After The Noise
Everything Is Equal
Wednesday 21 January 2026
Jason Donovan – Time Heals (1989)
My day always improves when a slab of the misunderstood music of Donovan burns into my lugs. Ten Good Reasons. What a record. As important as Sgt. Pepper or Guts.
Why is Ten Good Reasons not marked as the extraordinary contemporary work of genius it truly deserves? Like another often-ignored artifact from 1989, Tin Machine, which was my baby. The credit for seeing the future in the past goes to my comrade and confidant, Crispin Rainbow Willis.
He bought it for no other reason than to be wacky. And that is a brilliant reason for buying a cassette alone.
The sound is unmistakably Stock, Aitken and Waterman (or Stuffed, Apricot and Watermelon, as us musical snobs referred to them). Much derided at the time — think again. This was Motown for the 80’s. Tinny the drum machines may be, but they’re certainly not tiny.
Drum machines are the most well-behaved thumpers on the circuit — until they malfunction halfway through a live gig. Human drummers malfunction a lot as well, so a cheaper, more sensible option is often a drum machine.
I was always incredibly jealous of Crispin’s cassette, because he wildly bandied it about to anyone who would listen, proclaiming that Donovan was the future of music. And while he was mostly japing, a piece of him believed his own hype.
Sowing the seeds of his acting talents — not satire or a piss-take — at a young age.
Me: all highbrow — Tin Machine and Paul’s Boutique.
Crispin: all Jason Donovan (Tessa Sanderson).
We still guffaw about Donovan today.
And here’s the unpublished-until-now secret: I bought Too Many Broken Hearts on 7″ single when it catapulted up the charts before the album was released. I mimed to it in my bedroom with a pretend guitar, because Donovan had a pretend guitar in the video. I still hear zero guitar in the song, which somehow still sends shivers down my spine.
Like all incredible music does.
Ludwig van Beethoven – Notturno in D major (2026)
Classical music always arrives with instructions.
Long titles.
Numbers.
Movements.
How am I supposed to remember all that?
The good news is, I don’t need to.
This came on and simply existed.
No beat.
No voice.
No demand.
Classical music feels irrelevant in the best possible way.
It doesn’t ask me to belong to anything.
It just sits there.
For someone who never gave it much time, this is new.
I never wanted to be Inspector Morse, living in opera and arias.
Though maybe opera deserves another chance.
But when classical music appears after the noise, everything really does feel equal.
It calms me.
It steadies me.
Life feels all right.
I used to say, loudly,
“I fucking hate classical music.”
A bold statement.
I also hate beetroot.
I rarely announce that.
Madness – House of Fun (1982)
The Nutty Boys.
I love the Nutty Boys.
There’s something deeply reassuring about them. Madness are nutty — always have been, always will be. Nutty songs. Nutty videos. Nutty personas. And now? Nutty pensioners, which somehow makes it even better.
They’ve passed the test of time effortlessly. Not by reinventing themselves every five minutes or chasing relevance, but by sticking to what they are. Nutty Boys, being nutty, because being nutty is the point.
Every time I hear Madness, the same thought pops up:
You boys are nutty.
So nutty that it becomes nutty just thinking about how nutty you are.
Not nutty in a men-in-white-coats sense. Not sectioned. Not concerning. Nutty in the purest way — a declared state of being.
We are nutty.
And yes, that makes perfect sense.
House of Fun is peak Nutty Boys. Playful, cheeky, daft without being stupid. There’s intelligence in the silliness, craft in the chaos. They commit fully to the act and never wink at the camera to apologise for it.
They never stop being nutty. That’s the unspoken contract.
Which is why it all falls apart when they decide not to be nutty. When Madness try to be serious, reflective, restrained — I switch off. I don’t want sensible Madness. I don’t want grown-up restraint. I want nutty.
There is some worth in Y-fronts Madness (Mad Not Mad), but give me odd socks, Top Ten Nutty Boys any day of the week.
I yearn to be as nutty as the Nutty Boys.
Madness not being nutty isn’t Madness at all.
Carol Ann Duffy & Kathryn Williams – Hidden Meanings (2021)
That stopped me in my tracks. The former Poet Laureate on a piece of music that sounds like something Nico might have recorded in the 1960s. Work that one out.
