Saturday, December 31, 2022

The best of everything in 2022

Recovered from the failed newsletter...


Top 50 Albums Of 2022


50 Green/Blue - Paper Thin
49 Kamikaze Nurse - Stimuloso
48 Indigo Sparke - Hysteria
47 Breakup Haircut - Punk Dancing For Self Defence
46 Blue Amber - Rockland's Workshop
45 Jeremy Warmsley - American Daydream
44 Marlowe - Marlowe 3
43 Gordon McIntyre - Even With The Support Of Others
42 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Empty Rooms
41 Daphni - Cherry
40 Sophie Jamieson - Choosing
39 Andrew Bird - Inside Problems
38 Animal Collective - Time Skiffs
37 Modern Studies - We Are There
36 TVAM - High Art Lite
35 Kristine Leschper - The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door
34 Attia Taylor - Space Ghost
33 Angel Olsen - Big Time
32 The Beths - Expert In A Dying Field
31 Samantha Savage Smith - Fake Nice
30 Widowspeak - The Jacket
29 Sister Wives - Y Gawres
28 Dana Gavanski - When It Comes
27 Jemma Freeman & The Cosmic Something - Miffed
26 Soccer Mommy - Sometimes, Forever
25 Keeley Forsyth - Limbs
24 Naomi Alligator - Double Knot
23 Beach House - Once Twice Melody
22 Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset
21 Cate Le Bon - Pompeii
20 Harkin - Honeymoon Suite
19 Daniel Rossen - You Belong There
18 Bill Callahan - YTILAER
17 Julia Jacklin - PRE PLEASURE
16 Sharon Van Etten - We've Been Going About This All Wrong
15 Holodrum - Holodrum
14 Aoife Nessa Frances - Protector
13 Stella Donnelly - Flood
12 Weyes Blood - And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow
11 Yr Poetry - Ruin Music
(which you don't appear to be able to actually download from anywhere, but here's the Spotify stream)
10 Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork
9 Wet Leg - Wet Leg
8 Nilüfer Yanya - PAINLESS
7 Little Simz - NO THANK YOU
6 Gwenno - Tresor
5 Martha - Please Don't Take Me Back
4 Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen
3 Peaness - World Full Of Worry
2 Bjork - Fossora
1 Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You



100 Tracks Of 2022


Now, you can go through our YouTube playlist, or work your way through the Spotify playlist...



...or just read A GREAT BIG TEXT LIST.

