I imagine Taylor Swift and Erika M Anderson hang out a lot, probably bestest friends. The only artist on this list who receives anything close to the amount of hatred weighed upon Taylor Swift is Lana Del Rey, there’s surely some link there but I’ll be damned if I can see it. Most people’s gripe about Taylor Swift is that she dates people and then writes songs about them, and I suppose that’s a fair complaint seeing as she completely created that idea and nobody has ever written about their boy or girlfriends before. Ah shit- think I just broke my computer’s sarcasm filter… All this hate is more than counteracted by just how impossibly big she is, so big that when the record company accidentally released six seconds of static onto iTunes under the Taylor Swift banner it actually went to number 1 in Canada (that’s not a joke). It all makes Damon Albarn’s 20 minute buttock slapping record look like very small beans in comparison. I honestly feel sorry for all the remaining people who have to expend so much effort into pretending they don’t like Swift, as they’re missing out on some absolutely masterful pop, especially now she’s thrown off any ridiculous pretensions that she’s a fucking country artist. Swift recently knocked her own Shake It Off (a serious contender for the year’s best single) off the top of the US charts with follow up Blank Space (a brilliant example of Taylor’s smart and witty way of deconstructing her own public image and showcasing her almost inhuman self-awareness. If only her detractors were quite as clever and as talented at tearing her apart) but you could honestly imagine Swift repeating the trick with each of these 13 tracks, they all sound like potential hits. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate…

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A shitty Polaroid (and not the good kind) plus a rude reminder of how much younger she is than me.

Fuck you Taylor Swift

1/5

Here we go again- technology breeds isolation, are we really happy in this new digital age? We’re just everyday robots on our phones aren’t we? I’ll forgive EMA (which as I’m sure you know stands for Every Mousketeer Attacks) for replaying over these slightly tired old subjects because Erika M Anderson’s third album is simply so good- juggling the genres of punk and electronica while at the same time making classics in either genre or simply both. Plus it’s not always an ‘ain’t technology a STINKER!?’ sermon, and when it is the lyrics are only occasionally embarrassing. Plus there’s no song here about a fucking baby elephant. There may not be an album released in 2014 as wonderfully and skilfully diverse as ‘The Future’s Void’, capable of convulsing your bones with bangers like So Blonde or poking your soul holes with lilting beauty like When She Comes, without the record ever lacking cohesion. Anderson’s voice too is a thing of beauty- wonderfully evocative yet bare and untreated with it’s cracked flaws perfectly presenting the songs as deeply affecting naked emotion.

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I accept that just sitting here looking at that picture is the closest I’m ever going to get to an Oculus Rift.

‘Hmm, yeah, but isn’t modern life, like, already virtual reality, yeah?’

‘Jesus… anyone fancy a pint?’

3/5

There is certainly no artist working in 2014 less concerned with being cool than Norwegian Terje Olsen. In fact there are moments on Todd Terje’s debut that seemed designed to sound especially naff, almost wary of anyone ever having the temerity to consider this music somehow ‘hip’ or ‘groovy’ or ‘with it’ or ‘diddly-pop’ or ‘Mr Tembo’ or ‘that is one exemplary beat daddio’ (what is it the kids say these days?). Listeners of ‘It’s Album Time’ (even the title itself seems a knowing reference to some abhorrent cheap copied CD sold out of the boot of some lounge singer’s Volvo in the pub car park latest) of a certain age will think of nothing else but the Vegas levels of Sonic the Hedgehog. Terje wants this though, he wants music that’s as inclusive and desires that every listener possible enjoys this album so has attempted to be as widely likeable as possible, and true to his intention you can’t imagine anyone not loving ‘It’s Album Time’. Brian Ferry’s appearance on the Robert Palmer (naturally) cover Johnny and Mary really comes out of left field, but even though it stands out like a sore Martini it’s still a lovely addition.

