Saturday, December 24, 2022
Song(s) of the Day # 3,250 Apollo Ghost
A nice record to listen to on Christmas Eve. Pink Tiger, from Vancouver B.C. , the kind of laid back, thoughtful and intimate Indie band, tat you know you're in for an intimate listen with right from the off.
Fans of Burning Heel and Mt. Eerie might like to cup an ear. Songs for the sensitive.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Albums of the Year # 3 Naima Bock - Wild Palm
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.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,249 Chronophage
Another excellent record I've missed this year. The second half of December is great for that.. An album called Chronophage by a band called Chronophage from Austin, Texas with a big tomato on the front cover.
The band has been around for a while and weave a spacey, Indie, guitar driven, atmosphere that is pretty much all their own. I must say, I'm very much taken. Charming.
Thursday, December 22, 2022
Albums of the Year # 4 The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
Smile! It's a new album from Radiohead. Or at least it might as well be, even if it's only actually Thom York and Johnnny Greenwood, working here with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, rather than the rest of the band.
The new record entitled A Light for Attracting Attention, to all effects and purposes, might as well be a Radiohead album.Listening to it it's difficult to work out how it might have sounded differently had the other three members contributed.
All of them doubtless, have been invaluable contributors to all of the immense and incredible recordings the band have put out down the years. But it's not a huge diservice to them to say that Yorke and Johnny, (to distinguish him from brother Colin), have always been the driving creative heart and soul of that band.
Such is obvious here, if it wasn't already. A Light is immediately quite thrilling. Replete with the juderring unease and disquiet that marks Radiohead and Yorke's best stuff. And with a band as good as this one, it's difficult to know where to start in that respect.
Yorke is still all tics and itches. All Post Millenium restless angst, like an insect pulsing just beneath the skin. Johnny meanwhile provides the shifting surfaces, and boy is he one phennomenal musician. Able to switch from Can, to Led Zeppelin to Jazz to signature Radiohead pathways at will.
Much of this is familiar. Both Yorke and Greenwood have made a lot of music that sounds like this before. It may not actually put a smile on your face. That's not something either of these two or indeed Radiohead have really done much down the years. Perhaps there's some irony at play with the name they chose for this particular project. That doesn't mean it won't exhilarate you.
But the record is certainly fairly essential. Undoubtedly one of the best albums I've heard this year. They're both remarkable and so is this album. A Light for Attracting Attention is a model lesson in doing essentially the same thing differently and most of all keeping it very, very fresh.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,248 The Colourfield
A lot of Specials and Fun Boy 3 records in have been played and shared in the last few days. But also a lot by The Colourfield which led me to listen to their first album Virgins & Philistines a couple of days ago. It's a good record. The influence of Echo & The Bunnymen and Serge Gainsbourg sound much stronger here than that of Ska.
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Terry Hall
Sometimes you can be incredibly moved and touched and upset by the passing of a musician, in this case a Pop Star. It's difficult to fully comprehend really, the strangest of emotions. I've been feeling that way over the past couple of days since I heard about the death of Terry Hall, of The Specials, Fun Boy 3, Colourfield, and so many other, fabulous projects in the decades since. He had a voice, stance, perspective and conviction all of his own. He was also a wonderful team player. The Specials particularly were one wonderful team.
So a strange sensation. To be so terribly moved by the passing of someone you don't actually know. But with some musicians, the rare ones, you feel like you do. As a great music lover, I have this sensation quite often, but with over the past ten years with three in particular David Bowie, Lou Reed and now Hall. There have been others, Toots Hibbert, Peter Green, Aretha, but it's never felt quite as deep or profound somehow to me as with these three. This one seems to strike home quite deeply. It feels close to home somehow.
I was too young for Punk really. Only eleven or twelve when the first fledgling Punks started to appear around Richmond, the leafy suburb of West London where I grew up. They scared me as they intended to and although I picked up on The Stranglers, The Clash and the like as their singles began to penetrate the charts as the mid Seventies became the late Seventies, I didn't identify with the scene at the time. I had nothing to rebel against, being the product of a happy middle class home.
