2022: Top Ten

10. Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful

We are at a point when every new Spiritualized album could be their last. That is an uncomfortable thought. Having said that, if Everything Was Beautiful is the end (and it does seem likely) then this is a proper farewell. From the sweet singalong "Always Together With You" to the epic closer "I'm Coming Home Again", this is equal parts noisy beauty and beautiful noise. A masterful album.

Best song: "I'm Coming Home Again"

9. Built To Spill - When The Wind Forgets Your Name

Just do not let a bad cover get in the way of a good album, and you will be all right. Built To Spill's latest is quietly brilliant. Shimmering melodies, controlled guitar outbursts and the childish whimsy of Doug Martsch's voice. I think this should rank among Built To Spill's best ever albums.

Best song: "Comes A Day"

8. Ezra Furman - All Of Us Flames

All Of Us Flames is a hodgepodge of styles, moods and even sound quality, but I would say that it all works to the album's advantage. Ezra Furman is such a great songwriter that the music works whether we are talking about anthemic rockers ("Throne"), lo-fi bedroom pop ("Ally Sheedy In The Breakfast Club") or confessional acoustic balladry ("Come Close").

Best song: "Lilac And Black"

7. Alela Diane - Looking Glass

To me, Alela Diane just sounds timeless. Time and time again she offers the perfect escape with that voice and the wistful yet elated atmosphere of her albums. Which, however, would not mean as much without Alela's consistently great and nuanced songwriting. Looking Glass effortlessly switches from piano to orchestration to acoustic guitar and it all works beautifully. "Dream A River" is something else.

Best song: "Dream A River"

6. Alex Cameron - Oxy Music

First of all, a confession is in order: in spring and early summer, I was downright obsessed with this album. I could not get enough of its clever synth pop that revealed songwriting of such depth that made everything else pale in comparison. The wit of "Cancel Culture"? The chorus of "Sara Jo"? The lyrics of "Best Life"? The coda of "Oxy Music"? This is genius stuff, and the odd thing is that I had never really cared for Alex Cameron before he released this album.

Best song: "Dead Eyes"

5. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia

As ever with Fontaines D.C., their latest is a tasteful and impeccably realised album. Skinty Fia opens with a bubbling bass guitar and an Irish chant and just grows and builds incessantly before becoming the band's signature statement. However, they managed to better it with the closing "Nabokov" which is all attitude, balls and charisma. In between, it is the usual deal, literate and propulsive rock music with an occasional accordion thrown in for good measure.

Best song: "Nabokov"

4. Florence + The Machine - Dance Fever

Once again, I had never been convinced by Florence Welch before the sweeping chant in the second half of "King" really got to me. And all of a sudden, Dance Fever won me over. With the understated beauty of "Morning Elvis", with the protean "Choreomania", with the charming menace of "Daffodil", with the instant pop classic "Free" - how could it not?..

Best song: "Free"

3. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Above

While I thought their debut was a little overhyped, there was nothing wrong with Ants From Above. It is both challenging and oddly accessible, it features complex arrangements and magnificent melodies (if you are looking for instant gratification, try the chorus of "Chaos Space Marine"). The album is sometimes sparse, sometimes abundant and it never really lets up (the twelve-plus minute epic that closes the album holds your attention all the way through). Ants From Above is like a very intense lover whom you really love.

Best song: "Concorde"

2. Kiwi Jr. - Chopper

There is a slight concern that Black Country, New Road take themselves a little too seriously. No such problem here. Kiwi Jr. do nothing else but write some of the most exciting and irresistible melodies in music today. If the synth line that propels "Unspeakable Things" leaves you cold, check your pulse. Chopper is tuneful, clever, charismatic - and, last but not least, it is great fun.

Best song: "The Extra Sees The Film"

1. Luke Haines & Peter Buck - All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out

A sprawling no-prisoners-taken double LP that is also the greatest collection of Luke Haines's songs in years (not that he has ever released a bad album). The first side is mostly an onslaught of stomping, glammed-up, ear-splitting rockers and the second side is a diverse pop set from one of the greatest living songwriters. However, it is the three-song punch in the middle ("When I Met God", "Minimalist House Burns Down", "Exit Space") that convinced me that this was far and away the best album of 2022. 

Best song: "Minimalist House Burns Down"

Bonus: 70 Years of Songs

Pop music did not exactly start in 1953 but that is the farthest that my modest knowledge of it goes. Which makes it 70 years. To celebrate this, here is my list of the greatest songs year by year. From 1953 to 2022, from Big Mama Thornton to Florence Welch. Sometimes the choice was agonisingly difficult (like preferring "Sunny Goodge Street" to "Sinnerman" for 1965) but overall I would say I did not lose sleep over it.

