Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.

So we've made it to the end of the 60s, but before we start looking at the year's best music, let's mention a few things that happened in the year Bryan Adams got his 'first real six-string'. Well, Armstrong and co were the first men to land on the moon, Nixon became the 37th president of the USA and the Stonewall Riot in New York marked the beginning of the gay rights movement. According to a very quick Google search the most important event in the UK was the opening of the first B&Q store. Go capitalism.

Anyway, music, here's what our wonderful rateyourmusic.com users rate as their favourite albums of 1969:

#1 King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
#2 The Beatles - Abbey Road
#3 Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
#4 Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
#5 Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II

We've got the return of Miles, another album by the Beatles and debuts for this challenge for King Crimson and Led Zeppelin (who arrive with a bang with two entries in the top 5), both of who will be making plenty of appearances in years to come. Obviously, I'm not just going to review 5 because this is the 60s and there's just too much good music. The following albums from further down the list also caught my eye and so I'll be throwing them into the mix too:

#6 Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
#7 The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
#8 Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
# 9 The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
#19 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys

And so we have ten to get through again. Now I know what you're thinking, 'hey Clive, Mr Listman, now that you've got to the end of the 60s are you going to do a best of decade list too?' Well funny you should ask, yes I will be, but that'll be in a future post where I'll do a bit of a mop-up of some albums from the 60s tis challenge hasn’t covered that have made it to the heady heights of some publication's best of the 60s lists, just to make sure I' being definitive. So yes, look out for a '60s mop-up and best of the decade' post coming after this one.

Anyway, enough waffle. Let's get cracking, here's my thoughts and ranking on the above 10 albums from 1969.

led zep 2.jpgLedZep2 — 10. Led Zeppelin II

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin’s second album takes up from where the first one left off (we’ll get to that one later on) but doesn’t add all that much, and just isn’t quite as exciting as their debut, but then that’s a rather high bar to compare it to.

Obviously, we’ve got some rock classics here - this is Led Zep after all - such as Whole Lotta Love which features a great marching, chugging riff and some particularly huge vocals from Robert Plant. Then there’s Lemon Song, which is a particularly great example of John Paul Jones’ uncanny ability to lay down the world’s grooviest bass riffs, something that is particularly evident throughout this album. Finally, we’ve got Moby Dick, featuring that John Bonham solo. Now, even though I’m a drummer, I’ve never been a massive fan of extended drum solos (I think they’re better in short bursts and accompanied by other instruments, see the Jimi Hendrix Experience). There’s no doubt it’s a great solo - Bonham has such a great sense of dynamics - and the flurry at the end is impressive considering this was a time before double-bass pedals - but it’s still a bit long, and could do with the rest of the band playing too. After all, the whole band doesn’t stop playing when someone guitar solos do they?

I realise I’m sounding a bit down on this one, which absolutely isn’t the case (as you’ll notice with my score). The band is still on fine blues-rock form, something they’re astoundingly good at. This album in particular is full of powerful riffs, the infectious bass grooves I’ve already mentioned, and drum beats to shake the Earth, it just doesn’t feel quite as inventive as some of their other albums.

Song Picks: Whole Lotta Love, The Lemon Song, Bring It on Home

8/10

I know what you’re thinking. “Great, it’s another Velvet Underground album, so Clive’s going to waffle on for far too many paragraphs about the ‘chaotic, free noise’ they’re creating.” Well, don’t get ahead of yourself there reader, the Velvet Underground have done the unthinkable and calmed down. And thus, though I can’t promise that I won’t use the word chaotic or indeed any of its synonyms in this review, I can certain promise they’ll appear significantly less.

This the first album without John Cale, who apparently wanted to take the band in yet further experimental directions (including recording the album with amplifiers underwater) while Lou Reed wanted to make the music more accessible. This disagreement eventually led to Cale being kicked out of the band. He was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Doug Yule, who sings on a fair few of the tracks here. Again, like both of their albums so far, it was initially a commercial failure and only began to gain acclaim and success some time after it’s release. This is particularly surprising with this release considering Reed’s aim to create something more accessible and marketable.

