A short but functional post today. We only get to review one Album of the Month but of course listen to so much more. I thought I’d share a few of the new albums that have been a big part of my life in the last month or two;
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to guess what albums are going to feature in the end of year round ups, even as early as January. ‘Home’ by Rhye probably won’t be troubling too many of these lists. It’s too nice. It’s too gentle. It’s nowhere near cool enough. But I love it and everyone that I have recommended it to has loved it too, regardless of their usual musical tastes. Listen without prejudice and enjoy.
Next is ‘Deacon’ by serpentwithfeet which is an ambient R&B celebration of big gay love and sex. I am not sure there’s much more to be said. It’s a beautiful, perfectly crafted selection of 11 tracks. Each has something to say on their own but also as part of the wider story. Pull the lyrics up when you listen, revel in the frankness of the stories told.
Finally, is ‘Menneskekollektivet’ by Lost Girls a collaboration between 2 Norwegian artists; Jenny Hval and Havard Volden. Here you’ll find 5 tracks, 46 minutes worth of surprisingly accessible, experimental electronica textured with spoken word, vocal melody and harmony, guitars and at time chuggy beats. Sometimes odd, always fascinating. I know Guy is enjoying this one and he may also post on this album too. I think this album is very much worth investing some time into.
Listeners to the This Is Not Happening Podcast will be familiar with our standard format. The 1st half of each Pod is dedicated to an ‘Album of the Month’ (AOTM), the 2nd half of each Pod is dedicated to ‘Tracks of the Month’ (TOTM). Each pod we have a different theme for TOTM. We’ve had ‘new tracks’ and ‘favourite disco track’ but in Episode 10 (coming soon) we chose a new approach. We would draw straws, Secret Santa style, to find a new track for a specific member of the This Is Not Happening crew.
The track that we were selecting could be literally anything. An old classic. A hidden gem. Something brand-spanking-new that they’d never heard. Just in case we selected something that they already new we agreed to create a 4 track playlist so that we had a few back-ups. I was drawn to play Secret Santa to Guy. At first I thought this was a good thing and that my job would be relatively easy. And then i didn’t sleep for 2 weeks worrying about this selection.
Ahead of the podcast being released into the wild. I thought I’d share the long list from which I carved out my 4 track long list and my track selection.
You’ll find a pretty broad range of track selections here. Some of them I could have selected for Nolan, a couple I could have selected for David but I had good reason to believe that many, if not all, fitted into the overlap in the Venn Diagram of Guy and Joseph. The 2x 12 minute tracks were strictly for Guy!
I hope you enjoy my musical gift to Guy. I am sure he won’t mind you borrowing it.
Yes, we’ve done a podcast, but we haven’t talked about it much on here up to now. However, there’s a lot there for fans of any stripe, from EP1’s RTJ4 right up to Arlo Park’s Collapsed in Sunbeams in EP9. So consider this a refresher, or re-up (Omar comin’!) of where we have got up to. If you’ve not dipped into them all yet, or you’ve only braved one, here’s your chance to dive in! There’s a player below and after that a bit of a bite-size lump of what each is about. Enjoy.
Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
If RTJ hit the zeitgeist, anonymous collective Sault’s Untitled [Black Is] took that feeling to another level with its modern take on enveloping soul, roots, dub, and more, all wrapped up in lyrics that elevated black consciousness and lived experience. It really was a joy to talk through. We also took on our favourite afro-centric tracks from four different directions.
As the year came to a close, we cast our minds back over the last twelve months and counted down our top ten albums. For the first time in the twelve years of the blog, we mostly agreed on the top 3! We also brought our own tracks of the year to the table.
There’s lockdown albums, and there’s surprise releases from the biggest rock stars on the planet. McCartney III‘s homely rock and pop vision took us by surprise and showed that not everyone is a Beatles fan, to David’s shock! We also brought our best covers to the table, with some friction!
We hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast as much as we have making it. We have no grand plans, but we just want to talk about the music we love and hope a few others share that with us, whether you agree with us or not…. thanks again to everyone that’s listened up to now. See you at Episode 11 and Genesis Owusu!
Alongside Arlo Parks in March, we also chose new tracks to bring to the table in Episode 9. While we talked through one each on the episode, we had a shortlist of 4 from all the music we’d come across from the turn of the year.
There are some brilliant records from Tunnelvisions, Tom Trago, Nubiyan Twist, Virginia Wing, Sofia Kourtesis, Raveena, Field Music, Julien Baker, The Weather Station and many more.
Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
Episode 9 of This Is Not Happening lands on another massively hyped album from the last year: Arlo Parks: Collapsed In Sunbeams. From being crowned BBC’s ‘Sound of 2020’ and labelled ‘the voice of a generation’, the pressure on a debut album hasn’t been this heavy in a long time. We dissect it to see it lived up to the expectation, with Nolan at the helm.
In the second part of the show, we come back to picking our favourite new music since the turn of the year, with a really intriguing set of four great tracks We chose:
Episode #10 will be digging into The Weather Station’s latest album, Ignorance. Another female singer songwriter, but a departure from the world of Arlo Parks, for sure. Coming to you in late April.
It’s my turn for Album of the Month and as usual, I’ve not found my selection an easy choice. I’ve selected Ignorance by The Weather Station, the 5th full length album from 36 year old, Canadian Tamara Linderman. I wasn’t aware of her music before the single ‘Robber’ was released late in 2020. Her early albums fit neatly into the ‘singer / songwriter’ folk genre but with each successive release her sound develops in complexity and the band becomes bigger along with the sound. A journey that delivers ‘Ignorance’, which is hard to define by genre but it seems that many still refer to her as a folk artist. This feels like an old label that doesn’t fit this album. But on the other hand, does it really matter?
My hesitation in choosing this album was 100% down to the hype. Last month we discussed Arlo Park’s ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ a new, young artist from the UK managing the burden of expectation of being called ‘the voice of a generation’. The hype around ‘Ignorance’ is of a different kind; to come so early in 2021 but to be touted as a contender for ‘album of the year’. It’s a simple, undeniable fact that this changes your listening experience … at least it does for me. I vividly remember my first experience of this album. I had heard Robber, loved it and then saw an early review massively praising the album. I got on it straight away, and loved it. It was a 9/10 for me. I told the crew this was to be my Album of the Month. Can you tell there is a ‘but’ coming? But then, despite its luxuriant scope, scale and shockingly beautiful soundscape, I failed to connect to it emotionally. Which is odd as it ticks SO many of my boxes. The lyrical context and content being one of them. But it still failed to truly dent me emotionally. I found it a little cold and I stopped listening to it as a result.
So why have I chosen it? I’ve chosen it as I’ve gone on such a roller coaster with this album that I thought it would be an interesting choice for discussion with my friends who I know will have an opinion. I have connected more with this album over time. I think it demands close attention, it does sound best in headphones (I know, I know everything does) but I’d argue this is a different album in headphones. It’s so ‘pleasant’ on a surface level that it can be a perfect background music for life but I think due to the fragility or Tamara’s vocals and lyrics, a different level of appreciation can be achieved through a focused, concentrated listen.
So, on to the music? This a 40 minute, 10 track album. Hallelujah! Thank you Tamara. It is SO dense (I mean this in the ‘good way’) that overstepping the 10 track mark might have been problematic. There are a couple of 5 minute tracks but generally we’re in the 3-4 minute track mark … so this must be pop music right? I think the answer to that is ‘yes’ you could go ‘art pop’ if you wanted people to snigger behind your back but I am going with ‘pop music’ and I’m ok with that. ‘Side A’ (by which i mean tracks 1-6) is upbeat and rhythmically driven giving way to a more melancholic ‘Side B’. Regardless of the tone of the tracks there are tons of melodic, rhythmic and lyrical hooks. Let’s get into a few of them.
‘Robber’ … wow. What a way to open an album. There’s an albums worth of motifs, trills, frills, strings, woodwind and spiky yet intriguing ideas in one track (and of course we all know I love a big organ). It’s a surprisingly anxious, urgent and threatening track to start an album with and I think you could argue that it could have closed the album? It constantly threatens to veer off into jazz noise but never quite carries through on the threat.
The album then opens up into 9 more tracks that, while they rarely play with the oddness and complexity of ‘Robber’, there’s a hell of a lot going on. How many influences can you hear in this album? Are they deliberate? Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush, Springsteen (Atlantic / Tried to Tell You) and a host of other 80’s radio rock smeared with synths (I can genuinely hear shades of Dire Straits!) but then also the strings and hints of 80’s ‘sophisti-pop’ chucked in for good measure. David will love the disco-tinged-drive of ‘Parking Lot’ and I think we’ll all appreciate the magical backing vocals on ‘Loss’.
There is loads to love about this album; pop hooks with scope, scale, ambition and complexity. An artist playing with a wide sound palette and clearing enjoying the process and the results. I am still yet to fully connect with it emotionally but I can feel that this building slowly over time.
