Albums Of The Year: Number 10

Brakes ahead of the parent group British Sea Power? Believe us, we gave it quite a bit of thought before deciding that Eamon Hamilton needed promoting from be-beaniehatted keyboard tickler and big drum whacker to superior leader of what nobody really refers to as an indie supergroup given the Electric Soft Parade haven't sold any records for three years or so and the Tenderfoot never did. (Yeah, but we're willing to utilise the phrase for Zumpano/Destroyer/Neko Case And Her Boyfriends collaboration at 14. Never mind.) Why? Because, frankly, it's a lot of fun and, for an album that glories in its being tossed off in a week, there's a lot more thought going into it than there has been in a lot of the year's more diligently planned releases.

Essentially Give Blood is two mini-albums cut and shut together. One is an excursion into country stylings that comes across like a good white wine laced with strychnine. Over here guitars slide and twang, the Duke Spirit's Liela Moss drops by for a spirited run through Johnny and June Carter Cash's Jackson, the Pipettes turn the Jesus And Mary Chain's Sometimes Always into funpop and the effect is Ryan Adams being dragged towards a buzzsaw. The other album? That channels the spirits of the Minutemen, Jonathan Richman, McLusky and Sam Kinison, and then compresses it all into a tiny cube of musical scrap metal, as in metallic guitar sounds looking for a scrap. Didn't like the ten second Cheney? Try the five second Comma Comma Comma Full Stop. That's before we've got onto the liquidised DFA of All Night Disco Party or the way the end of Heard About Your Band singlehandedly vindicates the phrase "whatever, dude!" As a rule, the tracks either make no sense or lacerate everyone else they can think of. Eamon's mission accomplished.

LISTEN IN: Heard About Your Band
EXTRA FEATURE: Eamon explains himself to SoundsXP