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Speaker 2Let's move on. Let's move back across the ocean to UK and UK Alternative, which is a very loose category here. There's a couple of sacred cows I feel, I think we're going to be slaughtering in this category. But let's start off with a positive. A debut album. Yeah, yeah. Felt Mountain by Goldfrat. We love this record, don't we? I adore it. We both love this record. It's funny because in her catalogue, she never really revisited this approach, did she? I say she, it's actually Goldfrat. Even though Alison Goldfrat is the singer, it's Alison Goldfrat and the nerd and the bird configuration. Alison Goldfrat and Will Gregory, the kind of arranger musician.
Speaker 3This is the moment when Stephen Wilson was cancelled, obviously.
Speaker 2Well, because I've said the nerd and the bird. It's a well-known enough expression, is it not? Nerd and the bird, you know. This album has such a strong influence, doesn't it, from things that I know you love and you grew up with, and I also love it, which is the kind of John, John Barry, Bond theme. The influence from cinema is palpable, isn't it, right through this whole record. I mean, yes, I think you can hear it's very much a post-trip-hop kind of album, but at the same time, it's going back to things like John Barry, Bond theme, Shirley Bassey, the musical language of the 60s soundtrack, isn't it?
Speaker 3Well, again, like Broadcast, it's one of those things where it's gone right back to the 60s, but what a 2000-sounding album. It is the technology, the filtering of the voice, the rhythms, so it really is this kind of retro-futurist, and yeah, the obvious precedent is Portishead's debut album, which also drew from John Barry and that kind of vocabulary, but this does it maybe in a much more sensual way, I think.
Speaker 2This is not lo-fi. The Portishead thing, I think, was almost making it lo-fi. This is very cinematic and hi-fi, isn't it? It's got all the production sort of values of a very expensively recorded album, whereas Portishead, almost were deliberately looking for to make things sound lo-fi, dirty, rusty. None of that here, is there?
Speaker 3Well, every track, almost, apart from some of the instrumentals and the umpire pieces, because they bring umpire back, which is kind of interesting, but for me, it's almost like the best Bond soundtrack of all time for about eight of the tracks. It's like you're completely lost in that world, and she's got a fantastic voice. Hasn't she? And I guess the thing is, she does Shirley Bassey, but with the elements that you don't like taken off, so she's got the power, she's got the drama, but she's not overdramatic.
Speaker 2So let's move, that moves us perfectly on to Anthony and the Johnsons. Another critic's darling. This is the first album from Anthony, we talk about debut albums, this is the debut album for Anthony and the Johnsons, who I think I'm right in saying is also essentially an individual, despite the name, right?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think there might be a band with.
Speaker 2Overachieving voices that put, put me off because they're so overdramatic, overreaching, and I just get to the point where I just find it off-putting and hysterical. This is one of those voices. I know she has got an extraordinary talent. Yeah. An extraordinary voice, and she is tapping into the kind of Judy Garland musical tradition. I think there's a lot of, a lot of that sort of vaudeville in the voice. I don't like that. I've never liked, for example, I've never liked musicals. I've never. Yeah, no, well,
Speaker 3interesting. That's exactly my, you know, so yeah, Anoni, I think, amazing. Anoni, is that how you say the voice? I think, yeah. But it was Anthony and the Johnsons at this point. It's now, yeah, Anoni and the Johnsons. Brilliant voice, distinctive voice. In this case, I can understand why the critics get excited, and the arrangements are superb on this album, but the voice isn't, for me, as amazing as I think it is, as I think that voice is, it's far too Broadway, West End, incredibly dramatic. Sometimes you like it, sometimes you don't, and as gifted as Anoni is, it just doesn't speak to me.
Speaker 2Is it, do you think this might be a more common feeling than we think? Because she's not been that successful, has she, in terms of commercial mainstream, and yet she's got all the talent. Yeah. But as far as I know, apart from being, a critic's darling, she's never really crossed over to a bigger market.
