Tag: British rock

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Albums

Best albums of 2018: The honourable mentions (aka #10 through #6)

Happy Friday, November 23rd everyone! Black Friday, to boot. And happy belated Thanksgiving to our American friends!

Yep, it’s that time of year again. The best of the year lists are going to start pouring in from all over. It was actually around this time last year that I kicked off my Best Albums series with an end of the year list for 2017. I then travelled back in time through the decades, with stops at 2007, 1997, and finally, 1987 (you can find all of these completed lists here). It was a fun exercise and I’ll endeavour to do the same over the next year, starting with this 2018 list.

The drill is this. You’ll get albums ten through six, a sort of honourable mentions collection, today, and then, I’ll run through my top five albums of the year over the next five Fridays. If all goes well, the number one album will be revealed on the final Friday of the year.

For 2018, you’ll likely find that my list won’t resemble many of the lists from the real music sites. In fact, if you’re hoping for spoilers in the photo at the top of this post, you’ll be disappointed. None of those albums will appear in this series. As I get older, I find my tastes don’t line up as often with what is hip and new. I did check out a few of the buzz bands and some of them were quite good (hello, Shame and Starcrawler), just not top ten good in my opinion. And well, the ten albums that will make up this list may not be everyone else’s best. But they’re mine.

As always, I welcome hearing your own favourites and thoughts on my choices in the comments section of each post.

Let’s get started…

#10 David Byrne “American utopia”

To be honest, the only reason this album made this list at all is because I got to see the former Talking Heads frontman this fall at Ottawa’s CityFolk festival. I had only given “American utopia” a cursory glance prior to the festival and wasn’t even sure I would stay for his whole set because of a scheduling conflict with another artist but I was glad, in the end, that I did. His was probably one of my favourite sets in recent years and I’ve been listening to this album regularly ever since, it growing in my esteem with each play. Yes, it’s varied in sound but not in theme. For his first solo album in fourteen years, Byrne is as fresh and quirky and intelligent as he ever has been.

Gateway tune: “Everybody’s coming to my house”

#9 James “Living in extraordinary times”

As some of you may undoubtedly already know, I’ve been a pretty big James fan for a couple of decades now but the appearance of their fifteenth (!!!) studio album here has nothing to do with loyalty. In fact, I wasn’t much of a fan of their last album, 2016’s “Girl at the end of the world”, as a whole, disagreeing with a bunch of people who made it the band’s highest charting album to date. “Living in extraordinary times” is at times as big as the best of James’s hit singles but it also has its quiet moments. At its core, though, it’s an album that has Tim Booth and band trying to find a forward in these crazy times, with more than a few nods and kicks at the current US president.

Gateway tune: “Coming home (pt. 2)”

#8 The Limiñanas “Shadow people”

Okay. So I had never heard of this band before this year. I don’t even remember how I originally came across their sixth studio album, “Shadow people”, but I know it hooked me from the beginning. It took some doing to figure out what they were about, including reading a Wikipedia entry written in French. My French is improving but far from perfect. Still, I was able to ascertain that they are a duo, Lionel and Marie, indeed from France, that were performing in other groups for many years, before forming The Liminanas in 2009. This latest album checked a lot of my boxes with its droning and driving psychedelia and then mixing it with laid back and cool Serge Gainsbourg sounds. That it includes contributions by Anton Newcombe and Peter Hook is just topping on the cake. I can’t wait to dig into their earlier work.

Gateway tune: “Istanbul is sleepy”

#7 The Essex Green “Hardly electronic”

For a band that hasn’t worked together in over a decade and an album whose players reside in three different states, The Essex Green and their fourth studio album, “Hardly electronic”, sound pretty slick indeed. I got into this group after seeing them open for Camera Obscura in 2007 and bought their album “Cannibal sea” based on their performance. I have now been salivating while listening to that album and waiting over eleven years for new material. Now that’s in my hands and spinning on my turntable, I am not disappointed in the least. They picked up the 60s and 70s inspired indie pop right where they left it and they quite possibly might have improved on their sound in the intervening years. Hopefully, it’s not another decade before we get album number five.

