I <3 Lists

The BRNLV Best of 2009

1. Micachu & The Shapes - Jewellery
Micachu's incredible debut is a smashed together musical shantytown that seemed to spring up from under the concrete of east London. It contains as many influences as you care to name, from chittering mobile phone music heard on buses to dubstep rhythms to Waits-ian instrument invention to blistering noise outbursts and atonal yelps. A creative, open, joyful record brimming over with ideas, spirit and personality.


2. The xx - XX
These indie-darlings-du-jour actually turned out to be totally amazing. The xx play musically economical, stripped down torch songs that sound wise beyond their tender years. They managed to perfectly convey love and intimacy and emotional honesty, without ever sounding cloying or clichéd. And that's a pretty huge deal in these cynical times.
MP3: Crystallized

3. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
This is a full on 'quality' album that Mojo and Q might stick in their top ten as well as the hundreds and thousands or blogs and zines that worship the ground they walk on. But musicianship aside, Grizzly Bear really found their songwriting stride on Veckatimest. 'While You Wait For The Others' is one of the songs of the year, and just jaw-dropping live.


4. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
A masterful slab of wide-eyed, hopeful, dancey noise-tronica that sanded off some of the harshier edges of their earlier stuff thanks to producer Andrew Weatherall, gaining some more accessible moments. Inspiring, energizing, evocative music that conveys a surprising amount using no words whatsoever. Listen c/o The Decibell Tolls

5. The United Colours Of Trouble Books
A deeply beautifully album, embracing twee folk vocals, blankets of drone, ambient post-rock sections and even some dense noise passages - all laced with pretty, soft-focus vocal meandering and a very human warmth. Listen on last.fm

6. Peter Broderick - Home
A heartfelt collection of genuine, sweet and sad acoustic songs. Listen on Spotify

7. Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson peeled back the surface of domestic and suburban life to reveal loneliness, neuroses and a strong heart full of solitude and doubt.


8. Gus Gus - 24/7
Techno reinvented the Icelandic way. Daniel Agúst takes his komrades' compulsive flat-beats and pulsing synths and adds glamor and sex appeal via a towering soulful vocal contribution. Utterly brilliant.
MP3: Add This Song (truncated version)

9. Skeletons - Money
Dark, fucked up, jazzy alt-everything from these awesome muso-nerds who reinvent themselves (band name included) for every record.


10. Telepathe - Dance Mother
Telepathe seemed to develop before the eyes this year... from a cool but introverted duo muttering over plaintive backing tracks, they found themselves a lush, mature sound via the production input of TV ON The Radio's Dave Sitek. Listen On Spotify

11. Frankmuzik - Complete Me
Pop music reworked, by punchable hipster Vincent Frank. 'Complete Me' falls somewhere between Max Tundra and Robbie Williams. Shame about the shit ballads and the sulphurous smell of marketing spends, but there are some real pop gems in here.


12. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
Much feted at the time, but repeated listening revealed the patchy nature of this rich audio tapestry. Still, there are some amazing moments amid the fog of sound - 'In The Flowers' and 'My Girls' are themselves enough to make it essential.

13. Horrors - Primary Colours
An awesome return from the bargain bin - Primary Colours saw the flamboyant garage rockers digest the history of krautrock and shoegaze and come out with something perfectly formed but oddly detached. A highly successful exercise in musical study and synthesis. Listen on Spotify

14. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone Vs. Children
Following on the wall-to-wall amazingness of 'Etiquette' was never going to be easy, but this was a sweet and careful album placing American lives under the microscope. Listen On Spotify

15. Bleeding Heart Narrative - Tongue Tangled Hair
Euphoric post-rock crescendos tied together with anthemic singalongs... big things to come for this lot.
MP3: Colours Turn Colours

16. Sufjan Stevens - The B.Q.E.
Sufjan is pretty clearly out of his gourd, as illustrated by this densely orchestrated, neurotic and expansive album. "Traffic Shock" provided the surprise-attack jaw-dropping listening moment of the year. Listen on Spotify

17. Helios - Unleft
A subtle record of rippling ambient electronica. Get it on Emusic


18. Atlas Sound - Logos
Bradford Cox's latest was less awesome than his recent output, but who the hell could keep up the standard he's set himself? Logos is more like a collection of songs than an album, so pick out your favourites. MP3: Walkabout

19. Mt Eerie - Wind's Poem
This album opened with a ferocious black-metal pummeling. No fucking about. Massive riffs, tumbling drums, and those heart-piercing vocals from the Microphones lynchpin Phil Elverum. Flags sometime. But worth having.
MP3: Wind's Dark Poem

20. Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light
More top-drawer stagey, heavyweight emotional angst for Mr Hegarty.