1953. "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton

1954. "Sh-Boom" by The Chords

1955. "Thirteen Women" by Bill Haley & The Comets

1956. "Downbound Train" by Chuck Berry

1957. "Peggy Sue" by Buddy Holly

1958. "Rumble" by Link Wray

1959. "Sligo River Blues" by John Fahey

1960. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" by The Shirelles

1961. "(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame" by Elvis Presley

1962. "Tous les Garçons et les Filles" by Françoise Hardy

1963. "Girl From The North Country" by Bob Dylan

1964. "She's Not There" by The Zombies

1965. "Sunny Goodge Street" by Donovan

1966. "I'm Only Sleeping" by The Beatles

1967. "(Do I Figure) In Your Life" by Honeybus

1968. "Summertime" by Big Brother & The Holding Company

1969. "Candy Says" by The Velvet Underground

1970. "Waiting For The Sun" by The Doors

1971. "Jesus Was A Crossmaker" by Judee Sill

1972. "Reelin' In The Years" by Steely Dan

1973. "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" by Roxy Music

1974. "The End Of The Rainbow" by Richard & Linda Thompson

1975. "Free Money" by Patti Smith

1976. "Achilles Last Stand" by Led Zeppelin

1977. "Blank Generation" by Richard Hell & The Voidoids

1978. "Another Girl, Another Planet" by The Only Ones

1979. "Jumping Someone Else's Train" by The Cure

1980. "Going Underground" by The Jam

1981. "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" by Soft Cell

1982. "Leave It Open" by Kate Bush

1983. "Musette and Drums" by Cocteau Twins

1984. "Androgynous" by The Replacements

1985. "Field Of Glass" by The Triffids

1986. "Brilliant Mind" by Furniture

1987. "The Clarke Sisters" by The Go-Betweens

1988. "New Big Prinz" by The Fall

1989. "Nothing To Be Done" by The Pastels

1990. "Queen Elvis" by Robyn Hitchcock

1991. "Фа-фа" by Auktsyon

1992. "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" by Morrissey

1993. "Razzamatazz" by Pulp

1994. "Me And My Charms" by Kristin Hersh

1995. "When We Were Young" by Whipping Boy

1996. "Unsolved Child Murder" by The Auteurs

1997. "Downer" by Edwyn Collins

1998. "Louisiana" by The Church

1999. "Pink Cigarette" by Mr. Bungle

2000. "The Facts Of Life" by Black Box Recorder

2001. "Never Work" by Luke Haines

2002. "The Good Old Days" by The Libertines

2003. "Murrow Turning Over In His Grave" by Fleetwood Mac

2004. "The One You Love" by Rufus Wainwright

2005. "The Bleeding Heart Show" by The New Pornographers

2006. "Bird Of Cuzco" by Nina Nastasia

2007. "The Magic Position" by Patrick Wolf

2008. "Soul On Fire" by Spiritualized

2009. "Ave Maria" by Rowland S. Howard

2010. "Deep Blue" by Arcade Fire

2011. "Under Cover Of Darkness" by The Strokes

2012. "I'm Not Talking" by A.C. Newman

2013. "Picacho Peak" by Howe Gelb

2014. "Living Signs" by Cold Specks

2015. "Nobody's Empire" by Belle & Sebastian

2016. "Rings Of Saturn" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

2017. "Prince of Tears" by Baxter Dury

2018. "The Gypsy Faerie Queen" by Marianne Faithfull

2019. "Big" by Fontaines D.C.

2020. "Fine" by Will Butler

2021. "The Constable" by Sloppy Jane

2022. "Free" by Florence + The Machine

A Christmas Carol

One of my favourite Christmas memories is of a group of atheist friends sitting by the piano late at night and singing Christmas carols in a small English town around ten years ago. Christmas Carols was also the last book I bought from a great Minsk book shop called Gogol's Dream before it closed down back in 2020. 

Which brings me to Pete Seeger's Traditional Christmas Carols album from 1967. To me, the essential Christmas album. Timeless-sounding, subtle, and impossible not to sing along to. Merry Christmas!

Three films. Old Christmas.

Somebody should do research and explain why is it that modern Christmas movies look so hapless, so tedious, and so deficient when compared to the ones made eighty years ago. When I start thinking about good Christmas films made this century, I can only come up with three or four decent examples (half of which are animated). I am not even selling my childhood here. The films I am going to be talking about had all been made ages before I was born. And they all tower well above anything that has been released since. 

