Author: David Allison

Posted in Album of the Month, New Tunes

APRIL: GREY Area by Little Simz

Posted on by David Allison

Well, well, well. What a little belter this is.

Little Simz AKA Simbiatu “Simbi” Abisola Abiola Ajikawo (can see why she went for the shortened nickname) has been knocking around for a few years. I heard a couple of tracks that I really liked without falling in love with. She did stand out from her peers by seeming less interested in the beats of grime and more the classic beats of old skool hip hop.

So I admit it – I initially dismissed her a bit as a promising UK hip hop like a million before her that was full of promise but hadn’t quite delivered THAT track.

And then I heard OFFENCE. Jesus H Christ. What a ridiculous beast of a track that is. It became a genuine crossover that was being played on 6Music AND Radio 1 AND Capital (which I know, thanks to my kids).

Still, I approached this album expecting 10 tracks of more of the same. What I wasn’t expecting was such a rich, inventive brew, so full of creativity and painted on such a wide canvas.

Influences? Oh man, where to start? The nu-soul meets hip hop of Anderson .Paak and K-Os (of old!) on tracks like WOUNDS. SELFISH is basically a gorgeous RnB pop song but with a rap holding it together. VENOM’s flow feels like a grime style and BOSS is a great track 2 choice, smacking you right in the face. FLOWERS could be a collaboration with Cinematic Orchestra, and obvs Michael Kiwanuka is always a seal of quality.

So much to love on here – the live band and instrumentation gives it a blaxploitation film score vibe. Everywhere there are surprises – fresh samples, unusual arrangements. This is a really ambitious album made to aim high, and it nearly completely delivers.

Finally – oh joy of joy – it’s got NO SKITS and it’s a tight, punch 35 minutes long. How many hip hop albums could learn from this?

I notice she right at the top of the bill of one of the Coachella stages. She’s that good. Not surprised the US is noticing.

Any criticisms? Maybe her delivery and flow is a little bit monotonous at times, but lyrically it’s bloody brilliant – and she works around that by making each song such a uniquely constructed entity.

So yeah. I LOVE this album and I’m sure it’ll end up in my top 10 at the end of the year. How about you, Brothers?

Posted in Album of the Month, New Tunes

DECEMBER: Be The Cowboy by MITSKI

Posted on by David Allison

So just as we chose this for December, then comes along old Pitchfork to make this their #1 album of the whole year:

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/?page=5

Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t think this is the album of the year. I think it is VERY good. But I’m not sure I would go as far as Pitchfork. I always get the impression Pitchfork is so painfully curated as to hit its demographic, it’s hard to take their lists seriously. Mitski certainly hits all the right 2018 buttons – strong female voice, big leap forward musically with new album, touching on angst and loneliness and anger. You can see why they chose it.

I’ve been aware of Mitski for a while, and thought I’ve liked what I’ve heard, I’ve maybe not loved it. She’s certainly an interesting voice, but I’ve found her songs a little bit too indie and angular and maybe I’m searching for a touch more from them. But that is based on not spending a lot of time with them, so that could be hugely unfair.

And then I heard NOBODY. Oh boy. What a song. WHAT a song. It might be a late entry into my song of the year. Hell, it might even just knock GIRLFRIEND off the top spot. Aching, painful, searing loneliness that starts off plaintive and then turns into a bloody grandstanding DISCO song, complete with two key changes that take my breath away every time I hear them.

So maybe now I get Mitski.

NOBODY is probably an outlier on the album – it’s not choc-a-block with similar tracks – but there is something really interesting going on here. The album starts off with a song that I could take or leave, GEYSER, that suggests something generically indie, but it quickly picks up after that. WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP ME? is a stomping slab of St Vincent-style wonky pop. And off the album goes in all kinds of fabulous directions. Other highlights: include ME AND MY HUSBAND – a piano led belter of a pop song, PINK IN THE NIGHT – huge, emotional indie torch tune, LONESOME LOVE, which goes proper alt-country. And finally, closer TWO SLOW DANCERS is a lovely, electronic ballad that’s a fitting closer.

Another wonderful plus: song length! I love that so many of these songs don’t outstay their welcome. Thanks you Mitski for writing 2 minute songs that are exactly the right length. Please please God can some bloated rock dudes take note. You don’t need 2 guitar solos, a middle eight and a lengthy outro every time, got it?

However, those brief song lengths can occasionally be a hindrance – there are some songs that feel half-formed or don’t quite earn their place on what is a very good album. And that’s, for me, why it isn’t quite album of the year material.

Still, a strong end to a pretty strong year, I thought. Over to you…

———-

FINALLY: As a side discussion, shall we have an albums of the year chat, Brothers? Oh yes, I think we should!

Posted in Music chat, New Tunes

Nao That’s What I Call Music

Posted on by David Allison

Little bonus album for the Brothers.

