Why The Beatles aren't over-rated

The following was written for a No Ripcord debate piece on whether The Beatles are over-rated...

The combination of hyperbole and hindsight could very well be the music critic’s worst enemy. The desperation of wanting to be the person who spots the hip new thing coupled with the fear of missing the boat on the latest act to hit big means that, occasionally, reviews and features heap more praise on an artist than they really merit. Add to this cocktail the element of a fast-approaching deadline and before you know it, Oasis’ Be Here Now has been proclaimed a universal masterpiece. Then, it’s too late, and it’s only when the impossible to ignore poke of hindsight arrives that everyone acknowledges that it’s not a masterpiece, but an ego-laden, coked-up mess of a record that no-one wants to hear again. Of course, the words that were originally written can’t be taken back, and the history music journalism is full of effusive reviews for truly terrible albums.

Yet one of the acts that seems immune to these revisions of opinion are those lovable, Liverpudlian mop-tops, The Beatles. They’re hardly unique in this position; you won’t get many articles entitled, “Now I’ve had a while to think about it, Bob Dylan / Ray Charles / Miles Davis / Kraftwerk / Leonard Cohen was a bit rubbish”. However, The Beatles were the only band to combine lasting critical acclaim with such enormous popularity and influence, and that can’t be an accident.

If you’re a fan of popular music in any of its multiple forms, being a fan of The Beatles is practically a corollary. Between Please Please Me in 1963 and Abbey Road in 1969 (or Let It Be in 1970, if you’re so inclined), The Beatles redefined the popular landscape, introduced new concepts to a mass audience and developed their sound in a way no band ever has in such a short space of time.

It may help to look at The Beatles as two separate bands: the knock-out-songs-every-couple-of-minutes group and the sonic-adventurer group, with 1965’s Rubber Soul charting the time the former metamorphosed into the latter. So, now, a little music might help, so go and put one of those early Beatles albums on, whichever one you like. Have a listen - brilliant, isn’t it? They may sound slightly anachronistic and naïve compared to the music of today but with, for example, I Saw Her Standing There, I Wanna Be Your Man, Can’t Buy Me Love, Eight Days a Week and Ticket to Ride, the quality of the writing and melodies can’t help but shine through. What’s also striking about those early records is the sheer urgency of the delivery. It’s as if they’re trying to burst through your speakers and when you consider how many gigs they were playing, how many songs they were writing and how much they were travelling, it’s just exhausting. Think of your favourite band and work out how long they took between their last two albums. The Beatles were churning out gold-plated, enduring pop records almost at a rate of two a year in their early career.

During this prolific formative period, The Beatles went against the received wisdom that you couldn’t write all the songs on your own album whilst retaining popularity. It’s only when you put something like that into context you’re able to see what a feat that is. An appreciation of music and a curious sensibility meant that The Beatles were alchemist magpies; assimilating what they loved and what fascinated them into an irresistible package.

The vast majority of bands would have been content to rest on their laurels after such success but The Beatles were always wanting to push the boundaries of popular song and explore further possibilities. Neither of the key songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney were classically trained, meaning that they just made chords that sounded good to them and fitted in with what they were trying to express. From Rubber Soul onwards, you can hear a dissatisfaction with their previous achievements manifesting itself in a yearning for something outside of the constraints of the pop music of the day.

The argument against the above is that The Beatles weren’t the innovators; they weren’t the first to discover Eastern mysticism and sitars, incongruous sound effects or the approach of changing tack altogether mid-song (see A Day in the Life). Whilst it’s difficult to refute those claims - how do you prove who was the first person to do anything? - the real genius of The Beatles came in merging these ideas into their records, taking previously specialist concepts into the mainstream and creating their own private universe of which the listener could inhabit with just a 12” record.

Appealing to the mass-market and being commercial may be seen as going against the ethics of art and expression, and may even raise accusations of “selling out” (something which seems almost quaint these days) but it’s yet another reason why The Beatles are still so revered these days and why an enterprising writer like myself is spending a sunny Sunday afternoon indoors singing their praises. Their early incarnation may seem like something you’d now liken to a boy band: identical uniforms, hoards of screaming females and songs about unnamed girls in order to make the hysterical 1960's teenager feel that they could well be the subject. It was a tactical masterstroke and The Beatles didn’t lose their ability to market themselves. In fact, they got cleverer.

