2011 Music Top 10

A quite excellent year of music.

10. Juliana Barwick – The Magic Place

It’s not often that an album of vocal harmonies rocks my musical world, and it’s even less often that I find such music completely captivating, but it’s happened here. A truly unique and spellbinding album that bears repeated listens and should probably incorporate words like ‘ethereal’, ‘timeless’, and ‘transcendent’ in its review, but I’ll refrain as that would be a bit wank.

9. The Fall – Ersatz GB

Not premier league Fall, but not half bad either. After last year’s brilliant Your Future, Our Clutter I had high hopes that another golden age of The Fall was upon us, but it was not to be. Still, a very good Fall album is better than most of the pitiful offerings served up in the rock world, and this has some great songs such as ‘Taking Off’; ‘Greenway’; ‘Happi Song’, and my favourite ‘I’ve Seen Them.’ Lyrically, Smith is back in good foaming at the mouth lunacy and inspired genius.

8. Iceage – New Brigade

Over the years I’ve found it increasingly easy to hate punk. This is largely due to the sheer narrow-mindedness/crypto-facism of people who refer to themselves as ‘punks’, and the by definition limited scope of the music. So it’s both refreshing and confusing when a band like Iceage come along that shatter all these negative preconceptions. Refreshing because unlike many ‘punks’, who seem to consist of 40-something bores who spend the majority of their time screaming about ‘hipsters’ and bellowing on and on relentlessly about left wing politics until the right begins to look very, very appealing, Iceage are a group of 18 year olds from Copenhagen whose lyrics are obscure (yet seemingly angry and alienated) and mercifully free of all the sermonising bollocks that you often get with ‘punk’. Confusing because this lyrical content is not locked into the ever so tedious anger-by-numbers-anti-something-or-other, and the music though raw, aggressive and energetic, is more sophisticated and intoxicating than the usual hopelessly directionless guitar mauling that you come to expect from any band terming itself punk. It seems very unfair, therefore, to label Iceage as punk; if they’re close to any sound then it’s contemporary take on post-punk, Joy Division/Wire, with some thrash thrown in and accompanied by some rhythmical drumming that keeps the contorted energy flowing.

7. Nicolas Jarr – Space Is Only Noise

In an interview with the Guardian, Nicolas Jarr said:

“I honestly feel we’re at the beginning of a renaissance in music. It’s an amazing time. Mount Kimbie, James Blake, a lot of underground LA hip-hop – it’s happening. We’re all kids making music without studios, producers or other musicians – without anyone giving us money or telling us what to do – because we want to make really honest work. That’s different. That’s never happened before.”

Rubbish, of course, as innumerable musical trends have begun with ‘kids making music without studios, producers or other musicians,’ most of which influenced Jarr’s work and that of the artists he mentions. ‘Space Is Only Noise’ has been hailed as a ‘singular take on electronic music’ which is only true if you don’t know anything about electronic music. It reminds me very much of a whole swathe of early-mid 90s electronica, most notably St Germain’s Boulevard, a jazzy-housey type thing, and truly something of a landmark album. Whilst Jarr’s album isn’t anything new or ground breaking like Boulevard, it is a very decent piece of work and not at all as po-faced and humourless as most electronic music tends to be (particularly the likes of SG).

6. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhythms

If only all pop music could be like this. Alternately euphoric and heartbreaking, Wounded Rhythms is sing-a-long in the car-tastic and moodily down a whisky in a dive bar despairing. As someone who often feels this range of emotions in the space of, say, 40 minutes, I feel this album is perfectly suited to me.

5. Radiohead – King of Limbs

Poor Thom Yorke rises from his bed of nails at 4am every morning. Removing his sackcloth and ashes, Poor Thom, his eyes dried like a salt-bed desert from the ever flowing tears he sheds for the folly of mankind, slips on his hairshirt and hairpants. Grimly moving through the rubble of his five storey town house (Poor Thom requested his interior designers give him ‘Grozny-Chic’, which required them to mortar bomb and machine gun the house until it was virtually destroyed), he makes his way to what is left of his kitchen. Living a life of few luxuries, Poor Thom has restricted himself to a self-termed ‘scavenger diet’ of ‘found food’, which he sees as a new art form. Furtively, the lead singer pulls out a week old loaf of stale bread that he’d stashed behind the remnants of the partition wall. He brings the loaf close to his face and examines it as though he has never encountered one before; eyes darting, checking for snipers and dedicated fans, Poor Thom savagely tears into the loaf. He stops mid-chew and looks to his one remaining cupboard. He knows that his downfall awaits him inside, but he cannot resist. Tentatively, he reaches inside and paws for his Pandora’s Box. After what seems like seconds, his hand grasps his fate. Unable to look at what his hand contains, Poor Thom begins to wail a mournful falsetto entitled ‘What My Hand Contains.’

