Pad's Playlist

Here's what was rattling the windows last week:

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Their 70s & 80s soft rock influenced third album.


The Cure - Disintegration

You wanted dark? This is damn dark!!! The Cure mining the depths of human collapse from 1989. 


The Cure - Greatest Hits

For all of their legendary gothic miserabilism, it is often forgotten that The Cure are a jolly fine pop band. This album contains the proof.


The Damned - Machine Gun Etiquette

The Damned were an early punk victim of intra-band strife, splitting up in 1978. They quickly re-formed however, with Captain Sensible moving onto guitar in place of the departed Brian James, and Algy Ward joining on bass. This superb album containing the classics Love Song, I Just Can't Be Happy Today, Noise Noise Noise and Smash It Up marked their return in 1979.


The Damned - The Black Album

Confounding the critics, in 1980 they followed the aforementioned slice of punk with this excursion into psychedelia. Never ones to stand still and all that.....


The Dandy Warhols - Earth To The Dandy Warhols

I remember listening to this at the time that it came out (in 2008) and thinking that it sounded rather tired and the druggy in-jokes were somewhat grating. Listening to it again after six years the jokes haven't improved at all (Valerie Yum for example) but the music sounds much perkier than before. Well worth revisiting.


Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul

Not everything on here is as gloomy as the title suggests. Indeed, there are moments of pure pop delight. However, the fact that Mark Linkous and Vic Chesnutt both comitted suicide shortly after this album was recorded does tend to hang over it like a pall. That doesn't stop it being a very good album though.


Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue

Ah - the man who invented 'the cool'. This album is an absolute classic and All Blues is particularly fine.


The Dead Weather - Horehound

Much more than just another Jack White collaboration. If anything the star turn here is Alison Mosshart from The Kills, who makes the album her own.


Deep Purple - In Concert

This album documents concerts Purple's classic mark II line-up gave for the BBC in 1970 and 1972. The performances aren't as free-flowing as on Made In Japan, as these performances are respectively promoting the In Rock and Machine Head albums shortly after their release, so presumably the new songs aren't fully bedded in as live vehicles. It's still very good though.


Deep Purple - On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat

Here the mark IV line-up (featuring Tommy Bolin on guitar) are captured in concert in Long Beach, California, in 1976. The performances here are astonishingly good. Sadly, by the time the tour reached Europe, Bolin was so incapacitated by his heroin use that he could barely manage barre chords onstage. The band split up at the end of the tour, and Bolin died in 1977 at the age of 25. Purple re-formed with their mark II line-up in 1984.