Another Year of Reading - In Pictures

Following the popularity of last year’s post, here again is a pictorial record of my reading from the previous twelve months, to hopefully inspire and motivate your own reading choices. This time it comprises a photograph taken every two months, of the books completed in the preceding period.

Since I finished them, by definition all the included books have merit to my mind (I would have abandoned them otherwise), and I very highly recommend almost all of them. Indeed I have found the quality of writing, depth of insight, originality of ideas, and degree of empathy, inspiration and exhilaration provided by this set of titles frequently quite breathtaking. A number come with their own particular challenges of course, whether of style or content, but that is always part of the deal – if you the reader are not up for that then recognise you may be shutting off a key avenue for the development of your personal understanding, ideas and appreciation.

I only found three titles genuinely problematic, Joyce and Mieville were heavy going for considerable periods, the former also wearingly self-indulgent for spells, and Nabokov’s Lolita comes with a pile of deeply uncomfortable issues that individual readers will need to decide if they wish to engage with. The difficulty I had with the latter book is reflected in the fact that I had to put it aside for nine months while part way through, before returning to complete it last summer, and I recognise that I may have to steel myself for a re-read at some point to try and comprehend why it is held up by many (but certainly not all) to be a great novel – currently I don’t entirely see it.

Everyone comes to a particular book from their own unique situation, with consequent personal baggage and perspective, so draw what you will from the following titles. Many helpful reviews are available online, I particularly recommend those on the Guardian website at www.theguardian.com/books . In an act of gross oversimplification, and at the risk of being a little crass, I have also given each title a rating to roughly indicate what I personally got, that was positive, from each:

 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖          Truly Special/Exceptional
 📖 📖 📖 📖               Very Good and deeply rewarding
 📖 📖 📖                    Middling to Good, competent and worthwhile but not special
 📖 📖                         Poor/Disappointing, borderline whether I finished it
 📖                             Dreadful, by definition not finished and hence doesn't appear
 

January & February

 

Bleak House – Charles Dickens   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

Autumn – Ali Smith   📖 📖 📖 📖

The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

The Lonely City – Olivia Laing  📖 📖 📖 📖

Men Explain Things to Me – Rebecca Solnit   📖 📖 📖 📖

 

March & April

 

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce  📖 📖

To the River – Olivia Laing  📖 📖 📖 📖

Love of Country – Madeleine Bunting   📖 📖 📖

Golden Hill – Francis Spufford  📖 📖 📖 📖

Beloved – Toni Morrison  📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

Selected Poems – Emily Dickinson  📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

 

May & June

 

The Balloonist – MacDonald Harris   📖 📖 📖 📖 

Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

Lord of the Flies – William Golding   📖 📖 📖 📖

The Bricks that Built the Houses – Kate Tempest   📖 📖 📖 📖

Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy   📖 📖 📖 📖

Falling Awake - Alice Oswald   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖
ll account of his final racing season which still leaves him and his readers well in love with cycling and its wonderful culture.
And finally an antidote to all the worlds current frenetic madness, in a fine compilation of the beautiful writings of the under appreciated late Welsh naturalist William Condry. There are times when you need a book like this, found hiding in a shop in Aberystwyth.

July & August

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet – Thomas Dilworth   📖 📖 📖 📖

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov   📖 📖 📖

My Cousin Rachel – Daphne Du Maurier   📖 📖 📖 📖

Empire of the Sun – J G Ballard   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

No is Not Enough – Naomi Klein   📖 📖 📖 📖

The Unaccompanied – Simon Armitage   📖 📖 📖 📖

e just out!).
And Iain Sinclair manages to beautifully and gently expand your mind in his unique mysterious way as he eruditely ambles through his childhood haunts on the Gower, embracing creative connections at every turn (Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards...).
In stark contrast is Philip Dick's sixties sci-fi masterpiece, or should that simply be alternative history since it describes a post-war America run by the Japanese and Germans who had won. Either way it disorientatingly focuses on a few ordinary lives and small scale events, with an emerging considerable and odd emphasis on Chinese philosophy that develops an unsettling power and a climax strangely reminiscent of 2001. A very sixties example of the drug-fuelled creative process, which certainly stays with you afterwards and keeps you pondering...
 

