My Top 24 of 2024 (#21 - 19)

Three more records that rotated frequently on the imaginary turntable of my soul during the past twelve months...

21. Mercury Rev - Born Horses

"Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev's ninth album Born Horses spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before? The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of Mt Tremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendary tapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys), plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass) and Jim Burgess (trumpet)."

Normally, I'd call bullshit on that kind of florid press-release gumphery, but there's actually something in it. 

Three things I can tell you for definite about the latest Mercury Rev record. 

1) If such a thing is possible, it's even more shimmery than anything else they've recorded in the past 35 years. 

2) Jonathan's preferred delivery these days is a low, spoken, stream-of-consciousness blather. He sounds like an older, less camp version of 80s American stand-up comic Emo Phillips. Remember him?

3) It's very nice to listen to when you're stuck in traffic on the M1.

My mood swings and it swings and it swings
Sometimes even without asking me
Suddenly reminding me of deep down things
The way my mother would sing over my father's mood swings
How swiftly she could go from humming
"Just the way, the way you are"
To whistling, "Oh, the people you know"
This immense loneliness flapping in her chest
Like lady day, she knew why the caged bird sings
And now, so do I, it sings and it sings
Because each night it hurts just a little less
Reminding me more and more and more
Of deep down things
And the way my own mood swings

20. Frank Turner - Undefeated

Frank Turner's last album, FTHC, was my second favourite record of 2022, beaten only by the might of Half Man Half Biscuit. Undefeated treads much the same ground as its predecessor... at times, a little too closely. It feels too conscious an effort to capture that same lightning in that same bottle, and ends up being, in places, FT-by numbers. Still full of great songs and lyrics that bring a wry smile of recognition... but no risks are taken in the process.

I'm fully aware that this contradicts everything I said yesterday in my reviews of the Eels and Pixies records... but hey, Frank, you placed above both those guys, so you must still be doing something right.

Fifteen-year-old Francis
We need to have a word
I know because I remember
That you cannot stand The Verve
But Richard Ashcroft had a point
Now I'm old enough to see
There's a million different people
You will be before you're me

I know I'm not
Everything that you had hoped and imagined that I would be
But I did my best
And I have seen things that you don't even know that you've never seen
We need to find some common ground
In the ruins that still stand
Between you and me both of us want peace
Ceasefire

19. Crawlers - The Mess We Seem To Make

The first CD I bought in 2024 was the debut album by Warrington's Crawlers. It seems so long ago now, like it should belong to last year's batch. Fiercely confessional lyrics from lead singer Holly Minto, and a pop-rock sound that's a little more polished than some of their contemporaries. The deluxe CD contains acoustic versions of some of the tracks, and I like those even more than the originals.