Best of 2009: 11

Arctic Monkeys – Humbug

Ridiculous as it may sound, is there any chance we may have underestimated the Arctic Monkeys? Yes, we all loved them when they shuffled into the limelight as fresh-faced nine-year-olds a few years back, forgiving them for treating every interview and media appearance with an enthusiasm they usually reserved for their school’s BCG injections, we thrilled to their cheeky tales of fruit machines, chips, and all other sorts of things that conveniently have long been shorthand in large parts of the press for the Northern working class, and we were all charmed by a singer who sung in a voice more usually heard on stage at the end of Blackpool Pier sometime in the 1930s. But did anyone truly expect them to turn into a band of such substance?
Their debut album exhibited some extraordinarily accomplished, and potentially marked out Alex Turner as a truly brilliant lyricist, but it was such a relief to finally find a British rock band that might have an appeal beyond four blokes wearing trilbies in some Camden gastro-pub that it was possibly overrated in some quarters, there’s a strange lack of depth and invention to the music, and there was always the creeping suspicion that this was as good as it was going to get. However, their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare was twice as good and ten times as coherent- and as is traditional with these things sold about one tenth as much- and coming so soon after their debut clearly marked out the band’s intention for their career to follow a more abstruse and musically challenging path than anyone could have initially predicted.
Roping in Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme to produce their third album sent out a pretty clear signal of intent too: this record was never going to be accused of being ‘a bit heavy on the ballads’. Homme’s beefy production injects about 600mls of anabolic steroids straight into the eyeballs of nearly every track, to the extent that most of the songs strain their muscles so much they’re in danger of popping a blood vessel. Make no mistake, this is a heavy album, and at least initially the band’s more muscular and aggressive sound is as surprising as it is exciting. The experiment works a lot better than you might expect, with neither the songs nor Alex Turner’s voice (a lot deeper and devious sounding here than before) rising to the challenge of not being flattened by the sonic onslaught. It’s hard to shake the feeling though that maybe the Monkeys are trying that little bit too hard to prove their brawniness, especially with the coolest kid in school in the recording studio with them. While the sound they make is undoubtedly thrilling and, you begin to wonder how genuine the change in sound is, which can’t help but lead to a slightly detached experience.
There’s also the creeping suspicion that the Geoff Capes-ing of their sound may have seen the baby being discarded with the bathwater somewhat, as the sledgehammer approach of many of the tracks comes at the loss of much of the charm that was a big part of their old appeal. Once ‘Cornerstone’ slides into view though you simply won’t care anymore- a song so comprehensively lovely that it’s already been invited to be a guest on the Alan Titcshmarch show, and built around a melody that’s so instantly memorable you assume it’s been around since medieval times. The fact that Turner spins so much pathos, beauty and meaning out of what is essentially a tale of getting of with someone you meet in a pub is just one example among many on this record (see also his acknowledgment of the charged erotic potential of Pick n’ Mix on ‘Crying Lightning’) that he is fast growing into one of the greatest lyricists this country has ever produced.

Best of 2009: 12

Future Of The Left – Travels With Myself And Another

There’s a song on here called ‘Stand By Your Manatee’. I think that alone justifies this album’s position, but if for some reason you need more reason then read on by all means:
Cardiff’s Future of the left formed following the collapse (I think I’m legally obliged to use the phrase ‘from the ashes’) of the criminally underappreciated McClusky back in 2005 and, to put it frankly, they make the kind of rock music that puts nearly every other guitar band in Britain to shame.
While FOTL’s debut album was undoubtedly impressive in parts its spiky guitars and angular rhythms were still unmistakeably the work of two thirds of McClusky, and as a result it struggled somewhat to establish its own identity as the work of great band in its own right as opposed to just a very good side project. Their second album comprehensively does away with any such concerns though, fleshing out their sound marvellously and presenting a strong case for the band to be considered, at least potentially, as one of the most important in Britain.
Musically FOTL are a thrilling mixture of the dumbest visceral jolts of heavy metal and the high-brow artiness, complex song structures and jagged rhythms of post-punk, while all the while still writing tunes that your postman could still whistle as he contemplated his next strike. The sheer joy the band exhibit in making music that’s frequently leftfield and yet never loses sight of the mosh-pit (FOTL are one of those delightfully archaic bands that’s naïve enough to believe that making music their fans may actually enjoy may not be an entirely bad thing), plus the fact that they’re savvy enough to realise that if something’s worth taking serious it’s also worth making a joke out of, positions the band as probably the closest thing this country has produced to the brain-frazzling brilliance of System of a Down, the difference being that those uncultured, stupid and irony-unacquainted Americans have made SOAD one of the biggest bands in the country while Britain’s indifference toward Future of the Left means they’d struggle to sell out their own front room.Lyrically though, FOTL are simply on a different plane to most of their peers. Singer Andy Falkous can write words that are at once hilarious, profound, nonsensical, crude, sad, joyous, obtuse, blunt, unflinchingly honest and scathingly sarcastic, and proof to any budding songwriters out there that there is some middle ground between meaningless pseudo-emotional guff (‘I climbed the mountain and saw that the storm was too pure/ I need to see your eyes to fly back to the shore’) and over-earnest eulogies on ‘serious’ issues (where every song has to mention a non-specific group of people who ‘Got no home’). Any writer who can wittily articulately deconstruct such diverse subjects as rampant consumerism (‘Drink Nike’), Rupert Murdoch (‘Lapsed Catholics’) and the mundane nature of evil (‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’), while never losing track of how important it is to open a song with a line as good as ‘Slight bowel movements/ Preceded the bloodless coup’ deserves all the praise he gets

Best of 2009: 13

Ian Brown – My Way

Ok, let’s get this out of the way: Stone-Roses, Stone Roses, Stone Roses, Spike Island, Stone Roses, baggy clothes, Top of the Pops with Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, John Squire, Fools Gold, Waterfall, Spike Island, debut album: hooray!/overrated, second album; boo!/underrated, Stone Roses, John Squire, Spike Island, I Wanna Be Adored, John Squire, Stone Roses.
Can we start now? Good. Along with his Mancunian compatriot Morrissey Ian Brown must have accepted a long time ago that a certain well-loved and influential band he may have fronted in the 80s* will never be truly put to bed, no matter how many times you respond to reunion questions with the kind of bored disdain usually reserved for Louis Walsh.
The issue must be particularly exasperating for Brown, as while Morrissey has generally produced Smiths-lite solo work while gradually sliding more into self-parody (his latest solo album includes the songs ‘Whatever’s To Be Done With Such a Palaver’, ‘I Wish I’d Never Even Been Born’ and the hit single ‘It’s My Duty To Be Delightfully Despondent Doris’) Ian Brown has admirably ploughed a much more esoteric solo path. Even taking into account the consistently high quality of his solo work to date, the sheer quality of the songs on his sixth (that’s sixth!) solo album is still something of a shock. On My Way Brown pushes melody to the forefront of his music like he’s never done since… y’know… and as a result the album is by some distance his strongest collection of songs yet. Brown says he used Thriller as his blueprint for an album where every track was a potential hit single, and it seems to have worked in irradiating the tuneless skunk-fuelled dirges that occasionally marred his previous albums (only the lifeless ‘Crowning of the Poor’- regrettably placed at track two- manages to evade the screening process to become the album’s ‘The Girl is Mine’). Ian Brown has an almost naïve approach to making music where he develops ideas that most artists would reject as being ridiculous at the inception stage (mariachi cover of Zager and Evans’ ‘In the Year 2525’? Motown-esque torch song? R n’B ballads?) and then having a crack at them with such stubborn zeal that the sheer charm of the enterprise mostly fills in any flaws in the music.
His voice, however, is truly, truly atrocious. The fact that Brown has a voice that frequently resembles the torture of various land mammals, or that in more than twenty years of professional singing he has only ever managed to hit one note (the rarely used key of ‘Naaaaar’), is hardly news, but in the past he has been acutely aware of his limitations of a singer and his solo career and has written songs that rarely required his voice to rise above a growl. Here, the new focus on melody and tunes has exposed his voice like never before, and it’s not too unfair to say that at some points it sounds so bad that a person coming to this album having never heard any of Brown’s work before would surely presume it was a joke. The sheer quality of his song writing occasionally deserves a better voice to do it justice, and the fact that Ian Brown initially wrote lead single (and stand-out track) ‘Stellify’ for Rihanna hints that his future plans may lie in becoming modern R n’B’s most unlikeliest song-writer for hire.



*Is there a more ridiculously over depicted period of music than 1980’s Manchester?? Do we need a new book every week where the bass player from Crispy Ambulance gives ‘his side’ of the story? Is there anyone who doesn’t know that ‘Blue Monday’ lost money on every copy sold?

