Last year Cultureberg proposed some records of the year, wrote in some length and possibly even some depth about them. This year will be less structured, less certain. There are always good records being made - let no-one pretend otherwise - sometimes it's hard to pick them out of the morass. The technology has always shaped the art in popular music, and now it is the technology of its propagation and consumption which shapes its appreciation - streaming, everything ever recorded available. How do you find the Good Stuff? I'm not going to rehash this discussion, just noting that buying up piles of vinyl and cherry-picking tracks whilst listening through piles of cdr s can make it difficult to focus on what was inescapably the Really Good Stuff. But it's there...
Thinking about this it seems the memorable stuff is linked to seeing the band/artist live or investing in the vinyl, money-wise and time-wise..You're more likely to replay a vinyl record than a dodgy download, but maybe there is an aesthetic judgement being made when you commit to twelve inches of plastic or an evening out.
Best record of the year has to be Aldous Harding's Party. I don't yet own a physical copy of this, and this paradox should only underline the judgement, though in keeping with my argument I saw her live at the Sea Change festival in Totnes. As a performer. Aldous is inhabited by her songs, nay squatted in by their deranged subjects, Her eyes roll, she sits oddly, the audience respond in trepidation and respect. There is a constrained theatricality in her performance - how much is artifice, how much possession is difficult to tell - but what is undeniable is that there is a focus on the moment and the songs' delivery which is rare. In Totnes, in a room above the pub, the audience hushed the noisy, Aldous snarked at someone asking for windows to be opened (it was humid, at least) and the air crackled. She essayed the already classics - Imaging my Man, Living The Classics and Party (a song open to many interpretations, but surely talking about thoughts most would not admit to). John Parrish produced the album, and the lazy comparison is PJ Harvey with Kate Bush's vocals (less the stage school histrionics). I prefer Ms Harding to Polly and Kate by a New Zealand mile. The last song was Horizon - a song that resists interpretation whilst sucking in your identification, but I will link to the song which began the show and ends the album at the end of this post, Swell does the skull. It is possibly the most folk derived on the album and closest to her eponymous debut, but this video, I would suggest, is probably the best song performance ever recorded in a bathroom....unless anyone knows better.
Was this the best live show? Well, maybe, but I will plump for the show we saw in a velvet draped tent in Halifax's Piece Hall just before Christmas, where the Unthanks sang the songs of Molly Drake. Up until recently, this would be qualified with a comment of, "You know, Nick's Mum." This is now rendered inappropriate as Molly's songs, private and unperformed in a public arena in her lifetime, share (and probably pro-generated) a winsome regret and pantheistic appreciation of life's cycles and it's agonising inevitabilities that her son's more well known folk songs also encompassed.. She was every-woman and yet unique. There were girls in the crowd fighting back sobs of recognition, and not all of them were female. Chateau Cultureberg are big fans of The Unthank's interpretations of Antony and The Johnsons, but this venture surpasses that diversion. Molly's originals have a particular aura - Josephine Foster at The City Varieties maybe - but the Unthank's layer on the contemporary relevance, layer on the fragility. They encored with a cover of River Man (for what it's worth, my favourite Nick Drake song) they first recorded 12 years ago. Like Molly's songs, it is timeless and universal.
The other recommendation is forward looking, in that the Cultureberg Dyad and the Tangerine Dream will be heading down the M1 in February to see Circuit Des Yeux in London. The album, Reaching For Indigo, was a Day of Release (thereabouts) purchase, and whilst it cannot replicate the First Buzz thrill of In Plain Speech it has, perhaps, a depth and accessibilty all its own which may eclipse its predecessor. The songs hover and thrum with a confidence and poise that is backed up by a robust self-belief which seems born out of a significant Brainshift, and perhaps the esteem of innumerable peers. The balance of experimentation, structure, muezzin wail and Armatrading folkiness is perfectly poised on waves of oscillation. It's a great record.
I've written earlier about Destroyer's album Ken, and this continues to unfold and grow in estimation. They were brilliant at the Brudenell a few weeks ago - proof positive that they are a killer band not merely a frame for Dan Bejar's idiosyncracy. Mention should also be made of the Fleet Foxes show I saw at the Manchester Apollo, having resisted listening to The Crack Up for a complex of unsatisfactory reasons - time passed, begrudging reviews...Suffice to say the show was a unsurpassable summation of a certain strain of Cosmic American Music. Gene Clark goes Prog, Van Dyke Parks puts his finger in his ear to whistle the Cabinessence; the whole place, I swear, levitated. As I write tonight, albums acquired, bought, downloaded, continue to give up their riches, seem better than last time. Hiss Golden Messenger's Hallelujah Anyhow may be the best record Ronnie Lane made with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, Colter Wall's album seems both more heartfelt and more metamodern. There is always good music being made. Don't let anyone tell you different. Here's Aldous...
