Glad [2] Help

 I tell you what I've been listening to this week and which is an altogether pleasant surprise - 'Help [2]'.

30-odd years since the original 'Help!' album, it certainly surpasses its illustrious predecessor. 

Having said that, it's not actually the second installment - there was also 'NME in Association with War Child Presents 1 Love' (which I bought), 'Hope' from 2003, 'Help!: A Day in the Life' from 2005 (which I bought) and 'War Child Presents Heroes' from 2009, which I think I listened to. 

This is, I think, the most coherent and satisfying of all the albums. The 1995 'Help' album was scrappy, quite fun, but, clearly, apart from Radiohead's 'Lucky', mainly filled with offcuts, rerecords and covers. Some of the covers were great, but, in as much as, at the time, I loved the big bands and wanted to hear new songs by them, I was mainly a bit disappointed by what they offered, particularly by Blur's Eine Kleine Lift Music.

This new album has a handful of people left over from that 1995 album - Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon both appear (separately), as does Beth Gibbons (and there's an Oasis live bonus track on the physical edition). Pulp are here (though, false memory, they're not actually on the 1995 album though I could have sworn they were). That album had Sinead O'Connor and this one has a really great Sinead O'Connor cover by Fontaines DC.

There's no one quite as legendary as Paul McCartney this time, but there is a really impressive line-up of artists from the 80s (Depeche Mode), 90s (aforementioned and Beck), 00s (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Bat for Lashes), 10s and 20s. The headliners, bookending the album, are the Arctic Monkeys, with their first new song in years, and Olivia Rodrigo (with help by Graham Coxon) covering the Magnetic Fields as the final track.

The original Help album was done in a day, whereas they gave themselves a week for this one. To be honest, there is no sense of a time constraint or limitation on space. It is just a really good compilation.

The UK and Irish bands these days, I tend to like not love them - so, on this compilation, there are several artists which probably score between 6.5 and 8.5 for me, so, while I don't have the expectation they're going to blow my mind, I generally quite like what they sound like. So, where the original Help had, you might say, quite meh contributions relative to what I hoped Blur, Oasis, Stone Roses etc might offer, this album has a whole lot of songs by bands where my response is more "that's a good song by that band that does good song". ... if you see what I mean ...

I suppose the nature of the way music is released helps. In 1995, bands would have been much more pressed to keep their best songs for their own albums and singles, and putting something half-decent on a compilation might have felt like giving something too precious away. 

Now, a song's a song, it can become popular from anywhere via streaming etc. The Arctic Monkeys track has become a pretty big single for them. There's no harm in bands giving up really good songs to this.

Another thing is it's really coherent. The producer James Ford has been in charge of it, and, somehow or other, it sounds like a really well put together track-listing. There are a lot of explicitly anti-war songs and a lot of songs that sound really good back-to-back.

So far, my favourites on the album are Parasite by English Teacher with Graham Coxon, Carried My Girl by Bat for Lashes, Don't Fight the Young by Young Fathers, Black Boys on Mopeds (the Sinead O'Connor cover) by Fontaines  DC, and, surprisingly for me as I'm not a big fan, Nothing I Could Hide by Arlo Parks. 

But, really, there are no duds. It's a really strong, frequently quite moving, listen, which reminds me there's still lots of great indie (in a broad sense) music out there.