I bought my first new CD of 2011 yesterday. It's the new album from Elbow (who I'll be seeing live in a fortnight). I haven't received it yet.
So... what have I been listening to in the meantime...?
John Grant's Queen Of Denmark album was included in quite a few critics' Best of 2010 lists, and for once the critics are right. The former Czars frontman's debut solo effort is an enticing mix of 70s MOR and witty, personal, caustic lyrics that reminds me of Harry Nilsson at his underrated best. The song above has the best video (featuring the sad life of an unemployed superhero) but I reckon my favourite track on the album is Where Dreams Go To Die which features the following, heartfelt chorus...
Baby, you're where dreams go to die
I regret the day your lovely carcass passed my eye
Lily Rae's debut album Oh No! is only available to buy from the Indelicates' Corporate Records site, but I'm so glad I took a flyer on it. She has a similarly dark and witty lyrical style to Simon & Julia Indelicate, magpieing her influences from Morrissey, Jacques Brel and Victoria Wood, though after a few listens each track becomes uniquely her. There's a wonderful bitterness to songs like Diane, it's pleasing from one so young...
Diane - what do you see in him? The boy's a knob...
Plus, she has a song called Don't Sleep In My Cardi. What else do you want? Blood?
I wasn't as taken with The Libertines as the music press were back in 2002. They had some pretty good songs, but Pete Doherty annoyed me and the idea that they were a 21st Century answer to The Smiths never really took. That said, I always kind of cast Carl Barât in the Johnny Marr role - guitar god, but no frontman. Dirty Pretty Things did little to persuade me otherwise, but his solo album shows real promise. He hasn't quite found his own voice yet, so many of the tracks sound like Bowie, Brel, Bret Anderson or, obviously, The Libertines - but they still sound good. My favourite is Je Regrette Je Regrette, though I'd have liked it more if he'd called it Angry Birds...
I'm a wretch, I'm a wretch
A tosser at a stretch
I got stuff on my chest
This woman sent me west
I didn't pay her taxi now I'm failing to impress
These angry birds
Such angry birds...
I discovered Tom Williams & The Boat via Steve Lamacq. I want to call Tom a teenage troubadour and not just for the obvious alliteration. I'm not sure if he is still a teenager (though looking at his youthful face makes painful tears wet my crow's feet) but he writes well from that perspective, particularly on the song Concentrate...
They don't know my dad
He's this town through and through
Old school, fifty-something, balding, racist
So his mates are too... but me I'm a modern man!
This is available on the See My Evil EP, downloadable from Tom's website. His debut album is also out now, but I haven't got around to that yet.
Finally (for now), an oldie-but-goody from Bradford's finest rock exports (argue that all you like, Smokie and New Model Army fans)...
