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

One of the things I always find lamentable about Kent is the lack of a quality music scene. Sure, you’d get odd bits and pieces at the Tunbridge Wells Forum, but that was about it for the entire county outside of unknown local bands playing in dodgy bars every now and again. It always amazed me how Canterbury, a city with a large student population, didn’t have any real full-time venue for indie music.

Welcome The Farmhouse. It’s about damn time.

The Farmhouse is operated by the same people that run Canterbury’s Lounge on the Farm festival, an event that is now entering it’s fourth year. The venue has actually been up and running for a while now, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to get down there.

The thing that most struck me upon entering was how unlike a typical venue it was. Sure, it had the usual bar, posters and tiny stage in the corner. But also sofas, a ton of tables and hell, even flowers in the toilets. See, the place is only a live music venue after 9pm. All day, it’s a restaurant, and it retains the laid back feel that comes with that right through the night.

First band on were The Goodtimes from Southend. They started things off pretty well too. Nothing sensationally original granted, but solid, fun rock and roll that kicks off the night perfectly. Next up were local Rochester band The Mind Without Maths. If I’m honest, they weren’t entirely my cup of tea, but they were decent enough.

Finally, and getting close to midnight before even stepping on stage, it was Sky Larkin’s turn. Now Sky Larkin are a band that I have been following on here for the best part of three years now. In that time they have gone from being an unsigned band with a few good songs to a signed band who has released their first album, toured all over the place and even supported the likes of Broken Social Scene and Conor Oberst.

This was the second time I’d seen them the live. That time they were a support to Los Campesinos! but two years later they are enough to attract a crowd themselves. The set itself is of course made up mostly of songs from their recent album The Golden Spike. Songs like Antibodies, Fossil, I and Keepsakes all come across particularly well, even if the last struggled with a minor incident instrument failure (see tweet below). The band seem much more rounded than that last time too, the three of them managing to fill the room with a melodic racket.

weareskylarkin twitter
Scoreboard tonight; 1 Stevie nicks style dancing injury, 1 broken 45yr old snare skin, 1 bottle vin rouge, 1 van rouge. Canterbury roolz kx

Upcoming gigs at The Farmhouse include Jeremy Warmsley, Maths Class and Eben. Details here.

It took me a little while to come around to Sky Larkin’s debut album The Golden Spike. Perhaps it was being a little too familiar with a bunch of the songs, or that the production was rather more polished than on anything they had done previously. Time has worked in it’s favour though, and it now feels like a record that will probably be amongst my favourites of the year.

With that in mind, this is the video for the second single for the album. It’s pretty straightforward, with the band playing first on dry land and then in the middle of a mud pit. And that’s about it. Still, not every video needs to be high concept, and in an odd kind of way it does seem to suit the song reasonably well.

In one of the stranger lineup choices I’ve seen for a while, the band will soon be back in the UK as a support act for The Rakes of all people. I like both bands, but something about that combination just seems strange to me. Oh, and while we’re at it, here is previous single Fossil, I, which I thought I had posted in the past, but it seems I never got beyond the video.

Antibodies will presumably be released as a single soon via Wichita, but there doesn’t seem to be a date. In a rare miracle of a decent band playing in Kent, Sky Larkin will be playing at The Farmhouse in Canterbury on May 8.

Talk about your unwieldy band names. Getting the right amount of anananana is bad enough, but then there’s the double header of Aykroyd not being the simplest name to spell either. The funny thing is that the music fits the name. If you’d asked me beforehand what I’d think a band called Dananananaykroyd would sound like, I’d go with loud and fast. And that’s exactly what we have.

The thing that takes one aback about Glasgow’s Dananananaykroyd is just how loud and fast it is. The vocals jump straight in, not sung, but fucking shouted. A dual assault of two drummers quickly follows. None of this is an opening gambit, nor is it limited to the song. This is the sound of desperate for you to hear them. This is the sound of a band that makes even labelmates Johnny Foreigner sound relaxed.

The risk with music like this is whether or not it can work in a full album setting. It’s easy to run dry when you use up this much fuel in just three minutes. A bunch of singles and an EP show they are on the right track. We’ll find out in a month if their ability matches their ambition, but they certainly seem willing to try.

