So happy to see Max Tundra on the list already. Some great shit already gone, lots of albums I haven't heard to discover in amongst them, and the blurbs to come.

This is what I love about January - I've clearly got some catching up to do, but I have time to do it.

Fantastic work so far, Paul.

To everyone new to the SOMB:

Yes, we comment upon the list as it is revealed. Kind of the point.

Just a reminder that I need everyone's blurbs back to me by 9 am tomorrow. That is central standard time. I plan on getting started around 10.

I'm going to sleep. I've got most of the blurbs and they're looking really good, but these are the people who better have sent me PMs by 9 am:

100% Vegetable Juice
Duff.
Elemeno P.T.
Hero
Hewletts Daughter
Holiday In Risk
James Iha
Midnite_Vulture
Mitchell
Montana
Paul (oh shit!)
Slackmo
theremin
undo
without_opinion

There's really no way of saying this without replies that I'm being critical of Paul- not my intention- but throwing out there the suggestion that running through our top 40 albums in one day...with blurbs that people often put a lot of thought into may take away from the reflection that makes our lists so much more interesting than reading a magazine. Is there any support for playing this out over a few days so that there is more space/time to comment/reflect in responses on album placement/Sombie blurbs, etc?

No.

Not surprising from someone who obviously has the time to hang around here all day.

Thread made me go back and listen to Evil Urges, and yep, still pretty bad. It opens strong, closes strong, the middle (Thank You Too!-Look at You) is both muscially bland and lyrically awful.

Whole album should have been like "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream."

God... Paul is so fucking awesome. Great job dude. I don't envy the amount of work you've been doing, but I certainly envy your ability to be a radical human being. Glad I got my blurb in on time. Hope it doesn't blow too horribly.

from here on out... no more MMJ talk.

thanks.

I have agreed with Simakos five times in the last five days, and not one of those has been sucking up. (well, maybe this one...)









I'm scared.

Seriously.

Says the guy who bumped Frightened Rabbit six hundred times. You are the last person out of anyone here to give orders concerning repetitious band talk.

^Already post of the year.

Layers of irony crushing my skull.

is fleet foxes the most predictable SOMB #1 ever?

i mean, it's no m.ward, but

Probably not gonna be FF, yeah.

TVotR vs. Portishead = the likely showdown.

Lucky for you there's nothing beyond that layer of protection.

If putting a horn part on their new album doesn't qualify AC/DC for the most awesome record of the year, I give up.

I mean, c'mon: There's a saxophone on an AC/DC record. Revolutionary shit.

(ok, technically, sax is a reed instrument...)

Jesus I'm pulling so hard for Portishead here.

Not giving out hope though... we haven't seen the new Jonathan Richman yet.

Jesus.

I was gonna write a blurb after I finished my work, not realizing that the work would have me up this late. And I'm still not even done yet.

Wow, this is gonna suck.

To be fair though - it was a Frightened Rabbit Thread...

Leave this one to the results, not a straw-poll on MMJs best album.

I only just noticed that Deerhoof didn't make the top 40. Fuck.

Badu should've made top 20 at least. And I say this even though I dislike her personality. She comes off horribly in Before The Music Dies but there's no denying a real funk and soul gem.

Paul, just proof reading my blurb (for a change) should be with you in 30 mins.

EDIT: this is Liquid ring-a-ding-a-dinging, want those three Bran Van tickets man

You can link to it if you want, if it's on this version of the board. I remember elcorazon always being the biggest pro-songs guy. I wasn't really around on the SOMB for EOY 2006 or 2007. If you're talking about something from EOY 2005, then yes, it's entirely possible I don't remember a disagreement from three years ago.


No, you misunderstood - I was not claiming. I was asking. Maybe you thought it was a rhetorical question?

Thanks to everyone that has gotten their blurbs in to me. I'm still waiting on a couple though, so is there anyone who wants to write one kind of at the last second? If I don't have them by 10:30, I'll throw them out to anyone interested.

I did. My bad. Love the internet.
As for the "songs" argument, I'll try to find a link when I have more time today or tomorrow....and Elco always took up the cause much more eloquently than I did...miss the son of a gun around here.
Happy New Year to you.

Just double checking to see if you got my 2nd blurb after I initially wrote that I didn't have time to do it?

Yeah, I got it. Thanks.

no comment. well maybe just one comment.

the whole argument is circular. the songs folks are trying to come up with a way to have their favorite songs get recognition, some of which coincide with their favorite albums, some don't. the singles folks don't care about that and are merely interested in a singles poll, cuz they actually have some interest in the concept of the single. The songs folks don't really find the single at all relevant in this age so they don't get the point of such a poll. they are at loggerheads.

there ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys, there's only you and me and we just disagree.

- wrote my post on the previous page before seeing this.

