December 2010
61 posts
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British Sea Power cordially invite you to...
Rough Trade were desperate to avoid a repeat of the ‘Do You Like Rock Music?’ leak fiasco in 2007, where British Sea Power’s third album appeared online a full month ahead of its release date. The new record is pretty much on lockdown.
However, the band have very kindly announced that ‘Valhalla Dancehall’ will be streamed on three separate occasions from here on...
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Irish Music 2010: Year In Review
Irish albums were given considerable coverage on MFM this year (and no less than four of them popped up on our Albums of the Year list), so in 2011 we’re going to be giving Ireland’s music scene its due by covering it in greater detail. Our man on the ground, Gareth O’Malley, is practically bursting with excitement about the domestic front’s prospects for the coming year....
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2010, In Reviews
So throughout 2010, the MFM team of myself and Gareth O’Malley as editors and the contributing glories of James Dyke, Emmy Droege, David Molloy, Ben Ross and David McGowan, helped write a grand total of 190 reviews. We covered every single record that left us short of breath, enthused and excitable. And we also wrote about the odd disappointment…2011 will see an improvement on the...
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December, In Reviews
8.8 - Screaming Maldini - Restless Hearts and Silent Pioneers 7.9 - Raven Beats Crow - Zola Budd EP 7.8 - Teen Daze - Beach Dreams EP 7.8 - Mighty Mouse - Song With No Word
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Our albums of 2010 - In full
All selections made by Gareth O’ Malley (day 1,3,5,7,9,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24) and Jamie Milton (day 2,4,6,8,11,13,15,17,19,21,23) In order of entry, not preference: Day 1 - The Wonder Years - The Upsides Day 2 - Future Islands - In Evening Air Day 3 - Frightened Rabbit - The Winter Of Mixed Drinks Day 4 - Owen Pallett - Heartland Day 5 - Los Campesinos! - Romance Is Boring Day 6 -...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 24
Oceansize - Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up
This is probably the toughest choice I’ve made so far. So many other albums deserve to occupy the last spot on our Albums of the Year list. I know it, and so do you, but I can think of no album more deserving of finishing our advent calendar than this one; and so I present the final accolade of 2010 to a surprisingly understated yet...
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Music Fan’s Mic’s Albums of the Year: Day 23
Beach House - Teen Dream
Although barely visible on the shelf of a record shop, ‘Teen Dream’ was seen from afar as a record that had the potential of providing breakthrough for one of America’s more unsung acts. And thankfully, it acted in a similar way to Grizzly Bear’s ‘Veckatimest’, excelling Victoria Legrand and Alex Scully’s reputation and bathing...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 22
Foals - Total Life Forever
Releasing a seven-minute slow-burner as an album’s first single is a risky move. Particularly if you’re in a band like Foals, who up until the absolute revelation that was ‘Spanish Sahara’ had been best known for creating angular yet accessible math rock.
In hindsight, it was the perfect indication of things to come. They stepped things up a...
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Music Fan’s Mic’s Albums of the Year: Day 21
Max Richter - Infra
As soon as everybody watched ‘Inception’, Hans Zimmer’s accompanying soundtrack - so perfectly shaped for the visuals that met it halfway - was hailed as a triumph by many who hadn’t even considered championing an instrumental, ambient collection of melodies before. And yet in amongst the many normal albums released over the year, there was a...
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Johnny Foreigner: You Thought You Saw A Shooting...
Words: Gareth O’Malley
The juggernaut that is one of the most productive bands in Britain (at the time of writing, they have released sixteen songs this year, even without an album to prop things up) keeps rolling on. Yes, it’s been a difficult year for them: by frontman Alexei Berrow’s own admission, there is a ‘£5000 debt’ hanging over their heads that must be...
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Initial Thoughts: The Boxer Rebellion - The Cold...
The Boxer Rebellion try to be as immediate as can be, but are the kind of band who go about it in the most leisurely way possible. It may sound like I’m contradicting myself, but their first two records were quite easy to get into while still seeming to be slow-burners.
I gradually fell under the spell of ‘Exits’, a record chock-full of nervous anxiety and brittle tension,...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 20
Villagers - Becoming A Jackal
It was a case of second time lucky for Mr. Conor J. O’Brien, whose previous venture into music-making with The Immediate imploded in 2007. He valiantly gave things another shot with his Villagers project, and it certainly paid off for him, as the debut, every bit as striking as its artwork, announced the arrival of an exceptional talent.
