It is the season of lists and best-of-the-year’s, so here’s my annual contribution: the fifteen songs released in 2022 which have most inspired and uplifted me. In keeping with precedent, there are more than fifteen songs in the list and none of them are festive. I am indebted as always to the late, great John Peel and the inspiration of his Festive Fifty.
December is here, which means it is time for the annual markontour Festive Fifteen. As usual, there’s nothing to do with Xmas here, and there has been so much great music this year that I have yet again failed to whittle my list down to fifteen tracks. But, caveats aside, herewith The Festive Fifteen of 2019..
“What am I doing in Dubai?”, asks Aldous Harding at the start of ‘Zoo Eyes’, the third track on her third album, ‘Designer’. It would be a good question for almost anyone, but seems particularly pertinent for a New Zeland born avant-garde singer-songwriter. We never find out the answer, it being Harding’s practice to sing in riddles (a latter section of the song goes something like “I drove my inner child to a show / We talked all the way home / In the nectar”). But if that’s a problem then it is the only one with this perfectly wonderful, constantly inventive, total ear-worm of a record.
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