Fifty Six

Today's post is brought to you in association with the number fifty six. The A56 runs past the top of our road and a mile up the road from us (heading towards Manchester city centre) it goes past the beautiful but empty Art Deco cinema in Stretford (formerly Stretford Essoldo, pictured above). 

The A56 starts out on Frodsham Street in Chester and heads east through Cheshire, past Warrington and Runcorn and then passes Lymm where it turns to Altrincham, then Sale and Stretford (it is at various points between Altrincham and Old Trafford called Chester Road, Cross Street and Washway Road). Then it runs through Gorse Hill to Old Trafford where Manchester United's ground lies to its left, skirts Hulme and when it hits town it becomes Deansgate. From there north to Salford and Bury and into Lancashire, to Colne and Nelson before reaching Skipton and eventually running out of tarmac in the village of Broughton, North Yorkshire. 

Fact 56 was A Factory Video, a various artists VHS video released by Factory in 1982, the starting point of what Tony Wilson believed would be a brave new artistic world for the record label. The Factory video production arm was Ikon (Brian Nicholson) and operated from the basement of the Factory HQ at 86 Palatine Road. For a while it was based in the cellar of Tony Wilson's house on Old Broadway, a house that in 1982 I walked past every day on the way home from school. Aged twelve, I wasn't really up to speed with what was going on in that cellar. Ikon ran their own video release series and Fact 56 was a compilation of some of those releases.  

It starts with New Horizon by Section 25. New Horizon is the final song on their 1981 album Always Now, a record produced by Martin Hannett and clad in one of Peter Saville's Factory artwork masterpieces. The advice Peter got from band member Larry Cassidy was 'something quite European, but psychedelic with some oriental influences'. 'After that', he said, 'I was on my own'. The sleeve opens like an envelope, marbled on the inside on specialist card with bold type on the front and die cut. 

Tony Wilson was right about the importance of videos and video art. Fact 56 was available to buy on VHS and Betamax. I would guess a lot of copies of both ended up in landfill in the 90s as the world went digital. There are two copies for sale on Discogs, one for £50 and one for 80 Euros which would suggest they're pretty scarce now. 

There isn't too much else about the number 56. It became a symbol of the Hungarian Uprising. Joe DiMaggio had a 56 game hitting streak. It means that I'm now closer to 60 than 50. 

This came out recently, nothing to do with 56, just something I wanted to share- Seu Jorge and Beck covering Nick Drake's River Man, a lush and very lovely bossa nova version of the song from Brazil and produced by former Beastie Boy producer Mario C. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

This is my third and final Sunday mix pulling together some of my favorite tracks from 2025 (the first one, ambient and instrumental, is here and the second, dub and dance, is here). This one starts out folky, strays from dub to cosmische and Balearic, and picks from the past too with two covers, some Stone Roses inspiration and Mazzy Star, songs borrowing from the years 1971, 1989, 1993 and 1999. Going back to go forwards. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Summer Song
• Coyote: Battle Weary
• Stereolab: Flashes From Everywhere
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise)
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• Pale Blue Eyes: How Long Is Now (Richard Norris Remix)
• Red Snapper: Ban- Di- To
• Five Green Moons and Brix Smith: Boudica
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker
• 10:40 Present Retro Fit: Lavender Mist
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Joao Leao is a Brazillian- Canadian artist. This cover of a Nick Drake song came out on 7" in February on Toronto label Local Dish, a lovely, slightly tropical and ever so sweetly melancholic version of the original. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's solo album Lunga was a 2025 highlight, an album with some songs that date back to his teenage years growing up in Todmorden and the flipside to Syd's main job as leader of Working Men's Club. Lunga is downtempo, personal, acoustic guitar based with echoes of Syd Barrett in the singing and Nick Drake in the playing. Summer Song is reflective, a little lost, the sound of the end of summer. 

Notts Balearic veterans Coyote continue to drip feed new songs and tracks. 2025 saw a six track mini- album, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, a collaboration with Peaking Lights and two singles including the one here, the dubbed out sounds of Battle Weary with the vocal sample iterating, 'Sufferin' is a poor man's crime'.  

Stereolab returned after a long gap with a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, an album stuffed full of vintage synths, motorik rhythms, wit, invention and (crucially) good songs. Flashes From Everywhere starts out like an easy listening track and then goes krauty and flirts with being poppy. 

Stretford's Psychederek released the four track EP Thinkin' Bout U in August, four different versions of the song, covering everything from Pacific State style dance to broken down, beach bar Balearica (Pt. 4, the one I've included here), kind of proving there's no such thing as a definitive or final version. You can always find another way to do something. 

Saint Etienne released four versions/ remixes of Along Together (a track from 2024's The Night). The Hove Lawns Sunset mix re- imagines West Sussex as a Mediterranean island, slo mo beats and sunset by the pool vibes. Bob, Pete and Sarah then announced an album that would be their last and a tour this year that will be ditto. I think we'll miss them when they're gone.

Pale Blue Eyes are from Sheffield, an indie/ krauty trio. Richard remixed the song as a cosmische autobahn trip, soaring away from South Yorkshire and into 70s West Germany.

Red Snapper were all over my 2025. A tour in March to celerbate the 30th anniversary of Reeled And Skinned, a new album Barb And Feather, and an appearance on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with the percussion mayhem of Qraqeb. Ban- Di- To is amped up jump blues done 2025 style. 

Five Green Moons second album, Moon 2, was a second strong dub/ folk set from Justin Robertson, who is really in a purple patch at the moment. Brix Smith appears on Boudica. Surviving The Fall/ leading an uprising against the Romans- similarly troublesome I'd imagine. 

Raz and Afla released their cover of Aphex Town's Windowlicker, an Afro- futurist dancefloor bomb that repositions Aphex Twin somewhere new. 

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 released An Alternative History back in April, a track Jesse made inspired by a post here at Bagging Area where I imagined an alternate history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't mess it up after June 1990 but kept going and recorded singles, EPs and albums all the way through the 90s culminating in a gig at Raglan Road scout hut in Sale, up the road from me, where Ian and John first rehearsed way back. You can read that post here. Jesse fired up his studio, sampled Ian and built a new/ imaginary Roses track. The third version, Lavender Mist, went all backwards and is named after Jackson Pollock's painting of the same name. For a while Jesse had the idea that I might provide the vocal but I bottled it. Probably for the best. My singing voice hasn't been the same since I gave up smoking. I always planned to include Lavender Mist on an end of year mix but Mani's death in November added an extra poignancy to everything Roses related. You may have seen the photos from the funeral of his former bandmates carrying his coffin out of Manchester cathedral. A very sad loss. 

Four Tet's Mazzy Star sampling Into Dust (Still Falling) was my favourite single of 2025, a lush and slinky tune that (as I said elsewhere) sounded like summer in the summer and sounds like winter in the here and now. Kieran Hebden can do little wrong for me- his album with William Tyler was as good an album as any other released in 2025 and as Four Tet has been on a roll of superb albums in the last decade with New Energy in 2017, Sixteen Oceans in 2020 and Three in 2024.  

