24: Ibeyi: Ibeyi

Dec 8, 2015Dec 8, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz were born in France but grew up with their time spent both in Paris and Cuba due to their father being legendary Cuban percussionist Anga Diaz, who not only won a Grammy for his work with Latin jazz band Ikakere but was part of the Bueno Vista Social Club on that CD everybody bought in 1998 and have never listened to since. He sadly passed away when the girls were just 11 (with their elder sister following 7 years later) but the sisters decided to follow his musical legacy, not only by learning his signature instrument the cajón but also by studying the West African Yaruba culture (where there family descended from until being brought over as slaves in the 1700s) and immersing themselves in Regla de Ocha, the Afro-Cuban religion based on the worship of Orishas. Now, with a backstory as fascinating as that you already love the debut album by the 20 year old twins before you’ve heard a single note don’t you? But even if you set aside the origin story worthy of the Marvel cinematic universe then ‘Ibeyi’ is close to a perfect debut album, in that it touches on as many influences and inspirations as possible in 13 tracks, yet all the while remains doggedly committed to the twins’ unique style so no track ever really sounds like anything other than the band themselves. It’s not until the tenth time you listen to the album that it really strikes you just how sparse these songs are, often just Lisa’s voice over Naomi’s percussion, yet still the albums sounds so conversely FULL. Perhaps that echoes the ideas put across by the album’s lyrics, that of seemingly simple ideas and emotions that are actually far deeper than you may give them credit for. An extraordinary introduction

‘Fun’ Fact: The video for ‘River‘ is one of the most strangely disturbing things you’ll see today

Hmmm, I’m not really a fan of that funny foreign music, are we almost at the Coldplay album? You, sir, are an imbecile, start with ‘Stranger Lover‘ and delve deeper from there.

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25: Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love

Dec 7, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

SK’s much delayed eighth album shows that such periods of absence needn’t lead to such heinous crimes against humanity as last year’s Pixies album. Kinney don’t miss a beat as they breeze through 10 songs and 33 minutes of absolute new wave pop perfection, with hooks you could hang Mussolini on and choruses so big you initially mistake them for Tory benefit cuts. Yep, absolutely noting wrong here, move along…

‘Fun’ Fact: It’s pronounced SLAY-ter Kinney?!?! Oh no! I’ve embarrassed myself in front of so many far cooler people!

That review was barely using a quarter of your arse: ‘No Cities To Love’ is simply an album that achieves what it sets out to do with absolute minimum fuss and so the most appropriate reaction is really nothing more than an enthusiastically raised thumb, imagine something as finely crafted as ‘A New Wave‘ repeated 10 times

26: Shamir: Ratchet

Dec 7, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

We should all raise our hands and rejoice that artists like Shamir exist, he fits in no obvious hole and listening to his music or watching him perform you at once worry that there is absolutely no crowd that exists for him and also realise with delight that he may be your favourite thing in the world. At the very least he harkens back to the days when your grandparents angrily complained that they couldn’t tell if the performer on Top of the Pops was a boy or a girl, and Shamir delights in playing up to his inherent sexual androgyny (as he considers himself neither male or female he prefers to refer to himself as ‘queer’ rather than gay. I’ve decided it best I don’t refer to him this way) His debut is marvellously constructed pop-dance, as Shamir bounces around like a toddler let loose in the Sunny Delight cupboard, coming across as the Azealia Banks it’d be super fun (rather than terrifying) to hang out with. OK, I’ll admit, of all the albums on this list it’s Shamir’s that I can most envision some people finding extremely annoying, but isn’t such what divisiveness part of what makes pop music so great?

‘Fun’ Fact: Any night out with Azealia Banks would invariably end with you walking home alone with one shoe on.

Sounds a bit exhausting if I’m being honest: That’s always a worry, so the mid-paced ‘Darker‘ is perfectly placed near the album’s end

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27: Everything Everything: Get To Heaven

Dec 7, 2015Dec 7, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Have Everything Everything ‘broke through’ with this album? It’s hard to tell. I went to those teens on the corner and asked them but they only scoffed and called me ‘grandfather testicles’ while pointing out that that kids these days unanimously agree that youth culture reached a zenith in 1994 with Shampoo’s ‘Trouble‘ and famous teenage scientists who have their own YouTube channel and everything have instructed all teenagers to give up on pop music as it was now a dead art form akin to needlepoint tributes to the Osmonds. So that was me told…