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Absolutely banged on perfection, rarely can an album’s cover have better represented the sounds inside. And you just know whatever cocktails are on that piano are just the right ones too

5/5

If we were going to make a list of British music’s most underrated and undervalued artists, or simply to list down the ones that have simply and consistently been amongst the best then surely Gruff Rhys would be… I dunno… top 243? I’m not really into making lists, but you get the idea. It’s almost as if Rhys enjoys being quietly and secretly brilliant, quite happy with people simply writing him off as a bit of an oddball and getting on with releasing more fantastic albums while hiding behind the facade of being strange. Gruff’s fourth solo outing quite easily deserves to be lined up beside the very best of an extremely consistent back-catalogue. The Whether (Or Not) may be the 21^st century’s finest clap-a-long song, and Rhys’s voice is as similarly underrated as other facets of his ability but just try listening to the wordless chorus of Lost Tribes and not melting. A concept album of sorts built around the story of John Evans, who traversed the USA in search of mythical fellow Welsh speakers and ended up plotting the Missouri River, all of which I of course worked out on my own just listening to it.

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You have to admire Gruff Rhys, perhaps other artists would have based their record around John Evans’ story but few would show the dedication required to make their own little John Evans Muppet (sat to picture’s right) to complete the impression.

4/5

Christ, as if two Eno albums already wasn’t enough, Bournemouth’s William Doyle debut as East India Youth marks him out as a very obvious heir apparent. Doyle left his former band Doyle & The Fourfathers (who in a desperate bid to retain his signature obviously incorporated his name into the band’s own, akin to Arsenal offering Fabregas the captaincy in the hope that the act would dissuade him from joining Barcelona) in frustration at their slightly more limited guitar sound wasn’t giving his music the setting and space it deserved. ‘Total Strife Forever’ is a brilliant vindication of his decision, a fantastic clash between moody synths, hard electronica and simple beautiful melodies you’d expect from your local acoustic-tugging singer-songwriter (Heaven How Long being perhaps the best example), an amalgamation simply not conceivably possibly through his old band’s methods. There have been a lot of victories for electronics over traditional instruments this year haven’t there? Face it puny humans, you lose, the machines have won. This album doesn’t really work as well in individual parts (none of the title track four part symphony will be turning up on ‘Now 89’) but instead deserves to be completely lost inside, like the World’s greatest multi-story car park.

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I’m still pondering the significance of William Doyle choosing to present East India Youth’s debut by covering it with his As-Level art project.

I am not however pondering why it was he only got a C-

2/5

‘Black everything/Ask David/Black everything/You can ask David Cameron if we’re living in the dark ages’

Goodness, this list has got rather political all of a sudden hasn’t it? There was a fellow singing about an elephant not long ago wasn’t there? I miss those days. Ghetts’ debut studio album would be an absolute classic if he took a few tips from The Roots and trimmed off the fat a bit, as it is the 17 (!) tracks here end up just sounding bloated and excessive. The album fires out of the traps viciously and so raging with anger that you imagine the lyrics were originally written in capitals and posted as a YouTube comment, a sense refined by the fact Ghetts has a wonderfully caustic rapping style that frequently threatens to boil over into feral screaming. If the more introspective 10^th track What I’ve Done marked the album’s end you’d have a work of near perfect genius, yet unfortunately the album continues and as Ghetts lets us know how much he loves his beautiful girlfriend and starts eulogising about his kid and it all loses a lot of its righteous anger and therefore its main selling point. Still, only using Ghetts’ debut as a small example I can only assume the British hip hop scene is in rude health. Although obviously I’m now way near cool enough to really comment…

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Yes! That’s how you do an album cover! Young kid with a red bandanna hiding his face- Ghetts has obviously studied the classics and knows his aggressive little onions

Phew… Jesus, just listened to the album and now I need a lie down before I start this…

‘Deep Fantasy’ is an awesomely abrasive album, a brilliant screech of anger of what it’s like to be female in 2014. And it’s very angry. Why wouldn’t it be though? The patriarchy has somehow convinced people that ‘feminism’ is a dirty word, in 2014 we don’t just reject the ridiculous calls for equality from women, we laugh at them. Ha! Feminists! Too ugly and fat to get a boyfriend so they try and take away my page 3! The fact that someone could still write a song about rape and conceivably call it I Believe You is a damning indictment of a hideous issue in today’s society- about one in 30 woman who accuses someone of rape can expect the accused to go to court- despite what ‘Gone Girl’ may put across do we really believe that 96.6% of women…? Actually that’s a bit of a spoiler isn’t it? It’s not all japes about sexual abuse- Mish Way’s lyrics, which should perhaps be taught in schools, cover subjects as broad as depression, body image and disparity of employment pay and generally stoke the feeling that perhaps she wouldn’t be Dapper Laughs’ biggest fan. I better stop now actually, starting to sound like a fucking fat lezzer feminist.

