LINER NOTES: IT BEATS FOR YOU [2015]

1.    I Forgot to be Your Lover – William Bell

2.    Wedding Dress – Pentangle

3.    Jungle Fever – Chakachas

4.    Pretty Thing – Bo Diddley

5.    It Beats 4 U – My Morning Jacket

6.    Vad Hände Med Dem? – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

7.    Ping Pong Affair – The Slits

8.    My Rush – #1 Dads

9.    Light Flight – Pentangle

10.  Can You Get to That – Funkadelic

11.  Paint it Black – Africa

12.  If Not Tomorrow Maybe Some Day – Daniel Bortz

13.  Huarache Lights – Hot Chip

14.  Toxic Love – Popof

15.  Mr Noah – Panda Bear

16.  Need You Now – Hot Chip
17.  I’ll Never Cry for Another Boy (Rehearsal) – The Majestic Arrows

Comprised of just 17 tracks, 2015’s It Beats For You is my shortest compilation (not including The Hanworth of Heroes, which is a fabrication). I had been in two minds whether or not to continue into 2016 and create another biennial edition, but decided against it. I’d rather my playlists were on the short side rather than unwieldily epic.

I was still taking inspiration from Spotify except there was someone new feeding into it: a lovely Australian guy with an eclectic musical palate. Over time, this would affect the sort of tunes that appeared on Discover Weekly, which probably made for a more interesting assortment. 2014’s The Big Nod had been too narrow in scope to ever be a favourite of mine, and I looked forward to shaking things up a bit.

I don’t think we have the antipodean to thank for William Bell’s 'I Forgot to be Your Lover'. It could have just as easily been derived from the soul music I occasionally put on at work. Regardless, it’s a nice way to begin this playlist. This song would also turn up from time to time over at the St Margarets Tavern, who were more than likely playing Spotify playlists of their own, contrived to create a mellow vibe for their clientele to drink to.

I’ve referred previously to American country, folk and psychedelic music by way of The Byrds, Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, and so on. There was also a distinctively British interpretation of the genre manifest in groups such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle, The Strawbs and the associated Canterbury scene, which came later, morphing into what would become known as progressive rock. In its earlier stages, British folk rock took inspiration from American country and folk music, the blues, psychedelia, traditional English folk music, as well as the improvisational tendencies of jazz, which is maybe why Fairport Convention's first album reminded me of Jefferson Airplane. (Their fourth, Liege & Lief, is supposed to be their masterpiece, but I never got that far.) Pentangle sound to my ear quite different, and the various listening habits of their members may explain why. Double-bass player Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox were grounded in jazz, guitarist John Renbourn was interested in the more traditional elements of folk, whereas Bert Jansch had a taste for blues. How that all works itself out I couldn’t tell you, although it sounds to my ears that 'Wedding Dress' exhibits more the influence of traditional folk music whereas 'Light Flight' reveals the rhythm section’s fondness for jazz.

(The/Les/Los) Chakachas were a group of Latin-soul studio musicians, from Belgium of all places, responsible for this saucy number. 'Jungle Fever' was a big hit in the US but was banned by the BBC soon after its UK release. It featured in the film Boogie Nights and has been sampled a number of times, normally within the realm of hip hop.

Bo Diddley is often cited as one of the originators of rock and roll, alongside Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Bo Diddley is probably the classiest guy among that lot, and there’s a groove to 'Pretty Thing' that you might struggle to find in the music of his co-conspirators; signs that maybe he remained closer to the source, cleaving more keenly to the blues. 'Pretty Thing' was released in 1955, and a mention should also go out to the guy playing the harmonica, Lester Davenport.

Discover Weekly does not discriminate, and nor do I. The transition from blues driven rock and roll to the space-rock of My Morning Jacket’s 'It Beats 4 U' works surprisingly well. This was what I was missing out on in 2005 by not listening to contemporary music, other than The Bees and Kings of Leon. 'It Beats 4 U' would have sat comfortably on the previous year’s playlist too, maybe alongside the Besnard Lakes or Papercuts.

Despite my enthusiasm for The Brian Jonestown Massacre compilation Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective, which I’d seized upon in 2007, the only other record of theirs I’d purchased was Give It Back! in 2011. I’d lost track of what they were up to, but in 2014 they released their 13th studio album, which had found its way onto Spotify. 'Vad Hände Med Dem?' sounds like The 13th Floor Elevators on uppers, which, knowing Anton Newcombe, could well have been the intention.

