Albums Of The Year So Far (pt.2): Featuring The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, Captain Black Beard, Drought, St. Prostitute and more…

Mike Mikulas of Drought: one of Barton's top choices

We asked various members of the Classic Rock team to come up with their Top Five Albums Of The Year So Far. Yesterday we had the sultan of sleaze, aka Sleazegrinder, with a quintet of surprisingly un-sleazy choices. Now it’s Geoff Barton’s turn to list his five faves.

5. The Soundtrack Of Our Lives – Throw It To The Universe (EMI/Parlophone)

After 16 years, this is the goodbye release from Swedish psych-warriors The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. Curiously, it’s not an all-guns-blazing finale. Indeed, initial listens leave you feeling somewhat deflated and disappointed. But soon the album wheedles its way into your consciousness and you realise frontman Ebbot Lundberg is probably right when he says: “It’s the best we’ve done.”

No longer the musical equivalent of a coiled spring, Throw It To The Universe instead sees TSOOL winding down like an old clockwork soldier. The record is imbued with a melancholic feel and many of the songs sound like bittersweet reflections on the band’s demise: “Someone said we’re about to dissolve into oblivion,” Lundberg sighs on When We Fall; “We say hello to say goodbye,” he intones on the title track.

Hair-flailing is at a premium; only Faster Than The Speed Of Light recalls the often-rampant Scandi-band of old. But that doesn’t matter when there’s stuff of the calibre of Where’s The Rock (akin to The Shadows gone flamenco), Reality Show (a genuinely weird nursery rhyme that may or may not be a critique of the 15-seconds-of-fame Big Bruvva generation) and the shimmering Solar Circus.

Plus, if you’re at all worried about the sinister Apple-isation of our great planet (aka the iGlobe), check out Busy Land, a harrowing extract from “the book of [Steve] Jobs” featuring Lundberg at his best: both acerbic and world-weary.

Cheerio, TSOOL. Or, as dear ol’ Cov would pontificate: “Fare thee well.”