#1 - David Thomas Broughton - Ever Rotating Sky
No doubt in my mind whatsoever about this being the number one.
I think one of my biggest problems with music criticism is that when you read a gushing 10/10 review, no matter how well argued and written, I struggle to understand how anyone can write sufficiently about something with such a rating. It’s not a problem with art viewed as being perfect - songs to come and songs way posted back here I would describe as perfect - but, as pretentious as it sounds/is, records like David Thomas Broughton’s The Complete Guide To Insufficiency go way beyond perfection to a place where words are, ahem, insufficient - a theme that’s come up throughout Don’t Make Lists but is fittingly no more true when describing this. I’ll try my best.
The closer to my favourite record ever made, it perhaps only works in context rather than a standalone piece. Context in this case being the entire album and seeing Broughton perform live. You might view this as a flaw but this was never supposed to be some zeitgeisty definitive or consensus-calculating top 365 but rather one pretty bad writer with nothing better to do. And the context is completely there for me; listening to this record a thousand times, following the man around every tiny nook and cranny in Leeds and later seeing him stun larger audiences in support slots for Shearwater and Twi The Humble Feather.
Having said that, this couldn’t be a better introduction and I hope that if you’re introduced to this it clicks half as much as it does for me. Ever Rotating Sky itself is a Reichian masterpiece, a blend of drone and experimentalism mixed with the traditional folk song to create something unparalleled. The calm of what can be loosely described as a looping chorus eventually descending into a chaos of a glorious mix of vocals, guitar, drum machines and natural finger-on-wood percussion. Recorded in a single take in Leeds’ Wrangthorn church.
If with this year-long project just one person discovers David Thomas Broughton, it’s been entirely worth it. Thanks so much for reading.
