Misspent Youth

This is usually a music blog but this next post's not really about music, though music will play a part - particularly singing.

Music often triggers nostalgia but, for me, it's not the songs I deeply cherish that have that effect, rather it's songs which I listened to repeatedly at one time, most likely on the radio rather than through choice, and have hardly or never listened to since; songs like Wouldn't it be Good by Nik Kershaw, Sleeping Satellite by Tamsin Archer, Tattva by Kula Shaker - I've heard them all recently and completely lost my place in the present.

This is, I suppose, because the songs are indelibly associated with one specific time, so I'm instantly transported to that time, rather than the song having a life of its own through its presence in my head over many years.

True nostalgia is a wondrous, often misappropriated concept. Nostalgia is not just remembering the past, it's not just those TV list shows, the awkward jocularity of "wasn't that shit", "wasn't that great" ... it's about pain, it's about loss, it's about something you'll never be able to get back - it's rough etymology is "pain when thinking about home" - it's more akin to homesickness than just taking a trip down memory lane.

I want to write with a hint of nostalgia - nostalgia in the sense described above - because this is going to be about a life I lived with almost no connection to that I live now, the details of which are, in one sense, very easy to see myself involved in, but at the same time, relate to a person with a wholly different understanding of life, a wholly different way of interacting and attempting to communicate.

I'm asking myself why I'm writing about this at this moment. When I consider who I am now and the persona I have (to the extent that I have one), it's above all about my life at home and the people in it, then my work in quizzes, then watching sport, pop music, films, political feelings, writing as a means to process all of the above and keep my brain from seeing things only in terms of quiz questions (!), being online all the time, checking my phone too much, keeping fit when I can, my local small-town environment. My physical state and the aging process also plays a part in my self-definition, worrying about the world going forward, lots of daft little stuff as well - and really, the funny thing is, none of that is what was most important to me back then, apart from, I suppose, watching sport and listening to pop music a little, but even then, less so than now.

So I know the answer. I'm writing it now because I don't want something precious to be lost.

I'm going to write about being a teenager - a specific part of it. Teenage nostalgia has, of course, been a rich seam for film makers for a long time (Stand by Me, The Last Picture Show, Dazed and Confused etc) - but, as yet, if I'm not mistaken, there are not that many early-90s nostalgia trips - by which I mean, a film where the clear intent is for a modern film maker to implicitly or explicitly glorify and mythologise growing up in that era. There should be.

It's perfect for such treatment, because the early 90s was the last time teenagers grew up without the capacity to capture each moment with a photo, so the memories we have are just that, memories - memories enhanced, distorted, mutable - not documents which are impossible to ignore. Sure, there are a few documents too - a few photos, letters, the music, diaries maybe, items which ground memories in truth and also spark 1000s of linked images. There are not 1000s of emails, texts and photos. The mind has to do the work.

It's the last era that can look like something different from the cold hard truth.

So,  bearing that in mind, what I'm writing about is bathed in a golden glow, elevated to a special place in my consciousness.

Not that I think of my teenage years as a whole like that, anything but. It was shite, a lot of it. A lot of not getting on well with people, being a twat, watching bad telly at home on a Friday night, thinking everyone else was out having fun, awkwardness, blandness, meanness, watching EastEnders and thinking it was good, not to mention all the usual teenage existential and concrete crises. Not all golden, a lot of grey.

But golden is there, I cannot deny it. It's there in a few places - it's there because my school was by Hammersmith Bridge and that's nice on a summer's day, it's there because of cricket, and sometimes football, it's there because the first few times you get drunk without puking your guts up (I was about 50/50 hit rate) are fun, it's there because of getting into pop music, it's there because I lived with my family who were nice people.

But, it's there, primarily, I think, because of this strange thing, this thing I've left it until this far into this post to mention, that I've hardly ever mentioned in this 8 years and innumerable words of blog, that I hardly ever mention in conversation, that is anathema to how I exist now. It's there because of faith. Or, specifically, Christian faith and its practice.

The strangest thing ...

I'm not a Christian now, I haven't been, depending on how I define it, since I was somewhere between 17 and 20. I'm not an agnostic, nor do I really think I "lost my faith" (in terms of losing something that could possibly have been retained). I'm pretty unromantic about that side of it these days. I came to a satisfactory conclusion, over a period of years, about the likelihood of any god, let alone the Christian god and, by the time I was about 23, I was completely happy with that. I haven't doubted since, not a tiny bit. I feel generally better for it.

But I was a Christian for those teenage years, and not in a woolly way, I was a proper one. Those years - 13 to 18 - are pretty fundamental for something to loom so huge and then disappear to nothing.

Yet there are several contradictions here. I am now cynical, indeed contemptuous at times, about Christianity, yet I look on that time with great fondness. I don't believe any of it anymore, but I'm enormously glad I went through it. I don't practice in any way, but I think that experience of faith had a more positive effect on my character than anything else at that time.

I feel the need to write about it, to give it dignity in my own mind. I haven't decided yet whether I will seek to encourage anyone to read this post or not - whether I do will dictate to a large extent how it's written - if I imagine a readership, I'll probably play it safe, cynical and concise, but if I feel I'm writing for myself, I'm sure I'll go on a bit - god, I'll go on a bit -  but I may actually do justice to the experience. If I do, I'll use words which no longer have a natural place in my vocabulary - like fellowship, grace, communion, contemplation. I'm troubled by writing about this. I'm troubled that the voice of the person I am now will keep intruding, or that it won't, I worry that I'll over-contextualise, politicise, under-romanticise. I want to romanticise.

So here goes with that.

It was, firstly, the singing, above all. Singing like I'd never heard before. The sound of 140 young male voices launching their voices into hymns which for years, to me, had just been undistinguished time fillers. Now, each hymn had character and meaning. These boys, they sang the words like they meant them.

That was when I first felt like this was something to show off - look what I've found, here in a school chapel in a field in Dorset on a still summer's evening.

I had no expectations. I was 13, in between the prep school and the main school - I'd only decided to go at pretty short notice because my mother suggested it might be a good way to get to know a few more people. The St Paul's School Christian Union Summer House Party 1991.

I wasn't a deep thinker then. I was sporty, precocious but naive, facetious, beginning to be wounded by the fact that I would not be, as I had thought for my first few years of my life, master of all I surveyed. I was probably the least cool boy in West London, too, though, hey, weren't we all?

Nor was I a Christian. I'd given it very little thought for a while. Educated in Catholicism when a small child, the churchy stuff at school between the age of 8 and 13 had kind of washed over me. After those first 10 days at Clayesmore, I was now a Christian. Again, I can't say it was a big leap of faith, a big spiritual awakening. At that stage, it was just, "This is great, these are Christians. Hence, I'll be a Christian".

That's often how it works. That's how they get you. That's what my cynical voice would interject now. If you're reading this with that voice yourself, I totally understand, it's here with me all the time too.

But hear again, I'm 38, I'm a person capable of utter contempt for almost everything, I reject religion in all forms, I question and feel guilty about every aspect of my privileged upbringing, I'm often tortuously compelled to pick over the bones of every word, every sentence, every thought, for the wider social context, yet there is no massive regret and negativity in how I think about this experience as a member of this boys' club, this patriarchal proponent of an ancient superstition, this bastion of elitism. There's only fondness.

It was a place of kindness. The top-down mood was of kindness and warmth, and it spread. Cross words and conflict were rare. That's not to say my own character was instantly transformed. One of the bittersweet elements of this detailed journey into a past rarely touched in recent years, is realising that if anyone there was a dick, it was me. Not once, but on several occasions over several years, I've remembered times where someone should really have slapped me/told me I was a little arsehole/told me to grow up/put me in a box for a few hours/suggested I look somewhere else for a summer holiday. But they didn't. They nearly always stayed kind.

But it was not an anodyne kindness. It was not that brand of bland, do-gooding English Christianity so easy to mock. As a 13 year-old, to be suddenly, unambiguously welcomed into a club of clever, funny, sarcastic, talented elders was quite something. Even as I look back and remember the people, most of whom I haven't seen for over two decades, I recall someone else, then someone else with a brilliance to them - people who had a spark then and would go on to be something - some are teachers and doctors, some are writers and actors, some are film makers and journalists, some are priests and charity workers, some are academics and musicians, some are mathematicians, none are carpenters' wives...

