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.