#from the shelf
11 posts- 4 min
The Sundays — Reading, Writing and Arithmetic: a voice that caught me in an instant, and "Can't Be Sure"
A beautiful voice and shimmering guitars. The needle dropped and, in an instant, I was caught. I found it around the age of twenty, back when I had a job writing music reviews. The sleeve was the kind I'd normally pass over — yet somehow my fingers reached for it. Of all the records by women-fronted bands from abroad, this is the one I've loved and played most. A word about track three, "Can't Be Sure," and the sound that lives on now in Pale Waves.
- 4 min
Supergrass — Life on Other Planets: a record bought for its sleeve, and a song I can't stop humming
Look at that sleeve — that was reason enough to pull it off the shelf, and it's still the reason it goes back on. I found it in my vocational-school days, working along the racks at Disk Union in Shibuya until my hand stopped. Supergrass's fourth album: not their biggest seller, but a record full of four distinct characters. A word about my love of drummer Danny Goffey, and about track ten, "La Song," the one I can never stop humming.
- 4 min
Ash — Twilight of the Innocents: a youth spent in the recording room, and the people music brought my way
In 2009, holed up in a tiny Futako-Tamagawa apartment helping a friend's band record, this was the album always playing. A band with a boy's heart, suddenly wearing a grown-up face. Plus the story of a photographer I met — which began, of all places, on this very blog. Favourite track: number eight, "Shadows."
- 4 min
Beck — Morning Phase: the stir of life, heard on a green mountain road
Close my eyes and it's spring — new green, the first stir of life. This album always takes me back to driving the Hakone pass. The night at Fuji Rock that turned me into a fan, and the record Beck released six years after Modern Guilt: his other acoustic one. I won't walk you through the tracks. Just play it — ideally on a green mountain road.
- 5 min
Richard Ashcroft — Alone with Everybody: on a voice that makes you cry without understanding the words
The Verve's frontman, on his own. My definition of a charismatic vocalist has always pointed to Richard Ashcroft before Liam Gallagher. Track five — You on My Mind in My Sleep — brings tears every single time, and I still can't fully explain why.
- 3 min
Coldplay — A Rush of Blood to the Head: the night I cried at a live show for the first time
I still remember the day In My Place climbed the Billboard chart on MTV — I was in high school, watching on cable TV at home. I picked up the album not long after. A few years later, at FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL '05, I cried at a live show for the first time in my life.
- 5 min
Eric Clapton — Unplugged: an album that connects the boy I was to the father I am
An album that found me in middle school, through my older brother's love of Clapton. The song I copied night after night was “Tears in Heaven,” and the story behind it I only really understood once I became a father myself. Thirty years on for the album, thirty years on for us.
- 4 min
Stereophonics — Just Enough Education to Perform: nothing extra, every note holding its ground
The third album from the Welsh three-piece Stereophonics. A record I picked up around the time I was starting my own band — the one that simply made me think “cool,” and got me to buy a Gibson SG. A band that stands by sheer presence.
- 4 min
John Squire — Time Changes Everything: a quieter record by an artist's artist
John Squire, guitarist of The Stone Roses, made his first solo album in 2002. The man who let his frontman carry the band's voice for years finally sang in his own. This is one of those records you don't want to over-explain.
- 4 min
Records I keep — the storage solution I found, and the start of a memory tour
Bulky, no place for them, but impossible to throw away. The CDs that sat in cardboard boxes for years, and the day I finally went through them. The slim case I landed on, the 100-yen-shop box that holds them all, and the new series I'm starting — a slow tour through the music I once owned.
- 4 min
Travis — The Man Who: an obi-strip line, and the Nigel Godrich sound
“Even if we're gone, the music remains here…” — that's the line printed on the obi strip wrapping my copy of Travis's The Man Who. It's also the album that made me notice producers as people, after Nigel Godrich shaped the band's sound for the first time on this record.