B-Side Sunday.

Crashing into view with more demented euphoria than a pilled-up elephant tripping through an animal orgy in sweaty celebration of his full-frontal lobotomy, it’s the return of the most accurate and least factual Sunday service in all of Christendom – the ceremony that plucks you from the taxi-rank realism of the quotidian and flits you heavenwards on the back of another heavenly offcut otherwise lost in the thickets of the indierock undergrowth.

Only ever two people short of a threesome, B-Side Sunday rings true like some sort of sonic papal edict of aural salvation, propping up the best traditions of the few through a righteous blast of joy that’ll fistfuck your cerebral cortex as it whispers sweet nothings into your ear. So settle again by the fireside as we lead you through all the usual flights of fancy and wild tangents in another fleet-footed romp around pop’s backgarden, snuffling out the truffles of B-Side brilliance with nought but a twinkle in one eye and a dream in the other.

Long before Albarn started sniffing the inside of glowsticks and sculpting Gorillaz’s digital majesty, Blur were embarking on the slow build from goggle-eyed fascination with American rock to the chirpy cockney warblings that so successfully founded their corner of Britpop – a transition perfectly captured in ‘Young & Lovely’. Flipside to ‘Chemical World’, this was originally set for inclusion on ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ until those dastardly suits, eyes ever-locked on their unit-shifting dreams, replaced it with ‘Turn It Up’ to appeal to the American market. Jingly-jangly, summertime cor-blimey guv’nar wide-eyed wonderment, it’s the glorious sound of Damon “where’s me washboard?” Albarn perfecting his barrowboy schtick before the band went on to consume Britiain with the superlative-ravaging ‘Parklife’ the following year. Not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s good stuff for those who like it.

In other news, this is to be the last B-Side Sunday for a wee while. Like poker, no one wants to quit when they are behind but no one wants you to stop when you’re ahead; Edison extolled the idea of perseverence, he created a thousand lightbulbs that didn’t work – but regardless, sometimes it is simply time to stop. In many ways, it’s nothing short of a miracle that B-Side Sunday lasted as long as it did: like a ragged paper napkin that has outlasted every tea towel in the kitchen, it defied the rules of blog disposability for as long as it could. But hold close to you the warming thought that we shall always have the memories: it was the Sunday service that you truly deserved. Which is meant as a compliment, but then not all compliments are worth having. Amen.