Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator


Whenever people tell me there isn’t any good music being made any more, I always think that they’re just not listening hard enough. There is great new music being made all the time, in every genre, whether it’s the pop sounds of Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus, the warped country of Daniel Romano and Faye Webster or the urgent ‘indie’ rock of Marika Hackman and Sharon Van Etten or any other genre you can think of. Hurray For the Riff Raff is always an example I reach for as evidence that there really is great music still being made.

One thing I love to hear in modern music is a foundation of the past. Every great artist has spent time absorbing what went before them before attempting to forge their own sound; using the building blocks of the past to make something new. You can hear Alynda Segarra absorbing all sorts of influences throughout her career as Hurray For The Riff Raff, in both the songs she covered on her earlier albums or at her live shows, before arriving at her own triumphant sound on The Navigator.
Her country and soul education is still evident at times here but, at others, her and her band sound like they should be playing at CBGB’s, while there are times where she sounds like she’s playing at the end of the world (helped by a very Marc Ribot-esque guitar and a band of ghosts on Rican Beach). It never ceases to move me; whether it’s Livin’ in the City that is physically getting me grooving, the emotional trip of Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl that weaves and winds through your heart or the arresting Pa’Lante - the most powerful statement on an album made up of powerful statements.

"Fascinated by this
weird music"


Tom Waits - Blue Valentine


My first memory of hearing Tom Waits is sitting in the back-seat of my grandad’s car at maybe 12 years old. He was playing Starving in the Belly of a Whale loud through the Mercedes speakers and dancing gleefully behind the wheel as Waits’ devil growl shouted over his Halloween band. It sounds like someone is playing a xylophone made of bones, there is an echo in the song that makes it sound like it was recorded inside the belly of the whale he’s singing about.

Fascinated by this weird music - so unlike anything else I’d ever heard - I went down to Wanted Music off Beckenham High Street the following Saturday, found the Tom Waits section and, not knowing anything about his discography, picked out Swordfishtrombones. I took it home, pulled the disc out of its case and by the time Underground finished I didn’t know what to think or make of it. It was an utter racket to my early-teenage ears and on top of that, it was a terrifying racket. I immediately put the disc back in its case and returned the album to the shop where I’d bought it.

I didn’t listen to Tom Waits again for a while until I was grabbed by the title on a suggested video on Youtube: Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis. Clicking the link, it was apparent straight away that this was a live performance, from the Austin City Limits. With his trademark rasp, Waits started singing Silent Night before stumbling into his own song. It was captivating; it was hilarious, it was harrowing. It was perfect.

I found out what album this song was from and went back to the record shop I’d gotten Swordfishtrombones from and where I spent as much of my free time as I could - just looking at the covers of albums by Millie Jackson, Albert King, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding and reading the song titles on their reverse - and found Blue Valentine.

After the first song, Somewhere (From West Side Story) finished, I was again perplexed by what I’d heard but this time, pushed on. Fifty minutes passed and I was entranced. It was no clearer to me what kind of artist Tom Waits was, what kind of music this was, why he sounded like that but some things had become perfectly clear: Romeo was bleeding, we’d whistled past the graveyard, worn red shoes by the drugstore, the hooker in Minneapolis would be eligible for parole come valentine's day and that I was madly, deeply transfixed by the music and lyrics of Tom Waits.

Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher


The best two albums of 2020 came out on the same day, June 17th. One was Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan and the other was Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher (incidentally, they were both recorded in the same studio, too). I’d have loved this record even if it was no good just for the Eric Clapton diss, or her “lil bitch” jibe aimed at David Crosby following her “controversial” SNL performance of the album's monumental finisher I Know The End but the music and lyrics are so strong - from the mariachi flair of Kyoto to the haunting melody and string accompaniment on Chinese Satellite, the rise and fall of Savior Complex to the squeezebox hum on Graceland Too. The cover art completes the package on what is a fantastic, complex and haunting record.

Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel


There was a time when I barely listened to anyone apart fromCourtney Barnett. I grew a mullet out and donned her stage gear (plain white t-shirt, black trousers, red Tell Me How You Really Feel socks and Chelsea Boots) wherever I went. I saw her live four or five times in London across 2018 and ‘19 and once in Nashville, where she played this album from start to finish and then picked out some select tracks from Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit, her earlier EPs and a couple of covers. Each time she’s been incredible and each time I listen to this album something new in it opens up to me, it tells me something different and makes me feel something fresh.

It contains one of the one of the best, cutting and simple critic put downs I’ve ever heard (or at least, my favourite) as she quotes verbatim a review that read “I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and spit out better words than you” and simply drawls “but you didn’t” afterwards with a shrug. It contains one of the best surmations of living in a big city I’ve heard on record with “friends treat you like a stranger and strangers treat you like a best friend, oh well” and Sunday Roast is one of my favourite album closers of all time.

Listening to this album has gotten me through a lot, but it never felt more prescient as when I took a sunny walk one lockdown morning and the second song blasted through my earphones:

“The city looks pretty when you’ve been indoors for twenty-three days”.

"this album has gotten
me through a lot"


Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker


I always knew I was going to like Leonard Cohen. When you hear songs like So Long, Marianne and Suzanne you know you’re listening to a great songwriter. Knowing I was going to like him, though, didn’t stop me from feeling intimidated about approaching his catalogue in the same way I used to be intimidated about where to start with Joni Mitchell (Blue) and Kate Bush (The Kick Inside).

