Was this always or never before?

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

#26 : Lahai - Sampha

With huge hits for David Kushner, Lewis Capaldi and many more this year, the piano ballad remains a pop mainstay, and often boringly so – but Sampha showed off the form’s timbral and emotional possibilities. His piano playing evokes a hard-won certainty, and sturdily roots these songs, allowing for experimentation to flutter around but never get lost: sunlit hip-hop on Only, urgent secular gospel on Suspended, muted and cosmic Jersey club on Can’t Go Back, and so many imaginative genre flips. His songs, full of sun, sky and flight as he muses on his direction in life, move like murmurations in crisp evening light: clear, decisive yet poetic.

I caught Sampha on the one Later With Jools Holland I saw this season and thought he had a terrific voice, so was looking forward to checking this out.

And well, he does have a lovely voice, the whole album sounds very sumptuous and there's way more variety on it that The Guardian would have you believe from their introduction.  However, for some unclear reason, none of it really clicked with me - I was left thinking "well, that was nice" without any greater insight than that.  Yes, if I go back to it then maybe it will all just drop into place - but that feels very unlikely to happen.

Wikipedia has quite a lot on the album but a large percentage of it makes absolutely no sense at all - apparently it's an "exploration of orchestral jungle and technical sophistication".  The critics were very nice about it though and it also did surprisingly well commercially, getting to #21 here and denting the lower reaches of the charts in various other countries.

"Customers also listened to" SBTRKT, Elmiene, Lil Silva and Jorja Smith - I've got a 50% hit rate on name recognition there.  I didn't mind this at all, but I wanted it to hit me more than it did - whether its failure to do so lies with me or the album is unclear (and very unlikely to be resolved).

#25 : The Greater Wings - Julie Byrne

Byrne’s third album seems cast in halo light: production shimmering and celestial, melodies swooping like warm winds or moon tides, synths glittering and dancing. These are heart-in-mouth songs of real benediction as Byrne hymns the true love she experienced with collaborator Eric Littmann, who died during the album’s making, and how he taught her to stand for nothing less. Her deep, gorgeous voice is as study as Nico’s yet gentle as a caress, sustaining a vision of intimacy that is as grounded as it is limitless.

Another one I've never heard of, but I'm intrigued from The Guardian's description...

Oh yes, this is lovely.  She's got a gorgeous voice and the accompaniment is beautiful - I listened to it on headphones and the whole thing sounded very intimate.  And whilst there are some proper grief-stricken moments on there, she also manages to sound appreciative of her memories and determined to live the best life to continue doing so - I suspect that if you've recently lost someone then you probably should avoid this album for a bit, but otherwise I think this is well worth a listen.  Joni Mitchell sprang to mind several times - which is odd because I'm not a huge Joni fan, but I can appreciate the craft in what she does and there is a similar level on display here.

Wikipedia tells me the album was already underway when Eric died suddenly at the age of 31 - I can't begin to imagine how shocking that must have been for everyone.  The critics were very complimentary about the album with it making quite a few year-end lists and it actually made quite a few of the niche charts over here - it did pretty well in the album sales and album download charts, but didn't feature in the main chart (because I guess not enough people streamed it).

"Customers also listened to" ANOHNI, Joanna Sternberg, PJ Harvey and Youth Lagoon - another 50% hit rate for people I've heard of.  And I'm pleased I've now heard of Julie Byrne - I really liked this and will make an effort to check out her other stuff.

So, that's it, right?!?  No - #24 is a previous visit so we're going to do that now as well.  The critics loved Kylie Minogue's Tension - I thought it was, at the very least, better than her offerings from 1990 I've recently suffered but apart from that it was, my favourite phrase, "perfectly fine" or as I also put it "pretty hooky but also quite forgettable".  It's not terrible, but I just didn't understand what people saw in this.

Julie is a clear winner of the three albums here, vastly exceeding my non-existent expectations whereas the other two failed to reach my modest ambitions for them.

#28/27 - Two mild disappointments
#23/22 - Two well done albums