UK Blogger Albums of 2011

At the start of every year one of the UK’s longest serving and most under-rated music blogs Sweeping the Nation publishes the results of the UK Bloggers Album of the Year Poll. Each music blog that is involved (which includes our own) submits its 10 favourite albums of the year and through some sort of calculation wizardry Simon from Sweeping the Nation computes the results. You can see Breaking More Waves chosen 10 using this link and from that post there are links to articles on each album itself.

End of year lists from the likes of critics, journalists and music bloggers often tend to not reflect what the mainstream public has been buying. This year PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake won the Mercury Music prize and cropped up on so many year-end lists that we began to wonder if the list writers were actually the same person. Unsurprisingly it tops the UK bloggers poll as well. Yet the masses were largely ambivalent – the album only reached no.8 in the album chart and nose-dived quickly after that.

If the writers are ‘right’ then why is it that so often the public ignore them? After all isn’t one of the roles of a critic to help sieve out the good, the bad and the ugly to help enable the record buying public make informed choices? Isn’t their job to bring the underground to the mainstream? And to kick the dull and average into touch? Well if it is, they’re not doing a particularly effective job. For example, Jessie J’s album is 2011’s biggest selling debut album in the UK despite the critical panning it got.

Maybe these days the role of the critic is dead, as even if they do highlight the good they don’t have the authoritative voice they had in the past. These days everyone’s a critic. Set up your own website (we did), post a comment on someone’s review, ‘like’ something on Facebook, text a radio station and tell them that the new song they’re playing is amazing – all of this mass interaction dissolves the power of the professional critic to nothing but a vague limp cloud hovering somewhere in the distance.

So this is the UK music bloggers list of their favourite albums. What ‘influence’ it has we  guess would be close to zero. More likely anyone reading it or seeing it will criticise it one way or another. It will either be seen as ‘a good list’ because it represents your own tastes or a ‘bad list’ because some of the records chosen you haven’t heard or don’t like.

This is how music criticism works these days – through blinkered prejudice with everyone as a participant.

The Top 5 (in reverse order) are

5 RADIOHEAD - The King of Limbs

4 WILD BEASTS - Smother

3 tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l

2 BON IVER - Bon Iver

1 PJ HARVEY - Let England Shake

You can see the full list at Sweeping The Nation using this link, together with the blogs that voted.

So here’s our criticism, or rather our analysis of its relevance to ourselves, because it seems that’s what criticism is these days – it’s become very inward rather than outward looking. Of the 75 records chosen, 8 of Breaking More Waves favourite 10 made the list (with a neat spread throughout the top 75) indicating that by and large our tastes bear some similarity to our peer group. The only omissions of our chosen 10 were Florence & the Machine’s Ceremonials and our number 1 album of the year Last by The Unthanks, however we strongly suspect we were the only blog to vote for Last and that a high proportion of the bloggers haven’t even heard it.

Whilst PJ Harvey achieving number 1 placement is no surprise, there are a couple of records in the top 10 that may raise eyebrows.

 First is Radiohead’s high placing at number 5. The King of Limbs has been widely discussed on the internet this year, but the overall consensus was that it was far from their best. Radiohead however have always been massively revered by UK bloggers, so we suspect the fan factor crept in here giving bias towards their position. From our perspective we remain huge Radiohead fans; In Rainbows, Kid A and OK Computer are some of our most treasured recordings that we own, but with the exception of Codex and Lotus Flower, The King of Limbs left us cold.

A second surprise comes with the high placing of Noah and the Whale’s Last Night On Earth at no.8, which is a record that seems to have slipped off the radar a little and not been particularly well featured in the end of year lists, even though it’s a very solid album. So, it’s nice to see an element of the UK blogging community giving that record some recognition.

A further point of note is the lack of influence US hip-hop has on the UK bloggers poll. In fact the highest placed rap record is Ghostpoet (our own no.4 album) at number 20, but this is an unreservedly British sounding record.

Other albums that we would have expected to appear on the list include M83, Yuck and Rustie, but none of these make an appearance.

