‘I’m eloquent, but I like swearing too – I’m an eloquent gobshite’

Damon Minchella

 

Former Ocean Colour Scene bassist and founding member, Damon Minchella, has a ton of great stories to tell, so he’s written his autobiography, You’d Look Good On A Donkey: Britpop, Basslines & Bad(ish) Decisions.

It’s a fun read. In his friendly and chatty style – imagine he’s telling you his rock ‘n’ roll tales over a pint in the pub – he shares anecdotes of ‘90s indie-rock excess, including a close call with the drug squad, and telling Paul McCartney one of his guitar solos was shit!

Minchella, who left Ocean Colour Scene in the early 2000s, is extremely honest about his time with the group – he reveals the highs and the lows – and he also recounts when Leonard Cohen told him to fuck off, reminisces about his time with Paul Weller, shares his memories of playing with The Who at Live 8, and supporting Oasis on their 2025 world tour, as part of Richard Ashcroft’s band.

‘He shares anecdotes of ‘90s indie-rock excess, including a close call with the drug squad, and telling Paul McCartney one of his guitar solos was shit!’

Born and bred on Merseyside, Minchella now divides his time between Wales and Italy. Say It With Garage Flowers spoke to him earlier this month to find out why he decided to write his memoir, and we got him to tell us some of his amusing stories and reflect on his career.

“I’ve never been arsed what people think of me,” he says. “Apart from my closest friends and family, I don’t give a flying fuck what people think. I don’t care – it’s not a book about making friends…”

Q&A

I enjoyed your book – it’s a fun read. Why did you decide it was time to write an autobiography?

Damon Minchella: It was my wife’s fault, to honest. We would be out walking the dogs or in the pub with some friends, and I would just remember a story that I’d never told her. It kept on happening and she said was like, ‘You’ve got to write your book before you forget it all…’

So, there was that, and I was in Italy for an extended period, doing my citizenship and getting my passport – I had to be there for a specific amount of time, with nothing really to do, so, I thought: ‘I’ll just write – I’ll start and see what happens…’

So, I started it, and it was like, ‘bang!’ All these things just came out… The process of writing just released loads of memories, but not in a linear fashion, obviously…

I want to talk about that because you haven’t approached the book in the traditional way. It doesn’t start at the beginning, with when and where you were born, etc. It begins with Leonard Cohen telling you to fuck off, in a hotel in New York, in the early 2000s…

Yeah – as soon as I started writing, that was the first thing I wrote – ‘Once upon a time, Leonard Cohen told me to fuck off….’ and I thought, ‘Oh – that’s good, I’ll have that as the start.’ And then I started thinking of chapter titles… It’s a bit like writing a song – if you come up with a good title, then that kind of informs what it might be about.

All the chapter titles were sort of random memories, so I started putting them in some sort of order, that wasn’t chronological, and then I just wrote the book from there. After about three months, I had to come back to Wales for a couple of weeks, and I was in and out doing gigs with Richard [Ashcroft]… I thought, ‘Well – I’ve got half the book done already…’ So, then I finished it off.

Are you a natural writer? Does it come easily to you?

Yeah – I think so. It’s because I read a lot as well – I’m an obsessive reader. Obviously writing a book is different from reading what someone else has written, but I like to think I’m reasonably eloquent, but I like swearing as well. So, it’s a nice collision – I’m an eloquent gobshite.

Your writing style is very chatty – it’s as if you’re telling the stories to someone over a pint in the pub. Going back to Leonard Cohen – you started to speak to him when he was sat in a hotel dining room…

And he immediately told me to fuck off – before I’d even finished the sentence. As I say in the book, a lot of people might’ve been offended by that, but I thought it was genius. I wanted Leonard Cohen to be Leonard Cohen, and he nailed it…

Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth told you to fuck off too, didn’t she?

Yeah – weirdly, they were supporting us [Ocean Colour Scene], which was wrong – we should’ve been supporting them… It was an outdoor gig, and I was in the portacabin dressing room. She walked past and I just went: ‘Kim!’ She went, ‘Fuck off!’ and carried on walking – she didn’t even break her stride. That’s what I wanted from her.

That’s pretty cool. How are you when people who aren’t famous recognise you and ask for an autograph or a chat etc?

If people want to come up and talk to you because they like your music, to be rude to them is terrible. I was having dinner with Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers once, who’s a lovely fella. Dustin Hoffman was sitting at the table next to us – someone wanted his autograph, but he was so fucking rude to them… Those people are why you’ve got a nice house…

You did once tell Paul McCartney one of his guitar solos was shit! It’s mentioned in the book… It was in Studio Two at Abbey Road, when he, Paul Weller and Noel Gallager were recording a version of Come Together, as The Smokin’ Mojo Filters, for The Help Album – for War Child – in 1995. You were joking, but how did he take it? Did he see the funny side?

He did – after the initial shock. He’s not used to anybody around him saying anything apart from: ‘Yes, Paul, no Paul, three bags full, Paul…’

What were you thinking?

I just thought, ‘I’ve got to say it…’ I do have social airs and graces, but I also have the ability to go, ‘Oh, come on!’

Your family has a link to The Beatles – your mum went to school with George Harrison, and your dad was almost the tour manager and van driver for The Silver Beatles, before they became The Beatles…

Yeah, but Neil Aspinall go the job instead. When I saw Neil [at Abbey Road], I said: ‘You’ve got my dad’s job…’ It was amazing that McCartney even knew what my last name was, and he remembered my dad as well. That’s probably why he didn’t mind me telling him his guitar solo was shit…

The title of the book, You’d Look Good On A Donkey, comes from something Ian Brown from The Stone Roses said to you. The Roses were a big influence on Ocean Colour Scene in the early days, weren’t they?

It’s safe to say that without The Roses, you wouldn’t have had my band, The Verve or Oasis – what people labelled ‘Britpop.’ I know it’s on the front of my book, but ‘Britpop’ didn’t really exist for the musicians doing it… Five or six years before, The Roses paved the way for it on a commercial level, but they were more of an influence on our attitude and style – they blew us all away. They were in their mid-twenties and me, Ashcroft, Noel and Liam were in our late teens. We saw this band who had it all but were cool as fuck. We were like, ‘shit – we can do that.’

Damon Minchella

‘I’ve never been arsed what people think of me. Apart from my closest friends and family, I don’t give a flying fuck!’

You used to live near Ian Brown, in Notting Hill, didn’t you? And Brett Anderson from Suede lived nearby too you call him ‘a plonker’ in the book…

Yeah – he lived round the corner, and so did Justine Frischmann – when Damon Albarn was seeing her. Me and him [Damon] never got on, but I always got on with her, which annoyed the fuck out of him. She’d always come and talk to me, but he’d be looking the other way.

The book’s very honest – you don’t mind who you upset, do you? Are you not worried about some people coming back to you over what you’ve written?

Not in the slightest – I’ve never been arsed what people think of me. Apart from my closest friends and family, I don’t give a flying fuck what people think. I don’t care – it’s not a book about making friends…

I was interested to read that when you were young, you didn’t have any interest in music – you were into football, messing around on your bike and watching war films – but one morning you heard The Cutter by Echo & The Bunnymen on the radio, and it changed your life…

Yeah – totally. Prior to that, music was always on – my mum had a good record collection – but I wasn’t particularly arsed. It was always the shit my sister was listening to, which was pop music. I’d never thought ‘Wow – this is incredible! – until The Cutter came on breakfast radio. It was like a sound from another world. I was like, ‘What the fuck? I need to know what this is.’

