Albums of the Year

Number 1: Have One On Me - Joanna Newsom

Keeping up the quality on a double album is a difficult thing to achieve, even for the best artists. The Beatles didn’t quite manage it on The White Album (yes, I like it too, but Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da?) and many, many other double albums could be edited down to much better single albums.

So how about a triple album? A triple album of folky harp-based ballads even? Now that’s quite some ask.

But Joanna Newsom pulls it off. This album is a masterpiece. It feels wonderfully familiar, in part due to the fact it was released all the way back in February 2010, but even thinking back then, it felt pretty familiar from the first listen. It’s such a good album that even imagining a time when I hadn’t listened to it is hard.

Newsom has a style and a voice that is entirely recognisable and unique. The use of unusual instruments, not least of which the ubiquitous harp of which she is a virtuoso, matched with a vocal style that sounds medieval and lyrics to match, makes the album sound like it could have been released long before releasing albums was a thing anyone did. But it also feels fresh, and like nothing you’ve heard before. Still, the aforementioned familiarity is still there. The overall effect is comforting, relaxing, and just beautiful. It’s difficult to pick favourites from an album of favourites, but if you’re looking to dip your toe in the water, Good Intentions Paving Company is one of the best songs from this year in my opinion.

This is an album like nothing else you’ll hear this year. It’s accomplished, unusual, beautiful and not only that, but for your money you get over two hours worth of faultless material. A month or two after it was released I tweeted that if anyone released an album that was as good as this one in 2010, I’d be surprised and delighted. I’m not surprised that no-one managed to surpass the album, but I’m still delighted that it’s quite as good as it is.

Albums of the Year

Number 2: Queen of Denmark by John Grant

When bands you know and love release a new album and it’s great, that’s lovely, but when someone comes from what feels like nowhere and releases an album this spectacular, that’s all the more special.

In fact, John Grant hasn’t come from nowhere, and was the lead singer in The Czars for quite some years, and this history of songwriting is apparent across the album. He’s a man who knows his craft, who creates songs that show off his many talents, not least his beautiful voice, and whose lyrics have the assuredness and wit of someone who’s been in the business for some time.

That said, this is still a debut album, one made with the backing of Midlake, who despite being, in my opinion, a bit pedestrian in their own right, have made every song on this album sparkle with a 70s era charm. The tone of the album is like Elton John at his most reflective, or a whole host of other 70s rockers. However, it’s a sound that Grant makes all his own, crafting an album like nothing else from this year.

Where Dreams Go To Die (a song he dedicated to the Travelodge at Kings Cross at his Southbank gig earlier this year) is an achingly beautiful song, about, as is a theme of the album, lost, pointless, desperate love. An album about love going wrong, and feeling helpless and tragic might just be a horrendous self-indulgent and boring journey, but Grant’s sense of humour shines throughout. In Sigourney Weaver Grant compares his situation to a series of half-remembered characters from B-movies, and in Chicken Bones Grant’s anger at everyone in the world feels tempered by an almost oompah-style piano backing.

For all of the humour, though, Queen of Denmark has a stunningly beautiful and serious underside. The painfully incisive track It’s Easier, is an unrelentingly honest insight into the end of a relationship Grant feels unworthy of, and Grant’s feelings of inadequacy are also brought to the fore in the darkly humuorous title track, which has the opening lines

I wanted to change the world But I could not even change my underwear

Grant shines across the album as being funny, witty, intelligent and self-aware, but also deeply troubled, and it makes for an album that’s amusing and often really fun, but with a undercurrent of desperation.

Most of all though, it’s beautiful and intriguing and very nearly the best album released this year.

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Albums of the Year

Number 3: High Violet by The National

When this album came out in May, I felt like I’d been looking forward to it for ages. Not least because 2007’s Boxer quickly became one of my favourite albums of all time. Add that to the fact that the single released before the album came out, Bloodbuzz Ohio is one of the best songs they’ve released.

All this meant that there was a lot of pressure on this album to live up to my expectations. Even from the first listen I wasn’t disappointed. The album’s opener Terrible Love is an outstanding track that shows off Bryan Devendorf’s fantastic drumming and sets a standard the rest of the album more than lives up to. Sorrow shows that despite this being a brighter album than Boxer and less angry than Alligator it still contains The National’s trademark downbeat, yet somehow uplifting style. Afraid of Everyone is a beautiful track with Sufjan Stevens on backing vocals (vocals we were lucky enough to see him adding live a few months later).

