ifblog

Winning '11: 1 - Patrick Wolf

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000Z

Patrick Wolf - Lupercalia

The Magic Position was meant to be Patrick Wolf's commercial breakthrough back in 2007. Major label, bright presentation, glittery songs in (clap, clap) the major key. It didn't really happen. He went away and made The Bachelor, a darker, more personal and dense album funded by fans and released on his own label. It was a tremendous album but one that was stylistically all over the pace and took a lot of living with to get. I assumed that that was it as far as his chances of making it to the mainstream, and that a future of similarly difficult albums as a self-releasing cult act was ahead. Hopefully not involving Twitter as a full time job and auctioning off his possessions Amanda Palmer style.

In 2011, though, he was back on a major label again, and released a fifth album which finally saw his music more widely embraced and in the top 40 and on the radio (albeit the previously unlikely Radio 2!). Not only that, but Lupercalia is his best album yet, a cynicism-destroying celebration of love with his talent and ambition as forceful as ever and his strength at maximalist pop finally given free rein over a whole album, inspired by his engagement to fiancé William. He even gets namechecked on the brief electro interval of the same name, which yes, really does end with the line 'William, will you be my conqueror?'. As made clear by that and Patrick's rant last time I saw him about negative responses to the saxophones in "The City", this is not an album which recognises the concept of cheesiness.

Patrick has always had a way with writing grand, sweeping songs which hit with an elemental force but are still believably intimate and personal. Lupercalia drops some of the more ornate detailing for comparably straightforward love songs, but that's all still true and he manages to bring new perspectives to even this oldest of topics. "Bermondsey Street" is the biggest statement on love in the wider rather than personal sense (and its chorus is ridiculously, gloriously big, swelling with feeling and pride). Love is for everyone and anyone, it says, illustrating it with two mirrored proposals, both couples declaring theirs 'the greatest love of the century'. The obviously striking detail is the way its first line 'she kisses him on Bermondsey Street' is swapped out in the second verse for 'he kisses him on Bermondsey Street'. After reading so many suggested wedding vows with that phrase 'You may now kiss the bride', I can't help but see 'she kisses him' as a pointed reversal of the norm too, though.

"House" brings a great deal of sophistication and thought in to its hymn to the possibilities brought about by the security of a relationship, but Patrick still sings it with a heart-on-sleeve urgency: never has contented domesticity sounded so bloody exciting. Its something repeated in "The Future" which eventually builds to 'The threshold appears and I am carrying you over/Carrying me over!/Into the best days of the rest of our lives' as the track bursts into life, guitars and choirs driving home the all-encompassing joy.

On "Together”, which combines Patrick’s mile-wide romanticism with a deep disco pulse to incredible effect, the message is not “I can’t go on without you” but “I can go on without you, but it would be a bit rubbish, so let’s not, please”. It feels entirely natural but is uncommonly refreshing. It still allows his love to feel monumental, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary and powering the most ecstatic chorus of the year. And oh, the strings! The sweep up and out of the spoken bit! I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it (last.fm says 32, I'm not sure I trust it), but like Lupercalia as a whole, it still makes me so happy every time.

Winning '11: 2 - Emmy the Great

2011-12-30T07:00:00.000Z

Emmy the Great - Virtue

I very much see my top two albums as a pair. They came out within a week of each other in June and helped immensely to get me through some of the worst weeks of my year immediately at the same time. They were by the two singers who I've seen more than any others over the last couple of years and the albums are almost mirror images of each other. Both are open hearted intimate and make no secret of their autobiographical elements, but one is celebratory and one mournful, one marking the beginning and one the end of serious, marriage-bound relationships. They even both have a superb second track and single which is superficially about a house but really about the relationship.

Virtue is the end album of the pair and one which I'm very close to in probably unprecedented ways. I've exchanged more words with Emma-Lee Moss than any other musician (not that that's hard). I've seen her play more times than anyone else bar Elbow and Hard-Fi, and over a much shorter period of time than either. I've witnessed the songs on Virtue evolving before they were recorded and in fact, thanks to Pledgemusic, I heard several of them for the first time in my friend's front room, played to an audience of twelve people and a cat. It's maybe not surprising that I feel such a strong personal connection to the songs as a result, but on the other hand it's the strength of her songs which brought me into doing all of that in the first place. "Secret Circus" knocked me out before knowing anything about her apart from the name, which is probably worse than nothing. First Love was my favourite album of 2009.

Virtue shows all the same wit, insight, poetry as that album and is more complete and focused with it, musically as well as lyrically. Still playing indie-folk of a sort closer to Bright Eyes than to Laura Marling, every single song now sounds stripped to the bare essentials to make every moment count in service of the stories she's telling. Not to say that it's all acoustic all the way, but every additional touch is perfectly fitting - the yawning guitar echo in "Dinosaur Sex" that marks the creeping power of the uncertain and unknowable; the gothic choral backing vocals that convey the full horror of "A Woman, a Woman, a Century of Sleep" as her relationship turns suffocating and the very walls around her seem to be closing in.

The overall back story to the album is that it was written in the aftermath of a breakup triggered by Moss' fiancé finding God, and religious and fantastical imagery and considerations haunt the whole album. "Paper Forest (in the Afterglow of Rapture)" casts love as a blessing and the rapture of the title, but one that she's left unsure what to do with. Its words and sense of rueful deflation ring very true in capturing what happens when you spend so long believing something to be true, documenting and analysing and reaffirming it, that you can’t find your way back to actually living in and feeling the moment as it happens. "Creation" plays powerfully with the idea of becoming the author and God of your own story, or of someone else's and the weight of responsibility that results.

The album ends with "Trellick Tower", her saddest and best song yet. It lays everything as bare and as clear as can be, music reduced to a few piano notes which sound afraid to intrude on its grief. Her lover is now cast as a departed saint, as unreachable as the top of the brutalist block of flats from which the song takes its name. She prays in vain to a voice which he hears and she can't, everything around her and eventually herself turned into lifeless relics of something now gone forever, all greeted with a numb acceptance, like she's just setting out the facts but in the only language able do them justice. It's another fairly audacious idea but like all of Virtue it really, really works.

Winning '11: 3 - Einar Stray

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000Z

Einar Stray - Chiaroscuro

This first album from young Norwegian Einar Stray reminds me at least as much of Sufjan Stevens (when constructing delicate, intricately pretty chamber pop arrangements) and Hope of the States (when exploding them into an angry mess) as it does of Sigur Rós. Yet the feeling of listening to Chiaroscuro reminds me very much, and very specifically, of listening to Ágætis Byrjun for the first time. It has the same effect of almost overwhelming beauty and the same magic feeling that a strange new music and world is being created in which anything is possible (the latter being both the more unusual and what Sigur Rós have lacked since, it all now tending to feel a bit too forced and planned).

The album has three key songs which between them make up the bulk of its time and which it all hangs on, and it's perfectly structured around those peaks. They sit at the start, middle and end of its seven tracks. In between are two pairs of songs which are lighter, but bring their own joy on a smaller scale, and are a welcome breather to ensure that epic fatigue doesn't set in.

The three, then. "Chiaroscuro" deals in vivid wild elemental forces - its few lyrics sketch us in as 'rockets fall to the ground like snow' and Einar urges us to 'Make a red, red, riot/Make a big, bright fire'. We tour through great clouds of violin, a wilderness of whistled wind, molten rivers of feedback, the enthralling journey held together by a few elegantly recurring motifs sung and on piano. "We Were the Core Seeds" at the album's centre starts off with urgent plucked strings and skittering drums but emerges as a gentle and expansive lament for opportunities glimpsed and lost (note that whatever Core Seeds are, it's We Were, not We Are). It is though plainly backed up by a heart of steel that only completely emerges in the words 'They said trust the Bible/Trust the bankers' over crashing cymbals, the last word practically snarled. It's a terrifically startling moment in an album that exists so often in a reality of its own.

At the end, "Teppet Faller" is an instrumental and the album's big concession to the standard post-rock build and release format. But what a build and release! A piano tentatively emerges from the gloom and plays solemn notes, first obscured by the speaking of strange voices and then backed up by strings. It settles into a loop, growing in power, strings squeaking around the edges like a great old rusty machine being reluctantly forced into action again. The sound continues to grow imperceptibly until a bass rumble announces that everything is just about to kick off and then... nothing does. Everything grinds to a halt. There's a terrific unresolved tension. But it starts again, and this time the strings are squealing and the bass is becoming a ferocious roar and BOOOM. The strings go mental, the drums kick in like they've been restrained for the last ten minutes and are free at last. It's a life affirming bit of barely controlled noise that the whole track, probably the whole album, has been working up to and the pay off is worth it.

Winning '11: 4 - Elbow

2011-12-28T07:00:00.000Z

Elbow - Build a Rocket Boys!

Time flies and Elbow have been my favourite band for more than a decade now. Take the fact that Guy Garvey has the most amazing voice and that their every note is made to sound completely gorgeous as read for this review, really. This marked the first album of theirs which I approached with anxiety though, being as it was their first after achieving massive commercial success off the back of That Song. It turned out that I needn't have been worried that a whole album of deliberately soundtrack ready anthems was going to emerge to capitalise.

First, if anything Build a Rocket Boys! is the most considered and dense Elbow album since their first, the least concerned with immediate thrills and sing along choruses. It starts off with "The Birds", simultaneously big in musical scale and intimate in its emotions, unfolding in languorous stages. It has a hint of Pulp's We Love Life to its organic portrayal of nature and love but has a mix of romance and realism which is pure Elbow. It has an old man looking back at his life, interspersed with the dismissive interjections of those looking after him. 'What are we going to do with you?... looking back is for the birds', backed up by a puffed-up bass stomp. There's a lot more where that comes from album goes on to meditate on different aspects of memories and the past in every song, always one of my favourite of Guy Garvey's topics and one which once again sees him in evocative and impressive form.

The other thing, though, is that the album does have its own one obvious single, and "Open Arms" is unreservedly fantastic in a way that "One Day Like This" never was. An ode to community that it seemed clear, from the first time I heard it live before the album's release, was seemed destined to bring together its own wherever it went, so utterly welcoming and big-hearted it was. It even reaches out into space in the end - 'The moon is out looking for trouble/The moon wants a scrap or a cuddle/The moon is face down in a puddle/And everyone's here'. There remains no one better to go to for totally endearing and warm poetry on the subject of drink and friendship and nostalgia.

Winning '11: 5 - Lykke Li

2011-12-27T07:00:00.000Z

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

In some ways, the most unexpected album on this list. Lykke Li's first album Youth Novels had its moments, but for the most part I found it too limited, with too many incomplete sketches relying on cuteness and not much else. For Wounded Rhymes she came back transformed - still recognisable and still with the same producer and mostly the same instruments, but powered-up, focused and angry. "Get Some" was the early statement of purpose, all shyness or hesitancy blown away in a storm of sex and thumping drums which remains fantastically fun.

Mixing indie sensibilities with a new widescreen pop classicism, her sound and songs now hit a spot in a way that no one else has quite managed. The "Be My Baby" beat's inevitable appearance comes on "Sadness is a Blessing", the zenith of the album in its masterful control of melancholy. Confident and accomplished, even her voice took on a new deeper force which was barely hinted at previously, one which is as well suited to the scathing blitz of "Rich Kid Blues" as to the bare heartbreak of "Unrequited Love".

Winning '11: 6 - Austra

2011-12-26T07:00:00.000Z

Austra - Feel It Break

I just have to look at my year end lists over the last decade to see how crucial my year writing for Stylus Magazine in 2006 was to the development of my tastes. Exposed to a community of passionate and inspiring people who knew very different things, and saw things very different ways from me, I tried out stuff which I probably never would have done otherwise and took me at least a little away from the (British, male) indie rock which made up all. And some of the new stuff was awesome. One of the most critical records of that year was the haunted forest electro-pop of The Knife's Silent Shout. Maybe as a result I'm slightly over-inclined to see its influence, but there do seem to be a succession of new acts in the last couple of years who have been inspired by it and Austra are my favourite.

Not to say that Feel it Break is a mere imitator. It uses many similar sounds and tones and has a very similar stark and alien beauty - the deep throb of single "The Beat and the Pulse" is probably closest of all - but Feel it Break doesn't have the same fearful, cold distance or crushing force of sound. There are no mental rave-outs or pitch-shifted voices and Austra are more pop and less electro, have more open spaces. The plain piano backdrop of "The Beast" is the most extreme case, but "Lose It" and "Shoot the Water" both let in a lot more light. At least as far as it's possible to with a chorus of 'I want your blood/I want it in my hair'.

That couplet is an illustration of the way that Austra get much of their intensity and uniqueness from Katie Stelmanis' lyrics and voice. She specialises in an straightforward and unstinting darkness and while there are plenty of inspired moments like the evocative flashed images of "The Choke" ('The lamp. The slip. The floor.'), there's no obliqueness or indirectness. Together with the fact that she's front and centre and very clearly putting across the words to be heard and considered it kind of inevitably ends up with songs which could easily be considered quite silly. By neither steering away from ridiculousness or ever quite letting on that they're aware of it, though, Austra are able to use the reaction of humour and turn it into part of the heightening of emotional reaction. At least, that's how it works for me. "Hate Crime" being called "Hate Crime", having verses of struggling with avoiding sympathy with the darkness, and then in its chorus having Katie sternly intoning, over catchy synthpop, 'who signed the consent forms??' is amazing and somehow even more intense and sinister. The effect is quite similar to what I get from a lot of Editors songs and what I was the only person on the Jukebox to get from The Vaccines' "Post Break Up Sex", though Austra have crafted a set of songs which make making the bargain of accepting pomp as part of the appeal for their length much, much easier.

Winning '11: 7 - Perfume

2011-12-25T07:00:00.001Z

Perfume - JPN

2011 has been a hell of a year for Japanese writer/producer extraordinaire Yasutaka Nakata. A fine album from his Daft Punkish soloish project Capsule (seriously, watch that video), an EP and another single of uniquely garish and infectious hyper pop from Kyarypamupamyu (watch that one too, though for different reasons). Oh, and providing easily the best and most complete album yet for all conquering trio Perfume, who fall somewhere between those two in sound but do more than that.

I first came across them almost three years ago and it's been rather exciting to see them both getting better and getting a bit of wider attention this year. Manufactured pop in the best sense, their songs always feel precision-designed and constructed more than written - a pursuit of pleasure in sounds and their interaction above all else. Yet their gorgeous interlocking synth lines and piled up anonymised voices still always have a certain ticklish warmth.

The patriotically titled JPN comes at the end of a mindblowing run of singles from A-Chan, Kashiyuka and Nocchi across 2010 and 2011 (and doesn't even include their endearingly bizarre cover of "Lovefool" - I guess it would rather have disrupted the flow). "Natural ni Koishite" kicked it off with a relaxed swing and a chorus of bubbly happiness. "VOICE" was next with a big English chorus and a concentrated sugar rush of sound that more closely resembled classic Perfume. "Nee" took that, applied a darker synth pulse and introduced the unhinged madness of sampled fragments of voices as percussive bridge. Then "Laser Beam", which took that abstractness a step further and barely even bothered with the standard song part, beeps and stuttered words taking over until barely distinguishable, a mess of WHAT IS HAPPENING sound as constant stimulation which is one of the most exciting three minutes of pop released this or any year. Finally "Spice", a gently gorgeous and crystalline thing which even allows a natural voice out for a minute, and now closes the album with a satisfying contentment. And in Japan they were all #2 singles!

As if that wasn't enough, there are even more treasures on the album, including some very Perfume sounding rapping on "575", the synthetic jazzy whimsy of "Have a Stroll" which falls into the subgenre I'm never going to stop thinking of as Katamari music, and synth siren banger "GLITTER". Especially to anyone who liked "Spice", I strongly advise checking the whole thing out, despite the difficulties in doing so (Kyarypamyupamyu's new single is on Spotfiy and JPN isn't even on iTunes? Even though Perfume got used on Cars 2? That sucks).

Winning '11: 8 - Braids

2011-12-24T07:00:00.000Z

Braids - Native Speaker

Braids' unconventional music is big on swirl. Thick, indistinct swirl. Murmuring guitars, bubbling keyboards, vast drifts of sound that arrive like avalanches. The 8 minute title track of Native Speaker (which, now I come back to listen to, I realise even has 'swirls' as its first word!) best demonstrates their success at a glacial pace. They tease full import out of every musical element before Raphaelle Standell-Preston snuggles into the warm drones in a half-asleep bliss, repeating 'having you beside me' and 'having you inside me' before hitting the title line with a wide awake force. 'Oh, you are my native speaker!' she cries and the music turns into a great raw rush with big slabs of bass saying, in the most gorgeous way: this is a definitive statement, this is all that matters right now.

As good as Braids are at the slow life, they also mix that slow swirl up elsewhere on the album, with fast rhythms and little trebly bursts of tunefulness. I've seen many comparisons of them to Animal Collective, but don't understand that band's appeal enough to have got to being able to confirm or otherwise with much confidence. Certainly Raphaelle as a singer is a massive asset in raising Braids above anything at all similar I've heard. Her elastic voice both handles the deep emotional moments and brings a wide-eyed glee, brittle and unpredictable, to the mixture of oblique and seriousness-shattering lines which make up much of their songs.

She brings a range of escalating emotions through in "Lammicken" despite just repeating a single line of 'I can't stop it'. The circling, liquid guitars of "Lemonade" introduce soft first lines - 'I don't want to go back there/I don't want to know what you're wearing/'There are black diamonds in your eyes/And just so you know, your skin is scaly', sung with humour and gentle concern, before she tears into 'HAVE you FUCKED all the stray kids yet?' with an almost scary delight.

The rest of the band manage to find a way to be in tune with her and each other even at the weirdest of lyrical or musical combinations. For all that Native Speaker is a deeply strange record at times and its narrative can be difficult to grasp at, it's one whose emotions come across loud and clear and always fulfils its impressive musical ambitions.

Winning '11: 9 - Los Campesinos!

2011-12-23T07:00:00.001Z

Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness

I suppose We are Beautiful, We are Doomed and Romance is Boring weren't exactly album cheery titles but this one does clearly signals where they're going on their fourth album in as many years. The playful sex-and-snooker-metaphors single "By Your Hand" is a red herring, although even that centres around a refrain of 'By your hand is the only end I foresee'. This is an album which largely takes the crushing, magnificently emo, career highlight "The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future" as its closest template.

As such it's harder going than any of their albums to date. The music is the most developed and complex of any of their albums, and shows a marked move towards the highest priority being scoring the emotion rather than scoring the punchlines, which is what they have often done so well to date. There are still plenty of big hooks in there, but they're much less emphasised. It takes a bit of adjustment, but makes for another set of great songs.

"Every Defeat a Divorce (Three Lions)" is the song which Gareth has probably been waiting his life to write, a definitive account of the emotional turmoil of both his parents' divorce and supporting England's football team through repeated and inevitable failure. Over cello and barely musical squawks of guitar it turns the symbols of the latter into physical sources of pain - 'These three lions that were sitting on my chest are clawing hard into my skin as I am gasping for my breath... I have to screw up both my eyes as it goes into sudden death' - and is possibly the most darkly funny song they've released, but powerfully moving with it.

