Taken from Owens' third album LP.8, 'Sonic 8' is a brooding, uncompromising, nay apocalyptic slice of sparse electro. As with Helen McCookerybook's 'Wake Up', there is a sense of something coming to the boil in this spoken word piece.
"This is an emergency" she states "This is a wake up call". Before asking "What are you gonna do about it?".
There are references to divide and conquer and to feeling tired while wanting to be free together but she's deliberately opaque in her targets, meaning the track can be taken as a general statement about the world rather than aimed at a specific wrong or issue. As such, it's both statement and work of art.
Liz Lawrence: Liz Lawrence released her second album of indie rock, Pity Party, last year. It featured the understated observational deadpan of 'None of my friends are OK'. She was touring earlier this year, and it's to be expected that she may well have dates planned for the future, circumstances permitting. You can find her on Insta.
The Paranoyds: Achingly cool LA punk pop band The Paranoyds have been around for a few years now. Their debut album, Carnage Bargain, was released last year. You can find them on Bandcamp.
Starcrawler: The outrageous LA garage punk band are fronted by Arrow De Wilde, the feral lovechild of Iggy Pop and Cherie Curie. They have released two albums of stomping punk classics, are terrifying live, and you can find out more here.
Natasha Kmeto: This Portland based multi instrumentalist, producer and singer makes evocative, clever, sexy feel good electronic music. You can find her on Bandcamp.
Kelly Lee Owens: "Convention-blurring techno producer/musician" is what it says on her Bandcamp, and you can't really argue with that. Her self titled, self released debut album was released in 2017 when she was still living in Wales, and quickly became both a critical and word of mouth success. Since then it seems like everybody wants to work with her. Her second album is, it is fair to say, very keenly anticipated. You can find her on Bandcamp.
AURORA: Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Aurora has released three highly conceptual albums of electro art pop. You can find out more here.
Kelsea Ballerini: Tennessee country pop singer and songwriter Kelsea Ballerini has released three albums of country flavoured pop and cites Shania Twain as her greatest influence. As an artist who has grown up with pop crossover artists such as Twain and Taylor Swift, it's not surprising that she is able to straddle the pop and country worlds with such ease. You can find out more here.
Lady Gaga: The phenomenon that is Lady Gaga was born Stefani Germanotta in New York in 1986. She is a singer, songwriter and producer. 2008's aptly titled debut album The Fame was her breakthrough moment, and it's been non stop ever since for her. Musically, she remains a dance and pop orientated artist but, over the years, she has taken inspirations from metal, country and Americana, and even made a brief foray into the easy listening world with her Tony Bennett collaboration, Cheek to Cheek. "Do you want to be the next Madonna?" she was asked once "No" she replied "I want to be the next Iron Maiden". You can find out more here.
I thought I'd try taking a departure from the usual end of year lists format this year, having not done one since 2014 because: A.) Florence + The Machine would have won everything in 2015, and that would have made for a pretty repetitive blog post B.) 2016 was such a weird year it required a different approach. So, 2017... I remember writing in my diary at the end of 2015 'Well, thank God that's over' or words to that effect, little knowing the horrors 2016 would bring, and indeed, 2017... One last thing: Because I didn't do a list in 2016, the rule I'm working to is: If it was released in 2017, or if it was released in 2016 but I didn't hear it until 2017 then it's OK to include it.
Perhaps this is a little misleading... It wasn't so much a case of 'enjoying' it as being gripped by a hurricane that wouldn't let me go until I'd finished it, 48 hours later. And it led to a whole series of posts on here as well, plus 7 fantasy festival bills I'd like to see.
Expect to read more on this issue, and related issues, in 2018.
Favourite double edged single of the year: Natasha Kmeto, 'Pour Down/Free For Tonight'
Side A: Full on rainbow coloured lust on the dance floor
Side B: An equally killer dance anthem but with the underlying razorblade in the floss that it was a song pointing to the fragility of LGBTQI spaces
Favourite breaking artist of the year:
Overcoats.
The New York duo more than punched above their weight this year, with an impeccable debut album and strong singles. Their tours in the US are now headliner tours and are getting longer and longer. Let's hope we see them in the UK soon.
Most fully realised psychogeographic album of the year:
EMA, Exile in the outer ring
A dystopian postcard from the US mid west.
