Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.
SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017
Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★ The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary things
Óttarr Proppé, the stylish chap pictured above, was appointed Iceland’s Minister of Health in January this year. Last Saturday, when the shot was taken, he was on stage in his other role as the singer of HAM, whose invigorating musical blast draws a line between the early Swans and Mudhoney. At that moment, at Reykjavík Art Museum, it was exactly a week on from the declaration of the first results in the country’s Parliamentary election, the second within 12 months.
These days Peter Perrett doesn’t rely on the songs of his late Seventies/early Eighties band, The Only Ones, to hold his audience’s attention. At 65, looking and sounding healthier than he has done in years, he’s on a vital late-career creative roll. At the start of his first encore he even plays a new, unreleased song, “War Plan Red”, giving vent to fiery infuriation with global politicking, his band shadowed in ominous scarlet lighting. He may be renowned, primarily, for songs of romance and dissolution, but with lyrics such as “The so-called free world stands for evil incarnate” he clearly feels that in 2017 there’s also much else to sing about.
Perrett fronts a five-piece band consisting of his sons Jamie (guitar) and Peter Jr (bass), alongside their girlfriends Jenny Maxwell and Lauren Munisamy on backing vocals, violin and keys, with drummer Jake Woodward holding steady at the back. This is a family affair and they’re musically tight to a fault, Jamie Perrett’s lively fret-wrangling showpieces the perfect foil to his father’s stationary stage persona. Peter Perrett himself is black clad in a white shirt and Ray-ban-style shades, his hair in a classic Seventies rocker cut. His words are perfectly enunciated, that distinctive nasal voice cutting through everything. He was ever about the words.
Its starkness emphasises what an undersung master-songwriter he really is
Most of the set is drawn from Perrett’s recent album, How The West Was Won, a comeback of sorts for a man who spent chaotic decades since The Only Ones mostly mired in a dark underworld of crack and heroin. It’s a fine album and even better live. The title track is introduced with a rare and dry aside, “This song is a eulogy to a country that’s become great again.” Full of lyrical pith, the band really work its “Sweet Jane”-ish riff, and also cut loose spectacularly on “Living in My Head” with a squawling, invigorating violin vs guitar jam. The set is peppered with Perrett’s raw, self-scathing odes to his wife of many decades, Xena, and an emotive highlight is the new album’s superb “Home”. Its existential longing is simply heart-rending.
Perrett also dips into his solo back catalogue, from the better known such as “Woke Up Sticky”, which fires thought-provoking allegories off in all directions, to the more obscure “Baby, Don’t Talk” from 1994, with its cutting couplet “You ain’t learned nothing, from the cradle to the grave”. And, yes, The Only Ones are in there too, with fine versions of “The Big Sleep” and “Flaming Torch”. Surprisingly, given the song is something of a mixed blessing as it’s the only Perrett song most people know, tonight’s encore take on “Another Girl Another Planet” is a scorcher, Jamie Perrett nailing the famously tricky guitar solo with showy aplomb.
And at the evening’s very end, Perrett pushes towards the curfew on his second encore. He closes proceedings with a band-free take on The Only Ones’ “It’s The Truth”. Its very starkness emphasises what an undersung master-songwriter he really is. Given tonight’s performance it seems his return is only gathering pace.
Overleaf: Seven minute feature about Peter Perrett on Newsnight
Possibly named after a variety of magic mushroom, left-field Glaswegian six-piece Golden Teacher have been turning out their very strange idea of party music since 2013. Initially they did so for local freak-fostering collective Optimo but have since appeared via various outlets, finally ending up on their own eponymous label. Their sound is electronic but also organic, with percussion that rolls and sometimes has a touch of the more polyrhythmic, advanced drum circle about it. Don’t let the words “drum circle” put you off for Golden Teacher are an invigorating proposition.
Heavily stewed in the outer fringes of dub where the likes of On-U Sound Records have resided for decades, Golden Teacher are also unafraid to add layers of further psychedelic echo. In the case of “Diop” and the eight minute title track, tribal percussion designed to untether the mind takes over. A good reference point might be the best moments of Micky Hart’s Rolling Thunder album, if it had been made for Nineties clubbers rather than hippies (he’s the bloke out of The Grateful Dead who liked going cosmic on his bongos). No Luscious Life also has a post-punk sensibility, an edge that recalls New York skronk-dance outfits such as !!! and Outhud.
