Choice Tunes of 2014

  

2014 is nearing its climax and, musically speaking, it's been another brilliant year. Not a vintage one, perhaps, especially in comparison to last time around, but still very, very good. More than enough weird, wonderful and walloping sounds to get the ears around and the teeth into.

Below is a playlist of 140 top tunes from 2014, the songs that have soundtracked my year: singles, teaser tracks, stand-out album cuts. My half-term report has more doubled in size without any let-up in quality. Still, there'll almost certainly be a few tracks that have slipped through the net that I'll later wish I'd included. Some favourites aren't available on Spotify (special shout-outs to Wand's "Flying Golem" and Jessica Pratt's "Back, Baby"!) - needless to say, "Shake It Off" and "Style" would have been duking it out for inclusion if Taylor hadn't taken them down. Think of the royalties she's now gonna miss out on!

What we do get is a healthy dose of transporting psychedelia, by turns exploratory (Morgan Delt, Circulatory System), heavy (Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Bo Ningen), lilting (Soundcarriers, Gulp) and cosmic (Jane Weaver, Damien Jurado). Modern takes on the soulful (Lee Fields, Fatima), funky (The Budos Band, Jungle Fire) and jazzy (Badbadnotgood, Taylor McFerrin) feature, as well as thrilling rock’n’roll in all its cocky, punk-y and drone-y forms (Zig Zags, Eagulls, Hookworms).

Classic rock songwriting is represented by established artists including Beck, Ryan Adams, Sun Kil Moon and Sharon Van Etten, as well as relative newcomers like Angel Olsen and Blueprint Blue. Pop pops up: wonky dance-pop (Metronomy, La Roux), parping prog-pop (St. Vincent, tUne-yArDs), irresistible power-pop (Ex-Hex, Pujol), and the simple beautiful truthful pop that all-too-rarely disturbs the Top 40 (Wild Beasts, Future Islands, Pure X).

Singles from upcoming albums by Viet Cong, BC Camplight and Natalie Prass confirm that 2015 is in safe hands. On top of this, there are San Franciscan oddballs (Thee Oh Sees, Dylan Shearer), Pitchfork-approved electronic acts (Todd Terje, East India Youth, The Juan Maclean), and a whole lot more.

Dip in, shuffle, or enjoy the list in its full 10-hour glory!

This Week I've Been Mostly Listening To...

Vashti Bunyan – Mother (2014)

In a Sunday lunchtime stupor – in no way brought on by the previous evening’s cocktail of gin, beer and red and white wine, you understand – I was catching up on Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone radio show.

My guard was down, and “Mother” – in the most balletic, subtle way imaginable – glided in and knocked me for six. A song delicate of beauty, sparse but poetic of language, it speaks of Vashti Bunyan as a young girl, standing at an ajar door, catching the beautiful unaware lady who had brought her into the world in a rare off-duty moment: on one occasion, her mother is dancing, spinning, “briefly unbound”; on another, she is playing piano and singing “songs long learned, so long untuned”. “My applause should have been rapturous”, Bunyan whispers, but, instead – heartbreakingly – she closed the door and “turned, turned away”.

In the subsequent conversation with Maconie, Bunyan said that she wanted to acknowledge the sacrifices that her mother’s generation made – that the opportunities she enjoyed when pursuing her musical dreams weren't available to them. Her new album Heartleap, self-produced at her home in Edinburgh and only her second release since 1970’s evergreen Just Another Diamond Day, contains many more treasured memories and secret treasures.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Cellophane (2014)

Come for the name (just wrap your tongue around those delicious syllables), stay for the tunes. The marvellously-monikered King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have been incredibly prolific since forming in Melbourne in 2011, making a name (again, what a name!) for themselves in Australia’s vibrant psychedelic scene with several idiosyncratic LPs. They've recently been snapped up by Thee Oh Sees’ Castle Face label (a perfect fit) in the US and Heavenly Records in the UK, who’s nu-psych stable already includes Temples, TOY, The Voyeurs, and The Wytches. One listen through of “Cellophane”, and viewing of its accompanying 3D video, is enough to mark them out as a looser, loonier proposition than any of those bands.

Previous single “Hot Wax” suggested that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard had befriended the “Drunk Girls” at LCD Soundsystem’s house party and led them out into the street for a spontaneous rendition of the “Monster Mash”. Their new album I'm In Your Mind Fuzz is to be let loose on Halloween on blood red and green splattered vinyl. Of course it is!

Viet Cong – Continental Shelf (2014)

Viet Cong - a four piece, featuring two former members of Calgary post-punkers Women - are another act likely to receive more attention now that they've signed to a prominent Indie (in their case the wonderful Jagjaguwar label). And rightly so - their Cassette EP, originally only available at their live shows and then pressed up as a 12", is one of the most promising things I've heard all year - a 7-track demonstration of how to do something fresh with your influences (garage pop, drone, post-punk), be adventurous, and fall with style.

“Check your anxiety, no need to suffer silently” dooms Matt Flegel, and Viet Cong certainly don’t suffer in silence here. "Continental Shelf”, set to feature on their self-titled LP out in January, is their most brooding, oppressively impressive creation yet, recalling Bauhaus (who's "Dark Entries" they covered on the Cassette EP) and The Scream-era Siouxsie & The Banshees. Their most angry too: the verses find Flegel tearing at his hair and not wanting to “face the world…it’s suffocating”; the chorus a resigned howl against the greedy and the selfish with their “fingertips in the fountain”, fondling “liquid gold” as the world falls apart around them.

