2010 - albums

We weren't going to post our "best of 2010" albums list, but then we got too angry with all the other ones we saw. So, to try and right the record (for the platters below deserve no little love):

1. Northern Portrait "Criminal Art Lovers" (Matinée Recordings)

We wouldn't have expected, truth be told, that our favourite gig of 2010 would be Northern Portrait's charming underground dalliance with a not-full enough, not fully-enthused enough Buffalo Bars in cold, cold February, but that *special* half-hour confirmed that NP were not just studio fops, but living, breathing crusaders for POP! who could magic-carpet us back to the days of fine indie bands the first time round, nights stood at the back of the Camden Falcon in day wearing smiles that crept up on us as we were - quite simply - disarmed by the brilliance of some of the bands we saw, especially when half the audience, and usually the bands themselves, seemed completely unaware of just how precious they truly were. It was also a night, each time Stefan's voice soared even above the blissful buzzing guitar surround, when we realised that the 1,000 Violins comparisons - this is 1,000 Violins at their spectacular best, mind, rather than their hippyish worst - really are much more apposite than the Smiths ones. As for the album, we gave it a line or two here, each one of which we stand by to the fullest.

2. Cappo "Genghis" (Son Records)

Effortlessly talented MC who has fully earned his bragging rights as producer too: this is a near-masterclass that should be made compulsory listening for all those who doubt - with some justification, we must admit - that "urban" music can positively *ooze* intelligence, reality and *thought*.

3. Scorn "Refuse; Start Fires" (Ohm Resistance)

Wow. Winningly claustrophobic, sleekly plotted apres-garde oceans of musical pulchritude flecked with live drums, chasteningly deep dub vibes and passages of frankly severe brutality.

4. Diversion Tactics "Careful On The Way Up" (Boot)

Like we said. The best beatmakers in the business, still accompanied by one of the tightest lyricists out there. Cold.

5. Klute "Music For Prophet" (Commercial Suicide)

Even over some two hours, there's very little that drags: mixes sweepingly textured drum and bass beauty and percussive flair with rare style (CD1, the album "proper", is particularly peerless).

6. The Orchids "The Lost Star" (Pebble Records)

Now we *love* the Orchids, but we were still surprised at how beguiled we were by this really rather terrific album, which mixes easy listening with easy highs and more than enough hints of those stellar Sarah days. Why they had to release one of the weaker songs from it as a taster single, we will never divine.

7. The Westfield Mining Disaster "Big Ideas From Small Places" (Cider City Records)

Musically bright: some Haywains, some country-tinged Bristol pop (think Tramway or mellow-mood Beatnik Filmstars), some of Paul Towler's best melodies to date. Lyrically outstanding: intelligent, humane, acerbic, defiant and ultimately touching. Most of all though, *timely*, coming as it did on the cusp of the Coalition's latest concerted initiatives to keep the poor poor.

8. Trembling Blue Stars "Fast Trains and Telegraph Wires" (Elefant)

Their final postcard, which we will always treasure: in this household, tears were shed, and this is not far off the return to form of their last LP. Some of the best moments are provided by the experimental instrumentals and field recordings, such as "Grey Silk Storm" and bonus track "Radioactive Decay".

9. Kill The Client "Set For Extinction" (Relapse)

Simply a top line album, of remarkable consistency given the potential for any 19-tracker to yield a few horrors. Mind you, racing through them in 27 sheer, fury-filled minutes kind of helps.

10. The Short Stories "Small Mercies" (The International Lo-Fi Underground)

Third album (and swansong?) from the undersung Bristol duo, containing some of their most brittle and heartstopping moments (especially "On Reflection" and the title track) as well as a majestic Forest Giants-ish closer, "Bird In A Cage".

11. Phil Wilson "God Bless Jim Kennedy" (Slumberland Records)

He's BACK on 33 and the best songs on it (try "Up To London" and the fairly amazing closing three tunes) are arguably just as strong as their finest. Even better, it came on VINYL.

12. Electric Pop Group "Seconds" (Matinée Recordings)

Few bands have a knack for penning "growers" like EPG, and these songs just wouldn't stop blooming. But we're hard taskmasters: to be all-time greats they need to build on this, to step up to the plate, widen their palette and truly whet our palate.

