Last time this year I was worrying about writing an annual top 10 albums list. There simply wasn’t enough albums that I felt happy about including on the list, causing several entries to appear in the final list that wouldn’t have even dreamed of making it on any other year. In other words, 2008 was disappointing.

I’m worrying slightly again, wondering what on earth to include on this list and in what order. This time however it’s for the completely opposite reason. 2009 has been a brilliant, brilliant year in music and as I choose to see which 10 make it to the Chosen Pile, I have to look at all the ones that are left outside that group and feel sad over not allowing them a chance in the spotlight as well. There’s too much good stuff to choose and rank from!

But here we go.

A quick overall word about 09. A really intriguing thing is that this could be called the year of lyrics. Now I’m a person who does love his lyrics but I’m not a huge geek – I can safely enjoy and sing along to e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers without having to hold back tears on what Kiedis is shrieking. However, 2009 has been packed with albums where the lyrics are an integral part of the entire thing. Albums where my personal enjoyment leaped tenfold when I stopped still and listened to what was being said, albums where the lyrics are tied to a concept integral to the album’s creation, albums where the lyrics actually became one of the main focus points and one reason why I kept on playing the albums. Even albums where I didn’t fall in love with the lyrics were still made with lyrics as a focal point: concept albums and so forth.

But the music is the main focal point. And here we go, the music. First (or last?) five are here, the next presented tomorrow. There’s absolutely no reason involving ‘keeping tension’ or any other such tripe, it’s more just the fact that my entries tend to be a bit TLDR and therefore cutting it up makes it more readable.

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2010 is approaching soon. Twelve new months full of brand new music, from old veterans, young bands and complete upcomers. Just to go up-to-date on what’s happening with the artists that pleasure Flint’s tastebuds, it’s time to give a little checkaround to 2010’s possible offers by artists I’m intrigued about. Rumours, confirmed news, it’s all here.

Not keen on the artists I display? Give a sly prod at the other writers, maybe they’ll reveal their musical stalking results as well?

After the cut, a big list of various names.

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12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome is an article series where each month Flint hopelessly rambles about an album in his collection that he dearly loves, even when they have their flaws. Each of the albums chosen tends to be usually overlooked, or forgotten, in one way or another and thus this article series aims to give an alternative view on said albums, or simply just bring something a bit less known to the spotlight.

Manic Street Preachers – Know Your Enemy (2001)

Let’s honour the release of Manic Street Preachers‘ new album by talking about an album that is easily the most underrated piece of greatness in their catalogue. No, not Lifeblood although some of you might have expected that from me as I’ve several times mentioned its personal importance to me. Lifeblood’s a very clear hate it or love it kind of album and it frequently gets a whole load of fans to speak in its favour. No, it’s just divisive, not underrated per se. This article shall instead speak in favour of an album that often not only attracts dislike, but even the people who speak in its favour admit that there’s something very wrong with it. Today we talk about the moment in the band’s history when they decided to not give a flying shit about anything and released a sprawling mess of an album that doesn’t even attempt to have any sort of stylistic or aural unity.

After the two hit album streak of 1996’s orchestral Everything Must Go and 1998’s introspective and gorgeous This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, Manics found themselves in the public spotlight in a way that made them feel uncomfortable. Sure, the band always wanted to be big but all of a sudden their gigantic popularity and streak of hit singles had caused them to become the flavour of the month which the band grew tired of. They had finally reached the popularity they wanted but, typically to the band, instead of relishing in it they decided to react against it. The 2000 stand-alone single “The Masses Against the Classes” showcased the group in a more furious, energetic and rawer sound than they had been for years. After Masses/Classes, the band holed themselves up in Spain and began work on the album that would be their intentional self-destruction. Songs were written, performed and recorded with max speed – no more than three play-throughs were allowed before recording the song with as few takes possible. The band wanted to bring back their rawer, more energetic and aggressive past yet at the same time take advantage of their experience in crafting more melodic songs; the result being that countless different ideas were thrown around, recorded in various ways and sometimes even mixed together. The sessions grew so fruitful that at some point the band wanted simply to release absolutely everything they recorded in the form of a double album or two different albums Use Your Illusion style.

Eventually those sessions laboured Know Your Enemy. 16 tracks (and one hidden track), bouncing from 3-minute punk rockers to keyboard-heavy Beach Boys pastiches, from ramshackle acoustic ballads to drum-machine driven weariness, from spoken word angst to [i]disco[/i]. The c-part of a song left out of the album was separated and tacked on as a mid-album hidden track. The band’s bassist who can’t sing does his lead vocal debut while a man who had never written a lyric in the band’s entire career does his lyrical debut. Even the band’s regular lyricist goes from introspective misery through half-arsed political brainfarting to things that plain do not make sense. The track order hops wildly between pretty much everything with no seeming direction or plain sense. The album was previewed by the simultanous release of two completely different singles.

