Most Read of 2015

Happy New Year everyone! On Monday, I'll be looking ahead to some of the releases I'm excited to hear in 2016; for now, let's take a moment to look back on the year we've just left behind. Here's a quick countdown of The Album Wall's Most-Read Blog Posts of 2015...

10) 10 Questions for ESKA
A brief Q&A with Mercury-nominated musician Eska Mtungwazi.

9) Dimed Out
A preview of The Most Lamentable Tragedy by Titus Andronicus, written a couple of months before its release (spoiler: the album is every bit as excellent as I hoped it would be).

8) Review: Wasting Away and Wondering
Thoughts on the fab third album from Cardiff pop troupe The School.

7) Day-Glo Dreams & The Art of Depressing Me
What makes a truly depressing album? In this blog, I suggest that Helen Love may well have a better idea than the moody likes of Thom Yorke et al.

6) Abstract Heart
My review of Zervas & Pepper's latest LP.

5) Revisiting Little Kix
Is Mansun's much-maligned third album really as bad as some fans would have you believe?

4) 10 Questions for Trembling Bells
The genre-juggling folk-rockers offer up some insight on their latest album, The Sovereign Self.

3) Under the Western Freeway
My first blog post of 2015 revisited Grandaddy's full-length debut and found it to be, well, something of a downer. Who would have thought?!

2) Mogwai Albums from Worst to Best
Mogwai celebrated their 20th anniversary this month - here's your ultimate guide to their 8 studio albums.

1) Björk Battles the Leakers
In my most-read post of 2015, I examined the fallout that ensued when Vulnicura, the new Björk album, was leaked online months in advance of its scheduled release date.

Hope you've all enjoyed reading The Album Wall over the past 12 months - I can't wait to hear what sort of sounds 2016 will serve up!

Thoughts on the 2015 Mercury Prize Shortlist

Today, for the first time in years, I found myself taking an interest in the Mercury Prize.

I usually ignore UK releases in favour of new stuff from America, and as such, I'm used to being completely, blissfully unfamiliar with the albums that make up the Mercury shortlist each year. However, 2015 seems to have been an inordinately good year for British music; quite a few of the contenders for my next 'Albums of the Year' list hail from these shores, and I fully expected such outstanding albums as The Race for Space and My Love is Cool to number among the nominees this morning.

And...well, I was half right. Before I go any further, here's the 2015 Mercury Prize shortlist in full:

• Architect by C Duncan
• Are You Satisfied? by Slaves
• At Least for Now by Benjamin Clementine
• Before We Forgot How to Dream by SOAK
• ESKA by ESKA
• Hairless Toys by Róisín Murphy
• How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and the Machine
• In Colour by Jamie XX
• Matador by Gaz Coombes
• My Love is Cool by Wolf Alice 
• Shedding Skin by Ghostpoet
• Syro by Aphex Twin

As you can see, My Love is Cool has made the cut (and rightly so - my finger may be slightly west of the pulse, but Wolf Alice do feel to me like the band of 2015), as has ESKA's tremendous self-titled debut album (I did a Q&A with her back in July, don't ya know). Gaz Coombes is there too, which is ace - I haven't heard Matador, but Supergrass were always one of my favourite bands, and it's great to see Gaz getting some of the recognition he missed out on back in the day.

10 Questions for ESKA

ESKA is the woman behind one of the most beautiful, challenging, and original records of the year so far.  Her self-titled album blends its creator's spectacular voice with a dizzying array of musical genres, including funk, folk, psychedelia, experimental music, soul...I could go on.

This mesmerising musical stew has been rewarded with deafening hollers of critical approval (at time of writing, ESKA has a Metacritic score of 82, indicating 'Universal Acclaim'), and after years of co-writing and featuring on other people's tracks, Eska Mtungwazi has finally stepped into a spotlight of her own.

I recently sent ESKA a few questions about her amazing album, and she was kind enough to supply me with some answers. So, without further preamble...

Why did you decide to name the album after yourself?

It has taken over 150 released titles (as a co-writer or featured artist) for me to arrive at this album. 'ESKA' felt like the most appropriate title for a work that finally reconciled my artistic and cultural identity.

Is there a narrative or theme that ties these songs together?