These are all black and white Hollywood movies, mostly from the 40s. Not every old black and white Christmas film is great, mind you (take Meet John Doe, for instance), but these ten are. Each of these films feels effortless. Each of these films has a disarming charm and an affectionate heart to it. Each of these films is an absolute joy to watch over the course of this festive season. 

But before we get to the best three, a few others that are just as good: Shop Around The Corner (1940) - even if I am not a fan of Margaret Sullivan's character; Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - watch the original, not the sappy remake; Holiday Affair (1949) - the dinner speech from the elderly couple is one of the most heartfelt moments in cinema; The Bishop's Wife (1947) - what a deeply strange but beautiful film; Christmas in Connecticut (1945) - this one always has me in fits; It's A Wonderful Life (1946) - this one always has me in bits; It Happened On 5th Avenue (1947) - oh those eyes of Ann Harding. 

The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942)

This film is completely insane. It has an insane premise and it has insane performances (from Monty Woolley, from Reginald Gardiner, from the inimitable Jimmy Durante) - but the more I watch it, the more I feel caught up in this insanity. It is Christmas time, obviously, and a successful and conceited American writer suffers an unfortunate slippery accident and is forced to spend the whole holiday season in the house of righteousness and boredom. Worse, he is tied to a wheelchair. The way the plot unravels beggars belief, but by the time we arrive at the sarcophagus scene at the end, you are ready to take on anything thrown your way. 

At this point, I am completely in love with Monty Woolley's voice ('my blossom girl' never leaves my head) and Ann Sheridan's shamelessness, with Banjo's song (see below) and with Bette Davis's aristocratic detachment. Also, this was the film that started my love for baked sweet potatoes.

Remember The Night (1940)

Barbara Stanwyck is great in every film I can think of, but none is better than Remember the Night. John Sargeant (Fred MacMurray) is a prosecutor who is about to condemn Lee Leander (Stanwyck) to an extended prison term for stealing a bracelent from a jewelery store in New York City. However, this is almost Christmas Eve, and you can imagine where it goes from there.

Except nothing about Remember the Night feels trite and predictable. The film is a wild ride. The scene with cows is screwball comedy, the scene at sheriff's home is action thriller and the scene with Lee's mother is utterly devastating drama that for a moment makes you forget that Remember the Night is a Christmas movie. The best scenes, however, are all inside John's family house where the Christmas celebrations are filled with the kind of warmth and genuine feeling that you are bound to start longing for the old times you have never really experienced.

The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment is not just the greatest Christmas movie that I know - it is one of my favourite films of all time. The great Jack Lemmon plays a loser by the name of C.C. Baxter who lets his office superiors use his apartment in Upper West Side for dating purposes. Then Shirley MacLaine (elevator operator Fran Kubelik) appears and things begin to change.

This is a perennial story of self-worth versus corporate ladder but it is done with such style and great story-telling that you start to really care. The acting is superb, too, and the film is basically an endless collection of unforgettable scenes. I especially enjoy the ones with the doctor ("be a Mensch!"), but I believe it is the scene at the bar that truly gets me every time I watch The Apartment. It is a beautiful film that may get sombre on occasion but, equally, it is a film that never takes itself too seriously. To quote the wonderful Miss Kubelik, "Shut up and deal!"

Polish Diary. "The Soil".

It is always wrong to reduce a whole museum to just one work of art. However, if I absolutely had to do it here, at the National Museum in Warsaw, I would go to Ferdynand Ruszczyc and his masterwork "The Soil". That is a painting of such internal power and primordial intensity that you have to make sure you take it all in slowly, calmly, getting lost in the rough textures of what you are seeing. Because it is not even about the details. This time, it is all about the sheer grandiosity of those horrifying clouds that the lonesome farmer is carrying on his shoulders. 

Oddly, I have always believed Ferdynand Ruszczyc to be a Belarusian painter. He was born in Belarus and died there (Bohdanow village in the Western part of the country), he spent his childhood in Minsk and he identified as Belarusian. However, Poland claims Ruszczyc as its own, even despite his early education in St. Petersburg as well as the fact that much of his life as an artist was spent in Vilnius. Having said that, the artist held Polish citizenship and it was in Poland that he got his recognition. To me, the point of the argument centres around the very painting. "The Soil". This bold, challenging work was rejected by St. Petersburg for its radical break with conventions but was accepted in Poland that immediately recognised "The Soil" for what it was: a masterpiece of impressionistic realism. That, as well as Ruszczyc's subsequent career in Poland, guarantees the rightfulness of Poland's claims. 

