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.

when tickets for yuck went on sale a couple of months ago, i snapped them straight up. they sold out shortly afterwards. i haven’t seen them since field day in 2010 and can’t wait to see them again. unfortunately, due to a slight scheduling mishap, i will have to wait a little longer. i can’t make the 24th in camden now so i’m going to give my tickets to a lucky reader. it could be you. all you have to do is either of the following. and yes, this is a thinly veiled attempt to gain more followers.

to win
when I reviewed their amazing debut album at the start of the year i referred to how fantastic it is to have an album influenced by one of my favourite bands (sonic youth), made by members of one of my favourite bands (cajun dance party). what two, or more, bands would you like to see a collab album from? there are a couple of examples in the original review. you can either tell me on twitter by @ing me here with the hashtag #yucksock or you can post it on the facebook wall here. or both to double your chances. i’ll then stick all your names in a metaphorical hat and pick a random winner.

the small print
the gig is at the electric ballroom in camden on thursday 24th november and probably starts about 8.
you can enter once on each site. feel free to do more, but you’ll only get your name in the hat twice.
entries close sunday 20th at 9pm to give me a chance to get your address stick them in the post.
you’ll need to follow me if entering by twitter so i can dm you to let you know you’ve won.
you’ll need to ‘like’ the facebook page if you want to enter on there or you won’t be able to post.
if you win, don’t sell them on please.

that text on the picture above is a sneak peak of a possible new design by the way. it may even include capital letters at times. what have i become.

album review: yuck. yuck. 21 february 2011. fat possum records

have i ever told you how sockformation got its name? it all begun with a drunken discussion with my friend steve about starting a band. a few days later at a los campesinos gig in colchester we had forgotten the brilliant name we had come up with. once again drunk, we decided to text aqa with the question “what’s the name of our band? we’ve forgotten”. only probably slightly less coherently. aqa did not let us down, and the reply “we don’t know, but do think ‘sock’ would make a good name” came in a few minutes later.

both being huge men behaving badly fans, we instantly related this to a scene where the landlord of the crown, les, is confusing gary and tony with football speak. to try and get out of the conversation they retort with some made up rubbish about how it wold be better if they deployed the “sock formation” and other such crap. a name was born.

sockformation became the name of the band, along with everything i did from fantasy league teams to passwords (note to criminals: not anymore) and eventually my much loved blog. great.

not quite great actually… this christmas i recovered my men behaving badly dvd boxset from a 3- holiday at my brother’s house. when i returned to london i eagerly sat down to reacquaint myself with gary, tony, dorothy and (the weak link) debra. i knew the now infamous line was in the episode ‘drunk’.

emma was round and watching it with me. the moment came. i was excited. and then the words. “sock master”. sorry. what? the line was “sock master”, not “sock formation” at all. all i’d worked for and knew to be true in the world had just been destroyed by a six letter word. devastated.

still, what you going to do? this place is still called sockformation and won’t be changing.

what has this got to do with the debut yuck record then? nothing. i wanted to try and avoid mentioning cajun dance party too early in the review though and have succeeded.

as it happens, i feel much more inclined to compare yuck not to their (sort of) previous incarnation but to the mighty sonic youth. there is no way an album that is part influenced by one of my favourite bands, combined with part populated with former members of another of my favourite bands is going to be something i don’t like. what next? thomas bangalter recording a version of ‘silent alarm’? the velvet underground re-releasing ‘the velvet underground & nico’ but with kate jackson in the nico role?

with further nods towards the cure, ash and even del amitri to be heard on multiple listens the album has exceeded my expectations.

i really didn’t want to get carried away with a review so early on in the year, but fuck it being january. it’s just another month and this is a top quality album that deserves the praise.

it isn’t officially out for more than a month, but i get the feeling it is only going to grow on me in that time. say hello to the first album of 2011 that i’ve got overexcited about.