‘The first gig I ever saw was The Bunnymen on the Ocean Rain tour –  at Birmingham Odeon. I got down to the front, they came on and I was like, ‘Well – this is it: I’m gonna do that!’

Weirdly, The Bunnymen were in Smash Hits and my sister had every copy, so then I saw what they looked like – they looked as otherworldly as their music. So, that was it – I went and got the single.

You didn’t have a record player – you borrowed your sister’s

I probably never gave it back. The first gig I ever saw was The Bunnymen on the Ocean Rain tour – I’d moved from Merseyside to the Midlands, and I went to see them at Birmingham Odeon. I queued up on me own, I got down to the front, they came on and I was like, ‘Well – this is it: I’m gonna do that!’ I thought the guy on the right, Les Pattinson, who was on bass, was the coolest, so I wanted to do that.

Later on in your career, Ian McCulloch asked you to join The Bunnymen, didn’t he?

It was like a weird circular thing in my life. By that point, I’d obviously done loads of music and I’d met Mac a few times… He’s a character – let’s put it that way…

But you turned down the opportunity….

Yeah. I’m mates with Les Pattinson, who is the reason why I became a bass player. I told him and he said, ‘Nice one – you’ve dodged a bullet there…’ It’s not the easiest touring environment.

In the book, you write about the early days of Ocean Colour Scene, and the struggles you had making your first album – you had to re-record it a few times. You were signed to the Fontana label but, after hearing the demos for the second album, which, funnily enough, included future hit, The Day We Caught The Train, they didn’t want to work with you anymore…

It was crazy – they hated us so much that they just wanted to get rid of us. There was another song [on the demo] that ended up being on Moseley Shoals too. I can’t remember what it was… It took a year to end the relationship – we couldn’t do gigs because of all the legal bullshit.

‘The hellscape of making the first album had sucked all the life out of what we wanted to do’

So, we got ourselves the best sort of space we could afford, which was a horrendous sort of little backroom in a studio. But that’s when we just thought, ‘Right, let’s just fucking be us now..’ The hellscape of making the first album had sucked all the life out of what we wanted to do – we kept changing producers…

It was the typical major record label thing – they sign a band that sounds like something, you start making a record and then some other music scene happens, so they want a different producer to fit in with that. And then another scene breaks, and they want another producer to fit in with that. By the end of it, you’ve ended up with a very expensive pile of shit.

It was a struggle financially, wasn’t it? You were on the dole right up until The Riverboat Song was successful, weren’t you?

Yeah – apart from me and Steve [Cradock – Ocean Colour Scene guitarist] touring with Weller, we had nothing. All our mates who weren’t in the band had proper jobs and had bought flats and had proper cars, and we were struggling to get the bus fare to get to the studio.

People say we were really lucky because of TFI Friday and the Weller connection – he liked the band – but that wasn’t luck, it was self-belief and stubbornness that got us to that position. Everyone else who’d been dropped by a major label would say, ‘we’ve got no money – let’s pack it in…’

I didn’t realise how much Andy Macdonald, who had the Go Discs! label, helped you out ahead of you making Moseley Sboals...

Yeah – he’s an amazing person and I talk about him in the book. He loved our demos and what we were doing, and he wanted to sign us, but he’d just signed Travis, and it was quite a small label. He had Weller, who was exploding, and Portishead, who were doing well. He signed some other dancey stuff too, so he couldn’t take us on, but he said: ‘Here’s some studio equipment and £10,000 in cash.’ We were like, ‘What the fuck?’ Ten grand in 1995 was a fortune.

You mentioned not being able to afford the bus fare to get to the studio, but how was it when you suddenly found yourself in the spotlight and making serious money. How was fame? Was it a bit of a headfuck?

Not really – it doesn’t happen in a huge explosion, it’s day-to-day. As it was incremental, it was easier to deal with. It’s not like you’ve suddenly won The X Factor...

And you’d put the effort in early on…

Yeah, but I think it was also because we’d spent so long in the wilderness. We’d already done the first album on a major label thing, and that all went wrong. We stuck to our guns, so it was more validation really – it was like, ‘Okay – people like our music…’ It wasn’t just the four of us, our manager, a few friends and Andy Macdonald anymore…

You go from being flat broke to looking at your bank account and going, ‘Jesus Christ!’ And, instead of everyone around you saying, ‘You’re shit, split up’ – everyone’s saying, ‘Wow – you guys are amazing!’ That’s going to inflate anybody’s ego, but it’s how you deal with it is the test.

Ocean Colour Scene were a band that were liked by the people but disliked by the music press, who called you ‘Dadrock.’ Why did the media hate you so much and did it bother you?

I know why they hated us… The first time round the music press said Ocean Colour Scene were going to be the biggest band in the world – they hyped us up and then we had the disaster of making the first album, which took three years rather than three months, by which point they’d moved on – they were like ‘You guys are dead to us…’ So, we came from nowhere – it was completely unexpected.

They presumed we’d split up and then suddenly we’re on Top of the Pops and daytime Radio 1 – and they, the purveyors of good taste, were like, ‘How dare you.’ We circumvented them and became massive, so they had to slag us off.

Then there was Britpop and then Britrock, which I suppose, were positive terms – everyone was talking about it – but we got called ‘Dadrock, which was supposed to be really insulting, because it was the music your dad listened to. Well, my dad had really good music taste…

Do you think Ocean Colour Scene have gained critical acclaim as time’s gone on?

I think so. I hate the word ‘authentic’, but we were true to ourselves, we had talent, quality, and great songs. At the time it had a label, but then, years later, people go: ‘This is really good…’

It’s like Free – they’re only really known by the vast majority of the general public for All Right Now because it was in a chewing gum advert. It’s by far their worst song – their second, third and fourth albums are astonishing. They were never cool, but, over time, people are like, ‘We should listen to Free…’ Things that are written off and labelled as X, Y, Z… Now those labels don’t matter…

‘We didn’t like the closed-mindedness of the whole mod thing. It was supposed to be modernism – looking to the future – rather than thinking it’s all about 1967’

In the book you write about how Ocean Colour Scene were often labelled as a mod band, but, other than Steve, you weren’t mods, were you? Simon [Fowler – singer] was into folk music, and, like you, The Velvet Underground, and Oscar [Harrison – drummer] liked lovers rock and dub. You did embrace the mod look, though…

Yeah, and on the artwork, and it didn’t help that we had scooters… The look is good, and the clothes are great, but we didn’t like the closed-mindedness of the whole mod thing. It was supposed to be modernism – looking to the future – rather than thinking it’s all about 1967.

You played bass in Weller’s band, but you weren’t a fan of The Jam, were you? You prefer The Style Council – although you don’t like some of the ‘80s production on their songs…

I think it stems from when I was at school. Once I discovered The Bunnymen, I got into The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and Suicide – all that kind of stuff. You get into all this weird, cool-as-fuck music where nothing is straightforward, like the lyrics and the look.