River Man

Nick Drake's music has been orbiting me recently. Sometimes the only way to deal with melancholy is to accept melancholy and Nick's music deals in that beautifully. River Man from his first album, 1969's Five Leaves Left, is a masterpiece, a sign that Nick Drake was a young man with many talents. The song is in 5/4 time, possibly the influence of Joao Gilberto. The lyrics- I'm not sure I fully get them but they're poetic and full of meaning maybe only to Nick, concerning Betty and some sadness she endures, autumn and the running out of time ('Said she hadn't heard the news/ Hadn't the time to choose/ A way to lose/ But she believes'). The river man is someone who the narrator is going to speak to, 'about the plan for lilac time' and 'about the ban on feeling free'. Mystery and enigma. 

At the end Nick switches it around and suggests the river man might answer and tell him 'all he knows/ about the way his river flows/ I don't suppose it's meant for me'. The river man could be time, could be God, could be nature. He (Nick) is searching for something. 

Musically its sublime, Joe Boyd's production and the playing both first rate. The moment the strings enter, one minute in, is superbly done, Boyd's production utterly sympathetic to the song and the performance...

This version is the Cambridge version, a demo from spring 1968, just Nick and acoustic guitar. It came out in 2004 for a compilation, Made To Love Magic, an album of outtakes and different versions. 

River Man (Cambridge Version)

In 2010 a diverse cast of singers and musicians paid tribute to Nick at the Barbican, a concert called Way To Blue, with a house band (featuring the recently departed Danny Thonpson on double bass) and a line up of singers including Green Gartside, Teddy Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Robyn Hitchcock, Scott Matthews and Kate St. John. I watched some of it late last Friday night and found it a mixed bag. Nick's songs, the singing especially, are so him it's difficult for the singers to do something with them and as songs they're not necessarily suited to big rooms and grand gestures. The best one for me was Lisa Hannigan's Black Eyed Dog, Lisa stamping her foot and playing the harmonium- she found a new way to play the song and brought a different energy to it, a real physicality. 

Black Eyed Dog goes beyond melancholy, it's depression. Nick's version drowns in it. 

Black Eyed Dog 

Lisa Hannigan finds I think a defiance in the face of the black dog, she squares up to it, dares it to do its worst. It's a shame Nick Drake never lived to hear Lisa's version of the song. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

I held back from doing this for ages, a mix just containing cover versions, because it felt a bit lazy, a bit uninspired but the recent covers of Nick Drake by Joao Leao and The Velvet Underground by Thurston Moore twisted my arm into it. There are potentially more cover versions mixes to come. All these are relatively recent, although now I think about it Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes album came out in 2009 which is sixteen years ago and Calexico's in 2003 which is twenty two years ago- but the rest are all fairly recent. This mix leans towards the garage/ psyche/ guitar side of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

• Andy Bell: Smokebelch
• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Calexico: Alone Again Or
• Rowland S. Howard: Life's What You Make It
• Moon Duo: Planet Caravan
• Moon Duo: No Fun
• The Liminanas: Angles And Devils
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart

Andy Bell's cover of The Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch was begun on the day of Andrew Weatherall's death, 17th February 2020, and finished in late summer/ early autumn 2023 when I emailed Andy to ask him if he had a track for our then unreleased pipe dream album Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Andy's reply contained the completed cover and as soon as we listened to it, we knew it would close the album. Smokebelch itself began life as a cover version of L.B. Bad's New Age Of Faith.

Joao Leao's bossa nova flecked cover of Nick Drake's One Of These Things First, a song from Nick's 1971 album Bryter Later, came out as a 7" single on Toronto's Local Dish label and was posted here two weeks ago. 

Calexico's cover of Love's 1967 classic Alone Again Or doesn't stray too far from the original- Calexico were surely destined to cover it through with their combination of desert indie and mariachi horns. I thought I had a dub version of Alone Again Or- it sounded superb, dub groove, those horns and a snatch of vocal but I must have dreamt it. 

Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes was the former Birthday Party guitarist's second solo album. He was undergoing treatment for liver cancer at the time and died two months after it was released. Under those circumstances Talk Talk's Life's What You Make (second line, 'can't escape it') takes on a different meaning. Rowland's guitar playing- in fact just the way he held and approached the guitar- is pretty unique. His roiling guitar lines and feedback, the metallic clang and grim vocal delivery take the song into new places- which is what a cover version should do really. 

Moon Duo are represented twice here. First their cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan was a summer 2020 release, their version of the 1970 original a chilled and weightless cosmic take. Their version of The Stooges' No Fun is from a 2018 12" single with Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe on the other side. Sonic Boom produced it. Again, a blank eyed, calmed down take on Iggy's 1969 proto- punk classic. 

The Liminanas released a compilation of singles and other rarities in 2015, I've Got Trouble In Mind Vol. 2 which included this cover version of Angels And Devils, an Echo And The Bunnymen B-side. The Liminanas, French psyche/ garage band par excellence, take The Bunnymen's Mo Tucker stomp and turn it Gallic. 

Thurston Moore's cover of The Velvet Underground's Temptation Inside Your Heart came out in September, a song he's been playing live for some time, MBV bassist Debbie Goodge plays the bass (as she does when Thurston plays live). Lou Reed's song first saw the light of dark on the 1985 outtakes album VU and has been a favorite of mine since the late 80s. Thurston more than does it justice.

One Of These Things First

Another guest post from Spencer and a swerve in direction from the Balearic pop of Bruce Hornsby two weeks ago. Spencer's offering today is from a Canadian label and a Brazilian/ Canadian artist, Joao Leao covering Nick Drake.  

Spencer says...

'One of these things' is Joao Leao's lo-fi bossa take on Drake's dreamy next world poem. In many ways, his cover remains faithful to the original while still being quiet, measured and full of sorrowful yearning, but there's something else there too. The gently patted bossa box produces a beat that represents a kind of stealthy resilience. A defiant heart refusing to stop in the face of much provocation. As you listen you can hear the weariness but, there's wisdom too and that's what makes this one special'.

One of These Things First (Undui) is at Bandcamp, one side of a 7" single out on Toronto label Local Dish.

The collision of cultures going on here- late 60s English folk coupled with Brazilian bossa nova and released by a Canadian label dedicated to putting out 'eclectic analog recordings by local artists'- is exactly the sort of thing that we need more of- and that the internet is great for if you know where to look or have people pointing you in the right direction. Niche. Lo fi. Small scale. No borders.

Nick Drake's original is a thing of beauty too, a song from 1971's Bryter Later. The lyrics offer up all kinds of things, some real and some whimsical, that Nick could have been- a sailor, a cook, your pillar, your door, simple as a kettle, steady as a rock. In the end, he concludes he could and should have been one of these things first. Possibilities and missed chances. Regrets.

One Of These Things First

Spencer followed up his Joao Leao post with this from the same label...

'This one from the same label is just pure Balearic collage-pop joy. I can just imagine it being 'pick of the week' on the left field page in Jockey Slut back in the day...'

