Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 9

Already sounding ready to process fully on demo, Sky Larkin took a good long while from formation to album release. Mostly this was so members could complete further education courses, but it also allowed them to hone a sound and approach that comes across on The Golden Spike not so much as a power trio punch in the gut but death by a thousand tiny arrow spikes of jagged melodic subterfuge. Several reviewers attempted to draw comparisons between The Golden Spike and Sleeper, and while you can kind of see why - power indie-pop, female vocals that aren't especially ballsy nor girly-girl - it doesn't behove any of us to think that's anywhere near what there is here. Like their Awesome Pals! comrades theirs is a very American slanted sound, their idea of hands across the ocean being towards the female-fronted college rock spiky confidence of a Throwing Muses, Sleater-Kinney, Belly or Breeders. Then again, wherever the influences come from, it still seems cause for celebration that Britain comes out with a band who tread as far from the stock arrogance setting of the last fifteen years yet retain the tunnel vision to know that this is the right way of doing things, short, sharp electric shocks of sugar rush power trio alt-rock with quirks, twists and no small amount of charm.

By the end of 2006 UK bloggers were voting the best band in the whole of the land. That's some promise to fulfil, but it's clear they can handle it from when opener Fossil, I constantly builds, peaks and rushes, Katie Harkin's vocal engaging in its own forthright but warm, not quite sweet but getting there (or more likely getting away from there) way. Being from Leeds it's tempting to try and make connections with the city's post-punk trinity Gang Of Four, Delta 5 and Girls At Our Best, especially as two were also led by women, and while that's more luck of location than musical judgement you can hear a certain propulsion throughout. Check the insistent bass on Pica, Molten's stop-start tautness and vaulting riffs, the way Harkin seems to be trying to fight the natural direction of the rhythm section in both vocal and insistent guitar before the excellently sibilant chorus "sentiment stretched over sediment and soil", Nestor Matthews' flailingly precise drumming throughout but particularly on the chimingly forceful Octopus 08. John Goodmanson's production roughs things up to some extent, his influence betraying a high tension wiriness, but with the likes of darkly lyrical "gonna put you in bottles and jars and keep the bigger bits in the boot of the car") Korg rollercoaster Keepsakes, Summit's wind tunnel guitars and general sense of purpose and the plain skyscraping Somersault it was a compositional quirk that was there all along, just now with more defined guitar tones. It doesn't sound like an album with ambition towards radio friendly arena ticket shifting, which somewhere along the line became a stock criticism but here stands for something almost more personal, with no thought to massive choruses where something more insidious will do. What The Golden Spike achieves is taking the root blocks of some slightly out of fashion influences and sharpening them up for something that stands out in its own realm.

[Spotify]

Antibodies


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Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 10

We last saw Camera Obscura making the great leap forward with Let’s Get Out Of This Country. Not only did radio express an interest for the first time, it saw them cast off their unassuming past and fully embrace the Wall Of Sound, marrying uplifting 60s-tinged skewed pop to Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrical ideas of vulnerable romance and empathetic self-absorption. Making the leap to 4AD, My Maudlin Career didn't have anything to match the glorious Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken, but as a whole it refined the girl group swoon and countrified lilt not necessarily to disappear off in another stylistic direction but to create a sound that is entirely theirs.

Interestingly, at least until the Motown strings really kick in, opener and single French Navy is as close as they’ve come (for a while at least) to those Belle & Sebastian comparisons of yore. Hints of Orange Juice and Felt added to Northern Soul via Phil Spector drums help to create something that indirectly reminds us of The Wrong Girl off Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, but topped by Tracyanne Campbell's vocals. Great at expressing heartfelt bittersweet sentiments she swoons over new love, before on The Sweetest Thing singing about “trying to fall out of love with you... I don’t know what else to do". If the album has a theme it’s that hope v experience conflict, daring not to get her hopes up too high knowing from her bitter past fear fulfilment. Matching upbeat arrangement to downbeat lyrics is an old trick but very few have learnt to use it as well – even Swans with its circular riff and glockenspiel aided hook reeks of indistinct heartbreak. On Away With Murder she's "put my thoughts in a letter to send it when I’m feeling strong” over a Grand Old Opry beat, forming a stately piece of melancholy having already confessed “I told you all along there was no point looking to me”. James is more lyrically direct in its rejection, Campbell telling the titular ex “you broke me, I thought I knew you well“. “My maudlin career must come to an end, I don’t want to be sad again” Campbell sings through the tears on the chorus of the lilting title track, the closest thing on this album to the last. Then again she also confesses “in your eyes there’s a sadness enough to kill the both of us/Are those eyes overrated? They make me want to give up on love”. Closer Honey In The Sun rejects the downbeat air with a defiant, brass aided rush of a chorus over which she admits “I wish my heart was as cold as the morning dew”. It’s the sound of a band tighter and far more aware of what they’re doing, and more able to carry it off with the minimum of fuss, aided by a panoramic production, exhibiting a level of confidence that’s the exact opposite of the lyrical content. If Campbell’s declaration that much of this album is based on fact, such messiness has left her fighting fit.

This is an edited version of a review that originally appeared on The Line Of Best Fit

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French Navy


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The only chart that counted: 1999

40 Christina Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle
It briefly looked like the world would be taken over by ex-Mouseketeers around the turn of the decade. Who knew what unsubtlety was lying around the corner.

39 Europe - The Final Countdown 2000
It was the end of the millennium. This sort of thing was going on a lot.

38 Whitney Houston - I Learned From The Best
Most interesting entry outside the 40 came at 62 with perhaps the final defeat that caused Bill Drummond to give up on recorded music, his colleague Jimmy Cauty's Solid Gold Chartbusters. Left And To The Back have written and summarily provided about as clear a shot at fulfilling The Manual as you'll get. Clearly, it didn't still work.

37 Bob Marley Featuring Lauryn Hill - Turn Your Lights Down Low
That way round? Really? Makes that remix of Some Day Shining seem like a wise choice.

36 Eiffel 65 - Blue (Da Ba Dee)
The sort of end of the holiday season hit you don't get any more, and just as well.

35 Atomic Kitten - Right Now
"So come on baby do it to me good now/Do it to me slowly". If rock'n'roll is at its molten core about sex, as many thinkers will corroborate, this was the joyless pick-up of a ladyboy. Presence of the line "then we're through" unsurprising.

