BBO’s Top Four of 2009

So here’s what you’ve all been waiting for – our top four albums of the year. Produced through complicated Venn diagrams and extended algorithms.

1- Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Sublime. What more can we say?

Rough Steez

Flight Of The Feathered Serpent

2 – Brakes – Touchdown

Another of those bands we love to bits – we both saw them live this year and are still grinning about it.

Why Tell the Truth (When It’s Easier To Lie)

3-  Teeth of the Sea – Orphaned by the Ocean

We’ve been playing this droney, spacey lot all year long and haven’t tired of them yet.

Latin Inches

4 – British Sea Power – Man of Aran

What do you do after producing BBO’s number one record of 2008, Do You Like Rock Music? You work some of your instrumentals (and instrumental versions of other songs) up into the soundtrack for a 1934 documentary about life on the Aran Islands. It’s as atmospheric, evocative and affecting as you’d expect from a band at the peak of their powers, with special help from the London Bulgarian Choir. Glorious.

The South Sound

So, you have a few hours to pick up this little lot as late xmas presents – just imagine all those smiling faces as friends and family open their post-rock, droning, screeching, rocktastic gifts! We recommend Piccadilly Records in the North, Sister Ray in London (though you’ll have to pop into the shop), but any decent independent record shop would do. There are links to Cargo Records sales pages on the Teeth of the Sea review.

Merry xmas and we’ll see you soon!

jkneale and angrybonbon

jkneale’s Top Ten of 2009

Mr abb is right, this has been tougher than usual. I’m pleased we worked it out and even more pleased we’ve hit on a top four after extended negotiations more convoluted than the US healthcare wrangles and Copenhagen put together. Finally we can walk out to the armoured car in our blue UN flak jackets, shake hands, and pronounce the Big Four. A roadmap to tinnitus, essentially.

But before that, my other top records, following angrybonbon’s tremendous ten…

1 – Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men

I promised a review of this back in January, describing them as “one of the most interesting and completely underrated bands around”. I got a copy early, seemingly hand-posted from California by David Sylvian. Cue Mercury nomination, baffled reactions from all and sundry, etc. Did I review it? Did I hell. Anyway, it’s a superb album, developing the subtle craft of the first album into something much more expansive – especially the widescreen soundtrack of ‘Here It Begins’ – while still retaining the intimacy you get from recording in a shed. Still highly recommended.

Truth Only Smiles

There Will It End

2 – Fanfarlo – Reservoir

In the same post, I bade you all watch the glorious ascent of Fanfarlo. And didn’t review that album either, partly because it got released three times (I think). But it’s another surefire winner – the production does, as everyone noticed, conjure the Arcade Fire, but that just gives Fanfarlo another set of choices, a beefier sound to set against Simon’s voice and the spot-on instrumentation. This is great pop music and Fanfarlo’s hard work is surely winning them friends.

The Walls Are Coming Down

Finish Line

3 – Micah P. Hinson – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

I’m a sucker for covers, and to be honest MPH could cover the oeuvre of Nickelback and I would have to consider buying it… but this goes beyond by-the-numbers stuff. Exhibit A:

In The Pines

4 – Bob Mould – Life And Times

Bob is a bit of a fixture here, but if your teenage heroes continue to make fantastic records, what can you do? Writing his autobiography is clearly making Bob go back to the different stages of his career – Husker Du, solo work, Sugar, it all seems to inform this album. Apart from the superb ‘I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand In My Light Any More’ this is a stand-out, a song for Bob’s gay punk band:

Argos

5 – Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years

There was stiff competition for the coveted 5th placing but I ended up going back to this. SFA have been around so long they might seem in danger of going stale but this is a cracking album. One of the Welsh ones:

Lliwiau Llachar

6 – Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

7 – Circulus – Thought Becomes Reality

8 – The Flowers of Hell – Come Hell Or High Water

9 – Art Brut – Art Brut vs Satan

10 – The Joy Formidable – A Balloon Called Moaning

Thanks everyone who visited or emailed us this year, and apologies if we haven’t replied to you – we’re a bit snowed under with other stuff. Anyway, cheers!

JKneale

angrybonbon’s Top Ten of 2009

It has proved too difficult for me colleague and I to decide on a joint BBO Top Ten for 2009. It just got too complicated, we’re too polite to stamp on each other’s favourites and our brains are too small. So in a not-so-time-honoured tradition we’re going for individual top tens and then a joint top four. Yes, four. Obviously.

