Colour Green is a very deceptive title. After all, there is nothing especially 'green' about this album, whether we are talking about the sepia-imbued cover or the actual musical content. And yet the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. First, the colour in question invokes the cover of Nick Drake's classic debut Five Leaves Left from 1969 (which was surely an inspiration for Colour Green). Second, it creates a certain out-of-sync and out-of-time feeling that is further backed up by the story behind this album's release.
Sibylle Baier is a German folk singer and actress, and yet it is quite hard to say either of those things with full confidence. After all, she recorded but one album, and her only acting credit is a minor appearance in Wim Wenders's Alice In The Cities (1973). Colour Green was recorded in her home in Germany between 1970 and 1973 but remained unknown and unreleased until 30 years later when her son compiled the scattered recordings on a CD and gave it to J Mascis of the American alternative band Dinosaur Jr. J Mascis was so impressed that he passed the songs to the Orange Twin Records label who promptly released them in 2006. Since then, the album has achieved a legendary status and a cult following.
It is a great story, of course, but it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if the music wasn't special. After all, we have heard enough cult albums where the context overshadows the actual music. Colour Green is not one of those albums. Instead, it is a self-contained world of pastoral elegance and melodic brilliance that is sustained all through its brief, but magical, 33 minutes. Colour Green is a world unto itself.
In a nutshell, Colour Green is a haunting guitar-based folk album. It is mostly made up of short ballad-like vignettes which are both evocative and disarmingly beautiful. The material is very even. "Tonight" is the album's most famous tune, but that is perhaps because it comes first. After all, songs like "Remember the Day" and "Forget About" (possibly the most achingly gorgeous thing ever written) are hardly any worse. There is very little variation on the album, although one could argue that "Softly" is almost upbeat and "Wim" is almost playful. Oh and the closing "Give Me a Smile" features an orchestrated string section and an electronic organ (apparently Baier plays a steel-string guitar here instead of a nylon-strung one).
I don't remember who it was who said that February is a Tuesday of the year. Ever since I first heard this album ten or fifteen years ago, I've always felt this was a perfect Tuesday album. "Tonight, as I get back from work...". There is a certain wistfulness to Colour Green, a certain melancholy, but once in a while you encounter beauty that transcends sadness, and gives hope. Colour Green is precisely that.
Manya Wilkinson's Lublin (2024) is yet another addition to my list of perfect little novels. Others include Seize The Day by Saul Bellow, Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov and The Sense Of An Ending by Julian Barnes (the list goes on, obviously). Its perfection lies in the fact that there isn't a breath wasted or a word misplaced. The prose is beautiful and concise, and the emotional range goes from hysterical laughter to tears of despair. Some works of art you savour, not merely read, and Lublin is one of those books.
The plot is fairly simple, and gives off the vibes of an old Jewish fable: three friends embark on a journey to a city none of them have ever been to. This is the very beginning of the 20th century, and the city in question is Lublin (f0r the record, my second favourite Polish city, after Poznan). They don't know much about the place, and have a vague understanding of its location. There is a sense, though, that this city, this mythological metropolis, is the greatest place on Earth. It has the most beautiful girls. The best wine and the best food. It's a place of opportunities where you can make money and fall in love.
Elya is the one with the map. He loves to tell jokes (the jokes are decidedly hit and miss) and has this magical ability to conjure them on the spot and under the most vexing circumstances. Most importantly, he wants to be a businessman and carries a set of brushes that the three friends are planning to sell at the Lublin market. He is the one with the big idea, and he is the one who pushes the whole company forward. The two other friends are Kiva (comes from a rich family, knows all about Adoshem and prays incessantly) and Ziv (Kiva's cousin; hates Russians but likes Dostoevsky, wears bad shoes and will beat you up for fun), and they need to be persuaded all the time that this whole journey is not a complete waste of time.
As you would expect from a good old fable, there are hardships and adventures along the way. Temptations, selflessness, acts of real friendship, betrayal. The backdrop is very vivid, and you never get to forget the time period. 1906. There are despicable crooks along the way, and drunk Russian soldiers. In the meantime, Lublin remains desirable but elusive. Kiva wants to go back home. Ziv wants to get to the Village of Girls (does it even exist?) And even Elya has crises of faith that almost force him to abandon the whole thing and go back home to his girlfriend and sorry family business.