"To Tundra" moves from flattened, resigned verses into a giant swell of cathartic emotion even bigger than those of "The Sea...", Gareth's voice straining almost painfully at the edges. "Hate for the Island" sounds too tired and depressed to even manage that. 'It's no lie if the waters rose and drowned that place from coast to coast you wouldn't see the smile leave my face for all eternity' it ends, but there's no real hint of joy in there, just a statement of fact.

I hope that they won't move permanently to this level of darkness, but it's an area which they have explored very rewardingly.

Winning '11: 10 - The Joy Formidable

2011-12-22T07:00:00.000Z

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar

I first got into The Joy Formidable on the basis of "I Don't Want to See You Like This", which I repeatedly heard on the radio and mistook for a new single by The Hot Puppies. This was partly due to the strength of its brash and snappy rock but mostly because Ritzy Bryan's voice and accent sounds so similar to Becky Newman's (which therefore ought to mean, as pointed out about Becky by Ian Mathers, that she sounds like a Welsh Gwen Stefani. Hmm, not exactly).

That talent for instant power-pop thrills is carried on through the album but with few exceptions like that and fellow single "Cradle" (whose 'my vicious tongue cradles just one' chorus lyric is a good short cut to their aesthetic), the songs are drawn out into long jams and buried in shimmering, pummelling noise. The band they most remind me of across the album is actually Ash, but much artier and a bit less bubblegum - there's something about the way that they lean towards punk and metal in sound and use its loudness and impact while being pop through and through which is very similar.

Even their biggest single, "Whirring", sees its candied hooks and chorus put through a layer of fuzz and shifts after the song into four minutes of ear-splitting, exhilaratingly harsh instrumental. It's never quite clear whether they are a noise band who can't help but write immediate pop melodies or vice versa, but either way it works.

Winning '11: 11 - Säkert!

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000Z

Säkert! - På Engelska

Did I say that Girls' Generation was the album in this list which stretched the limits of being released in 2011 the furthest? I did? Well, somehow I completely forgot that there was an album ahead of it which entirely consisted of songs recorded into a different language. And it's a somewhat more significant change to me than theirs from Korean to Japanese.

Annika Norlin was responsible, as Hello Saferide, for my favourite album of 2008. Säkert! is her Swedish language band, and this is a record of their songs (mostly from their second album) rerecorded in English. That's what På Engelska means. Apparently they are particularly literal translations designed to give a Swedish feel but in English, but given that one of the most touching lines on More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide was 'years later I can still vision that forehead' I'm happy to largely think of this as a new Hello Saferide album.

It's a bit less country leaning than Short Stories but still heavy on a full band sound and a long way away from the acoustic twee-pop of her début. "Honey" and "Weak is the Flesh" feature jagged eruptions of guitar which go beyond anything previous from her and it also has a few songs which largely hold musically to a minimal loop and very effectively put across a sense of numbed melancholy, in particular "November" and single "Can I", which is a new and effective feel.

As charming as the music remains, what is mainly in På Engelska for me is how it combines with Annika's fantastic lyrics. Which is why the Swedish versions of her albums did little for me. Her words are a touch more abstract and less autobiographical narrative heavy than previous, but remain witty, self-aware but not in an overstated way, intimate and sometimes beautifully poetic too.

"Dancing, Though" is like Robyn's "Dancing on my Own", with Annika just as determinedly dancing to hide (and escape from) her heartbreak, except relocated to a wedding. It includes both 'Right where your shoulder meets your neck is where I hid all of my dreams' and, directed to the wedding singer 'I would beg you to stop singing but you're covering up the sounds of telephones not ringing'. "The Lakes We Skate On" zeroes in on one crucial line from "Parenting Never Ends", '[people] depend on me now/If they only knew how thin the ice they walk on is' and offers a fuller exploration of the insecurity and ways of getting away from it, as well as skating on literal lakes. 'We're walking on the crust on the ice that broke under you when you were young', it starts, and then 'There lies a melancholic joy in knowing you'll never again be with those who know who are' which says it all about escaping to somewhere where people can believe in a different you.

Winning '11: 12 - Anna Calvi

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000Z

Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi

When I was playing this album one more time ahead of writing it, my girlfriend came in and said that it sounded like Florence + the Machine. Now, I really don't like Florence, but I can see where she's coming from. Anna's voice has a similar tone and her songs do a similar line in struggle and overpowering emotions, with her début featuring plenty of wailing about love, the devil or both.

My problem with Florence's music, though, is how preposterously overstuffed and frilly it is. Anna Calvi, by contrast, has a wonderful straight to the point directness. Besides supporting drums, her voice and guitar playing are central and there is very little added to them. Plus any shows of virtuosity are pretty much confined to the guitar rather than the vocals, which is a good thing.

She plays with a dark rock and roll energy and gets across a primal intensity that's really raw and thrilling. When she sings the chorus of "First We'll Kiss" it's like she's willing the rest of the world into non-existence for getting in the way of her perfect moment. "I'll Be Your Man" is mostly just that one line and makes that sound like a powerful promise and a threat at once. "Desire" manages to do the 'fire/desire' rhyme and get away with it through sheer fierce force.

It's a necessarily short album and I'm not sure where she can go from here, but for now it's REALLY EXCITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Winning '11: 13 - Hannah Peel

2011-12-19T00:01:00.000Z

Hannah Peel - The Broken Wave

I first came across Hannah Peel from her Reboxed EP, on which she covered '80s pop hits accompanied only by her modified music box contraption into which she feeds self made paper rolls for each track, sometimes looping them round (if you get the chance to see her live, it's definitely worth it for this). That EP showed off a neat trick and a fine voice but was inherently limited. The Broken Wave shows off both a wider range and a songwriting talent.

A long way from "Blue Monday" and "Tainted Love", there is a very strong folk influence to an album. It's heavy on stripped back piano and acoustic guitar. It also includes a cover of "Cailin Deas Cruite Na Mbo" with its references to pretty maids extended into her own songs, as well as a version of "The Parting Glass" as a final ending (the not otherwise similar Ed Sheeran later did the same on his album!). The influence is also clear in the playful mix of old and new of "Don't Kiss the Broken One", a dissection of negative relationship dynamics tempers its hopelessness through a mixture of plucked and fiddling strings and the lightest electronic burbling, and uses antiquated language interspersed with references to handbags and (metaphorical) drugs.

Indeed, one of the keys to her new songs is how ageless they sound in their simplicity and universality. Their emotions are laid out with a calm ease and sparingly highlighted in the spacious arrangements - the gorgeous comforting warmth of the brass for the chorus of "You Call This Your Home", "Solitude" going from piano into Nitin Sawhney's incredible swelling strings as it reaches its emotional climax, the music box closing "Unwound" in onomatopoeic fashion as its peaceful contentment gradually falters. It's a beautiful sounding album and one which is really easy to fall in love with.

Winning '11: 14 - Gotye

2011-12-18T09:55:00.000Z

Gotye - Making Mirrors

"Somebody that I Used to Know" is easily one of my favourite singles of the year. Half musing thoughtfully and quietly (with glockenspiels), half unstoppable emotional outpouring, with a delicious right to reply coda supplied by Kimbra, it's actually even greater than the sum of its parts. It may yet be as big a hit in the UK as in Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. It may not. We'll find out in a couple of months. Either way, those who haven't ordered the album from Australia (or, er, listened to it by either means), have been missing out on that and much more.

What Gotye does so well is doing the sensitive, singer-songwriter with 'organic' sounds and vintage sounding production thing and yet not in any way being hard work to listen to. Instead his album that's an approachable joy from start to finish. He even manages to get by with a frequent vocal resemblance to Sting and (on "Eyes Wide Open") lines like 'it's like to stop consuming is to stop being human' without ever coming across as pompous.

He's great at atmospherics, like the way that "Smoke and Mirrors" winds its way tentatively through downbeat self-doubt with the occasional shaft of light from harpsichord or brass, before turning into full echoing creepiness and bringing the brass back over clattering drums as a demonic fanfare. Or the softer but equally powerful creepiness of "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You". Or indeed the opposite, the happy jazzy devotion of "I Feel Better" and "In Your Light".

It's definitely to the album's benefit that he happily and effectively takes on so many different styles, just as comfortable with retro pop leaning towards MOR as with the albums odder moments. This is probably best demonstrated by the combination of the two on "State of the Art", an joyful ode to the transformational power of his keyboard which sees him narrating its buttons and settings on it as they trigger all kinds of noises. It's totally instant and warm, and totally unique.

Winning '11: 15 - St. Vincent

2011-12-17T10:36:00.000Z

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

Annie Clark has, on her third album, perfected a recognisable formula. She sets up gorgeous and dreamy songs, with light and drifting arrangements, helped by her lovely voice. Then she slowly introduces a subtly unsettling element or two, through touches in the music but mostly in the lyrics. Finally in come her guitar riffs, bracing and fuzzy, to thrillingly blow the song apart.

Amazing single “Surgeon”, for instance goes from “You Only Live Twice” waltz through choruses of ‘find a surgeon to come cut me open’ into a surprisingly funky ending and a proggy guitar and synth explosion which could fit on Wish You Were Here. Strange Mercy as a whole does shift the elements around a bit rather than follow that exact order - "Chloe in the Afternoon" takes almost no time before the fuzzy riffing and leaves its uneasy peace until later; "Cruel"'s almost comically buzzy guitar doesn't so much puncture the song as emphasise its existing strangeness; "Champagne Year" is pure melancholic reverie all the way. The album's strengths, though, are very clear and consistent. That’s no bad thing because it really does work and keeps sounding fresh. This is helped a great deal by Annie's expertise in writing songs perfectly balanced between too much mystery and too little, on a borderline where they ring emotionally true but are not tied down and have full scope for musical flights of imagination.

A special word is needed for closer “Year of the Tiger”, one of my favourite songs of the year. It takes the same Bond theme aesthetics as “Surgeon” and blows them up bigger still, dreamscapes stretching gorgeously into the distance. It also sees Annie on the run from unknown forces with a suitcase of cash in the back of her car, calling on the whole of America to do her a favour yet still sounding quietly assured. The song finishes with the narrative still tantalisingly unresolved but it’s romantic, funny, and really moving.

Winning '11: 16 - Girls' Generation (SNSD)

2011-12-16T19:12:00.000Z

Girls' Generation (SNSD) - Girls' Generation

For half a year now I’ve been one of those pulling the strings behind the Singles Jukebox machine (that’s a really mixed metaphor, isn’t it?) when it comes to what songs we cover. One of the things I’m most proud of doing (though at least as much credit goes to the far more knowledgeable Edward Okulicz and Frank Kogan) is introducing regular coverage of Korean pop music. Our writers have gone on to do a great job with it. We gave a sneak preview in our review of After School’s “Bang!” last year and South Korea has been where a lot of the most exciting things in pop-as-genre have been happening in 2011 – 2NE1’s fearsome bosh, Dal*Shabet’s glittery exuberance, HyunA’s self-explanatory “Bubble Pop”.

However, my limited experience with K-pop albums has found them either non-existent (ditched in favour of a sequence of mini-albums) or deeply disappointing, generally full of laboured ballads that bear no resemblance to the singles material. Girls' Generation actually released an uninspiring new Korean album of their own in 2011, The Boys, but they also released one which breaks the trend. This self-titled Japanese release is easily the most dubious 2011 album in my whole list, given that many of its songs are a couple of years old, but there are some new ones and they have all been rerecorded in Japanese, so I'm having it. (Listening in Japanese is a slight improvement from Korean because it makes the occasional fragments of comprehension more evenly spread than just getting the English bits. Also I can enjoy lyrical constructions like 'risky な business'). It doesn't seem right to leave out an album so addictive which seemed so new and which I kept returning to.

Girls' Generation are actually well suited to the album format anyway. They are less fearsome, glittery, or bubbly than a lot of the other groups, but they have a more adaptable, slightly more lasting strength which stretches across all of the songs and their many, many hooks and production tricks. They tend to use nine voices at once (if at all) not as overpowering force but as a rounded sound that you can’t hear a flaw in.

“Gee” is the song you’ll have heard of if any, taking sounds you’d associate with pop ballads and subverting expectations to turn them into an incredibly catchy thing of sweetly nagging insistence. My favourite is "Hoot" with its surf guitar verses, electro exclamations and towering choruses leaping off each other's backs to ever greater heights. I love the C64 beats of "You-Aholic" and "The Great Escape" too, and "Run Devil Run" and its big brassy warning of a chorus. In fact, I could easily make a case for the particular greatness of at least 10/12 of the tracks, which is quite something given the low rates for anything similar in sound.

Winning '11: 17 - The Indelicates

2011-12-15T23:38:00.000Z

The Indelicates - David Koresh Superstar

There are issues which are unique to this album among this year’s offerings. Chiefly: is it right to produce a concept album, verging on being a musical, with moments of comedy as well as tragedy, about real events in which real people died?

Certainly you can see why they felt it was necessary, in that the couldn’t-make-it-up details of the progression of the story are a crucial part in illustrating the mental state of its central character and how it gets to the tragic ending that it does. The accompanying lyrics booklet complete with annotations and explanations makes clear that the band thought long and hard about every line on the album and in many cases were very careful not to present a one sided view of the story where they found the actual facts to be unclear. In the chaos of "Something Goin' Down in Waco" it really isn’t clear who fires first. Ultimately, though, being in a different country and with little existing awareness of the events may be crucial to being able to take this as art on a fairly standalone basis, and I can understand if others feel differently.

Onto what I enjoy in it: The Indelicates have never shied away from theatricality and a multi-character on-going narrative allows them to move even further in that direction. The country tones and ever-so-slightly hammy accent of “The Road From Houston to Waco”, the glam defiance of "I Am Koresh", the Chinese whispers that their large cast of vocalists play for humour before "Something Goin' Down in Waco" turns more serious, the base creepiness of "McVeigh". The way in which all of the melodies, voices and narratives are musically threaded together towards the end of the album in “Gethsemane” is fantastically well crafted.

Their scabrous wit is clear and present as ever, and the album poses some big questions in intelligent ways. They start with “Remember the Alamo”, a call to (a partial version of) history which establishes the mind-set that goes on to make some sense of what happens. Their central thesis, as I understand it, is that if you are brought up with a widely accepted belief in conspiracy theories and the irrational, it makes you more susceptible to believe in truly mad and dangerous things. Not guaranteed to fall for them, but more susceptible, and it’s a case they argue very creatively and persuasively. In particular “What if You’re Wrong?” grapples beautifully with the idea of faith and what happens when it gets to be so central to your mental picture that depending on your tenets of belief becomes the only way to keep belief in your own sanity.

Even with the aforementioned distance from the events described, it’s not exactly an easy listen, but one which feels rich, worthwhile and wholly unique.

Winning '11: 18 - Johnny Foreigner

2011-12-14T07:40:00.000Z

Johnny Foreigner - Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything

Here's how I described Johnny Foreigner's first album in 2008:

High energy compressed melody, taking handclaps and pop sensibilities and burying them in enough fuzz that you're carried on along on its wave, barely stopping to glimpse meaning here and there. Equipped with some seriously inventive guitar playing and drumming, they frequently change direction completely with barely a pause for breath, or speed up songs beyond what seems like it should be breaking point. Throwing in noises and feedback as punctuation marks, they rush headlong from A to B to A again, coherance sacrificed if necessary.

Now at album number three, all of that still stands. Theirs is a distinctive sound and they've stuck with it to the extent that certain snatches of melody seem to crop up repeatedly from album to album. So do lyrics, though slightly less so here than on Grace and the Bigger Picture. It seems to be a concious decision, as part of the same consistent aesthetic that sees the same Pac-Man ghosts appear on all their artwork (lurking on the back cover in this case). It still works. Only a few drum machine pulses and "You! Me! Dancing!" in reverse post-rock coda make "Hulk Hoegaarden, Gin Kinsella, David Duvodkany, etc" anything particularly new for them but it's as enjoyable a sugar rush rock song as they've ever done.

The sprawling and unprecedented 55 minutes and 17 tracks of Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything does see them do new things well too, though. The chiming nostalgia of "200X", Kelly giving a fragile and emotional lead vocal with Alexei as barely more solid moral support for the chorus. "(Don't) Show Us Your Fangs" acting as the flipside to their manic early Idlewild tendencies by sounding like a superior The Remote Part ballad. "You vs. Everything" takes what may be their best and perkiest chorus ever, makes brass blasts an integral part of its feel and goes on to a meta 'you can slow it all down...' middle section with mournful brass before the triumphant return of the chorus. Elsewhere there are stylophone duets, two rather charming spoken word things, and a band beginning to grow into a wider vision which could yet see something different and even more special emerge..

Winning '11: 19 - Deerhoof

2011-12-13T07:56:00.000Z

Deerhoof - Deerhoof vs. Evil

It's funny how sometimes certain things a band does just click with me and others don't. I loved Deerhoof's indie pop "Matchbook Seeks Maniac" when we did it back in the Jukebox of old (I would link, but Google is turning up nothing and I don't feel like searching through 50+ editions for it). Its parent album Friend Opportunity didn't do much for me though, and neither did its follow up. Deerhoof vs. Evil, though, I keep coming back to.

It's such a perfectly formed (and small) package of melody and intrigue, as accessible as it is unpredictable. Take the single "Super Duper Rescue Heads!" which combines a lovely crystalline synth riff, cutesy chants, crunching guitars and a couple of sections of clattering noise. Clattering, but somehow friendly. Which goes for the whole album, really - they manage to take great numbers of hooks and ideas (and occasionally rock out - see "Secret Mobilization") but fit them all together in such a way that it just seems like a natural and inclusively fun thing to do. And, on the likes of "Must Fight Current" and "I Did Crimes for You", imbue them with a heart-melting level of sincere emotion too.

Winning '11: 20 - Boris

2011-12-11T23:25:00.000Z

Boris - New Album

So as previously mentioned, Boris' unique approach to organising their music saw them offer three albums in 2011. The first pair were Attention Please and the self-explanatory Heavy Rocks. The last one, a short while after those, was New Album. Which as well as being one of the less inspiring album titles is slightly misleading, given that its newness was reduced six of its ten songs appeared on one or other of the previous albums.

The songs reused from Attention Please are a revelation, though. The relatively straightforward guitar feedback sound of Attention Please is reinforced by all kinds of electronic and production trickery. Just like the album's cover painting with the figure dripping paint and additional structures and growths to the point where she looks like the final form of a Final Fantasy villain, there are layers and depths added to the songs to give them a whole new power.

"Hope" and "Spoon" are back and again the highlights, but massively improved. For "Hope" they put the beat further forward and give a new urgency, as well as adding demented electronic spirals and extra guitars and bookending its already disruptive and mighty guitar solo with warped tape effects. "Spoon" gains percussion made up of shattering glass and someone tapping out Morse code, and an extra chiming counter melody, both bringing new dynamics to life.

Elsewhere on the album "Jackson Head" does pounding techno rock, with a confrontational Takeshi re-assuming vocal duties instead of Wata and having great fun shouting a lot. "Flare" is also a lot of fun and as close to the commercial J-Rock sound as I've ever heard them get, with all the ridiculous guitar solos and driving beats that entails. Other songs take on different styles of rock, incorporating dance elements to various degrees. Though the album doesn't have the same consistency of tone as Attention Please, the experiments are generally more successful.

Winning '11: 21 - Radiohead

2011-12-10T12:32:00.000Z

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

It's difficult to write about The King of Limbs without starting with why it's sitting at number 21 when all their other recent albums were significantly higher up my lists.

