My Top Ten (Late) Albums of 2016: Number 8

This series is all about the albums I might have included in my end of year Top Ten for 2016 had I got to them in time. The weird thing is, I did buy Ultrasound's Real Britannia the week it came out and because I love their previous two albums, 1999's Everything Picture and 2012's Play For Today, I fully expected to be writing about album #3 in my year end list.

The problem is, it came out in early December, which didn't really give me time to properly listen to it. I'll admit, I panicked and shoved it into rotation in the car, then became frustrated when it didn't immediately leap out screaming LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME. I resigned myself to the fact that if I did include it in my list, that would be more down to past glories that current adoration, and I pushed the album to one side.

Then came the January wilderness when I often get time to catch up on music I've not given enough time to in the pre-December crush. That's when I found myself revisiting Real Britannia and discovering its hidden depths. It might not be as immediate a record as its predecessors, but there's a hell of a lot to love... even if it is only 6 tracks long.

The album kicks off with a roaring indie guitar anthem about cross-dressing (something of a recurrent theme for the band), extremely timely in its suggestion that the era of tolerance and acceptance is at end for anyone remotely different: "there's a twister on the way".



Up next, a direct reaction to that: God's Gift, a Jarvis Cocker-esque rallying cry for mis-shapes and misfits everywhere...

We feel the need before we come to the dance

We come in peace, we fall to pieces

We smash and grab and then we smoke some fags and leave

A complete change of pace follows with a slice of righteous Riot Grrl action, Soul Girl, composed and sung by bassist Vanessa Best: giving regular lead singer Tiny both a rest... and a run for his money. No Man's Land channels 80s nuclear war paranoia (also timely now Trump's got the briefcase) and then comes Asylum, where music is the perfect escape route for us all...

Everybody's got an axe to grind in my town

They'll steal the light out of your eyes if you let them

So I just put my headphones on

Surrender to the song

Asylum

All of which brings us to the final track... or Side 2, as it would once have been known. I've seen Blue Remembered Hills called a "prog Epic" and compared to the latter half of Abbey Road because of its length (over 20 minutes) and the fact that it's made up of more than 6 different tunes, seemlessly woven together in Tiny's autobiographical confessional which starts thus:

Oh please

I feel like a boy band feels

Lame

As crippled as Mel C’s Tears

Chauffeur me

Cradle me

Mum and Dad

Save us from the secrets of love

And after that, it gets really good. Supposedly inspired by both Dennis Potter and Ken Loach, Tiny recalls the childhood of a "big fat cuckoo" from Wakefield (a town I pass every day on my way to work). It starts happily enough with "Shorts and scuffs and beans for tea" until his father has a nervous breakdown and heads down south, never to return, leaving Tiny feeling "just a waste of space". Bullying, drugs, nascent sexual encounters, more cross-dressing, Noggin The Nog: it's all here, yet the raw honesty of Tiny's words never become depressing. There's actually something hugely inspirational in it, even when the lyrics turn from personal woes to the poisoning of the outside world.

And those who thought they were innocent times

Nostalgia made them go blind

For all those modern lovers

And now we view the world of Top of the Pops

As something falling like rocks

On Savile’s shit stained covers

Yet despite this, Blue Remembered Hills is a song about not letting our good childhood memories be destroyed by darkness. Its message seems to be not to give up on nostalgia. There were good times, amidst the bad. There always are.

The endless sun

Cross country runs

The glam rock beat

The 3 day week

The waist high grass

The P.E. class

The Oxford bags

The woodbine fags

The past is a shining sea that’s drowning me

So I get my kicks from those who fall like me

Into the deep blue

You know what, Real Britannia might not be as immediate as Ultrasound's first two albums. But give it a little bit of time and it reveals its true identity: it is their masterpiece. It's Real and it Rules. I just wish they hadn't released it in December, because this really is one of the best records of 2016.

Buy it so Tiny can buy some more fetching onesies.

 

My Top Ten (Late) Albums of 2016: Number 9

9. Rumer - This Girl's In Love

I know a lot of people (even cool bloggers and muso critics) praise Adele for her undeniably excellent achievements in the field of current chart pop (i.e. not being unlistenable when so many of her peers are). However, whenever anyone starts banging on about what a great voice she has, I always want to shout back: what about Rumer? Truly the most beautiful voice of her generation; it's a voice which echoes back to the golden age of pop (hence the frequent Karen Carpenter comparisons) and is more at home singing classics from that era than on more modern compositions (although occasionally, as on her debut hit Aretha, she somehow manages to do both).

To date, Rumer's greatest achievement was her stunning 2012 collection Boys Don't Cry, featuring reinterpretations of lost classics by the cream of male singer songwriters from the 60s and 70s, including Jimmy Webb, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Clifford T. Ward, Stephen Bishop, Hall & Oates, even Neil Young. Most were as good, if not better than the original recordings. When I heard that her new record returned to that era, but focused on two composers only (the untouchable kings of easy listening: Bacharach & David), I wasn't sure what to think. It seemed almost too obvious: yes, Rumer's voice was made to sing these songs, and the fact that her producer-husband Rob Shirakbari had worked with Bacharach many times seemed like a match made in heaven. I knew the songs would sound great, but I worried I'd miss the variety that Boys Don't Cry offered... that it'd all end up sounding a bit samey.

