For as long as I've had a blog, I've filled most of December with a year end countdown of my favourite albums (and on my old blog, I used to do films, books, TV shows and comics too).
Since 2018, I've been doing a list as long as the final number in the year - 18 for 2018, 19 for 2019... last year, it was my Top 22 of 2022, but I think it's fair to say that the top four at least were all better records than anything I've heard this year.
That's not to say it's been a bad year for music. A lot of my favourite artists have put out new discs (or, in Kevin Morby's case, not bothered to put them on a disc at all, just plonked them on the interweb), but none of those records felt like they came from performers at the very top of their game. Unlike the ones I selected by Half Man Half Biscuit, Frank Turner, Craig Finn and American Aquarium this time last year.
I'm also frustrated by the fact that December is never the best time to decide your favourite albums of the past year, since you're still listening to half of them and haven't even heard a bunch more. A good example of this is that I just managed to squeeze the most recent First Aid Kit album into my Top Ten last year after only a few listens. I then continued to listen to it well into the summer, by which time my appreciation had rocketed - it's equally as good as any of the records mentioned above.
Anyway, the way I feel right now is that there's been a lot of great songs this year, but not as many great collections of songs. (This opinion may well have changed by next March.) Many of the old faithfuls delivered, but didn't quite scale previous heights. That doesn't bother me - I'm not one of those people who expects every record to be better than the last one. But I just didn't think I could subject you all to 23 reviews of 23 albums I liked, but didn't quite love. I managed to cobble together a Top Ten, just like in the old days (sometimes I have to remind myself what this blog is called), but the rest of the time between now and the end of the year, I'm just going so share some of my favourite songs. Like this one...
Spanish Love Songs - Lifers
Spanish Love Songs are one of those cool hipster bands that Ben likes and he's gradually been persuading me to do the same. I was particularly impressed with their song The Boy Considers His Hair Cut, which I featured on a Self-Loathing Friday just over a year ago. And their new album, No Joy... well, that's clearly a no-brainer. They remind me a little bit of Ezra Furman doing their best attempt at Springsteen, or (don't tell Ben) The Killers back when they were cool. And then the write lyrics like these...
It's the notion that your body is never gonna change
The baby fat that's hiding in your cheeks won't fade
And you're not sure why, but when you leave the house you circle the block to cry
And these...
So do you think that we'll outrun it?
Get past the pain of simply being?
Every time you want out of your body
Or can't get your head around this dream
You swore you loved it more
When you couldn't guess the end
It's never adding up
But don't write yourself out of the equation
Is 51 a good time to turn Emo?
Meanwhile, as I mentioned First Aid Kit above, I might as well throw this in to close today, a song in which they help out one of their recent tour-mates on backing vocals. Lola Kirke is a singer and actress (quite successful, it appears, though I can't claim to have seen anything she's been in). Born in London, raised in New York, yet she makes sparkly Americana that verges on good old fashioned Country & Western. George Strait, I'm sure, would approve of the song title below. Judging from the video though, Lola is probably spending time in Alcatraz for indecent exposure. Hopefully she'll be back out soon...
Lola Kirke feat. First Aid Kit - All My Exes Live In LA
I thought long and hard about this. Whenever Nige Blackwell
releases a new album, it’s usually guaranteed to be in my Top Ten of the year.
But could I really justify naming a Half Man Half Biscuit record my Number One?
When was the last time you saw a "funny" record at
the top of a music critic’s list? Although HMHB are well-regarded by the
cognoscenti, there’s always a sense that their “satirical, sardonic and
sometime surreal songs” (thank you, iffypedia) are not quite fit to be held up against
more “serious” artists. Can art be funny? Oh shit, I’m not getting into that.
Wouldn’t want to irk the purists.
Over on No Badger Required, the always eminently readable
barrystubbs (formerly, or maybe still, SWC) has a weekly feature called Almost
Perfect Albums, for which he invites guest contributions. I almost submitted
The Volatrol Years. Only two things stopped me – first, the usual paranoid insecurities; second, I knew I wanted to write this post. But it is an almost
perfect album, more almost perfect than anything else I’ve heard this year, and
(I will fight even the most ardent HMHB aficionado) the best album of their entire 38 year career. Because it’s not just a “comedy” record.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some very funny songs on this
record. Lyrics that still make me chuckle after 10 months solid listening.
Like a lot of Blackwell’s material, it works on a number of
different levels. Here there’s the pastiche of the Bill Haley song, coupled
with the song’s morbid humour, and then the extra suggestion of darkness and disgust
in that final word. When you analyse humour, it stops being funny. Must try
not to do that.
The fact I still find this record amusing even though I know
all the jokes off by heart says much about Nigel’s way with a line. Like all
great comedians, it’s all in the delivery. The most blatant example of that is
the monkey joke in Grafting Haddock In The Back Room Of The George. The first
time I heard it, I almost crashed my car. Now I look forward to its arrival
like a funny old friend. It’s a combination of the venom in the monkey’s voice
and the exaggerated Scouse accent. That’s art to me.