How do you be taken as a serious act and still try and appeal to millions? Keep the matching uniforms but make them grown-up (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), say you’re making a concept album (Sgt. Pepper… again), play on the roof of your record company headquarters, say something outrageous that will be quoted for years to come (“Ringo isn’t the best drummer”, “we’re bigger than Jesus”, and so on). All things that may not have been exactly new, but things that the biggest band around hadn’t done before.

All of the above reasons - and many more - tell the story of why The Beatles weren’t over-rated and fully deserve their place at the top of the popular music pantheon. It’s a subject that could stretch out over pages and pages (you may not be entirely unsurprised to hear that this isn’t exactly the first piece of music journalism to conclude The Beatles were a bit better than your average beat combo) and it’s wonderful to think that over 40 years since their last album, The Beatles are still one of the most popular groups around.

One last parting shot before you’re free to resume your busy life. As important as all these aforementioned reasons are, not enough has been made of the single most important factor: the quality of the songs. It was touched upon when discussing the raw energy of the early years, but The Beatles never lost sight of why they were so popular in the first place, and endeavoured to still write to the best of their abilities throughout their career. They were incredibly blessed in the writing department: the best groups rely on a songwriting partnership where the two members bring out the best in one another and are free to bounce ideas around. Well, The Beatles had the best partnership in the history of popular music, as well as George Harrison; himself an incredibly competent songsmith. Hey, even the unfairly derided Ringo wrote a handful of better-than-average numbers (admit it; Octopus’s Garden is great). So, if you only take one thing away with you, it’s that you can ignore any hyperbole and with hindsight, recognise that The Beatles had the best songs - it really is as simple as that.

33 1/3: OK Computer

Dai Griffiths - 33 1/3: OK Computer

published 9 September 2004 by Continuum

Type “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” into Google and you get well over 800000 results; not bad for a quote that’s patently untrue. It’s a sound bite that’s taken on a life of its own, principally due to its inflammatory nature and “quotability”, rather than anything remotely fact-based. At its finest, writing about music is a wonderful thing; a great review, article or opinion piece can be persuasive, invigorating, challenging and entertaining, much in the same way music itself can be. One of the great things about music is that it’s near-indefinable and certain tracks mean different things to different people. This means that music doesn’t lend itself too well to academic appraisal, yet that is what Oxford Brookes lecturer, Dr. Dai Griffiths, seeks to do in his book on Radiohead’s OK Computer.

This isn’t at all to suggest that academia and pop music can’t be bedfellows - for instance, analysing a particular album and its place in the canon of the history of recorded music would be a more than valid study. However, OK Computer was only released in 1997, and while Dr. Griffith’s thesis is as engagingly written as you’d expect, it’s debatable whether breaking down each song into its constituent parts with details on bars per section, tempo and key signature is going to advance anyone’s appreciation of the album.

The books in the 33 1/3 series examine “classic” albums in detail and tend to be written by journalists or musicians rather than academics. I find it difficult not to take issue with the style of the OK Computer book, as the music I love is all about the way it makes me feel, and while I’m keen to know more about the making of a record and the circumstances around it, dissecting it as if it were a scientific experiment seems impersonally anodyne and leaves me cold. The fact that the average song length on OK Computer is greater than that of The Bends is immaterial; the reasons I like OK Computer are likely to be different to the reasons you like (or dislike) OK Computer and grouping the lyrical themes into nine distinct headings isn’t going to alter that one jot.

That said, Dr. Griffiths’ prose is very readable, and the section on the difference between CD and vinyl albums is incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, the conclusion he draws is incredibly sweeping and rushed, and his over-confident tone can be grating and smug. It’s a decent enough book and worthy reading for OK Computer obsessives, but it ultimately comes across as the wrong approach to take. With a style like that, you may as well be dancing about architecture.

Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele

Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele

released 20 July 2010 on 8ft Records

After a protracted and well-documented battle, Amanda Palmer is free from her recording contract. Is there any better way of giving the middle finger to your previous employers than a leftfield project no self-respecting record company would go near - an album of Radiohead covers, played on the ukulele, at a cut-down price? Not even ten days after its release, the limited edition vinyl release sold out and the vinyl/t-shirt/button bundle has sold out. Hell, even all six “I Painted This Fucking Ukulele Myself” bundles have sold out.