1 – Manic Street Preachers – Journal for Plague Lovers.

When I heard about this album I thought it impossible to achieve; sometimes it’s great to be totally and ridiculously wrong. Quite where MSP found the emotional resources to use Richey’s words and put them to a staggeringly brilliant rock album is beyond me. Quite how Mr. Bradfield manages to make the lyrics scan is also beyond me. Plus any album that mentions Situationism is always going to be a winner round these parts.

Jackie Collins Existential Question Time

All is Vanity

2 – Brakes – Rock is Dodelijk

I have a deep love for live albums. When you get (in effect) two gigs on one album (with tracks repeated) that amounts to, but far exceeds, a ‘best of’ from the best in the country, I’m starry eyed infatuated. My newest favourite band and an album that has jolted me awake many a morning. Just incredible.

Hi How Are You

Cease and Desist

3 – Ben Frost – By the Throat.

Out of the leftfield this enchanted and disturbed like little has before. Digital growls and icy atmospherics make for a taxing listen, but one exceedingly worth the effort. Properly worthy of the term ‘groundbreaking.’

Killshot

4 – Saturation Point – Mechanisms

The best of the wave of Kraut inspired outfits that have taken hold of my playlists in 2009, this lot manage to sound new as much as Neu. Add some deep space moods and sunrise tinted psychedelics and this is an album that I keep coming back to.

*Untitled 6*

5 – Spokes – People Like People Like You

A surprise find. Taking the seemingly tired post-rock formula and giving it a sharp pinch, Spokes deserve much more coverage and adulation. To repeat: one to follow.

End Credits/Loveletter

And the other five:

6 – Cave – Psychic Summer

7 -  Let our Enemies Beware – Against Karate

8 – Julian Cope – The Unruly Imagination

9 – Harmonic 313 – When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

10 – The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method

And bubbling under are:

Fennesz – Black Sea

Jonsi and Alex – Riceboy Sleeps

The Horrors – Primary Colours

Black Sheep – Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse

Moebius – Kram

Beak> – Beak>

Health – Get Color

And thank fuck for music this year – everything else has been pretty shite. Biggest cheers to those I’ve enjoyed a gig with on a regular basis. You know who you are.

angrybonbon

Ben Frost: By the Throat

The scene: a blizzard whites out the darkest of nights and wolves gather in packs to howl at the moon. Surely, you would have thought, some sort of rock cliché with any sense of terror emasculated by Ozzy and a thousand low budget horror flicks? Well not when the sound of these herding beasts are given over to Ben Frost. In his hands, they become, as they rightfully should be, truly horrific, chilling and full of dread: ‘The Carpathians’, the track from By the Throat wherein these creatures make their fearful appearance, should have been my Halloween offering rather than the comic Goth I served up.

I hesitate saying such things, but By the Throat is like nothing else I have ever heard. It’s practically impossible to classify and to make comparisons to other artists would be both tough and unhelpful. The closest musically, in terms of sensitivity to expansive orchestrations and feeling, are Teeth of the Sea. The only adjective that comes back again and again is cinematic. Despite being a tired and over-used term, it’s the best I can do. By the Throat is the soundtrack to a film of unspeakable and life-altering horror, watched in a hut in a snow-storm with only a single candle for warmth and light, with a pack of carnivores baying in the near distance. It’s fucking scary, ok?

The sounds assembled herein vary from the ghostly choral, to soothing brass, to the deepest of sub-bass, frozen keys and a variety of searing ice-burnt and monstrous electronic distortions. And it’s the latter, on tracks such as ‘Hibakúsja’, which really disturb and leave the most lasting of impressions. Here some machinic beast, ready to rip your gizzards out just for the fun of it, stalks, growls and devours.

In every imaginable way this is a breathtaking and awe-inspiring album.

