If you can’t guess whose live album David Live is, you fail as a person. Two points:

• Awful, awful album art. Bowie looks like a damn marionette. And the typeface! GAAAAH!
• Part of Bowie’s charm is in the odd studio effects, and he sounds a little too much like a cabaret star on this album. He has better live albums. And… awful typeface! GAAAAH!

Spending the morning listening to the only Midnight Oil album I have not heard before, Breathe. By no means is it a truly classic Oils album, like 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1; Head Injuries; Diesel and Dust or even Capricornia, it is none-the-less easy enough to listen to (which is why it *isn’t* a classic - too laidback). At any rate, it’s superior to the next Oils album, Redneck Wonderland.

Best tracks: Surf’s Up Tonight, Common Ground, Sins of Omission and Underwater.

• Pioneers Who Got Scalped - DEVO
• Bring on the Comets - VHS or Beta
• Goodbye, Bull Creek! - Bob Evans
• Lodger - David Bowie
• Sumday - Grandaddy
• Here Comes the Fuzz - Mark Ronson
• Generation Terrorists - Manic Street Preachers
• Tu-plang - Regurgitator
• Unit - Regurgitator
• …art - Regurgitator
• Eduardo and Rodriguez Wage War on T-Wrecks - Regurgitator
• Mish Mash! - Regurgitator
• Silent Alarm - Bloc Party
• Steppin’ Out - Joe Jackson
• It’s Not You, It’s Me - Lily Allen
• Be the Twilight - Faker

I’ve been having a very Regurgitator day today (see my last.fm profile), and will use this as a excuse to mention Unit. A single word against this album, and I will possible hunt you down in your sleep. Well, maybe not, it does have flaws, but when one is in love…

Okay, honestly, the album art is brilliant (yellow circle on silver paper, with type on a sticker on the case), suggesting the tone of the album perfectly. And the songs rock like hell. I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff, !(The Song Formerly Known As), The World of Sleaze, I Will Lick Your Arsehole (sorry, that’s what it’s called) and Just Another Beautiful Story - if I’m forced to choose - are the best examples of the crazy, electro-alt-rap thing that the Gurge tried on the album. The only possible faults are the songs Unit and 1234, but hell, I like them for their quirkiness and the way they help pace the album.

Sorry for the gushing, but I honestly think that this is one of the best Australian albums ever. Ever.

1. Ohm Sweet Ohm - Kraftwerk
   Awful pun, both as title and only lyrical content? Check. Early electronica? Check. Cult band? Check. Nerdy? Dear god, that’s a check.
2. I Will Lick Your Arsehole - Regurgitator
   How many rap songs by alt-rock bands can you name that reference Doctor Who in two different ways, by the rapper both having “special effects like the BBC” and being “cool under pressure just like Sarah Jane Smith”? To quote another southern hemisphere rap song, “not many, if any”.
3. Π - Kate Bush
   The title should give away why this is a nerdy song. About a man who obsesses over this universal constant, it includes pi being sung to over a hundred decimal places during the song.
4. Tarkus - Emerson, Lake and Palmer
   To start with, it’s prog rock. In fact, it’s a prog rock song suite about an armadillo tank. Yep. I’m not lying.
5. Quark, Strangeness and Charm - Hawkwind
   Although by a band that quite often is associated with the progressive rock world, this song is a convential rock song. Apart from the suggestion that all one needs to woo the ladies is a knowledge of particle physics. So read up, kiddies…

An album I expected that I would dislike (at least a little), Mark Ronson’s Here Comes the Fuzz. As you expect from the write-up so far, I was surprised. Sure, I’ve heard some stuff off Version, but that’s a cover album of British alt rock hits! This is Ronson originals! This should be painful! The guy’s a producer, not a artist! However, it turns out to be one of the better hip-hop albums in my collection, with a few killer cuts - Ooh Wee, I Suck and Diduntdidunt. Of course, there’s some filler, and it is the guests that you notice, but at any rate, it’s worth a listen.