It has been years since I've written a blog post that was not a blurb serving as an enticement to listen to an episode of Love That Album podcast (or See Hear). I put so much time into assembling the spoken words, I never thought about putting the written word out into the ether.
That's going to change now – at least for this one post....for a couple of reasons.
Normally, the end of year podcast episode features me asking many of my regular co hosts to come up with their favourite discoveries of the year (released at any time, but the album had to be new to them). In 2021, as a podcast, Love That Album turned 10 years old. I asked those same people to talk about a favourite record released over the lifetime of the show....I didn't want to repeat that format for the end of year, so decided to record a “regular” episode....
….and then I received some personal news that made me lack any sort of motivation to record a show this month.
So, here I am still with thoughts in my head about music I've heard this year and want to put them out there – the written form seems ideal. I can type as much or as little as I want, and you can read whatever amount that interests you. There will be many more year-end lists out there – mine is just another put out into the overcrowded space vying for your attention.....doesn't mean I'm not going to submit it.
So, in no particular order, here are 10 favourite releases I heard for the first time this year – some new, some not.
1) Various - Pyramid Pieces Volume 1 (Modal & Eco-Jazz From Australia 1969-79) and Volume 2 (Modern Jazz Australia 1969-1980) (2020 / 2021)
Anyone who knows me realises I'm a sucker for a great anthology, and in particular, I really love discovering Australian anthologies - I love local music history. It was late in the year that I came across this pair of albums which will be an ongoing series from The Roundtable Records.
I'm a fan of the local jazz scene, but my knowledge of Australian seventies jazz is very limited (it could rightly be argued my music knowledge overall is limited). There are so many comps of the local rock scene of every era, and even some great contemporary jazz comps (The Pulse, Jazz In Melbourne). However, I was not aware of anything that attempted to look back. Pyramid Pieces attempts to rectify that.
Some of these names were known to me (Galapgos Duck, John Sangster, Allan Zavod) and others were not (Bruce Cale, Charlie Munro). All the music here is wondrous – maybe not taking jazz into new directions, but definitely providing compositions and performances worthy of any jazz lovers' attention.
Sydney's JazzCo/Op are showcased with a piece called A La Coltrane dedicated to the giant of music. It's more Atlantic era Coltrane inspired, than the free jazz period Strangely enough, the structure of the piece reminds me of a Dexter Gordon tune called Tanya, but certainly Howie Smith's tone reflects that of Coltrane's approach over Dex's.
Another Sydney group, Out To Lunch, as their name implies also dedicate their work to a jazz great, this time Eric Dolphy. Their piece “What The Thunder Said” seems to combine both the free jazz of Dolphy and some compositional elements.
Probably my favourite piece overall is a composition by Allan Zavod called “Circles”. Many people will remember him as a pianist for Frank Zappa, but he was already an important jazz figure in Australia before Zappa came calling. Apparently, he was offered a scholarship to Berklee after being observed by Duke Ellington on an Australian tour. How life changing was THAT moment!!!
I look forward to future volumes in this series.
2) Various - The Daptone Super Soul Revue Live! At The Apollo (2021)
One of my big regrets was never going to see Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. She was here a number of times, so it's not like I never had the opportunity. I know two people that were invited from the audience to dance on stage with her and the band.
I've been a huge fan of the retro soul sound of the last couple of decades. Melbourne in particular has a great scene (let's see what happens post Covid). I will speak a little further about that down the list.
Daptone was a sound unto itself...so many great artists on its label – Naomi Shelton, Charles Bradley, The Budos Band...but Sharon Jones was the label's queen. Back in 2014, Daptone held a 3 night soul revue at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem (which was no stranger to live albums). I don't know why it took 7 years for the recordings to see the light of day, but thank goodness they did.
The studio albums of these artists are mighty fine, but there's an energy and excitement from the live performances of all the acts that makes this collection astounding. Most acts get two or three songs each, but the label's king and queen, Bradley and Jones get lengthier sets. Jones was in the midst of cancer treatment, but that didn't stop her giving the performance her everything.
Get this collection – play it loud.
3) The Seven Ups - The Old World (2021)
As long as I'm looking at the soul revival, I need to include the latest effort from Melbourne band The Seven Ups.
As I mentioned, the Melbourne soul revival over the last decade or two has been incredibly strong with bands like The Bamboos and Emma Donovan & The Putbacks amongst many others. I've been a fan of The Seven Ups for a few years with their heavy groove oriented soul (a big asset to many of the local bands).
