We’re still kind of doing that end of year clear the decks and do what we should have done weeks or months ago, three more albums from 2023 that very much deserve a bit more of our attention before we’re done with it…

Silver Moth – Black Bay (Bella Union) – Way back at the start of what has turned out to be a very (very) long year we got rather excited by the first tastes of what we said at the time was a rather warm track from a new album and back. Silver Moth are a new collective involving Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai and “other acclaimed musicians” we reported back in January as we posted that the band had “today announced their debut album, Black Bay, out 21st April via Bella Union” and that “to celebrate the announcement Silver Moth have shared a first track titled Mother Tongue” – we featured  the beautifully brooding first taste as a Thing of The Day and declared it to be a rather rich, rather beautiful, rather spiritual track, we said back there that it bodes rather well in terms of the album and there we left it until we went back to put together our obligatory albums of the year list (hey, we love a list as much as anyone) and discovered we hadn’t said anything more about Black Bay when we really really should should have. 

Black Bay is a glorious album, it glows, epic pieces like The Eternal, not epic in terms of length mind you, The Eternal is just under six minute of something gloriously epic all the same and epic pieces like The Eternal really need to be, well not shouted about, this doesn’t feel like an album to shout about, not an album to rave and drool about, it feels like an album to just quietly share and nod your head in a knowing way about as you just quietly pass it on and wait to be thanked. Black Bay is full of massive pieces of glowing moody prog-flavoured folk-tinged beautifully voiced warmth. Lush, melancholic, just a wonderful album, a beautifully paced brooding piece of dark beauty.

Seems the band came together during the lockdown via a chance interaction on social media brought about the collective known as Silver Moth. The protagonists here are Ash Babb (drummer-Burning House/Academy of Sun), Elisabeth Elektra (singer/producer/songwriter), Steven Hill (guitars/keyboards-Evi Vine), Ben Roberts (cellist/bassist/multi-instrumentalist-Evi Vine/Prosthetic Head/Abrasive Trees), Matthew Rochford (guitarist/songwriter-Abrasive Trees), Evi Vine (singer/songwriter/bassist/guitarist) and Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai and Minor Victories.  Black Bay feels timeless, it feels very now, it feels rather special actually

It seems the story here is that some of the band knew some of the band, but essentially, they didn’t all know each other. After a few Zoom meetings, they took the decision to book Black Bay Studio on Great Bernera, apparently to have something to look forward to. None of the album had been written beforehand and it was tracked in just four days and mixed and overdubbed during the following four days. Remarkable given the content. As Elisabeth explains “Because we didn’t know each other before we went to Black Bay, we went into a really intense creative mode as soon as we got there”. Production duties were performed by Pete Fletcher and credit must go to him for the sounds on this album are exquisite (and we must really credit  Echoes And Dust website for that late night dying embers of the year bit of background)  And hey, look, the year is almost ended, we’re here in the early hour putting together lists and best of radio shows and you’ve got the music there on Bandcamp. This is just a beautifully hopeful album, something very special, if you haven’t already, just go enjoy it… (sw) 

Bandcamp

Gina Birch – I Play My Bass Loud (Third Man) – Thought we’d told you, she told me we had, we seem to have been writing about about Gina Birch quite a bit in recent years, we did cover this album back at the start of the year, we kind of kept it shut when it came to a “proper” album review (do we even do “proper” album review these days?). Here we are at the end of 2023 and fresh from Gina’s very strong exhibition of new paintings at East London’s Gallery 46. and we need to do a bit more crossing and dotting before we start a new year. Gina is brilliant but you know that already, some people might think she trouble, she says she’s just doing her best to be free, to be wild, and she doesn’t really need words from us – we do keep seeing her Three Minute Scream everywhere and this solo album that came out at the start of Spring of 23, although we did give it attention at the time does deserve a “proper” mention before the year ends. 

