I first heard this record in about 1985, when it was only a year old. I can’t remember how I first found out about it. Back in the eighties there were limits to how you could discover new music. Through NME, Sounds or Melody Maker possibly. Q, if you were slightly older and liked dad-rock. John Peel, Annie Nightingale or Andy Kershaw, if you liked something a bit different.

Although I listened to John Peel, I preferred Andy Kershaw and this is how I found many of the musicians that I listened to at that time. One band that springs to mind is The Long Ryders, whom I will come to soon. First, however, there is an album that had a great effect on me. I have a vague memory that there was a single from this album, Bad Day, which was played on the radio, and that was my way into it, as it was with most of the music that I played.

This album was retro before retro was trendy. Carmel sang as if a singer from a different age. Think Amy Winehouse way before Amy and Mark began making their fake-vintage soul music. Carmel consisted of Carmel singing, Jim Paris on double bass (not bass), and Gerry Darby on drums. That was the core of the sound – incredibly stripped back and incredibly jazz-tinged. There was a little organ, played by Steve Naive, and some backing vocals on a few tracks but otherwise it was the haunting sound of Carmel McCourt’s vocals and insistent rhythms from drums and bass. At the time I had never heard anything like it. It was not mainstream pop music. This was the route I took to listening to jazz vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald. This sound became part of my listening, alongside the other music that I was becoming interested in – Buzzcocks, XTC, Television, Smiths, Teardrop Explodes. I liked to think I was at the experimental end of mainstream.

Carmel predated by decades the vintage sound that became popular by the time I hit my forties. This record is still stark and remarkable and stands out among what was available in 1985, even though it never was particularly well known, although I see from Wikipedia that this album reached 19 in the UK. The record even looks as though it is from an earlier age, which I think was another reason that I was drawn to it then. More than many other records, this one transports me back to the eighties each time I listen to it.