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

Here's numbers 6 and 5 in the most po-faced countdown on the web....


6. Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises.

Thankfully, my Mark Kozelek retrospective from earlier this year wasn't wasted as the man behind Sun Kil Moon gave us a lovely record solely consisting of voice and nylon-strung classical guitar.

Very much an album about place, it opens with the flamenco sound of 'Alesund', a song about Kozelek getting fed up being asked if he's a musician when he takes his guitar on flights. "No this is not my guitar/I'm bringing it to a friend" go the opening lines. Kozelek has never been comfortable with being known, but it's a more playful nod to fame than the songs found on the sad and sombre April, his last record under the SKM moniker.

Kozelek's music has always been influenced by people and place, and the songs here continue to nod towards memories of things past and people lost. There's the gorgeous 'Third and Seneca', replete with about three different mood changes (in fact, most of the songs contain diversions at least once), 'Sam Wong Hotel' and the coastal hymnal of 'Half Moon Bay'. Many are situated in San Francisco, the place that contains the most memories of his lost muse, Katy.

However, there are always bright moments in SKM's music, and the playful 'You Are My Sun' is one of the finest moments on the record.

Admiral Fell Promises proves that even 20 years after starting to make records with Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek still has some creativity up his sleeve. Perfectly capable of plugging in and rocking when he needs to (and I fully expect the next record to be a rocker), this record shows that a deft touch on guitar and words sung with meaning and emotion are all that's needed sometimes. A powerful record.




5. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz / All Delighted People EP.

The mercurial Mr Stevens surprised fans this year by releasing not one but two new records, and we all breathed a sigh of relief as both were proof that he's overcome his existential crisis and is back to producing quite wonderful music.

There can be no doubt of the prodigious talent of Sufjan Stevens, and he's the one artist from the US "indie" scene who really pushes the boundaries in terms of what can be held up as modern pop music. All Delighted People is record of the two that sounds most like the Sufjan Stevens of the recent 50 states project (something that was said in jest, it turns out). It seems to gather together a series of songs that closes the door on the Michigan / Illinoise days, and points the way to the songs found on The Age of Adz.

There's the gorgeous folk songs of 'Heirloom', 'Arnika' and 'The Owl and the Tanager', none of which would be out of place on Seven Swans, but the EP hangs on two versions of the title track. The original version begins the record, and almost collapses under the weight of its angelic choir, and the "classic rock" version calls to mind the various interpretations of 'Chicago' found on The Avalanche, and is probably Stevens' most straight ahead rock song to date.

The Age of Adz is something else entirely. It ditches a number of the usual Sufjan tropes - acoustic instrumentation, songs about people, place and history - and brings in electronics, programmed drums and - gasp! - autotune? Fear not, there's still angelic choirs and plenty of orchestration for those listeners who are a bit scared by digital equipment.

It's also the most personal record Stevens has given us, and it's easy to pick out the tough times he's been through recently. There's explicit references to God, to a loved one, and nods to whatever it was that he went through in the past twelve months. It's a dark record, but extremely enjoyable.

Highlights include the electropop of 'I Walked' and 'Too Much', the gentle pleading of 'Now That I'm Older' and 'Vesuvius', but The Age of Adz really excels itself with the 25min closer 'Impossible Soul'. It contains more ideas in that space of time than most artists have in their whole careers: veering from horns, heavy string orchestration, the aforementioned dreaded autotune, a bit of R&B, a dance interlude and ends on some gorgeous finger-picked folk.

If anything, this is a huge two-fingers up to the generally accepted ideas about how music should be made and released, and further evidence that Sufjan Stevens should be treasured.