No Face Music 62

 

Some Awe's Best of 2021

Best of 2021

Ani DiFranco - Revolutionary Love
Bitchin Bajas - Switched On Ra
Black Stone Cherry - The Human Condition
Chelsea Carmichael - The River Doesn't Like Strangers
Del Sol String Quartet - A Dust in Time
Eivind Aarset - Phantasmagoria, or a Different Kind of Journey
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
Jackson Browne - Downhill From Everywhere
John Durant - Crossings
John Grant - Boy from Michigan
Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Low – HEY WHAT
Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real - A Few Stars Apart
Maarja Nuut – Hinged
Martha Tilston - The Tape
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolves
Natalie Jane Hill – Solely
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Barn
Nick Maclean - Can You Hear Me
Nubya Garcia - SOURCE ⧺ WE MOVE
Piers Faccini - Shapes of the Fall
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – Notes with Attachments
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raise the Roof
Ryley Walker - Course In Fable
Shelby Lynne - The Servant
Snowpoet - Wait for Me
Steve Earle & The Dukes - JT
The Delta Sound - Things Gonna Change
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Starting Now
Tom Jones - Surrounded By Time
Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend

(If there is a highlight in part or all of an album title above, click on this to read my review).

These selected albums are favourites from releases this year and which I have returned to listen to more than once, and often many times over.

This is the second year of a significant reduction in the amount of music reviews I have written. It doesn’t reflect on the amount of new and old albums listened to – which is as rich, many and varied as ever – but rather my immersion in other writing, for example as revealed in The Big Reveal post of this July that can be read here.

I haven’t selected a top ten (or other amount) but there are three I would single out: i) Low HEY WHAT as a perfection of their caustic/beautiful sound; ii) the Floating Sounds and Pharoah Sanders with the London Symphony Orchestra Promises for its sublime ambient loop and saxophone solo, and iii) Piers Faccini and Shapes of the Fall, perhaps my ultimate favourite of the year, with its widely noted occasional tone and mood of Nick Drake but also the African and Near East sounds as well as broad jazz influences.

Space Music 37

 

Maarja Nuut - Hinged, album review

Layers Over Rhythms

This set of electronic sonics is layered around rhythmic cores, so from noise-constructions to vocal-constructions there is always a prominent pace/measure, from the slow pulse of third Kutse tantsule to the punchiness of opener Hinged. In Kutse, overlays of the vocal/singing build and echo, pushed along by the clapclap of various sounds and a delayed but repeated metallic beat that adds another rhythm – it is lovely. Fourth, Mees, kes aina igatses has a slight loop of violin – Nuut’s usual main instrument, apparently – but again it is the layering of vocals and harmonies that preoccupy, once more beautiful. An analog Vermona organ provides a brooding backdrop for the meditative fifth track Vaheala valgus and the move to this point in the album has been quite choric and pretty. Sixth Subota returns to a more jagged concoction, though again pulsing to the drive of percussive impulses: ending (I’m sure) on the brisk jangle of Christmas bells!). New to me, I must explore her work more, but not until I have enjoyed this further. So often soothing, and you can get it here.

 

Space Music 36

 

The Delta Sound - Things Gonna Change, album review

Wonderful Variant

Here’s a variant on the fundamentals of rock/garage and some blues that deserves to go viral – there is no better time then now for some simple, straightforward honest musical joy to blow the other endemic constraints and concerns away.

The Delta Sound should be heard loud – probably should be seen – but we can all play it loud enough in and out of doors wherever we find we can and need. If you want a touchstone on the lineage I guess Oasis would do, but for me there are nuances here that make it distinctive. The opening two tracks Wake Up (that’s apt!) and Time Please set out the stall; third Blues 2 has those moments of internal musical reflection that put a broader fare into what's on offer.

 

Fourth Wanted to Be Like You is both generic and personal, and you’ll find your own echoes in the lyrics; a later track Meet Again (You & I) resonates on the empathetic level: a secret expressed openly about loss and love and enduring respect where we too can understand and feel its depth of countenance. Here and throughout there are moments of guitar bliss – nothing flash, but perfect. Sixth track Indian Queen foregrounds guitar swathes, harmonica backdrop and echoing psychedelia: it’s a great song you could cruise to on any Easy Rider route today. Seventh Let Love Take Hold is gorgeous.

 

You can and should get it here. Would make a good stocking filler for those who like a brisk and bright chaser to the day.

 

 

 

 

Sports Music 6

 

Conway Twitty - I've Already Loved You In My Mind, album review

Inevitable Loss and Lamenting 

As a music fan of Conway Twitty – for more on this, read my memoir extract lower down – this isn’t a favourite album, but the cover image intrigues for its casualness, and far less 'fashionably' so compared with these two others

 

The title track on the album is a perky, formulaic number, more in the storytelling than the melody – though I do warm to the lyrically philosophical musings on ‘we are not strangers’ because he has known the person he's attracted to already in his mind: a further contribution to the history of ontological explorations.

A track I do particularly like is the sassy Talkin’ ‘Bout You with its rockier echo and hot harmonica, the fiddle swerving in and out, up and down – leading up to its later riff. It’s all in the backing musicians. Next I’m Used to Losing You is classic Twitty with the plaintive storyline and empathetic pedal steel where loss is cried in wail and moan. And the resignation of the narrative So let me know what you decide to do / You can go or stay, I'm used to losing you is also classic Country lamenting.

 

The lyric from next The Reason Why I’m Here strikes a more defiant tone – though this too is about loss but the gain of another – and the balance is struck: the ending a classic Conway spoken line,

 

They all think that I just barely know you
They'll all say I'm forward fresh and crude
But they don't know that you've been thinking 'bout me
The same way I've been thinking about you.

 

Leona is beautiful – a tale of hope and holding on: and tragic inevitability.

 

I’m not suggesting you go out and get the album, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

 

 

Further details of the memoir here