Nick Cave – Idiot Prayer: Live Alone At Alexandra Palace
Perhaps the most profound performance image, and indeed release of 2020 could be that of Nick Cave playing all piano alone in the vast halls of Alexandra Palace. Beautifully filmed indeed, serious, sombre and dark, but it's also a wonderful live album, although pre-filmed and not broadcast as live, and including many favourites in these 22 career-spanning tracks. From Into My Arms, and appropriately several other tracks from 1997's The Boatman's Call such as Brompton Oratory to Black Hair, all making a dimly lit backdrop death, solitude and grief at this album’s heart. He peels back further tracks to the intimate, bare bones, such as the the song Sad Waters stretching back to 1986's album Your Funeral...My Trial. The album so rather profoundly also includes some newer work, Galleon Ship, from Ghosteen and new song Euthanasia. Who better to be a soundtrack to a very sobering year. Out on Bad Seed Ltd.
Nick Cave – Euthanasia
Cabaret Voltaire – Shadow Of Fear
While former band member Stephen Mallinder went on to form multiple bands, most recently Wrangler and with them, in a collaboration with John Grant, Creep Show, and Chris Watson's career went into film and field music, remaining man of the Sheffield trio Richard H Kirk returns with the first Cabaret Voltaire album in 26 years. It's a dark and dystopian in flavour, entirely in keeping with the year 2020, and without rehashing old material, also keeps the flavour of the band's late-70s and early-80s sound - industrial electronica meets krautrock, techno, house and acid synth. Standout tracks include Be Free, Papa Nine Zero Delta United, Univeral Energy, and the disturbing closing track which puts a new spin on that Marvin Gaye phrase What's Going On. "Thousands will die" says a voice on Microscopic Flesh Fragment, indeed, but Cabaret Voltaire has risen. Out on Warp.
Cabaret Voltaire – The Power (Of Their Knowledge)
Tayla Parx – Coping Mechanisms
She's a mainstream pop song writer with Grammy nominations for her work for Ariana Grande, but Parx's second solo album plays games with the genre with far more daring and experimentation. Following 2019's debut, We Need to Talk, this one is held together by a post-break theme, and contains some mesmerising dark sounds and beats as well as some impressive singing and rapping. Bricks, Y Know and Dance Alone are among some standouts that show some very slick, polished production as well as an inventive pop creator. Out on Tayla Made/Atlantic
Tayla Parx – System
Brian Eno – Film Music 1976-2020
One of the compilations of the year, another career-spanning release showcasing another string to Eno's many bows, and including many hard-to-find numbers under one album of an hour with music from films by director including David Lynch, Danny Boyle, Peter Jackson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Derek Jarman and Michael Mann. Tracks include Ship in a Bottle from The Lovely Bones, Prophecy Theme from Dune, Deep Blue Day in Trainspotting, Late Evening in Jersey in Heat, Beach Sequence in Antonioni’s last film Beyond The Clouds and An Ending (Ascent) from Al Reinert’s ground-breaking For All Mankind, as well as the theme from the BBC drama Top Boy. A release that summons all kinds of images. Out on UMC.
Brian Eno - Decline And Fall (From Henrique Goldman's O Nome da Morte)
Ana Roxanne – Because of a Flower
Slow, ambient, minimal and beautiful, the Californian artist returns after her debut with the understated title ~~~, and inspired by choral music of Christian and Hindustani traditions, this is spacious, exploratory, otherworldly work that fades in and out to perfection, and playing with her own ambiguous sense of gender that goes with the botanic theme. From A Study In Vastness to the more drum-machine and keyboard based Camille, to the closing track Take The Thorn, Leave The Rose, this is a masterpiece of unhurried minimalism, and a musical bud that is blossoming in its own sweet time. Outstanding. Out on Kranky.
Ana Roxanne – A Study In Vastness
Megan Thee Stallion – Good News
From delivering a speech about racism during a performance on Saturday Night Live to viral Tik-Tok videos to appearing on Time Magazine's cover as top-100 influential person, 2020 has been a huge year from the 25-year-old Texan rapper Megan Jovon Ruth Pete. Good news for her then, and this album helps crown it with a triumphants sense of this girl being right on top, as it were - feisty, filthy and a lot of fun as well touching on some fundamental issues, with a personality who ain't taking no prisoners. Punchy, flowing hip-hop with sharp, catchy beats, mostly touching on sexual politics with plenty of detail. Shots Fired to GIrls In the Hood, Body, Circles, Do It On The Tip, Sugar Baby … she's insatiable. Out on 300/Warner.
Megan Thee Stallion - Don't Stop
Contento – Lo Bueno Está Aquí
Wonderfully refreshing crossover work by the Colombian duo of Paulo Olarte and Sebastián Hoyos present an album of what they call "salsapunk". It mixes salsa not so much with the angry and shouty, but with Afrobeats, electronica, dance, jazz and a free, lo-fi approach, above all, simply to make you want to move, right from the off with opener Dale Melón. Loco Por Tu Amor, takes the salsa style into darker, slower, fuzzier territory, but it builds, while De Todas Maneras has a pleasingly rough edge to the vocals. Pasa Palante recalls Fetal Kuti, while Pelo Negro is a cumbia rhythm, but like something created in Tom Waits's workshop mixed with the tune and words from Led Zeppelin's Black Dog. Delightfully odd. Out on El Palmas Music.
Contento – Paso Palante
The Cribs – Night Network
Eighth album by the Jarman brothers' Wakefield indie outfit who for a time had Johnny Marr as a member, and recorded in 2019 at the Foo Fighters Studio 606 in Los Angeles and self-produced, is direct, emotional, slightly wistful, but also romantic mainstream in style. Opener Goodbye echoes elements of The Beach Boys, but overall it's very 90s in a free, unabashed way, from Never Thought I'd Feel Again to Under The Bus Station Clock generally with a sense of strong indie nostalgia and tongue-in-cheek approach. Great video for Running Into You. Out on Sonic Brew.
The Cribs – Running Into You
Luke Abbott – Translate
Dark, spacey, sci-fi-type quadrophonic soundtrack work by the Norfolk and synth specialist producer in this third solo album is proper late-night fare, sounding like something that could have come out of another age, from the slower build of Kagen Sound and Earthship, to the more manic plinky plonk of Ames Window to skittering sound of Living Dust. Immersive, surrounding, elsewhereness. Out on Border Community.
Luke Abbott – Ames Window
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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