Top 10 Albums of 2011

Geographically speaking, I don’t think I could be further from Scotland and still be in the UK.  You’d never guess that from reading this blog however, as Scottish acts seem to be dominating my tastes for the last few years.  2011 has been no exception, and four albums on this list have their roots firmly planted north of the borders.  As well as being a year for Scots, 2011 appears to be the year of the Return To Form.  In itself this is a good thing, as recent years have seen more disappointing highly-hyped albums than good ones, but it means there’s a higher than normal percentage of ‘old pros’ in this year’s list: amazingly, only one album on this list is a debut.

At this point an honourable mention ought to go Chris Thile and Michael Daves for their album Sleep With One Eye Open.  The Hype Machine’s widget for compiling their annual Zietgeist list didn’t recognize the Jonnie Common record, so albums 9 and 10 got bumped up a place, meaning Thile and Daves were promoted to the number ten spot on my Hype Machine list, but didn’t make the top ten proper.

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. Making Mirrors by Gotye. I umm-ed and ah-ed about whether this one would make the cut or not, as it isn’t a perfect record by any standards, and at times it strays far from what I would normally consider to be tasteful.  For all it’s occasional flaws however, when it’s good it’s very, very good.  His duet with Kimbra on Somebody That I Used To Know is a particular highlight, and the album is worth owning purely on the strength of that track alone.

9. Mine Is Yours by Cold War Kids. This one is simply fantastic right from the very first seconds.  Robbers and Coward, from back in 2006 (and particularly the track We Used To Vacation), earned Cold War Kids a fairly unassailable position of prestige in casa EbM, but 2008’s Loyalty to Loyalty didn’t quite live up to expectation.  As a result, the return to form displayed in Mine Is Yours is all the more satisfying.

8. Master of None by Jonnie Common.  Despite my taste for singer-songwriter-style songwriting with esoteric electronic noises, it seems to be a micro-genre that is very infrequently mastered.  Many try and fail to marry the two almost-mutually-exclusive textures, so when it’s pulled off successfully I’m over the moon, and rarely will you hear it achieved with such aplomb and deftness of touch that’s displayed on Master of None.
7. The People’s Key by Bright Eyes. Even more than Cold War Kids, the team behind Bright Eyes – Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis et al – have been slipping off their game of late.  As much as their early efforts number among my favourite albums of all time, Cassadaga just doesn’t sit well with me.  By all accounts The People’s Key will be the last album to bear the ‘Bright Eyes’ label, and I’m sincerely relieved that they managed to get all cylinders firing for their swan song.

6. Virtue by Emmy the Great.  The trouble with Emmy’s debut album, First Love, was that all the best songs had been floating around for ages before the album was conceived.  What drew me to the early demos was the almost brutal juxtaposition of Emmy’s voice and her lyrical content, thrown into sharp relief by the decidedly amateurish nature of the recordings.  The pristine album cuts, shorn of all their grit and viciousness, left the album itself sounding weak by comparison.  With Virtue  – her second full-length – the production is even slicker, but this time it’s a blessing and not a curse.

5. Codes and Keys by Death Cab For Cutie. The last of the returns-to-form in this list, and by now the story’s a familiar one: astounding early albums, a disappointing last record, and finally the triumph that we’ve been waiting for.  Codes and Keys marks a return to the more studio-based recording approach that made the band’s best albums such complete joys to listen to and, surprise, surprise, it’s led to yet another fantastic album.

4. Diamond Mine by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins.  The Mercury Prize nominations are always interesting from an academic viewpoint, but rarely – if ever – do they include an album that I’d include if I was compiling the list.  Imagine my surprise, then, upon discovering that this year’s shortlist that included this KC gem.  It’s not Kenny’s best record by a long way, but it’s testament to the strength of his other work that this sub-par effort nevertheless warrants a fourth place on this list.

3. Boots Met My Face by Admiral Fallow. I only discovered this album recently, having grown to love the track Squealing Pigs over a period of a few months, and it’s fast moved up the ranks of this year’s best albums.  While technically this record had its first release last year, it was re-released back in March, so I’m claiming it as a 2011 record (if only because I’m ashamed to have missed it the first time around).

