Welcome back to the blog for another year - and decade! I hope 2020 is finding you content and well. If not – well, music is a great elixir, and there are a ton of beautiful tunes in this post to help soothe what ails you :).

As has become tradition, my first post of the new year is a look back at my favourite records of the previous year, with a playlist for you to sample songs from each. As a bonus, I've added a playlist of my favourite releases of 2018 as well, since I wasn't blogging this time last year, but had been saving a list of records I loved.

Wow, there were some killer albums that came out in both 2019 and 2018. Once again, I'm extremely heartened by the state of new music – it just takes a little digging to find the good stuff ;).Here are my lists of top 10 albums for each year (in no real order, except for the top 3 in each list):

Now onto the fun stuff - the playlists! These represent what ended up being a fairly random number of my favourite releases. For the 2019 playlist, I was ready to go with a nice, neat 25 albums and 5 EPs and singles, but discovered I'd forgotten a couple of essential inclusions, and struggled to cut anything further. Then I realised one of the benefits of running my own blog is I can do whatever the fuck I want! So, 27 albums it is! (or 32 releases including EPs and singles).

If you are new to my contemporary music tastes, what you can expect is lots of neo-psych, avant-pop, shimmery dream pop, pop noir, and otherwise songs with irresistible melodies and strong songwriting, usually in a retro or classic vein. My playlists tend to be female-dominated - it's not by design, it's just that somehow my tastes lead me to more women making the type of music I love. I've never liked to make a statement of it; in some way, I think it's more interesting and powerful not to point it out, because why should it be unusual? That said, I am pleased to celebrate some extremely talented, sometimes overlooked female artists and present them to an audience who may not yet know them.

These were made on Spotify (RIP my fave playlisting service, 8tracks), but if you have another preferred streaming platform, visit the Soundsgood link beneath the playlist artwork for more listening options (the playlists, however, may be incomplete on some platforms).

Best of 2019: Spotify playlist | Soundsgood (more listening options)

A psychedelic mix just in time for Christmas! There's not much I need to say about this that the title doesn't already tell you. All I will say is, on playing it through, I noticed it's kind of an odd blend of cheerful and sinister – but hey, that seems apt for Christmas! It's named for a song by The Smoking Trees from the superb Active Listener Christmas Album from 2012. (A name-your-price download on Bandcamp, it's well worth grabbing). Oddly, I only noticed after compiling this that there are quite a few tracks from 2012, for some reason. Apparently that year was a fine vintage for Christmas psych!

In Part One, I shared songs from my most-loved albums of last year. Part Two features highlights from my favourite singles and EPs released in 2017. Enjoy! 

Okay, so it's nearly March, which probably makes this the world's most untimely 'Best of 2017' list! First I'll get to the music, but there's a personal note at the bottom of this post explaining why I'm sometimes much later with posts than I'd like, and why I think they're still worth doing anyway.

Wow, I was really blown away by the musical offerings from last year! There's some truly spectacular music being made by incredibly creative artists who are dedicated to their craft. and to making brilliant music for the sake of it. Though it's easier than ever to find music from all over the world to suit your particular tastes, I'm pretty convinced there's also just more and more amazing music being produced. This playlist features a song from each of my favourite 2017 albums. It's pretty long, with fifty-five tracks, coming in at around three hours and forty minutes of listening. I heard so much great stuff, this was as much as I could narrow it down! And you'll notice this is only Part One.... 

One of the absolute best albums of the year is Rose Elinor Dougall's Stelullar. Released January this year, the long-awaited follow-up to her excellent 2010 solo debut, Without Why, has exceeded even my rather high expectations.

This is a contemporary take on pop that is just exquisitely executed. Influences across many decades and styles are expertly synthesised and distilled into something earnest, fresh, modern and personal. You can hear The Smiths and other indie eighties, classic sixties songwriting, punk and its artier cousins, eighties synth pop, Britpop, as well as more recent influences from the world of today's avant-pop. I know music reviews can often be an annoying shopping list of improbable references, but I genuinely do hear all those! It's to Dougall's credit that these don't compete or sound unnaturally glued together, and that they aren't there for the sake of showing off what's in her record collection. The different pieces blend beautifully and always serve the songwriting and the essence of the song. The tracks are complex enough to offer up new delights on repeated listens, but not overly worked at the expense of what makes a good pop song so appealing: memorable melodies, addictive hooks and emotional immediacy.