adults - tfl has a lot to answer for
Algiers feat. Zack De La Rocha - Irreversible Damage
Alice Low - Show Business
Andrew Broder feat. Moor Mother & billy woods - Sleeping Car Porters
Angel Olsen - All The Good Times
Animal Collective - Cherokee
Anna B Savage - in|FLUX
Aoife Nessa Frances - Emptiness Follows
Arlo Parks - Softly
Attia Taylor - Space Ghost
Beach House - The Bells
Belle and Sebastian - If They’re Shooting At You
The Beths - Knees Deep
Big Joanie - Sainted
Bill Callahan - Natural Information
Björk - Ancestress
black midi - Welcome To Hell
Blue Amber - The Great British Sitcom (For Jozef Raczka)
Breakup Haircut - Out Of My Way (I'm Not Getting On The Nightbus)
Cate Le Bon - Remembering Me
Cheekface - Pledge Drive
Chemtrails - Eternal Shame
Chorusgirl - In The Business Of Dreams
Daphni - Cherry
deep tan - rudy ya ya ya
Dry Cleaning - Anna Calls From The Arctic
Elanor Moss - Cosmic Memory
English Teacher - Polyawkward
Ex-Vöid - Weekend
Fazerdaze - Thick of the Honey
Firestations - Swim Under The Winter
Fleur - Besoin de Personne
Gemma Cullingford - Tongue Tied
Girls of the Internet - In Love Again
The Go! Team - Divebomb
Gordon McIntyre - Tiny Marks
Greentea Peng - Look To Him
Gwenno - An Stevel Nowydh
Haiku Salut - Carousel
Harkin - A New Day
Holodrum - No Dither
Hurray For The Riff Raff - SAGA
Jane Weaver - Oblique Fantasy
Jemma Freeman and The Cosmic Something - Big Bread
Jen Cloher - Being Human
Jesca Hoop - Hatred Has A Mother
Jesse Tabish - Castro
Jockstrap - Greatest Hits
John Cale feat. Weyes Blood - STORY OF BLOOD
Julia Jacklin - Love, Try Not To Let Go
Katrina Ford - Peace Out
Keg - Kids
Ladytron - Faces
Lambchop - Police Dog Blues
Laundromat Chicks - You're On The Line
Let's Eat Grandma - Watching You Go
Little Simz - Silhouette
Live, Do Nothing - Oso Jugoso
Lucinda Chua - Golden
LUNGE - Off With Their Heads
Lynks - Hey Joe (Relax)
LYR - Addison Drifts
Maria Uzor - Over This
Marlody - Summer
Marlowe - My People
Martha - Baby, Does Your Heart Sink?
Melin Melyn - Hold The Line
Melody's Echo Chamber - Looking Backward
Naomi Alligator - Don't Get It
Nilüfer Yanya - midnight sun
Nuha Ruby Ra - My Voice
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Edge Of The Edge
Panic Shack - Mannequin Man
Peaness - How I'm Feeling
Prima Queen - Butter Knife
Regressive Left - The Wrong Side Of History
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - The Way It Shatters
Samantha Savage Smith - Fake Nice
Seraphina Simone - Milk Teeth
Sharon Van Etten - Headspace
SIPHO. - I DON'T GET IT
Sister Wives - Greater Place
Slug - Casual Cruelty
Soccer Mommy - Shotgun
Squiggles - We Only Came Here For Your Hearts
Stella Donnelly - How Was Your Day?
Sudan Archives - NBPQ (Topless)
Sun's Signature - Golden Air
Sunflower Bean - Who Put You Up To This?
Thank - Dread
Trust Fund feat. Radiant Heart - capital
TVAM - Double Lucifer
The WAEVE - Can I Call You
Walt Disco - How Cool Are You?
Wet Leg - Angelica
Weyes Blood - It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody
Widowspeak - Everything Is Simple
Yard Act - Tall Poppies
Young Fathers - I Saw
Yr Poetry - Damn the Man (won't somebody think of the kids in bands)

Thursday, December 01, 2022

The Christmas charts

For the last few years we've been collating the playlists of daytime Radios 1 and 2 for the whole build-up to Christmas, which the Beeb has now decided officially begins today. We post them on Twitter, the tweet gets three likes and we realise we've wasted good hours of the best part of a month.

Still, at least we have the data. So, in case you ever wondered - what are the most played Christmas songs on daytime Radio 1 between December 1st and 24th over the last three years?

19= Chris Rea - Driving Home For Christmas/John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (21 plays)
18 Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (22)
17 Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime (24)
14= Ariana Grande - Santa Tell Me/Katy Perry - Cozy Little Christmas/The Pogues feat. Kirsty Maccoll - Fairytale Of New York (25)
12= Coldplay - Christmas Lights/The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping (26)
9= Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?/Elton John - Step Into Christmas/Leona Lewis - One More Sleep (28)
7= The Darkness - Christmas Time(Don't Let The Bells End)/Destiny's Child - 8 Days Of Christmas (31)
5= Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone/Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (34)
3= Kelly Clarkson - Underneath The Tree/Wham! - Last Christmas (37)
2 Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody (51)
1 Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You (55)


And what about the same for Radio 2, which plays much more of it all round?

