Although in many ways this wasn't a completely new album, a number of the tracks had surfaced in various guises, for instance the opening track and maybe instant standout track Just Do It was previously a B-Side to single Dinosaur Egg, other tracks featured as foreign bonus tracks on other albums. And yet this still remained a precious collection of songs from a very special girl. Capable of sounding sweet as an angel and then as dark black can get.
Many tracks stood out, for me personally the hectic dynamics of both Calcination and Cherry Cheek Bomb made them instant winners alongside the less obvious big muff infected boggy sound of Strip Me Pluto, the dank muddy sound of the guitar was a perfect compliment to her oh so perfect vocals.
I fear that i will never get bored of this girl. A live performance earlier this year only helped to reaffirm that. Certainly one of my proudest discoveries.
For her sixth album, Scout Niblett once again teams up with producer Steve Albini, resulting in a series of recordings that's perhaps even more spartan and bold in its arrangements than anything she's done before. Much of the album is pared down to just Niblett's own voice and a skeletal electric guitar accompaniment, but the tactic could hardly be more effective: the likes of 'Just Do It' and 'IBD' are uncannily absorbing, hooking you in with their heavily charged atmospherics. Albini is surely the perfect collaborator for Scout Niblett, keeping her sound pristine but mercilessly free of any sort of conventional post-production traits. Calcination isn't entirely made up from voice and guitar however, and there are plenty of moments where minimal drum parts erupt from the quiet. 'Cherry Cheek Bomb' and 'Ripe With Life' both embrace fuzz-wrenching grungey outbursts while 'Lucy (Lucifer)' ditches guitar altogether, instead shaping a song - at times onomatopoeically - on the thrashing of drums and cymbals. Highly recommended.
Another one of those bands who's sound fits in incredibly well with the snowy weather. Each note sounding like a drop of snow settling wherever it can find itself a home.
It's not quite grabbed me as much as Kurr did, arguably one of the prettiest albums ever, however it's still incredibly beautiful material. The singles stand out, particularly What Are Waiting For which features more actual vocal presence, as in actual words, than I believe I've previously ever heard. And whereas vocals on mainly instrumental bands tracks normally turns me right off, this is done so well that you could be forgiven for thinking that this was múm at their very best.
Púsl and Mambó twinkle like we've come to expect from Amiina, chiming away like your mothers music box and somehow always reminding me of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier". In the Sun is pure antonym of its own name, icy and Icelandic in sound, with occasional approving glances expected from the likes of Vashti Bunyan and Efterklang if their wasn't so many of them or if simply major record labels did not exist.
Sicsak is darker and perhaps perfects the sound that I wished and that Textile Ranch once threatened to make on a consistent basis.
Go take a walk in the snow with this as your companion, you will not be disappointed.
As most of you probably know, Icelandic orchestral poppers Amiina used to be part of Sigur Ros in another life and despite not having worked with the band for a few years now, the influence of the epic post-rockers is still often evident. That’s not to say that Amiina’s latest full-length ‘Puzzles’ sounds exactly like Sigur Ros, but there is a distinct similarity to their attempts at the cinematic, the sublime and the quiet-loud dynamic. ‘Puzzle’ is a beautiful listening experience from beginning to end, and what it lacks in originality it just about makes up for in sheer resolve. There is never a sense that the band is anything less than sincere, and when making music this unashamedly emotional, sincerity is pretty much the most important ingredient. Through the usual fog of strings and delicate percussion, these precious songs tiptoe and shimmy through your unconscious like the ghosts of Scandinavian faeries, and with all the charm of a well-worn Grimm missive, the album chatters to the wide-eyed child in all of us. Lurvely.
With the exception of having moustaches and picking awful album artwork, in my eyes CocoRosie can do no wrong. Their twisted take on hip hop mixed with ancient folk and toy instruments is the kind of thing you should avoid like the plague and yet they pull it off so well. Over the years they've actually provided some of my favourite beats, simple but ridiculously catchy.
This is a more consistent album than The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, the good songs aren't quite as good, though that album had some exceptional moments, but there are no fillers, Lemonade, The Moon and the Cow standout with the opening triplet also being worthy of a mention.
