There is always some contention raised at Top Ten Towers about whether or not one should receive / start eating Easter Eggs on Good Friday... or wait until Sunday. Personally, I'm well past Easter Eggs - I'd rather have some nice nuts. But some people hate waiting till Sunday for their eggs. What does the hivemind think?
If it's just an average Friday today, or you're having to wait till Sunday for your Easter Eggs, you may be interested to learn that Friday April 3rd 2026 is also...
Don't Go To Work Unless It's Fun Day
"This light-hearted occasion encourages individuals to pause and assess how they actually feel about their work, not just how they think they’re supposed to feel. If the day’s agenda looks like nothing but stress, monotony, or one meeting too many, the message is simple: rethink the plan."
OK, are you going to pay my mortgage while I take time to rethink the plan?
There's a line in there which goes "You can burn it down as far as I’m concerned", which always reminds me of whenever we had a fire drill in my previous job... all those teachers (and students) stood out in the car park, praying it wasn't just a practice.
Walk to Work Day
Is it just me, or will a lot of people not be going to work today because it's a Bank Holiday? I don't think either of these days have been planned very well this year, have they?
But possibly my favourite pointless suggestion for today is this one...
National Find A Rainbow Day
And I quote...
"Quite a few ways to celebrate Find a Rainbow Day can be imagined. It might be fun to grab some friends and try to find a rainbow, although this activity may be dependent on the weather."
D'oh!
Don't despair though, because there's one occasion I can absolutely get behind celebrating today...
World Party Day
"World Party Day is based on the idea that peace is not the opposite of war, merely its absence. The real opposite of war is party, and World Party Day aims to synchronise a massive, world-wide party to celebrate everything that’s good and optimistic!"
I'm not really sure I believe that the real opposite of war is party - for two reasons. Firstly, I've been to quite a few parties that ended up as wars. And secondly, I'd rather stay home and read a book.
However, this day wins because it allows us the opportunity to celebrate the work of the late, great Karl Wallinger...
This is the actress Zoe Saldana from Star Trek and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy movies. She's here because of the Renault Zoe. Yesterday, Pablo represented the Citroën. Just be glad I couldn't find any songs (or people) called Duster.
Welcome back to Saturday Snapshots. Yesterday's clues were so fiendish, you may well have needed a Black Magic Woman to help you work out the answers. Hopefully you didn't have to make a Soul Sacrifice to Satan, or Santa, or anyone with a similar name. Sigh. Let's put the crowbar away and get on with the answers...
Yesterday saw a closely fought three-way battle between Alyson, Chris and George... who might have been a joint winner with Chris, had he not gone off to brush his teeth, allowing Lynchie to sneak in and steal his final point. So Chris takes this week's crown. Thanks for playing, as always.
10. Starting fires with a score of tiny cars makes you sick.
A score is 20.
Matchbox make tiny cars. Matchboxes contain matches to start fires. But really, when was the last time you used a match? I get quite nostalgic when I see one.
As is often the case with Robyn's songs, I don't really have a clue what this is all about, but there will be golf courses on the moon one day if we keep dreaming...
Buzz Aldrin took me by the arm
And said one day that I'd be rich
I think he meant that I was gonna be your lover in his lifetime
And I thought I heard, I thought I heard NASA clapping
Janelle pays tribute to the third woman in space (after Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya... who hasn't, to my knowledge, had a song written about her).
I'm packing my space suit
And I'm taking my shit and moving to the moon
Where there's no rules
See also Ride, Sally Ride by Lou Reed... which I'm guess wasn't about this particular Sally Ride as she didn't even join NASA till 4 years after it was released. Probably has more to do with Mustang Sally.
Christa McAuliffe died in 1986 on the Challenger space shuttle, a disaster that had a tremendous effect on a young Frank Turner. Here, Frank imagines her death as showing her the opening to another world... and the message she sends back to earth can only be heard by a young boy over his ham radio...
It came as some surprise to realise that as she lost everything
The world was revealing a transmission so real that she understood everything
You're still alive, you're still alive...
1. The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
Leave it to Neil Hannon to pay tribute to the first dog in space... and break our hearts in the progress.
Laika flew through inky blue
'Til Laika neared the atmosphere and Laika knew
Laika's life was through...
Absent friends, here's to them,
And happy days, we thought that they would never end,
But they always end.
Any astronauts floating around in your record collection?
It's the time of year when everybody has to compile lists... for once, it's not just me.