The Carpathians

Hibakúsja

Acquire it here.

angrybonbon

Lightning Bolt: Earthly Delights

Welcome back to my favourite noise-something bass/drums duo, Lightning Bolt. Listening to this is an extraordinary experience – how can it be so simple and so complicated? Jaw-dropping drumming, super-heavy riffs, vocal melodies a plumber could whistle… It’s perhaps a bit more metal, if that’s the word, than Hypermagic Mountain in places (‘Nation of Boar’, bloody hell) but it also feels like a more varied album – along with the ecstatic/primal 12 minute speaker-knackering freakouts (‘Transmissionary’) there’s the beautiful tweetery snippet ‘Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In’.

I’m listening now and I’m not sure whether I’m hearing sounds I’ve never heard before, or if that’s just my ears giving up. This is my commuting music at the moment, and I imagine it’s what the inside of my head looks like right now. Highly recommended.

‘Colossus‘ – Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

‘Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In‘ – Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

Go and see them at ATP or on the dates here. And have a look at this. And buy it from Fopp – I did and I discovered a fellow Lightning Bolt fan.

JKneale

Three Ambients

I think I first became aware of anything labelled ‘ambient’ in the late 80s or early 90s. Back then my encounter with all things blissed out consisted of the Rising High Record’s duo of Namlook and Mixmaster Morris and sheep bleating with the KLF. There was obviously much more, but I was too naïve and ignorant to go searching out Eno and the like – that stuff was old and I wanted new, new, new.

As a consequence, utter the word ambient in my environs today and I still get images, glimpsed through an unhealthy and sweet smelling fug, of lava lamps, ill-fitting ethnic clothing and dreadlocks whiffing of a damp Labrador.

Things have inevitably moved on, even if I haven’t. The following three outings might not be representative of what is going on the ambient scene (no attempts at authority here once again), and in fact some might not consider them as such, but they’re certainly interesting listens.

First up, Jónsi and Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps. I fully admit that I’d practically given up on anything to do with Sigur Rós after their album Með suð í eyrum við spilum eHowlndalaus – it left me cold and utterly bored. In fact the high church choir boy wailing of Jónsi had really begun to grate my teeth. It was with some trepidation then that I mustered the cash and courage to buy Riceboy Sleeps, but I’m so glad I did for it is a masterpiece of lush dronage and organic swells. Moreover, it manages to dispel the po-faced element that I’d sensed creeping into Sigur Rós last few recordings – there’s a sense of fun on this record, the source of which I can’t quite put my finger on.

Howl

Second, is the collaboration of Sparklehorse and Fennesz on In the Fishtank. We’ve seen the latter on these pages before, but I’m pretty ignorant of the former. What I do know is that this was recorded in a stupidly short period (two days of studio time), but doesn’t suffer for it. From the squirming opener ‘Music Box of Snakes’, the soporific yet slightly disturbing lullaby of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ and through to the brilliant ‘NC Bongo Buddy’- which gives us the soundtrack of boilers and air-con units at the verge of breakdown in a skyscraper’s basement – this is a varied and rewarding listen.

Goodnight Sweetheart

NC Bongo Buddy

Finally, we have White Rainbow and New Clouds. To be fair I’ve yet to give this the full in-ear treatment. Neither have I allowed it to soundtrack a late night or appreciated it in a horizontal position. Hence it seems the least successful of these outings. Yet with its improv and Harmonia-esque burblings it’s worthy of inclusion here.

Monday Boogies Forward Forever

So ditch images of the great apolitical unwashed preaching revolution from a squat in Leytonstone, New Age self-improvement in the Rainforest and buy something contemporarily fugged.

angrybonbon

Alela Diane featuring Alina Hardin, ‘Alela and Alina’

Released in January, US folk/country singer Alela Diane’s beautiful second album To Be Still has been swiftly followed by this EP (or ‘companion album’) featuring Alina Hardin. Alela’s voice is astonishing, and is perfectly complemented by Alina’s, and by the simple accompaniment. Three songs are covers, including ‘Matty Groves’, a ballad perhaps most famously covered by Fairport Convention on Liege and Lief. To say Alela and Alina more than do justice to a song that most people will know from that version, sung by the great Sandy Denny, should give some idea of how good this record is.

I want to plug To Be Still too, as well as mentioning the covers album Ms Diane recorded with Joey Waronker, Gus Seyffert, Leo Abrahams and Woody Jackson as Headless Heroes. The Silence of Love includes covers of more contemporary songs. I present their cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey’, which seems to suit a country feel – though this video was clearly done by GREAT BIG SOPPY HIPPIES – and for my co-blogger there’s also a version of Cave’s ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’.

