Chimpomatic

Best of 2010

CSF

Just because most of our 2010 reviews have been happening on Twitter doesn't mean quality music hasn't be coming in thick and fast this year. Here's my top 5 for 2010:

Abe Vigoda - Crush
Probably my most unexpected favourite for 2010, Crush finds LA Smell regulars Abe Vigoda moving up a notch to make their most accessible album yet. If a band like this can ever hit the mainstream, this is certainly great prep - like Interpol with more ideas and better beats.

The Soft Pack - The Soft Pack
The San Diego post-punkers graduate from community college with straight A's in 'chorus'. After a lot of hype and a fairly average live sighting, I was surprised to find myself so engaged with this first album proper. Side A rules.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
The bubble may have burst as LCD Soundsystem set to disband, but there was still time for one last go-around. Not quite as ace as Sound of Silver, but with tracks like 'All I Want' and 'Home', it's still stuffed with classics.

Spoon - Transference
Harnessing all their studio 'accidents' into another masterfully produced masterpiece, Spoon yet again deliver a five star album. So consistent I almost forget about them. Some great slow burners on here.

Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart
Almost forgot this one ...which is a surprise considering how bombastic it is. After the note perfect In The Future, Black Mountain had no hope of topping getting even better just yet, but the least they could do was shore up their legend. Old Fangs and the title track cruised into their best-ever playlist.

DULY NOTED: Weezer - Hurley / Pinkerton Deluxe
With their departure from a major label, it seemed certain that Weezer would put aside all the contractually-obliging crap they're been churning out and finally release a great record again. Nope. Hurley crawled back up to a 3, but luckily the time had come for a deluxe edition of 90's classic Pinkerton. A re-release shouldn't be anyone's best album in a decade, but this one is stuffed full of long-lost tracks, b-sides and oddities - plus it's getting a five star rating for being overlooked the first time round.

Monsters was a great movie. Somewhere one of the worst ever. Kings of Leon, The National and Band of Horses all disappointed. Roll on 2011.

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1st Jan 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Best Of 2008

CSF

It's been a pretty good year for music according to my ears, and I've struggled to prioritise my top 5. The fifth place provided the most struggle and I narrowed it down to two albums I've overplayed and am currently on hiatus from - TV On The Radio and Vampire Weekend. I suspect they will both remain firm favourites, but song for song I'm going to have to bump Vampire Weekend into 6th place. Other notable mentions go to No Age (fuzzed up easy listening), Silver Jews (these guys finally clicked for me), Tapes and Tapes (an uncut diamond marred by shoddy production), Tindersticks (a comeback I would have betted against), The Wedding Present (it's all fours) and White Denim (lo-fi grandeur).

5. TV On The Radio - Dear, Science
Building on all the promise of their previous records, this one delivered a pretty flawless set of songs, all building of each other and rising to a great finale.

4. Ladyhawk - Shots
"Ladyhawke is in the toilet, she'll be here in a minute" joked band leader Duffy Driediger, as the original Ladyhawk launched into an awesome show at the Borderline - cementing beer-swilling, hard-rocking second-album Shots into a place in my list. No frills rock, with a lot of personality.

3. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
On paper, this record had to stink. Who wants to listen to the same gags over and over again? In reality, every song provides a remarkable understanding of music history, picking just the right sounds to serve the story - with so many jokes you hear a new one every time. Never, ever fails to light up Chimp HQ on a dreary day.

2. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Another one that may have been temporarily overplayed, but this 70's throwback has been a pretty remarkable debut. Almost slipping unnoticed when it arrived in the office, it has been a solid player all year and I can't help but feel like it's greatness will soon be overshadowed by an even better follow-up. Unless they crack under the pressure.

1. Black Mountain - In The Future
Since it arrived on my desk in December 2007, In The Future has held the top spot for the year - and it still shows no sign of slipping. After a debut and a few side projects that paved the way, this was somehow exactly the record I expected and it never fails to impress me. Every note, every riff, every drum fill is just when and where I want it.