When I’d included The Slits on 2011-12’s The World’ll Be OK I’d opted for the obvious with 'Typical Girls'. Listening to them now, it struck me that 'Ping Pong Affair' was the more interesting song. The drums jerks back and forth, and Viv Albertine’s vocals turn in unusual directions. It’s also a clear indicator of the influence that reggae and ska had on British new wave and punk.

#1 Dads are an Australian, alternative band that weren’t introduced to me by the Australian work colleague with a taste for alternative bands. 'My Rush' is taken from the 2014 album About Face. The group appear to be defunct, possibly because they were never more than a side-project anyway, devised by a guy called Tom Iansek who more usually plays in a band called Big Scary.

Pentangle again, time signatures jumping all over the place, vocalist Jacqueline McShee doing an excellent job. I’ve already commented on how the influence of jazz makes itself known on 'Light Flight' and will leave it at that.

NYC

Turning 40 isn’t as bad as turning 30. Turning 30 draws to a close a period of abandon and of avoided responsibility that characterises one’s twenties in a psychological, tectonic shift that can induce mild panic, even angst. Such qualities have more traditionally been associated with reaching 40 – the archetypal mid-life crisis – but these days it's more an excuse for a party.

Or a holiday. Back to New York City. Funkadelic have no specific connection with the place – they based themselves in Detroit – but they sit nicely in it. Yet I came by 'Can You Get to That' at work, via Spotify, possibly because I’d been feeding their algorithm James Brown and The J.B.’s. It’s a very pleasing and fortuitous thing, then, that rather than reminding me of work, Funkadelic makes me think of New York.

When I first heard Africa’s cover version of 'Paint it Black' it took me a while to discern what song it actually was. This is because I was in the St. Margaret’s Tavern at the time and there was ambient noise to contend with, and also because their version is a departure from the original. Further, so often has this tune been covered that it wasn't easy finding out who was responsible in this instance, but it’s from an album called Music From “Lil Brown” released in 1968. Africa themselves were formed from the ashes of a number of rhythm 'n' blues backing bands who’d obviously had enough of it and wanted to cut loose playing a sort of Latin fusion of psychedelic funk.

The tracks that follow were all suggested by Spotify under the influence, I suspect, of The Australian. There were some things that The Australian used to play that didn't do it for me: Australian hip hop, The Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age (although I suppose Songs for the Deaf provides the occasional moment). Electronic stuff such as 'If Not Tomorrow Maybe Some Day' by Daniel Bortz, on the other hand, I liked. Or maybe The Australian had nothing to do with it and Spotify just shoehorned it in there.

I am generally indifferent towards Hot Chip but the single 'Huarache Lights' strongly appealed to me. I’m not sure exactly why, because from what I know of them it doesn’t represent much of a musical departure, but I was reminded of the band Clor, or a more upbeat Tom Vek. An improvement, as opposed to a change, the drive towards innovation is no longer the main imperative.

More instrumental music: the techno flavoured 'Toxic Love' by a French DJ/producer called Popof, taken from the Summer on Mars EP released in 2008. I can take it or leave it, but it compliments what comes before and after and helps carry the final quarter of my compilation towards its conclusion.

Panda Bear – aka Noah Benjamin Lennox – is an experimental sort of artist, experimenting mostly with synthesisers, samplers and sequencers. 'Mr Noah' is a violent tune that incorporates the barking of dogs, but the vocal is pleasant enough, completely at odds with the canine cacophony that persists in the background.

Hot Chip's 'Need You Now' is a smoother, slightly mellower effort than 'Huarache Lights'. It samples Sinnamon’s 'I Need You Now', which is tagged as post-disco but could also be identified as a precursor to house. You shouldn’t read anything into this conspicuous enthusiasm for Hot Chip, and electronic pop music generally, because it would never have come to pass if it wasn’t for where I was working, and has since dissipated.

In August my partner and I took ourselves off to Malaga, which intentionally coincided with the finish of Stage 3 of that year’s Vuelta Espana and unintentionally with the Feria de Málaga. Peter Sagan won the stage, while the Feria brought Spanish holiday makers to the coast and teenage drinkers onto the streets.

