LA based Massage feature Alex Naidus, once of Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Half a Feeling, first song from latest album Still Life takes off from a familiar base. Essentially the drumbeat and essential mood of Jesus & Mary Chain's Just Like Honey, itself in considerable debt to The Ronettes and Phil Spector.
Not a bad way to start and the album continues in this direction. Predicated on a jangle that you could trace back to late Eighties British indie pop. Sarah Records, C-86, and all that stuff. Beyond that, once again, most of all to The Bytds.
There's nothing at all that hasn't been heard many, many times before, but Massage's love for this whole way of thinking and doing things is evident and clearly sincere. Still Life is a sweet and undemanding listen and will take you back to the days when the boys from Ride were still rehearsing in their bedrooms.
It starts with...a bell. The new album by Cool Ghouls, San Fransciscan psychedelic melodicists who have been on my radar for a while now. Back in 2017, I was deeply taken with their last full album Animal Races and particularly the title track, which was probably my favourite song of that particular year.
Since then I've followed their progress and appreciated the mini-album and live one that they've put out in the meantime. I was delighted to discover their new record, At George's Zoo this morning land in my lap unexpectedly and have been playing it more or less continually during the course of the day before writing this.
Cool Ghouls can be loosely banded with any number of current similarly oriented San Francisco and West Coast guitar bands with common, mostly Sixties influenced predilictions. Allah-Las, Mystic Braves and Holy Wave immediately come to mind. In terms of references, The Byrds definitely immediately top the list in this respect, particularly the mop-topped Byrds of Younger Than Yesterday. But the band also tap into that whole glorious dawn of wonder of '66 and '67. Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Beach Boys, Country Joe & The Fish, Buffalo Springfield and other starry eyed suspects.
I'm always a sucker for anything that jangles, and Cool Ghouls can certainly jangle with the very best of them. But I'm delighted to report that on At George's Zoo, they've cast their net wider than previously to delicious effect. This is the best thing they've ever done I'd say. Still very much Sixties oriented, but broader in scope than what has come before, encomapassing blue eyed Soul, Jazz and Country as it takes their fancy. It's a delighfully dappled and varied listen.
Their are fourteen songs on here, plus a live track, appended I imagine to indicate what the band feel to be their natural environment. There's nothing on here I don't care for and though I generally prefer albums to be slightly more concise, in At George's Zoo's case, I'm happy to make an exception. The album glows with positive energy, which let's face it, is very welcome at this moment in history.
Picking out highlights is quite unnecessary as here is a band that are well schooled in the art of pacing and scheduling albums as a journey for the listener. It's a thrill to hear their full on momentum on the pacier songs and how they can slow the mood down too to allow us to take a breather and reflect as required. They way they've supplemented songs with brass and soul touches and the way it all works so beautifully.
Anybody who has a passing acquantance with Notorious Byrds Brothers, Surrealistic Pillow, Buffalo Springfield Again, Moby Grape or Gilded Palace of Sin, or even, (on its more soulful moments), Dusty in Memphis, will readily recognise what's going on here. But we're fifty five years on from those records and Cool Ghouls certainly know their Television and their Paisley Underground too. This is a sound where reference points are inevitable and appropriate but retro though this is, it's never a mere retread.
I love this record pretty much unconditionally already and I've only known it for a few hours. I look forward to developing and deepening my relationship with it in the coming weeks and months. All creamy harmonies, ringing, freewheeling adventuring and reflective, starstruck wonder, At George's Zoo's punches the sky from starting gun to finishing tape. I very much doubt whether I'll here a finer record of its type this year. Cool Ghouls are positively in excelsis here and I have to say, it's incredibly infectious.
Lindsey Buckingham is one of the most immediately recognisable voices. His new album, an eponymous one has been highly praised. I've only just heard it, but I can immediately understand why.
