As a knock-on effect of posting my Best Albums Of 2012 list every day this week, the office playlist is about double its normal length, as you’ll see.
A few return visits to albums of the year notwithstanding, it’s another list that signals a really strong start to 2013. To rank alongside Endless Boogie, Matmos, Pantha Du Prince, Low and Splashgirl, a new one by Purling Hiss arrived this week, less fuzzy and lo-fi, and revealing them to be effective heirs to Dinosaur Jr, or at least deeply immersed in late ‘80s Boston area rock. It’s great.
A few more margin notes: Cyclopean are a quartet featuring Irmin Schmidt and Jaki Liebezeit, alongside Burnt Friedmann and Jono Podmore. The Sun Araw/Congos EP is free, live and massively recommended; “Reverse Shark Attack” is one of a couple of Ty reissues lined up by In The Red; Parquet Courts have got the Fall/Pavement/wired garage band thing down as well as Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and “Light Up Gold” would have easily made my 2012 list if I’d heard it a day or two earlier; and, if you haven’t dared to watch it yet, you may be surprised by the Macca/Nirvana jam…
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey
1 Endless Boogie – Long Island (No Quarter)
2 Voigt & Voigt – Die Zauberhafte Welt Der Anderen (Kompakt)
3 Iceage – You’re Nothing (Matador)
4 Speck Mountain – Badwater (Carrot Top)
5 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd)
6 Pissed Jeans – Honeys (Sub Pop)
7 Matmos – The Marriage Of True Minds (Thrill Jockey)
8 Chris Darrow – Artist Proof (Drag City)
9 Junior Kimborough – First Recordings (Fat Possum)
10 Mountains – Centralia (Thrill Jockey)
11 Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory – Elements Of Light (Rough Trade)
12 Allah-Las – Allah-Las (Innovative Leisure)
13 Cyclopean – EP (Mute)
14 Low – The Invisible Way (Sub Pop)
15 Splashgirl – Field Day Rituals (Hubro)
16 Four Tet – Pink (Text)
17 Various Artists – Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 (Rhino)
18 Eyvind Kang – The Narrow Garden (Kranky)
19 FJ McMahon – Spirit Of The Golden Juice (Rev-Ola)
20 Ravi Shankar – Chants Of India (Parlophone)
21 Koboku Senju – Joining The Queue To Become One Of Those Ordinary Ghosts (MIE Music)
22 Kraftwerk – Radioactivity (EMI)
23 Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras And The Raw Power Band Meet The Congos – Icon Give Life (http://rvng.bandcamp.com/album/icon-give-life)
24 Purling Hiss – Water On Mars (Drag City)
25 Tame Impala – Lonerism (Modular)
26 Phosphorescent – Muchacho (Dead Oceans)
27 Paul McCartney & Nirvana – Cut Me Some Slack (Live)
28 Ty Segall & Mikal Cronin – Reverse Shark Attack (In The Red)
29 Miles Davis Quintet – Live In Europe 1969; The Bootleg Series Volume 2 (Legacy)
30 La Düsseldorf – Japandorf (Grönland)
31 Steve Mason – Fight Them Back (Double Six)
32 Joni Mitchell – The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (Asylum)
33 Parquet Courts – Light Up Gold (http://dulltools.bandcamp.com/album/light-up-gold)
34 Duane Pitre – Feel Free (Important)