Top 33 of the Year.....The Top Ten!

Here's numbers 8 and 7.....one is a two hour epic, the other a 30min reason as to why the album still matters



8. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me.

Well, we had more than one on Joanna as this was an epic 3xLP release from the elfin harpist.

Spanning over two hours in length, it's a record that' still revealing more and more to me a number of months down the road. Okay, so her voice may still be a bit of an acquired taste to some but Newsom is developing that once squeaky vocal into something almost pop, and in the process opening up her music to new audiences.

While Have One On Me shares similarities with the medieval Ys, it delves deeper into orchestration with layers of woodwind, strings and brass, alongside the more traditional guitars and drums (the brilliant Ryan Francesconi and Neal Morgan, also responsible for the lovely shortened versions of the songs found on the 2010 tour undertaken by Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band), and of course the gorgeous harp and piano playing of Ms Newsom.

Newsom shows a lightness of touch on most of the songs, meaning that the orchestration is never bombastic, and marries well to her voice and playing. You might find a reference point in Joni Mitchell, who applied pop sensibilities to jazz and classical styles, especially in the joyful 'Good Intentions Paving Company' and the bluesy 'Esme'.

Have One On Me is also an album that you can jump into at any point - in fact, you might benefit from listening in little chunks to ease yourself into the world of Joanna Newsom. There are few albums that can immerse you into another world entirely, that contain so many ideas and detours, that we have to cherish people who make music this ambitious. Dazzling.




7. Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago.

Jonathan Meiburg's Shearwater understand perfectly the importance of the album, or the album-as-concept. The Golden Archipelago, a record about island life and the third in a trilogy that includes Palo Santo and Rook, is something that has to be listened to as a whole to fully connected with the grandiose beauty produced by the band.

As is always the case with Shearwater, there's a mixture of restraint and explosion on the album - generally easy to spot as it coincides either with Meiburg singing with a gentle croon, or grandstanding with yelping vocals. Witness the middle portion of the record where we go from the almost-not-there 'Hidden Lakes' to the roaring 'Corridors', a story of prison islands. Talk Talk still remain the only real comparison to the music that Shearwater produces.

While Meiburg's vocals are stunning, the real star of the show is drummer Thor Harris. One moment he can be pounding away, the next he's instinctively and delicately finding his way around his kit. To call Harris a drummer is to tell only half the story: playing live he also performs on the clarinet, glockenspiel and other percussion, and uses a violin bow on his cymbals.

Once you realise that Meiburg is singing about the gradual decline of things that matter to him - birds, the oceans, the air and the world around us -in a way that's never lecturing or trite, you can understand the power and the beauty in music like this, and how it can still be the most affecting thing in this crazy universe.