Merry Christmas!

Hi folks, hope y'all have a good 'un. I'll leave you with this until after the Christmas period, but keep popping in for irregular updates!

Take it away, Sufjan Stevens:

Top 33 of the Year.....the full countdown.

So that's it for the Top 33, I hope you all enjoyed the countdown and didn't find it too long-winded or an excuse to avoid doing some actual proper blogging for the whole of the month of December.

By way of explanation, these are simply my own personal choices for the year rather than a definitive list. The rules are simple: I've listened to and enjoyed these records, and ones that aren't on the list fall under the categories "don't like" or "not heard". As there's not much I've not enjoyed listening to, here's the omissions list for ones I've not heard:

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Sorry Kanye, I enjoyed the GOOD Fridays but I've not listened to the album as a whole. I'm sure it's very good and not an ego trip.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: I've never really taken to this bunch, but after much lobbying I do have the record in my possession and I will listen to it over the Christmas period.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening: Okay, the facts are: LCD Soundsystem Have Not Made A Consistently Good Album. Sorry James Murphy, you don't make the list.

There are others I'm sure, but that explains the thinking.

I must also apologise to Sharon Van Etten. Having heard 'Epic' in the last week or so, I can safely say that it's a brilliant piece of work and if you release something in 2011 I have no doubt it will make my end-of-year list. My ignorance means that you missed out this year. Sorry.

If you'd prefer a more concise look at the year in music, head over to It's Bloggerin' Time! for an excellent 2010 playlist courtesy of Mr C Bell.

Not 'arf, pop pickers!

33. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
32. Warpaint - The Fool
31. Phosphorescent - Here's To Taking It Easy
30. Efterklang - Magic Chairs
29. Glasser - Ring
28. Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy
27. Tamaryn - The Waves
26. Wild Nothing - Gemini
25. Wolf Parade - Expo 86
24. Foals - Total Life Forever
23. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
22. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
21. John Grant - Queen of Denmark
20. Maximum Balloon - Maximum Balloon
19. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
18. Liars - Sisterworld
17. Beach House - Teen Dream
16. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
15. Sleigh Bells - Treats
14. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
13. Bear In Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth
12. Perfume Genius - Learning
11. The Besnard Lakes - Are The Roaring Night
10. The Walkmen - Lisbon
9. The Morning Benders - Big Echo
8. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
7. Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago
6. Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises
5. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz / All Delighted People EP
4. Spoon - Transference
3. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
2. Women - Public Strain
1. The National - High Violet

Top 33 of the Year.....Number 1.

Finally, we reach the top of the tree and for those of you who are regular readers of the blog - or who know me personally - the inevitable has finally happened.....

1. The National - High Violet.
The best band in music today produced the goods once again with their fifth full-length record.

From the moment the fuzzy chords of 'Terrible Love' kick off High Violet, you just know this is going to be something special - and I wasn't let down. There was the thrill of seeing this song performed live on US TV shows early in the release process, and it turned from a fine opening to a record to the song that brought their 2010 live sets to a thrilling close.

The record comes across as a hybrid of the insistent brilliance of Alligator, and the more austere, orchestral Boxer, and turned The National into everyone's favourite band. It's a different kind of mainstream record, not the kind of change that overcame R.E.M when they transformed from southern oddities to stadium rock monsters with Green, but The National do share much with Michael Stipe and co. Matt Berninger's brooding vocals and lyrics are as opaque as Stipe's, and the music masterminds of Aaron and Bryce Dessner are frequently as brilliant as - if not better than - Berry, Buck and Mills.

Where to go next? The stately 'Runaway'? The joy of 'Bloodbuzz Ohio'? The worried blues of 'Anyone's Ghost'? The soothing lullaby of 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks'? Any one of these songs would show you how brilliant these guys are, but I'll pick 'England' as my highlight:



If you don't like this record, you don't like life, and I don't want to be your friend. I'm joking, possibly......this is the sound of a quite special band, let them into your life.

Top 33 of the Year.....Number 2.

Okay, so we've come this far and now let's just go for brevity now that the finishing line is in sight.

2. Women - Public Strain.
This was an incredibly difficult choice. I really wanted to put this record at number one just as a plea for the band not to split up after recent difficulties, but I decided to let the record speak for itself.

In any case, this is the second-best (so nearly best) record released this year that I've had the pleasure of hearing. An angular, angry, noisy, fuzzy, bleak beast of an album, sounding like it was recorded down a drain, but bursting with energy, excitement, harmony and terrific tunes.

The finest moment is the last track, 'Eyesore'. Tight, tense grooves finally give way to the most wonderful outtro riffing which you just want to go forever:



Hopefully not the last song we'll ever hear from Women. A talent too good to fall prey to the rigours of the road.

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

Ooooh, getting close! What's at numbers 4 and 3?

4. Spoon - Transference.

Seven albums in, and Britt Daniel's band continue to weave their angular magic.

Coming after the pop majesty of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, there's an unsettling quality about Transference, with the band taking their studio trickery to new heights. Demo-sounding snippets suddenly surge into full blown productions, vocals suddenly drop out of the mix, there's stereo separations, but above all there's some cracking tunes.

There's the familiar groove of 'Trouble Come Running' and 'Before Destruction', the skeletal funk of 'Who Makes Your Money?' and the frenetic 'Got Nuffin'. The record also contains what's possibly Spoon's most lovely-sounding song, the gorgeous 'Out Go The Lights'.

At the centre of it all, however, is the seething, piano-abusing 'Written In Reverse'. Rarely has Daniel sounded so angry and urgent, bitterly spitting out lines about an unrequited love:



The sound of a band who just enjoy letting their hair down.

3. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest.

Simply a wonderful album about childhood nostalgia and the joy of discovering new music.

Bradford Cox continues to have a knack of being incredibly prolific as the helmsman of Deerhunter while also producing music as Atlas Sound, and Halcyon Digest is an amalgamation of the direct pop of the former and the bedroom electronica of the latter.

Incredibly, on a record full of Cox's brilliant songwriting the highlight is actually guitarist Lockett Pundt's 'Desire Lines'. Having said that, there are so many moments of joy that it's hard to focus in on just one. So here's 'Helicopter' as well:



Can you really argue with the brilliance of an album that reminds of the thrill and excitement of discovering new music? Answer: No.

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.

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.