Monthly Archives: October 2022

And finally…

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What a long, strange trip it’s been.

The initial idea of a couple of paragraphs on each album, followed by a recommendation to check out some related stuff, didn’t last beyond the first two or three posts.  It was never likely to – those first few were typed on my old laptop while on vacation last summer, and that whole structure went out the window as soon as I got back behind my desk, with all the time and space I needed to research things, listen to things and remember all the stuff I wanted to talk about.

In the end, some of these are too long, and some are too short.  I may revisit them over the next few weeks and months, especially the ones where I’ve spotted unfortunate typos (never proof read your own material, kids).

Will I bulk out the first few posts?  Probably not; one of the key things about this whole project has been its spontaneity – I wrote what was in my head and moved on.  It only took a few weeks for me to realise that what I really wanted to do was review every track as it came along, which led to a way of working which will seem crazy to any actual writers who may come across this.

Every Saturday, upon finishing that week’s post (spoiler alert: I was mostly writing about five weeks ahead, so I could build in a buffer for the Life Events happening around me), I started to think about the next one.  I’d spend the week in idle moments planning the structure – whether it was to be an autobiographical post, or just a reflective one; whether I wanted to talk about the context of the album in its time, or about its place in my life, but once I had the basic structure planned out, and the hook for the post, I just sat down every Saturday morning and wrote.

Once I was happy with the context piece, I put the album on, and reacted to it in real time.  If you’re wondering why some of these posts read like first drafts, it’s because – by and large – they are.

Which is, I know, crazy.  So I may give some of them a polish.  Only some of them, mind – others seem to work well in their immediacy, and I probably have spent enough time on this, if truth be told. All in all, it’s exceeded my expectations, this thing.  It’s kept me occupied and writing at a time when I thought I might not ever write anything substantial again; it’s allowed me to see other people’s reactions to things, and it’s helped me contextualise parts of my life which I probably wouldn’t otherwise have done.  I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but remind me not to do this again in another ten years.

60. 3rd Secret, 3rd Secret, 2022

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When I first sat down to compile a list of albums for this exercise some time last summer, I had the vague notion that I should leave the last slot blank so that it might be filled by something new.  Then I discovered that my first pass at the list was well into three figures, so I used the 60th slot as I couldn’t see a way to lose even one more from the list.

Perspectives change, though and (to let a little daylight in on the magic here) I discovered quite early on that there were a few albums on the list which I loved, but about which I had relatively little to say.  Fortunately, as I weeded those few out, I discovered that I had also missed several titles off the list, so the revised total ended up at 59.

Which was no problem; I could easily go back to the original list and slot one in (surely I’d find room for a Deep Purple album… surely).  Instead, I went back to Plan A – a space would be left at the end for whatever came out in the year and a bit it took to get this far, and I just had to hope that something would not only grab me, but relate in some way to what I’ve been banging on about all this time.

I reached the beginning of August, not panicking exactly (there was a new Big Big Train album, and – out of nowhere – a new Porcupine Tree one; I’d just have to do some shuffling of the order), but hoping that I’d be naturally led to something, rather than have to start digging and look for something I hope I’d like.

One of the things I haven’t really given enough attention to in these essays is the impact of YouTube to my musical experience.  Not only can I dial up pretty much any album or track I want on Spotify (other streaming services, etc…), but I can often find things on YouTube I’d otherwise never have been aware of.  A live performance by a half-forgotten band, or an interview with someone which illustrates nicely exactly what I’m trying to write about.

The other thing which YouTube brings me is the opinions and music of creators – people just putting their own stuff up online, or taking the time to share their expertise with the rest of us, and it’s through the channels of the likes of Paul Davids, Mary Spender, David Bennett, David Bruce; and the reaction channels of Doug Helvering, The Charismatic Voice, or Beth Roars, that I have found so many things which might have otherwise passed me by over the last few years.

Yes, that’s just a representative sample; there are hundreds out there – go find the ones you like…

It was one of the YouTube music channels which dropped this album in my listening space at the beginning of August.  Rick Beato is a music producer and fan (I suspect he might put those two descriptions the other way round).  He’s also almost exactly the same age as me, although his musical education took place on the other side of the Atlantic, so his memories are intriguingly different from mine in places.  He also works in music, so has a much more in-depth knowledge of the music I missed while I was busy doing other things in the nineties and beyond.

I watch his videos partly to be entertained by the choices he makes in lists of the “ten best” this or the “twenty essential” that, but I also watch them because he’s a great teacher, and helps the amateur enthusiast like me understand why certain things work, and just what that drum pattern is doing.  “Oh, it’s in 13/8”, he might say, and while I like to think I’d have got there, it’s great to have those signposts helping me understand what’s going on in that song I can’t quite drum my fingers along to.

At the beginning of August, with much going on in the rest of my life, I saw a Beato video called “The Musical Revolution We Need Right Now” (his caps).  I was intrigued at the idea that there were any revolutions left to be had, and that we were in need of one now as opposed to any other time, and I watched.  I don’t think that revolution is what the video gives us at all – it’s partly a review of the Seattle grunge scene of the 1990s – which I ought to feel more connected to, I think, given that I can see Washington state from my deck –  and partly an introduction to what he calls a “new supergroup”, featuring members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Which all sounded interesting enough, if not quite up my street.  Just under three minutes in, however, he plays a clip of this new band, 3rd Secret, and I’m immediately hooked.  Partly by the sound, and partly by the fact that there are two female singers given – as far as one can tell from a short clip – equal billing.  Now that’s interesting.  I dig around for more information, and find very little – there’s more out there now, about unusual guitar tunings and some influences, but not much – certainly not the kind of marketing you’d expect for a “new supergroup”.  That’s also interesting.