Spoiler : What Boomkat Said:
Grey Oceans is the fourth album from sister duo Bianca and Sierra Casady, and continues to chart CocoRosie's departure from their much-beloved but ultra lo-fi debut, La Maison De Mon Reve. After the atmospheric acoustic-electronic fusion of 'Trinity's Crying', 'Smokey Taboo' arrives as a slow-burning treat, colliding tabla rhythms with electronic tones whilst Bianca and Sierra layer their very different vocal styles: while the classically trained Sierra opts for an almost operatic approach, Bianca tends to sound like she's voicing a Tex Avery cartoon. The voices compliment each other beautifully and always ground the album in something substantial and accessible, even when the sonic backdrop is at its most fanciful. In one of their finest moments, the sisters make like a tag team on the outrageously bizarre 'Hopscotch', switching between hauntingly maudlin verses littered with electronic beats to honky-tonk piano choruses accompanied by throbbing sub-bass - it's like a collision between vaudeville-style variety theatre and dubstep during its weirdest stretches. Also of note, the lovely 'Undertaker' fashions an arrangement for an old recording of what is apparently the sisters' mother singing in her Cherokee, and 'R.I.P. Burn Face' develops a kind of melancholic sample-driven swagger. This latter track underlines what the duo do best on the new album: introducing their established fairytale language of glockenspiels, toy instruments and far-fetched yarns to a more sequenced and rigidly programmed approach to arrangement. If anything, the electronics seem to further facilitate CocoRosie's forays into fanciful, adventurous songwriting, making possible a surreal and inimitable brand of music hall electronica.
Over the last year or so, several bands have managed to recreate the magical sound of the sixties girl group/garage pop sound, the multiple vocalled harmony laden hand clapping, foot stomping, feel good, sing-a-long sound. I mean bands like Magic Kids, Strawberry Fair, Gigi, Fergus & Geronimo, The Cave Weddings, Stolen Hearts to name but a few. Add to that reliable list of pop loveliness the less than pop sounding named Cults.
With Go Outside Cults have produced a summer classic which in my mind is somewhat a less succesful but equally euphoric pop classic as Peter Jon and Bjorn's Young Folks, the Brainbheats remix giving it an extra dancy edge rather than blending it into an unrecognisable mush. Twinkling glocks draw you in before it inevitably explodes into pop perfection.
I'm not sure why i ignored this for so long, but upon seeing that they were playing in Nottingham, i decided to dig it out and how thankful I am that I did. Formerly part of The Loves, The School continue repaying their debt to the sixties, less Velvet Underground, more girl group. So many great songs here, so polished and filled with all the handclaps and harmonies you could wish for.
Another fantastic pop album appearing seemingly out of nowhere, Gigi is the work of No Kids member and songwriter Nick Krgovich and fellow Vancouver-ite Colin Stewart, an allstar (well allstar in an indiepop kind of way) cast joins for guest vocals and suceed masterfully, despite the many voices, this still stands up as an album in its own right, rather than sounding like a compilation.
The tracks featuring Chorus stand out, sounding like a 60's girl group, full of feel good multi vocal harmonies, footstomps and handclaps. Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls does a lovely job of a boy feeling all to sorry for himself on the lavish Dreams of Romance. Rose Melberg sounds amazing as ever on another highlight, again wrapped up like a sixties hit never made. On One Woman Show Jooey Cook of the Pomegranetes sounds slightly out of tune and untrained in the brilliant and loving kind of way that Kimya Dawson does, a fantastic track with a great Aisler's Set-esque chorus.
This is just the tip of the iceburg, i've not even mentioned guest appearances by Owen Pallet, Dear Nora, Karl Blau and Mirah. A triumph in the art of perfect pop and the ability to recreate that sixties sound.
Gigi is the handiwork of No Kids member and songwriter Nick Krgovich and fellow Vancouver-ite Colin Stewart, a producer and engineer who has previously worked on albums by Black Mountain, Destroyer and Cave Singers. When Canadians start singing songs with titles like 'No, My Heart Will Go On', it's usually time to duck for cover, but this opening piece actually recalls the traditionalist '60s American pop revisions of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's She & Him output - a far more palatable spewing of sentimentality than the ship-sinking ballad it threatened to be. Not dissimiarly, some of the tracks on Maintenant bring to mind Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl project, channelling '60s girl group sounds on 'I'm Not Coming Out Tonight' (featuring Sydney Vermont and Marissa Johnson) and 'Alone At The Pier' (with Rose Melberg). There's a wealth of outside personnel brought in for this album, with the biggest names including Owen Pallett (the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy), Zac Pennington (of Parenthetical Girls) and Mirah (the K Records solo artist and affiliate of Mount Eerie/The Microphones' Phil Elverum). Pallett's 'I'll Quit' exemplifies the sort of elegant big-band dynamics Maintenant can achieve, calling upon widescreen, loungey brass and luscious female backing vocals.