To start with, it was almost overwhelming. There were years of overlapping in-jokes you had to get up to speed with quickly. There were rules, games, odd bits of terminology, there was spontaneous outbursts of communal singing all the flippin time. It wasn't really explained, you just picked it up.

And there was sport. Thank you lord. Heaven for me was this - competitive cricket-like sport called podex in the morning, casual sport all afternoon, some tea, a bit more casual sport, then a bit more organised sport in the early evening. With individual racket and table football competitions to be fitted in alongside that. It's the sport, I think, that creates the clearest image in my head.

I haven't mentioned yet, but Clayesmore was beautiful. A public school with extensive grounds by the village of Iwerne Minster, Dorset, overlooked by Hambledon Hill, the 19th century main school building was a grand stately home. There were fields, there were trees, all green and yellow, all the best of idyllic England in high summer. It was like suddenly being let loose on the set of Mansfield Park ... and turning it into a massive sports complex.

It was ok to be competitive - not too competitive but fairly competitive - each day I sported myself to exhaustion - table tennis, padder tennis, touch rugby, podex (cricket/rounders-like, won't explain), cricket, football, tennis, swimming, croquet - just take your pick. Organised games, spontaneous games, wherever you looked, all day. I know the sport was meant to be about fostering teamwork and good spirit etc. I'm not sure I need to see it that way - for me, it was always just pure sport, but the fact it contributes so heavily to these memories says enough. There are still games of football and touch rugby, padder tennis, shots I hit, shots I saw, that I treasure. God was definitely in the sport, man.

God ... right, for the elephant in the room up to now. I'm finding it hard to write something which was real and now isn't. It's often what us unbelievers don't understand, just can't get to grips with, about people of faith. To believers, it can be a real, tangible thing that exists in the world, that you feel and see and hear. If you get that feeling, if you experience god, you'll go to any lengths to explain how that might be (or rather, sometimes, you won't).

I wouldn't say I understood anything about how I might go about feeling god's presence (I'll be using lower-case henceforth, as a deliberate personal choice, just to be clear) to start with - I think maybe it took me a few years. But gradually, I came to a sense of  something there in the small moments, in the poignancy, in the friendships, in the sounds and the rituals.

It wasn't all sport. There was a daily service, there were talks, there were regular biblical discussions, there was time for prayer and opportunities, first thing and last thing, for individuals to share specific ideas and thoughts. Prayer is a weird thing, isn't it, especially in the light of the way we live now? I think I went into it with the same attitude I have again now - as an awkward silence within which I'm very likely to burst out into spluttering, embarrassed laughter.

But, over the course of those years, I got the hang of prayer in all its forms - how to sound dignified and serious when praying out loud, how to stay calm and confused when others' prayers are a bit funny, how not to think of football, and, gradually, how to be silent, how to listen, how to keep my mind still, how to let my mind wander, how to consider myself and consider god.

At the end of the evening service, there was silence, and we'd all just gradually leave at our own speed. To start with, I'd be one of the first to leave and a bit baffled as to why anyone would hang around when there was still a bit of daylight for one last bit of cricket. I'd sometimes stand outside the chapel looking at people walking out looking thoughtful and pious 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes later. Hmm, extra piety points ...

But the stillness of prayer gradually became a part of my daily routine - I mean, I'm quite sure a few times I stayed behind to make myself feel godly and impress on other people just how serious I'd become, but I genuinely felt I was talking to god and being heard.

I'd also begun to read the Bible and other works of popular Christianity, I'd engage fully on discussion where I'd previously been merely disruptive and facetious, I'd give considerable thought to what it meant to live as a Christian in the world. It mattered the most to me then. Honestly, amidst all the things any self-respecting teenager ought to be thinking about, that was genuinely my main concern. What an idiot ...

The Christian Union was not prescriptive or doctrinal - certainly not straightforwardly so. Indeed, it made a big thing of being open to everyone in the school (a boy's school) - there were Anglicans, Catholics, there were plenty of agnostic and non-believers, there were also Jewish boys and Muslims sometimes.

Other faiths were respected, other paths to the top of the mountain, as it was put. So what was my path to the top of the mountain (which I was never to reach)?

Well, looking back now, I don't think there is too much to be ashamed of in what I believed, quite the contrary. Though I say the CU was not prescriptive, and had a place for all manner of beliefs and practices, I think, overwhelmingly, the mood that came across was of an open-minded, liberal kind of belief system - I don't remember anyone being anti gay marriage or anti women priests or too hellfire and damnation-y. I don't remember too many people who took every word of the bible as scripture.

Equally, I don't think it was all that lightweight and woolly - we talked of the atonement, we talked of sacrifice, we talked of how to live the good life, of what were worthwhile professions, of our sins and our pride, amongst many other things.

I'm quite sure it had a huge effect on the person I am even now. I tried to remake myself a little in those years. To take away the ghastly pompous show-off I pretty blatantly was and rebuild. In the end I, arguably, merely rebuilt as a slightly different kind of pompous show-off, but, you know, I think there was some improvement.

Also, I do wonder how much it affected me politically. To some, religion is highly conservative, to some the CofE represents a kind of gentle ineffectual liberalism, but the vision of Jesus that stuck to me was definitely that of a socialist firebrand, the man who destroyed the temple, who said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, all that stuff.

This is one of the main questions I ask myself even now - would I have been left-wing anyway, or did Jesus make me left-wing? Are my "principles", whatever they are, still informed by my understanding of the gospels. I had reached the conclusion that no, I put my stamp on my faith because that's the kind of person I'd have been, anyway. Right now, I'm not so sure. Thanks JC, you've a lot to answer for.

I developed for myself a fairly severe personal set of ethics - something that would eventually be pretty impossible to live by. I sometimes wonder if it was the high standard I set for living a Christian life that contributed in part to my faith failing. Did I subconsciously ask, "is this what it takes? If I'm going to do this, it's got to be serious, and I just don't know if i can or if i want to ..." Perhaps, that's something. Amongst other things.

My faith hit a high point in my last year of school, when I was by this point one of the leaders of the CU. I mean, I give myself credit, I was taking this shit seriously. I was volunteering, I was going to church every week, praying every day, I had arranged a gap year where I went as a guest of the church to Kenya (not a missionary, I hasten to add, there was no sense of converting anyone. They were perfectly well converted).

During that year, I had what one might call an experience of the holy spirit. The kind of thing I think I'd been asking/praying for all along. A physical demonstration within me of god's spirit, a rushing, overwhelming certainty. Even now, as I write this, it's a little harder to explain away than a few other things. But explain it away I do and I can, for what it's worth. The human body is funny. The mind plays tricks.

Immediately afterwards, I felt certainty, though. A certainty I'd never had before. Again, I wonder if that certainty was part of my undoing. Certainty passes, and when certainty passes, you have to hold on to confidence. And mine wavered.
Just a few weeks later, I still remember, I was reading something as innocent as an interview in a music magazine, I think it was with a band called The Longpigs, and something or other someone said suddenly hit me in the guts with my first ever, "No, it's not true, is it, none of it's true, there are better explanations for everything ...". I'd lived with doubt all along, I'd not been a blind believer, but I'd never had that crushing sense of an opposing certainty before.

I fought it. Very hard. For a few years. I flitted between renewed attempts at faith and greater doubt. The next year abroad now looked very daunting - I was nervous enough about going to a strange country to live without electricity and running water, but now, what was the purpose of my going? I was under false pretences. I'd have to lie to my hosts, just when I needed to be true to myself, it would be horrendous (as it happened, I lied a bit to start with, but gradually less, which was a bit awkward, but better).

The group through which I organised that gap year were quite evangelical - I was significantly confronted by people whose Christian faith was different than mine - who believed all of the Bible, who were so thankful, lord, and just wanted to praise you, lord, and just seemed to be talking fucking gibberish a lot of the time. And the songs were fucking awful.

That was not what I needed at that time. I didn't need to be regularly thinking "this is a whole load of hokum" in my crisis of faith.