Buckingham it seems, is not allowed to be in Fleetwood Mac anymore because Stevie Nicks won't allow him to be. Which makes Lindsey Buckingham a somehwat ironic listen. Because it's instantly recognisable as a better Fleetwood Mac album than Fleetwood Mac themselves could make these days.
All of the ingredients that mad Mac Mark II such an attractive proposition are present and correct and regardless of your music tastes it's difficult not to acknowledge, that Rumours and Tusk particularly were very, very good things. Buckingham still clearly has all of the songwriting gifts that he ever had so. These songs are speaking, fresh and instant.
In a year where members of older generations, Teenage Fanclub, Dinosaur Jr., ABBA and David Crosby among others, have returned with very good records, Lindsey Buckingham is up with the best of them. He must be hopping mad in some ways to be exiled from his spiritual home but thisin some ways if s thebest response. That shows them.
I'm always really pleased when Courtney Barnett shows up. She's been pretty much a constant in my life since my sister directed me to Avant Gardener, cher break out tune back in 2013. I've seen her three times since, each time just terrific. She's a perfectly formed Indie star. Just what I was looking for when she turned up without even realising it and great company ever since.
Things Take Time, Take Time, her third album in all, is just out. Strange, feels like a lot more and that she's something of a stalwart by now. I guess it's five really, if you include The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, from when she first arrived in 2013 and Lotta Sea Lice, her terrific collaboration with Kurt Vile four years later. You should really, as they were all important steps in her journey.
Courtney doesn't really change dramatically, her style is so well honed and immediately recognisable, but she does refine her sound and disclosures. Things Take Time, Take Time is her cleanest and clearest album yet, both lyrically and musically and may well be her best. Time willtell in that respect.
It's certainly her sparsest, the whole record seems as if it's been tabulated to the finest degree in terms of offering a simple and to my ears, really heartfelt statement and one that is clearly a Lockdown one, reflecting the changed condition and conditions that most of us have been experiencing and living under for the past two years.
Courtney's been going through changes recently. The end of a long term relationship, bereavements, the ones world's events forced on her along with the rest of us. She's also changed her working processes, from working with the three-piece band that she's been operating with since her early days to another collaboration, with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa. She seems comfortable here. Things Take Time, Take Time is an assured and lucid record. It's organic and it flows. In the words of Teenage Fanclub, Everything Flows.
In a recent Guardian interview Courtney said she wants the record to sound like a 'comforting arm (around) a friend.'That's a wonderful description of the album and in that respect it's beautifully successful. The first thing I felt when I started listening to the record early on Friday morning, (I've had it on loop pretty much ever since), was that it was great to hear her voice again and how much I'd missed her. I think of her as a friend and I'm not ashamed to say that I love her. I can't actually think another musician I'd say that about. That's Courtney's specific quality and her charm. A real immediacy and genuineness. The sense that you feel like you know her.
So the record has space and warmth. It muses on mortality. Our own and that of the planet we live on .It shows a wonderful shift in terms of her playing style. Everything rings like a bell. Clarion clear. There are the customary reminders of heroes of hers. The Velvet Underground, Dylan, The Lemonheads. Less so Nirvana this time around. She's also been listening to Eno, Arthur Russell and Leonard Cohen apparently. It shows. Less is clearly more.
There are also occasional reminders, to me at least, of Go Between's Grant McLennan's wonderful, minimalist songwriting style.When I last saw Courtney and her band they played a wonderful version of McLennan's Streets of Your Town. It seemed as if it might have been written for them. It's a great gift being able to talk simply, clearly and purely. Courtney and Grant both have it. I wish more people did.
So, all in all it's great to have her back and the record is worth the wait. She's an artist who asks good questions and doesn't offer easy answers. I guess we're all a bit confused right now. Courtney doesn't bother to hide the fact but she's definitely working on it. Trying to get there. It wil be really interesting to see where she goes next.
Trying to make lists of favourite records of the year in this day and age is a frankly an impossible tasks. For their will always be some album that will come to your notice late in the day that would, if you'd chanced upon it earlier have registered high on your rundown.
