October Playlist: Can We All Please

October's over, the clocks have gone back, and as we all know, music sounds better at this time of year. Here are 10 tracks that have been sounding pretty good to me over the last few weeks...

1. I Don't Want Love by The Antlers

(from Burst Apart)

And neither would you if you'd survived Hospice, the Antlers album that preceded this one. Here's something I wrote about Burst Apart (originally released in 2011) a few weeks ago.

2. Simultaneous Contrasts by Warehouse

(from Super Low)

Probably the most accessible track from Warehouse's unpredictable new album Super Low, which I reviewed here.

Guillemots: Through the Windowpane at 10

On the 26th of October 2006 - that's 10 years ago last Wednesday - I went to the Cardiff University Students' Union with a couple of friends to see a band called Guillemots. They were touring in support of their first full-length album, Through the Windowpane, which had hit the shelves a few months prior.

The show the Guillemots put on that evening at the SU still stands out in my mind as one of the best and most memorable I've ever witnessed. The stage was crowded with props: strange costumes, instruments of all shapes and sizes, television screens lit with snowy static, bubble machines spewing bubbles into the air. Kooky animation loops were projected onto a screen behind the band, a different cartoon for each song. And the songs themselves were just stunning - from the hits like Made-Up Lovesong #43 and Trains to Brazil to the fragile, swooning moments like If the World Ends and Blue Would Still Be Blue to the cacophonous, life-affirming climax of the spectacular finale São Paulo, it was a bodymoving, heartflipping musical rollercoaster that left me feeling genuinely elated for days afterwards.

Through the Windowpane remains one of my personal all-time favourite  albums, and last night - not realising that I was maybe 96 hours off the exact ten-year anniversary of that amazing gig - I ran a bath and gave Windowpane a proper listen for the first time in several years (I tend not to listen to my favourite records too often because I never want them to start sounding ordinary). I lit a candle and lay there listening in the low light, and I'm pleased to report that those twelve tracks made me feel every bit as alive and in love as they did back in 2006.

2016: What's in Store?

With a whole year of new music ahead, here are the upcoming album releases I'm most excited for...

The Waiting Room by Tindersticks

The first all-new Tindersticks album since 2012's The Something Rain is due out on the 22nd of January. I wasn't a huge fan of The Something Rain, and I'm afraid I didn't bother with Across Six Leap Years, the retrospective thingy that came out in 2013 (six of its ten tracks are already in my iTunes library anyway); for my part, I'm hoping that The Waiting Room will be a return to the more colourful, dramatic likes of Falling Down a Mountain (2010) and The Hungry Saw (2008).

Confessions of a Romance Novelist by The Anchoress
A 'revenge pop' concept album produced by former Mansun frontman Paul Draper? Sign me the heck up. Oh, and speaking of Mansun...

October Playlist: Keep it a Secret

What have I been stuffing in my ears this month? Well, since you ask, here are ten tracks that have rocktobered my October:

1. Daisy - Fang Island

(from Fang Island)

I bought Fang Island on a whim earlier this month, and I'm pleased to report that Fang Island's description of their own music as the sound of "everyone high-fiving everyone" is as applicable to this album as to Major (which I bought ages ago - why did it take me so long to pick this one up?!)

Red Got Rhythm

Red by the Guillemots was - and still is - an utter oddball of a second album. It was released a mere 20 months after Through the Windowpane (a truly stunning record, and one of my all-time favourites), and yet Red was light-years away from the swooning sound of its predecessor, all glitter and sexuality and weird drum 'n' bass breaks.

And, erm, whatever Last Kiss is.

Nobody was quite sure what to make of Red when it first came out. Many reviews framed the album as an attempt to 'go pop': "the Guillemots have unexpectedly gone all R&B on our asses", wrote one NME staffer, clarifying, "and not in a good way." Other critics were kinder, but still seemed a little baffled: when delivering Pitchfork's middling verdict, reviewer Chris Dahlen called the album "a stylistic trainwreck", "a classic sophomore slump" and "a total mess" before admitting that it offered "reason enough to stay tuned, even when they stumble."

New Year Wishes: Progress Report

Today - the 3rd of July - is the first day of the second half of 2015. The whole of next week will be dedicated to a halftime report, which means that I'll be looking back at some of my favourite songs and albums of the year so far, as well as highlighting a few records that I'm excited to hear in the latter half of 2015.

