It was a somewhat unusual musical year for me. Several albums dominated huge chunks of several seasons and the scale of the column somewhat skewed my more exploratory listening. However, a considerable stash of delights has assembled itself in my affections and I’ll count down a Top 30 over the new few days. Shall we do ten now?
The Lilac Time - Dance Till All The Stars Come Down
From the moment the needle drops on this one, it’s obvious that Stephen Duffy’s beloved band are in superb form. ‘Your Vermillion Cliffs’ is a truly gorgeous acoustic meditation on ageing and living a good life. The final lines, “Can’t promise you a rainbow, all I can say is this: we can leave tomorrow, for your vermillion cliffs,” drip with warmth and experience.
The plaintive country twang brings to mind Richard Hawley at his most confessional and Duffy has a hard-earned track record in documenting the human condition. These are songs bursting with heart that make magical use of space. ‘On The Last Day Of The Last Days Of Summer’ spells out its game plan in the title, but it is a deeply moving track that plays its seasonal metaphor with bewitching subtlety.
BC Camplight – Last Rotation Of Earth
To adapt a well-worn phrase, there are those who know BC Camplight is great and those that haven’t heard him yet. It was 2007’s ‘Blink Of A Nihilist’ that first caught my attention, but a large pause followed before a reboot via Bella Union began in 2015. A run of fantastic albums has ensued and ‘The Last Rotation Of Earth’ is arguably the best. The synth-driven single ‘Kicking Up A Fuss’ is an effective taster of what you might expect, but the ambition is considerable.
Concept track ‘The Movie’ is about twenty-five ideas in one, including a superb line about Louis Theroux. Lyrically, a long-term relationship has ended and addiction is rearing its ugly head, but Brian Christinzio (BC) continues to show his capacity to turn more than his fair share of unfortunate circumstances into musical gold. If he’s passed you by till now, make this the album where you put that right. Top pressing, too.
Jake Shears - Last Man Dancing
As the figureheads of the Scissor Sisters, both Ana Matronic and Jake Shears were very much PROPER POP STARS and that band’s absence for more than a decade has made the musical landscape a less enjoyable place to be. Shears released his self-titled debut solo album in 2018 and, despite a rather frustrating vinyl edition, it had its moments. However, its follow up, ‘Last Man Dancing’, is a sensational disco record that channels an array of influences into twelve songs that feel timeless.
The title track could easily nestle with the early releases from his previous endeavour while ‘Radio Eyes’ is a sparkling delight with hints of a higher BPM Kraftwerk in its refrain. Little moments like the percussive breakdown in ‘Really Big Deal’, a track with a tremendous lyric, and the torch-song piano opener to recent single ‘Do The Television’ signal the quality. A real grower.
Fatoumata Diawara – London KO
The absolute shining highlight of Gorillaz’s 2020 ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’ was ‘Désolé’, featuring Fatoumata Diawara as the guest vocalist. A strident, infectious pop smash from the top drawer, it was made even more special by Diawara’s sensational vocal performance. Naturally, I explored her work further as a result and keenly anticipated her most recent effort, ‘London KO’. Damon Albarn, with whom she has worked for over a decade in one form or another, co-produces and returns the vocal favour on opener ‘Nsera’.
The whole album is an immediate thrill, radiating an energy that feels precision-tooled for the sun that’s finally putting in an appearance. ‘Somaw’ is a great nearly-banger that does that wonderful simmering trick where it threatens to explode euphorically numerous times, while the rich piano presence at the start of ‘Blues’ is hypnotic. There is real beauty here too, with the measured textures on ‘Moussoya’ hovering in the soundstage. And then there’s my absolute favourite, ‘Sete’, which feels like a vintage earworm despite being brand new. I am absolutely besotted with the chord structure in the verse and the deft Wurlitzer touches that propel this majestic track.
Spearmint – This Candle Is For You
Shimmering, swooning, jangly guitar pop with a true gift for narratives, it continues the band’s reputation for understated beauty. And you can’t help feeling it should be a little more well-known and highly-regarded in the current musical landscape. The combined voices of Simon Calnan and songwriter Shirley Lee are in that same category of musical comfort occupied by Teenage Fanclub at their most heartwarming.
Affecting tribute ‘Melody’s Mother’s Jam’ features the wonderful lyric, “must be some kind of irony that a jam can’t be preserved,” while ‘Never Far From Saturday Night’ is a paean to domestic contentment. Rhodri Marsden provides excellent production and the GZ pressing is near silent throughout. Add in a glorious lyric book with commentary and this is a very satisfying package indeed.
Matt Berry - Simplicity
If ever there was a modern artist who might have been weaned on KPM Music releases as well as mushed up vegetables, it’s Matt Berry. The warmth and heft of so many of his albums lends them an endearingly audible connection to a different era and so a collaborative project between the legendary library music label and his normal home, Acid Jazz, has gifted us ‘Simplicity’. Artwork follows the conventional style and it is absolutely irresistible.
