The winner of the Mercury Music Prize for 2017 was announced in a live BBC TV broadcast on Thursday evening. At Crotchety Mansions the TV was tuned in and the Crotchety Couple watched with a mixture of hope and trepidation. The shortlist was promising, with a high proportion of deserving acts, but last year the…Read more Living, Breathing
Strange Angels
Crotchety Man has been on holiday - one week in Devon with the missus and a tottery old man I call Dad. The weekly blog for 3rd September was written in advance, the draft was called up on the phone as we sat in the holiday cottage watching the rain stream down the windows and…Read more Strange Angels
San Francisco Drive
Now that we have escaped from Hotel California let's go on a San Francisco drive with Petteri Sariola. "Who's that?", you ask. Well I'd never heard of him either until Spotify dropped a track called The Clockwork into my Release Radar last week. That track turned out to be an unbelievable guitar performance by Sariola…Read more San Francisco Drive
Hotel California
I love a good story. It might be an adventure story, a whodunnit or a sci-fi epic. Whatever the format there's always the urge to read on because you never know what will happen next. It might be in a novel or on a movie screen or, sometimes, in a song. That's what we have…Read more Hotel California
Tea Time
There are some funny names out there. In my Release Radar playlist this week there was a single called by a band called . I did listen to it and it's OK but not up to Crotchety blogging standard. (For the incurably curious it's on Spotify here.) Curiosity then seized the helm of the mental ship and took…Read more Tea Time
Mr. Tambourine Man
When he was about seven Little Boy Crotchety had a part in the school play. Sitting cross-legged on the floor he used an enormous silver cardboard needle to stitch some invisible cloth, while the narrator introduced him as the tailor. I don't remember what the plot was or even why it required a tailor. I…Read more Mr. Tambourine Man
Finale
A new album by Pentangle was released last year. Given that the band had split up shortly after I saw them in Oxford back in 1973¹ and, more pertinently, that two of them have died, it couldn't be a new recording. But it's not just another compilation, either. The original line-up reformed in 2008 and…Read more Finale
Cave
Here's a Track of the Week by Future Islands, a band whose music I've been meaning to explore for a while. It's called Cave and it comes from their latest album, The Far Field, which was released in April. The official YouTube clip for Cave shows a nearly monochrome video of a bearded, jacketed man signing…Read more Cave
Pain Killer (Summer Rain)
It's been a typical British summer this year. Anchored in the Atlantic Ocean just off the western edge of mainland Europe these islands get weather that is politely called 'changeable'. In Ireland they have a saying: if you can see the hills, rain is coming; if not ... it's raining already. A little farther east,…Read more Pain Killer (Summer Rain)
Sailor’s Tale
A desert is not just a place; it's also a time. The summer time in the northern hemisphere is often a desert for music lovers. In the summer not much is released and anything that does see the light of day is mostly old and often bedraggled: covers, remasters, demos, out-takes. But there is a…Read more Sailor’s Tale
Crotchety Man 