Friday, January 01, 2010
Lisztomania
OMactualG. It's the Delrico Bandito 2009 Review Of The Year!
Yes, the New Year is but hours old, but I've been making my lists and checking them twice, so no time like the present to splat them from my brain to your screen. Last year I finally hit on a format I liked, so we'll stick with that and start with...
Albums Of The Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
2. Paramore - Brand New Eyes
3. Metric - Fantasies
4. The xx - xx
5. Girls - Album
6. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
7. The Horrors - Primary Colours
8. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
9. La Roux - La Roux
10. The Antlers - Hospice
Reissue: The Vaselines - Enter The Vaselines
Live Album: Nirvana - Live At Reading
Special Gym Award: The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
A cracking year for albums. At one point I had 20 albums in my Top 10, which doesn't quite work. Paramore, Metric and Phoenix all made engagingly different guitar led pop. The Horrors confounded my expectations. The xx were a terrific antidote to the scourge of overproduced everything-including-the-kitchen-sink records. But the number one spot was never open to debate. POBPAH's debut is all wonderful sweet indie pop songs about sex in libraries and teenagers in love with Christ and heroin. It's like someone grew them in a lab specifically to push my buttons. A band and record to treasure.
Singles Of The Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - 'Stay Alive'
2. Deadmau5 Feat. Kaskade - 'I Remember'
3. Metric - 'Gimme Sympathy'
4. Animal Collective – 'My Girls'
5. Paramore - 'Turn It Off'
6. Art Brut - 'DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake'
7. Jon Hopkins - 'Light Through The Veins'
8. Mumford & Sons - 'Little Lion Man'
9. Florence & The Machine - 'You Got The Love (xx Remix)'
10. Ercola Feat. Daniella – 'Every Word'
I know these weren't all promoted as singles, but thanks to the download charts, they all count. So there. And these are just all gorgeous, whether making you dance like a lunatic, drift away into a dreamworld, or scream "I REALLY FUCKED IT UP THIS TIME!" very loudly. The sample of 'Light Through The Veins' was the best thing on the last Coldplay album, and The xx made the best Florence record of the year by almost completely removing Florence from it. In any other year, Deadmau5 would've kept up the tradition of a house track being my No.1, but a song like 'Stay Alive', with its breakdown to die for, doesn't come along very often. Simply wonderful.
Live Performances of the Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Scala, Kings Cross (also Brixton Windmill & Highbury Garage)
2. The Pixies at Brixton Academy
3. Blur at Glastonbury Festival (also Hyde Park)
4. The Flaming Lips at The Troxy, Tower Hamlets
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Shepherd's Bush Empire (also Glastonbury)
6. Paramore at Wembley Arena
7. Coldplay at Wembley Stadium
8. Mogwai at Field Day Festival, Victoria Park, Hackney
9. Japandroids at Madame JoJo's, Soho
10. Deadmau5 at Radio 1's Big Weekend, Swindon
Yes, it's the hat-trick. It was the year of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Each gig was better than the last. Every song sounded like a single. I love this band. Elsewhere, comebacks from Blur and The Pixies were better than I could've hoped. The Flaming Lips are still one of the best live bands on the planet. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Paramore were two perfectly contrasting strains of exciting female fronted punk pop joy. And, to paraphrase David Tennant on Buzzcocks, Coldplay were great. Deal with it.
Band Of The Year...
Take a guess.
Movies of the Year...
1. Moon
2. A Serious Man
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Sherlock Holmes
5. Watchmen
Oh, where to begin with Moon? I knew nothing about it before I walked into the cinema, and it just swept me away. Just everything you could want from modern Sci-Fi. Classic story telling, beautifully acted and wonderfully produced. A Serious Man was as black as comedy can get. Inglourious Basterds was beautifully absurd, yet also capable of startling intensity and suspense. And Watchmen and Sherlock Holmes were quite simply tremendously entertaining. Bonus celeb spot fact: I watched the No.1 film in my list in the same cinema as the director of my No.4 film.
And the rest...
Quick mentions of other cultural wonders. The second series of the Phonogram comic book 'The Singles Club' was simply stunning. Anish Kapoor's exhibition at the Royal Academy was my artistic highlight of the year, along with Francis Bacon at the Tate Modern. I devoured the Twilight series like junk food and then cleansed my palate with more Haruki Murakami and Douglas Coupland. I sold my soul to Twitter and my iPhone, and finally signed up to emusic's download subscription service that has opened my ears to lots of great new music. And with memberships to both the Tate and the ICA generously given to me for my birthday, there'll be even more to write about at the end of 2010.
So there it is. Another year over, but another exciting one just begun. And what with it also being the end of the Noughties, I may well blog about some of my favourite things from the past decade at some point. But enough lists for the time being. Here's to 2010. Happy New Year.
