The Go Team!- Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries)

The Go Team!- Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries)

It's Hard to believe that it's been over three years since Sophomore album Proof of Youth was released, comforting though for The Go Team! is that no-one has successfully attempted to recreate the band's definitive original combination of cut and paste style influences... Their Debut arguably redefined dance music for indie kids with it's large spaghetti western interludes, massive cheerleading choruses and it's apoclypatic guitar hooks, and that's not even mentioning the confrontation menace that was MC Ninja.

Rolling Blackouts opens with a huge mission statement as TORNADOS opens with that patterned scuzzy guitar sound and Ninja on a bigger mission than Katy B...and then what follows is the most ashamedly upfront, energetic and relentlessly upbeat album this winter could ever produce. Second Track Secetary Song guest stars Satomi Mastsuzaki (Deerhoof) and plays it even more kitsch cutesy than her dayjob. While Woman of the moment Bethany Constentino (Best Coast) excels in the hi-fi version of the Best Coast Universe and Dominque Young Unique challenges Ninja in the stakes of the albums MC on "Voice Yr Choice."

Their Third Album once again mixes all the usual factors, recalling skipping ropes, handclapping routines and the long hot summers of blaxplotation America in the 70s, all massively juxatposed in what sounds like The Go Team! musically biggest record yet. A Band who defined their own sound in 2004, do not need to reinvent the wheel, and Rolling Blackouts doesn't but it certainly pimps it's own ride, adding some lyrical cohesion over  their past releases. So if this year your looking for a positive dance record which is all about good times, then this is the record for you, it's twee but rocks and its assured to make even the most gloomy individual tap a toe. Long Live The Go Team! 8/10

Check Out: Tornados, Voice Yr Choice, The Running Range

FTC Discovery: Gypsy Death & You

Gypsy Death & You

Presumably named after The Kills Song from their debut Keep on Your Mean Side, Philadelphia's Gypsy Death & You are silmilarly a noisy two piece with a joy for raw sonic pop and a minor in shoegaze, their first EP No. 1 is a rough draft of exceptionally hooky songs which promises huge things in 2011.

www.myspace.com/gypsydeathandyoumusic

FTC Discovery: Chelsea Wolfe

Imagine if Laura Palmer had picked up a guitar and formed a band rather than turned to drugs and prostitution and you might expect it to sound a little like this. 

Almost as Doomed as the aforementioned TV Legend, It's a dark, beautiful, beguiling and unpleasant experience recalling last years sublime albums from No Joy or Tamaryn with a haunting pop shriek we are all hoping PJ Harvey is going to return with... It is the music of the dark cold night, of a world you've always hoped didn't exist, that you've seen in the corner of your eye, that you've had nightmares about... but without exception a beautiful nightmare? An early contender for best new act of 2011.

FTC Discovery: NETHERFRIENDS

Netherfriends are seriously my new favourite band... I've had Barry & Sherry on repeat for weeks now and it's a sublime adventure, the simple fuzz pop of opener "Bret Easton Ellis Novel" with it's shout along one liners before giving way to the intricate audio delights of the world music influenced "I'm Gonna Start" and "Live to a Hundred" or the acoustic clap along campfire fun   of "More Than Friends" make me angry I didn't discover on it's release in June, "BARRY & SHERRY" is one of the most accessible albums, probably appealing to anyone who got too hung up on Animal Collective's last album or Yeasayer or Vampire Weekend.

At times angry, focused and fiercly opinionated, Netherfriends deserve attention, I hope they tour the UK in 2011, or America on my visit..for the single purpose to scream along to this my late discovered top 10 album of 2010 if I'd discovered it in time!

FTC 45: Roky Erickson- Okkervil River -True Love Cast Out All Evil

45) Roky Erickson W/ Okkervil River- True Love Cast Out All Evil 

As with The Black Keys work with Ike Turner and Drive By Truckers's with Booker T, True Love Cast Out All Evil works as a historical reworking of musical history and more so than the other two , a rejuvenation of a legendary artist that has transcended with this release a reawakening of one of the lost greats of psychedelia. While Erickson has struggled with mental issues for decades and this his first studio album in 14 years, is an emotive homecoming to the recorded format. The opening track an incredibly lo-fi demo of Erickson before Okkervil River are introduced, and although the album is arguably just an Okkervil River record with Erickson on lead vocals, True Love Cast Out All Evil suitably addresses the absence of the man and his return to music, and Okkervil River have enough respect for the man at the centre that he remains the star throughout.

While any return to music is appreciated, True Love Cast Out All Evil works not just as Erickson album but by anyone, "Goodbye Sweet Dreams" is from an older man who can finally bring himself to look back upon his life and admit that he will never achieve those dreams from the past with a heavy heart and a broken soul. While "Please Judge" is a sociological story pleading with the definitions of victim and criminal and the fine line between them. And "John Lawman" directly shows that Erickson has not lost his contempt towards the men of law.

True Love Cast Out All Evil was a difficult and at times heartbreaking album but given its added implications of Erickson's return, a rich and warm hearted one worthy of acclaim for fans of the alt country rock genre.

FTC46: Former Ghosts- New Love

I loved Former Ghost's 2009 album "Fleurs" A LOT! I dragged myself to see their great show alongside parenthetical girls (who's EPs this year have been fucking amazing too) after one of the most draining weekends of my life in May and it was incredible! Xiu Xiu's Dear God I Hate Myself and Blue Water White Death (Jamie Stewart and Johnathan Melkberg of Shearwater) accompanied me to CMJ in October and were both incredible albums. "New Love" is better, in a year where a lot of my favourite albums are despairing, self-destroying and pained (in one way or another) nothing described something as clearly as "Winter's Year" synth line covering Ruppert's disparate pleas or "New Orleans" blood stopping chorus of "It's my fault I fell in love in the first place... if you leave the city, take me with you, or don't look back..." amongst the sights, sounds and smells of a past relationship.

"New Love" will be a record that will stay with me long into 2011 and I will regret it being so low on this list.... but it is one of the last records to be released this year (a day before my 24th birthday in fact) that is really important, lyrically, musically and it is sonically one of the most beautiful and intense albums that I've listened to in the last 12 months. Former Ghosts/Freddy Ruppert perfectly captured in one of the most heartbreaking and recovery albums of the year and I look forward to an album next november? 

FTC47: Jenny & Johnny- I'm Having Fun Now

I'm a life long Jenny Lewis fan, I first heard her on The Postal Service's We Will Become Silhouettes and then picked up Rilo Kiley's "The Execution of All Things" are my life (at the time) seemed complete, the way that Nick Hornby talked about the power of pop music in High Fidelity, about scores and scores of pop songs that encouraged misery and despair, Lewis did that, with some of the most introspective and sad bunch of lyrics mostly disguised in heartwarming and upbeat backings...

Two Rilo Kiley and Two solo records later, my love for Lewis hasn't really waned, of course the 16 year old boy somewhere inside me, doesn't want Rice involved in this and while this is arguably the weakest record Lewis has been involved in... Jenny & Johnny's debut "I'm having fun now" is a mighty fine and musically tight album, It's artwork and vocal harmonies harking back to another innocent time, post-war, grease/american graffti era. And like all of those albums between the first and now, Lewis still conjures up some open ended and wordly wise comments amongst a lightweight soundtrack. It's a good pop record which is unlikely to change the world but in the dire weather, it's November release recalls summer! We Need Summer! Like Best Coast's record (which features a lot higher in this list), this record plays upon both sexes fears of each other, fears of falling and fears of falling apart, Jenny & Johnny perfectly accompaning each other... I think the 16 year old me is over it now, I'm Having Fun...