September 2017 Review

I listened to no less than 14 albums from October, it was one of those months where I read the release list and was all "yep, yep, yep ...yep" and kept on loading my Spotify up with music. As is often the case with these bumper months, there were a few albums I put in The Rest that maybe should have gone in the ranked section - Danny Watts, Death From Above and Four Tet just missed out, and would have been dead certs for the top list on a weaker month. I was toying with a top 7 but... Nah. One to definitely avoid this time round is Prophets Of Rage. It's not like I was expecting anything special, but Rage Against The Machine with the dudes from Public Enemy and Cypress Hill waters down the political message from revolutionary encitement to Rock The Vote. Bring back Zach De La Rocha! 


The Rest:

Tori Amos - Native Invader - B

Death From Above 1979 - Outrage! Is Now - B

Four Tet - New Energy - C

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers - B

Mogwai - Every Country's Sun - C

Prophets Of Rage - Prophets Of Rage - C

Danny Watts - Black Boy Meets World - B

Zola Jesus - Okovi - C

The Best:

01: The Horrors - V - A

The Horrors are one of those bands that have been indie darlings for years, but have never quite broke the mainstream. Their last few albums have been critically acclaimed, but they've only troubled the top 40 of the UK singles chart once. It seems that the public at large hasn't quite warmed to the Essex quintet yet. I've never really been that bothered about their sound, but V hit me with some force, and I can't get enough of it.

It's hard to give the genre on this record a name, but it has a pleasing mixture of alternative rock, shoegaze and New-Wave psychedelia that weaves in and out of many different moods and emotions. Mountainous guitar walls tower across the landscape on V, guiding the bigger drops and tying up the loose ends of the calm sections. Enormous shuddering melodies clatter through the speakers, and single notes arc across the sky for miles. Huge tunes like Machine, Press Enter To Exit and World Below uplift the experience to euphoric heights, while low drifting tripped-out pieces like Gathering, Ghost, (which contains an utterly incredible explosion of glittering electronica around the halfway mark) and Weighed Down balance V out to a masterful level.

The boys save the best until last, though. The closing track Something To Remember Me By is an epic 6.40 of soaring vocals, reverb everywhere, and about 4 million guitar channels. The sound is truly monumental, an instant classic that fills out every cavity of your skull with bright, shining optimism. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from the peak of the late 80's post-Punk/Indie wave, but without being a throwback. Lead singer Faris Badwan's voice is beautifully suited to this song, dominating the soundscape for one final push for glory. As the final chords fade out, it doesn't feel like you've been listening for almost an hour. V is a shoe-in for top 20 of 2017.

02: LCD Soundsystem - American Dream - A

Is this a comeback record? In terms of years between albums it would be hard to justify - LCD Soundsystem's previous release was but 7 years ago,  the critically acclaimed This Is Happening. The band's hiatus (according to Wikipedia) lasted merely 3 years, meaning this album took a few years of "active" time to produce. So while it may not be a "long-awaited" comeback, it is still an artistic statement of intent, a signal to the world from James Murphy that he's back on the scene. And what's more, he's back on form, because American Dream is a very good album indeed.

While Blank Screen, the dreary outro track that takes up a fifth of the album's running time is a damp squib, the rest of the record gleans with brilliance, shining with the urbane sophistication that LCD Soundsystem have made their calling card. They are the thinking man's Electronica, a modern, spikier Talking Heads, and with Murphy's spoken-word monologue singing over the top of a lush orchestral vista of instruments, American Dream is another jewel in the already glittering crown of LCD Soundsystem's discography. 

There are many highlights on this record, but far and away the best tune on this is the irrepressible single Tonite, a pulsating fixture in the midst of the album's runtime, with all instruments going balls-to-the-wall for a cacophonous backdrop to Murphy's utterly vital vocal poetry. He is the eye of this particular storm, and his measured observational righteousness is hypnotic. You find yourself lost in the melee of sounds, and just as you think it's getting too much - It's done, and the next song starts. So it goes for the rest of American Dream, an album which will deservedly sit at the higher end of critic's best of lists, and that you will be hearing a lot of at any halfway decent Christmas parties you might find yourself attending this year.

03: Kamasi Washington - Harmony Of Difference - B

04: Masta Killa - Loyalty Is Royalty - B

Wu-Tang solo albums are a more regular occurrence than named storms, and for fans of the 18-legged New York Hip-hop dynasty, they sprinkle over any given year with comfortable islands of sonic familiarity. The quality is sometimes questionable, (Method Man's Meth Lab from 2015 was awful) and most of the releases post-90's have been viewed with a caveat emptor frame of mind. Recently though, the general quality has picked up, and with a new Wu-Tang album on the horizon, Masta Killa has put out his first new record since 2012's Selling My Soul.

Loyalty Is Royalty is an expansive collection of tunes. Masta Killa is known for being one of the least ostentatious of the Clan, and on the whole, his straightforward style is backed with some simple beats. Trouble, Therapy, Noodles Pt. 1 and OGs Told Me, all these songs are straight-up boom-bap ditties, and form the main sound palate of Loyalty Is Royalty. Masta only goes in to full commercial mode on Flex With Me, a latter album track that breaks up the darker pieces with a sweet Rhianna-esque female vocal, which adds a bit of depth. Loyalty Is Royalty is a balanced and varied record, and worth a listen even if you're not a Wu-disciple.

05: Wolf Alice - Visions Of A Life - B

06: Foo Fighters - Concrete And Gold - B

From Dave Grohl's awkward early 20's as drummer for Nirvana, through his rebirth as a neo-Grunge paragon in the wake of Cobain's death, to his current iteration as the Hey Guys Lets All Have A Beer And Groove Out To Some Gnarly Tunes Super Cool Rock Dad, the Foo Fighters have charted the highs and lows of the crown prince of American rock for almost 25 years now. Concrete And Gold is their latest iteration. The album is full of surprise innovations, intro track T-shirt starts the album like a rock opera, and single The Sky Is A Neighbourhood is one of the least single-y songs they've ever put out.

It's the last 4 tunes that really drive home the smorgasbord narrative. The acoustic-driven Happy Ever After, Sunday Rain, a mid-tempo whiskey-n-beer grinder, The Line, with the full-throated optimistic sound they've made their trademark, and finally Concrete And Gold, with it's sludgy, drawn out chords to close. It's entertaining stuff, and makes for one of the most interesting sections of music the band have ever put out.

Being The Biggest Goddamn Rock Band In The World comes with an enormous weight of expectation, and it would be easy for the Foos to play a safe hand every 3 years from now until the end of time, churning out some average rock fodder and getting perfunctory seal claps from the alternative music press. They'd still earn millions a year, they'd still tour the world and they'd still get Best Hard Rock Performance at the Grammy's. So the fact that they are still deigning to experiment in this mid-career era of theirs is a good sign that they still love what they do, and that they care about their fans. This doesn't even touch their 90's material, but that's OK. A thoroughly pleasant album.

August 2017 review

These are getting later and later. I'm gonna retire the format for 2018 - Publishing an August album reviews blog in November is silly, ain't it. Plus I wanna do more longform stuff and rank full discographies and all that. No surprises for the top spot, Ghostpoet's put something incredibleout that could challenge for top 5 of 2017. Don't listen to that XXXTENTACION album, though. That's one weird kid.

The Rest:

Brockhampton - SATURATION II - C

The War On Drugs - A Deeper Understanding - C

XXXTENTACION - 17 - C

Queens Of The Stone Age - Villains - C

Queens Of The Stone Age are certainly a singles band. Snappy, 4-on-floor dalliances such as No One Knows, Little Sister and My God Is The Sun pepper their discography and have heralded album releases with a burst of radio-friendly propaganda, for listeners who don't want to venture too far over the iron curtain and into hard rock territory. That's the crux of their success - They manage to generate tons of mainstream appeal without turning off the leather-jacketed riff fiends that drove their initial rise to prominence. On the first listen, what's so disappointing about Villains is that it contains none of the easy delights we've come to expect - Lead single The Way You Used To Do is frustratingly mediocre and nowhere near their usual standard. On repeated listens however, it's the sheer blandness of the majority of the album that makes this one such a dud. Ball-busting hard rock blasters from their back catalogue like Mexicola, Song For The Dead, Sick Sick Sick, and I Think I Lost My Headache do not compute with the laid back, chilled soft rock disco vibe on Villains.

