The marvellously named Meril Wubslin have just released a fiery and tangled Folk album called Alors Quoi which demands more attention than it's likely to receive. Dark, intoned with evident commitment and belief, it stirs the blood or certainly stirred mine and I've come back to it on a number of occasions over the last few weeks.
Meril Wubslin is not a woman, as you might immediately assume, but a trio.based in Lausanne and Brussels. On Alors Quoi they build up a proper head of steam on track after track, using the French tongue to splendid effect, the record has a thick and magical intensity.
The album has such a spiritual intensity that you feel the nusicians very much in the room with you. They work together with deeply focused intent. One to turn to if you're seeking a 'now for something completely different' moment of uncanny concentrated fervour.
The spectral Efterklang do a cover of a Piano Magic track which I'm not familiar with and will send me back to the original. This is, in itself, rather lovely.
You Are Still Here is not a bad name for a record. Everyone who reads this is I assume still here. It's not a bad thing to remind yourself of on occasion and Tim Cohen also of Bay Area's The Fresh & Onlys is here to encourage us to do so.
I was very fond of Cohen's 2017 album Luck Man. I listened to it a lot at the time, and it resonated with me in its small quiet way. He's put out another since, which I missed out on for one reason or another and now he's back again, because he clearly has a need to express something which The Fresh & Onlys will not allow him to, and I'm personally glad he does.
For You Are Still Here is not just a good name for a record, it is also a good record. Cohen has a quietly spoken modesty but assured insistence about his delivery which I find affecting here as I did on Luck Man. In some ways he comes across as an everyman, but a damned talented one.
Cohen has always played with 'Western' motifs, both musicaly and lyrically on his records. Both with The Fresh & Onlys and on his solo records. He does so again here. The idea of a frontier, what it takes to be a good man. Big Lebowski stuff. Meanwhile the guitar strings twang and reverberate as appropriate. It's all quietly affecting stuff.
There will many higher profile albums than this one this year. There will be many that will get much, much more attention. But You Are Still Here has a quiet but powerful appeal that I am sure I'll return to again across the coming months. Tim Cohen is the quiet but strong man deceptively fast on the draw, who you will want on your posse when it comes to the final shootdown.
The Lighthouse Keepers were a guitar band from Canberra, Australia who were active in the early Eighties. They're probably little remembered now except for their support slots with The Triffids of the UK in the mid-years of that decade. They're worthy of some basic excavation work though, as their recorded legacy makes a good listen, particularly as a companion piece to that better known Perth band.
The music is Folky with Country leanings much as the Triffids early records are. It's the sound of being young and liking books, a sound that became particularly recognisable and evident during these years, a time when I was coming of age myself and finding myself particularly drawn to music that expressed this sensibility.
. The Lighthouse Keepers songs,( I'd direct you first to the Lipsnipegroin complilation) , are warm, melodic and altogether rather charming and don't date remotely to my ears in the way that some music made in those days undoubtedly has.
Although the band's recordings lack the star quality that distinguished The Triffids, The Go Betweens and The Birthday Party from the Australian pack in those years, they're certainly worth a listen. Their tight knit rapport amd rolling energy is evidently apparent. Perhaps footnote status primarily but a footnote I suspect you wouldn't regret investigating further.
Ryley Walker is a musician who I've gone for to some degree in the past, without ever falling completely for a single album. He has a new one out now called Course in Fable which Uncut Magazine have just awarded their Album of the Month. I'll give it a listen now.
He's a musician who thrives on melody, albeit cyclycle, circular melody. His is something of a Prog Folk sound. As a fan of the latter but not really the former, this leaves me in the undecided lane when it comes to much of his music.
Course in Fable has its definite moments of beauty and grace. He definitely knows his Van Morrison and Nick Drake, and when he wanders through their fields I'm rather taken. But then he'll vault a stile for no good reason into neighbouring Pink Floyd and King Crimson territory and I'm tempted to give up on him altogether and find something more to my liking to listen to.
So this record is a game of two halves, a curate's egg, or whatever your own simile of choice for a mixed experience might be. Ultimately, I find Walker rather a fussy operator who should sit down and enjoy the view to a much greater degree than he allows himself to do. Not a record I can see myself returning to this one.
