It’s well and truly ‘Best Albums of the Year’ season and whilst I do see positives to this festive tradition, my overwhelming feeling is one of fatigue. I understand the thrill for an artist when they are ranked among the top albums of the year for someone, or even by a whole panel of someones. I also understand why recapping the important cultural points in any given year has journalistic merit but the tedious tendrils of this practice have seeped into the listening habits of so many folk, and for no real obvious reason. It’s as though not having a top ten or even twenty albums of the year mean that you have not kept up with (or pointedly rejected) the zeitgeist via your choices.
If it gives you genuine pleasure to think back on all the music you have listened to over the last twelve months and ascribe a ranking to each of the records that artists have poured themselves into, then who am I to stand in your way? I have also done this myself many times in the past, but this year it feels increasingly redundant as a music fan. Although yes, there have been a lot of incredible records released this year, and a lot of them have resonated with me.
Perhaps it’s through writing Slowpoke and making an attempt to have a different kind of relationship to the music that I listen to, or perhaps it’s finally being fed up of hyperbole and the relentless cycle of marketing, of endless lists, and the competitive sport of listening to music. I also think it’s easy for people who work in the music industry and adjacent to it to conflate the pleasure of their successes (or the successes of their friends) with enjoyment rooted in the art and execution of creativity. I am also guilty of this and trying to disentangle myself from that way of thinking. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating achievements and career milestones for yourself and those around you, I am merely suggesting that those highs are not the same thing as the pure enjoyment that comes just because you like the music. Maybe I’m overthinking it...
Anyway, although I will also be making a short list of my favourite albums of this year (as it has now been requested of me since I started typing this), my list here in Slowpoke is not of albums, it is just music-related moments that have brought me a lot of enjoyment and connectedness this year. It was really easy to make and it is not listed in any particular order.
New tattoo
My favourite bit of the Caroline Polachek album is a line where she sings ‘closer than your new tattoo’, and then Brighde Chaimbeul busts out some bagpipes. I find it pleasing for many reasons - I love the album, I love Brighde and I love that it is - I assume - wordplay, given that a tattoo is a word often used in connection to military band performances, for example the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo which is very bagpipe heavy. If it is not a clever example of using the word tattoo in two different ways, then well, at least the other two points still stand.
Kiss from Lane
At Roadburn this year, Elizabeth Colour Wheel performed a set that brought me to tears. It was only my second time seeing them live and I just thought they were perfect. Their vocalist, Lane Shi, spent a good deal of the show in the crowd, as she often does. I watched from the side of the stage, where the sound is rarely as good as out front, but I was afforded a close up view of this band that I had become really very attached to. Having lost sight of Lane down on the floor, I had remained captivated by the rest of the band on stage, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Lane making her way back to the stage and I was in the way. I moved to the side and she gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek and whispered in my ear. I’m not telling you here what she said but those seconds were a tiny bubble of calm in a frenetic, electrically charged performance that I will treasure forever.
Blue Roses
I saw Karin Park play with Brutus this week. She had a couple of technical difficulties which she took in her stride before switching gears and performing her track Blue Roses. Originally released on her Church of Imagination album it was re-worked for inclusion on her 2022 release Private Collection, and it was this more stripped back, sultry version that she performed live. Her voice is rich and strong, her poise is so elegant and confident; she makes it look so easy. You’ll start to notice a theme here - I cry easily, but this song brought tears to my eyes. Whilst a lot of Karin’s show sees her winning the audience over with her effervescent energy and the danceability of her songs, those few minutes were a perfect encapsulation of Karin’s vast raw talent.
Ouuuurrgh
I have already written about Tomb Mold in Slowpoke, but the first four seconds of the track Will of Whispers sums up a lot of my feelings about 2023.
