Present thoughts
Marcus Berkmann 7 rTlis the season to be cheerful, especially 1 if you like shopping. Which, obviously, as a heterosexual white middle-class male in his forties with no money, I don't much, unless it's for books or CDs. But at this time of year those of us of a non-shopping persuasion must bury our prejudices, venture out into the madness of pre-yule consumerism and buy lots of books and CDs for our friends and relatives. Or for ourselves, just to cheer us up.
So here are a few seasonal recommendations. Such is the profoundly subjective appeal of all pop music that these recommendations may turn out to be completely useless to you — in which case, I should probably apologise now, just to save time. But, speaking entirely subjectively as ever, I think this has been a good listening year. Previously mentioned in this column: the Pet Shop Boys' Fundamental (Parlophone), produced by Trevor Horn, their richest and strongest album in a decade and a half, repaying endless listenings (especially on headphones in the middle of the night, I have found); Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat (Reprise), a solo album from half of Steely Dan that, for a brief period in the spring, I thought was one of the best albums ever made ... silly bugger ... but it does have three or four wonderful songs in the late S Dan style (jazzy, complex, cynical, groovebased); Boo Hewerdine's Hamionograph (MVine), a gloriously direct and melodic covers album of sorts, in that Boo covers songs of his that he wrote for and with other people ... it's mainly acoustic, and quite stripped back, and the sort of music Radio Two would be playing if it had the guts; and John Martyn's On the Cobbles (Independiente), his most recent studio album and his best in years, too. It's his usual extraordinary agglomeration of folk, jazz, funk, gospel and whatever else has reached his ears since the previous album, but both songs and playing are immaculate: this is an album I have been playing in heavy rotation, as radio stations would say, for two years now and it still warms my soul. (Eagleeyed readers, and indeed anoraks, will have noticed that not one of these records was released this year. Maybe so, but having played them all to death I can now recommend them wholeheartedly. Ask me about 2007's records in a year or two.) And here are a few I haven't previously mentioned. Karine Polwart is a Scottish singer whose first album Frontlines cleaned up at the Radio Two Folk Awards a year or two back. But the follow-up, Scribbled In Chalk (Spit & Polish/Shoeshine), is better. She's not a pure folk singer by any means, more a singer/songwriter with folkish and, increasingly, countryish tendencies. There's an amazing warmth to both her songs and her singing (in a Scots accent, of course) and her songs live with you: she's sweeter than Kate Rusby, more acid than KT Tunstall, and has better tunes than either.
Meanwhile, in America, one of my favourite bands Grandaddy split up earlier this year, leaving behind a slightly overcooked final album Just Like a Fambly Cat (V2). But Jason Lytle's nerdy Brian Wilsonisms and ELO fixation are well represented in American indie music at the moment, leading me through all sorts of semi-obscure bands like Earlimart and Beulah to my favourite of these albums so far, Mouthfuls (Sub Pop) by Fruit Bats. This is for anyone who likes their music slow, stately, low-key, introverted but not fearful of melody or invention. I thought nothing like this was happening in the UK, until I chanced upon The First Album (Banana) by Ella Guru, a Liverpool band who would have a wonderful future if anyone knew they existed. This, obviously their debut, is so fully formed and realised that you'd imagine they have been around for years. They sound a little like a more focused Lambchop: almost ridiculously quiet at times, but they're less gnomic than Kurt Wagner's troupe and, yes, more tuneful. Again, why is this music not played on the radio? Does James Blunt really have more to offer?
Finally, Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55 (Because/Atlantic), a blissful, breathy return to recording from the French actress (released in 2006 but bought by me on the cheap in 2007). It's a collaboration with Air, who have moved on from the electronica of their early albums to a more organic, acoustic sound. They have found the singer they always needed; she is working with a band at the peak of their powers; it's an almost perfect album.
Previous page
