2023: New Music From Young Women

I blame it all on Wet Leg. Since they conquered the world from their Chaise Longue in 2021, "indie" girl bands have become much more exciting than "indie" boy bands. To be fair, with a few noteworthy exceptions, the lads have been pretty dull for a decade or so - the "Landfill indie" movement of the early noughties was mostly a masculine affair, so good on the ladies for stepping up to show the lads how it should be done.

Today, it seems like we finally have an equal gender playing field when it comes to making noisy guitar music. Makes you realise what outliers and pioneers the likes of Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde really were. Here are some of my favourite songs made by noisy young women his year...

English Teacher - Nearly Daffodils

Let's start with a band I've already seen crop up on a few other End of Year lists... which almost makes me feel like I have my finger on my pulse. English Teacher initially came to my attention because they'd chosen to name themselves after me. How could I not listen to their records? If you are thinking of starting a band next year, can I suggest calling yourself Failed Writer or Shit Fashion Sense or Miserable Bastard? I'll be there in the front row. 

Even better, Lily Fontaine, who fronts English Teacher, was born in Huddersfield. Putting her right up there with Jodie Whittaker and James Mason in my estimation. 

This is the best thing English Teacher put out this year. I have high hopes for their imminent LP. 

7ebra are Inez and Ella Johannson, 25-year-old twin sisters from Malmö, Sweden. They're the point of the Venn diagram where Wet Leg overlap with First Aid Kit. I Have A Lot To Say is one of the best songs I've heard all year. That the rest of their debut album couldn't quite live up to it isn't really their fault. Sometimes you write a song that's so good, nothing else can come close.

Skipping across to Germany now, where we meet the charming Ms. Anna Erhard...

Anna Erhard - Picnic at the Seaside

From Abba to Nena to Vanessa Paradis, there's definitely something about women who sing with European accents. I think it taps into the mythical "Exchange Student" fantasies that we had as teenagers. Not that I remember ever meeting an exchange student. And if I had, I wouldn't have dared talk to them. 

Anyway, Anna Erhard writes songs about campsites and picnics and guest rooms and idiots - everyday things from an idiosyncratic point of view. She's only released one song this year (the one above is from her 2022 album), but it was enough to make me grin for at least three minutes and fifteen seconds...

The Beaches come from Toronto. They're not exactly a new band as I'm pretty sure I remember listening to their debut LP in 2017. It's taken the six years to release a follow up, but, y'know, the world did rather fall apart during that time.  

The Beaches - Blame Brett

They also win the My Top Ten award for best inspirational slogan of 2023...

Those guys are just the tip of the iceberg though. Lately, every time I switch on the tube of you, I find it's recommending me an exciting new female fronted rock 'n' roll band. Blame the algorithms. (Steve For The Deaf has also been responsible for alerting me to many of these.)

Coach Party - All I Wanna Do Is Hate

VENUS GRRRLS - Liar Liar

Crawlers - Would You Come To My Funeral?

Twat Union - UTI

Worm Girlz - Dirt

Bugeye - Dancing Out In The Dark

However, the female-fronted band I'm most excited about hearing a proper record from in 2024 is probably these guys. 

The Last Dinner Party - Sinner

They're a little bit goth and a little bit Kate Bush but they can also rock it out like the kids used to do before they discovered drum machines. I also think they may be familiar with the work of Jim Steinman.

Over the past few months, The Last Dinner Party have swiftly become darlings of the cognoscenti, to the point where it almost feels like I should be rebelling against them, because it's never cool to like what the cool kids are telling you to like. But as long as they keep delivering singles like this one... I can't help but be swept along with the crowd.  

Cnut Songs #24: End Times

"Your blog's changed over the past 12 months. It used to be more personal, more honest... a lot of woe-is-me whinging, yeah, but it felt like it was being written by an actual human being with hopes and fears, aspirations and... feelings. Lately though, it's just a bunch of lists linking to some cool tunes with feeble jokes and forced bonhomie."

