Archie Roach - by Stuart Spence Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence. Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before,

VARIOUS ARTISTS Pop Boomerang Presents: Shake Yer Pop Boomerang Volume 4 (Pop Boomerang) UNLIKE THE FORTUNE FLAKES on the cover, being poured out into and over a bowl in a shower of cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and tooth rot, this is an album which will do you no harm. No harm at all. Better yet, it will bring joy to your house and alleviate symptoms of the common cold, raise your heartbeat enough to activate almonds but not enough to blow your heart monitor, and it will ba

Not when it hurts this much. Find consolation here. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Convert curiosity into satisfaction goals with hundreds more playlists like this at Spotify when you search my name.

Gentlemen checking the football score, or their Belgian fries order. L-R: Andy Kent, Russell Hopkinson, Davey Lane and Tim Rogers. Photo by Deb Pelser IT HAS TO BE SAID, the timing was hardly ideal Mr Russell Hopkinson, on the other end of the phone this cloudy Tuesday morning. Not the upcoming You Am I shows marking the 30th anniversary of their career reframing third album of superior guitar pop and melodic rock, Hourly Daily; nah, they’re good, in October, plenty of warnin

Matt Fell and Suzy Connolly, the two of 9 Last week I pulled out two albums from Sydney duo Butterfly 9, probably not played in four or five years but showings sings of how often they had been played in the decades I’d owned them, and the response – here, as I sang along, and online, from those who saw my post about them and were probably doing the same in their heads – spurred a search in the files for B9 business. This 2005 interview found them soon after their second album

BETH ORTON The Ground Above (Partisan/Mushroom) THE TRAVAILS – which is an inadequate word to describe them, but bear with me – which have beset Beth Orton have been both physical (a long struggle with Crohn’s and series of epileptic episodes) and emotional (grief, most notably, but also the complexity of parenthood). She has not averted her songs or our eyes from them, and her previous album, Weather Alive, plunged deeply into their challenges while immersed in a thick fog

There are better ones, and maybe you have no need for one anyway. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN If you're feeling bullish about this playlist, there's hundreds more from me at Spotify.

TIFT MERRITT Sugar (One Riot) LOOK AROUND AND IT IS EASY to find some well-meaning or well-remunerated type telling us how what we need to build – in ourselves, in society, in our sporting team – is resilience, that somewhat forced addendum to the self-help catalogue that too often boils down to the claim that not being crushed is a win, still walking is some kind of reward. I get it, and it is not to be sniffed at to come out of a relationship or a job or a life-changing m

Pseudo Echo, hirsutes you sir. By Stuart Spence Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence. Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve