Greetings folks. While I’ve been moving backwards in
time, revisiting years prior to my first one of these
end-of-year-best-of-round-up blog thingies back in 2009, you’ll be pleased to
read I have no intention to do any ‘best of the decade’ meanderings. No, just
the usual drill, like so:
Disappointments
It’s not like any artist did anything bad, per se, it’s
more like too much hype killing any chance of something meeting expectations
let alone exceeding them. Or the bands give an inch but the punters wanted the
whole hand. Or subjectivity. Something like that. Except for 65daysofstatic
with “replicr, 2019”. Goodness knows what that’s supposed to be. There is
better ambient and better post-rock out there, so this was sadly a waste of
time for all involved. Oh, and Raised Fist with “Anthems”. It’s like the band
outsourced the writing of the music and lyrics, and their social media post, to
a bunch of 12 year olds. Fans and critics seem to like it though; goodness
knows what planet they’re on.
Mono – Nowhere Now Here. There’s a nice little intro
track then the fabulously pummelling track “After You Comes the Flood”. And
then nothing else really, the rest of the album stays in a pretty low gear. A
shame.
Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah– Ancestral Recall. I
think the latest boundary pushing he’s meant to be doing here is something to
do with having a percussionist in the band. And having few discernible
melodies. And having Saul Williams on the album – actually this last was a good
thing, but generally this record was an OK idea poorly executed.
The Cinematic Orchestra – To Believe. Don’t get me
wrong, there are several lovely moments on this, not least the hypnotic
Lessons, but to use the same analogy as for the Mono record, the record never
shifts up a gear to really go somewhere.
Opeth – In Cauda Venenum. Entirely unmemorable.
Slipknot – We Are Not Your Kind. Actually this record
is excellent, but it still doesn’t have the inventiveness and maturity of what
I continue to consider to be the Iowan 9-piece’s magnum opus by a long way,
Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses. That album stepped away from the fourth-wall
breaking teenage angst that dates the early work (particularly Iowa, weirdly –
I revisited it on a jog home, yes you read that right, recently and, honestly,
very few of the tracks hold up today. Exceptions are People=Shit, deep cut I Am
Hated, and the title track itself, one of the few times Slipknot’s more
experimental leanings came good) and has since come back. Some of the choruses
on WANYK (this acronym appears on official band merch, suggesting ‘wank’ isn’t
a word in the US like it is this side of the pond) are so sugary they make my
teeth wobble (songs like Psychosocial, on All Hope is Gone, suffered from the
same problem), Corey Taylor’s cheesy rapping on Nero Forte is a far cry from
the self-titled glory days, and while there isn’t an epic experimental dirge-y dud
near the end of the album (Skin Ticket, The Virus of Life, Gehenna, etc) the
experimentation is instead spread out throughout the record. Some of it works,
like the lullaby-from-hell Spiders, but most of it just gives us extended
intros to songs we don’t really need. Funnily enough, my favourite tracks on
WANKY (sic, but seriously, even that is cringe-y for middle-aged men to be
coming up with) are the Slipknot-by-numbers tracks where the originality comes
from within, from the riffs themselves. Tracks like Red Flag and Orphan.
Swans – Leaving Meaning. Far too much filler among the
flashes of genius, which is all the more frustrating because the album is
Michael Gira’s shortest for some time.
Tool – Fear Inoculum. To be fair, there was no way this
could have lived up to the hype of 13 years. But its flaws are so
glaringly obvious even I can articulate them. While the usual mix of short and
long songs needn’t be repeated, necessarily, nearly every song outstays its
welcome here, even Culling Voices, which is particularly unfortunate because I
think it is otherwise a beautiful song with an incredible build and a clear
direction, a rarity elsewhere on the album. Some reviewers described it as the
most Tool-like song on the album but its simplicity (at least in the first
half) suggests the opposite to me. Now, strangely, the one song that I don’t
find to drag is the longest, the 15-minute closing epic, 7empest (there is
absolutely no call for grown men to be spelling it like that in 2019,
regardless of how linked to the number 7 the album supposedly is). It has the
most memorable riffs and melodies, starts with a flash of Maynard’s sense of
humour, harks back to the Aenima glory days, and uses effects nicely.
Throughout the rest of the album, the creativity of the bass playing is sorely
lacking – Justin seems to have spent all his time coming up with a nice tone
(still not as warm as on Lateralus) rather than an interesting bass part. Even
the drums don’t sit right with me – it’s another incredible performance from
Danny Carey, of course, but the patterns don’t seem to exist inseparably within
the songs like they normally do with Tool. There are some grooves and fills,
but nothing that really stands out, nothing iconic like the Tool drummer
normally yields. I don’t mind Maynard’s older-age subtle singing style,
although I found it generally more goose-bump-inducing on A Perfect Circle’s
Eat the Elephant, and on Fear Inoculum there are an awful lot of short two or
three word phrases before MJK takes a break, which I find irritating. Less of
this shorter phrasing on Culling Voices and 7empest, though, which is nice.
