Michele Stodart's torch songs

© Simon Poulter 2023

I seem to have a habit of only venturing north of the Thames to hear music you can’t boogie to when it is freezing cold. I also seem to have a habit of hearing said music inside churches that are marginally less cold than on the outside, but that may be just be a reflection of the kind of music that appeals to me.  

One year ago this week I squeezed into my parka and then squeezed into a pew at the Union Chapel in Islington to see Matt Deighton and friends (and family) charm the pants off all and sundry, as he tends to do. So, almost 12 months later, on the final evening of November, I’m a couple of miles down the road in in St. Pancras, in a church, and I’m wearing the parka again. However, for some inexplicable reason, it’s a little smaller than I remember.

The place of worship in question is the delightful St. Pancras Old Church, which dates back to the fourth century, and I’m here for an equally bewitching evening with Michele Stodart. The bassist in festival favourites The Magic Numbers (along with her brother Romeo and fellow siblings and former neighbours Sean and Angela Gannon) has dialled down their indie verve on her solo outings to pursue a flavour of Americana in songs drawn from the personal and the confessional. 

The latest, Invitation, released in September (and now nominated for Album Of The Year in the UK Americana Awards), appeared in the wake of what Stodart described as “life-changing personal circumstances”, without elaborating on the specifics. That said, she has talked of the album coming from “a place of inviting in the darkness, the hard times, the sadness, anger, loss, love and grief...all of the unknown feelings that get woken up inside you.” Which, it must be said, suitably sets expectations the record duly fulfils.

There are certainly a few emotional yards being trod on this album, which at the Old Church, Stodart performs in its entirety, a seven-piece band behind her, including pedal steel guitarist Holly Carter, a violin player and a harpist. They fill out the small stage, set in front of the church’s apse, cohesively providing a bed for Stodart’s smoky voice (she sounds a lot like her brother but in a higher register) and an engaging, enchanting energy. Between songs, Stodart - one of the friendliest, huggiest performers I have ever met - speaks proudly of the women in her life: her teenage daughter Maisie, her Portuguese opera singer mother and her partner Immy, all of whom are amongst the 100 or so folk in attendance. But she is also diffident, hinting at the childhood shyness that she has spoken of (a trait seemingly at odds with being the bass player of a band that has rightly become a Glasto staple).

© Simon Poulter 2023

The inspirations for Invitation are briefly alluded to in her introductions, but there is more depth online, as she descrbed the album as reflecting years of “change, growth and transformation”. It is, she reveals, an “intimate, personal record, with songs that touch on themes of motherhood, relationships, mental health, transformation, endings and new beginnings.”  

That couldn’t be more obvious than from the opening track, Tell Me, which unrolls a conversation between lovers near the bottom of the downslope of a relationship (although not actually written directly from personal experience), one that most of us have experienced at some point in time, and usually late at night. The line “Are there any of the other sides to me that you couldn’t love?” is loaded with jaded ambiguity. 

The seven tracks that follow continue in this vein, to a greater or lesser degree, touching at both the uplifting aspects of romantic entanglement and the bleak. Stodart’s vocals breathe like Patsy Cline through the torch songs Push And Pull and Undone, while the warming, jazzy vibes of The House wrap a proverbial blanket around the ears. 

These Bones speaks of the emotional wear-and-tear of a strained relationship - “I ain’t hanging round to die,” she tells her antagonist, while The Good Fight appears to be moving things on with the opening line: “You took back the key and you closed the door,” while remaining regretful of a love that could have been. 

Drowning brings the album to an end with perhaps Stodart’s bleakest statement of the album: “I lay here surrounded by these four walls of nothingness inside of my mind, getting smaller and smaller this space I’m sinking in”. On paper, depressing (and, even, possibly a statement of depression), it comes wrapped in a shimmer of reverb reminiscent of Richard Hawley, generating something of a dream state to close the record. If all this sounds a little too melancholy to the upbeat crowd lapping it up in this elderly church, sat within the environs of Victorian railway infrastructure and concrete modernism , it’s a euphoric full stop to the first half of the evening. 

Resuming after the interval, Stodart and her band deliver a set of as-yet unreleased new songs that suggest that the pre-Covid burst of creativity that produced Invitation is continuing to bear new fruit. The new material builds out the second half until it reaches a finale to savour. This was the third time I’ve seen Stodart live as a solo artist, and on each occasion there has been a demonstrable outpouring of love and professional respect from her peers (she regularly participates in songwriting workshops and is building up a reputation as a producer). 

