Gig of the Year (Take 2) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Newcastle O2 Academy - 3/12/09

After last Thursday, I had little choice but to amend my choice for the Muso's Guide Gig of the Year piece. Good job it hasn't been run yet!

It isn’t just a trick of my memory that the best gig I’ve been to this year also happens to be my most recent. It’s just that Yeah Yeah Yeahs were THAT good at Newcastle Academy on December 3rd. It’s not easy whipping the indie-kids into a frenzy in a venue of that size (I’ve seen plenty of bands fail) but from start to finish the band were a whirling buzz of energy, and the crowd had no choice but to comply. The new songs were as visceral as the old ones, and showed that the band can now put together a pretty meaty set after three albums. There was a real triumphant feel to the show which rounded off a fantastic year for the band. It wasn’t just the best gig I’ve seen this year, it was one of the best I’ve ever seen.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (Album)

My other contribution to the Muso's Guide Top 50 of 2009 countdown.

Plenty of artists have capitalised on the upsurge in popularity of the revival of 80s and 90s indie-pop. However, none have done so with quite as much aplomb of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. While some bands seem to spend years honing their sound, The Pains… appear to have just dropped out of the sky with a sound that is at once unique and zeitgeist-embracing. Their debut album is a collection of upbeat and compelling songs, riddled with hooks and slathered in that wonderfully echoey dreaminess of C86. The songs are consistently strong, with particular highlights for me being ‘Come Saturday’ and ‘This Love is Fucking Right!’ What is even more encouraging is that they have followed up this record with an EP which occasionally even surpasses parts of the album. So then, a wonderful debut record, with the tantalising promise of an even better follow-up to come. Can this band do any wrong?

Gig of the Year - Dananananaykroyd (Newcastle Cluny - 21/10/09)

My bit from Muso's Guide's Gigs of the Year Feature

For all the praise it received this year, Dananananaykroyd’s album Hey Everyone didn’t quite click with me until I saw them at The Cluny in Newcastle in October. Their live show took me back to my formative gig-going experiences and the rush of The Cooper Temple Clause’s early sets. It blended merciless aggression with sheer fun, and their onstage chemistry was a joy, blurring the lines between band and crowd. It felt less like a gig, and more like a party, and predictably the hour or so they played felt like five minutes. They’ve got a big reputation as a live band, and it’s entirely justified.

Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers (Album)

My two penn'oth on my favourite album of this year for Muso's Guide's impending Top 50 Countdown.

The prospect of Manic Street Preachers finally recording Richey’s last lyrics was both mouth-watering and terrifying. This weighty task had dogged them for fourteen years, what if it proved too great? Such trepidation seems foolish, even insulting, now. The process of finally exorcising their ghosts triggered a catharsis, as the band delivered one of their best albums yet, sounding more alive than they have in years. James’ delivery and guitar work, in particular often reached his high watermark of 1994. The songs were typically dense and occasionally harrowing, but they also contained odd flickers of the mordant humour that has long since been written out of Richey’s history. There’s also a real tenderness present in Nicky’s heartrendingly flat vocals on ‘William’s Last Words’, a strength always possessed by the Manics, but rarely fully appreciated. With Journal For Plague Lovers, the Manics have enhanced Richey’s legacy, when they could easily have harmed it.

The Albums of the Year - Part Two

Reasonably assured that no albums released in the next six weeks will have sufficient impact on me to be counted in the year's upper echelon, and after much painful deliberation, I've settled on the following as my top ten records of 2009. In reverse order, in time-honoured blog-countdown style, naturally...

10: Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
It is delightfully weird, sounding like the chirruping of some demented bird, and the songs are undeniably glorious. I couldn't stop listening to this for weeks after it was released.

9: The XX - XX
The undoubted hype record of the year, and the backlash inevitably started soon after release. However, there's a reason for the hype. With minimal ingredients and maximum precision, the Cockney teenagers were able to summon levels of black drama on a par with Interpol and The National.

