So, last year, January ended up a pretty good month (for a January).
Julie Bryne’s Not Even Happiness: a DiSer’s favourite,
The XX’s 3rd release, I See You, perhaps proving their debut was not a one off after all, following a rather disappointing sophomore effort.
Plus, for me at least, great efforts from The Proper Ornaments (Foxhole) and Ty Segall (s/t).
All those 4 made my year end “top 90” list.
Looking forward, what do DiSer’s expect from the first month of January? I have to say I haven’t yet heard of too much to be overly excited about (just Ty’s new one - with a name like Freedom’s Goblin, it must be good, right) and possibly Calexico’s The Thread That Keeps Us.
If I end up with 4 keepers from Jan '18, I will be pretty happy (and pretty surprised) I reckon … roll on 2018!
It’s looking like February might have the bumper crop this year
Some confirmed 2018 releases I’m keen to hear…
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Wrong Creatures (Jan 12th)
Shame - Songs of Praise (Jan 12th)
First Aid Kit – Ruins (Jan 19th)
Kimbra – Primal Heart (Jan 19th)
The Go! Team – Semicircle (Jan 19th)
tUnE-yArDs – I can feel you creep into my private life (Jan 19th)
Nils Frahm – All Melody (Jan 26th)
Django Django – Marble Skies (Jan 26th)
No Age – Snares Like A Haircut (Jan 26th)
Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin (Jan 26th)
Hookworms - Microshift (Feb 2nd)
Field Music – Open Here (Feb 2nd)
Simple Minds - Walk Between Worlds (Feb 2nd)
Son Lux – Brighter Wounds (Feb 9th)
Polica – Music for the Long Emergency (Feb 16th)
Belle & Sebastian – How To Solve Our Human Problems (Feb 16th)
Loma – Loma [Shearwater’s New project] (Feb 16th)
Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet (Feb 16th)
Ought – Room Inside The World (Feb 16th)
Andrew WK – You’re Not Alone (March 2nd)
Titus Androdicus - A Productive Cough (March 2nd)
Manic Street Preachers – Resistance is Futile (April 6th)
Made this list using recordbird.com that uses acts in your library on Spotify or Apple Music as well as the acts you follow on Facebook to give you alerts about new releases and clever stuff like that.
Yeah … maybe. I listened to tracks from BRMC, tUnE-yArDs, Nils Frahm and a couple of others on this site [link removed by @sean as it breaches copyright] today. Wasn’t blown away by anything much. Which is what prompted my posting. Truth is, I am a little dubious about January this year. (But very happy to be proven wrong, come this time next month.)
For Feb, in addition to yours, I see Meilssa Laveaux is due to release a new album, Radyo Siwel. Could be worth a listen.
Perhaps I will look into that recordbird site, although I pretty much shy away from all social media/algorithms generally …
I count RTJ3 as a January last year release and I can’t ree anything this Jan topping that.
In other news, and this could well just be because I’m old and grumpy, unless you’re actually American using the term “sophomore” to describe a band’s second record can really really do one.