unpopular

Double Negative: January 3rd 2018

Double Negative: January 2nd 2018

Double Negative: January 1st 2018

 

All the Unpopular music

Well, there’s another year done then, and in the tradition of the Unpopular festive celebration, here are links to various musical collections put together over the year(s). At the time of writing it is entirely unclear as to whether the monthly Unpopular mixes will continue in 2018 for it increasingly feels rather like a straightjacket (and one that a dwindling number of people find attraction in, it must be said). I rather think it might all fade away in the year ahead, or at least become something more organic and less driven by the rigid structures of the calendar. Perhaps also the focus may shift more to retrospection as I glance over at shelved records and CDs and think it may be advisable to re-acquaint myself with some of these treasures rather than be constantly looking for New. Perhaps the Unpopular computer expiration of The Thursday Before Christmas (so that this is composed/edited mostly from iPad) will encourage me to Do More Things. Perhaps too I will explore the new in the old as I perhaps escape down 1930s rabbit holes. Idly I wonder are there any records from the 1930s? What sorts of records would the those Bright Young Things of the 1920s have listened to in the 1930s? Or were they all dead by then? Metaphorically or actually…

I digress. And anyway I rather expect everyone (well, all three of you) has immediately skimmed over my words and leapt directly to the download links below. All of which will, in the tradition of these things, disappear like the ghost of Christmases past before 2018 has rung in its first tentative steps.

Advent 2017 playlist

All the 2017 Unpopular mixes 

All the 2016 Unpopular mixes

All the 2015 Unpopular mixes

All the 2014 Unpopular mixes

All the 2013 Unpopular mixes

Unpopular Advent 2016 - Day 24

'Pa’lante' from The Navigator by Hurray for the Riff Raff

 

 

If we drifted upwards and onwards through the 'Lunar Days' of The Clientele in 2017 then here, as we settle down in preparation for Christmas and wind up our Unpopular advent for another year, the thrust is most definitely onwards, onwards, onwards. At least this, I am reliably informed by the Interwebs, is the rough translation of ‘Pa’lante’, the song by Hurray For The Riff Riff which has been my touchstone for much of 2017; the song I keep coming back to; the song that takes me higher and deeper than any other.

 

Like many other artists in this advent series, Hurray For The Riff Raf were new to me in 2017, and whilst I very much enjoyed unearthing Alynda Segarra’s previous work it was to The Navigator set that I kept returning, convinced that whilst there is much in the likes of Look Out Mama, My Darkest Neighbour, Small Town Heroes, Young Blood Blues and It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You (highlights from these last two - or first two - collected on the ‘eponymous’ Hurray For The Riff Raff) to treasure there remains a sense that, ten years into her career as a singer/songwriter, it is on Navigator that Segarra has most profoundly and wonderfully found her voice. The Navigator is expansive and adventurous. It is a record that explores Segarra’s personal roots and which necessarily weaves around notions of personal identity within contexts set by geography and history. I cannot help but hear Kevin Rowland’s cry that his “national pride is a personal pride” in this record, and that is surely no bad thing. I am put in mind too of Joan Armatrading, whose early albums Segarra brings to mind on Navigator. Not just in that marvellous voice but also in the determinedly warm essence with which she cloaks her songs. Remember that old Saint Etienne/George Pelecanos notion of soft yet strong? Something like that. And do you remember that idea of Pop not being best placed to deal with complexities due to its essential short-form medium, and how we thought that The Granite Shore proved lie to that with Nick Halliwell’s extraordinarily detailed conceits of theatrical ambition? Well, something like that too.

 

The theatrical concept is key here, for it is the structure through which Segarra uses The Navigator as a means of exploring her Puerto Rican/New York/East Harlem axis of identity and it emerges as a stunningly prescient commentary/anticipator of contemporary history. There was something chillingly apt about spinning songs like ‘Rican Beach’, ‘Hungry Ghost’ and especially ‘Pa’lante’ in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s grotesque comments after Hurricane Maria. On ‘Hungry Ghost’ Segarra heartbreakingly sings “When will you help me out? You can’t even pick me out from the crowd”, yet it is a line delivered with a knife-sharp steely edge you would not want to be on the receiving end of.

 

It is to ‘Pa’lante’ that I am endlessly, tirelessly, hypnotically drawn however. Over it’s nigh-on six minutes the song majestically progresses in a series of movements. Sublime, almost resigned sorrow (funereal piano notes accompany Segarra’s isolated vocal) gives way to a hardening of tone announced by ‘Marquee Moon’ style hesitations and chords pronounced with sombre strength. Thunder rumbles. Lightning crackles. An interlude of poetry (‘Puerto Rican Obituary’ by Pedro Pietri lifted from the El Pueblo Se Levanta documentary) now punctuates the song before we enter the final movement where, over a swelling chorus of piano, strings and inter-twined voices Segarra says, time and time again “Pa’lante!” to numerous characters from the cast. Real, imagined, past present and probably future (a notion which mirrors Pietri’s words "All died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow”). It is profoundly moving. Extraordinarily stirring. It is a song that both holds a mirror to the times and which informs and colours the moments reflected.

