My Best Albums of 2010

Initially, I was pretty reluctant to do a 'best of' list since it would be filled entirely with stuff that you've probably seen elsewhere. Unless of course you get all your hot music news from me. In which case, I feel I must tell you, you can do better. Honestly.

But then I thought, what the hell, let's do this!

In no particular order:

1. First Aid Kit - The Big Black And The Blue
What's not to like? The wonderful vocals, that are actually properly sung and not just spoken, over the top of the gentle guitars are just beautiful. I just want to sit on the floor cross legged in front of them sitting on stools, wearing big cable knit jumpers and have them sing to me.

2. Solar Bears - She Was Coloured In
An exceptional and atmospheric record, that is rewarding with every listen. Really feels like it could be used as a film score.

3. Delorean - Subiza
I think it is actually physically impossible to be unhappy when listening to this album. Equally good on the iPod, or for busting moves in da club. Actually, it's so fun it'll have you busting moves when it's on your iPod.

4. Foals - Total Life Forever
I'll leave it to Hot Chocolate to describe what I think of each of the tracks on this album:


5. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (II)
It was a toss up between this and Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, but in the end I felt it would be ridiculous to not include an album that has racked up so many listens, not that that was the sole criterion for these choices. Far from it. But, I'm a sucker for bangin music and I did really like it.

There you go, them's me top 5. Like I said, the decision process was not based on what I've listened to the most, which may be a bit ridiculous. But, the decisions make sense to me, although I am disappointed I didn't find room for Ariel Pink.

Silly me.

I hope these choices weren't too offensive, but feel free to (politely) stake your claim for your favourites. If indeed anyone is out there and reads this.

The Return

Hey guy(s).

I'm back!  (Sorry.)

The past two weeks have been crazy hectic with all sorts of exam nonsense, so I've been far too busy to write.  But, equations and all that bullshit are nearly done for another three months, so watch out Internet, I'm-a-coming!

Even though I was too busy to write, I wasn't too busy to get a couple of pretty ace shows under my belt and tick off two more bands and my 'to see live' list.  Not that I actually have a list, although I might make one, knock something pretty sexy on Excel and I'll be on my way.

Anyway, I managed to see Crystal Castles on the 19th when they played at Heaven, a little bit of me wishes Heaven would stop getting so many great bands because I'm pretty certain not everyone is convinced that I'm not gay and this doesn't really help to quash the speculation, but in the mean time I'm going to to keep going there, maybe even to see The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, who by the way have a new single out in a couple of weeks which you can listen to via links here, at the end of July.

I really must stop these digressions, but, yeah CC were amazing, didn't get right up front in the crowd where it seemed to get pretty manic with Alice jumping in during nearly every song.  The crowd were loving first album material, but weren't quite feeling the new stuff if you can gauge 'feeling it' by amount of jumping up and down / dancing, but I'm pretty sure they still loved it all though.  The one thing that sticks with me about that gig is how incredibly sweaty some people where, it did look a little bit like I'd missed a wet t-shirt competition.  Oh yeah, and to add to the mega-excitement when I was just hanging around outside before the gig I saw Ethan and Alice and the drummer man, sorry for lack of name-age, although I really doubt that these guys are aware of my pathetic little blog so I the apology is probably redundant, arriving at the club and I can confirm that Ethan is quite possibly the scariest man alive.  I wanted to take a picture as they walked towards me, but I felt like they might get angry and smash me in the face with my own camera, and of course I would also look way uncool and like some sort of fanboy, much better to be all nonchalant and like, 'Yeah, whatever, I just saw Crystal Castles, but I really couldn't give a shit, I don't even like them anyway, they're way too mainstream, I'm only here in an ironic way.'

Epic paragraph.

Then on the Wednesday just gone, the 26th, I saw Vampire Weekend at my very own student union, although they tried their best to make sure no one knew about it.  They said they didn't advertise it becasue it was an MTV event so it was all MTV's responsibility.

I got there at around half 8 and managed to catch the support act who unfortunately are still a mystery to me since I have no 'hipster sources' and I'm not prepared to go past page one on a Google search.  At first I thought it may have been 'Dum Dum Girls' for a few reasons:

1. They were an all girl band
2. They were playing lo-fi rock and roll
3. Vampire Weekend have already announced they will be touring North America with them this Autumn.
4. And I wasn't really sure what they looked like.

However, I'm now fairly confident it wasn't them.  Oh well.

But, Vampire Weekend did indeed rock my socks playing a mighty 14 song set that got everyone dancing and happy, especially for the encore of 'Mansard Roof' and 'Walcott.'

So all in all a good week that surely couldn't get better?  Think again.

That's right, this week saw the start of the summer Test Matches.  That's what you were expecting me to write, wasn't it?

I think I've written enough now, you should congratulate yourself for making it this far, I know I would've given up.