Albums of 2010: 5-1

It's the final countdown (de-de derrr der...de-de der der derrr...)

5. Caribou - Swim

The greatest trick Dan Snaith ever pulled was convincing the indie-blogging world it liked club anthems. Sun and Bowls were essentially just that - woozy, euphoric and beat-driven - albeit constantly evolving, submerging and re-emerging as something quite different. But the pulsating 4-person live shows coupled with Snaith's frail tenor ensured that underneath it all Swim, as with all of Caribou's otherwise very distinguished records, possessed a beating human heart. The clinching vocal performance however, fell into the hands of Born Ruffian Luke Lalonde for show-stopping closer Jamelia.

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

As The Suburbs claimed the #1 spot in both the U.S and U.K, it sent Arcade Fire into the pantheon of artists such as Radiohead and previously REM of commercially successful bands that truly matter. The Suburbs was absolutely the right album at the right time for the Montreal band, eschewing blockbusting singles for more unified songwriting (I've heard no less than 9 of its 16 songs played on radio or on TV appeatances) and big themes for smaller, more fully realised ones which, in their mundanity, were paradoxically much more interesting.

3. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

The  Atlanta, Georgia band's musical journey over the last three years, from dissonant krautrock and ambient soundscapes to the blissful dreampop one might associate with their label 4AD, has been an enthralling one; Halcyon Digest felt like the next and quite possibly definitive piece in the puzzle, the sound of a band reaching its final destination. Guitarist Lockett Pundt made key song-writing contributions - Desire Lines, like Nothing Ever Happened before it, showed how Deerhunter can be epic without being even remotely showy - but Bradford Cox leant extra emotional heft to his songs, peaking with the achingly pretty Helicopter and He Would've Laughed's touching tribute to the late Jay Reatard.

2. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

James Murphy's supposed bow-out of the LCD Soundsystem name was in essence Sound Of Silver Pt. 2, and what's wrong with that? Murphy, who's gotten better and better as a vocalist with each release was, as ever, equal-parts sardonic, earnest and hilarious, and always utterly self-aware. But while Drunk Girls may have served as the obligatory go-to single, the album's true agenda was there for all to hear on You Wanted A Hit ("that's not we do"), backed up by a sprawling 70 minute 9-song cycle which once more drew upon the usual Bowie/Iggie/Talking Heads touchstones, yet maintained Murphy as no mere revivalist, but a peerless visionary.

1. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

It's some feat for an album bristling with such raw punk energy from the off to sustain such levels over 65 minutes, but The Monitor, the year's most exhilirating record, did just that. Vocalist Patrick Stickles spends pretty much its duration as man kicked into the gutter, lowest of the low, but no matter how wretched the situation, Titus Andronicus pulled thim up each and every time with one more venomous mantra, one more guitar solo, one more bagpipe solo(!). Theming the album around the American Civil War (cue readings of Abe Lincoln, Walt Whitman et al) may not have prevented lyrical references to Springsteen, Dylan and even Billy Bragg, but it was utterly appropriate; The Monitor was the sound of a band playing as though their very lives depending on it.

20-16

15-11

10-6

The Ones That Got Away

Grow Up! How to mature as a music artist

How many times have you read in an album review that an artist has gone for a more "mature" sound? How many times has that made you cringe? If you've read those words in Q or Rolling Stone, "mature" pretty much translates into "sold out" and/or "become really bland". So-called maturity can be a terrible thing for the creativity and credibility of a band - just look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers - but the fact is, very few artists can get away with forever mining the same sound. And when you start off playing as loud and as hard as you possibly can, there's only one way you can really go.

Portland, Oregon indie-punkers The Thermals are a prime example of a band  currently stuck in this conundrum. Their fifth album, Personal Life, which came out last Monday on Kill Rock Stars, is a disappointment, the sound of a band with the air taken out of them, when once they bristled with energy. Nobody could accuse them of "selling out"; their no-frills approach of guitar-bass-drums remains as true as ever. But their limited template just cannot bring anything to the (all too numerous) lower tempo songs on here.

Yet good bands can mature, and remain artistically vital long into their careers. Here are a couple of examples:

Pavement

Okay, so admittedly there's not many people who would say that their favourite Pavement album is Brighten The Corners or Terror Twilight. But those two releases honed in on the tunes that were always there, beneath all the jerking around and slack-strung guitars. And whilst the recording of Terror Twilight in full 24-track glory may have seemed like heresy to some, it served to make The Hexx the most densely atmospheric song in their entire catalogue.

