Top 10 Albums of 2010

With Christmas now behind us for another year we can all pick our selves up, shake of the excess wrapping paper and chocolate and resume our normal routines.  Being just days away from the new year it’ll soon be time to look towards the future, but for now it’s time for a nostalgic look back at the year past; it’s list time, folks! While this might be the correct moment to write a retrospective look at the whole decade*, I think I’ll limit myself to the more manageable task of listing my favourite 10 albums that 2010 had to offer.

It’s been an interesting year for music, but strangely it’s been one that has thrown up fewer “new” musical passions than previous years.  Looking back at my Top 10 from 2008, 7 of those albums were debut LPs by new artists, and while I didn’t publish my “best of 2009” the ratio of new acts to established ones was much the same.  This year, however, only 4 of the albums are debuts.  It seems to have been a year for great albums by well loved bands, but this in itself took me a little by surprise as there has been a whole slew of albums by bands I already loved that didn’t live up to expectations at all.  There was a certain element of schadenfreude in seeing the mediocre efforts by darlings of the HypeMachine  (Vampire Weekend and MGMT) sink without trace, but Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, Jim Moray, Band of Horses, Johnny Flynn and We Are Scientists should all have been capable of much better.  This rather dismal showing from such highly anticipated records has had the effect of clearing the way for less obvious successes, and has made for a much more varied list than previous years have thrown up.

So without further ado, here is the moment you’ve all been waiting for since January; the official Eaten by Monsters blog Top Ten of 2010:

10. Lights by Ellie Goulding. By including this record I’m aware that I’m in danger of undermining any credibility I may have, particularly at this early stage in proceedings.  Hopefully you’ll have the fortitude and strength of character to continue reading the next 9 entries, where you’ll learn that I’m not actually the manipulated pop hound that this entry would suggest.  This one is most definitely a “guilty pleasure”, to co-opt an expression from the tabloids.  Goulding topped the BBC’s sound of 2010 list back in January, and as a result I gave the record a listen.  Although I despise everything it stands for, abhor all the production tricks and pour scorn on the poor quality of the songwriting I just can’t stop listening to it! Like a pernicious virus it has managed to infect most of the past twelve months of my listening, so in the interests of full disclosure I can’t help but include it here, albeit with plenty of caveats.

9. Total Life Forever by Foals. I quite liked Foals’ last record, but didn’t really think it was anything all that special.  It was a little bit too “trendy”, and it goes without saying that any band that can be described as “darlings of the NME” probably aren’t going to be my cup of tea at all.  And with their latest effort, Total Life Forever, they’re still just as achingly hip, but this time it’s tempered with an earnestness that just about overrides the hipster aspect.  No band that cares this much can ever be truly cool, so now I feel I can enjoy their music with impunity.

8. All Creatures Will Make Merry by Meursault. Meursault’s 2009 EP, Nothing Broke, seemed to be the moment when vast swathes of the public realised that the band were actually rather good, but strangely enough it didn’t have that effect on me.  While the new-found acoustic sensibilities were well meaning and competently executed, I found myself missing the electronic elements that made their debut LP so bewitching.  Thankfully All Creatures Will Make Merry has fused the best bits of both of their “sounds” to great effect, and heralds a stunning return to form.

7. Odd Blood by Yeasayer. This LP is alone on this list for being the only record that I don’t feel works properly as an album.  All the other entries here are records that have mastered the exquisite pushing and pulling of tension and the sense of an overarching vision that are essential when crafting a bona-fide album.  So why has it made this list? Quite frankly, solely on the strength of the individual songs themselves.  Much like Ellie Goulding’s Lights, Odd Blood has wheedled its way into my affections by simply having great songs.  And as a festive bonus the band are giving away a rather impressive live album (in exchange for nothing more than an e-mail address) over at their website.

6. Broadcast 2000 by Broadcast 2000.  This LP is an example of that rare and mythical beast, an album that is clearly great from the first few seconds of the first listen.  Much as I expected at the time, repeat listens have revealed it to be slightly less than the instant classic that first impressions suggested, but it is nonetheless still a very good record indeed.  Home-recorded albums often have an intangible, but instantly recognisable sheen to them that identifies them as the work of just one person, and while that is certainly in evidence here, the record still manages to rise above the morass of other self-produced efforts.

5. Becoming a Jackal by Villagers. I came rather late to the Villagers’ party, and being as I like to pride myself on being ahead of the curve, my ego wouldn’t let me like this record for a good long while; if all these people started to pay attention before I did, then it’s clearly not going to be any good, I told myself.  Thankfully I’ve now come to my senses and accepted the fact that this record is so popular purely because it is, indeed, excellent. You can read my full review of this album here.

4. High Violet by The National.  As it was the full-length followup to 2007’s Boxer, the expectations were high for The National’s fifth studio album.  In many ways it’s conformed to this years trend in that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but being as my expectations were so high it’s no great failure on their part.  Despite not being the life changing opus I was hoping for, High Violet is an exceptionally consistent album.  There are no real stand-out tracks, but that’s only because the whole record is of a uniformly high standard.  You can read my full review of this album here.

3. Perch Patchwork by Maps & Atlases. This is the record that Vampire Weekend should have made.  Instead, the baton of rhythmic exuberance has been passed to this four-piece from Chicago, who are more than up to the challenge.  I had my misgivings on the first few listens owing to the overly cheerful atmosphere, but it turns out that this album does have the punching power to hold its own amongst the more heavyweight releases of the year.  “In vogue” and yet never derivative, Perch Patchwork makes for a worthy number 3.  You can read my full review of this album here.