Then there’s the observational stuff and the bitter
Middle-Aged-Ranting, like the lost dog poster complaint on Rogation Sunday’sHere Again or the public service vigilante who’s going out of his way to bury
the worst aspects of modern life (“the odd job man who never got back”, “the
ukuleles outside Sports Direct”, “Kelvin Mackenzie”) In A Suffolk Ditch. (That
one is particularly pleasing for me as I did briefly encounter the former Sun
Editor when his company bought our radio station way back in the day… so the
added detail that he’s been left “in a second-hand hessian sack” warms my
heart.) Even the most overt “comedy” track on the album, the throwaway nursery
rhyme singalong of When I Look At My Baby is improved by the precise
conversational detail of “his snidey little mouth”.
Elsewhere, Nigel rails against “the drunken heathen gormless
bores in Superdry” who attend gigs just to drunkenly heckle the band (Midnight Mass Murder), and those
talentless wannabes who seized upon the Covid epidemic as an opportunity to
boost their singing careers through social media, brought to life in the form
of Lockdown Luke (Token Covid Song)...
God fled when God saw the bread queues But fear not ‘cos here’s Julie Andrews Luke will lead us through
And this is where the album starts to cross over for me.
Because it’s not just about making us laugh. On his latest (clearly HMHB-influenced) record, Gavin Osborn
sings that “the best way to get some people to listen is to hit them right in
that funny bone”, something Nigel Blackwell has been doing for years. There’s a
serious point to the piss-take of Lockdown Luke, and Nigel balances the comedy with
the pathos exceedingly well on this record.
Lockdown Luke is on the regional news Sings his thing and laps up all the reviews And as poor Jim succumbs Luke adds up his thumbs Was it for this the clay grew tall?
All this and literary allusion too! That last line is a
reference to Wilfred Owen's poem Futility. I’d like to pretend I knew that,
but the hivemind of the HMHB Lyrics Project is much smarter than me. And it’s not the only
reference to that poem on this album, or to the wider world of poetry and prose.
Take the opening to the aforementioned Grafting…
When I was young And the blood pulsed swiftly through my veins Before age, trampling upon youth Powdered my head With the snows of fifty winters
Nigel freely admits he stole that opening, though he can’t
remember where from… much debate about that on the HMHBLP, but it’s a lovely
image anyway.
And that’s where I’m coming from when I put this forward as my Album
of the Year – there’s so much more to appreciate here than just the jokes.
Nigel is continually pushing himself as a writer, tackling more serious topics
such as dementia (Slipping The Escort) and toxic masculinity (Big Man Up Front).
Both feature amusing lyrical detail, both also feature elements of
tragedy, and the subject matter itself is not made light of, but treated but
seriousness and sensitivity. Quite the tonal balancing act, and something that
many lyricists wouldn’t even try, for fear of falling flat on their faces.
No-one ever loved her, nobody took her hand Bore her mother’s dominance, suffered each demand It was life without Edgar made it tolerable, but Edgar’s in the ground Now it’s ‘Doctors’, maybe ‘Father Brown’ It stays her thoughts Keeps her from the brink
And then comes the pièce de résistance, the closing track,
Oblong of Dreams, which I’m going to recommend to the GCSE Exam boards for
inclusion in next year’s poetry anthology. It’s a meticulously crafted lyric
about finding solace in nature, culminating in a genuinely uplifting singalong
refrain which some feared might be a swansong… though Nigel has thankfully
refuted that. Still, if it was, it would be a gorgeous way to bow out…
When Frank Turner started talking about his need to “restate
his purpose as an artist” on his ninth album, there was a clear danger of him
disappearing up his own arse. Much as I like Frank, there’s always a
danger of him going full-Bono, such is the self-belief that’s driven his career
so far. Fortunately, that self-belief is tempered with a healthy dollop of
insecurity, and when Frank lets that show, he’s a far more appealing prospect.
On FTHC, following a couple of records on which he dabbled in Radio 2 pleasing
pop-rock and feminist folk rock (both well-intentioned, just not quite hitting
the mark), Frank really did go back to basics, delivering his most enjoyable
record to date… even if it does start off a little bit shouty.
This anthem for not serving The Man hearkens back to the very
beginnings of Frank’s career in punk band Million Dead, and it’s an appropriate
opener as so much of this album is about growing older and the changes that
come with it. He’s over 40 now, recently married, and perhaps most telling of
all, has left his home in London for a quieter life in the sticks. All of these
seismic changes are touched upon here, along with his struggles with
addiction, the loss of old friends and more.
