The Liverpudlian post punkers’ live offering is rough around the edges and their fixation with heavy-handed autotune grates – but they do possess the sort of roof-demolishing closing number most bands can only dream of.
The Liverpudlian post punkers’ live offering is rough around the edges and their fixation with heavy-handed autotune grates – but they do possess the sort of roof-demolishing closing number most bands can only dream of.
“Everyone sing the chorus!” Sean Murphy-O’Neill ventures spontaneously in the closing stages of his band’s visit to Newcastle, eyes glinting with a boyish cockiness that rather overestimates the passion for Courting in this small crowd of mostly inebriated university students who will jump up and down to anything resembling a drum beat. Most seem to be here for the more daring shout-along choruses of the band’s debut album Guitar Music, a record filled with ample angry rap-singing and meaty bass riffs perfectly tailored to the tastes of a mostly young male demographic up and down the country. Courting aren’t quite leaders of the post punk pack (that would be Leeds’ red hot Yard Act, followed by Do Nothing and Squid) and their latest album aims for a broader indie rock appeal, but there’s still plenty of bangers to be written in this thriving subgenre. That said, Courting has some way to go to reach the mainstream, a fact that Murphy-O’Neill is reminded when no one sings said chorus. Ego visibly bruised, he hastens back to the mic to blurt out the next lyric. He needn’t fear, though – it takes a few more repeats of the refrain for the eager crowd to get the hang of the hook and soon enough Murphy-O’Neill is grinning and pointing his microphone at Fosters-wielding fans like Freddie Mercury.
You can only get such intimate crowd interactions at somewhere like the Cluny, hands down Newcastle’s finest small venue and an ideal underground cocoon to witness fresh bands like Courting navigate the early stages of their development. Discuss indie music with anyone in Newcastle and the Cluny will come up – this is where bands build their core followings before promotion to O2’s midsized venues across the country, which is why the continued loss of such venues to the cost of living crisis is such a tragedy. Luckily the Cluny, like Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, seems to have enough word-of-mouth hype to keep it sustained for the time being, and the small dancefloor and seating area is packed by the time the five members of Courting are picking their way through the crowd and onto the stage (a wonderfully unceremonious entry you just don’t get at your local O2 Academy).
The ensuing 80 minutes is an odd mix of Courting’s contentious early punk and more recent, pop-facing indie rock tracks. Opener The Wedding is very much the latter, and despite a few earwormy lyrics (“oh, I’ve been a good boy on this track!”) never quite elevates beyond competent yet flavourless rock. The former, epitomised in a stroppy rendition of Tennis, was much better received, although had issues of its own – when there’s no melody for distraction, spoken lyrics like “You’re a night in the Holiday Inn / I’m a breakfast bar with an unusual toasting conveyor belt” just won’t cut it. What’s more, Murphy-O’Neill doesn’t even serve up a juicy Scouse accent. Instead we get the posh southern boy voice popularised by pre-2023 Black Country, New Road and, lacking that band’s immense musicality or lyrical genius, Courting end up sounding like a pale imitation of their Cambridge contemporaries.
Underpinning it all is an irritating penchant for incongruous autotune that is hard to ignore during a listen of Courting’s otherwise rewarding recent album, New Last Name. This is far from the first time Murphy-O’Neill has received this critique – earlier this tour he wrote on X that all complaints just prompt him to boost the autotune even further – but what Courting gain from the manipulated vocals besides some point of distinction from their contemporaries is unclear. They stand to lose plenty; most of the time it just sounds distractingly silly and only occasionally – like on the rousing The Hills – did the emotion in Murphy-O’Neill’s voice survive all that pitch-correction. Sure, robot-ified vocals can sound great on an electronic track, but accompanied by earthy electric guitars and a real drum kit it just sounds wrong.
Crowd work between songs was hit and miss. They introduced sparkly pop number We Look Good Together (Big Words) by asking the crowd to imagine a drunken night out in Tup Tup (after a quick poll established that Tup Tup was indeed to worst club in Newcastle) and managed to get couples to waltz during PDA (“More romantic! More romantic!”), which was just as well because the track was a clear dud that had been getting an unusually cold reception from the Cluny patrons. Less wise was a needless and unfunny attempt at improvising a story (each band member contributing one word at a time), plus the awkward silence when Murphy-O’Neill announced “we’ve only got one more song…”, the frontman not getting the consternation he’d clearly expected.
Other times, that touch of youthful insouciance injected some much needed fun to proceedings. There were brief renditions of Coldplay’s universally loved Yellow and Fun’s We Are Young (a little obvious given the demographic in the room yes, but I still wanted more), plus by far the best surprise of the night in a full cover of Olivia Rodrigo‘s riff-heavy rager Bad Idea, Right?. This rendition stripped away what little melody there was in the original and added nothing in its place, but the raucous crowd couldn’t care less – it was the track I had been waiting for to compel me into the mosh.
Bizarrely, a cover of a girly American popstar’s song would have been the highlight of the night had it not been for Flex, the undisputed jewel of Courting’s discography, which was rightly saved for the end. Murphy-O’Neill had rehearsed parting the crowd Moses-style before the song, presumably so he could get stuck into the mosh pit, but in the end he stayed onstage, perhaps surprised at just how dense and wild the crowd became. That was because Flex is a song perfectly designed for singalong hedonism, overflowing with simple, bulletproof melodies as well us some shrewdly placed quiet passages to let us catch our breaths. In its composition it deserves comparison to the ultimate indie anthem Mr. Brightside – like that Killers song, every note Murphy-O’Neill sings feels inevitable and timeless, even when the core refrain repeats rarely. Tonight’s rendition lacked the endearingly ragged trumpet solo of the studio recording, but the spine-tingling finale about partying the night away nonetheless summoned pandemonium. In the eye of the storm, I turned around to find myself surrounded by smiling faces of people celebrating their joy, their glorious freedom and, most of all, a shared love of really good indie rock song.
Flex left fans leaving on an enormous high not quite representative of the flawed songs and scrappy performances that made up most of the gig. They may still have plenty of room to grow, but there’s no denying that this band’s star is rising. Another of Murphy-O’Neill’s audience polls found that most of those in attendance hadn’t witnessed the band’s last visit to the Cluny a little over a year ago. A few more solid choruses in the vein of New Last Name and a little more (justified) confidence in their frontman and Courting will be all set to graduate the small venue stages. Let’s just hope that by the time they’re headlining O2 City Hall they’ve seen sense on the autotune front.
Ticking off everything from electropop to metal, Indian folk music to club-ready dance numbers, the finale of Collier’s four-album extravaganza is eclectic even by his standards. It makes for a mightily impressive listen, even if the 26 featured artists might overwhelm even his keenest fans.
Now five albums into his career, it’s clear Jacob Collier is a once-in-generation musician. For anyone that’s been following him since he broke out via harmonically complex a capella covers on YouTube, that’s old news. In reality, it was clear from that very first album – Hideaway, toured solo with Jacob jumping around stage from drums to keys to double bass with the help of a loop pedal – that Collier isn’t like your average singer-songwriter, not even your average jazz musician. He plays everything brilliantly and effortlessly, all with Herculean powers of humility, and has an immense grasp of musical harmony in all its nuances. His insatiable urge to learn new instruments is matched by his appetite for a dizzying array of genres and a rare respect for music in all its nebulous forms: Djesse Vol. 4 has everything from choral ambience to cinematic pop and oppressive death metal – and that’s just track one. As a result, Djesse Vol. 4 is in turns awe-inspiringly virtuosic and discombobulating, as has Collier’s entire career up to this point.
This record, the final of a blockbuster four album cycle and the hardest of the four to pin down to one sonic palette, starts with Collier’s finest USP of recent years: the “100,000-person choir”. 2020’s Vol. 3 was followed by a world tour in which Collier perfected the art of ‘playing the audience’, orchestrating soul-stirring three part harmonies with hand gestures, often with improvisatory flourishes. Vol. 4‘s opener presents an astonishing overlay of audience recordings from every single concert on that tour (which means Undertone‘s voice is technically on this album too – there goes my impartiality). Moreover, 100,000 Voices is much more than just the heart-warming harmonies many Collier fans will have expected; soon Collier’s singing an up tempo pop anthem with an unusually unrestrained belt, a refreshing change from his usual choir boy undertones). He cuts through the chaos with a striking demand to “let me be happy! … let me be ordinary!” but alas, as with many a Collier song that has come before, he gets bored quickly, and soon he’s throwing in a distinctly unhappy and unordinary death metal interlude apparently just because he can.
There’s plenty of impatience elsewhere, but Collier’s core ideas are consistently solid. She Put Sunshine has a restlessly shifting electropop groove but a bulletproof hook and touchingly romantic lyrics at its heart; A Rock Somewhere is an utterly random yet atmospheric sitar interlude; in the other extreme, Witness Me features the definition of the Western pop mainstream in Shawn Mendes, and turns out to be a somewhat cheesy gospel pop number with a catchy chorus.
A common sonic thread is impossible to find in Djesse Vol. 4, but the record stands out in Collier’s discography by the unusually high number of actually comprehensible pop and rock songs. Lead single WELLLL debuted at Glastonbury and offered false promises of an incoming rock album, but it still includes impressively hard-hitting classic rock riffs for a musician that grew up singing Bach chorales in the living room with his family. Cinnamon Crush and Wherever I Go are both sumptuous R&B cuts, the latter containing a standout vocal performance from gravel-throated Clyde Lawrence. There’s also several much needed islands of calm. Little Blue, featuring a non-descript performance from Brandi Carlile, is serene to the point of being soporific. Summer Rain, instead, is the pick of the ballads, Collier showcasing the depths of his lovesick tenderness before a soaring, delightfully uncomplicated finale that evokes Coldplay in Fix You mode. It’s more proof that when Collier can successfully harness his immense talents into developing a single strong idea – like the Hulk trying not to smash everything he holds – the result can be stunning.
One gripe I’ve had of Collier’s albums so far is that he has an unfortunate habit of making the best song a cover. An orchestral All Night Long and a towering choral rendition of Moon River were the clear highlights of their respective albums, and a piano cover of Dancing Queen performed live in Stockholm remains on of the most affecting corners of Collier’s released discography. I’ve even made the claim that Collier is yet to create a genuinely great original composition, beyond perhaps Hideaway. Djesse Vol. 4 sets that right, but also includes another extravagant cover in Bridge Over Troubled Water, which foregrounds Tori Kelly’s extraordinary vocals. Unfortunately, the ample flourishes – namely Kelly’s bewilderingly ornate melismas – muddy the picture somewhat, and by the end it seems Collier has chosen showy vocal acrobatics over the simple beauty of the exceptionally well-written source material. Exceptional talent is useful at the right moment, but Bridge Over Troubled Water is an example of Collier’s difficulty in knowing where to practice restraint.
Given this album marks the end of the 44-song long Djesse series, Collier can at least be forgiven for indulging in a grand finale. Two-parter Box of Stars is the most Collier-esque piece he has ever produced, with each distinctive new guest vocalist wheeled in and out at a rate of knots. The result is, as Collier has admitted, utterly unperformable, since the guests’ rap verses and vocal flourishes are far too idiosyncratic for Collier to attempt, particularly given the variety of languages on display (Djesse Vol. 4 boasts featured artists from all seven continents – except Antarctica, but Collier claimed in an interview that there’s recording of Antarctic ice somewhere deep in the mix for good measure). Box of Stars Pt. 1 does at least boil down into a pulsating, hooky dance groove, although Collier only teases out four bars of it in its fully glory at the end of the song.
The very end of the Djesse experience, however, is a wonderful surprise. World O World is a choral hymn and nothing more – without even the drastic harmonic left turns that populate the many of Collier’s earlier choral pieces. Delivered with a gentle majesty akin to Hark!the Herald Angels Sing, the song is a poignant call to leave home and strive for something frightening and new. “Time is swift to come to pass / Nothing stays and nothing lasts,” the choir intones in buttery harmony, sounding not dissimilar to the a capella arrangements that launched 17-year-old Collier’s career in the first place. It’s a simple message, but it’s also perhaps the most deeply moving set of lyrics Collier has ever penned. As this anarchic album comes to a close with a final “goodbye”, all that’s left to wonder is just how Collier has found the time to attain such technical mastery in so many genres.
“When you become immersed in something that you care about in a deep, deep way, it doesn’t feel like practice any more,” Collier tells me, my friend Thomas and a few hundred others in a rammed Wardrobe on a Thursday night in Leeds. We’re here for an underpublicised album launch celebration, and in a Q&A section of a typically remarkable Jacob Collier gig. Surely the diminutive stage at the Wardrobe has never seen a performer of this calibre before. If four Grammys aren’t enough to go by (and the only time a British artist has won Grammys for all their first four albums), Collier soon provokes gasps by somehow playing guitar and piano simultaneously, this time without a loop pedal in sight. Later, he indulges in the musically literate crowd (he asks later to discover almost half of the audience attends Leeds Conservatoire), conducting his trademark audience choir, with added polyrhythmic clapping and impromptu covers. Constrained (mostly) to one instrument at a time, Collier’s renditions are far less overwhelming than the studio recordings, and melodies on some of Djesse Vol. 4‘s weaker tracks soon reveal their true beauty
Jacob Collier played to a rapt Wardrobe in Leeds.