Júníus Meyvant - Color Decay (2014)

There's something undoubtedly studied about Icelandic newcomer Júníus Meyrant's recreation of 60s baroque pop and 70s folk-soul. However, like Michael Kiwanuka's "Tell Me A Tale" or Ray Lamontagne's best work, "Color Decay" is so beautifully played and produced, its strings and horns so deftly orchestrated, that I can forgive him that. Plus, as I was listening to its autumnal sweep for the first time, Bob Lind's "Elusive Butterfly" came fluttering into my head. Which can only ever be a good thing.

Kevin Morby - Parade (2014)

"Slow Train", Kevin Morby's elegant collaboration with Cate Le Bon, was a real stand-out 2013 track for me, and the ex-Woods bassist clearly works faster than he plays guitar because he's back with another slice of unhurried, classic-sounding rock. On "Parade", the first track from his second solo album, his echoey vocal and diction and the universality of his melancholy lyrics (about coming to terms with the inevitability of death) are the right side of Dark Side Dave Gilmour; the "ba-ba-bahs", brass and "all my friends were there waiting on me" section straight out of a prime-Beatles McCartney piano number. Lovely stuff.

Live Report: The Horrors - ABC, Glasgow (26/09/14)

“Our colour isn't red, it isn't blue, it’s black”, wrote The Horrors’ Tom Cowan upon discovering that his band’s song “I See You” had been included in a pre-show playlist at last month’s Labour party conference. It was an effective and economical riposte. A funny one too, especially if you’re familiar with the Schlocky Horror Hipster Show image that the band had when they emerged from Southend-on-Sea in 2006 (leather jackets and drainpipe jeans; sun-starved skin; Back From The Grave garage-punk, complete with cover of “Jack The Ripper”). A suspicious media suggested that they were over-privileged chancers – playing dumb, feigning darkness. And after witnessing their performance as opening act on the following year’s NME Tour, I was of a similar opinion: a headache-inducing half-hour of confused clattering and illuminous goo-green strobes (this actually makes it sound a damn sight more exciting than it was); thick frenzies of hair and smoke where the tunes should have been.

It took just eight minutes to change many minds. Coming across “Sea Within A Sea” on the radio was one of those wonderful “who is this?” moments: a motorik pulse (a good few years before every alternative band was adopting that Neu! beat and claiming to be influenced by Can), howls of reverb and stabs of wiry guitar which built into a dizzying electric storm; a spooked voice encouraging you to follow him “far beyond the shallows, far beyond the reaches of the shadows” towards “the scraping sky…my destination”. When it came to an end and the DJ revealed it as being the new Horrors track, “who is this?” turned into “that was them?”

Tom Cowan’s comment also recalls a description by 1960s freakbeaters The Creation – one of the finest English art-rock bands of their time – of their own sound: “our music is red – with purple flashes”. It refers to the concept of chromesthesia, in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Red seems apt for The Creation’s particularly incendiary brand of biff bang pow; the purple flashes perhaps the metallic screeds that guitarist Eddie Phillips used to elicit from his electric guitar using a bow. It’s safe to assume that a group of avid crate-diggers and psych-heads like The Horrors are familiar with The Creation, the quote and the concept. 

Primary Colours, the band’s second album and home of “Sea Within A Sea”, was an extraordinary progression from the damp, dingy debut, Strange House. Geoff Barrow from Portishead was brought in on production duties and although he’s downplayed his role, saying that The Horrors knew actually what they wanted to achieve, his ear for fine detail and love of experimental rock is easy to detect in the record’s sound: thick coats of red, blue and yellow layered, swirled and smudged together to create a claustrophobic, breathlessly exhilarating mix of shoegaze, post-punk and psychedelia.
With Skying, the band moved from Primary Colours into Technicolor, their artful take on stadium rock drawing comparisons to The Chameleons, New Gold Dream-era Simple Minds and Psychedelic Furs. Frontman Faris Badwan claimed to have never heard any of those bands and that any similarity in sound was completely coincidental; either way, broadsheet critics, eighties rock fans and Shoreditch art students were all into it like a train.

In a recent interview, the band revealed that the intention for the latest album was to continue their “slow ascension into music that elevates”, adding a glistening electronic sheen, inspired by Giorgio Moroder and house-music labels Trax Records and Metroplex, to their already-airborne alt-rock. When the record was finished, and they were looking for a title that “expressed the sounds that live(d) within the sleeve”, one word felt right: Luminous.

Tonight’s packed show at the ABC kicks off confidently with two cuts from the new LP. The slow building, bongo-assisted intro and subsequent pay-off of “Chasing Shadows” makes it a tailor-made opener and “In And Out Of Sight”, while often overlooked in the reviews of Luminous that I've read, may be – along with “I See You” – my favourite on the album: the prominent yet fluid use of synthesizers on these tracks marking another progression for this forward-thinking band. A handful of tracks on Luminous (“Mine And Yours”, “First Day Of Spring”), while perfectly serviceable, feel like lesser versions of previous highs and, tellingly, don’t make tonight’s set-list.

