Welcome back, for the fourth year running, to the first of two roundups of 50 and more favourite albums of 2019 as nominated by, and popular with the Song Bar and readers. The first part was published yesterday.
As in previous years, this isn’t a countdown to leading to the so-called best album, or reviews, or anything as subjective or as flawed as that, it simply flags them up as worth a listen, and each offers something different, and again the list, which can only ever be a cross-section, reaches across genres, and goes from the mainstream to more obscure. The order is not significant but simply alphabetical by title, and most tracks are chosen as a sample. Feel free to point out different ones.
FKA twigs – Magdalene
Five years since her debut album, LP1, Tahliah Debrett Barnett finally makes a welcome return, and her profile of polymath enigma remains firmly, as well as singer-songwriter, even more so dancer, kung fu and visual artist, after no shortage of personal problems – health and celebrity relationship (Robert Pattinson) heartbreak. This album from Cheltenham artist has an even stranger, starker quality, her voice at times a shattered glass of vulnerability, sounding almost on the verge of tears. sounding both robust and yet fragile in a mix her unique genre, a mix of "alt-R&B", static noise, gunshots, electronica and rumbles. Her profile as an alternative Bjork with added sexual twist seems to be crystallising. Out on Young Turks.
FKA twigs – Cellophane
Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe
The 23-year-old British singer-songwriter of Turkish-Irish-Bajan heritage releases her debut album, a mixture of soul, jazz, pop and funk with fuzz guitar. She has a distinctive sound, deep voice, a lazy, confident delivery, wry lyrics and inventive rhythm. She has what appears to be commercial accessibility, but underneath is an edgy restlessness as shown the tracks Heavyweight Champion of the World, and Monsters Under the Bed. Despite releasing tracks for the past five years on Soundcloud, she's still a new voice with a promising future. Out on Ato Records/Pias.
Nilüfer Yanya – In Your Head
Shana Cleveland – Night Of The Worm Moon
Longstanding frontwoman for surf rock band La Luz, Shana Cleveland now brings out a solo album of ethereal otherworldliness, channelling Sun Ra, pastoral folk, country and cosmic planet-gazing. Keep an eye out for UFO sightings, insect carcasses and a whole kaleidoscope of beauty. Out on Hardly Art.
Shana Cleveland – Face Of The Sun
Kim Gordon – No Home Record
The former Sonic Youth frontwoman is never complacent, and this, her first solo album, after working with Bill Nace on the project Body/Head, is one noisy, almost industrial sounds spits and turns like a rusty wheel about all kinds of issues, whispering and shouting twisted contempt about many matters including Air BnB, work sexism, consumerism and more, from the pumping Don't Play It, to Murdered Out, Sketch Artist and the almost unfathomable sound on Cookie Butter. It's a challenging listen at times, but with Gordon's searing intelligence, a fascinating one. Out on Matator.
Kim Gordon – Sketch Artist
Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Superbly striking and unusual fifth album from the American singer, inspired by the illustrator who specialised stylised scenes from American 20th-century life, and Del Rey follows this concentrating on California and old Hollywood. It's all oddball slow and swooning at times, bubbling with strange menace, emotion and variously referencing bit musical icons from Neil Young to John Lennon, Led Zeppelin to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Never predictable. Out on Polydor.
Lana Del Rey - Venice Bitch
Slowthai – Nothing Great About Britain
An aggressively vigorous, funny and sweary by the young Northampton rapper also known as Tyron Frampton, who has a growing reputation for gobsmacking live shows where he is usual stripped down to his underpants. The Tory government, the Queen and a host of other British institutions get short shrift in this refreshing protest against the state of things. And let’s face it, there’s plenty more where that came from. With a stormy ratttatat of beats and dystopian sampled sounds and twisting anger, this is more like early Streets or Dizzy Rascal than Stormzy or Skepta. Standout tracks include Polaroid and Drug Dealer. Out on Method Records.
Slowthai – Nothing Great About Britain
Tindersticks – No Treasure But Hope
Startlingly beautiful and welcome return from Stuart Staples and co after 2016's The Waiting Room, with that consistent, characteristic style – perfectly paced, weighted, warm and sounding like a distinct, but differently warbly cousin of Lambchop. The emotional delivery almost breaks down into tears on For The Beauty, Take Care of Your Dreams and Carousel are deliciously slow and delicate, but there's greater passion on See My Girls and Tough Love. The Amputees uses lost limbs as a grim metaphor, but against the grain, Pinky In The Daylight is a lovely love song. Dreamily rich and delightful. Out on City Slang.