Best of 2009: 14

The Veils – Sun Gangs

As the son of XTC’s keyboardist, Finn Andrews is probably closer to Miley Cyrus than Sean Lennon in terms of rock royalty, but he’s still wise enough to bypass any accusations of industry favouritism by cannily limiting his fanbase to about eight people. His third album (the rest of the band are essentially session musicians that have changed with each record, if it aids you enjoyment of the record in any way feel free to picture him being backed by whoever you want- the cast of long-running BBC sitcom Surgical Spirit for example) was never likely to catapult his band to Michael Bublé levels of fame, but after forty minutes of near exemplary song craft and striking eclecticism you can’t help but wonder why The Veils aren’t annoyingly ubiquitous.
Fortunately, Andrews is so convinced of his music’s importance that his own conviction is the equivalent of at least six million devoted fans, plus perhaps a couple of Grammies and a Nobel Prize for Literature. Sun Gangs is an album utterly convinced of its life-changing potential, and doesn’t think it’d be appropriate to crack a smile in the face of such significance. From the choral-like opener ‘Sit Down By the Fire’ the album is awash with grand gestures and grandiose orchestration, to the point where the atypically underplayed closer ‘Begin Again’ sounds like the entire record collapsing with exhaustion like an athlete after a marathon or, perhaps more appropriately, an enthusiastic forty minute wank.
As irritating as it is to admit, given my proud British commitment to seeing any such self-belief fall straight on its arse, a great deal of Sun Gangs near enough justifies its own confidence. Despite its thick and multifaceted instrumentation, its mostly delicately composed enough never to descend into cheap pomp and bluster, and when at its very best can invest tracks such as the eight minute ‘Larkspur’ and ‘It Hits Deep’ with such elegant splendour that you almost don’t feel embarrassed calling them ‘epic’. The record’s devotion to eclecticism and experimentation puts other bands’ tedious imagination-vacuums to shame, and while it’s occasionally grating and overwrought it’s never boring. It also helps that Andrews is actually a pretty great songwriter, and wisely decides to augment his grand vision with half-decent tunes; ‘The Letter’ and ‘Three Sisters’ are textbook melodic rock songs, and the almost distastefully entertaining ‘Killed by the Boom’ is a riotous high-point. It would be nice if Williams himself chose a more subtle way of portraying emotion rather than singing each line like he was about to burst into tears, but Sun Gangs’ numerous achievements mean it’s more likely you’ll be on his side come the album’s end.

The Most Disappointing Records of 2009

5. Deadmau5: Random Album Title
Fantastic album of course, but it would have walked into this list if it I hadn’t only just found out it was released in November 2008. Curse my admirably strict selection policy

4. Kasabian: West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
After the great strides made on 2006’s Empire, this just seemed like a bit of a step back into half-hearted psychadelica and tired sixties pastiche

3. Bat for Lashes: Two Suns
Natasha Khan follows her excellent debut with an overproduced second that sounds so in thrall to her influences it occasionally lurches into pastiche.

2. Eminem: Relapse
Better than the almost fascinatingly awful Encore, but still the strained and underwhelming efforts of a once essential and important artist, with nothing else to say; ‘My mom, I’m bet you’re sick of hearing about my mom’-well… yes, frankly

1. Regina Spektor: Far
Terrible. If her last album, the fantastic Begin to Hope, occasionally threatened to slip into radio-friendly blandness, Far dives right into the deep end, completely shedding all traces of her personality in pursuit of the Starbucks dollar. Worse, every time she attempts to inject a modicum of her trademark weirdness it comes out as the sort of self-consciously ‘kooky’ crap that the writers of Friends would reject as being too eye-gougingly irritating; ‘We built ourselves a computer/ Out of macaroni pieces’- Aaaaaaaaaaarrghh!!!

Best of 2009: 15

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It's Blitz!

It’s amazing that, despite it being approximately 133 years since Elisha Gray first patented the first electronic musical synthesizer (back when Rick Wakeman was still a fresh-faced 28 year old) and 40 odd years since the instrument was first used to make pop records, if your average guitar band decides to utilize the instrument a great section of the music press act as if it’s a staggeringly futuristic gesture akin to announcing your next album will be released solely through sat-navs. The Editors last album, for example, was praised for its modern use of the occasional Moog stab, when in reality all they’d done is moved their sound on from 1979 to about 1982.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ move to a more electronic sound was actually not that far of a journey, most of their best moments have had at least one eye on the dance floor and their primal rhythmic sound has as much in common with krautrock (what a charmingly offensive name for a genre that is) than it has with the skinny denim of CBGBs. In creating their most polished (TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek further demonstrates his band’s recent Midas touch on co-production duties) and listenable album-and their best- to date the band have also rediscovered a sense of drive and purpose that was mainly absent from the reserved and meandering Show Your Bones album. Tracks such as ‘Runaway’ and especially ‘Hysteric’ easily rank amongst the band’s very best work and show that underneath their achingly hip exterior the band are more than capable of producing pretty great pop music.
However, if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ultimate goal is to one day produce music that is as captivating and as charismatic as their front-woman, they fall ever so slightly short once again here. Karen O dominates proceedings almost completely, exhibiting a voice able to seamlessly switch between disco queen, lovelorn balladeer and over stimulated eight-year-old, occasionally on the same line and crucially never stumbling into irritating yelping. The band’s music still sounds ever so slightly plodding- and strangely detached- in comparison, plus Nick Zimmer still has the kind of face past civilisations would have punched for sport, though I accept that second point may well be slightly irrelevant.
It’s Blitz is the closest they’ve yet come though, and most importantly it reintroduces a great sense of fun which initially seemed one of their hallmarks but was largely jettisoned on their last record. There’s a sense of a band actually enjoying the process of making music which can’t help but rub off on the listener- the sense of blissful abandon as ‘Heads Will Roll’ collapses into near chaos is one of the greatest musical pleasures put to disk this year. It’s all more than enough to make you hope they’re still taking as much pleasure out of what they do when they come round to their next album.

Best of 2009: 16

Florence + The Machine – Lungs

It seemed at time last year that the British music industry was simply desperate for Florence Welch to succeed last year, she was talked up as the Next Big Thing since around 1987, and all through 2008 as she released a handful of raw and uncommercial singles, they thrust a Brit award at her early this year and named her top of nearly every embarrassingly titled ‘pones to look out for’ polls (along the lines off ‘Tha Freshest Cold Meats Slammed On Tha Counter xx09xx’. That one was on Blue Peter.) and when her debut was finally released in July it was named on the Mercury shortlist within approximately seventy eight seconds, suggesting that it would’ve been nominated even if all it consisted of was recordings of Florence performing her favourite Eddie Large stand-up routines while riding a mechanical bull.
Thankfully Lungs contains enough brilliance to just about justify the cement mixer full of hype that it has been saddled with (hey, it’s my list and I can mix as many metaphors as I want to thank you very much), even if ultimately it’s a debut that promises a potentially great career rather than a truly great album in its own right. The album’s highs are generally wonderful enough to paper over its occasional duds, and it’s always great to see an artist as wonderfully odd as Florence Welch- both in her slightly leftfield musical style and wonderfully odd and occasionally grotesque lyrical imagery- getting such mainstream attention. there aren’t many albums with a better opening one-two than the singles ‘Dog Days are Over’ and ‘Rabbit Foot (Raise It Up)’ (how on God’s green earth did that only limp to number 12 in the charts?! This is a country that gave The Black Eyed Peas two number one singles this year for fuck’s sake), and ‘Howl’ and ‘Hurricane Drunk’ are hit singles in anything resembling a sane world. You know you’re at least partially onto a winner when you have the chutzpah to cover one of the greatest dance songs of the last 25 years (The Source and Candi Staton’s ‘You Got The Love’) and manage not to make it a complete affront to all that’s holy.
There are a few misfires though, ‘Kiss With a Fist’ is a slightly cack-handed White Stripes pastiche that sounds out of place (unsurprisingly, as it was originally released as a single more than a year before the album came out) and disrupts the albums flow, and ‘Girl With One Eye’ ramps the drama up to such ridiculously portentous levels that it makes the last night of the proms sound like a Steve Albini production. In future Florence may also like to consider a dash of subtly every now and then, her singing style, although impressive, only seems to have two settings- ‘belting’ and ‘Shirley Bassey’, and her habit of finishing each and every song by singing the chorus one more time but even louder begins to grate by the albums close.
Debut albums aren’t meant to be perfect though, and these are relatively minor quibbles. As a first taste engineered to make you eagerly await her next move, Lungs does its job to perfection.