September & October

 

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton   📖 📖 📖 📖

Clay – Melissa Harrison  📖 📖 📖 📖

A Life of Walter Scott – A N Wilson   📖 📖 📖

The Great War and Modern Memory – Paul Fussell   📖 📖 📖 📖

October – China Mieville   📖 📖 📖

In the Cairngorms – Nan Shepherd   📖 📖 📖

 

I then wended my way out of the city on the Thames, courtesy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s atmospheric homage to the Estuary of her books title and her home. A passionate and compelling capture of another marginal place, of land and water, made particularly real through the lives of many of its fascinating current occupants, often in conversation; a genuine treat. It also contains a number of superb quotes from Joseph Conrad that neatly reminded me of the book I had to read next.It is a special pleasure when a book you start in the hope it will be merely good, rapidly blows your mind. Magnificent is the only word for Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea. It is rare in simply setting out to provide the reader the sense of being at sea in a sailing ship at the end of the nineteenth century, without any single underlying adventure tale or narrative. It’s the only non-fiction by Conrad and is underpinned by the experience and knowledge of twenty years at sea working his way up to captain, and the intellect and sheer writing prowess of one of the greatest authors of all time. Every sentence counts for something, and the wonder, fear, psychology, atmosphere and complexity of every aspect of sailing is covered along with an astonishing level of observation and insight of human nature and the human condition. A captivating read and true classic. There is also a beautiful chapter on the Thames estuary, making for the smoothest of transitions from Lichtenstein’s workNovember & December

 

Bending Adversity, Japan and the Art of Survival – David Pilling   📖 📖 📖 📖

Silence, in the Age of Noise – Erling Kagge   📖 📖 📖

Waverley – Walter Scott   📖 📖 📖 📖 📖

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carre   📖 📖 📖 📖

La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman   📖 📖 📖 📖
 


See Also:  A Year of Reading - In Pictures (2016)
                 Favourite Listening of 2017

Favourite Listening of 2016

Integrity, not a word you hear too much just now in these messed-up times, but it is the one that best unites the music I’ve reached for most in 2016, often for my own sanity. Though never “easy listening” the following provided me with compelling listening; individually impressively creative and often demonstrating the degree of social and environmental conscience and sheer humanity we currently seem so short of…

Maarja Nuut: Une Meeles, In The Hold Of A Dream (Estonia)

 

A lazy person might describe young Nuut as the Bjork of Eastern Europe, since her highly individual fiddle playing and singing certainly reminds of the Icelander’s quirky style. But she is her own unique uncompromising composer, musician and voice, using traditional elements but also pushing things to their limits and subtly using loops and other augmentation to deliver widely varying, sometimes challenging, but always deeply satisfying pieces.

Julie Murphy: Every Bird That Flies (Wales)

 

The latest solo album from Julie Murphy, lodged in deepest Wales, is as immaculate and beautifully contemplative as all its predecessors; just her and a piano with the subtlest of occasional extra accompaniment. The musical and vocal delivery (all in English here as opposed to the Welsh she often uses with band Fernhill) is stripped back to only what is absolutely needed, every word and note counts, and the entirety feels like the most quietly insightful of poetry. Inclusion of lines from Emily Dickinson in one piece is simply at one with the whole. Julie also believes in keeping things local and comprehensively shuns the corporate approach; the album is only available from her directly via bandcamp, is adorned by a photo of one of her own elegant sculptures, and she was kind enough to sign my own copy when asked.

Nyn: Kristi Stassinopoulou & Stathis Kalyviotis (Greece)

 

Nyn means Now, and this stirring album pulls no punches in capturing the current desperate state of affairs in Greece in pulsating manner. Kristi and Stathis make extensive use of both synthesisers and traditional instruments and have a track record of making compelling music that arguably reaches a new height here. Although sung in Greek the entire lyrics and some additional context on Greece’s dire plight are included in English in a booklet that is essential powerful reading.

Vesevo: Vesevo (Italy)

 

The psychology of living right next to a large active volcano is obviously tricky, but something Neopolitans seem to have managed down the years with a certain panache. This seems to infuse local music and song, along with strong socialist principles that continue to be driven by the parlous state of parts of the city and the disadvantaged of Naples. Back in 2000 the superb but fleeting outfit Spaccanapoli produced the landmark album Lost Souls that seemed to come from nowhere and capture the essence of the city with a possibly never-to-be-bettered perfection. Now, two musicians from that band combine with a third into the new Vesevo (Vesuvius), which stunningly showcases the music of Calabria, to the south of the city. With hand drums, fiddle, keyboards, guitar and emotional soaring vocals, it’s evocative, addictive and rather intoxicating.

