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.

at last year’s field day i debuted my live tweeting reviews. it wasn’t perfect by any means, and i’ve improved it since, but thank you field day 2010 for starting me on this. this probably wasn’t particularly original, but it made my life very easy indeed so expect the same sort of thing again on monday.

as a bit of a preview to tomorrow’s field day i’ve put together a playlist of those acts i’m planning on seeing. i’ve used a clash guide, which i imagine has been put together through a lot of guess work so it may be impossible. some already overlap anyway and i haven’t accounted for food. or, more pressingly, getting drunk and losing my glasses. it’s nice to go with a plan though isn’t it. also, the chances of me being there by pearson sound are pretty much non existent. my aim is ducktails to start really and if i can only see one act all day it will be twin shadow. i don’t know why i would only get to see one act though.

you can listen to the playlist right here.

it should come as no surprise that this month’s playlist is a bit of an amy winehouse special. i wasn’t blogging very regularly last weekend so didn’t really mention her on here. enough has been said anyway, so it isn’t really worth saying much apart from how much she’ll be missed. especially her music. as it happens, i’m in the camp addiction is a disease and it doesn’t matter how what the situation around her life was, she was a young girl who lost her life. and that’s bad. just in case you haven’t read it by the way, russell brand wrote an amazing piece about her.

these playlists aren’t just about what i’ve written about on here, but also what i’ve been listening to in the background. as most new bits of music i like get included on the blog, the extras are often older stuff. this month i’ve broken out crazysexycool for a bit of tlc love. i had to include them on here. also on an rnb feel you’ll find some cassie. a few days ago i had her playing on youtube (she’s hot, so it’s always video rather than mp3 with her) and accidentally started ‘rudie can’t fail’ by the clash on itunes. suffice to say that the two mixed together brilliantly and i now rate myself as the next carl cox.

enjoy the playlist, which can be found here and any feedback (especially tlc love) is always appreciated. also a quick thank you to emma who chose the amy winehouse connected songs to close the set.

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

it looks like the second album wasn’t just a fluke then. after such a terrible and disappointing debut, everybody (including me) wrote the horrors off. then, out of nowhere they came out with what was, quite simply, an extraordinary follow up. primary colours contained song after song of pure awesomeness. i raved about it a lot on the original sockformation.

we’ve just heard the first track from the forthcoming skying and my god it’s good. faris once again sounds like he’s channeling ian curtis through every vein in his body, but this time he’s doing over a backing that has instances of daft punk about it. ‘still life’ may have just become my favourite song of the year so far.

it won’t be long until people start talking about them without even mentioning that terrible debut album.

by the way. i never got around the writing about faris’ side project, cat’s eyes. if you haven’t already please check it out. the man’s talents are limitless at this moment in time.