So, the loose and simplified tale of Radiohead's 2000-on career path as I see it: Kid A and Amnesiac made a statement that they could, and would, now do something really different from anything they had before. Hail to the Thief said that they could continue with that alongside more traditional songs, but had an awkward fit between the two. In Rainbows lacked the highest highs of any of those three but finally managed to reconcile the new and old and was their most consistent record in songwriting, sound and quality since OK Computer.

The King of Limbs is a weird step back, built on much the same sounds and atmosphere as In Rainbows but without the songs. 'There are no songs' was a futile protest at Kid A, not only because it frequently wasn't true, but because where it was true it was pretty much the point. The King of Limbs is the first time it feels like a valid complaint, because they've already shown that they can write catchy and moving songs that sound like it! "Morning Mr. Magpie" has been around unreleased for quite a while but does make you wonder whether this was deliberate or at least something they're aware of - it's difficult not to read into its wry final lines 'now you've stolen all my magic/took my melody'.

Negatives out of the way, The King of Limbs is a really very gorgeous album, something to sink into and explore and which for its similarities does still sound very fresh. And at its brief length every song counts, as it has to.

"Bloom" with its loping rhythms, Thom and the universe sighing over the top, pulling itself into an amazing swirl of strings and brass sounds before retreating into the forest with whispers all around. Jittery "Morning Mr Magpie" which starts from the none-more-Radiohead opening taunt 'You got some nerve/Coming here' and goes from there. The twisted groove of "Little By Little" existing in uneasy but compelling harmony with a delicate melody. "Feral" and its journey into the dark unknown.

Then the second half (and this is an album with a very obvious split in two) when things open up. There is still a wealth of details but what melodies there are are less crowded in, given more room to breathe. "Lotus Flower" taking the shuddering beats of "Idioteque" and setting them to something as pretty as it as panicky. The embracing serenity of both "Codex" and "Give Up The Ghost", one hopeful and one hopeless. The twinkling and elegiac parting gesture of "Separator".

Plus they did give rise to one of 2011's better memes.

Winning '11: 22 - Lady Gaga

2011-12-10T12:21:00.000Z

Lady Gaga - Born This Way

Easiest to start this off with what I said about the first two singles at the time:

"Born This Way" - For the past year or so, watching the “Just Dance” video has been a sure way of inducing cognitive dissonance. After the awesome, meticulous realisation of vision that was The Fame Monster and associated campaign, it’s a bizarre and unreal feeling to go back to seeing and hearing a document of Gaga not as unstoppable phenomenon but as mere ordinary pop star. “Born This Way” will not have as ordinary looking a video, and doesn't give up a large section of its lines to some guy called Colby, but it produces a bit of the same feeling. There are more moments of buzzing excitement in its multiple layers than “Just Dance”, and it has an even more hugely constructed chorus, but for the first time in a while you can see the joins.

"Judas" - This is more like it! The recycled elements are of minor consequence next to the way the beat clangs with awesome industrial force like nothing else she’s done, the best thing about it. Then there’s the sweet and addictive hi-NRG chorus and the way that that and the heavier elements are not so much stitched into a song as crammed violently together into the same four minute space. The effect is actually to make both of them sound all the more strange and exciting and the straight-faced nonsense delivered over the top works perfectly in that context.

The album carried on from there really, covering the whole range of points between those two, as well as a surprisingly enjoyable foray into Shania Twain/80s pop balladry for its closing two tracks and singles. It's overly long, especially the bonus edition (but that does get you the less stupid cover art), and undoubtedly a bit of a mess, but when it works it's amazing. "Government Hooker" and "Scheiße" sound like no one and nothing else in a fantastic way, and even when she doesn't pull things off to the same extent there's such likeable personality alongside the ambition that it's easy to forgive.

Winning '11: 23 - Chapel Club

2011-12-09T09:01:00.000Z

Chapel Club - Palace

I used the word 'epic' again yesterday. I should really stop that, it's a bit overused. Plus it's going to difficult not to bring it into play for Chapel Club, since 'epic indie rock' is kind of the genre they operate in. Think more guitar-heavy early Doves stuff like "Catch the Sun" and you're nearly there. Lewis Bowman's voice is a little more tuneful than Jimi Goodwin's, but almost as deep and just as naturally set on transmitting overpowering emotion.

Their lyrics are perfectly pitched evocative vagueness (the only way they can get away with a song called "All the Eastern Girls", and even then it's touch and go), the interpolation of "Dream a Little Dream" on "Surfacing" is fantastic twisted romanticism, absolutely everything sounds appropriately HUGE. There's not enough range, and this isn't a genre which I can love in unalloyed form, for them to get any higher up than 22 (or to give me much more to say), but they are great at what they do.

Winning '11: 24 - Help Stamp Out Loneliness

2011-12-08T07:32:00.000Z

Help Stamp Out Loneliness - Help Stamp Out Loneliness

Help Stamp Out Loneliness are, as you could probably guess from that name, indie pop. But not of the fey and twee variety, or the sharp and scratchy variety. Maybe it's also in part the resemblance of their album cover to that of "Slight Return", but there's something in their jangly, richly melodic sound that puts me in mind of The Bluetones. Long time readers will know that that is very much a good thing in my books.

Both the voice of D Lucille Campbell and the words she's singing take them to a different place from The Bluetones though. Somewhere between Nico and Morrissey, she sings in a knowingly witty, self deprecating way, expertly treading a line between humour and emotion as she suffers breakdowns in record shops and sings lines like "She said maybe he is not a real man/I'm not so sure, cos you don't even like Wham".

The album is also bookended by two joyful epics. "Cottonopolis & Promises" slowly builds anticipation before twinkling keyboards and guitar riffs which wouldn't be too far out of place on Los Campesinos!' début take over. "Split Infinitives" bounds to a huge singalong chorus finale of its own, and then steals one from Arab Strap to take things up even further.

My year in Jukebox

2011-12-07T20:44:00.001Z

A friend said recently that she had difficulty keeping up with everything I write for The Singles Jukebox. Which is pretty reasonable with three posts a day! So I thought for her and other interested friends it would be good to bring some of my highlights this year together in one place.

The Vaccines - Post Break Up Sex
Mainly for the fact that I got named in the intro, and how funny the gap between me and everyone else was.

Jessie J - Do It Like a Dude
Jessie J - Price Tag
An exploration of why "Price Tag" is one of the worst songs ever, preceded by her previous hit for context.

The Wombats - Jump into the Fog
Something else I didn't like, but was slightly more conflicted on.

Lady Gaga - Born This Way
I'm happy that my fairly instant reaction to this still stands up so well.

Patrick Wolf - House
Patrick Wolf - Time of my Life
Patrick Wolf - Together
This was the year that Patrick Wolf finally broke through to something approaching mainstream success and we (and I) did three of his songs and loved all of them.

Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend
Another song that I really love and tried to explain. There were some interesting discussions around its somewhat ambiguous narrative, as there were with...

Lana Del Rey - Video Games
My first mammoth blurb of the year. Originally even longer, but got edited down by me and the editor. Not entirely happy that my drawing of parallels between the song and the game I talk about came through as well as I'd like, but that wasn't down to the editing.

Emmy the Great - Paper Forest
I explain my love at length; song gets a total non-reaction from everyone else.

Coldplay - Paradise
I just liked how this one turned out. And the dubstep joke in the comments.

Sak Noel - Loca People (What the Fuck)
Most credit due to my friend George here!

Charlene Soraia - Wherever You Will Go
I detail what's wrong with (some) British pop at the moment. I hope at least someone appreciated 'Twincest tweebags'.

Perfume - Spice
Me giving the background to this particular strain of (amazing) Japanese pop. Everyone else actually liked the song too. Got my first compliment in the comments since, ooh, Owl City?

AKB48 - Ue Kara Mariko
Another mammoth blurb, about a different and less amazing strain of Japanese pop. Rather more fact-heavy than I usually get, but I was pleased with how it turned out.

Little Dragon - Ritual Union
Mammoth blurb number three. My single of the year and the very personal reasons why.

Winning '11: 25 - Boris

2011-12-07T07:32:00.000Z

Boris - Attention Please

Boris are a Japanese group, not one person or any relation to the mayor of London. I became aware of them at the start of the year through their presence alongside Radiohead and The xx on the soundtrack to Confessions, my favourite film of 2011. There are several overhead and slow motion shots in the film which would not have had anything like the same power if not scored by Boris' brooding post rock.

This discovery was just in time for a year in which Boris released three albums, none of which sounded anything like that! Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but Attention Please certainly was very much new territory for them - guitarist Wata (I presume that's her on the cover) taking lead vocals for the album and the band making an attempt at a 'pop' record.

Certainly they remain a long way away from AKB48 or Perfume style J-Pop, but on the two singles "Hope" and "Spoon" they hit upon an exhilarating blend. Those songs sound like shoegaze played without the same slurred thickness but with the same sense of overwhelming sweetness masking a harshness beneath. "Hope" makes that harshness particularly clear when it suddenly breaks into a vicious guitar solo near the end before the sweetness takes back over even stronger. "Spoon" does wind tunnel noise and double drumming over the top of what passes for a chorus. The sense that Boris are making it up as they go along and don't really understand the genre they're playing just adds to the exhilaration.

The rest of the album is not on the same level and offers a more uneasy compromise between their noise past and pop wishes, but has plenty of other compelling moments, from the stripped back breathy pleading of "Attention Please" to the malfunctioning machinery rhythms of "Tokyo Wonder Land", to the calm of their best Sigur Rós impression on "Hand in Hand"

Now for the spoiler - this is not the last Boris album in this list, and things are going to get both better and weirder from here.

Winning '11: 26 - Vanbot

2011-12-06T07:29:00.000Z

Vanbot - Vanbot

Between the ease of instant album listening through Spotify and the vast amounts of data last.fm and amazon have on my listening habits, this has been the first year when I've actually started making successful discoveries of artists I'd never heard of through algorithms. Sister Crayon doing Bat For Lashes/Glasser type alt-pop for instance.

Vanbot is both the biggest success of last.fm's recommendations for the year and kind of the easiest - it was recommended on the basis that I listen to Robyn a lot and 'if you like Robyn, you'll like Vanbot' doesn't seem likely to be a contentious statement. At least, if rather than the Robyn of "Konichiwa Bitches" or "Fembot" you prefer the Robyn of "With Every Heartbeat" and "Dancing on my Own" and "Hang With Me", of synth-pop filled with emotion and dance energy until the two become indistinguishable. With songs like the fizzy abandonment pop of "By the Side of this Road", and the chilly "Bitter is the Sweetest Part" (if ever there was a summary in one title...), that's very much the territory Vanbot is sharing

Vanbot is one Ester Ideskog, as the Paypal payment for my CD copy of the album went to - this is clearly a small scale enterprise. That makes it all the more impressive that the music frequently sounds so huge - the colossal beats of "Make Me, Break Me", the building layers of sound in "Ringing" before it collapses into the saddest of soft synth breakdowns at the end, the embracing washes of sound on "Safe By the Numbers". There's always a danger in getting closed into ever decreasing genre spaces if you only listen to things which sound like stuff you already like, so it won't be the only thing I listen to but if it's done as well as this I would be very happy to hear more like Vanbot.

Winning '11: 27 - Active Child

2011-12-05T07:36:00.000Z

Active Child - You Are All I See

This is an album which hits you with its musical themes just about instantly - after one harpsichord like keyboard note you are abruptly hit with actual harps tinkling all over the place and synths imitating wheezing brass instruments. Soon enough that's joined by retro synth drums and Pat Grossi's voice, which is high pitched, otherworldy and amazing and accounts for a lot of Active Child's appeal. Think Wild Beasts or Antony Hegarty but without the bleating quality. The opening (title) track slowly unfurls as a gorgeous reverie, highly strung both emotionally and musically.

It very much sets the tone for the whole album, but his is an unusual and rewarding sound and merits the full exploration that it gets. "Playing House" sees him joined by fellow traveller How to Dress Well and more closely approaches pop though twists it into strange shapes. Instrumental "Ivy" is a bigger showcase for the harp before plunging it into synth fuzz.

Every song contributes to the overall mood and has its own spin on the sound but "Way Too Fast" is probably the biggest highlight. It reaches dramatic heights even greater than the rest of the album through its slowly creeping melody and some really amazing choral vocal effects as Grossi sings about a relationship which is going wrong but he can't do anything to stop, sounding regretful, bitter and scarily vengeful in turns.

Winning '11: 28 - Coldplay

2011-12-04T00:04:00.000Z

Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto

"Every Teardop is a Waterfall" and "Paradise" are a seriously impressive pair of singles in doing everything which Coldplay have done so well in recent times (they're BIG) while simultaneously integrating new elements and setting them up as just a tiny bit closer to a mainstream pop sound. It's a shame that "Princess of China" feels too underwritten to make full use of Rihanna's appearance and doesn't complete the hat trick.

The rest of the album doesn't offer much in the way of big surprises (there are still impassioned choruses, lyrics which could politely be called impressionistic, guitars which sound a bit U2) but is no retread with the surging pop of "Hurts Like Heaven" difficult to imagine existing in its current form on previous albums too.

Mylo Xyloto is also much more coherent than Viva La Vida, stitched together with a series of lovely little instrumental interludes and seamlessly builds in (presumably Eno-influenced) moments of ambient prettiness. It sounds consistently gorgeous, with a rich sound even on the slower songs like "Us Against The World" where Viva La Vida sometimes sounded thin (That song shows off the deeper end of Chris Martin's vocal range to good effect, too).

I have a long history with the band that makes it a bit difficult for me to look at them in anything approaching an objective way, but if they'd continued on the compressed, ultra-serious anthems of X&Y I think I might still have fallen out of love with them completely. So I'm really happy that they've found a way to succeed while doing more than that. Though I kind of wish they'd found room for the ridiculous (yet strangely poignant!) space-prog of B-side "Moving to Mars". Maybe more like that next time?

Winning '11: 29 - Twin Sister

2011-12-03T09:56:00.000Z

Twin Sister - In Heaven

Going as far down as 30 albums this year, a lot of the lower entries are ones with one really outstanding song and a lot of other enjoyable but lesser songs. Twin Sister's In Heaven fits that pattern but is unusual in how little resemblance the one stand-out has to the rest of the album. The massively fun "Gene Ciampi" is a two minute blast of twanging guitars, clomping beats and "ha-ha!" backing vocals which reminds me most of the energetically updated retro pop of The Coral, though Andrea Estella's softer vocals are a long way from theirs.

Only the guitar and organ driven drama of "Spain" is remotely similar in sound. Over much of the rest of the short album they instead work on a much calmer and more electronic basis. Stuff like "Space Babe" and "Kimmi in a Rice Field" sets up synth-pop beats but use them as the backdrop to drifting songs of a quiet beauty. They actually come very close to a second stand out with "Stop", thanks to its amazing whooshing bass sounds as much as the songwriting, but the rest of the album is so easygoing and likeable that even just one amazing moment is enough to make me want to keep returning to it.

Winning '11: 30 - Neon Indian

2011-12-02T12:24:00.000Z

Neon Indian - Era Extraña

I never had a NES or a SNES or a Gameboy. I am about the right age but only had Commodore 64s and Amigas, both of which were a little past their times by then. Some bits of Chiptune (and some Calvin Harris productions) do sound like C64, but it tends to be Nintendo and Sega which are the dominant reference points in what the genre is going for. If anything, though, I think that having only come across them in brief sessions at friends' houses at the time makes the power of nostalgia all the greater.

This is an introduction to talking about Neon Indian because the dominant sound of Era Extraña is sharp and electronic and, if not actually played on a SNES, mostly sounds like it could be. While that sound is dominant, though, Neon Indian build layers of hazy sound built under and around it. So they have both an instant hit of excitement and nostalgia and a deeper and rewarding atmosphere to sink into. Using precise and unyielding sounds in pursuit of haziness (even the catchiest songs, like "Polish Girl" maintain a vocal indistinctiveness) - an unusual combination which consistently comes off very well.

Winning '11: 31 - Medina

2011-12-01T21:46:00.000Z

Medina - For Altid

We cover a rich diversity of stuff on The Singles Jukebox, but it's fair to say that melancholic Scandinavian synth-pop is one of our specialist subjects. As such it's no surprise that I first came across Medina's melancholic Danish synth-pop through "Kun for Mig" appearing in the Jukebox's top songs of 2009. And indeed found out about their return this year, with the awesome "Synd for Dig", in the same way.

You can already my thoughts on the wonders of that song via the link, but after "Synd for Dig" kicks off For Altid it carries through on that promise. "Kl. 10" does dramatic strings and perfect poise, "Lyser i Mørke" does a fine job both anthemic piano ballad and weird discordant futurism. All repeatedly punch through the language barrier (although amidst the Danish I'm pretty sure that "Vend Om" features some very Anglo-Saxon swearing), which is no mean feat.

So, um...

2011-11-20T19:04:00.000Z

I was really planning to follow up the Music Diary Project posts with some kind of summary! Something to do with one of the things Nick initially said about critics listening to music in an artificial or unusual way, and the fact that aside from The Singles Jukebox I don't write about music any more, but despite never having to review them I've still been seeking out new albums constantly. I keep a Spotify playlist to keep track of all the 2011 albums I've listened to and I'm on 185.

But yes, it's seven months later an I still haven't written it, or anything else. Oh well. I think I'm going to bring my write ups for my favourite albums of the year back off facebook and onto here this year though, starting from the 1st of December, so there will be some posts in a bit!

Music Diary Project Day 6 (09/04/11)

2011-04-11T21:54:00.001+01:00

Spotify starred playlist on shuffle for about 15 minutes. Young Galaxy came up twice and I enjoyed both songs so I definitely need to listen to the whole album. Also got "Tog" by Colourmusic.

After that I was out for most of the day. I heard a lot of music along the way, of which the below is only a selection of the most notable. I do find that I almost always notice background music, but getting a chance to note it down or remember what it was is another matter!

Chapel Club/The Drums (in pub bit of gastropub)
Lots of very low key triphop and soul (in restaurant bit of gastropub)
Numerous buskers, including an impressive beatboxer with an amplifier near South Bank
Doves - "There Goes the Fear" while getting a drink in EAT
Alexis Jordan - "Happiness" / Aqua - "Barbie Girl" / Spice Girls - "Mama" very loud, in a new Mexican restaurant.

Music Diary Project Day 5 (08/04/11)

2011-04-10T11:06:00.000+01:00

Hot Horizons - "October"
Tall Ships - Tall Ships EP / There is Nothing but Chemistry Here EP

Checking out new bands on the way to work. Hot Horizons on this evidence seem to be treading similar ground to Trophy Wife to slightly lesser effect, but I love Tall Ships' combination of downtempo, fairly minimal songs and early Biffy Clyro guitar riffs. Later have to conduct some research on the Tall Ships album from 2009 that Spotify has to make sure it isn't the same band and I don't have to disqualify them from my new bands playlist.

Olivia - Greatest Hits (Disc 2)
For my journey home, a Japanese album bought on a whim in Hong Kong which turned out to be really great, at least for Disc 2 (which I think is the B-sides, maybe, but is much better than the straightforward rock of Disc 2). Probably closest to Ellie Goulding, if she'd carried on being as good as "Under the Sheets" suggested.

