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Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux. Walter Benjamin ‘Task of the Translator’

Each January, on the Sizzletown podcast, Tony Martin tides over the holiday season with an unplugged version. This involves going back through his movie diaries from the 80’s. Each listing includes the name of the film and a five star rating. The podcast is basically him making sense of these ratings. One of the things that I find while listening is how much the rating seems superfluous to the explanation as to why he provided the rating. Personally, I always find it hard while listening to music or reading books as to how you make a judgment call. Often I am more interested in different ideas and beginnings and how this all changes in time.

Back in 1997, I went with my step-sister to see Romeo and Juliet at Knox City. Before the film, we went to JB-HiFi. This was before it had been floated on the stock exchange and stores were still somewhat rare. In addition to inquirying about a mobile phone (something else rare at the time), my sister bought a Celine Deon CD. I on the other hand bought Double Allergic by Powderfinger. My sister was mystified. She had never heard of Powderfinger. As time passed, I am pretty sure she found out who Powerfinger were and for me they went on the back burner.

In her review of JP Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between, Ali Smith argues that ‘books are go-betweens’.

Books are, in essence, go-betweens, works which conjure rhythm and release across time and history, across places of familiarity and those foreign to us; and personally and individually, too, it’s all a going-between, for every person who picks up a book for a first, then a second, then a third time.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

I would argue the music is the same. Different music, touches different people, at different times.

In Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Task of the Translator‘, he discusses the purpose of translation. Instead of conforming to the reader, the translator should conform to the source and target language of the work. The purpose is to highlight the relationship between the two languages, and how they complement each other. In his discussion of this, he gives the analogy of the tangent touching the circle:

Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux.

Source: Task of the Translator by Walter Benjamin

I wonder if there is something in this ‘tangent’? Each listener hears an artist at a particular point in time from a particular point of view, in some ways they translate it into their own world.

In Raymond Williams’ Marxism and Literature, he talks about the notion of the ‘dominant, the risidual and the emergent’. For Williams, culture is always in one of three phases. As WIlliam’ touches on:

By ’emergent’ I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created. But it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture (and in this sense ‘species-specific’) and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to it: emergent in the strict sense, rather than merely novel.

Source: Marxism and Literature by Raymond Williams

Thinking about this idea in regards to my purchase of Powderfinger’s Double Allergic, this was clearly an emergent practice. They were on the up. Although they were popular, they were not popular enough to be a household name. For example, I did not jump onboard when they released Internationalist or Odyssey Number Fiver, their ‘popular’ albums.

The question that remains with this is what about those who may have jumped onboard before? For example, what about those who bought into (as my friend’s brother did) the release of Parables for Wooden Ears or invested into them when they were playing covers in Brisbane?

As listeners, we are not only a part of a whole, but we are individuals as well. For me, we hear artists not only as a part of a particular moment in time, but also as a part of one’s individual experiences. Personally, I often find myself seemingly late to the party. For example, I find myself stumbling upon an artist only to become mesmerised by their next release. I did this with Methyl Ethyl’s Are You Haunted. I remember stumbling upon Jake Webb with the release of Triage, however Are You Haunted and I seemed to meet at the right moment. More recently, I had a similar experience with Kimbra. I had listened to and liked Primal Heart, but there is something about A Reckoning that met me at a particular moment.

So What about you? How do you go about ‘rating’ music or rating anything?

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Basically there's night and there's day, and you try and go between that, and you find the twilight zone—and there lies the Go-Betweens. (Robert Forster) David Nichols ‘The Go-Betweens’

There have been many side-effects associated with the pandemic. One has been to jump into untouched classic literature, like Proust. Alternatively, some, such as Kevin Smokler, have suggested returning to a favourite artist, while others, like Colin Marshall, have discussed the process of choosing one artist and listening to each album, once a day for a week. I tried Proust in regards to literature, but like so many before me, waved the white flag after the first two books. Moving on, I decided to dive into an artist I thought I knew, but knew that I had never listened to deeply. The artist I chose was The Go-Betweens.

I am not exactly sure why I chose The Go-Betweens as my deep dive. I had always known The Go-Betweens, but was not sure I really knew The Go-Betweens. One thought was maybe Kriv Stenders’ documentary, Right Here. I initially watched this on ABC iView. I think that I was captured by the discussion of the myth that surrounds the band. Another thought was listening to Missy Higgins’ cover of Was There Anything I Could Do on her album of Australian covers, Oz. Lastly, I was left thinking about Damian Cowell’s comment on the Take 5 podcast:

Use your power wisely … Treat them to an anchovy.

Source: TISM’s Damian Cowell’s songs from the 90s zeitgeist by Take 5 podcast

Although Cowell was speaking about Custard, I could not help but think about The Go-Betweens.

The first question that needs addressing is who were or are The Go-Betweens? First, there is the name. David Nichols’ captures some of origins in his book on the band. The obvious reference is to L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between, a story about Leo Coulston who is somewhat unknowingly entangled within an affair which leaves his life forever corrupted. However, some of the other ideas were that the music was a go-between ‘night and day’:

McLENNAN: Oh; we were driving along in a car one time; going to the Exchange Hotel. We drove over the bridge there and we were just thinking of a few names and 1 think Rob came up with the Go-Betweens. Because, we since found out, we went between two types of music, maybe, or …
FORSTER: Basically there’s night and there’s day, and you try and go between that, and you find the twilight zone—and there lies the Go-Betweens. – Page 20

Source: The Go-Betweens by David Nichols

Or between different styles of music:

To be a go-between was far from a negative role in McLennan and Forster’s eyes. They were in between so many places, swamped by a cultural flood. While they faced the reality of Brisbane, the heat, parental pressure, and the influence of punk rock, they also yearned for New York in the 1960s and 1970s, Paris in the 1920s and 1950s, and were fascinated by Timothy Leary Bob Dylan, Tom Verlaine, Françoise Hardy, Samantha Eggar, Richard Hell, Blondie, and the Erasers. All of this was siphoned through a strange, anomalous Brisbane rock group called the Go-Betweens. – Page 52

Source: The Go-Betweens by David Nichols

Interestingly, coming back to Hartley’s novel, Ali Smith describes it as a book about books:

The Go-Between is about books as much as it’s about memory. It’s a model of the importance of rereading (and God knows we treat books lightly – we wouldn’t, after all, expect to know a piece of music properly on just one listen), knowledge and innocence so much part of its structure as to make it a knowingly different book on revisiting. Above all, though, it is a text which works like a charm: books are, in essence, go-betweens, works which conjure rhythm and release across time and history, across places of familiarity and those foreign to us; and personally and individually, too, it’s all a going-between, for every person who picks up a book for a first, then a second, then a third time.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

Replacing the word ‘books’ with ‘music’, maybe the The Go-Betweens are music or a band that go-betweens, across places familiar and foreign. In the end, the name seems to act as a catchall for whatever meaning listeners are willing to apply.