After a few listens, those fears were put to rest. The selection is impeccable, as is the ordering of the tracks. Rumer switches effortlessly from the obvious classics like the title track, The Look of Love and You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart) to less well-known Bacharach & David compositions such as the 5th Dimension's One Less Bell To Answer and Luther Vandross's A House Is Not A Home. Along the way she takes on Dionne, Dusty, and, yes, Karen Carpenter, and gives as good as they deserve. Her cover of (They Long To Be) Close To You is equal to the Carpenters version yet not identical. Rumer's phrasing is different in places, turning the song from a bittersweet love song into something else. She made me hear the lyrics in a slightly different way. When I do my Top Ten Songs For Conceited Oafs, this will now be a strong contender.

If you've ever been a fan of the Bacharach & David songbook, I urge you to seek this one out. It's as sumptuous and perfect as these compositions deserve. It could have been released any time between 1965 and 1975... but it certainly doesn't sound like 2016. That's probably why it appealed to an old fart like me right now. I'm just so sick of the present. I wish I could go back and live in the past...

That said, there's one song in the collection which is as timely now as when Jackie DeShannon recorded it back in 1965. If not more so.

My Top Ten (Late) Albums of 2016 - Number 10

Every year it happens. As soon as I've decided on my Top Ten albums of the year, I start listening to something else that should have been in consideration. And then the new year stars and I start catching up on some of the records I've discovered in other people's year end lists, and damn, if a bunch of them aren't a whole lot better than the ones I had in mine. And every year, I wish I could roll back the clock and do my list over.

This year, I finally came up with an idea of how to deal with that: a second Top Ten, which will run throughout the next few months, wherein I can give some credit to the latecomers. They won't be featured in order of merit, just in order of discovery, and we may never know where they'd have ended up in the real countdown had I heard them sooner... but really, does it matter? All that really matters is I get to share some more cool tunes...

10. Kevin Devine - Instigator

I have featured Kevin Devine here before, but I only really knew one song by him (Guys With Record Collections) and I'll be honest, I'd pigeonholed him as a somewhat earnest, acoustic singer-songwritery type on the basis of that... so I really wasn't ready for the sound of his latest album. A younger, hipper work colleague kept banging on about him, saying how Instigator was his record of the year, so I thought I'd give it a go. I certainly didn't expect an album of pure, perfect power-pop that might even give Weezer a run for their money...


Magic Magnet gives you an idea of what to expect: guitars so chunky they could have elbowed their way out of a Silver Sun record, and singalong ba-ba-baaa choruses. Elsewhere, on Before You're Here, Devine fills the gap in my heart Fountains of Wayne left when they split up with some great storytelling and lyrical heft that goes way beyond the usual bubblegum thrills associated with power pop. Take No History as another example as New Yorker Devine describes the after effects of 9/11 more directly than I've heard before in a song...

The future was a plane through a skylight, over Tribeca at eight forty-five, 

My brother at a conference room table, watched the future rearrange all our lives, 

I was sleeping in her bed for the future, first in twenty and five miles away.

Her roommate knocked, he was a relative stranger,

'Kev, I need you to come out here, okay?' " Okay." 

The future was me drunk at my desk job, update the database to reflect the deceased, 

And if it's channeled as a digital graveyard, next to each name I typed a lowercase 'd'.

I was frightened by the face of the future, with habits of perpetual war. 

I called my father he said 'I know, I see it, I thought it made sense, I don't anymore.' 

The mosque on my corner, the firetrucks everywhere, 

The anger, the mourners, 

No history, it's dead in the air.

Best of all is Freddie Gray Blues, one of a seemingly endless number of songs I've heard recently tackling the issue of American cops killing young black men, but once again finding a new way to come at that subject...

When I’m talking these killer cop blues
I’m kinda talking my family to you
See, my dad was a cop
And his dad was a cop
And my uncles were cops
And my cousins were cops
I’m partly here because of cops
And I love all those cops
And I know not every cop
Is a racist, murdering cop
But this is bigger than the people I love
The system’s broken
Not breaking
It’s done

My Top Ten Status Quo Songs

2016. Another one bites the dust. But before I'd even had chance to finish my Rick Parfitt tribute, the news came through about George Michael. What a terrible, terrible year for the heroes of our youth. I'll write more about George soon: I want to take my time on that particular Top Ten because it touches on some important moments in my young life. But I guess Quo do to. I wouldn't ever have put them in my list of all time favourites, but I loved a lot of what they did... particularly when I was a teenager. I imagine Jez over at A History of Dubious Taste will have much more to say on this matter (and I look forward to reading his tribute) but I never considered Quo a joke. They were a solid rock band who knew how to have fun. Which is all-important to me and makes me value their 5+ decades of rock far more than a lot of more serious artists who didn't last half as long.

