Dancing About Architecture 1.02.08

Posted by Ian Wright on 01.02.2008

It's the start of a new year but what were my favourite albums and gigs of the year? The answer is just a click away.

The bit at the start

Howdy, happy new year and all that. It's funny the way around Christams time you can tend to lose track of what day it is. I woke up this afternoon at 3PM after ringing in the New Year at Jape last night and sudenly thought "shit, it's Tuesday, the column".

So obviously I'm in a rush to get something up and have it still be Tuesday. There's not much in the way of news this week so as it's the time of the year I give to you ...

The Dancing About Architecture Top J Albums of the year.

J.

Handsome Furs - Plague Park

Despite penning some of the best songs in the Wolf Parade canon for some reason Dan Boeckner seems to always be placed in the ha'penny place, and by a longs ways, in any discussion about the merits of the band's 2 principal songwriters. Perhaps it's due to Spencer Krug being so fecund but I suspect it's more to do with that fact that material of Krug's that Boeckner hasn't had a hand in has been more widely heard. Plague Park; with it's collection of sparse, occasionally harsh songs that he wrote with his then fiancé and now wife, saw Boeckner, well not step out of his bandmate's shadow as I don't think that he was ever there, but rather demonstrate that he's a singular talent in his own right.

Top songs: What We Had, Handsome Furs Hate this City, Sing! Captain,

I.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

Ignore the PR coup highjinks and ridiculous talk of breaking the record industry that surrounded the release of this record. The only really relevant question that should be asked about In Rainbows is this one, is it actually any good?

And yes, it is actually. Radiohead's first album in 4 years saw them in a seemingly more relaxed state and focusing more on songwriting then they have in some time. The results are at times magnificent and I have to say that even if we're discussing a post-Kid A Radiohead I think that for what is still ostensibly a guitar based band "All I Need" is a remarkable achievement. Also, as a long time fanboy I was beyond delighted with the way "Nude" finally turned out, even if they dropped the second verse.

Top Songs: Bodysnatchers, Nude, All I Need, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, Videotape

H.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Possibly the only album to ever go #1 in Ireland that features a pipe organ and hurdy gurdy. Not as good as Funeral and their subsequent stratospheric rise in popularity since it's release have made Arcade Fire a far less cool name to drop than they used to be but judged on it's own merits Neon Bible is a fantastic record. Guitarist/percussionist/upright bassist/keyboardist/shoutist Richard Reed Parry has described the record as a far more American sounding record than it's "Montreal sounding" predecessor and when you think about it that initially bonkers sounding statement begins to make sense. The influence of Bruce Springsteen, that most quintessential of American artists, is all over this record. Be it sonically like on "Windowsill" or "Antichrist Television Blues" or thematically as Neon Bible saw Win Butler's songwriting move away from personal subjects like love and loss as he turned his attention to the big themes of politics, celebrity and religion.

Top Songs: Black Mirror, Keep The Car Running, Windowsill, (Antichrist Television Blues), No Cars Go

G.

Cathy Davey - Tales Of Silversleeve

Aren't the second records supposed to be difficult? Cathy Davey followed up the promise of her quirky, sometimes excellent, occasionally patchy debut effort Something Ilk by seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth and then re-emerging with something so wonderful and beyond what she'd appeared to be capable of previously I remain almost as shocked as I am impressed whenever I listen to this album.

And she's a gooner apparently. Marvelous

Top Songs: Sing for your supper, Reuben, Rubbish Ocean

F.

Liars - Liars

Whilst not ever really registering with me as a band that I'm hugely in to I've recently come to realise that on the strength of releasing 2 of the best albums of the past 2 years Liars have quietly managed to become one of my favourite bands. A far more accessible album than anything that they previously put out before Liars have somehow managed to get themselves tagged as experimental without doing anything hugely complex or difficult and their great strength remains what it's been from the start, they've got a fantastic ear for cool sounds and simple ideas and can put them all together in an incredibly effective way.

Oh, and that drum sound. Always with that drum sound.

Top Song: Plaster Casts Of Everything, Sailing To Byzantium, What Would They Know, Pure Unevil

E.

