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.

2016 Top 40

At long last, here's the top 40 for 2016's albums. It's a lot later than I'd planned to do it - Blame a 2 week blackout with our internet connection for that. I've given a couple of retrospective A* to the top 2 records, they both are something very special and they deserve it. This blog is already miles long, so I'll just get on with it:

40: Kayo Dot - Plastic House On Base Of Sky – B

39: Nine Inch Nails - Not The Actual Events – B

38: Adult Jazz - Earrings Off! – B

37: Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo – B

36: M.I.A - AIM – B

35: Trixie Whitely - Porta Bohemica – A

34: Czarface - A Fistful Of Peril – B

33: Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep Of Reason – A

32: Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression – B

31: Kid Cudi - Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' – A

30: Roisin Murphy - Take Her Up To Monto – A

29: Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker – A

28: Animals As Leaders - The Madness Of Many – A

27: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Cell Phone Bikini – A

26: Avalanches - Wildflower – A

25: Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct – A

24: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - A Lovejoy – A

23: Anderson .Paak - Malibu – A

22: The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It – A

21: Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid – A

20: Band Of Horses - Why Are You OK? – A

19: 65Daysofstatic - No Man's Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe – A

18: Bon Iver - 22, A Million – A

17: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Sworn Virgins – A

16: Melt Yourself Down - Last Evenings On Earth – A

15: Mystery Jets - Curve Of The Earth – A

14: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool – A

13: Kate Tempest - Let Them Eat Chaos – A

12: The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation – A

11: De La Soul - and the Anonymous Nobody... – A

10: BADBADNOTGOOD - IV – A

BBNG's 2nd year in a row in my top 10 is a nice surprise to me, a group I'd not heard of 18 months ago but now at the forefront of my listening habits due to their stellar bank of releases. The cinematic, polished Hip-hop beats of Sour Soul, a masterful collaboration with Wu legend Ghostface Killah was one of the finest records of 2015, and they've followed that up with IV, a more orthodox release for BBNG.

What lifts IV above the general hubbub of Jazz records and indeed some of it's very own material is the guest vocal spots, serving as islands of conventional structure that break up the general fuzz of the experimental, drawn-out instrumental bulk of the record. That stuff is the key element to understanding the wonderful creativity behind IV, but those guest appearances - Mick Jenkins' fierce verse on Hyssop Of Love, the only full Hip-hop song on the album, Charlotte Day-Wilson's beautiful vocal take on In Your Eyes, and the top cut from the album, Time Moves Slow, with Sam Herring's velvet-toned delivery - These songs elevate up IV to something really special. Certainly a superb album, but one for those with an acquired taste.

09: Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye – A

Amen & Goodbye is the 4th studio effort from experimental rock arty-New-York-dudes-with-crazy-names group Yeasayer. Famous for their forays into several styles of music at a time, this album is no different, kicking off with the huge, synth-infused epic I am Chemistry - One of the finest cuts of the year - serving as the first song proper on the album. In five minutes, Yeasayer travel through electronica, acoustic guitar breakdowns and a children’s choir. The mutant vista of the song is accessible yet complex; it stretches out its lifespan to a sum much greater than its parts. Songs like Silly Me, Cold Night and Dead Sea Scrolls travel down a more traditional pop/dance/anthemic groove, while Prophecy Gun and Divine Simulacrum explore more experimental realms. Amen & Goodbye covers a huge amount of ground within the set parameters of the group’s earlier work – This feels like a summation of their career to date.   

So it goes for the entire album, as each song starts, a new journey begins. Baroque Pop cuts a deep vein through this record, and is its only true leitmotif. The bridging track Child Prodigy attests to this, a harpsichord solo piece with applause and crowd noise in the background. Some of the lyrical subject matter is academic to an absurd point, which is actually a good thing, as it adds to the classical high-art feel and helps to make Amen & Goodbye a cohesive, end-to-end project. Amen & Goodbye is brimming with hooks, catchy tunes and downright bangers that make the listening experience one of the smoothest and most enjoyable rides of 2016, while keeping the sound fresh and full of variety. Yeasayer’s quirky funkiness is spread joyously across from start to finish, and makes them a shoe-in for the top 10 for the year. A delightful, unexpected treat.