Most eerily prescient album of the year:
This is a tie between Kate Tempest's Let Them Eat Chaos and Father John Misty's Pure Comedy. The former hinted, in various ways, at a number of societal factors that were all about to converge in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, whereas the latter clearly signposted the warning signs of a US that had just elected Trump president.
Favourite video of the year:
Georgia, 'Feel It'
Favourite 'Where the hell did that come from?!?' album of the year:
Favourite gig of the year:
A tie between Gothic Tropic at The Castle Hotel as part of the Manchester leg of Dot To Dot, 26th May 2017 and Honeyblood at Gorilla, 21st December 2017 (review currently in progress, stymied by Christmas...)
Band to watch in 2018:
Pearl City
They provided strong support to Honeyblood at Gorilla on 21st December and are a Manchester duo who used to be known as Bernard & Edith and now appear to have renamed themselves after a mancunian Chinese restaurant. They sound a bit like Kate Bush fronting a dark wave band... Am expecting good things. 'Flames' is out now.
Songs of the year: I have made a Spotify playlist of these songs, but Helen McCookerybook's most recent album is not available on Spotify so I have included a link to the song on YouTube instead.
20) Grace Mitchell, 'French Becky'
19) Halsey and Lauren Jauregui, 'Strangers'
18) London Grammar, 'Truth Is A Beautiful Thing'
17) Rews, 'Miss you in the dark'
16) Daughter, 'Burn It Down'
15) Beth Ditto, 'Savoir Faire'
14) Wolf Alice, 'Beautifully Unconventional'
13) Bipolar Sunshine, 'The Scientist'
12) Noga Erez, 'Noisy'
11) Georgia, 'Feel It'
10) Honeyblood, 'Sea Hearts'
9) Lorde, 'Liability'
8) Wild Ones, 'Parathesia'
7) Helen McCookerybook, 'Big Brother'
6) XX, 'Replica'
5) Overcoats, 'Nighttime Hunger'
4) Gothic Tropic, 'Stronger'
3) Natasha Kmeto, 'Pour Down'
2) St Vincent, 'Los Ageless'
1) Miya Folick, 'God Is A Woman'
A week ago, Piccadilly Records, the mancunian independent store, released it's hotly anticipated End Of Year lists.
I look forward to the Piccadilly Lists because they tend to both tally with a broader musical consensus as to what have been the musical highlights of the year (both Solange's A seat at the table and Angel Olsen's My Woman scored highly last year) but also wear their heart on their sleeves so far as the consensus in the shop is concerned. Previous Album of the Year winners have been Julia Holter's Loud City Song and Jane Weaver's Modern Cosmology (keeping it local there...) and this years winner is Kelly Lee Owens self titled debut.
I do, dimly, remember their weekly mailout raving about Kelly Lee Owens earlier this year, but I hadn't got around to checking out the album until this morning when I decided, having bookmarked it in Spotify last week, that it was time I did.
While, on paper (or, indeed, on email mailout...), it didn't look as though it was going to be my kind of thing, I'm really glad I 'tasted' it now because I've been listening to it on repeat all day. Once I get paid at the end of the month, I'm off to the shop to buy it.
The main reason I have a Spotify account (aside from a hopeless predilection for playlisting...) is to try out music that I wouldn't normally listen to, some of which I then go on to buy from proper record shops (as much as possible) so as to ensure that the artist in question gets a better sales percentage on my purchase than they would if I bought it off Spotify or Amazon.
I really don't think I would have taken a punt on this album without the option to try it out first on streaming.
It's a mysterious and enigmatic creature, sonically speaking, soothing and calming despite being made up of really quite intricate sounding sonic landscapes. In their own write up, Piccadilly Records peg it's influences as everything from techno to shoegaze to Cocteau Twins. They think of it as a late night post clubbing kind of record, and I can see that it would work that way as it's quite lulling but still very electronic. They also describe it as slightly blurred, which I also got I think, listening to it.
I've been shopping at Piccadilly Records since the mid 1990s, when the shop was still on Brown Street and surrounded by punk shops. These days it's on Oldham Street, part of the hipster central that is the Northern Quarter and where it feels equally at ease as it did on Brown Street surrounded by punk shops. Such is the versatility of the modern record shop.