Some musical clangers for 2008: MMJ - Evil Urges (so disappointing), Weezer - Red Album, Breeders - Mountain Battles (only a semi-clanger), Kings of Leon - Only By The Night.

Best Songs: Portishead - The Rip, Port O'Brien - Close The Lid, Catfish Haven - Set In Stone, Fleet Foxes - Your Protector (for keeping BW running, if nothing else).

Best Gigs: Black Mountain rocked hard (again) at The Scala, Davin Berman's Silver Jews thoroughly proved their worth at ULU, Ladyhawk + The Dudes led the Canadian invasion at The Borderline, Oxford Collapse went under-appreciated at The Windmill and Jim James brightly shone a small light for the future of MMJ.

Live Clangers: Ween were truly disappointing.

Best Movies: In Bruges was a must-see despite an awful trailer, Iron Man andThe Dark Knight proved pretty solid superhero action, while This Is England and Dead Man's Shoes proved to be overlooked gems. Perhaps the biggest shock was the fact that the Sex And The City movie didn't totally suck - and in fact addressed the TV shows many shortcomings to make for a great movie.

Movie Clangers: Indiana Jones was as forgettable as you hoped it wouldn't be, while Somerstown didn't follow it's siblings in quality. There Will Be Blood did follow it's predecessors, with style over substance.

TV: The Wire came to a fantastic finale, Entourage continued to provide lifestyle envy, Breaking Bad took an original direction, Mad Men provided some slow-burning drama, while Summer Heights High provided some simple laughs. Undeclared and Freaks & Geeks finally caught my attention this year, wishing I'd caught both much earlier.

TV Clangers: Heroes just gets more and more contrived.

As a final note, headline of the year goes to chimpovich, regarding Men Called Him Mister's support slot for Foals in Madrid: "Band of Small Horses"

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31st Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Weezer

Weezer (a.k.a. The Red Album)

2008

The game is up. I'm not gonna take it anymore. Since 2000's self-titled third album (AKA "The Green Album"), Weezer have been distracting me with the smoke and mirrors of the catchy single/great video combo, while sneaking out a sub-standard album peppered with holes. Hash Pipe provided the magic for that album, while Dope Nose led off Maladroit and Beverly Hills pulled the wool over our eyes for Make Believe.

In fact, that only leaves two albums worth mentioning. The debut "Blue Album" snuck under the radar back in '94 - admittedly backed up by great videos. Follow-up Pinkerton might explain much, as it was universally panned by both critics and fans, before growing in stature to become Weezer's undisputed masterpiece - and one of my own all-time favourites. Auteur band leader River Cuomo laid bare his emotional soul over the Madame Butterfly-themed concept album, but the backlash was what almost certainly forced Cuomo back into the proverbial cave, convincing him to spend the rest of his life in tortured purgatory, writing inane troubled-pop star melodrama.

Couple that with the fact that every album since Pinkerton has made a fortune and the maths of spending a reported million dollars recording this pile of crap are hard to deny. Baring your soul for pennies is no one's idea of fun.

But, here lies the main problem. 4 albums later, while the guitars crunch onwards all he ever seems to tell us is how troubled he is and how the critics don't understand - but the more songs he writes about the critics not understanding, the shorter and shorter the patience runs. "No more words will critics have to speak" sing the band on the faux operatic The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn), re-working the classroom classic with little improvement. If the troubled soul isn't airing it's dirty laundry, it's mucho macho ironic chest-beating ...leading to the stunning rhyme of 'be-atch' with 'ki-ads'. While these inane rhyming couplets provide some amusiment in places, you'll generally be laughing at them, not with them.

Just when you might think Rivers' has stooped as low as he can go, he commits this albums mortal sin: letting the other guys have a go too. Thought I Knew finds guitarist Brian Bell taking the vocals for a slice of trite disco-pop, while drummer Pat Wilson takes lead vocals on Automatic. I dare you to find a more bland slice of by-the-numbers modern rock.