34 Charlotte Church - Just Wave Hello
Not her should have been enormous but never quite convinced and dropped pretty quickly pop career but some advert spinoff soprano.

33 Daniel O'Donnell - A Christmas Kiss
They queue up outside his house for tea, you know.

32 Queen And David Bowie - Under Pressure '99
Because the bassline obviously deserved to be hidden behind dated beats and crowd FX.

31 Tom Jones And Cerys Matthews - Baby, It's Cold Outside
The days following Catatonia's moment in the sun didn't reflect well on Cerys, and it turns out she thought as much. Then again, when in control of her functions she chose to shack up with Marc Bannerman on telly.

30 Martine McCutcheon - Talking In Your Sleep/Love Me
The Children in Need single. We went along with Martine as a pop diva for a while, but someone with that accent will never be convincing.

29 Celine Dion - That's The Way It Is

28 Westlife - Flying Without Wings
To think that people once talked about them being as big as the Beatles.

27 Lolly - Big Boys Don't Cry/Rockin' Robin
There's no reason why certain ideas should be discarded - after all, there's always consumers of every demographic - but we don't quite believe that the sometime Anna Kumble - last seen presenting on Nickelodeon, fact fans - really sold quite so many frankly contemptuously day-glo pop records to pre-teens alone.

26 Will Smith - Will 2K
As we say, the end of the 20th century did funny things to some people.

25 B*Witched Featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo - I Shall Be There
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for instance.

24 Five - Keep On Movin'
First of two number ones for the collection of young fashionable people launched as a 'lad band', and we will never tire of telling of how their label got them onto ITV series Britain's Worst Neighbours to emphasise their bad boy credentials and the producers put them onto a programme on which the other story was a dispute that ended in a murder.

23 Mario Piu - Communication (Somebody Answer The Phone)
So the one with the ringtone (pre-Dom Joly) didn't chart, but one which used the sound of the interference caused by a mobile phone ringing too near equipment was all over the place.

22 Melanie C - Northern Star
Two solo singles in the rock chick sell was hastily abandoned.

21 Perfect Phase - Horny Horns

20 Robbie Williams - She's The One/It's Only Us
World Party cover balladry on one side, preposterous hard glam on the other. Fun for all the family.

19 Various Artists - It's Only Rock 'N' Roll
A year after the surprise success of Perfect Day the BBC via Comic Relief tried to capture the same magic with a promo featuring, in order of appearance, Kid Rock,
Mary J Blige, Kelly Jones, Jon Bon Jovi, Kelle Bryan, Jay Kay, Ozzy Osbourne, Womack & Womack, Lionel Richie, Bonnie Raitt, Dolores O'Riordan, James Brown, the Spice Girls (prefaced by Mel C shouting "Spice Girls!"), Robin Williams, Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Skin, Annie Lennox, Mark Owen, Natalie Imbruglia, the ever present Huey Morgan, Dina Carroll, Gavin Rossdale, BB King, Joe Cocker, the Corrs, Ocean Colour Scene, Ronan Keating, Ray Barretto (no idea), Herbie Hancock, Francis Rossi, S Club 7 and Eric Idle. This was as high as it got. They never tried that again. And none of them were covered in foam while wearing sailor suits.

18 DJ Luck And MC Neat - A Little Bit Of Luck
Alan with the rinsing sound.

17 Progress Presents The Boy Wunda - Everybody

16 Len - Steal My Sunshine
Always appears in great summer record lists; had actually entered the chart a week earlier. And no, they weren't one hit wonders, Cryptik Souls Crew charted at 28.

15 Macy Gray - I Try
Soon relaunching with Sasha Fierce rip alter ego Nemesis Jaxson (I see...) There's a trailer clip which a) somewhat gives the 'who is Nemesis Jaxson?' game away by including 'macy gray' in the tags and b) viewed just over 800 times in just over a year, which doesn't strike us as the most successful viral campaign ever.

14 The Wamdue Project - King Of My Castle
1999 was the golden ace of trancey house, and we must never look back on it again.

13 R Kelly - If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time
Too many jokes.

12 Boyzone - Every Day I Love You

11 Alice Deejay - Back In My Life

10 The Vengaboys - Kiss (When The Sun Don't Shine)
When, kids, WHEN. Wiki: "The group temporarily disbanded; however, they regrouped for a private charity event under the name "Boowiffeck" and performed one date in 2005, playing for a Chinese-led operation management audience in Oxford." Now, come on.

9 William Orbit - Barber's Adagio For Strings
Funny thing, Pieces In A Modern Style. Not only did it fill the tasteful coffee table/dinner party hole for a year until Moby's Play arrived, but it had been released to no fanfare in 1995 before being withdrawn over clearance. Oh, and the single was a dance remix while the album was predominantly chillout electronic ambient.

8 Mr Hankey - Mr Hankey The Christmas Poo
The previous year Isaac Hayes singing about his bollocks (fact check pls - ed) had entered the Christmas chart at number two and climbed a place the following week, but unlike, as the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles categorises him/it, "US male Xmas excrement vocalist"*, at least that had pan-generational interest.

(* Which is good, but it's no "Bob The Builder - UK, male silicone puppet building contractor")

7 Steps - Say You'll Be Mine/Better The Devil You Know
Two years short of announcing their split on Boxing Day.

6 Artful Dodger Featuring Craig David - Re-Rewind The Crowd Say Bo Selecta
Certain it was actually just Rewind by Artful Dodger at the time, but never mind. Seriously, forget Leigh Francis and all that, it's quite good for what it was, which is birthing two-step as a shortlived commercial proposition. Worrying stare that man has.



5 S Club 7 - Two In A Million/You're My Number One
Contradiction!

4 Cuban Boys - Cognoscenti Vs Intelligentsia
We didn't need Facebook campaigns in those days. We needed a mischievous John Peel, a load of pundits going "what is this int-er-net?" (believe me, son, we didn't know what a viral was in those days) and a whole load of willing to take things on trust. Whether band/label just couldn't be arsed with dancers or hamster costumes is
unrecorded.



3 John Lennon - Imagine
It was the eve of the millennium. We did things because we thought they intrinsically mattered then.

2 Cliff Richard - The Millennium Prayer
The first One Song To The Tune Of Another in the first I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue of 2000 was Auld Lang Syne to the melody of the Lord's Prayer.

