Two Big Egos in a Small Car
A passionately laid back overview of the arts and culture scene in York and Harrogate with observations on journalism. This podcast is hosted by Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers and regular guests.
Two Big Egos in a Small Car
Episode 160: Review of the Year (Part One)
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Charles fights through the floods to join Graham for a review of the cultural year. The duo discuss the films, plays, books and albums that most impressed them in 2023.
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Hello.
SPEAKER_00Good evening, Graham. Good evening, Anthony. Sorry I am late. Rushing over to the chantry this evening. Obviously, going through flood water like Noah's Ark everywhere, you know, extraordinary.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00But still, it's a good time to therefore look back at the year if we're still around next week once the flooding has taken over the world. I don't think it was that bad, Charles.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there were some bad patches, but and I did fall in the mud and then walk through a gigantic puddle like I was a 12-year-old schoolboy in each shot. How did you fall in the mud? Well, it was dark, it was peeing down. The water was running down the hill in big rivulets over wet leaves, and there was cars coming towards me, driving way too fast. And there was no way getting to the ticket machine without crossing the grass really. Or you could risk not get getting hit by a car. So I went for the walking across the grass routine auction. And uh sadly, the amount of water involved and the lack of grip in my shoes, I went flying through the air, then landed on the muddy grass. And uh I didn't injure myself, but my hands were covered in mud, my trousers, my jacket.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then I had a real rigmarole trying to do the parking as well, and it was still peeing down by rain. And then having done all that safely without getting knocked out of the cars, I then walked down the hill in the pavement to the Crown Hotel. And the puddle didn't look that big from a distance, but when I stood in it, I realised it was over my shoes. So I then I then turned up for this event at the Crown Hotel to represent the Harg advertiser, covered in mud with with shoes that squelched. Like I just like I was one of those bungling amateur local journalists who was in his early twenties, who would have been played by Gordon John was it William Gordon John Gordon Sinclair. Yeah, it was it was a real subtle or John John might have done it in his younger days.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but Johnson he wouldn't have cared because he likes looking scruffy. He would have laughed the whole thing else. Like a chump, is what I felt like.
SPEAKER_00Here's chump charmers. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's that you start looking back, which I'm almost reluctant to do, really. And I can't believe it. Another year that's whizzed by far too quickly. And uh, but nevertheless, um so many things we've seen, so many things we've done, some of them together, many a podcast of we've chewed the fat over things, and it's come to that time of the year to to look specifically uh at well, we're going to I think look at albums, we're going to look at film and we're going to look at TV, and and I'll touch on a couple of other areas that I that have I I've enjoyed covering as well, of course, this year. Which would you like to start with?
SPEAKER_01I'd like to start with an interruption. You remember that musician William Doyle, who used to be called East India? East India. Yeah, whose album Total Strife Forever got nominated for Mercury Prize. And he sort of combined sort of like a bit of an electronic dance edge with a bit of ambience with a bit of nice electronic pop. And then he stopped being East India youth and went back to his own name of William Doyle, and then he got a bit more pretentious and got more ambient, but still very good. And I really liked his album Great Spans of Muddy Time that came out two years ago. He looks like this sort of chap who should really be a 1920s English poet rather than a musician. Well, anyway, as you know, I like pretension and he's pretentious. But I even I was surprised by a tweet that William Donald did last week. He actually tweeted this, he said, walking around Morrison's listening to Vaughan Williams symphony number two. So it doesn't get any more sootish than that. I mean, even I don't walk around Morrison's listening to a blooming classical symphony. That's just it just Williams like in his own world.
SPEAKER_00I I can't imagine listening to Vaughan Williams in uh in Morrison's more reasons to shock Morrisons do not uh in one's earphones Vaughn Williams.
SPEAKER_01No, they have lots of pop music and rock music, usually Morrisons, don't they?