Encontro de Seca com Chuva by Nikitta (the track title translates as 'drought meets rain' according to my search engine). Listen to it here.

To my ears it also sounds like the sort of thing the Beastie Boys would have released on Grand Royal back in the 90s. The label hosted records by Luscious Jackson, Atari Teenage Riot, Money Mark and the Josephine Wiggs Experience and At The Drive In among others. Grand Royal was also a magazine, a goldmine of references, recommends and articles, from Ramen to Lee Scratch Perry, George Clinton to Evel Knievel, Viv Albertine and the mullet. The Beastie Boys were the kings of mid- 90s pop culture.

Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson's death at the age of 88 was announced on Wednesday, a giant in the background of the English music scene from the early 60s onwards. An obituary I read somewhere yesterday said, musicians didn't get Danny Thompson to play bass on their records because they wanted some one who could follow the guitarist and hold down the root note- they got him in because they wanted Danny Thompson. His stand up double bass, born out of school music lessons where he picked up trumpet and guitar before settling on double bass, was as much a lead instrument as any other sound on the many records he played on. He played blues with Alexis Korner and then folk/ jazz with Pentangle and then on albums by Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Davey Graham, The Incredible String Band, Bert Jansch and John Martyn and then albums by a slew of artists including Talk Talk, Everything But The Girl, Kate Bush, Alison Moyet and David Sylvian. 

Until I started looking at the list of records his bass playing adorns, I hadn't fully realised how many I own with his playing on them and his name on the sleeve. Danny's playing was melodic and inventive, basslines that told their own story, that worked for the song but very much existed in their own right too. Sympathetic but full of the man's character. 

Pentangle rewrote the folk rule book in the late 60s, updating folk music by fusing it with jazz and a modern sensibility. This of course outraged the purists. In this clip Pentangle play live in January 1971 doing Light Flight , a song I've been playing on and off for several years since Andy Bell covered it. 

In 1969 Danny played bass on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, an album I love (not least 'Cello Song which has taken on a whole new meaning for me since Isaac's death- I've written about it, before more than once, and probably will again). Time Has Told Me is the album's opening song and Danny's also there on River Man, Three Hours, 'Cello Song, Man In A Shed and Saturday Sun, his bass bubbling away behind Nick's guitar and voice and Joe Boyd's production. 

Time Has Told Me

Danny's connection with John Martyn was long and went beyond music. They were notorious drinking buddies and trouble causers. In 1973 he played on John Martyn's the fourth album Solid Air, a groundbreaking blend of folk, jazz, Echoplex guitar, blues space rock and after hours music. The title track was itself a tribute by Martyn to Nick Drake, John's guitar and Danny's bass dancing together and wrapping themselves around each other...

Solid Air

There's loads more I could post, potentially hundreds and hundreds of songs, all to some degree improved by Danny Thompson's bass playing, but these three will do for now. RIP Danny Thompson. 

Three Years

Finally it is here- 30th November. It feels it's been hanging over me for ages. November is a double punch- 23rd November is Isaac's birthday and we wait for that to arrive with everything it brings and then there's a week where we wait again, for the anniversary of his death. He died on 30th November 2021, three years ago today. The two being tied together so closely is very difficult. We've all had a very tough week with some really difficult and gruelling days where our emotions have been very close to the surface and coping with every day things- work for instance- has been really hard. After today there will be some respite I think, some relief from it all, before we're flung into Christmas. It's incredible that it's now three whole years since he went. It feels like no time at all in some ways. Time really is relative. 

Isaac died in a side room off a Covid ward in Wythenshawe Hospital, at about quarter to two in the afternoon. The three of us were with him. I can remember it all so vividly. The previous day we'd spoken to a consultant. It was a Covid ward. He'd seen, he told us, a lot of people die. I asked him how it would happen, what would physically happen to Isaac when the end came and it was pretty much exactly as he described it. Some time afterwards, a few weeks maybe, lying in bed and unable do much except drink tea and scroll aimlessly on my phone, I saw an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers with a headline that said scientists had discovered whether when we die our lives really do flash before our eyes. I didn't click through and read it but it made me think about what Isaac would have seen in those last moments. Good things I hope. 

I've said before here that the time since his death has sometimes seen him swallowed up by it. By him I mean Isaac, who he was, the person he was and became, the things he and we did together. It is the grief, the loss, the full fucking horror of your son dying aged 23, gone in less than a week, suddenly, wrenched away from us. It is the massive ball of grief, the knot of anxiety I carry round inside me. It sits inside my chest and stomach, expanding and contracting, sometimes a thing that I've learned to live with and sometimes, like this week/ month, something that engulfs me. Trying to keep sight of him when you're overcome by it is not always easy. We talk about him and smile when we mention the things he did or said, laugh about the stuff we got up to. It hurts less some of the time. And sometimes it kicks me about, makes me cry in public places, makes me feel like I'm carrying a massive weight around with me. After today it will shrink a little for a while- I think it will anyway. Today is a milestone (or millstone) to get past, another date to see the back of, another end to a few weeks that just have to be endured. November is a fucker. 

In the time since Isaac died there are songs which have changed their meaning for me. Some of them are songs that I knew really well before he died and then when listened to at some point in the days since early 2022 have shifted, the words taking on a new layer of meaning. One of those is this one by Nick Drake (who coincidentally died fifty years ago last week aged just 26, the age Isaac would have been last Saturday). 

'Cello Song

'Cello Song opens side two of Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake's debut album, released in 1969. Fast but melancholy folky, finger picked guitar, a cello and some hand drums, all recorded up close and with real immediacy by Joe Boyd. Nick songs in that whispery, very English voice. I don't know what the word are about, what Nick meant by them. They are very poetic, very literate, not really contemporary to 1969's lyrical concerns at all. There was a point when I heard the song and had been to see Isaac at the cemetery- I don't remember exactly when, summer 2022 maybe- when it became a completely new song for me, it had a new meaning for me. Halfway through the second verse Nick sings...

'But while the earth sinks to its grave/ You sail to the sky/ On the crest of a wave'

The third and final verse continues...

'So forget this cruel world/ Where I belong/ I'll just sit and wait and sing my song/ And if one day you should see me in a crowd/ Lend a hand and lift me/ To your place in the cloud'.

I don't need to unpick that do I. 

At Isaac's funeral, at the graveside, we chose this poem to be read by the celebrant- The Dead by Billy Collins...

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'

I think something in 'Cello Song reminded me of The Dead. Both bring me some comfort. 

I've been going through Nick Cave's back catalogue too. There's lots to find in there. Playing CDs in the car while driving to and from work recently this song really struck me anew...

The Ship Song

Written way back in 1990, when I was only 20 with no idea of what was to come, this song was on The Good Son and was perhaps the first mature Nick Cave song. Piano and organ, with Nick at the fore and the three Bad Seeds (Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld and Barry Adamson) providing angelic backing vocals, The Ship Song is full of metaphor and is clearly a song about romantic love, doomed love maybe, love as struggle; but, as it has swelled and filled the space inside my battered Peugeot car this week in the cold dark mornings and evenings of fucking November it has given me something, I don't know what, something to hold on to. 

