December 2011
20 posts
7 tags
"Nine Types Of Light" is an AGCS Album of the Year
OK, so initially we wanted to pick just five records for our AGCS albums of the year but I just couldn’t let this one go unnoticed. Because “Nine Types Of Light” recieved a lukewarm reception this year; people claimed it wasn’t as good as Dear Science (in fact it’s better) and in general it’s been overlooked, barely getting a look-in on album of the year...
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AGCS Reviews EVERY Sufjan Stevens Christmas EP -...
Since the release of the Songs For Christmas box set in 2006, Sufjan has recorded four more Christmas EPs (and who knows, the fifth could already be in the hands of this year’s lucky few). Of these only Vol. VI and Vol. VIII have found their way into the wider world; as for other two, we can only speculate as to what they may contain. I have it on very good authority that Vol. VII...
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AGCS Reviews EVERY Sufjan Stevens Christmas EP -...
Yesterday I reviewed Vol. I, Vol. II, and Vol. III of Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas EP’s, and today in part two of our Suf-stravaganza I’ll be looking at Vol. IV and Vol. V. As I mentioned yesterday, these releases are a fascinating way to track Sufjan’s progress across the years, and these two EPs are no exception. Indeed, despite being separated by only a year they’re...
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AGCS Reviews EVERY Sufjan Stevens Christmas EP -...
We couldn’t go through an entire Christmas Calendar without mentioning the S-word could we? And nowadays it seems Sufjan is as much a part of Christmas as mulled wine and bitter family arguments. You see, long before the indie world and his alternative dog were releasing a Christmas record, Sufjan Stevens decided to make a Christmas EP for his friends. That was 2001, and since then...
19 tags
A Guide To Christmas Drinking From Alcopop Records...
Alcopop Records are great for a number of reasons: they’re home to a legion of great acts (Stagecoach, My First Tooth, Screaming Maldini, Johnny Foreigner, Katie Malco, Jumping Ships, and many more), they have lots of great ideas (Frisbee EPs, Scarves, Photo Albums), and they know how to throw a party (see here and here). This year I’ve managed to see all the acts mentioned above...
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"Suck It And See" is an AGCS Album of the Year
The most exciting musical moment of my year happened in the most horrid of venues that would only be referred to as The Millennium Dome by the band on stage that night. As the frontman stood centre stage and sang the opening lines of the first song solo over clean guitar, we all knew what was coming. Break a mirror, roll the dice; run with scissors through a chip pan firefight; go into business...
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Smith & Burrows - Funny Looking Angels
I guess I should hate this. Smith & Burrows is the imaginative moniker of Tom Smith (from Editors) and Andy Burrows (formerly of Razorlight). I don’t like Editors and I don’t like Razorlight. The lead single from this record, When The Thames Froze, is incredibly annoying, featuring clunky politics and a nauseating video which sees the duo battle it out for the prize of...
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"I'm With The Band" - In Praise of Bandcamp
In the first of these “review of the year” things I got angry at the music press’s obsession with nostalgia. In the second I got angry with Spotify’s complete failure to give bands a fair deal and develop a viable business model. In this third one I’ll be getting angry about … nothing. You see, it’s not all doom and gloom, and this piece is a love letter to potentially the best thing to happen to...
9 tags
Gruff Rhys - Atheist Xmas EP
I really wanted to like this; Super Furry Animals hold a special place in my affections as the first band I saw live and one of the first bands I became properly obsessed by. In his capacity as a solo artist Gruff Rhys has penned some brilliant songs and, in 2007’s “Candylion”, crafted one truly great album. But this year’s “Hotel Shampoo”, despite garnering...
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Tramlines Is The AGCS Festival Of The Year
This year I was able to go to some truly great gigs, with particular highlights including Sufjan Stevens, Los Campesinos!, Johnny Foreigner, Peter, Bjorn & John, The Kabeedies, Metronomy and loads more I’m sure I’ve forgotten. But while I saw lots of great shows in 2011, on the whole I was disappointed by the festivals I went to this year. In fact Reading’s line-up was so...
