Beach House - Teen Dream
For the intrigued/lazy amongst you we’ve decided to condense a month’s worth of blabber into an easy to digest Spotify playlist. Included are tracks from reviewed albums by Laura Viers, Beach House and Delphic as well as some January singles (OK and some late December ones) from These New Puritans, Late of The Pier, Plan B, I Was A King and The Strange Boys. … Continue Reading
Arctic Monkeys
I’m not really too bothered about who he’s fucking, or where he lives, or even what he gets up to outside music. He can become an actor if he wants, start painting….. whatever. I’m concerned about Alex Turner, ‘the indie icon’, about this ‘genius’ tag that has prematurely been bestowed upon his slender frame. … Continue Reading
Allow a few of our writers to give you their albums of the decade...
Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows
Idlewild’s 100 Broken Windows – by Paul Brown
As tricky a question as it is, I’d say the album which has meant the most to me this decade is 100 Broken Windows by Idlewild. The album was one of my first forays away from the Oasis, Travis, Stereophonics triumvirate which clogged the early-noughties hit parade, and opened up a gateway away from chart indie.
My love for this record isn’t just fuelled by nostalgia though. Even nine years later, no other British Indie band has matched it for energy, impact and sheer listenability.
It’s easy to understand why this is regarded by so many as a seminal album. . Roddy’s lyrics might straddle the line between intelligence and nonsense, (“…and Gertrude Stein said that’s enough!”) but that doesn’t matter at all, because 100 Broken Windows is powered along by incendiary (and bloody catchy) guitar riffs, and resonates with a glorious and barely contained rage. … Continue Reading
Owen Pallett
Between our ranks, we’ve been to a hell of a lot of gigs this year. So tidily and infinitely, here are a few looks back on the highlights of 2009 in gig form. … Continue Reading
While we’ve given you plenty of editorial on our albums of the year (50-41, 40-31,30-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-7. 6-4 3-1), we’re keeping it simple with this list of what releases our gaggle of writers collectively voted their singles of 2009. How did we reach this list, I hear you cry? May I hand over to our trusty friend, Excel Guru, who was last seen pre-ambling our top 50 albums end-of-year thingamejig:
“Everyone sent in a top 10 list and the 50 singles with the most nominations were collected; tie-breaks were decided by how high up those lists the songs were. Then everyone chose 10 ordered singles from the list of 50 and they were ranked using the same criteria as the album poll.”
Laura Groves
As a big fan of Blue Roses’s wonderful debut album and having been lucky enough to catch her a couple of times live before at The Great Escape and Glastonbury, Muso’s Guide was pleased to have the opportunity to chat to Blue Roses’ Laura Groves before her gig at The Captain’s Rest in Glasgow, earlier this month. Having to jettison an interview indoors thanks to the elderly gentleman, wearing his medals and a large poppy (it was Remembrance Sunday) who insisted on querying the war records of drinker’s grandfathers (no, really!) and not satisfied with was asking who had their medals. Laura chatted to us about her year, approach to song-writing and upcoming plans as well as Wild Beasts, gender roles in music and Twitter out in the wind and cold. Considering Laura had to cancel one gig before this night due to a sore throat, Muso’s Guide was very relieved that the tour was completed without anymore illness.
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
As a companion piece to our 50-1 countdown that hit the internet gradually over the past couple of weeks (check the top three and work backwards), I’ve decided to do this piece on my own personal top 20. First person writing, the chance to eschew writing as voice of a consensus – my very own top albums of 2009 as some sort of deeper representation of what this here site’s all about.
The order is very loose, and I guess based on factors such as how and how much I enjoyed them. I could probably put these albums in a tombola, get them out re-ordered and still call it a fair representation of my year. That said, the top five would have to be the top five, and in that order. They are five incredible albums that have added a next-level fever to this year. … Continue Reading
Hello, young chaps. We’ve been moving towards this moment for the past two weeks and the time is now here to tell you lucky folks which albums comprised our writers’ collective top three of 2009. The top 50 has been chock-full of some excellent choices, a sizeable amount of which could happily’ve taken these top three spots. But when it came down to it, it was these three that had the most votes from the writers. So here they are!
3) Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion by Russell Warfield
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective have been so diverse over the last ten years that they haven’t so much created a back catalogue of albums as they have a series of alternate debut records. The band whimsically flit from ear piercing noise drone to stripped down acoustic sounds in a manner which allows them to simultaneously progress and start afresh with each passing album.
Reinvention of their musical identity is something Animal Collective have once again achieved with Merriweather Post Pavilion, turning their hand this time to electronic-based material, but never have they accompanied it with such mainstream crossover appeal. Throughout this album in particular, the band triumphantly marries Panda Bear’s penchant for loops and samples with the tightly focused song structures of Avey Tare.
