These albums are now all at a stage where I don't feel like my writing skills, such as they are, can do them justice.
15. Air - Moon Safari
Having fallen in love with Sexy Boy with its heavy airplay I couldn't wait to get my hands on Moon Safari.
I had a voucher from the paper which gave me £1 off in Woolies and bought it on a day trip to Liverpool.
There aren't many albums that are as chilled out as this one. Over the years it's become a staple for bedtime so I will have heard the first half of the album a hell of a lot more than the second half, which is a shame really. As I type this I'm listening to You Make It Easy and remembering what a great song it is.
As you'll be aware if you saw my top 100 tracks list, All I Need is on my top ten tracks of all time, and is probably the closest MrsJ & I have to a "song". And it would certainly have been my choice for the first dance at our wedding, rather than Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now (a song that's almost as impossible to dance to as Welcome To The Cheap Seats).
With the exception of the The Virgin Suicides soundtrack, subsequent Air albums haven't really done it for me, so I'm just grateful that they have this one masterpiece.
14. The Lilac Time - Astronauts
Ah, Stephen Duffy.
Like most people of my age I was aware of the intelligent pop of Kiss Me and Icing On The Cake from his 80s "Tin Tin" period but my interest and knowledge of his work didn't really extend much beyond that.
But Return To Yesterday by The Lilac Time was on The Chart Show one week and Eifion went out and bought it. And then, as he has a habit of doing, bought everything else they released too.
The self-titled debut was released (on vinyl only?) by Birmingham's Swordfish Records before being reissued in a slightly tweaked form once TLT signed to Fontana. I remember finding the Swordfish version of the album on CD in the shop of the same name on one of my day trips to Birmingham from Coventry and being over the moon.
When Eifion & I went to see them play 2 shows in Manchester one day, they were moved along by the park police whilst setting up in Piccadilly Gardens so their manager came over to us to apologise and told us to go and see him after the show that evening and he'd sort us out with a free t-shirt.
Lovely bloke that Alan McGee.
Stephen Duffy is one of those people that can't really do much wrong in my book. His solo albums, whether collaborating with Nigel Kennedy on Music In Colours, or going "a bit Britpop" on Duffy, there's always great songwriting and tunes.
Sadly he's never had the hits that he had in the 80s so it's unsurprising that when celebrity fan Robbie Williams came calling asking him to write songs for his Intensive Care album Duffy took the money and ran with it.
Astronauts is, in my humble opinion, the best thing he's ever produced. Their only release on Creation Records, it's full of great love songs and tales of English country life, as well as a brief foray into almost-trip-hop on the single Dreaming. It's another album I'd be hard-pushed to find a weak song on - a measure of Duffy's supreme songwriting skills.
I bought it in what was basically a newsagent/bookshop in Germany. Kind of a WH Schmidt's I guess.
13. Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen
Purchased on a whim from Rhyl Our Price, probably based on a glowing NME review, the Afghan Whig's more soulful take on what the kids were all calling "grunge" was a hit with me from first listen. Unfairly bundled into the grunge scene mostly by virtue of initially being on Sub Pop, Greg Dulli's band were far better than that.
The barely concealed emotion of songs like Debonair and Fountain And Fairfax shows Dulli's voice off at its best, but the whole album is full of great songs and great vocal performances.
Subsequent albums Black Love and 1965 are also right up there, but this is the one for me.
12. The Boo Radleys - Giant Steps
I listened to this the other day for the first time in a long while and it's lost none of its charm.
A classic example of an act who I discover a couple of albums into their career and buy all their subsequent releases but never show an interest in their back catalogue.
My good friend Paul was the one who went for the early EPs and I think his reputation for being the one who was into shoegaze put me off a lot of things he liked.
Thankfully by the time Giant Steps was released I'd become slightly more receptive and the Boos had become a bit more... well... fun.
With the tunes here like Lazarus, Wish I Was Skinny, I Hang Suspended etc you can't go wrong. It was hands down my favourite album of that year and I remember being really chuffed that Select made it their album of the year. This
I've told you all already what Buffalo Tom mean to me. They're easily in my top ten favourite acts of all time. And this album, bought in Germany (like so many others), is them at their finest. There aren't any weak BT albums truth be told but this and Smitten are the ones I go back to the most.
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