The last installment in this year’s scurrilous act of revisionism.
Now, where’s the Future?
1. Ice Age – “You’re Blessed”
I get the Death In June references and the flirtations with dubious imagery and the icey intensity spilling over into ramshackle chaos. But how Ice Age ended up sounding like Futureheads by accident and it being the most gratifying and sophisticated moment on New Brigade makes me think hardcore just found exit velocity for creative entrophy. All it takes is geographic isolation and a strong sense of self.
Still now, even after a thousand listens or more, I can’t quite place EMA’s version of “California”, so oblique were its targets. Which despite its title, probably means it really is about dislocation. And yet for all the mystery, you don’t want to know what I would do to have been the ‘Stephen’ in this song…whatever being that ‘Stephen’ might have meant…
While it’s impressive that Katy Perry did make the video of the year without having to make her tits explode (again), her real crowning achievement is that she’s not a cunt, when, really, that’s exactly what she should be. All things considered, that’s quite remarkable.
What did bored kids do before 1977? Must have been rubbish. Or maybe better? Is it the punk that makes the feelings, or the feelings that make the punk?
Imagine. Craft. Dream. Master your art. Conceive brand identity. Package and present. Then when the time comes, take it to the streets and let the people vote with their feet.
Rarely has there been a more appropriately named band than The Rapture. And with “How Deep Is Your Love?” they were overtaken more than ever by a truly religious hysteria.
9. Ford & Lopatin – “Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me)”*
Following Camus’ concept of the artist’s journey, I can only assume that the second-half of this song’s eyes were first opened by level 4 of After Burner. Or maybe it was Ridge Racer.
Late-night and always doleful, King Krule (ne Zoo Kid – a bizarre change, all in all) was a striking dulcet tone and turn of phrase that crafted poetry from the mundane and gray of loving and hating the world simultaneously. In essence, the sound of every (im)perfect teenhood.
“Tiny Gradiations of Loss” stands as the defining moment from The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, an album constructed from samples of 78s of pre-war parlour room music and inspired by a study suggesting that music assists memory retention in Alzheimer’s patients. And that’s not least because the record’s concept is so perfectly captured in the pathos of that track title – time, and our lives along with it, disappear not in sudden lurches, but in gradual iterations of decay. Evoking the languid sound of antiquated records spiralling into the transience of their own dust-filled grooves, where the entropy of memory mirrors the entropy of vinyl. And strangely, the most pressing question it conjured was not how or what we choose to remember, but instead asks; are some things meant to be forgotten? In a culture that endeavours to exhume, collect, collate and record all, what is lost becomes less and less. The Caretaker wasn’t holding on to the past, but commenting on the curation of its very construction.
And so remained unchanged was Cold Cave’s continued forgoing of L.A.’s washed-out heat for the psychic rain of mid-80s northern Britain. Angst and self-hatred loomed large. Cold Cave are the Human League in aesthetic, but The Smiths in spirit – if ever a better summary is written for frontman Wes Eisold’s muse than “I Want The One I Can’t Have”, then I’d like to hear it. This was empty love and American nightmares turned up to way beyond in the red, that ultimately said we’d rather be anywhere but here today. Which is probably why they found themselves pacing around the church, begging for rapturous release. It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re rapt.
Destroyer’s music has always been a tissue of pop quotations and this was pop criticism to the soundtrack of the sentimental raconteur. “Kaputt” was an insider comment on the very things musicians often shun – self-awareness – representing the high point of Dan Bejar’s constant pursuit of the art of self-consciousness.
On Noah Lennox’s new album Tomboy – his fourth solo effort in total – there was a progression of sorts. And progression feels like the correct term, because here we saw the organic decaying elements of his past work chemically fused to a more electronic pulse. I’d be loathe to suggest that someone who’s been in Animal Collective for over a decade had just discovered drugs, but it was no surprise that the album’s best track, “Surfer’s Hymn”, ended up being released as a single on Kompakt (backed by an Actress remix, no less). But while there was a noticeably more metallic finish to Tomboy than on its predecessor Person Pitch, it was Lennox’s vocal that grounded it, that pushed the feet with one hand and tugged on the heart with the other. With “Surfer’s Hymn”, Panda Bear was posthuman in form, but in intention, he’s never made us feel more alive.
Always skirting somewhere on the edge of consciousness, just outside the M25, is the ineffable sadness of a shattered window McDonalds at 4am on a Sunday, it’s back turned against the world, face perpetually blurred.
9. Gil Scott Heron Vs Jamie XX – “I’ll Take Care Of U”
Whether or not you’re convinced of Jamie XX’s credentials as a producer – dance has not yet quite relinquished its notions of authenticity, rightly or wrongly – he didn’t sound like a tourist here, buoyed along by that none-more-heavy Scott Heron vocal and Romy’s effortless ability to conjure melancholy as vivid as prime-era New Order trapped in infinite stasis. Embrace their benevolence. You’re going to need it.
Tough Love released 5 different records this year. Below is a sampler collecting some choice cuts from each of these releases, on the off chance you missed them first time around.
And as a recap, here’s the years discography
CYMBALS – Unlearn – 12″/digital - buy here (12″ sold out)
Girls Names – Dead To Me - 12″/CD/digital – buy here
Slime – Increases - 12″ EP/digital – buy here
Fair Ohs – Pacific Rim: Early Recordings – 7″/digital – buy here
Weird Dreams – Holding Nails – 7″/digital – buy here
