Best Of The Year?

So the year ends and with the year ending and this being a music blog it is time to look back on the best albums of the year.
Last year if memory serves me I found very little new music much cop, and I think its a similar tale this year, but not particularly out and out bad, music it seems in 2009 is in a better state than it was in 2008, but only marginally.

A band that I did enjoy in 2009, both live and on CD was the second album by Portland band, Hockey, Mind Chaos. I do not like this eighties sound that so many artists are adopting, the eighties were a musical desert and it isn't something that I need to revisit, but Hockey take the best bits of that decade and open a party 7, both live and recorded. On Mind Chaos they prove that the single Song Away wasn't a fluke and produce a remarkably good album. Its new wave with elements of mental as anything, that sounds an awful combination but if any track appeared on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop it wouldnt seem out of place. Please dont let that put you off.



Song Away by Hockey

Another favourite album was NOFX's Coaster. Their 11th album and one of their strongest, varying between the knock about fun that they are known for on Creeping Out Sara, to more considered and darker material on My Orphan Year. It is perhaps my favourite album of the year all told and re-affirmed my love for all things NOFX, where as there has been a recent glut of Johnny Cash albums on my morning commute, when I get to the N's it is a huge NOFX section. This album though is text book NOFX and thats how I like it.



My Orphan Year by NOFX

Finally Sign No More by Mumford and Sons, a post by Kev made me investigate this album and after much malignment by the current Mrs D it turned out to be an album that soundtracked my work, as the commute was took up by the commute CD's. The Mumford and Sons album reminded me in parts of The Mystery Jets, in part of Arcade Fire but all in all a sound of their own, marvellous stuff.



Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons

The Best Albums of the Noughties

This morning I received an email from a chap (once) called Fog, who sent me a link to the NME's Best Albums of the Noughties, as mentioned in The Guardian. I forwarded this on to co-blogger Peter, who, in his own words, pounced upon it 'like a fat boy at a buffet' (see his post below). Now, being a fat boy myself, and fond of a good buffet (preferably an Argentinian breakfast buffet) this seemed like an opportunity I couldn't pass up. Of course the NME's list is for skinny white boys with stylishly feathered locks, not a chubby baldy man like myself (or Peter - no offence). So, from the fat perspective, here are my 00's best albums. It looks like Neil Young hasn't made a decent album in ten years and I aint got the blues no more .....

2001
Rufus Wainwright - Poses


2002
Foo Fighters – One by One
Audioslave – Audioslave
Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around
Maná - Revolución de Amor
Los Lobos - Good Morning Aztlán


2003
Molotov - Dance and Dense Denso
The Frames – Set List


2004
Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose
Ray LaMontagne – Trouble
Green Day – American Idiot
The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Origin Vo1. 1


2005
The Boxer Rebellion – Exits

2006
Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
Jerry Lee Lewis – Last Man Standing

2007
Mavis Staples – We’ll Never Turn Back
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand

2008
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

2009
Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More

Imagine

Learning from your mistakes.
Nick Drake, happy at 50.
Wuthering Heights in Tijuana
Del Amitri on steroids.
Banjo'd Elbow.
Los Lobos composing a new theme tune for Emmerdale.
Arcade Fleet Fire Foxes.
Impure hearts.
Stephen Stills' Tree Top Flyer crash lands in Ireland and picks up The Pogues.
Strength through pain.
The Band tied to a post.

Sigh No More, the debut album by Mumford and Sons, is all these things and more. It's a full harvest. Where they come from doesn't matter. Where they're going doesn't matter. This album stamps on the floorboards and soars in equal measure. It takes you up the mountain and into the seas. It's English and Irish and American and derivative and new and old and undoubtedly, undoubtedly my record of 2009.