I thank you for your patience during this difficult time... year end countdowns can be such a drag, can't they?
6. Manic Street Preachers – Critical Thinking
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Not really a fan of [Nicky's] voice. I mean, when you've got JDB, why ever would you let anyone else sing?
I've been trying to work out why Nicky would choose to croak so many of these songs himself, rather than letting James be his proxy voice as his usually the case. Maybe James is finding a full concert of belting them out is starting to put a strain on his vocal chords, so the band want a few Nicky tracks in their catalogue to give him the occasional break?
Or maybe these were a particularly personal batch of Wire lyrics, and he felt the only way the band could do them justice was if he stepped up to the mic?
Whatever the reason, the songs that Nicky gives to James (still the majority of the album) don't feel as personal or as raw... they feel more like standard Manics songs... with that one notable exception...
I've written about Dear Stephen previously, and I probably said everything I had to say about it in that post, but it's still one of my songs of the year. And it's not the only time the band steer into Smiths territory on this record. You'll hear a very Johnny Marr guitar sound on this track too...
5. Pulp – More
I've also written before about the perils of impossibly high expectations... but here's a prime example.
The first Pulp album in 24 years was a record I'd only ever dreamed of. A little context here - every Pulp album from the1993 compilation Intro to their final, Scott Walker-produced, unappreciated epic, We Love Life in 2001 - every one of them was my album of the year.
'93, '94, '95, '98, '01 - five years, five albums, nothing to touch any of them. The penultimate disc, This Is Hardcore, is also my favourite record of the 90s. So you see what an impossible task Jarvis, Nick, Candida and Mark had set themself by making a new Pulp record? Was it always doomed to be an ever-so-slight disappointment?
The crazy thing is, More gives you everything you could ever want from a Pulp record, starting with a wonderfully Jarvisian confession about why they went away, and why they chose now to come back.
Something stopped me dead in my tracks
I was heading for disaster and then I turned back
I was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won?
The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on
Not a shaman, or a showman, ashamed I was selling the rights
I took a breather and decided not to ruin my life
I was conforming to a cosmic design, I was playing to type
Until I walked back to the garden of earthly delight
I was born to perform
It's a calling
I exist to do this
Shouting and pointing
No one can ever understand it
And no one will ever have the last word
Because it's not something you could ever say
So swivel
Far more of the wit and wisdom of Mr. Cocker is to follow, including the usual meditations on sex, death, growing old, grubby backstreets and old girlfriends who might have been the one...
They even threw in a genuine pop hit... or it would have been a hit, if they'd released it three decades ago, when they originally wrote it...
More then, is a truly great comeback record. It's everything you could want from a Pulp record, and only a Pulp fan who was a complete idiot wouldn't make it his album of the year... but clearly I was expecting More.
4. Craig Finn – Always Been
By contrast, it's much easier to write about the new Craig Finn album. The main man from The Hold Steady always places towards the top of my countdown for his superior storytelling skills, creating heartfelt vignettes of the people who fall through the cracks. Always Been is no different.
What does make this one different though is that this time Craig enlisted Adam Granduciel and The War On Drugs to be his producer / backing band with the clearly intent of making a big 80s-sounding L.A. record. And they succeed on every level, crafting an album that shimmers in the heat haze like The Boys of Summer... with that unmistakable Craig Finn voice shining through the smog.
I've always found The War On Drugs to be a very frustrating band - being a child of 80s American rock, I love the sound they make... but they never seem to have anything to say lyrically, so their records rarely catch with me. Here though, they're working with one of the premier lyricists of their generation, and the result is pure magic.
Only three more to go...
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