Kesha is one of the 21^st century’s most characterful pop stars. She’s regularly stepped out of the boxes people have put her in, musically and otherwise. But, even taking into account truly oddball songs such as “Godzilla” (from 2017’s Rainbow), or projects such as working with Flaming Lips, Gag Order, created with cosmic ultra-producer Rick Rubin, is by far her most out-there work. It’s also the sound of a tormented human being.

In one sense you know what you’re going to bet with Róisín Murphy. Disco beats, a lot of bright colours, costume changes, goofing about, kick-arse vocals, and hats – lots and lots of hats. And yes, all that was present and correct at the Royal Albert Hall. But in another way, any given show is alien territory.

My associate for the evening has recently returned from Breaking Convention, a conference on psychedelics, celebrating their renaissance in recent years. He’s been microdosing regularly. Around us the crowd sways, many with eyes closed, bobbing, silhouetted by two screens and a stage backdrop on which a dancing silver-grey blob-humanoid grooves itself to liquid, splatters flowing off it.

The Damned could have been bigger contenders. As anyone who’s seen Wes Orshoski’s feature film biog, Don’t You Wish We Were Dead, will know, their career has been blighted by chaos, line-up changes, catastrophic business decisions and just plain bad luck. What they have never been short of is songs. From “Smash It Up” to “New Rose” to “Stranger on the Town”, their golden years were littered with corkers.

Together or separately, British psychedelia and 1967’s related music have been ceaselessly looked at. There cannot be an awful lot more to say. Nonetheless, the law of diminishing returns is there for ignoring so herewith the follow-up to the 2016 box set Let’s Go Down & Blow Our Minds.

There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually snowballing cult status, and the band split soon after its release.

One of the greatest things a musical artist can achieve is world building. That is, creating a distinctive type of environment, language and coordinates for everything they do such that the listener is forced to come into the musical world, and to engage with it on its own terms rather than by comparison. It’s something that musicians as diverse as Prince, Kate Bush and Wu-Tang Clan achieve have achieved, likewise plenty of more underground creators too.

Welcome to the first theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2023 and it’s another whopper, over 8000 words and a range of musical styles that defies genre or categorization, from the most cutting edge sounds to boxsets of golden vintage pop. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Jimmy Edgar Liquids Heaven (Innovative Leisure)

Antwerp band dEUS – built around the core of Tom Barman and Klaas Janzoons – started out as a very interesting band. They fully leaned into the anything-goes sector of 90s music where the likes of Beck, Beastie Boys, Björk, Moloko and Super Furry Animals kicked away genre fences and got their weird on.

Later, they got a bit Big Indie, with big, sweeping, widescreen songs that put them closer to Doves and Elbow and guaranteed them nice festival slots. Significantly less interesting, but packed with accomplishment and emotional heft, and definitely deserving of ongoing success.

The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.