We do realise that it’s been close to a month since we’ve entered 2012, but somehow some of us at Cherwell Music keep looking wistfully back at 2011. To kick off Cherwell Mixer for 2012, and provide you with some listening material before the slew of upcoming releases, we take one final glance back at some of the best (and most interesting) singles of last year. 

Mixer: A Farewell to 2011 from cherwellmusic on 8tracks.

‘Shake the Shackles’ – Crystal Stilts

We begin with the opening single of New York noise rockers’ 2011 release for Slumberbland, In Love With Oblivion. The perfect mix of jangly discord and irrepressible, earworm-riffs.

‘Ice Cream’ – Battles ft. Matias Aguayo

Having lost their vocalist Tyondai Braxton, Battles was liberated to make the sugary delight that is Gloss Drop. ‘Ice Cream’ is the pièce de resistance, an ecstatic romp expertly accompanied by Chilean guest vocalist Matias Aguayo. 

‘The Look’ – Metronomy

Metronomy surpassed already lofty expectations with the sleek, synthy, and unquestionably catchy release of The English Riviera, of which ‘The Look’ is the prime example: pure pop genius.

‘Lion’s Share’ – Wild Beasts

Wild Beasts are now three for three, after hotly-anticipated third album Smother was released to near universal acclaim. The Kendal quartet has always explored the dark yearnings of male desire, and ‘Lion’s Share’ takes it to predatory excess: “I take you in my mouth, like a lion takes his game.”

‘Misery’ – Veronica Falls

To label London C86-throwback quartet Veronica Falls mere mimicry would be unfair: theirs is a luscious, nostalgic sound, but wholly their own. ‘Misery’ is fairly self-explanatory: melancholy encapsulated, amidst plenty of heart-tugging guitar jangles.

‘Cruel’ – St. Vincent

‘Cruel’, to be a little hyperbolic, is rapturous: distorted hooks, thudding bass, and Annie Clark’s gorgeous layered vocals, racing along in shambolic glee. Did we mention there’s a guitar solo too? There’s a guitar solo too.

‘French Exit’ – The Antlers 

For those needing respite post-St. Vincent, worry not. The Antlers‘ Burst Apart, 2011 follow-up to the widely adored Hospice, is rather less forlorn, but nevertheless retains a unique beauty, of which ‘French Exit’ is a excellent example.

‘The Noose of Jah City’ – King Krule

Nobody has quite worked out who exactly King Krule is yet. He appears to be a 17-year-old British producer/singer, who looks even younger on his press photos. But does it really matter? ‘The Noose of Jah City’ is too good to ignore: a spacious, syncopated jam topped with Krule’s preternaturally mature vocals. 

‘Space Is Only Noise You Can See’ – Nicolas Jaar

An anomaly within the mostly tranquil, ambient works of Space Is Only Noise You Can See, Nicolas Jaar’s title track features one of the most thumping bass lines of the year. An impossible listen without at least some head bobbing – just try it.

‘The Words That Maketh Murder – PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, deserving winner of this year’s Mercury Prize, is a beautifully crafted thing – a mournful ode to England and the ravages of war. ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ stands out even amid Harvey’s majestic suite: rippling guitars, lamenting vocals, cut with bitter lyrical irony. 

‘Better Off Without You’ – Summer Camp

Summer Camp’s ‘Better off Without You’ was undoubtedly one of the summer’s most pitch-perfect singles. It’s got it all: the sound, the hook, and the teenage drama of a John Hughes flick. Elizabeth Warmley’s voice is oh-so-satisfyingly derisory as she tells an imaginary jilted ex-lover that “if you said you’re never calling back, I’d be so happy.”

‘I Can’t Compete’ – Balkans

Criminally overlooked this year, Balkan’s self-titled debut was the perfect amalgam of bouncing, jangling, punk-influenced pop. Breakneck single ‘I Can’t Compete’ has it all: gutsy, teenage longing in the vocals, and guitar hooks to die for.

‘Ritual Union’ – Little Dragon

One of the year’s most overtly sensual releases was Swedish synthpop quartet Little Dragon’s Ritual Union, whose title track is an exercise in warm electronics and soulful longing, courtesy of Yukimi Nagano’s stunning voice.