That leaves Adam Jones then, whose album this clearly and utterly is. His
guitar work on 7empest is some of the best he’s ever done, for example. But
Tool were always about all 4 members equally, and the unevenness this time
around unnerves me. Overall my opinion is that 10,000 Days is the superior
album – it had more flow, better sequencing (the interludes haven’t been worthy
since Lateralus, and Fear Inoculum’s are the worst yet – I find it especially unfathomable
why Legion Inoculant is between Invincible and Descending, given Descending is
already bookended by its own minute or so of pointless noise), some shorter
punchier songs among the longer epics, far cleverer use of repetition (on
something like the title track), less reliance on chug (sorry but doing it outside of 4/4 only makes it marginally less tired) and the songs built to decent pay-offs that
didn’t keep coming back to diminishing returns.
Anyway, enough of that, it’s sad isn’t it that a person
can go on so much about what he dislikes rather than what he loves (although
there is nothing like a good hatchet job). Said person must be getting old and
cranky.
Post-rock
Earlier this year, in a wonderful, and it turns out
incredibly fruitful, piece of geekery, I joined a Facebook group called the
Post-Rock Appreciation Society. I thought myself a fairly big fan of this most
delightful of music genres, but it turns out I had only scratched the surface.
Far more productive than my foray into black metal last year, I could quite
easily come up with a top ten albums of the year consisting entirely of
post-rock. Fantastic records that didn’t make it include American Football –
American Football (3) (perhaps stretching the definition a tad), Astronoid –
Astronoid, Autism – Have You Found Peace?, Cloudkicker – Unending, Latitudes –
Part Island, Russian Circles – Blood Year, Spotlights – Love & Decay,…
Jazz
I haven’t done very well in keeping up with new jazz
this year. I listened to a few of Jazzwise magazine’s top 20 list and there
indeed some good cuts in there (not least, Branford Marsalis, who’da thunk it –
my friend Rob doesn’t like him but apparently everyone else does; I should stop
listening to my friend Rob) and there were a few decent records I did manage to
check out from the likes of GoGo Penguin, Portico Quartet, Theo Croker, and
Snarky Puppy.
Honourable
mentions
Iggy Pop – Free. I could have mentioned this in my
small list of decent jazz records above but I wanted to bring it out more by
itself. Largely the brilliant but demented ramblings of a madman over the top
of some fine jazz playing.
Pixies – Beneath the Eyrie. Black Francis and Co’s best
album since Doolittle.
Korn – The Nothing. Worth mentioning solely because of
how astonishing it is this band is still around and is still capable of making
a good record. But it is a good record anyway.
Baroness – Gold & Grey. Apparently incapable of making a poor
album.
Iron & Wine (& Calexico). Ditto.
Dream Theater – Distance Over Time. OK sure it doesn’t
add much to the band’s legacy but, unlike a lot of the post (drummer) Mike
Portnoy output it doesn’t detract from it either.
Refused – War Music. I want to say much better than
2015’s Freedom, but upon a revisit it seems Freedom wasn’t actually that bad
either.
Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell. The first 5
tracks are all brilliant, not least the 9+ minute Venice Bitch, which is one of
the best songs of the year, but then the next 9 tracks are patchy.
Rammstein – self-(or possibly un?)-titled. I have
always been aware of this German metal band, but this time ‘round I made sure
to make time for their new record. It certainly was not wasted. The album is a
tad low key, in more ways than one, but none the worse for it.
Tycho – Weather, and Floating Points – Crush. I haven’t
kept up with much electronic music over the year, but these two definitely
happened. I think.
My
favourites
Of which there are 12. It could have been worse but
then I made an “honourable mentions” section.
Ibrahim Maalouf – S3NS
It’s peculiar. It’s entirely possible to listen to the
French-Lebanese precise trumpet playing and arrangements and find it a bit
unemotional and over-rehearsed. But when it clicks, my goodness does it click.
Jazz records aren’t normally so infectious one wants to listen to them on
repeat, but Maalouf is capable of making albums that are. This is another one
of them.
Check-out: Una Rosa Blanca, Radio Magallanes
Loscil – Equivalents
This is ambient noise. But. It. Is. Gorgeous. I have no
idea why. I guess it just speaks to me, somehow. The artist released another
album, Lifelike, in December, but I haven’t had enough time with that one yet.