30 Darlene Love - All Alone On Christmas (16 plays)
29 Keith Urban - I'll Be Your Santa Tonight (17)
28 Carrie Underwood - Favourite Time Of Year (18)
27 The Crystals - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (19)
25= Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year/Gwen Stefani feat. Blake Shelton - You Make It Feel Like Christmas (20)
24 Fairytale Of New York (21)
23 Christmas Wrapping (22)
21= The Crystals - Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town/Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) (25)
20 The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride (28)
19 Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (29)
17= Christmas Lights/Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (32)
16 Do They Know It's Christmas? (33)
15 Gabriella Cilmi - Warm This Winter (34)
14 Wonderful Christmastime (35)
13 The Pretenders - 2000 Miles (36)
12 Underneath The Tree (37)
9= Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas/Merry Christmas Everyone/I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (41)
7= Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)/Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry (45)
5= One More Sleep/ Step Into Christmas (46)
4 Merry Xmas Everybody (49)
3 Driving Home For Christmas (54)
2 Last Christmas (55)
1 All I Want For Christmas Is You (58)

Friday, April 08, 2022

Panic stations

Two and a half months ago we saw Panic Shack at Swn Festival. Later that night we made an official statement.



Back then, though they already had something of a home city following, they were a late replacement and an unknown quantity. We had no idea who they were until the day before the (usually) annual three day central Cardiff beanfeast, had never heard them as they had nothing publicly audible and were really only downstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach due to a combination of seeing a recommendation somewhere and rain. It was their third gig and they had six songs, two of which were covers. Even amid post-punk/punk-pop/just punk saturation there felt something different from what was around them, not just in the energy but that they were having fun. For the first time in a while it felt like we were watching an unforced girl gang who'd decided forming a band would be a thing they could do. Their big closer was about their lighter being taken. It caused pandemonium. This was all we wanted.

After that came a slow rise - Radio 1 and 6 Music play from Huw Stephens, three singles in 2020 gradually picking up their momentum, but maybe most importantly the return of live music bodies could fly around to - their Green Man set packed out the new bands stage, and when we got back to Swn they had graduated to packing out the upstairs main room. Last week they got another late call-up to a Cardiff event, this time the 6 Music Festival, and the station seems genuinely taken by what happened, playing tracks from the set (of which this is twenty minutes, though only missing two tracks from their regular, and one of those is very sweary) a few times in daytime over the next few days.



That October 2019 "moment" has practically lasted right through to today, when they release their splendidly titled Baby Shack EP. It is, of course, fantastic, some of it knowingly offbeat if not slightly silly (hey, it's the "you do not shush me in the cinema" one!) on surface but played with conviction underpinned by conviction and personal beliefs and experiences, Sarah Harvey throwing out singular aphorisms and statements made both to be bellowed back to and to underpin that her life as a young woman is not to fit into someone else's gendered expectations. Understandably the band they're most compared to are Amyl & The Sniffers, albeit a version that's less likely to point their runaway vehicle at a brick wall; however those covers they played back at Swn the first time were of ESG and Gang Of Four, pointing to a rhythmical drive - note how many of the six songs feature some kind of solo bass part. Maybe what strikes us most is that it sounds live with all the glorious lack of sheen that suggests. In fact, something occured to us about their unconscious secret lineage.

**

It was a scene with no name, or at least not one that stuck. Teen-C was aired but that really only consisted of one band even if its situationist ideals were right. NME attempted to coin Bratpop, but that didn't stick because it was the NME. The 'glitter scene' was a good one, given it was based around the kind of fanzine and make-up that was heavy on the substance. R*E*P*E*A*T fanzine's memorable piece called it '1997', which is ideologically and chronologically correct but also confusing.

