Field Journal #2
Catching up on the year of 2024
Last year, I spent the year doing a project. 365 days of albums. Every day I’d listen to an album that I’d never heard before. It was very ambitious and it was very fun, but I missed out on a lot. Aside from the FKA Twigs Record, here I go, catching up on some albums from 2024.
Lives Outgrown by Beth Gibbons
A late career album often gets lumped in with all the other late career albums. An artist, growing old, talks about growing old, death, and nostalgia. It’s a somewhat tired trope frankly; flattening our experience of the art made from someone getting up there in age. Black Star by David Bowie is infinitely more thoughtful and poignant than “an album about death”. You Want it Darker by Leonard Cohen and The American Series by Johnny Cash similarly have much more to say about growing older than “Death is Scary.”
Lives Outgrown by Beth Gibbons is no different. Over 30 years after her band Portishead’s genre defining album Dummy, Gibbons creates an album very much unlike what listeners know her for; a measured and elegant singer-songwriter album. Lives Outgrown, much like the stereotypical late-career album, explores the journey of life, but here Death (a character in its own right) does not take center stage. Gibbons here explores ideas of finding new life in old age; how to continue onward, all while grappling with grief and regret. This approach feels particularly notable for Gibbons considering her career so far. How, after 16 years, do you make yourself feel like an artist again? To capture that youth we so often associate with art? Add on top of that her history as frontwoman of one of the most esteemed 90s bands, I have to imagine there was a level of pressure that informs the music we hear. Perhaps, this is me narrativizing, but frankly, in either case, it doesn’t matter. What is presented here is simply, a wonderful body of work. Gibbons sheds old skin, finds new life, and in the process makes an album that continues her streak of creating transcendent, one-of-a-kind, art.
Gibbons played an essential role while in Portishead. A siren guiding us through a seedy underworld, albums caked with paranoia, nervousness, and the 50s pastiche. A lounge singer in a David Lynch movie. She is not known necessarily for her poeticism, but what she is great at during this early period, is her ability to transform into a vocal contortionist, using more simplistic language to draw listeners into the scene created by the music. On Lives Outgrown, she sheds this character and embraces her songwriting chops. Her voice has a weary and calming quality and her lyrics are direct and non-fanciful. She sings about the burdens of life, love, and time and their ability to change everything, the tree of life, wishing her body could heal; all of which are brought on with a sincere and earnest appeal. Her calls of “It reminds us, that all we have is here and now” on the song “Floating on a Moment” have the quality of ghostly howl that gives me chills every time. Meanwhile, the use of nature in the song “Whispering Love” is simply divine, the album’s lyrical crown jewel. “Moontime will linger, Through the melody of life's shortening longing view.” I mean come on.
Instrumentally Gibbons forgoes the electronic instrumentals that Portishead fans are accustomed to hearing. Instead she opts for the sounds of dark progressive folk, chamber folk, and art rock. Fans of Laura Marling and Joanna Newsom will get a lot out of this. She embraces a myriad of instruments: plucked guitar, sweet and elegant string sections, flutes, blaring horns, children’s voices. The percussion, with its driving and pounding toms, is a huge highlight as well. The flute/vocal melody on the song “Beyond the Sun” is unique and ear catching. Much of this album feels inspired by the mid-career work of Tom Waits: albums like Mule Variations or Rain Dogs seem like a touch point (but with less dredge and swamp vibes). Tell me that Tom Waits wouldn’t sound right at home on a song like “Reaching Out”. This album is instrumentally dense, and with each listen I find myself finding beautiful details, sounds, and elements still. Dig deep and you’ll hear small rhythmic details, what sounds like hammered dulcimer on the intro track “Tell Me Who You Are Today”, the field recordings of birds, chickens, and feet crunching leaves on “Whispering Love”. Gibbons and her collaborators imbue so much care and craft into these songs.
Gibbons has already made her stamp as one part of a great 90s band, but on Lives Outgrown, she establishes herself as an essential artist and master of her craft. Lives Outgrown feels like an album crafted in the off hours, somewhere in a workshop cabin. Like an old woodworker creating fine sculptures. A forever-student that is comfortable with years of experience; a well worn heart still trying to figure life out.
90/100 - Most Likely to Make You Cry
Eusexua by FKA Twigs
Eusexua: a reclamation of, a searching for, a full-spirited experience of the euphoria and freedom that sex can provide. For an artist with a track record of bending and stretching (both artistically and literally) her own artistic boundaries, this is a record that feels simultaneously very new for Twigs and also very safe.
