yes, yes i do

Ok, these guys are no spring chickens and, yes, I did play 'Walk Across The Rooftops' to death when I was a lonely misunderstood teenager but...the new release from Blue Nile entitled, "HIGH", is an amazing record. Just wonderful

I will take your advice Rev Jules but I still do like the Ben Harper one out now. Have to get that Nick Cave double album aswell before I purchase the new REM.

Libertines - Libertines Legends - Up Against the Legends (this was a gift actually, but i strongly recommend it.) Beach Boys - Pet Sounds My Bloody Valentine Loveless (i am literally cringing at having to admit I did not own proper copies of those last two until recently) Now to just count down the moments until REM 'Around the Sun' goes on sale... OH! and whie I have everyone's attention, get ready for what promises to be a lively debate about Tom Waits's 'Real Gone' which comes out soon (I got the hook-up and am listeneing to it right now for the first time...)

So what's the new Tom Waits one like? Waiting for this album for ages and he isn't even playing a date in Dublin You should review the album for Cluas as I couldn't figure out anything that Peter Murphy wrote in his Hotpress review.

Here's that Tom Waits review that I mentioned... Tom Waits Real gone (Anti) The only problem with writing about any new Tom Waits record is the man himself describes his own work so accurately that any further attempts at conceptualism are rendered superfluous. Throughout the last 20 years he has variously tagged his songs as exercises in surruralism or Wreck Collections – this time out it’s Cubist Funk. With a little help from his son Casey on the decks, and a lot from his wife Kathleen Brennan, Waits has eschewed the vacuum-packed precision of computerised loops in favour of his own internal rhythm combustion engine, generating distorted human beatbox sounds with lungs, tongue and teeth in real time (no sampling four bars and repeating ad infinitum here buster). This is filthy music. Tracks like ‘Clang Boom Steam’ hypothesise what would happen if the grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge came out to play with JB’s all-stars. ‘Metropolitan Glide’ is more skip rope than hip-hop, replacing bling-bling with prison slang. The bullwhip groove of ‘Don’t Go Into That Barn’ could be Beefheart doing ‘Who Do You Love’, while ‘Shake It’ transcribes the notes of dirty old men like Howlin’ Wolf or Willie Dixon on the commode after a rough night at the inn. Best of all is a furious psalm called ‘Make It Rain’, which backs up John Edgar Wideman’s assertion in his writing about the poetry of Sterling Plumpp that “blues announces the end of the world”. So, Uncle Tom is still pursuing primitivism as pilgrim’s progress. Real Gone is built from sounds that seem to originate from before the dawn of music – or beyond its extinction. The clack of wooden slats, stress metal clang, chain gang call and response, field hollers and boot camp chants, these are a few of his favourite things. Waits once told Jim Jarmusch that his earliest memory was of seeing a pirate deathship on a beach in Mexico. Here he has re-envisioned those phantasms in a piece called ‘Hoist That Rag’, conjuring opium dreams of high seas terrorists boarding Bosch’s ship of the foolish and the mad, visions of frigging in the rigging, rotting cadavers hanging from the mast, mutineers hauled by ropes under the barnacled hull. Real Gone also boasts a few new developments. There’s the return of the brilliant Marc Ribot on guitar, a key player in Tom’s rebirth as trashcan man in the mid-80s. On ‘Sins Of My Father’ he’s conceived a sort of Pentecostal ghost dub symphony over ten minutes, a dose of the neo-tropicalism practiced by the artist Jack Rathbone in Patrick McGrath’s novel Port Mungo. But also, there are the required mortality ballads like ‘How’s It Gonna End’ (Brecht and Weill’s ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive’ by way of a banjo-playing William Blake) and the Ophelia elegy ‘Dead And Lovely’. And of course, he’s still acting as prospector of lost etymologies, shoehorning words into songs no one else will touch (turnips anyone?). Just when you think he’s flying too close to self parody – ‘Circus’ is his latest riff on pickled punks and carny folk – he’ll hiss a line like, “Dr Smith slipped me a preparation” that makes you realise no one else has managed to make brothers of Burroughs and Barnum. When the world turns indifferent to art, the true artist’s response is to dream up a weirder one. Waits’ world it isn’t exactly a tourist trap, but once you go there you don’t want to come back. And then you’re real, real gone. Peter Murphy Rating: 8½ / 10

man alive. that's some review. after the 'no one can describe Waits's music better than Waits' (which i think is partly true) it just gets thick. When did intelligent criticism and accessible criticism become mutually exclusive? and why does this seem to be happening in only print journalism? (the last really strikingly good review i read, actually, was the cluas review of Kings of Convenience.) Why is this now the responsibility of bloggers, cluas, pitchfork (though they've sort of gone to pot too, i think) popmatters, etc. I know there've been discussion threads about this before, but seriously. I WILL review Tom Waits for cluas, if they'll have me. otherwise i'll just post it here...

Cheers, I wrote that KoC review. Glad someone liked it. And would love to read a review of the new Tom Waits album from someone who respects the man but won't babble on throughout the review. I think more up and coming journalists should be given a chance as many established writers, in Irish media anyway, slip up way too much. In contrast to this, I think we have the greatest sports journalist of all time in Tom Humphries, excellent writers in John Waters, Michael Dwyer, Sean Moran and Dunphy is always worth a listen.

Magrugada was last one I bought - anyone heard the latest album? I think it maybe a bit of a grower but a couple of great tunes. Love the Kings of inconvenience album and well done Gar, your review sums it up nicely. I checked out their site and the bastards aren't playing Dublin on their tour.

Bubblegum - Mark Lanegan On The Beach - Neil Young So what's the scoop on Burn The Maps? I see lots of you have bought it...

Quite disappointing, really I found it a bit boring. Im sure there are some 50 people hurriedly scribbling some reviews to be published on our fair site as we speak. Or type as the case may be. So what's Bubblegum like? I hear Mark Lanegan will be coming to Dublin in November.

'Burn The Maps' takes at least four full listens to really discover how good it is. But maybe people wouldn't bother going through all that effort which I can understand. Although I do think that it is a decent album.

Interpol - Antics Jay Z - The Black Album

Not a big punk fan but Green Day - American Idiot. Great so far, love it. boulevard of broken dreams and are we the waiting are the standouts for me. one of the better albums ive heard this year from one of the better bands around.

Sparta - Porcelain (emo stuff, this band was formed by half of At The Drive In) Converge - You Fail Me (hardcore and so interesting--very abrasive) Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium (the other half of At The Drive in, not so emo-y, but both albums-this and Sparta-are EXCELLENT) And recently scored for $3 each: Tad - Infrared Riding Hood Afghan Whigs - Historectomy (a best of comp) American Music Club - San Francisco The Church - Sometime Anywhere (double cd) Bob Mould - S/T Quicksand - Slip Living Color - Time's Up Boingo - ST Clannad - Anam

I do recommend the Sparta album. It's very emo, but it's also a grower. I've wondered since I loved Mars Volta so immediately if I'd wear it out after awhile.