Chapel Club - Palace
Epic Echo & the Bunnymen / early U2 indie which I actually like a lot, despite not having that much time for anyone else doing it. Listened to this at home before heading out.

Departure DJ set
A night at a bar in Camden which apparently plays 'Dark Wave, New Wave, Industrial, Synthpop, EBM, 80s'. Was there because other friends were (including the DJ) rather than for the music, almost all of which I didn't know. There was an excellent more industrial remix of Editors' "Papillon" though, during which I had an enthusiastic conversation about how good their last album was.

Music Diary Project Day 4 (07/04/11)

2011-04-10T10:49:00.000+01:00

Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
For my journey to work. I like this album a lot more than I expected, appreciating its dramatic sweep without descending into pastiche or being too over the top.

A few tracks on my mp3 player on shuffle
To fill up the remainder of my journey. I do like that my journey to and from work is usually about the length of an album.

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
While doing some work. I think this was actually a bad choice as it proved to be a bit distracting, or maybe that was just down to the work in question.

Adele - Someone Like You
On my way out of the office to get some lunch this was blasting out of someone's car at full volume, sounding distorted and a little unpleasant. The song itself as colossus bestriding British pop remains baffling.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
On my mp3 player on my way home. Made a mental note to myself to play it to my girlfriend again at some point as we are going to her gig at Shepherds Bush Empire next week.

British Sea Power - Valhalla Dancehall
Once I got home. This choice was partly dictated by having one hour to fill and nothing else recent that was long enough (as you may have noticed, I spent most of my time this week listening to quite new music, which is typical). I listened while reading/playing Don't Take it Personally Babe, it Just Ain't Your Story. I spend a fair bit of time listening to music while playing video games and usually it's the music which takes priority - I think I get some of my more concentrated listening done while playing stuff like FIFA and Street Fighter IV, and if anything having my mind mostly elsewhere actually helps me to win more at them asthey become more instinctive without concious thought getting in the way. In this case though, playing something very text and narrative heavy, combined with listening to something which I'm already very familair with, meant that there was a point where I realised that I was barely taking in the album at all.

MTV Hits - various top 40 songs
I had MTV Hits on the TV for about an hour while washing up, browsing the internet and sorting various things out. Much of the channel's schedule is now taken up by runs through of videos for the top 40 in order, which is the best thing to have ever happened to it - the democratic old Top of the Pops / chart show format has long been my preferred way of taking in chart music. You get to hear more different songs and if there's something unlikeable it feels better to blame the public at large rather than some unknown playlist selector's taste. It would be better still if the chart wasn't so slow moving these days though, and I do have to turn off when it gets to Jessie J because there is no way I'm listening to "Price Tag" again.

Xposure on xfm
For about an hour and a half. Nothing which really stood out as great in that time which I didn't already know, but there was a rather lovely live version of Elbow's "Some Riot".

Music Diary Project Day 3 (06/04/11)

2011-04-07T19:51:00.000+01:00

Katy B - On a Mission
On the way to work, since I didn't get to give it a proper listen the previous day. A few amazing songs (not just singles) but a lot of it still passing me by so far.

Einar Stray - Chiarascuro
Amazing Norwegian post-rock-meets-Sufjan-Stevens debut which was well worth the 20 quid I had to pay for the CD. Listened to while working.

Adele - probably something from 21
While browsing in HMV at lunchtime. Sounded quite a lot like "Chasing Pavements", but wasn't.

Elbow - Build a Rocket Boys!
Again while working. This has nothing as absolutely perfect as "Starlings" or "Great Expectations", or... half of Asleep in the Back, but that would be asking a lot, and I still love it. Competing with the aforementioned Einar Stray for favourite album of the year so far.

Various tracks from Spotify starred playlist, on shuffle
Couldn't make up my mind what to listen to on the way home.

Xposure (xfm)
For about an hour and a half while doing various things in the evening.

Day 2 (05/04/11)

2011-04-06T21:16:00.001+01:00

Conquering Animal Sound - Kammerspiel
On my way into work, my first listen to the album that I bought at the gig. Very much as expected, which is a good thing.

Elbow - Ticker Tape
Patrick Wolf - The City
Guillemots - The Basket
Delays made my journey a bit longer, so I listened to the last few mp3s which I'd bought - the new singles (or B-side) of three of my favourite acts and among the few that I would bother doing so for.

Admiral Fallow - Boots Met My Face
New album (well, it was released last year but has been rereleased and put on Spotify) which I listened to for the first time based on this piece and its mention of recommendations from a couple of my favourite bands. I liked the arrangements and the obvious depth and care that went into them, but wasn't so sure on the songwriting or singing. Will give it another go at some point.

Katy B - On a Mission
Another new album through Spotify Mobile which I listened to on my way home. Didn't quite get all the way through it and didn't form much of an opinion yet.

Hannah Peel - The Broken Wave
Listened to once I got home while on the web/playing games. On my own in the room. Lovely album which the previous day's gig made me want to go back to.

Oh Land - "Sun of a Gun" x3
I wanted to check that my thoughts on the song from listening to it on the album would stand up to concentrated listening before submitting my review for The Singles Jukebox (they did), and I needed to check the exact wording of a line that I was quoting.

Emmy the Great - First Love
Followed on from the indie folk of the previous day, but also a choice influenced by a discussion with my girlfriend about British people who are part-Chinese (she had been reading Matt Tong and Alexa Chung interviews for her PhD), and because she was in the room so I wanted to pick something she would be happy to listen to as well. I love this album a lot.

Xposure on xfm
Listened to this for about an hour, it's the only thing on xfm that I will listen to but is very good for new indie stuff. The highlight was the gorgeous new single from Clock Opera, "Belongings", which was played immediately after The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's "Belong".

Music Diary Project day one (04/04/11)

2011-04-05T18:50:00.001+01:00

Hi everyone! I really wanted to take part in Nick Southall's Music Diary Project. This involves writing down all of the music that you listen to for a week (and trying not to let your choices be too affected by the fact). Luckily I already have this neglected blog handy to write it up in! Day one is a bit late as I was out last night (as you will see) but this is what I listened to:

Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love
I listened to this album for the first time, during my commute into work. At the start of this year I signed up to Spotify Mobile and it has had a big impact on my listening habits as I love listening to new music and now can read about something intriguing, set it in my 'starred' playlist and it will almost instantly be available to listen to on my phone wherever I am. I think I still actually buy the same (large) number of CD albums as previously, but listen to many more and make a lot fewer bad purchases. In this case the title track appeared in Sweeping the Nation's Spotify playlist for the month and I'd never heard of it, looked it up and it sounded intriguing. It turned out that it indeed was, psychedlia which wasn't all possible to process on first listen but which I will definitely come back to.

Kassidy - "Stray Cat" (from Hope St.)
Connan album didn't last the whole journey and so Spotify went on to the next thing on my playlist. I put this whole album on after seeing a friend of a friend talking it up on Facebook, but it turned out to be horrendous landfill indie of a kind I thought was dead, and I didn't make it through more than one song.

Niki & the Dove - "DJ Ease My Mind"
Instead I went on to this to fill the last minutes of the journey - from my playlist of stuff by new acts. Owes a lot to The Knife, but really great regardless.

Oh Land - Oh Land
Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
I listened to both of these on headphones while working. I usually listen to one or two albums a day at most as I don't like to keep dipping in and out of an album and am not usually concentrated on doing on single task for that long, but when I am I find it easier to do so with music.

Something I didn't recognise which may or may not have been Macy Gray / someone whistling the World 1-1 theme from Super Mario Bros.
The soundtrack to getting my lunch.

Braids - Native Speaker
For my commute home. I have listened to this album a lot and it's one of my favourites of the year. Quite annoyed that I will be away when they play in London next month.

Conquering Animal Sounds live set
Various folk songs I didn't know, and a very proggy instrumental version of "Scarborough Fair"
Hannah Peel live set
I went to the Lexington to see Hannah Peel. I had never heard of the support act Conquering Animal Sounds but they were really impressive, building looped voices and keyboards into fragmented but increasingly powerful songs which also just about fitted the folk theme of the night. I bought their album before I left.

It was the first time I'd seen Hannah Peel and things took a while to properly get going, not helped by the drums being overpoweringly loud in such a small venue. Strong voice though and the quieter songs lived up to her excellent album. I love her music box playing too - such a clever idea! Also a neat bonus to see Laura Groves (aka Blue Roses) as part of her band.

Jukebox catch up

2010-05-03T12:17:00.002+01:00

Plan B - Stay Too Long [4]
Caribou - Odessa [7]
Chiddy Bang - The Opposite of Adults [7]
Jónsi - Go Do [6]
Josh Turner - Why Don't We Just Dance [5]
Local Natives - Airplanes [3]
Mariah Carey ft. Nicki Minaj - Up Out My Face [7]
Owl City - Vanilla Twilight [4]
Selena Gomez and The Scene - Naturally [7]
Shiny Toy Guns - Major Tom [6]
Spoon - Written in Reverse [6]
Train - Hey Soul Sister [2]
Diana Vickers - Once [8]
Die Antwoord - Enter the Ninja [3]
Laura Marling - Devil's Spoke [5]
McLean - My Name [5]
Avril Lavigne - Alice [3]
Orianthi - According to You [5]
Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt [10]
Vampire Weekend - Giving Up the Gun [7]
Alex Gardner - I'm Not Mad [8]
Darwin Deez - Radar Detector [3]
Gabriella Cilmi - On a Mission [6]
Hot Chip - I Feel Better [8]
Pendulum - Watercolour [7]
Sincere ft. Ghetts, Scorcher, G FrSH, Wretch 32 & Little Dee - Pass It Over [7]
Stromae - Alors On Danse [5]
The Futureheads - Heartbeat Song [4]
Usher ft. will.i.am - OMG [3]
Broken Bells - The High Road [8]
Kelis - Acapella [8]
LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls [6]
Paramore - The Only Exception [8]
Plan B - She Said [3]
Scouting for Girls - This Ain't a Love Song [1]
She and Him - In the Sun [4]

Jukebox returning

2010-02-21T22:28:00.002Z

Yes, I am still around. Reminded to post here by seeing this blog linked on Freaky Trigger's Pop World Cup, where my Netherlands team have their first match tomorrow.

And yeah, we're back at the Jukebox! My 2010 contributions so far:

Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind Part II [7]
Corinne Bailey Rae - I'd Do It All Again [8]
Daisy Dares You ft. Chipmunk - Number One Enemy [2]
Hot Chip - One Life Stand [7]
Wiley ft. Emeli Sande - Never Be Your Woman [7]
jj - Let Go [8]
Marina and the Diamonds - Hollywood [5]

My Week in Jukebox (w/e 02/10/09)

2009-10-04T20:51:00.002+01:00

The Big Pink - Dominos [7]
Natalie Imbruglia - Want [8]
Boys Like Girls ft. Taylor Swift – Two Is Better Than One [3]
Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind [8]
Mariah Carey - I Want to Know What Love Is [3]
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My Week in Jukebox (w/e 25/09/09)

2009-09-27T21:12:00.001+01:00

Well, two weeks in one as they were both a little shorter on me than normal.

Miss Li - Dancing All the Way Home [8]
Mini Viva - Left My Heart in Tokyo [7]
Robbie Williams - Bodies [4]
Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man [8]
Los Campesinos! - The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future [8]
"I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate". "To the left side and the right side, either way is a crazy golf course". Yep, still totally quotable as ever. This is straightforwardly emotional (and gorgeous!), though, in a way that they only skirted round on last year's albums, distanced by irony and uncertainty. There's nothing uncertain about the way that the guitars that have been swelling finally crash over the chorus here, a glorious moment of catharsis.
Leona Lewis - Happy [5]
Nneka – Heartbeat (Chase & Status Remix) [8]
Hockey - Song Away [4] (Ok, my mark is a little generous. Not sure what came over me.)
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 11/09/09)

2009-09-13T22:05:00.002+01:00

Quite a high scoring week for me, this.

Owl City - Fireflies [2]
Jay Reatard - It Ain't Gonna Save Me [6]
Morandi - Colors [6]
Jesse McCartney ft. T-Pain – Body Language (Remix) [7]
VV Brown - Game Over [8]
Just as full of big, cartoonishly dramatic hooks and metaphors as last time out, and just as energetic and entertaining with it. Probably even better than "Shark in the Water", though, for carving out more of a non-Bedingfield identity of her own too.
Biffy Clyro - That Golden Rule [9]
3OH!3 - Starstrukk [3]
The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition [6]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 04/09/09)

2009-09-04T19:31:00.002+01:00

With a bonus two blurbs that I managed in the previous two weeks, while on holiday.

Heartland - Mustache [3]
Bloc Party - One More Chance [7]
Florence + the Machine - Drumming Song [3]
Panic at the Disco - New Perspective [0]
Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed [7]
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions - Blanchard [5]
Jade Ewen - My Man [5]
Katie Armiger - Gone [3]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 14/08/09)

2009-08-15T01:07:00.003+01:00

Oh well, maybe I'll really like something next week.

Mike - We Are Golden [3]
Christophe Willem - Plus Que Tout [6]
Calvin Harris - Ready for the Weekend [6]
Mos Wanted Mega ft. Janee – Touch My [4]
Girls Can't Catch - Keep Your Head Up [3]
Sugababes - Get Sexy [2]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 07/08/09)

2009-08-07T17:46:00.002+01:00

Vitalic - Your Disco Song [6]
Kate Miller-Heidke - The Last Day on Earth [7]
Wild Beats - Hooting and Howling [5]
Paramore - Ignorance [1]
Eva Simons - Silly Boy [5]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 31/07/09)

2009-07-31T17:48:00.004+01:00

Gaggle - Crows [5]
Jessica Jarrell - Armageddon [8]
Muse – United States of Eurasia (Collateral Damage) [3]
Matt & Kim - Daylight [3]
Chrisette Michele – Blame It On Me [8]
Gloriana - Wild at Heart [8]
Lily Allen - 22 [6]
It's Not Me, It's You is a frustrating album for its wild extremes of quality, from the divine "The Fear" to the unlistenably dire "Fuck You". As much as that, though, it suffers from too much stuff like "22" - sweet and accomplished pop with some of Allen's better serious lyrics that nonetheless doesn't achieve anything that The Bird and The Bee don't do better.
Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone [4]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 24/07/09)

2009-07-25T00:13:00.004+01:00

Format taken from Alex Ostroff, as I like it. A few bonus ones from the end of last week as this is the first time I've made a post to link to all of my reviews, and I'll put in any of my blurbs that weren't used (only one this time).

Chicane - Poppiholla [0]
Colbie Caillat - Fallin' For You [4]
Kings of Leon - Notion [5]
Back in 2003 I would never have picked Kings of Leon out of a line up of NEW ROCK REVOLUTION bands as the ones who would become pack out arenas. But fair play to them as unlike, say, Jet, they have consistently improved with each record and got more accessible to boot. Here we are four albums in, and they've reached the dizzy heights of adequacy.
Boys Like Girls - Love Drunk [7]
Lady Antebellum - I Run to You [4]
Misstress Barbara ft. Sam Roberts – I’m Running [6]
Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge [9]
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Fever Ray at Shepherds Bush Empire (16/07/09)

2009-07-17T17:52:00.003+01:00

Thanks to Jukebox editor William Swygart I have been nominated for a post on the best music critics aged under 25. Between that linking here and actually having access to a keyboard (seriously, 90% of Jukebox reviews are done from my phone), it seemed the right time to update again.

Handily, I went to a gig yesterday! I am going to lots of gigs at the moment. This is partly due to work circumstances allowing, but also thanks to last.fm taking all the pain out of finding them. It notes who I listen to and informs me when someone I like is going to play in London - so useful. Yesterday it was Fever Ray (whose album I wrote about when it came out).

The support act was a guy who bowed, stood in the dark and played one long and quite boring ambient track, bowed again and left. Normally this would have been quite annoying but I was on my own and feeling antisocial, so an excuse to browse the net more without offending anyone was ok. He was Simon Scott apparently, according to last.fm again.

Fever Ray's set was heavy on literal smoke and mirrors. Plus lasers. Those were the only source of light for most of the set bar a few weak lampshaded lights, and it took several songs to work out which of the mysterious figures on stage was actually Karin Dreijer Andersson. Quite disorientating, especially as they started with an "If I Had a Heart" where she was buried deep in the darkness aurally as well, pitch-shifted even further into the depths than on the album.

Once she let both masks slip, from a plaintive "Seven" on, she was almost too pitch-perfect, the treasonous thought of 'why don't I just listen to the album?' raising its head on occasion. The live percussion saved the day on that front though, forcing the beats into the forefront in a way that they rarely are on record and lending a new urgency and immediacy to the distant. When they synced with the lasers to totally occupy the room, the idea that this was a better way of doing things than watching someone singing made total sense.

Back

2009-06-11T23:13:00.004+01:00

A couple of pleasantly surprising returns.

Hope of the States seemed like the most exciting new thing for a long time for a while in 2003 when "Black Dollar Bills" and "Enemies/Friends" hit, taking all the intensity and scale of post-rock and fitting it into something closer resembling immediate pop songs. Things then went wrong in all sorts of ways (although making the mangled bitter howl of "The Red, The White, The Black, The Blue" a top 20 hit was quite something) and debut The Lost Riots stands as a not-quite-there testament to what could have been.

I had just been thinking back and listening to it again in light of Broken Records releasing a excellent debut that captures more of the early Hope of the States appeal than anyone else since, although has a certain extra focus that both makes for a more cohesive album and means they never quite extent to such highs.

And then, coincidentally (?) The Northwestern came to my attention. They are Sam Herlihy and Simon Jones of HotS, along with others including Jonny Winter from fellow defunct widescreen guitar proponents The Open. And "Telephones", apart from being washed in more layers of guitar noise than HotS ever indulged in, is very much a return to the ambition that they did so well.

The second is even more exciting. See, there was this band called Buffseeds, who released my favourite album of 2003. A series of almost spooky collisions between their lyrics and things that happened to me during its preceding run of singles certainly helped burn it into my life, but it was amazing stuff regardless. JJ72 were the inevitable regular comparison, but they were like a JJ72 shorn of bluster and pomposity and able to cut precisely to heartbreak. In Kieran Scragg they had a singer with an astonishing androgynous voice and a way of making familiar sentiments totally believable and vital.

After Buffseeds split up, Kieran went on to form Iko. I seem to remember the name comes from the Japanese for orphan, presumably like another Ico. Fitting for their album I am Zero in 2005 which was a dark, sad record of largely acoustic despair that was almost uncomfortably intimate at times but rewarded perseverance a great deal.

After they struggled to even get that released fully and was followed by a four year gap I had to fear for the worst for any future music from them. Then I listened to Iko for the first time in a while and soon afterwards got a message on last.fm. From Kieran Scragg! An extra exciting moment because it said that they had a free EP to give away on their myspace, the Ctrl Alt Delete EP, and an album to follow.