08: Adrian Younge - Something About April II – A

Something About April II was an early year perk-up from Adrian Younge, serial songsmith and much-sampled hero of the L.A scene. Younge’s work has been compared to such disparately positioned artists as Ennio Morricone, The Beatles and Otis Redding. April is as solid a representation of his style as anything else he’s put out in his career, and continues a remarkably prolific arc of releases. Hell, he’s released 2 more since this one!

This is similar to Anderson .Paak’s Malibu, released the same month and lauded by critics. April was far more slept-on, unjustly – It’s a supreme, expansive accessible Jazz/Pop record, as short as you like, 13 songs all under 4 minutes, all sweet, radio-friendly numbers, simple and polite. Intricacy takes a hike for the beauty of melody. Most of the rest of this top 10 are well-known hits of 2016. This one’s a bit more exclusive. Take the time to listen to it.

07: A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service – A

One of the most celebrated rap records in 2016 came from one of the biggest acts in the game, barely 6 weeks before 2017, topping many end-of-year lists and rubbing shoulders with the genre’s newest and brightest stars. There’s a new golden generation coming through, but it seems there’s still room for some of the old heads to have their say.

Thank You’s staying power lies in the weird idiosyncrasy of its content. Nothing sounds quite like a Quest record, the scope of their sound is immense, flitting from the mellow head nodders like Melatonin and The Killing Season to whacked-out nutty sessions like Mobius, Kids…, and Black Spasmodic and the straight-up experimentation from Solid Wall Of Sound, they don’t settle for an easy beat or soft landing.

Quest’s sound has an unmistakable old-skool edge to it, the intro to Dis Generation, the hook to Lost Somebody, the bassline to We The People, it all harks back to their signature 90’s sound. There’s a millennial glow to it all though, and along with the guest spots from some of the finest contemporary princes of Hip-hop, they strike a solid balance. Thank You is a worthy way to honour the late Phife Dawg, and a huge statement for Quest to bow out with.

06: Frank Ocean - Blonde – A

Blonde has that instant classic quality, the sound you know will go down as the sound of the decade. The vocal harmonies touch on Pop, Soul, R ‘n B and Hip-hop sensibilities, while simultaneously transcending those labels and forming into something more. This multi-textural distilled chill-out is Ocean’s bread and butter, he floats along the lazy river of each song’s fuzzy-lude-dream delivery and watches as it dissipates into the atmosphere.

Blonde is the album I think Kanye wanted to make with The Life of Pablo. It’s light dustings of keys over vocal sketches, field recordings and library footage. It’s deep organs and vocal trills. It’s short compartmental suites that flow through together and form sweet little pockets of 3 or 4 songs you have to listen to in one go. The guest spots are nuanced - I didn’t notice half of them before reading the credits. This is Ocean’s salutation to life. As Ocean observes in Pink And White: “Like glory from above.”

Blogger is very helpful and only lets you put videos from Youtube on your blog, so. Yeah. Here's the Vimeo link for Nikes: https://vimeo.com/179791907

05: Bat For Lashes - The Bride – A

Bat For Lashes is the musical vessel for the multi-instrumental efforts of Natasha Khan, one of the most talented and brilliant songwriters to come out of the UK in the last decade. her 4th record The Bride is a concept album about a woman whose fiancee dies on the day of their wedding. The Bride deals with the story from that point, all the fall-out and emotional turmoil that such a life-changing event would bring is explored and laid bare. It's a complex, difficult album, but it's highly rewarding on repeat listens, and that's why it sits comfortably in the top 10 from 2016.

It's tough to categorise this album, Khan's lyrical consistency and song(wo)manship makes it tempting to lump her in the Singer-Songwriter trope, but that's far too broad a definition for her work. At times, the musical content of The Bride is challenging, with some sparse noise tracks, but it's all held nicely together by the concept and storyline. There's no "single" as such on The Bride. It's not easy listening, or something you play in the car with your grandparents. That's the point, though. The Bride pushes you to understand the weight of passion and despair contained within it, and once you let yourself in to the lonely, depressive world of The Bride's eponymous heroine, you unlock a superb record that begs to be listened to in full, over and over again. 