The Velvet Underground is a gentle, calm album that sounds like something recorded after a rather heavy night, voices too shattered to sing much above a whisper, and guitar-parts that sound so soothing they must have been played lying down. The opener Candy Says is a perfect example of what’s to come, with Yule’s vocals sounding like a smoother version of Reed’s. The song seems to be about about the transsexual Candy Darling and about her transgender dysphoria (the feeling of being born into the body of the wrong gender). What Goes On roughs things up a bit and shows the band haven’t calmed down completely with an abrasively brash sounding guitar part over what is an otherwise fairly simple song with a catchy chorus.

Pale Blue Eyes is probably the album’s most famous track, a perfect love song about Reed’s first serious love, Shelley Albin, who was, unfortunately for Reed, married to another man, something the second verse talks about:

Thought of you as my mountain top
Thought of you as my peak
Thought of you as everything
I've had but couldn't keep
I've had but couldn't keep

It’s a song that’s made by the simple and yet heartfelt lyrics and the way the quiet delivery blends so well with the soft lead guitar and the simple catchiness of that chorus: ‘linger on, your pale blue eyes.’ I’ve been known to have it in my head for days on end.

Maureen Tucker’s vocals on the lovely closing track After-Hours seem to me to be the first example of the anti-folk that the Moldy Peaches and Kimya Dawson would make so famous in the 90s, a sign again that the Velvet Underground weren’t done with being influential.

The Velvet Underground isn’t particularly eventful, it’s the morning after whereas White Light / White Heat is the night before. But sometimes, lying around in a mutually hungover state with friends the Sunday morning after is just as satisfying as the night before, if in a completely different way.

Song Picks: Pale Blue Eyes, Candy Says, What Goes On

8/10

Hot Rats is Frank Zappa’s second solo album and his first after the end of his band the Mothers of Invention.

The Mothers of Invention may have finished, but Zappa never quit inventing (geddit???), and this is a prime display of his willingness to experiment musically. Not only did he have a ‘homemade sixteen track recorder’ made before such things existed, but he also pioneered the idea of tape speed manipulation. Both of these innovations impacted the drum sound on the album in particular. He was among the first (the first we’ve had on this challenge I think) to record drums on multiple tracks, allowing him to record them in stereo, something that became commonplace once we enter the 70s. His tape manipulation was used to speed up tracks, changing their pitch and led to the drums having a very unique tonal quality to them (with very little resonance) on songs such as It Must Be a Camel and the brilliant opening track Peaches En Regalia.

But anyway, enough about his recording innovations, what about the actual music? As you’d expect it’s infinitely creative and has a wonderful sense of fun around it. Someone like Dan Deacon has made a name for himself for creatively using toy-like sounds in his electronic music. Hot Rats to me, has some similarities, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a big influence. The drums sound like toys at points, as do some of the other erratic instrumental performances. Captain Beefheart’s vocals on Willie the Pimp (lyrics aside) wouldn’t be out of place on the intro to some weird 70s kid’s TV show, and the bass riff on that particular track just makes me want to get up and plod around, bopping my head. It’s an infectious, boisterous jamboree of a track, and I love it.

Peaches En Regalia gives a pretty good indication of what’s to come. One of Zappa’s most well-known songs and the opener to this album, which Zappa calls a ‘movie for your ears,’ it all gets brilliantly fairground-y around the two minute mark, when you’re half expecting some elaborate dressed clown to appear out of nowhere. Ian Underwood (who can seemingly plays about 7000 instruments throughout the album) contributes flute and multiple saxophone, clarinet and keyboard parts to the song.

The Gumbo Variations is the other highlight for me which features a brilliantly off-the-hook sax solo from Underwood. He’s just going crazy with the thing, playing as if no one is listening. Underwood’s theatrics are followed up by a similarly free violin solo from Don Harris, who returns after a Zappa solo to burn up any idea of scales or theory as he screeches the song to an explosive ending. What a trip.

Hot Rats is more than a bit mad, and it’s also more than a bit great.

Song Picks: Willie the Pimp, Peaches En Regalia, The Gumbo Variations

8/10

As this is their third album released in 1969 (and fourth overall), it was clearly a rather productive year for the John Fogerty led Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band introduced to me by the film The Big Lebowski many years ago.