There’s a whole album; it’s only available to stream (so far, anyway), and it’s the work of mere moments to crank it up and see what I think.

(Spoiler alert – it’s on this list on merit; easily one of my favourite albums of the last 20 years, and despite me having only lived with it for a couple of months, as familiar to me as any ten or 20 others on this list, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves)

Everything I’d heard in the video had been in some way grunge-related, so it’s fair to say the opening of Rhythm of the Ride took me by surprise; it’s folky in that Led Zeppelin III kind of way, with ringing open guitar strings and a voice which feels contralto to me; based in the lower registers, only occasionally soaring into the chorus.  There’s nothing distorted or overdriven here; some minor chords for sure (or flattened sevenths, or whatever those music experts spot a million miles away), but the spacious beauty of the song is not at all what I’d been expecting.  I’m immediately hooked, and on first listen, went back to hear it again before moving on, such was the power of its simplicity.

I Choose Me is much more anthemic; probably a lot more like what ‘grunge supergroup’ is supposed to sound like; it relies on a driving, distorted riff and some terrifically understated drumming for its energy, and a couple of distinctly different short guitar solos from the two distinctly different guitarists on display here.  It’s mesmerising and powerful, and while there are dozens of influences I can hear in this, I’m trying not to go down that road.

Last Day of August is a dreamy drone of a song, with a chorus which mixes melody with a structure which seems designed to keep you on edge (and out of breath if you try to sing along) by going where the music takes it, rather than where the lyricist might want it to go. It was the first song from this set I found myself humming along to in an idle moment, taking a few seconds to recognise what it was my brain had decided to sing along to.  It also has a delicious false ending, complete with the sounds of nature before the instruments decide they hadn’t quite finished what they had to say.  It does feel like a song you’ve always known before you’ve even finished listening to it once; generally a sign of quality, I find.

There’s a paise for breath to let the final notes die before church bells usher us into Winter Solstice, and I’m immediately going to abandon my recently-established rule, because if this doesn’t knowingly pay homage to Sandy Denny while the carillon of bells rings the changes behind more of those gorgeously open guitar strings, I’ll eat my hat.  And, yes, I do have a hat.

I haven’t heard this song in winter yet; I suspect it will be even more effective when there’s frost on the windows, and the howling of the dogs in the mix sound less like the singalong of Steve Marriott’s dog on Seamus by Pink Floyd, and more like a pack of wolves out in the fields, paying homage to the December moon.

As Rick Beato notes, if you’re looking for those trademarked grungy riffs, Lies Fade Away is the song for you.  For me, this is the song where I can pay attention to the individual parts which make up this band – the vocal interplay; the causally brilliant drumming; the guitar solo which lifts this into another dimension, and the properly grungy bassline, courtesy of the man who played bass on Nevermind.

Not halfway into this album, the thing which is most clearly obvious to me is the variety.  Every song has a distinct personality, while still being obviously by the same band, and being played on familiar instruments.  Unlike so many albums which appear weighed and measured so that everyone has an equal amount of time in the spotlight, this one just serves the song.  Live Without You is under three minutes long, bounces along cheerily despite its fatalistic lyric, and ends when it needs to because it’s said all it has to say.  It is, needless to say, delightful.

Having said all that about familiar instruments, Right Stuff is an accordion-driven song.  If you were wondering what I see in this album, here’s your answer – a wheezy ballad which lopes along putting smiles on the faces of everyone who hears it.  Remember way back when I was complaining about Gerry Rafferty being bland, overlong and overproduced?  This is the feel I was hoping for; it sits right beside that Mercury Rev album for authentic musicality; a bunch of people having fun making proper music.

More sumptuous acoustic guitar soundscapes introduce Dead Sea, a song which seems to me to have a delicious tension to it – the guitar wants to deliver an ordered structure, while the voices slide around, pulling it in directions it doesn’t quite want to go.  There are some delicate keyboard sounds, the bass (it may be the bass strings on the guitar) slides in from time to time to try and keep order, but the harmonies are determined to do their own thing – I’m trying not to use the word ‘dreamy’ again, but I’m not sure any other word will do.

Again there’s a shift in mood, in style, and in instrumentation.  Diamond in the Cold has the feel of an instrumental workout at first, which I’d have been on board for, but once again the voices cut through the curtain of guitar and open the song up; the 3-3-2 rhythm slides into something slightly different but equally off-kilter, and then the chorus drops in to lend some normality to proceedings before the riff asserts itself again and drags us back to the beginning, layering distorted riffs and threatening to disintegrate altogether before it rights the ship and brings us into harbour, disoriented but thrilled by the ride.

Somewhere in Time is a song which could have appeared at almost any point on the timeline of this exercise.  If I’d heard it during the frenzy of 1978, I’d remember it as one of my favourite unheralded classics from that year which was bursting with them.  I might allow that the production sounds somehow more modern than was possible back then, but I’m not sure there’s much you could actually point to which wouldn’t have been possible then; there’s a point where everything drops out to leave just bass and voice, and it’s as thrilling and vital as anything the Clash were doing back then.  Sure, it’s just a rock song, but then so are the vast majority of the things I’ve talked about these past 59 weeks; what sets this – and a fair few of the others, to be fair, it that it has a timeless quality.  Stack it up against the songs on Revolver, and all the basic elements are right there.