At this point I would have been happy for any new music from him really, but the EP went way beyond my expectations and is the most fully formed and impressive Iko release to date. The last three tracks largely carry on where they left off before and are no less beautiful for it, but the preceding "This Room Needs a Priest" and "CtrlAltDel" are revelations. The former veers from choral harmony to rattling rock with more of a punch than even the Buffseeds days. The latter sees Kieran's voice cut up and distorted against a loud and chaotic backdrop, glimpses of the delicate song it might have started as just occasionally slipping through the haze, beautifully hopeless. Can't wait to see what else the album has to offer.
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Jukebox extras #3

2009-05-31T18:16:00.002+01:00

VV Brown - "Shark in the Water"
Something about the massive, unselfconcious enthusiasm this transmits, along with the number of clashing hooks that are thrown together in the presumption that some will stick, makes me think of Natasha Bedingfield. That and VV's voice sounds a bit like Tashbed's. An unlikely sound for the next big thing, but as long as she stays more "These Words" than "Single" I approve. [7]

Regina Spektor - "Laughing With"
"Fidelity" was one of my favourite discoveries of the old Jukebox era and still makes me smile without fail when it comes up on shuffle. It's actually a bit upsetting then that this is so hopeless, displaying none of the attributes that made that so swooningly charming. Instead it's a one note ramble, musically and lyrically, that doesn't even get across its message clearly and gives away its weak, weak pay-off in the title. Bah. [2]

Lady Gaga - "Lovegame"
Lady Gaga currently has the number 1 and 2 best selling singles of 2009 in the UK. That's Spice Girls levels of chart domination. Since this follows the formula to the extent of reusing the "Just Dance" melody several times, and helpfully flags up its 'disco stick' talking point at the start, middle and end, it's all too easy to see it following suit. Little else to take offence at, all competent as ever, but nothing new is offered to make hearing this everywhere an attractive prospect. [4]
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Doves at Brixton Academy (02/05/09)

2009-05-10T22:09:00.005+01:00

Making atmospheric guitar music with a clear familiarity with dance, it makes sense that The Invisible should be supporting Doves. It's slightly lighter and funkier genres that inform them, resulting in a sound that at its best recalls the cruelly overlooked Grand National. The deep bass squelch and happy bounce of "London Girl" in particular gets very warmly welcomed. At times, though, the lack of a commanding voice means less punchy material drifts out without connecting; there's some potential there nonetheless.

Doves themselves don't exactly have the world's greatest live vocalists at their command, though all three take to the mic by the end of the show. Jez is able to carry the likes of "Jetstream" and "Words" off no worse than on record, but Jimi is more variable. Frequently rearing back from the mic with each word as if overpowered by what he was singing, he suits the likes of "Rise" and "Snowden", with their brooding, beyond-words emotions and heavy musical weight, really well but elsewhere sometimes sounded curiously distant. "Caught by the River" resultantly becomes an odd choice of old song to bring out for the end of the main set.

Said set is mainly drawn from the new album Kingdom of Rust and (narrowly my favourite) The Last Broadcast. The best sequence is the pairing of the title tracks of each, both powerfully immediate and played with country jangle to the fore, forging a link between the two that wouldn't wotherwise be apparent. Those aside, a punchy "Black and White Town" and "Pounding" are highlights. My opinion on much of the rest of the new material (slight improvement on the last album, too lumpen to really recapture past glories) sadly doesn't get changed much, but the general reaction to the new stuff suggests plenty are a lot more won over.
The real treats for longstanding fans unsurprisingly come in the encore, beginning with a gorgeous acoustic rendition of B-side "Northenden" that melts away the distance between band and audience and brings to mind those pesky Elbow comparisons for the only time of the night. There's some position-swapping for "Here it Comes" and then the joyous, triumphant finale of "There Goes the Fear" and "Space Face".
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Withdrawn from memory

2009-05-03T19:16:00.003+01:00

Doves live review coming soon, but an amusing pre-script(?) to it first. I was going to write about how good it was to finally see a Doves show as I'd never seen them properly before, having only seen them at V2001.

Before the show started at Brixton Academy yesterday, something by The Magic Numbers was being played over the sound system and I had a memory of seeing them as a support act before their first album at the same venue. I worked out that it must have been early 2005, but couldn't think of a show that I'd been to that it could have been.

I've just done some internet research and turned up that it was, yep, Doves that they were supporting. I also found my ticket and saw that that was the one show at Brixton Academy where we ended up with seated tickets without realising. The fact that I'd totally forgotten about it may have as much to do with the huge distance from the stage of the upper balconies there as anything.

Bat for Lashes at Shepherds Bush Empire (19/04/09)

2009-05-03T14:55:00.004+01:00

No doubt that the word to leap to in describing School of Seven Bells is shoegaze - their guitarist, long fringe covering his face, even maintains the correct downward facing pose throughout. Their differentiating tricks are light electronic beats and their two singers, weaving between unison and harmony in a manner that my friend very distractingly (but sort of accurately) compared to Abba. All quite enjoyable but the fine definition needed to appreciate for more than a couple of unfamiliar songs doesn’t really work in a large-ish venue.

It occurs at some point during Bat for Lashes' set that Natasha Khan constantly mines a very limited and specific lyrical vocabulary to remarkable effect - not quite on the levels of Brett Anderson in his prime, but not far off. Possibly it’s the realisation that running in the dark/night is central to both “Daniel” and "Pearl's Dream" that tips it over the edge. Two Suns’ repeated twos, hearts, fires, space, stars, moons and darkness clearly and deliberately step the thematic links up a gear, but it’s not like they weren’t there before. Musically she has moved much further from the early days to expansive and dramatic variety of sounds of the new album.

That actually poses a bit of a problem live when it comes to some of the new songs that are heavier on context and studio work – “Peace of Mind” just doesn’t work without its choir. “Travelling Woman” also unsurprisingly flags as the closest thing to filler on Two Suns. Where the songs fall within the scope of the band to deliver, though, they are on top form. “Glass” makes for a monumental opener, between Natasha building from subdued to accessing previously unknown vocal range and its intense rhythmic climax. The amazing, forceful drumming is also foregrounded in “Two Planets”, the most fully realised tying of the record’s themes to music on a similarly cosmic scale.

But although the second album is the better by far, it’s the cherry-picked highlights of Fur and Gold that stand out even more and get the warmest reception, from the galloping statement of purpose “Horse and I” to whimsical “The Wizard”. An excellent bare-bones harpsichord version of “Prescilla” even inspires multiple uncoordinated attempts to clap the rhythm, about which the best to say is that hearts were in the right place.

Of the new songs "Moon and Moon" (which she has been playing live since at least the show three years ago that I linked above!) is the only one to achieve the same charged emotional intimacy as powered Fur and Gold and makes for a beautiful encore. Then she almost wastes all the good work by coming out for a second encore to play current single "Daniel" for a second time. Really unnecessary and a long way from the best she has to offer.

Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

2009-05-02T11:16:00.003+01:00

We’ll start off with another unused Singles Jukebox entry, from a while back:

‘Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets
I'm a bit torn on this one. The acceleration from the burbling opening into the blaring technicolour chorus is thrilling, but the singer's voice is a harder sell and by the end the shouting is just a touch too much. Similarly the zany lyrics repeatedly grate through trying far, far too hard but the Simple Kid reference makes me grin and 'we'll play lovely noise' is just about perfect as a dumb chorus statement. I still approve of anyone taking emo-minus-angst as a starting point and at the very least it makes me want to see what else the band can pull off.
[7]’.

Well, I did, and it turns out rather a lot that is much better! I’d like to say that I just hadn’t heard of Fight Like Apes before that, but sadly in fact I had but on the basis of Irishness and having a primate related name I’d somehow merged them together with Humanzi in my mind and therefore not bothered listening. Oh well, better late than never. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion is actually just about a 2009 album by UK release date at least.

For all that I complained of trying too hard in the lyrics (and the occasional contrived moment does sneak in elsewhere), the album is actually characterised mainly by being blissfully free of self-conciousness that might otherwise have held them back. So they rally their pop sensibilities and day-glo keyboards and head off in noble pursuit of the base and immediate, firmly rooted in Los Campesinos! style indie-pop but continually harder and more direct, and armed with Maykay’s yelp and embittered cursing and whoever it is that also does vocals sounding, to quote another Jukebox contributor, like ‘[a] guy who wanders in from a hardcore band near the end’.

They combine the heady thrills that result from this all out assault that with enough other tricks to ration it over the whole record. “Jake Summers” alternates between gauche and studied cool, its synthetic heartbreak interludes like Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps”. “Digifucker" sets itself up as coy and quirky even more convincingly than “Tie Me Up in Jackets” before you realise that it was just a pose to allow the surge into the vein-popping outrage of its chorus (“So did you fuck her??/Did you stick things up her??”) to hit you round the head even harder. They have a thing with plummy voice samples from B-movies too, cutting them up to increasingly amusing and unsettling effect in that song and others.

Best of all is “Do You Karate?”, a whirlwind tour around everything they do best in just over two minutes. Pummelling drums, inventive profanity (‘you’re about as much use as a cuntless whore’) a chorus that collides the two vocalists at full pelt, and an enormous synth hook that lights up the middle of it and serves as another indie reference, following the line ‘he doesn’t even know you like Stars!’ and resembling said band’s “Reunion” turned up to 11.
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Jukebox extra #2

2009-05-02T09:32:00.000+01:00

Chrisette Michele - "Epiphany"
Chrisette easily has the confidence and class needed to come out of this kiss-off sounding undeniably in control and on top. Not only that but she also makes the touch uncertainty and doubt present in arriving at that point believable and compelling. She's helped along by a pretty sweet piano hook but most of all I love the breathing as rhythym track, especially when everything else drops out. [8]
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Jukebox extra #1

2009-04-23T19:37:00.004+01:00

Stuff that I write about singles that doesn't get used.

Placebo - "Battle for the Sun"
Placebo made a decent stab at continued relevance last time round but this overreaching wannabe epic sounds like an outtake from the second JJ72 album, with the dubious addition of the dominating presence of Brian Molko. It doesn't help that the bits where he repeats the same word five times just sound like he's forgotten what comes next. [3]
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Somewhere else II

2009-04-14T07:56:00.005+01:00

To continue responding to my lack of substantial writing by trying to palm you off with other things, I'm also now on Twitter.

Something on the Fight Like Apes album coming soon.
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Somewhere else

2009-03-30T23:13:00.006+01:00

I'm not sure how big an overlap there is between interest in the music covered on ifblog and interest in vegetarian food in Japan. If you do fit into both of those though, or in the more unlikely event that you have an obsessive desire to read everything that I write, you'll be interested in the new blog that I am co-author of.
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Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

2009-03-29T15:00:00.001+01:00

I've long loved the way that Gruff Rhys and fellow Super Furries completely unselfconciously make the unlikeliest of subjects seem like perfectly natural lyrical concerns. Gruff has outdone himself with first single from their new album "Inaugural Trams" [free mp3 from website], an excited bounce of a song that puts its love in terms of town planning, or possibly vice versa ('We could promenade down the infra-nasal depression/The streets of your hands will never know a recession') and has a repeated call of 'trams!' as its most virulent hook of many. It's difficult to imagine many other bands singing of triumphs like 'we have reduced emissions by seventy-five per cent' with such winning sincerity.

I mention a Gruff song first as it's perhaps not surprisingly the most instant joy of their ninth (!) album, but the key to Dark Days/Light Years' triumph is actually the decision to divide up vocal and songwriting duties among the band. Said division was probably a large part of what made their last two albums a relatively weak patch (i.e. merely really good) but it's now paying dividends big time as everyone hits their stride. Cian Ciaran's sweet and affectionate "Helium Hearts" and Huw Bunford's intricate yacht rock update "White Socks/Flip Flops", its unlikely steals from Moody Blues solo records included, are album highlights. At least I think that's whose they are as with only the digital release so far songwriting credits are unclear.

Anyway, the band has long revelled in stylistic diversity and the different voices present (both figuratively and literally) add yet another dimension to this. There's a range of languages too of course, with the blissful Welsh harmonising of "Lliwiau Llachar" and the just-brief-enough German rap that Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand tears into midway through "Inaugural Trams". The variation all flows together without pause thanks to some particularly neat sequencing. Almost every track wending its way totally logically to an end in a brief snatch of a completely different tune before the following begins from there - a sort of aural palate cleanser mechanism that is very effective.

Perhaps of necessity Dark Days/Light Years is quite a different beast from the major label opuses of Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, with a more pared down and direct sound than previously. Focussing on tighter grooves with a sprinkling of kraut-rock and recalling Guerrilla most of previous albums (the fuzzy, itchy guitars and unhinged vocals of "Crazy Naked Girls" are initially a dead ringer for "Night Vision") suits the current model of the band a lot more than the harmonic pop of Hey Venus! did, although more important is that such an overview no longer really gives a fair reflection of the scope and ambition at work.
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Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood

2009-03-25T19:50:00.003Z

Polly Scattergood's debut shows off a talent for pop with a twist. Or rather, the pop is the twist in deceptively fragile and downcast songs which frequently turn out to have been smuggling expansive choruses all along. "Unforgiving Arms" switches seamlessly from contemplative to embracing with typically deft electronic touches, and the not all that cheery acoustic "Please Don't Touch" suddenly turns to handclapping jaunt in surprisingly effective fashion.

Elsewhere the vacuum packed glide of "Bunny Club" pitches its eerie emotional distance just right, and makes for a strong later section of the album alongside debut "Nitrogen Pink". Just about claiming status as most epic emotional blowout of the album, that one shows off her piercing voice to great effect, frequently just on the verge of cracking but holding the song together. To go for my usual comparisons to artists no one remembers, it's all quite Martin Grech, which is a good thing.

It's not all so excellent - she gets bogged down by a couple of too slow, sparser ballads and these in particular expose a pervading lyrical immaturity, with the naked blub of "Poem Song" and its 'ribbons on my fingers and cuts on my wrist' feeling uncomfotably like emotional voyeurism. Similarly "I Hate the Way" builds excellently from fragile verses through Muse guitar pounding to another big chorus, but then ends with a coda of Polly intoning 'maybe if I skip my dinner make myself pretty and thin and maybe then he'll love me' and it's all rather unnecessary. With that being something that time may hopefully fix, there's definite potential for greater things ahead.
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Ordinary northern blokes

2009-03-25T08:02:00.004Z

I was going to make a very brief post commenting on a live review of Doves that had said their new album was like Elbow's last one and 'deserves similar success', since I find it amusing when six years ago there were numerous pieces saying much the same with bands reversed. Thing was, I forgot which paper I'd been reading and had to do a search for it.

Turns out it was the Independent but also that they were far from alone.
The Guardian's 'the Cheshire trio who have accumulated so much critical goodwill during their steady but so far unspectacular 11-year career that much of the music press is willing them to follow Elbow into the winners' circle.' just about works at a stretch if we're only caring about awards now.
The Evening Standard's 'Plenty of signs point to them becoming this year’s Elbow — a bunch of ageing, remarkably ordinary northern blokes who find that after such a long time, a huge mass of people realise how terrific they are all at once.' is just plainly lazy rubbish, though.

Comparisons are obvious enough that it would be silly not to expect them to be made but totally missing the point to shoehorn them into a slightly more compelling story is another matter. The real question is whether after four years away Doves can still win back all the fans who put The Last Broadcast and Some Cities to number one when they were the ones getting mainstream coverage and succeeding on their own merits.
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You need more

2009-03-22T18:23:00.004Z

An update on my predicitions from my previous charts analysis which saw comparatively poor single performances in the singles chart from long established acts as being part of a trend in changing purchase patterns rather than down to individual failures or even general increasing irrelevance.

Despite the Brit Awards appearance and Xenomania declaring it a hit, Pet Shop Boys' "Love Etc." has indeed missed the top 10. Its 14 matches "Home and Dry" rather than setting any new record low and I can't decide if that undermines or strengthens my case. Anyway, next up are Depeche Mode.
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Wolf at the door

2009-03-22T17:30:00.003Z

Pictured above: the cover to the first of two forthcoming Patrick Wolf albums (the other is The Conqueror). Not entirely clear if this is the Tilda Swinton narrated one, or if that is actually both of them.

Clearly Patrick has long had a vision of his role as a pop star that extends well beyond the content of his music, and his successful careful matching of persona to music was a part of what made Wind in the Wires era shows magical. By the multiple costume changes of the next album it was something to be indulged as often as admired but still worked. Sometimes. Things have gone a little bit further now, perhaps as a result of a taste for the freedom provided by fan-financing as opposed to the major label deal of The Magic Position. First exhibit: that cover above (although it's probably the choice of font which is the biggest weakness). Second: the new (and not safe for work) video "Vulture" with its bondage gear and general dubious art-ness.

Possibly more telling, though, was his bizarre hour long show in the middle of Club NME at Koko last Friday. It was not so much the bare chest, leather trousers and return to bleach-blond hair that were the issue. No, it was the way that a desire to put on a show translated as donning headset microphone and dancing uncoordinatedly. For all the energy he put into it, it basically left him looking a bit lost on stage and detracted massively from the mystique of older songs. The problems were most obvious when he was tethered to the spot by the necessity to play ukelele for "The Libertine" and suddenly was a believable figure again.

Except that after appearing to have finished and left everyone baffled, he finally came out for an encore covered in silver glitter and weilding some kind of sparkly skull, and hit us with the aggressive, stuttering electronic of that new single and its obvious predecessor "Bloodbeat", and we last we really did actually have a cohesive, emphatic spectacle to behold, as intended. So I still hold out some hope, if not of receiving any kind of return on my 'investment' in The Bachelor.
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Back!

2009-03-16T08:08:00.005Z

Probably my favourite part of the still much-missed Stylus was the Singles Jukebox, in which a large team of writers took on songs from the charts (in some cases the charts of Poland, Serbia, Japan and so on) and mercilessly scored them out of ten.

Well, now there's a new, standalone Jukebox! 'Pop, to two decimal places'! I'm not on the first entry but there may well be some of my work up on it by the time you read this.
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Fever Ray - Fever Ray

2009-03-15T18:14:00.006Z

It was actually listening to Robyn's The Knife-produced "Who's That Girl" that I realised the key difference between Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo album and those of The Knife. It's the booming, metallic percussion sounds that most mark that song as one of their productions, and they are all but absent from Fever Ray, putting in just a relatively restrained appearance in "Keep the Streets Empty for Me" as the album nears its end.

Some trademarks from the group's fantastic Silent Shout are still around with electronic base, a very similar production and pitchshifted vocals still around, but the overall shift is clear; this is a less immediate album, more subtle in its effect. While Karin's voice is still frequently obscured, distanced, it's never distorted into the terrifying shapes of "One Hit" or "We Share Our Mother's Health". There's still a shivery hopelessness seeping through the day-to-day of "Seven" (is it 'and your toes cold now'?) but it's less explicit, a more typical domesticity foregrounded, not least in the ear-catching line 'We talk about love/We talk about dishwasher tablets'.

The determinedly monochrome sound serves to make Fever Ray a slightly underwhelming listen at first, with even the single and lead-off "If I Had a Heart" never reaching the resolution to its droning tension that you might expect. Yet somehow its completely unified atmosphere and the way that unveils its secrets so slowly, fractured narratives and feelings buried deeply, makes it even more addictive than Silent Shout.

