Top 10 Albums of 2015

2015 has been an excellent year for new music, and selecting just 10 outstanding albums from the riches lately lavished upon my ears was no easy task. Several deserving LPs have cruelly been excluded here, but rules is rules (even if I made them up) and only 10 records can make the final cut.

So here they are: The Album Wall's Top 10 Albums of 2015. How many have you heard?

10) The Sovereign Self by Trembling Bells

This is a glorious folk-proggy mess of an album. The Sovereign Self finds Trembling Bells straddling the river of history, dipping a big net in the water, and throwing everything they catch into the pot. Straightahead krautrock, medieval ballads, psychedelic hard rock...it's all here, bubbling noisily away, and the resulting stew is quite remarkable indeed.

Best Tracks: I is Someone Else // Killing Time in London Fields // Sweet Death Polka

Top 20 Songs of 2015 (Part 2)

Here we go, then - the cream of the cream of the crop. Here are my Top 10 Songs of 2015 (if you missed the first half of this list, click here to read it before continuing):

10) Eugene & Maurice by Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom

(from Don't Believe the Hyperreal)

Eugene & Maurice is a bit of an oddity on Don't Believe the Hyperreal, which is - for the most part - an album of duets. However, this song (the album's closer) is sung by Ariel and Ariel alone, lending a sad, lonely feeling to a song that frankly would have been heartbreaking enough anyway. Eugene & Maurice tells the true story of author Maurice Sendak and his partner Dr Eugene Glynn; since both men are now (spoiler alert!) deceased, I suppose this biography was never going to have a happy ending, but Sharratt's splendidly sad and decidely Anway-esque delivery somehow makes the whole thing even more devastating.

Thoughts on the 2015 Mercury Prize Shortlist

Today, for the first time in years, I found myself taking an interest in the Mercury Prize.

I usually ignore UK releases in favour of new stuff from America, and as such, I'm used to being completely, blissfully unfamiliar with the albums that make up the Mercury shortlist each year. However, 2015 seems to have been an inordinately good year for British music; quite a few of the contenders for my next 'Albums of the Year' list hail from these shores, and I fully expected such outstanding albums as The Race for Space and My Love is Cool to number among the nominees this morning.

And...well, I was half right. Before I go any further, here's the 2015 Mercury Prize shortlist in full:

• Architect by C Duncan
• Are You Satisfied? by Slaves
• At Least for Now by Benjamin Clementine
• Before We Forgot How to Dream by SOAK
• ESKA by ESKA
• Hairless Toys by Róisín Murphy
• How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and the Machine
• In Colour by Jamie XX
• Matador by Gaz Coombes
• My Love is Cool by Wolf Alice 
• Shedding Skin by Ghostpoet
• Syro by Aphex Twin

As you can see, My Love is Cool has made the cut (and rightly so - my finger may be slightly west of the pulse, but Wolf Alice do feel to me like the band of 2015), as has ESKA's tremendous self-titled debut album (I did a Q&A with her back in July, don't ya know). Gaz Coombes is there too, which is ace - I haven't heard Matador, but Supergrass were always one of my favourite bands, and it's great to see Gaz getting some of the recognition he missed out on back in the day.

Green Man 2015: Five Favourites

Well, I'm back from the Green Man Festival, and it was just as I remembered: great music, beautiful scenery, and lots of rain. Before I hop in the shower for a much-needed wash, here's a quick off-the-top-of-my-head list of some of the best acts I saw over the weekend:

Public Service Broadcasting

Long-time readers of The Album Wall won't be at all surprised to see Public Service Broadcasting at the top of this list. Their set on the Far Out stage yesterday was tremendous, even more so than the PSB shows I've seen previously - the new songs from The Race for Space sounded fab, the old songs from Inform-Educate-Entertain sounded fresh and superb (with a few new twists and turns to keep us fans on our toes), and the audience absolutely loved it. The trimmings were marvellous, too; from the dancing brass section to the light-up Sputnik to the surprise astronaut who joined the band onstage towards the end of the show, there was plenty to enjoy besides the always-excellent music.