2015 has been a fine year in music... if you know where to look. I've no idea what's happening in the mainstream anymore, and I've no idea what the musos will pick for their end of year lists. But it was easy enough to work out My Top Ten Albums of 2015.
Before I get onto those, here are a few also rans. Many fine records, worthy of note, if you're into this kind of thing...
Paul Heaton's long-awaited reunion with his former Beautiful South chanteuse easily made my Top Ten last year, so I'm not really sure why its follow-up barely scraped into this year's Twenty. I've been a Heato fan since the Housemartins, and while he rarely puts a foot wrong, this one didn't quite do it for me. He's long made a career contrasting catchy, upbeat, Radio 2 friendly melodies with arch, cynically caustic lyrics... that's exactly why I love him. However, Wisdom, Laughter & Lines occasionally felt like a step too far: the tunes just a little too perky, the lyrics just a little too wilfully obnoxious. It's most noticeable on Heatongrad, which frankly sounds like Chas 'n' Dave singing NWA. Ironically, the best song on here is the mock-Morrissey tune, Horse & Groom. Well, if Moz is too busy writing crap novels and sacking his record company to put out a new record, perhaps Heato can fill his old rival's shoes...
I still need to listen to this one a bit more, but what I've heard so far has convinced me this Elastica-esque four piece have a bright future. If indie guitar bands have any future at all, that is. Reminds me very much of the music I listened to twenty years ago, without being too derivative. A lot will be written about them by the cooler sections of the music press in the year end lists, so go read those guys if you want to know more. I'm just gonna turn them up and party like it's 1993.
Now that Taylor Swift's gone all pop, Nashville needed another young female singer songwriter to carry her baton, and Kacey Musgraves seems made to order. Although this is her second mainstream album, she had self-released three before signing to a major label and at 27, she's actually 2 years older than Taylor. She's also much more of a rebel - her songs tend to be more outspoken, referencing drugs and teenage pregnancy while taking potshots at beauty pageants and the male-dominated music industry. She also sounds a lot more traditional country than many of her peers, with steel guitar, banjo and mandolin to the forefront.
Top Track: Family Is Family 17. Idlewild - Everything Ever Written
Idlewild were always one of my favourite post-Britpop guitar bands, but I'd long since given up hope of hearing anything new from Roddy Woomble and the boys.
Their first album in six years then was a welcome surprise, filled with the kind of tuneful and heartfelt Scottish indie anthems that made them 'famous' (and more of Woomble's fascinatingly evocative lyrics). The stand-out track was the album closer, Utopia, a haunting piano-based melody that promises much for the future path of this band... if they choose to follow it.
16. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space
The second full PSB record is an elegy to the space race, and if anything is going to bring home to you how much of that is now ancient history - in an era where the most interstellar excitement we can get is the Mars Rover - this will do it.
As on their previous releases, PSB have raided the archives of the British Film Institute to provide the "lyrics" of their tracks. Rather than the old Public Information Films that made up much of the their last LP, they've used instead old news reports and actual recordings from the NASA control room.
The album sets its stall with JFK's inspirational speech about going into space "not because <it's> easy but because <it's> hard". After that we cross to the Soviet Union where the signal from Sputnik is used as the basis for a powerful piece of electronica, followed by a jazzy celebration of the world's first superstar cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
There's a massive shift in tone on track 4, built around a news report on the death of the Apollo 1 crew and backed by static and moody Vangelis-synths. It's a moving piece, so hard to listen to the band have refused to play it live, but it seems necessary to remember the lows as well as the high of the quest for space.
It's fair to say the second half of the record isn't quite as strong - though I have to applaud PSB for not going the obvious route and using Neil Armstrong's famous moon landing speech (or maybe they just couldn't afford it). However, while the first PSB record felt like a greatest hits collection with its magpie's eye and eclectic subject matter, here I found one subject (even one as vast as space travel) struggled to fill a whole album. It's still an extremely inspiring, affecting and, ultimately, sad listening experience... one that makes you long for the new hopes JFK outlined in his speech... while wondering whether we'll ever see those days again.
My love affair with contemporary country grew deeper this year, even though none of my favourites (Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton, Lucinda Williams) released any new material. The one album I listened to more than probably any other this year was Shelton's ultra-catchy Bringing Back The Sunshine, but as that was released in 2014 it was ineligible for consideration in this list.