Difficult to pick highlights but "Concrete Walls" is particularly effective in its claustrophobia writ large, its distorted 'I leave the TV on/And the radio' repeating and echoing into a coping mechanism mantra. The brief cracks of light in the aforementioned "Keep the Streets Empty For Me", with Cecilia Nordlund's gorgeous guest vocals and some unlikely panpipes, are all the brighter for feeling so hard-earned by that point. By five or six listens, absorption into the album's world is complete and by the time closer "Coconut" slowly stretches out its clicks and minimalism for seven minutes it feels like it could very happily go on for much longer.
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Chartsengrafs special - the death of the album act single

2009-03-08T14:24:00.003Z

Back when Chartsengrafs was a regular feature (you never know, it may yet reappear), I celebrated Oasis failing to reach number one with the first single from their new album, and began by noting 'The first single from a new Madonna album will go to number one (unless it's "American Life"). The first single from a new U2 album will go to number one (unless it's "Stay"). And the first single from a new Oasis album will go to number one... unless it's "The Shock of the Lightning"'

I would love to similarly celebrate the second statement there being proved wrong, as U2's laughable "Get on Your Boots" has failed to even make the top ten, but at this point it's clear that there's something else going on. Just like Oasis, their album is still selling bucketloads in the usual fashion despite reviews that maintained grudging respect at best.

A couple more examples of the same pattern of failing single and successful album from long-established acts:
Morrissey went from two number 3 lead singles to "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" recently stalling at 21, but the album was still 3 and not far below the last two for sales.
R.E.M. went from "Leaving New York" at 5 to "Supernatural Superserious" totally missing the top 40 last year. Even later singles from previous albums managed better than that. Yet Accelerate was still a number 1 album, just like its predecessor.
AC/DC came back with a number one album, but no sign of a charting single to support it.

So what's happening? Much of the success of such acts' lead singles was clearly down to large and long-established fanbases, not least because airplay for some of these was poor and publicity tended to be centred around the album even then. There weren't that many fans loyally buying every single though, or they wouldn't have all seen later singles from albums fare less well.

Although the album was undoubtedly the big deal for all of the above, the first single was a special case, a chance to own a song a couple of weeks early with a nice package and a couple of extra songs, for just a few quid. A chance which now looks a great deal less attractive, clearly. All still release CD singles but as finding them in shops becomes more and more difficult and their competition sell increasing numbers of downloads they don't have the power of before.

The single-buying audience has now very much switched to downloads and the previous U2 lead single buying audience has failed to make the switch with them. Either they are just not buying downloads at all (out-of-touch grandad jibes here) or, more likely, no longer seeing as much value in the purchase of a single that they are planning to get on an album anyway when it doesn't come as the same package as before. The fact that by time the single has released the album is likely to have already leaked may also have some impact here. I definitely buy far fewer singles than before although at least as many albums.

Rock acts that would previously have followed the pattern of more successful albums than singles can still overcome this effect. Look at Kings of Leon at number 1 for 4 weeks and Coldplay getting their first ever number 1 (not with the lead single, but that one's difficult to judge as they gave it away for free before selling). In both cases, with the songs continuing to sell despite album releases, it's clear that they got there by being bought by new fans, or at least those who weren't yet sure about buying the album. It takes airplay and exposure and positive reaction to mange that, not just fan loyalty. Which nicely brings us back to U2, who with all that prime time on TV maybe could have made a success of "Get on Your Boots" after all, if only it had actually been good.

There are two good opportunities to test the above trends coming up very soon, with comebacks from Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode. Both have consisently scored top ten albums and top ten lead singles regardless of the positivity of reaction to either. An added boost to PSB from their Brits performance notwithstanding, I expect the album record to hold true but would be surprised if the single one does.

Any thoughts or further examples/counterexamples welcome!
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Three free songs

2009-03-07T21:29:00.006Z

First up, Blue Roses. I saw them last November supporting Emmy the Great and was very impressed. Singer Laura Groves has had a couple of songs on compilations under her own name but I think this is the first Blue Roses release, a typically lovely number called "Doubtful Comforts" that's available for free from their site.

Blue Roses - Doubtful Comforts [right-click]

Next, My Latest Novel, whose expansive and gorgeous B&S-meets-Arcade Fire debut Wolves was one of my favourite albums of 2006. They are finally back with an album called Deaths and Entrances and The Line of Best Fit has the opening track to download. On first listen it sounds a little more muscular (particular the vocals!) but still shares the features that made the first so appealing.

My Latest Novel - All in All is All [follow link]

Finally, it's likely that everyone has likely made up their mind on Art Brut by this point, and the first song from third album Art Brut vs Satan is unlikely to be changing any positions. Those who enjoy them, though, should continue to do so with "Just Desserts" and lines like 'I went to... the patisserie! They're always very happy to see me!'. Free on RCDLBL.

Art Brut - Just Desserts [follow link]
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Mama, I'm a bargain

2009-03-02T00:08:00.005Z

Not quite as great a deal from a British point of view as it would have been a year ago, but Saddle Creek are (for the next few hours) offering the new Cursive album, Mama, I'm Swollen, for sale for $1 in mp3 form. That's about 70p. After that it will increase by a dollar per day until the physical release on March 10th.

On first listen it's a much tricksier an more subtle beast than the instant hit of blazing anger and blaring horns that characterised much of 2006's fantastic Happy Hollow and is definitely going to need further listens. Hey, there's already enough there to more than justify parting with $1 though.
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Are we human or are we fighter?

2009-03-01T23:50:00.002Z

The video blow came on TV earlier and the thing that struck me, apart from it's total ridiculousness, was the realisation that Brandon Flowers isn't the first in recent times to totally mangle English in a successful pop song with a chorus revolving around '[action]-er'!

the type of thing you hear on streets and don't dream of giving money for

2009-02-27T00:11:00.006Z

Emmy the Great's "First Love" is the free single this week on the UK iTunes store! So if you're still in the habit of downloading single songs and aren't already on to her, here's your chance.

It's also interesting to see the (largely average at best) reviews from those who've downloaded it. When you spend a lot of time reading the writing of or talking to people who have much the same taste as you, or at least who are also deeply into music, there are certain assumed values and ways of thinking that you take for granted. So it's quite instructive to see the reactions to a song you love dearly of a bunch of people who've never heard of it on the basis that it's free. A lot of it is just the people who love to moan every week about how ripped off they are thanks to not instantly loving the free song, but you also get a lack of opposition to "Hallelujuh", some very specific production complaints, multiple comparisons to Dido and stuff like 'She sounds like she's just talking to herself'. Huh, she sort of does at the start, actually.

Discourse 2000

2009-02-25T18:05:00.002Z

There's a guest post by me over at Sweeping the Nation. It's for their feature where they're assembling a collection of pieces about some of the best albums of the current decade that are not well established as such. Previous entries have included Super Furry Animals and Six By Seven.

I considered but rejected Hello Saferide's second (too recent and already written too much), Buffseeds' The Picture Show (too personal to be likely to convince anyone else) and Girls Aloud's Chemistry (too likely to end up with me sounding like an idiot) before eventually settling on Hate, by The Delgados.

Brits alright

2009-02-21T17:23:00.004Z

XRRF began their Brit Awards coverage by noting how backdated it was to be still using a blog, rather than Twitter. Thanks to being away from the internet all week I have that beaten and will present my notes taken on actual paper as I was watching it, even longer afterwards than I expected!

As a result you have to take it on faith that my many successful predictions are due to the predictability of the whole thing rather than any cheating.

Johnny Vegas voiceover is not really a good start, and ona first glance at the stage (grass, tent) it might not even be immediately obvious what was supposed to be happening to anyone who didn't read about the Glastonbury theme.

U2 are up first playing their new single, and waste no time in putting up the Union Jack imagery. Don't they get put up for Best International rather than British? Ah, they do an Irish flag too. I think. Or Italian.

You'd think that to celebrate and show off the best of British music we could easily manage better than "Put On Your Boots" Especially once it gets to the 'you don't know...' bit that sounds like inferior Muse. U2 make this all look totally routine and dull for them, and they haven't even put the album out yet.

The spoken bit is even worse, and if I wrote words like that I sure would not want them printed metres high behind me. Speaking of terrible lyrics, they've now switched to sounding like 2008 vintage The Verve. It's got to be all uphill from here, right?

Our host Kylie comes out for a short bit of "Can't Get You Out of My Head". It's weird that someone already so big can still have come to be defined so much by one song. There's some cheap laughs gained by the fatness of one of the dancers dressed in the red, face-visored costumes of the video. That's one of our other hosts, of course. I would definitely not be able to pick Mathew Horne out of a lineup, although I might manage James Corden.

Now Kylie is speaking she sounds very regal, although it's not long before the first autocue slip-up. The first joke is at the expense of Ting Tings for not being too world-renowned, which is a bit awkward. There are much better targets among the shortlists, for a start.

Simon Pegg is on. 'Pop - I know I love it' he says and it will be surprising if anyone manages to sound less convincing tonight. Our first award is best British Female. As they read out the nominees there's a big cheer for M.I.A. but nothing compared to our obvious winner Duffy. Then there's Beth Rowley, who I have only just realised is not the same thing as Beth Orton.

Best British Female - Duffy

Duffy sounds very unsurprised and almost as unimpressed. She knows she'll be back later.

Stage banter has already been reduced to just shouting at Kylie. They try to make jokes based on Lionel Richie song titles before he comes on, but it seems lost on much of the audience. Best International Female next. Santigold is still read out as Santogold for now. Less obvious one, this, apart from that Gabrielle Cilmi will not be winning - Pink?

Best International Female - Katy Perry

Oh. It's been long enough that "Hot and Cold" has been her representation on radio now that its mindlessly enjoyable chorus has taken hold and it's almost possible to forget how completely terrible a thing she is, but it comes back. Her first words get blocked off. Ooh, contraversial. She's sounding almost as ill as she says she is, and not even trying to pretend that she isn't only there because she knew she'd win.

Girls Aloud are the next performance and their staging looks more impressive than U2's right away. The giant feather aided stripper version of 'The Promise" is not quite working though. The impression that they could technically be naked behind those lasts about 3 lines before someone moves it wrong, and the feathers just get in the way for the entire rest of the song. It doesn't matter anyway because they're national treasures now - weird how it's happened a good three years after their best album by far, but there we go. Nicola sings and inevitably gets panned away from just before 'are you watching me baby?', heh.

Oh, we can't go the whole show without Fearne Cotton and her interviewing technique carefully honed on eight year olds, yay. She spends a remarkably long time detailing how the public can vote for an award without ever mentioning which one it is. It's Best British Single.

Interesting and a bit pleasing to see an iPhone advert with last.fm during the break, although the fact that even that is also plugging Kings of Leon is a bit depressing.

Alex James is now not a man of music, but of cheese apparently. And awkward speech rythyms. He's introducing Best British Breakthrough. It's difficult to care about anything apart from Scouting for Girls not winning, here. It will be Duffy though, probably.

Best British Breakthrough - Duffy

'This time last year she was playing a tiny club in Piccadilly' says the voiceover. She also already had a number one single. Try a bit harder, please. Her speech still sounds unimpressed, but she's charming and (a bit) less bland than her music.

Coldplay playing "Viva La Vida" next, and even for the Brits they don't have live strings and just have them miming them on a TV screen, which was funny half a year ago the first time but is not exactly lending a sense of occasion. This is almost as routine as U2 were. Guy Garvey doesn't look impressed. That's Guy Garvey, on ITV!

Haha, they have Jamies Oliver and Cullum presenting the next award. Almost as if they're setting out to make the easiest combined target possible. The public have now narrowed Best British Single down to five songs, and somehow have still included Leona Lewis' fourth best single.

More adverts, with Mastercard's miming sponsor things already repeating themselves. Poor effort. I'm not paying much attention to the ads and briefly think ITV are launching a programme called 'Celebrity Jews'. It's Juice.

Best International Group. Do we even need to bother with a shortlist? It's going to be Kings of Leon.

Best International Group - Kings of Leon

They will beat the exact same set of bands (MGMT, Fleet Foxes etc.) to win the album award too, presumably. We're being told again by the voiceover that the Brits are renowned for outrageous behaviour and surprises. They weren't thinking of Kings of Leon's super boring acceptance speech there.

A dig at Craig David's '6 nominations no Brits for CD!' is somehow still slightly amusing even after all these years, especially with placement next to the Best British Male award. And then you see the shortlist and realise that Ian Brown is up for it. And The Streets. Dizzee and Wiley still not acceptable? James Morrison to win, maybe.

Best British Male - Paul Weller

Oh. This is better than Annie Lennox every year how?

Next performance and unlike Coldplay, Duffy has real strings! And real music! Still boring.

Is Kings of Leon and Take That really that 'unlikely' a 'juxtaposition' as we're told?

Best International Album - Kings of Leon

How pointless. Mind you, British Group usually goes the same way. At least the acceptance speech is unintentionally more interesting as they go on and on in blissful ignorance about how they have to give this to 'England'. Just after having the award presented by notably not English
Joe Calzaghe too. Weren't the name of the awards a clue?

Take That perform next, and their hovering UFO staging and mid-transformation Superman costumes are a lot more impressive than the song. Which is still basically "Nature's Law" by Embrace. At least they look like they might be enjoying themselves.

Next award is Best British Live Act, as voted for by Radio 2 listeners. Taking that into consideration you'd think Coldplay would be a shoe-in and with Elbow as outsiders, but the fact that the vote likely had an internet aspect suggests that Iron Maiden's more dedicated fans might win over.

Best British Live Act - Iron Maiden

There we go. A video acceptance speech but they manage to at least stick something in the memory as they get vapourised by their mascot at the end, which is more than Weller could do.

Speaking of the internet, it's David Hasselhoff to present Best British Group. He (or whoever wrote the speech) is trying way too hard to sound profound. The 'surreal diversity' of British music is mentioned for a shortlist containing Radiohead, Coldplay and Elbow. Take That and Girls Aloud complete by far the best lineup so far. Take That to win?

Best British Group - Elbow

Oh my. A rare moment of joy has to be fucked up though, so the voiceover tells us that 'quality music does finally get recognised, even if it takes ten years', which rankles like anything when there was no reason not to recognise them before, and the awards committee still wouldn't have the balls to recognise them now if no one else had first. Chris Martin looks either happy or very well practised on his reaction shot. 'I can't believe how long it's taken us to get this close to the Hoff' begins Guy Garvey, although the speech doesn't really go anywhere too much from there.

Next performance is Kings of Leon doing "Use Somebody". Ever since the opening of this was used on the adverts for some MTV reality show that's all I can think of when I hear the song, it seems so appropriately vapid somehow. If they'd at least performed "Sex on Fire" I might have something half positive to say.

Hasselhoff is now creeping all over Fearne Cotton. Ewww. She tries to ask Elbow some questions but they are clearly not really listening.

The hosts joking at Craig David's expense a second time is not funny at all and just needlessly mean spirited.

Next award is a predecided one:

Critics' Choice Award - Florence & the Machine

Now, despite really liking Little Boots, Thecocknbullkid and Polly Scattergood, and even Micachu for the space of at least one song, I find myself completely unable to get behind Florence here. Even so, if she's meant to be so exciting why not give her the chance to come on and do a whole song? Someone else who doesn't look like this is just another show on a long list would be great.

Best International Male does not have the most impressive lineup, and must surely go to Kanye?

Best International Male - Kanye West

He's not here, of course. His first line is 'We know Barack is best interracial male'.

We now have a unique and exciting collaboration between The Ting Tings and Estelle! Which amounts to them getting to do a very short bit of "Shut Up and Let Me Go" before she does half of "American Boy" while they desparately try and find things to do in the background and Tempest 2000 is projected on the screens. There's then an excruciatingly awkward transition into "That's Not My Name" where the presence of all three finally makes a litte sense as it takes three competing voices to do the song's finale justice.

I finally realise that one of the reasons that I am beginning to dislike Mathew Horne so is that, especially in his awful blazer, he looks just like Ray Quinn.

Best British Single to be announced next. A "Mercy" win and Duffy clean sweep looks inevitable.

Best British Single - Girls Aloud, "The Promise"

Maybe not! The voiceover actually calls them 'national treasures'. Haha. I knew that they hadn't won anything recently, but didn't realise that this was their first ever Brit! Sarah is justified in shouting 'It's about time!'.

Last of the not already known awards is Best British Album. This surely can't be Elbow too and will be heading to Duffy. The fact that they have Tom Jones presenting makes that all the more obvious.

Best British Album - Duffy, Rockferry

Yep. Really difficult to care too much about this either way. She finally does actually look emotional though - maybe they only told her about the other two? She also doesn't make much sense at all. Voiceover mentions that The Darkness won three awards too at this point, although not that they had the whole finale turned over to them as the most exciting thing to hit music ever.

Only thing left is lifetime achievement to Pet Shop Boys, for which Brandon Flowers gives a surprisingly good speech which suggests that he is actually a fan and did actually read and think about what he was saying even if he didn't write it all.

My notes run out at this point as there was finally something more enjoyable to watch than to snark about. So, take it away Neil and Chris...

Emmy the Great - First Love

2009-02-15T23:10:00.003Z

I recently had a conversation by email with Ian Mathers about his review of Los Campesinos!’ second album. He comments on how it could never replicate the effect of their debut, thanks to not featuring songs which fans had already grown to love and waited expectedly for. I said again that I love wab, wad even more of the two and that it was interesting that I hadn’t had the same experience at all.

You may guess where this is going, but here’s the thing – I saw Los Campesinos! only once a relatively short time before their debut’s release, and didn’t listen to anything apart from the singles. I’ve only seen Emmy the Great twice, but the first was a year and a half ago and from then on I’ve been devouring the vast quantities of demos, singles and collaborations of hers that have been available.

I’ve had more than twelve months of slowly growing to adore her My Bad EP to the point where it’s odd to think that it’s a mere 5 songs and 13 minutes of acoustic alt-folk. More than twelve months of trying to get any news I can on an album, of groaning at repeated delays, of blind panic when even a month beforehand it still wasn’t on Amazon and I briefly, irrationally, feared that the “Hallelujah” issue had claimed it whole.

She has in fact stuck by “First Love”, even making it the single. That’s only right, because it remains a wonderful song (almost) entirely of her own, a well-spun yarn that totally captures the evocative and not always welcome power of memory and of music.

And so with it we have, at last, First Love the album (that’s not exactly a title to manage down expectations). And here I am at a loss to form an opinion on it in any normal way because it’s all too wrapped up in my expectations. The joy of finally getting to hear recorded versions of “First Love” and “Bad Things Coming, We are Safe”, of the violin led folksy swing of “Dylan” taking full shape, goes beyond just that of the fine songs themselves.

Weirdly the only two songs that I hadn’t already heard at least once are the first two, but they make for just as fine an introduction. “Absentee” builds up an affecting story from fractured phrases, with objects rather than memories that are the focal point – ‘brown laces’, ‘strange pictures’, ‘CDs, carkeys, diaries’. “24” is an even more terrific demonstration of Emmy’s skewed world view and way with words, turning with a hushed grace from watching the titular TV show to aging and death and missed chances.

Then there’s the three tracks from that EP make it on and despite having already seemed fully formed in simple acoustic form they are dressed in new clothes. “The Easter Parade” remains a haunting hymnal for the unfaithful and acquires a charming coda. “City Song” is relatively untouched and ‘They pulled a human from my waist… I would have kept it if I’d stayed’ is certainly an arresting line to close the album on. But “M.I.A.” doesn’t feel the same. The added backing vocals undercut the jarring, stark loneliness that suffused the whole song and instead it only emerges, concentrated, in the final line of the song.