2. New Blood by Peter Gabriel. Last year’s Scratch My Back project saw Gabriel record orchestral covers of a host of popular songs, and while on paper that sounds like a heinous cringe-fest not fit for human consumption, it was actually rather impressive (although a few of the covers were as awful as the premise suggested, far more were haunting, effecting, moving and surprisingly powerful renditions).  This year he gave the same treatment to his own back-catalogue and had even greater success.  An assured and overwhelmingly impressive album, New Blood is a truly remarkable feat, especially coming from someone that I’d written off as having his best days long behind him.

1. Factorycraft by FOUND. For a long time now I’ve liked the idea of FOUND much more than I’ve liked their actual music.  Heralded by reviewers far more familiar with the band than I as their most accessible record to date, they’re not wrong as I finally find myself loving FOUND’s music.  Maybe my taste is more predictable and mainstream than I’d like to admit, but the only thing that really matters is that this is a simply super record. 

 

Top 10 Songs of 2008

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 2008’s been a pretty super year for music.  And most of it has come from new, emerging talent, too. Seven of the records on my Top 10 Albums of 2008 were debuts.  And many of the best songs were by acts that haven’t gotten around to making a full LP yet, and therefore couldn’t qualify for last week’s album list.

There were also a few fantastic songs that appeared on otherwise mediocre records (there’s quite a few of these), or records that I haven’t heard in full or just haven’t been made aware of yet, and I think they deserve to be recognised as the works of greatness that they are.  I’ve also taken the executive decision to exclude songs that appear on any of my top 10 albums, on the basis that they’ve already had their just deserts.

10. After Hours by We Are Scientists.  My love of WAS’s first album, With Love and Squalor, seems to be a source of constant and somewhat inexplicable derision amongst my peers.  It might be because their latest effort, Brain Thrust Mastery, is such a shallow and vapid beast.  Nearly all the songs follow the same theme as this, the lead single, and it’s not enough of a theme to qualify as a concept album either… I really like this song though, and it’s earned it’s place on this list mainly as a result of its high playcount in my iTunes.

9. 5 Years Time by Noah and the Whale. Not the best album I’ve heard lately by a long while, Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down is nice on its first listen, but is ultimately proves to be too flimsy to stand up to repeat listening.  I guess the immediacy of the songs accounts for their meteoric rise to fame at the start of the summer.  Despite the fact that it’s now become ubiquitous and omnipresent thanks to the all the aggressive radio playlisting it received, 5 Years Time has still clung onto at least some of its original charm.

8. I Will Possess Your Heart by Death Cab for Cutie.  I’m an absolutely massive Death Cab fan and I was so, so, so excited about the release of the Narrow Stairs album back in May.  Hearing this song in advance of the records release whipped my excitement to even greater heights.  Sadly the rest of the album was a little disappointing.  Good, but not as good as it should have been.  I’m hoping it will grow on me over time, as Plans did, but this track still sounds lovely.

7. Trip To Bucharest / The Flight Of The Folk Mutants Parts 1&2 by Bellowhead.  Bellowhead’s latest album, Matachin, was quite a disappointment; I’d previously only heard them in-the-flesh, and something’s definitely lost in the retelling.  This song is the closest they came to capturing their raucous, energetic live performance.

6. Hiphopopotamus vs the Rhymenocerous by Flight of the Conchords.  I was loathe to include what is ostensibly a comedy album in last weeks list, so I’ve put FotC in here because they really are superb.  Not quite as musically sophisticated as Angles (the Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip album that did make the album top 10 despite being almost a comedy record) and the TV show itself wasn’t all that great, but their irreverent parodies were about the funniest things I heard all year.

5. We Almost Had a Baby by Emmy the Great.  I’ve been waiting to be properly impressed by Emmy for a while now.  She’s shown an awful lot of promise and potential in the past, and with this song (in my eyes at least) she’s finally come up trumps.  The Billy-Bragg-esque guitar line gets things off to a good start, and the cheery, innocent swing juxtaposes sharply with the cutting lyrics.