1 Westlife - I Have A Dream/Seasons In The Sun
As we say, let us not speak of these times again.

Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 11

You read blogs, ergo you don't need it explaining to you who Animal Collective are. And yet, there's always been a wall of possibly hipster founded Here Be Monsters rhetoric around them. They're freak-folk. They sound like they live in woodland. This is A Critic's Band; this is not for you plebs. Why, if you found out what they do in their studio your head would probably explode. What Merriweather Post Pavilion does, maybe on some subconscious label, is humanise the Animal Collective hydra-headed being. It's their Soft Bulletin, the album that while not exactly one for the record buying kidz (although My Girls was a Jo Whiley record of the week) brings what they do into some sort of widely sellable context while not turning their back on what helped them get this far. There's always been a lunatic fringe who would claim they were always 'pop', it's that now the currently operating as a trio Collective have actually thought to use some of pop's better nap hands to sieve their wealth of curious ideas through.

The title, after a Maryland venue where they saw the Grateful Dead in their teens, suggests or maybe confirms they take inspiration from livewire improvisation refracted through psychedelia, luckily without actually becoming a jam band. Certainly In The Flowers would suggest a certain reverence towards the freakout, progressing for two and a half minutes in contentedly splashing shimmer until Avey Tare sighs "if I could just leave my body for a night..." and the whole thing takes off in a tornado of arpeggios. If that makes for a hallucinatory sonic experience, My Girls is at least grounded to something - to be precise Frankie Knuckles' uber-rave cut Your Love, among whose undulating house synths we find criss-crossing harmonies, joyous handclaps and a proper approachable chorus in which Panda Bear expresses a wish for "four walls and an Adobe slab for my girls" (no idea what Adobe slabs are, but then he should be told social status isn't a material thing as such either) As much as this and Daily Routine deal with the basic human nature of life as grown up family men (although the second half of Daily Routine feels very inhuman, or maybe inhumane) echoes still carry through from previous albums - the dizzily whacked-out Guys Eyes, the tribalism that marks the start of Also Frightened. Summertime Clothes throbs with circuit board menace before launching into a drunken, disturbed Beach Boys swing as Tare declares "I want to walk around with you", having started on what sounds like a miniscule, distorted glam sample and featured a middle eight that runs at an entirely different signature. Not all of it escapes the trap of art for art's sake and it's still far from an easy listen, but what does is magnificent. As the serotonin enhancement of Brother Sport winds its way towards Panda Bear's familial empathy amid digital whirligigs it's evident that at last the great avant-hipster band of the 00s has found a connection with and about itself, and by extension with its burgeoning audience.

[Spotify]

My Girls


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Tonight thank god it's from them instead of you

More festive offerings to complement our previous selection:

Stereogum has found a rich vein of free mp3s including Can's Silent Night (from 1976, but free for the first time now), the Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd in collaboration with Locust Avenue's Jeff Richardson, Slow Club (tagged as 'Snow Club', which might just be Moshi Moshi's little joke), Lucky Soul, Banjo Or Freakout, Ohbijou, Parenthetical Girls, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Nellie McKay and Blondie doing We Three Kings. The Banjo Or Freakout track comes from a free, home recorded set of festive standards. Italian blog Polaroid have their usual specially commissioned selection up, from which our main points of interest are this week's new His Clancyness track and a new one by The School (which is also on another compilation but we think you have to buy that one rather than get it presented to you as free).

Edinburgh's Avalanche Records has put out Alternative Christmas, all proceeds to Sick Kids Edinburgh and African children's charity Street Invest. Good strong lineup too, with Broken Records, Meursault, Ballboy, Frightened Rabbit, Eagleowl, There Will Be Fireworks, Zoey Van Goey, Pictish Trail and Withered Hand, whose It’s A Wonderful Lie is available seperately for nada. Ruffa Lane's Christmas Gift is Ruffa Round The Christmas Tree, in which their four strong roster - Lucky Soul, Napoleon (featuring Ali Howard), Montt Mardie and Grantura - offer tidings glad and otherwise. Finally Where It's At Is Where You Are have offerings anew, a video for Hong Kong In The 60s' cover of the Beach Boys' Winter Symphony and, if you get in quick enough, Help Stamp Out Loneliness' version of Just Like Christmas.

Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 12

You don't so much review Joe Gideon & The Shark as recite them. Gideon Seifert's lyrics have a Carver/Kerouac short story-like edge, streams of literate consciousness that take all sorts of side roads, replete with characater backstories, approaching menace and three dimensional pictorials of a life well lived, like a Tom Waits reverie. Not that this is some singer-songwriter conceit. Duos playing rumbustuously dirty blues-rock aren't exactly uncommon, and of course the White Stripes comparison has been brought out given the family/gender divide - sister Viva drums and provides backing vocals - but what they produce is far from showmanship plus primal thwacks, or even the straight up Luddite riffs of the Black Keys. Live they're a feast of energy, loud and intense, Viva limb flailing to the fullest, crashing forcefully all over the place with expressive theatrics and playing hopscotch with loop pedals so she can play keyboard and percussion too as Gideon draws out a raggedly glorious wall of swamp fuzz guitar over those epically sonorous monologues. Can it transfer to record?

Of course it can, if only because it allows you to make out the words better. Throughout there's a sense that everything is far off centre, grounded by nothing but imagination and bad experience. The title track crashes in on cymbals and laconic swagger that turns to self-abasement ("it's like the rats left a sinking ship... then the ship became a submarine, guess the rats should have stuck with me") to preacher howl. Kathy Ray, which Gideon introduces live as a true story, paints the tale of a failed Ray Charles backing singer auditioner which after four tentative minutes' build from muted guitar and electric piano explodes into thumping drums, Gideon's triumphant shouts and gospel tinged backing vocals. DOL - Daughter Of a Loony, clearly - gets quite intense for something based on that single statement, a musically reflective churning chaos. Civilisation's narrator heads around the world via religion, mythology, science and the shoe counter at Debenhams to "learn the ways of man", full of unexpected detours and odd sidelines - "wrote a book which was a spectacular success, spent all my earnings on weed and crystal meth" - before turning the whole concept on its head right at the end. Hide And Seek is a triumph of ill will, Gideon intoning "What I didn't like about him was the way he smelled... or his stupid curly hair, or that mistake that he made on his first school day" over looped piano, the evil hearted monologue gaining bursts of distorted guitar and vocal fervency, before after everything laid out epic yet still somehow minimal seven and a half minute piano ballad Anything You Love That Much, You Will See Again pretty much brings things floating back down to earth with uncommon comforting notions, but by then the die has been long cast. Mordant deadpan wit, intrigue, assertiveness, the switches between intensity and delicacy and an unhurried album structure that allows Gideon's lyrical ideas to fully develop sets Harum Scarum apart as a properly unique proposition.