Speaker 3It's possible. I mean, you know, I do know people who absolutely adore the voice. As do I. So it's difficult to say, because if you don't get something, and sometimes, you know, we know this, it's kind of- It's a Marmite voice. I guess what I'm saying is,
Speaker 2is this a Marmite voice? Hope the listeners know what I mean when I say Marmite voice. But then some Marmite voices,
Speaker 3as we said before, you know, the Marmite or Vegemite for Australians here, you know, a great example of that was two that have been, have been huge. Brian Ferry and Morrissey, you know, you cannot get two more Marmite, Vegemite voices, yet it's not got in the way of their success.
Speaker 2They both were willing to play, being the pop star though. I got the feeling that she's not prepared to be. Right. Maybe she just doesn't want that kind of success. Maybe she could have had it if she, if she'd sort of, you know, wanted to play that role. Well, this is it.
Speaker 3Is it in the voice, the material, or the wanting to play the pop star? It's kind of difficult to know, isn't it sometimes?
Speaker 2I think sometimes it has to be the whole package. Otherwise, you know, it doesn't cross over.
Speaker 3So it's a really good, you know, really good debut. And it's worth what the critics say about it. You know, this time round, when it's the Mojo Album of the Year, I'm not complaining. I can see exactly what they're getting. But yeah, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2You're not complaining like when they make Ryan, you are complaining when they make Ryan Adams.
Speaker 3I'm hitting the wall. I'm taking a hammer to the wall. For goodness sake.
Speaker 2Yeah. It's the 21st century here we're talking about.
Speaker 3Exactly. Just about. When Elliot Smith is the Mojo Album of the Year, my head is hitting that wall.
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, especially when you've got, you know, to be fair, I think everyone made Kid A the Album of the Year this year as far as I can tell anyway. And with that,
Speaker 3I'm all right.
Speaker 2I'm all right with that too. Fair do's Sam. Fair do's. Right. While we're on the groove here Tim, of slaughtering the sacred cows, PJ Harvey. PJ Harvey. I don't get it. I get it more. How many times has she been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize? 47 times now? 200. 247 times. How many times has her album been made Album of the Year by the critics?
Speaker 3Every year. Every year.
Speaker 2Even if she hasn't released an album. Album of the Year. PJ Harvey will still get Album of the Year. Even if she hasn't released anything. I don't get it. I don't get it. It just sounds, I mean, I'm not saying she's bad at all. No, she's good. She's good. She is good.
Speaker 3It's not that interesting, is it? I'm just not, I'm not kidding. I don't dislike it. I think there's some pretty decent, you know, last couple of tracks are good. There's some good material. I've bought this album a couple of times. I've tried to love it. And interestingly, I compare it with another album that came out this year, which was the Patti Smith album, because I love Patti Smith. And this year's Patti Smith album, it suffers from being overlong, you know, quite a number of albums this year, because it's the heyday of the CD age album, where I've got 18 minutes, I'm going to use it. You know, I'm going to have a 65 minute album, a 70 minute album. No, Patti, this is a great album, but if it was 40 minutes, it'd be one of your best albums of all time. You know, in that album, which is all really good, she's got a 40 minute album and a 40 minute all time classic. To me, it's just an odd thing that when I listened to the Patti Smith album, then listened to PJ Harvey, which is the closest comparison in this year, the Patti Smith album, her voice really gets a hold of me, tears me apart. I love this Patti Smith album. And also even sonically, the Patti Smith album is sort of pushing the envelope. You know, she's quite an old artist at this point, but she's doing some quite intimate things. But then she's also really driving the drums up in a way that's suggesting, you know, she's listening to what's happening out there. So I don't know. I can't say anything particularly bad about the PJ Harvey album. - Me neither. - Because I think it's good. - Yeah. - But I can't get excited about it. -
Speaker 2No, I think that's the problem I have. I sometimes, you know, I sometimes feel like there's something I'm not getting. - Yeah. - With PJ Harvey. A bit like we talked about, you know, with, you know, the Springsteens, the Dylans, something obviously I'm not getting, because so many people tell me it's genius. I never particularly, I mean, I've bought a few albums over the years a bit like you. I bought one called White Chalk, I think, which is more of a stripped down piano voice. And I just thought this is something that I think other artists would have done. Better is the wrong word. Just more to my, more to my taste, perhaps. I don't know. -
Speaker 3Yeah. I think that is it. -
Speaker 2Bjork released Selma Songs, which is the soundtrack to the Dancer in the Dark movie. It's a good record, isn't it? - Yeah, very beautiful. - Jorky Boy's on that one too. -
Speaker 3He's on everything this year.
