This is me. Looking a bit worse for wear and wistful midway through the calendar year in my new local. Here is the final rundown of my favourite records of the year. It's the fourth year I've done this Top Fifty on here, counting down one day at a time from the beginning of November. This one seems like my best list, not necessarily because the records are better this year but because the process has been the most thorough it's ever been. I can vouch fully for every album listed here. Many very good records haven't made it; Lana Del Ray, Bubblegum Lemonade, The Murder Capital, Ona, Mac Demarco, Wives, Sleaford Mods, The Persian Leaps, Jeanines, A.A.Bondy, Divino Nino and myriad others. Check out the upcoming playlist for specifics.
Bill Callahan - Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest
Sarathy Korwar - More Arriving
Vanishing Twin - The Age of Immunity
Big Thief - U.F.O.F.
Lightning Dust - Spectre
Robert Forster - Inferno
Aldous Harding - Designer
Wild Firth - Lawn Memory
Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
Fontaines D.C. - Dogrel
Big Thief - Two Hands
Mega Bog - Dolphine
The Mystery Lights - Too Much Tension
Wilco - Ode To Joy
Cate Le Bon - Reward
Little Simz - Grey Area
Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
Damon Locks & the Black Monument Ensemble - Where Future Unfolds
Joan Shelley - Like The River Loves The Sea
Olden Yolk - Living Theatre
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Colorado
Elva - Winter Sun
Jeremy Tuplin - Pink Mirror
Shana Cleveland - Night of the Worm Moon
Hand Habits - placeholder
Joanna Sternberg - Then I Try Some More
Adam Green - Engine of Paradise
Trash Kit - Horizon
Possible Humans - Aspiring to be a Bloke
Kevin Morby - Oh My God
Fat White Family - Serf's Up!
KOKOKO - Fongola!
Tiny Ruins - Olympic Girls
Good Morning - Basketball Breakups
Rustin Man - Drift Code
Program - Show Me
Neutrals - Kebab Disco
Boogarins - Sombre Duvida
Penelope Isles - Until The Tide Creeps In
Parsnip - When The Tree Bears Fruit
James Yorkston - The Route To The Harmonium
Kit Sebastian - Mantre Moderne
Modern Nature - How To Live
Kelsey Lu - Blood
John Southworth - Miracle In The Night
International Teachers of Pop - International Teachers of Pop
Not necessarily the album I've listened to most over the course of the year but the one I think is the best. From July:
Bill Callahan strikes me as an artist who only seems to get better with time. While other musicians strive to stay relevant with the passing of the years, he only becomes more so. He refines and hones what he does to a point of clarity precious few others achieve or can even aspire too.
His latest album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, just out, is his first for six years, and is quite worth the wait. In the meantime Callahan has got married, had a son, and found domestic calm, leading him to question whether he should even be creating and recording music anymore, as it no longer has the driving centrality it had previously in a career moving towards its fourth decade.
We can only be grateful that he chose to return. The record is a double, and a feast to relish, dive into and immerse yourself within at repeated sittings. Twenty songs, imbued with the vedic calm and warm, rich irony but also chiselled profundity that has come to be his modus operandi.
The songs come across almost as diary entries. Minimalist, poetic and beautifully self-aware. Opening up like beautifully judged and lovingly wrapped gifts, the perfect things to listen to late at night before surrendering to sleep.
There's a well earned and hard won contentment to the record and you can't help but feel really pleased for the man. Full of lines so perfectly judged and rendered that you want to press pause and write them down. 'I woke up on a 747. Flying through some stock footage of heaven.' To quote just one. He makes it all seem utterly effortless when it's perfectly plain that it's anything but. Otherwise countless others would be doing it too.
Honouring the ghosts of Cohen, Reed and Buckley, Callahan has matured to the degree when the light is utterly his, despite inevitable reminders of his inspirations. Musically his arrangements skirt the borderlines between Folk and Country. Everything is slowed to Callahan's inimitable pace. Frankly it's something of a masterpiece. A book to give pride of place on your shelf and return to whenever you have need of its sustenance.
