You can become an impression of yourself - whatever that means

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Albums of 2021

#22 : Pink Noise - Laura Mvula

After enduring the humiliation of her old label dropping her with a seven-line email, Mvula donned the musical equivalent of shoulder pads – namely the 1980s’ gated drums, pugilistic bass and immaculately buffed synths – for this supreme display of confidence against the odds. The stylisation never comes at the expense of heart, either: Mvula delves deep as she searches for freedom in desire, art and within her own body, stretching her voice into majestic, wild anthems of liberation.

I've met Laura before and found her a bit insubstantial - perfectly pleasant but nothing I really needed in my life, so I was expecting more of the same here.  And I can confirm it's very much not more of the same.  Quite what it is is less clear, but whatever it is, it's certainly very polished (or "immaculately buffed" as The Guardian puts it).  A lot of it reminded me of Shalamar - it's not really to my taste, but you can certainly feel the quality.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album - apparently making it "took three years of waiting and waiting and fighting and dying and nothingness and then finally an explosion of sound".  It did OK commercially, getting to #21 in the UK - but there's no word on its critical reviews, which I suspect would have been good (and I guess they were from The Guardian).  I did, however, learn something - pink noise is a "signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal" (as opposed to white noise, where all frequencies are present equally).

"Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of, which surprised me somewhat.  I can't say I'll be rushing back to this, but I certainly think it was well done and can see it will have its fans (and quite a few of them won't have listened to it because of their assumptions around Laura being exactly like mine were).

#22 : Coral Island - The Coral

Few of their peers from the 00s indie boom are so hale and hearty; 20 years into their career, the Merseyside band made their most ambitious album, and one of their best. It’s a double concept album about a seaside resort, and captures those towns’ blend of buckets-and-spades buoyancy and out-of-season malaise; gorgeous harmonies flow through jangling psych-pop and touches of northern soul, though there’s also creepy rockabilly emanating from the ghost train and ballads for lonely fishermen at the end of the pier.

I don't mind a bit of The Coral, although I wasn't aware they were still going, so was intrigued to hear whether they'd kept their sound.  And yeah, they pretty much have - there's a decent collection of jaunty-ish songs here.  The narration is "interesting" - it felt a bit like a Scouse Richard Burton from War Of The Worlds reading a script pulled together by Bob Mortimer.  I think they keep it just the right side of the "quirky/annoying" divide, but only just and I was intrigued who it was done by because I thought I recognised his voice - but Google tells me it's the 85 year old grandfather of a couple of band members, so I'm guessing I'm not aware of any of his previous work.  It feels like the sort of album that given a couple of listens I could really get into - I might try to revisit and see if that happens.

Wikipedia has considerably more on the album than I was expecting (181 milliPeppers) but there's an awful lot on this album that you can dig into if you feel the need (and it appears that someone did).  Amusingly, it tells us that they "built a model of the island, which inspired the band; Skelly attributed the model to "Ray Harryhausen crossed with Llandudno".  It also mentions that the album drew comparisons with The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which didn't occur to me at the time but with hindsight I can totally see it.  It was extremely well received both critically and commercially - getting to my favourite chart position, kept off the top by Typhoons from Royal Blood which I've not heard but imagine to be a fine album that I may well be visiting later.

"Customers also listened to" Teenage Fanclub, Gruff Rhys and Tim Burgess - all names from back in the day who have made some interesting sounds in their time.  I really will try to re-listen to this though - it's not an instant classic, but I do think it could be a grower.

#24/23 - Artists ranging in age from 19 to 81
#20/19 - Two slightly different albums