album review: the maccabees. given to the wild. 9 january 2012. fiction records
(buy here)

i like it when a band doesn’t just sit back and rest on their laurels. releasing the same album again and again. whether throwing up three albums that you can tell are the same band but are completely different in sound, ala bloc party. or whether it is a natural progression of a band maturing. the latter is the stage at which we find the maccabees today.

listening back to colour it in now you can tell that is the album that was fun to make. whether singing about the, now famous, latchmere swimming baths or complaining about chewed pieces of lego making it tricky to build a castle the band were playing about with their sound. maybe they didn’t think they’d ever make. maybe this was just them having fun with friends. but they did make it. the album was a moderate success. certainly enough of a success to warrant a second album.

suddenly making music wasn’t just a pastime. this was their career. the perfect wall of arms was the album that set them on their way as a proper band. intelligent lyrics. soft instruments. not forgetting orlando weeks’ instantly recognisable voice.

this is of course all guess work. however it came about though, we are now enjoying given to the wild. and enjoying it we certainly are. another step forward and one that throws you around from light to dark from high to low. ‘unknow’ is like nothing they have released before, while ‘ayla’ wouldn’t feel out of place on either of their earlier records. every track is very maccabees but also very different. on ‘went away’ they even bring in vocals from elsewhere in the band. one of the white brothers i think.

what this album has done more than anything though is not make critics pleasantly surprised again. what this album has done has raised expectations in the band everywhere. even if we do a disservice to colour it in and put it down as just a fun debut, the maccabees have still released two excellent albums. that’s not a one-off fluke anymore. that’s a band with real talent.

8.5

this review originally appeared on the 405

how was your christmas? mine has been fun. present wise, i finally own a record player meaning that i can now play the piles of vinyl i’ve built up due to my complete lack of self restraint when faced with a pretty looking 12″. no longer will i have to shift uneasily or change the subject when somebody when i get home from flashback records and emma asks me why i’ve bought another record. having said that, 2011 has once again been dominated by digital music of course. your spotify account now links to your facebook, everybody has their top three played artists of the week feed through from their last.fm to twitter and you can’t move on the tube for people with a pair of beats headphones plugged into their iphone. some artists are fighting back though. it is not unusual to see a band release lovely vinyl versions of their albums with limited edition t-shirts, posters or chocolate brownies. but they still have to include that code for the digital download of course.

enough of all that though. let’s get on with the list. once again, i’ve nominated a top ten, with a single winner and then an extra addition which i simply couldn’t ignore. the 2011 apologies for just missing out go to battles, emmy the great, the kills, pj harvey, the pains of being pure at heart and last year’s winner cloud nothings.

bon iver. bon iver

he’s still a miserable fucker, but compared to for emma, forever ago this is positively rainbows & puppies. let mr iver take you on tour of his favourite places while he sits alone in a vets. (buy here)

girls. father, son, holy ghost

their ep was one of my favourites of 2010 and this full length is a worthy successor. in a year when the beach boys announced they’re reforming for 2012, girls released an album that any californian worth their salt would be proud off. (buy here)

the horrors. skying

i’m still at a loss as to how a band can improve so immeasurably (actually, you can measure it. only in terms of back to the future though). still debating whether it’s as good as primary colours, but who would i have thought they’d be anywhere near this list four years ago? (buy here)

lykke li. wounded rhymes

oh lykke. we all love lykke. her second album ticked all the boxes about growing up and while not as instantly pickupable (real word) as her first is far more accomplished overall. (buy here)

m+a. things.yes

this was the album that i could just put on this year and drift away. what a a truly beautiful album. (buy here)

metronomy. the english riviera

what isn’t to love about this album? nothing. the perfect advert for tourism of the english coast. (buy here)

times new viking. dancer enquired

there are lots of bands producing that lo-fi sound that i love so at the moment. the greatest example of the year though came not from a teenage genius in his bedroom, but a five-album veteran three piece. (buy here)

tom vek. leisure seizure

so excited i was about the release of this album that i dedicated a day to tom vek day. any other year he would have probably walked off with the winner’s badge. tom vek is back in a big way. (buy here)

yuck. yuck

the first new album i listened to of the year. a great start it was too. especially for a sonic youth and cajun dance party fan like myself. (buy here)

so, who wins? if you’ve been an avid reader of this blog over the year i’m sure you already know. a couple of years ago nobody knew whether they were a swedish collective or an east london teen. it transpired that they were in fact a guy who was already established as solo artist in his own right, and a girl who was a music journalist – and had in fact been asked to cover the band before people knew their true make up. i’ve seen them over a dozen times live and i hoped the album would live up to the high standards they’d set. it more than did.