This has been bubbling under on my (metaphorical) turntable in the last couple of weeks, and it’s slowly dawning on me that’s it’s a work of complete genius. Nao’s one of the brighter lights of the British neo-soul/R&B scene, and she first came to my attention via the brilliant collaboration she did with Mura Masa a couple of years back:

I liked her debut, but I didn’t love it. This is her second album and it is a GIANT leap forward. It has such a beguiling mix of classic soul tropes, great 90s R&B arrangements (of the kind Brother Joey and I used to lap up back in the day), but it also strays deliciously into Frank Ocean territory, like this gem:

Best of all, it is just JAM PACKED full of great songs and top songwriting chops. It starts off pretty slowly, but really gets into its swing mid album, and the run of songs – Saturn, Gabriel, Orbit and Love Supreme – are as good as anything I’ve heard in a very long time.

What do you reckon, Brothers? Thought I’d throw a little extra listening into them mix.

Posted in Album of the Month, New Tunes

JULY: Rebound by Eleanor Friedberger

Posted on by David Allison

Hello sunshine. Hello Eleanor.

So. I don’t know how well The Brothers know The Fiery Furnaces, the wilfully leftfield band that consisted of Eleanor and her brother, Matthew. They were like nothing else – a knotty indie band that wrote dense, weird songs with names like “Chief Inspector Blancheflower”, “The Philadelphia Grand Jury” and “The Old Hag is Sleeping”. Their songs’ lyrics sounded like they were some little known novel, and the structure of their songs were often really strange, veering off into different time frames or arranged in several parts.

Now, that makes them sound WAY harder work than they were. They were a bit eccentric, but they were surprisingly easy to love. Well, by me, anyway. Marc Riley used to play them loads on 6Music and I fell for them, bit by bit.

Adam Buxton, on his excellent podcast, recently did an episode with Eleanor F – one that was actually recorded a couple of years back, but for some reason, he wasn’t happy with. I don’t know, I found it charming and it really got to the heart of his subject. As an intro to Eleanor, you couldn’t do any better. I’d strongly recommend listening:

What’s clear from that is that her brother was quite the control freak in the band, and she felt trapped and straitjacketed in the band. Since their seemingly permanent hiatus, she’s started to carve out a strong solo career of her own, with a series of increasingly accessible solo albums, of which is the 4th, and in my opinion, the strongest.

Despite her brother’s control freakery, you can hear in Eleanor’s solo work that she was very much a big part of the Fiery Furnaces’s sound, not least because her beguiling vocals define so much of their output. She’s still fond of obtuse lyrics at times, and slightly wonky music. But what she has done is grown in confidence in writing more direct pop songs – and unlike the FF, this more pop than rock, I think. As you know, I think the P word is much maligned and is one of the highest art forms on Earth! Writing the perfect pop song: what a skill.

So what we have here is Friedberger at her warmest, her most human, her most direct. She hasn’t lost her leftfield edge, and to me, this still feels unusual and far from generic. But has she ever written as out and out a cracking pop tune as ‘Make Me A Song’? There’s a lovely mix of slow jams and uptempo numbers, and the songwriting throughout is A class. Great for lazy summer days too.

Hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. This Furnace is perhaps less fiery these days, and more smouldering. It’s working for me.

Posted in Album of the Month, New Tunes

MARCH: Microshift – HOOKWORMS

Posted on by David Allison

Sometimes you enjoy a band, but you know they could be so much more. And you will them into becoming that thing, and so often, that just doesn’t happen. They plough the same furrow with decreasingly fruitful results, until, by album three, you feel something die inside you and you know your relationship with them is over.

I’m always keeping an eye on the local music scene in Leeds. It’s not a bad scene and it always has some bands worth listening to, but often they peter out before they get going. I first noticed there was a bit new psyche thing going a few years ago, and some of it actually seemed really good. At the forefront of that were Hookworms. They’ve made two really solid albums, the first building on the first and expanding its sound. But they were solidly PSYCH albums, sounding something like this:

I’d seen them live and I’m partial to a bit of Krautrock, so it was right in my wheelhouse, but they are REALLY good live, and a lot more punky that you might think, but they weren’t exactly inventing the wheel (to complete the wheel related references). I remember thinking, rather fancifully like a twat, that they were ‘Austerity Psych’ – psych rock channelling the anger of our era in a Northern city.

And then an absence of a couple of years. And then, a month or two ago, I hear THIS on 6Music:

And my mind is blown. THAT is Hookworms? Sweet Jesus, yes. It’s Hookworms having babies with New Order, LCD Soundsystem and every other slice of dance rock heaven you could ever imagine. Everything has gone widescreen. The lead singer, MJ, one of rock’s more unlikely looking lead singers, has no longer hidden his voice behind acres of reverb, and wow, he actually has an amazing voice. The ANGER and the punk attitude is still there (this is, after all, about depression and dealing with the death of a friend), but what a canvas to paint it on.