SPEAKER_00So they they do. So maybe it's to it's to blit it to to obliterate that and have something altogether more beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Possibly. Uh who knows? He he's he's an interesting, talented young man or youngish man. So I'm I'm not going to knock him by.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just a matter of interest. Does he do concerts?
SPEAKER_01I've seen him live. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's he's still within the sort of regular pop, you know, circuit, really. Yeah, he hasn't deserted that entirely. No, no. He's he's just he's just at the more sort of like fancy danny end of it.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Excellent. Well, we look at is I'm not sure whether he's gonna be in your list or not, because I think the album came out. Was it last year, the one you mentioned? Did it have the word muddy in it, Greg? It didn't have the word muddy in it, which you're very familiar with, muddiness now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Disgraced yourself with chumping and turning up as a chump at a public event. So Greg, we'll go with uh what do you want to go with? Do you want to go with your albums first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You you do your top five first. Okay, so I'm they're sort of in order, but they're sort of not in order. But um if I start with the reissue of the year, and this we're not doing categories, this will go on forever. No, no, they're not that no, just that this is the only re because I always like to look at you know, I tend to buy a lot of reissues, as you know. And this was impeccable. This is on the death of Terry Hall. And so the Funboy 3 says on the tin this one, the complete Fun Boy 3. It is absolutely everything they've done. So BBC sessions, alternative versions, it's utterly comprehensive, beautifully put together, nicely packaged. And the fun boy three was pretty short-lived if you look at it, really. I mean, obviously, Terry continued to work with Lindville. Um, but in the breakup of the specials, the Funboy 3, I still think have probably not been as appreciated as much as they could have done. And uh politically very strong, but romantic too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's get to the point here. I mean, interest in band Terry Hall, it's very 80s Funboy 3, mostly because it was in the 80s. So it doesn't get any more 80s than that. Uh but how does it sound I don't see that as a limitation? Yeah, does it sound like that?
SPEAKER_00I really I really don't see that as a limitation because does it sound better than then, or does it sound the same as then?
SPEAKER_01How does it sound?
SPEAKER_00It does sound of its period, but actually the the the within that though, the lyric, the lyrics sustain because you know, lyrics of romance and lyrics and and lyrics of damned romance and lyrics of of politics continue to have power, and uh so but obviously you're right, the arrangements are very, very much of that era. But again, I don't have a problem with that if I'm living in the past a lot of the time. And it did it did strike me that one of the things I have to say this year is I have not discovered one new band that has excited me this year. Now, whether that's me, I mean maybe that's a failing, and you can come and criticize me for that, but uh you know, well, you know, discovering you then I I know at least one new my lists are you know, then they are all bands I've sort of loved for a long time, but there is significance in number number four, everything but the girl fuse really are small. Yeah, but that but they're not those. See, this is 24 years since their last album. But both Ben and Tracy have continued to make albums, and in Tracy's case, written books as well. And this her voice is a thing of of of rare beauty, as we know, and it's probably nudging more towards what they be there became. So you know, the interest in the the the electronic side of it, the the dance, the the dance hall side of it. Um, but but so tune just for the hell of it. So I loved that. I loved that album.
SPEAKER_01I thought it if you're gonna come back the tracks I heard were good. It sounds sophisticated and very mature, but basically high quality.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't sound like of which the other album by which I've not put in the list, but one could include in that would be Lloyd Cole's On Pain album, which is exactly again. He interestingly has a lot of synthesizers now within that as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So now I know we've we've one, you were perhaps more dismissive of the teenage fan club than me. I have and ended up playing this album over and over. Nothing lasts forever. And I know what doesn't last forever, obviously, uh, if you like, is guitars that do rather more than just be jammed. But actually, if you I mean, no one criticizes Squeeze for writing songs as they've grown older that address that. No, no one would criticize Paul Weller for doing that, and I'm not going to criticize Teenage Fan Club for doing that. It is looking at the state of affairs as they are now. I know, Graham, you feel it's a little bit slippers and pipish, their music now, but they still have craft melody, and I think they get a sense of being older, which I I mean I I'm growing older. I think it's fine to have music that I love that reflects where I am, and this album does that.
