Everyone else is doing it so why shouldn't I... except I will not be mentioning PJ Harvey, Mogwai, Anna Calvi, Decemberists, Panda Bear et al, there's no point you would have heard them anyway and decided you loved them and most of the aforementioned left me cold or at least they were records that I didnt think were anyway near as strong as previous releases...
And there are also so many records to be released in the rest of 2011 which may eclipse a lot of these records... or hell I may relisten to one of these above and decide it's the best thing since Stephen Malkmus picked up a pencil who knows... But here are 20 records you should have heard this year... some you will have, some you wont. There's also a load that I won't mention here, mainly because Ive mentioned them before or will rave about them more later...
FUCKED UP- David Comes To Life
This Record has been raved about by pretty much anyone who has heard it and for those who didn't love it... they've been fitted with hearing aids and have now changed their minds. Fucked Up's opus was a marvellous, intriguing, brutal and beautiful discourse on love and misery. Reject all concepts you have of the band or of their prog hardcore sub-category, sit down with a bottle of whiskey and listen to this record with the lyric booklet wide open, no record this year will have any more of an emotional punch than David...
And this is the sort of school I want my children to go to...
DESTROYER- KAPUTT
Destroyer finally makes the record of his career with Kaputt, which sounds like a perfect pop record lost somewhere at the 80s synth pop peak with shades of the pet shop boys, spandau ballet and Haircut 100. Despite it's ear catching hooks, its also a sonically closed album with less going on than Dan Bejar's previous ventures. Bejar is an intriguing yet intelligently awkward figure enhancing Kaputt to a beyond beautiful, suggestive and insightful pop album encompassing an ambience far superior to many of the record's it shares traits with. I can guarantee that not many records do quite what this record is capable of... it's closer companion in my mind at the moment is Handsome Furs' incredible Sound Kapitol.
DIRTY BEACHES- Badlands
Sticking with Canada is Dirty Beaches' Badlands a creepy little lo-fi release, stylised and noirish nightmare rockbilly fused pop. Sparse instrumentation reminates around what sounds like a bad tape recording of an old 45 but Alex Zhang Hungtai's debut is an atmospheric beast which lead it to being longlist for the polaris prize earlier this year. Not for everyone's ears but an imaginative release which will leave you haunted beyond its short duration.
More Tomorrow....
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