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Ah jeez, there’s far too much going on in this cover, and I just know there’s about a thousand profound political statements being made that are just flying over my head.

I can’t take it all in! Can’t it just be a photo of the band standing against a wall or something? Holding your instruments so I can identify you?

2/5

‘Green Language’ starts so wonderfully. After about 4/5 tracks you’re absolutely hooked, you’ve heard the awesome collage of sounds Russel Whyte throws at you, you hear musical stabs that really shouldn’t work piercing areas that have no business existing, you laugh at the little trick he plays at the start of A Glimpse when he throws a guitar solo in and kids you into thinking for a second that the album’s going to morph into some sub-Pendulum dance rock. You’re converted. This is the best dance album of the year. No, the best dance album ever. No, the best thing ever. You take your clothes off, and throooooooow them in the lake. Yes! Yes! Give me more! Then… It stops… Or rather the album badly loses momentum around the time guest vocalists are invited and Whyte obviously become more concerned with making his big club hit- Danny Brown’s Attak is pretty Ok, but D Double E’s Up Down stalls the album badly, almost critically. The album slightly peters out with occasional highs and the whole experience ends up feeling like a blast on a laughing gas balloon- an initial blast of elated jubilation that dies off and quickly turns into a something close to confused embarrassment.

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The two embracing flamingos beautifully capture the euphoric feelings of the album’s opening. The back of the CD more represents the second half of the album however, and instead shows the two flamingos awkwardly avoiding each other at work and one flamingo unfriending the other on Facebook after the fucker never calls back

4/5

Aaaaaaah bollocks, I really wanted to hate this, really. Damon Albarn has transformed into such a critics’ darling that if ‘Everyday Robots’ consisted of nothing else but a 25 minutes recording of the singer rhythmically slapping his buttocks while occasionally shouting ‘PEANUTS!’ it would still be acclaimed as a work of artistic genius and absolutely every review would include some snide comparison to Beady Eye (though Albarn has still to release a solo song as fun as The Roller). Annoyingly though ‘Everyday Robots’ is very good. Albarn now wishes he were as old as, say, Leonard Cohen so that maybe his tired and brow-beaten persona might fit better. The whole concept of technology begatting isolation and loneliness seems an extremely tired idea now, but Albarn explores it nicely nonetheless. And besides when he tries to go off message he ends up writing a jumpy ditty about a fucking baby elephant called Mr Tembo which is laughably out of place here and couldn’t have sparked more controversy if it tweeted a photo of a white van man’s England flag, and yet the song iss still agonizingly brilliant.

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Albarn’s new sound encapsulated, the singer slumps dejected in the corner.

‘Damon! Damon! What’s the problem??’

‘I dunno…’ he sighs ‘It’s just… people…’

‘Jesus… Anyone fancy a pint?’

4/5

Listening to ‘Shriek’ it’s difficult to comprehend how Wye Oak were right up until this release a pretty standard guitar band. The sheer wall of sound created by the synths on this album suits the band’s sound so perfectly that it’s almost unimaginable that they ever managed to do things differently. A fair comparison would be how Tegan and Sara tried a similar jump to electronic sounds last year and instead sounded rather forced and artificial. Here Jenn Wasner’s voice glides within the electronic sounds so perfectly that rarely since ‘Superman 3’ have we seen a woman so exquisitely intertwined with a machine, only this time obviously it’s less likely to be so horrific it completely traumatises your childhood and mean that more than twenty years later you still can’t bring yourself to kiss a robot. If I were to describe the album in five words it would be lush, lush, lush, lush, lush, lush. Wait, how many words was that…?

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The sad denouement to this tale is that the wind changed and Stuart’s face really did stay like that.

Ah shit, I can do better than that.

That was rubbish wasn’t it? Can I try it again?

4/5