The sheer number of fantastic songs that Emmy had already released also make for inevitable disappointment when favourites don’t make it. No otherworldly “Secret Circus”, no disarming honesty of “Two Steps Forward”. And no “Aiko”, even though it had it all – beauty, loss, romance, Cantonese… perhaps that one at least is for the best, as I can’t imagine the EP version being bettered. I can still listen to that EP compulsively, and now I also have First Love somewhere between ‘really great’ and ‘album of the year contender’ too. Will have to live with it a while longer to decide which, and I’m going to enjoy it a great deal either way.

Post-scripts

2009-02-10T21:35:00.004Z

...to the last two posts.

First, I'm not sure how I didn't put two and two together sooner, but non-singing half of The Bird and the Bee Greg Kurstin is also a producer of others. Most notably of late, the new Lily Allen album. Which explains why the soft swoosh of "The Fear" is not a million miles away from the band. Possibly also why they're on EMI.

Second and also on a producery theme, Popjustice have a post on Xenomania's new group Mini Viva. Not only is their only release to date called "I Left My Heart in Tokyo", it has a rather fetching sleeve with fake Japanese overlay. And difficult though it is to tell with only remixes available, there does seem to be a hint of Perfume in there.

The Bird and the Bee - Ray Guns are not Just the Future

2009-01-31T13:45:00.002Z

Given the previous post, it’s an amusing coincidence that the first album of 2009 that I’ve fallen for is one with a single called “Love Letter to Japan” (try to ignore the rubbish video). For a love letter it doesn’t actually say that much lyrically about Japan, beyond the the ‘patience and the peace/cherry blossoms and the candy’, but their musical retro-futurism and a certain sense of reserve do also point to what they might have been able to find to their liking there.

The Bird and the Bee's is a sort of dance-twee-pop sound built on trip-hop like beats, crackly string samples and minimalist instrumental interjections. On top of this you get Inara George’s soft and rather mannered vocals, frequently lent emphasis by being doubled (or tripled) up. At times, Ray Guns sounds about half way between the two models of Goldfrapp, but more often than that it sounds a lot like “They” by Jem. This is a good thing, given that “They” is one of the most mystifyingly great one-offs to have graced the charts recent years.

The comparison is clearest of all on playful album highlight “Polite Dance Song”, where the aforementioned reserve is put to use. Inara’s repeated ‘pardon me’s and ‘apologies, apologies’ multiply and swirl round her as she tries and doesn’t quite succeed in living up to the title. Those repeated apologies actually give even more of a sense of the loss of control and irresistibility of the urge to dance than the sweeping rise of ‘da-da-da-da-da-DA-DA’ that eventually overpowers do.

I’d previously come across The Bird and the Bee through their “Because” being a free single on iTunes. One aspect aside it was quite a good song, but I didn’t really remember that until going back to it now, thanks to that aspect being their failure to correctly distinguish the words ‘prostrate’ and ‘prostate’, a mistake that rendered it unlistenable as soon as spotted. They’ve fortunately avoided dropping any such clangers this time on an album that’s lightweight but very charming from start to finish.

I'd rather be in Tokyo

2009-01-30T18:06:00.004Z

I had a splendid time in Japan all round. Music related notes:

I didn’t exactly experience the ‘sensory overload’ suggested by guidebooks, possibly because London is not exactly the quietest or most restrained of places. However, the number of speaker-equipped video screens on Tokyo and Osaka corners blaring out clips of the top 10 between adverts certainly made pop music even more inescapable.

I went to a gig in Tokyo, which was as impressively organised and high-tech as so many other things (the small club’s lighting rig could probably outdo Wembley Arena’s). In a bit of a cheat it wasn’t actually a Japanese band but Canada’s Stars, who aren’t bothering with Europe on the current tour.

Although slightly taken aback by how much older they were looking than a couple of years ago, they did a fantastic job of much of Set Yourself on Fire, with an encore running from a stately “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” to the tension and emotional release of “One More Night”. They even brought rather patchier newer material to life, at least for as long as Torquil was energetically rushing around while cooing behind Amy’s “My Favourite Book”. A politely enthusiastic crowd was completely won over, especially after an amusing clarification that “Bitches in Tokyo” was describing the band rather than the locals.

They were supported by a local band in the shape of Ogre, You Asshole who despite the suggestions of their terrible name turned out to be decent post-punk that just didn’t quite have the tunes to rise above pastiche. See also: Base Ball Bear. My experience of indie music was a little disappointing in general, as based on a selection of store listening station clips it tended towards either limited imitation or (more frequently) being too twee even for me.

The listening was mainly done in Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo, which was probably my most impressive record shopping experience ever. The mere fact that it still exists is obviously an edge over our Tower, but six floors that are near enough all music goes beyond the scale of anything we used to have, never mind now that Zavvi is dying and CDs are slowly squeezed out of HMV. That meant a greater selection of Western music than I’m used to. They had a big display for We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed!

The aforementioned listening stations were typically well-designed too, with touchscreen menus that made it easy to find stuff but also to listen to new releases or anything in the top 100 singles/albums (interesting aside – Belle & Sebastian’s BBC Sessions was doing much better than here)

Beyond that there was a feeling of a personal touch, with lots of handwritten recommendations cards (I assume that’s what they were since I couldn’t read beyond the level of ‘M.I.A. something something… erekutoroniku something something’) and intriguing choices of in-store music, all identified on screens around the place as they played, which makes so much sense you wonder why it’s not the case everywhere.

The downside? Everything is ridiculously expensive, and not just because the pound is currently worthless. That’s CDs in Japan in general rather than a fault of Tower – bizarrely, imports tend to cost much less than domestic CDs, which have prices roughly double those here relative to most things. Three times relative to video games, which were sometimes actually cheaper. Despite (because of?) this, even more expensive editions of albums with bonus DVDs seemed to be the norm and I was asked a couple of times if I was sure I just wanted to buy the CD.

Oh and I did find a Japanese album to buy apart from stuff I already knew about (Kana, Anna Tsuchiya, Polysics) in the end. By the means of hearing it while in a Poundland equivalent, I came across Perfume’s GAME. Apparently a previous number one album in Japan, their sugar rush robot-pop is like if Lo-Fi-Fnk had a high budget girlgroup at their disposal – I can’t really think of anything similar and more mainstream here that’s nearly as intoxicatingly sweet as the self-explanatory “Chocolate Disco” (or “チョコレート・ディスコ” - Chokore-to Disuko). Capsule carry the slightly less pop visions of the same producers and are also worth a go – “More More More” for instance.

Away

2009-01-05T08:23:00.003Z

Just a quick note to say that for once I actually have a good reason to not be posting as I'm going to Japan (followed almost immediately be other less exciting trips). I should be writing again in three weeks or so.

Albums of 2008: #1

2009-01-01T16:41:00.007Z

Hello Saferide - More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide

It's been a strong year for albums all round and the most difficult year that I can remember to decide what should top this list. There was almost nothing at all between two albums that stand head and shoulders above everything else released in the past few years. I've had a few changes of heart but in the end had to make a personal choice and go for the one that, to invert a quote from #4, told me lots about my life, and which said it in endlessly charming and clever and insightful ways. It’s also a second successive Swedish winner, if anyone is keeping score.

Annika Norlin's 2005 debut Introducing Hello Saferide demonstrated a talent for writing songs laced with self-effacing wit and the telling small details of everyday life, all wrapped in sunny lo-fi indie pop. The wit and talent remains, but musically its follow up was enough of a change of direction for her to feel the need to issue advance warning that the album 'features no hand claps and hardly any acoustic guitars'.

As it turns out, the initially disconcerting move to a fuller sound works wonderfully. If anything it suits Norlin’s slightly husky voice better and while the songs still make songwriting sound the easiest thing in the world they crucially now have the musical heft to back up their emotional weight when required. Take “X Telling Me About the Loss of Something Dear, at Age 16”, a regretful tale of lost virginity that unflinchingly sets out the facts before a single soft ‘I felt sad and I didn’t know why’ brings out the emotions that have been seeping through between the lines. It’s even more powerful for its twanging pedal steel backing, and the way that the enveloping choral ‘ahh’s raise tempo to an almost cruel ‘ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah’, like an aural version of the experience burned into memory. It also, incidentally, now possesses the most amusingly inappropriate video of the year.

Alongside the musical developments, Annika now sounds remarkably self-assured. She still makes no secret of her issues, with “Travelling With HS” ruefully admitting that she prefers spending time with herself than other people, but she sounds like someone who has made peace with them, who is in a position to analyse and make humour from the unhealthier desires rather than give into them.

And so she is in a position to make magic out of the ordinary. Nothing that dramatic as such ever happens in Hello Saferide songs (unless it’s imagined like her non-existent daughter’s multitude of achievements in “Anna”) but, you know, nothing that dramatic really happened in my life this year either, and it doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel extremes of emotion at times.

Nothing gave me the same shiver of recognition as the line “People give me work and money/They depend on me now/If they only knew how thin the ice they walk on is’ from “Parenting Never Ends”, a beautifully vulnerable song about the pains of growing up and the not-so-hidden desire to give it all up and retreat into childhood (or earlier). I might not yet be able to personally relate to “Overall”’s satire of parents worried about the effect the tiniest failure to follow best practice might have on their children, but it rings deliciously true. Then there’s the moment in the Bonnie and Clyde fantasies of the bored “Middle Class” where Annika plots to steal a car before noting ‘I’ll probably feel bad for not taking the train’.

“Arjeplog” boils down love and the trials of domestic life to its essentials ‘The obstacles we build for ourselves, my love/Creating decisions to make, my love/When really it could be this easy/You and me and house and food’ before casting off the worries with a smile as its escapist string-swept chorus takes off beyond mere words. ‘The wind in the trees are like shhhww, shhhww/And the trains that pass by are like chkachk-chkachk’ it goes, and ‘Our feet in the snow are like shp-shp-shp/And the choir in my chest is like oh-oh-ohhh-oh’. Then comes the kicker – ‘And the Stockholm insecurity is like I don’t exist’. It’s one of the most uplifting things I’ve ever heard.

The first signs of how much I was going to love the album actually came practically two years before its release, when I saw her at Eurosonic and noted the high quality of new stuff, especially one about how people are like songs, especially loving how it ingeniously phrased its admiration through the words ‘You’re the only one I’ve met who’s God Only Knows’. That song is now opening standout “I Wonder Who is Like This One” and sounds even better, with a mythic quality in its hushed electric progression that recalls a certain recently popular Jeff Buckley interpretation. There are layers of depth to even its apparently throwaway lines, too – it only recently dawned that not only is ‘Me, I’m like Can’t Get You Out of My Head’/Annoying at first but I’ll make you want to dance’ a funny line, but the whole thing is indeed about someone that she can’t get out of her head!

I sincerely hope that this album will get picked up and released properly in the UK (especially given the current exchange rate for buying from Sweden, ouch) because not only is it massively deserving of a wider audience but there really should be no barrier to it – aside from an occasional local reference and having to look up Sancho Panza to fully get the song of the same name this should be universal stuff. Songwriting this good usually is.

Albums of 2008: #2

2009-01-01T04:46:00.008Z

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

It's been decidedly odd this year watching Elbow finally clasped to the hearts of the nation at large as much as to mine. Seeing those familiar, reassuring faces staring out from unfamiliar places in newspapers, hearing their songs in endless sports coverage reels, channel-hopping from "Grounds For Divorce" soundtracking a trailer on C4 to it gracing another on 5. Hearing "Mirrorball" at a work training conference may have been the most surreal. It's been immensely cheering with it though, as rarely has belated success been so thoroughly deserved and, even ignoring their previously amassed wonders, The Seldom Seen Kid was worthy of all kinds of raptures.

Totally uncompromising, their songwriting remained as personal and individualistic as ever. Again they demonstrated that there is never a need to aim for universality in broad generalisations when poetically expressed emotions are far more relatable grounded in specifics, and again they showed no truck with making their songs straightforward and easy to take in any more than they did with being deliberately difficult. The belief came across clearly, as always, that if they got it right the audience should come to them if willing, and now they turned out to be more right than ever.

Starting off with a very Elbow bang then, "Starlings" strung big fanfares around an exposed moment of honesty and love. 'You are the only thing in any room you're ever in' is a breathtaking sentiment and the musical eruption that eventually follows seems only appropriate, but it's all the more poignant for the doubt and false bravado that surrounds it - the next line after all is 'I'm stubborn, selfish and too old'.

The bluesy swagger and thwacking percussion of "Grounds For Divorce" drill home the deadening routine of its hopeless drinking, as vulnerabilities seep through into the chorus and its hole 'down which I cannot help but fall'. "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" stretched yearning and alienation to new skyscraping heights musically and in content. "The Fix" was also a whole new type of genius, Guy Garvey and Richard Hawley hamming it up as two scheming cheats to gleeful results with just a hint of sadness at the fact that they're as likely mere fantasists as anything more sneaking through.

Even "One Day Like This", which I shall again call the best single Embrace never recorded, should take that as a compliment (as long as they don't intend to go there for good) and features some distinct Elbow touches, not least 'kiss me when my lips are thin'.

The Seldom Seen Kid also just sounds amazing. Now self-producing, their painstaking pride in rich and dynamic sound, alongside their belief in album as artform, showed through more than ever to create their most sonically gorgeous record yet. Every little detail given its own space to breathe and make an impact and the end result is an album to shut the world out from and get lost in. You can listen to a song like "Mirrorball" and be totally absorbed by every daintily graceful piano note and soft swell of strings, and by the way that by its end it's as if Garvey is whispering in your ear, before you even get to its considerable emotional content - and that's quite something to tag on as an extra.

Albums of 2008: #3

2008-12-31T14:30:00.002Z

Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Hold On Now, Youngster... difficult to follow? As if it 2008 wasn't Los Campesinos' year already, they took the almost unprecedented move of going ahead and doing just that, inside eight months. Oh sure, they may try to claim that wab,wad isn't an album, but as well as the previously noted fact that at 32:18 it's not even the shortest on this list, it's way too complete and fantastic for that to fly.

Besides, one of the very minor weaknesses of the actual debut that I carefully avoided mentioning in the previous post was that even 42 minutes was just a touch too long for their huge instant appeal to stretch over in one go. Those who complained that it was all a bit too much to takeor all sounded a bit too similar... well I can understand even if not agree. So a newly trim length and associated total lack of a wasted moment help to ensure that their second is the better (even better!) of the two.

Apart from that it was largely a case of the same again, done every bit as successfully. There was an increased melancholy egde (culminating in that title track and 'my body is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel/Harbouring these diminishing so called vital organs/I hope my heart goes first/I HOPE MY HEART GOES FIRST!') and a slightly less hectic, further developed musical sensibility. Hence the queazy strings of "You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing" and harmonic backing vocals and hints of actual open spaces in "Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1", although needless to say there were still moments of fleeting glee like "The End of the Asterisk" and crazily fun finale "All Your Kayfabe Friends", Tony Cascarino references and cliff dropping ending and all.

And all that clearly still wasn't enough, as they carried through on their fanzine inclinations to give it the best packagaing of the year. Woo.

Albums of 2008: #4

2008-12-31T12:35:00.003Z

Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster...

After a couple of years of releasing singles that established their place as the most exciting new thing happening in music, 2008 was finally the year for Los Campesinos!. They could get away without even including two of them on their album, such was the confidence in what they did go ahead with (and perhaps concious that "The International Tweexcore Underground" was too perfect a mission statement for their marriage of twee and punk to slot in).

Not so much inviting devotion as demanding it, this is a band by music obsessives for music obsessives. Rooted in a really specific outsider world of mixes and lists and poring over lyrics (and one where 'four sweaty boys with guitars tell my nothing about my life'), they are convinced of its importance, giving mere love and pain only equal importance. They're also filled with a neurotic lyrical self-awareness that helps to make them the most endlessly funny and quotable band in a long time.

So references to Camera Obscura, Bis, indie festivals, Livejournal, second hand bookshop employees, Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia and so on and on, and lines like 'Conversations about which Breakfast Club character you'd be/I'd be the one who dies (no one dies!)/Well then what's the point?' and 'You said send me stationery to make me horny/So I always write you letters in multicolours/Decorating envelopes for foreplay' to pick two examples of many at random. The sort of thing that makes you go around playing songs to people and saying 'Listen to this bit!' even when you thought you'd stopped doing that by now.

Bands that just get it in the same way are rare as anything (only Art Brut come to mind) but what really makes Los Campesinos! something else is that they go beyond and (successfully) strain at every step to create music to excite people in the same way, with not a hint of the same self-conciousness. Their default setting of gleeful sugar-rush, throwing everything at hand (and some extra glockenspiels) at the song and sticking most of it, is amazingly successful even before you add in the quickfire call and response and moments of expansive genuis like the warm post-rock embrace that offers a quick breather before the hedonistic rush of single of the decade "You! Me! Dancing!" kicks in good and proper.

Sounding completely fully formed and with no end of songs all worth obsessing over and listening to again and again, it's exactly the sort of debut that would take quite something to follow up.

Albums of 2008: #5

2008-12-30T22:33:00.004Z

The Indelicates - American Demo

One thing I'm sure of - this is the most difficult album here to write about convincingly without sounding like an idiot. I'll give it a go.

Starting proper with a song calling itself "The Last Significant Statement to be Made in Rock'n'Roll" and ending with an emphatic call for no less than the end of all pop music, full stop, it's fair to say that The Indelicates are not ones to shy away from Big Statements. Musically they follow suit, drawing heavily on well-worn stadium rock gestures and the excesses of Britpop in particular - "Heroin" is Suede from the title on in, and when the Oasis-style harmonised guitar solo of "Unity Mitford" kicks in it's difficult not to laugh at the sheer gall on show.

All of which doesn't exactly sound like a great recommendation, except that they have one simple lesson just right - If you're going to proclaim your thoughts about the state of the world at every step, to turn every line into a slogan, they have to be good ones. And, thanks to terrific scabrous wit and ear for just the right phrase, they all are, and all matched by a righteous passion and indignation that says 'this deserves the big musical gestures' with enough force to make them sound fresh anew.

So the aforementioned "Statement" picks out 'the fanzine writers [who] write for broadsheets' with gleeful disgust. "Our Daughters Will Never Be Free", Julia Indelicate's deeply sarcastic protest at the treatment of women, commands 'Lift up your top/Got to use what you've got/It's all tongue in cheek anyway' before escalating to rape, beatings and 'Let's just be pretty/Let's just be beautiful/Let's just be retro and disco and twee!' with such fury that you wonder what exactly her experience in The Pipettes was. "Heroin" somehow delivers the couplet 'She plays acoustic guitar and the flute and the harp and the theremin/On heroin' with a straight face and magnificent centrepiece "New Art for the People" picks out its doomed romantic devotion in terms of 'The dark days ahead and the blood on the bed/And the cover of the NME'.

The picking on easy targets that saw their most prominent early demo being "Waiting for Pete Doherty to Die" is now gone. By contrast, "...If Jeff Buckley Had Lived" is magnificent, similtaneously skewering his revered place as a result of his death and inspiring a great deal of sympathy for the man and the fact that a life lost is worth more than the chance to never suffer 'The weak second album/And the difficult third'.

