FEATURE: February Sounds from TSOTC HQ

Welcome back to another 'Sounds from TSOTC HQ' feature. This month there’s a good mix of old and new, including releases by Gary Numan, Joni Mitchell, Silk Sonic and Manchester girl band The Deep Blue…

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1) I, Assassin - Gary Numan (1982)

I discovered this album a few years ago, having been recommended it by someone I worked with. He was adamant it was one of Numan's best albums, a claim I never really understood or agreed with until recently.

The thing is, for the first few listens I, Assassin sounds a bit of a mess. Every song (perhaps with the exception of 'The 1930's Rust') is a haze of flurried synthesisers, crackling drums and barely distinguishable lyrics. It just sounds like noise.

That is, it just sounds like noise until you start listening to Pino Palladino's bass lines, at which point everything begins to make sense. They hold everything else down and yet elevate the tracks where the bass is allowed to shine the most, as Palladino often finds himself doing with music he plays on (see 'I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down' by Paul Young, 'Give Blood' by Pete Townshend, 'Bad Love' by Eric Clapton and 'Take That Situation' by Nick Heyward. Suddenly everything on I, Assassin feels like it fits, becoming a fascinating example of early-'80s synth-funk and an that reveals new delights with every listen.

'The 1930's Rust' is still one of my favourites on the album, but it has recently been overtaken by the sinuous 'Music For Chameleons', the mystifying 'White Boys and Heroes' and the utterly exuberant 'We Take Mystery (To Bed)', the full six minutes of which I could never sit through previously, but which I now regularly listen to on repeat.

So if you've tried listening to this album before and found the endeavour to be less than fruitful, I highly recommend trying it again and listening to the bass in particular - I don't think you will be disappointed.

Featured Track: 'We Take Mystery (To Bed)'

2) Night Ride Home - Joni Mitchell (1991)

There aren't many singer-songwriters who can consistently conjure up a scene with the detail and intricacy that Joni Mitchell can. In fact, I don't think there's anyone else does it quite as well as she does. The title track of this album is a prime example of this; 'once in a while in a big blue moon / there comes a night like this / like some surrealist invented this Fourth of July night ride home', she sings, over cricket sounds and rich acoustic guitar.

I really feel quite regretful that I didn't listen to this album before this month. In fact, the only reason I listened to it at all was because Mitchell had removed all of her early albums from Spotify after the furore Spotify CEO Joe Rogan caused with his remarks about COVID in his podcast. Bereft of my favourite Mitchell releases (Ladies of the Canyon (1970), Blue (1971) and Hejira (1976), I turned to the four albums of hers that remained on the streaming platform, of which Night Ride Home was the latest, having been released in 1991. In these four albums I found a Joni Mitchell I didn't know but immediately liked - a Joni Mitchell with a darker, deeper voice and whose songs had lost the gentle naivety that her earlier work is so steeped in.

Night Ride Home possibly appealed the most because it is the most consistent of her later albums, but mostly because the songs are so evocative and heartbreakingly beautiful. As mentioned, the title track is probably my favourite, but you are missing out on a vital piece of Mitchell's musical history if you haven't heard 'Come In From the Cold', 'The Only Joy In Town' and 'Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free').

Featured Track: 'Night Ride Home'

3) An Evening With Silk Sonic - Silk Sonic (2021)

A blend of 1970s sonic sensibilities, stellar 21st century production and some inspired songwriting, An Evening with Silk Sonic was undeniably one of the greatest pop releases of 2021. A collaboration between golden-voiced Bruno Mars and the multi-talented rapper/singer Anderson .Paak, there isn't a single track on this album that doesn't sparkle with its own personality, wit or groove, making it a release that can be listened to repeatedly with the greatest of ease (aside from the other releases mentioned in this blog post, I haven't listened to anything else). The videos accompanying the singles ('Leave the Door Open', 'Skate' and 'Smokin Out the Window') are also works of art, combining style, sophistication and the occasional bout of humour.

Another thing to note is that if you listen carefully to this album, and then to the rest of Bruno Mars's musical output since his first album in 2010, it suddenly becomes fantastically obvious that this is probably the sort of music he's wanted to make all along. I'm glad he has finally got there, because this an album is an absolute joy, and contains some of the best new music I've heard for a long time (I don't know enough about Anderson .Paak's previous output to make similar judgements about him, although in the light of listening to this album this is certainly something I shall be rectifying). This album really does deserve to be remembered as one of the greats in 21st century pop music).

Featured Track: 'Skate'

4) Taking On Water (EP) - The Deep Blue (2021)

It's a rare experience to hear a song so good that it completely stops you in its tracks, but that's exactly what happened when I heard one of the tracks from The Deep Blue's new EP Taking on Water. My friend and I were sitting in a hotel room talking about harmonies, when she'd remembered she had seen this band (an all-girl group from Manchester) supporting another harmony-centric band I love (Flyte) a few months ago. She played me a track called 'Cotton White Linen', and I was absolutely stunned. And it wasn't just the harmonies - the whole song had such sparkling, soaring delicacy that, when you play it through decent headphones and close your eyes, you feel like you might as well be flying. Don't even get me started on the bridge because if I think about that particular combination of melody and lyrics I will probably cry.

Since listening to whole EP (possibly a hundred times over), I have also become rather fond of 'Jealous Sea', which takes the rather commonplace lyrical theme of jealousness and makes it into something that sounds anything but, through the use of Fleetwood Mac-esque instrumentation, some clever word play and more of those stunning harmonies.

Featured Track: 'Cotton White Linen'