It grooves, it swings, it swaggers and it has more than the odd wry smile. In the way that so much of Keith Mansfield’s sensational recordings still do, this set makes everything better. The soundstage is huge, nuanced and utterly absorbing. Listen to the predictably grand build in ‘Widescreen Features’ or the impeccably observed brooding intrigue of ‘Telescopic’ to get a sense of what to expect.
Teenage Fanclub - Nothing Lasts Forever
When you’ve delivered several genuinely classic albums and haven’t split up or had a lengthy hiatus, there’s a risk of being taken for granted. I do wonder if that’s the case for enduring charmers Teenage Fanclub. Their twenty-first century output hasn’t quite sustained the quality established in the Nineties, but that is quite the challenge and there have been a number of superb records nevertheless. Delightfully, their latest is one of them. The instrumental coda of opener ‘Foreign Land’ says it all, with its comfy, melodic and thoroughly wholesome presence. It gives way to opening guitar part on ‘Tired Of Being Alone’ that could only be them, and that’s before the honeyed vocals that quickly follow.
The presence of Euros Childs in the line-up since Gerard Love’s departure is felt properly for the first time here, backing vocals and musical quirks seeping through that are very distinctly him. Yes, plenty of it’s mid-paced, but you don’t go around begging Kylie for an album full of ballads, do you*? The crucial test for me is whether I pick it out of the racks when I could go for ‘Grand Prix’ or ‘Songs From Northern Britain’. And I do, with many of these tracks slowly growing into heartening favourites as the weather turned towards winter. The unashamed beauty of ‘Self-Sedation’ should melt the coldest heart.
*Kylie - Tension
The Parlophone-orchestrated re-boot of Kylie’s career at the turn of the millennium was quite remarkable and she has absolutely run with it ever since. She has consistently delivered some joyfully wonderful records and her recent switch to BMG has lifted the bar further - admittedly only after getting ‘Golden’ out of her system. 2020’s ‘Disco’ is a particular highlight and ‘Tension’ fully understands what worked about its predecessor. While this new set feels less retro-focused, it still pursues the hands-in-the-air hooks and simmering beats that explode via euphoric bridges into unashamedly BIG choruses.
The unexpected cut-through of ‘Padam Padam’ rather reframed the whole project and, as the recent ‘An Audience With Kylie’ for ITV proved, restored her to the forefront of public consciousness across the generations. It’s an odd but irresistible track, sure, but there’s much more interesting stuff to be found across the album. The title track has superb early-Nineties piano and a nonsense lyric that makes it an instant earworm and ‘Vegas High’ is pure pop magic. There’s a recently released extended version, as with ‘Disco’, should you wish to luxuriate in the synth stabs and nifty basslines. And why wouldn’t you?
Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World
How many bands make one of their best albums thirty-seven years after releasing their first? Things have been a little less frequent and rather more sedate in the world of Yo La Tengo in recent times, but if you’ve been asking yourself whether or not you really need another of their records then the answer is very much yes. ‘This Stupid World’ is magnificent. It is both immediately, obviously excellent and also very clearly capable of growing on you, revealing so much more over time. Motorik rhythms, fuzzy textures and Georgia Hubley’s distinctive voice all fuse together to form a visceral, hypnotic and energising record.
It flies by, compels you to put it straight back on when it finishes and incites ever-increasing volumes. It’s Stereolab, the Velvets, Can, Radiohead, The Beta Band, Blueboy and, of course, Yo La Tengo. It’s your record collection chewed up, adored, nurtured and delivered with an urgency that seems to be about escaping recent times. There is a bonus jam on side four that doesn’t particularly add anything, but it’s still preferable to a pointless etching. The dynamics are there on a superlative Optimal pressing, ensuring that the driving rhythm of opener ‘Sinatra Drive Breakdown’ is felt bodily without losing any definition. More delicate material like ‘Aselestine’ is just as well served, the hypnotic clarity of the mid-range perfectly sculpted below Hubley’s sublime performance. This album continues to grow and there are so many things to pick out of the mix. Very fine work indeed.
This Is The Kit - Careful Of Your Keepers
Kate Stables has long been known as This Is The Kit, initially as a moniker for her solo work and now as the name of a band that she leads. Your correspondent has loved her work for some time and it is wonderfully hard to describe, thanks to its hypnotic, meditative, languid magic. I’d argue that this is their best yet, possessing many neat little textures on tracks that gradually, almost subliminally, pull you in over multiple listens. It delivers the glorious sensory ambush that unusually arranged music can sometimes engineer.
Try ‘Take You To Sleep’ for a great example of this intangible glory. When the brass kicks in on ‘Goodbye Bite’, it’ll instantly prompt a smile, while the skronky ascension towards the end of ‘Inside Outside’ is utterly hypnotic. The title track has a touch of the portentous piano and atmospherics from ‘Spirit Of Eden’-era Talk Talk. This is seriously good stuff. Produced by Gruff Rhys and mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud, the Optimal-pressed vinyl sounds sublime. The many instruments involved are deftly and physically present in the room, while Stables’ voice is intimate but fully carved out at the heart of the soundstage. Essential music that might actually work even better at the tail end of the year.