I used to think that was a bad thing; that maybe we hadn’t moved forward in nearly 60 years; now I celebrate it – age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety, as someone once said…

We go out on something of an epic.  The last few weeks have seen a definite return to my Prog roots in this list, so I think it’s fitting that The Yellow Dress, the last song I’ll review for this, is seven minutes long, begins with sound effects, and seems to be built in sections, including a thunderstorm which ushers in the kind of thundering heartbeat we encounter when woken in the night.  Like all good nightmares, this eventually subsides back to the calmer rhythms we need to get us back to sleep, although now – in a pattern all too familiar to us, the brain is now chewing things over; there’s an instrumental break where the two guitars outdo each other in trying to sound like something otherworldly without ever breaking the sonic spell this song weaves around itself.  Like the best songs, the parts where the band push and prod, looking to see just how far this structure will bend, it doesn’t break.  It all makes sense, in the context of the song; in the context of this wonderful, captivating album, and in the context of 60 years of music.

When I sat down and clamped on the headphones for the first time back in the August of 2021, wondering if there was anything at all new I could say about Revolver, and I heard the opening strains of Taxman, I didn’t know where this journey was going to take me.  I had no idea if I could even do this – make time to write a significant number of words every week, and try to keep it interesting and not too repetitive.  Here at the end of the road, an album which didn’t exist when I started seems to me the perfect capstone to the whole thing.  As I planned this week’s post, I initially thought I could tie it back, almost song by song, to all that has gone before (Sandy Denny and Led Zeppelin III survived from that idea, but a lot ended on the cutting-room floor which is my brain), but I think that would have done it a disservice – this is new music; building, like everything else in here, on what has gone before, and looking out to an uncertain but exciting future.

It’s been a blast.  Thanks for sticking with it all these weeks, if you did, and thanks for dropping in if this is your first visit.  Have a look around; there might be at least one other album in here you like….

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Nope.  First album, and all that.

Compilations to consider?

See above.

Live albums?

No, but there are a couple of live clips on YouTube…

Anything else?

Well, an enormous back catalogue.  Just this once, however, while encouraging you to check out everything these musicians have done before, I’d also encourage you to pick something from the other 59 on here if you don’t already know it, and give it a whirl.  You never know what you might find.

59. Stranger Heads Prevail, Thank You Scientist, 2016

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If the previous 58 posts have mainly been about looking back, and – perhaps – the last one might look forward at least a little, then I think this one should look around.

This album came out in 2016, like the last two, but I came to it a little later; it’s only been stuck in my head for a couple of years.  In fact, now I think about it, it’s one of my pandemic albums.  Stuck behind this desk for the majority of time while the whole world got sick, I did break up the endless hours of staring at screens by trying out some new music, as well as listening to a lot of old music, which is probably where the idea for this whole thing came from, to be honest.

If I take March of 2020 as a pause in life, I might ask myself “where am I now?”  If you’ve been following the autobiographical parts of this journey (and I don’t blame you if you’ve just been skipping to the bits where I talk about the music each week), then you’ll have noticed that I (and we, for a large part of the story) have been something of a wanderer.  I started the story in Aberdeen, but that was already the third house I’d lived in, as I first heard (and heard of) the Beatles when we lived in Essex, in a place we all fondly called Upminster, but which was in fact Cranham.

From Aberdeen, I lived in Edinburgh, then various bits of Inverness, Perth, Tring, Watford, Edlesborough, Prince George, and now – am I saying finally? – Victoria.

I think we’re settled here.  I’m pretty sure we’ll move house again at some point, but I doubt we’ll move far.  The career I thought I’d abandoned in my early forties has returned, and while I keep trying out the word ‘retirement’, I don’t think it suits me just yet.  As I nudge against 60, I find myself planning what the next few qualifications I’d like to get might be; I actually like being the old-timer in the room, but I also like being the old-timer who says things like “I don’t know, but I’m going to teach myself how”

Some things have come full circle: I’ve mentioned several times already that I buy and listen to vinyl albums (and the odd single) almost as much as I did during my fevered teenage years, when there was nothing else to distract me, and I spent whole days just watching the black plastic revolve around the spindle while I tried to figure out exactly what the words were.

Some things just passed: I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to a cassette (musicassette: did I do that one?), and I haven’t borrowed music from a library in probably 25 years.  I also haven’t bought a CD in over a decade, although they have not passed entirely out of my life: my father recently died, and I retrieved a selection of his CD collection and have spent many happy hours converting them to digital files while I consider what to do with the physical objects, which I don’t think I ever bonded with the way I did with albums or books.

There’s probably an essay there somewhere about how the CD was a triumph og function over form, and how the form is just no appealing enough, although maybe I’m just a generation too old to get nostalgic about jewel cases and tiny inserts you can’t quite read.

And, of course, a great many things have arrived, and show no sign of passing into history just yet.  Had I started this exercise when, let’s say, Trilogy came out and first caused me to obsess over an album, I’d have had to borrow my mother’s elderly manual typewriter to put my thoughts down – I doubt I’d have handwritten it; one of the few drawbacks of being left-handed is that my childhood handwriting was generally smudged and hard to read, even for me.

