The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Fourteen

Hello, and welcome to door number 14, behind which Pranam spends more time discussing albums he forgot to include in his top 24 rather than those he did.

Pranam Mavahalli

Flying Lotus – Pattern and Grid World (Warp)

Track - Jurassic Notion/M Theory



As I sat to write this review, I realised that I’d left out Autechre from my top 24 – a band who’ve released two albums this year, both of which I’ve really enjoyed. Damn. Well, if I’d included one of those albums it would have been Move of Ten over Quaristice because of its immediacy. Similarly, Flying Lotus’ EP gets a look in here over his LP (do people even say LP any more?) Cosmogramm. Both are great records, but the EP perhaps controversially wins for its instant appeal.

John Skilbeck

Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts (Sub Pop)

Track - Weird Feelings



Dalston is not about to become the new Seattle but Male Bonding, who hail from that east London district, have slotted in on the Sub Pop label with the kind of promise many of their grungy antecedents from the Pacific Northwest did almost 25 years ago. Nothing Hurts was an arrogantly good debut album which grabbed you from the forceful riff of opening track Year’s Not Long and refused to release its grip. I saw them for the first time in October, supporting label-mates No Age in a sense, but showing them up all told. This record saw frenetic punk and slacker fuzz-pop wrapped up in a 13-tracks-in-30-minutes package, sort of the way Nirvana introduced themselves with Bleach.

Steve Pill

How To Dress Well - Love Remains (Lefse)

Track - Ready For The World



Tom Krell might just be the hippest post-Kantian philosophy research fellow in the whole of Cologne. When he's not studying, the German-based producer makes a sort of sublime, futuristic soul music, splicing Michael Jackson and other more abstract samples over his own delicate Bon Iver-like tunes. Love Remains is a collection of the best of the various tracks Krell has posted on his blog over the past year and despite its fragmented birth, it is still one of the most cohesive albums of the year.

Matt Collins

Anna Kashfi - Survival (Little Red Rabbit Records)

Track - Glass House



Manchester’s Anna Kashfi takes a come-to-bed girl voice, some bluesy acoustic guitar work and snatches of melody. Loop them around in a colourful whirlpool of piano and melodic phrases. While some of the lyrical subject matter hints at future rather than present classic status, Anna Kashfi do enough to suggest theirs is a sound worth keeping an ear on.

Andy Welch

Manic Street Preachers – Postcards From A Young Man (Columbia)

Track – Postcards From A Young Man



As effective as vulnerability, despair and heartbreak are in music, I’ve got a thing about artists sounding confident. It was hard not to be swept along with the sheer bravado of Postcards of A Young Man when it was released; here we have a band more than 20 years into their career sounding fresher and more vital than they have since the mid-90s, and among a only a handful of bands willing to say something about the bankers and the collapse of what industry the UK had. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is, and we should be thankful they’re still here.

Guy Atkinson

Alkaline Trio - This Addiction (Hassle)

Track - The American Scream



One of my all time favourite bands deliver a seventh album brimming with hook-filled slices of angsty punk rock goodness. Matt Skiba's guitar licks have never sounded better, and while admittedly they do fail to reach the giddy heights witnessed on From Here to Infirmary and Good Mourning, this is a worthy addition to a canon of work that raises two defiant fingers to nearly all other punk rock bands.

Dom Farrell

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening (EMI)

Track - All I Want



“It’s better to burn out than to fade away”. So Neil Young sang, so Kurt Cobain wrote before shooting up and shooting himself. The point is, that’s exactly what LCD Soundsystem are doing. This Is Happening apparently marks the end of James Murphy’s indie-dance monster. If so, it all goes down in a stunning blaze of glory. From Bowie to Byrne, the influences are all worn proudly on a vibrant sonic sleeve that is euphorically invigorating throughout.

Ian Parker

The Duke & The King - Long Live The Duke & The King (Silva Oak)

Track - Hudson River



It's fair to say Simone Felice had quite a year. A trip to hospital with breathing difficulties led to him being told he should, by rights, be dead from a long-standing heart defect. Emergency surgery followed, but somewhere along the way, the former Felice Brother managed to put out two albums, the first the follow-up effort to The Duke & The King's debut LP Nothing Gold Can Stay, and the second, Live From A Lonely Place, an intimate set of recordings Felice made during his recovery from the operation. Nothing Gold Can Stay never made my top 24 last year, but the follow-up has been an absolute certainty since its release. It doesn't so much build on the potential of the debut as deliver on promises they'd not yet even made. This is Americana with soul, real soul, and we can only be thankful that Felice is still with us to share it.