There's a whole bunch of different bonus tracks and what-not, depending on where you buy this record. They manage not to totally massacre a cover of The Band's The Weight and the Broadway musical rock of Miss Sweeney provides some entertaining role-playing as Cuomo smooth-talks his secretary in enjoyingly mis-rhymed lyrics. Heart Songs provides a slightly naff, but mildly touching highlight to the album, as Cuomo takes us through the songs that shaded his past, with the music changing and evolving as the time line progresses. Unfortunatly he wrote himself out of my Heart Songs several albums ago.

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16th Jun 2008 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

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The Libertines

Time For Heroes - The Best Of The Libertines

Rough Trade

I confess. The Libertines passed me by. I'm not sure if I was just not reading NME at the time, but they literally passed me by to the point where I couldn't tell you a single one of their songs. Their influence can (apparently) be seen in the more recent crop of British bands who seem to have taken the band's style and applied it to good music. I'm talking about the Arctic Monkeys and The View amongst others, who of course both have obvious roots and influences, but bring a bucketload of originality with it.

A quick iTunes search tells me that as far as new music goes, 2002-2004 was defined for me by Arcade Fire, Beastie Boys, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Grandaddy, Interpol, John Frusciante, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Red Hot Chili Chili Peppers, Steven Malkmus and Weezer. In alphabetical order. Come to think of it, 2004 is barely a whisper away - but looking back at my list it is certainly dominated by American bands and The Libertines must have presented a tangible alternative to that.

The comeback of the English guitar band is certainly indisputible, with dance music being the most obvious loser, but coming at The Libertines now with hindsight but a distinct lack of sentimentality it's still hard for me to see what all the fuss is about. At least Oasis were huge, loutish, hotel-trashing superstars who would literally walk out of a US stadium tour waving their fingers. Can't Stand Me Now does come across as a melacholic anthem but the songs just seem to be mostly repetitive chorus, which could at least make for a singalong live. In this day and age, there's little excuse for poor production. But The Libertines just seem to make dull, derivative music with very little genuine impact. The band are clearly derivative of many British bands, but strangely the band they remind me of most is So-Cal punkers Seven Seconds. Go figure.

It's not saying much when a band has to cull a 'Best Of' from only two original albums and a few singles and it's saying even less when half those tracks still put themselves forward as skippable. Sorry, I honestly tried.

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29th Nov 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

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Weezer

Brixton Academy

I’ve been a big Weezer fan since they started, and I’ve waited a long time to see them, so right off the bat you know they’re getting a good rating. Prejudices aside however, it was great to be seeing an actual functioning band five albums down the line – rather than these one-record upstarts (Ambulance), or reunion monsters (Pixies). Rivers Cuomo is truly the Woody Allen of rock – a few shakey moments here and there in the past, but live it’s all highlights.

Tired of Sex is a great opener on the Pinkerton album, and it made a great opener here. A quiet start, revving up to a rocking finale – with sound in Brixton sounding way better than usual.

After that it was crowd surfing and singalongs all the way. Undone and Say it Ain’t So sounding awesome, Buddy Holly kicking in after a disguised intro, Beverly Hills and We Are All On Drugs sounding great of the new album and then all the way through to a feedback finale with Hash Pipe for a as a second encore.

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20th Jun 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Weezer

Make Believe

After their last LP, Maladroit, Weezer seemed to be on a roll. Loads of demo's of forthcoming material were available to download over at weezer.com - supposedly destined for 'album 5'. The fact that Maladroit kind of sucked seemed to put a spanner in the works however and the band went quiet again, with Rivers Cuomo heading back to Harvard to finish the hiatus he started in 1995.

When I first heard this new LP it sounded like the band were back on track, particularly as Rick Rubin was drafted in for production duties. The album kicks off well, with rockin'-comedy single Beverly Hills and then Perfect Situation works Weezer's hard-rocking irony well, This Is Such A Pity is also good, using a funky disco keyboard.

After that, things start to follow the path of the last two Weezer albums. The tracks get bogged down and start plodding and the catchiness fades. I'll keep trying as I want this to be good... and maybe it's the hidden classic that Pinkerton is. Plus I shelled out £25 to see them in June.

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9th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

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