Weekend Mix #3 - End Of The Year Review
Because I’m lazy, and I need to get the Weekend Mixes back on track, welcome to the combination Akuhei Bakery 2007 Review and Weekend Mix #3 (#2 was the Christmas mix), now with added analysis!
Tracklisting
1.Kaiser Chiefs - ‘Everything Is Average Nowadays’
While a bazillion NME-beloved copies of the Kaiser’s cropped up this year,
the originals turned up with their second, now mandatory ‘darker’ album,
further developing the indie-rock sound template that anyone not copying The Libertines, have been copying since 2004.
2.Stars - ‘The Night Starts Here’
The Canadian group’s 4th LP in 6 years mixes the electronic-pop sound heard on their debut, Nightsongs, and mixes it with the lush folksy-indie-pop of their last 2 albums.
Good Lord, that was some terrible faux-music-journalism
3.The Shins - ‘Turn On Me’
Just making the cut with a release date of January 23, The Shins are a band which I now cannot describe without using the phrase ‘lush folksy-indie-pop’ again.
Just buy the album this is off, Wincing The Night Away. It’s awfully good.
4.Jamie T - ‘Sheila’
Currently being ripped off by his bargain-basement clone Jack Penate, Jamie T (even the names are…sort of…similar) managed to mix a not-too-bad cock-er-ney accent (not as bad as Kate Nash’s, but then, few are) with bits of hip-hop, reggae and other such music. His album, Panic Prevention, is also awfully good.
5.Justice - ‘D.A.N.C.E’
Woo! Raving! The spirit of Daft Punk is in fellow Frenchies Justice, on whose album (the name of which is…a picture of a cross) has a highlight in the form of this, a school-choir-sung ode to Michael Jackson (before he was crazy/white)
6.Richard Hawley - ‘Tonight The Streets Are Ours’
Richard Hawley, as fellow Sheffield musicians and winners Arctic Monkeys succinctly put it at last year’s Mercury Music Prize, was robbed. This year, Hawley released his follow-up to Cole’s Corner, the album nominated in said awards, Lady’s Bridge.
Hawley is another one that does well ‘boosting’ his sound rather than radically changing it to dub-skiffle or whatever genre NME has made up that week, and so Lady’s Bridge sees him continue the 50’s Sun-studios sound which my Mum likes. But it’s still good. My Mum has a pretty good taste in music.
7.The Cribs - ‘Our Bovine Public’
While I lambasted those cookie-cutter, curly haired and choppy-guitared indie bands earlier, The Cribs are sort of an exception - I say sort of becuase…I find it hard to categorise The Cribs. I feel they should fit into that realm of, say, The (ugh) Pigeon Detectives, but they transcend that.
Now that the poncy analysis is out of the way, ‘Our Bovine Public’ is the snarling ead-off track from the band’s third album, Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, targeting shallow indie-rock taste makers…oh. I guess that’s why I like them.
8.The Good, The Bad And The Queen - ‘Herculean’
Look, Damon Albarn’s got another side project! While this may have made many (wrong) people groan, I danced and screeched like a giddy schoolgirl when I heard the news - especially when the rest of the group’s line-up was revealed; The Verve’s guitarist, Simon Tong, The Clash bass player Paul Simonon, and Afro-beat drummer Tony Allen, all produced by Grey Album/Gnarls Barkley genius Danger Mouse.
While this track, the first single from the group’s eponymous album, may
seem quite Gorillaz-y, with it’s drums, moodiness and strings, the album itself really isn’t - out-of tune guitars and odd time signatures are the order of the day. And so, I continue to worship at the altar of Albarn.
9.LCD Soundsystem - ‘All My Friends’
Good Lord. Daft Punk Is Playing At My House was fun, as was LCD’s eponymous debut, but James Murphy’s follow up, Sound Of Silver, takes the new wave/dance-influenced er, sound, to greater heights - the greatest being this, which became a sort-of mini-anthem (odd, since it’s about 8 minutes long)
10.The White Stripes - ‘Conquest’
Jack ‘n’ Meg return, after a brief flirtation with marimbas and pianos on 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan, to good old fashioned dirty blues on Icky Thump, and it’s grrrrrreat.
The White Stripes are another band who work best by taking their established formula and tweaking it, only slightly - an example being this track, recently released as a single, a none-too-subtle story of male-female role-reversal, which features Jack’s distorted guitars complemented with some blazing Spanish trumpets.
11.The Chemical Brothers - ‘Do It Again’
How do they do it? How, after 15+ years, do the Chemical Brothers manage to release great album after great album, and still get middling to bad reviews? I blame Global Warming (Oo! Topical!)
‘Do It Again’ is a dancey, slightly scary (a good way to sum up the duo’s live performances this year) song featuring Ali Love, who I’ve only heard of for being one of those ‘New-Rave’ indie knobs, but is surprisingly good on this.
12.Kanye West - Homecoming
Kanye’s collaboration with Coldplay’s Chris Martin, from the rapper’s album Graduation, fares a lot better than Mr Gwyenth Paltrow’s song with Jay-Z from a couple of years ago.
Graduation cut the flab from Kanye’s previous efforts (i.e. the skits), and moved into a more electronic, Daft Punk-inspired sound, which was no more prevalent than on the DP-sampling mega-hit ‘Stronger’. Speaking of which…
13.Daft Punk - ‘Around The World/Harder Better Faster Stronger’
Okay, this may be cheating slightly, since neither song originally came out this year, but the mash-up of two of their biggest hits on exemplary live outing Alive 2007 shows that the two robots still have it.
Roll on album 4!
14.The Arcade Fire - ‘No Cars Go’
Of course bloody Arcade Fire are on here. They’re on everyone’s end of year list. Go read someone else’s if you want analysis on the Canadian troupe’s triumphant sophomore album - I’m still bitter that they said they’ll never come back to Nottingham.
15.Gruff Rhys - Skylon!
This is more like it. I’d like to think the Super Furry Animal’s second solo record was on more end-of-year lists, but…then I wouldn’t stand out as much.
Once again, it’s hard to describe Rhys’ album, Candylion, as something other than lush folksy-indie-pop (with a hint of psychedelia), though that’s not a bad thing - and he does venture into other genres across the album (Prog rock, anyone? Not you, Dad).
This is the final track on the album, a 15-minute long fictional, musical account concerning a Welsh plane full of celebrities becoming the target of suicide bombers, who are stopped by a bomb-disposal expert who just happens to be on board, who is named Skylon.
Yep.