Speaker 2Let's talk about the Primal Scream album. - Yeah. - It's a bit like The Terminator because what, what I love about Primal Scream, now we talked about overachieving voices. - Yeah. - Bobby Gillespie's got, a bit like me, he's got an underachieving voice. -
Speaker 3Look. - He's got. - You know an idea. You're being falsely modest. -
Speaker 2No, I'm not. - You've got a good voice. -
Speaker 3Have I? Well, that's very nice of you to say so. -
Speaker 2You've got a good voice and you really stretched it on the latest album. - I always feel very limited by what I can and cannot do with my voice. And it's never stopped Bobby Gillespie. Good, good on him. And I like Primal Scream, I like the idea of them more than I like the reality sometimes. One of the things I love about Primal Scream is every album, it's like, oh, we've done that. different so you've got scream screamadelica which is kind of their acid house summer of love album followed it with with the the rolling stones pastiche album which i didn't like it wasn't my kind of thing yeah whatever it was called get with it and get out of it whatever it was called and then a couple of albums later they're making this album exterminator which is almost like uh they've got kevin shields from my bloody valentine it's a noise album isn't it it's like uh it's on york on it yorkie boy he's not on this one but it's almost like the chemical brothers with added noise isn't it it's got a kind of big beat breakbeat thing but there's a lot of noise and it's almost like fuzz has been applied to everything in the mix yeah and it's quite interesting and it's quite um manny's on it as
Speaker 3well he's a bass player from stone roses
Speaker 2it's exciting it's a real rush to listen to it yeah i don't think there are any songs there i don't think primal scream was ever really about songs but in a production sense in a kind of reinventing their sound way no it's
Speaker 3really fresh i mean like you you know that they've never been an all-time favorite but they will occasionally come up with something really special and i think what's good is that bobby gillespie as you say one he reinvents himself but two he surrounds himself with the right people for each project um and this one it sounds great you know it's really driven and as you said everything is kind of hypercharged the drums the bass the grooves are fantastic so it's their sort of noise groove rock album and it's they're pulled
Speaker 2off really well let's move on tim i think we can we can move very swiftly through these next couple of categories because this is out of our comfort zone okay but we're going to give them a name check anyway because we like you know we like to at least mention these albums covering the year there's some big records there's some big records here i just don't know them metal and us rock okay brave new world by
Speaker 3iron maiden pretty good album that was the return of bruce dickinson and maiden were in epic form and actually from this point onwards their albums get more conceptual more ambitious and i quite like the fact that they still seem to be enjoying making music and finding themselves in a slightly different place because we know that steve harris
Speaker 2and bruce always loved a bit of prog anyway oh yeah they like they like a big concept you know
Speaker 3and you can hear on this because brave new world it's the
Speaker 2artist yeah i'm guessing
Speaker 3yeah and from this point onwards i think the success of it led them to get even more ambitious you know they're later in matter of life and death some of the albums that follow this if you like iron maiden they're still on really good form i do like iron maiden and still enjoying it i mean my weirdly enough despite that i think they're making some of the best music now my favorite iron maiden album is still the first me too i love the
Speaker 2diano records the first two records because i i love the sort of more punky new wave british heavy metal sound i think obviously they became a much more impressive quote unquote band much more sophisticated band later on but yeah i'll always have a soft spot for those things sun oh oh oh void now i think it's fair to say we were talking about earlier about gas how gas have the one gag or that godspeed you black ember have the one gag yeah so they've got one gag haven't they and their gag is let's take from an old black sapath album let's take the drums and the vocals out of the mix yeah let's isolate the guitar and the bass and then let's slow it down to a tenth of its original speed exactly that that is the sun and so they have been innovators well i say innovators they kind of were copying what a band called earth an american band called earth had started doing a few years earlier but they've really honed in on it and refined it and they've this idea of drone metal or ambient metal um it's a great gag isn't it it works
