Sometimes, for whatever reason, you find a band you love, and it just never happens for them….

…And like an ex-girlfriend, you eventually stop the checking-in texts, and you move on with your life, and one day for no other reason than a stirred memory you think to yourself, I wonder what happen to them? And you stick on the record, and it still sounds great.

Come on, everyones done it. Facebook makes it easy, little bit of online stalkery never hurt anyone….actually it probably has, ignore that bit. Anyway I was out running yesterday, and this track came on my iPod and it took me way back and I as soon as I got home I stuck on the record, and bounced around a bit. The record was an EP called Hotel Baltimore, but more importantly the band were called Cotton Mather. They were fuckin’ brilliant.

I’ll be honest, my knowledge of the band stems about as far as a Wiki search, I never saw them live, they only came to my attention when Noel and Liam raved about them in 1999. Like most bands that came with a Gallagher recommendation, I quickly ran out an picked up everything I could. Hotel Baltimore was the EP, and in 1997 Kontiki was the album.

It’s just a great, guitar pop record, and when you listen to it, you can hear where it fits in the lineage of US guitar bands, from The Pixies, through to Husker Du and on to The Hold Steady. Cotton Mather where never a trendy New York band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes, and couldn’t conjure up the same kind of intrigue as The White Stripes, they were pretty ordinary guys, who like The Beatles and The Stones and just made a great few records.

Sadly for me, our love affair was relatively short-lived and it took them ages to bring out another record, by the time I got an import copy of 2001’s The Big Picture, I’d sort of lost interest, and moved on, but if you’re reading this blog, and have done for a while, you may have seen me occasionally refer to them, well then I’m pretty sure you will like them, so your homework for today is…..I dunno if it is on Spotify, if it is, check there (sorry my computers acting a bit slow, opening Spotify would only drive me mental) but give Cotton Mathers Kontiki & Hotel Baltimore a spin. If you hate it, you’re ears are wrong.

Please feel free to add any records you feel similarly about, this is an openish forum, I rarely remind people to comment, but y’know, it is there.