(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: The Clientele Album Title: Bonfires on the heath Year released: 2009 Year reissued: 2017 Details: standard black vinyl
The skinny: Happy new year everyone! I’m starting off my blogging year by returning to the series I started back in November, sharing the copies in my vinyl collection of The Clientele’s LPs. Originally released in 2009, “Bonfires on the heath” was the London-based dream pop quartet’s 5th studio album. It continued moseying on down the beautiful road they’d been thus far paving, mixing jangly atmospherics with hazy, technicolour psychedelics. I purchased this bare-bones Merge records reissue back in 2017 from Amazon’s UK platform*, a few weeks after I ordered the 10th anniversary reissue of The Clientele’s previous album. “Bonfires” is a total mood record, one that I am always ready to face.
Standout track: “Bonfires on the heath”
*Something I was doing with regularity back in those days because they had access to records more in line with my tastes and it was still relatively affordable, even with the shipping across the ocean and the exchange rate.
Well, here we are. We’ve finally made it to the last full day and hence, the last post of the year and exactly as planned, we’re going to be talking today about my favourite album of 2025: No Joy’s “Bugland”.
Originally formed as a duo in Montreal, Canada in 2009 by Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd, No Joy has gone through a number of personnel compositions over the years but is these days, for all intents and purposes, the musical vehicle for White-Gluz. My first exposure to No Joy’s music was sampling their 2013 sophomore release “Wait to pleasure”. As I hinted back at the beginning of December*, I was alerted to this record care of a post on a Facebook group page that I had forgotten joining on all things Shoegaze. This happy introduction began a long love affair with their music. I immediately went back to pick up the debut “Ghost blonde”, ate that up, and since then, have stopped to take notice whenever a new EP or LP was announced. It was the term shoegaze that first drew me to No Joy but White-Gluz keeps adding to the arsenal and experimenting with sounds, colouring far outside the lines and stretching the label to its limits.
Indeed, when I wrote about No Joy’s fourth album “Motherhood” for my Best albums of 2020 list, I suggested that Wikipedia might soon need to erase all reference to shoegaze from its No Joy page. And though I think the progression has continued ever onward on “Bugland”, I’ve changed my thinking on that sentiment, especially after finally catching No Joy live back in October and seeing White-Gluz and company perform these songs in the flesh. This fifth record doesn’t always live in that space where guitars are layered, screeching, fuzzed out, and dreamy controlled chaos, but it’s still there at the heart. And there’s so much more. There’s some metal, some dance, experimental noise, prog, and synth pop. White-Gluz makes music for herself, that’s obvious, bucking trends and taking names, and she’s most definitely having fun on this album.
“Bugland” is big and magical. It begs to have all the knobs cranked to eleven. It calls you dance along with it, though its ups and downs, to close your eyes and sing/scream. It is definitely weekend music. Eight songs for living free. Each one worth your attention but as always, I’ve picked three from the group for you to sample.
“Garbage dream house”: “Erased the laughs all off from your face. And I’m wondering how.” The opening track feels like a collage. It starts and ends with mutated dial tone sounds, bringing to mind the days of dial up internet, when the world seemed limitless, if you could only have the patience for it. Then, there’s the heavy handed drum beat and the muscular guitar skipping the light fantastic around it. White-Gluz’s vocals sound at times a part of the ether, an echo of a dream, and at others fed through the machine, syllables and vowel sounds becoming key strokes. By the end, everything is thrown through the blender, and the song sounds like many different songs from one moment to the next, roaring and soaring and challenging your ear drums.
“Bits”: “I walk around the back and you’re all around me. You’re all around.” Track three is a dichotomy, setting angst and discordance against pastoral freedom. It is angry and noisy and angular guitars. These build and get more aggressive but when they take a break, to gear up for more, you notice that the dreamy synths were there all along. The vocals float around the proceedings, fading in and out of coherency. When you do catch a word or an idea, you can’t help but wonder whether you are missing something important with all those other words and ideas flitting about. You aren’t given long to ponder though. The vocals just continue to play hide and seek in the mix, even the spoken word bit at the end feels like a conversation walked in on halfway through, but before you can ever ask for a repeat, the song is over and you press play again.
“Bugland”: “You’re in bugland. Leave you suntanned. You look better with eyes eyes eyes.” The title track is only two and a half minutes long but it sounds infinitely bigger and more pronounced. The beats are frenetic, almost rave material, and they don’t quit, though they do slip behind the screen of heavy riffing guitars at points and the washes of synths at others. The words almost unintelligible, voice in the high registers, calling to mind early Cocteau Twins, but the energy and tech interruptions scream Curve. Indeed, White-Gluz is leaving us breathless, really selling us on this Bugland. I would never think that I might enjoy a place that would be run by the creepy crawlers but she almost has me convinced.