Hey Everyone! will be released on April 8 by Best Before. The band is also participating in new WTFblog Awesome Pals, alongside Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin, Johnny Foreigner, Favours for Sailors and a bunch of others. In other words, the entire good end of the British music scene.

Oh Johnny Foreigner, the only band to put out a record last year that I enjoyed more than either of the Los Campesinos! records. Quite an impressive feat given there is only three of them when the other lot have seven. Even more impressive given their album, Waited Up Til It Was Late was largely made up of older, re-recorded songs. Nearly two and a half years down the line though, they still sound as fresh as they ever did.

Of course, it’s still lovely to hear some new material, so it was a nice surprise last week when the band threw up a zip file on their Myspace page containing two new songs: Ghost the Festivals and Ohai, Sentinels. The first has been around for a while now, both in live sets and a couple of videos out there in Youtubeland, but it’s nice to have proper recordings. The production may be a little rough around the edges, but I’d expect nothing less.

Ghost the Festivals manages to sum up my own experiences at Reading last year, but I imagine the language is pretty universal. From escaping the site before the riots on the final night to the endless sea of tents to hanging out in the VIP area with free drinks. Although I must have been doing something wrong as my drinks certainly weren’t free. £2.50 for a tiny glass of Coke? Jesus.

There isn’t anything particularly new in these songs. When you hit the perfect formula with your first album, I suppose it makes sense to keep it up. Which is fine with me. So long as the next record is even half as good as the first, it’ll still probably be the best thing released this year.

Johnny Foreigner Is Aces (containing both Ghost the Festivals and Ohai, Sentinels) is available to download from the band’s Myspace page for the next ten days or so. Both songs are also on an exclusive tour EP that the band will be touting during their European tour with the mighty Sky Larkin.

One of the things I find to be most appealing about Sky Larkin is how unlike a rock band they seem. I’m not knocking their music at all, but they always seem to come across as normal people that just want to play good songs. This video for their upcoming single Fossil, I does little to disprove that, showing the band playing on a street corner while no one really pays any attention. Oh, and amps start floating through the air. As they do.

Fossil, I will be released via Wichita Recordings on October 20.

Great British Hopes features the rare new British bands that don’t make me want to go deaf.

The mighty Wichita Recordings have recruited another into their already daunting ranks with the signing of Sky Larkin. The Leeds band have been floating around critics’ radars for some time now, but it’s taken until now for them to find a home. This now means that their first full length abum will be arriving sometime in the near future, with it recently being recorded in New York.

Molten, previously a single, is one of the songs on it, and while not their strongest work lyrically, it does give a good sample of the Sky Larkin sound. The guitars are rough, noise drops in and out constantly, and vocals occasionally shout from the background. It’s a hell of a lot of noise for only three people to making really.

Now how about touring again with fellow Wichita band Los Campesinos! to flog both of their albums? Just saying.

Los Campesinos!
Sky Larkin
Kate Nash
The Indelicates
Johnny Foreigner

What do all of these artists have in common? It isn’t that they are all great, even if that is indeed the case. It’s that I am a big fan of all of them and yet I don’t own a single thing that they have released. Why not? Because all of their releases are on vinyl.

Technically Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin and Kate Nash haven’t actually released anything yet, but in the coming weeks they will all release debut singles. All of these will be on the 7″ format. I don’t know a great deal about how the industry works on a financial level, but can someone explain to me exactly why this is the case? Surely a CD is far cheaper to produce than vinyl, and surely more people have access to CD players than to record players. So what possible reason is there for cutting out a chunk of the market?

You could argue that there is always a digital alternative as most of these songs will made available as downloads at the same time. I’m sorry though, but the day I pay £1 for a DRM infested piece of crap from iTunes will be the day that I’m done with music. It isn’t an elitist “I want a tangiable product” thing, however nice that is. I understand that for small bands digital distribution is a fantastic thing, and would support it, if only I could do whatever I wanted with the songs I’d paid for on whatever devices I choose to.