SPEAKER_01Too much crest, not enough inspiration, but yeah, I I take your take your argument there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now, number number two, Slowdive, who of course came back after a long, long hiatus, and have now made their second album since that comeback, first one since 2017. Everything is alive. Here they have again marshalled what they have always been very good at, which is atmosphere, yeah, atmospherics. And I mean, I know shoegazing got you know got a bad press at the time, but uh again, I have loved the sound that they've created, and they've just just they've just honed it more and more and more, and you you find yourself absorbed in the mood of that album beautifully across its time. There again, they tend to be longer songs, um a little bit meandering or whatever, but there's always melody within them. And although the it the the um it's fair to say the lyrics are not the clearest. I'm not suggesting mumbling, but they're not the clearest to hit. But to some extent, that doesn't particularly matter. It's all about the mood. And if I sound like I'm you know winding down a little bit as a human being in my 60s, I I I don't again have I mean, it is alive, I mean it's not the greatest pulse has ever been, but I think slow dive, first of all, they absolutely justified coming back, and that doesn't always happen. The first comeback album I absolutely loved, but this is a perhaps a more one. So I was delighted that and my number one album, and this might just seem perverse, really, because uh here's the most contrary of musicians, is Kevin Rowland. But I have to say, yeah, I've I've always loved Dex's, and I know Marmite, I get that Kevin's Marmite, but I loved I love what he did with this album. Again, if I'm going with a theme tonight, I think it's probably where one is. And Kevin here is looking in particular, it's called Feminine Divine, and it's changed in his attitude towards women and in offering an apologia in the first part of the album. Uh, and then the second, it's utter praise for women, which he thinks is the greater, the great greater than men, basically. Although I think when we discussed the concert where on track where the uh his his um can well he he um he he kind of handed the microphone over, as it were, not literally but metaphorically, to uh the woman on the stage to do her bit for dis uh explaining why women are fantastic. Um, but he continued to then sort of rather dominate the stage, which is what Kevin says slightly, you know, it's much he was trying to make.
SPEAKER_01It's much easier to like see these things as a as a matter of theory than to actually live your life on that basis.
SPEAKER_00You yeah. Do you think musicians I mean, yes, because you can write a book that would do the same thing. I I mean, yes, actually, how you then perform might be different to to the the thesis, as it were, that you come up with. And it is very much a thesis of an album.
SPEAKER_01John Lennon sang, you know, imagine no possessions, but he and Yoko made sure there were wealthy people because they looked after their real estate and their finances really well. And the time he was he was murdered in 1980, a wealthy man. And I'm not saying he didn't believe what he wrote, he did, but it's one thing saying I don't believe possessions, another thing actually giving away all your possessions.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So I I've gone with Dex is as the album that I played the most this year, loved the loved the concert at York Barbican, and um again an uh a musician who um well he disappears and then he comes back, he thinks things through the changes that he does. It doesn't all work, not everything the the the the things within what he says doesn't always make complete and utter sense or doesn't always completely work.
SPEAKER_01But I love the fact that he's is the Nigel Farage of pop. Oh that's that's a terrible line. Imagine that. Did you want to withdraw that one?
SPEAKER_00I'm not so sure.
SPEAKER_01I'm not so sure I like that one, but um I mean it's just yeah, it's the sort of thing that Kevins would say.
SPEAKER_00It is so the feminine by Dex is album that I have uh still comes up with uh tunes that that what earworms is a good top five chums. Yeah, so I just can only apologize really for terrible words, a little bit my age.
SPEAKER_01I did think you do like lots of box sets by by guys from the 1960s, so uh I think it's good top five, high quality.