4. I Love You by Esser.  This cheeky lad’s a right character, and no mistake.  All his songs are full of sly, subtle wit and this is his best so far.  Add a succession of quirky videos into the mix, and we’ve got something that’s sure to be going places.

3. Ides (live on WtOTVS) by frYars [sic].  I’ve heard the recorded version of this song and I must say I didn’t like it much at all.  However, this version – despite the shoddy quality of the recording and the mistake he makes towards the end – is infinitely better.  Full of charm, wit and just enough violence to keep it exciting.

2. Poke by Frightened Rabbit.  By rights the album from which this song comes (The Midnight Organ Fight) should be on my Top Albums post, but alas, I only discovered it this week.  To atone for my sins I’m including Poke on this list.  It is certainly the stand-out track from the record, and has the best lyrics I’ve heard in absolutely ages.  As dirty and aggressive as The National at their best, but with far better scansion.

1. If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It (Toad Sessions) by Broken Records.  Everything I’ve heard from Broken Records this year has thoroughly impressed me, but none of it has quite reached the heights of this, my first exposure to them.  I’m a big fan of their full-band sound, but this stripped-down three-piece acoustic performance is as close to perfect as it gets.  Not only are all the individual parts extremely well crafted, but the whole ensemble gels together perfectly.

 

For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee… The 5 Angriest Songs Ever

Everyone seems to be compiling lists lately, from the Guardian to Song, by Toad, so I figured I’d have a go at it.  Being as its now Wednesday (only just…) I guess we’ll make this a regular feature: a Top Five once a week.  This might even convince some of you lurkers out there to get stuck in and leave a comment, as I’m sure everyone will have their own views on what should/shouldn’t make the lists…

So, this week its gonna be songs about hate! More specifically, songs that are so saturated with vitriol and outright hostility that you can’t help but wince when you hear them.

Before we get stuck into the list proper, there are a couple of songs that made the longlist, but missed out on the final top five that deserve an honourable mention: Killing in the Name nearly made it, but was just far too obvious – any band with Rage in their name can’t be taking their anger seriously.  Styrofoam Plates, by Death Cab For Cutie came close too (“a b*st*rd in life; thus a b*st*rd in death”); Micah P. Hinson’s Patience just missed the cut, as it only really comes into its own anger-wise when he plays it live (apparently, I myself have never seen it in-the-flesh); and Ani DiFranco’s Lost Woman Song (the only girl to make the top 10; are women less pathologically angry than men?) a challenging rant about abortion – more blunt than Ben Folds’ Brick, but certainly less impartial…

But enough of the alsorans, and on with the main event!

5: Cheers Darlin’ by Damien Rice. Boy meets girl, girl leads boy on, girl gets picked up by fiance, boy goes home and vents his spleen onto DAT tape… what a classic story.  The one song that definitely separates Rice from the rest of the acoustic, coffee-table, Jack-Johnson-lite drivel that seems to be so popular at open-mic nights.

4: I’ve Been Eating (for you) by Bright Eyes.  Ooh, poor Conor’s been taken for a ride by a floozy who was porking all his friends as well.  He sure taught her a lesson with this bilious paean to the injustices of teenage lust.

3: Has Been by William Shatner.  My word, Bill must’ve been waiting for years to write this song.  Selfdeprecating, venomous and painfully honest.  Get’s the spurious distinction of being the only song on this list that’s not about girls…

2: Skinny Love by Bon Iver.  A current hit to keep this list contemporary.  Our hero gets dumped, shuns society and lives in a cabin in the woods for months, living off moose, and makes a sublime album of heartbreak and isolation, of which this is the stand out track.

1: When Did You Stop Loving Me When Did I Stop Loving You by Marvin Gaye.  The title says it all; Marv’ splits acrimoniously from Mrs. Gaye (a.k.a. Anna Gordy), and thanks to his fleet of cars, mansion, and coke habit he can’t pay alimony for his kid.  So, the divorce judge orders that all the proceeds from his next album should go to his Ex. missus. The result? Here, My Dear, the bitterest record ever.  It flopped when it was released, as per Marv’s plan, but it subsequently went on to become one of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Take that, ya b*tch!