Like I said, that wasn't the end of it. There was still the odd return to the fold. I even went to church quite often long after I'd given up any pretence at belief - I suppose for some hint of that sense of fellowship, of community and also of stillness.

But I never got back what I'd had for those five years. For me, now, I think my nostalgia, my active sense of loss, is not about the faith, it's about the experience, the comradeship and the innocence.

And the singing. Gosh, the singing. Firstly there were the hymns - the classics from the old songbook like Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, My Song is Love Unknown. You'll have heard them 1000 times, but never heard them sung like that, I swear.

And the other singing - one of the daily rituals, known as Sing-Song, a nightly congregation round the piano. I'm not sure I always enjoyed it that much. It was sometimes cheesy as hell, and there would be a bit too much swaying and eyes shutting in the front row sometimes. There was a bit too much of "this is the fun one, but hey, this is a serious one" ... but there was some great singing (solo and communal) and, above all, I think it added to my love of the song - the folk song and the protest song and the kind of song people can sing together. The kind of song that changes the world. It was the first time I sang a Bob Dylan song - Blowin' in the Wind - albeit not much like Bob Dylan sang it.

I've done my best to remember every song we ever sang there - i'm sure I've missed plenty - you get the idea - silly songs, children's song, folk songs, protest songs, religious songs, show tunes, changes of mood, all stuff designed for 100-odd voices to sing together.

• You are My Sunshine 
• Seek Ye First
• Ol' Man River
• What a Wonderful World
• The Wild Rover
• The Gypsy Rover
• Streets of London
• All My Trials
• Blowin' in the Wind 
• I Believe 
• We Shall Overcome 
• We Shall not be Moved 
• Jerusalem
• Inch by Inch
• Teddy Bears' Picnic
• John Brown's Body
• Swinging on a Star 
• Let it Be
• Life is ...
• Banks of the Ohio
• Molly Malone 
• Alouette 
• Siffler Le Train 
• Animal Fair
• Kumbaya 
• Yogi Bear
• Camptown Races
• Bridge over Troubled Water
• You'll Never Walk Alone
• Underneath the Arches
• Green Grow the Rushes
• Mack the Knife
• It's a Long Way to Tipperary 
• Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
• Pack Up your Troubles
• Swimming
• Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes
• Rise and Shine
• Day is Done
• One Man Went to Mow

It's all a strange vision of what it is to be a teenager. What's missing from the standard teenage reminiscences? - girls, drugs, booze. It seems all the more remarkable in retrospect how all those teenage hormones were managed so seamlessly. I've found when I tell people about it that they are a bit querulous and that, to them, it sounds a bit a) cultish b) jolly hockey sticks c) ancient Athenian. But it wasn't. That wasn't the environment. It was refuge from the loss of innocence. It was grounded, but separate. At least, that's how I experienced it.

As the years passed and I had more of an organisational role, I of course saw that it wasn't all that innocent. It was extremely well organised, even calculated. The older folk who were being kind to younger lads to their face were taking the piss out of them in private (hell, I did!).

There were cheeky cigarettes in the woods and illicit trips to the pub, there were internal politics and personality clashes.

But, you know, you'd worry if there weren't. They were good people. There are so very many from that time I have some good memory of, people I'd trust implicitly even now.

My foul apostasy disqualified me from carrying on with it in any kind of organisational role. I felt a dreadful sadness then, I really did. But I was ready to move on, In my late teens and early 20s, I spent a lot of time with the connected PHSP charity - it was more grown-up, less idyllic, there were a lot more drunken arguments.

Even that, and the connections I made there, has begun to fade from my memory a little. I'm sure it'll get its own blog post some time soon.

As for this one, it would have been great to fill it with photos, but I guess the point is that I don't have any, apart from in my head. I'd be amazed and impressed if anyone's got to the end of this. I think I ended up somewhere between reserve and going all in.

I don't know how well I've done what I intended, how much I've communicated the sheer joy of those House Parties - the sketches by properly funny people, the running jokes, the elaborate parlour games, the quality of the sport sometimes, the ambling through the countryside, the trumpet playing in the moonlight, the custard, the team names, the match reports, the gradual descent from cleanliness, the reading the tabloids, the drinking fizzy drinks, the pop songs that were the soundtrack to each dormitory (that first HP of 1991 is indelibly connected to Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy, by 1993 it was the Manics' La Tristesse Durere - talking of the passing of innocence), the talks by seriously good orators, the cups of tea, the sunburn and tired feet, the friendships. No TV, no mobile phones, no laptops, no income tax, no VAT. Nostalgia.

The real London

I only wrote this poem a week ago, but already it seems horridly out of date. My intentions were good, my feelings were honest, but I read it back this morning, and nearly every line accuses me of missing the point, of bowdlerizing the city I love, insensitive to its deeper truths. It's a London leaver's work - I wouldn't have written it like that if I still lived there, I think.

Grenfell Tower is the London that non-Londoners (and plenty of Londoners) don't understand. When Kensington and Chelsea shockingly went Labour last week, we all said, "see, even the richest folk are voting Labour now", but that wasn't it. There are two sides to Kensington and Chelsea. It's true of much of London. Wealth within touching distance of poverty.

I used to play football there - firstly at the Westway Sports Centre, under the Westway (which is the centre of the relief effort), then later on some little 5-a-side pitches right in the shadow of Grenfell. I can't say I ever really noticed it. It was just another high-rise. I tended to keep my head down and enjoy my football.

It was edgy round there - not worryingly so, but it was the kind of place to keep your wits about you. Kids from the estate playing on the next pitch as we played - various people are remarking about the grief they're feeling now, as if someone in the family has died. I suppose different people will have different reasons for this - it was so close, people Londoners will have walked past, worked with every day. But too many of us forgot about them.

I forgot about them as I romanticised Trellick Tower, West London's most notable brutalist tower block. "Look at Trellick, isn't it strangely beautiful". I never gave a thought to the less striking Grenfell, and I only occasionally dwelt on the people inside the tower, rather than the tower itself.

I forgot about it when I defended gentrification - gentrification is only defensible when it makes some significant attempt to carry everyone with it.

With this most awful event - what feels like the most awful event in our city's memory - maybe we can glorify and elevate the people of the tower, the people too long forgotten. Already the potted biographies of the missing remind you of the immensity of every life - the 1000 perils they might have already got through, the imagination, the graft, the goodness, the unbearable sadness now.

There's a lot to be said about it, there's a lot being said. We all know there's a big scandal waiting to be fully unearthed. I don't want to go on too much. Maybe it will change the way we all think, that's all.

London loves

I've been thinking about that there London this week. Five years since I've lived there, and maybe it feels a little less like my home than it used to, but not that much.

Here's a photo I took of the Shard rising up behind The Tower of London - I'm crap at photos, but you get the point ...

I quickly wrote the following about London this week ... sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but London gives back what you put into it.

*

When London loves back,

The glow of centuries’ labour

Sparks ten million hearts

On a summer evening.

London, from on high, is all

Parks, hospitals, football grounds, churches,

Dotted with oddities

Of architects ancient & modern,

Ringing with ghostly choirs of

Filth & fury.

No city's so unplanned

And fantastical, purer

Than symmetry, with so many

Centres and shelters from the storm.

London, on a good day, is

Six hundred square miles

Of festival, is

Six hundred square miles

Of everything in the whole world.

London lies dormant,

Then bubbles with hopes,

Simmers with ridiculous clashes

Of untameable tribes,

Of sacred and profane,

Lost in lucre, envy and both.

Even tube trains come alive sometimes,

Embarrassed to look up

Then wild-eyed and glorious

Like a karaoke booth,

Sometimes.

When London loves back,

A hipster’s allowed to be

just another lost boy

Who’ll wait his turn

For a fair price,

Raise his lips to the sky

On a riverside path

And breathe his own air

For a second,

And it’s cool.

London, fresh with Fuller’s,

Feels safer than any statistic

Or any sadistic prick

Can ever tell you otherwise,

Feels like every freedman’s fiefdom.

No other city contains so many towns,
defending their own honour,

nor hides so many battles raging

A few layers beneath,

No city so Irish or Polish

Or Ghanaian or French

Or whatever you are, whatever you want to be,

No city so godless

Or ecumenical.