Rory Dollard

Tunng - ...And Then We Saw Land (Full-Time Hobby)

Track - With Whiskey



About a week after I took delivery of Badly Drawn Boy’s latest album – a dirgy waste of a once great talent – I bought this. The difference between the two could not be more apparent had it been advertised in garish neon signage on the side of the Palace of Westminster. Tunng’s latest bristles with inventiveness, warm boy/girl vocals resting atop the shifting sands of the ‘folktronica’ backing. This is where BDB’s wonderful debut The Hour of Bewilderbeast hinted he would be in 10 years.

Ali Mason

Sky Larkin – Kaleide (Wichita)

Track - Still Windmills



If Kaleide lacks the instant appeal of Sky Larkin’s debut The Golden Spike, it certainly rewards repeat listens – following as it does much the same pattern as last year’s effort but drawing from a wider pallet. There’s something of Pretty Girls Make Graves about Sky Larkin’s post-grunge sound, with its big hooks and intensity, while they show a willingness to if not experiment then branch out on tracks such as Year Dot and Smarts.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Thirteen

So, which albums are lucky enough to be behind door number 13?

Pranam Mavahalli

Madlib - Madlib Medicine Show #1 (Madlib Invazion)

Track – Ode To The Ghetto (OJ Simpson remix)



Confessions pt.2: This is a random choice. Madlib’s released 16 albums this year – 16 – and I’d be lying if I were to say I’ve given them all equal attention. At one point I did consider giving 16 advent calendar places to each of Mr Lib’s efforts, just because I love his music so much. Fortunately common sense prevailed. So Medicine Show #1 gets a place, but there are probably better ones out there that miss the cut for no better reason than that I haven’t heard them. Feel free to reproach me.

John Skilbeck

Nina Nastasia - Outlaster (Fatcat Records)

Track - This Familiar Way



Stationed in New York City, Nastasia released her sixth LP this year and with it took a fresh step in her career, reversing out of stripped-down street and taking a trip down orchestra alley. With string and woodwind quartets she added style but relinquished none of the substance in her writing. Outlaster was an album I enjoyed particularly at night, with the lights off and the street outside silent. It demanded attention, every note integral; the songs of the dramatic nature an audience would fall silent for. Nastasia drew emotion from each word she sang, and the new accompaniment augmented her delivery. Infused with such raw emotion at times it reminded me of the melodramatic fado songs of Portugal, albeit always steering just the safe side of maudlin.

Steve Pill

Aloe Blacc - Good Things (Stones Throw)

Track: I Need A Dollar



The Roots and John Legend might have tried to evoke 1970s politico-soul this year with an over-produced album of choice covers, but Stones Throw singer Aloe Blacc trumped them with a buoyant set of originals. Good Things sounds like a lost Bill Withers album and includes a sublime rework of the Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, restaged as a gentle soul classic. If the whole production wasn’t so damn derivative, this would be in my top five.

Matt Collins

Beach House - Teen Dream (Bella Union)

Track - Silver Soul



Beach House’s trade is a combo of one-setting synths, dreamy girl vocals and drum machines churning out chilled out beats, and it is beguiling. My ears know that their trick is a repetitive one, with tempo and mood rarely straying from dreamy and whispy. But it doesn’t stop my heart sinking deeper into the warm aural bath with every winter night listen.

Andy Welch

Laura Veirs – July Flame (Bella Union)

Track – Summer Is The Champion



It seemed every album I loved in the early part of the year was released by Bella Union or the Co-Op it belongs to. Laura Veirs’ seventh album July Flame is maybe the pick of the bunch, in my view the Portland singer’s best so far. Yes, even better than Carbon Glacier. Veirs is such a skilled writer and performer, and here displays her amazing ability to make the same song sound both like a homemade demo and a rich, fully realised masterpiece.

Guy Atkinson

Los Campesinos - Romance is Boring (Polydor)

Track - A Heat Rash In The Shape of the Show-Me State



Where their first two albums were like having your cheeks squeezed and hair ruffled in unison, this third offering is like being kicked in the gut. While there are still some typically jovial moments, there are far more brooding and introspective songs that showcase a new maturity in their songwriting and it's these that live longest in the memory.