We are rewarded for our appreciation and patience with two Horrors classics: “Who Can Say” – with its Ronettes-via-Ramones spoken word section – and a moody, magnificent “Sea Within A Sea”. Similarly, later on, mid-set newbies “Jealous Sun” and “Sleepwalk” are immediately followed by a catapulting “Endless Blue” and "Mirror's Image". Crisp, clean strobe tramlines complement the “Chase”-indebted “I See You”, while the terrific “Falling Star” is arguably The Horrors’ poppiest track yet - I can imagine someone like Grimes or Chvrches taking that gorgeous synth riff and running with it into the upper reaches of the Top 40.

In contrast to that fateful NME show, where he was throwing himself around, presumably in an attempt to mask the absence of tunes, Faris Badwan now lets the songs do the talking. His poise and cool is disrupted only by a smoke machine which is positioned directly behind him – at seemingly random intervals, unnecessarily powerful streams of smoke are fired out, engulfing the singer and threatening to force his slight, gangly frame off stage. As the smoke dies away, you half expect to find poor Faris hunched-over, wheezing and coughing.

Badwan's lyrics for The Horrors are rarely as personal or emotionally honest as his work with Cat’s Eyes (the closest he gets to vulnerable tonight is during the crooned verses of “Change Your Mind”): he’s too busy observing the skies and in awe of the vastness of the ocean to be pouring his heart out into a diary entry. But these songs clearly do connect with people. The fact that “I See You” was judged suitable for the Labour conference – alongside tracks by such black-hearts as Embrace, Gorgon City and Laura Mvula – shows just how much light and shade has seeped into The Horrors’ music over the years; it’s hard to imagine any of their early material being considered, let alone chosen, for such an event (though a “Sheena Is A Parasite”-backed speech on targeting benefit cheats would be genius). They produce a Big sound without resorting to the lazy “woah woah-woahs” and “yeah yeah yeahs” of many stadium acts. “Still Life” – while, yes, sounding a bit like Simple Minds – is expansive yet elegant, anthemic without being contrived.

Any other band would have saved “Sea Within A Sea” for last, but The Horrors also have “Moving Further Away”, another fantastic, propulsive eight-minute epic. Strobes shoot like caps of silver and the crowd wheels in formation.
The ABC felt like the perfect-sized venue for The Horrors tonight (large enough for the songs to swirl around and breathe; small enough for the experience to be an immersive one), but it would be no surprise to find them filling stadiums and headlining festivals in the near future. Their star is still on the rise.

Relatively-Recent Classics #4: Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs (1998)

I vividly remember being down the park one Saturday afternoon in 1997, involved in an epic 22-a-side game of football (though, given both teams' tactically naive approach, perhaps "ballchase" would be a more fitting description). One of those games where the majority of the players you'd never met before and likely never see again. (Where did these people come from, and where did they go?). A natural break in the eight-hour match presented itself, so we laid on the grass, picking at the turf.

Talk turned to music; a number of the boys were, through their older siblings' CD collections, gaining exposure to the cool rock acts of the time: Oasis, The Prodigy, Supergrass, Black Grape, Kula Shaker. I was still very much a pop kid.

Two lads started arguing the merits of the just-released Be Here Now. It was the best album ever, according to one - better than The Beatles, better even than (What’s The Story) Morning Glory; the other said it was crap and long (I hope this guy is now a highly paid and respected music critic). He asked me what I thought.

I hadn't heard it, I said. I'd been too busy listening to Green Man by Mark Owen.

Not since the day Miss Henderson joined our school had I seen so many boys' heads turn so fast; sniggers, comments and insults suddenly flying in from all angles (so this was how the Ipswich goalie felt when United put nine past him!). Mark Owen? As in Mark Owen from Take That? What was I? Like a girl or something? "Why are you bothering with that shit when you could be listening to "D'You Know What I Mean", d'you know what I mean?" Why didn't I like real music?

There was nothing wrong with Take That, I suggested, convincing no one. And anyway, even if there was, Green Man didn't sound anything like Take That. It had guitars and everything!

Mercifully, the abuse didn't last for long...In one short, coolly-delivered sentence, my friend Stephen took the heat off me, won the game of Cool Sibling Top Trumps, and killed the conversation stone-dead – announcing that his brother had turned him on to some American (*50 cool points!*) band no one had heard of (*100 cool points!*) called Mercury Rev.

We returned to our game of ballchase.

It was another couple of years before I finally investigated the Rev - I caught the video for their track “Goddess On A Highway” on a late-night music program, and bought Deserter’s Songs after noticing its inclusion on a list of previous NME Album Of The Year winners. There’s an assumption that, during the 90s, the NME championed exclusively dodgy, lairy British groups with guitars (many of them no doubt favourites of the boys' brothers and sisters), but look at that list and you'll find several bold, deserving choices which have stood the test of time, including Björk, Tricky, Beck and Spiritualized. Deserter's Songs might be the best of the lot.