Good to fall in love with something new, just before Christmas Day. Which is something I've managed to do this year. Not a person this time but a very good record. Nothing Feels Natural To Me, the debut album from The S-Bends. Appropriately they're an Australian band as that country, (sub-continent?), has far and faraway the best music scene in the world right now.
They're not from Melbourne though which appears to be the hub of what's going on down there. Instead they hail from Sydney, a city that seems something of an underachieving sibling right now by comparison. But never mind, because judging by this they've got at least one small marvel in The S-Bends.
Brief, unassuming songs, often eschewing standard verse / chorus straitjackets but hitting home each time due to their assured melodic and lyrical pull, the record is an absolute joy and seems like one set to burrow ever further under the skin with repeated plays. I could easily post the whole thing here, such is its constancy, there's not a weak track on it.
So where is it coming from? The highest compliment I can give it as that it recalls the mythic pleasures of compatriots The Triffids and The Go-Betweens at their Eighties peaks. The songs here evoke the narrative guile and depth of both bands without actually being indebted or structurally plagiaristic of either.
As literary as it is musical, with the mic swapped between band members to give its textures different hues. The record would have comfortably made my own end of year list but it's come to my attention too late. Nothing Feels Natural To Me is a considerable album and I proffer it to you as a gift on Christmas Day. Make a point of exploring its joys for yourself!
Sounded like the biggest record I heard this year. From July:
A record described as 'sublime' by the Rough Trade homepage who also made it their album of the word. Sublime is a good word for this, More Arriving, the new one from Sarathy Korwar. All in all it's quite some record, a bubbling melting pot cauldron of sound and ideas. Vibrant, rhythmical, eclectic, furious and immersive.
Sarathy Korwar is pretty much the definition of a globalised culture musician. Born in the States, raised in India, now living in London. His More Arriving, (and what a title that is),is a broad, expansive album that pretty much sweeps away the vast majority of albums released in 2019 in terms of both ambition and achievement.
In Can't Get There From Here, from R.E.M.'s third album Fables of the Reconstruction, Michael Stipe sang about 'the earth of seven continents going round and round'. Along with the aforementioned adjective 'sublime' this is the best description of this record I can come up with. More Arriving is positively seething with energy. With life, death, the ebb and flow of existence. Never mind quite remarkable words and music.
There are records that focus on the intimate and personal. This isn't one of them. It's out on the streets and pushing its way through the teeming marketplace from the off with its opening track, appropriately Mumbai. From there it never lets up and is fabulously musically and lyrically diverse. all kinds of Indian music, Jazz, (particularly Coltrane), Hip Hop, Ragga and more are stirred up gleefully into the mix. The tone is defiant and celebratory, dancing up a storm of global colour and culture.
I've heard and written about all manner of great music in the seven months of this calendar year thus far. More Arriving is the best record I've heard up to now and it will take something really special to best it by December. Something of an instant classic!
Tulip Fever, the redoubtable and articulate blog listed on the right hand site of this page, chooses California's Cosmonauts latest record Star 69 among its Top Ten albums of the year. It's probably an act of some generosity as the record doesn't tell us anything that Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, Spiritualised, The Verve, Primal Scream. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Brian Jones Massacre haven't told us many times before.
Pretty much psych by numbers, considering the strung out essence of this sound, Cosmonauts are frankly rather conservative. We have some velvet mornings and some candy talking pretty much as you'd expect. There are also some decent, frazzled tunes to enjoy along the way though. Here are three.
The most populist of the end of year lists and possible the most reflective of the State of Pop in 2019, if such a thing can be readily defined. Shares twelve choices with mine.
Lana Del Ray - Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Dave - Psychodrama
Billie Eilish - When We All Feel Asleep Where Do We Go?
