Retroversy

I always try to write at least a tangible attempt at a year in review post whenever a new year comes a-knockin’. I already gave you my anime of the year, and seeing as I usually play don’t enough games or watch enough movies or series throughout the year to have anything meaningful to say, there’s really only one thing left to talk about — music. So, that’s what this post is going to be about. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Overall, I’d say 2022 was a pretty great year for music. Despite some old favorites tumbling off their pedestals and a somewhat concerning lack of my particular favorite brand of post-progressive mathgaze or whatever the heck I’d describe that specific style of music I prefer above all else as, my list of favorites for this year was quite bountiful, with artists I’m already quite fond of delivering yet again, old flames making surprising comebacks and even some new kids of the block showing a lot of promise.

Consequently, I dove into my meticulously maintained Spotify playlist of everything that caught my ear this past few year and came back bearing three songs and three albums — way ahead of you there, Three Wise Men — I think deserve your attention. I deliberately didn’t pick any songs from albums that I’ve included into my list of best albums in order to maximize diversity, but otherwise, I didn’t really set any rules. Trust me, you’ll notice.

So, let’s start with the songs of the year.

Yard Act – “The Overload”

It’s hard not to listen to the title track to Yard Act’s debut album and be reminded of Blur’s “Parklife” — a 90s classic that, like this track, mixed up intensely quotable spoken word verses about #justbritishthings with an anthemic singalong chorus best consumed after a couple of pints and a game of football. Yet whereas “Parklife” carted out a single sarcastic pastiche of a particular kind of middle class oaf as its subject, “The Overload” takes the form of a stream of consciousness weaved from snippets of conversations singer James Smith is overhearing at the pub. As they flow into one another, from working-class cynicism over boomer rants to obnoxious, unwarranted advice, the chorus reveals the nature of the titular overload as twofold — both in a literal sense it is difficult for our hypersensitive narrator to “remain in [the] dissonance” of stimuli around him, and in a broader sense, as these impulses reflect a collapsing, deeply tragic society. We’re all overloaded with discontent and burdened with making sense, say Yard Act, as reflected by Smith’s manic performance and the somewhat unnerving bongos-and-bass combination that backs the whole thing. Since the 90s, the Britishness that Blur still lovingly sent up with a knowing wink, has now become a kind of trauma, an anxiety in and by itself.


Editors – “Heart Attack”

With their rousing, stadium-friendly take on the dark and gloomy sound popularized by bands like Joy Division and Interpol, Editors were often propped up to be this massive international phenomenon over here in Belgium. Up until they became a bloated pastiche of themselves, they were widely considered as one of the precious few guitar bands that could still headline a summer festival. Odd, seeing as they are little more than a footnote to a footnote as far as the international press is concerned. It was quite a surprise, then, to see trend-setting music blogs like Stereogum reporting on a new Editors song all of a sudden. Why now, of all times, when the band’s honeymoon with the only audience it’d been able to amass for itself was falling apart? The answer lay in Editors’ newest member — a man by the name of Benjamin John Power. As a producer and composer, Power is known for the often abrasive, overwhelming and complex music he performs under the name Blanck Mass — a far cry from Editors’ usual easily digestible fare.

Nevertheless, the collaboration makes for a surprisingly effective match on “Heart Attack”, Blanck Mass’s distinctive thumbprints of maximalist rhythms and eerie synths perfectly supplementing Editors’ brooding intensity, in particular Tom Smith’s passionate baritone. The extended coda that combines thumping industrial beats with some vintage atmospheric guitar work recalls both artists at their peak, and this synergy shows that this collaboration would not be a one-off experiment. Indeed, Editors ended up releasing a full album with Power a few months later — aptly titled EBM, as in “Editors” + “Blanck Mass”, but also as in “Electronic Body Music”, the 80s genre their collaborations sound quite reminiscent of. It’s not quite the tour de force the lead single is — the front half occasionally gives the impression Blanck Mass is puppeteering Editors’ corpses as opposed to breathing new life into them, while the latter half confirms this impression by being overblown with groan-worthy cheese — but there is the seed of something truly grandiose in there. It’s going to be hilarious seeing that something catapulting Editors to the superstardom radio hosts and newspapers critics in this country have always attributed to them, especially at this point in their career, but hey, I’ve seen stranger things happening in music. Speaking of which…

Paramore – “This is Why”