Dom Farrell

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (Parlaphone)

Track - Stylo



Ahh Damon, bless him. He’s a wanker isn’t he? However Plastic Beach goes some way to confirming the suspicion that the one-time Colchester resident could well be the most accomplished British musician of his generation. The strong point of Gorillaz’s third album is that Albarn takes the best elements from his varied work over the past two decades, while jettisoning the self-indulgence that has often hindered it. Urgent contributions from Kano, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def and the return of De La Soul mean Gorillaz’s hip-hop elements lose their air of eclectic box-ticking. Bobby Womack’s guest slot is no dutiful homage - his vocals on Stylo sizzle irresistibly. But the clinchers are On Melancholy Hill, Broken and To Binge, where the Gorillaz project benefits from evidence that Albarn’s wistful songwriting remains in rude good health.

Ian Parker

Best Coast - Crazy For You (Wichita)

Track - The End



Best Coast make that sort of breezy, lo-fi west-coast pop that I pretty much find it impossible not to like. Their lyrics border on the ridiculous, and they go out of their way not to bring too many hints of sophistication to the record as a whole, but that works just fine for me.



Rory Dollard

Dylan LeBlanc – Paupers Field (Rough Trade)

Track - If the Creek Don’t Rise



Anyone who follows Ryan Adams on Twitter will surely share my fear that he is as likely to spend the rest of his days as an online fast food critic as resume his previous role as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. We should probably cross our fingers that does not transpire but in the meantime we have 20-year-old Dylan LeBlanc, who channels Adams’ most tenderfooted moments with a set of lyrical, melancholic country. Americana’s next major star.

Ali Mason

Bombay Bicycle Club – Flaws (Island)

Track - Fairytale Lullaby



Bombay Bicycle Club’s debut album, I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose was (apparently – I don’t know, I didn’t buy it) a rockier, more electric affair than this. Consequently Flaws is an interesting concoction – the gentlest of folk albums with a rock sensibility. Rock peeps through on the edge of Jack Steadman’s vocals and in Suren de Saram’s unexpectedly insistent drums – and it works surprisingly well. The best track by a distance, though, is Fairytale Lullaby, a cover of a song by John Martyn.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Twelve

Today one album gets three nods, another gets two. Welcome to what will now be known as Consensus Day.

Pranam Mavahalli

Warpaint – The Fool (Rough Trade)

Track – Shadows



Warpaint arrived on my radar alongside a lot of hype and ‘sleb associations. This made me sceptical. But I think they’re very much more than the scene-ster band they could be and this is a very fine record that I keep returning to. I think their current rhythm section is the most exciting to emerge in indie rock since that in Interpol. Start the debate.

John Skilbeck

Warpaint - The Fool (Rough Trade)

Track - Baby



Today we reach the halfway mark and an apology is due: so to Caribou, to Agent Ribbons, to Cinema Red And Blue, to Zola Jesus, you all brought me great joy in late 2010 and I’d surely have squeezed at least a couple of you ahead of Warpaint had your LPs and my ears met before this list was submitted in early November. Not that Warpaint, a four-girl LA rock band whose sound is like nothing you might expect from a four-girl LA rock band, would slide any further down the list than the mid-teens though. The Fool was a spellbinding debut album, an exercise, like the XX’s debut, in restraint fashioning a substantial work of elegance. It had a radio hit in Undertow, but hardly went looking for it. Post-punk guitar lines circled and swooped around wraithlike vocals and a snare-drum clattered by, and it was rather wonderful indeed.

Steve Pill

The Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers

Track: Until The Last



Before writing A Chorus Of Storytellers, Jimmy LaValle's band performed a score to FW Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise. Was there ever an act better suited to soundtracking a silent film? For some, the Album Leaf can often slip down unnoticed, with plaintive keys, vocal harmonies and cute chord progressions all making the minimal fuss. Strap on headphones though for the warmest, most uplifting listen of the year.

Matt Collins

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (Parlaphone)

Track - Some Kind of Nature (ft. Lou Reed)



Gorillaz finally move out of the amateurish beats side project with Plastic Beach. It’s as cohesive as it is interesting, helped in no small part by genuinely talented guest stars, all with a shared lineage of behind-the-scenes uber-cool. Welcome To The World with Snoop Dog is actually real hip-hop, while Lou Reed makes Some Kind of Nature what Damon Albarn has presumably been aiming for all this time - lazy, fluid melody and a tight groove.