‘Stop’ – Twin Sister 

Those who detected funky undertones in the sleepy dream pop of Twin Sister’s debut EP were vindicated in 2011’s full-length Bad Street. ‘Stop’ certainly doesn’t drop the band’s dreamy heritage, but its delightful girl-boy call-and-response and syrupy strings are lovingly inflected with shuffling, irresistible syncopation.

‘Mer’ – Chelsea Wolfe

Eager categorisers have been busy throwing labels at Chelsea Wolfe – ‘goth rock’, ‘doom folk’ – but, truth be told, none can adequately describe her appeal. Dripping with menace, Wolfe’s voice combines with the growling guitar and bass of ‘Mer’ for a resonant, booming catharsis.

‘Raconte-Moi Une Histoire’ – M83

Of M83’s effusive, sonically overflowing double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Jayson Greene wrote that “If a sound has ever made you break out into a foolish, cheesed-out grin you couldn’t suppress, it’s probably here.” ‘Raconte-Moi Une Histoire’ is an obvious case in point.

‘Lay Myself Down’ – Mazzy Star

Few anticipated the abrupt return of 90’s alt rockers Mazzy Star in 2011, but their welcome was warm following the quiet release of the ‘Lay Myself Down’, a tender ballad featuring the peerless, husky tones of Hope Sandoval. Expected a full-length in the year.

‘The Daily Mail’ – Radiohead

Although the long-awaited Radiohead album of 2011, The King of Limbs, fell somewhat short of wild expectations, the steady stream of remixes, singles, and basement tape released by the band in the following months have abated the disappointment. ‘The Daily Mail’, in particular, is a gorgeous, haunting return to form.

Mixer: Farwell to 2011 is also available on Spotify – click here to load the playlist.

Most of us would agree that the world is unfinished, but Graham Sutherland with his ‘working and reworking of familiar landscapes’ seems to have brought the finishing as near as possible in his lifetime. For all curator George Shaw’s optimism that ‘Sutherland is an artist as much rooted in the past as in the world before him, a world forever unfinished’, his world, when before us, seems to have totally finished, marching off as it did along with the soldiers towards the Second World War. Sutherland seems to be ‘one for the experts’, rooted in a specific time and place. This could well be just a quirk of unfinished history, but there is something about the look of the paintings that consign him to the England that stretches back to Boudecia and didn’t survive the 50’s.

Sutherland possesses a Larkin-like sense of earthly propriety, evoked in his dark-tinted, non-brilliant shades. All his works (especially the pre-war Welsh landscapes) have that slight ‘30s’ hint of brown, no matter the prevailing colour. He wears his age on his sleeve.               
Curator Shaw seems to have drawn  most heavily on Sutherland’s strongest, more abstract work. Sutherland is a painter of line, not colour. Shape and contour are his tools, and it is from these tools, that his subjects take figuration. From close up Sutherland’s paintings suffer from perspectival flaws; his best paintings are the ones that can withstand the inevitable “flattening out” of the gouache upon the viewer’s approach.            

Consequently, the pictures in which he allows himself freer rein with the relations of colour and shape on canvas are his best work, when he allows the sun (or anything movable for that matter) to act as counterpoint, as in Sun Between Two Hills. He never quite dispenses with figuration, but his strength is in taking the landscape in front of him and letting imagination take hold, laying on the Welsh hills in that signature sloping arc of the brush.

Sutherland then manages to get these small-scale works to open up, to unclog themselves, and defy the restrictions of their own scale to throw us open to the vast landscape. His best pictures open out for us, giving a sense of space that is not to do with perspective but is all to do with an abstract form of expression. Something not wholly organic but slightly and carefully found. The landscape must be in harmony and compromise with the artifice, just like Welsh Standing Stones. The joy is in almost seeing something that you recognise

.               
These Standing Stones are a poetic summoning of the Celtic,  instinctive people-land relationship, but as we move into Sutherland’s paintings executed during his period as War Artist, the sloping arc, the smooth earthiness of the Standing Stone, is pushed aside for ruler-straight line. Never such innocence again. Bombed buildings are not made of ruler-straight lines, but the association of the mechanical, un-feeling line with the destruction the machines of war have caused is a dramatic poetic gesture. Such gestures can be noted in a glance and as such are moving haikus as much as they are paintings.

