ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011

As promised exactly 12 months ago today, if our end of year Top 20 failed to hit the spot last year we would return again for another attempt, so here it is. Starting tomorrow, our 20 favourite albums of the year will be highlighted daily, in the order of our choosing, building up to the big reveal of the winner on New Years Day. There's no change to the judging criteria, these are the albums that we've enjoyed the most deciphered by the trusty method of just listening to lots of music as much as is humanly possible. Where the system gets a tad skewed is when, as has just occured, two of our top 20 albums are released in the month of December. I mean it's a safe bet that the top two records, both of which have received regular plays for most of the year, are assured placings but when there's only been a few days the potential for lessening appeal with repeated plays is still very real. That said, the two records I'm thinking of here are so fine that the only real danger is in twelve months time I might feel they should have appeared higher up the chart. Hey ho, there you go...

Musically 2011 has often seen more brilliant albums coming out than a mere top 20 countdown can adequately convey. Still my feelings when tuning into almost anything mainstream radio or TV are putting out is invariably despair. I know I'm beating on an old drum with this one, but I can't comprehend what's happening with the blanket use of Autotune on pop records. There's a tune doing the rounds at the moment where a quite lovely Lily Allen vocal is juxtaposed with another Autotune treated voice that for me renders the whole track unlistenable. It's just heartbreaking, you know, because I love a bit of great Pop, I've got no issue with Rap and great Dance music is invariably more life affirmingly joyous than anything the Indie set ever come up with. Yet it's almost as if three or four years ago a private dare went around the worlds recording studios to see who could get away with sprinkling the shittest vocal effect on records before anyone noticed and so far nobody has, and the joke just keeps getting ever more ridiculous. The idea that a top producer could make me a backing track so I enter the studio for five minutes, hung over and nauseous, only able to vomit the word "huey" into a bucket and he could turn that into a workable Autotune treated vocal should only really endure for a couple of minutes on a 'One Show' factual featurette. It shouldn't be the basis on which the entire pop recording industry works around.

Still there has been some great Pop this year with Adele's record being top of that particular tree. Of course it's a traditionalist's formula but how it works; write some great songs and get a great voice to sing them, good production and market it with the music centre stage. I regret that Adele didn't make our Top 20 but I'll rest assured she won't care much! Then there's the other end of the mainstream spectrum; the big money major label release whose dire content is masked by the promotional circus that circles it's every move. That'll be Coldplay then. I know people of the 1960s generation who'll make a blanket decision on whether a new band are any good or not by how much they move on stage. It's that idea of if they're staring at their feet the whole time they're not all that because they've got to concentrate too much whereas if you're jumping around and playing you've got to have a bit about you. I go for the opposite position with Coldplay, I think the more Chris Martin pogos about on stage the more he's over compensating for the lack of creative spark in the content of his music. I've seen Chris Martin do an awful lot of bouncing around on stage this past year. His bands music has an abundance of "whoa oh oah oooh's" floating about, the first calling port for any uninspired stadium band fearing for their reach in the cavernous arenas they're about to spend two years playing to. Oh and lastly, I sincerely wish that indie bands would stop sounding like the 80s Human League or Talk Talk or A Flock Of Seagulls etc etc. This is because the 80s were crap for music; I thought that fact was long established?!

So onto the good stuff. Here are a few that just missed the leaders pack, number 20 in our chart will be revealed tomorrow:
THE BLACK LIPS, Arabia Mountain
TORI AMOS, Night Of Hunters
ZEE AVI, Ghostbird
RANDY NEWMAN, Songbook Vol.2
TRUMMOR & ORGEL, Out Of Bounds
LUCINDA WILLIAMS, Blessed
JONNY, Jonny
BABY WOODROSE, Mindblowing Seeds...

Finally three musical departures left their mark on us this year. One awfully tragic, another sadly inevitable and the third a blessed relief. For Amy Winehouse there's little I can say other than what a terrible loss and a massive blow for 21st Century music. She really should have had a lot more in her, gone too soon doesn't even begin to cover it. With Bert Jansch I've been feeling his absence quite intensely this winter but sad to say, I was shocked by his sunken appearance at this summer's Cambridge Folk Festival playing with Pentangle and feared he may not be long for this world. Then on a more positive note R.E.M. knocked it on the head this Autumn. Did they read my pleading with them to call it a day on this blog and decide enough was enough? I think they might have. The great thing for me though was this; the moment they were no more I could once again enjoy their back catalogue free from the fear that they would keep testing my love for them.