No other city feigns indifference

Quite so democratically

But loves you back sometimes,

And lights up your heart.

No exile from London

Doesn’t, once in a while,

Wake awash with the sounds and the smells

Of the permanent city

And smile a prodigal smile.

I can tell, when I hurry back,

Assume my London glare, my London shuffle,

My home’s not

Forgotten me and my

Vain attempts to measure it,

I can tell it knows it owns me

And I owe it still, and always.

*

And here's a playlist about London, but the joy of London ...

Upfield – Billy Bragg

London – Benjamin Clementine

Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks

Galang - MIA
London Pride - Noel Coward

Up the Junction – Squeeze

In the City – The Jam

Itchycoo Park – The Small Faces
The Sights and Sounds of London Town - Richard Thompson

For Tomorrow – Blur

Electric Avenue – Eddy Grant

Rudie Can’t Fail – The Clash
Trams of Old London - Robyn Hitchcock 

A Rainy Night in Soho – The Pogues

Brompton Oratory – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

22 Grand Job – The Rakes
Blue Piccadilly - The Feeling

Dreamy Days – Roots Manuva

At the Chime of a City Clock – Nick Drake

Time for Heroes – The Libertines

Supersonic / Touch the Sky

I'm just going to hitch a couple of minor thoughts together in the same post, one's about Oasis, one's about Kanye West.

I watched the Oasis documentary from 2016, Supersonic - it was the early hours, I could have watched a few other films I need to catch up on, but for some reason I watched that.

It was a good work. It avoided the cliches - didn't mention Blur or Cool Britannia or Blair or Britpop. It didn't go past Knebworth in 1996. It gave the band some meaning - not all that much, but a bit.

It gave context, did show the sillier, lighter more childish side of Liam Gallagher, while not disguising how toxic the atmosphere around the band must have been (bullying, sackings, breakdowns etc though not for the two protagonists).

I can't say it has made me think about or listen to the band in a new light. I listened to Definitely Maybe today - it's still exactly what it always was, no more, no less.

But the thought I took away, which I've thought about before in the context of a few other bands, is that moment, if you're just a guy who's got a band together with their mates, and you're hoping for the best but no great expectations, when the guy you've been told writes the songs plays you something he's been working on, and you go "Hang on a minute, this is something, we've got one here!" The nervous delight you must feel.

With Noel Gallagher, when he joined his brother's band, he played them All Around the World (in 1992, well before they broke and five years before it was released). Well, now, it's a bit of a lump of a song, hardly one of their classics, but just hearing the ambition, the way with melody and universal sentiment, the sudden nudge "we might all get rich off this guy", it must be quite something.

Stevie Jackson talked about the same thing when he first heard Stuart Murdoch's songs - he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Of course, it doesn't happen like that all the time, in fact it probably rarely happens these days when rock bands hardly have any successful songs which make them rich. Still, a nice moment to imagine.

On to Kanye. Kanye at Glastonbury in 2015, specifically. Two years ago - perhaps I've been making my mind up all this time what I thought about it (I only watched it on telly, I should add).

There's a fierce determination amongst the indie music press to anoint Kanye West as the great genius of the age. He tells us how long he spends on an album, what a genius he is, what an artist he is, and a lot of people go along with it. His albums are always near the top of end of year polls.

I'm quite a fan, mainly of the album Yeezus, but quite often I'm sure I'm missing something, but I think that Glastonbury album confirmed for me that, no, I wasn't.

When the songs were good, they were great, but the more I think about it, the more of a profound exposing disaster the set was.

A lot of people complained that it was just one man jumping around on the stage to a backing track, with no real music being created. I can partially forgive that, but it does suggest that either didn't see the point of, or was unable to, show that he could orchestrate his music to an even small degree. I mean, I'm sure he could ... and that's not the point, sure.

But what the show demonstrated was his huge lack of judgement, his complete failure to understand what would work in a wider context - a challenge which most artists who do the main stage at Glastonbury, even if its not their natural territory, meet a lot more successfully.

Arrogance might be a part of it. Arrogance on its own is fine, if arrogance leads to the right calls. But thinking the Glastonbury audience would think him getting on a crane for 10 minutes was awe-inspiring, or thinking singing along badly to Bohemian Rhapsody would hit the mark ...

And that's how I felt about his next record really. Just a bit of a poorly judged mess. Kanye West doesn't have to be hated or loved, he can just be a bit shit sometimes.

The Great Works of the Alt-Country Middleweights

I've used the term "alt-country middleweights" (sadly not one I coined myself) several times on this blog down the years, and each time the post has received almost record low pageviews - so here goes again. Something about the term must be utterly offputting to the casual reader.

But I persevere - because Alt-country middleweight is, despite feints towards eclecticism, my abiding taste in song, and very fine it is too - all those American men and women now in their 40s who really know their way round a song - this is the apotheosis of Uncut music.

It's a loose term, and I've been loose with it in compiling this list of what are my own 25 masterworks of the genre. Is an alt-country middleweight defined in their weight category only against other alt-country artists? Surely Wilco would be alt-country heavyweights if so? But none of these have ever sold more than a few 100,000 records, none of them are really household names, so I let'em all in.

Are they all really even vaguely country? No, not at all. I only excluded blatantly urban bands and artists like The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend, The National's midwestern roots just about let them in.

And it's very personal, there's no pretence at objectivity - the likes of Smog, Gillian Welch, Giant Sand, Mark Eitzel, Felice Brothers, Low, Yo La Tengo would all feature heavily for others.

But these, looking back, are 25 albums I've loved wholeheartedly across a period of almost two decades. I've allowed only one per artist. Wilco, as you no doubt know, would probably have four of five albums if not.

No particular order at all. Too many men, really. No Newsom - somehow a whole different genre, though she's as country as some of them.

