Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

Laura Marling’s debut was one of an artist still learning her craft and developing her talents, on her second she was finding her footing and used the album as a platform for an exploration of stern femininity. If she was learning to swim and speaking because she could, respectively, with those earlier efforts it’s not too hard to suppose that she is the creature we don’t know on her third album.

‘The Muse’ is an intriguing opening track, as it is not like anything we have been used to in Marling’s oeuvre previously. It mixes the country banjo and deep English cello in a complicated yet playful, jazz indebted, time signature which will have Jools Holland itching to join in on the ivories come an appearance on Later… The most obvious comparison here is one of Laura Marling’s key influencers (literally, her muse) Joni Mitchell and her folk/jazz album Hejira. Marling has spoken about one of the album’s themes being reflecting on looking for something and discovering on finding it that it wasn’t what you were after, the difference between needing and wanting, strength and weakness.

With a similar jazz feel in its opening, though more of the Norah Jones coffee shop variety than Mingus or anything outlandish, ‘I Was Just A Card’ is a sleepy, breezy and elegant song with subtle brass and a refrain of “You know, you know, I know, I know” and talk of secrets and hidden thoughts. As there was a cache of songs that were in consideration for I Speak Because I Can and a second album of material from those sessions didn’t materialise a year ago, we wonder about Marling’s comment that she had said what she wanted to say about the themes on her second album and the other songs felt like old clothes hanging on for too long.  ‘I Was Just A Card’ was the first song on the new album to be written and features a final verse about saying goodbye, suggesting she’d found something else to write about, and didn’t just grow weary of pre-existing songs. Marling often goes to great length to suggest her songs feature characters and aren’t to be taken literally – for the first time here we can see that mask slipping in places.

Straight away though we are thrown off the scent by the simple and downbeat ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ and the segue into ‘Salinas’ the former being inspired by an imagined conversation but clearly lets us know  that if we don’t ask questions, we won’t hear any lies. That’s us told. The latter is inspired by John Steinbeck’s third wife Elaine’s biography of him and her recollection of him writing and writing in the evenings towards the end of his life. In many ways ‘Salinas’ ties back to the title track of the previous album which had Penelope as the character who was left behind while Odysseus got the life. Before marrying Steinbeck, Elaine Anderson, as she was then, gave up her career to move with previous husband Zachary Scott to Hollywood.

Musically the first part of the album is quite slow paced and though there is the first lick of electric guitar prowling on the outskirts of ‘Salinas’ it makes a shattering, starring role in ‘The Beast’. The track has been heralded (including by Marling herself) as an outrageous “I didn’t know she had it in her” primal howl of a song evoking PJ Harvey’s 4 Track Demos, but we did have her guttural soul-searching of ‘No Hope In The Air’ last year to prepare the ground for this six minute album centrepiece. The gnashing and snarling electric guitar needs to be heard to be believed that this is the same Laura Marling of ‘New Romantic’ and ‘Failure’. The beast itself occurs throughout the album and in the opener she’s the beast and will ‘call on you when I need to feast’ and she hungers for her muse. The equation of love and food is as old as the English language and fits in well with the idea of not knowing the difference between need and want. On the track of the same name however she chooses to lie down with the beast in a more submissive role. I don’t think you need to be Sigmund Freud to understand that looking at strength and weakness here is going down a slightly different path.

Lead single ‘Sophia’ raises the eyebrows with the way it takes a minute or so to get going and settle into a melody as well as the slightly clunky use of “pondering” and the glorious, verging on AOR, self-backing at the end of the song, but there’s more buried a little deeper in it. Here,  Marling’s delivery is at times both a Dylan-esque kiss-off, a la ‘Positively 4^th Street’, and also a completely sincere exanimation of her post-relationship state. The fact that we are being let in to hear some of this dialogue without having it laid bare is very intriguing from an artist who previous kept her cards very close to her chest. The title’s reference to the Ancient Greek concept of wisdom and knowledge of a higher kind and the seeming nod to a disparity between the two parties’ thoughts on the existence of a higher power to answer to is an intriguing thing to be found in what is quite a poppy song.

While I wouldn’t want to go as far to say there are elements of Noah and The Whale’s First Day of Spring in the way Marling has tackled the end of a relationship, it certain isn’t all spelled out for us, merely hinted at (“I speak because I can / To anyone I trust enough to listen / You speak because you can / To anyone who’ll hear what you say” was surely her reply to Fink on the last album.) It is only on ‘Night after Night, the final take of which allegedly reduced producer Ethan Johns to tears. She herself has said that the song has “nothing hidden” and a cursory look at some of the contents of newer Mumford and Sons songs might allow one to put two and two together when coupled with ‘Sophia’ to what has happened and why she is singing “Where I’ve been lately is no concern of yours”. Maybe as she sang in ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ we are looking for “answers in unsavoury places” but most telling of all is the mention of communion – aside from yet more religious undertones, Communion was the London club night right at the heart of the city’s burgeoning young folk acts a few years ago . The song is a true Leonard Cohen style outpouring, even down to the closeness to his ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ with her playing alone. It ends with a delightful instrumental break that reminds us of how Nick Drake would finish a song with a flourish.

Elsewhere on the album we get the familiar references to the classical elements with suns, seas, air as well as bones on ‘Rest in the Bed’ a track which was introduced live in LA last year as being “perfect for a film… Maybe a film that I’m too embarrassed to say. Don’t judge me” with lyrics on growing dark and growing old it’s no surprise that someone turned Marling a shade of crimson by yelling out “TWILIGHT!” in reply.

‘My Friends’ is the most lightweight of the songs on the album, it acts as nice palette cleanser after the middle of the album and although it has a passing resemblance to Jose Gonzalez’s version of ‘Heartbeats’ during the intro it breaks into the most Mumfordian thing on here with undulating banjo interjections galore towards the end. The most endearing moment on it is when the music pauses and Marling deadpans “I’m full of guilt.” It’s a different style of folk that closes out the album with ‘All My Rage’ interjecting a bit of light-heartedness and pastoral Led Zeppelin III feel to finish with as Marling rolls her tonsils around the choppy waters and leaves her rage there very much as an act of closure.

Lyrically we can never know for sure what Laura Marling is getting at – are these characters? Is she toying with our expectations about what we expected to be presented with on the record? She is an artist who likes to keep an air of mystery, sometimes misinterpreted as aloofness – she’s not someone you can imagine her updating Twitter feed to inform us she’s watching Red or Black with a big bag of Doritos. She has let us in a little though or led us on a merry dance with some short stories about her muse, and her friends The Beast and Sophia. Every time we are beckoned closer here we are slapped with a phrase or a guitar lick that sends us off balance slightly. Musically the album feels less chilly than the previously and as relaxed and considered as her vocals always have been the music doesn’t feel quite so urgent as well, maybe as a result of her not allowing Ethan Johns to get his fingerprints on the songs until she’d demoed them beyond the embryonic stage she took them to him on the previous album. It’s very appropriately released as well; it feels like an autumnal album in the way the first two did spring and winter. 

At the end of ‘Salinas’ is a choral refrain which reminded us of The Rolling Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ which, if intentional, is a superb masterstroke considering the next line in the chorus is of course “…and if you try sometime you find / you get what you need”, perfectly summing up  the album’s message.

It’s only a few days until 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Prize, now entering a third decade of awards and with Mystic Meg’s News of The World hotline not being picked up we call upon Mitchell Stirling to gaze into a crystal ball or hack into the judges phones to find out who come Tuesday could be celebrating too.

The sure things.

Adele - 21

Adele – 21

Nominated in 2008 for her debut when everyone was deciding if there was room for both Adele and Duffy that year, there’s no such issue this time round, even we had to check Wikipedia to confirm there actually was a second Duffy album that was eligible. It won’t be on the list. Adele’s mega-selling 21 will be though. While we struggle to see the award going to it, it’s hardly needing the sales boost – it sold a three millionth copy at the start of this month and will surely pass James Blunt’s Back To Bedlam to become the biggest seller of the last 15 years. (More than The Spice Girls, Robbie Williams, Dido, The Corrs or anyone has with one album since (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?) She does not really need the coverage and the £20,000 cheque we would argue.

Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi

Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi

Releasing her self-titled album early in the year so fresh after a BBC Sound of 2011 nomination (and not forgetting being tipped here in May last year) has seen her garner plenty of critical praise in the vacuum that can be January album releases. With the likes of BBC Radio, Uncut, NME, Mojo, Pitchfork, Rough Trade, Brian Eno, Nick Cave and others behind its spiky intensity, it’s also got the obvious leg-up of being a debut (seven out of last nine winners were first albums) alongside her growing profile after her well received Glastonbury set last month.

