Hey, I watched some films this year didn’t I? Now’s as good a time as any to list them, as in you’re unlikely to care any less about it than now:

5 Guardians of the Galaxy

Depending on your mood either the film that proved Marvel studios are currently on such a hot streak that they can take any old shit and craft from it a massively entertaining, enjoyable and frequently hilarious popcorn masterpiece, or just proof that Marvel can slap their logo on a 100 minute video of a pigeon corpse slowly decomposing and it’d still gross $900 million

4 The Wolf of Wall Street

Very confusing for some people, as the film never flashed up a subtitle on screen every 30 seconds explaining that Jordan Belfort’s actions are actually pretty objectionable- how on Earth are we supposed to make these judgements otherwise?

3 Inside Llewen Davis

Movies are about musicians either fall into two camps- the frustrating travails of the outstandingly talented yet tragically unappreciated or the humorous pratfalls of the hilariously terrible. ‘Inside Llewen Davis’ is the Coen’s brilliant snapshot of how life is as a musician who is simply ‘Ok’.

2 Calvary

The difficulties and faced by the unlikelihood of being a generally decent priest. Brendan Gleeson is fast becoming the go-to actor when it comes to choosing reliably decent films to see. He’s in Smurfs 2?? Right, that’s next on my list to watch…

1 Under the Skin

Stunning, disturbing, sexy, scary, beautiful, smart, daring, funny and generally wonderful. Yes, very much like myself.

Ok, sorry about that, back to normal business now:

Aaaaaaaaaaah yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Against Me’s sixth is the greatest and most thrilling blast of pop punk this year by an almost embarrassingly large distance (unless there’s actually a better one higher up, I dunno, in that case it’s the second. Or maybe third or fourth, like I say- I don’t know. Probably should have researched that statement before making it). If it is punk of course- the sparkling urgency and bursting chorus can frequently instead call to mind an especially fun and (importantly) less naff update of glam rock. The band have an obvious knack for great choruses, and every song has a hook so pronounced that Dustin Hoff… Hang on, I’ve done that one already haven’t I? Alright: the hooks are so pronounced that they’re… they’re… in a club’s cloakroom. Nah that’s shit isn’t it? Can’t I just do the Dustin Hoffman one again? If you’ve any idea about the band then you can probably guess that the lyrics mainly concern the difficulties and confusion faced by singer Thomas James as she underwent procedures to become Laura Jane, though I worry that the big story behind the record is in danger of overshadowing just what a fine and coherent example of furious, biting and diverse rock music it is. Closer Black Me Out is absolutely the best song of 2014 to picture yourself shouting at karaoke to- ‘Black me out/I wanna piss on the walls of your house/I wanna chop those brass rings/Off your fat fucking fingers/As if you were a king maker’.

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Eugh. This is a difficult one- it’s horrendously ugly but at the same time the whole idea is that it is ugly and difficult to face up to and process, much like Richard Keys

Either 1/5 or 5/5, depending on how you look at it

Before I start talking about this album, I’m actually legally obliged to present a Buzzfeed style list of all the things that weren’t invented the last time Aphex Twin released an album (2001’s ‘Druqs’) so here goes:

• The Microsoft Zune!

• Shampoo!

• Either Shampoo the band or shampoo the product this time, depending on what you first thought when you just read ‘shampoo’ there!

• The concept of reconciliation!

• The Spanish language!

• Forks!

• Future Islands’ performance on Letterman!

• Dirt! And with it of course the perception of cleanliness!

• Can I stop now?

Yes it’s been a hilariously long time between albums (or at least solo disks, Richard D James has continuously released music under countless other guises) and since that last release was a probable career lowlight expectations weren’t sky high for ‘Syro’. It delivers and then some though, perhaps because it’s probably the most oddly traditional album James has ever done- it’s neither showy nor controversial for the sake of it and simply has enough confidence that the sheer quality of the music would shine through on its own terms. And what music- ‘Syro’ simply sounds wonderful, no album this year or even decade better rewards the use of headphones. While you may be initially disappointed that it doesn’t quite break boundaries and wank off conceptions of music in quite the same way you may by now be expecting from an Aphex Twin release- there’s nothing particularly new here- the wonderful arrangements and even fantastic (spit) melody makes the record one of the year’s best. About 12^th best I’d say.

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Nope, nothing much going on here, but do you see the enduring power of a logo kids?

