I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends with good taste and a wife with excellent taste too. I don't really read much music press, very few blogs or listen to radio so the stuff I like I find from friends, twitter or going to gigs, then look em up online afterwards.
Before we get to the list there are some albums that I didn't get til Christmas that haven't made it to the list which may have if I'd had more time to digest, these are The Avett Brothers, Beach House, Local Natives, Cee Lo and Four Tet.
Anyways, lets crack on with my top 20. I'll do the 20-11 as a list then go in to more detail for the top 10.
20.Yeasayer - Odd Blood
19.Fenech Soler - Fenech Soler
18. Bombay Bicycle Club - Flaws
17. The Black Keys - Brothers
16. Francis and the Lights - It'll be better
15. Jamie Lidell - Compass
14. Kele - The Boxer
13. We Have Band - We Have Band
12. Grosvenor - Soft Return
11. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
I think I heard ONE by Yeasayer at the end of 2009 and was convinced if they could follow that up with a great album they'd go huge. Ambling Alp was the first single and I was all set to declare my new favourite band - 2 outstanding songs in a row.....aaaand the rest of the album couldn't live up to it, but its those 2 tracks that gets it in my top 20. I now want to talk about all those albums cos they all have their moments of utter genius, but I cant, I don't have time and neither do you. Maybe in a later blog...
What I tried to do with this list is rate them purely on how much I listened to the album, forget about what a technically great album Plastic Beach is - I didn't listen to it as much as I did these next 10, so it misses out - but only just!
10. Pulled Apart By Horses - Pulled Apart By Horses
Shortly before I heard PABH, I declared that there hasn't been, a decent English ROCK band in a long while. You know the ones that make you wanna throw things, and scream out the lyrics while in the flat on your own. I heard I punched a lion in the throat first and it didn't just grab my attention, it grabbed the scruff of my neck and shook me til I took back those words in the first sentence.
Speaking of the lyrics, you cant be this BALLS OUT RAWWWK without your tongue being slightly in cheek, and PABH lyrics really shows they have a sense of humour, close that living room door turn up the volume and shout "I'LL MAKE YOU DANCE WITH MY BALLS ON FIRE!!!"
9. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
They made it acceptable to say I love drunk girls and not get a slap from my wife. Great comeback single, I then got a 12" white label of Pow Pow at Record Store Day and expectations of the album reached lofty heights. It was a slow burner for me though, Dance yrself clean scared me witless every time the album started on my iPhone. If you haven't got it, you think your volume has broken so you crank it up to hear the verse, only for the chorus to blast your ears a new hole. Ive read a few interviews with James Murphy and it seems he enjoys annoying people, this quiet-loud beginning DID-MY-HEAD-IN. He's also said that he likes the live shows to be as unemotional as possible (?). Odd guy, but a genius, the album grows into a dancefloor monster that only they can do. If its to be their last, the legacy remains unblemished.
8. Best Coast - Crazy For You
I was never really into lo-fi fuzzy pop that much, but I think Pains of Being Pure at Heart changed that in 2009. So this years fuzzy-ness hit comes from Best Coast. Lovable quirky lyrics, compliment the sweet simple melodies which make up some pretty perfect pop songs.
When people started raving about She and Him earlier this year I told them to listen to this instead. Its just so much cooler and they have a similar retro vibe.
7. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
OK, Admission time. I really did not get this album for months. It just seemed so dull, repetitive, uneventful.... suburban *cliché cringe*. I tried to like it, almost forcing myself to listen to it in the first few weeks. It didn't work though. I kept it on my iPhone as a gesture, like you keep an old school friend on facebook during your quarterly "friend" culls - sure, they're dull, but they don't deserve to be treated badly.
Then we went to see Jools Holland being filmed and they were on. BANG, At last! It clicked, it made sense. There was urgency, there was delicacy, there WAS tunes. I knew there was all along, honest...
6. The Drums - The Drums
Anyone who hasn't found themselves dancing / singing Lets Go Surfing in the past 18 months since it first appeared on the Kitsuné Maison vol. 8 compilation is probably dead. Its infectious riff and opening Oh mamaaa, made it a an indie sing-a-long classic. But who knew they would have depth?! This album shows a maturity that no-one could have anticipated. Great slow shufflers like Down by the water showed they could do a lullaby if they wanted and Best Friend had real heart. Influences from Beach Boys and The Cure span the record. The Drums will be played up and down the countries indie discos for years to come.
A rare case of hype equalling the end product.
I'll post my top 5 in the coming days, for now if you haven't heard any of the above, go forth and spotify.
Heckles, arguments, comments welcome.
Corrections to my grammar - get a life.
That's a very in-depth list you have there young man.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised by the inclusion of LCD Soundsystem given how much you slated their live concert last year.
Can I hazard a guess that at least one of your top five is able to sing in acapella? ;)
LCD were awful live! Definitely down to their "unemotional" front. Call me traditional but I like to feel that the band WANT to be there. I thought what he said was really disappointing. But I tried to not let that experience effect my judgement of the album.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, it did, the album would've probably been higher if they'd have been great live as it would've made me listen to it more. As it was, I stopped listening for a couple of months after the gig as I was so pissed off with them!