Andy Welch

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (Parlaphone)

Track - Welcome To The World of the Plastic Beach



The guest line-up is incredible; Mark E Smith, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Gruff Rhys and Snoop Dogg to name a few, each used effectively, no one getting by on name alone. Even more staggeringly, the best songs on the album are the ones that see Albarn go it alone. It was a shame to see the band fare so badly at Glastonbury, their Roundhouse show a few months earlier was among the most thrilling gigs I’ve ever been to and captured the very best moments of this terrific album.

Guy Atkinson

65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway (Hassle)

Track - Crash Tactics



Sheffield's leading lights in the charge to make instrumental-post-math-rock as popular as Justin Bieber came up trumps with an album brimming with invention, noise and, most importantly, tunes. It might not be enough to knock that little Canadian shit off his stride, but it sure as hell makes me want to dance and smash things at the same time - an explosive combination.

Dom Farrell

Family Band - Miller Path (Family Band)

Track - Fantasy



The time of year can often play a key role in your perceptions of a record. When I first heard Miller Path in early summer, I found it to be a perfectly pleasant and well constructed folk and Americana collection. As the nights have drawn in and temperatures have plummeted, the haunting, ethereal beauty of the New York trio's debut has become apparent. Miller Path was recorded in a cold, damp wooden cabin, which, in the most complimentary terms, is exactly how it sounds.

Ian Parker

Warpaint - The Fool (Rough Trade)

Track - Set Your Arms Down



I'm the third guy attempting to review this today alone, nevermind the number of different opinions being thrown out in the calendar as a whole. Though the fact that we all seem to have put it in mid-table is fitting. It's a really good album, an infectious album, but something about it stops it being short of great.

Rory Dollard

Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt (Dead Oceans)

Track - The Wild Hunt



A Swedish singer-songwriter in love with early Dylan and in possession of a ludicrous moniker may not sound like the stuff great albums are made of in 2010 but you should never judge a book by its cover. Unless it has a recently ousted Labour politician on it, in which case it’s probably a tedious account of the demise of New Labour. But I digress. The Wild Hunt is just the sound of one guy with a guitar, a great voice and 10 wonderful songs. What’s not to like?

Ali Mason

Smoke Fairies – Through Low Light And Trees (V2 Coop)

Track - Erie Lackawanna



Best band name of the year, yes. Most apt album title of the year, yes. Best album of the year...not quite, though it is very, very good. The Smoke Fairies have created a wonderful niche, full of murky atmosphere and portent summed up perfectly by the album’s name. Indeed, Through Low Light And Trees is as much about atmosphere as it is about music and lyrics. It’s rural and eerie and lonely and, even when the country guitar kicks in on Strange Moon Rising, peculiarly British.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Eleven

Eleven = Fourteen. Why? Because this is the Musical Advent Calendar. Here are the panel's No. 14 albums of 2010.

Pranam Mavahalli

Neil Young – Le Noise (Reprise)

Track - Rumblin’



How does he do it? He’s old enough to claim a free bus pass, but he’s still putting the young ones to shame by sidestepping expectations with each release. Part of this album’s appeal for me is that it was so unexpected – just Neil and an electric with a garageload of effects. It flirts with being too outré at times, and I would love to hear how some of these songs would sound with Crazy Horse backing them, but I adore Neil for continuing to challenge and confront.

John Skilbeck

MGMT - Congratulations

Track- Brian Eno (Columbia)



Career left turns rarely work out this well. Congratulations presented MGMT in apparent rebellion, as the two-piece withdrew from the chart-pop rat-race and presumably caused a code-red alert at their record label. They wrote one song in tribute to cult indiepopper Dan Treacy of the Television Personalities and labelled it Song For Dan Treacy, another for Brian Eno and called it Brian Eno. Track six was a 12-minute opus, while track eight – the instrumental Lady Dada’s Nightmare – sounded like a night raid on the asylum. Really, for heaven’s sake. Where their first album was a cash cow asking to be milked, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser really spiked the milk with acid this time, and the result was a radical record, laced with madness, touched by genius. Was this really the band that made the grating Oracular Spectacular?

Steve Pill

Hot Chip - One Life Stand (Parlophone)

Track - Hand Me Down Your Love



More direct and battle-hardened than their earlier electro workouts, One Life Stand is full of proper, Word-magazine-reading literate pop music. Instead of repeating themselves over and over and over again (like a monkey with a miniature cymbal), the funny-looking five-piece have slowed down, chilled out and borrowed a couple of tricks from their Dad's battered copy of The Best of Squeeze, but they are sounding no worse for it.

