HALFWAY HOME - THE YEAR SO FAR

Back in January I wrote about some of the albums I was looking forward to in 2010. Now that we’re halfway through the year it only seems appropriate to reflect on how it’s been so far.

The Highs:

Owen Pallett’s Heartland, which I reviewed all the way back in January, has borne repeated listening well and remains the most ambitious record I’ve heard so far this year. Marking a major step up from the violinist’s earlier work and featuring the confusing but nonetheless intriguing concept of Owen as the all-powerful narrator of an ultra-violent farmer’s destiny in the fictional “Spectrum” world (told you it was confusing), this record is a blinder. Pretentious? Quite possibly, but that doesn’t make it any less brilliant. Read original review here.

I was a huge fan of both the EP’s Hot Club De Paris released in the first half of the year, which saw the band augmenting their mathrobeat guitar sound (that’s right, I did just take it upon myself to merge math-rock with afro-beat. I’m a visionary) with a bit of old-fashioned shredding. The results were some of the best songs of the bands career yet. Read reviews of both EP’s here and here.

Los Campesinos! remain one of my favourite bands and their second album proper, Romance Is Boring, only made me love them more. I’ve already written a ridiculously long track-by-track review here, so I’ll keep it short and just say that Romance Is Boring is my favourite record of the year so far.

There were also some great albums I inexplicably never got round to reviewing. Of particular note were the excellent WHB and Siren, the debut albums from We Have Band and Yes Giantess respectively. Both bands create gloriously catchy synth-pop and both albums were ace from start to finish. The return of LCD Soundsystem, with This Is Happening, was also cause for celebration and completed a hat trick of near-perfect albums.

Along with a lot of records which, while being good, failed to offer anything particularly new (Contra by Vampire Weekend, The Chaos by The Futureheads, Measure by Field Music) there were a few big disappointments…

The Lows:

Good Shoes took three years to release a follow up to Think Before You Speak, yet the turgid No Hope, No Future sounded like it was knocked out in a week. Most frustrating were the occasional flashes of the band’s early charm, seen on album opener “The Way My Heartbeats” in particular, which made the record’s other tracks appear all the more disappointing. Read the original review here.

Eels also continued their losing streak following 2009’s ill-conceived Hombre Lobo with January’s apocalyptic break-up album End Times, throughout which E managed to sound like a bad cover version of himself. Not one memorable track, and in fact not even one memorable lyric made this by far the worst Eels album yet. E may well redeem himself in August, when the final instalment in this trilogy, Tomorrow Morning, is released; however given the quality of the first two parts I won’t be getting my hopes up.

Best Gig:

To end on a positive, seeing Xiu Xiu at the Harley in Sheffield was one of the most intense gigs I’ve ever been to, an experience that would be hard to describe without sounding like a pretentious dickhead and which none of the live videos on youtube can do justice. Xiu Xiu’s music isn’t for the faint-hearted, and in a live setting the raw self-loathing and anguish at the heart of Jamie Stewart’s songs is only amplified further. It may not have been a barrel of laughs, but Xiu Xiu’s performance has definitely been the most memorable of the year so far.

Jed. x