Going beyond the name, the narrative of the band seems just as disputed. The easy answer is to focus on myth surrounding the two songwriters, Grant McLennan and Robert Forster. They met while studying at University of Queensland, before deciding to form a band on Forster’s behest. Interestingly, Foster was interested in creating a band as an idea:

If a musician couldn’t be found, a friend could be taught. It then followed that a group could be cast like a play or a movie. – Page 25

Source: Grant & I by Robert Forster

Although many compare the partnership between Foster and McLennen as some sort of Australian Lennon and McCartney, there inspiration was as much groups like The Monkees and the ‘band as a flagship’:

FORSTER: Grant and I used to look at products. As a game, I’d go round the kitchen and pick up something like Vegemite. And we’d rattle off five or ten advertising slogans. Products around the kitchen. We were flying! We thought we were geniuses. The band was always the flagship: “If the band becomes famous, everyone’s going to be interested in these ideas. We’ve got to get famous.” The group was the get-famous thing—once that happened, we could go. ‘‘Surprise, surprise, everybody, yeah, we’re pop stars but we’ve got all these other ideas and we’re goddamn flickin’ geniuses. You thought you were only getting two moptop pop stars, what you’re getting is Truffaut and Godard! We’re the Orson Welles of rock.” It didn’t happen. – Page 70

Source: The Go-Betweens by David Nichols

However, The Go-Betweens story is far more complicated than a story about two songwriters.

In My Rock n Roll Friend, Tracey Thorn makes the case that The Go-Betweens are really a classic trio whose true story starts and finishes with Lindy Morrison.

It is Lindy, Robert and Grant who are the original Go-Betweens. It is their band. In the future they might get in backing singers, or keyboard players, or violinists, or sax soloists, or a full-blown bloody orchestra, but the essence remains. They are a classic trio, whatever anyone might say later. – Page 40

Source: My Rock n Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn

Morrison was the drummer for much of the eighties, before McLennan and Forster dramatically pulled the pin on the band. She defied the “fantasies of a chic little French girl” that Foster and McLennan may have intially had. Instead, she provided a particular edge and perspective.

Underplaying Lindy’s contribution does not just do her a disservice: it is self-defeating. It makes them a less interesting band, saddling them with a dull identity when they had a bright and interesting one. It is their final act of self-sabotage. – Page 200

Source: My Rock n Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn

In addition to Morrison, there are others, such as Amanda Brown, Robert Vickers and John Wilsteed, whose legacies served in making the band more than just a duo. Let alone the later additions of Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson when the band reformed in the late 90’s.

Although I listened to all the albums in order, I feel they can be organised into two groups. The original line-up featuring Morrison on drums ending with 16 Lovers Lane and the reformed line-up.

The Original Line-Up

Send Me a Lullaby
Before Hollywood
Spring Hill Fair
Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express
Tallulah
16 Lovers Lane

Reformed Line-Up

The Friends of Rachel Worth
Bright Yellow Bright Orange
Oceans Apart

I am not sure if it was because, out of all their albums, I had listened to 16 Lovers Lane the most, but listening to the early albums in more depth and detail felt a little like one of those word puzzles where you change one letter each step until the whole word has changed.

Send Me a Lullaby is an albums that feels like it is trying to find itself.

Released in 1981, it now sounds very much of its time: jerky, influenced by all sorts of even jerkier-sounding British post-punk bands like Gang of Four, the Raincoats and the Slits.

Source: The last time I saw Grant – Griffith Review by Andrew Stafford

Beyond Hollywood adds hooks and texture to develop a more complete sound.

Where Send Me a Lullaby was fragile and occasionally faltering, yet still possessed of an uplifting resonance, Before Hollywood is a more complete album. Endearing as their vulnerability was, the Go-Betweens now play with confidence and solidity, though still with an edge . . . [here] they offer ten deceptively simple pop songs that pack an emotional impact just below a skin of finely wrought and realised melody and rhythmic attack. – Page 209

Source: Stranded by Clinton Walker

With Spring Hill Fair, gone is the contrast between fast and slow of their early albums. This is replaced with the attempt at a slicker pop sound.

With synthesized rhythms—about half the drum tracks are programmed—and “slick” sounds, the album sounds the way a major-label debut is supposed to sound. There may, then, be no readily identifiable reason why Spring Hill Fair doesn’t quite seem to come up to scratch. Perhaps it‘s that the diversity of the songs prevents it from coming together as a cohesive whole.

Source: The Go-Betweens by David Nicholls

Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express parks the technological experimentation, instead going for a more organic approach.

The production credit for Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (what a wonderfully pretentious title) was going to read, ‘The Go-Betweens and Richard Preston’. There’d be no drum machines, no piecemeal recording, no acquiescence to a higher authority – we were experienced enough in the studio, and flying on the strength of our demoed songs and Richard’s easy, collaborative ways. Our intention was to expand upon the crisp, woody sound of Before Hollywood, to include a grander, more exotic range of instrumentation – vibraphone, oboe, piano accordion, and, at Grant’s suggestion and to my apprehension, a string section. But he was right; we were making music and living lives that demanded strings. And we had a crack rhythm section, with Robert’s swinging melodic bass and Lindy’s signature rolls and fills, inventive and sturdy under every song. – Page 113

Source: Grant & I by Robert Forster

Tallulah is an experimentation in sound and texture. For me, it sounds like a search for the right formula, something of a ‘what if’ album.

Among fans of the Go-Betweens, there’s a school of thought that every second album they made was better than its predecessor: the first exploring a style, the second perfecting it, before they would immediately move on to a new form. In this way, the Go-Betweens’ parameters kept expanding, like Chinese boxes.

Source: The last time I saw Grant – Griffith Review by Andrew Stafford

16 Lovers Lane trades in the funk grooves and distortion of Tallulah, instead replacing this with a bed of acoustic guitars. Although it is heavily produced, leading to some songs being difficult to reproduce live, it still feels subtle and subdued.

I had trouble with 16 Lovers Lane for a long time. It wasn’t until the late nineties that I recognised the album for what it was – a pop record, a far but tine side of what we were as a band. With its spiralling guitars and narcotic groove it became an influential album in noughties pop. On its release my fear was that the production obscured the grit in the songwriting, the added heart Grant and I had put into our lyrics. – Page 140

Source: Grant & I by Robert Forster

I find listening to the reformed albums, The Friends of Rachel Worth, Bright Yellow Bright Orange and Oceans Apart, interesting. There are the usual hooks and melodies, but no matter how much I listen, they do not gel like the early albums.

