My Favourite Albums of 2009

1. Butcher Boy - React Or Die
year-end heads-up for DiS

Glasgow is typically characterised as a dreich, dank and violent city, but much of its musical heritage seems to be centred around the light, graceful and romantic: Orange Juice, the Fannies, Belle & Seb, and Camera Obscura. Butcher Boy need to be added to that list, and not just because of their similar style; their continuing low-profile, even in their home city, is perplexing considering the strength of both their albums so far. If debut Profit In Your Poetry was hugely promising, React Or Die fulfils that promise, with ten achingly pretty, perfectly paced and impeccably produced songs in thirty fatless minutes.

In opener 'When I'm Asleep', singer John Blaine Hunt pointedly insists that his night-times are sterile: "I never dream, I never feel anything" he sings over a trilling mandolin melody. His vocal control is important: he doesn't hold a note for an instant more than necessary; it's only when the song swells, when the strings and mandolin combine into a gorgeous melancholy, that his vocals allow for breath, his emotion seeping through. It's as if his stoicism is stolen by the song.

This whole record does that to me. I struggle to stay composed. I've tried to pinpoint why the keyboard outro of 'You're Only Crying For Yourself' draws my eyebrows into an arch and teases my tear ducts to stir, every time I hear it, like Pavlov's bell. But, well, my attempt at critical detachment is stolen by that song, by all of them, by their exquisite arrangements, by Hunt's romantic lyrics. I'm convinced React Or Die will one day be recognised as an equal of any of its hometown's indie-pop classics. For now, it's either "just too beautiful and bright for these times"; or I'm finally going batty.

React Or Die is streaming in full on Butcher Boy's MySpace, and on Spotify.

And the rest...

2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
MPP was The Skinny's album of the year, as you can read about here (or that last blog post on the left there).
3. Fever Ray - Fever Ray
In my head, the music I imagine my hypothetical future self will make is closer to this in style than any other album, ever.

4. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
My first Camera Obscura album. I know! Between this and Butcher Boy, I've had a swoonful year.



5. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
My breathless Clash review for it here, which I knew was breathless at the time but I still stand by 100%.


6. Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone!
My 5-star Skinny review here, which I think is only my fourth full-marks album review - after Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, In Rainbows, and Third.


7. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
I fucking love that cover by the way.
8. The Field - Yesterday and Today
In retrospect, better than his first album, which I wanted to like more than I actually did. Yesterday and Today has several passages of staggering beauty, I can't imagine ever getting bored of it.

9. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
Anthemic garage rock well encapsulated by the minimalism and friendship of the cover; until any clever sod can work out what the fuck is really "important", the answer is mates, music, girls and fun. Lad rock says the same, but Japandroids say it better.
10. Tony Allen - Secret Agent
One of the many sensible objections to music lists is that it's impossible to compare two works of art from completely different genres, so it's feels kinda weird positioning Tony Allen in a list just under Japandroids (and, for that matter, Japandroids in a list just under The Field). I try to make a guess as to how much I've enjoyed a record and rank it accordingly, because when you begin to think in genres, you apply your own perception of stylistic limits to the limit-free work of others. I discovered Afrobeat in 2009; it's not a genre I claim to know a lot about, and perhaps Afrobeat know-alls aren't impressed by Secret Agent; I haven't a clue. All I know is I played it to death and loved it every time.