Finally, a small cheer for our favourite member of Girls Aloud - Nicola Roberts - and her album Cinderella’s Eyes. If you’ve followed us on twitter or have seen our own end of year list, you’ll know we’ve been big fans of Miss Roberts in 2011 and it’s pleasing to see that her album has managed to sneak onto the list at 58.  It shows that some UK bloggers know a superb honest pure-pop album when they hear one.

So overall, a good list in so far as it neatly summarises what UK blogs have been getting excited about this year. 

Thanks to Simon from Sweeping The Nation for his work in compiling it. Here’s the link again to the full run down at Sweeping The Nation.

Tomorrow we’ll be bringing another blog compiled list –  the results and winner of the Blog Sound of 2012– UK bloggers alternative to the BBC Sound of 2012. For now, here’s the winner of the 2011 UK Blogger Album poll.

PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder

Albums of the Year 2011

Over the last 10 days we’ve counted down Breaking More Waves favourite 10 albums of the year. We even used a formula of sorts (see above) to calculate it. It's probably one of the more scientific album of the year lists you'll see this year. Yet even though we calculated it this way, our gut feeling on what would be our top 3 was correct. Sometimes you don't need maths to help determine what you really love. It would be like calculating if your boyfriend or girlfriend was marriage material based on a spreadsheet. Some things you just know. Here's a list of the end result.

1.The Unthanks – Last

2.Adele – 21

3.Nicola Roberts – Cinderella’s Eyes

4.Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter & Melancholy Jam

5.Lanterns On The Lake – Gracious Tide Take Me Home

6.Other Lives – Tamer Animals

7.Florence & The Machine – Ceremonials

8.James Blake – James Blake

9.Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes

10.tUnE-yArDs – Whokill

If our top ten had run to twenty records the following would have been featured.

Summer Camp – Welcome To Condale, Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys, The Cure – Bestival Live 2011, Let England Shake – PJ Harvey, M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming, Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know, Yuck – Yuck, The Unthanks - The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons Live From The Union Chapel, Cults – Cults, The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar.

That completes our lists for this year - we have just a few more blog posts between now and Christmas, starting with our thoughts tomorrow on this years BBC Sound of list.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #1 The Unthanks - Last

So this is it. Our favourite album of the year is Last by Northumbrian folk group The Unthanks. It’s an album that sadly hasn't cropped up on many end of year lists, yet by quite some way Last is the recording that we’ve been most affected by in 2012.

Last is certainly not an album you’d put on at a party. Its sparse arrangements, constructed out of intense piano and haunting strings, accompanied by the tear-jerking and tender vocals of sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, are incredibly beautiful. There’s a stillness and sadness in much of Last that demands a solitary quiet winter afternoon to listen to it properly, in one sitting with no distractions – as all best albums are. Last is by no means an instant album, there’s no big pop singles, no hype and its critical praise has been reasonably under the radar. Yet let’s be absolutely clear about this, Last is the most exquisite, emotional and uniquely beautiful recorded music we’ve heard all year.

As you slowly weave your way through this enchanting but melancholy repertoire of songs it’s easy to forget that most of the tunes are not originals – so deftly do The Unthanks make them sound like their own. There’s a consistently mournful sound, Becky's breathy sultry vocals in particular giving it this quality. Irrespective of if the band are interpreting prog-rockers King Crimson’s Starless or the Alex Glasgow penned Close the Coalhouse Door, which deals with the tragedy of a mining disaster. “Close the coalhouse door, there’s blood inside,” its compelling in nature. With no artificial reverb on any of the voices and the majority of the album being recorded at home there’s a real purity to Last that we haven’t heard on any other record in 2011.

With a new baby for two members of The Unthanks, a second album The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, Live From The Union Chapel released at the end of November and shows that have included performances with brass bands it’s been a busy year for The Unthanks.

In 2009 we named their album Here’s The Tender Coming as our eighth favourite album of the year, in 2011 Last goes seven better. As unsettling as it is beautiful, it proves without doubt, that often sad songs are the best songs. Album of the year.

