Sometime very soon my full end-of-year list of LP’s, singles, movies etc will be in your local street press. My albums list is pretty all over the place though, so I thought I’d take the chance to explain myself a little just before it comes out. It’s also a really great chance for me to procrastinate.
And you love end of year lists, right? I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it seems like everybody possible seems to have done one this year. I’d apologise for adding to an already crowded marketplace, but let’s face it; there’s no activity I can think of that’s more self indulgent than this, and you know how I love to indugle myself. Enjoy these ten minutes of your life that you won’t get back.
10. Yoko Ono - Between My Head And The Sky
I’m a big fan of Yoko Ono. Her vocal style can come across as a bit freaky, alternating as it does between twee melody and banshee-style screeching. When she’s in song-based mode, as on the above live clip with Antony Hegarty, her songs are generally based around one very simple, tightly honed lyrical idea carried for three minutes, something it shares with a lot of John Lennon’s solo stuff. This album is full of great songs and surprising vocalisations (after all these years and records, she’s still got new tricks) and it’s a really good entry point for anyone curious about her music.
9. Lady GaGa - The Fame Monster
Last year’s The Fame was unbearable. I hated it. The songs were crap, the arrangements sounded like they’d been cobbled together in five seconds using out of date trance synths and the videos were beyond lame. Over 2009, GaGa won me over with a series of pretty amazing performances that made their way onto YouTube, and then released this EP that pretty much took all the things that are good about her live shows and put them into a record.
That being said, Bad Romance is about 1.9 times better than anything else on the record. Luckily that song is so good even that still makes this pretty awesome.
8. Various Artists - Live Fast Die Drunk
2009 was a bit of a vintage year for Perth punk in my humble opinion. There were a lot of really strong releases, and two great compilations (this and Project Mayhem’s solid WA Gold, which would have made the list except that I’m on it). Audiences aren’t exactly flocking to see most WA punk bands at the moment, but I think things will pick up over the next year as releases like this and the others start to find a cult following and word gets out.
Specifically relating to this record though, it’s all killer. Mandurah band The Lungs’ Head Like A Cunt is possibly the best track ever and I love that they’re a band from the suburban sprawl with a track about estate developers Mirivac Fini. ZXSpecky’s lyrical barbs shine brightest on this record out of all their releases, while The New Husseins and Surprise Sex Attack also put in fine efforts on their parts of this split.
7. Chicks On Speed - Cutting The Edge
This album is so much fun. You can hear them quickly throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks. It’s then up to the listener to look through what they’ve done and find the bits they like. For me, it’s the sparse, big room electro of Sewing Machine, the pleasantly dated Christopher Just remix of Art Rules and the ethical oddity Buzz, which sees the Chicks praising the luxury of travelling with an oldschool airline company. For such a staunchly anti-corporate band, that one rings particularly odd.
I actually had the chance to talk to Alex Leslie-Murray from the band for Drum this year and it was probably the highlight of my journalistic micro-career. I’ve loved their records for a long time and she was very forthcoming about their process and really pleasant to talk to despite it being 5am. I don’t think much of the singles from this record, so I’ve posted the video above from ABC’s Sunday Arts which probably gives you a better idea of the record and the kind of stuff they get up to now, particularly the craft side of their work, which is pretty unusual and cool.
6. Dan Deacon - Bromst
If you’re familiar with Dan Deacon, you probably think this a fairly predictable choice coming from me. Don’t care. It’s really good.
5. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
I don’t think I’m as in love with this record as everybody else is. I mean, sure, it’s great, but it’s not their best record by a long shot. Still, given that they seemed fairly destined for irrelevance at this point in their career, I can’t help but admire the balls involved in putting out an album of sprawling psychadelic jams. Sure, I might have to listen to it twenty minutes at a time, but if it were a vynil record that would mean I’d be taking it in a side at a time, which is how I’ve approached a few of the sprawling 70’s double record monstrousities I have in that format.
4. Alec Empire - Shivers
I really should have made this number one, but I only got this record the week I wrote up the list, so I thought I had a bit of wanderlust. Turns out this is actually my favourite record of 2009. Alec Empire is best known for being in Atari Teenage Riot and his solo work has mostly been under the shadow of that band’s pretty distinctive sound. This steps away from that with a mix of pounding, electro-ey techno and Velvet Underground-ish jams. It’s not worlds away from what Primal Scream were doing on Evil Heat and XTRMNTR, but it’s much less stuffed with filler than those records. This aims for the gut and hits it hard.
3. Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor
Dammit. Everyone is always like “oh, you’ll like Patrick Wolf” and I’m always like “yeah, but no”. The middle section of his last record was fantastic, all orchestral chamber pop and glitchy beats. This expands on those high points for a whole record. It’s gorgeous, it’s lush, it’s pretentious as fuck… but damn if I haven’t listened to it more than anything else this year.
2. Fischerspooner - Entertainment
No other band operates in as much of a comparable way to myself as Fischerspooner. They do shows in and out of art galleries, theatre shows, festivals, nightclubs with fantastic costumes and theatrical goodness. Obviously the end results are quite different, but I do like to follow what they get up to as it’s usually similar to the kinds of things I either already do or aspire to.
Anyway, they’re super-consistent (their only flaw is that they are super-boring DJ’s) is new record is their third consecutive awesome album and as good an entry point as any to what they do. Go get it.
1. New Pants - Equal Love
Songs are, for some people, something they attatch to significant moments of their life like little post its that remind them of a specific time and place. This is not really a record that lends itself to that. Its’ mixture of Chinese and western pop sounds make it sound like it’s from nowhere in particular, and the 80’s style reverb-heavy production mixed with droning ‘00’s guitars makes it sound out of time as well.
And that’s before you take into account the fact that New Pants love to fuck with you for the sake of it. They’ll put in songs called Grand Panda. They’ll go absolutely batshit crazy on tracks like Mr. Director. And they’ll throw you a curveball in the shape of a perfectly formed melodic curveball like my personal favourite track, 2 Girlfriends.
This is a record that makes me feel like I’m the only person in the world that could possibly dig it as much as I do, in the specific way that I do, which is my favourite kind of record.
Here’s a clip from the aforementioned Mr. Director, performed live in what I assume is a Beijing club.