'Come sail your ships around me/ And burn your bridges down/ You are a little mystery to me/ Every time you come around'.

Thanks for sticking with me if you've got this far and thanks to everyone who does respond to my grief and Isaac posts. I know they're a bit heavy sometimes- I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to read this first thing on a Saturday morning. The comments and best wishes from the people who are part of this online community really do mean a lot. 

Onwards and upwards eh? Always onwards. Aiming upwards. 

 

Forty Minutes Of Fontaines D.C.

Fontaines D.C. had an album out in August, their fourth, a record called Romance. It's the sound of a five piece guitar band about to go massive. They sounded a little bit jaded on 2022's Skinty Fia I thought but Romance is the band firing on all cylinders, expanding and playing around. The band said that a wider range of influences were brought to the table for Romance- hip hop, Massive Attack, Deftones, Alice In Chains, various films including Akira and Wings of Desire, the Beat poets, Dylan Thomas and on final song Favourite, Johnny Marr's c1986 Smiths guitar sound. It's a really good record and judging by the live appearances I've seen on TV they're on fire at gigs too. A friend went to an early evening album launch gig in Liverpool  and said they were superb. 

They've got themselves a memorable look as well. Vocalist/ lyricist Grian is wearing a black skirt/ kilt and big boots and the rets are mixing up vests, tattoos, green or red dyed hair, bug eye sunglasses, neon green and yellow jackets, massive platform trainers. In the guitar indie rock world the easiest/ classic look is to go fringes, skinny jeans and leather jackets, channel the Velvet Underground and the 1960s or the post punk early 80s. I like the fact they're playing around with their image, a look that is most definitely not classic or canonical and which likely makes little sense to anyone under the age of thirty.

Four albums, various remixes, a Grian Chatten solo album, a Nick Drake cover- it seemed the time was right for a Sunday mix. 

Forty Minutes Of Fontaines D.C.

• 'Cello Song
• I Was Not Born
• A Hero's Death
• A Hero's Death (Soulwax Remix)
• Here's The Thing
• Televised Mind (Dave Clarke Remix)
• Favourite
• Romance
• All Of The People

'Cello Song is a cover of a Nick Drake song from a tribute album last year, The Endless Coloured Ways. Nick's original version is my favourite Nick Drake song. Fontaines D.C. do what any good cover should- respects the original but tramples all over it too. Fontaines  version is a real beauty, a rockabilly drumbeat, grungy guitars and Grian's Dublin drawl re- interpreting nick's fragile lyrics. The words have taken on a new meaning for me since Isaac's death- I've written about them before- especially these lines...

'But while the earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky
On the crest of a wave

So forget this cruel world
Where I belong
I'll just sit and wait
And sing my song
And if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me
To your place in the cloud'

I Was Not Born is from A Hero's Death, the second FDC album, from 2020. It's a blast of Dublin storytelling and street poetry, twin post punk guitars, Grian declaiming 'I was not born/ Into this world/ To do another man's bidding...' Electrifying stuff. 

A Hero's Death is from the same album (obviously), a calling card and the song that really turned my head to the band. The guitars pile in, chords slashing like a beefed up Last Nite by The Strokes, and Grian's words are a series of pieces of advice, a list, punctuated by the refrain, 'life ain't always empty'. 'Don't get stuck in the past', Grian says, 'Say your favourite things at mass/ Tell your mother you love her/ Go out of your way for others' and rattles through all sorts of killer lines before concluding 'If we give ourselves to every breath/ We're all in the running for a hero's death'. Two ears ago, listening to this in the car, with thoughts of Isaac's death on my mind, this song reduced me to tears. Powerful stuff.

The Soulwax remix came out on 12", the Belgian duo spinning Fontaines D.C.  from Dublin to the Balearics. I played this out once in a bar and a young bloke came up to me, enthusing about it and asking if it was Fontaines.

Here's The Thing is from this year's album Romance, the words written following  an argument between Grian and guitarist Carlos O' Connell. The guitars are superb, distorted and crunchy. Favourite ends the record. Romance starts it. I included them both here and switched them around. 'Maybe Romance is a place for you and me' Grian finishes the title track with. Here the line segues into All of The People.

Televised Mind is from A Hero's Death and is here in remixed form by techno don Dave Clarke, a enthralling, synth squiggle, bottom end heavy remix that shoves Fontaines into new places. 

All Of The People is from Grain Chatten's solo album Chaos For The Fly, released last year, a record that showed there was life beyond FDC with electronics, acoustic guitars and strings and a sombre, melancholic feel. 

NYE 23

Let's wave goodbye to 2023 with the final Sunday mix of the year, this one stretching out with an hour and thirteen minute's worth of tunes from this year, not exactly a Best Of 2023 (although these are among the best of this year) more of a Some Of 2023. A mixture of trippy, dubby electronic music, throbbing dance tunes, chuggy indie dance, Balearic pop and Dublin guitar slinging sturm und drang. 

Happy New Year. Have fun tonight however you're choosing to celebrate. Thank you to everyone who's come here this year, to read and comment. I don't think I write this thing with an audience in mind but it helps to know that there is one, and that the people that populate it and places like this one are defintely a community. The comments and responses, particularly to some of the more personal, grief related posts, are genuinely much appreciated and a real support. Thank you, all of you. 

Onwards into 24. 

2023 NYE Mix

• Aphex Twin: Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
• Four Tet: Three Drums
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Psychederek: Test Card Girl
• 10:40: Little Black Dress (Undressed Dub)
• A Man Called Adam: The Girl With The Hole In Her Heart
• David Holmes: Stop Apologising (Horse Meat Disco Vocal Remix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
• James Holden: Common Land
• JIM: Still River Flow
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

2023: My Year In Music

2023 has been a year of 23s for me in many ways. I've written before about the number and its occurrence, its relationship to us since Isaac died and the tattoos the three of us got done in October. This is my end of year post, a list pulling together what has been the best of 2023 for me. Inevitably there are 23 entries (but much more than 23 artists, singles and albums) and as I was writing it I realised that today is 23rd December (I planned to post this today before thinking about what date it would be). I have heard so much new music this year and so much of it has been really good- my long list of albums of the year came to thirty albums without much thought, a new album for every ten days of the year. And while much of this year has been a real struggle with grief and the long aftermath of Isaac's death, I've had some great nights out at events that were (almost) entirely about the music- the grief never goes away, it sits inside me or hovers above me but music- recorded music, live music- often has the power to transport me in a way nothing else does. 

This is a list of my favourite musical things of this year. It's not objective. I haven't heard everything I should have done and I'm sure there are records that I'd love if I had more time and more money. Usually I find something early into the new year that instantly screams 'best of last year' to me. Also, ranking art and declaring one album 'better' than another is inherently subjective but end of year lists are fun and looking back and putting it all into one place is a good way to mark the end of the year. The year of 23. 

