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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.