Best of 2009: 17

Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light

Perversely, the main drawback of the third album by everyone’s favourite Nina-Simone-voiced-Giant-Haystacks-sized-Sonya-Jackson-look-alike Antony Hegarty is that it’s exactly the album he wanted to make, and achieves precisely what it sets out to do. Amongst all the hoo-ha and accusations that surrounded Antony’s 2005 Mercury Music Prize victory, it’s often forgotten what an absolutely astounding record I Am a Bird Now was, and is, an utterly jarring yet entirely bewitching set of psychosexual baroque pop that should have plenty to say when people start thinking about the best albums of the last decade (‘the noughties’ if you prefer, or ‘the proppa nawties’ if you’re Danny Dyer). It also exposed Antony Hegarty to something dangerously close to fame- not quite Madonna levels of hysteria admittedly, but the kind of fame that prompts Richard Littlejohn to mention you in his Mail column while using the phrases ‘Give me Rod Stewart any day of the week’ and inevitably ‘You couldn’t make it up’- which goes some way to explain the near four year gap between the two albums. In response to the critical and commercial success of that album, for The Crying Light Antony has decided to reign in pretty much all of the flamboyance and drama that used to be pretty much his trademarks- gone are the operatic codas, the wailing torch songs and all the camp and circumstance that defined his greatest work, and as a result the album is so shockingly restrained and slight that in places it barely exists. It’s also wilfully uncommercial, with the great majority of the album made up of just Antony and a piano, with perhaps the tiniest hint of an orchestra, singing melodies so subtle you have to locate them with a magnifying glass. There’s a moment near the end of ‘Aeon’ where Antony suddenly calls out in that astonishingly beautiful voice of his ‘Oh that man I love SO MUCH!’ which honestly couldn’t be more shocking if he confessed to murdering Jill Dando while doing an impression of Louis Walsh, and it takes you a while to realise that it’s because it’s the only point in the album’s entire 40 minutes that the singer lets himself go for even just a millisecond- the rest of the album is repressed, studied and almost psychopathically restrained.
It’s also frequently brilliant and heartbreakingly beautiful (unsurprisingly, as Antony next album could be a track-by-track Oompah Band re-imagining of Aqua’s Aquarium album and he still couldn’t help himself making it exquisite enough to make even Fabio Capello weep), and so far ahead of any of his contemporaries that it’s almost embarrassing. Tracks like ‘Another World’, ‘Her Eyes are Underneath the Ground’ and the title track are so beautifully precious and ornate that you worry they’ll simply shatter if you talked over them. If the record does nothing else it provides further evidence of Antony Hegarty’s title of possibly the most singular and unique musical talent of his generation, even if I wish that his next record didn’t jettison quite so many of the things that made him so special in the first place.

Best of 2009: 18

18: Grizzly Bear- Veckatamist

While Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear may not operate entirely in the same ball park as Andrew Bird, they certainly play there for two hours every other Wednesday and frequently drink in the clubhouse. Beloved of Radiohead and other alternative types whose opinions generally elicit sage nods from the general media, their third album Veckatimest (a title I have generally avoided saying aloud) is further proof that artists can make innovative and modern-sounding music without resorting to a Lethal Bizzle guest spot or putting a donk on it. The album manages to splice in elements of psychedelica, chamber music, classical, folk, indie and more, while at the same time never threatening to jeopardize a commitment to melody that actually makes the record one of the most accessible albums released this year (a statement proved by it debuting in the US Billboard Top 10). However, just because the album is likeable enough to be so broadly appreciated doesn’t mean that it’s shallow or one-dimensional, in fact few other albums this year reward the patience of repeated listening and close examination as much, the record’s chief modus operandi of mid-tempo acoustic numbers can on initial listens conceal just how much has been crammed into each song- while the record may superficially sound like one that has been recorded mainly under the influence of folk, it’s actually the stench of prog-rock that more wafts over this album, like Genesis have left the toilet door open a few feet away. What the album most calls to mind is the ultimately unfinished and occasionally radically experimental recordings that Jeff Buckley intended to be his second album (where you can clearly map his influences moving away from Billie Holiday and more to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), so you could conceivably give Veckatimest the high praise that it’s the album Jeff Buckley would make if he were alive today.
If Veckatimest has one flaw, it’s that it’s forced me to attempt to correctly spell the Native American for a small Massachusetts island three times in less than 400 words. If it has two flaws however, it’s that the record can be so one-paced and pleasant sounding that it sounds like it’s almost demanding to be played in the background and shies away from close examination. If it were played in a pub while your friends and you fiercely debated the reasons Jaffa Cakes aren’t ‘Jaffa Biscuits’ there would be tellingly few moments (the drums on ‘Southern Point’, the last 90 seconds of ‘While You Wait for the Others’ and ‘I Live With You’…) that would truly prick your ears up and stop listening to your friend describe the baking process. But that may just be nitpicking (and when I’m discussing Jaffa Cakes, occasionally a nuclear bomb won’t stop me having my say), the simple fact of the matter is that is unlikely any other album on this list was as widely liked as Vecktatimest, whether these people were brave enough to attempt to pronounce its title or not.

Best of 2009: 19

19. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Nature’s rubbish isn’t it? It gets all over you, it’s hard to wash off, it’s seemingly 90% composed of shit, it flies up your sinuses, it drops into your drink, it falls from trees with nary a care for who’s supposed to clean it up, it seems to have a irrational phobia of noxious industrial fumes, it grows where you don’t need nor want it and meekly withers and dies when you attempt to meet it half way and encourage it. Chicago multi-instrumentalist (one of those words which are only ever encountered written down, and with good reason) Andrew Bird may not completely agree with this, his fourth solo album is as bucolic as the chewed end of a piece of straw, a sumptuously organic piece of work that evocates the natural world with no little flair. It’s an extraordinarily detailed album, so incredibly layered with violin, clacking percussion, double basses, flutes and dozens more instruments that even nearly twelve months after its release every listen seems to uncover some new device to ignite your attention. This meticulous approach to music making extends to Bird’s lyrics, with words mainly chosen for their sounds and tonal qualities rather than any actual meaning (although dropping lines like ‘The young in the larva stage orchestrating plays/ In vestments of translucent alabaster’ into day-to-day conversation is a great ice-breaker).
If that sounds a little pretentious, then you haven’t heard the half of it. Andrew Bird’s main failing is that he can occasionally lose track of himself in attempting to impress the listener, very occasionally the songs can briefly tumble over the fine line separating ‘very good’ with merely ‘very impressive’. And you can practically see the grin on his face as he contemplates how he got away with opening an album with the line ‘In the salsify mains of what was thought but unsaid/ All the calcified arithmetists were doing the math’. One of the songs is called Nomenclature for Christ’s sake…
However, it seems extremely churlish to bemoan a brilliantly smart and gifted musician just for being aware that he is a brilliantly smart and gifted musician. With Noble Beast Andrew Bird has pulled off the difficult trick of creating a record that is on one hand endlessly inventive and experimental while on the other hand remaining faithful to some of the oldest forms of music known to man, it’s an album that has it’s eyes firmly on the future while and the same time never losing sight of its past. His best album; and I say that with the authority of someone who’s never heard any of the others. A fine whistler too…

Best of 2009: 20

20. Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years

Everyone loves the Super Furry Animals; it’s just a crying shame that most people don’t seem to realise it. Since 1996’s Fuzzy Logic- and seemingly without asking anyone’s permission- they’ve steadily built up a body of work that fully deserves to be ranked alongside any British band that still likes to think of themselves of a going concern, and yet have never truly threatened to breakthrough and sell any records beyond their devoted admirers (fact- every SFA album so far has sold exactly 172’027 copies each, which is the exact size of their fan base). Their ninth album was never likely to change that- being more of the same peculiarly Welsh brand of fried indie-rock psychadelica which they’ve made their own,-but it’s probably their best since 1999’s Guerrilla (or ‘Their best in a decade’ if you think that would look more eye-catching on the posters) and exhibits the kind of sparkle, energy and ingenuity you’d usually associate with barely pubescent bands who buy their trousers in a can, rather than a dishevelled band of cagoule wearing Welshman who generally look like the kind of provincial loners you see on local news being charged with sending threatening letters to Fiona Phillips.
The highlights of Dark Days… are among the highlights of the band’s entire career: ‘Mt’ is a commendably restrained attempt to invent glam-folk, ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ somehow manages to live up to the glory of its title by being a dark-tinged pop masterpiece with a hook on it so large you could hang you cagoule on it, and the album is bookended by ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ and ‘Pric’, two tracks that pull off that rare trick of being psychedelic jams and not making you want to clean out your ears with sandpaper. ‘Inaugural Trams’, however, is the album’s (and, in terms of singles, possibly the year’s) one indisputable classic, and can probably be considered one of the top ten songs ever written about the construction of a German town’s transport system. It’s both admirably insane and endlessly inventive, and in proving that it’s possible to sound deliriously happy without sounding either hackneyed or inane it sounds like the theme tune to the coolest children’s TV show ever. As a bonus, it also gives new credence to that old phrase ‘Why have a guitar solo when you can just rope in the guitarist from Franz Ferdinand for a few lines of German spoken word?’
While the highs on Dark Days… are positively Snowdonian, they do cast a shadow that certain parts of the album can’t help but wither in. While it’d be harsh to call any of the tracks here truly bad, it’s fair to say the skip button on your remote control will be getting a work out as the likes of ‘Inconvenience’, ‘Where Do You Wanna Go?’ and ‘Lilwiau Llachar’ (The inevitable Welsh song) just sound pedestrian and uninventive in their stellar company, giving the album a slightly uneven feel, and hold the record back from being truly great.