That's happened to me twice in 2021 and may still happen again before December finally draws to a close. First over the weekend with Cleo Sol's altogether lovely Mother now again with Pearly Gate Music's slightly staggering Mainly Gestalt Pornography.
This apparently is the return of Zach Tilman, (for he is Pearly Gate Music) after a ten year hiatus. Which makes the quality of Mainly Gestalt Pornography even more extraordinary. It's an enormously confident return. Confident Uutsiderdom you might call it. I was reminded of the likes of Arcade Fire, Phosphorescent, Beck and Kevin Morby. Not by the music so much, but by the utter stridency and assurance of every moment of this.
I'm not sure exactly where this is coming from, but I urge you to give this a listen if you care for any of the artists above. To quote from elsewhere: 'Tilman's music sounds as if it were written by whatever songs from the poor youth circuit were being sung after dinner in the parlors of his youth - and who somehow managed to supernaturally absorb the sound of Lubbock circa 1955, Laurel Canyon circa 1968 and Berlin circa 1980.'
In some ways I'm sad to encounter this so late in the year so I couldn't included it in my Album Rundown list for the year. It would have been Top Twenty for sure. But really I'm glad to have encountered it at all. On first listen, it's immediately clear that this is a wonderful and quite special record. I'll put aside a considerable portion of the next few weeks to enjoy it further.
No, not the Film Director John Ford. The writer Jonn Ford. The 'alas poor gentleman. He looked not like the ruins of his youth.' oneFine song District Attorney!
There was so much waht I considered dreadful, Post Punk related stuff praised to the heavens. This was the only record connected to those scenes that I rated. It's a very good album that was never fully given it's due. Quite different and a radical step forward from their debut. Definitely ones to watch:
Where to start with Goat Girl and why I've neglected their second album, the unfortunately named, On All Fours. There is only one place to start for me. With Susie Fenn. Susie Fenn was a girl I went to secondary school with. Almost forty years ago. Susie was an assured and attractive girl who poured a packet of sugar over my head in a Domestic Science for absolutely no reason. Simply because she could. Such stuff can cause lifetime scars of minor kinds. I'm fine of course, but I'll never forget it. It felt like a small and slightly painful initiation ritual into the world of adult relationships.Kids games of course compared with the incredible pain that can come later.
Now Susie Fenn really has nothing to do with Goat Girl at all. But when I saw them play at Cluny 2 in Newcastle a few years back, supporting someone, (I can't remember who), their stage demeanour reminded me of Susie Fenn. Of all the cool, surface confident and sometimes scary, (and certainly scarily attractive girls), I went to school with. I have a good friend who wonders why I like Siouxsie & the Banshees, or at least the early Siouxsie & the Banshees. It's because almost all of those girls made themselves up, or tried to make themselves up like Siouxsie did back in those days. Ready for battle.
So I've finally got round to On All Fours and I love it. I heard a song from it on the radio the other day which finally made me take the plunge. I've been playing it ever since. It's a small but specific marvel. A very interesting record. One of the best albums I've heard this year and that's a high compliment. There have been some really great ones already. It doesn't really remind me of Siouxsie and the Banshees at all. It reminds me most of all of Warpaint. Also the glossy surfaces of early and later Roxy Music. But really this is all Goat Girl's and its enormous credit to them. A mighty achievement so early in their career.
It's an enormous shift and expansion of sound and scope from their first, eponymous album, which came out a couple of years back. That was good in its way, a small quirky record, that made plenty of friends. This is something else. One which reaches and attains a grace and assurance they only hinted at there. This should win them a lot more and take them on to a new level if there's any justice in this world at all.
Some similar themes emerge here as with their first. Irritating men. Worse than irritating men and how to deal with them without submitting to their bullying ways. Not being down on all fours I suppose, there must be a reason for choosing a title like this, but I wonder what their mothers think! Goat Girl are certainly not submissive but they're not aggressive either. Their's is a swirling, immersive sound, glossy and seductive, enhanced by the neat electronic touches the band have added to and enhanced their sound with.
