The Festive 50 (2011)
Published: December 16th, 2011 in Music Reviews
This year, I thought I might try and actually order my top 50 albums of the year by preference rather than taking the path of least resistance offered by an alphabetical listing. It’s much harder than I thought it might be. The decline in quality from 1 to 50 is actually rather slight and this makes the judgement calls between individual placings near impossible.
This rundown has been compiled from a much larger list of around 150 albums which have spiced up a lengthy succession of otherwise dreary days spent building and replumbing other people’s websites.
Top prize this year goes to the excellent collaboration between Adian Moffat and Bill Wells Everything’s Getting Older. For those of us of a certain vintage this album will have a particular resonance but for thinking music fans everywhere this is a must-have for 2011. PJ Harvey was awarded the Mercury Prize for Let England Shake and, this time at least, the judges were spot on. A stunning album. I was lucky enough to see Baltimore’s Wye Oak live this year when they were the support band for The National. The sublime Civilian has never been far from my playlist.
There is plenty to keep you busy here. From the post-rock loud/quiet of Mogwai’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will and the instrumental post-metal of Russian Circles’ Empros through to the experimentalism of Puscifier’s Conditions Of My Parole and David Lynch’s (yup, that one) Crazy Clown Time.
By my count there are 8 albums here by home-grown Scottish artists. Not a bad total. Special mention must go to Martin John Henry (of the late, and much missed De Rosa) and his superb solo debut The Other Half Of Everything.
- Adian Moffat & Bill Wells – Everything’s Getting Older (open in spotify)
- PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (open in spotify)
- Wye Oak – Civilian (youtube clip)
- The Antlers – Burst Apart (open in spotify)
- The Decemberists – The King is Dead (open in spotify)
- Wild Beasts – Smother (open in spotify)
- King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine (open in spotify)
- St. Vincent – Strange Mercy (open in spotify)
- Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (open in spotify)
- Puscifier – Conditions of my Parole (open in spotify)
- Star Wheel Press – Life Cycle of a Falling Bird (open in spotify)
- Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (open in spotify)
- Martin John Henry – The Other Half of Everything (open in spotify)
- The Dø – Both Ways Open Jaws (open in spotify)
- Feist – Metals (open in spotify)
- Bon Iver – Bon Iver (open in spotify)
- Gazelle Twin – The Entire City (open in spotify)
- The Field – Looping State of Mind (review and streams)
- Johann Johannsson – The Miner’s Hymns (open in spotify)
- Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys! (open in spotify)
- Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow (open in spotify)
- Tom Waits – Bad As Me (youtube clip)
- Radiohead – The King of Limbs (open in spotify)
- Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know (open in spotify)
- Alexi Murdoch – Towards The Sun (open in spotify)
- Loch Lomond - Little Me Will Start a Storm (open in spotify)
- Russian Circles – Empros (open in spotify)
- Vessels – Helioscope (open in spotify)
- Braids – Native Speaker (open in spotify)
- Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (open in spotify)
- David Lynch – Crazy Clown Time (open in spotify)
- Explosions In The Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (open in spotify)
- Low – C’Mon (open in spotify)
- Bjork – Biophilia (open in spotify)
- Peggy Sue – Acrobats (open in spotify)
- Found – Factorycraft (open in spotify)
- David Thomas Broughton – Outbreeding (open in spotify)
- Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi – Rome (open in spotify)
- Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi (open in spotify)
- RM Hubbert – First & Last (open in spotify)
- R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now (open in spotify)
- Christina Vantzou – No. 1 (open in spotify)
- Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes (open in spotify)
- The Jezabels – Prisoner (soundcloud track)
- Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact (open in spotify)
- Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (open in spotify)
- King’s Daughters and Sons – If Then Not When (open in spotify)
- Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost (open in spotify)
- Thrice – Major/Minor (open in spotify)
- The Moth & The Mirror – Honestly, This World (open in spotify)
Exit light, enter night.
Published: September 28th, 2011 in Comedy and Satire, Media, Misc., Uncategorized
Bill Bailey with a message for James, Lars and co.
Today’s aural treat
Published: September 27th, 2011 in Music Reviews
One of the things that has often kept me from descending into melancholic despair over the years is my love of good music. It doesn’t really matter what sort of music, it could be instrumental, sung in Icelandic, played on an authentic 15th century harpsichord or programmed via Ableton Live on an iMac. The key thing is that the music should be written and performed from the heart and avoid pandering to mass consumerist taste for the sake of inflated sales.
I recall vividly the very first time I was allowed by my parents to go off into a record shop in Edinburgh to purchase a 7″ single. It was 1979, I was 8 years old and I chose to purchase Message in a Bottle by The Police. By way of comparison, during the same visit to the record shop, my 7-year-old brother chose to purchase Dollar’s cover version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand. This divergence in musical taste persists to this day.