Know Your Enemy does not make sense. It’s a gigantic, schizophrenic mess. It’s why the band’s fans regularly put it up as one of their least favourite albums and why “make your own KYE tracklisting” topics are such a popular sight. It’s why I love it to bits.
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First of all, apologies dear readers for our slight silence as we’ve all been quite preoccupied this week! To make up for lack of articles and mp3s, all which shall return next week again, here’s a little batch of things I’ve been powerplaying recently whenever I’ve had the chance to powerplay anything. They might not be as fashionable choices as Mag’s mathnoisetechnojanglepaganindierock delights or as immense of a treasurepile as Ipequey’s weekly chest of indie pop diamonds from today and the past, but they sure are gooood.

First of all, we have a little piece of the Finnish quirky pop group Regina. They released their third album Puutarhatrilogia recently and, well, it’s not really my cup of tea. Regina’s debut Katso maisemaa still charms me with its goofy, naïve-ish attitude but after the debut the band’s decided to grow up and take a slightly more mature, and a bit artsier, approach to their music. Which is great! For them anyway. They continue to develop as artists and that’s a good thing, and I can definitely see why people love their more recent albums, but I just kinda miss that fun little novelty charm that got me into buying the debut in the first place.

Anyway! “Saanko jäädä yöksi?” is Puutarhatrilogia’s centerpiece focus and the album’s best track, an artsy little pseudo-dance ditty driven by an irresistable piano melody, chopped vocal clips and Iisa Pajula’s quirky singing, mixed together with a brilliant burst in intensity as the drums finally hit the stage fully and interspersed with a random dancehall interlude. It’s quirky, it’s brilliant.

MP3: Saanko jäädä yöksi?
Puutarhatrilogia on Recordshop X

Kashmir is a Danish rock band who started off as some sort of funk-rocksters, if I’m reading my Wikipedia correctly, and then drifted into a more melancholy, melodic rock act. Zitilites is widely regarded as their best album and whilst it suffers from slight overlength mixed together with a bit too similar tempo all the way through, it’s an enchanting and good listen that’s been keeping me in its grips lately. The lead man Kasper Eistrup sounds like he’s been taking vocal lessons from Thom Yorke which makes the music occasionally sound like a long lost off-shoot album from Radiohead’s OK Computer era, but you know, that’s a good thing.

“Rocket Brothers” was a big hit in Denmark and a fairly audible thing elsewhere in Scandinavia too when it was released, and for a very good reasons: great melodies, excellent atmosphere, good chorus. It’s one of Zitilites’ best tracks and even if the rest of the album isn’t one’s cup of tea, Rocket Brothers is a brilliant song worth keeping anyway.

MP3: Rocket Brothers
Zitilites on Amazon

Right, let’s crack open that Manic Street Preachers chest a bit more now that Journal for Plague Lovers is pretty much out. “Virginia State Epileptic Colony” got a brief mention on my Journal for Plague Lovers review and now I’m gonna share the brilliance that it is. Mopeyman Richey’s indecipherable and sloganeering-filled lyrics featuring such amazing lines as “pig pig piggy!” are set upon a hilariously upbeat jangle pop backing that sounds like it’s taking the complete piss out of anyone who thinks the song was going to be something deep and serious. The chorus is pure awesomeness in its almost humorous singalong tone, and check out that plinky-plonky piano interlude! Journal’s got a strong lighter side and and VSEC’s a great example of that.

MP3: Virginia State Epileptic Colony
Journal for Plague Lovers on Amazon

Finally, something from that Danger Mouse / Sparklehorse / kitchen sink collaboration album Dark Night of the Soul that’s now making itself famous by all the legal dispute news that might prevent its physical release. Fortunately, it’s out there digitally already and let me tell you, outside the Black Francis / Iggy Pop -twofer weakspot around the middle-ish, it’s very very good. Mr Ipequey of our wonderful blog establishment might give you a bit more indepth account on the album’s bliss at some point, being an even bigger Sparklehorse lover than I am, but I shall give you a sample MP3 in the form of the album’s opening track – the Flaming Lips collaboration “Revenge”. It’s five minutes of chilled out, hopeful, dreamy orchestrated bliss and beauty, not too far from the brilliant Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Easily one of the best songs of 2009? You bet. Just check out that sweeping beauty of a chorus. And mmmm, the atmosphere…

MP3: Revenge (feat. The Flaming Lips)

This was Flint’s random MP3 moment, hope you enjoyed this brief dabble in me making an mp3 update for a change!

Journal for Plague Lovers, the first Manic Street Preachers album to feature monsieur Richey Edwards’ ramblings as lyrics in a tad over a decade leaked a while ago. I did tell myself to wait for the album release but eventually I crumbled and downloaded away. I was too curious. Manics are one of my very favourite bands and certainly the most important band in my musical life as discovering them was the start of my music obsession and foundation of my tastes. And quite frankly, I wanted to see if the fears I had were correct. The last album, 2007’s Send Away the Tigers was a gigantic disappointment, not only because it was genuinely awkward but also because for a fanboy who’s last brand new studio album from the band he loved (2004’s Lifeblood) was such a gigantic moment of personal bliss, feeling nothing after hearing Tigers was… bad. On it, the band decided to try and imitate their past – on Journal for Plague Lovers, the band openly said that they didn’t mind if it would be compared to 1994’s The Holy Bible, Edwards’ last album with the band before his disappearance/suicide and a critical classic. Would they copy the past unconvincingly again?

