It Starts With a Birthstone - Review of 2023

 

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.