Oh, wow, OK, to have such an honest admission on your album’s opening track is quite a statement! It sounds wrong to call ‘Virgin’ sex positive, per se, but it’s definitely Lorde’s most ‘sex aware’ record (counter to its title, I guess), and to ensure that it opens like this definitely warns listeners to leave their kink shaming at the door.
I fear that some of my oversees readers might not get the reference here, so think of this post as a bitesize educational supplement as well as the usual incisive musical journalism. Canal Street is about a kilometre walk away from my house, so I feel a degree of closeness to it to the extent that explaining the history and significance of the reference would actually be something of a pleasure.
Man, as a British person, I can’t help but shake my head in bewilderment at the simply awful race problems that they have in the US of A. I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but considering that we don’t have that sort of trouble over here in the UK, you can only come to the logical impression that the UK is simply a more liberally developed country than the US. More liberally developed than white America, I mean, all you African-Americans are obviously being treated horribly over there, it looks ghastly. George Floyd, isn’t it? Awful business, truly horrid. #BlackLivesMatter, ammi right? If only Obama was still president, I do so wish that I was able to vote for him. I’d have voted for him in the next three elections if they’d let me. Quite, quite, quite. You have my sympathies for that ghastly country. You’re welcome to come and romp in England’s green fields with me. So long as you don’t outstay your six month visit Visa Britain is full, I should stress, and we simply can’t take anymore people with skin as dark as yours. Oops, did I say that last part out loud?
You know why I think is the reason we’ve ended up a slightly more civilised society? You know why I don’t think any of us really even see colour? The reason why I don’t even notice if my cleaner, my personal driver, or my pool cleaner is black? Actually… I think my personal driver might be Indian or Pakistani, or maybe one of those Muslim ones… But whatever they are I don’t notice! And I believe the reasons for this go back to us ending slavery first! Yes, you Americans might go on about your Abraham Lincolns and your ’12 Years a Slave’ and your Sylvester Magees and your thirteenth amendments, but to be honest, us progressive Brits are chuckling behind our china tea cup! 1865, you say? Oh, how cute! Erm, cough, erm, cough cough, eighteen motherfucking thirty three, bitches! Golly, that must mean that the UK is a whole thirty two years more progressive than the colonies across the pond! And, to be honest my American chums, the UK is so much more progressive now, that I doubt you’ll ever catch up! And I believe your hick, backward country is still debating reparations, but I can see that the United Kingdom of Great Britain already paid some sort of reparations when they passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, I assume that all the slaves were fairy remunerated and that’s why the UK is free of racism now? I don’t mean to talk down at you, but when both my high horse and my ivory tower are this high, it’s difficult not to.
I’ve always hated the concept of ‘desert island discs‘. So I’ve been shipwrecked on an island, marooned away from society, all amenities and all forms of human contact for potentially the rest of my sad and increasingly deranged life? I’ve not even got a beach ball to draw a face on and inevitably end up fucking by around week four as the loneliness drives me to sad, feral desperation? And you want me to choose eight songs to play on repeat for infinity to soundtrack my own mental journey into the heart of darkness?? I mean, I love Old Town Road as much as the next man, but by the hundred and twenty seventh time it’s played in the background as another angry parrot pecks at my arse hairs, repeatedly?? “Squawk! Can’t nobody tell me nothing! Squawk!”?? I’m going to learn to hate that song rather quickly.
But then I learned that perhaps it was just the number of songs that was the issue. Forty two songs to a desert island? Yeah, I reckon I could live quite happily for the rest of time. I’d still go crazy, obviously, but in a more earnestly satisfying and poignantly depressed sort of way. And those parrots will learn some bars.
Forty two songs. Two hours and twenty seven minutes. That is (as far as I can work out) the extent of Massachusetts group The Hotelier/The Hotel Year’s entire recorded output. And every emotional, artistic, intellectual and affectionate need a human being ever needs is here. Lead singer/songwriter/bassist Christian Holden is as accomplished a lyricist as there’s ever existed in the artform, possessing a poetic sensibility and unashamed earnestness that can fundamentally cleanse and then rearrange your very soul in a world of post-truth nihilism. More importantly though: their songs are almost always absolute fucking bangers. If you couldn’t speak English, The Hotelier would still be in your top ten favourite ever acts simply based on the sheer, bollock-splitting, rush of blood to the spleen of their immediate songcraft. Then you’d learn English from the lyrics, realise what beauty and genius underpins these bops, and would scientifically become a better person based on their teachings. You’d also learn words like ‘dichotomies’, ‘salutations’ and ‘chrysolite’ a lot earlier than most English speakers.