SPEAKER_00Right, I'd love to hear yours, Graham, and I'm hoping that maybe newer acts than I've come up with might feel more than I've done.
SPEAKER_01Maybe maybe a bit. There's quite a few acts I rejected that have been popular this year, so a lot of the other polls of best albums of the year inside the old year dying. And it is obviously a work of art because PG Harvey is a proper artist, but it's a bit of a hard listen. So even though it's quality, I don't want it. Lancombe have done really well.
SPEAKER_00The Irish sort of model So why have they done so well, Graham?
SPEAKER_01Number one in one number one in either Mojo or Uncut. Yeah, well Fal I've only heard two or three tracks of False Lankham, but as usual with Lankham, again it's like hard work. A bit like Richard Dawson is very hard. And you know, different. That's perfectly fine. But if if you don't get pleasure from listening to the album, so I've rejected seven Psalms. I played it again, desperately trying to like it. And I admire the ambition, I admire the tone of it and the feeling of it, and the spirit and the idea of it, but it's basically one tune, which isn't a classic tune, played over and over again and played very well. You know, it's very very in a sort of semi-acoustic fashion, lots of atmosphere, but it's one average tune that goes on for about three minutes. So I'm I'm I I can't have that in the top five. Uh Lana Del Rey tried desperately to like Did you know There's a Tunnel under Ocean Boulevard? And it has got some great tracks.
SPEAKER_00Sunday Times Sunday Times album of the year.
SPEAKER_01It sticks in your brain there's a title track, but the rest of it, there's a there's a couple of hip-hop and tracks, there's a sort of like indie track, but all the rest are Lana Del Ray's usual shtick of heavily emotional, doom-laden ballads on the piano. And once you hear the opening piano, that's it for the whole song. And once you hear Lana Del Ray voice starting the song, that's the tone for the whole song. I know there's a mix of auto-biology and a mix of playing with things and playing with ideas. So I can tell that she's something interesting. Kendra Lark, there's something interesting around. But it all seems heavily confusingly autobiographical, but with no great purpose. When you listen to the original self-indulgent songwriters of the 60s and 70s like John Leonard Elton John or Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell, who were autobiographical, they put their own lives and their own feelings within the construct of a well-arranged song with peaks and troughs, and with ideas that weren't just going woe is me. And the troll Lana del Rey is the it all starts with Coldplay and Snow Patrol. The monotone woe is me so sensitive, and oh oh, it's also it's also emotional, and there's no point to it, it doesn't reach a destination. You don't learn anything by listening to it, you just bathe yourself, you wallow in mystery. So I I had to reject Laradel Ray.
SPEAKER_00Which she's playing Graham next summer at uh she's been announced for Leeds Festival. Well, yeah, I'm gonna go and see it because I'm I was gonna say, is actually that's gonna be interesting how it transfers. I mean, she keeps producing albums, she's not one of these sort of turns up every so often. She's doing year after year of albums, so it'll be interesting to see what she chooses to play in Leeds and how she presents them.
SPEAKER_01She's clearly talented and interesting, but I don't have to like it, and I don't like it that much. But I want to see her live because I would like to be persuaded that I'm wrong. If I go and see her live at Leeds Festival and she's actually amazing live, I'll think wow, I was totally wrong. She's great.
SPEAKER_00And I'm I think it's really good that she's a headliner at Leeds. I think that that's um rather well, you know, Liam Gallagher, rather obvious to have him. But anyway, that's uh that's for another bit of thought. Right, so Graham, these are what you've rejected. Number number one prediction. I'm gonna make one blur will be in there. Blur will be in there.
