Another indulgent list of the music I've been listening to recently. This time between January to March 2017. Mostly new music, but some old stuff too. With an overwhelming quantity of new music flooding out every week, hopefully this may help someone to find something brilliant amongst it all. Anyone comfortable with the idea of grime, punk, folk, indie, Americana, and '60's balladeers on the same playlist should be the right audience.
Albums
Mose Allison - I'm Not Talkin'. The Song Stylings Of Mose Allison. 1957 - 71. Compilation from the American jazz and blues pianist, singer and songwriter, which I've been playing in tribute following his death in November 2016 at the age of 89. The fact his death passed largely unremarked suggests that his legacy has become seriously undervalued. I'm not particularly a jazz fan (it can be okay in restaurants and on film soundtracks; I like blues a lot more), but Mose Allison is an exception, partly due to his unique and distinctive style (which was shamelessly copied by Georgie Fame). You may know more of his work than you think. Amongst others, his songs have been covered by The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, Elvis Costello, The Clash, and The Who, who performed 'Young Man Blues' as the opening track on the original version of 'Live At Leeds'. He was an acknowledged influence on Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, The Yardbirds, John Mayall, J.J. Cale, Georgie Fame (who described him as "more important than Bob Dylan"), Jethro Tull keyboard player John Evans, Van Morrison, The Pixies, and many others. The very least there should be is a tribute documentary on BBC4.
Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3. The coolest rap band on the planet on prime form.
The xx - I See You. For anyone who actually remembers Young Marble Giants, they immediately seemed to be the most obvious comparison for The xx's debut album - albeit a version filtered through a youth listening to soul, hip hop, and beats-driven music in general. The success of such muted music, from such self-effacing people, was a modest thrill when they first emerged. For me, the appeal was fading by the 2nd album though (maybe I just didn't listen to it enough), so it's great to hear the growing confidence, and emergence of an actual pop sensibility for album 3. Fantastic stuff. As with the equally surprising ongoing success of alt-J, it restores some faith in humanity that you don't have to be a loudmouth show-off to make it as a pop star.
The Molochs - America's Velvet Glory. Wouldn't sound out of place in any decade from the '60's until now, the appeal of well-crafted garage pop-punk will last forever. And anything where the influence of Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers is at all evident will attract my interest every time.
Allison Crutchfield - Tourist In This Town. Debut solo album from the sister of Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield, and proof that both sisters share a natural talent for bringing a certain style of '90's indie (eg Belly, The Breeders, Throwing Muses) into modern times. The poppier tracks should be on the radio, and in the pop charts, all the time. And, as with Waxahatchee, the quieter tracks could hold an audience rapt whether played in small clubs, at festivals, or in your living room.
Japandroids - Near To The Wild Heart Of Life. Anthemic rock with strong enough tunes to make it past my prejudices against 'serious rock'. This is the duo's 3rd album, more accessible than their early, murky Hüsker Dü noise-with-tunes (a great place to start from), and should see them moving into ever-more-prominent positions on festival billings.
Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness. Completely traditional U.S. folky singer-songwriter music sounding hushed and lovely, and deserving as much of your time as anything else in 2017. Laura Marling isn't the only who who can pull this off. Try 'Melting Grid' as a starting point.
The Burning Hell - People (issued 2013) and Public Library (issued 2016). After hearing 'Fuck The Government, I Love You' from the mini-album 'Don't Believe The Hyperreal' (issued Nov. 2015) by Ariel Sharratt and Mathias Kom (a side project from, respectively, The Burning Hell's clarinet player and singer/ songwriter), I dabbled lightly in The Burning Hell's next album, 'Public Library' - which includes a slightly different arrangement of 'Fuck The Government...' - but only got around to playing a couple of tracks. Despite the brilliance of 'Fuck The Government....', and even after looking at a couple of YouTube videos, I couldn't get past a vague impression they might be too polite for my taste. They have a clarinet player, for god's sake! And an album called 'Public Library'.