A stylistic change in the circumstances is to be expected. Queens Of The Stone Age are a different animal from their past releases, Homme being the only constant member since the beginning. Their last release ...Like Clockwork (A magnificent record, and a career peak, by anyone's standards) drew a line in the sand between the old Queens material and a new, fresh perspective. Villains is an attempted continuation of that, and with Mark Ronson on board to produce, this album was always going to be a curve ball. I have a lot of time for that, but the issue I have with Villains is that it strips out the core principles that made Queens such a vital, rewarding group, with nothing but some average lyrical content and aesthetic guitar to replace what they once stood for - Pulsating, hook-laden rock and roll. It's a bit too safe.

There's a couple of cuts on Villains that are worth a look - Domesticated Animals is one, a subtly malevolent song similar to Leg Of Lamb and I'm Designer from previous Queens releases. Songs like this allow Homme to use the full tonal capacity of his voice, giving him a clean backing to float over. The other tune of note on Villains is The Evil Has Landed, a 6 minute rock behemoth, a heavy-duty foot-stomper in the purest sense, with several undulating sections of pleasing, intricate melodies. The final movement has the repeated single power chord motif that has defined their sound since the beginning, and it's just about worth getting through the rest of the album to reach that point. Everything else sounds like a Them Crooked Vultures filler track. This isn't offensively bad like the Arcade Fire record last month, but it is the weakest Queens Of The Stone Age release to date.


The Best:


01: Ghost Poet - Dark Days + Canapes - A

Twice Mercury prize nominee Ghostpoet is back with his 4th album Dark Days + Canapes, an album for big city living in the mid 10's, with all the filth and noise of a subway train creeping out of the station in the darkness. Inky, paranoid compositions filter through the speakers to touch the the deepest recesses of the human psyche, and it all hits home just a little too hard. Ghostpoet's languid takes on futile relationships, loneliness, addictions, and lack of connection with the world and people in it make for difficult, uneasy, but vital listening. This is quite something.

To say this is all dark would be wrong. There's humour, with some light sarcastic utterances scattered around. At times you can hear him smile through the mumble. Somehow, this makes it bleaker. There is mountains of instrumentation throughout the record, but at no point does anything overstep the mark into self-indulgence. Everything has a purpose, and a reason, and there is a tremendous amount of restraint from front to back. Layers of carefully crafted music fill every composition, which is the big metaphor for the whole of Dark Days - Ghostpoet is quietly measured; he is depressed, but ultimately, he is in control. What this creates for each song is a tightly-packed piece, with no beat or note out of place. It's hard to be critical of such an efficient method of expression.

Ghostpoet's style is inextricably linked with the Bristol Trip-hop sound of the 90's, an underrated style that ran parallel to the popular guitar movements of the time. His vocal delivery is similar to Tricky, a legend of that scene, while Woe Is Meee, with it's simple bass funk and tripped-out guitar sounds might as well have been a Portishead track. Dark Days is special because it takes these threads of influence and weaves them into something much bigger, giving Ghostpoet a truly unique spot in the musical landscape. From the anxious rising strings and off-key jazzy piano stabs in Blind As A Bat, through the blackened sound wall that is Many Moods At Midnight and the bleak ballad Trouble + Me, Ghostpoet explores rich, varied veins of quietly neurotic self-reflection. A third Mercury nomination must be a formality for this record.

02: UNKLE - The Road, Part 1 - A

UNKLE's long-awaited new release, The Road: Part 1, 7 years in the making, has come to a deservedly comfortable landing in this list. Their genre-busting debut (and one of this writer's favourite albums of all time) Psyence Fiction is almost 20 years behind us, but UNKLE still have the ability to carve out fresh and varied sounds. The Road is predictably lush, and it's many twists and moods make for a characteristically enriched listening experience.

In a way, UNKLE represent the closest thing we have to Prog-rock in the post-millennial era. They don't have a specific style or form, but it could be broadly defined as electronic music. Along with their dabblings with Hip-hop and Rock, (Prog-rock's equivalent would have been Folk and World music) they create timeless records that strike through multiple genres and eras of popular music. Their song structures are crafted in a progressive sense, but without the long form noodling or extended improv sections, both cornerstones of 70's alternative music. Neo-Prog, perhaps?

In any case, their penchant for guest spots paint them as a connoisseur's Gorillaz, a less hooky version, but certainly comparable, in a musical sense at least. While there are no cartoon avatars, global stadium tours or multi-platinum certifications, UNKLE do exhibit a murky, hallowed presence in music. That they can draw such a polarising list of feature musicians for The Road shows that the group still have a lot of contacts in their little black book. Mark Lanegan, Twiggy Ramirez and Liela Moss are just 3 that appear on this record. And a damn fine record it is, too!

03: King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard - Sketches Of Brunswick East - A

Sketches Of Brunswick East carries on the extremely prolific nature of King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's output, it being their third release this year. (the first one was titled Flying Microtonal Banana, surely the best album title of 2017). With it's multiple leitmotifs and seamless segueing, Sketches plays as one long song; even when you're staring at the track list scanning across Spotify it's virtually impossible to pinpoint breaks between pieces.

The sounds on Sketches are familiar enough for any of you (like me) who follow similar jazz/psychedelic/WTF acts such as Thundercat, Flying Lotus and BADBADNOTGOOD. KGATLW's warped-up vocal takes, down-the-rabbit-hole style flute stylings and low-key bass solos are just about original enough for them to hold their own in the wave of progressive artists that have enjoyed such a successful few years of late.

This is, if nothing else, one of the most fun records you'll hear all year. Though the jazzy melodies can sometimes be challenging to digest, the overall feel is cheery and inclusive. There's a bizarro-world advert break psychedelia that permeates throughout, like the lift music if Captain Beefheart had a mansion. The music glides along steadily, always with the threat that the ride could sharply change direction at any point. It ensures that Sketches keeps producing surprises after several listens. It's mercifully short too, and worth it if you want a vibrant adventure that doesn't take up your entire lunch hour. To say this group have now released 12 full-length projects in 5 years, they are still sounding fresh and lively.

04: Brand New - Science Fiction - B

05: Everything Everything - A Fever Dream - B

Everything Everything's 2015 release Get To Heaven was a superb experimental electronic Rock/pop record, a statement about global politics and their human effect which made my top 5 of that year. When I saw a new album from the Manchester 4-piece on the release list, I got excited. While A Fever Dream doesn't match up to that previous album's lofty standards, it is worth a spin. This is lighter, smoother, less refined. The songs are longer, and the catchy bits are sparingly dotted around. This is an evolution, but still with their signature synth sound, not straying too far from the formula.

The style on this is much more uniform, the boys have opted for laid-back electronic grooves over straight-up pop hooks, and it doesn't work all the time, but when it does, the band show they still have the creativity and verve to carry off their 4th record with as much ease as the rest of their back catalogue. Their musical intelligence is always present, but never garishly so. The lyrical references are subtly educated, and they push the Art-rock aesthetic just far enough without it becoming overbearing. At the core of this album is the warm-hearted sincerity that have got Everything Everything their well-deserved seat at the critic's favourite table.

06: Action Bronson - Blue Chips 7000 - B

July 2017 Review

July wasn't that shining for music. Maybe I chose the wrong stuff to listen to, but in the end I came out with a solitary A rating from 13 albums. I was all pepped up and ready to give the Arcade Fire album a big thumbs up and thee top spot, until I heard it. I heard a few things about how bad it was and I thought "Nah, never! This is the band that gave us Mountains Beyond Mountains for goodness sake!" But yeah, it's really bad. I'm not even gonna try and get tickets for their tour. Everything else was pretty good, though. A couple of solid rap releases, an experimental EP from one of my musical heroes, a tight catchy rock record and an album from a counter-culture legend are the top 5 this month.

