Songs of the Year # 32 Islet

 

Great British B Sides - # 32 The Skids

 

B side to Into The Valley

Albums of The Year # 32 U.S.Girls - Heavy Light

 Not quite as fine as previous album In a Poem Unlimited. But still pretty fine:

Great to see Meghan Remy, (Aka U.S. Girls), back with a new record, only a couple of years after In a Poem Unlimited, one of my favourite albums of recent years. She's a fiercely independent voice, defiantly political, genuinely funky, her songs full of ire and wit.

Heavy Light, her new album, focuses on the concept of hindsight and the inner child within us all including a re-working of three of her early songs as part of the overall concept It's noticeably more immediate, stripped down and percussive than its predecessor, much of it having been recorded live in the studio. As a result it's less glossy and detached than In a Poem. coming across as less of an art statement than an urgent missive from the frontline.

I gave the record a few listens before posting this at it seemed important to find out whether the songs here were durable enough to stand the test of time. I'm pleased to report that I think it will. First to get its hooks into me was opening track 4 American Dollars one of the most genuinely funky songs I've heard in ages.

Remy is clearly an artist always seeking to make a point and Heavy Light certainly addresses the world it finds itself in. She's an entry-ist, using accessible pop formats to make comment on the complexities we face, governments that lie, societies that enforce constructions of self on the individuals within it, the way we hurt each other and ourselves.

Here this leads to the sense that a fight for our very survival is taking place. This leads to genuinely soulful performances at times. Remy stretches herself and shifts shape from record to record. If we have a female equivalent of Bowie right now it's probably her. Heavy Light is another fascinating record.

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 112 Dead Kennedys

 

'Contrary to what we were being told at the time, some Americans did 'get' punk.' 

Song of the Day # 2,499 Dead Milkmen

 

Memorable Eighties song for me as it was a great friend of a good friend of mine who spent a year in the States, and saw this band, (a punkier Camper Van Beethoven), several times.

Songs of the Year # 33 Mr Ben & the Bens

 

Great British B Sides - # 33 Orange Juice

 

B Side to Simply Thrilled Honey. Reworked for the Rip It Up album.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 107 Siouxsie & the Banshees - A Kiss in the Dreamhouse

 

'A Gothic. Psychedelic sex pop album, with sex bits.'

Albums of The Year # 33 Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

 

There's an inhaled breath at the beginning of the latest Perfumed Genius album Set My Heart on Fire Immediately which is telling and affecting, though not hugely surprising. You know where you are with this particular artist. Mike Hadreas, (because it is he), has form in this respect. It's immediately clear what you're getting but you might as well enjoy this hugely narcissicistic form of expression and dive in anyway.

We're in the realms of melodrama and experienced pain of the most gorgeous, melodic but deeply felt sort. File it next to Rufus Wainwright, John Grant, Anthony & The Johnsons and Ezra Furman in your record collection if you don't order these things alphabetically. File it next to Lou Reed, who was the king daddy of this kind of musical expression. This is a very American kind of yearning. Of being beaten up in the locker halls for perceived difference by confused jocks and going back home and not seeking revenge in a violent form but instead in interiority and artistic expression.

This is an extremely rich and layered product. We all know at this point of time that things are getting complicated in terms of human expression, so the arrival of this record is both timely and welcome. It's familiarity doesn't lessen its value or impact. Hadreas has been here before, but now he seems keen to iron out the creases he might have been known for previously for commercial impact and consumprtion. Drawing on similar classical impulses as the contemporaries and equivalents mentioned in the previous paragraph but making sure this is a deeply personal statement at the same time.

I'm only on my second play of the record but already it seems like the most extravagant and gorgeous indulgence. Of course this is a sexual statement. That factor is blatantly clear from the most immediate contact with its textures, but this is not a forbidding or exclusive album in any respect. In fact it's one of the most inviting and immediate albums I've heard this year. It also sounds hugely commercial to me. It's just a shame that it's being released at a point where the general public can't go into record shops and exchange currency for rich, expressive product in the manner we're so used to. Never mind, there are other ways to consume, or at least divulge. This is incredibly good. It repeats on former glories but adds new and unexpected layers to that rich experience.

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 111 Joy Division

 

'Joy Division, even more than the Sex Pistols, reshaped  Rock and Roll.'

Song(s) of the Day # 2,498 Brad stank

 

Rather odd and rather nice album from earlier on this Brad stank's Kinky Om, by, you guessed it, Brad stank. And yes, that small letter at the beginning of his surnmane is correct.

How to describe it? Well I can't really. On first listen it's not entirely clear whether this record was made in LA or Peckham. It's a laidback cocktail lounge funk and hip hop melange. It's laidback as can be, but you also get the feeling that it might have been recorded in a squat.