I got tired of London, not tired of life
I’m so sorry, my darling, to leave you behind
We had a hell of a run there, I must go down to the sea
While you’re always changing
It wasn’t you, it was me
I’m sorry about the argument at the weekend
I should have listened to what you said in the first place
And I should have been your friend
But I finally tidied up the garage like you asked me
I put some laundry on
Both our clothes this time and not just mine
When they closed down the restaurants, boarded up the bars
We moved out of the city, bought a second hand car
Tried to figure out standing still, for the first time in a long, long time
Cut back on the sleeping pills, and the overkill, and the overtime
I guess that this little life
Is gonna have to do
It’s only a little life
Mostly just me and you
Frank’s turbulent relationship with his father is also a
focus, from his early life when he felt completely abandoned…
Well, here’s a tale I’ve not yet told
I was evicted when I was 8 years old
I was shipped off to a dormitory
Full of kids who made no sense to me
And I cried myself to sleep each night
For 3 straight weeks until I was dead inside
But I’m not asking for your pity
It’s just that fairytales about fathers make me angry
…to the starling changes that led to a late-life
reconciliation between father and son…
My father’s called Miranda these days
She’s a proud transgender woman
And my resentment has started to fade
‘Cause it was never about who she was
Just the way that he behaved
And now my father is Miranda
And we’re okay
In truth, this is one of those records where I could quote
every lyric, because there’s not a dull song and they’ve all had some effect on
me. It could well have been my record of the year, were it not for some old
friends who actually managed to turn the dial up to 11. But that
shouldn’t diminish Frank’s achievement, because he’s truly delivered on the promise
of his fabled rock n roll beliefs in this album, baring his soul to touch hearts and minds, and
make you want to pump your fist in the air in defiance and celebration. Two
tracks in particular seal the deal for me…
I’ve posted a couple of tracks from the latest American
Aquarium record this year, and the response has been deafening tumbleweed. Undaunted,
here they are again…
I’ve been running in circles most of my days
And I still can’t find a path that keeps me out of my own way
From a long line of losers with bad luck in their veins
Carrying the weight of a lifetime of mistakes
They say time is the cruellest trick of all
You’re riding high, next thing you know
Your back’s against the wall
You can’t take it with you when you go
And we’ve all got to die someday
When it all turns to black, we’ll be left looking back
At all the things we lost along the way
For what it’s worth, the new American Aquarium record is
very good. I’ve had it on rotation in the car since June and by now I know the
words to every song and sing along at full pelt when they come on.
You know, like we used to do when we were kids. This might sound insane (or
maybe not: see above) when you consider that songwriter BJ Barham lists the
themes of this record thus: “Loss, Death, Darkness, Suicide, Divorce, Losing A
Child, Losing A Parent, Losing A Spouse, Addiction, Recovery.”
I swear I’m gonna lose my mind
If I have to hear about God’s plan one more goddamn time
I’m just staring at the sky, begging for an excuse
I never knew hard until I took apart
That room that never got used
Hardly sounds like a rousing singalong collection, does it?
And yet, this is an amazingly uplifting album. BJ has obviously been through a
lot this past couple of years, but not all the above stories are from personal
experience. Barham has a Springsteen-esque skill of creating very believable
characters that blur the lines between fiction and autobiography. Even the most
emotional songs are tinged with hope though. The key word in that list then is
“Recovery”. It’s a hugely cathartic album. Maybe that’s why it meant so much to
me.
As I was writing this review, I did something I haven’t done
in a long time. I was pootling about on the band’s website, gathering info for
some of the above and I noticed they were playing in Manchester in February. On
a Friday night! So, I bought a couple of tickets. I don’t do that sort of thing
any more, and I certainly can’t afford it. I might not even go. But I wanted to
give something back to American Aquarium, because they’ve certainly given me a great
deal over the past couple of years. More than most, they understand the
cathartic power of music.
It was a spiritual change
I’m no longer the same, I’ve turned a page
In one afternoon, a three minute tune
Was my coming of age
There’s an old line that could well be applied to how I feel
about Rumer: “She could sing the telephone directory and make me want to
listen”. But do we even have telephone directories any more? Probably time to
update that line. “She could sing my twitter feed…” doesn’t really have the same
ring, especially now Elon has murdered Twitter. Nothing’s as good as it used to be…
…except maybe Rumer, who ages like a fine wine. But I
haven’t drunk wine since the 20th Century. What else ages well?
Certainly not my writing ability.
An album of B-sides and Rarities seems a very 20th
Century notion too, but everything about Rumer is gloriously old-fashioned, so
it’s easily forgivable.
I just wanna be there
When you get home
I’ll be your old-fashioned girl
When you get home
And if that didn’t illustrate my point, then try this Bacharach
& David cover, a song that champions traditional gender roles so brazenly, it’s
sure to give Alanis Morrissette palpitations…
Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off
With your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again
That’s one of three Bacharach & David compositions in
this collection; no surprise there, Rumer has long favoured their tunes and
proved herself more than capable to standing toe to toe with their greatest
interpreters: Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Karen Carpenter… and all due
respect to Cilla, chuck, but if this isn’t the best version of Anyone Who Has A
Heart you’ve ever heard, then it’s time to get some new ears.
The album’s mostly made up of covers, from the likes of
Elton, Carly, Van The Man and even Cherry Ghost… and every one of them should
feel honoured to get the Rumer treatment. Because it’s beautiful.