In 1994 I spent a year in Warsaw. In the centre of town on Marzalkowska Street outside the main department stores, hawkers use to sell bootleg cassettes of the latest releases. I bought quite a few over the course of the year but my most memorable purchase of the year was definitely Nas's debut album Illmatic.
It was and still is a fabulous album, probably the last Hip Hop album I truly fell for before I pushed the genre to one side in terms of my tastes and focused elsewhere. But I got several years of play out of that particular cassette and then replaced it on CD and still later on vinyl. It's what they refer to in romantic affairs as a keeper. All urban noir cool, slippery and enigmatic beats and an atmosphere you could slice with a knife.
Twenty five years on and Hip Hop doesn't play a large part in my life. I go back to my Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest. Digable Planets and De La Soul records sometimes. I have a healthy respect for Wu Tang and his Clan but I barely ever listen to them anymore. Kanye, Eminem even Kendrick don't appeal .Hey, I'm 55. I don't really care to hear the 'N' word every other sentence. or indulge young men's fantasies of blowing one another away. Yes, I know I'm generalising and probably missing great stuff but I won't lose any sleep about it.
So it was with great pleasure that I chanced upon Tha Wolf on Wall Street. Tha God Fadim and Your Old Droog's fabulous collaboration from earlier this year. It's wicked! Sorry, did tell you I was 55. But it is really great. All Liquid Swords inventive samples and odd lyrical slants which seem to focus as much on what you might say or be exposed to during a visit to your therapist as what's going down on the corner.
This record is addictive. It casts shadows. It creeps up on you in a couple of plays. It's only eight tracks long so it's a moot point as to whether it's actually an album or should be referred to as an EP instead of as an album. I'm calling it an album anyhow, a lot of Hip Hop albums are too long for my tastes anyhow and this is just right, like baby bear's porridge.
The God Fahim and Your Old Droog circle and rap off each other with great wit and poise. The rhythms and loops are dope. I admit freely that I'm not particularly fluent in this argot and it's probably for the best. But I like this. It strikes me as a slick, inventive and enlightened album. Strikes me as another keeper. Such a spooky and soulful record.
The absolute nadir. I don't even have ten records from this year that are worthy of posting. Here is the Best Ever Albumschart.
1. Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
2. David Bowie - Station to Station
3. The Ramones - The Ramones
4. The Eagles - Hotel California
5. Boston - Boston
6. Rush - 2112
7. Bob Dylan - Desire
8. The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
9. Genesis - A Trick in the Tail
10. Electric Light Orchestra - A New World Record
Here is my Top Eight. Chosen just from the albums I own in record form. Says it all. My favourite record from this year was actually recorded in 1972.
1. The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
2. The Ramones - The Ramones
3. Bob Dylan - Desire
4. The Patti Smith Group - Radio Ethiopia
5. Blondie - Blondie
6. ABBA - Arrival
7. The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action
8. Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
Otherwise as a year probably best to draw a veil over the whole thing apart from Reggae where there was a lot of excellent stuff. Sadly I don't own any of it. Also Station to Station of course which would be in my list if I owned it. On to '77 where things start to look an awful lot better.
Joan Armatrading is truly wonderful artist. A thoughtful and talented musician whose voice on her finest songs resonate with me in a way that few others do. But perhaps she's not enormously influential. You don't listen to many records and think, 'he or she's been listening to Joan.'
Not often but sometimes. Sunny War sounds like she's cupped her ear to a few Armatrading albums. And I don't mean that just because she's a black woman. She has Joan's lilt.
There's also a reflection here, an inner Soul in the genuine old school sense, not the debased worn out Saturday evening TV singing contest, between essentially unsoulful and untalented people. Sunny is deeply talented, and not as well known as she ought to be.
Simple Syrup, her sixth album in all, just out, is a pearl. Now esconsed in Venice Beach, California after spending time in Detroit and Nashville, Sunny War lives up to the contradiction spelt out between her given name and surname. Plenty of light and shade.