Tindersticks – Pinky In The Daylight
The Divine Comedy – Office Politics
After 2016's Foreverland, and a triumphant greatest hits tour in which the charming Neil Hannon dressed as Napoleon, the catchy pop and clever humour continues with 16 songs centring about office life and "infernal machines", the music infused with synthesisers alongside regular instruments. Again this is full of mischief, fun, and ridiculously catchy pop. The songs focus on everything from ignoring traffic lights and general oneupmanship and competitiveness (Queuejumper), wistful, repressed, tragic love (Norma and Norman), bitchy-talking electronica (Office Politics), atmospheric jazzy lounge (You'll Never Work In This Town Again), forensic robotic oddity (Psychological Evaluation) to funky social annoyance (Life And Soul Of The Party), all of which captures the absurdity of modern life and workplace. Out on Divine Comedy Records.
The Divine Comedy – Queuejumper
Gruff Rhys – Pang!
Brilliantly eclectic new album by the Welshman and former frontman of the Super Furry Animals. Here he sings almost entirely in hi first language (with a brief moment of Zulu) and this is more stripped back and acoustic following the bigger orchestration of last year's Babelsberg. There is also a South African sound in here, influenced by producer and electronica artist Muzi. Climate change and politics interweave in his own idiosyncratic, eccentric, wonderful, with songs variously about wearing sun hats (Eli Haul), or a fog of lies (Niwl O Anwiredd). The inventive Welsh equivalent to David Byrne continues to deliver. Fabulous. Out on Rough Trade.
Gruff Rhys – Pang!
Ebony Steel Band – Pan Machine
Covers or compilations wouldn’t normally make the year’s favourites, but wonderfully novel and charming album of Kraftwerk songs by the steel band formed in west London 50 years ago in 1969 just rang out to be heard again. Numbers include The Model, Spacelab, Neon Lights, Tour De France, The Robots, Computer Love and Computer World, arranged for Ebony’s 11-piece line-up by Ian Shirley. Joyous and gorgeous. Out on OM Swagger Music
Ebony Steel Band – The Model
The Futureheads – Powers
Welcome return after seven years for the postpunk four-piece band from Sunderland, the only release from them coming from Barry Hyde's 2016 emotionally raw solo album about his struggle with mental illness. Here they return at full strength with those four-part harmonies and manly vocals that hark from a folk tradition, railing against Brexit and the state of the British identity in Across The Border and the blackly humorous Listen, Little Man! Much of this album is a visceral examination of the male psyche, including Jekyll, which touches on the effects of bullying and violence in childhood. Excellent, powerful return. Out on Nul Records.
The Futureheads – Listen, Little Man!
Holly Herndon – Proto
A strong contender for the most original and brilliant release of the year, the American composer, musician, and sound artist's fifth studio album is an experimental masterpiece of electronica and choral adventure. Astonishing, lengthy and exploratory, it takes the genre to different, but equally thrilling areas as much as Gazelle Twins's album of last year. The extraordinary song Crawler, for example, brings utterly dazzling vocal sounds and harmonies, as original as anything by Kate Bush or Bjork at any time. Alongside collaborator JLin, the album includes the voice of an “AI baby” called Spawn, exploring the nature of DNA strains and identity. History, folklore, science and spirituality? It's all here, and this is certainly a new musical frontier. Out on 4AD.
Holly Herndon – Frontier
Dave – Psychodrama
Even before bagging the Mercury Prize, this was always going to make the favourites lists. South London rapper Dave, the straight-up stage name for Streatham’s David Orobosa Omoregie, after years of enthralling live shows, brings out his long awaited debut album – a candid, articulate, intelligent, incisive exploration of racial identity, prejudice, prison and relationships. Certainly a new voice in British hip-hop, in the way that Dizzee Rascal, Plan B, Stormzy and Kate Tempest have been, this is less a frenetic form, but more one that's musically and lyrically contemplative, self-analytical, angry but questioning, especially in the final song, Lesley, an 11-minute exploration of toxic masculinity and domestic abuse, or the the new single, Black, which has caused controversy in its honesty. Out on Neighbourhood:
Dave – Black
Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains
David Berman, formerly the frontman of Silver Jews, and writer of some of the sharpest and most memorable of lyrics this century, finally returned after a decade since his band split with a new project alongside folk band Woods, but tragically, a little later in year, came suicide. After a divorce, and living as hermit, his sharply humorous misanthropy had lost none of its edge, with lines such as "I fell ill in Illinois / I nearly lost my genitalia to an anthill in Des Moines”, and "Death is a black camel that kneels down so we can ride”, with targets that include Trump and quite possibly his own father. Not quite Silver Jews but droll, marvellously miserable, anxiously acerbic. What a terrible loss. Out on Drag City.
