19th Century shipping labels

Flickr user pantufla has scanned her beautiful collection of 19th century shipping labels.

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Another FA Cup replay - What Do You Think?

Red Eye's panel rage about the controversial draw against Manchester United.

I agree with Michael Samuel, it was NEVER a pen.

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Album Review: Painted Garden

Greg Ashley is starting to get as annoying as Sufjan Stevens. Since 2001, he's released two immaculate garage-psych albums with The Gris Gris, two acid-soaked retro rock albums with The Mirrors and now two solo albums - and all without a drop in standards. Like Stevens, if we didn't enjoy listening to his records so much, our envy of his ceaseless talent is such that we'd line him up for a punch in the mouth.

We're told that Ashley wrote and recorded all of Painted Garden himself (in a burnt-out ghetto in Oakland and his remote cabin in Kosse, Texas), except for half of one song which was co-written and performed by an Oakland chanteuse. Just like his previous solo album, Medicine Fuck Dream, Painted Garden plays strictly to Ashley's folk tendencies but retains the acid-fried weirdness that his reputation is forged upon.

It's certainly a darker affair than Medicine Fuck Dream, and there's nothing to rival the lovely She or I Said, These Are Lonely Days from his solo debut. The scummy mix of piano, jazz drums and guitar makes Fisher King particularly creepy, as Ashley offers his take on heroin use ("pick up a spoon / cook up your breakfast"). Room 33, too, offers a nightmarish backwoods vibe and oddball lyrics.

Painted Garden's unhurried pace is enlivened by the final track, Corporation Station Agent, a short, frenzied garage-folk number that was originally found on a Gris Gris 7". It's a song that not only sends the album off to a delirious conclusion but reminds us that Greg Ashley is right up there with the great musical minds of our time.

Album Review: Now It's Time

The daughter of a Southern minister, a choir member from the age of four and a mainstay of various punk bands (including Frightwig) in the 1980s, Paul Frazer discovered her true path when she formed the group Tarnation in 1992.

As the personnel rotated from record to record and even from tour to tour, Frazer was Tarnation's only constant, as well as the sombre tone that coupled traditional western music with sixties pop sensibilities.

After two albums, Gentle Creatures and the acclaimed Mirador, Frazer took a step away from the name Tarnation in order to free herself from the constraints that she felt the band's structure imposed. Frazer released two solo albums - Indoor Universe and Leave The Sad Things Behind - that were lush and symphonic, as well as a compilation of four-track recordings, A Place Where I Know.

Now, having written a batch of songs that bear the same doleful quality last witnessed during the Mirador years, Frazer decided it was time to re-establish Tarnation, hence the new album's title.

Now It's Time reconnects with Tarnation's past by marrying an olde tyme ambience created by long-time collaborator Patrick Main's piano with Jasmyn Wong's drums and whispering guitars and strings, which wonderfully frame Frazer's signature angelic voice.

Pretend recalls Nick Drake; First Sign incorporates elements of last year's solo record, Leave The Sad Things Behind; Nowhere is the kind of lyrical ballad that Paula last employed when writing The Wall well over a decade ago, with the Moore Brothers adding backing vocals. The twin highlights, however, are August's Song and Sleeping Dreams, which tell the story of a broken relationship from the two different perspectives.

Frazer has one of the most distinctive and rangy altos in popular music and, paired with assured songwriting, Now It's Time feels both at once traditional and contemporary.

Boro advance to quarter-finals - What Do You Think?

Red Eye and his Boro Six turn their attention to Boro's victory over West Brom.

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Album Review: In Bocca Al Lupo

With a name shared with a 1976 Eileen Brannan mystery spoof masterpiece, a singer who mimics Johnny Cash and an album loosely based on Dante's Inferno, Murder By Death are clearly prepared to rub shoulders with the very best.

