Posts tagged ‘The National’

The Festive Fifteen 2023

As the year draws to a close it’s time for markontour’s annual homage to John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’. As usual, my list is not festive and doesn’t even manage the fifteen tracks I habitual aim for and fail to achieve. But these are my favourite songs released in 2023. Given how much I have travelled this year, there’s a paucity of bands from beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, so that’s by New Year’s Resolution sorted, but I hope you enjoy them as much I have just the same.

Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

Seven days after seeing The National I still have ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’ on repeat in my head. London does a nice line in chilled-out summer festivals these days and last Saturday The National were the perfect headliners in Victoria Park, somehow invoking audience euphoria from a set-list that veritably wallowed in melancholy. The previous night I had enjoyed a different kind up uplift in Brixton, with Loyle Carner singing about his mum again and Erykah Badu suitably eccentric in a stetson.