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:
10. Snocaps “Snocaps”
9. Nation Of Language “Dance called memory”
8. Robert Ascroft “Echo still remains”
7. Doves “Constellations for the lonely”
6. Miki Berenyi Trio “Tripla”
5. Suede “Antidepressants”
4. Wet Leg “Moisturizer”
3. Pulp “More”
You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.
Looking back at my list so far, there’s a few bands making their first appearance on any of my end of year, best albums lists and a few of these still that are brand new to me, just hearing about them and listening to them for the first time this year. Gift is an example of this latter group.
My (life in) music lists 