Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Albums of the Year # 19 Astral Swans - Astral Swans
Astral Swans is just the best name for a band ever. Wish I'd thought of it. The project of Calgary, Alberta singer-songwriter Matthew Swann. The name is not all, he and they have going for them. Latest album, an eponymous one, though it's their third is a magical and consistently surprising one.
'Steeped' according to Vice 'in 60s psych-folk mythology and loner punk iconography.' Astral Swans is certainly an original amalgum of sound. Reminding me of Phosphorence in terms of its explorative spirit as much as its sounds. It's a set of buoyant and suprising space pop melodies.
The 'space' analogy seems to be an apt one as these songs seem to be floating free like objects in a gravity fee capsule on electric waves of sound, familiar yet somehow fresh.
Bill Baird and Kelly Stolz are other similarly single minded modern pioneers who could be brought in as basic fellow travellers. It's great to see music artists able to channel the past to make entirely contemporary statements.
Astral Swans was an absolute delight when I chanced upon it in the new releases playlists yesterday. An immediate new entry into my Albums of the Year countdown, and a high one. It will be well into December until this is posted again.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 497 Eminem Featuring Dr Dre
'Guilty Conscience becomes a new high - and deliberate low in irresposible pop entertainment.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,872 Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio
Funky songs of the day today. Seattle's Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio hit all of the sweet and funky spots on new album I Told You So. But baby, it's cold outside! Who cares, It's lovely and warm in here. Toasty!
Monday, December 6, 2021
Albums of the Year # 20 The Goon Sax - Mirror II
Mirror II the third album from young Brisbane trio The Goon Sax is a revelation. The sound of a band expanding their sound from basic inide templates to something much broader and more expansive, in the most exciting and successful way. Everything the band has done has been worthy of attention but this is quite unexpected and notable.
Something that needs to be foregrounded, as it always inevitably is, (whether the band like it or not), is that mainman Louis Forster is the son of Robert Forster of The Go Betweens. This is not mere biographical detail, as The Goon Sax are a three-piece composed of two male guitarists and a female drummer, just as the classic, original line up of The Go Betweens was.
They also inherit much musical DNA from that band. Their songs are jerky, offbeat, angular takes on Velvet Underground and Jonathan Richman inspired emotional melodrama. But Mirror II sees The Goon Sax truly moving into their own space. All three band members, Forster, Riley Jones and James Harris contribute vastly different sounding tracks and I'd say the record is all the better for its schizophrenic qualities.
Forster was originally the main songwriter but now duties are more democratically shared. Jones is that coolest of things. A female Rock and Roll drummer who sings, with all the allure of a Sixties siren with leftfield, artistic leanings. Harrison takes a different slant. That of shambling, jangling, Eighties indie off tune vocals. Think The Pastels, The Television Personalities and Josef K..As the excellent review of the record by The Guardian's Alexis Petridis, (which I've drawn on here) suggests, Forster still contributes the albums, 'most immediate songs.'
It's a very exciting record in this respect. The sound of a band spreading their wings, reaching maturity and leaving the nest as they enter their early Twenties. It was almost impossible to imagine them becoming this when you first heard their debut album Up To Anything which was a great record but a small one, firmly grounded in teenage ennui and the Brisbane suburbs.
They're a different band now and an immeasurably better one. They forge their songs from a fascinating range of musical and artistic sources and although the record is startlingly diverse, it's also wonderfully thrilling. You can't help but imagine Robert Forster must be phenomenally proud. It will be very interesting to see where they go from here and whether they can beat this.For now, this is more than enough.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 496 Basement Jaxx
'manic, infectious like foot and mouth, and bullishly, deliriously happy...'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,871 Silk Sonic
A record that passed me why when it first came out last moth. But it's a nice one to catch up with now. Particularly on a bleaker than bleak Monday morning in Newcastle at the beginning of December. It brings a definite warmth and glow to my flat.
It's a collaboration between Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak entitled An Evening with Silk Sonic. It doesn't pretend to be anything but a slavish recreation of the Golden Seventies age of Soul and Funk. It's unashamedly bathed in a rose tinted nostalgic hue.
Nothing here will shock or amaze you. As well as the reference points abve, ut almost might remind you of OutKast, except with the implicit genius. On its weaker moments it might also make you think of Flight of the Conchords having one of their smoochier, dim the lights numbers. Doesn't all work, but anyhow, It's a cool record.
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Songs About People # 1,316 Laurence Harvey
Something loud and jarring for one of the great, lost Movie Stars.
Albums of the Year # 21 Tha God Fahim & Your Old Droog - The Wolf on Wall Street
I think the only Hip Hop album on this list. But it's a very good one:
In 1994 I spent a year in Warsaw. In the centre of town on Marzalkowska Street outside the main department stores, hawkers use to sell bootleg cassettes of the latest releases. I bought quite a few over the course of the year but my most memorable purchase of was definitely Nas's debut album Illmatic.
