November 2017 Review

Remember November? When Keith Chegwin was still alive, and we didn't know who the winner of the 2017 edition of The Apprentice was yet. It's like it was a different era! November's traditionally the last proper month of releases in music, after that everyone's wrapping up their tours and going on their jollies. November 2017 was no different, as it saw some final pushes for the top of end-of-year lists, some wonderful, some brilliant, and some not so good. This month's top 2 in particular are very good, and the 3rd place album ain't so bad either if you fancy a surprise release from an established artist.


The Rest:

Baths - Romaplasm - C

Hello Skinny - Watermelon Sun - C

MED - The Turn Up - C

Talib Kweli - Radio Silence - C

Yung Lean - Stranger - C


The Best:

01: Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest - A

It's another female songwriter in the top spot this month. Charlotte Gainsbourg's much-anticipated Rest, her first album in 6 years, is a triumph of breathy atmospherics that bristles front to back with the kind of vitality usually displayed by artists in their formative years. Rest has a pulsating urgency that never lets up. Minor key piano sections form the lion's share of the musical soundscape and make each song flow effortlessly into the next. With occasional orchestral stabs and simple electronic beats thrown into the fire, Rest is a ruthlessly engaging album, one which demands your attention but doesn't punish you with harsh sounds. Everything is smooth and measured. It is a logical, evenly-spaced album, with plenty of hooks.

The start of Rest is virtually apocalyptic; the first song Ring-A-Ring O' Roses is like the opening credits of a film, the synth-harpsichord melody that forms the back bone of the song driving right through to Lying With You, an emotional keys-led piece, both with Gainsbourg's carefully produced vocal laid delicately over the top. Gainsbourg lives in London but she has roots from across the English Channel, and sings half the album in French. This (to a boorish Englishman who can't speak a word of French) creates an exotic, faraway feel to the record, and on huge beat-driven songs like Deadly Valentine, Songbird In A Cage, and the utterly wonderful Sylvia Says, Gainsbourg's mastery of her voice across two entirely separate languages gifts Rest a vibrant, ultra-saturated sound palate.

Rest combines electronic pop with post-punk and goth styles. It's bouncy, happy and clever, but it's also melancholic. The music is virtually all synthetic, but presented with so much honesty and pathos that it's one of the warmest listens you'll have all year. Rest's final track is Les Oxalis, ending the album with characteristic epic choruses, rich synth lines and the driving bass sound that keeps the whole thing bumping like a carnival right to the end. Gainsbourg enjoys a breakdown section at the finish, then resists the urge to drop into a 3rd chorus, instead choosing to turn a vocal sample from a young child (presumably Gainsbourg's daughter) into a big finish, aptly closing a record about the death of her father with the voice of the next generation. Flip it over and play it again, Rest is too good to leave alone!

02: Bjork - Utopia - A

It's tough to write about an artist as lauded and universally acclaimed as Bjork, because really, after years of mind-melting experimentation, everything that's going to be said has been said about her. She covers a vast width of musicality, taking inspiration from countless obscure and mainstream choices and constantly mutates her voice and the instrumentation around it to form music that is challenging, comforting, familiar and unique all at the same time. Utopia is the latest album from this wonderfully idiosyncratic genius.

Bjork attained escape velocity and left the solar system some time in the late 90's, after a wave of huge alt-pop hits left her balanced squarely in the golden spot between mainstream success and critical acceptance. Building on that position with her first 2 records Debut and Post, each of her subsequent albums have gone further and further in pushing the envelope of what can be considered music. Utopia is denser than most of the recent output Bjork has given us; it's altogether more lush than 2015's Vulnicura. This is actually what makes Vulnicura a better album, though. It's much more focused than Utopia; the album's meaning and direction can falter at times. It's easy to get lost in the forest of sounds, and it doesn't wait for you to catch up before hitting you full force with the next section.

