A bit late, but here are some things, old and new, that have been affecting the ears pleasantly this summer...
Valet - Nature (Kranky Records)
This quietly powerful album crept up on me but has ended up being one of my most listened-to new releases this summer. Honey Owens & co make extremely restrained, subtle but immersive music that I grudgingly suppose fits into a shoegaze-ish type of category; beautiful and haunting, fragile but never weak.
David Bowie - Young Americans (RCA)
My favourite Bowie album changes all the time; mostly it has been between Station to Station and Diamond Dogs, but recently it's been Young Americans. Notoriously a 'plastic soul' album, it has far more intense feeling hidden beneath its smooth surface than is usual in his 70s work, and he has arguably never sung better. It's somehow typical that possibly the best song on the album, Who Can I Be Now? is available only as a bonus track on the CD reissue. Possibly it felt too revealing to the wilfully enigmatic and chaotic Bowie of the mid 70s.
Myrkur - M (Relapse records)
Stupidly heralded by a pre-backlash, Myrkur's debut album can easily withstand the criticism (mostly not even music-related) thrown at it by her critics. Ulver-esque black metal, folk and classical influences and superb songwriting skills make for one of the black metal releases of the year. Look; if it's good enough for Garm (who produced it), it should be good enough for you. Unless you just don't like the music of course, which is fair enough.
Lee Brown Coye - Where Is Abby and Other Tales (Cadabra Records)
A genuine oddity, this album is a spoken word album of macabre stories by the American artist and writer Lee Brown Coye, whose writings have largely been overshadowed by the weird and expressive artwork he produced for pulp horror magazines. Both of these were only aspects of a large and fascinating talent though; hopefully more people will discover him through this release, which features readings by the great man's son.
Various Artists - Mongol Metal (Mongol Metal)
This compilation brings together the work of three folk-metal bands from Inner Mongolia and makes for an addictively familiar-yet-strange listening experience. The basic ingredients of folk metal - modern, mainly power metal with a pinch of extreme metal (blastbeats/raw vocals) plus elements of traditional folk music, in this case, Mongolian string and wind instruments and throat singing. It works surprisingly well, though, like all folk metal, it has a humorous aspect if not embraced as intended.
Horna - Hengen Tulet (World Terror Committee)
Horna have produced some of the best black metal of the last decade and their latest album is no exception. It hasn't replaced Sanojesi äärelle as my favourite Horna album, but then that is one of the greatest black metal albums ever; this one is still great though.
Alif - Aynama-Rtama (Nawa Recordings)
I didn't necessarily expect to like an album of unclassifiable music by Arabic musicians, but there is an addictive quality to the mix of unfamiliar (to me) sounds, sampling, funkiness, jazz and so forth.
Manierisme - フローリア (self release)
I LOVE Manierisme, but he/it is one those artists/bands who it is impossible to convince people to like. This demo is at once so noisy, so evocative, so extreme and so tuneful that it's kind of disorientating as well as immersive; it doesn't sound like anything else really; or rather it does; it sounds like Edwardian vaudeville music, WW2 broadcasts, martial marching music and extreme black metal all being played at the same time. Jekyll is some kind of genius to make it all work.
Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth (Ipecac Recordings)
Le Butcherettes are always great; primal yet skilful Iggy-Birthday Party-Lunachicks type punk rock, when it works, is hard to beat, and when Le Butcherettes play it it always works; and that isn't all they play. And this time they actually got Iggy to croak along with Teri Gender Bender; what's not to like?
Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Dress For Excess (EMI/Parlophone)
I have no excuses for loving SSS's second album; it's so 1988, so flimsy, Pete Waterman had a hand in it somehow; but I heard it at the time, liked it then and it still sounds like the future to me now. And it has a spurious kind of Blade Runner melancholy alongside all the recycled 50s riffs and pop-punk posing.