Twenty Three: Venue Of The Year

No contest here- The Golden Lion in Todmorden and a fitting place to start the list. I've enjoyed several superb nights out at The Lion this year with the honour of DJing on a few occasions. ALFOS in June was very hot and memorable, David Holmes' album launch party in November was a 2023 highlight, Dan Donovan’s Casbah Club in August (sadly Paul Simonon was unable to attend), our Sabresonic celebration and Q&A with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns and Jagz’s DJ set (videos of the Q&A to follow shortly), the Tici Taci Party in August with Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray DJing downstairs after a blistering set from Sons Of Slough upstairs, Red Snapper rattling the fittings in November and the legendary, untouchable AW60 in April with a beautiful cast of artists and revellers and a huge headlining set from Justin Robertson. 

Twenty Two: Label Of The Year

There are lots of independent labels putting out loads of good music, keeping things in house and small scale- not that there's anything small scale about the music- with digital and physical releases. These three have kept me busy all year with singles, EPs and albums, one offs and compilations- a three way tie for first place. Leeds based label Paisley Dark has put out releases by Warriors of The Dysthoteque, Jay- Son, The Machine Soul, Hogt I Tak and James Rod, all top notch electronic psychedelia. Duncan Gray's Tici Taci has had a year long celebration of ten years in the business with a tenth birthday party at the Golden Lion, a series of compilations, Decades Volumes 1 to 4 with outstanding new releases from The Long Champs' 'Nostalgia For The Future', Jack Butters' ‘Shake It Off’ and singles and EPs from Mystic Thug, Uj Pa Gaz, Viper Patrol and Mr BC. Along with those two is Exeter's Mighty Force, the label that back in the early 90s put out Aphex Twin's first 12" single, reborn for the digital age. Mighty Force have sent all of these into the ether and all are excellent electronic music- Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’, ‘Fluffy Inside’ by Nylon Corners, M- Paths' ‘Hope’ AP Organism's EP ‘Space Docks And Moon Rocks’ David Harrow's ‘Jitter’ and ‘Described Spaces’ by KAMS. Long may all three labels continue.

Twenty One: Gig Of The Year

I had the pleasure to see some great gigs this year, several of which lived long in the memory. Spiritualized at Manchester's New Century Hall were genuinely breathtaking. Red Snapper at the Golden Lion kicked up a storm of cosmic jazz, trip hop and downtempo. Eyes Of Others at The Castle on Oldham Street were great, another great Heavenly Records artist. Chris Rotter and Andy Bell's two man set on Saturday afternoon at AW60 playing songs from Andrew Weatherall's A Pox On The Pioneers was a gem. 

But the win goes to A Certain Ratio who I saw live three times this year. They toured twice, released a superb new album, 1982, and an EP, celebrating 45 years of making music and they're still forging ahead with new music and ideas. Their gig at New Century Hall earlier on this year, the free one outdoors at Factory International in June and the two set 45^th anniversary celebration at Band On The Wall at the start of this month were all brilliant, a dance floor blend of youth and experience, post- punk/ punk funk/ jazz funk, the old and the new. 

Twenty: Compilation Of The Year

I've already mentioned Tici Raci's four volumes of Decade, several hours of chuggy sci fi, nu disco, house, techno sparkle. Aficionado's 25 Of Aficionado is a celebration of a Manchester institution, the anything goes, genre free spirit of Jason Boardman and Moonboots pressed onto four sides of vinyl is right up there with Colleen Murphy's Balearic Breakfast Volume 2 not far behind. But the stand out compilation of the year was Richard Sen's Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House And Breakbeat 1990- 1994, a perfectly pulled together and superbly sequenced set of tracks from the early 90s that show what a fertile period that was and how much was going on in the underground. 

Dream Frequency: Dream The Dream

Nineteen: Edits Of The Year

Some of my favourite tracks of this year have been edits- do edits count as new music? Or old music? New versions of old music, rejigged for the dancefloor. Jezebell's Jezebalearic Beats Vol 1 is a masterclass in this area and will appear further on in this list. Jezebell's Diavol Edits Vol 7 as a four track joy. Beyonder's Present Case Edits Vol 1 was a stunner, not least Hardway Bros edit of Sleaford Mods' Mork And Mindy, the M&M Acid Edit. Peza's Rock The Spectre, a layering of Joe Strummer's vocal from Rock the Casbah over Mystic Thug also hit the spot for me. But just pipping all of these for me were the pair of edits on the A- side of a recent vinyl only 12" by Coyote, their reworking of Monsoon's Ever So Lonely as Lonely and Gil Scott Heron as Western Revolution lighting up December for me.  

Eighteen: Andy Bell

Pretty soon from here there will be some proper lists and less wittering from me but first Andy Bell who at first glance seemed to have had a quiet year after all his solo albums and GLOK activity in 2020- 2022. Even so he put in a tour, released a lovely ambient/ free jazz mini- album with Masal, Tidal Love Numbers, and a ten minute live cover version of Neu!'s Hallogallo (also with Masal), a live in session album for Electronic Sound called Gateway Mechanics wearing his GLOK hat, two sides of soaring kosmische electronics and guitars, a bunch of remixes for other artists and put out a fanzine, Volume, Fuzz And Delay (which contained my review of his gig at Gulliver's in April 2022. Which, as the man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice). The fanzine came with a download code for three hours of live recordings from Andy's Space Station gigs, live versions of songs from his solo albums and as GLOK, all of which are stunning. 

Seventeen: EPs Of The Year

All of these were essential listening for me at various points this year, all of them somewhere between the single and the album, with Sons Of Slough's chug and cosmic wallop recorded live at Convenanza in September,  Jezebell's messy day and night out in the sun with Siouxsie on Trading Places, the three remixes of Unloved's Polychrome album, Justin Robertson's rocking dub especially, and at the top the wondrous Magic Hour EP by Wigan's Mark Peters, resplendent on 10" yellow vinyl.

• 11. Whitelands ‘Remixes’ 
• 10: Steve Queralt and Michael Smith ‘Sun Moon Town Versions’
• 9: Yorkshire Machines ‘Firing Up’
• 8: Woodleigh Research Facility: Apparently Solo 4 Borderlands
• 7: Sons Of Slough ‘Live at The Castle’
• 6: Chug Norris ‘Dark and Sweaty’
• 5: Richard Sen ‘Dream the Dream’ remixes
• 4: Andy Bell and Masal ‘Tidal Love Numbers’
• 3: Jezebell ‘Trading Places’
• 2: Unloved ‘Polychrome’ Remixes
• 1: Mark Peters ‘The Magic Hour’ EP

