Discopop Directory Top 10 albums of 2011

Let's get this out of the way now: PJ Harvey does not feature in this Top 10 (which is actually a top 11, because I miscounted). Let England Shake topped everyone else's polls and is, on an intellectual level, a brilliant treatise on war and history. But I never woke up singing lyrics like "What if I take my problems to the United Nations?".

So these are the albums that embedded earworms in my brain. The ones I cued up on every car journey. The ones I actually listened to...

11) Lady Gaga - Born This Way

On the face of it, Born This Way is a deeply unlovable album. The production is harsh, the artwork is horrible and the tunes simply aren't there. But if you carefully select the highlights (Edge Of Glory's sax solo, Sheiße's pomposity-pricking humour and the title track's towering chorus) it's a hell of a lot of fun.


10) The Pierces - You & I

The cover of The Pierces' fourth album is designed to look like an care-worn old record, with a ghostly imprint of the vinyl visible on the sleeve. The music is a similarly faithful recreation of a bygone era - lush with harmony and classic, timeless melodies. When the polished perfection threatens to become too winsome, the band flash a glimpse of their darker side, as on the possessive growl of Love You More. Tailor-made for radio, this didn't do as well as it deserved.


9) Katy B - On A Mission

Kathleen Brien wrote songs about going to the club, her plans to go to the club, picking up boys at the club and the aftermath of having been to the club. Thankfully, it wasn't as soul-sappingly tedious as that sounds. A night out with Ms B sounds thrilling and magical, everyone clamouring for one more dance before catching the night bus home. One reviewer described On A Mission as "a glowstick Alice in Wonderland" and, frankly, I can't do better than that.


8) Noah And The Whale - Last Night On Earth

A big old FM rock album, directly inspired by Tom Petty, with choruses bigger than mountains. It's almost as if Noah and the Whale were bored of pining after Laura Marling and wanted to have some fun...


7) Beyoncé - 4

"Apparently", Beyoncé is a secret math nerd. Her album was called 4, it featured one song called 1+1 and another, Countdown, which was a tribute to Carol Vorderman's mental arithmetic skills [subs - please check].

Less edgy than her previous albums, 4 is steeped in classic soul - from the Randy Crawford-isms of Love On Top, to the Purple Rain grandstanding of 1+1's guitar solo. It all adds up (ha!) to become Beyoncé's most consistent album to date, even though it was apparently sequenced by a monkey stabbing pins into a dartboard.

6) Foster The People - Torches

You might have noticed that this top 10 is a bit oestrogen-y. Well, this is the antidote: A trio of California dudes who aren't shy of a pop hook. They may have been fêted by the indie kids because of their disturbing lyrics and quirky production techniques (he's singing through a megaphone, LOL) - but Foster The People were as shamelessly mainstream as Russell Grant being fired out of a cannon.

5) Metronomy - The English Riviera

The English Riviera opens with the sound of seagulls and a string quartet and ends with a woozy techno ode to Jill Scott. In between, it references Serge Gainsbourg, Ace Of Bass and end-of-pier Wurlitzers. It sounds bonkers - it is bonkers - but it's also a superbly-crafted record, with more musical twists and turns than a bowl of spaghetti.

4) Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

She's a cheery sort, Lykke Li, declaring "sadness is my boyfriend" and singing wistfully of being "kicked 'til I drown". You have to hope she's seeking professional help... but would a happy, well-adjusted Lykke Li make music as mesmerising as this? From the depraved sexual pounding of Get Some, to the echo-drenched Sadness Is A Blessing, this is the most exciting album about loneliness and depression ever made.

3) Florence and the Machine - Ceremonials

Listening to Florence and the Machine is a bit like standing in a wind tunnel full of kettles - invigorating but painful. Once you get past the bluster and chaos of this over-produced album, however, you might notice that it's rammed full of tunes. Shake It Out is the best song about a horse since Father Ted, while Spectrum showcases Florence's surprisingly versatile vocal range. If there had been a few extra moments of levity - like the frothy Breaking Down - this would have been a contender for number one.