I wonder if they miss the ‘Go-Betweens drama’ as Amanda Brown has put it or if a part of this disappointment is my own listening experience? I was left wondering whether maybe they missed the flourishes from the likes of Willsteed and Brown? I also wonder if there is something about getting six, seven and eight records in? This also left me thinking about the challenges in listening back through a whole catalogue? When asked about album reviews and music criticism, Caroline Polachek suggested that:

Music criticism is not a review of the album you just made, its a review of your career up to that point. – Caroline Polachek

Source: This Generation’s Caroline Polachek by Switched on Pop

Maybe it just is not possible to listen to their later albums without comparing or even placing them within the context of their time.

One of the things that I found interesting about doing this deep dive is that growing up with the singles, it can be hard to appreciate evolution that I imagine most bands go through it. In addition to this, it provided a deeper appreciation of the music. Bopping along with the jangly guitar of their ‘striped sunlight sound’, with mentions of love and emotions, it is easy to be lulled into their music. However, to come back to Cowell’s point about anchovies, I found that digging into The Go-Betweens more akin to zucchini chocolate cake. When you move beyond the surface, there are often ingredients that surprise you. Maybe this is what made them what they were, while at the same time prevented them from ever quite making it into the mainstream.

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Some bands peak early. Almost all the great ones, however, take several years to hit their stride. Andrew Stafford ‘Pig City’

Andrew Stafford explores the Brisbane music scene between 1975 and 2005. The book discusses the place and politics that laid the foundation to the music scene. Stafford dives into groups such as The Saints, The Go-Betweens, The Apartments, The Riptides, Died Pretty, Kev Carmody, Tex Perkins, Screamfeeder, Custard, Regurgitator, Powderfinger and Savage Garden. This is tided together with investigations of various cultural and historical institutions that were integral to the change, such as the Curry House, Triple Zed, the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and the Livid Festival.

Although I had read David Nichols’ The Go-Betweens, Robert Forster’s Grant and I, Tracey Thorn’s My Rock n Roll Friend, and Clinton Walker’s Stranded, I did not really appreciate the politics of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Although not quite East Berlin described in Anna Funder’s Stasiland, it certainly seems a world away from the Melbourne music scene. For me, it really put criticisms of ‘Dictator Dan‘ in perspective.

I also enjoyed Stafford’s book for the insight it provided to various artists, such as Custard and Powderfinger. For example, I was shocked at Darren Middleton’s glam metal beginnings:

Darren Middleton was recruited to add the requisite metallic flash after the band discovered him strutting his stuff in a glam-metal band called Pirate. Middleton, now probably the least showy member of Powderfinger, has never heard the end of it since.

Ian Haug: He was doing the shred thing, dancing on the tables with a wireless guitar. He was into Dokken and all those terrible bands and we thought he was just the sort of idiot we needed! He was really funny.

While I was intrigued by the endeavor of the COW (Country Or Western), Dave McCormick’s band before Custard, to be the something akin to the Wild Bunch.

Robert Moore had imagined COW as a musical collective similar to the Wild Bunch behind the first Massive Attack album, where a virtual reserve bench of musicians would be on call to play gigs or recordings. Often the band would be joined on stage by backing vocalists the Sirloin Sisters, twins Maureen and Suzie Hansen; at other times, former Go-Between John Willsteed and occasional Queensland Symphony Orchestra violinist John Bone would jump up to add their own flourishes.

All in all, Pig City is a great read that helps with appreciating some of complex the roots to Australian music.

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Basically there's night and there's day, and you try and go between that, and you find the twilight zone—and there lies the Go-Betweens. (Robert Forster) David Nichols ‘The Go-Betweens’

David Nichols’ book on The Go-Betweens was first published in 1997. Capturing their rise in the late 70’s until their initial demise in the late 80’s. I read the third revision published in 2011, which included a postscript discussing the reforming of the band in the late nineties until McLennan’s death in 2006. It often ties together original source material with more recent interview material from those in and around the band in a similar vein to Clinton Walker’s Stranded.

Although Nichols’ captures The Go-Betweens rise and fall and rise again, it is feels somewhat lopsided towards the bands initial rise. From Robert Forster and Grant McLennan meeting at university, the early desires to form a band as a flagship for other endeavors, the various local and international influences, and the roll of Lindy Morrison. Once the band started producing records, the book becomes somewhat more methodical.

In some ways I could imagine this book just being about the band’s early years. In regards to ideas, I think that this early period is often more telling. I think this is why Jarvis Cocker’s memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop works. Although as Tracey Thorn captures in her book on Lindy Morrison, this retelling can often lead to mythologising.

I remember reading an online comment left by a reader prior to starting it, criticising the fact that it did not provide anything about the band that you could not find online. This is not something Nichols’ necessarily denies. However, when it was first released in 1997, the internet was only in its infancy. As Nichols attests,

This book is largely a pre-internet work and, it turns out, one of the last of its kind. – Page 270

Additionally, I wonder how much credit needs to go to people like Nichols for the fact that you can find so much information on the band online. He talks about the fact that he actually donated his research to the National Film and Sound Archive. I feel that Kriv Stenders’ documentary Right Here would not be possible without Nichols’ work.

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These are the ways in which the stories of women get told – in music, in art, in literature, in science. I think about the women who are silenced by encounters with disparaging, or predatory, men; the women who think they are working as equal partners only to find their names left off the credits; the women who work to their own rules and are then patronised for not knowing the real ones; and I remember how much sheer bloody determination it takes to keep forcing yourself back into the narrative, back to centre stage. Tracey Thorn ‘My Rock 'n' Roll Friend’

My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend is the story of Lindy Morrison told by Tracey Thorn. It is compiled from a range of sources, including interviews, letters between the two artists, diary entries provided by Morrison herself, as well as existing accounts of The Go-betweens, such as an interview with Andrew Denton and Kriv Stenders’ documentary Right Here.

On the one hand Thorn goes into Morrison’s life in The Go-Betweens as you would expect. However, she goes beyond the tales told by and about Robert Forster and Grant McLennan as ‘the indie Lennon and McCartney’ to provide a different perspective on how things were with an attempt to correct the record.