Speaker 3really well and yeah i think ambient metal probably is the best description because in a way it's sort of comforting and beautiful yet it's pure noise and pure metal um and obviously there have been deviations because they made an album with scott walker in about 2012 was it um which is actually really good i mean what what is quite surprising about that one is you're getting this avant-garde metal band scott walker who at that point was really taking himself into some strange places and oddly that album is quite listenable it's actually one of the more accessible albums both of them are put together and walkers on great voice throughout it um yeah really good i like suno i've got almost
Speaker 2every suno album i've ever they've ever made and i do sometimes ask myself why yeah because they do have the it basically becomes what other musical elements can we add to this so there'll be albums where they've added a church organ or there'll be albums where they've added a monologue or something like that um it's a great gag it's a great gag and actually almost any suno album would do this one is is more about just the sound of the guitars later albums are a bit more opening things up a little bit more in terms of the musical forces but great gag yes um let's talk about this album tim because i i felt like we should talk this is the last album in the category i felt like we should stop on this one a little bit because it's one of the biggest selling albums of all time it's almost like you can't just you know gloss over it i'd never listen to it i'm clearly not the age or the demographic to have to have heard it before i did listen to it in preparation for this podcast and i've got my one sentence review of it which i'll give you in a minute okay um lincoln park's hybrid theory is one of the best-selling albums of all time it's sold like about a billion copies apparently or maybe a few trillion i don't know here's my here's my one sentence review of this album it's one of the best-selling albums of all time it's sold like this album see if you take issue with this okay bit of nine inch nails yeah bit of hip-hop bit of new metal package it like a boy band what a recipe for success that was it was massive yeah
Speaker 3what
Speaker 2do you think of my one sentence
Speaker 3summing up i think you're pretty much there i think they're kind of you know i remember the singles as they came out like you i only listen to the album for this but i remembered the singles and they had a sound and they pulled it off i mean basically it was almost like a kind of almost a boy band sweetness in the voices and then they go into a kind of a death metal chorus and they did it really well they did it with a plumb i think is the word don't get me wrong i'm not saying it's bad and so the production is is great and the shifts of tone they pull off brilliantly um yeah it's not my kind of music i mean i you know i do really like nine inch nails and i think it's unfortunately it's a reference lost on you but it's the sort of music that i do think is really good and i think it's really good and i think it's really i think baby colin robinson would have liked when he was going through his teen rebellion phase okay i
Speaker 2hope the listeners understand what that means
Speaker 3what we do in the shadows sitcom with matt berry i know i love matt
Speaker 2berry and um baby
Speaker 3colin robinson goes through matt berry just texted me
Speaker 2he just texted me to say this say i'm talking bollocks no he just texted me to say i've just this is happening as we speak guys yeah i've just played the imagine white piano last week never thought i'd type that okay just fresh news in from matt berry there i hope he won't mind you sharing that with me anyway i've played the mrs mills piano abbey road i've played benny's piano at polar studios before polar studios destroyed that he he played dancing queen on yeah yeah that's all i'll say i think that trumps i think that trumps everything including the john lennon piano in my opinion well
Speaker 3including the mrs mills piano including
Speaker 2the mrs mills i'm sorry what the day in the life piano from dancing dancing queen it just trumps them all all right if you ask me so
Speaker 3yeah no it's really well done and i can see why it was successful because there's a kind of they pull off the sweetness and the gruffness and it sounds fantastic
Speaker 2okay let's let's move on to another album in the same that i feel the same way about this is the u.s rap category now okay have you heard them u.s rappers have you heard them rappers do you know about them rappers what are the u.s they're like rappers okay going to stewart lee you mean grandmaster
Speaker 3flash that kind of rappers have you
