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millionreasonsI’ve broken with my 11 year tradition of making an end of year tape and made a CD. Since nowhere sells cassettes anymore and because nearly all my music is on the computer nowadays. As ever, this is stuff I’ve listened to this year, rather than released this year.
1. Strychnine – The Sonics
2. Grits Aint Groceries - Little Milton
3. Bottle Rocket – The Go! Team
4. Hiccup In Our Happiness – Luckies
5. Kaja Kaja Goo– Polysics
6. Reconsider - Brenda Holloway
7. What’d I Say– Ray Charles
8. Dark End Of The Street - James Carr
9. Tram No. 7 - Jens Lekman
10. Army Of Me - 50 Hertz
11. You Are The Light - Jens Lekman
12. Wishbone - Architecture in Helsinki
13. Formed A Band - Art Brut
14. Abc - Pipettes
15. Black Cab - Jens
16. Side Streets - St Etienne
17. Homeless Kids Club - My Favo[u]rite
18. Love Me Like You - Magic Numbers
19. Wake Up - Arcade Fire
20. Love Punch - Chalets
21. She’s Not Leaving - The Research
22. Winter Proper – Luckies
23. Rent A Wreck – Suburban Kids
1. Heard this at a birthday party back in January. I can’t remember ever hearing the Sonics before, but they’re that dirty bluesy funky garage sound (with piano) that I like and can’t, in my opinion, be imitated by noughties pretenders like the Strokes.
2. I haven’t been to How Does it Feel discotheque much this year but I heard this at The Long Running Indie disco and I loved it. The trumpets! Makes me want to swing… out.
3. Gareth told me about the Go! Team and I thought they were one of the most genuinely innovative, original and exciting bands of this year, unlike, say, the Kaiser Chiefs
4. The Lucksmiths released their new album and as ever it was reliably good; this was the best track off it, although their most beautiful song was no. 22.
5. Jeff referenced the Polysics as a Japanese Bis, but they’re more than some kind of novelty act. Kaga Kaga Goo may sound like the name of a badly hairstyled 80s new romantic band, but you could light a fire off of its energy.
6. Brenda Holloway was another HDIF play and one of Motown’s lesser known artistes. A pity cos she can sing better than Diana Ross, although she wasn’t shagging the boss, so…
7. The BBC makes unfunny sitcoms, yawnsome dramas and its news bulletins are aimed at 6 year olds with learning difficulties, but it carries on making brilliant documentaries. It’s pretty unusual that a factual programme about something I’m interested in tells me something new but Soul Deep, broadcast earlier this, year was - in the words of the Points of Viewers - worth the exorbitant licence fee alone. Ray Charles was a revelation. It was this kind of stuff that invented modern pop music and not the bloody Beatles.
8. James Carr was a Soul Deep artiste I’d not come across previously. I’d heard Dark End of the Street covered before but never the Otis-esque original.
9. Jens Lekman is my Featured Artist of the year. Filling the gap[s] Sarah Records left behind. This will always be a Swedish summer song and Fosca’s fab mini-tour.
10. Strange, wonderful and, again, Swedish.
11. I thought Tram #7 was my fave Jens song until I heard this. “You are the light by which I travel – into this and that”
12. Just a fabulous 2 min 26 minutes pop song by Australian trombone-loving nutters.
13. I don’t think Art Brut are the best thing since sliced-up music industry execs, but I love this song. Reminds me of a freezing cold picnic in London Fields and the DIY ethic not yet dead and that bit about standing under Byker Bridge with Michael Bradshaw from Sweeping the Nation. “Stop buying records from the supermarket!”
14. A great pop song by faux-6Ts kids. 1 min 58 secs long. Perfect.
15. More Jens. The best song since the Popguns’ Bye Bye Baby about being in a cab in a city at night. “I feel like going home, but at the same time I don’t”
16. St Etienne released a new low-key album and this was the best song on it. Bossanova-tastic. Contains the chorus more feminist than a thousand Huggy Bear and Le Tigre situationist happenings: “I walk the side streets home, even when I’m on my own - if I let myself believe all the bad press and stories I’d never step a foot outside”.
17. Another indiepop gem. “Ghosts of dead teenagers sing to me when I am dancing”.
18 and 19. I didn’t think the Magic Numbers or the Arcade Fire were the best new bands of 2005, but these are pretty good songs.
20. The Chalets are a Cramps-esque band I ‘discovered’ on the indiemp3 weblog. Mp3 blogs are fun but really, it’s only a hi-tech version of mixtapes, despite what the Guardian may say. “I know you love me but you’re so fucking crazy”.
21. Lawrence told me about these. They’re fine! Electro-rock from Wakefield.
22. The Lucksmiths saved their best 2005 song for a B-side. Full of yearning and shivers. You’d never think they were south hemisphere-ites.
23. More Swedes. Babbabababa. Sweden is the heir-apparent to Anglo-Indie I think. Best song about touring since Super-Trouper.
I couldn’t fit the following onto the CD:
Two Lovers – Butterflies of Love
Bye Bye Baby - Mary Wells
Crazy Chick – Charlotte Church, Motown-a-go-go!!
17 - Juni
Law of the Sea – Fog Band, this would definitely have been on the CD should I have known how to record from vinyl to PC
Becky I Wanna Borrow Your Boyfriend - All Girl Summer Fun Band
Gekommen zu Bleiben - Wir send Helden
September Song – Frank Sinatra
The Christmas Song - Frank Sinatra
Rainy Night in Soho – The Pogues, just cos I listened to it far too much in December
