Prompted by the terribly sad news of his passing this month, I have been back on a deep re-examination and appreciation of Karl Wallinger’s music. Primarily within the working vehicle for his songs, World Party, but also covering his too brief mid-eighties contributions to the Waterboys as well as the Peter Gabriel led Big Blue Ball project wherein Wallinger left as big and lasting an imprint as Gabriel himself; it is clear that we lost a notable musical force. Ironically, the overwhelming characteristic burning through if you check out old interviews and read the many tributes in the wake of his passing, is that he rarely over promoted his efforts, preferring to demur behind a very droll English line in self-deprecating wit. You do wonder if maybe just a sprinkling of the kind of self-aggrandizement (something that his former Waterboys sparring partner Mike Scott is happy to emit when required) might not have gone amiss just occasionally, he certainly had the music to back it up. Indeed, among the first to pay tribute when the news broke was Mike Scott himself remembering Wallinger as “one of the finest musicians I ever worked with” which said a lot, especially when you consider the animosity the pair had shown each other for the majority of the previous forty years.

There remains a sense of unfinished business between Scott and Wallinger, not in terms of the sniping but more in terms of how incredible the results were when they did collaborate on The Waterboys ‘This Is The Sea.’ The only joint songwriting credit between the pair, on record, was that albums dramatic opener ‘Don’t Bang The Drum’ but the role Wallinger played in the bands biggest hit from the same album, ‘The Whole Of The Moon,’ cannot be underestimated. Scott did, at times, go to great lengths in interviews to clearly state that Wallinger played no part in the writing of the piece (although I can find no evidence of Wallinger ever claiming it as his own) but that does show how much he left his mark on the recording. It is a track full of little sonic explosions, fantastically so when the lyric sings “came like a comet, blazing your trail” and the crash of a speeding collision pre-empts the first appearance of a saxophone, demonstrating how fully locked into the studio creativity Wallinger was at this point. But it would not even last to the end of that year, as the Waterboys made a left turn into the world of Irish folk music and Karl departed to form World Party with Mike blowing a farewell kiss in his best ‘How Do You Sleep’ style with a sarcastic sounding song of the same name; “climb your own peak, find a new streak, get yourself along to the World Party”.   

During the late 80s/90s period that followed, there is a compelling argument that says Karl’s band were far more in tune with the prevailing winds of the period than Mike’s. Listening today, World Party music actually sounds ahead of its time, quite something when one recalls how back then accusations of sounding a little too retro were levelled whilst all around the faux-psychedelia of the ‘second summer of love’ and the ‘daisy age’ were in full bloom and celebrated by a music press rather more impressed by sixties-referencing music if it was stitched to a dance culture aesthetic and backed by the ubiquitous funky-drummer sample. Wallinger’s genius was evident in how he recognized production values and analogue sounds from thirty years previous as the design classic they, later in the Britpop era, became acknowledged as being and simply used that as his studio canvas. He was no mere Beatles and Dylan obsessive though, the influence of Prince always loomed large in the work of a similarly gifted multi-instrumentalist who always took care of the lions share of playing in his studio work. Lyrically too, his environmental concerns can no longer be dismissed as the hippy-leaning idealism of a man indulging in too much blue sky thinking; indeed, everything he sang about sounds like front page news in 2024.

The execution on the albums he made sounds absolutely flawless today, not least on 1990’s classic ‘Goodbye Jumbo’. It really is worthy of the word ‘classic’ too, boasting a timelessness due to the creation being undertaken with zero intention of merely photocopying sounds of the past, far more realizing the sonic treatment each and every song required and it just so happens that, unusually for any record, every song is a must hear. Recordings remain bursting with untapped potential on ‘Goodbye Jumbo’ where songs like ‘Is It Too Late?,’ ‘When The Rainbow Comes’ and the gorgeous ‘Sweet Soul Dream’ are guaranteed to enjoy extended lives in the hands of TV and film producers for years to come. As messed up as the music business can seem to be, there is a satisfying tendency for the great stuff to rise to the top eventually in many cases. Karl continued to release World Party albums for the rest of the 90s and deservedly won some financial security after Robbie Williams covered his 1997 song ‘She’s The One’, something that, regardless of his mixed feelings about the cover version, he must have felt grateful for when health issues began in 2001, pre-empting only intermittent music releasing and performing activity for the rest of his life. The catalogue he did leave behind though is overflowing with wonderful music and I cannot over emphasize this enough. Occasionally a music related death stops me in my tracks with a sense of oh no, we have lost a good one here (Elliott Smith and Lou Reed spring to mind from the past twenty or so years) and this same feeling has returned with the passing of Karl Wallinger. This month’s playlist therefore has a few representations that hint at the incredible range of his legacy…

This months playlist is headed up by The Zutons, a band that I am more than a little excited to find are returning after being mostly inactive for the past fifteen years. It just so happened that my record shop took in a rare original vinyl copy of their 2004 debut album these past couple of weeks, ‘Who Killed The Zutons’, which was online for less than a day before someone had snapped it up. Luckily, before the sale and largely because there were a few surface scuff marks on the record, I had to play test it before listing it for sale. It played great and just reminded me what a stonking debut album that was twenty years ago. Hence the inclusion of a classic from that album to get this playlist started.

