2019 has been a year of mixed blessings — for me, a year of transition and change, exciting and daunting all at the same time. For the world (and especially the UK) it has been a year characterised by division and unrest. This year, I’ve been relying on old favourites for comfort and support, but have also started to shift towards the polar opposites — Throbbing Gristle have been played an awful lot this year, but ambient music has been worming its way into my library for the first time too. Some of the above has been reflected below. The records here are in no particular order. I hope you enjoy, and a Happy New Year!
U-Bahn — U-Bahn
The debut album from Australian new-wave inspired band U-Bahn has got to be one of the years most startlingly original debuts. Like a Devo inspired soundtrack to a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the album is simultaneously indebted to it’s early 80’s inspirations — blocky guitar lines, buzzing electronic interludes and songs dealing with weird sex and beings from another dimension — whilst also carving out a niche all of its own. It’s fun, self-aware and lighthearted, but it also really grooves. Standouts include the opener Beta Boyz, with its catchy yelped chorus and synth buildups, and Dirty Sheets, a hilarious mash up of samples from what sounds like cheesy 70’s porno’s (‘I kissed her right on the lips/Which lips, honey?’) set to an urgent Gang of Four inspired backing track. There’s also room for a little bit of necessary experimentation to keep listeners on their toes, such as War of Currents, which sounds like a radio broadcast from an alien planet. Combined with their wacky visuals and increasingly infamous live performances, U — Bahn are a band worth sitting up and taking notice of.
Other People’s Lives — Stats
Success for Stats has been a long time coming — their debut EP, Where is the Money, came out in 2014 to muted reception. Now, 5 years later, the band has fully outgrown their awkward teenage phase and the results are almost flawless. The whole album was supposedly built around elongated jam sessions, so for all the songs here to be so succinct, lean and groovy is an achievement in itself. The sense of fun is still there — slow jam opener I Am An Animal and the bouncy Raft are self aware, even when playing with the notion of sensuality. But the band sound mature and settled, reflected in the domestic bliss presented on the cover. There is a Story I Tell About My Life and From a High Sky have a new found hard edge and incessant beat, and the band even allows themselves to indulge in some more serious subject matter on the kitchen sink drama The Family Business, or touching love song Never Loved Anyone. And the crowning achievement and culmination of all of this is Lose It, easily the catchiest hook on the whole record, and a dedication to letting go of normality, whatever the price (as well as the albums wittiest quip: ‘Yesterday I realised I left the back door unlocked/for four straight days and nights/ but nothing was taken/ I tell you, you can’t rely on anyone anymore). All of the above is set to superb music — bouncing baselines, electronic funk and easily accessible melodies. Stats have arrived, and are primed to take over the world.
No Home Record — Kim Gordon
As a founding member of the legendary Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon is no stranger to noisy experimentation. Having flirted with side projects for several years, No Home Record is her long awaited full length solo debut. And it somehow manages to be both startlingly original, and yet exactly what one may come to expect. Air BnB, with its tectonic chorus and shrieking guitars is an obvious early standout, but digging deeper reveals a wealth of treasures — the uneasy rumbling threat of Cookie Butter, the almost hip-hop reminiscent beat on Paprika Pony, and the discordant closer Get Yr Life Back are all as intriguing as they are uneasy. Everything here is tightly wound and tense, threatening almost. But Gordon also manages to find moments of beauty, even when the beauty is aggressively slammed up against dense walls of guitar — opening track Sketch Artist displays this perfectly, juxtaposing swelling strings with rumbling guitars which, to steal a quote from Brian Eno (who used it to describe Iggy Pop’s The Idiot), sounds like having your head encased in concrete. Of all the albums on this list, this one was certainly the most highly anticipated by fans and critics alike. What solidifies it as a great achievement is that it managed to not only meet everyone’s expectations, but buck them as well, broadening her fan base whilst challenging her core audience. The proof? I was never a Sonic Youth fan.