04: Laura Mvula - The Dreaming Room – A

This has been one of the most slept-on releases of 2016. I’m disappointed that more outlets didn’t pick this one up, because it’s exactly the kind of album music critics love. There’s a lot of styles explored on The Dreaming Room, Mvula plays around with elements of pop, rock, funk and world music, but in the end though, I think it’s best described as experimental pop. Mvula’s song writing touches on a wide variety of themes and that coupled with the fantastical magic realm of her music makes The Dreaming Room an irresistibly rewarding album to listen to.

There’s a feeling on this album that I get while listening to Bjork’s music. The way Mvula sings and manipulates her voice in post-production makes it sound alien at times, and like Bjork, Mvula uses her voice as an instrument first, and as a conveyance of lyrics second. This attitude of her vocals being fair game for experimentation opens up a huge amount of possibility.

With such a wealth of sounds present on The Dreaming Room, it’s exciting to think that this is only the 2^nd full length album from Laura Mvula. The work accomplished on this album will hopefully be a taster of things to come. It’s going to be well worth following Mvula’s career – She’ll more than likely be putting out records of this calibre for many years.

03: Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life – A

The hugely talented Regina Spektor released her 7th album in 2016, carrying on her legacy of solid, masterful records. It’s another sleeper release; too many publications shoved Remember Us To Life in the doldrums of a top 100, or missed it off completely. Such a shame, but their loss is our gain. The album’s intro salvo is positively rambunctious, Bleeding Heart starts off as a blippy pop-indie cut and finishes with a full-on rock guitar outro, Older And Taller is a summery, sentimental American Folk tune, The Grand Hotel’s rich piano melody sounds like a warm 90’s Hollywood blockbuster soundtrack, Small Bill$ stalks and undulates through a moderate beat, and before you know it, Spektor has covered any number of musical styles and genres within 20 minutes.

My top pick from Remember is the vast, symphonic cut The Trapper And The Furrier, the emotional zenith of the record, a scathing monolith of a piece that begins with a haunting spoken word intro and builds up into the stratosphere, at times Spektor’s hands slamming down on the piano keys make you almost want to click the volume down a few notches to save your ears. Pure passion.

The rest of the album follows suit, the key element binding this together is Spektor’s magnificent songwriting, the fact that she sits alone on the piano writing these tunes and envisions the enormous compositions they are going to be makes the music that bit more personal. Her lyrical content deals in the literal, metaphysical and downright cryptic, most songs encapsulating all three. Spektor enjoys telling us about her personal tragedies, she creates characters with back stories, and she opines on the world in her own unique fashion. It’s all tied together sweetly to form a bright and brilliant gem of a record. You gotta listen to this one!

02: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered. - A*

Kendrick Lamar’s latest record might just be his finest moment. From the high reached last year, it would have been understandable if Kendrick took a break to work on a follow-up, after all, how can you follow such a huge project like To Pimp A Butterfly? The answer is with untitled unmastered.

What strikes me about this record is the brazen roughness of it. Releasing it with no promotion and putting out straight on to Spotify requires a huge level of self-confidence. The lack of song titles, some tracks holding more than one song, the extended jam and studio chatter at the end, it’s all so mutant and frayed. It gives the project a truly unique sound, the experimentation is magnified with every dud note and odd key stroke.

Kendrick’s the brightest star in a golden generation of rappers. To Pimp A Butterfly was truly magnificent, perhaps even era-defining, but it was too opulent. That’s what pushed it off the edge of being a perfect record. untitled unmastered strips that sheen off and gives us the goods with no pretension and that’s why it’s so important. History may forget this quicker than Butterfly, but after all’s said and done, this is the top rapper in the game at his best.

The nature of this project means there's been no official music video release yet, so take a look at this superb live performance from last year:

01: Chance The Rapper - Coloring Book - A*

Legendary albums are zeitgeist. It’s a vital quality of any top-tier release to represent the time it was released. People go on about “timeless” albums, but do they really exist? That’s a question worthy of lengthy discussion, for sure. When a great record comes out that could only have been released when it was released, that cranks it up a notch. Coloring Book is one of those legendary classics.