As for today's blog, well, now seems like a good time for a progress check. Back at the very, very end of 2014, I named five artists who I fervently hoped would release new albums in 2015. Those artists were:

• The Magnetic Fields
• Tindersticks
• Iron Maiden
• Tilly and the Wall
• Guillemots

So, now that half a year has elapsed...how are those new albums coming along, folks?

The Magnetic Fields

There's been no sign of a proper follow-up to 2012's Love at the Bottom of the Sea, although Stephin Merritt did play a couple of never-before-heard "micro-songs" to a small dog named Lola. That may well be it for this year, I fear.

The Long Farewell

Has this ever happened to you?

You buy the latest CD from one of your favourite bands. You take it home, peel off the cellophane, and pop it into your computer to rip this new acquisition to iTunes/Windows Media Player/whatever.

After a moment, your PC recognises the fact that you've given it an album to chew on, and up pops the 'Rip CD' screen, which looks something like this:

And that's when you spot something unusual in the 'Time' column. Most of the songs on this album are between two and five minutes long - pretty standard stuff - but the last song clocks in at just under a quarter of an hour.

April Playlist: Stick it in Your Arm

We've (almost) reached the end of April, and it's been a month of freshness and newness and sunshine all around. Here are 10 of the tracks that have soundtracked the last 30 days or so for me.

My March playlist can be found here.

1. Rainbow Road - Cloud

(from Zen Summer)

We'll start, perversely enough, with the closing track from Cloud's new album (which I reviewed earlier this week). I don't know for sure that this song's title is a Mario Kart reference, but I fervently hope it is.

3 Albums for Springtime

As you may have noticed, spring is here! The sun is out, the jumpers are off, and there's been a noticeable change in the kind of music I've been listening to lately. Here are three albums that never fail to make it feel like springtime:

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

If I associate an album with a particular time of year then, more often than not, it will be the time of year at which I originally bought that album. I picked up CYHSY's self-titled debut in March 2007, and since then, it's always reminded me of the clocks going forward and the sun coming out. Happily, it still sounds as fresh and as bonkers now as it did eight year (eight years!) ago.

Springiest Track: The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth

"How can I keep me from moving? Now, I need a change of scenery"

New Year Wishes

Here we are, then: the last day of 2014. I've already weighed and measured the best albums of this year, so now it's time to look into the future, to wonder what musical marvels 2015 might have in store for us.

Now, we already have a few dead certs. Modest Mouse, for example, have assured us that they will be releasing a new album next year, as have The Decemberists. But today's blog post isn't concerned with these releases; instead, it's all about speculation, the unconfirmed classics of 2015.

Here, then, are 5 artists that I'd really, really like to hear more from in the next 12 months. As far as I'm aware, none of these bands have given any indication that new work is on the way, but hey, if you're going to indulge in a little wishful thinking, the 31st of December seems like an opportune time for it.

The Magnetic Fields

Wishful-O-Meter: 2/5

It doesn't seem too optimistic to hope for a new MF album in 2015. In fact, you might even say we're due one - Distortion came out in 2008, Realism in 2010, and Love at the Bottom of the Sea in 2012, so if Stephin Merritt keeps up this every-other-year workrate, there should be an extra album in the MF discography by this time next year. Failing that, I'd settle for some Merritt solo action, or another 6ths album.

Tindersticks

Wishful-O-Meter: 3/5

Wikipedia may count 2013's Across Six Leap Years - the latest Tindersticks release - as a studio album, but I don't. It was more of a career retrospective, and while it's cool that Staples et al bothered to re-record all of their old hits, I'm still waiting for a proper follow-up to The Something Rain (which came out all the way back in early 2012). Bonus points if the new one is on a par with The Hungry Saw - it's not my #1 favourite 'Sticks album, but demanding something as good as Tindersticks II at this stage just seems churlish.

Iron Maiden

Wishful-O-Meter: 1/5

If West Ham United's most famous fans fail to release a new album in 2015, this will be the longest Maiden drought the world has endured since the band's eponymous first album was released in 1980. The Final Frontier was almost four and a half years ago now, and so it seems perfectly reasonable to expect a follow-up before Christmas comes 'round again.

Tilly and the Wall

Wishful-O-Meter: 4/5

Things have been disquietingly, uh, quiet in the Tilly camp of late. Their official website still features 'upcoming' tour dates from June 2013, and nobody seems to have heard much of anything from them since Heavy Mood came out. Still, a boy can dream...