That turned out to be completely wrong. I heard 'The Road', from 'Public Library', which reminds me of Pavement, if anything. Next stop was their Popular tracks on Spotify, followed by frequent plays of these two albums.
From the albums, it seems certain they're a storming live act, though their USP is Mathias Kom's lyrics. Perhaps too literate, literary, and smartass funny (but still very funny) to ever break through to full-scale mass appeal, he's still one of only a few contemporary songwriters where it's worth paying attention to the lyrics. In terms of wit, he stands comparison to modern masters like Jeffrey Lewis and Stephin Merritt (of The Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes etc). Good tunes too. A great new discovery.
Toothless - The Pace Of The Passing. Solo project from Bombay Bicycle Club bassist Ed Nash. Despite slightly mixed reviews (some very positive, others with fainter praise) it does live up to the promise of the singles released throughout 2016.
Daughn Gibson - Vas 1 EP. Moody electro-country noir? More great stuff from Daughn Gibson. (Apparently his birth name was Josh Martin. Is 'Daughn' even a real name?)
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Talk Tight (released in the UK Nov. 2016) and The French Press (released March 2017). By the time I heard the debut mini-album from this Melbourne band they had already signed to Seattle label Sub Pop, and now there's already a follow-up, another mini-album. Initial impression is of an amped-up Go-Betweens - a comparison which has been made by most reviewers. Being compared to the blessed Go-Betweens already puts them several leagues beyond most of the competition. Seem guaranteed to be a sensational live act. If you google 'rolling blackouts' you'll find it's a real thing, and the band didn't just put some random words together.
Jens Lekman - Life Will See You Now. His best since 2007's 'Night Falls Over Kortedala', and on track to exceed even that with growing acquaintance. Also very pleased to have attended a recent UK live show: great night, despite Jens illness (the previous night had been cancelled) requiring a shorter performance, lower energy levels (he was seated throughout), and inability to perform any song calling for a vocal range his throat couldn't cope with. He still radiated charm and good humour throughout - though clearly suffering - and he's invited round to our house for dinner any time he likes. The only previous people I can recall that this applies to were from gigs years ago: Mark Eitzel, from the American Music Club, and Lou Barlow, when he was fronting Sebadoh.
Our daughter's first gig (she's 14, nearly 15), and a night out for the whole family, since our son was there too. Our daughter liked it enough that she's actually willing to be seen out with us again at other concerts in future.
Jens' illness also prevented him from doing what is apparently one of his regular jobs: manning the march stall with his girlfriend/ road manager. But our daughter still got a t-shirt, so we'll see if that becomes another favourite, alongside her Joy Division and Dead Milkmen t-shirts.
The Blue Aeroplanes - Welcome, Stranger! Sometimes it seems that every band there ever was is still going. Even ones where key members are dead. Beatnik art-punk band The Blue Aeroplanes have been going since 1981, though their turnover of members since that time rivals that of The Fall. I bought a few albums in the late-'80's/ early-'90's, and saw them supporting R.E.M.. Memorably, before we were married, my wife (still working too hard then, as she still does) fell asleep, sat against the back wall during their encore at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. They had something like 4 guitarists on stage at that time. 'Journal Of An Airman', their adaptation of the W.H. Auden poem, from their 1985 album 'Tolerance', has been a favourite, and art-punk classic, since I first heard it.
Delighted to find that their new album sounds as good as they ever have.
Lowly - Heba. Lovely, floaty, atmospheric and melodic debut from this Danish band.
Maggie Rogers - Now That The Light Is Fading. Described as 'lush follktronica', and not at all the sort of thing you would expect to be praised by Pharrell Williams, who apparently encountered her work when delivering a masterclass at New York University's Clive Davis Institute, where she was a student. Video of him sitting next to her, listening to her track 'Alaska' (which is on this EP) went viral, and increased her profile by about 12,000,000 %.
