let me show you what i'm made of

Top 10 Albums Of The Decade

4. Chantal Kreviazuk - What If It All Means Something (2003) (LB)

Female singer-songwriters have always been a favourite of mine. From Julia Fordham to Alanis Morissette, Amanda Marshall to Jann Arden and Sarah MacLachlan to Tina Dico, I do love the sound of a female vocalist with an acoustic guitar or piano.

Of all the superb vocalists to have released records in the 2000s, this album remains one of my favourites. After her promising debut Under These Rocks And Stones and the brilliant 1999 album Colour Moving and Still, Kreviazuk returned in 2003 with this brilliant record. From the superb opening single In This Life, it's one of those rare albums where there isn't a bad song included. It's a strange mixture of styles from the yearning ballads of Flying Home and Morning Light to the upbeat charm of Miss April and Ready For Your Love.

Kreviazuk isn't particularly well known outside her native Canada other than for contributing the track Leaving On A Jet Plane for the soundtrack of the film Armageddon. She's also made her name as a talented songwriter having penned the great Walk Away for Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stefani's Rich Girl.

What If It All Means Something is as brilliant and consistent an album as I have heard in the last ten years and whilst her subsequent albums have included brilliant individual highlights (All I Can Do from 2006's Ghost Stories is one of my top five records of the decade) nothing matches the overall quality of this album.

Listen to: In This Life

4. Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (2008) (bedshaped)

When you're coming up with a favourite list of albums that spans ten years, I guess it's easy to forget some of the albums that were released at the further end of the scale, and there's a little danger that recent releases may cloud your judgment. And when it happened for me, I found myself listening to the album once more, to justify my thoughts. All of them fell into a "Well, yeah, it's a great album, but all things considered, it doesn't really rank amongst the top ten of the decade" pile....all of them, except one.

This is that album.

Released only a couple of years ago, but it feels like yesterday. Why? Because I can still listen to it, now....as I am doing while I write this....and it sounds so....fresh, new, beautiful, original....amazing.

I got my first taste of Elbow with an ex girlfriend of mine. She kept raving about a song called Newborn. I could never decide at the time if I liked it or not. There was nothing to dislike, as it were, but again, nothing really grabbed me. Elbow and I parted company for a while until they released the Cast Of Thousands album, which completely won me over. Since then, I've stuck with them through thick and thin.

I've always loved the fact that they've remained a 'great, but not stadium filling size' band. They've had a string of successful singles, and their albums have always sold consistently well, but there's always been a lack of something. I don't even know what it is? Media support? TV spots? Eye catching videos? Something, somewhere just didn't give them enough oomph to become a household name. This album, I guess, has done all it can in respect to growing their popularity as a band. The began to sell out huge stadiums, appear on many a tv spot and even had much of their music used on tv adverts and programmes.

Their deserved Mercury Music Prize seemed to give them the recognition they had deserved for such a long time. Yes, their previous albums are brilliant. All of them! But this album....this is the album that is made with pure love and devotion to the art of making music. I have serious doubts they will ever be able to top this album, but I would love to be wrong.

There's a huge array of musical instruments on display here. The arrangements are lovely, so perfect. Guy's 'twenty a day' voice sounds as familiar as your best friend just bursting into song one night. And the stories that unfold are just genius. Each listen can twist the lyrics on their head and show a whole different meaning to the song. And it works so, so well. The music is beautiful. His voice is divine. The stories are so brilliantly told.

Amazing sound production on this album. Big enough to fill stadiums, but intimate enough to just about fill your living room. Perfect late night listening. Enough wonderfully told stories on here to make you laugh, cry and feel utter loss. It's a truly emotional journey.

Picking a favourite song is really difficult. I love all the tracks for different reasons. And it really does depend on what mood I'm in at the time, as to which single track I would choose. Grounds For Divorce....it's massive! Mirrorball....is just so, so beautiful! Weather To Fly....is genius! Starlings is....OMFG! I could say something about them all! Except The Fix. I've never really gelled with that song. I don't know why?!

I think when I had this as my album of the year, I was torn between The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver and Some Riot as my standout track. I haven't checked back to see which one I chose, but I feel like I'm torn again. I love how he sings that line, "Send up a prayer in my name". But I also love that piano sounds.

*sigh*

Ok, I'm going for Some Riot. I guess a tragic story about giving up, turning your head, over indulgence and ultimately....death. It's not quite as depressing as it sounds. The piano sound is incredible. And when the backing vocals come in, it's uplifting and euphoric. This is an incredible song to see them play live. The whole thing is delivered with such passion. You can't fail to pick it up. Genius!

Listen to: Some Riot

4. Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World (2006) (Swisslet)

With the release of The Seldom Seen Kid in 2008, Bury’s Elbow finally began to achieve the success that they had long deserved for their quiet understated excellence. It’s an album that seems to get better with every play, with songs like Mirrorball, Grounds for Divorce and One Day Like This….

Oh, hang on. I’ve not picked that one. I’ve picked the album before, 2006’s Leaders of the Free World. It didn’t win the Mercury Prize, and although it was well received by the critics – all Elbow albums are – it didn’t shift anywhere near as many units as the follow-up and never threatened to break the band into the arenas that are now their natural stomping ground. Elbow do platinum albums now, you know, not just gold ones.

But you know what? Leaders of the Free World is the album that made me love them. I had both their previous albums, and liked them well enough, and it looked for a while as thought this one might be going the same way: to be played every so often but generally left to gather dust on the CD shelf. And then something happened: Puncture Repair happened. It’s only 1m48s long, but it’s magical and it proved to be the key that opened up the rest of the album for me: Station Approach, Picky Bugger, Forget Myself, Mexican Standoff….

The great tracks keep on coming. Apart from Puncture Repair, there are two other songs that really lift this album up to greatness: Leaders of the Free World is a stinging attack on the Bush administrations (“passing the gun from father to feckless son”) and paints world leaders as little boys throwing stones. The Stops is the sound of a heartbroken lover letting go and wishing his erstwhile love all the best (“I’ll miss you the way you miss the sea”). It’s so beautiful and sad that it never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Damn that Guy Garvey has a way with words. The Seldom Seen Kid is a good album and has been rightly lauded, but this is the one for me.

Listen to: The Stops