So yes, anyway, not one but two albums from Tori! Plus new albums from loads of my faves like Kings of Leon (a bit over-rated), Bats for Lashes (better than the first one), Regina Spektor (awesome), Jenny Owens Young, Florence and the Machine (a bit shouty), Imogen Heap (disappointing!), La Roux (great!), Lisa Hannigan (disappointing!), Neko Case (awesome), PJ Harvey (not bad), Tegan and Sara (cool), The Veronicas (oh dear), Yeah Yeah Yeahs (amazing) and Karen O (cool).
Plus it was a year where I discovered the amazing Katherine Edwards, Sarah Slean, St Vincent and Paramore.
And I was online the other day and discovered that a couple of my faves – Mindy Smith and Catherine Feeny – had new albums out and I’d had no idea! (I’ll never forget when I was a kid and I loved Edie Brickell and I was so thrilled to find her 2nd album in the Virgin Megastore in Birmingham – I had no idea there even was a new album. I think it’s moments like that that you try to recapture in life... It’s one of my favourite albums of all time.)
So yes, a great year for music (for me lol), altho not so much for my bank balance. Scary but true, sometimes I spend more money in a month on music than I do on food...
But I just wanted to mark out two new albums in particular...
First up is Nerina Pallot’s The Graduate.
Now as you may know, I like my angst-ridden women, and Nerina kind of falls into that category. So I heard she had a new album out - ‘meh’ I thought... Started to see some live songs she’d put on her website – ‘blimey she doesn’t half witter on’, I thought. I got the album, which was quite strong... I decided to see her play a gig – not that I was all that bothered, but some of the tracks on the album were lovely and she was playing at the ICA, which I thought would be a nice venue (it wasn’t that nice!). I was expecting a drab night of wittering-on...but my god!!! Incredible!!!! She rocked!!! She was amazing! Really gave me a complete new perspective on her, and in particular some of the songs on the album that are a bit weird. For instance, the bizarrely ‘up-tempo’ ‘I Don’t Want to Go Out’ is actually a piss-take... In the gig she also did an Elton John medley which sounds crap but it was astonishing!!!
But anyway, yes, fab album – Human is one of the best songs you’ll ever hear, When Did I Become Such a Bitch is a stormer – the only clunker is English, where I’m not sure what message she’s trying to convey. I think it’s a bit of a mis-calculation to be honest...
I don’t really understand why she released Real Late Starter as the first single – there are so many better songs on the album!!!
Anyway, take a look at this live take on Human. Fast forward to 2.30 if you want to avoid the wittering (it’s such a great idea to do these live promotional versions, but the wittering is really annoying!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbFIBltiZUw
Second album worthy of mention is The Temper Trap’s Conditions. If you’ve not heard of them...well you probably have! Their current song Sweet Dispostion, is one of those tracks you hear on the radio and love, but you don’t know what it is!
It’s Q Magazine’s fault that I avoided this album, because they described the album as sub-U2, blandly epic. Luckily I heard more at the weekend and my god, it’s amazing!!! It’s like a cross between Radiohead and Bloc Party (who I think I’m bored of now) (also a teeny bit of Scissor Sisters) - but it’s kind of what they should be doing now (instead of BP and RH slowly disappearing up their own backsides). It’s such a fantastic album, although it’s a shame it’s only 10 tracks long (one of which is an instrumental, and there’s Sweet Dispostion too, which I’ll probably over-listen to very soon...)
Anyway, check out this awesome awesome video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MltGXUcq-fs
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