It was and still is a fabulous album, probably the last Hip Hop album I truly fell for before I pushed the genre to one side in terms of my tastes and focused elsewhere. But I got several years of play out of that particular cassette and then replaced it on CD and still later on vinyl. It's what they refer to in romantic affairs as a keeper. All urban noir cool, slippery and enigmatic beats and an atmosphere you could slice with a knife.
Twenty five years on and Hip Hop doesn't play a large part in my life. I go back to my Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest. Digable Planets and De La Soul records sometimes. I have a healthy respect for Wu Tang and his Clan but I barely ever listen to them anymore. Kanye, Eminem even Kendrick don't appeal .Hey, I'm 55. I don't really care to hear the 'N' word every other sentence. or indulge young men's fantasies of blowing one another away. Yes, I know I'm generalising and probably missing great stuff but I won't lose any sleep about it.
So it was with great pleasure that I chanced upon Tha Wolf on Wall Street. Tha God Fadim and Your Old Droog's fabulous collaboration from earlier this year. It's wicked! Sorry, did tell you I was 55. But it is really great. All Liquid Swords inventive samples and odd lyrical slants which seem to focus as much on what you might say or be exposed to during a visit to your therapist as what's going down on the corner.
This record is addictive. It casts shadows. It creeps up on you in a couple of plays. It's only eight tracks long so it's a moot point as to whether it's actually an album or should be referred to as an EP instead of as an album. I'm calling it an album anyhow, a lot of Hip Hop albums are too long for my tastes anyhow and this is just right, like baby bear's porridge.
The God Fahim and Your Old Droog circle and rap off each other with great wit and poise. The rhythms and loops are dope. I admit freely that I'm not particularly fluent in this argot and it's probably for the best. But I like this. It strikes me as a slick, inventive and enlightened album. Strikes me as another keeper. Such a spooky and soulful record.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 495 Krust Featuring Saul Williams
'Less a pop single than an intimdiating intellectual experience.'
Song of the Day # 2,870 Cloakroom
Cloakroom is an odd name for a band. 'Hey, let's call ourselves Cloakroom...' They're from Northwest Indiana, have a long track record of doing something that seems to derive its roots from Shoegazing. Here's their latest single.
Like Magic in the Streets
Having grown up, for my formative years, in the Eighties in the UK, I've always felt that it was generally misrepresented as a decade in films and TV programmes for the most part, particularly in terms of describing what coming of age felt like then. Going to university seemed to be mostly presented in a shallow, facile light. All about being a New Romantic or trying to get onto the University Challenge team. It wasn't like that for me. The Eighties was a furiously political one in the UK as Thatcherism seized control of peoples mind and lives in an appalling way and communities were torn apart.
The music I first really loved was 'independent' guitar driven, literary stuff. R.E.M, The Smiths, The Go Betweens, Aztec Camera, The Triffids, Echo & The Bunnymen, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Prefab Sprout. Much of it seemed on the surface to be decorative rather than deeply engaged but this was deceptive. The music that these bands made was actually made for these times and a reaction and response to what was going on politically and culturally in the mainstream.
Tim Blanchard's Like Magic in the Streets is the first music related book that I've read that truly captures what it felt like and feels like looking back on those years for those of us who were utterly opposed to what was going on and made our musical allegiances according to that opposition, choosing bands and records that seemed to express and help us understand those emotions and impulses for us.
Blanchard chooses Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Go Betweens, The Smith and The Blue Nile and an early, important album from each as the basis for his discussion of these times. He could easily have chosen any of the artists I've listed above or several others. He understands and clearly loves the music deeply but his argument is a much broader one, essentially focused on Romanticism, with a capital, rather than a lower case 'R', and how these bands expressed key features of this 19th Century movement of ideas, poetry, fiction and cultural change in terms of the records and decisions that they made and how they presented themselves.
This is a wonderfully realised book and I'm very grateful to Tim for writing it. He rightly bases his narrative on the writing of the music papers at the time (which were such a fundamental and valuable education to the likes of me), places these records within their historical and cultural context and reclaims those years from unconvicing, airbrushed representations (where the winners wrote the history of the times), recognising the incredible strength and resolve of the people who made this wonderful music. It's a must read for anyone who grew up in these times loved this music then and still do.
Saturday, December 4, 2021
Covers # 186 Richard Cheese
Cool, finger clicking Lounge Jazz take on probably the most overblown Rock song ever.
Albums of the Year # 22 Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
A much lauded album of recent months that I haven't got round to writing about as of yet. Mdou Moctar's rides the desert dunes on Afrique Victime, with much the same graceful ease and purpose as recent albums from Tuareg contemporaries Tinariwen.