2) Nicola Roberts - Cinderella's Eyes

"I had to call the fireman, my hair was burning bridges.
I'm shooting bullets from my chest. I'm Superwoman, bitches.
And if my balls of steel have got stuck half-way down your pipe,
I brought some KY, time to open, open, open wide."

Dear all other pop stars, you have been served your notice.

Nicola Roberts - Gladiator



1) Adele - 21

Yes, that's right: It's a team ginger triumph in the top three...

She turned up out of the blue, univited, and conquered the planet. 21 is not cool, it is not original, it is not remotely contemporary - but Adele Laurie Blue Adkins' 11 tales of heartbreak, revenge, and more heartbreak and revenge touched millions. It's inspired by soul, gospel and country, but the album is defined by that voice. Adele has a clarity of tone so pure you suspect that, somewhere in the fiery depths of hell, the devil has a tiny leather box with her soul in it. Good album, though.

Adele - Set Fire To The Rain

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Discopop Directory top 10 singles of 2011

It's that time of year again... As usual, the top 10 is dictated by my iTunes play count so I can't pretend I was cool and listening to Gil Scott-Heron all year, because I wasn't. It was this instead.

10)Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum

One thing we learned this year is that, if you want the lead single from your album to be a gargantuan chart hit, you shouldn't get Diplo to produce it. Beyoncé flopped with Run The World (Girls), but turned things around with her mega-spectacular Glastonbury performance. Nicola Roberts had to make do with T4 On The Beach - where someone hit her on the head with a beach ball. Poor Nicola





9) Britney Spears - 'Til The World Ends

In which the lyrics of an REM song were set to the refrain of Baltimore's Tarzan Boy. Apocalypse Wow.





8) Adele - Someone Like You

A lady, a piano, a broken heart, a televised tear, a sales phenomenon, a modern classic. Of all the songs in the top 10, Someone Like You has the most passionate, believable vocal. Why isn't it higher? Because I can't shake the feeling that the key line: "I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me it isn't over" simply doesn't scan.





7) Chase & Status ft Liam Bailey - Blind Faith

You simply can't go wrong by sampling Loleatta Holloway's Love Sensation and, in the year that she died, Chase And Status brought her disco classic bang up to date. Liam Bailey must have two-ton balls of steel, though. A total newcomer, he does all the vocal heavy lifting, ramping up the tension in the bridge so that Holloway's lines work as a pressure-release, arms-in-the-sky, hugging-complete-strangers moment. An absolute corker.





6)The Pierces - Glorious

I'm a sucker for a sun-kissed harmony, and this song is buckling under the weight of them. The middle 8 section - "I felt his hand today / Across my shoulder, I kneeled down to pray" - where the Pierce sisters go all coquettish and ethereal makes my spine tingle. A vain attempt to work out the intricacies of their pitching is what propelled this song into the top 10.

But I hadn't realised until recently that Glorious is a cover of an obscure 2007 single by US band The Levy. The original is a bit mopey, this is almost perfect.





5)SBTRKT ft Little Dragon - Wildfire

If Wildfire doesn't make your bottom move, then your bottom is malfunctioning.





4) Metronomy - The Bay

I swear that The Bay's synth riff intro is a tribute to Abba's Money Money Money (distressingly, if you type Money Money Money into YouTube, the second result is Jessie J's Price Tag, a song that wasn't even within sniffing distance of this list).

The track is probably the most explicit of the "I LOVE TORQUAY" songs on Metronomy's album about how much they love Torquay, which is really quite a lot. Crammed full of hooks and a strutting, sinewy bassline, it was also the best single they released in 2011. Even the remixes were superb: In particular Erol Alkan's extended version and the Cloud Control reworking, which took Joseph Mount's London-Paris-Tokyo lyrics and turned them into an existential techno travel advert.

The video, the band admitted, was a parody of Will Smith's Miami, filmed in England's sunny Torbay. Is there anything about this song that isn't incredible?





3) Lana Del Rey - Video Games

Gloomy and sexy like a David Lynch film, this song is simply beautiful.





2) Lykke Li - Sadness Is A Blessing

Gloomy and sexy like a David Lynch film, this song is simply beautiful.