Earlier this month, Mercury Rev performed Deserter’s Songs in full at the Green Man Festival (so significant and influential was Mark Owen’s misunderstood masterpiece that they named this annual music and arts event in its honour. Possibly). I can’t get too excited about the recent trend of bands playing their classic albums in sequence, note for note, years sometimes decades after they were recorded – I prefer my live experiences more unpredictable and visceral, for the songs to do something slightly different to their recorded versions. However, the idea of Deserter’s Songs – such a singular LP, and one which means so much to me – in its entirety on a Saturday night in the Welsh countryside is an inspired, magical one, and I'm envious of all who were there to witness it.

The album is worthy of such revisiting not only because it’s considered their classic but also because it's highly unlikely the band would still exist without it. Prior to its recording, Mercury Rev were very much in the Last Chance Saloon: See You On The Other Side, their brilliant underrated third record, had been a catastrophic commercial flop; they had parted ways with their record label, and both their manager and their long-term drummer Jimy Chambers had departed. Founder members and best friends Jonathan Donahue (frontman) and guitarist Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak (guitarist) were barely communicating, struggling with drug and relationship issues.
They retreated to the Catskill Mountains, 100 miles outside New York City and home of The Band (Levon Helm plays drums on "Opus 40", "Hudson Line"'s slinky sax is provided by Garth Hudson), in an attempt to get their friendship back on track and write and record the next album. This need and desire to escape is touched on in the playful, Grasshopper-penned “Hudson Line”: "Gonna leave the city / Gonna hop a train tonight...gonna catch the Hudson Line / Cuz you know I love the city but I haven't got the time".

"The world wasn't exactly waiting for another Mercury Rev record", said Donahue, which meant that they were free to, as The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne put it, "make the music that was in their dreams". This sense of freedom, of making something purely for themselves, is all over Deserter's Songs. Jonathan Donahue sought inspiration for the songs in books and records that he'd loved as a kid - Tale Spinners for Children, a collection of spoken-word fairy-tales set to classical music, being a key text. His words are full of wonder and vivid imagery ("telephones for eyes", bugs exploding on glass), "streams that flow into your dreams". His voice – high, pure, grasping for notes just out of reach – imbuing them with a naive creepiness, present in all the best bedtime stories.

Psychedelic space-rock - the band's calling card - was, for the most part, ditched in favour of something altogether more classic, quintessentially American ("how does that old song go?"). Ornate assemblages of strings, horns and woodwind take precedent over wailing guitars. The Cole Porter-referencing "Tonite It Shows" has a sweep and grace rarely found in the rock age. "Endlessly" breaks into "Silent Night". Twice.
Jack Nitzsche’s film work can be heard in the LP’s rich string arrangements; a musical saw quivers and wobbles throughout, just like in his One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest score.

As well as a freedom, there is a desolation and desperation which runs through many of these songs - the group believing the end to be in sight. "Bands / Those funny little plans / That never work quite right" sighs Donahue on the beautiful "Holes". "Goddess On A Highway" dated back to 1989 when he was a member of The Flaming Lips, but its chorus refrain of "I know it ain't gonna last" probably never rang truer than when it was recorded here.

Producer and one-time member Dave Fridmann was simultaneously working on Deserter's Songs and what would be The Flaming Lips' breakout LP, The Soft Bulletin, in the same studio, leading to a cross-pollination of ideas, tricks and energies. Donahue played guitar with The Lips for three years and the two bands have followed similar career trajectories: drugged-up hippies to major label weirdos to conquering cult heroes to godfathers of neo-psychedelia. Wayne Coyne often credits Deserter’s Songs and its success with laying the groundwork and preparing an audience for The Soft Bulletin (The Flaming Lips were the opening act on Mercury Rev’s triumphant 1999 tour). With Bulletin and then Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002), they arguably took things to the next level.

“The Funny Bird” was possibly the most astonishing, out there piece of music I had heard up to that point, and it remains a stand-out for me. Donahue's disconcerting, disembodied voice is swept along on the verses - the calm, in-between sections of intense exploding sound, each time detonated by that killer line ("You're the only one I know..."). The careering guitar solos - the second somehow even more intense than the first - are genuinely thrilling and psychedelic, recalling the likes of "Chasing A Bee" and "Sweet Oddysee Of A Cancer Cell" from their debut Yerself Is Steam LP.

When I first bought Deserter’s Songs, I wasn't particularly keen on the three interludes peppered throughout it – they brought a disjointed feel to the record, delayed access to the BIG songs. Listening now, however, they work really well: each one is like a quick nip indoors; respite from the falling snow; a breather from the cruising of highways; the reason for the train-hopping – the desired sanctuary. “I Collect Coins” and “The Happy End (The Drunk Room)” hint at the kinds of backward inebriates you might encounter in the inebriated backwoods of the Catskills.
And when the songs are so BIG, so lush and theatrical, these monochrome moments of comedown and contemplation are necessary: it could well have been sickly-sweet string overkill had “Endlessly” ran directly into the dramatic whooshes of “Opus 40”; the bright, almost rave-like piano of “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp” achieves optimum uplift by bursting out of “Pick Up If You’re There”’s eerie quiet.

