Prends-moi la main, s'il te plaît

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017.

#32 : New Energy - Four Tet

Kieran Hebden returned in the autumn with this heavenly record, which may have promised fresh things in its title, but instead retreated into the electronica luminary’s past – to gratifying effect. Flowing between house and chill-out music and more, and incorporating Indian influences, Hebden’s sound experiments are a salve whatever the tempo.

I've certainly liked some Four Tet stuff in the dim and distant past, but I'm not sure I've ever listened to a whole album of it - I'm expecting to like it though.

Yeah, this is right up my street - a generally repetitive underlying musical motif with some pleasant noodly variation on top of it. It certainly won't be for everyone, but it's the sort of thing I like and feels like a fine example thereof - and I think that's all I've got to say.

Wikipedia tells us this is his ninth album and it's more up-tempo and listener-friendly than his previous albums. The only other thing that jumped out at me is that Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith was involved on "LA Trance" - we can't avoid her these days! Critically, everyone was very nice about it and there are TWENTY year-end lists that included it (which is easily the most we've seen so far). Commercially, it made the proper chart, with one week spent at #48 - it also got to the dizzy heights of #167 in The Netherlands.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up the CD for a tenner but the vinyl is going to set you back somewhere between £25-£55, with no obvious reason for the price difference. I liked this one though - it's just my sort of thing.

#31 : Rest - Charlotte Gainsbourg

The title track of Gainsbourg’s fifth album is a sultry reworking of Walking in the Air, which then segues into a peppy slice of disco in the form of Sylvia Says. The lyrics of Rest – the first album for which Gainsbourg has written the lyrics – explores the death of her father and her sister. This subject matter sometimes uncomfortably contrasts with erotic vocals and sensual beats, but it’s an undeniably engrossing juxtaposition.

I've certainly heard some stuff from Charlotte in the past and seem to recall it always seemed a bit cartoonish to me - and I can't say a "sultry reworking of Walking in the Air" has got my expectations too high.

Hmmm - I can see why I thought it was cartoonish but, for this album at least, if you like Air (and I do) then you're not going to have any problems with this. Charlotte doesn't write the music and for this album it's been mostly done by SebastiAn (who is, unsurprisingly, French) - and he's done a good job, with a decent variety of sounds across the album. I'm sure Charlotte has also done a good job with the lyrics (exploring the death of her father and sister) - most of them are in French, so I've got no idea what she's on about, but they certainly feel to fit well with the music. All in all, this was surprisingly enjoyable.

Wikipedia tells us this is her fifth album, her first in six years and features some interesting guest artists including Paul McCartney (I'm intrigued as to how that happened) and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (half of Daft Punk). Critically, it was well received and made a load of year-end lists (but not as many as Four Tet) and commercially, it got to #89 in the charts here, but did slightly better in France getting to #14 and the French-speaking half of Belgium where it got to #9. 

discogs.com tells us you're going to have to shell out a fiver for a decent CD version (complete with digisleeve, which apparently just means carboard packaging) but if you want the boxset with the double album and the CD, it's going to set you back £70. I wasn't expecting to like this but it was thoroughly decent and I'd be perfectly happy to listen to it again.

#30 : Earl Grey - Girl Ray

Although Girl Ray make gawky guitar pop that recalls both kooky indie bands like Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and DIY post-punk, their debut sounds unmistakably like the work of three teenage girls coming of age in 2017 – which indeed it is. The songs on this breakup album are peppered with amusing references to the minutiae of modern life, while frontwoman Poppy Hankin’s unvarnished, London-accented vocals are warm and vivacious.

I've never heard of Girl Ray and the description above is an interesting one because half of it makes it sounds like I'm going to like it and half of it makes it sound terrible - so who knows what we're going to get here!

Hmmm - it's OK, I guess. I'd say it's an impressive debut from a bunch of teenagers - it's got a very 80s indie sound to me but the songs are all well put together and they're all played well enough. But I'm not sure it really goes anywhere with 54 minutes being rather too long for my fancy - and I also found her voice quite annoying, so I missed all the "amusing references to the minutiae of modern life". So, I'm happy enough they're doing their thing, but it's not quite for me, I'm afraid. I do like the whole rhyming album title/group name thing though.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but their entry tells me they're still going and up to three albums now. The critics were nice about this album and have continued to be nice about them, with them also having had several decent support slots. Commercially, things are looking up as well because, although this album only placed in some of the more minor charts (although it did get to #4 and spend four weeks in the Record Store chart), their '23 offering made the main chart and got to the dizzy heights of #73!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for three quid, but if you fancy a signed copy of the vinyl then it's going to set you back £40. This isn't one for me though, but I'd be interested to see where they've taken their sound (and yes, I realise it would be easy for me to find out).

So I'm afraid Girl Ray won't be taking the round, but it's hard to pick between the other two - Four Tet is much more up my street, but Charlotte has made a much more accessible album for most people and it was considerably better than I was expecting. So let's have our first two-way tie of the list, but Girl Ray deserve congratulations for their youth at the time as well as their ongoing success. And Charlotte gets the lyrics for the blog title because she actually has some lyrics!

#35-33 - A surprising winner