10. Ryan Bingham - Roadhouse Blues
Ryan B
ingham sounds so much older than his 28 years. His voice has that raspiness and world weariness associated with the best blues and country singers. He also produces some of the best Americana music
around today. Produced by The Black Crowes' Marc Ford, it's rootsy, honest and rocking and a definite step-up from his excellent debut Mescalito. Plus it's hard not to love an artist with song titles like Dylan's Hard Rain and Tell My Mother I Miss Her So. I find something new in this everytime I listen.
9. Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears -
Tell 'Em What Your Name Is!
Mixing t
he old school soul with garage rock, Black Joe Lewis' album has to be one of my big surprises of the year: I just could not stop playing it. Sure the songs were sexist and silly, filled with the sort of lyrics normally found on a hip hop record praising "big booty women" and complaining girlfriends, but it's done with such humour you instantly forgive it and the music has such raw passion, reminding you of the very best Stax bands and James Brown at his craziest, that there was more joy and pure rock n' roll in this little album than most rock records. Plus, unlike those, you'll want to dance to this one.
It's tru
e The Decemberists have always had a thing about concept albums but they haven't pulled one off as successfully, I think. In fact, although I've always liked The Decemberists, it wasn't until The Hazards Of Love that I was finally understood all the love people have for them. When I first got this album I just played it over and over. It's like a huge, operatic play based on strange myths and dark fairytales. Although I'd have a hard time telling the story to you, something about a woman and a shape-shifting forest dweller and an evil queen, it doesn't really matter because the music, which moves seamlessly from one song to the next, is magnificent: folk, pop and even heavy metal, it utilises them all. But best of all is guest singer Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond as the evil forest queen, particularly on the song Repaid which has to be the most thrilling, amazing vocal I've heard all year.
Apparently
Valley Lodge is the band of a New York comedian called Dave Hill, who I had never heard of until I accidentally discovered this album on Spotify. Although it turns out Hill is a very, very funny man, so I can understand why he keeps his successful career as a comedian as his main job, I have to admit I love the pure power pop joy of his musical side-project more (whose first album was unsurprisingly much loved in Japan - they love good power pop over there!). Think Cheap Trick meets The Raspberries and you get the idea: great rousing choruses backed with crunchy glam rock riffs. More old school than The New Pornographers, Valley Lodge are the best power pop band I've heard in ages.
6. St. Vincent - Actor
I have l
ots of female artists in my list this year for some reason but I think it really has been a great year for female musicians and every one is strikingly different. Not least Annie Clark aka St. Vincent, a brilliant guitarist with a gorgeous, pure, grand almost, voice and songs filled with strange sounds that go off into unexpected places, leaping from graceful pop to abrasive rock without a moment's notice. She manages to carry this trick over to her live shows with even greater success too. It's also a treat to hear an album that sounds pretty yet sinister and intelligent and doesn't forget to rock out on occasion too.
So I'm
sure this album is probably on lots of end of year lists but I have to follow the crowd with this one and include it because it really is a stunningly beautiful and ethereal record. Less folky and more beat-based than the first album it's filled with the best British eccentricity that made the likes of Bowie and Kate Bush (with whom she is often, justifiably, compared) so great, from alter-egos named Pearl to the whole thing being a concept album about "dual personalities" and other spiritual and metaphysical ponderings. But really it's the music that's a stand-out: graceful, sensual, sophisticated but still pure pop, albeit of the smarter variety, it's hard not to fall under Natasha Khan's spell.
First of
all, Neko on the cover kneeling on top of a cool 70s car brandishing a sword looking like a mighty flame-haired warrior princess? Easily the cover of the year, without a doubt and luckily the music was just as awesome. Middle Cyclone saw Neko embracing her more pop sensibilities (as seen with her fantastic first single from the album, People Got A Lot Of Nerve) and veering slightly away from the sultry, country noir of her previous two albums. But what it lacked in smokey atmosphere and strange, folk stories it made up with the pure quality of the songs and in some ways it seems to be Neko's most honest and auto-biographical album to date. I can't wait to see what she does next.
3. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Although The Flaming Lips have enjoyed their greatest successes, critically and commercially with the
ir last three synth-filled albums, I have to admit what I yearned for was a return to the crazy weird guitar days of old and I got even more than that with Embryonic. More a child of their insanely brilliant experimental Zaireeka (an album you needed four CD players to listen to) than the offbeat grungy noise of their early 90s albums, this was happily on one CD this time but contained the same Krautrock-style grooves, psychedelic noises and spaced-out lyrics, and then some. Everything I love about The Flaming Lips in fact.
I can im
agine that those enamoured with the stark, spacey, sparse sound of Alela Diane's debut album, The Pirate's Gospel, may have been disappointed by her move to the fuller, more fleshed out music on her follow-up, To Be Still, but I absolutely fell head over heels for it. After touring for a couple of years behind her first album, To Be Still sees her vocals more assured and daring and the music moving to a more Laurel Canyon meets country feel, her guitar this time backed by drums, violin, banjo and cello. The gorgeous myth and nature-inspired lyrics are still present though making up a truly beautiful record that I never get tired of hearing.
1. Alessi's Ark - Notes From The Treehouse
This ye
ar has been all about Alessi's Ark for me. I first listened to her as 2009 broke, knowing absolutely nothing about this mysterious West London girl other than a reference to Rilo Kiley and Graham Nash (one of her favourite bands and her first album, respectively) and liking the sound of that combination discovered something completely unique and unlike those two artists. It's a folk record but a shimmering, magical one full of bedtime stories and wonderful little worlds to escape into with tales of magic weather, kite flying, birds and trips to the library. On one hand it was surprising to learn that she was a mere 18 years old because the music is so epic, beautiful and sophisticated, but on the other hand it's no surprise at all because it's also full of innocence and child-like charm. This is a lovely record, there's really no other word for it: Alessi is just lovely and she made the best, loveliest album of 2009 in my humble opinion.