Featuring lyrics by Jimy Chambers, “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp” might not be stylistically of a piece with the rest of the album, but it rounds things off on an euphoric (and, as it turned out, entirely appropriate) note of optimism. In contrast to the distinctly nocturnal feel of the other tracks, Mercury Rev are here "sliding away in a washed up Delta sun". A Chemical Brothers remix was included on the B-side of the single release, continuing a relationship which began with “The Private Psychedelic Reel” on Dig Your Own Hole and led to Surrender’s “Dream On”.

Deserter’s Songs was named Album Of The Year 1998 by NME and Uncut magazine, and featured highly in countless other polls. The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump (2000) followed quickly in its wake: the Holy Trinity of Cosmic Americana. A flurry of alternative US bands were suddenly setting out to create ambitious widescreen LPs (Wilco, Low), being fronted by Neil Youngsters with reedy vocals (My Morning Jacket, Polyphonic Spree), and participating in rustic, back-to-nature Band-worshipping (Midlake, Fleet Foxes). Even some British bands got in on the act (Grand Drive’s sumptuous True Love & High Adventure; The Delgados and Mogwai both summoned Dave Fridmann).

Mercury Rev released their follow-up, All Is Dream, in 2001, and played the Glasgow Barrowlands on the 5^th October that year. It was my first live show not in a giant hall – more specifically, my first at the unbeatable Barrowlands – and still ranks in my all-time Top Five Gigs.
I had lost contact with Stephen, and my friends were going through a deeply unsavoury nu-metal phase, so my gig buddy – as he was for the majority of my early concerts – was my dad.
We were both blown away.
Opener “The Funny Bird” was even more unhinged than on record, Grasshopper wrestling resonant screams from his guitar, the ballroom illuminated by dashing fireflies of light. Donahue, a compellingly peculiar presence, acted out the fairytale imagery of “Holes” and “Lincoln’s Eyes”; his long fingers, flattened-down hair and piercing stare at times calling the Child Catcher chillingly to mind.
A couple of songs in, he disappeared to the back of the stage before returning with his trusty musical saw. He’d found it lying around in his shed back home, he said, raising it aloft to the kind of cheers usually reserved for a guitar hero’s axe.

The set concluded with All Is Dream’s opening track “The Dark Is Rising”; a gorgeous piano ballad with crashing waves of orchestral sound, and the natural progression from Deserter’s Songs. A remarkable piece, even if its power was temporarily diminished due to its nature documentary trailer ubiquity.

After several magnificent rises and falls, the music all but disappeared for the song’s final lines.

“I always dreamed I’d love you, I never dreamed I’d lose you / In my dreams I'm always…”

Donahue, gangly frame silhouetted against a moon white backdrop, threw out his arms and flexed his muscles.

“…STRONG!”

He held the stance, but his arms began to shake vigorously (think a goth Popeye who’s just taken his spinach) as the band built one last giant swell around him.

It was the defining image of an unforgettable night.

This Week I've Been Mostly Listening To...

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - I'm Glad (1967)

My Uncle Les recently presented me with an original vinyl copy of Safe As Milk (he knows me so well!) - an excuse, as if one were needed, to enjoy the debut by Don Van Vliet & his Magic Band. I've long heard of my uncle's mythical record collection, packed away in a crowded loft, but only in the last few months has he started to sort through it. There's a pretty incredible selection of mod, Motown and Stax singles up there, apparently; psychedelia and hard rock from the 60s and 70s. I look forward to one day having a good riffle through. He handed me a lovely pile of LPs (Exodus, The Jam, B.B. King, Joe Jackson) with Safe As Milk – the cream – on top.

In many ways, it’s Beefheart’s most approachable album - the song structures are (relatively) conventional and the guitar work by a 20-year old Ry Cooder is fantastic throughout. Already, though, Van Vliet's take on the blues is a frazzled, twisted one (one listen of his first single "Diddy Wah Diddy" back-to-back with the Bo Diddley original confirms this); weirder and less reverential than that of the British blues-rock explosion.

I'm very much a fair-weather Beefheart fan: for every work of madcap mischief-making that I find thrilling and electrifying (The Spotlight Kid, Shiny Beast, "Big Eyed Beans From Venus"), there are others that remain impenetrable, no matter how much I persevere with them (the majority of Trout Mask Replica. "A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is soft and bulbous, got me?!" Erm, not really Capt'n, no).

I'm fond of the rare softer moments (“Observatory Crest”, “Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles”) which suggest that - like fellow "difficult" avant-gardists Lou Reed and Frank Zappa - Beefheart had an appreciation of classic R&B and doo-wop. “I'm Glad” being my favourite.

Quilt - Open Eyes (2013)

Held In Splendor, the second LP by Boston dreamers Quilt, was a constant companion during the miraculous run of sunny days in Glasgow we enjoyed for the first week of the Commonwealth Games. It's a delightful little album where "each song has its own voice", a patchwork of folk, soft psych, sunshine pop and indie-rock. The tracks with co-vocalist Anna Fox Rochinski on lead are particularly beguiling - when that sweet coo of a voice beckons you near, you heed its call.

"Open Eyes" is probably the band's finest moment to date: darker and, ironically, less clear-eyed than anything on Splendor, it was released last year on a split EP with fellow Bostonians MMOSS.

