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You give me your love, it's a curious love

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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #29 :  Antisocialites -  Alvvays This Canadian crew channel the spirit of C86 with their jangly tunes – yet on their second record they embrace the slickness eschewed by their predecessors. Antisocialites might be a paean to indie’s formative years – In Undertow features Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake; Lollipop (Ode to Jim) is directed towards the Jesus & Mary Chain’s Jim Reid – but it is also a blast of fresh air. We met Alvvays on a later Guardian list and I liked it, so I'm hoping to like this one as well. Yup, this one was also definitely enjoyable. It's 80s style jangle-pop (think Lush or The Primitives) so it instantly takes me back to the old days, but there's not too many people making that sort of sound these days so it sounds kinda new as well  (although Amazon Music played a Wednesday track after the album and the sound was very similar) . If you like that kinda sound and haven't checked ...
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All right, first things first, I've been putting in the work

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 17/03/17 : Gang Signs & Prayer - Stormzy Our third visit with Ol' Stormzy and it's safe to say it's not aimed at me, but I can at least recognise the man knows what he's doing, so I will admire some of it, but definitely not love it. Yeah, it's really not aimed at me, but he certainly knows how to put over a track - he has strong cadence and powerful delivery. He also works well with other artists, although  I wasn't expecting to see Lily Allen pop up. There's a decent amount of variety across the album, but none of it hits the spot for me and 58 minutes was definitely a bit too long for my liking. We're at #4 in the charts this week on his third week of an impressive 67 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week becoming the first grime album to top the chart - so yeah, we're going to see someone other than Ed at #1 very soon. The rest of the top five are obviously  Ed ,  Rag...
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Prends-moi la main, s'il te plaît

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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #32 :  New Energy -  Four Tet Kieran Hebden returned in the autumn with this heavenly record, which may have promised fresh things in its title, but instead retreated into the electronica luminary’s past – to gratifying effect. Flowing between house and chill-out music and more, and incorporating Indian influences, Hebden’s sound experiments are a salve whatever the tempo. I've certainly liked some Four Tet stuff in the dim and distant past, but I'm not sure I've ever listened to a whole album of it - I'm expecting to like it though. Yeah, this is right up my street - a generally repetitive underlying musical motif with some pleasant noodly variation on top of it. It certainly won't be for everyone, but it's the sort of thing I like and feels like a fine example thereof - and I think that's all I've got to say. Wikipedia tells us this is his ninth album and it's more up-tempo and list...
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We're going backwards ignoring the realities

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 24/03/17 : Spirit - Depeche Mode Our fourth visit with DM and this is another one I've never heard - I'm expecting it to be interesting, if not necessarily loveable. Yup, that's pretty much where we are. I appreciate they've done a good job in moving their music on throughout their career and taking their fans with them, but the problem I have is that I really like their early poppy stuff and their later gothy phase - and I just think they sound tired on their later albums (I guess they are old geezers now!). So whilst there's nothing wrong with this, there's nothing to make me listen to it again as opposed to sticking on one of their earlier best-ofs. We're at #5 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a surprisingly brief five week run - they've never really been appreciated here as much as they are elsewhere. The rest of the top five were  Ed Sheeran ,  Drake  (a new entry), Vera ...
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Got a mind full of TNT - I need a lunatic just like me

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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #35 :  Green Twins -  Nick Hakim As the surreally gruesome album artwork suggests (it features a slime-trailing eyeball admiring itself in the mirror), Hakim’s debut album gives classic soul a psychedelic sheen. Like the memory of a dream, Green Twins is hazily impressionistic, and its subject matter includes a musing that his girlfriend bears a resemblance to God. Another first mention ever for an artist and I'm not entirely sure what my expectations for psychedelic soul are - I suspect it will either terrible or surprisingly bearable. Well, having listened to it, I'd say that psychedelic soul is actually a very good description for it and I found it surprisingly bearable. I was reminded of Prince when he was in one of his laid-back introspective moods - it's quite noodly, but not excessively so. It just has a good mellow vibe to it - but obviously, I'll never listen to it again. Wikipedia doesn't h...
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Music makes me feel good

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 31/03/17 : Wonderland - Take That Our fifth visit with the lads - I'm sure I'll recognise some of it, but none of the track titles are ringing any bells on first read. Nope - no bells run at all. None of it was hateful, but it all felt a "let's be like Coldplay and fill out arenas with people waving their phones" button-pushing exercise. And I struggle to imagine many of these tracks survived their live show after that particular tour - I'm sure those that packed out the shows loved them though. My only other comments are that  I really didn't need the ukelele backing on "New Day" and what on earth are they doing on the album cover? We're at #2 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a fifteen week run - I suspect they would have been hoping for a bit longer than that. The rest of the top five were  Ed Sheeran ,  Drake ,  Rag'n'Bone Man  and (quite obviously) Vera...
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There are so many people living their lives perplexed

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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #38 :  Prince Of Tears -  Baxter Dury Opening with a hilarious and obscene twist on Will Smith’s Miami, Baxter Dury’s fifth record is a self-assured series of wry stories and character studies. Dury half-sings/half-speaks in gruff Cockney tones, clearly unafraid of comparisons with his father, Ian – but his work more than stands on its own two feet. I met a Baxter Dury album in passing once and didn't hate it, but didn't love it - from the description above, I'm expecting more of the same here. And yeah, the apple really hasn't fallen far from the tree with Ian's influence being very much on display, but it's feels a bit more contemporary (which it probably should since New Boots And Panties!!  is 47 years old now - and features a very young Baxter on the cover). It's not really my thing musically, but there's some obvious skill involved in the lyric creation - if maybe not so much in the...
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