Micah P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress
A one-off, aided by The Earlies, a raging, brooding melodrama with some epic sounds which lent themselves well to Hinson's doomy growl. Key tracks: Don't You, Patience
Lapalco - Brendan Benson
A perfect album of power-pop from a class songwriter. Not a song out of place. Key tracks: Tiny Spark, Eventually
Nashville - Josh Rouse
A world-beater in a different world, the definitive alt-country middleweight. 1972 has equally great songs, but is more pastiche, this is the perfect Rouse collection, a lovely cohesive album. Key tracks: My Love Has Gone, Sad Eyes
The World Won't End - The Pernice Brothers
More utter perfection, a chamber-pop summer swoon, which you well know contains my favourite song of all time. Key tracks: She Heightened Everything, Bryte Side
Nixon - Lambchop
Soulful and funny, Kurt Wagner switches between croak and falsetto to devastating effect. Curtis Mayfield and Johnny Cash rolled into one. Key tracks: Up With People, You Masculine You
Benji - Sun Kil Moon
Grumpy misanthrope tells it like it is. Personal vignettes told with humour and pathos, one of the best albums of the last few years. Key tracks: Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes, Ben's My Friend
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco
What can be said? An altogether great, triumphant album, a career highest of highpoints amongst many. It's great when you communicate ... yeah. Key tracks: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Jesus Etc
Alligator - The National
Still my favourite National album, and not as urban as their later works (still, who am I kidding that it's anywhere near alt-country). Monstrous drama and great drumming. Key tracks: Mr November, Abel
More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley
An album to fall in love with, flies between indie-pop, balladry, soul, folk and a country stroll. The best songs Jenny Lewis wrote. Key tracks: I Never, More Adventurous
I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Bright Eyes
Mainstream but not too mainstream, this album contains a couple for posterity. Key tracks: Lua, The First Day of My Life
Cease to Begin - Band of Horses
One of the best of those archetypal Neil Young voices, a fantastic collection of rock songs with slight country tinge and great guitars. Key tracks: No One's Gonna Love You, Is There a Ghost
The Shepherd's Dog - Iron and Wine
Beautiful allegorical story-telling, cleverness and hushed beauty abounds. Key tracks: Resurrection Fern, Flightless Bird, American Mouth
Queen of Denmark - John Grant
Formerly of the Czars, big-voiced hero makes grandly bitter heartbreak album with the help of Midlake. Key tracks: Sigourney Weaver, Queen of Denmark
Van Occupanther - Midlake
One of the best of the lot, a world of its own, a nostalgic sad unrepeatable epic of an album, pastoral and mystical. Key tracks: Roscoe, Branches
Heartbreaker - Ryan Adams
Almost the definitive alt-country album and probably still Adams' best work. All the tricks. Key tracks: To Be Young (Is to be Sad, is to be High), Come Pick Me Up
I Am Shelby Lynne - Shelby Lynne
Very country, doused in southern soul. One of the best singers going, a heady album: Key tracks. Your Lies, Dreamsome
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Almost too big for this, what an incredible sound they made when they came out, the coming together of all the sounds, almost too clean at this stage but still glorious: White Winter Hymnal (check out Josh Tillman hatching his wicked plans at the back), He Doesn't Know Why
Something More Than Free - Jason Isbell
Formerly of Drive-by Truckers, a beautiful recent collection: Key tracks: The Life You Chose, To a Band That I Loved
American Band - Drive-by Truckers
The first time I really fell for this band (though their song Danko/Manuel is also a pretty definitive song of the genre). Music to unite a divided country. Key tracks: Ever South, What It Means
The Crane Wife - The Decemberists
Folk-rock-country-prog, or whatever, this glorious mad collection is their finest moment. Sons and Daughters, man, Sons and Daughters Key tracks: The Crane Wife 3, Sons and Daughters
A Sailor's Guide to Earth - Sturgill Simpson
Great when a country artist goes alt. Key tracks: Welcome to Earth (Pollywog), In Bloom
Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass
Bit of a toss-up between this and Matthew E White (who produced this album). Combines country and southern soul Key tracks: My Baby Don't Understand Me, Violently
Stereo/Mono - Paul Westerberg
One of the godfathers of alt-country and americana, and one of the great voices, this is my favourite solo collection of his, a ragbag, messed up little masterpiece with more stinging lines than most folk ever think of. Key tracks: Baby Learns To Crawl, Only Lie Worth Telling
case/lang/veirs - case/lang/veirs
A modern supergroup, and one of the best albums of 2016 - just chose this over a Neko Case solo album. Key tracks: Song for Judee, Best Kept Secret
The Sophtware Slump - Grandaddy
Well, if i'm going to have this, I should have Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips, I suppose. Well, shoot, too late now. Uncomfortably beautiful masterpiece. Key tracks: He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot, Underneath the Weeping Willow

I've tried to choose live tracks where possible, just because, you know, that's more fun, albeit some of them are well ropey.

Anyway, these are some of the cosmic geniuses of modern music. At festivals, we used to play a game when we saw an game of saying "We'll have to formulate another one" whenever we saw an extravagant beard. Well, there were a lot of other ones formulated to these sweet, check-shirt, beardy sounds

Hey Henry, can you hear me?

Returning to writing about specific lyrics, here's a nice simple one.

The Decemberists are not known for being a simple band, though. They've released seven full albums and they're acclaimed for highly literate, theatrical, lengthy stories in song, 8 minutes of The Mariner's Revenge Song, the 11-minute Crane Wife 1 and 2, the hour long concept album of The Hazards of Love. Glorious conceits, an acquired taste which gradually became more and more successful.

The frontman Colin Meloy has enjoyed an alternative career as an acclaimed children's author - as he sings in one of the band's finest songs The Engine Driver "I am a writer, writer of fictions ...". And, so he is. Not that poignancy is entirely absent from his lyrics, but it's a long way from confessional. I'm pretty certain there is not a single confessional moment in the first 5 Decemberists album. It's all a wonderful hoot.

The sixth album is 'The King is Dead'. The third song is 'Rise to Me'. A slow, grand tune. The first verse is about mountains and rivers, their permanence and strength. There's nothing really unusual in terms of Decemberist songs.

Then the start of the next verse ...
"Hey Henry, can you hear me?
Let me see those eyes
This distance, between us
Can seem a mountain size
But boy, you are gonna stand your ground
They rise to you you'll blow them down
Let me see you stand your ground
They rise to you you'll blow them down"

A man who has not given one little thing away in several years of successful recorded music, then this ... Henry is his son with autism.

It's just a gut punch, a completely unexpected moment of naked communication. It never fails to move me. Even without the context, it's a moving song, about nature, about strength, about love and parenthood.

Like Brief Encounter, or the solitary tear moving slowly down the cheek of the stoic, it's moments like this, rather than regulation emotional splurges from the usual show-offs, which are the most moving.

Songs can and should stand alone, but the nature of song allows real life to intrude, and with powerful effect. I've been loving 'Nobody's Empire' by Belle and Sebastian too recently, the most autobiographical and triumphant song Stuart Murdoch's written.

There are so many ways Colin Meloy could have slightly hidden the context of this song, but he had no intention of doing so "Hey Henry, can you hear me?" Without second-guessing him too much, surely he wrote this, so far out of his songwriting comfort zone, to burst out, to genuinely achieve what the question is asking. We're almost eavesdropping, but he's letting us.


Anyway, here's a live version.

The Voices

I started thinking about who my five favourite voices were, and it inevitably turned into a list of 100 voices. What can you do?

Whether we like a singer is one of the most subjective things imaginable and also pretty much a sine qua non for fandom. The voice just stops a lot of us at the door of certain artists. A lot of people find that with Bob Dylan, I'm led to believe. I feel the same way about Bono and Mariah Carey. I can't imagine deriving pleasure from listening to them sing, even if they're, in the former case, emoting their head off in front of a highly proficient band with some perfectly well-written songs, or in the latter case, very technically accomplished.

Still, there are some singers who take the scope for subjectivity away a little - not many people don't like to listen to Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin sing. Some voices are just great.

So, I'm making a list, vaguely along the lines of voices of the last century, people with unique and influential voices, unforgettable, powerful, definitive, expressive, unmistakeable.

These are all voices I love (sometimes more than I love their music), apart, perhaps from Elvis Presley, but really it would just be silly not to have him in this list.

In some cases, these are combined voices.

It turns out the list doesn't contain many of my favourite artists, eg Stuart Murdoch, Gruff Rhys, just because it's not necessarily the singing that elevates what they do, they make the voice work beautifully to deliver their songs, but it's not as such the voice that stops you in your tracks. Also, no Joanna Newsom, not quite, even though her voice does stop you in your tracks.

The list isn't in order of how much I like them, but vaguely chronological - I suppose you can trace the history of how popular songs have been delivered through this list of voices. It's ended up being pretty old-timerish and rolling-stoney, hasn't it?

1. Paul Robeson
2. Billie Holiday
3. Louis Armstrong
4. Ella Fitzgerald
5. Hank Williams
6. Odetta
7. Judy Garland
8. Frank Sinatra
9. Julie Andrews
10. Johnny Cash
11. Nat King Cole
12. Elvis Presley
13. Jackie Wilson
14. Roy Orbison
15. Joan Baez
16. Sam Cooke
17. Bob Dylan
18. Ronnie Spector
19. Diana Ross
20. The Beach Boys
21. Marvin Gaye
22. John Lennon
23. Aretha Franklin
24. Van Morrison
25. Steve Winwood
26. Simon and Garfunkel
27. Steve Marriott
28. The Temptations
29. Tina Turner
30. Dionne Warwick
31. Dusty Springfield
32. Merle Haggard
33. Nina Simone
34. Joni Mitchell
35. Crosby Stills and Nash
36. Janis Joplin
37. Levon Helm
38. Mavis Staples
39. John Fogerty
40. Stevie Wonder
41. Barbra Streisand
42. Glen Campbell
43. Scott Walker
44. Al Green
45. Sandy Denny
46. Jimmy Cliff
47. Michael Jackson
48. David Bowie
49. Tom Waits
50. Minnie Ripperton
51. Bob Marley
52. Roberta Flack
53. Bill Withers
54. Freddie Mercury
55. Karen Carpenter
56. Emmylou Harris (and Gram Parsons)
57. Debbie Harry
58. Joe Strummer
59. Annie Lennox
60. The Proclaimers
61. Kevin Rowland
62. Jon Bon Jovi
63. Michael Stipe
64. Morrissey
65. Whitney Houston
66. Paul Westerberg
67. Axl Rose
68. Frank Black
69. Chuck D
70. KD Lang
71. James Dean Bradfield
72. Kurt Cobain
73. Eddie Vedder
74. Jeff Buckley
75. Beth Gibbons
76. Lauryn Hill
77. Liam Gallagher
78. Snoop Dogg
79. Thom Yorke
80. Ghostface Killah
81. David McAlmont
82. Eminem
83. Jeff Tweedy
84. Lucinda Williams
85. Beyonce
86. Ryan Adams
87. Robyn
88. Andre 3000
89. Guy Garvey
90. Jenny Lewis
91. Karen O
92. Martha Wainwright
93. Jim James
94. Neko Case
95. Hamilton Leithauser
96. Amy Winehouse
97. Ben Bridwell
98. First Aid Kit
99. Laura Marling
100. Kendrick Lamar

