Albums of the Year # 44 Modern Nature - How to Live

Bands don't seem to split now, the way they did in the old days. Not like The Beatles and The Smiths did for example, way back when. Through irredeemable personal and musical differences. Going their separate ways once and for all. Instead they seem to splinter or scatter, move off to separate projects before coming back together.

There was at least one proper old school group sundering in 2019. Ultimate Painting, one of my favourite bands of recent years, a collaboration between  James Hoare and Jack Cooper which had produced three excellent albums together, went their separate ways due to some personal rancour apparently. A fourth album they had recorded together which was clearly a factor in their split was left unreleased.

A shame, but as it transpired not a disaster. Both Hoare and Cooper moved onto new or pre-existing projects and both produced fine records during 2019. Hoare with The Proper Ornaments and Cooper with Modern Nature. The Proper Ornaments Six Lenins was a neat, understated Indie guitar album the way they used to make them back in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Modern Nature's How To Live was a more layered, nuanced affair. A more considered record. And ultimately, a better one.

Cooper has been a considerable talent for some time and with How to Live which he worked on with Will Young also of Beak among others, he proved it once more. It's a wonderful blend of influence almost suggesting what might have transpired should Fairport Convention, Cluster and Roxy had chosen to work together in the early Seventies. A fascinating proposition and a record that more than lived up to its billing.

Songs of the Year # 44 Proper Ornaments

Song(s) of the Day # 2,121 Big Supermarket

An absolutely fabulous record that's been brought to my attention of late. 1800 by the plain as plainly named  could be Big Supermarket, which seems to have come out at some point last year. The name is plain but the record isn't, distilling the essence and beauty of the Flying Nun Record Label's finest moments of the Eighties over its 35 minute playing span.

One of the things that was most appealing about The Clean, The Chills, The Bats, The Verlaines, Look Blue Go Purple and the other main players of that Dunedin scene was how the minimalism and simplicity of their musical approach was channelled so creatively through ingenuity and drive to forge records of marvellous warmth, mystery and unfathomable depths. 

Big Supermarket harness a similar modus operandi. The early Fall records were a particular spiritual influence on that scene, particularly The Clean, and you can trace the surly Mancs centrifugal pull here too on the abstract chug of tracks like Personal Pronouns and SuoerHwy.

It's that version of The Fall that I still like the most, before Martin Bramah, Una Baines and Marc Riley gave up knocking heads with Mark E. Smith and surrendered the reins to him in the early Eighties. Big Supermarket have plenty of their shambling charm and though 1800 is by no means a coherent record it's certainly a highly compelling one.

There's very little information available about who exactly Big Supermarket are except that they appear to hail from Australia. No band photos or social media presence seem to be available at all. Which leads you to suppose they're a collaboration of some kind. Really it matters little. 1800 is happy to stand on its own merits and they're quite considerable.

The number of Australian bands putting out superior product these days is frankly beyond comprehension. Big Supermarket stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best of them, even though we don't really even know who they are. Many thanks to Darren, supporter and occasional poster on this blog for bringing these to my notice. Something of an instant, if obscure, classic.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 330 The Districts

It's gratifying to see a young bad hit their stride a few years into their career. Such seems the case here with Pennsylvania's The Districts as they make their way to their fourth album You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere. This, Hey Jo the outlier for that has a sad lonely grandeur they had hinted at before. Something of The National, something of Sharon Van E and something all their own.

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 433 Space Lady

Space Lady's Greatest Hits is on the jukebox at The Newcastle Arms thanks to me requesting it. This sounded suitably spooky yesterday. A great deal of plundering this wonderful record's considerable riches is probably on the cards.

Songs About People # 988 Liberace

Liberace played Chandell in a couple of consecutive episodes of Batman.

Albums of the Year # 45 Kelsey Lu - Blood

First posted in May.

Classically trained cellist North Carolina's Kelsey Lu has just released her debut album Blood and it's an evocative and elegant record of moody depths that constantly surprises and avoids easy categorisation. Soulful, but with inventive and deft arrangements, it's pop music filtered through classical influences and all the more interesting for that.

 

I found myself listening through to it, seeking easy references and connections and not being able to make them and finding the record all the more involving for just that reason. In some respects it's something of an avant gard album in that it's experimental and elusive but at the same time it tips out a whole cupboard of melodies and emotions along the way. At the same time, it's by no means a difficult listen despite its bravery.