The Unthanks - Queen of Hearts (from the album 'Last')

Albums of the Year 2011 - #2 Adele - 21

What is left to say about Adele Adkins’s second album that hasn’t already been said? It sat at the top of the UK albums sales chart for a third of the year, has stayed in the top 10 for the rest of it, bagged 13 weeks in the US at number 1 and has been number 1 in pretty much every country that has a sales chart; only Hungary (no.11), Japan (no.53), Argentina (no.8),Russia (no.9), Mexico (no.4) and Spain (no.2) not fully succumbing to the charms of 21. It’s a phenomenal success story, particularly in an age when the perceived wisdom is that nobody is buying music anymore. 12 million sales and still counting, 21 has engaged and touched more people in the world than any other release this year.

The reason? It’s ridiculously simple; the music is sublime. Written in the aftermath of the singer's separation from a boyfriend, it deals with traditional themes of anger, revenge, despair, self-examination and forgiveness. Awash with vintage influences from Southern blues, country and soul, 21 is the perfect vehicle for her voice. Whereas 19, her debut album showed hints of greatness (Hometown Glory, Chasing Pavements, Make You Feel My Love), 21 is brimming with it. The music is perfectly weighted to allow Adele’s vocal to be blustery, sincere, insecure, beautiful and powerful; there’s a whole range of emotions on display, often within a single song. It’s one of two albums this year that have brought us to tears in our more vulnerable moments.

21 is a bloody marvellous album. Hell, it even includes a cover version of one of Breaking More Waves favourite bands ever – The Cure.

For once commercial sales and artistic brilliance go hand in hand.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #3 Nicola Roberts - Cinderella's Eyes

Cinderella’s Eyes is the best pop album of the year by a country mile. After the artistically redundant failures of Cheryl Cole and the wasting-floor-space-of-Tesco middle of the road rubbish that was Nadine Coyle’s record, it was left to the ginger princess to demonstrate that sometimes a solo effort can produce something as good, if not better than the group together. Cinderella’s Eyes may have been a commercial flop but it’s an intriguing, confident and quirkily engaging album.

From the word go Cinderella’s Eyes sets out its stall with Beat of my Drum. Dealing with how at the age of 16 Nicola Roberts went from being just a normal kid from Halton Brook estate in Runcorn to being in one of Britain’s biggest girl bands via the TV show Popstars: The Rivals and how uncomfortable, unprepared and out of place she was. “Once upon a time I press rewind, two left feet I had no beat, baby in the corner learning quickly, keep up, keep up,” she sings explaining the steep learning curve she experienced. From that moment on we’re allowed a fascinating, voyeuristic and often upsetting look into her life with Girls Aloud. “Too young to by my own bottle of vodka, so I’d beg the driver please I need another, funny that I was too young for many things, yet you thought I’d cope with being told I’m ugly,” she pipes on Sticks & Stones. “Never been wrapped up in the way I look, so when I got down to London, had the press on my case, coz I didn’t walk round with a smile on my face, called me a rude ginger bitch and say I bought bigger tits, they’re gonna eat all their words, their talking absolute shit,” she spits on Take A Bite. This is Nicola Roberts 2011; defiant, a little analytical, brilliantly angry and having come through the process, a pop outsider ready to take on the world – bang to the beat of her drum indeed.

Whilst this insight into Roberts world may be fascinating, without the songs, you’re hardly likely to come back. This is what sets Cinderella’s Eyes apart. In a world full of beige and LOLpop this is pop at its best – it’s often brilliantly oddball and fearless in its attempts to not mimic the likes of Katy Perry, Rihanna and the like. Whether she’s grappling with Diplo, Metronomy or The Invisible Men, the songs are full of vocal hooks, exuberant classy synths and grab your balls beats and lots of weird ‘where did that come from’ moments of sound that make you want to go back and investigate again. Witty, catchy and just a little edgy Cinderella's Eyes shows how good pop music can be if it dares to jump off a cliff into the depths now and then.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #4 Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam

Back in April we said of this album “We’re taking a punt here but it really wouldn’t surprise us if Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam picked up a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize later this year. There’s also a fair chance it’s going to crop up in our own end of year Top 10.” Our punt was right on both accounts.