The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls In America

Every year when it comes to making an end of year list there's the dilemma of an album that was released in North America one year but only makes it into the shops here the following one. This year it's Boys And Girls In America. I am so enamoured with Craig Finn's universe of lowlives, drunks, addicts and scumbags (yeah, a lowlife is a different thing to a scumbag) that it's not even funny. This is the second album in this list to proudly wear it's Springsteen influence on it's sleeve though truth be told the specter of The Boss is hanging over this album far less than on The Hold Steady's previous album Seperation Sunday (which featured the frankly brilliant couplet " Tramps like us, and we like tramps") and Boys And Girls ... has a more general classic rock sound to it. Also different this time around was the degree of prominence which Holly, Gideon and Charlamagne; the trio of characters that have populated many of Finn's best songs over the course of his band's last 2 albums, play in the album. "First Night" mid-way through the record seems to wrap things up for them and allows Finn to focus more on the general theme of how when you're young eventually the boozing and the pills and the powders and the fucking stops being fun. Sometimes.

Top Songs: Stuck Between Stations, First Night, You Can Make Him Like You, Citrus, Chillout Tent, Southtown Girls

D.

Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

And now we reach the point where the merely very good and the truly great diverge. Had you said to me in January that The Animal Collective would be one of the bands that were going to put out a record that would be a contender for my favourite album of the year I'd have thought you insane or delirious on hallucinogens. Few bands have pissed me off in the past as much as Avey Tere and his gang of sonic lunatics.

But here we are and 12 months can really bring about big changes. For Animal Collective it saw them release an album that moved away from the freak folk stylings of their previous work and into a more electronic direction. For me it saw me learn how to stop hating Animal Collective and learn how to love Animal Collective.

Top Songs: Fireworks, Peacebone

C.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

As I said above this year was the one where I was turned around on Animal Collective and I suspect that the main reason was Noah Lennox. The conventional thinking seems to be that more than any other AC record before Strawberry Jam was his album. And judging by the other record he put out this year that line of thought may be close to the truth. Lennox's second album under the Panda Bear moniker is a glorious collection of ambient found-sounds, chanting and Beach Boys style singing that leads me to believe that if Brian Wilson were sane enough to learn how to use today's technology this is what he'd be doing.

Top Songs: Comfy In Nautica, Bros, I'm not, Ponytail.

B.

Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

The second band to make my top albums list 2 years running Sunset Rubdown's 3rd album is one that for me is just barely lacking songs that quite match the colossal brilliance of "Stadiums And Shrines II", "The Empty Threats Of Little Lord" or "Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" but unlike their last album whose 'lesser songs' are still slowly revealing new and fresh charms to me every time I stick it on Random Spirit Lover hit me like a ton of bricks immediately and overall I think I still just about prefer this album. Spencer Krug seems to be able to get up every morning and immediately shit out a brilliant new song effortlessly and in the event that he ever does a bad one they don't appear to ever see the light of day. There's not a single weak moment on this album.

2008 will almost certainly see the release of a new Wolf Parade album but with the Pollardish rate that Krug writes it's not inconceivable that he'll sneak out a new Sunset Rubdown album by year's end.

Top Songs: The Mending Of the Gown; Up On You Leopard, Upon the End Of Your Feral Days; Stallion; The Taming Of The Hands That Came Back To Life; Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot!

A.

The National - Boxer

When I first heard the leak of this album back in March I thought to myself that it was unlikely I'd hear a better album all year. Turns Out I was right.

I had an utterly idiotic online spat with someone recently about the ideas of experimentalism vs. conventionality in music. My stance was that the two concepts are completely irrelevant and that the only criteria that mattered to me were good vs. bad. Which leads me to Boxer, of the 4 records that might have occupied this position it's far and away the most conventional sounding indie-rock record but it's so brilliant that it matters not an iota. The National write great songs, Matt Berninger writes great lyrics and sings them in a gorgeous and considered Baritone with phrasing almost as good as Sinatra's.

Oh, and take a bow Bryan Devendorf for the drumming.

Top Songs: It's a cop out, but everything.

The Dancing About Architecture Top 10 gigs of the year.

10. Deerhoof - Electric Picnic
9. St. Vincent - The Sugar Club
8. Deerhunter - Whelan's
7. Jens Lekman - Whelan's
6. Okkervil River - Whelan's
5. Joanna Newsom - Olympia
4. Arcade Fire - Olympia
3. The National - The Olympia
2. Final Fantasy - Electric Picnic
1. Dan Deacon - Whelan's

The bit at the start

Back next week with the news. Take care, I hope you get whatever it is you want out of the year.