how's your view of things today?

Top 10 Albums Of 2009

1. Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions (bedshaped)

It took me a long time to get to listen to this album all the way through. Not because I had any 'difficulty', as such, for the album, quite the opposite. As each track played, I would skip back to listen to the track again, and then again from the beginning of the album. The first six tracks I found particularly addictive and completely lovable. And it's just grown on from there, really.

There's certainly a theme that runs through this album, and that's that it's about keeping the interest. Taking the shape of many forms. Honesty in the lyrics, twisted as they are. Wailing guitars and power chords; think Led Zep, Placebo, The Strokes at times, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, et al. Orchestrations at perfect moments. And beat and tempo changes, licked to death by The Devil himself. They like a tempo change, do Biffy and Co. Often the straight 8 bar gets kicked in the bollocks by some very odd, but amazingly catchy tempos switches.

Sometimes sounding like a typical Foo's song, sometimes Feeder, sometimes Bruce Hornsby and The Range, sometimes Genesis, sometimes Smashing Pumpkins, sometimes....well....insert pretty much any rock type band; not too heavy, but isn't afraid to do power chords. And yet, they still manage to retain their own originality....somehow. And some of the tracks are very original sounding. It's pushing a few boundaries, is this album.

It's fantastically enjoyable to listen to in the correct running order. The running order is just perfect for the album's feel, as a whole. I guess I'm left with a bitter-sweet but appealing sensation as I listen to it. I often wonder what other people might make of it.

Favourite track: I was gonna choose That Golden Rule purely for the last half of the song. Not only is the first half brilliant in itself, but when it changes from Foo-A-Like to some unsigned Swedish Rock band that want to represent their Country in the Eurovision Song Contest, it just switches up, like ten gears. The dramatic strings that flit in and out. The power of those dirty chords. The orchestration. And come on, who wouldn't wanna play drums on a track like that?! Surely the best outro to any song for a long, long time. Fo' Real! Snizzle.

And then I thought seriously about Cloud Of Stink, not just because it has a brilliant title, but the pace of the tempo changes....just wicked. Reminds me of Nirvana. Many Of Horror too. An outstanding track which begins in beautiful acoustic mood, the builds and builds into a wonderfully 'cinematic' sounding track. Brilliant!

I've finally settled with Bubbles, because not only is it the track that hit me the most after first listen, but the more I hear it, the more things I find buried beneath the surface. It's a great song, well structured. Kinda The Strokes at times. The guitar hook through the chorus is fantastic. The pounding drums keep driving the song and that deep repetitive bassline couldn't have been delivered any better.

I bet they're a brilliant band to see live.

Listen to: Bubbles

1. Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers (Swisslet)

As a band, the Manic Street Preachers have surely got nothing to prove to anyone…. Except perhaps to themselves. The success of 2007s Send Away the Tigers seemed to have finally give the band the courage to open up the cache of lyrics that Richie Edwards carefully left behind for them shortly before his disappearance in 1995.

Richie’s official status was changed from “missing’ to “presumed dead” in 2008, and this whole album is an eerie time-capsule back to the band that the Manics were around the time of the Holy Bible: even the artwork is reminiscent of an earlier time, featuring a painting by Jenny Saville, the same artist who produced the cover for that 1994 album.

Like The Holy Bible, this album also features awkward, punky, guitar-driven music (this time produced by Steve Albini), again often with clips from films inserted between tracks. The lyrics themselves are incredibly dense and are so compact, elliptical and reference-filled that it frequently feels as though it has been written in code. Like the Holy Bible too, this is not an easy listen, although the overall tone is somewhat less bleak and confrontational….if not exactly filled with the joys of spring.

What might have been ghoulish and exploitative has been handled with care and with no little dignity, and this is both a fitting epitaph to Richey and the band’s best work in decades. An absolutely superlative album, and I can pay it no higher compliment than to say that it’s right up there with the Holy Bible. It really is that good. My album of the year by a country mile.

Listen to: Marlon J.D.

1. Tina Dico - The Road To Gavle (LB)

So, here we are again. Another year, another Tina Dico album, another #1 favourite record.

The Road To Gavle wasn't quite such a shoe-in, though. Whereas I absolutely loved Count To Ten from the first moment I heard it, The Road To Gavle has a different sort of quality. It is ostensibly an album of songs that sprung from Dico being asked to write a soundtrack for the Danish film Oldboys, and so it is a curious mixture of styles and sounds, from some perfect Dico ballads to some instrumental tracks and songs which are half 'standard pop song' and half 'lush string orchestration'.

The result has taken some time for me to digest, but is no less brilliant than her previous work. The lyrics are yet again those of a singer despairing about her place in the world (the album opens with A Long Way Home in which Dico's regrets are apparent: 'it's a long way home, when you've burnt down every bridge that you've crossed'). With contributions from Helgi Jonsson (who worked with Dico on her An Open Ending EP) it's an eclectic selection - different, but great.

I wasn't sure about The Road To Gavle to start with but after repeated listens I have come to absolutely love it, and I have no hesitation about installing my current Favourite Artist Of All Time TM as my #1 in this chart for a second year running.

Listen to: Goldhawk Road