Titanic Rising — Weyes Blood
Sometimes, an album is simply far greater than the sum of its parts. The sound here can only be described as an electro-flecked pastiche of The Carpenters, yet Blood takes that formula and runs with it. What has resulted is easily one of the years most devastatingly gorgeous records. Andromeda and Movies are simply beautiful, as swirling and dramatic as the record’s name would suggest, sensual and sorrowful in equal measure, whereas tracks such as A Lots Gonna Change, with its swelling strings and anthemic chorus, could easily be the finale in any art — house musical (is there such a thing? If not, Weyes Blood should write one). What carries the whole record is Blood’s voice — rich, distinctive, effortlessly emotive. It allows tracks such as Everyday — the most obviously Carpenters inspired track here — to transcend their inspirations to become practically drenched in pathos, a jaunty pop chorus with a torch song beating away underneath. 2019 was the year of Weyes Blood.
The Centre Won’t Hold — Sleater Kinney
Sleater Kinney are one of those bands who could hang up their guitars right now, and their status as legends would forever be assured. But in trying times such as these, perhaps we need the outspoken riot-girl icons more than ever. It’s so perfectly apt, therefore, that the band chose to take a sharp left turn away from their discography and try something fresh and challenging. With St. Vincent on production duties, the band delve into as yet uncharted territories. There’s the charged, feminist tinged rockers we’ve come to expect (Hurry on Home), but there are also tracks such as Reach Out and The Dog/The Body, which with there speckles of electronic embellishments and anthemic chorus’, are pure guitar driven pop. At the other end of the spectrum, tracks such as the opening title track, RUINS and The Future is Here have an almost proto-industrial, steely edge. The breadth of styles and moods is astonishing, and the band master them all with ease. The record closes out with Broken, a gorgeously simple piano and vocal only tribute to Christine Blasey Ford, and her bravery in standing up in court against Brett Kavanaugh. Politics bubble under the surface throughout the album — no matter the style, a combined sense of ennui, exhaustion and yet somehow perseverance gives all of these songs, even the most lightweight, their bite. The title’s purposeful rephrasing of Yeats’ ‘the centre cannot hold’ sends a clear message — bands like Sleater Kinney are driving the change and speaking out, musically, politically and artistically.
Mazy Fly — Spelling
Spelling may originally be from the Bay Area of San Francisco, but her second album Mazy Fly could easily be from outer space. It’s a collision of so many disparate and conflicting elements — the artist herself name checks Solange, Motown Soul and The Beatles as inspirations, but with the records commitment to tape loops, buzzing synthesizer lines and mournful saxophone interjections, it could also easily have come out of the same northern UK industrial scene as Cabaret Voltaire or Reproduction era Human League. What ties all these elements together is Spelling’s uncanny ear for melody and emotion. Some of the pieces here, such as the instrumental Melted Wings or woozy ballad Haunted Water, could be backing tracks to an experimental horror film. However, there are others, such as Under the Sun, which are hopeful, almost playful, even as Spelling’s lyrics deal with being haunted by the past and the fear of self-destruction. All of these ideas culminate in the album’s magnum opus Secret Thread — the first half of the track is nursery rhyme sweet, before the chilling synthesizers kick in and the saxophone blares across the track like a foghorn in a storm. It’s a staggering achievement, even greater for how Spelling manages to inject real emotion, and even a sense of fun, into what is easily one of the years most bizarre and challenging pop records.
Pony — Orville Peck
If you polled me at the beginning of 2019 as to what genres of music I liked the least, country would have ranked very high up the list. Therefore, it’s been an absolute delight and surprise for a country album to rank in my top 10. But see, that is the sly genius of Orville Peck, the perpetually masked country star who combines instantly recognisable country musicianship with a heart wrenching baritone and — here’s the clincher — overtly queer subject matter. On paper it sounds like a gimmick, but musically it makes so much sense. Peck’s gravelly baritone is as authentically country as it is endlessly emotive, and on every track here he successfully rides that thin line that all torch singers strive for — its dramatic and engaging, but it also feels authentically real. Picking standouts is challenging — this album feels like it was made to be listened to front to back, under the stars in the middle of nowhere — but the polar opposites of the driving, incessant Buffalo Run and the understated, almost lethargic Big Sky demonstrate Peck’s talents perfectly. All the classic queer stories are covered here — drug dependency, falling in love with bad men and being obsessed with tragic yet beautiful women (on Queen of the Rodeo). Queer country has a spotty history, and Orville Peck easily slots into the pantheon of artists with feet planted in two very separate worlds. One can imagine him being a defining moment in a cross-cultural exchange.
