My Top 24 of 2024 (#12 - 10)

More good albums from 2024.... 

12. Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand

I know I'm unduly harsh on Hamish Hawk, all because I want him to be the new Morrissey, to replace the old no-longer-fit-for-purpose Morrissey.

Wait, hear me out! Don't just stop reading because I used the M-word!

There are some clear comparisons to be made between Hamish and The Artist Formerly Known As My Second Favourite Singer In The World. Vocally, they share many of the same traits. Musically, they plough similar furrows. And lyrically... well, they both know their way around a metaphor, are skilful in the use of puns, and wear their hearts openly on their sleeves. 

For some reason though, much as I admire Hamish's songwriting chops, I can't quite embrace them in the same way I once did The Unmentionable One. His songs don't touch a nerve, and I often miss their overall meaning. While I enjoy individual lines, I'm often left scratching my head as to what he's saying en masse. But I feel like I ought to, and this leaves me frustrated.  

Despite all that, his latest album is very good. There's clearly some kind of homoerotic kink going on this time round, but that's about as much as I can decipher. 

You with all the modesty of Big Tech in boom
I tire of you honestly when you swan around a room
How I used to like to watch you fixing me a drink
'Til manhandling the crystalware, became your kink
You vetoed everyone of my miserabilist movies
You bored my friends from out of town with the virtues of shoegaze
You've all the upright strength of an infant's neck
And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet...

Will you record the sound I make when I die?
What the devil will it take for you to look me in the eye?
Am I your number one? Or just some other guy?
If I axed you for real, would you wise up and die?

11. Amy Rigby - Hang In There With Me

Amy Rigby moved to the UK this year, which should make it much more easy to stalk her. (Don't tell Eric.) 

Another artist who can do no wrong in my ears, Amy brings her customary cynical wit to another superior collection of songs involving Bob Dylan, bad haircuts, and burying your husband under the patio. Plus there's a fair bit about growing old too...

Try your whole life to make something that matters
Chords chime, words rhyme, paint spatters
Get out the camera, take a shot you wanna capture
Madness, sadness, sunsets, rapture

Doors won't always open
That don't stop you hoping
Someday you can grab it
Like a cowgirl cattle roping

Selling makes you crazy
Giving up is lazy
Tough days got to play it
Like De Niro and Scorsese

First you get hurt
Then you get smart
We all wind up in the dirt
They say that living is an art
Hear the sound of laughter
From the Hereafter
Is it better to burn out or fall apart?

10. The Bug Club - On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System

My only complaint about the latest album by The Bug Club is that if I want to purchase the CD (which I do) from Bandcamp, it has to be shipped from America, and they appear to want TWENTY-FIVE QUID postage & packing. 

The Bug Club are from Wales. Why can't I get a copy from the UK? 

This kind of niggle is actually the sort of thing The Bug Club could write a song about. I'm looking forward to their next album, which will hopefully feature a song called Twenty Five Quid, with a chorus that goes...

Twenty-five quid
Twenty-five quid
Twenty-five quid
Twenty-five quid
Robbing bastards
(But not The Bug Club themselves, who I'm sure are very nice people.)

On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System tackles many more big issues of our time, such as where to find Quality Pints in your town, what happens if you watch too many War Movies, and the undeniable fact that Everybody Thinks They Look A Bit Like James Bond...

I collect Hornbys and commemorative stamps and there's something James Bond about that
I am gluten intolerant and there's something James Bond about that
I like casinos. Like James.
I like tuxedos. Like James.
I like women. Like James.
I like swimming. Like James.
And I love Shirley Bassey. Like James.
And I hate the baddies. Like James.
And I simply couldn't give a shit about the the consequences of my James Bond wit

Snapshots #372: A Top Twelve Songs About Different Fabrics

Welcome, all you Material Girls and Boys to a list of songs about fabrics. Lou Reed graced our opening shot yesterday with his Velvet Underground... and today, we have Brett Anderson from Suede.

Here are twelve songs that fit the theme...

12. Can you a Ford to drive these guys around?

The Courteeners - Acrylic

11. Seen in disgusting August.

GusGus - Polyesterday

10. Goes with Marie and a Spanish Bandit.

Donny goes with Marie. A Spanish bandit would be El-Burt Reynolds.

Donnie Elbert - Little Piece Of Leather

9. Pestered by Society.

To pester is to bug. A society might also be a club.

The Bug Club - Cheap Linen

8. Wrote a diary about being a baptist.

Bridget (Jones) wrote a diary. St. John was a baptist.

Bridget St. John - Curious & Woolly

7. Hopefully nobody will think this week's Snapshots features a crap link. Er...

"Crap link. Er" was an anagram...

Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes

6. They don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

So said Randy Newman, anyway.

Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe

I apologise for that. It's the last thing anyone wants to hear on a Sunday morning.

5. Weller's necklace.

Pearl Jam - Corduroy

4. Like flour, and drawing papers.

Plain and white.

White Plains - Taffeta Rose

3. Fresh.

A very Fresh(-faced young) Prince.

Prince - Pink Cashmere

2. Would you like some insects mixed into your Kiev?

Mix together the letters in "insects" and "Kiev" until it gives you...

Stevie Nicks - Leather & Lace

Or you could have had...

Stevie Nicks - Blue Denim 

1. Where the police go to get pissed.

The Bobbies go to Vin-ton.

Amazingly, this is the first time he's appeared here...

Bobby Vinton - Blue Velvet

More next Saturday.

2023: The Best Of The Rest

Before we get to the Top Ten, a brief round up of other noteworthy records I've been listening to this year that I couldn't shoehorn into previous posts.

Karine Polwart didn't have a new album out this year, otherwise she would have been in the Old Faithfuls category. She did, however, release an EP called Seek The Light, from which came one of my favourite tunes of 2023, Windblown. Folk Radio explains the song's background...

"...the story of the old Sabal bermudana palm that was the pride of Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden (RBGE), the oldest specimen in its living collection. Sadly, the plant’s desire to seek the light sealed its own fate. Its towering growth threatened to push through the dome of the garden’s iconic Victorian tropical glasshouse."

Karine Polwart, Dave Milligan & Pippa Murphy - Wind Blown

Staying in Edinburgh, we find local lad (although he was born in London), Dan Wilson, who released his latest Withered Hand record this year. He's hardly what you'd call prolific - this is only his third release since 2009 - but he's always worth a listen.

Withered Hand - Waking Up

Our final Scottish offering comes from another perennial favourite, Daniel Meade, who describes his latest album, Your Madness Is My Medicine, as "a welcome return to the boogie woogie & rock n roll".

Daniel Meade - Your Madness Is My Medicine

Andrew Blackaby comes from London where he became a Born Again Christian at age 13, and then had to fight to extract himself from the grip of his church. His latest record, Comeback Innocence, deals with the extra dollop of teenage angst that ensued...

And we're doing our best, we're doing our best
I guess that much is true
But like Travis Driftwood on The Man Who
I'll drift away from you

Blackaby - Teenage Purity

Another Andrew, though far more Savage than the last, is the co-frontman of New York-via Texas band Parquet Courts. He also does his own thing, and I was rather taken by this single... not just because I like songs about Elvis. It reminds me of Stephen Malkmus.

A. Savage - Elvis In The Army

The Gaslight Anthem came back this year, bringing their old pal / idol Bruce Springsteen along for the ride. Bruce appears to be filling his spare time by guesting on other people's records these days - he's popped up on songs by Bleachers, John Mellencamp, Jesse Malin, Lucinda Williams and probably a load more I haven't come across just yet. Anyway, I've only just started giving serious time to the latest Gaslight Anthem album, but it does appear to be something of a return to form.

The Gaslight Anthem (ft. Bruce Springsteen) - History Books  

The Sleaford Mods are a band I can only take in small doses, because they look and sound like the kind of dodgy geezers you'd steer well clear of if you saw them walking down your local high street on a Saturday night. Still, when they drafted in Florence Shaw from Dry Cleaning to start swearing along with them in her usual deadpan style, they got a sizable amount of plays from me. Extra marks for re-using the title of the 1978 sequel to The Guns of Navarone...

Sleaford Mods feat. Florence Shaw - Force 10 From Navarone 

And while we're here, it's worth mentioning the Mods' "Christmas single", a cover of West End Girls by The Pet Shop Boys which sounds exactly like one of the blokes described above grabbing the mic on Karaoke Night and giving it his "best"... with everybody in the audience too scared to snatch the mic back. All profits going to Shelter though, so you can't knock 'em for it.

Sleaford Mods - West End Girls

Finally, the album that I would have placed at #11 in my Year End Countdown, if I could have been bothered to count past ten. Rare Birds: Hour of Song by ramshackle Welsh wonders The Bug Club is as good as most of my Top Ten, to be fair, but I was annoyed by all the spoken word between-song interludes... to the point that I edited them out to create a music more enjoyable record. A hugely enjoyable purchase, nevertheless...

The Bug Club - We Can't All Play Saxophones

The Bug Club - Short And Round

Cnut Songs #23: The Every (5)

Last one of these, I promise. Or else (much as I'm trying to help promote his book), I'm probably going to get sued by Dave Eggers.