Gina Birch is many things, she lists lots these things herself. she’s a fighter, she’s an artist, she’s a city girl, a feminist, an activist, a Raincoat, a film maker, a warrior, if you ask her, she’ll tell you she’s lucky, if she is then she’s made her luck herself. This feels like a very autobiographical album, a positively personal album and yes, as you’d probably expect, a call to arms, a kind of come on sisters, this-is-how-you-do-it kind of album – come and have a laugh, come and dance and sing, let’s please ourselves. just be happy and wear your shoes (but not stilettos)  and let’s be brilliant, we are not afraid, we are not insane.  This is classic post punk if you need us to vaguely put it somewhere, you really don’t need us to that though, you have ears, you have the Bandcamp link, it is classic post punk though, and very London, all those bits of dub and riot and rage. On the brilliant title track, she’s joined by four (women) bassists – Shanne Bradley, Emily Elhaj, Helen McCookerybook, and Jane Crockford – she is the bass player in the Raincoats of course, she’s joined by all kind of people on this, her first ever solo album, it makes for all kinds of colours, in never ever feels disjointed, solo albums with lots of collaborators often can, this one flows gloriously and one whole body of work. Yes of course some of it is angry, more in the lyrics than the playing though and although it is very angry at times it does make you smile, you do want to yell “yes!”. Shall we politely say she doesn’t have much time for the patriarch? – I Play My Bass Loud, her debut solo album at the knowing age of 67, is rightly a celebration of her place at the forefront of a lot more than just feminist rock, it is also a defiantly furious protest against the persecution of women.  

The album cover painting deserves another mention, a self-portrait of Gina Birch from an art school Super 8 film in which she screamed directly into the camera lens for three minutes back in the 70’s. She’s has indeed carried that spirit, that often screaming, sometimes quietly raging dissent through her music made with the Raincoats, the Hangovers, and the Gluts, but rarely has she been so right there about it about and “When you ask me if I’m a feminist/I say to hell with powerlessness, to hell with loneliness/Damn all those people putting women down,”. She is angry, she’s creatively positive about it though and this album, like her paintings, like her films, like her shoes, is just wonderful. It feels like she’s only just starting. I do wonder if this album and her recent solo exhibition (and the Women In Revolt show currently at the Tate), make 2023 of her best year yet,? It does feel like she’s had a good year, it feels there’s lots more to come and Gina Birch’s time might just be still ahead of her and well, you don’t need all this from me, just go explore once more, go explore, enjoy and be inspired by Gina Birch..  (sw)    

Bandcamp

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KkHA8OgRwlQ%3Fsi%3Dsu7JXDci2MdWA7Rs

previously on these pages…

ORGAN THING: Gina Birch’s No One’s Little Girl at Gallery 46, Whitechapel, East London, a show of paintings that’s just so positively more of everything, just more…

M(h)aol – Attachment Styles (Tulle) – Another album we should have covered back when the daffodils were still out, M(h)aol’s rather wired tracks have been featuring on our playlists and as part of our regular five slices of music pages for the last couple of years now, Attachment Styles is an album that deserves to be very much treated as an album rather then one off tracks though, it is a decisive beast, a pinpoint set of songs or tracks or challenges or whatever you want to call them, it is a rather fine album. Actually It did come out last month in America, we could pretend we’re on the case and that we’re actually coving that version – “M(h)aol’s acclaimed 2023 full-length debut Attachment Styles comes to North America! The Merge Records reissue of Attachment Styles features the previously unreleased song Jack, the first song M(h)aol wrote as a unit and a feature of their beguiling live set. Attachment Styles is an album about social connection, queerness, and healing, taking the listener on a journey through various stages of self-acceptance and community-building….” 

What we have here are a whole load of what I guess could vaguely be called post punk moments or statements or confrontations that play in a very positively strong way on intersectional feminism and once again, fittingly as they share a page with Gina Birch here on this page, the reclamation of power. I wonder in Gina likes chipper chips as much as M(h)aol do? This is a set of strong do-not-mess defiantly-voiced statements, songs with lots to say, laced with a touch of humour and powered by a rather forcefully constructed set of tunes that are rather electrically charged, jaggedly-edged, dissonant, fuelled by wired up guitars and a whole load of single-finger Irish/feminist attitude, irony and a whole lot of…. oh, like we keep saying, just go listen to what they have to say and how they say it. 

Based between Dublin, London, and Bristol, M(h)aol (pronounced male) are formed of Róisín Nic Ghearailt (She/Her), Constance Keane (She/Her), Jamie Hyland (She/Her), Zoë Greenway (She/Her), and Sean Nolan (He/Him). They say Attachment Styles is “a record about social connection, queerness and healing. When Róisín was writing the lyrics, she used the theory of attachment styles as an overarching theme which is a theory that looks at the impact our inter-familial relationships and society have on how we relate to one another.  With the album, the listener goes on a journey of healing. We start with Asking For It, a song that deals with one of the worst things that can happen to someone, then we travel through various stages of self-acceptance and community building with the triumphant Period Sex. Bassist Jamie produced, mixed, and mastered the album where she wanted to capture the live element, meaning it was recorded in one small room with no headphones, minimal drum mics, and only a PA for vocals” – the production feels just right as does almost everything about this impressive debut album…. (sw)

Bandcamp / Facebook