When I moved from Merseyside to the Midlands, my mates at school were all into The Jam, but you’d hear the music and it was too obvious – they looked boring and you knew what every word meant… There was nothing to unravel in your mind – there was no mystique.

Obviously, Weller wrote some fantastic songs in The Jam, but I think the songs he wrote in The Style Council are way more interesting, but the problem with a lot of The Style Council stuff is the production, which is very ’80s…

What did playing with Weller teach you? Did you develop as a musician and learn to improvise?

Yeah – I learnt to improvise a lot, and to be really committed – not that I wasn’t committed, as I’d been through the wilderness of being on the dole and making tunes in a really shit studio… It was more about playing live – the sheer attitude of it and how it was the most important thing right now… It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s onto the next bit and give it your all.

One of the main things Paul gave me was the chance to explore loads of music that I wouldn’t have thought of listening to, like Free and Traffic. The first time I listened seriously to The Verve was when he gave me a cassette which had History on it.

I saw The Verve when they did their first album. Me and Simon [Fowler] saw them at some tiny venue in London – they were good, but it was when they were doing that sort of psychedelic sonic space jam stuff… So, Paul opened my eyes to The Verve, which is kind of weird, because I would go on to work with Richard. That’s not to say that Paul was open-minded about all kinds of music – I’d play him some stuff and he just refused to listen to it.

‘One of the main things Paul Weller gave me was the chance to explore loads of music that I wouldn’t have thought of listening to, like Free and Traffic’

We talked earlier about how honest the book is. You’re very candid about the bad times in Ocean Colour Scene as well as the good times. When the band got a lot of money, that led to a lot of drugs too, which, ultimately, caused a rift between some of the members, didn’t it?

Yeah – it happens to every single band, if they’re inclined to go that way. You’ve suddenly gone from no money to shitloads of it, and, if you’re in a band, you tend to do drugs anyway… And now no one’s telling you you can’t, and you’ve got lots of money, so you can afford it. You also then got extra people involved, like partners…

And all the hangers-on…

Yes – you’ve got a lot of people talking and also lot of pressure to follow up the next record, to make sure you have another hit. All of a sudden, it’s rare that all four people in the band and their manager are together on their own – all of a sudden, you get a little fracture.

Half the band are doing uppers and half are doing downers, so that immediately creates a sort of energy rift, and as soon as that starts, when you’re in the band, small things become big. People – particularly blokes – don’t tend to talk about how they’re feeling. So, you get the two who are smoking a lot of weed [Simon and Oscar] and won’t go into the studio because they think the other two are just going to have a go at them…

‘I can’t listen to One From The Modern now, because I know how it was made…’

That all came to a head on One From The Modern, which was basically mine and Steve’s record. If we hadn’t pushed it, it would never have got done. It wasn’t the record that me and Steve wanted to make, but it’s still a very good record. I can’t listen to that record now, because I know how it was made… I was talking to someone for a podcast yesterday, and they said One From The Modern is their favourite album. I was like, well, good for you, but it’s not mine…

Since you left Ocean Colour Scene, in the early 2000s, you’ve seen Steve and you’ve seen Simon, but you haven’t spoken to Oscar, who you fell out with in a big way, leading to you leaving the band. Would you like them to read the book?

I know they will… Oscar won’t like any of it… I think if Steve and Simon get to the end of it, they’ll be like, ‘All right, fair play…’ because I’ve got a lot of love and respect for the band and particularly for Steve and Simon. If they only get halfway through it, I’m expecting my phone to be quite hot…But if they get to the end, they’ll go: ‘We get it…’ They were there as well – they know what happened. It’s not like I’ve invented some sort of Stalin-esque re-reading of our lives.

We talked about drugs… There’s a good bit in the book where Ocean Colour Scene accidentally join a drug cartel…

(Laughs). That was a very bizarre time – it was when we were finishing off One For The Modern, which was sort of the pinnacle of the band being at their most excessive. We were all doing a lot of drugs and we had a tried and tested dealer, but we didn’t know the police were keeping tabs on him…

They see him going into a big studio in an industrial part of Birmingham, where loads of trucks go, and they think the band is being used as a transportation front for an international drug cartel, which we didn’t know the guy was part of.

Bizarrely, the other three guys in the band were buying their drugs with cheques… so the police found that out as well…

Ocean Colour Scene

There was a paper trail…

I’m not being funny, but just go to the cashpoint… I’d moved to London, so when I was in Birmingham, I stayed at a hotel – the police never saw the guy come to my house, but they saw him go to the other guys’ houses as well, not just the studio… Obviously, we weren’t a drug cartel, but, you know, the studio got raided by the armed drug squad…

‘We were all doing a lot of drugs and we had a tried and tested dealer, but we didn’t know the police were keeping tabs on him…’

And your manager, Steve’s dad, was an ex-copper…

Yeah – and fortunately he was able to sort of deal with it without anyone having a heart attack. He understood who we needed to talk to. Obviously, there were going to be some arrests and cautions, but then eventually they were going to say, ‘ Okay, it’s not you guys…’

It made the TV news and you had to distract your mum when she saw the story on the telly…

Yeah – she’d come in from the kitchen, turned on the telly, and it panned across a picture of the band… then it was just a picture of me on screen, with the news anchor saying, ‘What next for Ocean Colour Scene?’

There’s another police-related story that didn’t make the book. You once signed autographs for the police when you had some drugs hidden in the glove compartment of your car…

Yeah – I’d bought a sports car, I’d been working late in the studio, and I was driving back with the top down, playing Public Enemy at full blast. It was when I was renting an apartment not too far from the studio, and the police had cordoned off the road for some reason.

I was thinking, ‘shit…’ They’d blocked the road and they were obviously going to search the car, so I immediately turned off Public Enemy, stopped the car and took my hat off.

A copper came up to me and said [adopts a Brummie accent]: ‘Fucking hell – it’s Damon from Ocean Colour Scene!’ He called his mate over – another copper – and they said: ‘Can we have your autograph?’ They asked me where I lived, opened the roadblock, and let me go. Meanwhile, my heart was pounding…

The Family Silver: Matt Deighton, Steve White and Damon Minchella

You were in a great band with singer-songwriter /guitarist, Matt Deighton, and drummer, Steve White, called The Family Silver. It’s now just over 10 years since your debut album, Electric Blend, came out. Is there talk of reissuing it and playing some gigs?

Yeah – there is. It kind of depends on Matt, and also if there’s enough desire for it – not just from the three of us. We’re all of a certain age now… It’s not like when you’re younger, and and it’s like, ‘Great, let’s get in a van and eat frozen pizza, and we can all share a room on tour…’ No chance!

It was a great band – and a pure band. It’s nice when it’s just three people as well, because it just makes everything incredibly important – what each person’s playing. And I do like that stripped-down side of music a lot. It’s a possibility – it’s definitely not a shut book.

