Aurora Gory Alice by Letters To Cleo

Letters To Cleo are brilliant and this is my favourite album they did. Let's take a quick look at how I found them - and how long I had to pause the tape to see their name in the credits!

The It Girl by Sleeper

Britpop fascinated me while I lived through it, because I never quite belonged to it, yet somehow it filled the charts and radio playlists with guitar bands. Even as a teenager, I felt something about Britpop was a little too masculine, overly laddish, which wasn't me at all. The entire scene, I'd later discover, was…

A Christmas Record (Ze Records)

Ze Records was one of the hippest labels of the time. This was their attempt at a Christmas album. It's...something.

The Kim Gordon Fan Club

Kim Gordon is an idol of mine. Read on to find out why.

Lycanthropy by Patrick Wolf

I saw Patrick Wolf very early on in his career at the original Stereo while he was touring Lycanthropy. The gig wasn't very well attended, which made sense because Patrick was most definitely a cult artist at that point, beloved by critics and photographed for all the coolest magazines, who presented him as the coolest…

Resolver by Veruca Salt

The very nature of a break-up album is that of catharsis, that journey the artist takes you on from the first note to the last second with the whole gamut of emotions in-between. The music becomes your guide through some intense feelings. Some of the greatest, most critically acclaimed albums ever recorded have been inspired…

Beaucoup Fish by Underworld

I tried so hard to get away from Trainspotting. It belonged to my brother, my sisters, their friends. Somehow, I felt it couldn't belong to me. I was at Cumbernauld High School, still trying to create myself, work out what I liked and what I didn't like. Now, here's the important detail: what I liked…

Tinderbox by Siouxsie And The Banshees

I always knew where to find new music. Sometimes, that new music came from old bands long since gone. As a teenager in search of a perspective grander than what I saw outside the window of a council house in Cumbernauld, I'd find myself turning to music and books to give me something that wasn't…

Your New Favourite Band by The Hives

Some bands are too fun to be denied. Fundamentally, for me, there's something really exciting about a cool-as-fuck garage rock band. Their music is a loud racket, the sound of my emotions. These bands look cool with their music playing, just as cool when they stand for photographs. The Donnas. The Cramps. The Kills. Black…

Vibrate You by King Adora

King Adora arrived before quickly vanishing completely, a standout cameo in a really shit film. Though they're gone, Vibrate You is still here, always somewhere close to me. Hands up if you form emotional connections with albums? 2001 was a strange time which demanded strange music made by odd people. I knew I wanted to…