Politics too. The strange times we find ourselves in. In many ways the spiritual home of Goat Girl are the late Seventies and early Eighties. The height of Post Punk when similar ideas were being fielded on a regular basis. Round about the time Susie was pouring a packet of sugar over my head in the Domestic Science lab. But what differentiates Goat Girl from the usual Post Punk pack that so abound these days are that their influences are so difficult to trace and that's incredibly unusual these days.
Apart from Warpaint, and Warpaint are the obvious contemporary comparison, Goat Girl pretty much make their own scene. I'm sure they've listened to and taken notes from Warpaint records but there's nothing slavish here, (oh dear the submission thing again).Theirs is very much South Coast rather than West Coast. They inhabit their own space.
Thirteen tracks here but its a smooth and pleasurable ride. No jagged edges. Goat Girl have well and truly arrived and it will be incredibly interesting to see where they go from here. Time for me to put away foolish preconceptions and irrational prejudices. To forgive Susie Fenn, wherever she is and keep listening to this. It's fabulous. Simply!
'Better adjusted Elliott Smith' is a phrase I must have used on several occasions on this blog. It's a description that's often helpful to convey what new records sound like in that particular sub category of thoughtful, vaguely introspective singer songwriters who favour reflection, solitude and a certain, quiet stillness.
This impression has rarely been more useful that in respect of an album like this. Bedroom Ice Age, the debut album from Husky Gawenda, also the lead singer of Melbourne band Husky. It's a thoughful melodic and finely honed record.
The influence of Elliot is immediate and clear from the off and posssibly the only consideration that detracts from even greater praise for the record. I found I was never able to shake the comparison off as long as I was listening to it. But it's afine record. Well worth a listen.
A lush, synthetic Pop record in the way that they used to make them back in the Eighties, while all the while maintaining a contemporary sheen, Jubilee, Michelle Zauner's third album under the Japanese Breakfast moniker, on the surface has similar DNA in some respects from Madonna, Belinda Carlisle and Cindi Lauper records from way back when. That's certainly not intended as a slur, even though these artists are hardly regulars on my own record player, because here it's all twisted into new colourful shapes that I have to say I find really exciting.
This is unashamedly Pop Music. But with an indie sensibility. The tunes are bright and boppy, the playing polished and sleek. All the time though, the lyrical themes are both yearning and reflective and by no means always upbeat in tone. Zauner has form in this respect. Her first album was largely inspired by her trouble relationship with her mother who subsequently died from pancreatic cancer. The pain is clearly still here. She's not afraid to sugar the pill when required. Here though she seems to be experiencing a genuine rebirth in search of happiness.
Perhaps the added ingredient that makes this appeal to me so much is the shoegazey texture of some of this record, transposed into a dancefloor context. Much of the atmosphere on the record isn't actually a million miles away from the kind of thing bands like Cocteau Twins and (yes), Lush used to come up with though here the vocals are pushed considerably further upfront and you can imagine seeing it pop up on a prime time chat show or hear it in a glossy nightclub or as the backtrack to a top model making her way down a Milan catwalk. Bjork is also cleary an influence too in terms of her own rebirth when she became a solo artist and embraced dance related technology after she left The Sugarcubes.
Jubilee also reminds me of two of the best ever years for Pop Music, the ones when I personally came of age. Of 1981, and 1982, when records like Dare, Tin Drum, Sulk and Lexicon of Love were managing to achieve the magical contradiction of being simultaneously bright, immediate and commercial and say something as deep and enduring as any leftfield art classic. This record does that too, some of its surfaces textures, are almost reminiscent of Japan or The Associates at times. This might seem like I'm flailing around to make comparisons that aren't really there to anyone's ears but my own, but it often works in a similar way for me.