The Rest:


Arcade Fire - Everything Now - C-

You know that trope that you see everywhere? Those bank adverts with vanilla poetry trying to be all kitchen sink about the modern world, or when BBC runs an article asking Are Millennials Killing The Glass Blowing Industry? Or when your dull friend from school who you've not seen for a decade posts up a Clickhole article titled A Photographer Removed The Phones From All These Pictures Of People And Like, Wow Man So Deep And Meaningful, Such A Fresh Take? Well, guess what! Arcade Fire have done an album all about that, and it's called Everything Now! They must have been up all night thinking of that title.

The beginning of the album promises so much - A quiet intro building up to an ABBA-inspired piano line that pierces through the darkness atop a pulsing rhythm, which announces Everything Now with the grandness we've come to expect from Arcade Fire's traditionally strong album starts, but unfortunately, the whole thing goes downhill sharply from that point. With Electric Blue, a synth-rock blaster as an exception, Everything Now, on the whole, plays like a Killers cutting room floor studio session. Compare with huge moments from years past like Wake Up, Power Out or Ready To Start and there's no contest. Musically, this is absolutely the worst album Arcade Fire have put out to date.

The lyrics are obtuse and ham-fisted to the point where it feels like a joke. Moments such as Chemistry, an upbeat throwaway song that may or may not be ironic, the 3 minute double track Infinite Content and Infinite_Content, with it's painfully trite "observational" lyrics "Infinite content, infinite content/We're infinitely content" presented over and over as if the meaning behind them is this monumental revelation no-one has thought of before, and We Don't Deserve Love, the last song proper, a dreary indulgence that clocks in at six and a half minutes are amongst the band's lowest ever. To go from Reflektor, the expansive zeitgeist masterpiece of 4 years ago to this is one of the steepest drops in form of any artist I've experienced in some time.

It's just really, really tiring to be bombarded with this kind of bullshit, (which is ironic, considering) and for a standard-bearer of the millennial generation's musical landscape to now participate in this kind of shallow self importance is beyond frustrating, and is little more than an insult to the fans who grew up through their teens on them in the mid-00's, loved them and made them millionaires. Sorry for ranting, everyone. I'n gonna have a few beers and listen to Funeral.

Boris - Dear - B

Foster The People - Sacred Hearts Club - C

HAIM - Something To Tell You - C

Lana Del Ray - Lust For Life - C

Melvins - A Walk With Love and Death - B

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Doom Patrol - C


The Best:


01: Tyler, The Creator - Flower Boy - A

Hip-hop's problematic bizarro-altar boy is back. With his own music label, clothing brand, and media streaming channel to run, Tyler could be forgiven if he had taken some time between releases. But barely 2 years on from his whacked-out opus Cherry Bomb, we have the opportunity to embark on another guided tour around Tyler, The Creator's carnival of satanic delights.

Tyler's brand on Flower Boy is heralded by the plucked strings, the radio-jingle female choruses and his own shape-shifting vocal style. He's low-key one of the most creative and original artists on the scene right now. He's not occupying the same stadium-filling, global sensation platform as Kanye, Drake or Kendrick, but his work over the past few years has been just as worthy. Tyler has managed to teeter on the knife edge of commercial viability and critical acclaim for his last 3 releases. Time will tell if he will explode into a Hip-hop supernova or shrink into a cultish backwater, but at least with Flower Boy, he's given himself a little while longer on the cusp.

His evolution as an artist over his full-length catalogue is pleasingly traceable, and the maturation present on Cherry Bomb has extrapolated further; Flower Boy is dreamier, headier, plusher. There are still a few sinkholes of darker material though, pressure drops that pique the ambient melancholia and stretch out the longevity of this project, sly nods to his psychotic past on Goblin. While Cherry Bomb is clearly his finest moment to date, Flower Boy is a vital component of Tyler's creative psyche, and represents the further cooling of his once-livid persona.

02: Nine Inch Nails - Add Violence - B

As the 2nd EP of a promised trio of releases, Add Violence has set Nine Inch Nails on collision course with the end of this year, and the expected denouement of a series that has already yielded some excellent moments. Some fans are speculating a full length record at the end of the greyscale rainbow, pointing to lyrical cues and hints embedded in videos and artwork. We'll have to wait and see on that, but for now Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are gradually cracking the window to their world and letting the light stream through.

The wide scope of musical styles on this E.P is exciting, and offers an insight into what could end up being the most creatively unfettered era of Nine Inch Nails to date. While the 80's synth driven Less Than stands with Head Like A Hole, Discipline and The Hand That Feeds in the upper realms of the hook-laden singles arena of Reznor's work, Add Violence also contains the longest ever Nine Inch Nails track - The Background World, whose muffled lyrics and gradually decaying outro is sheer pornography for fans of Reznor's envelope-pushing, harsh soundscape material. This Isn't The Place is the best song on the E.P, a slow plodder with little structure and whispered vocals, bearing all the hallmarks of Reznor and Ross's atmospheric soundtrack work post-With Teeth.

It's a huge step for Reznor to have Atticus Ross as an official member of Nine Inch Nails, and it's been drastically understated. This is a project now approaching it's 30th year, and not once before has Reznor officially accepted someone else into the group. Trusted collaborators such as Robin Finck, Charlie Clouser, Alessandro Cortini, Chris Vrenna and Danny Lohner have all worked extensively with Nine Inch Nails and never been an official member. By inducting Ross into this new role, Reznor is making a big statement about how he expects the band to evolve over the next few years. Maybe we'll get a new album, perhaps something different altogether, but in any case, come the end of 2017, the picture will be much clearer about this new release era from the band.

03: Shabazz Palaces - Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines/Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star - B

These are technically two separate releases, however as they came out within weeks of one another, I'm counting them as one double album. Shabazz Palaces, the enigmatic duo from Seattle are one of cerebral Hip-hop's uncut diamonds. I'd never heard anything else they've done before this pair of astral-plane surfing albums came around, and I was pleasantly surprised at the scale of this ambitious project. There's not a lot of discernible switch-up in style between these twin releases, however Gangster Star is probably a little more accessible than Jealous Machines.

The group draw lyrical sensibilities from obvious sources like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, whereas the deep, penetrating music verges on Trip-hop at times, with sounds which UNKLE and DJ Shadow fans will find familiar. It's a spacey, perky soundscape that makes this double album a delightfully easy listen. Shine A Light, the lead single, a King-Geedorah-era DOOM inspired instant classic is the best song on either record, and for all the brainy wordplay on these Quazarz releases, it's the sub-3 minute sample-and-strings piece that takes the top spot. That's somehow fitting.

They can sometimes delve a little too much into self-indulgence at times, leaving beats playing too long after the meat of the song has been done with, or adding a 3rd verse where 2 will suffice, and of course a double album from such a little-established act is a big statement to try and pull off, but this is still a great project, and a hidden gem in 2017's glittering rap-spectacular. We are certainly in a golden age of the genre.

04: Broken Social Scene - Hug Of Thunder - B

05: The Fall - New Facts Emerge - B

June 2017 Review

Yep, this is late. Mainly because I was busy sunning it up in the Med for a week and a half. I tried writing all this when I was there, but. Nah. Sorry/not sorry. This month's top album is an utter belter. If you listen to nothing else from June, then I implore you listen to that because it's got the makings of a modern classic. ON WITH THE SHOW!


The Rest:


Algiers - The Underside Of Power - B

Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up - B

Kool G Rap - Return Of The Don - B

Royal Blood - How Did We Get So Dark? - D

I have very little time for power duos. They go one of two ways - Either they stick rigidly to the 2-piece formula, which closes a lot of doors and makes for plain compositions which are forced to stick to basic song structures, or they expand the sound by inviting extra musicians in or dub over parts in the studio, in which case - It's clearly not a duo, is it! Neither of these two options are exciting in any way, frankly.

