Tess Parks has been around for a while and she's always had Alan McGee's firm seal of approval right from the off. No wonder really. New album And Those Who Were Seen Dancing will immediately remind you of things that might you remind you of him.
The Sixties firstly. Tess comes across as a slightly underfed IT girl. A groovy chick, Penelope Tree, Twiggy. Jean Shrimpton. That type. Wearing a cool monochromatic outfit in a cool London night club and about to be photographed by David Bailey. You catch my drift?
Then Creation Records. First track Wow sounds pretty much like the Primal's Loaded with Hope Sandoval droning over it. This is a pretty identikit record really, but those who dig its reference points will surely dig this too. Excuse my 'Hippy' speak.
I certainly dig its reference points. For those who like to pretend they're back in the Nineties, pretending they were back in the Sixties. A record that certainly does what it says on the tin.
Perhaps I'm being slightly flippant and unkind. It's a high listenable album that I'll put on my list of 2022 favourites. In the lower reaches perhaps but I can certainly endorse it.
The fourth unexpeceted treat that came my way last Friday among the new batch of releases. Moot Mother's latest Jazz Codes. A Hip Hop record really, if it needs a label, but deeply engaged with and informed by the great Black American musical and cultura; tradition and well worth cupping an ear to.
It most obviously reminded me of a couple of records, both of them classic early Nineties ones. Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets debuts, People's Instinctive Travels and Reachin'.
Both of these records have stood the test of time and I'd say t Jazz Codes should do. It's mired in the eternal. This feels like a project. Knitted together from a set of collaborators with rappers and poets, understandably focuses on issues facing the Afro American community. There's plenty of rage but this is an easy record to listen to.
The whole thing positively floats. It also crackles and resonates. Haunting and soothing in turn. Described by its key author as 'Black Quantum Futurism',it tells an old story, and one apparently that needs constant retelling.
Another of the fresh explorations in to the wonders of yesterday which the likes of Allah- Las excel in. Ghost Woman's eponymous album joins the dots between Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape. the Paisley Underground scene and Brian Jonestown Massacre.
That's my review in a nutshell frankly. If you like those artists, you will almost certainly like much of this. Ghost Woman explores absolutely no fresh territory but nevertheless covers plenty of deeply wonderful familiar ground with great skill.
The sound of clanging, chiming reverb guitars and lush harmonies essentially. There are records that try to exist in the present and those that simply don't because they revere the past too much. This is certainly one of the latter. That's not intended as a criticism in any respect.
I come across a record like this every year pretty much. One that shines a light on this golden era of the American guitar at the frontier of a new consciousness, 65-67. If Cool Ghouls or alla La's put out a record during the year it's generally theirs. Looks like Ghost Woman are set for this award this year.
What is it about Arcade Fire? They're back with a new album called WE. Watch out folks. They've been reading dystopian fiction again. Someone should take their library cards away really. On the surface, after a couple of shaky albums over recent years this feels like a return to form. These are good songs. Clearly. But somehow it doesn't resound. At least not with me.
First of all it needs to be said that Arcade Fire are definitely not the zeitgeist anymore, and never will be again. Once, they arguably were. This must be an enormous, irritating itch for them. One they can't scratch. Particularly given how messianic and zealous and full of self importance they've always been and remain.
This lot have always thought they were the best band in the entire world and for a while, many, many people thought they were too. You could probably consider their imperial period covered their first three albums, perhaps a minor blip, for their second Neon Bible, which was considered a misstep by many at the time.
The problem for me with this band is they appear to have swallowed their own myth, good and proper. Just because they relased a couple of records that had a good claim to be the albums of the year, they seem to be convinced that every record they have has a god given right to be accorded that status. Life doesn't often work like that. It hasn't for them anyhow.
Unfortunately they still think that the tricks that worked so well on Funeral and The Suburbs will always work. Essentially, bombast, turning everything up to 11, full on anthemic mode at all points, whether they really have anything to say or not. On first play with WE, they don't particularly except that Big Brother and The Man are still out to get us. Is that really news? I won't be listening to it again to find out if I'm wrong or not.
I had a slightly frustrating time on occasion watching Glastonbury on TV this year. Not all the time, for the most part it was wonderful, but occasionally I had a slightly frustrating spell watching and trying to appreciate the attraction of the highly feted crop of young or youngish British Post Punk bands once again.
I've pretty much given up on Black Midi and Squid now. Dry Cleaning went slightly, ever so slightly up in my estimation. IDLES played a great set. In general though I think I need to give up my struggle against this puzzling modern sub genre of independent music, for fear of boring people.
If asked to choose my favourite band among those, inevitably lazily coralled under the Post Punk label, they would certainly be Goat Girl, a group that I'm always slightly surprised to find rather neglected when this area of music is discussed.
I saw Goat Girl play a few years ago, in their early days, supporting someone, (can't remember who). If I'd known how interested I'd become in them I'd have paid more attention. Naima Bock, played bass in that original incarnation of the band. She's since left, had a pretty tough time personally apparently and come up with this, her debut Wild Palm.