What’s more, Collier is just an inspiring a speaker as musician. He has a knack of giving profound answers to tedious, surface level questions. For example, a somewhat technical question about harmonic dissonance (one of several such questions from a crowd hungry for just one percent of this genius’s powers) becomes a discussion on finding perspective in life. “Sometimes you might play one note over a chord and think ‘well that note doesn’t go at all’, but it’s not the note that’s wrong, it’s the chord. Whilst you can’t control the world’s ‘notes’, we can control the context within which we place those notes. We get to decide what matters. Music is a very great teacher.” Some may accuse nerdy young musicians of being in a Jacob Collier cult, but it’s hard not to become a convert when hearing him speak so eloquently about his life’s passion.
I’m not the first to want to put Collier’s music back in a box, to dream of a pop song with a verse and a chorus, or a jazz album that focuses on Collier’s seasoned piano improvisation skills, perhaps even an orchestral symphony. The wonderful thing about Collier is that he couldn’t care less. His stated, noble goal of Djesse was to simply experiment and learn about as much music as possible, recruiting world experts from T Pain to Anoushka Shankar, Chris Martin to Xhosa lyricist Kanyi Mavi, and the eclectic volatility of the resulting songs seem to indicate he has achieved his goals. Any Grammys that come along the way are nice bonuses. Later in the gig, one audience member asks him how to be successful, to which Collier advises the best measure of success is simply “contentment”. His best single piece of practical advice? “Don’t try to be cool, be warm.”
Starry pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason’s Clara Schumann had crystalline clarity plus a stunning cello solo, but it was Dinis Sousa’s vigorous tackling of Beethoven’s most fabled symphony that had RNS operating at their genuinely world class best.
It’s 7 p.m. on an unseasonably mild February night outside the Glasshouse and a violinist is in a hurry. She dashes past me as I’m wrestling with my bike lock, already creating her own percussive rhythms through the frantic clip clop of high heels and the rattle of her violin case on her back. Her panic is understandable – tonight, of all nights, is not one to show up late for. Inside, the place is packed, with perhaps double the attendance of underrated Sunwook Kim‘s take on Brahms before Christmas. There are even – to my wide-eyed disbelief – a handful of fellow youngsters in attendance, apparently lured in by the youthful appeal of tonight’s 27-year-old pianist. The high turnout isn’t the only reason this concert feels special. The first person to walk out onstage is BBC Radio 3’s Linton Stephens, who opens with “Good evening everyone here in Gateshead, and good evening to everyone listening at home!” to the excited murmur of the audience, some of whom have already spotted the bulky camera taking up a cluster of seats at one side of the auditorium. The tardy violinist, thank goodness, is on stage with the rest of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, listening intently to Stephens’ preamble about the Schumanns whilst cradling her violin as if nothing untoward happened 30 minutes prior.
As Stephens made clear, big things were to come in the evening’s programme, but it started with a curiosity in Robert Schumann’s Zwickau symphony, a rarely performed piece. Schumann himself gave up on it as he was composing it, leaving behind two unpublished movements. The challenge for Dinis Sousa’s RNS was to justify playing such a work, especially since – as Sousa made sure to warn us at the start of the concert – it ends in such a blatantly unfinished way, the second movement’s subdued ellipsis begging for a lively and redemptive third movement. Soon the reasoning became clear: Sousa was simply having enormous fun, setting off rapid-fire melodies in various corners of the orchestra with a flick of a hand like a kid let loose on an air traffic control dashboard. When the symphony took a strikingly bleak turn in the second movement, Sousa went all in, conducting gut-punching fortissimo chords with a violent full-body thrust.
However, as in life, it was the subsequent Clara Schumann piano concerto (fittingly premiered by Clara alongside Zwickau in the 1835 concert where the two first met) that outshone her husband’s work. Quite possibly the greatest female composer of all time, in the 19th century Clara was acceptable as a high profile virtuoso pianist but not in the more firmly male-dominated world of composing. Today, the fact that this Piano Concerto – which she performed in Leipzig aged 16 – received little fanfare in its day is extraordinary. It is a remarkably fearless, ambitious piece overflowing with winning melodies that call for robust execution in some moments and careful nurturing in others. Melodic caretaker this evening is Isata Kanneh-Mason, a big name in British classical, the big names being the second and third in particular; the precocious Kanneh-Mason family have created a small dynasty in recent years, enshrining themselves in the mainstream when Isata’s cellist brother Sheku took a star turn at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in 2018. Isata hasn’t simply got tonight’s gig playing Clara Schumann on a whim, though. Her affinity for the composer runs deep and she has long championed Schumann as a figurehead of criminally underappreciated female composers over the centuries.
Kanneh-Mason’s star continues to rise, so it was a testament to her humility that tonight she turned the focus primarily onto Schumann rather than herself, delivering the virtuosic flourishes with little fanfare and devoting plenty of thought to the elementary passages that some of her circus-act contemporaries might dismiss as pointless fluff between all the flamboyant fast bits. Indeed, it was the second movement, a piece achievable for any intermediate piano student, which shone brightest in this rendition. Referred to by Schumann as a nocturne, the movement evokes Chopin at his airy, moonlit best, complete with a haunting melody played with limpid ease by Kanneh-Mason. She was to be bettered by cellist Eddie Pogossion, however, who contributed his own delectable solo, wringing out a lament from his strings with a pained, yearning vibrato. A clattering finale to the third movement, with Kanneh-Mason powering her way through some fiendish passagework, made for a satisfying finish to a recital that was something of a revelation for me.
I was so immersed by the high-octane finish to the piano concerto that it was a surprise when Stephens appeared on my row a few seats away from me, primed with a big microphone to give the link during the interval. There was plenty to say about what was coming up in the second half. A survey of conductors by BBC Magazine saw Beethoven’s Eroica to be voted the greatest symphony of all time, beating out his instantly recognisable Fifth (duh duh duh duhhhh), which didn’t even make the top ten. Often described as the symphony that sparked the new Romantic era in classic music, Beethoven’s Third is the epitome of a hero’s journey and a musical expression of the democratic surge sweeping across Europe at the time (it originally had a dedication to the revolutionary Napoleon Bonaparte, which Beethoven retracted when Napoleon turned out to have more dictatorial aims).
It should come as no surprise that Eroica is a highly demanding piece to play for every member of the orchestra, but Sousa was characteristically fearless, launching into those thrilling first two chords at a notably faster tempo than the versions I’d previously heard. He passed the almost constant main theme around the ensemble like a burning torch, sometimes letting it flicker to nothing, other times stoking a roaring inferno. It turned out Sousa’s preference was more towards the latter, urging his violins on towards the first movement’s denouement with such a burning intensity one front row violinist ended up with a broken string.
A lowly fourth violinist was obliged to exchange their working violin for the broken one and spent the second movement backstage fitting a new string, but the waltzing Adagio assai sounded no less full-blooded than the first movement, lazily drooping double basses providing a rich base for a tragic melody. The alarming stabs of brass were spectacular, but the most exciting sound was the flutter of Sousa’s coattails, audible from my prime perch just above the orchestra in the breathless moments before one of Beethoven’s numerous symphonic explosions. A sprightly shiver of strings propelled a comic relief solo from Peter Facer on oboe during the Scherzo, and the finale was replete with solos, each as flawless as the last, with Charlotte Ashton’s turn on flute a standout. One of my favourite things about classical music is the unambiguous, utterly unapologetic way they tend to end and Eroica is a particularly thrilling example, with its rocky crescendo that accelerates towards oblivion. Now with his entire ensemble back, Sousa looked like he had had a whale of a time as he took long applauses and directed various instrument sections to stand for their own applause. In keeping with the democratic ideals Beethoven was voicing support for, every single member of RNS had put in an almighty shift, and there was never the question of whether this lofty masterpiece would prove much for an ensemble from little old Newcastle.
A cellist has already emerged from the back of the Glasshouse by the time I’m unlocking my bike outside. He quietly accepts compliments from a few concertgoers before joining the queue for taxis. For him, this was just another day at the office. Seeing him is a reminder of just how easy it is to forget how extraordinary this whole affair is – the magnificent Glasshouse, the buzzing auditorium, my perfect balcony seat (only a fiver for under 30s!), the fact I can cycle home in minutes. All of it makes me feel incredibly lucky to live where I do, but tonight proved one further surprise: on their day, the RNS really can compete with the London and Berlin Philharmonics of this world. I hope to never take such a musical feast for granted.
From chart-toppers to hidden gems, it’s time to reminisce about the most remarkable musical moments of 2023, as we countdown the year’s greatest hits. The rules are the same as usual: only one song per artist and no covers. Remember this is primarily a personal reflection on my own music habits this year; I don’t pretend to have listened to enough music to declare the best works of all popular music this year, and you might spot some songs that were released before 2023. This list is about sharing the best songs that I happen to have discovered in the last twelve months.
40.I See Myself
by Geese from 3D Country
It’s been a breakout year for lovable New York indie band Geese, whose unhinged, creative post-punk creations suit their throwaway nickname. Beyond the playful vocals, there’s a deep sense of groove to I See Myself’s half time strut, which oozes with tambourine and cowbell yet never feels cluttered – every last dink has earned its place in this mix. As for the hook, good luck forgetting the titular refrain – belted every time – any time this side of next Christmas.
Also try: Cowboy Nudes
39.impossible
by Wasia Project from how can i pretend?
Creative pop siblings Wasia Project look set for big things in 2024. The Guildhall students already have an impressive collection of stylish, instrument-driven pop under their name (plus an acting credit in hit Netflix series Heartstopper), and impossible is just one example of an intelligently written composition rich in potential. It lifts off in the final third, piano throbbing and Olivia Hardy’s vocals soaring skywards. Keep a close eye on them.
Also try: Petals on the Moon
38.Topless Mother
by Nadine Shah from Filthy Underneath
Nadine Shah delivers her chorus in Topless Mother with ample venom, hissing out every last syllable, backed by tribal drums and sudden deluges of cymbals. It’s just as well, because the words themselves are rhyming gibberish: “Sinatra, Viagra, iguana / Sharia, Diana, samosa” comprise the first two lines. It’s a startling approach that serves as a middle finger to her critics and a steadfast refusal to fit into the mould assigned to her. It’s a vicious reminder never to get on the wrong side of a skilled songwriter.
Also try: Twenty Things
37.HOT TO GO!
by Chappell Roan from The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess
It’s been a breakout year for many artists, but few have had a trajectory as stratospheric as Chappell Roan’s, who started the year as one of thousands of aspiring young American pop stars and finished it with a global hit album and a support slot on tour with no less than the undisputed queen of young American pop stars, Olivia Rodrigo. HOT TO GO!, and its accompanying dance routine, accounts for some of Roan’s phenomenal success, typifying her bratty, entertaining brand of pop. Roan’s lyrics are hardly Shakespeare (she’s certainly not above spelling out the song title cheerleader-style), but the silly chorus comprises one of the most intractable earworms of the year – hear it once and it will haunt your dreams (and perhaps nightmares) for sixth months hence. Add some bouncy synths and a half-rapped pre chorus that veers precariously close to cheesiness and the result is a career-launching banger free of pomposity and absolutely stuffed with life-affirming glee.
Also try: Femininomenon
36.Then It All Goes Away
by Dayglow from People In Motion
Then It All Goes Away is one of the most satisfying examples of sunny indie pop that Texan showman Dayglow has come out with so far. Bright piano riffs and a very healthy contingent of cowbell make for easy listening, and spacey guitars hold gimmers of 80s pop at its dreamiest. A perfect soundtrack to your next daydream of summer.
Also try: Deep End
35.Glory
by Gabriels from Angels & Queens
Soul trio Gabriels were one of the standout performers of Glastonbury 2023, with Glory the peak of a heart-warming set. Jacob Lusk’s silky voice is as charismatic as ever, but its the driving percussion and insistent strings that make this foot-tapper such an exciting listen.
Also try: Love and Hate in a Different Time
34.Who Let Him In
by Obongjayar
What’s refreshing about Who Let Him In is not the strength of Obongjayar’s brags (being able to string together a few rhymes about how great and unique you are is more or less a prerequisite for today’s rappers) but in how justified they are. “I fear no one / Walk in the room like the owner,” he tells us, and by the sounds of this beat – a bubbling Afrobeat groove bursting at the seams with energy – he seems utterly believable. Obongjayar doesn’t just want to be a good artist, he wants to “take over”, and with tracks as inspired as this one, that’s exactly what he seems destined to do.