Guillemots

Wishful-O-Meter: 1/5...but also 5/5

"More and more gardens are coming into bloom" said Fyfe Dangerfield in a news post on the Guillemots website back in June. On Summer Island, the follow-up to 2012's springtimey Hello Land!, is now two years and three months overdue, and while Fyfe and Co are supposedly still working on it, we're still waiting for some kind of sign that it's nearing completion.

As you can see, I've given this release two completely opposite wishful ratings: a 1 because they can't possibly need another whole year on this, and a 5 because it's beginning to seem like this album will never see the light of day. Time will tell, I suppose, but one thing's for sure: if they continue at this rate then the seasonal quadrilogy that they promised us back in 2012 won't be complete until some time in 2019.

* * *

So that's it for this year! I'll maybe revisit this list in December '15 and see how many (if any) of my wishes came true. In the meantime, have a happy new year and cross your fingers for some great music in the months to come! 

EP Corner: Of The Night

Welcome to EP Corner. This is something I plan to do every once in a while - a solid EP can be just as satisfying as a full-length album if it's done well, and to demonstrate this, I'd like to share some of my favourite four- or five-trackers with you lot.

For my first exemplary EP, I'd like to discuss Of The Night by the Guillemots. This four-track platter was served up back in 2006, and it's notable because each song was helmed by a different band member. Here's what it says in the CD case:

1. She's Evil (featuring Monstro)  // (written by MC Lord Magrão + Monstro)
2. The Rising Tide // (written by Fyfe Dangerfield)
3. Bad Boyfriend // (original concept + loops by Greig Stewart, expanded on by Guillemots)
4. By The Water // (written by Aristazabel Hawkes)

For reference, Hawkes is the bassist, Stewart is the drummer, Dangerfield is the singer/pianist, and Magrão was the guitarist until he left the band last year.

My Top 10 Debut Albums

I'm not sure where it started, or how long it's been going on for, but quite a few people have been tweeting their 'Top 50 Debut Albums' over the last few days.

I wanted to jump on the bandwagon, but I'm not sure I've even heard fifty debut albums, let alone fifty good ones. I decided that I could just about stretch to a Top 10, so here we are - The Album Wall's Official Top 10 Debut Albums:

10. Give Blood by Brakes
Recorded in one long take (or so I vaguely remember reading), this awesome album gave the world its first glimpse of the Brakes and their bonkers little world.

Standout Track: Hi How Are You

9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
In which Alec Ounsworth finds beauty and brilliance in his own nasal passages, and deigns to share it with us. As every review mentioned at the time of its release, Davids Byrne and Bowie were both big fans.

Standout Track: The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth

Your Favourite Covers

In case the whole 69 Love Songs thing hasn't made it clear, I'm a big fan of cover songs. Actually, I'll amend that: I'm a big fan of cover songs IF they do something new with the source material. Playing a note-for-note cover can be fun at live shows, but there's really no need to record it unless you're bringing something original to the table.

For the last couple of days, I've been asking people on Twitter and Facebook what they consider to be the best cover of all time. Here are 20 of the songs that were suggested - let's see how inventive these reinventions are, shall we?

I'm Shakin' by Jack White
Original Artist: Little Willie John

Suggested by Amy Wise

Reinvention Rating: 2/5 - Jack adds a whole lot of attitude and (if I'm not mistaken) a couple of extra verses, but in spite of the added vim and vigour, it's still essentially the same track.

5 Artists Who Should Release a New Album, Already

It's been too long!

The Decemberists

• Last Proper Album: The King is Dead, released in January 2011.


• Recent Activity: They put out a live album, We All Raise Our Voices to the Air, in March 2012, but haven't released anything since. They've got a few gigs in May - a festival and a couple of benefit concerts - and singer Colin Meloy recently recorded an EP of Kinks covers, but aside from his vague assertion that he's "starting to dabble" with new Decemberists material, there's been no word on when we might get a new set of songs from the band.


• Why I'm Desperate for New Material: The King is Dead was good, but it represented a conscious effort to strip things back after the proggy song structures and epic rocking that littered The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love. As enjoyable as it is, the slender, folksy LP that the band left us with in 2011 simply isn't enough to keep us going for this long. We need more (and I personally need more of the aforementioned proggy epic rock).