This is a record with much to offer. Chance of pace, change of mood. A deep rich voice supplemented by sparse rolling guitar embroidery and occasional strings. The kind of record you might want to put on one Sunday afternoon, stretch yourself out on the sofa and properly enjoy.
'a youth club disco band with a reggae bass player and a punk producer, trying to play African dub versions of Motown's greatest hits, with a member of The Shangri-Las on lead vocals.'
There are some things you never ever really expect to hear on a new record ever, ever again. Many of them are on here, Duly Noted, the second album by Canadian trio Tuns, a Power Pop record of such great intuition and inspired detail that it truly taps itself into the DNA of Nowheresville, USA, 1978, even though you know it was actually released just over a week ago.
This is a cute but highly effective musical act of spot the difference time travel that more and more artists are prone to nowadays. Some do it better than others. Tun do it better than almost anybody else. They realise that you don't just have to understand what you wish to be that you have to actually be it. You have to inhabits its skin. Most of all you have to listen to Cheap Trick records of the period until you are Cheap Trick.
This to all effects and purposes is a 1978 record. Grease and Animal House are in the cinemas and the second Star Wars film is being made. America still knows precious little about Punk and every small town across the land has a band that sounds just like this one. Post Punk meanwhile will never, ever happen.
Tuns harmonies are flawless. Their trousers are tight and their teethand hair dos brush backed are perfect. They're preppyboys and perhaps not very bright or even very nice. Like Richie Cunningham's best friends in Happy Days, which was being made in 1978, even if it wasn't actually about 1978. Perhaps it actually was about 1978 rather than 1958 after all.
Duly Noted doesn't skip a line or a beat. It's note perfect. If Nowheresville, USA, 1978, is what you wan,t the train is waiting for you in the station. It has twelve stops in all and to be honest each stop looks pretty much the same from your train window. If a better leap in time and place occurs in 2021 I will doff my cap to it. Then attempt to eat it.
Du Blonde is a musician who doesn't take herself too seriously but is worth taking seriously anyhow. Hailing from the neck of the woods that I've been delighted to be able to call my neighbourhood now for over twelve years, namely the North East of England, her latest album, Homecoming is more of the trashy but far from disposable fun that she's come to be known for.
So what do you get? Poundland value for money. Ramones, Cramps, Blondie, B52's beats, Kenickie, Elastica, poppy era Lush, movies, comic strips, dressing up, making up, going out. A sensibility that's utterly stripped of pretension but is actually smarter than a lot of your so called smart friends and certainly a lot more fun.
On Homecoming you also get collaborations. High proile collaborations, with the likes of Ezra Furman and Shirley Manson and rather lower profile ones with the likes of The Farting Suffragettes. I'm afraid I can't help you there. Never mind. Belt up and enjoy the ride.
Because this is fun. Do you remember fun? Not stroking your chin and wondering what Radiohead are trying to say to you. Not trying to keep up with Nick Cave. This is fun in the way that Ramones, Cramps Blondie and B52's albums were primarily fun despite the fact that they were plenty smart too. Officially the beginning of Spring.
Now here's an interesting one. Tune-Yards are great. Cannonball by Breeders is one of the greatest songs ever written. But the overriding question when listening to this is' Why?'Why bother? You can't improve on perfection. The original of this, almost more than any other is the sum of its exquisite, component parts.That odd vocal sound right at the start . The kick in drum effect. The loping bassline. The guitar crunch.T hat incredible, exuberant noise that is also the chorus. You know how it goes. Leave it alone Tune-Yards. You don't stand a chance.
My thoughts on listening to Anna Fox Rochinski while clearing my flat a couple of days ago:
I had never hear the name Anna Fox Rochinski before a few days ago when the usual sources started to herald the arrival of her debut album Cherry. She's from the Quilt stable which was a promising initial sign for me as Quilt was also the starting base for Olden Yolk, one of my favourite bands of recent years.
Cherry sounds very little like Olden Yolk. Altogether less immersed in the Sixties, (barely a hint of that decade here), and perhaps more tuned into the Eighties although there are echoes of contemporary artists too, notably St. Vincent. It's perhaps an album that struggles to make an absolute impression and statement of its own but it's not an unprepossessing record when it steers away from the spot the influence arena.