I have carried with me all the way through the writing of this book this particular line from Rebecca Solnit’s essay [Grandmother Spider] as a template for what I’ve tried to do, the way in which I want to reclaim Lindy’s story, to save it before it’s too late and to add it to all the other lost stories. To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your own fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not just straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. Why does it matter that Lindy has been partly written out of the story of the band? Because it happens all the time. LOCATION 2618

Thorn makes the claim that the band were always really a classic three-piece, with other members coming and going:

It is Lindy, Robert and Grant who are the original Go-Betweens. It is their band. In the future they might get in backing singers, or keyboard players, or violinists, or sax soloists, or a full-blown bloody orchestra, but the essence remains. They are a classic trio, whatever anyone might say later. LOCATION 485

Appealing to the reality beyond the myth surrounding Forster and McLennan’s friendship, Thorn suggests that denying Morrison’s contribution is the ‘final act of self-sabotage’.

Underplaying Lindy’s contribution does not just do her a disservice: it is self-defeating. It makes them a less interesting band, saddling them with a dull identity when they had a bright and interesting one. It is their final act of self-sabotage. LOCATION 2481

Thorn, also broadens out to provide a different perspective on Morrison, one that goes beyond the ‘force of nature’:

When it comes to describing you, everyone uses the same phrase: a force of nature. I do it myself in Bedsit Disco Queen: ‘as for Lindy, well, she was a sheer force of nature, an Amazonian blonde ten years older than me, unshockable, confrontational and loud’.

Your friend Marie Ryan says in the liner notes to a Go-Betweens box set: ‘She was a force of nature, brash, opinionated and loud.’

Writer Clinton Walker says: ‘Lindy, is, as we know, this force of nature, and she’s very attractive in that, you know, and she can be a FUCKING NIGHTMARE.’

Peter Walsh doesn’t use the actual phrase, but comes close:

Lindy Morrison. Her great, upending, tumultuous, machine-gun laugh . . . SHE SPOKE, IF NOT LIVED, EXCLUSIVELY IN CAPSLOCK, a Klieg light in a roomful of 40 watt bulbs. Describing her quickly exhausted all possible weather metaphors. Gales of laughter, gusts of enthusiasm, a storm of personality that broke in every room.

An interview in Hero magazine says: ‘Lindy Morrison is an excitable girl. Some would say volcanic.’ LOCATION: 924

Thorn explores Morrison’s life before The Go-Betweens, her discovery of feminism, work with Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, relationships with Denis Walker, activism in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland, participation in the world of theatre, hitching around Europe, and playing in punk group, Xero. However, most importantly, Thorn captures a more more human fragile side to Morrison, especially when exploring Morrison’s letters she used to write to herself when growing up.

When I learn about the child and teen she used to be, they are not immediately recognisable to me as the Lindy I thought I knew. The uncertainty, the self-doubt, the miseries suffered over her appearance – they’re at odds with my image of her. I had formed a first impression of her as a textbook heroine: a bold adventurer, no one’s plaything, no one’s victim. But I created that myself, out of almost nothing. LOCATION 1607

As Kitty Empire highlights, “this is a book about more than music.” It captures identity, friendship, culture, Gina Arnold suggests that, “the book is a reminder of the present, with Thorn using Morrison’s story to show the myriad ways that women continue to be underserved in the world of rock, despite being integral to it on every level.”

Listening to The Go-Betweens albums, I have always felt that they all seemed to lead to 16 Lovers Lane. However, after reading Thorn’s account, I have been left thinking that another way of viewing the before and after 16 Lovers Lane is a story of Lindy Morrison and everything that she brought to the ‘three piece’. I was also reminded about Ann Powers’ discussion of ‘band guys‘ wondering what she might add to this conversation.

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The actions that define culture are rarely deliberate. Culture is, in many ways, an accumulation of accidents, small gestures and stumbles that somehow end up sticking together like a giant snowball rolling down a hill. Every successful band has the moment when they almost gave up just before their breakthrough; every artistic movement has its rejections, arguments, and fistfights; every book has a graveyard of characters and scenes that were killed to make way for the story. The end result may look neat — libraries of books ordered alphabetically, artworks organized into linear chronologies — but the process of making culture is anything but. - Matt Locke ‘The Hot List: The Rise and Fall of the Singles Chart’

I was recently inspired to read Clinton Walker’s Stranded – The Secret History Of Australian Independent Music by the deaths of Ken West and Chris Bailey. Over the years I have watched various music documentaries exploring Australian music over the years, including Autoluminescent, Something In the Water), Midnight Oil 1984 and The Go-Betweens: Right Here, as well as listened to Damian Cowell’s Only The Shit You Love podcast and Double J’s series on the Big Day Out. However, it occurred to me that although I might have heard many of the names, my understanding of the history of Australian independent music is rather patchy.

My introduction in the 90’s to artists like Tex Perkins, Dave Graney and TISM primarily came via Triple J, Rage and the annual ARIA awards. Although there were programs like The J Files which would provide some of the back stories to artists and their music, for whatever reason, I do not remember these retrospectives addressing the history. For example, it would seem that Perkins giving the bird to Scott Morrison was pretty timid to some of the things he did in the past.

Walker’s book provides something of a ‘thick description‘ of the Australian music scene between 1972 – 1992, the bedrock of much of the music I grew up with.

It took time before my analysis of grunge came together, before I could see what had been under my nose all along—that its roots were Australian as much as anything! That’s perhaps why it never did much for me, because I’d sort of heard it all already. Grunge, the defining Sub Pop/Seattle Sound of Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, was basically the sound of Australia’s ’80s underground—the Scientists, the Cosmic Psychos, even the Birthday Party, and bands like Feedtime, Grong Grong, Lubricated Goat and Bloodloss—mixed up with classic early metal, classic early punk and, I’d now add, AC/DC and Neil Young’s Crazy Horse.

Not only was Walker there for much of it, but he was a part of it as well.

Stranded is, for better or worse, simply my version of a history.

It goes beyond the world of Countdown, Farnsey and Barnsey, Michael Gudinski and the pub rock scene. Instead, it captures the rise of bands such as The Birthday Party, The Saints, The Triffids, The Hard Ons, The Beasts of Bourbon and The Go-Betweens. As well as the many other bands and artists who seemingly came and went.

Some of things that stood out to me were:

  1. How fluid, volatile and connected tge scene seemed to be. Often one band would demise only to have members pop-up in another band, if they were not already in more than one band.
  2. Hearing some of this music was incredibly hard. Whereas these days we might go online to listen or purchase new music, finding some of these pressings would have involved going to a handful of niche record stores.
  3. Place of covers. With so many bands forming on a whim, covers seem to play an important role in filling out a set or helping to define a bands sound. I feel that Walker’s latest book, Suburban Songbook, might have more to say on this.
  4. How many moving parts there were and are. It can be easy to think that success is all just about the music, but there are so many other parts at play. Whether it be the labels, the record stores, the local radio stations, the magazines, the venues, the promoters, the managers, the producers. Each play their own particular part in the rise and fall.