James Blake - James Blake

James Blake – James Blake

By now a more polarising album than we’d anticipated it being, with fierce defenders and attackers lambasting and praising it not following the work Blake was doing in 2009 and early 2010. Regardless, it’s an album that people have been talking about the past six months and its inclusion would be bound to raise the ire of the haters again. In not sounding as ground-breaking or other-worldly as say Burial’s Untrue, it puts itself in a stronger position to win as a more middle-ground, BBC Radio 2, dinner-party stable.

Katy B - On A Mission

Katy B – On A Mission

On A Mission ticks a few boxes for nomination in that it is a slightly more pop look at a the margins of the dubstep / R&B divide, is it slightly too popular to do well? (#2 in the album charts, three top ten singles) We’d wager no, as that never held some far more popular acts off the list, even in recent years; Adele, Radiohead, Amy Winehouse, Paul Weller and others who are far more household names. We’d also suggest her as one who could win the whole thing; certainly odds of 16/1 looked quite appealing. It would also be nice to see a more positive role model for young flame-haired girls on the front of the Guardian for a change.

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

For us, this is without doubt one of the best albums of the year and it should be nailed on to be shortlisted and as one of the favourites. However Stories from The City, Stories From The Sea won in 2001 and although this is as strong (stronger even?) as that album, the gong has never been given to a previous winner. In fact in 2008 when Portishead’s outstanding Third was talked as a potential winner it didn’t even make the cut, there previous win surely counting against them. We’ll stick with calling Let England Shake a sure thing as some ex-winners (Arctic, Dizzee Rascal) have made it but we won’t be completely shocked if it doesn’t make it either.

Wild Beasts - Smother

Wild Beasts – Smother

The band that brought us Muso’s Guide’s 2009 Album of the year have made another strong contender for the Mercury Prize and while a lot the albums mentioned so far have had impressive chart positions, due to Smother’s #17 peak it is the kind of record that would benefit from the exposure of the nomination. Missing it off would certainly seem a perverse thing to do given the amount of love that has been poured out toward it from devotees as well as newcomers to the band’s sound.

Other contenders.

As always we’ll throw up some albums we would love to see on the list personally, even if some of them might be wishful thinking. First up would be The Phantom Band’s The Wants which while not the kind of record that is quick in revealing its knotty charms, its sprawling ambition is exactly what the shortlist should be celebrating. Likewise Esben & The Witch’s cavernous sound deserves more ears to appreciate it. On a quieter note, ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall’s charming solo debut and Smoke Fairies’ chilly, haunted folk have hopefully made the judges’ ears prick up.

Moving to some previously nominated acts who have albums up for potential selection; not many people are seeing a nomination for Radiohead as their The King of Limbs seems curiously unloved and taken for granted. We do think that it would be bizarre for them to win for that, having not won with some of the most important releases of the last twenty years. Domino don’t seem to be pushing previous winners Arctic Monkeys that much and I’m sure they aren’t all that fussed having appeared before and of course winning in 2006. Likewise Elbow’s Build A Rocket Boys could easily not make it if there’s no desire to have two previous winners on the list (assuming PJ Harvey is). British Sea Power’s Valhalla Dancehall doesn’t seem to be as popular as their shortlisted album from 2008 and we’d be surprised to see them make the twelve this time.

It’s much more likely that a further nomination will go to the very recent released album from The Horrors (released on the deadline day) as well as Friendly Fires and serial nominee Eliza Carthy. Less likely are nods for Guillemots, The Go! Team, Glasvegas and The Streets, acts that have made stronger albums in the past and which have previously made the list.

After a barren couple of years the token urban/ R&B nod(s) section is quite competitive. Ghostpoet and Tinie Tempah seem the most likely but don’t rule out the likes of Dels too. Though we feel James Blake is a shoe-in, Jamie Woon, Mt. Kimbie, Darkstar or even SBTRKT from the dubstep world could get a look in. Golden Panda, Magnetic Man and Zomby we feel are a little more unlikely.

In the “old bloke that’s still got it, never going to win” slot there’s no Paul Weller, Morrissey, Robert Wyatt or anything else that Uncut and Mojo readers will know inside out to make up that demographic so thoughts have settled on Kate Bush. However, given the re-worked nature of her Director’s Cut, a nomination seems a non starter so that probably puts Brian Eno’s Small Craft on a Milk Sea (or even the more recent Drums Between the Bells) in the driver’s seat.

The remaining indie slots will likely divide into one each from pools we like to call BBC3 indie (Beady Eye, Noah and The Whale, The Vaccines, Frankie and The Heart Strings) and BBC4 indie (Everything Everything, Metronomy, The Joy Formidable, Stricken City, The Chapman Family, Yuck, Pete and The Pirates, Let’s Wrestle and Wu Lyf) one pool more broad/popular, the other more niche/unknown. Pop wise, Chase & Status and Jessie J have been talked up but it’s more likely Hurts will be the only further bone to the poptimist crowd that makes it as Adele and Katy B are very likely to be included and the days where The Spice Girls and Take That made the list seem to be long gone.

There’s no Marling or Mumford to take an obvious folk slot so despite the strong albums from Admiral Fallow, Alessi’s Ark, Bellowhead, Emmy The Great, The Unthanks and King Crimson we’ll go with The Leisure Society. The tricky to predict jazz slot could go to Kit Downes Trio or Led Bib again or Karios 4tet. We think it’ll be Sebastian Rochford and Pamelia Kurstin though.

One thing we can say with absolute confidence. No Gorillaz on the list.

Predictions:

Adele, Anna Calvi, PJ Harvey, James Blake, Katy B, Wild Beasts, The Horrors, Metronomy, Tinie Tempah, Sebastian Rochford and Pamelia, Ghostpoet and The Leisure Society.

Half a dozen to cover our tracks; Brian Eno, Yuck, The Vaccines, SBTRKT, Eliza Carthy and Friendly Fires.

We’ve also created a Mercury playlist over on Spotify – go here for an hour of tracks from previous winners to get you in the mood before the announcement tomorrow at 11.30am.

16 April, 2011

It is fitting that on the weekend of the FA Cup Semi-Finals the Pewsey locals hanging on the boughs of branches on the other side of the fence to hear some of the acts at the inaugural Honeyfest remind us of those doing the same at the famous Hereford vs. Newcastle game some 39 years ago.

Damien Rice

Honeyfest was originally scheduled to take place December last year but inclement weather put paid to that and instead it serves as an early prelude to the festival season.  Last year the Wiltshire villagers, utilising the name received funding from the Big Lottery Fund’s Village SOS programme to purchase the lease for their local pub, The Barge Inn, securing its then uncertain future at the heart of the community. The Barge Inn re-opened to the public that very same day and many pints of neon green Alien Abduction were sunk among its freshly painted walls. The BBC has been filming more of the village and others involved so you may be seeing more of the pub later this year.

We unfortunately miss the opening of the festival as our meticulous travel plans are spoilt by some people holding up our train for two minutes by prising the doors open four times and thus making us miss our slot at London Bridge, meaning we miss our train into the countryside by a minute. So thanks for that! We can only speculate how local acts, winners of a battle of the bands competition, Slagerij and Matthew Kilford go down. Judging purely by the amount of merchandise they shift after we arrived, we’d think they were well received. Make your mind up yourself by having a click on their webhomes http://www.myspace.com/matthewkilford and http://www.myspace.com/slagerij420

Marthas & Arthurs are just the kind of band you want to have on stage when you first arrive at a festival; pleasant, melodic and soothing. You’d have to have a heart of black coal to be offended or irked by their music and their boy-girl harmonies made for a fitting soundtrack for our first exploratory wandering around the compact site. We found the organisers had nicely married up the kind of normal festival fair that will be familiar to anyone who has been at an outdoor festival in the past ten years, such as The Pie Minister (or Eric Pickles as he’s known to his friends) alongside the more esoteric crystal skull and mysticisms usually found on the outskirts of Glastonbury.

Hotly-tipped new comers and tipped-to-be-big folk rockers Dry The River sustain the rustic mood. They may soon find themselves wading through the path carved out by Mumford and Sons and will be a feature at many a festival this summer. They delight the crowd with tracks from their self-released EPs and singles such as ‘Lion’s Den’ and ‘New Ceremony’. The crowd are very receptive to their homespun charm and mentions of which songs are favourites of the band’s mothers endeared them to many. After a couple of cheeky ciders in The Barge Inn we are back for The Magic Numbers who know how to keep a festival crowd happy. The double siblings pull out ‘Forever Lost’ and ‘Love Me Like You’ from their first album and delight those in the know with a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ for a sing-along by those of a certain age (and some who aren’t.)