In fact a little research and Brad proves to be a mellow, dope smoking Scouser. Anyhow, the record is a treat. Inventive, original and rather charming.Companion piece to Billy Nomates stunner from earlier this year. Good to see British Pop is still capable of surprises. Even if it's mostly coming at you from the margins.

Songs of the Year # 34 Rufus Wainwright

 

Great British B Sides - # 34 Jesus & Mary Chain

 

Cover of an early, almost mythical, Pink Floyd number. B Side to Never Understand.

Albums of The Year # 34 En Attendant Ana - Juillet

 A really sweet surprise at the end of January:

Parisian colts En Attendant Ana splash welcome colour all over the end of January with their sparkling second album Juillet.It's a glorious record, all vim, verve and melody, C-86 jangle, and Margaux Bouchaudon's astonishingly optimistic vocals soaring over proceedings throughout.

The band barely barely put a foot wrong throughout the course of the album's ten track run. In many respects this is the best 'indie' record, (in the old school sense), that's come my way since the last Alvvays and Say Sue Me albums. Despite singing in English, En Attendant Ana add some distinct Gallic flair to proceedings at times, (why on earth would they not, they hail from the land of Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy and Laetitia Sadler).

A really lovely record that has both winning immediacy and the promise of  staying power, July in January. En Attendant Ana, my brand new favourite band.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 106 Squeeze - Singles 45's and Under

 

'They were ordinary guys were Squeeze... the kind of blokes who always seemed  like they'd stand their round.'

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 110 The Specials

 

One of the finest covers ever recorded.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,497 Monophonics

 

There's nothing like a really good spooky soul record. Monophonics have probably released the best I've heard this year in It's Only Us. It manages to both be utterly here and now and transport you back to 1972 at one and the same time. The halcyon days of big afros, sharply iron flared checked trousers and astonishing falsettos.

Songs of the Year # 35 Yumi Zouma

 

Great British B Sides - # 35 The Only Ones

 

B Side to Another Girl, Another Planet.

Albums of The Year # 35 The Cool Greenhouse - The Cool Greenhouse

Funny and angry young British band record of the year:

Now this is a find. Yet another angry and acerbic young London band, The Cool Greenhouse who perfectly capture the insane, hyper-surreal tenor of the times with their eponymous debut album, just out.

Taking their lead most obviously from The Fall, The Cool Greenhouse spin a thick, dense psychotic web of sound for lead singer Tom to lay out his manifesto upon. This is well described by second track Cardboard Man, where former Prime Minister David Cameron is skewered in the most delightful and exhilarating manner.

This may be a difficult album to get through at a single sitting. Things are turned up to the max from the off and the pace rarely lags thereafter. It's all quality stuff mind . Lyrics that take the temperature of our bizzare, frenzied times, itemising the mundane and paranoid concerns of modern living. Blur tried to do a similar thing almost thirty years ago. Frankly this band do it with greater accuracy and honesty.Though maybe not with the same commercial potential. But they don't seem remotely concerned about all that nonsense.

I'm not sure where The Cool Greenhouse stand currently in the scheme of things in terms of their public profile. I only came upon them a couple of days ago and quite by chance. Their prospects should be good anyhow. Certainly Idles, Sleaford Mods, Shame and Goat Girl in particular have ably demonstrated that this stuff has sufficient cultural cachet at the minute to catapault bands like this, who are not prepared to accept what's on their plate, onto the pages of Q and larger venues. Hope The Cool Greenhouse follow a similar path. They certainly deserve to do so on the merits of this.

Having already astonished with Cardboard Man they continue to exceed expectations with Dirty Glasses which is pretty much their How I Wrote The Elastic Man. Kurt Vonnegut, Mark E. Smith Thomas Pynchon and Charlie Kaufman swop anecdotes and perspectives over unwise cocktails in a smoky bar, (the sort that no longer exist), one of them telling a tale of going round to dinner with Margaret Thatcher and being shocked by the state of the glasses in the cupboards in her kitchen. 

But they don't just project the guilt outwards at obvious, guilty parties. After all, in their own words,  'We represent a different platform. Dispossessed pinko middle classes.  Who have very dirty glasses. And anyone else who has very dirty glasses. You see, the purpose of this band,is to offer a glasses cleaning service. At a very reasonable price.' We're all complicit in this of course but at least here's a band who are trying to do something about it.

So while The Cool Greenhouse don't have all the answers, (why on earth would you want to trust any band that claimed that they did), they ask the most interesting questions and do so while having the best of possible times. 'There may be trouble ahead.' As the captain of The Titanic may or may not have said, 'But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance. Let's face the music and dance.' This is as good a soundtrack as any for that right now. Just don't try to dance all the way through it is my advice. You're liable to give yourself a hernia.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 105 Marvin Gaye - Midnight Love

'Midnight Love would be just as great  if Gaye was still alive and selling Tupprware from a stone-clad semi in Epsom.'

