After The Noise
Everything Is Equal
Tuesday 12 May 2026
4Hero – Wishful Thinking (1998)
The reality is that at the end of next week I’m off to Brazil. São Paulo, if we’re being picky.
This will be my third visit to the country of my wife’s origins and while I love travelling, I absolutely loathe the process of getting there.
Two flights as well.
A short hop to Frankfurt before the main event. Half a day inside a giant metal tube eating questionable pasta while trying unsuccessfully to sleep upright beside a man watching action films without headphones.
We fly on my birthday too, which naturally becomes an excuse to get a few beers in beforehand.
Despite all that, I’m genuinely looking forward to the break. Even if my Portuguese remains stubbornly limited to a handful of words delivered with the confidence of a man who absolutely does not understand the reply.
I’ve tried learning over the years and failed impressively. The truth is I never fully committed to it. Thankfully the family compensate with smiles, food, beer and warmth.
This morning, 4Hero are setting the mood nicely.
Wishful Thinking drifts along on laid-back jazz textures and soft vocals, all very warm and understated. Two Pages was nominated for the Mercury Prize back in the late 90s and always felt like an album split between two personalities. At the time, I leaned more towards the tougher drum and bass material on the second half.
Now, older and slightly slower around the edges, these softer tones make far more sense to me than they once did.
Red Simpson – Truck Drivin’ Man (1966)
During my country music phase about eighteen months ago I became slightly obsessed with Red Simpson.
I mean, what’s not to like?
Twanging guitars, endless highways, truck stops, coffee, jukeboxes and men who seem perfectly content driving across America with only the radio for company.
Red Simpson understood simplicity.
His songs rarely aim higher than getting down the road, finding somewhere to eat and maybe putting another quarter in the jukebox before moving on again.
Honestly, it’s wonderful.
He even made a concept album about traffic police and a Christmas trucking record which, frankly, should be compulsory in every household.
Music like this just puts a smile on my face. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s exactly what music should do.
Dead Can Dance – Threshold (1984)
Here’s a name I’ve known for years without ever properly listening to.
More fool me.
How I managed to spend decades loving 4AD records without falling headfirst into Dead Can Dance is now becoming a genuine concern.
On this fairly ordinary Tuesday morning in Manchester, Threshold completely floored me.
That rarely happens now.
Not because modern music is bad or older music is automatically better, but because after decades of listening you naturally stop expecting to be genuinely startled by something.
Yet here I am with headphones on, shivers down the spine, immediately replaying the track.
I can hear fragments of things I already love. The Cure. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Felt. Cocteau Twins. But somehow it never feels derivative. It sounds entirely like itself.
A proper discovery.
I can already sense a Dead Can Dance phase approaching. The sort where you spend two weeks listening to little else while wondering how this somehow passed you by the first time.
Charli XCX – Rock Music (2026)
Then, via one of Spotify’s endless algorithmic rabbit holes, came Charli XCX.
Or Charlotte Emma Aitchison if we’re suddenly being formal.
I stumbled across a clip of the Rock Music video and, against my better judgement, got drawn in immediately.
Cigarette in hand, pouting at the camera, throwing amps around, licking people, generally behaving like someone who has studied several decades of rock clichés and decided to cram all of them into a few minutes.
Which, to be fair, is pretty much the joke.
I watched her Glastonbury set last year out of curiosity and came away oddly fascinated by it all. Half performance art, half pop concert, half cultural parody. Yes, that’s three halves. Mathematics collapses around modern pop spectacle.
A lot of it felt detached and strangely artificial, but at least Charli XCX has some personality to her. There’s attitude there. A sense she understands the absurdity of the whole machine.
Still, compared to the raw intensity of something like Dead Can Dance, modern pop can sometimes feel assembled rather than lived in.
Not bad exactly.
Just slightly held together with algorithms, marketing plans and industrial quantities of double-sided tape.
END OF LISTENING LOG
The Listening Log 