I could go on explaining everything that I love about each track on this album, but I don’t think there’s any need. There’s no filler, no poor track on the whole album. From the outset to the closing paean to geekhood, Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, this is a joy to listen to.

Is it as good as Boxer? As yet, I’m not sure if I can tell, but it could well be, and there’s not much higher praise I can give it than that.

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Albums of the Year

Number 4: This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem

LCD Soundsystem’s third and apparently final album feels rather appropriately like a culmination of their career. 2005’s LCD Soundsystem set out their stall of dance-punk, and the middle section of 2007’s Sound of Silver was a work of genius not quite reflected in the rest of the album. This is Happening is where it all seems to work, though.

That’s not to say there aren’t some real outstanding tracks. All I Want is one of the best songs they’ve released, Drunk Girls is an excellent song (with an accompanying excellent video directed by Spike Jonze), I Can Change is excellent and touching, and You Wanted A Hit is typically sardonic fare but LCD Soundsystem always felt like an albums band who couldn’t quite maintain the quality across a whole album. This is Happening solves that problem. It’s a single, unified, excellent album.

I’m hoping that LCD Soundsystem are bluffing, or just won’t be able to keep themselves away and that this doesn’t end up being their final album. But if it is, I’ll be happy.

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Albums of the Year

Number 5: All Delighted People EP / The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens

I don’t feel too much like I’m cheating by blocking these two albums together as one single entity. Partially because they’re both by Sufjan Stevens, clearly, but also because they complement each other.

The All Delighted People EP came first, and of the two is the more restrained, sounding a lot more like previous albums by Stevens. It’s none the worse for that, of course. The title track is a particular delight, and deserves the two versions found on the EP, and alongside Djohariah is probably the best pointer to the album that was to follow. Tracks like Arnika and Enchanted Ghost show off Stevens’ simple songwriting skills and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on previous albums.

When Stevens announced that he was also releasing an album this year, therefore, I was expecting much of the same. However, October’s Age of Adz, despite containing many of his hallmarks, sounds nothing like music he’s made in the past. This may in part be due to the fact that Stevens has been suffering from some sort of debilitating virus which has caused him immense pain. This feels reflected in the music. There’s an ebb and flow between the quiet and loud sections of the albums, from the restrained to the bombastic, that bears a similarity to the feeling of the ebb and flow of pain. Stevens himself said that the album is “a result of that process of working through health issues and getting much more in touch with my physical self. That’s why I think the record’s really obsessed with sensation and has a hysterical melodrama to it.” That obsession with sensation becomes more clear on repeated listens. The album has a texture unlike anything he’s produced before. The multi-layered musicality of what he often produces is still there, but the ubiquity of drum machines producing often unusual beats creates an entirely different feel.

The album itself is named after a work by American artist Royal Robertson, who was a schizophrenic who saw visions and believed himself to be a prophet, and there’s a sense of import, drama and intensity that Stevens clearly relates to.

Both albums come across as works written by a man who’s absolutely overcome by original ideas, a man who has music just pouring out of him, and barely the means to control it. And there are parallels there with the subject of the album - the comparison between music, talent, originality and the notion of prophecy, schizophrenia, paranoia and madness. Both are mystical and difficult to explain. Both are difficult to control and harness, and with both it’s difficult to tell how the people you share it with will react. Is the prophecy true? Has the music succeeded?

Personally, I think it’s a triumph. A difficult, textured, slightly mad glimpse of genius.

Albums of the Year

Number 6: The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe

When you buy this album on iTunes (which you should, now), you’ll notice that it’s categorised as ‘R&B/Soul’. Although this isn’t an entirely unfair decision, it fails to cover the astonishing array of genres Monáe leaps through as the album progresses. Starting with a short classical track, the album explores soul and R&B with panache, but also has some distinctly indie tones, oodles of hip-hop (her collaboration with Big Boi on Tightrope being a particular moment of genius) but there are also of rock, dance, jazz, funk, indeed pretty much any genre you can think of is here at some point.

Which you might think would lead to a disjointed, or at least rather difficult album, but instead it’s a delight to listen to because each track has an unabashed pop sensibility. It reminds me a lot of Michael Jackson’s albums at their peak for the way Monáe picks and chooses from a huge range of music’s history and yet ends up with something eminently listenable.

Anyone who can create this, as a debut album, at 25, is going to be one to watch for the future. In the meantime, there’s enough in this album to keep me intrigued and listening for a couple of years.