Ultimate Painting - Ultimate Painting (2014)

MMOSS front-man Doug Tuttle released his lovely Teenage Fanclub-subscribing solo album in early 2014 on Trouble In Mind records. (Factor in the incredible Morgan Delt and Klaus Johann Grobe records, and TIM stake a strong claim for being my Label Of The Year So Far. Good work, chaps!).

New kids on the Trouble In Mind block are Ultimate Painting, consisting of James Hoare and Jack Cooper. For the past five years, both have been providing vocals and guitar for two of the finest British indie acts around (Mazes and Veronica Falls, respectively), and they sound very much on the same page here, easy in each other's company.

"Who Loves the Sun?" the Velvet Underground once inquired. "Ultimate Painting" the track, with its gorgeous shiny guitar sound and loosey-goosey Loaded flow, suggests that Ultimate Painting the band do.

The Budos Band - The Sticks (2014)

Another label enjoying a strong year is Daptone Records: Sharon Jones gave the people what they wanted in January with her comeback album; Cold World by Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens has been justly well received; and the forthcoming fourth LP by The Budos Band looks set to be an absolute stonker.

The Budos backed Charles Bradley on his ace cover of "Changes", and, judging by The Wizard imperious on the new sleeve and teaser track "The Sticks", they have continued to flick through the little black book of Black Sabbath black magic. Down-tuned guitars and sustained bellows of brass bring a doomy gloominess not present in their funk before; the hyperactive interplay between drums, horns and organ hints at an exciting new prog influence.

Nude Beach - I Can't Keep The Tears From Falling (2014)

Take a quick look at the cover (tight jeans, checked shirts, leather jackets) and tracklisting ("Radio" "Walkin' Down The Street", "Some Kinda Love") of Nude Beach's 2012 album II and, without hearing a note of the music, you could probably have a good guess what it might sound like. Theirs is a 70s FM Rock dream world, where Tom Petty is God, lovers cruise around to The Cars, and Big Star rule the airwaves.

Nude Beach have a knack for writing infectious, irresistible power-pop - tunes that stay with you even as they rush by you. "I Can't Keep The Tears From Falling" is the latest example and first taster of new LP, 77. The drums hit hard, the guitar solos sting, and that chorus just wont take no for an answer. I hope it reaches the size of audience it deserves.

King Creosote - My Favourite Girl (2005)

"My Favourite Girl", a long-time favourite of mine, originally appeared on 2005's KC Rules OK. A rerecorded version features on King Creosote's beautiful new From Scotland With Love LP, a soundtrack to archive Scottish film footage and a future Sunday Morning Vinyl staple, for sure. Written about his daughter Beth, "My Favourite Girl"'s simplicity and beauty breaks my heart every time I hear it: "I guess that I have not got long / Promise you'll tell her / She's my favourite girl / In all the world".

This idea of family and time passing is a recurring theme in much of Kenny Anderson's best work - "Your Young Voice", another favourite, repeats the phrase "it's your young voice that's keeping me holding on to my dull life" over and over until I'm reduced to a blubbering wreck.

Radio Days: Mark Lamarr & God's Jukebox

For four years between 2006 and 2010, “Moanin’ At Midnight” by Howlin’ Wolf heralded the plugging in of God’s Jukebox and the start of the three most engrossing, enriching and enjoyable hours of my week.

It had always been a dream of Mark Lamarr’s to have a radio show with “Moanin’ At Midnight” – and Wolf’s unmistakable low groan intro – as its theme. When God’s Jukebox was commissioned, his dream came true. That the show started at midnight (Saturday, 12 till 3am) made it all the more perfect.

Lamarr joined BBC Radio 2 in 1998 and hosted a number of specialist series on the network: he shared his enviable stash of 7-inch records and extensive knowledge of rockabilly – his first love – on the award-winning Shake, Rattle & Roll; The Reggae Show began with him dipping his toe into the world of reggae and ended with him as something of an authority on the subject, interviewing virtually every key figure in Jamaican music along the way; Alternative 60s was an exhilarating journey into the outer reaches of the 1960s.

With God’s Jukebox, he had the ideal vehicle for his Catholic tastes; a showcase deserving of his remarkable record collection. Each show featured a dizzyingly diverse selection of music – blues, soul, reggae, punk, funk, gospel, country, jazz – much of which I hadn't heard before. Little Willie John into The Sonics into Hank Williams into Irma Thomas into Dr. Feelgood into The Maytals into Sister Rosetta Tharpe into Nat King Cole. All the good stuff jumbled together - just as, I trust, the Good Lord likes it.

For all of its punk “anything goes” spirit, God’s Jukebox was structured and meticulously assembled. One regular segment (Featured Artist) saw Lamarr playing six tracks by or connected to a particular singer or group – a fantastic way of demonstrating that artist's range and influence, of opening your ears to someone you perhaps thought you knew or had preconceptions about. Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, Nina Simone, Dexys Midnight Runners, Candi Staton, Slade and Roxy Music are all former Featured Artists who I now consider favourites. Bob Dylan wasn't the only person doing themed radio shows in the 2000s – Mark could also be found riffing on a range of subjects from family and flying, to the moon and (yes) midnight.

Every week, to the disgruntlement of some, Lamarr would slip in a hip-hop track (it’s safe to presume he’s responsible for 100% of the plays Ludacris has received on Radio 2) and a raucous gospel performance – from the original vinyl, naturally. No show would go by without him playing something by one of his biggest heroes, Tom Waits - it seemed only right to me that I buy a Waits album a week to keep up.

