Albums Of The Year... Part 2

Hello Friends,

5 more belters coming up for ya as I close my rousingly-verbal proclamation of the year's best LPs, starting off with a trio of art-rockers, one of which is named after an ancient EastEnders battle-axe.

London Grammar - If You Wait

For those of you who didn't work out the answer to my semi-riddle, London Grammar's keyboardist is called Dot. Anywhom... another must for this list were this daring, fashionable and experimental trio who met studying at Nottingham Uni and formed one of the breakthrough act of the year. There's been shouts of 'the new xx' but I consider them to be so much more, Hannah Reid's vocals are floaty, powerful and vibrant all at the same time and are the driving force behind the Grammar's success. That's not to understate the contribution of Dot Major and third man Dan Reid who provide all the musical nous they can muster to contribute with a wholesomely wide variety of instruments, sounds, tones and influences. 'Wasting My Young Years' was the one we all heard first, a ballad rich with empathic layer and solemnly reminiscent of another modern British female voice in Florence Welch - it was an ode to what's now being referred to as the 'quarter-life crisis', a theme frequently revisited by the three. The fear from the moment of its release was that they'd follow it up with more of the same, an album of lolling-ballads would be excellent for ten minutes but grating for sixty. Instead, If You Wait contains enough variation to feed the 5000 - 'Hey Now' offers us a choking riff the likes of which math-rock connoisseurs Foals would be proud of, 'Shyer' opens sweetly but closes brutally and allows Major and Reid to exhibit their formidable backing vocals and in 'Nightcall' they have as unique a cover as it comes, the song being the Grammar's take on a tune from the soundtrack of the Ryan Gosling 'he-doesn't-talk-much-but-boy-is-he-sexy' epic Drive. The talent is there to give these understated and humble twenty somethings quite the career as long as they continue to expand their repertoire and If You Wait  has all the potential to become a modern masterpiece in the same vein, it must be said, of that so very talked about debut xx release.

Jagwar Ma - Howlin'

Back in the summer, everyone's favourite Mancunian Noel Gallagher (the talented one) was asked for the umpteenth time by NME about the possibilities of Oasis reform. His paraphrased response - "Every time we get together a reformation is never mentioned because we're too busy talking about fucking Jagwar Ma" was high praise indeed from a man who you would have imagined hadn't even heard of this trio of Australian oddballs. On first listen to Howlin you kind of start getting what Noel's on about and by listen number three or four you're ready to preach to the masses about these guys. Jagwar Ma's debut LP is essentially the closest a band has come to reciprocating the care-free Britpop jungle sound of the Happy Monday's late 80s releases, a sound which inspired a generation of teenage pill-poppers. While you can't help but feel that had Howlin been released back in those times Jagwar Ma may have reached legendary status by this point, the album instead will have to settle for being hit with critical acclaim from all portions of the music press while sadly not really hitting major record sales. The opening minute of 'What Love' is enough to set the tone for the journey, with a powerful pulsing beat coupled with lead singer Gabriel Winterfield's loop-pedaled lyrical repetition. Other album highlights are thrown in thick and fast, 'Uncertainty' is an absolute banger and provides the lyrical inspiration for the title - 'How can you, how can you look so gloomy when you're gloomy howlin' look so good to me' is an absolute joy to listen to and is followed by trippy lead single 'The Throw'. As the LP veers onwards, it becomes more measured and with purely instrumental tracks like 'Four' giving the listener an idea of the talents of fledgling DJ Jono Ma, you feel like there could be a place for this bunch in musical idolatry some time in the future. For now Howlin' remains one of the most underrated releases of the year.

