Hey everyone - it's December! But before you break out the Christmas hits, here are 10 non-Yuletide tracks that I really enjoyed listening to in November and that I hope you'll enjoy listening to right now.
1. Holy Hell It's Cold by Quiet Marauder
(from MEN)
I tend to revisit MEN (originally released in 2013 - read my three-year-old review of it here) every year at around this time, and this rib-tickling but also slightly sobering cut seemed like an appropriate choice given the current temperature outside.
2. Treaty by Leonard Cohen
(from You Want it Darker)
You Want it Darker - which it's probably safe to assume was written and recorded by a Leonard Cohen who knew that he would soon be dead - has a certain duality to it. Many of its songs make it sound like Len had made his peace with the world and was ready to go, but a couple of songs (including Seemed the Better Way and this beautiful number) suggest a certain amount of regret, a desire to go back and change something. More thoughts on You Want it Darker here.
What is it about well-read American indie bands and songs about brutal acts of violence?
That's right, it's a blog about The Decemberists!
Oregon's most successful sea shanty merchants are kind of notorious for the dark, gory narratives that singer Colin Meloy writes to accompany all those hot accordion riffs. However, I'm not just picking on The Decemberists today; since I've been listening to Black Sheep Boy and Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See almost constantly over the last week or two, I'd also like to include Okkervil River in this discussion.
So here's a new thing. From now on, my last blog of each month will take the form of a playlist, a recap of what I've been listening to (and indeed blogging about) each month. I'm afraid I can't be bothered to compile and share a proper Spotify playlist, but I do encourage all of you to do so for yourselves.
Anyhow, here are 10 of the songs I've been loving since New Year's...
1. Summer Here Kids - Grandaddy
(from Under the Western Freeway)
My first blog of 2015 was all about Grandaddy's debut album, and how it's arguably just as good (and as depressing) as its more popular sequel, The Sophtware Slump. This song in particular is a corker, and what better way to kick off a January playlist than with a song about summer?
Prior to this month, they hadn't released a new studio album since 2011.
Their last album, The King is Dead, was something of a departure from their previous work. It scrapped the epic prog-rock structures and fantastical narratives that had characterised albums like The Hazards of Love and The Crane Wife, and it erred instead towards a more folksy, down-to-earth sort of songwriting.
While The King is Dead was reasonably well-received by critics (its metascore of 77 trumps the meagre 73 achieved by The Hazards of Love), I personally consider it their weakest album to date. It had far less personality than any of its predecessors, and fewer stories to tell; furthermore, the album's musical backdrop was significantly blander than the band's spectacular, accordion-pumping norm.
With all of the above in mind, you can probably guess how I felt going into What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, the first fresh batch of Decemberism in almost precisely four years. I was excited, certainly, but that excitement was cut with more than a little trepidation; any artist could be forgiven a small foray into the ho-hum after a project as ambitious as Hazards of Love, but if this new album had proved as ordinary as The King is Dead, I'd have had no choice but to assume that the Decemberists I had once loved were dead, buried, and surreptitiously replaced by indieblah clones of their former fun selves.
On Monday, I suggested 10 lesser-known Christmas songs for people who are sick to death of Slade, Band Aid, Cliff Richard, and all the other music that's pretty much inescapable from Bonfire Night onwards.
But what about the people who don't want to listen to Christmas music at all? I've seen quite a few Grinchy Scrooges on my Facebook feed this week, all of them complaining that it's too early to break out the Christmas records, or that they simply hate Christmas in general and wish everyone would stop talking about it.
Well, for the benefit of those people, today's blog will concern itself with non-Christmas albums that are nevertheless perfect for this time of year. December is a rather lovely month, what with autumn gradually turning into winter, and it'd be a shame to completely abandon ourselves to seasonal cheese when there's so much other music that's ideal for the latter part of the year.
Without further ado, then, here are three albums for a non-festive December:
The Magic Position by Patrick Wolf
I only purchased this album last month, so it already held a distinct autumn/winter feel for me. Still, I'm pretty sure that The Magic Position would sound Decembery even in June, with its evocations of bonfires and rotting leaves and its sprawling array of warming sounds (including - yes - a Christmassy-sounding glockenspiel on the title track).
"And you were my husband, my wife, my heroine - now this is our final December."
Key Wintry Track: Bluebells, which seems to compare the slow decline of a romantic relationship to the Earth's slow descent into winter at the end of each year.
Last Proper Album: The King is Dead, released in January 2011.
Recent Activity: They put out a live album, We All Raise Our Voices to the Air, in March 2012, but haven't released anything since. They've got a few gigs in May - a festival and a couple of benefit concerts - and singer Colin Meloy recently recorded an EP of Kinks covers, but aside from his vague assertion that he's "starting to dabble" with new Decemberists material, there's been no word on when we might get a new set of songs from the band.
Why I'm Desperate for New Material: The King is Dead was good, but it represented a conscious effort to strip things back after the proggy song structures and epic rocking that littered The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love. As enjoyable as it is, the slender, folksy LP that the band left us with in 2011 simply isn't enough to keep us going for this long. We need more (and I personally need more of the aforementioned proggy epic rock).
Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and this is my last blog post of 2013. I'd love to do a great big review of the last twelve months, but to be honest, my memories of early '13 aren't all that detailed. Besides, I'm sure you're all busy buying alcohol and newspapering the floor in preparation for the big blowout tomorrow night, so I'll keep this one short.
