1 Labyrinthitis, Destroyer
Destroyer: my single most important musical discovery in 2022. It’s almost blasphemous but imagine a Dylan-esque poet singing/chanting alongside a fabulous and vibrant synth/indie/psychedelic/noise rock band and you get Destroyer. If you say that the laws of nature forbid it I’ll concede a little: yeah, Dan Bejar is not quite Dylan, and the band’s not quite Radiohead, but it’s still sufficiently exciting that I ran through almost their entire discography spanning 20-or-so years in two months. Conclusion: they might just become my favourite amongst all contemporary active bands (assuming that Radiohead’s not active now and given that Muse’s new album totally bummed me out).
As usual, everything starts from Bejar and his guitar, but that’s hard to imagine if you begin from their later albums. Streethawk is still relatively folk-dominated, where Bejar just grabbed his guitar and sang mystic and weirdly moving lines like ‘Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo, where someone learned to love again’; Rubies is a masterpiece that leaned more into Bowie-esque glam rock, where piano becomes more centre-stage. Kaputt, their most popular album, takes on more of a soothing, slightly psychedelic indie sound. Synth became increasingly important since then. And now, Labyrinthitis. It’s a labyrinth, it’s a myth, Bejar’s poems are already moving beyond sense or nonsense. Let the synth let the beat take over and go crazy for a moment. He already sang it himself:
I couldn’t see, I was blind
Off in the corner, doing poet’s work
That’s alright for now
It was just a dream of your blue eyes
Tinseltown Swimming in Blood
I went to see their live in London earlier in October. Bejar just had that weird and yet hugely charismatic vibe: he’s like a prophet on stage. Sometimes the band went awfully quiet and there was only him, reciting – or rather mumbling – his poems that nobody really understands. Sometimes the band went crazy and the four synths got to work and the noise overwhelmed everything, turning the whole experience into pure ecstasy. The only thing is: what kind of world are we living in where Destroyer’s new album tour could only charge less than 20 pounds for a show while Coldplay gets to do at least 5 times more than that?
2 A Light for Attracting Attention, The Smile
Whatever form it takes, isn’t it always delightful to see Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood back to make some music? This album is basically in the late Radiohead style, and follows so seamlessly from Radiohead’s last album, A Moon Shaped Pool, that if people are told that this is just another Radiohead album they’re quite likely to be fooled. It’s pensive as usual, profound as usual, and Thom Yorke, the guru, continues his attack on modern politics, modern technology, and modern life.
I went to see their live this summer (too!) at All Points East music festival. Afterwards I wrote: ‘Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, the two gods of contemporary rock music, prophetic, defiant and experimental, never fitting a line inside a bar, never changing chords according to bars, never satisfied with standard rhythms.’ Their drive to always keep on experimenting, to always try new things, to avoid repeating themselves seems to me precisely what makes Radiohead such an immortal band.
3 Empire Central, The Snarky Puppy
As always, first-class fusion music, incredible live studio, the rhythm’s tight, tone innovative, collaboration professional, and Mark Lettieri’s back on guitars (and baritone guitars). What more to wish for?
4 The Car, Arctic Monkeys
Controversial as it may be, I quite enjoyed Arctic Monkey’s two most recent albums and the direction they’re taking. Not that their earlier albums were not good, but they’ve come a long way: compared with the earlier indie punk stuff where the guitar/bass are quick, coarse, simple and straightforward and singing’s more like shouting, it’s incredibly interesting to see that they’ve slowed down, more or less got rid of the standard verse-chorus structure, and started to carefully craft their tone, to use less but more effective notes and chords (think about mirrorball), to pay more attention to the bass and consider non-standard rhythms, to go darker and lower and let Alex Turner’s voice undulate and meander on top of everything (oh I love his falsetto and the nostalgia and longing in that). In short, their songs start to sound more textured.