Albums of 2008: #6

2008-12-30T21:48:00.003Z

Johnny Foreigner - Waited Up Til it Was Light

Now we reach a really cheering section of this rundown. See, in recent years there's been a bit of a lack of new bands capable of making the lists, Guillemots aside, and I was beginning to worry slightly. Now though, we get three* superb debuts from new British bands in a row, and aside from all using alternating boy-girl vocals and being distinctly indie, they cover a fair spread of styles too.

First Johnny Foreigner, whose debut is a lesson in high energy compressed melody, taking handclaps and pop sensibilities and burying them in enough fuzz that you're carried on along on its wave, barely stopping to glimpse meaning here and there. Equipped with some seriously inventive guitar playing and drumming, they frequently change direction completely with barely a pause for breath, or speed up songs beyond what seems like it should be breaking point. Throwing in noises and feedback as punctuation marks, they rush headlong from A to B to A again, coherance sacrificed if necessary - the final thrilling screamed 'IMIGHTBEDRUNKBUTATLEASTI'MSTANDINGUP!' of "Sometimes, in the Bullring" sounds barely human.

As an example of how peripheral the lyrics were to my enjoyment of much of this album, I only just noticed on a listen through before writing this that said song references Jeff Buckley. What still comes through is how grounded they are in a sense of place, and conflicted love for the place, that's easy to appreciate even as someone who's never been to their hometown of Birmingham.

There's also the startling song about being a band "Yr All Just Jealous" which starts off with the lines 'Hot girls know the words to our songs/And I'm terrified of what comes next' and does sound abjectly terrified as it thrashes around before eventually the lights come on and a beautifully sad and melodic chorus of 'One by one will move away for friends or university/One by one fulfils a plan/And leaves three ghosts in Birmingham'.

Special mention also has to be made of almost everyone's favourite "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella". The standout track, it teeters on the brink of falling apart for a couple of comparatively minimalist minutes before 'turn on the real drums!' gleefully announces escapist headbanging heaven.

That they turned out to be big Idlewild fans was a bit of an 'ahh' moment as those guitar sounds and cramming of words into lines reminded of nothing so much as that band's superior early days. Token slow song "DJs Get Doubts" shows a particular spooky likeness to Woomble and co. Even back then they never made an album quite this great, though.

(*four, sort of)

Albums of 2008: #7

2008-12-30T13:32:00.002Z

Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

Made in the Dark features the best four track opening sequence of the year bar none. From the moment that the forceful, rusty groove of "Out at the Pictures" slams into life, through "Shake a Fist" and its feral menace and playful self-sidetracking onwards, they sound unstoppable, alive with energy and a peerless sense of adventure.

Then it's "Ready for the Floor" which remains one of the best hit singles of the year, building on their ingenious template of hiding bruised soul emoting within playful party music and serving either purpose just as gracefully. "Bendable Poseable" is just straightforwardly huge fun, showcasing Joe Goddard's hard edged vocals by setting them against Alexis Taylor's coo and through a semi rap whose 'tick tick tick... time delay' is laugh out loud funny.

There are even a few more songs throughout that hit the same kind of peaks, with the absurd humour and backwards warping of "Wrestlers" a particular favourite. Though to be honest I would probably love it even more if they chopped off the last three songs and Hot Chip haven't yet found a way to express themselves as brilliantly when they concentrate on their softer side, Made in the Dark still feels like another step on the road to an album that does from start to finish.

Albums of 2008: #8

2008-12-30T12:56:00.003Z

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

Last year's fabulous Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? was quite the multi-level pileup of ideas and melodies, but even that was no preparation for this one. Yet although sticking noise-drone "Nonpareil of Favour" in first probably shook off many of the uncommited, beyond that there's nothing difficult about it at all beyond its central motto of 'why have one chorus when you could have five different ones?'.

Essentially I've loved anything that even comes close to pulling off this level of ridiculous ambition since Mansun a decade ago (and doesn't the mocking response vocal at the end of the first part of "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" sound just like Paul Draper??) so the more song sections the better, when they're all wrapped up in such unfailingly catchy hooks and new ideas are sprinkled across them all.

Lyrics that switch between the intriguely abstract, the overtly sexual and the hilarious, or else manage all three at the same time ('Texting your freaky fantasies to my phone/Black condoms on vanilla icecream cones', anyone?) are also welcomed, and have really stepped up a gear even from last time. There there's the ocassional moments of sincere and clear emotion like the lovely nostalgia of "An Eluardian Instance", which thanks to context actually sound like the most bizarre things on the album.

Compressing a large proportion of the history of modern pop into its length, chewing up and throwing out styles as it goes, it's very much to Kevin Barnes' credit that they near enough all succeed and form a constantly engaging whole.

Albums of 2008: #9

2008-12-30T12:08:00.007Z

Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer

As half of 'caberet-punks' (that's largely a way to avoid saying emo) The Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer was responsible for in retrospect one of my favourite albums in recent years, Yes, Virginia. An album that unflinchingly delved into the dark side of human nature and behaviour, it matched its insights with a black sense of humour and many a theatrical flourish, whilst stretching the limits of the piano/vocals/drums format in ferocious style.

Palmer's solo debut was originally meant to be an album of stripped back songs defined by lack of drums, but with slightly unlikely producer Ben Folds on board she ended up stretching her musical styles in a number of different ways. "Runs in the Family" sounds just like one of the band's punkish blasts with added strings. On the other hand there's the self-explanatory "Guitar Hero", the blaring horns of "Leeds United" (which takes theatricality above and beyond while Amanda stands in Sainsburys counting her change), and a ghostly cover of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" which calls in St. Vincent for more fitting vocals.

All of which makes for a less intense and relentless listen than either Dresden Dolls album, but that's very much a relative thing as we are still in dark territory throughout. "Oasis" ties teenage abortion to Britpop fandom and the breeziest, catchiest song of the record - probably the most uncomfortable thing she's written.

"Blake Says" has social inadequacy dead on ('Blake says he is sorry he got through to me/If it's ok he'll call right back and talk to the machine') and treats it with a sympathetic resignation that's particularly heartbreaking. "Strength Through Music" is just plain spooky, starting 'Locked in his bedroom/He saw the world/A web of answers and cumshot girls" over ponderous piano chords and slowly floating away into icy numbness.

All three of those songs illustrate the other main change from the past, which is an increasing move away from the first person and into inhabiting other characters, the better to explore all the other fucked up people out there, I guess.

Albums of 2008: #10

2008-12-30T11:44:00.002Z

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

This is the only album on the list that I actually disliked on first listen. There's something about the clean, bloodless feel of it that I wasn't expecting at all and didn't sit quite right, especially coupled with a vocal style that inititally made me think of Razorlight.

Aside from, well, everyone else going on about them it was mainly the lyrics that made me give it another go. A fine mixture of the intellectual and absurd, they don't ever sounding like they're straining for either or trying to exclude anyone, because you get the feeling that that is just the world in which they travel.

After that in the end that same cool, considered sound that initially caused unease is exactly what makes the album so addictive. Nothing is ever out of place, every note sounds like it's been reasoned and argued before being dropped precisely into place to create a relaxed and blissful summer atmosphere. They even manage to sing "Is your sweater on?/Do you want to fuck like you know I do?" without it sounding gauche, which is quite something.

All of which means that the little extra creative touches, the moments when they play near their rigid self-imposed boundaries stand out. The dizzying strings over the end of "M79", the drilled intro of "One" and "A-Punk" where they almost, almost loosen up.

Albums of 2008: #11

2008-12-21T15:10:00.004Z

Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

This was a year when my tolerance for album filler reached a new low. Partly it was driven by a regrettable lack of time to listen to as much music as previously - if an album takes the whole of a journey to work and back, it had better be worth it. Even more, though, it was driven by a number of bands who actively demonstrated what a fantastic asset brevity could be to their sound, and none more so than Tokyo Police Club.

Clocking in just north of 28 minutes, this is the shortest album on my list. Even beating one which claims not to be an album, in fact. The complete lack of any moment that isn't vital is a key part of their addictive appeal, lending an urgency to songs that stop just before the point when one of their many hooks begins to los its shine. They're obviously aware of it themselves, with the closing explanations of "Centennial" beginning 'I'm running out of space, so let me sum this up for you...'

Their other unique move is the melding of Dave Monks' fey, literate vocals (think a slightly less sappy Ben Gibbard) to spiky, ultra tight music that's like The Strokes with a touch of post-punk and an occasional sprinkling of softer moments (and handclaps) added. The contrast between the two is played expertly, with lines like 'dead lovers salivate/broken hearts tessellate tonight' coming off much stronger as a result.

Their very specific aesthetic and fast moving nature of the album actually makes it difficult to pick out individual highlights as it works best as a satisfying whole, but I'd go with former single "Your English is Good". It's both the catchiest song and the one where the cryptic, fractured phrases of the lyrics work best. Welcoming on the surface, its mocking but infectious chants of 'give us your vote/if you know what's good for you' give the real thinking behind the patronising sentiments of the title.

Albums of 2008: #12

2008-12-21T15:07:00.003Z

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

I have to admit to having never got into TV on the Radio before, but this time there was no resisting.

Tying their ocean-deep layered productions to more direct songs, it still didn't always connect right away but always felt worth the effort invested. And when they got it right they sounded utterly unstoppable. "Halfway Home" is one hell of an introduction, tension reverberating and stretching away into the infinite distance for four and a half minutes before finally, finally bursting fully into life. "Family Tree" fits so much sadness and nobility into one beautiful song that you wonder how it can hold it all in.

Then there's those two singles. "Golden Age" had enough feelgood factor that it felt like it had the belief of the whole world backing it up even before events convened. As for "Dancing Choose", it's difficult to know where to start, between its frenetic pace and oddly gorgeous blasts of brass, nimble switches to brief moments of relieved calm and of course 'I've seen you figured in your action pose/foam injected Axl Rose'. Just breathtaking from start to finish, really.

Albums of 2008: #13

2008-12-21T14:51:00.002Z

Black Kids - Partie Traumatic

This may take a little more explaining than some others, I think, given the early hipster hype and almost as early backlash that don't normally happen to things that I actually feel straongly enough. The approach to take here is simple enough though I think.

My favourite songs by The Killers by some distance are all from the first album - "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine", "Somebody Told Me", and, yeah "Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll". They didn't even show any inclination to make a whole album like that back then, and certainly they're not going to now. So if someone else steps in to do it for them and does a better job with references to Sparks to boot, fantastic!

Thoroughly aware of both their influences and ridiculousness, but determined to be catchy and funny enough to pass by without that mattering, Black Kids made quite possibly the most stupidly, hedonistically fun album of the year.

Albums of 2008: #14

2008-12-18T00:09:00.004Z

The Hot Puppies - Blue Hands

The Hot Puppies' debut a couple of years ago was chiefly notable for Becky Newman's voice, a powerful instrument that sounded seductive and desperate by turns and lent a touch glamour and high drama to everything they did. Their songs gave her chances to shine but in comparison were a bit too grounded in straightforward retro rock'n'roll. Too often they were in the shadow of The Long Blondes, who did similar but with less of a '50s obsession and, crucially, much better grooves.

This time around they're even less danceable ("The Word on the Street" being an enjoyable exception) but it's a big success as rather containing the drama, they give it full flight. Sinister imagery abounds, with shadows and death around every corner and a sense of powerful destiny behind much of the album. Songs are much longer and more varied, with strings and keyboards often taking the place of jagged guitars that now burst in for emphasis, and songs that take as many twists and turns musically as lyrically.

And while the references to the past are stronger than ever lyrically ('Fred Astaire, Edith Piaf' namechecked a couple of verses in), musically they benefit from no longer being so tied down in time.

Best of all is "Secret Burial", which slowly builds an unstoppable momentum from initial caution to clattering drums, images of "the whispers through the trees, the misslies across the seas" and an uneasy declaration of love. The feeling of something not quite being right briefly retreats but remains in the background through a gorgeous minimal piano ballad before the song takes a final odder turn to a pitchshifted electronic repetition that sounds like The Knife, of all things. It's unexpected and initially almost too much to take in , but soon addictive, like the album as a whole.

Albums of 2008: #15

2008-12-17T20:30:00.003Z

Bloc Party - Intimacy

"Ares": Floats in the ether for just long enough to give you a chance to prepare, then announces itself rudely with an metallic scrape. Then barrels along on its stolen beat, daring you to say something. If you do, it isn't listening, preferring to launch headlong into an equally confrontational stream of thoughts that stops and starts and doubles up on itself, anything to seize momentum and attention. The discernable message? The world is a fucked up place, we should dance. And here's what to.

"Mercury": Infectious chant slowly taken over by ominously corrosive blasts of brass. Desperately they hold on to a semblance of a normal song as elements conspire against all round. Sort of Radiohead's "The National Anthem" if it had it's sights set on stomping into the charts and living up to its title.

Intimacy's place here is largely down to that fantastic, breathless opening one-two. It's never quite so bold again, but still doesn't feel a disappointment afterwards thanks to a strong set of purposeful songs. "Signs" is possibly their most touching yet and "Zephyrus" makes much more impressive use of a choir than they did in a whole show with one previously. Plus this time even Kele's much questioned lyrics ('You used to take your watch off before we made love/You didn't want to share our time with anyone', etc.) were as adorable as they were clumsy.

Hallelujah post 2

2008-12-16T18:42:00.003Z

Now it really is happening. X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's version (with added key change!) is heading for inevitable Christmas number one. Jeff Buckley's version, having already become his first top 40 hit ever, is set to follow it into the top 3. Even the original is going to get a look in at the bottom end of the 40!

But anyway, I had to revisit the subject to post a link to a really splendid piece on the song that deserves a read.

Albums of 2008: #16

2008-12-16T18:05:00.003Z

Envelopes - Here Comes the Wind

Sweden is now surely the world's greatest exporter of indie pop. Envelopes fit into the mould with songs that sound determinedly handmade, and through making fine use of endearingly innocent vocals. In particular, when Audrey Pic sings of loneliness in her father's absence on the simple "Boat" it's incredibly touching. Except that she's actually French. And for all that their sound is lo-fi, even then it's rather more raucous than most as the song ends with layers of echoing guitar taking over and ominous radio samples.

Envelopes show a talent throughout their multifaceted songs of deftly switching between ideas, giving them just enough time to bear fruit before moving on. They apply themselves finely to a wide range of styles, from the Television-recalling cool of "Smoke in the Desert, Eating the Sand, Hide in the Grass" to the answerphone atmospherics of "Put On Hold".

That the album moves so quickly and that do it all with a certain looseness and roughness makes for an exhilarating feeling as each new idea successfully strikes, and there a couple of moments of surreal songwriting genius that go beyond even that. Best has to be the foul-mouthed adaptation of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" that graces "Party", with the backwards nonsese chorus of "Freejazz" a close second.

As they end the album with plans to go 'anywhere we want to go, anywhere we want to', you believe them.

Albums of 2008: #17

2008-12-15T21:51:00.003Z

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs

There are a good few 'return to form' albums this year that haven't made this list. Coldplay's and R.E.M.'s, to take two well known examples. The point being that while both were massive improvements, it was a little difficult to espouse their appeal without gauging it against the sheer dullness of their predecessors.

Death Cab For Cutie's last album was every bit as bad as X&Y or Around The Sun, but they've sidestepped the return to form thanks to the fact after Narrow Stairs it now feels like Plans never even happened and Narrow Stairs is just an effortlessly logical continuation from better times.

In fact, they've ever sounded more confident and comfortable in their own skin than now. Still as sincere and plangent as ever, the considered build up of newly dense songs keeps all of their emotional heft while adding a lot more to repeated listens. "I Will Possess Your Heart" is a particularly great choice of single, gradually issuing a welcome into their world as you follow the thread of its beats through echoing vistas.

Albums of 2008: #18

2008-12-14T18:11:00.003Z

Guillemots - Red

Guillemots' follow-up to Through The Windowpane, their debut and my favourite album of 2006, mystified at least as many as it pleased. While Through The Windowpane was incredibly ambitious and very occasionally suffered for it, its ambitions were for the 'epic' within relatively traditional rock song structures. Red, on the other hand, has as many nods to '80s pop and more recent R&B than to anything within their previous sphere.

From the metallic funk bounce of "Big Dog" to the sharp electronic pop of "Last Kiss" and slick falsetto "Standing on the Last Star", they repeatedly confounded expectations and seemed to get little but flack for it. Which is a crying shame because at its best, at the moments when there's nothing to do but grin and think 'did they really just pull that off?', Red even outshines the debut.

The thundering eastern strings and ever expanding reach of "Kriss Kross" make for an awe-inspiring opening. "Get Over It" successfully tied cool and bubbly pop with an undercurrent of improvised madness better than anything since they first announced themselves with "Who Left the Lights Off, Baby?" and when "Don't Look Down" takes a sudden left turn from superior U2 ballad into skittering electronic chaos, its dramatic lyrical images of the sky falling make a vivid kind of sense.

The reason that this record is only 18, then, is actually because the regret here is that they didn't completely follow through on their new ambitions. A handful of slow songs retread old ground overproduced and unsatisfying style and add to the fatal impression that the whole thing is a bit of stylistic mess. It will be even more interesting then to see where they go next.

Albums of 2008: #19

2008-12-13T17:13:00.006Z

(Yes, this is meant to start at 19. That will bring us to the end of the year and it's the exact number of albums that I can sufficiently support to want to write about.)

Aidan John Moffat - I Can Hear Your Heart

Bar one very long closing ramble, nothing on I Can Hear Your Heart stretches to the 2 minute mark. Track one of this CD is an instruction to make sure that you read the booklet before

beginning. Never mind the mainstream, this stretches the definition of an album. It's certainly one of the more wonderfully unique recordings this year.

Back in 2003, Chemikal Underground released a compiltion album with a spoken word secret track called "Cunts" ('by Aidan Moffat aged 29 1/2'). Back then it was an amusing afterthought, but newly reprised with a crackly, dusty musical accompaniment it sounds as tired as it does funny, a fitting start to a very dark listen.

Free of even the limited shackles of Arab Strap, Moffat has fully taken the freedom to be as crude and frank as possible, and certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture of himself or anyone else around him. Barely anyone you meet isn't manipulative and weak and the everpresent sex is full of regret and uncertainy more often than it is joyful. In one of the most amusing moments, "Hopelessly Devoted" specualtes on the future of relationships of characters of Grease and assumes it to have probably been 'a sexless pretence dragged out too long'.

But for all the darkness there is redemption in the droll humour and in the beautifully ancient sounding string arrangements that perfectly offset the words and link together the little vignettes into a really satisfying flow of ideas. Albeit one that's ocassionally interrupted by screeching answerphone messages from someone saved in Aidan's address book as '4SEX'.

Not an album I've returned to as often as any above it in the list, but every time I do its ambition and candour is freshly pleasing.

You See Colours

2008-11-29T10:02:00.002Z

From ILM, a fantastic album cover knowledge game: 'Recognize discographies from their approximate colour schemes'

It uses this handy site, which takes an image you input and returns a set of images with roughly the same colour arrangement. Put each of an act's album covers through it in sequence, and you get an obscured but hopefully recognisiable sequence.

So to start with an easy example, take Belle & Sebastian and this:

becomes this:

To use a few examples from others, this:

is Radiohead.

This:

is Pet Shop Boys.

And this:

...well, you get the idea.

Five of my creations to finish. In some cases the fun comes from making them difficult, but in some it comes from the amazingly close or appropriate matches that come up.