First off, it’s exciting to feature on an end of year list myself. Thanks to Amy at Shake Your Fist for that. And while we’re in the spirit of self-promotion, do head on over to Dreamboat Records to download this year’s Christmas EP (featuring me!).
I always find it strange how each year at least one journalist in their end of year write up plays the ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ card. This year it was the turn of Alexis Petridis who described Glastonbury thus:
A preponderance of indie rock ordinaire on the main stages made Saturday even more of an ordeal than it needed to be. The much-vaunted Glastonbury spirit seemed in short supply. There were a handful of moments when you wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, not least during the Stooges’ remarkable performance, but even that left behind dark thoughts about the current state of music: there was something troubling about returning home with the knowledge that the most exciting, unpredictable, iconoclastic thing you saw all weekend was not a thrilling new artist, but a sixtysomething heritage-rock act.
It’s that ‘current state of music’ line that I have a problem with. When I think of the current state of music I don’t think of a rainy weekend in June standing kneedeep in mud watching Mika. I think of a culture in which the amount of inventive new music available seems to increase exponentially each year. It’s unfair to say that just because Glastonbury was a bit of a wash out this year it somehow represents a depressing trend about musical culture. This faux-holistic analysis of music is a journalistic angle which is used again and again to generate a story. See here for instance: Amy Winehouse has made a retro-sounding record, therefore the entire ‘current state of music’ is backwards-looking and unoriginal.
(And while we’re kind of on the subject, I have three words for Mark Ronson: Mike Flowers Pops.)
Maybe if Petridis had spent some time at the Park stage watching a band like Tinariwen, rather than gawping at The Kooks on the main stage and wondering why they hadn’t solved music yet he’d have a few more positive things to say.
As a footnote to this, one of the best things I’ve read this year has been Steve Albini’s brilliant intervention on a poker forum, in which he had this to say:
Downloading and the culture of free music have affected the income of record labels, but the street-level music scene (as defined by bands, entrepreneurial independent record labels, studios like mine, etc.) is doing great. Bands have an easier time than ever getting their music out into the world, and bands don’t even need a label to have an international following. It’s actually a great time to be in a band.
So, on that positive bombshell, let’s say Hoorah! Merry Christmas! Bon Voyage! And List, List, O List!
Albums of the year
This year I’ve done a lot of catching with just how brilliant 2006 was for music. Here’s my top ten from last year:
10. Love, The Beatles
9. Chops, Euros Childs
8. Silent Shout, The Knife
7. Ys, Joanna Newsom
6. The Black Swan, Bert Jansch
5. Born Again in the USA, Loose Fur
4. Drum’s Not Dead, Liars
3. The Letting Go, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
2. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case
1. Garden Ruin, Calexico
But since then I’ve discovered Scott Walker’s The Drift, Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House and the first Burial album.
This is what my 2007 list is looking like, and hey-ho, it’s not exactly an original selection, but it’s all good music, right?
10. Untrue, Burial
I haven’t quite got into this yet, not as much as the first album anyway. But this album is here to represent how much of an impact Burial had on my tastes this year. I heard ‘Southern Comfort’ for the first time this year and I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such an compelling and unsettling listening experience. I was aware that a lot of elements of Burial’s music weren’t exactly to my taste, but then when I finished listening to the song I found that everything else sounded a bit weak and inconsequential in comparison. Anyway, see a brilliant analysis of Burial and ‘Hauntology’ here and a really good interview with the chap himself here in which he describes his music like this:
It’s more about when you come back from being out somewhere; in a minicab or a night bus, or with someone, or walking home across London late at night, dreamlike, and you’ve still got the music kind of echoing in you, in your bloodstream, but with real life trying to get in the way. I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It’s like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark. It’s pretty simple.
9. In Rainbows, Radiohead
I think that everything it’s possible to say about this album has probably already been said. For whatever it’s worth, I think this is almost their best album (Kid A and Hail to the Thief have better songs I feel), that Thom Yorke’s voice has never sounded better, and that the (seemingly) unproduced, effect-less guitar sound used throughout signals a move to a less ostentatious and more intriguingly sparse approach.
8. Cuilidh, Julie Fowlis
A beautiful collection of Scottish folk songs, made all the more mysterious and unearthly by being sung in a percussive Gaelic. The purest folk voice I’ve heard since Cara Dillon.
7. The Cloud of Unknowing, James Blackshaw
Virtuosity is actually deeply boring, and surprisingly common. What’s rare is virtuosity combined with a unique artistic vision, and that’s something Blackshaw has alongside his incredible guitar talent. This album has an amazing sense of space and melody.
6. Liars, Liars
Apparently an attempt to make a more straight-forward rock record, Liars still sounds as bonkers as ever, but this time you can dance to it. If you’re mad!
5. Joanna Newsom and Ys Street Band EP, Joanna Newsom
So it’s not an album, but ‘Colleen’ is one of the best things that’s been released all year: half Irish jig, half insane parable about a woman who used to be a whale.
4. Mirrored, Battles
Is there anything new to say about a band who became utterly ubiquitous this year? Needless to say they’re the best live band I’ve seen all year and that’s the highest ride cymbal I think anyone has ever seen. This is definitely worth reading if you haven’t already, however. I like how they have codewords for the different sections of their songs. I happen to know what they call the part of ‘Tonto’ which starts at 3m 41s, but that’s a secret between me and them.
3. Person Pitch, Panda Bear
Another record about which there is something of a cultural fatigue: I haven’t seen a single end of year list which hasn’t included this strange and joyous album. So to the melting pot I would like to add the following: For me, the magic of Person Pitch lies in the way it feels familiar. The songs sound like memories of songs. Despite the directness of melody, the songs themselves are delivered in an indirect and infinitely alluring way. The beat of ‘Bro’s’ sounds like it might have come from some 50s doo-wop song; it’s nothing you can pin down, but it triggers something off in the reverb chamber of memory.
2. Friend Opportunity, Deerhoof
Before I’d heard Deerhoof I asked a friend what they were like and he said, ‘pop’. This is kind of the thesis that I come back to again when trying to describe music I like (see Animal Collective below). All music that I like becomes ‘pop’ to me.
Deerhoof confirm my believe that you can’t help what songs you write. You can’t sit down and write a ‘rock’ song or a ‘pop’ song. When something good comes out you have to make use of it, and Deerhoof always do this. No matter how eccentric the context, the songs always serve the melody and maintain the spirit in which they were written.
1. Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective
For me a more consistent record than Person Pitch, Strawberry Jam seems to me to be a relentlessly positive album. Filled with songs that barely seem to be songs at first, let alone songs whose tunes are so rich and compelling that you’ll find yourself humming them as if they were the most blatant pop songs ever written. Melodically it’s superb: the beautiful piano loop of ‘Cuckoo Cuckoo’, the ascending vocal line of ‘Peacebone’; I even find myself whistling Panda Bear’s falsetto line in the largely inscrutable, but still brilliant, ‘#1′. But what makes it my album of the year are the lyrics which go from proverb-like titbits (‘It’s not my words that you should follow it’s your insides’) to domestic eulogies (‘the taste of your cooking can make me bow on the ground’; ‘Chores’) to the downright beautiful: ‘Why must we move on from such happy lawns?’; ‘You can’t feel a thing, no heart flutters in late spring, you just drift and pray for sun kissed golden days.’