Putting their songs in order led to a curious list that probably would be laughed at by more serious Quo fans, but this blog is personal to me and so is this list...




10. Rocking All Over The World

The song that opened Live Aid. What other songs could have done that? Only its sheer ubiquity places it at the bottom of this countdown. A John Fogerty cover - saying the Quo improved on the original is a great accolade as I'm a huge Creedence fan.

9.  Caroline

Well, it's not Neil Diamond, but it'll do. Quo's tribute (and not the only one) to the radio station that made them famous. I like the way they go quiet quiet LOUD towards the end, about 30 years before Nirvana.

8. Ain't Complaining

An intro you need stereo speakers for. It's weird what can turn you on to a song. It is a bit Chas 'n' Dave, this one, but the bridge "when the chips are down..." is great and there's a top guitar solo.

7. Pictures of Matchstick Men

The oldest song on this list, proper phasing psychedelia. Francis Rossi wrote it "on the bog". Can't decide whether this is the best Lowry song or if that honour goes to Brian & Michael. Still. Bloody brilliant.

6. Whatever You Want

Another one that loses a point for over-familiarity... but the first 60 seconds are genius. We used to play Beat The Intro on one of the radio shows I worked on in my youth and I can actually remember choosing this as one of the intros. I can't remember if the caller guessed the song before the vocal came in, but frankly, if he didn't, he was an idiot.

5. Down Down

Now listen to that intro! If that was Pete Townsend, everyone would be throwing garlands. The rest of the song is pretty standard Quo (nothing wrong with that), but the first 30-odd seconds are sublime.

4. Marguerita Time

Another great intro. Say what you like about the Quo, but you can't deny they gave great intro. I obviously have a thing about Marguerita songs: Jimmy Buffet's Margueritaville is another favourite. Confession: I have never even tasted a Marguerita, I don't even know what goes into one.

3. Rock 'n' Roll

A slower Quo-er, but proof that they didn't have to rock out to succeed. I guess it's a song about wanting to be rock stars, wondering if the dream will ever come true. Nice bit of whistling too.

2. Burning Bridges

This one at #2 will surely irk even the Quo purists!

Remember my shocking Jason Donovan confession of a few months back? Well, that same ultra-cool mate of mine who was into the Pet Shop Boys so much that he bled the lyrics to Paninaro, would also join me in a chorus of Burning Bridges from time to time. This is a great one to do the Status Quo dance to and really swing your imaginary guitar in time with the music. I'm not sure the rest of the school bus appreciated our rendition, but I was just happy to have been transferred from bus 6 where, for a couple of months, I'd been bullied to the point I seriously considered ending it. This song reminds me of the relief I felt at getting away from that awful situation. (Read the book in my side-bar if you want to know more about that.) Yes, it has an aggravating nursery rhyme hook. but so did a number of Beatles songs...

1. In The Army Now

You can probably tell by now that I'm an 80s Quo boy, and this is probably the pinnacle of that era. I had it on a double compilation album of 80s rock tunes - John Waite, Europe, all the usual suspects - I still remember the cover: it was red with a big pair of headphones on. No idea what it was called. This was one of the best tracks on there. I was shocked when Jez revealed a couple of months back that it was a cover of a Dutch band called Bolland-Bolland. Who knew?

The sergeant calls:
"Stand up and fight!"




RIP Rick.

As I say, my tribute to George will follow soon... meanwhile, 2016 can kiss all our arses.

My Top Ten Albums Of 2016 - Number 1

1. The Divine Comedy - Foreverland

And so to my favourite record of the year. There's really nothing special about it. It's just another new album from the consistently excellent Neil Hannon. But it's that consistency that makes it Number One though. Since their breakthrough album, Casanova, 20 years ago (and arguably, even before that, though Hannon's first three records were all about an artist refining his craft), The Divine Comedy have never faltered. It's been six years since the last one though: I was beginning to wonder if Hannon had packed up his cravat and smoking jacket and sailed off to retire in sunnier climes.

But no, he's back: and better than ever. With sweeping orchestrations, male voice choirs, huge production numbers worthy of Broadway musicals, a tuba, a donkey, and droll lyrics that arch a Noel Cowardesque eyebrow towards modern relationships... with a few historical figures thrown in along the way.

The tongue-in-cheek opener Napoleon Complex starts with Hannon making fun of so-called Short Man Syndrome (which he's entitled to given his own lack of stature)...

Who pulls the strings, who makes the deals?
Stands five foot three in Cuban heels?
Who gets all the girls, then wakes up again?
Who will rule the world?
Who will make them scream his name…?

Soon after he declares his undying admiration for Catherine The Great, a razor sharp history lesson which includes the year's best rhymes...