Geomungo Factory: Imago (South Korea)

 

Let’s see now, this cost a cool £22, took two and half months to arrive from South Korea, and plays for a mere 30 minutes, was it really worth it? The geomungo is a zither-like traditional Korean stringed instrument with a rather percussive sound, which seems to lend itself to vigorous and innovative playing, witness a bunch of young ground-breaking South Korean bands currently taking it to very new places. Geomungo Factory are prominent amongst these, and made a big impact with their first album Metamorphosis (currently virtually unobtainable in the west) and a brief visit to London in 2013. Fortunately a second album has now appeared that I was able to get via the essential Far Side website (www.farsidemusic.com gateway to all musical things Far Eastern), and am delighted to report it is superb. There’s some mad, bad composition and playing here that absolutely stops you in your tracks! Given Metamorphosis was also apparently short it does however seem a missed opportunity that they didn’t release the two albums on one CD at a sensible price, then they really would have a world beater. Note there are other ground-breaking geomungo bands and albums out there, I also have the longer and more affordable Mask Dance by outfit Black String (smartly released in Europe via a German label) which although superbly deranged still doesn’t quite hit the dizzy heights of Imago for me.

Kate Tempest: Let Them Eat Chaos (England)

 

Has anyone got a more appropriate surname right now than Kate? She’s not a singer, she’s not a musician, but some refer to her as a performance poet (though she’s also a prose author). On this album though, she’s simply and appropriately a force of nature. Let Them Eat Chaos is a book length poem that is a stunning read in published form, describing the variously messed up lives of seven Londoners as a vehicle for nailing where our society is right now, before delivering an environmental coup de grace that nature is all too likely to do for real. But the piece is designed to be read aloud and this album is that reading (and rapping), to often powerfully effective musical accompaniment. The result is astonishing and vital; it tells us all exactly where we are right now and what we need to understand before we can even begin to get out of the huge hole we’ve dug for ourselves. This is not background music, this is the main event that demands you pay attention, and the most essential listen of the last year, and today.

See also: Favourite Listening of 2015
                A Year of Reading - In Pictures
 

A Year of Reading - In Pictures

Intrigued by just what my current insatiable reading habit amounts to, and keen to share my literary discoveries and pleasures, I decided for a year to photograph, at the end of each month, the books I finished that month. These have been shared, along with some limited (but admittedly growing) comments, with a small number of Facebook friends each month. Here now is the compilation of those posts for 2016, for wider consideration and hopefully enjoyment…

January

Emma – Jane Austen

The Outrun – Amy Liptrot

A bracing contrast as pompous fictional Emma Woodhouse and the very real alcoholic Amy Liptrot get their respective acts together.

February

The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
Runner – Lizzy Hawker
Black Country – Liz Berry

The exquisitely articulated slow sad adulterous self-destruction of Ford's masterpiece, nicely offset by the wonderfully motivating and life-affirming story of mountain ultrarunner Lizzy Hawker. With some brilliantly evocative and visceral brummie poetry from Liz Berry stirred into the mix. Marvellous!

March

The Buried Giant – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Shackleton's Whisky – Neville Peat
A Sleepwalk on the Severn – Alice Oswald
Virginia Woolf – Alexandra Harris

A bumper month, though a couple of titles required a stiff drink to see me through! I fear Alexandra Harris has worked her normal magic on me, and that I'm now fired up to read much more Virginia Woolf...

April

Rain – Melissa Harrison
Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Bonniest Companie – Kathleen Jamie

Three more gems; I'm particularly pleased to finally "get" Virginia Woolf after several abortive tries - Mrs Dalloway is an astonishing piece of writing really. And Kathleen Jamie's poetry was a fine and fitting accompaniment to our April Scottish foray - this collection was written in 2014 and beautifully captures the essence and mood of that country in independence referendum year.

May

In Pursuit of Spring – Edward Thomas
The Singing Sands – Josephine Tey
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

A wonderful journey by bicycle from London to the sea in Somerset with Edward Thomas a hundred years ago, through some places and country lanes I know intimately, had me reaching for the maps and memories. Followed by an elegantly sparse, understated yet addictively evocative, 1950s murder mystery in the Scottish highlands and islands courtesy of Josephine Tey. And finally another fantastic dose of Virginia Woolf; To the Lighthouse is so subtle, complex and insightful it almost beggars belief, packing so much in so cleverly that it seems entirely reasonable that she should have suffered a breakdown after the completion of several of her major books.

June

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible – Peter Pomerantsev
The Racer – David Millar
A William Condry Reader – Jim Perrin (editor)

The reason why Orwell's 1984 doggedly remains a top ten bestseller in Russia is writ large in Pomerantsev's chilling account of how Putin's dystopian nation is currently run, and in particular how the "truth" is carefully manufactured for the masses. A cautionary tale if ever there was one.

Once again David Millar proves he can rise substantially above the usual two-dimensional sports autobiography, and has produced a timeless and passionate warts-and-all account of his final racing season which still leaves him and his readers well in love with cycling and its wonderful culture.