When you add to this the most glorious production the band has ever cultivated; lyrics which have taken a sudden turn for the literal and relateable and, perhaps most crucially, catchy-as-hell melodies, you have a recipe for something which, in an alternate reality, would probably break the UK top 30 album charts – oh, hang on. It did.
2) The XX’s XX by Jamie Smith
The XX - XX
In a year that will mostly be remembered for the rise of Brit-rap and electro-pop, the xx stood out like a sore thumb with their gentle ambience and careful melodies.
If the Big Pink laid the foundations for the resurgence in subtle British alternative music with their electric-rock debut earlier in the year, the xx built on them in stunning fashion with an eponymous record so accomplished and sure of itself you wouldn’t believe it was their first. The xx were the most precious delicacy of 2009 in more ways than one. Deliciously simple yet spellbindingly immersive, they proved that sometimes blogosphere hype is well deserved.
The boy/girl vocals of Oliver Sim and Romy Madley-Croft offered a fresh take on sharing lyrical duties with their sexy, sumptuous simpering to each other, while multi-instrumentalist and this writer’s namesake Jamie Smith put together the gorgeous backing tracks for the pair’s aural lovemaking.
1) Wild Beasts’ Two Dancers by Natalie Shaw
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
From the opening chimes of ‘The Fun Powder Plot’, the stage was set for a boldly original album of true originality, sonic warmth and labyrinthine, admittedly thorny subject matter. The brazenness and volatility of the mating game, the quest to explore new senses through expansive, vivid passages of foreplay – it tempered the brashness by creating characters to despise and be ashamed of yet still, somehow, embrace.
With every listen, something surprising snuck out from behind the elegance; breathless, uncluttered production that gave the songs space for their extravagant eloquence and scope to slowly seep out. From the moment it was released in early August, Two Dancers capitalised on the unique charm of first album Limbo, Panto, piling on top of it crystal-clear tales of a dark underground via lecherous slapstick, tribal-style desperation and wild passion.
The “elegant and ugly” reference on ‘Hooting and Howling’ is a perfect pre-cursor to an album structured around such such striking sounds. And Hayden Thorpe’s outrageous falsetto isn’t used as a comic device, more as a foil for the harrowing feeling of threat the songs portray; not to say Wild Beasts haven’t seen the lighter side of their sound. Take the background “ooh”-ing on ‘Two Dancers (ii)’ against Tom Fleming’s rich baritone and you’re left with a quieter, ruminating band than on much of that first album. And the ‘Through The Iron Gate’ ends Two Dancers in a dark room, with guitar sounds mimicking reverberating thoughts.
Wild Beasts immortalised bleak tales of a social class usually side-stepped by the eloquent, with each note ringing out, longing remorsefully in the uncomfortably depravation set up by Chris Talbot’s core-of-steel drumming. The “guts fried up” imagery on ‘Underbelly’ and the oft-quoted “this is a booty call; my boot up your arse hole/This is a Freudian slip; my slipper in your bits” one-two on the album-opener are simply crane-arm picks from an anthology of breathtaking lyrics that scale the heights in their own right.
Two Dancers is a genuinely one-off piece, a truly unique album and it sits proudly on top of 2009’s tree of storming albums as less of an album, more of a world. … Continue Reading
“We’re here, we here!” That’s what these three magnificent albums screamed at us from the moment they were released this year, and it’s only too pleasing to see that our writers in their masses agreed with us. Here’re some tributes… … Continue Reading
We’re into the top ten! Is your favourite here? Are you shocked it’s not been placed higher? Are you outraged by some of our writers’ choices? Tell us. Don’t be a closet whiner.
10) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! by Rob Hastings
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
It’s been a bumper year for fans of Karen O. Not only can they chirp about her band’s third album being yet another humdinger, but they can also indulge in a debate as to whether her freak-folk soundtrack to Where The Wild Things Are is even better still. Those who plump for It’s Blitz!, however, have plenty of justification. While armies of pretenders continue to squeeze the life out the synth revival, this is an album showing how Korgs really should be used to complement Fenders.
From the moment ‘Zero’ first explodes into full-blown stomping, strobe-lit form, it’s clear Nick Zinner isn’t just lazily following a trend; as the lyric in ‘Heads Will Roll’ goes, the next nine tracks are truly “dripping in alchemy”.
By melding the neon elements of their new sound with their garage origins, YYYs have created an LP that is by turns breathlessly euphoric, profoundly delicate and downright barbaric. … Continue Reading
Norway's electro pop quintet CASIOKIDS play Camden’s Barfly on February 25, and we're giving away a pair of tickets.
After the release of a few stellar singles in 2009, 2010 is looking exciting for this lot. Their bouncy percussive basement music, eerie melody and distorted bass are the product of inspiration from such diverse sources as Paul Simon's 'Graceland', Ivor Cutler, King Tubby, Bob Hund, Cornelius And Fela Kuti.
To win tickets, just answer the following question:
We are listening
Join the conversation...