Who needs the same old sappy Christmas tunes when there's a whole world of weird and wonderful festive music to explore? I love digging into the many fascinating, original takes on holiday music that countless artists have recorded over the years. And sometimes, the more bizarre, the better. My first Christmas mix this year is a collection of some of the most enjoyably unconventional seasonal tunes that I've come across. Some are simply delightfully eccentric, while others get genuinely weird... and even a little creepy. If you need an antidote to the cliches and suffocating sentimentality that can be hard to escape at this time of year, hopefully you'll enjoy this mix of freakish festive goodness!

It's my first post of the new year and, though late to the game, I wanted to share my favourite music from last year. 2016 was a notoriously terrible year (not that this year is exactly peachy so far!), but thankfully the same can't be said of the music that came out last year. It was, to quote Lisa Simpson's insensitive future fiancé, like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. I feel spoiled by the amount and variety of quality music I've been enjoying from last year's offerings. There are the gorgeous vintage European pop sounds of The Yearning and Lia Pamina, the visionary retrofuturism of Adrian Younge, the moving, classic songwriting of Big Smoke, the raw garage rock of The Mystery Lights, some fresh takes on dream pop, and many outings in psychedelic-influenced, experimental pop. Some of these albums have quickly become all-time favourites, not just favourites of the year. Below is a playlist of songs from my most-loved releases of 2016, including albums, singles and EPs, in no particular order. A list of my top eleven albums (I could not narrow it down to ten!) of the year – again, in no specific order – follows it.

Pop-up player | 8tracks tips

If you prefer Spotify, listen here. Update: By request, now also on Deezer (but missing the Samara Lubelski song).

Tracklist:

Photo by Pedro Aguilar, via Lucky Soul's Facebook page

A welcome surprise came a few days ago in the form of a new song from Lucky Soul, a band that has been sorely missed. They were last heard from on 2010's A Coming Of Age, an album that matured and expanded the meticulous retro pop sounds of their 2007 debut, The Great Unwanted. On both albums, they produced pop music that had hooks to spare, with heartfelt lyrics that were both wry and earnest.

Six years on from their last release, '(Hurts Like A) Bee Sting' shows their pop chops are not at all rusty. The effortless hooks, the level of songcraft and Ali Howard's distinctive voice, sounding better than ever, make this recognisably Lucky Soul, but there are some new flavours here as well. The downbeat disco style is a new sound for them, but as usual, they try on genre not for the sake of it, but because it fits the song's mood. They also get more political in their lyrics (not entirely surprising for a band who have a song about Billy Bragg): "Didn't take you so long / From the back room to the boys' club / Into the quarters of the king".

This is apparently from a 7" but there is no word on a release of that yet. There are also hints of a new album in the works; on social media, they cryptically posted coordinates that fans deduced were the location a mastering studio. Here's hoping that comes sooner than later; now they've whet my appetite, I miss them even more. 

Spiked Candy kicked off with a France Gall video and a Quebecoise France Gall cover, so for old times' sake, I thought I'd start again the same way:

This is a clip from an episode of a music show called Au risque de vous plaire which originally aired on the 10th of January, 1969. The episode, directed by Jean-Christophe Averty, is creative and colourful, making the most of the relatively new colour format. They've gone a bit nuts with the technique of using graphics to frame the footage, with fun results like those seen here. (The video may take a few moments to load).

Claire Lepage - Le Premier Chagrin d'amour

I love Canadian girl Claire Lepage's take on France Gall's 1964 single, 'Le Premier Chagrin d'amour', which has lyrics by France's father, Robert Gall, and music by Claude Henri-Vic. In her slowed-down, more grown-up-sounding version, the 'first heartbreak' of the title sounds like it's about something that had more at stake than France Gall's lost teen love. Claire's version comes two year later, in 1966, which is a little unusual as international covers tended to appear soon after the original.

I've also made a playlist of France Gall covers - 30 of them!