For her first UK gig of the year, Laura Marling looks every inch the NME and BRIT Award winning act that she now is, cloaked in a black shoal (and at one point cloaked in far too much pyrotechnic smoke than is strictly required for her brand of folk!) She and her band glide through last year’s ‘Devil’s Spoke’ and ‘I Speak Because I Can’ effortlessly and dip into ‘Ghosts’ and ‘My Manic and I’. It’s hard to think that it was 2007 when she was first playing those songs to crowds and the progression from those to new songs ‘Salinas’ and the quite lovely ‘My Friends’ is something to behold.

Damien Rice rounds the evening off, with a solo performance leading the crowd through as his back-up for ‘Volcano’ and letting them off the work for ‘Blower’s Daughter’ just as the sun slowly begins to sink beneath the trees and the temperature starts to drop. The Magic Numbers and a slightly worse for wear Dry The River return for a mass encore croon along to Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ and Laughing Len’s ‘Hallelujah’. With that, the day is over and the locals disperse and we hurry back to London contemplating a very early start to the festival season. But when the surroundings, bands, weather and beer are this good who would dare complain?

Since 2008’s debut, Youth Novels, Lykke Li has given us two clear pointers to what the subject and sound of her follow up might be. In terms of themes and lyrical content, appearing on the The Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack with ‘Possibility’ was a hint that there would be thoughts on transformation, explicitly mentioned in that song and key to the franchise, as well as the gap between youth and young adulthood, another big theme behind Stephenie Meyer’s novels.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

The second, less frequently noticed clue was her sparse, naked cover of The Shirelles’ ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ also released just over a year ago. It’s interesting here as many of the songs on Wounded Rhymes fit that low-key template. All the more interesting though, as there is a version of it with pounding, cavernous percussion and Spector “Wall of Sound” aping production and that’s the version on Dusty Springfield’s debut album, which seems to be the jump-off point for a lot of we have here.

That’s not to say this is a backward looking album, for all the clear influence of the girl-groups of the early sixties and dirty Dick Dale rusty garage guitar lines snaking in the background, there is plenty of modern sounding production here. This is mainly evident on the up-tempo numbers – opener ‘Youth Knows No Pain’ which, despite the trill of a Hammond organ, could almost pass as Lady Gaga at the start or Girls Aloud with those backwards whoosh cymbals later on. The title is quite ironic given what Li has in store for us later on.

Then there’s the two singles from the album so far – ‘I Follow Rivers’ with steel drums careering around like a pinball and ‘Get Some’, which sounds like  the backing of Bjork’s ‘Earth Intruders’ meeting the vocal melody of Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance’ somewhere round the back of The Doors’ ‘Break On Thru’. ‘Get Some’ of course has been reduced in most quarters to simply being the song with the line “I’m your prostitute, you gon’ get some” and how it displays the sexual, feisty and confident side of Li’s personality. However, this is a slight misreading of the song’s apparent intended target – male music journalists who can’t help but describe a female performance looks in a way they wouldn’t a male act.

At the heart of the record  is, the stand-out here,  ‘Love Out of Lust’ which could almost pass for Amy Winehouse being backed up by These New Puritans. It’s slower pace suits the vocal, which is closer to that the sound of her debut.  The percussion is just as open but more nuanced and dampened to give her singing the centre stage. In a parallel world it’ll be sung at X Factor auditions just as much as Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ surely will be this autumn. Paired with it is ‘Unrequited Love’ and it’s hymnal, almost a capella, doo-wop feel that brought to mind Elvis’ ‘Crying In the Chapel’. There’s no bravado here, simple acoustic guitar and percussion that’s not much more than a foot tapping along.

Another reference to those golden age girl-groups is the “boom, boom boom, cha” ‘Be My Baby’ drumbeat that punctuates ‘Sadness Is A Blessing; with a sky-scrapper chorus and the most radio friendly of the needy, yearning songs it gets our vote as the next single. Meanwhile, ‘Rich Kids Blues’ with a Del Shannon ‘Runaway’ / ‘96 Tears’ intro and it’s infectious earworm hook is still probably the slightest thing here, not making much of an impression on us.

On a similar note the six minutes of ‘I Know Places’ do drag a touch despite the gorgeousness of the instrumental passage at the close, it does work as a palette cleanser though before the most aggressive song on the album, the borderline stalker’s pursuit of ‘Jerome’.  The production from Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John fame here ramps up the harshness of the synchronised hand-claps and wooden percussion to their most tribal. It should be noted that Jerome got Li “for nothing” so he certainly isn’t one the pimps/journalists being addressed in ‘Get Some’!

The album closes with the spellbinding ‘Silent My Song’ another show stopping vocal as Li’s own voice backs her up in choral refrain like a ghostly Everly Brother,  and it’s quite the way to go out with chilly, gothic reverb and brutally open lyrics: “No fist is needed when you call” Li implores us, more than slightly worryingly.

Overall the production is restrained when it needs to be and when it needs to sound like a bloke going mad in the kitchen with a wooden spoon it does that with great aplomb as well. It’s a sign of the burgeoning of Li’s song writing that it’s not wall to wall icy crashing drums and synths, the intimate stuff suggests a real belief behind her vision. An apt comparison would be Bat For Lashes Two Suns; it’s a similar leap in quality and step up from the debut in terms of the atmosphere of the production but here there is no need to signpost the record as having a split personality as Natasha Khan did with Pearl on that record. Here we are to accept that Li is both a pissed off, prickly, slightly scary girl but also a vulnerable, wounded and longing woman.

A lot has already been said about whether the eight tracks in front of us today are all we can expect from Radiohead in the next six months, surely they are up to something, three plus years for less than 40 minutes etc etc. For now, let’s eat what’s on the plate and then deal with what’s for dessert or seconds if/when that comes.

Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

As is the norm for a new Radiohead album, the opening track, ‘Bloom’ presents us with very little in the way of a clue for what to expect for the rest of The King Of Limbs, much like it’s obvious forbearer Amnesiac’s ‘Pakt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box’. There’s a looped, rolling piano intro, syncopated beats, crashing, skittering drums, droning deep bass and like many of the tracks here it’s a full minute in before we hear vocals. Having appeared as a guest on last year’s Flying Lotus record it seems Yorke enjoyed it and ‘Bloom’ is the closest thing to homage, even by way of Joy Division’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. Towards the end, around 2:50, some horns underpin the sound like it’s the  soundtrack to an establishing city shot of a mid ’90s LA cop show.

A lot has been written about the first side of the album being very close to Yorke’s 2006 solo album The Eraser. It’s true that side A is dense and knotty and brings to mind not only the kind of 1990s IDM that was praised by the group at the turn of the century but the more modern work of Four Tet, Burial, Darkstar, Untold and the aforementioned Flying Lotus amongst others. Despite this, it’s highly disingenuous to suggest that it’s only Yorke that can be heard on the first half. The Eraser simply didn’t have the punctuation of Greenwood’s string arrangements, which have developed after his stints working on the soundtracks for Bodysong and There Will Be Blood. His elder brother’s bass work is also all over the front of this album, much more prominent and centered then the digital bass lines on The Eraser. Similarly Phil Selway’s emperor’s new groove of tight, Can motorik school has continued here as on their previous record.

‘Morning Mr. Magpie’ was a song that was webcast, when such a thing was a fancy notion, in December 2002 and hearing that version you’d be forgiven for thinking that it would end up being a stomping Britpop number. Instead it shuffles along vocally and the rhythmic drumming and squirrely bass line are almost at the level of funk workout of The Smiths’ ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’. This continues on ‘Little By Little’ which barges in with such an outrageous near Tropicalia rhythm at the beginning that it takes a little while to appreciate the noodly guitar licks and tone from Ed O’Brien that peppered  In Rainbows, Hail To The Thief and Amnesiac.

‘Feral’ is an instrumental which has been lauded in some quarters as a notable entry into the post-dubstep landscape, in others called a pointless waste of four minutes. Obviously the truth is somewhere between those points but despite the vocal treatments to Yorke’s voice sounding very much like those on Burial’s Untrue in places, the backing is looking further back. Overall the tone on the first side is one of a Radiohead album that is still in thrall to the likes of Squarepusher, Autechre and Aphex Twin much like Kid A but exists in a world where records like Untrue and Portishead’s Third have been poured over if not fully integrated into the band’s sound. Yet

At this point the record starts to “slowly unfurl” as Yorke actually sings in ‘Lotus Flower’, surely deliberately and with a degree of knowing. It isn’t that far away from what went before it but manages to include the first real sign of Thom’s cooing, Prince-like falsetto akin to the vocal warmth of ‘House of Cards’. Even on first listen it’s clearly well-chosen as the single and it’s the most difficult earworm on the album to shake. It’s probably the only song we’ll hear this year that has (almost) got a reference to Lee and Herring’s mid ’90s comedy knock about Fist of Fun (Yorke wishes for “The Moon upon a stick”).

