Another Form of Relief

When I was first approached by BBC Music to put together a list of albums I think should be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I was initially hesitant. First of all because I don’t much care for awards, and if I’m honest, have never paid attention to the Mercury Prize. Secondly, because I hardly ever listen to complete albums these days. I want to be an elitist snob and pretend that I do, but most of my music is absorbed via an iPod on shuffle.

Throwing around the year’s music in my head though, I realised that it’s actually been a bloody good year for British music. I initially came up with a couple of albums, then a couple more, and it kept going from there. In the interests of brevity, I’ve limited the final tally to seven exceptional albums and a handful of honourable mentions at the end. I don’t expect a single one of these to actually be nominated for the prize, but hey, I’m happy to be proved wrong.

God Help The Girl – God Help The Girl

Okay, so it’s not a radical departure for the Belle & Sebastian mould for Stuart Murdoch’s solo/side/whatever project, but that’s no bad thing. It’s not often these days that albums tend to tell a complete story, and that is what we have here. Ably held together by Catherine Ireton and an array of guests, it’s not absolutely perfect – the Funny Little Frog cover is especially misguided – but it unashamedly embraces the album format when everyone else seems to be fleeing from it.

MP3 God Help The Girl – Come Monday Night

Dananananaykroyd – Hey Everyone!

I’m under no illusions that the prize would ever get near an album like this, but that doesn’t make it any less deserving. To find a band with this much energy on stage is rare enough in itself, but to get the same urgency on record is near impossible. Dananananaykroyd manage it, giving us one of the finest debut albums in years. It’s loud, it’s messy, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

MP3 Dananananaykroyd – Pink Sabbath

Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura give us three out of three so far for the Scots. It felt like Camera Obscura had reached their peak with their previous album Let’s Get Out Of This Country. Then My Maudlin Career pops up and blows it out of the water with it’s beautifully textured songs. It’s taken more than a decade, but this is the album Camera Obscura were destined to make.

MP3 Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

Emmy the Great – First Love

Out of all of the albums on this list, I’d imagine First Love is the one most likely to turn up on any Mercury lists if any of them do. I can’t quite pinpoint why, but Emmy does seem to fit the slightly left of the centre singer-songwriter style that seems to have made the lists in previous years. The album is a grower for sure, but there is some stunning songwriting on display here. Emmy has only barely scratched the surface of what she is capable of.

MP3 Emmy the Great – We Almost Had A Baby

Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Los Campesinos! remain the most posted band on this blog, and rightly so. Coming out with a good first album and then following it up with one of the best albums of the year within six months is no mean feat. Evolving beyond the “tweexcore” fun of the first, this is an album that actually has emotional depth and philosophy added to the proceedings. All while still continuing to sound like quite nothing else that’s around at the moment.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Thomas Tantrum – Thomas Tantrum

Thomas Tantrum pick up right where the dearly missed Life Without Buildings left off. Rough, random songs jump all over the place, but the appeal here is in the voice of Megan Thomas. Breezily floating between gentle and slightly unhinged, she gives the songs an unpredictable air. That their debut album is so strong is all the more impressive given they were a pretty mediocre live band only a year earlier.

Video Thomas Tantrum – Work It

Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland

Seems only fitting that we end with yet another Scottish album, resulting in them making up more than half of the list. It’s taken Aidan Moffat a little while to find the project that suits him after Arab Strap split, but The Best Ofs seems to be it. Allowing his songwriting and voice to be front and centre plays right into his strengths and results in an album more consistent than anything he and Middleton put out.

MP3 Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde

Honourable mentions
Fanfarlo – Reservoir
It Hugs Back – Inside Your Guitar
Ballboy – I Worked On The Ships
Sky Larkin – The Golden Spike

Okay, so that project is basically a video designed to hype Middleton’s new solo record Waxing Gibbons. Which means the title may have been some kind of bait and switch. Sorry about that.

Now I’m not exactly sure what this is supposed to be. It’s not serious enough to be a proper documentary. But it’s more than your usual puff-piece EPK fodder too. Middleton talks openly about his career and the kind of music he writes, while others (including Moffat and King Creosote) pipe in with various observations. Some are supportive (“His voice absolutely sums up pish weather”), others not so much (“Aidan’s got a solo career while Malcolm is just nosediving.”). It’s all good fun, and certainly a hell of a lot more entertaining than most of these advert pieces usually turn out.

The album itself is solid, but nothing really different from what one would expect Middleton. Maybe it really is time to try making that heavy metal album.

Waxing Gibbons is out now on Full Time Hobby.

I haven’t paid much attention to Aidan Moffat since Arab Strap broke up. I kept up with Malcolm Middleton reasonably well, and once you’ve picked one child over the other, it’s hard to go crawling back. In fact, the last I heard about Moffat he was recording under some dodgy name like Psychometric Dildo or something. I might be wrong on that*, but for some reason it feels right.

So I wasn’t exactly excited when an Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs file dropped into my inbox. Expecting some kind of spoken word dirge, my first thought was something along the lines of “holy shitting hell, this sounds cheerful”. The only problem with that is that Moffat does not have a voice built for cheerful. When your range extends from melancholy to suicidal (not a criticism!), something seems off when you bring the whimsy.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this really. It’s certainly not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It ambles along nicely, barely reaching two minutes, meaning it hardly outstays it’s welcome. But something isn’t quite right. Maybe I’m too nostalgic for the Strap of old, but this doesn’t really do much for me. Which may beg the question of exactly why I’m bothering to post it. Honestly, because the video (found below the jump) is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Aidan Moffat related fun facts!
1. He writes a highly amusing advice column entitled I’m No Expert.
2. I once sold a book to Aidan Moffat. He is unaware of this fact.

How To Get To Heaven From Scotland was released last Saturday via Chemikal Underground Records.

* If I am, that’s one hell of a band name right there.

Continue reading Aidan Moffat: One hell of a mime