Israel Philharmonic presents "Little Tchaikovsky", cond. Lahav Shani

Every year, the Vienna Philharmonic presents a New Year's Day concert of light music based around Strauss-family waltzes and polkas.  These concerts are legendary and are broadcast worldwide, reaching a viewership around 50 million people annually.   

This was essentially an unadvertised concert that didn't appear on their published schedule, with tickets sold to under-35's at a discount price.  The presumed goal was to capture a younger audience and turn them into more regular concert goers, present a different side of classical music other than the stuffy reputation that it usually gets, and bring a special holiday-type atmosphere to the concert hall in a manner that's worked so well in Vienna and elsewhere.  The results were a slam dunk success.  

The Nutcracker ballet is already a holiday classic around the world, and Tchaikovsky ballets basically transcend classical music (even people who think they don't know about classical music will recognize many of the melodies), so the theme makes plenty of sense.  This was far and away the best performance I've seen from Lahav Shani.  He might fancy himself a late Romantic/20th century specialist, but he's incendiary with "lighter" music, not only as a conductor but as an educator/entertainer.  He spoke with the crowd between pieces, and invited audience members to watch part of the performance on stage to "fulfill a dream" (which turned into an unexpected deluge of upwards of 50 people).  He came across more cool and approachable than he could ever be while conducting Stravinsky or Bruckner.  In a cute moment during the extended pizzicato during the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, he simply took a break from conducting and grabbed seat in the audience.  It drew waves of laughter, but many conductors wouldn't be willing to take themselves down a peg and display such a sense of humour.

The programme was brilliantly sequenced, beginning with three selections from the Nutcracker ballet -- Waltz of the Flowers, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and Dance of the Reed Flutes, each one delightful, each one recognizable to all.  This was followed by a selection from Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1, arranged for string orchestra, and a performance of the first movement of the Violin Concerto featuring soloist Michael Shaham, a young violinist making his debut with the orchestra.  The start was a bit rocky, but he pulled it together by the end.  Finally, following the aforementioned rush to the stage, the full orchestra performed the third and fourth movements of the Fourth Symphony.  The third movement was a lively delight, and the final movement was sufficiently fiery to get across the overall mood of the piece.  One unannounced encore later, and the concert was over in a trim 75 minutes (no intermission) and not a single person left without a smile on their face.      

Another year without a list

I used to obsess over my year-end lists, but now, I don't miss them in the least.  Non-listmaking friends and online acquaintances used to claim that lists were simply not their preferred method of judging the music they listened to.  I thought it was a giant cop-out.  If you love music, then you should stick your neck out for the stuff you've been championing all year long.  Well, I get it now.  Lists are really nothing more than a snapshot of where your head is at, a timely and in-time review of the year/decade as you saw it at the time.  In that sense, lists are essential.  But if you don't make those lists, then you can still document your thoughts in other ways.  On a blog, or on social media, and so on.  

Resident Advisor published a their best music of the past quarter-century.  My tastes are too outdated, so I didn't recognize most of the tracks on the tracks lists, even by the artists I'm familiar with.  It looked more like an artist representation list than a tracks list, with an outsized attempt to feature lesser-known tracks by well-known artists.  The albums list was more of my thing, perhaps the last major contemporary list that I'll truly be able to relate to.   I have still never heard the DJ Sprinkles album at #2 in full but I can't argue with its impact.  Burial's "Untrue" at #1 indeed felt inevitable.  

On the contemporary side, Philip Sherburne wrote about the top 30 electronic albums of 2025 for Pitchfork.  I haven't heard anything on it, but damn, Sherburne always makes everything seem so compelling.  There is truly not enough time to listen to all the music I love.  That Los Thuthanaka album really comes across as a must-hear.  

I have been deep into techno nostalgia -- the em:t discography, the Round One to Round Five compilation, the still mind-blowing In Order to Dance 5 compilation on R&S.   I could never write about contemporary music again, and churn out steady content based on reviews and recollections of old compilations, much like I did for the Spacemen 3 tribute CD.  On some days, I convince myself I should migrate to an all-nostalgia review format, possibly through video channels instead of through writing.  

Various, "A Tribute To Spacemen 3" (Rocket Girl)

I don't know why I have never written about this album before, seeing as it influenced my buying habits for years afterward.  If memory serves, this was my introduction to Bardo Pond and Low.  I had heard the names of both bands prior to this but had never heard their music.  I had never heard or heard of Flowchart or Transient Waves.  I spent considerable time tracking down nearly everything released by Flowchart, and Transient Waves' second, self-titled album is a long time favourite of mine, a psych-ambient masterpiece if there ever was one.  

Bowery Electric's "Things'll Never Be the Same" finds them hurtling headlong into their "Lushlife" phase, as the hazy "Beat"-like intro segues into the trip-hop influenced main section of the song.  The general idea is to create a shoegaze-like headspace without relying on a bank of guitars, and it succeeds.  As the opening track on the compilation, it sends a clear message -- this won't be a note for note pastiche of the source material.  

