This month I’ve decided to respond to myself by flogging the now dead horse that is the narrative that music in the first half of 2023 is poor compared to previous years. The ‘top albums of the year so far’ emails I’m currently receiving from record shops up and down the country are doing little to dissuade me. And, to temper your excitement, the other Picky Bastards do still concur, so don’t expect any huge revelations here. ‘Bore off and move on James’ I hear you say, ‘it’s July now, start looking forward’. No! I shall fly in the face of your imagined clamour and take one final trawl through the last six months nonetheless. To prove myself wrong (for some reason) I’ve asked for some 2023 albums I might have missed from my fellow editors. My verdict follows hence.
Caroline Polachek, Desire I Want To Turn Into You
Caroline’s name is one I’ve been aware of through Picky Bastards for some time. And this led me to listen to this album when it came out, and again when we featured it on the podcast in April. For whatever reason it did nothing to really capture my attention among the admittedly bleak landscape of mass album listening required of a PB editor in 2023. Revisiting it now, and following her fantastic Glastonbury set on TV, it’s clear I really need to have a word with myself. I can’t stop listening and telling people how great I think she is. The totally un-ironic veneration of the objectively naff sound of millennium-era music is truly wonderful and taps into a nostalgia I didn’t even know I bore. I’ve pre-ordered the belated release of the record for August. What the hell was I doing before? Have I been in a bad mood all year? Does the Judith Chalmers vibe of ‘Sunset’ just make more sense in the summer? Who knows. All I know now is that I am obsessed with this album.
Wednesday, Rat Saw God
Far be it from me to claim that not being able to sing isn’t some radical comment against musical hegemony, but the thing is, singers who can actually sing sound…well…good. At times this resembles a cat dying to the sound of stoned teenagers having band practice. The rest of it is very drony and sounds pretty dated. Not for me.
Fever Ray, Radical Romantics
I felt like this had some potential, and there are a few tracks that do appeal where there is still a hint of The Knife (Karin Dreijer aka Fever Ray’s former band). Radical Romantics on the whole is too vast and incomprehensible and experimental for me. Or maybe it’s more that some of the songs rightly belong in an art gallery rather than an album. Take closer ‘Bottom of The Ocean’ for instance. Seven minutes of ‘oh oh oh oh oh oh oh’ is about seven too many.
100 Gecs, 10000 Gecs
If you thought Gecs couldn’t get dumber and more annoying then you were wrong. Lyrical highlights include ‘I went to France to get some new pants / I went to Greece to get something to eat’, ‘I got my tooth removed and I don’t want talk about it’ and ‘frog on the floor / where’d he come from / nobody knows’. I think ‘I got my tooth removed’ is a metaphor for ending a toxic relationship. Accepting that they know what a metaphor is, let alone how to successfully use one, is giving them too much credit. In a way I guess I can admire their commitment to their Casio-keyboard-demo-meets-the-American-Pie-soundtrack-autotuned-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life sound, but it doesn’t mean I want to hear it. Grating doesn’t even come close. 10000 Gecs brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘difficult second album’.
Skinny Pelembe, Hardly The Same Snake
Let’s end this with another success. I listened to Hardly The Same Snake once when it was released and didn’t return to it. It’s clear to me immediately on my second listen, that not returning to it was a mistake….there are a bunch of great songs here – there’s a warm, classic simplicity to the them. Take the instant familiarity of ‘Don’t Be Another’ and ‘Like A Heart Won’t Beat’ for instance. I’ll make sure I swing by his set at Bluedot festival when I’m there in a few weeks.
Words by James Spearing
Picky Bastards 