A busy year for me. On here and in life in general. I saw any number of gigs in Newcastle in the first half 2023 and wrote a lot of reviews throughout it. My rundown of favourite albums rose from 100 to 150 this time round. I wonder whether I'll be able to continue at that rate next year, Time will tell.
Revewing so many records, you do detect trends of some kinds, movements rising and falling. Young or not so young bands playing the Post Punk card in rather tiresome, knowing and frankly careerist manner seemed less prevalent trend thank god.
Dry Cleaning, who I've come round to after initial suspicion, are off on a seemingly endless World tour. Spreading the gospel of glum indie sprechgesang to the global masses. The other main players seem to have kept a lower profile than normal or else moved onto other territories themselves. I wonder about the whereabouts and activities of Goat Girl last year, the band which appealed to me most from that original Brixton, Windmill set which that scene stemmed from. I hope they make themselves known again in 2024.
Where Post Punk's tide seems to have ebbed, a strange successor scene seems to have gathered in the shadows and taken shape. Lankim's False Lankum was my record of the year along with almost everybody else's. I'll see them at the end of January and look forward to my date with them. .Lankum seem to bring a whole mad chorus of not disimilar bands and artists in their wake. The new Dark Gothic Medieval Folk thing. Call it what you will. I'm sure it has a name or if it doesn't it soon will.
Men with long beards, women in floral dresses. People for whom Folk is not a dirty word as it pretty much was when I was coming of age in the Mid Eighties. Lisa O'Neill, John Francis Flynn, Richard Dawson. Name your own suspects. Perhaps not a scene as such. But musicians whose music bears similar hallmarks obsessions and sensibilities. A willingness to embrace the times before we were born.
I wonder whether this kind of thing will begin to pall too, given overfamiliarity in 2024. I suspect it might. What next? A Mod or Afrobeat Revival ? We wait and will see. There are certainly a lot of new records I'm looking forward to hearing as the new year takes its shape as it inevitably does and will.
Picture the scene if you will. It's December 31st 2023. The end of a year of my life that's been action packed to say the least. I won't bother you with tiresome biohtaphical detail. I can't sleep. It's five-ish in the morning. Pitch darkness outside. I'm in the front bedroom of a portly family house on the corner of a modern avenue of smiilar buildings in Canterbury, Kent. I'm staying with beloved parents for Christmas and New Year. Typically it's blowing the gale to end all gales outside. But It's snug and warm in here.
I get up, go downstars and make myself a mug of tea. I take it back to my room, careful not to disturb my parents, sit down, put headphones on and start listening to Coming Of Age, by Oscar Scheller an album I chanced upon yesterday evening.
It's a Bedroom Pop album, so appropriate to be listened to in a bedroom early in the moning on the last day of the year., Scheller has a rather glum, unvarying and electronically treated delivery, the musical setting is slightly unremarkable. I won't come back to the record.
But it's the kind of record that I write this blog for. Moments of discovery. Wildlife spotted on the grassland on the plain in front of my hideout hole.. I mark this 7, don't listen to the whole thing because it's samey frankly and look for something else to listen to which will detain me more.
'I used to spend every afternoon. Locked in the confines of my room. My mother told me I never should. Play with the gypsies in the wood...'
Possibly the most Ironic Rock & Roll Album, with a Capital I and in Italics, ever made. Certainly not the most successful. or the most disastrous.by any means. So laid back it threatens to subside in a heap of self-satisfied sniggers at any moment.
If the third album by Orange Juice were a short story it would be one by Donald Barthelme or Richard Brautigan. One far too clever for its own good laughing up its own sleeve. Not for everybody probably. Where you stand on this may depend on your positions on attitudes like wry and fey. 'A wink and a knowng grin' in the words of opener and flop single Lean Period,
The band's moment in the sun had long passed by the time this came out in 1984..The glorious Postcard singles, tours and interviews where they were clearly far and away the coolest kids on the block and also the ones most likely to.for a few seasons After Postcard came a redraft band wise and an actual bona fide with Rip It Up. Top of the Pops appearances and Smash Hits covers.Their brief lived but inevitable destiny.But by the time this came to be recorded the game was clearly up.
By 1984, it seemed their very reason for being seemed somewhat questionable. They were on a major label, Polydor, but not one that seemed to have much faith or belief in them. Essentially they weren't really even a band any more with key members James Kirk, Stephen Daley, David McClymont, (on sone but not all I think). and Malcolm Ross having dropped out of the frame.