Sixteen: Albums Of The Year Numbers 30 to 8

• 30: Laurel Halo 'Atlas'
• 29. Red Snapper 'Live At The Moth Club' 
• 28: Young Fathers 'Young Fathers'
• 27: Dicky Continental ‘Uh?’
• 26: House of All 'House Of All'
• 25: Goat 'Medicine'
• 24: Boxheater Jackson ‘Indigenous State Of Mind’
• 23: Konformer ‘Konformer’
• 22: A Certain Ratio: 1982
• 21: Slowdive ‘Everything Is Alive’
• 20: The Coral ‘Sea Of Mirrors’
• 19: David Harrow ‘Rare Earth Technology’
• 18: Steve Cobby ‘The New Law Of Righteousness’
• 17: HiFi Sean and David McAlmont ‘Happy Ending’
• 16: Woodleigh Research Facility ‘Phonox Nights’
• 15: Andy Bell ‘Gateway Mechanics’
• 14: The Thief Of Time ‘Where Do I Belong?’
• 13: Coyote ‘I Hear A New World’
• 12. Grian Chatten ‘Chaos For The Fly’
• 11: Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright ‘Psychedelic Science’
• 10: Jezebell ‘Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1’
• 9: Richard Norris ‘Oracle Sound Volume 1’
• 8: Yo La Tengo ‘This Stupid World’

Fifteen: Singles Of The Year Numbers 23 to 8

• 23: Four Tet ‘Three Drums’
• 22: Woodentops ‘Ride A Cloud’ and Coyote remix
• 21: Hurdy Gurdy and the Local Psycho ‘The Hurdy Gurdy Song’
• 20: X- Press 2 ‘Phasing You Out’ David Holmes remix
• 19: Rude Audio ‘The Grinning’
• 18: Warriors Of The Dysthoteque and Joe Duggan ‘Fitzroy Avenue’
• 17: Dicky Continental ‘Simon Says’ Congagong Rework’
• 16: Dot Allison ‘Unchanged’ GLOK Remix
• 15: JIM ‘Phoenix’ Crooked Man Remixes
• 14: Flamingods ‘Dreams (On The Strip)’
• 13: Islandman ‘Godless Ceremony’ plus the Hardway Bros Remix
• 12: A Man Called Adam ‘The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart’
• 11: Aphex Twin ‘Black Box Recorder 21f’
• 10: Psychederek ‘Test Card Girl’
• 9: Jo Sims ‘Bass- The Final Frontier’ David Holmes remix
• 8: Katy J Pearson ‘Willow’s Song’ Richard Norris remix

Fourteen: Album Of The Year #7 Eyes Of Others ‘Eyes Of Others’

Eyes Of Others debut album is a heady collage of electronics, synthpop, dub, acid house, early New Order and John Bryden's singular world view.   

Thirteen: Album Of The Year #6  African Head Charge ‘A Trip To Bolgatanga’

Bonjo and Sherwood back on the African Head Charge express, ten songs built over Bonjo's drumming, chanting and dub. 

Twelve: Album Of The Year #5 10:40 ‘Transition Theory’

I first heard Jesse Fahnestock's music a couple of years ago, an edit of Spacemen 3. This album, a complete piece of work, each track containing the seeds of the next one, an eleven song trip through the 10:40 world roaming in the spaces between ambient house, chuggy electronics, indie dance, psychedelia, bleepy dub and atmospherics, floating in inner/ outer space.  

Eleven: Album Of The Year #4 JIM ‘Loves Makes Magic’

Surprise of the year for me, a Balearic song based album that lit up summer- the hot, sunny summer we didn't really get this year. 

Ten: Album Of The Year #3 Sonic Boom and Panda Bear ‘Reset In Dub’ by Adrian Sherwood

Sherwood and the On U Sound collective proving they've lost none of their power, sending Sonic Boom and Panda Bear into echo heaven. 

Nine: Album Of The Year #2 James Holden ‘Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’

This album came out in March, an album that is endlessly innovative and entrancing. Holden recorded it partly as a memory of 90s rave and the free party movement but it works way beyond nostalgia, twelve tracks that never become predictable, never settle, always looking to twist and move somewhere else, melodies and squiggles, birdsong and synths. I played it again recently and it sounded as fresh as it did in March. 

Eight: Single Of The Year #7 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson ‘Just A Daydream Away’ versions plus Hardway Bros remix

Shimmering indie dance from the West Coast of the USA, in two versions, both equally great and a wonderful Hardway Bros remix serving up ten minutes of cosmic indie chug (a trick Sean repeated with remixes of Holy Youth Movement and Islandman's Godless Ceremony. 

Seven: Single Of The Year #6 Electric Blue Vision ‘Other Skies’ plus remixes

Jesse Fahnestock has been on fire in 23, a flood of music and ideas (see above, number 13). Other Skies is a song that has that magic, the magic that transports and transcends, Emilia Harmony's vocal about being lost and going home a key part of it. The remixes, all three of them, sent it into new places with the Hardway Bros and Monkton's dub version bringing the bass and melodica front and centre. 

Six: Single Of The Year #5 Khidja ‘Do You Know This Record Marius?

Two weeks ago this wouldn't have been here but it shoved its way in and won't let go- trippy, spinning electronic psychedelia from Romania that has been on a loop at home and in the car. 

Five: Single Of The Year #4 Dirt Bogarde ‘Heavy Blotter’

Dirt has provided several tracks this year that have pushed me forwards but this one has an oomph, an electric charge and a big acid house sound that rattles my speakers and hits me in the chest. 

Four: Single Of The Year #3 Matt Gunn ‘Learning By Loops’ Bedford Falls Players Remix

I wrote about this last week, a remix that has been in my ears since the early summer, and one I'm not remotely tired of hearing. A crunch of drums, long vocal sample about binary systems, time travel, the voice of Jesus and shit like this with a ringing guitar part looped in and out. 

Three: Sinead O'Connor and Single Of The Year #3 David Holmes 'Necessary Genius'

There have been a lot of high profile deaths this year, the losses of David Crosby, Tom Verlaine, Bobby Charlton, Jane Birkin, Steve Mackey, Spot, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mark Stewart, Andy Rourke and Shane McGowan all moments of sadness. But Sinead's death in July was shocking and brought a wave of heartfelt tributes and genuine bereavement from many, her death, coming a year after the loss of her youngest son Shane. I read her book Rememberings last year and the knowledge that Shane would die after the book was written made reading it very moving. 

Back in July when I posted my own tribute to her I included a link to an edit Rich Lane did of Sinead's song Jackie. A friend sent my blogpost to David Holmes who in response sent me the track he played at his own tribute to Sinead at NTS radio, his remix of Orbital's Belfast with Sinead's vocal from Nothing Compares 2U over the top. David also then got in touch with Rich and asked for a copy of Jackie to play when DJing (which he did and which David played at The Golden Lion in November, a moment that made me smile when it came over the sound system and I thought about how it got there). David also then asked Rich to do a remix for him which should be coming out soon. Sinead's face was on the art for David's Necessary Genius single and a print included with the Blind On A Galloping Horse album. She's been a presence all over the second half of 2023, a beautiful and fearless soul and it seemed right to include her in this list. Hopefully the album she recorded with David Holmes will see the light of day eventually. 

Necessary Genius was close to the top in my list of singles of 2023, a rollcall of talent and inspiration with glorious synths and drum machines. But it missed out to this...