Etheral would be an understatement, dreamlike and majestic sounds filled this album making it a welcome companian whatever the weather, mood or time of day. Zebra, Used to Be and Norway set the standard for great music this year few songs managed to match up to both the brilliance but also the understated immediacy of each track, dynamics barely there instead songs that trotted along in third gear and never feeling the need to accelerate or drop the pace, like a long walk outside of the city, no distractions, just you and nature, simple and beautiful.
One of the most hotly anticipated releases of 2010, Beach House's Teen Dream follows up the massively lauded Devotion, the album that saw this Baltimore duo reach creative maturity back in 2008. Since then the formula hasn't been tampered with too much, and instead Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand continue to pursue the spartan, hazy tenderness of their prior successes, but with a more developed ear for songwriting and a heightened melodic purpose. Former 7" single, 'Used To Be' is included here, and represents a punchier, somehow more full-blooded incarnation of the band's sound. Similarly, on early highlights like 'Silver Soul' there's a more forceful quality to the mix, something underlined by Legrand's soaring vocals. Following on directly, the woozy, unstable synth tunings of 'Norway' bring a blissfully disorientating quality to what might otherwise sound not unlike a lo-fi, more minimal arrangement of something Fleet Foxes could have come up with - albeit with added Liz Fraser-style vocal tics in the chorus. Production from Chris Coady (a veteran of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio recordings) preserves the beautiful dream-pop gauziness that helped make this band so unique in the first place, but avoids following the sound through to any excessively dissolved, chill-waved conclusion. The result is an album of greater substance than either of its predecessors, and one that gradually reveals its understated brilliance over repeated listens.
Tennis showed fantastic potential, you may argue that something in lost in the poor production of these tracks, i'd rather dwell on what they might be capable of next year if there given even something close to the opportunity Best Coast had and took, brilliant lo-fi girl fronted pop. Cape Dory is just wonderful.
Loverly yellow 7" from husband/wife duo, Patrick and Alaina, aka Tennis, featuring three tracks apparently recorded over the last year on their sailboat, while touring the ocean (the Atlantic, presumably). The two A-side tracks are pretty raw bits of bubblegum summer pop, and we really like the B-side 'Marathon' with Alaina's super cute vocals. Don't sleep on this!
After already carving the name all over my indie pop loving heart with last years incredible "Hey Boy" single my expectations were left slightly short on initial listening, however given time the majority of the tracks here revealed themselves to be absolute pop gems. Admittedly "Hey Boy" and "Superball" which we'd already heard are still the best of the pick, the latter perhaps even being better than the former, still the closing trio of Sailin, Little Red Radio and Cry With Me Baby brought the album to an exceptional close, more smooth 60's in sound than the songs we'd heard before. A fantastic album that gets better with each listen.
Having already given us a taste of their impeccable pop wares with the terrific single 'Hey Boy' (released last year on Goner), this talented bunch of (alarmingly young) musicians deliver their full-length via True Panther, a label that's currently home to up-and-comers like Delorean, Girls and Tanlines. Memphis manages to sound indebted to the greats of American pop, like Brian Wilson and Phil Spector yet without resorting to a retro production sound. Instead, the record sounds full, modern and detailed, thanks partly, no doubt, to the recording by Shane Stoneback, (a mixing engineer whose credits include Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells... and even the mighty N'Sync). Stacked with vocal harmonies and upbeat, breezy arrangements the album opens in fine fashion with the brilliant 'Phone' which packs a remarkably well-constructed, hook-laden song into just two minutes. The track is buoyed by horns, strings and harpsichord-like keyboard sounds, setting a template carried over into the equally inscrutable 'Little Red Radio' - a kind of cross between Teenage Fanclub and The New Pornographers. Upon its release last year, 'Hey Boy' sounded freakishly brilliant, but here it's just another track, nestled among songs that are easily its equals: 'Superball', 'Candy' and the excellent 'Skateland' in particular. Recommended.