What amazes me about this book is that Walker was able to remember what he did. As he posits:

They say that if you remember the ’60s you can’t have been there. So much about the ’80s I can’t remember either. My journalism brings a lot back; I can’t help wondering if the rest isn’t best forgotten.

I guess the task of remembering is often ruefully aided with snipets from the artists in question that help provide further perspective and fill out some of the gaps.

There is so much more that I would love to know. This was the feeling I had after listening to Damian Cowell too. However, as Walker suggests, maybe sometimes it is best left forgotten.

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"Nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return." Milan Kundera - Ignorance

Although a little late, here is the music that soundtracked 2021 for me and how it kept me surprised.

Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land – Marina

I always love serendipitous discoveries. Bored one day, I created a set of arbitrary rules on Spotify to decide what I would listen to. It was something like clicking on the fifth artist in the ‘Fans Also Liked’ three times. Doing this, I came upon Muna’s remix of Marina’s track Man’s World and I went from there.

I feel like this album has a bit of everything. There are aspects of slick pop production, balanced with a mix of punk, all done with a touch of melodrama. Overall, it is shouty without actually shouting. As Damian Morris explains:

Anti-misogyny manifesto pop could easily become clumsy and overwrought, but the joy Marina invests into her mannered, quasi-operatic delivery makes sedition sound seductive.

Sixty Summers – Julia Stone

It is interesting how there are some artists that you overlook because you presume you already know what they are about only to discover a whole other side that you were unaware of. In 2020 it was Sufjan Stevens, while in 2021 it was Julia Stone.

It is easy to imagine another version of Sixty Summers at the hand of somebody like Stuart Price. Although it always threatens, it is always held back. Whether it be the tempo or the particular mix. Overall, I really liked the delicate and sparse nature of this album. In part this is a product of Stone’s voice, but I also feel it is result of Thomas Bartlett and Annie Clark production.

Deep States – TFS

There is a quote from Peter Goldsworthy that I come back to again and again, “cartoon descriptions, how else to describe a cartoon world.” I think that there is something to be said about TFS being the soundtrack for the current crisis. As Gareth Liddiard suggests, maybe the world has just caught up with a perspective they have been plying for years.

“With TFS, I think the world just caught up to our thing. We’ve been plying our trade for years and I think the world has finally become as anxious and neurotic as we’ve always sounded,” says Liddiard.

I must admit, there are times when I listen to TFS and I just feel kind of stupid for not following all the references littered within the music. Maybe that it how it is meant to be, not sure. Overall though there is something compelling about it that just keeps me there. There are moments where the clouds clear and clarity shines through, such as in GAFF.

I’ll take the wages of sin over the minimum wage I’d blow myself up too, man, it’s been one of them days But I’m not a kamikaze, I don’t wanna die a martyr I’m just looking for a latte and a fucking phone charger

Divine Intervention – Client Liaison

I remember seeing Client Liaison perform for the first time for ABC’s New Years Eve This Night is Yours concert. One cannot help be transfixed. Are they for real? I guess artifice comes in many shapes and sizes.

Divine Intervention is an album in search of higher power. There is something about their slick sound that leaves me both full and yet wanting more. In some ways, just as Roger and Brian Eno’s album felt like the perfect album for the start of the pandemic and the world wide lockdown, Divine Intervention seems the right album to shake out the blues and get out on the dancefloor again and the new normal, even if that dancefloor still may be alone in a kitchen with headphones.

Only the Shit You Love – Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine

Damian Cowell has a knack of taking a morsel of an idea to its nth degree. In the age where bands release a series of singles prior to the album launch, Cowell took this a step further releasing his who album on a weekly basis as a YouTube series, until finally release the album as a whole.

Only the Shit You Love is a snapshot of the modern world.

The modern world, product placement, continuous improvement, the culture of engagement, the diminution of language, the moronisation of television, imposter syndrome, subjectivity, my career demise, the heard instinct, popularism, the death of reason, nostalgia, love, lose, tolerance and friendship.

As always, it contains Cowell’s usual witty observations on the world. However, one of the changes to the first two Disco Machine albums was exploration of different dynamics and tempos. The usual upbeat tracks are still present, but they are contrasted by a number of slower numbers. Overall, coupled with a weekly podcast, this album was the perfect ailment for what felt like a perpetual lock-down.

One of the things that music offered me in 2021 was a sense of surprise. With so much of life in lockdown somewhat mundane, these albums each in their own was offered something new, unexpected and seemingly novel.

So what about you? What albums soundtracked your 2021? Were there any themes that tied things together? As always, comments welcome.

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When the world stopped, music continued. Its power was more vital than ever, providing comfort in times of great anxiety and loneliness, and adding fuel to the righteous anger that exploded across the planet. Music itself rarely fixes anything: it’s not medicine, listening to a beautiful piece of art doesn’t absolve you of the need to confront the issues this year has brought on. It does help, though. A lot. When things are grim, it can get you through. Sometimes that’s all we can hope for. At least for the moment. Great music, and the communities that have formed around it, will be one of the best legacies our generation will leave. This year did not test that, it brought the importance of this art and those who make it work to the fore.

A reflection on the music that represented my soundtrack for 2020.

With 2020 a strange year on so many levels, here is the music that tied it all together.

The Slow Rush – Tame Impala

I am sure that some might be put off by Parker’s move to ‘deft auteur-pop synergy‘, however I found this to be the first Tame Impala album to really capture my attention. Although the album touches on themes of nostalgia, lose, anxiety and inner peace, first and foremost I feel this album offers up a sound that envelopes you.

As a producer, Parker has more moving parts to balance this time, but he arrives at a deft auteur-pop synergy in which every last decision, down to the assorted cathedral-like reverb effects that lend his voice an otherworldly aura, become as intrinsic to the music as the melodies or the words. Though there’s a lot going on in the latticework of the music — springy analog synthesizer arpeggios, guitars doing unguitarlike things, layers upon layers of pastel lushness — the post-psychedelic swirl of The Slow Rush registers as an organic blend, with the songs never feeling cluttered or too tightly scripted.

Written before the onset of the coronavirus, it has been fascinating to listen to it in this new light. This was an experience that also happened with Run the Jewel’s RTJ4 and the death of George Floyd. Take for example the lines from One More Year:

Not worryin’ if I get the right amount of sleep (One more year) Not carin’ if we do the same thing every week (One more year)

Or On Track:

But strictly speaking, I’m still on track Strictly speaking, I’m holding on More than a minor setback But strictly speaking, I’m still on track And all of my dreams are still in sight ‘Cause strictly speaking, I’ve got my whole life

Or Tomorrow’s Dust:

I was blinded by a memory Like it’s someone else, like it wasn’t me And there’s every chance I’ll be learning fast And the day will come and then it will pass

It has also been interesting to see Tame Impala address the constraints of performing/promoting these tracks. After turning to solo performances, they have since morphed into a synthpop setup, driven by sequences and drum machines. In part, this was due to some members not being in Perth, but one wonders if this is where Parker was heading anyway.  It will be intriguing to see how much of this persists in the long term.