There were few brainier
Just ask the King of Lithuania
She could dictate what went on anywhere
She had great hair, and a powerful gait
Catherine the Great

Then there's a quirky, screwball duet with his other half, Cathy Davey, which is as Funny Peculiar as its title. But Hannon doesn't just do the funny stuff. My Happy Place is pure escapist fantasy, just what we need this year, and it's bettered only by the glorious title track, Foreverland, which brings hope to a hopeless world... well, if you can escape it. As a lyricist, Hannon is surely the modern day equivalent of Cole Porter, finding room for Voltaire, Zsa Zsa Gabor, La Legion Etranger and entente cordials in his songs without ever sounding pretentious. He can even deliver the big hit singles like he used to... well, How Can You Leave Me On My Own? was a big hit single in my house this year, even if nobody else bothered with it.



Each of the songs on Foreverland is its own mini-movie, from the Hitchcockian romp of A Desperate Man to the waltzing romance of The Pact which turns every political cliche you can think of into a romantic metaphor. And then there's Other People, recorded into a dictaphone in a late night motel room (he added the strings later), which really is the best song Stephin Merrit of the Magnetic Fields never wrote (but should have). It also has the best end to any love song I've ever heard... I know, call me a hopeless romantic. Go on, it's only a minute and a half, treat yourself...



And, erm, blah blah blah seems a perfect way to end this Top Ten. Thanks for ploughing your way through it, for leaving comments, for being there. I'm taking the typical blogger's Christmas break now, though I do have a couple of posts in the can to finish December off. I've been blogging now for over ten years (both here and, before that, on Sunset Over Slawit) and I can honestly say I've enjoyed it more this year than I have in a long time... maybe ever. And that's down to you, those of you reading this now, anyone who's taken the time to get to the bottom of the page. Have a Happy Christmas, a far better 2017, and... erm, blah blah blah...

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 2

2. Weezer - Weezer (The White Album)

Weezer are a band who have long existed on the outskirts of my collection but never really stepped centre stage. I enjoyed their 1994 debut album, particularly their big hit Buddy Holly and slacker anthems like Undone - The Sweater Song and In The Garage. Since then I've dipped my toe into their pool occasionally but not given them as much time as I have their contemporaries like Fountains of Wayne or even The Dandy Warhols. Then, just over a year ago I picked up their 2014 "second comeback" album Everything Will Be Alright In The End and found myself hooked. I started filling in the holes in my collection and became extremely stoked for their next record (not literally called The White Album; it's actually eponymous, like the Blue, Red & Green albums before it, and only differentiated from its predecessors by the colour of its sleeve) especially when I heard the hilarious pre-release gem Thank God For Girls... surely one of the best power pop singles of the 21st Century.

I'm so glad I got a girl to think of even though she isn't mine
I think about her all the day and all the night it's enough to know that she's alive
She says I give her sweaty palms she almost had a heart attack
The truth is that I’m just as scared I don’t know how to act
I wish that I could get to know her better
But meeting up in real life would cause the illusion to shatter
I carved her name into all the trees
Sang a song down on one knee
Looking at the underwear page of the Sears catalog like when I was 14
I’m levitating like a magnet turned the wrong way around
I’m like an Indian Fakir tryna’ meditate on a bed of nails with my pants pulled down
Thank God for girls
Holla Jesu Christe
From Tennessee to LA

The rest of the album was going to have to go some to match that, but they just about pulled it off. Described as both a "beach" album and a concept album about a geek finding love and then having his heart ripped to shreds... well, despite that, it's still the most upbeat, positive, sing-along-till-your-heart-bursts record of the year.Which, given everything else that's happened this year, might go some way towards explaining why I place it at #2.



Next: my favourite album of the year. A prize to anyone who can guess what it might be.

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 3

3. Meat Loaf & Jim Steinman - Braver Than We Are

Again, I've already written about this one quite extensively, just over a month ago. A not-so-quick recap...

First up, if you don't like Meat Loaf, you can skip along to the next blog right now. You've made up your mind about that a long time ago and neither this record - nor anything I write about it - will change that opinion. But if you've ever given Meat the time of day, stick around with open ears... and an open mind. 

To say I've been looking forward to this record, the reunion between Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, is something of an understatement. It's been 23 years since they last did a full album together, and that was 12 years since the previous one and 16 since their first. At risk of irking the musos even more than I usually do, this is as big as Morrissey and Marr recording together again (not as The Smiths, obviously)... or Billy Joel releasing a new album. (Hahahaha: I'm equally serious about both those comparisons, and somewhere a muso just stabbed my voodoo doll with a rusty stylus.)  

But you can build something like this up way too much, and let's face it, the Moz-Marr reunion would probably be as damp a squib as the Stone Roses comeback (though I'd grin and bear it and play it to death all the same) while Billy would struggle to match We Didn't Start The Fire these days, let alone his classic 70s output. So I've been fully prepared for Braver Than We Are to be a disappointment, ever since it was announced as "Coming Spring 2015"...