Unsurprisingly, however, upon listening to 'APPTPHOROHMU', it soon becomes clear that it’s little more than a stop-gap: something to stay in contact with her fanbase and make a statement with. It really is exactly what the title says; Radiohead songs played on the ukulele, and little else. The novelty of hearing these well-known songs on a relatively unusual instrument soon wears off and other than the contrast of having female vocals instead of Thom Yorke’s distinctive wail, there really is nothing added to the mix here.

Fake Plastic Trees and High and Dry are fairly dull when stripped down, and without percussion they struggle to reach the emotional peaks of the originals. Creep is performed in a lilting, Hawaiian style and, for no apparent reason, there are two near-identical live performances - one with audience, one without. Give Palmer her dues though, her attempt to recreate Jonny Greenwood’s primal guitar sturm und drang is admirable, even if it does lack the nihilistic effect on a ukulele.

Oddly enough, the least guitar-based song, Idioteque, is one of the highlights. Although it may lack the intensity and skittering beats of the Kid A version, it showcases what a melodious piece of work it actually is. The only track fit to hold a candle to the Oxford band, though, is OK Computer's Exit Music (for a Film). It features no ukulele and is probably the only non-obvious choice on the EP, but it retains the drama and tension which makes the original so compelling.

Other than to satisfy your curiosity, this EP really isn’t worth your time. A quick listen will just make you want to go and put your Radiohead albums on to hear it done properly. It’s hard not to admire her chutzpah though - to paraphrase words constantly misattributed to Voltaire: I may not agree with Amanda Palmer releasing an album of Radiohead covers played on the ukulele, but I’ll defend to the death her right to do so.

Tokyo Police Club Interview

Canadian post-punks Tokyo Police Club may have only formed five years ago, but they have an impressive CV for such a young band. Two well-received EPs in their formative years led to a deal with Conor Oberst’s Saddle Creek label to release their début album, 2008’s Elephant Shell. Unfortunately for TPC, Elephant Shell wasn’t quite the success they hoped for, but the band re-grouped and have returned with the critically acclaimed Champ. Early signs point towards the group fulfilling the potential they’ve always shown. Add this to a busy touring schedule and it seems that 2010 could truly be Tokyo Police Club’s year. In the middle of their busy summer, Greg from the band found time to email a response to No Ripcord’s questions.

How are you finding the reaction to your new album and what are your hopes for it?

The first reactions have been really positive so far. I haven't read a lot of the reviews, but we've been getting a great response from fans at our shows every night. It's really satisfying to go out on stage and break into a new song and have people start dancing and singing along to it. It's really the best reaction you can hope for.

General consensus on this record is that it’s a step forward and you’re making good on the promise shown earlier in your career - would you say that’s a fair assessment and do you feel you’re continuing to develop as a band?

Yeah, we are all definitely really happy with this album. I hope that if people in 2006 who liked our EP could listen forward to what we're doing now they'd be happy and not feel like we've veered off in some disappointing direction. I think we've learned to just trust our initial gut instincts more and not second guess what our first ideas are for a song. They're usually the right way to go, so it was a lot less of "start, stop, re-write, go back to what you had" process with this record and more of just a constant flow of ideas forward. It feels like a more natural progression for us, and I hope people can hear that.

What was the thinking behind setting up the Champ Championship and what’s the best challenge you’ve had so far? [The Champ Championship is a TPC invention where fans can challenge the band to a competition of their choosing with the chance to win prizes]

The Champ Champion contest is basically just a way to have some fun and meet new people in the cities we travel to on tour. It's really often that you get to a town in the mid-afternoon, setup, find some mediocre food in the area and then have a few hours to do absolutely nothing till the show begins. I think we all got tired of just having "laptop circle parties" in our dressing room, where everyone is just staring at their computers, surfing the internet, completely bored, and wanted to actually have a chance to do something in our time off before we play. With this contest, we get to pull into town and then ask the people there, "What do you guys do here for fun?" and instead of them just giving us an answer, "Oh, well there's the pencil museum and the miniature tea set collection in town square...", like you would get from a travel site, we get, "What do we do here? Effin’ Three-Legged Races! Backwards! And Blindfolded!" Done! Let's do that! In Baltimore we had a couple come out and just challenge us to clean and eat steamed blue crabs. What kind of amazing people offer that up as a challenge? And if you've ever seen The Wire, you'll know that was definitely the best way to spend an afternoon in Baltimore.