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"Hello Sadness" is an AGCS Album of the Year
“Oh, another post about Los Campesinos!, doesn’t Jed like ANY other bands” is what I imagine you’re thinking right now, to which I will reply SHUT UP, BEST BAND EVA, LC! 4 LIFE! I mean, maybe my obsession with Los Campesinos! isn’t quite that bad, but there’s no denying I’m pretty enamored with them and could quite easily write (and have already written)...
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Tellison - Good Luck It's Christmas
Tellison are great, but as much as I loved this years “The Wages of Fear” I couldn’t help but wish the band had recorded an entire album of gorgeous ballads like “Freud Links The Teeth And The Heart”. Sure, I know they’re first and foremost a rock band, and a mightily good one as well, but personally I find it’s in these more tender moments (see also:...
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"The Future Of Music" - AGCS Vs Spotify
Remember a few years ago, when Spotify first started to creep into the public consciousness, and you downloaded it and your first thought was “wow, this is pretty cool”. Sure, the adverts were annoying, and there were huge gaps in the collection, and you really couldn’t see how it was going to be financially viable for the company itself, let alone for the bands whose music you...
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"Smother" is an AGCS Album of the Year
This year we decided that instead of arbitrarily assigning numbers to our favourite albums and putting them into a league table, we’d just pick some of the records we enjoyed the most and write about them. And while I could claim this was a noble move to examine music on it’s own merit and not make everything a competition, the real reason for abandoning the list format is simply...
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Christmas TV 2011 - An AGCS Guide
“And I’d like it if you made it to mine by Christmas Eve, So you can hold me, and we’ll watch Christmas TV”
So sang Slow Club on their festive hit “Christmas TV”, and while the sentiment is all well and good, the harsh reality is that Christmas TV is almost exclusively shit. I mean, just look at the BBC’s big, expensive promo for the festive season and as...
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Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler - This Is Christmas
Saccharine (adj.)
Excessively sweet or sentimental
Relating to or containing sugar; sugary
To save me constantly referencing a thesaurus, looking for ten different ways to say the exact same thing, I’ve put that definition at the top of this review. I can call the songs cloying, sickly, overly sentimental but it all comes back to that one word: saccharine. If you were expecting this to...
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"Every Holiday Is A Disaster" with Bordeauxxx
Bordeauxxx are ace! If you checked out our awesome compilation of this year’s best unsigned music (if you missed it here’s a link), you’ll already be familiar with the gang-chants-and-glockenspiel glory of Every Holiday Is A Disaster, but if not, here it is again in video form:
Great, right? You can get this track and the similarly excellent “Mother’s Ruin”...
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"Let England Shake" is an AGCS Album of the Year
This year we decided that instead of arbitrarily assigning numbers to our favourite albums and putting them into a league table, we’d just pick some of the records we enjoyed the most and write about them. And while I could claim this was a noble move to examine music on it’s own merit and not make everything a competition, the real reason for abandoning the list format is simply...
16 tags
"The Pain From An Old Wound" - AGCS Vs Nostalgia
The first of a series of essays on the state of music in 2011.
“May You Live In Interesting Times” goes the old Chinese curse, and it’s fair to say this year has been an interesting one. The front pages of newspapers have been adorned with scandal, disaster, and revolution at a seemingly unprecedented scale. But what if, in a hundred years time, an historian was looking not at...
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A Christmas Gift For You From TeamABC
TeamABC are great. I think I may have mentioned this before, and indeed just yesterday I was extolling the virtues of their new Complaints EP. So I was very excited when the band’s creative powerhouse Stef Purenins agreed to write a Christmas song (his first one) for our calendar. The resulting track is called “Winter Nights” and in keeping with the rest of the TeamABC...
November 2011
6 posts
17 tags
The Best Unsigned Bands Of 2011
Here at AGCS we love new music, and so it’s only fitting that we should start off our calendar with a compilation of the great music made by new, unsigned acts this year. But it’s more than that; this is a taste of what’s to come in the run up to Christmas. We’ve got features and exclusives from several of the acts on this compilation going up over the course of the...