Musick's Top 20 albums: 7

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion



In the past, it’s been easier to slip Animal Collective’s name into a conversation in the hope of impressing someone than it has been to actually enjoy listening to them. Previous albums have been as wilfully impenetrable as they have been inspiring. Merriweather Post Pavilion changes all that however, being simultaneously more grown-up and controlled and yet with a childish urge to experiment. Musically, it’s as Technicolor as the mind-bending cover art, with pulsating dance rhythms emerging unexpectedly on tracks such as opener ‘In The Flowers’ and the jubilant single ‘Summertime Clothes’. With ‘My Girls’, they made their finest song, a simple, heartfelt plea for domestic bliss (“I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls”), cased in a euphoric musical confection.

Key track: ‘My Girls’

New Musick Monday

We all knew last week would be a success, in fact, we made sure of it. Echo sold over 160,000 copies in its first week, to debut at number 1, but that's about half of what her last album sold in the same period. Now, we're not suggesting that the wheels are falling off Leona's career per se, but what she lacks that a lot of other pop stars have is a definite personality. Songs like 'Happy' don't help matters. Speaking of personalities, Will Young's best of crashed in at, er, no. 9, which is hardly the work of a TV talent show alumnus, but we're pretty sure that's all he can hope for now. The Arctic Monkeys single seems to be missing from the top 40, which must be some kind of blip, right?

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Fuzzo by Brigadier Ambrose



OK, confession time, this band are friends of the blog. Not just, "oh yeah, we met them at a party, they seem like nice guys" kind of friends, but proper "we went to school together" type friends. We feel the need to make this clear from the outset given the fact that we love this album so much it's going to seem like nepotism either way. You'll assume we're friends even if we weren't when we say that Fuzzo is one of the best debuts of 2009. Influenced by surrealist British comedy just as much as they are by bands like Blur, Belle & Sebastian and Pavement, they've crafted an album that keeps one eye on the everyday and the other turned skywards. It also features this lyric; "Silences don't really mean a great deal anymore/ One minute for footballers and two minutes for war / Three for terrorist atrocities / Four for the death of Morrissey". Kind of says it all really.

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Rated R by Rihanna



The Fame Monster by Lady GaGa



Two of pop's biggest characters return with albums on the same day, one trying to build a new image after some well-publicised personal problems and the other cementing her status as 2009's best megastar. Rated R is a darker, denser affair than Rihanna's previous efforts, featuring far more aggressive, almost sadomasochistic imagery. Guns are licked, fired and drawn on skin (she has a tattoo of one on her hip), whilst love is variously depicted as dead, deadly or, er, Spanish ('Te Amo'). WARNING: This album features will.i.am. Lady GaGa's The Fame Monster on the other hand should be subtitled "what this? Oh I knocked this up in my lunch break", such is the run of form she seems to be on. Eight brand new songs, four potential singles, Beyoncé drops by for a brief cameo and somewhere Madonna dies a little inside.

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Fall Be Kind EP by Animal Collective



This 5-track EP is a little bit darker, a little bit denser than their last album...oh, have we written that before today? Erm, it's their equivalent of Rihanna's Rated R album, only with longer songs and slightly more droning. Very good as ever, in other words.

Yea ha!

Yeasayer are a bunch of guys who make music with instruments and their mouths. They have released an album, which collects together some of these recordings and now they're about to release another one. In order to generate some excitement surrounding this release, the band have decided to pick one song from the bunch and let you, the public, download it for free. Their hope is that once you've heard the song you will think, "that was jolly nice, I might purchase the album once it's released".



It helps that 'Ambling Alp' is proper bangin' all up in our collective grills. Ecouté:



You hear some Animal Collective in there? We do too. But it's a genuine leap forward for a band who previously seemed intent on tying themselves in knots in order to hide a catchy melody. We particularly enjoyed the last 30 seconds, where it sounds like someone's having a spasm on the keyboard.

The album, Odd Blood, is out in February 2010.

New Musick Monday

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag, but on the whole music was the real winner. The Flaming Lips seem to have scared the majority of their fanbase with the sprawling, maddening Embryonic, whilst Shakira has won some new converts with her uncanny wolf impressions (her album crashed in at no.4). The real winner of course was Alexandra Burke whose 'Bad Boys' sold nearly 200,000 copies in a week and is the fastest selling single of the year so far. Who thinks Jonathan & Edward will be doing similar business this time next year?