Down on the Corner opens the album, a song about a fictional band, Willy and the Poor Boys and how they play on street corners for a nickel. Originally, the album was planned to be a concept album about this fictional band, but that was soon scrapped. Down on the Corner is a perfect example of the band’s ability to lift your mood in an instant. The guitar and bass bounce along jollily as Fogerty belts out his tuneful but just-rough-enough-for-rock-‘n’-roll vocals. It pretty much begs for you to sing along, something that could be said about a lot of CCR’s tracks. Think Elvis, but with a bit more edge, and a fervour for political songs. Fortunate Son, is an example of one such political song, and in my opinion one of the finest political songs ever written. It’s a classic anti-vietnam war song, although it never specifically mentions that war and can be seen as more of a song about war and class, or as Fogerty puts it, "It's the old saying about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them." The song has been used endlessly as an anthem of the anti-Vietnam war movement and was, perhaps most famously, used brilliantly in the film Apocalypse Now, where that famous guitar riff played as soldiers loaded their guns in helicopters, off to fight a war they had no choice but to participate is as Fogerty sings:

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays Hail to the Chief
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

Along with the two songs I’ve already mentioned, the other highlight is the band’s great cover of the traditional Midnight Special which features some fine vocals from Fogerty and an arrangement that will guarantee the song is stuck in your head for the next 72 years. Ever since the first time I heard it (about ten years ago) it’s randomly popped into my head time and time again.

Willy and the Poor Boys is one of my favourite straight rock ‘n’ roll albums. It’s got oomph, it’s got exigent vocals, it’s got a wonderful roughness to it, and it’s got a conscience.

Song Picks: Down on the Corner, Fortunate Son, Midnight Special

8.5/10

FiveLeavesLeft — 6. Five Leaves Left

Nick Drake

Though, pretty famous nowadays, Nick Drake’s music didn’t become well known until the 1990s, well after Drake’s death due to an overdose of prescription drugs in 1974, a death judged as suicide by the coroner, although this has been disputed by some. He’d struggled with depression, something that is evident in the lyrics of a lot of his songs.

Time Has Told Me is Drake’s debut album, and a remarkably mature one at that. The album opens with Time Has Told Me, an iconic and melancholy meditation on ‘going with the flow,’ Drake’s open guitar tuning creates a unique and dark sound, which is lightened up somewhat by the backing band, who create a quite beautiful musical palette for Drake’s poetics. Drake’s singular vocals are as strong as ever, a kind of endearingly accepting murmur that has the ability to convey a strong sense of melody in a very understated way. He tends to hold notes at the end of each line, as if urging them to take flight so that he’s not bothered with them again, before moving onto the next.

All the songs were recorded live, with no overdubbing, Nick Drake reportedly sat in the middle with his acoustic guitar as the other musicians played in a circle around him. The resulting sound is remarkably polished sounding, and Joe Boyd’s production deserves all the plaudits, as do the instrumentalists who create such a perfect soundscape for Drake’s vocals. ‘Cello Song, Man In A Shed (that lead guitar) and The Thoughts of Mary Jane, the latter with the gorgeous addition of a flute, are prime examples of this. The former is also a great example of Drake’s lyrical skill. His imaginative, sad words go with his vocals like milk and honey. Here’s an example verse:

You would seem so frail in the cold of the night
When the armies of emotion go out to fight
But while the Earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky on the crest of a wave

Time Has Told Me sounds like the delicate acceptance of sadness, and there’s something rather beautiful about that.

Song Picks: Time Has Told Me, Cello Song, Man In A Shed, Saturday Sun

8.5/10

Let It Bleed was the last Rolling Stones album Brian Jones, who started the band, had any hand in. He was fired during it’s recording for becoming too unreliable due to heavy drug use, often missing recording sessions or being too incapacitated to be of any use in them, a story that sounds similar to that of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. Jones was replaced by Mick Taylor, who was to stay with the band until 1974.