In the finishing comes the assertion that all is unfinished. Sutherland’s late work doesn’t maintain its earlier promise of Romantic harmony. His wartime work is all past participles: ‘twisted’; ‘fallen’; ‘blasted’. For Sutherland, what lives on is certainly an unfinished world, but it is damaged and leaking oil.

Luke Wright is dangerously close to becoming the poetic voice of a generation. His poignant, sardonic, and satire-drenched lyrics have led him to become one of the biggest names in contemporary performance poetry. And after his witty, caustic performance at Corpus Christi this week, I’m inclined to agree.

Wright’s poetic epiphany came when watching Manchester punk poet John Cooper Clarke aged 16. ‘All I wanted to do was put words together and rhyme’, said Wright.  He later went on to form the poetry club Aisle16 in 2000 and toured a show with the group called ‘Poetry Boyband’. Like all boy bands, the magic had to come to an end, and Wright left to pursue a solo career. In the style of an X-Factor contestant or Dick Whittington, Wright says he moved to London and ‘decided to give myself a few years at it. It took me 15 months till I’d become a poet – until it was my day-to-day job.’

Nowadays Wright has written poetry for films (watch the charming and a slightly weepy Seven Ages of Love on 4od), organises the poetry line up for Latitude festival, and performs at Edinburgh every year.  His obvious involvement with the more public side of poetic life led me to ask if he felt himself carefully surveying the divide between performance or ‘proper’ poetry. But Wright calls himself a ‘performance poet’ despite its reputation –  ‘there is some lazy stuff on the scene because you don’t have to cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s – because poetry is a sonorous experience. There are two types of poetry: the stuff that’s self-referential with posh language and the stuff that’s trying to tell stories, and I’m definitely in that second bracket.’
Nevertheless, Wright quotes Andrew Motion, saying that ‘poetry shouldn’t have to make people like it. Poems should hit you in the gut the first time you read it. I like to have an emotional connection with a poem but, more than anything, I love a great line.’  

Wright was also employed as the poet in residence for Radio 4’s Saturday Live where he has recently written on Christopher Hitchens’ death, the race for the American presidency, and his dad’s crush on Twiggy. Does Wright find it easy working on commission or is it the cross the modern artist must bear? Wright admits that he doesn’t ‘have a real love for these [commissioned] poems. I never hand in something I’m not happy with but there’s no truth or heart in those poems – there’s something genuine that you lose from it.’

From his latest work in progress – an epic called Revolt! that twins narratives of the peasants revolt in 1381 and the recent riots – to his new show, entitled Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything (and other poems), it’s clear that Wright, undoubtedly, is a poet of the people.

Japanese prints aren’t an art form that many are familiar with. I was correspondingly in the dark when I dropped in to have a look at the Ashmolean’s exhibition of twenty woodblock prints of Kubuki actors armed only with a passable knowledge of the artist Hokusai, a guide book, and the rather reassuring admission of a staff member that even she ‘hadn’t a clue how to pronounce any of the names’.

The prints belong to a Japanese tradition of stylized representations of much-beloved Kabuki actors, whose dramatic theatrical style has been wildly fashionable, entertaining and notorious in Japan ever since the 17th century when a former prostitute and Shinto shrine dancer performed with her troupe to great acclaim in 1603. Woodblock prints of the actors were a hot commodity amongst the large fan base and depict the actors in costume and in character.

The older prints are dynamic and colourful: the actors faces contorted into grotesque caricature for the ‘villains’ and heroic bravado for the ‘heroes’. ‘The Catfish Priest’, a print depicting one play’s evil denizen, almost makes the exhibition worth seeing singlehandedly: his long sideburns and amusingly sinister characterisation are brilliantly evocative.

Along with the older, largely nineteenth-century prints, there are several prints by a contemporary Japanese artist, Tsuruya Kokei, whose work continues the Kabuki tradition. These are unmistakeably modern with simple but effective colour schemes, spare and static composition, and a quality of stillness which is completely different from the wild movement of the older prints.

Kokei’s work has been very popular both in Japan and abroad for several decades. Although he has since retired from his artistic career, these prints are well worth seeing as an example of a contemporary artist who combines specialization and popularity to make him an alternative ‘favourite’ to ‘discover’.