There are two types of book titles, as Martin Amis wrote in the introduction to London Fields. Those that denote things which are already there. And those that are 'present all along', that 'live and breath, or try to, on every page'. Manya Wilkinson's Lublin is a curious case in that it exists between two of those types. Lublin is a little like Beckett's Godot. It is already there, and yet it barely even exists.
The grim realism of Lublin is absolutely harrowing, and yet it is a very elegant, poetic book. I loved these three characters to bits, and was with Elya all the way. I believed him, too, every time he uttered those magical words:
There is a game I sometimes like to play. I ask myself: what if I remove this one song from a given album, will it improve the overall quality? In these dream scenarios, you get In The Court Of The Crimson King without "Moonchild". Led Zeppelin III without "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper". OK Computer minus "Fitter Happier". Would you really argue that those changes do not constitute an improvement? And is there an album in the world that would not get better with some minor pruning (for the record, yes, there is a handful of such albums)?
You might think Ween would be a great candidate for this game. You might think that each one of their albums features a failed experiment or a worthless dick joke that should never have seen the light of day. Oddly enough, Ween renders the game completely irrelevant. Take "Candi" out of Chocolate And Cheese, and some ridiculous yet vital balance is disrupted. Obviously, "Candi" is a silly joke, an uneventful mess, and yet it feels essential to the whole idea of this band. In a way, Ween's heart is spread evenly between "Candi" and, say, "A Tear For Eddie".
Their studio output started with the wild, hilarious screams of "You Fucked Up" and ended with the slick, smart "Your Party", and despite the maddening diversity and the large body or work in between, Ween have always felt like this one clever unit of a band, unbothered by register and willing to take any genre in the world and make it their own. In a live show, they would do "Mister Would You Please Help My Pony" and follow it up with the beautiful, earnest cover of "All Of My Love". There would be no contradiction in that.
Ween are mostly Gene and Dean Ween - the former is a vocalist of a million voices and the latter is one hell of a guitar player.
10. Pure Guava (1992)
This is an early one that features song titles like "Flies On My Dick" and "Touch My Tooter". It sounds that way, too, amateurish and deliberately dumb, besides being their first album for the major label (Elektra). A lot of joke songs and dicking around going on here, and don't even think of making it your first experience of Ween, but when you dig deeper, you will be rewarded with a few flashes of songwriting brilliance ("Little Birdy", "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)"). They simply couldn't help themselves.
This sounds a lot like Good Ween Satan: The Oneness, only darker and somehow... even murkier. The crazy thing is that underneath the overall silliness, there is a great band very much enjoying themselves. "Dr. Rock" rocks, "Pork Roll Egg & Cheese" has the sweetest melody in the world and every time Gene Ween screams "Sketches Of Winkle" I can't help thinking about Roger Daltry singing "Pictures Of Lily". I can't say I enjoy listening to The Pod (for the record, the cover is a parody of Leonard Cohen's 1975 compilation), but I find it genuinely unsettling and ever intriguing.
This album greets you with one hell of a warm welcome. After a brief announcement, a few seconds of silence and a brittle drum rhythm, you get Gene Ween shouting "You fucked up, you bitch, you really fucked up!" into your face. What follows is a bunch of one-minute outbursts (plus a couple of 9-minute jams) that tackle various genres and moods. The production values are low, but the fun and the energy levels more than make up for that. Also, there is a song titled "Mushroom Festival In Hell", and it probably sounds like one, too.
This was an interesting detour for the band. After Chocolate And Cheese (which many people consider their best album), the band moved to Nashville to record a country album. Of course, Ween being Ween, they recorded the absolutely greatest pure country album in the world. They brought the edge to it, a few new voices from Gene Ween and almost no dick jokes. Tight, catchy and a lot of fun - with a touch of real heartbreak in the closing ballad "Fluffy".
Back when this album was released, I was already a fan. I remember that for weeks and perhaps months they had been promising a really brown album, and this is what we got. La Cucaracha was, once again, a great exercise in taking a genre (pop punk, piano balladry, smooth jazz, soul, etc.) and writing a song in it. The results were a little patchier than expected ("Spirit Walker" is unforgivably bland, and I have little use for "Learnin' To Love" after 12 Golden Country Greats), and many fans were disappointed, but there is simply too much good material here to ignore. "Woman And Man" is a prog rock epic with some great guitar workout from Dean, "Object" is a lovely folksy ballad with ominous lyrics and "Your Party" creates the sort of atmosphere I could die in.