And finally an antidote to all the worlds current frenetic madness, in a fine compilation of the beautiful writings of the under-appreciated  late Welsh naturalist William Condry. There are times when you need a book like this, found hiding in a shop in Aberystwyth.ll account of his final racing season which still leaves him and his readers well in love with cycling and its wonderful culture.
And finally an antidote to all the worlds current frenetic madness, in a fine compilation of the beautiful writings of the under appreciated late Welsh naturalist William Condry. There are times when you need a book like this, found hiding in a shop in Aberystwyth.

July

Cockfosters – Helen Simpson
At Hawthorn Time – Melissa Harrison
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain – Barney Norris
All the Birds, Singing – Evie Wyld

Consistently compelling and powerful writing from four modern authors this month, it’s been quite a ride! None, and especially Evie Wyld, are for the faint-hearted but all are ultimately and variously rewarding

August

Summer – Melissa Harrison (editor)
Black Apples of Gower – Iain Sinclair
The Man in the High Castle – Philip Dick

While I usually avoid "pretty" anthologies which are so often full of the same lazily selected tired old material, Melissa Harrison's Summer really is the business. Full of new writing by young authors and naturalists, around a lightweight framework of smartly chosen minor masterpieces by more established names, it manages to gradually envelope you in a marvellous summerness - to perhaps cling on to into autumn (though there is also now an Autumn volume, just out).

And Iain Sinclair manages to beautifully and gently expand your mind in his unique mysterious way as he eruditely ambles through his childhood haunts on the Gower, embracing creative connections at every turn (Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards…).

In stark contrast is Philip Dick’s sixties sci-fi masterpiece, or should that simply be alternative history since it describes a post-war America run by the Japanese and Germans. Either way it disorientatingly focuses on a few ordinary lives and small scale events, with an emerging considerable and odd emphasis on Chinese philosophy that develops an unsettlingly power and a climax strangely reminiscent of 2001. A very sixties example of the drug-fuelled creative process, which certainly stays with you afterwards and keeps you pondering.e just out!).
And Iain Sinclair manages to beautifully and gently expand your mind in his unique mysterious way as he eruditely ambles through his childhood haunts on the Gower, embracing creative connections at every turn (Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards...).
In stark contrast is Philip Dick's sixties sci-fi masterpiece, or should that simply be alternative history since it describes a post-war America run by the Japanese and Germans who had won. Either way it disorientatingly focuses on a few ordinary lives and small scale events, with an emerging considerable and odd emphasis on Chinese philosophy that develops an unsettling power and a climax strangely reminiscent of 2001. A very sixties example of the drug-fuelled creative process, which certainly stays with you afterwards and keeps you pondering...

September

Addlands – Tom Bullough
Skies – Alison Brackenbury
His Bloody Project – Graeme MacRae Burnet

Three powerful volumes this month; a beautiful moving epic tale of three generations of farmers in the Welsh borders around Llanbedr Hill from Tom Bullough, pure fiendish poetic magic from Alison Brackenbury in Skies, and a brutal triple murder in the 19th century Scottish Highlands that provides the vehicle for exploring so many things, including the nature of truth itself (but definitely not one for the squeamish).

October

What Goes Around – Emily Chappell
Estuary – Rachel Lichtenstein
The Mirror of the Sea – Joseph Conrad

From the heart of the city to the open sea in three volumes.

I started this month with Emily Chappell’s breathless and addictive account of life as a cycle courier in central London, which had me tearing around hazard-strewn streets trying to meet delivery deadlines with her. Her intimate evocation of the marginal culture of couriers and raw enthusiasm for everything cycling (see also thatemilychappell.com ) had me well and truly hooked.

I then wended my way out of the city on the Thames, courtesy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s atmospheric homage to the Estuary of her books title and her home. A passionate and compelling capture of another marginal place, of land and water, made particularly real through the lives of many of its fascinating current occupants, often in conversation; a genuine treat. It also contains a number of superb quotes from Joseph Conrad that neatly reminded me of the book I had to read next.I then wended my way out of the city on the Thames, courtesy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s atmospheric homage to the Estuary of her books title and her home. A passionate and compelling capture of another marginal place, of land and water, made particularly real through the lives of many of its fascinating current occupants, often in conversation; a genuine treat. It also contains a number of quotes from Joseph Conrad that neatly reminded me of the book I had to read next.

It is a special pleasure when a book you start in the hope it will be merely good, rapidly blows your mind. Magnificent is the only word for Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea. It is rare in simply setting out to provide the reader the sense of being at sea in a sailing ship at the end of the nineteenth century, without any single underlying adventure tale or narrative. It’s the only non-fiction by Conrad and is underpinned by the experience and knowledge of twenty years at sea working his way up to captain, and the intellect and sheer writing prowess of one the greatest authors of all time. Every sentence counts for something, and the wonder, fear, psychology, atmosphere and complexity of every aspect of sailing is covered along with an astonishing level of observation and insight of human nature and the human condition. A captivating read and true classic. There is also a beautiful chapter on the Thames estuary, making for the smoothest of cross-overs from Lichtenstein’s work.