The Skinny's Best Scottish Albums of the Decade

Top 20 write-ups at The Skinny website

50. Lapsus Linguae - You Got Me Fraiche
49. Funk D'Void - Volume Freak
48. Dead Or American - Ends
47. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
46. De Rosa - Mend
45. James Yorkston - When The Haar Rolls In
44. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
43. Found - This Mess We Keep Reshaping
42. Christ. - Metamorphic Reproduction Miracle
41. Laeto - Zwoa
40. Sons & Daughters - Love The Cup
39. The Delgados - Hate
38. James Yorkston - The Year Of The Leopard
37. Y'All Is Fantasy Island - Rescue Weekend
36. Foil - Never Got Hip
35. Half Cousin - The Function Room
34. Withered Hand - Good News
33. The Beta Band - Hot Shots II
32. Butcher Boy - React Or Die
31. Half Cousin - Iodine
30. Macrocosmica - Art of the Black Earth
29. Life Without Buildings - Any Other City
28. The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage
27. The Twilight Sad - Forget The Night Ahead
26. Mogwai - Rock Action
25. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
24. Aerogramme - My Heart Has A Wish That You Would Not Go
23. Idlewild - The Remote Part
22. Biffy Clyro - Puzzle
21. Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastophe Waitress
20. Malcolm Middleton - Into The Woods
19. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
18. Uncle John & Whitelock - There Is Nothing Else
17. King Creosote - Rocket DIY
16. Meursault - Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues
15. De Rosa - Prevention
14. Mogwai - Happy Songs For Happy People
13. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
12. Arab Strap - The Red Thread
11. Aerogramme - Sleep And Release
10. Mogwai - Mr Beast
9. Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
8. The Delgados - The Great Eastern
7. Arab Strap - Monday At The Hug & Pint
6. King Creosote - KC Rules OK
5. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
4. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
3. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
2. The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
1. Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows



I've seen worse lists (even though it is topped by a thoroughly unremarkable album). It doesn't exactly match mine, of course, so therefore it's incorrect. But it's not bad.

I googled to see if there was any reaction. On one forum, I read "what a shite list! Two from Mogwai, Arab Strap and King Creosote in the Top 20? What about promoting lesser known bands? It's all rather mainstream and boring for me!" On another forum, I read "what a shite list! I've not heard of any of that Top 20 except Franz Ferdinand! Where's The View, Glasvegas and Paolo Nutini? Bunch of elistist snobs!" Oh well, can't satisfy everyone. Probably can't satisfy anyone (not even Malcolm Middleton).




There are 7 (seven) albums from 2009 in there. This year has been a fantastic year for Scottish music, so in that way it shouldn't be a surprise. But in another way it's very odd, because canons take time to form, and decade lists compiled before the decade has even finished are more likely to be over-weighted in older years and under-weighted in recent years. That's very true for the Pitchfork list, the Lost At Sea list, the Stylus list. If any of these pubs do it again in a few years, it'll be more proportionate. For 7/50 records in this list to be from this year, which hasn't even finished yet, is remarkable. Even more remarkable is that those seven do not include Dananananaykroyd's incredible Hey Everyone!

This was the top ten which I submitted, which was also 2009-heavy:

1. The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
2. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
3. Butcher Boy - React Or Die
4. Mogwai - Happy Songs for Happy People
5. Y'All Is Fantasy Island - Rescue Weekend
6. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
7. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
8. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
9. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
10.James Yorkston - Year of the Leopard

and even though I squeezed three 2009 albums into ten spaces, I couldn't find a space for Dananananaykroyd either! Scheisse.



It's also been pointed out to me by a mate that Kode9 is Glaswegian. That reminded me that Kevin Martin, of The Bug, was born in Paisley. If this list was not limited by geography to a country which is still very culturally homogenous, it would be criticised for itself being quite homogenous, being 95% indie-rock. In retrospect, it'd have been pretty cool if Memories Of The Future, London Zoo and Hudson Mohawke's Butter had made it, just for a bit of stylistic diversity. But (not butter) the first two are intrinsically linked with London, it would have been a bit odd to see them on a Scottish list. I wonder if they got any votes at all, just because the association is never made. And the latter (Butter) was released too late to be seriously considered - only a week or two before votes were cast.

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone!