Shinola: Vol.1 is a superior collection of rarities and outtakes. I'm sure they could release a much longer collection (it is actually criminal that the following volumes have never materialised), but the quality of songs here is up there with Ween's best albums. "Do You See Me" reminds me of prime Pink Floyd. "Monique The Freak" sounds better than anything I've ever heard from Prince. "Someday" would have graced a classic Ween album like Quebec. "Gabrielle", my favourite, is a pumping rocker with a terrific guitar solo and one of their catchiest choruses. Crazily but also typically, early outtakes sound better than the albums they were rejected from.
This is the first major album by the band. A sprawling 16-song album tackling almost every genre in existence and not once sounding faceless or derivative. Somehow, the genius of Ween has always been to own the genres they handle. So if they do sunshine pop ("Roses Are Free"), they do it with utter conviction. If they do a Funkadelic-styled jam ("A Tear For Eddie"), Dean Ween comes up with a Maggot Brain-sized guitar solo. And if it is a revenge tale that you want, done in a spaghetti-western style, then "Buenas Tardes Amigo" will squeeze the absolute maximum out of the obvious genre limitations. It is not a perfect album, but, again, remove the bizarre "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" from the track list, and the whole thing might crumble.
Quebec is one of the band's more serious albums, with its 'brown' moments feeling a little uninspired - if not downright forced. Thus, whereas I can take on "So Many People In The Neighborhood" without any difficulty, I really have no use for "The Fucked Jam" in between the perfect pop of "I Don't Want It" and the moody guitar soundscape "Alcan Road". Still, like I said in the introduction, you can't be a Ween fan and expect them to forego "The Fucked Jam". Quebec is a brilliant album, with heady power pop ("Transdermal Celebration"), propulsive Motorhead-styled hard rock ("It's Gonna Be A Long Night") and the anthemic finale of such magnitude, you could be excused for thinking they may have been entirely serious there. Also, the music of "Zoloft" captures its title perfectly.
What is this - a 12-song Ween album with little to no juvenalia and just great music? But that's what White Pepper really was. A play on the names of two legendary Beatles albums and melodies to match that. The diversity has not gone anywhere, of course, and the Caribbean-styled "Bananas And Blow" just about transcends everything you may have heard in that genre. "Stay Forever" is pop perfection. "Falling Out" is criminally catchy. And the gorgeous "Flutes Of Chi" has one of my favourite guitar solos ever. An absolute classic of an album.
This was the album that made me a fan twenty or so years ago. Unlike most other Ween LPs, The Mollusk always felt to me like a collection of songs all serving one purpose. The Mollusk is not exactly a progressive rock album (there are hints, though), but it sustains the same mood - that of the deep green you can see on the cover - all the way through. Interestingly, they pull it off regardless of the fact that in the course of this album they do foul-mouthed sea shanties, underwater polka and, yes, the obligatory novelty number. A masterful album - so masterful, in fact, that you will be tricked into thinking adult contemporary is not the most worthless genre imaginable. But that is the power of Ween.
Musically, 2025 was just another year. Mid, as kids today would say. Which does not mean, of course, that any of these ten albums are anything less than excellent.
10. Cold Specks - Light For The Midnight
It saddens me that nobody noticed this album. In all fairness, I did not notice this album either, and only heard it two months after its very low-key release. While Light Of Midnight does not reach the artistic heights of Neuroplasticity, it is definitely an improvement on the somewhat middling Fool's Paradise. She is a very special talent with a knack for a soulful melody and a real personality to back it up. Fantastic voice, too.
9. Luke Haines & Peter Buck - Going Down To The River... To Blow My Mind
They keep churning them out, Luke Haines and Peter Buck. Looks like they enjoy each other's company, and if this results in albums as good as this, then so be it. Going Down To The River is my least favourite of the three collaborations, but this is still full of Haines' sinister melodic wit and Peter Buck's tasteful guitar freakouts. Excellent rock album.
