The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Three

Hello and welcome to door three of the Musical Advent Calendar, which features not merely our No. 22 albums of the year but also a re-run of the Scottish independence referendum and Pranam's pre-emptive claim in a future lawsuit over tinnitus. 

Without further ado...

Andy Welch

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire With No Witness (Jagjaguwar)

This is the second album from Angel Olsen, and it's a sad affair. The lyrics themselves aren't solely melancholic – there's a lot of strength in here – it's more Olsen's voice that just gives everything she sings a sheen of doom and gloom. The album veers from barely there acoustic songs to much bigger full arrangements, but Olsen sounds just as comfortable and just as brilliant with all of it.

Rory Dollard

King Creosote - From Scotland With Love (Domino)

There are many ways the Scottish Independence referendum could have been improved, but here are two most obvious:

1) If Alex Salmond had exclusively used the Blackadder 'Darling' gag every time he spoke to Labour's chief unionist.

2) If the entire episode had been soundtracked by Kenny Anderson's glorious Fife burr (if ever there was a voice worthy of the 'b' word, his is it). Several dozen albums  into his career, he knows instinctively how to set the mood for his homespun gems. Increasingly a national treasure and, for now, a British one too.

Matt Collins
St Vincent - St Vincent (Loma Vista)

More kooky female led pop tunes, with these lot being massively danceable rather than Lykke Li dreamy. 'Digital Witness' has the most insistent brass riff since 'Crazy in Love' too.

Dom Farrell

Wye Oak - Shriek (City Slang)

The follow-up to 2011’s excellent Civilian sees Baltimore duo Wye Oak once again trading deft indie folk writing against splatters of white noise. The bursts of feedback that decorated Shriek’s predecessor remain but glacial electronics broaden the sonic palette to good effect. A first line of “This morning, I woke up on the floor” on opener “Before” knowingly pricks the listener’s attention, which Jenn Wasner’s enchanting vocals largely hold for the duration.

Andrew Gwilym

The Antlers – Familiars (Transgressive)

My awareness of The Antlers owes much to Rory Dollard’s insistence on having me listen to their 2009 album Hospice over a beer round his gaffe in Howden. It was not the most lighthearted of booze-related activities but it made an impact. Familiars on the surface treads a similarly bleak path, largely ruminating on death, but there are glimmers of light within the gloom. “When I’m old I’ll be clear, more attuned and understanding” declares Peter Silberman on ‘Intruders’. Familiars is a slow burner, but it is definitely worth your patience.

John Skilbeck
Jessie Ware - Tough Love (Island)

How to follow a debut so elegant, so deeply soulful and - critical to the existence of its follow-up — so successful over the counter was the challenge confronting Jessie Ware as she began to piece together Tough Love. Emerging two years ago with the luxurious Devotion, which garnered Mercury, Brit and Mobo award nominations, London-born English graduate Ware conquered self-doubt to emerge in a post-Winehouse world as a warm, powerful and credible voice. That record promised shelter and succour amid the most cataclysmic emotional crises, and Tough Love offers similar salvation. Ware earned comparisons to Sade and Whitney Houston first time around, and from the title track onwards, a shimmering reflection of love both under and spiralling out of control, album number two tugs firmly at the most base emotions. Ed Sheeran co-wrote 'Say You Love Me', US soul star Miguel lent a hand elsewhere, and where Tough Love doesn’t smoulder it soars, hitting its peak on the delectable 'Champagne Kisses'.

Pranam Mavahalli

Rustie – Green Language (Warp)

When I'm in my 70s and suffering from age-related hearing loss, Rustie will be partly to blame. This album is a little more restrained than Rustie’s debut, it retains the trap beats, sub bass and bright synths that made that record special. It's also an album demands to be played load – preferably on a club soundsystem with hefty subwoofers. But in the absence of that, when for example you're on the bus to work wearing your headphones, the only way to replicate this effect is to crank the volume up to foolhardy levels. Pardon? Excuse me? What?

Ian Parker

Felice Brothers - Favourite Waitress (Dualtone)

There aren't many special tricks or groundbreaking ideas on Favourite Waitress, but that's sort of why it's here. I'm not against bands trying new things, as long as they recognise what has worked and what hasn't. And the dashes of electronica on the Felice Brothers' last record, well…didn't work. So we're back to basics on their fifth full release - which might be kind of ironic given it's the first they've recorded in an actual studio rather than a chicken coop or some such. The sound is ramshackle, many of the tunes are too, but the raucous free-spirit of the Felice Brothers is back. And maybe that's their special trick.

Guy Atkinson

Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal)

A collection of certified club bangers that remind me of why I liked rap music when I was a teenager...or simply a token hip-hop pick?