Best of 2009 30-21

30. Julian Casablancas: Phrazes for the Young
Strokes man’s debut shows flashes of his band’s breezy melodic charm and- clocking in at a massive eight tracks- their prodigious work rate

29. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu: Gurrumul
Blind Aborigine folk singer mixes traditional styles with more contemporary western guitar music to create a deeply satisfying experience for anyone who chose to actually listen to it rather than just display it on their coffee table.

28. Jarvis Cocker: Further Complications
Steve Albini produced second effort with enough great songs to just about avoid mid-life crisis classification

27. Blakroc: Blakroc
Blues revivalists The Black Keys team up with the cream of creditable US hip-hop to create a record that somehow entirely avoids being in any way cringe-worthy. Would be a lot higher if it wasn’t released just a week ago.

26. Various Artists: Cathedral Classics volume 1
Fantastic first retrospective from London label Sonic Cathedral, just don’t call it shoe-gazing Ok?

25. Mastodon: Crack the Skye
Mind-blowingly accomplished and unashamedly ludicrous- the best metal album of the year by about six furlongs

24. Jay-Z: The Blueprint 3
Another perfectly great modern hip-hop album, but you get the feeling it’s the kind of solid effort Jay-Z could fart off under his bedclothes without even bothering to roll over. More off-the-wall efforts like the ingenious ‘D.O.A’ next time please.

23. Doves: Kingdom of Rust
Déjà vu once again with the Doves- spectacular first single (in this case the gorgeous title track) followed by undeniably accomplished but oddly underwhelming album. However, when their fourth album is good, it’s career best good.

22. MF Doom: Born Like This
Frequently fantastic, the best hip-hop album of the year is still let down by the inevitable wearisome skits and occasional homophobia that’s so unpleasant it’s almost impressive

21. Soulsavers: Broke
No, there isn’t a song as good as ‘Revival’, but while the Soulsaver’s second album with Mark Lanegan doesn’t quite scale the same peaks as the first, it’s a much more complete and satisfying body of work overall.

490: Gang of Four- Entertainment (1979)

http://open.spotify.com/album/4lktnCTpQK5vV1im9Z3htY

Ah, once again we enter the ctitical minefield of the 'hugely influential'- abandon all hope all ye who dare attempt an objective opinion. By all estimates 'Entertainment' sold around 46 copies when it was first released, and even then mostly to the band's immediate family, but it's influence on pretty much all incidents of politically charged post-punk and rock that have occured over the past quarter decade has vastly outweighed its meagre sales. Indeed, there was an 18 month period around 6 years ago, mainly the fault of Franz Ferdinand releasing their debut album, where ebery single new British indie band just seemed to be subtly re-working 'At Home He's a Tourist', the only real noticable difference being that the lead singer might perhaps wear slightly different shoes. They are possibly the first band to have their music described as 'angular. I want to enjoy this, I truly do...

00:30 Mmmmmmmmmm, angular...

02:52 There's a fantastic affect that happens just at the start of the chorus in 'Ether', where the guitar jumps out of tune for a few miliseconds and makes the record sound like it's skipping in time to the song. Well I liked it. The first song is brilliantly raw and unsettling, which is a brilliant relief after sitting through Mott the Hoople

06:37 'Natural's Not In It' is pleasantly abbrasive enough, but there's really good tune hiding within its jangled walls, and you can't help but feel they've undersold it somewhat

08:40 At it's best 'Not Great Men' sounds like a blueprint for much of the Talking Heads, there are moments, however, when you hear the clipped vocals and bass guitar and can't seem the shake the horrific image of Sting and the Police out of your mind (shudder...)

13:48 'Your kiss so sweet/ Your sweat so sour/ Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you/ But then I know it's only lust'. Gang of Four's take on sex is hardly Barry White. Great as some of the lyrics are, you can't help but picture the band as possibly the last people you would ever invite to Wetherspoons to make the most of their 'Pound a Cider' night.

15:16 I have a real problem with songs where the singer just sings along to the guitar line, and I can't explain why. Answers on a postcard...

16:30 'Return the Gift' is the first song that really feels a bit flat, especially that wierd spoken word bit at the end done in a comedy Mexican accent. Oh, hang on, that's an advert for Nandos.

17:06 People do realise that Nandos is just chicken don't they?

17:36 I mean, that's it. Chicken. Nothing else.

19:29 I'm gonna try and sound all clever now by pointing out that 'Guns Before Butter' is probably a rteference to a famous Herman Goerring quote. The song itself doesn't quite sound fully formed- not nearly angry enough to be tuneless.

19:46 'Angry enough to be tuneless' would be a great T-shirt quote

22:20 After losing its way for a couple of tracks, 'I Find That Essence Rare' is a classic example of spiky post-punk, and is good enough to stop me sneaking off to the toilet, which when you think about it is all music really aspires to.

24:35 Considering that this album is thirty years old, it's a little bit disheartening to note how little the great majority of this genre of music has evolved.

27:24 Track nine now, and it's all beginning to get a bit relentlessly po-faced. I would suggest a cover of 'Atmosphere' by Russ Abbott around track seven to leaven the mood slightly.

28:32 Russ Abbott's version of 'Atmosphere' is almost unrecognisable from the Joy Division original.

31:42 Twang, scratch, schwang, eeeeeeeeeeek, thwudunk...

32:00 'At Home He's A Tourist' must be one of the strangest 'hit' singles of all time, barely a tune to speak of underneath all the guitar crunches and spat lyrics, but it's strangely affecting all the same.

35:32 'Watch new blood on an 18" screen/ The corpse is a new personality'

40:17 'Love Like Anthrax' (those old charmers) is a brilliantly odd end to the album, squeals of feedback and spoken word threaten to make the whole thing an unlistenable mess, but the sense of rythm and raw funk of the bassline serve not only to make it very listenable, but almost danceable. It's a lesson in how to make something extremely challenging without it turning into an unlistenable turgid mess (cough, coughPearlJamcough, cough). It ends the album on a high note.

The album's influence is as clear as a bell to anyone without frog-spawn in their ears (yes, I'm talking to you, you know who you are, take that out at once, you're forty six now for God's sake, if only your mother were alive to see you now, I dread to think what she'd make of you), and it's easy to consider just how much of a shock to the system this album would have been 30 years ago. However, it's power has unarguably waned over the years, and while a good half of the tracks are pretty great, and the none of the others could be classed as stinkers, the unrelenting seriousness of it all, the creeping suspicion that the band only really have one trick which they continue to flog admittadly well, and the simple paucity of enough truly killer tunes all combine to make this an album which is around ten times easier to admire than it is to truly love

C+

491: Mott the Hoople- All the Young Dudes (1972)

http://open.spotify.com/album/2aOWMZo9zarFg3wIPLdTA7

Ah, Mott the Hoople, what can you say about Mott the Hoople that hasn't already been said? Come to think of it, what can you say about them at all? I know one thing about Mott the Hoople, the title track off this album was written by David Bowie, and I'm sure that neither I nor anyone else would want to know anything else. Even looking at that album cover fills me with a painful indifference, I have no interest in listening to this album at all, I pretty much know what kind of music lies therein and I know that it's not for me, I know the music is going to wriggle in one orifice and politely shuffle out the other without ever even making eye-contact with my conscious. A large part of me just wants to skip this album altogether and save myself 40 minutes. My life, my day even will not change one iota by listening to this album. No-one's life has ever been truly affected by this record. It's not even going to be rubbish enough to slag off. Sigh...

So as I say I'm approaching this from a purely objective standpoint...