All of which leaves me with no legal means with which to obtain releases from the above artists. This essentially forces my hand into downloading copies, which really doesn’t help anybody. It’s actually getting to the point where I’m considering getting a basic record player (and whatever I’d need to rip them to mp3) just to be able to get hold of these releases. Which all seems a bit silly in this day and age.

So can anyone explain this to me? Is there a good reason for the upsurge in vinyl releases? Am I missing out on something spectacular?

#19
Emmy The Great
‘Paper Trails’

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Myspace

I’ve really tried to get into the music of Emmy the Great, but I can’t seem to do it. Maybe I’ve been hearing the wrong songs or something, but all of the tracks that I’ve picked up from various blogs haven’t done very much for me. All except this one anyway. It’s quite a feat for an artist I don’t particularly like to get to get a song in my top 20 songs of the year, but ‘Paper Trails’ somehow gets there. I can’t even tell you what it is that I like about it. Possibly the song itself, but it makes so little sense that it’s probably not. It could be her voice, but if it is, why don’t I like her other songs? It’s all very confusing really. Rest assured that this is a fine song though, and certainly worthy of it’s place here.

#18
Sky Larkin
‘Keepsakes’

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I wrote earlier on in the year that ‘Keepsakes’ was one of my favourite songs of the year, and the fact it’s made this list confirms that very little has changed. It’s not their most complex song, but it’s the one that I’ve enjoyed more than any of the others in the past year. There’s something a little creepy about the whole thing, but it’s mainly just an outlet for Katie’s increasingly powerful voice.

#17
Play Radio Play
‘Jello’

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The first time that I heard the early parts of ‘Jello’ I genuinely thought that I was listening to The Postal Service. Nearly everything comes across as uncannily similar: the song structure, the random electronic bits and the vocal is pretty much a perfect Gibbard. Of course, this leads to an ineviatble question of why I’m including a song so highly here if it’s just a rip-off of another band. I’m not even sure if I can answer that question entirely though. I just really like the song. It’s simplistic and some of the words are a little awkward, but it’s just incredibly catchy.

#16
The Light Footwork
‘Coastlines Are Landmines’

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The Light Footwork seemed to arrive entirely out of nowhere with an already perfected sound. Primarily the creative outlet for Jay Underwood and Becca Wilhelm, they combine the musical sounds of Beulah with the songwriting finesse of Stephen Malkmus. If I was putting together an album list for the year, there is no doubt that their debut release, ‘One State Two State’ would feature very highly, if not in the number one position. I don’t think I’ve played any other complete albums as consistantly in the past year. Anyway, ‘Coastlines Are Landmines’ is just one standout song on an incredible album.

#15
The Elected
‘It Was Love’

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“I’m still not a big fan of ‘Sun, Sun, Sun’, but this song is just about my favourite of any song that The Elected have put out. If there’s one thing Blake Sennett can do well, it’s sounding melancholy while doing his best Elliott Smith impression. An entirely depressing story about two people who stay together because they know no better (”I just put up with you / Kid, I stayed because you wouldn’t leave”). I don’t know if it’s supposed to be positive or not when Blake describes this time as “It was love / Or at least the closest I got”, but it certainly doesn’t seem that way even if it’s supposed to be.” – originally posted June 2.

#14
Pony Up!
‘What’s Free Is Yours’

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I discovered Pony Up! toward the end of the year, and have since obtained a lot of their material. To be perfectly honestly, a lot of it isn’t all that interesting to me. What is interesting to me though are perfect pop songs, and ‘What’s Free Is Yours’ certainly falls into that category. An upbeat song from a slightly bitter woman who is changing her perception of the past to make the guy she’s broken up with seem like the bad guy (“I don’t believe / you’d be here if you could / But then again / you never said you would / I make up promises you never made”). It’s this perfect capturing of the quirky little things that people do that allow Pony Up! to have some fantastic songs. They just need seeking out amongst all the rest.