Ghostpoet’s debut album is a very British, very untypical rap album. As Obaro Ejimiwe raps on I Just Don’t Know “Other MC’s want to talk about crime, but that ain’t me.” Instead Obaro’s languid stream consciousness delivery takes on subjects such as the thoughts of a lonely 44 year old man whose life hasn’t worked out the way he hoped it would (Survive It) and feeling sorry for himself hangovers (Cash and Carry Me Home) with a world-weary, philosophical approach over d-i-y, laptop created electronics and beats. It would be easy for the record’s downbeat delivery and lyrical themes to feel pretty depressing, but because of Ejimiwe’s softly spoken ‘just get on with it’ approach it ends up feeling uplifting and is incredibly engaging.

Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam is one of those rare things in music – an album that stamps its own identity on the map yet feels as welcoming and comfortable as something you’ve known for ages.

Ghostpoet - Garden Path

Albums of the Year 2011 - #5 Lanterns on the Lake - Gracious Tide Take Me Home

Gracious Tide Take Me Home by Lanterns on the Lake seems to have a watery connection with Breaking More Waves. Our coast loving persuasion is drawn to an album whose songs feature titles of Ships in the Rain, Not Going Back To The Harbour and on If I’ve Been Unkind lyrics that gently intone ‘when I sailed the seas, you were never even there’. However even if the band had been singing about steel-toe capped booted builders painting and decorating a castle we suspect we would have fallen head over heels with this album anyway.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is the musical equivalent of a walk in winter, through frosty fresh air and red-brown scrunching fallen leaves with visible breath punctuating your steps, then returning home to crackling warmth created by the calming glow of a fire in the corner and hot steaming coffee served from chunky china mugs.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is a sensual, near spiritual record that picks the fibres from post-rock, ambient, acoustic pop and folk and creates something blissfully calming and toughly rousing at the same time. Its gliding moods, set by unhurried piano, delicate glockenspiel, sweeping soaring strings and sad sounding guitars are cinematic and intimate, the kind of music that grabs you inside and pulls slowly and gently at your heartstrings.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is a record to put on auto-repeat, lay back and swim in, floating around in its celestial beauty.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is one of our favourite albums of the year.

Keep On Trying by Lanterns on the Lake

Lanterns on the Lake - Not Going Back To The Harbour (Live Session) from The Line Of Best Fit on Vimeo.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #6 Other Lives - Tamer Animals

Back in April after we had first heard Tamer Animals by Other Lives we described it as ‘a flawlessly subtle piece of work that becomes even more giddying and beautiful with every listen.’ Eight months on we resolutely stand by that statement. For Tamer Animals is one of those rich, evocative records that’s so immaculately crafted that once your ears have heard it once, they’ll want to be treated to its elegance many, many times more.

To apply a genre to Tamer Animals seems unfair insofar as it puts the shackles on this cinematic, suspenseful music, but if we had to then it would probably be filed under Americana. However really it should just be stored in the box labelled good music, so intricately is it fleshed out with arousing orchestration, warm harmonies and songs that seem ready to fill skies over deserts.

Capturing elements of Fleet Foxes, The National, Midlake and taking them to the Albert Hall to kiss them with string symphonies Tamer Animals is a record that seems perfect whatever season it is or wherever you hear it. One of our favourite albums of the year, from the word go.

It seems that we’re not the only ones to find favour with the band as well, with love gradually spreading via word of mouth, leading to the band playing a sold out show at London's St. Giles Church in November and being asked to support Radiohead on their US dates next year.

Other Lives - Dust Bowl III

Albums of the Year 2011 - #7 Florence & The Machine - Ceremonials

Back in 2008 when Florence & The Machine appeared in the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch for 2009 list we suggested that Florence Welch was likely to go on to have some commercial success but was probably a little too eccentric to achieve mainstream popularity. Fast forward three years on and Florence & the Machine can be found appearing on X-Factor - which really is as mainstream as it gets. We were both right and wrong at the same time.

