Absolutely not an end of year 'Best Of...' List. Not At All.

Wait, Am I Still A Tastemaker?

They remain the most obligatory, and yet still infuriating, opening statements that morph into questions after being introduced: “So, you’re into music...so, what’s the best album of all time?” often followed with the related “Music’s so shit now…why don’t they make records like Sgt Peppers/Dark Side Of The Moon/OK Computer/*insert title from questioner’s generational era* anymore?”

Before you ask, my stock answer to the first usually runs something along the lines of “Born To Run/London Calling/Hourly Daily/Yankee Hotel Foxtrot/*insert title from questioner’s generational era*”  , although it doesn’t really matter what you say – they’re often just looking for the chance to argue their favourite, and/or disagree vehemently with your choice: “The Clash? Come on, they were crap compared to the Pistols, maaaaaaaate….”, and go from there. My response to the second query is usually the somewhat more snappy: “Well, it could be that it’s not 1967/1972/1994 anymore, chief…” which thankfully usually leaves me alone with the cabanossi and cheese at the party.

Conversely, the need to know about the new hits its peak around now, with the equally obligatory end-of-year ‘Best of…’ lists. There’s conventions here too: you’ll forget the one that came out in January, the work-experience writers will deliberately pick something from out of their comfort zone of music to show how ‘open-minded’ they are to an audience that really doesn’t give a shit: the guitar music guy will throw in Gambino or Kendrick, the electronica fan will namecheck Gang Of Youfs’ emotionalism. Because they think they should. And I’ll still stand by Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange being a terrific record of its time, transcending all pigeonholes. And, of course, somebody will loudly and angrily squawk ‘Whaddabout….?’ as you’ve missed their singular favourite. Come at me, bro.

But, as ever, the 1-to-10 list has always shit me. Music as a ranked and competitive thing has always struck me as a bit silly. So, I’m not doing one. And you can’t make me. However, there are 2018 records that are affecting in various ways, that you probably should know about – and who’s gonna tell you if I don’t. Then there’s that one that I actually might call my favourite of the year, but I won’t mention contradicting myself if you don’t.

Now, when you reach the time where the media outlets talking about you preface your name with ‘veteran’ - although I much prefer ‘venerable’, it giving me an adjectival flavour of a monkish aesthete, which you’ll admit is me all over – you may crave the familiar. So, a couple of these names may have appeared in rants, screeds, or dribbling words of praise from me before – although this year’s works may have come with some sort of twist or another. Thus, things I’ve listened to a bit, and you probably should too:

Tell Me How You Really Feel was the apt title for Courtney Barnett’s (surprisingly-not-all-that-) difficult second album. At times blunter and more angry than previously, she could still be wry and observational - but appropriating Margaret Atwood’s line “…Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them..." had more people hear it - and hopefully understand it - than ever before. While that’s Courts’ #2 record, Warm is probably about the 20th to have Jeff Tweedy’s name on it – although a little bizarrely the first collection of new and original material with just his name on the marquee. He philosophises and ruminates on a stroll around the human condition, perhaps revealing a little more of his songcraft and wordplay than he would have with the sometimes intimidating virtuosity of Wilco in the room.

Getting even more minimal, and even more in contrast to what went before, St Vincent recast the shiny technological art-pop of Masseduction as Mass Education – basically the piano and guitar sketches of the songs. Never has an album of ‘demos’ been so austerely beautiful, and so totally different to the final (or maybe more accurately, the ‘other’…) result. Further blurring of gender roles and musical styles to crystallise an artist’s identity came in Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer – the best Prince album this century, not the least due to some posthumous input from the little purple himself. And from purple to Blue Poles, Jack Ladder made another album suitable for moody brooding. Touchstones: Bowie, Cohen, Ferry, things dark and crooning. This he does very well. Also contains some Benet and Callinan, as it should.

As for songwriters who know their history, and increasingly their place in it, Elvis Costello gave the faithful the health scare to just worry about how much we might miss him, and presented an album to make us appreciate him again now. Look Now was Declan at his most crafted. At times baroque, with a tumble of words, other times just utterly graceful and gliding, it’s the record to put next to the glistening ‘80s gems like Imperial Bedroom and King Of America. Yeah, that good.

 

Having waded through my pleasure in all of the above, then there’s the one so original that three months on I’m still working it out. Emma Louise is already ‘successful’ – in the sometimes odd terms of music in the 21^st century: Label-signed, ‘hit’ songs of chart position, even that one that got used in a perfume commercial and as meaningful mood-setter on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. That was Jungle – you’ll need that as a trivia quiz answer one day, I imagine.

So, with a new album to do, she debunked off to Mexico, and made Lilac Everything, a record of her typically clever and well-made pop songs – including one called Mexico about debunking off to Mexico to get over a busted heart. So, autobiographical broken relationship songs? Yeah, maybe – but maybe not.