As has become customary with Rolling Stones albums, the album starts with a bonafide classic. This time that’s Gimme Shelter, a song inspired by the sight of a load of people running for cover during heavy rain, but expanded to cover 1969’s most popular topic, the Vietnam war. It’s another example of the Rolling Stones’ ability to use some interesting instrumentation to raise a great song to the heady levels of a classic. The band starts with some delicate electric guitar, drums and the use of one of those things that you always have at primary school where you rub a stick up and down it and it makes a rattly noise. You know the one. Well it’s that thing that adds so much to this song, adding an added layer of interest to a song that is powerful, brilliantly performed, and features a brilliant distorted harmonica part. Also more than worth a mention are Merry Clayton’s great vocals, which work so well with Jagger’s.

Let It Bleed is the Rolling Stones’ most cohesive statement yet. It’s a dark revealing of the 60s dream turning into a nightmare, although it’s slightly happy-go-lucky exterior keeps this hidden somewhat until repeat listens. As you’d expect, there’s heavily sexual lyrics (see the brilliantly drawled title track, ‘we all need someone to cream on’), there’s tracks showing the band’s skill at playing the rough blues (see the brilliant Chicago blues inspired Midnight Rambler) and there’s songs that sound like they’ve come from the old, deep south themselves (see the superbly bouncy and catchy Country Honk). This time however there’s a dash of maturity added to the mix, the kind that leads to songs like the now iconic closing track You Can’t Always Get What You Want. A song that features the London Bach Choir in what has to one of the most memorable intros of the 60s. There’s a general party atmosphere to the track, and though the song is often seen as a meditation on the failure of the 60s dream there’s plenty of hope in the vocals, ‘you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.’

Let It Bleed is a superb album which not only demonstrates the Stones’ ability to take American roots music influences and turn them into something sloppy, filthy, rough, and inspired, but also makes for a pretty great statement about the end of the 60s.

Song Picks: Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler, You Can’t Always Get What You Want

8.5/10

In The Court of the Crimson King is prog-rock pioneers King Crimson’s debut album. One of the many fun and rewarding things about this challenge is you notice new genres appearing through the years, and this is clearly the birth of prog-rock, which combines the rock genre with elements of jazz and classical music. It tends to be a dramatic style of music, with long powerful instrumental sections. It’s remarkable for a genre to appear as obviously as this (though we’ve had hints of it from elements of Pink Floyd’s stuff so far) and therefore it’s quite easy to see just how influential this album was.

Now, I have to confess I’ve never been the biggest prog-rock fan, and I’ve generally been put off by the more fantasy style lyrics that are so common in the genre (bands like Genesis are a prime example). In the Court of the Crimson King doesn't have this lyrical style however and alludes more to themes of love, war and politics.

The opener 21st Century Schizoid Man, which was sampled by Kanye West in his 2011 song Power, is a song criticising the Vietnam War and those running it. Schizoid disorder is one that leads to a feeling of detachment, and the song very much critiques the growing detachment from the atrocities of war. The final verse sums this up nicely:

Death seed, blind man's greed
Poets' starving, children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-first century schizoid man

The song features many lengthy instrumental sections but is essentially made by the heavily distorted vocals (it’s the first time I’ve heard this in the challenge so another innovation from this album it seems) and the blaring horns that follow each verse, both of which are iconic.

I Talk to the Wind is a much calmer song and recently covered by Dana Gavanski. It’s a pretty, flute infused meditation on religious doubt, featuring some lovely guitar solo work and percussion that caresses your ears like some sort of relaxing ear-drum massage.

Epitaph ups the drama in typical prog-rock fashion with an opening instrumental that seems fit to soundtrack the end of the world, which makes sense considering the dystopian nature of the lyrics. It features the album’s most emotional vocal performance, Greg Lake sings as things churn and build around him creating a sound large enough to fill the world’s largest cathedral. It’s a death march, a song about everything crashing. ‘Confusion, will be my epitaph,’ is a repeated lyric, and the one that lingers long after the song has finished.

Moonchild features the album’s longest instrumental. Starting with a segment so quiet, it’s barely there, then things start to get quietly erratic, like the unsynchronised waking of a variety of creatures. Drums dabble, a xylophone titters, someone’s practising guitar quietly off in the distance. But what’s it all building to?? Is it building to anything or has someone just left the recording equipment on as the band have a very quiet muck around?? Oh, we’re over 10 minutes in and someone’s just hit a gong really quietly, surely this is it? Nope, the build never comes, well not until the title track which closes the album anyway. It’s an extended break, increasing the impact of the title track when it does come in, a storm after a day of sunshine.

