There are no wasted votes

The first past the post system isn’t without flaw. That’s a given. However, I do not accept that there are any wasted votes under our democracy. If the system works as it should, with no corruption or errors (for they are issues for another day), every vote is counted. You might be the only person voting for the Unhinged Knee-jerkers’ Ignorance Party (I wish I could come up with a catchy acronym for that), but that vote still counts. You’ve had your say, and registered your preference. Your vote was not wasted simply because it was not cast for the winning candidate or a losing candidate that came closer to winning.

During election campaigns, the Liberal Democrats in particular like to trot out the myth that a vote for anyone but the top two parties in a two-horse race is a wasted vote. “Labour can’t win here” their leaflets proclaim in areas where they are fighting the Tories. If you don’t want the Conservatives to win, you need to vote for us – they tell you on the doorstep – a Labour vote will let the Tories in. In the north of England where their fight is with Labour, it’s disaffected Tory votes they target in this way.

This ploy is cynical in the extreme. The Lib Dems’ claims are often accompanied by not-to-scale bar graphs, designed to mislead. They will always visually portray the gap between the probable top two and third parties as bigger than the percentages that accompany them. They are also very likely to use the result that best fits their purpose, not necessarily the latest one.

I also reject the wasted vote premise, because it makes the very bold assumption that I am happy to vote against a party that I don’t want to see elected, over my own preference. People have a right to use their vote negatively, but I resent the suggestion that mine is somehow wasted if I ignore the tactical route. Since they went into coalition with the Tories, I think the Lib Dems have a cheek to still be using this tactic, and I’ll be surprised if it continues to serve them as well as it once did.

Put simply, whichever candidate or party I vote for in local elections on 2 May, will be the one I want to vote for. It won’t be tactical, it won’t be negative, and it won’t be wasted.

My Records of the Year (2012) – The Final Five

Following on from the long-list of nominations and the subsequent short-list of ten, here is my final five for Records of the Year (2012):

Artist / Album (label)

5. Alt-J – An Awesome Wave (Infectious Music) The Mercury favourite and eventual prize winner is certainly the most innovative record of 2012 in my view. Straddling just about every genre of music at some point, the album as a whole is best described as brilliant pop, plain and simple.

4. Grizzly Bear – Shields (Warp) This band is new to me, which begs the question, where have they been hiding? The four-piece hailing from Brooklyn have been around a while, but the common perception is that they are still sticking steadfastly to what they are good at, without the need to deviate for the sheer sake of it. The final track, Sun in Your Eyes, which is afforded a whole side of vinyl to itself, is the album’s tour de force, taking the listener from a delicate opening to having the hairs on the neck standing up by its glorious end.

3. Beach House – Bloom (Bella Union) This majestic-sounding duo have gone from strength to strength in 2012, not only emulating but surpassing the success of their 2010 breakthrough album, Teen Dream. This was a band I was lucky enough to see live this year, and they did not disappoint. Not everyone would see this as a compliment, but at times, so polished were the vocals of Victoria Legrand, that they were indistinguishable from the LP itself. Bloom can carry you along effortlessly in a dream-like trance, so stunning is its beauty, but there are many layers to peel back if you choose to explore the record’s deeper recesses.

2. Django Django – Django Django (Because Music) This superb debut has been on repeat play on my turntable for the best part of a year, and my love for it shows no signs of abating. It’s unmistakably indie, but not as we know it, bucking the conventions of a genre that is currently stale at best. Landfill indie, indie by numbers, call it what you will, but this most definitely isn’t it. Angular rhythms, funky bass-lines, sharp synth loops combined with distinctive Beach Boys harmonies make for something quite unique.

1. Dry the River – Shallow Bed (RCA / Sony) Not only is this my winner, but it must also be the most underrated album of the year by some margin, failing as it did to trouble the Mercury Music Prize panel, Uncut’s top 75 and Pitchfork’s top 50. Well, what do they know? Is there such a thing as punk-folk? Is this fusion even possible? Questions which by the end of Shallow Bed the listener should be closer to answering. Hypnotic, haunting falsetto resonates throughout without any loss of raw power when required. The songs are lyrically simple yet no-less poignant, such as Weights & Measures, which tells the familiar, painful story of love lost: You’ve made your decision, now get up and leave, the familiar sting of the woodcutter’s swing to the tree. I’ll fall in the forest, to elbows and knees, and it won’t make a sound since there’s no-one around here to see. I was prepared to love you, and never expect anything of you. I can say with certainty, having seen these boys live twice in 2012, that Dry the River like to put on a show, and are first and foremost a rock guitar band, which is no bad thing in my eyes.

Thanks are expressed to Rise Music, Cheltenham, my local independent record shop, which gave me the opportunity to purchase all of these LPs on glorious vinyl.

My Records of the Year (2012) – the short-list

Following on from the long-list of nominations, here is the short-list of ten for my Records of the Year (2012), alphabetical by band name / first name:

Artist / Album (label)

• alt-J – An Awesome Wave (Infectious Music)
• Beach House – Bloom (Bella Union)
• Chromatics – Kill for Love (Italians Do It Better)
• Django Django – Django Django (Because Music)
• Dry the River – Shallow Bed (RCA / Sony)
• Field Music – Plumb (Memphis Industries)
• Gravenhurst – The Ghost in Daylight (Warp)
• Grizzly Bear – Shields (Warp)
• Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky’s Edge (Parlophone)
• Sharon Van Etten – Tramp (Jagjaguwar)

These will be reduced to make up my final five between now and 2 January 2013.