But The Specials arrived at a time when I was ready. Becoming politically conscious, naturally Left leaning at a time when the UK and England in particular was in turmoil. Riots on inner city streets. Black and White and a need to choose sides.
I wasn't part of the hip set at school, the kids who would turn up in Two Tone suits, but you couldn't help but notice The Specials singles that told you of a world of decisions and choices that were coming a few years down the line. Teenage pregnancies, dead end jobs, the terminals you were heading towards if you took the wrong turns in the road.
The Specials charted these decisions with pinpoint precision and incredible wisdom beyond their years, in a series of quite fabulous songs, singles and album tracks. Too Much Too Young, It Doesn't Make It All Right, Stereotype and too many others to mention. Leading of course to Ghost Town. Number One in the UK charts while Britain's inner cities burned, and The National Front and mindless racism, which Thatcherism actively encouraged and fed flourished. I still feel privileged to have been alive in these times. It taught you all you needed to know.
I bought my first actual record with Terry Hall on it in 1983. The Fun Boy 3's second album after Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staples formed after The Specials split. The greatly underrated Waiting, named according to Hall because everybody seemed to be waiting for something. Paralysed by the fear of actually doing something instead.
It was a contradictory record. At once dark and bright. Mordant and funny. It was all great, coming at a rare moment in British Pop Music when you could actually say something and have hits and speak to people from their radios before the predominant, prevailing and dominant voice became the handed down dogma of Thatcherism and Reaganism. Aspiration greed, hedonism and froth . For a few years, if you wanted to hear something else, you mostly had to look elsewhere, rather than the singles charts.
But if you were interested in Hall and where his particularly glum, introversion originated, one track on Waiting immediately stood out. Final track Well Fancy That the autobiographical tale of him being abducted and sexually abused by a paedophile ring when he was 12 on a school trip to France. It was bleak and frightening and utterly haunting and coloured by the deepest, bravest honesty. As an innocent, sheltered boy coming towards his late teens with no idea of this deeply evil aspect and possibility of life, it came as a huge shock to me. I'd never heard anything like it. It answered the conundrum of Hall's bleak demeanor. The depression he struggled with all of his life, this deeply, harrowing haunting formative experience. I can't actually listen to it anymore. But I'm glad it's there.
Hall continued to make wonderful music over the following decades. Coloured by his own witty, smart, unique perspective. He had a voice of great warmth and emotion and like the greatest singers, immediately recognisable. Then, in 2009, came The Specials return, unfortunately without Dammers, one of the few reformations that was actually welcome, almost necessary. I was lucky enough to be at the first gig of their comeback tour in Newcastle where the anticipation for their arrival onstage was palpable and tangible. It was some night.
His death when it was announced earlier this week came as a huge shock. Hall had made it clear to friends and family that he didn't want his worsening and ultimately terminal condition to be announced. Some things are deeply and rightly private. Still, he'll be deeply missed, and not just by those who knew him. He made an indelible mark.
Albums of the Year # 5 Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes
This came out a few weeks back. An old skool collaboration in many respects. With the rapping rhythms and tone of early NAS and the vague gangster dread of those times but leavened by cool samples, melodic flourishes, tight beats and the constant ability to surprise.
I don't really listen to much that might be labelled Hip Hop these days so am in no position to judge whether it's in rude health or not really.Very few records seem to appear that really grab my attention and make me think I must play, them but this one certainly did.
Producer Danger Mouse and rapper Black Thought are neither of them actually new kids on the block. Far from it. Black Thought made his name as MC of The Roots who have been putting out records since the early Nineties, while Danger Mouse has been a producer of note for a broad range of artisits from Jay Z to Beck and Damon Albarn. No spring chickens then.
But on latest collaboration Cheat Codes they make Hip Hop's broad legacy work for them. This is something of an instant classic. Put it on and it will give you the instant shivers in the way that Illmatic, De La Soul is Dead or Liquid Swords might do.
One of the albums off the year then. One of the best records of this type I've heard for some time. A lyrical free wheeling treasure that improves on every listen.