“I’ve never heard anything that sounds like that. That’s a drug for me,” he said after the song finished, calling Rogers’ sound “singular.”
After everything took off, she said, during an interview with Pitchfork: “I come from such a small place and I’ve always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it. I know that’s a really naïve statement and that isn’t always the case, there is so much good music that doesn’t get heard, but it’s been really wild watching people find my old music. It kind of reaffirms my belief that if you make what you want to make, maybe somebody will find it, even if it takes four years.”
Great to see good things happen to modest people.
Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors. 8th album from the band, which is now essentially a solo project for frontman David Longstreth. The current sound is reminiscent of an ultra-modern update on Scritti Politti: pop/soul made by very smart people. What initially appears like over-use of auto-tune (see also Lambchop's 'FLOTUS', from last year) becomes less of an issue with growing acquaintance, and it quickly emerges as one of the year's best.
Grandaddy - Last Place. This kind of thing never used to happen. A critically acclaimed band return after a lengthy hiatus and put out an album which is at least a match for the work which made their name.
Sleaford Mods - English Tapas. Absolutely brilliant that 2 relatively old blokes (vocalist Jason Williamson was born in 1970) based in Nottingham should be arguably the most punk rock band in the country. The sound is like some DNA splicing experiment involving The Fall, Suicide, and classic rap - with John Cooper Clarke in a bad mood on vocals. After 10 albums, dating back to 2007 (an impressive work ethic), they're not even slowing down, and remain as vital as ever. A great example of modern protest music, which actually does still exist, despite the many complaints for years about politically apathetic, career-driven modern pop stars. And Williamson is one of the best at swearing currently working in contemporary music. A rare talent.
The time they were on Jools Holland's Later in 2015, they were the best thing on that entire series. The fact that, for each song, beats provider Andrew Fearn's contribution consisted of pressing one button on his laptop, then standing shuffling, nodding along, and nursing the dregs in his plastic pint, just made it even better.
Stormzy - Gang Signs & Prayer. The most high profile grime album of the year to date, and proof that Stormzy can cope with mellow, soulful tracks too (eg Cigarettes & Cush). A lot of it is fantastic, though the excessive swearing can get a little tiresome (unlike Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson, Stormzy doesn't have a talent for creative swearing), and overuse of the 'N' word seems even less excusable from a UK artist. And the skits are a pointless, unfunny waste of time.
Still worthy of attention, but, for me, Skepta remains the one to beat.
Conor Oberst - Salutations. 2016's 'Ruminations' was Oberst's starkest solo work: recorded alone at home, with simple piano or guitar backing. It was one of my favourites of last year, and a highlight of his astonishing, and still undervalued, career.
Issued less than 6 months later, 'Salutations' is full band versions of all 10 songs on 'Ruminations', plus 7 extra tracks. It's nearly 68 minutes long, and is equally essential.
He's been releasing music since the age of 14, under the name Bright Eyes for most of his career (though there have been other projects and other names too), is now 37, and seems to be operating on peak form.
Idles - Brutalism. State of the art for UK punk rock. Over the best kind of 2-chord stampede, singer Joe Talbot comes over like Ian Dury with the music hall tendencies cut out, the pub rock roots transplanted into the heart of proper punk rock, the intensity dialled up, but the humour intact. I love the idea of festival audiences yelling along with lines like 'Mary Berry loves reggae'.
Slaves have some serious competition.
Laura Marling - Semper Femina. Tracks like 'Soothing' and 'Don't Pass Me By' move her onto a new level, beyond the English folk stylings of the past. As noted in the review in UNCUT magazine, on these tracks they sound like Karen Carpenter fronting Portishead. It's been a career conducted at her own pace, with maturity and class. Often compared to Joni Mitchell, she just needs a 'Big Yellow Taxi' to propel her permanently onto a level of arena-filling mass popularity. Though it would be no surprise if she doesn't aspire to that at all.
