The Art of Longevity

Now well over a decade in the music industry, Tom Odell is motoring through a successful second phase as an independent artist. His recent albums have leaned into more introspective, personal material that has resonated so much that he now attracts bigger audiences to bigger shows (an arena tour is forthcoming), and continues to grow a very large base of listeners on the streaming platforms. Indeed, he sits comfortably (and ironically) within Spotify’s elite of Top 200 streaming artists. He is in the 0.01% of working artists, the “Billions Club”, a place he never set out to be but nevertheless, belongs. Odell broke free of the major label system (not his choice at the time but transformational as it turned out) three albums ago, to find a whole new level of creative and commercial success. Most of all, with his seventh studio album A Wonderful Life on the horizon, the singer-songwriter has found a renewed sense of purpose. His time touring with artists like Billie Eilish and the Lumineers has given him a first-hand glimpse of the very top tier of success in a changed industry, a secret sauce that may well rub off on him more as a result of those experiences. Odell is a hopeful soul. In a world of quantity over quality, 100,000 songs a day and AI about to increase that number ad infinitum, he has a strong idea about where a solution may lie to all the madness. “I really have faith in the listener. I believe people will find the good stuff. And when I look at what’s big right now, most of the time I go, ‘Yeah, that’s really good, that’s why it's big”. As A Wonderful Life gets closer to release, Odell isn’t looking to chase the numbers, or meet any industry expectations. He’s following the music. “I didn’t get into this to be big,” he says. “I got into it because I love it. And I still do.” His Spotify biog says it all. No flowery press copy, no AI generated summary, no self-penned promo, just 33 million monthly listeners and a simple keyboard smile emoji. One wonders how far he will go. Season 12 of The Art of Longevity is Powered by Bang & Olufsen. Long copy can be found on www.songsommelier.com.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Singer-songwriter Amy MacDonald has never been one to chase trends - an impressive show of resistance for an artist whose music journey began with teenage stardom (the streaming monster hit “This Is The Life” was all over the radio when she was just 19). Macdonald could be forgiven for trying to stay in the spotlight, but she was never that bothered about industry fuss in the first place, protected as she is by a finely tuned bullshit detector, a birthright for anyone born in the vicinity of Glasgow.  That said, as her career has developed (she is now on her sixth album), MacDonald admits to worrying more…about mostly everything. New album Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For? is a cheeky dig at years of being asked when new music was coming, yet it comes with a certain anxiety about how it will go down, about how the world sees her now. “I keep myself up at night just thinking about shite basically, it's ingrained in me - I just want it to be good for everybody involved”. Staying grounded matters to Macdonald. When asked what she’s most proud of, her answer is modest but telling: “That I’m still doing this. There were so many times I thought I was going to sack it all in. But here I am, album six, and people still seem to be interested.”It's easy to forget how much responsibility falls on the shoulders of solo musicians. It’s as if the strength of her songwriting might not be enough. But it is. Season 12 of The Art of Longevity is Powered by Bang & Olufsen. Long copy can be found on www.songsommelier.com.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

In the intervening four years since Olly Knights first joined me, the band has been on something of a creative roll; two fine albums, a successful acoustic tour and something of a collective raising of the game. To my mind, this is how established bands of longevity should operate; to hell with the mainstream and gatekeepers, just do the very best work you can and keep those fans happy. The new Turin Brakes album Spacehopper saw the band going back to the start - recording the album at Konk, the recording studio founded by The Kinks in 1973 and where Turin Brakes recorded their classic debut The Optimist. This of course, was in contrast to the homely recording of post-pandemic Wide Eyed Nowhere, still a fine record but very different in character to Spacehopper. This time around too, the lead single from the new album, “The Message”, had some much deserved radio play on BBC Radio 2. But still, no hits to speak of, and the album reached the UK chart for just a fleeting moment. A hit would be nice for this band, but Ollie Knights remains more philosophical than ever:“You take the wins where you can. Our happiness levels are less influenced by “success” in the mainstream areas. We’ve finally learned after decades of smashing up against the wall. We get over it very quickly if something is disappointing in the mainstream realm. That’s the bit you were not thinking about when you were dreaming about a career in music as a kid”. Indeed. For bands of Quiet Legend, still making excellent records and blowing the roof off venues live - it’s time to build your own momentum. There’s a lot to learn from Turin Brakes. To be contrarian for a moment though, this band may still get their moment. When