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone! (*****)
album review for the skinny

Dananananaykroyd may be a little late to the party, but their stunning debut album has been well worth the wait

Could Dananananaykroyd be Scotland's best new band? Not exactly -- The Skinny first saw them in 2006, at that long-gone city centre festival Indian Summer, and their line-up has changed considerably since then -- so they're hardly "new". A debut EP, Sissy Hits, was set for release ages ago before their record label went bankrupt; it eventually elicited rapturous praise on release last summer. In the three years since they formed, they've made like a band from the future, taking the new model route of gigging to get by regardless of recorded output. They've toured across Europe and built up a deserved reputation as an awesome live band; but they've gone so far, in fact, that it's been easy for us back home to forget about them. With all the clamouring for FatCat's Scottish heroes and Edinburgh's burgeoning alt-folk scene, the absence of a Dananananaykroyd album has allowed them to drift away from Scottish music fans' awareness. Appropriately, Hey Everyone! addresses us all with an unforgettable force; it thrusts one hand round our necks, while the other cheerily waves hello.

But Hey Everyone! isn't really addressed to everyone. Dananananaykroyd are a post-hardcore punk band, with two drummers, two guitarists and two screamers - it'd be euphemistic to call them "singers". They wont please your parents, and they wont even please music fans who treasure qualities like clarity, ambience, poetic lyricism, or calm. They don't do that. Danananananykroyd do ferocious riffage, relentless rackets, noise enough to make you feel dead old. Vocalists Calum Gunn and John Baillie Junior can yelp like dying animals, but their style fits perfectly the unhinged thrash and percussive assaults coming from behind them. The drummers are used like dual guitarists - one on 'lead' sprawls full-range passages throughout each song, while another on 'rhythm' (!) can pound away for sheer power. They combine to amazing effect on songs like Pink Sabbath, where drum fills act as rhythm and melody, and Watch This, where light clickety-click fills propel the quieter sections. There are quiet sections -- there has to be, for respite's sake -- though for Dananananaykroyd, the whole group shouting from a few yards away, as in the start of Some Dresses, qualifies as quiet. It doesn't last long - Some Dresses climaxes with vigorous guitar punches, before 1993 launches into its Fugazi-like thrust.

But then 1993 breaks down into a gentle choral hymn -- "Turn your hissy fits, into sissy hits" -- and you realise that for all Dananananaykroyd's blunt abrasiveness, their construction of Hey Everyone! is pretty subtle. Short instrumentals begin both 'sides', and other tracks play trumps with each other on hooks or velocity or sanity, but every minute contributes to a riveting 45-minute whole. Hey Everyone! flows through peaks and troughs of pace and power, setting challenges up and laying resolutions down. It juxtaposes melody with strength and humour with earnestness. Dananananaykroyd are as youthfully boisterous as Los Campesinos!, and as battle-hardened as Trail of Dead, and their album teaches that what could be painful can actually be hugely fun. "Hey everyone!" they seem to be saying, like late arrivals to Scotland's new indie-rock party. With troubadours reaching for acoustic guitars and champagne hippies crashing out, it's the riotous gatecrashers who'll keep going til morning. Don't even think about flagging now.

Dananananaykroyd @ Cabaret Voltaire, 7/4

Dananananaykroyd @ Cabaret Voltaire, April 7th
live review for the skinny

Favours for Sailors (***) have seemingly been winning a few influential fans recently, but it's not really apparent here why. They sound like a band more in thrall to Stephen Malkmus' solo records than his Pavement stuff, which is kinda the wrong way round to take it. Anyway, their harmless pizza banter and competent show is utterly blown away by the band that follows them. There's lots of people who'll tell you that Glasgow's Dananananaykroyd (*****) are the best live band in Britain. Who are these people? Anyone who's been to watch them. Dananananaykroyd need two drumkits to batter out their relentless sprawling rhythms, two singers to scream, yell and work the crowd, and just a few songs to get everyone into a frenzy. Both vocalists and guitarist break the fourth wall by spilling into the crowd and cheering along with us; it's gallus, but nothing compared to the cuddling outbreak they manipulate like impudent preachers, or the final song that's sung off-stage by the crowd in chorus. Yes, you read that right - there was a brief, crazy outbreak of cuddling in the crowd. You have to see it to believe it. You have to see it.