MILL-ENN-I-UMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Here's a list of the albums I loved most this millennium. From the expansive poetry of Joanna Newsom to the brutally, mind-meltingly fierce metal of 80's MBD, the heartbreaking sadness of David Thomas Broughton to the revelatory intimacy of Bjork's Vespertine or The XX, the late-night introversion of The Knife to the Dirtbombs all-time-best reading of garage rock 'n' roll to the arch, intellectual pop of Simon Bookish and the wide-eyed optimism of Fuck Buttons' euphoric noise... these are the very best albums I've heard in the last ten years.

1. Joanna Newsom - Ys.
2. The 80's Matchbox B-Line Disaster - Horse Of The Dog
3. David Thomas Broughton - The Complete Guide To Insufficiency
4. Björk - Vespertine
5. Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
6. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
7. of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? / Skeletal Lamping
8. The Knife - Silent Shout
9. The Dirtbombs - Ultraglide In Black
10. Simon Bookish - Everything/Everything
11. Micachu & The Shapes - Jewellery
12. Arcade Fire - Funeral
13. Radiohead - Kid A
14. Mice Parade
15. Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
16. Beach House - Devotion
17. The xx - XX
18. Burial - Untrue
19. The Microphones - The Glow Pt. II
20. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Etiquette
21. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing / Tarot Sport
22. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
23. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
24. Final Fantasy Has A Good Home
25. Patrick Wolf - Lycanthropy
26. Clinic - Internal Wrangler
27. Tom Waits - Real Gone
28. The National - Alligator
29. Hammock - Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow
30=. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
30=. Skeletons & The Kings Of All Cities - Lucas
30=. The United Colours Of Trouble Books

BRNLV 10

Happy November! Here's a little MP3 mix tape for you. Some of my favourites this year. So far...

1. Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem MP3
2. Beach House - Norway MP3
3. The xx - Crystalised MP3
4. Wild Beasts - All The King's Men MP3
5. Hudson Mohawke - Joy Fantastic MP3
6. Max Tundra - Which Song MP3
7. Gus Gus - Add This Song MP3 (harshly edited version: all I could find)
8. Mat Riviere - FYH MP3
9. Micachu - Vulture MP3
10. Atlas Sound - Walkabout MP3

We've seen them all, and we've chosen you.

MP3: All The King's Men

Well, this is an absolute beauty of a performance from Wild Beasts. I've had these guys on the periphery of my music radar for a while, since Napoleon IIIrd supported them on tour this year. They're one of those bands that are obvious real quality, but it didn't quite click. The sticking point was the occasionally yelping, histrionic delivery of the vocal, recalling Sparks perhaps with a touch of the Jeff Buckleys.

But when something is good, it gets through eventually. "All The King's Men" is an evocative song with a humid, exhilarating feeling to the instrumentation, bringing to mind the excitement of a party on a steaming summer night. Lyrically, it's a cryptic treatise on seduction, sex and procreation. The first verse draws out some strikingly non P.C. positions, such as casting women as attention loving wallflowers and men as predators. It goes on to talk about what men and women want from each other, and what they end up with, in broad, sweeping terms. It's tricky to untangle the intent of the lyrics, in which nobody comes out particularly well. But it's fun trying.

A genuinely rich piece of music, and a highlight from the album Two Dancers.

WATCH: Live at Hoxton Hall
LISTEN: MySpace
BUY: Vinyl with download code from Norman Records

And here's a video made by some dancers the band apparently met at SXSW.

Darkest Before Dawn

MP3: Oppressions Each
Tickets: Here

Awesome hella-hippy duo Brightblack Morning Light leave their natural Mid West habitat (via a show at All Tomorrow's Parties) for a one-off evening at London's lovely Luminaire this December 7th, playing songs from their acclaimed third album "Motion To Rejoin".

Naybob Shineywater and Rachel Hughes say of the band's wigwam-inhabiting Alabama roots: "We feel like Southern music should be played by Southern people, and don't dig it when other folks imitate accents. Posturing is a disease, awaken the inner self! We both grew up in Alabama, yet we both left for the same reason. The environmental degradation due to corporate development is staggering and unchecked, it makes us disgusted. However, in the Western USA we are gathered with the many folks to protect wilderness, rivers and oceans."

Brightblack's take on rootsy americana absorbs blues, gospel and folk traditions to create a lush, pastoral, slow-motion world. Don't miss it.

Collected Flowers

Animal Collective's album-highlight "In The Flowers" get a single release.