 

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 109 The Selecter

 

'(Two Tone) hppily put out singles that directly competed with each other for space in the Top Ten.'

Song of the Day # 2,497 King Somalia

 

From La Locura de Machuca a compilation of Colombian African fringed funkiness from the Seventies and Eighties. Surely destinesd to be my compilation of the year. This will do for now.

Songs of the Year # 36 Waxahatchee

 

Didn't much care for the latest Waxahatchee album. Did like this one.

Great British B Sides - # 36 The Undertones

 

The Undertones were masters of the B Side art. Here's just one example. Flip Side of late single Got To Have You Back. Much beter than that.

Albums of The Year # 36 Latitude - Mystic Hotline

 

 

Interesting one this one. Particularly for someone of my particular middle aged vintage. Mystic Hotline, the second album from San Francisco quintet Latitude, is so immediately reminiscent of early Eighties, alternative sunshine sounds that listening to it felt like being taken back the best part of forty years in a time machine.

So, some immediate associations that I drew: Blondie, Go Go's, Let's Active, Bangles, Martha & the Muffins, dB's, Adult Net, Look Blue Go Purple, Pylon, Swimming Pool Q's. All gloriously sunny, honeyed, sublimely happy touchstones. Latitude use these inescapable reference points to glorious effect.  

I found listening to this record a fabulous experience on a dark overcast Monday morning looking out at an increasingly Autumnal landscape in the North of England, leaves turning brown on the tree outside my flat and preparing themselves to fall. Because Mystic Hotline occupies territory that's unmistakably Summer. Better than that, the territory of the most glorious summers of your lifetime. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty one.

This is a record that you realise early on is not going to let you down and become a bit 'meh'. Ten songs in all, combining to become much more than the sum of its parts.  Latitude pull of a similar party trick to Alvvays, taking a handful of sounds that are utterly familiar, yet injecting them with a sublime energy and grace to ensure this is never just an exercise in looking back. Altogether fabulous album.

 

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 104 Donald Fagen

 

'An easy listening album suffused wth a casually expressed horror that implicates its own audience.The Nightfly is one of pop's greatest hidden masterpieces.'

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 108 Delta 5

 

'The sort of record that some US punk type occasinally mentions as the founation to their entire approach and is further proof that Rough Trade was the best and bravest record player in the world at this point.'

Song of the Day # 2,496 Blue Rondo A La Turk

Widely reviled in the early Eighties I recall. I liked this one.

 

Songs Heard on the Radio # 381 Cerrone

 

Lunchtime dance around my living room.

Songs About People # 1,207 Sufjan Stevens

 A rather lovely song for Sufjan, from an artist who really isn't called Oso Peligro.

Songs of the Year # 37 Sufjan Stevens

 

More Sufjan coming up, much, much closer to Christmas.

Great British B Sides - # 37 Madness

 

B-Side to Michael Caine.

Albums of The Year # 37 This is the Kit - Off Off On

 From a few weeks back:

I wondered, when I started listening to this, earlier on in the day, whether I really fancied hearing another This Is The Kit album. Not that I don't like them, because I do, but you fairly much know what you're going to get with this bunch. Tuneful, thoughtful, reflective Folk music. Nowt to complain about. But there are plenty off purveyors of this kind of thing these days.

Of course, Off Off On, remarkably the band's sixth soon lulled me under its spell. They do their thing very, very well. For This Is The Kit, essentially Kate Stables and the musicians she works with, are masters of this particular art. It's a great knack they have, to be able to draw on such ancient traditions and make them poppy and immediate. The stuff you feel like dancing around to the kitchen to.

I'm not informed enough of the band's stuff to know where this stands in terms of their overall body of work. But if you're going to listen to one This Is The Kit record, it might as well be this one seeing as it's their latest and it's just great. It's immediate, it's warm, it's inventive. In turns it's upbeat, then laid back. Then it's something in between the two. It dances to the rhythm of its own drum. In short, I love it. Go on treat yourself. Proper Sunday morning record.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 103 Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

 

'There's just a meanness in this world.'

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 107 The Pop Group

 

'Everything here gibbers and bleeds  and it seems extraordinary now that music like this ever existed never mind became influential and critically acclaimed.'

Song of the Day # 2,495 Still Corners

 

The underrated art of whistling in pop songs foregrounded here. Perhaps Still Corners overdo it slightly here but it still makes me want to hear their forthcoming album, which arrives in January 2021.

Funky Glasgow Now

 

Songs of the Year # 38 Kelly Lee Owens

 

Great British B Sides - # 38 Lush

 

'I see other women as the competition.' Tinkerbell, a very Lush title, from the Single Girl 12 inch package.