Alela Diane featuring Alina Hardin – ‘Bowling Green‘ -  Alela and Alina

Headless Heroes – ‘Nobody’s Baby Now‘ – The Silence of Love

Headless Heroes – ‘Just Like Honey’ – The Silence of Love

Buy the EP from Amazon or iTunes or there’s a limited 10″ version that might be available through Rough Trade.

JKneale

Micah P. Hinson: All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Micah P. Hinson, everyone’s favourite Texan and honorary native of Burnley, returns with a double album of covers. When I saw this I thought a) Micah had put something out fairly quickly so that he could tour and b) he might have over-reached himself. He does have a fantastic voice and a classy sense of how to arrange and perform, but could he cover such karaoke classics as ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ and (gulp) ‘My Way’? What about ‘Suzanne’? And could anyone do justice to ‘Running Scared’?

Well, it’s an almost flawless covers album – which puts it in the same company as Kicking Against The Pricks in my book – and the answers to those questions are ‘not bloody likely’ and ‘yes’. Though accompanied only by the extraordinary musical all-rounder Nick Phelps - MPH’s one-man touring band last time I saw him – and a couple of friends, this sounds nothing like a space-filling record. It continues the experiments with Link Wray distortion and surf guitar heard on Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra with clever cello to fill out the sound. And while the better-known songs benefit from a bit of volume – ‘My Way’ sounds best when MPH is singing quietly, loudly, if you see what I mean – there are some superb covers here. ‘Running Scared’ is particularly impressive, because Micah has Orbison’s clarity, if not his lungpower. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ sounds different enough to work.

But the other standouts are, for me, in the standards and in the more obscure choices. I could listen to these versions of ‘Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling’ and ‘In The Pines’ all day – the latter sounds like Blixa Bargeld has turned up to add the requisite noise+weirdness. And the cover of Pedro The Lion’s ‘Slow and Steady Wins The Race’ is this album’s prize, as far as I’m concerned – that strange matter-of-fact oddness you only get from straight-faced examinations of faith.

This is a handsome-looking album (or rather 2 CDs running to 50-odd minutes) and you should go out and get a copy.

Micah P. Hinson – ‘Running Scared‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Micah P. Hinson -  ‘Slow and Steady wins The Race‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Buy here – I did. Nice mug, too!

JKneale

At the gates of silent memory…

In advance of tomorrow…

Happy  Samhain, Hop-tu-naa or All Hallow’s Even.

With respect to the beloved departed and dead.

Alien Sex Fiend – Now I’m Feeling Zombified

Bauhaus – Double Dare

The Cure – The Hanging Garden

Fields of the Nephilim - Last Exit for the Lost (Live)

The Cramps – Goo Goo Muck

angrybonbon

Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport

I take it all back, the kids are alright. It seems they are enthused by the future enough to collect from car-boots and connect bits of tech to give us a soundtrack of what might become. Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport is thus the perfect youthful accompaniment to Moebius’ Kram.

Before my first encounter with Tarot Sport I was slightly worried. I’d heard phrases and words such as ‘accessible’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘cross-over hit’ bounded about. Understandably, I think, this produced concerns that one our artists of 2008 had watered down their sound. This anxiety was underlined somewhat as I came to realise that the brilliant ranting-cum-speaking-in-tongues that added so much to Street Horrsing had been jettisoned.

And I still miss the indecipherable fuming. However, this album has won me over in three ways. First, there’s a real sense of arrogant independence on show here: for example, not many combos could get away with a 10.32 opener (‘Surf Solar’). Second, with a flick of a switch they have the ability to mesmerise with an utter grandeur and massiveness (for want of a better word). Third, the now seemingly signature fuzzed guitar/organ drone is still apparent and as warming as ever.

Take ‘Olympians’: the sense of space and enlargement on this track is so convincing and hypnotic that it can make you feel both godlike and irrelevant at the same time. If you don’t believe me, just stare at the sky when you listen to it. No, try it.

So give it time (if you have enough). It’s an album of expanse and scale that at first can make you feel a bit lost, a bit insignificant. But then you give up any sense of control or possible importance, and you come to realise that being lost can be a wonderful thing.

The Lisbon Maru

Olympians

Just buy it.

angrybonbon