Moving to a Beach House, gonna eat a lot of peaches

MP3: Norway

Awesome Baltimore chamber-pop duo Beach House have revealed a taster of their new album "Teen Dream". It's called "Norway". It's free, which they seem to find odd from their use of inverted commas around the word "single" on the band Twitter. But I like free singles. Makes a lot of sense. People will take a punt on a free MP3 innit. And more people should like Beach House.

In keeping with recent live shows, it's more upbeat that the swirling, laconic sound of their 2008 breakthrough album "Devotion"; this one's an exhilarating few minutes of breathlessly infatuated, dreamy pop music. "Teen Dreams" indeed.

Efterklang Perform Parades at the Barbican

LISTEN: www.efterklang.net

It's nice when you accidentally stumble into a show that carries a heightened significance for the performers.

I remember seeing Terrorvision in my teens at a sold-out Wolverhampton Civic, and watching their beaming faces as they revealed they'd never played a real 'hall' venue with a balcony before. And Los Campesinos! at ATP were so overcome with pride to be involved that their singer Gareth visibly broke down from the excitement. It adds to a sense of occasion to see a show mean something special to the players.

There might not be any tears and drama on the stage for Efterklang, but the band are visibly thrilled throughout. And fairly so - they are playing with the full Britten Sinfonia, performing huge, impressive arrangements of the songs from their album 'Parades' and it's live counterpart 'Performing Parades'.

The band seemed to have multiplied or the occasion, with what seems like eleven or twelve members in distinctive harlequin-colour sashes, including a three-part choir and the conductor. Some of them shift between instruments, jogging from one side of the stage to the other to switch between drums and organ, trombone and guitar. The arrangements often encompass two or three sections in each song, from subtle string-plucking and organ work to expansive, emotional orchestra swells, to lonesome brass outros. There's never a shortage of exciting sounds and things to lack at with so many performers involved.

Reference points come to mind in droves. Sometimes the lingering arrangements are like the artier moments on Björk's seminal chamber-pop record Vespertine, but without that central show-stopping voice and persona; Casper Clausen's lead vocal is understated by comparison, and allows the ensemble performance to take the limelight.

At other times, I'm reminded of Nico Muhly's avant-garde string arrangements, or the subtle electronic textures of Valgier Sigurðsson's solo work; the militaristic percussion lends a sense of historic grandeur also found in Matmos's 'The Civil War', or in Sons Of Noel & Adrian, who opened the evening's bill in the foyer space.

Efterklang tonight dispel any coffee-table-music stigma that may have come from their earlier recordings. This is an ambitious and talented ensemble giving it their all, and it's a sight and sound to behold. In full flow, they create an epic, utterly absorbing sound that's nothing short of magical.

Gus Gus Keep It Going

MP3: Add This Song (Lopazz and Zarook Remix)
LISTEN: myspace.com/gusgus
BUY: Boomkat

Remember Gus Gus? The breakthrough Icelandic 90s electronic pop collective famous for, amongst other things, having the band's extended retinue (including their accountant and costume designer) in photoshoots and their talismanic jumpsuit-wearing shaven-headed singer Daniel Agust. Their debut album "Polyesterday" was an epic, hazy, genre-straddling electronica opus; "This Is Normal" was the follow-up, taking a more pop direction. It's been ten years since that last release, and 24/7 represents a welcome return.

Reinvented as a tastefully besuited three-piece, Gus Gus have refined their previous exploratory tendencies into a focussed presentation of sensual, glamorous techno. 24/7 is album built from languid beats and Agust's silky crooning. The synths loop tightly, occasionally flowering into pulsing, undulating arpeggios; "The Thinnest ice" builds a simmering tension over it's eight and a half minutes, slowly easing in new elements. "Hateful" explores it's own space as if caged for the first few minutes, before a questionably revenge-minded (but utterly seductive) vocal tirade from Agust, this time delivered in a soul-inflected style.


"Add This Song" is the anthemic finale, with a rising synth line and a slightly faster pace. For something so minimal, it's compulsively catchy and oddly timeless, bringing to mind everything from 80s minimal techno and 90s trance to the booming stadium-dance of Faithless and the recent shimmering electro of The Knife.

24/7 is by far the the most coherent album Gus Gus have produced, and the most one-dimensional as a result; but what's lost in open-hearted experimentalism is made up for with a relentless, hypnotic and diamond-sharp sound.

Gus Gus are gonna conquer Europe with this shit. It's about time.

Aeronauts Ahoy

Watch the amazing We Aeronauts healing hearts with their beautiful songs over at BBC Oxford... and watch this space for future release & tour details...