1) Adele - Rolling In The Deep

Adele's producer Paul Epworth was interviewed on posh-nobs radio show Front Row last week, and talked about the making of Rolling In The Deep... Adele came to him with the opening line "There's a fire, starting in my heart" and they knocked out the song in an afternoon. It's an amazing piece of work - at once elemental, powerful and vulnerable.

Epworth deserves as much credit as Adele. There's a breath-stopping moment in the interview where he picks up the guitar he used on the track and chops out those muted opening chords. Even on a tinny broadcast microphone, it sounds almost like the recorded version, which goes to show how simple and clean his recordings are. Adele's writing and singing on 21 is fantastic, but its the production makes them leap out of your speakers like a panther. A big ginger panther with a filthy laugh. Song of the year.



Honourable mentions (aka "why didn't I listen to this as much as I thought I did?"): Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend / Florence & The Machine - Shake It Out / Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers / Michael Kiwanuka - Tell Me A Tale / Ronika - Forget Yourself / Kanye West - All The Lights / Emeli Sandé - Heaven / Beyoncé - 1+1 / Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar / Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill / Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets / Foster The People - Call It What You Want / Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle

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Feliz Navidad de Simon Le Bon

I'm taking the customary Christmas break from blogging... but I'll be back next week with the Top 10 singles and albums of the year (a definitive list - none of the others count).

Hope Santa brings you everything you want, and that the Top Of The Pops Christmas Day revival isn't an unholy mess. Until we meet again, here are Duran Duran, wishing you a Happy Christmas in poorly dubbed Spanish.



Mark
xx

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Lana Del Rey: Off To The Races video

Lana Del Rey has been chopping up gun-porn B-movie footage with her trusty razor blade again.

This time it's in aid of her album taster Off To The Races. The result is all death, bubble perms, sun bleached beach babes and distressingly tight jeans.

Oh, and the song's quite good, too. After a languid, harmonically-challenged opening, Lana picks up the pace for a chirpy, suggestive chorus: "I'm your little scarlet, starlet, singing in the garden, kiss me on my open mouth."

Which is all very nice.

Lana Del Rey - Off To The Races

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As if by magic, an Arcade Fire video appeared

I thought Arcade Fire had disappeared deep into the Rocky Mountains to ponder the follow-up to their magnificent Suburbs album. But no...

In a typically untypical act of scheduling madness, the Canucks have just released a video for The Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - just a brief two months after they wrapped up their world tour.

If you haven't listened to the album for a while, this is the one where Régine Chassagne gets a shot at lead vocals. It sounds like a whimsical remix of Blondie's Heart Of Glass and the video features that quirky Arcade Fire "humour" that results in terrifying night visions.

Watch at your peril...

Arcade Fire - The Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains


PS: If you're feeling energetic, there's a webcam-enhanced interactive version of the video at the end of this link.

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When collaborations go right

French DJ David Guetta is basically responsible for the sound of every record you hear on chart radio these days. His formula is simple: Euphoric synths, pounding 4x4 drum beats and precipitous drops. Or, to put it another way, he's constantly recycling the thing he did on The Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feeling in the hope that everyone is too off their face on Vodka and Red Bull to notice.

When it goes right - eg with Rihanna on Who's That Chick - it goes very right. When it goes wrong - eg with Akon on the risible Sexy Bitch - it's like an ear infection, a migraine, the norovirus and having a spike rammed into your oesophagus all at the same time.

His latest single is a duet with Aussie jazz-pop experimentalist Sia. Probably best known in the UK for her work with coffee table chill out band Zero 7, she's an unexpected collaborator for the starstruck French producer. If you were to plot their respective careers on a graph, it would look like this graph:

Their duet is called Titanium and, appropriately enough, it's a 100% bulletproof club anthem. But I wonder what the ultimate goal is: Respect for Guetta from the internet cognoscenti? A rare chart hit for Sia? Or an unhappy mish-mash of mediocre sales and begrudgingly positive reviews from Pitchfork?

Their fate is in your hands, etc.

David Guetta ft Sia - Titanium

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