Live Music News & Reviews

Phew it’s that time of year again when we makes lists, because we all love lists. Oh yes. For me 2009 was all about The Beatles, and if I could I would name all 14 reissues albums of the year, the remasters were superb quality and I enjoyed listening to them from start to finish. However I am not going to do that. You can see London Venue Guide’s top ten below. Firstly however, here’s a list of lists of 2009’s best albums:

NME:

10. Jamie T - Kings and Queens
9. Fever Ray - Fever Ray
8. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
7. The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love
6. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
5. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
4. Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz
2. The XX - The XX
1. The Horrors - Primary Colours

 Mojo Magazine:

10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
9. Madness – The Liberty of Nolton Folgate
8. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
7. Florence & the Machine – Lungs
6. Bob Dylan – Together Through Time
5. Tinariwen – Imidiwan: Companions
4. The Horrors – Primary Colours
3. Richard Hawley – Truelove’s Gutter
2. Bill Calahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle
1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Q Magazine

10 Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
09 U2 - No Line On The Horizon
08 Lily Allen - It’s Not Me, It’s You
07 Muse - The Resistance
06 Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
05 Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
04 Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
03 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz!
02 Florence And The Machine - Lungs
01 Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

And from the wrong side of the Atlantic, Rolling Stone:

10 Sonic Youth - The Eternal
09 The xx - xx
08 The-Dream - Love Vs. Money
07 Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
06 Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
05 Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
04 Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3
03 Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
02 Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream
01 U2 - No Line ON The Horizon

I am finding this year’s list quite difficult - I don’t feel I have listened to enough new music, or maybe I have listened to too much. The easy accessibility of music means it’s often a case of download ten albums in an evening, listen to them once and move onto something else. But the “stayers” this year have been:

10. The Cribs - Ignore the Ignorant

The Cribs still know how to write three chord tunes and now we have Johnny Marr’s fingerprints all over it, which is a good thing. The ballads don’t work as well, but a very good album.

9. Bombay Bicycle Club - I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose

Great debut.

8. Passion Pit - Manners

Passion Pit’s debut is full of fun and has some great tunes. The falsetto vocals can annoy after a while, but this is still a good electronica record, although that particular scene is surely due a death now.

7. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

When this album first came out I loved it. Then I didn’t, now I do again. Stand out tracks are Dance Little Liar and Potion Approaching.  It’s a little short of tunes, and whilst the Monkeys’ sound has grown with their hair, they seem to have lost something of whatever it was that made them special. Still, they are determined not to play the game and I respect them for that. Not as good as Favourite Worst Nightmare, but the next album should be very interesting.

6. The Maccabees - Wall of Arms

Great second album from The Maccabees. The singer has a great Bryan Ferry-like voice, and in fact they sound more than a little like Roxy Music.

5. Air - Love 2

Air really pissed me off in the noughties, after the superb Premiers Symptomes and Moon Safari they just went all, well, crap. 10 000 Hz Legend had its moments (and some odd collaborations with Beck) but I had written them off as a band after a series of disappointments, until people started describing Love 2 as a “return to form”. It’s a great album involving their trademark laidback grooves and odd noises.  

4. Mos Def: The Ecstatic

I loved this album and would rate it almost as highly as Mos Def’s stunning debut Black on Both Sides. The Arab-themed music felt new and fit with the zeitgeist as Iraq and Afghanistan headed inevitably towards Vietnam, films like Hurt Locker told it like it was, and “Auditorium featuring Slick Rick” was possibly the song of the year for me.

3. Girls - Girls

San Fransisco’s Girls appeared out of nowhere in 2009 to hit us with a, let’s be honest, patchy album, but when it hit the heights it offered us the sublime “HellHole Ratrace” and the lovely “Ghost Train”. Their intriguing lead singer Christopher Owens is a former member of the Children of God cult. This album shows a lot of promise, sounding like the Beach Boys, Motown, the Cramps, and something of Glasvegas, only better.

2. The XX - The XX

Where did they come from? This album will get played to death and is in danger of becoming another Moon Safari, appearing on ads and tv shows, but let’s not forget that right now, it is a great album full of feeling. The boy/girl vocals are beautiful and the album has so much empty space you could fit the entire country of Denmark in it. 

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz

The move away from guitars was a masterstroke, this album has so much depth to it and so many great tunes. Live they became one of the best acts around.

Last night Julian Casablancas played the second of two sold-out nights at the HMV Forum. And what a disappointing night it was.

Casablancas appeared onstage at 9:20 wearing a sleeveless leather jacket and looking every inch the rock star, before launching into Ludlow Street, which sounded a bit like the Pogues and was an underwhelming opener. Casablancas was joined onstage by two drummers, a keyboard player and a guitarist.

It wasn’t until three songs in, when the keyboards signalled the intro to 11th Dimension, that the crowd looked remotely interested. That didn’t stop Casablancas from talking mindless nonsense in-between songs about how “fuckin’ awesome” the crowd was. It soon became clear why Julian Casablancas rarely does interviews, his personality does not seem to match his rock star look at all - a bit like David Beckham, he would be well-advised to keep his mouth shut. Still, he meant well, and it was nice of him to talk to the crowd, but his banter was pretty abysmal.

The excellent Out of the Blue came early in the set, which provoked some excitement and a singalong, but it didn’t seem to lift the oppressive air of disappointment, which Casablancas either didn’t pick up on, or completely ignored as he continued to spout crap like “Shit man, um yeh, let’s fuckin’ do this”. A low point was reached with the awful “I Wish it Was Christmas Today”. Things picked up slightly with the excellent “Left & Right in the Dark”, but “Tourist” was one of the worst dirges I have ever paid to sit through.

After a brief break, Casablancas returned to play a fairly sweet cabaret-style version of You Only Live Once, just him and a piano, although he did stop himself halfway through to spout more bollocks, before struggling to remember where he was, with the momentum by then completely lost. He finished with Glass, and the crowd stumbled home like they’d just found out Father Christmas didn’t exist.

You can’t deny Julian Casablancas has a great voice, but outside The Strokes he seems lightweight, the songs aren’t good enough (unlike Albert Hammond Junior’s two excellent solo albums) and he doesn’t have the charisma to pull it off.  There was nothing of the “amazing light show” Casablancas had talked about in interviews leading up to the tour, just plain old rock and roll with a little bit of Duran Duran thrown in. The Strokes reunion cannot come soon enough.