Nine Feet Underground

Gotta put 2019 behind me!  This will be the final post on last year's music - despite the fact that I keep discovering new things I'd missed (WaqWaq Kingdom, anyone?) and also questioning my final top 10, which admittedly I was doing at the time I compiled the list. Inevitably this will omit many things of note: no doubt I could keep writing until words were written about every album I liked in 2019, but that ain't happening. 2020 is here, and we're all off to hell in a handcart. Looking back is ultimately futile - there is only now and now plus one. It's time to move on, new music is already appearing in 2020 - thank you, Wire, for getting the year off to a great start - gigs are getting booked, starting with Julian Cope, who has a new album, 'Self Civil War', due out in February, and, from what I've heard so far, it's his best in while.  With that in mind, f or the final time then, let's wind the clock back to 2019 and just see what el...

My top 10 albums of 2019 has been a struggle.  Not because there was a shortage of candidates. Far from it.  More because of the sheer impossibility of comparing one piece of music with another, something I've become increasingly bothered by over recent years.  On any given day the albums I might get the most enjoyment from will vary according to my mood and general state of mind.  Not only that, there have been a lot of albums which almost made it into my top 10, and in a few days, if you asked me, I'd probably choose one of them, instead of one in the list (with a few exceptions). Let's also be honest, close up, any year's music is hard to assess. The albums that I'll still be playing a year from now, let alone five years time - and when I say playing, I mean playing in full (I will, of course, still listen, randomly, to tracks from these albums) - may be very different to the ones that provide the most immediate enjoyment now. I've been struggling wi...

A dubious category, if ever there was one: best box sets of 2019? Sounds like something made up as an excuse to shout about some musical peccadillo that doesn't fit into any other category, if you ask me? You betcha, mate! Now, without wishing to start a religious war or equivalent, I have to start by saying that, in general I am resistant to the idea of the box set.  It seems to me it's no different from buying books by the yard to populate a library in a house where none of the books is actually read. The less said about that, the better. Box sets often suffer from two problems. For starters they often collect together everything by an artist, regardless of merit, and let's face it there is no artist, I would argue, that produced album after album of equal brilliance.  (No, not even those four blokes, so leave it out!) The other failing is that they are the musical "five yards of books", a sort of coffee table "look at this, I'm really cool...

Gotta start somewhere, though clearly not with arithmetic, and the start is my top 10 songs of 2019. There's a Spotify playlist imaginatively titled 'Top 10 Songs of 2019' which currently stands at 25 songs, but I've hardly started, so ya know, like all good things, it's gonna grow...oh, and just so as y'know, they're in no particular order, no need to take offence Ed and I really do like your haircut, Julie! Frankly, I can't be arsed to make an equivalent YouTube playlist (the tools! the tools!) but will splatter, smatter and repeatedly batter this post with YT songs from the list, as the urge takes me. The further I delve into 2019, the more songs I find, so I guess I should probably take the advice of the Skints... After the "crowbar-ing" of that song into this thread, I should be a little bit more careful with the next one, or I'll end up Enough of this tomfoolery, heading off in another direction, here's ...

Or is it?  Le SuperHomard's 'Meadow Lane Park' could make the top 10, and from it here's the title track... [Le SuperHomard are one of several musically interesting French bands and artists - others include Aquaserge (no new album in 2019?), La Souterraine (too many albums in 2019!!!), Laure Briard and Halo Maud, to mention but a few.]

Another album that won't make my top 10 - 'Free' by Iggy Pop. Not a bad album, probably better than we have any right to expect, and certainly way better than it could have been. Iggy says he's been re-invigorated by his sideline as a BBC Radio 6 Music DJ, specifically by the new bands he's heard and played. It shows. Good on him and, let's face it, it's great that he's still alive after the life he's lived. I'm not sure anyone would have predicted he'd have outlived his friend/mentor/producer, David Bowie. Life, eh? Twists and turns no one can predict. I've chosen 'Loves Missing' from the album - it can speak for itself.

I still haven't finished listening to all the albums that are candidates for my "Best Albums of 2019" review, though I do already know what will be the best re-issue of 2019, that is, unless I decide to make box sets a category of their own. In the meantime, here's a track from an album from 2019 that won't make the top 10:  from Jenny Hval's 'The Practice of Love', here is the hauntingly beautiful, 'High Alice' - shame the rest of the album isn't as good. (I should add it's not a bad album, just that, with the exception of maybe one other track, it doesn't quite work, much as I enjoyed it)

Some of my favourite things in December are the best of the year lists in the music magazines (and also best books of the year, but that's for another blog), mainly to discover things I may have missed -  those hidden gems that passed you by first time around. Thus far, I've seen best of lists from Rough Trade, Uncut, Louder Than War, Shindig!, Mojo, Prog and Record Collector with The Guardian, Wire, NME and maybe a few others still to come. Much as I love these lists they do challenge me - despite all the albums I have  already heard this year - there's always a shed load of albums I must listen to or dip in to, otherwise how will Santa know what to bring me on Christmas Day? Many of these lists have particular bias in line with the magazine's focus or editorial policy: Louder Than War - white women/men with guitars/indie; Prog - pretty self-explanatory; Wire - leftfield/outer limits/anything goes; Shindig! - sounds like '60s or '70s music; and Mojo - ma...