Also try: Just Cool
33.Dans Le Noir
by Free Love from Inside
Glasgow synth duo sound anything but Scottish on this largely French-language funk-pop belter, but the language gives this sticky dance number a flirtatious edge, regardless of the meaning of Suzi Cook’s words. An almost comically overblown synth bass is the main attraction, though, and the instrument is rightly given free reign to wobble around its rich upper range in an extended instrument section in the middle of this song. Cook’s vocal hook eventually returns us to solid ground in a song full of left turns from a duo quite happy to keep their audiences guessing.
Also try: Open The Door
32.Who the Hell Is Edgar?
by TEYA & SALENA
Sweden may have won it with a vaguely uninspiring pop song, but it was Austria that came to Eurovision 2023 with arguably best song of this year’s contest. Who the Hell Is Edgar? strikes the fine balance between loveable joke song and earnest work of art with a clear message in a contest where songs usually fall heavily into one of the two categories (think hard rock fancy dress monsters for the former, hymn for the deported Crimean Tatars for the latter). TEYA and SALENA’s playful chemistry is a joy as they summon the ghost of 19th century poet Edgar Allen Poe and the various threads of the song are knotted together cleverly after the bridge. Granted, TEYA and SALENA’s performance on the night left something to be desired and a slot as show opener can’t have helped votes, but in more favourable conditions Who the Hell Is Edgar? would have made for a worthy Eurovision champion.
Also try: Ukraine’s excellent entry, Heart of Steel by TVORCHI
31.(You) On My Arm
by Leith Ross from To Learn
Leith Ross hit viral success in 2023 with the acoustic guitar track We’ll Never Have Sex, the sort of throwaway almost-song (it’s only 100 seconds long) that would never be a hit before the age of streaming. (You) On My Arm stands out as both the only uptempo track and best tune on their debut album, a pleasingly understated indie rock number that features the ingenious line “I’d be better armed if you agreed to take it.” The songwriting fundamentals are handled so competently here it’s a relief that Ross doesn’t unnecessarily complicate things with a flashy backing, instead sticking to a muted bass tone and spacey guitars that complement her introspective vocals. It’s no wonder her humble approach to music making has resonated with millions around the world.
Also try: Monogamy
30.Love for the Last Time
by Leadley from LIGHT POP
There’s an unreality that goes beyond the usual popstar Photoshopping in West Midlands singer Leadley’s album covers, presenting her as a sort of celestial beauty of impossible perfection. Her songs have a similar immaculate quality, especially Love For The Last Time, a note perfect pop song blessed with crystalline production. A divine sax riff recalls Carly Rae Jepsen at her five star best, and enjoyably schmaltzy lyrics like “Hold me like it isn’t goodbye / Touch me like you’re never really leaving,” roll off the tongue like honey on freshly baked pancakes. The result is almost too sweet.
Also try: Love Me Like That
29.Hell
by Sleater-Kinney from Little Rope
“Hell is desperation / And a young man with a gun,” Corin Tucker informs us ominously in the minimalist start to Hell, her portentous lyrics the only sign of the melee of sound to come. It’s a contrast that works deliciously well when the chorus does eventually hit, a screaming electric guitar loud and salient in the mix like the whirr of a dentist’s drill. It’s one of the grungiest choruses I’ve heard all year and I can’t get enough of it.
Also try: Say It Like You Mean It
28.Dancer
by IDLES feat. LCD Soundsystem from TANGK
Dance and disco music may not be an obvious match for IDLES, Bristol’s ever popular post punk group helmed by the fearsome Joe Talbot, a man who seems to grow more grizzled and bear-like with every passing year. But, right from the opening swoop of disco strings, this collaboration with dance music luminary LCD Soundsystem comes off surprisingly well. Industrial guitar riffs open up for a pummeling chorus, Talbot’s descriptions of dancing “cheek to cheek” sounding uneasily violent rather than swooning and romantic. Their new album TANGK, due in February, promises to be something special.
Also try: Grace
27.Poor Madeline
by Daffo from Pest
Daffo came out with one of the finest indie rock EPs of the year with October’s Pest, which features a number of soulful compositions that have both a depth of emotion and proficiency of songwriting that many of her peers lack. Poor Madeline is just one of several potential picks for this list and shows Daffo’s typical urge to strive above and beyond the usual song structures associated with the genre.
Also try: Seed, Good God and Collector are all Poor Madeline‘s equal
26.New York Transit Queen
by Corinne Bailey Rae from Black Rainbows
Corinne Bailey Rae’s September album Black Rainbows marked one of the most astounding artistic pivots of the year. For the woman behind the smooth, sunshine-filled R&B hit Put Your Records On, lead single New York Transit Queen could hardly have been more shocking. There are no tinkling triangles or cheery Hammond organs to be found here – this track is an unreservedly grungy pastiche of 60s rock and roll in all its swaggering glory. The opening guitar riff, which has all the blunt-force simplicity of You Really Got Me, hits like a truck and Rae’s vocals are strikingly distorted and unhinged. What’s most remarkable is that the track doesn’t end up sounding like a cover or parody. The grit of the blaring instrumentation here feels organic, the drums hammered out with what feels like genuine fury. Appropriately, a vodka shot of a song like this comes and goes in a frantic 109 seconds. It’s just as well – even at this length, New York Transit Queen has a tendency to leave you breathless.
Also try: He Will Follow You With His Eyes is a remarkable, completely different sonic experience.
25.Theatre
by Etta Marcus from The Death of Summer & Other Promises
Etta Marcus made the list two years ago with a melancholy, nuanced ballad with Matt Maltese, and Theatre starts in much the same vein before revealing itself to be a much different beast. Far from a sweetly romantic tune about moving to America, Theatre is a rock rager about crushing, desperate loneliness, with the volume turned up to the max. It’s propelled by a gut-wrenching set of lyrics in which Marcus plays a twisted version of herself hell bent on love, demanding someone, anyone, to “call me baby / let me die on the stage / let the orchestra play”. The melodrama is matched by a barnstorming vocal performance, Marcus almost audibly dropping to her knees in anguish. Like an enthralling stage performance, this song is impossible to ignore.
Also try: Snowflake Suzy
24.Phone Me
by CMAT from Crazymad, For Me
2023 was a year in which Irish singer-songwriter CMAT finally fulfilled her potential with a rewarding second album of charismatic indie rock that married inventive songwriting with thinly veiled self-mocking humour. Phone Me was the catchiest of the bunch, with a cracking bass line and a chorus that leaned into the strengths of CMAT’s formidable vocals. “Does my affliction turn you on?” she belts with trademark matter-of-factness. It’s this fearlessness that has seen CMAT’s career flourish this year, and there’s a sense that 2024 will likely be more of the same.
Also try: California and Have Fun! are similarly great tracks that bookend CMAT’s new album, while Rent is the mid-album showpiece.
23.5-Watt Rock
by Theo Katzman from Be the Wheel
Theo Katzman’s fourth studio album Be The Wheel was not short on earnestly profound reflections on a pandemic spent largely alone in the wilderness (the eloquent title track very nearly made it on to this list), so I could forgive Katzman for feeling disappointed that the record’s comic relief is what I’ve selected here. Sure, this tale of a humble songwriter overcoming the inadequacies of his small guitar amp is not overtly thought provoking, but it’s still a sweet story expertly delivered and a fine example of Katzman’s knack for satisfying rhymes. The chorus is one of the earworms of his career – you can practically hear the band’s smiles as the group vocals reach ever upwards, urged on by a genius chord progression even by Katzman’s high standards. No doubt Katzman spent many more sleepless nights crafting the dense lyrics found elsewhere on the album than for this light-hearted ditty, but perhaps Be The Wheel would have benefitted from a little more of 5-Watt Rock’s simple joy.
Also try: Be the Wheel and Hit the Target provide a bit more food for thought and also showcase Katzman’s adroit songwriting.
22.One That Got Away
by MUNA
There’s only been one song from Los Angeles pack leaders MUNA this year following the triumph of last year’s Silk Chiffon, a glorious collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers, but boy is it a good one. On One That Got Away, the band lean into full-blown 80s art pop, the angular synths almost blinding vibrant, the aggressively clipped snare drum sounding colossal. Katie Gavin’s hook is a winner, and a climactic bass fill almost feels cribbed from that moment in You Can Call Me Al. This ever popular trio aren’t going anywhere.
Also try: Silk Chiffon is an essential piece of not just MUNA’s discography, but modern pop in general.
21.Clashing Colours
by Quinn Oulton feat. Monica Martin from Alexithymia
A reworking with incomparable soul singer Monica Martin elevated this track from South London multi-instrumentalist Quinn Oulton in April. A sublimely rich bass is a spectre looming over the mix and a nice match for Oulton’s tip-toeing breathy sax, which eventually finds its place in the track with a meandering jazz solo. It makes for an impossibly cool jazz-funk stew – a groove to savour with every listen.
Also try: Lately
20.New York
by The Kills from God Games
“Why should hip-hop be future-forward and guitar music always looking back?” the Kills asked in an NME interview before their recent album God Games, and it’s only when you hear the inventive brilliance of that album that it becomes how clear just how behind the curve the rest of today’s guitar music is. New York in particular succeeds in being unlike any rock song you’ve heard before, in large part to a heavy use of orchestra hits, which lend the track the grandiosity of the opening scenes of a spy thriller. Bare bones percussion and wall-shaking bass make for a suitably industrial-feeling portrait of the Big Apple. This isn’t a repeat of Alicia Keys’ or Frank Sinatra’s romantic visions of American Dream New York, but perhaps something more realistic: dirtier, angrier, with rats scuttling from gutter to gutter and taxi horns blaring. New York’s most compelling aspect, however, is its roof-raiser of a guitar riff, destined to be sung passionately by thousands in the vast concert halls that no doubt await this daring rock duo.
Also try: Wasterpiece
19.Begin Again
by Jessie Ware from That! Feels Good!
Begin Again formed the pinnacle of Jessie Ware’s April album That! Feels Good!, which largely built on the sound established by its predecessor What’s Your Pleasure? – no bad thing since What’s Your Pleasure? was nothing short of a modern classic. It’s a towering five and a half minute epic that earns favourable comparisons to Stevie Wonder’s Another Star. The descending bass line holds similar gravitas, as does a stellar horn contribution from trendy London jazz group Kokoroko. It’s Ware herself, however, that crowns it, sealing a cinematic crescendo with spine-tingling high notes that exemplify the huge strides she’s made as both an artist and a singer since her debut 13 years ago.
Also try: you can’t go wrong with Ware’s latest album, but Pearls and Freak Me Now are two of my other favourites.
18.Everybody’s Saying That
by Girl Ray from Prestige
Girl Ray’s live show may have disappointed in November, but there’s no denying Everybody’s Saying That is a glorious little disco single. There’s a loveable awkwardness to Poppy Hankin’s vocals and the mix as a whole, which trades the glossy sheen of something Dua Lipa might release for the air of three friends simply having a good time in a studio. There’s plenty of fun to be had on that bulletproof chorus hook, and the trio don’t miss the opportunity for a slightly silly clavinet breakdown. The result is a simple joy: funk at its euphoric, uncomplicated best.
Also try: True Love and Tell Me provide plenty more disco joy.
17.Birth4000
by Floating Points
Try to explain to someone in a sentence what sort of music Floating Points makes and you’ll find yourself giving five more sentences of qualifiers and explanations before you can get close to fully conveying the extent of this artist’s musical creativity. A good place to start is his astonishing work with London Symphony Orchestra, Promises, which is a transfixing, 46-minute long ambient classical piece that features the murmured incantations of late sax giant Pharoah Sanders. Fittingly, Birth4000 is just about the complete opposite: a steamy, in-your-face trance banger that writhes and throbs the way only the most compelling dance music can. The drops are titanic, with the kick drum turned up just loud enough to become slightly distorted. This is a piece of music that kicks you by the backside into the hypnotising strobes of a euphoric, thronging nightclub. You won’t want it to stop.
Also try: devote an hour to Promises and thank me later, or try trippy single Vocoder for a completely different side of Floating Points.
16.Running Out of Time
by Paramore from This Is Why
Beloved punk pop group Paramore could be forgiven for calling it quits at this point, their late-noughties hits like Misery Business and All I Wanted now increasingly old enough to enter nostalgic classic territory. Instead, they released one of the best albums of their career so far with February’s edgy, quick-witted tour de force This Is Why. The call-to-action title track that opens the album was easy to love, but I’ve gone with funky Running Out Of Time for this list. A playful number about always being late (“There was a fire! (metaphorically) / Be there in five! (hyperbolically)”), there’s also a touch of social commentary on our productivity-first culture for any listeners looking for some food for thought. More importantly, there’s some delightfully nasty guitar riffs, plus Zac Farro letting loose on a swaggering drum groove. Paramore’s golden era hits may be untouchable but make no mistake: this band isn’t fading away any time soon.
Also try: This Is Why‘s title track makes for a killer album opener.
