The Hundred Records Top 20 of 2019

Our staff picks for the year are, in no particular order:

- Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen 2-CD £12.99 / 2-LP £25.99
Ghosteen is the latest from Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, and it’s our album of the year so far! In its quiet way, it is devastatingly beautiful. But don’t take our word for it – the Guardian thought so to! They said: “For all the cinematic attractiveness of their arrangements and the title track’s opening meditation on the beauty of the world, the long songs on album two seem darker in tone, filled with sleepless nights, departures and desperate fantasies of escape. Perhaps the most straightforwardly beautiful set of songs that Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have ever recorded.”

- The Soft Cavalry The Soft Cavalry CD £11.99 / LP £26.99
The Soft Cavalry are Steve Clarke and his wife, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. The band’s music is a particularly British brand of intense cinematic drama. Melodic and timeless, their self-titled album lands in the atmospheric dimensions between Pink Floyd, Talk Talk and Mansun. The record radiates midlife crisis but equally enormous elation; it’s a helix of fear and hope, aching for resolution.

- Sharon Van Etten Remind Me Tomorrow CD £11.99 / LP £20.99
Remind Me Tomorrow comes four years after Are We There, and reckons with the life that gets lived when you put off the small and inevitable in favour of something more present. Throughout the album, Sharon Van Etten veers towards the driving, dark glimmer moods that have illuminated the edges of her music and pursues them full force. This is an ambitious album with curling low vocals and brave intimacy, that provokes our most sensitive impulses: reckless affections, spirited nurturing, and tender courage.
The songs are as resonant as ever, the themes are still an honest and subtle approach to love and longing, but producer/arranger John Congleton has plucked out new idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound.

- Ed Wynne Shimmer Into Nature CD £12.99 / LP £21.99
Shimmer Into Nature is the debut solo album by Ed Wynne, psychedelic visionary and founder of the legendary Ozric Tentacles. Wynne is undoubtedly a gifted instrumentalist, a prodigal symphonist and one of the UK’s most influential musicians. He is credited as one of the lynchpins of the re-emergence of the UK festival scene with Ozric Tentacles, who formed at Stonehenge Free Festival 1983 and became staples of the Glastonbury Festival, with their most recent performance at Glastonbury in 2016 on the Glade stage.
With an incredible flair for creating masterful tapestries of sound, his debut solo album will be quick to take a hold on fans of psychedelic synth and rock music. Shimmer Into Nature was recorded and inspired by the different locations to which Ed travelled over three years, from deep in the Colorado Mountains, to the coastlines of Cornwall and South Devon, before being completed on Scotland’s east coast by the Firth of Forth.

- Mercury Rev Bobbie Gentry’s Delta Sweete Revisited CD £12.99 / LP £20.99
Mercury Rev bring us a reimagination of Bobbie Gentry’s 1968 album The Delta Sweete, a psychedelic record depicting a Mississippi of hot biscuits, genteel table manners and working-class sense suddenly overturned by a grave sinning and suicide. Carried on an evening breeze of strings and a supple, foreboding voice like sensually charged breath, ‘Ode To Billie Joe’, also reimagined on this album, became a surprise Number One single for three weeks late in the Summer of Love. The Delta Sweete Revisited features guest vocals from a stellar cast including Norah Jones, Hope Sandoval, Rachel Goswell, Vashti Bunyan, Beth Orton, Marissa Nadler, Lucinda Williams and Margo Price.

- Marry Waterson & Emily Barker A Window To Other Ways CD £11.99 / LP £20.99
English folk royalty meets Australian soul in the collaboration between Marry Waterson & Emily Barker. English folk singer Marry Waterson is the daughter of Lal and a member of the famous folk music family The Watersons. Emily Barker is an Australian singer/songwriter whose music you may have heard on the UK version of crime drama ‘Wallander’ even if you don’t already know her name. The pair met at a songwriting retreat run by Kathryn Williams. Their first album together, A Window To Other Ways, has thrown up a mixture of styles from the obvious folk, with country, soul, blues and indie, and is a fabulous album full of fly-on-the-wall observations of the contradictions and disconnections of modern life.