And that’s exactly what I love about this playlist. You never quite know what’s coming next. Just when you think you’ve got your bearings, something unexpected walks into the room and calmly takes over.
If I put my critic’s head on for a moment, this is beautiful. Utterly beautiful. Delicate, unsettling, and quietly delightful in the way it unfolds rather than announces itself.
I assume Duffy wrote the lyrics as a poem first. It feels that way — language-led, measured, deliberate. I remember flicking through one of her poetry books years ago and thinking, I could do that. Not arrogantly. Not dismissively. It wasn’t cockiness — it was confidence. I just didn’t understand poetry then in the way I understand it now.
That confidence mattered, even if I didn’t yet have the tools to back it up.
Listening now, it feels like a missed and imagined collaboration: Carol Ann Duffy versus Nico. Poetry meeting drone. Voice meeting atmosphere. Language hovering over sound rather than sitting inside it.
That would have been something.
R. Stevie Moore – Wayne, Wayne (Go Away) (1976)
I was doing my usual years-long trawl through Wikipedia — anything and everything — when the name R. Stevie Moore floated past me. I clocked it, filed it, moved on. At the time, I didn’t really listen. Not properly. I knew the phrase original lo-fi artist, but that was about as far as it went.
Now his songs keep turning up — unannounced, half-remembered, never quite familiar enough for me to say ah yes, that one. I’m still learning to recognise them. Still training my ears. But every time one appears, it brings a smile.
I picture a small man in a room. His own room. Surrounded by wires, tape, cheap gear, patience. Just making things. Musical things. No permission sought. No audience demanded. Just work.
Much of it was made in the 1970s, yet you’d never guess. Not because it sounds futuristic, but because it sounds outside of time. Lo-fi not as an aesthetic choice, but as a condition of existence. This was what was available, so he used it and kept going.
Misunderstood doesn’t quite cover it. Overlooked, maybe. Or simply too early for the conversation that would later catch up.
The old me would probably have played these records often and still missed the point. Enjoyed them, yes, but not heard them the way I hear them now.
Listening as part of the After the Noise, Everything Is Equal experience has changed something. Everything arrives without hierarchy, without prejudice, without urgency.
And in that space, R. Stevie Moore sounds richer. Warmer. Kinder. Like someone humming to themselves while the rest of the world argues about what matters.
His music makes me dream good dreams.
The kind where nothing needs explaining.
The kind you wish would never end.
Felt – Crashed on the Rocks (1986)
Felt are one of the most overlooked bands of the 80’s. Timeless in a way that never quite translated into popularity.
Lawrence is one of those figures who always had the music journos frothing. He even insisted on going by his first name only, Morrissey-style, long before that became expected. I’ve always loved that. It feels stubborn. Personal.
I was jealous of him. Not in a bad way. In a useful way.
He made lo-fi four-track recordings sound far better than anything I could manage, and it bugged me in exactly the right manner. He had the confidence to do what I only imagined doing. Release everything. Trust the work.
Felt were dreamy but varied. Dreamy music is soulful music. Indie soul.
They were probably too avant-garde even for the indie crowd. One of those bands people claim not to understand.
I’ve never understood that.
Hans Zimmer & The Disruptive Collective – Wonder Woman Suite, Part 2 (Live) (2023)
My first thought was simple: people actually paid to watch this.
I’ve never been to a gig like that.
My second thought: The Disruptive Collective is a fantastic name. It could be a band, a book, a manifesto.
Hans Zimmer is one of those figures you think you know without really knowing. He plays the AO Arena in Manchester regularly. Tribal rhythms. Huge orchestration. Film music, obviously.
I could quite easily become a Hans Zimmer fan. I bet he’s brilliant live. That’s something I’ve never thought before.
This is the beauty of After the Noise. It throws up things I’d normally ignore.
It’s orchestral and tribal at the same time. Bonkers. And I like bonkers.
I remember thinking Wonder Woman was stupid when I first saw it. But the music? Zimmer doesn’t give a fuck. And that’s admirable.
The important thing is this:
I’m creating, not running to Wikipedia.
That matters.
END OF LISTENING LOG
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