“I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond delivering the same he always has.
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.
Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brilliance
It’s been a tough few years for Sŵn Festival. Once a genuine rival to fellow urban festivals Great Escape and Sound City, recent events have fluctuated between one-dayers and a string of ticketed gigs. 2018 marked the biggest change yet, but also a return to the multi-day, multi-venue format. Founders Huw Stephens and John Rostron announced they were handing over the reigns to Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff’s leading music venue.
Kurt Vile is a cult artist with growing commercial heft. He’s gained this without making concessions to mainstream sensibilities. Ever since Walkin’ on a Pretty Daze in 2013 he’s become an unlikely contender, mustering sales. His last album, a collaboration with Aussie fuzz-troubadour Courtney Barnett, almost made the UK Top 10. He’s not yet in the league of his old pals and band-mates The War on Drugs but his latest album, a step forward and slightly to the left, won’t do his career trajectory any harm.
“Well, that was really sweet,” one young audience member in front of me remarked on his way out of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. And yes, there’s no denying that director Wils Wilson’s colourful, psychedelic, summer-of-love-set Twelfth Night, the Lyceum’s season opener in a co-production with the Bristol Old Vic, is warm and generous, lovingly crafted, and – yes, touchingly sweet.
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt.
In 1969, a stream of creative new albums pointed to how what had grown from pop music could be reframed. Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline embraced country music. The Band’s eponymous second album drew on and was integral to defining Americana. The first album by Crosby, Stills & Nash shied away from the increasingly harsh template embraced by rock.
Once heard, Wimple Winch’s “Save my Soul” is never forgotten. The A-side of a flop single originally issued in June 1966, it is one of the most tightly coiled British records from the Sixties and has sudden explosions of tension suggesting the band are ready to punch anyone within reach. Late the previous year, The Who’s “My Generation” had taken pop music to new, hitherto unexplored, levels of aggression. “Save my Soul” went much further. It is a landmark.
With Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys seemingly hitting the best form of an already outstanding career, the bar has been pretty high for any other Furries looking to leap into pastures new. Not that this should unduly worry Gulp – SFA bassist Guto Pryce and bandmates Lindsey Leven and Gid Goundrey – their 2014 debut, Season Sun, was a gorgeous summer haze of an album, all dreams and driftwood. After a four-year gap, however, could they replicate the success?
Signed to FatCat records and purporting to create music that “recalls thoughtful days spent outdoors”, Breathe Panel’s self-titled album could easily be lost in the thriving soft-psych scene that seems to have set itself up in the south of England. Ultimately, though, Breathe Panel’s considered melodicism and dynamic range ensures that it’s a strikingly tender body of work that gets more and more enjoyable with each listen.