Yes, the New Year is but hours old, but I've been making my lists and checking them twice, so no time like the present to splat them from my brain to your screen. Last year I finally hit on a format I liked, so we'll stick with that and start with...
Albums Of The Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
2. Paramore - Brand New Eyes
3. Metric - Fantasies
4. The xx - xx
5. Girls - Album
6. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
7. The Horrors - Primary Colours
8. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
9. La Roux - La Roux
10. The Antlers - Hospice
Reissue: The Vaselines - Enter The Vaselines
Live Album: Nirvana - Live At Reading
Special Gym Award: The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
A cracking year for albums. At one point I had 20 albums in my Top 10, which doesn't quite work. Paramore, Metric and Phoenix all made engagingly different guitar led pop. The Horrors confounded my expectations. The xx were a terrific antidote to the scourge of overproduced everything-including-the-kitchen-sink records. But the number one spot was never open to debate. POBPAH's debut is all wonderful sweet indie pop songs about sex in libraries and teenagers in love with Christ and heroin. It's like someone grew them in a lab specifically to push my buttons. A band and record to treasure.
Singles Of The Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - 'Stay Alive'
2. Deadmau5 Feat. Kaskade - 'I Remember'
3. Metric - 'Gimme Sympathy'
4. Animal Collective – 'My Girls'
5. Paramore - 'Turn It Off'
6. Art Brut - 'DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake'
7. Jon Hopkins - 'Light Through The Veins'
8. Mumford & Sons - 'Little Lion Man'
9. Florence & The Machine - 'You Got The Love (xx Remix)'
10. Ercola Feat. Daniella – 'Every Word'
I know these weren't all promoted as singles, but thanks to the download charts, they all count. So there. And these are just all gorgeous, whether making you dance like a lunatic, drift away into a dreamworld, or scream "I REALLY FUCKED IT UP THIS TIME!" very loudly. The sample of 'Light Through The Veins' was the best thing on the last Coldplay album, and The xx made the best Florence record of the year by almost completely removing Florence from it. In any other year, Deadmau5 would've kept up the tradition of a house track being my No.1, but a song like 'Stay Alive', with its breakdown to die for, doesn't come along very often. Simply wonderful.
Live Performances of the Year...
1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Scala, Kings Cross (also Brixton Windmill & Highbury Garage)
2. The Pixies at Brixton Academy
3. Blur at Glastonbury Festival (also Hyde Park)
4. The Flaming Lips at The Troxy, Tower Hamlets
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Shepherd's Bush Empire (also Glastonbury)
6. Paramore at Wembley Arena
7. Coldplay at Wembley Stadium
8. Mogwai at Field Day Festival, Victoria Park, Hackney
9. Japandroids at Madame JoJo's, Soho
10. Deadmau5 at Radio 1's Big Weekend, Swindon
Yes, it's the hat-trick. It was the year of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Each gig was better than the last. Every song sounded like a single. I love this band. Elsewhere, comebacks from Blur and The Pixies were better than I could've hoped. The Flaming Lips are still one of the best live bands on the planet. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Paramore were two perfectly contrasting strains of exciting female fronted punk pop joy. And, to paraphrase David Tennant on Buzzcocks, Coldplay were great. Deal with it.
Band Of The Year...
Take a guess.
Movies of the Year...
1. Moon
2. A Serious Man
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Sherlock Holmes
5. Watchmen
Oh, where to begin with Moon? I knew nothing about it before I walked into the cinema, and it just swept me away. Just everything you could want from modern Sci-Fi. Classic story telling, beautifully acted and wonderfully produced. A Serious Man was as black as comedy can get. Inglourious Basterds was beautifully absurd, yet also capable of startling intensity and suspense. And Watchmen and Sherlock Holmes were quite simply tremendously entertaining. Bonus celeb spot fact: I watched the No.1 film in my list in the same cinema as the director of my No.4 film.
And the rest...
Quick mentions of other cultural wonders. The second series of the Phonogram comic book 'The Singles Club' was simply stunning. Anish Kapoor's exhibition at the Royal Academy was my artistic highlight of the year, along with Francis Bacon at the Tate Modern. I devoured the Twilight series like junk food and then cleansed my palate with more Haruki Murakami and Douglas Coupland. I sold my soul to Twitter and my iPhone, and finally signed up to emusic's download subscription service that has opened my ears to lots of great new music. And with memberships to both the Tate and the ICA generously given to me for my birthday, there'll be even more to write about at the end of 2010.
So there it is. Another year over, but another exciting one just begun. And what with it also being the end of the Noughties, I may well blog about some of my favourite things from the past decade at some point. But enough lists for the time being. Here's to 2010. Happy New Year.
Labels: gigs, lists, movies, music, top 10's