Chris Cornell - Higher Truth (Universal Music)
On the whole, Chris Cornell's solo career has been (to me at least) a patchy, hit & miss and sometimes pretty dull affair thus far. I've only been able to have a few listens but so far I love his new album; it's direct, moving, catchy, not bland and he sounds wide awake; great.
Now for the autumn...
Please see the updated and improved version of this article here
I have been listening to Jobriath and Creatures of the Street since I bought them over twenty years ago for £1. At that point I didn't really use the internet, which was anyway nothing like as vast as it is now. I first came across Jobriath's name via a dismissive mention in Charles Shaar Murray's GREAT 1977 article Glam Rock Remembered. At the time I was very interested in 70s glam, which I firstly got into through Bowie and Lou Reed and then Roxy Music and the New York Dolls. After that it was a case of wanting to explore the breadth and depth of it; there was a lot of great stuff out there and a lot of crap. It was an amazingly all-pervasive style, from the high street/kid-friendly pop fluff of Hello, Flintlock or (!)Gary Glitter(!), to the serious-band-but-fun-music of Slade and The Sweet to the arty/pretentious Bowie/Roxy and the glittery underbelly of Iggy and Wayne/Jayne County. There was glam for all occasions, as well as the post-glam/pre-punk Beatles-influenced pop of the Bay City Rollers or Pilot (to this day one of the most underrated of Scottish bands).
But this is not about glam, it's about Secret Goldfish Syndrome. The point is that I loved the Jobriath albums (and still do) and part of that love came from the fact that not only didn't I know anyone else that liked Jobriath, I didn't know anyone else who had heard of him. And I was happy for it to be that way. Secret Goldfish Syndrome applies in all of the arts (and many other spheres too), but I will mainly focus on music because that is more fun to write about. At first glance it seems like the classic music critic attitude that you can't like anything once it's successful, but as we will see, it's more complex than that. In theory, if you like something and don't know anyone else that likes it you should want to evangelise; and sometimes you do. But sometimes you want to keep these things to yourself; like Jobriath. Since then, though, Jobriath has (thanks in part to Morrissey) had some of the respect he is due for those great albums. His work is available again; people write about him and make films about him. I'm glad and it's nice; especially since I can now replace my albums if they get scratched or broken. But it was nice being the only Jobriath fan I knew too.
Jobriath is not an isolated phenomenon; Searching for Sugar Man is a great documentary, and it's nice that, unlike Jobriath's success, it didn't come along too late to improve the life of the artist himself. But I bought Rodriguez's Cold Fact (as it turns out, the South African pressing with the slightly superior sleeve, where the background is black not white) in a charity shop on the strength of the cover and loved it, when the only other person I knew that had heard it was my brother. Cold Fact is just as great as it was then, but now that it isn't a secret goldfish it has taken its place in the pantheon of popular music and belongs to everyone.
Forever Changes by Love was always in the public domain; but I didn't know that when I first heard it in (I think) 1989. I was attracted to it by the psychedelic cover art, expecting something cheesy and hopefully drenched in 'grooviness' and wah-wah, but instead hearing delicate, summery guitars and 'the snot has caked against my pants/it has turned into crystal'. Something far more strange and addictive and satisfying than mere kitsch; art in fact. Some years later Forever Changes started cropping up in the kind of 'best of the 60s' lists beloved of 90s NME and, like Jobriath a few years later, it became everybody's property.
When your secret goldfish band or artist becomes public property, the work gets a scrutiny that can be uncomfortable; when loving Jobriath's albums as something personal and private, his peculiar Mick Jagger-meets-Elton John vocal style, his extravagant old Hollywood flamboyance/musical arrangements and his assimilation of Bowie/Ziggy-isms in his aesthetic, lyrical and musical approach are all part of what makes him so loveable. In the wider world they can be criticised in an entirely valid way that has nothing to do with one's personal taste.
Anyway; thinking more about the whole phenomenon of secret goldfish it is possible to define various types (with the disclaimer that there is no accounting for taste; someone in the world will no doubt regard Dire Strait's Brothers in Arms as their own personal meaningful discovery; and that's alright).