Purple Mountains – All My Happiness Is Gone
Cate Le Bon – Reward
Magnificent return from the Welsh artist who, to write this fifth album, following 2016's Crab Day, moved from Los Angeles to live in the Lake District and turn her talents to making wooden furniture. A unique talent and voice, this is uplifting, sun-filled music of beautiful melancholy, piano-based but filled with guitars and gutsy saxophone and a dry, oddball humour, from Sad Nudes to The Light, the spiky, offbeat Magnificent Gestures, the eccentric You Don't Love Me, the lamenting Daylight Matters, or Home To You. With her piercing gaze and extraordinarily quiet but powerful presence, she's also a must for a live show. Out on Mexican Summer.
Cate Le Bon – Home To You
black midi – Schlagenheim
The young London band's debut album is a crash, bang, wallop of fascinating experimentation and improvisation, their lower case name taken from the term Black MIDI, a sub-genre of music created from multiple digital MIDI files resulting in thousands or even millions of notes. Appropriately then the result here, though with live instruments, and constantly shifting rhythms, is complex, songs not at all following the usual verse-chorus structures, with a style that echoes King Crimson, krautrock's Can, leftfield XTC or Battles, right from the opening number – 953. Lead singer and guitarist Geordie Greep's vocals are a crazed mish-mash of different voices, especially on ‘bmbmbm’. Indulgent or brilliant? Certainly a bit of both, and certainly the most interesting bunch to ever emerge from the Brit School. Out on Rough Trade.
black midi - ducter
Fat White Family – Serfs Up!
With a masterpiece of musical mischief, the brothers Lias and Nathan Saoudi, Saul Adamczewski and co make a most welcome return after 2015's Songs For Our Mothers and the hiatus to do other projects such as Moonlandingz and The Insecure Men. What new, dark magic is stirring here? A mélange of styles seamlessly dipped in humorous wooziness, stirred in a cauldron of caustic originality. Elements of Leonard Cohen, Gregorian chanting, early Sheffield synth-pop, lo-fi murder ballads, electro funk, David Axelrod, Alan Vega, Afrika Bambaataa, David Bowie, bossa nova clicks, glam fuzz, string swirls and much more bubble away, including Lias's menacing, whispered minimalism, Nathan's shimmering synths, and bold, brassy sax by Alex White. The album feels like a black-humoured, dystopian journey of bewilderment, from Feet to I Believe In Better, to Vagina Dentist to Oh Sebastian to Tastes Good With The Money (with a Baxter Dury oration) to classic FWF on When I Leave. From drug-fuelled chaos, they are now a musical Monty Python entangled a murderous Wicker Man procession of frog and horse heads, ambling forward, leading a procession of edgy innovation and daring. Out on Domino.
Fat White Family – Tastes Good With The Money
Bill Callahan – Shepherd In A Sheepskin
After a six-year hiatus which has brought marriage, a son, and the death of his mother, a very welcome 20-song release of extraordinary beauty, delicacy and intimacy by the deep-voiced American singer-songwriter who has also released albums under the Smog moniker. Now 53, Callahan's 16th album uses the shepherd metaphor as a revolving perspective of emotion, insight, experience and wisdom, but the album is infused with many perspectives that clearly point to his personal experience of love, loss and tenderness, with the music unfolding gently like fern leaves in spring. Morning Is My Godmother, Tugboats and Tumbleweeds and Watch Me Get Married ("the orchid in the canyon is the one for me") are some of many tracks of moving folk-country minimalism. As the opener put it: "Have You Ever seen a shepherd afraid to find his sheep?" And as he sings on final track, The Beast: "The gravestones here look like teeth, with a beast asleep at our feet". Out on Drag City.
