Tag: albums of the year 2015

52: Balthazar: Thin Walls

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

This album was recorded in sporadic bursts whenever the Belgian band had any time off at all from their hectic touring schedule, so it’s a mystery how despite being born from such chaos their third album sees them sound like the world’s most laid back band. Not so much relaxed per se, more that this album is the sound of someone who’s partied hard all night and at 5am is really considering whether it’s time to go to bed now. Chamber pop par excellence that perhaps peaks at track five and tails off ever so slightly but is still a wonderful collection, though one that’s probably best used to perfectly pass the time rather than truly lose yourself in

‘Fun’ Fact: ‘Name a famous Belgium’ has been scientifically proven as the most boring thing it’s possible to say, especially if you follow it by smugly declaring ‘Not counting Poirot!!’

Peaks at track five? What’s that then? ‘Wait Any Longer‘. You know you could really just look that up?

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53: Years & Years: Communion

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

There’s something undeniably and inherently dislikeable about Years & Years: maybe it’s the association with the Brit Awards Critics’ Choice (bleugh!) award, which in the past has seen the nation’s most respected and influential people that could be easily and cheaply contacted at short notice choose whichever acts will irritate everyone the most over the next 12 months (Sam Smith, Tom Odell, Jessie J); perhaps it’s the fact that they generally look like spotty students accosting you outside Boots trying to get you to sign a petition banning the student union bar from playing ‘Jump Around‘ by House of Pain; maybe it’s because singer Olly Alexander once acted in fucking Skins. Whatever the reason, they frequently disarm that hatred by crafting music that’s close to divine, commercial without sounding soullessly contrived and bridging pop and dance rather irritatingly well. The album isn’t a constant success, but its highs are magnificently high.

Hmmm… ‘If your girl steps up I’m slapping the ho’… Maybe that song should be banned…

‘Fun’ Fact: Olly Alexander’s acting talents aren’t limited to ‘Skins’: he once played a ‘demanding shopper’ in the ‘Google Analytics in Real Life Site Search’ corporate video, and most intriguingly appeared in the film ‘Funny Bunny’ as a character called ‘Titty’.

‘Its highs are magnificently high’? I find that very hard to believe… ‘Shine‘ is one of the best pop songs of recent years

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54: Will Butler: Policy

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Obviously tired of the sonic spheres and aural palettes he regularly releases out into the stratosphere when with Arcade Fire in his day job WB apparently wanted to strap everything down for a while and record the most straight forward garage rock album he could. While that may be relative, and the most straight forward garage rock he could make still sees synthesisers frequently rear their dirty heads into view like particularly shameful deformed step-children that Butler keeps chained up in the attic, this is generally very straight-up stuff. Definitely diverting and a brilliantly accomplished collection of ever-so-slightly meat and potatoes indie, though it’s hardly going to move, move, move any mountain and I’ve already forgotten what I’m talking about…

‘Fun’ Fact: It can’t be good for your confidence if your parents name your brother ‘Win’

28 minutes? I ain’t got time for that shit… Then ‘What I Want‘ may be (wait for it, wait for it, wait for it) what you want

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55: Briana Marela: All Around Us

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Aaaaaawww, this album is just so sweet and lovely that I want to pinch Briana Marela’s cheek between my thumb and knuckle and wobble it adoringly until the muscle comes off in my hand in a bloody fleshy lump (hmm, got a little bit dark there didn’t it?). I can’t find Briana Marela’s listed age anywhere online, but listening to the child-like emotion and wonder on show I can only assume that actually she’s about 8 years old and by admitting to my affections I have placed myself on some sort of register. The music is never less than lovely, and though there’s a certain lightness to the album that may place it on the wrong side of consequential Marela is always just the right amount of odd to always keep it interesting.

‘Fun’ Fact: ‘All Around Us’ was recorded in Reykjavik, like every fucking album ever.

Child-like, aye? Do you know I have a recurring dream where I drown a succession of toddlers in my sink? Um… OK… Listen to ‘Friend Tonight‘ and see if it helps

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56: AWOLNATION: Run

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Oh yes, this is largely unsubtle, unpretentious fun that’s harming nobody, like seeing if you can eat a bowl of nuts using only your tongue, or perhaps just spending the evening carefully and methodically inserting said nuts into your rectum. AWOLNATION are certainly unafraid of sounding a little ridiculous, you just hope the laughs they frequently illicit with their blasts of bombast (Blasts of Bombast were a brilliant band) are always intentional. This is the type of album you’d imagine Freddie Mercury’s Queen would be making in 2015, and I’m aware how much of a double edged compliment that is. It’s impossible to truly dislike this collection, there’ll always be a track to raise something of a smile.

‘Fun’ Fact: Singer Aaron Bruce was given the name ‘AWOL’ in school due to always being late and started to use the moniker in rap battle. Rap battles!!

I haven’t smiled since mother was eaten alive by that awful man pretending to be Bradley Walsh, you really think any one track will return a smirk to these cold and crusty lips? Try ‘Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)‘

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57: Braids: Deep in the Iris

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Braids’ third album aims at deep music lushness infused with blasts of cerebral electronica but too often falls a little too short, instead occasionally calling to mind David Gray’s ‘Babylon‘, presumably unintentionally (because, really, who would you aim for that on purpose???). However, ‘Deep in the Iris’ contains ‘Miniskirt‘ which is such an amazing song both musically and lyrically that it makes the entire album worthwhile.

‘Fun’ Fact: Singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston has a name that sounds like she once sued Mark Zuckerberg for ownership of the Facebook brand.