I was at their show back in October 2023 where they presented a few of these songs. During the concert, they sounded like the best thing in the world. In their final studio form, however, the songs feel a little too self-conscious and clever for their own good. Still, the talent (vocal, songwriting, instrumental) involved here is incredible. Really, other than the faceless title song, this is great: twisted, inventive, and extremely rewarding.
This was Patrick's first album in 14 years, and aside from the glowing review in Quietus, I did not see much love for it. A shame. There is actually a part of me that thinks Crying The Neck is his most consistent album ever. Perhaps it does not have the fantastic peaks of "Paris" or "The Magic Position", but each one of these 13 songs has something to offer. Charismatic chamber pop, steeped in folk music, mystical lyricism and the man's unfading melodic sensibilities.
Again, I'm shocked to see that so few reputable publications included Neon Grey Midnight Green in their end-of-year lists. Because if not for a couple of somewhat uneventful songs in the middle (sometimes she taps into country music a little too much for my liking), this could easily be in my top 5. Side one is some of her best music ever, and she goes so effortlessly from the Laurie Anderson-inspired "Tomboy Gold" to the intense, driving second half of the title song. One of the best singer-songwriters in business.
This is such an accomplished, immaculate album that you almost take it for granted. The Delines found that sweet spot back in 2014 with the classic debut album and have been doing the same thing for more than ten years now. And it just works. Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom is soulful, classy Americana that is equally charming and heart-breaking. Their best music since the aforementioned Colfax.
I will have to admit that Stereolab had always been a band I respected rather than loved, but this latest album, their first after a 15-year hiatus, is pure aural joy. It's hard to pin them down in terms of genre (krautrock, indie-pop, post-rock, chamber pop - it's all in here), but does it even matter? What matters is that these songs are full of hooks, personality, style and sometimes the French language.
The amount of sheer euphoria on this album is truly staggering. I used to be an ardent agnostic when it comes to Geese (their first albums did not impress me, and neither did the acclaimed solo record by Cameron Winter), but Getting Killed finally won me over. Adventurous, hook-filled rock music that works even when it shouldn't ("Half Real") and simply blows me away with that final two-song punch. I can't wait to hear what they do next.
Robert Forster is one of the best songwriters around, still. I was underwhelmed by the leading single (title song), which seemed a little too cutesy and Lovin' Spoonful-lite to me, but the moment "Tell It Back To Me" started playing, I got my album of the year (almost). So much personality in these melodies, so much class in these lyrics.
Pulp came back in style, but how else? You couldn't really expect that Jarvis Cocker would not bring the songs. More is playful, infectious and full of nostalgia that doesn't grate. I do not yet know how it compares to their classic three (let's wait and see), but this definitely met my expectations and had, in "Tina" and especially "Grown-Ups", some of their greatest songs ever.
Jan Komasa really took a gamble here. Anniversary is his first film released outside Poland, and for his English-language debut he chose to go all in. Well, maybe not all in, but it certainly takes guts to exploit the current state of American society with a political psychodrama. Audacious would be an understatement.
The film got little to no promotion from Lionsgate studios which feared Anniversary would prove too controversial. This is sad for two reasons. First, the film is likely to end up being a box office flop. Secondly, it is a really powerful cinematic experience, one that will haunt you long after the end credits.
It will not flop in Poland, however. Polish people love their heroes, and a relatively young filmmaker doing it in the US (and Great Britain, too; Komasa's second film, The Good Boy, is coming out in 2026) will not go unnoticed. The cinema hall in Wroclaw where I watched it a little while ago was anything but empty. The audience was buzzing excitedly at the start of the screening, and left limping and downtrodden, haunted and traumatised. It is that kind of film.
And yet it is exactly what you would expect from Jan Komasa. If you have seen Hater or Corpus Christi, you have to realise that the bleakness will be gripping and the smiles will be compromised. Gripping is the word here. For all its darkness and ever-impending gloom, Anniversary is extremely watchable. Partly this is due to exemplary acting (Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Dylan O'Brien, Phoebe Dynevor - they all excel) and partly due to the meticulous, smart direction.
Oddly, the trailer almost makes it seem like a horror film - but it isn't, or at the very least the horror is manifested in a different way. We start with a close-up of Elizabeth Nettles, a young woman who is about to be introduced to her boyfriend's parents at their 25th anniversary party. She is carefully practicing exactly what she is about to say. Because there is a past: she used to be a student of her boyfriend's mother, a radical one, with some hair-raising views of democracy. What soon transpires is that she has actually written a book about the future of America, and the cult following soon becomes reality. The whole thing unfolds in a gradual but totally relentless way. Like a heavy train that just won't stop. It is a chilling, absolutely brutal experience. But God you cannot look away.
