Favourite Albums Of 2010

Third part of my review of the year, my favourite ten albums of the past year.

10. The Winter Of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit



A more commercial offering from Frightened Rabbit. It's no 'Midnight Organ Fight' but then what could be. That's what happens when you set the bar so high.

9. Your Future, Our Clutter - The Fall



I haven't listened to a Fall album in years. I'm glad I did this year.

8. Existence - Detroit Social Club



Detroit Social Club's début album seems to tick every box for every musical style that it can but somehow comes out sounding pretty fine.

7. Renegades - Feeder



The album spawned from their Renegades side project, marking a welcome return to their noisier earlier days.

6. Romance Is Boring - Los Campesinos!



The sound of Los Campesinos! maturing slightly whilst still telling meandering tales of Gareths's multiple relationship failures and sexual disappointments.

5. Nobody's Coming To Save You - The Sunshine Underground



Welcome back to the Sunshine Underground. Another band who had the impossible task of trying to surpass a near perfect album. They gave it a decent shot.

4. Interpol - Interpol



Like Feeder, Interpol go backwards to go forwards. It's no 'Turn On The Bright Lights' but it's in the same moody sort of vein.

3. Ex Maniac - Babybird



Whatever happened to Stephen Jones. Well actually he's never been away and now his new record is Johnny Depp's album of the year, but he would say that, he played guitar on it. It's dark and depressing whilst at the same time oddly amusing and uplifting. Quite brilliant actually. Surprise of the year.

2. Expo 86 - Wolf Parade



I'd only just got into Wolf Parade's first two albums when they bring out 'Expo 86' which it could be argued is the best thing they've ever done.

1. High Violet - The National



Here's one band who have managed to achieve the same sort of heights as their previous works. As good, maybe, as both 'Boxer' and 'Alligator'. Simply Brilliant.

Who's Counting?

With only 25 days to go to the Nottingham Half Marathon, but hey, whose counting, I have a mangled toe nail and an accompanying limp. L gives me some foam padding for my toes so that I can still manage my intended four mile run to work. In the end I don’t use it; I use the grin and bear it technique instead.

The run was hard but then I expected it to be. I needed to run on tired legs. That was kind of the point really. It didn’t help though that my audiobook ran out only five minutes in. The story stopped a bit sudden, leaving nothing tidied up. It makes you want to start the next book straight away and I didn’t really want to do that. At least we can go and see the film now. This is ‘The Girl Who Played With Fire’ I’m talking about.



I get an email from Summer Sundae asking what my festival highlight was. That’s easy. Nice one Gareth Campesinos!



Another festival success, The Fall, inspire L to go in search of their latest album in Fopp. Unfortunately when she looked for it in the obviously place, under ‘F’, it wasn’t there. She discovered a ‘Festivals’ section which had a ‘Summer Sundae’ subsection but no, not there either. An assistant eventually pointed her to the ‘Retro’ section... Bizarre. I have no idea why shops have to sectionalise things. Does anybody understand these sections? Probably not. Alphabetical order only please. It’s no wonder people buy off the net and record shops are closing.

I meet up with some old school friends after work and desperately try to get some stimulating gossip for L but my friends just haven’t done anything exciting. Certainly nothing worth gossiping about. Though we do end up talking about dead school friends. We can name four from our year and that's just the ones we know about. Scary.

(Wednesday 18th August)