Early contender for album of the year 2011

[G-Man]

I talked up Nicole Atkins before, with her briliant Neptune City album. Her new album, Mondo Amore, is quite wonderful as well. I don't understand why a derivative hack like Amy Winehouse has enjoyed so muc success, when the much superior (and eclectic) Nicole Atkins is still a secret tip in the blogosphere and SXSW circles.

Vultures

Cry Cry Cry

On a completely different vibe, Buddy Miller's The Majestic Silver Strings is a quite beautiful country album. It includes a fair number of collaborations with the likes of Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin (whose Downtown Church album from last year he produced), Shawn Colvin and LeeAnne Womack.

[marke]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

"I talked up Nicole Atkins before, with her briliant Neptune City album."

found this in the cheap bins a few weeks ago, and on the cover alone bought it.
i completely agree re its brilliance.
love the production and whole vibe.

[Incandenza]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

For me it's the new Cornershop.

[hobbes]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

You know I don't do it deliberately, G-Man, but that's horrible horrible music. The first one sounds like a low grade rip off of the Sopranos theme and the second the sort of thing I'd expect to hear in a happy clappy church.
I'll not be adding her to my Spotify list, I reckon.

[linus]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

It's hard to build any kind of consensus on music. I've heard a lot worse than those two tracks but yeah it sounds pretty generic to my ears.

[Borracho]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

The Josh T Pearson album is fucking mental. Absolutely gruelling to listen to, and yet incredibly impressive.

He sounds like he was having a breakdown while making it.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

I've been listening to Andre Previn.

What?

[steveeeeeeeee]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Analogue Bubblebath II wrote:

The Josh T Pearson album is fucking mental. Absolutely gruelling to listen to, and yet incredibly impressive.

He sounds like he was having a breakdown while making it.

I tried to start a thread on it, but nobody replied. Personally, I think it's absolutely awful. The highpoints of "Texas Jerusalem Crossroads" were when his voice would be more powerful than the enormous guitars which dominated that record, and those points where f*cking higher than most music I've ever heard. This album just fails spectacularly and the defence (not yours ABII, but of many) of "it's deeply personal, you can here his troubled soul" doesn't make the music any better to listen to. Bland, under-par and done much better and more succinctly by many other artists.

My top 5 so far:

1. PJ Harvey
2. Lykke Li
3. James Blake
4. Ghost Poet
5. Johnny

Too early to make a decision but not doing much for me:

Kurt Vile
Cat's Eyes

Disappointing:

Josh Pearson
Chapel Club

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Incandenza wrote:

For me it's the new Cornershop.

I'm intrigued, but the one review noted on the Wiki page is middling.

I do like their Born for The Seventh Time, though.

[Incandenza]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

This one is really good. I really enjoyed Who Fingered Rock & Roll?, their last one, and I think this one is just as good, if not better. All of the songs are sung by Bubbley Kaur, a woman they discovered working in some shop, and they did a song with her back in 2004 ("Topknot") that's on this album.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

I'm waiting for the Cornershop album to arrive, bought that and Wye Oak too.

[dalliance]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

I tried to start a thread on it, but nobody replied. Personally, I think it's absolutely awful. The highpoints of "Texas Jerusalem Crossroads" were when his voice would be more powerful than the enormous guitars which dominated that record, and those points where f*cking higher than most music I've ever heard. This album just fails spectacularly and the defence (not yours ABII, but of many) of "it's deeply personal, you can here his troubled soul" doesn't make the music any better to listen to. Bland, under-par and done much better and more succinctly by many other artists.

I'm going to have to disagree with you Steve, I think it's a beautiful and deeply moving record. It just comes from a very different place than Lift To Experience did.

I mean that was a ridiculous record, how often does a band arrive with a debut that complete and assured? For a newish band to put out a double album so conceptually abstract and pull it off is still hard to get your head around.

This solo album sounds like the music of a man for whom life has been very hard going for the past decade - he has indeed not had a happy time of it. All the bombast and the confidence is stripped away and you are left with his beautiful voice, often cracking in places, an acoustic guitar and his abundant lyrical gift.

It's the most moving and heartfelt stripped down album I've heard since Bon Iver. If I had one criticism it would be the length of some of the tracks, from memory I think four of the seven tracks are longer than 10 minutes long. That's hard going with just a vocal and an acoustic guitar, to keep peoples attention for extended spells like that you need plenty of other stuff in the mix too. It's a must liten album though.

[dalliance]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Just to disagree with you again, I liked the Chapel Club record. It has an insidious catchiness to a lot of it, a bit like Mirrors too.

Wye Oak are an outstanding band but have not really made any notable commercial headway yet unfortunately. The new album Civilian is good, it's just not as good as the first two though.

My big new band/artist find this year is Banjo & Freakout. It's some chap recording on his own and he is ploughing the fertile fields of psych folk meets Animal Collective abstraction with a touch of shoegaze. If you like Suuns or Yuck or especially Echo Lake then you will like this lot. His eponymous album is one of my best of the year so far.

