Charity Shop Treasure (5)

Three recent bargains, a quid apiece from one of the slightly formidable ladies that rule things at the local blind-charity shop(actually the ‘Ghost Dog’ album was 99p from Oxfam, but that just makes things messy – besides, I put the penny in the box…) Plus they all have cool, largely black and white covers with swirly patterns on them so I thought they might make a nice picture…

The Robert Forster album is great, particularly ‘Demon Days’, which is apparently the last song he wrote with Grant MacLennan before his death. Actually I like all of Forster’s solo albums, which tend to be warmer and more direct than his bandmate’s stuff (he’s kind of like the Bob Mould to MacLennan’s Grant Hart, if you see what I mean…) but this one is more personal and gentle than some of the others…

The ‘Ghost Dog’ album would have made a good soundtrack to some other movie, this disc being made up of tracks that the Rza put together as a kind of ‘companion piece’ to Jim Jarmusch’s film rather than the actual music used (I presume these are the tracks that he stripped right down for the rather more minimal OST…) Sunz of Man’s ‘Strange Eyes’, in particular, would be a great, swaggering opener for some far less cerebral blaxploitation-influenced flick of the Quentin Tarantino ilk. I love the rap in the middle, where he’s going on about the usual dope‘n’guns schtick but putting in some topical references to meditation and pigeon rearing…!

Glasvegas, of course, are big if not always particularly clever. Personally I’m a sucker for a bit of barefaced country-and-western emoting and a massive, big sweeping chorus (lovely gatefold sleeve, too…!)