The mainstream goldfish
The subjective nature of Secret Goldfish Syndrome means that, unlike sometimes-related phemomena such as 'outsider music', commercial success or mainstream recognition of the artist/band doesn't necessarily preclude them from secret goldfish status, although it does make it less likely. For example, probably all of The Beatles albums are probably just too well known, too readily available to be a true secret goldfish album (at a push Magical Mystery Tour maybe?) but some of their songs certainly can be; probably not 'Hey Bulldog' anymore, but certainly oddities like 'Goodnight' (a personal favourite) or 'Mister Moonlight'.
The (relatively) unsuccessful mainstream goldfish
The key secret goldfish works by major artists are those that are considered lesser works by the critical orthodoxy or that for one reason or another are slightly less well known. It must be hard to feel that say, Thriller or Bad is yours, but possibly Forever, Michael (never heard it) could be.
This category used to include works which have subsequently become acknowledged as nasterpieces (see Hey Bulldog above) like De La Soul's Buhloon Mindstate, Lou Reed's Berlin and The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, but there are still albums by major artists that could (and possibly do) qualify: Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, The Cure's Japanese Whispers, The Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup, Kiss' Music From The Elder would all be good examples, though the latter really does suck quite a bit.
Also any album by a well-known band without a key member has secret goldfish potential: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band without Alex, Iron Maiden with Blaze Bayley, Motley Crue with John Corabi, Judas Priest with Tim Owens, Van Halen with Gary Cherone (maybe it's mainly a rock/metal thing?)
The outsider goldfish
So-called 'outsider music', perhaps because of the lack of distancing caused by professionalism/production values etc is a natural place to find music which has a powerful appeal on a personal level. Daniel Johnston is probably the most high profile example that I love, but also artists like Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fischer, Withered Hand or Venusian Death Cell's David Vora.
The ironic goldfish
This would consist of things one knows are objectively beyond the pale, but which it is possible to love anyway; I have written about these kinds of things several times; Spin a Magic Tune, Christian rock or metal, but also the kind of 'manufactured' music of the Monkees, 60s/70s bubblegum pop or even (which I definitely don't love) the 80s Stock, Aiken & Waterman version of bubblegum pop or the present TV talent show related variation.
The possibly-uncool goldfish
It's probably true too that mainstream artists are more likely to be secret goldfish if it isn't the kind of music you usually listen to; the one disco or country album in the collection of a punk or metal fan perhaps, or music you like because your parents played it when you were little. In this sense the secret goldfish can be very close to the so-called 'guilty pleasure' and can include theoretically cool artists like Madonna or Michael Jackson as long as the listener her or himself wouldn't normally consider them cool.
SECRET GOLDFISH RECOMMENDATIONS
Many secret goldfish will naturally remain secret; but here's a short list I don't mind sharing because I have written about elsewhere, because they are famous already or because they seem to be popularity-proof:
New England by New England (1978)
This is getting less obscure all the time, but I love it. NOT cool music, this is late 70s power pop/soft rock produced by Kiss' Paul Stanley; the songs are great
The Whole Enchilada by Trini Lopez (1969)
Trini was of course a huge mainstream/easy listening star in the 60s and is a great, underrated guitar player and a fantastic singer. This late 60s masterpiece was produced by Monkees alumni Boyce & Hart and consists mainly of covers of material by slightly cooler artists (Donovan, Cream, Marvin Gaye), given a soulful treatment. This has on it the only cover of Heard It Through The Grapevine I have ever heard that doesn't melt into insignificance compared with the original.
