this band are precious and intricate, unhurried. Hope they get the time and space to grow...
rekindling the love after the stodgy, indigestion-inducing Neon Bible. I still think this is another slightly bloated album, and the front man must be one of the most annoying since Bono, but this is a fantastic song...
smoothing out some of the rough edges of Ariel Pink's sound hasn't resulted in a loss of uniqueness. If anything it's clarified it, brought it to the fore...
tangerine dream(s). The score to a lost 80s fantasy film...
the masters of the weyrd English sound had a very strong year...
hauntological heaven: vintage vhs musical mashups...
I'm a bit late to the party with this band. Apparently they've already ditched the dead-end 80s reference points and the new stuff is more proggy, Gong influenced, which sounds exciting...
wonderfully lush, textured sonics and imagery from a perrenial favourite...
manages to be both playful and sinister, with beats so fat they could be classified as obese...
this is all over the place but there is a synth(etic) magnificence that kicks in about a minute in...
This girl seems to annoy the shit out of everyone but I REALLY like this track and 'Obsessions'. Nice video too...
absolutely sublime Moroder/Cerrone-esque tune that builds into an epic disco lament...
castles remixed and disco-fied...
this manages to filter the 80s influence into a modern, fresh groove...
Salem smothers some sinister synth over bone dry beats...
and the man himself...
there's something sinister, almost medieval-sounding in this slice of dark dubstep...
Ronson takes the 80s obsession to olympian heights. Q-tip and MNDR legitimize the tune and save it from pure pastiche. And the video...oh yes!
saw this band play a beatiful set at the ICA. This is an incredibly affecting breakup ballad that sounds like Gram Parsons covering The Band's 'The Weight' for a low key sundance indie film...
sleazy beats, sinister vocoder, surreal 'company flow' style delivery, boards of canada-ish sonics. HUGE...
precise, almost mathmatic dubstep from a precocious talent...
I don't know anything about this collective but everything I have heard is compelling. This creeps up, with waves of percussive dubby goodness...
A kitschy delight. LOVE the instant segue from happy hardcore to depth charge dubstep about 40 seconds in...
handclaps and garage rock riffs. They're a bit one note over the course of a whole album mind..
I dont care what anyone thinks, my love affair with this band will not die. Standout track from 'contra'...
After pocahaunted this was a surprise. Nails the post-Spector pop bubblegum aesthetic perfectly and has a swooning quality...
Hmm. Not quite sure how, but this band just manage to sidestep the 'widescreen vagueness' of the sub-U2 serious, unsmiling white men with guitars crowd. Possibly by virtue of sounding more like Tindersticks than (shudder) Editors. Incredibly boring live sadly...
I simply will not stop posting links to this Bristolian genius. If only he had actually scored TRON...
you can't deny the delivery. DEADLY...
this appears to be three different songs in one. Luckily they are all awesome...
making no claims that this is a great song, but it makes me smile, as do the band. Give me these dudes over black eyed peas anyday. AND just listen to that bassline. It's like LFO or some other warp style bleep techno, no?
I make no bones about it, I LOVE this record, and the album too. Such a warm sound, so resonant of English folk and even hints of acoustic Zeppelin? Or is it just me..?
The Fall have essentially recorded the same song for well over three (or is it four?) decades. Luckily it’s a great song...
This is absolute dreck of course - vacuous, moronic and shrill.
The diabetes-inducing video is basically a visual tribute to American stupidity, sweets, tits and wanking. It’s enough to make you sympathise with the Taliban.
In spite of – or perhaps even because of – these reasons, I basically love it...
I'm old enough to remember actual goths so this manages to be amusing, mortifying and nostalgic all at once. I like the relentless seriousness of it, especially the video, an essential part of the aesthetic...
the former NiN front man does Fincher's wonderful facebook drama proud with a bleeptastic electronic score that stands alone perfectly well. Parts of it remind me, mood-wise, of Stewart Copeland's magnificent, percussive Rumblefish score for some reason...
one of my absolute favourite covers of the year..
honestly, I have found nothing on Kanye's new album that resonates emotionally with me in the way that most of his flawed, simplistic, heavily-sythesised 808s and heartbreak did, but he's almost always interesting...
easy to write off as a manc La Roux but there's a fierce, arty intelligence here..
This is SO 80s it could just as well be on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop 2 or something. This is a good thing. La Roux sounds like she's having more fun than usual too...
this simple and unaffected northern soul-tinged stomper shouldn’t even exist. The fact that it does is due to Collins (one of our loveliest and most affecting white soul voices) learning to speak and play guitar all over again following a near fatal haemorrhage. The healing power of music in tangible form...
Cave, for some reason, has started to get on my nerves a bit of late. Don't quite know why. But this throwaway Beefheartian stomp works just fine...
Grinderman - Heathen Child on MUZU.
Quantum leap over their first record...
YEASAYER "O.N.E." from Paranoid US on Vimeo.
I first saw this projected on an absolutely massive screen at the amazing tate pop art exhibition. The crashing sound that accompanied my entrance was that of my jaw hitting the floor. I can’t decide whether this is absolutely awful or total genius, but either way it’s certainly the best thing McG has ever done...
Nothing on Halcyon Digest has quite hit me in the way that their last few records have but this is still, as Alan Partridge would say, ‘lovely stuff’...
Basically Jane Wiedlin's ‘rush hour’ updated as a powerpop anthem about the global economic crisis...
in a world light on real pop icons (Lady GG aside) it’s good that there are still big figures capable of surprise and bringing what Americans love to call ‘the drama’. So many ironies in both song and video, a whole soap operas worth of dramatic subtext and probably the most effective use of Rhianna’s er ‘acquired-taste’ vocal to date...
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