you consider that those early classic hits (remember “Pain Killer” was a top five UK hit in the summer of 2003, whilst the band’s first chart single “The Underdog (Save Me)” has become an evergreen classic) are still relatively understreamed. The band’s biggest song on Spotify remains the 2016 ballad Save You with just over seven million streams. Sooner or later, that is bound to change, but until it does, the band continues to thrive organically, with or without the accolades. Their momentum is such that they are back in a place where it's still exciting after 25 years. “There is always something on the workbench. The chemistry between me and Gale and between the four of us - without those relationships, forget it. We look forward to getting together and playing, we’re excited about it. And when people come to see us live it's as if they want to come and watch the relationships happen”. Turin Brakes are the indie folk band that rocks. Good luck to them.Season 12 of The Art of Longevity is Powered by Bang & Olufsen. Long copy can be found on www.songsommelier.com.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Estelle is old school. With a modern twist yes, but nonetheless, if this most eclectic of artists leans in any particular direction it is towards ‘classic’. She even says it in one her own songs; "I'm not of-the-moment. I am a classic, yeah, I live at the MoMA” (The Life, opening track of her 2012 album All of Me). She is quite the proverbial eclectic artist - edgy but not (un)necessarily shocking, traditional but modern enough to make her point in the era of precision-tool song production, and forever flitting between a dozen sub-genres (across hip hop, R&B, pop, reggae and soul). Classify Estelle at your peril. New album Stay Alta has throwback quality to it that is extremely welcome in the current climate. Although it was conceived as a post-pandemic record, it works effectively as a tonic for the turbulent times we are living through right now. It channels Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder and…Melba Moore. Like records by those artists, Stay Alta is an organic listen and auto-tune is strictly off limits. But somehow, it is modern. Stay Alta themes include gratitude, celebration, joy and defiance but not the migraine-inducing platitudinal kind - just the straightforward take it or leave it kind. You should take it. It is album number six across a career of two decades, so Estelle does not subscribe to FOBF, the “fear of being forgotten” that is the scourge of many modern pop artists in today’s fast-flowing pop scene. Instead, she is happy to take her time. There is something to note in her approach about time, longevity, and lineage. Estelle seems acutely aware of whose shoulders she stands on. It’s not unconnected to the fact that The Estelle Show (her 5-days a week Apple Music radio show, which won an esteemed Gracie Award for Women In Media) provides a platform to put her fellow peers and new artists in context alongside legendary artists. Classics and new classics sit side by side - why can’t broadcast radio pull that off? Anyhow, credit to Estelle. It was her idea, her pitch to Apple, and now it's her show. And that is how Estelle rolls. At this stage, she is a serious artist living outside of the mainstream and not really in need of a hit anyhow. But yes, she is a songwriter and an artist with the potential to strike at any time. She knows where she is from and how to reach deep into that well. “I see credit and beauty in artists who know where they come from because you then have a well to pull from. If I know funk and I’m a new era funk artist I know where to find that bassline. If I’m a drum & bass artist I can go to that Roni Size beat and sample it or repurpose it. Nothing’s new under the sun”. Damn right. Season 12 of The Art of Longevity is Powered by Bang & Olufsen. Long copy can be found on www.songsommelier.com.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

During our live interview with Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey of Morcheeba, I found myself at one stage scrolling through my notes to find a description of the band’s sound I’d queried using Chat GPT. I couldn’t find it at the time but here is what it said:“Morcheeba’s signature rich, mellow music became the soundtrack of the suburban homes and chillout rooms of the late 90s and early 00s”.That’s a composite of much that has been written about the band over some 30 years, and it doesn’t really flatter does it? “The devil’s own lounge band” is the quip that Skye Edwards recalled from an early review. The music press loves to characterise bands, but in Morcheeba’s case, it comes across somewhat dumbed down. Contained within Morcheeba’s mellow sounds are multiple layers of influence that reveal hidden depths with every listen. The interview with the band for this launch episode for The Art of Longevity (Season 12!) manages to scratch just beneath the surface at least. That said, Morcheeba know their place in making music that can be the perfect backdrop, to quote Ross Godfrey:“We’ve always made relaxing music. You can get home from work on a Friday night, have a glass of wine or smoke a spliff or whatever and play our music”. On the other hand, the sheer depth of their musical influences and references can be breathtaking. Within the mix are Bacharach, Barry and Morricone of course, but also Brazilian late 60s Tropicalia, and somewhat less obviously (but most certainly in terms of always