The Pierces hinted at this vengeful, messed up ex-girlfriend, post-split up blues sound on their album 13 Tales of Love and Revenge. The Like took that idea and perfected it, like the Shangri La's when they removed those rose tinted glasses and faced reality, the bitterness of being cheated on is a strong feeling and its presence is clear from the very beginning. "If i could smack some senses in to his senses/ then i might feel alright/ Cos i spent the weekend feeling all alone/ for that rat to come back home/ when all the while he was with somebody new/ now that i know, his hours are few/ Cause i just can't forgive and forget/ So when i'm through with him he will be wishing he was dead/ I know what he's been up to/ and i know that he's been untrue/ when i'm through with him he will be wishing he was dead"
The anger subsides at times but generally this is a fantastic anger fuelled heartbroken tale of unfulfilled love and the all the confusion that Best Coast translated so well, all in the guise of the Shangri La's discovering distortion and quirky keys. A quite brilliant tale of love and revenge.
Blessed with beautiful voices and the ability to write great songs, from the fuzzed out acid folk opener Dead Songs to one of the most beautiful non instrumental songs of the year, that being the closing track, The Archivist & The Archeologist, a heartbreaking tale of one whom find her soul mate only to find that he is family. Headstone 1974 all dosed up on effects, Curtain Call, remarkebly beautiful in its starkness, a truly great album that seemingly got better and better with each listen.
An extraordinarily succesful collaboration between Portishead and Beak>'s Geoff Barrow and German artist Anika. This is the sound of the sixties Girl Group given an almighty dub reworking. Her voice haunting and Nico like, the bass, deep and deeper still. Each song managing to stick in your mind and have you singing along despite the almost doomy feel. End of the World and No Ones There stand out amongst a very impressive collection.
Spoiler : What Boomkat Said:
This album came about when German artist Anika crossed paths with British band Beak while she was working as a political journalist between Berlin and Bristol. Spending just twelve days in the studio, Anika and Beak came out with a wholly unique album that clashes together punk ethics, dub-inspired production and the sort of songwriting approach you'd associate with the golden era of girl groups, during the sixties. Former single 'Yang Yang' seems to get better every time you hear it, and there's a massively weird DIY reggae cover of Bob Dylan's 'Masters Of War' that's far better than you could possibly expect.
Twee as can be and proud of it, not afraid to steal lyrics and even chrouses from already popular songs. Allo Darlin' had already charmed me beyond the point of return when I saw them support the lucksmiths on their final show ever, this album only served to establish and further my affection.
Charming, twee and seemlessly bridging the gap between Camera Obscura and Tender Trap. Responsible for some of the most danceable indie pop this year.
Spoiler : What Boomkat Said:
Sharing a record label with The Pains Of Being Pure Of Heart, Allo Darlin' occupy a similarly sunny indie-pop disposition, harking back to the heyday of twee-pop and the C86 movement's sounds. Led by Australian-born songwriter Elizabeth Morris, this London-basedquartet got their start with 'Henry Rollins Don't Dance' a splendid and most comical indie-pop missive that's sadly absent from this debut album. 'Woody Allen' fills the gap left by the band's absentee Black Flag ode, opening with the line "In the movie of our lives would Woody Allen write the screenplay?" before musing on whether Ingmar Bergman might be a more apt helmsman for a cinematic depiction of the narrator's relationship: "Max Von Sydow couldn't play you/I know you'd want him to/But Max Von Sydow couldn't play you". Following on is the disarmingly sweet 'Let's Go Swimming' a song that typifies this band's ability to transcend their potential for irritating archness. When Morris starts singing about a lake she and her beau would visit together, there comes the chorus: "And all the punks in Camden couldn't shout about it/And all the hipsters in Shoreditch could never style it/And all the bankers in Moorgate could never buy it for you", which somehow sounds rather touching for its romanticising roll call of London Boroughs - the sort of thing that was so popular within indie circles back in the Britpop-era. For all their feyness and knowing lyrics, Allo Darlin' are incredibly easy to fall for, and this eponymous debut surely represents one of the most charming examples of twee-pop in recent memory.
Dronea Dronea have been banging on about Forest Swords for a very long time, way before people slapped bizarre new genre's on their sound, whether that be "Chillwave" "Hypnagogic Pop" or "Glo Fi", the truth be told Forest Swords owe more to Burial that what I believe the aforementioned terms to mean. As such i steered clear of the genre as I didn't massively love the Swords, though they are finally growing on me.
