IAN SWEET - Sucker.

 

I do like Ian Sweet records. I liked the last album, 2021's Show Me How You Dusappear and I like this one Sucker. Sweet is a low profile Lana Del Ray. Less attention seeking and frankly a lot less irritating but seemingly focused on similar themes. The essential strangeness of modern existence, and how ultimately alienating it often feels to be unmoored and floating in space across the universe in 2023. 

Sucker.is full of unconventional Pop Songs of deep yearning that hint at great pain and greater desire. They're plugged into modern sexuality and sensuality and resist easy pigeonholing at every turn. I've already done just this by bringing up Del Ray but in some ways Bowie as the original shapeshifter is a better reference point here. Even though these songs don't really ever sound like Bowie songs as such.

They're Pop Songs really. They come with a spoonful of sugar which as any well brought up child know,s helps the medicine go down. In the mist delightful way! IAN SWEET is largely an underground concern still, as far as I can gather, but Sucker. is another fine record which should help address this sad and sorry state of affairs,

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time -# 39 Maximo Park

 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 462 NWA - Straight Outta Compton

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 119 Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister

 

Songs of the Year # 51 Alabaster dePlume

 

Albums of the Year # 51 Deerhoof - Miracle Level

 

San Franciscan legends Deerhoof continue along their singular path with latest record Miracle- Level. Continuing to put the en- in enigmatic they fuse art, noise, fun and cute Japanese vocalising to the n-th degree.

Miracle- Level is fun, fun, fun 'til Daddy takes the action paint spray away. As you'd expect it's akin to a leisurely hour spent strolling around a Contemporary Art Galley with your pretentious friend.

Prankster anarchists in the line of Kesey, Ginsberg, Yoko, Sonic Youth, The Boredoms and My Bloody Valentine, this particular record finds Deerhoof prioritising the playful. 

They have a magpie's eye. I was pretty certain I detected a Led Zep riff in there a one point. But they ensure that they keep things shifting along at a pace enviable of a band of such advanced years.

If the Japanese language keeps things oblique for speakers restricted to the English tongue it's still mighty contagious stuff.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,553 Emma Anderson

 

An early Monday morning with Emma Anderson's Pearlies. An interesting experience. The record came out a few weeks ago. It's been lauded in the circles where you would expect it to be lauded. Indie ones. And it's deserving of that praise. It's a finely worked on, nuanced and considered statement.

Anderson is a musician with a slightly pained history and a story to tell. Lush, (where she came from), were a band with a respectable career and one that made some fine records. But they, and the scene they emerged from, the Shoegaze one, were on the receiving end of their fair share of critical bickbats and Anderson and Miki Berenyi her partner in Lush, were embattled constantly by the brutal sexism that the music business is charactersed by. The curtain also came down on Lush when their dummer hung himself.What can you say about the scare that this leaves.

Pearlies is a finely wrought and well produced record. As you'd expect from a musician with Anderson's back catalogue and pedigree, it's highly atmospheric. It sounds like the Lush album that never was. As you'd also expect, Anderson misses Berenyi's voice, which was always slightly stronger and has more character than hers.

Still, I enjoyed ,forty minutes with Pearlies. Anderson has always been a talented songwriter and perhaps this will help that be more generally and widely recognised. There's much textured bloodletting here that David Lynch, the master of this kind of emotional theatre, would appreciate and applaud. Recommended. 

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time -# 40 The Pigeon Detectives

 

 

Oh gosh. More Arctic Monkeys cast offs.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 461 Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 120 The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

 

Songs of the Year # 52 Black Market Karma

 

Albums of the Year # 52 This is Your Kit - Careful of Your Keepers

 

Kate Staples, who essentially if the driving motor and heart of This is the Kit has been an important part of many people lives for some years now. This seems to be set to continue and the loving bond to harden, with the release of her latest record. Careful of Your Keepers. 

Out of Winchester, Kate has channeled the Folk spirit with her ongoing project for over fifteen years now. I've always found her records almost mathematical in terms of their symmetry and unity.

There's a calm authority in her delivery that radiates health and vision. It feels like you're in the company of someone you know and love and trust intimately. A walk in the countryside with the promise of a pub lunch at  the point of arrival. Thirty five minutes with an old and deeply valued friend.