You have several special packages for fans available on your website. Why have you decided to do this and do you think it’s important for bands to try and connect with your fans in such a way?

I think it's important to give your fans a chance to connect with you in as complete a way as you're willing to offer. We're all huge fans of music and we love it when you get to see some behind the scenes shots or video of a favourite band of ours rehearsing, or just goofing around. I think that extends to the album and the music on it. Like, how with some of our CDs you get a collage that Dave made of all his lyrics and notes he made while writing them. It just gives an insight into our creative process and mechanics as a band that I know with bands I love, I'd be really interested in seeing.

You seem to have a pretty heavy tour schedule for the remainder of 2010 - what are you particularly looking forward to?

Honestly, right now we're all just excited to be playing live again. We stopped touring almost completely in early 2009 to start work on this album so we'd been off the stage for almost a year and a half before we began playing live again recently. You can get pretty exhausted by life on the road and there's definitely always a point on tour where you realize you just need to get home soon or you're going to go crazy. But being away from it for that long you really begin to miss just being on stage together and you remember why you started playing music in the first place. It's a real rush again for us to get on stage every night, so I think we're having more fun now than we've had since we started touring back in 2006. It's a blast to be a band again.

What bands and artists are your main inspiration when writing songs and looking for ideas?

We all love the Strokes and Radiohead, but I'm not sure if they'd be where we draw ideas from. Bands like that constantly remind us that we've still got so much room to grow as song-writers - it's always really humbling to put on a record like Is This It or Kid A and just be blown away every time. I think we draw a lot of inspiration from our contemporaries; bands that we know and love and play shows with who are growing up and developing their sound around us. I get really inspired by just hearing what new exciting music is coming out each month and then dissecting it and figuring out what they're doing and learning from it. It's really great to be able to just look around you for inspiration and find it everywhere. It's still a really exciting time for music and I'm glad to be a part of it.

What new bands coming through do you think are worth watching out for?

We just played at a few festivals with this band from Australia called The Middle East and I think they're amazing. I really loved their sets each night and everyone in the band is just really talented and puts out such an intense performance where they’re playing at peak level all the way to the end. If you get a chance to see them live soon, do it!

Finally, How did you end up appearing on Desperate Housewives and how did you find it?

Desperate Housewives was a fun experience. Our friend, Paul Bullock, is a writer on the show and it came up that they needed a band for a story arc they were working on and he suggested us. The only strange part is how, since the show exists in it's own "universe" apart from our reality, we couldn't be called Tokyo Police Club and they had to change our name to Cold Splash. So, now there might a large contingent of 40-something women out there who are Cold Splash's biggest fans.

The Mercury Prize 2010

It’s the time of year when a bunch of people in “the biz” put their heads together and come up with a dozen acts to put forward for the Mercury Prize (or, to give it its full title, The Barclaycard Mercury Prize). Almost as traditional as the mid-July unveiling of the list is the customary griping about the make-up of said list. People always say that Christmas seems to be getting earlier year on year, but I think the gap between the releasing of the list and the deluge of criticism of the choices is getting smaller as each twelve month passes. In fact, some music journalists on Twitter, so jaded of the inevitable impending criticism, were pretending to have a moan about the judges’ selections an hour or so before the list was made public.

So, since we’re here, why don’t we sit down, have a nice cup of tea, peruse the albums on the list and offer up our views on this year’s shortlist?

Actually, do you mind if we don’t? My opinions on the list will be incredibly similar to yours and pretty much anyone else who’s decided to vent their spleen on the subject. All critiques follow a simple formula, namely: “I’m glad they included [Band A], what are they doing including [Band B] and what kind of moron would leave out [Band C]?” My Band A, B and C are The xx, Biffy Clyro and Field Music respectively - yours will probably be different - but it’s completely immaterial really.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a piece rubbishing the prize or even the concept of it. The majority of awards are fairly meaningless, and the Mercury is better than most at making brave choices and not necessarily kowtowing to public opinion. The point is that this hackneyed, predictable cliché of dismissing the list as worthless is beyond tiresome.

As far as I can tell, anyone who writes off the list would only be happy if their favourite twelve records of the year made up the Mercury shortlist, but how realistic is that? The chances of a team of experts and professionals coming together and choosing the exact dozen you want on the list are fairly slim. Guess what, everyone, taste is subjective, and your favourite album of the year not making the cut equates to a difference of opinion rather than a failure on the part of the award.