Albums of The Year # 38 Emma Krupa - It Will Come Easier

 

There are some moments when you start listening to a new album and realise within seconds that it is purpose built for you and your constituency. That it was made by someone who grew up listening to the scriptures and essential texts of Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Vic Godard and Edwyn Collins. Who sees the world in that way and is absolutely not about to stray from that path for the course of the record whatever happens.

Such is the case with It Will Come Easier, the debut solo album, as far as I can see, from Emma Krupa, who has also featured previously in Mammoth Penguins and Standard Fare. This is a record that runs on indie oil. Taking that slightly askew way of looking at the world that refuses to conform to mainstream dictates and will never straighten its tie or tuck in its shirt. That prefers the wonky tooth in its mouth wonky, and is not planning to visit the orthodentist and get it fixed.

This is either a record that you will cast aside or else take to your heart instantly. It plays by certain rules and is aimed at certain hearts. The hearts of those that attend gigs in the small upstairs rooms of pubs or similar venues. For the kind of people who are not waiting for The Killers to turn up at the local enormo-arena. For those that still listen to Belle & Sebastian and Felt instead.

Kupa has worked often with Darren Hayman, most obviously during their time together in The Haynab Kupa. Hayman is another who considers Who Loves The Sun, Hospital, Ambition and Felicity to be among the highest forms of art ever conceived and produced. Well, they're not wrong are they. Every note of It Will Come Easier testifies to their ambling grace. It's sheer joy for true believers.

This time last year I was listening to Penelope Isles wonderful Until The Tide Creeps In and seeing them play one memorable evening. A year on as this strangest of all years draws  towards its close along comes Emma Kupa to occupy the place in my heart that the Isles did then. Another timely record and one for the end of year list.A record of small but specific charms.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 102 Kate Bush - The Dreaming

 

My own particular favourite Kate.

This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 106 The Jam

 

'The Eton Rifles is not The Jam's best tune or performance, but it is their greatest moment.'

Song(s) of the Day # 2,494 The Very Most

 

Feelgood, crafted tumes from Boise, Idaho. The Very Most take you to a nice, warm place.

Nina & Miles

 

Songs of the Year # 39 The Districts

 

Great British B Sides - # 39 Super Furry Animals

 

'B side of Juxtaposed With U.'

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 99 Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Imperial Bedroom

 

'Costello waved goodbye to any ideas of being a pop star on Imperial Bedroom, heading for the classic singer-songwriter high ground.' (Fiorgot to actually post this the other day).

Albums of The Year # 39 Drab City - Good Songs For Bad People

  From June:

Late testerday evening as the light outside my window, alnost three months into Lockdown, was just beginning to fade, I picked up a tip from the ever reliable A Pessimist is Never Disappointed blog, listed to the right hand side of this page, and started listening to the new Drab City album, Good Spngs For Bad People. It was a fine closing soundtrack to a quiet, lazy day, encouraging me to listen to it again this morning and write this.

Drab City are a duo working within an established tradition. It would be difficult to listen through to this record without the comparison points of Portishead and Broadcast popping into and staying in your head. The album has similar, Sixties soundtrack inspired woozy charms. In fact it's drenched in them. 

But in this case the shadow of influence is a recommendation rather than a curse because Drab City take these clear inspirations as  a starting point to forge off onto a journey that over the course of the record they both make one of their own despite remaining an act of hommage.Unusual balancing act, but they pull it off.

This is a walk home across deserted city streets by lamplight with The Ipcress Files spinning in your head. Because John Barry is every bit as much a mentor to Drab City as Portishead or Broadcast. I'd throw early Goldfrapp into the mix too. By now I suspect you may be getting a fairly accurate picture of what this record sounds like, but please don't let that put you off listening to it for yourself. These after all are pretty impeccable references. Anyhow you wouldn't not watch a Brian De Palma film, just because you knew that he was influenced by Hitchcock.

Even though it's blindly apparent where this is coming from, it doesn't make the record itself any less of a luxuriant listen. Throughout our lives we watch the same kind of films again and again, whether they be Thrillers or Coming of Age flicks, and the fact that we know innately where they are going as well as where they come from doesn't make the journey to the end destination any less enjoyable.

Drab City have a couple of safe pairs of hands at the helm and they manage the journey with cool restraint, never once taking their hands off the wheel or their eyes off the bending track ahead. This is deeply, deeply filmic stuff, and although you never forget that essentially this is fiction, you nevertheless can't take your eyes off the screen for the duration. It's also one you might want to go back to and enjoy all over again, from the beginning. I certainly will.

Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 101 Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81, 82, 83, 84)

 

'One of the most purely beautiful sonic tapestries British pop hath woven.'