Author: Paul

Each week, I choose an artist at random from a pickle jar and listen to everything they’ve done, hoping to find new favourite artists. This week, it was Jaz’s recommendation – Martha Wainwright.
Now, I was aware of MW because Jaz added possibly her most annoying song to our Road Trip playlist – a 24 hour long playlist we use when we are on, you guessed it, the road. That annoying song is Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, and even after I listened to, and thoroughly enjoyed, the rest of Martha’s back catalog, I hold this truth to be self evident. I don’t like BMFA. It sounds like a bad Alanis song.

That said, Martha and the whole Wainwright clan are very much up my straße. There’s a lo-fi element to her first couple of albums and a sad longing that was only ever going to make this Sad Boi blush. With each album, there’s an iteration and a change that I am completely on board with. Even the French albums had something for me.

I think it’s fair to say that I judged this particular book by its cover and had been missing out on a league of other stuff as a result.

Sorry Martha. Sorry Jaz.

If there is one thing I have been missing in my life, it’s knowing who the cool, new bands are. That’s why I felt really lucky that I got to spend the week listening to Wet Leg.

Wet Leg are a British indie band formed by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers and hailing from the Isle of Wight. You may know them from their 6Music rotation, on songs like Wet Dream and Chaise Longue.

There’s a certain Courtney Barnett coolness to their approach that resonates in laisez-faire and explicit lyrics on sex and relationships. It speaks of ownership and real-life scenarios which bring a smirk as well as cementing a melody in the frontal cortex. They are not only a band I’ll be looking out for but one who are yet to release an album. (Research shows it’s due out next month on Domino Records).

What I have found with Wet Leg is the idea that there is hope out there, in guitar and pithy double-entendre and with women.

Long live Wet Leg.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

This week, I have mostly been listening to Halsey.
Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s likely you’re familiar with Halsey’s music, activism and bold (and wonderful) statements about her sexuality and mental health.

I wasn’t familiar. I do live under a rock. I am glad I have corrected that now.

Halsey has released four albums to date, which have an increasing development and tone. Her latest, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, produced by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, is particularly adventurous. There are such a wider range of influences to her music which makes it dynamic and different, like it’s being pulled in a number of directions. I state that as a positive, by the way.

It was only in the depths of my Halsey week that I discovered I had heard her before, as part of the cast of Sing 2.
But the less said about why I have heard that, the better.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

This week I had the pleasure of listening to American singer-songwriter, Phoebe Bridgers. It would have been impossible for me to get to this point in my life without being aware of some of her incredible music, notably her work alongside my dreamboat Conor Oberst with Better Oblivion Community Center, but it was another matter altogether to recognise what she has already contributed to the world of music.

Phoebe Bridgers has, to date, released two albums. 2017’s Stranger in the Alps and 2020’s Punisher. Both of them bring an absolute sucker punch of acoustic songs into being and demand attention. It is clear why she has become the indie darling that she deserves to be, and is continuously heralded for the music she creates. That said, I couldn’t write up my thoughts on her two albums without acknowledging her performance on SNL where she smashed her guitar and everyone got mad about it as if it didn’t fit in with the ethos of the show or her music or she didn’t do it properly or whatever. None of that matters when it’s her performance and as such, she can do whatever she likes. Watching that clip back again with the effect her music has had on me this week makes it all the more poignant.
It got more people talking about her music, and if you’re able to get people talking without being a dick, then you deserve all the praise.

Whether it is on Didn’t Know What I Was In For from BOOC, Motion Sickness from SITA or Kyoto from Punisher, there are elements of Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes, Camera Obscura, Elliot Smith and any number of other beautiful influences that to me it feels are on display and make her work as special as it is.

Long may Phoebe Bridgers share this with us all.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

This week, I have mostly been listening to American-British singer-songwriter Celeste. I’ll lay it down now, as I had to check… No relation to Daphne & Celeste.

As Celeste only has one album, 2021’s Not Your Muse (which debuted at number one in the UK Album charts), it was a deep-dive into that offering, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was also great to discover a new artist, someone I was tangentially aware of but had not heard. Boy, it was a real treat.

This is one of those wonderful examples of also finding out that someone who is already so accomplished is a good seven years younger than me. What. a 2021 Celeste Epiphany Waite had. Nominated for several Brit awards, the Mercury Prize and an Academy Award for co-writing Hear My Voice from The Trial of the Chicago 7.

The joy of Not Your Muse is in Celeste’s powerful smokey vocal, which I’ve seen compared to Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse by writers far finer than me. There is something truly wonderful to songs like Ideal Woman, Love Is Back and The Promise that kept me circling the album whenever I got the chance to listen to it.

