This is the first year I have decided to compile a Songs of the Year list, but then 2015 has been a rather good year for music. It was hard to restrict the list to just 25 tracks; there could have been many more. Not only could most of the year’s best albums have contributed more than one, there are several songs from earlier years that I have included in the list, because I only discovered them this year, and they are too great to leave off. Most of the tracks do have associated videos, but not all of them do. I will note that when relevant.
So: starting at No. 25 and working my way up:
25. “He Is” by Ghost: Album Meliora
A great sing-along track from an album that is definitely fun and listenable but not truly “great” (at least in any real meaning of the word).
24. “Beyond Metropolis” by Shriekback: Album Without Real String or Fish
The 80s are back…in a big way this year, and 80s alternative icons Shriekback do it the best. The cleverly post-apocalyptic track “Beyond Metropolis” is the one that grabs me most from this album, but there is no video for it alone. Start at 17:33 in the link below, or listen to the whole album.
23. “Happy Returns” by Steven Wilson: Album Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Wilson does pop. Or something like that. This track does have its poignant moments, but I simply cannot muster up the interest to place it higher.
Continuing on with the Gigs of the Year…now we are into the good stuff. I saw some great shows this year as well as some no-so-great. The best concert of the year also turned out to be the last one I saw — I had high hopes for this gig, and the guys did not disappoint.
Riverside (The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland)
This was the fourth of the four gigs in a row that I caught during the Love, Fear and the Time Machine tour in North America. It was a difficult show; Duda was sick and exhausted, battling some kind of throat infection. Cleveland came the day after blowing the roof off in Chicago and Mariusz was essentially running on fumes, doing his best to not just phone it in but clearly struggling, short on energy and fighting his way through the songs. However, towards the end he got a huge injection of energy when the crowd belted out Happy Birthday (and mangled his name; his expression was priceless). That really seemed to make him happy and boosted the last few songs.
Árstíðir (Church of St. Stephen’s-in-the-Field)
I can’t remember exactly how I came across this outfit, gentle folk rock/post-rock from Iceland; I tried a few tracks from youtube and they didn’t really grab me, far too sedate; but the idea of seeing a band like this in a church seemed like something worth checking out. And they really were very good, very musical, personable and intimate, a beautiful setting, it was a special evening.
Riverside (The Mod Club, Toronto)
Toronto audiences are a bit weird. Really hipster alty and metal types, not really into prog, and I was a bit nervous about the turnout for Riverside given the size of the venue. And the crowd was smaller than I had hoped for, a couple hundred people or so, but the show, being the first of four in a row I was to see, was a great introduction to the new material and new stage presence of Riverside. They were much heavier on stage than the new album would have suggested, lots of energy; and it was the first time to experience the beauty of “Found” with the lights.
As the end of 2015 looms, it is time to start thinking about the Musical Year that Was. I will begin with a two – part post on the gigs I attended, starting at the bottom and working my way to the Show of the Year.
I took in a lot of gigs this year, more than I realized. A few of those were post-rock or related shows in the style that generally does not appeal to me; I went in large part because some notable bands in the genre passed through town. I was willing to give them a chance because more than once I have been pleasantly surprised by a band’s live performance when I was not a fan of their albums. The major news of course was the return of Riverside to North America; I managed to take in four of their shows via a massive roadtrip.
Swans, (Opera House)
I was actually excited to see Swans, a rather legendary band in some corners, and one that has been around for a long time. Their last two albums have been interesting. But…an hour and three long drony meandering musical excursions later I had had enough. Bored to tears, I left, the first time I had walked out of a gig in memory. Even a naked Thor Harris was not enough to keep me there.
Mono (Lee’s Palace)
Mono is a well-regarded Japanese post-rock outfit and would seem a shame to miss them, but that slow atmospheric going-nowhere-fast style of post rock is just not for me. I stuck it out for most of the gig but split early. I got the point, and I can say that I saw them.
Haken (The Hard Rock)
I wrote a brief and rather scathing review of their album The Mountain for Prog Archives, and I still do not understand what appeal these guys have. However, I decided to take a chance because sometimes a band whose studio stuff you don’t like can put on a decent live show (see: Anathema)…but nope. Their derivative style of prog is no better live and the frontman is exceedingly irritating with all his rock-star posturing.
Explosions in the Sky (Nathan Phillips Square)
Another iconic atmospheric post-rock outfit, this time from the US. It was a free gig around the PanAm games that were held in Toronto over the summer, and that was the main reason I went; I already knew I was not fond of them. They were energetic, and skilled, but all the songs ended up sounding the same.
Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything)
Lost Her Way Home
The Propagation of Light (Through the Ether of Emotion)
So Just Hang On, Beautiful One
In Three Seconds I’ll Be Gone
Forever Dancing Under a Fallen Sky
Wherever We Begin to Fall (Broken Glass Will Surely Follow)
The Empty Gorgeousness of All
Planck Length
Over the Edge It Goes
The great thing about social media is the sheer amount of music that can be found, via recommendations and links from friends, from various genre-based Facebook groups…Youtube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp…there is more great music out there than I will ever get to hear if I live to be a hundred. The disadvantage of social media is, well, the sheer amount of music… yeah. I could spend my entire day online just clicking links. It is both exciting and daunting at the same time. I simply have to bypass most of the stuff that people share: no time, no ability to focus on it, whatever. I know I have missed a lot.
But eventually there comes some time to poke around, to sample the links that folks seem to be most excited about. On one day I decided to try out a video shared by a few of my friends who were so enthusiastic they were almost incoherent. The band had a strange name seemingly taken from the Periodic Table, and the album cover was a rather beautiful bit of art.
This, the very first track I heard — which I believe is the last track on this album — stopped me dead in my tracks. I could not quite fathom what I was hearing. All I knew was that I had to hear more of the album, and when I did I had to hear it again. And the more I played it, the more I had to play it. It dug in deeply and insistently and relentlessly, like some musical version of Cordyceps, and zombie-like I was compelled to play the thing. Over and over. This does not happen very often, and usually if it does, the album does not last for very long. It gets overplayed and then set aside. But so far there seems no evidence that I can overplay …And Down Goes the Sky. This album seems to have found a special niche in my soul.
Confession time…and some context. I will say right off the bat: I struggled mightily to review this album when it first came out. I made a few attempts, and even posted some, but frankly none of them ended up worth the time it took to launch Word. It pains me to say that they were pretty much the sort of hagiographic piles of adulatory crap I deplore reading from others, and deep down, even at the time I wrote them, I knew it. But I chose to ignore my gut.
What I think happened was this: Shrine of New Generation Slaves was the first album that Riverside released after I discovered them and became a fan, and I had just spent most of the preceding year immersed in the band’s (and Lunatic Soul’s) discography, listening to almost nothing else, stunned and exhilarated by the discovery of music I had been waiting for all my life. Naturally I had a huge emotional stake in the new material.
When the special blue vinyl pre-order arrived (the first of the several versions to hit my doorstep) and the playing began…well, things started to go south from there. My immediate reaction was: This is not the album I have been waiting for. But because at some level it had to be that album, and the accolades began pouring in from all directions…I suppressed my instincts and spent the next year trying to talk myself into loving it. Even the video accompanying the first single, “Celebrity Touch”, didn’t dismay me as much as it should have.
…But now a couple of years have passed, and I hope I am far enough distanced to deal with SoNGS fairly. The truth is, I don’t love the album, and that is tough to admit. So let’s get this party started.
After the release of Anno Domini High Definition, four long years passed before the fifth full-length album appeared in 2013. However, the guys were not idle: Mariusz Duda released two albums for his Lunatic Soul solo project: Lunatic Soul II in 2010, and Impressions in 2011, and the band continued to work on new material.
As it turned out, 2011 marked the 10th year of the band’s existence, and the Memories in My Head EP became part of the celebration of their first decade. It certainly seemed as though the band had reached a high water mark: Their label in Poland, Mystic Productions, released the 6-cd Reality Dream box set (combining the first three albums with additional material), and Inside Out released several limited edition coloured vinyl versions of their first four albums. The band then embarked on a “Jubilee Year” tour of Europe, which culminated with the release of this EP; they also began talk of a new album.
“When something ends, something else begins/We are moving on”.
Memories in My Head was intended as a farewell nod to the foundational Riverside sound of the Trilogy years (and perhaps to placate the fans impatient for a new album): as ADHD (and subsequent albums) demonstrated, the musical intentions and direction and of the band had shifted, and would continue to do so. Still, the EP may well be one of the band’s most beloved releases, and it is not hard to see (or indeed hear…) why. MiMH truly is a magnificent little album, a consummate distillation of everything that made the Riverside sound unique, an almost perfect summing up of ten years of musical and lyric artistry, inspiration and influences, writing and touring.
Clocking in at a shade under 33 minutes (and by now the numbers game should need no explanation), the three glorious tracks merge seamlessly into each other, creating a musical flow that makes the EP feel almost like one long, magnificent song. Driven by Piotr Grudziński’s hallmark melodic winding guitar themes, and Mariusz Duda’s powerful leading bass and fine vocals, it is packed with musical metaphors and classic Riverside tropes and themes, lushly atmospheric, full of the vast, cinematic soundscape that is so fundamental to their sound. Lyrically Duda is very much on the ball; there is some excellent word-smithing here, at least on the first two tracks, evoking both nostalgia for the past and hope for the future. “Forgotten Land” does break the continuity in that regard, being one of the very few songs he has written (for any of his projects) that is not from an intimate first or second-person perspective. However, the track was used in a trailer for The Witcher 2 video game, so it works in that respect.