Anyhow, this is a record that succeeds on its own terms, whether they genuinely relate to the fanciful comparisons I've made here, and I'm more than happy to endorse it. It's one of the most exciting records I've heard this year, reminding us of Pop's rich past while standing in its own place. at one and the same time. The rhythms here are bright and glossy but it has a lyrical depth and mystery that seem likely to greatly reward further plays I suspect. Japanese Breakfast is one of the most seductive records I've heard in some time, Zauner is a genuine talent, and I'll be back soon and on a regular basis thereafter in an attempt to identify just what I like so much about it.
A wonderful record that's was brought to my attention yesterday, late in the year. One that would certainly have been included in my own rundown of favourite albums had it come to my notice earlier on in the year.
It's Mother, the second album from Cleo Sol, one of the voices of the spectacular SAULT, probably the greatest musical phenomenon of recent years. But this sounds nothing like SAULT really. It's more grounded in Carole King and through that, King's essential pop and soul roots, which means Aretha most of all.
Mother is not shamed by such comparisons. It's so good. It's genuinely soulful. I was also reminded of Anita Baker's 1986 album Rapture which I was generally astonished by at the time of its release and have been ever since. Like Rapture, Mother taps into the essentially giving, loving and spiritual, qualities of the feminine. A man could not have made this record.
It's great to hear a record like this in 2021, which has been such a cold and frightening year for so many people. It's a reminder of warmth, love and rebirth, things we all need right now. A magical album.
Thanks to Joe Mitchell for making me aware of this. A virtual friend. But perhaps those are the best sort.
One of the most fascinating re-inventions of recent years musically has been what's been going on with Duluth, Minnesota's Low. They've always been a contrary bunch, going back to their early days in the Mid-Nineties, where they chose quietness and space as a response to Grunge and it's great to see them continuing to operate in their own space with latest album HEY WHAT.
It's a fascinating record, immediately arresting and surprising, building on the impact of the band's last record, 2018's Double Negative but also doing something different again. The grey, static sleeve of the record gives some indication of the sparse, disembodied, eerie mood of the record itself.
This is slightly more approachable than Double Negative in that it foregrounds melody and places less immediate emphasis on alienation as a key ingredient, but it's still a very odd and particular album. But it uses melody so skillfully that there are moments when this becomes a Pop album, if one of the oddest Pop albums you've ever heard.
It's wonderful to see bands that determine to do their own thing and this is quite definitely Low's own thing. This takes its lead if anything from pioneers like Wire and My Bloody Valentine without sounding anything like either of them or for that matter like anyone else. An absolutely intriguing record that pitches its tent away from the crowd in a remote stretch of the field.
I am always immediately likely to be taken by an artist called Beatrice Deer. This is a record that backs up that initial liking. SHIFTING, the sixth album in all from this Canadian singer-songwriter, based in Montreal. Sung in three languages. French, English and most intriguigingly in Intuktikut, the indigenous language of her childhood.
Perhaps it's the linguistic element of SHIFTING that gives it it's primary distinctive quality. It gives the record an almost other worldly quality. Regardless, it has a wonderful textural quality that makes you feel like it's spring even though you actually know that it's December. That's highly welcome.
Punk becomes Thrash and LA related music generally becomes a lot more interesting than it's been for a while. X, Gun Club, Cramps, Minutemen and Paisley Underground. Take your pick.
A rather lovely record altogether. Fits of Laughter, the debut album from Louisville, Kentucky's Bendigo Fletcher. Recorded in December 2019 but just out on Elektra Records, (another wonderful thing about it), and not a moment too soon. Laid back as a Saturday afternoon snooze in a hammock, it's a warm, nostalgic, bucolic thing of beauty. A terrific album.
