2010 albums - my year of a few new discoveries (mostly) not hyped up elsewhere
It's been an aeon since I did some music journalisticy musing. Have some here behind the cut (I got carried away).
Home Video - the Automatic Process
I'll start with my favourite album for the year, which is impressive considering it only just scrapes in as a 2010 release due to its digital-only release in December. What can I say about Home Video that I haven't already said a dozen times? I am in Biblical Love with this band. To be sure, it is a personal thing - they've roadmapped some of the most intense emotional times in my life in the past few years - but that aside these guys are making music that really deserves more attention. Several people have said to me "they're like the direction Radiohead should have gone in" and I'd agree with that. The comparisons can't be helped thanks to Colin Ruffino's plaintive, Thom Yorke vocals and the taut and tense electronica, but there is a mournful, romantic webbing tugging at the edges, too. Moody, midnight, can't-sleep, frustrated lovelorn music. Exactly what my head sounds like. Standout track for me: "The Smoke"; a sparse and breathless gasp of confused infatuation. It makes me want to fall in love again.
Veil Veil Vanish - Change in the Neon Light
I must thank Jason P-W from ILX for repping this band last year. An ostensibly goth rock outfit from San Francisco, they'd earlier released the impressively retro, Cure-esque ep "Into a New Mausoleum". Like Home Video, comparisons are unavoidable and in this case its due to vocalist Kevin Tecon sounding alarmingly like Robert Smith on their debut EP. But on "Change in the Neon Light" they bust out of the rigidly retro sonics, and hit something altogether poppier, brighter and full of nu-new wave swagger. Why these guys aren't massive I have no idea - they're doing things better than the Killers or Interpol ever could. Maybe I'm just biased. Check out the song "Modern Lust" in particular: reminiscent of something belonging in a John Hughes film, it evokes all kinds of hot sweaty lip-biting attraction and makes me want to knock over my chair to get to the dancefloor.
Twin Shadow - Forget
The first decent thing 4AD records have released in freaking forever. I'll admit to being a fan of the "core" 4AD sound of the 80s, but that is why this release is a welcome one for me. Right from the first moments of the first track "Tyrant Destroyed" I was stunned silent by how moving, lush and gorgeous it all sounded. He's all over the map stylistically (cf Ariel Pink further down the page) and seems to be channelling every 80s influence he had - mostly Morrissey and Peter Gabriel, by the sounds of it. But the production, the way the songs are put together, the delicate and detailled touches - this was clearly a labour of passion for George Lewis Jr (who is Twin Shadow all on his own). If you love This Mortal Coil, early Peter Gabriel and a touch of the Smiths, do buy this.
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
I shouldn't really include this album, it's been hyped to the skies all year and probably needs no more word countage, but fuckit, the praise heaped on "Before Today" is deserved. I'm not normally a fan of low-fi and I don't at all care for Ariel Pink's earlier work. This is a radical departure from that though, because he's thrown money and decent production values (and a band?) at this album and it shows. It's cheesetastically 80s - sometimes I feel like I'm listeing to Hall and Oates - but somehow every track lures you into thinking it's a cool jam and then veers off unexpectedly into a tree or down a ditch, one wheel off the axles and careening down the road with a scraping noise. I don't really even know how to describe this stuff, such is its eccentricity. The exception being, of course, the single "Round and Round" which was everyone's 2010 summer jam and yeah I can dig that. Drive with the roof down past the beach. Sunglasses on. Deal with it.
Engineers - In Praise of More
Prior to the release of Engineer's long awaited (well, long awaited by me and Rob anyway) follow up to 2009's "Three Fact Fader", the band announced a new member - Ulrich Schnauss. The single of "In Praise of More" had Ulrich's fingerprints all over it, a chugging, trebly, mess of synthgaze. I loved it, but I know a lot of people were a little wary. Not to worry, because it's the only song on the album that sounds anything like Schnauss's other work. The rest is classic Engineers - slow, dreamy, stoned shoegazey prog, half-asleep under a tree in a field. Very delicious, very English, and very very sexy.
the Prids - Chronosynclastic
I only caught up with the Prids last year, despite having been told I should check them out a lot. They come from a similar stable to VVV, Bell Hollow et al - Americans doing that english 80s Smiths/Cure-esque gloom so damn well. Their earlier releases have a goth-punky, bass-driven urgency that I can't get enough of. So I hate to say that Chronosynclastic was a bit of a disappointment for me, though it is growing on me. Why? It isn't goth in the slightest. It sounds in fact rather like the Silversun Pickups. Shimmery sheer layers of guitar compliment the sweet boy-girl vocal harmonies perfectly (I'm such a sucker for boy-girl harmonizing), so they're really closer in sound now to MBV or the Smashing Pumpkins, than the Cure. This isn't a bad thing and no band should remain static (or ape the past too much). I think I need to give it more time though.