The remainder of the record is, for a lot of people, the sound of Radiohead doing what Radiohead do best. ‘Codex’ lies somewhere between the greatness of ‘Pyramid Song’ and the not quite as stellar ‘Sail to the Moon’. It’s a woozy piano led, slow number with gorgeous string swells and vocals rising delicately and sighing gently. You imagine that if the band weren’t so bored of the sound of their imitators cribbing this template for the past decade and a half they might write a few more of them, but their paucity is what makes it all the more satisfying. Yorke’s continuing obsession with water and fish can be found on many of the songs and there is even some nods back to him singing about roots, earth, plants and branches like he was a few albums back as well.

The album rounds off with ‘Give up the Ghost’ which reminds us of Neil Young c.1974 with the blissful, cracked honeyed vocal and appropriately haunted backing vocals that would slot on to On The Beach, the title track of which the band covered around the Hail To The Thief era. When it boils down to it though, it is a simple, lush acoustic guitar song. It washed over us at first but again, slowly revealed itself to be one of the strongest songs on here. ‘Separator’ is a low-key but suitable ending with more skittering drumming, like an up-tempo ‘Videotape’ complete with the kind of spidery, melodic, pseudo- White Album guitar lines that can be found on LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Never As Tired as When I’m Waking Up’

It’s hard to assess any new album other than to try and place it into today’s musical landscape or to place it within a band’s own discography. With Radiohead, even before a note of The King of Limbs was heard, there would have been sizeable potions of fans who would have wanted the album to sound a bit like any of the albums that went before it. (Though those wanting The Bends part II should really give up waiting – it’s been 16 years now guys). This was a major failing of Hail to the Thief – that it tried to cram too much of what the band had moved on from with an approximate attempt to fold their new sound back into “arena rock” and ended up with a bloated runtime that is widely considered to their least great album since their debut. This is just long enough to feel like an album but not so long you’d get lost trying to pick over it.

That we know nothing about the recording process of the album due to the band’s near radio-silence makes the normal Radiohead dilemma even trickier; Are they a rock band that act as a Trojan horse bringing the more esoteric to a wider audience or are they simply by far the largest cult band on the planet? Everyone hearing this and who has heard it has expectations tied to the band so that they are comparing The King of Limbs to some unreal album that doesn’t exist outside their own head.

Our view is that it’s a slightly beguiling entry to their canon. It very much has the sound of both The Eraser and In Rainbows but that is over-simplifying as it’s much more organic than Yorke’s solo outing and not as warm and immediate as their last studio record.  Stating that the first half is “Radiohead plays the hits of Putney’s Elliott School” is similarly off – the tightness of the rhythm section and incorporation of digital loops bring to mind a modern take of Talking Heads’s Remain In Light and the subtlety yet depth of the sound Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock. While it sounds “other” in the same way like Kid A and Amnesiac do, it’s not quite as alien, largely in part to Yorke’s singing on the tail-end of the record. There’s nothing on here where they sound like a drummer, a bassist and three guitarists rockin’ out like on a ‘2+2=5’, ‘Bodysnatchers’ or ‘Optimistic’ but with all the drawn out gaps between phrases and verses works as a moody, atmospheric collection that has all these busy little moments buried in the ever-excellent production to make it worth your time. Maybe it is increasingly hard to be thrillingly excited by the band themselves now they are approaching their mid-forties – sure, the album doesn’t really break new ground, but why does it need to?

Finally another comparison to Amnesiac is when that was on the horizon, those that had bristled at Kid A thought it would be ‘the real album’. That must have made Thom and co. laugh, and I dare say that any talk of further music to come in 2011 from the band being  ‘the real album’ will do so as well.

British Sea Power’s Valhalla Dancehall rides into town just shy of a decade into their career. Over that time they’ve developed a devoted following and a reputation as one of the best live bands in the country. Part of their charm has been that they’ve not followed anyone’s template for a career arc. When they hit the top ten with their Mercury nominated Do You Like Rock Music? they followed it up by recording a soundtrack album to a 75 year old fictional documentary on the everyday struggles of fisherman off Western Ireland (2009’s excellent, lesser heard Man of Aran). They exist on the outskirts of the mainstream and the very things that make them unique and truly special paradoxically push them forwards and hold them back. Given the themes the band have explored before and here on ages modern and past, it’s a fitting place for them.

The front cover is adorned with a three-legged horse, a call back to the one mentioned in ‘The Pelican’ (from 2007’s Krakenhaus? EP) no doubt but more importantly a reference to Helhest, the steed of Hel in Norse mythology, and coupled with the title it’s a wonderful visual pun. It’s the equivalent of calling your album Disco Heaven and slapping a horned goat on it. It’s not all jokes at casa de British Sea Power though, as there are harbingers of the oncoming storm on opener ‘Who’s In Control?’. Brimming with the band’s typical gusto, it’s one of their most literal call to arms. It fits in serendipitously with last year’s student demonstrations with the sheer luck Yan’s wish that “protesting was sexy on a Saturday night” has come true. While there’s an almost passive acknowledgement in the line “Oh, were you not told, do you not know / everything around you is being sold” one would suggest the band are angry none-the-less and concerned where we are heading. If you are going to sing about protest, you can’t go far wrong sounding like a riot with the wonderful of addition of what sounds like a particularly narked crow every now and again.

‘We Are Sound’ and ‘Observe The Skies’ are the two songs that fit the mould of the chugging Replacements-esque, solid bro, indie rock that marred parts of DYLRM? Thankfully these are a cut above ‘A Trip Out’ and ‘Down On The Ground’ and diversify sonically from that template. Both employ a rattling, driving beat underpinned by some expert drumming from Wood and the occasional scree of guitar making me wonder if guitarist Noble, in a mad moment, has considered playing solos from the roof of Buckingham Palace at the end of April. ‘We Are Sound’ slowly winds down to something more melodic and quieter, much like the more reflective and cinematic moments on Man of Aran.

However the hard rocking Yan numbers and Hamilton’s reflective calmer moments don’t operate in a vacuum – the album is more than a mere collection of separate songs that don’t reflect each other. Some might argue that this was a failing of Do You Like Rock Music?, packing relentless anthem after anthem into the front of the record. ‘Stunde Null’ and ‘Mongk II’ are the record’s show-stoppers and certainly among the best songs the band has produced. ‘Stunde Null’ (The German for Zero Hour, when WWII finished) is a raging beast, with darting buzzsaw guitars turned up to rusty and a bassline you could catch tetanus off as well. ‘Mongk II’ a refined version of its predecessor that appeared on Zeus, late last year, which also hums and throbs along as the band dip their toes a little deeper in to the metronomic world of early 70’s German Progressive rock.

The next two songs take the pace down a level at end of first half of the record, much in the same way that ‘Treefingers’ and ‘New Orleans Instrumental No. 1’ do on Kid A and Automatic For The People. ‘Baby’ has a gorgeous harmony between Abi Fry and Hamilton and is surely the most (only?) delicate song to mention crap aphrodisiac “powdered rhino’s horn”. ‘Luna’, with its questioning tone of asking if you are off to disco, party or looking to get laid, is accompanied by the same style of fragile piano line that’s on ‘Georgie Ray’ which sees Yan taking on the ballad duties uncharacteristically.

The nature of partying and mass consumerism comes up again in first single ‘Living Is So Easy’ which kicks off the second side. It’s the only song that moves away from dabbling with electronics to something a little more dependent. It’s references to a Vera Lynn pigeon shoot was that was a blast, and it’s deliberately dismissive sideswipe at capitalism works better on the record than in isolation despite that earworm hook. Towards the end of the album ‘Thin Black Sail’ is one of the more gonzo, demented songs they’ve put on an album since the debut and recalls the funnel that The Coral once managed to squeeze Barrett, Zappa and Julian Cope through. Closer ‘Heavy Water ‘sets out like it could be on the Tron soundtrack but ends up being the kind of windswept close-out that could sit on Echo and The Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here quite contently.