My Records of the Year (2012) – the nominations long-list

Another year has passed, and we’re back here again, contemplating a great twelve months in music, and needlessly putting 2012′s album releases into some semblance of order, just because music lovers like to do that sort of thing!

This preliminary blog is my long-list if you like.  It’s stuff I have definitely listened to and liked from 2012, even if I do not necessarily own it. Even at this late stage, something not yet in my long-list can still make my short-list, and I very much welcome suggestions, from my readers and Twitter friends, of music I may have forgotten or simply overlooked. If I haven’t heard it, I will endeavour to rectify this, and if it’s good enough, it can still trouble my final placings!

This is the second year I have written an album of the year blog. Here is 2011′s in case you didn’t see it or you want to recap: Nominations / The final Top 10

I have decided that this year, I will turn my long-list into a short-list of ten from which I derive a final top five.

Okay, without further ado, here is my long-list for my Records of the Year, 2012 (in no particular order):

(Artist / Album)

• Dry The River – Shallow Bed
• Beach House – Bloom
• Django Django – Django Django
• alt-J – An Awesome Wave
• Grizzly Bear – Shields
• Chromatics – Kill For Love
• Portico Quartet – Portico Quartet
• Poliça - Give You the Ghost
• Gravenhurst – The Ghost in Daylight
• Errors – Have Some Faith in Magic
• Efterklang – Piramida
• Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky’s Edge
• Field Music – Plumb
• Grimes – Visions
• Lone Wolf – The Lovers
• Sigur Ros – Valtari
• Shearwater – Animal Joy
• Andrew Bird – Break It Yourself
• Here We Go Magic – A Different Ship
• Wild Nothing – Nocturne
• Purity Ring – Shrines
• DIIV – Oshin
• Two Door Cinema Club – Beacon
• Swans – The Seer
• Daphni – JIAOLONG
• The Shins – Port of Morrow *NEW ADDITION* How did I forget this?
• Joseph Arthur – Redemption City *NEW ADDITION* My appreciation goes to @adamashby.
• Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city — Really pleased that some hip-hop features in this list.
• Sharon Van Etten – Tramp
• Mark Lanegan Band – Blues Funeral

********

Your other suggestions:

• Matthew Dear – Beams // Many thanks to @Easynova on Twitter for pointing this one out. I love the musicals and bass-lines but less so the vocals. It won’t make my top 10 unfortunately, so it doesn’t go on the long-list, but this blog is more about the musical discovery for myself and others than who or what ultimately comes out on top.
• Rush – Clockwork Angels // Cheers @calexico65 for this suggestion. I’m afraid it’s far too close to being ‘metal’ for me to like though! No likey.

Blog on This is Glouc’shire: EU Must Be Joking

I love Martin Kirby’s weekly column. There. I said it. He’s predictable inasmuch as he will almost always spend at least half of his allocated wordcount on some right-wing crusade or other, but he still has the capacity to surprise his readership, sometimes by coming over all reasonable, or, as is the case in his latest column, by somehow leaping onto a bandwagon that many thought had already sped by….

Read more on thisisgloucestershire.co.uk

Blog on This is Glouc’shire: The smells of Gloucester past

When I was a lad (that’s a surprise already, me being old enough to start a piece like that!), the Gloucester I recall could be mapped by its characteristic smells. Maybe these were not unique to the city, and certainly not particular to the era – history will show that the early-to-mid nineteen-eighties is when many of their sources actually began to disappear – but nevertheless, I do have some very fond and rather less fond memories of Gloucester’s various odours….

Read more on thisisgloucestershire.co.uk

Never Too Much

Luther Vandross, 1951-2005

Last night, I had the strangest dream, possibly ever.

Despite being my current age of thirty-seven or thereabouts, I was still living ‘at home’ – my parental home rather than my marital home.

Luther Vandross and his daughter – I have no idea whether he really had a daughter – who looked to be in her mid-twenties or so, were over from the USA and visiting us in Gloucester. Yes, really.

Luther and said daughter wanted to hit the town on what was a Friday night. They wanted to take in a show, maybe a film, and then a late bar or club. My wife and I warned them that Gloucester wouldn’t really have much to offer, but we agreed to take them into town. Just to clarify, my wife was also in the dream, at her present age, although also living, for whatever reason, at her parental home. Such things are rarely explained in dreams.

We walked the just under two miles into Gloucester, which takes around thirty-five minutes, all the time warning them that they would be disappointed with what they found when we got there. As we reached town, it was quiet, but we were soon approached by two middle-aged black guys, who recognised Luther and were keen for him to visit the club they were on their way to. I had never heard of this club, basically because it does not really exist outside of my dream.

We got to the nameless club, which turned out to be frequented exclusively by black people over the age of thirty, and had a pretty good time drinking and dancing. Luther was treated like a king as you would expect. He did ask the DJ to stop playing his songs at one point, and also turned down repeated requests for him to sing, but other than that, I can recall nothing of note.

Mental.