VARIOUS ARTISTS - NEW MUSIC

Reviews for Various Artists albums which consist of (at least mostly) brand new music, artists being requested to come together for one reason or cause or another and to contribute brand new songs for the purpose.
• 2005: Help!: A Day in the Life
• 2020: Lost Christmas: A Festive Memphis Industries Selection Box

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HELP!: A DAY IN THE LIFE

1) Coldplay - How You See the World No. 2; 2) Razorlight - Kirby's House; 3) Radiohead - I Want None of This; 4) Keane & Faultline - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; 5) Emmanuel Jal - Gua; 6) Gorillaz - Hong Kong; 7) Manic Street Preachers - Leviathan; 8) The Kaiser Chiefs - I Heard It Through the Grapevine; 9) Damien Rice - Cross-Eyed Bear; 10) The Magic Numbers - Gone Are the Days; 11) Tinariwen - Cler Achel; 12) The Coral - It Was Nothing; 13) Mylo - Mars Needs Women; 14) Maximo Park - Wasteland; 15) Elbow - Snowball; 16) Bloc Party - The Present; 17) Hard-Fi - Help Me Please; 18) The Go! Team - Phantom Broadcast; 19) Babyshambles - From Bollywood to Battersea; 20) George & Antony - Happy Christmas, War Is Over

A charity album turned scene compilation, mid-00s UK in a thrilling nutshell.

War Child - a UK-based charity established to aid children in war-torn regions - at one point in time realised that charity music compilations are an excellent way to raise funds for good causes, especially if you actually give the artists free reins rather than go for jolly charity singles. 1995 saw the release of War Child's first collection The Help Album, and since then the charity have been periodically releasing collections of brand new music to raise awareness and money, focusing on the current and contemporary artists of the given year the release comes out, each of whom contribute something new and unheard - whatever they want.

Because of the way they come about, War Child albums have inadvertently become snapshots of the British music scene of whichever time period one gets released in. The Help Album united the biggest names in and around Britpop as well the nascent threads of pre-millennium anxiety that was about to take over, becoming one of the decade's definitive various artist compilations if you're in any way that taste inclined. In 2005, on the tenth anniversary of the original release, the official sequel Help!: A Day in the Life acted as a similar definition of where British music was in the mid-00s: the rise of the new art rock scene, the oversaturation of landfill indie, the masters of yore exploring new paths and the mashing of other sounds and genres into the traditionally British songwriting, represented here through the twenty songs. Besides the returning veterans (Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers, Damon Albarn by way of Gorillaz) and the few then-upcoming future stars (Bloc Party, Elbow, The Go! Team), looking at the tracklist is a right blast in the past, glowing with names that at one point in time meant something but now have been lost completely in time: The Magic Numbers, Mylo, The Coral, etc, etc. If you want to know what music in the UK sounded like in 2005, Help!: A Day in the Life is practically a Nuggets compilation.

Each War Child selection comes with a gimmick and the one for Help! was that each song was recorded, produced and released within the same 24 hours, taking advantage of the growing digital download market (the CD arrived a little later). Given the circumstances, it's really surprising just how much effort nearly everyone involved has put in - maybe realising that going for zero effort in a charity compilation probably isn't cool, not that it stopped Babyshambles whose "From Bollywood to Battersea" is exactly the kind of "pub's closing in five, let's call it a day" garbage they were synonymous with (why we ever as a species thought Pete Doherty should have a record deal, I've no idea). Coldplay recycle a prior Japanese bonus track off X&Y and call it 'No.2' (though the differences are so minor I can't even detect them), but at least it's a good song, and Chris Martin sounds downright angry at one point in it which is a surprising turn of events. A number of artists also turn in covers, which isn't too unexpected: The Kaiser Chiefs turn "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" into a laddy pub disco anthem (shudder), Keane's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" sounds like a Keane song, and Boy George and Anohni dueting on John Lennon's "Happy Xmas" is some kind of a LGBT fever dream that strangely works, Ending the album on a Christmas song (and let's remember this was released in autumn originally) is a bit off-kilter and out of everything on the record it screams "charity album" the most, but there's sincerity and warmth in the makeshift duo's performance that closes the record in an unexpectedly poignant way.