(This is a mildly NSFW video for which Ragged Glories accepts little to no responsibility. We blame Guy entirely.)

Steve Pill

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)

I'm going to get this one out the way early. Have I listened to Lost In A Dream plenty of times? Sure. Do I actually rate it as an album? Erm... Here’s the crux. I love the sound of it all – the billowing keys, the Dylan-esque delivery, the highway-ready beat (forgive the Americanism, but the M42 lacks the requisite glamour) – but it’s the repetitive nature of the songs themselves that take the shine off. At times, I’m not even sure if this isn’t the same track rewritten 10 times at varying lengths. Still... What a song.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number Two

On day two of the Advent Calendar, we're starting to hit our stride as the panel outline their No. 23 albums of the year. How else to explain Dom pondering a future record about paddleboarding, Matt booking himself in for a bowl haircut and Guy declaring himself a sucker (possibly a better self-declaration than Pranam's yesterday...)?

Andy Welch

The Lost Brothers – New Songs Of Dawn And Dust (Lojinx)

I've been a fan of The Lost Brothers, Oisin and Mark, for a good few years. Their album So Long John Fante is an underrated gem, hopefully to be rediscovered one day to get the credit it deserves. Their live shows, so full of energy and fun, have often varied from their more restrained, precise recorded work. On this fourth album, recorded in Liverpool with producer Bill Ryder Jones and a little help from his old Coral bandmate Nick Power – it’s the first of their records not made in the States – they've managed to blend their more two sides, the serious and the fun.

Rory Dollard

Curtis Harding - Soul Power (Burger Records)

You know when you're a few quid short of free delivery on an order and you add something to the basket purely because it's got a nice front cover? That. That kind of decision making has landed with several duds over the years but this isn't one of them. A nice mix of old school soul and some rockier tear-ups, but apparently widely unavailable when Ian tried to land a copy. Worth another try, boss.

Matt Collins

Let’s Wrestle - Let’s Wrestle (Fortuna Pop)

Just as cheeky a set of chappies as the name suggests, this is all delightful indie tunes, and undoubtedly bowl haircuts. Fun times down the indie club.

Dom Farrell

Neil Young - Storytone (Reprise)

Divorce wife of 35-years; shack up with a younger movie actress and partner with her in rampant environmental activism and paddleboarding; release a crowdfunded, high-end music player shaped like a Toblerone; publish an autobiography based around a lifetime of car ownership; follow an album recorded in Jack White’s enchanted photobooth with a record accompanied by some sort of behemoth Disney score orchestra. All in the year he turns 69. Neil Young remains a quite marvellous lunatic. Given his recent recorded output, an album dedicated to the joys of paddleboarding feels grimly inevitable. But Storytone focuses on love, loss and a desire to solve ecological problems almost as complex as Young’s character. There are a couple of complete turkeys on here and the orchestral schmaltz is laid on too thick in places, but when Young starkly muses on his own failings and burning passions we are treated to beautiful, heartbreaking brilliance.

Andrew Gwilym

Elbow – The Take Off and Landing of Everything (Fiction)

This album will carry a particular resonance for me for its role in helping me cope with turning 30. For whatever reason, moving into my fourth decade bothered me immensely, I felt a real anxiety about it. Call it an existential crisis, a realisation of my own mortality or me just being a miserable bugger (almost certainly the latter), but I found myself dreading my birthday no matter the plans girlfriend, family and friends had made for me. That’s where Guy Garvey and pals helped out. On the night of my birthday Gemma had booked us tickets to see Elbow at the 02 Arena and, during a set heavily built around this album, Garvey’s soothing voice and ruminations, amidst Elbow’s widescreen backing, set my mind at ease. Getting older will be just fine, don’t you worry about that. A few beers followed and I ended the day in a more celebratory mood than I had started it in. Guy and co, I thank you for ending my 20s on the right note.

John Skilbeck
Jennifer Castle - Pink City (No Quarter)

Toronto’s Jennifer Castle has been likened, at least for the quirks in her voice, to Joni Mitchell. Castle's second album under her own name was slow to grab yours truly's attention but since hooking on in late summer rarely a couple of days has slid by without Pink City demanding a play. I’m reminded on the piano-led tracks more of Natalie Merchant than Mitchell, but Castle’s voice is versatile, one moment sober on the piano-led Nature and the next channelling Joni on the country carousing of 'Down River', a stand-out track that comes tagged with a masterful closing harmonica solo from Kath Bloom.