And then came the album, and the fear that this one truly amazing song would be sat amongst a load of psych songs of old, standing out like a sore thing. Not a bit of it. STATIC RESISTANCE is probably the closest thing to Hookworms of old, but even that has crispness and urgency to it that really stands out. It’s a GREAT Track 2:

It doesn’t let up from there. ULLSWATER is another banger, to rival NEGATIVE SPACE, as is OPENER, which feels almost joyful. And then there’s the other surprise – the soft, almost balladeering underbelly of a band that with hitherto all hard Krautrock beats. THE SOFT SEASON is sweet and moving, and EACH TIME WE PASS is, well, actually quite dreamy!

I think this a major piece of work. It works totally as an album and a vision, and it’s rewarded me every time I’ve played it.

Finally, can we talk about the sequencing? Brother Joey, I know it’s a bugbear of yours and mine when a good album is badly sequenced. Just how beautifully sequenced is this? ULLSWATER as a Track 3 basically says – yes, the whole album is as good as this. And then THE SOFT SEASON is that sudden blast of tenderness that opens out the whole album’s palette. And at the back end, SHORTCOMINGS has got to be the best closer to an album I’ve heard in a long time. It’s up there with my favourite songs on the whole thing – James Murphy would be proud of that one.

It’s only March but I can’t see this not being one of my albums of the year.

So yeah, sometimes those bands you invest in do reward you by turning into something much bigger than you’d ever imagined…

Posted in Music chat, New Tunes

Hookworms – roll up for your LCD fix and more

Posted on by David Allison

Long time since I’ve been as taken with an album as the new Hookworms album. As a local band, I’ve kept an eye on them for a long time (they’re FEROCIOUS live), and have enjoyed their heavy Krautrock workouts, but I wouldn’t say that either of their first albums have stayed with me that much.

All that has changed with the new album, Microshift. It’s a complete reinvention of everything they’ve done – suddenly full of wide open spaces, electronics and dance rhythms and MJ’s voice – which you suddenly realise is actually brilliant. I have been playing it to DEATH for the last week.

Bearing in mind this blog’s collective love for LCD, Hot Chip et al, I’d be absolutely astonished if there wasn’t a fair bit of love for this. I urge you to listen to the whole album in one go. It’s still an indie record, sure, but it has its eye on so much more than that.

I also love the way they’re using their sound to really dig at real stuff. This is about depression and the death of a friend and other disaster – and finding a way out of the other side. It’s compelling and really life-affirming. Again, James Murphy would be proud.

This is an absolute contender for album of the year for me, and yup, it’s only Feb.

Posted in New Tunes

INVISIBLE MINDS – Yo Mae Leh

Posted on by David Allison

Had a proper WHAT IS THIS moment when I heard this on the radio today. Isn’t it BRILLIANT? It’s everything I love all rolled into one. The artist is apparently deliberately a total mystery.

All there is, rather ingeneously, is a Spotify playlist of their musical inspirations…

I am more than intrigued.

Posted in Album of the Month, New Tunes

NOVEMBER: Wallflower by Jordan Rakei

Posted on by David Allison

Ah, blue-eyed soul. A double-edged term that come across as much as insult as praise. It implies a lack of depth, a lack of the heritage of the music, not just racially but in terms of authenticity. Maybe this isn’t quite blue-eyed soul, but it’s certainly made by an artist who’s steeped deeply both in the history of the music and current trends. It’s also not quite accurate to say he’s a white guy singing a historically black genre. To be specific, he’s a Kiwi of Pacific Islander heritage who now lives in London and signed to Ninja Tune. How fantastically 21st Century.

So where did this come from? That was what I thought when I first heard ‘Goodbyes’. It was one of those times I immediately Googled the artist, found he’d made a whole album, and then just sat opened-mouthed when I sat down and listened to it. The opening number, ‘Eye to Eye’ starts like a soul ballad, and then when it kicks in, you know you’re going somewhere really interesting. That edgy, nervous arrangement, almost jazz-sounding at at times, is such a great counterpoint to his sweet voice.

This is such a tough genre to excel in. I mean, I think I’d call this a soul record, but it’s a post-dance era soul record, I suppose in the same way that Sampha is. There’s also a touch of those downbeat artists like James Blake in there too. But where some of this genre can be a little hit-and-miss – for example, I LOVE the highlights of the Sampha album, but there’s some filler on there, I really love the whole of this. It’s so fully-formed, it’s so rich, it’s so delicious to listen to. It’s beautifully produced too – those strings remind me of Craig Armstrong’s work on Massive Attack’s finest albums. In fact, Massive Attack are a real cornerstone, influence wise. Time for a trip hop revival, anyone? 😉

There are two stages to your relationship to an album, I find. The first is: do I keep playing it when I first get into it? This has been a huge yes – I’ve had to start rationing myself because I’ve listened so many times. The second stage is: Will I come back to this, year after year – has it become a permanent part of my musical landscape. Well, of course, I won’t know that yet. But if you’re asking me to guess right now, I’m pretty certain it will be. I like it that much.

Highlights: opener Eye to Eye, the straight-up soul of Nerve, funky, melancholic single Goodbyes, Massive Attack-esque Hiding Place. But honestly, I love the whole thing!

Thoughts, brothers?