 

I like the bit in the book where you talk about how Steve White calls you on a Wednesday in 2005 and asks you if you want to play a gig with him on Saturday – it turns out to be The Who at Live 8, in Hyde Park…

When anyone asked me to do something, particularly in London, my stock answer was always ‘no’ – I was living in Warwickshire, out in the countryside – but when Steve told me what it was, I was like, ‘Fuck – it’s The Who!’ I went to a little pub just around the corner from my house, and thought, ‘Fuck – I need to learn some Who songs, but I haven’t got any of their records…’

You weren’t a Who afficionado…

No, but obviously they’re brilliant… Apart from a greatest hits album, I didn’t have any of their records, so I didn’t know any esoteric tracks. By the time we’d eventually found out what the setlist was, I’d kind of worked the songs out, and we rehearsed for one hour on the Friday…

That’s crazy… Only one hour?

Yeah – we played Won’t Get Fooled Again twice…

Well, that’s almost half an hour already…

(Laughs) Yeah. We went on stage after Robbie Williams, who’d heroically overrun – everything was running behind and it was insane backstage. Me and Steve weren’t even having a beer because we needed to keep our shit together.

As you both walked towards the stage, Steve said to you: ‘If we fuck this up, our careers are over…’

Yeah – brilliant! And we had to push past Sting and Bob Geldof to get on stage – they were in the way. We didn’t fuck it up – thank God.

I watched a clip of it on YouTube – you can’t see a lot of you because of where the cameras are positioned…

Yeah. I’ve got really short hair for some reason. Clearly, I wasn’t planning on doing the world’s biggest gig ever…

You wrote some of the book while you were on tour with Richard Ashcroft, including the dates supporting Oasis last year – how were those shows?

I think Oasis did 42 shows – we did 24 of them. I’d easily done over 100 gigs with them the first time round. It was a lot more organised this time – it was like clockwork.

What was amazing about it was the euphoria from the audience – even more than the first time round. I think it was that people couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening.

Richard Ashcroft: photo by Dean Chalkley

 

‘Richard Ashcroft is the last of the singer-songwriter rock stars’

And walking out on stage with Richard… We’re the special guests, but we weren’t seen as the support band… We were our own world within the Oasis world and, for those 45 minutes, people were losing their shit and crying – before we’d even played a note…

It was amazing to see so many young people there – there was a whole new respect for Richard, and Oasis and Cast. You’ve got this entire new audience, which is millions of people, who didn’t get it the first time around. Maybe their parents played them the tunes when they were growing up, or an older brother or sister. A lot of the kids in the audience had parents who weren’t even born the first time round…

It culminated for me at the gig in the Chile, which was the best gig I’ve ever done – it was in the old National Stadium [Estadio Nacional in Santiago], which is where the Chilean government used to execute people in the ‘70s.

There’s a monument at the far end of the stadium, but you can see it from the stage – there were 90,000 Chileans and it was like a biblical experience for them. It was utterly incredible – an amazing, life-affirming experience.

Is Richard your favourite musician you’ve ever worked with?

Yeah – he’s the best performer and best singer, and a great songwriter. If you combine everything together… People might say, ‘Oh – Weller is a better guitarist than Richard…’ Yeah, of course he is, but he’s not a better singer than him – that’s for sure – and he’s not a better frontman… And if you combine it with Richard’s fucking aura… He’s the last of the singer-songwriter rock stars.

So, what’s next? Would you like to write another book?

It’s in the back of my head – I’ve got an idea. I left it open in this book that I might do a follow up. It’s going to be music-related, but it might not be part two of a memoir… but then again it might… That sounds really mysterious… I think I probably will do one. 

It could be a book about going on tour with Wendy James from Transvision Vamp…

Christ – what an experience that was.

I didn’t know you’d done that, until I read a brief mention of it at the end of the book…

I wish I hadn’t done it. It was Steve White’s fault. We were playing a gig with Weller in L.A. and Wendy James came in, because she knew Steve and Paul.

She was like, ‘I’m putting a band together…’ and Steve said: ‘Ask Damon – he’ll play bass for you…’ And I was like, ‘Yeah – cool…’

So, I went on tour… and oh my fucking God… It was hell. It wasn’t a fun experience at all – it was the second time I’d left a tour halfway through. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I think I left the tour in Madrid, and I didn’t tell anyone.

I remember Wendy sending me an email that said: ‘You will never work with me again.’ I just replied: ‘Obviously.’

 

You’d Look Good On A Donkey: Britpop, Basslines & Bad(ish) Decisions by Damon Minchella is out now, published by Backstage Books.

For more information, visit: www.backstagebooks.com.

Turn on the neon and look out for the ghost signs, it’s the best albums of 2025…

From cinematic late-night soundtracks and dark disco to jangly Americana, psych-folk, melancholy orchestral pop and retro soul, Say It With Garage Flowers chooses our favourite albums of 2025 and looks at a few of them in more depth.

When Say It With Garage Flowers spoke to Louis Eliot, frontman and songwriter for the newly-reformed cinematic glam popsters Rialto, in early 2024, he told us that there was a possibility that the band could make a new album.

Louis Eliot – picture: Chris Floyd

Fast forward to spring 2025 and that album, Neon & Ghost Signs – the group’s third and their first record in 24 years (!) – saw the light of day, or should that be the dark of night, as, like Rialto’s previous work, it was collection of songs inspired by night-time in the city.

“A lot of it is about searching for thrills,” says Eliot, adding: “But it’s also about heading out into the night to search for the person that you think you might’ve missed out on being… but what you find is some bruises in the morning…”

We’ve all been there… Neon & Ghost Signs is quite possibly Rialto’s finest album, and Eliot agrees, saying: “I genuinely think this album is the best one. It’s a grown-up record but perhaps not a graceful one… I know bands always love the latest thing they’ve made, but I think it’s a good album and that age has helped me write a better record.”

Well, it’s our favourite album of 2025 – a natural step on from its predecessor, 2021’s Night On Earth, which flirted with moody, Bowie-like electronica and Duran Duran-style ‘80s pop, as well as the dramatic, widescreen influences of John Barry and Ennio Morricone, which were all over Rialto’s 1998, self-titled debut album, Neon & Ghost Signs also explored new territory.

Comeback single and album opener, No One Leaves This Discotheque Alive, is a big statement of intent – over handclaps and a pounding disco groove, a lascivious Eliot is on the prowl in a nightclub, playing “the hound of London town, where the sheets are stained with gold.

It’s like a darker, sleazier cousin of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor. The song was partly inspired by Eliot leaving behind a long-term relationship to immerse himself once more in London nightlife.

‘Rialto’s Neon & Ghost Signs was our favourite album of 2025 – a natural step on from 2021’s Night On Earth, which flirted with moody, Bowie-like electronica and Duran Duran-style ‘80s pop, as well as the dramatic, widescreen influences of John Barry and Ennio Morricone, it also explored new territory’

There’s an urgency and a celebratory feel to a lot of the songs on Neon & Ghost Signs – this is down to a near-death experience Eliot had six years ago, when he was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery while on holiday in Spain.

“What you might think is if you have a very close to death experience you want to start looking after yourself,” he says. “I just went chasing full speed after my youth. I was just like, f*** it, I might not be here next week, so I’m just going to dive in!”

I Want You is a glitter-soaked, glam rock stomp, and there’s more epic disco on the shimmering, ABBA-flavoured, Taking The Edge Off Me, with its cascading piano and soaring strings.

Louis Eliot

 

The edgy and European-sounding, Put You On Hold, is John Barry-meets-the-Bee-Gees, while Cherry is delicious, futuristic robo-funk that struts the same catwalk as Bowie’s Fashion.