Darkside - Psychic

A collaboration to rival that of Mount Kimbie and King Krule, Darkside is the new double-moniker for DJ extraordinaire Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington. The two make for an unlikely duo, Jaar's chiselled boyish good looks coupled with Harrington's long-haired carefree and permanently sulky facial expression. The result musically has been nothing short of phenomenal. What's been most impressive about the way these two have been drawn together is the lack of compromise on sound. The album could easily be a solo Jaar record with a touch of guitar just as easily as it could be a Harrington record with a touch of electronic experimentation and yet it is clearly something that the two have put hours of work into in order to produce an undeniably polished piece of music with both their influences shining equally. 'Golden Arrow' was what we as baited listeners heard first, released on YouTube a few months previous to the album's issue date it is an eleven minute tribute to the subtle expertise these two have gained in their chosen fields. When the subtlety is removed however, we are allowed to see what these guys can really do and the talent that's been nurtured to get them both this far. Lead single 'Paper Trails' exhibits the underrated vocal side to Jaar's repertoire while allowing Harrington to show off that old-school funky side which they both know and love (Jaar does funk and he does it good - check out his edit of Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' when you get the chance) but it was 'Heart' that really caught my attention when first listening to Psychic. This time Jaar unleashes a powerful falsetto to couple with a fascinatingly eery undertone which is matched and probably beaten by a thrilling riff from his collaborator, the closing minute is virtually orgasmic. The awesome twosome can give themselves a decent pat on the back as this is one bizarre collaboration which could stand the test of the time. Rather than linking one tune I thought I'd hit you with a classy Darkside boiler room broadcast from the top of a New York apartment a few weeks back.

Haim - Days Are Gone

Another release which as much as I tried hard to ignore it was never really not going to make the list. 

Myself and the rest have virtually run out of superlatives for this trio of Jewish sisters who have now been populating the hearts of Brits for coming up to a year. Days Are Gone was delayed and delayed and delayed, from the Spring to Summer to late September as the girls tweaked and u-turned and polished but the result was never particularly in doubt. Every single track adds a new layer, a new ability and a new understanding of the chemistry which separates these three from other similar all-female groups who didn't happen to all come out of the same womb. 'Forever', released a good many months before the album, displays a riff of pure quality, a quality of which is replicated in recent single 'The Wire' and also dark r 'n' b track 'My Song 5'. However it's the 70s and 80s influence which is most exciting, the synths and raunchy drum beats consistent with wonderfully subtle intertwining vocals give off a Fleetwood Mac meets Depeche Mode kind of vibe. What did I say in October's blog post on Haim - "the phrase "breath of fresh air" barely even covers it". Strangely I imagine this still ringing true in five/ten years time about undoubtedly one of the best LPs of the year.

Kanye West - Yeezus

It turns out that the 'I am the next Mandela' interview broadcast by global satirical The Daily Currant  was a hoax but one only has to look back at Kanye ripping in to Taylor Swift at the Grammys to appreciate that he is just a little bit of a cunt. However this is about the music not the man and as much as it may pain me to say it, Yeezus is in fact a wonderfully-crafted album. While I would never profess to exactly be a hip hop expert (although in fairness both Ghostpoet's Some Say I So I Say Light and Danny Brown's Old were within touching distance of this list) I feel there's a certain grit to this work which leaves it almost genre-less and that's a tribute to the excellently varied samples Kanye chose to mix in with his convoluted beats and warped overly-arrogant lyrics ('I am a God/Hurry up with my damn massage' being just one example). The release itself was as under-hyped as West could possibly manage, carried out on a Tuesday with absolutely no publicity behind it it was very quickly picked up by all sections and heralded as one of the year's most interesting albums. Of the two singles released after the event, 'Black Skinhead' is an undoubted success  and while the official video for 'Bound 2' appears a parody of itself and has in fact been parodied  brilliantly by Messrs Franco and Rogen, the song is an uplifting ode to being in love with the world's most fucking stupid woman. Each to their own and all that. However, if I was to pick just one track to represent the album then it would simply have to be the Frank Ocean collab 'New Slaves', one which on a personal level operated for some unknown reason as the self-appointed soundtrack to my travels around America and allows us to hear Kanye crooning 'You see there's leaders and there's followers/ but I'd rather be a dick than a swallower' before a blissful sample ripped from a 60's hungarian rock band bursts free from its shackles ('New Slaves' 'shackles', see what I did there??). Supposedly, West pieced this album together in just a few solitary days spent in the bedroom of a Paris hotel before enlisting the help of multi-award winning producer Rick Rubin to strip it down and give it that minimalist edge. Fair play to the guy, maybe time to focus less on the dickish personality and more on the creative juices flowing out of it.

So there you have it, a list which I hope has given you a balanced look at what's been blaring in 2013. Here's a few which narrowly missed the cut but which I still consider to be some of the best:

Foals - Holy Fire
Maya Jane Coles - Comfort
Austra - Olympia
Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Daniel Avery - Drone Logic 
Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze
Black Books - Black Books
MSMR - Secondhand Rapture
Chvrches - The Bones Of What You Believe
James Blake - Overgrown

As always, thank you so much for reading and I would love to hear your take on the albums included. Any ridiculous choices on there? Or anything glaring I missed out?