*In a story I’ve told a couple of times that I won’t repeat here.
So that’s it, my favourites for 2025. In case you missed them, here are the previous albums in this list:
I trust that those of you who celebrate had an enjoyable Christmas holiday. I passed a great couple of days with my lovely wife but now I’m back to continue this countdown of my fave albums of the year. So let’s go.
Seven years ago I fell in love with an album. It was called “Shadow people” and it was by this band that I’d never heard of before: The Limiñanas. I placed it at the number eight position on the list of my top ten albums of 2018 when I sat down to put it together. But the album continued to grow in my esteem over the months and years that followed and it would likely place even higher if I were ever to redo said list.
Strangely and sadly, I was never able to learn much more about this band. I can tell you that The Limiñanas were formed in 2009 in a small town in the south of France by husband and wife duo, Lionel and Marie Limiñana, but that’s nearly all I can say for sure. I went back and tracked down a handful of their previous albums and found that there’s much to like there as well. So I then set to waiting impatiently for a new album, an album that didn’t immediately appear. Instead, they focused on scoring and soundtracking a bunch of films and collaborating on material with some of their friends, including actress Emmanuelle Seigner and Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe*. I was almost starting to expect that a new album would never materialize, especially after the release of their retrospective compilation, “Electrified”, back in 2022, but then, I was surprised yet again.
Somehow its February release escaped my notice and I came at “Faded” from behind. From the opening notes of the instrumental intro track, I knew the album I had been waiting for had arrived. The double album is cinematic in scope and heavenly dramatic. The duo enlist likeminded guest vocalists to lead certain tracks, adding to their own shared duties, giving the proceedings a compilation feel, albeit one with a shared vision and a droning, retro psychedelic rainbow coloured coat of paint. It’s music as haunting and indelible as the blanked out faces draped across the album’s cover. The mood is late-night art-house film or darkened, half-empty, wine soaked dive bar.
The thirteen tracks are hard to separate and dissect as distinct entities apart from the delicious whole and I wouldn’t bring myself to do so if it weren’t the tradition with these posts. I’ve perservered, however, and managed to come up my three picks for you to peruse.
“The dancer”: Track seven is an instrumental beast. It starts with a steady drum beat. It is quickly layered with an arpeggiating bass line that just climbs up in down your spine like a fit athlete on a rope ladder. Pretty soon you’re deep in a jungle of organ chords and effects, easily lost to the sounds. The fuzzy guitars are the last straw. Queue the smoke machine and the retro coloured light show and you’ve somehow forgotten there’s no words to sing along to. Your whole body is absorbed in the delicious washes of sound. You can almost picture the scene in the film to which this could soundtrack, a mass crowd on the dance floor, soft filters, the protagonist succumbing to the lateness of the hour and the alcohol levels of her umpteenth cocktail.
“Shout”: “Shout shout, until you lose your soul.” The vocals on track four are provided by Timothée Régnier (aka Rover), a French musician that grew up in New York City and sings mostly in English. A haunting voice that echoes bouncing down an infinite hallway, ominious and foreboding. Set against a punishing beat, hammering keys, layers of guitars, you almost feel like this could be a lost outtake from the self-titled Velvet Underground debut album. Yeah, another insatiable track yanked firmly from another time and another place. An anachronistic journey from beginning to end.
“Prisoner of beauty”: “Poor little diamond crashed out on the rocks again.” Apparently, the advanced single and second track on the album was inspired by Primal Scream’s “Rocks”. It certainly has a similar driving beat as the Scottish psych rock band’s 1994 hit single and of course, “Prisoner of beauty”’s vocals are perfectly and unmistakably delivered by Primal Scream’s frontman, Bobbie Gillespie. It’s an almost perfect collaboration and feels like it was fated, written in the sparkling stars. I couldn’t imagine any other way that this song could have been delivered better, the man and myth sounds like he’s cozying right up to fuzzy guitars and screaming organs and wrapping them around himself like the most comfortable robe. This is without a doubt one of the greatest indie rock singles to see the light in the last year** and one that I could see dragging these sorry old bones of mine out on to any dance floor, at any time to shake a leg and slap a thigh. So great.
*Who produced the aforementioned “Shadow people”.
**Though in truth it was released as a single near the end of 2024.
We’ll be back on New Year’s Eve with the final post in the countdown. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:
My (life in) music lists 