I’ll pause to let you consider that all this time, I’ve been left-handed, and you didn’t notice…

Today, of course, I’m sitting at my well-appointed, if rather over-large, desk with all the electronic wizardry money can buy at my disposal.  I could, if I wanted, break off from doing this on my PC and pick up again on my expensive Macbook in another room, or even another location entirely.  If the urge took me, and I don’t know why it would, I could even do this on my phone.

When the time comes to listen to this week’s album of choice, I can do so in splendid isolation, listening through noise-cancelling headphones to a crystal-clear digital copy, a vinyl original or reissue as appropriate (well, not this week), or to a copy supplied by a streaming service.  I don’t have to share my music with anyone if I don’t want to –

Let me rephrase that.  I don’t have to share my music with anyone if they don’t want me to, and I can hear all the subtleties and nuances of a track exactly as the band, the producer or the recording engineer intended.

I can listen anywhere, react anywhere, and post these essays from anywhere, but I don’t, and this is what I mean by “where am I now?”

I am now in an incredibly fortunate place – all those things I mention up there are the product of a privileged and comfortable lifestyle, however much I like to moan about the bills.  What I like to think I’ve learned from my sixty years of getting to this point is that while it’s possible to consume and produce on the go; to never take a pause to reflect and simply keep moving forward, I don’t think it’s healthy or even helpful.

I don’t mean that “everything was better when I was a kid; we made our own entertainment, and the only thing which might distract you from the album you were listening to was the text on the sleeve” – I delight in (almost) all the things technology has brought us; it’s just that, if this exercise has taught me anything, or reinforced anything for me, it’s that there is value in slowing down, stopping to listen; stopping to read, and stepping back from time to time from the ubiquitous black mirrors which we peer into all day, hoping to see ourselves reflected in some meaningful way.

Which is to say that where I am now is a place where I am able to put on an album – an old favourite or something brand new – close my eyes and listen.  Perhaps not in the same way I used to; I’d suggest that the sound is better, the seat is more comfortable, and there’s less banging on the walls; but I’d say that the 11-year-old me who heard Trilogy all those years ago would recognise the way I listen to music now, and I like to think he’d approve of me returning to the act of actively seeking out new things.

I first heard of Thank You Scientist (I know; you were wondering which of the phrases up there was the band name) because I have accepted that the music I enjoy above all other forms of 20th century rock music is the much-maligned genre known as Progressive Rock.  I have, perhaps, come to this realisation later in life than I should have, but I do take pride in the fact that it doesn’t in any way preclude me from liking all kinds of other things.

Because I’m interested in Prog, I seek out like-minded souls on the internet to see what I can learn from them, and a name which kept coming up in those discussions was Thank You Scientist.  In deciding to see what the fuss was about, I felt in fairly safe hands; over the last few years, I’ve been steered towards a number of bands, some on this list, others – like The Mars Volta, Spock’s Beard, Transatlantic, Anathema, The Pineapple Thief, and Slowdive (OK, one of these bands is not like the others) – which might easily have been on this list but for the fact I had to make a cut somewhere.

Here’s how I dip a toe into new music these days, since I don’t have to go to my local record store (of which there are many) and buy something in the hope it will be good; I fire up Spotify (other streaming services are available), and I look at which tracks are the most popular.

Now, there’s a trick to this, which you might not know about, so here’s your fun fact for the day: in trying to find the most popular tracks for an artist on Spotify, ignore any which are the first track of an album or compilation.  A significant proportion of those listens will be by people who started to listen, then realised they didn’t like it.

When looking for popular albums, however, you are generally on safer ground – the ones marked ‘popular albums’ generally will reflect listener taste, although this can also be skewed by re-releases and remixes – currently, the most popular Beatles album appears to be the recent soundtrack to the rooftop performances from the ‘Get Back’ project.

Anyway, Thank You Scientist – I sought a couple of tracks, liked what I heard, and bought myself a digital copy of the Stranger Heads Prevail album.  I think the Trilogy-obsessed version of me would have enjoyed it; there are certainly some elements he’d be familiar with, but there’s also a lot going on which he wouldn’t yet recognise.  Let’s see what the nearly-but-not-quite 60 year old version of that kid sees in it…

It begins, as all good Prog albums perhaps should with a prologue: A Faint Applause leans heavily on the vocal harmonies and instrumentation of mid-seventies Queen, with some ELO-style strings for good measure.  I can see me at eleven thinking this is going to be exactly his kind of album

Only to be brought up short by The Somnambulist, all trumpet, treated vocals and seemingly random time signatures.  The voice eventually breaks out into its normal register, and more traditionally ‘rock’ instruments take over, but the song itself continues to unsettle; at times it seems to be reacting to Metallica’s Enter Sandman, at others, it’s teasing us with snappy chorus-like segments with trumpets providing a fanfare.  The middle section allows for some rhythm section exercises, but just as yo’re settling to enjoy the funky bass and jazz drums, it takes flight again, gleefully letting us know that ‘the world you know is gone’ before coming to a stop rather like a steam train reaching the end of the line

And if that wasn’t strange enough, Caverns erupts like a 21st century Frank Zappa extravaganza, hurtling through about six different musical styles before the vocal enters, sounding spookily like the Frost* album from last week – maybe this was the sound of 2016?