Some previous messing with the technology of recording had seen Emma discover the perfectly monikered effect of ‘dragging’ – slowing and down-tuning her voice to an veering-to-male-sounding croon so distinctive she even gave it a name as a different identity. ‘Joseph’ delighted many, and equally upset some of the faithful who lamented the loss of her more usual bell-like clarity. But the artist went with idea for whole record. And it so works.

But yeah, it would have just been a gimmick – albeit a pretty good one – if the songs couldn’t stand on their quality. Falling Apart, Wish You Well – yep, crumbling emotions and eventual acceptance still often make the best tunes, gender irrelevant. Although get to Never Making Plans Again, with its soul-ly tinge - and if the handlers haven’t got around to offering it to Adele or Norah Jones, they’re not earning their money.

You need to hear this record. Make up your own mind about the central conceit of it, or just listen to something truly original.

Visions of sugarplums, customers.

Me And Billy Bragg have a natter way back when.

HEARTS AND MINDS

You don’t so much interview Billy Bragg as have a conversation - with him asking as many question as you - as he prepares for one his semi-regular Australian tours.

His previous visit, a short hit-and-run for a music conference with a just couple of shows shoe-horned in came a few days after the 2013 election. ”I think a lot of you were in a state of shock,” he notes. “So how’s the Abbott thing working out for you?” We trade phrases suitable for song like ‘Inept arseholes’, and ‘All going down the pan’ of the situations both here and in England, before talk comes back to the music.

The death of folk music legend Pete Seeger is still a touchstone. For the music, the man, and what he represented. “He was taking on the world with just a wiry voice and a banjo,” Bragg explains. “I remember being at some ceremony for him, looking down and finding him doing cycling exercises on the floor – he must have been near 80. That’s 100% better than twerking.”

It was not just the physical vitality that impressed him. “Even in his nineties he still had work to do, things to achieve. And this was a man who had travelled with Woody Guthrie, wrestled the Klu Klux Klan as they tried to stop (legendary black singer) Paul Robeson performing. He actually walked alongside Martin Luther King. You were shaking hands with history.” Conversely, Bragg plays down moments from his own life. Being at the frontline of the Miners’ Strike in Thatcher’s England, visiting Russia as Communism collapsed, and the campaign to free Nelson Mandela among other things, just doesn’t seem to have the same currency to him.

“I don’t want to think about that yet. I want to live in the present - I still have plenty to do. History will judge us on what contribution we make, but that’s for history, not for now.”  For Bragg, it all comes back to the work: “Not all music, but some can carry a message - an idea that can just carry and take hold. You have to have a faith that sometimes that’s going to happen.”  

In another twist this most English of singers’ latest album, Tooth And Nail, has seen him embraced by America as never before. Getting labelled as ‘alt.country’ or even ‘Americana’.  “Americana is a quite broad word,” he says in that quite broad accent. “It can be Johnny Cash, it can be Booker T. - any music that has its roots in American roots music. Whatever that is.”  

“I was just trying to find my way back to Mermaid Avenue,” he recalls the celebrated - if slightly fractured - collaboration with Wilco of Woody Guthrie songs, which gave all the participants a wider audience. “I wanted to find more of that sound, that idea, that Wilco and I sometimes got in the studio. But I got sidetracked – that’s been known to happen before,” he muses.

Those thoughts dovetailed with his homeland’s view of the music. I throw one of his quotes back at him: ‘The English don’t get folk music - it’s what the Scots and Irish do when they’re drunk.’ He pauses. “Did I say that? I might have been drunk,” he adds with a laugh.  

He quickly and politely clarifies: “Maybe what I meant that our Celtic neighbours still use folk music as part of their identity, where in England it’s quite different – it’s much more marginalised.”

Does that mix in with the natural English reserve? “An embarrassment in letting go?,” he asks himself. “Like Morris dancing? Everybody tends to be embarrassed by Morris dancing - sometimes even those actually doing it. Then again, I have Scots friends who are mortified when they see some bad singer get up in a kilt.”

Mr Bragg can also see the upside: “The folk audience – wherever they’re from - still want to hear topical songs, and that’s died out a lot in much other contemporary music.  Do people not want to think? Sure, to switch off and relax - I’m fine with that. But don’t tell me that music’s only purpose - it can be more than that. It can be about any part of the human condition.”  

While knowing the past, Billy Bragg knows things have changed, via a keyboard and a screen. “When I was 19, I really only had one outlet – learn to play an instrument, write songs, do gigs. If you were really lucky, go into a cheap studio and make a record. A 19-year-old now has so many more options: Write a blog, make a film and stick it up on Youtube, tweet up a crowd.”

“Music has probably lost its vanguard role, where in the second half of the 20^th century music was our social media. It used to be three chords and a chorus - now it’s 140 characters.”