Journal

Holidays approaching - time to sum up the year with the best new music...




10 The Swell Season - Strict Joy



I have to thank The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien for introducing me to this dulcet duo. They were performing live and vocalist Glen Hansard’s warm voice in a bluesy ballad called Low Rising seemed awfully palatable to my sensibilities, so I immediately acquired their full album. The album is strong, even though Low Rising remains the most tuneful piece on it. I read that Hansard was the founder of an Irish indie band The Frames and The Swell Season is more of a side project for him and his former girlfriend, Czech pianist Markéta Irglová. They apparently won an Oscar for Best Original Song from the 2007 musical drama Once. Strict Joy is the third studio LP they’ve released together. Markéta can be heard singing lead on a couple of tracks, but the anonymous quality of her voice doesn’t add much to the tapestry of swirling guitars and light folk rhythms. It’s Hansard’s elegantly pensive personality that takes this record on another level, higher than your typical cornershop indie output.


09 Elysian Fields - The Afterlife



Elysian Fields must be the most obscure band in my favourites list. They are so deep under ground that you can comb through Youtube and end up with only a handful of videos where you see them performing in some dark, dingy jazz club for 30 people. And that they are once again a male/female duo (New York-based musicians Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles) like The Swell Season strikes me as a humourous coincidence. Humour is one facet of them that attracted me from the start. Jennifer Charles possesses a voice so sultry that it could melt the pants off any man, but she’s not able to wrap herself around the sexual metaphors in Climbing my Dark Hair without the scent of self-irony dripping through. She’s a bit of a clown, lulling and seducing the listener into a mysterious dream where the most exotic bedroom fantasies (whether straight or lesbian) become possible.


08 Tinted Windows - Tinted Windows



Optimistic power pop suits Taylor Hanson like a glove. Even as a daddio he’s still able to switch into youthful Where’s-The-Love-style singing mode and make me feel giddy, like he does on Messing With My Head - first song from the album that caught my attention. He’s also particularly scrumptious in places where the mood bites a little – Dead Serious or his self-penned track Nothing to Me. Listening to his voice again after a long while, I found myself wishing he was backed up by his own brothers, but I suppose James Iha’s interesting guitar patterns compensate somewhat for the lack of Hanson-ness.


07 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!



It’s Blitz! is a little gem of an album that I feel like I haven’t yet started to really appreciate, because it hasn’t completely sunk in yet. Maybe I will give it a higher rating in a year or two once I’ve seen how the music holds up. Indie magazines are collectively drooling over it, but I’m reluctant to fall for what I’m told to fall for. That said... lead singer Karen O’s presence suggests layers of richness under glowing electro-disco beats and in slower numbers she comes quite close to assuaging my concern over the actual substance of this sugar-coated affair. She’s definitely hinting at something more serious than snarky girlie angst, but is it enough to make me care for them beyond this blitz?


06 Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince - Original Soundtrack



If you don’t believe that this is the most splendid Harry Potter score since John Williams provided his magic on the Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban soundtrack, then listen to In Noctem, Harry & Hermione, Farewell Aragog, When Ginny Kissed Harry and Dumbledore's Farewell for about ten times. There are no roaring and sweeping themes in here, but every delicate composition reveals emotional subtleties that will tug at your heartstrings when given a chance.


05 Lacuna Coil - Shallow Life



A very controversial album that frustrated many old school fans with its slick "Americanized" production and more simplistic lyrical ideas than expected from the Italian gothic metal sextet. However, I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t consider it on par with their early work, but it’s a well crafted rock album, energetic and life-affirming. I never thought I would use this word to describe their music, but Lacuna Coil is FUN to listen to in here. The guitars sound sharper and miss Scabbia spices up her usual weary vocal method with scathing one-liners of a dance diva.


04 Bat for Lashes - Two Suns



Daniel is one of the most stunning songs ever written. If she can keep up with these standards she has set for herself on this record and throw us more ethereal, nocturnal pop of such calibre in the future, I will happily declare myself a proper fan. Go girl.


03 Muse - The Resistance



I harbor contradictory feelings towards Muse. There are days when I’m convinced that they are incorrigible, hypocritical bitches, making money off of the Twilight soundtrack, while acting as if it was a touch of irony from their part to appear on it; then there are days when I have to admit that not many bands in the world right now do their thing better than they do. Fortunately with Muse I’m not hindered by the issue of separating the artist from the music they make. If I was, or I'd let myself be, I’d miss out on a lot. And whoever deliberately misses out on Muse’s delicious brand of flamboyant stadium rock is a fool.


02 Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends



I listened to this album so much over the past six months that I kind of neglected the fact that it was officially released in June, 2008, and I just happened to be late to the party. Which is why in my memory it will be associated with the summer of 2009.


01 The Veils - Sun Gangs



Not a big surprise. Now, I don’t think it’s the most consistent LP of the year, but it offers some of the best songwriting from Finn Andrews so far and that’s saying something. Nothing from Viva La Vida or The Resistance reaches the depth and timelessness of Sit Down by the Fire, the soaring Jeff Buckley-esque beauty of The Letter or the gloomy atmospherics of Larkspur. Andrews’ voice and its range are simply divine throughout – he alternates between tenor and baritone, drama and tenderness, sensual belting (It Hits Deep) and cracking animalistic screams (Killed by the Boom), and every nuance of mood and emotion in his complex vocalizing is brought to the fore thanks to the impeccable production by Graham Sutton and Bernard Butler. An interesting note: Canadian folk-songstress Basia Bulat sings backing vocals on The House She Lived In and Scarecrow.




This year has been a year of amazing discoveries for me (new and old artists) and a year of radical changes (both positive and negative). When 2008 was left fairly pale and uneventful in comparison, I will always remember 2009 in music.





Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket mourn their father



COMPOSERS:

Alexandre Desplat
Christopher Young
Clint Mansell
Giorgio Moroder
Dave Grusin
Mikis Theodorakis
Zbigniew Preisner
Vangelis
Wojciech Kilar


POP/ROCK:

Roy Orbison
Patti Smith
Mansun
Bauhaus
Tom Waits
The Flaming Lips
Stevie Wonder
Loretta Lynn
Suede
Bernard Butler
The Smiths
Kate Bush
Michael Jackson
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Hu?
Basia Bulat
The Swell Season
The Raveonettes
Joanna Newsom
Elysian Fields
Tinted Windows
Bat for Lashes
The Veils




And what is it going to take anyway for this man in here to become a cult legend? Does he need to fall to death from a cliff in New Zealand or something? I'm sorry, I won't accept that