Phew! That was longer than I'd planned.
Home Video - the Automatic Process
I'll start with my favourite album for the year, which is impressive considering it only just scrapes in as a 2010 release due to its digital-only release in December. What can I say about Home Video that I haven't already said a dozen times? I am in Biblical Love with this band. To be sure, it is a personal thing - they've roadmapped some of the most intense emotional times in my life in the past few years - but that aside these guys are making music that really deserves more attention. Several people have said to me "they're like the direction Radiohead should have gone in" and I'd agree with that. The comparisons can't be helped thanks to Colin Ruffino's plaintive, Thom Yorke vocals and the taut and tense electronica, but there is a mournful, romantic webbing tugging at the edges, too. Moody, midnight, can't-sleep, frustrated lovelorn music. Exactly what my head sounds like. Standout track for me: "The Smoke"; a sparse and breathless gasp of confused infatuation. It makes me want to fall in love again.
Veil Veil Vanish - Change in the Neon Light
I must thank Jason P-W from ILX for repping this band last year. An ostensibly goth rock outfit from San Francisco, they'd earlier released the impressively retro, Cure-esque ep "Into a New Mausoleum". Like Home Video, comparisons are unavoidable and in this case its due to vocalist Kevin Tecon sounding alarmingly like Robert Smith on their debut EP. But on "Change in the Neon Light" they bust out of the rigidly retro sonics, and hit something altogether poppier, brighter and full of nu-new wave swagger. Why these guys aren't massive I have no idea - they're doing things better than the Killers or Interpol ever could. Maybe I'm just biased. Check out the song "Modern Lust" in particular: reminiscent of something belonging in a John Hughes film, it evokes all kinds of hot sweaty lip-biting attraction and makes me want to knock over my chair to get to the dancefloor.
Twin Shadow - Forget
The first decent thing 4AD records have released in freaking forever. I'll admit to being a fan of the "core" 4AD sound of the 80s, but that is why this release is a welcome one for me. Right from the first moments of the first track "Tyrant Destroyed" I was stunned silent by how moving, lush and gorgeous it all sounded. He's all over the map stylistically (cf Ariel Pink further down the page) and seems to be channelling every 80s influence he had - mostly Morrissey and Peter Gabriel, by the sounds of it. But the production, the way the songs are put together, the delicate and detailled touches - this was clearly a labour of passion for George Lewis Jr (who is Twin Shadow all on his own). If you love This Mortal Coil, early Peter Gabriel and a touch of the Smiths, do buy this.
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
I shouldn't really include this album, it's been hyped to the skies all year and probably needs no more word countage, but fuckit, the praise heaped on "Before Today" is deserved. I'm not normally a fan of low-fi and I don't at all care for Ariel Pink's earlier work. This is a radical departure from that though, because he's thrown money and decent production values (and a band?) at this album and it shows. It's cheesetastically 80s - sometimes I feel like I'm listeing to Hall and Oates - but somehow every track lures you into thinking it's a cool jam and then veers off unexpectedly into a tree or down a ditch, one wheel off the axles and careening down the road with a scraping noise. I don't really even know how to describe this stuff, such is its eccentricity. The exception being, of course, the single "Round and Round" which was everyone's 2010 summer jam and yeah I can dig that. Drive with the roof down past the beach. Sunglasses on. Deal with it.
Engineers - In Praise of More
Prior to the release of Engineer's long awaited (well, long awaited by me and Rob anyway) follow up to 2009's "Three Fact Fader", the band announced a new member - Ulrich Schnauss. The single of "In Praise of More" had Ulrich's fingerprints all over it, a chugging, trebly, mess of synthgaze. I loved it, but I know a lot of people were a little wary. Not to worry, because it's the only song on the album that sounds anything like Schnauss's other work. The rest is classic Engineers - slow, dreamy, stoned shoegazey prog, half-asleep under a tree in a field. Very delicious, very English, and very very sexy.
the Prids - Chronosynclastic
I only caught up with the Prids last year, despite having been told I should check them out a lot. They come from a similar stable to VVV, Bell Hollow et al - Americans doing that english 80s Smiths/Cure-esque gloom so damn well. Their earlier releases have a goth-punky, bass-driven urgency that I can't get enough of. So I hate to say that Chronosynclastic was a bit of a disappointment for me, though it is growing on me. Why? It isn't goth in the slightest. It sounds in fact rather like the Silversun Pickups. Shimmery sheer layers of guitar compliment the sweet boy-girl vocal harmonies perfectly (I'm such a sucker for boy-girl harmonizing), so they're really closer in sound now to MBV or the Smashing Pumpkins, than the Cure. This isn't a bad thing and no band should remain static (or ape the past too much). I think I need to give it more time though.
Phew! That was longer than I'd planned.