Top Ten countdown begins with one of my favourite records of recent months.
A proper treat for mid-October. ex Galaxie 500 frontman, Dean Wareham's wonderfully named I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of LA. His second solo album and belated follow up to his eponymous debut from 2014, it's a wryand beautifully crafted record that will bring a smile to the faces of many who find themselves at a similar time of life to the man himself. Younger too I'd hope.
Defiantly wistful, playful and elegaic from the off. There's so much hard worn wisdom from opening track The Past is our Plaything onwards. Poetic, melodic dispatches from the homestretch. In some ways this reminded me of the work of the late, still missed and much lamented David Berman. But I Have Nothing to Say is the glass half response to Berman's ultimate resignation and surrender.
'My time has come. I'm not afraid...' sings Wareham on 'The Last Word. We can only hope that he has many more soft bullets in his chamber. This is a record that appears as if it's arrived too late for my end of year album but it's so good that I'm going to reshuffle things so there's place for it in my Top Ten.
The album deservedly gets Album of the Month status in this month's Uncut Magazine. It's well worth tracking that down to read their review and interview with the man and get a fully detailed account of what's going on here and why music is as good a commentator on this strange planetary endgame as we have right now and why we need to listen to, learn from and cling to the messages it imparts.
Unusually, he takes on politics this time as he admits in the Uncut interview rather than just, 'writing about my own little world.' On The Corridors of Power, the song where this is most apparently foregrounded, he rightly strikes a comical vein of nevertheless righteous distance. 'People who live in houses like that don't know.' 'I'm getting hot under the collar...at the top of the hour...' We're all ultimately rather powerless in the hands of this pack of charlatans and hucksters. As so often on this quite charming and knowing record Wareham hits just the right note of disdain and grace.
Wareham has been responsible for plenty of quite wonderful music over the years with Galaxie 500, Luna and elsewhere. This is as good a record as any he's ever made. How wonderful that is to be able to report. He's relocated in recent years from New York to LA and this sounds very much a record from that strange elusive city.
This is a quite wonderful album to hear as Autumn fades and Winter encroaches. Understated, sparse and wordly wise. Hear it, and if you're not overfamiliar with the man's back catalogue as many, including myself, are not, work your way back from here.
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