Hide encore
I saw Hide a few months ago which was an incredible show - it always is. An intense burst of pulsating industrial noise and catharsis. What has stuck with me over the following weeks, was the encore. Hide aren’t really a band for encores; when the set finishes the abrupt descent back to reality is part of the experience. But someone called for an encore. As instrumentalist, Seth, departed the stage, vocalist Heather turned back to the room and started to sing. Devoid of the softness of the original and of musical accompaniment, Heather sang Sinead O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds - belting it out with what sounded like barely contained rage, tempered only by exasperation. In a room with no lights, with no microphone, their voice rang out with an unmatched clarity. Thirty three years after the original was released, the sentiment remains relevant and in the mouth of an artist as politically astute as Heather, the power of the lyrics can still be felt.
Birdhouse
I heard my neighbour through the wall, singing along to Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants. I have never cared that much for the song, but hearing him sing with wild abandon made me view it in a new way. Even through the bricks his joy was palpable. I really wanted to listen to it, and did so quietly so as to not alert him (I didn’t want him to think I was passive aggressively letting him know I could hear him, and I absolutely didn’t want to impinge upon the unfettered fun he was clearly having). Since then, I have listened to it in my car several times… sometimes several times in a row, and I have grown to love it. Here’s a weird thing… it’s really hard to sing along to this in your own accent (unless you happen to have the same accent as the man from They Might Be Giants).
Becky Domestic Terrorist
I went to see Full of Hell and Dylan Walker dedicated a song to me with the intro “This is for my friend Becky… it’s about a domestic terrorist”.
Dawn Ray’d
I worked with Dawn Ray’d for six years and I loved it. They broke up this year, not long after releasing To Know The Light, my favourite album of theirs. Once again, I have already written about them, so if you’re keen to read more about them and how I feel about them, you can. But I couldn’t not include them here because I really, honestly feel like they were a special band and when I look back on this year, they were a part of what made it so good. Watch this great video of them in a church, playing the same song twice, in two different ways. Naturally, I have cried many times over Dawn Ray’d.
Luscious Jackson
In April, Vivian Trimble - the keyboardist for Luscious Jackson - died. I found out a few days later whilst at a metal festival in Norway. When I got back to the UK, I had to drive back to the North from Heathrow airport - a task which became a lot more difficult because I was operating on just a couple of hours sleep. I told everyone it’s because the fire alarm had gone off in the hotel in the night disrupting my ability to get a good night’s sleep. This is only partly true. The fire alarm did go off, but I was most definitely not in bed - I was talking in the hotel foyer until long into the night. Anyway, the upshot is that upon my return I stayed in a Travelodge off the M1 because I couldn’t handle the 4 hour solo drive home - even the journey to the hotel was agonising. So, I drove with the windows down in the hope that the cold air would keep me awake, and I blasted some Luscious Jackson in honour of Vivian. I re-played the song Devotion several times in a row, honking it out at the top of my voice and allowing myself to indulge in a wave of nostalgia. When their album Electric Honey came out in 1999, I was a sixteen year old desperately seeking role models, and Luscious Jackson seemed to me to be extremely cool. I still think that they are.
Yellow eyes
Yellow Eyes casually dropped a new album a few weeks ago and yes, I know I already mentioned it but it’s really so good. I got to work with Yellow Eyes once and since then I have thought about how much I would love to do so again. But now I have a very real sense that they don’t need me, or someone like me… they can just do what they want and people will respond appropriately… by listening intently.
Warm Blood
This year I released a cover of a Carly Rae Jepson song that I made with my friend Santos. Really, he made it and I just did some actually really quite quiet vocals on it. But you wouldn’t believe the buzz I got from it. Well, actually you would if you ever made a piece of music and asked people to listen to it. After working with musicians for so long, I now understand a specific facet of it in a way that I didn’t before. What? You haven’t heard it? Well - here’s a link.
And as well as all these things, this year I started this here newsletter - a definite highlight - and one I will write more about next week.
Til then!
~Becky
Image below shows Redcar seafront, where I was yesterday, contemplating life.
This was by far the best end-of-year-list-adjacent thing I have read this year.
💗💗