SPEAKER_01Over to you, Graham. Yeah, so Hamish Hawk's number five with Angel Numbers, which is Fallout to Heavy Elevator, and this was almost his breakthrough album, but it didn't get America Prize nomination. He hasn't suddenly become a best seller, it doesn't appear in lots of other people's top 50 albums of the year. He's not, is it? But Hamish Hawk, who's a sort of like up market Scottish Scottish version of Morrissey, uh but better than that sounds, full of like great using language and great melodies, and enjoyable to listen to, but always interesting. And I just find him way better than people who I think he's almost although he's a bit slightly eccentric, he's almost too normal now. To be respected now by the world, if you're not a billion streamed, you have to be a bit weird and preferably a bit interacting. Yeah, that's what seems to get you curious. And image hawk is actually entertaining, so ooh, entertaining. Nobody wants entertaining anymore. Anyway, that's number five. Number four, they get better and better. They manage to take classic English guitar-based pop rock songs and imbue them with like a really natural, quiet sophistication, which never overstays its welcome, and it it's just quietly classy the whole time.
SPEAKER_00What's the album called, Rem? Sea of Mirrors, very good album indeed. So this is the coral, and sorry, because the line was slightly unclear there, wasn't it? Uh yeah, not the coral. Pardon? Oh, yeah. How long have the coral been?
SPEAKER_01Since the late 90s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Do you reckon they're really at a peak at this point? That this is a band who've continued over the years to improve and improve and improve.
SPEAKER_01Well, they started off very well. The first couple of albums were big hits, and then they got interesting, but stopped having such quite big hits, and then they kept to be interesting without really hitting any peaks. And then suddenly the last two, three albums, it's like they've learned a lot and come back and refined what they could already do into an even better version of it. It's very rare for a band to get but they have. Number three. Number three, uh, Young Fathers, heavy, heavy. Yes, they are a completely strange band. They've got melodies, they've got some pop ideas in there, they've got bits of rap and hip-hop in there somewhere as well, they've got bits electronica, but the end result is dominated by the drums and by the call and response vocals. And there's I've never seen them live, but there's live. But young fellows who are from Edinburgh, they're really they're it's like a it's like a tribal and you can't quite work out where they're coming from because they're they're quite thoughtful, intelligent, arty guys, but the music they make is very emotional and very powerful. So I've never got to the bottle of Young Fathers, and uh Heavy Heavy is probably the best album I've done so far. Yeah. And number two blur, the ball of Darren.
SPEAKER_00So this is a I mean to call it a comeback album is a bit cheesy, but um they came back and played gigs at uh was it Wembley that was it Wembley they played? I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and that obviously coincided with the new album. And this is an album that's basically been appearing in all lists. I wonder what marks this album out as maybe better than previous time they returned.
SPEAKER_01Uh, first of all, melodies, each of the songs has got a very good melody and is. very written song doesn't the other thing is emotion I don't know what's happened to Damon Albert but he seems to have had an emotional epiphany he's always been a bit of a he's he's always seemed to be quite cynical and this album is full of heart he hasn't lost his intelligence but he seems to have of gained a heart and it's quite an emotional album it's like it not only like presses the right buttons in terms of like indie guitar pop and you know ballads and being you know being enjoyable to listen to it's also quite affecting it sort of moves you in blur and I like blur a lot in the 1990s I saw a lot of times they didn't move you didn't buy Blur album to be moved that's not what Blur did in the the ballad of Darren it was moving so it's a moving album so I I at first I thought it wasn't that great and when I played it last week again I thought this is as good as anything did in the 1990s back 20 years later and do something as good as what used if not better. So that's quite extraordinary I mean you you would not call this a pop album would you I mean it is not pop anymore it has got one out and out pop tracks on the limited edition version of one of the two extra tracks well one's a fantastic ballad gorgeous heartbreaking ballad but the other song which might have helped El Max I I would have taken off one of the slower tracks and banged on the other pop tune so that's number two and I knew I I thought that would would be in your list and number one Graham number one I'm doing this to be perverse a little bit so the Bruce Peter and David from Field Music they both did two solo products this year and by solo that still means the other Bruce brothers involved