What his hand contains is a jar of Robinson’s marmalade. Poor Thom stares with anger flecked eyes at the ‘gollywog’ emblem that adorns this particular brand of preserve. ‘Racist marmalade!’ he screams at the jar and hurls it against the wall; as goey dribbles of sugary orange remnant slip slowly to the floor, Poor Thom scoops some in his war weary palm and whispers ‘I won’t let this happen to my children …’

Meanwhile next door, guitarist and sound boffin Little Jonny Greenwood rises from his bed of mirrors. He catches a glance of himself reflected in his mirrored walls and sees the dark circles of his red eyes powering back into the chambers of his inner being. Little Jonny’s five storey town house is entirely decorated with mirrors. On every wall, every floor, every available space a mirrored surface reflects back an echo of never ending reflection. Little Jonny keeps out the light with mirrored shutters, and allows only antique candles from the 18th Century to illuminate the gloom. A never ending loop of Kraftwerk’s ‘Looking Glass’ echoes permanently from mirror concealed speakers around his lair:

The young man stepped into the hall of mirrors
Where he discovered a reflection of himself
Even the greatest stars discover themselves in the looking glass
Even the greatest stars discover themselves in the looking glass
Sometimes he saw his real face
And sometimes a stranger at his place
Even the greatest stars find their face in the looking glass
Even the greatest stars find their face in the looking glass
He fell in love with the image of himself
And suddenly the picture was distorted
Even the greatest stars dislike themselves in the looking glass
Even the greatest stars dislike themselves in the looking glass
He made up the person he wanted to be
And changed into a new personality
Even the greatest stars change themselves in the looking glass
Even the greatest stars change themselves in the looking glass
The artist is living in the mirror
With the echoes of himself

Little Jonny, naked, grubby, and emaciated from his diet of clear soup (from which he can see his reflection), furtively makes sure he is not being watched by his Master next door. Over the last few months, Little Jonny has become convinced that he is being watched – which he is, all the time, by himself – but also by his shell-shocked neighbour and schoolboy chum. Poor Thom has been haranguing Little Jonny to ‘find more weird sounds! We need more weird shit! The new Radiohead album will be released in five years time!’ Little Jonny, though, locked in an ever increasing inward battle with multiple mirrored images of himself, has found himself unable to produce the unique sounds demanded of him. In desperation and in fear of the wrath of Poor Thom, Little Jonny has taken desperate measures.

Little Jonny presses on one of the many mirrored walls, and it gives way to his scrawny touch to reveal a darkened chamber filled from top to bottom with TV monitors showing pictures from other darkened chambers. Little Jonny takes his seat in his chair or ‘command post’ as he calls it, and shouts ‘Attention!’ The still grainy images on the screens begin instantly to move, revealing the outline of human forms. What emerges is a bank of images displaying what appears to be children of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. Behind them are rows and rows of complex electronic equipment.

‘Pakistan – report!’ cries Little Jonny.
‘We are sorry sir, nothing to report,’ replies a sad, cherubic faced boy in rags.
‘What!!! No new sounds?’ screams Little Jonny, ‘what is the meaning of this?’
‘We are sorry, Sir. We are working around the clock, but still, no new sounds come … We try field recordings, warp them, chop them up, slow them down, but … nothing.’
‘Nothing? Nothing can come of nothing!’ screeches Little Jonny.
‘Eritrea – report! cries Little Jonny.
‘We tried, Sir, your idea … ‘ says a weary eyed Eritrean boy.
‘The last gasps of dying goat? And? And?’ squawks an animated Little Jonny.
‘It just died, Sir …’
‘But the sounds – the sounds! Had you heard it before?’ cries Little Jonny
‘Oh yes, Sir, but that is why it’s not a new sound …’ replies the Eritrean boy.
‘Silence! I will not tolerate your insolence! Send me the recording instantly – wait! Send it via a bird of prey, that will be more authentic.’
‘I cannot do that, Sir,’ replies the boy with a shiver.
‘In the name of Thom why?! I tell you to do something and you do it!’ screams a demented Little Jonny.
‘Birds of prey do not migrate, Sir. Perhaps a Swallow? But even then … might it not be better if I email it to you in a .flac file?’
‘I will not be corrected! I strike thee down! Guards – take him away!’ roars an irate Little Jonny.

Hooded figures emerge on the monitor dragging away the kicking and screaming child.

Little Jonny stands up, naked and proud, and addresses all the monitors showing the images of his global army of child sound slave labourers.

