Music Pick-Ups 2008

The first CD of 2008. I saw these guys on TV a few years ago and I was on the lookout for this ever since. Some really awesome songs, but it does sound a little too samey throughout.

Now, I've had this on cassette since 2000, but I decided to embark on a campaign of replacing all my old cassettes with CDs at the beginning of last year and this was the first one I got. An absolute classic dance album.

I had a bootleg cassette copy of this back in late 1997. I wasn't too impressed and I ended up chucking it out. I decided to give it another go last year and got hold of a legit CD copy this time. Maybe my expectations have been worn down by years of dodgy Oasis releases, but I've got to say that this is really a pretty decent album, one they've yet to better IMO.

I had two instalments of the series on cassette since the 90's and while I was looking around eBay for CD copies to replace them, I found myself having a look at another one. I had written off this series as crap years ago, but a cheap price, a decent track listing and a long suppressed love of cheesy late 90's pop music saw me picking this up.

Another old album I had on cassette. Such an awesome one too! I bought this originally in the summer of 1999 and didn't stop listening to it for months. Seriously, most of the writing is worn off the cassette from pulling in in and out of my old walkman. :)

The selection of CDs at my local record shop is always a bit on the random side. I loved the first FF album and I had been meaning to get this for ages, so when a bunch of copies showed up for €10 each, I made sure to grab one. This is even better than the first, I think. "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" is lovely.

Swept up in a wave of nostalgia by Now 44, I headed to official Now web site in March to see if any of the other entries were worth getting. With a short list in hand, I made my way to eBay to see what I could find.

I decided to start off with a Now 40/Now 41 combo. Save for a few tracks, Disc 1 of this is pretty poor, but there's some good stuff on Disc 2 - Catatonia, Mansun, The Verve, some decent dance tracks and even the lame (but awesome) Three Lions 98.

This was one of the two Now compilations I had on cassette since back in the day. I got this originally in December 98 along with The Masterplan by Oasis - my first music purchases ever. There's some filler towards the end of both discs, but this is a pretty solid compilation throughout - "Gangster Tripping", "My Favourite Game", "Perfect 10", "Crush" by Jennifer Paige and playing Goldeneye all weekend after school. Those were good times.

Hmm, never really warmed to this like the first Kasabian album, but there's a bunch of great tracks here and it was only €7.99 to boot.

A pretty so-so entry in the Now series. Disc 2 is pretty much useless apart from Faithless and a few tracks near the end. Disc 1 fares quite a bit better though - lots of pop classics from mid-late 1996 from the likes of Suede, Ocean Colour Scene, The Pet Shop Boys, Deep Blue Something and Pulp. They also put on the fantastic "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House due to a 1996 reissue. What's up with the dodgy remixes of George Michael and Garbage though?

Along with Now 35, I picked up a replacement for the second Now I had on cassette. I remember buying this originally around the time of the Man Utd. - Arsenal FA Cup Quarter Final replay in 1999. This one's not a patch on Now 41 though, I was so let down by it that I gave up on the series from then on.

Overall, it's not a great compilation. Most of the decent tracks from the likes of Fatboy Slim and The Cardigans are concentrated in the first half of Disc 2. The Dusty Springfield track at the end is a nice touch though.

Another CD I grabbed off eBay to replace an old cassette. I originally picked this up in 2001 on a school trip to see Hamlet. I never got into Blur in a big way, but this is a damn fine compilation, even the bonus track is pretty awesome.

A darker, more melancholic outing for the Ash boys, but still no less catchy than their previous work. I wish I'd picked this last year, but I was waiting for the price to drop a bit. Forgive me, Tim.

Summer '96 was when I really started to fall in love with music and this is basically that summer pressed onto two discs of pop perfection.

Another cassette replacement. This one, I originally bought in early 2002. Together with D12, Limp Bizkit and Sum 41 (questionable music taste ahoy!), it provided the soundtrack to the few months leading up to my Leaving Cert. Certainly one of Ash's best, pretty much any song on here would have made a great single.

It took me a while to track down this, but I'm glad I finally nabbed a copy. An excellent slice of geek rock, hardly missing a beat from start to finish.

Their last album might have been a giant, filler-infested disappointment, but that didn't stop me from getting their awesome debut when I spied it on the shelves, probably completing my Kings of Leon collection for the foreseeable future.

The debut 2006 album from a little-known, but awesome Irish outfit.

I liked "Since I Left You" and "Frontier Psychiatrist", so I decided to give this a go when it turned up out of the blue in my local record shop. I really wasn't quite sure what to make of this at first, it's much more an eclectic DJ mix than a series of well defined album tracks. It took me quite a few listens, but I came to enjoy it in the end.

Bought mainly because I liked "Everyday is Like Sunday", I was really let down by this compilation. There are some other good songs on here, but it's pretty average overall.

There was a 3 for €20 promotion in my local record store around September, so after a quick browse around I picked this and the next two albums up. I'm not a massive fan of modern hip hop, but I've been interested in checking out some older stuff for a while. I'm really glad I picked this one up, it's a great, great album.

The very first album I bought as a download. I had downloaded a few tracks on iTunes before, but I was too scarred off by the DRM to make any serious investment there. However, I was getting cheesed off at the fact that I was impossible to find anything I wanted on CD locally. It was around September that I found the solution to my problems - 7digital, a mostly DRM-free MP3 store.

For €4.99 with a bunch of bonus tracks, this was a no-brainer as my first purchase.

November saw me stumble across Indiecater Records, a small record label offering long deleted Irish indie albums for download. The prices were insanely low, so I took a listen to what they had on offer and ended up grabbing this for €3.50. A steal for such a great album.

I was a big fan of Nina Hynes' first album, but somehow the release of this follow-up completely passed me by. I was browsing Rate Your Music one day and there it was. I had a feeling that this would be tricky to get hold of on CD, so I got it as a download from Bookmat instead. I do still prefer "Staros", but this is a really beautiful follow-up

I wasn't expecting to be buying a second festive compilation last year, but when this one popped up on the Indiecater web site, boasting a fine selection of quirky alternative Christmas songs (including a fantastic new one by Nina Hynes), how could I refuse?

"Christmas in Jail" = so awesome

I have a real soft spot for Christmas songs and I had been meaning to pick up a compilation like this for years. I was torn between this and Now Christmas, but ultimately, I went for this because it had "Last Christmas" and the other didn't. This one is missing plenty of other big tracks, but it makes up for it by including quite a few decent lesser-known numbers. Most of the stuff on here is still cack though, even by my standards. :)

One of the big omissions from Christmas Hits is, of course, the original version of this. The 2004 version may have be horrendous, but it did include the original as a b-side, so I got up the digital version on 7digital along with ABBA Gold.

In recent years, I've made a habit of picking up a best of compilation and listening to it over Christmas. This year I'd opted for the Christmas compilation instead and as the festive season was nearly upon us, I was beginning to have second thoughts about that, so I hopped onto 7digital and picked this up for €9.99. I'm so glad I did, Swedish pop makes peeling potatoes so much more enjoyable.