This left OJ as the core duo of Edwyn Collins, who has always been the figure you'd most readily associate with the band and drummer Zeke Manyika. Supplemented in the studio by the likes of Dennis Bovell and various session guys. On the surface the record might have come across as an afterthought, a shrugged apology before Orange Juice finally making their apologies at the end of the Pop Party and disappeared off into the night in different directions..
But there's more to Orange Juice than that. And the tecord makes a glorious listen in 2023. Sounds like a Lost Classic to me, 'Let's talk things over. In the Old Rover. Lets drown our sorrow's like there's no more tomorrows' . From Lean Period. Great punning that would never make it onto Top of the Pops or daytime radio.
As well as the most Ironic,this could be the best Punning album ever made. Collins seems twinned belatedly with Oscar Wilde. An Oscar with a fondness for The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Dub and Dance Music. You can tell Bovell is involved this time.
I could go on about this at length, How it contains What Presence?! Surely the great lost Orange Juice hit single that never was. The Velvet Underground meet Al Green. In Bearsden. But let's face it all Orange Juice singles apart from Rip It Up, (which actually made and stayed in the charts), were great lost single hits. Orange Juice in retrospect didn't put a foot wrong. Even when what they were recording didn't fit in with what NME or Smash Hits were looking to put on their front cover that week. They were truly a band for the ages.
I've listened to this record a number of times in the last couple of days and now I'm viewing to hunt down a vinyl copy for my record player in 2024.It's an album that has an incredible sense of literary drama which foregrounds itself on virtually every moment of the record and seems to demand another listen when the album finishes its run so you can check out again just how good this is as if you can't actually believe your ears.
Like I just said, I'd contest it's one that would benefit from a reassessment in the scheme of things. . Not one that was destined to trouble any actual charts at the time it was released. In the same way as The Velvet Underground, Edwyn's heroes weren't. Many of the best records don't do that well in the actual charts, but wait for thir moment with stoical restraint and after you' grace. for their moment a few decades down the line The charts? How terribly vulgar. Hear this!
Hey Hold the Front Page! I've finally found my favourite R& B / Hip Hop / Rap whatever you call it for this year. Oh I guess that ship has already sailed!
Well never mind.Noname's Sundial covers a lot of ground in just over half an hour. That's all I ask of a good record in this genre and have done since De La Soul first arrived and shook me up properly back in the late Eighties.
This is Noname's first album for five years and she's in indecent haste to make up for lost time here. I don't claim to be an authority on the streets this walks, I'm more in my neighbourhood with Wedding Present records but I enjoyed this more than most Wedding Present records lve heard for a while.
This is sparky, bright and bouncy and never once stands on a spot. Each track goes in multuple directions like the best Hip Hop and never goes for easy options, I reckon it's a keeper. It grows with every play. Sometimes these things take time and effort and return your investment with interest. Such is certainly the case here.
If you want more detail I direct you to the Pitchfork review of the record or, oh I don't know, Hip Hop Monthly ? Down on the Corner ? As i said I'm no expert here but I know what I like and I like this a great deal. Ir's a superb album.
Sometimes you miss some. An occupational hazard of writing a blog like this. You don't get round to listening to and writing about evrything you'd like to. For example the latest record by a band who you've written and raved about before. There are only so many hours in a day and I don't spend every hour of every one of them glued to ,a chair in front of my laptop writing on here, much as though it must seem like I might sometimes.
So, belatedly here I am listening to The Window by Chicago's Ratboys. They're a fine band who've been making records for over a decade now. This is the first time they've recorded away from their home town. The Window was recorded in the Hall of Justice Recording Studio in Seattle, with producer Chris Walla, who's also wrked with Death Cab For Cutie.
It's a pity I missed out on this when it came out because it's a tight, urgent and varied record which knows when to take its foot off the accelerator pedal and take a look around it. Ratboys are well-versed and know their game by now. Vocalist Julia Steiner has a wistful, keening voice which will go down well with anybody who's ever enjtoyed a Breeders, Belly, Betty Serveert or Madder Rose record.
If The Window belongs anywhere it probably is the Mid Nineties as spiritually this is where its signature sound hails from. This is another fine record and I hope and trust it keeps pushing them onwards, because the thing Ratboys do is neat indeed.
I started posting on It Starts With a Birthstone in 2013. Originally as a way of recording my memories, feelings and thoughts about favourite albums from the Eighties, the decade when I first started buying records. Over time this has mutated into something else that's easier to do and more organic. A prompt to encourage me to listen to and write about music that's largely being released now. Or as near to now as I can get..
Over time the blog has begun to dictate it's own shape and character, A routine has established itself, This is the direction I will continue to take from now on. A song and record every day. Building day by week by month. Eventually to a rundown of my favourite albums of the year. as darkness falls at the end of each year. All this supplemented by posts on books and compilations that have taken my fancy and anything else that catches my notice and interest and that I hope might interest others.. No big deal but a nice thing to do and I'll continue in the same manner from here..