Occasionally the record gets more obviously conventional as on Poor Fake, which seems to run on more accessible Soul or R & B rails and sounds like something you could easily imagine playing on  daytime radio but even here Lu's voice suddenly takes the track in a different direction and the song takes flight in a quite astonishing way.

If you're looking for a record that constantly surprises then you could do far worse than plumping for Blood. Oddly, towards the end of the album, Lu throws a spanner in the works by choosing to cover 10cc's mid-Seventies weepie classic I'm not in Love and opting to play it pretty much  straight. As someone who has heartily detested this particular track since I remember it being voted the best song of all time by the listeners of London's Capital Radio in the mid Seventies, I wish she hadn't bothered because frankly she has much more interesting songs of her own.

Once this blip has been overcome however, Blood recovers its poise with a series of tracks that remind me of what drew me to it before its brush with Seventies mush. Lu is clearly an artist to watch. Interspersing songs that sound like genuine potential hits with unnerving tracks that disorientate and offer no easy answers making this a strange but highly compelling listen. 

Songs of the Year # 45 Olympia

Song of the Day # 2,120 Quivers

Bikini Kill

Songs Heard on the Radio # 329 Allah Las

Allah Las. Sounding like 1966 in 2019.

Songs About People # 987 Shelley Winters

Winters played Ma Parker in Batman. Here's a song for her from the Lolita Soundtrack.

Albums of the Year # 46 John Southworth - Miracle in the Night

Originally posted in May.

'There are ancient societies that value the dreaming world on an equal level as the waking world. I've always had one foot in the dreaming world.' So speaks John Southworth an English-Canadian singer-songwriter who's been putting out musical product over twelve albums in all on a regular basis since the late Nineties, His latest record Miracle in the Night is just out.

It's a revelation at least to me, as I've been unaware of Southworth's work until ... well just now. His voice is not a particularly outstanding one but it is noteworthy in terms of the warmth and depth of feeling, the sheer atmosphere he gets across.Miracle in the Night is choc a bloc with crafted, slightly mournful songs played on traditional, generally acoustic instruments with moods that chip away at the listener until they're lulled into admiring silence.

Southworth is working again with his long term band the South Seas, the musicians he feels most understanding to his vision. It certainly works here to an almost magical degree. Miracle in the Night  is very much a waking dream.

Each song adds new ingredients to the spell being cast. The songs are slowly, jazzily paced, and Southworth's gentle, intoned vocals are at the heart of the mix. It's altogether wonderfully done, a set of musicians who know implicitly exactly what they're at and after. At times, things get quite heady, as on Red Velvet Curtains, which occurs midway through the record, one of several standout tracks .

 

But really this an album that never puts a foot out of place. I get the impression that Southworth has taken notes from the likes of Dylan, Cohen, Robert Wyatt and Robbie Robertson but his voice is still very much his own. This is a fine, fine album that has already encouraged me to investigate his back catalogue in depth because here is a man with a quiet but beautiful skill who should be recognised as an artist to a much greater degree than he is.

There's a tangible sadness to much of what's on show here. Life, after all, is ingrained with sadness, even in its happiest moments. But also a hard earned, palpable awareness of its moments of tender beauty. Because most of all this album is beautiful. In the words of one of the song titles here, Southworth is halfway up the mountain. There's much behind him but much still ahead and he knows that he needs to keep pushing onwards.

The album reaches its summit with Just Before Dawn and you might be tempted to reel back and listen to the whole record through again start to finish. One of the softest spoken but most persuasive records I've heard of this type for many a year. Not dissimilar in tone to Adrian Crowley's wonderful Some Blue Morning which was my Album of the Year way back in 2014, near to the beginning of this blog. Both records appreciate the value of silence and the hushed whisper. Sometimes less is more.

Songs of the Year # 46 Mount Sharp

Song(s) of the Day # 2,119 Rose McDowell

From the sound track of Far From The Apple Tree, which judging by the trailer looks the kind of modern fairytale that you've probably seen before. The music is more passable. Layered baroque, intensity from Rose McDowell, once half of Strawberry Switchblade and Shawn Pinchbeck. Don't be alarmed. It's just a bad dream.