Pranam

Plank – Hivemind (Akoustik Anarky)

Good news is hard to come by, so let's all rejoice in the fact that sales of vinyl are increasing. And Plank's second album strikes me as an album that the vinyl format is made of. It's structured very distinctly into two halves - side A picks up from their debut: taut, crisp, krautrock influenced grooves with added heaviness and funk for good measure. But Side B is where it's at for me; an ambitious suite of songs that segue beautifully into each other, much like Pink Floyd's Echoes. It's a surprising but wholly welcome turn, and I look forward to seeing where their next chapter takes them.

Ian Parker

Elbow - The Take Off And Landing of Everything (Fiction)

I can't remember the last time I got excited about an Elbow album - but then that's never been the point of them. This is a band whose worth lies in their surety of touch; their understated qualities. They get better and better with age, so it makes perfect sense that on an album where Guy Garvey tells us all that it's okay to be feeling a little older, they've hit the sweet spot once again.

Guy

Whirr - Sway (Graveface)

I'm still not sure whether this is any good or if it's just landed in the midst of the woozy, fuzzy shoegaze revival, which I've fallen for in a big way. Sucker.

Steve Pill

Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes (self-released)

Is this the point where the Radiohead frontman finally settles into a corner? There are certainly no alarms and no surprises on Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, from the typically unusual release method to the glitchy electronica backing that has become Yorke’s default setting for many years now. Not only that, but it lacks the Beatles-y melodies that made the curiously unloved King of Limbs my favourite post-Kid A album.

And yet, and yet... It is still a willfully brilliant and comfortingly morose dispatch from one of the finest musical artists of his generation and, perversely, the disappointments only serve as a measure of his genius. This may not be the great leap forward we’ve come to expect, but it is still an atmospheric, engaging and multi-layered album that rewards repeat listens.

The Musical Advent Calendar - Door Number One

Here we go again. For a sixth straight year the Musical Advent Calendar is here as the 10 of us countdown our top 24 albums of the year as a way of reminding you all how little time left you have to do your Christmas shopping.

But before we dive right in, we have some positional changes to announce. Ali Mason, who over the years nominated actual cups of tea, mountains of folk records and Eliza Doolittle, has left us. While we will mourn the loss of his attempts to convert Guy to folk, we used his departure as an opportunity and swiftly reached out to Andrew Gwilym. We can now expect the Manic Street Preachers to receive at least double their previous tally of nominations for each new album (so two, then?) as Dom looks forward to Dollard having a new target for his resulting wrath.

Speaking of wrath, imagine that which awaits Pranam, who has the gall to open up this year's Advent Calendar by nominating a record by a band THAT HE IS IN. And then he declares himself God for good measure. Sure, he didn't actually join said band until after the album was recorded, but does that matter?

But enough of this. We have hundreds of albums - 165 to be precise - to get through. Starting with these...

Andy Welch

Real Estate – Atlas (Domino)

I loved Real Estate's first two albums, Days in particular, but for all the sun-kissed nostalgia and memories of high school, their songs do tend to wash over rather than really get under your skin. It's more like the music was setting a scene, a beautiful soundtrack to the main event of Martin Courtney's past, than rather than providing the main entertainment. Atlas is different, though, the band sounding more confident and comfortable than ever, their songs bolder than before. And while the nostalgia is mildly heartbreaking – Courtney longs for the suburban safety of his youth but knows he can never get back there – it at least feels real, and not the rosy version of the endless summer we’re sold so often. It's a great record.  

(Please forgive a video with a man rambling for too long at the start. For the music, skip to the 2:30 mark...)

Rory Dollard

Tim Wheeler - Lost Domain (Red UK)

I was always a bit of a floating voter when it came to Ash (yes to 'Shining Light' and 'Girl From Mars', no to the bonus track vomiting on 1977), but Tim Wheeler has always seemed like one of the good guys. This first solo outing is a to-the-bone raw account of his father's descent into dementia and it's brutally emotive at times. I've only listened to it three times and I'll need a strong moment to make it four because the effectiveness with which he portrays the situation makes it a hard listen, in the best possible sense.

Matt Collins
Lykke Li - I Never Learn (Atlantic)

Apparently brilliant live, Lykke Li does the whole kooky female singer schtick quite well all told. Some delightful alt-pop textures on this album all the way through.

Dom Farrell

Broken Bells - After The Disco (Columbia)

Good morning Ian, good morning everybody. This second outing for James Mercer and Danger Mouse’s high-profile side project brings exactly what you’d expect in terms of effortless melodic excellence and droll bittersweet lyrics from the Shins front-man and slinky production cool courtesy of his knob-twiddling colleague. The unexpected comes in the form of some bizarre and entertaining Bee Gees vocal stylings, while a mid-album slump is arrested when 'No Matter What You’re Told' sends us swaggering towards the finish.

