We’re through the hinterland of Dec/Jan release twilight and there’s some amazing new records out, many of which are from previous AOTM favourites. So here’s a little rundown from @whyohwhyohwhy of some picks.
Arlo Parks – Softly
A bit of a change-up, musically. Pace, a bit of a breaks/d’n’b feel and a big piano. Lovely.
Yard Act – Fixer Upper
It’s hardly novel to big these guys up, but this is a great track and brilliant lyrics.
Snail Mail –Valentine
I stumbled across this in my search for a Feb AOTM (before we Album clubbed it) and it’s really great guitar music, in the way that a lot isn’t around any more. The album is worth really checking out.
Mano Le Tough – Either Way
It’s like the album never really stopped….
The Weather Station – Endless Time
They did a new song. No one knew they were doing it. We all win.
When we started this little podcast, we weren’t really sure how it was gonna go, how long we’d do it for, or who’d be listening. It’s a great surprise and pleasure to still be here, 19 episodes in, with a growing listenership.
However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that our logo was a bit….well, home-made! That’s because it literally was – put together by Guy, who frankly did a brilliant job considering he is very much not a graphic designer.
But as the pod has grown, it’s become clear that we needed a proper logo and fresh redesign – and it’s enormous pleasure to share the new TINH logo with you today. Gorgeous, innit?!
The logo was designed by the amazing Jane Jardine, who’d already done an incredible job with the design for David’s radio show Mondo Pop. We love the retro vibe of our new design, the vinyl sleeve and the way that it feels like an evolution from the original logo. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the results!
So here’s to a very slightly more professional TINH pod and blog – and to many more albums reviews coming your way in 2022…
If you’ve been reading the blog or listening to the pod then you’ll know that I love a debut. I’ve always been fascinated by the raw honesty of a debut and the breadth of ideas that they often bring. They’re often the culmination of everything that has happened to an artist up until that point. I think it was a Galagher who said something like ‘it takes you whole life to write your debut album … then the record company want another one 12 months later’. For Joy Crookes that ‘whole life’ was 22 years when she wrote and recorded this special debut album. However, ‘Skin’ is far from her first rodeo with 3 EPs and 13 singles recorded and released since 2016.
Joy Crookes was born in Lambeth and raised in Elephant and Castle, and moved to Ladbrooke Grove in South London when she was 14. During these teen years she taught herself the guitar and piano and started writing music, ‘I didn’t know then that this could be a proper job’. Joy went the You Tube route to self publish covers and then her own original music in what is now quite a common rites of musical passage.
In Oct. 2021 she released ‘Skin’. It’s 13 tracks, 42 minutes and is (all puns fully intended) … an absolute joy to listen to. Sorry. Whilst the album would mostly likely be described as nu-soul or something similar, the styles on show are vast, pop, soul, jazz, trip-hop shades of punk and even a track that feels like it could be a Bond soundtrack contender (To Lose Someone). The album feels really personal in a way that many records don’t, even when an artist in sharing their innermost turmoil. This feels like proper soul music, channeling her young (but old) soul.
In some ways it feels very much like a debut album; there’s loads of ideas thrown into the mix, she’s obviously exploring a rich soundscape that she didn’t have access to on previous recordings and there’s a brash confidence in the way that she struts and spins through the album. However, Skin totally lacks the naivety that many debuts (including ones that I love) suffer from. As we found with Arlo Parks this time last year, the signposts for her future output are numerous. She really could go anywhere on the next album … if of course Sony let her.
So, hold on tight … cause … we need to talk about Amy. My skin is crawling from even raising the topic of Amy Winehouse as it’s the worst lazy criticism possible. But, I am sorry, there are valid comparisons. But when I make these comparisons, I mean them as the biggest compliment to both artists. I loved Frank. It’s right up there on my list of faulted but adored debut albums. I properly fell in love with Amy Winehouse when I heard Frank. I felt like I knew her. ‘Skin’ has exactly the same kind of raw personality as Frank. They are both at times heart breaking and at the next moment amusing and jubilant. The broad, lush, widescreen soundscape that is employed on Skin is at times reminiscent of Back to Black. Both artists sound nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. When I say this album reminds me of Amy Winehouse I mean it reminds me of all of the things that I love about Amy Winehouse.
Lyrically, this album is a monster. Joy Crookes is a STRONG songwriter. This album really demonstrates her talent across what are quite different tracks in terms of style and subject matter. Relationships, gender politics, family shit, politics, and London are all in the mix. She writes about all of them in a personal manner that never looks the other way, is heartfelt and often well humoured. There are 1 or 2 tracks where the standard slips a little (Wild Jasmine being the track that comes to mind) but the album is strong enough as a body of work to keep momentum.
If this album was released earlier … even a month or two … I think it would have featured pretty high in my 2021top 10. It’s so easy to recommend to people. Thank you Joy, I’m genuinely excited to see what you do next.
We loved loved loved Mitski’s Be The Cowboy in 2018, and she’s back with a new album – Laurel Hell – in February 2022. Before this lands there’s a fantastic new EP, which takes in 3 sumptuous tracks including this upbeat, synth and guitar-pop of The Only Heartbreaker. Roll on next year!
It’s never a bad day when you discover some new music from Michael Kiwanuka. This is from a new Netflix show, but who cares where it’s from? There’s two tracks and they’re both heaven.