One final note – there’s no better album for listening to
during a busy commute. Guaranteed to soothe the soul of the stressed-out
traveller every time you’re stuck in a motorway snarl-up. She could sing the
travel reports and make me want to listen.
A couple of years back, I’d pretty much resigned myself to
having left (for want of a better genre name) “indie” music behind. Or maybe it
had left me behind. I’ve been singularly unimpressed by all the Next Big Things
to come down the pipe over the past decade or so, particularly the home grown
variety. Occasionally I’d take note of a new American band who were playing
those kind of songs, but even they often veered into another genre I was more
comfortable with in middle age, such as Americana. Maybe guitar bands were a young man's game, and it was time to put away childish things.
And then, slowly, about a year ago, I started to take note
of a new group of predominantly female UK “indie” artists who were making me
smile in the way that guitar bands used to. Dry Cleaning. Billy Nomates. Low
Hummer. Coach Party. Porridge Radio. Actually, they were making me smile in a
way that the old guard often didn’t manage (Jarvis excepted), because not only
were they singing about real life… but they were funny too.
I don’t know if anyone’s come up with a decent genre name
for the artists I’ve mentioned above, but if they did then Wet Leg would be
their queens. Chaise Longue was my single of 2022. I worried it’d just turn
out to be a one off, and then they released Wet Dream, a track so good even Man of the Moment Harry Styles had to cover it.
The album wasn’t as
instant a success as those two tracks, but I soon warmed to its collection of
fun, quirky, attitude-packed pop songs, not one exceeding the 4 minute mark,
every one guaranteed to make me smile, with a healthy mix of misanthropy and self-doubt.
Angelica, she brought her ray gun to the party
Angelica obliterated everybody
I look at my hands, then I look for the door
Can’t help but feel like I’ve been here before
I don’t know what I’m even doing here
I was told that there would be free beer
I don’t wanna follow you on the ‘gram
I don’t wanna listen to your band
It used to be so fun
Now everything just feels dumb
I wish I could care
And now I’m always 28
Still getting off my stupid face
I don’t need no dating app
To tell me if I look like crap
To tell me if I’m thin or fat
To tell me should I shave my rat
I don’t need no radio
No MTV, no BBC
I just need a bubble bath
To set me on a higher path
7. Gavin Osborn & The Comment Section – Scrolling Home
I owe Martin a pint for this one. If he drinks pints. I
don’t drink pints, except maybe a pint of coffee every now and then.
If you’ve never heard of Gavin Osborn, you’re probably
wondering What Kind Of Thing he does. Luckily, he answers that very question on the
opening track...
I play guitar in front of an audience Mostly in the minors and the majors It’s just four chords but they’re played in different orders And I’m prone to too much self-deprecation
Sign me up!
It’s acoustic folk with the emphasis on rhyming With well-worn and tried and trusted tropes I’m a cut-price atheist pound-shop Paul Simon With a rolling cast of awkward misanthropes
Seriously, how much of my money do you want, Gavin?
It’s like if Billy Bragg had swapped Barking for Bedford If Jim Croce met John Hegley in the shower If you cross Pat Sharp with some early Robert Redford That’s what’s it’s like to sit and watch me for about an
hour
You’ll have to come to Huddersfield though, otherwise I’ll
just stick to buying your records.
What else can I add?
Well, Gavin also introduced me to the word “weltschmerz” (I’ve had
it tattooed on my forehead) in a song that proves he’s a Springsteen fan…
And this world might never turn out how I thought it would
at 18 But through tinny café speakers I hear the sound of
Springsteen Thunder Road trying to break through clink of spoon on china And that restless inner voice that’s a constant reminder That magic can occur in the most unlikely places Sit back and take hold, as Mary’s dress keeps waving
Remember when you were a kid and the songs that meant the
most to you were the ones where the singer was channelling your own thoughts
and feelings and putting them to music? Well, that’s what Gavin Osborn does for
me on pretty much this whole album.
Always wanted to be on the Top of the Pops Now I order CDs from all the online shops The most joy that I get is from opening the box And I could’ve been a contender
So my first Gavin Osborn album was a great success. I'll be buying more in the New Year. You should do the same, so he can start playing venue's a little larger than Caroline's Kitchen...
Every year I do these countdowns, I have a little whinge about the artists who wait till late November to release their records. Yeah, you might sell a few more copies in the Christmas shopping rush, but you don't really stand much chance in year end lists against records we've been living with for months.
This is the fifth album by Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, who weren't even born until the 90s, but live forever in music's best decade, the 70s. Another gloriously catchy set of West Coast Americana-flavoured tunes that sound like you've known them all your life... though it's still unfair to ask them to compete, after only a couple of weeks, with the year's constant companions. Ask me again in March and this might well be in my Top 3.
