My Year In Lists

If you haven't already figured this out I am a sporadic blogger. I'd like to say that it's because I lead such a busy, satisfying life but really I just get so bored of my own internal monologue that I can't bare to commit it to 'paper.' In fact, I've only made it this far by temporarily replacing my own internalised Hampshire-burr with John Candy's (RIP) flustered voice. Somehow my own opinion is a lot more interesting when it sounds like it's coming from Uncle Buck.

Anyway. I love lists. So here are some:

Top Five Albums Of 2010 (In No Particular Order)

1) Liars - Sisterworld
A horrible sinewy mess. If there was a Hollywood remake of 'Eraserhead' this would be the soundtrack. The only accurate comparison I can make is the sound of thousands of tiny aluminium spiders crawling over broken guitars and straight into the mouth and eyes of a weeping claustrophobic mental patient. Basically - it manages to be creepy, punky and noisy and is very fucking good.

2) Les Savy Fav - Root For Ruin
Les Savy Fav is your first sip of cider in summer. Les Savy Fav is stumbling already drunk into a chalet party at ATP. Les Savy Fav is what punk rock would have sounded like if it hadn't got old and fat. Les Savy Fav is a million issues of the NME burning. Les Savy Fav is hanging out with your best friends. Les Savy Fav is listening to love songs and thinking of your girlfriend and then laughing about it after you break up. Les Savy Fav is the party and so is this album.

3) No Age - Everything In Between
If I had to sum this album up in one syllable, which i don't, it would be "BZZ" but each letter would be in a different font and if you look really closely is actually made up of pictures of people dancing. No Age write songs now? And they're GOOD?! Get out.

4) Grinderman - Grinderman 2
Nick Cave is the hoary, sex obsessed poet that every teenage boy wishes he will grow up to be (if only she'd listen to his mixtape!). Grinderman is to music what a key swapping party is to adventurous couples in their fifties. Put these two elements together and you have the filthiest sounding rock and roll album of the year.

5) Errors - Come Down With Me
Why don't Errors play in huge dance clubs with hundreds of people pilled off their tits going completely nuts? Oh yeah...because of their tendancy towards ruining an awesome groove with angular riffs from the Steve Albini songbook. Dancable and clever and severely underrated. Bonus points for naming their remix album 'Celebrity Come Down With Me.'

Honourable mentions to: Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest and Deftones - Diamond Eyes. You were good, not great.

Top Five Live Shows Of 2010

1) Boredoms perform 9 Drummer Boardrum @ ATP, May
A holiday camp ballroom. Midday. Eight drummers onstage, tapping out perfectly synchronised tribal rhythms. Zach Hill gets carried in through a fire exit, on a platform, already playing. Eye is hitting a bank of guitars with a big metal pole and hammering (literally) a sampler. It sounds pretentious but it was completely euphoric. The best band in Japan? Well, I like 'em.

2) Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ The Troxy, London, December
Film soundtrack blah blah, transcendental blah blah, art blah blah crescendo wah wah wah. Everything that has been written about this band in the past is somehow both pretentious bullshit and completely true. The indisputable fact however, is that Godspeed are fucking loud and gave me goosebumps. Brilliant.

3) Grizzly Bear @ The Roundhouse, London, March
Not just because they were a gentle hug on the evening I turned twenty six, but I was also stood next to David 'Tobias' Cross for the whole set. Wonderful.

4) Monotonix @ End Of The Road Festival, September
One part sludge rock band, one part dance party, ten parts spectator sport. A description can't do it justice. Sweaty, boozy, noisy fun.

5) Iggy And The Stooges perform 'Raw Power' @ ATP, May and Sonisphere Festival, July.
Oh yeah, you're in a band, that's cool. And you have a singer who's a great frontman eh? Dances around a bit? Sings a few songs? Gets in the audiences faces? Plays some abrasive punk rock? Fuck off junior. Iggy did it better forty years ago and still makes your shitty band look weak today.

Honourable mentions - Holy Fuck at Reading, the only band that made an otherwise terrible afternoon bearable. Ozzy Osbourne at the Roundhouse, you're old but you still play Sabbath, so you're ok. Alice In Chains at Sonisphere. Brilliant.

Top Five Annoying Musical Trends Of 2010 (and every fucking awful year before it)

1) Hardcore band t-shirts consisting of an unrelated black and white photo, with the band name in times new roman above it.

2) Bad indie moustaches. Just because Yeasayer do it doesn't make it ok to garnish your upper lip with a light dusting of pre-pubescent wisp. In fact, Yeasayer doing it should be enough to make you want to eschew any kind of feeble facial hair experimentation altogether in favour of not looking an absolute cunt.

3) Weezer continuing to release albums which aren't Blue or Pinkerton (with the exception of the Pinkerton re-release).

4) Songs I love being used in adverts. Eg. Man Man in Tony Hawks Skateboarding Whatever and Chromeo in VO5. Where did all the jingles go?!

5) The unstoppable rise of dubstep - waahp waahp waaaahhhpppp. There aren't enough drugs in the world to make me want to listen to this shit at any volume. I will add a sub-rant to this and say that punk / hardcore / fashion bands having a dubstep intro is equally irritating.

Special mention to - YOUR SHITTY DIGITAL CAMERA. YOU'RE AT THE BACK OF A CROWD. THE PHOTO WILL BE CRAP. GET IT OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE.

Top Five Things That Pissed Me Off At Festivals This Year

1) White sunglasses.

2) Iron Maiden t-shirts. You're fifteen. We can all get on Ebay and search 'Iron Maiden Vintage Tour Shirt OMG Mega Rarezzz!.' You're a dick (and they were crap).

3) Poor soundsystems. Turn it up.

4) Bands not playing the hits. It's 11am, just play your single and fuck off.

5) Other people.

Special mention - I didn't kill anyone yet. That's a good sign right?

Top Five Shitty Musical Losses of 2010

1) Jay Reatard - a lot more people seemed sad about his death than bought his albums which is a shame because they were nasty fuzzy garage pop. Instead of retweeting his Guardian obituary I would have liked to have seen more people listening to his awesome music but hey, me being a snob isn't going to give anyone better taste is it?

2) Dio - I don't think this needs any further justification.

3) Isis - however, bets on now for a reformation and curating ATP's Nightmare Before Christmas 2012.

4) Captain Beefheart - one of my most confusing memories of childhood is coming downstairs late at night to find my parents drinking wine and listening to Frank Zappa's 'Hot Rats.' Hearing 'Willie The Pimp' for the first time AND realising that maybe they were pretty cool people with outstanding music taste was a total life changer. Definitely paved the way for my discovery of weirder music.

5) Dio - again. Because I chose watching Coheed and Cambria in the dry instead of Heaven And Hell in the rain at Sonisphere 2009 and have never forgiven myself for it.

Hopefully 2011 will be a better year. DOUBT IT. I tried to make a top five of things I'm looking forward to but could only manage one - Black Sabbath reunion (FINGERS CROSSED).