somewhere along the line they never do anything entirely separate daylight saving records and Peter David Bruce did a very interesting album called The Soft Struggles which was very ambitious it was basically mixing a bit of uh Astral Weeks by man Morrison meets Nick Drake meets Brazilian 60s Bossa nova with a semi-orchestral acoustic feel and it could easily have been you know a disaster because that's an ambitious thing to try and pull off and lo and behold the songwriting is still good the arrangements are still good and even though David Bruce certainly can't sing as well as Van Morrison he's very sensibly uh kept his singing within the tone of each song and kept it inside the song he hasn't pushed it beyond the limitations and so it's it's an absolutely lovely album and Peter Bruce album Blow Dry Colossus it's it's a crazy meditation on the past based on the 70s and 80s musical influences and it sort of mixes a bit of yellow magic orchestra bit 80s a bit of 80s glossy pop jazz funk a bit of the stuff that Eno and David Boyd did together in the 70s a little bit of classical music a little bit of hip hop and it's almost entirely instrumental and it's like one of those crazy ideas that you have in the pub and they never get around to doing it. And again like Peter Bruce has done this album and it's a bad album and it could easily have been just rubbish or completely frivolous and silly but I think it's actually a really good album musically and there's so much depth and it so much richness that you can play it a million times and you would you could argue that Peter Bruce and David Bruce both that have done well in the best of the but I would argue that I think I I think those if they were done by Lancet Paul Simon would be highly so so I'm putting them there because they deserve to be there. And I am I right in thinking that neither of us has gone for a single luxury music prize nominated album I don't think so no no but if you look at the rough trade shops done by their individual which are always interesting there's a couple of shops where they pick albums that you may have heard of pick albums that you've never heard of and which you can guarantee although not without merit and probably interesting in some ways aren't actually that good because I think the Holy L now syndrome that all music critics always have which you and me despite how great we are have as well but we we we we we know so much that we can rise above it that's the way I look at it the Rough Trade Shops people oh my find the most obscure album better than everybody else and I've never liked it I mean I I tend to look at um I used to look at what timeout used to choose I have always read with interest what Rough Trade has chosen um of of them the the the the monthly magazines or or indeed uh websites any in particular that you look at with looks like we're only going to do albums this week that's fine we can we can that's not a problem but are there any that you you you know you take more interest in than than any others uh when they do their retrospective of the uh well like all good journalists you never trust another journalist so I don't even trust you Graham when I used to get the enemy in sounds every week for for a long time I used to like look forward to buying it every single week it was great even then I didn't trust most reviewers' opinions there's only one or two people I'd actually trust in general and nowadays I don't trust any of them I did there's virtually no there's a lot of well written articles happening in the music sphere in the digital world but uh opinions that I trust hardly any so for example the the lead singer of Fontaines DC Grind which is fairly folk but unlike Lancam is actually actually very good songs that you want to listen to. If Grindchattin wasn't already well known and Fontaines DC weren't already regarded by the world of rough trade shops as being a big band that would be on people's lists because it's really good.
SPEAKER_00Because because there's that they're not going to impress any of their any of their mates by going oh yes I really like the guy from Fontaines DC's album because everybody's goes oh Fontaine DC yeah yeah yeah we know them yeah yeah it's like old news so it's the perpetu that happens when it comes to music reviewing so what you're basically saying Graham is trust our lists and nobody else's yeah but our lists are based on what we listen to then the the problem is that you know I haven't got time to listen to 200 new albums a year.
SPEAKER_01So I can't I don't pretend to be an expert on three but of of of the 2030 that I have knowledge of I'm pretty sure that my top five's good.
SPEAKER_00Well Graham next week we will return to doing best of next week uh we just to train it we're gonna do uh best films of the year television programs of the year and maybe because we we I I do think it'd be nice just to have a maybe we just talk a few through a few gigs of the year maybe an exhibition of the year as well you've been listening to the podcast Two Big Egos in a small car your hosts were Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson. This was a Baltic sub production