Remember the Portland band Ponys? If you don't you should, they had three albums out last decade of which two were excellent. They have become a band called Phantom Buffalo and I thoroughly recommend their recent album Cement Postcard With Owl Colours.

Aside from these I have liked Mogwai, PJ Harvey, Yuck, Tapes 'n Tapes and Amplifier. Belong's Common Era is another piece of fuzzed up magic like their first album, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have turned out their usual solid piece of work with Tao Of The Dead. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins album Diamond Mine is a gem.

Another four recommendations - Moon Duo, Parts & Labor, Thank You and finally an album that is miles from the usual sort of thing I listen to but I really enjoyed this - The Naked & Famous.

[Borracho]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Steveeeeeeeeee, if you don't like it, then fair enough -- but bland is the last thing it is.

I can see how a lot of people would be turned off by it though.

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

steveeeeeeeee wrote:

I'm waiting for the Cornershop album to arrive...

Slow download, grandad?

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Okay, Inca, I'm going to risk it.

[RobW]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Not heard the new Nicole Atkins LP yet but on my wishlist. Her debut was fantastic. The latest Kurt Vile LP is excellent.

[Incandenza]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Nice, WOM.

Cornershop financed the album in a cool way--they used a site called PledgeMusic where bands ask for donations to help finish projects, and when the project is completed the people who pledged get some extra stuff in return. The basic pledge was around 10 pounds, and you got the download before it was released, regular updates from the band as the album was in progress, as well as a copy of the CD. For extra you could have gotten T-shirts, signed copies of the CD, etc.

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

That's cool. I paid $8.99 on iTunes.
I like to keep a strict pilferedurchased ratio.
I won't go into details of what that ratio is, exactly, but let the main take-away be that I'm strict about it.
I'll let you know how I'm liking the album.

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Money well spent. Far from middling.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Analogue Bubblebath II wrote:

Steveeeeeeeeee, if you don't like it, then fair enough -- but bland is the last thing it is.

I can see how a lot of people would be turned off by it though.

No problem, it's really not an album I want to get into a heated debate about. I really want to like it but can't. When I say it's bland, I mean in the sense that melodically it goes absolutely nowhere. And like dalliance says, it goes nowhere repeatedly for over ten minutes at a time.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

dalliance wrote:

Just to disagree with you again, I liked the Chapel Club record. It has an insidious catchiness to a lot of it, a bit like Mirrors too.

I think my expectations where a little too high for it. I loved "Surfacing" and "Five Trees" and was just a bit disappointed that their was nothing better than those songs on that album. It's a good album, I just expected more.

The Kurt Vile album is a similar case, loved the two songs I heard from it, but those two songs open the album and are the best songs on it by far.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Worn Old Motorbike wrote:

steveeeeeeeee wrote:

I'm waiting for the Cornershop album to arrive...

Slow download, grandad?

I'm a bit lost on this, I buy CDs from Amazon or Rough Trade. It's really important for me to have the actual CD, I just can't appreciate an MP3 in the same way.

[Mumpo]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

Not nearly as many honourable mentions as there should be, though we're only three months in - I seem to be getting more and more picky about what music I even bother to give a listen to these days; in fact often, I don't even get past the first paragraph of a review. Still, off the top of my head...

Le Corps Mince De Francoise - Love And Nature
Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
Discodeine - Discodeine
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
The Chemical Brothers - Hanna (movie soundtrack)

Most of all, though, it's been all about Mirrors' superb Lights And Offerings. Do you ever get to that point, with a really good album, where you get the 'perfect listen'? That ideal stage where you've heard it enough times for the tracks to be familiar, and not quite enough for diminishing returns to kick in? Where you know the little twists and turns of the songs well enough to appreciate them, and they're not catching you off-guard? It's the moment it 'chimes' all of a sudden, and becomes something really wonderful. Hmm, I can't think of this being explained any less competently. But anyway, it happened the other day with Lights And Offerings. So... good. Yeah.

Also (no, stay!), I don't think there are many other bands that have got the idea of 'retro' so perfectly as Mirrors, and, crucially, implemented it so well. To quote from another message board (because there's no chance of me expressing the concept so eloquently):

"They don't sound like imitators, or like they're filtering their music through 30 years of other music that came after the original electronic era. They sound like they're from 1981. It's astounding."

The only other band I can think of who have captured a past (and very different) era's aesthetic so effectively are Music Go Music.

[WOM]

Early contender for album of the year 2011

steveeeeeeeee wrote:

I'm a bit lost on this, I buy CDs from Amazon or Rough Trade. It's really important for me to have the actual CD, I just can't appreciate an MP3 in the same way.

Yeah, my missus is the same. I'm amazed at how quickly I went the other way. My CDs just sit on the shelf like antiques, and I've not bought a hard copy in....hell, I can't even remember what the last one might have been.