So today my random album script picked out “Bright Lights” by Ellie Goulding, an album I wasn’t sure I’ve ever listened to. I looked in my music library and there it was! As a result this is not so much an album revisit as an album _visit. Anyway, this album was released in 2010 and did quite well. In fact, “Bright Lights” is a reissue of an album that was originally released as “Lights” (February 2010).

At the new year, thoughts and spare time for writing point me toward writing some new posts for my understated classics series. Expect some new ones soon. I also reflected on my previous choices and thought a bit about how my music tastes have changed recently. Some of this has to do with streaming and the frustrations I wrote about in my last post. Some of it is just down to getting older: I have less time to listen to new music, and much of the ’new’ stuff I listen to is me investigating the stuff I missed first time around.

The next instalment in my understated classics series is "Stray" by Aztec Camera. Released in 1990, it features two hit singles and the cover is my favourite colour: green. My angle for writing about “Stray” was that it was an album that I "caught" from my parents. I soon realised that I wrote about some of those already, for example “The Circle and the Square" by Red Box. Besides, I’m not sure that my parents liked this album that much.

I give the impression of planning these posts but to be honest I came across an article about Maxwell a few weeks ago and fondly remembered my cassette copy of this album. The joy of Spotify is that it’s easy to dig up old favourites. The recent warm weather makes for a good opportunity to enjoy the sultry embrace of “Embrya” once more. “Gestation: Mythos” burbles along for two and a half minutes, overlaying spoken word samples, string phrases and weird underwater noises, before the bass line of “Everwanting: To Want You To Want” brings things to life.

This little masterpiece was released in 1991. I got my copy on cassette for Christmas that year, but by May in 1992 they’d already “retired” and split up. The KLF were a band in the right place at the right time with the right idea. Taking advantage of synthesizers and the idea of fusing rock and pop music with the emerging sound of house music, they laid the ground for many of the most successful electronic acts that followed them.

It’s rather spooky but shortly after deciding to write about Nelly Furtado’s “Folklore” as the next understated classic, I found out that she has a new album out this week. As a result, I have been listening to a lot of her music while writing this post, and I’ve been enjoying it too. As always with these choices of mine, “Folklore” is a record that I can link to particular events and emotions in my life and so I guess my perception of it is coloured by that.

“I see the people working and see it working for them.” (Sat In Your Lap) The Dreaming by Kate Bush is a strange 1982 album that many believed had destroyed her career. Two weeks before her first ever performance of “Running Up That Hill”, the NME had written an editorial asking whether she had burnt herself out completely. Obviously “Running Up That Hill” (recently used to great effect in the Olympic Closing Ceremony) and the parent album “The Hounds Of Love” that followed showed that she had plenty more up her sleeve.

I got into Début via a cassette from the library, much like I did with Together Alone by Crowded House. I suppose it is less obscure than many of my choices for this strand but I do think that Post is more well-known (because of It’s Oh So Quiet, which we shall mention here only briefly) and that Homogenic is probably more popular among her fans. What I really like about Début though, as much as the album itself, is the panoply of remixes and alternative versions that surround the release.

Happy Birthday! No matter how intellectual one gets about these things, the primary function of music is to have fun. With this in mind it is a good time to turn to Roxette then, as they are almost always the epitome of fun. I received Look Sharp! as a present for my ninth birthday. This was probably a bit young to fully understand all the emotions expressed on the record. It’s just as well that it is also crammed with the kind of pop confections that made “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!

Background Tiger Bay is Saint Etienne’s third album and I think it is among their best. It was released in June 1994 on Heavenly records. I first owned a copy in 1998 when I picked it up while living in halls as an undergraduate. The reason for including this album in the understated classics series is the same as for Second Light by Dreadzone: it marries traditional forms to newer electronic music1.

When is understated not understated? The trouble with writing a series of articles all themed somehow is that eventually you might find something that sits naturally in the sequence but at the same time goes against the grain a little. Et voila, I give you “The Circle & The Square” by Red Box. An album that hardly anyone has heard containing two top 10 UK singles that probably everyone has heard.

This week Arcade Fire released their hotly anticipated third album “The Suburbs”. I loved “Neon Bible” but critics found it preachy, as overbearing as the religious folk it sought to satirise. I disagree and think it was an impressive continuation from an exciting debut. “The Suburbs” steps on from their previous two albums, both in subject matter and tone. It’s sad, thoughtful, resigned, angry and tetchy - among other things. “The Suburbs” isn’t the understated classic that I want to discuss though: with all the praise and plaudits, it may never suit this new thread of posts.