Music Time
Friday December 21, 2007 in music |
This is a brief review of some of my favouite music from the last year, a year when I found myself downloading just as much music as I bought in the shops. My favourite two albums of the year however were both hard copies, Back to Black by Amy Winehouse and Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys. I’ve come late to the music of the Arctic Monkeys, and Gordon Brown was already declaring that he liked them before I’d even heard any of their songs. But FWN has become one of my most played albums lately, and I think Flourescent Adolescent is a brilliant little pop song, up there with Up the Junction and Lady Madonna.
The good: The Arctic Monkeys
2007 was the year I feared the worst for myself. Waking up in the middle of the night panicking that I had become mainstream with my musical tastes. There’s no denying it, Amy Winehouse and the Artctic Monkeys are now both musical mainstream. I even quite like James Blunt. So I was relieved to find that I really, really like The Young Knives and their album Voices of Animals and Men. This was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize but lost out to The Klaxons. I haven’t heard The Klaxons album, so I can’t comment, but it must be pretty good to be judged better than The Young Knives. They’re a weird bunch, I can’t deny that, although not by Mercury standards. And any band from the excellently named Ashby de la Zouch who have a band member called House of Lords gets the thumbs up from me.
The mad: The Young Knives
In the last year I also continued to keep a close watch on Damon Albarn, and his The Good The Bad and The Queen project was a masterpiece. His old mucker (or should that be mocker?) Graham Coxon released a criminally ignored EP together with Paul Weller called This Old Town. Other favourites were Thirst for Romance by Cherry Ghost and Yours Truly, Angry Mob by The Kaiser Chiefs. However, I may have saved the best till last. Although I only bought it yesterday, An End Has a Start by Editors is already shaping up to be something special. if you like dark, serious, emotional stuff then this is it.
The scary: Editors
My favourite bands aren’t the most photogenic. I’m glad of that.
And at last I’ve found a job where they let us listen to music in our quieter moments. Until next year, happy listening…