Memories in My Head looks back to the more expansive, more progressive, much-beloved sound of the band’s origins, and winds up that era of the band’s history in an almost perfect fashion. There could hardly be a better way to commemorate their first ten years.
Released: June 2009 (Poland); July 2009 (Europe and RoW)
Tracklist
Hyperactive
Driven to Destruction
Egoist Hedonist
Left Out
Hybrid Times
And then there were four….
Mariusz Duda, when interviewed, often likes to draw attention to a couple of things: that Riverside has a recognizably distinctive sound, and the band does not like to remain stylistically static. These facts are abundantly clear nowadays, but I warrant that even after three albums, the second point was not so obvious. The Trilogy introduced an unmistakable Riverside-ish musical Gestalt, one that essentially defined them and even though there were some differences from album to album (especially in regard to how heavy they became), there really was a unity of sound that likely has helped pigeonhole them in the “progressive” category from which it is proving difficult for the guys to extract themselves (in fact, anyone who has paid any attention at all to interviews and comments over the past couple of years will realize that being styled “progressive metal” is somewhat of a Duda bugbear).
Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD), their fourth album (with its four-word title and double-entendre acronym) was the first album where this desire for stylistic change became undeniably manifest. And what a change it was. It must have seemed as if they were not just abandoning their lush progressive roots, but dropkicking them into the next solar system. The guys took their sumptuous atmospheric sound and slammed it head on into a heavy metal wall; they embraced it so enthusiastically one might even suspect they were eager for a change. The keyboard sound acquired a much harder edge. The guitars are dense and raunchy and full of relentless energy, the bass punchy and riff-heavy, taking the lead like it had never done before. Piotr Kozieradzki must have been in drum heaven on this one, with his extensive death metal background. No acoustic guitar, no ballads, no real soft pieces except the start of “Left Out”. For all that, Duda’s first point stands: There is no doubt we are listening to Riverside—their distinctive core remains untouched.
Welcome to the second post in a new occasional project: revisiting music that has sat, unplayed, in my vinyl collection for so long I don’t remember what it sounds like. Often these are albums from artists whose other work I like, or that I bought because a song or two caught my attention, or that thought I “should” have for whatever reason. Sometimes they are albums that once got a lot of play but for some reason drifted out of consciousness. I think we all have managed to accumulate a few of these albums.
So I’ve decided that this blog is a perfect excuse to haul them out, dust them off, give them a spin, and write up short reviews to tell you about them. With luck, I will discover some forgotten treasures. On the other hand it may inspire me to get rid of stuff and open up some much-needed (Much. Needed.) space for albums I might actually want to own.
Walking Into Mirrors by Johnny Warman
Released: 1981
Lineup:
Johnny Warman: music, lyrics, vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Guest Musicians:
Jerry Marotta: drums, percussion
Larry Fast: keyboards and synth effects
Tony Levin: bass, stick
John Giblin: bass
Dave Lawson: synthesizers and sequencing
Peter Gabriel: vocals (track 5)
Tracklist:
Walking into Mirrors
Radio Active
Searchlights
Martian Summer
Screaming Jets
Three Minutes
Will You Dance with Me?
(S.O.S) Sending Out Signals
Dancing Dolls
Fantastic Light
Johnny Warman is a British singer/songwriter whose most successful phase was during the 1980s; he has made a few albums over the years, and is still active, but Walking Into Mirrors was the only album that really made any kind of impact. The track “Screaming Jets” became a minor hit and probably is the only song that Warman may be remembered for–and that is largely due to the guest vocals of Peter Gabriel who was hitting his stride as a solo artist in that decade.
And yet…while Warman may seem to be a One-Hit Wonder, it does not feel right to actually call him that, mostly because it is unlikely that Walking Into Mirrors got the play or attention it really deserved. “Screaming Jets” as a single had the name cachet of Gabriel to drive sales, but the entire album is stellar, with several tracks arguably superior.
Walking Into Mirrors is unmistakably an album of the 1980s, with its short, bass-heavy, densely synth-driven pop songs, effortlessly evoking the night-club dance-fests and the unquiet angst that the relentless clubbing could never quite dispel. But dig beneath the surface: the lyrics, the superb arrangements — these songs are piercingly intelligent, incisive both lyrically and musically; the lyrics are full of anxious trepidation, loneliness, desperate hope, quietly apocalyptic, but the music is upbeat, poppy and sometimes even cheerful – the world may end in a blinding flash, but the aliens are here because they are lonely without music of their own…and will you dance with me?