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
Tyler, The Creator - Igor
Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
FKA Twigs - Magdalene
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen
Slowthai - Nothing Great About Britain
Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
Catherine Polachek - Pang
Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka
Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride
Little Simz - Grey Area
Richard Dawson - 2020
Ariane Grande - Thank U, Next
Hot Chip - A Bath Full Of Ecstasy
Cate Le Bon - Reward
Solange - When I Get Home
Clairo - Immunity
Charli XCX- Charli
Fontaines D.C. - Dogrel
Nilufer Yanya - Miss Universe
Aldous Harding - Designer
Big Thief - U.F.O.F.
Jenny Lewis - On The Line
Taylor Swift - Lover
Lizzo - Cuz I Love You
Jenny Hval - The Practice Of Love
Kim Gordon - No Home Record
James Blake - Assume Form
Brittany Howard - Jaime
Muna - Saves The World
Bill Callahan - Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest
The Murder Capital - When I Have Fears
Sleater-Kinney - The Centre Won't Hold
Big Thief - Two Hands
Black Midi -Schlagenheim
W H Lung - Incidental Music
Sturgill Simpson - Sound & Fury
These New Puritans - Inside The Rose
The Japanese House - Good At Falling
Jamila Woods - Legacy! Legacy!
(Sandy) Alex G - House Of Sugar
Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
Durand Jones and The Indications - American Love Call
The comparison points for Vanishing Point's rightly hailed new album The Age of Immunology are immediately and plainly apparent. Broadcast and Stereolab. Stereolab and Broadcast. That's not a particularly surprising place of reference nowadays. These two bands seem to have a much greater profile in terms of their influence nowadays than they did when they were putting out records and touring.
Not that The Age of Immunology deserves to be confined solely to that particular box. It's a fascinating and rewarding listen. Taking forward the groundwork laid by these two bands into wonderful new vistas in a similar way to what Jane Weaver has done with her last two albums, this an utterly blissful record.
Of course neither Broadcast nor Stereolab were working in a vacuum. They themselves had a very clear set of influences and inspirations from Dada and Surrealism to Science Fiction and Exotica which Vanishing Twin explore and twist into new shapes with admirable relish.
So while the territory is familiar, the execution is quite brilliant. The comparisons made by the Rough Trade review of the record are apt, 'sultry songs for musicians', 'library music from a parallel universe'. we're entering into the realm of cliche here but frankly The Age of Immunology invites them. Look at the record sleeve or read the song titles; Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life, Planete Sauvage, Language is a City (Let me Out). The whole package is a demonstration of the most refined literary and cultural taste of a certain sort and Vanishing Twin are utterly fluent in the language.
No surprise then that this is also top of the list for new releases of the week on the Rough Trade site. Vanishing Twin are just made for the hipper than thou set. No criticism intended. I started to fall in love with this halfway through my first listen and I'm not altogether certain I won't have to go out and buy it, even though I've already got more than enough records as it is. One to listen to in your polo neck and carpet slippers. The Age of Immunology is as good a record of its kind as you are likely to hear all year. The most glorious form of escapism imaginable.
P.S. Here's a press release from the band which describes their philosophy :
'To Vanishing Twin, one of the most exciting young groups in England at the moment, the term is used in dismay on living through a period where borders are being hardened, walls are being built and new boundaries being needlessly imposed. Band members may come from Belgium, Japan, Italy, France and America but they have all made England their home and, on this album, they are heralds of the much better future that is being rapidly dismantled as we speak. The Age Of Immunology - which is sung in all the primary languages of the musicians who made it as well as English - is the soundtrack for those who still believe in the pluralist dream, where the other is embraced and learned from, not isolated and destroyed.'
One of the most approachable and melodic records I've heard in recent weeks is Paper Suit the debut album from Nicole Yun, also of Eternal Summers. Exhaling many of the features of classic and modern Shoegaze and sounding not a million miles away from Until The Tide Creeps In the fabulous debut album from Penelope Isles, the whole thing's a breeze.
Brought to my attention by the ever reliable A Pessimist is Never Disappointed blog, listed to the right hand side of this page, Paper Suit for the most point sticks to a formula, but it's a happy and highly successful one as these three tracks attest.