Chance’s moniker may lead the uninitiated to believe that this is a Hip-hop record, when it’s actually much more than that. Yes, Chance does rap, but there’s also a full gospel choir on most of the songs, there’s Sou­­l and R ‘n B tracks, there’s a centrepiece slow-jam track featuring Justin Bieber, all this and more to form a sweet, sunny ultra-feel-good album. One of the songs is just D.R.A.M, a friend and collaborator of Chance’s repeatedly affirming that everyone is special in their own way – “This I know is true, when I look at you.” The album’s cover is a shot of Chance smiling and holding his newborn child, the songs Blessings and Angels are about the joy of friendship, love and fatherhood. Joy is the theme throughout Coloring Book, and it never lets up.

One of my absolute favourite songs from 2016 is on this album, Same Drugs, a sentimental nostalgic piano-led piece about growing up and seeing old friends after years apart – “Wendy you’ve changed, Wendy you’ve aged/I thought you’d never grow up, I thought you’d never…/Window closed, Wendy got old/I was too late – A shadow of what I once was.” Childhood is so fleeting in memory. A genuinely spine-tingling moment.

With the tumultuous socio-political situation in the USA becoming more chaotic by the day, it’s comforting to see such a positive record released by a prominent artist from the POC community. Dark times tend to bring out the best in good people. Coloring Book implores and obligates you to be the finest person you can be. An album that spans so many genres, has a unique sound and has such a peaceful message has to top the list of 2016’s albums.

December 2016 Review

The final month of the year is never really that good for new music. Everyone's on their holidays, or lazing about in the label's offices, watching the clock tick down and shopping for their Secret Santa present. No one wants to actually put the work into releasing an album. I found it hard to make up the numbers with the releases. I even considered a Neil Young album, for Chrissakes! The top album in December 2016 is the weakest no.1 of the year on this blog. It's still great to listen to though, even if you're not a fan of the artist. And so:


The Rest:


Omar Rodríguez-López - Some Need It Lonely - B

Experimental Rock/Dub


Omar Rodríguez-López - Nom De Guerre Cabal - C

Electronica/Experimental Rock


Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3 - C

Hip-hop


EL-P and  Killer Mike dropped Run The Jewels 3, the predictably titled follow up to RTJs 1&2 on Christmas Eve, an early present from one of the game's most popular groups. There's been some pretty damn monumental rap records released this year but this one? Eh. Not so much.

Is this a joke album? It feels like a joke. The lyrics are appalling. Bragadoccio is the self-evident currency of Hip-hop, but lines like "I'm the shit/Looking at the money like it's mine to get/I'm the shit bitch/Everybody down, throw the pistol and fist" and "I got a good thing with a bad bitch/ that's rare bitch/She don't even like you hoes/she'll walk in the room take errr bitch" would have you laughed out of any half decent open mic night, so why do RTJ think they can spunk out such garbage? So it goes for all of the songs on this album, with far too many examples to mention.

The beats are bassy and decent enough, they keep the record simmering along with no real aural challenge and it's at least nice to hear a rare Zach De La Rocha guest spot on the final track. Ultimately though, RTJ3 carries on EL-P and Mike's infuriating insistence on constantly proclaiming themselves gods of Hip-hop without ever deigning to prove it. A schoolboy pissing contest.


The Best:


01: Omar Rodríguez-López - A Lovejoy - A

Experimental Rock/Synthpop 


After 12 releases in 2016 and 364 days, my best buddy Omar finally hits the top spot. A Lovejoy is as it's name suggests - euphoria on high, romping through verdant fields of pop, rock, synth and classical styles to achieve a truly brilliant climax to this year's releases. The record bubbles with tight pop loops and whispery vocal hooks, mixed with complex acid synth riffs. For the first time in 39 solo releases, El Maestro has taken command of a wonderfully effective synth string section in I Bet He'd Like That, which is a rare first for an artist with such a vast back catalogue.