Start Slowly and Gently

As far as opening tracks are concerned, my general rule of thumb is to start with a bang. I feel that a big, attention-grabbing gambit tends to make for the best beginning; the five tracks that I mentioned in my Track Ones blog (cripes, that feels like an eternity ago now) are all pretty good examples. The Chad Who Loved Me has its epic movie strings...Cloud Shadow on the Mountain gives us those pounding drums...heck, Grace Kelly Blues starts with a friggin' brass band!

Lately, though, I've been coming around to the opposite approach, i.e. opening your album with a quiet, gentle song. Matthew Jay's Draw (which I recently received in a 1p Album Club swap) starts with a song called Four Minute Rebellion, and it's the most stripped-back, simplistic, and affecting song on the disc:

This track - being relatively unembellished and less than two minutes long - feel like the sort of thing that ought to be buried somewhere in the album's mid-section. And yet there is a certain charm to the idea of easing your listener in, and Four Minute Rebellion is a pretty arresting opener in spite of its slightness. The sweet melody and tactical F-bomb make sure of that.

Matthew Jay's minute masterpiece got me thinking about other such track ones - which other classic openers knock politely instead of tearing the door off its hinges?

Little Bear by the Guillemots springs nimbly to mind. I realise that I was blogging about Through the Windowpane only a few days ago, but the album's first track is also a great example of what I'm talking about here.

My Top Ten

Since this is The Album Wall's 100th post (woo milestone!), I thought I'd give you all a treat and finally explain the reasoning behind my Top Ten list on the right-hand side of the blog. These are my ten favourite albums of all time - of all time! - and today, you're going to find out why.

Fables of the Reconstruction by R.E.M.

Why I Bought It: I was just starting to dig into R.E.M.'s rich discography. I'd already bought Out of Time; this was my next purchase, mainly because it was the cheapest one in HMV that day (£3!)

Why I Love It: Its sound is intriguing and mysterious when compared to other R.E.M. releases, and the loose running theme (a lot of tracks focus on unusual characters from the South) makes it a little more cohesive than its cousins. Oh, and it's the album that houses Life and How to Live It, which may possibly be my favourite song of all time.

Concept Albums

I'm having a bit of a rest this week, but rather than neglect The Album Wall entirely, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you some blog posts from the past. Today's update was originally posted on my last.fm journal back in August '07:

Confession: I am a total concept album freak. If I so much as hear the same word in two songs on the same album, I'll set about looking up lyrics and drawing somewhat fanciful lines between them.

Okay, so we've got the ones that everybody knows are concepts - The Wall, Tommy, and so forth - but I'm talking more about the excitement you (well, I) draw from spotting recurring themes and ideas nestled in the records that didn't otherwise scream 'concept album'. Let's look at a few examples, shall we?

1) Attack Of The Grey Lantern

I've only recently got into Mansun. Apparently, when they were big, there was a big debate between their fans over whether or not ...Grey Lantern does, in fact, stow a concept. Yes, all the tracks flow together perfectly (I feel sorry for the Americans who had the whole thing minced up), but does it tell any kind of story? Well, one look at the lyrics should at least persuade the naysayers to reconsider their position. The title character from Dark Mavis pops up in several songs, as does the Stripper Vicar. Mansun's lyrics are pretty oblique, mind, so it's hard to work out exactly what's going on. Don't let the chorus of the hidden track, An Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter ("The lyrics aren't supposed to mean that much/They're just a vehicle for a lovely voice"), put you off; apparently, lead singer Paul Draper has since admitted that the song was meant ironically.

2) Secrets of the Witching Hour

If you haven't heard of The Crimea, I would first advise you to hop over to their website (here) and download this album for free. Yes, free! I suffer from a serious case of CD scruples, so I had to get the physical version, but I'm sure the less ridiculous of you will happily take it for nothing, especially now that it has my "Seal of Approval". Download it now, I'll wait.

