Albums Of The Year

[alexsarll]

I can't be faffed with all these lists of the decade which are doing the rounds - not least because I haven't been keeping an ongoing list through the decade, so I'd end up with some sort of half-remembered mess I'd be regretting within the week. But this I do every year, and keep a running tally for, and justify because I know it's got a couple of friends into a few great records over the years and really, how much more than that can any of us hope to accomplish with our LJs?

1. The Liberty of Norton Folgate - Madness
2. Wonders Never Cease - Mr Solo
3. It's Not Me, It's You - Lily Allen
4. Truelove's Gutter - Richard Hawley
5. London - Philip Jeays
6. You've Created A Monster - Brontosaurus Chorus
7. Art Brut vs Satan
8. Dark Young Hearts - frYars
9. Let's Change The World With Music - Prefab Sprout
10. Found Wanting - Rob Britton
11. The Bachelor - Patrick Wolf
12. Primary Colours - The Horrors
13. The Sound-Board Breathes - Gyratory System
14. The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman - Sparks
15. Someday All This Could Be Yours (Pt 1) - The Paper Chase
16. The Glare - McAlmont & Nyman
17. God Help The Girl - Stuart Murdoch et al
18. The Duckworth Lewis Method
19. Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da - Rammstein
20. The Fame Monster - Lady Gaga
21. Islands - The Mary Onettes
22. Journal For Plague Lovers - Manic Street Preachers
23. Through The Devil Softly - Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions
24. Until The Earth Begins To Part - Broken Records
25. Forget The Night Ahead - The Twilight Sad
26. Hombre Lobo - Eels
27. Slow Attack - Brett Anderson
28. The Life Of The World To Come - The Mountain Goats
29. 21st Century Man/Achtung Mutha - Luke Haines
30. The Hazards of Love - The Decemberists
31. Fight My Battles For Me - Pagan Wanderer Lu
32. Twitter Tracks - The Streets
33. The Yellow Mini - Jonny Cola & the A-Grades
34. Kicks - 1990s
35. We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River - Richmond Fontaine
36. Pram Town - Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern
37. The Performance - Shirley Bassey
38. The Resistance - Muse
39. Begone Dull Care - Junior Boys
40. Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle - Bill Callahan

But blazes, haven't there been a lot of disappointments? Franz Ferdinand, Pet Shop Boys and Jarvis were among those who made a brave effort to work with new production teams who ought to have produced the goods, but they all came a cropper by so doing, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Eminem and Marilyn Manson, meanwhile, were among those content to churn out more of the same old same old - especially disappointing in Manson's case, when the preceding Eat Me Drink Me had been the first sign of any new direction in his work for years. And Springsteen...well, for someone so blue collar he's never really been reliable, but this year's album was still one of his more leaden efforts, and in the theme from The Wrestler contained quite possibly his worst song ever. I don't think he's lost it, you understand - there have been bad albums from him before, and will be again, but always interspersed with greatness.
Nor, I thought, was there really a Song Of The Year, something ubiquitous and inarguable, not even a covert Johnny Boy-style one within certain circles. I would ask whether I missed it, but the nature of a 'Get Ur Freak On' or 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' or 'Umbrella' is that it's unmissable right through at least the summer, and then as the nights close in, as nostalgia for summer, however bad that summer was. I suppose the closest this year came would be the offerings from Cheryl Cole, Lady Gaga and La Roux - but I stumble on not having actually liked any of them, in spite of the first two at least being things which on paper should have been right up my street. Or at least, that was how I felt until Gaga's deluxe reissue of the album which had failed to impress me turned out in fact to be another, better album, trailed with 'Bad Romance', and suddenly she had the material to match the concept, and just as the year stuttered to a close, suddenly it had its anthem. It doesn't normally work this way but then, isn't it a song about precisely that?

Comments

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

you are all the wrong in the world mister barry

and "song of the year" is clearly on a boat by loanly island

also - the pains of being pure at heart album - do you have no soul as well as no heart?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I liked the Madness album a lot, but my problem with it is that they'd suddenly turned into a brilliant, rich, rootsy band, a kind of English Pogues, but this fantastic band is fronted by Suggs, who has I admit sounded worse but is still a really leaden frontman for this kind of music (whereas his awkwardness and stiffness worked in his favour back in the ska-pop days).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If nothing else I would have thought you'd appreciate how Pram Town has dropped down the list since we last discussed the matter.

TPOBPAH...I don't object to them, but I also don't get much from them. They're the indie equivalent of this year's Fischerspooner album, perfectly pleasant background music.

'On A Boat' is undoubtedly awesome, but it only really works to best effect a) with the video or b) in a club where everyone's doing impressions of the video.