There are some reflective moments amidst all the dancefloor shenanigans. The album’s gorgeous title track, which is cocooned in warm, pulsing synths, is a bleary-eyed, comedown ballad that’s one of the best things Eliot has ever written – an ‘us against the world’ love song, like 1998’s The Underdogs.

Sandpaper Kisses is another relationship ballad, but it’s about love gone wrong:Sandpaper kisses, stinging on your lips. The one you want to hold in your arms is slipping from your grip.”  

Eliot juxtaposes the barbed lyric with a charming and nostalgic tune that has echoes of ‘50s instrumental rock and roll duo Santo & Johnny, complete with a great, twangy guitar solo.

The atmospheric and romantic ballad, Remembering To Forget, is so beautiful that Scott Walker could’ve sung it, while second single, the glam strut of Car That Never Comes, is another of Eliot’s songs about escaping and driving through the city under the cover of night – it can be parked alongside The Car That Took My Love Away, from 2000’s mini-album, Girl On A Train, and Drive from Night On Earth.

“I need to come up with some new ideas,” he jokes, adding: “The album wouldn’t be a Rialto record if it didn’t have the things that people liked about Rialto from the past, but there wouldn’t have been a whole lot of point doing it if I hadn’t brought new things to it.”

Here’s hoping he follows it up with a new set of songs soon and, in the meantime, please can we have vinyl reissues of the first two Rialto albums and a compilation, including all the B-sides too?

Cinematic songs played a big part on one of our other favourite albums of 2025 – The Divine Comedy’s Rainy Sunday Afternoon.

For his 13th record, singer-songwriter, Neil Hannon, returned to the grandiose, orchestral pop of previous long-players, such as Absent Friends and Victory for the Comic Muse, and came up with one of his best albums in a career that’s lasted over three decades.

Recorded in 10 days at Abbey Road and written, produced and arranged by Hannon, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, features an orchestra, brass section and choir, as well as a full band, and found him in a melancholy and reflective mood – he describes it as his ‘deep in middle age album’.

Some of the songs were influenced by some troubling moments in his life – The Last Time I Saw the Old Man concerns itself with the death of his father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease – as well as the current state of the world.

The stunning opening song, Achilles, has a stirring and mournful string arrangement, and was inspired by soldier and scholar Patrick Shaw-Stewart’s 1915 poem, Achilles in the Trench, which was written about his experience of Gallipoli during World War 1 – Shaw-Stewart died fighting in France in 1917.

The haunting orchestration on I Want You recalls vintage John Barry, while The Last Time I Saw the Old Man is ‘60s-Scott-Walker-meets-late-night-jazz, managing to evoke a similar doomed atmosphere to Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding, which was covered by Robert Wyatt – Hannon cites the track as an influence on his song.

Despite all the sadness, there are some lighter moments on the album, where Hannon juxtaposes the heavy lyrical subject matter with some playful arrangements.

The delightful title track, which deals with the doom and gloom in society, and having the weight on the world on his shoulders after a fight with his partner, is Bacharach and Carole King-inspired pop, while on the breezy bossa nova of Mar-A-Lago By The Sea, Hannon imagines himself as an imprisoned Donald Trump, pining for his Palm Beach resort in Florida.

All The Pretty Lights is a gorgeous and evocative recollection of a childhood Christmas trip to London, complete with a fairground organ instrumental break, and the atmospheric and yearning ballad, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter – it takes its title from the novel by Carson McCullers – is a beautiful song about looking for love, but also leaving the past behind, and looking to the future.

‘Despite all the sadness, there are some lighter moments on the album, where Hannon juxtaposes the heavy lyrical subject matter with some playful arrangements’

After all the soul-searching, the album ends on an optimistic and hopeful note with the pastoral Invisible Thread – the lyric centres on a parent letting go of their loved one, as they flee the nest. Fittingly, the track features Hannon’s daughter, Willow, on guest vocals.

Pastoral influences were all over The Instant Garden – the debut album by Blow Monkeys frontman, Dr Robert, and singer-songwriter/ guitarist, Matt Deighton (Mother Earth, Oasis), but it’s not the first time these two talented musicians have collaborated – they worked on the Monks Road Social project, which was overseen by Robert and spawned four albums, one of which featured Paul Weller.

The pair bonded over a mutual love of Tyrannosaurus Rex – they both grew up listening to A Beard of Stars – as well as Fred Neil, Davy Graham, and Nick Drake, which shines through on The Instant Garden – stripped-back, psych-folk, with open-tuned acoustic guitar and impressive and inventive electric playing is very much the order of the day.

Robert and Deighton share lead vocals, as well as acoustic guitar duties and percussion, but Deighton takes care of all the electric guitar work.

The album was recorded and mixed in five days, at Penhesgyn Hall Studio, Anglesey, in North Wales.

Matt Deighton and Dr Robert

Dr Robert takes lead vocals on the soulful and anthemic, Giving Up The Ghost, which brings to mind early Bowie, and he’s also the main singer on Gardening In The Mediterranean Way, which could’ve been inspired by his botanical pursuits at home in Spain – he lives in the mountains, in Andalusia.

There are more green-fingered antics on the title track, with its slow, bluesy-psych groove – it’s like a stripped-back take on Marc Bolan’s Hippy Gumbo, with Robert literally leading us down the garden path: ‘Won’t you come along with me into the instant garden? Won’t you accompany me down in the undergrowth?’

Things take a country turn on the delightful Philosophy, with Robert finding peace in a haven by the sea, and the mesmerising, acoustic-led shuffle, Supernatural Seas, which is sung by Deighton, is a magical and mystical trip – ‘I’m away from the poison breeze / High above supernatural seas’ – with a killer electric guitar break.

The spiralling Endless Circle is a bewitching and autumnal folk ballad written and sung by Deighton that has shades of Paul Weller and Nick Drake, but the Bolan boogie of the playful Superstitious Woman lightens the mood, as Robert tells us how the song’s female protagonist is trying to blow his mind.

‘The spiralling Endless Circle is a bewitching and autumnal folk ballad written and sung by Deighton that has shades of Paul Weller and Nick Drake’

Album closer, Crying Like A Child is one of the record’s more soulful and left-field moments, with Robert repeating the title phrase against a backdrop of guitars – acoustic strumming and some psych-tinged, FX-laden electric work.

It’s a wonderful record – intimate and pastoral, with a sense of mystery and exoticism. Let’s call it a garden of earthly delights – there’s plenty to dig here…

This year was a strong one for Americana records – one of our favourites snuck out just before the end of the year: Faith In Us by singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer, Tony Poole, who was a member of ‘70s English rock band Starry Eyed and Laughing, who were often labelled ‘the British Byrds’, due to their jangly sound – Poole is a wizard with a 12-string electric Rickenbacker.

Poole, who is also one third of Americana trio, Bennett Wilson Poole, released his first ever solo album in late 2025.

Self-produced, it opens with the chiming and existential title track – Poole’s Rickenbacker rings clear and true – a life-affirming and beautiful song about believing in the good in humanity: “If we don’t have faith in us, what is anything worth? If we don’t begin from trust, we’re just some dust blowing round this Earth.”