Now then. Secrets... is an altogether different beast to the Mansun album. Whereas the tracks of ...Grey Lantern all run into each other, some punchy with big choruses, some widescreen experiments, Davey and Co. give us 11 relatively compact pop songs-gone-bad (like a neurotic, self-loathing Beach Boys with more complex arrangements and a less camp Brian Molko doing vocals). They seem to document a) the breakup of the relationship between the narrator and his girl, and b) the end of the world. Whether these two are happening simultaneously, or if the latter is simply a metaphor for the former, or if it starts as a metaphor and then actually happens, or WHATEVER, the songs are certainly deeper than your average 3-minute pop song. Just to pick out some pivotal moments in what might be the plot: Bombay Sapphire Coma sees our protagonist regretting "disown[ing]" the girl, Don't Close Your Eyes On Me is a sort of "We ain't finished here yet" song, while Wierd [sic] is the epic final curtain (as a sidenote, it also contains the darkly brilliant line "Rapunzel above me, recieving chemotherapy/Throw down your- oh, sorry, how stupid of me").

3) Beautiful Freak

If you thought I was clutching at non-existent straws up 'til here, just wait 'til you've read this one. I reckon, right, that all Eels albums have at least an element of concept to them (most notably Electro-Shock Blues, which is pretty definitely about the death of his sister and mother). This one, however, requires a bit of imagination. I first imagined this a concept album when I noticed the similarity in theme between Beautiful Freak and  My Beloved Monster; both are about E's affection for a social outcast. Most of the other songs also deal with the narrator's OWN status as a bit of a pariah (Mental sees all of his peers describing him as such; Rags To Rags documents a down-on his luck loser's arduous struggle to the same exact spot). If you're like me, and willing to claw at whatever tiny links you're given, you might say that the borderline agoraphobia experienced in Not Ready Yet is caused by the events of Susan's House, or that the girl to whom the lyrics of Manchild are addressed is the titular "freak". Or you might not. Up to you.

4) Fevers & Mirrors

If the mock interview at the end of An Attempt To Tip The Scales is anything to go by, Conor Oberst - Mr. Bright Eyes himself - was deliberately using a lot of repeated imagery in the writing of this record, if not actually telling a story. Fevers, mirrors, scales, clocks and calendars all crop up multiple times, not to mention this enigmatic Arienette lady. Now, I have to admit, if there is a straight concept here, then I'm not entirely sure what it is. I've often considered that Arienette (who, remember, is made up, and yet "as real as you or I") may be a mental manifestation of Conor's "dream girl", who, even in his head, can make his life miserable one minute and bring him great joy the next (although, admittedly, the "great joy" to be seen in these ditties is sparse). At any rate, I'm going to leave the gaps in this one for you to fill in yourself, as I'm tired and I'm obviously unsure what I'm on about here.

5) Through The Windowpane

Last one, promise! I like to envisage this one as a sort of musical, if you will, featuring Guillemots main man Fyfe Dangerfield as our overly romantic protagonist. The album documents his (ultimately fruitless) attempts to woo his girl (a lot of girls in this list, ain't there?), including "leaving [his] best friend" (Redwings) and embarking on some big journey with her (Come Away With Me; not in a creepy rapist way, of course, more a romantic trip kinda way). Eventually, however, her constant rebuffs get to him, and he goes a bit mad (Sao Paulo). Bless. The whole "musical" idea works best if you imagine the curtain opening after the interval to reveal a lone, despondent-looking Fyfe, who bursts into Blue Would Still Be Blue, accompanied only by those weird boopy noises. Magic.

* * *

So those are my thoughts. If you're not a "lyrical trainspotter", you might just view all of this as the ramblings of a crackpot who ought to get a job. Hopefully, though, you'll have at least partially understood what I'm getting at, and you'll have some could-be concept albums of your own at the ready.

P.S. If anyone could explain to me the concept behind Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, that'd be great, 'cause I've got no idea.

The Great Discography Binge

Above is a screenshot of the Twitter conversation that spawned today's blog post. Having never really listened to Hot Club de Paris, I can't express much of an opinion on them, but what I can do is take a look at my own library and think about which back catalogues I would happily gobble up in the space of an afternoon.

R.E.M. were my obvious first thought, and while they do have a rack-flexing fifteen albums* to get through, I'm not sure it would be all that challenging. That said, if we assume that I have to listen to all the albums in the order they were released, I would probably start losing interest in R.E.M. around the turn of the millennium. I think Reveal and Around the Sun get more criticism than they deserve, but considering what came before (not to mention how long I'd have been listening by the time Reveal came on), I think the chances of me turning off at The Lifting would be pretty high.

So I tried to think of bands with slightly slimmer discographies**, but the recurring problem is that one album that isn't as good as the others. Mansun have Little Kix. Guillemots have Walk the River, which is mind-blowingly amazing at times but does drag a little in the middle. Regular readers will already know where I would call it quits in an Arcade Fire marathon.