I was scared for nothing. Journal for Plague Lovers really is quite spiffy.

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XFM decided to play Jackie Collins Existential Question Time from that new Manic Street Preachers album. I decided to record it.

Despite the rather ominous title, it’s actually a pretty cheery and dare I say poppy song with a rather nifty soaring signature guitar riff. Should be an intriguing album, and definitely not THB2.

There was also a short James Dean Bradfield interview before the track, new tidbits being that James doesn’t really care if it’s called THB2 or not, and that “William’s Last Words” is sung by Nicky. Woo.

MP3: Jackie Collins Existential Question Time (radio rip)

So here I was wishing for something concrete out of the new Manic Street Preachers album to appear and badda bing badda boom Zane Lowe decides to play the new album’s opening track Peeled Apples on his show.

First impressions:

• pretty damn well rocking
• not so much The Holy Bible as imagined which is good cause it sounds like more of its own thing instead of self-plagiarism
• sexy bass intro
• chorus has a kick
• the whole song has a nice kick to it and the band certainly isn’t suffering from production problems now
• not an earthshatteringly great song but damn nice of a taster and already sounds much, much better (and genuine) than Send Away the Tigers stuff
• Zane Lowe, stop talking over songs

I am getting optimistic about this album

MP3: Peeled Apples radio rip (new link)

MP3: Edited rip, check comments thread for details (credit to G.G. Moogley)

And boom, after a surprisingly long time of having no info, the majority of details from Manic Street Preachers’s new Steve Albini produced album, that’s been said to be a sequel for the band’s third album The Holy Bible both in tone and lyrics and which uses leftover lyrics by the dead/”missing” band member Richey Edwards, have been revealed.

1) The title will indeed be Journal for Plague Lovers. This was unofficially confirmed already but it’s nice to have the official confirmation.

2) The cover, shown here, is a painting by the same Jenny Saville whose artwork graced the cover of The Holy Bible. It’s also really bad and features the embarrasingly corny reverse Rs but what else did we expect from the spiritual successor of THB?

3) The album will be released on May 18th. That’s my birthday. So this will either be a very poor or very good birthday present.

4) The album will also be released as a 2-disc special edition. Considering the band’s been toying with the idea of no singles (at least before the album’s release) and there’s certainly been no info of such things, I quite hope the second disc would be a batch of extra tracks that didn’t make it onto the album and would have been b-sides in any normal case, much like Radiohead’s In Rainbows bonus disc. Of course, it’ll probably be some dull DVD thingy.

5) I can’t decide if the tracklist is So Bad It’s Hilarious or So Bad It’s Horrible. Whichever choice I end up with, it’s pretty easy to see that Richey wasn’t exactly in the finest mental health during the last days of his existence. Tracklist after the cut.

And despite all this snark and utter facepalm over the song titles and most likely the lyrics themselves when they show up – Richey’s texts have always been severely overrated in my opinion – I’m quite interested in hearing the actual music. Some early comments by people who’ve heard it have been not only optimistic, but also hinted that the album’s a bit deeper and takes a few listens to get in properly: something that’s quite the opposite from the “instant gratification, constant waning out afterwards (from what little there is to wane out from)” of Send Away the Tigers.

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Festive themed mixtape for you today. We hope you all had a great christmas and an even better new year! Love, Indiepaws.net!

1. Mew – She Came Home for Christmas [Half the World Is Watching Me version] ♥
2. Carolina Liar – I’m Not Over ♥
3. Sea Wolf – Winter Windows ♥
4. The Go! Team – The Ice Storm ♥
5. Kate Bush – December Will Be Magic Again ♥
6. Motionless – Winter Heat ♥
7. Asobi Seksu – Thursday ♥
8. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal ♥
9. Slow Runner – Snow Tires ♥
10. Manic Street Preachers – Antarctic ♥
11. Cracker – Merry Christmas Emily ♥
12. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas ♥
13. XTC – Countdown To Christmas Party Time ♥
14. John Cale – Child’s Christmas In Wales ♥

Key:
Mag’s tracks = ♥
Javs’ tracks = ♥
Flint’s tracks = ♥
Ipequey’s Tracks= ♥

Download!

Those of y’all who remember my past articles may remember me being quite the Manic Street Preachers fanboy. Those who have read the said article also know that my Manics fan died for a while after Send Away the Tigers but has recently started to recover extremely well.

Then stuff like this comes to slap my face and makes me very, very afraid of what the band is going to put out.

The band’s official e-mail newsletter today contained a message from the band regarding their next album that’s currently being planned for release next year.

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