, wonderful tunes, an underlying sense of melancholia grounding it, and understated strings enhancing its many beauties and charms.
And, like any fine record, there’s something different and new to reflect on after each play.
It’s still the album I reach for the most, from the past year, my default all these months on.
If I was in charge of things and ruled the world, I’d also welcome Alex Dingley’s Beat The Babble (Libertino Records) onto the shortlist; a record of fragile but passionate gorgeousness that’s only been out in the UK a few weeks but a special one to me already.
- Cath Bore
Rolo Tomassi: Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It
Holy Roar Records
March 2018
A major criticism of the Mercury Prize – well, one of them, anyway – has classically been that it seems to exist in isolation from its epoch. What kind of anti-zeitgeistic troll hands M People an award during the Britpop era?
Which brings me to a second major criticism; the shortsightedness of the panellists’ selections. Sure, at the time nominating Take That or East 17 probably seemed like a bit of a contrarian laugh. But when you stack the latter’s Walthamstow next to PJ Harvey’s seismic Rid Of Me in 1993, it’s an unfunny joke. Don’t get me started on the flashes in the pan to have scurried off with an award. Ms Dynamite, Klaxons, Talvin Singh; not just nominated, but honest-to-God winners.
Finally, genre-wise, you can almost throw a blanket over the nominees. There’s usually a token avant garde, electro and/or hip hop album, then the crater is piled with landfill indie. Nothing from the heavier end of the spectrum.
My nomination then is Rolo Tomassi’s Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It. I reviewed it in Getintothis’ Album Club #24 and loved it; we don’t give out scores, but if we did, it would have been 9/10 any day of the week. Since then, like any truly great album, my admiration has only grown.
Months after its release, it feels less like an exceptional record by a great band, and more like a culmination of everything they have achieved so far. It’s in turns blissful and blistering. Some tracks coo and gently pet the back of your head, before grabbing a handful of hair and pounding your face into the floorboards.
Time Will Die seemingly floats somewhere up above us. It has set a benchmark not just for Rolo Tomassi, but for heavy British music for the next few years. This isn’t some barely-signed band lucking into a decent debut before disappearing forever. Time Will Die rearranges the landscape, both artistically and aurally, if played at a high enough volume. Such an achievement deserves a Mercury nomination at least.
An honourable mention must go to Holy Roar labelmate Conjurer’s full-length debut Mire. Those riffs would’ve walked themselves onto this list any other year. But, well, here we are.
- David Hall
Spinning Coin: Permo
Geographic
November 2017
I’ve chosen this record out of all the others this year, because Spinning Coin are such a promising band and they deserve to be heard more widely. They have plenty to say, are passionate about what they do, and most of all, have released a classic, debut album.
For anybody who loves classic Scottish indie post-punk as much as me, they’re a gift. All the post-punk hallmarks there, from the urgently spiky guitars, to the haunting melodies, and sometimes painfully direct lyrics.
Spinning Coin’s songs are the work of Sean Armstrong and Jack Mellin, whose talents contrast but enhance each other in a remarkable way. Armstrong’s work is often melancholic, romantic, and wistful, whilst Mellin opts for a rockier, more aggressive approach.
The result is a very record crammed with ideas, far more than one often expects from such a young band. They’re also outspoken about the times they live in too – this is a band who think about their lyrics.
Don’t miss this album if you care about guitar music.
- Andy Holland
Isaac Gracie – Isaac Gracie
Virgin Records
April 2018
The London born singer Isaac Gracie released his debut self-titled album in April of this year. His routes in music began surprisingly in choral singing, progressing up the ranks of Earling Abbey Choir up to the position of head chorister.
Following his voice breaking in his early teenage years, Gracie turned to a different style of music and picked up a guitar. Self-taught, the inspiration of musical greats such as Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley and Nick Cave can all be recognised in his melodies.
I first saw Gracie live in the October of 2017 in a small venue in Leeds. His beautifully acoustic, yet visceral, songs of heartbreak, loss and separation were truly a delight. It is a pleasure to see that in his debut album many of the songs he played have been slightly adapted for the production of the record but still retain their original appeal.
Highlights from the album include the melancholic silhouettes Of You. Showcasing the raw brilliance of Gracie’s vocals alongside his poetic lyrics of anguish, this track is particularly special.
Other notable tracks include the opening song: terrified which insightfully discusses the anxieties associated with change and the difficult intricacies of love. Similarly, the sultry track hollow crown, too, uses the haunting and ethereal sounds of the acoustic guitar to lament on instances of failed and fractured love.
Isaac Gracie delves into dark recesses of human emotion. Beautiful, delicate and elegiac, his music leaves a welcome space for reflection and, as the final song on the record suggests: reverie. An album without a doubt deserving of a Mercury Prize nomination.
- Ellie Montgomery
Pussycat and the Dirty Johnsons: Ain’t No Pussy
Johnson Family
October 2017
In an alternate universe where no-one cares about the vapid outpourings of the musical-industrial complex or what salesmen listen to in their cars, records that emerge from total, insane commitment and channel divine madness into our ears would be celebrated, shortlisted and showered with awards.
Records like Ain’t No Pussy, a homegrown masterpiece by Basingstoke three-piece Pussycat and the Dirty Johnsons. This, their third album, is pure rawboned rock ‘n’ roll delivered with intensity and loaded with fun to dangerous levels. Their sound is deeply infused with punk, rockabilly, grunge and glam, though not constrained by any of these styles: they careen down their own path with mad joy.
PatDJs are fiends for touring, and these tracks have been honed by dozens if not hundreds of live shows – but this isn’t some muddily-thumping-away ‘live in the studio’ effort – the band’s raucous energy has been documented with clarity, Puss Johnson’s intense vocals, Big Jake’s hell-for-leather garage guitar and the controlled chaos of Filfy Antz’ drums given space to breathe. The visual impact of the live shows – where Puss stalks the stage and the crowd costumed like a psychedelically-enhanced Catwoman, complete with tail – doesn’t feature in audio-only format (obviously) but the theatricality remains in the vinyl-captured onslaught of these vivid 2-3 minute songs.
Some tracks have a venomous attack such as the memorable Sylvia, a scarily-comprehensive demolition of an antagonist in a ‘little glass office’, sender of ‘letters straight from Himmler’s stationery cupboard!’
The title track and others are energised by a searingly direct feminism; Pretty Good for a Girl goes on the offensive against sexism in the rock world, where female artists are subjected to abuse, groping and patronisation: ‘Don’t you dare call me a prig / I just want to slay this gig’.
Darker tracks like Pain! and Foreign Body explore personal territory with a kind of unflinching assertiveness, exploring an outsider vibe with no self-pity, the sound of demons being driven out. The monster album closer Midnight Motorway hints at future musical possibilities with its hypnotic mantra-like vocal and unrestrained sonic attack.
Ain’t no Pussy is a creation that is totally, honestly and simply itself – an antidote to a world of fakeness, a necessary injection of rock ‘n’ roll derangement and thing of pure, primal beauty.
- Roy Bayfield
Mogwai :Every Country’s Sun
Temporary Residence Limited / Rock Action
September 2017
Following the departure of John Cummings in 2015, Mogwai went back to basics. It was probably a good time to take stock; while the group don’t do bad albums, there’s no denying that 2013’s Rave Tapes was a patchy affair, with the Glaswegians struggling to reconcile their electronic and post-rock sides. In an effort to recapture the cohesion of Happy Songs for Happy People, they disappeared into the woods of upstate New York with producer Dave Fridmann