This week: G Flip, Eels, East 17, Britney, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Jurassic 5, DJ Format, Run The Jewels, Gemma Heyes, Incubus, Johnny FlynnAs I write these words, it is 5.38am, and I've been awake for about two hours - certainly at least long enough to listen to two albums since I dragged myself out of bed so I wasn't also disturbing Catherine's sleep as well as my own; I'm sure anxious insomnia isn't a gift I should be sharing. But I'm going to choose to consider my brain's response to the continuing collapse of western society as a very well-hidden blessing, as I have a busy Sunday planned so this early start gives me a chance to get a jump on getting this blog post written and up in good time before I start cooking a Palestinian mezze meal for my friends and spend the afternoon playing Rock Band 3 with them, which promises to be a very welcome distraction so long as I am able to stay awake through it.
It's been a pretty rugged mental health week between work stresses and everything else stresses, so my listening has been strangely fractured this week, lots of minor themes, and no great volume of records consumed; nothing like the 30+ album cleanup jobs I've had to do in prior weeks. Let's see how far we get before my sleep-deprived brain stops feeding me words to put on this page and I head back to bed for another 90 minutes or so of sleep.
I met Louise about eighteen months ago; my friend Andy runs a
monthly game of
Blood On The Clocktower here in Sheffield, and him and co-conspirator Matt were far better and more effective at promoting and marketing their game than I am at getting more than 20 people to read this blog. This meant as well as attracting a playerbase of people they knew in real life, a number of people which were not immediately in our circle of friends joined one or more games. Louise was one of those people. She didn't come to the game with someone; just saw the game advertised, and took herself out to Walkley Community Centre to play a social deduction game with a bunch of strangers. Maybe it's just my social anxiety talking, but I think that's probably one of the most courageous acts I can imagine, just behind firefighters running into burning buildings.
A few months later, Matt decided to run a one-shot RPG session as part of his birthday celebrations, and we played
Mission Accomplished, and despite not knowing us very well, and having never played a TTRPG before, Louise put her hand up and and said "I'll come do that"; playing an RPG for the first time with virtual strangers? The firefighters have competition. Then last year, having done precisely one session ever, Louise joined a small group of us to play through
The Between in what was the best RPG experience I've ever had.
The Between is not a game for the faint-hearted, and Louise dove headfirst into it and produced some of the best at-the-table moments I've seen. It's been a real pleasure getting to know her - while I've flippantly said how easy it is to meet new people and make new friends after the age of 30, it's really a genuine pleasure to have someone come into your social circle unexpectedly and find them to be interesting and impressive and fun. So, when I looked for people to send me recommendations, Louise made my shortlist as a kind of shortcut to have conversations with her about music, but her range of recommendations means I feel like I somehow know less about her than I did before.
Let's touch on the easy ones first; I've made my feelings on Britney clear before, and
In The Zone might be the one Britney album I have listened to all the way through prior to this year. It's got
Toxic on it, which I think is indisputably the best Britney song; the rest of the album is also good though I admit I don't particularly care for either the Madonna collab
Me Against The Music (so 'good' it made the album twice, opening it, and closing it with a remix) or the track with the Ying Yang Twins. I get that every pop record from the early 2000s felt like it was contractually obligated to have a track with a rap break half way through it, but Britney does her best work alone. I didn't know who Johnny Flynn was until I put his name into Spotify and the first recommendation was his theme tune to British gentle sitcom
The Detectorists.
A Larum is very much in that vein, a kind of traditional folk that I am certain works far better in the back room of a countryside pub than it does on a studio album. Not that it is bad by any means, it's inoffensively pleasant, but for me this is the kind of album I'd put on as background music at a dinner party where I didn't know anything about the guests musical tastes.
It's probably no surprise if you've read all of these blog posts that I've been a fan of Run The Jewels for a decade; I'm pretty sure I listened to the first RTJ album because of a twitter recommendation, and I've been there on release ever since. I find it hard to choose between them (and, to be honest, distinguish which album which track is from with a few exceptions) so I will simply say that Run The Jewels 3 is an excellent hip-hop album and I very nearly did the whole discography this week but ran out of time/got distracted. I started listening to Incubus because my first real serious girlfriend was into them, so I have very historical associations with this album (also S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and Enjoy Incubus, but we had broken up just before Morning View came out, so I know that album far less well). I sang along to every word on this album while I listened to it; in keeping with my philosophy of choosing not to be embarassed or ashamed of what I've enjoyed, while I'm not an Incubus fan (never seen them live, own no merch, that's the litmus test) I'll happily listen to this album - which has to be their best (even though there are four more after Morning View I have no idea the quality of). I did want to bring up one thing before I let them off the hook though; obviously, Incubus were a band which appealed to a lot of women I knew/still know. So in Stellar, when Brandon Boyd sings "I need you to see this place / it might be the only way / that I can tell you how it feels / to be inside of you"...you like that? That's OK? Is that what game looked like in 1999? Because I knew that lyric was coming and it still gave me an incredible case of the ick when it arrived. Anyway, let's move on.