While we’re on the subject, the whole concept of “the best album of the year” is near-impossible to pin down. How do you define “best”? Most enjoyable, most inventive, most different, most surprising or any other superlative you care to toss into the ring? Any award for the “best” anything is wildly open to interpretation: in 1997, Titanic won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but how was that the best? If you’re judging “best” in terms of special effects or box office gross then the victory is fairly undisputable, but if you think of “best” pertaining to story or dialogue, then the success of Titanic (and subsequent nomination of Avatar for the same award in 2009) must be one of the indications of the impending apocalypse.

Critics also like to find trends amongst the winners of the Mercury prize: another pretty fruitless exercise. Attempting to apply anything remotely mathematically rigorous to such a small data set (there have been 18 winners) where the choice of who is victorious is influenced by so many external factors is essentially futile. There is a different panel of judges each year, attitudes change, scenes come and go, and if you want to predict who’s going to win this year, a look at the role call of previous champions will tell you absolutely nothing.

There is also the much-vaunted “Curse of the Mercury”: examples of acts fading into obscurity after their prize win, such as Talvin Singh and Ms. Dynamite. This was said to have been “lifted” in 2008 with the success of Elbow, but its return was heralded last year with a poor post-win sales showing from Speech Debelle. Interestingly, no-one seems to argue that a Mercury Prize win offers a significant boost in sales for an album. So, considering the fact no-one’s ever won the prize twice and a win means units shifted, it’s little surprise that follow-ups tend to relatively under-perform.

What was meant to be a defence of the Mercury Prize looks to have turns out as a defiant stance against the nay-sayers, but the point remains. The Mercury Prize is an interesting award, can lead to healthy debate and often rewards acts that look to do something out of the ordinary with their music. So, this year, let’s not pass judgement prematurely, let’s acknowledge that not everyone agrees with our own personal tastes and let’s look upon it as an opportunity to discover something that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks. The Mercury Prize has honoured fantastic artists like Suede, Pulp, PJ Harvey and Dizzee Rascal, while giving much-needed publicity to smaller acts like Burial, Fionn Regan, Seth Lakeman and, this year, Kit Downes Trio. It should be celebrated in what it seeks to do, whether we agree with the winner or not.

That said, if Corinne Bailey Rae wins on September 7, the judging panel are clearly a load of cloth-eared cretins who wouldn’t know a decent tune if it slapped them round the face of a weekend. But then again, that’s just my opinion…

/\/\/\Y/\

M.I.A. - /\/\/\Y/\

released 12 July 2010 on XL

London-born Sri Lankan Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam could just be the perfect pop star. She’s that irresistible, hard-to-ignore mix of intrigue, fun, controversy, branding know-how and beauty. She’s always on hand with a quotable soundbite, whether it be pertaining to herself, other artists or political activism. Last year, she was listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 “World’s Most Influential People” and - despite not even considering herself a musician - she’s already made two albums of glorious, cacophonous, joyous, genre-melting, Technicolor pop. Both Arular and Kala tore up the rule book, with M.I.A.’s keen magpie-like musical eye picking out hip-hop beats, playground rhymes, bhangra rhythms, philosophical rhetoric and unlikely sound effects, and blending them into something greater than the sum of their parts. In 2005, none other than Nas called M.I.A. the sound of the future and over the last five years, he’s been proved correct.

However, M.I.A.’s latest LP, the typically contrarily-titled /\/\/\Y/\ - or, if you prefer, Maya - hasn’t quite been receiving the praise of her previous two efforts. This review comes over a week after the album has been on general release, and while it may be considered bad form to read the views and reports of others before setting out to chronicle your own opinions of a record, the fallout has been difficult to sidestep. So, why the cold shoulder for /\/\/\Y/\? Has M.I.A. really released a dud, or is it the revenge of the hack - payback for M.I.A. tweeting the telephone number of New York Times journalist Lynn Hirschberg after an unfavourable profile? Happily, I can report that M.I.A. has NEVER made my telephone number available in the public domain (she doesn’t even have my number - ha! More fool her), so you can rest assured this review is free from any personal vendetta I may have had.