The streets groan with little Caesars ...

or, in full,

The streets groan with little Caesars,  Napoleons and cunts 
With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones Counting on their fingers, with crumbs down their fronts 

from Darker with the Day, the last track on No More Shall We Part, the 2000 album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Up until this year's extraordinary Skeleton Tree, I'd say that No More Shall We Part was my favourite Nick Cave album, closely followed by The Boatman's Call. One of the many things those albums have in common is Nick does a lot of walking.

No More Shall We Part is a very walking album. Darker with the Day begins "And so with that, I thought I'd take a final walk" ... he's just walking around, saying what he says.

It reminds me of running - running in the sun around Tooting, Wandsworth, Clapham Common, in the rain and snow around Sevenoaks, around Ashford and Willesborough.

Even on my best days, when there was a great big sun smiling down, I'd run with hatred and loathing, I'd run as if every amateur, dilettante, hack, cowboy, clone, little Caesar, Napoleon and cunt was my sworn enemy.

It can make one feel special, walking or running through the world, observing and thinking you and Nick Cave are the only ones who realises it's a world of hacks, Caesars, Napoleons and cunts, but, of course, everyone else is thinking it too. This is hardly one of Nick Cave's most insightful lyrics, but it's the sheer deliciousness of the juxtapositions and the annunciation which makes it such a joy. Cunts, he said. Oh, yes. To this stately, mournful tune, cunts. 

And then there's delight in the next two lines - the bit about crumbs down their front reminds me of a bit in Stewart Lee's latest Comedy Vehicle about Rod Liddle having food down his front. Sadly, it's not on youtube or anywhere, so you've either seen it or you haven't, there's no way to describe it.

So, it's been a shit year for good things, the left has lost, let's be honest, the balance has tipped and the window of hope has closed. We're back in some dark ages and they may be the darkest of the lot.

But there are still marvellous master craftsmen like Cave and Lee, there's still great joy in self-righteous loathing, sometimes I don't think I'd swap that for all the hope in the world ...

Albums in 2016

It's been a hell of a year, all told. Propitious personal circumstances made it a year I got to listen to a lot of music (while all other cultural interests fell by the wayside), but, neverthless, 2016 has been, all told, a heavy year for hope and all that. A lot of what's happened in music has reflected this. Gloom and doom and depth and darkness everywhere. Beyonce's Lemonade, which seemed at once like an unusually serious, major work, could seem almost trivial in comparison to some of what's come along. Not that that takes away from its quality.

Beyoncé's been great for ages, of course, for almost two decades. She's so far pre-eminent in pop music it's not even fair. But this album, this Lemonade, this has something truly special about it. I haven't even ever watched the accompanying film. Perhaps I should, but the music alone is enough for me. 

It was one of those rare albums that hit me instantly - first listen, I was gripped, going with the journey through the different songs. Some people have said there are some lighter, less effective songs in the second half, but her vocal always lifts them. It's a concept album that works - it's personal and political without feeling forced. It's also a brilliant incorporation of the best of the indie America, a perfectly executed crossover, where rock and RnB fans can hook onto the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Jack White and James Blake and the Weeknd and rap fans can enjoy Kendrick Lamar, and song after song leaps out at you. It's a great, great album, the comfortable best of nearly every year.

There are a few themes in the best music this year. One of them is, of course, death. We'll get to that. The other, which I just touched upon, is what Gram Parsons called "cosmic American music". In a country which seems, from a distance, to be as horribly divided as it's been for 150 years, some of the great albums and musical moments flew in the face of it. Beyonce made music for everybody. So did country singer Sturgill Simpson. Frank Ocean did a song which referenced Trayvon Martin. So did Drive-by Truckers. So did Lady Gaga (a terrible terrible song). Beyonce appeared with Dixie Chicks at the Country Music Awards. People walked out. Doh.

I assumed Beyonce's album would be at the top of most Best Album lists, but those I've seen are reasonably divergent. Near the top of most is Frank Ocean's Blonde, but I'm not having it. With his fine voice, original view and sharp intelligence, people desperately want Frank Ocean to make great music, but he doesn't. Blonde is one long dirge. In the second half there are snatches of Carpenters and Beatles tracks, and they're like coming up for air when you're drowning in sludge. He sings like what he's saying matters, he sings like he's gifting you a melody, but genuine insight and melody are scarce. To judge it, say, as a dreamscape, something to get lost in, or perhaps to judge it as a singer-songwriter album, it falls short. It's no Astral Weeks, it's no Songs in the Key of Life, it's no Blue. It's far too long, it takes a tremendous effort to get anywhere with it.

And like a lot of albums this year, it has indulgent, boring spoken word bits. What is with that? The only effective use of spoken word intermissions I heard this year was on Solange's 'A Seat at the Table' where the various people talking (family, friends, rappers) were woven into the music beautifully. Solange's album may, narrowly, be the second best Knowles album of the year, but it's a cracker, and a real grower. Her voice doesn't soar like her sister's, and when there's rage, it's more gently conveyed, but it's a superb, serious work of consequence, which never bores.

Laura Mvula's The Dreaming Room also has a slightly daft spoken word bit, but I think that's one of the most underrated albums of the year. The level of her accomplishment, the otherworldly brilliance of her voice, seems to be taken for granted in the UK. The column inches she merits have not found her a natural audience yet.

I also loved Michael Kiwanuka's album, which was everything to me that Frank Ocean's album wasn't - warm and rich, something to get lost in, full of soul and melody, unforced insight. It was also bold and expansive musically, beautifully produced. I returned to it several times throughout the year.

I'll quickly run through albums which caused a stir which weren't necessarily personal favourites. Skepta's Konnichiwa won the Mercury, and, you know, it's fine, it's actually rather sweet in places, and Shutdown is a tremendous song, but there was a lot in it which ploughed old ground lyrically. I think it was talked up a little more than it deserved.

Kanye West's The Life of Pablo was a mess. I was a big fan of Yeezus, which had a contained, controlled, punkish fury, a darkness which demanded to be heard (if darkness can be heard). The Life of Pablo was the sound of a man with no sense of judgement left. His Glastonbury set showed that. It could have been awesome, but he made some terrible decisions. I found The Life of Pablo almost unlistenable. 

Not as unlistenable as Drake, the most baffling superstar ever. His most noteworthy songs are loathsome and casually misogynistic, and then it's downhill from there. He featured on Rihanna's album, which I quite liked, but went on a bit, and didn't beg to be listened to over again.

I even listened to the Lady Gaga album a few times which was, at least, not boring. But everything she does is so forced, it's hard to bear. And 'Angel Down', another song which references Trayvon Martin and gun violence, was just the lamest, most meretricious song of the year, the kind of pap that would turn the most bleeding-heart liberal into a raving hawk.

I quite liked the Emeli Sande album, it had a couple of great songs, but it was generally overwrought and a bit of an opportunity missed perhaps. On the other hand, the Christine and the Queens album Chaleur Humaine really showed how to do it, fat-free, slick yet moving, it quietly became one of my favourite albums of the year.