Next up we’re in lighter territory – on the jaunty and groovy guitar pop of Chelsea Girls (1965), Poole finds himself transported back in time to London’s King’s Road in the Swinging Sixties.

While riding on a No.11 bus heading to Sloane Square, he contemplates how great it is to be alive in 1965, but, with prior knowledge of what lies ahead, he warns of the death of the peace and love era in ’69, and the impending Vietnam War.

It’s a fun and infectious song – Twiggy gets a namecheck, as does the Ready Steady Go! TV show and its host, Cathy McGowan – and it climaxes with a ‘60s psychedelic rock freak out.

The soaring This Slice of Time takes us back to the present day – in a moody and powerful song, which was inspired by a demo Poole was sent by US musician, Nelson Bragg (Brian Wilson), we hear how the Amazon Rainforest is being burned to raise cattle to turn into burgers.

Social and political issues also get a look-in on the brooding Imagine This – specifically the suffering caused to immigrants by Trump’s policy on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The track opens with an ominous psychedelic drone and tribal drums and then heads skywards, driven by Poole’s shimmering Rickenbacker.

There’s a touch of Beatles psych and the sound of the chaos theory butterfly flapping its wings on the anthemic jangle rock of Marcie Dancing (On A Butterfly’s Wings) – musically it’s joyous, but the song comes with a warning: If everybody’s waiting for everybody else to come and save the world, we’ll still be waiting when it’s too late and we’re past the point of no return …”

‘The track opens with an ominous psychedelic drone and tribal drums and then heads skywards, driven by Poole’s shimmering Rickenbacker’

There’s a cinematic feel to Love or Something, which has a different vibe to most of the other tracks – atmospheric ‘80s synths create a ghostly atmosphere on a late-night, jazz-infused song that’s set on the neon-soaked streets of Copenhagen.

Album closer, Film Noir clocks in at just over six minutes – a magnificent and mysterious, Neil Young-style psych-rock epic.

Faith In Us is currently only available on CD – you can order it online at www.starryeyedandlaughing.com – but there are plans for a deluxe double vinyl version in 2026, depending on demand.

One of the other members of Bennett Wilson Poole released a great Americana album this year – Robin Bennett, who, along with his brother, Joe, plus Jamie Dawson (drums), Tom Collison (keys) and Nick Fowler (guitar) – make up The Dreaming Spires.

Their third album, Normal Town, explored themes of home, nostalgia, alienation, escapism and the beauty – and drudgery – of the everyday.

The sublime, nostalgic and atmospheric title track, which was also the first single, pays homage to their hometown of Didcot, which, in 2017, was deemed “the most normal town in England” by a bunch of number-crunching researchers.

The Dreaming Spires – photo by John Morgan

“I don’t want to die in a normal town,” pleads Robin Bennett, over plaintive piano and cinematic twangy guitar.

‘Normal Town is less jangly than their previous albums – no 12-string Rickenbackers were used during the making of this record’

Didcot is also referenced in Cooling Towers – a reflective, bass-driven, country-tinged song inspired by the town’s power station, which was a famous landmark, until it was finally demolished in 2020. 

Less jangly than their previous albums – no 12-string Rickenbackers were used during the making of this record – Normal Town has anthemic and political, Who-like power-rock (Normalisation), which sounds like Big Star covering Baba O’Riley; the Springsteen-esque crime story Stolen Car;  21st Century Light Industrial –  imagine the observational songwriting of Fountains of Wayne but transplanted from New York to a business park in Oxfordshire – the folky travelling song, Coming Home, and the spacey psychedelia of Where I’m Calling From, which is a message beamed in from the future.

“It’s quite a nostalgic album – a lot of the time period I’m talking about is as much about 25 years ago as it is about now,” says Robin Bennett. “You can get to adulthood and be a bit disappointed by it – where’s the transcendent experience we were looking for?” 

That’s a good question – we’ve no idea, but Normal Town is a good place to start.

From Americana to Canadiana… This year’s Waves Of Desire, from Toronto singer-songwriter, Jerry Leger, was a mostly warm sounding set of songs, and was influenced by acts including The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and The Zombies, whose music first inspired Leger as a kid.

“I get a certain feeling from those songs and memories, and I wanted to try and get that same feeling with Waves Of Desire,” he says. “I’m not trying to copy or sound like those songs, but just getting close to the feeling they gave me.”

Made in Germany, during a short break from touring Europe, Waves Of Desire was recorded at Cologne’s historic Maarweg Studios, which began as an EMI studio in the 1950s and still has its main room virtually unchanged, with a mix of vintage and modern gear. Leger’s vocals were all recorded live with the band through an old German microphone.

Suzan Köcher and Jerry Leger – photo by Katie Methot.

Produced by Leger, the album features his longtime group, The Situation, (Dan Mock – bass/vocals), Kyle Sullivan – drums/vocals, and Alan Zemaitis (keys/vocals), as well as contributions from Suzan Köcher (harmony vocals) and Julian Müller (co-production / guitar).

Several of the songs make great use of close harmonies and textured analogue synths – first single, the atmospheric and ‘50s-tinged, It’s So Strange, which is a song about vulnerability and starting over, has doubled acoustic guitars, Mellotron and Everly-Brothers-style harmonies.

Album opener, the jaunty Alcatraz – written about one person leaving a relationship, while the other is left in confusion – is driven by some superb, warm Dylan-style organ. The song’s heavy subject matter is nicely juxtaposed with a breezy, poppy and uplifting backing, which Leger says was inspired by The Shangri-Las.

Let Me See How It Ends – another song influenced by the Everly Brothers –sounds like a long-lost ‘50s breakup ballad – and the organ-drenched Calling A Bluff mixes a sultry, Rolling Stones shuffle on the verses with a big power-pop chorus.

On the ethereal and haunting, We’re Living In This World, Leger envisages the protagonist floating in space – there’s tinkly piano and a Moog synth creates a breathing effect, which adds to the feeling of disconnection: ‘You’re living in this world/ I’m in the twilight zone,’ sings Leger.

Stranded is another song about isolation – Zemaitis plays a spacey synth solo, which heightens the mood – and on the nostalgic and partly autobiographical, Willow Ave, Leger reminisces about childhood walks with his father around Toronto’s East End.

‘On the ethereal and haunting, We’re Living In This World, Leger envisages the protagonist floating in space – there’s tinkly piano and a Moog synth creates a breathing effect, which adds to the feeling of disconnection’

The title track is an upbeat rocker, and the album ends with the reflective, piano-led ballad, Back In Love With Me Again, which opens with the lines: Another day older, another job done…’

It’s been 20 years since Leger’s first solo album – 2005’s Jerry Leger & the Situation. Waves Of Desire sees the start of a new partnership with Hamburg-based label, DevilDuck Records, and next year he will be touring the UK to support the release.

Leger is a fan of vintage soul music, so he’ll probably dig this year’s album by Essex-based band The Milk.

Borderlands, which was  influenced by acts including Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Miles Davis and Michael Kiwanuka, is the group’s most ambitious and fully realised record yet – a stunning set of cinematic soul songs.

It’s a melting pot of ‘60s and ‘70s-style soul, modern funk and jazz, and vintage film soundtracks.