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 432 Protomartyr

By the miracle of jukebox algorithms Protomartyr's resplendent Relatives in Distress makes its way to The Newcastle Arms. It was my favourite record of 2017 and this is the track.

Songs About People # 986 Ethel Merman

Archers of Loaf honour Ethel Merman who played Lola Lasagne in Batman.

Albums of the Year # 47 International Teachers of Pop - International Teachers of Pop

Written in May.

International Teachers of Pop released their eponymous album a few months back and I've been negligent not to listen through it right the way through because it's a small treat. Very, very British and to be more precise, English, it's emblematic of the kind of record that shows up every few years from one band or another and represents an ongoing faith in smalltown high street eccentricity and self-expression.

So where exactly did this tradition start? probably with the first Roxy Music album which first foregrounded this kind of weird, assembled futurism. Then fast forward to the Human League, any number of early Eighties synth duos, then Pulp and the cultish but fondly remembered World of Twist.

And now to International Teachers of Pop. Their's is a Woolworth's pick and mix selection, stirring up low and high culture to a frothy mix; sci-fi synths and harmonised vocals, Kraftwerk rhythms, Jane Weaver pulses and B52's oddity. Not intended to be taken remotely seriously but to forge out a series of funfair rollercoaster rides you'll want to get on again as soon as you've got off.

It wasn't altogether a surprise to discover that members of Moonlandingz and Whyte Horses have combined forces in the line up of International Teachers of Pop or that Jarvis Cocker and Moloko's Roisin Murphy have become fans. As I say, they're working in an altogether English tradition that it's heartening to see still has legs. Pop concoction of the year thus far...

Songs of the Year # 47 Mattiel

Mattiel's star appears to have continued to rise this year. A very good thing.

Song of the Day # 2,118 Ignatz & De Stervende Honden

'These are songs to get lost in and confused by. Tripped out blues folk that sounds like Les Rallizes Denudes feedback in 100% Egyptian cotton.'

Songs About People # 985 Milton Berle

Again, a long time Hollywood veteran with over 80 years screen experience as an actor and comedian. Took the role of Louie the Lilac in the Batman series.

Albums of the Year # 48 Half Japanese - Invincible

Not an album I imagine likely to show up on many end of year lists. But I think it's worthy. First posted back in March:

The world and his wife are not beating down Half Japanese' door in 2019. Well let's face it they never really have done and are hardly likely to start doing so now. After all, the band have been plying their trade in a determinedly low-fi manner all the way back to 1979 over 18 albums, numerous singles, cassettes and myriad other releases and tours. They've possibly flown as far under the radar as any 'known' band ever have. Much has changed for them over the years but at the same time nothing has.

So how best to evaluate Invincible, the bands latest record, released quietly just last month. On its own merits probably.  I like it. I imagine I would like most of the Half Japanese back catalogue even though I haven't heard much of that apart from Best of collections. Because they all sound a bit like this don't they? That's intrinsic to the band's charm and appeal.

Listening to a new Half Japanese record is akin to going back to the home you grew up in to find the kids next door are still living there, haven't aged at all and are still playing with the same toys. This is no criticism. In fact it's a high compliment if anything. They, (and by this of course I mostly mean focal point and leader Jad Fair), make the case put forward in Television's Friction, 'I don't want to grow up. There's too much contradiction..'. This record to a large extent is a complaint about the realities that life tries to impose upon us. Rock and Roll remains one of the few remaining feasible Peter Pan options in life and Fair never once wanted to make his way back from Never Neverland.

This record makes Pan's case very cogently, to me at least and I'm enjoying it more with every play. Half Japanese still hang around in the High School corridor with the Velvets, The Modern Lovers, Daniel Johnson, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth and Kurt, their ultimate fan. Subject matter; vampires, the walking dead, alien spacecraft, the teenage crush, them and us. The geek ultimately will clearly inherit the earth. The menu remains the same as does the shambling ill-begotten, intentionally inept musical manner they choose to get their message across in. Most of it works. 

So Invincible, fifteen songs between two minutes and the cusp of four, fifteen dweeb manifestos. Perfect. Or at least perfection judged by their own wonky criteria, formulated in stone over the decades. I commend them to you.