00:31 Starts off with a Lou Reed song (this band were certainly well-connected), the singers delivery is a further reminder that absolutely everyone has a better voice than Lou Reed

04:10 One of those sepia-tinged-guitarist-playing-with-a-cheeky-smile-on-his-lips-all-boys-in-it-together mid-tempo FM rock songs that were all the rage in the 70s. The 80s were much better musically than the seventies- discuss...

7:34 There's an obvious laid-back approach to the songs here that I can kind of understand people warming to, but to me it just suggests that they've probably worked very hard for a sound that makes out like they've put in no effort at all, which to me just makes it sound disconnected from the listener

12:17 All the Young Dudes' is a great little pop song and stands out a mile when placed next to the first two half-arsed tracks. The singer seems to really connect with the words for the first time (ironically, seeing as they didn't write it) and in doing so delivers his first performance where he actually sounds like he gives a shit

14:37 United are playing Liverpool tomorrow, it'd be fantastic to get a result and really hammer a nail in their coffin, but I've got a horrible feeling the Liverpool players are going to play like they've got something to prove and sneak a result, especially if Fergie packs the midfield as a cautionery measure

20:45 This band owe David Bowie a massive drink- every other song has been so tediously mediocre that it's actually making me want to weep

21:56 Any band that has a song called 'One of the Boys' really isn't worth 40 minutes of anyone's time

25:18 It's a damning indictment of the music that,when I try and picture the lead singer, I can only think of Robin Askwith.

27:50 That song did seem to come alive at the end, for a moment there the album actually had a pulse.

30:14 The album's trying to mount an unlikely comeback now- 'Soft Ground' is a great hammond organ-led number, shot-through with a sense of malevolent charisma that finally suggest the band may have a personality to speak of. I think you can actually here Deep Purple making notes if you listen hard enough

33:37 'Ready for Love/After Lights' single-handedly invents the Glam-rock-ballad, and while it's hardly going to be playing at my funeral, it exudes some slight variety and invention which is a Godsend after the sludge-rock of the album's first half.

37:45 Are Mott the Hoople the best band to have ever come out of Herefordshire? Are they the only band to have come out of Herefordshire? I mean, there's Fred West, but he was less a band and more of a freaky-haired serial killer.

39:52 And Lady Godiva of course, she was pretty rock and roll

40:44 Oh, it's finished.

There's an issue raised here that's going to crop up dozens of times throughout this list. I can accept that this was a very influential record, and in listening to it I can hear its impact on glam-rock and a lot of the heavy rock of the 70s, I'll even accept that it's an important album (though in terms of importance and influential it's severl furlongs behind 'It Takes a Nation of Millions...'), but that doesn't mean that it still stands up as a great album more than 30 years later. The fact is that this kind of music has been done so many times and often so much better that this album just sounds simple, undemanding and ultimately almost naively primitive. It's cruel, but thems the breaks- one piece of work doesn't dserve to be ahead of another merely because it did it first. Of course, there are plenty of albums that could be described as both the first and best example of their field, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The album itself sounds so pedestrian and workmanlike in places that it's almost depressing, if the fantastic 'All the Young Dudes' didn't make like a sore thumb on the record's first half then I honestly believe cement would've started pouring out of the speakers. Luckily the last three tracks belatadly injects the album with a modicum of life, which is just as well as the first few tracks had merged into one tuneless aural dirge in my head to the extent that I resembled Jack Nicholson at the end of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest', or Keanu Reeves in... well... anything really.

While it's patently not as bad as the borderline offensive Kiss record, it's unrelenting mediocrity actually made it a lot harder to listen to. Kiss had the decency to be spectacularly bad, there was absolutely nothing spectacular about this record

D-

492: Pearl Jam- Vitalogy (1994)

http://open.spotify.com/album/3ZJplfadDFMU8oV5IpvGtI

History hasn't really been kind to Pearl Jam, the increasing beatification of Kurt Cobain in the 15 (sweet Jesus I'm old) years since his death has led to the band being seen as a commefical cash-in on Nirvana's fame, the Monkees to Cobain's Beatles. Cobain himself called them coperate cock-guzzling sell-outs (or words to that effect, I'll be damned if I'm trawling through Wikiquotes at this time in the morning) years ago and the accusation has stuck to them.

Completely unfairly really, as out of the two bands it was Eddie Vedder's cash-cow that really shunned fame and fortune at the height of their success- following their mega-huge debut Ten by releasing second album Vs with next to no publicity and refusing to release any singles or videos while Nirava seemed happy to follow their breakthrough with even more expensively constructed promotion and promos, and allowing the word 'rape' to be removed form the sleeve of In Utero in an effort to please Walmart- and have continued to attempt to marry the punk spirit to their enormodome success ever since, assidously attaching themselves to worthy causes and endlessly fighting in order to stop bigger business simply ripping off their fan-base. Most impressively, they have always seemed to achieve all this without fucking going on about it all the time.

Musically however, if Nirvana were The Beatles, Pearl Jam are actually somewhere closer to Hermann's Hermits. Their chugging, work-ethic rock, which seems to honour good solid workmanship over anything else, is often cited as the biggest influence on contemporary American rock, for which they all should be extremely ashamed. Their po-facedness and ability to take themselves astonishingly seriously positions them as kind of an American U2, but at least the Iriash band has festonned us with some rare moments of inspiration over the course of their career, all Pearl Jam have left us with is the strong feeling Eddie Vedder needs more fibre in his diet.

This, their third LP, may prove my previous points. Apparantly it's an admirable attempt to make a more complex and experimental album, a step away from their fame. I'll also bet it's as dull as dog's cock

00:12 Great, a 'jazz-influenced' intro...

02:20 If I wanted to be a bit mischievous I'd say that 'Last Exit' sounds like it was a big influence on Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl knows where his sympathies lie

04:15 'Spin the Black Circle', as you may well guess, is very metal. A pretty decent little rock song though, I think every major rock band should try at least one mid-career album where they employ such a stripped-down production, as the re-energising affect it can have on the music can occasionally be awesome. I'm looking at you Oasis...

08:15 Brendan Rodger's production sounds absolutely fantastic on 'Not for You' (and all three songs so far actually), the sound's so crisp it's all I can do to stop myself peeling it off the speakers. Vedder's voice on this track though is particularly grating

10:05 They seem to have stolen the font for this album from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Possibly in respect to Gene Wilder's definitive version of 'Evenflow'

11:44 Chugchugchugchugchugchugchug...

14:56'Tremor Christ' is a laugh-a-minute riot, as you'd imagine. There's actually nothing wrong with being so unrelentingly serious, but you do have to make sure the music itself exhibits a modicum of vitality (excuse the pun)

20:07 'Nothingman' is a seriosuly lumpen rock-ballad that was only momentarily exciting when I initially thought it was called 'Nottingham'. This is the kind of lighters-aloft-can-I-play-the-coffeeshop-in-the-OC-please-Mummy-barely-a-fucking-song rubbish that's about a dime a thousand amongst mainstream American rock nowadays. If Pearl Jam are even partly to blame for that they should hang their heads to the sodding ground like Ostriches.

22:12 Vitalogy was actually the second fastest selling album ever in America at the time. Any guesses as to what the first was?

26:33 'Cordurouy' is a pretty standard rock song, but it has a definite 'zip' to it that's missing from many of the other tracks. Hey, I'm tapping my foot ever so slightly, and sometimes that's enough for me, Ok?

30:18 'Bugs' is actually a lovely little surprise, an accordian-led little ditty that's the first time on the album that the band sound like they're ambling ever so slightly outside their comfort zone

34:16 Times up, any ideas what the fasting selling album ever was? Astonishingly, it was the band's previous album Vs:They were huge!

38:10 For 'Better Man' see 20:07

44:57 For 'Immortality see 20:07

53:54 'Hey Foxymophandlemama, that's Me' sounds almost like a compromise to the idea of experimentation, a seven minute plus noise collage that merely sounds like it was tacked on to the end of the record to give the impression of radicalism. It's completely unnessecary and pretty much unlistenable, and being the kind of noise anyone with with a half-decent mixing desk and twenty minutes free could make it proves absolutely nothing about the band's ability to make truly challenging music.

55:02 Twenty seconds of silence, presumably to take stock of the magnitude of what you have just heard, and that's yer lot...

Most critical receptions to this album freely use adjectives like 'challenging', 'experimental' or 'uncompromising', and yet what you really have is 90% a solid if unspectacular rock album (albeit with fantastic production and a handful of really decent tracks) and a few insignificant (apart from the pretty great 'Bugs') tracks where the band experiment with different sounds to varying degrees, yet these tracks seem so removed form the general fabric of the album (and 'Pry To' and 'aye Davanita' are little more than instrumental fillers) that they contribute nothing to its sound other than being barely diverting asides. While the album obviously sees a pretty succesful attempt to strip down their sound (which again jars with the more elaboratly produced 'experimental' cuts) there's really little evidence here of the band really moving their music forward.

