21: Ghostpoet: Shedding Skin

Dec 8, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

As good as Obaro Ejimiwe’s debut album was, his modus operandi of sparse electronica coupled with moody vocals somewhere between rap and spoken word never sounded at all disparate to the dozens of hundreds of millions of British artists who have tried similar tricks since the mid 90s.

What’s that Obaro?

You drank too much last night?

You’re going to do a moody and dark piece about that post-club comedown?

Sure, nobody’s done that before.

Come again Obaro?

Sigh, yes I suppose the big city is a dark and intimidating place sometimes.

Are you sure I can’t get you a bag of crisps or something?

Pretty much the only selling point Ghostpoet had to mark him out was that he wasn’t from Bristol. His second album, however, is a marvellous and largely inspired step into the direction of singularity. While it hardly tears up the book and starts again- it still sounds unmistakably like Obaro’s work- it’s an ambitious step into alt-rock territory that sees Ghostpoet put a band together that gives each of the songs here a weightier kick that was absent on his debut. Upon hearing ‘Shedding Skin’ the influences it brings to mind are no longer Tricky and Massive Attack but TV On the Radio or even Radiohead if Thom Yorke finally gave in to the inevitable and started rapping (which would obviously be the greatest thing ever). It’s astonishing how such moody alt-rock coupled with spoken word generally of the glummest variety can produce music so frequently exhilarating.

‘Fun’ Fact: the brilliant (and titled beyond parody) ‘That Ring Down the Drain Kind of Feeling‘ features Nadine Shah. Nadine hails from Whitburn, also the birth place of both of West Ham’s full backs in the 1923 FA Cup final!

These facts are getting increasingly tenuous: Oh I’m sorry, do you have a problem with this completely free and absolutely insignificant list? Just listen to ‘Be Right Back, Moving House‘ and pretend he’s actually singing ‘I am sitting over here, looking for Beyonce’ like I do.

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22: Hot Chip: Why Make Sense?

Dec 8, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Little about Hot Chip makes much sense, they have long seemed too bizarre an anomaly to be easily fit into any scene or genre: you just can’t blast out anthems to the dance kids when you look like you could list off your favourite ‘Magic: The Gathering’ card to be played in any one of the top 50 most common gaming scenarios, while you can never truly be accepted by the hipster nerds when your throwing out tunes as banging as ‘Dark Knight‘ or the absolutely stunning ‘Huarache Lights‘ (that opens here and that the album consequently struggles a little to live up to). ‘Why Make Sense’ is almost a mid-life crisis of an album, asking whether it’s actually still normal to just want to pursue fun while approaching middle age, and whether there’s any point in doing so anyway. As the title implies though there’s really little need to over analyse such basic human desires: we’ve had many examples of music that’s referred to as ‘dance music you can’t dance to’, well ‘Why Make Sense’ is dance music you can dance to but made for people who really shouldn’t, yet do it anyway.

‘Fun’ Fact: Huarache lights are trainers I’m far too old to think are unbelievably cool

I wonder if any of these tracks would work perfectly on Shane Meadows’ ‘This Is England 90’: Funny you should mention that, because ‘Need You Now‘ has the definite and bewitching stench of Shelley’s Laserdome in Stoke-on-Trent sometime at the turn of the decade.

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23: Carly Rae Jepson: E•MO•TION

Dec 8, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

‘Call Me Maybe‘ was one of those extraordinarily rare things: a pop song that was absolutely ubiquitous and inescapable and yet not universally hated, perhaps because it’s absolute pop perfection. Following that monster hit can be unnerving, but CRJ’s second album is a triumph of capitalist cynicism: more than two hundred songs were eventually whittled down to the 12 here that some boardroom somewhere decided were absolute best to further the ‘Carly Rae Jepson’ brand (collaborations with guaranteed hit makers such as Max Martin and Jack Antonoff were scrapped). And by God it works! Musically there isn’t a wrong step here, with every song being as perfect as the last (with one exception being slightly more perfect). The only problem lies with Carly herself, who is such a vacuum of personality that it’s near disastrous. What is Carly Rae Jepson? There have been absolutely no hints of any sort of personality behind those gorgeous big eyes (and no Carly, telling The Guardian you ‘spent an entire week vaping’ to get your voice ‘gritty’ for one track absolutely doesn’t count). Recently Katy Perry launched her comeback in a leopard print leotard shouting at tigers in the jungle, Rihanna played up her bad-girl image with ‘Bitch Betta Have My Money‘, Miley was dancing with bunnies and spelling ‘twerk’ out in alphabetti spaghetti, while Carly was… er… Carly was telling Tom Hanks that she really liked him. Even Charli XCX opens a song this year with ‘You have an ugly tattoo and fucking cheap perfume’, but you couldn’t imagine CRJ being even that interesting. ‘E•MO•TION’ is an absolutely amazing album, but if it came over the pub speakers I’d struggle to remember who sang it.

‘Fun’ Fact: Carly Rae Jepson is 30 years old, which is totally age-appropriate for me and it wouldn’t be at all weird if we were to get married and have lots of little babies together. If you’re reading this Carly why not lift that restraining order? Can’t we be adults about this?

Great, 12 tracks that aren’t as good as ‘Call Me Maybe‘, why bother? You’re so cynical! Opener ‘Run Away With Me‘ is at least as amazing as that albatross, as perfect a pop song as you’re likely to hear, it opens the album so impressively that most albums would struggle to follow it.

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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

Album Link

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

Album Link

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