1. Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys – The Smashing Times
2. SuperHwy – Big Supermarket
3. Get Found Out – Publicity Department
4. Map Like a Leaf – Autocamper
5. Ivanhoe’s Twopence – The Fall
6. Roman Litter – Felt
7. Blue Shadows – Lower Plenty
8. Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine
9. Dreamhorse – Workhorse
10. Doggerland – Vehicle
11. Mariella – Khruangbin featuring Leon Bridges
12. Comet 4 – The Soundcarriers
13. Listen Here – Eddie Harris
14. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, Montreal Forum) – Bob Dylan
15. On Parade – Electrelane
16. Explosions – Devo
17. Teen Beat – Automatic
18. Year of the Books – The Green Child
19. Colour Television – Stereolab
20. Spike Island – Pulp
21. Baader Meinhof (Das Capital version) – Luke Haines
22. I Never Happened – Comet Gain
23. Trees – Pictureframes
London’s train network is undependable at the best of times – I reckon about one in three services are disrupted to some
extent. Accordingly, when I travel across town I err on the side of caution, which on this occasion meant I arrived in Hackney with plenty of time to spare. I went for a drink at The Cock Tavern, which was part of the plan anyway, but didn’t get on with the beer nor the crowds. With nearly an hour left to kill, I decided to dodge the showers and take refuge in the JD Wetherspoon across the road: Baxter’s Court.
Whatever you might think about JD Wetherspoon and its extravagantly coiffured founder and chairman Tim Martin, a pint there is about half the price it is anywhere else. For a lot of people, that's the difference between going out and not being able to afford to. Moreover, their pubs tend to be well run. What they aren't is pretty. Although quite tidy, Wetherspoon's pubs are generally stuck in a 1990s time warp. I say generally because sometimes they occupy grander buildings that were once something else, such as a bank, an old cinema or a post office. Baxter's Court is none of these things, it’s purpose built, and so you have wall-to-wall carpet, low ceilings, overly bright lights, fruit machines, and too many bar-high tables and chairs. (The best pubs in the 1990s were the ones that hadn't undergone any significant change since the 1970s, which is as true now as it was back then. See also cafes and motorway service stations.) So I didn’t stay long, dodged more showers on my way to the Moth Club, and readied myself for the support act.
I am guilty of not always paying supporting acts the respect they often deserve. Had the Cock Tavern been less busy and less keen on serving up obscure IPA, or if Baxter’s Court was more like Hamilton Hall in Liverpool Street, I may have missed The Smashing Times, which would have been a shame. ‘Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys’ was the third of sixteen tracks they managed to squeeze in before the headline act, and the first off of the album of the same name.
Publicity Department are equally obscure, the solo project of someone by the name of Sean Brook, who’s also in a band called Brunch. You can't buy any records or CDs, but there are cassettes. In some instances there’s no physical artefact at all, and yet it’s all available on Spotify. Quality music readily available from the most high profile audio streaming provider in the market and yet almost impossible to own on any tangible format. It's all there on Bandcamp, and I do use Bandcamp, but I'd rather buy a record, or at least a compact disc.
Autocamper are selling actual records. I know this because Monorail Music said so on their social media. Autocamper are from Manchester and appear to take inspiration from the sort of ‘indie pop’ you used to get a lot of in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Kind of like The Umbrellas, so perhaps it's making a comeback.
Satisfied that I'd now heard everything by The Fall up to and including the 1994 album Middle Class Revolt (see It's Raining Today) I decided to listen more closely to what they'd recorded since. Aside from compilation that would result – The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, Volume 4 – I was determined to add a track to this playlist, and ended going for 'Ivanhoe's Two Pence' from the 1998 CD single 'Masquerade'. Considering the alternatives, my choice may confound die-hard Fall fans. Steve Pringle describes it as ‘languid’, which is not meant as a criticism. It’s certainly one of Smith’s more laid-back vocal performances, complimenting the sampled film dialogue chuntering away in the background.