Bill Callahan – Angela
Snapped Ankles – Stunning Luxury
Brilliant follow-up to 2017’s Come Play The Trees, from which we previously profiled on a Song of the Day sample of Johnny Guitar, this is surely the London-based band’s big breakthrough. It’s an album filled driving energy, wit and invention, a heady mix of postpunk, electronica and krautrock psychedelia, a writhing root-growth cross-pollination of Hawkwind meets Moonlandingz meets Goat. Continuing with their log-wrapped mic stands and synths, the tree camouflage costumes are now mixed with smart city suits to lampoon property developers, hence the album title, Stunning Luxury and the video for Drink and Glide. They also cover subject matter from Swedish flat-pack furniture, dystopian futures, social media and Andrei Tarkovsky. Surely now set to branch out and grow massive. Springing out now on The Leaf Label.
Snapped Ankles – Rechargeable
Warmduscher – Tainted Lunch
Perhaps with the most humorous title of the year, and beginning with a vocal intro by Iggy Pop, the collective of oddball characters known as Pretty Lilly, Whale Jimmy, Clams Baker, Uncle Sleepover, Ice Cream Keith, and Disco Minny remain irresistible, and this follow-up to last year’s Whale City is funkily dirty, bluesy, dancey and brilliantly catchy disco filled with talky, funny filth and sleaze from start to finish. Highlights include Midnight Dipper, Disco Peanuts, and Grape Face. You know you want it. Out on The Leaf Label.
Warmduscher – Disco Peanuts
Leonard Cohen – Thanks For The Dance
Posthumous albums are often a thin skim of what’s left, or a whimper rather than a scream, but these unreleased recordings by the artist who died three years ago is a fabulous memorial, crammed with deadpan lines and is a more than worthy follow-up to 2016's You Want It Darker. From the opener about his career, Happens to the Heart (“I was always working steady, I never called it art. I got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx") to a song talking about German puppets who killed Jews, to beautifully mournful love songs (Moving On) to his old-age slowing down (“The system is shot / I’m living on pills”) on The Hills, it's a wonderfully paced treat from start to finish. A scholar and a poet, sadly missed. Out on Columbia.
Leonard Cohen – Moving On
Vanishing Twin – The Age of Immunology
This eccentric synth-folk-pop album from the London and Margate four-piece fronted by Cathy Lucas is filled with bouncy squiggles and boings as well as beautiful smoothness and quirky retro sounds. From the lounge jazz with bird chirps and an exotic drumbeats of the opener KRK (At Home In Strange Places) to the more anxious Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life, this is lovely, otherworldly work. Out on Fire Records.
Vanishing Twin – Magician's Success
Kate Tempest – The Book of Traps and Lessons
After the relative anger, blood and thunder of her first two albums, especially 2016's Let Them Eat Chaos with the single England Is Lost, the poet and dramatist's third is far more stripped back, personal and tender. People's Faces still laments how "my country's falling apart" and "rage sinking to beige", but soon turns to a more philosophical, quieter tone, that there is change afoot and "so much peace to be found in people's faces", celebrating the complexity and variety of human life. Produced by Rick Rubin, who was behind Johnny Cash's arguably greatest later work, The American Recordings series, the entire album is much quieter, often accompanied by low-key piano and slow beats. Firesmoke is a completely unfettered love letter to another worman, and I Trap You talks across a quietly jaunty piano sound. Overall far mellower, more reflective, and definitely more optimistic, and yet Tempest has lost none of her potency and south-London earth. Out on Fiction Records.
Kate Tempest – People's Faces (Streatham version)
Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising
Fourth and arguably best yet album by the American and mesmeric Natalie Mering, mixing the intimate with old-school electronica, string arrangements, avant-garde wobbliness. The subject matter touches on the modern relationship with technology and the connectedness contradiction, and climate crisis, all done with a breathtaking ethereal beauty, from the slow-build of Movies, the jaunty Everyday, and the otherworldly, folky Andromeda. Out on Sub Pop.
Weyes Blood – Andromeda
The Comet Is Coming – Trust in the Life Force of the Deep Mystery
The London trio may be labelled to be of the jazz genre, but their new album is vary much a lively dance-electronica fusion that brings together influences as diverse as Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, 70s prog King Crimson, and Pig Bag from the 1980s. Leading British saxophone player Shabaka Hutchings pours out the melodies alongside the driving drums of Max Hallett and synth player Dan Leavers introducing rich textures and sounds. Superb in concert, this album is an otherworldly, visceral, energised experience, but also includes a track that brings in an intense, accompanying poem by Kate Tempest. Out on Impulse.