Eusexua follows her genre bending and mind altering albums Magdalene, the M3LL155X EP, and LP2, which see her fusing alternative R&B with art-pop in new and exciting ways, evading structure and definition. On Eusexua, however, Twigs begins to dabble with tried and true genres typical of the 90s. The fans of Debut era Bjork and early Aphex Twin may enjoy what’s on here.
I feel a slight disappointment with Twigs’ choice to play it safe here. While, yes, it is a new avenue for her, penning straight up pop with an artsy flair to it, I find myself missing some of the more weird elements of her music. This return to the past doesn’t result in Twigs’ best writing for me. Songs like “Wanderlust” featuring lyrics like “brazy” throw me off (even though its chorus is wonderful). “Room of Fools” when it hits its stride feels entirely too much like any other house/pop hybrid you might hear. “Perfect Stranger” falls victim to this same trap as well: just feeling somewhat derivative.
In spite of feeling underwhelmed, this is by no means a bad record. What Twigs lacks in terms of her usual avant-garde bravado, she makes up for in well written and fun songs. The title song is a perfect tone setter, with nimble synths, a propulsive beat, and her trademark breathy vocals, perfectly capturing Twigs signature sound. “Girl Feels Good” is vaguely Björkian, spearheaded by Twigs’ insights about young men, giving young men advice on how to be sensual, or how to make a woman feel good. Drums of Death is a glitched out banger that sounds like it could be a remix of Dizzee Rascal’s “Fix Up Look Sharp”. Meanwhile the North West feature on “Childlike Things” (yes THAT North West) is just plain fun, with a childish “bum bum” chorus, and glistening piano stabs that punctuate and cut through the mix. Striptease and 24 Hour Dog feel like vintage FKA Twigs; the latter featuring a pained auto tuned croon about wanting to be totally submissive in a relationship. It is an ask that feels especially vulnerable, and makes for one of the more engaging moments on the album.
When I leave work I walk by the On store (a brand of running shoes) and I see FKA Twigs displayed prominently, modeling their workout clothes. There is something fitting about these ads in relation to Eusexua. Twigs, as experimental as she is, has successfully crossed over into the general pop landscape. Taking on an ambassadorship with a mainstream clothing company while making her brand of moody, sexual, art pop is nothing short of remarkable. Despite releasing an overall safe record, she still manages to push the boundaries of expression. While it may not be my favorite of hers, it is still a solid record and worth a listen.
74/100 - Most Sexy Album of 2025 so far
Prelude to Ecstasy by The Last Dinner Party
Boarding School Indie Rockers: a music industry conception story wet dream. Hyperlinked parents on a band’s Wikipedia page can pretty much guarantee commercial success. If you’ve been a semi-active consumer of contemporary music for the past few decades, none of this should strike you as news.
The british girl band, The Last Dinner Party, late in 2024 faced accusations of being nepo-babies. “How dare they create art after coming from a world of privilege (never mind their very apparent awareness of this and their outspokenness on many issues concerning the working class).” This short sighted faux outrage misses two crucial points. One: does deriding them change anything for actual working musicians coming from nothing? No not really… Two: Is the music bad?
Well, also no. Prelude to Ecstasy is in fact a great record. An album with the theatricality of Kate Bush and Tori Amos, a tincture of goth rock a lá Siouxsie & the Banshees, and the catchy melodies that vaguely feel indebted to La Roux (let me know if anyone gets that vibe too). The lyrics are vicious and scathing toward patriarchy, fragile masculinity, and gender dynamics - steeped in wanting, desire, and sex. Even the visuals of tight corsets, an homage to royalty, create an interesting contradiction. “Burn Alive” is a bombastic opener, “Caesar on a TV Screen” is a winding and powerful exploration of imagining oneself as an insecure and power hungry tyrant, “Nothing Matters” has an ear worm of a hook. The way “Sinner” transforms from being musical theatre-adjacent, only to bust into a groovy chorus with an angular guitar line chorus is energizing and heavenly. Some songs can feel underwhelming in comparison to the shining stars on this album, like Portrait of a Dead Girl, which doesn’t quite stick the landing melodically (though the string arrangements and piano are immaculate). Meanwhile, Beautiful Boy, in spite of a beautiful vocal performance, feels meandering.
If the music was horrendous, I might agree with the critics. Why should a talentless band have the right to endless resources and the ears of record executives, simply because their parents know somebody? I would hope that on a more even playing field, a band like Last Dinner Party would still receive this kind of exposure. They have style and substance, and seemingly are quite principled as a band. They may have had some help, but they are not the problem.
84/100 - Most Kate Bush