Yes

This song, Yes by McAlmont & Butler, came out in mid- May 1995. In eighteen months time it will be thirty years old, which seems ridiculous- as does the idea that the mid- 90s are now three decades ago. Bernard Butler and David McAlmont had both left their previous bands in acrimony, Bernard walking out of Suede and David out of Thieves, and when they bumped into each other, in the Jazz Cafe in Camden, both were looking for some kind of statement to announce their return and to kick back against their former bandmates. Bernard had written the song as an instrumental and was coming out of 'a very dark place'. It was , he has said, 'a very liberating song'. McAlmont had a verse and the voice of an angel. Between them they recorded this enormous piece of 60s inspired, Wall of Sound pop music, a song to be sung loudly and in that sweet spot between anger and celebration. 

Yes

I turned 25 four days after Yes was released. Isaac would have been 25 this week had he lived. When I heard Yes last week it struck a chord with me, a song about survival and sticking up two fingers to the world, but sitting here typing this now, three days before Isaac's birthday, I'm not sure I do feel that much better. It still feels really shit. 

Yes, to paraphrase McAlmont, I do need November to be over. 

David McAlmont has recorded an album with Hifi Sean, a producer, songwriter, musician and DJ and also the former/ current singer of The Soup Dragons. Their album Happy Ending came out either last year or this year- the full vinyl release was this year so I think it counts as a 2023 album- and is a joy from start to finish, a beautiful stew of dance rhythms, synths, Bollywood strings, pulsing bass, piano and McAlmont's extraordinary voice. A psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack according to Last Night From Glasgow, and they ain't wrong. 

All In The World

Happy Ending

Hifi Sean and David McAlmont's album Happy Ending finally got its full release last Friday, after months of hold ups at the vinyl pressing plants, three singles as teasers, a limited vinyl release last year (I was lucky enough to get a copy a few months ago) and recently a free to download lyric booklet. However you have received it, in whatever format, it has been well worth the wait, one of the 2023's best albums already. 

Hifi Sean, former Soup Dragon now DJ, producer and remixer, had an album out in 2018, an album with multiple guest vocalists ranging from Yoko Ono to Bootsy Collins and Alan Vega. David McAlmont guested on Like Josephine Baker and this was clearly the starting point of a beautiful working relationship. Sean's music conjures up a 21st century psychedelic soul soundtrack, with sweeping Bollywood strings on six of the songs, recorded in Bangalore, clubby drums, driving basslines, gorgeous soaring melodies and David's startling voice. The opening song and title track Happy Ending is seven minutes of glorious music, starting with found sound and voices before the drums kick in and a Motown bassline starts pushing and then the strings gliding up and down... and then McAlmont joins in, an angelic but world weary voice, singing of 'good outcomes and happy endings/ where do you want to start?'

Happy Ending is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Over the next four sides of vinyl/ twelve songs they repeat the trick time and time again, a perfect collection of songs that really need to be heard and appreciated as an album, tackling the big topics from racism and Black Lives Matter as those protests unfolded following the death of George Floyd in 2020 to the gay nightlife hedonism of Hurricanes, to Sean writing during the midst of a breakdown, trying to rebuild his life. Beautiful is the kind of life affirming adult pop music we all need to hear on those days when getting up and out just doesn't seem worth the effort. Viva Hifi Sean, David McAlmont and happy endings. 

Maybe

I read an interview with Nick Cave where he spoke about the music he's been enjoying recently, the grown up pop music of the early 70s, songs like Wichita Lineman, Suspicious Minds, Always On My Mind, Galveston, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and artists like Elvis, Jimmy Webb, Kris Kristofferson and Glen Campbell. Nothign too groundbreaking there maybe but as Nick says 'big, classic, grand themes'. The interviewer, Sean O'Hagen, added, 'those songs still sound so ambitious- the lyrical sophistication, the melodies, the arrangements. They do seem to belong to another time, another world though...'.

It made me think of the songs Hifi Sean and David McAlmont have released this year (and the album that's due next year) which have something of that scale about them- the grand themes and the ambition- coupled with the feel of some of the music of the 90s when house music/ dance music infiltrated the mainstream, dance beats and orchestras were used side by side. Their record label are calling it 'a psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack'. Sean's programmed drums, production and the strings are magical and sumptuous, music to bathe in. David's vocals soar on top. 

In April they released  The Skin I'm In. I thought I'd posted it previously but apparently not. The sort of song that works its way under your skin, David singing of social injustice and racism.

Maybe  came out in June, a soaring, giddy, wide eyed song with the message that 'anyone can fall in love'. Music with grand themes and ambition. 

Augustus

The National Portrait Gallery contains this painting of Augustus John (by William Orpen). I like Augustus John- the most technically gifted painter of Edwardian England, generally thought to have wasted his talent or not fulfilled it, and a man with an interesting life, some of it scandalising the Edwardians with his bohemian lifestyle, boozing and unconventional living arrangements. The National Portrait Gallery is a fantastic gallery, not at all stuffy or staid, well laid out and full of interesting art- it even held the interest of some of my 6th form students for a while. And it's free. There's a Man Ray exhibition opening next week as well which I want to get back dahn sarf for before the end of May.

I posted a song by 90s folktronic outfit Ultramarine a couple of weeks ago. This one features the vocals of David McAlmont (what happened to him?). There was a version with Kevin Ayres singing it too which I think I've got somewhere, lying around on a hardrive.

Hymn

Yes

I'm voting Yes in tomorrow's Alternative Vote referendum. Although public interest has been minimal and turnout may be lucky to reach 30% the campaign has been nasty, bitchy and full of lies. Par for the course with party versus party and some party's split internally I suppose. The No campaign has been particularly shitty, one set of posters round here presenting it as a choice between an alternative voting system and a new maternity ward/ equipment for soldiers. I don't think that's the choice is it? One of the main reasons I'm voting Yes is because I can't bring myself to vote the same way as David 'Call me Dave' Cameron on anything and if so many Tories are against it, it must be the right thing to do. Of course there are other reasons but let's not weigh ourselves down with them here and now.

This is Yes by McAlmont And Butler, a coalition from 1995, a glorious, swooping, wide-screen song with huge vocals from The Right Hon. David McAlmont and very un-Suede like instrumentation from Lord of the Privy Guitar Bernard Butler.

http://download230.mediafire.com/56oj980s3gog/3umx7vcvdvbpv7n/01+Yes.wma