When it finally "dropped"*, 18 months later, I followed the link to the first single,  and was predictably bummed. At 11 1/2 minutes of full-on bombast, this operatic "Song in 6 Movements" felt like Steinman finally falling victim to self-parody. I sat back and waited for the album with a heavy feeling in my gut, and the first reviews did little to offer any relief. "Meat's voice is a wreck," they whinged. "It's not a new album of Steinman material at all," they carped, "just cobbled together leftovers with the occasional 'new song' thrown in!" One reviewer even swore he was the biggest Bat Out of Hell fan ever before calling Braver Than We Are the worst album he'd ever heard, saying he'd had to force himself to listen to it again just to write the review. Wow, First World Problems of Irked Musos... doesn't your heart just bleed?

On finally encountering the beast then, I was prepared for the worst, and the first few times I listened to it, I did wonder if my lack of outrage was just a brave face forced upon me by decades of hero worship (for Steinman primarily, Meat to a lesser degree). And then something weird happened. I fell in love with the freak... and that love affair began with the very song I'd rejected at the start.

Going All The Way Is Just The Start may well be the ultimate Jim Steinman song. No, it's not better than Bat, Paradise, Dead Ringer, Total Eclipse, More Than You Deserve or Objects In The Rearview Mirror. It's not up there with the classics. But it does do everything you want from a Jim Steinman song, and then some. It's 12 minutes of roaring guitars, Roy Bittan-esque piano, ridiculous, overblown imagery, layer upon layer upon layer of melodramatic tosh like the very best rock 'n' roll has to offer. It grows and builds and crescendos like it's the very last song at the end of the world, like if it just keeps on going, maybe we won't have to turn out the lights after all. If this is, as widely assumed and reported, the very last Meat Loaf record and the last will and testament of Jim Steinman, then it does the job just fine.

Yes, there are problems. Meat's voice, first and foremost. There's no denying it's long past its best. I saw an interview with him where he claimed Steinman had insisted he sang every song in the lower register, and that was probably Jim just being kind. He even struggles a bit with that. There are hundreds of vocalists who could have done a better job on this album, but none would have made the same emotional connection to Steinman's last full batch of songs. This had to be a Meat Loaf album, even if he sang it with his dying croak. Steinman describes Meat's performance as "heroic", and I honestly believe there's a truth to that: it's more than just the usual JS-BS. Plus, Jim has a back-up plan to help out the biggest song, dragging both Ellen Foley AND Karla De Vito back from Hell to pitch in: what should have been a duet becomes a grand ménage à trois. Together again for the very first time, these three really are Crusaders of the Heart.

So ignore the musos. If you ever loved Meat 'n' Jim, give this album a try. Be brave: persevere with it as it I did and you will come to love it.  

Anything else to add? Beyond those detailed above, there are other flaws with this record, most notably the way it starts strong and then peters out at the end. Metaphor, anyone? But there's still much to love before that. The opening track, Who Needs The Young? is the most bizarre song on the album, an off-kilter mishmash of German cabaret kitsch. Turns out it's the first song Steinman ever wrote so there's huge irony to Meat finally recording it now. However, it fits his 69 year old voice and persona well... in many ways it reminds me of that final Leonard Cohen album. (That'll irk someone, somewhere.) Beyond that (and the big single) we get Speaking In Tongues, a song which delights in collosally awful innuendo such as "You got the fire - I got wood" before building to a line about "an erection of the heart", which is utterly, utterly preposterous and would be laughed out of town if it came from any other artist... but Meat can get away with it when he's singing Steinman. Honestly.

After this, Meat teams up with newcomer Stacey Michelle to tackle one of the few Steinman classics he's never recorded before: Loving You's A Dirty Job (But Somebody's Got To Do It). He has a decent enough crack at it, but doesn't quite match the original by Bonnie Tyler & Todd Rundgren. More successful is another very early Steinman composition, Souvenirs, which shows where Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad's classic "I'm crying icicles instead of tears" line originated from. The album's weakest recording is Only When I Feel, not because of the lyrics (pure Steinman hyperbole: "It only hurts when I feel") but because it's the one that stretches Meat's weary voice way beyond its present limits. He's far more suited to More, originally by the Sisters of Mercy (from back when Steinman was collaborating with Andrew Eldritch): here, the Slipknot-esque growl he can still pull off fits perfectly.

The remainder of the album draws from songs written for early Steinman musicals, elements of which have, over the years, been reworked into other hits, most notably the "turn around" refrain from Total Eclipse of the Heart - but that sounds weird at first without the rest of Bonnie Tyler's breakdown. What the record lacks is a big showstopping finale suitable for the last ever Meat Loaf album: an epic, 300 minute Wagnerian beast befitting Steinman's reputation. Fading away just doesn't seem right when everything else in your career was about burning out.

So given all that criticism, why do I still rate this album so highly? Why do I place it above so many far worthier, muso-pleasing discs this year? I fully accept that out of all the albums I have chosen in this Top Ten, this is the one that most relies on my appreciation of what's gone before. On its own merits, it probably shouldn't be here, and certainly not this high. But this record still means a HELL of a lot to me. Because it's Meat and Jim, back together again for one last go, like I always dreamed they would. They were never about perfection. They were about emotion. And if nothing else, this record's got that in spades.



