Alabaster DePlume, aka Mancunian Gus Fairbairn, has been an antically charming performer, confounding unsuspecting crowds with tenderly comic philosophy, voice Tiny Tim-eccentric yet alive to mental fragility, and attuning listeners to the brave possibilities in their every breath. Operating at a quizzical angle to London’s jazz scene, he surfs his own, sui generis wavelength.
Working with West Bank Palestinian musicians in Bethlehem during the Gaza War had clearly changed DePlume in gigs in Brighton and Norway’s Moldejazz festival, and A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole. He sometimes attained elevated communion with the crowd, suspended in surprise and grace. He played Brighton’s Concorde 2 as child starvation took Israel’s initially retaliatory war beyond balancing equivalence to Hamas’s October 7 atrocities. Humour was subordinate to DePlume’s declarations of genocide, an uncompromising, even maddened purpose which confronted one example of 2025’s ruthless nationalism and militarism, and surged with unreasonable power. This activism was embodied in the self-taught, sinuous vibrato of his tenor sax and redeemed for every listener by sublime melodic warmth, on stage and vinyl.
The record’s “Prayer For My Sovereign Dignity” builds in ritualistic waves, centred on the truly prayerful sax’s softly ecstatic expression of a Middle Eastern sound seeming Jewish as much as Arab, rising from a well of sorrow. The bittersweet weight of mourning could be a kaddish. “This Is My Garden” encompasses universal self-worth applicable to Gaza, the Donbas, Sudan or the ashes of Israeli kibbutzim, as sax and piano weave intimate, healing bonds and make a mighty, defiant stand. Strings and dub inflections add to DePlume’s most timely and moving album.
Elsewhere, Pulp came back with More, seemingly taped by a band cryogenically frozen after Different Class (1995) yet awakening with rueful middle-aged knowledge, maturely hymning married and parental love alongside memories of seedy frustration. Index for Working Musik and Insecure Men were among younger bands finding their own self-created culture in rock music, still a matter of life and death.
Three More Essential Albums of 2025
Pulp – More
The Saints – Long March Through the Jazz Age
Index For Working Musik – Which Direction Goes the Beam
Musical Experiences of the Year
Charles Lloyd’s Sky Quartet, Jazztopad Festival, Wrocław, Poland. The 87-year-old saxophonist had already broken his audience open with songs steeped in jazz and blues verities before ending with “God Only Knows”, which left me weeping.
Insecure Men, 100 Club, London. Formerly of Fat White Family, Saul Adamczewski rebuilt himself from recent trauma with each minute of this intimate, impassioned country-soul revue.
Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts, BST, Hyde Park, London. Headlining over Van Morrison and Cat Stevens on a baking summer’s day, Young’s generous mix of hits and deep cuts cohesively responded to Trump and other tyrannies, proffering peace and love.
Track of the Year
"Grown Ups", Pulp. Jarvis’s horror at adult stasis and diminished dreams rang true for older listeners: “And soon it will be time/For some more food…”
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