impressive guitar work) classic rock from Ross Godfrey’s childhood favourites Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix. Meanwhile, Skye’s lyrics and styles include 70s country music, along with ska and dub reggae. All of this is somehow weaved into the seamless Morcheeba sound on the new outstanding album Escape The Chaos. Launched in the mid-90s and quickly swept along on the British ‘trip-hop’ wave, Morcheeba outlasted most of their contemporaries including Portishead (who refused to heed to the repeated calls to re-form). Morcheeba is one of those bands you might easily have forgotten about. And yet the band has (give or take a short hiatus and shuffling of personnel sometime between 2003 and 2009) steadily worked their way to 11 albums over 30 years, most of it under the radar of music industry gatekeepers and without much love from the music press. “They hated us” was Skye Edward’s response when I brought up the subject of early press reviews. And yet, Pitchfork gave their debut album Who Can You Trust (1996) an 8.3/10, but then stopped loving them as the band’s popularity took off. Recent single We Live & Die references “in the old days of NME” which had me going on to Wayback Machine to dig out an NME review from 1998 of the breakthrough album Big Calm. It was the now legendary music critic Syvia Patterson, who wrote:“Morcheeba you see, sounds nothing like Portishead. They sound like they like life”.That has certainly proved a lasting observation. And Morcheeba has proved a lasting British trip hop institution. One of the few 90s bands that just seem to keep on getting better and better. This live episode launches a new partnership between The Art of Longevity and Bang & Olufsen. Find more details on the Song Sommelier web pages.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Light, fire, water, fruit, and worms; “just the basics”, are Matt Berninger’s recurring themes, and these emerge again on his second solo album Get Sunk. One of life’s sponges, Berninger is constantly observing and recording the world around him - on paper scraps, whiteboards, garageband files, notes-to-self via text messages and even on baseballs. The sketches of songs ideas, lyrics and poems are transcribed from his brain to his fingertips, ready to go when the songwriting process gets underway. Once you understand this, it’s easier to see just how the man has become prolific. Having written lyrics for not one but two albums with his band The National in 2023, his catalogue of solo works is fast developing, first album Serpentine Prison arrived in 2021 (a substantial achievement given that Berninger had some debilitating bouts of depression around the COVID period). After the exercise in traditional, classic song making that was Serpentine Prison, new album Get Sunk is much more an indie pop record not a million miles from The National. It even contains a surefire hit (in the parallel universe where good songs become hits), in the form of drivetime indie single Bonnet Of Pins, destined to become a firm fan favourite. Coming in at 10 tracks, Get Sunk is a lean, mean machine of well-crafted, mid-paced indie and easy on the ear ballads. It’s a consistently engaging listen, but some songs, Frozen Oranges, Little By Little, Nowhere Special really showcase Berninger’s powers. If this was the 80s, Matt Berninger would have a solo hit record on his hands and a parallel successful career as rock band frontman and solo artist. But, given this is the 21st century streaming era, he’ll have to make do with a modestly successful outlet for his prolific creativity - some half-million listeners on his Spotify profile as validation. It’s a worthwhile endeavour. Besides, having extra-curricular projects is critical to longevity - very much one of our underlying themes. Berninger’s core project, The National, are a rare exception to the rule of a band’s career as the proverbial rollercoaster ride. No stratospheric rise as such, more a steady climb. No ‘disintegration’ or crash to the bottom for this band, who continue to go from strength to strength it seems. They’ve never been dropped, now having made 10 albums over 25 years - all of them on the ultra-cool indie label 4AD. The band now is the original line up since the beginning and since The National is Berninger plus two sets of twins, any alternative seems unthinkable. If every band wants the career of Radiohead, then the career of The National can’t be too far behind in the dreams of young friends forming indie bands in every small corner of the world. Still, it took a minute. As Berninger quips “longevity takes a long time”...before elaborating on the early days:“We were ignored for the first couple of records, nobody paid attention to us until Alligator and Boxer. Those records were hard fought, but by then, we had four records and so you couldn’t pin us down. Then Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Sufjan Stephens started helping us and we grew this community in Brooklyn that became a really healthy thing for all of us”. Creating a body of work of some four albums before registering on the radar is the way to go, if you can get away with it. By the time High Violet came around in 2010 (and its highly successful successors Trouble Will Find Me, Sleep Well Beast), The National were a bona fide transatlantic success. More than that, however, they represent (probably along with Arctic Monkeys) how a band of the 21st century can achieve a kind of success that is, in essence, a