Woss on the Web

Oh dear. Cover your eyes everyone - it’s that embarrassing and awkward time of year again, those final few days before Hogmanay when I like to pretend people actually care what I think and want nothing more than to read the various music-based lists and charts I've painstakingly compiled in notebooks and Starbucks napkins. I'm entirely aware that the whole thing is both boring and pointless, and believe you me, I’ve been racking my brains for a new way of doing it that is irreverent, original and interesting. But you know what? I enjoy imagining that artists have been feverishly refreshing this page for the last few days, desperate to find out if I like them or not. I enjoy fantasising that I'm a significant player on the music scene. Plus this is my blog, so hah, you’re all just going to have to humour me one last time. Fire up Spotify and join me on a semi-enjoyable romp through the last 12 months of vaguely decent tunery!

My Two Favourite Albums


Florence ‘+’ the Machine Lungs
Waffle: Big vocals, big production, massive tunes and songs about coffins - it's an album that appeals to me on just about every level. The artwork, songs and videos collide to create a staggeringly unhinged English summer teaparty. Florence's vocals are incredible.
Key lyric: 'No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight, in the shadow of your heart'
Key tracks: ALL OF THEM
It's the sound... my soul makes when I've not slept in a few days and I'm halfway through a third bottle of wine.


Paper Route Absence
Waffle: The lovechild of insomnia and Nashville, Absence is a dreamy piece of indiepoprock magic. Building on the band's impressive discography of EPs, it mixes synths with clattering percussion and haunting melodies.
Key lyric: 'And when I awoke my friends were sleeping'
Key tracks: Enemy Among Us, Wish, Carousel, Gutter, Are We All Forgotten
It's the sound... of an amazing band making an amazing album in a giant wintery house with a selection of fine wines.


Three Other Really Good Ones


Idlewild Post Electric Blues
Waffle: Roddy Woomble returns to Idlewild after another stint of accordion-bothering and brings with him a splash of lo-fi folkish charm. The sepia-tint suits the band and gives them their best album since, er, their last one. I liked this very much.
Key lyric: 'The moon brings us back, I'm going back to the islands'
Key tracks: Readers & Writers, Younger Than America, Take Me Back To The Islands, Circles in Stars
It's the sound... of one of my Highland holidays, if I could actually sing or play an instrument


Lily Allen It's Not Me, It's You
Waffle: Lily really doesn't get enough credit - this album owes as much to her skill as a razor-sharp lyricist as it does to Greg Kurstin's shimmering production. Lead single The Fear pretty much sums up life in 2009, while tracks like Who'd Have Known and Chinese demonstrate a real tenderness behind the tabloid bravado.
Key lyric: 'I don't know what's right and what's real anymore'
Key tracks: The Fear, Not Fair, 22, Who'd Have Known, Chinese, He Wasn't There
It's the sound... of the real Lily Allen


Annie Don't Stop
Waffle: After leaking last year, Annie's much delayed second LP underwent some minor remedial work, and it's so much better for it - the final cover is amazing, the new songs with Richard X and Paul Epworth feel like they've been there all along, and some of the more superfluous Xenomania moments have been pruned. It's the album Annie deserves.
Key lyric: 'Every song I hear reminds me of you, does it make you feel the same as I do?'
Key tracks: Hey Annie, Bad Times, Don't Stop, I Don't Like Your Band, Songs Remind Me Of You, Take You Home
It's the sound... of a Norwegian disco. In a fjord


I Enjoyed These Too


Metric Fantasies
Takes their established sound and explodes it. Some of the more obvious attempts at crowd-pleasing fall flat (the optimistically entitled Stadium Love, for example) but this is a worthy addition to an already thrilling backcatalogue.
Key tracks: Help, I'm Alive, Gimme Sympathy, Satellite Mind


We Were Promised Jetpacks These Four Walls
Debut release from the Edinburgh-born but Glasgow-bred foursome which goes some way towards capturing their live energy and fully justifies the constant comparisons to label-mates Frightened Rabbit and the Twilight Sad.
Key tracks: Quiet Little Voices, Ships With Holes Will Sink, Keep Warm