Although M.I.A.’s endlessly quotable persona can be a gift to the press, she does tend to lean heavily towards conspiracy theory on occasion. She recently claimed that the Sri Lankan government are watching her and her child, and the theme of invasion of privacy continues with opening track, The Message, where over a burbling bass motif, a distorted, robotic voice unemotionally states that “the iPhone’s connected to the Internet connected to the Google connected to the government”. Outlandish maybe, but about ten times more interesting and inflammatory as you’re likely to get from your average airhead pop strumpet.

Where M.I.A. really excels though, is her innate ability to create an addictive kaleidoscope of sound, crashing disparate elements together and forcing them to fuse like a persistently stubborn alchemist.Steppin Up, in particular, is an intoxicatingly heady mix of drills, urban machinery, whistles and the kind of playground rhymes you’d expect to hear over footage of schoolgirls playing Double Dutch in the street. An interesting side-effect of listening to M.I.A. is that the utter uncompromising brashness of her music is so exhilarating that it can inspire confidence in you. Try listening to Steppin Up or the jackhammer drums and crunching, clipped riffs of Meds and Feds while walking through a populated area and it’ll make you feel around ten feet tall.

M.I.A. isn’t a one-trick pony, however, and she deftly demonstrates that she can do things slightly more subtly when required. Paper Planes is her best-known song and her most accessible, and it’s a combination she looks to repeat on leading single, XXXO. It’s odd to hear M.I.A. not rallying against some form of oppression and doing what could almost be considered a traditional love ballad, but her restrained vocals give the music the chance to take hold and envelop your senses. The disorienting recipe of huge bass drum, auto-tune and hardly any mid-range make Tell Me Why consistently intriguing, and the Animal-from-the-Muppets drumming, buzzing riff and primal vocals make Born Free a defiant joy.

All this means that /\/\/\Y/\ has some of the best tracks of any album you’ll hear this year. When M.I.A.’s on her game, there really is no-one to touch her. It may well be heavily disguised by the spacing of the good songs but unfortunately, /\/\/\Y/\ just seems to not have enough ideas. Maybe it’s no longer being able to provide “the shock of the new”, maybe it’s the distraction of family life, maybe it’s just a stumble or maybe it’s - whisper it quietly - the fact she’s so busy courting controversy she’s lost sight of what made her great in the first place, but this album sounds half-baked on more than one occasion. Teqkilla is a bad title and a worrying example of when M.I.A.’s Midas touch deserts her, It Takes a Muscle is rancid ska-lite and final track, Space, is disappointingly non-descript.

In fact, the blandness of a closing track of Space is symptomatic of the contradictory nature of /\/\/\Y/\: an album that veers between quixotic brilliance and insipid dullness. It’s possible that the crossover success of Paper Planes has left M.I.A. in a difficult position where she wants to stay true to her roots and ethos whilst also attempting to break into the mainstream. On the evidence of /\/\/\Y/\, she could be in danger of achieving neither.

Let’s get some perspective here, /\/\/\Y/\ is a good album by anyone’s standards. However, it’s the fact we’re judging it against M.I.A.’s (granted, incredibly high) standards that it’s so frustrating, and we all know she can do better. M.I.A. has now made a trilogy of inventive, engrossing records, but for the sake of music we’d all better hope that /\/\/\Y/\ isn’t the beginning of the end.

My Night in with... Tracey Thorn

from www.wordmagazine.co.uk and published in the August 2010 edition of The Word magazine...

What's it called?:

Love and Its Opposite

What It Sounds Like:

The kind of grown-up pop music you wish more people would make. Everything But The Girl were often labelled "sophisti-pop" by critics - sneeringly suggesting coffee table music with little substance - but lead singer Thorn has made a fantastic album which is as unashamedly sophisticated as they come. The arrangements are careful and professional, and the lyrics capture the frustrations and difficulties of being a 40-something woman in the second decade of the 21st Century. Love and its Opposite shows Thorn can write domestic vignettes with astonishing detail and candour and is a wonderful record.

What Does It All "Mean"?:

That it's ok to be afraid of aging, divorce and the worrying speed that your children grow up. It also means Tracey Thorn is becoming a national treasure.

Goes well with...:

A quiet reflective evening when a reassuring voice would be appreciated, as well as any time you feel like being thankful for what you've got.

Might Suit People Who Like...:

Everything But the Girl (obviously), Portishead's more reflective moments, The xx, Joni Mitchell. It should also be required listening for anyone who thinks Lily Allen and Kate Nash are the queens of unabashed, honest lyricism.