Getting it Wrong: A Chat with Jamie from Audio Antihero

Audio Antihero is a record label that specialises in all shades of off-kilter indie music. The label's very first release was the furiously fidgety We're Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On to Block Out the Noise by Nosferatu D2, and since then Audio Antihero's purview has expanded outwards to include everything from folk music to laptop pop, experimental soundscapes to route-one punk.

The man at the helm of the Audio Antihero frigate is Jamie Halliday. Jamie lived in London when the label first launched, but he has since moved to the USA, a country that - as you may be aware - recently elected TV business guy Donald Trump as its leader. In the wake of Trump's inauguration, Jamie (with the help of many cool bands and artists from the US and elsewhere) put together a compilation album called Unpresidented Jams to raise money for the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Top 10 Albums of 2014

Time for the big one, then. I've already told you my favourite songs of 2014, and with that warm-up out of the way, I'm now ready to reveal my favourite albums.

Frankly, I can't quite believe that it's been a whole year since Quiet Marauder scooped top honours in December 2013, but a year it has been and we're about to find out who is following in their footsteps. We know that it won't be any of the bands from my Honourable Mentions list; those albums were good, but not quite good enough for the final list.

Without further ado, then, here are The Album Wall's Top 10 Albums of 2014:

10) Commune by Goat

World Music, Goat's first album, was pretty good, but I never managed to shake the feeling that it wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. Commune is a lot closer to being that album; it feels much more full-on and much more mystical than its predecessor, and that full-on mysticism is what makes Goat such a great prospect. That and the rhythms - I particularly like Bondye, which uses metal chains as a percussion instrument.

Standout Tracks: Talk to God // Bondye

Top 20 Songs of 2014

Great albums would be nothing without great songs so before I reveal my Top 10 Albums of 2014, I'd like to share some of the best songs I've heard this year. Some you will know, some you may have missed, but all of them are excellent and that's an Album Wall guarantee.

Just to clarify, any song is eligible as long as its parent album was released in 2014. That stonking new Modest Mouse song, for example, is not on the list; even though we're listening to it here and now in 2014, the new album won't be out until March 2015, and so as far as I'm concerned it's not a 'Song of 2014'.

Also, I'd finished compiling this list before Lampshades on Fire was made available to hear, so there we are. Now, without further ado, here are my Top 20 Songs of 2014!

20) Did I Ever Love You by Leonard Cohen

This song attracted a lot of criticism for its "bouncy country" section that "sounds like Mumford & Sons", but whatever - I still love it, and the contrast between those sad, achy verses and that abruptly upbeat chorus is one of the best things about it.

Five Years of Audio Antihero

An antihero is, put simply, someone who does heroic things but doesn't behave in a heroic way. Wolverine is a common example; he fights on the side of good, but he's a drinker, a smoker, and a bit of an all-round curmudgeon, none of which are normally considered to be heroic qualities.

Let's apply this trope to the music industry. A traditional 'hero' would be the label who put out catchy, accessible music that everybody instantly loves. Audio Antihero, on the other hand, have a slightly different approach:

"We know, we know. You THINK you want a squeaky-clean pop song, but deep down, that's not really what you're looking for. Here's the music that you really NEED: some wonky punk stuff, a folk song that sounds like it was recorded in the bowels of a ship, and a nine-minute droney thing."

I only came across Audio Antihero last year. The first AA release I listened to was There is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passing of Time by The Superman Revenge Squad Band, and while that one grabbed me more or less immediately, it was followed by left-turn after left-turn after left-turn.

Stop Holding Back: Jan-Apr '14 Playlist

A couple of weeks ago (i.e. around the end of April), I created a playlist containing my favourite songs of the year so far. I've decided to share it here - not only are the songs really good, I'm also really pleased with how it flows as a playlist.

See, this isn't a bumper-sized free-for-all like my summer playlist. That was one to shuffle and enjoy for an entire afternoon; this is a tight, ten-track affair that was carefully sequenced for the best possible listening experience.

So sit back and feast your ears on the 10 best songs of (the first four months of) 2014. I'll put the songs here without comment for now, and add some more details tomorrow.

(N.B. I would have embedded this as a Spotify playlist but My Name is Ian hasn't put his bloomin' album on Spotify. Thanks for that, Ian - now I have to embed ten things instead of one. Yeesh.)

1) Cult of Love by Dum Dum Girls (from Too True)

Too True isn't a particularly spectacular album, but it does boast the best opening track of the year so far. Cult of Love is a charging krautrock bull of a song, recalling the best parts of goth music among other things.

Dead or Alive?

Here are two albums that came out today:



The one on the right is Goodbye, Cagoule World by Benjamin Shaw; the one on the left is I'm Dead by Glimmermen, a band from Dublin. The former is the latest offering from the consistently intriguing Audio Antihero label, while the latter was sent to me in an email by somebody who thought I might appreciate it. I'm Dead actually seems to have been available for some time, but I'm told that today marks the album's proper UK release.

You might be wondering why I've lumped these two albums together instead of reviewing them individually, and it's because they land on either side of the same divide. Cagoule World is a sickly-sounding album about being alive; I'm Dead is a lively-sounding album about being dead. And so I thought it would be fun to examine them side-by-side.