[Spotify]

Civilisation


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Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 13

Ambition isn't a word that weighs heavily upon Grammatics leader Owen Brinley, a man who's changed half the band this year and whose music possesses an epic swell and massive plangent guitar sound but with a method of fixing it all to a belter of a hook, melodic twist and/or lyrical resonation in a similar way to how, comparison crocodile pit be damned for a moment, Radiohead do. Almost all the mainstream press reviews compared it to Muse and you can see why, with Brinley's occasional falsetto leaps and moments of skyscraping explosiveness, but rather than space-prog mini-symphonies Grammatics prefer a melodic grandeur with a elusive lyrical quasi-complex opaqueness, stretching and messing with ostensibly pretty pop-rock melodies as Emilia Ergin's cello sails serenely across while clearly paddling furiously under the waterline.

Such is their command of their surroundings that there's far too much going on to start believing it acts as any kind of suite even if it works best flowing in one sitting as it is, such is the sureness of touch. Shadow Committee teases you with unresolved tension then crashes through a colossal vaulting chorus, straight after which D.I.L.E.M.M.A.'s darkly swooning and chiming melodrama almost sounds like pop. The Vague Archive cut and shuts two songs into one, starting charging and hyperventilating like double speed Bunnymen then deciding to be a stentorian post-rock influenced swoop instead. Murderer is what White Lies think they sound like, only with a knowledge of building guitar layers without completely flooding the thing. Relentless Fours loops old school M83 style ambience with a hypnotic intensity, chooses not to smash down the studio walls when it has the chance and instead coasts on cello loop and clubbing drums as Brinley and Ergin duet on an elliptical love/obsession theme which eventually becomes acapella... and *then* the guitar lets go. Even the big rock ending immediately falls down a lift shaft again and again. They can even pull off a widescreen orchestral ballad, even an acoustically led one like the yearning Broken Wing, which eventually pitches Brinley's falsetto into a wall of cello and delay pedal sound. He may be singing about being "in a prism of refractions" on Inkjet Lakes, but all around him things coil and bubble like a volcanic lake while Laura 'Blue Roses' Groves (qv) attempts to stand fast. Six minute final track Swan Song refuses to become the all-encompassing blowout, preferring dynamic shifts veering from willing to swirling to stabbing, and that's just the cello. This is why some still have albums rather than collections of songs vaguely arranged, because this is an album that can't be rearranged or have bits taken apart because it'd collapse like a Jenga tower into a complete mess. Nothing here could pass even in the most warped sense for an anthem, but it demands to be played at top volume across a huge expanse, a knotty, deceiving emotional core at the heart of this remarkably assured and accomplished debut.

[Spotify]

The Vague Archive


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Vision on

It's a tradition of Decembers on STN that, no matter how bad the overall output, we're committed to listing the best (ie not "plus a special guest appearance by JLS") of the music based broadcasting over the period covered by the Christmas listings magazines. Radio in red.

SATURDAY 19th DECEMBER

10:30 Radio 4 Here We Come
They were the first manufactured boy band, you know, although that they didn't play their given instruments on recordings didn't become common knowledge until after they'd started doing so. By then they'd overthrown their founder, who formed the Archies on the basis that cartoon figures couldn't rebel. Then they made Head. Then Michael Nesmith was instrumental in the formation of MTV. It's a fascinating tale, one we hope is gone into deeply on this documentary, featuring a now rare Davy Jones interview. Oh, and it's not Tipp-Ex, it's Liquid Paper.

11:00 C4 Hollyoaks Music Show
'Unsigned band' is a horrible nebulous concept these days, and if you remind us in January we'll explain why. This thing, which seems to be the only idea television has for putting music in its own show now, has been running an unsigned band competition, presumably because MobileAct Unsigned never worked, and the winner is declared here.

13:00 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
1977, with Jonathan Richman's Egyptian Reggae, and 1985, with the debuts of Last Christmas and Walking In The Air.

14:30 Sky Arts 1 Donovan: Sunshine Superman

15:00 Radio 2 Dermot O'Leary
Featuring carols by Dermot's Choir Of Angels, listed as "three indie female stars". If one of them is Pixie Lott, we're going to the IBA.

18:30 ITV1 Take That: The Circus Live
Wonder if they have an exit strategy at all, given this idea of "coming back to claim what wasn't rightfully theirs but their original audience need something to be excited about" can't last forever. The fastest selling tour in UK history gets ninety minutes of prime-time, followed by a behind the scenes account on ITV2.

19:00 Sky Arts 1 Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
Stewart Copeland unearths his Super 8 collection.

20:00 Radio 2 Even Better Than The Real Thing - The Top Of The Pops Albums
Not actually connected with the telly show, because the Beeb forgot to patent the title and Pickwick Records picked it up. Doing a documentary on them is therefore big of them. Noddy Holder voices, and discussion of the Pretty Vacant cover is promised, which isn't that audacious as the chords and vocal style are quite easy to replicate. Cover volume 45's version of Autobahn, at least!

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Gary Moore: One Night In Dublin
A 2005 one-off tribute to Phil Lynott, Moore joined by a number of ex-Thin Lizzy members. Followed at 22:20 by Thin Lizzy Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow Theatre.

21:55 BBC3 Move Like Michael Jackson
Yeah, cos everyone remembers that Mitchell Brothers track. Parts three and four, so they're shoving this out ASAP, of the dancing competition kind of given away in the title, with judges Jamelia, Jermaine Jackson and the alliteration buggering Mark Summers. That's the dancing casting agent to the stars, not the bloke behind Magic Roundabout sampling novelty rave hit Summer's Magic. But imagine if it was. Final Sunday at 21:00, the finalists' (oh christ) journey at 21:00 Monday.

00:15 C4 Live From Abbey Road
This seemed such a good idea when Channel 4 launched it, but the lineups consistently fail to impress. Tonight Michael sodding Buble, Little Boots and bane of Amelia Fletcher's life the Temper Trap.


