listening2... 21/12/24
I've been listening to... #13 in the series
listening2… is a series of regular posts on what I’ve been, well, listening to. Tracks from my travels. New songs and music to explore further. Half forgotten tracks from my collection. Roadtrip gems. If you like this post, let me know or, even better, let someone else know!
It’s been a wild ride since March - seventy-odd awesome tracks, together with bonus videos and extras! I’ll be republishing the full playlist in the New Year as a record of awesomeness. in the meantime here’s the final Listening2… instalment of 2024.
Listening2… #13: 28/12/2024
On this final listening2… playlist of 2024: Christmas tracks from The Delines and Smith & Burrows. A classic cover oldie from Suede. A new track from the forthcoming posthumous album by D & B legend, MC Conrad (RIP). New finds from Cindy Lee and Audrey Powne…
1. The Delines - Christmas in Atlantis
Their 2023 Christmas single…
No apologies for posting more from the Delines. This one is their not-very-jolly Christmas single from last year. As always with this band, the song contains a story that we all need to hear:
“Diago gets dressed, starts talking about the merits of the KKK and how fascism is misunderstood, and sometimes you need a dad to keep you in your place. A fist fight breaks out between your mom and your aunt over who’s going to inherit your mother’s jewellery…”
American families eh? Happy Christmas everybody!@!@!
2. Suede - Shopbuilding
From the original War Child album, Help, in 1995
In my last post (Little Shrew about Kate Bush’s winter album, 50 Words For Snow), I mentioned the War Child charity that launched with the album, Help, back in 1995. It produced the fastest album recording ever with a great playlist of covers and originals by bands like Radiohead, Sinead O’Connor, Portishead, the Manics and loads more. One of my favourite tracks on the album is this cover of Shipbuilding, the Elvis Costello composition. It’s a classic song of any era this one, written at the time of the Falklands War, but relevant today as we face new warnings of spreading war and militarisation.
Robert Wyatt, The Unthanks and others have also covered this song beautifully, but Brett Anderson’s voice on this version really suits its poignant tone, in the context of the War Child release which came out at the time of the Bosnian conflict.
3. Audrey Powne - Feed the Fire (Atjazz Deeper Remix)
Remixed from her 2024 album, From the Fire
My big find from the back end of this year, and definitely an album of the year contender if I was in that sort of game. Australian artist, Audrey Powne’s album From the Fire is just amazing. The whole album is great – eight beautifully played, sung and produced tracks that I’ve been listening to a lot in the past couple of weeks. You can find the full album at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kRpEeuGYYrerEr41KlMTsvmWq6y9m_uDY
This track is a dance remix of the lead single from the album, and it’s equally great. Definitely a top Ziggy’s Lament recommendation…
4. Smith & Burrows - When The Thames Froze
From their 2011 album, Funny Looking Angels
This has long been one of my favourite Christmas songs from one of the best Christmas/Winter albums by Smith & Burrows aka Tom Smith (formerly of the Editors) and Andy Burrows (I Am Arrows, Razorlight and We Are Scientists). Like a lot of the best Christmas music, it’s bittersweet, but still captures a chill kind of seasonal cheer. The album is a combination of carols, Christmas standards and original songs. Really worth a resurrection, thirteen years on…
Funny Looking Angels is at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n4z4C5mhZkfB_q029owpl92eRn-Y4TQFg
5. Cindy Lee – If You Hear Me Crying
From the 2024 album, Diamond Jubilee
Trawling through the end of year albums lists is a bit daunting. Everybody’s top 50 seems to be different with artists I’ve never heard of, and music that has literally passed me by. I think I should be all right with that, and I am mostly, but sometimes FOMO kicks in. It shouldn’t, I know, I should just be grateful that there is so much good stuff out there to listen to. Even if the music industry is fucked (see this for example),1 music scenes thrive as outlets for personal and collective expression and creativity! It’s lush!
Anyway, the album that this track came from was second on the Guardian’s top 50 albums. It’s by Cindy Lee, the drag alter-ego of Canadian musician, Patrick Flegel, and the album is a giant – 32 tracks long, and full a strange and amazing compositions that sound like they’ve been part of the American dream for decades. It was first available from the archaic 90s platform, GeoCities (http://www.geocities.ws/ccqsk/) and is available to stream, in full, from YouTube (though not from Spotify or Apple etc). You can also find the album at Bandcamp:
…and here’s the track that captivated me when I first heard it via the Guardian website:
6. MC Conrad - Promised Land ft. Aquariid (DJ Marky & Makoto Remix)
Single released on Liquicity
This year saw the untimely death of Drum and Bass legend MC Conrad. This posthumous track has just been released, and it already sounds like a classic. It’s from a forthcoming MC Conrad album in 2025 – put together from tracks he was preparing for release before he died. Going on this one, it’s going to an essential listen. Find more about the album release on Mixmag here: https://mixmag.net/read/posthumous-mc-conrad-album-2025-connatural-news or on Instagram HERE.
All proceeds from the record will go toward the MC Conrad Foundation, which aims to support young, independent artists through their careers in music.
Note: The music industry is fucked, example 1
Not a cheery note to end the year on, but an important one. In 2022, veteran music journalist, Ted Goia, wrote a post on the way the algorithms on music streaming services are being manipulated using fake artists. It’s a complicated scam, but the bottom line is that searches for topics (such as Jazz in the Background, for example) bring up playlists with a large proportion of unknown or obscure artists with high numbers of royalty attracting plays. More recently he’s highlighted an investigation in Harpers’s Magazine which covers the same ground in more detail entitled The Ghosts in the Machine - Spotify’s plot against musicians by Liz Kelly. More of this to come on Ziggy’s maybe. It’s a terrible irony that there’s so much great new emerging locally and internationally, and yet the music industry is still basically ripping off artists (and listeners).
You can find Ted Goia’s piece at: https://substack.com/home/post/p-51923250 and Liz Kelly’s at https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/