Not So Old-fashioned by Eartha Kitt (1970)
A similar idea to the Trini album, but with a less psychedelic feel, Eartha performs some great songs (many by Donovan) in her not-quite-imitable style. Highlights include a spooky reading of Wear Your Love Like Heaven and a genuinely lovely Catch the Wind
Loaded by the Velvet Underground
This is a very famous album; for many reasons though it is considered not to be a great VU album. The natural VU goldfish would be Loaded's predecessor, The Velvet Underground but although I love that I have been listening to Loaded without getting bored by it since about 1993 or thereabouts and I think it is absolutely the equal of The Velvet Underground and Nico or anything Lou Reed produced. I love everything about this album, even Doug Yule's voice. I had high hopes for the follow-up Squeeze, but when I finally tracked it down it was blah.
Hot Space by Queen
I am not a very big Queen fan, which is maybe why this (along with Jazz and A Day at the Races) is probably my favourite Queen album; I love the cheesy funkiness of Backchat and Cool Cat and Life is Real is a lyrically great and musically genuinely moving tribute to John Lennon. I love Freddie Mercury's Mister Bad Guy too.
Edge of the World by Wolf (1984)
A late NWOBHM album, this isn't very heavy really, but is that very early 80s thing, a metal album with a lot of soul (not in the 'soul music' sense). Just a really nice album, if you can say that about a metal record.
On the Boulevard by Bachelor of Hearts (1984???)
Post-punk glam(ish) rock by a band led by Bay City Roller Ian Mitchell and featuring porn legend Lindsay "Ben Dover" Honey on drums, this is an oddity by any standards. But I love it. Standouts include sleaze anthem Girls in Jeans plus the oddly melancholy Boulevard LA and the gloatingly mean I'm a Winner. Possibly an acquired taste. Oddly, the band seems to have been signed to RCA but all pressings of the LP are either expensive Japanese ones or weird, bendy Romanian ones like mine.
Honey Girl by Venusian Death Cell (2014)
I love all of the VDC albums I've heard (four so far I think), and I chose this one more or less at random. All consist of addictively plaintive, homemade, sincere-sounding, non-catchy, possibly improvised songs by David Vora. His guitar rarely sounds properly in tune but it doesn't really need to be.
In Vmbrarvm Imperii Gloria by Absentia Lunae (2006)
I've written endlessly about this great album and how I think it's one of the best black metal albums ever recorded, so I guess I must have some kind of affinity with it.
Let's end with a pairing of two albums that are different in everything except their theme:
In Your Face by Shout (1989) and The Marshallettes Trio with Linda Bratton by The Marshallettes Trio (1968)
The Shout album is the second LP by US Christian metal band led by Ken Tamplin. The album is kind of (80s) Whitesnake-like glam-ish hard rock. Tamplin's virtuoso guitar playing and Coverdale-ish vocals would make this just another hair metal LP but for two factors:
1) good songs
2) Christianity. I am not, nor have I ever been a Christian, but the message here undoubtedly gives the record a heartfelt quality that makes it special. This isn't a Christian thing per se; I would say the same about Motley Crue's commitment to their lifestyle on Girls, Girls, Girls. You have to mean it sometimes.
The Marshallettes were three teenage Christians who made an album with their music teacher. It was supposed to be contemporary and girl group-ish, but they were five years too late and irremediably square. But it's kind of beautiful. And so far I've yet to meet anyone else who thinks so.
What's currently (ie this week or so) playing, with whys and wherefores insofar as one can be bothered explaining;
* Odessey & Oracle and the Casiotone Orchestra (Folkwit Records)
'Baroque Pop' is not one of my favourite names for a genre of music, but it's as good a description as any for this masterpiece by French band Odessey & Oracle. The band consists of the core trio of Fanny L'Héitier, Guillaume Médioni and Alice Baudoin, here joined by the Casiotone Orchestra.
Simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic, this is a beautiful and very Gallic album whose music seems equally rooted in 60s psych pop, space rock, (slightly twee) C86-style indie, Stereolab (go-to reference for modern French alternative music) and baroque/classical music.