8: The Horrors - Primary Colours
This received similar hype to The XX, and largely because of the surprise element. Nobody expected these immaculately coiffed ex-NME darlings to produce something so searing, and deep. Yes, it's very derivative, but this doesn't stop it being a fantastically well-realised piece of work.

7: Jason Lytle - Yours Truly, The Commuter
Grandaddy never received the Pavement-sized recognition they deserved in their lifetime, and this record hasn't pushed Lytle to untouchable status like Malkmus, but it should have. It's a gorgeous piece of bruised songcraft. The warmth Lytle is still able to conjure up is awe-inspiring.

6: Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
Fur and Gold was rightly lauded and this is leaps and bounds ahead of even that. On this record, Natasha Khan has gone from simple singer-songwriter to someone producing high art. Her voice is better than ever, and the Scott Walker duet is spine-tingling.

5: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
The first great record of 2009, and the point at which some people stopped considering other albums for the top prize of the year. It was massively (and predictably) hyped in indie circles, and (even more predictably) panned by the backlash brigade, but it is brilliant. Panda Bear's increased influence has smoothed off some of AC's more abrasive edges without blunting their creativity.

4: Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Had this been released later in the year it would probably have been even higher. Another artist to have shown incredible progression from an already strong debut. The noise and menace is still there, but the harshness has been buffed out in place of something more mesmeric, but no less beguiling.

3: Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
Speaking of massive progress... Little to say on this other than that it is jaw-dropping stuff. Incredible maturity and depth to their sound that you wonder if they can ever top this.

2: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The band with the worst name of the year ironically nearly produce the best album. It distills all the good points about shoegaze and twee 90s indie pop, compressing them into a near perfect half hour or so. A record which becomes more and more addictive with every listen, and what is even more pleasing is the fact that the recent Higher Than the Stars EP contains songs that are arguably even better.

1: Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
It's impossible for me to judge this record objectively, given that the Manics have always meant more to me than any other band. I awaited this album with real excitement, but also an equal measure of trepidation. I mean, what if they hadn't been able to live up to Richey's lyrics? I did them a real disservice though. After 20-odd years of friendship and 14 years of wrestling with his ghost, of course they understood the grandeur of their task, and of course they were able to do it justice, The entire band sound absolutely revitalised, meaning that I'm in two minds about whether now is the right time to end their story, or whether they should work with this newly rediscovered passion to make more awesome records.

So all things considered, 2009 has been a great year for new music. Fingers crossed for 2010...

The Albums of the Year - Part One

We've reached that special point in the year when the Coke advert is imminent, kids and grownups alike are swarming around the window of a certain Newcastle department store, and pasty indie kids all around the world are hastily compiling best of the year lists like some kind of grisly game of top trumps.

So, in the spirit of the season, and in anticipation of the lists that will soon litter the blogosphere, here's the first half of my favourite twenty albums of the year.

20: Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Not their best work, sure, but even allowing for the occasional drift into autopilot, Sonic Youth still creatively outshine most of their peers / grandkids

19: Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone!
A screamy blast of almighty power, which only really makes proper sense once you've seen them live.

18: Grammatics - Grammatics
It might have been completely overblown, but the point is that this kind of bombast hasn't been done this well since Dog Man Star.

17: Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
In which the delicately hewn craftstmanship shown on the last couple of albums reached its apex of near perfect woodsy charm.

16: Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike
Infused with the vigour of youth, the sort of brilliant pop which could only be made in England.

15: Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
A tough album for them, but an undoubted success. Working with Homme gave them a welcome harder edge, and once again they showed progression without it seeming forced.

14: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
The first of a seemingly endless slew of indie bands gone disco, and by far the most perfectly executed.

13: Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective
Lockett Pundt (the 'other' one from Deerhunter) gives a clue why Deerhunter went from nothingy garage band to incredible dreamy space cadets after he joined.

12: Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
One of the cleverest and most enriching songwriters we have produces arguably his best collection of songs. Worth exploring again and again and again.

11: Years - Years
Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think puts together abandoned song fragments to make an unexpectedly cohesive collection. Like making a banquet out of the scraps left over from dinner.

Part Two to follow tomorrow...