15.Go Dig My Grave
by Lankum from False Lankum
Irish drone-folk group are no strangers to gothic tales of doom and misery, but Go Dig My Grave, the masterful opener to their lauded March album False Lankum (the Guardian’s Album of the Year, no less) reaches new levels of chilling. It begins with a breathtaking two minutes of solo vocals from Radie Peat, who possesses an earthy, sorrowful voice unlike any you’ve heard before. She unravels a disturbing narrative as storm clouds gather in the form of industrial clatters and a sinister strings drone. Each member of Lankum is a multi-instrumentalist and the fact that most of the instruments in the ensuing dirge are tricky to identify adds to the disorientating horror, lending the climax a supernatural intensity. This is folk music at its most sickening, the terror of Peat’s lyrics realised potently in the incessant rise and fall of detuned violins. Go Dig My Grave is Lankum at the peak of their witch-like powers.
Also try: there’s plenty of treasures on False Lankum. Master Crowley’s successfully turns a Gaelic jig into something hellish, while On a Monday Morning is one of many drone-free moments of peaceful melancholia.
14.Sleepwalker
by Ava Max from Diamonds & Dancefloors
It seems the intensely mainstream sound of Ava Max has caused to her music to be largely dismissed as chart-ready pop candy floss, primed to keep company with the countless other indistinguishable female pop acts destined to be forgotten in a few years’ time. Indeed, Max’s vocals are hardly exceptional, and Sleepwalker’s lyrics about making a guy obsess over her are at best functional and at worst clunky, but the fact is no other pop song this year has matched this one’s instant appeal. Flawless chorus hook aside, what other charting track this year features a synth solo this brazen? In a genre plagued by impersonal corporate hitmakers, crafting pernicious hooks behind the scenes like evil scientists, there’s a frisson of playfulness in the longer than necessary solo that suggests Max is genuinely having fun beyond her quest for a global pop empire. That’s not to say Sleepwalker shows much daring, but it does deliver the pop formula for success in a way so impeccably you’ll find yourself humming along to the chorus before your first listen is even over. Max has had much bigger hits than this and will no doubt push Sleepwalker further into obscurity with another slew of smashes in 2024, but I maintain this little pop gem is criminally underrated.
Also try: Maybe You’re the Problem, Ghost and Hold Up (Wait a Minute) are all bangers, not to mention Max’s energetic contribution to the Barbie movie, Choose Your Fighter.
13.The Abyss
by KNOWER from KNOWER FOREVER
Inimitable US funk artist Louis Cole has played some nut-tight grooves in his time, but few are as exquisitely precise as The Abyss, the face-melting highlight of his superb project with Genevieve Artadi under the name KNOWER released in October. Sam Wilkes delivers a particularly monstrous performance on bass, purring tiger-like under Artadi’s clipped vocals and Cole’s trademark sharp-edged synths. The rhythmic discipline all round is immense – not one note comes a fraction too late – and that’s before mentioning the ensuing chaos of the track’s unfettered second half: not one but two whirlwind Cole drum solos, a screaming distorted sax solo and a showstopping blast on keyboards all provide an assault on the ears before Artadi coolly brings it home with one last chorus. It’s KNOWER at their ruthless best: astonishing, cut-throat electro-funk from start to finish.
Also try: I’m the President is a thoroughly satisfying album opener, while Nightmare descends into a cosmic electrofunk jam.
12.Phlox
by Emma Rawicz from Chroma
Emma Rawicz is gaining a reputation as one of the more cerebral new exponents of UK jazz, serving shape-shifting, rhythmically complex compositions that are often hard to pin down. Phlox is a song that avoids any aimless wandering via the oldest trick in the book: a no nonsense riff, repeated over and over. Granted, it’s a very Rawicz sort of riff – that is to say, dazzlingly complex – but it’s delivered with such flair and precision it’s hard not to get whipped up in the stormy brilliance of it all. Rawicz is also on fine form for a delightfully impolite solo, but it’s drummer Asaf Sirkis who steals the show with a marvellous closing drum solo that both neatly fills the gaps made by that riff whilst sounding utterly chaotic. Rawicz’s jazz has never felt so vital.
Also try: Middle Ground is a perfect example of Rawicz’s softer side.
11.You Are Not My Friend
by Tessa Violet from MY GOD!
One of the great underrated albums of the year in my books was Tessa Violet’s midsummer release MY GOD!, a leitmotif-laden opus that excelled in every genre Violet had a crack at, from the bombastic hyperpop opener to Swift-esque Again, Again or the folksy singalong Kitchen Song. You Are Not My Friend was an apt closer, wrapping up the emotional complexities of the earlier tracks with a straightforward pop punk sound as unapologetic and self-assured as its title. Here, as in virtually all of Violet’s songs, the songwriting is exceptional, with the interlocking vocals in the technicolour finale evidence of Violet’s considerable pop nous. The lyrics are gold dust for anyone looking for reassurance after a messy breakup, but even for the rest of us the quotable nuggets come thick and fast (“You say I’m insecure? / You’re twenty-eight with a teenager” will go down as one of Violet’s sharpest take downs). It’s a testament to the strength of You Are Not My Friend that you don’t need to directly relate to any of the lyrics in order to share Violet’s sweet, sweet taste of retribution.
Also try: MY GOD! is an album that rewards front to back listening, but start with BAD BITCH or Breakdown if you want to dip your toes into it.
10.Up Song
by Black Country, New Road from Live at Bush Hall
Up Song is responsible for one of the most memorable live music experiences of my life so far. It happened not this year, but in May 2022, in a feverish Brudenell Social Club the day Leeds United narrowly avoided relegation. Black Country, New Road were a band in a unique turmoil: just five days following the release of their instant cult classic Ants From Up There, their lyrically gifted yet troubled frontman Isaac Wood abruptly left the band. Up Song marked the beginning of the remaining six members’ intimate gig in Leeds which, astonishingly, comprised of an entirely new album worth of unreleased material. New lead vocalist Tyler Hyde proved she was not one for introductions, soon interrupting a quiet opening with a typically unpredictable onslaught of sound, May Kershaw prominently hammering away behind her on piano. It ended up being an inspired reflection on the band’s turbulent recent history; the climactic line “Look at what we did together / BCNR, friends forever,” might sound trite on paper, but belted in a sudden a capella unison from every band member it was uniquely moving. The rest of the gig (and 2023’s live album) had more than its fair share of interesting post-Wood creativity, but it was Up Song that announced BCNR’s rapid reinvention in glorious style.
Also try: Dancers holds the album’s best vocal hook, but it was cinematic epic Turbines/Pigs that had the BCNR fans really swooning.
9.But leaving is
by Matt Maltese from Driving Just To Drive
Reading balladeer Matt Maltese is no stranger to a good old fashioned love song. These days he’s got a slew of bittersweet tracks to his name, from the formative breakout hit Even If It’s a Lie (the sort of superb songwriting that demands no more than a simple piano accompaniment to shine) to the viral epic As the World Caves In, a spectacular song which changes complexion somewhat when you learn it was written about Theresa May and Donald Trump spending a steamy night together before nuking the planet. Even by Maltese’s standards, however, But leaving is is an utterly heart-wrenching ballad. The central punchline – “Love isn’t a choice / … but leaving is” – might be the finest lyric of his career, a smart one-two that manages to encapsulate much of the lovesick emotion that Maltese has devoted his music career to thus far. He seems to know he’s got a winner on his hands, too, delaying the payoff in two exquisite choruses, which are lifted by tasteful strings and his trademark melancholy piano. It’s a stunningly emotive arrangement of the sort Maltese’s starry peers like Lewis Capaldi and Dean Lewis simply can’t match with their cookie cutter four-chorders.
Also try: Hello Black Dog has a sickening, dark edge, whilst Florence is a lovely, rare uptempo number from Maltese.
8.All Life Long
by Kali Malone from All Life Long
All Life Long has the power to bend time. It’s a piece of ambient music that gets under my skin, stops me in my tracks and leaves me feeling invariably different – calmer, more in tune with my surroundings – than when I started it. Like most of Kali Malone’s work, it is a piece of solo pipe organ music, and the most obvious image evoked is that of a funeral; the achingly slow tempo brings with it palpable gravitas as notes slowly float downwards the same way a coffin might be carefully lowered into a grave. But All Life Long deserves also to be felt outside the context of the Church. Through her music, Malone has made it her mission to decouple the majestic organ from the dogmatic domain of religion and worship, and what makes All Life Long (and much of Malone’s work) so interesting is how starkly different it is from the organ music we know: more patient, nuanced and imaginative than the music we tend to associate with a church organ. Bach’s mathematically precise masterpieces for the instrument may be rightly venerated, but he never brought us intimacy with the instrument the way Malone does, never highlighted the way the notes aren’t constant but in fact a breath-like wave (which Malone leans into in a 70-second long final note here), or showed us how each note begins with a little whistle as the air shifts direction in the pipes, plus the tactile click of a key being pressed. The organ is a uniquely magnificent instrument. As All Life Long argues convincingly, it’s time it left the cold confines of the Church.
Also try: Thought-provoking lockdown album Does Spring Hide Its Joy weighs in at a daunting five hours but rewards an open mind, whereas The Sacrificial Code provides more of All Life Long‘s ruminative, secular organ music.
7.Bewitched
by Laufey from Bewitched
It’s easy to imagine Laufey landing into Bewitched Mary Poppins style, floating down gracefully via umbrella just in time for the first verse. Such is the love-it-or-hate-it Disney feel to the ornate orchestral arrangement in this track, the likes of which the mainstream pop charts hasn’t seen for generations; the Icelandic-Chinese jazz singer would have certainly had a number one album on her hands if a certain Olivia Rodrigo hadn’t released a slightly better album the same week. Lean into the intense sweetness of Bewitched’s orchestration and you’ll no doubt be as besotted as I am. Laufey’s gentle vocals are gorgeous yet charmingly unshowy, singing as if a song of this delicate beauty might fall apart if she were to overexert for a high note. Not that she needs any vocal flourishes – every melody here is a beauty, the luscious strings supporting Laufey like a warm, cosy bed. Laufey’s lyrics are deeply romantic, framing love not as a choice but a sort of benign curse, an uncontrollable desire to lose yourself in its “all-consuming fire”. It may sound like there’s an uncurrent of unease in all the talk of “bewitching”, but make no mistake: Bewitched is pure, unrestrained love in music form. Love songs just don’t get any lovelier.
Also try: Lovesick is Laufey’s rock moment and comes off surprisingly well; From the Start is her record-breaking bossa nova smash hit.
6.A Month Or Two
by Odie Leigh
Every so often, a song comes along that seems to tell you exactly what you need to hear. Odie Leigh’s charming ditty A Month Or Two was that song for me, an unfussy waltz on acoustic guitar broadly about growing up. Leigh’s repeated progression on guitar might have outstayed its welcome if it weren’t for a glorious string quartet that patiently weaves its way into the fabric of the track. The tension is held for a moment before the exquisite payoff, the luscious interlocking melodies sounding like a warm bath at the end of a long day. Leigh’s repeated assurance to “give it some time” is beyond comforting. It’s obviously a vague lyric that will resonate with many listeners in different ways, but there’s some magic in Leigh’s cooing vocals or her lullaby-like guitar plucking that makes it feel like she’s speaking directly to you, and only you. A Month Or Two is a cooling balm of a song I’m convinced everyone needs in their life from time to time.
Also try: Crop Circles, or Big Thief’s Change which was a similar comfort song for me this year.
5.My Love Mine All Mine
by Mitski from The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
To get a hooky, upbeat pop song about, say, being “hot to go” in the charts is tough enough, but getting the masses hooked on a quiet, subtle two-minute country ballad about the moon is a Herculean challenge. Of course, if anyone could pulled it off, it would be America’s favourite troubled genius Mitski, who took over the Internet in September with this jewel from her divine seventh album. Every second is a meticulously crafted moment of bliss, from the lazy, last-orders-at-a-jazz-bar piano inflections to the silky wisps of slide guitar that seem to weightlessly hang in the mix like a plume of cigarette smoke. Mitski’s lyric sheet is as poetic as ever, but more optimistic than usual, celebrating the preciousness of both her lover and, more importantly, her capacity to love. As is customary for a Mitski song, this track briskly comes and goes with little time for rumination. The good news is that My Love Mine All Mine is not a song that loses its emotional potency with repeat listens – trust me.
Also try: When Memories Snow includes one of Mitski’s strongest metaphors, whilst I’m Your Man memorably depicts the artist being eaten alive by hounds, sound effects and all.
4.Nothing Matters
by the Last Dinner Party from Prelude to Ecstacy
Arguably the most exciting development in British indie music this year has been the rise of the Last Dinner Party, a London five-piece who continue to amass a cult following despite having released only four songs. In fact, they’d already signed to Island Records and scored a support slot for the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park before they’d released their first single, prompting perhaps justifiable claims from hard-working independent artists of being an ‘industry plant’. The good news is, organically successful or not, every one of the Last Dinner Party’s four singles has been exceptional, each introducing their carefully presented brand of baroque rock. Live shows involve band members (and audience members) dressed in elaborate Edwardian-style gowns and corsets whilst frolicking amidst regal candelabras. Their visit to the intimate, famed stage of Brudenell Social Club promises to be one of the most thrilling occasions for Undertone in 2024.