 

And so we look forward even as we glance back. We glimpse the past as we strive onwards to the future. ‘Pa’lante!’ indeed.

Unpopular Advent 2016 - Day 23

'Lunar Days' from Music for the Age of Miracles by The Clientele

 

Yesterday mimics today and today repeats yesterday. Let us blink in a fit of deja-vu then and say that If there were a theme to the later part of this advent series (there isn’t) it might be Artists Who Also Featured In The Unpopular 50/50 Series. All of which is a fairly long-winded way of saying you can read much of what I have say about The Clientele over there/here.

 

Was it a surprise to learn of a new album by The Clientele in 2017, nigh on a decade since their last? Certainly, yes, and yes certainly it was perhaps the most pleasant of all surprises. It has been delightful of course to have had the Amor De Dias records from Alasdair and Lupe in recent years but do you know I would be lying to myself if I said they ever quite filled the gap left by The Clientele for that particular group are perhaps the most treasured of musical artists with whom I feel I have grown to maturity (or some semblance thereof) over the past two decades. Each and every one of their records has touched on me like an angel breathing light into my soul. Rarely has a group blended lyrical and musical intent so perfectly and so beguilingly. Not unlike the second coming of Twin Peaks, you may never have known exactly what their songs were about yet you instinctively understood exactly what Alasdair Maclean meant when he sang. Poetry and Pop in perfect harmony. Didn’t Lawrence once say something about that? Well it may be mildly heretical to say it but do you know I think The Clientele took the blueprints of Felt and over their two decades have made something that in the end has proved to be even more beautiful and everlasting.

 

Music For The The Age Of Miracles is classic Clientele. It sounds exactly like a Clientele album ought to and thank heavens for that. Poetry and Pop and then some. Some songs stretch languorously like the mist on the Downs that hovers in the centrefold photograph, and some are blinked interludes; fleeting instrumental touches that soothe and punctuate. Breathe in. Catch the chill of approaching winter and the warmth of anticipated summers in your throat. Breathe out.

 

‘Lunar Days’, my song of choice, is almost as upbeat as The Clientele ever get (though they kick it out, if one can describe the act as such, even more on the divine ‘Everyone You Meet'), the kind of song where the balance tips ever so slightly towards Pop, though the poetry is always lurking deliciously in the background. Alasdair sings in much the same way as Michael Head now sings, which isn’t to say that he sounds distinctly Mersey but rather that he sings unapologetically in his own voice, his own accent. Anyone wanting to be horribly harsh might sneer about him sounding all BBC and middle class middle-English but that would be to wilfully miss the point and would be to fall into the trap of failing to recognise your allies based simply on the sound of their voice and the language they may or may not use. 

 

Certainly Language is important to The Clientele and MacLean relishes the sound of words as much as their meaning. Maybe at times he is like an Elizabeth Fraser with better enunciation and fewer made up words. Maybe not. Certainly in ‘Lunar Days’ he plays with London, deliciously rhyming the song’s title with “Holloway(s)” whilst dropping bus routes and rooting everything around Russell Square. What other group would trip out a line about speaking in “beaten copper tongues” and not sound just a tiny bit self-conscious and awkward doing so? What other group would include the word ‘stanchion’ in a Pop song and make it sound like the most natural thing in the world? Musically it is taught yet supple, spacious yet gorgeously intimate. A Stonesy string riff echoes in the distance, harps pluck the heart strings and though this may be "the year that the monster will come” (and in so many way it certainly was) we drift upwards and onwards on the soft promises of connection and love.

 

God bless The Clientele indeed.

Unpopular Advent 2016 - Day 22

 'Hotwire The Ferris Wheel' from Life Will See You Now by Jens Lekman.

 

 

If there was a theme for the later part of this advent series (there isn’t) it might be Artists Who Also Featured In The Unpopular 50/50 Series. All of which is a fairly long-winded way of saying you can read much of what I have say about Jens Lekman over there/here.

 

Now if I were to be horribly honest I would tell you that although I continued to love Jens through thick and thin, I found his I Know What Love Isn’t set of 2012 to be something of a disappointment. Sure there were some splendid moments but it did not really hold my attention as a collection. Perhaps Jens felt something the same. Perhaps this was why he embarked on the Postcard series of songs in 2015. If it was undertaken as a way of breaking through the blocks of creation then the evidence of Life Will See You Know is that it was a magnificent success, for Life is certainly the best album Jens has released since When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog, and was that really an album as such or ‘just’ a collection of sketchbooks and singles? Well whatever, Life Will See You Now is endlessly entertaining and filled with songs that move us emotionally and dynamically (yes! They make us want to dance!). 

