through, don’t really get, and then discard telling everyone who’ll listen that they are terrible. Later though, you are forced to eat your words over a massive six course banquet that you can barely consume, leaving you resting your hands on your overstuffed gut of foolishness. This Album was on my list. It’s also, seemingly, the fate that befell it on its initial release in 1968. It was virtually ignored but has since found a place amongst the classic albums of the period.

It is a wonderful record, whimsical and melodic with Ray Davies mining his imagination to write about an old England of Village Greens, corner shops and Characters playing cricket in the thunder and the rain whilst also inventing Early nineties blur circa Modern life is rubbish into the bargain.

The music contained within is so redolent of the period but came just as Led Zeppelin were waiting over the crest of the hill, ready to shift the musical goalposts of the era. Davies it seems missed the portents but with songs as good and gorgeous as Last of the steam powered trains and Big Sky included here (although not on the original release) along with two further discs of b-sides and rarities , Village Green is well worth you investigation.

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The argument runs thus, that by having the Television show reach its end in the weeks running up to the festive period that the X-Factor has got the Christmas  top spot ‘tied up’. That the very gullibility of the British public means that no other artist even has a chance of yuletide glory.

X-Factor has provided us with the last four with the 3rd rendition of Do they know it’s Christmas grabbing top spot in 2004. Here then is a selection spanning the last 40 years. In 2000 Bob the builder was fixing it, ’99 Cliff Richards Millenium prayer, ’98 the Spice girls, ’97 the Teletubbies said Eh Oh, ’94 East 17, ’93 Mr Blobby, ’88 and 90 was Cliff Richard (again). In 1984 the flying Pickets barber shopped their way to the top with only you and in 1980 the St. Winifred’s school choir knocked John Lennon off the top spot with there’s no one quite like Grandma. ”72, Little Jimmy Osmond’s Long haired lover from Liverpool, ’71 Bennie Hill with Ernie, ’69 Rolf Harris’s two little boys.

There are some notable exceptions, The Beatles three years running from ’63 to ’66, Pink Floyd in ’79 and Don’t you want me Baby by the Human League over Christmas ’81 but on the whole an artistically bankrupt lot.

There have been numerous charity singles over the years which we will leave to one side but I think that when you are looking at a list where East 17′s stay another day is a high point, well I think that the British public should have the back of their collective wrists slapped! We are not gullible. We just like rubbish music!

Now I dislike Evil Galactic emperor Cowell as much as the next man but it’s hard to argue that he’s ruined pop music. On the evidence presented above, it was already ruined. and by allowing Hallelujah to be released last year, X-Factor went some way to replenishing Leonard Cohen’s pilfered retirement fund. Based on this, I feel almost magnanimous towards the high trousered one.

TV on the Radio’s previous output was perhaps easier to admire than to like or love. With genre labels like experimental rock, post rock or even art rock thrown at them, they were unlikely ever to find a mainstream audience with their at times almost aloof sound.

While hardly making a leap for the Kaiser Chief, David Siteks Brooklyn based project have released an album suffused with pop hooks, horns and sonic tricks.

It has a sound derived from  a meeting of David Bowie and 1980′s Prince, probably in a lift, and the record that ensued was Dear Science. Both Tunde Adebimpe’s falsetto nod the outpouring of musical ides is reminiscent of both their best.

Still experimental? Yes, but inclusively so.

Simon Yardley.

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Is it worth criticising Kings of Leon?

Certainly not within the walls of a Mojo. In my nine year stay/sentence I’ve never seen a collection of records unite both worker and drinker quite like the quartet produced by the followhills.

With no real hit singles to speak of their unerring rise from poor cousin southern Strokes to arena eating behemoths is all the more admirable.

But where are the rockers? There are more than enough libido grabbing numbers here, Sex on Fire, the primal churn of Crawl or the opener, Closer, yet it can feel quite ploddy at times. It lacks something of the potency of Charmer, Red Morning light or Molly’s Chambers.

So a good album but certainly not a great one

Simon

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