I don't get this photo finish between Wedding Present and Robert Wyatt in my 1991 poll. Is there anyone cheating there? None of those will be my fave, I can assure you. Though they are both excellent of course. But those two were neither particularly innovative nor particularly touching and that's what it needs to win 1991 in my book.

Silence is a rhythm two has three Magazine songs online. The first two tracks are great energetic post-punk with a penchant for melody by Howard Devoto (former Buzzcocks singer) and mates. There is a dramatic dark vibe to his voice which sometimes reminds me of Van Der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill. The two Swell Maps tracks from an older entry are indeed sounding like Buzzcocks in a box of frogs.

Music is a Virus shares Woolie Bullie by Pere Ubu and ponders about geography and personal relocation plans. The music is intense droney stuff with the fabulous lines

I think I have to dig deeper into this band. It's a good sign if I still contradict myself on a daily base.

I love the last two David Thomas albums but I do not feel the urge to get any Pere Ubu. What does this mean? Usually when I start to love an artist I discovered (quite) late I want to get everything he/she has ever released. Not in this case. I listened to some Pere Ubu and I was never impressed. But I am with the latest David Thomas albums. Maybe he has just become much better. And nobody realised? By the way I quite like the Rocket From the Tombs pre-Ubu stuff.

Giant Sand's latest It's All Over the Map may be his 37th(?) album. Maybe the 25th including the solo albums and the albums under a different monicker I got. Probably the last. As it is the same unfocussed hodgepodge mess between improv, desert rock and Howe as usual but without the inspiration. Convertino and Burns have left and Howe is with some Danish friends plus Vic Chesnutt, John Parish and who knows whom. I hope he hasn't lost it for good.

The first Go-Betweens Send Me a Lullaby is not easy to get into neither. It has been re-released with a bonus disc. They haven't found their sound yet. I hear a band who has listened to the Talking Heads but is doing their own garage thing. Loveable dilettants.

The new David Thomas & two pale boys 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man's Chest is killer. A voice from another galaxy. Hardly any drums. A trumpet in the distance. A slow motion descent into the darkness. Going where no-one has been before. To one of those places I am attracted to.

Nevermind, coastal seamonsters from dondestan give goat blood to the loveless divinity of spiderland and weld electronic beatsongs to create bandwagonesque screamadelica for gish.

Not only that my fave dance pop album (I know about a dozen) only gets 3 out of 5 stars. This phrase on the most enthralling song on it takes the cake. That keyboard line I could kill for. With the reverb near the end. One of those hooks where you have to put scotch tape on my lips to keep me from whistling it synchronously (more or less).

Kingblind offers solid write-ups on his top 16 albums of 2004 with one mp3 download for each of them. The only song which I loved was Pedro the Lion's Foregone Conclusions. American sadcore with a tired voice: Pavement meets Idaho. Elliott Smith was ok, Iron and Wine as well, The Hives were kind of fun but all the rest went straight into my virtual dustbin.

P.S. Too much great music released in 1991. I couldn't boil it down to 10 releases. The Field Mice comp is from 1998 but they called it quits in November 1991. That's why they are here.

When I set up the reader’s poll for 1984 I was almost 100% sure which album I’d pick as my fave of the Orwell year. Hatful of Hollow, the second LP of The Smiths which established them as the most important band of the mid eighties. The poll even confirmed this choice but after relistening to the other contenders I came to a different conclusion. Guitar pop it had to be but neither Morrissey/Marr nor Forster/McLennan (Go-Betweens) could match the team of singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole and guitarist Neil Clark. Rattlesnakes, the debut of Lloyd Cole & the Commotions sounds as fresh and infectious today as 20 years ago. Lloyd Cole’s erudite lyrics on achy experiences with the other sex may not attain Morrissey’s witty imaginative songs on adolescence but altogether Rattlesnakes is more of a piece than The Smiths "garage" album.

On the inside photo the four members of the Commotions and Lloyd Cole are grouped around a living room table. They all smile except him. He stands in the corner behind the others and stares straight into the camera with an emotionless serious face. Somehow he seems to be totally out of place. At the time he was 23 years old and had studied philosophy at Glasgow university. He shows his literacy in arts and letters in his songs full of allusions to books, movies and music. On Rattlesnakes he namedrops the writers Simone de Beauvoir, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, the actresses Greta Garbo, Eva Marie Saint and Grace Kelly and the musicians Leonard Cohen and Artur Lee. It is all too much showing off but you have to forgive him immediately when you hear him sing.

Lloyd Cole has got the voice of a crooner. It is at the same time masculine and sensual, camp and soulful. His sugar-sweet tunes go straight into the heart. Neil Clark plays his stratocaster extremely fluently. It goes down as well as a Bourbon on the rocks. The ten songs on the original LP clock in at just above 35 minutes and there is not one dud. There is an instant nostalgic feel to the cosy British winter afternoon atmosphere of the music. The occasional string arrangements even add a little melodrama to the sentimental mood. Lloyd Cole is a romantic who does not take himself too seriously. I love the self-irony in lines like

All in all this set of catchy acoustic pop songs is like a cooler, less kitschy version of Neil Young’s Harvest. Without the occasionally painful plainness but with much more self-confidence. It was going to stay Lloyd Cole’s masterpiece. He had two great records in the 90’s Don’t Get Weird On Me, Babe and Love Story but he never repeated the stroke of genius of his first release. There is a special 20 years anniversary edition of Rattlesnakes with a bonus disc out this year but I guess the Polydor release with the four bonus tracks and the extended version of the centerpiece Forest Fire is probably still the one to look for. Especially when you look at the price tags (about 7 against 17 euros).

The last bonus track, the upbeat You Will Never Be No Good can give you a good idea of the jangly guitar sound of the album.

Further reading:

• AMG review
• Lloyd Cole ILM thread

Die Tödliche Doris: All their music (8 hours) as mp3's. The Berlin avantgarde band started making sounds in 1980 and finished as planned after seven years in 1987. The most irritating to me are the voices which get more and more warped in the first track Vor dem Krieg of the first audio tape from 1980. Does anyone have an idea where to find their German lyrics? I have big problems to understand what they say. The lyrics seem to be rather political.

Phil at one faint deluded smile has some interesting tracks by P16.D4, another German experimental band from the early 80's. They were from Mainz near where I live right now with PD standing for progressive disco. The numbers are just the positions of the letters in the alphabet. Apparently before the Neue Deutsche Welle got big they played with bands like Der Plan, S.Y.P.H., DAF and Fehlfarben. All those became commercial around 1982, only P16.D4 stuck to their raw noisy approach not too far off from Einstürzende Neubauten. They sound great though you should check yourself.