The Antlers

Last time I saw The Antlers live, the setlist was almost entirely composed of numbers from their then-new album Burst Apart. This time around, they played a roughly equal mix of songs from Burst Apart, old favourite Hospice, and last year's Familiars. These three albums sound very different from one another, but I must say that Peter Silberman et al chose their songs very cleverly this time around; the oldies, like Shiva (from lo-fi Hospice) and Putting the Dog to Sleep (from the more electronic Burst Apart) somehow sounded like they could just as easily have been plucked from Familiars, a more soul-influenced album that deploys lots of horns and longer-form songwriting than any previous Antlers release. Also, DID I MENTION THAT THEY PLAYED PUTTING THE DOG TO SLEEP I FRICKING LOVE THAT SONG OH JESUS 

My Favourite Albums of 2015 (So Far)

Following on from Monday's blog - a list of my 15 favourite songs from the first half of 2015 - today I'd like to look at some of the best albums from that same six-month period.

Detailed below are the five current top contenders for my own personal 'Album of the Year' award; like the songs on Monday, they're listed in random order, just in case I don't hear anything better before Christmas and my current frontrunner actually turns out to be my favourite of 2015. Gotta keep some semblance of suspense, right?

My Love is Cool - Wolf Alice

This album only came out about a fortnight ago, but it's already given my ears many a roughing-up. My Love is Cool is a superb 'hello' album; not only does it establish Wolf Alice as a cool, dangerous outfit that you wish you could be a part of ("You can join us if you think you're wild, you can join us if you're a feral child"), it also demonstrates that this is a band with many an arrow in their quiver. There's a really great range of styles on show here: between sirenic synth numbers, crank-it-up rawk, and slow-building Slowdive homages, there's really no room to get bored.

Standout Track: You're a Germ

My Favourite Songs of 2015 (So Far)

We have now entered the second half of 2015. In recognition of that fact, this entire week will be dedicated to The Album Wall's 2015 Halftime Report - later in the week, I'll be selecting some of my favourite albums of the year so far, as well as highlighting some forthcoming releases that will hopefully be rocking my world between now and New Year's Eve.

Today, though, is all about the songs. Here - in no particular order, are 15 of my favourite tracks from the first 182 days of 2015.

Disclaimer #1 - Not included in this list are songs from albums that have not yet been released, e.g. Dimed Out by Titus Andronicus. That song will undoubtedly prove to be one of the year's best, but as The Most Lamentable Tragedy isn't out until late July, it's not eligible for this halftime list.

Disclaimer #2 - I'm only one person, and while I do get sent a few albums here and there, I do buy most of the music I listen to myself. This does rather limit the number of CDs I'm capable of taking in; if your favourite song doesn't feature in the list below, it may well be because I haven't heard its parent album yet. Feel free to recommend anything I might have missed!

Foreign Object - The Mountain Goats

(from Beat the Champ)

One of the most straightforward songs on both this list and Beat the Champ itself, but that simplicity is very much an asset for Foreign Object, a tight little horn-led thing that's sung from the POV of a wrestler who doesn't care about winning as long as he can "make 'em bleed like pigs".

10 Questions for Public Service Broadcasting

Public Service Broadcasting are on tour at the moment. Having recently left Australia, they're currently in the USA, and they'll be playing in Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic before the end of May. Oh, and they've also got a thirteen-date jaunt around the UK and Ireland booked somewhere in the middle of all that.

This mammoth world tour is being undertaken in support of The Race for Space, PSB's second LP and my personal album of the moment. In fact, I've been so enjoying The Race for Space that I recently jotted down some questions about it and emailed them to the band's management in the vague hope that I might get a response.

And, well, I'm thrilled to announce that J. Willgoose Esq. (the man behind Public Service Broadcasting) was generous enough to answer those questions. Here's what he had to say:

Photo by Paul Hudson

The Race for Space, as an album, is far more thematically unified than Inform-Educate-Entertain. What drove you to write a concept album this time around?

I think the first record was a concept album too, it's just that the concept was basically us. And before that we had The War Room EP, which was obviously conceptual too, and which actually post-dated a lot of the material on the album even though it was released before I-E-E. I really enjoyed that way of working and felt it made the record hang together a lot better and gave it a stronger emotional hook, so I was keen to work that way again.

March Playlist: Roll Up Your Sleeves

March has been another eclectic month here at The Album Wall. Over the past few weeks, I've grappled with foreign languages, explored Cardiff's local music scene, analysed all kinds of different albums, and weighed in on one particularly stupid petition. Below is a 10-track digest of all the music I've been listening to this month.

Last month's playlist is here.