In the Court of the Crimson King is one of those momentous times in history where an album comes out and bulldozes a way for a whole new genre. It still suffers from some of that ‘prog-rock pomposity,’ but don’t let that put you off, this album feels every part as enjoyable as it does important.

Song Picks: 21st Century Schizoid Man, I Talk to the Wind

8.5/10

We’ll be seeing plenty of Led Zeppelin on these lists in the years to come, and they’re named in an uninventive fashion - we’ve already seen this with Led Zeppelin II - which makes it rather pointless for me to tell you whether it was their debut, second, third album etc, but I’ll do it anyway because I don’t like change.

Led Zeppelin I, the band’s debut album, is made up mainly of original material from the band alongside reworked blues & rock songs such as You Shook Me and I Can’t Quit You Baby. It features probably the heaviest guitar work we’ve had so far in this challenge courtesy of Jimmy Page, rock solid and un-showy bass playing from John Paul Jones, arena fillingl, loud vocals from Robert Plant and of course some of the most powerful drumming the world had heard up to this point from John Bonham.

Led Zeppelin sure know how to play blues rock. You only need to listen to the six and a half minute blues rollercoasters You Shook Me and Dazed and Confused to realise they have a complete knack of making instrumental sections sound like a blues freight train, Page’s thick riffs perfectly padded out by Bonham’s humongous beats and Jones’ sturdy bass. But that’s not all there is to the band, far from it. There’s a level of inventiveness that has made them one of the main influences on guitar-rock and their influences are still clear to hear today. A prime example of this can be heard in the classic Dazed and Confused. Plant belts out ‘soul of a wooooman was creeeeated beelooooowww’ and then what has to be one of the most iconic guitar parts ever written makes its debut, a howling guitar line that sounds like its weaved its way from some ancient mountain range to lift the song from greatness to the annals of history. It’s worth noting that a lot of the song was copied from Jake Holmes. I say copied rather than covered (it’s a different enough version to be a great cover) because Holmes was never credited in the album’s original release, Holmes sued the band for this in 2010. It’s easy to see why Led Zeppelin have a bit of a reputation for ‘stealing songs’.

What makes Led Zeppelin stand out as a rock-band, alongside their obvious instrumental skill, is the great sense of drama they manage to build up in their songs. Stairway to Heaven, perhaps their most famous song, is a prime example of this. Now, that song wasn’t to come for a few years yet, but there’s plenty of evidence of the band’s ability to build an atmosphere of importance here on their debut. Your Time Is Gonna Come is a case in point. The song starts with cathedral-filling organ chords, punctuated by some gentle sparkly notes here and there. By the time Bonham’s simple and yet earth-shattering beat enters the fray you’re in the palm of the band’s hand, your emotions tied to their every whim. As the band all sing ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’ together as the song closes out, you can’t help singing along, a triumphant feeling in your bones that karma will deal with the unfaithful person the song is about. Although I’m not genuinely a fan of the high-pitched hard rock vocal style that so many bands in the years to come were to have, I think Robert Plant’s version of this style is actually crucial to the band’s sound. His high notes cut through the bombardment of sound created by the band and their talent for drama, which I’ve already spoken about, makes sure that it somehow never sounds histrionic.

Led Zeppelin I is the conclusive announcement of the arrival of one of the world’s most popular bands, even if they did pinch a thing or two.

Song Picks: Good Times, Bad Times; Dazed and Confused; Your Time Is Gonna Come

9/10

_108240741_beatles-abbeyroad-square-reuters-applecorps.jpg — 2. Abbey Road

The Beatles

Abbey Road, the Beatles’ eleventh album’s recording sessions were fraught with artistic disagreements (particularly between Lennon & McCartney), but by all accounts things were much more amicable than the previous sessions for the proposed Get Back album, which later became the Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, in 1970.