2. The Winter of Mixed Drinks by Frightened Rabbit. If anything, my expectations for this release were even higher than for High Violet.  Very rarely does an album capture my attention as thoroughly as Frighten Rabbit’s last studio album, The Midnight Organ Fight, did.  With a string of fantastic singles serving only to heighten my sense of anticipation, The Winter of Mixed Drinks may not have actually exceeded the standard set by their last record, but it has at least lived up to it, while at the same time moving the band’s sound forwards.  One of the highlights of this Christmas was getting the vinyl box set of all their recent singles.  You can read my full review of this album here.

1. Bang Goes the Knighthood by The Divine Comedy. I’ve always been a firm fan of The Divine Comedy, but it’s always been off the back of individual songs; a large percentage of my all-time-favourite-songs lie within Neil Hannon’s back catalogue, but I’ve never been enamoured of an entire album of his stuff.  So it was quite a shock when I discovered, almost by accident, that he’d released a new album, and that furthermore it was exceedingly excellent from start to finish.   You can read my full review of this album here.

*remember, there wasn’t a year zero, so the new decade starts on the 1st of January 2011…

 

Broadcast 2000: Broadcast 2000

I often wax lyrical about how most of the albums that still stand up as favourites years down the line weren’t the ones that really impressed on their first spin on the hi-fi.  Most albums that impress straight away do so because they are, in a nut shell, shallow; that is to say, you hear everything that there is to hear instantly, and every repeat listen only serves to diminish the record’s appeal.  The albums that stand the test of time are more often than not the ones in which the currents run deeper; repeat listens are required to fully expose the subtlety of the work, and each further listen reveals new, intriguing facets and enhances the experience of the listener.  I’m not one to blow my own trumpet (much, at least, and this isn’t all that much of an achievement anyway…), but it’s fair to say that I listen to a lot of music – and crucially a large percentage of the music I listen to is new music –  so I think I am fully qualified to make the following statement:

Albums that blow you away on their first listen and still sound amazing hundreds of listens down the line are exceedingly rare occurrences.

I listen to at the very least five or six new albums every week, and in the last three or for years I can only think of one record that blew me away when I first heard it and still sounds as fresh and impressive today*.  I’m certainly not saying that these albums are any better than the ones that you grow to love (to be honest, about 70% of my all-time-favourite albums weren’t ones that impressed first time around – I think the act of growing to love a record over time leads to a stronger relationship with said album) but the very fact of their rarity makes them something special, something to be treasured.

Now what, I hear you gasping with bated breath, does this lengthly preamble have to do with Broadcast 2000‘s first full-length record, Broadcast 2000?  Well, quite frankly this album knocked me for six.  By the middle of the opening track I was entranced, and sat still and utterly captivated until the record’s closing moments.  For the reasons I mentioned above I delayed reviewing it for about a week; would this be just another shallow piece of work that says all it has to say on the first listen?  After a week of constant listening I can say that shallow it is not.  Whether or not I’m still equally enamored of Broadcast 2000 a year down the line only time can tell, but I’m pretty confident that this album’s going to be a favourite for a good long while.

As is always the case, accompanying this record through my letterbox was a sheet full of the inevitable PR gumph and hyperbole, but in this case I’m inclined to believe it.  It seems that Joe Steer, the wunderkind behind Broadcast 2000, has been doing rather well for himself; his 2008 debut EP Building Blocks must have ended up in the right ears, as this LP was produced by Eliot James (he co-produced the third Kaiser Chiefs album with Mark Ronson, and his credit can be found on tracks by Bloc Party and Kate Nash) and features violin by Tom Hobden from Noah and the Whale (who’s album was produced by non other than, you guessed it, Eliot James).  In fact, the string arrangements on this record are one of the things that really stand out as being above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty excellent; subtle, yet choppy and angular enough to be really interesting even though they are buried amongst so many other elements.  I’m not often one to make “it-sounds-like-the-music-of-x-fused-with-the-music-of-y” style comparisons, but the glockenspiel and esoteric percussion on this album put me in mind of nu-folk scenster Adem‘s 2006 LP Love and Other Planets, but while the songs on Love… were sprawling, introspective pieces, the songs on Broadcast 2000 are actually rather energetic and approachable.

Long Story Short: Will Broadcast 2000 live up to my expectations and be the elusive prize of all music obsessives – an album that gives an astoundingly great first impression and continues to deliver years down the line?  We’ll have to wait and see, but in this instance the chances are far higher than normal.  This is an absolute blinder of an album and I strongly urge all of you to grab yourselves a copy when it’s released.  The LP Broadcast 2000 will arrive on the 22nd of February, courtesy of Groenland Records.

Broadcast 2000 – Rouse Your Bones

Broadcast 2000 – Get Up and Go**

Addendum: at the request of the band these tracks are stream-only, but they have – in an excellent and blog-savvy move – provided a couple of acoustic tracks for download:

Broadcast 2000 – Pep Talk (acoustic)

Broadcast 2000 – Everybody & Me (acoustic)

*Frightened Rabbit’s Midnight Organ Fight, from 2008, if you’re interested.  Not necessarily the best album of the last few years, but the only example of this rare beast, the instant and long-term favourite, that I can think of…

**Yes, it is that song from the e.on advert.