Ben: Oh man, how is it already late October? I kept thinking it must be about time to do a checkout post for September and it’s managed to slip me by entirely.

TS Eliot be damned. September is the cruelest month, not April.

What have Dan and I bought over the past month?

So many great songs, artists and albums seem to be passed over entirely. Left of Centre aims to highlight music which should have reached a bigger audience than it did. In this edition: The Chalets.

Ben: During a dark Glasgow evening late in 2003, I was idly flicking through record label websites looking for bargains, news and free mp3s. I went to Setanta Records’ site hoping that they might have some old vinyl pressings from The Divine Comedy. Disappointed by the lack of anything of note in their online shop, I looked at their current artists roster.

That’s where I stumbled across the best pop act of the last decade. Ladies and gents, let me talk to you about The Chalets.

As Ben no longer has regular iPod access, he’s making do with one ‘big’ album a week, posting summary reviews every Monday. This coincides nicely with the #musicmonday meme on Twitter. How serendipitous!

Ben: Still in a bit of an ‘alt-country’ mood after last weeks’ Hungry Bird, I kept off the beaten track this week and listened to Piney Gir’s latest release, The Yearling. You’d be forgiven for saying ‘Piney who?‘ – she’s not the most well-known of artists and save for a single mid-afternoon festival slot I’ve not seen or read much about her either. A chance encounter with a cheap copy of her new album combined with my rather pedestrian listening of late (did I really need to buy three Beatles re-releases?) meant that I jumped all over the skirt-swishing, violiny Ms Gir (aka Angela Penhaligon).

Clever move or not?

Dan: As you might recall in our previous Beatles post I’d not had much exposure to their work until a couple of months ago. I had never really heard more than their early Love Me Do stylings and as such I didn’t explore any further. Interestingly enough this seems to be the same position as most of the people I know who also dislike The Beatles. With my position being reversed after hearing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rubber Soul and only having The White Album on CD, I decided to invest in the new stereo remastered collection released on September 9th. I shall make comparisons to the non-remastered versions where I feel I can but for the most part this is an account of my introduction to all thirteen studio albums and the Past Masters.

Upon receiving the glorious box set I made a decision to listen to the albums in chronological order. It’s the order they’ll appear in here. Before we begin and as I also bought the recently released and brilliantly fun Beatles Rock Band, treat your eyes to the opening cinematic:

Ben: Yes, Ben’s mystery teapot! I was given a teapot by my brother, and, well, I made a video.

The teapot is weird. Properly weird. You might be impressed. You might not.

Video and a few additional comments after the jump.

As Ben no longer has regular iPod access, he’s making do with one ‘big’ album a week, posting summary reviews every Monday. This coincides nicely with the #musicmonday meme on Twitter. How serendipitous!

Ben: There’s a long-running joke between Dan and I. Whenever we meet, we ask how the review of the last Clem Snide album is coming along. Released way back in the depths of the new year, Hungry Bird was the much anticipated album that, for complex label and legal reasons, was assumed to never be released. After we did the discussions of Franz Ferdinand and Andrew Bird, Hungry Bird was meant to be next on the list.

We never got round to it.

Consider this wee post a review in the memory of that never-written post, and hopefully an end to the stupid joke.