If I had to mention one artists from the past that this seems to veer towards, I'd have to say that it's probably Annie Lennox. While I'm no rabid, Eurythmics fan, I liked a few singles , thought Love is a Stranger was a small classic and was indifferent to much else, this consistent reminder as Cherry ran its course was by no means an unpleasant one.
This was a record that wiled away a quiet hour while I was spending a day of staggered flat cleaning. It was an album that never irritated me, but never really grabbed me particularly either like not disimilar recent releases by Jane Inc. and Floatey have done recently.
These two seem to have slightly more going on under the surface than Cherry does. Partly could I couldn't feel much coming at me lyrically that grabbed me or seemed to warrant further investigation. Hey, my formative music years were spent in the early Eighties when this kind of chart fodder that seemed to be ten a penny. Artists that had a lot less to offer than Eurythimcs. Blue Zoo, Howard Jones, Fiction Factory, The Fixx.
Still, I'll give it further plays to see if it creeps up on me. I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from listening to it because it has an admirable pop sheen and I did wonder on first listen whether I was missing anything. Only one way to found out I guess.
First, a personal caveat. Calling yourself Dry Cleaning is no way to endear yourselves to me. Yes, I understand why bands do things like this, zeroing in on the ordinary, the mundane, as a way to highlight the extraordinary, the innate complexities, layers and depth and beauties they plan to focus on. I wish they wouldn't. I have enough of the ordinary in my life. I look to music for something else.
Having got that off my chest, here are some words on 4AD's great new hopes. Yes, a four-piece band from South London called Dry Cleaning and their debut album called New Long Leg just out.
It's very much a record of the streets. It's real in the way that Tracey Emin was real. You just need to listen to it and gives off the smells of city life, of traffic streaming by, of rubbish bins and fish and chips, of Staines and Crystal Palace, concrete and high rise, convenience stores. Laaandon!!!
So, if I've already mentioned that the name of Dry Cleaning does little for me and the textures of their record is not one that particularly floats my boat either, that's not to say New Long Leg is not a record of merit or worth. It is. For many people it will be one of the records of the year and I can understand why.
Here is a band that do that Post Punk thing that is so prevalent right now.They tick absolutely all of the necessary boxes very competently. Stream of consciousness lyrics, intoned, (in this case genererally spoken), over scratchy, wall of sound guitars that go back most of all to Gang of Four. Modern disquiet. It's almost a formula now and bands are lining up around the block with their take on it. Count 'em - IDLES Shame, Cool Greenhouse, the Fat White Family family tree. Get in line Dry Cleaning. Get in line. Get your contemporary irony, disdain and despair here. In a State of the Art 4AD sleeve.
New Long Leg establishes its rhythm early and sticks with it for the rest of the record. Like a long Geoffrey Boycott innings. There's actually very little variation on here. If you don't care for one song then you're highly unlikely to care for the next. I wonder sometimes whether this is easy or uneasy listening really. It's certainly in vogue. You have to give it that.
Ultimately I'll pass. This isn't a bad record and Dry Cleaning aren't a bad band. They're just a rather predictable one. I'd point them in the direction of Goat Girl, the one band from that Brixton, Windmill scene that is so clearly the spiritual home of this sound, who seem to have struck off for somewhere new with their second album On All Fours.
Dry Cleaning are not there yet. New Long Leg is their first record and it's certainly not their New Gold Dream. But Simple Minds took a while to get themselves completely off the building sites of Glasgow and onto the broad cinema screens and autobahns of Europe. Dry Cleaning need to find a way of making the ordinary sound extraordinary. This is not the record of theirs that does so.
Maria Sommerville, (I'm sorry who?), does a cover of Seabird, (I'm sorry what?), originally by Air Miami, (I'm sorry who?). Unexceptional in every respect I'm afraid. But then again it's worth remembering there was always a fair bit of filler on This Mortal Coil albums too. It helped focus you on the truly magnficent stuff.