throwback to the old world. Despite this and maybe becauSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Valerie June’s journey to what we might call ‘cult stardom’ hasn’t been easy. “I was cleaning houses while playing bars & clubs at night. And I had a vision that I would not make it - my music wouldn't reach its audience through regular means - it would reach its audience through musicians. My friends would help me. I’m a musician’s musician”. Working through a talented community of musicians that has included Booker T Jones, Brandi Carlile and none other than Mavis Staples, eventually brought Valerie June together with her own audience. For her new project, June works with Blind Boys of Alabama, Norah Jones, DJ Cavem Moetavation and M Ward, supremo guitarist and producer of new album Owls, Omens and Oracles. I wanted to get her view of her own music, because the music business loves to put artists in lanes, boxes and pigeon holes. How on earth did an eclectic artist like June slip through the cracks? Her music has been described by others as an amalgam of soul, gospel, Appalachian folk, bluegrass, country, spiritual pop, African blues and my own favourite…cosmic rock. How does she describe her music in response to this assessment? With a joyful guffaw and an emphatic reaction: “I’m a singer-songwriter. I follow the songs, whatever they want to be is what I do. I’m kinda like their servant. All those names related to the music - I used to get attached to those and now I don’t ”.In Jeff Tweedy’s entertaining memoir World Within a Song, the author, singer songwriter and Wilco frontman says: “Taking something old and making it sound modern is nothing new”. And yet obsessing over your references, but melding them into something that is uniquely you is one of the key themes for artists of longevity. Both concepts are critical to June’s work.“I do commune with the ancestors. I know I’m standing on the shoulders of many who came before me. I feel them beside me as I’m talking now. I’m not doing this by myself. I wanted to understand my people through music, and I got there through studying the blues”. Most songs come to me as voices. I’ll try this instrument and be like “no, not that one…like Goldilocks. I try many different instruments to connect that voice to what it wants. Then, I found a team of people to listen to and understand”. If Valerie June really is the Goldilocks of songcraft, the results are indeed nourishing.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

With the album’s reduced commercial clout and declining role in music consumption, a dilemma crops up for all long-established bands involved in the endeavour of making a new LP record. Put simply, why bother? Why toil for four years on a body of work that distils 100 song ideas into ten tracks, spending a fortune in the process, only to see it flash across the charts and then evaporate into the mesh of 100 million songs? It’s an existential question for Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue, who told me:“It’s sort of madness really, when all the good songs and books have already been written. Who wants to hear what’s in my head or what we’ve created as a band? Does anyone even sit down and listen to an album now? But I think of it in the same way as poets, novelists and filmmakers. It’s still worth doing if you feel you can do it well”. Arguably, new albums have been especially challenging for Deacon Blue in part because the band made one of the most accomplished debuts ever, 1987’s Raintown. With its themes of growing up in Glasgow, work, money, expectations and dreams, Raintown is as universal a concept as any record and yet it is fundamentally a musical tribute to Glasgow that most Scots are really proud of. It set a high bar for Deacon Blue, and yet the band went on to have acute commercial success with the four albums that followed between 1989 and 1994, rounding the period off with a Greatest Hits compilation (remember them!) Our Town, in 1994. The band then split, and you can’t say they didn’t quit while they were ahead. They each went on to have their own multi-media career ventures, acting, writing and presenting, effectively avoiding the inevitable mid-career slump of many of their contemporaries. Alas, they came back together in 1999 and the second act has been a classic post limelight affair. A string of lower key albums placed them firmly in the ‘for fans only’ vortex of music careers - perfectly sustainable and yet largely forgotten by the mainstream. It hasn’t stopped the band hitting creative highs with albums though, notably 2014’s A New House  and the outstanding City of Love in 2020. But when the journey continues, where do you go next? The answer seems to be ‘full circle, then forward’. New album The Great Western Road arrives on a momentous anniversary for Deacon Blue, it is 40 years since songwriter and frontman Ricky Ross and drummer Dougie Vipond created the group’s first incarnation. With the opening title track set in Glasgow, it’s more than a nod to their debut (indeed, the title track echoes Raintown’s opener Born In A Storm, a ‘Gershwin meets Glasgow’ classic). The band reunited with Raintown recording engineer Matt Butler and so were clearly ready to revisit their origins. But as the new album unfolds, so does the metaphor of the band stretching out further and further. The result is a bunch of songs that reflect the sense of expectation of their early work with reflection, perspective and a contented resignation. Classic country songs How We Remember It and Curve of the Line are particular highlights of a mature, grown up pop record. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