The new material the band are returning with sounds pretty special too if what I have heard already is anything to go by. I do recall how exciting it was when they first appeared, seemingly another classic band from Liverpool (and this was only a short while after The Coral first surfaced) already developed and producing brilliant music. I knew John Peel at the time and can remember him holding their debut album in his hands saying how fantastic the band were and complaining that record companies such as theirs no longer sent him releases like that for free so he had to go out and buy his own copy. To be fair, he probably wasn’t being sent them because they knew he would be unlikely to play it. The Zutons were a Radio One daytime playlist band from the word go and Peel was always reluctant to play much music that was already getting exposure elsewhere. Still, it is worth noting that he rated The Zutons, especially given his high opinion of other Liverpool greats and of course, he was right.

Within a couple of years The Zutons world changed indelibly when Amy Winehouse covered their ‘Valerie’ making it, almost instantly, one of the most popular and familiar songs of the decade. It is hard to not believe that this must have had a demotivating effect on the band, especially with all the financial security that singer Dave McCabe, by his own recent admission, still enjoys to this day. It could indeed be the reason that, as of today, there are only a frustratingly paltry three Zutons albums to look out for. But, that is about to change, maybe this time they can stick around for the long run…

I seem to have spent the month of January in the most stimulating song exchange with a close friend which has had the knock on effect of keeping me away from listening to anything new. Instead I have been delving back into my extensive lists of archived playlists and music libraries trying to pick out whatever appropriate response song I can lay my hands on. Putting together the monthly playlist today the temptation was to just compile a 75 track summary of the back and forth of tunes we have been sparring with but the majority of them have appeared in previous monthly playlists and so, as my rule is a song only gets included once, I have had to do a speedy late sweep of new music missed in 2024 so far alongside other older tunes that were languishing in the in-tray.

Considering this state of affairs, it is actually quite pleasing to end up with another five hour list that is as fresh sounding and far reaching as this. It helps that some of my enduring, ever dependable favourites are dropping new music in plentiful amounts; names like Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, Hurray For The Riff Raff and Nadine Shah are back with superb renewed perspectives and there is even a brand new song by Billy Joel. In tandem with that, my recent obsessions with Cleo Sol and Blossom Dearie show no sign of abating whilst alongside all this I am about to reignite an old alliance with a close vinyl dealing friend and potentially get involved with clearing a house of some three thousand records. Keep an eye on the Fruit Tree Records store on Discogs to see if that all comes to pass. For now, watch out for the return of my Fresh Juice posts for the one thing my end of the month hoovering up of missed tunes has proved is this, there is a lot of exciting new music to be getting excited about as 2024 revs up…

As readers of my accompanying piece for the December playlist are aware, I have no shortage of available archive / vintage music to explore in my daily life and often a new obsession can lead to months of ongoing discovery and musical joy. Many people my age seem to have suspended their listening habits around their teenage years and much beyond their twenties they do not keep up with (not a statement that applies to my close music listening friends I should add). I even know a few serious record collectors who are perfectly happy just sticking to a past genre like Northern Soul or Acid Jazz or Seventies Prog and letting that journey uncover their thrills. I occasionally ponder whether I would be capable of going through a new release dry spell, all too aware that there is now more than enough already recorded music that I am going to love waiting for me to hear.

The problem with that would be that I do not appreciate just one or two styles of music. I would still be riding the genre waves, not anchored to one specific stream. And that being the case, I would invariably come across new present-day music. And as this latest playlist reveals in clarity, I am going to hear music that I will love and need to find out more about. I cannot imagine hearing any of the tracks on this playlist and turning a deaf ear to them because I am not interested in contemporary music. It is unthinkable. That means I would not be alert and alive to the sensational Cleo Sol, that alone is a circumstance that I cannot give any consideration to. Not only that but to deny myself recent music would be to also miss out on the live experience. As much as that remains an outlet rife with its own annoyances (over loud gig chatter, people not in the moment as they pointlessly capture mobile phone footage) in the average year there will be more than enough soul stirring performances to easily outweigh the negatives. Every once in a while, you catch something life changing.

So, I do not see a time when I will ever be indifferent to new music. Every January for a while now I have used the first monthly playlist of the year to round up my top tracks from the previous twelve months that escaped inclusion. And every year I end up pleasantly surprised at how easy the selection process is, I am simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contenders to pick from. If there ever comes a year when there are a lack of choices or getting up to seventy-five tracks is like arduous work, then maybe that will be the right moment to step back from the fresh juice. But I do not see that happening. I do not regard my tastes as representing anything remotely mainstream however, if my favourites were so ridiculously niche then there would not be so much of this stuff around. It is good to cast your net wide and it can be rewarding when you uncover something that is outside the popular consciousness. Just as much though, it is vital to have no rules and be ready to be excited by the unexpected. That is why you see an Olivia Rodrigo song in this list, that red alert explosion when you hear something for the first time and shout “bloody hell that’s brilliant” is so important.

Without that penetrative moment, I doubt any of us music obsessives would exist, we would all be satisfied with sticking on a supermarket CD at Christmas and partying annually like it’s 1994 (or whatever your peak younger year might be). For me I could never lock music away in a cupboard like that. It is not a background to other activities; it is not something I only need at parties and neither is it my nostalgia shelf. It is my primary artform, a vessel that lights up my life every single day. It is more important than movies, more accessible than books, more of a life crutch than my favourite football and cricket teams. Simply, it is the only thing that makes me feel happy, sad, blue, ecstatic, nostalgic, thrilled, amused and delighted; that moves me both emotively and physically; that can simultaneously induce tears of sadness and delight; the art form than can bring the past vividly back into the present moment or paint a clearer vision of the future. It is everything and the way it works its powers on the human emotions are mystical, it has a power that is almost magical. It is hard to imagine this ride ever losing momentum while I breathe. Let 2024 commence…