Royal Blood, the garden-variety rockers from Brighton are the first such type. At the end of the day, when all you have for dynamic range is 3 big on/off switches labelled VOCALS, BASS and DRUMS, if your churning out basic cookie-cutter rock music then the format gets tired very, very quickly. How Did We Get So Dark? offers no change to their self-titled debut record in terms of style. It's still teeth-clenchingly derivative and juvenile to the point of sheer frustration. Avoid like the Central Line on a hot summer Friday at 5pm.


The Best:


01: Lorde - Melodrama - A

Lorde still feels like a new artist, maybe because she's been in the spotlight for most of her teen years, but with her excellent debut Pure Heroine now 4 years old, it's high time we saw this talented songwriter back on the big stage. Melodrama is a superb, finely crafted statement on loneliness and the ambivalence of solitude. It's a hugely important release for 2017.

Musically, the record rolls out of the speakers with ease, the sound is fresh and tight, and some of the instrumentation and structure is breathtaking. Of course, this is a pop record, and there are obligatory singles - Homemade Dynamite, Perfect Places and Green Light are shrink-wrapped and ready to go on any top 40 radio station you'll care to listen to in the next 6 months - But there's something about Melodrama that puts this above the sphere of Just Another Cool-Pop record.

That would be the strikingly intelligent level of self-reflection on show throughout the lyrical content of this record. While she co-wrote Melodrama with Jack Antonoff, (the guy out of the band that did that awful "Tonight, we are young" song) it's clear that the majority of the words on the album come directly from Lorde herself. The lonely piano piece Liability is the kind of intricate emotional songwriting most lyricists can only dream about producing. The song is a musing on the issues surrounding fame, but is also a personal statement, an apology to her friends for her own intensity. The rest of the album plays out like that - Melodrama, is after all, a loose concept album. It's about that isolated anxiety everyone has felt at some point, which is hard to put into words, but amounts to: "Wait, what if everyone hates me?"

That's what makes Melodrama so achingly relatable, it relentlessly taps into that 21st Century Millennial ennui that anyone under the age of 35 has had delivered to them in buckets. It's a documentation of our time, it's a fulfilment of unrequited dreams for a (L-O-V-E-L-E-S-S) generation that have had to do everything the hard way. Undeniably, Lorde is one of the best young stars in this era of traditional pop revival, and if Melodrama and her debut are anything to go by, she could end up being one of the finest songwriters of this decade.

02: Ride - Weather Diaries - A

Ride are famous for their standard-bearing genre-defining Nowhere, a 1991 Shoegaze megalith that gave them a permanent seat at the table with the alternative guitar gods of the 90's. Like many of those bands, their sphere of influence has shrunk, but also like many of those bands, Ride have got on the boomerang hype of this era of reunion, started back in 2007 when Led Zeppelin got back together for a couple of shows. Since then, an endless stream of broken up bands have returned to the release/tour/festival circuit, and to be fair, many of their albums have been disappointing - Take the dull releases from Slowdive and The Jesus And Mary Chain from earlier this year as examples - But Weather Diaries, Ride's first album in 21 years, is different.

Maturity is something I find overrated in music and songwriting. Most of the best material an artist will produce is in their teens or 20s, and it's a depressingly common trope that a musician's vitality and relevance will wane as they get older, and inevitably more comfortable. That's what my main objection is to many of these comeback records - They're all too safe. Happily, Weather Diaries spins that all 'round. Ride have used their mellower shades to create music that benefits from the smoother edges of adulthood. The album plays front-to-back with a sheen of quality songwriting piqued with long sections of guitar walls, droney noise channels and other such Shoegaze staples. It's an unmistakably classic sound that can still clash heads with modern guitar music. All I Want is the peak of this album for me, a song that encapsulates the entirety of the project in one slice of power chords, minimal vocal looping and reverb dials up to the max. This is one of the few Dads-Getting-Back-In-The-Game-To-Fund-A-Messy-Divorce releases that deserves attention. A fantastic return.

03: alt-J - Relaxer - A

alt-J were the indie darlings of 2012, crashing on to the scene with the seminal An Awesome Wave, a deep, layered and luscious debut that placed them permanently on the musical landscape. Global tours, appearances on The Jonathan Ross Show and universal acclaim followed. Fast forward 2 years to This Is All Yours, their dreary sophomore effort, and the first without founder member Gwil Sainsbury, and alt-J's world had changed. It was far less exciting, absurd to the point of parody at times, and showed a darkened edge to the band, a group of musicians moving in an unwanted direction. They had to come out swinging on their third album. Relaxer is thankfully a return to form, and offers a measured take on their career to this point. The Nerd-Folk mumblers are back.

Relaxer's distilled nuance belies an immense amount of energy in each track. The Prog/Orchestral mash-up on 3VV announces the album like a shaft of light through the heavens. As an intro track, it's extraordinary, setting the scene for the band's idiosyncratic palate, and is probably the best song on the record. Another highlight is the tense cover of House Of The Rising Sun. Of course, this song has been covered by basically everyone who's ever picked up a guitar, and so it's a testament to their musicianship and creativity that the boys manage to create a version of this song that actually is unique. What really pushes this over the edge for me though, is the fact that they wrote a new verse for it. That really is on another level, and representative of Relaxer as a project - This is a comfortable, effortless alt-J record, the one they should have put out 3 years ago.

There's no straight-up single on Relaxer. Those who listen to this album waiting for a radio friendly burst akin to Breezeblocks or Left Hand Free will leave bereft, but they'd be missing the point. This is a project for the band, not for the fans. This album is alt-J levelling out to a cruising altitude. That the band chose Adeline, a sparse, guitar-scratched composition as a lead single for this album says it all - They're doing what they damn well want, and if that means no Apple-Music-ad-worthy tunes, then so be it. Relaxer challenges you to join alt-J on their own personal astral plane. It's your choice whether or not you want to go there with them.

04: Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory - B

Vince Staples is barely in his 20's, but his presence is already rippling through the American Hip-hop world. Big Fish Theory, his latest project, is a club banger/Hip-hop hybrid album that presents a wide selection of musical moods to accompany Staples and his laid-back, righteous delivery. The album is a solid run of beat-driven tunes, each one a choice selection from one of several top producers who worked on the project. On Big Fish Theory, Vince Staples offers his opinion on what he sees as the great folly in Hip-hop - The vast difference between the image rappers portray in public and what their day-to-day existence actually is.

The only criticism I could level against this glittering piece is that it's too short; Any rap record of this style under 40 minutes could barely be considered more than a mixtape. It's not just the literal length though, guest appearances (aside perhaps from Kendrick Lamar's centrepiece verse on Yeah Right) are too fleeting. Having said that, the snappy style complements Staples' concise verses. His words are straightforward, and he makes no bones about his observations. Big Fish Theory is certainly a step away from Summertime '06, and there is a lot of evolution in the sound from that previous release. With Big Fish Theory, Staples is charting out his empire, but we're still waiting for a stone-cold classic from this young Hip-hop starlet.

05: James McAlister - Planetarium - B

06: Anathema - The Optimist - B

May 2017 Review

It took me a while to get this blog complete, partly because I was busy getting hammered in a field for the 2nd half of June, but also because I wasn't that enthused about most of these releases. Aside from the top 2, it's been weak. Writing about average releases is hard, because you can't say much about it. *Shrug* June's releases are way better so I'll see you next month. Here's May:


The Rest:

Faust - Fresh Air - B

Football, Etc - Corner - C

Mac Demarco - This Old Dog - C

Slowdive - Slowdive - C


The Best:


01: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Birth Of A Ghost - A

After all the gump I spewed last month about the slew of average offerings in the Ipecac series, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has characteristically produced an unmitigated triumph near the end of the release cycle to blow everything I said out of the water. Birth Of A Ghost has come out of nowhere to take one of the top spots in the heated, ravenous expansion that is OR-L's vocational artistic conquest. There appears to be no form of music that he doesn't want to touch. Perhaps a Burmese Folk/Jazz/Metal exploration next time? We can only anticipate.