Debut single Nothing Matters is perhaps the most majestic of the four songs and a masterclass in endowing a straightforward two note chorus with as much emotional weight as it can possibly sustain. Abigail Morris’ lyrics are poetic and layered, yet unafraid to unleash an embittered expletive when the time comes in the chorus. What turns Nothing Matters from a good song into a great one is how the band negotiate the denouement. Emily Roberts’ dovetailing guitar solo evokes Sam Ryder in full Eurovision saviour mode, and a fanfare of horns and strings provide a sense of scale and pathos unlike any debut single I’ve heard before. It’s an instant masterpiece for a band that thus far hasn’t put a foot wrong. Industry plants? If the music is this good, I say let the industry keep planting.
Also try: the three other singles so far, in order of greatness, are My Lady of Mercy, By Your Side and Sinner.
3.vampire
by Olivia Rodrigo from GUTS
Almost no one reading this will need reminding of Olivia Rodrigo. She’s had an astonishingly successful 2023, finishing up with six Grammy nominations and a potential Oscar next year for her song in the new Hunger Games movie. Increasingly, it seems like everything she touches turns to gold. That was certainly the case for her second album, GUTS, one of those precious music releases that was both listened to by everybody and adored by everybody. It was earthier, wittier and just generally better than her 2021 debut album and almost every track was worthy of this list, but the lead single was the most obvious choice of album highlight. vampire is Rodrigo’s masterpiece, opening with a gentle Beatles-esque chord progression and crashing to a halt with a spliced up piano bashed with maximum rage. In the intervening three and a half minutes Rodrigo steadily ramps up the intensity, dissecting a toxic relationship with some of her sharpest lyrical slights to date. Behind her, an accompaniment thrillingly gathers pace, eventually snowballing into a compelling gallop that lifts the track to new, mesmeric heights. Rodrigo started her career with a blockbuster bridge (on Drivers’ License), and vampire’s is perhaps even better, the galloping backing sounding relentless, her melody inevitable. With vampire, Olivia Rodrigo rightly took over the planet once more. When she visits Manchester on her world tour next year (which, to the detriment of my bank account, I have tickets for), she will be greeted like a queen.
Also try: GUTS, probably my album of the year. all-american bitch, bad idea right? and making the bed are all essential listens in the unlikely case you’ve navigated 2023 without coming into contact with them.
2.Not Strong Enough
by boygenius from the record
The boygenius trio are friends before bandmates. It’s a fact clearer than ever on their soaring country rock number Not Strong Enough, which finds the three American singer-songwriters, who formed boygenius as something of an indie supergroup and released their debut album this year, trading verses and eventually coalescing in stunning harmony. Their imagery is particularly thoughtful (joyriding through a canyon, disassociating whilst staring at the ceiling, a quiet drive home alone) but it’s the proudly belted “I don’t know why I am the way I am” that lingers longest, a lyric as simple as it is wise. It’s delivered with the sort of fist-pumping melody that compelled hundreds to lose their voices (and their consciousness) singing along when Undertone caught the group in Halifax on a memorable midsummer’s night. boygenius’ layered lyrics about feminism and friendship have plenty of depth, but really Not Strong Enough is a wonderfully simple song and one of those pieces of music that makes you smile without exactly knowing why.
Also try: Cool About It and True Blue were my fourth and fifth most listened to songs of the year. Not Strong Enough was my number one.
1.Any Time Of Day
by the Lemon Twigs from Everything Harmony
I am a believer that our musical preferences are often determined by the cultural prevalence of certain styles during our formative teenage years, which partly explains why soft rock – a genre that had its heyday in the 70s and, unlike its disco cousin, is not yet considered cool enough for a modern revival – is often synonymous with the somewhat derogatory term ‘Dad rock’. These days much of soft rock feels dated, now replaced by the myriad of more courageous and forward-thinking rock subgenres that could never have thrived during an era where the idea of accessing virtually all recorded music in a few clicks was science fiction.
The Lemon Twigs, New York brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario, are the exception. Their six years of releasing proudly revivalist soft rock came to a head in May with their fourth album and magnum opus, Everything Harmony. As a staunch musical defense of Dad rock, it was difficult to refute – from elegant melodies to imaginative song structures and harmony, Everything Harmony managed to point out all the most flattering aspects of soft rock that have been somewhat overlooked in recent decades. The crème de la crème was Any Time Of Day, a truly titanic ballad. It may be fairly brief, but every inch of this song is genius, especially when it comes to the fantastically interesting chord choices (and buttery smooth key change), which sound miles more sophisticated than anything in the charts today.
There’s a timelessness to the lyrics, which are dreamily romantic (“you can make it bright / any time of day”) without pinning themselves down to a specific era or circumstance – like all the best songs, Any Time Of Day is an accommodating blank slate on which to imprint any meaning or emotion you like. The lines are delivered with in a heavenly falsetto which seems to get more and more euphoric with every line until the utterly glorious musical fireworks of the finale. The bass purrs, the backing vocals flutter, the synths scintillate; by the two minute mark you’ll be transported into a wholly different, blissful realm. I usually dismiss soft rock fans living in the past who may tut at the current state of the charts with lines like “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”. Comparing the majesty of Any Time Of Day to the rest of the competition in 2023, I’m beginning to think they might have a point after all.
Also try: inspired songwriting is abound on Everything Harmony, but When Winter Comes Around and What Happens to a Heart are two of my other favourites.
This seasoned popstar knows what she’s doing when it comes to delivering a night out for the ages. This deeply uplifting evening came replete with flawless disco sing-alongs, nut-tight choreography and even a stellar Cher cover to boot.
Jessie Ware doesn’t do halves. She tackles the pulsating dance number What’s Your Pleasure? sparkling in a pearl-studded bralette – her fourth outfit of the night and by no means her last – and clutches a microphone attached to a thick white whip instead of a stand, which she duly twirls around her head and lashes theatrically towards her backing dancers. It’s a rendition that leans into the kinky side of the title track of Ware’s career-defining lockdown album, which had many critics grasping for the appropriate superlative to convey its rush of steamy, exquisitely produced disco that caught the zeitgeist in a society clamouring for a return to the dance floor. What’s more, Ware has already told us her mother Lennie is in attendance tonight (beloved by the crowd as co-host of their hit mother-daughter podcast Table Manners), plus Auntie Monica. When the two male dancers, wearing tight shirts and even tighter unflinching smiles, gracefully bend over and present their backsides to the audience, a line seems to have been crossed. “Sorry, Monica!” Ware manages to blurt out between lyrics, doling out a pair of hearty spankings all the same. The choreography has been rehearsed for a reason, after all.
It’s a moment of hilarity that nicely sums up what makes a Jessie Ware gig such a unique hoot. Five albums and 13 years into her career, the 39-year-old is entering pop veteran territory, and there’s a wizened confidence in the way she effortlessly endears herself with organic chat between songs, speaking in the loving tone of an old friend. It seems over the years Ware has learned to drop her guard and never take herself too seriously. “When I first played in Manchester I just stood still, sang my songs and that was it,” she admits to us at one point, in between chatting to a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary and gushing about how she met Marcus Rashford yesterday (“I invited him to come but I think it might not be his kind of thing”). That said, Ware knows when to assume a more formidable posture when required of her, like when whipping her bandmates on What’s Your Pleasure? or on the opening number That! Feels Good! during which, after introducing monikers for her bandmates – Steady Eddy on bass, Sweet Pea on backing vocals, The Oyster for one unlucky dancer – she pronounces herself as Mother, arms spread wide and head held high. Make no mistake, for tonight this venue is not just Victoria Warehouse, but Victoria Ware-house.
A tightly choreographed What’s Your Pleasure? was one of the many highlights.
Mother may have been a reference to the recent Gen Z trend of giddily calling any vaguely authoritative female figure on a stage “mother”, but it was literally true, too. Ware is at an age at which women in the music industry are encouraged to gradually recede from the limelight and into the afterlife of Radio 2 to make way for the next cohort of trendy twenty-somethings. A mother of three isn’t supposed to bring in the numbers Ware is pulling today, let alone with unequivocally erotic songs about sexual empowerment and dancing. Instead, 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? turned Ware from a faltering M.O.R. popstar into a household name, and it’s that album which forms the bulk of the set list tonight, along with if-it-ain’t-broke follow-up record That! Feels Good!. In fact, the only pre-2020 song that gets more than an allusion is Say You Love Me, a poignant remnant of a past era for Ware, delivered with a sombre piano accompaniment to contrast the bombast elsewhere in the show. It’s a touching singalong with a fine vocal performance, but even this ballad has been bettered in recent years, namely by the gorgeous Remember Where You Are, which soon follows and provides necessary respite from all the feather boas and glitter. A song title to live by, Remember Where You Are’s message of bittersweet hope hits even harder in the flesh, a relatively calmed group of swaying backing vocalists delivering the chilling line “the heart of the city is on fire” as Ware begs for someone, anyone, to “take me home”. It’s her most profound song and perhaps greatest artistic achievement.
That song formed the end of a run of Ware’s slowest, sweetest ballads, which were all lumped together for an obvious reason: to leave a second half bursting with non-stop dance crowd-pleasers. The uber camp showstoppers soon piled up: Ooh La La’s bass line alone could have torn the roof off; Begin Again built spectacularly towards a thrillingly belted high note; Bananarama-referencing Mirage (Don’t Stop) was hypnotic and impulsive, the only flaw being that it had to come to an end. When the source material gave an opportunity for some fun onstage amateur dramatics, Ware went all in. Shake the Bottle, for instance, features plenty of coy interactions with the two backing dancers, who hysterically played the roles of Ware’s former love exploits, making absolutely sure the audience missed none of the many cheeky double entendres sprinkled throughout the lyrics. She hardly stopped moving during up-tempo dance banger Freak Me Now, her drummer delivering a thrilling performance at a DJ station at the front of the stage. Beautiful People provided a ready-made slice of crowd choreography in the lines “Stand up / Turn around / Take a bow / Because you look so good right now”. It could have been corny had the music itself been lazy, but instead we got a cracking bass riff, punchy horns and an all-out vocal performance from Ware, gleeful architect of the ensuing chaos. We were all, as Ware insisted, “beautiful people” and as the few thousand punters crammed into Victoria Warehouse spun around and jumped up and down to the beat, it was impossible not to agree.
Say You Love Me provided the night’s only acoustic moment.
Every song was a winner, but Ware had one more surprise up her sleeve. After a suspiciously long costume change, we might not have figured out the source of Ware’s disembodied vocals had one of the dancers not gestured to the back of the room. A disbelieving cheer rippled through the crowd as it transpired that Ware was perched in a corner of the mezzanine floor at the back of the room, now wearing a riot of pink that dazzled under the spotlight. What’s more, she was getting stuck into the verse of Cher’s cheese-smothered classic Believe, which the audience duly belted along to. She proceeded to weave through the standing audience Jesus-like, blowing kisses and holding hands of devotees all whilst belting out the chorus in full voice like the rest of us.
She was ushered back onto stage just in time for a final rendition of Free Yourself, a riotous ode to self-acceptance and perhaps Ware’s quintessential song. The track was one of the highlights of the lavish opening sequence to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool and in Manchester it was no less extravagant, the sashaying dancers visibly perspiring under many layers of sequins. It was silly and unedifying but in an honest, unapologetic way; Ware understood that you don’t need a reason to have a good time – just wanting to dance is enough. The extended cut of the track was glorious, Ware never losing an ounce of enthusiasm even as the final chorus looped back into another repeat. All around me, the ecstatic crowd lapped up every last note.
The sad truth was that Ware had to leave the stage eventually, prompting boos which briefly switched her into stern mother mode (“we don’t boo in this house!”). When she left the stage victoriously to the strains of Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free the crowd simply kept dancing, oblivious to the stewards who were rapidly trying to cordon off sections of the standing area for cleaning. I would soon regret not joining in. Instead I watched and took a moment to appreciate how far I’ve come and how special this moment was; or, as Ware would put it, remember where I am. Jessie Ware had been the figurehead for tonight’s fabulous celebration of life, but as I watched punters twirl one another around and laugh uncontrollably, it seemed clear that this gig belonged to all of us.
Eclectic was the word for this remarkable new project from Manchester Collective’s Rakhi Singh and Alan Keary. Singh’s Bach and Keary’s Reich were each fantastic in their own ways, but it was a chilling closing piece that had audience members either enthralled or clamouring for the exit.