Two: Single Of The Year- Fontaines DC 'Cello Song'

I thought long and hard about this, about whether I really think a cover version should be my single of the year and whether given almost all the music above is electronic, a rock 'n' roll rumble in the top spot is right- but in the end it is the song I've gone back to time and time again. Nick Drake's original is my favourite song of his, a song of acoustic and poetic beauty, and in some ways the words have become associated with Isaac for me in the two years since he died. Fontaines DC take the song and do something new with it, a squeal of feedback, a rockabilly drumbeat, acres of Dublin street swagger and Grian Chatten's deep hit of voice breathing new meaning into Nick's words. Back in July I put together a forty minute mix of Nick Drake songs which opened with Nick's version and closed with Fontaines. Here it is again. 

Forty Minutes Of Nick Drake

One: Album Of The Year- David Holmes 'Blind On A Galloping Horse'

The album I've been waiting for since the first single from it appeared in 2021, Hope Is The Last Thing To Die. Fourteen songs long, seventy minutes of music, a proper album from start to finish with contributions from Keith Tenniswood and Tim Fairplay, the voice of Raven Violet and the spirits of Andrew Weatherall and Sinead O'Connor. Songs that take in the personal and the political, the emotional and the righteous, the psychedelic and the electronic, over four sides of vinyl housed in a beautifully designed sleeve. Everything we wanted and more and as someone said to me, exactly the album we needed at exactly the right time. 

There were a slew of remixes to support the singles, all of them worth hearing and some of them right up there with the best music released this year, a case of more is sometimes more. Shout outs to Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's remix of Yeah x 3 and both Vendetta Suite's versions of the same song, Colleen Murphy's acid disco remixes of Stop Apologising, and the remixes of Necessary Genius by Decius (a riot in a sweaty basement), Lovefingers (a slowed down piano dub groove) and especially Phil Kieran's eight minute electronic kraut hammer remix. 

Necessary Genius (Phil Kieran Remix Vocal)

Forty Minutes Of Nick Drake

I abandoned not one but two Sunday mixes this week- in frustration mainly, at not being able to get either one right. One was a Talking Heads/ David Byrne/ Tom Tom Club mix that kept defeating me and the other an Underworld one that I couldn't get into a state that I was happy with. Instead I've gone for a Nick Drake mix, one which came together quickly and which hits the spot in all sorts of ways. In some ways it's just an excuse to repost the recent Fontaines D.C. cover of 'Cello Song, which has come out physically recently as part of an album of twenty five songs, covers by a diverse range of artiss. 

I first encountered Nick Drake aged seventeen or eighteen after reading a review in Melody Maker of a 1987 compilation called Time Of No Reply, fourteen songs that were all outtakes and alternate versions. I don't know why I bought it. It wasn't remotely like what I was listening to in 1987/ 1988, but something about the review must have appealed to me or it was a strange impulse that paid off in the long term. I liked the songs but details were scant, there was no internet to look him up on and explore further and I didn't dig much deeper until the mid- 90s when his three studio albums were re- issued. Nick's music- the finger picked folk guitar, his clear, well spoken English voice, the songs that were adorned with Disney- like string arrangements, the way his songs veer between dark and light, depression and light-  confused me at times and I had to sift through them to find what I wanted. Some of these songs, 'Cello Song for one, have taken on huge meaning and significance for me (I wrote about 'Cello Song here when it became a lockdown song round my way, and again here in November last year, on the first anniversary of Isaac's death. I heard 'Cello Song in the aftermath of Isaac's death and the words took on new layers of meaning for me- it stops me in my tracks when I hear it now, partly why the Fontaines cover has gone near to the top of my most played songs of 2023 list). The backing on many of these songs add another dimension to them too, the use of hand drums, congas, cello and so on, lift them, adding subtleties and layers and put them in a different place from the more standard folky singer/ songwriter area. That's Joe Boyd's influence I think. There's something about these songs which often seems very autumnal but they fit into the long days of summer too. Even if the weather has been anything but summery these last few weeks. 

Forty Minutes of Nick Drake

• 'Cello Song
• Time Has Told Me
• Rider On The Wheel
• River Man
• Northern Sky
• Three Hours
• Hazey Jane I
• Black Eyed Dog
• Clothes Of Sand
• 'Cello Song
• Introduction

'Cello Song and Time Has Told Me are both from Nick's debut Five Leaves Left, produced by Joe Boyd.  The original version of River Man comes from Five Leaves Left too but this solo version is from I Was Made To Love Magic, a compilation released in  2004 that was an updated version of the cassette I bought back in the 80s. 

Rider On The Wheel was on I Was Made To Love Magic along with the versions here of Three Hours, Clothes Of Sand and the haunting Black Eyed Dog. Rider On The Wheel and Black Eyed Dog both date from 1974 and were possibly intended for Nick's fourth album, a record which never happened due to his death that year. 

Northern Sky and Hazey Jane I are both from Bryter Later, Nick's second album, released in 1971. The album was very polished, with string arrangements added by Joe Boyd- I can leave some of it, its too sweet but some of it is lovely. John Cale was involved in the production of Bryter Later adding piano and Hammond organ to several songs including Northern Sky. Northern Sky was also the song which spearheaded Nick's rediscovery, being sued as the lead track from a CD compilation and in a handful of films in the 90s. Introduction is an instrumental, one minute thirty seconds opening to Bryter Later. 

The second version of 'Cello Song is the cover by Fontaines D.C., out now on album The Endless Coloured Ways. It kicks and spits and takes the song somewhere else entirely, a grinding rocking guitar song, with rockabilly drums and Grian Chattan's Dublin voice a new way to hear those words. Exactly what a cover version should do. 

Where Spring Is Sprung

This song has already featured at a couple of blogs linked to this one and been posted on social media by friends but, at the risk of repetition, I'm posting it here today as well. 'Cello Song has long been one of my favourite Nick Drake songs- the finger picked folk guitar, the gorgeous, weightless, melancholy of the cello, the busy, subtle hand drums and Nick's voice, as if recorded not long after waking up. Back in November, in the lead up to the first anniversary of Isaac's death, I was struck by the lyrics which seemed so apt and took on new meaning for me. 

'Strange face, with your eyes
So pale and sincere
Underneath you know well
You have nothing to fear
For the dreams that came to you when so young
Told of a life
Where spring is sprung

You would seem so frail
In the cold of the night
When the armies of emotion
Go out to fight
But while the earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky
On the crest of a wave

So forget this cruel world
Where I belong
I'll just sit and wait
And sing my song
And if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me
To your place in the cloud'

Fontaines DC have covered 'Cello Song for a forthcoming album of covers, The Endless Coloured Ways, along with twenty- nine other artists. Fontaines DC grab hold of the song and don't let go, stamping their own identity on it while retaining the spirit and essence of Nick's original. In their hands, with twin clanging guitars and layers of feedback, rat- a- tat- tat drumming, thumping bass and Grian Chatten's unmistakeable Dublin vocals, 'Cello Song switches effortlessly from melancholic late 60s English folk to gritty back street 21st century indie- punk rock. The sweeping cellos are still there, the bridge between the two. It's rewritten the song for me (and they've rewritten the lyrics partly too, cutting pasting parts of the second and third verses into one), rewired it into something new, still emotionally charged but with a different, more insistent, more menacing edge. It's a wonderful reinterpretation, exactly how a cover version should be done. 