Next, at Number 2... the feelgood record of the summer. It's about time!

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 4

4. Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker

Leonard Cohen's death came as less of a surprise than many of the other showbusiness fatalities of 2016: he was old, his health was known to be failing, and frankly, by the time November rolled round, and Trump was elected, very little shocked us anymore. But Cohen's death was still a very sad day in the history of popular music, brightened only by his parting shot, the superb You Want It Darker, which arrived in my collection on the day he said goodbye.

Unlike Bowie's final album which was all about maintaining the mystique and armour-plating the legend, You Want It Darker was a very personal affair, as most of Cohen's records are, staring mortality in the face like Johnny Cash did on his final records... then giving it a wry, sardonic wink. On the one hand it's a sad, rather pessimistic record about aging, fear and regret, yet it's bouyed by gallows humour and an uplifting spirit. Cohen's voice is apocalyptic, yet he's chosen his backing well, from male voice choirs to string quartets and crawling drumbeats that recall The Future. You Want It Darker is the title, but the darker it gets, the more cracks appear... and that's how the light gets in.

At only 9 tracks, the album is yet another of the year's successfully short discs, but Cohen packs a lot in, from standing face to face with his maker for a reckoning on the title track ("Hineni, I'm ready my lord...") to further religious allegory, coupled with political matchmaking on the sumptuous Treaty...

And I wish there was a treaty we could sign
I do not care who takes this bloody hill
I’m angry and I’m tired all the time
I wish there was a treaty
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine

Then there's On The Level, which sounds very much like The Last Temptation of Leonard, followed by the gloriously resigned Leaving The Table, in which the infamous Ladies Man truly calls it a day...

I don’t need a lover, no, no, no
The wretched beast is tame

A beautiful soul to the very end, Leonard Cohen's life was summed up in a quote from a 1993 interview he gave in the Daily Telegraph...

“I don’t consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.”

He found dry wit in even the darkest places, especially this final record. I doubt anyone will ever find a better way to say goodbye.


Next, at Number, yet another final album...although the two men responsible are both still with us... even if one of them ain't quite the man he used to be. Two out of three ain't bad.

 

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 5

5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

I've already written about my initial reaction to Nick Cave's latest album. What I didn't tell you in that post was that I listened to it first very late at night (as I often do with music these days) before going to sleep. It was a disturbed night's sleep, to say the least, and I woke up thinking about the opening track in particular at about 3am, and couldn't get back to sleep. I'd thought that the whole album had been written in reaction to Cave's recent tragedy, but soon after Steve told me much of it had been written before that, which is in some ways even more frightening.

I haven't seen the documentary One More Time With Feeling, perhaps that will give me the full story, but for now it's safe to say that my initial reaction proved correct in one way at least: this is definitely one of the best albums of the year and it's up there with Cave's best too (although its bleakness prevents me from loving it in the same way I do Murder Ballads or The Boatman's Call).

Jesus Alone is still one of the scariest songs I've ever heard, and that's down to the music just as much as the stark, horrifying lyrics. Elsewhere, however, there's real beauty to be found, despite Cave's apocalyptic imagery. He finds it in the strangest places: take Rings Of Saturn, which mixes Stephen King-esque imagery...

Upside down and inside out and on all eights
You're like a funnel-web
Like a black fly on the ceiling
Skinny, white haunches high in the sky
And a black oily gash crawling backwards across the carpet to smash all over everything
Wet, black fur against the sun going down
Over the shops and the cars and the crowds in the town

...with a hauntingly lovely chorus...

And this is the moment, this is exactly where she is born to be
Now this is what she does and this is what she is

Things gets darker still on tracks like Magneto and Anthrocene, and then there's I Need You, which is about as far from Leo Sayer as you can get and still be a love song. Forget Murder Ballads, this is an out-and-out funeral ballad. Heartbreak never sounded so mournful and desperate, yet somehow, like much of this album, touched with a strange kind of hope.

All of which leads us to the final track (at 8 tracks, it's a mercifully short album... as are many of this year's best), the... I keep looking for synonyms for beautiful, because that's the word I think best sums up this album, despite its subject matter. In that alone, it's the best album I've heard all year... but it's not my Number One. Because this year, more than any other, I needed a little more romance, nostalgia, wit, and escapist fun from my record collection. And I did find that... as we'll discuss very soon.


Think that's as dark as my Top Ten of 2016 gets? Number 4 begs to differ...

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 6

6. Paul Simon - Stranger To Stranger

It's not that long since I wrote about this album, so here's a copy & paste of what I said back then because I'm very, very lazy...