Speaker 2heard them rappers they're all over the place them rappers i've heard gil scott the young the young kids they like them rappers the last poets i've heard them yeah you like them i like them right okay so even bigger than the lincoln park album yeah the other people in the room probably will know this record rob and miles scaring are both here listening to us thinking what are these two old fuckers talking about right even bigger than the lincoln park record eminem marshall may there's lp yeah so i listened to it it's so whereas the lincoln park album sold about three trillion yeah the eminem album has sold about 25 gazillion apparently um i listened to it to me it sounded like a white boy adopting all the tropes and style of black gangster rappers that's what it sounded like to me i might be doing him a disservice he might have grown up exactly in the same way but that's what it sounded like to me and to me that says this is why white people bought it when they wouldn't have bought the public enemy and they wouldn't have bought the the nwa album but they will buy the eminem album which is why it's sold 27 gazillion records now i may be being really unfair there but i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure it might be a lot better than that this music i don't understand it because i'm an old man lots of stuff about hoes and bitches yeah and popping caps and stuff which can just about get along with with the the public enemy record everyday life invading stoke everyday life in in boxmore hamel hemstead i can just i'm gonna say like it's like a 300 years old oh for fuck's sake um robin robin my miles did you like eminem's the marshall mayors lp when you were growing up it was sort of everywhere well it was ubiquitous wasn't it yeah that song stan yeah that that song stan is on this
Speaker 3record isn't it i think he had look i think the point is he had pop star presence and his voice was distinctive in that field and while i take your point that it's kind of white boy doing black music he did it well and he had a presence it was again not for me but it was ubiquitous i remember it being around and you know we had interesting. use of samples occasionally as well um so again you know never going to be my music but i could sort of see the quality but it's
Speaker 2an interesting use of samples i mean you could apply that to almost any american hip-hop record yeah yeah of course yeah i mean the other two records on the list which i liked more outcast stanconia and wu-tang clans the w to me the w to me again really interesting use of sampling and beats the next category we've got here is progressive rock yeah and the first thing's fair to say it's not a great year for progressive rock except obviously porcupine trees light bulb sun came out but apart from that not a great year for progressive rock ovo peter gabriel is the first one so i don't know much about this album tim it was kind of like a soundtrack to his millennium dome show the millennium dome and and he doesn't sing on himself or he does sing
Speaker 3on some yeah you know father's son which is arguably the best track on it he sings and it's a really beautiful piano miniature i mean the thing is for me it's quite like a lot of gabriel albums since so that all of them could be shorter there are three or four of the best things he's ever done and i really count io in this as well that io i think there are three or four tracks that are the best things he's amongst the best things he's ever done you're doing that best of peter gabriel they're on it but there are quite a number of tracks that wouldn't get anywhere close to that and also it's a little overlong you know it's 65 minutes or what it's a little overlong you know it's a little overlong you know it's a little overlong you know what's good so his voice is amazing he still is capable of writing songs that are as affecting as ever um he did two versions of it um one version which is the special edition doesn't have the over wrap it has it as a on a second disc so
Speaker 2what is the ovo rap then is it he ever
Speaker 3opens it no he uses nana cherry and a rapper and it's kind of peter gabriel music so he won't do it himself i mean on the album he sings a few but he gets great singers i mean richie havens sings on it and richie havens i've got to say this i think richie havens is a great singer he's a great singer when gabriel left genesis that's your replacement if richie havens are joined well
Speaker 2he's in fact he's on steve hackett and he's on
Speaker 3steve i mean what an amazing voice i mean i think phil collins is pretty you know obviously phil is stunning but he'd have been such a natural replacement yeah yeah um and an amazing voice and again he's you can see this that gabriel's clearly a fan brings havens havens is stunning um it's got early performances this is interesting alison goldfrapp's will gregory from goldfrapp also does some of the arrangements alison goldfrapp doesn't get credited on the album though still it's odd she's not on the credits but she sings liz fraser sings paul buchanan so it's a list of some of my favorite vocalists of all time and for me you know i guess it's in the nature of it being and here's two
Speaker 2clearly i mean that's why he's invited them they're all his favorite singer
Speaker 3and they're brilliant and there's a few tracks that are you know great um downside up make tomorrow father son so again it's like if i'm putting together that greatest peter gabriel album it's gonna have a few things from this it's gonna have a few things from up a few things from io but maybe as a whole perhaps it betrays the fact that it's a soundtrack album too often
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