1. Oder Nicht Oder Doch - MIA.

(from Zirkus)
My blog about Zirkus mostly expressed exasperation at the fact that I don't understand the lyrics. Still, this is a solid opener in any tongue - it's actually track 6 on the album, but if Meat Loaf has taught me anything, it's that motorbike engine sounds are always a great way to kick things off.

The Race for Space: Who Wins?

The Race for Space is the second full-length LP from Public Service Broadcasting. It is, unsurprisingly, an album about the USA vs. USSR 'space race', which began in the 1950s and ended sometime in the 1970s. It is also, unsurprisingly, very good indeed. The previous Public Service Broadcasting album (2013's Inform-Educate-Entertain) was very good too, but that was simply a collection of very good songs; this, on the other hand, is a very good *album*.

As boring as you're about to think I am, one of my favourite things about The Race for Space is its sequencing - i.e. the order the tracks are in, and the narrative that this order creates. The title track kicks things off by taking excerpts from JFK's rousing Rice University speech and backing them with an equally rousing choral arrangement, but while this does a great job of firing us up for the various American victories we'll be hearing about later on, it's actually Team Russia that dominates the first half of the record. Sputnik and Gagarin (tracks 2 and 3, respectively) celebrate two big Russian achievements, and they're immediately followed by Fire in the Cockpit, a rather harrowing account of the Apollo 1 accident. Two Russian wins are followed by an utter calamity for America, then another success for the USSR - E.V.A. is all about Alexey Leonov, the first man to leave his spacecraft and move around in open space.

The Race for Space

Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about Public Service Broadcasting's second album and what it might be like. I speculated that it might be - indeed, should be - a concept album, similar to their WW2-themed EP The War Room. But, y'know, longer.

I also recounted some suggestions from people on Twitter:

Oh, and to my delight, I actually received a response from the band shortly afterwards:

Public Sophomore Broadcasting

Will Public Service Broadcasting release a second album? And, if so, what will it contain?

These are questions that I've been pondering recently. I've been listening to last year's Inform-Educate-Entertain album again, and while I maintain that it isn't perfect, it's still an utter barnstormer for the most part.

But how will they follow it up? I suppose they could just do more of the same, but while I wouldn't be unhappy with another album that's exactly like Inform-Educate-Entertain, I would be a little disappointed. We're familiar with PSB's gimmick at this point - it's time for them to take it up a notch.

Glastonbury: Tips for JR

My friend Joshua 'JR' Robson is off to Glastonbury tomorrow (the bands don't start until Friday, but he presumably wants to make damn sure that he's down the front when they do) and he's asked me to recommend a few bands for him to see.

Now, I've never been to Glastonbury myself, but I've had a look at this year's line-up, and there are quite a few acts whose awesomeness I can vouch for. For the benefit of one man, then, here are my Top 5 Bands to See at Glasto '14:

Note: I haven't checked for clashes, so I apologise if any of these artists are on at the same time.

John Grant (The Park Stage, Saturday)
Three times I've seen John Grant now, and three times I've been bowled over by how powerful his songs are. He's got a great knack for welding plain-spoken emotions to big, brilliant tunes, and I personally think he's got one of the best voices in contemporary music. Oh, and his stage presence suggests that he's one of the most genuinely amiable people you'll ever encounter.

Top 10 Albums of 2013

Right, I've done the best songs of 2013 - now it's time for the albums. These are my ten favourite albums of the last 12 months, and each one is an outstanding testament to the album as a format. Some scale the highest of high concepts with subtlety and aplomb, while others simply succeed by filling a CD with corkers from one rim to the other.

One side note before we get started: The Crimea's Square Moon is noticeably absent from this list, but not because it's not good enough for the top ten. The band's double-length swansong was officially released this summer, but since I got a pre-order version way back in autumn 2011 (ner ner na-ner ner), I don't really count it as an album of 2013. If you like, you can read my tribute to Square Moon - and The Crimea generally - by clicking here.

Right, now that that's out of the way, let's crack on with that all-important list...

#10 - Reflektor by Arcade Fire
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it (not least its inescapable promotional campaign, which certainly ruffled the feathers of one Trent Reznor), but it's hard to deny that Reflektor is one of the best albums of 2013. It's easily been among the most talked-about, and that kind of hype will often lead to disappointment when things actually get released, but fortunately, the music on those two discs more than justified it. It was a more daring, more ambitious, and altogether more exciting album than The Suburbs, with songs like Afterlife and Here Comes the Night Time making up for the slight lack of truly brilliant tunes on the band's previous release. Oh, and even if it could quite easily have fit on one CD,  the second one makes it feel a lot bigger, and a lot more important.