On closer lyrical inspection there's a city and a river, the colours blue and red, references to mythological characters. The work as a whole sets me up as a heroine in my own quest. I suppose the quest was my journey making this album - I drew those conclusions once the record was complete.

May Playlist: Blood on the Front Row

I'm off to fabulous Barcelona today for the Primavera Sound festival, so this month's musical digest is going up slightly earlier than usual. There will be no new blog posts while I'm away, although I may fire off the odd update from Spain over on Twitter (I'm @TheAlbumWall).

Anyhow, here to tide you over in my absence are ten of the songs that have run barges through my ear canals over the past few weeks:

1. From Nails to Thumbtacks - The Baseball Project

(from 3rd)
My first blog post of May 2015 compared wrestling with baseball, and 3rd with The Mountain Goats' more recent album about professional wrestling. Wrestling emerged victorious from that comparison, at least in the grit stakes, but this true story of superstar-turned-carjacker Lenny Dykstra demonstrates that America's pastime does have some fairly gritty stories of its own.

This is ESKA

From what I've read, most reviews of ESKA's self-titled first album can be summed up thusly:

Did you know that ESKA has been a well-regarded session musician for quite a few years? It's true! But now she's stepping into the limelight and finding her own voice - and what a voice it is!

Many debut albums have been named after the artist responsible (Franz Ferdinand, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and The Magic Numbers, to name just three), but while it usually seems like a slightly lazy decision - made in lieu of any ideas for a proper title - it does make a lot of sense in the case of ESKA. The album is an announcement to the world that the musician is ready to be seen as an artist, to sing her own life instead of assisting with someone else's ideas.

Swn Festival 2013

The spectacular Swn Festival took over Cardiff for much of the weekend just gone, and while I didn't see as many bands as I might have liked to, I still caught a few gems that I thought would be worth sharing. So, just as I did after returning from the Knee Deep Festival, I present four of my favourite acts from Swn 2013:

The Wytches actually played at Knee Deep, too. They were on the main stage as we arrived, and while they did sound pretty great, I sadly had to go and set up camp. Still, I later managed to establish the name of the band I had heard, and I swore that, sooner or later, I would get around to having a proper listen.

And so, when I spotted that The Wytches were down to play Clwb Ifor Bach on Swn Saturday, I cleared my schedule. They were absolutely awesome, too, with meaty basslines, Halloween surfer guitar sounds (a bit like The Cramps or The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster), and a vocal style that probably isn't especially good for the singer's throat. The recordings don't do them justice; by all means listen to the song I've embedded above, but see them live if you can.

Seazoo were my last band of the festival, and not a bad one to go out on. Their music occasionally strays a little close to the nose-wrinkling tweeness I complained about in my Sweet Baboo review, but the underlying chug and Seazoo's knack for a big, Hold Steady-style guitar riff injected just the right amount of attitude to balance the sweetness. In contrast to The Wytches, they're even better on record, where you can hear all of those lovely layers properly.

I didn't see all of ESKA's set, and that's a great shame because what I did catch was something special. The lady's voice covers considerably more notes than would comfortably fit on a stave, and her all-trades talent - each of the three songs I heard was played on a different instrument - makes it hard to lose interest. Her songs are soul-cleansing things, filling your ears with a cathartic wail that's really rather astonishing. It's far from easy listening, but the loose structuring and near-religious fervour that typified those few songs made for a seriously electrifying experience. It reminded me of Josh T. Pearson a little bit, but then everything reminds me of Josh T. Pearson.

Without Feathers

My final pick is nowhere to be found on SoundCloud, and I couldn't see anything of theirs on YouTube, either, so above is a link to their EP on Bandcamp instead. Without Feathers were billed as being a bit like The Moldy Peaches, but they're far more polite than that, peddling sweet little songs and three-part harmonies that remind me of The Roches as much as anything. I liked the round they sang - you don't hear many rounds nowadays -  but my favourite songs were those on which the girl in the awesome coat did most of the singing (not sure of the name, sorry; she's in the centre of the photo below). She had a little more spunk when she was singing lead rather than backing vocals, and the slightly more punky moments contrasted well with the softer stuff.

Did you go to Swn this year? Who did you see?