By contrast, here's another late entry, and another record that seems immediately familiar... perhaps because much of it was. Yes, it's a compilation, a "greatest hits" from the best chronicler of modern society in the world of "pop". I feel Jim Bob would appreciate those inverted commas. Did someone decree we can't have compilations in our Year End countdowns? Oops. You won't like the next entry either then.
Never mind. Here are three songs Jim Bob did release this year, from his excellent Beach Ready EP. None of them are on The Essential Jim Bob, though they're all strong enough to deserve a place. Jim Bob can do no wrong.
8. The Divine Comedy - Charmed Life (Deluxe Edition)
Another Greatest Hits collection (albeit one that does feature some actual hits), though it earns its place in my countdown from disc 3 of the Special Edition, the “Super Extra Bonus Album”, a collection of new and unreleased recordings. You well might expect a ragbag of outtakes and B-sides (although nothing wrong with that, depending on the artist, as has been demonstrated elsewhere in this countdown), but the quality of the tracks here makes this one of the best releases of the year for me, full of Neil Hannon's Coward-esque wit and self-deprecating wisdom. A wonderful treat, well worth paying £3 more than the double album.
13. Father John Misty - Chloë and the Next 20th Century
I know a lot of people don't like Father John Misty, or at the very least don't "get" him. I'm not sure this is the record to change your mind, though it is far more accessible than some of his records if you're a fan of jazzy crooners of the 50s and 60s, performing Bacharach and tunes from the great American songbook. Because musically, that's the sound Josh Tillman has gone for here: lush orchestration and lounge swing. Lyrically, it's a much more complex beast, fragments of stories that might hint at a wider novel (Truman Capote meets Scott Fitzgerald) if you had the patience to piece them together. If all that sounds a tad pretentious, I direct you to the Pitchfork review, which will blow your mind.
If you can get past all that, this is a great record...
If ever the phrase "from the sublime to the ridiculous" was apt... we follow Father John with Dry Cleaning, a band that are just as Marmite, but in a very different way. I used to be on the other side of the fence when it came to Dry Cleaning, but this year, a startling metamorphosis occurred. It was all the fault of Gary Ashby, a tortoise that went missing during lockdown.
People who know more about music than me say that Florence Shaw's rambling, stream of consciousness / bored stand-up comedy routine vocals flow alongside the Wire / Magazine guitars and curious post-punk rhythms the rest of the band are playing in complementary fashion. I hear it slightly differently. When I was a university student, we would record random conversations from people on the bus or in the cafe and then pull them apart for linguistic analysis. Oh, the wild student nights I had! Anyway, Florence's "lyrics" remind me of those conversations I recorded way back when, and the fact that there's some music going on in the background seems almost incidental to her. I prefer the idea that she doesn't even know she's in a band... these guys with instruments just keep following her around, soundtracking her day.
Oh, and much as I still love Gary Ashby, the track that's obsessing me the most at the moment is Kwenchy Kups, which appears to feature a gloriously passive-aggressive argument about a trip to the zoo.
"This is awful," said Louise, when the title track from Helen Love's latest album popped up on one of Sam's in-car CDs. "I can sing better than that."
This interaction alone was enough to propel Helen Love's latest album into my Top Ten of 2022... almost. That aside though, this is still the 11th best album I've heard this year, an intensely personal record that takes in childhood nostalgia through the eyes of someone who's recently lost her parents; Born To Run rewritten by someone who was quite happy staying in Swansea and never running anywhere, thanks.
Musically, this is a broader and more emotional affair than the usual DIY punk pop you might expect from Helen Love, while that title track could well be the best thing the Pet Shop Boys and the Lightning Seeds have done this century. In interview, Helen spoke openly about this change of direction, and also saw fit to answer Louise's snipe...
"I don’t get up in the morning shouting ‘Hey Ho Let’s Go’ to the dog, it’s not all disco dancing round my place, I have had bouts of pretty bad depression, just because loads of my songs are happy doesn’t mean I am. There has always been a part of me that wants to be Anne Briggs or Sandy Denny. My God, if I could sing or play properly that’s what I would do, play folk clubs and live in a big jumper."
Despite all that, this is a joyous, occasionally heartbreaking, often hilarious record. And don't worry, Helen, I've heard her sing. You're safe.
Mountain Goats mainman spent his lockdown watching action movies.
I'm coming to swat you down like flies
'Cause I got guys
Guys on every corner
This is the result: a visceral, pounding assault of guitar anthems with singalong choruses snatched from clichéd dialogue lines straight from the movies.
We're gonna need
We're gonna need more bandages
It's an album full of three minute revenge fantasies, but one that ultimately concludes that revenge is rather a pointless (if wholly satisfying, especially when experienced vicariously) way to carry on.
It's hard to judge Bill Callahan's records against anybody else's, since they dwell for me on an alternate plane of existence. Sometimes I find myself in a trance-like state when listening to Bill. His YTI⅃AƎЯ is strange, yet comforting. I'm not sure I can say any more. This is a beautiful record. I'll let proper reviewers try to explain to you what it's all about.