Songs of the Year # 48 Bonnie Prince Billy

Song of the Day # 2,117 Sacha Distel & Joanna Shimkus

Not the original and best know version by Frank and Nancy which I always found slightly creepy. This pairs Sacha with Joanna Shimkus, who went on to marry Sidney Poitier. 

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 431 Chubby Checker

Quite a selection of Chubby on the jukebox at Rosie's for some reason which is odd given the multitude of things not on there. Not a crowd pleaser this one but it pleased me. Patti likes Birdland. I preferred this.

Songs About People # 984 Malachi Throne

Stalwart guest star in all manner of popular American Sixties and Seventies TV Serials, including The Man From Uncle, The Fugitive and Lost in Space. Played False Face  in Batman.

Albums of the Year # 49 Doug Tuttle - Dream Road

Neat, Autumnal stuff from Doug Tuttle:

'American musician Doug Tuttle once of Mmoss has long specialised in the kind of thing he  unveils on his latest album Dream Road. Yearning, jangling, occasionally ever so slightly psychedelic guitar driven pop music. Rooted in Big Star, Teenage Fanclub, Byrds and  '65 and '66 period Beatles.

On Dream Road he does it again but perhaps better than he's ever done it before. This is mining from a classic seam and Tuttle knows exactly how to go about his craft, exactly what he's after and he doesn't let devotees of this stuff down for a moment. Songs don't outstay their welcome for a moment, most of the tracks here see no need to go beyond the three minute mark. Just as it should be.

So, if you treasure your copies of 5D, Rubber Soul, #1 Record or Grand Prix, then there's plenty here which should take your fancy. Dream Road never sounds derivative though because though Tuttle's sources of inspiration are clear he understands the mechanics of this stuff innately and captures the essence. Every song made me marvel at his ability to make the familiar sound so fresh. The essential secret is that he's a damned good songwriter pure and simple.

Ten songs that sound as if a heart is breaking, just the way it did when you were eighteen, Tuttle never puts a foot wrong. Lennon, McCartney, Chilton and Blake would surely doff their caps to Dream Road's achievement. A golden, and quite lovely guitar record.'

Songs of the Year # 49 Ride

Ride's album from this year This is not a Place was not really to my taste but hats off to them for doing their own thing. Did like this though.

Song of the Day # 2,116 Headclouds

Songs About People # 983 Julie Newmar

It's reasonably plain who Julie Newmar played.

Albums of the Year # 50 Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love

So, the countdown to Xmas begins in earnest. At least on here. We start with an excellent record considering it only made it to 50. Jenny Hval's fine The Practice of Love. Originally posted in August. I came to appreciate it more with every play despite my slightly lukewarm tone to the end of this.

Jenny Hval's latest album The Practice of Love starts quite magically with Lions, an electro-pulsed opener that invites us to take notice of the miracle of the universe around us. In terms of the way it sounds, not a million miles away from the fabulous records that Jane Weaver has been putting out over the last few years, it raises the bar high for whatever is coming next. 

Norwegian Hval hasn't really got the strongest voice in the world but it's perfectly serviceable for a really likeable record that pitches her tent somewhere between that of Weaver and Agnes Obel's in the campsite for  reflective contemporary musical existentialists.

Bolstered by guest turns from the likes of Laura Jean, Felicia Atkinson and Vivian Wang. The Practice of Love plays a confident innings. The title track, coming midway through the record, gives Laura Jean a monologue that foregrounds some of the album's main concerns, what it is to be alive, child-bearing or not child-bearing, our purpose of being on the planet and other important quandaries.

The record strides onward, confident but hardly startling, a cool way of starting the day, (at least that's how I started mine yesterday). A fine album without being an exceptional one - though it may be a grower. It would sound just great for a half hour's browse around a Rough Trade Record Shop, perhaps its natural habitat.

Songs of the Year # 50 Carnet De Voyage

We start this with shades of Gainsbourg and Birkin.

Song of the Day # 2,115 Gold Light & Snakemusk

Americana. Named after one of the truly great books.

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 430 Mazzy Star

Bit of Mazzy Star on a Monday evening before Book Club.

