My Favourite Albums of 2016 So Far

2016 is just about half-over, the last six months having rocketed past with the velocity of a drumstick that the guy on the stool wasn't gripping properly. Today, I thought I'd share ten of my favourite albums from the first half of the year, so that's exactly what I've done: find them all listed below (in alphabetical order, just in case these turn out to be the best albums of 2016 overall - I want to preserve a little bit of mystery for my end-of-year list!)

Adore Life - Savages

"Thrillingly confrontational...almost scarily compelling"

Standout Tracks: Evil // I Need Something New // T.I.W.Y.G.

Read More: Savage Orders

Amen & Goodbye - Yeasayer

"A colourful cornucopia of bouncy pop and blissed-out psychedelia"

Standout Tracks: Silly Me // Dead Sea Scrolls // Cold Night

Read More: A Track-by-Track Analysis of Amen & Goodbye

On Women in Music & 'Classic' Albums

As you may be aware, I'm currently conducting a survey on how we consume music here in the UK (if you haven't already filled it out, please do so - your contribution will be much appreciated!)

One of the questions on my survey reads as follows:

Respondents are then presented with the same list under a different heading: "Which of these albums do you own on CD, vinyl, or cassette?"

I included this pair of questions in the survey because I hoped to compare the number of people who had heard those albums with the number of people who had actually bought a physical copy. At time of writing, for example, 101 people have said that they've heard Thriller, but only 51 people profess to own a physical version. Conversely, while only 65 of my respondents have heard Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, 43 of them also own a physical copy - that's nearly two-thirds of the people who've listened to it.

The twelve albums I chose for this part of the survey represent my slapdash attempt to cover several different genres so as to see if fans of a certain genre are more likely to get physical than fans of another. There's the hip-hop album (To Pimp a Butterfly), the heavy metal album (Master of Puppets), the classic rock album (A Night at the Opera), and so forth.

But while Queen, Metallica, and Kendrick Lamar are each associated with very different types of music, they all have one thing in common, as do all but three of the other artists on my list. Can you guess what it is?

They're all men.

January Playlist: Just One Rose

Good news, everyone: monthly playlists are back for 2016! Here are 10 of the tracks that most tickled my tympanic membrane in January...

1. Animal Life - Shearwater

(from Animal Joy)

Shearwater are a band I've been meaning to investigate for ages, and January 2016 was the month in which I finally got around to it. Animal Joy was the album I purchased (thanks to @dickiesview on Twitter for the recommendation), and it's a very strong set of songs - Animal Life could well be one of my all-time favourite opening tracks, and I've only owned its parent album for about two weeks.

Confessions of a Romance Novelist

Before I share my thoughts on Confessions of a Romance Novelist, a quick note about Mansun. As a big fan of Mansun, I was naturally very excited when, last year, it emerged that their former frontman Paul Draper was to co-produce the debut album from somebody called The Anchoress. That album came out two weeks ago, and in a few moments I'll be typing out my take on it.

First of all, though, I'd like to make a promise: I promise not to spend this entire blog post talking about the parts of Confessions... that remind me of Mansun songs. Sure, I could waste paragraphs and paragraphs pointing out that What Goes Around bounces along in the same kinda way as My Idea of Fun, or that Doesn't Kill You puts me in mind of both Cancer and Television, but I'm not going to do that because a) it would do The Anchoress and her album a grave disservice, and b) I realised that I'm only hearing Mansun because I know that Paul Draper was involved. If someone had told me that Confessions of a Romance Novelist was co-produced by Neil Hannon, or P!nk, or the keyboardist from Nightwish, I'd probably be hearing their influence instead of Mr Draper's, when really the overwhelming majority of ideas on show here came from The Anchoress herself (a.k.a. Catherine Anne Davies). This is a dramatically chameleonic album; one minute you're thinking it sounds like The Dresden Dolls, then you come across a bit that sounds like Evanescence, and eventually you realise that it's kind of futile playing the 'sounds like' game at all when the album you're dissecting skips across so many different styles in so little time.

So, once this italicised introduction is over, I shan't be using the word 'Mansun' for the remainder of today's blog post. If I do, you have my permission to come to my house and kick me in the shin.

I don't read a lot of romance novels myself, but my girlfriend Vicky has been researching this market a lot recently and she informs me that writers who work within the romance genre have to stick to a pretty strict formula if they want their books to sell. One of the most important rules, as I understand it, dictates that romance novels must always conclude with a happy ending; if, by the final full stop, your lead couple aren't living happily ever after (HEA), or at the very least happily for now (HFN), your book is almost guaranteed to flop. Rulebreaking and bittersweetness apparently don't play well at all in the world of Mills & Boon.

It is this stubborn rigidity that gives Confessions of a Romance Novelist its central conflict: our narrator is a (presumably somewhat successful) romance author, and yet she herself is the polar opposite of all the oppressively formulaic love stories that spill from her pen. She doesn't want to get married; she doesn't believe that finding a partner is the most important thing in the world; and she knows from bitter experience that, for every HEA, there are DORTEB - dozens of relationships that end badly.

2016: What's in Store?

With a whole year of new music ahead, here are the upcoming album releases I'm most excited for...

The Waiting Room by Tindersticks

The first all-new Tindersticks album since 2012's The Something Rain is due out on the 22nd of January. I wasn't a huge fan of The Something Rain, and I'm afraid I didn't bother with Across Six Leap Years, the retrospective thingy that came out in 2013 (six of its ten tracks are already in my iTunes library anyway); for my part, I'm hoping that The Waiting Room will be a return to the more colourful, dramatic likes of Falling Down a Mountain (2010) and The Hungry Saw (2008).

Confessions of a Romance Novelist by The Anchoress
A 'revenge pop' concept album produced by former Mansun frontman Paul Draper? Sign me the heck up. Oh, and speaking of Mansun...