An album quite unlike any I've heard thus far this year and one with a specific and quite wonderful charm. God's Trash Men Sent to Right the Mess, from Belgian duo Fievel is Glauque, is the record in question. It's a collection of brief but inspired musical collages that combine the joys of off the wall freaky be bop, left bank experimentalism, daisy era hip hop eclectisism, and outre derring do. Hope that gives you some idea of what it sounds like. Possibly not.
A record that came out at the end of January and one I've only just picked up the scent of. Well, better late than never in this case. Very much so. There are twenty tracks on here in all and most of them check in between one and two and a half minutes. It doesn't hang around. God's Trash Men is a blast from the first second of its opening track, a truly new variation on well trodden paths and an altogether delightful listening experience, pure and simple.
It's certainly a blast, at the risk of repeating myself, that's for sure. Reminding me sometimes of the early Eighties Jazz and retro adventuring the likes of Everything But The Girl, Prefab Sprout, Weekend and The Bristol scene groups that orbited around Rip Rig & Panic indulged in. God's Trash Men... is a record that sounds ahead of the pack in every respect and is certainly the most truly original album I've heard thus far this year.
These are not so much tunes so much as fragments. But they're fragments that make complete sense. The record finishes with its longest track. The four minute closer ironically entitled No Title, which has a brilliant end effect with singer Marie-Amelie Clement-Bollee intoning the title like a stuck record, bringing this inspired album to an utterly inspired close. Paris, polo neck, 1960, London, polo neck, 1980. Brussels it seems, polo neck, 2020.
This is a record that you want to recommend to people. To buy so you can play it to them. To buy so you can play it to yourself. I hope it breaks out of cult corner. I doubt it somehow, Can't seem to track down a vinyl version as of yet. But my goodness, it deserves to. It's a small but beautifully formed classic. Hear it.
P.S. Slight disclaimer. This record might never surprise you quite like it does on the first listen. On my second or third now and it's slightly less startling. More comfortable. Like a cosy armchair. I'd still maintain it's a quite wonderful record though.
One of the most interesting stables of musicians in the world at the moment seem to be the group of people in Australia who coalesce now and then and put out records as Total Control. One of that number and certainly one of the most interesting musicians of the group is Perth's David West.
Long since it seems having flown the Total Control nest, West now puts out some of his most interesting stuff under the banner Rat Columns. They put out a terrific album in 2017 called Candle Power and are now back with another Pacific Kiss.
It's meandering, romantic guitar melodicism somewhere between The Only Ones, The Go Betweens, Felt and Belle & Sebastian. That should be enough to entice you in and Pacific Kiss has plenty to offer to anyone who loves any of these bands and is looking to renew their vows.
The Breeders doing what they can still, remarkably do all these years down the line. Surprise and delight you. The original, like all of the originals on this sublime record, is by another 4AD recording artiste, in this case His Name is Alive.
This is a record that knows where it wants to be. It wants to be in 1981. When young men, like the young men in The Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, The Chills, and The Clean wielded their guitars like weapons and as if there really was no tomorrow.
It was a worrying time to be honest. People were most worried about the nuclear bomb. But there was also rioting, social unrest, police brutality and plenty more to fret about and these bands provided a damned fine soundtrack and no little consolation.
Adult Books are essentially more 'coming of age' than adult.. They're incredibly cuspy in terms of their sound and the emotional impact they convey. They're the first bands you saw, if the first time you experienced the thrill of live concerts was back then. Their latest album Grecian Urn is pure retro thrill, an experience I enjoyed thorugh they are also defined and restricted by their sound. This breaks old rather than new ground..
The early Chills came across as a particularly important influence as the record unfolds. It seemed to offer a similar trip through lurid and verdant undergrowth as that band's early singles did. Guitars that chime and clang, that know their Byrds but also their Clash.
So this is a slightly weird Time Travel experience, like being offered the opportunity to go back to the university halls of your first few terms and put right their first few, important mistakes. Its ten tracks in all, ones that complement and offer subtle variation to one another.
There is plenty of punching of the air along the way. Adult Books are not here to change or save the world so much as give us all a reminder of a time when such an idea seemed conceivable. Hardly the worst mission or accomplishment imaginable. This record succeeds in almost evrything it wants to do and I'll come back to it.