Something of a small, unnoticed classic, arriving late in 2019, was Tindersticks latest album, No Treasure But Hope, their first since 2016. They're one of those bands that surprise you that they're still together, so mired are they in memories of the Nineties, the decade in which they first emerged.
They're not a band whose sound ever changes, merely thickens, Dark, slow, melancholy, the most glass half empty of outfits. Rented rooms, damp, bleak accommodation, rain pattering on window panes, cigarette dog ends in teetering ashtrays. The sound of a human heart being broken again and again until the end of time. The ace in their pack has always been their masterful, baroque, orchestral arrangements of the songs which smother their depresso anthems in an undeniable, redeeming beauty.
So, No Treasure But Hope adds another volume of miserable consolation to their shelf. They don't really say anything new here, but anyone who has ever appreciated what they've done before will appreciate this. The debut album remains the one you really need as they were fully formed from the off, but this does their legacy proud. A suite of quite excellent songs. Something for the fan of Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, Albert Camus, Patrick Hamilton, Graham Greene. Film Noir and Kitchen Sink Sixties Cinema in your life. Might even cheer them up a bit!
One of the mainstays in writing about stuff that means something to me over the last few years on here has been watching the progress of American band Big Thief. They're a remarkably prolific bunch, UFOF, just out, is their third album in four years, bands don't generally work at this rate anymore, last year when they actually managed not to release a record, both singer Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek put out their own solo albums instead. They've got a lot of fuel in their tanks. Full on momentum.
The most difficult thing for a young guitar band to do in 2019 is something really new. There's so much in music's archive now, the form they're working within is over sixty years old, (and had previous of course before that), there's plenty there to readily plunder for the lazy, and myriad markets where that will be readily accepted. Having already established that Big Thief are anything but lazy, it's a pleasure to report that UFOF finds them quietly carving out new territory for themselves. On first listen it sounds like their best record and that's really something. 2016's Masterpiece and the following year's Capacity were both wonderful and accomplished records.
But UFOF moves beyond both of these records in terms of its content and general feel into the celestial and sublime. While both of those earlier albums seemed to be rooted in very specific times and places, UFOF takes them somewhere else. Into the cosmic, questioning the very basis idea of what it is to be alive and what that might mean. In some ways it's a happier record than either of its predecessors which touched on abuse and violence but it's far far stranger than either.
Lenker's childhood gave her ample material for an artistic career. Brought up in a cult by parents who split in her teenage years, this seems to have planted within her a sense of 'otherness' that she uses thoughtfully and quite beautifully on the twelve songs of UFOF. Supported by a group who seem just as concerned with their own personal friendships as the bands trajectory, they come across as a phenomenally close knit unit as a result.
Every song here adds to the overall effect. It's a remarkably poised record with an incredible awareness of the fabulous effect music can have when it's capable of capturing the balance between noise and silence. The songs are constantly poised and thrillingly aware.
This record should take Big Thief onto another level. They're developing a growing audience and profile, the release of UFOF comes hot on the heels of a review and in-depth article with Rolling Stone. If ever a band deserves their growing success it's this one. They've been notable from the off, but their determination to keep moving forward rather than just make variations of the template they established early on makes them an altogether different proposition from most of their contemporaries.
Listening to UFOF this morning in one glorious sitting was an intense, wonderful experience. Big Thief are a band rooted in the great Americana traditions. I hear echoes of The Band, Neil Young and even Creedence in the record. But they're forging their own path and in doing so they're worthy of huge respect and even awe. As good an album as anyone will make this year.
Lingua Ignota is a California based, classically versed musician whose work will not be to all tastes. The music is glacial and for the most part utterly spooky, polarising in the way Nico used to be, but with a solemn religiosity that is impressive to say the least . Here are a couple of tracks from her latest album Caligula.
Something of a revelation when I came upon this in October.