The Old World puts the soul sound into a blender with the style of Ennio Morricone writing a sci/fi soundtrack. “Abode of the Clouds” belongs in a 70s Blaxploitation film and the title track is like a mini symphony mixing cool noirish jazz and some elements of melancholy.
4) The Hard Ons - I’m Sorry Sir, That Riff’s Been Taken (2021)
I'm sure this latest Hard-Ons release is on a lot of local favourites lists this year. Tim Rogers also released an excellent album with You Am I earlier in the year, so the news that he had become the new lead singer of The Hard-Ons AND they were releasing an album was a surprise – to me anyway.
I think there was concern in some camps that Rogers was not the right man for the job – I hope that feeling has been dismissed. He's was a bona fide fan of the band and he wasn't trying to fit them into the You Am I image. This is a great selection of punk pop tunes – something the Hard-Ons have always excelled in - and I hope that long time fans are as happy with this as they are with, say, Yummy. Favourite songs – Shove It Down, Home Sweet Home, and the great lead off single Hold Tight.
5) Harmonium – Harmonium (1974)
Earlier on this year, I was asked by head honcho at Pantheon Podcasts, Christian Swain, if I was interested in interviewing the leader and songwriter of 70s folk / prog group Harmonium for LTA. I had no idea who Harmonium was but gave them a listen – within 20 minutes, I knew I needed Serge Fiori on the show. Harmonium released 3 studio albums and a live record in the 70s before calling it quits. The music became more progressive as they went along.
Late in 2020 saw the release of an orchestrated reworking of all the band's material into a symphony. This sort of reinterpretation can be a dangerous – the results aren't always great. However, given that Harmonium's folk roots developed into more complex arrangements as they went on (including use of orchestra on their final studio album), Harmonium Symphonique seemed not only inevitable but a must-do project.
As part of my research for the interview, I listened not only to the original Harmonium albums but recordings from their contemporaries in the Montreal prog scene – all very different, but all part of the same story. The debut self titled album from 1974 was full of gorgeous melodies and harmonies that were dreamlike. I speak no French, but it doesn't matter – the music tells the stories and the vocals are like another instrument. It seems that the most popular of their albums is the second one, Les Cinq Saisons. Make no mistake, it's a magnificent album. But my pick for this list is the debut with what I term complex simplicity – the songs are hummable and sound simple, but underneath is a beauty in the composition and arrangements that probably took a lot of time to get right.
6) Jane Weaver – Flock (2021)
Jane Weaver was another musician I'd never heard of until this year. Pat Monaghan at Rocksteady Records had put up a post about her latest album Flock being in the store. I like to check out Pat's recommendations – some are in my wheelhouse, some are not, but he's someone whose opinion I take note of.
Turns out she's been recording for years and this was her 11th album. It turns out that this was probably an ideal album for me to get introduced to her work. An interview in The Guardian cited that her tastes and previous work leaned towards “Lebanese torch songs, 80s Russian aerobics records and Australian punk”. I will search some of her earlier music out, but Flock still has enough of a mixture of pop, psych, Krautrock and dreampop to keep her versatility cred running.
The opening cut on the album “Heartlow” is a dreamy piece of pop that centres around a keyboard motif played over and over again while the rest of the melody works its way around it – Jane's voice is ethereal. Another tune that shows something of a psych feel to me is Modern Reputation. It reminds me of a tune performed by Elephant's Memory in the film Midnight Cowboy, Old Man Willow.
There's also electronica included on this album, but the bottom line is there are wonderful pop melodies that kept me hypnotised and returning to this album a lot over the year.
7) Charm of Finches – Your Company (2019)
You know how you go down YouTube wormholes that you regret because your time has been wasted? Occasionally, you discover something wonderful.....such was the case earlier this year where I was led to a film clip of a Melbourne folk duo, Charm of Finches.
The duo are sisters Mabel & Ivy Windred-Wornes. The song that came to my attention was a tune called Treading Water. It's a heartbreaking song about a relationship where both partners know it's reached a point where it's going no further. Mabel and Ivy's gentle harmonies just haunted me in the way that beautiful sibling harmonies seem to do. My first thought of association was with the Unthanks sisters, Becky and Rachel. Some of their songs, however, are more tragic than anything, so maybe it wasn't a great comparison.