What it was was a stream of bands mostly in their teens who formed in or as a result of the events of 1996, the year Kenickie became the most beloved off the radar band through releasing Come Out 2Nite and Punka while being effortlessly funny live, Bis appeared on Top Of The Pops and Ash released their debut album 1977. Those three were the immediate British (Isles) foundation stones, alongside which often lay the Ramones, riot grrrl, Blondie, Pistols, girl groups, Buzzcocks, early Manics and unashamed love of pure pop. It was indie rock by untutored youths playing songs as if clinging on to them, lo-fi and raw to a fault but evidently trying hard just so as to not be confused with the last youth movement of slackerdom. It was defiantly British in scope but running parallel rather than connected to Britpop. In fact it was if anything a reaction to Britpop's cocaine socialism, especially the Oasis hegemony and the lager culture that was settling in, with its own unspoken, maybe unknowing, debt to the "twee" we-went-and-did-it-anyway era of C86, Sarah Records, Amelia Fletcher and beyond - in fact C96 was another name toyed with, although NME ended up using it for an unrelated cassette offer. Many were sort of affiliated with London's Club Rampage, later Club P*rnstar. And, here's the key, it was mostly female.

Tampasm, Period Pains, Disco Pistol, VyVyan, Helen Love, Pink Kross, Xerox Girls, Lung Leg, Velodrome 2000, Charlie's Angels... nobody talked about gender issues or representation then, it was more that young women were getting up and doing it while most of the boys were still perfecting their power chords. (And of course it should be noted there were all-male bands involved: Midget, Gel, Agebaby, The Pin-Ups, Spraydog...) Kenickie's Catsuit City was the Velvet Underground of the scene - it didn't sell many copies, and there were only 500 to sell in the first place, but everyone who bought one either started a band, started a fanzine or bought some facial application glitter like Lauren Laverne - who bought hers from a novelty shop - wore.

There's no Cherry Red compilation of the scene available in print or to stream - most of it was released on labels far too small to have digital distribution sorted - but there were compilations, often through Damaged Goods, the Abuse Your Friends sets or the middle volumes of Snakebite City. Last week we found someone had uploaded to YouTube what at the time was the most high profile of them, And The Rest Is History...



Nodding to the forebears with a short, ragged Kenickie B-side, And The Rest Is History... is an untutored feast of the youth of the day (some as young as 14) at the peak of their abilities and their punk-pop, fizzy lo-fi, garage rock just as ramshackle in tone as the 1960s bands that practised in garages and ended up on Nuggets, British indie with the Owen Morris influence surgically removed, cheap guitars and second hand keyboards/drum machines, handclaps, commanding strident/shouty vocals, big dreams against small room ideals, discos at weekends, sticky floored toilet circuit venues at weeknights. Teenage angst and enjoyment is writ in size 64 bold.

It's almost all undeniably exciting, outspoken in places, racing against the red lights at others. You want to be part of most of their gangs, or at least stand idly within earshot of them as they exchange bon mots and daggers. Some days we think "fuck off back to the Slimelight with your stupid ugly lanky streak of piss boyfriend, you poxy little cunt" (Xerox Girls' Keep Your Mouth Shut) is the greatest lyric ever written.

The glitter scene was always going to be transient, and not just for the obvious reason of careerism versus amateur willingness' natural barriers. If your ambitions are to have fun with your mates in a scrappy loud punk-pop band, play the Highbury Garage and maybe put a limited pressing 7" out you're not looking to build for the long term, especially when you hit your twenties. Even Kenickie were gone by the end of 1998, after their comedown album and having cleaved in two. Symposium, who in this company are the most obvious Band Most Likely To and were already on a satellite of a much bigger label, got some press wind behind them and three top 40 singles. Disco Pistol, who played a big Reading Festival stage, got signed, changed their name, went crap and quickly disappeared, though leader Mira Manga re-established her cult DIY credentials in the Duloks almost a decade later. Charlie's Angels, who got to support PJ & Duncan, did likewise. Tampasm's enthusiasm was destroyed by dealing with the music business and it's doubtful they were alone in that. Girlfrendo, who sounded more than most like people shouting in a charity shop stock room, transmuted into Love Is All and got some Pitchfork credentials in the mid-00s. Period Pains singer Chloe Alper, unaccountably, formed a prog band with a member of Gel and now, even more so, is a member of James. Helen Love is still fighting the good fight, having flirted with the Radio 1 daytime playlist, but out in Cardiff and building her own world of Moogs and Joey Ramone she was always the outlier. Practically everybody else disappeared into academia, the anonymous 9 to 5, whatever. 95% of it is almost entirely forgotten now.