5 The Aristocrats with Primuz Chamber Orchestra, The Aristocrats
Speaking of texture, I also love the texture that the orchestra gives to the Aristocrats – it adds more tension, paints a slightly different colour, and gives the albums its epicness. Epic music is always hard to resist, and definitely more so when there’s Guthrie Govan’s masterful guitar on top.
6 Omnium Gatherum/Changes, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Omnium Gatherum: a gathering of everything. So this is like sheer exuberance and an exploding kaleidoscope of a little bit of, yes, everything: there’re synth pop songs to dance to, progressive metal songs to headbang with, there’s R&B and rap, there’s more standard indie rock, there’s jazz/funk fusion, and of course, their good old psychedelic stuff. And they’re doing all this pretty well. Anne Carson’s line seems apt: ‘I will do anything to avoid boredom.’
Changes is also great: a good groove and a psychedelic ambience don’t seem like good bedfellows but KGLW fused these two things pretty well in an album. The mixing’s quite a feat.
In case you’re thinking that two is too much, they’ve actually got six full-length albums out this year. Again, sheer exuberance of creativity, much to be admired.
7 Closure/Continuation, Porcupine Tree
Nothing too surprising, but also not a let-down (tempted to cue Will of the People again here), just another interesting Porcupine Tree progressive rock album. There are moments that take me back to In Absentia or Fear of a Blank Planet. Steven Wilson’s production is impeccable as ever, and however heavy the music might get, Porcupine tree always has a clean, bright and almost hopeful feel to it, a rather pleasant result of both the production and the scales they tend to use.
8 Revealer, Madison Cunningham
After we went to see Madison’s London live a friend remarked: she’s like an elf in a magical forest and the guitar seems to have taken on its own life in her hands. It’s not just an instrument, but something with a will. The guitar wants those notes to be played.
And that’s a fairly apt description of her live performance – and her music in general. Her guitar playing is amazing – anyone who has tried singing while playing different guitar riffs will know how difficult it is to coordiate, not to mention that her riffs are fairly unconventional, interesting, and quick. She has a unique and fairly recognisable combination of voice and guitar tone, but she’s also interestingly versatile when she explores different styles (Radiohead-ish pensive music, whimsical singing like Regina Spektor, bright folk colour like Joni Mitchell…). In any case, Revealer makes for quite a soothing, comfortable, and refreshing listen.
9 Ants from Up There, Black Country, New Road
A whimsical band, a whimsical album. They have so many instruments and each seems to have its own will: they whimsically get in and out of tune, whimsically join the music and quit it after 10 seconds, whimsically swirl upwards together in a circle and then drop down all in a sudden and separate… When they get epic they sometimes sound like Arcade Fire, when they get quiet and sad they sometimes sound like Arcade Fire, but they’re whimsical and quirky in a way that Arcade Fire is not (by the way, AF’s new album’s fine and Lightning II is a fairly good song but the lyric really does put people off). They’re whimsical and quirky in a slightly, cutely pedantic way – after all, they’re a Cambridge band; even suppose I don’t like them, I still can’t fail to relate to them.
Oh, but every time I try to make lunch
For anyone else, in my head
I end up dreaming of you
The place where he inserted the blade
10 Being Funny in a Foreign Language, The 1975
The 1975 has recently become my guilty pleasure, i.e. the musical parallel of Sally Rooney… There’s definitely cheesiness to it, but the cheesiness is so intentional, so exaggerated, so self-consciously and self-mockingly played out that it almost became likeable. I happened to be re-reading some Susan Sontag during the days when this album came out and found a line, in the classic Notes on ‘Camp’, strikingly relevant:
To camp is a mode of seduction – one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders.
Notes on ‘Camp’
As I see it that’s precisely Matty Healy’s mode of seduction. That’s the charm of his lyrics and storytelling, the charm of his personal charisma, and the charm of their happy, cheesy aesthetics. Their music divides people just as ‘camp’ art used to divide people – in an interesting way.