Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
13-15 & 20-22 April 2012
Empire Polo Club, California, USA
coachella.com

In a sentence
With two identical line ups on consecutive weeks, Coachella boasts what is probably the strongest overall line up in the world.

Headliners
The Black Keys
Radiohead
Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg

If you only see one band
This could have been anybody of dozens, but ignoring the headliners, I wouldn’t want to miss The Shins.

Hidden down the order
It shows the strength of the line up that Gaslamp Killer looks like he’ll be on very early on the final day.

Other sockformation favourites
Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, M83, GIRLS, The Horrors, Frank Ocean, SebastiAn, Yuck, Neon Indian, WU LYF, The Dear Hunter, Miike Snow, Jeff Mangum, Feist, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, SBTRKT, Flying Lotus, Azealia Banks, A$AP Rocky, Buzzcocks, tUnE, yArDs, Black Lips, The Big Pink, Justice, Beirut, The Weeknd, Girl Talk, The Hives, DJ Shadow, Wild Flag, Modeselektor, Real Estate, First Aid Kit, Metronomy, Wild Beasts

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.

this was my christmas. 9am. josh got up. later than expected. open stocking. 10am. kedgeree. good. 10.30am. open presents. i’m getting a bike so i had a book and some lights. josh got a table football table. ben 10 ds game. lego. lots of bits basically. 11.30am. to my brother’s with the family. guinness on arrival. 12.30am open presents. i got a massive daft punk print. josh got an ant world and chemistry set. i see danger and mess ahead. 1.30pm. sister in law’s family arrive. rum is given to me. good. more guinness. 4pm. dinner. very good. brother and his wife’s first effort. impressive. red wine. 5pm. christmas pudding. custard. excellent. 6pm. rapidough. lager. 7pm. shout out loud. lager. 8pm. london underground game. lager. 9pm. four player mario kart on the wii. i won. lager. 10pm. christmas cake. black bomber & biscuits. lager. 11pm. sports resort on the wii. i won. midnight. fifa on the wii. i won.

what this basically means is that i don’t know what to post about. how about a spotify playlist to relax on a boxing day to? perfect.

boxing day playlist (spotify)

if you’d like to know who’s included, probably best to check the tags at the bottom as i can’t be arsed to write out the full playlist here

coming up over the christmas period i’m with the family and all that jazz for most of the time so posts might be a little irregular. i’ll be trying to do a couple of features though and a few spotify playlists. first off, this one. i’ve chosen my favourite track from each of the 2010 albums of the year i picked, other than those that aren’t on spotify. as an extra bonus i’ve put in my choices from my favourite three eps from 2010 as well. what’s more, my two favourite singles that aren’t on any of those records (still with me?) are here too… that’s ‘the sea is a good place to think of the future’ and spanish sahara’ by the way.

sockformation’s top ten albums of 2010 and then some other tracks as well (spotify)

album review: girls. broken dream club ep. 22 november 2010. true panther sounds

there have been some top quality eps in the last couple of months. first up we had sockformation favourites summer camp. wow. then spectrals shortly afterwards. almost as wow. and now girls. another wow.

mixing all sorts of sounds and influences throughout the record, it starts where ‘album’ left off with elvis costello (always going to win my heart) fun and ends up with a bit of bowie. throughout the beach boys style melodies are prevalent and, dare i say it, at one point it brought back memories of the thrills debut ‘so much for the city’

this is truly a beautiful piece of work and well worth the mark i’m about to give it.

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