Three years in, from 2016 I started listing my favourite albums and songs of on an annual basis. Something else to focus me as winter approached. So that year I wrote my first annual list of favourite albums, topped with Bowie's final record and the most recent one Radiohead have released, accompanied in the Top Three by Regina Spector who I fell completely in love with for a few years..
Here are my top three records for each year since then. No artist has recorded two entries as of yet. Not deliberate on my part. Just the way it's gone. But something I'm quite pleased with. I try to be reasonably eclectic.
There are some pretty good records here. Perhaps I should give some of them another listen. But then the remit I've given myself here for the most point is to keep moving forward, and that for the most part is what I intend to do. Foot on the accelerator, into 2024....
2016
1. David Bowie - Blackstar
2. Radiohead - Heart-Shaped Pool
3. Regina Spector - Remember Us To Life
2017
1. Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent
2. Les Amazones D'Afrique - Republique Amazone
3. The Feelies - In Between
2018
1. Janaelle Monae - Dirty Computer
2. The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie Land
3. U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited
2019
1. Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
2. Sarathy Korwar - More Arriving
3. Vanishing Twin - The Age of Immunity
2020
1, SAULT Untitled (Rise)
2. Sufjan Stevens - Lamentations
3. Billy Nomates - Billy Nomates
2021
1. Greentea Peng - Greentea Peng
2. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might be Introvert
3. Jane Weaver - Flock
2022
1. Joan Shelley - The Spur
2. Big Thief - Dragon New Mountain I Believe in You
3. Naima Bock - Giant Palm
2023
1. Lankum - False Lankum
2. John Cale - Mercy
3. Craven Faults - Standers
Grandaddy will be back in 2024 with their first album since 2017's Last Place. They're a band whose return is aways a cause for celebration, certainly for me. I come to appreciate their music and sensibility increasingly with the passing years. They're that rarest of beasts. A band with a genuinely sustained worldview and perpective. One that deserves a large illustrated book or a documentary.
With their return in mind it's worth listening to Everything on Memory the lastest record from Small Isles which features guitarist Jim Fairchild, who has done time with Grandaddy and Modest Mouse among others down the road.
There are seven largely instrumental tracks here. All of them veined with the spacey, uneasy melancholy which makes Grandaddy such a special project. These are tracks which are sad, but where you can't quite identify exactly where the sadness stems from precisely. If asked to specify the reason for that sadness I guess I'd say it's largely focused around a sense of loss. This seems to be a record about 'loss' but it's a quite wonderful one perhaps most when it's at its most downcast .
This one feels like it's been a long, and very interesting year music wise. Here is a list of albums that I've gone for. I actually started way back in September at # 100, but here is the Top 50. From ones that I've loved to ones that I've liked. No attempt at academic distance and judgement. Just records that have bought me joy. The photo here is one of me, a long, long time ago:
1. Greentea Peng - Man Made
2. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
3. Jane Weaver - Flock
4. Parquet Courts - Plant Life
5. The Weather Station - Ignorance
6. St. Lennox - Ten Songs of Worship and Praise For These Tumultuous Times
7. Dark Tea - Dark Tea
8. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
9. Fievel Is Glauque - God's Trashmen Sent to Right The Mess
10. Dean Wareham - I Have Nothing To say To The Mayor Of LA
11. Low - Hey What
12. Cool Ghouls - At George's Zoo
13. Goat Girl - On All Fours
14. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
15. Bendigo Fletcher - Fits of Laughter
16. Drug Store Romeos - The world within our bedrooms
17. Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
18. John Grant - Boy From Michigan
19. Astral Swans - Astral Swans
20. The Goon Sax - Mirror II
21. The God Fahim & Your Old Droog - The Wolf on Wall Street
22. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victim
23. Lost Girls, Jenny Hval & Havard Volden - Menneskekollektivet
24. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
25. Adrian Crowley - The Watchful Eye of The Stars
26. Tronco - Nainoia
27. Fog Lake - Tragedy Reel
28. TEKE::TEKE - Shirushi
29. Elephant Micah - Vague Tidings
30. James Yorkston & The Second Hand Orchestra - The Wide, Wide River
31. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview of Phenomenal Nature
32. ABBA - Voyage
33. Vanishing Twin - Ooki Gekkou
34. Pye Corner Audio - The Spectral Corridor
35. The Telephone Numbers - The Ballad of Doug
36. Hannah Peel - Fir Wave
37. El Michels Affair - Yeti Season
38. Black Twig - Was Not Looking For Magic
39. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - ENTERTAINMENT OF DEATH
40. The Killers - Pressure Machine
41. Orla Gartland - Women on The Internet
42. Dusted - III
43. Fruit Bats - The Pet Parade
44. Mega Bog - Life, And Another
45. Valerie June - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
46. Floatie - Voyage Out
47. Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
48. Durand Jones & The Indications - Private Space
49. Albertine Sages - The Sticky Fingers
50. POSTDATA - Twin Flames
At the end of a year that none of us have ever seen the like of, here's It Starts With a Birthstone's countdown of my favourite fifty albums of the year. I like my list not unnaturally. I think it's eclectic, varied and reflects a lot of the things I've enjoyed and listened to during 2020.