Some of that love is in the church, as friends present include acclaimed singer-songwriters Kathryn Williams, Hannah White and Daisy Chute, who are invited up on stage with Romeo Stodart for a seemingly unscheduled (and unrehearsed) but rousing finale of The Band’s Bob Dylan-written I Shall Be Released. It’s the song that also ends The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s film of the group’s all-star final concert. While that included special guests like Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Ringo Starr, the space in front of the Old Church’s altar is filled with no less a celebration of music by Stodart and her friends. It may not have been San Francisco’s Winterland, but its intimacy is just what Stodart’s music is made for.

Return of the secret singer-songwriter

I don’t know when Peter Bruntnell decided upon Journey To The Sun as the title of his latest album, but it was with some irony, given that none of us are going anywhere right now, in search of sunshine or anything else. Then again, the Kingston-upon-Thames-raised “secret singer-songwriter” now lives in Devon, which I associate with glorious childhood journeys down the A303 for Whitsun half term, dodging torrents of rain on Dartmoor, of course, but also enjoying the splendours of the South Hams and the West Country sunsets streaming in through my aunt and uncle’s Plymouth living room window. 

Bruntnell is, it would appear, something of an intentional enigma. Read any review of his 11 albums to date (including his last, King Of Madrid - my album of 2019) and you’ll see the same phrases repeated: that he is lauded by the music press (Rolling Stone branded him the best-kept secret in “England”), has been endorsed by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Richmond Fontaine’s Willy Vlautin (“my favourite singer in the world”), is criminally underappreciated, and so on. It truly is baffling. But, as I noted in my recent review of the Matt Deighton Overshadowed documentary, there is an echelon of, mainly, singer-songwriters who just seem unable to edge - or be led - over the threshold of mainstream recognition, and the widespread success that comes with it.

So, materially, what makes Bruntnell so compelling, and why should you pay him attention? There are plenty of singer-songwriters, of course, and no shortage of guitar strummers - from Ed Sheeran-wannabes earnestly busking outside the local shopping precinct, to those with Neil Young/Nick Drake/John Martyn aspirations in every kind of venue (normally), from pubs up to arenas. Plus, if you dive down the myriad rabbit holes of sub-genres, the label ‘Americana’ will dish up no end of alt-country variants. Given the apparent need to slap a label on everything, it’s here that Bruntnell will probably get filed, but just because his songs might be acoustic guitar-based, with the occasional slither of pedal steel, it shouldn’t automatically mark him out for one genre or another. Indeed, Journey To The Sun, he says, draws on wider influences, including Brian Wilson’s arrangements and even Brian Eno’s ambient work. Other musicians called Brian may have played a part.

That, though, only outlines the form. What about the music itself? Like Deighton, Bruntnell’s is a mix of acoustic-tinged balladry and wry rock songs. To quote, unfortunately, Donny and Marie Osmond, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. I don’t mean to be flippant. But this brings us to “Pete’s Basement Studio” at Bruntnell’s Devon bolthole, where Journey To The Sun was recorded. Like so many new albums Where Are We Now? has listened to in recent months, it was produced in lockdown, but while the enforced work-from-home that every musician has been required to adopt has often been influenced by the pandemic, it was always Bruntnell’s intention to work on a solo album during this period. It just happened to coincide with a pandemic. “That meant more acoustic guitar, and I bought a bouzouki in March last year, which really was a catalyst for quite a few songs being written in a very short timeframe,” he recently told Sean Hannam’s Say It With Garage Flowers blog. “Oh, and I got a drum machine and a new synthesiser, too.”

A synth? A bouzouki? On an album by a noted exponent of Americana? Well, yes. Because while the music business does love a label, Journey To The Sun lends itself to a more experimental direction. There is still the luscious, acoustic guitar balladeering that Bruntnell found such strength in on King Of Madrid, but there are also eccentric stabs of electronica, a drum machine and even that staple of prog rock, the Mellotron. While the overall tone might still be plaid-shirted, there is - for all the additional layers - a stripped-back feel, something he does admit was influenced by the vibe of the times without being directly informed by it.