Much of the success of the sound of this album is down to the outstanding roster of guests. Warman was held in such regard at one time that iconic 80s musicians were happy to show up to lend their chops: pioneering synthesizer whiz Larry Fast; drummer Jerry Marotta (who stepped in because Phil Collins couldn’t make it) and who went on to become a hugely in-demand player for just about everybody; prolific studio and guest bassist John Giblin; and the legendary Tony Levin on bass and stick. And of course, Peter Gabriel…. Warman wrote the music and lyrics, and does the vocal job with his distinctive Cockney accent (which may make or break this album depending on one’s tolerance for … “interesting” voices).
This was an album that I used to play a lot. Most of the songs are eminently listenable, ranging from pure 80s synth-pop to gentle, almost ambient electronic-based balladry. The standouts include not only “Screaming Jets” with Warman talking the lyrics and directing the key changes while Gabriel wails and cries eerily in the background; but also the disquietingly cheerful “Dancing Dolls” featuring Levin’s distinctive stick bass sound.
But the real crank-to-eleven show-stopper is the last track, “Fantastic Light”. Majestically funereal, an ominous slow synthesizer line and massive snapping snare underlie Warman’s desperate keening vocals: “I’m waiting for that one fantastic light” — an apocalyptic warning if ever there was one.
Live tracks recorded and filmed during a concert played in Łódź, Poland on May 17th 2008.
The reviews of the three studio albums that make up the Reality Dream Trilogy are posted, so it seems like a sensible spot to put a brief précis of the only live concert video Riverside have managed to bring to fruition thus far, a live set of tracks and a DVD stitched together from songs from those albums. If they played anything from Voices in My Head or new songs during this show, it does not appear here.
As of this writing, apart from some videos on the band’s and the label’s Youtube channels, the Reality Dream DVD is the only official record of the band’s on-stage presence—at least as it was at one point in their career. It provides a touchstone for comparisons to their recent performances, especially if one refers to the documentary “In Between” that accompanied the last Lunatic Soul album wherein Mariusz Duda briefly discusses the changes made by the band in how they approach their live shows. Duda is indeed much more of a physical presence on stage now than he was in the early days, and Michał Łapaj is much less restrained…but otherwise there isn’t a lot of difference. They were and are superbly rehearsed, almost preternaturally in touch with each other as performers, and while audience participation is more actively encouraged in recent years the band seems to play more to each other than they do directly to the audience.
In terms of production it is a good record of a live performance, fairly straightforwardly shot but alas edited as if someone had spent too much time watching Porcupine Tree’s Arriving Somewhere DVD, chock full of faux scratches and fading colour and the flare of decaying film, with aspect ratios flipping back and forth at random. All of that distracts more than it enhances. Just give us the show. The songs are almost perfectly rendered versions of the studio tracks with some minor concessions to the live context. This perhaps is the biggest contrast with the current approach: today many of the songs have been modified and transformed into unique and in some cases superior versions for live performance.
There are four versions of this show, in different formats, and each with slightly different track orders. At the moment the availability of the different releases varies from “You Can Find It If You Dig” (the DVD mostly) to “Yeah Right, Dream On”. Set lists for the different versions continue below the fold.
We’re halfway through the year so I thought I would do a quick run-down of the music that has caught my attention up to this point. There are not a lot of albums on the list; for a variety of reasons I have not been knocking myself out seeking new music. But finding it is never a problem – there is far more great music out there than anyone could ever listen to, and many of my friends have reasonably decent taste. 🙂
It might be a short list, and not everything on there is going to make it across the finish line, but the quality of the releases has been outstanding. Let me put it this way: if this year’s no-hopers had appeared in 2014, my year-end tally would have looked quite different. Last year it was tough to come up with ten albums without padding the list; this year it is going to be hard to leave things off. If the quality of the upcoming releases is as high as what has already appeared, I may simply make a Top 15.
This is a year that demonstrates beyond all doubt that the best, most engaging, most sheerly awesome sounds are being made by people no-one has ever heard of, or who have been forgotten—folks who have nothing to lose and in the overall scheme of things (especially in the current musical economic reality) little to gain; when the icons seem to have become mired in hype and self-referential twaddle, and when genres have become meaningless (not that they ever were really meaningful, mind you).
So without further ado, here are the best (so far) of the maybe 16 albums I considered, in roughly reverse order. Needless to say this is subject to change at any time, and is pretty much bound to change as the new crop of upcoming releases hits.