Check-out: Equivalents 1, Equivalents 3
The Appleseed Cast – The Fleeting Light of Impermanence
Depending on whether you class 2001’s masterpiece Low
Level Owl as one or two albums, this is either the band’s eighth or ninth
full-length release, but it is most certainly not an example of the musical
equivalent staying at the party after everyone else has gone home. Far from it,
it is high quality, creative, and varied stuff.
Check-out: Chaotic Waves, Reaching the Forest
Wear Your Wounds – Rust on the Gates of Heaven
I can’t remember if I’ve written this out loud before,
but I’ve often wondered if Jacob Bannon is musically the weak link of Converge.
His endeavours outside of the aforementioned prove that this is unequivocally
not the case. The production, arrangement, and writing on WYW’s sophomore
effort show in particularly how Bannon is capable of far more than devastating
screaming. The record is mature and cohesive and while Bannon admittedly is
joined by several of his talented friends, his influence and contribution
cannot be understated.
Check-out: Love in Peril, Shrinking Violet
Alcest – Spiritual Instinct
I first saw this French shoe-gaze/metal band support
Opeth at the Roundhouse. I remember thinking they might be a bit lame, in the
tradition of support bands who are not at the forefront of their genres, but
upon further digging I was glad to find my knee-jerk concerns were, as they
often are, wrong. The mononymous Neige (French for ‘snow’, real name Stephane
Paut) has in 2019 put out a record better than Opeth’s.
Check-out: Protection, Sapphire
Pelican – Nighttime Stories
The tightly woven 6th record from the
Chicagoan (sic?) post-metal titans continues the consistency and quality of
their output. Not previously a band I’ve listened to as much as, say, Cult of
Luna, or Isis, which can’t be due to anything other than there not being enough
hours in the day. Something it has been enjoyable to set right.
Check-out: Midnight and Mescaline, Full Moon, Black
Water
Newly discovered post-rock gems, thanks to the Facebook
group I mentioned, without which I would not have come across any of these fine
works. I’m sorry I haven’t got something distinct to say about each one, but as
a consequence of a) hoovering up as many recommendations as I could at once,
and b) most post-rock being the sort of thing one can enjoy without knowing it
very well (unlike a more standard rock band’s songs, I mean), it has all
blurred into one big melting pot. These selections never stay quiet and
shimmering for very long, and they’re not a million miles away from each other
(except perhaps the Tides from Nebula with its heavy incorporation of
electronics) or all that original in the first place, but I enjoyed them all as
great examples of the sound.
Pillars – Cavum. Check out: Escape
Ranges – Babel. Check out: Tower
We lost the sea – Triumph & Disaster. Check out:
Towers
The end of the ocean – -aire. Check out: Redemption
Tides from Nebula – From Voodoo to Zen. Check out: The
new delta
Cult of Luna – A Dawn to Fear
I haven’t ordered my top best greatest favourite albums
in these little blogs for years, but in 2019 this album is my favourite by a
large margin. Sure, Swedish post-metal legends Cult of Luna are (is?) one of my
favourite bands, but they (it?) haven’t released a great album since 2008’s Eternal Kingdom. Granted, 2013’s Vertikal had
two of their greatest ever songs (I, the Weapon, and In Awe Of) and 2016’s
Mariner, with Julie Christmas, was far from a failed experiment, but A Dawn to
Fear is a classic, vintage CoL, unfettered masterpiece. This is all the more
surprising given it’s 79 minutes long (I’m not sure if it fits on one CD, I
only have the double vinyl. The fact that only one physical form of the album
is taking up space in our house will please my wife no end) and there’s
basically no filler. Even Somewhere Along the Highway (2006) had filler. It is
entirely possible ADtF is Cult of Luna’s magnum opus, which as the 8th
release of a band that has been around for about 20 years is somewhat
astonishing. I often ask folk if they can name a band they become a fan of but
then prefer a release that comes later. The only example I had up until now was
Slipknot (of whom I was a fan after the first record, but their third,
mentioned earlier, is their best), but now I think I have two.
While it is sad that I haven’t as much to say about
this album as I do about Tool’s Fear Inoculum, I can talk about it more in
emotional terms, about how it is simply mesmerising and one of those records
where just where you think it’s hit a peak, yet another stunning song comes
along. What is singularly striking though is the sheer melodiousness of the
guitar lines. While the vocals are as crushing, and the lyrical concept as
interesting, as ever, it is the guitars that tell the album’s story. Sublime
stuff.
Check-out: Lights on the Hill, The Fall
Merry Christmas everyone/everybody (depending on
whether you prefer Shakin’ Stevens or Slade).
2019, a playlist: Link
