There is a word for it - I believe it's kaizen. Continuous improvement. It's what the star t of each year inevitably focusses on for me. How long can I kick the booze to the kerb for? A month? Until my birthday? Until lent? Forever? Actually, there's good evidence to show that drinking in moderation is better for you than not drinking at all, so you know, it is the weekend, and well, who wants to live forever anyway. Same with the Mens' Health inspired fitness regime, the low carb diet, the yoga videos, the brisk walks and all the rest of it. Dancing at a gig counts as exercise, right? And gradually, by mid March, we tend to be back where we started. But it's worth trying.

English Settlement has a very kaizen feel to me. It doesn't sound dramatically different at first listen to Black Sea, but stick it next to White Music and it sounds more assured, more polished - perhaps more of a studio exercise? They had stopped playing live by this point I think.

And of course here come those sense working overtime. This one I can remember actually at the time - '82 would have been a year of large mono tape recorders, mostly used for listening to books on tape borrowed from a neighbour - The Lost World and Master and Commander. Sat up listening to James Mason spin yarns about dinosaurs while playing The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. A simpler age. I was definitely already a radio fan though - tuning in to Jensen and Peel, trying to track down Radio Luxembourg and baffled by Play for Today on Radio 4.

Double albums. Tricky things to get right. A final severing of the ties with punk, though now through the prism of this album I wonder if they were ever really punk anyway. Suddenly we're up to the five, six minute mark with a lot of these though. Again, the ease of the studio perhaps.

I'm fascinated by Leisure because now I have the Blur thing in my head, and it does not disappoint. It's Nearly Africa likewise is something that appeals to me. I get the drums, the way the vocals work in that kind of tribal vibe, but reading the lyrics I can't quite get at what point they're making. Here's what AP says on Chalkhills (I have literally just discivered Chalkhills - more on this later):

"It's really not about Africa! It's about reclaiming lost innocence -- it's the impossible dream, isn't it? It's Eden. Once you've fallen from the Garden -- which was going to be the title of Mummer, by the way -- you can't go back. But wouldn't it be nice to go back? This is what human beings dream of -- they dream of being in Eden, they dream of naivety, they dream of innocence, they dream of being in the womb, they dream of the Golden Age."

I can give them that. This ties in to February, by the way. Knuckle Down and we're almost into Steely Dan territory. English Roundabout and we're flirting with prog almost. Progressive Pop, as Wikipedia would have it.