If I were to do the traditional top ten albums of the year awards everybody else does, Stalagmite Steeple from Returned to the Earth, the creation of Robin Peachey alongside his brother Steve and Paul Johnston, would be a strong contender in the top three. As it is, with the way I do things, this seminal album about Covid, its impact, and wider societal issues, has won two awards, the first a joint winner of “epic track of 2024”. As it happens, this incredible title track is a couple of seconds short of the ten minute mark, but it’s my website, so I am able to make my own rules up, and ignore VAR!

To quote from my review:

Staring from the window, seeing the steeple in the mists of a befogged mind, and this is at the heart of this gorgeous piece, the loss of a human personality, piano, guitar, orchestration achingly sad, the guitar work especially emotive, with the keys soaring above in a lament for a life and the circumstances in which it ends, the loneliness as the world outside is shut and she looks into another life, the orchestration really bringing this to the fore alongside Robin’s guitar work which is simply marvellous, the collective cleverly bringing the intensity up several notches without you really noticing until it hits you in the final fifth, some delicate choral noises serving as a perfect backdrop to the guitar crying above the band pushing matters along. Simply brilliant, and a contender for the epic of the year on this website’s annual awards (we can forgive the couple of seconds!).