A SELECTION OF THE BEST TRACKS OF THE YEAR.....SO FAR!!!
As a follow on from my last post - which featured a run-down of my favourite albums at the halfway point of 2018 - I've decided to have a little trawl up the information superhighway and stop off at the musical hot-spots and rock and roll rest areas that litter the old intraweb. If I'm honest, it's way too hot at the moment to do anything other than open one's eyes in the morning, so this post is the equivalent of those easy to churn out articles you get in music publications this time of year - festival guides and the best tunes of the summer and such like. It's an easy on the eye and ear type of post and I make no apologies! Regular service will resume once this infernal heat abates.....
First up, and no surprise perhaps to regular readers, is the utterly tremendous Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. Their debut album - Hope Downs - was released in early June and has continued the startling run of tunes that the Melbourne quintet burst out of the blocks with last summer when they released their first two EPs. A ten track masterclass in rattling indie rock and janglesome pop, Hope Downs immediately took up residence at the top of my chart and I very much doubt that anything will dislodge it before the end of the year. It is, and with no hyperbole, absolutely magnificent and - to my mind - one of the greatest debuts of all time. This track, the staggering 'An Air-Conditioned Man', explains why....
Currently sitting at Number 2 in my albums of the year list is one of my personal heroes and a man who has sound-tracked my adult life - first with his incredible run of albums through the 90s with the rip-roaringly ramshackle Pavement - and then, since that band's messy demise, his current combo The Jicks. I'm talking about Stephen Malkmus of course, and his wondrous new opus Sparkle Hard. Without doubt the finest collection of songs he's written since peak Pavement, the new album is full to bursting with jerky art-rock infused indie and soaring guitar-led flights of fancy that bring to mind Neil Young jamming with Frank Zappa. It's fantastic to have him back and on such outstanding form. Here he is, with The Jicks in full flow, performing the splendidly sloppy 'Shiggy'.
Another group of returning 90s heroes, and a band I saw perform with Pavement many times back in the day, are Boston's mighty Buffalo Tom. Back after a seven year hiatus with the truly excellent Quiet And Peace, Bill Janovitz, Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis have produced another sterling set of songs that deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as their 1992 watermark Let Me Come Over. And coming from me that's almost stratospheric praise. There's no huge departure from their usual sound, but that's not what I listen to Buffalo Tom for. They are one of my touchstones, one of my constants. They will always have my undying thanks for songs like 'Taillights Fade' and 'Larry' and there are a number of tracks on the new album that will stick with me for many years to come. This track - the punchy 'All Be Gone' - is the perfect distillation of everything great about this band. The world-weary vocals of Janovitz coupled with his gnarly riffs and searing solo, Colbourn's fluid basslines and REM-esque harmonies and Maginnis holding it all together with his driving drums. The song itself is a treatise on ageing and the passing of time and features one of Janovitz's finest couplets: "But now my time behind is greater than my time ahead, save the minutes like flowers before they're all dead....and gone!" Superb.
Nestled in at Number 6 at the moment is the 5th album from French husband and wife duo The Liminanas. Comprising mainly of Lionel and Marie Liminana and hailing from Perpignan, the group have mutated over the last few years into a 7-strong garage rock collective that fuse thumping 60s indebted rock and roll with Phil Spector-ish walls of sound and classic 80s indie. Imagine The Stooges having a beano with New Order and you're halfway there. On record they are tremendous but live on stage is where they really come into their own - a heady meld of thrashing drums, catchy riffs, beards and black leather. Truly, all human life is here. On the album this track - 'The Gift' - features the gnarly bass of one Peter Hook. He knows his onions that Hooky.
Finally, but by no means leastly, we have the incendiary classic rock stylings of the fulsomely bearded and sartorially spectacular Ethan Miller and his Howlin' Rain collective. Miller has been somewhat of a psych-rock Zelig in recent years - treading the boards with fiery combos like Comets On Fire and Feral Ohms. But Howlin' Rain is his main gig, and their new opus - the storming 'Alligator Bride' - is their finest to date. Thrumming with bluesy swagger and psychedelic detours, it could well be Miller's magnum opus. The perfect album to blow away any hazy mid-summer cobwebs, the title track - performed here by the band in, wonderfully, the back of a van - is possibly the greatest song Neil Young & Crazy Horse never wrote. Astonishing on almost every level.