Things feel hard again. Grief comes and goes in unpredictable arcs and waves. I know it isn't very long at all since Isaac died- a little over fifteen months- but there's been yet another shift in things recently, with the old one step forwards, two steps back as standard. The acceptance that things have changed forever is one I'm trying to get to grips with. With it comes the realisation that it's not just that there's no going back to the world as it was before he died, it's also that there's no going back to the person I was before he died. This has changed me/ us forever. The person I am now has this ball of grief and loss built in. Some days it's a dull aching sadness. Some days it's a knot of anxiety in the stomach and chest. Some days it's a weight, a heaviness I'm lugging around with me. Some days it's raw and painful again. Some days it erupts unexpectedly, a burst of frustration or anger (or the opposite, a resigned shrug and a fuck it to a situation I maybe should care more about). It may change as the months and years go by, the grief and loss becoming more bearable- not lessening, just more liveable with- but it's there for good. That's a big thing to take on board I think- I am not who I was. 

One Year Ago Today

Isaac died a year ago today, 30th November 2021 at around quarter to two in the afternoon. He was twenty three. When the worst thing that could possibly happen to you has happened, it's difficult to know which way is up. The last few weeks have been really difficult as this day has borne down on us. I go over the events of the last few days of Isaac's life in my head sometimes, reliving them. Earlier this year I suffered some quite extreme flashbacks, which put me back in to the the room with him as he died. It was so quick which has made it more traumatic. Covid came and took him in less than a week. He was out of sorts on his birthday, tested positive for Covid the following day (Wednesday) and then became more unwell until on Saturday evening we phoned an ambulance. They took him into Wythenshawe hospital. On the Monday morning the consultants told us there was nothing they could do, that the Covid was in his lungs and given his weakened immune system there were no drugs that would work, that he would die within the next couple of days. He died the following day, Tuesday. The three of us were there when he went. I was sitting on his bed facing him, holding his hands. The flashbacks, auditory and visual, were often of this moment. I haven't had any since May, something I feel relieved about but it doesn't take much for me to go back to those days and to replay what happened. I'm not sure if it helps or not but as this date has come closer an closer my mind has been going back there more often. 

It's difficult to believe it is already a year since he died when it feels so recent and still feels so raw. The passing of time is a real fucker and dates and anniversaries have been extremely difficult to deal with, mainly something to get over and be done with. Today may prove to be the toughest of them all, the coming to terms with the fact that it's a year now that he's been gone, that it's now over a year since he was in the house with us, living with us. People keep saying that a year really isn't actually very long at all, especially at our age, but still, a year... it baffles me somehow. 

Writing about it all here has helped. I'm sure at times it has been an uncomfortable and difficult read for others and I don't blame anyone who quietly closes the page and goes to read something else. Some people have said it has helped them, to know where we're at or where we're up to. Writing it down and posting it has helped me get my thoughts in order and I think it has worked as a form of therapy. 

We made the decision to have Isaac buried and we're glad we did. Having his grave as somewhere to go has helped. Early on, back in January and February, it was difficult and I liked going, it felt like he was closer to us while we were there, but leaving was tough. It's still very difficult sometimes, standing there can bring home very suddenly the enormity of what has happened and it has the power to floor me, leaves me feeling like I have to catch my breath. But it's comforting too. It's good to go and see that other people have been, that people have taken flowers or left things for him. We still haven't sorted a headstone and I don't feel any particular need to do that in a rush. The planter we filled with flowers has changed as the year has passed. I started photographing it when we visited, keeping a record of it and how it has changed with the seasons. This picture was quite recent, mid- November. There is a road in the distance of that picture- you can't see it but it's there. The road runs between Broadheath (near Altrincham) and the road to Lymm (I've never checked the timetable but I wouldn't think it's a busy or profitable route and I can't imagine there's more than one bus per hour). We try to go to see him at least once a week. Almost every single time we visit, a bus goes past which always makes me smile. Isaac loved public transport and the bus shuttling back and forth between Altrincham and Warrington has begun to feel like a little tribute to him. 

This place started as a music blog in January 2010 but became intertwined with my life from quite early days and Isaac (and Eliza) have featured regularly. This year especially the music and Isaac's death and my/ our grief have become more wrapped up in each other. Here are two songs that have come to mean something to me in the last few weeks, that have become part of Isaac, his death and my grief, and in some way a part of trying to deal with it all.

Ten days ago I posted a forty minute Flaming Lips mix. I knew some of the songs would be affecting, that they might get to me. Do You Realise?? has that power in any circumstances, even without dealing with the death of your child. Race For The Prize has been connected to Isaac for me since very early days. Jesse Fahnestock questioned- quite reasonably- why Fight Test wasn't part of my mix. 

Fight Test

Fight Test definitely should have been included and for a while it was but I took it out. After our conversation I went back to it and some lines really jumped out...

'Cause I'm a man, not a boy/ And there are some things you can't avoid/ You have to face them/ When you're not prepared to face them'

That's a truth right there. There's some lovely imagery in the song too, something to hold on to...

'I don't know where the sunbeams end/ And the starlights begin/ It's all a mystery'

It's funny how the meaning of songs and the way you hear them can change, that they can be one thing at one point in your life and another at another. That's definitely true of Fight Test. My other song for today is this one by Nick Drake...

'Cello Song

A few weeks ago I pulled out a compilation CD from a pile of homemade one that date back years, to listen to in the car. 'Cello Song came on and it worked its magic as I drove. I kept playing it, pressing back, playing it again, pressing back. It's a gorgeous, almost weightless, song, finger picked guitar melodies and deep sonorous cello sweeps wrapping themselves around each other. I've known and loved it for years without ever really noting the words. Like many of Nick Drake's songs, it's poetic and melancholic but there is a tinge in his voice which suggests hope. The words began to come into focus but I had to wait to do an internet search for them to read them in full-

'Strange face, with your eyes
So pale and sincere
Underneath you know well
You have nothing to fear
For the dreams that came to you when so young
Told of a life
Where spring is sprung

You would seem so frail
In the cold of the night
When the armies of emotion
Go out to fight
But while the earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky
On the crest of a wave

So forget this cruel world
Where I belong
I'll just sit and wait
And sing my song
And if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me
To your place in the cloud'

They struck me hard, left me gasping a little bit and then as I wiped my tears away and read them again, they made me smile. This is never going to leave us and it hurts like nothing I've ever known before, but we have to find a new way to live without him and to find a way to come to terms with the feelings of loss and grief that we have been left with. Isaac will always be with us - and in a funny way I can find him now in places, like in the lines of songs by Nick Drake and Wayne Coyne.