New talent was given its time to shine, even if the majority of the new music to catch Lamarr’s ear was clearly indebted to the past (something I find increasingly with my own listening tastes as I get older). He would joke that the artists he tipped for the big time were destined for a career of obscurity, and he kind of had a point – Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Candie Payne, The Heavy, Chicken Legs Weaver and The Dials were just a few to not receive the support or success they perhaps deserved. Many of these acts performed live sessions on the show, as did legends including The Monks, The Zombies, The Congos, Allen Touissant and Paul Weller.

Every God’s Jukebox would end on something pre-war – something crackly and reflective to waltz you into the wee small hours, towards the land of nod.

It’s easy to forget that for the first couple of years of the show’s run, at least, there was no iPlayer. If for whatever reason you missed the show going out live - that was it, no catch-up, no second chances. I know it may sound melodramatic, but on the rare occasions that I did miss a show it really did feel like I’d missed out on some valuable education, on some new doors being opened to me. In those four years, I listened to, bought (albums, greatest hits, compilations, Proper box sets) and devoured more music than I ever had before or have since.

Not everything played on the show was great. Garage and punk bands, clearly beloved of the teenage Lamarr, would be invited in for sessions, sometimes way past their sell-by date. He, like many avid record collectors, had a penchant for the novelty song – some of which you probably didn't need to hear even once in your life. An annual special, three hours of obscure Christmas records, would have tested the patience of Saint Nick. But this all felt like part of the discovery.

The Mark Lamarr on God’s Jukebox was very different to the Mark Lamarr on television. The jaded, sneering quiz master of Never Mind The Buzzcocks felt less like a persona as the series stacked up (Someone really needs to put that rock dinosaur of a show out of its misery). On the radio, he was always relaxed, incredibly passionate and knowledgeable, funny but in a less showy way. He had the best job in the world, he’d say. Waspish comments were saved for a few choice targets: Elton John, Robbie Williams, Radio 2 bigwigs.

And so it went that Lamarr left BBC Radio 2 in 2010, following one last row with bosses regarding the show’s graveyard slot. “We have a greater commitment than ever before to specialist music genres and feature an extraordinarily broad range of music…we plan to replace his shows with equally distinctive content in 2011", a BBC spokesperson said at the time, which looks even more like bollocks now than it did then. The final God’s Jukebox went out on Christmas Eve/Day. Last I heard, Mark was doing some on-flight radio shows for British Airways and curating a stage at the Latitude festival.

6music have some superb stuff in their schedule – Gilles Petersen; Craig Charles’ Soul & Funk Show; Cery’s Matthews’ splendid Sunday morning show, which is probably the closest to God’s Jukebox in terms of its rootsy diversity – but surely they could find a slot for Lamarr. I can understand why musicians like Guy Garvey, Jarvis Cocker and Ricky Wilson are given their own shows – they’re recognisable and popular personalities with ready-made audiences.

But no one on radio has as big a personality as Mark Lamarr: I don’t think I’ll ever forget the glee with which he introduced “Duppy Conqueror” by Bob Marley (“duppy” is the Jamaican word for “ghost”, meaning that “Duppy Conqueror” is essentially Marley’s version of Ghostbusters!), or the warmth and humanity with which he, obviously choked up, dedicated one show to Charlie Gillett – his friend and fellow DJ and record obsessive who had passed away earlier that week – and played Barbara Lynn’s “You’ll Lose A Good Thing”. Even setting aside his musical expertise and taste, there just has to be room on the BBC for a broadcaster like that.

Thanks Mark. Happy trails to you, till we meet again.

One gallant warrior has compiled this Two Week (!) long Spotify playlist of music featured on God’s Jukebox.  If that seems a little intimidating, I have put together my own selection - some tracks I vividly remember hearing in the early hours of Saturday, ear pressed against the side of my radio. I hope it gives you a flavour of this incredible show.

Live Report: The National - Usher Hall, Edinburgh (10/07/14)

Gig Of 2013 had to be The National at Alexandra Palace, a band I’d wanted to see live since hearing the stately piano and fanfare of “Fake Empire” and its parent album, Boxer, in 2007. The intervening years had given this desire time to grow - The National, themselves growing bigger and better, slowly amassing one of the finest catalogues in modern rock. No Scottish shows were announced in the initial promotion of their latest LP, Trouble Will Find Me; my friends and I had to go to them.

The London audience that night were treated to a generous, triumphant two-hour set, complete with string section, swirling visuals and an unplugged version of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” to close. Lead singer Matt Berninger, swigging from a bottle of red wine throughout, did his trademark slalom through the crowd. Twice. 

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Eight months on, and I'm off on another National pilgrimage - this time to the Usher Hall in Edinburgh (Guys, I love you, and, yes, the travelling arguably adds something to the overall experience, but a Glasgow date at some point wouldn't go a-miss, eh?).