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Albums of the Year # 6 Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
I'm certainly not the only person who enjoys Friday mornings, particularly as we make our way into Spring. But I particularly enjoy waking and listening to a new album I've really been looking forward to while getting ready for work, knowing the weekend is coming up at the end of the day.
Such was the case this Friday and the treat I was looking forward to was hearing Warm Chris, the fourth album from New Zealander, Aldous Harding. She's a singular talent, difficult, or rather impossible, to pin down and categorise. Types like me who write about music always need to try to do this to some degree and generally it's manageable with reference points and comparisons.
What I like most about AH though is her elusive quality. Labels don't define her. Generally she's described as a Folk artist. But Warm Chris like her previous records is not quite like any Folk album you've ever heard, though you can see why the word is applied to what she does. On the Pitchfork site, which is always a good place to go to for particularly ludicrous and unintentionally comic reviews, the writer of the review for this goes to enormous lengths to tie herself and her reader up in knots by detailing how she likes the record very much but doesn't understand it.
But music is really meant to be enjoyed or provoke thought or emotions rather than being coralled in print. Warm Chris is a hugely enjoyable and thought provoking record first and foremost. AH never itemises her thought processes for clinical dissection and this is a prime reason for why I find listening to her so rewarding.
Warm Chris like so many records right now of course is AH's Lockdown record written after moving back to her mother's house in Lyttleton, New Zealand and then recorded in Monmouth, Wales with her long term production collaborator John Parrish. In a recent Guardian interview she describes what she does as 'treading the line between flow state and dissociation - being present and being somewhere else.'
That will do for me. As with my first great musical love R.E.M., who alternatively titled second album Reckoning, File Under Water, the best records need to be listened to and not defined. Warm Chris like Reckoning is a record most of all to be savoured and listened to again and again. That's what I'll be doing over the coming weeks and months.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,246 Mitski
Another fine artist I've neglected, and another very good album I haven't really listened to until the last few days. Mitski's Laurel Hell.
Monday, December 19, 2022
Albums of the Year # 7 Bill Callahan -YTILAER
Bill Callahan occupies a certain space these days, having worked and refined his persona in a particular direction down the years. He's determinedly old school, and latest record Reality speaks from a similar place to previous albums down the years in seeming to have more in common with classic Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen records than much that is being released in 2022 although his records never entirely seem to fit in the Sixties or Seventies either, maintaining a mordant, ironic, and (apologies), post-modern quality.
I've been very much taken taken with everything I've heard down the years either under his own name or for his first decade as a recording artist when he recorded under the Smog moniker. He's always had a specific, spartan talent, allowing the listener to disengage from their external reality and fully feel and experience the space in his songs.
Reality comes late in the year, but I imagine it will feature prominently in end of year run downs. It certainly will do in mine. It makes a strong claim for classic status on first play. Callahan operates on a much higher level than most musicians are capable of.
It's classic Callahan. Twelve minimal, moody American Folk and Country streams of consciousness that have an almost Old Testament feel to them. If everyone could do this, they probably would but he's in very specific company these days. Nick Cave, Bonnie Prince Charlie otherwise, my mind goes blank. Of younger artists, Big Thief and Kevin Morby come to mind.
The specific quality Callahan brings to the table is a dry, biting wit that you could cut bread with. Reality is another fine addition to his quite masterful body of work. He's truly a craftsman. One to get to know better over the winter months.
Sunday, December 18, 2022
Albums of the Year # 8 Fortunato Durrutti Marinetti - Memory's Fool
I think by happenstance, I've just stumbled across one of my favourite records of 2022. In the absence of new records from the likes of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Grant McLennan, it's wonderful to have records like these to remind you of and further their legacy. These were the artists I was reminded of most when listening through to this, Memory's Fool, the latest, astonishing album from Toronto musician Fortunato Durrutti Marinetti.
Inevitably, you may get fairly regularly reminders of the greats while listening to new stuff, but the records that usher in those reminders themselves are rarely as great themselves as this one clearly is. Born in Turin but residing in Toronto, Marrinetti has been playing in bands, releasing records and touring America in a Volvo Station Wagon for twenty odd years to a generally indifferent response. This is the second album's he's released under his own name. During these years it's clear he's nurtured and tended a worn but wry sagacity which have allowed his music to ascend to the level of easy mastery that's on display here. He's very, very good indeed.