Gateway tune: “The 710”

#6 Colter Wall “Songs of the plains”

Who is this Colter Wall? He definitely does not sound of this time and place, singing somber and slow-burning numbers about the plight of the plainsmen in the 1800s and the legend of Wild Bill Hickok. Amazing, then, that this kid is but 23 and hails from Saskatchewan, Canada. It was my brother Mike that alerted me to him when he saw his name on the lineup for Ottawa’s CityFolk festival. His was definitely one of the highlight sets of the festival for me. Not only are his songs well written and of a different sensibility in today’s pop world but Wall has a voice that has been compared to the likes of Johnny Cash, though I for one would say it is even more profound than that. This is his sophomore album and builds upon the fantastic work laid out on last year’s fine debut. I think we’ll be hearing lots from him in the coming years.

Gateway tune: “Saskatchewan in 1881”

Check back next Friday for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 1991: #12 The Farm “All together now”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

I watched a lot of films in my late teens and early twenties and often rewatched my favourites multiple times. One of these was (what is perhaps) a little known WWII film called, “A midnight clear”. Directed by Keith Gordon and starring Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise, Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon and Arye Gross, the film is more drama than action. It is based upon a novel by the same name, whose plot is built around a Christmas eve truce between German and US soldiers, forged after the two sides engaged in a snowball fight. We see the kindness and the humanity of these characters plus the psychological trauma and inherent madness that results from the killing and loss in war in both sides.

The whole concept and idea always reminded me of “All together now”, my favourite tune off The Farm’s debut album “Spartacus”. Though the song has been used in plenty of adverts and films and as the theme for football matches and tournaments so that its original intent has been diminished over the years, it was originally written by the group’s frontman, Peter Hooton, as an anti-war song. The lyrics refer to a no man’s land truce, this time during World War I, between British and German soldiers and though they only refer to December, we can assume it was Christmas.

The song is uplifting, anthemic in mood, and full of hope. And if it feels familiar, it’s because at keyboard Steven Grimes’ suggestion, the group lifted and used the same chord progression as that of Pachelbel’s Canon. Those chords set the tone right from the beginning and underpin the rest of song, like a gauze curtain or a beam of light from the clouds of heaven, even as the nasty guitars and danceable drum beats drag you on to the floor for debauchery.

The Farm only ever released three full-length albums before breaking up in 1996 and “All together now” is probably still their best-known tune. Personally, I could think of many worse songs to be remembered for. Indeed, though it is a popular tune and sounds lightweight, it’s imbued with the Liverpool outfit’s favourite themes.

I’ll dance to that.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1991 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #8 Pulp “The night that Minnie Timperley died”

<< #9    |    #7 >>

At number eight on my best tunes of 2001 list, we have “The night that Minnie Timperley died”, a track that also figured on my Top five Pulp tunes post I did back at the beginning of this year.

This particular song appeared on the iconic Britpop band’s seventh and final album, “We love life”. It was never released as a single so I likely didn’t hear it in 2001. You see, I didn’t purchase this album the moment it was released into the record stores. Indeed, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts in this series, I was rather poor when we first moved to Ottawa in 2001, with not enough disposable income to lavish upon the purchase of many compact discs. I certainly remember looking longingly on the album’s simple cover and its adornment of block letters spelling the band’s name when I tortured myself by browsing through Record Runner, my favourite independent music store at the time, long since closed down. I had to content myself to the snippets I could catch on the internet, like the first single “The trees”, until I had stowed enough money working overtime at my call centre job.

When I finally put the CD in the tray and pressed play, track number three hooked me on first listen. To my ears, it most certainly should have been a hit, save the dark subject matter. Not that this has ever stopped Jarvis Cocker and company before. Never one to shy from the dark underbelly of humanity, Cocker mines a dream here, telling the story of a teenaged girl’s murder, lurking in the minds of both the victim and the predator. A song that starts so upbeat (“There’s a light that shines on everything & everyone”) but ends so dark and twisted (“And he only did what he did ’cause you looked like one of his kids”). It feels like Jarvis is playing with us. And if you didn’t pay enough attention, you could be easily fooled and taken in by the funky drum beats, handclaps and jangle, alien synth washes, and Who-worthy rock and roll guitar and bass slam riffs.

It’s brilliant stuff that proves this group was great right up until the moment they broke up.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.