 

The one I keep coming back to is ‘Hotwire The Ferris Wheel’, the latest in a (too) occasional series of duet opportunities between Jens and Tracey Thorn. The chemistry between their voices is as perfect as that between Tracey and Ben Watt and do you know I really do long for a full album of their collaborations. Perhaps inevitably then there is something of Everything But The Girl in ‘Hotwire’ too; like some perfect melding of their sumptuous string soaked sophistication with the bleeping disco House doppelgänger. This one goes like this but backwards; the squiggling techno squelches setting a foundation for the orchestrated swell that folds around our shoulders as the song reaches conclusion. Just so.

 

Jens’ songs have always been peopled by intriguing characters. It’s who he is, was, might might not be. He weaves fascinating tales of make-you-better-believe. Truth is stranger than fiction but fiction makes it truer than you might otherwise think possible. So in ‘Hotwire’ we have Tracey telling Jens and us all about her perhaps less than law abiding brother teaching hot wiring skills and we have Jens idling along “past the slumbering seals” maybe waiting for something anything or nothing. I kinda see Jens as Tom Courtney and Tracey as Julie Christie in Billy Liar. Jens all daydreaming, tied to the old town with it’s "buildings like bowling pins” and Tracey all breezing back for a moment, hoping maybe to pull him to something somewhere more exciting and real. “Let’s do something illegal” she says. “Let’s just live a little”. And so they do. And so we do vicariously through them. Tracey urges Jens that if he writes a song about this then “please don’t make it a sad song”. And he doesn’t. They don’t. They make it into a miniature epic.

Unpopular Advent 2016 - Day 21

'Take Me Home' from How the West Was Won by Peter Perrett

Do you remember how earlier in this series we said, more than once, that if there were any themes (there aren’t) then one of them might be that of (white) men reconnecting with the medium of recorded music in their middle age? Well, if there were an award for winner of that particular category (there isn’t) it would certainly go to Peter Perrett.

Did you see it coming? I mean, it was a shot as from nowhere that the former Only Ones singer should emerge with a new solo record in 2017 but that was as nothing compared to the splendid shock of just how terrific it ended up being. From the first opening riff references to ‘Sweet Jane’ to its final breaths of guitar notes that could be lips kissing ‘New Day Dawning’, How The West Was Won is a ravishingly full bloodied immersion in rock and roll. It is unapologetic. It is celebratory. It is also intelligent enough to remind itself not to take it all too seriously, throwing in throwaway nods and winks that cast a sprinkling of dark knowing humour. How The West Was Won in many ways acts as some kind of splendid brethren to Americana, where Perrett picks up on Davies’ foundations and spoils the party with a Punky sneer. Perhaps no surprise then to discover it was mostly recorded at KONK studios. As we are won’t to suggest at times: It all fits.

Alexis nails it in his splendid review for The Manchester Guardian when he suggests that Perrett "has pulled off something genuinely remarkable here”, for How The West Was Won is certainly a remarkable record. Remarkable in the context of Perrett’s back story, yes, of course, but remarkable too for simply being such a marvellous collection of brilliant songs so perfectly recorded. Would we love this record in spite of its history? Yes we would. Would the record exist if not for that history? Well no, of course not. The two are impossible to untangle, and why would you want to anyway? So How The West Was Won is drenched in the stench of excess, ego and selfish introspection to the point of near-extinction but is also offset with the scent of escape and the faintest glimmer of redemption. It all fittingly slips to its conclusion with ‘Take Me Home’, a glorious tale that captures the almost desperate conflict between the desire to belong with the unquenchable need to be separate. ‘Take Me Home’ is the quest to return to a centre which is continually just out of reach and not-quite possible to define or grasp. ‘Home’ is here, there, nowhere; the place we simultaneously yearn to return to and desperately desire to escape from. As such it captures where How The West Was Won may sit in the Peter Perrett story: Perhaps one last perfect point of conclusion or perhaps one stepping off point for brighter futures. One rather hopes it is the latter, but either way we are lucky to have such a magnificent artefact of rock and roll perfection. Remarkable, indeed.