‘Here this and here it good: you have seen what just happens if you disobey my command. I want my weird new sounds and I want them soon. The new Radiohead album is due in five years’ time – we do not have any time to waste. Get them to me and you will be rewarded. Fail – and, well – they’re will be no failure on my watch.’ He defiantly flicks the switch and all the monitors go blank.

Little Jonny cautiously returns to his mirrored outer lair. He tip-toes across the hallway and uncovers the peephole he secretly made while Poor Thom was sleeping. He peers through to observe his Master applying another elastic band to his scrotal sac. Poor Thom, concerned that as he becomes older his distinctive falsetto might lose it’s intensity, has taken to applying consecutive elastic bands to his ballbag in the hope of fighting the tide; however, due to this practice, he discovered that his voice was actually becoming higher as he got older, which gave him another ‘art thought.’ He confided in Little Jonny that his new ambition was that by the time of the release of the next Radiohead album his voice would be so high that the first note he sang would instantly shatter all the glass wear in his fans’ homes. As most Radiohead fans have shaven heads and wear glasses, he duel hope was that their spectacle glass would also fragment upon encountering the piercing tone. The putative track ‘Shatter Your World’ is the one that is causing Little Jonny such headaches, as Poor Thom’s demands have been that his insanely high vocal pitch be accompanied by ‘noises never heard and sounds not yet invented.’

But this is not all. In a cryptic note that took Little Jonny 3 months to decipher (Poor Thom has invented a new written script based upon a combination of paleolithic cave paintings, hieroglypics, and infant children’s scrawls), Poor Thom revealed that the end game of his scrotal tightening procedure was to produce an album entirely in sonar. Poor Thom wrote, ‘not enough has been done to incorporate the needs of our non-human fans. What about the dogs, bats and dolphins that all dig our music? Get to it now, son, get me some sonar shit. My voice will be ready at that time.’ The note gave Little Jonny another nervous seizure, and he wondered whatever happened to the days when he just set down some standard rock guitar licks to some standard melodies …

And so with King of Limbs we finally get an album from Radiohead where they give up any kind of pretence of being any kind of conventional rock band. There’s no crowd pleasing ballads or guitar led rock tunes, there’s just this sound that sounds uniquely Radiohead. The album received mixed reviews, and it appears is not all that popular with the fan base, some of whom still seem to think an Ok Computer type album is just waiting to come out. As someone who didn’t care for the band much until Kid A, it seems to me that King of Limbs is something quite special, distinct, and proves that Radiohead are still moving forwards.

4. Tom Waits – Bad as Me

Tom Waits has been around forever. Just prior to the release of his debut album, Closing Time, Tom slithered down the tree and said to Adam, ‘I’m guessing you’re not a betting man,’ and turned to Eve, ‘but baby, you sure look like you’d enjoy a bite from a delicious juicy apple, why don’t you mosey on over here and sink your teeth into this, lil’ darlin’?’ The rest is history.

The history of Tom Waits is that you’d be hard pressed to find a bad album in his catalogue. In fact, you won’t find one. The range of quality is from unbelievably brilliant to absolutely fucking wonderful. Bad As Me is somewhere towards the latter end.

3. EMA – Past Life, Martyred Saints

This young lady is certainly very cross about a few things. And who can blame her? Life’s shit, so why not say so? Erika M. Anderson is a self-taught musician who produced a lot of this album at home, which explains why it sounds so fresh, so vital, and so honest. Scathing lyrics, ‘Fuck California – you made me boring,’ to brutal tenderness, ‘I wish that every time he touched me left a mark,’ show an energy, anger and willingness to expose what most keep hidden. Musically, it’s got banks of feedback, subtle acoustic guitars and pleasing harmonies; Erika’s voice is rich, expressive and beautiful.

As you may be able tell, I’m really quite fond of this album.

2. James Blake – James Blake

It took me quite a while to ‘get’ James Blake. The first few times I listened I thought he was a bit too keen on the vocoder and the music was a bit too sparse (even for me who likes space in music). Repeated listens revealed the genius within. It’s really something special to find something that sounds utterly unique – almost heart stopping – as so much sounds the same and everyone’s nodding towards somebody else. Not that there isn’t stuff here that isn’t influenced by other things of course, it’s just that what Blake has done with his sound is shape it to mould to the fragile beauty of his vocals and lyrics so that the sparseness is completely fitting.

A remarkable debut.

1. Ólafur Arnalds – Living Room Songs

It was always going to take something special to beat James Blake, and that something special is this short neo-classical album by Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds. Based around Arnald’s exquisite piano playing, these seven tracks are melancholic, melodic and beautifully nuanced. I often like to read when I listen to music, but this is an album I find so affecting I end up just sitting there letting my mind drift upon the waves of the music. I completely adore this album and have been listening to it on a daily basis for many months now.

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