You can be up in the clouds with the driving beats and basslines and then dropped flat out into ambient noise forests on the turn of a sixpence. This harsh dichotomy of pleasure and pain lifts the already stratospheric album above the rattle and clang of his middling releases to place it in the top tier of the Ipecac spectrum, along with Cellphone Bikini and Arañas en la Sombra.

Though this doesn't beat the exemplary Sworn Virgins to the top of the baker's dozen of releases from OR-L in 2016, it comes a close 2nd, and is a welcome surprise, dropped less than 48 hours before the close of the year, putting strength behind my regular lament at major publications putting out end-of-year lists in bloody NOVEMBER. It ain't over, 'till it's over.

02: Kid Cudi - Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' - A

Experimental Pop/Alternative R 'n B


Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' is the latest project from the genre-busting, ambitious and voraciously talented Kid Cudi. Split across 4 sections, each titled more opulently than the last, (the final quarter is named It's Bright And Heaven Is Warm, for goodness sake,) this album explores a wide range of moods and textures in search of a defining moment of  spiritual clarity.

Slayin' is best listened to as a skimming exercise for good tunes, rather than as a full-length session. There's plenty of R 'n B flavoured treacle to wade through to get to the good stuff, but it is worth it for highlights such as Cosmic Warrior, Frequency and Surfin', the latter of which features a subtle but effective guest spot from Pharrell Williams. My cut of choice is Distant Fantasies, a dark, enigmatic tune that harks back to the dark MF DOOM beats of a decade ago.

This one is a lot like The Weeknd's album from the other month. Not only stylistically - I should think the Venn diagram for fans of both artists features a healthy overlap - But also because it's just too long! Slayin' is almost 90 minutes in length, an enormous project, but that's not justified by the content. You could trim off a lot of filler and have one of the best records of the year. As it stands, Slayin' is a great listen for a long drive, and unfortunately, far too much of a good thing.

03: Nine Inch Nails - Not The Actual Events - B

Alternative Rock/Industrial Metal


Not The Actual Events was released with a characteristic lack of pretence to fulfil Trent Reznor's promise that Nine Inch Nails would return in 2016. Three and a half years hence from the superb comeback record Hesitation Marks, Events clocks in at barely over 20 minutes, so it doesn't quench the thirst a full length Nails LP would, but it is good to get stuck into a new chunk of flesh from the grand master.

Events has big shades of Reznor's 90's material, chainsaw guitars, enormous walls of  sound and distant, pained screaming are all over it. Along with that, there's a marked determination with this release to distance it from the rest. To that end, there's a measured influence from Atticus Ross; The Idea Of You has the most industrial feel to a Nine Inch Nails song since Broken, and the smooth production and industrial noise have his fingerprints all over it. There is also an ever-so-slight hint of How To Destroy Angels slipping through the cracks.

In the end though, the bulk of the sound comes from Reznor himself, as you would expect. Nine Inch Nails has this brillliant idiosyncrasy threaded through 30 years of releases, the same leitmotifs and lyrical phrases littered throughout the 3 decades of music, and Events is no different. Whether this is no more than a perfunctory flourish or an indicator of a new era in the disparate vista of releases from this life-long artistic project remains to be seen.

04: J. Cole - 4 Your Eyez Only - B

Hip-hop/Trap

05: Childish Gambino - Awaken, My Love! - B

Soul/Funk/R 'n B/Psychedelic


Donald Glover's musical alter-ego snuck out a nice little record at the start of December. Moving away from his traditional rapping style, Awaken, My Love! represents Gambino's 3rd studio full-length, and a departure into more adventurous territory. I've always appreciated artists that take a left turn and try something new. Awaken at least covers that base, giving it some worthy moments, with elements of many different styles.

It doesn't do them much justice though, and after all's said and done, there's quite a bit of fluff on Awaken, and you'd have to be really dedicated to get any more than a handful of spins out of it. The music Gambino makes feels incredibly happy and fun, an open invitation to the world to enjoy the ride along with him. The appropriately sunny, keys-soaked California and the Megadrive synth-guitar masterpiece Redbone are the two stand-outs from this enjoyably flawed record.