Folklore – Taylor Swift

This year produced a number of albums that were clearly responses to the situation at hand. For example, Charli XCX stripped things back to what she had on hand with her quarantine album, How I’m Feeling Now. Taylor Swift used the opportunity to explore a different collaborators, sounds and storytelling.

With folklore, Swift has made a self-consciously minor transitional album, a grand readjustment. She’s nailed it. Swift, it turns out, is one of the few great pop chameleons to come along in recent years. She was great at gleaming Walmart country. She was great at bright-plastic global-domination ultra-pop. She was a bit less great at quasi-trap club music, but she made do. And now she’s great at lightly challenging soft-thrum dinner party music.

Although Antonoff features on the album, Swift used Folklore and the sister album, Evermore, as an occasion to team up with Aaron Dessner from The National. What I find interesting is that the album is a departure for all parties. Although some would like to pigeon hole Antonoff, his oeuvre has shown nuance. While it feels like Dessner further unpacks some of the sounds explored with The National’s I am Easy to Find, as well as Big Red Machine.

With its woodsy black-and-white art, not to mention its title, Folklore advertises itself as an expected pop-star maneuver: the “back to basics” or “stripped down” revelation. But the album’s more complex than that, and does not conjure the image of Swift slumped over a guitar for an acoustic set. With the producers Aaron Dessner (of the indie band The National) and Jack Antonoff (the rock singer turned pop-star whisperer), she swims through intricate classical and folk instrumentation largely organized by the gridded logic of electronic music. Melancholy singers of ’90s rock radio such as Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan seem to guide Swift’s choices, as do contemporaries such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde. The overall effect is eerie, gutting, and nostalgic. If Folklore is not apt for summer fun, it is apt for a year in which rambunctious cheer and mass sing-alongs have few venues in which to thrive.

Although it is possible to find correlations with Swift’s past albums, what previously was at the edge is placed front and centre. There has been some conjecture about whether these tracks will fit with Swift’s stadium spectaculars, this was one of the reasons she gave for her live recording with Antonoff and Dessner. At the very least, with the absence of the traditional pop singles, it is at refreshing is to hear a track like Cardigan played on mainsteam radio.

Djesse Vol 3 – Jacob Collier

There are some albums that stick straight-away, while others take a bit more time. Djesse is one that took time to sink in. Collier’s tendency to mash-up so many ideas and sounds can sometimes be an affront to the pop senses. I think what helped was not only appreciating the tunes, but also the sonic world Collier created.  However, I feel this uncanny experience is somewhat intentional. As Collier explained in his Switched on Pop interview with his exploration of unfamilar keys and new sounds. When it clicks though there is a certain joy and exuberance that cannot be escaped.

Collier claims that Djesse is a quarantine album both in its sound and structure.

“Djesse Vol. 3,” recorded remotely, is “really a quarantine album,” he said. One of the songs, “He Won’t Hold You,” with Rapsody, “is about coming to peace with being alone. So much of my process is a solitary one. I wanted to craft a journey that described that—a mixture between very chaotic sounds that wrapped themselves around you and a simple melody that can rock you to sleep.”

However, it could also be argued that he has been building to this moment. Not only has he always recorded and produced his own music, but he also has tendency to push what is possible to the limits. Whether it be singing ahead of the beat to perform duets over Zoom, using Source Connect to capture recordings from around the world or performing as a one-man band, Collier is always innovating.

The Ascension – Sufjan Stevens

WIth The Ascension, Sufjan Stevens takes a step back to drag the listener in. There are many pop elements within all the layered synths and beats, however the mix always feels held back. Rather than sad bangers, Stevens’ presents what he labels ‘rage-bangers‘. In the hustle bustle of lockdown life and political upheaval, the album provides a point of meditation. Jon Pareles describes it as, “more metaphysical than biographical.“. While Grant Sharples argues, although it may not be the optimistic answer we may be craving for, it captures the current air of contemplation.

Though it’s still an incredible album, The Ascension better suits the cynicism of 2020. It feels banal to say that, but The Ascension isn’t exactly the optimistic salve that people may be looking for in 2020. Fans can find solace in this colossal work, sharing Stevens’ valid sentiment that, simply put, everything sucks right now.

Lost in all the sounds and starts, Sam Sodomsky compares the album to a big-budget IMAX movie.

Don’t get too hung up on the plot—just tilt back your head and watch him float.

Kate Miller-Heidke – Child in Reverse

Whether it be The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, Washington, Washed Out, The Naked and Famous, Empress Of or Sylvan Esso, there have been some great pop albums released this year. However, the one that stood out to me was Kate Miller-Heidke’s Child in Reverse. Her sense of authenticity and honesty, as well as the measured production reminds me of Lorde’s Melodrama. Whereas, Lorde’s album recounts her transition into the adult world, Miller-Heidke is looking back on life with a sense of acceptance of who she is and forgiveness for any misgivings.

It’s hard to separate Miller-Heidke’s musical theatre dalliances from songs like ‘Twelve Year Old Me’. Her storytelling is so precise and the imagery so vivid that you could transplant it into a theatrical setting with ease. Her balance of poignance and playfulness has always set her apart, and there are countless moments on this record that highlight how emotionally commanding she can be, without coming across overbearing.

Some of the tracks came out of an APRA SongHub songwriting weekend. She signed up after going through a phase of writer’s block. Miller-Heidke reflects upon the experience of working with Evan Klar and Hailey Collier and the benefit of letting the songs live through the ‘ears and hearts of others’:

It actually needs to live and breathe through the ears and hearts of others, and sometimes that can paradoxically make it sound more personal and more intimate. Sometimes other people can just help you distill what you’re saying down to an essence.

The album was produced by Klar. Miller-Heidke explains what she felt he brought to the table.

[Klar’s] arrangements are a little bit strange and surprising, but they’ve got this sparkly, airy sweetness and I think that style compliments my voice beautifully.

His aesthetic as a producer is what really drew me to his work, and made me want to work with him across the whole record. These are all sounds that come out of his computer, but there’s such a warmth and analog humanity there. They are imperfect sounds, but there is so much sparkle and air to them. What he does sounds so beautifully fresh and real to me.

I have always been aware of Miller-Heidke’s music and appreciated her virtuosity. However, I was always a little put off by her vocal gymnastics. This album changed all that for me.

