2011 - Albums of the Year

And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain...

What an excellent year it's been for music. As well as great new records from old favourites like Luke Haines, Elbow and PJ Harvey, I've also made some incredible new discoveries from the likes of Skint & Demoralised, The King Blues and Cosmo Jarvis. Many of the artists I've been championing don't get a lot of attention from the radio or music press, yet they have strong fanbases and if the winds of taste were blowing in the right direction for a change, they'd be topping the charts. Not that topping the charts means anything to anyone but the X-Factor idiots these days.

Anyway, it's been a hard fought battle on my own chart of the year. Will my favourite band of the 21st Century clinch a hat-trick of number one albums... or has someone else beaten them to the top spot?

Click the links to hear a selection of my favourite tracks from each of the albums.

My Top 20 Albums of 2011

20. Glen Campbell - Ghost On The Canvas

19. Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!

18. Half Man Half Biscuit - 90 Bisodol (Crimond)

17. Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See

16. Paul Simon - So Beautiful Or So What?

15. 8in8 - Nighty Night

14. Skint & Demoralised - This Sporting Life

13. The Airborne Toxic Event - All At Once

12. Luke Haines - 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations On British Wrestling Of The 1970's And Early 1980's

11. Shirley Lee - Winter Autumn Summer Spring

10. Fountains of Wayne - Sky Full Of Holes

9. The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?

8. The King Blues - Punk & Poetry

7. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

6. Cosmo Jarvis - Is The World Strange Or Am I Strange?

5. Elbow - Build A Rocket, Boys!

4. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

3. Noah & The Whale - Last Night On Earth

2. The Indelicates - David Koresh, Superstar

1. Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones

Apologies to The Indelicates then, it would have been nice to let them win three albums in a row, but brutal honesty must give the award to Frank Turner this year. Truth is, any one of the albums in the Top Five would have been a worthy victor in less exciting years. There's not an album there I wouldn't fight to see gain more recognition. Cosmo Jarvis asks, Is The World Strange Or Am I Strange...? And FRank Turner replies...

Not everyone grows up to be an astronaut
Not everyone was born to be a king
Not everyone can be Freddie Mercury
Everyone can raise a glass and sing
Well, I haven't always been a perfect person
I haven't done what mum and dad had dreamed

But on the day I die I'll say
"At least I fucking tried!"
That's the only eulogy I need
That's the only eulogy I need.

Happy New Year, thanks for wasting some of the old one reading this silly little blog. Despite everything, it's been fun.

Top Ten Spelling Songs

One of my missions in life now that I'm the world's first official Word Wrestler is to clean up bad spelling on the internet. So to help out, here's ten singalong spelling lessons from rock and pop...

10. Carla Thomas B-A-B-Y

(From 'The Platinum Collection'.)

We'll start with an easy one, and theoretically one of the first words we should all learn to spell. A classic slice of Atlantic soul from Carla.

9. The Fall - C.R.E.E.P.

(From '50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats'.)

What kind of creep has got Mark E. Smith's goat?

His oppression abounds, his type is doing the rounds
He is a scum-egg; a horrid trendy wretch

We need more songs with the word "scum-egg" in the lyrics, regardless of the spelling.

8. Jimmy Ruffin - As Long As There Is L-O-V-E

(From Hold On To My Love.)

Another easy one, probably the most spelled song in the history of pop. Few are the artists who spell it L-U-V... most notably Slade, but Noddy Holder's spelling was always atroshuss.

See also L-O-V-E (Love) by Al Green or Edwyn Collins and Orange Juice.

7. Piney Gir - K.I.S.S.I.N.G.

Sadly, I can't find Piney Gir's wonderful sitting-in-a-tree song anywhere on youtube, but you can hear it on her hugely entertaining debut album Peakahokahoo(eat that, spellchecker!)

Mansun are practising the same word, but they spell it K.I. Double S. I.N.G.

6. John Cougar Mellencamp - ROCK In The USA

John Mellencamp spells out a tribute to 60s rock from one of my favourite albums of the 80s, Scarecrow.

5. Pulp - F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. L.O.V.E.

Jarvis decides that sex is the best way to teach spelling, on the sleaziest track from Different Class.

And as I'm standing across this room

I feel as if my whole life has been leading to this one moment.

And as I touch your shoulder tonight

This room has become the centre of the entire universe.

4. Tammy Wynette - D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

(From 'Stand By Your Man: The Very Best Of Tammy Wynette'.)

Tammy spells out the words she doesn't want her son to understand in this classic country heartbreaker. Billy Connelly spells the same message a little differently.

3. Noah & The Whale - L.I.F.E. G.O.E.S. O.N.

(From 'Last Night on Earth'.)

Charlie Fink's story about Little Lisa Loony Tunes owes a sizable debt to Walk On The Wild Side, but that doesn't stop it from spelling out one of the catchiest singles of the year.

2. Aztec Camera - How Men Are

(From 'The Best of Aztec Camera'.)

Wait... shouldn't that be H.O.W. M.E.N. A.R.E.?

No, it should be P.E.R.S.P.E.C.T.I.V.E. - definitely the longest word I've asked you to spell today. Roddy Frame handles it with style.