Proof: Shady Lane (from Brighten The Corners), ...and Carrot Rope (from Terror Twilight)

Arcade Fire

A more recent example, yes, and a band (one hopes) still relatively early into their career, but the Arcade Fire solved the quite enviable problem of how exactly do you should follow up one of the defining debut albums of the last decade. Whilst Neon Bible was perhaps a minor misstep, this year's The Suburbs re-affirmed them as critical darlings by stripping away much of the  previous bombast, and delivering a set of songs with a clearly realised concept that sounded all the better in one another's company. And #1 positions on both sides of the Atlantic confirmed that it wasn't just critics who were in agreement.

Proof: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Ready To Start (both from the Suburbs)

Fugazi

"Mature" shouldn't even be in the vocabulary of your average hardcore/post-hardcore band - most (Drive Like Jehu, Black Eyes, At The Drive In) burn fast and bright, whilst those that stick around (...Trail Of The Dead) go into a downward spiral. But typically Fugazi (along with perhaps Unwound) are the exception to the rule. Crucially, Fugazi demonstrated that sound experimentation, along with ever-improving musicianship and even a degree of subtlety, didn't have to come at the cost of the band's trademark intensity, and as great as 13 Songs and Repeater are, it's arguably the likes of 1995's Red Medicine and 2001's (probable) swansong The Argument that will remain the band's most enduring classics.

Proof: Fell, Destroyed (from Red Medicine), Full Disclosure (from The Argument)

Nick Cave

Here's another alternative; don't "mature" at all, but revel in your own filth as a dirty old man. If it helps, enlist some of your buddies in a side-project that allows you and your friends to let your hair down, and use that to re-inform and reinvigorate your day-job. That raucous first Grinderman album was swiftly followed by Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, possibly the most rollicking release in the Bad Seeds catalogue. The release of Grinderman 2 on Monday is a highly anticipated as any Bad Seeds album.

Proof: Get It On (from Grinderman), We Call Upon The Author (from Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!)

Review: Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Music critics can be fickle mistresses. Follow up a good debut album with a great sophomore effort and you can be heaped with praise, however undeserved, for the rest of your career. Do it the other way around, however, and you're cast off as one-hit wonders, also-rans, who can never hope to hit such peaks again. Herein lies the current predicament for the Arcade Fire. Of course, it doesn't help matters when you introduce your third album to the world with an uncharacteristically low-key effort (the sombre title track), all of which meant that the hype and level of expectation were not all they might have been.

Yet against these odds, the Arcade Fire have seriously delivered the goods with The Suburbs. At 16 tracks and 65 minutes, The Suburbs threatens to be a sprawl (it even has a multi-part song entitled Sprawl), but the even pacing and consistent theming of the tracks actually makes it the band's most focussed record to date.

Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels), the opening track from Funeral, depicted kids digging tunnels through the snow to escape their parents. The kids in The Suburbs are no different - "grab your mother's keys, we're leaving" Win Butler tells us on the opening track - and the BIG themes that bore so heavy on the shoulders of Neon Bible are of no concern to the inhabitants here ("when the first bombs fell/we were already bored"). The return to more personable matters is a most welcome one, and whilst the concept of disillusioned kids living out their repetitive, sterile lives in modern suburbia is hardly an original one, it is at least carried out whole-heartedly and coherently, with multi-part songs, and the repetition of key themes and lyrics.

What takes a bit of getting used to is the lack of bombast - on the first few listens at least, this really needs to be regarded as a very separate entity to its predecessors in order to be judged objectively. More driven songs like Month of May and Empty Room are the rare exceptions to an album which predominantly plays out in mid-tempo. But despite the more stately nature of the material, the songs are richly detailed, and when the band takes a song to a rousing conclusion, as on Suburban War and We Used To Wait, the indulgence feels well earned.

A few forays into new-wave might have been disastrous, but actually produce the album's glittering highlight on the Regine-led Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), a Blondie-like gem that will surely go down a storm live. A few more obvious highlights wouldn't have done the album any harm, but The Suburbs succeeds in being greater than the sum of its parts, the archetypal grower. Most crucially, in executing this change in direction so well, they've proven that they are in it for the long haul, that they can and will remain one of the great bands in recent times.

The Suburbs closes with a reprise of the title track, in which Win Butler tells us "If I could have it back/all the time that we wasted/I'd only waste it again". For all their frustrations at their insular existence, the kids in The Suburbs lack both the ambition and imagination to do things any differently. For the Arcade Fire, thankfully, that's not the case.

86/100