That sounds like a slightly indigestible mixture, but it isn't; somehow the sound of violas/cellos/flutes etc is complemented perfectly by the analog synths of the Casiotone Orchestra, creating a sound that is wistful and comforting, but never cloying, thanks in part to Fanny L'Héitier's pleasantly cool voice.
The album was available through France's Carton Records but has been picked up by the excellent UK-based label Folkwit Records, who will be releasing it on 1st June this year and is well worth picking up. Check out the band here too.
* Absentia Lunae - Vorwärts (ATMF)
Italy's finest black metal band returned with this sombre and furious album, an authoritative and scathing attack on pretty much everything, informed (but not constrained by) the tenets of Italian Futurism.
The imagery is austere yet grandiose and militaristic, but the music is far from rigid or dead. In comparison to their earlier masterpiece In Umbrarum Imperii Gloria (one of the most underrated black metal albums ever released),the tone of Vorwärts seems less despairing, more aggressive and dynamic but never simplistic, revealing hidden subtleties with each listen.
* Nippon Girls 2 (Big Beat International)
This second compilation of songs by Japanese beat/pop/rock 'n' roll girls is every bit as great as the first. Covering the period 1965-70, it's a wide-ranging selection, taking in the crazed fuzz-pop of Anne Mari, the Serge Gainsbourg-influenced erotic pop of Chiyo Okumura and the barely musical voice of Kemeko Matsudaira. These sometimes naïve, sometimes sophisticated records preserve the excitement of one of the most revolutionary periods of popular music.
* Oblivionized - Life is a Struggle, Give Up (Secret Law Records)
I've written about this at length elsewhere, so in brief: this is the superbly unpredictable avant grind debut album from one of the best bands in the UK underground extreme scene.
* Zombi - The Zombi Anthology (Relapse Records)
This great album gathers together all of the early work of Pittsburg's analog synth duo Zombi; superbly creepy and minimalistic John Carpenter-influenced tunes, perfect for when you just want to wallow in horror movie atmosphere.
* Pilot - A's, B's & Rarities (EMI)
A great compilation from terminally underrated Edinburgh post-glam pop-rock icons Pilot. Limited a little by its theme (some of their best songs were album-only tracks) but still more than enough to showcase the band's superb Beatles-esque songwriting skills and inventive musicianship.
* Frank Zappa - Over-nite Sensation (DiscReet Records)
At the time critics saw Over-nite Sensation as evidence of Zappa's descent into puerile inconsequentiality, but the accessible, (relatively) commercial songs on the album manage to compress all of the band's amazing musicianship into far more concise forms than is sometimes the case.
*Taran - Taran (Odium Records)
Straightforward, ultra-aggressive but still atmospheric old-school Polish black metal; kind of like classic Immortal but with a more anti-Christian focus. Well worth checking out for fans of second wave BM.
also...
* Green Elder - beautifully atmospheric neofolk from the USA
* Enslaved - In Times: my new favourite Enslaved album
* David Bowie - Young Americans (the expanded reissue from the 90s with Who Can I Be Now - one of Bowie's best songs of that period - on it)
*
Délétère - De Ritibus Morbiferis (Sepulchral Productions) Excellent compilation of some of the best Quebec black metal of recent times
* Neil Young - Harvest Not quite as classic as After the Goldrush, but it has its own charm
* Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique. An enduring classic
* The Beatles - The Beatles. People who think the white album would be better slimmed down to a single disc are WRONG. Without even Wild Honey Pie it would be a lesser album.
Please check out the new & improved version of this article here!
Please check out the updated version of this article here!
It's only a matter of time! So just for fun... In the spirit of the Best... album in the world - EVER series, a mainly completely obvious compilation with a few wayward choices thrown in.