With much of what passes for culture in modern Britain leaving almost nothing of value behind after consumption, I have found music has taken on a greater importance in my life with each passing year. Comedy shows on prime-time TV which I previously enjoyed immensely now often leave me feeling short-changed with their increasing laziness. The same tired finger-pointing and sniggering “Nick Clegg’s a secret tory“. No he isn’t. Much closer to the truth is that David Cameron is patently a liberal and the large “C” conservative party no longer exists. But without the tories to bash, where does a card-carrying on-message left-leaning TV comedy panel show direct its ire? Best to maintain the fiction. Yes, I’m looking at you O’Briain!
Anyway, I digress. This morning I heard the new record by Peggy Sue (formerly Peggy Sue and the Pirates), Acrobats (Wichita Records). I did rather like their previous album Fossils & Other Phantoms and it made my Festive 50 last year. You could describe that record as nu-folk with a dark edge, should you like such pigeon-holing. I had been expecting more of the same with Acrobats but I was in for a bit of an eye-opener. The new record is, by any yardstick, a huge leap forward. Production duties on the album are carried out by long-time PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish and, perhaps inevitably, there are echoes of the early-career PJ Harvey here, never more clearly than on the opener “Cut My Teeth”. There is much less reliance on acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo and the other accoutrements of the self-respecting indie nu-folk band here. This new album shows a bolder, darker side to Peggy Sue. There are a couple of weaker moments during the 45 minute runtime but they are easily forgiven when, overall, the standard is so high. I’ve heard the album twice today and can see already that repeat listening will be rewarded.
Smarter, more engaging and less contrived than some of their nu-folk peers such as fancy dress posh boys Mumford & Sons or Noah & the Whale, Peggy Sue are a band worth keeping an eye on. If you are a fan of PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi, The Sian Alice Group, Laura Marling or Devics and you are also in the market for some new and interesting music, look no further.
Have a listen to the record for yourself here:
Even the minor release stuff is good!
Published: September 23rd, 2011 in Media, Music Reviews
Scottish post-rockers Mogwai have released a new EP – Earth Division – and it’s available to listen to on Soundcloud. As far as the music goes, I would describe this as minor Mogwai and lacking the punch of their other 2011 release Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will but it’s still a great deal better than a lot of artist’s major releases and contains several sublime passages. They are playing Glasgow’s Barrowland on 22nd December and I’ll be preceding my staid family Christmas by attending what, I’m sure, will be a monumentally good gig. Here are the tracks from the new EP, enjoy …
1. Get To France
Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite: This song is a lovely piano ditty by John (Cummings). It also features a string arrangement by the wonderful and wonderfully double-barrelled Paul Leonard-Morgan. To my thoroughly dishevelled ears it is reminiscent of Erik Satie, but John could well have been going for something entirely different. He’s hard to read. The song title is, like many of our titles, a shamelessly stolen piece of Scottish colloquialism.
2. Hound of Winter
Stuart Braithwaite: I’d describe this as a power-free power ballad. Which, in essence, is just a ballad. Confessing to writing a ballad is a brave thing to do, though at 35 years of age, abandoning a fear of judgment can easily be confused with bravery. The strings on this are by the irrepressible Luke Sutherland. A man who I recently witnessed convincing our lighting engineer that vegans ate eggs, but only the yolks.
3. Drunk and Crazy
Stuart Braithwaite: A lot of credit for this piece of randomonia must go to the producer of this EP, Paul Savage. This track recorded in three stages. First Barry (Burns)’s piano, then the strings and finally a pile of guitar noise. Somehow Paul managed to arrange all of this in a very imaginative fashion into what you hear. I’m still amazed as to how it turned out. The title is stolen from a country and western album that I found in the DJ booth of the Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow.
4. Does This Always Happen?
Stuart Braithwaite: This is a very simple song augmented again with a great string arrangement by Paul Leonard-Morgan. I’m sure Barry won’t appreciate the compliment but I think his improvised piano part here is really special. The title is a quote from our friend, the musician and artist Tom Schofield, who uttered this in bemusement when he walked into a psychedelic rock show in a very fancy private members club in Glasgow.
Happysad
Published: September 9th, 2011 in Edinburgh, Misc.
My tolerance for the kind of weather which afflicts this country of mine from September through until May gets eroded a little further with each passing year. In my younger days I would be spending rather a lot of my time with jovial drunken friends in the many wonderful bars of our capital city and the inclement weather outside was rather incidental as a result. As a home-based worker and 40-something stay-at-home father I spend rather less time in those bars now and am required to soberly face the dreariness of our climate with metronomic grinding monotony. What colour is the sky today? Oooh, it’s grey again! There’s also drizzling rain for texture. My PC desktop-borne climatic temperature gauge reports 12°C but I know that to be one more in a series of filthy lies.
The thought of living further north has sometimes flitted through my head, in much the same way as a thought such as I wonder if it’s possible to survive the 40 metre fall from the Forth Road Bridge into the freezing waters of the Forth Estuary?. Sometimes, while staring out into the half-light of yet another blanket-grey morning, I chill myself by imagining what it must be like to live on the Shetland or Faroe Islands. Perhaps such places are studded with windowless pubs, filled with intoxicated inhabitants.
It cheered me to read the story of one such inhabitant on today’s BBC News website …
Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg
I know how that elk feels.