SUNDAY 20th DECEMBER

10:40 Sky Movies Indie Shine A Light
Scorsese's 2008 Stones documentary, Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera propping up - literally, perhaps - two dates from their last world tour.

14:30 Sky Movies Indie Control
Chin up!

15:30 6 Music A Month of Matinees
6 Music has been filling this slot with guests while they wait for Stephen Merchant to come back. December's theme is people in films, ergo Edgar Wright gets a turn.

16:00 Radio 1 Radio 1's Chart Show
Fuck you, they won't do what they tell you.

20:00 Absolute Geoff Lloyd
Substantial chat with Trevor Horn.

20:00 6 Music Dave Pearce
Substantial chat, as well as DJ selections, with Horn's mates the Pet Shop Boys.

21:00 Sky 1 George Michael Live In London
If he doesn't fall asleep backstage.

21:10 BBC4 Cardigans At Christmas
We're being far from ironic when we say that when the Tories get rid of BBC4 next year this is the sort of thing we'll miss. This is actually a repeat documentary about light entertainment festive specials, followed by the best of The Andy Williams Christmas Show, a Val Doonican Show special from 1976 and the recentish Queens Of British Pop documentary.


MONDAY 21st DECEMBER

16:00 6 Music Hamish & Andy
With over two million listeners, Hamish Blake and Andy Lee's unique comedic style has made them Australia's most popular DJs. This is the first time they've broadcast in Brit... wait, is this some sort of injoke? (checks) No, apparently not. Why on earth are they doing this, then? "The show finds its humour in everyday stories and situations", apparently, but then so does Andy Parsons'. Jamie Oliver and Ricky Gervais guest.

17:30 Sky Movies Indie High Fidelity
Avant fact: Ian Williams of Don Caballero and Battles is in the celebrated Beta Band scene.

19:00 Five Studio Five's Jacko Tribute
God, Ian Wright's tribute to Michael Jackson, can you imagine?

19:00 Radio 1 Festive Festival
Now they've got shot of Lamacq, it's Nick Grimshaw's turn to host an all-eveninger at Maida Vala, featuring Simian Mobile Disco, Mumford & Sons, Plan B, The XX (or, as the original press release said, XX Teens), Enter Shikari and Marina & The Diamonds.

20:00 BBC2 University Challenge
Featuring the University of Manchester team, one of whom runs Cherryade Records and another is one of our co-contributors to The Line Of Best Fit.

20:00 ITV4 Freddie Mercury: Magic Remixed
Another favourite obsession of documentary commissioners with no ideas, Robbie Williams, McFly and Mike Myers discuss Freddie's legacy alongside home video footage and rare interviews.

20:00 Sky 1 Michael Jackson's Private Home Movies
Actually from 2003, part of Fox's damage limitation following the Bashir interview.

20:00 Sky Arts 1 My Music: Seth Lakeman
Overambitious push as 'the folk James Blunt' long gone, Lakeman discusses his influences.

21:00 Five Michael Jackson: The Last Days
22:00 Five Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Concert
23:50 Five Michael Jackson Not For Sale
First and last here won't be tawdry in the slightest, being a reconstruction of his last movements and an examination of belongings recently auditioned off. In the middle is a 2001 concert, the brothers' first reunion in two decades plus the usual selection of appropriately demographic crossing guests.


TUESDAY 22nd DECEMBER

16:30 Radio 4 Great Lives
The station's regular series commemorating the significant dead reaches Vivian Stanshall, with Neil Innes and Viv's widow Ki Longfellow. Pop fact: Viv and Ki found, moored and converted what is now the Thekla in Bristol.

19:00 Radio 1 Review Of The Year
Nihal runs through this year of years.

19:00 6 Music Marc Riley
The annual all-in Christmas bash, also featuring Guy Garvey, Jesca Hoop and Liz Green.

22:00 BBC4 We Need Answers
Mark Watson, Tim Key and the other one's post-post-post-post modern quiz welcomes beKangoled guest Neil Innes.

22:45 BBC2 The Culture Show: Michael Jackson Special
23:45 BBC2 Michael Jackson Live In Budapest: The Dangerous Tour
He died, you know.


WEDNESDAY 23rd DECEMBER

17:00 Radio 2 Chris Evans
Chris' last proper show before he takes over Wogan's seat, from the O2 featuring live Proclaimers, Ting Tings and Scouting For Girls.

19:00 6 Music Marc Riley
Highlights of his 2009 sessions.

19:30 BBC2 TOTP2 Christmas Special
They've given the narration to Mark Radcliffe! Yes! Beyond that, the predictable.

20:00 Radio 2 Radcliffe & Maconie
Thea Gilmore, whose Christmas album Scrawn sings on, does the festive special.

20:00 ITV1 The Nolans: In The Mood For Dancing
It must be like a permanent Loose Women staff night out with Lambrini on tap at those gigs.

20:00 Sky Arts 1 My Music: Kate Rusby

22:45 Sky Arts 1 My Music: Eliza Carthy

23:30 Radio 4 Take Two
In a series about famed double acts, Richard Coles discusses Steely Dan.

00:30 C4 Editors Live At Fabric
Does it really matter where it is?


CHRISTMAS EVE

16:00 6 Music The Best Of Adam & Joe

18:30 6 Music Guy Garvey's Encore
This went out in the lunchtime docu-oddity slot on Radio 4 a few weeks ago, but it was worthwhile just to hear recordings of how Garvey wanted Elbow fans to summon an encore on their last tour. It's about the development and conventions of the tacked on bit of the gig, featuring Everything Everything among others.

20:00 Sky Movies Christmas (wut?) Mamma Mia!
No.

20:00 Sky Arts 1 Songbook: Ray Davies Special
Part one of two, the second at this time on New Year's Eve. The Songbook format is Will Hodgkinson talks to a guest in a makeshift rehearsal studio about influences and songwriting and they then play acoustic versions of some of their songs. It works, actually.

20:00 Radio 2 Robbie Williams' Line Of Enquiry
Kate Thornton puts your questions to him for two hours. You'd run out soon enough.

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Queen Rock Montreal
In 1982.

23:05 Five Simon Cowell: Where Did It All Go Right?
Assuming it did go right for the greater good, there.

23:15 Radio 3 Late Junction
The latest in their series of one-off collaborations brings together excellent Brighton folkie Mary Hampton, storyteller Debs Newbold and theatrical composer Dave Price.