So that's that for 2016. I'm gonna compile a top 40 over the the next few days and push that out. I'm very happy with my top choices from 2016, there's some obvious releases, some that have been wildly popular this year, some that have been underrated, and some I don't think I've seen in any end-of-year lists at all. I like to think my list reflects as wide a range of music as possible, which is the aim of this blog. One thing I noticed is lacking is debut albums, I think I've probably listened to less than 5 all year, which is something I want to remedy in time for 2017's top list. 2016's top choices are coming soon!

November 2016 Review

It was hard to listen to a full crop of albums in December, what with Christmas and New Year and drinking my body weight in Prosecco every weekend. In between the cheeseboard binges, endless travel and general festive fun I actually ended up listening to 9 albums. That's more than some people managed all year, so I'm happy with that.

The Progressive Metal fans amongst you will have spotted May's Protest The Hero EP sitting there, sticking out like spotty ginger child. I don't know why, but I had it in my head that it had been released in November, so I stuck it on the list with these albums and listened through. It's too good to not list to be fair, it only just missed the top 5, so it's going in!


The Rest:


Justice - Woman - B

Electro House/Nu-Disco


Protest The Hero - Pacific Myth - B

Progressive Metal


Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Weekly Mansions - B

Electronic Pop


Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Zapopan - C

Experimental Rock


The Best:


01: A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service - A

Alternative Hip-hop


With the tragic death of legendary MC and all-round decent dude Phife Dawg coming earlier in 2016, the Hip-hop world breathed a heavy sigh of resignation - It meant no more new material from A Tribe Called Quest, the cerebral superstars that have rang against the walls at any given 4am after party throughout the past 25 years. When the group announced the release of We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service mere months after Phife's passing, it signalled a surprise resurrection. Quest were back in the game, for the final round.

Q-Tip's voice is the smoothest in the business, the velvet-toned counterpoint to Phife's more rugged delivery. When they mix in with the idiosyncratic quirkiness and warm Jazz tones that comprise the Quest sound, it's hard to think of a Hip-hop group that can match them for sheer likeability. The tunes roll off the tracklist one-by-one and all add their own spice to the eclectic blend of sounds. We The People..., a short, downbeat statement on the oppression of minority groups, Melatonin, a chilled vocal-hooked instant Quest classic, Black Spasmodic, an off-kilter guitar skank, Movin' Backwards, featuring a top-notch turn from Anderson .Paak, all these songs are undeniably brilliant, pushing through with Quest's righteous Afro-centrism just as well as any of their 90's output did.

Phife is tributed on this record perfectly. It would be too easy to turn Thank You into a memorial project, overshadowing the fine work put into the album before he died. Instead, Quest dedicate only 2 songs to their fallen comrade, the easy-soul cut Lost Somebody and The Donald, which is a buoyant closing number, Phife Dawg's name being repeated affectionately over and over until the end of the record. That's fitting for Phife - From what I've heard of him, he'd never want it to be all about him.

Thank You holds on to the basic tenets the group gained fame for in their earlier years. They've not lost the magic after nearly 3 decades. It's wonderful that Phife ended up with a few verses on record for this project, their presence is a grand tribute for the man, it's good that he was able to put his imprint on the last ever Quest album. If this is the final chapter of A Tribe Called Quest's journey, it's a brilliant way to end such a distinguished group's time in the game.

02: Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct - A

Heavy Metal


The Hetfield/Hammett partnership is one of my favourites in all music. The great thing about the boys is that they are nowhere near the most technical or creative players in the world, but something happens when they get together that is teeth-clenchingly monolithic. Together, they've written some of the most ubiquitous and celebrated pieces of heavy guitar music, and along with one of  the worst drummers ever and a revolving cast of bassists, they've ruled the goddamn universe for about 30 years. They released a double album of Thrash Metal in November, and it's rock solid.