They are one of my favourite artists of all time. And the fuckers haven’t released a single piece of music since I first became aware of them
I can’t even remember how I first became aware of The Hotelier, can’t remember the first time I heard them, can’t remember the first time I felt their presence. It’s like asking me the first time I tied my shoelaces or became aware of my own mortality. I know there was a time where it wasn’t there, and now if most definitely is, but the changing of the guard was never noted. I heard their masterful third album ‘Goodness’ in late 2016, fell in love, named it the fourth best album of that year, fell in love even more and later retconned it to be the best album of that year (potentially the decade/century), saw them live and bawled my eyes out believing there was a God, and went back to assesstheir first two albums. In 2023, I named Soft Animal as the greatest song of the previous 10 years (spoiler…?). Goodness was released on May 27th 2016. I first started to become obsessed with them a few months after that. In the almost eight years since the fuckers haven’t released anything else!!
So perhaps I’m writing this list to tempt fate, to harness the dark power of Sod’s Law. Wouldn’t it be awful if I spent all this time and more than 10’000 words writing about the band’s complete discography only for them to release a new album and make the whole thing redundant?? Oh no, you guys, that’d be terrible! Absolutely don’t do that! That’d be the worst! Spank me, Daddoes, I’ve been naughty!! In terms of writing about the importance, majesty and genius of the band, Zac Djamoswrote a perfect piece for Stereogum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band’s most widely regarded second album ‘Home, Like Noplace is There’, which I’m not sure is humanly possible to compete with. So instead I’m sticking to what I do best: borderline autistic listicles! I was also blessed enough to have my longtime yaoi fixation Seth Manchester to answer a few questions about their bone rattlingly good production on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album.
Seriously though, the band have promised not to record another album before the revolution, so that’s yet another reason for all you workers to unite and break free of your chains (and join your local Communist Party branch, obviously). This list is basically a quick cheat sheet to the band, and forty two reasons why you should be as obsessed with them as I am!
Lonnie Holley is one of those people whose very existence is a bit awkward for the United States of America. He’s a good looking guy, a few months older than my Dad but healthier looking than even me. He’s not some crinkly, confused, 112 year old veteran of the first world war, baring a toothless smile to the camera on the arm of his minder. A minder he needs to remind him to put his underpants on in the morning, and works overtime changing him considering the amount of times each day he pisses himself. He is still plugged in, still 100% articulate, more creatively engaged now aged 73 than he’s ever been. He didn’t become an artist until he was 29. He didn’t even begin releasing music until he was 62. There’s no rush.
Which all means he has pretty vivid memories of being born in Jim Crow era Alabama.
The Mining Industry’s Colapse is Unfortunately Not Always Super Entertaining
I don’t think any widely used (and often misquoted) maxim gets me more riled* than the one that supposes all the world’s problems could have easily avoided if people just payed a little more attention in history class.
History’s great: the past was fucking mental and studying quite how bananas it was is always fascinating. In fact, I’d say that out of all the school subjects history was definitely my favourite ‘ry’, better than chemistry, carpentry and podiatry (my school was very weird). But to say that knowledge of it would prevent making similar mistakes in the future just completely misunderstands human psychology: when you hear of past logistical failures, you don’t wisely choose to avoid making the mistakes, you do it all exactly the same because, deep down, you know that it’ll work when you do it because you’re frickin’ awesome. Do you think that in late 1942 some bespectacled nerd Nazi soldier (a ‘nazerd’? A ‘nerdzi’? Yeah, I like that second one) hurried to the front of the battalion encroaching on Russia with his school history text book shouting at the admiral “Hey, mate, hey! I’ve just read up a bit on this whole ‘invading Russia’ lark, and it turns out it might not be a good idea…!”
No. Hitler knew all about his history. He just assumed that he would be able to get it done right. Because he was Adolf fucking Hitler and he didn’t give a fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, yo.
Necessary Evil 