CD 1
1. Venom - Sons of Satan (1981)
2. Hellhammer - Triumph of Death (1983)
3. Mercyful Fate - Satan's Fall (1983)
4. Bathory - The Wind of Mayhem (1985)
5. Possessed - The Exorcist (1985)
6. Celtic Frost - Circle of the Tyrants (1985)
7. Sodom - Witchhammer (1986)
8. Sarcofago - Satanic Lust (1987)
9. Sabbat - Blood for the Blood God
10. Mayhem - Deathcrush (1987)
11. Necrodeath - Graveyard of the Innocents (1987)
12. Sabbat - Children of Hell (1988)
13. Bathory - A Fine Day to Die (1988)
14. Morbid Angel - Immortal Rites (1989)
15. Mayhem - Freezing Moon (live 1990)
16. Darkthrone - In The Shadow of the Horns (1991)
17. Burzum - My Journey to the Stars (1992)
18. Thorns - Ærie Descent (1992)
19. Abruptum - Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me Pt 1(1993)
20. Graveland - The Night of Fullmoon (1993)
21. Immortal - Unsilent Storms in the North Abyss (1993)
22. Beherit - The Gate of Nanna (1993)
23. Moëvöt - Chant d'Eternité II (1993)
24. Marduk - Stone Stands its Silent Vigil (1993)
25. Darkthrone - Summer of the Diabolical Holocaust (1993)
CD2
1. Mayhem - Life Eternal (1994)
2. Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger (1994)
3. Behemoth - Thy Winter Kingdom (1994)
4. Burzum - Det Som Engang Var (1994)
5. Emperor - The Burning Shadows of Silence (1994)
6. Enslaved - Allfǫðr Oðinn (1994)
7. Forgotten Woods - Grip of Frost (1994)
8. Hades - Glorious Again the Northland Shall Become (1994)
9. Satyricon - Min Hyllest Til Vinterland (1994)
10. Gehenna - Morningstar (1994)
11. Carpathian Forest - The Eclipse/The Raven (1995)
12. Mutiilation - Ravens of My Funeral (1995)
13. Dissection - Where Dead Angels Lie (1995)
14. Trelldom - Til Evighet... (1995)
15. Ulver - I troldskog faren vild (1995)
16. Gorgoroth - Gorgoroth (1996)
17. Dimmu Borgir - Antikrist (1996)
18. Rotting Christ - Snowing Still (1996)
19. Cradle of Filth - Beauty Slept in Sodom (1996)
20. Burzum - Beholding the Daughters of the Firmament (1996)
21. Tsatthoggua - Worm of Sin (1996)
22. Sigh - Hail Horror Hail (1997)
23. Immortal - At the Heart of Winter (1999)
24.Marduk - Blooddawn (1999)
25. Emperor - An Elegy of Icaros (1999)
CD3
1. Mayhem - A Grand Declaration of War (2000)
2. Beatrik - Buried Among Skeletal Woods (2002)
3. Deathspell Omega - Insanity Supreme (2002)
4. Xasthur - In the Hate of Battle (2002)
5. Tronus Abyss - Radio Europa (2003)
6. Watain - Devil's Blood (2003)
7. 1349 - Singer of Strange Songs (2004)
8. Gallhammer - Endless Nauseous Days (2004)
9. Falkenbach - Hávamál (2005)
10. Satyricon - The Pentagram Burns (2006)
11. Negura Bunget - Cunoaşterea Tăcută (2006)
12. Absentia Lunae - Subliminal Aeternitate (2006)
13. Agalloch - Limbs (2006)
14. Summoning - Across the Streaming Tide (2006)
15. Gorgoroth - Carving a Giant (2006)
16. Striborg - Somnambulistic Nightmares (2006)
17. Shining - Längtar bort från mitt hjärta (2007)
18. Goat Semen - Madre Muerte (live) (2007)
19. Alcest - Souvenirs d'un autre monde (2007)
20. Dornenreich - Dem Wind geboren (2008)
21. Horna - Liekki ja voima (2008)
22. Nachtmystium - Nightfall (2010)
23. Ihsahn - Frozen Lakes on Mars (2010)
24. Woods of Infinity - Förbjuden Frukt (2011)
25. Enslaved - Building With Fire (2015)