C+

493: Earth, Wind and Fire- 'That's the Way of the World'

http://open.spotify.com/album/739zIKWH5IhKL4Eg4zu1ug
I suspect that one look at that album cover there would give you at least a vague idea of what kind of band we're dealing with here. Look at the outfits! Look at the afros! At least some members of the band can't even stop dancing for a routine photo-shoot! One member is having so much fun he seems to have collapsed! That fellow on the far right who seems to be taking the whole thing extremely seriously!

That's right: it's Scandinavian Death Metal!

02:49 What an opening track, 'Shining Star' careers out of the speakers like a funky rhino ('Funky Rhino' is now reserved for my next band's name, sorry) sounding like the theme tune to a 70s Tv show where Stevie Wonder plays a blind cop who can only solve crimes through his amzing skill of feeling 'vibes'

07:36 The title track is obviously where Lenny Kravitz 'got the inspiration for' 'It Ain't Over Til It's Over'. The song's so smooth that it doesn't so much play as it winks at you slowly from across a bar, sends a mohijto over and offers you a Silk Cut

08:22 Incidentally, this album can join such alumni as 'Parade' by Prince and, erm, 'Ben' by Michael Jackson as 'classic soundtracks to films no-one can remember to save their lifes'

11:32 'Happy Feelin'' is extremely appropriately named; unlike most 'happy' songs ('Shiny Happy People', 'Don't Worry Be Happy, etc.) it doesn't make me want to join Al-Qaeda in attempt to wreak my vengeance on the decadent west

17:05 'All About Love' starts off as a generic soul ballad- nice enough but hardly earth-shaking- but swells into brass-based bedlam in the chorus that's so sultry it's all you can do to stop yourself dry-humping the speaker. Just me? Gorgeous coda at the end too

21:35 The start of 'side two' (how deliciously archaic!) is another absolute stonker, 'Yearnin' Learnin'' makes me wish, not for the first time, that I had a huge afro and a pair of platforms. Ok, it's the first time I've wished I had a pair of platforms...

26:54 'Reasons' is a beautiful ballad, with a fantastic vocal performance. The orchestration and horn arrangements all across this album are just perfect.

29:24 That drum fill in 'Africano' has been sampled by at least 62'345 acts. Isn't the flute such an underused instrument in pop music? There isn't a single record that couldn't be improved just a little by it's inclusion- FACT!
Oh sorry, did I say 'FACT!'? I meant 'OPINION!', sorry, it's evidently very easy to get the two confused

39:17 The gospel-funk (it exists, I have heard it) of 'Seen the Light' ends with a recording of traditional African music, and our journey's over brothers and sisters

Brilliant. With exception of the two albums I was already au fait with this is the best album I've heard by a considerable distance. There simply wasn't a bad song nor a dull moment (though if I was being cruel I'd argue that perhaps the closing track went on for longer than was probably necessary), and I'd honestly put 'Shining Star' in my top 20 best album openings of all time. The sound was both lush and abrasive, beautifully produced but always teetering excitingly on the edge of total chaos. Not only would I listen to this album again, but after I write this I'm straight onto Amazon.

Pearl Jam next. Sigh. After having so fun locating my inner black funk player, I now have to exhume my inner 14 year old teenage boy

A-

494: Cyndi Lauper- 'She's So Unusual' (1983)

http://open.spotify.com/album/2aZG65CSBMeTKr0YNfsFMe
She's got red hair
But we don't care
Cyndi, Cyndi Lauper


It's almost impossible to have a dedicated opinion on Cyndi Lauper (go on, try it. Can't can you?); in the 25+ years since this, her debut was released you really can't picture one person either desperately falling in love with her music or despising it to the point of sledgehammering records (even though this album sold sixteen MILLION copies!!!! Have you ever met anyone who could even recall seeing a copy lying around a vague aquaintance's house?). What can you possibly say about her? She did that song about girls having fun that isn't actually half as irritating as it could be; she's so New York that she pronounces her hometown 'Noo Yoik'; plus this album contains a cover of 'When You Were Mine', which is one of my favourite Prince songs, and I'm all ready to absolutely despise it. Still, 'Time After Time's quite nice isn't it? This may be a short entry...

01:41 The opening track, a cover of The Beats' 'Money Changes Everything', is pretty good actually, a bit like The Pretenders fronted by one of Fraggle Rock

04:41 While we're on the subject of that voice- it has all the necessary ingredients-nasal, shouty, brattish, etc- to be epically infuriating, but it's a credit to both the producers and Lauper herself for utilising it in a way that very rarely makes to want to chew your ears off

05:35 Aaah, 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'. Everytime I hear this song I instinctavely look round my shoulder to check for any onrushing hen parties. To be fair though, the song could have been officially the most annoying song of all time in the wrong hands, but in the end it's actually quite enjoyable bubblegum pop. Ok yes, it's still a bit annoying...

12:04 'When You Were Mine' is rubbish. Yes, I know that it was never going to have much of a chance, but they've taken a strange and spikey new wave pop song and liberally spunked Magic FM juice all over the production desk. Even Cyndi Lauper herself sounds almost disinterested at times (well, by her standards anyway, which is 'feverishly excited' to most people)

13:15 Ewwwwwwwww, whispered outro. Didn't the Geneva Convention define them as a justifiable act of war in 1998?

14:44 'Time After Time' now?? Well this is just hit after hit isn't it? Well, right up until the end of this song and I realise that I don't know any more Cyndi Lauper songs.

15:56 It's a nice little song though isn't it? No-one's pretending that it's 'Marquee Moon', but it may dull that constant hankering for self-obliteration for four minutes or so

17:31 Another whispered outro!!! One more of those and I'm writing to my MP

20:38 'She Bop', as the so-Cyndi-Lauper-you'd-probably-presume-she-was-taking-the-piss-is-you-chose-to-invest-her-with-that-kind-of-self-awareness title suggests, is pretty silly but enjoyable stuff

23:51 The synth solo at the end of 'All Through the Night' veers past annoying and into nauseating, but the rest of the song is a pretty expertly crafted mid-tempo pop ballad, one you'd imagine absolutely despising after the radio plays it 16 times an hour for about two months

28:17 It was actually the law during the mid-80s that every succesful pop album required at least one song that could be feasibly described as 'reggae-tinged' or as having 'a Caribbean flavour', hence 'Witness'

33:11 'I'll Kiss You, with its synth squelches, synthesised slap bass and lyrics about visiting Gypsies, probably sounded dated back in 1983. This kind of production was probably killed off by the advent of the Nintendo Entertainment System

35:09 'He's So Unusual', despite being just a 45 second music hall pastiche, almost made a smile break across the craggy facade that was once my face. No mean achievement.

38:04 'Yeah Yeah' is a slight train wreck of saxaphone solos, squeals and comedy Japanese voices which, admirably, Lauper's strength of personality manages to just about save from being an absolute embarrassment. And that's all folks!

A pretty much perfect example of 80s pop all told, there's nothing in it's 10 tracks you'd describe as filler, almost each and every track has you unintentionally humming along by the second chorus and when you learn that the first six tracks were released as singles those humungous sales start to make a lot of sense. I still wouldn't describe any of the tracks as classics, or even particularly great, but even on the songs that may have turned out to be absolute stinkers the power of Lauper's personality just about manages to carry them over the finish line. Will I listen to i again? Intentionally? I doubt it, but it was 38 minutes of unpretentious fun that didn't at any point make me want to stick needles in my eyeballs. A success, of sorts...

C

495: Husker Du- 'New Day Rising' (1985)

...ah thank God.

After nearly a week recovering from the horrors of Kiss, when I saw that this was the next album on the list I almost wept tears of relief. While most people would place the also-great 'Zen Arcade' above it as Husker Du's (I apologise in advance, but I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my time finding the umlaut on my keyboard) best album, I believe that the band semi-jettisoning their hardcore roots for a slightly more poppy sound produced easily their most enjoyable listen, and paved the way for Bob Mould's future career making ever so slightly twisted hard pop records. In the 'against' column however, there's always that horrendous accusation that the band had a larger part than most in creating what we now know as 'emo', so to some that may colour their affection of the band in a 'unproven child abuse' kind of way.

