That Music List: LIST 237

So here we are, then - the first List since May 2018, and a few changes to note.

Firstly, a longer running time, upped from just under the length of a CD to just under the length of a two-hour radio show. That's not an unsubtle dropping of a hint on my part, as my limitations as a broadcaster were long exposed some fifteen years ago. Rather, I just find two hours a nicer, rounder quantity of time to work with than an hour and twenty.

Secondly, more features. Unless they were a themed special (by year, Xmas, Eurovision, etc.), previous Lists would generally include Then and Now and In Loving Memory as a maximum, and nothing else. However, there are now well over twenty different features that'll be appearing. Not all at once, and some more than others, but a goodly handful each time, just to keep it interesting. Click here for a glossary of what they are and what they contain.

Thirdly and finally, embedded videos! I have no idea whether this feature was already present in Blogger the last time I uploaded a List; I'm guessing at yes, but the Victorian laptop I was using at the time would likely have screamed enough at anything other than the construction of the simplest, blandest of lists. I'm sure it must be handier to click on a video or link without having to be propelled out of the List in order to watch it, though I suspect you might still need to for links to Bandcamp material.

Right, then, what can I tell you about some of today's contents?

The List actually contains my three favourite songs of 2025, starting with number one. I'm sure I wasn't alone among Cardiacs fans in harbouring fears that I'd actually want to like the LSD album more than I ultimately actually would like it, chiefly out of goodwill towards all those responsible for this herculean task of crafting something from the raw materials the late Tim Smith left behind.

Shear - if one possibly can - the music of all of the back story that comes with it, however, and what's there is still an astonishing piece of psychedelic punk pop rock. Not the creative or songwriting equal of the Sing to God album for me, as almost nothing on Earth ever will be, but a better produced, richer sounding piece of work whose highpoints are very high indeed.

Lead single Woodeneye, originally played in fragment form by Tim Smith to at least one Cardiacs acolyte down the phone nearly two decades ago, went a long way towards assuaging fears that LSD would be Cardiacs lite. Simultaneously direct yet complex, simultaneously beautiful yet manic, it does exactly what you'd hope one of the poppier statements on a Cardiacs album might do.

There's an added poignancy for me to the whole Cardiacs story these days, following the recruitment of Mike Vennart to the recording and live ranks of the band. In his former day job as frontperson of Oceansize, Mike would have been among the regular listening pleasures of my much-loved sister-in-law Kate, who left us suddenly in 2023. I'd have loved to play her this.

Second place for me in 2025 was There's More to Life than Crooks by Lighting in a Twilight Hour, just the most recent reminder of Bobby Wratten's propensity for occasional piercing political statements hidden in the plain sight of beautiful indiepop music.

The Field Mice won't necessarily have been thought of by all as overtly political, beyond their association with a record label in Sarah which intrinsically was; yet that early Wratten vehicle occasionally gave us statement songs such as the pro-LGB This Love is Not Wrong and the ahead-of-the-curve dismantling of toxic masculinity Song 6. Cut to the staggering Dear Faraway Friend from his Northern Picture Library incarnation, apparent musical simulation of a war scenario, air raid, sirens and all. Cut to Trembling Blue Stars' A Statue to Wilde, a reflection on the progress made on gay rights and acceptance, and the progress still to make. And so it goes on.

More so than most of his previous projects, I've found some of Lightning in a Twilight Hour's output veering towards the pretty and admirable rather than the compelling. Not in the fascinating soundscape and noise experimentation pieces Bobby has long enjoyed crafting; they can be treated separately. Rather, some of the pieces intended as conventional pop or indiepop music just haven't quite landed, meandering rather than grabbing.

...Crooks does everything right, though. Six minutes of precise, calmly delivered barbs against the Trumps and Farages of this world and all they stand for, set against gently pulsing electronic pop, thoughtful guitar additions and Anne Mari Barker Davies's unmistakable backing vocals. "Let your existence be the resistance" is a line originally attributed to Albert Camus, I understand. It's also a single line in the song that sums up the whole perfectly.

And third place? Stereolab. They can be an arid, detached proposition live, sometimes a little bit too enchanted with how far they can stretch an idea on stage whilst punters increasingly cough and kick their heels (the version of Lo Boob Oscillator they closed with when I saw them in Sheffield in 2019 went from long to overlong to self-indulgent to purgatory in succession).

A few of their late-1990s/early-2000s albums could probably be accused of similar, but comeback longplayer Instant Holograms on Metal Film was pleasingly short on such excesses even within its hour-long run time, and lead single Aerial Troubles sparked with pure pop song vim and accessibility in a way that seemed almost entirely lost to them around the Sound Dust or Cobra and Phases... period. Tick, v.g.

I've banged on for way too long already, and rest assured most Lists won't have anything close to this much preamble. Quick notes about a few other inclusions, however;

Nev Clay's York gig in July last year, put on by Jo and Pete Dale from Knitting Circle, not only afforded me the chance to see this kindly, humble, hilarious and super gifted singer songwriter play for the first time this century (gigs much outside of Newcastle by him are few and far between), but lit the touchpaper in terms of wanting to go out and see live music more often again. To all of those concerned, I thank you most humbly.

Duck get a deserved play for services to my revived live music consumption also, Sarah and Chris from the band having taken on the running of Sheffield DIY venue Hatch, formerly the Audacious Art Experiment, in the time since I saw them perform Monsters (and much else besides) there some years prior. Long may it prosper.

The choosing of a Telex track which namechecks Brigitte Bardot for this List long predates her recent passing, and rest assured shouldn't be taken as any endorsement of her more hateful personal views whatsoever. It's definitely an endorsement of those ace deadpan Belgian electronic funsters, however.

Red Pony Clock were a highlight of the first Indietracks festival I was able to attend, back in 2008, Gabe and Gerry Saucedo skilfully squeezing their too-many-member psychedelic mariachi ensemble (their words) onto the long, very thin truck stage (the proper outdoor stage came a year later) for one of the entire weekend's most joyful performances.

J xx

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FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2025

CARDIACS - Woodeneye