Anniversary tackles a lot of things, and some could say that it tries to handle way too much for a film under 120 minutes. There is a difficult question of modern-day academia. Conformism. Democracy. US politics. Family dynamics (there is a particular Thanksgiving Party scene that is some of the tensest and unbearable filmmaking I have seen in a while). However, I would argue that the film deals with all of those issues quite well, and manages to weave them all into one coherent narrative. The most common issue raised by American critics is that the film does not take sides. Which is interesting. Not in the sense that it does actually take sides (it does not), but in the sense that it is viewed as a flaw (and this, I believe, is where we come to the very line that separates Hollywood from European cinema).
There is no moment of respite here, though, not for one second. It is just this one ruthless onslaught, and maybe I do miss a little humour (I don't mean jokes), a little heart - sometimes Anniversary may feel a little too slick and calculated, a little too perfectly conceived and executed. After the first fifteen minutes of the film, the only genuine smile you see in the film comes from Josh (Dylan O'Brien), Elizabeth's boyfriend and future husband. But it is the kind of smile that will fry your nerves and fill you with utter hate.
P.S. Also, just for the record, "Don't Dream It's Over" truly is one of the finest pop songs ever written.
Each time that I want to write about The Stone Roses' legendary debut, something gets in the way (lack of time, mostly). So I think I will just do it now, finally, a few days after the death of Gary "Mani" Mounfield. Because even though I have never been a fan, this was shocking, tragic and so really uncalled for.
The Stone Roses has the mystique that cannot be denied. It is a statement of intent, a big send-off to the 80s. It is a self-contained world. It effortlessly mixes beautiful guitar melodies with sonic grandiosity. It is conservative and also wildly experimental. Really, so much of 90s music in Britain would not have happened without it (I'm not passing any judgement here, just stating the obvious). Critics loved it, as did the audiences. In fact, they loved it to the extent that the second album never stood a chance.
And yet... I never quite bought into the mystique. Do not get me wrong, I like this album. I just never got the adoration (no pun intended). John Leckie, the album's producer, once spoke about how The Stone Roses was conceived as a perfect album. Just look at the way the whole thing is structured: you start with a classic opener ("I Wanna Be Adored") and end with a huge sprawling epic ("I Am The Resurrection"). And there is indeed something about the concept and the idea of this album that is grand and self-important and also a little... overreaching. You would not know it from the beginning, though. A beautiful rumble, then cleverly constructed guitar build-up and then Ian Brown singing the classic opening line (truly, one of the best opening lines in history):
I don't have to sell my soul
He's already in me
It really is a magical moment, and it is all the more painful that nothing that follows even comes close. I would expect fireworks after this, but nothing here lives up to that initial blast. Already the next song, "She Bangs The Drums" is little more than an unremarkable, if catchy, pop-rocker. I'd rather take "Waterfall" that follows - with a jangly groove and a timeless vocal melody. Next comes... "Waterfall" again. Only this time it is played backwards and bears the title "Don't Stop". It is an artistic choice so bizarre, it is actually quite brilliant. "Don't Stop" is a subdued psychedelic experiment that works.
Following that, the album settles into its confident proto-Britpop rhythm that is only broken once by the short acoustic ballad "Elizabeth My Dear" that rips off, quite unapologetically, the melody of "Scarborough Fair". Nothing on side two feels like a major highlight, but "Made Of Stone" does manage to stick out due to the superior melody and John Squire's flashy guitar solo. Regrettably, I have never been in love with the closing "I Am The Resurrection" that starts as a pleasant enough pop-rocker and ends with a lovely guitar freakout. Nothing about it justifies its title, though, and that encapsulates my main issue with this album: it is great all right - but does it really sound that great to someone not caught up in the Manchester craze of 1989? Does the actual songwriting warrant the 'adoration', the 'resurrection', the 'second coming'?
Sometimes I do get this urge to crack the mystique. Once in a while, I put this album on, and God knows it always blows me away for a few minutes or so. Sadly, it rarely, if ever, goes beyond that.