Ironically, the latter is what I set out to create when I started My Top Ten (maybe with less feeble jokes and more genuine bonhomie). My old blog, Sunset Over Slawit, was very personal and open and honest... and I'd grown tired of sharing that side of myself with the world, so I devised MTT as purely a music list blog, because I thought that's all I wanted to write. Look back at the first couple of years of posts here, and that's all it is. Gradually though, the personal side took control again until MTT had basically become what SOS was 12 years ago... with arguably better tunes. 

So why have I gone full circle? If I'm being brutally honest, the answer is depression. There. I said it. Here's a track from the excellent Cherry Red compilation Revolt Into Style 1979 which sums it up better than any amount of my piffle can...

Andy Arthurs & The Rock Along Combo - I Feel Flat

"You're depressed? Join the fucking club, mate. If it's that bad, why don't you do something about it?"

What do you suggest? I went to the doctor about anxiety a couple of years back and all they did was put me on cognitive behavioural therapy. Via an app. I'm too cynical for CBT, you need a certain proclivity for tree-hugging, I believe... and on app? I understand that the NHS is at breaking point... I work in the NHS now!... so I know why I'm on an app rather than speaking to a real person... especially considering some of the people I work with who are on a waiting list for face-to-face CBT and have a much greater need than I ever will. There comes a point where you have to put your own "illness" into perspective and realise that it's mild enough to not bother the NHS with. Besides, if CBT is out... what am I left with?

Half Man Half Biscuit - Depressed Beyond Tablets

So what's getting me so down? Well, beyond bereavement and the ongoing mid-life crisis, The World itself is top of the list. I've posted a few excerpts from Dave Eggers' novel The Every recently, all of which paint a depressing picture of a world where technology has robbed us of freedom, individuality, creativity and joy. And then last week, this happened...

I've been teaching some lessons over the internet via Microsoft Teams again lately. Only the odd one, not like in Lockdown when all my lessons were online, but following my most recent lesson, I received a report from my "Speaker Coach". It seems that my lesson had been monitored by artificial intelligence, and the AI had a few tips for how I could improve my performance...

It's not all criticism though. Our robot gods have judged me worthy in certain ways...

I'm sorry, but this really is the End Times as far as I'm concerned. This comes in the same week as I heard about schoolkids using AI to do their homework, while a number of pioneers in the field warn that the end is nigh. In a rage, I shared my concerns with Ben...

Rol: End times.

Ben: Not really, just a reorientation of the labour process.

The spinning jenny, the combustion engine, even the printing press saw large modifications to labour.

This is now a quantification of the individual

Terrifying in it's direction, yes. But... "End times"? Only when the revolution comes, comrade!

I have a problem when technology interferes with art. Making a speech is on a similar level to art or music or writing. The fact that we now have AI attempting (and dictating how we should do) these things based on shitty algorithms... either human beings are really no longer needed, or we're just becoming so fucking lazy that our relevance is at an end. There's a distinction between replacing a boring and laborious mechanical process... and replacing creativity.

That's part of the restructuring of the labour process. Creativity was distinctly only an option for the ruling class until the 20th century and this will see to it going back to that

The de-skilling of labour through technology is something inherent to the capitalist mode of production, and it has found a way to penetrate the arts

And that really is the end times.

(You see now why I don't let Ben come round here as much as I used to? He's even more depressing than I am!)

We've reached a tipping point, and there's no going back from this. We've already got AI art generators, AI story and poetry generators, we've even got AI writing songs and recording new tunes from long defunct bands.  I used to tell myself that when I retired, I would start writing stories again... but really, what's the point? By then, the computers will be doing all that for us. It'll be terrible, but we'll have lost the critical faculties that enable us to tell the difference.

When I started writing blogs in 2006, the medium still felt relatively fresh and innovative. Blogs are old hat nowadays though, and most people who still write them are the wrong side of 40. But with an increasing amount of AI-generated content on the internet (and everywhere else), the weeds will soon choke out the flowers. 

And you wonder why I'm depressed... at least I can still rely on good, old-fashioned music to cheer me up.

7ebra are two sisters from Sweden, following in the steps of First Aid Kit, but with more of an Wet Leg vibe. As far as I can tell, they wrote all their own songs, play their own instruments, and use their own voices to sing with. In other words, no AI was used in the production of this wonderful tune...