On the first Friday of October, a morning that proved to be full of interesting, new releases, this particular one, Spectre, the latest from Lightning Dust, hit me like a bolt from the blue, if you'll forgive the pun.
In the same way as Mega Bog's wondrous Dolphine turned up, a few months back, this is a record that arrives with little or no fanfare, but appears fully formed, crammed with arresting melodies and a commanding narrative thread, demanding that you investigate further and get acquainted with the artists proffering the gift before you.
Lightning Dust are Vancouver based Amber Webb and Joshua Wells who formed the band in the mid 2000's to provide them with an outlet for their other musical project, the distinctly heavier Rock concern Black Mountain. This has proved to be an altogether more ethereal affair, driven by a brooding, electronic pulse.
Although the tunes here are accessible, the lyrical themes are less so, but bear rich promise of a record to truly immerse yourself in over the darkening winter months of 2019. Spectre appropriately is a haunted record, like the glossy surface of a deep forbidding lake, rich with the gifts of memory, loss and sensual experience.
A few immediate comparison points that struck me. Sharon Van Etten's similarly stark and brilliant Remind Me Tomorrow, Arcade Fire's austere hysteria, though I'd have to say that Lightning Dust have trumped that band in my affections already. Also, and most strikingly, the record's dignified bearing minded me of Patti Smith at her declarative peak, (Redondo Beach and the album Wave immediately came to mind),almost as high a compliment as you could wish to bestow on an artist.
Spectre richlydeserves these plaudits I assure you. On first play its up there with the very best records I've heard this year. Or many a year for that matter A magisterial, assured album. One that grabs your attention from its opening notes and holds you rapt like a classic Hollywood thriller until its final reel. Quite majestic!
As we wind down to the end of the year, nay the end of the decade itself, I'm conducting something of a mop up operation here. Looking at various End of Year Album lists and trying to listen to those records on it I haven't heard or paid enough attention to so I can give them some scant, late focus before 2019 runs its course.
One record that I finally have got round to listening to is When I Have Fears, the first album from Dublin's The Murder Capital, which came out and received its fair share of acclaim a couple of months back.Having finally heard it in full it's clearly worthy of that at the very least.
A cross that The Murder Capital seem destined to endure, at least for the time being is comparisons with compatriots Fontaines D.C. who also came fully into the public domain this year and pretty much swept the board in this particular punky sub-category with their own debut Dogrel which justly grabbed plaudits and critical garlands, wherever it and they went.
When I Have Fears is a lesser record to Dogrel, but its still a very good one. The two albums are similar in many respects, defiant, inflamed and literate. That The Murder Capital take a slightly darker and musically more Grungy than Punky route, (Killing Joke and Joy Division seem useful pointers), may have been the reason I didn't immediately warm to the songs I heard when it first came out and listen to the album all the way through. Still, I got there in the end and I'm pleased I did.
To say they pull no punches is putting it mildly. The interview they give in this month's issue of Q Magazine is one of the most emotive things you're ever likely to read. It's undoubtedly utterly sincere. There is a growing group of bands expressing this articulate righteousness; Shame, IDLES, Sleaford Mods, Fontaines D.C. now The Murder Capital. They're not the least of them by any means. Heartening stuff!
The end of year album lists are pretty much all out now, so I'll start posting them here. Starting with Q Magazine, with whom I share 11 selections, mostly in their Top 20.
Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell
Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka
Aldous Harding - Designer
Little Simz - Grey Area
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen
Fat White Family - Serfs Up!
Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
Fontaines D.C. - Dogrel
Billie Eilish - When We All Feel Asleep Where Do We Go?
Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
Slowthai - Nothing Great About Britain
Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
Dave - Psychodrama
Kevin Morby - Oh My God
Tyler, The Creator - Igor
Lee 'Scratch Perry - Rainford
Joan Shelley - Like The River Loves The Sea
Big Thief - U.F.O.F.