Ghost plays out across a teasingly short 25 minutes, a gourmet selection of rich treats that leave you wishing for an extra minute, a few bars more, a dozen more measures. Often records like this can be frustrating, but within such constraints you can usually find the brightest lights in OR-L's repertoire. He usually makes every second of his sub-30 minute albums count, maybe it's the lack of too many noodling sections, or the final breath of the closing track leaving you wanting more, but however you want to swing it, Ghost is a prime example of El Maestro's ability to produce concise statements in any given genre, with seemingly very little effort.

It's unfair to label this as merely a "classical" album, vague as that term is. There's pop song structure, rock arrangements and modern soundscape elements that accompany the orchestral domination of this novella, making it like a truncated film score. OR-L's creative finger-dabbling does stretch to film making, so it figures. Ghost is one of the most original releases from OR-L in years, an unexpected shot in the dark. He keeps us on tenterhooks, guessing and jumping the gun with disparaging reviews. Forgive me, Omar. I'll never doubt you again.

02: The Amazons - The Amazons - B

This one was a nice surprise. The Amazons are being predictably subtle-hyped as the New Exciting Sound Of Modern Rock by the likes of NME and Radio 1, and to be honest I was ready to listen to this 3 times, slap a C on it and call it a day, like so many others of their ilk have deserved in the past. What is contained within The Amazons however, is a strikingly balanced set of songs that will entertain listeners from across guitar music's broad spectrum.

To be fair to The Amazons, they are a young band, barely 3 years together and already playing major festivals and receiving healthy radio play. They can not, and should not be expected to produce god-tier material on their first attempt, but they do make a bloody good go of it. Their riffs are a heady mix of grunge and garage rock, familiar but still with that wonderful debut-album frailty. They have originality and honesty that hasn't yet recoiled from the sting of public scrutiny. Their sound is sweet enough for prime time media play, but with enough edge for alternative ears to enjoy. You can see them playing out The Jonathan Ross Show, but they'd also do a grand job of headlining a raucous, sweaty club tour.

Burn My Eyes, Something In The Water and In My Mind are awesome, medium-paced guitar slammers, Black Magic is the kind of big rock banger Royal Blood wish they could write and the reverb-soaked single Junk Food Forever is disarmingly natural. All of these are topped with Matt Thompson's widely expressive and controlled vocal style, which will only improve with time. The Amazons is a fresh and brilliant debut, and I hope we don't have to wait for too long for more to come from this bright young foursome.

03: The Mountain Goats - Goths - B

04: Kasabian - For Crying Out Loud - B

What kind of music do Kasabian make? From the chart-topping lager-drenched anthems such as LSF, Fire and Eez-eh, the casual listener could easily pass them off as nothing more than laddish indie, music for the football hooligans who were in their first year at school when the band formed way back when in 1997. As Kasabian have proved however, is that they are capable of mixing their famous, Radio-1 moulded singles with esoteric, sometimes downright experimental tunes, and along with the rich vista of synth-driven melodies and jazzy, Morricone-inspired sections of Vaudevillian psychedelia, they have a sound that - To this writer at least - is virtually uncategorisable.

To their latest album then, For Crying Out Loud, the horrendously-artworked Alt-pop oriented follow-up to 48:13, their Ibiza club-bangers attempt of 3 years back. What instantly struck me about Crying is the lack of a real single - The song chosen to open release proceedings for this album was You're In Love With A Psycho, a beige, zoned out composition packaged with a frustratingly insensitive video. The song sounds like a poor version of Days Are Forgotten, and would probably have been better off left as album filler. The rest is similarly lukewarm - Not bad, but a distinct lack of energy vibrates throughout.

Crying is best seen as a showcase for the band's ascent into maturity; as Kasabian enter their 3rd decade together, they are calming down, and developing songwriting skills that will serve them well on future releases. That said, Crying does have a clutch of worthy tracks. Are You Looking For Some Action is my top pick; A sprawling, 8 minute indie/dance epic that harks back to latter career Happy Mondays, with a little zing of Talking Heads. It comes replete with full saxophone, guitar and percussive breakdown sections to spark life into Crying's mid-section. Other songs of note are the light-rock head-nodder Good Fight, and the downbeat acoustic number Put Your Life On It, which closes out the album with a sense of "Wait, where did all the big tunes go?" West Ryder remains their masterpiece.

05: At The Drive-In - In•ter a•li•a - B

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez enjoys 2 entries on my top 5 this month, rounding off the selection with At The Drive-In's first album since their 2000 alt-blockbuster Relationship Of Command, their white-hot breakthrough record that steadily led to the messy implosion and break up of the group. They returned this year with In•ter a•li•a, their first album without founder member Jim Ward. There's not a great deal more to say - This album is very similar to their previous sound. They have managed to maintain the energy from the glory days, and a few tracks standout amongst the better songs from their initial string of releases - Continuum, Incurably Innocent and Hostage Stamps are all well worth a go.

Even though the initial 2012 tour was labelled as strictly for the money, in this era of comebacks and reformations, a new record felt inevitable. What ATD-I has produced with In•ter a•li•a is exactly what you'd expect from this kind of band, at this stage in their lives. It hasn't broken any new ground in terms of musical style, but there is still a lot of life left in Bixler-Zavala's lyrical output, and with the temperature of a Mars Volta reunion being tepid at best, this is going to be the only Omar/Cedric music we're gonna get for some time.

April 2017 Review

It's finally happened. I listened to a stone-cold, balls-to-the-wall classic album this month, and was able to give it my first non-retrospective A* rating. You know that feeling when you listen to an album on release, and you just know it's a god-tier release from the first listen? That happened this month. Take a bow, King Kenny. No one came anywhere near you in April.


The Rest:


Alvarez Kings - Somewhere Between - D

Czarface - First Weapon Drawn - B

J Dilla - Motor City - C

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Killing Tingle Lifted Retreats - B

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Solid State Mercenaries - C

OR-L's long list of releases on the Ipecac label is coming to a close, with only a few albums left to go. I'm gonna have to be honest, even as a big Omar/Mars Volta fan, I'm quite happy about that. I really don't think it's been worth it, on the whole. As a fan and a completist, I like listening to everything he puts out, even with this hugely prolific period. But aside from a clutch of genuinely great albums (Sworn Virgins, Arañas en la Sombra, A Lovejoy, Cell Phone Bikini) the series has been fairly average. There's only so many songs with him mumbling unintelligible lyrics that I can hear without it getting samey.

You know how your favourite artists often say they have a vault full of ideas, sketches and unreleased projects? Those off the cuff comments under their breath in interviews that leave tantalising images of albums not yet realised? You think about the great possibilities of what lies waiting to be discovered - What if it's the best thing they've ever done, what if it's like OK Computer or SGT Peppers, just sitting there, ready to be found. Yeah, well there's a reason why they don't get released. Omar seems to be fully clearing out his garage, and we get to watch the whole yard sale. Solid State Mercenaries is another formless, dull record from the box at the back of the room. Apart from Lightning Round. That's a nice song.


The King Blues - The Gospel Truth - D


The Best:

 
01: Kendrick Lamar - DAMN - A* 


This is something very special. Kendrick Lamar has been one of the biggest stars of this current generation of bright prospects in the rap game, his 2015 release To Pimp A Butterfly was an ambitious, sprawling project that stormed the charts and topped many end-of-year lists. Following up on such a roaring success would usually be beyond most artists, but with DAMN, Lamar has surpassed the high water mark from any of his previous work. This is his best album yet.

