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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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! .
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.
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.
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.
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. .
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'!
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
I think their domination of single sales actually predated the complete collapse of the market a little; certainly 2000 and 2001 sales were an order of magnitude higher than those a few years later and with a new-number-one-every-week turnover that must have made stocking the big sellers quite lucrative.
Anyway, as suggested that was where their singles charts of their own invention came in. Despite stocking a top 40 (or possibly even 75?) they wouldn't put anything new in below 20 and were rather selective with those. Well before online midweek charts, a trip to Woolworths was an almost infallibale acid test for chart-friendliness.
Generally whatever I was looking for wouldn't be there, but in the unusual event of the likes of Turin Brakes actually getting a single stocked there (at 19), they were top 10 bound in the real world for sure.
I never actually bought a single at Woolworths in objection to this shocking anti-indie bias, a stance which if widely shared was obviously going to be self-reinforcing. I was glad not to be in one of the towns where it was the only available source of singles, anyway, and a level playing field in terms of basic availability is a major plus to its replacement in power by iTunes et al.
And their particular manipulatory mantle is not dead, but has merely been taken up by supermarkets and their album charts, hence the post title.
Strong rumours around that this year's X factor winner will be releasing a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as their first single. Probably this girl who already sang it in her strangled Regina Spektor-meets-Kate Nash style, which has led to outraged allegations of a fix. As if the judges' vested interests have ever been much of a secret.
Anyway, my first thoughts weren't about the fix, or about which verses they're going to include and which not-so-hidden meanings they'll leave in. Instead they were of what remarkably bad (or good) timing this is for Emmy the Great, releasing an album whose title track quotes from the same song while the X Factor one will still be in the top ten. Her staccato "Hallelujah. The orginal. Leonard Cohen version." may well now sound even more pointed than intended.
Presuming that she wasn't hoping for a massive breakthrough with the song (probably not) it at least isn't a disaster of Mylo/BetaBand proportions, anyway.
And it shouldn't be a surprise because the song has slowly been making its way to this particular questionable accolade for a long time, with Jeff Buckley's version the obvious breakthrough and still hitting iTunes top tens whenever "Hallelujah" gets its moment on telly.
Then there's Rufus Wainwright, John Cale, Damien Rice, and its inclusion in Shrek. Fall Out Boy paid tribute on their last album, taking the chorus too which seems to be the simple, universal refrain that does the most to continue winning over new audiences with such ease and will surely survive undimmed.
Let's get a really strong recommendation in here first. Tonight's support act is Laura Groves, (except it isn't, because she's accompanied by 'one woman band' and they're now going by the name Blue Roses) and she's great.
Having looked her up beforehand I already have positive impressions, but arriving just after her set gets underway there is awed silence all around and it soon becomes clear that this is something rather special. Her keening voice is used to powerful effect, and often stands almost alone with just the tiniest of colour added sparingly across the songs by soft piano and guitar. The songs are grounded enough for it to work and that silence is almost as much a key player.
"Coast" with it's elemental imagery and timeless atmosphere reminds of Wind in the Wire era Patrick Wolf, but as Laura's very audible nervousness between songs contrasts with their assured clarity and beauty, the strongest comparison is to my first encounter of Bat for Lashes first on a bill in early 2006. Similar big things could well be ahead – catching her outside afterwards she says that an album is tentatively due for April.
This leaves me in a somewhat weird position. I'm seeing for the first time a full gig by my current favourite new act by far, the one whose album in February I am hoping will live up to the long wait in a big way. Yet she isn't even the best thing tonight.
At moments it's a different story. Emmy is as engaging and funny as anyone could hope for, offhand witticisms between songs too many to recall. Some of the things she's now doing with a full band are beyond the scale of her previously intimate modern folk in a fine way – the whip crack bitterness of "First Love", memories unspooling like the chewn up Leonard Cohen tape its tale centres round, could well be the finest thing she's yet done.
"Short Country Song", the (I thought) insubstantial B-side to the current single, is suddenly deeply heartbreaking, one of a series of songs that skilfully picks out everyday minor details and laces them with an underlying sadness.
The standard bearer for that type of song, "M.I.A." is the opener and the best example of what doesn't quite sit right. Its desolation of sitting in car-crash aftermath, with only mixtape for company, is particularly undermined by the melodica and backing vocals that are now brought in. although just about any moment when the rest of the band are singing feels imperfect.
It might just take some getting used to, after too long listening to acoustic recordings, but even on the new songs it's those that take the extremes of noisy clatter or of space that are the most impressive.
Still, there remains oodles of promise, the violin led folk cover of "Where Is My Mind?" goes down a treat and we get a solo encore (chosen by consensus) of "Canopies and Grapes" that shows Emmy's still happy doing stream of conciousness strumming with S Club 7 and Magnetic Fields references too.