Now out of seemingly nowhere there's a storm raging outside so I'm off to stick the fucking kettle on. Have a good Chrismas!

Cheers to all,

Max

Albums of the year... Part 1

Good evening one and all,

It looks like that time of year is upon us again. It's easy to look back on 2013 and recite the old, 'music aint what it used to be, I wish I lived in the 60s, kill me now', kind-of mantra but when attempting to compile this list, this being the Ball and Biscuit's second albums of the year post, I found narrowing down my ten ten LPs from 2013 a deviously tricky task. Therefore, below is a list of what may not necessarily be my absolute favourite ten albums of the year as to be frank my opinion on that manner of list changes daily but more a breakdown of what I believe this year has had to offer us music-wise. As with last year, they are not in any particular order and I have semi-tried but pretty much failed to not write about albums which haven't at some point this year featured on this blog. So without further ado I present to you an album which featured on this very blog back in March when I referred to them as 'the best new band I've heard this calendar year' (although it seems March is slightly early to be making these sorts of claims). First five coming right up!

To Kill A King - Cannibals With Cutlery

While 2013 has indeed been a good year for music, it hasn't been such a great year for emerging new bands - this becoming most apparent when considering the lack of debuts on this list. Cannibals With Cutlery  is one of those 'how didn't it make the mercury list? Those judges are all fucking twats' sort of albums. While not being particularly alternative or 'out-there', the whole LP listened to as a collective communicates the feeling that lead man Ralph Pelleymounter and co have written an album for themselves, not particularly seeking massive fame but one that people can sit back, relax and enjoy, and in this idea is transmitted a radiant beauty which shines throughout each of the thirteen tracks. Opener 'I Work Nights and You Work Days' is an ode to a busy lover while follow up 'Cold Skin' relates to brotherly love and friendship (the repetition of outstanding lyric 'Place your head on my own' is pertinent in all the right ways) and is responsible for the admittedly minuscule amount of mainstream success the album has achieved. As 'Cannibals With Cutlery' gathers pace these radiant occurrences only grow in their frequency. 'Choices' is probably the pick, Pelleymounter's voice noticeably quivering when he reaches the emotional crescendo before belting out repeatedly, 'She's at our doorstep/ laden with flowers/ his garden is freezing, teasing you leaving me for hours', the most strangely memorable lyrics of the album only rivalled by 'Letter to my lover (the Dylan fan)'s closing proclamation, 'You can have your balcony by the sea, watch the waves come crashing down, each one erasing me'. It's all beautiful, it's all memorable and it's all worth a listen. There isn't a bad track on it and while something would halt me from considering this my album of the year, it was indeed the first to pop into my head when compiling this list. As an afterthought, finding a fellow TKAK fan, while not the easiest of tasks, is a source of immense enjoyment and one which has led me to one or two memorable conversations in the past twelve months, .It would seem they are already in the mould of reaching that often enviously sought-after 'cult' status.

Arctic Monkeys - AM

Well it was obviously going to turn up on this list somewhere so I may as well get it out the way. Smooth, sexy and reflective of yet another twist in their sound, the fifth offering from South Yorkshire's finest could in some respects be considered their best. When the Monkeys dropped 'R U Mine' in February 2012, over 18 months before AM reached our ears, we knew that the tweaks this formidable four-piece were making to their sound were going to eventually boil up into something special. 'R U Mine' is a peach of a tune, one which intertwines golden riffs with Alex Turner's lolling, lackadaisical LA-inspired vocals to phenomenal effect and even leaves us with the added bonus of Matt Helder's falsetto (lovely jubbly). The rest of the album may have come a lot later but it followed suit. Each of the singles have followed in 'R U Mine's vein, Turner oozing out sensational lyrics like there's no tomorrow - 'Why Do you Only Call Me When You're High, 'Arabella's got some interstellar-gator skin boots' and 'like the beginning of mean streets you can be my baby' reverberate round the mind just as the writer intended and with huge dollops of panache. While no one is accusing them of losing any of that stunningly northern grit which made them such 'rebels without a cause' in the first instance, the development of the now somewhat Anglo-American Monkeys has been greeted with a firm cheer and rave reviews and long may it continue, losing even a remote section of their fan-base appears an impossible task. We wait with baited breath for number six and at the rate Turner's moving at the moment (five Monkeys LPs, one Last Shadow Puppets release and a cult film soundtrack since 2006) we may not have to wait too long.