Like so many of these WFH productions, digital technology meant Bruntnell wasn’t working entirely on his own, with several of the tracks featuring New England-based keyboardist Peter Linnane, while Bruntnell’s longtime lyricist collaborator Bill Ritchie contributes words to five of the songs. But, for the most part, this is a largely Bruntnell effort, with the vast majority of instruments played by himself. This is apparent from the outset with the mournful Dandelion, written on the aforementioned Greek mandolin, with the addition of rudimentary piano skills, giving the song a sparse and haunting folkiness. Lucifer Morning Star - performed entirely by Bruntnell - is brighter, made so by a combination of 12-string guitar and subtle synths giving it a sunny dimension. Runaway Car rocks along with the kind of energy that will make it an instant live highlight. It is precisely the sort of expressive, guitar-driven song American television shows love (as we’re still working our way through 15 years’ worth of Greys Anatomy, with its dizzying panoply of singer-songwriters on the soundtrack, I’m amazed its producers haven’t come knocking on Bruntnell’s door…).

Picture: Simon Poulter

The jangliness of Journey To The Sun is occasionally broken up by clear references to Eno, specifically his album Another Green World, finding itself in the intro of You’d Make A Great Widow (a typical piece of macabre Bruntnell humour, resulting from a chance remark by Mrs. B), as well as the instrumentals The Antwerp Effect and Moon Committee. They provide undistracting interludes between the folkier songs, such as Heart Of Straw and a beautiful interpretation of the much-covered Scottish traditional Wild Mountain Thyme - here blessed with a wonderful arrangement, featuring an electric 12-string superbly channelling Jerry Cole’s lead on The Beach Boys’ Sloop John B (fun fact: I have it on good authority that Bruntnell performed this very song at a junior school concert when he was a lad). That same shimmering guitar finds its way, with uplifting effect, onto the reflective closing piece, Mutha, which examines time’s passing with a sense of hope. The hope we probably all want right now.

Mine, amongst many other things, is that Journey To The Sun earns Peter Bruntnell greater recognition. It’s not, to be fair, an album of anthems, or chart hits, or daytime radio blockbusters. Not that everything in popular music should be. It is, though, delightful, earnest and wonderful listening, particularly repeatedly, drawing out Bruntnell’s intimate vocal style and drawing on his exquisite arrangements and self production. Will it be the album that breaks him to a wider audience? Will it end his status as the “secret singer-songwriter”? As I wrote about its predecessor, I wish it would. Because some secrets really are best out in the open for everyone to enjoy.

Journey To The Sun is out now on Domestico Records and can be ordered from here.

Lost and found: Matt Deighton Overshadowed

As a onetime pop scribe, I’d like to think that I know my music. But - and I know it’s not a point of competition - all too often I discover just how inadequate my musical knowledge actually is. A work WhatsApp group, for example, regularly offers up listening recommendations to which I stare at blankly, despite containing things I probably should already be aware of. Friends frequently float suggestions hitherto missed that, when I dip in, turn out to be masterpieces. Even my 16-year-old stepdaughter - who should have her finger on the contemporary pulse - is familiar with stuff even older than me that I’ve escaped, to my shame. Reassuringly, I found resonance recently with the writer Andrew Collins, who posted an essay on how he was a very late convert to Bruce Springsteen. I felt vindicated (my Damascene moment only came in 2002 with The Rising in the emotional wake of 9/11). Even so, it’s quite galling to think that your so-called expansive record collection isn’t all that expansive, after all. 

I do, though, have a predilection towards the lost and under-recognised. My oldest friend, technically, is now a highly successful musician who sells out the Royal Albert Hall for several nights running, and yet when I mention his name, people go “Who?”. Likewise, I have long championed John Martyn, but it’s still such an effort to bring civilians up to speed on who he was, what he did and just why he remains arguably the most important part of my listening universe. There are others, like Peter Bruntnell, whom I was introduced to one Saturday night at a Kentish Town basement gig, only for him to a) turn out to be one of Britain’s finest singer-songwriters, b) his albums are now indispensable and c) he went to my junior and secondary schools, a few years ahead, his mum knows my mum, and that makes him cool. Which, indirectly, brings me to Matt Deighton.