14. Del Amitri - Fatal Mistakes: Outtakes & B-Sides
The internet trolls tell me I shouldn't like Del Amitri. They're bland, apparently. So I certainly shouldn't like an album of "Outtakes & B-Sides", should I? Still. Irk the purists, and all that.
I thought this was every bit as strong as last year's comeback album. Where some hear bland, I hear biting cynicism, world weariness and mouth-watering misanthropy in Justin Currie's songs, from the chirpy "We're all going to hell" chorus of Happiness Is It to the weary wisdom of My Adulthood.
My adulthood is a masquerade I took
From the other adults that I knew
Little did I know, nobody ever grows
They just carry on as children do
Like I've carried all my adulthood
This thing I had to do
Suspend my adulthood, so every day I could
Be free from you
Hardly Coldplay, is it? And that's before we even get to This City Loves You Back, another worthy sequel to Nothing Ever Happens.
Beware, trolls - this is not the only B-sides collection you'll encounter in this countdown. And chances are, the next one will be even blander than this...
Mellencamp's best record in some years, here he finds a nice balance between the folkier turn his music has taken in the 21st Century and a grizzled retread of his earlier days. I was a huge JCM fan growing up, and while I'm glad he's not trying to make the same sort of music he made back then, it was good to hear him lighten up and have a little fun again. Well, as much fun as us miserable old bastards can allow ourselves. There's also a couple of cool Springsteen collaborations and even a toe dipped into Tom Waits territory.
Back in 2018, Ezra Furman's Transangelic Exodus hit the heights of #7 in my Year End countdown. I couldn't get into the 2019 follow-up, Twelve Nudes, but this one is a definite return to form. The Springsteen influences are still there, and while there's a slight discordance to both music and vocals, as always with Ezra, these heartbreaking tales of lost souls doing their best to survive in our pre-apocalyptic times regularly turns caterpillars into butterflies.
A while back, Kevin Morby took up residence at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. The hotel is famous for its ducks: they live on the roof, but are brought downstairs every day, accompanied by a John Phillip Sousa March, where they proceed via red carpet to swim in the lobby fountain.
Kevin Morby's 7th album isn't about the Peabody Ducks, though it is about Memphis, the town where Elvis, Jeff Buckley and Martin Luther King all died, but much amazing music was born. This record follows in those footsteps, an intensely personal disc about family, memories and mortality. It's the first Kevin Morby record to really leave its mark on me, but it's definitely encouraged me to dig back into his catalogue.
Still, at least there's been some decent music. Beginning today, I'll be counting down my Top 22 albums of 2022. Here's the first three...
22. Bret McKenzie - Songs Without Jokes
The news that half of the Flight of the Conchords duo was releasing his debut solo album got me very excited earlier this year, although the title "Songs Without Jokes" had me worried... because I love with songs with jokes. The critical consensus that serious music should be bereft of gags is one I'm continually railing against... and will continue to do so later in this countdown.
As part of the FOTC, and on various movie soundtracks, Bret McKenzie has shown himself to be adept in a wide range of musical styles, from rock to rap, though his heart clearly belongs to the classic 70s singer-songwriters. Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and James Taylor are heavy influences on this record, with a splash of yacht rock thrown in for good measure. In that, it pushes all the right buttons for me... though I wouldn't have minded a few more... y'know... jokes.
In comparison with the last few years, there are fewer country and Americana records in my countdown of 2022. That might be because there haven't been many big releases from my favourite artists, or it could be that my tastes are swinging back in other directions. Probably a combination of the two.
Midland are as country as it gets. Well, "Neotraditional" country, whatever that is. I think it means they wear big hats. To me, they sound like The Eagles, if The Eagles had come from Texas and never stopped off at the Hotel California. They're hard-luck, heartbroken, heavy-drinking bar band types, though their music is pretty upbeat, with a second splash of yacht rock (twice in one post!) to keep me smiling.
This is their third album, and it doesn't appears to have done half as well on the US Country charts as the first two. No idea why; I enjoyed it just as much.
DCFC's 10th album was conceived under lockdown, with band members building the tracks remotely, in a process lead singer Ben Gibbard describes as ""chain-letter songwriting". As with all Death Cab albums, it's a slow burner, but given time it gets under your skin and plays with your emotions. As with a lot of the records in this countdown, it's about growing old, even though these guys are still in their 40s. Spring chickens.
This new Bruce Springsteen album. The Boss covering a bunch of old soul songs. It’s all a bit…
Rod Stewart?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, his voice sounds amazing. It’s some of the best singing he’s ever done. On 7 Rooms of Gloom, he even gives Levi Stubbs a run for his money…
But it’s not Levi Stubbs, is it? Many of these songs… the originals are so strong, so well-entrenched in my mind, in my heart, no cover’s ever going to come close. Not even Bruce.
Is it just that… he’s getting on a bit now… he’s reached the karaoke stage of his career? Dylan’s done covers albums. Willie Nelson… ahem… Rod Stewart… don’t they deserve to sit back and put their feet up rather than still be re-inventing the wheel?