Oh, and if the general skittering about between styles wasn’t discombobulating enough, it turns out to be a disturbingly frank tale of a couple contemplating an abortion, although there’s a horror-movie element to it; I don’t think for a minute that any of this should be taken at face value.  There’s a breakdown which sounds as if someone’s retuned a radio, then some almost djent-like metal guitars and some ferocious drumming before a more traditional guitar solo tries to anchor us back into the real world, although I’m not convinced it does anything more than point up the otherworldliness of everytihg going on.  It’s a giant cacophony of a song; one which prompts me to both want to know more and o leave it entirely shrouded in mystery.

Thankfully, Mr. Invisible kicks off with some jazz-funk stylings which that 11 year old kid would have recognised.  It sounds at once like a sweet love song with brass underscoring the general mood of jollity and fun; it swings along, although it also feels like a song which could also be performed in a much darker style, and as the refrain confirms the suspicion that all is not what it seems, the distorted guitars poke their heads out to say “we’ve been here all along; you didn’t think this was some sunny ‘moon in June’ thing, did you?”

However much the darker truth tries to assert itself, however, you can’t keep the bounce and swing out of this song; it floats through some distinctly 1980s arrangements, and there’s a swinging saxophone solo where a guitar might have been.  Every now and then the ghost of Frank Zappa waves at us from behind the layers of instrumentation, while the vocal carries a soaring melody line over a collapse into heavy metal, which only allows the brass to wheeze at us, defeated, in the final bar.

A Wolf in Cheap Clothing is more sparse, and offers a bit of breather at first – there are some cunning drum patterns, and a vocal line which seems to be building to something, but is in no hurry to get there.

When we do reach the chorus, it’s tempting to invoke all kinds of other bands and musicians, but here’s the thing – the band they sound like is Thank You Scientist.  There are a million influences in here, including, I assume, dozens I don’t recognise, but if by this point anything sounds familiar, it’s because this is the fifth track on the album, and the soundscape has really started to assert itself.  There are sections which relate to each other in inscrutable ways; a familiar mechanism now, where the important vocal lines are backed by trumpet before the guitar elements underscore the fact that the song appears to be being played in two different time signatures at once.

I like pop music, but you can’t pick it apart like this for the most part, and that to me is where the real fun exists.

There’s a sense in Blue Automatic that the instrumentation is pulling on the leash; trying to break out into open chaos, and it’s barely held together by sheer force of will, or sheer force of songwriting.  This is entirely deliberate, of course, as the lyric seems to be describing a panic attack from the inside looking out.  It’s jittery, nervous and stutters around a melodic centre without ever quite settling on it; there are thrilling instrumental solos before – and I may be reading too much into this – the anti-anxiety meds take over for a brief period of calm.

It doesn’t last, however – there’s a genuine sense of paranoia in this song, and it doesn’t take long for the panic to come back before the song skids to an uncertain close.

Can I just point out here that all these songs end?  It’s one of those tings I like most in a well-constructed song, that the composer has taken the time to figure out how to bring it to a natural close, as the way a song ends can say so much about what’s going on with it.  I’m not a fan of fadeouts, and don’t get me started on the rare song which fades in…

Anyway, back on planet Scientist, here are some of the open reverberating basslines we last heard on Hejira, and – wait; I wasn’t going to do that, was I?

Ah, there’s no point pretending that all music isn’t connected in some way.  Need More Input is a song which sounds 2010s, but owes that fact to the way it pulls sounds from throughout the history of popular music from the post-war period.  This one is an ‘android comes to life’ song, although it’s hard to hear the mechanical in much of this; the music on this album (and the others I’ve listened to) is intensely human, even when trying to invoke the artificial.  I think I can imagine what android music might sound like (I’m getting Gary Numan), but I can’t imagine the effortless shifting between styles, influences (it goes all middle-eastern for a moment in the bridge), and especially the way the song skips between tempos, time signatures and – I think; it’s hard to keep up – key signatures.  It’s frenetic and head-spinning, this track.

This whole album, really.

A sign that I’m likely to enjoy a track is that very rare occasion when I laugh out loud at the title.  Rube Goldberg Variations is the kind of joke aimed squarely at my sense of humour, and I don’t think it would have mattered what it sounded like, I’d have been predisposed to like it.  It turns out to be a delightfully unhinged instrumental, initially anchored on a string section which pulls it back into line each time a ‘variation’ has had its turn, but which gradually cuts loose and just does its own thing.  There’s no Bach piano line here, but there’s the full flow of a band exploring their abilities, and whether it’s a jazz trumpet over a bossa nova backline, or saxophone fronting some unexpected drum and bass, or a Stephane Grappelli-like solo violin, or fuzz guitar, or a deliberate invocation of the soundtrack to a mid-seventies cop show, there’s never a dull moment.  It’s nearly nine minutes long, but had it gone on all afternoon, you’d have had no complaints from me, such is the wit and invention on show here.

 There’s a whole genre of music called Psychopomp, or of there isn’t, there should be.  Whether it exists or not, it probably doesn’t sound like this, because this sounds like Thank You Scientist, and I have no idea how you’d make a genre out of all the colliding parts of this.  I can’t even decide what it’s about (Frankenstein’s monster?  Charon?  Given recent events, Paddington?) but, as with all of these songs, it doesn’t matter – the joy is in the experience, and  – oh, look, I’m hearing Wishbone Ash in the twinned guitars now.  I really love this music, but I’m glad I had all the experience of all the other music before I came to try to unpick this.  Equally, I’m happy not to unpick, just to let it wash over me while I look on, mildly baffled.