Why should it take the tears of a woman

To see how men are?

1. Aretha Franklin - R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

(From 'Queen Of Soul - The Best of Aretha Franklin'.)

Otis wrote it, Aretha made it live forever.

Find out what it means to me...



This concludes today's spelling test... unless you have anything you'd like to add? Pity no one ever wrote a song called... A.N.T.I.D.I.S.E.S.T.A.B.L.I.S.H.M.E.N.T.A.R.I.A.N.I.S.M.
...or did they?

Top Ten Escape Songs

I've been thinking a lot about escape recently. For obvious reasons. So here's my top ten songs about getting the hell out of Dodge while you still have time...

10. Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

Let's start with the obvious, as usual, and the only one that actually mentions the word 'escape' in its title. Much mocked, but this is a classic slice of 70s story-song cheese with that wonderful wink of a twist in the tale. Two cheating spouses find love... with each other. I believe that's known as irony, but I could be wrong.

(From 'Escape...The Best Of'.)

9. Pulp - The Boss

I'm gonna leave town
I'm gonna catch a train
I'm going somewhere where I can start again...

After 7 long years down a dead end road I'm gonna get off here
I'm gonna let it go,
Let it go.

7 long years, Jarvis? Try 23, mate.

(Demo track taken from 'His 'N' Hers (Deluxe Edition)'.)

8. Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

I'm not sure there's a whole lot of metaphor to Lizzy's jailbreak. But if you feel like you've spent half your life trapped in a situation... say, just for example, a job... that feels like a prison sentence... then this track is pretty damned apt.

(From 'Greatest Hits'.)

7. Billy Joel - Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)

Billy Joel drops some profound nuggets that ring more than a little true...

Ah but working too hard can give you
A heart attack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack

You should never argue with a crazy mi mi mi mi mi mind
You ought-a know by now

Good luck movin' up cause I'm movin' out

(From 'The Stranger'.)

6. Noah & The Whale - Tonight's The Kind Of Night

Noah & The Whale were my Glastonbury-on-TV highlight. Having said that, I did miss Paul Simon, Morrissey and The Wombles.

There's a boy with his head
Pressed up to the window
Of a bus heading out of town
In his breath on the glass
He draws with his finger
A map of the roads they go down
Circles of street lights
Are the only signal
That there's people out there in the black
He waves goodbye, to the town he grew up in
He knows that he'll never come back

They say you can't ever go home again.

Sometimes when you leave a place, you've no desire to ever go back.

(From 'Last Night on Earth'.)

5. Frank Turner - This Town Ain't Big Enough For The One Of Me

God, how did I survive before I discovered Frank Turner?

This town is growing old with me, so I'm making a move.
Everybody round here's been out with everybody else,
Which makes talking to girls hazardous to my health.
They've been in this gene pool so long they've got wrinkled toes;
I don't want all her exes to be people I know.
There's millions more fish in the sea, so I'm making a move.

I'm bored of this town, bored of this scene, bored of these people, yeah.

(From 'Love Ire and Song'.)


4. The Animals - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

Shame on you if you didn't see this one coming.

(From 'The Complete Animals'.)

3. Boomtown Rats - Rat Trap

There's a huge Springsteen link to the top three... and we start with Bob Geldof doing his very best Boss impression, making Dublin sound like New Jersey...

Billy don't like it living here in this town
He says the traps have been sprung long before he was born
He says "hope bites the dust behind all the closed doors
And puss and grime ooze from its scab crusted sores
There's screaming and crying in the high rise blocks"
It's a rat trap, Billy, but you're already caught...

It's only 8 o'clock, but you're already bored
You don't know what it is, but there's got to be more
You'd better find a way out, hey, kick down the door
It's a rat trap and you've been caught

(From 'A Tonic For The Troops'.)

2. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell

What do you get when you turn the ideology and romanticism of Springsteen up to eleven?

Jim Steinman.

A demented genius who lives in some crazy Wagnerian netherworld where fanatical teenage emotions live forever, heaven and hell have both broken loose and everything's louder than everything else. Nothing succeeds like excess.

If you're looking to make an escape, I can suggest no better mode of transport than a silver Black Phantom bike.

(From 'Bat Out Of Hell'.)

1. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run / Thunder Road

One of the greatest albums ever made, and it's essentially an ode to liberation. Each side opens with a quintessential escape song: how could I ever choose between them?

Oh-oh, baby this town rips the bones from your back

It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap

We gotta get out while we're young

`Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

It's town full of losers

And I'm pulling out of here to win!

(From 'Born To Run'.)

So... they were my favourites... which of your favourites escaped me?

More Things I Have Been Listening To...

It's been a while since I bored you all with a new music post... so here's a sampling of the hot wax that's recently been trickling, like the poison that killed Hamlet's dad, into my eager ear canals...



I'd almost written off Noah & The Whale as quirky one-hit-wonders after Five Years Time drilled itself into the nation's consciousness a while back, going one of my favourite songs of the year to that annoying, over-played thing with the chirpy whistling.