 

 then wended my way out of the city on the Thames, courtesy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s atmospheric homage to the Estuary of her books title and her home. A passionate and compelling capture of another marginal place, of land and water, made particularly real through the lives of many of its fascinating current occupants, often in conversation; a genuine treat. It also contains a number of superb quotes from Joseph Conrad that neatly reminded me of the book I had to read next.It is a special pleasure when a book you start in the hope it will be merely good, rapidly blows your mind. Magnificent is the only word for Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea. It is rare in simply setting out to provide the reader the sense of being at sea in a sailing ship at the end of the nineteenth century, without any single underlying adventure tale or narrative. It’s the only non-fiction by Conrad and is underpinned by the experience and knowledge of twenty years at sea working his way up to captain, and the intellect and sheer writing prowess of one of the greatest authors of all time. Every sentence counts for something, and the wonder, fear, psychology, atmosphere and complexity of every aspect of sailing is covered along with an astonishing level of observation and insight of human nature and the human condition. A captivating read and true classic. There is also a beautiful chapter on the Thames estuary, making for the smoothest of transitions from Lichtenstein’s work.

November

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Days Without End – Sebastian Barry
Let Them Eat Chaos – Kate Tempest

In the month that the year's imbecilic self-destruction reaches its new low point I felt the need for some robust challenging reading.

Margaret Atwood's dystopian classic on the appropriation of women’s bodies seemed scarily real, let's hope Trump who famously "doesn't read" doesn't get hold of a copy - he'd probably treat it as a user guide. One of those books perhaps largely regarded as by women, for women, but which would have greatest impact if more (intelligent) men read it.

Sebastian Barry’s new novel tracing 20 years of the Indian Wars and the US Civil War rattles along at a breathtaking pace with a gay love affair, cross-dressing aplenty, savagery of the direst kind imaginable, and a twisting cliff-hanger plot. Somehow through all of this, wrapped within exquisite descriptions of landscape and season, runs a golden thread of simple love, truth and integrity that is hugely life-affirming.

And so to Kate Tempest's necessary, vital, angry blast. A 72 page accessible poem on the state of society, the nation and the planet that I got through in a single sitting. It tells us what we all need to know at this dire post-truth, post-humane moment, where we seem to have collectively totally lost the plot. Read it. Deal with it.t impact if more (intelligent) men read it.
 Barry's new novel tracing 20 years of the Indian wars and the US civil war, rattles along at a breathtaking pace with a gay love affair, cross-dressing aplenty, savagery of the direst kind imaginable, and a twisting cliff-hanger plot. Somehow through all this, wrapped within exquisite descriptions of landscape and season, runs a golden thread of simple love, truth and integrity that is hugely life-affirming.

December

The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Some Corner of a Foreign Field – James Bentley (editor)
Black Dog, The Dreams of Paul Nash – Dave McKean

Popularity and merit should never be confused, but justly coincide in Sarah Perry’s superbly brooding Dickensian (with a touch of Bram Stoker and Sarah Waters) tale on the murky Essex marshes around the Blackwater. It’s about belief versus fact; fear and need and desire, and ultimately about the overlooked power of that most modest sounding of things, friendship. A great tale to curl up with of a winters evening; frequently discomforting, and building its strength seductively slowly.

Kurt Vonnegut survived the 1945 bombing and subsequent firestorm of Dresden as a POW by virtue of being imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse in the city. It took him another 24 years to adequately distil what he wanted to say about it into his classic Slaughterhouse Five. The slim volume contains aliens, and a novel take on time (and what a lifetime is) whereby he slides up and down his own timeline, frequently from one paragraph to the next. Other reviewers have noted its potential influence on the recent superb film Arrival, if not directly then possibly indirectly on the writer Ted Chiang whose short story the film is directly based upon. For all its strangeness and often apparent randomness, Vonnegut ultimately weaves a hard-hitting work that is one of the best anti-war books of all time.

And finally, as we reach the mid-point of the centenary of the supposed “war to end all wars”, two superb devastating volumes to aid the contemplation of man's (continuing) inanity:

Some Corner of a Foreign Field is, frankly, perfect. There are many much more weighty collections of Great War poetry, and the beauty and diminutive size of this volume may fool you into thinking it is relatively trivial, but the combination of expertly chosen poems (all necessarily short to fit on a single page) and opposing striking colour artwork from the time, achieve something even greater than the sum of its considerable parts - exceptionally moving.