It's the original material that keeps me coming back to this record though. The artists I already knew and loved are in strong form, with Manics previewing their imminent return to guitar riffs with the fiery and frivolent (those handclaps!) "Leviathan", Elbow's "Snowball" is full of barely restrained anger as Guy Garvey fantasises over the ghosts of war-killed innocents coming back to haunt Tony Blair over a deceptively pretty melody which by the end has morphed into a villain song, The Go! Team's "Phantom Broadcast" is a delightful Bollywood spaghetti Western theme, and the contemplative "Hong Kong" is one of my favourite Gorillaz songs and absolutely worth looking up for anyone who enjoys Demon Days. I don't think anyone else in Radiohead but Yorke ever even knew "I Want None of This" existed and it's certainly no "Lucky" (their original The Help Album contribution), but Yorke mashing his piano hauntingly is always engaging to at least some degree. Meanwhile the "forgotten" artists remind why they did inspire budding fanbases in one point in time - The Magic Numbers have always left me a little cold but "Gone Are the Days" genuinely makes me wish I'd love them because it's such a jubilantly lovely summer number, and Mylo's "Mars Needs Women" is a fun slice of mid-00s hipster house. Even the pub rock acts I could barely stomach back in the day cause me to question my 2000s self, courtesy Razorlight's "Kirby's House" and Hard-Fi's "Help Me Please" - both more engaging and inspired than anything else I've ever heard from the two acts, as if the mere presence of the more esteemed peers pushed them further (both acts also re-recorded these songs for their follow-up albums, which means even they were impressed by the tracks).

Not all here is gold and that's just the nature of twenty-track various artists compilations, and the slightly less exciting cuts most of the time pick up enough power through their peers that they work in the flow, next to a lot of great music from acts that may not have crossed your mind for eons. The thing is, I bought this for pennies for the sole purpose of nabbing a few non-album tracks off artists I like and yet it's turned out to be something very different: a rock solid scene compilation. The 2000s were when I really took off as a music fan and my attention was very heavily focused in the British music media and independent scene; Help!: A Day in the Life brings me right back to that time period, of online fanzines and forums, of hype machine going up and down on each new act. It was a genuinely exciting and fertile period for British music, and the wild and varied sounds and accents of this compilation represents it incredibly well.

Physically: Jewel case, with liner notes going into detail about the concept behind the album and who War Child are and what they do.

LOST CHRISTMAS: A FESTIVE MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES SELECTION BOX

1) Field Music - Home for Christmas; 2) Haley - Like Ice and Cold; 3) Warm Digits - Good Enough for You This Christmas; 4) Rachael Dadd - We Build Our Houses Well (with Rozi Plain and Kate Stables); 5) Stats - Christmas Without You; 6) The Phoenix Foundation - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; 7) Francis Lung - To Make Angels in Snow; 8) Jesca Hoop - White Winter Hymnal; 9) The Go! Team - Look Outside (A New Year's Coming); 10) The Cornshed Sisters - Have a Good Christmas Time

Sentimental, feel-good indie Christmas music - for once!

As someone who loves both Christmas and "indie" music, I've listened to my fair share of seasonal non-mainstream releases over the course of my time on this earth (and certainly since they became bizarrely popular in a post-Sufjan landscape) and let me tell you what - it's not easy to find one that sounds like we're celebrating one of the best times of the year. Many artists in the indie spectrum specialise in melancholy or straight-up depressed Christmas music - sometimes with a wink and tongue lodged firmly in cheek as they knowingly cater to the sad banger crowd, sometimes genuinely wanting to dig into that hidden sadness that surprisingly many ye olde Christmas classics carry under their winter coats. That kind of soft melancholy can be oddly cosy, suitable for those quiet evenings when you reminisce on Christmases past or you're winding down from the current one. But downbeat is downbeat, no matter how much tinsel you put on top of it - as evidenced by the many snide questions I've had about why I'm listening to such depressing music at Christmas.