This is of course, still a brilliant record. Utopia's pinnacle is Losss, a composition spanning nearly 7 minutes. It starts gently, with Bjork's inimitable voice seeping through stuttering beats, and evolves through newer and newer levels. The music gets more complicated with each passing minute, before the final chaotic section of madness, the gentle plucked strings give way to a full-on electronic-blipped freak out, the malevolent creeping percussion does what it's been threatening to do all song and breaks through the mix, overwhelming the rest and washing over you like an enormous cleansing tsunami. Then just as quickly - The song is over. What do you even call this kind of music? It's beautiful, dangerous, emotional and robotic. It's vibrant and stark. It's Bjork all over. She's been on top form for decades, and there's no sign that she's going to slow up any time soon.

03: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon? - B

Noel Gallagher has spent the last few years building himself up from the wake of the breakup of one of the biggest rock bands in history. Since his debut solo release in 2011, he has managed to make a status for himself entirely apart from the lager-fuelled hedonism of Britpop, and the phoning-in of the post-90's Oasis years. His solo work has been pleasantly bereft of the trappings of his previous rock stardom, and has focused around what we knew he could do all along - Writing honest, accessible songwriter's pop-rock. The kids have been sent upstairs to bed, and now the grown-ups are cracking open that hours-chilled bottle of Rosé. Let's have a proper conversation, shall we?

Who Built The Moon? is different to what you'd expect from the 3rd Noel Gallagher solo effort. While it would be remiss to suggest that this album is experimental, (especially compared with Bjork's release from the same month) it is the strongest curveball Gallagher could possibly throw at this point in his career, and for that you have to give him a lot of credit. He could churn out a collection of brusque ballads every 18 months and be done with it, and a lot of his fanbase would probably be very happy about that, so for him to put out such a psychedelically informed record is a big statement. The compositions are brimming with guitar noise, euphoric choruses, and big beats. Gallagher's unmistakable calm voice leads the musical journey, and ties the whole of Moon together, to make a complete listening experience unlike anything else he's ever put out.

There are straightforward tunes like Holy Mountain and Keep On Reaching which maintain the no-nonsense Gallagher brand while simultaneously allowing the more adventurous pieces such as Fort Knox, It's A Beautiful World and Be Careful What You Wish For to shine brilliantly. While his brother plays around in the sandpit with rhyming couplets and 6th form guitar riffs, Noel Gallagher is spreading his wings and exploring new lands. Moon is more compelling than anything Oasis put out in their final decade of existence, and frankly if this is the sort of thing Noel wants to put out under his solo moniker, then that big money-spinning reunion can wait.

04: Converge - The Dusk In Us - B

05: Joji - In Tongues - B

George Miller, questionable Youtube starlet and instigator of the enormous Harlem Shake meme (remember that? 2013 feels like a different world, doesn't it?) also does music, as I discovered a few weeks ago. I'd heard nothing of Joji, his newest endeavour, and mainly picked this E.P from the fact that it was so highly rated on albumoftheyear, which is where I find most of this odd stuff I listen to. In Tongues is a wonderful little E.P, and it's a shame it's not any longer because it feels like the ideas Joji explores on it could very easily be stretched to a full-length effort. It's generally a sombre record; opening track Will He sounds a lot like something that could be on Sampha's early-year highlight Process. It stays the same all the way through In Tongues, and the tripped-out beats, drippy piano chords and floaty falsetto vocals means 16 minutes flies quickly by.

Bitter Fuck is the best song on In Tongues. Joji's style on this song melds elements that bring to mind the styles of Frank Ocean and Beck into a simple mix of instrumentation that ends the E.P on the highest note of all, even though the lyrical content is about loss and despair. It encapsulates the mood Joji wants to explore on In Tongues - Life is shitty, but I'm making the most of it. So even though Joji wanders around morosely throughout this E.P, the overall experience is nourishing and positive. It's a mature project from a young artist who's trying to move to the next level. Someone give this kid a full album deal!

06: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland - B

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