I didn't know Gemma Hayes at all, but Night On My Side was my favourite of Louise's recommendations. Some post-listening research revealed it's nomination for the Mercury Music Prize in the early 2000s, which makes a lot of sense. I don't want to burden her with something like a Norah Jones comparison, because its a lot more interesting than that, but it did bring to mind a collection of winsome and earnest young female vocalists of the early 2000s which somehow I had been exposed to, and only got to Gemma Hayes two decades too late; proof that talent is no guarantee of exposure, I guess.
Finally, Louise had me listen to Steam by 90's boy band East 17. This album has not aged well; it's the whitest people you could ever find delivering the corniest educational rap flow about how sexy they think you are and how much they want to get down with you. It's not just bad because of how appropriative it is (it is bad for that reason also), but just every aspect of it, from the style to the performance to the presentation somehow had a shelf life of exactly four months in 1994 and past that point it spoiled faster than those time lapse videos of fruit bowls rotting. However, there's a silver lining here because I do get to remind everyone, or tell people who haven't experienced this wonderful story for themselves before, that band member Brian Harvey once ran himself over with his own car because he had eaten too many jacket potatoes. He's fine, it's OK.
What's baffling about Louise's recommendation of East 17 is that she obviously enjoys, you know, good rap and hip-hop as evidenced by her RTJ recommendation, and the last of her recommendations*, Quality Control by Jurassic 5. Catherine's sister had also recommended a J5 album (their self titled Jurassic 5), and I have a long standing request which I need to honour. Back in 2017, in my original version of this, I had Netunner player MasterAir ask me over Twitter for some recommendations of where to start with hip-hop and rap if you want to experience it and find it intimidating and inaccessible**. Jurassic 5 is the answer to that question.
My former, now sadly departed housemate Dave was very into J5, which is where I first heard them, and there's something incredibly rare in a world where gangster rap turned the most successful incarnation of that musical form into something dark and a violent, to hear expressions of the hip-hop form which are not slaves to those conventions. That's not to say J5 aren't telling stories about their own experiences as black men in America, but they cut truth with levity, deliver impeccable wordplay with style and panache, and any of the three albums of theirs above (I listened to Power In Numbers as it, along with the prior two, were the three J5 albums on rotation in our shared house) represents an excellent entry point into hip-hop and rap for the uninitiated.
From listening to J5, it felt inevitable that at some point in my time watching MTV at my friend D's house that I would be exposed to the video for DJ Format's
We Know Something You Don't Know, which features
B-boys in fursuits showing out on the streets of London, and features vocals from two of the MC's from J5. I bought
Music For The Mature B-Boy on the strength of that song, and was delighted to find not only that I enjoyed that but also Format's collaborations with Canadian MC Abdominal, who features on all the non-instrumental, non-J5 songs on the album and is incredibly lyrically creative and has an extremely fun flow.
Viscious Battle Raps, also from this album, has another great
one-take music video which is worth watching if you enjoy that kind of thing. The follow up,
If You Can't Join 'Em...Beat 'Em is very much
Music For The Mature B-Boy part two, including the return of Abdominal as the featured performer, and both of these albums still sit proudly in my CD collection. I'd assumed after the radio silence following the second albums 2005 release that they'd simply been too beautiful for this world and had faded away, but Spotify told me there was a 2012 album, so I tried it; look, it was a first listen through, so I can't pass too much judgment, and
Statement of Intent does do a cool thing in highlighting what I guess are a other, less well known UK MCs, but at the cost of no longer featuring the raps from Abdominal which I'd come to associate with DJ Format albums***.
I don't remember what was going through my head when I decided to listen to this album this week. It's possible I just needed to pick something on the spur of the moment and reached for comfort. Regardless, Beautiful Freak might be the last new music I remember my parents being excited about. As debut albums go, it's certainly in conversation with some of the best of all time - E's winsome and melancholy delivery and songwriting felt completely unique to me when I heard it in 1996, as a just-past-teenager who'd spent most of their time immersed in a heady mixture of Seattle grunge, R.E.M., Tori Amos, and the emerging electro/dance music of The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers and Bentley Rhythm Ace. It's an album that exists in an emotional space completely devoid of the kind of kaleidoscopic chaos I was feeling as a young adult, and it still has the ability to make me feel a kind of quiet and contemplative calm when I listen to it.
This was a surprise for me this week; for reasons which are not clear to me, I know several people who enjoy the Australian soap opera Neighbours, including Catherine. Park that thought for a second while I tell you that, unrelated to that, I'm quite the fan of the two radio institutions on YouTube, the BBC Radio One Live Lounge, and Australian radio station Triple J's Like A Version, both of which encourage modern artists to come into their studios and perform cover versions of songs they like. The algorithm this week served me up a Like A Version recommendation I had not seen before, of Australian artist G Flip covering Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer, and because I love Taylor, I watched it knowing nothing about the performer.