13. Tricia Yates Fan Club s/t (555 Recordings)

A punked-up, back-bedroom, garage-rock hommaging vinyl LP from the very first clickings of the year on which perennially bruised underdog Stewart Anderson perfects his usual trick of making the cynical sound almost tender, a beautifully narked narrative unfolding over spiky indie guitarrisms evoking a particularly riled Milky Wimpshake or the mid-period, proto-rock Sportique. If you need any more reason, note that not only one but two of the best blogs on planet Earth declared for it, albeit rather earlier than we've managed to.

14. A-Bomb "For Those Who Understand" (Yard 26 Recordings)

Free - that's FREE- to download, this is the Speech Ferapy man now six years on from the first time we clocked him on his NGU 12" with Eyezofman (now Mindzeye). No war bars, no party starters, no dimunition in quality from this way slept-on rhymer; just dedication, deep thought and more humanity.

15. Math & Physics Club "I Shouldn't Look As Good As I Do" (Matinée Recordings)

Perfectly weighted (ten popsongs in twenty-five minutes flat): brevity which doesn't preclude healthy servings of quality, melody, innovation and humour.

16. Violent Arrest "Minute Manifestos" (Boss Tuneage)

As clocked earlier in the year. Unreconstructed, spirited, thoroughly invigorating and as defiant, albeit in a very different way, as "Big Ideas From Small Places"...

17. Wormrot "Abuse" (Earache)

Maybe patchier than KTC's effort, but at its best, this is intoxicatingly good, as feverishly focussed as grindcore has been for many years.

18. Tender Trap "Dansette Dansette" (Fortuna Pop! / Slumberland)

Half the songs may have been around for a while, but what songs: "Fireworks", "Boyfriend", "Girls With Guns", etc. A typically accomplished set even better, at a pinch, than "Talking Backwards".

19. Nashgul "El Dia Despues Al Fin De La Humanidad" (Power It Up)

As dissected here, a bright, earnest and insistent album of high-speed grind, with many an individual highlight.

20. Fukpig "Belief Is The Death Of Intelligence" (FETO)

This LP helped get us through those days of media mania that followed that deliciously irrelevant royal wedding announcement. From the first track ("Die Bastard Die") to the last ("All Of You Are Cunts And I Hope You Fucking Die"), a remarkably consistent channelling of Discharge via Chaotic Dischord / Riot City and early ENT and, as befits the seeming resurgence of d-beat this year, powerful and confident post-crust crashalongs.

Closely followed by Paul Lewis taking on the Beethoven piano concertos, the Berliner Philharmoniker doing Mahler 5, Rotting Christ's stretchingly ambitious "Aealo" (featuring Diamanda Galas of all people, on tpo vocal form) the Fall's "Your Future, Our Clutter" (at times, the head-down existential fury of "Hex Enduction Hour"), Killing Joke's "Absolute Dissent" (seriously: it exudes sheer power in a rare and rousing way), Secret Shine's "The Beginning And The End", the Atrocity Exhibit's spritely "Damned And Blasted", Milky Wimpshake's "My Funny Social Crime" (including the MW-meets-Harper Lee perfection of "Patchwork"), Hellfire Sermons' "Luminous Crocodile" (you know our love for these: it remains undimmed), Vic Godard & Subway Sect's "We Come As Aliens", Jesus Crost's "010", Kashmere's "Galaktus: Power Cosmic", the (brand new) Secret Shine album, Shrag's "Life! Death! Prizes!" (there still appear to be people who claim to like Shrag but not the Fall, in which case simply playing them the (excellent) "Ghosts Before Breakfast" should be enough to make their heads explode with the sheer hypocrisy of it all), not to mention the albums from Very Truly Yours, Leng Tch'e, Television Personalities, Standard Fare, Japanische Kampfhorspiele, Benga, Misery Index, JME, Frisco... plus the retrospectives of sorts from four mighty outfits: Sayyadina, Black Tambourine, Horowitz and Vex'd. Oh, and "This Comp Kills Fascists 2". Obviously. Especially for Lack of Interest and Extortion.

And on the reissue tip, there were those Razorcuts CDs (more reminiscence from us on that fine band here) on the ever-bountiful Cherry Red, more from the fine Brilliant Corners back cat, and the joy of Music Club Deluxe issuing a budget-price 2xCD J&MC greatest hits ("Upside Down"), making the band OFFICIALLY label mates of a similarly great all-time musical combo and hopefully putting them in every motorway services and petrol station shop in the country. We never thought we'd see the day. It shares all its best tracks with "21 Singles", which also puts us in nostalgia mode And and and, there was Power It Up's re-release of that simply astonishing album by Looking For An Answer. If you only bought one record all year...