The Magnetic Fields - 50 Song Memoir. For me it's never going to have the impact of their masterpiece, '69 Love Songs', but only because it lacks the thrill of discovering a major talent. ('69 Love Songs' was 1999, and I had previously bought 1995's 'Get Lost', then gone back to previous albums, and the 1st album by The 6ths, but '69 Love Songs' was such a quantum leap forward it was like discovering something new.) Nevertheless, the release of this 5-disc, 50 track album is still one of the cultural events of the decade. After several weeks of constant playing, its wonders are still unfolding. And we're super excited to have booked tickets for a rare UK tour later this year.
Jarvis Cocker and Chilli Gonzalez - Room 29. Described as “a song-cycle concerning the goings-on in Room 29 of the Château Marmont hotel in Hollywood”, this seems more like a literary exercise than a pop album, and all credit to Jarvis Cocker for taking on such an interesting side project, with limited commercial potential. It's frequently hushed, delicate piano music with spoken, almost whispered vocals, which wouldn't sound out of place on Radio 4.
Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator. At least once a year there's a band or artist who have been plugging away to respectable success in whatever genre ghetto they have been consigned to, then everything snaps into focus and they produce an album which raises them above any perceived categories which have limited their appeal in the past. Last year it was Drive-By Truckers, with their awesome state-of-the-nation address 'American Band'. This year it's Hurray For The Riff Raff (filed under folk-blues/ Americana in the past). Stand-out track at the moment is 'Hungry Ghost', but the rest of it is catching up with repeated plays.
The Simple Carnival - Smitten. The Simple Carnival is Pittsburgh-based singer-songwriter Jeff Boller, who aparently spent 7 years producing this in his home studio. The sound is reminiscent of never-cool '70's/'80's U.S. singer-songwriters like Christopher Cross, Dean Friedman and Rupert Holmes, though critics have instead made more credible comparisons to the likes of Todd Rundgren, Burt Bacharach, The Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, and Emitt Rhodes. It's beautifully-crafted, melodic, and entirely charming. (I've also recently heard a couple of tracks from an album called 'The New High', by Brent Cash, which also wouldn't have sounded out of place on the soundtrack to Dudley Moore's 1981 film 'Arthur', so maybe something is going on here.)
In times when the most popular U.K. singer-songwriters are so dull, MOR, and career-driven they make Chris de Burgh look like Daniel Johnston, it's refreshing to find someone quietly pursuing their own vision.
The Moonlandingz - Interplanetary Class Classics. This began as a fictional band in a concept album called 'Johnny Rocket, Narcissist and Music Machine... I'm Your Biggest Fan', by Sheffield electro-duo Eccentronic Research Council. Lias and Saul from Fat White Family were recruited to front the imaginary band, but after one track attracted a lot of attention from BBC Radio 6, they have now emerged as a real band with their own album.
On the original album, The Moonlandingz were described as a “cosmic synth krautabilly group doing fuzzy Joe Meek-style pop”, which sounds like a recipe for a perfect pop group to me. And supposedly they're even better live.
When playing it I'm reminded at various points of such as The Cramps, Jesus and Mary Chain, Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Maybe Transvision Vamp... Maybe Bobby 'Boris' Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers...
The album also has just about the greatest selection of guest appearances ever, including Randy Jones the cowboy from The Village People, Rebecca Taylor from Slow Club, Phil Oakey from The Human League, and, as it seems to be described almost everywhere, 'YOKO fucking ONO, who sings and yowls on epic closer 'This Cities Undone'' (presumably the connection made via Sean Lennon, since the album was recorded with him at his studio in upstate New York). Beat that Gorillaz!
Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me. Mount Eerie is the musical project of Anacortes, Washington-based songwriter/ producer Phil Elverum, and this is his 8th album under that name. If I ever thought about it at all before, my impression was that Mount Eerie was post-rock or experimental music (and the descriptions on his Wikipedia page suggest that may be true for some of his work), and I never paid much attention until this album, currently the highest scoring of the year to date on reviews aggregator website Metacritic. With a Metascore of 96, it's one point above Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' 'Skeleton Tree', which had the highest score of 2017. It just took a moment to type the name into Spotify's search box to see what was attracting such levels of praise.
In common with 'Skeleton Tree', this was recorded in the wake of the death of a close family member, in this case Elverum's wife, who died of cancer in July 2016. Presumably it was a cathartic exercise for Elverum, though many will feel that these thoughts are too personal to be recorded for public consumption, and too intrusive to listen to.
The opening lines on the album are: "Death is real, someone's there and then they're not/ It's not for singing about, it's not for making into art/ When real death enters the house, all poetry is dumb'. So Elverum is obviously aware of all that. But he's a musician and an artist, so this is how he deals with things.
One reviewer hails it as a masterpiece, and ranks it alongside works of actual art such as 'A Grief Observed', C.S. Lewis' reflections on the death of his wife from cancer at age 45, after only 4 years of marriage, and the painting 'She Will Find What Is Lost', by Brian Kershisnik. This should be considered as something other than pop music then.
In terms of what it actually sounds like, it's very slow, stark and haunted. Closest comparisons I recognise would be Red House Painters, and early Will Oldham, when he recorded under variations of the Palace name (Palace Brothers, Palace Music, etc).
It's an important work. How often I'll play it remains to be seen. Everyone else will have to decide for themselves how they view it.
T r a c k s
American Wrestlers - Vote Thatcher. Instant indie classic, and lead track on their also-good album 'Goodbye Terrible Youth'. For baiting Red Wedge-era punk rockers they could hardly have come up with a more provocative song title, though the lyrics are actually about police brutality. Although the band are based in St. Louis, Missouri, singer/ composer Gary McClure is Scottish, but may be too young to appreciate just how contentious a title that could be - especially in Scotland. From this distance perhaps we can just consider it to be quite funny though.
Bobby Vee - The Night Has A Thousand Eyes and Take Good Care Of My Baby. U.S. hits from 1962 and 1961 respectively, from the era of clean-cut pre-Beatles teen idols - which I was prompted to play following news of his death in October 2016 at the age of 73. I do have a fondness for the music of that time - Phil Spector girl groups, Brill Building hit factory tunes etc - perhaps due to a perceived innocence in a less complicated world (the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK assassination etc, so maybe not that innocent a time...). These 2 tracks in particular still sound great.
Also interested to see from Vee's Wikipedia page that, very early in his career, a young Bob Dylan played piano in his band, operating under the name Elston Gunn. That time is covered in Dylan's autobiography, and Dylan subsequently paid tribute to the man during a 2013 concert in St. Paul, Minnesota, when Vee was in the audience.
Blaenavon - My Bark Is Your Bite. Another great single from highly promising U.K. indie band from Hampshire. Perhaps even better is the acoustic version, currently available via Spotify and iTunes. Debut album due in April.
Foxygen - Follow The Leader. Lead track from their album 'Hang'. Epic soul-pop which recalls the likes of early Todd Rundgren or the New Radicals.
Cherry Glazerr - Told You I'd Be With The Guys. Standout track from their album 'Apocalipstick'.
Apothek - Roaring and Waiting For The Thunder. Moody and tuneful standouts from the album (also called 'Apothek') by Norwegian electro-pop duo.
Loyle Carner - The Isle Of Arran; No CD (feat. Rebel Kleff). Hearing brilliant single 'No CD' on Spotify last year was enough to make me look forward to the album ('Yesterday's Gone'), and lead track 'The Isle Of Arran' may be even better. He's categorised as hip hop, but definitely a U.K. variety, and more like a modern equivalent of The Streets. The whole album is worth your time.