The first two thirds of
this video had me going "Ok, they've got an nice voice and it's a good performance and the live strings are nice" and then it hit 1m50s in and my mind was completely blown. Playing the drums is hard; I have been learning for five years now, and if I can't play like a professional musician after five whole years of practice, it
must be hard. Also, with a running start and a following wind, and if I very carefully curate my choices, I can sing a little as well. Being able to do both simultaneously is some kind of witchcraft that I do not understand, but can only stand in awe of. I've probably watched that video fifteen times this week. I had to find more, so I listened to their 2023 album
DRUMMER. About 40 minutes later, I posted this on BlueSky.
Last year, this album could have been my new obsession for a month; As a percussion enjoyer, this kind of drum-lead pop rock album with a strong vocal performance and songs straight from the lyrics-as-diary-entries-and-therapy school ticked all of my boxes. But time spent listening to the same album again and again is time not spent reaching my goal, so I reluctantly put it to one side; however, I did think I would recommend it to Catherine, as it definitely fell into the range of albums she'd enjoy too. When I sent it to her, she replied "Oh, you mean the artist who was on Neighbours?". I try not to pay attention to the Neighbours chat that happens around me, but I was vaguely aware that some musician had been on the revived version of the show on Amazon Prime, but a quick google told me that G Flip is indeed married to American actress Chrishell Stause, who appears on the show, and that they had appeared. In light of their incredible talent, and the degree to which I enjoyed their album, I will choose to not hold their appearance on Neighbours against them. This album is great, go give it a try.
Last but not least, in anticipation of our upcoming Rock Band session today (it's now 7.48am, I've not slept any more yet, if you are keeping count) I thought I would listen to some albums by artist I may not have heard unless they appeared on a Rock Band setlist and got my attention that way. I love the song The Electric Version by The New Pornographers which has great drums and a bouncy energy to it, and I'm on record as being a Neko Case fan (who sings vocals on this album), but there's something too gleefully arty and indie about this record which means I enjoy it in very short bursts, but as a whole album it starts to very quickly wear down my patience. It's like a dessert wine, nice once in a while, in limited quantities, for the right occasion, but you shouldn't be drinking a whole bottle on a random Tuesday night unless you have very particular and refined tastes.
I don't know where Fall Out Boy got the reputation that existed in my head as kind of extremely basic and pandering alternative music for teen girls (very much the Incubus of the mid 2000s, perhaps) but I'm grateful for Rock Band forcing me to play This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race because the song itself is a quicky microcosm of the entire album and indeed, the Fall Out Boy sound in general. It's often arch to the point of high camp, but that's never been a bad thing in my book unless it's done poorly, and I don't think there's any argument to be made of that kind about Infinity On High. For reasons I will have to interrogate about myself, and perhaps just because the media has trained us to expect things in trilogies, I've only listened to three Fall Out Boy albums, of which this is the latest (the others being From Under The Cork Tree and Take This To Your Grave, which also has a song which is in a Rock Band setlist on it, Dead On Arrival). I enjoy their song titles as well, and they've never once produced an insipid lyric that made me feel slightly ill, so if I can be comfortable enjoying Incubus, I'm steadfast in my belief that Fall Out Boy make good music regardless of your age or gender identity.
Closing us out for this week, I like to imagine I would have found Paramore one way or another, because they're like a band created in a lab to appeal specifically to several of my personal tastes, but there's no doubt in my mind that the first time I heard anything by them was when crushcrushcrush was featured as a bonus track on Rock Band 2. Riot! is the Paramore album you listen to if you are only ever going to listen to one (though as previously stated, I'm extremely partial to This Is Why), because it has Misery Business and That's What You Get as well as half a dozen other album deep cuts that deserve more love (I like the opener, For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic, and not just for the fun title). I consider myself incredibly fortunate that somehow Paramore, a band I would have paid money to see on their own tour, were somehow the support act for Taylor Swift's European leg of the Eras Tour, which felt like an incredible bonus. Please no-one tell Hayley Williams that I missed the first 20 minutes of their set because I was queuing to buy a Taylor Swift hoodie though.
Here's hoping for better mental heath, and better sleep, in the coming week.
* Technically, Britney was the last of her recommendations as I told her that I'd listened to all the albums she had sent me and then she started firing more suggestions at me. Also, she did also recommend August and Everything After but that an album I would have listened to anyway, and I am saving it for, well, you can guess when.
** Quality Control - Jurassic 5 / Journey To Anywhere - Ugly Duckling / 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of... - Arrested Development / Labcabincalifornia - The Pharcyde / ATLiens - Outkast. Sorry that took so long.
*** There is a 2017 DJ Format album I've not yet listened to which seems to have Abdominal back as the main featured performer, so there is hope for more of that music I like.