In October my bouldering buddies and I drove to Fontainebleau in France to climb up rocks and were blessed with fine weather for the three days that we were there. Climbing on actual rocks is a different proposition from climbing indoors – technically more difficult, physically more demanding and sometimes scary. But the rolling forests and gentle valleys of Fontainebleau are a joy in themselves, and the post-climb beers felt well deserved.

I bought a steel bike with integrated shifters to replace the one I'd ridden from London to Brighton, which only had six gears and was slightly too small for me. In December, my Cornish friend and I met for our annual Dickensian pub crawl, a tradition we'd initiated in 2010, but none of our invited guests turned up.

The version of 'I’ll Never Cry for Another Boy' by The Majestic Arrows is a rehearsal, which gives this soul tune an almost folksy feel. It’s a deliberately off-kilter finish to a compilation that was running out of steam. Although I’d succeeded in my remit to diversify musically, it had been a bit of an effort to find material good enough for inclusion. Maybe I hadn’t looked hard enough, or had been distracted by my vacations, cycling concerns, festive pub crawls, and turning 40.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE BIG NOD [2014]

1.    Montparnasse – Floating Points

2.    People of the Sticks – The Besnard Lakes

3.    Junebouvier – Whirr

4.    The Big Nod – Soft Walls

5.    Sand Dance – Temples

6.    Stoned and Starving – Parquet Courts

7.    Mum’s the Word – Chain & The Gang

8.    I Miss Your Bones – Hospitality

9.    No Need for a Leader – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

10.  Fat Lady of Limbourg – Dirt Dress

11.  Won’t Remember my Name – Soft Walls

12.  The Upsetter – Metronomy

13.  Passing Out Pieces – Mac Demarco

14.  Pretty Machines – Parkay Quarts

15.  John Brown – Papercuts

16.  Far from Any Road – The Handsome Family

17.  Pulling on a Line – Great Lake Swimmers

18.  Would That Not be Nice – Divine Fits

19.  Fever Boy – Femme

20.  Pseudologia Fantastica – Foster the People

21.  What a Pleasure – Beach Fossils

22.  Talking Backwards – Real Estate

23.  Re. Stacks – Bon Iver

24.  Rocky Mountain High – John Denver

25.  Hellhole Ratrace – Girls

26.  Winter Sundays – Your Headlights are On

Fed up with working peripatetically, I accepted a full-time position with an engineering firm in Kennington. I only bother to mention this because of the impact it had upon my listening habits. It was all to do with Spotify and this associated thing called Discover Weekly, which we listened to while we worked. It’s basically a playlist derived from an algorithm that tries to predict what you might like to listen to based on what you’ve previously searched for, and it is surprisingly astute. What I used to do was write down in a draft email the names of songs that I quite liked and then send them to my personal email address to listen to more carefully back home. Not all tracks stood up to closer inspection, but judging by the length of this playlist many did.

Floating Points is the name that neuroscientist Sam Shepherd records under, and he can count snooker legend Steve Davis as a fan. 'Montparnasse' is 11 minutes’ worth of down-tempo electronica, and not the sort of thing I’d usually use to kick off any compilation. It is one of the few tracks here that recalls a specific memory outside of environment in which it was discovered: waiting for the train at Putney after bouldering at Urban Ascent (now The Climbing Hangar) in Parsons Green. At around 8 minutes and 45 seconds in, the shuffling deep-house of 'Montparnasse' sabotages itself. The drumbeat vanishes, the track plays out to an ambient, Orbital-esque kind of refrain, and then just stops. This is how I can get away with following it up with 'People of the Sticks' by Canadian band The Besnard Lakes. It all plays out like the beginning of a James Bond film. 'Montparnasse' scores the opening action sequence and 'People of the Sticks' is the official theme, whence the credits role. That’s not how I intended it; the analogy suggested itself after the fact.

