Tag: 2020

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Best tunes of 2020: #8 No Joy “Birthmark”

<< #9    |    #7 >>

It’s been just shy of four months since we last visited this series counting down my favourite tunes of 2020.

I don’t know that I’ve stayed away on purpose. I do have a few series on the go and the usual end of year festivities often take up lots of blog space. However, I admit that I’ve been finding 2020 an odd year to look back upon of late. Sure there was lots of great music being produced with all these musicians locked up with nothing else to do, but the rest of us were also locked up. It often feels like a lost year* and I’m sure I’m not alone with this feeling.

Indeed, every time I sat down to write this post, I found myself getting distracted by something else. Most recently, I went down the rabbit hole of looking at the timelines and the numbers of the COVID pandemic and it brought it all back. It’s perhaps easy to forget how bad things looked early on and all the fear and uncertainty. The numbers of the rates of infection, how quickly things spread, and how many deaths there were early on. Faced with the stats, it made me think how bad things could have gotten if it weren’t for the measures taken and for the mass roll outs of the vaccines worldwide. I remembered the empty grocery shelves, the low gas prices, the almost daily trips to Costco in search of toilet paper and disinfectant wipes. The stories of resilience, human nature winning out, images of deserted streets of some of the world’s biggest cities, and that video of Italian seniors singing together from the windows of each of their homes.

That last reminded me about all the stories coming out of the seniors facilities during the lockdowns. Hearing how the virus ran rampant through each of them, despite the valiant efforts of staff. How it hit certain residents hard, given their age and in some cases, already poor health, how the mortality rate was even higher. How the isolation made things even harder for loved ones to check in on family members in these homes. The word was that some were terribly frightened, remembering the previous pandemic of their youth, and some were not really understanding what was going on and feeling abandoned. And though I’m sure things are quite different and much improved in these facilities nowadays, I met and spoke to a few seniors when I was in the hospital last year and heard some stories and got a different perspective. Imagine, preferring to stay in the hospital than to return to your ‘home’.

Which brings me back to the real subject of today’s post. “Birthmark”, the number eight song on this list of my favourite tunes from 2020, was actually inspired by Jasamine White-Gluz, frontwoman and driving force behind Montreal’s No Joy, visiting a relative in senior living facility a few years before the pandemic. It’s not a protest song or a call to arms for seniors rights but it does shine a light on their humanity.

“Oh I braid your veins
Our old limbs are hard to break
No Matter when
Every lung has a line to trace”

As I wrote when No Joy’s fourth long player hit number four on my Best albums list at the end of 2020, the “opening track on the album and very first peek at the project’s first new album in five years hits like a ton of bricks. It’s the sound of 90s shoegaze gone 90s alternative dance. Think Chapterhouse’s second album “Blood music” or anything by Curve. Like the rest of the album, Jasamine White-Gluz had a lot of fun with this one in the studio, finding use for a set of bongos and apparently, a broken clarinet. The bongos are definitely front and centre and form the basis of a dance floor beckoning drum rhythm but I challenge you to point out the clarinet in the wall of sound she’s created in the loops and loops and loops.”

*There’s been a couple of those for me in the last five…

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #9 Andy Bell “Love comes in waves”

<< #10    |    #8 >>

Ever since pioneering shoegaze rock band, Ride, called it quits rather spectacularly back in 1995, I’d been firmly planted in camp Mark Gardener in terms of following the post-breakup careers of the two warring principal songwriters and driving forces behind the band. I’d always preferred his voice and with the exception of “Vapour trail“, enjoyed far more the songs he led with Ride. I always thought he’d do greater things. Who knew the opposite would turn out to be true?

Sure, Gardener was the first of the two to record and release a solo album by a long shot. However, Bell seemed to get back on the horse quicker, forming Hurricane #1 in 1996, a band of whom I’ve still only heard a few tracks but who released a couple of reasonably successful albums before breaking up a few years later*. Shortly after that, he was recruited by the Gallagher brothers to replace founding Oasis member Guigsy, a job for which he had to quickly learn the bass. He stuck with them until their rude implosion a decade later** and stayed on with Liam for a couple of albums under the Beady Eye moniker. Fans (and readers of this blog) will know that Ride successfully reunited just over ten years ago and not only toured but have released three amazing new albums that build beautifully on their legacy. There’s also been a host of other collaborations and projects that I know little about or only heard tell of so I won’t list them, but know Mr Bell has been quite active indeed.

And in the midst of all this productivity, Andy Bell has been writing, recording and tinkering with songs, a step away from all of these projects, refining and honing sounds, lyrics and melodies. Apparently, “The view from halfway down” became something more than just a ragtag collection of song snippets shortly after David Bowie’s death, this event lighting a fire under Bell’s comfy chair. As a debut solo album, it works perfectly, recognizable enough as Andy Bell but different enough to set it apart from his other projects. And, yeah, some excellent tracks here.

“If you’re searching for meaning
Or a secret worth revealing
And you’re missing the feeling
Of connection, a reflection back from above
You’re ready to ride the first wave of love”

“Love comes in waves” is the opening number and the lead single from the album, a clarion call, a demand for attention. It’s frenetic jangling guitars repeating and not giving up, pounding it in to you, dancing up and down your spine. Meanwhile, the drums just chug along, breathless and immovable, like the unbreakable ocean that he’s comparing with love. A thing of beauty that creates a space that I would definitely want to revisit again and again, sometimes dancing, sometime just being.

*Hurricane #1 was re-formed by cofounder Alex Lowe without Bell and really, the rest of the original lineup in 2014.

**Of course, he was asked to join them on their wildly successful reunion tour this past summer/fall as well.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #10 The Exbats “Hey hey hey”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

I couldn’t imagine being in a band with my father, whether at 10 years old, 20, or any age really. But that’s the relationship between the two primary members of The Exbats, the band behind our song at number 10 from my list of favourite tunes from 2020.

Originally called The Numbats, the band began over a decade ago when Kenny McLain, who had recently picked up the guitar, decided that his 10 year old daughter Inez needed to learn to play an instrument. He gave her the option of learning to play the piano or to pick up the drums and play in a band with him. She chose the latter and they never turned back, though they both freely admit that it took them quite some time to get to where they are today. Inez also provides vocals on most of the songs and they have in the past employed a bass player* to bring their band complement to three. They’ve released five full-length albums and a handful of EPs, most of which have come in the last five or six years.

I couldn’t tell you now exactly how I came across this DIY indie group based in Arizona. It was early days in the pandemic and I had a lot more time on my hands, as all of us did. I didn’t really pick up a new hobby as I’ve heard others might have done, I just spent more time doing the things I was already doing. I probably discovered a lot of artists that I mightn’t have otherwise done under normal circumstances, looking under proverbial stones in corners of the internet that I didn’t often have time to reach. I probably came across The Exbats’ third album “Kicks, hits and fits”, just over a month after its release while mindlessly scrolling late into the night and quickly fell for its retro leaning, jangly pop rock. Admittedly, I haven’t to this day heard any of their other material but this album is rooted deep in 2020 for me, having brought some sunshine in an era of darkness and confusion.

“I wrote a stupid song today. (Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.)
And I threw it all away. (Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.)”

Perhaps fittingly, the penultimate and my favourite track on the album, “Hey hey hey”, is apparently all about the feeling of isolation in this world that’s heavily influenced by social media. It’s a bouncing and haunting number, very retro sounding, layered vocal harmonies, some rough hewn and some clean, a bopping bass line, clipping drums, all succumbing to a reverb drenched negative space, reminiscent of Phil Spector production. Beautiful stuff.

*When I came across them, Bobby Carlson Jr was filling that role.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.