Anyway, I'd just about given up on anyone but Kacey Musgraves representing country here (there is, arguably, a country record in my Top Ten... but I'm the one arguing it's more a rock album) when Eric Church popped up with The Outsiders. I'd encountered Church before when he brought out his heart-punchingly catchy Springsteen tribute in 2011, but this was the first time he won me over with an entire album. He very much sees himself as the bad boy of 21st Century Nashville, and that's something he plays up more than ever before on this record, which - like Johnny and Waylon - finds the down 'n' and dirty ditch where country meets rock 'n' roll... and then kicks up a dust storm there. Especially on tracks like The Outsiders, Devil Devil and Dark Side. Most impressive of all though is his mission statement song, That's Damned Rock 'n' Roll, wherein he name-drops Hendrix, Joplin, The Clash and Nirvana...
It ain't a needle in a vein
It ain't backstage sex
It ain't lines of cocaine on a private jet
It ain't havin' a posse full of hangers-on following you around
It ain't long hair, tattoos, playin' too loud
Naw
It ain't a middle finger on a T-shirt, the establishment's tryin' to sell
It's a guy with the balls to tell the establishment to go to hell
It ain't about the money you make, when a record gets sold
It's about doin' it for nothin', 'cause it lives in your soul
That's damn rock and roll
Elsewhere, Church wants to have his cake and eat it. Roller Coaster Ride is as shamelessly poppy as anything Shelton's put out, while Talladega recalls the sweet sunset nostalgia of Springsteen (the song, if not the artist). Both are great songs, but they feel a little out of place on a record that's otherwise trying so hard to build a rebellious reputation.
There's no denying the fact that Brandon Flowers really, really, really wants to be a pop star. It's not enough being the lead singer of one of the biggest alt-pop bands of the 21st Century, he wants to be Bruce Springsteen too. Not the young and hip Born To Run Bruce or the old, respected Statesman of Rock Bruce we know today. No, Brandon wants to be Born In The USA-era Bruce. With a bit of Raspberry Beret-era Prince and True Blue-era Madonna thrown in. He wants to be a global megastar, a household name, a pop star of the kind they don't make any more... hell, the kind they haven't really made since 1985.
That's why he released his second solo album album, a record accompanied by the boast that "every song is a single". And to a large extent, he's telling the truth. Every track here is as shamelessly insincere and gloriously overblown and ridiculously catchy as the very best pop songs of my youth (though it turns out Brandon is 9 years younger than me, so why exactly he's so enamoured of my 13th year on the planet - when he would only have been 4 - I have no idea). But time has moved on, and the days of the global megastar are gone (Adele excepted), so The Desired Effect probably didn't have the desired effect for Brandon. For me, it worked just fine. Even the track where he steals the tune of Jimmy Sommerville's Smalltown Boy, almost as though he's being forced to admit his own failures. Still, while most of today's pop stars are lying in the gutters... Brandon keeps reaching for the stars.
Josh Tillman isn't the only singing drummer to make my end of year list in 2015, though he certainly is the strangest. Plus, he's written probably my favourite opening verse this year on the eponymously crafty Top Track below...
Oh, I just love the kind of woman who can walk over a man
I mean like a god damn marching band
She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes
And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream
I wonder if she even knows what that word means
Well, it's literally not that...
That's the kind of distinctively sarcastic lyric you'll find me praising very soon on this year's winning album, so I'm not sure exactly why Father John only made it to Number 13... except that I didn't fall for I Love You, Honeybear quite as much as I did for its predecessor, Fear Fun. And it didn't stay with me in the car as long as any of the records that follow. Maybe it's one to revisit in the New Year...
For the first time in forever I laid the needle down inside the groove For the first time in forever I held my breath, waiting for side two...
I'd just about given up on Mercury Rev. In fact, I didn't think I'd even bought their last album, 2008's Snowflake Midnight, although it turns out it did make its way into my collection somehow. Listening to it now, it confirms my growing problem with the band: they'd just become too twee. Too mystical and airy-fairy hippy-shit. Too bollocks.
Bands crash and people cry,
Everyone here is really shook
Trying hard, the kids can't shake it
You can't fool ol' Peter Hook
They really want to but they just can't fake it,
Trying hard to look old and worn
Facebook butterflies flap their wings and
Suddenly a Brooklyn band is born
So I wasn't holding out much hope for The Light In You, and with a track-list including Queen of Swans, Amelie, Sunflower and Moth Light, it seemed my prejudices were about to be confirmed. What a relief then to find them returning to form with the kind of upbeat, singalong, life-affirming alt-pop songs that made Deserter's Songs and All Is Dream such wonderful records.
A new Indelicates album is always a source of great excitement in this house. This is the band who, with their debut single, created - if not my favourite song of the 21st Century, then certainly the one against which I measure all others. "I love it... but do I love it as much as We Hate The Kids?" The answer is invariably no.