Lamar's narrative string on DAMN is the best it's ever been. He weaves a highly detailed lyrical soundscape that takes in references from the bible, politics, music, racial tension and his own experience, forming an hour-long statement using a loose theme of the end of days to describe the socio-political turmoil in the USA. DAMN has those harsh vocal hooks and long, winding verses that Lamar has built his brand on. It's got the prophetic edge he touched on in earlier releases, but now it's right at the forefront. It's a dark, direct album that takes no prisoners.

There are catchy singles like Humble, Element and Loyalty that will be counted as huge hits from 2017 mixing with more progressive pieces like Yah, Lust and Fear. While there are several forms of music and style on the album, DAMN is different to Butterfly in that it's concentrated. Lamar has trimmed off the fat on his style to make a leaner, more effective record. I always thought that was a sticking point with Butterfly - Far too many ideas that didn't work. DAMN is different to that. It's short with no filler. It's far too consistent from front to back for me to begin listing any highlights, but the peak moments on DAMN are hair-tinglingly intense. It's a snapshot of a great artist at his zenith.

Lamar's style is hard to pin down, he's not strictly a mainstream Hip-hop artist other than by virtue of his success, but it would also be wrong to call him simply cult or cerebral. He has that righteousness and pomp that assists the finest rappers in delivering their message. His ability to mould pop-rap hooks with minutes-long introspective verses is the key to his ascendancy. His style evokes images of some of  the greatest names in rap history - That direct, urgent flow you hear from rappers like Tupac, Kanye West, RZA and Nas.

DAMN will be remembered for years to come as the point Kendrick Lamar officially elevated from Crown Prince to the undisputed king of Hip-hop. DAMN will be ranked alongside the great classics of the genre, alongside the platinum standard releases from the legends Kendrick will have spent his childhood lip-syncing to in the mirror. More mature that Good Kid..., More accessible than Butterfly, More polished than untitled unmastered, and more angry, more vital and more relevant than any other rap record you'll hear for a long time. This is album of the year. We might as well pack up and go home, because it doesn't get any better than this.

02: Animal Collective - Meeting Of The Waters - B


Animal Collective is a fluid ensemble, with members interchanging and evolving with each release. It's a lottery of artistic vision - You'll never know what they're going to come up with from one release to the next. I was quietly disappointed with last year's mushy Painting With, and while I skipped its companion release The Painters, I was still well up for giving Meeting Of The Waters a few spins.

Animal Collective released Meeting for Record Store Day, after recording it live in a rainforest, of course. That's a canny summation of the album's sound. You can hear rain showers and wind rustling through the trees. The album is peaceful and calm on the surface, underpinned with an isolated psychological edge. Meeting is a solitary walk into the forest, it's about being totally alone and trapped with your thoughts. Merely 2 members of the collective are credited on this album, which underlines the disparate feel throughout.

I'm a total sucker for noise and drone on albums. When it's piqued by small islands of song structure, it's all the better. After the 13+ minute journey of the opening track, Meeting turns a corner into Man Of Oil, an acidy acoustic piece, and it's like you've wandered through the forest and stumbled across someone sat playing guitar. Meeting has a subtle playability, It's such a compact record, barely breaching past 30 minutes, but it feels long and involved. It's trippy, broody, dark and reflective. Its weirdness and bohemian sensuality define the sound of a band that repeatedly refuse to conform to categorisation.

The Collective don't have any kind of official video on Youtube for this release, but it's only 30 minutes long, so listen to the whole thing, why dontcha.


03: Feist - Pleasure - B

04: Gorillaz - Humanz - B

One of the bigger anticipated releases for 2017, Humanz was dropped as the usual art-and-music double whammy from Gorillaz, one of the finest and most unique pop bands of the last 25 years. With Blur being on recording hiatus for most of the last decade, Gorillaz is arguably Damon Albarn's most important project - Certainly the most popular, and since the post-Britpop era was heralded with one of it's biggest stars forming a virtual Pop/Hip-hop/Electronica/etc, group, we've enjoyed a swathe of high quality albums, with image, art and animation just as important as the galaxy of guest stars that feature on each one. Their self-titled 2001 debut was verging on revolutionary in terms of execution and ambition, and they've steadily improved since.

Humanz is a bit of a damp squib for me, though. It's too disjointed to stand up to the better Gorillaz albums like Demon Days and Plastic Beach. It's a collection of songs which all sound fairly good together, but they could be played in any order and still achieve the same effect. Most of the guest appearances don't uplift the album, and there's no real direction or point to any of it. There's an identity to Gorillaz that fails to come out properly on Humanz. They concede too much creative licence to their guest stars, rendering the album devoid of a cohesive theme. However while this is nowhere near their finest moment, Humanz is worth a few spins and the inevitable world tour that will follow. Gorillaz is a project that still has plenty of mileage left, and if one of their lesser releases is this good, that just goes to show how special Gorillaz is.

05: Talib Kweli - The Seven - B

March 2017 review

Hey, look. I'm sorry. I know I've mentioned the character string "Omar Rodriguez-Lopez" so much on this blog that the words have lost all meaning, and that he's released about 4 million albums in the past year, but honest to goodness the two OR-L records from March are good enough for the top spots they've been given. Azul, Mis Dientes is quite an accessible release, a kind of edgy-goth version of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Gorilla Preacher Cartel meanwhile, is nothing short of magnificent.

I was just gonna make it a top 5 this month, but I didn't want to put the Soulwax records in the doldrums with the rest of the mush. It's too good. So it's another bumper top 6 list. In the end, it was easy - March's albums brought 6 distinctly average records to go along with my top picks, and I chose the ranking in minutes. Also, I'm happy to finally put a Metal album as my top spot. Metallica's effort from last year nearly got a #1, but I wanted to save it up for something that really kicks you hard in the balls.


The Rest:


Jamiroquai - Automaton - C

Sleaford Mods - English Tapas - C

Temples - Volcano - C

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Damage and Joy - C

Pulled Apart By Horses - The Haze - B


The Best:


01: Mastodon - Emperor of Sand - A

One thing about this album that caught me straight away was how, even in the midst of long progressive instrumental sections and brutal riff-shredding, there is still room for acres of hooks, vocal and otherwise. Emperor Of Sand, Mastodon's 7th studio album, has a lot to offer in terms of an easy experience for the casual listener. It's a good introduction to a band that are known for their uncompromising complexity. Pieces such as Precious Stones, Andromeda, and the epic closing track Jaguar God easily stand up to the rest of Mastodon's back catalogue, and will likely be touted as classic moments in years to come. One other thing I get out of this record is how easy the grooves and melodies come - The band are still happy in one another's company, and with the direction they're going in, even after almost 2 decades together.

This one will not ultimately please the purist fans, who will long for the heavier sound of the bands early output. They'll point to the 3 Doors Down sound from Show Yourself - To be fair the song is a total clanger - and say that Mastodon have lost their edge. But there is nothing on the rest of the album that isn't able to stand up to proper scrutiny, and while it's certainly exciting and impressive for a band to put together a 4 album concept project, eventually there will have to be a change in direction. With Emperor, Mastodon have mixed up elements of hard rock, alternative rock and progressive metal and come out with something very special. They continue to evolve and grow, and they are still one of the finest Metal bands to come out of the past 25 years.

02: Omar Rodríguez-López - Gorilla Preacher Cartel - A

This is exactly what I like from OR-L. It's one of those crazy albums of his where you don't know what's coming next. This is due to the scrapbook nature of the album, as it takes in material from across his entire solo output, and even before - Some of the material is understood to have been written or at least conceived around 2000. OR-L has chopped and fiddled with multiple cuts from his previous records on and come out with an album that defines his own idiosyncrasy, and he's called it Gorilla Preacher Cartel, of course.