summer camp. welcome to condale

summer camp introduced us to the fictional american town of condale. with teen crushes, a burgeoning rock band and ultimately death, welcome to condale and the accompanying fanzine takes us through an americana dream. it isn’t just the story that makes this album so good though. elizabeth has the sort of voice that is recognisable and easy to listen to. jeremy knows more about electronic instruments and how to use them than i know about cheese. the songs have more variety than early releases did and straight away remove the risk of becoming bored of the sound. this is a worthy winner. as an aside, if i was writing a list of my live performances of the year, i fancy summer camp’s gig at efes would top that too. (buy here)

alex turner. submarine original songs

i couldn’t complete the list without giving a shout out to alex turner’s soundtrack to submarine as well. my favourite film of the year was also my favourite soundtrack. just six tracks long, but it was pretty much all i listened to for a period earlier in the year. superb songs, brilliantly performed. (buy here)

in case you’ve ignored all of my subtle hints to buy the albums mentioned, you can listen to them all on this handy spotify playlist.

album review: m+a. things.yes. 7 november 2011. monotreme records
(buy here)

every now and again an album crops up that it is just impossible to stop listening to. in these days of itunes and ipods (and other bits of kit not made by apple) it is simple to forget that you’re on the third listen in rotation of an album, and when you realise you don’t mind one jot. that has to be a good sign that the music is doing something right.

things.yes is one such album. whether that’s due to it being less than 3/4 hour long, or because the tracks pull together in such a way that you’re quite happy to drift away listening to it is unclear. one thing is for sure though, m+a have some serious talent coming out of their italian fingers. just out of their teens, the duo have not been shy about admitting they have been heavily influenced by the music they listen to. air and sigur Ros are the obvious comparisons, and sounds of the avalanches and even early does it offend you, yeah? crop up as well.

this is m+a’s album though. they’ve put in the time and they’ve stuck to their ideals to make an album that they themselves would listen to. there is the perfect mix of samples and a cohesion with both their voices that is rare and hard to force. it’s dreamy, it’s mysterious, it’s unusual, it’s brilliant.

the cover art of the album is fucking gorgeous as well. so simple and so perfect. just like the album inside.

9

this review originally appeared on the 405

hello. it’s been a while. how are you? i’ve decided to put some real effort into this again. a little undecided about the exact direction, but i’d like to go back to the days when i wrote about new music loads. i’m sure there will still be the odd album and live review and i’ll probably include anything i write for other sites on here as well, but the main aim will be new music. yeah. decided now. oh, and i’ll still post a load of videos. mainly because they take about two minutes to do and are an easy post. i thought as a bit of a welcome back (in addition to the amazing competition i’ll be posting either later tonight or tomorrow morning) i’d quickly tell you what i think about some of the albums that have come out recently.

sitting comfortably? then we’ll begin.

feist. metals. (buy here)
she’s fucking good isn’t she. she’ll be touring early next year and i want to go. feist at the albert hall? that’ll be amazing. 8

justice. audio, video, disco. (buy here)
brilliant. not as ipod friendly as † but this will sound pretty awesome live. 9

summer camp. welcome to condale. (buy here)
can you imagine if this had been rubbish. two years of stalking the two of them totally wasted. fortunately it isn’t. perfect. seriously. i love the little town of condale the’ve put together and i want to be brian krakow. 10

los campesinos! hello sadness. (buy here)
recently there was a twitter hashtag game of #lessexcitingbandnames. my favourite? “los campesinos.” i found that fucking hilarious. only challenged by “the bernard matthews band”. 8

yeah, so i’ve pretty much only chosen albums i really, really like. live with it. anyway, stay tuned for a competition coming up soon. i’m not going to give it away, but if you want to see yuck live in london at the end of the month, you’ll want to enter.

album review: theophilus london. timez are weird these days. 3 october 2011. warner brothers records
(buy here)

so, the man with the coolest name in music finally releases his debut album proper after three mixtapes of varying quality. it’s been three years since jam! found its way onto the interweb and people started asking who this theophilus london was. one or two tracks stood out from that but it wasn’t until the follow up, this charming mixtape that i started to take notice. as well as the re-inclusion of the best song from jam, ‘ultraviolet’, it was this release that included the excellent ‘grey x sage’ and even better ‘humdrum town’. couple that with an album title and front cover that pays homage to elvis costello and i was fully sold in. by the time i want you dropped in last year mr london was officially the “next big thing”. he was on the guardian’s buzz graph. he stole a lindsay lohan starring muse video and made it a hell of a more stylish for a cover of ‘oops’. he was regularly being featured in style etiquette and had become a certified style icon.

with the hype now at levels not seen since ofwgkta the week before, how could london possibly ensure a good album? getting dan carey, a man who has worked with css and hot chip among others, to produce isn’t a bad place to start.