Top 20 Songs of 2013

2013 has less than a fortnight left in it, so it's high time I started making some lists. I'll be sharing my favourite albums of  the year on Friday, but I figured I'd build up to it a little bit first.

To that end, here are my top twenty songs of twenty-thirteen. Some are from albums that I've been banging on about for months; some are from records that I've never even mentioned on the blog before. It was quite difficult to decide on the right order, but lists like this are so much better when somebody wins, don't you think?

One more note before we get started: I considered limiting myself to one song per artist, but then I decided to scrap that idea because, hey, if your album contains two really spectacularly amazing songs, I want to reward that. Reward it with kudos from my piffling little music blog.

Anyway, enough explanation. Let's rock...

#20 - Lately I've Found Myself Regressing by The Superman Revenge Squad Band
(from There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time)
My list starts with the opening song of an album I've blogged about a lot recently. More or less every song on There is Nothing... is a lyrical corker, but on Lately I've Found Myself Regressing, they really knock it out of the park musically as well. The frantic drums, the warm-sounding instrumentation, and the "let's pack in as many syllables as we possibly can" stanzas come together to create something truly magical: a magnificent musical meditation on getting back to one's roots that bursts out of its two-minute runtime and leaves debris strewn about your mind for hours afterwards.

Thou Shalt Not Track-Skip

My girlfriend's father - he could write a blog or two about albums, I don't doubt - has often preached that track-skipping is a cardinal sin, and that when listening to an album, one ought to listen to it properly. Of course, he's a vinyl man, and track-skipping on a turntable is more trouble than it's worth, but I listen to most of my music on portable devices and I hold more or less the same view. Even when I'm not enjoying a song and I'm keen to proceed to the next one, I very seldom hit the skip button; if the artist deemed this song worthy of a place on their LP, who am I to pooh-pooh it?

Recently, though, I've realised that I might not be the saintly, skip-shunning listener I took myself for. After all, I was all too happy to lop two tracks off the Public Service Broadcasting album, reconfiguring the band's artistic vision for my own listening pleasure - is skipping a track in the middle really any different?

Well, yes, I'd contest that it is. When you hit the skip button right in the middle of a song, you're interrupting the flow of the album, raising your palm to the band as they rock out and going "nah, not keen on that one, what else have you got?" If you like an album, you'll listen to the whole thing, even the naff bits; if you find yourself skipping all over the place, you probably like the individual tracks more than you like the album. In fact, my main reason for beheading the PSB album was the presence of Spitfire, an earlier single that had already found a good home on their previous EP and felt like a bonus track on the full album. If you just want to hear your favourite songs, make a playlist and listen to that instead!

This is kind of related to my hatred of being interrupted while I listen to an album. Even if I pause the music and start listening again from the exact same spot, the effect is ruined. I'm no longer immersed in the world that the album has created, and now I'm starting again from some random spot in the middle of a song.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of songs that I love even when taken out of the album context. Heck, I could name quite a few albums that are rubbish apart from one song, and I appreciate that there's no point wading through forty-five minutes of dross to reach a track that you could have just listened to on its own.

But if this amazing song's parent album is even halfway decent, I always find it far more rewarding to hear that song in context. Its place on the tracklist gives it an extra dimension, and like the heart-in-throat first chords of the song you came to the gig to hear, it will sound all the better for the journey.

Inform? Educate? Off with its 'ead!

It's no secret that Public Service Broadcasting are a fantastic live band. I first saw them back in December (you can read my review for The MMP if you're interested), and they were so good that I shelled out to see them a second time in May. Both gigs were great fun: a brilliant combination of awesome music and shrewdly-used film.

After that pair of knockout live shows, I was obviously pretty excited to get my hands on PSB's debut album. But while Inform-Educate-Entertain was good, it wasn't quite the revelation I'd been hoping for. I wasn't alone in this, either - check out this review from MiddleMusic.net:

Now, in fairness, I don't entirely agree with that conclusion. The film clips certainly add something, but I think crackers like Night Mail and The Now Generation stand up perfectly well without them. In fact, they sound fantastic (each of those two songs has an absolutely incredible final minute or so) and Public Service Broadcasting have a great knack for creating music that's both atmospheric and immediately arresting. Here's Lit Up, another excellent example:

So what's the problem? If you ask me, it's the first two tracks. The opener seems like a cool idea at first: it's an overture-style composition that mixes elements from some of the songs that follow. But once you're familiar with those songs, you don't want to hear snippets of them all mashed together - you want to hurry up and get to the real McCoy.