I saw Dave Mason in concert once. After he did "We Just Disagree" most people left. Except all the idiots who kept yelling "Watchtower!"

Nice ref, though.

So did I. Saw him at Poplar Creek with the fake Fleetwood Mac (Bekka Bramlett). He put on a good show. The fake Fleetwood Mac did not. Man that was a ways back. Ex-girlfriend bought the tickets and treated for the whole thing as well. I don't even think that venue exists anymore.

So is this starting soon.

I woke up early for it.

wtf

“hey ho, hayo no age on mayo” - avec

#40.




No Age - Nouns
(1550 Points, 35 Votes)

US Chart Position: n/a

UK Chart Position: n/a

Charting Singles: n/a

SOMB Says: it's easy to write off a band like no age as some irritating art-fucks. anytime an album so slight receives rapturous praise, it's tempting to lash back, to dismiss it sound-unheard. but nouns, for all of its slightness, is a pristine and cohesive collection of songs. noisy enough to freak your parents out, but accessible enough to blast during summer barbecues, you've gotta be pretty grinch-y or scrooge-like to resist no age's breezy anarchism.

plenty of other bands tried to make some joyous noise this year, but none succeeded as well as no age. times new viking, bless their ear-scraping, lo-fi souls, lacked songs as well-developed as these. and fuck buttons came close to reaching their distorted nirvana, but it took them upwards of ten minutes to do what no age does in two.

nouns is a bullshit-less record. devoid of bloat, lean and vigorous, no age capture the feeling of youth better than pretty much anyone around. with one foot in the early eighties and the other in the mid-nineties, it still sounds completely modern. which makes it timeless, i suppose.

other albums were closer to my heart this year, but few were as unblemished, as entirely pleasurable as nouns. it might be unfair to reserve high praise for albums as unambitious as nouns, when there are other artists out there, killing themselves to live. that said, music is as much meritocracy as it is a personal expression; for all of their slightness, no age made better music than almost everyone else this year. i won't be playing nouns as often next summer as i did the one that's passed, but i also know that in a year, in ten, it will still sound just as good as it does right now. - brobee

Artist's Previous Rankings on Our Albums Lists: n/a

Ranked Highest By: arkin, Ramona (#3)

Also Ranked By: RoBKoZ, Blue Straggler (#4), SmashNapCrash (#5)

Amazon Link

and we're off.....nice to see these p4k favorites place so low...highly over-rated

At least it's not any higher.

EDIT: Blackswede rockin' some shit.

Ok, good start to top 40. Have it on vinyl. Let's see how many of these I have on vinyl.

PS. I don't read Pitchfork.

word.

“i would go as far as to say anyone who doesn't like this is somehow under the influence of satan” - torrance

#39.




Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
(1563 Points, 20 Votes, Two #1 Votes)

US Chart Position: n/a

UK Chart Position: #45

Charting Singles: n/a

SOMB Says: I was hanging on for local heroes Six Nation State to come on stage after My Luminaries, then I remembered the name from a few weeks before. I’d missed Friendly Fires play near me and a couple of people mentioned the blonde local girl who’d played that night and sung backing vocals on The Rakes album as well as the EP of hers (The London Town EP) and a Ryan Adams cover (“Answering Bell”) I’d half listened. I’m glad I stayed. Six months later she’d recorded “New Romantic” a pure, simple acoustic guitar ballad with naïve lyrics about young love. It was devastating. It gets covered on YouTube once a week by a fresh-faced innocent youth as some sort of micro-generational anthem but to the slightly more world wearied of us, it’s more of a window back into how we thought and acted. It was here a Herculean love affair began. Twelve further months later still and we are talking about a Mercury nominated album which has been making a respectful number of publications end of year lists. Coming out in the shadow of the big two British females releases (The UK #1 albums from Adele and Duffy) it struggled to make an impact outside of the broadsheet reviews but clearly it’s not just me that has seen in it qualities that have kept us coming back to it nearly a year later.

There’s something about the songs on this album that reminded me of the way that President elect, Barack Obama addressed questions during the election campaign. Instead of merely opening his mouth as soon as a nano-second of silence presented itself he would take a visible pause and think about what he was going to say. That’s the sense I get from this album; it’s been thought over, developed (“Failure” dates back to at least 2005) and as entwined in death, heartache and aching depression as it is, it’s not a record of denial or anger, its acceptance. It says much when it says little, letting the songs breathe and the building up from guitar and vocals before, often as not, the songs finish to smattering, splashing, rolling drums, sighing or wailing washes of strings or an accordion here, xylophone there filling the spaces in between. When she does sail through her lyrics, it’s clear she has a way with words already and the stripped back nature allows you to hear them, unlike some of her peers.

