A monthly musical diary, so I can look back in future on what was going on in my musical world. Music i’ve enjoyed, gigs I’ve been to and general stuff in the musical world.

September was a good music discovery, as I finally found time to catch up with the backlog of tunes on my ‘Songs To Check Out’ playlist. Some of it at least (every song I read about that sounds every interesting, every good song I hear on radio or TV or wherever else gets added to this playlist, and I go out of my way to seek out new music from various sources to add to it. This is a long way from being comprehensive, and I know people (mainly online) who do this a lot more obsessively than I do, but in general I would say my new music diet is better now than it has been since my Twenties, and more varied than it has ever been.

My favourite song this month was very much not new, being from a 1992 album by artist who has been around since the early Seventies. Jonathan Richman is a name I knew of course, but not someone I had ever thought about much. All I know of him is the stuff that every music fan knows (Roadrunner & There’s Something About Mary). I vaguely thought I should listen to him at some point, but I think that about a lot of artists.

Recently though his song ‘That Summer Feeling’ was featured in the TV show ‘Colin From Accounts’ (good show incidentally, you should check it out if you haven’t already). Within moments I had Shazamed it. I had no idea who it was, and it had a kind of timeless quality that meant it could have been from any time in the last 50 years. It was a delicate acoustic number, exactly the kind of thing I love. Intimate, offbeat and, not shonky exactly, but not smooth either. Its melody is beautiful, the backing vocals perfect and the lyrics are clever in a way that serves the song rather than the songwriters ego. It feels like it must have been influential on the anti-fork artists I loved in the 2000s, such as Herman Dune. Clearly here is an artist with much more to offer than I had realised, and a massive back catalogue for me to explore.

Of the new music I discovered during the month, highlights included a couple of great Tierra Whack features, on tracks by Chad Hugo and Jill Scott. She’s been one of my favourite rappers since I first saw her on the Netflix ‘Ladies First’ documentary, and almost everything she does is worth hearing.

Also a lot of great pop music from around the world, such as the slinky, electro-rap adjacent ‘Beep Beep’ by Shanae (Australia via South Africa)

Blue Soleil (from France, but featuring the Brazilian Luiza), with the haunting, addictive Soleil Bleu. This one is from 2025 admittedly but new to me.

And Laura Day Romance, gorgeous Japanese indie-pop.

Live music highlight of the month was Manchester Psych Fest, a multi venue festival in Manchester which I attended for the first time in 2025. Psych isn’t a genre I’m especially into, at least no more than any other. The festival is pretty loose with its definition though, encompassing spoken word, math rock, indie-pop and singer-songwriters who share little more than a certain offbeat or unconventional quality. Like many festivals, what you end up seeing is often decided by logistics, and this year the fact that they had inadvertantly booked one of the hottest bands in the world in Angine De Poitrine kind of through a spanner in the works in terms of being able to make plans or even to get into certain venues.

I did manage to see two of the main artists I intended to see, Lael Neale & Mandy, Indiana, both excellent in very different ways, Lael Neale a quiet duo show with barely any audience interaction but moments of great beauty. Mandy, Indiana, loud, confrontational and uncompromising, even more so than on record. But my favourite moment of the festival was a band I had never previously heard of, Dreamwave. They played in a surprisingly packed Deaf Institute, and I’m fairly sure most of the crowd weren’t familiar with them, but as their set went on they were so tight and rhythmic and intense that the crowd got more and more into it. The band seemed genuinely surprised and delighted. They vibed off the crowd and the crowd vibed off them. It was one of those moments that festivals should be all about, but too rarely are. Lowertown, who were recommended to me by a friend’s teenage kid, were also excellent.

Music discourse for the month was mainly centred around Ella Langley’s Choosing Texas breaking the record for most weeks at Billboard number one, why it had happened and whether it mattered that a lot of people had never heard it (or at least didn’t realise they had, or claimed not to have). It has been quite a dull discourse, with the topics having discussed to death (streaming, changes to how the charts are compiled, the death of the monoculture). The song itself is perfectly pleasant (I’ve heard it a lot as we often have Radio 1 on in the house), without generating any particular strong feelings. But long running number one records have never been my favourites (and Choosing Texas is certainly better than most of the long running UK or US number ones of my life). Nor do they tend to be songs that are beloved for many years. They’re usually songs that a lot people like a bit rather than songs that many people truly love (movie tie-ins used to help as well, but not so much nowadays).

The main impact of the charts being based on what people are listening to rather than what they are buying is the realisation that people like listening to the same things, for a long long time. The charts are full of old songs, even with chart rules that devalue their streaming numbers. Songs only used to drop out of the charts because even the most avid fans would usually only buy them once, but they’ll never stop listening.

Linked is my playlist of the month, on Apple Music, but you can use Tunemymusic.com to convert to a streaming service of your choice should you wish.