The Besnard Lakes could be described as post-rock with a touch of shoegaze, and so too could 'Junebouvier' by Whirr, who hail from the San Francisco Bay Area. Their contribution to my playlist is more urgent, with the bass guitar playing a more integral part. Is this what the kids had been listening to since I’d been away? Were those in the know also digging the Soft Walls? Information was scarce. I wanted to buy their LP but couldn’t find it anywhere (No Time, released July 2014). The Soft Walls sound like what might have happened if the John Cale-era Velvet Underground had decamped to Marrakech with Brian Eno, although a simile like that can lead your imagination almost anywhere. There’s also a North-West African vibe going on in 'Sand Dance' by Temples, a band that could be more generally described as psychedelic. Listening to it now, the shift between these two songs is too abrupt for my liking. Parquet Courts’ 'Stoned and Starving' imagines what the Velvet Underground might have sounded like if they’d invited John Cale to contribute towards Loaded.

I’d not heard of any of these bands before, let alone the individual tracks, and was pleasantly surprised that music like this was being made. Not that I had my ear to the ground, but artists such as Alt-J, The War on Drugs and Warpaint were getting airplay, so why not Soft Walls?

I hadn’t purchased a Chain & The Gang record since 2009’s Down With Liberty… Up With Chains!. I’m not sure why but I only found out about 2011’s Music’s Not For Everyone a year or so after its release, whereas 2012’s In Cool Blood completely passed me by. Then in May 2014, Chain & The Gang played at The Dome in Tufnell Park (supported by Comet Gain) to promote the release of their latest album, Minimum Rock N Roll, which I subsequently purchased after the gig.

More Spotify. 'I Miss Your Bones' by New York band Hospitality sounds a bit like The Breeders, which is all you need to know. At work, once we’d had enough of Discover Weekly, members of staff would take it in turns playing their personal preferences. I took the opportunity to explore further the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and selected their track 'No Need for a Leader' for inclusion on this compilation.

'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' by Dirt Dress is a cover of a Brian Eno tune. I only became aware of this just now, literally before writing that last sentence, after rummaging around on the internet looking for something to say about Dirt Dress. There’s not much information out there, which suggests they’re no longer active, but their raucous take on 'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' is certainly equal to Eno’s slower, slightly sinister original.

Another contribution from the Soft Walls, and probably the better of the two, 'Won’t Remember My Name' sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain reinterpreting 'All Tomorrow’s Parties' by the Velvet Underground, maybe off the back of a particularly heavy session.

Metronomy are on a bit of a downer too, but of a different kind. 'Why you giving me a hard time tonight?' asks the protagonist in 'The Upsetter', presumably to the object of his affection. I’m not sure of the song’s precise meaning but hearts have obviously been broken, as the wistful guitar solo that plays the song out attests.

'Passing Out Pieces' by Mac DeMarco is a weird tune. A discordant keyboard hammers out a discomfiting melody while Mac ponders the price of following his chosen profession. The video is even weirder. Mr Wilkinson and one our bouldering buddies (let's call him The Florist on account of his profession) went to see him play live, and they rated the experience very highly.

Parquet Courts again, except this time they’re referring to themselves as Parkay Quarts. Due to a combination of familial and scholarly commitments, the rhythm section didn’t contribute much to the album Content Nausea, which explains the nomenclatural reconfiguration. 'Pretty Machines' harks back to The Strokes at the start of their career, while again sounding a lot like Loaded-era Velvet Underground.

'John Brown' by Papercuts was released in 2007, which goes to show how Spotify’s Discover Weekly isn’t all to do with pushing new music onto the listener. I could have done with something like this in 2007 – indie-folk before it went mainstream. This also applies to 'Far from Any Road' by The Handsome Family, which dates back even further to 2003. I didn’t realise at the time, but the reason this song was probably doing the rounds was because it was being used as the theme song for HBO’s Gothic crime drama True Detective. It exhibits more of an alternative-country sound than the Papercuts’ track, but the terms ‘country’ and ‘folk’ are often interchangeable. 'Pulling on a Line' (2009) by Canadian folk rock band the Great Lake Swimmers occupies the same ballpark. You can see from this how Spotify does its business.

My enthusiasm for my place of work was already beginning to wane. The managing director, although a nice man, worried too much about things he needn’t have worried about, which meant I was kept on a tight leash. This is a common affliction among managers. They are control freaks by nature, and probably need to be. I also hadn’t taken a holiday in a long while, which was put right when I flew to Valencia with my partner for a long weekend towards the end of the summer, providing the perfect antidote to what would be the coolest August in 21 years, as well as one of the wettest.