For my 50th birthday, The Wilkinsons presented me with a copy of Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson. It would be fair to describe Lawrence as something of an eccentric, and this eccentricity can often carry over into his music. Take 'Roman Litter' as an example: the breathy ‘heys’ after every third line of the verse, or the way he stretches out ‘all right’ at the end of the chorus. These are not usual inflections, and yet they’re what makes the song interesting. (Incidentally, in June I found myself standing very near to Lawrence at an Escape-ism gig downstairs at The Dome in Tufnell Park, which makes me think his reputation as a recluse may have been overstated.)
The Lower Plenty are another Australian band from Melbourne. ‘Blue Shadows’ is taken from their album No Poets, released in 2023, and reminds me of the Irish indie-pop band Catchers, who were active in the 1990s, so perhaps this type of stuff already has made a comeback?
I'm not convinced half the people who own Loveless by My Bloody Valentine ever listen to it, or if they even like it all that much. 'Sometimes' is fairly easy going but the rest of it is a wash of dissonant noise. Which is not say it’s a bad record, just that it requires a bit of effort. The group's first album, Isn't Anything, is more forgiving, at least by comparison. 'Cupid Come' reminds me of a more abrasive version of 'City Girl', a song Kevin Shields wrote for the film Lost in Translation, which I love.
More Australian music, this time from Adelaide. Workhorse are fronted by Harriet Fraser-Barbour, who cites Julee Cruise, Chris Isaak and Mazzy Star as influences, which are not bad influences to have. On 'Dreamhorse' I'm hearing The Handsome Family, so we’ve got that alternative country thing going on too.
Vehicle look to be in the same boat as Publicity Department. I wrote last year about how hard it was finding out anything about Vehicle, on account of their name, but there doesn't seem to be any physical product whatsoever. They even have an album out, entitled Widespread Vehicle, but it’s only available on Spotify or as a download from Bandcamp. I utilised both facilities, and in April I went to see them at the Sebright Arms just south of Hackney, but what I really want is an object I can actually hold. The gig was rather shambolic (technical issues, not the band's fault). They didn't play 'Doggerland' either, although they did finish with 'Uncle Roy Orbison'. I suspect the reason 'Doggerland' didn’t feature is because of its arrangement and Spector-ish production. That's the same reason you find it placed here, approaching the halfway mark, following on from the alternative country of Workhorse and before the laidback tones of ‘Mariella’ by Khruangbin.
I heard ‘Mariella’ down The London Apprentice, drinking with my Cornish friend during Sunday Service earlier in the year, and we then listened to it when I visited him in at his flat in Plymouth a few months later. I’m also fairly certain that The Florist played it in his van on the drive to Alabarracin in 2024. I’m not sure where The Soundcarriers came from. I’ve been aware of them for a while, maybe because they’re often compared to bands like Stereolab and Broadcast. ‘Comet 4’ suited the mood, and I needed something that could work alongside jazz.
The next morning, while getting ready to check out, my partner turned on the radio, which happened to be tuned to Jazz FM. That was fine by me, and so I drank my morning coffee to the sound of ‘Listen Here’ by the tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris.
Harris was known for playing an electric Varitone saxophone, developed by a company called Selmer. The Varitone – essentially an electronic amplifier – allows the user to manipulate the sound in a number of ways. The function that Eddie Harris liked was the ‘octamatic’ setting, which adds a pitch one octave lower to that emitted by the instrument itself. The effect is a full-bodied, humming bass sound. From what I can gather, jazz purists weren't keen on any of this and Harris's reputation suffered as a result, although he is more well regarded nowadays. 'Listen Here'
Antica Stuzzicheria
Because ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ is recorded live, I was unsure of where it should go on my playlist. As I often do (but not always) I found myself implementing Stanley Kubrick’s theory of non-submersible units. Whereas Kubrick typically split his films into six to eight narrative components, I usually go for four or five, depending on the length of the compilation. With regards to this one, the delineation between the first and second quarter isn’t so distinct – more of a gradual wind down, starting with the Lower Plenty and culminating with Khruangbin. As the year progressed, I’d amassed a number of more upbeat tracks that I realised would have to be grouped together in what would become the third segment. The question then was how to bridge over from the mellower tunes that comprise the second quarter to the upbeat ones that were to form the third. ‘Listen Here’ begins this process and ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ finishes it; while neither track has a particularly high tempo, they’re both more urgent than The Soundcarriers' tune that precedes them, but less so than what comes next.