And then I realised that I'd known the answer all along. Eels didn't initially strike me as a particularly binge-friendly band; they average about 14 tracks per album***, and I was looking for lean, mean, bite-sized records that I wouldn't get bogged down in.

But yesterday, I listened to Shootenanny!, Beautiful Freak, Souljacker, Blinking Lights & Other Revelations, and Wonderful, Glorious all in one go, and I wasn't bored once. That's got to be at least four and a half hours of music (let's not forget that Blinking Lights... is a double album), and I never even considered switching it off. And while that admittedly isn't the order they came out in, it's not like I was only listening to the cream of the Eels catalogue; Electro-Shock Blues and Daisies of the Galaxy are E's twin masterpieces as far as I'm concerned, and I didn't even need to resort to them!

I think it's because each Eels release has such a unique, distinct personality. Souljacker is the fuzzy garage rock one. Beautiful Freak is the weird debut. Blinking Lights is the aural equivalent of an autobiography. They've all got their thing; the same could be said of R.E.M. albums up until about the mid-noughties, but Eels have yet to release their Around the Sun. Even E's less brilliant albums remain fun and colourful, adding another layer to the discography as a whole.

So if you've got some time this weekend, treat yourself to an Eelathon. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll have the time of your life.

*I'm not counting best ofs, live albums, B-side compilations, or EPs. Full-length studio albums only.

**Although I decided that less than three albums would hardly count as a 'binge'.

***And it's only that low if you count Blinking Lights & Other Revelations as two.

Things Found in Liner Notes, Volume 1

If, like me, you're an advocate of buying the CD or record instead of downloading, then you've almost certainly used liner notes as an argument for the physical artefact at some point. But is an inlay booklet really worth forking out for? 90% of the time, I'd say no. But occasionally, you leaf through the liner notes and find a hidden Easter egg that makes it all worth it.

Here are some cool things I've found in my CD cases recently. This is just a smattering of stuff - the result of an afternoon's browsing - so I'll most likely share another selection of interesting inlays before too long.

• The liner notes for Key Lime Pie by Camper Van Beethoven contain interesting snippets about the band members, including a lot of information about shoes. One anecdote tells the story of how lead guitarist Greg Lisher once "lost a shoe in the Mojave Desert". There then follows a description of this shoe (black, size nine) and an address that you can send it to should you happen upon it.


• Some of the people whom Bikini Atoll saw fit to thank in the liner notes for Liar's Exit: 'Lynchriderlulu', 'The Porn', and 'That fat kid who loves cakes'.
  
  
  
  
• Manowar, being Manowar, aren't satisfied with merely listing the people who were involved in an album's creation. The Kings of Metal booklet refers to the various producers and engineers as the 'Digital Death Squad'; instead of a management team, they have a 'Vanguard of the Elite'. Oh, and their live crew are credited as 'The Magnificent Soldiers of Death'. Sounds better than 'roadie', doesn't it?


• The Young Knives have often been described as a quintessentially English group, and their first album, Voices of Animals and Men, is lined with information on such quintessentially English activities as Morris Dancing, beekeeping (see below), and Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling.
  
  
  
  
  
• While scanning the 'This album couldn't have happened without...' acknowledgements inside Jarvis Cocker's first solo album, I noticed that he'd mentioned someone named Joel. Since Jarvis didn't bother to include a surname, I can only assume that he was referring to me.


•  Electro-Shock Blues gives us Eels lyrics, yes, but the booklet also contains a few black-and-white comic strips that seem faintly pertinent to some of the songs. Here, for example, is the Baby Genius comic:

Image taken from boards.ie. Thanks to Pacifico for uploading it.

• Sufjan Stevens opted to embellish his 'here are the people who played on/contributed to Illinois' list with little comments about their performances. Example: "James McAllister plays all the sophisticated drum parts. Man, he's good!"


• The lyrics booklet for Okkervil River's I Am Very Far includes the words to a song that isn't on the album. It's called Weave Room Blues, and it was the B-side to Wake and Be Fine.


• Anyone who sprung for the CD edition of Hello Land! by the Guillemots will find this nice little poster inside the case:

As I say, there are probably loads of other cool bits and pieces hidden away in my CD collection, so I'll report back if I find anything else of interest. That's it for now, though; it takes more than a couple of hours to scale The Album Wall.