For turbulent times: tributes, dire warnings, forward-driving art punk and backward-yearning nostalgia.
“GOLDFRAPP MOVES BACK TO FRUITY ROBO-DISCO ODDNESS.”
1 LAMBCHOP WHEN YOU WERE MINE
Where the FLOTUS soothsayers take Prince’s heartbroken new wave gem from 1980, slow it down and let Kurt Wagner mush-mouth the lyrics in almost dubular style, finding a soulful poignancy and wistfulness and inferring a deep poetic wisdom. YouTube reveals Bob Mould covering the same song at First Avenue in Minneapolis the week Prince died. Two great tributes from across the musical spectrum assure cosmic significance. Find it: Soundcloud/YouTube
2 ANOHNI PARADISE
Reunited with producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, Anohni’s new ecocide lament is fittingly downtempo, agitated by footwork beats and ending with a sucking vortex of distortion. Remix this, Guetta. Find it: Soundcloud
3 RAY DAVIES POETRY
Recorded with The Jayhawks, and from the long-awaited Americana album, a bittersweet roots rocker that finds Ray wondering, despite the market satisfying every conceivable consumer need, where has the depth and meaning gone, eh? Find it: YouTube
4 DELTA 7 THE JUNGLE
From Eastbourne, a seven-piece whose members have various learning disabilities bring focused tribalistic punk-funk action. Are they pursued by some unidentified threat or just doing it for fun? “You feel like you want to fit in with everyone else,” muses one in the short explanatory film, We Rise, “but not everyone’s the same.” Find it: YouTube
5 BOB DYLAN I COULD HAVE TOLD YOU
A Carl Sigman and Jimmy Van Heusen song first recorded by Sinatra in 1953, here we find Bob once again in a country jazz reverie, singing of the eternal verities of cheating and heartbreak. From the new LP Triplicate. Find it: YouTube
6 RHODA DAKAR DOLPHINS
Mixing reggae, jazz and soul, the ex-Bodysnatcher and Special AKA-er covers Fred Neil’s song of ecology, the heart’s longing and waiting for world peace, in sizzling style. From her EP The LoTek Four Volume 1. Find it: Pledgemusic
7 GOLDFRAPP ANYMORE
After the agrarian moves of her last few albums, it’s back to the fruity robo-disco oddness of Supernature and Black Cherry with this teeth-bearing groover for riding into nightclubs on a horse. Find it: YouTube
8 STONE FOUNDATION (FEAT. PAUL WELLER) YOUR BALLOON IS RISING
Neo-vintage soul, with Weller revisiting his Style Council days with Memphis-meets-Midlands friends. From the Weller-produced Street Rituals LP, which features William Bell and Bettye LaVette. Find it: YouTube
9 MARK EITZEL MR HUMPHRIES
A poignant rock tribute to the late John Inman’s Are You Being Served? character. “Millions loved him,” laments Eitzel, adding, “You can’t calm the savage beast but you can make him much less of a bore.” Find it: Hey Mr Ferryman (DECOR)
10 KRIS KRISTOFFERSON JODY AND THE KID
Unreleased track from Kristofferson’s 1997 album of de Nashville-ised catalogue gems The Austin Sessions. A sweetly nostalgic 1968 song about family, mortality, love and letting go. Find it: Rhino Soundcloud
11 FAITH EVANS & THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. NYC (FT. JADAKISS)
Taster from long-awaited Biggie-from-beyond LP The King And I, it salutes New York in style, ie, plenty of ’93 scratching and rhyming. Find it: YouTube
12 CRYSTAL FAIRY CRYSTAL FAIRY
Melvins/Mars Volta supergroup fronted by Le Butcherettes singer Teri Gender-Bender whose cabaret swish invigorates Omar Rodriguez and Buzz Osborne’s sludge-prog guitars. Find it: YouTube
13 JARVIS COCKER AND CHILLY GONZALES TEARJERKER
Pulp’s acrylic confessor and the reinvented piano impressionist collaborate on a sombre put-down song from their LP Room 29, a short story collection centred around a piano in a hotel room in Hollywood’s golden age. Find it: www.room29.tv
14 PUSSY GALORE PIG SWEAT
Bracing, farcical 85 seconds of smashed guitars, beyond-basic drums and smokers’ cough blues hollering, which trip over each other before coming to a sudden stop. From 1987 LP Right Now! Find it: YouTube
15 THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ BILLY BRAGG
Could’ve filled this list with Trump protest songs, but let’s settle for the Barking bard’s audacious Dylan update: “Martin Luther King is spinning in his grave to see a bigoted bully taking the stage”. Find it: YouTube
16 PINS AND IGGY POP AGGROPHOBE
Mr Osterberg does louche, lisping narrative over a track from the Manchester group’s Bad Thing EP. The contrast between his black-hearted noir cool and Pins’ hypnotic, ping-pop melodic hooks and swirls is an unforeseeable triumph. We await his shoegaze reinvention. Find it: Spotify
17 INSECURE MEN ROXETTE
Fat White Family’s Saul Adamczewski covers the Dr. Feelgood great on a home organ and a reverb unit. He’s also done covers of The Nips, Van Morrison and Springsteen in “patheticist” style, ie, mangled lift music for drinkers of bogus “screen wash” vodka. Find it: Soundcloud
18 WIRE SHORT ELEVATED PERIOD
Economical yet rich, forward-driving art-punk – which can’t help but suggest their late-’70s output – from a group who seem to gain momentum the further they get away from ’77 year zero.
Find it: YouTube
19 SLOWDIVE SLOW ROVING
With a title like this, ’gaze heads could be forgiven for imagining a cloud of reverb and dry ice rolling over the stage of the Windsor Old Trout. Instead, it’s quick off the blocks, gauzy and melodic, as it heads into wider reaches of space.
Find it: YouTube
20 THE TRINARY SYSTEM DAVE DAVIES
A new trio for Roger Miller (Mission Of Burma). Their EP Amplify Amplifiers opens with a snarling garage nod to the younger Kink’s influence on MoB’s razored-amp electric fizz (“He kinda helped me go crazy”). Find it: Amplify Amplifiers EP/Bandcamp