What is quite incredible is just how deep Florence has embedded herself into mainstream culture in the UK without ever really compromising what she does. Her second album Ceremonials is a gloriously bombastic piece of work that takes elements of her debut Lungs (namely Dog Days Are Over and Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) ) and expands them into a colossal sounding record, that’s almost too big and too grandiose. Ceremonials is the album for getting tipsy on red wine, running into a wild forest, ripping your clothes off by a lake and dancing in the rain with the beautiful people.

Whilst Ceremonials is huge, it works because in amongst the vast string arrangements, church bells, choirs, heavy impact drums and over-the-top dramatics there are tiny moments of subtlety and most importantly, some great songs. Shake It Out, apparently inspired by a hangover is everything a Florence & the Machine fan could want; a big chorus, hooks, passionate vocals, sticks that slam against drums with violence and a windswept panoramic production that is breathtaking, yet it starts with a gently rising organ sound and Florence singing a gentle lullaby. Likewise What the Water Gave Me, with its concept of children who are swept out to sea, and their parents go in to rescue them, is certainly no derivative shake-yer-booty-in-da-club attempt at singles chart compromise and continues to assert Florence as the queen of the colourful crazy goth-hippies. Ceremonials is an album full of songs similar to these, feeling like the logical conclusion to what was started on her debut album.

It’s an album that is fan pleasing without compromising who or what Florence is or does. Those who dislike her music and think she wails like an evil harpy, will only have their beliefs confirmed further, but those who loved Lungs (as we did) will have little to turn them against Flo either. The big question now is where will Florence go from here? Surely the peak of the sonic mountain has been reached and new musical landscapes will need to be found. That may prove more problematic for her.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #8 James Blake - James Blake

At the back end of 2010 James Blake was the name on almost everyone’s lips. His version of Limit to Your Love had taken Blake from underground producer to potential mainstream artist. However, the resultant eponymous debut album was certainly no middle of the road commercial sell out, but neither did it leave Blake residing in the dubstep camp from where he started.

This album is very much a late night headphone album. There’s no excess, everything is stripped back to just leave just the right amount of sound. It’s not always an easy listen; the songs are sometimes slight, Blake’s vocals manipulated with effects in many places. It’s so sparse throughout that it can almost drift over you without notice. However, this is the albums beauty. James Blake is the musical version of awkward intimate first time nakedness, that as time goes on becomes more and more natural, more and more pleasant.

Blake has managed to transcend his roots, and whether he’s playing piano, utilising crackling haunted beats or warm melancholy electronica, his album whispers rather than screams. It’s all the better for it.

Albums of the Year 2011 - #9 Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

Back at the end of 2008 we named Lykke Li’s debut album Youth Novels as our seventh favourite of the year. In 2011 the follow up Wounded Rhymes crops up at number nine. Written in LA in early 2010 and recorded at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm, Wounded Rhymes is an album of shadowy pop songs that owes some debt to Phil Spector but never sounds fully retro. Retaining in part the rhythms and percussive beats of her debut, Wounded Rhymes finds Lykke Li heading off into different corners of fantasy and reality, her vocal sounding stronger, full of outwards confidence and yet also more melancholic and vulnerable. From the girl-gang sexy arrogance of Get Some with its chorus of ‘like a shotgun needs an outcome, I’m your prostitute you gonna get some,’ to the Dusty Springfield referencing torch song Sadness is A Blessing, Wounded Rhymes is an album that has at its core ten well-crafted songs filled an abundance of melodic and lyrical dexterity.

Whilst the main subjects of Wounded Rhymes, that of unrequited love, heartbreak and the pain of bruised and broken relationships clutter up the halls of pop music like old ladies queuing at a jumble sale, in 2011 almost nobody took these themes and handled them better than Lykke Li, except that is for one other person - more of that in a few days time.