The final third of the record is slightly weighed down by the presence of both ‘Cleaning Out The Rooms’, as epic and twinkly as it sounded on Zeus last year, and ‘Once More Now’ which total 7 and 11 minutes respectively. ‘Once More Now’ does have a veneer of shoegaze that the band hasn’t touched on before. Coming so soon after another long song it hasn’t proved all of it’s worth to us yet though we did feel that way with some of the longer songs on Open Season at first, which it fondly recalls.

Are the band entering a period in their career where like 1970s Neil Young they switch styles and tempos record to record? It’s a trope that last year’s tour partner’s The Manic Street Preachers have employed of late to a degree and even before that I’d regarded them as British Sea Power’s slightly older brothers. Maybe they don’t need to, as this album is the nearest they’ve come to a complete collection of songs that scale the peaks of  the wonky Bowie influenced new-wave pop, the epic sweep of The Big Music of the early/mid 1980s and The Flaming Lips’s 1995 album Clouds Taste Metallic. Zeus worked very well as a showcase for where the band’s head was and should very much be heard as a companion piece to this album. Some might say that the band haven’t really done much hear to appeal to new fans but, like they say themselves after 11 minutes of ‘Once More Now’:

“Fuck ‘em”

Warpaint - The Fool

For those of us that heard Warpaint’s sparse and chilling take on Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ earlier this year as well as their EP in late 2009, it can come as no surprise that their debut proper has surfaced fully formed through the veneer and fug of LA chronic that dominates the stoned, hazy outlook of contemporaries Wavves and Best Coast. While those bands’ music exudes a summery naivety, Warpaint come from a colder, darker place. It’s not gothic though, it feels like they are as dark as say New Order were in 1982/3, on the way from being Joy Division but not quite arrived at the band they would be c. Low-Life and beyond.

Warpaint’s Exquisite Corpse EP was released five years after the band was formed, the songs had been gestating for a couple of years at least as the band found their feet. With such a long build up to The Fool the stylistic traits and quirks that are found on this record seem deeply imbedded and are executed without fuss or a great deal of showiness. On the opener, which was curiously mooted as the closer at one point, ‘Set Your Arms Down’ there’s a moment where Stella Mozgawa’s drums change up a gear and for a brief moment touch the metronomic motorik of Krautrock. The song though doesn’t make a big deal out of this – it doesn’t pivot on this in a way that say Radiohead’s ‘Bodysnatchers’ does about two and a half minutes in where the whole song bends around the change in tempo. Here, it’s threatened but never followed through.

On ‘Bees’ the drum sound is very reminiscent of the dubstep influenced sound on The XX’s debut and the band similarly find a lot of traction in pulling out one of the components of the song and letting the others continue without ‘noticing’ there’s a space not filled. It’s a neat trick and Warpaint do it well, maybe slightly too often but that’s a nitpicking complaint really. It works because the band are so ridiculously tigh – as well as the isolated portions of motorik on ‘Composure’ and scattergun drumming on ‘Shadows’ each member gets their own periods to showcase their talents but they work better in unison. Theresa Wayman’s rippling waves of guitar work throughout are delightfully sonorous; be it pinging like Foals, chiming with occasional Byrdsian swagger or, on ‘Shadows’, with a little touch of Latin bite to the flavour.

The two bands that have come up as reference points in our notes the most are Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Nirvana. The first isn’t a surprise considering that both current and former guitarists from the band (Klinghoffer and Frusciante respectively) have played and produced for them during their career, and it’s also a rather larger plus that they don’t have Anthony Kiedis’s funk-rap guff laid over the top of the guitar lines. Nirvana seems a stranger one to attach to this band though – lead-off single ‘Undertow’ manages to evoke the rubbery, aquatic rumble of ‘Come as You Are’ and some of the phrasing and delivery recalls ‘Polly’. Many of the other basslines seem to suggest the Seattle band or the watery grooves of The Cure.

‘Undertow’ itself is the biggest success story on the record – it captures everything they do well and throws in a chorus which has found itself buried into our brains, no doubt helped by the worming away of the nimble guitar work. The flipside of this are ‘Warpaint’ and ‘Majesty’, which are too dense to escape from themselves and during their droning was the only times we found ourselves checking run time on an album with an average track length of over five minutes.

The band’s biggest assets belong to the vocal harmony and magnetic bass work of Jenny Lee Lindberg. While Emily Kokal’s ghostly, phased dream-pop vocals are much better than you’d expect them to be on a record like this – there are moments that bring to mind Liz Fraser, Siouxsie Sioux, Bilinda Butcher and PJ Harvey – it’s when the vocals click in harmony, seeming to illicit a pained sexual yearning with the stealthy, priapic rumblings underpinning it that the record is at it’s beguiling best.

Even more of a surprise is the acoustic, folky number ‘Baby’ which is the only song on which the lyrics seemed noticeable as opposed to being atmosphere builders, and has the rustic, campfire elegance of pre-Domino Animal Collective. The final track, ‘Lissie’s Heart Murmer’ was yet another leftfield turn at the end of the record; we did even wonder whether we’d accidently nudged Beach House onto our playlist when the rolling piano started-up until the vocals came in. Why it was imagined as the first track we’ll never know, as it whirls and crashes to conclusion and the melody gets sucked circling down, it’s the perfect ending to one of the most intriguing and impressive American debuts of the year.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Strangely, considering the amount of American cinema and TV dedicated to the white picket fences of the suburbs and feeling of inertia within (Blue Velvet, American Beauty, Desperate Housewives to name but three examples), there’s very little music from across the Atlantic on the subject. In the UK the gravitational pull of cities mean we have the outsider’s perspective of Suede or Blur peering into London, Pulp’s seedy tales of suburbia or even The Pet Shop Boys ‘Suburbia’. Now, Arcade Fire shed some light on the geographical gap in the US between Springsteen and the cool kids in the city on their highly anticipated third album.

It opens, and closes, with the title track – a smorgasbord of cherry picked phrases from 55 years of popular music with ‘want to hold your hand’ and ‘the damage done’ spilling out in quick succession. It’s a strange choice musically for an opener with the more suitable and more atypical Arcade Fire sound of ‘Ready To Start’ in the #2 slot – lyrically though, as a statement of intent, it maps out the cul-de-sacs and avenues the record will wander around. The repeated piano refrain brings to mind Ed Harcourt’s ‘Apple of My Eye’ and Sleepy Jackson’s ‘Good Dancers’ (The latter is more evident on the short, closing version of the song).

As you’d expect from what is essentially a double album in old money (its 16 tracks run just shy of 65 minutes) that explores one theme, there’s a lot of treading on well-worn ground, whether it be Butler nostalgically recalling his youth or lamenting the sense of directionless ennui that the he felt growing up in the suburbs around Houston. The album’s genesis was in Butler reconnecting with an old friend and it’s quite easy to imagine how, like the food critic in Ratatouille, a trickle of memory became an overwhelming flood. This is most obvious on ‘City With No Children’ a lament to Houston by name.

The subject matter on the album seems to either fall into the literal tales of childhood or the allegorical variety where you are sometimes left trying to marry up a song about the chess playing computer (‘Deep Blue’) with the overall theme, which is so sprawling and encompassing (The boredom and trappings of suburban American lives, 1970 to present) that it’s very easy to over analyse every single line and attach false meaning to it. Is ‘Deep Blue’ about the struggle between man and machine or not? We don’t mind dwelling on these theories, it’s an important part of song-writing to “show not tell”, but the game is played too often and sometimes not well on The Suburbs. Butler is too literal at times and at others not explicit enough, leaving us not really sure what he is trying to say exactly.

Coupled with this abstraction there’s a distinct lack of songs that hit you square in the solar plexus on the first go round. The centrepiece of the album ‘Half Light I’ and ‘Half Light II (No Celebration)’ invoke the dreamy, string backed reflective parts of Funeral, with the former employing a chugging reggae riff a la ‘Paper Planes’ / ‘Straight To Hell’ the later dissolving into British Sea Power covering Doves’ ‘There Goes The Fear’. Indeed it’s very easy to remember that Arcade Fire were once pigeon holed as the Canadian BSP with the sonorous, coruscating guitar liberally sprinkled across the album. Our notes are also peppered with ‘outstays welcome’ ‘goes on a bit’ ‘a minute too long’ and ’outro doesn’t really do much’ up and down the track listing.

