1. 'Hot Head' - Orcutt Shelley Miller Yow
Take one avant-rock power trio composed of three outstanding musicians and throw professional nutjob David Yow into the mix on an incendiary cover of a Captain Beefheart track, and the effect is like a grenade going off in a cement mixer. We may have been deprived of Yow's presence at Strange Brew last night, but the band - kicking off the Bristol New Music festival in style - were a glorious embodiment of both symbiosis and chaos.
2. 'The Bunker' - Edwin R Stevens
Just your average nearly-nine-minute-long folk song whose prettiness is undercut with lyrics about oral sex, Germans spreading autism and post-apocalyptic suicide fantasies. As I said after seeing him at Paradise Garden a couple of weeks ago, the guy's a one-off.
3. 'Time Will Be The Only Saviour' - Bill Ryder-Jones
I've come to the realisation that Bill Ryder-Jones' trash talk about Yawn - as well as the quality of follow-up Iechyd Da - had jaundiced my view of the earlier album. The solo performance of this track at St John the Evangelist last month was sublime.
4. 'Light On Our Feet' - Snail Mail
The high point of Lindsey Jordan's splendid third LP Ricochet is - appropriately enough - light on its feet, and is the most obvious marker of a blossoming confidence in her songwriting.
The first I heard of this project - a collaboration between Trent Reznor and Alexander Ridha aka Boys Noize - was when the footage from Coachella started doing the rounds. This version of the Downward Spiral classic is an absolute stunner.
6. 'Silver Machine' - Hawkwind
Speaking of heresy, is it verboten to suggest that this is the best thing Lemmy ever did? I'll stick my neck out...
7. 'Dying For You' - Charli XCX
As anticipated, nothing else on Charli XCX's soundtrack to Wuthering Heights quite matches up to opener 'House', her astonishing collaboration with John Cale, but it's a very solid record capable of standing on its own, and one that signifies an expansion of her sonic palette to encompass industrial and goth. Plus 'Dying For You' had me humming the verse to 'Video Killed The Radio Star'.
8. 'Attempt At A Crash Landing - Theme' - The Twilight Sad
All-guns-blazing stand-out from latest album It's The Long Goodbye, which - owing to circumstances - is a particularly bleak record even by the Scots' own standards.
9. 'Dayvan Cowboy' - Boards Of Canada
Confession time: Boards Of Canada's surprise return has me less animated that most musos simply because to date they've somehow largely passed under my radar (a handful of listens to Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi aside). But encountering this track, from 2005's The Campfire Headphase, has really piqued my interest in them and just-announced comeback LP Inferno. Here's Andy Price writing for Music Radar on how the track took shape.
A song about always that sounds like Alvvays. Sweet and simple, and a highlight of her recent Clwb gig.
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