00:18 Christ, you do forget quite how loud Husker Du could be, the title track sounds like jumbo jets having angry sex

01:14 Few people can scream as well as Bob Mould though, he's definitely up there with the Frank Blacks of this world

02:04 This is all marvellously unhinged, and fantastically exciting as a result

03:28 'The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill', and most of this album in fact, is pretty much as good as guitar music

gets. Anyone thinking of forming a band should by law at least have a passing knowledge of this album

06:39 'I Apologise is a pretty useful blueprint for Bob Mould's next band Sugar

12:14 Would Bob Mould be more famous now if he hadn't so stubbornly refused to change what is possibly the most unattractive name in rock? He sounds less like one of the most influential figures in 80s alternative music and more like the Lib Dem counsellor for Swaffham

14:01 This media player tells you what percentage of a way through a track you are, how marvellously unnecessary. I'm currently 51.65% through 'Celebrated Summer'

16:05 Husker Du had a fantastic talent of somehow making essentially collections of buzzsaw guitars and strangulated yelps sound as melodic and poppy as The Supremes

19:39 It always baffled me when people ponder why it was REM who made it big rather than Husker Du, surely in terms of radio-friendliness it's like wondering why the Pet Shop Boys became big over Einsturzende Neubauten

20:35 Ok, a bit of an overstatement, but you get my drift

22:06 'Husker Du, Du, Du, Captain Beefheart ELO...'

23:35 '59 Times the Pain' is probably as close you're gonna get to describing Husker Du's sound in three minutes and eighteen seconds

26:03 I mean, he may as well call himself Ted Damp...

26:49 I do think he has a really underrated voice though

29:46 I can imagine that there's people out there who really resent 'Books About UFOs', and it does sound likes it's been airlifted from a completely different album (even by a completely different band), but I honestly think it's one of the most joyously perfect little pop songs ever written, and to hold absolutely anything against it is a spiteful crime akin to farting on a kitten's lunch.

32:26 In fact, I think the album takes a bit of a nosedive into almost wanton unlistenability after it ('I Don't Know What You're Talking About' excepted), almost like the band were overcompensating ever so slightly

33:26 Mick Clammy...

33:49 Actually, 'Mick Clammy' sounds pretty cool, you can imagine him being the bass player in X-Ray Spex

36:35 Listening to it now, 'Whatcha Drinkin' is actually a pretty good punk song, it just sounds a little generic compared to most of the songs preceding it

41:44 A taped studio conversation states- oh the japes!- that 'it's the last song on the album, nobody cares what it sounds like' and we're done...

A classic of it's genre (whatever that means, it's a classic in any genre) and hasn't lost one iota of ferocity in the near quarter century since its release. I'd be surprised if there weren't at least one other Husker Du album on this list, and it would be entirely deserved

More of the same next, pretty much: Cyndi Lauper

A

496: Kiss- 'Destroyer' (1976)

http://open.spotify.com/album/2oPeCzPDtjkm2Ux5r7edAb

Seriously, where do you start?


It's hard to dislike Kiss really, even if they're less a band and more of a strange mutated offspring of unchecked capitalism where nobody bats an eyelid when a group of paunchy middle-aged men turn up at your door- looking like they've just returned from a Dungeons and Dragons live role-playing game and decided to get their faces painted at the county fair on the way home-and try to sell you a pack of condoms with their faces on them. Gene Simmons is a postcard from a paralell universe where one man can dress up like Liberace's dungeon keeper, profess undying admiration for Margaret Thatcher, before showing off his admirably large tongue, spitting fake blood all over you and claim to have slept with over 1000 women. And he's the bass player. Gene Simmons will be 60 this year.


In a sense listening to Kiss's actual music is like going to a exhibition of Ronald McDonald's water colours, but there's a big part of me that knows I'm going to enjoy this record; I'm hardly expecting Brian Eno's 'Music for Airports', and I can pretty much guarantee you that I'll never have the inclanation to listen to this album again, but fuck it, it's Saturday afternoon and I'm adequately prepared to rock

00:30 It starts, like countless classic albums, with a radio report of a truck crash. The driver of the truck was uninjured in the collision

01:29 Strange sound effects, snatches of old Kiss songs...

02:30 I can now confirm to myself that 'Detroit Rock City' is a huge stinking turd of a song, I've never really given it enough attention before to make a fair and balanced judgement

04:24 Remember to vist http://www.Kiss.com/ and buy some official Kiss nasal spray, only $16.99

05;20 The song finishes with another car crash. These crazy Detroit drivers

06:15 Paul Stanley sings the chorus of 'King of the Night-time World' more like the king of Ovaltine and Radox baths, he has the singing voice of a man who's never stayed up past Crimewatch

08:33 Ok, both the opening tracks have been absolute pish. Onwards and upwards though, aye

09:08 Why on Earth would a song called 'God of Thunder' start with children shouting??

09:44 'I was raised by the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeemonns'

10:38 'I command you to kneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel before the God of Thundeeeeeeeeeer!'- this really is too ridiculous for words, it's going to be very hard to get through this album without mentioning Spinal Tap...

11:52 'I bring the dark to quease thee'- brilliant

12:51 Don't forget to visit http://www.kiss.com/ and book your official Kiss anti-natal classes, starting September, $245.66 a session

14:19 No, no, no, you can't seriously expect us to take a lighter-waving uber-ballad called 'Great Expectations' after we've just sat through 'God of Thunder'

15:30 Even Freddy Mercury might consider this a bit overwrought. Is that a childrens choir???

17:48 Most producers use a mixing desk, this one evidentally used a trowel, I think there's a song in there but...

18:51 After this, visit http://www.kiss.com/ and buy your very own official Kiss shoe-horn, only $12.84

20:15 Hehe, that song was called 'Flaming Youth'...

21:55 'Sweet pain': I personally don't think the world needs to hear Paul Stanley singing about S&M, but I guess it's too late now...

24:06 This is more like it!

24:24 'Shout it, shout it, shout it, shout it out loooud'!!!!!!!!! Finally I am awaken from my slumber, this is a classic slice of dim-rock

25:42 The air guitars are out now. Heeellllllllllllloooooooo Milton Keynes!

26:28 A piano, this can only be bad news

27:22 Words cannot describe the horror of 'Beth', it is truly, truly an abomination, I actually feel like I'm going to vomit

28:11 A fucking string section?? I thought this was a fucking Kiss album??? How are you supposed to vomit blood and spray fireworks from your crotch to this???

29:18 'You really like my limousine, you really like how the wheels roll'- wheels have other ways of rolling?? This is truly an insight into how the other half live...

29:36 'You like my seven inch.... platform heels'- very clever!

31:30 Have I mentioned http://www.kiss.com/? There's currently a sale on official Kiss colostomy bags, now just $45.52 for a box of 12

32:20 This song- quite literally- has bells on...

33:46 The album ends, in predictable preposterous and bewhildering fashion, with what sounds like a lazer fight in a football crowd, before that sodding childrens choir does a little reprise of 'Great Expectations'. Sweet Moses smell the roses

I'm not going to mince my words here; that was a unmitigated fucking turd-festival. I like a bit of pomposity and preposterousness (phew), and the odd ridiculously overblown ballad here and there isn't bad (although I draw the line at the horrendous 'Beth, which did at least twelve times as much damage to my health as the cigarette I smoked while listening to it), but apart from the (brilliant) 'Shout it Out Loud' the other 9 tracks didn't have half a tune between them, not even old tracks on the ground indicating a tune may have passed through days earlier, not even the encrusted droppings of a tune, not even a small mosquito of a tune, encased in amber, discovered millions of years later by curous scientists.

Kiss, you have wasted a half hour of my life, and I want it back

E-

497: Public Enemy- 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show' (1987)

http://open.spotify.com/album/1wiSjwzZjO3zt6VrUsATfC

Surprisingly low down this, you could make a decent shout for this being one of the most influential debut albums of the last 25 years (look out for my next blog, when I attempt to listen to Rolling Stone's '500 Greatest Debut Albums of the Last 25 Years'- my reaction on finding out number 1 is '1 Polish, 2 Biscuits and a Fish Sandwich' by the Outhere Brothers is a classic) and, while the production values on tracks such as the title track may leave some of the album sounding massively dated (not to mention the very occasional blast of casual misogyny which, depressingly, don't sound very dated at all) much of the album manages to retain its massive visceral impact and capacity to excite. Plus, in 'Timebomb' and 'Public Enemy No.1' it contains two of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time (even Puff daddy couldn't manage to make the latter sound bad). This is also the first album so far that I own, so this next 45 minutes is going to be more of a refresher course really

00:07 That intro to 'You're Gonna Get Yours' still sounds amazing

00:53 'Suckers to the side, I know you hate, my 98'- I've never been quite sure what a '98' is, a smaller version of a Mr. Whippy?