00:40 BBC2 Comedy Songs - The Pop Years
Originally shown on BBC4, it doesn't cover everything it could but is a pretty good effort at tracking how comedy and music have intersected over the last forty years.

04:00 Radio 1 Huw Stephens' Weird And Wonderful Christmas
Weird for that time, certainly. He did something similar to this last year, if memory serves, at about the same timeslot and they didn't even put it on iPlayer for whatever reason.


CHRISTMAS DAY

10:00 Radio 1 The Tinsel Takeover/Radio 1's Christmas Gifts
Helpfully different sources give different titles. Seems a bit of a mutually helpful filler too, giving 24 listeners fifteen minutes' airtime each. According to the station's blurb, that's three whole songs, one of which has to be festive.

10:00 6 Music Derek Smalls
Harry Shearer is a more than capable radio host, as you may know from Le Show on KCRW, and we'd like to hear him transplant that sort of thing to Britain even if just for a one-off. But no, it has to be Tap-related. When they put their album out this year, it was promoted in America with a Guest/McKean/Shearer acoustic Storytellers-style tour of Tap and Folksmen songs, and in Britain with a load of in-character interviews that didn't work. So here's Derek Smalls, with the rest of the band on the phone. Trust us, this won't be as fun as it sounds.

10:35 C4 Beyonce: I Am... Yours
Ambitiously billed as "an acoustic set".

12:00 6 Music Jimmy Page and the BBC Sessions
Not an exciting new supergroup but Page introducing Led Zep session tracks and in conversation with Shaun Keaveny.

13:00 6 Music Beth Ditto
Deepening threat she'll just play a load of bad electro rather than what she actually bred her band's style on.

13:15 Sky Arts 1 Freddie Mercury: The Tribute Concert
The Wembley event from Easter 1992, featuring David Bowie's in no way cloying Lord's Prayer recital. Also, Spinal Tap played.

14:00 BBC1 Top Of The Pops Christmas
Seriously, wouldn't you rather not have this charade than this Sun sop once a year, still presented by the same Cotton/Yates team that took the show under? Diversity are on, and they aren't even a musical group.

14:00 Absolute Christmas With Christian
They value O'Connell enough to give him a prime Christmas Day highlights spot. But then they also let him do a show for 5 Live.

15:00 6 Music Lammo's Mercury Highlights
Pick of winners and nominees, apparently. His Mercury's in retrograde.

16:00 Radio 1 Story Of The Noughties
They've been running this series of instant nostalgia throughout the last ten weeks, and now they're being shoved out back to back.

16:00 6 Music Don Letts' Reggae Christmas

18:05 Sky Arts 1 Roy Orbison Live In Australia
"At the peak of his career", it says in the blurb. Well, he peaked in 1963-64 and this was recorded in 1972, so within the decade.

20:00 Sky Arts 1 ELO Live At Wembley
The huge Out Of The Blue gig, introduced by Tony Curtis. Now there's flash.

20:00 Radio 2 Suzi's Motown
Ms Quatro is American, ergo.

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Soul Power
Alongside the Rumble In The Jungle in Zaire in 1974 was a three day concert starring James Brown, the Detroit Spinners and BB King. The footage has only recently been found and sifted for this recently released documentary.

21:00 Five The Abba Years
22:00 Five Mamma Mia!: Where Did It All Go Right?
23:00 Five Abba The Movie
That's the trouble with Five, they get one idea in their head and they have to chase it down as far as they can go.

00:30 BBC2 Never Mind The Buzzcocks: Where Are They Now?
Like those end of series specials, except without Amstell's ideas. Repeated at a nearly earthly time (11pm) on the 30th.


BOXING DAY

10:00 6 Music Adam & Joe
Their last show for quite a while (pre-recorded, so the last proper show is on the 19th) for a while while Joe Cornish goes and directs a film.

10:00 1Xtra 1Xtra's Chart Of The Decade
100 tracks of ten years stretched out across the day.

13:00 Radio 2 Pick Of The Pops
1962, with Telstar, Chris Montez and Rolf Harris' Sun Arise, and 1981, headed by Don't You Want Me with appearances by Ant Rap and, oh go on Dale, Altered Images' I Could Be Happy.

13:00 6 Music Hail Hail Rock 'N' Roll With John Harris
Harris has just put out a book of historical rock and roll factoids, and here he'll run through some of them with illustration.

15:00 6 Music A Man Like Curtis
Curtis Mayfield died twenty years ago this day, so Lenny Kravitz takes over most of the day, with Craig Charles butting in at one point, with a series of documentaries paying tribute to his life and influence.

17:00 Sky Arts 1 Marvin Gaye: Greatest Hits Live
Recorded in Amsterdam in 1976.

17:00 Radio 2 Bon Jovi's Guide To Rock With Richie Sambora
Ha ha ha ha ha. (Mirthless laughter there)

19:00 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979
Last year Sky Arts showed a lot of the Cash family gatherings, and this year they're reshowing them all. This is new to the channel, though, featuring a guest slot for Andy Kaufman.

20:00 Radio 2 The Record Producers
In the latest of Radio 2's seemingly bank holiday only series Smokey Robinson talks about his career, Steve Levine analyses it.

23:00 Radio 1 Most Hip-Hop
Repeated from last year, Westwood and Lowe list hip-hop's thirty most important names.

23:00 Radio 2 Gospel According To The King
Elvis won three Grammys, and they were all for gospel recordings. Jerry Hall - well, the natural choice - opens two weeks of programming leading up to what would have been Presley's 75th birthday by examining his gospel links.


SUNDAY 27th DECEMBER

09:55 C4 Chipmunk T4 Special
Brap Pack. We mean, fucking hell.

11:15 Radio 4 Desert Island Discs
David Tennant, who you may know took his stage name from Neil, takes to the mythical island with an inexhaustible power supply but little cultural materials.

15:00 Radio 2 Pirate Johnnie Walker
Walker actually does pretend he's broadcasting from a pirate ship station, the ambitious fool. The best of the end of 1966 in this one-off, presumably, revival.

17:00 6 Music Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone – 1969
For some reason the next four days on the station are dedicated to the last year of the last four decades. This makes a kind of sense, though.

20:00 6 Music Bob Dylan Changing Times
Part one of a three parter, the others being at 7pm over the following days, on what Dylan was up to in those corresponding themed years. Nashville Skyline, Slow Train Coming and Oh Mercy, if you must know, all changes in their own ways.

