Each month, we rally the team together and annoy them until they tell us the best music they listened to in the most recent calendar month. It can be something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – it can be whatever. Once, it was even a busker someone had heard while walking through a train station.
In September, it was these things:
Rick Larson
It was a bit of a calm September apart from the lightning bolt of Lex Walton’s ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER. But, I wrote about that already. Go and listen to it, please.
The month saw the release of “deluxe” versions of two of my favorite recent albums, Wednesday’s Bleeds from last year and Ratboys’ Singin’ To An Empty Chair, released in February of this year and a strong AOY contender. These deluxe versions, adding remixes, covers of songs by other artists, and demos or live tracks, are perhaps most useful in underscoring just how special the untricked-out albums are and reminding one to listen to those again. Rarely does the redo by other artists approach the original. The best extra songs are those played by the bands themselves, two demos from Wednesday and Ratboys’ ripping cover of The Marked Men’s ‘Fix My Brain.’
The most successful cover is Bad Bad Hats giving ‘Anywhere,’ Ratboys’ wonderful first ‘person’ of an anxious dog, an Attractions treatment. Most of the versions by other artists are just solidly in the “it’s fine” category, with the exception of Ducks Ltd. putting ‘Light Night Mountains All That’—one of the best songs of the year—through an electronic wash with a shitty drum machine and rinsing it of all its power and the remix of Wednesday’s ‘Elderberry Wine’ by DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. I was excited about the latter, but it’s a bummer, turning that instant classic into a Bruce Hornsby song. In any event, I’ll take whatever nuggets these bands throw my way.
James Spearing
A month behind everyone else, I’m going to big up Mary in the Junkyard too. My particular favourite is ‘Thou Shalt Sprout’. It taps in to my absolute favourite type of folk song…one that is full of crime, sacrifice, revenge, death, the supernatural, and violins. What sets it apart from traditional classics, is how it is written directly to, rather than about, the deceased. I love the image of the buried food thief bearing fruit forever in a successful, but ultimately misguided adventure where they end up providing for their young family yet also depriving them of a parent. No swords, horses or hangings, but a wonderful modern version of an ancient tale of warning.
Lisa Whiteman-Pearce
Before listening to this This Mirror Weighs a Ton, I’d read (can’t remember if it was in Rolling Stone, NME ,or somewhere else) that this was Interpol‘s “best since Antics”. I told Picky Bastards that I’d be the judge of that, so here comes the judgin’.
From start to finish, This Mirror Weighs A Ton is sublime, it is a sexy, sexy record. The opening title track got me straight away, an immediate “oh HELLO”, one of a number of sleek, teasing tracks on this album, and a perfect half of the bookend duo with closer, Sudden. In the middle, there is no filler, but it is full of Interpol+, and by that I mean what is typically them, with songs such as Wings On Fire, Wake Up and So Rides The Reindeer, but with something…else. I’m not sure I can call it something new… it is just more in a great way: a particular nod to the more prominent backing vocals from the band. A gorgeous album, which will be in my top of the year.
Best since Antics? Possibly better than? Judge and jury are out on which, but what I do know is that this is the first time, in a long time of Interpol records, that I haven’t twatted on about still missing Carlos Dengler.
Kate Burke
With Band of Horses currently touring on their Everything All the Time anniversary, I’ve been toying with tickets for a while and a re listen has only served to help me agonise further. Not only is it a solid listen (‘Wicked Gil’ and ‘The Funeral, ‘ anyone?) but I am certain their live performance will be on form .
The scariest thing is not just that I saw them 20 years ago on this particular tour. It’s that it was in a venue that now doesn’t exist (the sadly fire-ravaged Glasgow ABC, RIP giant disco ball), and that a ticket was just £14.75. This time around they play Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, and I will continue to tell myself that I need to save money and not buy as many gig tickets this year, right up until the day of or before the show when I finally cave because live music will always be my favourite vice and I have very little self-control.
When O haven’t been wallowing in nostalgia, grungy, LA indie-rock Blondshell have been making an appearance on my suggested listens. Their latest release, Violins, will more than likely appear on next month’s best of because I’m finding myself hooked already.
Fran Slater
Look. At some point this year, I promise to talk about something other than Man/Woman/Chainsaw. But that point is not now.
While I have already raved about their album on the latest episode of the Picky Bastards Podcast, and waxed lyrical about their live show on this very website, there really is nothing else I could choose when talking about the best thing I heard in September.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s show at Gorilla is still living inside my head. I have been to two great gigs since then but, because they didn’t leave me overwhelmingly exhilarated, they have simply paled in comparison. This was one of the most vital gigs I have been to in years.
