Feb 1, 2012 0
…for the first day of the month¹ and a return to blogland following a self-imposed hiatus. It’s good, at times, to be quiet.
But noisy is equally essential, so let’s start with 2011’s winning song-from-each-year-of-my-life. Decibelles are three women from Grenoble, France, who know how to rock. The LP, Pedro Joko, is available for free and worth every byte of your bandwidth.
Dec 16, 2011 0
I do have a spoon in my drawer that reminds me of the kind of spoons my grandparents had. There is only one band on Earth who could possibly have been alive to that fact. They are, quite obviously, among the nominees for 2011’s song-from-each-year-of-my-life.
Any year that sees the release of a new Half Man Half Biscuit LP is a good year. Wirral’s finest released their 13th studio LP in 2011. While 90 Bisodol (Crimond) isn’t as musically inventive as some of its procedures, its lyrics are among the very best that Nigel Blackwell has ever written.
Dec 14, 2011 0
I could stay forever hanging out, to quote Allo Darlin, but time is short and there are still at least half a dozen more nominees for 2011’s song-from-each-year-of-my-life, including my favourite folk-, country- and dance-tinged tracks of the year.
But first the aforementioned Allo Darlin’ and a version of a song by Darren Hayman, no stranger to these parts. Like an increasing number of independent artists and labels, All Darlin’ are selling the single through their Bandcamp page, whence they may actually get a fair share of the proceeds. Spotify it ain’t.
Dec 9, 2011 0
This morning brings four more nominees for 2011’s song-from-each-year-of-my-life, as I try to squeeze the remaining 14-or-so tracks into the next couple of weeks. Then maybe I’ll have time to post a few holiday faves for the festive season, before announcing 2011’s winner. Oh, the suspense…
First up a track from Married to the Sea, a free LP from Canadian musician Charlie Berger’ With Hidden Noise project. It’s lovely.
Dec 7, 2011 0
The cover may be one of the year’s worst, but Acid House Kings’ second LP, Music Sounds Better With You, was one of 2011’s highlights for fans of Scandinavian indie pop.
And who isn’t.
Dec 7, 2011 0
I could have picked any of several tracks from The Big Roar, one of the finest LPs of 2011, but while this contender for this year’s song-from-each-year-of-my-life is perhaps the most predictable, it’s also the most worthy.
And the video is filmed in a bike shop.
Dec 1, 2011 0
They’re chiefly known for their louche covers of new wave classics such as Love Will Tear Us Apart and Teenage Kicks, which gave the band its name; The Becster calls them Vaguely New, which rather fits; and they’re astonishingly good live.
The band’s array of singers also have a musical life apart from revisiting the music of the late seventies and early eighties. The two producer-musicians behind the band, Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, collected some of those recordings into an LP released in March 2011.
Nov 24, 2011 0
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were my 2010 choice and runner-up for song-from-each-year-of-my-life, so my expectations were beyond high as the release date of their second LP got closer and closer.
Those expectations were tempered when the band added another guitarist — hinting at a shift from pop to “serious” rock, never a good thing. That the 2011 LP, Beyond, survived the transition is a testament to the band’s sensibilities and songwriting, which spawned at least half a dozen excellent numbers to go with those two moments of genius from the previous year.
Nov 23, 2011 0
Tapes ’n Tapes hail from Minneapolis, have been compared to Arcade Fire and in 2011 released a decent LP called Outside.
And Outside features this track, a first of two more nominations for my 2011 song-from-each-year-of-my-life.
Nov 18, 2011 0
No list of the records of 2011 will be complete without mention of Bearsuit’s fantastic Phantom Forest LP, the Norwich band’s best to date. Sadly most lists of the best records of 2011 will ignore it.
This is why I don’t read music magazines.
