The Listening Club - 18th December 2022

Hey folks,

Hope you're all doing fine. Last regular #LC of 2022 tonight, which has turned out to be a little more tumultuous a year than most of us would have liked, I'd say. We return on Sunday 8th January with the customary #festivevortex, which requires one of two of your favourite tunes of 2022 to be sent this way (dropbox details to follow), so get your thinking caps on...

All that remains for me is to wish you all a highly enjoyable holiday season, whatever you decide to get up to, and to thank you for sticking around here to participate in our sessions this year (and especially to @saucer, @akx and @JimMcCauley for #vortex work), it's really been a lot of fun, and it would not be the same without you, natch.

Last Sunday it was m'self @kleptones in the chair, blending past and present with Nancy Mounir's "Nozhet El Nofous", which I'm pleased to report went down pretty good with the assembled. All that remained was to flip the frisb over to @woj, who has this to say about tonight's pick...

"The end of the year approaches and all that comes with it: holidays, the longest night of the year (or the shortest as the case may be), and, of course, year-end lists. As a result, this past week, I've been going back and forth between picking something festive, picking something from my favo(u)rite albums of 2022, and picking something off someone else's best-of-2022 list. After the requisite hemming and hawing, settled on the third option as (1) one person's festive is another person's depressive and (2) I still haven't listened to everything that came out in 2022 that I've been meaning to listen to so don't really know what my faves of the year are yet. Plus, having done this sort of pick before, it's actually pretty fun to do!So, after trawling through a few non-corporate magazines and blogs lists, I selected this album purely based on the blurb that this particular blogger wrote to describe it. Except to spot-check the audio, I've not listened to it and don't even know if I like it, nevermind if it is actually good or not! But I hope it is because the description is promising:

"It seems like each year you can count on just a small handful of incredible albums by artists you've never heard of before to emerge, seemingly from out of nowhere (actually it's usually Canada), vivid and fully formed, familiar and warm, destined to become lifelong favorites. The stunning debut full-length from Toronto's [REDACTED] is officially one of those rare gems for 2022. It's one of the most beautiful and affecting things you'll hear this year, as [REDACTED] imbues these timeless, heartbreakingly poignant songs with a graceful levity that only enhances the record's entrancing emotional pull."

I think it might have been the, "actually it's usually Canada," which tipped the scales for me.

So, sit back and ring out 2022's Listening Club with a mystery album that's a mystery to us all! I'll be listening along in a car somewhere between Newark and New Haven so won't be chatty today but will check in after I get home for sure..."

Right then, download's here, stream's below:

See you at 8pm GMT tonight.