It's a record that needs to be heard by anyone who has ever treasured songs or albums by the likes of those mentioned above. Or Van Morrison. Or indeed David Berman. Or for that matter Bob Dylan.The more I listened to this the more frankly I was astounded by it. It's very much in the traditions of the musicians I've mentioned here. Particularly the three deceased masters Cohen, Reed and McLennan. Frankly their fingerprints are everywhere. But Marinetti does their memory and legacy full justice here as well as adding his own signature touches .
This is a record I lived with and listened to for a while before writing and posting this. It seemed to warrant it. Any record that has the intense lyrical scrutiny of Cohen, Reed and McLennan and something else of their own, needs a little time to process and do justice to.
There are just seven tracks here. But don't worry, you won't get short changed. The majority of them strench from six minutes to nine. They're narratives of purgatory to some degree, not comfortable in their skin but confident of their moral compass.This is a fine, fine album indeed and one I'll be returning to again and again over the coming months.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,244 Leyla McCalla
Great Albums I've Missed During 2022 Part Blah, Blah, Blah. Leyla McCalla's latest. Breaking The Thermometer. explores the fascinating narrative of the creole language Radio Haiti and how it intersected with the story of that deeply troubled country.
As much educative as entertaining the record is an absorbing document, weaving together ads from the time, personal narratives of the brutality of the Papa and Baby Doc regimes and wonderful tunes that swing with defiance and reverence for the dead.
The product of a commission from the Duke University in North Carolina, Breaking The Thermometer is best ingested at a single sitting. Fabulous stuff.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Albums of the Year # 9 Horsegirl - Versions of Modern Performance
I've been waiting for Versions of Modern Performance the debut album from impossibly young Chicago female trio Horsegirl with as much anticipation as any for really quite a long time. They've been featuring on this blog ever since I first heard them a couple of years back, and now the record's finally here I'm pleased to be able to say, it doesn't remotely disappoint..
For anyone with a certain musical disposition and tastes, they're a godsend. With a sound most obviously constructed around the shared love of Sonic Youth's poised distortion, they're imposibly cool and informed about the legacy of alternative rock music they've chosen and what makes it so thrilling and transcendental.
In much the same way as I was transfixed the first time I heard The Strokes Modern Age EP, more than 20 years back, Horsegirl immediately set my anntenae up. Versions is the sound of three people in thrall to this stuff and also utterly aware of how it works.
It's the self awareness of the band that's most astonishing frankly. Able already to self-mythologise to such an acute degree, there's a track on here called The Fall of Horsegirl another called The Guitar is Dead 3, a reasonable assumption to form at this late stage. Lyrical references to Horses and Marquee Moon They're perfectly aware of just how good they are and are going to be.
Every song on here, is quite immediate in its appeal. Here's what this reminded me of on first play. Blondie, the whole record brought those opening chords of Union City Blue to mind again and again. Punk, New Wave, Post Punk, Shoegaze, Grunge and Riot Girl all at once. Joy Division, (the quite deliberate 'Dance, Dance, Dance to the radio' echoes of opener Anti-glory. Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine and early Teenage Fanclub. They make me think of good stuff.
But mostly, they're just themselves and I'm so pleased to hear a record that reminds me of why I fell so deeply for this stuff in the first place. I can't imagine hearing another record of this sort that impacts on me in quite this way in 2022. Horsegirl have got it. Frankly, they have the world at their feet.
Friday, December 16, 2022
Albums of the Year # 10 Nilufer Yanya - PAINLESS
A niece directed me to Nilufer Yanyer a couple of years ago and I listened to one track, didn't care for it and stopped listening. But I've been listening to her latest, PAINLESS, for the last few days now and care for it very much. It's already one of my favourite albums of 2022 and seems likely to remain so, regardless of what the next nine months bring.
Yanyer is a Chelsea born singer songwriter with a fascinating family heritage. Her mother is part Irish part Barbadian, her father Turkish. Both parents are visual artists. That's an interesting place to start from and Yanyer is certainly interesting. Listening through to PAINLESS doesn't remind me of anything much apart from itself really and that's highly, highly unusual these days.