So what does it sound like? Comparisons are not immediately apparent. which is always a good thing. It's a bit early Seventies in terms of its general vibe. Country Folk if you need a category that seems to work. A slightly cuddlier Wilco also come to mind, though the band do rock out too at times. What this goes back to first of all is probably The Band. Echoes of Grant Lee Buffalo perhaps. Nilsson too in terms of the vocal delivery but then lots of things I like remind me of Nilsson.
Hope that gives you some idea but really Fits of Laughter just needs to be listened to for its own qualities and they're considerable. The melodies are winding and lackadaisical in tone but also beautifully crafted. The mood is consistently good humoured. It has a a 'ragged elegance' to quote the band's own album press release. The more the album played, the more I came to love it. One of the most charming records I've heard in a long, long time.
I think I've been unwittingly waiting for my Underground American Rock record of the year for a while. There's generally one. Lawn, Wild Firth and Warehouse in recent times.
Along with the Dark Tea and Cool Ghouls albums from a few months ago this is probably that record. Fits of Laughter simultaneously ticks all my boxes and hits all my soft spots.
One of the best things you can possibly be in my book is influenced by the later Velvet Underground and the early Modern Lovers. Those two versions of these bands tapped in to a gold mine that is still productive over fifty years later. The Bug Club seem entirely alive to the possibilties that these ealier bands opened up for Rock and Roll.
I chanced upon The Bug Club by turning on my radio at exactly the right moment a couple of days later. Now I've caught up with their debut album Pure Particles from earlier on this year. It's an inessential release except for those for whom these things are essential.
These things being the later Velvet Underground and the early Modern Lovers. Vic Godard, The Violent Femmes and the music taste of Marc Riley. I certainly count myself among that number.
It's a quirky and rather delightful album. Fans of Holiday Ghosts who also mainline into this particular Rock and Roll vein might also like to explore. There also seems to be a song devoted to Modern Lovers leader the wondrous Jonathan Richman called Jonathan's Gone. Fortunately that's not actually the case but when that day comes it will be a very sad one indeed. At least his spirit will live on as Pure Particles testifies.
Is it the weekend yet? I need the weekend. I'll certainly give this one another spin.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. For the most part of this period apart from Tom Waits, Warren Zevon and the admittedly excellent Rumours, theis is true of LA. Until Punk comes to save the day. It's arguable that LA Punk was the best Punk,but it was certainly needed there, just as much as it was needed everywhere else.
One of my favourite new young British bands of recent years and a great debut album.
An album I've been waiting for with some anticipation for a while and it hasn't disappointed. Home Counties bedroom dreamers Drug Store Romeos come up with a debut that underlines the value and potential harvest that can be reaped from pursuing your own vision on The World Within Our Bedrooms.
While hip urban types groove it up at The Brixton Windmill raving over The Fall, The Gang of Four, Can and Free Jazz, Drug Store Romeos take a vastly contrasting trip grounded in casio tone runs of the most basic kinds and honeyed vocals. It's a wonderfully basic recipe that becomes more fruitful and revalatory as the record progresses. By the end of the record a hynotic spell has been cast not a million miles away from that of the first two Suicide albums.
Drug Store Romeos' intentions are not unnaturally a lot gentler than Suicide's however. The World Within Our Bedrooms evokes England's Dreaming as powerfully as any record in recent memory. Listening to it you can almost conjur up a vision of the placid streets of Fleet the three grew up in and longed to escape from. This record is a testimonial to the power of the imagination.
Influences are definitely apparent. It's difficult to imagine the record without Stereolab or Broadcast and the whole album is underpinned by a bassline pulse that is consistently reminiscent of New Order, while Sarah Downie's opiate heavy vocals reminded me of Dubstar. Young Marble Giants classic Colossal Youth might also be some kind of touchstone for this inpsired budgeted minimalism.There are also inevitable, implicit nods to the big daddies of this kind of electronic contemplation, Kraftwerk, Neu and Human League.
But Drug Store Romeos own input is so considered and considerable that their points of inspiration become increasingly irrelevant. The World Within Our Bedrooms makes a great case for itself as the British debut album of the year, even as early as July. It's a truly wonderful record, something of an instant classic and I look forward greatly to getting to know it properly.