Seriously, that shit’ll pay the bills for years

3/5

Yes, we’ve all seen their wonderful and wonderfully batty David Letterman performance, the stone cold classic pop ‘moment’ that introduced the World to both the showstopping voice and the- shall we say?- ‘eccentric’ performance style of front man Samuel T Herring. In fact, if you didn’t see the name ‘Future Islands’ and immediately burst out the impression that you’ve been working on for the last 9 months then you’re so dismally out of touch that I can only assume it’s a medical condition. Future Islands are easy to mock, but isn’t that a facet of a lot of great pop music? As good as the albums are, I’m willing to best you don’t have an Elbow or Sun Kil Moon ‘bit’ that you break out at parties (you can maybe manage a nice Parklife skit, your Gruff Rhys really needs a Power Rangers helmet to work, while your Ben Frost tribute actually involves you violently gutting half the people in the room and wailing as you smear their blood across your face) whereas Future Islands arrived (a classic four album/six year overnight success) with a style and persona so easy to ape and with their own World you so want to be trapped inside. And the actual music? The music is fabulous, 10 killer choruses, bewitching melodies and brilliant bass lines, not one duff track and some especially heavy highlights.

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Ah jeez guys, I was really on your side there, but this is pretty awful. If you just said you know how to use Photoshop I would have believed you, honest.

1/5

I think we can all agree that Kelis Rodgers is undoubtedly A Good Thing, reliably producing fantastic and fantastically cutting edge pop music for more than 15 years now. Yet there’s always been the strange and nagging feeling that she’s never been anyway near as successful as you’d think should be her absolute right- even her commercial peak 2003’s ‘Tasty’ never broke the album chart top ten and nobody even bothered releasing her 2001 second album ‘Wanderland’ in her native US. It seems with her fabulous sixth album she’s going all out in pursuit of the massive hit her talent and fame seems to demand. The only real gripe you can have with ‘Food’ is that it’s by far and away the most conventional and ‘normal’ release of her career, and a second may be that that her amazing voice can sometimes disappointingly sound like it’s pushed a little too low in the mix in thrall to the general tunes themselves. But when the tunes are this good it’s hard to muster up much in the way of complaint. ‘Food’ absolutely detonates out of the traps with an almost dangerously exhilarating opening five of Jerk Ribs, Breakfast, Forever Be, Floyd and Runnin and although the album then catches a small breath out of fear of any coronary risks it never truly lets up over 51 minutes and you can easily imagine any of its 13 tracks being number 1 for weeks. The results? A number 20 in the UK and the dizzy heights of 73 in America. Fuck ’em Kelis, they’re not good enough for you.

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Hey! It actually says ‘Food’! This is literally the first time I’ve noticed and the record came out in April.

Come on Kelis- how are people supposed to buy it if they can’t read the fucker?

2/5

Are Elbow now a victim of their own continued brilliance? Of course ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ is wonderful, but you just expect that don’t you? We don’t just believe and assume every Elbow release will be fantastic, it’s now such an anticipated event that we simply take for granted how fabulous it is. The album was released, received rave review, then was swiftly forgotten. Perhaps Elbow have simply settled into a groove now- content to forever release great music though never really challenging their sound. At least their latest release doesn’t contain a shameless One Day Like This ape akin to ‘Build a Rocket Boys’ Open Arms. As fabulous as the album is, you can’t help but dream that they’d let loose a bit more and throw off the self-imposed shackles of their sound a little more frequently, the absolutely fan-fucking-brillaintly-awesome-tastic Charge is a small hint of just how amazing Elbow can be when they think slightly more outside the box of their own conventions.

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‘What do you ponder child? Are you already at such a young age wary of life’s eternal struggles? Yet you see in the distance some great beauty and are still in thrall to the delightful possibilities of human condition?’

‘No, just wondering when you’re gonna clean up that crap I’ve just done’

‘Jesus… Anyone fancy a pint?’

3/5

When you’re told openly gay house musician Drew Daniel is releasing an album of electro covers of black metal standards (well, some of the tracks are ‘standards’ apparently, although I’m told that some of the tracks by such luminaries of scene as Venom, Darkthrone, Sarcofago and- oh yes- Impaled Northern Moonforest are slightly more ‘obscure’ cuts) you immediately assume it’s going to be some hilarious work of cutting satire, exposing the genre’s occasional (frequent??) brushes with gruesome homophobia, alongside its forays into sexism, racism and just good old fashioned hatred. In fact it’s almost the opposite- Drew Daniels has in fact long been a committed black metal fan and instead uses the record to try and highlight just how brilliant some of the music can be– ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage’ is actually an attempt to show that the genre doesn’t just deserve to be solely associated with Norwegian murders and church burning. While I can’t say the record has convinced me to rush off to Our Price and purchase a few choice efforts from the Hellhammer back-catalogue, the album is nevertheless a resounding success aurally- 10 brilliant songs that you approach first as a curiosity and soon grow to appreciate as work of uncommon genius. Ready To Fuck probably best encapsulates the record’s mission in every sense, while Satanic Black Devotion throwing in a sample of Snap’s The Power illustrates how the project never completely jetisons an underlying sense of humour, because really how could you approach such a thing completely straight faced??