‘Get…’ has been sold by some reviewers as a monumental step up in quality for the band, but it’s not really massively superior to 2013’s ‘Arc’ (which certainly isn’t a bad thing at all, no siree, nope, not at all), however while that last album was more a hopeless whimper directed at life’s little insurmountable tasks of tedium, ‘Get…’ is a BIG and impassioned cry over the very state of humanity itself, taking stops off to comment on the rise of ISIS and the wet fart of the 2015 General Election. Sure, it’s essentially four middle class white boys complaining about life’s difficulties but at least it’s something, it’s always so refreshing to see the almost critically insular world of indie rock at least take a peer out of the window occasionally. It’s extremely gratifying to hear EE’s sound (a mishmash of countless influences) blossoming into something that now sounds rather unique to the band: you couldn’t really imagine any other indie (if EE even still deserve to be tagged so) band launching their big comeback with a song as angular and esoteric as ‘Distant Past‘.

‘Fun’ Fact: Shampoo used to write the Manic Street Preachers fanzine ‘Big Exit’ and appeared in the video for ‘Little Baby Nothing‘, so they’re alright by me

The main question, and one I ask of all albums, is whether there’s a track that could be played over commercials for upcoming soap operas to lazily demonstrate a character is in some way upset over a past action? Channel 4 used ‘Regret‘ liberally to advertise Hollyoaks over the summer

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28: Roots Manuva: Bleeds

Dec 7, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

If you were going to compile a list of the greatest ever organic cottage cheeses it might be a good test of your debating skills to argue the case for Roots Manuva’s inclusion. It would certainly be a more worthwhile endeavour than collating a list of the greatest ever British rappers, as Roots would splay open-legged as he lay on top of that list with such ease that it’s actually rather embarrassing to even consider. Stop thinking about it! Stop it! Not that Rodney Smith’s eighth (or is it ninth?) album sees him kicking back to reflect in the glory, in fact it’s by some distance his most disturbed (though never disturbing) and bleak album to date. He’s always been hip-hop’s greatest curmudgeon, but ‘Bleeds’ sees him occasionally furious but always deeply crestfallen at the state of Cameron’s Britain, from corporate greed to the poor being continually shat upon. It’s his most weighty social commentary, though the gritty and enraged lyrics are often onset by some of the most beautiful productions he’s ever been involved in. He mainly does away with any frivolity that may have once formed a big part of his identity but the results are deeply affecting. It’s another album I wish I’d been able to spend more time with, but it already sounds like it deserves to placed alongside the very best works of his career.

‘Fun’ Fact: Roots Manuva is the 52’664^th most ‘popular’ person on famousbirthdays.com

Ooooooh, weighty lyrics with gorgeous music, gimme some of that: ‘Don’t Breath Out‘ is probably the best example

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29: Miguel: Wildheart

Dec 7, 2015Dec 7, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Remember when I said there had been at least two brilliant Prince albums released this year? You don’t?? It was in the actual Prince review! There really is no point creating these marvellous interlocking segues if you’re just not going to pay attention! No, don’t go back and look for it, it was really only that one sentence and it doesn’t really bear the effort. Well anyway: I said it, and this is one of them. Although the comparisons are inevitable Miguel is one of the faces of an enthralling new strand of R’n’B that has blossomed recently, a strand that never takes its eyes off its influences but still crafts music that represent new creative highs for the entire genre. I’m generally heterosexual and generally male, yet after listening to ‘Wildheart’ sultrily and explicitly dry hump my ear for 46 minutes I still became pregnant more than a dozen times and tweeted Miguel so many naked pictures I’m actually due in court a week next Tuesday. If he concentrated more on the brash and provocative modern rethinks of ‘Dirty Mind’ rather than AOR nonsense like ‘face the sun (sic)’ then he could get amazing.

‘Fun’ Fact: Miguel was born the day before Wayne Rooney and both their lives and personalities have proceeded down remarkably similar paths.