The three singles show that this isn’t just some Brit school alumnus that has found a niche to bend her pop songs into, despite retaining that sensibility to them. Opener “Ghosts” implores us that the narrator doesn’t “believe in everlasting love”, “Cross Your Fingers” that we are “all gonna die when the buildings blow” and “Night Terror” starts with the line “I woke up and he was screaming” Recent b-sides and debuting of newer songs live has shown that a more pure folk direction will not be alleviating this gloom. Aside from the singles there’s plenty more to investigate within the dozen songs on here. From the honey dripped voice on “Old Stone”, the teasing come-on and “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” of “Tap At My Window” or “My Manic & I” from the EP of the same name. The sweeping Arcade Fire–esque climax of “My Manic & I” acts as the template for many of the song structures included on here. These three songs also showcase another of the albums strengths, the production of Noah and The Whale front man Charlie Fink who incorporates burning embers, rain on a window pane, Laura giggling, the scribbling of a pen amongst chatter and birdsong within the gaps in the tracks to reaffirm the sense of this being a collection of songs that live together in their own place and time, literally if you have the song box.

Whereas earlier on the record Marling declares to someone that despite their independence and lack of need for support that “You’re No God”, come the rough waters on “The Captain and The Hourglass” she is sitting under clouds alone and lamenting the passage of time and while on one hand she falls into the water, “done with all this bullshit” on the other, since she sold her soul to Jesus, she’s had no fun. The track itself quietly strums and despite sounding like it could have washed across the Atlantic from Saddle Creek it never quite blooms into a country hoe-down it threatens to. The restraint that Marling and her band show is evident throughout the album and like “Shine” says Laura is “honest, not a shouter” a very key point when you hear her deliver the cooing 75 seconds of “Crawled Out of The Sea” and you know that she has the voice to replace the quiet reflections of those clipped syllables with elongated sustained vowel sounds. That she chooses not to makes it all the more affecting. “Shine” also contains some of the best lyrics on the record, dealing with the overwhelming power of love to cloudy the waters and make someone a vessel for that emotion and no-longer themselves, the person that she was in love with herself at the start. Despite shying away from the light and needing some space from it, she cannot go back to being blind.

As birds twitter around her on her she sweetly tales the tale of “Your Only Doll (Dora)” who it sounds like is on the receiving end of an abusive relationship where she is queen in his bed but as cellos swoon she ends up head against the wall, broken and refusing to be alive. The birds chatter on before giving way to the sing-a-long hidden title track, based on a Persian poem part of which translates to “There is a boy, across the river with his bottom like a peach but alas, I cannot swim”. The absolute best thing about this record? The promise of more to come.
- Mitchell

Artist's Previous Rankings on Our Albums Lists: n/a

Ranked Highest By: Mitchell, Paper Tiger, Duff. (#1)

Also Ranked By: Alright Still, Torrance (#2), Waterloo (#3), RabbiSchmoiley, Bobzilla (#5)

Amazon Link

I'm jk'ing, I love Laura Marling.

Beat Lindstrøm this time though. score.

great write-up, mitch... like the "hurculean love affair" ref...

“Despite the lack of Scott Hall references, I really like 'Souled Out!!!' a lot.” - UselessRocker

#38.




Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
(1617 Points, 25 Votes)

US Chart Position: #15

UK Chart Position: #37

Charting Singles: n/a

SOMB Says: On “Sausalito” Oberst daydreams of escaping to California and living in a houseboat ala Otis Redding while a Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing”-like guitar-burst rocks him back and forth with the ocean waves. It’s Oberst at his most relaxed.

Recorded on retreat in Tepoztlán, Mexico, Oberst delivers beach songs (“Sausalito”, “Get-Well-Cards”) road songs (“NYC-Gone, Gone”, “Moab”) songs about the last legs of life (“Danny Callahan”, “I Don’t Want To Die In The Hospital“, “Milk Thistle”) and general soulessness (“Lenders In The Temple”, “Souled Out!!!”).

On “Get-Well Cards” he finds himself guiltily half-asleep on the beach wanting to send get well wishes to the ailing back home; the bald boy with bone marrow cancer (“Danny Callahan”), the man who doesn’t want to die in the hospital, “They give me all these flowers and big balloons. But I’m not going to stay in this little room,” and the man going down slow sipping milk thistle for his sclerosis singing “If I go to heaven/I’ll be bored as hell.”

“He's got a get well card to deliver, he's gonna do it by hand.” Conor Oberst delivers about a dozen of them here. - RadioHitchcock

Artist's Previous Rankings on Our Albums Lists: n/a

Ranked Highest By: Mike Schank, Radio Hitchcock (#2)

Also Ranked By: Heretix, 54cermak, Paul (#3)

Amazon Link

Ugh, wtf is wrong with you people?

Maybe the next album is okay.