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Baker's Dozen

Shields Against The World: Mat Osman's Baker's Dozen
Luke Turner , May 10th, 2023 08:40

From growing up on The Carpenters to reconnecting with music in his "wilderness years" Suede bassist turned novelist Mat Osman takes Luke Turner through his Baker's Dozen of favourite recordings

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Bryan Ferry – ‘A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall’

I'm not a huge fan of the original. I like Dylan, but it’s a bit relentless and obviously incredibly depressing, apocalyptic and all those things. It's so bold of Bryan Ferry to basically turn it into a party, all these terrible warnings from Dylan about war and ecological collapse get turned into this celebration. Every time I listen to it I always think, ‘oh, that's just like now, these waves of annihilation and death and destruction’. And you're just surfing across the top of it, enjoying the wreckage. I love the glee he takes in describing the end of the world, and the joy with which the band plays and turns it into this party anthem. In The Ruins I talked about how for me brilliant music takes two totally opposing ideas and crams them together to create a mood or a feeling that you can't get from anything else. The gleeful annihilation of this track I don't get from very much else. It's almost like a brand-new emotion and I’m always chasing that.