Nite Songs

  And so the end is near...we present to you the ten best albums of the year just gone in our humble opinion... 10.     BEANS ON TOAST - "The Toothpaste And The Tube" Another regular presence in my end of year lists in recent years, The Toothpaste And The Tube  sees Jay McAllister aka Beans on Toast returning to the fray in fine form and taking on everything from the joys of life on tour ( Back Out On The Road , The Golden Lion ) through laments at the state of the country ( Hope & Glory , The Greenwash ) to enjoying the simpler things in life to get you through ( Swimming In The Sea , The Dragicorn ). McAllister is quite simply one of the best lyric writers in the country today and The Toothpaste And The Tube  is a fine place to start for those wanting to discover his work. *** 9.     CYANIDE PILLS - "Soundtrack To The New Cold War" Soundtrack To The New Cold War sees Leeds pop-punks the Cyanide Pills well and truly coming of age. The group have ...

  With the world currently shutting down for January and very little coming in in the way of releases at the moment, it's fair to say that the number of reviews on the site is going to be a bit low for the next few weeks so we're going to make up for it by doing a few more features. Including a couple of new instalments of the old Album By Album series we intermittently do on here. And where better to re-commence that than the Stones? To my ears, the Rolling Stones are arguably the greatest band that this septic isle of ours has produced. I mean, with the greatest of respect to the Beatles, that whole "which do you prefer?" thing isn't even a question in my book. I'd never argue the toss that Lennon and McCartney weren't great songwriters but the truth is that to these ears, they wrote good simple sunny pop songs while the Stones' output hinted at a much murkier, darker side to the '60s dream. They weren't nice boys doing vocal harmonising, the...

  And so we enter the Top 10 of the Worst Albums Ever list. Verily we truly are in the crap de la crap of modern times now. Hope you're ready... PREVIOUSLY IN THIS COLUMN:   Intro  •  Part 1 (50-41)  •  Part 2 (40-31)  •  Part 3 (30-21)  •  Part 4 (20-16)   • Part 5 (15-11) *** 10.= THE ROLLING STONES - "Dirty Work" (1986) 10.= MICK JAGGER - "Primitive Cool" (1987) Similar to the David Bowie entry earlier in the list, let me quantify what I'm about to say by stating that I regard the Rolling Stones as the greatest rock 'n' roll band that this septic isle of ours has ever produced and that their run of albums from 1968's Beggars Banquet  to 1973's Goat's Head Soup  is arguably, in my opinion, the greatest five album run by any band ever. However, similar again to Bowie, when you've been around for as long as the Stones have been then it's inevitable you'll drop a few clangers somewhere along the way from the limp AOR of 197...