Careful of Your Keepers has a tick tock certitude that's deeply reassuring in these troubled times. In November the band will kick off a 50 part UK and European tour which will take them from Edinburgh, Tunbridge Wells, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Leipzig, Rheims among their destinations and then on to New York. One stop on this trek is The Sage in Gateshead, less than a couple of miles from where I'm sitting listening and writing this. I'm already planning. Plotting my co-ordinates

Song(s) of the Day # 3,552 Portable Radio

 

I always like it when Did Not Chart, listed on the Blogroll, to the right of this page posts. It's less often these days, but whenever the man behind it does, what he writes, and what he writes about is worth reading and noting. 

To Portable Radio, his latest post. A Manchester band. An affable looking quartet of fellows with a taste for Seventies Singalong radio. This might mean, (wait for it), reminders of  Mike Batt's Wombles, ELO, Wings, Gilbert O'Sullivan.

But wait. Don't run away just yet. Unless you're positively allergic to this kind of stuff. Because Portable Radio are damned good at what they do and every song on latest album Counting To Three sounds like a hit that never was.

Most of all it's gloriously melodic so it might have been made with me in mind. This stuff is mother's milk to me. I'm a very sentimental fellow by instinct. A Beatles fan. R.E.M. Monkees. So this goes down a treat. 

For me it's a spoonful of nostalgia because early Seventies Pop Music is what I was reared on. This stuff is not easily done. If it was a lot more people would do it. Of course many would not want to even if they could. But personally I'm glad that Portable Radio do and have done, Fine stuff.

My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize # 26 Oasis

 

The Oasis V Blur singles war. A moment in music history that looks increasingly tawdry the further we get from it.

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time - # 41 The Paddingtons

                                More spirited and likeable than much of what we've heard so far.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 460 The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 121 Slowdive - Souvlaki

 

Albums of the Year # 53 Beach Fossils - Bunny

 

                           'Sometimes. I'm in love with thinking I'm in love.' Beach Fossils, Numb

Beach Fossils are back with a new record. This will be significant news to some. Those with a certain sensibility and record collections. It seems a long time ago now when this particular journey started. Way back in 2010, the original fresh faced quartet emerged from Brooklyn, New York and released their eponymous record.

It was at once a journey. into the past, and as it turned out, into the future. At least as far as a particular seam of American Independent guitar music was concerned. An exercise in intense delicacy, and sensitivity. It called out to many.

Twee, intensely twee. The record harked back to The Byrds, most all, the sound of guitars ringing, chiming. But also onwards from The Byrds into the Eighties. To R.E.M and The Smiths, New Order, C-86, Sarah Records, other aspects of Factory, Railway Children. And most of all a specific moment in life. Teenage awakenings. Holding someone's hand for the first time, first kisses, the brief period in your life when your heart first awakens.

Like I said it was treasured by many, and was a partial inspiration for any number of American bands and a movement of sorts over the years that followed. Real Estate DIIV, Alvvays. Arrested development, stasis. The best summer of your youth. The one which never ended.

Beach Fossils sixth Bunny, is hardly an evolution of this sensibility, It's an attempt to realise it fully. Distil it. Capture first love in a bottle. It's Bobby Gillespie's decision to stay in love with his initial vision, The Byrds, Love, and not to listen to those nasty Rolling Stones and wander off the woodland path to Grandma's House. It's a sweet delightful record that sticks with admirable determination to the bearings it plots for itself. The secret of eternal youth.

Songs of the Year # 53 Bry Webb

 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,551 Bry Webb

 

Looking for a little record of calm, early in Sunday morning I was please to come upon Run With Me by Canadian songwriter Bry Webb. A laid back guitar driven exercise not a million miles away from Dire Straits in their early likable days before they donned heandbands, embraced the naff, and headed for the stadiums.

This is definitely a matter of put on your guitar and play, see where that takes us. As well as the Knopfer thing there's definitely some DNA shared with Steve Gunn, who's put out some wonderful, freewheeling guitar records in recent years.

As Run With Me played, its meditative calm and genuine wisdom emerged, like ripple circles as a fisherman's line breaks the surface of a still lake. A vedic calm emerged. Webb is a man of considerable gifts and they're put to fine use here.

My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize # 25 Boo Radleys

 

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time - # 42 Morning Runner

 

No. Just no.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 459 Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 122 Weezer - Pinkerton

 

Songs of the Year # 54 Sparklehorse

 

Not a song from this year really. But a rather special thing nonetheless,

Albums of the Year # 54 Sleaford Mods- UK GRIM

 

Seaford Mods are far from the workshy yobs that government stereotypes might wish to label them, given the way they look. Release wise they're one of the most hardworking bands we have right now. Also one of the best. Particularly in terms of trying to offer a state of the nation address every time they put out a record these days.

