The Underground of Happiness

So here's the final instalment of this Best of 2016 loosely centring on Psych Pop and some offshoots. I must say it was great listening back to the tunes over the last few weeks. It seems I always say this, but it really was another great year for music. It’s also very interesting when compiling a list like this to spot trends over the year, or longer, some kind of pattern that might be developing, or on the other hand any glorious one offs. I think I always say this too but no harm in repeating. These lists aren’t meant to be representative in any way. I know there are glaring omissions here out of the sum of music released last year but this list is made up of the music that struck a chord with me and in almost all cases was played (generally quite a bit) on the show. So once more with feeling, these are in no particular order. Enjoy. ************************************************************************** 1. Weyes Blood – Front row seat to Earth (Mexican Summ...

This is the Angel Olsen record I was waiting for. There’s a lovely garage rock feel to the guitars, a setting that works very well with her voice. It’s a wonderful voice of course. It can be tender, it can be harsh, soft, berating, pleading, encouraging. Soulful needless to say, capable of turning the direction of a line with some crucial inflection or a change of gear. Usually simmering with intent and always laden with emotion. This guitar vocal combination is best showcased in the early sequence of ‘Never be mine’, ‘Shut up kiss me’ and ‘Give it up’, a killer run of love, loss and fuzzy guitars. (She also does a marvellous thing midway through ‘Shut up kiss me’ which involves a bank of Angel voices racking up the tension on one repeated note in glorious harmony.) It must be said that she tries on other clothes over the course of the album (‘Those were the days’ is an especially gorgeous cosmic soul turn), and there’s no doubt she can turn her hand to many things, bu...

Broadly, there was a kind of genre flow to this week's show. We began with a run of electronic pieces of different shades - Future Islands, Eyedress ("nothing special" is the subtitle of the song by the way, not a comment from me on the quality of it - I think it's quite special), Matmos with some mental radio, new Roll the Dice ,an industrial meltdown with sumptuous strings and culminating in a wonderful track from the debut SlowPlaceLikeHome album, due next month. The mid-section featured a series of singers - Cormac O Caoimh with some lovely jazz-folk tones from his fine new album, the unforgettable Angel Olsen who plays Cork with Jaye Bartell next month, Sontag Shogun from NY feat. the great voice of Liam Singer . A bit of punk rock in the shape of Thomas Truax and Shonen Knife . And some kosmische to finish from Eat Lights Become Lights plus the Conny Plank-produced Eno-Moebius-Roedelius . More on these pages as always. May 6 2014 w/ Roll th...