Not Many Experts

Unfortunately this musical month was almost overshadowed by an unrelated event in which the often immoral British public expressed their extreme moral disgust at the actions of a few of their immoral members. Days were spent wondering whether it was more important that Rebekah Brooks looks like a media-mogul version of The Simpson’s Sideshow Bob or that she may have been editor of some newspaper at around the time that the whole voicemail listening thing happened. Just incase anyone was thinking of hacking it, you can listen to my voicemail anytime. It’s just my Mum asking where I am constantly.

Musicians were all engaged in the time consuming activities of the month; registering topical domain names such as hasrebekahbrooksbeensackedyet.com and hasthenewsoftheworldbeenshutdownyet.com, therefore they only managed to release 5 albums between them all last month, so they’re the only 5 that I’ve written about. And one of them’s not even out until September… I guess everyone really did get caught up in the whole sanctimonious criticism of the scandal thing. Hopefully we shall return to music next month, but until then, here’s 5 albums which are all quite brilliant in their different ways. Continuing the trend started last month, our non-existent Album Of The Month award goes to Washed Out and Youth Lagoon.

Each listen of “Within And Without” reassures me that music becomes ‘cool’ at least partly because it is amazing. The thing is, I could barrel out a rambling essay about how good “Within And Without” is, but ultimately I would just want it to look like this, and seeing as that already exists, well, there’s not a huge amount of need for it. All that is needed is for me to urge you, even if you won’t read that entire review, to at the very least listen to Washed Out’s gently propulsive, nostalgia drenched ‘Amor Fati’ below just so that you can be convinced that he’s brilliant and then buy the album. That’s almost 90% certain to happen, and in the 10% of cases where people don’t agree, he’s the coolest thing going so they’ll buy it/illegally download it anyway. Go for it.

Washed Out – Amor Fati by Not Many Experts

Youth Lagoon – The Year Of Hibernation

Not that it’s a particularly recognised category, but Youth Lagoon has easily become our favourite new artist to stumble out of nowhere in 2011. “The Year Of Hibernation” is the only reason why; its considered, hazy take on heart-wrenching anthems is emotionally intense in the way that Bon Iver achieved with his guttural debut. Buried beneath the layers of hipster-attracting lo-fi, though, is a set of mournfully constructed pop songs that are packed with hooks in their own distinctly melancholic way. He may not be the happiest of chaps but he’s completely enthralling, and its hard to want it any other way when his paranoia and disillusionment have created such a remarkable album.

 Youth Lagoon – Cannons by Not Many Experts

The Horrors – Skying

“Skying” has managed sell 13,924 records by sounding like Echo and the Bunnymen, a band popular with people around the age of 40. These people do not know that the internet exists and are therefore unable to illegally download music, thus resorting to the old fashioned purchasing. Also, it has received glowing reviews that are enough to make you think that Faris Badwan is, in fact, the Rupert Murdoch of alternative music journalism. This is related to the first point; established music journalists for newspapers have, generally, also notched up a few years, and are reassured that The Horrors sound like music that was cool when they were.

But there’s also the fact that “Skying” is breathtaking in many parts. At its best, moments like “Still Life” are wide-eyed euphoric, others like “Changing The Rain” steadily breath new life into trodden textures, and some others are slightly underwhelming, but let’s not concentrate on that too much. There are only 5 albums here so there’s not much room to be too critical. Honestly, it may not be the masterpiece that almost everybody is heralding, but its got a cracking cover and some perfect moments.

The Horrors / Still Life by sockformation

SBTRKT – SBTRKT

Today is a big day for Mr SBTRKT. And not because he is partaking in the Commons Committee’s grilling of News International bosses, although it would be perfect to see him interject half way through proceedings with the “All I see is you. Stars. Open-arms. Pharaohs. God. Kings and queens” refrain from ‘Pharaohs’ with his crotch waving infront of Murdoch’s head. It is quite unlikely, though. Instead, the Mercury Prize Longlist will be announced, and according to an extensive survey we commissioned earlier this week, approximately 95% of people are certain that SBTRKT will be on the list. This is mainly because his debut album, imaginatively titled ‘SBTRKT’ is unstoppably brilliant, crossing the post-dubstep zeitgeist with garage, soul, pop, and even something that’s strangely similar to disco; the album highlight ‘Pharaohs’. The thing is, even if the Mercuries don’t give him a mask-covered nod, ‘SBTRKT’ will still go down as the most interesting, addictive, and pioneering electronic album that 2011 has offered us.