We Will Always Love You – The Avalanches

This album was on the periphery for a while, with various teasers released throughout 2020. However, it was not until the album dropped that the vision for it fell into place. Although there are some great tracks, with my favourite being Wherever You Go, the strength is listening as a whole. Chris Deville describes the this as an odyssey.

Like the other two Avalanches albums, We Will Always Love You is an odyssey. Each track feels like an encounter with some new character or a scenic passageway in between outposts.

Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, with the help of Andy Szekeres, stitch together voices from the past and present in an act of musical remembering. Touching on themes of contemplation and transcendence, Kate Streader describes it as The Avalanches’ own Golden Record.

In many ways, We Will Always Love You is The Avalanches’ own Golden Record, tracking their sonic DNA through an epic list of collaborators who have influenced their sound in some shape or form over the years while exploring love, human connection and our place in the universe.

As with Oneohtrix Point Never, We Will Always Love You feels more like a mix tape, a hopeful one that was needed to end the year with.

With all the talk of the ‘new normal‘ this year, the theme that seems to tie them together is the idea of ‘new beginnings’. Whether it be new collaborations, new sounds, new mindset or new approaches to performance, I feel each of these albums has offered something different.

So what about you? What albums soundtracked your 2020? Were there any themes that tied things together? As always, comments welcome.

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I have used Google Music for the last few years, however it is going away. This has been on the books for awhile. As the lights are slowly turned off on another Google product, here is my reflection on the options and my choice moving forward.

YouTube Music

The most obvious choice is to simply move over to YouTube Music. As Ron Amadeo shared, the demise of Google Music is about YouTube as anything else.

Google’s decision to kill Google Play Music is mostly about YouTube. For a while, it was negotiating two separate music licenses with the record labels—one for YouTube music videos and another for Google Music radio—so combining them makes some amount of sense. In a Google Play Music versus YouTube fight, the service that pulls in $15 billion a year (YouTube) is going to win. YouTube Music pulls songs from YouTube, and Google can consolidate into a single license.

Therefore, a few months ago, I transferred my data over to YouTube Music to try it out.

The one thing I initially noticed was that there is some confusion between ‘YouTube’ and ‘YouTube Music’. I had some pre-exisiting music related playlists in YouTube. These too were available in YouTube Music, often meaning that I could listen to live performances without also watching them. I think this would sort itself out in the long run as my playlists become a bit more consolidated. However, it was an initial point of confusion.

Another observation was the way in which YouTube Music organises artists. For those without a channel, YouTube automatically generates a channel. This means without an official channel, YouTube Music incidentally mashes together different bands/artists with the same name. Look at the Canadian synthpop band DIANA for example, their collection is combined with other random DIANA’s which I am pretty sure are not the real DIANA band. This is a problem also carried over from Google Music.

Bandcamp

Damon Krukowski recently explored the question as to whether Bandcamp is a streaming platform. The reality is that it is not. Although it provides such features, of being to access music across devices, the focus seems to be on creating a marketplace for people to purchase music, as well as merchandise. Although I have stepped up my purchases on the platform, not every band is on Bandcamp, therefore this is still primarily about supporting artists.

Own Your Own Music

I have read about people setting up their own personal music servers. I imagine I could probably do this with Reclaim Cloud. The other alternative is to go complete old school and scrap streaming altogether and just load purchases to my devices as I used to do. To be honest, it just isn’t a priority for me right now. I guess I have become far too wedded to the cloud, even with all the hidden costs.

Spotify

My last stop was Spotify. In regards to user experience, YouTube Music and Spotify seem very similar.

One point of difference between the two platforms is the ability for children to tune in. Although my daughter was able to create her own account to connect with the family subscription associated with Google Music, this was not possible with YouTube Music. I would assume this relates to the fact that YouTube accounts are restricted to 13+, but am not completely sure. Alternatively, Spotify has created a separate app for children. Although this does not allow access to all artists and songs, it does mean at least allow my daughter to have full control without needing to create an account.

There’s a library of 8,000 tracks, judged by Spotify staff to be age-appropriate to children and teens, with more songs to be added over the app’s lifespan.

In addition to this, there are still some artists and albums available on Spotify that are not necessarily available on YouTube Music.

In the end, I ended up going with Spotify. This included using Tune My Music to bring across some of my playlists from Google Music. Maybe in the future I will resurrect my music files and create my own server? As I am apprehensive about the data mined and the move into DNA. Or maybe I will join the (re)turn to vinyl in a search for an optimal experience. I guess we will see.

As always, comments welcome.

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A quote about the power of music from Dan Condon

A reflection on the music that represented my soundtrack for 2019.

I enjoy the exercise of looking back at the music that stood out to me across the year. Here then are my thoughts on 2019.

Better in Blak (Thelma Plum)

Produced by Alex Burnett and David Kahne, Better in Blak has the pop hooks and melodies to quickly drag you in. However, once there Plum users this platform to challenges the listener. In songs such as Better in Blak, Homecoming Queen and Woke Blokes, she opens up about race, gender and identity. Although she tells many stories of injustice and heartbreak, the album always manages to remains positive. As Caitlin Walsh explains,

If there’s a connecting thread through the songs, it’s that you don’t need to reject the various people you used to be on your way to loving who you are now; that the ugliness, whether it’s social injustice or trolls or crushing heartbreak, can create beauty and growth if you pick them up and use them as tools, and then moving past them.

Additionally, Cyclone Wehner captures Plum’s style suggesting that,

Regardless, whether her songs are critical or confessional, she conveys, if not levity, then wry humour.

For me, Better in Blak is an example of what Damian Cowell describes as treating the listener to an anchovy. Maybe this is why she abandoned her original album? There were quite a few albums of this ilk that caught my attention in 2019. That is, they hooked in the listener, while also serving up some deep questions.They included Monaigne’s Complex, King Princess’ Cheap Queen and Banks’ III.

Lost Girls (Bat for Lashes)

Lost Girls is a soundtrack that stemmed from a script that Natasha Khan was/is writing telling the story of a vampire girl-gang chasing a mortal protagonist in Los Angeles. It is loosely based on the 80’s film, Lost Boys. Andrew Trendell explained that,

[Khan] wrote a screenplay about a girl called Nikki who becomes obsessed with alien sightings and befriends a local lad whose town is being terrorised by some ghostly girls on bikes. Together, they set out to solve the mystery before finding themselves in the captivity of the spooky cyclists. Sounds like the perfect John Hughes’ script, eh? Well, it started out as something for the big screen before the soundtrack took hold and the album ran away with itself .