And if I celebrated all the other endings on this album, I reserved an entire paragraph for this one, as the spoken word outro, played as if it was a spirit voice from the ancient past, delivered to us via an elderly vinyl recording, reverses all the theories I’ve been working on, and removes the ‘mildly’ from my previous paragraph.  Brilliant.

Penultimate track The Amateur Arsonist’s Handbook prompts me to try to imagine it as a straight rock song; there are solid verses, interesting pre-choruses, and a gloriously melodic chorus, and I think you could just about build a four-minute single out of it – I can even just about imagine it in an acapella version.

But why would you?  What raises this and all the others above the ordinary are the extras – the crazed yet controlled drum fills; the electric violin solo; the hints of trumpet provoking the singer to break out of his safe range and reach for something altogether more epic; the return of the brass line at the end, and the acceleration to the crash ending.

Take a deep breath, because here comes the epilogue.  Just as we began with close harmony and familiar sounds, we go out with … and the Clever Depart to give us time to calm down, return to normality so we can safely interact with the rest of the world.  It, naturally echoes the Prologue, and even suggests an answer to the question posed at the beginning

If this album, or this band needs an epigram, it’s contained in this whimsical endnote:

“Too many notes for normal folk to understand.”

Their words, not mine.

My kind of band.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Considering how much I love this one, it may surprise you to know that I haven’t dug deeply into the others.  Partly, I keep hoping to turn them up on vinyl somewhere (I do dislike not having a physical object to look at and hold); partly, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this album, and there’s only so much room in my brain.  I’ll be going for Terraformer next, though.

Compilations to consider?

I know I keep saying this, but how could you compile this?  No is the answer.

Live albums?

Not yet, but there are a couple of YouTube videos which suggest that a Thank You Scientist live show would be every bit as spectacular as you might imagine.

Anything else?

Not yet.  Unless you want to try to unpick all those influences I can hear, and go back and try to find where all this came from.  Frank Zappa would be a place to start if you wanted to do that…

58. Folklore, Big Big Train, 2016

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It took us ten years or so to get itchy feet again after our move to Canada.  The small boys who came to Prince George with us in 2006 were graduating High School and forging their own paths by 2016, and in the last year or so up north, I was beginning to wonder ‘what next?’

I had been doing a part-time IT job all those years; one which allowed me the flexibility to do all the parenting things I wanted, which mostly seemed to involve standing at the side of soccer fields yelling at teenagers while I tried to transplant my vision of the effortless game in my head to the feet of boys who weren’t all as confident as I was of their ability.

By the summer of 2015, I was more or less surplus to requirements as a coach, and was beginning to wonder if I could find my way back into a more career-shaped job, while I was just beginning to tire of the endless winter pastime of shovelling the driveway.

So when opportunity called for Zoë to expand her working horizons with the kind of job which seemed perfect for her, I was ready to dust off our ‘how to move house’ plans one more time.

The first time we visited BC’s capital, Victoria, perched at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, I think we both thought ‘not for us’.  It seemed less Canadian than everywhere else we’d seen, almost as if a genteel English seaside town had been plonked down in the shadow of the Olympic mountains.  Of course, first impressions can be misleading, and subsequent visits revealed all the hidden parts of Victoria we had missed first time round, and a trip in February of 2016 revealed that they have spring here, not just the sense of ‘only three more months of snow to go’ we had in PG.

So, with decisions made and job offer accepted, we set about the single hardest task known to 21st century humans – trying to buy a house in Victoria.  This required several trips – together or separately – until we finally managed to persuade someone to take our money in return for an extraordinarily expensive piece of land – the house is something of an afterthought in these proceedings; it’s the location you’re buying.

The house wasn’t, and isn’t, perfect, which only means that we’ll likely be moving again before we lose our enthusiasm for packing and unpacking things.  However, the process of buying it involved me driving around various previously unexplored areas of Greater Victoria one weekend in May, accompanied by the new album by my new favourite band.

I hadn’t realised, as we entered the 2010s and my age suddenly had a 5 at the beginning of it, that I was in the market for a New Favourite Band, but having been in the musical doldrums for long enough, I suddenly found myself surrounded by things I’d never heard before – the last three entries on this list fall into that category, but this one surpasses them all as there can’t have been a time in my life since I was in the grip of teenaged obsessions (qv) that I so rapidly and completely became immersed in the sounds of something completely new to me.

Big Big Train came into my life as a result of the first real Canadian friends we made on arrival – not that Andrew and Janet are any more Canadian than we are, in truth – which is to say, the people we bought our first Canadian house from.

We do things differently in Canada.

Not only did our predecessors in our enormous new house make the process as pain-free as possible, having been through the same process themselves only a few years before), but they stuck around, made us welcome, invited us to their ‘house cooling’ party so we could meet the neighbours and get to see the house in action, as it were, and generally behaved about as unlike anyone we’d ever bought a house from in the past as it’s possible to imagine.

After moving out, Andrew was a regular visitor, as he and I were both at something of a loose end – he waiting for his children to finish their last school year in PG, me trying to ensure mine got to school in something approximating upright, fed and dressed while our respective wives got on with the whole ‘earning a living’ part of things.

We lunched and watched World Cup games together; Andrew accompanied me to my driving test in case I failed and he had to drive me home; and gradually discovered a similar taste in music.

