I haven’t written on this blog for an age and the reason is quite sad indeed. For me this has been the dullest year for new music I can remember. Very, very little has caught my attention and kept it. There have been some good tracks but very few albums that I would consider good, let alone great. Some of the year’s most hyped acts leave me severely unimpressed;
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest all sounds very nice but the actual songs are more than a little weak
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion really not as good as the reviews said
Florence and the Machine – Lungs an okay album but really nothing original or special. I would prefer Marina & the Diamonds who have MUCH better songs and manage not to sound like a rehashed Kate Bush. Can’t wait for their album to come out.
La Roux – La Roux horribly irritating voice shrieking to be freed from the 80s!
Some of the acts that I expected great things of were also very disappointing;
Tegan & Sara – Sainthood doesn’t come close to the brilliance of The Con
Bat for Lashes – Two Suns why did she forget how to write good songs?
Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted to Sin the word boring is an understatement
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love spends too long meandering around a theme and sadly lacks strong tunes apart from the magnificent Rake Song
A Camp – Colonia a Fairly lifeless, forgettable effort
Antony & the Johnsons – The Crying Light I can barely remember one tune after listening to the album countless times
Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms really quite boring apart from the one Sufjanesque song Big Bird in a Small Cage
Bell X1 – Blue Lights on the Runway one great song among a largely uninspiring set
There HAS to be more original music out there than that lot! Probably the best thing I heard this year was Pixies in concert performing an album that is 20 years old! If there was an album out this year half as good as Doolittle I certainly haven’t hear it yet.
Not that I value their opinion much but Q magazine have struggled so hard to find good albums their top ten list of 2009 includes the drivel U2 produced, Lily Allen (!) and Muse. Their favourite album of the year? Kasabian. Really?
It is quite likely that the year ahead will offer me fewer opportunities to listen to new music as I embark on my year of travelling. I can only hope that when I settle down again that I will have a richer year of music to delve back into than the last twelve months has given us.
Of course there were some that I did like and I am currently reviewing what the year has offered before committing to my own list of favourites of the year. But it is seriously a struggle. As my Occasionally Pole-Dancing Friend might say, colour me unimpressed!
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