 

Unpopular Advent 2017 - Day 20

'Wear Black' from Goths by The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats followed the terrific wrestling-themed Beat the Champ set of 2015 with an entire album exploring the (Pop)cultural phenomenon of Goth in 2017. Of course. And of course too John Darnielle is far too clever and/or marvellously awkward to pull a trick so clumsy and obvious as making such a record in the accepted style of Goth. I mean, there is no doubt that he could if he wanted, but that would almost certainly result in a record inevitably filled with cliche and predictability. Some might say that there are few things so predictable as a Mountain Goats record, but this is clearly true only to the point of saying yes, well, maybe and maybe not. There are certainly a string of early to mid period Mountain Goats records where threads of commonality weave throughout in terms of abrupt and rudimentary recording techniques lending much of the landscape a similarly blasted and bleak prospect. That’s fine though. I have no quarrel with that, and the earnest, viscerally intelligent Darnielle of those records remains one of my very favourite recording artists. The Mountain Goats of more recent times however are far more varied and apply a touch which is never as light and as measured as on Goths.

So Goths is a Goth vision refracted through the lenses of its ‘80s counterpoint of lush sophisticated Pop. Goths is Andrew Eldritch masquerading as Martin Fry (and/or vice versa) and Gene Loves Jezebel courted by Hall and Oates. Except even that is a little disingenuous, for Mountain Goats here fill their songs not so much with synthetic technology but often with the natural sounds of brushed drums and acoustic bass. There is space. There is light. Naturally I will resist suggesting that this creates a sound that is more ‘authentic’ (for surely such a notion would be absurd in the context of songs about a cultural identity which is so carefully drawn in artifice and the dark arts of concealment) but it is a sound that is warm, oddly comforting and fittingly mature.

Finest of all is the beautiful ‘Wear Black’ which is all Sisterhood snakebite polished by Scritti Politti and accompanied by heavenly gospel choirs. It’s the Batcave decorated with tinfoil and fairy lights; the gloomth of Walpole’s Strawberry Hill made over by Philippe Stark. ‘Wear Black’ both reinforces the cliche of Goth costume and neatly pops the bubble of that stereotype: An acknowledgement and repudiation in the same breath, if you will. Darnielle sings in his finest angelic tones: “check me out, I can’t blend in. Check me out, I’m young and ravishing” and if there was ever a line that succinctly captured the essence of fashion as youthful expression then I either have not heard it yet or cannot remember. Given my age it is entirely possible that the later explanation is the true one, but nevertheless…

‘Wear Black’ then sets Goth as Malevich cast his black square on canvas: Goth, perhaps more than any Youth Cultural movement, invites us to escape the dead-weight of the world into ones of fantasy and illusion. Yet it also opens doors to glimpse the universal human frailties those fantasies embrace. Of course it does. How could it not? Lives, with their realities and dreams, are simply complex, after all.

 

Unpopular Advent 2017 - Day 19

'Strike A Match' from Strike A Match by Sacred Paws

Sacred Paws quite rightly won the Scottish Album Of The Year award for 2017’s astonishing Strike A Match but do you know I have been startled to see how few other ‘albums of the year’ lists I have seen it on. There is surely no good reason for this other than the curse of records released in the first halves of years always struggling to be remembered by a music ‘press’ with notoriously short term memories (memories that apparently can’t keep anything stored past this week’s PR penned ‘reviews’). I plead as guilty as the next person in this regard but my goodness Strike A Match remains firmly in my grab bag of records guaranteed to make me twist and shout, shimmy and shake. Inside of course. Always inside.

In many ways Strike A Match is the perfect album. Ten tracks, five-a-side. A shade over a half hour in total length. No band name or title on the sleeve, just some beautiful two-colour abstract geometric prints on reversed board. The prints are a bit like Matisse paper cuts in monochrome. Positive. Negative. Dancing. Just like the music.

It is impossible not to begin twitching with delight as soon as the needle hits this record. Immediately into a stride it never once loses, Strike A Match tosses its key ingredients of pin sharp guitar rivulets, hypnotic darting rhythms, sombre synths, ebullient horns and vocals that are cool yet warm, strong yet charming, disarming. Think Young Marble Giants playing the soundtrack to a Haitian vodou ceremony or ESG hosting a dance party in George Square. Perhaps.

The title track is simply sensational; three and a half minutes of barely but crucially just-so contained exuberance. Somehow it feel faster than it actually is, for its pace is such that it allows space for each of its elements to breathe deeply. It opens almost empty before building layers of rhythm and bursts of light. ’Strike A Match’ is a song where each element supports the thrust of the whole. Darkness, emptiness, connectedness, love, light, delight, hope, anticipation, redemption. All in a blink of an eye and a hip shimmy shake. The last minute in particular is just magical, leaping off into a collection of refrains played by guitars, drums, horns and handclaps; each performing their own syncopated little dances within their own private parties, at one with the whole yet almost simultaneously oblivious. Lift the needle and place it again. Press ‘repeat’. Leap in and lose yourself again and again and again and again.