9

thanks to shellzenner for the witty title.

i’m not a massive fan of tips for 2011 lists. actually that’s wrong. i am a fan of reading them. i’m not a fan of writing them. i just know i’ll end up writing about somebody that either i fucking love but in all seriousness is never going to make it; or somebody that right this moment i’m loving but come mid january i will hate and then have to live with the fact that i tipped them for glory as jamie theakston plays them constantly on heart and i wonder what the hell i was doing for the next eleven and a half months. instead, i’m going to burden josh with the pressure.

that’s right, my six year old son is going to tell you who will be the real breakthrough acts this year. now josh doesn’t know the names or output of a lot of the new pretenders to the blogosphere throne, so instead i’m playing him examples of the music from other places tip lists, plus a few of my own. so, with nods to the 405, the pigeon post and the bbc, here goes.

first off are the tracks that i put in front of him. you’ll know by now that i’m a massive summer camp fan. josh was already aware of them from an earlier post where he liked their video for ’round the moon’. he picked them out once again and i don’t think it’ll be long until he actually remembers who they are without the aid of a nudge when i mention them. also from the moshi moshi stable comes spectrals. another act i rave about a bit on here and another of josh’s tips for 2011. he didn’t say much about the music, but let’s assume he fell in love with the 60s infused guitar strums. sunday girl took more than one listen as i was sure he’d like her, and after three or four plays of ‘four floors’, including the diplo remix, i was correct. he may just have said he liked her to shut me up, but what are kids for if they aren’t for forcing your own tastes onto?

two other bands got the thumbs up. the first of which, cults, surprised me a little. cults sound very female. although this is only a positive thing for me, josh is at that age when he doesn’t like anything with girls taking a big role in because he still thinks girls are yucky. that leads onto his final pick from my selection perfectly. the band are yuck. as it happened i was wearing my cajun dance party t-shirt while we were doing this, although i doubt very much it swayed josh’s choice. mainly because i am certain he knows nothing of the link. whatever the reason i am delighted that he picked them because i also think they’re ace.

onto the 405 list. before i forget, you can download their tips for 2011 mixtape here by the way. there were a few acts he’d already been played (including cults & spectrals) so i missed them out, but as it transpired he only cared about the early tracks as it was. it needed less than 20 seconds of grouplove to get a definite “yes”. personally they remind me of somebody that i can’t quite put my finger on. if i remember by the end of the post i’ll tell you. whoever they are, i agree with josh. in time honoured x-factor tradition, the good ones kept coming. both treefight for sunlight and jonquil garnered eager head nods from josh, and make his list of tips.

that was it though. maybe it was because a lot of the rest had slightly slower build ups and josh doesn’t like to be left waiting. maybe it was just because he was getting bored and wanted to get on with building the lego @emsalts bought him for christmas. whatever the reason, he just didn’t take to the rest of the mixtape.

after a brief break we soldiered on with a thorough examination of pigeon posts sound of 2011 (available here). he spread his love out a little more here, again starting from the off though. i enjoy walsh, especially the daft punk torn sounding ‘days of thunder’ and josh agreed. i’ve been bombarding him with the tron score for the past few days so this surprised nobody. the other artist he picked out was somebody i know very little about, botany. what a pick though! they must have passed me by when i first sailed through the tracks, but i’m so pleased josh didn’t miss them. i am impressed to such an extent that expect a post about them sometime early january.

the final list we looked at was the bbc sound of 2011. by now we were both getting hungry and keen to get a list finalised. we sped through the bbc site, and as it turns out the only josh pick was the one artist that isn’t available to listen to on the bbc page. jai paul is a bit micachu if you want a lazy description. it is better than josh’s though which pretty much came down to the fact that he liked the video to btstu and the collage type picture of jai paul.

as for me, i’ve decided that i will mention one act. the time is right for ghostpoet. he’s my tip, and apologies in advance if i’ve just given you the kiss of death.

there you have it. i hope josh is right with his tips. if he isn’t i’ll make sure he puts more time into his 2012 choices and there will be no wii mario kart next christmas.

how have i only just found out that one of my favourite bands, cajun dance party, have split up? remember my t-shirt?

what’s more, how have i only just found out that two of the members of one of my favourite bands, yuck, are from cajun dance party? remember my field day love?

i knew doing some live tweeting (follow me! follow me! @sockformation) would be invaluable. now all i have to do is copy & paste my tweets for a thorough field day run down. i’ve decided not to remove the bit when i mention i was published in the guardian this weekend (ahem). my phone battery died before phoenix as well, but i can confirm they were once again very good. probably. i don’t remember much from that point onwards.

enjoy. it is probably best to start at the bottom by the way.