Paramore’s career trajectory is a story that deserves a movie. Founded as a vehicle to lift its then teenaged frontwoman Hayley Williams to a superstar among her Myspace emo peers, they scored a couple of hits during the heyday of undercuts and eyeliner. Some of these have aged like fine wine — “Ignorance”, “Decode”, “Still Into You” — and others like milk — including their biggest hit, the mean-spirited slut-shaming anthem “Misery Business”. Around the turn of the decade, Williams’ contractual privileges compared to other band members led to continued lineup changes, which in turn had an effect on Williams’ mental health. In 2017, it looked like the mess Paramore had become had finally sorted itself out as the band reinvented themselves with After Laughter, an album inspired by 80s new wave and funky pop. In spite of this new, peppier sound, however, Williams sounded more miserable than ever. The honest accounts of her cynicism and world-weariness, combined with a retro sound made the album a critical darling, however. All of a sudden, Paramore were an indie band now. Connoisseurs who had derided them as fodder for hysterical teenagers a decade ago now embraced them. Paramore were finally seen as a band now, instead of as a glorified solo project. The drama was well and truly behind them, their reputation had been saved and their credibility cemented.

Yet as cinematic as it might seem, this redemption story had taken its toll on Hayley Williams. The dissolution of her marriage, shortly after the release of After Laughter, became the straw that broke the camel’s back, and once again Paramore’s future became uncertain. This is why — haha — “This is Why” feels like Paramore’s true redemption. Not only does it precede what will be the band’s first album with the same line-up as the last one — signifying some much-needed stability — it’s also the first song the band have recorded since Williams’ recovery, which she documented on her excellent 2020 solo album Petals for Armor. Combining the jittery new wave of After Laughter with the muddy edge of their most iconic work, the song is a true homecoming, a defiantly catchy statement that doesn’t so much sound like a band finally getting to be who they want to be as it sounds like a band excited to find out who they want to be — setbacks and disappointed purist fans be damned. Also, they said they want to sound like Bloc Party for this album, and there is little that can excite me more than the claim that you want to sound Bloc Party, except maybe for when the people saying it are, err, Bloc Party.

If anything, it’s something to look forward to. We’re trying to look backwards here, however, so let’s get back on track with the albums of the year.

The 1975 – Being Funny in Another Language

The 1975 are not a shenanigans band, they are a parody of a shenanigans band. Over the years they have wrapped themselves into layers upon layers of irony, to a point where it is genuinely hard to tell whether anything they say or do is in any way genuine, or if it is just an elaborate ploy to invoke the platonic ideal of the self-indulgent rock stars. The 1975 don’t make albums, they make statements, with titles like A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships or Notes on a Conditional Form. Their loyalty to any given genre is about as fragile as their lead singer pretends his ego is. They are every band ever, at the same time — every band, except for maybe one. On their latest album, Being Funny in Another Language, The 1975 address what is perhaps the biggest question in a career filled with misdirection: “What do The 1975 sound like when they’re just The 1975?”

The answer is dense, layered, sophisticated and catchy, immaculate yet hooky. The guitars are jangly and funky, the bass is drenched in 1980s sleaze, and the saxophone makes more than one star-making appearance. There are hare-brained rhymes — “vaccinista, tote-bag chique baristas sitting in east on their communista keisters”, anyone? — delivered with such infuriating confidence only someone trying to be decried as a poser could get away with it. A girl gets called a “muppet”. What did you expect? Even when they’re trying to be just themselves, the 1975 can’t exactly stop being, well, themselves. Out of all the identities they have assumed over the years, the band has forged a sound all for themselves, and on this album, they are confident enough to put it front and centre. The result is a collection of densely layered, sophisticated but poppy songs that, perhaps for the first time in the band’s career, sound like they’re all part of the same whole.

Wet Leg – Wet Leg

Wet Leg came out of nothing fully formed. When their very first song, the cheeky, manic “Chaise Longue” went viral last year, the band already had a distinct aesthetic, a distinct image and a distinct sense of humor. The Wet Leg brand was immediately obvious — they were two quirky, awkward friends dressed in outfits lifted straight from a cottagecore subreddit or Tumblr blog, making catchy indie rock while delivering wackadoo rhymes (“on the chaise tongue / all day long”), cult movie references and irreverent snark (“what makes you think you’re good enough to think about me when you’re touching yourself?”) in a slick deadpan. The singles and music videos that followed, confirmed this coherent image, yet still Wet Leg never really feel like a brand, or even particularly well planned at all. Watch them perform “Chaise Longue” live — a song they must have played hundred of times at this point — and Hester Chambers (the blonde) still looks utterly baffled when Rhian Thisdale (the brunette), barely able to contain her laughter, expects her to respond to a playful “Excuse me?” The point is that Wet Leg feel far too genuine to be manufactured. Their awkward demeanor, their clothing style and their sense of wit all register as having been their own from the very beginning, not only because, well, they probably are, but also because these two are just so damn good at being themselves.

