No Frills Reviews

5. Youth Lagoon – Heaven Is a Junkyard

After a brief retirement of the Youth Lagoon moniker in 2016, this marked a comeback for the artist otherwise known as Trevor Powers. But, this was also a comeback following a prolonged bout of illness which left him almost literally voiceless. And it’s Powers’ voice, both vocally and as a songwriter, that really make this album a triumph.

In earlier releases, his voice was almost obscured; drenched in a fuzzy haze. But it takes centre stage here; even when it’s barely there, it dominates. Its defining quality lies in being indefinable; it feels ageless, genderless, timeless. It can be brittle and vulnerable, yet carries a ‘seen-it-all-before’ authority. That allows the songs to take different forms; a deep recounting of personal traumas, or character sketches with Powers as the all-seeing narrator. However you choose to interpret them, Powers’ voice will somehow fit.

Lo-fi and Dream Pop have both been used to describe Youth Lagoon in the past, but neither feels quite right. There’s no issues with the quality here, the music is just deliberately slight, with disembodied vocal samples and scratches of static lurking like ghosts haunting these songs. And there isn’t the sense of euphoria that typically comes with Dream Pop, instead it’s like being caught in limbo. When he sings “Heaven is a Junkyard, and it’s my home”, it could just as easily be defiant pride as desperate resignation.

An album that excels in simultaneously navigating conflicting emotional states; upliftingly despairing.

Top Tune: Prizefighter

4. Lankum – False Lankum

False Lankum is a masterclass in musical atmosphere. This is folk music which is as traditional as it gets. If not for the quality of the recording, you could easily be convinced that this is music rescued from a couple hundred years ago. The majority of the album is, in fact, made up of traditional folk songs, but they’re rendered into something new by the subtle (and at times domineering) touches of electronic drones and distortion. By pushing these songs forward in a new direction, they manage to take you further back into the past.

You’re taken to a world where every story is a matter of life or death (well, mostly death), with songs shared in small crowded pubs providing only brief respite. It can be a challenging listen, beginning with the tense, claustrophobic horror of Go Dig My Grave. But there’s plenty of beauty to be uncovered from the dark; notably, the voice of Radie Peat which appears sparingly like a siren call – entrancing yet devastating.

The storytelling combined with the force of the compositions provides a constant sense of momentum, even if that momentum is at times arduous. Almost every song feels like its own mini-epic within an epic. While they may be wrapped in archaic language, ultimately these are universal tales of doomed young love, Monday morning blues, and…errr…murdering your family.

Haunting, bleak, and beautiful.

Top Tune: Newcastle

3. Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy

If you’ve been following Young Fathers for any length of time then you can easily take for granted just how good they are. Even a decade on from their Mercury Prize-winning debut there’s nobody else that quite sounds anything like them. This is a sound where tribal rhythms clash with children’s choirs, blasts of distortion, hoots, howls, and pretty much anything else you can think of, to form a euphoric wall of sound.

Even in their gentler moments, there’s a sense of maximalism to their minimalism. A track like Tell Somebody feels almost prayer-like, with a soft orchestral backing building and building until it eventually explodes into an all-encompassing moment of revelation. Whether rising from these softer moments or emerging out of the chaos, it always feels like they’re reaching for something bigger; an appeal to a higher power. The lyrics can be slightly impenetrable at times, but even the briefest snippets can become grand proclamations or crucial pleas to action. This is decidedly weird music but it’s filled with such urgency and joy that it becomes uniquely accessible.

Young Fathers; still distinctly themselves and still distinctly great.

Top Tune: I Saw

2. Benefits – Nails

This is probably my least listened to album on this list; industrial punk noise isn’t exactly the easiest background listening. Yet it’s the first album that I knew would make my top 10. Its power lies in the fact that this isn’t purely a musical experience. It’s almost a piece of performance art; an indictment of Tory Britain as expressed through a cycle of frustration, rage, and disillusionment.

Nails makes a lot of other political music sound silly in comparison: either too vague or too heavy-handed (much modern political music feels chronically online; social media sloganeering dragging you deeper into the culture wars). Now, this is also heavy handed; it hits like a fucking sledgehammer, and by design. But the slogans used here are those they’re railing against; their repetition exposing their emptiness while mirroring how they permeate everyday discourse.

What really sets the album apart though are the twinges of hope and empathy that lie beneath the anger. It’s in the details that bring the songs’ characters to life; these aren’t just faceless keyboard warriors, these are people you know. It’s in the understanding of how you can get sucked into apathy. This isn’t purely raging against the machine, it’s a reflection of how the machine fuels and funnels your rage. While it may paint a bleak picture, as much as anything this serves as a reminder to strive for something better.

The best political album of this year (and probably many more). A call-to-arms shouted into the void.

Top Tune: Flag

1. CMAT – Crazymad, For Me

This top 10 has featured albums that excel in their experimentation, political messaging, or battles with addiction, depression, illness, etc. But everyone knows that the best type of music is pop songs about heartbreak. And this is an album full of excellent pop songwriting; a break-up album that digs deep into sorrow until a silly bitch can emerge out of the other side.

Actually, break-up album isn’t quite right, this is really about the long-term fallout of a bad relationship. Starting with the initial desire to escape it all on opener, California, and the quietly devastating one-liner “You made me brilliant, fucked me up”. The album is a journey through torment, resentment, and self-reflection until eventually landing on the nonchalant celebration of closer, Have Fun! Throughout it all, CMAT lights up this well-worn emotional path with a treasure trove of references, where Britney sits alongside Mark E. Smith, and Vincent Kompany alongside Sex and the City. She brings these tales to life with the minute details that lead to the monumental feelings.

CMAT’s voice is a combo of sweetness and power with a healthy dash of weirdness; somewhere between Stevie Nicks and Cyndi Lauper (with an Irish accent). The tunes effortlessly move from baroque or country-tinged ballads to big fist-pumping pop anthems. I’m not really sure what breaking out means these days, but CMAT is surely on the cusp of breaking out as a star, and it’s well deserved on this evidence; great vocals, great storytelling, great tunes.

Top Tune: Stay For Something