Haven't posted anything on this particular series for a while as I haven't really listened to the radio for a few months now. But I just turned Marc Riley's evening programme on 6 Music and heard the tail end of this. Will have to investigate this band further. A three-piece from Caldicot, South Wales. T
Good to see John Grant return with one of his best records for years.
I have to say I've taken my eyes and ears off John Grant in recent years, having been very much taken, like much of the musical world, by his first two albums. Boy From Michigan his latest, is a reminder of what attracted me so much to him and his gifts and vision in the first place. Splendidly and sensitively produced by Cate Le Bon, it's a truly elegant, lyrical ride, with all the atmosphere of rich cinematic drama.
Mythic, mystic small town American life and the trauma it can visit on those who choose or have no choice but to be different. The kind of experience documented by John Cheever and Richard Yates, David Lynch, Virgin Suicides, Danny Darko and Six Feet Under. Grant is almost a short story writer in this respect, casting himself in the leading role each time, producing songs imbued with haunted melancholy and he's very much recovered his muse here I'd say.
Ferris wheels and girls called Cindy, maple trees and Five and Dimes, everything butressed by an electronic pulse that functions almost as a heartbeat. Grant of course has a wonderfully rich and nuanced baritone, but what's great about it here is that it's splendidly restrained, he controls his delivery masterfully with his narrative aims in mind. Generally those of doomed and thwarted romance.
Of course this is all grounded in Grant's sexuality and the implication of parental and communal rejection at the most vulnerable passage of teenage experience that still leaves an indelible hurt, an ache decades down the line.
There is a jarring moment halfway through the album with Rhetorical Figure when the record takes a hysterical, jaunty New Wave novelty turn that seems out of place with its bedfellows here, coming on like Trio meets Van Halen's Jump for some reason only known to itself. It doesn't work for me. Offbeat, self parody is always part of Grant's charm but this grates and it'll be a track I skip. Same goes for Your Portfolio a little later on. They're rare blemishes on a record that otherwise is the John Grant return to top form that I've been waiting for without even realising it.
As with the best storytellers he saves the best 'til almost last. Nine minute penultimate track The Only Baby where Grant takes aim at the Moral Majority and the people behind Donald Trump and lets them have it with both barrels. There's always a sadness about his best songs but they're redeemed utterly here by their sheer artistry and musical beauty and grace. He's really excelled himself this time. The record unfurls seamlessly like the most bingeable and atmospheric Netflix drama. An absolutely terrific album.
The Fast & Bulbous blog, listed to the right side of this page, is always a useful resource to chance upon things you haven't heard. They, (or he I presume), have just posted their top hundred albums of the year, and there's a lot of interesting stuff that's new to me.
Like this, an album named Ephemeral, from a Brooklyn band called Groupie. It's a New Wave / Post Punky and occasionally slightly Grungey album. Melodic and thoughtful and full of the sounds that you might expect from a band with this kind of base of influences.The female vocals reminded me of Courtney Love quite a bit. I will make no inappropriate comparisons between her and this particular band's name. Oops, I just have. One of the album's songs Daleko, is sung, mostly in Polish by bassist Ashley whose mum emigrated from there in the Eighties. It's one of the best tracks on a very good record and certainly the best song I've heard sung in that particular language this year.
The record is in turns extrovert then introvert, full of great guitar sounds, and slightly desperate angsty moments. It gets better the longer it spins. It's so New York, and full of wonderful reminders of that spectacular city's sleazy thrill and underground legacy. Kim Gordon fronting Sonic Youth. CBGB's It's listed at Number 4 on this sites particular rundown and I can see and hear why. It would certainly have been somewhere on my own list for this year had I discovered it earlier. I thank Fast & Bulbous for this recommendation and will continue to investigate their list and post what I find and like there, over the coming weeks.