Which meant that when, a few years later, began raving about this English band he’d discovered, I paid attention.  By now, of course, when someone recommended a piece of music to me, I could just click on a link and listen to it, and I too became immersed in the world of Big Big Train.

It is hard to describe the music of this band without referencing a great many things which make it sound like they’re somehow still living in 1973, and I’m going to try to avoid all that if I can, because there’s a lot more to them than a surface reading, or a description might reveal.

Big Big Train make music which is unabashedly English.  And I do mean English rather than British; there are influences from all over the world, because of course there are, but the first few Big Big Train albums, including – and perhaps especially – this one, mine the seam of what it means to be English and to be surrounded by the depth of history in that ancient land.

None of it is tub-thumping or bombastic, rather it’s reflective and even pastoral in places; it celebrates the rural as much as it does the urban, and it’s interested in the corners of history perhaps overlooked by most.  If Elgar had made rock music, I think it would have sounded like this.

And here I was, in the May of 2016, eager to properly listen to a new Big Big Train album, while driving around what is perhaps the most English of Canadian cities.  This album will always be to me my ‘moving to Victoria’ album, even though its subject matter actually harks back to earlier periods in my life.

Oh, I also have to make a decision with this one which is becoming more common, which is to say: what is the correct tracklisting for it?  The vinyl issue contains two extra tracks, and moves things around to perhaps make a more complete story in places, but after some thought, I’m sticking to the CD (and streaming) version, as that’s the one I heard first, and still think of when I consider this album.  So, for once, I suggest that you listen along with Spotify, rather than skip bits…

Folklore begins with a sound which was familiar to Big Big Train fans, but which might cause the newcomers to raise an eyebrow – it’s essentially a fanfare of strings and brass, with not a rock instrument in sight.  Even when the song proper starts, it’s essentially voice and drums for the first verse; appropriately setting the scene of the traditional folklorist, travelling from village to village, passing on the legends of the land.  Of course, the full extent of the band gradually reveals itself, placing this modern music firmly into the tradition; allowing us to accept that what follows is a telling of some tales ancient and modern in this idiom.

Instead of a middle eight, there’s David Longdon’s breathy voice underscoring that while these are stories, they each contain a kernel of truth, a moral or a message.  It’s deliberately set as a message from the past before it withdraws and allows this band of spectacular musicians to each put their stamp on the song before a gentle laugh reminds us that this is all an entertainment in the way it has been done for millennia.

London Plane is a contemplative stroll through the history of the River Thames, taking us not only around the bends in the river, but the history of a city and a nation.  It does this, not by invoking the obvious, but by gently pushing us to make the connections between the Runnymede of the Magna Carta, the sunsets of JMW Turner, the briefest glimpse of Alice in her Wonderland, to the Festival of Britain, whereupon the music shifts gear to show us the modern city in all its hurry and wonder, still shot through, as the riverside is, with oases of calm and contemplation.

Incidentally, with the recent news of the passing of Hilary Mantel, I now see her Thomas Cromwell in those ‘kings and crowds and priests’ as the river passes through Putney, but maybe that’s just me.

As the Thames reaches out to the North Sea and ‘the fires grow cold in the east’, the music returns to a calm certainty as the voice soars and we drift out to sea, passing Canvey Island on one side, and then the Isle of Sheppey on the other.

I can tie the novels of David Mitchell and Neal Stephenson to all this, too, but I’d like to keep this to something around the same length as the others, so…

So we move out Along the Ridgeway, a landscape I know well, having lived alongside it for several years.  To be fair, the part of the Ridgeway which this song references are much further south and west than the Dunstable Downs, but I can hear those familiar landscapes in this, alongside St. George, King Alfred and Wayland the Smith (which reminds me to recommend the novel The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, another revocation of an ancient England which lives long in the memory after reading).

Along The Ridgeway paints its pictures in that sumptuous Big Big Train soundscape – rarely has the solo violin, so strongly associated with the Celtic nations, sounded so English, before doing a thing which you rarely hear, actually introducing the next song before it fades into it: ‘Here comes the Salisbury Giant’, we are told, and then…

Here, indeed, comes the Salisbury Giant.  It’s a mainly instrumental piece, representing the 15th century processions of the giant and his hobby-horse which used to lead the midsummer processions in Salisbury, and which can still be seen (albeit in much restored form) in the Salisbury museum, where it can be seen in a context which stretches back to Stonehenge, and – I’d suggest – forward to this song and this album.

The Transit of Venus across the Sun is an extraordinary song which packs an enormous emotional punch even if you don’t know the story behind it.  Inspired by the English astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, it uses the rare astronomical event of the transit of Venus to illustrate another aspect of his life; the death during the second world war of the only woman he claimed ever to have loved.  The loss and regret bound up in this song with the almost mystical readings of features of the planet Venus as the narrator reaches the end of his long life is emotional enough, but then the representation of the transit itself takes it onto another level with what seems a simple trick.

There are three lines towards the end of the song which begin ‘So many words left unsaid’ which repeat three times, then the entire song takes a breath, gathers itself, and without missing a beat, moves into the sublime.  On the face of it, it’s a modulation and the addition of an extra line, but it’s infused with such majestic power that it stops me in my tracks every time.  It is, I think, intended to represent the pair of transits which happen every 247 years, in pairs eight years apart, assuming I’ve understood the maths correctly.

