Year by year: 2001

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – NO MORE SHALL WE PART

Nick Cave’s success is not too hard to explain. The man knows exactly what his strengths are; and he knows exactly how to use them. Which, come to think of it, does not necessarily mean great things. Great things are charisma, talent and taste. Those, and a great deal of style.

No More Shall We Part was my first Cave album. Also, it is his best. Over the years I have tried to figure out whether it’s the songs or the great sentimental power that this record holds. The hypnotic guitar rhythm driving “As I Sat Sadly By Her Side”. The stirring, minimalist piano chords that never fail to sound like the best thing in the world.

But it could not be just that. In the end, it’s the fucking songs, and the perfect mix of rough and gentle, melancholic and pounding. It’s the man who recorded The Boatman’s Call but someone who had also done “Mercy Seat” all those years ago.

It’s easy to disregard the second side of this album (besides “Oh My Lord” – you cannot disregard that) in view of what came before. “Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow”, “Hallelujah”, “As I Sat Sadly By Her Side”, “God Is In The House” (when I heard him do it live, the whispered part felt more spiritual than all religious sermons combined)... But then you delve deeper into something like "Darker With The Day" and you start noticing how brooding and essential those seemingly long-winded songs are. 

And “The Sorrowful Wife” is astonishing. It’s a bit like “John Finn’s Wife” the other way round. Two sides of Nick Cave stitched into one song of power and mourning. Face it, when he lets all hell loose – you just lose it. It’s mind-blowing. 

Jeff Lynne

I’ve always valued a good melody too much to look down on Jeff Lynne. Idle Race, The Move, ELO, goddamned Traveling Wilburys. And even now. He might not have another “Do Ya” or “Nobody’s Child” in him, but Alone In The Universe does the job well. 

He plays to his strengths. You smile unintentionally when you hear the opening “When I Was A Boy” as it sounds like a million Beatles-inspired songs. But there’s also great sincerity about it. Jeff Lynne has always been honest about his talent, and suddenly, in the year 2015, it has paid off. Not a classic by any means, but a great reminder that a good song is – primarily – a good song.

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence

You will have to love the aesthetics. The static camera, the lack of on-screen emotions, the pale colours. Otherwise, you will just get bored, confused, hysterical and wonder when the whole thing is over – ‘And what was it about?’ Or, worse, ‘And what, pray, did the director want to say?’ 

There is of course a strong Beckettian edge to it, and post-war Vladimir and Estragon are hardly any different from their contemporary versions. They don’t spill the truth – but they imply it in a way so obvious as to appear subtle. Like Inland Empire, it’s a film whose message (and I do hate the word) is clear. It’s just that you will never ever be able to put it into words. Rather, you reflect on it.

Year by year: 2000

Black Box Recorder - THE FACTS OF LIFE

A pretty girl frowning against slabs of raw meat, you could not think of a more accurate description of this album. John Moore and Luke Haines providing the brutal wit and pop sensibilities, and Sarah Nixey singing in a way that is both sexual and icy cold.

The Facts Of Life is one of my favourite albums of all time, and “The Deverell Twins” could be the main reason for that. Not “Goodnight Kiss” with backing vocals that would make you weep with joy. Not the title song, the world’s most likeliest and most unlikeliest hit single. Not the ominous and magical “The English Motorway System”. It's “The Deverell Twins”. With its gorgeously sinister guitar line and with its chilling story of child suicide dug up from the 19^th century. This is intriguing songwriting. 

Compared with two other studio albums from Black Box Recorder, The Facts Of Life gets a very slight edge. It just feels like their most realised and perfectly executed creation. And a good start for the decade: seductive, sophisticated, impossibly cynical. 

Year by year: 1999

Pavement - TERROR TWILIGHT

No one can write a disjointed melody as beautifully as Stephen Malkmus. No one can break your heart with meaningless lyrics the way Stephen Malkmus can do that. Could, can – I still rate his songwriting, even though a good song comes with an effort these days.

“The Hexx” is icy cold perfection and “Ann Don’t Cry” is achingly pretty. “Major Leagues” is still irresistible and “Platform Blues” is still mind-blowing. Terror Twilight could be Pavement at their most flawless. Even the silly “Folk Jam” has its playful place between the gorgeous and the beautiful. 

Terror Twilight was the best gift to the fans. Swan song, and they knew it. Also, I quite like to think this album was the perfect ending for the 90s. It had a bit of everything. It was catchy, irrelevant, grungy, sentimental. And, most importantly, it finished with a brilliantly irreverent metaphor.  

The Final Derriere

80s slump – to put in mildly – was inevitable and not entirely hopeless. But it’s hard to think of another band that has retained the original edge with such effortlessness and with such conviction. This extraordinaly ability to modify it a little, to reinvent it, but to still have it... You’ve heard latest albums by Keith Richards and Dave Gilmour to know how ‘who the fuck cares?’ it can get. 

But from “Fletcher Honorama” to this. The Mael brothers can still pull it off, and “The Final Derriere” (off The Forbidden Room, one 2015 film you should definitely see) is as a good a song as Sparks have ever written. I’m seriously struggling for names here…

Year by year: 1998

Mercury Rev – DESERTER’S SONGS

I thought about this one for a few seconds. That mystical charm that Deserter’s Songs had back when I was 20 years old, is it still there? And the way I lay down in Piazza del Campo a while ago, late at night, listening to this album to the open sky and a growing sense of calm? Has that not disappeared like so many other things have?

Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips was a great collection of songs. Deserter’s Songs by Mercury Rev was a great album. The way one song started, the way another song ended, the way they all flowed into each other (and flow into each other they did). The dark wonder of the melodies and the drama and the childishness of the lyrics:

Well, she tossed all night like a raging sea

Woke up and climbed from the suicide machine

Their new album does absolutely nothing for me. It has the style and it has the tunes, but something has definitely been lost. Not relevance (not even applicable here) and not the quirkiness of Jonathan Donahue’s voice. However pathetic it way sound, what is missing is that element of magic. That mystical charm which was paramount on Deserter’s Songs and which was still felt on All Is Dream. 

And sometimes I think it’s all about “Opus 40”. Now if ever there has been a song that makes me feel like the happiest and most special kid on Earth…