King Cnut could not hold back the tide, and I cannot hold back society's full-throttle descent into dystopia. All I can do is watch helplessly from the sidelines, and nod my head sagely when others hold a mirror up to the madness. Which is why I've been using this space over the past few weeks to quote excerpts from Dave Eggers' novel, The Every. Because everyone should read it and face up to the horror...

In this final extract, Delaney goes to work in the Iris-Tracking department. When she arrives, they give her a demonstration of the tech they’re developing…

“As you sit in front of the monitor,” Eric said, “an infrared light is being directed toward your pupils. This causes reflections in your pupil and your cornea. The vector between the cornea and the pupil is tracked by the infrared camera, and this way we can determine what you’re looking at. This also gives us the ability to track when you get fixated on something, what order you look at things – that kind of hierarchy is so crucial to study – and what things you come back to.”

“So it’s recording what I look at and how long,” Delaney said.

“Exactly!”

“But isn’t this illegal? I mean, didn’t some people sue?”

“They did,” Eric said, “and there are laws in some cities and states that limit their use. But there are millions of systems already in place. It’s been used for years within the Implicit Association Test, the Stroop Test, and of course the gaze contingency paradigms.”

“Using eye-trackers,” he continued, “just to figure out what people are looking at and for how long – that’s only logical. It started with marketing. Advertisers want to know what you look at. This serves the makers of ads, sure, but it serves the audience, too. A bad ad will be ignored, whoever made it will find a new line of work, and you won’t see any more like it.”

“It’s the perfect symbiosis,” Delaney said, and finally she saw Eric smile. “It’s the only meaningful way to determine what someone’s actually seeing, reading and responding to.”

“Well, right,” he said, and Delaney felt he’d finally begun to like her again. “The utility of this tech for advertisers drove its progress in the first place. But then film and TV asked for data, and that was huge. It was kind of hilarious, because with the first test group we did, we discovered that this one very highly paid actress was actually being avoided by most eyes. She would come onscreen and the eyes – seventy-seven per cent of them – would dart away like she was an infection. You can be sure that data affected her future salary negotiations.”

Delaney smiled, then thought she should be more emphatic in her approval of his joke. “Ha!” she said.

“So apply the same idea to any movie or show. Where does the eye really gravitate to?” Explosions, breasts, abs – this was obvious enough. But it gets more subtle. Certain clothing tested high, certain cities, décor, facial expressions, animals, children. If you knew what I knew, you’d know how seriously it’s already affected filmmaking. By any chance have you noticed a pretty dramatic increase in the number of toddlers and medium-sized dogs in contemporary film?”

“I have!” Delaney lied.

Eric nodded. “And fewer heavy people. Fewer romantic scenes between people over 65. Fewer scenes in Baltimore and the Middle East. That’s the easy stuff, to be honest.”

Soon enough, Eye Tracking Technology takes off in a big way…

The global debate about the ethics of eye tracking, which began that afternoon, was vigorous, but anyone hoping to hold back the advent of ETR was proven a fool. The unexamined glee with which it was embraced followed a familiar pattern. First hobbyist explored its limits, producing results both innocuous (which parent does your baby prefer?) and terrifying (which parent does your teenager prefer?). Heedless capitalists leaped in, apps and related products proliferating, enabling anyone with a self-cam to determine where the eyes of any other humans around them were landing. The software and hardware necessary had been built into Every phones for years; it was only a matter of activating it.

Over the next few weeks, it became clear that because half of humanity’s iris scans had already been stored, their owners could be singled out in seconds. If a man ogled a woman at a New Jersey dog park, those eyes could instantly be paired with the offender’s name, and his family, employers, and the public would be duly notified of the transgression. A new wave of suicides ensued, the embarrassment and discredit being too much for certain called-out persons, mostly men. In the first week, one hundred and seven humans in Tokyo took their lives, thirty-one of them by throwing themselves in front of trains, the scene of their eyeshame. Tens of thousands followed elsewhere on earth, and a few hundred, nicknamed Oedipals, chose a middle path – they gouged out their eyes.

Whatever the name for the offenders, eyeshame was the term that stuck to the crime. The Every resisted it, tried to push ocular offence, but eyeshame was more direct and descriptive. It was not strictly speaking a crime, of course; no laws prevented anyone from looking where they shouldn’t. But shame ensued, and shame was deserved, and shame was the internet’s currency and lever for change. As ETR spread without resistance among the vast majority of the species, there were occasionally calls to ban it. But like most innovations in the twenty-first century, the spread was caterwauling, without organisation or caution, and thus unstoppable.

The latest changes to 6Music have me convinced they want me to switch off completely. It's been reported as another nail in the coffin of guitar music, and I can't say I disagree. Apparently The Bug Club are also up in arms about it. Who'll play songs like this on the radio anymore (other than Mickey and the wonderful Natasha)?