You might argue that… if Dylan hadn’t just produced one of his best albums in years off the back of his karaoke sets. Bruce too… Western Stars showed he can still cut it. It was his best album of the 21st Century, easily up there with his best, without trying to recapture old glories. (I enjoyed Letter To You a lot too, but much of that was a reworking of old E Street numbers from back in the day that never got recorded, so it didn’t really speak to where he is now, creatively.)
Your problem then is the songs he’d chosen to cover? They’re too iconic to mess with?
Well, to be fair, he’s not messing with them. The arrangements are very faithful to the originals (if a bit Saturday Night At The London Palladium in places)… but then you start to wonder why you’re not just listening to the originals. I mean, at least Billy Idol made William Bell’s I Forgot To Be Your Lover his own.
They work better. The two Jerry Butler songs, the title track and Hey, Western Union Man, are definite highlights. But then I went straight out and added The Very Best of Jerry Butler to my wishlist.
Good question. I can tell you who it’s not for: Soul music fans. Even if you love Bruce as much as you love Motown, Atlantic et al. Maybe this is a record for Bruce fans who don’t know a lot about soul music. If it turns them onto that genre, I’m sure they’ll be eternally grateful… and this might well be Bruce's aim. His love for these old records is infectious, his voice sounds great, and he’s clearly having a great time. Despite the preponderance of lost love songs (What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, When She Was My Girl), the performances are almost jubilant. But they’re not Jimmy Ruffin, The Walker Brothers or The Four Tops. And Someday We’ll Be Together as a closer? Ouch. Diana Ross is untouchable on that.
So I'm guessing this won't quite make your Top 22 Albums of 2022 then?
Sadly, no. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I don't think I'll still be listening to it in the new year...
This is not Justin Currie’s first appearance as a Grumpy Old Man on this blog. I doubt it will be his last. From Nothing Ever Happens to No, Surrender, he’s consistently been near the top of the Grumpy Old Pops
throughout his career.
Following on from last year’s excellent Del Amitri comeback
album, Fatal Mistakes, the band have released a supplementary collection of
Outtakes & B-Sides, many of which are strong enough to have been included on the album itself… though I’m glad they did it this way, rather than
going down the dreaded Double Album route. Anyway, among this collection is
perhaps the happiest grumpiest song Mr. Currie has penned to date. In
these days of war, pestilence and incompetent politicians, this is two and a bit minutes of pure misanthropy that cheers me up greatly...
I'm gonna sing a happy song (everything is dying) So kick your feet and clap along (we're all going to hell) I'm gonna sing a happy song Throw it on the heap of shit you're choking on To the ever-growing hill of junk I'm gonna add another one I'm gonna let rip a whoop of joy (everything is burning) C'mon kill a girl, rape a boy (we're all going to hell) I'm gonna sing a happy song Don't give a fuck if you don't sing along Next year this will all be gone So hit the pedal bring it on Hurry up don't be late, the suicides start at eight Last one alive can take some pride In seeing the last one die I'm gonna sing a happy song (everything is dying) Happiness keeps us strong (we're all going to hell) I'm gonna sing a happy song Till my eyes bleed and hair is gone Main thing is to carry on into the pit Cos happiness is it
Not even the end of September, and already summer seems like another country.
Yes, I view the past through a rose-tinted lens of nostalgia.
Yes, there’s a lot to be positive about in the modern world… even though it seems easier to dwell on the negativity of death, disease, destruction and dunderhead politicians.
No, it won’t always be like this. There will be good times again.
Although this guy ain’t so sure...
Kevin Morby is one of those names I keep hearing from the cognoscenti, a critic’s darling who, until now, I’ve not quite been so sure about.
That changed when I heard Goodbye To Goodtimes. It’s an exceptionally well-written and well-structured piece of songwriting, linking together themes, memories and touching lyrical details to create a whole that’s much more than the sum of its parts. One of those songs where I’m tempted not to quote just a little bit, because the little bits have more impact when you experience the full song. Having said that…
I was brought up Church of England. Sunday School every week, religious assemblies, a Bible by my bedside. Somewhere along the line, I fell into fence-sitting agnosticism. I can see both the positives and negatives of religious belief, and while I no longer accept the idea of a bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud, I refuse to discount the idea of some kind of afterlife, if only because the alternative is just too bleak... and how would I account for ghosts otherwise?
I find the whole belief debate quite fascinating though, particularly the unanswerable question of How Could A Loving God Allow So Much Suffering? That's a bottomless pit which former Carter frontman Jim Bob willingly throws himself into on this epic track from his latest Beach Ready EP. Apparently Jim Bob describes ‘If God Was a CCTV Control Room Operator Called Steve’ as his favourite ever Jim Bob recording. I'm tempted to agree with him.
Yes, I'm heartbroken. Mrs. McCluskey, actress Gwyneth Powell, died earlier this week. Another icon of my childhood gone. Who's going to stop Gripper Stebson now?
Oh, very well then...