- Billie Eilish When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? CD £12.99 / LP £23.99
Billie Eilish’s meteoric rise to global stardom has been nothing short of phenomenal, and is arguably unparalleled to date. Since her debut single ‘Ocean Eyes’ in 2016, Billie has quietly yet unapologetically infiltrated the forefront of pop. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was written, produced and recorded entirely by 17-year-old Billie and brother Finneass. The pair spent most of 2018 writing songs on the road, then spent many days and nights at home, recording the album.

- Weyes Blood Titanic Rising CD £8.99 / LP £21.99
Weyes Blood, a.k.a. Natalie Mering, has designed her own universe to soulfully navigate life’s mysteries. Manoeuvring through a space-time continuum, she plays the role of melodic, sometimes melancholic, anthropologist. Tellingly, Mering classifies Titanic Rising – which was written and recorded during the first half of 2018, after three albums and years of touring – as the Kinks meet WWII or Bob Seger meets Enya. The latter captures the album’s wilful expansiveness. The former relays her imperative to connect with listeners.

- Son Volt Union CD £11.99 / LP £19.99
Hundred Records favourites Son Volt release their new album, Union, which showcases more of the pain of division, while still taking time to spotlight music’s ability to heal and offer respite from troubling sociopolitical times. “There are so many forces driving our country apart,” says founding member Jay Farrar. “What can we do to bring our society back together?” To answer that question, Son Volt delve deep into a batch of songs steeped in the history of protest music, both thematically and symbolically. Several of Union’s 13 tracks were recorded at locations Farrar views as important to America’s history.

- Eilen Jewell Gypsy CD £12.99 / LP £24.99
Hundred Records favourite Eilen Jewell, who has been described by American Songwriter as “one of Americana’s most intriguing and creative voices”, has written 11 new songs for Gypsy and is calling it her favourite album yet. It’s a mixture of new sounds with old sounds; electric-guitar-driven rockers, classic country and tender ballads. Gypsy continues to solidify Jewell’s reputation as one of the most distinctive and potent voices in Americana today.

- The Comet Is Coming Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery CD £11.99 / LP £22.99
The Comet Is Coming, the side project of Sons Of Kemet’s Shabaka Hutchings who were nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2016, release their second album, this time on the Impulse! label. The themes on Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery revolve around universal truths and questions, and expands the trio’s 21st-century take on spiritual jazz.

- Thom Yorke Anima CD £11.99 / 2-LP £26.99 / Deluxe 2-LP book £64.99
Thom Yorke’s third solo album, Anima, is the first one to feel truly complete without his band behind him. It floats through the uneasy space between societal turmoil and internal monologue. If glitchy dark electronica is your thing, you will love this.

- Fontaines D.C. Dogrel CD £9.99 / LP £20.99
With the best bands, it seems to happen fast. The trajectory is steep, the progression seemingly preordained, inexorable. Assembling while still at college in Dublin a mere three years ago, from the ruins of early nowhere bands, and having discovered a shared love of poetry and a common zeal for authentic self-expression, the evolution of Fontaines D.C. has been swift, sure and seemingly effortless.
Reluctant to be viewed as part of any wider movement (“I get a bit uncomfortable with some of the comparisons that have been made,” says Chatten, as he must, though comparisons will inevitably be made), Fontaines D.C. have delivered on their tremendous promise in a way that few bands have. It is to their credit and it augurs well that their collective eye is already on the next phase as they prepare for now to take on the world for real.

