Albums of The Year # 64 Alex Chilltown - Eulogies

 From the end of January.

England's dreaming. In 2020. Difficult to credit a record as good as this and sounding like this, coming out now. Alex Chilltown have appeared on this blog before. A couple of months back as a Song of the Day as I couldn't wait for their debut album, which I knew was coming, to actually arrive. Well now it's here and I'm writing about them again.

There's something really exciting about this lot, though it's a little difficult to say exactly what it is that's so exciting. Perhaps it's because they're part of a heartening renaissance of decent young guitar bands from London that have surfaced in recent years. After the Fat White Family extended family, Shame and Goat Girl to name the most obvious examples.

It's also because Alex Chilltown are rather difficult to define. Sure, their name is a play on the mighty Alex Chilton's and they may well have listened to some Big Star records along the way. But actually that's almost a complete red herring. The record sounds very British, or actually more English, rather than something made in Memphis. But it's just the sensibility that's difficult to describe more deeply . In order to get a handle on Eulogies, (the name of the record), you have to work a bit harder.

For they hide the traces of what exactly has given birth to this very skilfully. I'd say the point of inspiration starts from the early Seventies and Bowie, most obviously, then going on to the late Seventies through the Eighties and into the early Nineties and any number of inspired English mavericks from Robert Smith, Richard Butler and Peter Perrett to Luke Haines and Brett Anderson. This is a record that evokes suburban terraced houses and estates, and adolescent Friday evenings, spent in teenage bedrooms or tearing around on high streets, drunkenly constructing your adult self before returning to the safety of the family home and slightly concerned parents.

It's good to know this process still goes on. Of course it does but it's important that it continues to be documented. This record reminds me of when I did just this myself in the early Eighties growing up in South West London. It's heartening to see that the essence of this experience can still be so artfully realised by guitar bands and the poetry of teenage dreaming. This is a very English art form after all. It's obviously not yet entirely extinct.

Josh Eshaw is the man at the heart of the Alex Chilltown and in photos he exudes an androgynous cool that we've seen before, most obviously in Bowie, Bolan, Butler and Anderson. All sons of the suburbs. A pop star of the old school! Whether he'll actually realise that status himself  remains to be seen. In Eulogies he and the rest of Alex Chilltown have made a very fine start.