By his own...
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Music Fan’s Mic’s Albums of the Year: Day 19
El Guincho - Pop Negro When ‘Pop Negro’ plays, you bounce, you jolt, you shake the floor. From ‘Bombay’ onwards there is a unique, cultural party spirit conjured up by Barcelona-wizz Pablo Díaz-Reixa and it’s quite simply impossible to turn your head to. “Infectious” is a gross, practically illegal understatement. I would indulge, busy myself with making...
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Screaming Maldini: Restless Hearts And Silent...
And so Screaming Maldini end 2010 as they started it: with an EP. Technically their third release in the space of nine months - I don’t know about you, but I’m counting the four songs they unveiled in June as another collection - it finds them taking even bigger steps towards carving out their own niche.
The focus, this time around, is not entirely on immediate pop songs (the title...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 18
The National - High Violet
I don’t think 2010 can be defined by any particular album. There is certainly no record of ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’-like proportions that we can think back on and say, ‘yes, this was 2010’. Things were far too scattershot for anything like this to happen. Take me, for instance: back at the start of December I thought I had my twelve...
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Chapel Club: Surfacing
Things are certainly looking up for this lot. Chapel Club are getting off to the best of starts in 2011 with the long-delayed release of ‘Surfacing’ (out via Polydor on January 17th). Why long-delayed?, you ask. Well, the chorus uses lyrics from ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’, and there were copyright issues, so, meant to be the band’s debut single (an accolade that...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 17
Menomena - Mines Just now, I looked at the world we saw this year. Over at the Big Picture are hundreds of images captured by photo-journalists, collected to summarise the year as a whole. From Julian Assange to Port-au-Prince, there is documentation that gives you an almighty impression of how diverse, how thrilling, heartbreaking, frightening life can be, depending on where you may be. In just...
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Matt & Kim: Where You're Coming From
Gotten your giddy Canadian synth-pop fix today yet? I hadn’t either, but I am delighted to announce the return of Matt & Kim, who have recently released the first fruits of their third record, ‘Sidewalks’ (due out March 28th - that’s going to be a long three months!). The pair have always reminded me of Tokyo Police Club to an extent - no kidding, they’re also...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 16
Blood Red Shoes - Fire Like This
Following up a storming debut album is never an easy task, but it came quite naturally to Blood Red Shoes. The critics will say that ‘Fire Like This’ showed both a lack of progression and a dearth of melody, but I must refute these claims.
On the release of ‘Box of Secrets’ in 2008, who would have thought that, two years later, a song as...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 15
Yeasayer - Odd Blood
Yeasayer’s biggest strength is also their only downfall: Enthusiasm. There’s a childishness, and keen eye for experimentation that belies ‘Odd Blood’; a perhaps over-appreciation of thinking outside of the box. Whilst bottled up with potential pop hits, the occasional blip comes in the form of something so blatantly on the brink of brilliance, but...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 14
Halves - It Goes, It Goes (Forever And Ever)
I don’t think I need to say too much about this record. Most of it has already been said, of course. I don’t need to tell you how its complexity and depth eclipses the majority of debut records I’ve heard in the last few years, or how painstakingly crafted the album was (it is the result of almost two years’ work).
What I...
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mpfree: Toro Y Moi - Still Sound
Interesting, how Toro Y Moi is taking a fairly bold step away from the realms of chillwave…In ‘Still Sound’, you can no longer highlight his work for adhering to a vintage, synth-y sound. Instead, his music is progressive, dense, soulful. Out of all the artists tagged with the “chillwave” scene, Toro Y Moi always looked the more likely to break out of a media-created...
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Christmas: A Playlist
You might remember our good friend Yellow Laces’ Autumn Playlist. No doubt, if you do, you enjoyed the warming, rich tones of Iron & Wine and others. Keeping it seasonal, Tom’s compiled a Christmas-related playlist, consisting of similar artists, plus a couple of surprising inclusions. Here’s the playlist, and here’s the tracklist for you non-Spotify-ers: - Biffy...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 13
Maximum Balloon - S/T This one could have passed you by because regular Yeah Yeah Yeahs-producer and contributor to both Foals’ and Liars’ early work, Dave Sitek aka. Maximum Balloon spends most of his time working as a member of the innovative, Brooklyn-based TV On The Radio. Here, on a debut solo album littered with guest vocalists channelling his streamlined pop ideology, he...