Matt Collins

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record (City Slang)

Track - Meet Me In The Basement



Another band who aren’t fixing things that ain’t broke, Canada’s post rock heroes Broken Social Scene are almost knowingly making a standard album with the name. But they’re close to the top, so why change? Meet Me In The Basement has the insistent riff throughout, out there production and jump-up-and-down rock all together - as usual.

Andy Welch

Stornoway – Beachcomber’s Windowsill (4AD)

Track – The Coldharbour Road



“Conkers shining on the ground, the air is cooler, and I feel like I just started uni.” Hardly the most macho of starts to Stornoway’s debut album, but it’s churlish to quibble with anything Brian Briggs sings, such is the heavenly nature of his voice. There are a few misjudged tracks on Beachcomber’s Windowsill, but any shortcomings are overshadowed by the brilliantly sophisticated The Coldharbour Road, Zorbing and Fuel Up.

Guy Atkinson

Your Demise - The Kids We Used To Be (Visible Noise)

Track - Teenage Lust



This album is what I'd imagine would be going around in my head if I was being bludgeoned in the face by a serial killer. Having said that, it's still a significantly more 'tuneful' effort than their unrelenting debut and contains enough hooks to suggest that these English gents could break the American stranglehold on melodic hardcore punk.

Dom Farrell

Broken Bells - Broken Bells (Columbia)

Track - The High Road



Okay, so this essentially sounds like an expensively produced batch of Shins demos. But therein lies the virtue of the eponymous debut from prodigious collaborator Dangermouse and James Mercer. The production is slick but unobtrusive and deft neo-psyche touches allow room for Mercer's effortless songcraft to breath. The Ghost Inside and The High Road are near enough perfect pop, even if it is difficult to shake the feeling that this is a very charming piece of thumb twiddling to pass the time before Mercer gets round to a proper follow up to the Shins' magnificent Wincing The Night Away.

Ian Parker

Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now (Names Records)

Track - Sinful Wishing Well



It's no secret that I like a spot of country music. Proper country music. None of your modern Nashville pap. Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Emmylou Harris, Townes van Zandt. And those that build on their legacies. So to see the likes of Caitlin Rose come to the fore and prosper is truly delightful. Rose does country the old school way. And you know I'm going to like that.

Rory Dollard

Grinderman – Grinderman II (Mute)

Track - Palaces of Montezuma



We all know the story of Grinderman by now. It’s Nick Cave and his hairiest cohorts playing a quick game of dirty old bastards. Needless to say, it’s a roll that suits them well. There are no pretensions towards the poetry or piousness of the Bad Seeds so instead it’s guitars set to warp speed, rabid sexuality fit for the offenders’ register and Cave in his wild-eyed, scenery-chomping pomp.

Ali Mason

Kate Nash – My Best Friend Is You (Polydor)

Track - I Just Love You More



That Polydor chose to release Do-Wah-Doo as the lead single for My Best Friend In You was a pity, because it made the album seem like Made Of Bricks II. Anyone determined to believe that’s the case will find the evidence to back up their prejudice if they look hard enough, but this is a much richer, much more interesting album than her debut. It’s delightful to hear Nash playing with styles – there’s riot grrrl here, and spoken word and lovely lo-fi folk. Perhaps most exciting is Pickpocket, where she hints at being a British Regina Spektor. If you can look past the occasionally over-literal lyrics, this is a rewarding listen.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Ten

Door number 10, which by my maths means we've entered the land of our panel's top 15.

Pranam Mavahalli

Huun Huur Tu – Ancestor's Call (World Village)

Track - Prayer



Everyone’s favourite Tuvan throat-singing popular beat combo return with their fifth studio long player. I find this music haunting and unearthly. It might sound like the engineer’s done some studio jiggery pokery (e.g attached a ring modulator) to get their voices to take on different pitches and tones. I’m assured this is not the case and that they are
in fact each singing two different notes at the same time. Astounding.