Some questions that I think might be interesting to discuss;
What is hell is this (and as always, does that even matter)?
How do hyperbolic critical reviews impact your experience of an album?
What influences do you hear in it?
What do you think might be preventing my emotional connection (reading a wide range of reviews – I am not the only one)
Whilst most of us are waiting for 2021 to show a flicker of light, you could argue that music hasn’t let us down so far. After kicking of the year off with Bicep’s ‘Isles’ February has delivered another treat; ‘Collaped In Sunbeams’, the debuit Album from Arlo Parks. For transparency, I wasn’t too sure about this album or how to approach it. The cynic in me was slightly concerned about the hype.
Much has already been written about the creation, but if you have missed the many articles here’s a top-line recap: Around a year ago Arlo Park embarked on writing her debut album as Covid hit. Instead of being whisked away to a glamorous recording studio in LA, New York or London Arlo and her writing partner hunkered down in a B&B in Hoxton and created much of this album as the world seemed to be falling apart. It seems that her focus could not be shaken and the results were fruitful.
As we all worked through 2020 we were treated with the first 5 tracks from the album; Eugine, Black Dog, Hurt, Green Eyes and Caroline. Black Dog, a chillingly honest song about her friends depression landed on many (including our) Top Ten year end lists for tracks of the year. As David pointed out in our 2020 year end podcast, there was a lot of expectation and hype around her album.
The album as a combined finished article is very approachable. From the spoken word intro into “Hurt’ Arlo quickly lets you into her world. Her honest lyrics are matched by her likeable vocals of the West London songstress. The pop sounding ‘Collapsed’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Caroline’ flow into each other and are pleasing on the ears whilst lyrically telling stories more in the vein of a poet than a pop star. She weaves stories into songs with ease, making you feel the album is closer to a conversation with a friend than a collection of songs. This is apparent as you move onto ‘Black Dog’, ‘Green Eyes’ and then ‘Just Go’ which feels like a summer jam on the outside and ever so familiar song about relationships to us all (at that age) when we think about our late teens and early 20’s.
We often speak on this blog and our podcast about album pace. I’d argue this album has been mapped very well. Some reviews have questioned ‘Violet’, and have suggested it perhaps is one of the albums weaker songs. I think the opposite. The Portishead-esk track reminds us not to rest on our laurels and arguably is a nod to some of her less predictable influences such as Radiohead. After a quick break from the expected you’re quickly pulled into the well known ‘Eugene’. It reminds me of Lily Allen. Not just for the vocal presentation and similar West London accents but also ability to welcome you into the story that Arlo tells and Allen previously did on some of her work. This for me carries through to ‘Bluish’ and ‘Porta 400’.
Like many debutant albums ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’ oozes with vulnerability. It reminds me of so many conversations with friends at that time in my life. As a person in my 40’s I can relate to her as her songs remind me of so many things when I was a similar age to her. I think perhaps that’s the magic; her and the allowance into her world.
It’s hard to read any article that doesn’t focus on the age of Arlo Parks which I struggle with. Many have arguably written their best work at this age; though perhaps this is the point. Is Arlo Parks going to be one of the greats? There is little doubt that poetic lyrics and welcoming vocals are ahead of many of her peers in a similar age group.
The album is easy to listen to, and has been on constantly in our house. It flows nicely and doesn’t seem to offend any of our ears. I often catch my Hayley and the kids humming along.
Any hype that this album has received is well earned in my opinion. Will she be one of the greats? I truly hope she can carry on the trajectory she has started on. But she has a lifetime of songs still to write and in the meantime this album has a fair bit of tread on it for me. There are many miles left in it before I’ll be needing the next model.
Irish rappers are still a pretty rare breed, though by all account it’s a fast growing scene. But even those that break out, like Rejjie Snow, end up relocating to the US, and let’s be honest, sounding 100% American.
I first heard Denise Chaila via the unbelievably charming and catchy Chaila tune last year, berating those who can’t be bothered to learn how to pronounce her surname.
I love that she’s got her own distinctive voice and flow, and she’s not just trying to sound like an identkit US rapper, and it’s just so enjoyable to listen to.
But this new track, ANSEO, feels like a step further forward. A proper intro track to her world view and her vibe over a fantastically beefy beat, mixed with the whole chainmail and swords video, it feels like she’s just waiting to blow up. Which is surely what’s going to happen to her….
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