As with last year: here’s nothing more than a list of new albums that I really like, nothing very impartial, nothing objective. But in addition I’ll tell you my (sometimes very personal) reasons for my preferences, and maybe you’ll be a little moved by them and want to try out the music. Who knows? (And what else could such a list achieve anyway?)
Live at Bush Hall, Black Country New Road
When this came out in March, I was entirely blown away: what do you do as a band, when your lead singer/frontman (Issac Wood), whose voice and lyrics are generally seen as probably the most distinct feature of the band, decided to leave? Well, first, they dropped their very successful album from last year, Ants from Up There, and resolved not to play it live without Issac. Second, (nearly) everybody joined to sing and write lyrics. Finally, they made a live album of their new songs and a film of the concert, which came across as lively, imaginative, and rich as they’d ever sounded. Which is not to say that we don’t miss Issac (I went back to Concorde more than ever this year). But they became more upbeat and diverse without him, and none the worse for that.
And this is not to say that this is already great or very mature music (so putting them in the first place was surely my bias). But it’s brimming with energy and power, and, as cliché as this may sound, when they sing ‘Look at what we did together, BCNR friends forever’, I have no doubt about the sincerity of this post-Issac-Wood BCNR manifesto. And of course, it was not just that. There are the good voices of Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, May Kershaw, each attractive in a different sort of way (in turn: refrained and subtle; whimsical and bright; elegantly beautiful); there’s the good old counterpoint, lots of motifs and variations and developments (the repeating riffs in ‘Dancers’); there are lots of tricks and themes they take from classical music, and, of course, the classic-BCNR soaring tornedo of piano and sax and violin.
I went to see their live in Cambridge back in May (it’s homecoming for them, and in a sense, for me too); they looked still not very much at ease with the stage, but the tinge of awkwardness made me like them all the more. I see them not so much as unapproachable shining rockstars under the spotlight, and much less as the wrapped-up streamlined celebrities in the musical industry, but more as people you could’ve met and befriended and held for a witty chat in one of the cozy little parties. A distant intimacy of this sort, I suppose, is part and parcel of the charm they’ll always hold over me.
Javelin, Sufjan Stevens
This is probably his most Carrie & Lowell sounding album after Carrie & Lowell itself. Often, I don’t quite know what to say about Sufjan Steven’s more experimental/electronic sounding albums (it tends to be: yeah, I know it must be good, I just need to learn to appreciate it more). But I do know very clearly what to say about albums like Carrie & Lowell and Javelin: they’re as great as they’re devastating. Beneath the thin, serene surface of his whispery voice, it contained as much heartrending power as is manifested in his lyrics. Here are some of my favourite lines (but you can’t just read them, go listen to them):
In ‘A running start’: ‘Don’t go, my lovely pantomime / Receive of me my only wish’
In ‘My red little fox’: ‘Kiss me with the fire of gods / just say what you want / say it out within’;
‘Rivers running through it all / so kiss me as I am lost / kiss me from within / jump in, my red little fox’
In ‘So you are tired’: ‘I was a man indivisible / When everything else was broke’
‘Shit talk’: ‘Do as I say, not as I give up’; ‘I will always love you / but I cannot look at you’
And the entire Javelin song. No one does it better to put such a twisted, intricate sentiment in so few lines.
The Harmony Codex, Steven Wilson
What more can you say: Steven Wilson just has it. Everything’s right with this album. I see it as his best after The Raven that refused to sing, where Guthrie Govan played immaculate guitar for him. But this is almost no less melodically intricate. Check out the (proper jazz-fusion) keyboard solo from 6:55 in ‘Impossible Tightrope’. The expanse of ‘Rock Bottom’, the powerful voice of Ninet Tayeb, the epic guitar solo that enters with and takes over her voice at the end of it. The groove in ‘Actual Brutal Facts’ (and a brilliant, typical Steven Wilson line: ‘Squander this and that, the feted and the hated, and when you turn the shit to gold, it’s not appreciated’). And the best among them all, in ‘Staircase’, there’s the best guitar and bass solo I’ve heard in a while, the whimsical, dancing melody, all the sliding and bending and dynamic changes…
The Record, Boygenius
At the end of the year, Spotify reminded me that this was my most-played album of the year. I was a little surprised, and then, I recalled how lost I was from April to June and how I replayed that album again and again through those months, how their voices calmed me and soothed me, how I would smile when I sang those sentimental lines along (‘I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself’, ‘I came prepared for absolution if you’d only ask / So I take some offence when you say, no regrets’), how the ending section of ‘Not Strong Enough’, with all its soaring guitars and thunderous drums, strengthened and empowered me – and now that I’m in a different place I’ve thrown them all to the back of my mind. How easily, how effortlessly we forget things. In that sense, songs, like words, save us ‘something from the time where we will never be again’ (the last sentence of Annie Ernaux’s The Years).
My favourite track of the album remains ‘Leonard Cohen’. It’s short, with a beautiful melody and a very good story. It makes some harmless fun with Leonard Cohen whom I felt very dear to my heart in a peculiar way. It has a line which drags me into the past – I once knew someone who was very fond of putting persons in front of ‘happen’ instead of events. (- And then you know what happened. – I know. I happened.) It has a very appropriate line which G and I have been fond of alluding to at the present (‘I might like you less now that you know me so well’), as we very tentatively reach closer to each other’s heart like two utterly modern people… but that’s for another day.