The outro suite Loveless//Interceptions/Of Pride is by far the finest moment on Cartel, and represents the pure randomness of the album. It's an extended version of Upon Golden Ice, a song from the earlier 2017 release Roman Lips. This now has an extended middle instrumental section that was jammed live by The Mars Volta around 5 years ago. It's wonderful stuff. Usually I'm turned off by OR-L's flagrant frankensteinism, but this speaks to me. I'd still say that Sworn Virgins is the best of the Ipecac series, but Cartel breaches the top 5 for sure. It's a wide-ranging album that buzzes with ideas and visions, far beyond its 40 minutes.

03: Blanck Mass - World Eater - A

Blanck Mass is the blackened alias of Benjamin Power, one half of the drone duo Fuck Buttons, in which he explores a dancey, industrial-Techno sound, with plenty of noise thrown in for good measure. His album Dumb Flesh from a couple of years back made this writer's top 10, which has now been followed by the enigmatic World Eater.

Nothing on here bangs as hard as Dead Format, the single from the afore-mentioned 2015 release, but that seems to be the point - This is not a straight-up club anthems record. World Eater is to be digested in one go. There are several tracks on the record that don't make sense on their own, but because of their position and timing on the album, really resonate when they come up on the playlist.

The beats are hard, the noise is noisey, and those industrial late-90's Nine Inch Nails sensibilities are all hallmarks of the sound Power is making into his signature style. I dig the niche he's made for himself with this project; there's so much depth and space to explore in the sound. World Eater is a rung above the last release, with more progressive song structures and longer noise sections. It's not something you'd put on in the car with your mum, but it's blistering hot if you like that sort of thing. And I do. I really do.

04: Raekwon - The Wild - A

With Raekwon being the most vocal of RZA's detractors in the Wu-Tang inner circle from the past few years, it's unsurprising to see that he is not among the army of producers and guest spots on The Wild. Indeed, no-one from the dozens of Wu-denizens that once so heavily populated solo albums of this ilk are to be found. This probably isn't much of a statement, but it's an indication of the era. The Chef is carving his own turkey now, at the head of his own table. And a good job he makes of it, too. Raekwon manages to create a classic, simple sound with the tools at his disposal, which makes The Wild a smooth ride from front to back.

After Fly International Luxurious Art, his failed mainstream experiment of 2015, Raekwon needed to truly hit it out of the park with his next release to get him back on track. With The Wild, he's done that. Back to basics, and back to the beats that made him and the Wu so loved. I'm not saying he's incapable of more radio-friendly mid-10's style tunes, he's just not comfortable in that mode. This is the man responsible for Only Built 4  Cuban Linx, for chrissakes. He needs to be edgy and dirty. The Wild is far from a mid-career curio for the Wu-completists. It's a strong album in it's own right.

05: Omar Rodríguez-López - Azul, Mis Dientes - B

06: Soulwax - FROM DEEWEE - B

February 2017 Review

Yep. There were some awesome releases in February. From contemplative rap, to crazy idiosyncratic Jazz Funk via a long, long folk album, it's been a good ride. Any month with a top 6 is a great month. It means I can't bear to drop something off the list into the doldrums of The Rest section. Albums in 3rd and 4th in these months would possibly be top in other lists. The top 4 from February were greatly enjoyable, and all of them represent widely different styles of music. This blog's already too long, so here we go:


The Rest:


Big Sean - I Decided. - C

Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors - C

Omar Rodríguez-López - Chocolate Tumor Hormone Parade - B

Omar Rodríguez-López - Ensayo de un Desaparecido - C

Xiu Xiu - FORGET - C


The Best:


01: Jonwayne - Rap Album 2 - A

Comeback albums are volatile currency. There's an inordinate amount of pressure on the artist to deliver. It's an illustrative microcosm of human nature that a time on the sidelines raises this brand of sneery expectation. It's our shameful desire to see people who have got themselves out of a pit fall straight back in. I'd like to think that a slightly stronger desire in us is the one that wants to see people overcome that expectation. And with that in mind, after a tough ride through alcohol abuse and a career hiatus during which he thought he may never get back in the game, it's awesome to see Jonwayne drop an impressive early contender for one of the top Hip-hop albums of 2017.

Rap Album 2 is a stoic meditation on personal struggle. It's one man's diary, a document of human experience. Initially you notice the subtle, styled beats and lack of hooks through the record, and you realise - In the best way possible - This ain't gonna be top 40 radio. Jonwayne's flow and rapping lends itself to the music and fits smoothly over the top. His lyrics are nakedly honest, they tell us all we need to know about his journey through the last few years. He talks about it all with gravitas and a lack of bitterness that suggests he's moving past the tough times, and is now able to reflect on exactly how he feels. It makes Rap Album 2 exclusive and personal, but it also makes it mature.

Listen to Out Of Sight, Human Condition, and the magnificent final track These Words Are Everything. These are heavy philosophical verses. They are wide open windows into Jonwayne's life. He's given us an open door to his past few years, lyrically concise and musically unique. Rap Album 2 is listenable, enormously relatable, and easily makes the top of the list of a very good month of releases.

02: Sampha - Process - A

Process was one of the most hotly anticipated releases for 2017, and something I'd had on my list for some time. Sampha's virtuous Soul vibes ripple delicately across this project, and it's fair to say that the hype was justified - Process is a grand, eloquent Pop/Soul project, brimming with pathos. The music is densely layered, yet simultaneously light and easy to listen to. It washes over you in waves. From the first listen, Sampha's budding musical prowess shines out, and from front to back, Process is a sweet journey.

There's something about honest British songwriters that popular music institutions love right now, more than usual, and Sampha slots into that mould very well. The obvious single Blood On Me is as off-the-shelf alt-mainstream as it gets - It's got that pealing intensity that will keep it on Radio 1's playlist for months. The rest of the album is decked out with emotionally charged concise pieces, each one forming a vital part of the picture. There's no filler on Process.

One song I can't get out of my head is (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, a sparse piano/vocal tune about the piano in Sampha's mother's house that he learned to play on. There's so much love and tenderness in that song, it threatens to go too schmaltzy here and there, but never goes over the edge. It's a solo performance worthy of someone far more accomplished than a songwriter, on his full length debut, and even though it sets a high benchmark for Sampha, it's obvious he should be able to surpass it with little effort. Process is a sheen-polished debut from an artist with bags of potential.

03: Thundercat - Drunk - A

This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I'd known Thundercat was gearing up for a release from his Twitter activity for some time, (follow him if you like random bursts of nutty craziness on your timeline) and so have been adequately prepared for Drunk and it's whacked-out funk-bass and jazzy twiddlings.

Thundercat's greasy pawprints are all over modern music. He's directly orchestrated big chunks of recent albums by Flying Lotus, Chuldish Gambino and Kamasi Washington, to name just three of the 2 dozen projects he's featured on since the mid-00's. That's before you count the decade he's spent as bassist for Sucidal Tendencies. Now he's put out his own full length. Dude's prolific.

Drunk is a murky set of 23 short tracks, Jazz, Funk, Pop and experimental pieces, strung together by Thundercat's superlative weirdness. There's a radio-friendly double header in the centre with Friend Zone and Them Changes, certainly playable at any given late-night party, but then there's songs like Captain Stupido that are probably best kept to the headphones. Thundercat's aforementioned co-conspirator Flying Lotus provides production on the majority of the album, and with a guest spot from Kendrick Lamar, (who else) Drunk is all the top boys of the cerebral beats world coming together to create something that is purely fantastic.

04: Sun Kil Moon - Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood - B

I once listened to this on a 2 hour train journey. It was perfect. Watching the green fields and isolated trees of the English countryside silently roll across the mid-spring vista, with the droney folk of Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood painted through it all made for one of the nicest transitions from London to the north I've ever had, and let me tell you, I've had A LOT of those. The album finished after I got off the train. That's how goddamn long it is. I think that's what detracts from the quality for me - It'd be an A with just 1/4 of the length taken off. Mark Kozelek's world is interesting, but it's not that interesting. His mumbling gets drowned out by most ambient noise and it's hard to catch the thread of the stories once they're lost.