There are others who walk a similar path. Some of the so called Post Punk bands. Dry Cleaning, Shame, Fat White Family, Billy Nomates. Warm Duscher, Slowthai, IDLES. 

It's all fairly angry stuff but as I've said on here before, there's a lot to be angry about living in the UK these days. Government evil, media barrage, a general sense of personal impotence, an anxiety of being unable to do anything about all this. These feel like 'end times' in lots of ways.

Sleaford Mods are as good as anything we have in response to all this evil, and they're consistently musically sharp and dryly witty at the same time. Everything that's great about them is immediately present and correct on latest record  UK GRIM. Well titled too.

I'm not sufficiently completist to tell you whether it's a better record than their last one or whether it's an indication that their next one might be their masterpiece. It's just another very good record by Sleaford Mods. Have they ever made a bad one?

Song(s) of the Day # 3,550 Hotline TNT

 

Cartwheel, the latest album from Hotline TNT opens up with waves of guitar inhaling and exhaling then spitting out soft feedback. Hey, My Bloody Valentine I thought. That band reinvented the guitar wheel.

Will Anders,n the man behind this is described on Spotify as an Indie stalwart. From the evidence here, he's a bit of a journeyman too. This is familiar stuff. Plenty of melody and familiar pedal tropes, which will take anyone who spend time at Indie gigs at the turn of the Nineties back.

There's nothing here that really made me sit up and take notice. This is all my yesterdays, thirty or more years back now. Still, Cartwheel does what it does well for those regretting that they didn't buy those Moose EPs firt time round.. 

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time - # 43 Jack Penate

 

The less said about this the better.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 458 The Pixies - Doolittle

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 123 Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against The Machine

 

Songs of the Year # 55 Kristen Hersh

 

Albums of the Year # 55 Emma Tricca - Aspirin Sun

 

I was very taken by Emma Tricca's last album, St Peter from 2018, (that seems like such a long time ago now). It was a haunting, literary record, overflowing with classical allusions, which stayed on my radar for several months and ranked # 32 on my end of year album countdown in a strong year.

Belatedly, she's back with a follow up Aspirin Sun. An intriguing title, fittingly for Tricca, as it's another intriguing record. She's a musician who plots and navigates her own trajectory and territory. An example to many. She's on Bella Union, a label that encourages and nurtures artistic perspectives. She truly maps out her canvas again here.

Supported by musicians like Steve Shelley and Jason Victor who have worked with Sonic Youth and Dream Syndicate as well as elsewhere. This is exalted musical company and results in a dappled and layered ware for which one play will surely not be enough.

This is Psychedelic. It's Folk. At its heart is Tricca's questing, lived in voice. On a year which set sail musically early in January with John Cale's.remarkable Mercy and has maintained phenomenal momentum since Aspirin Sun is yet another impressive case for the defence of music as art and an act of exploration and perhaps the best we have at our disposal right now.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,549 Circle Devils

 

Nobody does it better. Makes you feel bad for the rest. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices cronies has revived another sde project, Circle Devils, and they have a new record Squeeze The Needle.

Spit 'em out. Churn 'em out. Pollard and co are an assault on procrastination. For god's sake piss or get off the pot. But remarkably the quality control is incredibly high once again.

Circle Devils is more highly strung, urgent and uptight than Guided by Voices. Though GBV are certainly a band that are not without urgency. But this is more wedded to the aesthetics of Punk. At least to start. Then suddenly they veer into the slow lane and stay there. Detour into Prog which has always been a factor where Pollard's concerned. 

Anyway it's essential. At least for the small but loyal cohort which requires a Pollard fix every few months. I'm among that number. Twenty songs in short of forty minutes. They do what they do better than anyone else. It's probably a bit much for one sitting. I'd say do ten, have a sandwich. Then, do the other ten.

Holiday Ghosts

 

Grace Slick

 

My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize # 24 Ride

 

Oasis go into overdrive with the release of third single Live Together. Ride hit their wall and are effectively irelevant,

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time - # 44 Cajun Dance Party

 

This list is beginning ti take on an utterly generic and rather painful quality.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 457 De La Soul - 3 Feet High & Rising

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 124 Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols

 

Songs of the Year # 56 Haley Blais

 

Albums of the Year # 56 Mary Elizabeth Remington

 

I've found another one. Where are all these truly wonderful new records coming from. This latest one is Mary Elizabeth Remington and her debut album In Embudo.