The other major complaint is the way that Butler seems to have an issue with the band’s fans, never really a good thing to dwell on. While at the start of their career the band were imploring that “Us Kids Know”, here the kids are following tends to save face on ‘Ready To Start’. Even worse is surely the nadir of the band’s career so far, ‘Rococo’ – not just a repetitive dirge of a song but a bilious festival of sneering. Here the kids are hipster douchebags and Butler isn’t shy about letting us know how objectionable he finds them. Unfortunately ’Positively 4th Street’ it ain’t. The other song that we really don’t have any time for is ‘Month of May’ – described by some as glam or punk but in reality it sounds like Mud or a late seventies pub-rock borefest about nothing.

Most of the album consists of atmospheric, quieter moments like the ‘Revolution #1’ feel of ‘Wasted Hours’ or the Lifes Rich Pageant era R.E.M. of ‘Suburban War.’ Where the guitars are given centre strange they aren’t just reaching for the stratosphere, they chime and ping away like Peter Buck’s (again on ‘Modern Man’) or like that one from Coldplay does. The only thing that brought me back to ‘Deep Blue’ was the guitars lapping themselves like Magazine used to do. There’s even ‘Sprawl I’ which has a baroque English-folk feel.

There’s not much that really stands out as a radical reinvention of Arcade Fire’s sound, bar the shoegazing drone in the core of ‘Empty Room’ and the underwater strings (as heard on My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loomer’) on ‘Suburbs II’ and the revelation that is ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ – here, Regine takes the vocals and it’s impossible not to talk about it without mentioning Abba or Debby Harry. It glitters and shimmers and despite her chipmunkish singing voice sounding like she might launch into ‘Optimistic Voices’ from Wizard of Oz it’s by far the most endearing and grin-inducing moment on the record.

While the band have, in the main, gone out of the way not to record another album of songs like the big singles on Funeral, it’s the songs that invoke it that are the most intriguing – on ‘Suburban War’ the mad race to all be crashing and banging their instruments at once seems a little forced and not as thrilling as it once did. On the other hand though the track that most recalls the Talking Heads and New Order path of ‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’, ‘We Used To Wait’ is the best thing on here and probably the only song that is as immediate as Funeral’s best songs. With what could be theme from Gremlins bubbling behind it Butler laments the loss of the intimacy and excitement of something as simple as waiting for the post to arrive with hand-written correspondence. We don’t need to dwell on what the symbolism may or may not be here because the music is too exciting to let our minds wander.

Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible was criticised in some quarters for not being another Funeral. This forgets that a few of the songs on their debut weren’t even in the same league as the very best songs on it. Some people found their second album to be too overbearing and preachy. They don’t do pomposity nor over the top theatrics on The Suburbs for the main. This record either whispers key points or bludgeons you with a hammer to get them across again and again. While the bulk of the songs on the album are good or very good they sound better together with the thematic threads interweaving between them.

Arcade Fire haven’t gone as far as some do on their third album by standing at the very top of their game and looking down at their peers from on high. We hope that the opening of their musical palette to include more from the early 1980s leads to more experimentation musically on their next record and one that will really challenge them and maybe us. Arcade Fire know that they aren’t the sensation that they were in 2004 anymore and like the suburbs themselves they can’t get back there. The difference is that whilst they’d be happy to go back and ‘waste it again’ in the suburbs, they don’t want to be that band again.

The xx - xx

As Paul The Octopus isn’t returning our calls we’ll have to make do with our own physic cephalopod, Mitchell Stirling as he casts his tentacles over the elite 12 British and N. Irish records that might be receiving nods next week.

Last year I, like most people felt that Doves winning would be to similar to the Elbow win the previous year but didn’t think that would prevent them getting a nod (nor did the bookies, they were favourites). Similarly we all thought that Portishead’s Third was a lock the year before and it didn’t make it. This year we can’t even find odds before the nominations but you can pick up a vibe on a few releases.

The XX – XX: We’d would be frankly astounded if this doesn’t get nominated, it was already being talked about as a potential winner around the time of last year’s ceremony. WE fully expect it to go in as favourite once the nominations are announced as well based on the acclaim it received at the end of the year that wasn’t restricted to the UK indie press, it was lauded by the broadsheets, the older music press and even the likes of FACT, The Wire and Mixmag. We haven’t seen a reaction to a British record like that since Dummy a former Mercury Prize winner. The one to beat we feel.

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers: Discussed in similar terms last autumn as a potential winner when summer rolled round. It has also been applauded thoroughly for the delight it takes in it’s own outsider status from the striking imagery to the arresting melodies. We don’t think it has enough momentum behind it with its September release in the way The XX have though.

Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can: We’ve rhapsodised a fair bit about Miss Marling on this site and to anyone that will listen. It seems critical and public consensus is catching up with me and she’ll likely add the nomination of her first album in 2008 with this one. We also fully expect it to be among the favourites when the odds are drawn up.

Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels and Ellie Goulding – Lights: We’re almost flipping a coin on this one. The top two of the BBC’s Sound of…  poll at the start of the year and in the previous two years the women at the top of that list have had a 50% strike rate with Duffy and Little Boots not making the cut, La Roux and Adele did. We think a similar thing is going to happen this time and although neither album really set my pulses racing we’ll go with Marina for having slightly more of the star quality. Bank on at least one of them to make it though.

Delphic – Acolyte: With the slightly more leftfield guitar-indie of The XX and Wild Beasts it’s hard to think of a typical Conor NME indie type album that might make it so we’ll plump for Delphic on account of the high amounts of tips at the start of the year and the goodwill they still have from their incredible early singles.

Plan B – The Defamation of Strickland Banks: It was a surprise at the time that his ‘British Eminem’ debut didn’t attract the attentions of the judges who went with Sway’s This Is My Demo and likely couldn’t find room for both on the list. The change to an easier on the Radio 2 listener’s ears singing style and lack of calling everyone listening a c**t probably puts him in a good position to land on the list.

Others that could make it.

Like last year we’ll throw in albums we’d like to see on the list first. These New Puritans‘  Hidden would be high up on my nomination sheet, a step up from their debut as impressive as that of The Horrors last year. We are also a big fan of Race Horses‘ Goodbye Falkenburg but fear that if SFA can’t get on the last two lists it’s unlikely another Welsh band that has followed them can. (we’re sure Jude Rogers will try though!) If we’re following the saga of the release of Fanfarlo‘s Reservoir correctly, it should be eligible this year if entered but who knows on that one.

We’d love to see Field Music‘s third album on there but with the panel choosing not to include the excellent Tones of Town or The Week That Was, we’re not convinced that they’ll be sitting through a double album too often from their listening pile. Their loss, we know. We also would have loved to have seen Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and Mystery Jets make the line-up in 2008 though we think they all suffered in what was a very strong year for the prize. Their most recent albums are all in with a shout of making it but we feel that they aren’t as strong as previous efforts. The Big Pink‘s debut seems a very long time ago now but Glasvegas managed to make the list after a long gap last time out. We’re 50:50 on A Brief History of Love doing likewise. We also can’t see Alex Turner making it four from four with Arctic Monkeys‘ Humbug certainly not a bad album by any standard but it’s autumn release handicaps it more than any perceived dip in quality we feel. A couple of albums that could make it on both strength and previous efforts feeling hard-done-by are Foals‘ Total Life Forever and Los Campesinos! with Romance is Boring.

With a presumed nod for Laura Marling we think, despite the wealth of talent in the indie folk box there’s probably only room for one more nomination; it would likely be Mumford and Sons. A band that have had stratospheric rise in the past 12 months with a feverent fan-base that clearly adores them and their intense live show as well as lashings of Radio 1 play their have the wind in their sails despite a large amount of sniping at them. This probably means no place for Noah & the Whale‘s The First Days of Spring or Peggy Sue‘s Fossils and Other Phantoms as there surely wouldn’t be a third album from that corner of the world. Previous nominees The Unthanks and newcomers Stornoway and Goldheart Assembly are more on the Radio 2/Uncut end of the folk spectrum so they could usurp Mumford and Sons or join them in a heavily folky list.

Moving away from guitars there’s every chance that Hot Chip‘s recent effort One Life Stand, a more complete effort than Made In The Dark could be nominated like 2006′s The Warning was. We also think that if Four Tet are ever going to get a nomination than this is year with There Is Love in You, one of the best received albums of the year. In a similar vein Fuck Buttons, Scuba, James Yuill and Broadcast and The Focus Group may feel in with a shout.

Typically there’s a Irish nomination just to remind everyone that Irish acts are eligible prime suspect this year is likely to be the joyful but lightweight indie pop of Two Door Cinema Club or Dublin’s Villagers. Former nominees Polar Bear, Dizzee Rascal, Portico Quartet, Maps, Fyfe Dangerfield, Jamie T and Richard Hawley all have perfectly serviceable albums that could make it. Muse’s last album was terrible but that doesn’t stop the panel from including one record a year to really annoy us. A much better home-grown stadium rock effort would be Biffy Clyro who surely deserve a look-in for persistence alone.