Lykke Li - Love Out Of Lust

Albums of the Year 2011 - #10 tUnE-yArDs - Whokill

Whokill by tUnE-yArDs is one of the most eccentric, inventive and bold albums of the year. Formed out of some sort of crazy cartwheeling self-confidence Merrill Garbus yelps, hollers and howls her way through an album that features moments of stomping jungle percussion, stop-start jitters, afro-punk, warped jazz and brutal strikes.

When Garbus performs live she often paints tribal streaks on her face and that tribalism can be heard within Whokill. It’s raw, edgy and full of freaky experimentation, yet it never veers too far away from pop. Whilst not sonically similar, the vision of tUnE-yArDs is similar to Bjork’s in that she is very much creating something completely of her own. Quite simply there are few musical comparisons. In a world where music has reached middle age, where nothing is truly original anymore, Whokill gets about as close as you can get to uniqueness without ever being unlistenable rubbish.

Albums of the Year 2011 - Intro

For the next ten days we’ll be running down the Breaking More Waves blog top 10 albums of the year.

What this top 10 list isn’t is a comprehensive analysis and consideration of every album that has been released this year. If you want to see what people who spend all day listening to music and analysing it to decide if it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ think are the ‘best’ albums of 2011 then visit the critics end of year polls. Most of these polls have been decided by a committee of journalists and therefore the eventual outcome smooths out the individual quirks, likes and passions of each individual as the albums with the most votes rise to the top of the pile.

Breaking More Waves is fan journalism. This means those quirks, likes and loves of the author / fan can be displayed brutally (and beautifully) on the internet, warts and all. This list isn’t a ‘best of’ list. It can’t possibly be. We’ve heard only a small handful of the hundreds / thousands of new albums that have been released this year. Our list represents all of our prejudices as a fan, it's formed through our emotional connections not only to the music, but the artists as well. For example a critic might write off Britney Spears latest album immediately because it’s in part flat generic pop music. However if you are a fan the chances are that when halfway through Femme Fatale the quality drops a little (ok, a lot) you’ll forgive her because it’s still Britney and Britney is amazing, full stop.

Of course that’s not to say that this list is simply a list of our ten all-time favourite bands that have released albums this year. As fans we can also be massively disappointed – love isn’t always blind. But the reality is that this is a list of favourite rather than best of albums that we’ve heard this year. We’ll be posting about one album each day until we reach our favourite at number 1.

So how have we chosen our top ten ? We've applied a little bit of musical mathematics. Our top 10 albums have been selected on three criteria. First, and most importantly, the musical quality and emotional connection - the critical judgement part. Second the number of times that we've played an album this year, divided by the number of months it has been since we first heard it. The theory here is that if an album is really a favourite we'll play it a lot. We've got the play counts figures from our Last FM page, which doesn't represent all of our listening, much of it having been done on CD players away from Last FM such as the car, but it gives a reasonable impression. Thirdly the fan factor - as we described with our Britney example. We've gone to extraordinary lengths to apply these three criteria, putting each one into an excel spreadsheet and listing every album we've heard this year that we think is good, then weighting each factor to give a score. So the musical quality is 55%, the number of times played is 30% and the fan factor is 15%. The output is our top 10 albums.

If you’re interested in what’s moved us this year, check back each day for the next ten days.

This year has seen a number of releases by artists that have featured in past favourite albums lists on the blog - from Bon Iver (our favourite album of 2008) to Florence & The Machine (in the top 10 in 2009). How do they fare in 2011 ? And what of some of our Ones to Watch from last year ? Only four of them - Clare Maguire, James Blake, Misty Miller and The Vaccines actually got as far as releasing an album - are any of those in our Top 10? And what of artists we've got excited about on twitter this year ? We've given a lot of love for Nicola Roberts, but her album flopped commercially. Could she make an appearance or was our love for Girls Aloud's finest just a passing one night stand ? To date her album has only cropped up on the Guardians top 50 albums at number 38 but of course pop and dance music very rarely finds goodwill from the critics.

We’re not asking you to agree with our choices, feel free to disagree or comment on them if you want, but never say that that we’re ‘wrong’ because these are the records we’ve connected with. This is personal.