In truth, I’m not sure if the transition works. ‘On Parade’ by Electrelane is all high energy, comparable to ‘Sisters’ by Cate le Bon, maybe with a bit of Kleenex/Liliput thrown in. The segue into Devo’s ‘Explosions’ isn’t perfect but works better. In any case, we’re now firmly into the playlists’ third non-submersible unit.
‘Explosions’ is from Devo’s fifth album, 1982’s Oh, No! It's Devo, which I wasn’t overly familiar with. That all changed in February, around the same time as that trip to Plymouth I alluded to, after I put together a Devo playlist to listen to on the journey. Which is apt because it was a girl from Plymouth who implored me to listen to Devo in the first instance, even if it did take me several years to heed her advice.
I saw Automatic play at 2022’s Wide Awake festival and liked them. I don’t think their second album, Excess, could have been out yet, because I only remember having listened to their first – Signal. Excess is an improvement on Signal. Their third album, Is it Now?, was released earlier in the year, but I’m still catching up. I’ve played a couple of 20-minute sets at The Sussex Arms in Twickenham this year, and ‘Teenbeat’ was one of the tunes I elected to play, which proved to be a success.
The Green Child are yet another band from Melbourne, Australia. Boomkat product review: ‘Originally the recording project of Raven Mahon (member of Grass Widow, Rocky) and Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Shutdown 66), The Green Child now boasts Shaun Gionis (Boomgates) on drums and Alex Macfarlane (who runs the label Hobbies Galore) on guitar and synth.’ You can begin to see how Spotify goes about its business. At 5 minutes and 58 seconds, and falling apart towards the end, this is the compilation’s climax, rounding off the third non-submersible unit.
Different Stereolab records evoke different times and different places. Mars Audiac Quintet reminds me of the summer of 1994, specifically the walk from my parents’ old house into Plymouth city centre. Emperor Tomato Ketchup recalls Hounslow, as does Refried Ectoplasm. Dots and Loops, the dive I lived in off Hanworth Road in 1996-7; Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and Aluminum Tunes, the poky flat my partner and I rented in Brentford. Will their most recent album, Instant Holograms on Metal Film, ever prompt me to think about St. Margarets and the apartment I’ve resided in for the last 20 years? I doubt it. My circumstances don’t fluctuate as much as they once did, and nothing’s really gone on this year to distinguish it from the last. Not even turning 50.
What may end being more firmly entrenched is the memory of seeing Stereolab playing at the Electric Brixton. Prior to the event I had a couple of drinks in the Trinity Arms and The Prince Albert – pubs I’d not been to before. I had been to the Electric Brixton, but only in its previous incarnation as the Brixton Fridge (to see The Fall in 1994) and it looked nothing then like it does now. Unfortunately, Stereolab didn’t see fit to play ‘Colour Television’ but they did ‘Household Names’, which they hadn't on any of the previous five times I saw them.
Another Britpop affiliated band with a new record out were Pulp. Pulp have fared better than many of their contemporaries, and it’s hard to imagine any of them producing an album that sounds so much like themselves without crossing over into pastiche or parody. If we overlook Jarvis's waning powers as a vocalist (which is understandable, given his age) 'Spike Island' could have been recorded 25 years ago. This is not to say that it sounds dated, just that Pulp's music hasn't dated much, if at all.
Pinakothek der Moderne
Comet Gain had a new record out: Letters to Ordinary Outsiders. It’s a grower, but the songs themselves are tied together by way of a series of spoken-word vignettes and sampled dialogue. In other words, the tunes don’t lend themselves to being put on miscellaneous compilations. No bother, because in the Comet Gain binge that followed I came across ‘I Never Happened’: 'a Rock and Roll Hymn to all the failed aspirations and the nobody feelings as we scream helplessly into the void in the busy streets where we disappear [sic].'
That was supposed to be the final track, but then a band called Pictureframes released an EP entitled Event on the Downs. Again, there’s no artefact, just a platform on Bandcamp. ‘Trees’ sounds a bit like the mellower end of Yo La Tengo, but what really interested me was the instrumental coda that kicks in after about three minutes, reminiscent of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac – maybe ‘Dragonfly’. Let’s hope they, and Vehicle and Publicity Department, can get the support they need to press some actual records.
[Listen to here.]
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