A new album release by your favourite band is an important event. Thank god for this. A new album is a reprieve, an escape, a comfort and a joy. Of course, to experience all these emotions you do have to take the time to really listen. I particularly love that a record has the power to be your own personal time machine. When I first played back the new My Morning Jacket album, simply titled is, I was transported back in time to the late 70s, back to my childhood. A time of albums on vinyl or cassette, played on ‘music centres’ (that’s what we called hi-fi systems in Northern England back then). A time when ELO or Supertramp, or The Stranglers or Queen, would make albums consisting of singles with accessible catchy melodies mixed with more exotic, experimental songs that were probably marked during the recording process as ‘album tracks’. A time when you could expect each and every album released by a band to have a different, distinctive character from the last one. It was a time of greater attention and patience and a slower, simpler time of life. 70s memories are especially magical for me, so a soundtrack courtesy Jim James & co is a total treat. It isn’t fashionable music that My Morning Jacket creates. Indeed, their alchemical meld of alt-country rock, alternative country/Americana and late era Beatles-esque psychedelia make MMJ sound always like a band out of time. That’s just how Jim James intended it. Music perfect for sucking you into their timeless orbit. And no real desire beyond that. It’s the way Jim James operates these days. Put your best work out there into the universe and then what will be will be:“Of course we all want our work to be successful, me included. But I’ve ridden the rollercoaster so many times now, I know the outcome is always the same, whether people like a record or not, I still had to deal with my own depression and self loathing. External validation will not fill that hole, you can only do it yourself, love yourself and try to see things more clearly”. MMJ have never shied away from dissonance, off kilter time signatures and ear-splitting guitar work, but there is always the emergence of beauty from the noise. This abruptly contrasting style takes a backseat on is. Instead, the songs are what matters most on this album. Legendary rock producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Springsteen and ACDC) has pushed Jim James and his band to be even more in service of the songs than they have been before. But the melodies and grooves are so strong, it works wonders such that the album stands up as one of their best so far. Pretty good show after 25 years and 10 LP records.And Jim James loves LP records:“I love the album as an art form. It’s important as artists to do what you love, and don’t worry about the world and what the world’s gonna do. It’s cool even if people love one song, but if they are gonna take the journey of the album, that’s my dream. We aspire to make music in that format, but even if one person loves one song, that's still so awesome”. Yes, yes it is. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Great bands and great records shouldn't come down to a competition, but by way of bringing it to your attention, Tindersticks’ Soft Tissue was my choice of 5th best album of 2024. I’m touched that Stuart Staples seems genuinely pleased to be on the list. Alexi Petridis’ review of that record in the Guardian was so good I read it a few times. “If the overall message seems to be about noticing beauty in small things as a bulwark against the ghastliness of 21st-century life”.That captures the mood of the album in precious few words. I found myself drawn into Soft Tissue…seduced by it really. From the opening song, New World, and its topline “I won’t let my love become my weakness” it got me, and the rest of the record buried itself into my brain even though I couldn’t pinpoint why. But as Stuart Staples attests, the best music connects with us in a way that is beyond analysis:“If a record sets things off, gets you searching for something or looking for meaning, then it's doing its job. If we understand it too much, it's kind of dead, whereas if there is mystery to it, space to try and understand it, then it’s alive”. Tindersticks music is beyond analysis but that hasn’t stopped me consuming everything written about the band over the years with almost as much hunger as their music. What makes them such a well kept secret? In the book Long Players, author Eimear McBride’s essay on the second Tindersticks album (the band is rare in every sense, including the dubious accolade of being a band with two self-titled albums, the debut and its follow-up). “There’s a true, if disconcerting, magic to the three way wedding of the album’s beautiful, intricate scoring, the cigarette-stained, shame-filled intimacy of the lyrics and Stuart Staples’ deep, dark, world-weary singing voice”. If the best artists create a world in which their work can come alive and their fans can escape from the humdrum of life and the worries of the world, then Tindersticks are the perfect example. But beware those who enter, this world is not perfect and to overuse typical adjectives, it is dark and as McBride attests, disconcerting. It’s also strangely comforting.Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/