Mary Elizabeth was brought up in a log cabin in Hardwick Massachusetts The record sounds like she was. It has the authenticity of fresh running water. Of The Band.

Her voice has a wonderful purity nd the songs sound like they were hewn from living rock. The record was made with the help of friends Adrienne Lenker and James Krivchenia of Big Thief, That band are one of the great musical gifts of recent years. They've come to represent a return to Woodstock values and it's very welcome.

Remington has some of the ingenue eccentricity of Vashti Bunyan, Sybille Baier and Dory Previn. It's an odd record and it's stylings have a dark, sweet comedy of their own. A sense of rural community in the same way as Lenker's vocals for Big Thief do these days.

These are rich pickings and this is a record you may find yourself returning to in the coming months. I'm delighted to see that Jana Horn is returning with a new record in the next couple of weeks. This one and that one may become companion pieces for me in 2023.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,548 Silver Bars

 

Barrow's Silver Bars, come onto you shamelessly from the traps. They have little shame. And mainstream Indie taste. As if the're trying to tell you that The Kaiser Chiefs were actually a good thing. Sorry lads but they really weren't. But you're not all bad. Certainly judging by latest EP Modern Features.

They don't hold back. In the way Pulp never did. This can go either way. Many of the best British bands have been brazen. You might as well try to pull the most attractive woman in the bar even if half the guys never mind half the girls in the room are going to hate you for it for the rest of yor days. That's what Silver Bars do. The whole Duran Duran ego trip. For 22 minutes.

Silver Bars are not risk takers or experimentalists. This takes its lead from Arctic Monkeys most of all. I get the impression it would like the attention of Steve Lamacq more than anyone. They kept my attention.

The Go-Betweens

 

My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize # 23 Oasis

 

                   OASIS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I lose interest.

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time - # 45 Good Shoes

 

I don't know most of these bands. Which makes this an education of sorts. This sounds like many of the songs I have already listed.

Songs of the Year # 57 Lankum

 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 456 XTC - Oranges & Lemons

 

Best Ever Albums - Top 1,000 Albums # 125 Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of The City

 

Albums of the Year # 57 Arbor Labor Union - Yonder

 

A belated plug for Yonder, the latest record from one of my favourite bands, Georgia's Arbor Labour Union. They've featured on here a number of times down the years, because they excel in one of my favourite musical things. The Georgia, thing. The American South thing.

This has been a full on love affair on my part for all my adult life now. A friend reminded me that yesterday was forty years since  IRS Records released Murmur, the still genuinely captivating, enthralling and quite unique debut album from R.E.M., a record that could genuinely be described as changing things. It certainly changed me and I'm still reeling from the shock waves.

For Murmur, as much as any record ever released, mapped out the Southern sensibility. The South of the Civil War and Br'er Rabbit. Of Faulkner, McCullers and Tennessee Williams. Jim Crow. Of an oral, written, poetic and musical tradition that still means everything to me.

Arbor Labor Union hold that torch aloft once more on Yonder, (and what a Georgian record title that is). They place themselves once more firmly in that tradition musically and lyrically. R.E.M, Pylon, B-52's, Black Lips, Mattiel. Two guitars, circling one another like war, slightly mangy dogs, stretching back further to the best records of Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynryd.. This is another terrific album to add to their body of work. More people should know about and appreciate them.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,547 Sofia Kourtesis

 

Sofia Kourtesis is a young, Peruvian Dance Producer. Her debut album, Madres, (just out), is immediately highly accomplished and I suspect will draw much attention and acclaim in circles where matters like these are assessed.

It Starts is not habitually part of these circles. Listening to the record, early on Sunday morning, I appreciated the craft and immersed myself in the enveloping atmosphere without being inclined to join the dance.

This is a very good album though it doesn't resemble the ones I appreciate most; the ones which develop a narrative which I can follow and appreciate. Once I'd finished writing this short review, I took it off and put Elliott Smith's Either / Or No on instead. That was a record that I could appreciate and enjoy fully. Home ground. 

No doubt this will not trouble Kourtesis. She has her audience and I imagine it will grow considerably on this record's release. I imagine Mixmag's review of her record is a lot more considered and generally better and more hwlpful than this.