© Simon Poulter

I could, lazily, dismiss having him absent in my life until relatively recently as a result of me living abroad for 17 years; but while that excuse might cut it when declaring ignorance of, say, not having seen I’m A Celebrity until I returned to these shores, I’m almost embarrassed at having had to get up to speed with Deighton. But, then, an invite to see him play at London’s 229 club in 2017, accompanied by Squeeze’s Chris Difford (and supported by the legend that is Dr. Robert), proved epiphanous. In the venue’s stripped back environment it was a demonstration of British songwriting at its finest. I say that, not out of misplaced patriotism, but as a statement of the compositional integrity with which Deighton had wowed people since emerging in the early 90s with funksters Mother Earth, even replacing Noel Gallagher in Oasis before veering into a masterful series of albums that tapped into the same roots as my hero Martyn. In the months after that 229 gig I hoovered up Deighton’s back catalogue, desperate to make up for lost time. Later that year I saw him again, fronting The Family Silver with drummer Steve White and bassist Damon Minchella, a power trio capturing the best of the soulful rock that had populated their respective band outlets (The Style Council and Paul Weller in White’s case, Ocean Colour Scene in Minchella’s). It was another one of those small venue shared experiences: intimate audience, buzzing on top musicianship and groove. And for me, another pillar in my understanding of what Deighton was all about.

That insight now goes a long way to explain why Overshadowed, a documentary about Deighton premiering tomorrow night on Sky Arts, features so many peers enthusing about him. Included in Kevin Lee Brown's film are Weller, White, Difford, Minchella, Marti Pellow, the acclaimed Kathryn Williams, vocalists Linda Lewis and Carleen Anderson, and legendary British folk-rocker Bill Fay, who was an important source of inspiration to Deighton in the wake of Mother Earth coming to an end. Brown’s emotional - and at times wroughtly so - film isn’t, however, just a parade of musos lining up to pay tribute, but an engrossing study of another one of those lost causes of mine, peeling back the layers to explain, almost forensically, why he's the deserved recipient of so much warm endorsement. 

It is clearly, unmistakenly, down to songcraft and musicianship. Pellow cites Deighton’s “gift for melody and structure”, while Weller himself highlights how Deighton can create orchestra out of an apparently simple guitar chord. Minchella goes further by calling out Deighton’s core strength: “He just has this way of writing songs which represent him as a human being.” Some songwriters are gifted in creating a vibe, some have a knack with melody while with others its technical ability. But there are so few who have the instinct to pull it all together. McCartney might be the obvious example, or perhaps Neil Finn (both are melodically blessed). Overshadowed, rightfully, puts Deighton in the same bracket, digging into his alt-folk solo albums, like Villager, You Are The Healer, The Common Good, Wake Up The Moths, Kids Steal Feelings and Doubtless Dauntless. They are being re-released progressively over the coming months, with a five-LP bundle going on sale in August, as well as in high-resolution digital formats. ‘Sumptuous’ doesn’t fully cover the musical experience of what awaits the uninitiated.

2003’s highly acclaimed Moths has just been re-released as a remastered package, marking in the process an unhappier element of Deighton’s story, which Overshadowed doesn’t shy away from, either. The album’s cover image, featuring Deighton curled up asleep, indicates - he admits now - the “black dog” of bipolarism that has shadowed him, and appeared to be behind a lengthy recording hiatus after Moths came out. In the film, he says of the album that he “wasn’t well” when he made it. Dark thoughts were entertained. Music became his saviour: “Some people bury their heads under a duvet,” he says. “Others get out a guitar and write about it.” This might go some way to explain Chris Difford’s comments in the film about his friend: “I think Matt can work with anyone, really. Whether people can work with Matt is a different thing. You’ve got to be very patient and you’ve got to be open and understanding as to where he’s coming from.”

Deighton wouldn’t be the first person to channel depression into his art (“Where would some of the greatest creativity be without it?” reflects Steve White). Music is both his saviour and his rail. For some, the depths of emotion can be all consuming (there’s no shortage of ‘divorce albums’ out there), reminding me of a comment Beverley Martyn - former wife of John - once made, that so much emotion left him via his songs that there was nothing left for her. Thankfully, though, Deighton refuses to be defined by his mental health, even if, as he reveals in Overshadowed, it can creep up on him when he least expects. 

