Quarter 1 - Report

Good Afternoon,

 

I’m writing this like a letter to a client as this is being typed on my work computer. It’s Wednesday and two days before I leave the company. I have little or nothing to do besides a hand over of work to a colleague which can wait until tomorrow.

 

The title isn’t actually the red herring I have implied it is. This blog will be a report on the first three months of the year, not in relation to the performance of a particular pension scheme, but the records released in January, February and March 2015.

 

Last year, I posted two lists of five albums on Twitter, that consisted of my favourite records of the first and second six months of 2014. This year, after only three months I already have five records that it would be a crime to not mention if it so happens better records are released in the next nine months.

 

In fact in this month of April, I am expecting the best album of the year to be released, Eaves – What Green Feels Like. If the E.P from November and new single ‘Pylons’ are anything to go by, it’s going to be utterly sublime. Needless to say, it’s been on pre-order for about three months now.

 

On top of that, Blur release their first album with the original line up for sixteen years next week, and again if the streamed tracks “Go Out”, “Lonesome Street”, “There are too many of us” and “I Broadcast” are indicative of the rest of the record, it’s going to be a treat.

Laura Marling puts out her 5th album next week too, which is bound to slay me like she does every time.

 

Finally, and remember this is still just April I’m referring to here, the Stornoway album landed a few weeks ago and is sounding really special. Tonight I see them at Reading’s Sub 89.

 

In January, two albums I had been anticipating since last year dropped. Menace Beach’s ‘Rat World’, and Desperate Journalist’s eponymous debut. Both strikingly different from each other, but both equally stupendous.

 

In February, Idlewild made a triumphant return after 6 years off with ‘Everything Ever Written’. The beginning of March saw Noel Gallagher finally release the second solo record he’d announced six months previously, and then at the end of March I made the discovery of Courtney Barnett and her first L.P proper ‘Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit’ after her first two E.Ps were released as a double album ‘The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas’.

 

It has to be said, the first exposure I had of her didn’t exactly blow me away. Not sure I was in the mood for it when I played the video for “Pedestrian at Best”. It didn’t make it to the end. A while later, in the car, the misses changed the radio station over when it had been playing for a minute and I didn’t exactly protest. Fortunately though, as it turned out, a lot of people, including the person who makes the playlists on XFM and Absolute Radio, did like it. You couldn’t escape it. I found myself humming or singing it, in the car, in the shower, at work. It had seeped into my sub-conscious. A link came up for a session she did at one of the Rough Trade shops in London and up first was ‘Dead Fox’. Such a contrast to 'PaB', and a different style of singing. I did think perhaps that the record would be all punky guitars and shouty vocals like 'PaB' but after listening to a stream, it was a myriad of sounds and styles.

"Elevator Operator" has a Hammond organ running through it giving it a much lighter feel than the PJ Harvey-esque "PaB", "Small Poppies" is bluesy and has a permanent guitar solo that apes Jack White and evokes the spirit of The White Stripes' "Ball and Biscuit". "Depreston" is a Country song with slide guitar prominent, lyrics discussing buying a house in Preston, a suburb of Melbourne, in her native Australia.

"Dead Fox" and "Nobody really cares if you don't go to the party" are similar stylistically, all summery, pop tunes with words talking about the mundane, everyday shopping dilemmas and arguing with a friend about the virtues of staying in or going out.

"Kim's Caravan" is the slow burning, epic, dark and brooding, big end of album track, despite the slightly through-away "Boxing Day Blues" concluding the record. Check the great video to accompany it, which makes more for a short movie, below.

It's such a natural sounding record. There are no pigeon holes to fill here. Her influences are many and worn on her sleeve.

So, in no particular order, as they are all as important as each other:

Menace Beach - Rat World
Desperate Journalist - Desperate Journalist
Idlewild - Everything Ever Written
Noel Gallagher - Chasing Yesterday
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I sit and think,  and sometimes I just sit.

LISTEN  TO THEM, BUY THEM!!