She’s definitely one to look out for.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

This week, I had the absolute pleasure of listening to nothing but Brittany Howard, known for her work with Alabama Shakes, Thunderbitch and Bermuda Triangle. In 2018, the former announced a hiatus which spelt the arrival of a solo album, Jaime, which I had never heard before. It was therefore here that I turned my attention.

I first heard of Alabama Shakes through a TV appearance, which in my head was Jools Holland but a quick Google search shows I may be mistaken. From there, I quickly got into their debut album, Boys & Girls, a wonderful and deep soul rock record with something for everyone but especially me.

I was therefore very happy to include Howard in the mix for the Music Jar 2022, especially to learn that there was more output from her than I was aware of.

It’ll come as little surprise that Jaime is just as loaded with heart as anything else I’d heard from Brittany Howard and her hiatus band. Listening to Thunderbitch also gave me access to a darker side of her skillset and some deep 60s guitar and organ riffs that would only ever tick boxes.

If there’s one thing that comes through in every single song, it’s the power of her vocal. There’s really nobody like her and I was fascinated to watch any live footage I could find to see her absolute all in every performance. There’s no way to halfarse some of these songs and that passion is what makes it so special.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

This week I had the absolute joy of listening to British singer songwriter, Cleo Sol. I hadn’t heard of her before this project and really enjoyed her soulful albums and have tried to find out more about her.

There’s a certain romantic late night feel to both Rose in the Dark and Mother which was a departure from other artists I have listened to this year. It led me to check her social media and other links in search of more information but whether it is purposeful or not, she’s kept things fairly light. What I was able to see is that she cites Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott as influences and became a mother last year.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

Each week, I listen to a different artist, chosen at random from a pickle jar full of names.
This week was the turn of Japanese-American singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada.

It’ll come as little surprise that I wasn’t aware of Utada before this week. It was a pleasant surprise for me to enter a world of 90s pop music and journey forward from there. Utada was deemed “the most influential artist of the decade” in the Japanese music landscape and here I am listening to her for the first time.

There’s a romanticism to Hikaru Utada’s work, alongside the pop sensibilities and titles such as First Love, Find Love and One Last Kiss attest to this. It’s clear where her influences come from and what her intentions are. In this age where everything feels a lot more fraught, it was nice to bathe in Utada’s music, to feel that positivity and affection.

Thank you to my friend Mika for the recommendation.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

Each week, I listen to a different artist, the names drawn at random from a pickle jar. This week was the turn of Norwegian synth-pop star, Sigrid.

I knew nothing of Sigrid before the start of this week but am really pleased to have found a new favourite musician. Her only album, Sucker Punch, is full of verified electronica bangers. It’s been an album that I have been turning to when out on a run as well as something fun to have on in the background while I’m working or cooking.

For me, the go to songs on this new favourite album include Sucker Punch, Level Up and Strangers. There’s something familiar about her particular brand or style, with bits of Jessie Ware through to Bat For Lashes thrown into the mix.

Ultimately, it’s fun to hear something new/current that I enjoy as a curmudgeonly 30-something who is very much stuck in his own heyday. Go and listen now.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.

Each week, I take a piece of paper from a pickle jar. On that pickle jar is the name of a musical artist. This week, I got to enjoy Kate Bush.

This, of course, was not the first time I had heard of KB. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the last forty years plus to have managed that. From what I can recall, there are two Kate Bush-y memories that I have from my formative years.
The first was when I went to see Placebo play at Brixton Academy in 2004 and there was a lot of talk about them doing Running Up That Hill – a song that much later I found out was by Kate Bush.

The second is slightly more puerile but totally Schiernecker at the same time. As a child, my dad used to say to me – “one in the hand is worth two in Kate’s bush”. As with a lot of his wisdom, it went over my head for a number of years but I’m laughing to myself as I think of it. It was around the same time that we had to walk home after a birthday meal out and he regaled me with the history of his sexual exploits.
“Anyway, 3, 2, 1, you’re back in the room…” as he would say in a nod to Little Britain, a show he’s never been able to free himself from the catchphrases of.
Kate Bush.

I knew a lot more Kate Bush songs than I would have figured. If it had come up on Pointless, I’m not sure I could get a Pointless answer (even after a week of listening) but there is a lot to be said for the way that Babushka, Running Up That Hill, Hounds of Love and Wuthering Heights entered my life like they’d always been there.
Just had an awful memory reemerge. Remember the height of lockdown when everyone was doing quizzes… Well, one of my friends started running Friday night home discos where she would play out requests over Zoom and we’d all get drunk in our lockdown quarters and dance like idiots. One night, after maybe a bottle of wine, she played Wuthering Heights and I threw a blanket around me and danced like I was possessed for four minutes and twenty eight seconds.

She’s an overlooked artists. She definitely has her fans, of which I know my friend Drew is a huge one, but I don’t think it’s possible to give Kate Bush the flowers she deserves for being a true original.

What a woman.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.