Can't explain my ankle sprain

     

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's top 50 albums of 2022. 

#25 : Blue Rev - Alvvays

The current sound of indie sophistication is all smooth, dulled surfaces and painfully wrought minimalism. Alvvays buck the trend with Blue Rev, an album that’s impossibly busy but devastatingly elegant – the musical equivalent of a rich, quiet aunt who always seems to be wearing a few too many pieces of jewellery. Guitar solos unspool into more solos; Molly Rankin’s lyrics are the stuff of acerbic, cult-favourite chapbooks, filled with “benevolent collegiates”, defiant spinsters and references to cult heroes and iconic pop stars. As on earlier records, Alvvays are still channelling bookish indie icons such as Swirlies, the Smiths and Teenage Fanclub. But Blue Rev goes beyond pure influence, turning that sound into something grand, buffeting and rich, leaving in all the craters of distortion – the equivalent of taking your teenage cassette player and blasting it through the speakers of Wembley Stadium. 

I've never heard of Alvvays (and I'm intrigued as to how you pronounce their name) but I suspect I'm going to like them, despite the atrocious introduction The Guardian has just given them.

And yes, I very much do - it's a very 80s indie sound, although The Smiths is a very lazy comparison in my opinion.  Teenage Fanclub is closer and I can't comment on Swirlies because I'm not aware of their work (they do at least have a female vocalist) but I'd have gone for Lush or Voice Of The Beehive myself.  I can't say any one track jumped out at me, but if they play a stage somewhere at Glasto I'll definitely make an effort to see them because I liked this a lot.

To my surprise, it charted, spending one week at #27 and it also has a Wikipedia entry which is surprisingly lengthy, but contains little information.  They're Canadian (which for some reason surprised me) and the album had a troubled production, with delays being caused by the theft of several demos, a basement flood damaging a load of their gear and then Covid.  The critics were very complimentary though and it made quite a few "best of 2022" lists.

"Customers also listened to" Jockstrap, Dry Cleaning and Weyes Blood - all of which we'll be meeting later on in this list,  I suspect.  Whether any of them are better than this though, we'll see.

#24 : Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You - Big Thief

While Big Thief themselves can get a little tiresome – coming out with things like “we’re one big organism”, “it felt like we were inside a giant guitar”, or whatever – their music remains a tonic to the head-in-the-clouds discourse. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You charts strange, invigoratingly experimental new plains: a hoedown powered by cartoonish jew’s harp, a noxious trip-hop dirge, and one song, Little Things, whose percussive guitar almost sounds like drawing pins being poured from one box to another. As ever, Adrianne Lenker’s lyrics are startlingly clarified in their mix of the pedestrian and poetic (“I wanna be the wrinkle in your eye / I wanna be the vapour that gets you high”) and the same could be said of the music itself: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is transgressive, challenging, and a perfect comfort listen.

I could have sworn I'd previously met Big Thief, but it turns out they've just popped up from time to time in "customers also listen to".  I think I almost like them, without being a full on fan - but I could be totally wrong about this, so let's see...

Hmmm - not sure.  It's kinda tricky to describe - indie folk, maybe?  I think I was most reminded of Waxahatchee from my previous write-ups - it's all a bit "tricksy but simple at the same time".  Does that make any sense?  Probably not.  I liked some tracks more than others, but totally failed to note them down - and I'm not spending another 80 minutes working out which ones they were.  It was all getting to be a bit of a drag by the end of it, but you can't say they don't give you your money's worth.  Some of the track titles are ace though - "Spud Lightning" and "12,000 Lines" amuse me.

Only one week in the chart for them, but they did get to #15 which is higher than most have managed on the list so far.  Wikipedia has another surprisingly lengthy entry with very little content, although it does tell me that Americana is the proper description for this kind of thing.  It might surprise you to hear that the album is named after, errrr, lyrics from the title track.  No shit, Sherlock.  A lot of the rest of it is telling us how much the critics loved it - they really did and it did pretty well commercially as well, getting to #31 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Cassandra Jenkins (yeah, this was similar), Waxahatchee (I told you), Soccer Mommy (well, it's nothing like this) and Snail Mail (no, it's not really like this either) - that's quite a collection of albums we've seen before.  I can see that fans would listen to this repeatedly and endlessly debate the meaning of the obscure lyrics - but I will not be one of them.

One definite hit and one nice try, but not for me.

#28-26 - Nice if you like that sort of thing
#23-22 - Another one yes, one no