I’ve decided to start keeping a monthly music diary, more for my own purposes than anything else, so I can remember what has been going on in my musical world. It’ll include a playlist of the songs I’ve been enjoying this month, as well as my reflections on my, and the wider, musical world.

June 2025 has seen the death of both Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, two of the greatest, most innovative musicians of all time, both of whose work I have not explored as deeply as I really ought to have done. What I have heard of their work I have admired, but I have never felt the deep connection I had with other musiciains who are more personal favourites of mine, so whilst I felt their loss, perhaps not as keenly as some.

It has also been the month of Glastonbury, and tiresome discourse on what performers (Kneecap and Bob Vylan in particular) should be able to say on stage, and whether the BBC should broadcast their performances. It has been almost 20 years since I have last attended, but it has always been a festival with deeply political elements, so performers speaking out about the situation in Palestine should hardly be a shock. I don’t tend to watch much Glastonbury footage on TV, as it never comes close to replicating being ther. I did watch and enjoy Neil Young’s set, as he’s one of my very favourite artists, whilst also thinking him a slightly strange choice to headline the festival in this day and age. Not a man to play the hits and please the crowd (although he did play more than I expected)

No live shows for me this month, with the exception of my daughter’s school talent show (which did have some pretty amazing DJing from one of the year 5 kids) and junior orchestra concert. Annoyingly I was offered tickets for multiple concerts which I couldn’t attend, Pendulum (no great loss), Deftones (who I would have liked to see) and most guttingly Sparks, who are definitely in my top 5 ‘bands I have never seen but would really like to, perhaps behind only Sufjan Stevens.

This month’s listening has included more old music than new. I’ve been enjoying Aaron Carl’s queer Detroit techno, due to this Sunday review in Pitchfork. There’s also a heavy ‘A History of Rock Music in 500 songs’ influence, not just because I am part way through a complete relisten of that excellent podcast, but also because of the Brian Wilson playlist that Andrew Hickey shared upon his death.

I watched an old documentary on The Magnetic Fields, which introduced and reintroduced some of their songs to me, and have been relistening to some Neil Young due to that Glastonbury performance.

Travels With Brindle put out an excellent EP of Sparks covers, which I keep returning to (see below) and I finally got round to listening to the FKA Twigs album from earlier this year which is as good as everyone said, perhaps even better, and sure to be in my albums of the year list.

Some artists I have been listening to for a while, such as Sacred Paws, Valerie June and Little Simz returned recently or recently-ish, as good as ever, with the Little Simz episode of Song Exploder really helping me appreciate her song Free.

New to me are Jinje (Leeds artist, yay!) Milena Casado and Everything is Recorded, the latter of which has been a particular favourite. Also Sarah Mary Chadwick who has somehow passed me by despite being into double figures of albums, and being very much my kind of thing. And last but not least is Kate Nash’s GERM, which says something that absolutely needed to be said, and I’m very grateful that she has.

The playlist of this month’s musical diary can be found at the link below (Tune My Music will convert it to your streaming service of choice. I have also embedded below as a Spotify Playlist, purely because it is the easiest to embed in a WordPress post, although I don’t use that service myself.

https://www.tunemymusic.com/share/6xoIKs7tSB