Dragonette Fixin To Thrill
A deliciously wonky follow-up to their 2007 debut which throws iTunes in a blender and garishes the ensuing insanity with Martina Sorbara's icy vocals. Almost all of it works, and even the techno-country number sounds okay after a beer or two.
Key tracks: Fixin To Thrill, Liar, Easy, Big Sunglasses


Lady GaGa The Fame Monster
Lady GaGa has grown on me like an evil fungus over the last 12 months, and I was fully won over by The Fame Monster - an 8 track EP that's about 12 times better than her actual album. Hook-laden, demented, and very very danceable - Gaga oohlala, romaromamaaaa etc etc
Key tracks: Bad Romance, Alejandro, Monster, Telephone


Lights The Listening
I have tried to resist. Oh how I've battled with my desire to sing Saviour while walking down the street. But against the power of Lights and her 13 tracks of sugary pop pleasure, there can be no victory. She's also a million times less awful than Owl City.
Key tracks: Saviour, Ice, The Listening, Drive My Soul, Face Up


And These, But Not Quite As Much


Imogen Heap Ellipse
Perfectly enjoyable, but not the masterpiece I was hoping for. Some amazing songs - Half Life and Canvas especially - but the magic of her earlier work was lost amid obsessive overproduction and various lyrical missteps. Listening to this was like eating a cheese cake in one go - initially satisfying, but later... ugh.
Key tracks: Wait It Out, Swoon, 2-1, Canvas, Half Life


Patrick Wolf The Bachelor
Much like Ellipse, this would be fine as a stand alone record, but it just doesn't compare with his first three releases. Tilda Swinton's contributions help raise the bar though, and there are still flashes of brilliance under all the choirs and strings.
Key tracks: Oblivion, The Bachelor, Damaris, The Sun Is Often Out, The Messenger


Some Honourable Mentions

Miike Snow's debut was very good, as were those by Fever Ray, Dan Black and Frankmusik. Charlotte Hatherley returned, no one noticed. Again. If you stuck La Roux and Little Boots together you'd probably get a half-decent album between them, and you all know how I feel about Owl City. Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivered with It's Blitz!, and Antony and the Johnsons really deserved a space up there - I just couldn't face having to shadow and rotate another album cover.

Hall of Shame

Despite being surrounded by the stellar releases listed above, certain individuals still managed to churn out some truly awful shit this year. Cheryl Cole's solo debut was an aberration, Eminem managed to plumb new lows with his 'comeback' single and the Sugababes cemented their reputation as the biggest joke in pop. I was particularly disappointed in The Bravery, whose third album was utterly hideous, and Maps - boooo. Well done everyone!


ET VOILA.

Word reaches Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello early in the week that his band are involved in some kind of chart battle, though initially he seems less than sure where exactly it's taking place.





OOPS. Never mind. Unabashed, he continues in his mission to drum up support from the inhabitants of these distant lands using a subtle biblical reference, and then some pop-culture ones too in case they don't have Christians in the Kingdom of N. Ireland.



Sorry, I'm starting to get really bitter now, I'll reign it in for Joe's sake. After all, the constant twittering about buying his record was in no way irritating, and just because he professes to rage against the machine doesn't mean he can't enjoy selling lots of singles.













YES OKAY we get the message. But hold on, this last one sounds rather familiar.



Who originally said that I wonder? Do explain, Tom Morello.



.......

But no, of course I'm going to sit here and sneer at his terrible faux-punk posturing, I'm just a brainwashed X Factor fan. Well done to Rage Against the Machine and their supporters, it was a well played campaign and though getting to Christmas number 1 is a huge achievement I'm sure they have no intention of overplaying it as something of any real significance, because that would just be silly.



Oh piss off.

WELL DONE,
though clearly I wasn't the only one attempting to influence the outcome by supernatural means:



Wingardium leviosa, etc etc etc

To me he'll always be Punsi's slightly unhinged Icelandic cousin, but you'll probably know Jónsi better as the frontman of vaguely demented Icelandic band Sigur Rós. The fact that he's planning on releasing a solo album in the new year was kindly brought to my attention by xolondon - Punsi's still too busy dealing with various tax issues to keep me up to date with his family's doings - and while March 2010 is quite some way off yet, you can download first single Boy Lilikoi for freeeeee. It makes for good listening when you're stuffing your face with mince pies and trying to untangle Christmas lights instead of revising.