just in case anybody has missed the build up to the album it starts with ‘last name london’ in an effort to ensure that everybody knows who’s album this is. it’s a nice start and a good reflection of a lot of the good things from this charming mixtape. the theme of keeping hold of the sound of the mixtapes stays strong when holly miranda’s voice kicks in on ‘love is real’, a track that will offend nobody but delight some. the track also shows off some of the record’s diversity, especially when compared to ‘why even try’, which features sara from tegan and… fame.

it is the variation in sound within the album that is both its biggest strength and weakness. ‘wine and chocolates’ is a wonderful track and is theophilus at his best. he just can’t seem to resist putting shit like ‘girls girls $’ on there as well though.

7

this review originally appeared on the 405

album review: dum dum girls. only in dreams. 26 september 2011. sub pop records
(buy here)

i’ve fallen a little bit in love with this album over the past few weeks. i feel i need to make you aware of that from the off. it’s great and you can skip the following two paragraphs if that’s all you needed to know. go get it now.

since dee dee has expanded to allow more dum dum girls than just herself, they have grown into a band very much suited to today’s tastes. what has always made dum dum girls stand out from most is that they’ve got that natural sixties sound. and it is natural. there is nothing forced or contrived here. throw some modern l.a. surf pop into the mix and you’ve got a coming together which works. it works so well.

my only criticism with only in dreams would be that the heights early songs such as ‘bedroom eyes’ and ‘in my head’ reach is not held throughout. as i write that i feel i’m being harsh though because ‘coming down’, with its long drawn out vocals and guitars that just ask to be swayed to, has come on and i fucking love it. i know perfectly well that as soon as ‘wasted away’ comes on in a couple of minutes i’ll have something to say about that as well. shit. i’m going to end the review now and stick with the mark i was going to give it. otherwise i’ll just get overexcited. again.

8.5

album review: jay-z & kanye west. watch the throne. 12 august 2011. def jam recordings
(buy here)

i was planning on reviewing the joint jay-z kanye record at some point this week when i noticed my friend, and writer of shamfrolic, mr kris de souza was giving us a track by track run down on twitter. never one to pass up the opportunity to do less work, i sent him a quick message to ask if i could use this on sockformation. hurrah. he said yes.

so here it is. i ask you to please, in time honoured manner, start at the bottom and work your way up please.

he hasn’t given it a score, so i’ll sum up how i feel about it and score it quickly. it’s good. i’ve never got overexcited about kanye myself, but there is no doubting that he’s one of hip hop’s most creative artists (proper creative. not will.i.am ‘let’s put on a lego hat so everybody thinks i’m crazy’ creative). so when combined with the biggest rapper in the world, this was always going to be good. it will sell in it millions and no doubt garner the odd 5 stars and 10/10 here and there. it’s no deltron 3030 though.

8

album review: css. la liberacion. 22 august 2011. v2
(buy here)

it seems like css have been away for a lot longer than three years. maybe it’s because donkey did very little in the way of commercial and critical success. that isn’t to say that it was a bad album. it was just a sort of nothing album. it seemed to disappear as quietly as it arrived. that was a complete contrast to the (sort of) self-titled debut. when that was released everybody and their mum were talking about lovefoxxx and the unusual brazilian band. initially dubbed as new rave, they beat klaxons in releasing an album that may have had its roots in new rave, but was so much more.

so to la liberacion. the band themselves wrote the tracks not as an album but as a collection of different songs. this lack of theme is evident from the off as we get lo-fi distortion, reggae, hip hop and even almost ballad-like vocals. it isn’t so much an experiment as the band having fun. they seem to run out of ideas slightly as the record goes on, but when the closer ‘fuck everything’ comes in and we’re back in familiar css territory you won’t mind on ounce.

after donkey lovefoxxx stated that she was tired and didn’t want to make music. she’d lost the love. it is evident from this album that the love is back.

oh. and lovefoxxx has cut her hair.

7.5

album review: the horrors. skying. 11 july 2011. xl recordings
(buy here)

what better way to review the new record from the horrors than on the back to the future scale of greatness?

strange house: back to the future part ii
primary colours: back to the future
skying: back to the future part iii

i hope that clears everything up.

9

album review: sebastian. total. 14 june 2011. ed banger records
(buy here)

with the release of total sebastian drags and pulls us through 22 tracks in just 52 minutes. we come out of it the other side set for the day after a thrilling ride. his reworks of ‘doggg’ and ‘motor’ are perfect here, along with plenty of new tracks to keep you occupied. it’s an excellent record that makes you feel as invigorated as a dog in a sidecar throughout.

8.5