It’s a brutally honest revelation, in an equally candid portrait of a musician who should not be regarded as enigmatic or cult-like. This is no Searching For Sugarman, a ‘fancy that’ study of a tragic figure, but quite the opposite. If anything, it’s a joyous celebration of music, musicianship, songcraft and talent deserving of a bigger audience beyond the cognoscenti. Now, where have I made that statement before?

Overshadowed premieres on Sky Arts at 9pm on Friday, 14 May

2017: that was the (music) year that was

So here it is - a shiny new year. We’ve rung out the old and are already getting on with the new. But to allow one last coquettish glance over the shoulder at 2017, there are a couple of reflections to note: because this was a year that commenced with the hangover of the prior annus horribilis and its morbid stream of departures, from Bowie to Prince to George Michael. We switched, then, from 2016's somewhat grim procession to 2017's irritating insanity, chiefly due to an elderly playboy with candy floss hair arriving at the White House in January and then on a daily - if not hourly - basis displaying all the characteristics of a petulant child in whatever first came to his mind while, clearly, carrying out his morning ablutions.

Thankfully, music intervened to provide a certain feelgood factor. In short, 2017 was a superb year for new music and live performances. Just cast your mind back to an unseasonally sunny June and Glastonbury: 12 months on from the Brexit referendum, a month after both the Manchester Arena bomb and a stuttering British government stuttering further with one of the most pointless general elections in history, three weeks after the London Bridge attack and two weeks after the Grenfell fire, music did its bit to perk up the nation, with Nile Rogers/Chic and the-now ‘Sir’ Barry Gibb cranking out guilty pleasures in the heritage slots, headliners Radiohead and Foo Fighters delivering unabashed crowd-pleasing enormity, and relative newcomers like The xx and Royal Blood proving that engaging live performances on a grand stage are far from over.

Further back, in April, there was a bonanza of consumption as Record Store Day generated treasures such as The The's first new music in an age (and an Elbow cover of one of their older songs), as well as sumptuous vinyl releases from the likes of Prince and T-Rex to make the brutally early start to queuing worthwhile. Throughout the year live music was equally as rich and rewarding for me personally, kicking off with Michele Stoddart in early January performing her beautiful Pieces album in its entirety at Camberwell’s Slaughtered Lamb. Later that month I made acquaintance with the brilliant Peter Bruntnell (and discovered that he's from both my home town and school); I saw Robert Howard, Matt Deighton and Chris Difford deliver a masterclass in songwriting and experienced Squeeze on their home patch for a communion of arguably the UK’s most prolific pop-rock band since The Beatles. And in the summer I celebrated the pure pop joy of Nick Heyward, not once but twice. Indeed, this year has been more about pop than rock for me…though thankfully without succumbing to the Faustian horror of Ed Sheeran and his guitar-looped wallpaper-drivel.

Sheeran, inevitably, features heavily in figures released yesterday by the BPI of how music was consumed in the UK during 2017. The numbers reveal that a total of 135.1 million albums were either streamed, purchased in a physical format, or downloaded - a 9.5% year-on-year rise and the third year of consecutive volume growth. Of significance is that streaming now accounts for over half of the UK's music consumption, with 68.1 billion audio streams served last year through Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and other services, a 51.5% rise on the previous year.

That said, my acquisition of mostly vinyl albums last year maintained a steady pace, to the extent that I actually ended the year with a pile of unlistened-to records more than a pile of those I had played. Clearly I have personally contributed to the growth of vinyl over the last decade: according to the BPI 4.1 million LPs were bought last year - an increase of 26.8% on 2016. That said, it does remain a niche (and, some might say an expensive one, too) with just one in 10 of all physical purchases made in 2017 being vinyl copies. Even the ageing CD represented just under a third of all formats.

Streaming, however, continues to attract converts. In a New Year blog post, my friend Steven Wilson - whose fifth solo album To The Bone was one of the brightest highlights of the year - wrote about his own, somewhat reluctant adoption of streaming formats: "For years I resisted non-physical distribution of music, I just couldn’t relate to music if it didn’t come as a physical piece of art that I could hold in my hands." He acknowledges, however, that streaming services do act as a 'try-before-you-buy' gateway, pointing out that his own album has been streamed eight million times in the four months since it was released. "While those numbers aren’t going to trouble the likes of Kendrick Lamar," he adds, "they are an indication that there are a lot of people out there beginning to discover and hear my music for the first time", pointing out that they might then go on to buy from his back catalogue, or come and see his live shows.