Fauna, Haken
I don’t quite know what to say about this album, except that it has a very nice concept (nine songs, each about an animal), that it’s very good progressive rock, and that it’s quite melodically weird (I guess the rhythmic unconventionality hardly needs to be mentioned), which might take a fair bit of repetition to legitimise (it did for me, eventually). Like the very Gentle-Giants-ish verse from ‘Elephants never forget’ – I can’t make sense of it, so much so that I suspect it’s almost atonal, but it’s just strangely charming. (Simply: take your guitar. Play along with the song. Play any note, just any note. None would sound wrong.)
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, Lana Del Rey
I rediscovered Lana Del Rey this year, beginning from the release of this album, and going back to other classics like Norman Fucking Rockwell. I used to like her very much, dating back to ‘Young and Beautiful’, which seemed to me at that time a perfect snapshot of the whole Gatsby sentiment. Then I sort of stopped since, first, her songs sounded too much like one another so you got tired after listening to some, and second, she became too popular for a kid that wished to be different from everyone else to like her, and three, with the benefit of hindsight, of course, what did the kid know about love and eros and melancholy back then to understand her lyrics anyway.
And now, well, the jigsaws have fallen into place. Musically, she diversified herself a little, and though the fundamental colour of her music remained the same, it’s now ornamented rather variously, with a lot more collaboration with other artists (I especially enjoy the pieces with Jon Batiste, SYML and Father John Misty on this album). And I’ve grown up. The whole ‘cool kid’ angst has long been behind, and I’ve become more than happy to defend whoever I enjoyed, from the most popular to the most obscure. There’s a great melancholic ambience in Lana Del Rey’s, and meandering melodies that kept me from getting bored through my repeated listens, and that’s pretty good as far as I’m concerned. Finally, of course, there’s much more that only began to resonate with me after coming of age, after all the loneliness, nostalgia, love, the longing along with emptiness after something beautiful ends, whether it is a party, a carnival, a brief encounter, a relationship, or a stage in life.
Black Classical Music, Yussef Dayes
For a start, the album has a nice title (as impressive as they are, it goes without saying, there shouldn’t (and can’t) be only one canon of classical music). And then, Yussef Dayes I also rediscovered this year to be one of the best drummers and probably my personal favourite, incredibly groovy and endlessly creative and expressive with very subtle rhythmic and dynamic changes. He makes lovely videos, playing with his band in places with heavenly sceneries. He often collaborated with the bassist Rocco Palladino (the son of the glorious Pino) to some great results (‘Tiago Pass’ on this album, the album Welcome to the hills, the single ‘love is the message’, and many live sessions); and sometimes, with the guitarist and singer-songwriter and fellow south Londoner Tom Misch (‘Rust’ on this album); and then, of course, with Rocco and Tom both, on one of my favourite jazz fusion albums, What Kinda Music (would they form a band, ever?).
Be the wheel, Theo Katzman
Sometimes simplicity and sincerity could go a long way. The recent idea behind Theo’s production of this album is roughly this: with all the fancy modern music technology, a strive for perfection easily gets things overproduced. He’s doing away with all that. All real-time high-fidelity recordings in a little hut in the woods, and nothing, no production, after that. It’s all his original voice and all the instruments themselves recorded live in one take (which you can see in his youtube videos). Theo goes very philosophical about it (The Thoreauvian ‘back to nature!’, humanhood as against machines, etc.), but I tend to be a little more superficial: he has a beautiful voice, and writes very good lines; in this modern world, sincerity becomes a rarity, so I’d cherish it whenever I see it. Theo is surely one of the sincerest musicians one could ever know, and one of the best amongst them.
His music doesn’t get the popularity that he deserves (Vulfpeck is getting some attention, sure, but not his own stuff), but it’s not his concern. His ‘5-Watt Rock’ is great as far as he’s concerned, as long as it does reach the heart of someone that truly connects with him and recognizes what he does. His lyrics are nothing fancy, but they’re humorous, punchy, and they tell good stories like a good friend of you would. Sometimes sincerity manifests itself in the form of intimacy. Maybe, all of a sudden you’ll feel the click, you’ll have felt intimate with the music and Theo himself, and then, everything will start to sound different.
Some other albums that I also sort of enjoy
There’s Columbo by Bruno Major, which I haven’t enjoyed as much as his previous albums, but there are moving moments, especially in ‘18’ and ‘Tears in rain’, the two non-love-songs of the album (one about his sister that killed herself, and the other, his granny that passed away); I guess I’m a little tired of his love songs, which can get a little cheesy at times. The title song ‘Columbo’ (which I thought was a love song but turned out to be about his crashed vintage car) is still Bruno at his melodic best, no doubt. There’s Women by the Norwegian band Orions Belte, recommended by a Norwegian friend. They’re hard to define, there’s some psychedelic stuff, and some experimental electronic things; they write very good instrumental riffs. There’s Mirage by Plini, the great prog rock guitarist; it’s impressive in one way, but I tend to have higher expectations for him than going relentlessly over the major pentatonics. There’s Held Together by a band called Aberdeen that practically no one listens to, but if brass jazz rock fusion is your thing (if Snarky Puppy is your thing), this is definitely worth checking out. There’s Rio by Trevor Rabin, a very multi-faceted album with a little blues, a little prog, a little folk, and an immaculate, unforgettable Jacob-Collier-ish vocal harmony in ‘Tumbleweed’. Finally, This Stupid World by Yo La Tengo, which I would rank very high amongst all the 90s bands that came out recently and made new albums, but then I’m not sure whether that’s much of a praise.