- Purple Mountains Purple Mountains CD £11.99 / LP £21.99
“Well I don’t really like talking to myself, but someone’s got to say it, hell …” You know this voice. An old friend has returned. It was some years back that you dropped the needle on the record and heard it say: “No, I don’t really wanna die …” Like so many lines you couldn’t possibly have guessed the finish to. Yes, Purple Mountains is the new nom-de-rock of David Berman. Purple Mountains is also the title of what will become known as one of his greatest albums – full of double-jointed wit and wisdom, up to the neck in his special recipe of handcrafted country-rock joys and sorrows that sing legendary in cracked and broken hearts.

- Michael Kiwanuka Kiwanuka CD £12.99 / Deluxe CD £15.99 / 2-LP £26.99
Michael Kiwanuka’s third studio album, entitled simply Kiwanuka, is Michael serving from the heart, from the mind, and from the soul. The album was recorded in New York, LA and London with Danger Mouse and Inflo at the controls, the same production team that combined so magnificently on Love & Hate. They take the basic sonic blueprint of that last record to a dizzying new realm on Kiwanuka, which also finds a new assuredness in Michael’s writing.
Michael will tell you of his love for records that entwine their songs with incidental skits and shape-shifting spiralling outros, making the listener experience almost that of listening to one long, dramatic song. Kiwanuka fulfils that winding, dream-like haze, unhurried.
On the album title, Michael explains “This album, it’s kind of a defiant thing; I’m engaging with who I am and I’m not going to have an alter ego, or become Sasha Fierce or Ziggy Stardust, even through everyone’s telling me I need to be this, that or the other. I can just be Michael Kiwanuka.”

- The Highwomen The Highwomen CD £12.99 / 2-LP £30.99
The Highwomen are Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris – four women in the midst of stellar careers – and this collaboration represents as super a supergroup as you could ever wish for. The 12 songs on this eponymous album explore in vivid colour common themes such as motherhood, resilience, loss, heartache and humour, and include ‘If She Ever Leaves Me’, which may be the first openly gay song in country music. It’s an audio diary of the nuances of being a woman in 2019.

- Honeyblood In Plain Sight CD £11.99 / LP £20.99
Honeyblood, the Edinburgh-based indie rock project led by Stina Tweedale, goes from strength to strength with the release of new album In Plain Sight. Any fears about the ‘difficult’ third album are allayed: the clear focus, wit and sparkling identity of the songwriting make this an instant classic.
We are delighted to be the very first stop on Honeyblood’s short in-store tour to launch the album on 17 May at 6.30pm, and we will have early copies of the CD and exclusive dark-green vinyl available on the night. Don’t know Honeyblood? Well, have a listen here and we’ll see you on the 17th May!

- Thea Gilmore Small World Turning CD £11.99 / LP £20.99
Small World Turning is Thea Gilmore’s first new collection of songs since 2017’s The Counterweight, which was her third successive Top-40 album. An artist of enduring international acclaim (Bruce Springsteen regularly names her as a favourite) and a justly revered lyricist, Gilmore’s musical settings have taken many ingenious detours in recent years. Small World Turning, however, nails its colours to a very different mast from the get-go: acoustic guitars are back to the fore, and a quintessentially rootsy array of instruments frame them – fiddles, whistles, mandolins and tenor banjos are all in abundance. A gifted and exceptional artist at the peak of her powers, Thea Gilmore has delivered a vibrant and deeply resonant album, rooted in folk music but completely transcending any .

- Bruce Springsteen Western Stars CD £12.99 / 2-LP £24.99
The Boss is back! Bruce Springsteen’s first new studio album in five years, Western Stars, takes his music to a new place, drawing inspiration in part from the Southern California pop records of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The album was recorded primarily at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey, with additional recording in California and New York.
“This record is a return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements,” says Springsteen. “It’s a jewel box of a record.”
The 13 tracks of Western Stars encompass a sweeping range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.

- Angel Olsen All Mirrors CD £8.99 / LP £22.99
All Mirrors tracks the artistic voyage of the wonderful Angel Olsen: her beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and, on the vulnerable All Mirrors, we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations.

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