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Albums of the Year

Number 7: The Suburbs by Arcade Fire

In my flat, this has proved a rather controversial choice. Although I enjoyed The Suburbs a lot, my partner is not keen. If I’m honest though, I can see where she’s coming from.

The bad news is that this album is another point on Arcade Fire’s consistent downward trajectory. The best album they’ve released is still Funeral, and by some margin. And The Suburbs is, unfortunately, also not as good as Neon Bible. Funeral was a solid album full of outstanding tracks. Neon Bible was a slightly patchy album with some outstanding tracks. The Suburbs is a slightly patchy without any particularly outstanding track.

But the news isn’t all bad. I like Arcade Fire a lot, and them on a bad (or at least unremarkable) day is still far better than a lot of indie music that’s out there. Their formula of dispensing with the irony and really seeming to enjoy what they do goes a long way for me, and they’re still the masters at taking a simple song premise and just letting it charge off to its natural conclusion. And although there aren’t any tracks to the standard of Keep the Car Running or Intervention on this album, We Used To Wait and Sprawl II are still damn fine songs.

But the thing is, I’ve probably listened to this album more than any other this year. Firstly because despite a few reservations, I like it a lot. Secondly, though, it’s because I was expecting that a few listens in it would all come together and I’d realise that this was actually a masterpiece. But it never did.

So sure, it’s a fine record, and far above the standard of many artists out there. It’s charmingly nostalgic and feels like a real album, rather than a disparate collection of songs that just happened to be written at the same time. But it’s still a disappointment. Indeed, if Arcade Fire don’t stop this downward spiral of theirs sooner or later, they’ll become the dull, formulaic band that their harshest detractors already think they are.

Albums of the Year

Number 8: The Defamation of Strickland Banks by Plan B

Concept albums are a tricky business. It’s hard enough at the best of times to make one that doesn’t make you sound utterly pretentious. When you add into that the idea you’re making a Motown-infused album about a man falsely accused of rape, I think most people would have suggested to Ben Drew that it might be worth barking up some other tree.

But this album not only works, it’s great. Drew has a beautiful, soulful voice and one that we didn’t hear much of on his first album. At its highest register his voice sounds so close to cracking that it provides a real sense of emotion. The songwriting is so solid and polished that the final result sounds more like a best-of singles collection from a band with quite a considerable career. That said, it doesn’t feel disjointed, the concept flows remarkably well and never feels forced.

I have a lot of favourites but if I was forced to pick a couple of tracks, both Writing’s On The Wall and Prayin’ are excellent, and the latter also has a great video. Next year’s The Ballad of Belmarsh is apparently going to fill in the gaps in the story. I for one can’t wait to hear it.

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Albums of the Year

Number 9: Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle

Those who are a fan of Steve Earle will recognise much in his son. Not least the fact that he’s named after his father’s hero Townes Van Zandt. And when you hear this album there’s much, much more to link the two. Justin’s voice has much of Steve’s gravelly timbre, breaking with what feels like perfect emphasis. There’s the clear country roots with a rock sensibility, and there’s the stories of the working man, topics that would feel as at home in a Springsteen song as anywhere. And his arrest following a drunken argument with a concert promoter earlier in the year wouldn’t look entirely out of place in his father’s biography.

There’s something unique about Justin though, and you can hear it in the title track, which although clearly firmly rooted in the country/folk/rock tradition, also drips with a stunning gospel backing. Later, ‘Move Over Mama’ shuffles along in a much more traditionally rockabilly feel than you’d be likely to hear from his father (although it’s not entirely unknown).

However much of an overlap there is between Justin Townes Earle and his father, though, this is an excellent, polished album that feels like Tennessee just taken wholesale and bottled ready for export.

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Albums of the Year

Number 10: I Think Because I Can by Laura Marling

Laura Marling’s not much of a groundbreaker, and this album is not at the forefront of what can be achieved with modern technology. But then it’s not supposed to be, it’s a strong, solid, beautifully written folk album. Marling’s vocal style is impeccable and although traditionally folky, also uniquely hers.

This album might not quite be up to the standard of her debut, and there’s nothing that quite reaches the levels of Ghosts on that album, but the opener ‘Devil’s Spoke’ and the rather timely ‘Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)’ are excellent tracks in different ways, the former being a rhythm-driven folk bonanza, and the latter a touching and charming track about homesickness, and running away from love.

Overall, there’s a lot to like in this album, and like Marling herself, it’s charming, understated and shows a still unfulfilled promise. 

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