Track 2 is Spitfire, an absolute blinder. But as good as it is, it's got no place on this album. Spitfire, you see, had already been featured on an EP called The War Room, and since it felt right at home there, it feels a little out of place when it pops up here. I realise that failing to include one of your best-known songs on your debut album doesn't sound like a good move, but Spitfire's presence makes Inform-Educate-Entertain feel more like a Greatest Hits compilation than a cohesive studio album.

So my solution to this problem is simply to start the album from track 3. Theme from PSB makes a great opener, and while this does leave the album feeling a little short, there's nothing wrong with leaving your audience wanting more.

My Favourite Albums of 2013 So Far

It's the first of July today, and with 2013 half-gone, I wouldn't be much of a music blogger if I didn't cobble together a list of the best albums of the year...so far!

Except I don't feel especially qualified to tell everyone what 2013's "best" releases are because, well, I haven't listened to all of them. I do try to stay abreast of the good stuff, but I've glanced at some other mid-year best-ofs, and there are albums on those lists that I've not even heard of, much less listened to. So, instead, I've just grouped together a few of my favourite albums that were released in the last six months - they're not necessarily The Best, they're just the best I've heard.

Now, without further ado, let's all gaze down at the atrophied legs of 2013...

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic by Foxygen

This album sounds like it was made in the seventies and, unlike a lot of albums that actually were made in the seventies, I love it! The slightly hippie-ish classic rock vibe ties everything together nicely, but the songs themselves are diverse enough to keep things interesting. San Francisco is a slightly twee summertime song with a lovely boy/girl duet in the chorus, while In the Darkness is more theatrical and the title track is an unhinged freak-out. Melody is never in short supply.

Praxis Makes Perfect by Neon Neon

I wonder if I'd like this record as much were it not for the jaw-dropping National Theatre Wales performance that it spawned, but I suppose that's kind of moot. This is an album with a story to tell, and while that story isn't quite as lucid when it's not being performed by actors, the LP still bristles with the intrigue and danger that typified the life of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Check out his Wikipedia page if you're curious to find out more; I'm just going to say that if you want to hear synth music that remains perfectly cool and detached while it grabs you by the balls, this is the album for you.

Pale Green Ghosts by John Grant

I've already written a lot about this album, so go and read my track-by-track review and we'll leave it at that.

La Costa Perdida by Camper Van Beethoven

This could yet prove to be my album of the summer. I'm already head-over-heels for Northern California Girls (a slow-burning, skyscraping come back to me), Peaches in the Summertime (a frantic ode to a sexy lay-day), and the title track (a sweet-ass murder song), and the other seven tracks will surely follow given another listen or two. It might be presumptuous to put a record on my Best of 2013 list before I've truly gotten into it, but frankly, those three songs alone would be enough.

Wonderful, Glorious by Eels
As lyrical content goes, this is far from E's best, but you can't fault the music. The last three albums - Hombre Lobo, End Times, and Tomorrow Morning - got a slightly mixed reaction from critics, and while I've got time for all three of them, this album is definitely superior. On the surface, it's a fuzzed-up rocker in the same vein as Souljacker (and, hey, that would have been great), but it's actually something of a rattle-bag; You're My Friend is a stuttering, staggering laptop anthem, while Accident Prone and On The Ropes are softer numbers that allow a little bit of light to shine through. Even the big, rocked-up numbers have their little diversions, which make the whole thing feel slightly proggy. I'm a big Eels fan, can you tell?

Honourable mention goes to Mosquito by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (uneven, but worth a tenner just for Despair) and Inform-Educate-Entertain by Public Service Broadcasting (great, but not as cohesive as I'd hoped). I also purchased new albums by Tullycraft, Future Bible Heroes, and Mikal Cronin over the weekend; I've not had a chance to listen to them properly yet, but they could all prove to be better than anything on this list.

Which awesome albums have I overlooked? And what will you be looking out for in the next six months? Let everybody know in the comments.