Asteroid #4's take on "Losing Touch With My Mind" transforms the original from a bludgeoning grind of guitars and feedback into a space-rock epic, full of windswept atmospherics and apathetic vocals that work perfectly in this context.  It wouldn't be right to say that these versions improve on the originals, rather, they've been updated and remodeled in a 90's post rock context.  That's exactly what you want from a tribute album -- fresh takes on older ideas.  Incidentally, Asteroid #4 are one of the few bands on this compilation whose albums I didn’t end up buying—mainly because I could never find them.

Mogwai's "Honey" is presented in the vein of their debut album, in particular, "Summer" is an accurate reference point with it's use of glockenspiel and quiet/loud contrasts.  I would have loved for them to take on a track that lends more to a maximalist approach, like "Walking With Jesus", but what we got is still fairly good.

Flowchart makes a lateral move with "Ode To Street Hassle", taking one of S3's weakest songs, tacking on a drum machine, and keeping more or less the same mood and feel.  It's one of the weaker tracks on the album, although I would still end up buying nearly everything Flowchart released and playing the daylights out of it.  Same for Accelera Deck's "I Believe It", although I never really connected to their version and never bought any more of their music. 

Arab Strap renders "Revolution" nearly unrecognizable by slowing the tempo and replacing the urgency of the lyrics by Aidan Moffat's incomprehensible mumbling.  Then they bring it all together in the end with a furious, wailing guitar outro and a jittery pseudo-dance beat fed through an amphetamine-laced drum machine.  But that's Arab Strap for you, it's all very much on brand.  

Shit gets taken to a new level on the next track, Bardo Pond's crushing version of "Call The Doctor".  Obscure trivia time: in 2002-3, noted pro wrestling asshole and trainee abuser Bill DeMott was getting a minor push in WWE.  His gimmick was that of a grumpy, veteran ass-kicking and he was using some kind of "doctor" nickname that I can't recall.  Well, somebody in the WWE's music department must have been looking for inspiration for a new theme song for DeMott, searched for "call the doctor" on file sharing services or wherever one would search for obscure music in 2002 pre-youtube, pre-streaming, stumbled across this Bardo Pond track, and figured what the hell, let's rip off this band that nobody's ever heard of.  That's the only explanation that makes sense, because these tracks couldn't be any more similar.  

Bardo Pond, "Call The Doctor"

Bill DeMott's theme, "No More Laughing"

Frontier's "Hey Man" is yet another space-rock masterpiece, quite similar to Asteroid #4 but even more into the outer reaches of the stratosphere.  The album makes another U-turn by following that with Low's "Lord, Can You Hear Me?", certainly the most Low-like S3 track and an excellent choice for them to cover.  

Amp’s "So Hot" is the most purely gorgeous track on the compilation, retaining all the lightness of the original while adding subtle, ethereal touches that make it feel almost folk-like and magical.  Amp were arguably the most underrated act in the Bristol post-rock scene, I never heard a bad note from them throughout their vast catalog.  And they're still active!

Piano Magic understood that "How Does It Feel" is, above all, about "feel"—the more you try to do with it, the worse it gets. So they let the track pulse and breathe and drift toward its understated conclusion. It’s exactly what the song needs, and it makes for a fine tribute to the original.

There's only one song from "Recurring" on this compilation, and it's Transient Waves' version of "Billy Whizz".  A bit of a tangent -- the Jason songs on "Recurring" all have horrible titles.  Thankfully he'd get much better in Spiritualized.  Transient Waves were a lovely band and this is an ambient rock lullaby, the perfect track to end the compilation with.  

This album was a huge influence on me, serving as a virtual "who's who" of Spacemen 3 disciples.  This is where the shoegaze-adjacent, psych-drenched post-rockers came to play and to carry on the Spacemen 3 tradition.  It blew my mind some twenty years ago and is still and powerful listen today.  Does anyone still remember it?  The recent shoegaze revival has more or less pushed this style of music into irrelevance. It now comes across as weak and wimpy, too self-absorbed—much like the criticisms leveled at the first wave of shoegazers, which was a major reason they fell out of favor by the mid-’90s.

One Shot with Ed Sheeran

Of course it’s an advertisement for his upcoming world tour, and yes, he surely got a boatload of money from Netflix for doing it. But set the cynicism aside—One Shot is ridiculously fun to watch: a fresh, challenging, and genuinely unique take on the “no camera cuts” concept. They brought in the team behind Adolescence to execute the vision and the logistics, and Sheeran absolutely delivers under what is, when you think about it, enormous pressure and uncertainty.

Even though he had multiple attempts (three full takes were filmed), so many things could have gone wrong. It takes a special performer to stay fully engaged, think fast on his feet, and not get flustered. Sure, plenty of moments were staged, but there are also interactions with the public that are clearly real and off-script. Then again, if you’re going to attempt something like this, who better than the musician who commands a stadium for two-plus hours solo night after night? The key word being “solo.”

The songs are great, the settings are wonderfully unconventional, Sheeran nails the persona (part affable megastar, part Pied Piper), the camerawork is exceptional, and I’m not sure anyone else of his generation could pull off this kind of “concert film”—although I’m sure some will try.