04/20 - You'll Have To Learn To Live A Different Way

Things are shifting. Small steps taken start to add up to a critical mass. Change comes rumbling. It should be good, it could be bad. Things are nervous.

Billie Eilish - No Time To Die

I have not caught up with the Billie Eilish hype. I have yet to form an opinion on her, and it might even be that this song will have lost its luster a couple of months' heavy commercial rotation from now. But just at this moment it definitely feels like the best Bond song – except for Radiohead's discarded Spectre contribution of course – since the 1970s. It's gutsy, because it's so subtle: Billie holds back, quavers and doesn't go full throttle until the dramatic crescendo in the final 40 seconds. It's got nerve and it sends a chill down my spine.

Dave - Black

Maybe it looks like I'm desperate to stay hip and contemporary by including two performances from last week's Brit Awards, but how can you look over a performance like this? Between Dave and Stormzy it feels like there's at least a cultural antidote to the Tory Brexit. Just wish that extra verse was on the record.

Tirzah - Go Now

We spend a lifetime trying to learn when's the right time to leave.

Low - Disarray

Did a bit of catching up with this album. It's a near perfect distillation of zeitgeist. Stunning humanity in the midst of distortion and... total disarray.

Melanie - Mr. Tambourine Man

The richness of a Bob Dylan song still has few matches. There are always at least two sides to every verse. You could do a Byrds-like take of Mr Tambourine Man and make it into a paean to delirious freedom and escape. Or you could do like Melanie, and pick out the sleep-deprived anxiety and indecision, to sing with tense, anguished voice:

Please let me forget about today until tomorrow

And because I forgot it last week; here's Goat (Japan). They're not on Spotify, but they're absolutely extraordinarily awesome live.