A couple of months ago, Paul Simon released a new album. The record company hype proclaimed it his best since Graceland. That album is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, but it certainly marked the zenith of his (solo) career back in 1986 (for all the controversy that surrounded it). Simon has only released 6 albums since, and with the exception of his ill-fated 1997 musical The Capeman, I've enjoyed every one of them. With that in mind, I took the hype with a pinch of salt...
But, you know what? The hype might be true for once. Don't get me wrong: Stranger To Stranger is not in the same league as Graceland, but it is his most coherent set of songs since... well, certainly since Graceland's successor, Rhythm of the Saints. Which is kind of odd, considering it's a relatively short album and two of its 11 tracks are brief instrumentals (I bought the Deluxe Edition, but you're not missing anything if you go with the standard release, except the rather lovely Dion duet). However, musically, it's his most playful and experimental record since Graceland, largely due to the collaboration with Italian electronic maestro Clap! Clap! (Don't worry, Simon's not gone dance). It also hit Number One in the UK album chart (making him, at 74, the oldest male artist to ever do that) and became his best-selling album since Graceland in the US.
Wristband was the first radio single (do they call them Impact Tracks or summat these days?) and on the surface, it's the somewhat smug tale of a rock musician getting locked out of his own gig who's then refused backstage entry by a security guard because he doesn't have a wristband. As with the best of the Graceland songs, its lyrics are witty and clever... but also have a bit more to say about the state of the world as Simon turns the wristband into a metaphor for privilege, the class system and the growing anger of the "have nots" (those without a wristband) in today's society.

I was focusing on one track when I wrote that, but there's plenty more to enjoy here, from the chilling end times metaphor of The Werewolf, which seems a little too prescient for comfort...

You better stock up on water
Canned goods off the shelf
And loot some for the old folks
Can't loot for themselves
The doorbell's ringing
Could be the elves
But it's probably the werewolf
It's quarter to twelve
And when it's midnight
And the wolf bites
It's a full moon
She's really got the appetite!

This theme continues with a curious ongoing narrative about a street poet who ends up in hospital diagnosed with schizophrenia, looking for proof of love to keep him sane. The more you dig into the lyrics, the more you find Simon casting a wry eye over the terrible state of the world... it's no wonder the final track is an Insomniac's Lullaby. You may wonder how he keeps smiling... well, he gives you the answer to that pretty directly in Cool Papa Bell...

It turns out to be
A great thing for me
I don’t worry
And I don’t think
Because
It’s not my job to worry or to think
Not me
I’m more like
Every day I’m here, I’m grateful
And that’s the gist of it
Now you may call that a bogus
Bullshit, New Age point of view
But check out my tattoo!
Says "Wall-to-Wall Fun"!

It's also this song which finds him bundling in an always-welcome tuba and picking apart the meaning and usage of the word 'motherfucker' in hilarious fashion: even more so when you consider this track was played on Radio 2, heavily edited to the point where it made no sense at all. The unedited version is below...



Next, at #5... out of terrible tragedy grows great beauty.

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 7

Great tunes to be had at #7... if you can get past the annoying band name.

7. Dawes - We're All Gonna Die

My introduction to Dawes came via their previous album, 2015's All Your Favourite Bands, which would have been near the top of my year end countdown last year... had I not discovered it in early 2016. (This often happens, and I'm sure it will again this year. By June 2017, I'll have kicked half these albums off this chart - in my head - and replaced them with more worthy discs I haven't yet heard.) AYFB was a fantastic record, channeling the Eagles, Jackson Browne and a bunch of my favourite Laurel Canyon bands of the 70s, and it had the same kind of hazy, nostalgic lyrics that make me long for a youth I never had in a far away land I might never visit. It's worth listening to the title track again now, just to show you what I mean...



OK. You know when you love an album so much that all you really want from the band's next release is another version of that record? And inevitably, if you get it... it's not what you wanted at all? A smart band knows that. And a smart band don't give you what you want. They give you something different... even though they know you might not dig it at first. A smart band hopes you'll be smart too, and you'll stick with that different record and come to love it in a different way. Turns out Dawes are a pretty smart band...

I bought We're All Gonna Die the second it came out, not just because of my love for AYFB, but because... hell, how am I not going to buy an album with that title? It deserves to be on my year end Top Ten even if I'd never played it. But from the opening chords, it's a very different record. Musically much beefier, owing more to the 80s than the 70s, throwing out the Eagles in favour of funk, fuzz-guitar, a splash of Jeff Lynne-produced George Harrison, and an occasional nod to Don Henley's solo output. It's a more diverse record than its predecessor and it doesn't fit together quite as well, but when you get past all that, Taylor Goldsmith's lyrics still shine with intricate, oddball details that suggest much bigger stories waiting to be told... as on Five Miles Away, which has disappeared from youtube since I wrote this post...

There's a stranger in the bushes
Looking through the windows of a home
At a woman from the movies
That's been living there alone

She's home at 7 in the evening
He sees the code punched in the gate
This is all happening right now
Less than five miles away

There's another great Divorce Song in Roll With The Punches too. Because we can never have too many of those.

I still think Dawes is a terrible name for a band though.


Next, at Number #6: still rhymin' after all these years...