00:40 C4 Hits And Headlines: Christmas No. 1s
Not sure what that title's about if it's not a strand, and not sure what they're really going to find new to say about the Spice Girls and Westlife, only taking the top spots from 1995 onwards. Maybe Gary Jules won't just be given passing short shrift.


MONDAY 28th DECEMBER

13:00 Radio 1 The Chart Of The Decade
Nihal takes over this slot for the next four days, covering the decade's top selling albums on this day and singles for the next three. That's no fair slanting.

14:00 Radio 2 The Great British Songbook Of The 60s
Nobody outside Radio 2 seems to be entirely sure what the Great British Songbook entails - isn't it just the same catalogue of Great Songs again? Regardless they're running with it for the next five days in this slot, one for each decade, with relevant hosts. It's the none more stereotypically happy happy 60s sound of Tony Blackburn and Cilla Black today, Noddy Holder and Kiki Dee for the 70s on Tuesday, Chris Tarrant and, wow, Nik Kershaw on Wednesday, Zoe Ball and Melanie C Thursday, Alan Carr and Nadine Coyle Friday.

21:00 C4 The Greatest Songs Of The Noughties
And no deviation will be accepted. Decided, since you ask, by public poll - well, we weren't asked - and critical survey. How do they leverage those two together, then?

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis '56 Special

22:30 C4 The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2007
All the Big Fat Quizzes are being reshown during this period, but this one's notable for a truculent Lily Allen and a guest appearance on video from a Muttley-laughing Thom Yorke.

23:30 Radio 2 Elvis – Movie King Or Celluloid Sellout?
Another multi-parter, the second half at the same time on Tuesday. Reliable old Paul Morley is in charge, wondering what Presley's film career did for his reputation.


TUESDAY 29th DECEMBER

12:00 Radio 1 Radio 1 Live - Arctic Monkeys
Recorded for the Beeb in August, repeated here for your convenience.

18:00 Radio 2 The Class Of 2009
Really strange annual event, this, where Paul Gambaccini completely ignores received opinion about who's done best the year just finishing and interviews the people he thinks have achieved the most. This year that means Paloma Faith, Jay Sean, Ingrid Michaelson, Eric Hassle and The Postal Service Owl City.

22:30 Radio 2 Elvis And Dewey – Red, Hot And Blue
Gambo again, with a profile of Dewey Phillips, the motormouth king of Memphis radio and the first person to play Elvis on the radio.

22:50 BBC1 Sting's Winter Songbook
He's going to do some carols. Lordy.


WEDNESDAY 30th DECEMBER

12:00 Radio 1 Radio 1 Live - Dizzee Rascal
His not great full band set from the Electric Proms. Still, it fills this slow day up.

17:00 Radio 2 The Beatles – Here, There And Everywhere
It's a Gambaccini Christmas! This, again, is the first of a two part special the second of which is the same time tomorrow in which he gives the Beatles corpse another kick by talking about their legacy with, among others, George Martin, Brian Wilson, Cameron Crowe, Grohl, Jeff Lynne, Mika, Tom Petty, Slash, Jackson Browne, Mark Ronson and Rick Rubin.

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Elvis Lives! The 25th Anniversary Concert
In 1997 Elvis' TCB Band toured with a large screen on which was shown footage of Presley singing live. And you thought Queen & Paul Rodgers was unneccesarily ghoulish.


NEW YEAR'S EVE

10:00 6 Music Sound Of 2009
Lauren Laverne's year end review.

20:00 Bio Bryan Ferry
21:00 Bio Amy Winehouse Live: Eurockennes Festival
22:00 Bio Franz Ferdinand Live
For some reason the Biography channel is contravening its basic idea and running a day's worth of concert footage from midday, but this is the very last thing we're writing for this so we can't be arsed to list all the Buble, Cliff, Knopfler and Tina Turner. Check the listings guides.

16:00 6 Music Lamacq's Top 40 Of 2009
As voted for by you. Unless you didn't know about the vote.

18:30 BBC1 Top Of The Pops New Year's Eve
Mopping up the rest of the year's achievers.

20:00 Radio 2 Mika
Promising a "party playlist". Oh, we wonder.

21:20 BBC4 Guitar Heroes At The BBC
A different selection to that from earlier in the year but with a lot of the expected names. "Mick Ronson hardly gets a look-in during Starman" Radio Times sniffs, somehow unaware that that TOTP performance is notable for slightly different reasons.

22:00 6 Music 6 Mix Superstar DJ NYE Special
Andrew Weatherall, Marc Hughes, whoever he is, and Erol Alkan.

22:20 Sky Arts 1 The Story Of The Clash

22:50 Five The Cheryl Cole Factor
There must have been some point at which Five - a terrestrial channel, don't forget - must have decided it couldn't be bothered to attempt to get names of any size on board personally.

23:00 BBC2 Jools' Annual Hootenanny
Sir Tom Jones, Dizzee Rascal, Lily Allen, Kasabian, Boy George, Roger Daltrey, Paolo Nutini, Shingai Shoniwa, Florence Welch, Paloma Faith, Dave Edmunds, Ruby Turner, Rico Rodriguez and the First Battalion of Scots Guards. Jools' Rhythm & Blues Orchestra regulars Edmunds, Turner and Rodriguez aside, all seems fairly unimaginative, doesn't it?

00:00 Radio 1 New Year's Eve Essential Mix Live
Deadmau5, Eric Prydz, Justice and Plump DJs see in 2010 at great expense.

01:10 BBC2 Best Of Glastonbury 2009
Ooh, keep in that impromptu glockenspiel solo Neil Young attempted at the end of his set.


NEW YEAR's DAY

10:50 C4 Mariah Carey: Under The Skin
And you think Rick Edwards is going to get the sort of access and insight that title suggests?

13:00 6 Music Lauren Laverne's Sound Of 2010

16:00 6 Music Lamacq's Almanac
Lots of clued-in DJs looking forward today, as expected.

17:25 Sky Arts 1 Johnny Cash: Half A Mile A Day
It's Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison day on the station - the Big O we'll get back to - and the highlight of the Cash output is this oddly titled documentary featuring Willie Nelson, Billy Bob Thornton, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Lee Lewis and so on.