02:23 'My 98 automobile...'- that'll be it then

05:03 Aaaaaaaaaaah, 'Sophisticated Bitch', what a charming slice of good ol' fashioned woman-hating. To be fair, it's slightly incorrect to state that this kind of lazy sexism is endemic in a lot of hip-hop, when in fact it's endemic in a huge swathe of male-made music, from rock, to pop, to classical (Verdi's 'Rhapsody for a Skank Ho' being a case in point)

08:21 The AOR guitars date the song slightly too

08:31 'Yo Chuck, run a power move on them'- someone ran a power move on me once, it was most unpleasant. No-one's ever bum rushed my show though... Unless you count that one time in 1996... Shudder...

10:56 'Miuzi Weighs a Ton' sounds like a slowed down demo of the kind of furious white-noise of samples and mixing sound they'd pretty much perfect on their second album

13:09 The Outhere Brothers' Best-Of is called 'The Fucking Hits'

14:00 The Outhere Brothers have a Best-Of????

14:16 'Timebomb' is one of those fantastic songs that, on the surface, don't seem to do anything much at all- all it is is one tiny sample repeated ad infinitum with Chuck D rapping breathlessly over the top, no chorus, no break, no cow-bell solo (although that would've only improved it)- and yet somehow, magically and completely illogically, it sounds like an almost perfect pop song.

17:40 Aaaaaah, 'Too Much Posse'- the massively unhinged Flave Flav song that's as much an obligation on a Public Enemy album as the really, really rubbish Ringo song is on a Beatles album

19:05 'Too much posse' sounds like an odd complaint, I can't imagine that going down too well in the old west; 'Sorry Rattlesnake Bill, I know you wanna go and rescue my daughter from those Injuns too, but we've simply got too much posse, and you were the last to join...'

20:45 How amazing is 'Rightstarter'?? I'd completely forgot about it, I think this may qualify for a list of 'fantastic forgotton songs on classic albums' list. I'm on it...

22:48 'Mind over matter, mouth in motion, can't defy cos I'll never be quiet let's start this'- brilliant.

23:45 To be fair to 'Rightstarter', most songs that were sequenced one track before the monolithicly amazing 'Public Enemy No.1' are always likely to be forgotten'

23:55 'Monolithicly'???

24:45 I am completely, embarassingly in awe of this song like it was captain of the football team and I was the speccy bookworm who's never even held a boy's hand. Is there a more viscerally striking and complete statement of intent in the history of recorded music?

26:54 Well, yes, 'Cleopatra Comin Atcha' obviously...

27:03 'All you suckers, liars, you cheap amplifiers, your crossed up wires are always on fire...' Ah oui, oui oui!

28:48 'MPE' is a strange mix of classic PE sirens and turntable assault and minimal verses that actually make it sound more like 'I'm Bad' by LL Cool J. As I keep stating: this isn't necessarily a bad thing...

31:33 Chuck D wouldn't truly nail the incendiary politics and social commentary until the second album, a lot of his lyrics here are just classic rap bravado (usually about how heavy his uzi, funnily enough)

34:00 Actually, the title track doesn't sound half as dated as I remember it being (is that possible??), and is actually closer to the sound of their later, more complete, work than a lot of the tracks on the album

37: 41 The heavy metal guitars on 'Raise the Roof' have Rick Rubin's big hairy palm marks all over them

40:16 'At School I'm cool throughout the week'- I hear that

40:30 Did he say he's 'down with the Greek'??

43:25 'Megablast' is just bizarre

44:27 Backwards vocals... Did he just say 'worship satan and kill all your friends'????

44:48 Ah no, it actually says 'shop at Lidl', fucking sell-outs...

46:49 A spectacularly pointless instrumental, and we're done...

An album that absolutely still deserves to be called a classic, in my memory they was a lot more filler and dud tracks than there actually was, and the standard throughout is actually consistently very high. 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show's problem is that Public Enemy's next two albums raised the bar for what hip-hop could actually achieve so high that their debut can't help but sound like a dry run for what the band were about to achieve, but although it does suffer in comparsion to their later work (as would 99.9856124% of all other records) it can still stand up on its own as one of the greaest hip-hop albums of all time, and reaistically should be a lot higher in any definitive list of greatest albums.

Kiss next, from the sublime...

A

498: ZZ Top- 'Tres Hombres' (1973)

http://open.spotify.com/album/0Em8m9kRctyH9S3MTXAHvY

Aaaaaaaaaaaah ZZ Top, the Topmeisters, the Zizous, Zizop or just simply 'The Top', it doesn't matter how many nicknames you make up for them on the spot, for some strange reason they just kick all kinds of ass don't they?

It's the beards isn't it? It's those long, lucious, tick-fostering belly button ticklers for which you'd walk over hot coals just just to poke with a tiny stick while squealing 'BEARDY BEARDY BEADY!' to yourself. Just me?

And guess what the only one without a beard's called? Go On? have a guess which one of ZZ Top is the only one not to have a BEARD while both the other two BEARDed gentlemen quite clearly have BEARDs??? Give up? It's Sylvester Cunningham...

I jest of course! it's Frank BEARD! Oh praise the lord for such bountiful gifts!

Of course, I'm under no illusions as to what this album will be like; I can only remember ever hearing three ZZ Top songs- 'La Grange', which is fucking brilliant, 'Gimme all your loving, which isn't, and 'Sharp dressed Man', which I can't actually remember very much at all, and I've braced myself for 'Tres Hombres' being 'La grange' plus 9 other songs which aren't as good as 'La grange' but sound remarkably similar. I mean c'mon, they're one misjudged hair-replacement advert away from being the American Status Quo, but I love them all the same, and this is at least going to be fun.

00:43 I'll be honest, I didn't expect my first thought to be 'Hmmmm, 'Love is the drug' by Roxy Music', that Bryan Ferry is a thieving Charlaton! And a massive tit too, but I'm sure there'll be time for that later...

03:06 I have a sudden urge to go out and buy a Stetson and some tight Levis Strauss...

04:41 Thankfully, on the basis of the albums first two tracks, the band seem to have packed the tunes as well as the boogie into that cow-skin suitcase of their's. Is that a melody I hear?

06:22 I have it on good authority that Billy Gibbons rider includes two big cow-pies, with the antlers coming out of the pastry and everything. Oh, and a mechanical bull, otherwise he's just not going on stage

08:10 This isn't quite as exciting as a song called 'Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers' should be, but it's hard to supress an urge to grab a nearby tennis racket and pose in front of the mirror

08:35 Isn't cow pie just steak pie?? That Desperate Dan's a fucking bullshitter if you ask me, you wouldn't call your sausages 'pig-tubes' would you?

09:34 From now on I'm calling all my sausages 'pig-tubes'

10:21 Shock! AC/DC nicked the riff off 'Shoot to Thrill' straight from 'Master of Sparks'! Everything I believe is wrong...

12:54 Listening to 'Master of Sparks', the similarities to Queens of the Stone Age become a lot more apparant and you begin to understand why Josh Homme rates the band so highly,

13:26 It's a sign of the times that I read 'Hot, Blue and Righteous' as 'Hot, Blue and Ringtones'

14:20 The song itself however is a slight and unfortunate right turn toward 'dad-rock'. It also sounds a lot like the more, ahem, 'radio-friendly' songs on the last Kings of Leon album

17:17 'Move Me On Down the Line' = The Foo Fighters. This is fun, like an FM rock word association game

18:42 Billy Gibbons was Jimi Hendrix's favourite guitarist, funnily enough

19:58 'Precious and Grace' brings up predictable nausea that I get every time I hear something resembling a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song

22:34 'La Grange' is such a brilliant song, the aural equilavalent of a silver Jack Daniels belt buckle worn by Robert Mitchum.

25:39 None of the songs here outstay their welcome by a second, which I can imagine getting more and more rare the deeper I get into the 70s

27:24 Pork chops are 'pig-hammers', gammon's a 'pig-frisbee'

28:18 Two minutes in, 'Shiek' hasn't quite decided what it wants to do yet. It might want to hurry up

33:35 The slight anti-climax of 'Have you Heard' and it's by-the-numbers boogie comes to a close, and it's time at the bar gentlemen please.

A pleasant surprise, if I'm being honest, while the wheel remains resolutely un-reinvented, it's a simple, unpretentious collection of very decent songs, and, may this may sound ridiculous considering it's little more than classic American barband blues, there was actually a lot more variety than I was expecting. easily the first album I've listened to on this list whioch I might imagine being one of the best 500 of all time. 1000 at least...

And besides, it's over in half an hour, so even if you hate it it'll be finished before you know it

B