Like all the best records, the album takes you on an emotional journey and is designed to be listened to in one sitting – it’s a coherent piece of work that starts with the striking and filmic I Need Your Love and closes with the epic love song, I Saved My Best For You, with its silver screen strings.

“We’re very much into making a body of songs that has a beginning, a middle and an end – that’s how I listen to music at home,” says Rick Nunn, the band’s vocalist and keys player.

‘Like all the best records, the album takes you on an emotional journey and is designed to be listened to in one sitting – it’s a coherent piece of work that starts with the striking and filmic I Need Your Love and closes with the epic love song, I Saved My Best For You, with its silver screen strings’

“I like the commitment of putting a record on and then having 40 or 45 minutes when I don’t need to make another decision.”

He adds: “People who like soul music will hopefully like it, but we also just wanted to make something that was a talking point in itself – even if it’s not your thing, it’s a big-sounding record.”

“We spent about a year arguing about the references and batting ideas around, and eventually we all gave in and said, ‘Let’s make something huge.’”

The Milk

Nunn explains how very few bands have got the resources or the budget to make a high-production, mid-‘70s soul record, but that having their own studio allows the group to have more time and creative freedom, and lets them achieve their ambitions without costing a fortune.

It’s a move that’s certainly paid off – with Borderlands, The Milk men well and truly delivered.

Sounding huge was something that baritone-voiced singer-songwriter and pianist, Tom Hickox, achieved on his long-awaited third album, The Orchestra of Stories.

A grandiose affair, inspired by the lush, dramatic and mysterious sound of Scott Walker’s seminal solo albums of the late ’60s, The Orchestra of Stories is a stunning piece of work – a set of largely story-based songs on which the London-based Hickox collaborated with the Chineke! Orchestra – Europe’s first majority black and ethnically diverse orchestra – and the Onyx Brass ensemble, as well as guitarist, Shez Sheridan, from Richard Hawley’s band.

As if that wasn’t adventurous enough, Hickox produced the album himself, which was a first for him.

“It wasn’t initially my intention to produce it myself,” he says. “I co-produced my first one with Colin Elliot, who works with Richard Hawley, and I produced the last one with a bassist friend of mine called Chris Hill.

“I really enjoy collaborating, because, otherwise, it’s quite lonely, but I met up with a couple of people and talked to them about doing this record, but nothing clicked, so I just started getting on with it myself.”

‘The Orchestra of Stories is a stunning piece of work – a set of largely story-based songs on which Hickox collaborated with the Chineke! Orchestra and the Onyx Brass ensemble, as well as guitarist, Shez Sheridan, from Richard Hawley’s band’

He adds: “As I started getting into it, I realised quite soon it was my vision and that I had to do it because of the way it was forming. It’s a massive production and it took a long time to get together – it required lots of different studios, lots of musicians and lots of money!”

The orchestral arrangements were recorded in London’s AIR Studios, while other parts, including vocals, drums, bass, piano and guitar, were laid down in studios in North and South London and Sheffield.

Opening song, The Clairvoyant, inspired by a tragic tale of a man in the US, who was hustled out of his entire life savings and house by a fraudulent psychic, is the perfect scene setter – Mariachi brass gives way to a piano and Hickox’s deep and rich croon, before a moody string arrangement creeps in and then unfolds. The effect is startling and unsettling – a very powerful start to the record.

The gorgeous Chalk Giants has a lighter touch, with acoustic guitar, stately strings and pastoral horns – the song finds Hickox on a bucolic English road trip, searching for greater meaning in life.

The serene mood doesn’t last for long, though…  Chalk Giants is followed by the dark, brooding and satirical Game Show, with its sleazy, James Bond horns, filmic strings and news audio clips recorded by CNN’s Clarissa Ward, BBC’s Nick Beake and the actor, Rory Kinnear.

For the lyrics, Hickox took inspiration from the Cambridge Analytica and Edward Snowden personal data scandals.

On haunting album closer, The Port Quin Fishing Disaster, we are transported to a small Cornish fishing village, where a tragedy strikes during a raging storm, while in The Failed Assassination of Fidel Castro, Hickox plays the part of Marita Lorenz, who was tasked with seducing the Cuban revolutionary and putting poison in his moisturiser but ended up becoming his lover.

These stories are a gift for a talented and inventive singer-songwriter like Hickox, who has a brilliant eye – and ear – for taking curious tales and turning them into fully-realised and often epic compositions.

In 2024, our favourite album of the year was Good Grief  by Bernard Butler and this year he contributed to another record we loved – the self-titled debut album by supergroup Butler, Blake and Grant, on which he was joined by Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) and James Grant (Love and Money).

The trio were formed when a mutual friend in the music industry suggested they play together for a concert in rural Scotland – he had a hunch that they’d work well as a group. That led to some shows in Glasgow, as part of the Celtic Connections festival – Blake and Grant are both Scottish.

Writing and recording for it began at Blake’s home, on the banks of the River Clyde – the group were looking to capture the stripped-back vibe of their concerts, with guitars and vocal harmonies.

“We went up to Norman’s to hang out for a couple of days and see what would happen,” Butler says. “It really worked – there was no set way of doing it – we just sat around in armchairs playing, and James said, ‘I’ve got this tune…’, he started playing a song, and we joined in and started working it out together.”

‘Writing and recording for the album began at Blake’s home, on the banks of the River Clyde – the group were looking to capture the stripped-back vibe of their concerts, with guitars and vocal harmonies’

He adds: “I asked Norman if he had any recording gear and he did, so we got out some mics and set them up in his living room – we had no headphones or isolation. There was no studio set up – just three microphones plugged into a computer. We said we would record everything we did – just press record and leave it. We did a song by James and one of Norman’s, then I wrote something quickly, overnight.”

There were more sessions at Blake’s place, and then Butler took the recordings to his studio in London, where he added overdubs and mixed the tracks.

First single and album opener, Bring An End, which started out as a fragment of an idea on Blake’s phone, is a good indication of what’s to follow – a gorgeous and intimate, autumnal folk song with acoustic strumming, some delightful harmonies, and Butler playing some impressive and inventive electric guitar.

It’s followed by the sublime, One And One Is Two, which is steeped in the chiming folk-rock sound of The Byrds, and was the first song the trio worked on together.

Butler takes lead vocals on his own composition, The 90s, a wry commentary on his past – “We’ve been loving the 90s for far too long”, which is a jaunty tune with a retro-soul feel, thanks to its strings, Blake and Grant’s backing vocals, handclaps and some neat, ‘70s-style guitar work. 

The Old Mortality – another of Butler’s songs – is one of the record’s moodier moments. It’s a dramatic and atmospheric track, with swelling violin by Sally Herbert, and would’ve fitted well on Butler’s Good Grief.

Butler, Blake and Grant will more than likely attract comparisons to Crosby, Stills & Nash, and they channel that on Grant’s, laidback harmony-laden Seemed She Always Knew, which was inspired by Joni Mitchell and has echoes of Laurel Canyon running through it.

As you would expect from the coming together of three such talented musicians, Butler, Blake and Grant is a strong album of well-crafted songs that has an authentic and traditional charm to it. Let’s hope they make another record soon.