No new music has surfaced since the Ally Pally gig, but we have had Mistaken For Strangers - a rockumentary made by Tom Berninger, Matt's brother, following the band on their High Violet tour. Mistaken For Strangers is less a film about The National and their music and more a psychological profiling of Tom (lay-about, heavy-rock lover, aspiring movie-maker, hopeless roadie), focusing in on his relationship with - and jealousy towards - his successful rock-star sibling. Indeed, most of Tom's valuable one-on-one interview time with the other band members is taken up with him determined to know "what's the deal with Matt??". It's touching, truthful and uplifting-in-a-melancholy-kind-of-way, as you might hope from something National-related. But it also made me laugh louder and more consistently than any other film I've seen this year. Didn't expect that!

A listen through of Trouble Will Find Me after time away confirms it as one of The National's best: strong, direct songs (the unorthodox time signatures on "I Should Live In Salt" and "Demons" are as tricksy as the LP gets) which flow seamlessly into each other; more open both spatially (compared to the claustrophobic High Violet) and emotionally (Matt's lyrics less cryptic, his vocals less mumbled); the sound of a band who know who they are and what they do best. "Pink Rabbits" and "Hard To Find" combine to form one of the most devastating and satisfying endings to an album that I can remember. 

"To be honest, I'll be more than happy if it's exactly the same set as last time", I say on the train through to Edinburgh.

And that's pretty much what we get. A near-identical set-list heaving with high-points from the last four albums, the more overtly anthemic moments from Trouble Will Find Me and High Violet meshing successfully with the twitchier Boxer and Alligator tracks. “Don’t Swallow The Cap” and “I Should Live In Salt” next to “Mistaken For Strangers” and “Squalor Victoria”. "Bloodbuzz Ohio", probably their most famous tune, is dispatched with four songs in - plenty more where that came from.

The opening 20 minutes are very good, but I can’t help feeling that something is lacking in comparison to the London show – the guitars and vocals are a little too low in the mix perhaps, or Matt’s slightly subdued.

Then, suddenly, everything seems to shift up a gear – and I don’t mean in terms of volume (though “Abel” is loud and electrifying, Berninger letting rip on its “my mind’s not right” chorus). It’s more about momentum. The cumulative effect of these superb songs, swelling one after another, is to create something incredibly intense and moving. You’re swept away on a wave of emotion, a tide of euphoria, a Sea of Love.

There are minor changes to the set-list. “Anyone’s Ghost” and Catching Fire contribution “Lean” both make way. An unnamed new track – Future Island verses giving way to British Sea Powered blasts of noise – comes and goes, leaving little impression.

The delicate piano intro of "Hard To Find" begins, however, and I instantly feel myself welling up. Fuck! They’re playing that! I adore the radiant sadness of the slower National numbers (see “Start A War”, "City Middle", "Slipped"), but they don’t always lend themselves to being played in large halls, their subtleties often lost. “Hard To Find” sounds perfect tonight though, its lyrics crystal clear, the “they can all just kiss off into the air” refrain a proper throw-your-arm-round-your-mate moment.

“Conversation 16” also gets an outing – it must surely bring perverse joy to the band that they can instigate a mass sing-along of the lines “I was afraid I’d eat your brains…'cause I'm evil”. 

This dark humour and wit - present in much of The National’s work - is often missed by casual listeners. Like The Smiths, they have been dismissed as miserable and depressing - predominantly I think due to Berninger's deep grumble of a delivery. But the lyrics to "Karen" ("It's a common fetish for a doting man / To ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand") and "All The Wine" ("I'm put together beautifully...a perfect piece of ass...a wingspan unbelievable, I'm a festival, I'm a parade"), to give just two examples, are genuinely funny; "When I walk into a room I do not light it up / Fuck!" from "Demons" is positively Morrissey-esque.

Now in his early-40s, Berninger is a little older than your average alternative rock front-man. He’s a father, a family man, and this – along with the experience which comes from a hard-won success after years of working, touring and struggling – brings a wise, worldliness to his words. His takes on life’s loves ("What I feel now about you then, I'm just glad I can explain / You're beautiful and close and young / In those ways we were the same") , pains ("Sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue don't they?"), hopes ("You know I dreamed about you, for 29 years before I saw you") and disappointments ("We expected something, something better than before, we expected something more") are more-often-than-not considered, poetic and right. At his best, he's Guy Garvey without the "oh my giddy aunt" chumminess; the equal of Nick Cave or Moz.

Another aspect of The National that may surprise some is just how guitar-orientated they are live, how much they rock. On record, the voice and drums tend to drive the tracks, but tonight the guitar-playing brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, are free to elongate solos and add licks to the likes of "Afraid Of Everyone" and "Graceless". They end “Terrible Love” on separate sides of the stage, in identical poses, their guitars held aloft.

The gig closes, as it did at Alexandra Palace, with Berninger turning the microphone on the crowd for “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” (as captured in the video below). Near a cappella, with the band and the fans giving everything they've got left, it's a spine-tingling, fitting finale - despite the fact that many of us need to brush up on our second verse.

A couple of songs previous, Matt Berninger had been propelled into the crowd by “Mr. November”. He made his way to the rear of the venue and then cut back diagonally across the floor. Tracing his mic lead which stretched out above, we knew he was close. And, suddenly, there he was. Racing like a pro, not missing a beat. We patted him on the shoulder as he flashed past, then turned to each other and let out schoolboy whoops of excitement.

For that briefest of moments, he had come to us.