Incidentally, today's Maps Magazine advent calendar track is by Zombina.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I see where you're coming from, but I think that blokish (but not in an obnoxious Gallagher sense) Everyman quality really suits the record. Shane MacGowan has the big drunken poet thing going on to be an archetypal Irishman, but for an archetypal Englishman, assuming Neil Tennant was busy, Suggs is a pretty good stand-in.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

woooo Zombina

i'd be more impressed if someone (not me) hadn't requested chainsaw for christmas from radio 6 yesterday....

if you belive pram town is in the top 40 albums released this year then you are a man without taste

(and since when do you judge a song due to where it works to best effect - hey ya "works to best effect" in the same places, and if you say that makes it less than one of the best things ever, I think you'll loose the popular vote)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

'Hey Ya' had a good video, but the video wasn't integral to its effect. For me, anyway, these clearly being entirely subjective matters.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

are you seriously telling me that the shake it like a polaroid picture bit works outside of someone actually shaking it like a polaroid picture....

the video is good, but I swear if you're in a car and the person in the passenger seat puts on "on a boat" you won't give a shit about the video

[johnny-vertigen.livejournal.com]

That last DM album really was a pile of tosh wasn't it? I liked Playing the Angel but man, that was bad. See also Morrissey, though I've not really liked any of his albums this decade.

There was a Sparks album this year? When did that happen? Man, I am so out of touch with what's happening musically today it's not funny. But then that means I was also (until I read this list at least) blissfully ignorant of new Brett Anderson stuff, so it's not all bad.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

well it's not an album per se, it's the songs from a musical, which loose something without a visual accompinyment, but apparently this doesn't affect barry's decisions........

oh wait.....

[charleston.livejournal.com]

My list would look totally different - I've only actually got two of these (Rob Britton and Art Brut). What amazingly diverse creatures we are!

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the Prefab Sprout album rated so highly in your list! I think it's lovely, but I haven't heard anyone else rate it highly.

b) in a club where everyone's doing impressions of the video.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

POPTIMISM THIS FRIDAY EVERYONE! Horse Bar near Lambeth North tube, free entry, 7pm, all 2000-songs all the time.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

It's Not Me, It's You would have been my number 1 I think. Not least because it is the only album released this year I appear to own.

I know what you mean about Fight for this love. I want to love it because it should have been more than it was but instead I want to poke her with small sticks. ARGH IT'S SO ANNOYING. STOP SINGING! STOPPIT!

[fugitivemotel.livejournal.com]

Man, I thought the Muse album was rub.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's even better on a motherfucking boat. I just regret that neither our boat nor the goths had it playing when we passed in opposite directions just outside Oxford over summer.

Re: b) in a club where everyone's doing impressions of the video.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Subtle! But yes, I shall assuredly be there.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

but barry, that is neither includes the video or people doing impressions of the video.... so surely you'd find it unsatisfactory

and yes hey ya is obviously better, but that's my point really isn't it, you taking songs at their own value

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY ENDORSE NUMBER 10.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the opera. Was initially exposed to The Lonely Island track, as with most other tracks of theirs, via Youtube. Like I already said, it's subjective. One's experience of a song has a lot to do with how you first encounter it, something I know you appreciate given the biographical vignettes which accompany a lot of your December MP3 posts.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It wasn't even tosh per se, I didn't hate it, I just forgot it the second it had finished playing, beyond a vague sensation that I had been listening to Depeche Mode.

The Sparks one is...odd. But interesting.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The outfit was ace, though. SEXY M BISON.

Apparently the Sarah Harding tracks on the St Trinian's 2 soundtrack are much better.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

one's experience of a song, yes.... but that's like saying "the best food I ever tasted was at that kebab shop, because that is when I first saw my one true love"

i.e. the experience is the best, but that doesn't mean the food is..... you need to be able to separate your experience from your opinions, or else your top 40 albums of the year will be complete rubbish made by a man who's devalues his own opinion...... oh wait.....

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

OK, or c), if one is in fact on a motherfucking boat. I omitted that on account of it not happening all that often for most of us (maybe if travelcards covered the Thames services, it would be very different).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Human interaction with art is necessarily subjective and sometimes defined by coincidences. It is not the unmediated reaction of a tabula rasa to a work with one definitive meaning and value. I'd rather produce - or read - a list which acknowledges this than one which loudly (and necessarily falsely) proclaims itself to be OBJECTIVE SCIENCE FACT.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think it probably slipped past a lot of people by sounding like it was another album from the Prefab Sprout heyday which they'd somehow missed (a very easy thing to do when one is just playing through a band on Spotify, say). It certainly sounds more like something from then than the wistful comedown that was Andromeda Heights, say. Which I think was their last album and which was, what, a decade ago now? Which is itself terrifying.