My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 8

And so we move from the sublime... to the ridiculous.

8. The Humdrum Express - The Day My Career Died

I know what your immediate reaction to this post will be: "Rol: you're seriously telling me this record is better than Bowie?"

No, of course I'm not, and I'm sure Ian Passey, the man behind The Humdrum Express doesn't think he's better than Bowie either. The point is, my Top Tens are never about artistic merit, as subjective as that may be. My Top Tens are just about what I like, and a lot of the time, I like silly, trivial, funny records as much as, if not more than, serious, arty ones. That's why I irk the musos, because musos rarely believe humour has a place in the pantheon of serious rock 'n' roll.

I owe this one to Charity Chic, who introduced me to this band less than a couple of months back. As soon as I heard the track Leopard Print Onesie, I downloaded the full album from emusic. In a year with very little to laugh about, with doom and gloom making a big impact on even my year end list, and in lieu of a new Half Man Half Biscuit album to warm my cockles... The Day My Career Died was the record I needed more than any other.

The HMHB comparison is unavoidable, particularly on the title track and the one Charity Chic highlighted, but there's more to Ian's bag of tricks than pin-sharp observational minutiae. Although he is bloody good at that...

The local kids' swimming club
Packs shopping at a cost
I leave the supermarket
With bread and crisps all squashed
They should be briefed:
Put tins underneath!

Elsewhere on the album, there's a hilarious rap based on crap advertising slogans (End of Part One), and a note perfect Morrissey parody (Catch A Fallen Star) that if you closed your eyes could be the long-awaited sequel to Little Man, What Now?

Look, if we're all in agreement about anything, it's that it's been a truly awful year all round. With that in mind, The Day My Career Died could well be the most welcome album on this list. We need something to make us smile...

I can't help but feel ungrateful
For gestures from the smug
Who take pity on my plight
By sending me a cyber-hug
They all should fear...
My cyber-clip round the ear

Next, at Number #7... it sounds like Jim Morrison's band, but it doesn't sound anything like Jim Morrison's band.

My Top Ten Albums Of 2016 - Number 10

The job of picking my albums of the year gets harder every December. I swear I've been fretting over this since March: first, worrying I wouldn't have enough for #10, then scared I wouldn't have time to properly listen to all the late releases to judge them properly. I don't know why I let this bother me; I mean, it's not as though anyone gives two hoots what my favourite records were... plus I can pretty much guarantee that by March 2017, I'll already have heard at least five better 2016 albums than the ones I've plumped for here... and I'll be wishing I'd heard them earlier, in time to write about them now.

Such are the First World Problems of the middle-aged music blogger. They seem even more pathetic considering all the really serious things I could be worrying about this December... like whether we'll even live to see next December with the way the world's going... but sometimes, you've just got to sweat the small stuff. It's like Mick said: "Whatever gets you through the night..."

So let's try to get through this as painlessly as possible, shall we?

10. Drive-By Truckers - American Band

I've been a fan of Drive-By Truckers for a good few years now, although their last couple of records did seem to be treading water. American Band is a blistering return to form though, due largely to two significant factors:

1) The band's reaction to the current political scene... with a view to communicating in particularly, though not exclusively, that even though they're from the south, Donald Trump does not speak for them. Sadly, it wasn't enough to convince southern voters to dump Trump, but at least they gave it a shot.

2) The recent success of former member Jason Isbell, whose last album, Something More Than Free, blew the doors off 2015. (And would have been in my Top Ten of 2015... if I'd heard it in time.)

American Band is a bloody great (Southern) American Rock Record, sounding not unlike mid-period R.E.M. in places, although it does lack the humour of many early Drive-By Truckers albums... I guess they don't feel there's been much to laugh about this year. Maybe they get a little bit too earnest in places, but frontman Patterson Hood will never be Bono, and more often than not they manage the heartfelt integrity of Wrecking Ball or American Skin-era Springsteen. It's an angry record, to be sure, and one that reflects what's happening out there more than anything else I've heard this year, particularly on the savage and excoriating What It Means...

He was running down the street
When they shot him in his tracks
About the only thing agreed upon
Is he ain't coming back
There won't be any trial
So the air it won't be cleared
There's just two sides calling names
Out of anger out of fear
If you say it wasn't racial
When they shot him in his tracks
Well I guess that means that you ain't black
It means that you ain't black
I mean Barack Obama won
And you can choose where to eat
But you don't see too many white kids lying
Bleeding on the street

But after all that sterling political pop, it's the final track, Baggage, which tips this album into my Top Ten of 2016. Written on the night Robin Williams' death was announced, it deals with Patterson Hood's response to how the media deals with the subject of depression (something he knows more than a little about) and it's one of the most raw and honest songs I've heard all year (and that's saying something, considering some of the other records we'll be discussing here shortly). It'll stay with me long after Trump has been impeached and forgotten.

Only a live video on youtube, so you can listen to the album version here...

Drive-By Truckers - Baggage

Next up, at Number #9... the stars shine a little darker this year.