Alan Keary is a man who knows his way around a loop pedal. Watching him construct a dense soundscape with only his voice at the start of haunting original composition Shattered Creek felt a bit like watching a passionate painter get lost in their work, each vocal loop a delicately judged brushstroke that contributed to an emerging whole. He told us in advance the song had been written in response to the news story of a man finding himself stranded in a deep Peruvian cave system for three days, and Keary was adept at recreating that lonely, echoey environment with eerie rumbles of bass and floods of reverb. Then, a new sound: two alternating tones, harsh and loud in the mix, apparently cued by Keary with one of the dozens of electronic buttons and knobs at his fingertips. For a moment, it seems like an odd addition to the mix, perhaps a misguided attempt to take things in an unexpected direction. Then Keary looks up to the back of the room, smiles and takes his hands off his electronics. It is, of course, just the Star and Shadow’s pesky fire alarm; the plumes of stage smoke had been atmospheric but evidently a bit over the top. Refreshingly humble despite the seriousness of his composition, Keary simply abandons Shattered Creek and starts harmonising with the alarm. Rakhi Singh promptly joins in with him on violin in a moment of improvisation that hints at the immense musical nous these two possess. When the alarm persists Keary even throws in some lyrics (“Fire alarm / You’re my best friend”) and the place erupts in laughter.
That was only one of the incidents in a rocky start to this memorable concert; Keary had to stop the previous song twice and apologise when he miscued his loop pedal during a particularly fiendish rhythmic passage. But, if any performers are up to the challenge of overcoming song-ruining technical difficulties and mistakes, its these two. Both Keary and violinist Rakhi Singh, two members of the sprawling Manchester Collective (of which Singh is Musical Director and Fergus McCreadie one of this season’s pianists) are immense professionals, more than self-assured enough to not let a few slip-ups disrupt their mojo. Their willingness to laugh rather than sulk or attempt to hide the errors is typical of a group in which the stuffy old world of classical music increasingly struggles to contain them. Their releases never fail to surprise, offering daring, fascinating and often challenging sounds that sit right on the modern extremes of what classical can be. Forget the well-documented styles of 20th century classical music – Manchester Collective explore the unchartered territory of 21st century classical. It is groups like these that will define how our era of the genre is remembers in the decades and centuries to come.
Alan Keary was an impressive multi-instrumentalist, playing bass, guitar, violin and electronics.
That’s not to say Manchester Collective shun music of centuries gone by in favour of more fashionable sounds. This gig started with the distinctly unfashionable music of Hildegard von Bingen, an 11th century philosopher and mystic as well as composer of deeply religious medieval music (remarkable not least because she was an exceedingly rare female academic) whose potent, deeply spiritual compositions were centuries ahead of their time. An opening rendition of O virtus Sapiente is given life by a Shruti box, a simple wooden box containing bellows that emit a constant, hypnotic drone, tonight powered by Singh gently stepping on an attached foot pedal. The one note instrument is traditionally used in music from the Indian subcontinent, but in Newcastle it made von Bingen’s ancient melodies sound strikingly alive, the hinge of the box softly opening and closing as if breathing, the drone fading gradually into nothing in the seconds after Singh stopped pumping the instrument.
That enchanting opener was only the beginning of this duo’s eclecticism. Von Bingen was followed by two Bulgarian folk songs in unusual time signatures, Keary offering nimble bass lines under Singh’s sprightly violin playing. The challenge was to make these strange rhythms feel natural and danceable rather than needlessly intellectual and complicated, a task which Singh and Keary’s vivacious playing mostly succeeded in (at least when Keary wasn’t missing his cues on the loop pedal). A pre-recorded percussion track was a good idea to elevate the particularly bouncy tune of Buchimish, even though the drumming came across as a little underpowered in comparison to the two outstanding players giving it their all in front of us.
The real meat of the programme came with solo turns from each performer in the middle of the concert. First, there was Singh performing J.S. Bach’s Chaconne, a notorious piece due to its demand for both the melody and bass line to be played simultaneously on a single violin. Singh made a point of prefacing her performance with the bass line played in isolation, explaining how Bach simply repeats it, only with a multitude of creative variations. Her care towards bringing out that bass line was clear throughout the subsequent rendition, the piece crucially never losing its musical guiding star. Chaconne is a fierce piece of music and Singh was its equal, striking her bow across the strings in those famously ferocious opening notes as if wielding a sword. It was an unremitting intensity that occasionally came at the expense of a handful of subtler moments in the piece, but when Bach’s melodies rose to their most stormy Singh’s playing was a tour de force. Such was Singh’s immense passion for the piece it was easy to miss the vast technical ability and extraordinary feat of memorisation on show – Chaconne may be 16 minutes long, but Singh is not the sort to seek comfort from sheet music.
Rakhi Singh played violin whilst pumping a Shruti box with her right foot.
Similarly engrossing was Keary’s moment in the spotlight, a movement from Electric Counterpoint by 20th century composer and defining figure of minimalist music Steve Reich. Unshaken by his earlier slip-ups, this was a masterclass in loop pedal skills. One by one, Keary stacked dozens of intricately plucked guitar melodies on top of one another, creating a musical house of cards that could have easily tumbled down had one addition been played ever so slightly too fast or two slow. Instead, he was metronomic, impressively able to apply exactly the same tone to every melody, resulting in a fascinatingly balanced tapestry of interlocking twangs. It may have been less emotionally compelling than Singh’s Chaconne, but Reich’s music doesn’t call for individualism but rather rigid discipline in pursuit of a mathematical sort of beauty. Keary was less a musician, more a machine-like music generator, and the brilliance of Electric Counterpoint shone as a result.
However, in the end Chaconne and Electric Counterpoint were really just preludes to the extraordinary work that closed this set. LAD, written by American composer Julia Wolfe in 2007, was originally written for nine bagpipes and, although there sadly wasn’t a band of pipers waiting behind the scenes at the Star and Shadow, Singh and Keary had plenty of tech to recreate an unassailable wall of sound with just two violins in Singh’s own arrangement of the piece. And what a sound; the blaring tones of LAD more closely resembled a spiritual out-of-body experience than a piece of music by any of the usual definitions. Singh herself prefers to talk of it as “an ancient cleansing ritual”. It was here that Singh’s fearlessness as a violinist really came into its own. Her opening notes – a lurching upwards slide, heavily thickened by effects and distortion – was followed by gaping silence, Singh pointedly glaring into the whites of the audience’s eyes, making a few seconds feel like minutes. Stood in the front row, I found myself averting her unflinching gaze, pulse quickening. She returned to those sliding notes, sounding somehow even more sickening than the first time, before staring in silence once more. Never before have I been so utterly floored by the opening to a piece of music. Soon a drone emerged and Keary joined in with the mounting cacophony, the excruciating tension rising impossibly via a particularly gut-churning use of the Shepard tone. Eventually, haunting folk tunes arose from the din like zombies from a grave, sounds of a past era back to haunt us. The noise became so horrific, so viscerally intense that not everyone in the room could handle it: two old ladies sat near me rather huffily gathered their things and left midway through, triggering a chuckle from Singh. Another couple near the front also vacated just as the piece was reaching its apex. A few minutes of chaos marked the finale, Singh and Keary playing a non-sensical tangle of notes that was so avant-garde it almost made this powerful work of art feel silly. Nonetheless, by the time they had finished (remarkably ending this rhythm-less piece perfectly in sync) it felt as something in the air had changed. The applause from those of us that remained was loud, long and deserved – I’ve never experienced anything quite like Manchester Collective’s LAD. This leg of their autumn tour may have had a shaky start, but it could hardly have ended more strongly: modern classical music at its enthralling, inspiring best.
Squid’s twisted, ugly brand of post-punk rock music was a perfect match for the industrial surroundings of Newcastle’s finest gigging venue for a set packed with interest and surprises, not least a theatrical twist at its climax.
Squid’s latest tour, in support of their critically acclaimed sophomore album O Monolith, begins with nothing but cowbells. Two rhythms weave immaculately together whilst drummer and frontman Ollie Judge gets comfortable on his stool, plinthed and silhouetted against a growing storm of technicolour stage lights. A buzzy, detuned synth loop arrives spectre-like, then an eerily off-kilter bass line and dizzying assemblage of dovetailing guitar lines. After a minute or two Louis Borlase lunges forward and unleashes a piercing guitar riff, his instrument scratching and screeching higher and higher, urging this monster of a song towards its startling finale. This is Swing (In a Dream), Squid’s fascinating set opener that serves as a head first dive into the strange, nightmarish underworld in which this band’s music resides, full of unhinged melodies and alien stretches of what can only be described as noise. It makes for unrelentingly challenging listening – unlike their similarly daring peers Black Midi, Squid aren’t tempted to throw in a delicate acoustic ballad just to keep the audience on their toes – but it is all utterly enthralling.
Ollie Judge’s endurance as both drummer and vocalist was impressive.
My friend Liam and I are in the thick of it. Despite arriving shortly after doors opened at Newcastle’s Boiler Shop, we’ve somehow secured the best spot in the venue, pressed against the barriers and right under the nose of a shadowy Judge, who is throned centre stage. With the masses of fans all behind us – Bristol group Squid have garnered a comparable cult following to the likes of Black Country, New Road in recent years – we can fully appreciate the perfectness of the venue, a bare and atmospherically lit former warehouse that seems built solely to recreate the dystopian future so vividly painted by Squid’s music. There’s plenty to look at on stage, too: five musicians and many more instruments. Borlase inhabits a small forest of synths on their stands; Laurie Nanivell makes use of a dedicated cowbell station when he’s not injecting songs with trumpet; Arthur Leadbetter has his own ring of synths, plus an electric cello for good measure. What’s more, it’s not all just eye-candy for music nerds like me; Squid’s ambitious compositions genuinely demand half the stock of the nearest Gear4music warehouse. It’s this vast choice of instrumentation that allows these songs to be so volatile, the band indulging in lengthy song transitions that veer towards the genre of ambient noise, full of indecipherable squeals of synth and undulating tides of electronic fuzz.
It’s in these off-script song transitions that Squid were their most daring and compelling. An early sortie in the preamble to Undergrowth was breathless, Judge emerging from a mist of guitar with a thumping dance groove that sounded like a warped version of Parcels in full nightclub mode. Then there was the song itself, with its heavy hip hop groove and sticky guitar hooks. “I’d rather melt, melt, melt, melt away,” Judge yelped in the chorus, competing with a honking trumpet amidst a superb, head-banging racket. Peel St. was another early highlight that emerged from experimental noise, the band miraculously turning what sounded like a jammed photocopier into one of the most lethal grooves they’ve ever dug their teeth into.
Louis Borlase played guitar and electronics whilst Arthur Leadbetter performed on electric cello.
It was all a bit too much for one man a few rows back from us, who used the few pauses in the music so impatiently shout the lyrics to Squid’s biggest hit, Narrator, at one point getting the crowd to clap distractingly during a quiet section of solo guitar. Liam and I saw him extricated from the crowd and awkwardly heaved over the barriers by half a dozen security a few songs later. “Sunday night… who would have thought it?” Judge mentioned quietly at one point, apparently in disapproval. Tellingly, it was one of the only things he said directly to the crowd all night.
It was a good thing that the five members of Squid were all far too absorbed in their craft to let a rude audience put them off. The crowd did at least elevate standout Documentary Filmmaker by singing along gleefully to a trumpet riff, then shouting along to Judge’s descriptions of a hot summer (“the sweat dripped off my plastic sheets”) during a suitably stifling climax. The biggest climax, however, was reserved for a deafening rendition of Siphon Song, which was helped by a more restrained use of the robot-like vocal manipulations that somewhat took the sting out of the studio recording. A patient outro that flickered like a dying ember gradually revealed Narrator, the track that many in the crowd will have been waiting for. It was a performance that was bound to fall short of the experience of listening to the original track for the first time – Martha Skye Murphy, whose blood-curdling screams in the finale make for one of the most disturbing pieces of rock I’ve ever heard, was of course not present at Boiler Shop – but Judge’s sheer vocal stamina in the epic crescendo was admirable, even if the song rather outstayed its welcome over the course of a nearly nine-minute runtime. Simultaneously drumming and singing (or, more accurately, wailing) for such a behemoth of a song was no mean feat.
Laurie Nankivell and Anton Pearson completed the lineup.
Whilst Squid’s sonic onslaught was sometimes overwhelming, they could never be accused of boring their audience. In Newcastle this was true right until the very end, with the awe-inspiring The Blades, which started with a clever reprise of the opening cowbell rhythms. Here lies perhaps the most memorable image of all Judge’s sinister lyrics: a drone operator sits alone and watches his screen that shows aerial images of people on the ground which he darkly reduces to “blades of grass waiting to be trimmed.” Judge repeated these menacing lyrics with increasingly uncontrolled yelps, as if playing the drone operator as he gradually loses his mind in the warfare, powerful trumpet melodies and wailing sirens exploding like bombs. It made for a violent depiction of mania that would be compelling even if it didn’t come at a time when war crimes are becoming depressingly common in the news.