19:00 Radio 1 Huw Stephens
Can we wish Huw wouldn't use so many sound effects and comedy features in 2010? It's very unbecoming of the new music DJ in a frankly nigh-on DLT style, especially when he puts clip-clopping noises over Pulled Apart By Horses records.

19:30 Radio 2 Friday Night Is Music Night – Ella, Aretha, Dusty & Me
The BBC Concert Orchestra, Guy Barker and his Big Band and singers Madeline Bell, Liane Carroll and Kym Mazelle work through the catalogues of Fitzgerald, Franklin, Springfield and, erm, me. It says here.

21:00 BBC4 Guitar Heroes At The BBC
23:35 BBC4 Guitar Heroes At The BBC
Different selections to the selection with the same name from a couple of months ago but with a lot less of the expected names. The Radio Times gets oddly sniffy about this, moaning that they've picked Starman as Mick Ronson's showcase when he's not on screen much - no, but the moment he is is very, very famous - and for the second part claiming "The New York Dolls are less convincing than Alice Cooper", somehow unaware that they came at rock'n'roll performance from different angles.

21:00 Sky Arts 1 Roy Orbison And Friends: A Black And white Night
While the highlight of half a day's Orbison is a 1988 special in which he played the hits with a band including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, kd lang, Bonnie Raitt and James Burton.

21:00 6 Music Bruce Dickinson Friday Rock Show – Led Zeppelin Special

22:00 BBC4 Queen: The Legendary 1975 Concert
Did Queen ever just have a bog-standard concert?

22:00 Radio 2 In The Lounge With Justin Lee Collins
Did his album ever come out?

22:50 BBC4 The Faces: Sight And Sound In Concert

00:35 BBC4 Rock Goes To College: Tom Petty
Newly unearthed transporting of American classic rock to the Oxford Polytechnic studes.

01:20 BBC4 Les Paul - Chasing Sound

02:50 BBC4 Peter Green - Man Of The World

Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 14

The Phantom Band seemed to emerge from nowhere at the very start of the year, but their appearence seems in keeping with the current realm of Scottish plangent guitar botherers. While they may not have the same adherence to pedals and brutally honest seeming lyrics and delivery as many of their indirect peers, although the accents are just as strong, it's the sense of invention and moreover that of determination that keeps them afloat, even as they cycle through variations on genre themes. They harbour a dark heart that connects these dispatches from their eerie, richly textured eclectic combined minds. For all the ideas they throw at the wall first time out, they still come across as fully formed and completely in control.

And like the Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit etc. they have their own ideas about what nowadays consitutes a big alt-pop Moment, that is to say nowhere near the idea of what everyone else thinks but using many of the same hooks and tricks. The Howling kicks off with an undulating bassy keyboard groan before taking on big rock shapes dialled down to a lower level. The band it actually slightly resembles is Snow Patrol, albeit Snow Patrol caught between Jeepster cult and early major label stumblings, taking anthemic structures for a walk through the more off-beam reeds, with nods to the Super Furries to pick up tips on subverting big choruses, so much so that you barely notice it is one until after it's passed for the first time, before charging into a small-text gothic breakdown that lasts the whole final third. If Folk Song Oblivion is supposed to act as the album's big anthem with its slashing power chords and group chorus vocals it's only insomuch as a British Sea Power single is ever an anthem, working doggedly on its own path and motifs. "I can't see for the mountain silhouette" they chant for a coda, placing it in some mythical Highlands misty rockpool formation. Burial Sounds attempts to pull itself out of swampy, almost country-Kraut wave through force of tribal rhythm and choir of black angels alone; Halfhound proves they can do stuttering, stumbling menace around an elastic riff. The instrumental Crocodile begins with a whole heap of Can-like motorik beats twisted around the bass and sound effects until they almost become funky, develops gradually before exploding in a supernova of Stereolab drones and explosive drums not too far short of Holy Fuck. As usual, the ingredients may not be entirely original but with a little stirring and seasoning they've been made to resemble something entirely fresh, an all songs/styles in it together approach that mostly works best as an album, and as an album it works splendidly as a sinister mould-breaker.

[Spotify]

The Howling


The full list

Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 15

No two ways about it, we live in a post-Funeral world (can we use the 'wake' joke again? No? OK) as far as ambitious 'indie' goes. Fanfarlo might fall squarely into that category - forcefully heartfelt singing, strings, working knowledge of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - but there's none of the traps many fellow travellers fall into, of mistaking over-emotiveness and overworked orchestrals for soul bearing march. Their approach is far more down home and warm, still reaching for the stars but simultaneously grounded, feeling like traditional songcraft applied to a melodic musical paintbox of livening instrumentation. If that ambition means, say, Ghosts' soul stomp mirrors the Motowny bit at the end of Wake Up it comes across, as savant as it may be, as unintentional.

Besides, it's not as if it's ever a straight take-off. I'm A Pilot's handclap/percussive clank chain gang rhythm might come across as one of those long marches to Valhalla, strings slithering around Simon Balthazar's precisely unenunciated David Byrne channelling dreaminess, before splitting the sky with crescendos as he channels Howard Hughes with "If I stay in this room they’ll remember me for my youth". Not that it needs to be complicated when it could just as easily carry off good honest indie-pop as she used to be, just with a twist. See the excited rush of Luna, except its power-pop dynamic gets derailed halfway through into minor key lushness that comes across as little less sparky but all the more nuanced in its wash of melancholy as the main figure switches from strings to melodica to trumpet, with a theremin whirring away for backup. Drowning Men doesn't seem able to afford to hang around either, an air of desperation surrounding the central figures in the same way producer Peter Katis brought to his previous clients Interpol and The National. Fire Escape borrows Grandaddy's keyboards before a bass-led surge which allows Balthazar's vocals to float and/or emote where necessary. Pleasing whistling at the end too. If The Walls Are Coming Downs carries echoes of Ounsworth in its mariachi brass and mandolin strumalong, the folky melody and sweeping, joyous and oddly summery chorus are all their own. The pensive, sparsely downbeat slow motion balladry of If It Is Growing proves they can pull off sensitivity as much as passion, with a sound as depth filled and delicate as any ballad this year. For all their playful singles and quietly promising development over the nearly three years between first single and album Fanfarlo were right to bide their time, because on the album they sound ready, confident and with room for manoevure in the future while sounding relevant and enthralling right now.

[Spotify]

The Walls Are Coming Down


The full list