1. SAULT - Untitled (Rise)
2. Sufjan Stevens - Lamentations
3. Billy Nomates - Billy Nomates
4. CHOPCHOP - Everything Looks So Real
5. Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History
6. Cornershop - England Is a Garden
7. Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today
8. Bananagun - The True Story of Bananagun
9. East Man - Prole Art Threat
10. Fontaines D.C. - A Heroes Death
11. The Mountain Goats - Getting Into Knives
12. Saint Savior - Tomorrow Again
13. Brona McVittie - The Man in the Mountain
14. Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow The Rules
15. Bo Ningen - Sudden Fictions
16. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Boltcutters
17. Lawn - Johnny
18. Nathalie Shah - Kitchen Sink
19. Arbor Labor Union - New Petal Instincts
20. Ora Cogan - Bells In The Ruins
21. Wire - Mind Hive
22. Isobel Campbell - There is no Other
23. The Homesick - The Big Exercise
24. Daniel Romano - How Ill Thy World is Ordered
25. Jeremy Tuplin - Violet Waves
26. Coriky - Coriky
27. Grimm Grimm - Ginormous
28. Kevin Krauter - Full Hand
29. I Break Horses - Warnings
30. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Sideways To New Italy
31. The Innocence Mission - See You Tomorrow
32. U.S. Girls - Heavy Light
33. Perfume Genius - Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
34. En Attendant Ana - Juillet
35. The Cool Greenhouse - The Cool Greenhouse
36. Latitude - Mystic Hotline
37. This Is The Kit- Off On On
38. Emma Kupa - It Will Come Easier
39. Drab City - Good Songs For Bad People
40. James Elkington - Ever-Roving Eye
41. No Age - Goons Be Gone
42. X - ALPHABETLAND
43. Aoife Nessa Frances - Land of No Junction
44. Jenny O. - New Truth
45. The Strokes - The New Abnormal
46. Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song
47. Galore - Galore
48. Arbouretum - Let It All In
49. El Goodo - Zombie
50. Death Valley Girls - Under the Spell of Joy
I don't think even that much background detail is required really. Particularly when the record you're focusing on and appreciating is as damned good as today's record of the day. Namely Chester Jonson's Lake Erie, the latest must listen for depressive Indie types that don't feel like playing their pile of Elliott Smith and Beck records today.
For that seems essentially seems to be where Lake Erie comes from. I was also reminded of East River Pipe. A rather obscure indie loner I latched onto for a while in the late Nineties. J.Mascis, Lou Barlow. That's the gene pool and sensibility we're talking here. Slacker American types in nowhere towns. Staring at the holes in their jeans and their battered sneakers.Wishing they had a girlfriend. Deciding whether to do a hit, sniff some glue, clean the porch or just generally feel sorry for themselves on an overcast Saturday afternoon in October.
Perhaps I'm not doing Lake Erie justice because this a really fine record considering the slightly bleak premise and departure and arrival points it's decided upon for itself. In fact I think it's a quite brilliantly realised record. More grog for First Mate Starbuck / Darren Jones who brought this to the Captain's Table lads. Steady on your feet Starbuck. You've had so much grog already this week you might come to regret it.
The magazine for all things Americana. 18 in my 150.
Naima Bock does Laughing Len. Rather beautifully. I'm hoping for more Naima in 2024.
The venerable Mojo, 18 in my long list/
Sacre Bleu! Le Billy are a French Psychedelic Pop Dance band that, according to their Spotify dexription ' sharp ears shall recognise Gainsbourg's touch, and hypnotic vocals mixed just like in Tame Impala's psuchedelic rock L'Imperatrice's dance music.'
It's a record you can dance to. Imagine you're on the continent, living it up with cool young bohemians. Funky. afros and loose threads.
It's a record to marvel at where it comes from and immerse yourself in where it's gone.One of the purest 'fun' records I've heard for an age. Just in time forthe Post Christmas come down.
