Getting to the middle of the year; time to take stock and think what sort of year its' been so far. A quick squint at itunes suggests that I've added about 30 albums released in 2007 to my collection. And not many duff ones to be honest.
Top 3 to date
Grinderman: One of my favourite Nick Cave albums. Raucous, urgent - the sound of a man raging against his own mortality. And I disagree with Tom; I think the cover is great - as was the discussion on the AV club review as to what the monkey is doing.
LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver I find it very hard to think this will be topped as my album of the year. James Murphy is on top of his game - very much like Bright Eyes or Sufjan Stevens over the last couple of years. It will surely feature highly in many of the Sherwood OCC end of year compilations; there's not a weak song on the album. The Franz Ferdinand/Erol Alkan version of All My Friends on the single is well worth a listen. Also try the unofficial sounds like silver remix.
Malcolm Middleton: A Brighter Beat. In a year when I've been listening to a lot of Scots miserablism (Mogwai, Arab Strap, Sister Vanilla), this is the pick. A pop album for people who hate pop music? Maybe. It's dour stuff - maybe a little less dark than Into the Woods - but any album with song titles like We're All Going To Die, Death Love Depression Love Death and Fuck It I Love You isn't going to be a barrel of laughs.
Also enjoyed: The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Bright Eyes: Cassadaga, Tracey Thorn: Out of the Woods
Two recent purchases I'm not yet sure about - Digitalism: Idealism. I like the Digitalism in Cairo re-edit of The Cure's Fire in Cairo, although it's taking a while for the album to grow on me. The White Stripes: Icky Thump. The title track and Little Cream Soda are classic White Stripes, but as a whole the album hasn't yet grabbed me in the same way White Blood Cells and Elephant did.
Biggest Disappointments:
Fairport's Sense of Occasion. With the exception of a good cover of XTC's Love on a Farmboy's Wages, this is Fairport doing it by numbers. A far better momento of their 40 years is the Live at the BBC boxed set, which, whilst not universally strong, reminds you what a great band they were at their Swarbrick, Denny, Thompson et al peak.
Royksopp: Back to Mine. I've bought some good compilations this year - Hot Chip' s DJ Kicks, In the Mind of Nitin Sawhney, Nouvelle Vague's Late Night Tales, Mark Ronson's Version. But this is cheesy and badly mixed.
Best Live Downloads:
Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines at Manchester - here and here
Mogwai at Grunspan
The "how did I not get into this band before" discovery:
Stereolab. They're influenced by Kraftwerk, Krautrock and Bacharach. They've got Moog synths and female vocals often in French. Honestly, how has this band passed me by?
1 comment:
Yes I would certainly have thought that Stereolab would have crossed your path before now! I love French Disko, but after that I rather run out of enthusiasm. They are one of those bands whose influences become jaw droppingly obvious a long time after first encountering them - When I heard the first Neu! album, it was very clear that Stereolab were massive fans.
Similarly, When I heard Halleluwah by Can, the Happy Mondays seemed suddenly far less original than I thought at first, and have clearly based an entire career on that one song.
Your pick of the year so far is very similar to mine, at least in terms of Grinderman, Malc Middleton, LCD Soundsystem...though I would add The Fall, Findlay Brown and Meg Baird to that list. A couple of LPs that are good by anyone else's standards, but disappointing by the high standard set by their predecessors - Nick Lowe and Richard Thompson.
Still, it's been a good year so far, and boring white boys guitar bands are few and far between. Heard the new Maximo PArk cd the other day - boring. All these Maximo Athlete Party Interpol bastards are really outstaying their welcome..
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