Graphic novels have not been my natural territory, conjuring as they do, images of adolescent boys clutching dodgy magazines with improbably busty heroines on their covers. Yet the form is getting interesting, and so-called literary graphic novels for adults have in particular started to emerge. Taking the blending of artwork and words to create powerful messages (the previously mentioned book does this after all) to a new level is intriguing and exciting. The perfect example of what can be achieved is Dave McKean’s recent stunning Black Dog – The Dreams of Paul Nash. Nash was a war artist in both World Wars, creating iconic images from each, and his life experiences before, during and immediately after the Great War are used here as a framework for a dramatic exploration of what war does to men, and what personal traits and skeletons come to the fore during and after extreme situations (black dog is of course an allusion to depression). McKean pulls no punches in page after page of dark powerful artwork and comparatively light use of text (including a subtle passing quote from Vonnegut), constantly varying in innovative style, and delivers a formidable coherent whole that simply knocks you for six.

Here's to Good Reading...

 

See also:  Favourite Listening of 2016

Favourite Listening of 2015

It’s that time of year again, and 2015 has provided a particularly diverse and exciting range of new (to me) musical listening. My favourite half dozen albums of the past year are detailed below for your consideration, and hopefully enjoyment.

As an aside, my listening was briefly interrupted this year by the final expiry of my trusty hi-fi, after 23 years sterling service, as the amplifier died and the attached CD player made an increasingly alarming range of noises. So what to do? I’m as impressed as anyone by the clever new ways of listening to music; my credit card sized iPod containing 250 CDs-worth of music still amazes me, providing tolerable sound quality and a handy ability to be plugged into the car stereo, and networked and blue-toothed options abound. But still nothing comes close to a decent hi-fi with a couple of reasonably-sized high quality speakers, fed by good quality source material, for fully appreciating a piece of music in all its detail, mood and subtlety. It frequently even trumps live music when focussing purely on the music, as the latter is at the mercy of remarkably common dodgy sound systems, engineers and acoustics that can leave you deafened and/or puzzling over the lyrics or the crudeness of the sound.

Reports in recent years of the impending death of the CD in favour of the download, streaming, or some such internet-enabled nebulosity, left me wondering if it would still be sensible or even possible to invest in a replacement CD-based system. It became necessary to take a deep breath and plunge briefly into the rather disturbing world of hi-fi magazines (£200 for a 1m cable anyone?) to educate myself. The message I got from this little exercise was strangely reassuring; buried in many of the reviews of weird and wonderful digital audio devices at absurd prices was the frequent referral to CD-quality sound as the standard that many new devices still aspire to, but frequently don’t reach. And since I’ve also detected a renewed commitment to the issuing of new music of the sort that interests me on physical CD (not to mention my existing collection), I decided I was going to stick with it for as much of the next 23 years as possible. So a couple of shiny new boxes have been installed at moderate expense, the sound quality is even better than before, and I can get promptly back to thinking about the music rather than equipment (very much the opposite, I fear, to regular readers of those magazines - I believe it’s largely a male thing)...

 

The Gloaming

The Gloaming are the new band of the profoundly impressive Irish sean-nos singer Iarla O Lionaird that I was fortunate enough to see perform in great style in 2014 (see 19May2014 post). On this, the bands eponymous first album from 2014, the deeply moving Gaelic songs performed by Iarla on the first and final tracks would alone justify its purchase price, yet there is so much more to it than that. Indeed more than half the tracks of the highly coherent whole, more like a symphony of movements rather than a collection of disparate tracks, are instrumentals. And these, including both fiddle and guitar played respectively by the formidable Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, but also fine sensitive piano from Thomas Bartlett, are measured, consequential, and often semi-classical in range and flow, though always with a traditional Irish core that is occasionally allowed freer rein. Overall this is a serious, magnificent, timeless piece of work that will always reward the thoughtful listener.

Olivia Chaney: The Longest River

So at last the long awaited debut album arrives, and has to immediately run the gauntlet of the sky high expectations that have been given too much time to accumulate. On initial listen it’s a pretty good piece of work: crystalline, emotive, intricate, elegant and polished, with material centred on youthful growing pains that the recording label, witness promotional tours in Australia and the US but not the UK, have clearly decided is best suited to an offshore/transatlantic market. Good yet measured and caveated early press reviews however, prioritising timely publication perhaps, suggest that those high expectations have not been exactly met. After a couple of listens I tended to agree, there seemed no immediate wow-factor of the sort perhaps we were all expecting, knowing just how uniquely talented and engaging Chaney is - based on live performances and the 5-track EP of a couple of years ago. And yet. This album has refused to let go and has drawn me back again and again, and has grown in stature with every listen in a way I recall of the best of the likes of Joni Mitchell. I’ve finally had to admit that this is actually a very fine and often poignant work, with sufficient depth and quality to provide substantial and sustained rewards, and am left pondering whether some of the writers so keen to be first with a review would actually write something different given a later opportunity.