There are a few acts that’ve never been on the list that might make a debut Steve Mason’s Beta Band never made the cut. Nor, surprisingly did Grammy and BRIT nominee Corinne Bailey Rae with her debut. We think she may well atone for that oversight. Paul Weller has his best album since 1993 nomination for Wild Wood but we don’t think he’s the kind of act they’d want to nominate still. What price a nomination for Teenage Fanclub or The Fall after all these years? (We can’t see them wanting Mark E. Smith gurning at Lauren Laverne in September to be honest.)

We have also mulled records by The Cribs, North Atlantic Oscillation, Archie Bronson Outfit, Rox, Bombay Bicycle Club, New Young Pony Club, Massive Attack, Lonelady, Pulled Apart By Horses, Tunng, Kate Nash, The Chemical Brothers and Blood Red Shoes and could only see NYPC or Lonelady sneaking on to the list but we’re not going to tip them.

We wanted to mention Slow Club as a nominee we’d like to see but Charles and Rebecca’s wonderful debut falls outside of the dates for being on this year’s list after looking it up. Anyone who is suggesting Gorrilaz will be nominated may want to do their homework on the band’s previous nomination though!

Our final predictions: The XX, Wild Beasts, Laura Marling, Marina and The Diamonds, Plan B, Delphic, Four Tet, Foals, Biffy Clyro, Mumford and Sons, Empirical and Villagers.

Half a dozen more to cover our tracks: Scuba, Ellie Goulding, The Fall, Corrine Bailey Rae, Hot Chip and These New Puritans.

How accurate will we be?

Summer Camp

After coming across the superbly excellent Summer Camp (Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley) back in December last year with an ‘introducing Summer Camp‘ feature – back when we didn’t even know their identities – and giving them a glowing live review supporting The Drums, the time has now finally come for a one-on-one with the band. It’s taken a long time!

When you first started, everything was quite secretive – how long did you think or hope that was going to last?

Jeremy Walmsley: We wanted to stop it being a secret much sooner than it eventually emerged. We were just doing the project for fun, and we were doing it anonymously as we didn’t want our friends to know it was us. And then it turned into this big “oh, they’re anonymous” thing.

Someone at Platform (where Elizabeth is Editor) reviewed your first song didn’t they?

Elizabeth Sankey: Yes, but they had no idea it was me though.

JW: It was really funny. Elizabeth came home from work that day and told me that one of Platform‘s writers had said they were doing a piece on Summer Camp.

You should have done it yourselves! Like last year, when Stewart Lee reviewed his own BBC show for Time Out. It was a really scathing review, where he described himself as “just a man going on and on about nothing”…

ES: That’s’ brilliant! I did get asked to do a Radar piece for NME on Summer Camp, though – they didn’t know it was us but I just couldn’t do that.

Did anyone actually think that you were seven school kids from Sweden?

ES: People did. Even now there are some left still saying we are keeping our identities hidden.

There was a piece in The Independent only the other week saying just as much. Just after the night I saw you play, taking note of the fact that you weren’t wearing masks.

ES: There does seem to be a spate of bands doing the whole anonymous thing, and it’s a really good idea but just not something we set out to do intentionally.

JW: It’s true, even though in a way it worked out really well for us. The whole anonymous “idea” simply wasn’t an idea. We just wanted to make some music.

ES: We weren’t sure how we would do the whole reveal thing – we thought we’d end up probably just playing live, with people seeing it was us and writing about it. Luckily, we were outed by The Stool Pigeon and we just had to deal with it.

Did you ever even consider playing live with masks?

ES: By the time we were playing, a lot of people knew who we were anyway. We didn’t want to hold on to it, so we kind of just let go.

JW: I think it’s blown up into a bigger deal than it ever was meant to be. No-one sent us an e-mail saying “Hey, who are you?” I’m not sure anyone actually cared about it at the time. Now it’s just an interesting thing for journalists to talk about. I wish we had a better answer to the question.

ES: Yeah, I wish we’d planned it because we would have enjoyed it a lot more rather than being stressed out by it.

JW: But then again, Max Clifford is my father.

ES: No he isn’t!

The first thing you did was a cover of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ as made famous by The Flamingos. How did you come about that?

ES: I made Jeremy a mixtape with it on there. We decided then to do a cover of it one afternoon.

JW: I’d never heard Elizabeth sing.

ES: I hadn’t really sung before!

It’s odd because another band that are playing here this weekend, North Atlantic Oscillation [Ed - at The Great Escape], covered it too last year. A recent-ish one I really like though is Mercury Rev’s cover, which was a b-side to one of the single releases of ‘Goddess on a Hi-Way’, and also in a John Peel session.

JW: They were doing some Neil Young covers around that period too, acoustic ones.

Yes, ‘Vampire Blues’ is on that single as well. Their ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ has a load of saxophones on it. It’s on their Peel Sessions boxset.

JW: Some of my favourite versions of that are the really cheesy, big-band jazz versions before the Flamingos did it, which was a massive reinvention of the song – they really re-wrote it.

The original is from the early/mid ’30s, isn’t it. Flamingos late Fifties but I guess a lot of people found it through its use in GoodFellas. I know I did…

JW: And American Graffiti.

A lot of people talk about Summer Camp in the same terms as glo-fi bands like Washed Out, Memory Tapes and so on. Do you feel an affinity with that, and them? Or a UK reaction to it?

JW: I can see why people compare us. We are similar, but it’s not like we ever sat down and said “Let’s be a glo-fi band!”

ES: I think it’s natural to have comparisons to them and it’s especially nice, as they are doing great stuff. Likewise most bands in that position will say they’re not set in a scene. We like that stuff but we never really sat down and self-consciously went for that. We can see why the comparison is made but obviously we personally think that what we do is different.

I think it’s interesting as the Wikipedia page for Chillwave…

Both: There’s a Wikipedia page on it!

Yep, and you aren’t on it actually.

JW: Well there you go, that’s the proof. If we aren’t on the Wikipedia entry we can’t be chillwave!

It does mention acts mistakenly labelled by iTunes as chillwave, like The XX, jj and Best Coast.

ES: Really? What I really like is that chillwave was invented by Carles at Hipster Runoff, as a joke. It’s amazing that it’s now a genre, with a Wikipedia page based on how he labelled those bands.

I think that does become a self-perpetuating thing; a lot of these bands self-release stuff on tapes instead of digitally or on CD.

ES: They are into the whole lo-fi aesthetic.

Yes, that seemed to be a happy coincidence at first, but now people are running with it and it’s a key characteristic.

JW: A few years ago it was the likes of Times New Viking doing their releases like that, and a few years ago you had Fennesz’s Endless Summer, which if it came out this year…

It would be included as chillwave, yeah, definitely.

JW: Really though, if somebody wants so label something as being ‘X’, it doesn’t have any effect on the way we think about our music when we’re doing it – but maybe it does when we listen to it.

ES: I think it’s really good to be compared to other bands in such a way as to make you not want to be seen as being as poppy as them say – it gives you an opportunity to move in a different direction.

I think that’s an interesting quirk of what you might want to call ‘The Digital Age’; unlike say Merseybeat, punk, shoegaze or even Britpop, you won’t have met any of these bands. You aren’t working out of one small record label or a club in London, LA or Paris.

ES: That is quite sad though in a way. Now with blogs you can be a Drowned in Sound band or Muso’s Guide or Pitchfork or whatever.

Those are your tribes more than any individual band.

ES: Yeah, that’s how you get classified which in a way is better because we did a remix for  James Yuill, who we only met yesterday -  it was amazing to work with him.

I think it’s really good that there’ve been bands forming from forums in the same way that bands used to from NME adverts.

JW:Yep, Kasier Chiefs found their drummer that way.

It’s good that people can respond to things in that way. It’s like the call-and-response thing between The Beatles and The Beach Boys or punk on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s on a micro-level but it’s more frequent.

JW: Like when ‘No Scrubs’ came out and that other group did ‘No Pigeons’.

While now, a pastiche like that would be on YouTube within days.

ES: The only problem with the era is longevity… everything moves at a much faster pace.

These things have to be place in context, Sporty Thievz’s ‘No Pigeons’ makes no sense if you haven’t heard ‘No Scrubs’

ES: When you are a band and you’ve been playing for years and years at the Hacienda and you finally get there with the internet, there’s a very short time to make an impact.