Label mates Rangers on the other hand hit all the right buttons, the music is chilled, it glows and whilst maybe not quite hit a state of hypnagogia it is certainly early evening, summer music. Everything about it is just fantastic, the bedroom-esque production, the not quite perfect EQ and the ability to stay the right side of both cheese and funk with those oh so rubbery bass lines.
The best way to describe the music would probably be to imagine what people in the late 80's/ early 90's imagined the music of today or even what the future in general would be like, it has a strong nostalgic feel, some would say like peering into someone elses half remembered memories, fuzzy around the edges and missing clarity and complete sense. I can't help but think of Deloreans and Back to the Future 2 for some reason.
Suburban Tours is an album that shouldn't work but strangely does, quite instantly loveable and full of shelf life. Along with the excellent Bear Creak, laid back jazz funk bass to make Howard Moon week at the knees, Out Past Curfew, through Woodland Hills, Ross Downs to the aptly named Bel Air are simply genius, like Ducktails discovering the thumb of the Mighty Boosh's Hitcher.
Spoiler : What Boomkat Said:
Another unfathomably great transmission from the mighty Olde English Spelling Bee - compressing a world of hazy 1980's pop edits and television broadcasts on one dense, oddly unsettling LP - so good* Rangers aka Joe Knight sits us in the passenger seat for another incredible cruise around the grey interzone of 1980's suburbia on this, his excellent debut LP release. 'Suburban Tours' was inspired by his move from the outskirts of his native Dallas, Texas, to a rainy San Francisco, where his loneliness grew into eleven tracks of pop-inspired, avant-smudged melancholia. The obvious comparison point is James Ferraro or Ariel Pink and their expressions of white American solitary poplife, but the tape editing processes and drained 80s funk of these tracks gives 'Suburban Tours' it's own autistic aura. Knight draws on the foggy memory of records by Steely Dan, Weather Report and Prefab Sprout, assembling a degraded sheen of 80s funk that's generally not found among many of his fellow Hypnagogic explorers. The uncomforting factor comes to light when his edits bunch into looped cul-de-sacs, like we're exploring the landscaped terrain of some gated community and the road/tape inexplicably folds into itself, we feel like we should be moving forward, wanting to get out of there, but we're were not getting anywhere. Perhaps this is his take on the stultifying nature of American middle-class suburban life? Or English, for that matter. Either way, the effect is oddly moving, blending the neon evening glow of an inner-city night drive with tones of a greyer, and more insipid suburban landscape.
A total surprise, I'd heard a few songs and been horribly disappointed by the poor quality. The 13 tracks here are nothing but fantastic. It sums up the confusion and complications of growing up, love and obsession, all in shiny catchy pop songs with great great choruses and a little lo-fi twist. An album to be played over and over again. Believe the hype!!
Spoiler : What Boomkat Said:
One of the most excitedly anticipated and talked about rock albums of 2010 arrives after a snowballing of blog attention, and great lead-up singles. The buzz around Best Coast was to some extent inherited from frontwoman Bethany Cosentino's previous band, Pocahaunted, but this current project provides a very different outlet for her talents. After early ultra lo-fi bedroom recordings - with the help of cohort Bobb Bruno - Cosentino has nurtured Best Coast into a fully fledged alt. pop forced to be reckoned with, prompting parallels to be drawn with '90s American lo-fi, grunge and like-minded West Coasters like Wavves (who similarly litter recordings with references to beaches, the summer and weed). Naivety and songwriting simplicity seeps through every pore of Crazy For You, but what Bethany Cosentino lacks in musicianship and innovation she effortlessly makes up for thanks to an understanding of classic pop music and her innate ability to write great songs out of two-and-a-half chords at a time. Lyrically these pieces don't stray too far beyond the realm of heartache cliche, and yet as with the join-the-dots chord wrangling every passing moment is underscored by a palpable sense of honesty and sincerity. Cuts like the heavenly 'Our Deal' or opener 'Boyfriend' could hardly be more perfectly formed, despite their primal, ostensibly hackneyed assemblage; lines like "I wish he was my boyfriend/I'd love him to the very end/But instead he is just a friend" don't look great on paper, and yet on record there's some real pop alchemy afoot here.
