scaryblog

  Time for another The Guardian best of list - this time we're starting on the top 50 films of 2022 , which I'm very much looking forward to.  Well, most of it anyway... #50 :   Купе номер шесть (Compartment No. 6) Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen directs this answer to Before Sunrise, about an archaeology student who shares a train compartment with a boorish Russian; the pair connect despite their differences. I really didn't like Before Sunrise,  Before Sunset  or Before Midnight - so it's safe to say I'm not exactly looking forward to this.  I have heard it's good - but I'm afraid that hasn't convinced me in the slightest.  But here we go anyway... Well, well, well - this was a very pleasant surprise.  We follow a Finnish archaeology student, Laura (and I'm not sure we ever actually learn her name in the film) as she travels from Moscow to Murmansk "to see the petroglyphs (the what?)".  But it's very much about the journey as opposed...

  So, having got to the end of The Guardian's Top 50 albums of 2022, what have I learned?   Me?  Learning something?!?  Never!  All in all, I enjoyed the list and thought it was better than last year's offering - it introduced me to 41 new albums which is well down from the 48 last year, but this is mostly because I've been writing up the album charts for the year.  Which suggests the list is surprisingly commercial this year - and this is certainly true towards the top. Best 10 I've gone for a top 10 again this year - I'd actually listened to four of them before, with three of the others being from artists I knew about and three were completely new. #49 : Dirt Femme - Tove Lo #43 : Autofiction - Suede #34 : Topical Dancer -  Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul #30 : Muna - Muna #29 : Two Ribbons - Lets Eat Grandma #25 : Blue Rev - Alvvays #23 : Preacher's Daughter - Ethel Cain #16 : Cool It Down - Yeah Yeah Yeahs #8 : Wet Leg - Wet Leg #4 ...

  And we've made it to the end of The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #1 : Renaissance - Beyoncé Capturing the unspoken connectivity that so many of us crave from the club, Renaissance sees Beyoncé at her most lyrically playful, political by destiny rather than design. Like an expert DJ set, Renaissance was sequenced and blended to create a sense of proper night-time immersion, resisting the lull of the smoking area. There are no ballads, just endless horny bops; with minimal features from heteronormative guests, Beyoncé appears to have recommitted to Destiny’s Child’s recommendation that you leave men at home if you want to have a good time. Borrowing from Chicago house, Detroit techno and New York disco, the album is a tribute to the influence and endurance of the Black LGBTQ+ community, made in collaboration with producers whose lived experiences and historical weight bring gravity to the sound. And, here we are!  #1 - and I've listened to it before (the nint...

        Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #2 : Mr Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar Mr Morale represented a sizeable risk for Kendrick Lamar: a personal excavation so messy that he toyed with not releasing it at all. But even in a crowded field of musicians reckoning with trauma, Mr Morale stands out for Lamar’s deeply attuned, perceptive and often unflattering storytelling, addressing his flaws and laying bare his contradictions. This blurriness created interesting questions in turn: what does Lamar owe his audience? And what happens when ingrained mechanisms to tough it out through life come face-to-face with those who suffer as collateral damage? At any rate, it was hard to argue with the album’s sumptuous production and a number of songs that count among Lamar’s finest. I am, of course, aware of Mr Lamar and I've experienced three of his four previous albums on here and, every time, found them all a bit mystif...

        Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #3 : Dawn FM - The Weeknd Dawn FM is the Dom Pérignon of male manipulator music – a slick of negging and neediness, sleaze and sanctimony that carries the unnatural, alluring glow of toxic waste. Released without fanfare on the first week of the year and still as luridly spectacular 40-odd weeks later, Abel Tesfaye’s fifth album as the Weeknd is also his most dazzlingly deranged, juxtaposing Rilke citations, Jim Carrey narration and a cameo from indie film-maker Josh Safdie with a hallucinatory vortex of disco, R&B, electro, EDM and hip-hop. Once known for his bloody-minded pursuit of one ultra-specific vibe, here Tesfaye proves he has far more in him than meets the eye; it confirms his status as one of our greatest living stars, an auteur with inspiration and idiosyncrasy to burn. Our eighth previous visit (and we're STILL not finished) and I found this to be surprisingly enjoyabl...