JW: When I look at it, most of the music I listen to know, it’s music I hear about and buy through the internet.

Oh totally. When I was 16-17, I used to read NME, Mojo, Q, Uncut, Select and Melody Maker, look at the reviews and say “that sounds good, I might buy that.” Now, when I read the ones that are still with us I may have heard a lot of the records already and I’m thinking “I don’t agree with that” or “Yeah, that’s what I thought”.

ES: In a way that’s good and brings everyone to a level – you can tell when someone gives a bad review to say “Ahh! not everyone agrees.”

With the video for ‘Ghost Train’ and the package of the group, the artwork, the MySpace and so on, was there a real aim to have a motif running through in a way that a band like The Smiths did?

ES: I think we’ve just been lucky enough to find a visual image that matches what we do.

JW: The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian are great examples of that.

With their artwork, you could take the name away and tell it was one of their sleeves.

JW: I think for us with the artwork and the blog, which Elizabeth adds to most days, it’s quite easy to look at a photo and say whether it’s a Summer Camp photo or not. The music that we’ve made does seem to have a strong kind of visual sense – or I like to imagine so anyway. It’s not why we’ve done it but I hope that aesthetic is distinct enough for people to know it’s Summer Camp in the same way as you mention with The Smiths.

ES: I haven’t really thought about it like that again, as it’s a happy accident more than anything. I really like having something where the image fits in with the story of the song, and it reflects on each other. To be honest I just really love all those photos and I may have done a blog on them anyway!

JW: I’m sure it’s the same with The Smiths; those were just images that Morrissey liked and connected to something in the music.

In some cases literally, with the lines from Billy Liar and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning being incorporated into the songs and images used on the sleeve.

ES: I think it’s an idea that offsets the music and adds to it. Maybe your own sense of what the songs are about. Not something as literal as “here’s a song that’s about smack and here’s the sleeve of someone doing smack”, though…

Is Summer Camp now the primary focus for both of you or is it an off and on project?

JW: It’s been our primary focus for four months now and I imagine that it’s going to be that for the indefinite future.

ES: We both do other stuff as well, but this is what we are committed to and passionate about. It would be great to do it for as long as possible.

Is this a good way to break up the normal cycle of touring and recording?

JW: Oh yeah, already I mean going back to the chillwave comparisons, the songs that we wrote in our first few months of existence are  nothing like the songs we’ve written since then. They are more all over the place vocally; if you had heard the three most recent songs we have recorded, I don’t think anyone would say we’re a chillwave band.

ES: Then again, to us they sound so different but to anyone else, who knows?

Are you finding your way around in terms of getting the sounds you make in the studio live? Is it a difficult thing, the mix between playing, singing, loops and samples?

ES: It’s tricky. We don’t want to have too much that isn’t live but we have some amazing people that help us out – we are really lucky to have them. It has been difficult though, and each time we play we are getting better and better.

JW: The most important thing is choosing which songs to play, as we’ve got nearly thirty to choose from now.

So has it affected your writing over the past few months, knowing you’ve got to perform the songs live?

ES: A little. We have been having conversations in the middle of writing about how hard it might be to recreate. But we don’t let it put us off.

When you take the famous example of The Beatles just before they stopped touring, there are shows from Japan in 1966 where between the screams and the small PA systems, they can’t get quite get across songs like ‘Nowhere Man’. Aside from all of the other issues they had with touring, they reached a point where they must’ve just thought themselves, “fuck it”.

JW: I dunno. I’ve seen some versions of ‘Nowhere Man’ which are still awesome. We do really enjoying playing live.

ES: It’s just a bit of a challenge that needs to be overcome every now and again.

I’m sure The Beatles would have liked some loops or a laptop to help them out, not that either are some kind of panacea.

JW: I do think that some people see a laptop, and think everything is coming from it. For us, it’s usually only one keyboard sound coming from the laptop; we don’t have any backing track, and all the vocal samples are being triggered by Elizabeth.

ES: We want it to be real; we don’t want it to be seen as fake.

JW: I saw a band who had an orchestra on a laptop. Can you imagine!

ES: Urrggh!

JW: A lot of people probably aren’t that bothered anyway, if it makes the show better, whatever. For us, we just want to be excited about our show.

ES: For us, it’s because we are really anal about controlling all the music coming from the stage.

JW: There are ways of including it that are really good. I’ve done gigs like that before and I don’t think it’s as much fun for the musicians. We want it to be a good show, and we want to be able to get into it.

ES: Plus it kind of restricts you. I’ve only been singing for a little while so it’s good to know that if something went wrong, the band would still be there behind me.

How have you found singing live in general?

ES: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Before we started doing it I said to the band, “I don’t know what I’m going to do! What if I go mad?” It was really odd not knowing what was going to happen, and I was really stressed out. Then as soon as I did the first gig, it was just fine. I wouldn’t say by any stretch I’m a seasoned pro, though. I still have a long way to go as a performer but when you get up there and you start, the adrenaline flows – it keeps you going. Hopefully with more shows we’ll get better and better and better.

After Jeremy mentioned Fennesz, my brain started thinking… even though the vocal samples are twenty years further down the line and not from nature documentaries, your earlier stuff really reminds me of Boards of Canada. And they’re another group who retained an air of mystery for years, until it was revealed that they were brothers. I would almost go as far as describing them as they are prog-chillwave™ (no Google hits for this so I’m claiming it). Thoughts?

ES: I don’t think either of us have ever actually listened to much Boards of Canada, so that wasn’t an influence or reference point for us.  ’90s hip hop like Wu-Tang, Organized Konfusion and Pharcyde were where I first experienced bands using sampling, so I’d state bands like that as more of an influence.

JW: Yeah, I’ve never really listened to much Boards of Canada I’m afraid, but I do see where you’re coming from. I would point to Eno/Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts as a pretty essential bit of sample tomfoolery.

Also back to our conversation about the nature of reviews and the changing shit that the internet has had on closing that three-month gap between a record going to reviewers and the public. A 15-year-old can download every Rolling Stones album in a little over an hour, and become an ‘expert’ in no time at all.

Do you think that reviewers no longer act as gatekeepers? Do you think that this has made the music press more insular not less, due to a conformation bias between internet music fans, bloggers and the publications? The more democratic nature of the internet has seen a centalisation of taste, with people listening to more music, but end-of-year lists still seem to coalesce around the same 100 or so albums each year. I often find that come December, the more interesting lists come from places like Scandinavia or Poland.

JW: I don’t think there’s such a thing about being an expert when it comes to music. That same teenager could just read up about the band on Wikipedia and be able to win a pub quiz on the Stones without ever having heard a note of their music. I think the idea of a reviewer being a “gatekeeper” to music is a bit unfair on listeners, too. Everyone has the right to get into anything – there’s no rule saying “you can’t listen to our band unless you understand our influences”. That would be very weird. So in that respect I think the internet opening up new avenues of discovering music is a good thing. I think.

ES: I love the idea of music journalists being gatekeepers.  I think it did used to be that one of the main roles of the reviewer was to explain how the music sounded, since they’d heard it and the reader hadn’t.  And now, the readers probably have heard it, and already made up their minds.  I quite like the new way, and I think the growth of small blogs are fantastic.  It means big music publications have to up their game and change how they discuss music, which is great.  And it can also mean there’s sometimes a fixation on finding new bands, as everyone wants to be the first to write about something.  That means older and more established bands sometimes get pushed to one side when they release their second or third album, because everyone’s excited about some new act.  But, as you pointed out yourself, it also means people are digging around to find stuff where they wouldn’t normally look, rather than just taking those lists you mentioned as the be all and end all.

How has it been putting out records with Moshi Moshi, and touring with some of their roster like The Drums and Slow Club? There doesn’t seem to be a definitive Moshi Moshi sound even after four years of the singles club. How did you come about joining their gang?

ES:  Moshi Moshi are amazing.  As a band who never expected to be a band, our priority has always been to work with people who we trust and who value the same things we do.  We were both fans of the label already, and felt really lucky to be invited into their gang.  And working with them, we’ve found that they’re lovely, wise, and hilarious people who tell it like it is.  Touring with Slow Club was brilliant.  We were all mates already, so it was great to tour with them and see how they do it.  Their fanbase is insanely dedicated, and you can totally see why – they’re a band who’ve grown gradually in an old-school way, they’ve done it ‘right’ (whatever that means).  It was amazing to see them at Koko, having a huge crowd singing along.  It was the culmination of all the hard-work and talent those two have put in.  Plus their bassist kicked ass [Ed - that was Jeremy].

Thank you, Summer Camp!