This week is jam-packed with amazing new albums so we've scrapped the download single bit to squeeze everything in. There's also a theme, see if you can spot it.

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Don't Stop by Annie



This album's gestation has been as protracted as a 48 hour labour only with less mess. Originally due for release in 2008 it was then put on the shelf whilst Annie looked for a new record label. She then recorded three amazing new songs to go with the other amazing ones and finally Don't Stop is available to one and all. Featuring production by Paul Epworth, Richard X, Xenomania and Timo Kaukolampi, it's a forward-thinking pop gem with at least ten singles and a personality all of its own despite the ubiquity of it's co-creators. Plus, there's a special version of it that features a five track EP, which is better than 90% of all pop albums released last year.

BUY THIS WITH YOUR BIRTHDAY VOUCHERS

Declaration of Dependence by Kings of Convenience



It's been 5 long years since their last album, but finally Norway's answer to Simon & Garfunkel are back with this lovely collection of acoustic-lead singalongs. With no drums or percussion, the focus is solely on their harmonies, the twang of the guitar and the odd flutter of a violin here and there. Luckily they've not lost their ability to craft memorable melodies, even if 'Me Inside You' is impossible to listen to without thinking of a parody from Flight of The Conchords (yeah, cheers, Maddy Costa from the Guardian!).

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Logos by Atlas Sound



Atlas Sound is the pseudonym used by Bradford Cox - the lead singer with Deerhunter - for all his solo work. Logos is his second album in as many years and is as intimate, experimental and downright lovely as anything Animal Collective have done in recent years. Featuring guest vocals from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and Animal Collective's very own Noah Lennox, as well as Cox's own hushed tones, Logos rewards repeated listens, revealing itself slowly over time...a bit like that fat kid at school that you thought was a bit boring but was just shy and actually had some amazing opinions but then died of high cholesterol.

Whole again

As 2009 lurches further towards its end, we're left to reflect on what has been a pretty good year for music. There have been some pretty amazing albums released - Animal Collective, Annie, Antony & The Johnsons (and that's just the 'A's) - but there's one album we keep returning to and that's Primary Colours by The Horrors.

Everyone's already heard all about 'the year of the second album' and the fact that Primary Colours is this massive departure into krautrock with bits of shoegaze, etc, etc. The truth is much more straight forward; the album is well good. To make it even more well good they're releasing a new single in November that was previously only available on the Japanese version of the album. This is the video for 'Whole New Way':



Yes, we mentioned the song before but it's now a bit shorter and has images and things to go with it. Lazy you say? Yes. Yes we are.

New Musick Monday

Last week we pleaded with you to buy the special edition of Kid A and, we're not gonna lie, not many of you did. A few more of you brought the Noah & The Whale album, which entered just inside the top 20. Obviously soppy love songs sell better than paranoid tension these days. But, what will always sell, is a song about sex performed by three young ladies in tight lycra, so it's little surprise to see that 'Get Sexy' by the Sugababes entered at no. 2 on Sunday. Well done everyone.

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East of Eden by Taken By Trees



As we've said before, Taken By Trees is the musical nom de plume of one Victoria Bergsman, former lead singer of The Concretes and the female portion of Peter, Bjorn & John's 'Young Folks'. East of Eden was partially recorded in Pakistan, during which time Bergsman had to pretend to be married to avoid unwanted attention and was ignored by the male musicians who appear on the album. Thankfully the results are startling, with songs like the lovely 'Anna' and the brilliantly conceived cover of Animal Collective's 'My Girls' (re-titled 'My Boys here) taking elements from her travels and suffusing them with her distinctive own sound.

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Kings & Queens by Jamie T



Jamie T kind of passed us by before, what with all the harping on by the music press, each magazine declaring either him, Alex Turner or Mike Skinner some kind of modern day poet. This was probably a bit unfair and we enjoyed his debut album a lot on the one occasion we listened to it. This, the follow-up, is more of the same, but with greater focus on the actual songs and not just trying to make them sound as ramshackle as possible.

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'Dominos' by The Big Pink



We did a thing on this song about a month ago and when we heard it on the radio the other morning we thought, "this is really rather good", so here it is again. Moody, booming, simple and very catchy, it has all the ingredients to become a real smash on the hit parade. Things being the way they are, it will no doubt limp in at no. 38 and set things up 'nicely' for their debut album, A Brief History of Love.