John Skilbeck

Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart (Jagjaguwar)

Track - Rollercoaster



The third album-length tranche from Vancouver’s Black Mountain was a detonation of heavy prog-leaning rock which for what it lacked in originality it compensated for with one irresistible hook after another. The Canadian four-piece are a band set apart by the powerful combination of frontman Stephen McBean’s gravelly delivery and Amber Webber’s luxuriant, quivering voice. And while Sabbath-indebted guitar riffs dominated Wilderness Heart, beneath the surface the unique register of the Mellotron organ gave the sound ocean-floor-scraping depth. Black Mountain stand incongruous to most of my list, and my hopelessly narrow-minded taste as a whole, but I was drawn in by Webber’s association, having fallen hopelessly for her side-project Lightning Dust, and this certainly did not disappoint.

Steve Pill

Four Tet - There Is Love In You (Domino)

Track - Love Cry



Kieran Hebden began by making autumnal, folky electronica under his Four Tet moniker but by the time of There Is Love In You, he had one eye firmly on the dancefloor. However, this being a Four Tet album, you can never really expect full on, four to the floor madness. Instead there's dusty analogue synths, vaguely jazzy drums and all manner of weird noises and glitches. Love Cry is the album in a nut shell, a slow burning twitch that builds into an electro-gospel work out and ends in more familiar Four Tet instrumental territory.

Matt Collins

James Yuill - Movement In A Storm (Moshi Moshi)

Track - Crying For Hollywood



Electro blips acoustic picks shouldn’t be in a comfortable relationship together, no matter who you are. But James Yuill has a unique talent for blending the two into the oh-so-imaginatively-named folktronica in a way that doesn’t forget the songs in the sound. Crying for Hollywood is a particular highlight, the electroriff a delight, the song a stormer.

Andy Welch

Darwin Deez – Darwin Deez (Lucky Number)

Track – Up In The Clouds



With his Hassidic curls, headband, bum-fluff ‘tache and interviews in which he quotes his favourite philosophers, Darwin Deez does come across a bit ‘Flight Of The Conchords’, an artist not to be taken seriously. But to write him off on appearances would be to miss out on one of the best debuts of the year. He demonstrates a rare talent here; the fuzzy, Strokes-esque guitars on top of lo-fi drum loops creating a perfect bed for his sumptuous, endearing tales of romantic ineptitude.

Guy Atkinson

Yeasayer - Odd Blood (EMI)

Track - Mondegreen



The fact that my iTunes categorises this album under 'pop' tells you all you need to know about the quantum leap these guys took for their second album. Containing two of the year's most thrilling pop bangers in the shape of Ambling Alp and O.N.E., this is an album best listened to after consuming as many intoxicants as your body will allow.

Dom Farrell

Chemical Brothers - Further (Parlaphone)

Track - Horse Power



As students taking to the streets to protest and burn things outside the Conservative Party headquarters calls to mind the Poll Tax riots, the Chemical Brothers also seem to be casting their minds back towards the early nineties. Further jettison any guest vocal turns from assorted Britpop royalty and the result is a focused, muscular and euphoric tour de force. This would be equally at home in the all-night warehouse raves of Tom Rowlands' and Ed Simons' youth as the festival fields they deservedly frequent today.

Ian Parker

Johnny Flynn - Been Listening (Transgressive)

Track - Kentucky Pill



I'm still not sure if anti-folk actually is, and if it does, what the heck it means. But let's put silly labels to one side. After his potential-filled and slow-growing debut A Larum, Johnny Flynn returned with an all together more confident, more brash and more fully-realised follow up in Been Listening.


Rory Dollard

Tricky – Mixed Race (Domino)

Track - Murder Weapon



Tricky is almost always more interesting in theory than reality, with great moments followed by lengthy miscalculations. Mixed Race, at just 28 minutes, finds him streamlined and focused on the killer material. A phalanx of guest vocalists do much of the heavy lifting, with Tricky a menacing, malevolent presence in the background for large periods. The tone is claustrophobic and tautly played and it speaks volumes that the singalong ‘pop’ single is called Murder Weapon.

Ali Mason

Broken Records – Let Me Come Home (4AD)

Track - A Darkness Rises Up



I simply didn’t get the Arcade Fire comparisons when Broken Records released their debut album last year, but they seem more apt this time around. Let Me Come Home lacks some of the bombast of Until The Earth Begins To Part, which is perhaps not a bad thing, but with songs called things like Dia Dos Namarados! and A Darkness Rises Up, there’s no lack of their trademark portentousness to go along with their epic sound. And with Arcade Fire on the slide, it’s worth making room for Broken Records in your life.