Based on the album I sought out, Your Company, Charm of Finches songs tended more to wistfulness than full blown sadness. Her Quiet Footsteps is a favourite from the album which appears to recall memories of better times following the death of a loved one. The album is full of songs of introspection and memories. Another lovely tune (really, they all are) is Where Do All The Ducks Go, a song of childlike innocence and inquisitiveness.
This is an album I recommend to be listened to without distraction....it really is a thing of beauty.
At the time of me writing this, they've just released a new album called Wonderful Oblivion, so I may have to search that out as well.
8) Various – The Trojan Story 50th anniversary edition (2021)
I'm far from what anyone would call an expert on reggae, but over the years I have developed a love of classic era ska music and through that, reggae. I've collected a few great Trojan comps over the years (X-Rated, Beatles Reggae, This Is Trojan) as well as some stuff from the big name artists like Desmond Dekker and Lee Perry, I have plenty more to explore, I acknowledge.
This year saw the re-release of a beautiful set from 1971 called The Trojan Story. The attention to detail is magnificent, and it's sort of like the reggae equivalent of Nuggets (albeit limited to the Trojan and associated series of labels).
There's songs here that everyone will know like Rudy, A Message to You, Housewives Choice, Pressure Drop and Rude Boy, but there's a ton of things here I had no knowledge of and am rapt I discovered like Syncopate by The Astronauts (if reggae was tackling surf music....), Them A Laugh And a Kiki by The Soulmates and King Without a Throne by Sugar Simone (which could have easily been released by a Motown act of the era).
I can't speak for the experts, but I think this is a brilliant primer for the first decade of reggae music.
9) Terje Rypdal – Odyssey (1975)
As I've often said on the LTA Facebook group, I'm a big fan of ECM Records. There's something about the sound of many of the artists who have recorded for them that just gets me right....much of it quite moody. It's only hit me in recent times that my very favourite artists on the label are guitarists – John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, Bill Frisell, and of course, Pat Metheny. Now I add Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal to that list.
Rypdal is one of those artists I always meant to listen to more than I had. This year, I found a couple of his records going second hand at prices that weren't obscene (as much of the current market for vinyl seems to get). One of those albums was his 1975 double platter, Odyssey. This is definitely an album for playing late at night with a strong whiskey (at least that's my take on it).
Like many of my age, my gateway to jazz was via jazz fusion – Al Dimeola, John Mclaughlin (those damn guitarists again....) Moreso than any of the other ECM jazz guitarists, Terje Rypdal fits into the fusion sound description, though with more of a slow tempo feel. There's none of the uptempo latin feel you can hear on a Dimeola cut, for instance. In fact, much of Odyssey seems (to my ears) to be a kindred spirit to Diamond Dust or Cause We've Ended as Lovers from Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow album. There's that slow intensity, and the searing guitar tone is in a similar vein. Over Birkerot is an uptempo rocky piece, but the meandering pace of Better Off Without You and Midnite are better examples of what this album is all about. It's musically very dark...and that's a good thing by my taste.
10) Gillian Welch - Boots No.2: The Lost Songs (2020)
There's been a common trend over the last couple of decades. Legacy acts have been releasing songs “from the vault”. These are usually live recordings (Bob Dylan, Neil Young Bruce Springsteen etc) or previously unheard studio cuts (Bob Dylan, Neil Young Bruce Springsteen etc). They possibly figure that if they get the cash rather than having them released as bootlegs, they don't care that they're often songs left off projects for good reason.
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings have also decided to walk down that avenue. A few years ago, they released an album of Revival outtakes – I didn't get myself a copy of that. In 2020, a mail order box set of recordings called The Lost Songs was released featuring songs Welch wrote to fulfil a publishing requirement sometime after Time The Revelator. One would think these songs would be second rate (of course, I imagine second rate Welch / Rawlings recordings would still be essential listening).There was nothing to fear – this was all top shelf stuff. Given how infrequently Welch and Rawlings release new material, 2020 was a gift with All The Good Times, an album of covers, as well as this box set – 4 CDs of new material.
If you're a fan of their other albums, you don't need me to sell you the idea of how great this collection is – all the darkness, harmonies, and that Appalachian sound should be enough to convince you this is essential listening.
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If you've read this far, thank you for indulging me. I hope to put out a new podcast episode for your earholes in January 2022. Stay safe, stay sane, listen to lots of music (my suggestions or your own favourites – it doesn't matter)....and be kind to others.
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