The underpinning ideals didn't entirely go away. How could it, even as British indie as it was known to most faded away. There was a mini-revival at the end of the decade - Chicks, Angelica, Bellatrix, Twist - and even as alternative music got more and more professional there were outliers kicking against the pricks. The mid 00s, the crossover period between fanzine/gig networking and social network, er, networking, brought a brief window where a new generation of DIY kids converged on either bands that may not have evolved in the same way but took their musical cues from an earlier, more scrappy era - Art Brut, The Research, Help She Can't Swim, KaitO (featuring Nik Colk Void and Gemma from Sink Ya Teeth) - or latched onto bands that were sonically slightly different but still sounded like they might have heard, read and watched similar things to you when getting into non-standard music - Los Campesinos!, Bearsuit, the Long Blondes, the Pipettes. The indiepop revival of the start of the 2010s and the rise of Indietracks festival co-opted some of the above - Veronica Falls, the Lovely Eggs (Holly Ross had been in Angelica), Shrag, Standard Fare - and like most of their forebears would only occasionally raise their head above the mainstream coverage parapet.

Indietracks is gone, fanzines are PDFs, social media does some degree of the work an introductory weekly music press feature did, finding all the new music is both easier and more complex (where do you start?), but it stands to some reason that at a time when "indie-pop" is applied to everything short of Ed Sheeran and all the guitar bands on the radio seem mixed, mastered and generally buffed to a fault for hi-fi arena dynamics, then if the alternative underground is a thing it's surely time to mess things up again. From Sports Team to deep tan to English Teacher, that spirit feels like it's creeping back into the wider conscious, none more so than those responsible for maybe the week's biggest new release. Two close female friends formed a band on a whim with a stupid name so they could enjoy playing music and hang out more, with the singer learning guitar after having decided she needed to play it for the band to work, who recorded their first single in a friend's bedroom with an accompanying self-shot video and no more ambition then to get some gigs with friends at a big local venue, then wrote more songs about youthful drift and attention from shitty blokes, and less than a year after that single's release find themselves profiled in the New York Times and Rolling Stone running a headline 'Wet Leg Are the Buzziest New Band of the Year'. And actually, as with Baby Shack, Wet Leg the album is built on both the idea that women in guitar-based music shouldn't have to take up the tortured artist mantle and the neat trick of claiming to have very little deeper to say for approachability while actually being otherwise.

More than any of these, Panic Shack resemble that effective have-a-go attitude that brings with it a cult following and songs, aphorisms maybe, that people cling to. They formed as a reaction to laddish bands just as the glitter encrusted types reacted against Noel acolytes. On forming they decided who would play which instrument and only then set out to learn them, a process continued during recording. Ju Jits You is a song about unwanted male attention and the fantasy of striking back but was written off the back of some of the members having actual ju jitsu classes, in a pleasingly straightforward but actually not way. There's the gang chants and the intrinsic celebration of their coming in packs, the way they dress in tracksuits, leopardprint, modern mullets and gaudy retro because they can. They even have a semi-anonymous bloke at the back. They describe the EP as "a representation of our experiences and friendship: raw, honest and always chaotic", which is absolutely it. What they do is entirely of themselves, but they fit spectacularly into a lineage of kicking against the pricks with joy, company, energy over muso-ness and above all the fun of being in a band with something to say and the electric means to bring the whole package to people. Some might almost dismiss it as "putting the fun back into indie rock". For the people making it, however long for, it's evidently much more than that.