This is an exhibition for the non-pedant. With only twenty prints in the exhibition, and filling a space equivalent to half a seminar room, it is the perfect go-to place for students with a tight schedule. But be warned: there is very little explanation of an art that for many is quite alien, although the little that is explained is enough to make you eager for more.

Visit the bookshop and pick up a copy of The Art of Edo Japan which has enlightening references to the art you will have encountered, expanding into a general discussion of Japanese art over the few hundred years that Kabuki prints were most popular. This is a useful surrogate to the inadequate contextual detail provided by the exhibition itself. For the true enthusiasts, the Ashmolean’s Curator of Japanese Art, Dr Clare Pollard, is offering a tour of the exhibition in second and sixth week.

How do your academic and your creative pursuits cross over?

In some ways I see them as very separate. I certainly have to work on them completely separately. It’s like having an easel and a set of paints in one room and an easel and a set of paints in another room. But I’ve always seen my creative work as itself post-colonial. It asks tough questions about authority and power, which are post-colonial questions. So my creative work, to a certain extent, brought me to the whole area of world literary studies.

Did you ever feel that you might go down a solely creative career path?
Absolutely! At the time I took my first permanent academic job it was a little as though I was, speaking from an Irish point of view, taking the Queen’s shilling. I think there was a particularly grim moment when the new head of department at my job called me into his office and said, ‘All these junkets are all very well but you have got to understand that you are now a serious professional literary critic and teacher. You have to knuckle down and start churning out academic stuff.’ It was a bit of a crisis actually because there are only so many hours in the day and the week and so you have to do the one thing rather than the other.

Could you tell us about your recent short-story collection, Sharmilla, and Other Portraits?
Almost as a bona fide finger exercise, the writing of short stories has always been enormously interesting to me. I’m particularly a fan of Katherine Mansfield who only ever, because of her circumstances, wrote short stories. So I’ve written them and published them as I’ve gone along for actually, about twenty years. The first short story in Sharmilla I probably wrote in about 1984, but it sat around for a while before I published it.

Is there any advice that you would give to aspiring novelists?
Point one: keep on. And point two: keep on keeping on. Every day is very solitary because you have to go back; you’ve got to thrash it out again. The right word in the right place is a very difficult thing to achieve, but it is achievable, as long as you put in the work.

Could you tell us about the creative project you are currently working on?
I have been writing a fictionalised version of my father’s early life. He was fifty-three when I was born and therefore, to my young eyes, a very old man. He was something of a colonial officer; if you know your Conrad, a sort of a Lord Jim or even a Marlow figure. He had been in the Far East before the Second World War. And very helpfully for me, he left literary but still quite useful sketches of his times in the 1930s and the 1940s. And I’ve been using these as a kind of cord for the fictionalisation of his life. So I’ve been writing that up but inevitably the story of one’s father, remote a figure as he was, is a story of oneself.

Age? Then, now and more to come.

Like, who? It’s rooted in early electronic music from the 60s by the likes of Brian Eno, Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler.

So it’s that ambient stuff? Pretty much, except not quite as uplifting.

Sounds boring. Sell it to me. Well that’s kind of the point. Most of the genre is built around long tracks of a single note.

A single note? Often, but sometimes there are too many layers to count. It’s not static. The sound is constantly morphing, just enough to hold your interest.

Errgh. Yes. But, it’s perfect chill out music, except for the extreme noise stuff. You probably want to avoid people like Prurient, Russell Haswell and SUNN o))) unless you like whole albums of screaming and guitar feedback.

Check out our selection of five bona fide bangers:

‘Hatred of Music I’ – Tim Hecker

‘Relocation.Reconstruction’ – Yann Novak

‘Sovereign’ – Yellow Swans

‘City Nightlights’ – relapxych.0

‘Mass Transit Railway’ – Monolake

Hear all these tracks, and more, on the accompanying Spotify playlist.

Like most Apprentice fans, there was one guarantee that kept me watching week after week. It wasn’t the stupidity of the contestants, nor Alan Sugar’s poor attempts at wit. Rather, it was the assurance of a look (sometimes many) of sheer disdain at the contestants from Lord Sugar’s faithful aide (and sidekick), Nick Hewer. Imagine, then, my delight, when I learnt that everyone’s favourite cynic was to take over as the new host of Countdown in 2012.