Lung Bread for Daddy — Due Blonde
Though Due Blonde’s last record, 2015's Welcome Back To Milk, was an immediate standout for that year, Blonde yearned for a rawer sound entirely her own. The result, Lung Bread for Daddy — written, performed and produced almost entirely by Du Blonde herself — is another outstanding achievement. The pieces are all still there — Blonde’s rich, gravelled honey voice, her beautifully melodic songwriting — but the sound is rawer, less overtly theatrical yet equally moving. Singles and standout tracks Buddy and Angel prove that Blonde can write a killer hook, but there is so much more here to discover. Opening track Coffee Machine is a low-key slow-burner that ends in a scathing guitar solo, whereas Baby Talk sees Blonde become the eye of the storm, her deep and almost morose vocals holding steady amongst a chaotic swirl of drums, guitar and organ. And if fans of Welcome Back to Milk were feeling disappointed, Acetone retains that record's rock n’roll show-tune feel, with all the ear-worm potential and pomp but pared down to its bare essentials. In an alternative universe, Du Blonde would be a superstar.
Vagina — Alaska Thunderfuck
Yes, I know, 90% of the music coming out of the Drag Race franchise is, well…questionable. However, when the queens get it right, they get it right. Alaska Thunderfuck has always been able to straddle that fine line between self-aware pastiche of drag cliches, and being able to say ‘fuck it’ and having fun with it anyway. What buoys the record is Thunderfuck’s genuine singing/rapping prowess, filtered as it may be through her idiosyncratic sense of humour. From the ludicrously banal ‘Walk into the Club’ (with its hilarious ‘Born This Way’ misquote) through to the wonderfully filthy ‘Cellulite’, an ode to chubby chasers everywhere (‘got an ass so fat/it’s got cellulite honey’), Alaska proves that dirty, campy drag music doesn’t have to be club fodder or guilty-pleasure, but it can be and that we should learn to embrace it. And with the pro-sobriety influenced love song ‘Twisted’, and the genuinely beautiful ‘The Land of the Midnight Sun’ closing out the record, Miss. Thunderfuck proves she is also not afraid to bring the pathos at the heart of drag out into the spotlight as well.
Neighbourhoods — Ernest Haze
In fairness, this could be seen as a bit of a cheat — you see, Neighbourhoods was officially ‘released’ in 1975. However, it was personally pressed and released in extremely limited quantities by Hood, who had to give up his life as a jazz musician in the 1950’s after contracting polio. 2019, however, marked its first widespread release. It seems fitting that this album exists as something of a curio or keepsake, a memory from a bygone era. What’s most exciting though,is that an album this quaint and willingly antique can sound so radical even today. The album is love letter to Hood’s home neighbourhood in Portland, Oregon, and its chosen form is a potent mix of proto-ambient synths, jazz and music concrete. As a record it’s totally alive, built mostly around field recordings Hood recorded around his home town, reflecting the freedom, joys and sometimes banalities of small town life — entire minutes of At the Store are dedicated to an everyday conservation between two young boys. When Hood does intervene, his primitive synthesizer melodies don’t attempt to blend in, but reinforce the emotions of his subjects. What results is an album that feels jettisoned from another time, or perhaps something to be unearthed in an old suitcase in the attic. As an ambient album, it is adequately relaxing yet impossible to ignore as well, given the deceiving complexity of its textures. Perhaps I have chosen to bend my own rules and put it here because this has been my year of transition, of redefining home — or maybe it’s because it sits so uneasily within our current musical and political climate that it feels entirely necessary. It’s cosy, warm and oh so easy to get lost in — but that doesn’t also mean that it’s trite. Never before has music evoked the real world so vividly or so beautifully, and in 2019 Hood’s little passion project arrives as one of the years most charming releases.