Matt Monro - Born Free; From Russia With Love; On Days Like These; Softly As I Leave You; Walk Away; Portrait Of My Love. As suggested in my 2016 music post, after Andy Williams, my next focus on '60's MOR balladeers was planned to be Matt Monro, which I was mainly prompted to do in the end after I kept hearing 'On Days Like These' (which was featured in the original film of The Italian Job) on the radio. Some of his other best work was also film theme songs: 'Born Free' and 'From Russia With Love' (the 2nd James Bond film, from 1963, after 1962's Dr No).
Ezra Furman - Ferguson's Burning. Brilliant protest song like they used to do, written as an immediate angry reaction to the shooting of 18 year old black man Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, and the riots which followed. Furman posted it on YouTube little more than a week after the shooting, and it's still available only on YouTube and SoundCloud. Not the sort of music Ezra Furman normally does (also brilliant), but proof that modern musicians haven't forgotten how to do protest music, and hopefully an inspiration to many more.
Bright Eyes - When The President Talks To God. Inspired by Ezra Furman, I went back to Bright Eyes' equally potent protest song from 2005 - which remains at least as relevant now as then.
Black Honey - Hello Today. Another highly promising U.K. indie band. No sign of an album yet, but this should have been all over the pop charts. Not that I ever know what's in the pop charts anymore, but this sounds like a hit to me.
Tim Darcy - Tall Glass Of Water. Opening track, and the most immediately appealing, from debut solo album 'Saturday Night' by the frontman of frequently thrilling arty post-punk Montreal band Ought.
The Animals - House Of The Rising Sun; Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood; We've Gotta Get Out Of this Place. Some of those early-'60's U.K. bands, jazz and blues players re-inventing themselves as pop and rock groups, must have been a revelation to encounter playing in small clubs. During his keynote address at the 2012 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Bruce Springsteen spoke about the impact The Animals had on him, and basically said he's spent his entire career trying to re-write 'We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place'. These all still sound awesome.
Parquet Courts - Captive Of The Sun (feat. Bun B). Re-recorded version of a track from their 2016 album 'Human Performace' (their best album?), featuring a guest appearance from rapper Bun B. Best rock/ rap collaboration since The Maccabees' re-imagined version of 'Empty Vessels' with Roots Manuva.
Alexandra Savior - Mirage. The one advance review I've read of her debut album 'Belladonna Of Sadness' wasn't particularly complimentary, but this single (track 1 on the album) sounded great after it appeared on a Spotify recommendations list, and it still sounds great. Probably most easily described as post-Lorde.
Skepta - No Security. So far, he has failed to disappoint.
Clifford T. Ward - Home Thought From Abroad. Title track from his breakthrough 1973 album 'Home Thoughts', and b-side to his biggest hit 'Gaye', though, according to Discogs, it was later released as a single in its own right in 1976. Heard it on the car radio and, although it was one of a few Clifford T. songs I'd always quite liked, thought it sounded better than I remembered: lush string arrangement; shamelessly romantic; lovely moment of calm during the drive back from the school run. On repeat plays since it still sounds just as good.
The song is in the format of a letter from abroad to his wife back home in England. Somehow he gets away with frequent references to staples of high school eng. lit. poetry classes: "I've been reading Browning, Keats and William Wordsworth"; "And I know how Robert Browning must have felt"; "Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem". As befits a former English teacher, I suppose.
For someone so superficially Radio 2-friendly, John Peel was a supporter. Ward's debut album 'Singer-Songwriter' was issued on Peel's Dandelion label, and Peel was later amongst those (also including Elton John and Sting) who provided some financial support after Ward was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987, which allowed him to battle the disease, and also to continue recording until his death from pneumonia in 2001, at the age of 57.
Also surprised to discover that he was musically active from 1962, forming his first band after leaving school. Although, following his hits, his success was hampered by shyness and a reluctance to perform live, he toured extensively throughout the early part of his career.
Obviously a man pursuing a lifelong passion.
