Both Bars On: Top Twenty Records of 2014

Compared to 2013, this year has been bloody marvellous. On the music front, when we came to sort this list out we weren’t sure that 2014 had been a ‘vintage’ year. Yet one of the many benefits (amongst the head/beard scratching) of compiling a ‘best of’ is that it makes you reflect on what has been released and the quality of the stuff out there.

We might not have had time (or the cash) to review all the music we wanted to this year, but that doesn’t mean we’re not listening and thinking about music as much as we can, and we continue to be racked with guilt that we don’t write about the things we love.

So here’s our list. It’s been tough this year as our separate nominations didn’t overlap that much. Hence, there’s a degree of arbitrariness to some of the placings. Yet it’s a fine list, chocked full of aural delights and counters those miserable naysayers who claim ‘there’s no good music these days’ (something we’ve heard a lot this year).

We hope it finds you dancing in the streets like the gentleman in the above picture is seen to do.

 

20. Mogwai: Rave Tapes

Mogwai’s eighth album is full of gems; like several albums on this list it came out early in the year and still sounds astonishing now.

 

19. Luke Abbott: Wysing Forest

Abstractions in machine agency, but with soul and the capacity to dream.

 

18. Teeth of the Sea: A Field in England: Re-Imagined

It wouldn’t be the BBO end-of-year list without Teeth of the Sea; their reworking of the amazing Jim Williams / Blanck Mass soundtrack to Ben Wheatley’s civil war freakout was appropriately mind-blasting.

 

17. Ben Frost: Aurora

Huge,  sublime and downright terrifying at times.

 

16. The Drink: Company

It only came out at the start of the month, but it certainly grabbed our attention – as it did everyone else’s – with its tricksy-but-irresistable pop songs.

 

15. Goat: Commune

More instantly gratifying spiritual psyche fusion from the Swedish masked ones. We just hope the New Ageisms start to wane. Or we might have missed the irony. We’re not sure.

 

14. Peggy Sue: Choir of Echoes

A beautiful, and beautifully atmospheric, set of songs on this third album from Peggy Sue; two superlative voices, fine playing, songs of loss and desire.

 

13. Wizards Tell Lies: The Maddening Machine

Horror post-rock brilliance. There’s chaos magick rituals afoot here, we’re sure of it. And slightly scared of it.

 

12. Benjamin Shaw: Goodbye, Cagoule World

More twisted tales of misanthropy and hatred from songwriter Benjamin Shaw, with glimpses of sly wit and some actually rather beautiful arrangements.

 

11. Node: Node 2

Super groups are often problematic things, but when this bunch of mega-producers gathered and synced their modules, something incredible was birthed.

 

10. Perc: The Power and the Glory

Noise album of the year; gurning album of the year. Techno invented again.

 

9. Cuz: Tamatebako

The mighty Mike Watt teams up with the Go! Team’s Sam Dook and a varied crew of helpers for an album full of twists and turns, unexpected changes of direction and lots and lots of fun.

 

8. AK/DK: Synths + Drums + Noise + Space

Punk-rock-electro with bite, a gnarl, a sneer and a warm embrace. AK/DK injected energy into our booties, and made us gyrate with reckless abandon.

 

7. EMA: The Future’s Void

EMA’s follow up to Past Life Martyred Saints gave us a slew of concepts informed by William Gibson’s first novel – amongst other things; lots going on behind that Oculus Rift – and a whole load of great noises.

 

6. The Advisory Circle: From Out Here

A testament to the fact that end-of-year-lists are often published too early and hence would’ve missed this, Jon Brook’s incredible control of voltages and attuned minimalism has been rarely out of our ears since its release.

 

5. The New Mendicants: Into The Lime

Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Joe Pernice make an album with the all harmonies and glorious hooks you could hope for.

 

4. Trojan Horse: World Turned Upside Down

With this fully rounded offering it seems World Turned Upside Down has finally opened doors for the Salford boys. Ambitious as their facial hair, this album moved across genres, sounds and attitudes with bewildering speed and dexterity.

 

3. Plank: Hivemind

Intricate and intimate, majestic and magnificent, funky and fantastic, Plank’s ode to insect life crawled its way round our consciousness on many glorious occasions this year.

 

2. Grumbling Fur: Preternaturals

If we’d be on the ball (ha ha ha) last year’s Glynnaestra would have been in 2013’s Top 20. Grumbling Fur’s third album is a strangely euphoric slice of  wyrd suburban pop, as the single ‘All The Rays’ makes very clear:

 

1. East India Youth: Total Strife Forever

Passages of electronic noise – by turns exhilarating, melancholic, furious – interspersed with proper pop songs. We both loved this. And great live, too.