Aided by a fabulous band, Moctar leads from the front with impossibly fluid guitar lead. This music is both celebratory and troubled. Based in Agadez, Niger, the record tells the story of his people. The voice of the dispossessed.
Underpinned by a fabulously realised rhythm of harmonies and melodic patterns, you somehow don't need to understand the lyrics to follow its message of sorrow and joy.
Best experienced at a single sitting, the ghost of Hendrix can be heard in the grooves of Afrique Victime. By turns thrilling and deeply moving. A mighty record from a mighty band.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 494 Blur
'some kind of masterclass in how to make old-school guitar pop sound fresh all over again.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,869 Duschpalatset
Darren Jones, consistent and valuable contributor to this blog, over several years now, comes up with the goods again. This time with a playlist of his recent listening which has led me to chance upon this just now.
Baby, the second album from Umea, Sweden band Duschpalatset is a small treat. Sung in their native tongue alternating between male and female singers which brings it a charming, childlike quality though it shows genuine teeth and bite sometimes.
.It's a defiantly 'indie' record and full of wonder and melody. A case of 'small is really rather beautiful'. Nice way to start the weekend.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Albums of the Year # 23 Lost Girls, (Jenny Hval, Havard Volden) - Menneskekkolectivit
Lost Girls is the latest project from Norwegian artist Jenny Hval, this time working with Harved Volden. Artist is the right word here because Menneskekollectivit, the album they've made together, is brimful of ideas. It's like walking through a multimedia installation at a modern art gallery and sets off a lot of the reactions that might be inspired by that experience.
Some might find it pretentious and it's certainly ambitious. My own definition of pretentious is when an artist is not in control of the ideas they're attempting to project. Essentially they're showing off but without the substance to back up what they're saying. Menneskekollectivit is an exercise in consummate control and it's a wonderful enveloping experience, pulsing, rhythmic, (electro is the word that comes to mind trying to describe its musical ambience, it has a pulse), brilliant.In many ways extraordinary.
There's so much great new music around at the moment and this is right up there with the very best of the things I've heard so far in 2021. Five tracks in all, a couple of them stretching beyond ten minutes. The title and opening track, a journey in itself, gives you more than your money's worth.
You might not be able to grasp all of the ideas behind the album but it's a good enough one that you should be able to experience, feel and appreciate them just by listening to it. Mission accomplished then. A very fine record indeed.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 493 Cobra Killer
'if someone played this at a dinner party I'd ask if I could move in.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,868 Watchhouse
As we moved into December, it's time for me to mop up the year for myself personally, taking a look through the various end of year lists and cupping an ear to them to things I might have missed during the last eleven months. This has been my busiest year post wise on It Starts, which I'm quite pleased with, nine years down the line, but there are always going to be good things released that I've missed out on.
This one for sure, the eponymous debut album from Watchhouse, listed on the Pop Matters site among its Folk rundown. Folk is probably a good description of it, though that's such a strange catch all nowadays, that it's difficult to know where to start in that specific respect.
It's certainly a very good record, and I'm glad to have caught up with it now. Melodic, roaming, warm and wonderfully immediate. Kicking off with Wondrous Life a track that sounds uncannily like Everybody's Talkin' by Nilsson, which is always a reference point that's likely to make me prick my ears up. I find I like Nilsson more with every passing year.
The record unfolds from there with assured tread and grace.Watchhouse apparently used to be Mandolin Orange, but have opted for a name change here. Not being aware of Mandolin Orange I can only guess as to why that might be. I'm just glad they've arrived where they are now. Watchhouse is an altogether lovely album.
Thursday, December 2, 2021
Waiting For the Sun by Barney Hoskyns # 11 The Eagles
LA slips further into darkness. Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco provides a refuge for Glam waifs and strays. But perhaps the great soundtrack of these times is provided by The Eagles.
Albums of the Year # 24 The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Last of the Gret Thunderstorm Warnings
Mid-Saturday morning and I'm two tracks into the new Besnard Lakes album, (take a deep breath), The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings, and I'm pretty much dumbstruck. Boy is this ambitious. It sounds like they're after some kind of unholy mix of Pet Sounds, Big Star's 3rd and Flaming Lips Soft Bulletin, and more remarkably that they might not actually fall too far short.
Besnard Lakes are a band that have popped up intermittently on my personal musical radar for a few years now without ever fully registering. I had to check just now as to whether I'd featured them here as a Song of the Day artist. Apparently I haven't. So I'm making amends in that respect anyhow. Because on the basis of what I've heard thus far, (listening as I type), it's the least they deserve. There's something quite fantastic going on here.