Pfff, sounds a bit gay to me mate: If you don’t finish listening to ‘the valley (sigh, sic again, Miguel hates his capitals)’ with a deep yearning to at least spend a night in Miguel’s bed then you’re only lying to yourself

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30: Joanna Newsom: Divers

Dec 6, 2015Dec 6, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

No! No! No! I need more time! I need more time! Can’t we put the end of 2015 back a few months this year? I’m sure if we did list in June 2016 rather than November/December this year I would spend far more time drowned inside this album and feel far more qualified to speak of how magnificent it is. And it will be magnificent, I’m certain, once I’ve listened to it maybe a dozen more times, once I’ve picked through the dozens of layers that obviously lie here, at the moment unfortunately I can only legitimately call it ‘very, very, very, very good’. While her last album was a ridiculous 3CDs of intense work that not one person alive had time for, ‘Divers’ is a far more dynamic attempt, rather than any massive revolution in sound it merely attempts to condense all the many disparate and intriguing strands of her musical career so far into a brisk 56 minutes (‘brisk’ by Newsom standards: it takes her 3 hours to brush her teeth and do her first morning dump). I’m in no position to talk though: talk to me in 12 months and this will be my favourite album of 2015.

‘Fun’ Fact: You’ve probably got ideas of the type of family Joanna grew up in. Well, they forbade her from watching TV or listening to the radio so you’re right: that type.

Aaaaaaah! We’re running out of time here! Just recommend a song you feel best represents the album, quick! Aaaaaaah! Erm, er, I guess ‘Divers‘ is halfway through and, erm, it’s the title track and everything

31: My Morning Jacket: Waterfall

Dec 6, 2015Dec 6, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, My Morning Jacket are as reliably satisfying as microwave popcorn, and it’s equally perplexing to me why they aren’t as universally adored. Like microwave popcorn, they’re surely impossible to dislike (surely??) and their seventh album isn’t significantly less of a towering achievement than any of the six that preceded it (and significantly better than one or two of them). It kicks off with the gorgeous ‘Believe (Nobody Knows)‘- an absolutely scientifically proven perfect album opener- and never really lets up. It’s hard to think of a significantly more pleasurable way to spend 48 minutes (apart from having sex, like, almost a hundred times), my only gripe is that these beautiful songs somehow fail to truly stick with you like old microwave popcorn kernels lodged between your teeth.

‘Fun’ Fact: From Louisville, Kentucky yet as far as I’m aware have never once called themselves ‘The Louisville Lips’. What’s wrong with them?

I was just talking to my mate Sean last night yeah, and he was wondering ‘What’s the best pop song ever about broken bones piercing the skin?’ I’ve told you that you should stay away from that Sean, he seems to talk only in bizarre non sequiturs that turn out to be extremely relevant much later. Anyway ‘Compound Fracture‘ deserves at least to be included in the discussion.

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32: Blur: The Magic Whip

Dec 6, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Blur’s first album for 12 years (and first with Graham Coxon for 16) is far better than it has any real right to be, only really veering off into the embarrassingly crude approximation you might have feared it’d turn out like when they attempt to ape the music they made while at the height of their mid-90s relevance (you’ll be glad to hear Danny Dyer isn’t called upon to perform Phil Daniels duties). It can occasionally veer too clumsily between the sombre moroseness more associated with Albarn’s solo records and more throwaway attempts at flippancy, but mainly it’s clear the band still retain an uncanny ability to craft beautiful music.

‘Fun’ Fact: Alex James was once in the catastrophic yet mercifully short-lived ‘super group’ Me Me Me. He should never be allowed to forget that

If the band are about to attempt to break into the Chinese market, do you think they should push ‘My Terracotta Heart‘ as their main single? Oh no, I think ‘Pyongyang‘ is far more suited.

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33: Sway: Deliverance (The Story Of)

Dec 6, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Hard to believe this is only Derek Safo’s third studio album, he seems like a veteran elder statesman of British hip hop even if he’s never collected the record sales his obvious talent and standing deserve. It should come as no surprise that ‘Deliverance’ exhibits the crisp production and self assured swagger of an artist roughly 17’986’964 times bigger than Sway actually is, and equally predictable is Sway remaining one of the best technical rappers working today, shooting off brilliant wordplay at occasionally dazzling speeds. The actual songs sometimes fall short of the outstanding production and Sway’s considerable presence, and the album dips markedly when the more poignant attempts sometimes veer off into schmaltz, but ‘Deliverance’ remains an extremely accomplished if eminently skippable set.

‘Fun’ Fact: Sway’s debut ‘This is My Demo‘ is absolutely one of the best rap albums ever.

Hey! Aaron Eckhart is in this episode of Fraiser! Must have been quite an early acting appearance by him: I worry you’re not paying enough attention, turn on ‘Blow It‘ and get your head back in the game

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