I do love the wandery subject matter though, Light and Love is about politics, serial killers, musical heroes, it has a requiem for a friend who passed away. It's a loose concept album, based around 6 months of travel, the monologues and paragraphs in Kozelek's notebooks (surely he has sackfuls of them) somehow shaped into some level of cohesion and written into songs. There's no track under 5 minutes on this record, which gives you a good heads-up of how epic it is. While some of the content is hard to justify, (a 9 minute song called Chili Lemon Peanuts, anyone?) Light and Love contains some beautifully written stories and bravely honest moments. It's worth the ride if you have a couple of hours for a daydream.

Sun Kil Moon aren't exactly a chart-busting prime time act, so I couldn't find any Youtube video for this album, official or otherwise. Listen to Bergen To Trondheim, Butch Lullaby and God Bless Ohio to get a good feel for this one.


05: Stormzy - Gang Signs And Prayer - B

Unlike Wiley's Godfather from earlier this year, Stormzy tries out some wider ideas on Gang Signs And Prayer that elevate the scope of the project beyond Just Another Grime Album. This is nowhere near as cohesive, though. The off-brand tracks are probably the direction Stormzy wants to go - His reflective moments on Prayer are what kept me coming back, Blinded By Your Grace, 21 Gun Salute and 100 Bags are all worthy highlights, whereas intended bangers like Bad Boys and Big For Your Boots are a little flat and tacked-on.

That's not to say it detracts from the overall experience - This is Stormzy's first full-length release, and he's obviously put an enormous amount of love and effort into it's execution. Prayer is a statement on life, music and the world. In spite of some fairly derivative content, it's a great record, and in the end it is a statement worth making. It'll be exciting to hear his next release, and to see how his career pans out. Cigarettes And Cush is a massive tune, by the way.

06: Crystal Fairy - Crystal Fairy - B

January 2017 Review

January's records were an interesting clutch of releases to say the least. The first month of the year is always a slow starter in music. The industry kinda takes a month off and no big releases come along until the spring. Historically, several artists have preferred releasing albums/singles in January, as they will usually get a higher chart position than if they released in the summer, or at Christmas. So it is this year, the top album for January is unlikely to be an act many of you have heard of, and you'll see the 10 albums I listened to are a bit of a motley crew of established artists, forgettable mid-career albums and some downright clangers. There were some good albums though - There always is!


The Rest:


Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life - C

Ty Segall - Ty Segall - B

Omar Rodríguez-López - Zen Thrills - C


The XX - I See You - B

The 3rd album from The XX sounds like what they promised with Coexist - A louder, brighter record with more of a clubby influence. More beats, samples and texture. The quiet teenage kids have grown into their 20's and are exploring new sounds. Thing is, they aren't quite new enough. I See You still has the sound of the other 2 albums, and lacks the punch and progression you'd expect from such a young set of musicians. This is a B, but it's a low B.

This is along the lines of Jamie XX's solo album from the other year, which was lauded by critics on release. In Colour was conceptually sound and nicely executed, however it turned out to be dreary, drawn out, and ultimately rather dull. So it is with I See You - A good bag of ideas and some sweet lyrical phrases but overall a dissatisfying experience. The XX are still in possession of a lot of potential. They've just not realised it yet.


Vitalic - Voyager - B


The Best:


01: Dot Hacker - N°3 - A

Alt-Prog brood-mongers Dot Hacker have returned with N°3, their pensive foray into the lonely darkness. The enigmatic sheen pervades through it’s own measured urgency from front to back, Klinghoffer’s androgynous voice adding minimalist layers of harmony to the mix. This is a rock band, but they are not playing rock music. It’s black, atmospheric, and undefinable. There’s a collage of thoughts and emotions running right through N°3, a fever daydream of introspection.

The guitar work is exceptional at times. The Klinghoffer/Walsh partnership executes a melodic style of simple lines, carving and moulding the path of the song, weaving indelible patterns into the structure of each movement. It’s good to hear Klinghoffer’s guitar unbridled by the pop rock style of the latter Chili Peppers’ albums. In Dot Hacker he is able to take the lead on a creative project, and through that he shines.

The songs wander around in the mist, but always coming back home to greet you with familiar tones. This record is at once challenging and forgiving; elements that are easy to understand in one song may take multiple spins to get your head around in others. In the end, the band bring together several nuanced elements to present a unique package of sounds. N°3 has limitations, and isn’t going to change the world, but it is a genuinely brilliant, perfectly orchestrated project.

02: Wiley - Godfather - A

Wiley, the acceptable face of hardcore UK Hip-hop put out what is rumoured to be his last record in January, finally accepting the tag he has shirked throughout his career. Godfather is the pulsing return from the self-identified inventor of an entire genre. Wiley, in titling this latest record with his unofficial fan-decreed moniker, has given tacit acceptance to that status - Apprehensive though he may be to accept it, Wiley is Grime 101.

Usually, I can't stand Grime. Don't get me wrong, I understand how important it is. I just don't like the sound. This album really speaks to me though. Wiley's flow is monstrously good, and the consistency in his delivery is top notch. This is the driving force behind any good rap record - the beats will always come 2nd to a great MC. The ludicrous repetitive hooks, the dark imagery, the east London idiosyncrasy, it's all part of the image that Wiley feeds generously into each track. His universe is paved with slick, yellow lit streets and he knows every last inch of it.

Forgive me for making a crude comparison here, but Grime is the new Punk, isn't it? A youth-oriented, scene-based, revolutionary cultural art form. It's beyond music, that becomes secondary to the statement and pure fervent energy of it all. Wiley is the progenitor of this exponential movement, and with Godfather he's released some hyper-catchy single-ready tunes, without losing any of the edge that is vital to the genre.

03: Bonobo - Migration - A

04: The Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody - B

The Flips dropped their first proper studio album in 4 years this past month, and they're one of those bands where it's the goddamn law that you have to listen to anything they release. So I did. After all, such a unique, long-lived and crazy band deserve that status. It was just about worth it. Oczy Mlody is a tripped-out sojourn in the enchanted wilderness, with a delightful supernatural peculiarity to it. The Polish song titles, the epic synth walls, the song with frogs croaking throughout, it's a bizarre, acid-distressed dreamworld. The lyrics are pink candy love hearts - songs about faeries, mystical castles and unicorns paint a rainbow-tinted view of the world, counterpointed by darker elements of death and destruction; a sinister horizonal corona always threatening to spoil the party. 

This is nowhere near The Soft Bulletin, Clouds Taste Metallic or Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, the albums in the seminal strata of this band's output. It's not even in the same room. There's some bits that drag like you wouldn't believe, and some sections that are psychedelia-for-the-sake-of-psychedelia, seemingly parodying The Flips' own 60's throwback sensibilities. But it is at it's heart, a genuine, well-crafted collection of sounds, hippie-anarchism and wonderful weirdness that this band are loved and famed for. There's not much new ground covered here, and is The Flaming Lips in 2nd gear. To be fair though, that's really appealing. A nice effort, and a gas to slip on during a long coach journey.

05: Omar Rodríguez-López - Roman Lips - B

This is a fun record. Most of Rodríguez-López's albums are at least slightly weird, his passion for dissonance, crazy song titles and his odd singing voice tend to lend themselves to a discerning taste, but Roman Lips, OR-L's fortieth solo studio album has a forgiving, rounded edge to it. So you can listen to this one on the train without worrying about people hearing your headphone bleed and thinking you're odd.

A lot of what Omar's put out in the ever-burgeoning Ipecac series is average. (See The Rest, above.) That's OK - At the end of the day, when you're releasing an album every 2 weeks for months on end, you're not gonna churn out Sgt Peppers every time. Roman Lips is well above that malaise of average-standard releases, generally by virtue of the catchier tunes on offer. Omar can write a good old fashioned quirky pop song when he wants to - Outro track Fishtank, a Depeche Mode style mumble-fest is a great example of this element of his wide palate. This is a good listen for anyone who needs a gentle introduction to OR-L's spacious back catalogue.