Then came the twist. For the first time in the whole gig, Judge stepped out from behind his kit, untangled his microphone from its stand, and positioned himself at the very edge of the stage, almost within touching distance of Liam and me. “Back to bed / Another man’s hand on the joystick,” he almost whispered over dreamlike sustained guitar chords. He looked genuinely frightened, gazing nervously up to the metal rafters of the warehouse building while gradually tangling himself in his microphone cable. Judge – or, more accurately, his character – seemed defeated, lost, hopeless. It was a moment of intense theatre that would haunt me on the subsequent walk home and make me wish Judge had dug even deeper into the performance art that his evocative lyrics so easily lend themselves to. As the quiet final notes of this otherwise thunderous gig rang out, Judge stood alone centre-stage, incapacitated by his own microphone cord. The crowd had been rowdy all night, but something in Judge’s performance seemed to have genuinely struck a nerve. As the stage lights dimmed, all that was left of Squid’s concert was a stunned silence.
A dejected, overwhelmed Lincoln set the scene for a thoroughly unprofessional showing from Penelope Scott, whose pitchy vocals and underwhelming songs made the hour feel like two.
Somewhere between Leeds and Manchester, the knot of anxiety in my stomach tightened. As the light outside the train window weakened, my apprehension of what was to come – namely a solo traversal of Manchester city centre by bus – strengthened. I am lucky to have travelled to far more exotic places than this, but something about the task of negotiating a ticket on the number 1 towards Wythenshaw from a no-nonsense Mancunian bus driver sent shivers down my spine. An egg sandwich bolted at a shady bus stop felt like battle fuel. Of course, as is almost always the case, there was absolutely nothing to worry about, although I had cut things finer than I anticipated, joining good friends Ewan and Isaac in the Deaf Institute’s bar queue with just enough time for hugs and Coke orders before the crowd cheered the night’s first performer onto the stage.
I wasn’t the only one feeling anxious that Wednesday night. Lincoln, a singer-songwriter from Ohio dealing in neatly packaged emo rock and painfully poetic lyrics, is the man responsible for what remains the finest EP I’ve ever heard, 2017’s A Constant State of Ohio. At five songs and 16 minutes long, there isn’t a single minute on Ohio where Lincoln loses his burning sense of creativity, with consistently thrilling songwriting and staggeringly stylish rock arrangements that belied the fact that it was his first – and for many years, only – official release, produced when he was still a teenager. It was this set of five tracks that caught the imaginations of 14-year-old Ewan and I, and we took to playing it in our high school’s only practice room, me bashing out the chords and bass lines on piano, Ewan playing guitar and singing along with all the heartfelt devotion that lyrics like these demand.
The fact that, somewhat out of the blue, Lincoln had booked a brief debut UK tour in support of Penelope Scott seemed too good to be true, and for those initial few minutes settling down in the beautifully restored Deaf Institute it still seemed ridiculous that this random American artist, adored by us and (more or less) us only, was just a matter of metres away from us. But there he was, plodding onto stage alone, head hung low and letting his now chest-length scraggly brown hair fall away in front of him, covering a wiry moustache that almost made Lincoln unrecognisable from the few, aged photos Ewan and I had seen of him online. Immediately, alarm bells were ringing. “There’s a lot of you here and… I’m not ready for this,” were his first tentative words, the crowd’s reaction gradually switching from laughter to intermittent cheers of encouragement as it became clear Lincoln wasn’t joking.
Right from those first words, it was obvious that Lincoln wouldn’t have the conviction to produce a satisfying support set, although circumstances didn’t help. Sat down and hunched over a guitar, he looked crushingly lonely on stage and needed other musicians not just for more visual interest but to beef out his songs – opener Smokey Eyes was a different song altogether without the spectacular drum fill intro that lights the touchpaper of the studio recording. Instead, Lincoln battled on alone, admirably pushing through what seemed like a genuine personal crisis but leaving little musical substance for the few fans like Ewan and I to cling to, even if Ewan proudly belted out every lyric in support anyway.
Lincoln had to battle through his set at the Deaf Institute.
Instrumentation aside, the lyrics remained extraordinary even if Lincoln often didn’t seem to enjoy delivering them. Lines like “quiet lies that you’re telling to those black and screaming skies” were appropriately spat out with disgust from the singer, as was Lincoln’s poetic assertion that “the sky is what we leave behind” on Downhill, which wrapped up this set powerfully as it did on the original EP. Not that Lincoln seemed at all aware of the effortless flow of his rhymes, instead rolling his eyes to the ceiling when they weren’t glued to his feet. He didn’t realise it, but they were songs that he had every right to be proud of.
It soon became clear exactly what he meant by “not ready”, too. Part of Lincoln’s apparent terror was the fact he had walked onto the stage without a plan, improvising a set list and often forgetting his lyrics. Every song seemed like a challenge to be overcome, and with awkward gap came the genuine risk that Lincoln might no longer be able summon the courage to continue at all. He needed the direct help of Ewan – easy to hear over a meek guitar intro – to find the opening line of Banks, a song that shouldn’t have been so difficult to remember; the stunning final four lines about the power and limitations of music and art in general remain etched in my memory since I first heard them years ago. As I would have the chance to insist on Lincoln later, if I was into tattoos, the lyric sheet of Banks would be my first point of call.
It wasn’t just Ewan unwaveringly powering Lincoln through this set, although they made up a big proportion of the most vocal supporters. Every song was cheered, every mumbled apology batted away with whoops and laughter and shouts of “we love you!” dotted around the room. When Lincoln cut his finger whilst strumming, one audience member even offered a plaster, symbolic of the band-of-friends atmosphere that had emerged in the Deaf Institute as we watched what felt like a mutual friend crumble in front of us. Of course, Lincoln declined the offer.
He finished the set with a subversion of the usual showman’s routine of lines like “I’m so sorry we’ve ran out of time” or “I can’t wait to see you all again soon!” Instead we got “I’m gonna get down off the stage. Can I do that?” It was a measure of the crowd’s sympathy that instead of the usual pantomime groans, the audience gave a loving, appreciative yes. With that Lincoln wiped his brow a final time, unplugged his guitar and slunk backstage.
Then something remarkable unfolded. Improbably, Ewan had acquired Lincoln’s personal email address in a thorough online trawl of the deepest corners of his elusive online presence in the weeks leading up to the gig, and had managed to persuade Lincoln into an exclusive interview for Ewan’s YouTube channel. After such a forlorn performance, the three of us wondered if he would appear after all, but sure enough Lincoln snuck out from a side door five minutes after leaving the stage, trailed by a lowkey stage manager. Venue security prohibited us from going outside, so the Deaf Institute’s atmospheric, gloomy stairwell would have to do for an interview venue. Lincoln Lutz from Cincinnati, Ohio is hardly Ed Sheeran, but meeting the creator of one of my most treasured works of art felt special. Ewan asked the questions (just as disbelieving as me), Isaac filmed and I positioned myself in a corner, trying to take it all in. Conversation veered chaotically from allusions to years of drug addiction and a sharp decline in mental health (about which Lincoln described himself as becoming “not a person”) to his newfound appreciation of the Manchester fruit juice delicacy Vimto. He was so addicted to nicotine that the transatlantic flight to the UK was a huge struggle, he would later tell me. When asked for wise words from Ewan, “don’t do crack!” was the half-jokey response, a sadness detectable in his muted laughter.
Ewan managed to grab a signature on their vinyl sleeve of Ohio before returning to the concert hall just in time for the appearance of the night’s main act, Penelope Scott. She is one of a new breed of TikTok star, unusual for having gained millions of monthly listeners with little to no mainstream coverage. Perhaps her wild success is down to just how much the Internet age dominates her music, which sounds like a corrupted, freakish video game soundtrack, restlessly lurching from punk rock to cutesy acoustic guitar to plodding 8-bit synths with a joyous disregard for the traditional rules of hit making.
There’s a limit to the mind-boggling numbers, though. The Deaf Institute, for one thing, is a humbling venue, housing just 250 fans at its capacity. Artists with her volume of streams – albeit largely coming from American shores – can at least aim for Gorilla’s 550 capacity, or perhaps even the 1,500 capacity O2 Ritz across the road (incidentally a venue which hosts the abysmally named Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs at the end of the month, a traditionally established metal band with a poxy 60,000 monthly listeners on Spotify). Alas, it seems streaming numbers aren’t everything in today’s gigging circuit. In fact, often they can be completely misleading.
Penelope Scott was in desperate need of a band to support her songs.
Scott’s lack of a backing band was perhaps even more underwhelming than Lincoln’s, largely neutering the tumultuous edge of much of Scott’s louder tracks. Feel Better, for instance, is home to Scott’s most impolite punk riff and was duly screamed in Manchester, but ended up sounding impotent with minimal support behind Scott’s vocals. More often the songs resembled a campfire singalong on a school residential trip, complete with awkward chat between songs and a proudly singing crowd that often drowned out Scott’s weedy amplification. The whiny vocals, invariably pitchy and occasionally nauseating, would have been acceptable from an overconfident middle schooler, but at a show like this were simply below the bare minimum required from a headline act. It was a shame there was no supervising schoolteacher to tell Scott that maybe it was time to give it a rest.
It didn’t help that the songs Scott was singing lacked much of Lincoln’s depth, often reading like stream of consciousness posts from a 15-year-old American girl’s Tumblr page. American Healthcare was typical of Scott’s general rage at the establishment without being able to pin down any specifics beyond scorn towards all those “corporate fucking pricks”. “I bet my shit all sounds the same to you,” she railed at an unappreciative ex on genuinely promising new piano number Cabaret, unaware that, at least when she restricts herself to plonky piano songs and flimsy mid-range vocals, the guy might actually have a point.
The real nail in the coffin, though, was the dearth of professionalism on show. Like Lincoln, although with a less obvious excuse, Scott seemed to have no plan when it came to a set list, nor even when it came to what key to play her songs in; at one point she completely restarted a song after deciding the starting note ought to be a bit lower. Instrumental sections were needlessly injected with lines like “just bear with me here” and “ooh I like this bit” as her tempos veered faster and slower like a bucking bronco.
The evening’s nadir came when Someone Like You began playing through the speakers after Scott left her laptop playing on shuffle after one backing track had finished. I say nadir – it might have been the musical highlight of the night had Scott just sat back and let the Adele classic ring out. Instead, she fumbled her way to the back of the stage and instructed us to talk amongst ourselves as she wrangled with her audio files for two excruciating minutes. As Isaac and Ewan pointed out, it was hardly Mitski-level artistry. With a bored-looking Soap, Scott’s set was over, an hour long reminder that sometimes TikTok success just doesn’t make sense.
The three of us lingered in the venue until security told us to leave. I was surprised by how much passionate Scott fans Ewan and Isaac agreed with my general disappointment. The gig had left a bitter aftertaste for us all given the toils involved in getting to Manchester on a Wednesday night in the first place. Ewan slipped backstage and bumped into both performers whilst Isaac and I waited outside, Ewan eventually emerging with a pizza-hungry Lincoln following behind. We stood in line with Lincoln at Domino’s – a genuinely surreal experience – before relocating to a shady bench where we chatted happily despite the growing chill and the unsettling number of beggars approaching us. We said our goodbyes to Lincoln at midnight and walked to Piccadilly still in disbelief. Ewan seemed dazed after a meaningful conversation with a deeply influential musical hero, leaving Isaac and I to be giddy on their behalf. The journey home would be gruelling, but discussing the most impossible events of the night – Lincoln referring to Ewan as a friend, the fact the embattled Lincoln had even agreed to chat in the first place – it was clear to all of us that this venture had been worth it, albeit for everything besides the music.
On a damp and dreary night in Glasgow, Theo Katzman showcased his exemplary songwriting and impressive technique despite a set bloated with solos in one of those gigs overshadowed by my own circumstances.
Another gig, another nervous train journey. This time I was gazing out the window somewhere on Scotland’s central belt, the outside world so uniformly dark it was genuinely difficult to tell whether or not the train was passing through one very long tunnel on the way to Glasgow. I’d already had plenty of excitement for a Tuesday night – I sprinted in a failed attempt to catch an earlier train in Edinburgh, my overnight bag bouncing uncomfortably on my back – but the biggest challenge was to come: making it to the renovated church of Òran Mór in Glasgow’s West End before American singer-songwriter Theo Katzman took to the stage bright and early at 8.15 p.m.. Glasgow was damp and gloomy but jogging through the dimly glowing backstreets in search of the flat where my friend Fionn was waiting for me felt enjoyably like a movie, at least until I soaked my trainers in a puddle. I buzzed in to find a nervous Fionn, and understandably so. He’d had to buy a dodgy ticket online in the days leading up to the gig and was, crushingly, denied entry on the door. Neither of us had the guts to do a runner – this was, in truth, hardly a high-security venue – so we just stood there stunned for a few minutes, waiting for a solution to reveal itself which never came. Only when we heard the cheers heralding Katzman’s punctual appearance were we triggered to say a sad goodbye and part ways. Fionn made the 10 minute walk home alone whilst I shuffled into the already stuffy Òran Mór to find almost nowhere to get a good view. I settled on a spot just in front of the bar, my view of the main man largely obscured by pillars, and tried to focus on the music.
