The Listening Club - 22nd May 2016

Hey there,

Hope all is good and well with you all. In the midst of a gigorama weekend here in Amsterdam, as I mentioned, seeing LV on Friday, and Radiohead & Holly Herndon last night, all flipping great. Tonight off to conclude the weekend with Plaid and The Southbank Gamelan Players, which should be equally wunderbar, I hope.

Note that next week, being end of the month, could be a vortex - however, as we seem to be struggling a bit for decent original themes, I think it best that we make the vortexes optional from now on - if someone's got a good idea, please shout it out and we'll see if it floats, but if not, we'll carry on with regular picks. Seem fair? I hope so.

Last week @RougeForever folked us with her pick of Eliza Carthy's "Neptune", which hit the Sunday spot with most folks. Many thanks to Liz for the pick and for flipping the frisbee across the room to @MrHig, who is, natch, here with this week's intro...

"Are any of us the culmination of all our potential at birth? How about upon reaching adulthood? All we ever do is change, and that's a necessary thing, something to be welcomed, even celebrated. Even to someone like me who is deathly afraid of change of any sort. I see who I am now, conceptually at least, as the best version of myself. It's a pleasant ideal anyway. Looking back at yourself a few years back, a decade back, a few decades back… cringing should be the natural impulse. Just as you're never the pinnacle of what you can be, and looking back at yourself in a few years time, you'll probably recoil in awkwardness at who you are now.

I had a few possible options for my pick this time. I had an initial thought, dismissed it, dithered between two other options (those of you who saw my Twitter poll about Americana Folk and Baroque Pop will now know what that was about, if it wasn't clear at the time), before, eventually, returning to my first instinct.

Because, not to put to fine a point on it, when I was trying to choose between the other options I could feel something wasn't right and it wasn't the way things were meant to be. The real choice - the only option, really - was staring me in the face the whole time.

So this week's pick is about metamorphosis, about transformation, about improvement, about realisation, about being the best version of yourself, about being true to who you've always known you are, instinctually.

It's also Baroque Pop (with a bit of soul thrown in). Sorry about that."

Okaydoke. Direct download is here, and the HearThis stream is...


Hope to see you at 8pm BST (GMT+1)