SBTRKT – Something Goes Right (feat. Sampha) by Aeros

Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm

Undeniable evidence that Mr Leftwich is talented comes in the form of the fact that he’s Radio 2 endorsed whilst avoiding being the sort of inoffensive bollocks popular with my mum. Not that anything about “Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm” is particularly offensive; Benjamin is definitely a softly spoken type, but at least he isn’t deliberately trying to be uncontroversial. Instead, everything on “Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm” is racked with honesty; his melodies are more adorable than this guy but avoid being contrite courtesy of his breathy sigh of a voice. He might not be wanderingly inventive, but he’s got enough character to avoid being anybody else but himself.

Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Atlas Hands by Dirty Hit

Foreword: I’ve been out of education for so long that I think I’ve forgotten how to spell and those tricky little buggers like full stops and that so bear (bare? blurgh…) with me.

Well… I guess I sort of have to admit that I started writing this post as a reaction to the BBC’s Sound of 2011 longlist announcement, which was whenever that happened, most of the days have blended into one so I’m not too hot with months and weeks anymore which is equal parts liberating and cripplingly impractical for all of its romantic attraction. Most of the trouble is that I now live here and get paid this to do this, and clearly have been spending the rest of my time learning how to abuse wordpress to waste your time in mildly-amusing, vaguely off topic wanderings.

Speaking of abusing wordpress, if that wasn’t a satisfactory excuse then let me go for the sympathy vote – as always, always happens whenever I set foot outside of a trusty internet connection, wordpress detrousered itself and waved through a hacker of a moral-less, talentless capitalist from Slough (fair enough, he’s probably depressed). He (and we’re assuming it’s a he for stereotypical-villain convenience) thought that it would be a bright idea to trick people looking for new music on a web site into giving said music web-site their credit card details. If depressed Slough resident is reading: you could probably hack this site hundreds of times, but that is never going to work seeing as the success of music blogs is based on the fact that you can get music for free, so that plan is pretty fatally flawed from the start… Cheer up and get a job, or at least steal from the government instead of the general public. Is there no integrity left in thievery?

Anyway… Just to direct us slightly towards what this post was intending to say; yesterday the BBC shocked all in the world of music-dom by announcing the Brit-schooled woman with past chart success as a writer, and present chart success with her own song (which, as far as I can tell, is only popular because Stephen Fry made it so via twitter) as the “Sound of 2011”. Call me cynical, because I am, but… Becky who is 10 and from Milton Keynes and loves X Factor and Zac Efron could have done that for them. This gave me an opportunity to pretend that I had been waiting for the announcement to unleash my own list upon the world, but I think that that dishonesty would probably put me on a level with my friend from Slough, so, instead, have it for what it is; here is a list of artists, all of whom I love, some of whom I think are going to sell some records to Becky next year, and all of whom are well worth spending 3 minutes working out whether or not you like them. You don’t even have to put your card details in, trust me, it’s a brilliant deal.

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Here is a collation of the few (literally) things we know about promising troubadour Benjamin Francis Leftwich:

• his name put us off listening to his music for far too long. Unfortunately it has an arostocratic aesthetic that suggests something to do with Harrow, showers and buggering, but this is both wrong (he is from York), presumptuous (never a good thing), and not particularly funny (sorry).
• conversely, the aesthetic of his music is completely heart-stoppingly beautiful, and it’s obviously this that matters.
• he sits somewhere between a more direct Sufjan Stevens and a less belligerent Tallest Man On Earth, and he has the potential to be just as good as both.
• maybe he already is.
• 25th October saw the release of his “A Million Miles Out EP” on Dirty Hit.
• as far as we can tell, the only place to get hold of it is on iTunes
• on the 20th November he’s supporting Ellie Goulding in the Union Chapel as part of the Little Noise sessions.
• he may or may not be the next Mumford & Sons (they do share a producer). We really don’t know, but hope so. Best of luck Benjamin.

Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Atlas Hands by Authority Communications