Attwenger: Spot

23 tracks in 40 minutes from Austria’s finest alpine duo delivers a quick-fire Germanic accordion/ drums/ synthesizer based object lesson in rampant creativity and sheer beguiling entertainment that leaves many other established artists looking comparatively shabby in those departments. See my previous (15Nov2015) post on this splendid, criminally unsung outfit for far more.

Stick In the Wheel: From Here

This is not a nice album. It’s brash, in-yer-face, Essex. Raw down-to-earth contemporary stories are mixed with almost brutal no-nonsense reworking of traditional folk standards for an effect that some of a nervous disposition might find offensive (“the antidote to twee” has been one description, “punk-folk” I might almost suggest). Somehow evocative of many current injustices and with an air of not-so-quiet desperation; but boy is it bracing! They still call it folk, but it seems to have blown guys in Arran jumpers with fingers in their ears to kingdom come. fRoots magazine Critics Poll Album of 2015. Awesome. Nuff said.

Moriarty: Epitaph

I picked this up while stranded at Orly airport, nudged by a vaguely remembered favourable review and, yes, its exquisite hardback book format. Moriarty are a well-established French-based band fronted by distinctive singer Rosemary Standley, who sing in English but have been strangely absent from British soil for some years. Whatever their origins, the bands core sound is, if anything, gusting towards American traditional (blues, ballads, hillybilly…), though always versatile and, as I’m discovering, always compelling. Epitaph indicates an album whose central theme is death, and how it is variously coped with, yet this is not the complete downer it might sound – Moriarty have a talent for originality, atmosphere and for getting the feet tapping, and spirits (pun intended) can’t be kept down for long. They also put a high value on craftsmanship, evident both in the sheer quality of their performances and their beautifully presented albums – Epitaph comes in a cloth-bound book full of intriguing and elegant drawings and hand-written lyrics.

The White Stripes: De Stijl

OK so this is catch-up time for the old codger who is just 15 years late on this one. Based on the well proven rule that 90% of current mainstream pop/rock music is mutton dressed in myriad different ways as lamb, I don’t really track it very much. This obviously runs the risk of missing the odd gem, which is a pretty good description of Jack and Meg White, alias The White Stripes. This is the first album of theirs I picked up, and I was immediately blown away by the power of rock music being performed with greater charisma, originality and sheer competence than I’ve heard it for a very long time. Superficially some of it may sound like much that has gone before, but this is somehow considerably superior to most, with some great classy musicianship, and very very addictive. It’s a while since I bought three albums by the same outfit in as many weeks, and it was also rather novel to be twice congratulated on my choice by young music shop staff; respect!

The White Stripes also have an irresistible ability to tease you into nudging the volume up, and up, and even to wonder if perhaps some slightly bigger speakers might be in order…  Hmmm, where exactly did I put those magazines?

Happy listening, however you do it.


See also: Favourite Listening of 2014 

Alpine Punk Anyone? The Genius of Attwenger (and John Peel)

I always struggle when someone asks me what sort of music I like. The honest if facetious sounding answer is good music, of any sort. This seems to run counter to a common expectation that you should instead name a limited number of widely recognised genres, bands or singers. Musical categories are something of a necessary evil; they provide a vocabulary for trying to describe what you hear and feel but can also act more negatively in reverse by creating perceived boundaries beyond which many fear to tread. This can be reinforced by the music media which often operates in a correspondingly compartmentalised fashion, with both media and public hence having to choose which individual “compartments” they are going to engage with, the natural consequence being that all else gets excluded.

I’ve just finished reading the hefty, addictive and cumulatively impressive tome Good Night and Good Riddance by David Cavanagh which documents the late great radio DJ John Peels’ approach to, and profound influence on, new music engagement and taste in Britain. 35 years of subversive and provocative broadcasting that miraculously survived BBC conservatism allowed Peel to encourage large numbers of new unconventional musicians, and steered listeners to the vastly enriched world thus created. However, Peel broadcasts were never easy listening; they were akin to panning for gold: often deeply uncomfortable, patience testing, and with large amounts of crap to get through. Yet you still knew you were in the best possible place to encounter genuinely life-changing nuggets, and so you did – everyone who stuck with it will have their own prizes.

A key part of Peels radio approach was a kind of shock tactic; in addition to being willing to play virtually anything on his shows, however obscure, rough or provocative, and of any genre, as long as it had some sort of (often well disguised to his listeners) merit to his ears, he made a particular point of sequencing tracks in the most jarring way possible. This left the listener all over the place, constantly trying to re-adjust; it was hard work and challenging – but I soon realised that was the point, to (often brutally) challenge his audience, to see if they would “get” yet another music possibility. In so doing they had to constantly question their current preferences and boundaries – mind expanding stuff.