#13
Pocketbooks
‘Cross The Line’

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“‘Cross the Line’ is the first song released from their new batch of recordings, and it’s easily cemented itself in place as one of my favourites of the year so far. Full of lovely imagery (it opens with “I’m asleep on a train on the Zone 2 boundary”) and basically continues as a back and forth conversation between the male and female vocalists. This takes on a nicely self-aware twist when she starts calling him on the honesty of his lyrics (”As a kid I would run through the fields and orchards” / “What about your hayfever though?” / “I’d climb the branches to the top” / “What, with your vertigo?” / “Look, I’m making all this up”). Extra points also have to be awarded for being the first song I’m aware of that actually slots in the term “Oyster card” without being entirely tacky.” – originally posted November 4.

#12
Beeches
‘Make Your Own Luck’

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Proclaimed as “a fucking excellent song” by at least one attendee gig Beeches played for AFoR a month ago, ‘Make Your Own Luck’ is my favourite song of theirs and one of the best I’ve heard this year. Musically it comes across as a crazy drunk person, jumping from energetic bursts of aggression to slowed down gentle parts and back again. Lyrically, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Essentially the story of man singing to his new step daughter after he met her mother at “the filming of Trisha” before they “married on Kilroy”. Of course, it’s all rather whimsical, but who can resist it when it leaps into high gear for the second time?

#11
Jenny Owen Youngs
‘Fuck Was I’

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Firmly a part of my “big in 2007″ list is Jenny Owen Youngs, something that was made stronger by a recent signing to Canadian indie label Nettwerk, who will be re-releasing her 2005 album ‘Batten The Hatches’ early next year. Despite initially being kind of indifferent to it, ‘Fuck Was I’ quickly became one of my favourite songs of the year. Pretty much the anthem of any breakup, mournfully looking back and asking “what the fuck was I thinking?” All sung by a wonderful voice with a gentle strings arrangement in the background, sad songs really don’t come much better than this.

#10
Born Ruffians
‘This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life’

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The world has been decidedly short of slacker anthems since the loss of Pavement, so a song like this from Canada’s Born Ruffians fills in the void perfectly. Two and a half loud, noisy minutes about the things the singer wants from life (a girl, nice car, a meaning to his life) while seemingly accepting that he’s too lazy to do anything about it. This certainly isn’t an epiphany song, more one that proclaims what will never be had. Making the whole thing rather a downer to be honest.

And with that we’re down to the final nine songs that make up best songs of 2006. In my opinion of course. If you read the blog regularly you can probably guess a few of the songs that will make up the top end of the chart, but hopefully there will be a couple of surprises in there too. Be sure to come back tomorrow to find out what they are.

I know I didn’t do a ‘Way Back Whensday’ feature yesterday. I haven’t abandoned it after only two weeks, I just don’t have the time to do both it and one of these countdown posts on the same day. Rest assured it’ll be returning next week when we’re be back to having very little else to write about.

#29
The Young Republic
‘Modern Plays’

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One of my favourite discoveries of the past year or so was The Young Republic. In fact, they were one of the bands I wanted to babble about that indirectly prompted me into starting this thing, and they become the first band I ever wrote about. Now I don’t know if ‘Modern Plays’ is actually from 2006 as I’m thinking that the EP it’s from was released late in 2005, but it’s one of the songs that I’ve played the most in the last year, so it makes the list. While it was easy in the early days to assign The Young Republic a label of being like Belle & Sebastian, they have grown far more abstract with each release. This song even manages to have a mini jam session in the middle of it, which still all comes together again for one final round of the chorus. About as perfect as indie folk pop can get.

#28
The Indelicates
‘New Art For The People’

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The Indelicates is largely the project of Simon and Julia Indelicate, which may not be of a great deal of interest. What might be though is that Julia used to be a part of The Pipettes before departing the band sometime last year. This is what led me to The Indelicates, and the most fun part of it all is that they are the far better band. It’s hard to pigeonhole them as each song seems to sound so different to the last, but what we’ve got here are a lot of witty, down to earth lyrics sung by a gruff male voice and a sweet female one. ‘New Art For The People’ is the best example of this, a charming tale about two people who really don’t like each other but stay together in a band because they are successful. With it’s back and forth deliveries and rising final section, it all comes across a little bit like a modern version of ‘Fairytale of New York’.