TL:DR, can you just say the name of that great song again for people like me far too lazy to read 94 words? ‘Miniskirt’, you absolute cretin

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58: Adele: 25

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It can easily be underplayed just precisely how big Adele’s music is, it can seem sometimes that she is single handedly keeping the very concept of recorded music sales afloat. Her last album ’21’ is currently the second best selling album in Britain ever (a trifling 20th in the world, which is hardly worth even getting out of bed for) around 400’000 copies behind ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, though while The Beatles released that album in a time when the competition was fierce, Adele stands now as pretty much the only musical artist who’s selling albums in any considerable weight whatsoever. So ’25’ arrives, intending to charm those same 21.3 million people again, preaching to that converted and perverted market of people who have heard of neither YouTube or Spotify. And by God it sounds like a record aimed squarely at the type of people who would describe their favourite type of music as ‘John Lewis’. I know, I know, Adele’s music was clearly not broke and so it wouldn’t make much (financial) sense to fix it, but still it’s disappointing how safe ’25’ is, you’d hope that Adele would use her untouchability to take a track or two into truly interesting places, instead this album is undeniably well done but depressingly unambitious. Even ’21’s lead single ‘Rolling in the Deep‘ sounds like Scott Walker’s ‘Tilt’ in comparison to the horrified aversion to any sort of experimentation on show here. As the record company’s only sure-fire success left it would be commercial suicide to differentiate it even slightly from it’s behemoth predecessor so what’s left is a soulless hole that will likely leave you cold. It will probably sell another 20 million, and we’ll learn nothing in the process, but at least albums will continue to be financially viable for another 12 months.

‘Fun’ Fact: When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister (honest he was, ask your parents) he wrote to Adele to thank her for keeping the nation’s mood up during the recession, calling her “A light at the end of the tunnel”. I’m sorry, but what the actual suffering fuck?

Is it all as depressingly formulaic as a Formula 1 driver in a Formula boat eating baby formula while chanting ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost? The trinitarian formula you mean? I think that’s a little too obscure a reference. It’s pretty much that bad, yes, though I’d like more songs like ‘(Send My Love) To Your New Lover)‘ that even slightly bend the formula

59: Prince: HITNRUN Phase 1

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

There have been at least two – maybe three or four- brilliant Prince albums released in 2015, but the one actually released by Prince is certainly not one of them. Of the two albums he released in 2014 it makes perfect sense that Prince would choose to take his cues from the rubbish one, and ‘Art Official Age’ has two of its songs revisited here, though the very fact he’s reworking songs he released less than 12 months previously is indicative of just what a half-purple-arsed hack job this is. Prince doesn’t even take sole production duties, handing over some of the reigns to some unknown 25 year old called Joshua Welton, who was presumably taking out the bins during the 4 minutes it must have taken Prince to finish this nonentity. And the production is terrible: so loud and brash that it’s impossible to tell how many of these songs were actually quite good before they were pummelled into weeping smithereens by a production that’s about as subtle as a hefty knee to the balls. The best you can say about ‘HITNRUN Phase 1’ (oh God please don’t subject us to phase 2…) is that it resembles more one of his weird 90’s albums rather than one of his truly dreadful ones.

‘Fun’ Fact: Each of Prince’s last 6’543 albums has been referred to as his ‘best since the 80’s’ by at least one person, a record recognised by Guinness. This isn’t even his best album since 2013.

Come on though, even the crap Prince albums have at least one great song on them don’t they? Indeed, though ‘1000 Xs and Os‘ was originally written for Rosie Gaines many moons ago

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60: Drenge: Undertow

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Recently I walked past the once agreeable (and astonishingly still open) Witchwood live venue in Ashton and saw that it was advertising an upcoming gig by a Royal Blood tribute act. While at the time I of course despaired at the obvious signal of the end of days and wept openly in the street, looking back it might have only been indicating an appearance from Drenge (fucking ‘Drenge‘??), those other two horseman of the indie-rock apocalypse. Depressingly by-the-numbers ‘rock’ attempts, one half-decent riff swamped in distortion while the singer barks out nonsense lyrics that are cack-handed attempts at sounding ‘dark’. Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull.

‘Fun’ Fact: Drenge hail from Castleton, which you more than likely visit every 29th May for ‘Oak Apple Day’, where a ‘Garland King’ is paraded around the streets wearing an extremely large garland of flowers, followed by local girls dressed in white with flowers. I can only assume the ceremony ends with the ‘Garland King’ being burnt alive in a giant wicker apple.

Come on man, I want to get my Guitar Hero on, there must be something good for me to rock out to: I don’t hate ‘Never Awake‘, probably due to it being played on 6 Music eight times an hour for the past ten months

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61: Mercury Rev: The Light In You

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The ninth studio album by Ver Rev (as the kids almost definitely call them) is the rather sad and dispiriting sound of a once highly significant band miserably fizzling out. While certainly no disaster it’s such a descent from their truly ground-breaking best into ineffectual rambling that listening may make you question the very point of recorded sound. The band seem uncertain what exactly their music is aiming for other than a place on the Radio 2 playlist and a radical re-think is needed.

‘Fun’ Fact: ‘Sunflower‘ is absolutely the worst thing they’ve ever recorded. Perhaps the worst thing anyone’s ever recorded. Perhaps the worst thing anyone’s ever done.

It can’t all be bad bro, surely? The lead single ‘Are You Ready‘ does the best impression of usefulness

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