File download is hosted on Megaupload
On with the show…!
6 Comacozer/Blown Out – In Search of Highs Volume 1
I chose a Blown Out track for my Festive ‘Spill Number 2 cut last year and their “New Cruiser” album made my end of year list the year before. This split LP from the ever-reliable Riot Season records builds on that template of spaced-out guitar rock and stretches it even further. Comacozer give us one 18-minute-long epic track of perfect psychedelic guitar wrangling and Blown Out have three shorter tracks of similar time-stretching guitar greatness. If I haven’t managed to persuade you of the greatness of Blown Out over the last couple of years, hopefully this split with Comacozer will be the one to get you over to the heavy psych-rock dark side. And if not, I’m sure I’ll be writing about them again next year too!
5 Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel
Courtney Barnett’s first record was my Number 2 album of 2015 so I was super-excited when I heard she had a new one coming out. I bought it unheard on its first week of release (as I like to do with albums that I know I will buy regardless) and skipped back home from the record shop to listen (OK, I took two trains and a bus and walked sensibly, but I was skipping in my head!). Well, I was pretty disappointed, to be honest. Where were the narrative vignettes? Where was the laid-back stoner cool? What about those super-shredding grunge riffs? There were all (well, mostly) gone and in their place was a darker, more serious, mature (ohh..the “m” word – surely the death knell of any artist), self-reflective, downbeat album. But after four or five more listens it all started to click and get under my skin and I realised that this was an incredible album from a ridiculously talented songwriter who is still developing and hasn’t even come close to reaching the height of her powers yet. Of course she couldn’t have and shouldn’t have made a “Sometime I Sit…” MKII, of course it’s more mature and serious, of course it’s more contemplative, complex and nuanced. It is all the better for it – it just took me a while to realise!
4 Gnod – Chapel Perilous
I don’t know how I managed to miss Gnod until this year. They have been regularly putting out albums and splits since 2007 and I even had a split 7” that they put out with one of my favourite bands Robedoor on my all-time favourite label Not Not Fun that I didn’t know I had! This is another slice of epic experimental noise rock with a nice heavy edge that’s not afraid to go off in new directions.