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Words With: And So I Watch You From Afar
MFM loves this lot, so naturally it jumped at the chance to grab a quick interview with possibly the hottest property on the Northern Irish scene at the moment, And So I Watch You From Afar. They toured the UK as recently as last month, and Gareth fired over some questions about this a few weeks ago. Here’s how he got on with Tony Wright.
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GO’M: How did your UK tour go,...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 12
Cathy Davey - The Nameless
It’s often that an album doesn’t fully click until it’s witnessed live, and such was the case with me and ‘The Nameless’. I’d been aware of Cathy Davey’s existence for quite a while (mainly three singles: ‘Reuben’ and ‘Moving’ (from second album ‘Tales of Silversleeve’); and ‘Little...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 11
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Ok, so we might have declared that the majority of our collected 2010 records would consist of albums you might not have come across before, this, and Arcade Fire are quite crucial exceptions. This, in particular, because last time I visited a major record shop, I saw it lagging at #35 in the UK album charts, a mere two weeks after its release. So...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 10
65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway
A move into euphoric post-electro paid dividends for Sheffield’s 65daysofstatic this year as they returned from three years in the wilderness, revitalised and raring to go. A world away from any of their previous records, ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’ was about as close to the band declaring a fresh start as it was possible to get.
Out...
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Los Campesinos!: Kindle A Flame In Her Heart
Kindle A Flame In Her Heart by Los Campesinos!
Hello, Los Campesinos! Christmas song! It’s great, as per usual, and not just in the ‘for a Christmas song’ way. Just generally great. The first proper new material from the group since their most recent line-up change earlier this year, it popped up, unannounced and unexpected, yesterday, heraldng the earlier announcement and...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 9
Delphic - Acolyte
There’s something about this album that I still can’t put my finger on despite having listened to it for the first time around this time last year. I’m not sure why I love it quite as much as I do, but I certainly have my reasons. One of them is that I stepped away from this album almost entirely for a good chunk of 2010, and it’s only now that...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 8
The Phantom Band - The Wants
Sometimes talent can overwhelm the listener. There’s so much going on, so many ideas deeply personal to the songwriter in ‘The Wants’ that initially, you’re left taken aback and at loss for thought. What is this world I’ve accidentally stepped into? It bogs you down, does this album: It tests you. Pass the test, and you discover a band...
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Words With: The Fanclub
These guys have a lot to look forward to next year. The Fanclub’s orchestral indie pop has seen praise lavished on it, and they only have two singles out. Gareth O’Malley had words with Josh Todd and Lewis Tobia last week, discussing things such as how their year went, their plans for the next one (including, of course, that all-important debut album) and what records floated their...
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Music Fan's Mic's Albums of the Year: Day 7
Adebisi Shank - This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank
There have been so many great albums to come out of Ireland this year that I’m going to have to go into greater detail about all those fantastic happenings (of the musical variety of course, because I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re kind of screwed over here) in a separate post. I can say for...
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Quick Fix: Mighty Mouse - Song With No Word
Words: Gareth O’Malley
This is certainly an interesting proposition. For one thing, in keeping with its title, the ‘intro’ record from London-based Mighty Mouse (and I didn’t say ‘debut album’, very deliberately. I’ll explain later.) is an entirely instrumental work. They’ve even refrained from giving the songs themselves titles of any...
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WatchAudiovisuals // Fixers - Who Says Boys
Grand, ambitious walls of sound meet trippy symmetry in the Oxford five-piece’s promising new song.
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Observations on the "Sound of 2011"
James Blake
Anna Calvi
Daley
Esben & the Witch
Jessie J
Clare Maguire
Mona
The Naked & Famous
Nero (pictured)
Jai Paul
The Vaccines
Warpaint
Jamie Woon
Wretch 32
Yuck
2010 saw something of a backlash towards journalists and their “tips” for greatness. Perhaps this was in response to the consensus’ inability to guess that Lady Gaga would end up 6,000,000...