All of which is a rather long-winded introduction to celebrating a rare new release by one of my favourite category-busting bands of the last twenty years. A largely unrecognised duo from Austria about which Peel in typically perfunctory style simply said “I have no idea what it’s all about, but I like the general noise a great deal”.

Attwenger

Attwenger comprise Markus Binder and Hans-Peter Falkner from Linz, Austria who on their emergence in the early 1990s had a highly distinctive, rapid, in-your-face sound, which could be broadly described as manically fast drums and accordion overlaid with inscrutable Germanic lyrics, often spoken rather than sung. It was sufficiently new, raw and engaging that it provoked the (possibly tongue-in-cheek) coining of a new genre – Alpine Punk, recognising its core building blocks lay in the traditional music and instruments of their homeland. Their initial 1991 release Most captures this style best, and is still a fun listen – with even the occasional yodel creeping in. Others such as the notable Bavarian band Hundsbuam Miserablige subsequently joined in and developed the theme further (their leader inspired by an Attwenger concert), and their eponymous first album from 1996 is also well worth a spin.

Early Attwenger were highly influential in firing up a whole Alpine New Wave and enjoyed considerable acclaim, locally at least, to the extent that it all got a bit much and they ceased to exist in 1995 to get a break from it all. Two years later however, they roared back with something very different, and this ability to move on with great originality and panache has proved to be one of their key assets. The 1997 release Song left the punk moniker well behind and hinted at how their longer term evolution would progress, to something far more sophisticated and interesting. Dominated by clubby repetitive trip-hop and jungle beats, centred around the synthesizer with only light-touch folk and traditional elements, Song broke very different ground with its small number of long mesmerising tracks. Yet it in turn was something of a transitional step, marking out new territory of interest, before inventively amalgamating this with the earlier more traditionally based style to arrive at a far more creative, varied, yet balanced and satisfying sound that gelled fully for the first time in 2002 on the album Sun, which took them to a whole new level and remains a firm favourite of mine.

Attwenger largely sing/speak in an Upper Austrian dialect that is beyond even many Bavarians, let alone a wider audience; a situation the duo use to advantage by treating the vocals more as another interesting sound source than an explicit source of meaning. But with each album from Sun onwards it’s got a lot more intriguing than that; wordplay has become a key part of their art, with careful positioning and emphasis of occasional words or phrases that have alternative meanings across several languages they create fascinating ambiguities and pulses of meaning (or possible meaning anyway) that jump out at the careful listener of a particular language in time with the music. It can all get quite beguiling.

 

This complex and absorbing style has developed and matured in unhurried fashion from Sun through the subsequent albums Dog (2005) and Flux (2011), to the very pleasing latest offering a couple of months ago, Spot. The latter is an object lesson in creativity and sophistication, with 23 diverse tracks nearly all under two and half minutes, showcasing a level of entertaining and playful inventiveness that most artists would give an arm for. Seek it or its predecessors out for a rewarding new musical experience ranging from the languid to the frenetic. Oh, and play it loud for greatest appreciation, this really isn’t music for half-measures.

Getting my first Attwenger albums in pre-internet times was a rather mysterious experience; sending cheques off to the sole UK distributers, the splendidly named Klang Records at the Tolkienesque address of Midgehole Road, Hebden Bridge in the deepest darkest Pennines. I had visions of a flea-ridden establishment like something from the slightly disturbing TV black comedy series The League of Gentlemen. They now have a clunky, rarely updated website of exquisitely obscure recordings – are they really still there I sometimes wonder?

Coincidentally I only recently discovered that klang is German for sound – so actually a rather boring name. Sometimes it’s better not to know; although such changes in perception with language are pure Attwenger!

 

Despite nearly 25 years of inspired music making Attwenger are hardly known in Britain and as such they epitomise the great music that is out there in the wider musical world that many would find exciting and rewarding if only they knew about it and could hear it for themselves. John Peel was a special and relatively lonely explorer and champion of new music on the national airwaves in his time, an impressive one-stop shop for those with sufficient open-minded hunger. A few others on the radio have subsequently picked up the baton to varying degrees, and arguably across a wider front, though generally with a lot less appetite for the truly experimental and half-formed. But the key now, in this digital era, is perhaps for each of us to develop that appetite, beyond any simplistic constraints of familiar artists or genres. The internet-enabled means for new musicians to put stuff out-there and for listeners to find it, with or without the help of intermediaries, means exciting and rewarding new music is literally at our fingertips if we want it enough to go looking. Maybe we just need to first hear that one fantastic piece of music that tells us just how good it can be…



The tip of the John Peel tribute iceberg