The contributors to our Songs of the Week music survey of new releases are each picking a selection of the tunes that helped make their 2023 a better place. Here’s the choices of Graham Reid.
Green Rocky Road
By Van Morrison
It’s summer so let’s set aside Van Morrison’s perpetual, curmudgeonly nature and weird politics of recent years and settle into his Moving on Skiffle album on which he remakes that 1950s style into rock’n’roll, blues-rock, country rock, folk-gospel, and so on. It’s easy listening and thoroughly enjoyable but after 22 songs he arrives at this, a look back at Celtic soul for nine minutes.
Dick Move
By Small Man, Big Tweet
There was a fair bit of competition in the local noise-rock/garageband/post-punk region this year: Ratso, Ringlets, Fuzzies, Swallow the Rat, Ingrid and the Ministers, the recently discovered Grim Ltd album recorded in 1966. But we guide you to the second, explosive, profane and bratty album Wet, by Auckland’s Dick Move who fire off 13 songs in 22 minutes. Here for a good time not a long time. Neighbour-baiting music for your backyard barbecue?
Midnight is My Name
By Ebony Lamb
From her recent self-titled album, this country-flavoured folk-pop is a fine introduction to an album that is sultry and seductive, sometimes slightly weary and full of interesting lyrics. Formerly of Eb and Sparrow she is now the fully-formed Ebony Lamb for a solo career.
shanty
By Slowdive
The opening track to their everything is alive album, this Pink Floyd-like slice of psychedelic shoegaze established Britain’s resurrected Slowdive as leaders in a genre of their own making.
Washout
By Tom Lark
With his Brave Star debut album as Tom Lark, Auckland producer/singer Shannon Fowler served a classy collection of power-pop, Pacific-kissed dream pop like Washout, Lennon-esque pop-rock and country-flavoured songs that had something to say. But did so with understatement and memorable melodies. A real keeper.
Grønland
By Vor-Stellen
Local band Vor-Stellen’s Parallelogram double vinyl may hark back to German bands like Neu!, Can and others making kosmische music/cosmic music in the 70s, but their expansive instrumentals like this are full of discreet detail and subtle shifts that revealed themselves over many pleasurable repeat plays.
Down on Our Knees
By Glen Hansard
Irish singer-songwriter Hansard probably got more attention from his performance leading a rambunctious version of Fairytale of New York at Shane MacGowan’s funeral than he’d had in years. But 2023′s All That Was East is West of Me Now was among his best albums and this swirling, apocalyptic slice of emotional pessimism probably captured the mood of the year better than most. The rest of the album offered more promising visions of where we’re at and could be.
Come on Aphrodite
By Natalie Merchant
Greek goddess of sensuality and love, gospel spirit from singer Abena Koomson-Davis, big hooks, surging horns and just one of the entry points into Natalie Merchant’s terrific life-affirming album Keep Your Courage.
Sweet Sound of Heaven
By The Rolling Stones with Lady Gaga
Harking back to their Muscle Shoals/Southern country influences and classic albums like Sticky Fingers and Some Girls, the Stones here rekindled a spirit many thought had been snuffed out long ago. Having Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder on hand helped considerably, but this soars soulfully, and Jagger hadn’t sounded this inspired in decades. Cool false ending also.
Mercy
By John Cale
This opening, title track of 80-year-old John Cale’s umpteenth album set the mood of clear-eyed reflection (there’s a song dedicated to his old paramour/creative partner Nico), intellectual rigour and heartfelt farewells wrapped in his songs, which possessed a rare, stately beauty. Yet with collaborators like Weyes Blood, electronic duo Laurel Halo, Animal Collective and others, Cale was still pushing creative envelopes. Damaged beauty.
Chasing Rainbows
By Rose City Band
Where the band of Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo) evoke the spirit and style of expansive Jerry Garcia and the country-rock of the Byrds crossing paths to provide the soundtrack for your slow summer drive. This year’s Garden Party - or better, their 2020 Summerlong - is the album you never thought you needed until you heard it.
Sinatra Drive Breakdown
By Yo La Tengo
There was a lot of krautrock/motorik music around this year - not least from Kraftwerk themselves - but long-distance runners Yo La Tengo (40 years, about 20 albums) opened their 2023 album This Stupid World with this hypnotic slice of rolling groove and stuttering guitar. File alongside our own Vor-Stellen and have at hand when the car is pulling out for that long holiday drive to somewhere distant.