My niece says she prefers her early EPS and that's the nature of many musical loves, particularly for those of us who listen to a lot of music but I'm going to focus on this before I go back to her previous releases if I do. Writing a blog like this on a daily basis doesn't always allow me to do this as much as I'd like to. Anyhow, this is more than enough for me for now.
The French magazine Les Inkoruptibles has compared her music to King Krule, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Parquet Courts and The Breeders. None of these touchstones mean anything to me. At least not while listening to PAINLESS. Perhaps they did in reference to her earlier records.
But here she seems to be operating in a space between independent guitar and dance music. That's a cool place to be. Certainly cooler than immediately reminding you of the bands above, great as they are. The one alternative band her music does remind me of generally is New Order, another band who moved away from Rock sounds into dance spaces. Radiohead too occasionally. They did a not disimlar thing after OK Computer,
Yanyer's singing and lyrics obviously move the music of PAINLESS into a different space still. They're clearly not similar in any way to anything New Order or Radiohead ever did. What the concerns of those lyrics might be is not always clear as her vocals are slightly removed and remote in the mix. You get the sense that the focus is rather pained but this is never a detached or overwrought record. Rather it's a warm and engaged one.
So I'm not writing here as anything of an authority on Nilufer Yanyer. Far from it. I haven't done anything but the most cursory research into her backstory or her back catalogue. But I am a convert to the power of her music and in that respect I'm on the same page as Pitchfork unusually, who've given PAINLESS a glowing review. Hipness at last. I'm in awe of its clockwork, sinuos intensity. It's a brilliant, brave and fascinating record. Also a very 2022 one that captures the year's mysterious qualities.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,242 Wu-Lu
An old friend, Garth, sent me his Spotify end of year most played playlist and named this, Wu-Lu's LOGGERHEAD as his favourite album of the year. Naturally, trusting his taste, I gave it a listen. It's a fine record indeed.
This one exists within a noble British tradition of uncomfortable 'street' records Going back through Stormzy, Young Fathers, The Streets themselves, Grime, Goldie, Roni Size & Reprazent and Prodigy to the point where Irvine Welsh published Trainspotting and started this particular ball rolling probably. LOGGERHEAD has enough of its own juice to deserve mention in such hallowed company. It's an immediately arresting record.
Garth described it as 'a harder-edged Massive Attack', and I concur there too. There's not much better in my book than anything that reminds me of Massive Attack and this certainly does. Perhaps Tricky was the original, 'harder-edged Massive Attack', I suppose and it reminds me of him too. It has Tricky's distinctive unease in his own skin. Listening to it is like having an itch you can't scratch.
It's very much the sound of the UK's underbelly which we've got used to being reminded of in popular culture over the last thirty years. It's a Metamorphosis record by which I mean Kafka. Like waking up from your comfortable bed and finding yourself in a distinctly uncomfortable one. In an overcrowded, freezing and smelly squat, surrounded by addicts with rodents scrambling under the foorboards .
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 551 ESG
This turned a couple of heads and sounded just fabulous when played at The Newcastle Arms the other evening.
Albums of the Year # 11 Kikagaku Moyu - Kumoyu Island
It's been neglectful of me not to share my thoughts on this. Kumuyo Island, the fifth and apparently final album from Japanese enigmatic longhairs Kikagaku Moyo.
KM have been putting out records and touring globally for ten years now, delighting fans of Jap Rock and Krautrock whose noble legacy they revere and further.
Now, apparently, they've decided on a hiatus. Whether temporary or permanent we're not yet sure. Regardless of which transpires this is a fine record, to bemoan their departure from the stage and hope for an encore at some remove.
With a band like this and textures as intricate and alluring as these, you do wish you understood their native tongue so you could have a greater understanding of what's going on though perhaps explicit understanding is not really required here..
The band name translates as Geometric Patterns and in some ways that's all you really need. From the off they've always made a beautiful and intriguing noise.
Never more so than here. This for the moment is a beautifully realised final act. Whatever comes next, they won't be forgotten.
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