GOOD LISTENING OF 2018: beats and bass and words and worlds and melancholia

Reading is the foundation – all the stillness and immersion and depth and revelation – but music is the other constant: without it I would not be able to respond to the world in a meaningful way. For what it’s worth, the following are the albums that I enjoyed the most this year.

I have loved everything The Go! Team has ever done, so I hardly have a balanced view, but Semi-Circle is a delightful albeit subtle progression on what they do best, which is alternative pop (if that’s the right term). As always, every song is impeccably crafted, despite the lo-fi aesthetic. Head towards ‘Semi-circle song’ for a fun entry point.

Depth of Field by Sarah Blasko is a wonderful companion to the stunning Eternal Return from 2015. This is sexy, soulful electronica with some heart-breaking ballads. Beautifully produced too. ‘A Shot’ is one of the many highlights from a very special album.

Another Australian who is doing amazing things is Luke Howard. Open Heart Story fits into the category of beautiful, simple, new-classical music made popular by Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter. There is a lot of cinematic melancholia on this record – try ‘Bear Story II‘ – which means I’m all over it and it’s all over me.

Borrowed Verse is a fascinating project initiated and curated by Brisbane-based songwriter Simon Munro – it pairs Australian songwriters with prominent Australian poets, including Judith Wright, Dorothy Porter, and Michael Dransfield. Ben Salter’s ‘Tracks’, based on a poem by Herb Wharton is, for me, song of the year. Also brilliant is Angie Hart’s ‘Not The Same’, based on a poem by Dorothy Porter.

To my mind, in 2018 there were two albums that verged on being truly great.

The first is All Melody by Nils Frahm. Although I have been listening to experimental new classical music for years (starting with Glass and Nyman decades ago), Frahm is new to me. All Melody is everything I want a record to be: fresh, adventurous, intricate, all the while being highly listenable. There is such a range here: from simple piano pieces to electronic epics that could almost be played in nightclubs (if they dared). Sublime is the world. Try this video of Frahm performing ‘All Melody’ and ‘#2’.

The other truly great album from this year, and one that I have been playing on repeat for months, is Singularity by Jon Hopkins. Immunity from 2013 was a superb work, but it is possible that with Singularity he has made his masterpiece – from the first note till the last it is stunning: there are dancefloor bangers and gentle ambient pieces, some of which are soft echoes of the more intense songs. Yes, a masterpiece. I could listen to ‘Luminous Beings‘ till the end of days.

 

GOOD READING OF 2018: adventures and horrors and play and bloody relevance

There has been a bit going on this year in my neck of the woods: seeing The Weight of Light have its world premiere in Canberra and then performed in Goulburn and Sydney (plus two other music projects but more on these at a later date) and a final spit and polish of Bodies of Men before it heads into the world in April/May 2019. As always, reading has been the foundation. Stillness and immersion and revelation and depth: there will never be anything like it.

The following is not really a ‘best of’; it’s just a list of work that I have read that has got beneath my skin.

In Terra Nullius, Claire G. Coleman, a writer from Western Australia who identifies with the South Coast Noongar people, reveals the horrors and hypocrisies that underpin contemporary Australia. In a way, perhaps, the novel is speculative fiction, but the scenario is far too present to be ignored, as are the uncomfortable truths it reveals. This is one of the most unique novels I have read in years.

Speaking of unique, a work that I almost literally gobbled up is The Long Take by Robin Robertson. A verse novel, the narrative follows a D-Day veteran as he travels across the US so he can piece his life together. Rather surprisingly The Long Take is as much about urban planning and design as it is about war; there are also evocations of Hollywood. Disintegration appears to be the unifying theme, but this is not a grim read, nor is it inaccessible. Truly remarkable.

With her trademark lyricism, Robyn Cadwallader in Book of Colours brings to life the people and politics behind the making of a fourteenth-century prayer book; the novel is also about the making of art in general. It is fascinating – and highly moving – from first page to last. A beautiful novel in every way.

Also beautiful is Inga Simpson’s Understory, which is a chronicle of the author’s profound attachment to a small patch of Queensland forest. This is much more than a tree-change memoir: it is also about the desire to live a creative life and the need to find and survive love. Very moving.

Two poetry collections especially resonated: Melinda Smith’s Goodbye, Cruel and Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi. In the former, Smith once again displays her extraordinary range, moving seemingly effortlessly from the dramatic to the deep historic. In the latter, Chingonyi investigates music, masculinity and racism, in a tone that reads to me as muscular melancholia – it is wonderful. Both collections I have read more than once.

As others have said, Andrew Sean Greer’s Less is a surprisingly light read for a Pulitzer Prize-winner. It is a warm and accessible read, but it is ultimately a deeply yearning hymn to modern love in a global world. Although often hilarious, Less is also a broken-hearted novel and deserves to be read until the end for its full impact to be experienced.

A second heartbreaking novel from this year, though it is also brain- and soul-breaking, is Taboo by Kim Scott. Another writer of Noongar decent, Scott has created a deeply affecting story about race relations in Australia. In spare but lyrical – at times literally magical – prose, Scott writes about the layers of this country’s history that are far too often glossed over to tell a more appealing but largely false narrative. Taboo is powerful and very necessary.

I also thoroughly enjoyed The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser and, though it took me a long time (years) to get to it, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, as well as On Patriotism by Paul Daley and No Country Woman: A memoir of not belonging by Zoya Patel.

Much of this year was dedicated to reading gay fiction, which I wrote about for Meanjin. I also loved All Being Equal from Griffith Review, because it includes a suite of novellas that explore the contemporary gay experience, and because the stories are deeply moving.

Finally, I was lucky enough to read advance copies of two wonderfully adventurous novels that will be released in 2019: The Artist’s Portrait by Julie Keys, which in a memorably unflinching voice reveals the complex and often fraught nature of creative identity; and Karen Viggers’ The Orchardist’s Daughter – told in the author’s typically unaffected prose, the novel explores the web of relationships and competing viewpoints that exist in and around a Tasmanian forest. Here’s hoping both novels will be much discussed and find a broad audience.