But. My point is. 1) I will go out and get the Alastair recommendation, because anything that gets anyone going that much has to be worth a listen, and 2) I have a Neko Case/John Peel story.
There I was, on my own in my room in Oxford, listening to Peelie, when this beautiful, beautiful country song came on. I don't, as a rule, like country music, but the voice was so soulful and pure and strong and gentle and amazing and the song was so different and alt. country and lovely and cool, I stopped whatever I was doing (writing, I think) and soaked it all up. It was proper mmm. Of course what made it even better was that Peelie came off the back of the track saying something like "That was blah taken from the album Furnace Room Lullaby, by Neko Case and her Boyfriends and it was frankly so amazing that we're going to play it again."
Which he did. In all the history of ever, things have been played on the Peel show twice not very often at all. Certainly the number is in single figures. So to have someone who apparently knew a fair bit about popular music share the same "ooh, that's good" moment, was, obviously, nice.
I've subsequently met the record label owner who brought Neko Case to Britain and he said that moment changed the fortunes of his company overnight and to the producer who was working on the show that night, who said there was a serious debate about whether or not they should play the tune 3 times and they only decided not to at the last moment because it would mean dropping a session tune.
Obviously I bought the Furnace Room Lullaby album and it is a classic. If you ever buy a country album and don't know where to start - it is jes' brilliant.
Love the norks, love the voice. Not quite sure what she's doing, but hey. Respect to her Boyfriends.
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