One of the other most inspired collaborations of the year was 84-year-old Canadian folk singer, Bonnie Dobson, teaming up with London’s cosmic cowboys, The Hanging Stars, to make a brand-new, eight-track album, Dreams. It was a match made in heaven – you could say it was as if the Stars had aligned…

Dobson’s gorgeous and haunting voice is perfectly complemented by the band’s shimmering, psychedelic Americana sound, like on the first single and album opener, the sublime and hazy Baby’s Got The Blues.

It’s followed by the fun and upbeat, country-tinged Trouble, which recalls ‘60s Nancy Sinatra. In the song, Dobson has a chance encounter with a guy in a club, is attracted to him, but knows trouble when she sees it: “One, two, three, and four, what are you waiting for? Five, six, and seven, eight, come on darling, don’t make me wait.”

On the moody Don’t Look Down there’s more trouble brewing – we’re taken on a trip into the desert for a Spaghetti Western soundtrack, with Mariachi horns and twangy guitar.

On A Morning Like This also has a cinematic vibe. With its lush, ‘60s-style strings – played on a Solina String Ensemble synthesizer – and guest vocals by Hanging Stars frontman, Richard Olson, it evokes the wonderful and slightly spooky-psych pop of Nancy and Lee.

There’s yet more drama on the stunning You Don’t Know, with finger-picked acoustic guitar, French horn and wintry orchestration, it feels haunted by the ghost of Eleanor Rigby.

Friends and family play a big part in the lyrics of the album’s reflective title track, which has Dobson, who lives in the UK, dreaming of Canada, but also singing about walking in Somerset and the hills of Shropshire: “You always can go home again, but you never can go back.”

It’s a truly beautiful and moving song, and, like the rest of the record, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention an album that I contributed to this year – Document by Liverpool singer-songwriter, Edgar Jones. 

I was delighted to be asked by the label AV8 Records to write the sleeve notes for it, based on an interview I did with Jones. 

His 2023 album,  Reflections of a Soul Dimension, was a lavish affair, with strings and brass, and influences including Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker, as well as Motown and Northern Soul, but Document is just him, in a stripped-down style, with a guitar and pedals, captured live to tape.

Based on his current live set, it’s a blistering, soulful and raw-sounding record, with covers, new versions of some old Jones classics, and blueprints for songs that will end up on his future albums. 

Talking about the idea behind it, Jones says: “I don’t sit there and think, ‘Hmmm – what’s my next project going to be?’ I already had two projects on the go – one was a follow up to Reflections of a Soul Dimension called Representations, on Stereopar Records. I’d written all these songs for it and done the demos, building up the rhythm arrangements on which the strings would be added.

‘Based on his current live set, it’s a blistering, soulful and raw-sounding record, with covers, new versions of some old Jones classics, and blueprints for songs that will end up on his future albums’

“With Reflections of a Soul Dimension, I was lucky to catch Steve Parry, the producer and arranger, during some downtime in lockdown – he’s a very busy man – but we still can’t find a window to do the follow up. The incentive is there and so is the love for the project, but it’s about finding the time… It can’t be made cheaply.”

Edgar Jones

He adds: “AV8 Records had been saying to me for years, ‘Let’s do a project’, and I said, ‘Yeah – when I’ve got something…’ It turned out that I did get something – and, again, it was soul music…

“It’s a kind of a vanity project – mid-‘60s Motown stuff. I’m pretending to be a vocal group called the 4Tastics. It was going well, but we hit a wall – everyone in the band had something mad going on. There were personal problems, me included. It’s kind of 90% done now, but when it was 60% done, I was commiserating with [journalist] Lois Wilson, who said that while I was waiting for the two projects to take off, I should go into the studio for a day and bust out as much as I could of what I do live.

“I thought that was a great idea – I could revisit some old classics – put some new life into them, as I’ve been doing on stage – and put down some of the blueprints for Representations and the 4Tastics album.”

This year’s record, Document, is a great, er, document of where Jones is at, and we can’t wait to hear his next two albums when they’re done and dusted.

  • Here’s a list of Say It With Garage Flowers’ favourite albums of 2025 and an accompanying Spotify playlist: please note, as it stands, Tony Poole’s Faith In Us and Edgar Jones’ Document are not available on Spotify.

Say It With Garage Flowers: Best Albums of 2025

  1. Rialto – Neon & Ghost Signs
  2. The Divine Comedy – Rainy Sunday Afternoon
  3. Tony Poole – Faith In Us
  4. Dr Robert & Matt Deighton – The Instant Garden
  5. Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging StarsDreams
  6. The Dreaming Spires – Normal Town
  7. Butler, Blake & Grant – Butler, Blake & Grant 
  8. Kathryn Williams – Mystery Park
  9. Paul Weller – Find El Dorado
  10. Ron Sexsmith – Hangover Terrace
  11. Jerry Leger – Waves of Desire
  12. Tom Hickox – The Orchestra of Stories
  13. The Milk – Borderlands
  14. Andy Bell – Pinball Wanderer
  15. Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City
  16. Johnny Marr – Look Out Live!
  17. Sharp Pins – Balloon Balloon Balloon
  18. Nelson Bragg – Mélodie de Nelson: A Pop Anthology
  19. Matt Berninger – Get Sunk
  20. Vinny Peculiar – Things Too Long Left Unsaid
  21. The Delines – Mr. Luck & Ms.Doom
  22. Patterson Hood – Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
  23. Chris Eckman – The Land We Knew The Best
  24. Emma SwiftThe Resurrection Game
  25. Jake Winstrom – Razzmatazz!
  26. Gary Louris – Dark Country
  27. Luke Tuchscherer – Living Through History
  28. Michael Robert Murphy – Chaos Magick
  29. Edgar Jones – Document
  30. Manic Street Preachers – Critical Thinking
  31. Suede – Antidepressants
  32. Doves – Constellations For The Lonely
  33. Miki Berenyi Trio Tripla
  34. Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override
  35. Matt Berry – Heard Noises
  36. The Loft – Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same
  37. Jim Bob –Automatic
  38. Jim Bob – Stick
  39. Drink The Sea – Drink The Sea I
  40. Drink The Sea – Drink The Sea II
  41. The Clang Group – New Clang
  42. All Seeing Dolls – Parallel
  43. The Crystal Teardrop –… Is Forming
  44. Ian M Bailey – Lost In A Sound
  45. Kevin Robertson – Yellow Painted Moon
  46. Future Clouds and Radar – Big Weather
  47. Miniseries – Pilot
  48. Dan Raza –Wayfarer
  49. Dropkick – Primary Colours
  50. Edwyn Collins – Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
  51. His Lordship Bored Animal
  52. Chrissie Hynde & Pals – Duets Special
  53. Jerry Leger – Lucky Streak (Latent Lounge – Live From The Hanger)
  54. The Autumn Defense – Here and Nowhere
  55. Luke Haines & Peter Buck – Going Down To The River… To Blow My Mind
  56. The Len Price 3 – Misty Medway Magick
  57. GA-20 – Orphans
  58. The Blow Monkeys – Birdsong
  59. Rose City Band – Sol y Sombra
  60. Joe Harvey-Whyte & Bobby Lee – Last Ride
  61. Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto – Electric War
  62. Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts Talkin To The Trees
  63. Star Collector – Everything Must Go!
  64. Montefurado – Heavy Heads