The Comet Is Coming – Summon The Fire
Clinic – Wheeltappers and Shunters
After a seven-year gap, the Liverpool indie psych band return with one to treasure, something full of intricate detail, voices, sounds and ideas that enrich on each listen. The sound is distinct, offbeat, eccentric, eerie, and often at a walking pace, deceptively simple, with Ade Blackburn's often lispy voice a wonderful narration, and it makes a perfect companion to Fat White Family's Serf's Up. The title is taken from the 1970s TV series variety show (also referenced on Noel Gallagher's latest single video) a kind of original Phoenix Nights featuring everyone from Cannon & Ball to Dusty Springfield and the Krankies – a mishmash of brown-and-beige glory and naffness, summoning up a period when Blackpool was the height of pleasure entertainment showbiz, of Butlins, of national TV plate-spinning and Morris dancers, all with a seedy underbelly. From Laughing Cavalier to Ferryboat Of The Mind, Flying Fish to Be Yourself/Year Of The Sadist, it's a spooky, mischievous delight. Out on Domino
Clinic – Rubber Bullets
Solange – When I Get Home
The younger sister of Beyoné's latest work is less a collection of 19 songs, but of fragments, experimentation, skits, intermissions, half bits of choruses, verses, ideas. Is it lazy or revolutionary, a statement of the culture of low attention span that comes with social media apps, or a symptom of it? There is plenty of oddness, eccentricity and innovation here, if not really a consistent identity, but it's also intriguingly catchy at times, such as the 2-minute track Things I Imagined. Almeda meanwhile, co-produced by Pharrell Williams, is the nearest to a full track. Out on Columbia.
Solange – Almeda
Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Since her debut single in 2016, Ocean Eyes, the now only 17-year-old Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell from Los Angeles (of Scottish/irish descent) is more quite something – she's already bucketloads of records of her first EP, and this is her full LP debut of clever, offbeat electropop, mainly on the unavoidable subject of adolescent love, yet delivered in a highly original dark-humoured fashion. What marks her out is a great maturity in her quirky, breathy delivery, the twisted takes on love, and those wobbly effects and production from her brother and co-writer Finneas. Next big thing? Duh. She already is. Out on Darkroom/Interscope.
Billie Eilish - Bad Guy
Deerhunter – Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
Getting ahead on the avalanche of releases coming out mid-January, including most of these, let's begin with the Atlanta band's eighth album. As the title suggests, it ponders on a grim future, with poems and many a profound moment of dark, nihilistic humour by frontman Bradley Cox, including asking what the point of making an album at all in a world without an attention span. And yet it grips you (that's the point) with several wonderful tunes of lo-fi indie, especially the harpsichord sound on Death in Midsummer and an overall style and sound of gritty slowness that perhaps matches where it was recorded – in the sparsely populated Texan desert city of Marf. Dry deliver indeed. Out on 4AD.
Deerhunter - Death In Midsummer
Some honourable mentions, though there are many more we could name:
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
Gabriel Ólafs – Absent Minded
Toro y Moi - Outer Peace
Beirut – Gallipoli
The Specials – Encore
Yak – Pursuit of Momentary Happiness
Yola – Walk Through Fire
Du Blonde – Lung Bread For Daddy
James Yorkston – The Route To The Harmonium
Robert Forster – Inferno
Bilge Pump – We Love You
Karen O and Danger Mouse – Lux Prima
Ibibio Sound Machine – Doko Mien
These New Puritans – Inside The Rose
The Hare and Hoofe – The Hare and Hoofe / The Terror of Melton
Jenny Lewis – On The Line
White Denim – Side Effects
Show Me The Body – Dog Whistle
The Matthew Herbert Big Band – The State Between Us
Carla dal Forno – Look Up Sharp
Pozi – PZ1
W.H. Lung – Incidental Music
Rozi Plain – What A Boost
Stealing Sheep – Big Wow
The Mountain Goats – In League With Dragons
Kevin Morby – Oh My God
Erland Cooper – Sule Skerry
The National – I Am Easy To Find
Pip Blom – Boat
Georgia Anne Muldrow – Vweto II
Ty Segall – First Taste
Marika Hackman – Any Friend
Ezra Furman – Twelve Nudes
Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury
Young M.A – Herstory in the Making
Elbow – Giants Of All Sizes
Mark Lanegan Band – Somebody's Knocking
Lankum – The Livelong Day
Underworld – Drift Series One: Sampler Edition
Moor Mother – Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes
Missing an album you loved? Please comment and add yours, and also have a look at the first part from yesterday. Also please use the search box at the top right hand fo the page to find more, or simply peruse the Album Section.
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