Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's top 50 albums of 2023

#30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe

Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.”

I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible - they've sounded impressive, but I haven't quite enjoyed them.  So I'm somewhat heartened to hear that she's returned to earth here - even if I've no idea what that actually means...

Lordy - what that means is proper songs, with tunes and everything!  Who'd have expected that?  And they were even tunes I like - yes, she's somewhat obsessed by sex but it's sex for pleasure rather than power and she's certainly going to give as much pleasure as she receives.  I liked the fact that it's a lot more accessible than her previous high concept albums so all in all I think this is a pretty decent album indeed - if I had any complaint it would be that 32 minutes wasn't enough.

Wikipedia has quite a lot on the album which tells me absolutely nothing - it's her fourth album and the critics liked it, with even our old mate Robert Christgau (who's now 81) having some nice things to say about it.  It's been nominated for a couple of Grammy awards and has done well commercially - #49 here (which feels low) and #17 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Victoria Monet, Jidenna, Amarae and Chloe - all of whom I know absolutely nothing about.  Not that I'm an expert on Janelle, but I do know I liked this.

#29 : I Inside The Old Year Dying - PJ Harvey

In a career not short on left turns, PJ Harvey’s 10th solo album adapted texts from her book-length poem Orlam, a mythic account of a farm girl’s coming of age guided by the spirit of Elvis in the body of a dead soldier and watched over by the disembodied eye of her pet lamb. With experimentation and avoidance of any past repetition paramount, Harvey and her collaborators conjured a folky netherworld that crept up on you like mist over a cliff – synths that buzzed like telephone wires, rhythms like the footsteps of horses hacking out, harmonies that seemed borne on the breeze – a sound that seemed at once totally novel and as if it had emanated from the ground itself.

"A career not short of left turns" is indeed a fine way to describe Polly's repertoire - and I love some of those left turns and I really do not love some of the other ones, so I've got no idea what I'm going to get here.  But it's not going to be dull, is it?

Nope - not dull and it's on the acceptable side of Ms Harvey's style for me.  It's got some lovely tracks on it - I particularly liked "Prayer At The Gate" and "All Souls".  I was quite reminded of later Radiohead by a lot of it and her voice often sounds quite like Thom's as well.  This won't be for everyone but there's a lot of interesting sounds on here which I enjoyed experiencing and I'm sure I'd get more from a repeat listen (which will probably never happen).  I like the album cover as well.

Once again Wikipedia has a load of text telling us nothing - this is her tenth album, but her first since '16 (her debut was all the way back in '92).  The critics loved it and it's also been nominated for a Grammy Award.  I was surprised to see Ben Whishaw appearing in the credits - he does backing vocals on a couple of tracks and I can imagine him loving being asked!  This is probably the most commercially successful album on the list so far with it getting to #5 here and making the top ten in quite a few European countries.

"Customers also listened to" Julie Byrne (who'll be coming up very soon), Anohni (also coming up), Grian Chatten (seen recently) and Nick Drake (but we won't be seeing him).  PJ Harvey very much does things her way, which I always admire but don't always enjoy - but I'm pleased to say I found this but interesting and enjoyable.

Two sisters doing it for themselves here - both with very positive results for me.

#32/31 - Two that miss the spot for me
#28/27 - Two mild disappointments