There were several albums by stalwarts which kept my love of Scottish pop alive, the best of which was by Teenage Fanclub - they just do it, they always do it. The severed alliance (severe dalliance) of King Creosote and The Pictish Trail released albums in the same month, each of which touched on their falling out, a fierce, rather sad, internecine dispute which rather belies those monikers which must have seemed such a hoot in more innocent times. King Creosote is one of the great British songwriters. Emma Pollock, Steve Mason and Colin Macintyre of the Mull Historical Society are not far off - melody and imagination come streaming out of each of them.

As for the great English artists - PJ Harvey's album didn't work for me - it was an attempt to say something important, but the lyrics were ho-hum, the message was laid on a bit thick - her voice sounded surprisingly unsure of itself. Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool was my favourite of theirs since OK Computer - I'm not a massive fan, so that's not saying a huge amount, but it was a pretty beautiful piece of work. Sounded a bit more like Coldplay than you'd think, though ...

And the great Americans? Well, of the younger (not that young) ones, I loved the Conor Oberst album Ruminations - a return to form for me after about a decade off it. Clear, sad, meaningful songs, a lyrical gift which remains astounding at times. He still has the capacity to be one of the best, I reckon.
Wilco are the best band in the world, so I love every Wilco album. Each new Wilco album, funnily enough, makes me realise how good the last one was. This one was Schmilco - I listened to the last one, Star Wars, a lot, in the week it came out ... but Schmilco was a low-key treasure itself and I know I'll love it even more in a year or two.
Then there was Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam, alumni of the Walkmen and Vampire Weekend respectively, whose album I Had a Dream That You Were Mine was almost as good as I hoped it would be, but not quite. I do want the Walkmen to get back together, I'm afraid.

case/lang/veirs was one of the most pleasurable albums of the year - three great singers and songwriters - it had a bit of everything, sometimes eerie, sometimes folky, sometimes, sometimes poppy. Jenny Lewis was also in a "supergroup" called Nice as Fuck. It wasn't great.

There were two or three tremendous country records - the Margo Price one didn't quite come good on its early promise, but Sturgill Simpson's A Sailor's Guide to Earth was brilliant. Drive-By Truckers' American Band was one of my albums of the year, the first time I've really got what they were all about. Proudly southern but right-on, for want of a better word, it felt doubly poignant in a year like this - taking digs at the NRA, the hypocrisy of white America, it was a wolf in sheep's clothing. A nod as well to Jason Isbell (formerly of Drive-By Truckers) - his Something More Than Free came out last year, but I only discovered it this year - it's every bit the equal of his old band.

Right, finally, on to the old dudes. Some year for the old dudes. Iggy Pop's album was critically acclaimed but I haven't listened to it yet, or Neil Young's, sorry. The Paul Simon album Stranger to Stranger is great, actually. He's still innovating, still interesting. It's a clever, sweet, modern record.

I wouldn't usually place Paul Simon above Bob Dylan but this year there was no contest. Ironic that in the year he was honoured like never before for elevating songwriting like no one else, Bobby released his least consequential album ever (and there are few contenders, Christmas in the Heart). Oh great, another album of Frank Sinatra covers, said no one. The first one, Shadows in the Night, was actually rather lovely, and it's not like Fallen Angels is substantially worse, it's just unnecessary. Though, hopefully, my theory, that, just as he rediscovered his mojo with two albums of covers in the early 90s, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, so will this be a platform for an album of Dylan-penned attempts to enhance the Great American Songbook. Nice theory, let's hope so.

Enough of Dylan. For a while in January, I felt like I'd put my money on the wrong horse. I wondered if Bowie was the larger figure all along. To some, to many, he surely is. Comparisons are pretty invidious. They occupied pretty different spheres in the end. Bowie's end was a masterstroke, in any case. As if planned, though not entirely planned. The last two songs on Blackstar, Dollar Days and I Can't Give Everything Away, just couldn't have been better. I genuinely think it's his best record for 40 years.

And then there's Leonard. That was a blow. I've been listening to him ever since, primarily You Want it Darker, with its lovely closer Treaty. The only thing nagging me is I remember thinking, before he died ... I'm not sure this album is quite as good as the last one. It doesn't matter now, I just think I can't in all honestly judge it one of the best albums of the year.

In the end, there's only one for me. One that stood out far above the distinguished crowd. Cohen and Bowie's albums were about death primarily, while Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree was about grief and loss and love and a bare beauty you very rarely hear.
As the various End of Year lists have come in, seeing Skeleton Tree, on some of them, 15, 21, 23 has had a tragicomic absurdity, as if there is genuinely a field of peers and genuinely 22 albums that are "better" than it. It stands alone, it hardly belongs in these lists.
Nick Cave's always been a master, and he's written deeply powerful, heartrending songs before. In truth, the last few albums were enjoyable and immaculate but left me a little bit cold. There's nothing cold about Skeleton Tree. The genius of it is not just to harness the grief but to give it its head. Maybe unwillingly, Cave lets you in, he emotes, he doesn't stand above it. It's in the voice. He even lets the craft go a little. Just a little, and the album's all the better for it.

The stark beauty is almost unbearable at times. Girl in Amber, the third track, is the one for me, the first moment where the listener struggles for air. "If you want to leave, don't breathe ... a word" He lets neither himself nor the listener off the hook.
There are eight songs on the album, five are utterly beautiful, the other three are utterly compelling. I'm not sure this isn't one of the very greatest albums ever made. The 22nd best album of the year it is not.

So, those are the albums I'm going to write about. Oh, one more, the Monkees album - tremendous. Really.
And these were the other albums I listened to a few times, just so you know. Some of these were good too, some of them were a bit crap.

Singing Saw - Kevin Morby
Distance Inbetween - The Coral
Crab Day - Cate Le Bon
Side Pony - Lake Street Dive
The Colour in Anything - James Blake ... boring
Hopelessness - Anohni ... caught me on an off day
Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul - Dexys ... the irish bits worked
Love You to Death - Tegan and Sara ... ok, too polished now
Why Are You OK - Band of Horses ... rather than being great like you used to be
Patience - The Invisible
The Bride - Bat for Lashes ... good, just never quite grips me all the way through
Night Thoughts - Suede
Freetown Sound - Blood Orange
Light Upon the Lake - Whitney ... liked this
Eyes on the Line - Steve Gunn
Furnaces - Ed Harcourt
No Mind No Money - Beach Baby ... promising
Mangy Love - Cass McCombs
Foreverland - The Divine Comedy ... pretty crap i'm afraid
Trick - Jamie T ... had three fabulous songs near the end, didn't like the rest, hated the single
My Woman - Angel Olsen ... very good
We Move - James Vincent McMorrow

Commontime – Field Music 

Untitled - Kendrick Lamar

Second Love – Emmy the Great  pretty good

Painting With – Animal Collective

Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop - Love Letter to Fire ... a pleasure

Sunflower Bean - Human Ceremony

Steve Gunn - Eyes on the Line

Banks - The Altar

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan - Everything Sacred

Hiss Golden Messenger - Heart Like a Levee

Weyes Blood - Front Row Seat to Earth

Lambchop -FLOTUS ... If only
Dawes - We're All Going to Die ... always fun, but so cheesy

Regina Spektor - Remember Us to Life ... bit tame
Bon Iver - 22 A Million - bit exhausting and unrewarding

And so, my albums of the year

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree
2. Beyonce - Lemonade
3. Christine and the Queens - Chaleur Humaine
4. David Bowie - Blackstar
5. Drive-By Truckers - American Band
6. Laura Mvula - The Dreaming Room
7. Solange - Seat at the Table
8. Michael Kiwanuka - Love and Hate
9. Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger
10. Radiohead - A Moon-Shaped Pool
11. Sturgill Simpson - A Sailor's Guide to Earth
12. case/lang/veirs - case/lang/veirs
13. Bright Eyes - Ruminations
14. The Monkees - Good Times
15. Leonard Cohen - You Want it Darker
16. Teenage Fanclub - Here
17. Wilco - Schmilco
18. Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop - Love Letter to Fire
19. Bat for Lashes - The Bride
20. Angel Olsen - My Woman