But it’s only possible to think about that once the song is over, because the force of that simple change is overpowering, and the subsequent return to the chorus with brass band accompaniment almost always passes by with me in something of a daze.  Without the pair of transits, this would be a favourite song by a favourite band.  With them, it’s something almost indescribable in its effect on me.

Fortunately, we get to have something of a party to clear our heads.  Wassail celebrates the ancient English tradition, tied to Christmas, but probably predating it, where the last of the autumn’s cider was served warm to fend off the beginning of winter, celebrated in merry-making and song.  Out of season, it’s a joyful celebration; in the depths of winter, it gives off a warming glow all its own.

Which brings us to the album’s first attempt to establish a modern folk tale.  Winkie, despite its slightly unfortunate name, uses the structure of traditional storytelling to tell the tale of the first recipient of the Dickin Medal, awarded to animals who display what is described as ‘conspicuous gallantry’.  Winkie was a pigeon, which allows for some appropriate sound effects and a jaunty tune which establishes what seems to be a slight tale of radio taking the place of pigeons for sending messages in wartime.

The jauntiness in turn, allows for the music to take a much darker turn when tragedy strikes, and then to illustrate the dauntless flight of Winkie herself.  It’s a bit of a ‘schoolboys’ own’ tale of assumed heroism on the part of a bird doing what it had been trained to do, but the strength of this band is the way they can paint pictures with music, and sweep you up in the tension of the search (the Last Post is played at one point, seemingly dooming the story to a tragic ending) and the way the whole thing is played with straight faces and heartfelt honesty delivers a remarkably satisfying conclusion.  It really shouldn’t work, but it really does.

Brooklands is not so much a story as a poem.  Another twentieth century story, this spreads out and takes its time to establish the story of John Cobb, imagining his thoughts and memories as he prepares for his doomed water speed record attempt on Loch Ness in 1952.  Cobb’s thoughts turn to Brooklands motor racing circuit, a place which future historians might seize upon to help explain the advances of the early 20th century.  The lyric and the music treat this place of fairly recent memory with the same reverence as Runnymede and the Uffington White Horse earlier; one of the key themes Big Big Train work with is the place of advances in technology in the broader story of England.

At once elegiac and celebratory, Brooklands has time to breathe, time to reflect, before taking us into the cockpit of the Crusader as it reaches its top speed before breaking up.  We don’t hear the disaster, we hear Cobb’s spirit ascend, still pleading for ‘one last run’.

I will admit that after the emotional punch of earlier tracks, this one doesn’t quite get to me in the same way, magnificent song though it is.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, perhaps I just need to listen to it more.

The end is reached by way of Telling the Bees, another ancient English custom, here given a light touch and an arrangement distinct from the other, more serious songs on here.  This is a perfect delight of a song, the very epitome of a fabulous album, in both senses of the word. ‘The joy is in the telling’, indeed.

I’ve avoided any reflection on the fact that some of the albums in this list were made by people who are no longer with us, but I cannot let the passing of David Longdon go without a mention.  A charismatic frontman, powerful and expressive singer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist, he was, by all accounts a lovely man, and his sudden early death last November was one of those which seemed to come as a physical blow.  I’m delighted that the band has decided to carry on with a new vocalist, and am enormously looking forward to hearing what this iteration of Big Big Train will sound like.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Certainly.  For all the impact this delightful album has on me, I’m not sure it’s even in my top three Big Big Train albums.  The recent remixed and tweaked version of The Underfall Yard is spectacular, as is the combined English Electric: Full Power, which can keep me occupied for days once I get started.  There are many others, including the tantalising glimpse that Welcome to the Planet gave us of what the future sound with Longdon might have been.  I suspect it divides opinion, but I love its quirks and tangents.

Also, as with most of my favourites, try them all – there’s something for everyone here.

Compilations to consider?

Well, I kind of gave English Electric: Full Power non-compilation status up there, but technically it’s a compilation, so…

Live albums?

It took a long time for Big Big Train to establish themselves as a band who play live shows – a combination of a desire for something close to perfection and the complexity of the arrangements meant that any show would be expensive to produce, but with the support of their remarkable fans, collectively (and inevitably) known as the Passengers, they ventured into the light in 2015.  Those concerts are captured on A Stone’s Throw From the Line, the following set of shows on Merchants of Light.  Both are highly recommended, and I’m off to listen properly to Empire, so you can probably take it as read that it’s also worth your time.

Anything else?

Big Big Train has had a revolving cast of members over the years, many of whom have much other work to recommend, from Dave Gregory’s time with XTC to Nick D’Virgilio’s extraordinary drumming with Spock’s Beard.  Having been in Big Big Train is not an absolute guarantee of a musician’s quality, of course, but it’s pretty damn close.  However, I’m going to end by pointing you to the book – Between the Lines covers the entire band history, of which there is a lot more than you might expect, and one more footnote:

The album Between a Breath and a Breath by Dyble Longdon was a collaboration between the legendary Judy Dyble and David Longdon.  It now, sadly, stands as a tribute to them both, and is also highly recommended.  It also, by its mere existence allows me to tie this band all the way back to King Crimson, Fairport Convention (they surely stand musically somewhere between those two), and tangentially to Joni Mitchell and (again) the novels of David Mitchell – Judy Dyble surely having been one of the inspirations behind the staggeringly good  Utopia Avenue.

You think this post is long?  You should have seen the first draft…