RECOMMENDED LISTENING FROM 2023 (Volume 4)

The fourth of an occasional feature in which I’ll draw your attention to some albums that have been purchased in 2023 and which I reckon are worth highlighting. This one will come as no surprise to anyone who is a regular visitor to TVV and has been paying attention.  It’s an album that came out in March on Fika Recordings.

The debut album from Alison Eales is an absolute doozy, twelve wonderfully crafted and delivered musical gems which draw from the many genres in which this superbly talented musician has been involved over the years.

She is best known as the keyboardist in Butcher Boy, one of the best and most underrated bands to emerge out of Scotland in recent times, but she is also a long-standing member of the Glasgow Madrigirls, a choral society whose live output encompasses a huge range of music such as  classical, medieval, world, folk and chapel.  The Madrigirls grew out of an initiative at Glasgow University, and Alison is a bit of an academic too, having gained a doctorate thanks to a ground-breaking thesis on the history of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, which earlier this year enjoyed its 37th edition.

There was every chance that Mox Nox was going to be an album of quality, and so it proved.  I did review it on release (not something I’m in the habit of doing, but I will make exceptions for friends) and mentioned that the publicists at Fika had suggested it would likely appeal to fans of Saint Etienne, The Magnetic Fields, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stereolab, Jake Thackray and Kirsty MacColl, all of which gives an indication of the depth of influences that have impacted on the songs and the ways they have been recorded and arranged.

It’s an album which, from the opening notes of its first song, grabs and holds your attention throughout.

mp3: Alison Eales – Rapunzel

The voice is angelic, the instrumentation is of the utmost quality and the production, courtesy of Paul Savage of The Delgados, is perfection personified.   It’s the beginning of what proves to be a genuinely captivating album.

It’s an impossible task to put this record into a single category.  There are a number of examples of chamber-pop, not least on Ever Forward in which Alison sings while accompanied by a string quartet, while the track selected as lead-off single Fifty-Five North has the catchiest of choruses to a tune that many an indie-pop band would kill for.

It must also be one of the few songs to have been inspired in part by the Glasgow Subway,  the city’s underground rail system, which opened in 1896 (third-oldest in Europe after London and Budapest) and has never expanded beyond its initial design of a 10.5km loop around the city, but only taking in the west end and south side.

It’s a gentle-paced album for the most part and a couple of the ballads, including the title track, are examples  of songs that just seem to grow in stature with every listen.

Alison’s sense of self-deprecating humour shines through on a few occasions, not least in the album closer Come Home With Me, a jaunty number, in which the art of seduction finds itself reeling in the face of candidness:-

I don’t have much to offer in my flat
I can’t tell the cobwebs from the cracks
The kitchen’s full of rotting fruit
Up we crawl and then it’s all downhill to ill repute

Part of the reason for pulling this mini-series together is to perhaps offer up some ideas for Christmas gifts, either for yourselves or to buy for someone who you think might really enjoy the sort of music being suggested.

If Mox Nox is of appeal, then please feel free to click on this bandcamp page.

JC