And my favourite songs

1. Girl in Amber - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
2. Dollar Days - David Bowie
3. Distant Sky - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
4. Freedom - Beyonce
5. Night 52 - Christine and the Queens
6. Overcome - Laura Mvula
7. Hurts - Emeli Sande
8. Sign of the Times - Jamie T
9. Treaty - Leonard Cohen
10. Sea Stories - Sturgill Simpson
11. Tilted - Christine and the Queens
12. Build Another Brick - Mull Historical Society
13. The First Sight - Teenage Fanclub
14. 1000 Times - Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam
15. Love and Hate - Michael Kiwanuka
16. Me and Magdalena - The Monkees
17. Skeleton Tree - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
18. I Can't Give Everything Away - David Bowie
19. The Hustle - Lambchop
20. Happiness - Wilco

2016 - This is what it stopped sounding like

Pure Imagination - Gene Wilder

Fantasy - Earth, Wind and Fire

Wizbit - Paul Daniels

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) - Dead or Alive

Madness - Prince Buster

Can I Kick It? - A Tribe Called Quest

Stand by Me - Muhammad Ali

Wonderful Life - Black

If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard

Famous Blue Raincoat - Leonard Cohen

White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

Floral Dance - Terry Wogan

I Could Have Danced All Night - Marni Nixon

Cleaning Ladies Song - The Two Ronnies

The Ballad of Barry and Freda - Victoria Wood

A Day in the Life - The Beatles

Purple Rain - Prince

Take Good Care of My Baby - Bobby Vee

Frankie Teardrop - Suicide

David Bowie - Five Years

In the final end

I'm not going to let Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature go without a little post.

It made me happy. Bob Dylan remains at the centre of everything for me, has been since I was 16, he's the overwhelming reason I'm so obsessive about and such a zealous advocate for popular song, that I approach it the way that I do, he's informed so much of how I think and how I process words. There can be big strong arguments for Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, Bowie, James Brown, Neil Young, whoever they like, but it's always Dylan for me. And I wasn't even there.

This is also a validation for song. Lyrics are a way that we encounter words, hence its literature. There've been novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists win this prize. Quite right that a songwriter should. These people who go "most lyrics to pop music are nonsense, for example "she loves you, yeah, yeah". See, I told you." There are still a surprising number of them. They're the worst people.

If any of them, Roth or Murakami or Margaret Atwood or any other writer the green chorus suggests is "better" than him just by virtue of writing novels, could make words meet music like he could, I'd be stunned.

Plenty have tried - Simon Armitage and Salman Rushdie and others. Rushdie's not bleating about lyric writing being a lesser art form.

I've read Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin, I've read Shakespeare and Faulkner, Frantzen and Woolf, Camus and Heaney. I think Bob Dylan's better. I don't just like him better. I think he's better. There.

And also, I bet Bob Dylan's inspired more people to be writers than pretty much anyone else in the last 50 years.

He'll probably turn it down or some stupid shit. No, actually, I don't think he will. My guess is that nothing's ever made him happier. I remember how genuinely thrilled he said he was to get good reviews for his book.

And also ... read this fabulous article about Leonard Cohen ... http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker
and read Dylan's contribution halfway down to see how much he really cares about stuff that he likes.

And also, if you really want to know if Dylan winning the Nobel Prize is a good thing, compare these two articles, the first by the same author as the above, David Remnick. He thinks it's good
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/lets-celebrate-the-bob-dylan-nobel-win

And, this now, by this guy (I feel a little cruel to pick him out, but really)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/13/a-world-that-gives-bob-dylan-a-nobel-prize-is-a-world-that-nomin/
He doesn't think it's a good thing. But ... bless ...

I was a television version ...

Perhaps a less well known one, this.

"I was a television version of a person with a broken heart"

It's from The National song, Pink Rabbits. The National are a great band, with great drumming, great arrangements, rock anthemics, and have really notable lyrics. Crafted, but also, occasionally, shocking, funny, moving  etc

One that caught the attention was in the song 'Conversation 16' - "I was afraid that I'd eat your brains, 'cos I'm evil" Then there was "I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders". I love that one. That's from Mr November, a pretty deranged piece of rock desperation.

Pink Rabbits is different. It's a swoon, a ballad, more of a pop song almost. Matt Berninger sings it fairly high up in his baritone range. It's one of the three songs from their most recent album 'Trouble Will Find Me', that I really love.

What do I love about this line so much? Well, how it sounds, for starters. The play on words is obvious, the slightly-off alliterations and internal rhyme, I love the confidence of how much is packed into the line.

It falls within this

You didn't see me I was falling apart
I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park
You didn't see me I was falling apart
I was a television version of a person with a broken heart

So you can see, he's had to rush through 4 more syllables than in the comparable line, yet it all sounds perfect.
I also like the two metaphors juxtaposed. The first one doesn't, as such, work for me. Or rather, it's opaque. "I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park". Am I supposed to get how that indicates falling apart? Perhaps not, so let's make it clearer. "I was a television version of a person with a broken heart" Right, get it - a lovely, knowing, self-mocking image of a man, unshaven, drinking all day, crying and moaning and looking woebegone - a television version of a person with a broken heart.

And it's this great descending phrase, it reminds me of the themes to sad children's TV shows of my youth - perhaps that's why I find it so apt. I've only just thought of that. I can't believe that's on purpose, but maybe it is.

Also, you know, quite often, people with broken hearts are television versions, that's the weird thing, isn't it. Grief can look like a cliche, so can despair. I remember seeing this guy walking through Clapham once crying and shouting "why me? Aaah ... why me?" and one part of me thought "poor guy" and the other thought "dude, find a new scriptwriter ..."

Anyway, here's the song

Pink Rabbits

If it snows ...

In my opinion, this blog has been its most successful (and certainly most enjoyable to write) when I've started at a specific song, then been able to examine it at length, to venture into pop culture in general, throw in a bit of autobiographical detail, and come back to where I started. That feels like proper writing, and what a music blog should be all about.

I also note that I've made lists of countless things and written about countless things, but have never been so bold to focus, as such, on "lyrics". I've never told you my favourite lyrics. I don't really think I have favourite lyrics, as such, and I'm very cautious about ever divorcing the words from the song. The song is the whole thing, it's always unwise to remove the words from their context. We all know that the person who starts reciting you their favourite lyrics like they're the Book of Revelation is a person to avoid most strenuously.

But ... of course ... I can't avoid being the twat forever.

All I'm going to do, perhaps as an ongoing strand, perhaps not, is give a line I love from a song I love and see if I can write around it, think about it and see what it is I love so much.

I'll avoid tapping into the spirit of my student self and going too deep into literary criticism, but I'm sure words like assonance will pop up every now and then.

"And if it snows that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain"

This is a good place to start, eh?

This line, as you probably know, comes from the second verse of 'Wichita Lineman', written by Jimmy Webb, sung by Glen Campbell. I fucking love this line. I love the way it sounds, for starters, the easy, oddly gentle alliteration, perhaps the hissing of the wire, though it doesn't have to be, the long, relatively complex unit of sense, sung just at the edge of where Campbell's glorious voice still sounds comfortable. He sings it like he means it, it sits in the verse like it's the most important thing he can think of.

But it's not, of course.

The line that follows this one, almost as a sigh, is the most famous line in the song - "And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time".
This enormously romantic and beautiful line is oft-repeated and quoted. But would it be such a wonderful, beautiful line, if, as might make sense, it had been preceded by something like ...

"Baby, I'm trying to compare how much I need you and how much I want you,
and also how long I'm going to want you for ..."

Thanks, I came up with that myself.

No, it's the juxtaposition that makes the magic.
"If it snows that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain," the stoical, hard-working man thought to himself, focusing, for a time, on the concerns of his job. But his loneliness and longing inevitably burst through the veneer his mind had constructed. "And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time".

There are so few lines in this song, which tell so much, just the perfectly concise biography of an American man, his life, his character and all his concerns.

Wichita Lineman

There are other things I love about this song - the fact it's a country song at heart, but also a chamber-pop song - it's really one of the cornerstones of all-American music.

I haven't much else to say about it, certainly nothing autobiographical, it doesn't take me back to my days as a binman in Winchester. But it's a glorious moment in a glorious song, and if I ever have the opportunity to use the phrase "If it snows, that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain" appropriately, by golly, I will!