 

In our bubbling under category this year: Dead Sea Apes High Evolutionary; Warning Light XXXI; Fennesz Bécs; Bob Mould Beauty & Ruin; The Hold Steady Teeth Dreams.

Now, please as to be so kind to stop reading our words and go buy some or all of the above albums. They are available from shops – independent ones, big shiny ones, online ones (who pay their tax), ones where there isn’t really a shop but you have to email some bloke. We like buying records – actually, we really do. And we think you should too.

Rodney and Del Boy

 

Peggy Sue and Willy Mason: Longest Day of the Year Blues

The longest day of the year today, and probably our shortest post ever. Willy Mason joins Peggy Sue on a great version of their ‘Longest Day of the Year Blues’, from the album Choir of Echoes issued earlier this year. Free download from Soundcloud, album is available here.

Enjoy the sunshine.

jkneale

The Blog Sound of 2013: the longlist and BBO’s vote

It’s The Blog Sound Poll time again, the poll of key music tastemakers, and us, that was set up as an alternative to the annual ‘BBC Sound of’ exercise, providing another chance to say who might be big next year [go here for our story on last year’s list]. Organised by Robin Seamer and Andy Von Pip of Breaking More Waves and the Von Pip Express blogs, it involved 49 blogs [listed below] each picking 5 bands. As you might suspect this generated lots of different suggestions, but there is a longlist, and there is a winner – tipped by a quarter of the blogs consulted. You’ll have to wait for the New Year for that.

But for now, here’s the longlist of 15:

AlunaGeorge / Curxes / Chvrches / Daughter / Haim / Laura Mvula / MØ / Palma Violets / Pins / Randolph’s Leap / Rhye / Savages / Seasfire / The Neighbourhood / Tom Odell

The top 5 will be announced in the New Year – will any of ours be in it? Well, no, ours are below. We didn’t even make the top 15 – organisers, I don’t think we’re giving anything away here – which either makes us the alternative to the alternative to the BBC, or a couple of cloth-eared gets. We went for (in no particular order):

Kult Country, ‘Source (Code for Thought)’:

Base Ventura. ‘Side of the Street’:

Tribal Fighters, ‘Tree Fiddy’:

Peggy Sue, ‘He’s A Rebel’:

And Beak> (who angrybonbon tipped at the end of 2009!), ‘Wulfstan II’:

The 49 blogs who voted in the poll are:

A New Band A Day, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, All Noise, Alphabet Bands, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Details Of My Life So Far, Don’t Watch Me Dancing, Dots And Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Eaten By Monsters, Electronic Rumors, Faded Glamour, Folly Of Youth, Flying With Anna, God Is In The TV, Harder Blogger Faster, Howl, In Love Not Limbo, Just Music That I Like, Killing Moon, Kowalskiy, Love Music : Love Life, Mudkiss, Music Broke My Bones, Music Fans Mic, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Bands Better Than Your Band, Not Many Experts, Peenko, Real Horrorshow, Scottish Fiction, Skeletory, Song By Toad, Sounds Good To Me Too, Storm’s Brewing, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Electricity Club, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Music Hoarder, The Recommender, This Must Be Pop, Von Pip Musical Express, 17 Seconds

Go and have a read – they’re all great blogs – and come back in January for the results!

jkneale and angrybonbon

End of the Road 2012, Friday – Peggy Sue

Peggy Sue packed out the Tipi Tent, as you can see above. Katy Young and Rosa Slade’s voices are extraordinarily powerful and their angular pop is perfectly held together by some subtle, tricksy, drumming and, on this occasion, a borrowed bass person (didn’t catch his name, sorry). What started as a two-piece works pretty well as a full band, and it’s interesting to see how this might develop. Peggy Sue recently played at a screening of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and have just released an album of covers of the tracks, called Peggy Sue Play The Songs of Scorpio Rising. It’s really good: here’s ‘(Love is Like a) Heatwave’ and the video for ‘Hit The Road Jack’, which they played here, to the audience’s obvious enjoyment.

‘(Love is Like a) Heatwave’

‘Hit The Road Jack’

Why aren’t this lot all over the charts, then? Buy Peggy Sue Play… here, more here.

Beer note: Don’t know if I had any while listening to this lot, but Friday was the day I discovered Tring Brewery’s Mansion Mild, a perfect afternoon pint.

jkneale