This paled into insignificance when set against the grave illness of our friend from North Yorkshire. It didn’t end well – life is a seedy business at times. What can you do, other than manage one’s own sense of terror. Maybe that’s why I’m bothering to write any of this: to deny my mortality, or to overcome it – my own memento mori.

Divine Fits was the result of a collaboration between Britt Daniel from Spoon and Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade that spawned 2012’s A Thing Called Divine Fits. 'Would That Not Be Nice' is a piece of slightly polished, slightly jagged alternative rock with a strong melody.

Femme (real name Laura Bettinson) released the single 'Fever Boy' in late 2013. I can’t understand why it wasn’t a massive hit. You might call it ‘alternative dance’, comparable to music made by people like M.I.A. and Santigold.

When Foster the People broke through with the single 'Pumped Up Kicks' in 2010-2011 I wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t stand the overly jolly bass line, nor the treatment of the lead vocal which had been synthesized in some way. For a while, I mistakenly thought the song was called Pumped Up Kids and that it related to children who were into bodybuilding. After realising my error I then assumed it to be about trainers. It kind of is, but not in a celebratory sense: it’s about kids wearing kicks having to run for their life from a psychotic adolescent carrying a gun. All this aside, 'Pseudologia Fantastica' is from the group’s second album, Supermodel, released in 2014, and has been described by one critic as ‘psychedelic dance-pop’ and by another as a ‘psychedelic, shoe-gazey wig-out’. You decide.

Beach Fossils were a band that I always intended to follow up on, but I never got around to it. Maybe I will now. The reason for this is that their song 'What a Pleasure' (taken from their 2011 EP What a Pleasure) reminded me of some of the bands signed to Sarah Records – The Springfields perhaps.

Released as a single in January 2014, 'Talking Backwards' by Real Estate also evokes the spirit of Sarah, but this time it’s the Field Mice that comes to mind. The Florist likes this song, and it makes me think of driving in his van back from Bermondsey after a session at the Biscuit Factory, or even down to Fontainebleau for a climbing holiday in 2015.

Valencia

Now for something altogether gloomier: 'Re. Stacks' by Bon Iver. All I knew regarding Bon Iver was that their principle songwriter, Justin Vernon, had a beard. That’s still pretty much all I know about them, which doesn’t in any way diminish my enthusiasm for 'Re. Stacks'. It concerns Vernon’s gambling habits, although the bigger picture is that he was also in the process of surmounting a number of personal obstacles. 'Re. Stacks' is a folkish sort of tune and so opens the door for 'Rocky Mountain High' by John Denver, even if it does come from a different mental place.

Did you know that in the USA there’s such a thing as state songs? Moreover, sometimes a state may have more than one, as is the case with Colorado, whose state songs are 'Where the Columbines Grow' by A J Fynn, and – you’ve guessed it – 'Rocky Mountain High' by John Denver. Under normal circumstances I might have drawn a line here and finished on a (Rocky Mountain) high, but Discover Weekly had other ideas.

'Hellhole Ratrace' by Girls would have made for a great climax. It’s a slow burner lasting all of 6 minutes and 56 seconds. The sucker punch comes at 3 minutes 45, where an electric guitar kicks in and singer Christopher Owens proceeds to plead the following lines four times over:

But I don't want to cry my whole life through,

Yeah I wanna do some laughing too,

So come on, come on, come on, come on and laugh with me.

And I don't want to die without shaking up a leg or two,

Yeah I wanna do some dancing too,

So come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me.

It pains me to hear people say that they don’t like this or that song because they find it depressing. This sentiment will often be lazily directed towards artistes like The Smiths, R.E.M. or Leonard Cohen. What they really mean is that such music demands too much of their attention and that they can’t be bothered to listen to the actual words. All they’re reacting to are minor chords, a slower tempo, or a lugubrious vocal – the lyrical content could veritably be triumphalist.

I don’t know whether 'Winter Sundays' by Norwegian band Your Headlights are On is supposed to be sad or not, although you’d think so given the title. Whatever the sentiment, it is not depressing but a thing of beauty, and it's where I draw my line.

[Edit: Turns out that the lyrics to 'Winter Sundays' are based upon the poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, which is indeed rather sad. It follows that the song is sad too, although by meddling with the final line the poem's actual meaning has been diminished.]

[Listen to here.]