There are a couple of attempts – sort of – at vocal pop, or at least alt-pop, since it sounds nothing like the tween meme phone-piffle that mostly haunts the current Top 10. “The Kazimier” is Grace Jones by way of The Tom Tom Club and the synth-poppy “Spiritron”, a keys-fuelled ode to the singer’s “cosmitron”, is akin to Fujiya & Miyagi attempting to make P-funk.
There’s a lot of music about that doesn’t attempt anything new. Life is blighted by the stuff. Not Golden Teacher. In an era when it’s hard to do so, they use their imagination to push the boat out. This is head-fry music for freaky dancing. If they weren’t named after that psilocybic fungi, they should have been.
Overleaf: Listen to a four minute edit of Golden Teacher "Sauchiehall Withdrawal"
An underground American star since 2010’s Strange Cacti EP, Angel Olsen’s distinctive brand of indie folk-rock was propelled to new heights in both Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014) and then last year with MY WOMAN.
“The Babysitter” tells the story of a Scottish spy embedded with the Nazis during World War Two who has come home. His sister tells him that Unity Mitford is convalescing at a nearby cottage. Visiting, he finds that it’s a maternity home. The details are not revealed, but our spy duly becomes a full-time baby sitter: “The world is safe from an English orphan Hitler,” sings Mathias Kom of The Burning Hell. Mitford, real-life Nazi sympathiser and chum of Hitler, had in this tale been preparing to give birth to the Führer's child.
Canadian trio The Burning Hell’s eighth album is a collection of song-stories ranging from an account of an emergency room doctor who instantly falls in love with the blood-spattered victim of police brutality to a word game demonstrating how the armed forces recruit through pop culture allusions. That Kom delivers his smart, succinct and droll lyrics with an enviable straightforwardness would make Revival Beach notable enough, but the album’s 13 tracks are songs as such: toe-tappers which can be hummed.
There are nods to klezmer on the impressionistic clarinet-led instrumental “Race to Revival Beach” among the tracks focussing on Kom's musical partner Ariel Sharrat. There's psychedelia on the hilariously dry “Canadian Wine”. But the main musical hallmark is a fondness for a third/fourth album Velvet Underground. When Cass McCombs was so inclined, he was a musical kindred spirit.
The Burning Hell’s fundamental driver is that there is no shame in being clever. Revival Beach is inspired by the sense that fears of the impending apocalypse are no longer limited to religious zealots or survivalists. We are, as Kom persuasively argues, all in it together.
Overleaf: Watch the video for “The River (Never Freezes Anymore)” from Revival Beach
The sensation evoked by Sykli is that it documents a voyage, one beginning with anticipation for what will come and then journeying through diffuse territory which could be an endless, mist-filled valley, anywhere beyond this solar system or within inner space. The mostly instrumental – the only vocals are wordless – album uses repeated guitar and keyboard figures as the basis for five lengthy pieces which openly draw from Philip Glass, Neu and Tangerine Dream.
As son of the famous Blockheads frontman, Baxter Dury has always had big (new) boots to fill. Over the last 15 years though, he’s become distinguishable in his own right for his Chiswick accent and roughened-up pastoral music. Both are just as present in Prince of Tears as they have been on his previous albums, but with friends Madeleine Hart, Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods) and Rose Elinor Dougall (The Pipettes) providing guest vocals, it’s an album that engages with a wrenching variety of humanity's different sides, often more shade than light, rather than being just about the music.
Single “Miami” starts the album in a pleasantly plodding way, sounding not unlike a slowed-down Hercules & Love Affair. Dury makes full use of the orchestra on hand as he recorded the album, with the multiple string parts giving the song (and world inhabited by the grim narrator, Miami itself) an edge of tragedy. “Porcelain” is unsurprisingly equally as fragile, the raindrop-like piano opening giving way to Rose Elinor Dougall’s sinisterly deadpan vocals, keeping the mood tense throughout.
That’s not to say Prince of Tears is relentlessly depressing by any stretch. “Oi” has all the fun of the "fairground" side of Blur’s Parklife, with its spiralling Wurlitzer and steady beat bouncing the song along. “Letter Bomb” also manages to blast its way through several slow psychedelic choruses and old-skool punk refrains in under two minutes. This simplicity readily lends itself to Dury’s style of music.
The strongest song on the album, by far, is the title track. Dury and Hart take turns to lament the “Prince of Tears”, a man who seems to be the result of all the heartbreak found in the other songs. The pained guitar mirrors the grief of the singers, helping to send a resounding final message: Dury’s getting gloomier.
