No Fiction’s top 8 albums of 2010

I love a good album. I love that feeling of a thing being demanded to be heard coming out of my speakers.  I love having my attention arrested and my head enveloped rapturously by journeys through an unfamiliar landscape. 2010 will enjoy posterity as a strong year for music. It was such a twixt and tween year with no one thing truly dominating and consequently we ended up with quite the verdant diversity of new music.  For me it was the year of the return of the album. It felt like the last few years artists have been getting lazy and concentrating on the consistency of Singles with the b-sides of LPs languishing as a result. Twenty ten saw a convincing number of productions re-embracing the joy of the long form. Here’s a quick list of my recent decents:

O. Children - O. Children

I had been waiting for this record for f*cking ages and the trouble with waiting is the more time it takes for the artists to deliver the more you start to think ‘they’ve taken too long, it will never be as good as the live show, they’ve hit some kind of wall in the studio’.  In this case patience was repaid a hundred fold. The glorious subtlety of the production rewards repeated listens. Encountering O. Children I am reminded of the richness of listening to early Simple Minds/Sisters of Mercy/Bauhaus/Joy Division  for the first time. However, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that this album is anything other than 100% original. Best heard at high quality, its nuances are lost in the cracks of compression. This is one you really need to own on disc. (And no, CDR doesn’t count.)  Breathtaking in its energy and innovation, it deserves your ears and a decent speaker system.

Tomorrow in a Year – The Knife with Mt Sims and Planning to Rock

TIAY’s press was filled with enough tit bit turn offs to alienate all the casual listeners in the world. A concept [wait for it...] opera based on Darwin’s On The Origin of Species in a three way collaboration that most purist Knife fans would fear boded a dilution too far. However, I am a synth nut so I strode forth to Rough Trade undeterred and grabbed a copy.  Tearing off the cellophane, catching a whiff of  freshly printed artwork, cautiously opening the  cardboard case, carefully slipping the disc into my left hand side Pioneer CDJ 400, I raised the fader and hit play. What came out of the speakers was divine; a crafted sonic-scape guilty of the same arch-fidelity to concept as Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity, blessed with all the prickling synthetic precision of M83′s Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts. It clearly sounds like a Knife record but imbued with the creative freedom best expressed in the darker moments of Silent Shout.

Bloodless E.P. – Fever Fever

OK, so not technically a long player but to be frank, they don’t need another five tracks to make their point. A frenetically blistering riot assault. The Fever Fever trio save the entirety of rock with this redemptively violent release. Two girls and one boy from Norwich (of all places,) in one swift gesture have pissed all over every other guitar based band both sides of the pond. Oh, so you don’t believe me eh? Just listen to it. Bloodless leaves you breathless and more than just a little bit in love.

This is Happening - LCD Soundsystem

James Murphy is a cheeky chappy. This offering wears its influences on its sleeve whilst hiding that arm just far enough behind its back to avoid a law suit. (From One Touch‘s leaning towards Kraftwerk’s The Robots to I can change‘s loading up on The Eurythmics’ Love is a stranger, to Drunk Girls obvious debt to Bowie’s Boys keep swinging.)  TIH also commits the outrageous sin in many LCD fans’ eyes of not being Sound of Silver and therefore conspicuous in its inferiority. I hear that, but for me TIH smashes that pedestal. Sure it’s not a heart break album like its predecessor but likewise it’s not bound by Murphy’s emotional baggage. This album is free to party and it does that very well indeed. I strongly believe time will bear This is Happening out as the apex of the LCD trilogy. (However much Empire Strikes Back syndrome dictates people will continue to bleat on about the second one being best.)

Crystal Castles ii – Crystal Castles

I take my hat off to CC. I think we all thought they’d end up the Fisherspooner of New Rave but it turns out that was actually CSS and the Castles crew had something more promising lurking within. Banished is the periodic jarring abrasive silliness of the first record. Subsuming its place comes a poise of introspection and dare I say it a humility of maturity. New too for 2010 is a gaunt mastering style that allows space for the inflexions of the electronics. The production of CC2 allows room for the emotion of the sound and the results are far the more heart rendering for it. I actually prefer this to the Salem record by a country mile and it feels natural to mention those two in the same breath; Crystal Castles ii is almost a template for where Witch House must go next if it is to deliver on the covenant of its early hype and avoid the hi-jack of the masses befallen by Dubstep and recent Electro. (Plus they both remixed Health). There are more than a few clichéd beats on CC2 which run the gauntlet of making the tracks sound more like reworks of Airwar than a new record. It is to their credit that they subvert this; the familiar pulsations are re-positioned in the mix and re-informed by the interplay with the surrounding electronics. The outcome is that Kath (producer,) transforms the beats. In his hands they become as a guitar to Johnny Marr; an infinitely re-interpretable signature  to define him as an artist.

The Like – The Like

Continuing my binge on eponymous offerings; here’s The Like.  I’m becoming increasingly aware that I may be the only twenty something man in the world that enjoys this band for their music but I do still feel a need to get on my soap box and beat a drum about this lot. Pop is not a four letter word and whilst this record is clearly an evil plan by a major label A&R department there is something intangibly right sounding in the record itself. It’s fun with a wink. Don’t think too much about it, just pretend it’s a long lost Pipettes record and get into it.

Babylon by Car – Bot’Ox

This has to be my find of the year. The scope of this is huge; bold, big soaring one minute, intricate, intimate tender the next. I can liken the production to early noughties analogue electronics like Ladytron and Adult. but there’s so much going on here that I’ve never heard before it wipes the smug grin off my jaded muso face. People will have to cotton onto this masterpiece (and yes, it really, really is,) early 2011 and I suspect it will all go mental for them once they’ve been through next year’s festival circuit. It’s far too bloody good to stay relatively hidden for long.

Swim - Caribou

Here it is folks. Record of the year for me. Something truly original from an artist at the top of their game. I think what I like most about this disc is its looseness; it glides through contortions of sound from start to finish. Unhurried, unhindered like a clockwork genius. From first listen it tastes ubiquitous in the brain. There is something about that opening of Odessa, that brief downward crash before the first beat/wail that puts the unique noises in a context of normality. It becomes the confidence of Swim that it pronounces its calmness within its own agitation. This trend of comfort in the surreal and distorted is picked up by Sun and from there the tone is cemented for the duration of the record. That is the gift of Swim that although there are so many noises alien to the ear somehow it sits with the familiarity of years. Sound wise the only way I can describe it is like the shotgun marriage of Mylo and Zombie Zombie. Delicious, a classic in the making and a welcome addition to my collection that I envision will be regularly cuddling up with Holy F*ck in my future setlists.