Andrew Gwilym

Billie Joe and Norah – Foreverly (Reprise)

This proved a daunting selection. My first for the advent calendar. “You need to make a statement” I was counselled by one established member of this gathering, so I briefly pondered creating a playlist of a song from each of my 24 albums and inserting it into the iTunes libraries of around 500 million people. You may have noticed an increasingly redundant Irish band beat me to it. So instead I decided to follow the example of the man whose place I have taken on the advent calendar, Mr Ali Mason. A man whose attitude was ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks, if I like a record it goes on the list’. It meant he picked albums such as the Les Miserables soundtrack and faced accusations of promoting “flaccid grandma music”. Did he care? He did not. So I pick this loving recreation of the Everly Brothers 1958 album Songs our Daddy Taught Us. It does not reinvent the wheel, it is not a brave album but I absolutely adore it. It could also pass for “flaccid grandma music”. I hope that’s alright with you, Ali. It means the likes of Ought, Conor Oberst, First Aid Kit and Smoke Fairies narrowly miss out, although the Inside Llewyn Davies soundtrack would have made it had it not been released just three days too early for consideration.

John Skilbeck

White Lung - Deep Fantasy (Domino)

Before she dated Kurt Cobain, penned Hole's totemic Live Through This, lost Kurt and found Hollywood, Courtney Love made a brilliant and brutal record titled Pretty On The Inside. Twenty-three years on, White Lung's splenetic new album, Deep Fantasy, could be Pretty On The Inside's (younger) sister record, a hardcore punk monument to unbridled fury that grabs at the throat and keeps grabbing. Frontwoman Mish Way heads an aural assault that spans 10 songs and 22 minutes and leaves the listener breathless yet panting for more. Deep Fantasy is a filthy beast of a record, a guttural blast that takes in deep anxiety, desire and anger. Courtney Love is still touring old Hole songs in 2014, so fill your boots with a taste of the past there. But this is punk's violent present, a rancorous, snarling triumph.

Pranam Mavahalli

Douga – The Silent Well (Do Make Merge)

Douga's debut, is a rich mix of ethereal melodies, ambient soundscapes, drones and drum machines. Equal parts folky and experime...***************************...

Okay here's the deal, I joined Douga shortly after the band finished recording the album. So while, I'm not on it, I can see why people might accuse me of being self-serving by putting it on my list. I'd totally disagree with those dissenters of course, and urge you to listen to it nevertheless (did I say, I don't play on it?). But have I squandered my integrity by including this record? Can you trust anything I say from hereon in? Have I made a mockery of this whole exercise before it even begins? Am I an egotist? Kanye West wouldn't worry with such matters would he? He'd say “I AM A GOD” and leave it at that. Maybe I'll do the same.

Ian Parker

St Paul and The Broken Bones - Half The City (Single Lock)

More than any previous year, this year I couldn’t get my top 24 in any kind of order. Nothing stood out as an obvious number one, nothing quite felt like it had only just snuck onto the list. In the end I wrote out each album’s name on a piece of paper and moved them up and down until there was some semblance of a ranking. I’m still not sure if it was the right one or if I’d have been better picking names out of a hat. Either way, St. Paul and The Broken Bones ended up last. This seven-piece out of Birmingham, Alabama endured all manner of Alabama Shakes comparisons before they’d even had a chance to establish themselves, and that perhaps explains why they’ve not had the impact that was predicted. The problem is that they don’t quite have the tunes, and they don’t quite have the technical assuredness of their neighbours from Muscle Shoals. What they do have is bags of soul and the quite incredible pipes of front man Paul Janeway, and that seems more than enough. It’s good, but not perfect. In at number 24. Perhaps my system works after all.

Guy Atkinson

The Lawrence Arms - Metropole (Epitaph Records)

Rousing, melodic punk rock from Chicago stalwarts. Snuck in thanks to a rippin' show in Manchester in October.

Steve Pill

Mac DeMarco – Salad Days (Captured Tracks)

Each year, I always resolve to start my advent calendar of musical goodness with a fanfare, yet every time I get around to writing review number 24, it can feel like an apology or a damp squib. Well, never let it be said I learn from my mistakes. As ever, I screwed it up in 2013 and managed to omit plenty of decent albums from the list that I only subsequently discovered earlier this year. Sam Amidon’s Bright Sunny South, Agnes Obel’s Aventine and Ezra Furman’s Day of the Dog surely deserved a top 10 placing if I’d have been switched on sooner. That Arctic Monkeys’ album grew on me big time as well, unlike the Arcade Fire fourth, which I placed at 24 and now just makes me sad when I hear it. Apologies over, let’s have a minor fanfare for Mac DeMarco. Like a hipster Syd Barrett or stoner Marc Bolan, he has made a woozily wonderful acoustic record that I will no hate within 12 months. Toot toot, indeed.