I have been consciously avoiding writing about the death of
Queen Elizabeth II due to the lynch mobs who are out there, listening to our
every word, waiting to hang, draw and quarter anyone who responds with anything
other than reverential grief. But since Alyson threw down the gauntlet... let’s see if I can dip my toe in
that puddle without the piranhas biting it off.
I was saddened to hear that the Queen was dead. It’s sad when
any old lady dies, and given that she was just a couple of years older than my
own parents, it obviously made me worry more than ever for them. Is it more of
a big deal when a famous person dies? I can’t claim to believe otherwise, since
I’m regular wailing and gnashing my teeth as I eulogise departed icons here –
musicians, actors, TV personalities, writers, comic book creators… Mrs. McCluskey! I still find
it hard to accept that Prince is no longer with us. And Stan Lee. And Olivia
Newton John. The list goes on and on. And the Queen was, we are told, the most
famous person in the world, so clearly her death is a huge deal for many, many
people, and who am I to question that?
What I don’t like is this idea that everyone is expected to grieve
in the same way and at the same level. A level of grief prescribed and dictated
by the TV stations that have cancelled all their programming in favour of
wall-to-wall mourn-porn, and a Bank Holiday in which everything is shutting
down (hope you weren't planning on visiting Center Parcs) to force us all to watch a state funeral, whether we want to or not.
Attention, populace: YOU WILL BE DEVASTATED. None of this is about paying our
respects; it’s just about putting on a show.
Andrew O’Hagan, a far better writer than me, wrote what I
consider to be the
definitive response to the media… I want to say circus, but it’s much
bigger than a circus, isn’t it? Media Apocalypse? Royale-with-cheese-mageddon? Yet at no point is he disrespectful to the memory of QE2. Indeed, he makes some excellent
points about how the Queen herself was a woman of quiet dignity, and how the
very newspapers that are flagellating themselves the most are the ones who have
tried their best to make her life miserable for the last half century. It’s one
of the best pieces of social commentary I’ve ever read (hey, if everyone else
is allowed to drown us in hyperbole this week, at least let me get in on the
act), culminating in a final paragraph that lifts the roof off.
The Express reports on huge
crowds weeping in the street. Modern journalism loves the idea that a nation
has a heart and that a heart can break, as if there were a requirement to
confect a sort of togetherness out of national torpor, the quivering lip having
long since replaced the stiff upper one as a symbol of our essential nature. It
won’t matter for very long, but today it all seems part of the workaday
hysteria of British life, yet perfectly at odds with the quiet, persevering
woman on the postage stamp.
Beyond all that, I firmly believe that the death of the
Queen is another nail in the coffin of “Great” Britain. First Brexit, then a
government that takes ineptitude beyond satire (The Thick Of It looks tame in
comparison), now the death of the monarchy as an institution. Don’t try to
convince me that Charles or William or anyone else will be able to save it,
because without Elizabeth’s dignified resolve, the gradual slide into Reality
TV Royals will become a landslide. Republicans might cheer at this, but they’d
be wrong to do so. The Royal Family won’t go away. They’ll just become an embarrassment, and so will the “United” Kingdom. “And it’s so lonely on a limb,” sang that bloke I’m not supposed to be mentioning, but I’ve now mentioned
two days running.
I didn’t post The Queen Is Dead here on Friday, partly
because it would have been crass and disrespectful, but mostly because it was
Sam’s ninth birthday and that meant a thousand times more to me than any of this. Choose Life, as Renton said.
TQID is my
favourite album of the 80s, and the title track is one of the best things The
Smiths ever recorded. But it’s also a rather misunderstood song. Despite the savage title, it’s not really about the
Queen herself at all, but about the Queen as a figurehead for the monarchy.
I’ve stolen this from Genius, because
talent borrows but genius steals…
“This does not refer to a literal regicide. It is about how
British society is still, culturally, rooted in the monarchy and aristocracy,
and how the sudden decline in the relevance of those institutions means that
British society is wayward and lost – it’s on a limb. To go “out on a limb”
means to put yourself in a risky/vulnerable position. 30 years on, with
devolution in full swing, a London-centric Parliament that can run wild, and
peerages for sale, one might be inclined to think he’s got a point.”
And even despite Morrissey dreaming of “her very lowness
with her head in a sling”, the Queen comes out of her encounter with this
Rusholme Ruffian pretty well, firstly by playing Ernie to his Eric…
“She said, “eh, I know you and you cannot sing,”
I said, “that’s nothing. You should hear me play piano.”
And secondly, because it all ends thus...
Life is very long when you're lonely.
Thinking about that repeated coda now, in light of all
that’s happened in the past week, I can’t help but wonder if the Queen herself
lived a lonely life. If she did, then she does truly have my deepest sympathy.
Because, as Mother Teresa once said, “loneliness and the feeling of being
unwanted is the most terrible poverty”. Even if you’re the richest woman in the
world. I know loneliness, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone… especially not a
lady who meant so much to so many.
