Seven in the morning - when they wake you gotta be ghost

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

#11 : Modern Kosmology - Jane Weaver

Icily clear vocals provide a satisfying foil to the spacey psych-revivalism of Liverpool-born singer’s newest album – the latest chapter in a three-decade career that has taken in Britpop and folktronica. Modern Kosmology is at once earthbound and otherworldly, with mesmerising vocals balancing on a whirring undercurrent of steadily throbbing synths.

Only the second ever mention for Ms Weaver, so I only have what's above to go on - and it's safe to say it doesn't really help.

Hmmm - Goldfrapp or Roisin Murphy would probably be as good a ballpark comparison as anything, I guess. With the exception of "Ravenspoint" (which I REALLY didn't like), it's all bearable and I'd even go as far as saying I liked "I Wish", but a whole album of it was just a bit boring really - it was all very underwhelming and I've no real clue what this is doing at #11. I do like the album cover though!

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album and her entry doesn't give any further detail about it, but it does tell us she's still going, having released her thirteenth album in '24. A quick review of critical write-ups across the internet suggests I'm wrong because everyone views this as some kind of masterpiece and I was also surprised to see we have some proper chart action to report, with it having spent one week at #50.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a CD copy of this for £8, but if you want the deluxe limited edition 180gm vinyl it's going to set you back £54. Just no, thank you very much - this is skilful for a track or two, but the whole album is a chore.

#10 : Peasant - Richard Dawson

There was something in Peasant’s detailed vignettes of dark ages beggars, weavers and prostitutes that felt unexpectedly resonant in 2017, a timely work from another time.

Well that's a very short introduction from The Guardian, isn't it? This is our third mention for Mr Dawson and the phrases "weird" and "amusingly eccentric" have previously been used, so make of that what you will.

Well, yes - whatever accusations you might like to make here, boring is not going to be one of them. The tunes are along the lines of medieval folksongs, generally performed on a guitar (sometimes tuned, sometimes not) but often with weird, to my ears unrecognisable, other sounds thrown in there. And the lyrics feel to be along medieval lines as well, but they're often pretty unintelligible, so it's hard to be certain. 

And there are two amusing reasons for the difficulty in understanding them - firstly, the tune used for the words is often nowhere near the tune used by the music which is somewhat confusing and secondly, Richard often chooses to sing in a voice which sounds like one Terry Jones from Monty Python would use when dressed up as a middle-aged housewife. Which is an interesting stylistic choice, to say the least. My only other comment would be the one word track titles don't really help matters - eg "Ogre", "Shapeshifter", "Hob", "No-one". I'm reasonably confident most people would hate this - I can't say I love it, but I do admire someone who treads their own path and Mr Dawson is certainly doing that here. 

Wikipedia has three sentences on the album but two of them are amusingly mad. The track titles are explained by saying that each song is from that person's perspective, but that just seems to pose more questions than it answers. We also learn that the album is "set in the Kingdom of Bryneich, from the 400s to the 600s CE" - I'm afraid that kinda passed me by (but I'm sure you already know that Bryneich or Berenecia was a 7th century kingdom in the Scottish/English border area). Critically, the album was very well received but commercially, we only have three weeks on the Record Store chart to report - he has had a couple of albums chart properly, but this wasn't one of them.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD version for £8 but if you want the deluxe yellow double vinyl it's going to set you back £69 - amusingly there also a reissued brown double vinyl which you can pick up for £40, but who's going to want a brown vinyl? Actually, I suspect the sort of people who like this album would probably want exactly that (yes, that's me being brownist - or Dawsonist).

#9 : Take Me Apart - Kelala

In revealing vulnerability, Kelela shows she is no longer interested in the cool pose of alternative R&B. She continues to work with avant-garde collaborators, but her main musical touchstone for Take Me Apart was Janet Jackson. Yes, the sub bass remains, as do the icy synths, but these future sounds are put to the service of classic structures, and powerful pop songs are the result.

I completely don't remember it, but we have previously met Kelala - my verdict was that it was more suited to a summer evening in Ibiza than a wet December afternoon in St Albans (but what isn't?!?)

Yeah, even though it's now a sunny (but chilly) May morning in St Albans, I think a summer evening in Ibiza is still more the setting for this. I think I'd argue with The Guardian we've got "powerful pop songs" here - it's pretty standard R&B to my uncultured ears (think something like SZA). Which isn't really my thing, but if I'm going to like any R&B it'll be like this because she has a nice voice and it's all well done and perfectly listenable.

Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album, but all it really says is she wrote it, recorded it and released it - which you probably guessed. It was produced by Ariel Rechstad, who I knew I recognised but had to Google to remind myself he produced Haim's album. Critically, it was very well received with people reading an awful lot more into it than the "nice sounds" that I came up with - it appeared on 32 year-end lists which is the most we've seen so far. We also have some proper chart action to report with it getting to #51 over here and #125 in the US.

discogs.com tells you can pick up a CD for six quid but if you want the deluxe, numbered, limited, club, yellow neon double vinyl edition it's going to set you back £80 (or you can get the not-so-limited orange neon one for £50). This is a very summery album and it's been cold today, but it still went down pretty well with me - it's nicely done...

...particularly in comparison with what we'd had before, so it easily took the round - I'm afraid Jane's album was just boring and whilst I think Richard Dawson's album is worth a listen for curiosity's sake, I'd really struggle to describe it as good.

#14-12 - Three well put together albums