This excitement was, nonetheless, soon marred by a few slight worries. Would Hewer’s disdain be ever present during Countdown? Would he, rather than being liked by the Countdown team, be regarded as an aloof and unfriendly presence on an otherwise ideal show for grannies to watch over a cup of tea and a biscuit? Worst of all…would he actually ruin both his own career, and a loveable programme, by being a poor match? Thankfully, my fears were unfounded. Rather than being disdainful, Hewer has been mostly rather charming. Admittedly, that could also have been disastrous…but Hewer manages it wonderfully. His charm, believe it or not, is utterly genuine. He doesn’t overdo it and make the viewer feel queasy. Indeed, he’s certainly happy to let contestants know how he feels. I recall watching him chastise an otherwise very successful contestant after his poor attempt to guess the conundrum as “Mosquited” (It was actually ‘misquoted’). He responded with the air of disappointment that a teacher feels when their top student says something stupid in class: “Don’t be ridiculous…coming from a champ!” and three tuts. As if this wasn’t enough, he then appealed to the audience for the answer by claiming that there was “abject failure” on the contestants’ part. The man takes no prisoners.

Throughout the past two weeks, Hewer’s been slowly trying to settle in. He gives the audience regular updates on what number show he’s at, how much he’s still enjoying it, and how he’s getting to know the mechanics of the show. His introductions and goodbyes in every show take a little longer than they should (indeed, one never really knows when he’s finished with them!). He awkwardly tries banter with Rachel and regularly flirts with her (when Rachel recently claimed she’d have to take a numbers game home, for instance, he responded with “you can take me home!’). 

And…it works perfectly. The past three presenters have been good. Their chat was less awkward, they said the right words and they kept things professional. But the yardstick for any long-term Countdown fan is the late Richard Whiteley. Whiteley was neither polished nor ‘showbiz’. Whiteley appealed to people because he was genuine, likeable and that little bit mischievous. Hewer shares these qualities. Between his slightly awkward banter that brings an inevitable smile, and his cheeky comments to his female colleagues, Hewer is like the granddad everyone would visit and enjoy having at home for Christmas. For students and OAPs alike, then, Nick is just the ticket. Long may he reign!

If Blur had put down their guitars, acquired some synthesizers, stumbled upon a pitch-modification tool, and tried their hands at house music, it might have sounded a little like The 2 Bears.

To my mind, The 2 Bears, otherwise known as Joe Goddard and Ref Rundell, might just be the next big thing in the world of what has come to be known as (fairly or otherwise) indie electronica. If you haven’t heard ‘Bear Hug’ yet on a night out, undeniably a dance anthem as ridiculous as it is brilliant, then you surely will soon.

Anything Joe Goddard (of Hot Chip fame) turns his mind to comes out as an eclectic mix, to say the least: be it the chilled, summer’s day vibes of ‘The Birds and the Bees’, the atmospheric house of ‘Take A Look Around’, or the funky, country feel of ‘Time in Mind.’ Be Strong, their first full length EP, is no exception. If anything can be said of The 2 Bears, it is that they’ll work with any sound that tickles their fancy, as long as it gets people moving. That said, Goddard and Rundell are undoubtedly on their best form when they lay down an uncompromising, unashamedly pop-laced house track. ‘Be Strong’, a winning floor-stopper, sets a high standard right from the off, and marks the beginning of a record that, albeit with a few drastic diversions, becomes an increasingly subtle and sophisticated take on house music throughout.

While ‘Bear Hug’ is a track likely to find itself knocking shoulders with Hit 40 UK, the likes of ‘Take A Look Around’, ‘Faith’ and ‘Church’ seem more suited to the underground house sounds of Maceo Plex, Maya Jane Coles and Deniz Kurtel (with an obviously more pop oriented slant). This, for me, is why Be Strong is such a successful album. Joe Goddard and Raf Rundell have an honest, all-embracing approach to dance music that allows them to at once produce catchy, eclectic floor-filling anthems and the sincere, intelligent house music that characterises the album as a whole.

3.5 STARS