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Features Rants Records of 2005 
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| Records of 2005 |
| By Jamie Mackie | |
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Monday, 02 January 2006 Crazy Frog. Live 8. The 58th series of the sodding X-Factor. Yep, even if you an imagination to rival Hans Christian Anderson you’d be hard pushed to suggest that 2005 has been a great year for music. In fact, if this year has a musical footnote it belongs to the heartbroken hand wringing singer songwriter. Sadly, this meant James Blunt. The ubiquitous coffee table record of the year, Back to Bedlam was purchased by practically everyone and their pet. ‘My life is brilliant’, he sang (repeatedly, as 1.6 million idiots went out and bought his awful record). Let’s face it, you could afford to be smug too if you authored the best selling record in 2005, despite singing like a cat being slowly strangled. Anyway, I digress. Musically, 2005 has been distinctly average. Even discounting every songwriter that popped up, we’ve also had the usual novelty number one singles (Crazy Frog’s ‘Axel F’, ‘Is This The Way To Amarillo’) and the singles that were just crap – Westlife, the Pussycat Dolls and Akon’s hugely irritating ‘Lonely’ spring to mind. Yet with some persistence you could pull some emeralds from the mountain of coal. Some bands turned in the best records of their career, and despite my moans, at least two singer songwriters were actually worth some of the hype. In no particular order, here are the five best records that have soundtracked this writer’s year.
Josh Rouse: Nashville (Rykodisc)
Elbow: Leaders of the Free World (V2)
The opener ‘Station Approach’ provides a blueprint for the record – affecting acoustic guitars, soul bearing lyrics delivered in Guy Garvey’s well worn gravel vocals and (shock for Elbow) a huge chorus which you find yourself humming under your breath at inappropriate moments of the day. The band have always sounded as if each track was methodically put together and this feeling remains, but all of a sudden they sound as if they’re having fun – in particular the jaw dropping ‘Forget Myself’ sounds nothing like a song that they would never have previously attempted and has a chorus so huge that NASA would have to send out a probe to space to pick it up. Similarly, ‘Mexican Standoff’ (and yes, it is all handclaps and choppy riffs) sounds like a party you want to join immediately.
Yet, it’s a record of two halves. More upbeat moments aside, the best parts come when Garvey is at his most vulnerable. Much of the lyrical content focuses on his break up with Radio One DJ Edith Bowman and he’s not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. ‘An Imagined Affair’ and ‘My Very Best’ are typical of this, with subtle acoustic loops and gentle melodies. The former also has my favourite lyric of the year – ‘The sky is as black as regret’. Basically, it’s a must have album for the sensitive indie boy (or girl). Doves: Some Cities (Heavenly) It’s not entirely perfect – one of the few black marks is ‘Walk in Fire’ which sounds too close to previous single ‘There Goes the Fear’ for comfort. Even that is excepted though with ‘Sky Starts Falling’, the best track on a great record. A euphoric, upbeat song, it has initially clipped drums and guitars which suddenly morph, driving and screaming at the chorus – difficult to describe, but trust me on this – it’s the perfect song for when you just want to let go. KT Tunstall: Eye To the Telescope (Relentless) |
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Word of mouth saw Editors grow in stature during 2005. Signed to a small indie label, it was easy at first to dismiss them as the English Interpol. There are undoubted similarities – the clipped and rhythmic guitars, the dark image and of course the fact that singer Tom Smith sounds suspiciously like Paul Banks, his counterpart from Interpol. The Back Room is a grower though, and repeated listens saw a wholly distinct band emerge. Interpol have often been accused of sacrificing emotion for melody, yet Editors have both in spades. There’s a melancholy, human quality to songs like ‘Camera’, ‘Fall’ and ‘Fingers in the Factories’ and much of the record deals with human emotions and their fragility. They have more than a slight debt to Joy Division rather than Interpol too – ‘Camera’ in particular, with rippling guitars and synths, has Smith bellowing like a wounded animal, reminiscent of Ian Curtis. Better still, in ‘Munich’ and particularly ‘Bullets’ they have two songs which sound so powerful and, well, just right, that they are genuinely life affirming.
The Back Room
Despite being the year in which the world record was set for crap singer songwriters, some established solo artists released the best of their careers. John Rouse was one. Rouse relocated to Spain, went through a divorce and became tee-total during the making of this, his fifth album, so you wouldn’t exactly expect it to be a barrel of laughs. Strangely, you’d be wrong. Nashville is an upbeat and strangely soothing record, stuffed full of warm acoustic melodies and topped by Rouse’s unmistakable Dylanesque tinged vocals. ‘Winter in the Hamptons’, with its ‘ba ba’ refrain and instantly likeable tune is a benchmark for much of the album, while the hook laden ‘Carolina’ is the bounciest soung he’s ever written – evoking the feeling of high summer and possessing a chorus which blatantly defies you not to sing along.
While Radiohead continue to pursue their aim of being the most obtuse band in the universe and Coldplay go for global domination within a cloak of utter blandness, Elbow decided to take it upon themselves to step into the breach. Proper melancholy always requires a bit of intelligence and in a year where the marketing of no brainer bland bands went beyond a joke, Leaders of the Free World delivered.
Doves' third record was far more focused than its predecessors Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast, and all the better for that. Listening to Doves is usually a Willy Wonka experience for the music lover – there are so many enjoyable aspects that it’s hard to know where to start. Some Cities was no exception. The chiming riffs of the title track, the bouncing piano of first single ‘Black and White Town’, the melancholy guitar and sampled choir on ‘Snowden’, the hair raising strings on ‘The Storm’, the perfect simplicity of the acoustic guitars on ‘Some Day Soon’, all topped with Jimi Goodwin’s world weary vocals.
While the initial urge is to apologise for selecting such a ubiquitous record as one of my favourites of the year, no one should ever be ashamed of defending talent. Even putting aside that Tunstall is a fellow Scot and frankly a fox,
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© 2004-2006 uk-fusion.com
All rights reserved. Editor: Afsheen Shaikh.
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