Mount Kimbie - Cold Spring Fault Less Youth

This is an excellent release. London duo Dominic Maker and Kai Campos are fast becoming amongst the elite of Britain's electronic artists with 2010s debut Crooks and Lovers garnering critical acclaim and placing the two Kimbieans on the map. May saw the release of Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, an album gleefully pleasing critics similarly to that of its predecessor and for good reason. Mount Kimbie know exactly what they're about, they stay relatively bound within the walls of their tried and tested method of genre-defining ambient dub and post-dubstep but it's the subtle variations which most catch the ear. This time round, they employed the services of one of 2013's breakthrough acts, the unmistakably ginger King Krule. I raved about the collaboration between the two on 'You Took Your Time' in a blog on Krule a few weeks back but the album also includes, 'Meter, Pale Tone' a second collab between the two and one which runs at a faster more engineered pace, a raunchy drum beat driving it the entire way. Krule's semi-contribution in a third tune and personal album highlight 'Break Well' proves to probably be the most important. As the track slows to what appears to be a floaty outro, Krule's voice suddenly flutters sharply and cuttingly into life with a simple wail and is followed up by one of the most scintillating bass lines I've ever heard - a minute of pure bliss reflecting just what these two do best. The album doesn't falter here, other standout tracks include' Made To Stray' which has come to feature in many 'top singles of 2013' lists in the world of the alternative music press and also 'Home Recording'. All in all, this is an album full to the brim with layer upon layer of innovation and is well worth its place on this here list.

Peace - In Love

2013 saw a semi-revival of the Birmingham indie-rock scene. Now there's a sentence which I certainly imagined I wouldn't be writing at this point twelve months ago. At the helm were four slightly odd-looking blokes who's music displays influence from the very very best - Oasis, Stone Roses, Kasabian, The Smiths, Blur and Nirvana are thrown in there for good measure and have led  to the production of what I consider to be one of the most important albums of the year. We can always take a given calendar year and pinpoint those who led the supposed 'rock 'n' roll revival (The Vaccines, White Lies, Palma Violets and even Alt-J in recent times) but these breakthroughs have become less and less frequent and more and more underwhelming it seems in past years (the fact that I've even considered Alt-J is worrying, they're brilliant but certainly not rock 'n' roll), not something that can be said of our good friends Peace. I may not be the biggest fan of the name and it's lengthy disambiguation in Wikipedia but these guys do a job and they do it bloody well. 'Follow Baby' is a punch to the gut of an anthem and displays the quartet's love for grunge but it's the softer moments of the album that I feel have granted In Love its joie de vivre. The glistening oriental solo during opener 'Higher than the Sun', the dreamy Beach Boys 60s vibe of fan favourite 'California Daze' and the metronomic ambience of 'Float Forever' and its rousingly hippy instruction to 'Swim down through the fathoms of your soul/ If you don't try and get your feet wet/ You're a liar and a troll' making it an absolute banger. Peace may evaporate into thin air like so many others before them but at least they can say they tried bloody hard and at least put a smile of a number of adoring fans faces for a good year.

 Jon Hopkins - Immunity

I think if there was a gun being held to my head and I simply had to pick one of these to be my album of the year it may well have to be this one, mainly considering the basis that I could literally have it on repeat all day without either tiring or at any point feeling the necessity to switch it off. Immunity is an emotional roller coaster of an album, told in beats and in tempo-change rather than vocal prowess but with devastating affect. There's no point describing each song as a separate entity (although I will say that the linked track 'Open Eye Signal' below is an absolute thrill ride and not one for the faint-hearted), the entire thing must be listened to as a whole in order to be properly understood but if you do, and once you have reached the closing title track, then and only then will the true genius of this work be properly established in your mind. Next up for Hopkins is a collaboration with Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes, a match-made in heaven if you ask me and one which I look forward to hearing. For now, this masterpiece remains firmly embedded in top-ten 2013 album lists across the globe, it is the shit.

The next batch of five albums coming soon to a Facebook or twitter page near you... (probably at the latest Thursday, I do always like to place a timeframe on these things).

Peace out.