Songs About People # 982 Eli Wallach

Archetypal bad guy Eli Wallach, who had a sixty two year Hollywood career,  played Mr Freeze, complete with cryogenic suit.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,114 Foliage

San Benardino, California bedroom based musician Manuel Joseph Walker who basks under the moniker Foliage is clearly deeply inured to Eighties English guitar Indie. He makes fine use of  his indebted influence though on latest album Take. It's slight but likeable, joining the dots between China Crisis and Sarah Records. Here are two tracks.

Jesus & Mary Chain

Songs About People # 981 Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Jones, best known for playing Morticia Addams in the Addams Family, also played Marsha, Queen of Diamonds in five episodes of Batman, marrying the caped crusader in one of them.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,113 Michael Kiwanuka

The third Michael Kiwanuka album, simply entitled KIWANUKA came out last Friday following a number of glowing reviews scattering critical rosebuds before it. I've listened through to it a couple of times and though it's not a bad record by any means I wouldn't say it's the masterpiece that it's suggested to be in some quarters either.

That's not to say there isn't plenty here that's worthwhile. Kiwanuka has a rich, soulful voice, he's a talented arranger and there are some strong songs on the record. The difficulty with reviewing an album like this though is the true giants it inevitably stands in the shadows of. Namely Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder  and the early Seventies classics they recorded that we all grew up with. That these are prime sources of inspiration for Kiwanuka is beyond reasonable doubt given the briefest of exposures to his work.

So while KIWANUKA often sounds good, it almost always sounds like it's carved in the foothills of What's Going On, Curtis and Innervisions. This is a more nuanced and deeply felt record than anything Lenny Kravitz for example ever recorded but it rarely explores the sublime. I'd give it seven.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 328 Courtney Barnett

New from Courtney and a forthcoming Milk! Records compilation, out in a couple of weeks. As with City is Pretty she channels The Velvet Underground guitar sound to fine effect, also showing once more that she understands the art of cover versions. Honouring the Loose Tooth original while making it her own at one and the same time.

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 429 The Auteurs

One of the truly great 'Stop Start' songs. The Auteurs first single from 1993 and a quite masterful track.

Songs About People # 980 Tallulah Bankhead

The utterly uninhibited and also utterly legendary Tallulah Bankhead portrayed Black Widow in Batman in 1967. It was her last screen role.

Song of the Day # 2,112 Son Rompe Pera

Posting on here every day I sometimes need some help. In times when I do, browsing round the Rough Trade website is as good a way as any to chance upon something new and unusual that I'll probably like.

That's very much the case with this lot. Son Rompe Pera a Mexico troupe formed around brothers who fuse the marimba with traditional guitar, bass, drums combination to brew up a proper storm.

This goes ahead of their debut album Batuco which drops next February. It's a riot and the promo which goes along with it and is well worth a watch too. Son Rompe Pera show plenty of attitude, flex their tattoos check out the record stalls and generally make you, or me at least, hungry to hear more.

Songs About People # 979 Cesar Romero

To follow up one mini-series within a series with another. The American Sixties TV version of Batman offered an opportunity for all manner of Hollywood veterans to have a go at portraying its colourful set of villains offering all sorts of opportunities for camp, glamorous bandstanding. It turned into something of a Who's Who of notables. So we start this set of twelve with Cesar Romero who had a sixty plus year career in film, radio and television and of course played The Joker

Song(s) of the Day # 2,111 Maps

A rather lovely moment from Maps album of earlier this year, Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss. Something of the giddy, childlike grace of The Chills here. 

Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 429 The Doors

Stand by The Doors. I always try to.

Songs About People # 978 Enoch Powell

The third and last of this particular mini-series. For one of the more unfortunate British politicians of the Twentieth Century.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,110 Ali Barter

Usually I only post stuff I just like pure and simple but there's something about this that rather got my goat and I'm making an exception. As you get older you get used to niche marketing but there's something particularly cynical about the way Australian singer-songwriter Ali Barter seems to be being sold. By her record company. And more unfortunately, by herself.

Take the picture here, where her hooded, wasted expression is blatantly designed to give the impression that Barter's utterly 'under the influence' whether or not she actually is. Take the song title Ur a Piece of Shit and a lot of the 'too gone to care' lyrics which are either deeply contemptuous or deeply irresponsible or both. The music industry has always exploited wasted chic but in this case it's a shame because some of Barter's songs are half decent if you can circumvent the callow manipulation.

November