Tuesday, December 18, 2012

STN Albums Of The Year 35-31

35 The Mountain Goats - Transcendental Youth
Would it be going too far to call Transcendental Youth the best full-band Mountain Goats album? Perhaps, but it seems their most consistent for a while. John Darnielle's literate gaze seems to fall on people struggling to find a way out, a darkness of the soul as much as of the optimism levels, finding the small detail in and around a cast of low-lifes, junkies and the generally lost. Around him things feel that little bit more settled in and dynamic while still second fiddle to these stories sketched out with shade and colour, plus not a little empathy to coincide with the band's increasing warmth.

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34 The Wave Pictures - Long Black Cars
This far down the line, especially with their work ethic, it's no use pretending you don't know largely what you're going to get from a Wave Pictures album. It'll sound like a Richman-via-Hefner shuffle, Dave Tattersall will toss off straight talking, cultural references and lovelorn imagery as equal value and then he'll launch into a coruscating guitar solo. A kitchen sink kind of band, magnifying the minor and always sounding like they're being recorded one take and eye to eye in a rehearsal studio with two mikes. It's that after so much work and with such a strong collection these already sound like bedroom indie standards.

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33 Felix - Oh Holy Molar
If Felix's debut You Are The One I Pick felt like half awake stream of consciousness Oh Holy Molar is a set of word association daydreams. The songs remain brittle compositions, chamber pop with the excess sonic field stripped away and every piano strike echoing off old stone walls. The silences make many of these songs as much as what's there does, all led by Lucinda Chua's crystal voice dripping in ultimate regret, bold statement and delicate wonder alike. While not quite as intimate as their first stirring you still get the sense we're digging into Chua's deepest private thought processes, matched by the starkness around.

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32 Gravenhurst - The Ghost In Daylight
As much as it's subtly shifted over the years, Nick Talbot's work as Gravenhurst has always focused on the smaller, most intimate parts and let everything else take care of itself. This time he focused on his sparse acoustic folky side, bathing acoustic picking in waves of ambient fog and subtle accoutrements at the crescendo, whether heroic strings, ominous feedback or field recordings, suggesting these dispatches from a blackened mind are in some way haunted, a feeling exacerbated by Talbot's close-miked whisper telling of evil, shadows and isolation. By turning down the all-out washes that pervaded his last couple of albums the unsettling effect becomes more pronounced.

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31 Evans The Death - Evans The Death
Some said Evans The Death weren't so much indiepop's then-latest great white hopes as much as a throwback to when the Primitives and Darling Buds could knock on the door of the singles chart. Actually they're more an invocation of the energy rush of youth and enthrallment even as the lyrics dig deeper concerns. Fizzy nervous energy-fuelled guitar pop songs with reflective moments and self-questioning turns of phrase, Katherine Whitaker's voice speaking of bruised adolescent anxiety with a semi-hidden intelligence, sense of humour and rocket fuelled distortion. This is what debut albums by young bands are supposed to be, and this is better than most of those.

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