My gigging mate Dave - who I should listen to more often when it comes to this sort of thing, as he's also the one who introduced me to Frank Turner - kept telling me how strong the new NATW material was, but as usual I had my head in the sand.

And then I stumbled across Tonight's The Kind Of Night... and discovered that Noah & The Whale have only gone and re-recorded one of my favourite songs!

You know that old trope about how there are only 7 stories in the world? I sometimes think there are an equally limited number of songs. I last wrote about this tune in 2009 when The Enemy released it as Sing When You're In Love, recognising its debt to earlier recordings by the Boomtown Rats, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Drugstore, Shed Seven, Bruce - even, as Simon commented, Heroes by Bowie. Well, now Noah and the gang have given us their version... and it's every bit as lovely as could be hoped.

The album, Last Night on Earth, is rapidly becoming one of my favourites of the year too.



I haven't seen the movie Country Strong, but I realise that for many people reading it'll surely be your idea of hell. Gwyneth Paltrow acting and singing her sincere little socks off in a tale of new-country folk. Now, I've always liked country music, but never had much time for big business US radio pop country. Y'know, Garth Brooks and his ilk. And I've certainly never had much time for Mrs. Chris Martin... well, not until her spunky turn as Pepper Potts in Iron Man. And yet here I find myself unable to stop listening to a pop-country song featuring Ms. Paltrow on duet duties with Tim McGraw... I really must be getting old. (Taken from the Country Strongsoundtrack.)

This senile insanity might also go some way towards explaining my newfound love of this gentleman...



I have no defence, other than that the video above features George from Seinfeld and SHATNER!!! Although that doesn't explain why I like the rest of Paisley's album 5th Gearthough. Ah, I could start telling you about witty lyrics, heartfelt songs about growing up, growing old, and the risky business of love ("If love was a plane, nobody'd get on")... but you're not gonna listen. You just see the stetson and think, "nah - not for me". I understand. Time was, I'd have felt just the same way.

A couple of years back, I compiled a list of songs about famous Marvel Comics characters. Recently that post received a comment from Tim Sykes, directing me towards a track he'd written all about my favourite superhero, Spider-Man. It's a funky, jazzy little number which explains not only how Spidey's webshooters work, but also why Peter Parker has devoted his life to the thankless task of stopping criminals. You can listen to a preview of the song over at the Music Cafepage on Amazon. Thanks, Tim - top Spidey song!

Also dropping into my inbox recently were a couple of live tracks by one of my top discoveries of last year, The Young Hegelians. Rough and ready blasts of angry and/or resigned indie lyricism: listen and enjoy. Lead Hegelian Carl Jackson promises me that the band will shortly be going into the studio to commit these and other new tracks to acetate (or whatever they record popular music onto these days) in preparation for the band's forthcoming album. From their myspace, Carl describes the band thus...

"A jazz influenced post-punk trio from the far-flung corners of Teesside. If you like your music offbeat, al la Talking Heads, XTC, Gang of Four, then this is for you."

The Young Hegelians - The Call Centre Is The New Factory Floor

The Young Hegelians - German Autumn

Check out The Young Hegelians myspace for more info.

Given a comment I just read on Carl's twitter account, I'm guessing he'll hate me for plugging his band in the same post I confess to my Brad Paisley affliction. But we are a very broad musical church here at Sunset Over Slawit though, all are welcome. (Apart from Bono.)



Speaking of musical churches, we're just two weeks away from the release of the third Indelicates album: David Koresh Superstar. Judging from the track above, it's gonna be another belter. Keep watching Indelicates.com for more updates.



I caught Villagers supporting Elbow back in March and their debut album Becoming a Jackalhas been nipping at my heels ever since. Pieces, the track above, reminds me of early Radiohead (think Fake Plastic Trees) but lead Villager Conor O'Brien has many strings to his bow, and seems poised to conquer the world... if only you people will listen.



Against Me! is a truly awful name for a band. Actually, when I bought this record, I thought they were called White Crosses, but it turns out that's the name of their latest album... which I also believed to be their debut... I know nothing, obviously. Anyway, I came to this record through their air-punching Green Day-esque single I Was A Teenage Anarchist, which I liked a lot, despite the fact that it got a large portion of their hardcore fanbase screaming "punk-pop sell-outs". The album contains far more interesting material, though, notably this touching little ode to Saint Bob...

I dreamed Bob Dylan was a friend of mine


He was the owner of the house in which together we all lived
He slept between me and my wife in bed
Oh, the roof leaked in the kitchen
I never mentioned my collection of his albums
I never bothered him with intrusive questions


I dreamed Bob Dylan was a friend of mine

Now, I admire the old crinkly-croaky one as much as the next muso, but I'm not sure I'd want him sleeping in my bed. That's taking fandom a step too far, lads...

Enough music for one post! Before I close with a genuine rock classic from Queen's The Gamewhich I've recently rediscovered after 25 years, a quick heads up to any Half Man Half Biscuit fans that voting is currently underway in The Lux Familiar Cup over at the HMHB Lyrics Project. Pop along and join in the referendum to decide the world's favourite Half Man Half Biscuit song. Now, here's Freddie...