In Bocca Al Lupo (an Italian phrase meaning `in the mouth of the wolf') is the third album from Murder By Death, following Like The Exorcist But More Breakdancing (which was released under the name Little Joe Gould) and their previous effort, Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them?

In Bocca Al Lupo trades some of the amazing instrumentals from their previous albums for more narrative and tighter songs. Having lost keyboardist Vincent Edwards since their last album, cellist Sarah Balliet fills the void by taking over the keys but also increasing the presence of the cello. Rather than taking away possibilities, being forced to choose between instruments allows Balliet to give each song more clarity and her deep cello is never more impressive than when coupled with the tango rhythms of One More Notch.

Whether the plucked strings, hand claps and acappella choruses on bass-drum driven Dynamite Mine, or the languorous vocal and implacable drums of Raw Deal, Murder By Death cannot be faulted for their ability; in Brother and Dead Men & Sinners, they have a pair of rollicking drinking songs the envy of any band. The single, Brother, is the band's most infectious moment to date, while Dead Men & Sinners is a vaudeville pirate polka, replete with chinking glass mugs, floor pounding and a chorus of drunken men doubling every word. Later, the all-acoustic Shiola breaks new ground for the band, but it's the only moment where Adam Turla's voice veers a little too closely to the Man in Black's.

Besides his Cash-aping vocals, Turla writes frightening and stirring lyrics that express the voices of his many characters. The Big Sleep follows a man who has been sentenced to death and, perhaps surprisingly, is the only song to overtly refer to The Divine Comedy as Turla moans, "the bailiff leads me back to my cell / like the river man ferrying me to hell". Cold-blooded murder is outlined on the wonderfully chilling Dynamite Mine, while Boy Decide is full of thrill and intrigue.

As the album ends with Turla insisting "there's still time to start again", it's worth remembering that it was the she-wolf in Inferno that forced Dante on his journey to hell, and so into hell Murder By Death have taken us, touching on themes of sin, transgression, punishment and, finally, redemption, and, along the way, with grit and spunk, wit and precocity, have matched their inspiration with an classic entirely of their own.

Album Review: School Was My Hustle

It's a very big test of a new act's pedigree to charge them with resurrecting one of hip hop's most fondly cherished labels. Fortunately for Rawkus, Kidz In The Hall are more than talented enough to live up to the task. And, perhaps more appropriately, they have an ethos worthy of the great label, because just as the formation of Rawkus was originally a reaction to Bad Boy and Death Row artists selling millions of records with arguable talent, School Was My Hustle makes it clear that they still feel the same way.

Having both studied at the University of Pennsylvania, Naledge, a poet since an early age, was introduced to Double O, who had always been DJing and composing beats, and they formed Kidz In The Hall. And, with an outlook similar to the Native Tongues movement, their debut album takes a slightly less militant Dead Prez political consciousness and spins it with Jurassic 5-style positivity.

Naledge makes his agenda clear on Ritalin as he ploughs through what he feels are emcees undeserving of their success, backed by a military drum roll. The rhetoric continues on Wassup Jo', as Naledge berates less talented rappers that have found commercial acclaim.

Naledge is also keen to impress upon us that although he chose college, he does still have an understanding of the streets. On Cruise Control he claims to have "the heart of the street, plus the eyes of the ghetto, with the brains of a nerd," while on Dumb Ass Tales he laments upon the number of juvenile lives that are wasted.

Double O's production is layered and dynamic throughout. Go Ill is a blaxploitation funk and flute loop and Wheelz Fall Off ('06 Til) reworks the sample that made Souls Of Mischief's 93 Til Infinity such a classic, but Double O's outstanding beat is Don't Stop. While it's fair to say that some of the beat's impact has been lost because it was lent to Just Blaze for use on Jay-Z's Show Me What You Got previously, it remains the album's standout beat.

Across its lean twelve tracks, School Was My Hustle oozes the brash, cocky definitive of early 20-somethings, while exhibiting a maturity beyond their years by remaining duly reverent to classic `80s hip hop.