So AN really did a song called Let There Be Ebola Frost?? Brilliant…

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Brilliantly captures the record’s spirit with graphic, grotesque yet intensely humorous images of men getting up to all sort of grot. Includes the record’s sub-heading ‘Electronic Profanations of Black metal Classics’

4/5

Blimey…

Ben Frost’s eleventh record is precisely the kind of challenging and uncompromisingly dark experience many people expected Aphex Twin’s (more on him later. Or maybe not. No spoilers here) record would be. ‘A U R O R A’ is an almost maliciously difficult listen, aggresively intense and the kind of record that would snap your neck for even suggesting in passing that it maybe crack a smile. It’s very possible that Frost was so uncomfortable with the general happy-go-lucky disposition of his native Australia that he simply had to decamp to Iceland to find surroundings that better suited his music’s wrought intensity. Jesus Christ- has there been any decent album recorded the past few years that hasn’t got some link to Iceland? I can only assume the entire country is just some floating Studio 54 that any musician worth their salt simply has to frequent. Ben Frost’s ideal location wouldn’t be Studio 54 of course- in his perfect World he’d be convulsing on the pavement outside the Viper Room, choking painfully to death on his own vomit. ‘A U R O R A’ demands to be listened to as a whole, and when I say ‘demands’ I mean you worry that if you were to break the record down at all it would actually leap from the speakers and throttle you to death with the extension cables. Perhaps the record’s deep sense of dramatic dread can get a little overwrought at times, but it’s such a threateningly wonderful experience that you dare not complain.

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What… is… that…?

Is it… some guy being electrocuted…?

Ah shit, this is like Ringu isn’t it? Now I’ve seen that I’m gonna die

4/5

Sky Ferreira was signed at 15 in the hope she could perhaps become the next teen pop sensation, general commercial failures and disputes with her record company together with the odd occasional run in with the law means that her debut finally arrives when she’s a grizzled and hideously disillusioned veteran of this scummy business at the practically pension age of 23. ‘Night Time My Time’ isn’t shy about laying out just quite how horrendous and difficult life as Sky Ferreira is, she leaves you in no doubt that she has pretty much has the worse life ever. It seems in every song she’s forever beating off or holding back ‘the hounds of hell‘, like one of the biggest draw back of her early record company support has been the constant interference of Cerberus. If you want an album to take the piss out of in 2014 (actually released way back in October 2013 in the US) then this is absolutely the one. The whole Sky Ferreira mystique is almost beyond parody. The music however is fucking brilliant. ‘Night Time My Time’ is absolute pop/punk-perfection, such a wonderful blast of bubblegum ridiculous that the whole persona simply works in as a package making the album a brilliant pop thing, regardless of how intentional the effect is. Ferreira’s deep disillusion with the business gives her a voice a wonderfully bored and jaded sound that underlays just how fantastic the pop songs are– Selena Gomez would kill for tracks this joyously good.

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Boooooooooooooobs!

Actually, there actually exists a widely held theory that the only reason this album’s been in any way successful is because she shows a nipple on the cover, so to be honest I can’t really be arsed making any effort here while such beliefs seriously exist.

3/5

On his debut Eric Bergland referred to himself as ‘ceo’ but now on this sophomore effort he feels confident enough to use to name ‘CEO’. If someone has such a shockingly casual disregard for the standard use of capitalisation you can only imagine what kind of crazy music he’s capable of. ‘Wonderland’ does not disappoint thankfully, painting with musical ribbons that often sound like you’ve violently thrown a packet of Crayolas hard into the face of the craziest guy at the asylum and angrily barked the instruction that you need a picture drawn of a clown riding a stegosaurus. Only, you know, in a good way. You’ll even forgive him naming a song OMG when the results are quite so fantastic and I can state with some confidence that there has been no song this year quite as well suited to whoop-whoop-a-whooping along to as Harikari. The only real problem with listening to Bergland’s second is that any record you listen to after it is going to sound ridiculously slight and undercooked in comparison- every wonderful song here (and they all are wonderful) is a gloriously bonkers kaleidoscope of sounds that frequently introduce noises you’d never previously known existed never mind not considered them songworthy. Well that’s not the only problem- I suppose I can imagine extended listens could possibly send you insane, but Jesus Christ what kind of nanny state is this?

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If you find this cover in any way slightly ridiculous there’s a big chance this album isn’t for you.

4/5