It was in these circumstances that I first saw Theo Katzman in person. His was the third name on my bucket list of Vulfpeck members to see live after prolific guitarist Cory Wong and fabled bassist Joe Dart, who happened to be stood right next to Katzman in Glasgow, the glints from his customary sunglasses dazzling even in the short glimpses I got from the back of the room. A guitarist, vocalist and drummer for Vulfpeck, Katzman’s showmanship instincts have sometimes felt squashed in that band by the zany presence of frontman Jack Stratton, but whilst Vulfpeck have taken an extended hiatus Katzman has grasped the opportunity to show the world exactly what he’s made of. Showing up tonight sporting a skew-whiff oversized baseball cap and loose, exposing denim jacket, Katzman has always felt a little different from the rest of the Vulfpeck gang, even if he can funk just as hard as the rest of ‘em. His distinctive take on country rock has only the barest resemblance to Vulfpeck, the link most clear in those moments he opts for a particularly perky funk bass line or indulges in a gleeful, improvised falsetto run. Lyrically, Katzman’s solo discography is so smartly written and heartfelt it makes you wonder what heights that Michigan band might have scaled if they chose to sing about something more stimulating than self aware ducks and whales with feet.
Katzman arrived in this damp Scottish city after, like many of contemporaries, having undertaken something of a creative (and, perhaps, personal) reinvention during the pandemic. He spent much of his chat during this gig discussing a formative year or two alone in the wild woods of the American midwest, doing little else than simply “thinking”. He cut himself off from the Internet for long periods, becoming self-sufficient and discovering the counterintuitive yet ever trendy hobby of extreme cold water swimming. It all amounted to a spiritual awakening that seemed destined to result in either powerfully profound or powerfully pretentious new material. A monologue played through the speakers as the band took to the stage in which a disembodied Katzman espoused the “universal law” that “everything in nature has a cost” and insisted that “we ourselves are nature,” dangerously teetered towards the latter, although in the remaining brief speeches that would pepper the rest of the gig Katzman came across as far more a humbly passionate advocate of spirituality than a self-absorbed ‘enlightened one’.
That said, Katzman’s latest album, Be The Wheel, is hardly a George Harrison-level musical departure from his earlier work, the change instead making itself clear in a notable decrease in the specificity of his lyrics. The title track and Hit The Target got things moving in Òran Mór, and although Katzman’s calls to “be the wheel” and “put down the pistol” seem indecipherable to anyone other himself, there was plenty to love in the consistently interesting composition, particularly than it came to the writhing retro synth in the latter track. 5-Watt Rock was an outlier in its directness – an endearing, self-aware tale about wooing a lover despite an underpowered guitar amp – but was tellingly one of the most enjoyable tracks of the night, the harmonised group vocals in that unforgettable chorus sounding even more glorious in the flesh.
Katzman performed to a sold out Òran Mór.
Katzman was blessed with a stellar live band, not least when it came to Mr. Dart, who is as far as I’m concerned one of the finest bassists active today. They were kept busy with a daunting quantity of solos – almost every song found eight bars to lend to one of the musicians who, whilst clearly very capable performers, occasionally struggled to justify every departure from the standard rock formula. At their best these improvisations were transformative – Dave Mackay’s blues blast on piano on Trump-bashing You Could Be President was a thing to behold – but other times, like on 5-Watt Rock, the solos added little to the original. At least Dart’s superfluous diversion on She’s In My Shoe added a degree of interest to an otherwise uninspiring plodder. Still, we were left wanting more – the cutting of a few solos would have been a small price to pay had Dart or one of his bandmates been given enough airtime to fully explore his instrument within a single song.
The new material may have its fair share of duds, but there’s no disputing what an exceptional songwriter Katzman is – unmatched by any of his Vulfpeck peers. The remarkable What Did You Mean (When You Said Love) is his best song and he knows it, drawing it out in Glasgow with a pretty yet convoluted piano intro followed by a stripped-back, overly theatrical first verse that showcased both Katzman’s expressive vocals and the song’s undulating harmonic foundations. Virtually every phrase was followed by an increasingly dramatic pause, culminating in a lengthy silence that verged on mick-taking before the band’s entry. “Do it, ya bastard!” one unmistakably Glaswegian man couldn’t help but blurt out from the back, somewhat puncturing all the romantic tension Katzman had worked so hard to construct, even if he had been playful about it. He did, eventually, “do it”, throwing in a jazz piano solo and rampaging electric guitar solo for good measure. The song came out perhaps a little overcooked, stretching out into a six minute epic, but if any Katzman song can withstand this sort of abuse, it’s this one. The Death of Us came as a welcome contrast, the sticky funk groove light on its feet yet still offering an electrifying extended jam that had these five musicians operating at the peak of their powers.
Katzman’s unwaveringly earnest inter-song talks about the new worldview he acquired during that forest retreat were hit and miss. A speech about bravery before You Gotta Go Through Me was genuinely compelling, Katzman urging us to take that crucial first step outside our comfort zones, starting tomorrow morning; cue a muted applause. “Yeah, that one never goes down that well,” he admitted. It was a pity that all the oration came as a prelude to one of Katzman’s sleepier numbers, but at least the song gave me a chance to make the most of my back row spot and get hold of a queue-free delayed Coke. There were also a lot of ‘prayers’ at play: The Only Chance We Have was “a prayer for listening”, followed by Corn Does Grow, which was both a “prayer for nature” and “a prayer for us”. Really, Corn Does Grow was just a rollicking country rock song, delivered in Glasgow without the excessive vocal distortion of the studio recording. Instead, there was the most head-banging guitar solo of the night and plenty of intense riffing – by the end, the temperature in an already stifling Òran Mór seemed to have gone up a degree or two.
Rip-roaring new tune Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day was the best surprise of the night, Katzman asking desperately “but how long did it take to fall down?” as chugging drums and guitars gathered pace around him. The other uptempo Rome-themed song in Katzman’s canon, As the Romans Do, would have made for a worthy finale but instead we got That’s The Life, a disappointingly middle-of-the-road choice of closing number but a neat encapsulation of the Katzman appeal, with lyrics about searching for life’s purpose set to the sound of a light-hearted hoe down. Heads bobbed politely in the crowd in front of me, but there was a sense that we weren’t quite seeing Katzman at his uninhibited best.
It was still drizzling when I found Fionn waiting outside for me, needlessly apologetic. I joked that it had been a rubbish gig anyway, but it was true that Fionn’s absence hadn’t been the only disappointment of the night. Katzman remains a consummate entertainer – his free-wheeling falsetto feats were so consistently remarkable it became easy to take them for granted – but it seems when he found himself in the woods he partly lost sight of what made his music so much fun – namely uncomplicated, joyous rock hooks. Unlike a good deal of his contemporaries, Katzman has plenty of worthwhile things to say, but on this sad night in Glasgow I was left wishing he’d let the music do more of the talking.
Equally packed with punk rock instant classics and beautifully understated piano ballads, Olivia Rodrigo’s bravura second album is somehow fiercer, wittier and altogether even stronger than her Grammy-sweeping debut.
It takes about 52 seconds for the brilliance of Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album to hit. It begins with a delicately plucked acoustic guitar and semi-whispered vocals as Rodrigo sweetly delivers disingenuous lines about being perfectly socially aware and having “sun in my motherfuckin’ pocket”. It’s an expletive that foreshadows the rage that’s about to unfold: a clatter of drums followed by an implosion of distorted guitars and bratty, Avril Lavigne-esque vocals, matching Rodrigo’s rage at having to conform and look effortlessly pretty as the fawned-over young American pop star she is. all-american bitch is not just a smartly executed satire but simply a great rock song, with unusually fierce and unhinged guitars for a pop album so deeply in the mainstream, plus a rebellious shouted chorus that lands with all the impulsive force of a teenager’s bedroom door slammed shut.
It’s a bracing opener that sets the tone for what should become one of the great pop-rock albums of the decade. Where her generally excellent debut record SOUR outstayed its welcome with increasingly underpowered wallowing in the same formative breakup, GUTS sees Rodrigo venture (partly) beyond the world of misbehaving boys, in the process diving deep into the full throttle punk music that lingered dormant within the highlights of that first album. Raucous banger ballad of a homeschooled girl perhaps best exemplifies Rodrigo’s evolution and sudden maturity as an artist as she sings about social anxiety and unease at settling into a crowd after her unique upbringing as a child actor at Disney. What makes this song about awkwardness so brilliant is just how confident the music sounds as Rodrigo sings of “social suicide.” This song is not self-pity but a vivid recreation of Rodrigo’s (and, as it happens, much of her generation’s) anxiety in the form of a rapid torrent lyrics and a restrained bridge that promptly collapses upon itself into an electrifying finale.
Interestingly, a newfound willingness to be a little silly on GUTS is all part of that new maturity. Where SOUR occasionally risked slipping into melodrama, GUTS is mellowed out with wry anecdotes from a turbulent love life and jokes at Rodrigo’s own expense. “Yes I know that he’s my ex but can’t two people reconnect?” she quips on gritty Wet Leg-esque number bad idea right?, a song about willingly doing what you absolutely know you shouldn’t – far from the only unifying feeling of adolescent life that Rodrigo has comprehensively unpacked in her two albums already. get him back! is even more fun, a sharp-witted tale of getting a spot of light revenge on a clueless ex complete with a killer singalong chorus and an irresistibly groovy drum groove.
When Rodrigo gets serious, though, she doesn’t hold back. Lead single and perhaps this album’s finest achievement vampire steadily crescendos towards the condemning lines “bloodsucker, fame fucker, bleeding me dry like a goddamn vampire,” delivered with enough conviction to void any previous criticism that 20-year-old might be throwing in swear words just for cool points. There’s no mistaking that vampire’s vehemence is whole-hearted as the drums build into a canter and a twisting chord progression tugs on the heartstrings with accumulating urgency. At the heart of it all is the best vocal performance of Rodrigo’s career so far, transitioning from exquisitely quiet opening to bell-clear belted high notes that slice through the mix like a hot knife during the second utterly flawless middle eight of her career (after drivers license, of course). It all comes crashing down satisfyingly in a wall of spliced piano chords and deafening cymbals, triumphantly wrapping up what may be Rodrigo’s greatest three minutes of pop.
On lyrics alone, however, it’s hard to beat making the bed, an artful standout ballad that grapples with the uglier aspects of the celebrity life that Rodrigo has inadvertently created for herself. “I’m playing the victim so well in my head,” she admits as a mire of electric guitars and washed out piano chords inexorably begin to subsume her. Much of the detail on GUTS is inevitably difficult to relate to given it draws directly from the truly bizarre upbringing of a young global celebrity, but on making the bed there’s something strikingly universal about Rodrigo’s deep-seated guilt and cognitive dissonance. There’s similarly exceptional lyrics on classy piano ballad logical, where Rodrigo tells of falling for a dishonest lover “like water falls from the February sky.” She ends up concluding that nothing about love makes rational sense with the ingenious “the sky is green, the grass is red / you mean all those things you said,” making a mockery of the superficial ‘roses are red’-style love poems she must have received from countless desperate boys over the years. It’s rounded off with a sense of self-awareness typical of GUTS’ maturity, Rodrigo admitting in an introspective bridge “I know I’m half responsible.” This isn’t just a case of mining a flawed relationship for witty comebacks and one-upmanship. This is the intricate, pained unravelling of both party’s flaws set to ruminative piano and beautiful melodies.
In terms of sheer songwriting quality, GUTS never loses an ounce of momentum during its 40 minute runtime. In other years and on lesser albums, love is embarrassing could quite easily be a smash hit and worthy song of the summer with its joyfully self-deprecating chorus and pulsating synth beat. On GUTS it’s just another underappreciated deep cut, as is smooth and catchy indie pop number pretty isn’t pretty, which covers the well-documented topic of unrealistic beauty standards with a new clarity. “Fix the things you hated and you’d still feel insecure,” Rodrigo bluntly points out at one point, reminding us it’s something deeper than the supermodels and sunny Instagram posts that are making young people feel so insecure.
Most of all, it’s Rodrigo’s age that runs a thread through this album, with the singer both grappling with intense fame at such a young age and the jealous, patronising put downs that she receives from her invariably older critics. The opener’s semi-earnest declaration of “I know my age and I act like it,” proves to be self-deception by the time the stunning closer, teenage dream, is reached, when Rodrigo asks “when am I going to stop being wise for my age and just start being wise?”, sounding almost defeated. There’s also the uncomfortable question of whether committing her entire young adult life as an actor for Disney was wise. “‘Got your whole life ahead of you’ […] / But I fear that they already got all the best parts of me,” Rodrigo reflects in a line that must resonate with any young person unfortunate enough to come of age during a pandemic. Therein lies the great magic trick of GUTS, an album that has the raw intensity of Rodrigo’s singular life experiences but is equally adept at speaking on behalf of an entire generation of Gen Z-ers. For me, like many other 20-year-olds the world over, this album has quickly become part of my identity, a work of music to scream and dance along to in vigorous catharsis or confide in during quiet moments of overwhelm. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