With these cultural references, the album’s palette of rich synth sounds is also deeply based upon the past. This can be interpreted as a case of using the past and nostalgia to make comment on the present. As Ryan Leas suggests

The sound of Lost Girls isn’t just exhuming certain synth tones. It’s exhuming a past to try and clarify today, to clarify aging, to clarify how our memories and upbringings shift in and out of focus, eventually rewritten into the kind of filmic adventures we might’ve escaped through when we were actually living through those years.

I think that Joe Goggins summarises the album best when he describes it as, ‘doomy disco for dark times.’

About Us (G Flip)

I remember first hearing (and seeing) G Flip (or Geor Flipiano) as a part of the the ABC’s ‘The Night is Yours Concert‘. She played with so much energy, I was hooked. I was also intrigued when her EP came out a few months later. Although the drums were present, the power and punch was made way for the emotion of the songs. The album continues with this balance. She could easily have gone overboard with the production, but instead holds back, providing what feels like enough of everything. Overall, it carries a certain pop subtlety. As Simone Ziaziaris describes:

Her energetic tunes are packed with electric baselines, catchy synth-pop melodies and of course, vibrant punches from the drum kit. Flipo has mastered the art of pairing vulnerable lyrics about loss and yearning for love with confident (and catchy) multi-layered pop beats.

Similar to how Lorde’s Melodrama captures a particular period of her life, many of the songs document a time in Flipiano’s life when she was falling in and out of love with her girl friend. She also received help from some big names, including Ariel Rechtshaid (‘I Am Not Afraid’), Justin Tranter (‘Stupid’) and Scott Hoffman (‘Two Million’). This reminds me of Missy Higgins talking about her experience of working with different writers on the Inspired podcast. I am going to assume that is how the music industry works?

Norman Fucking Rockwell (Lana Del Rey)

Rather than hooking the listener in with sweet choruses and succinct pop songs, Norman Fucking Rockwell is an album which washes over like waves lapping on a beach. Before long, you are lost within a world. I think Sam Sodomsky sums it up best, saying,

The album weaves love songs for self-destructive poets, psychedelic jam sessions, and even a cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” through arrangements that harken back to the Laurel Canyon pop of the ’60s and ’70s. Throughout, Lana has never sounded more in tune to her own muse—or less interested in appealing to the masses.

In an interview with Joe Coscarelli, Del Rey provides some insights into the choice of Jack Antonoff as producer and why it is time for protest songs. There is something ironic about Antonoff’s inclusion. Some may call out another failure to present anything original, yet Del Rey’s attempt at raw honesty seems prime for collaboration with the ‘superproducer’ (what is a superproducer?) As Antonoff once stated in an interview with Zane Lowe:

I want to work with people because they think that they are geniuses, not because I want make the albums that they have already made

Although Ann Powers questions her reference to noir and where Del Rey sits within the panteon of other female artists, such as Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, I think the success of the way in which is drags you into a world. As Powers’ describes,

The sensitivity and compassion Del Rey expresses in these songs really resonates not in its straightforwardness, but because of all the pings it sets off in the listener’s brain, each one hitting like a nearly-erased memory. In “Mariners,” she deflects the Elton John comparison its piano part demands (“I ain’t your candle in the wind”), only to build to a chorus that seemingly echoes the Oscar-winning theme from a classic 1970s disaster movie (Maureen McGovern’s magisterial “The Morning After”) and, in its warm but uncanny multi-tracked vocal hook, the synth-kissed love songs that brought Leonard Cohen back from obscurity in the 1980s.

Coming back to Antonoff, it is also interesting to consider that this album was released a week after his other significant production effort for 2019, Taylor Swift’s “evolutionary rather than revolutionary” Lover.

Late Night Feelings (Mark Ronson)

Mark Ronson’s Late Night Feelings has the usual polished rhythm and feel that you would expect from Ronson, however gone is the sense of fun present in past tracks such as Bike Song and Uptown Funk. Instead we are left with a collection of ‘sad bangers’. As he explained in an interview with Jordan Bassett,

Ronson and the Parisian actor Joséphine de La Baume divorced in 2018 after five-and-half years of marriage. “The entire period of a year – a year-and-a-half, maybe two years – was kinda like… it was just a bit covered with this grey cloud over it,” he says. “Some days it’s fine, some days it’s better – and there’s still good shit that happens. It’s the first time I ever put my own emotions, or what I’ve been going through, out there in a record. I almost didn’t have a choice not to make a personal album because it was so all-consuming going to the studio and trying to make something fun or groovy. As nice as it might have felt in the moment, the next day I’d listen to it and it would feel completely inauthentic.”

For Ronson, the contrast of the upbeat nature of the music with the melancholy of the lyrics is something that harks back to the blues.

“I think it’s the combination of being able to move to something that’s melancholy,” he explains. “Obviously having a dance beat and a really relentlessly upbeat song is kind of fun, but then you’ve got everything firing in the same direction. I like the rub between the upbeat rhythm section and the longing in the vocal. All American music, really – all soul, American R&B, everything – comes from the blues. And the blues was invented to express dissatisfaction, heartache and lament, so it makes sense that it would work in, like, a disco. There’s a sadness and melancholy in a lot of my favourite dance records.”

Peyton Thomas also places it within the tradition of ‘Sad Girl‘ genre,  where the portrayal of female sadness is actually a strength to be recognised.

Late Night Feelings is not the first recent record to treat the sadness of women as a healthy response to all manner of hurt. It is, however, a worthy entry in this still-developing pop pantheon, authentic and honest in its rendering of many shades of feminine sorrow.

Some critics have questioned the seemingly hit and miss nature of the album, however I feel it is one of those albums where the whole is greater than the parts. It can be easy to get confused at supposed fillers like Knock Knock Knock, but like Fitter Happier on Radiohead’s OK Computer, such tracks serve a wider purpose in creating a particular world.

I think this also touches on the reality that Ronson is first and fore-mostly a DJ. When discussing the making of Covers, Ronson once stated that his intent was to make music to DJ to. This album is a continuation of that. In some ways it can be heard as a set in its own right. Although it isn’t as blended as something like Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, moments like the bridge in Late Night Feeling or the constant of the bass throughout give it that feel.

I have completed this activity for a few years now. What is interesting is that a theme always seems to present itself. 2017 was Jack Antonoff, 2018 was musical reimaginings. This year it was about the female voice. Each of the album’s was driven by a strong female presence. What is intriguing though is when you dig into each of the album’s, there are still a plethora of men producing? Alex Burnett, Charles Scott IV, Jack Antonoff and Mark Ronson. Other than those who self produce, where are the female producers?

So these are my highlights for 2019, what about you? What were the albums that stuck with you? As always, comments welcome.

 

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