gongs

Another year over and what have we done?

Well, we've listened to a lot of music. Time well spent? Think so...

Here's a playlist of some decent tracks which have seen the light of day in 2011, courtesy of our favourite music streaming service. It's in no way authoritative, being largely dependent on hastily scribbled post-it notes after 6Music--usually Gideon Coe--has make my ears prick up with something.

And these, in rough order, are my top 20 albums of the year, chosen with slightly more consideration:

1. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
2. High Llamas – Talahomi Way
3. Hong Kong in the 60s – My Fantoms
4. Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
5. Cornershop – Cornershop and the Double “O” Groove
6. Leisure Society – Into The Murky Water
7. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
8. Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
9. Nick Lowe – The Old Magic
10. Hollie Cook – Hollie Cook
11. Low – C’Mon
12. SBTRKT – SBTRKT
13. Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!
14. Silver Seas – Chateau Revenge
15. Modular - Sinfonias Para Terricolas
16. Cecil Sharp Project – Cecil Sharp Project
17. Gruff Rhys – Hotel Shampoo
18. James Blake – James Blake
19. The Unthanks – Last
20. Jonny – Jonny

Make of that what you will but as always I'd be interested in any comments, politely-phrased alternative suggestions/unbridled outbursts of knuckle-clenched fury...

P.S. The High Llamas record is excluded from my playlist but you can buy it (shock horror) here.

yool choons

Getting festive here and, as is popular in these parts, there's one of those new-fangled Spotify playlists to reflect the fact with a selection of recommended festive listening.

Some of these tracks are pretty obvious examples of syrupy fifties schlock, a few are slightly further off the beaten track. Many of the regulation Christmas musical cliches feature at some stage: there are chimes (track 4), a couple of "Jingle Bells" intros (tracks 9 and 22), a fair few unashamedly schmaltzy string arrangements and I can count six tracks on which sleigh bells appear. There is though, as far as I can tell, no children's choir.

Here's another Christmas song, cliche-free, and one which you can only get on YouTube, unless (shudder) you are prepared to spend some money, and we certainly don't want any of that kind of extravagance, particularly at this time of year.

Happy Christmas...



(See also: David Hepworth's Christmas playlist which also manages to steer clear of most of the usual suspects--Slade, Kirsty & The Pogues--but doesn't have a single choice in common with my own.)

lost in france?

Every year I put together a compilation of the my favourite songs of the year to send to my sister as a Christmas present. She has three kids and lives in France so I tend to think that the musical treats which I obsessively pore over on an almost daily basis are pretty much denied to her.

Whether she's bothered about this of course is a different matter. I'm not sure to what extent she's just being polite but she always says thank you to me for sending it. She does now and then pick out the odd track for a special mention so I've no doubt she listens to it. At least once.

Anyway, tonight I've been looking at the iTunes playlist of tracks which I've been adding to during the course of the year. I've burned them to CD and will be putting them in the post to France over the weekend.

I'm listening to them as I type this, and damn, there are some great songs, if I say so myself. Many of them I've already banged on about in these pages, others not. See what you think:

• Prefab Sprout: Let There Be Music
• The Leisure Society: A Short Weekend Begins With Longing
• Fleet Foxes: He Doesn't Know Why
• Niko: Womb
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: Strange Overtones
• Pull In Emergency: In Silence
• Shena: Can't Stop The Rain
• The Third Degree: Mercy
• Shirley Bassey: The Girl From Tiger Bay
• The Leisure Society: The Last of The Melting Snow
• Oh, Atoms: Sugar Mouse
• Howling Bells: Let's Be Kids
• Empire of the Sun: We Are The People
• Rose Elinor Dougall: Start/Stop/Synchro
• Simphiwe Dana: Ndiredi
• The Unthanks: Living By The Water
  
• Prefab Sprout: Music Is A Princess

OR: You can Spotify 'em here.

the last of the great romantics

If you, like me, are a longstanding admirer of the recorded work of Prefab Sprout, you'll probably think that Paddy MacAloon is a songwriting genius. You'll certainly have been interested to read the many interviews in the press recently and maybe heard the man himself, gracious and self-deprecating as ever, talk to Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe a couple of weeks ago.

You'll be familiar with the story of a compulsive songwriter whose addiction to his craft has meant that, in addition to the albums which have sporadically appeared over the last twenty-five years or so, he's also amassed a huge collection of songs which have, tragically, never seen the light of day. You'll also have heard the sad story of how severe health problems mean that the recording process is now a massively laborious one for him and live performances an impossibility. You'll have seen photos of a man in dark glasses, bushy beard and purple suit hugely at odds with his appearance as a handsome, clean-shaven twenty-something.

Thankfully a recording of at least some of the songs from the McAloon archive has now finally hit the shops. "Let's Change the World With Music" is the pared-down version of a possibly very overblown concept album first put together in 1993 and which consequently met with record company rejection.

These are songs of another time in many respects--they're imbued with the naive optimistism of a younger man and often saddled with rather out-dated arrangements. But they're great songs and, as is typical of Prefab Sprout albums, repeated listenings reap rich rewards. There are some great tunes: the chorus of "Music is a Princess" (below) is particulary majestic I think. "Falling In Love" is all the more heartfelt for its simplicity. The lyrics are clever and relentlessly upbeat. In "Last of the Great Romantics":

Here comes the last of the Great Romantics
Not tortured, not racked, illusions intact,
Undiscouraged by the facts.

He's a master songwriter. In "I Love Music", he claims his hero is "the unnerving unswerving Irving Berlin." You can see why.

Here's hoping for more from the vaults soon...



Links:

• Album reviews: holymoly.com, the Independent
• Interviews: recent Independent (excellent), Unoffical Sprout web site

Recommended Spotify listening:

• Steve McQueen (1984)
  
• Jordan: the Comeback (No, not that one) (1990)
• The Gunman and Other Stories (2001)