BAMS 2014 / Music this year: a miscellany

Chris S. and me (and two other fans) photographed by The Chills.
Martin Phillips’ signing hand is bottom left.

Now, to be honest, my favourite musical things of the year were the Serum wave table synthesizer, and getting re-acquainted with the Reaper DAW, due to having a semi-modern laptop for the first time in ages. Certainly for the last 3 — 4 months of the year I spent my evenings tinkering with these programs, and not listening or reading as much as usual. Which possibly explains the total lack of records in the list below by people I’d never heard of before. Still, they are great records.

1. Vashti Bunyan — Heartleap
2. Lispector — The Cult of Less
3. Comet Gain — Paperback Ghosts
4. National Jazz Trio of Scotland — Standards Vol III
5. Ian Crause — The Vertical Axis
6. Vic Godard & Subway Sect — 1979 Now!
7. Tara Jane O’Neill — Where Shine New Lights
8. Morrissey — World Peace is None of Your Business
9. Ai Aso — Lone
10. Scott Walker + Sunn O))) — Soused

Best gig of the year was Security at the DCA in July supporting Ela Orleans (who was also great). A text message conversation is the closest I got to reviewing it:

M: Any good?
Me: Fucking amazing — I have a new favourite band. Called Security. Who said ‘AIDS care put back 5 years by Putin’. I pulled the singer’s piggy nose. How were Owen & the Rednecks?
M: Lol missed them; arrived late, left early. Wrong choice by me. Yours sounds awesome =]
Me: Aw — next time!
M: Only if they have sax
Me: They had sax with the furniture — does that count?
M: Did you go to the right show? That sounds slightly more specialised.
Me: I did. Which I guess means that the guy was actually subsidised for chasing people away from their seats and dry humping them.
M: Ooh… All for £5… Damn it.

Vic Godard was on top form at the Voodoo Rooms last month, too. To my shame I missed the only Pastels show within reach after falling over in my parents’ garden racing my niece and scraping most of the skin off my left palm, which made driving difficult. ‘You hurt yourself didn’t you? And you still didn’t win’ was her less than sympathetic summing up. It was amazing to see The Chills in August — and amazing, as Manic Pop Thrills pointed out, to hear them so vital and bursting with new material.

Best mis-heard song title of the year (by S.) was ‘Saddle Up’ by Comet Gain (it’s actually ‘Sad Love’).

The song that got me in all of the right places the most was Lispector’s ‘Endless Summerz’. Beautifully pitched between hope and despair.
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BAMS is ‘An annual poll of Scottish Blogs and Music Sites’, on Twitter here. Thanks for asking me to participate (with the albums list, the rest is off piste).