Solange - When I Get Home
Caroline Polachek - Pang
Bon Iver - i,i
Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars
Bill Callahan - Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest
Thom Yorke - Anima
Mac DeMarco - Here Comes The Cowboy
Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't Hold
Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride
Foals - Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 1
When in need of another in this series, go back to old Luke Haines albums. This comes from a 2011 album at least partially inspired by 1970's British wrestling. Catweazle was one of the star turns of that scene.
Being able to listen to a new record by Robert Forster as March arrives is a rare treat. Like an opportunity to catch up with one of your oldest and best friends after years of not seeing them. Forster has a particular gift that differentiates his songwriting from any other musician on earth. A wry and gentle lyricism. Wisdom. A magpie's eye that cherry picks from the records and people that first inspired him, most evidently Dylan and Seventies American Punk and re-melds them according to his own highly idiosyncratic minimalist rule book. Then puts them out as a record when he's ready. But only then.
It was evident to me very quickly on during my first listen early on Friday morning that Forster's new album, Inferno his seventh in all, ( he made nine with the Go-Betweens), was not about to disappoint me. Just seeing the title of the record's opening track Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement brought a smile to my face before I'd even played it. Dylan, Dylan... But done the Forster way. Dylan in suburbia.
This blog is a much, much humbler endeavour than Forster's life journey but I try to go about it much as I imagine as Forster goes about his songwriting; with an imaginary reader in mind. Meanwhile he seems to write for an imaginary listener. That listener can only be Grant McLennan, his partner and judge and jury for so many over the years with the Go-Betweens before he was so horribly taken away from us in 2006 and most of all, taken from Forster. McLennan is definitely, irrepressibly here.
The Rough Trade Homepage, where Inferno and its background information are listed, does a brilliant job in not mentioning his former band once. Really Forster deserves it of course, he stands in his own place and time as this record more than attests. A very great talent. One of the most important of all for the likes of me. But really, seeing him utterly apart from his former band is a very difficult thing to do. Frankly almost futile.
The fingerprints of The Go-Betweens are unmistakably all over the record. Fragments of sound, lyrical and melodic twists, a supporting female vocalist who can't help but remind you of Amanda Brown. It's almost like leafing through old photo albums, which is what I've been doing coincidentally over the past few days. Long forgotten memories, moments and emotions come back into view and even though they're experienced through the prism of time assume a strange and frightening clarity. Immediacy.
This is what life is like when you turn fifty. Forster has a few years on me and he's used that time well. Musing on his memories of the chapters of his past and its myriad emotions, loss, disappointment and mercifully joy and sheer love and hunger for life in order to create new art. His records have always been highly evocative of the Australian sunshine and never more so than here. But here they come with the growing realisation of darkness and death. Just look at the record cover. Forster's huge gangling frame stretched on a bed, his arm beckoning out to you.
Forster handles it all with his customary grace. On the front of his memoir Grant & I, Nick Cave describes him as 'the truest and strangest poet of our generation'. It's high but not misplaced praise. That poetry is realised here as so often in the past. I'm not going to comment on individual songs because I found the record an immersive, snowballing experience, ( ironic, given that it's coming from an Australian). It gave me the shivers.
Sometimes while I listened to it I was forced to just sit back and reflect. Forster was always and still is the most cerebral and thoughtful of artists. So many echoes of his and his listener's past; the opening to I Want to be Your Dog, ( or is it Waiting for the Man, can't make up my mind),the 'doo doo doos' of Walk on the Wild Side. Moments in the life and career of The Go Betweens, that most unrecognised of bands. McLennan alongside him onstage, in the studio or the rehearsal room, strumming, nodding.
There are nine songs on the record. It's less than thirty five minutes long. It's enough. Forster says what he wants to and is gone. It's funny, it's sad. Songs about the realisation that you're alive but won't be forever. On final track particularly, One Bird in the Sky, one of the very best songs he's ever written, it's unbearably poignant. One of the very finest albums that will be released this year. Already. Sometimes music, like other things in life come at you at the right time, from the right person just when you need it. This is one such record for me. Thank you Robert.
