Left alone with nothing

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2024.

#12 : Sentir Que No Sabes - Mabe Fratti

The title of Mabe Fratti’s third album in eight months means “feel like you don’t know”, and the Guatemalan cellist and her small ensemble venture into strikingly novel territory here. Moving away from the abstractions of her previous records, these are strange, stately songs led by prowling cello, starbursts of brass and otherworldly distortion and effects that recall her sometime collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never. Songs such as Kravitz, Elastica II and Descubrimos un Suspiro centre bassy grooves as self-possessed and suggestive as those of Mingus’s Solo Dancer; the space in Pantalla Azul and Quieras o No seem to open up vast new vistas. Fratti’s piercingly clear voice cuts through it all like wax through watercolour. True to its title, Sentir Que No Sabes is an album that keeps yielding new revelations – a sense amplified by its surprisingly metal and totally astonishing live incarnation.

Well that's an intriguing introduction, isn't it? God knows what we've got here!

Well, having listened to it, I'm not entirely sure what we have here. It's kinda slow cello jazz, with a lovely female vocal over it - does that help? It somehow manages to be unchallengingly challenging - I'd say it's quite nice, even if I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with it. Foreign language vocals never helps my understanding of such things, but I don't think it overly affects my enjoyment here - overall I'd say I'm pleasingly perplexed by the whole thing.

Wikipedia tells me this is her fourth album - and that's your lot, other than a load of critics being nice about it, with no chart action to report. Her entry has a bit more, but not a lot - apparently she grew up only being allowed to listen to Christian or classical music, until her dad randomly brought home an album by György Ligeti, a leading avant-garde composer. Most peculiar.

"Customers also listened to" Marina Allen, O, Sumac and Dirty Three - quite the collection of names. This was an odd one - enjoyable without me having the faintest idea why.

#11 : Songs Of A Lost World - The Cure

Moving at the pace of a pallbearer carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, the Cure’s return is full of sombre finality: for love affairs, for loved ones, for a planet gone asunder, and also, perhaps, for this band’s long career. Robert Smith faces death not with his chest out, but caved in with sadness and disappointment; any accrued wisdom seems stupid or unimportant. Warsong is about a couple given to feuding but its declaration “for we are born to war” can’t help but be about retributive violence on a global scale. Romance falls short (“The way love turned out every time was never quite enough”) and even art can’t provide solace: “Left alone with nothing at the end of every song” is the album’s final line. But the deep, steady grooves suggest tenacity: humanity gritting its teeth as we trudge towards a scorched future.

This is the twelfth album I've previously listened to and the fifth I've already written up - I actually listened to it a couple of times because I enjoyed it so much but I don't feel the need to add anything to the original post - it's just a fine album.

#10 : The Collective - Kim Gordon

The free-associative nature of the lyrics on Kim Gordon’s second solo album – sports cars, sex, bowling trophies, “$20 potatoes”, each recounted in her charred, vengeful mutter – take on a dissociative affect, like waking up from a bad dream into a worse one and wondering what happened. Produced by Justin Raisen, the industrial, blown-out churn of The Collective is an intentionally abrasive strike against society sleepwalking its way into a convenience culture touted by self-styled disruptors, and a reminder that real disruption only comes from the margins: at 71, Kim Gordon stands at a frontier, agitating against the future with her massive, singular perspective.

I thought I'd listened to this one already, but it turns out I was confusing Kim, the pensioner bassist from Sonic Youth with Kim, the not-quite-pensioner bassist from Pixes - sily me, eh! They actually don't look all that dissimilar and have a similar "take no shit" vibe - but I suspect I'm not going to like this album as much as I liked Ms Deal's offering. 

Hmm - whereas Mabe Fratti was unchallengingly challenging, this is most definitely towards the challengingly challenging end of the scale. I can't say I liked it, but there's certainly skill involved - I'm quite intrigued by it and I suspect that repeat listens would turn up new stuff. Unfortunately, I also suspect that any new stuff that turned up would not be to my taste, but it's most definitely the sound of someone bravely forging their own unique path, so I respect her for that.

Wikipedia tells us this is her second solo album, is apparently a hip-hop album (I wouldn't have guessed) and is obviously, partly inspired by Jennifer Egan's novel The Candy House. The critics were very nice about it but boy do they spout some bollocks ("it sounds how TikTok bran feels") but The Skinny called it "visceral", which strikes me as a very accurate description. It got two Grammy Award nominations (Best Alternative Music Album and Performance) but didn't exactly set the charts alight, getting to #55 in Belgium and #46 in Portugal.

"Customers also listened to" Hannah Frances, Free Kitten, Friko and Kim Deal - see, it's not just me! This album is very much not for me, but I can (unlike some other albums I've endured) accept that people are interested by it - or even like it!

Unsurprisingly, this was an easy win for The Cure - it was nice to see the grumpy old men back at the top of the charts with a very fine album.

#15-13 - Quite the variety of genres and quality
#9-7 - Successful does not mean interesting