I'm clearly not alone. Uncut Magazine made the record their album of the month a couple of issues ago. I'm currently in a state of some frustration trying to track my copy down, having made the unforgivable error of tidying up my flat a couple of days ago. Never mind, I'll try to do the whole thing justice myself.
So, biographical basics. Besnard Lakes hail from Montreal, Canada and were formed way back in 2003. That's so long ago that you might be led to assume that they've long since lost any creative spark they may once have had. Trust me they haven't. There may be some true gems in their back catalogue, I'm sure there are, but frankly this one is more than enough for me, for right now and some time ahead I imagine.
The record is full of things that I would usually expect myself to hate. It also reminds me of Pink Floyd, and not the Pink Floyd that I'm generally partial too. Namely the Syd incarnation. But the Roger Waters one that I'm generally utterly allergic to is the one that comes most readily to mind here. Also other Prog offerings that I've never even been able to summon up the courage to immerse myself to even really listen to. The Alan Parsons Project. Peak period ELO. It ends with a seventeen minute title track for goodness sake. A seventeen minute title track which is utterly magnificent at that. Perhaps I've been ungenerous and should open myself up to some of these things. The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is doing strange things to me. I'm quite lost in its cosmic wonder.
Because Wonder seems to be the key word here. The Besnard Lakes are adrift in Cosmic Wonder. Like your older brothers record collection, they remind you of things that you were born slightly to late for. Like another slightly less than hip reference point, The Moody Blues, they seem to find themselves in search for the mythical lost chord. I actually suspect they might have actually found it at some point during their journey.
I'm not sure what I'm writing will encourge you to investigate further. All I can say is that I urge you to do so. This is some record. I'm not altogether sure that it's entirely a 2021 album, (save for its solemnity and portentious themes),but it is a truly fascinating one, and one of great achievement and perhaps in this of all years we need to put aside inherent prejudices and lay ourselves open to what is so often and so foolishly described as guilty pleasures. The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is full of guilty pleasures and I'll certainly be back for more. Time to make myself presentable and see if I can track down that copy of Uncut Magazine and remind myself to tidy up a bit more judiciously next time. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.
P.S. I found the magazine I was looking for. It was where you would have least expected to find it. In a pile of other music magazines. I was pleased to disover that the review, (well worth a read in itself), concurs with a lot of the conclusions I arrived at myself in the review here.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,867 Foam Giant
Cult dark psychedelicists of the late Eighties and early Nineties, The Telescopes ,and Minneapolis drone stoners Flavor Crystals combine for a long tare into the void in shades and black polo necks album Acetate Parade.
Apparently 'the soundtrack to a film made in 1983 that was never made,' whatever that means, it's a record that's utterly proficient in the tongue it chooses to speak.
Just made for fans of Spacemen 3, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Loop and Black Angels, Acetate Parade never breaks into a grin. It's too busy maintaining its numb cool. I enjoyed it, though I'd got the idea a few tracks in and didn't listen right the way to the end.
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Albums of the Year # 25 Adrian Crowley - The Watchful Eye Of The Stars
On the last day of April, and the last Friday of the month I could find little in the new album releases department to excite me. Even the new Teenage Fanclub, which I had been looking forward to for so long, didn't seem to work for me. On Saturday morning something wonderful and exciting fell into my lap.
A few years back, right at the beginning of this blog in 2014, my favourite album of the year was Some Blue Morning by Adrian Crowley an Irish singer songwriter. A superb, nuanced album of thoughftful, poetic and reflective songs in the tradition of Leonard Cohen and dare I say it, of Heaney and Joyce. I wore the album out over that period. It was a wonderful, evocative album to play, last thing especially, specifically if you're experiencing one of those long nights of the soul which visit us all occasionally.
Now Crowley's back, with The Watchful Eye of the Stars, his second album since then and it's another winner. Sparse,rich and literary, the kind of album that many people made in 1971 but very few are capable of forty years on.
He's a master of a lost art. I only needed one listen for this to tick all of my boxes. Less of a surprise than Some Blue Morning, but just as welcome and with plenty of surprising gifts of its own. Like meeting up with an old friend unexpectantly, many years after you last saw them and finding them every bit as good company as they always were. Those special ones who are capable of giving you hidden insight into the parts of the world you hadn't discovered yet.
An album that perhaps won't get as much general recognition as it should. Might be one for those in the know. This is very much the world's loss. And the gain of the happy few who have chanced upon this wonderful artist. They need to spread the word. That's certainly what I'll try to do. Magnificent. Hear it.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 491 Campag Velocet
'a record so unfashionable it bombed utterly.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,866 Smoke Bellow
Smoke Bellow are yet another Melbourne band, but one doing something quite different from their contemporaries. Latest album Open For Business is a quite fascinating mixture of rhythms and pulses.
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