#27
Sky Larkin
‘Traits and Traitors’

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Sky Larkin are one of the British “success stories” of 2006, and that will hopefully continue through 2007. Through a bunch of great songs on their Myspace page to gigging the hell out of their native Leeds and London, the band have built up quite a formiddable following. ‘Traits and Traitors’ is one of their darker songs, all moody arrangements and refined vocals. Big things loom for 2007, including a release of their debut single, ‘One of Two’ in January and a small tour with fellow AFoR favourite Los Campesinos! in March.

#26
Voxtrot
‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’

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What can I say about Voxtrot that hasn’t already been said? They have pretty much dominated indie blogs over the past year and now seem to be crossing over into the mainstream. I still think that the ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP is better than the ‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’ one, but this song still stands out entirely. Trying to find a band that could craft songs in a finer manner than Voxtrot would be an almost impossible task. The words, the textures, the depth. All perfect.

#25
I’m From Barcelona
‘We’re From Barcelona’

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Coming off like a rather less creepy version of The Polyphonic Spree, the 29 members of Sweden’s I’m From Barcelona (go figure) simply bring pop songs that are full of joy. Incredibly simplistic pop songs at that take. Take introduction song ‘We’re From Barcelona’ for example: it only actually has eight lines that it just repeats a couple of times. But who really cares when it all sounds as gleeful as this? If you’re not singing along to “love is a feeling that we don’t understand / but we’re gonna give it to you” within a couple of plays, you’re dead inside.

#24
Cansei De Ser Sexy
‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’

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The second song from CSS to make our list, and by far their strongest. It runs the risk of being overrun by the style over substance thing and it’s almost too post-modern for it’s own good, but it sounds too good to dislike. It’s all sultry vocals and overblown synth with a nod and a wink, but that’s what makes CSS so much fun in the first place. It even manages to have a little Death From Above 1979 style breakdown in the middle of it, just to make music geeks like me happy. One of the best videos of the year too.

#23
Human Television
‘I Laughed’

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I’ve loved Human Television since their ‘All Songs Written By’ EP nearly four years ago, and thought for some time that they were destined to do nothing more than those seven lovely songs. Then out of nowhere a new album appeared, led by ‘I Laughed’, which proved that hadn’t skipped a beat in the gap in between and had maybe picked up a couple of new ones. Nothing is all that different from the EP with it’s gentle guitar and smooth harmonies, but the songwriting has certainly improved, and an addition of a female vocalist to the mix does them no harm at all.

#22
The Besties
‘Prison Song’

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I’ve been meaning to write about The Besties for the longest time, but never seemed to get around to actually typing anything. This means they are probably only one of only a handful of bands that have made this list without anything more substantial on the site. For those unfamiliar, The Besties are a three-piece twee pop band from Brooklyn. All of their songs tell adorable little stories, and ‘Prison Song’ is at the forefront of these. Harmonies, melodies and nice little lyrics rule the day here.

#21
Los Campesinos!
‘Death To Los Campesinos!’

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I’ve already prattled on about Cardiff’s Los Campesinos! over and over, so there isn’t very much more that I can add here. They are easily in my list of the top five bands of the year, and all of that is based on a four song EP entitled ‘Hold On Now Youngster’. Four songs of perfect pop bliss full of all of the elements I love, their next twelve months should be fascinating to watch. Only forming early in 2006, they were propelled into the limelight and were garnering label interest before they had even played ten gigs. They signed to Wichita (home of Bloc Party) at the end of the year, and a double a-side debut single (‘We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives’ / ‘Don’t Make Me Do The Math(s)’) is to follow in the new year.

#20
Shake My Hand
‘Invincible’

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Another band to come out of the seemingly unstoppable Cardiff music scene is Shake My Hand. I actually wrote about these guys earlier on in the year, but they were called Yossarian back then. I’m not entirely sure on the reason for the name change, but it doesn’t matter as they still sound just as good. Wonderfully simple songs about mundane things (“Fancy a cup of tea? / Fuck, we’ve got no milk / Ben, d’you fancy going down the shop?”) all delivered in the kind of bored vocal style that makes The Rakes so enjoyable.