Wet Leg’s disarming charm is all over their eponymous debut album, which was released this spring to acclaim the likes of which few other debuting guitar bands have seen over the past couple of years. Songs like the sunny, surf-inspired “Wet Dream” and the psychedelic, but laid-back “Angelica” (“I don’t know what I am doing here / I was told that there would be free beer”) prove that all the hype was more than warranted. On the other hands, goofier asides like “Oh No”, a rhythmic nursery rhyme about the horrors of the Internet, or “Ur Mum”, a song in which Thisdale dryly announces that she “has been practicing her longest, loudest scream”, followed by, well, a very long and loud scream, prove that Wet Leg are more than just another hot new indie band. They are a funny band, or at least a band who can be thoroughly funny without handcuffing themselves to a comedic niche. Hot new indie bands are a dime a dozen, but bands that are convincingly funny not so much. It’s yet another piece of evidence in my case for Wet Leg’s authenticity. I’ve heard what record labels trying to sound “relatable” to today’s shitposting and doomscrolling youth sounds like, and it’s nowhere near as compelling as this. Besides, referencing Buffalo ’66? Do you think an record label executive could even come up with that?

Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up Here

In 1997, a man named Jeff Magnum wrote and then had his band perform a series of heart-rending and psycho-sexually disturbing, but immaculately crafted songs about among others, a desperate and deeply embarrassing personal connection he felt to Anne Frank. The result was In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, an album that became perhaps the most quintessential example of a cult hit, its contents virtually unknown to casual music fans, but its reputation a meme few experienced internauts haven’t at least heard of. The album’s recording, release and subsequent reception allegedly messed Mangum up so badly he disappeared from the public eye for over a decade. In 2022, a man named Isaac Wood wrote and then had his band perform a series of heart-rending and psycho-sexually disturbing, but immaculately crafted songs about among others, a wet dream he once had about pop singer Charli XCX. The result was Ants from Up Here, just like Aeroplane an album rife with air travel references — the notoriously ambitious but ill-fated Concorde plane gets mentioned multiple times throughout — and just like Jeff Mangum’s masterpiece an album destined to live on as a cult classic. When I first heard Ants From Up Here, as with Aeroplane, I realized I was listening to an all-time favorite.

Unfortunately, that is not where the comparisons end. A week before the release of Ants From Up Here, Isaac Wood that he had left Black Country, New Road in order to take better care of his mental health, causing the band to depart on tour without its frontman and, most noticeably, dedicated not to play any songs Wood had had a hand in. An understandable decision, given how personal some of these songs are, but I can’t help admitting that the idea we’ll never hear the euphoric “Concorde” performed live again, that we’ll never hear all of Glastonbury or Primavera Sound belting along to “The Place Where He Inserted The Blade” or that the only performance of “Basketball Shoes” you’ll ever find on YouTube will be one without an audience. On the other hand, Wood’s departure also gives these songs so much more meaning, and I don’t even mean that in a macabre way. There is something to be said for saying your piece and then signing off, leaving the art to speak for itself. Isaac Wood doesn’t anyone anything — not even his band members, who have been taking touring without any songs to perform as a challenge to find their voice without a frontman. I hope the songs they end up writing find their way back to the studio, because in spite of Wood’s confessional lyrics and dramatic vocals having been key to BCNR’s rise to fame, the band wouldn’t be who they are without Georgia Ellery’s klezmer-inspired violin, Tyler Hyde’s bass keeping the band tied to its post-punk roots or Lewis Evans unleashing his saxophone at the climax of many a song as if he were the late Clarence Clemons himself. Ants from Up Here is the end of an era, and sounds like it too, but for this band, it’s only the beginning.

Let’s hope the year 2023 brings good things, not just for Isaac, not just for his former bandmates, but for all of us. Happy New Year!