It's a really magical album, quite unlike anything else you'll here this year. It certainly doesn't sound anything like Goat Girl. A hugely ambitious record that touches on Jazz, (Miles and Coltrane come to mind), Bossa Nova, the Avant Gard and mostly Folk. Often it pitches itself somewhere between Sandy Denny, Os Mutante and one of those great personal idiusyncratice personal statements of the late Sixties and early Seventies, Forever Changes, Astral Weeks, Five Leaves Left, Just Another Diamond Day. But really these are just reference points. It's really just an incredibly original album that demands to be be heard..
For the course of its ten track run Wild Palm meanders wherever chooses and makes you want to listen to it again once you're done to try to work out exactly where it might becoming from, because you can't quite believe what you've heard and what you're hearing.
It's magic, pure and simple. Lush, bucolic and pastoral all at once. An incredible act of renewal and recover/ The record has already gathered a small buzz and I can see that gathering in coming months. It's out on Sub Pop. Do yourself a favour.
An actor who seemed to have it all in the palm of his hands then suddenly didn't gets Slavic tribute.
Weird. I like weird. When it comes to the end of the year, records by Cate Le Bon and Aldous Harding will feature high on my list of favourite personal records of 2022. Practitioners of the new female weird thing.
Also this. Tresor The latest album from Cornish Welsh Folk marvel Gwenno which had me spinning back in time this morning as if I'd inadvisably been deep in the forest, ingested some mushrooms that I really shouldn't have, and been sent back to ancient days to hang out with Arthur's knights and Morgan Le Fey. Trust me, I'm not being fanciful. It does actually sound like that.
Gwenno sings, speaks and chants in Welsh and Cornish while around her, musicians weave a musical backdrop that is both mired deep in pre-history and wonderfully modern at one and the same time. She's been doing this for a while now, so Tresor shouldn't really come as a surprise to devotees, merely confirmation of what a pure and wonderful talent she is..
I'm not sure where I'd rank this in comparison with Aldous's Warm Chris or Cate's Pompeii. I find it increasingly difficult to do such things these days. I'm just glad they're all here. Gwenno should really have called this Treasure. Because that's what it and she clearly are..
July is here and I've already chanced upon a couple of really terrific new or recent record releases to greet its arrival. First, Gingko the latest from Field Guides, a project centred around Bendedict Kupstas.
The only label I can think of which seems approprate for this is 'Post Interne't music. Searches for personal meaning, discovery and coherence in a universe which no longer seems to offer them. Looking back to forge forwards.
Gingko is one of the best recent examples of this genre, if such a thing exists, I've probably just made it up. It's a charming, formed and compelling record, probably best experienced at dusk or dawn.
Full of allusions to the classical and literary, it's an incredibly assured record, and one I knew immediately I'll come back to many times over the coming months and destined for the higher reaches of my end of year list which I've realised gets going in just a couple of short months.
Field Guides will certainly be there. Kupstas is a magnificent, self-contained talent and Gingko a wonderfully achieved artistic statement. Many thanks again to Darren Jones, who consistently directs me towards wonderful stuff on here, for the tip.
I have a feed of new music for Friday morning new record releases that I work my way through during the week that follows. It's a necessary element of what I need to do, given the slightly daft remit of what I've set myself to do here.
So yesterday, by chance I started to listen to Lavender Days the latest album from Ohio's Caamp. It's opening song Come With Me was immediately taking. Not so much a song as a permanent build, bedded on a rush of frantically strummed guitarists that never gets and never needs to get to its chorus.
The record spins, it's a nice background record. Based on harmonies and melodies that maybe a hundred bands anchor releases on a hundred times everywhere. Based in some respect on the kind of thing that bands like Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes and The Decemberists brought back into fashion. Because the themes they touch on had never gone away.
Lavender Days is not a record you need to listen to. You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. But you might like to listen to it. It touches on eternal themes. Growing older. Watching the world around you change, while much essantially remains the same.Caamp seem like a bunch of good old boys, and they've made a solid record.
Norwalk, Connecticut's finest Goose, well I imagine their the finest Norwalk has to offer, strut a confident if fairly generic step on latest album Dripfield. It's that generic, slightly faceless, white guitar large arena sound that has been filling stadiums for over twenty years now. The goose, if you'll forgive the pun,(you probably won't) that layed Kings of Leon's Golden Egg.
It's all perfectly palatable, though it's also equally bland. Like a reasonably filling meal at an unmemorable diner. The kind of thing you might enjoy reasonable if a friend played it to you on a car trip and then forget the name of the band ten minutes after the journey ends. I realise this is a fairly damning review but too many bands are taking this option. I stopped listening after a few tracks in and put on Mild Orange's latest instead. That's my go to record of that description this year. It truly touches on the transcendent which this kind of music at its best can do too.