When it was released, To The Bone made it to number three in the album charts. Not bad for an artist many still have never heard of, and even more impressive when you consider that he was pipped to No.2 by someone called Elvis Presley by a relative handful of copies of a greatest hits package. Ed Sheeran - inevitably - remained at No.1 that week by selling a further 15,000 copies of Divide, a relentless achievement helped in part by grannies buying it at supermarket and petrol station checkouts.

I shouldn't be too critical of Sheeran (though his bland, universal appeal does stagger me...meaning that I will). Thank God for more interesting British pop acts, from Rag’n’Bone Man and Stormzy to Paloma Faith, all making for a very good year. It would be impossible to critique everything that passed through my ears in 2017, but particular mention should be given to the following:

Liam Gallagher - As You Were: Liam's reinvention as the macrobiotic, Hampstead Heath-jogging renaissance man (albeit one still hilariously lobbing Twitter grenades at Frère Noel) coincided with him producing the feelgood album of the year. Yes, it was full of Oasis-like stadium stormers, but wasn't that exactly what we wanted? And even if he had help, As You Were also demonstrated that the songwriting genes in the Gallagher family weren't entirely monopolised by his elder sibling. Speaking of whom...

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon?: News of a "psychedelic" third solo album from Gallagher proved unfounded. In fact, it took several listens to get any handle on what Who Built The Moon? actually was about. There were traces of Roxy/Sweet/Bolan glam, trademark NG irony, a scissor-playing French vocalist, a flirtation with the sort of Chemical Brothers sound Gallagher had experimented with earlier in his career, and some Britpop whimsy that harked back to prime Oasis. Collectively, and after several listens to be sure, Who Built The Moon? is up there with Liam's product as one of the best of 2017.

LCD Soundsystem - Anerican Dream: James Murphy's declaration that LCD Soundsystem had reached the end in 2011 seemed like a long goodbye when the sumptuous, five-LP live album of that description - The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden - made its appearance some years later (and was instantly added to my collection of the greatest live albums ever). So the appearance in 2017 of brand new material from Murphy and his collective, with its conscious and unconscious nods towards Bowie (who'd invited Murphy to work on the Blackstar album but declined citing a lack of worthiness), not to mention Talking Heads, was a surprise. And a welcome one, too. American Dream is a curious cocktail of the obscure and the enlightening, going beyond simply fan pleasing, although fans will be inevitably pleased by the sheer depth of what is dished up. Magnificent.
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Thundercat - Drunk: I’m a lazy music connoisseur: I should have my finger pressed more tightly on the pulse of what’s going on. Indeed, if it wasn’t for a late night visit to the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival in March I might never have come across the splendidly batshit-mad funk of Stephen Bruner - Thundercat - and his mesmerising six-string bass guitar prowess. Drunk pulled all that together into a 23-track album of the weird mixed with the conventional, of Stanley Clark-style jazz funk blended with traces of hip-hop and even FM radio soft rock, courtesy of guest appearances by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald.

Father John Misty - Pure Comedy: Much is made of Josh Tillman’s wry takes on modern life and his somewhat capricious nature towards fans, rivals and indeed anyone who chooses to take him on, but there is no denying that if, like me, you’re a fan of ‘classic era’ Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Chateau et al), FJM’s unmistakably Elton-like vocal delivery is as comforting as a box of Quality Street comprised entirely of the green triangles. And that’s before you come to appreciate the smart lyrics that traverse between bittersweet and humour, while remaining smarter than most others out there. A masterpiece.

Portico Quartet - Art In The Age Of Automation: If every record went on its library classification, Portico Quartet’s four studio albums - including this one - would be hard to file. To some, it’s ambient noodling, to others jazz (“…just a series of mistakes without the 'oops’”, to quote Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnell), and to those more appreciative, clever, engaging electronica which thankfully stays clear of a suburban wine bar’s looped collection of Café del Mar compilations. Art In The Age Of Automation extensively explores over 11 tracks a variety of landscapes and textures, tinkering with the sparse grooves of trip-hop while applying varying thicknesses of layers with an orchestral approach that knows when to be sparing and when to be full on. This was my go-to record in 2017 for commuting or, simply, needing to come down after a more raucous night out on the tiles.