Here are five songs that are ideal for a brand new year:
This Will Be My Year by Semisonic (from Feeling Strangely Fine)
A defiant ode to the hope that, this time, you'll win. The fact that I first purchased Feeling Strangely Fine (also featuring big hits like Closing Time and Secret Smile) around this time of year only cements its newyeariness in my own mind.
Following on from Wednesday's blog post - in which I listed five new releases I was lusting after - I will now select a few albums of a slightly older vintage. Most of these are still relatively new (none were released outside of my own lifetime, for example), but none of them are so new that they could reasonably be referred to as 'new' albums.
Got that? Then let's go...
Star of Love by Crystal Fighters
I went to Fopp in Manchester a couple of years ago and they had this album on the stereo. I asked the guy on the till what it was, he told me, and I asked to buy a copy. It was out of stock. I still lie awake sometimes, wondering why on Earth they were playing it to their customers if it wasn't available to purchase.
The track that has me excited: Xtatic Truth, a particularly memorable track that has kept Star of Love on my wishlist ever since Manchester.
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Castaways and Cutouts by The Decemberists
Like that album by The Superman Revenge Squad Band, this was another recommendation that came from Twitter. Unlike The Superman Revenge Squad Band, I am already pretty well-acquainted with The Decemberists, but I'm yet to get my hands on Castaways and Cutouts because, well, I've never seen it in shops. But a hearty commendation from @Driver_8_Ace may well have me adding it to a virtual shopping basket very soon.
The track that has me excited: The one about your mum.
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Humber Dogger Fortiesby John Mouse
I first came across John Mouse in the Green Man Festival's Far Out Tent. I've seen him several times since (albeit with fewer band members each time), and yet I still haven't gotten around to buying his probably awesome album. That will change...soon.
The track that has me excited: The Last Great Rhondda Romance, one of the most curiously heartwarming songs you're ever likely to hear.
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Can Our Love... by Tindersticks
Tindersticks are good because, like Nick Cave, there's always another album in their discography. Since I acquired Curtains, this one has been next on my list, mostly for the cuddly donkey on the front.
The track that has me excited: I don't know any of the songs on Can Our Love...but, as my Curtains write-up demonstrated, that doesn't mean I won't love them. Here's one of my favourites from that album, Let's Pretend.
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Love and Other Hideous Accidents by The Just Joans
Last.fm radio is a dear friend of mine, but it does have an irritating tendency to play amazing songs that are nigh-on impossible to track down afterwards. For example, I was thrilled when Eels released their Useless Trinkets compilation because it meant that I could finally get my hands on Rotten World Blues. Hideous Accident by The Just Joans is a great song, but finding its parent album has proved to be somewhat fiddly. Maybe I just haven't been trying hard enough.
The track that has me excited: The sort-of title track, represented here by a live performance because YouTube doesn't know the studio version.
So there you are - factor in the albums I mentioned on Wednesday, and you've got a pretty solid list to draw from if you ever need to buy me a present.
Actually, don't buy me any of these because I've just been paid and I intend to go shopping tomorrow. Have a good weekend!
Please note: this blog post has nothing to do with Metallica's first album. In fact, I've never even heard Metallica's first album. Is it good?
So I really like Game of Thrones, and one of the best things about watching it is trying to guess who will die next. Given the programme's 'anyone can die' reputation, relatively few major characters have been killed off so far (see the full list here), but my dad has read the books and he gleefully assures me that the worst is yet to come.
It's hard to create engaging, three-dimensional characters over the course of a song, and harder still to get your listeners so attached to those characters that they're upset when you kill them off. None of three albums listed below ever emulate Game's ability to make you go 'holy moly, I can't believed they did away with him', and frankly, none of them really endeavour to. You'd need a proper concept album with recurring characters to make that happen, and that's not what these LPs are about.
But just because each song has its own set of characters doesn't mean that the artists are any less excited at the prospect of giving those characters a grisly death. Without further ado, then, here are three albums with a body count that George R. R. Martin would be proud of:
Picaresque by The Decemberists
Colin Meloy and Co. have never shied away from a gruesome tale, and by my count, Picaresque is the most corpse-strewn of all their albums.
Final Body Count? At least five: the suicide lovers in We Both Go Down Together, the mother in The Mariner's Revenge Song, and Eli the Barrow Boy and his lady friend. Then we have the "fifteen celebrity minds" and the "sixteen military wives" who get served to the cannibal kings in Sixteen Military Wives; assuming they all get eaten, that brings our total to 36. It's probably a safe bet that both mariners in the Revenge Song cop it as well, given that we leave them inside a whale (not to mention the fact that one is about to be murdered by the other). That makes 38, and that's ignoring the countless unnamed seamen who were "chewed alive" by that whale.
Too Long In This Condition by Alasdair Roberts & Friends
A collection of traditional folk songs (always good for a grim demise or two) as interpreted by the Scottish singer and his pals. More or less every song features at least one kick of the bucket.
Final Body Count? I counted 14, but that figure doesn't include the people who presumably perish in The Burning of Auchindoun or the crew of the "Spanish galley" that is sunk by the boy from The Golden Vanity.
Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
An obvious choice. At just under an hour long, this murderous little platter averages out to roughly one death per minute.
Final Body Count? A whopping 65, according to Wikipedia. It isn't clear whether or not that number includes the dog that gets "crucified" in The Curse of Millhaven.
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