His latest album You Want It Darker had come out just under a month before I got round to listening to it. One weekend I’d heard the title track and popped the album into a playlist to listen to on the 35 bus from Camberwell to Shoreditch on my way to work. It felt like a religious experience, listening to the album once, twice before getting to the office. The opening song, with its Hebrew refrain “hineni, hineni / I’m ready, my lord” means that it is quite literally a religious song, but hearing the gorgeous backing vocals from Athena Andreadis on Traveling Light or the guitars played by Bill Bottrell and Adam Cohen on Leaving the Table, makes the rest of the record feel religious, too. So do the strings and piano on Treaty. So does every perfect lyric delivered perfectly by Leonard Cohen throughout the album.

A few days later the news broke, following his funeral, that Leonard Cohen had passed away. It had taken me years to feel ready to approach his music and on the very day I was opening my world to him, he was leaving the world behind. That religious feeling that had struck me on hearing You Want It Darker has never left me, and the world that opened up that day has led to a lifelong love of albums such as Death of a Ladies Man, I’m Your Man, the posthumous Thanks for the Dance and his triumphant Sunday Night performance (with Sonny Rollins) of Who By Fire.

People often talk about David Bowie’s Blackstar, also released in 2016, as being the perfect farewell record. The perfect farewell record arrived on October 21st, 2016 courtesy of Leonard Cohen.

"Some albums hit
you right away..."


Angel Olsen - All Mirrors


Some albums hit you right away and let you know they’re going to be important to you, some albums sneak up on you over time and take root in your heart. For the first minute and seventeen seconds of listening to All Mirrors by Angel Olsen I assumed it was going to be an album that fell into the latter category and then three snare hits later and Olsen bellows the next line, the stakes are raised and her intensity never leaves you again.

Some albums hit you right away and others hit you after one minute and seventeen seconds.

Randy Newman - Harps and Angels


About half of this list has been made up of old white guys who don’t have conventionally good singing voices. I wanted to find room for a slightly younger white guy, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, who isn’t noted for his vocal gymnastics. I was considering albums by a few old white guys who really do know how to sing - Sinatra, Dean Martin, Charles Aznavour - but couldn’t look past another late career gem from a man not often commended for his strong vocal performances.

Randy Newman once joked that my generation would be the first generation who wouldn’t mind his voice, having grown up listening to You Got a Friend in Me, Strange Things and The Time of Your Life in Toy Story and A Bug’s Life and I’ve certainly got a fondness for it, so maybe he had a point.

What’s more shocking than his voice, having grown up with the Disney soundtracks, is hearing the lyrics on his albums. He is a master of the character song and has a back catalogue filled with songs about slavery and racism; money, power and greed, heartbreak and loss. He can be shocking, he can be hilarious, he can be seedy and crass or he can tug on your heartstrings and blow the wind right out of you. On Harps and Angels he does all that and more. There aren’t many albums any more that sound like this. It’s clearly a modern record, but it comes from an old world.

The jokes make me laugh every time, the music takes me away from wherever I am every time, the world and jazz influences take me by surprise every listen, but by the time the record gets to it’s final song Feels Like Home, well that’s exactly how the album has felt to me.

There were nine years between the album before it and nine more between this and it’s follow up, the equally brilliant (or maybe even superior Dark Matter). Only five years to wait for Newman’s next masterpiece.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times


Bob Dylan is the single most important musician in my world, so just choosing one of his albums for this list was a real challenge, as indeed only choosing eight would have been if I’d only picked from his back catalogue.

Modern Times was not the first of his albums I ever heard (Bringing It All Back Home), it’s not the one I think is his best (“Love and Theft”), it’s not the one everyone else thinks is his best work either (Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks) or the one that I enjoy the most (Saved), but it’s the first new album of Dylan material that came out after I’d become a fan.

It was the album that made me realise Dylan was still an active figure and not just the voice of the ‘60s counterculture, playing an acoustic guitar and singing about injustice in black and white videos that were recorded back when my grandparents were still children.

I picked this album up the year after it came out in the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, New York - the same city where Dylan made his name and not far away from where the album cover shot was taken by Ted Croner in 1947. I put the CD in my walkman and didn’t change it for anything else until we were back home in London.

In the fifteen years since, I’ve seen Dylan all over America and Europe. I’ve listened to his music more than I’ve listened to anything else. I’ve probably listened to most of his other albums more than I’ve listened to Modern Times, but whenever I hear this one, I’m back in Grand Central Terminal or outside the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village; back outside Carnegie Hall and in Times Square. I’m thirteen again and Bob Dylan is singing to me about cowboy bands, Alicia Keys and the buying power of the proletariat; he’s quoting Homer and Virgil and ripping off the lyrics of Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie and mixing it all up with the music of Bing Crosby. The levee has broken, the world has gone black before his eyes, but he’ll be with us when the deal goes down.

Some sweet day, I’ll stand beside my king.

Bio


Matthew Ingate is 26 and lives in London. He works for Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, Warner Chappell and has spent eight years in the music industry.

His first book, Together Through Life, is released January 28th, 2022 and follows alongside Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour from London to New York; Chattanooga to Stockholm, Philadelphia to Paris, into the Shadow Kingdom and beyond. Published through Matador, more information can be found here.