Like many albums on these lists it seems, Abbey Road wasn’t universally loved upon it’s release with many criticising its artificial sound. They could have meant two things by this. Firstly, the band had long stopped performing live and thus their albums weren’t designed to be played live, meaning that there was plenty of studio trickery going on. Secondly, it’s their only album to be recorded entirely through a solid-state transistor mixing desk, which apparently gives the album a brighter sound. I mean, listening to this in 2020, where studio trickery and artificial effects are at a whole new level, it doesn’t sound artificial at all, but in context of some of the other releases here, I can at least partially understand why people would have been slightly caught off-guard. Nowadays though, the album is often cited as their best work, and is bookended by two iconic moments for me: First of all, the opener Come Together, with it’s famous scattered percussive intro, signifies the band quite literally, coming together. Secondly, the penultimate track, and finale of the 17-minute medley that finishes the album, The End, finishes in a blaze of glory with the words ‘And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make’ as a sad A minor chord turns into a triumphant C major. It’s probably one of the best and most fitting goodbyes we’ve had from any band ever. And yes, I know they released one album after this, but as I’ve already mentioned, Let It Be was actually recorded before this album.

Abbey Road, to me, typifies everything great about the Beatles: Their catchy choruses (Come Together, Here Comes The Sun, etc etc); their slightly weirder and brilliantly playful compositions (Octopus’s Garden); the pioneering idea that something recorded didn’t have to sound exactly like a live performance; surprisingly heavy rock epics ((I Want You (She’s So Heavy)); heartwarming harmonies (Because); and just an overall sense of a band that were master songwriters. I spent a lot of my life thinking that the Beatles were influential but a bit boring to listen to nowadays. How wrong I was. Though I stand by the fact their vocals can be a bit bland in tone, their sense of melody and harmony more than makes up for this. Their creativity and the joy they’ve brought me in listening to these albums has been a massive part of what’s made the 60s such a great decade to listen through.

Abbey Road is the Beatles’ best album, and the fact it’s basically their last makes that all the more satisfying to say. A band that never slowed down, that continually pushed what a pop-album could be. Abbey Road is their last, most beautiful firework exploding gloriously across the sky, its sparkles inspiring the musical landscape the world over.

Song Picks: Come Together, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Here Comes The Sun, The Medley

10/10

In a Silent Way is an enigma. It clearly influenced jazz fusion, but it’s not jazz fusion. It was clearly influenced by the explosion of rock at the time, but it’s not rock. It has clear jazz influences, and if you had to put it in any box, you’d probably stick it there, but it wouldn’t be entirely comfortable there either. In a Silent Way floats around mysteriously, scattering ideas to a whole host of genre boxes, while never fitting into one itself.

To me, this is ambient music, well before that existed. Davis creates a staggeringly beautiful soundscape. It’s like walking through an empty town in a dream, everything left just as it was, but everyone’s gone. Only the shining of stars in the sky and the streetlights remain, lighting the path as your footsteps echo ominously around the streets.

The album is made up of two tracks, the first, Shhh/Peaceful, is a fine example of a minimalist foundation being a great canvas for improvisation. The drummer spends his entire time doing the exact same thing on the hi-hat, the bass bops along, occasionally adding in an extra note here or there, and Davis’ trumpet whistles songs of freedom over the top as the piano, organs and electric guitar add beautiful sprinkles of magic.

The penultimate and title track is perhaps the highlight, creating a mood so serene and charming that I’ve pretty much lived the whole day through its filter. The song slowly builds over it’s 20 minute duration on the back of a snappy guitar-riff to a gently raucous conversation of trumpet, cymbals and bass, never sacrificing the album’s dreamy nature. When the drums disappear to leave you with gentle electric guitar and piano notes, featuring a whole host of tasteful effects, you’re left wondering if you’ve died and gone to some sort of musical heaven.

In a Silent Way is a truly magical album, and rather unlike anything else. It’s no exaggeration for me to say it’s one of the most beautiful and evocative pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It’s an album that never tries too hard, everyone’s playing well within their abilities, but that’s what makes the album what it is. It feels like a gentle celebration of the realisation that there’s something truly remarkable about just being.

Song Pick: In a Silent Way

10/10