In no particular order, here are my albums of the year:
Box for Buddy, Box for Star – This is Lorelei
Cool World – Chat Pile
Moves in the Field – Kelly Moran
You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To – Knocked Loose
Circus of Desire – Olivia Chaney
Diamond Jubilee – Cindy Lee
Night Reign – Arooj Aftab
World of Work – Clarissa Connelly
Evil Does Not Exist (OST) – Eiko Ishibashi
If I don’t make it, I love u – Still House Plants
Of these, it’s Box for Buddy, Box for Star that is the pick of the bunch. I remember idly reading a review of the album when it was released – it sounded interesting, and I really like Water From Your Eyes (This is Lorelei being the side project of Nate Amos from that band), so I thought I’d take a punt on it. I’m so glad I did because I can’t remember the last time that I have connected so immediately and so deeply with an album. Amos’s songs are simultaneously funny and serious, traditional and experimental, ironic and intensely vulnerable. Like all great pop music it treads the line between seriousness and non-seriousness brilliantly. Take the standout track, ‘Dancing in the Club’:
It’s a song that starts with the totally sincere line, ‘I lost your love today’, but whose chorus is almost throwaway – some silly (but great!) wordplay to do with playing cards: ‘I feel your heart in spades / While you were dancing in the club / I gave my diamonds all away’. And yet I find it almost overwhelmingly moving. Even that post-chorus piano hook (which Amos hilariously described as ‘Bruce Hornsby-ass piano’) could be cheesy, or it could almost become parodic, but it feels like such a genuine expression of emotion.
Despite the joy and the humour on Box for Buddy, Box for Star, it felt to me on first listen that it was a record that was possibly about trauma, or, more specifically, about overcoming trauma. Interviews with Amos seemed to confirm this; he talked about how the songs were written during a period in which he was dealing with depression and addiction:
Initially, this album was just a challenge to make music without getting high, and I was worried I wouldn’t come up with anything at all. I isolated myself from pretty much everyone and wrote songs all summer. I was pretty broke and significantly depressed, but also in a sort of healthy mental demolition mode, trying to reimagine how I wanted to move forward with my life. For better or worse, what I made ended up being a delayed recovery album, largely dealing with more significant addictions that I kicked a year earlier.
I think I’m always drawn to songs, or books, that are somehow about that process of overcoming or recovery. I’m reminded of the brilliant Larkin line about ‘the strength and pain / Of being young’, and that growing up is as much about experiencing unprecedented joy as it is about processing pain. And I think that works of art that deal with this subject well often sublimate that pain, and focus on the ways in which buried trauma presents itself in our everyday lives. I know this is a monumentally clichéd thing to bring up (but I’m also sort of interested in why it is such a cliché), but the book that I have come back to again and again throughout my life is The Catcher in the Rye. I read it every year, and whenever I do I am always completely amazed by how vivid the reality of the novel feels, and also how its true subject is beneath the surface – it’s a book about grief and the experience of processing grief. It’s (another) cliché to compare a work of art which happens to be about the strength and pain of being young with The Catcher in the Rye, and I’m not really doing that here. I think all I’m trying to say is that when I listen to Box for Buddy, Box for Star something about it connects with me in the same way that Salinger does, and I don’t really know why. I’d like to try and unpick it somehow. Which leads me on to my (sort of) new year’s resolution, which is that I want to write something fairly longish about The Catcher in the Rye and what it means to me on Substack throughout 2025. Maybe I’ll do one post and give up, but that’s the plan anyway.
But hey, enough of my yakkin’, whaddaya say? Let’s boogie!
‘Suffocate’ – Knocked Loose ft. Poppy
I’m constantly amazed by how heavy music keeps getting heavier. How is that possible? ‘Suffocate’ has got one of the heaviest ‘drops’ I’ve ever heard. And it’s somewhat comforting to know that metal/hardcore still has the power to shock, at least judging by the reaction to this appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. I’m sure this performance will have inspired a whole generation of kids to make music that their parents absolutely hate. Hooray!
‘Na Gul’ – Aroof Aftab
Arooj Aftab’s voice is the most beautiful instrument on earth.
‘M M M’ – Still House Plants
I was pretty late to this album (I only came across it by checking out some end of year polls), but I was immediately struck by how completely new it sounded. Fantastic to hear the influence of This Heat. And that voice is something else. Someone compared it to a CD of Jeff Buckley’s Grace skipping. I like that. Fascinating band, can’t wait to see them live.
‘All I Want is You’ – Cindy Lee
A song that just feels like it’s always existed. I love how the release of this album (on YouTube and via a GeoCities website) added to its mystique and otherworldliness.
‘Lady with the Braid’ – Olivia Chaney
I love Olivia Chaney’s beautiful, poised arrangement of Dory Previn’s song ‘Lady with the Braid’. I had a good chat with Olivia (and discussed this song) on my podcast earlier this year.
‘When You Needed My Help’ – Jerry David DeCicca
This is from a record that came out in 2023. I just can’t stop listening to it. I find it so moving. I guess it’s a kind of love song, but it’s from the perspective of someone who feels intense remorse because they have let someone down when they needed them. I’m sure there are other songs that deal with this, but I don’t know if anyone has done it so melodically and so mournfully!
Other bits and bobs
Saw some great gigs in 2024 (and I’m going to see Paul McCartney tomorrow!). Particular highlights were Euros Childs at the Lexington, one of my absolute heroes:
And I absolutely loved finally seeing Fat White Family at the Colour Factory. A hugely entertaining, hilarious and energising rock and roll show. I even got in the mosh pit (for the first time since 1998).
Books I read in 2024
Didn’t read as many books as I’d have liked this year, possibly because I thought it would be a good idea to read Our Mutual Friend twice (it does actually improve with every read). Highlight for me were Claire Kilroy, Geoff Dyer and Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes was a total revelation).
We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
Lolly Willowes – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Bournville – Jonathan Coe
A Dream of Wessex – Christopher Priest
Soldier Sailor – Claire Kilroy
The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings – Geoff Dyer
Trespasses – Louise Kennedy
Old School – Tobias Wolff (again)
Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamond Lehmann
The Late Americans – Brandon Taylor
You Are Here – David Nicholls
The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives – Jude Rogers (again)
Listen: On Music, Sound and Us – Michel Faber
Stay True – Hua Hsu
The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story – Kate Summerscale
Living the Beatles Legend: On the Road with the Fab Four – The Mal Evans Story – Kenneth Womack
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens (twice!)
Be Funny or Die: How Comedy Works and Why it Matters – Joel Morris
Ghosts and Journeys – Robert Westall (again)
And in the End: The Last Days of the Beatles – Ken McNab
All Fours – Miranda July
Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles – Kenneth Womack
You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] – Andrew Hankinson
The Vet’s Daughter – Barbara Comyns
The Voice in My Ear – Frances Leviston (again)
Old God’s Time – Sebastian Barry
Hope I Get Old Before I Die: Why Rock Stars Never Retire – David Hepworth
Intermezzo – Sally Rooney
Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World – Dan Hancox
Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger – Nigel Slater
The Hotel – Daisy Johnson
Men at War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939–1945 – Luke Turner
The Proof of My Innocence – Jonathan Coe
Small Rain – Garth Greenwell
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
OK, Merry Christmas and all that. Thanks for listening and reading. See you next year!