Lost Christmas was born from sad events - the UK label Memphis Industries had to cancel their annual Christmas event due to COVID, and instead in its place the label decided to issue a compilation of new and borrowed material from willing acts in their roster. Despite the less than optimal change of plans and the title, Lost Christmas has turned out to be one of the rare Christmas albums of its ilk that genuinely sound like they welcome the season. It's happy. It has the kind of warmth that comes from genuine excitement for the season, wrapped with a bow of bittersweet but comforting nostalgia and coated with the tinsel of adulthood reality in comfortable measures. Even when the lyrics aren't necessarily excited about the Big Day, they still glow with a careful positivity: "Good Enough for You This Christmas" only hopes that whatever can be done do on the day is something special after the trials of 2020 ("it won't be perfect - it's still worth it!"), while "Look Outside (A New Year's Coming)" skips Santa entirely and raises its view towards the next year and better times in the horizon. That optimism is really resonant.

There are a few lesser songs in Lost Chrismas' short but sweet half-hour-ish run time - The Phoenix Foundation's twee robot take on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is probably the least essential inclusion but it raises a little smile nonetheless, and Jesca Hoop joining the push on making "White Winter Hymnal" a seasonal classic doesn't quite do it for me - and to be honest, I blame a lot of that on hearing British TV personality Alexander Armstrong covering it for his Christmas album and instantly gentrifying the song as a result. But even with Hoop's song, the sneaky interpolation of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" it secretly contains within is masterfully done and lifts the song up. Both turn out to be minor imperfections on what is otherwise a real treats selection. Some acts bat for team sentimental (Haley and their gentle acoustic landscape, the magic winter wonderland of Rachael Dadd) and others for holiday cheer (Field Music's Christmas musical opener, Stats' karaoke funk, the carefully romantic Francis Lung), and what they share between one another is a lot of heart and plenty of hooks. Memphis Industries' roster is full of quirky but delightful indie pop, and the acts selected here represent that really well.

The undisputed high points here are the aforementioned and gloriously swooning "Good Enough for You This Christmas" by Warm Digits and The Go! Team's very Go! Team-esque "Look Outside (A New Year's Coming"), both of which have already become Flintcore holiday staples. They're stunningly perfect pop songs that adorn themselves in big melodies and a larger-than-life pop bombast and, they carry a kind of earnestness in term that really makes a great Christmas song; no empty clichés, but an appreciation for the feeling of the season, whatever exactly that is for each person. The Cornshed Sisters close the selection beautifully with another now-favourite: "Have a Good Christmas Time" is a cosy dressing gown, cup of warm glögi in hand and an idyllic fireplace crackling in the background, bidding Christmas evening to a good night with a gently-sung lullaby. It's wonderfully feel-good and like comfort food, and appeals to my soppy yuletide heart. The quiet Christmas greetings at the end are the only time Lost Christmas succumbs into real cheese, and honestly - it's perfect and I'll allow it.

That slightly cheesy happiness, the cosiness - it all hits the spot because (and obvious thing is obvious) I am a Christmas romantic: I've had the pleasure and privilege of having grown in a household where Christmas was considered a special time full of traditions and family closeness, and that's carried over to my own adult days. While I love my weird and wallowing holiday hits, I didn't realise how large of a gap there was in my collection in terms of music that actually reflects my own feelings towards Christmas in tune and tone, even if not always in lyric. Lost Christmas has filled that gap by surprise and it's now an essential holiday listen for me - and with the added bonus of it being one I can actually put on in the background without raising too many eyebrows from others. It came in the wake of a rough year for many, and it was made to lift people's spirits again when many of us were denied from spending the season the way we wanted to. In December 2021 - the time of writing this - we're still facing some of those trials and tribulations, but Lost Christmas is still here to glow up the room with cheer for all for at least its precious 34 minutes, still bright.

Physically: Nothing, no CD release exists which makes me very annoyed given the quality of this thing, and I will probably pester the label yearly about it until they cave in just to appease my inane obsession. You've been warned.