PP Arnold - The Turning Tide: Initiatives like Record Store Day deliver plenty of re-release treasures, but never something which has lain recorded but unreleased for close to half a century. PP Arnold - a former vocalist in the Ike & Tina Turner band and hit maker in her own right (First Cut Is The Deepest and Angel Of The Morning) - dusted off this hidden treasure, which had originally benefitted greatly from the significant involvement of Barry Gibb and the entertainment mogul Robert Stigwood, as well as Eric Clapton, members of his Delaney And Bonnie outfit, Steve Howe (of Yes) and others. The Turning Tide is a fascinating time capsule opened up, representing some of the best freewheeling pop-soul-rock of the late 1960s, including covers of material by Steve Winwood, Van Morrison, and the Glimmer Twins - Jagger and Richards. Bureaucracy, sadly, kept the recordings under lock and key, until Arnold and her manager, Sally Cradock (wife of Ocean Colour Scene/Paul Weller guitarist Steve) started picking at the strands of publishing complexity with an aim of finally getting the recordings released. With further mixing by Cradock's husband at Weller's Black Barn Studio, the resulting album sounds both fresh and a stunning snapshot of the time it was originally recorded, capped by the voice of one of the finest and under-appreciated soul singers ever.

Squeeze - The Knowledge: While not likely to win any prizes for sonic innovation, Squeeze's best album in more than two decades reinforced why, almost 40 years ago, we liked them to begin with: Chris Difford's lyrics, Glenn Tilbrook's uncannily accessible melodies. Wrapped up in an album loosely about the London they love (with specific reference to the south-east London of their youth - and my current dwelling), Squeeze produced a delightful compendium of observations about modern British life, from the state of the NHS to the ageing population, even including an edgy account of child abuse in youth football. National treasures, with a back catalogue - not just the singles - deserving of serious re-indulgence.

Paul Weller - A Kind Revolution: Arguably competing only with Neil Young for the shere rapidity of his output, Weller's umpteenth solo album since 1990 also set the tone for the summer of 2017. A Kind Revolution is chock-full of solid Weller ear-pleasers, although The Cranes Are Back must rank up there with You Do Something To Me for sheer soulful delightfulness.

Nick Heyward - Woodland Echoes: Weller's album may have set the tone for last summer, but the August release of Nick Heyward's first album in 18 years and only his seventh solo effort, proved to be one of the sunniest moments of the year, being a collection of pure bottled delight. That was, of course, the schtick of Haircut 100, back in the early 80s, but the precedents were good when, in the spring, Gary Crowley started playing the double-A side single Baby Blue Sky/Mountaintop, hinting at some breezy latent Britop to come, such as Perfect Sunday Sun, Beautiful Morning and Love Is The Key By The Sea. I saw Heyward live twice last year and on both occasions was left wondering how long it would be before he would be offered one of the feelgood spots at Glastonbury, such was the utterly infectious good time his canon delivers.

Elbow - Little Fictions: The release, just before Christmas, of Elbow's Best Of compilation, featuring their gorgeous cover of The Beatles' Golden Slumbers, gave timely reminder of the Mancunian quartet's status as arguably Britain’s favourite band. And with good reason: for all the festival singalong/wavealong favourites like One Day Like This and Mirrorball, Elbow have successfully retained enough indie credibility to save them from persecution by those curmudgeons who eschew such popular fare. In that respect, Elbow are like few other acts with such popularity (yes, you Sheeran), in producing vivid, layered (some might even say 'prog') rock, with instrumental curiosity and the genuine warmth of Guy Garvey's persona. Little Fictions is the album (their seventh) where you felt that Elbow were fully comfortable in their skins, kicking off with a sense of wellbeing as Magnificent (She Says) struck a resonant keynote of upbeat goodness, along with the lovely Gentle Storm, with its understated chords and unashamed, plaintive refrain "Fall in love with me - every day". From almost anyone else this might be schmaltz, but it sits amongst a collection embracing themes as varied as relationships, post-Brexit national isolation and Fleet Street's vampiric tendencies. As I wrote on Little Fictions' release, it's easy to declare a band's latest album their best, until you play it back in comparison with the previous work. And even though its six predecessors are mostly excellent, it was hard not to consider this Elbow's best yet.