The National Museum in Warsaw displays great works of international, and internationally recognised, art. In its essence, however, it is a Polish museum. The first floor is devoted exclusively to religious paintings, icons, sculptures and installations, which subdues your spirit and sets the mood for the whole experience. And then, upstairs, Gustave Courbet and Paul Signac, while certainly good, do not really overshadow the works of Polish art. Alfred Kowalski's travelling stories of grim realism, Piotr Michałowski's striking portraits from the 19th century, Aleksander Gierymski's early impressionism... These are all works that give credibility to Polish art, which is precisely the point of any national museum.

Still, while I was impressed by the story behind Stanisław Wyspiański's creepy "The Mulchs" and the tasteful, slightly mysterious expressionism of Konrad Krzyżanowski, it is Ferdynand Ruszczyc and "The Soil" that have really stayed with me. I remember how once, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at "Woman with a Parasol" (which could qualify as my favourite painting of all time). Well, the National Museum of Warsaw gave me something similar in the sense that I could not look away from Ruszczyc's painting even as people were rushing by me and a group of Polish children were listening to a lecture behind my back. Monet's masterpiece is a work of ecstatic beauty and subtle impressionism, but this is something completely different. 

With "The Soil", it is the physical, physiological effect that absorbs you. The painting is huge, but that is the only way for it to exist (I am enclosing it here, but it has to be seen live). It is not that "The Soil" drags you into its frame - it is that the painting bursts out of it. And you feel small, and insignificant, and utterly gripped, and a tiny step closer to discovering what art really stands for.

Album of the Month: PREMONITION by White Lung

"Hysteric" kicks off with two or three seconds of near silence. The anticipation (premonition, if you want) is resolved joyously, in a way both old and familiar: barrage of speedy guitar lines, relentless drumbeat and stellar vocal melodies. The whole package, the immaculate noise punk racket you have grown to love over the 12 years of the band's existence. In a way, there are few things more comforting than the signature wall of sound from one of Vancouver's finest bands. 

This, sadly, is White Lung's final album. Premonition had actually been written prior to 2020 but the pandemic put things on hold. The hiatus did not, in fact, break the band. The decision had actually been made earlier - and I do not find it tragic. First, nothing beats a discography of five consistently brilliant albums. Second, Premonition is a dream ending to a great career. 

Essentially, White Lung's take on hardcore punk is different in the sense that it stays non-abrasive and even (God help me) family friendly without losing any of the rough edges associated with the genre. Anne-Marie Vassiliou pounds those drums with intelligent savagery. Kenny McCorkell crafts the incessant onslaught of orgasmic guitar intricacies. Mish Barber-Way weaves timeless melodies into and out of the beautiful noise. That's it. That is the pattern. But what a great fucking pattern that it.

As ever, the album features 10 songs and the overall running time does not exceed 30 minutes (worth remembering, though, that some of their earlier LPs did not even reach 20 minutes). Nothing overstays its welcome, everything hits hard and gets the fuck out. "Date Night" and "Tomorrow" are great singles but you could throw a dart at the track list and hit another one. Having said that, "Under Glass" is almost a ballad, "Girl" is almost filler and the epic (I'm using the word loosely) "Winter", with its powerful interruption in the middle, is most definitely the perfect swan song.

Not too many bands release great albums in December - but there is something deeply satisfying about White Lung pulling it off with the last record of their career (hence the delay in the monthly feature on this blog). Premonition is a beautiful end in a world where nobody knows how and when to stop. 

November Round-Up

If you, like me, heard Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in 2009 and thought this was as good as indie rock gets, you would not want to miss any of the follow-ups. I have not missed them and, sadly, they have all been disappointing. Alpha Zulu (★★★) is slick synthpop whose melodic substance is, while catchy and stylish, a little too sterile. The title song will be coming to me in nightmares.

As for Neil Young's latest, World Record (★★★½) is another fine addition to the ragged and charming catalogue of Crazy Horse albums. Some lovely accordion reminiscent of Harvest Moon ("This Old Planet"), wild waves of distortion (you can definitely imagine how "Break The Chain" goes before you actually listen to it) and a fascinating 15-minute closer called "Chevrolet" (not exactly "Cortez The Killer" but nothing is). 

Finally, everybody keeps worshipping Weyes Blood, and I still, for the love of me, cannot hear it. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (★★★) is lovely and everything - but what makes this special, exactly? Hollow, vaguely majestic compositions with beautiful singing and little substance. "God Turn Me Into A Flower" is a little more majestic than others, I will give her that, but otherwise I will go back to my Judee Sill records thank you very much.