Hardwired... to Self-Destruct pulses with thrash and flex, calling back to their 80's material with chugging guitars, Hetfield's signature rallying calls, and complex song structure. They've always been anti-war, but this one feels like a specific statement against the rising tide of conflict across the globe. There's a lot of hard grooves on the album, with some softer tracks - The guitar work on Dream No More, Halo On Fire and Here Comes Revenge echoes Superunknown-era Soundgarden, ManUNkind is a wandering elaborate piece with many different moods. Songs like that give a break from the long thrash sections that reverberate throughout pieces like Atlas, Rise!, Moth Into Flame, Spit Out The Bone and the like. It's well-balanced, and just about worth the double album status.

Hardwired's got that Metallica imprint all over it - the barely controlled rage, the speaker-melting guitar solos, the sombre ballad sections, the distraught desperation at the insanity of man. The production is thick, it's a perfectly constructed brick wall. The guitars sit crisply above the drums, and the vocals only take prominence when they absolutely have to. Because that's why we're here, right? We want riffs. Perhaps that's what's so attractive about Hardwired, it's not Metallica doing covers, or stripping themselves back, or being clever. It's Metallica being Metallica.

This is Metallica's 10th studio effort, and the causal observer can be forgiven for thinking that there is little ground left to cover in their creative sphere, Metal being the intensely dense, nuanced genre it is. What you've got to remember here is that Hardwired is their first album since the complex and demanding Death Magnetic, now 8 years in the past, and is quite a switch-up from that album's style. It represents a sound they haven't explored on a record cover-to-cover for a quarter of a century. For that alone, it deserves its spot. While much of the latter half of 'Tallica's back catalogue has been routinely slung onto the "Yeah, it's alright" pile, I'd like to think that this one has a little more staying power. The best one they've done since The Black Album.

03: Animals As Leaders - The Madness Of Many - A

Progressive Metal/Jazz

04: Czarface - A Fistful Of Peril - B

Hip-hop


Rap's superhero obsession has permeated the genre's DNA since records began, with some of the most stoic personalities indulging in their own pseudonym-based villainy at some point in their career. Czarface is the latest iteration of Wu-Tang visionary Inspectah Deck and 90's beatsmiths 7L & Esoteric's coalition, and represents their own tribute to the cartoon heroes of their childhood. A Fistful Of Peril offers up an unapologetic slice of old-skool beats, pumping with the fresh production of the modern era.

Peril doesn't push the boundaries any further than last year's Every Hero Needs A Villain, but that's the point. Czarface is it's collective member's folly, their unfettered sandpit project, a reward for the big rap records of 20 years ago. The boys revel thoroughly in the flat-out, driven-through simplistic beats. Repetitive guitar chops and nerdy vocal samples abound. It's easy, smooth stuff. The age of Boom-Bap has passed, but its fans are still around, and there's plenty of room for this head-bopping gem in today's Hip-hop landscape.

05: The Weeknd - Starboy - B

Pop/RnB


Solo songsmith and Millenial Wail-milking The Weeknd drops his latest smooth cut of silk, with a smattering of impressive guest appearances. This album has surprised me in how little attention it's got from the mainstream music press - his sound is rhetorically zeitgeist. The melodic, pitch-shifted warblings sometimes morph into full-on rap verses, channelling the likes of Drake and Kanye, with whom Mr Weeknd could (and should) be granted contemporary status. Starboy is the kind of stuff that could only be made in the mid-10's; we will look back on music like this in 20 years and say it was the sound of the decade.

Sadly, Starboy is a good example of a trope I find completely distasteful in music - Too many songs on an album. I'm no minimalist by any stretch, (the 2nd album on this top 5 is a double) but there's an art to knowing when it's time to fade out the dying embers of the closing number, and on this album, that's around about the 12th track. Unfortunately, it just keeps going. When you stuff 18 songs on to the same disc, inevitably it will suffer from the inclusion of a lot of filler, which is such a shame, because there is absolutely no need to pad this record out. There are over half a dozen wonderfully catchy downtempo tunes lost in the swamp. It's worth finding them if you wanna dive in and have a swim.

That's November's choices. As always, I'm very happy with the top 5, there's just simply been loads of brilliant releases in 2016. The top list will be hard to compile, mainly 'cos I'm gonna have to leave some incredible records out of the top 20. It's gonna be good though, There are several albums I've loved this year that haven't had nearly enough recognition. So I'll recognise them. Happy New year, everyone.