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.   1969 :  Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles I can't be certain, but I suspect there are some fine tracks from this year.  And The Beatles have done some very fine tracks indeed.  However, I suspect this track is going to struggle to come close to the top of either category. I mean, it's a lovely track but it's not a great track, is it?  It's 3:06 of loveliness, but are you going to stream it over and over?  No, I'm not.  Wikipedia tells us that George wrote it at Clapton's house rather than going to a business meeting - which seems like a fine idea to me.  It tells us an awful lot of other stuff about the song as well - I can't claim to have read most of it, but it's fair to say that it did George a lot of favours in upping his status as a songwriter.  It also tells me that it doesn't feature John - he was probably off sulking somewhere. The critics love it with quit...

       Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #4 : Crash - Charli XCX On Charli XCX’s fifth album – and last on the contract she signed with Atlantic aged 16 – she temporarily sidelined the mutant vision behind Pop 2 and Vroom Vroom to embrace every trapping the label had to offer, “to make a major-label album in the major label way”. Before you call Charli a “sellout”, know that she’d only take it as a compliment: “You say I’m turning evil / I’ll say I’m finally pure,” as she sings on the housey kiss-off Used to Know Me. Crash works because the one-time mainstream refusenik commits so wholeheartedly to the big-ticket concept – there are deliciously villainous anthems that strut on punishing gothic synths, flesh-slapping boogie and Cameo-worthy guitar sleaze – and you can tell she’s enjoying it. Our seventh previous visit (and not even close to being our last) and I enjoyed this when I met it back in May.  I haven't revisited...

        Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #5 : MOTOMAMI -  Rosalía Rosalía’s third album delights in flinging diverse, even contradictory styles together – dembow, hip-hop, dubstep, salsa, industrial, bachata, the experimental electronics of Arca, R&B, flamenco, pure radio-ready pop – and presenting the results to the listener with an insouciant take-it-or-leave-it shrug. It’s the work of an artist who clearly sees her success as a platform that enables her to do what she wants rather than as an end in itself. “Es mala amante la fama y no va a quererme de verdad,” as the Weeknd puts it on their collaboration La Fama: fame’s a lousy lover and won’t ever love you for real. Better to exploit it than chase it. I liked the previous Rosalia album we met (nearly two years ago now!), I know this has got good write-ups and I would have gone to her O2 gig if there hadn't been a train strike on that day, so I'm looking forward ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 23/12/22 :  SOS - SZA Our second visit with SZA and last time I mostly enjoyed her general vibe and added one of her tracks to my general playlist so she's popped up from time to time in the intervening period.  I'm pretty certain this has to be the shortest artist/album name combinations we've seen - six characters is impressively brief (and three of them are S).  I'm looking forward to it though - I like her voice. Yeah, it's pretty much what I expected and I liked it - although at 23 tracks running over 63 minutes, it was certainly longer than I was expecting (and much longer than most albums have been this year - 35-40 minutes has been the average).  I have to admit that there were one or two tracks that jumped out at me, but I didn't note down which ones they were and I'm not going to listen to it all again just to get their names.  Sorry, SZA - but they were all pretty decent (although less m...

        Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #8 : Wet Leg -  Wet Leg On one level, Wet Leg’s rollicking debut album is an autopsy of a past relationship conducted with goofiness, with Rhian Teasdale often sounding openly disgusted by men before spraying a squirty-cream smiley face over that judgment. But she and Hester Chambers pair sweet with sour to disarm, then pull you in close and whisper the real story in your ear. It’s also an album about middle-class millennial malaise – though they always temper worry with something lighthearted: their gags and the sing-a-long choruses hint at an attitude so throwaway it’s almost absurdist. But look beyond the smirk and there’s skill, observational wit and melodies that burrow into your brain. ANOTHER one we've previously met - and this one I would have actively sought out and have listened to a few times since.  And I really like it - "Chaise Longue" is one of my tracks of th...

      Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  top 50 albums of 2022 .  #11 : Nymph - Shygirl  The London producer’s long-awaited debut brought a blast of fresh air to the filthy, dripping club tunes that she broke out with, putting Blane Muise front and centre of brighter productions (collaborations with Danny L Harle, Sega Bodega and Arca among others) that touched on UK garage, bloghouse and, on Little Bit, apparently the detritus of Y2K-era Timbaland. While Shygirl is never backwards in coming forward, her vulnerabilities also shone through here as she addressed a lover’s treachery and admitted to her own. An impressively cohesive debut, though try telling her that: “I can have it all but I’m never satisfied,” she flexes on Woe. Never heard of her - I'm expecting something R&B-ish, I guess. And yeah, from my limited knowledge, it's R&B-ish but it feels like it covers a load of genres - my suspicion is that Shygirl probably has a slightly greater ...