A few months ago I presented the fantastic track ‘Mirrored Identities’ by Tunnel Visions and we discussed that it would be hard to follow that track up in a set. This stuck with me for a while and I wanted to find out where the track actually sits in a set. Could you follow it up? The result is that it sits well in a set, and this is my answer to the question. I hope you enjoy….
TRACKLIST
Musumeci – Pawn Storm Aera – Shallows Tim Engelhardt – Idiosynkrasia (Andhim Remix) Rampa – 2000 Avidus – More LFO Djuma Soundsystem & EMOK – Ouga Gionist & Turgi – Konnakol Tunnelvisions – Mirrored Identities Audiojack – Introspection (Nick Curly Remix) Ede – Mimosa Clavis – Anteac Yeah But No – Run Run Run (Adam Port Remix)
In one of our most enjoyable chats to date we delved into Skyzoo’s latest effort ‘All the Brilliant Things’ on Episode 13.
Within the chat David requested a Skyzoo playlist looking into his previous work or perhaps a quick trip into the Brooklyn artists that inspired Skyzoo…. I chose to do both!
First and foremost lets delve into some of the most formative hip hop tracks from Brooklyn. Where do you start and more so end?
And then Skyzoo. Like the Brooklyn playlist it could be much longer and was tough to keep it down to 10 tracks (plus a bonus).
For Genesis Owusu, it wasn’t so much for the album, but almost per song, sometimes per verse and chorus! There are so many there, right across the spectrum from Talking Heads to Death Grips, Young Fathers to Frank Ocean and Saul Williams to Kendrick Lamar. It’s such an album of contrasts, musical flourishes and confidence in the protagonists talents – from Owusu to his tight and musically inventive band – that it’s a joy each listen, with new things coming with each time you encounter it.
We hope you enjoy the playlist and also feel free to suggest things back to us on the socials.
If you’re getting your teeth into Episode 10 of the podcast and the Weather Station’s brilliant Ignorance, you’ll know we also talked all about those artists that we found within its ten tracks. Some of the blog’s favourites ride high in that list: Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac, U.S. Girls, HAIM, Phoebe Bridgers…. so we made a playlist of them all as a companion piece, something we’re going to try to do for each album of the month. It’s a bit of enjoyment if nothing else. Hopefully here it’s a bit more context to an album that gets better and better with every listen.
It may seem like there’s always a nailed-on candidate for our albums of the month. But there’s all sorts of reasons that an album may not be chosen as AOTM. Way before we did the podcast, we were still having the same discussions and dilemmas. So why would it get derailed? Sometimes it’s as simple as the fact that we’ve already got it and have rinsed it before it could be chosen – Caribou’s Suddenly and Roisin Murphy’s Roisin Machine are both good examples of this last year – or sometimes there’s a veto from in the camp. Or it simply falls at the wrong time: your album’s released in March, you have June, and by the time your choice comes around, its old news.
I think we can all agree that should time be taken again for Roisin, we’d have chosen her over Sufjan 99 times out of 100. Hindsight is an easy out. But we loved it so much it sometimes feels like taking the less worn path (though Sufjan is hardly unlikely) is a better choice than choosing something everyone will love. Other times while one – or more – of us loves it, it’s pretty clear that it would be likely hated by the other. I know what I’ll be playing still in a year.
With Ep11 and April’s AOTM in question, this is a great example of that dilemma. @misterstory put me onto Menneskekollektivet by Lost Girls, a strange, ethereal collection of 5 tracks from Norwegians Jenny Hval and Havard Volden, that he brought to my attention as one of the 4 ‘new tracks’ up with Episode 10. 11 minutes of hypnotic music that’s part spoken word, part dancefloor chug, then in between meanders into the areas in between. I was half-captivated, half confused by it, but it definitely stuck in my head. And it pointed me to the album, which was just as off the wall, but just as beautiful. While it was in the mix for April, we also knew that it really wouldn’t be a ‘David’ album, and we weren’t sure it was a Nolan one either, and so it went to the cutting room floor. Which is odd as the album we chose – Genesis Owusu‘s Smiling With No Teeth – was just as ‘out there’ in many I(but different) ways. But it just seemed to be an album which would be a choice that would land with the four of us better. Having said that, we chose Macca, and look how that turned out for Ep7!
Going a bit deeper into the album than even Joey has so far, Love Lovers is probably the standout of the 5 tracks (total: 44 minutes for, yes, only five tracks). A tribal beat that morphs into techno, as Hval’s spoken words then wailing notes and Volden’s chords drive the melody, until it breaks out into an epic peak. Carried By Invisible Bodies also weaves around, its chords de- and re-tuned throughout, a sort of woozy, disorienting melody that I’m still not sure if I’d ever have the cojones to play out anywhere. It definitely skirts the fine line between musical genius and pretentiousness, and no doubt knows that. But the artist background of Hval (and this being considered an accessible counterpoint to her solo work!) makes this less of a surprise when you delve deeper.
We could probably do a whole series of albums that never quite made it to a chosen each month – we don’t by any means have just those 12 albums in our lives each year – but this one definitely stood out. For every choice there’s always one that ends up on the floor. If I had time again, I’d have chosen Everything Everything’s Reanimator because – no diss to Yves Tumor, my EP3 choice – I’m still playing it, all the time. In fact it’s turned into one of my favourite albums of the last 6 months. In music as in life, you live and learn.