Overleaf: watch the video for "Miami"
Both Rhode Island’s Downtown Boys, and Washington D.C.’s Priests sit at the centre of today’s feminist punk scene. As stated in a recent Downtown Boys press release, they oppose “the prison-industrial complex, racism, queerphobia, capitalism, fascism, boredom, and all things people use to try to close our minds, eyes and hearts”. This, perhaps, explains why the promoters have listed the night as a “radical double bill”. Having also both released extremely well received albums this year - Cost of Living and Nothing is Natural respectively - they descend on Manchester’s Deaf Institute amid a flurry of hype and expectation.
London-based support act No Home is on stage as I enter, with a sizeable crowd watching the singer thrash at a telecaster and viciously pour her soul into the microphone. She’s a singer-songwriter with real guts. Although she’s not the most polished guitarist, the grit of her performance adds to the sense of catharsis about her music. The highlight of her set is the acapella “Who Cares”, which deals with teenage isolation and ends her performance in a hauntingly beautiful manner.
With their manic female vocalist and smatterings of saxophone, it's almost lazy to mention the obvious X-Ray Spex comparison in regards to five-piece Downtown Boys, but there’s a real musicality and rhythm in their music which they share with their punk predecessors. The growling bass pulls the crowd up by their feet, until the floor is quite literally shaking.
There’s also a curious blend of fun and politics in their set, as there has been across their three LPs. 2017’s Cost of Living, for example, heavily nods to Trump’s Presidency and the fear that it has resulted in. A skanking stage invader has just left when we’re treated to the first of several political speeches, all of which keep the audience captivated. Their music is equally charged, with the passion of singer Victoria Ruiz at its most evident in the attack of “Lips That Bite” or high-point “Somos Chulas (No Somos Pendejas).” By the time the incendiary set closer, “A Wall” finishes, the whole audience is dancing and whooping. Even if just for this moment, I feel like I’m standing in (what No Home described as) a sea of “super-funky ultra-revolutionaries”.
The four members of Priests come on to both roaring cheers and roaring heat. Greeting the crowd with a new song, and then ballsy album cut “Appropriate”, they take a moment to find their feet, but by the time fan-favourite “Jj” pounds in, Priests have the crowd hypnotised. The band move between scratchy feedback and coy melodicism with ease, with magnetic singer Katie Alice Greer swaying like a charmed-snake at the front of the stage. Dressed like a gothic 19th-Century prince, she’s at her best in the Sonic Youth-tinged “No Big Bang”, almost spitting into the microphone over an oddly catchy one-note bassline. At the end of the set, the audience mill about for a while. No one wants to leave the Deaf Institute and admit the evening’s over.
Priests drummer Daniele Daniele revealed mid-set that Priests feel a special bond with Manchester and, judging from the crowd’s reaction tonight, Manchester also feels a special bond with Priests.
Overleaf: Watch the video for Priests "Jj"
Super Besse are from the Republic of Belarus, Europe’s sole dictatorship – a country where freedom of expression and opportunities for individual self-determination are limited. As there’s little musical infrastructure in their home country, the label they are on is Latvia’s leading independent imprint. Despite the obstacles, the Minsk-based trio – named after a French ski resort – have played across mainland Europe. La Nuit* is their second album.
Given where they are from, Super Besse would be notable whatever the nature of their music. However, what they deal in and how they put it over renders them notable in any context. La Nuit* opens with “Predlogenie”, an insistent yet supple workout where rubber-band, no-tone bass, distant keyboards and a declamatory vocal combine to form an unexpectedly romantic whole. Yearning clouds the album.
As it moves on, an album suffused with sadness beds in as the soundtrack to fidgety distraction, born from either loss or obsession. What Super Besse are actually singing about is, for non-Russian speakers, impossible to tell. The booklet with La Nuit* includes all the lyrics. In Cyrillic.
Although Joy Division usually crop up whenever the band are written about, it’s not an accurate comparison. Whether knowingly or not, when seen live Super Besse actually draw a line between Leeds’ post-punks Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, the very early Sisters of Mercy (also from Leeds) and D.A.F. with light nods to the squelchy pulse of early acid house. On the smoother La Nuit*, Liverpool’s Modern Eon and the early Modern English are in there too. Whatever the possible touchstones, with Super Besse and their dreamy, out-of-focus album, undeniably rooted in the mid-Eighties, Belarus has found its best ambassadors.
Overleaf: watch the video for “Doroga Domoi” from Super Besse’s La Nuit*