A Long Goodbye

After The Noise

Everything Is Equal

Wednesday 04 March 2026

Brandi Carlile – A Long Goodbye (2025)

Brandi. Dear old Brandi.

Confession time. I’d never heard of you before you made an album with Elton John. But I’m glad you did. I’ve since listened to some of your work and it’s very good. Most pleasing on the ear.

I’ve no idea which album this is from. It doesn’t really matter.

This is soothing me. Calming me. A definite After the Noise moment.

Brandi Carlile turns out to be just the ticket when you’re feeling slightly annoyed with the world. I didn’t know that. You probably didn’t either. There she is, warbling away in her own little Brandi Carlile way.

Without Elton, sadly. Though she doesn’t always need Mr Dwight.

Is Brandi Carlile a cure for depression?

Robbie Basho – North American Raga (Vocal) (1971)

God knows where Basho has come from. Never heard of him.

Seventies look. Dodgy clothes. Beard. Guitar. Looks like he knows what he’s doing. One of those.

Acoustic guitar, played beautifully. And given my state of mind today (fair to middling), it complements it perfectly.

Then I clock the length and panic sets in.

Eleven minutes. Eleven ruddy minutes? Take a deep breath, Derek, and calm the funk down.

Hey, I listened to a nine-minute chamber music piece last night. Anything’s possible.

I don’t mean that sarcastically. I mean it in an attention-span, modern-life sort of way.

There’s always a little thrill when something comes up that I’ve never heard before. That excitement still matters.

At least if you don’t like it, you never have to listen again. But I do want to listen again. I want to listen to everything.

He’s not really singing. More like a poet. Which makes it even better.

Does anyone else in Britain listen to Robbie Basho? Anyone at all? Somebody must. Did he have groupies? I reckon he did. Love-guitar groupies. This feels like a come-to-bed call.

Eleven and a half minutes of acoustic guitar and wandering poetry.

Absolutely the point.

I put in things I know. Things I don’t know. Things from friends, from AI, from the radio. Some stay. Some go. Long collections get trimmed. Eighteen hours of anything is too much.

This stays.

What a moment.

Eleven minutes of Robbie Basho.
A moment.

(American. Died aged just 45 in 1986. Life can be a bastard.)

Lole y Manuel – Tú Mirá (1975)

As soon as I see the name Manuel, my brain starts doing its thing. Thinking of Manuel from Fawlty Towers — who, incidentally, once made a record.

Another one I’ve never heard before. 1975. Glam rock ruling the charts here, while somewhere in continental Europe this was being released.

I may never hear them again. And that’s fine.

There’s something vaguely flamenco in the voice. A wail. A timelessness. A small, steady beat underneath it all, ticking away without asking permission.

It feels like music that arrived fully formed, without explanation.

This is the joy of listening without context. You don’t need to know where it came from. You just let it pass through.

I notice myself smiling. That’s usually the sign that something’s working.

Shitdisco – Why No Kung Fu (2007)

What a brilliant name for a band.

I remember them being talked about around the late 2000s. The kind of band BBC Radio 6 Music would love — even if they’d have to censor the name on air.

They’re noisy, twitchy, awkward in the right way. A bit terror-tappy. A bit chaotic.

I don’t need to know anything else about them. The mythology can wait.

I know that next time they appear, I’ll recognise them. And I’ll probably like them again.

That’s enough.

Michael Hurley – The Vt.-Ore. Floor (1976)

Doing very well in the “who the blinking heck are you?” stakes today.

But you made it onto the playlist somehow, so here we are.

Apparently this is “outsider folk”. A genre I’m not sure I’d even heard of until today.

Released in 1976, though it doesn’t really belong anywhere specific. A bit of country. A bit of something else. No obvious category to drop it into.

It sneaks up on you. Starts quietly. Then, without warning, you find yourself turning it up.

This kind of listening suits me now.

I don’t feel the urge to binge entire discographies. I don’t need the complete works of anyone. One track is enough. Let it arrive when it arrives.

That’s the shift.

Sounds. Speech. Music. All on equal footing.

No hierarchy. No rush. No obligation to become an expert.

I still care deeply.

Just differently.

And I still listen to my favourite artists.

Long may it continue.

END OF LISTENING LOG