Five albums in and things have changed a lot for Simon and Julia Indelicate. They're no longer the darlings of the blogosphere, as they were back in 2006/7. Those kids they hate won't ever hear their music nowadays... and neither will many other people, save the devoted few. They're not cool anymore (where they ever?) and despite running their own record label, and recently becoming parents, you get the feeling time has passed The Indelicates by. Which is one of the greatest tragedies in "popular" music, if you ask me. But you didn't, did you?
All that said, there's really nothing to stop them making their latest album another (totally unhip) concept album, based around a mind-stretching sci-fi story about "the singularity, virtual realities and the generation stuck between space ages". If nobody's listening, you can be true to yourself and do whatever you like: and thus is true art born.
Anyway, I've listened to this record quite a bit and while I don't quite agree with the band's pronouncement that it's their best yet (if I did, it'd be Number 1, not Number 11), it's certainly their most varied and experimental (the video below is "an immersive 360 degree spherical video" - which is kind of like watching a pop video on google earth... and just as annoying). While their last concept album, 2011's excellent David Koresh Superstar, shared Trey Parker and Matt Stone's unabashed loved of huge American musicals (along with a splash of the South Park boys' irreverent humour), this one goes for broke with earthy folk songs, lush piano instrumentals and (as on previous records) huge rock numbers that sit firmly in the Venn diagram intersection between Bertolt Brecht, Carter USM and Jim Steinman. Beyond the moments which echo Public Service Broadcasting's lamentation for the death of the space race, I've no idea what any of this is truly about, but it is the most honest and individual record you'll hear all year, completely unconcerned with the vagaries of fashion. A lot is written these days about the death of indie, but that's just hogwash. The true spirit of indie will live on as long as the Indelicates are making their own music their own way.
So, those were the records that would have been my favourites this year... if not for ten other, slightly better releases. I'll begin revealing what they were in just a couple of days...
At last - the big ten. What took me so long? I'll delay you no longer on the intro, I'm sure you just want to read the numbers and skip the waffle. (But allow me the waffle anyway, it's the only writing I get time for these days.)
10. David Bowie - The Next Day
This will no doubt be many people's album of the year and it certainly was a return to some kind of form... though I've enjoyed bits of most of the albums the Dame has released since his 80s zenith/nadir (depending on your point of view - there are those who count Scary Monsters as his last truly classic album, but I'd have to go with Let's Dance and irk the purists). The Next Day was certainly a triumph of marketing - or anti-marketing, if you prefer - and Where Are We Now? was a brave and inspired choice for lead / surprise single. Brave because The Stars (Are Out Tonight) and Valentine's Day were much more obvious pop songs; inspired because of the way it opens with Dave catching a train, then mocking us for believing he never does stuff like that. (He probably doesn't.)
9. dan le sac vs. Scroobius Pip - Repent Replenish Repeat
The "vs." is apposite. Scroobius Pip is probably my favourite contemporary lyricist. I couldn't be less into the music of dan le sac if it'd been used to torture me non-stop for 36 months in a dripping dungeon in Doncaster. IDM, they call it (Intelligent Dance Music.) "Noise," is what Alan Partridge would call it, and I grow closer to Alpha Papa with every passing year. Yet I find myself more than tolerating the le sac racket: I find myself embracing it when it's paired with Pip's stunning storytelling. On their latest release, those stories include a guided tour through an asylum for disturbed ladies (Alice, Dorothy and Wendy... you may recognise the names); an explosive attack on bling culture; an anarchic team up with former King Blues frontman Itch; and the mesmeric tale of a doomed love affair, a true onion song that you need to listen to again and again, peeling back the layers to get to the truth...
8. Public Service Broadcasting - Inform - Educate - Entertain
What the hell's this - more dance music? Well, this is about as close as I get. Unjustly compared to both Jean Michel Jarre and Jive Bunny (by utter, utter philistines who don't know what they're talking about), PSB steal samples from old Public Service Announcements and layer them over varied musical accompaniment to create sonic cathedrals of brilliance (TM NME circa 1987). Check out the W H Auden flavoured Night Mail as a starter...
Yeah, this is more like the sort of thing you expect to find in my Top Ten... and who am I to disappoint? Billy delivers exactly what his fans desired on his latest album - a mix of personal, state-of-the-relationship middle aged anthems (my Top Track below became a much-played retort in the year that Louise expected me to become a DIY supergod) and trenchant state-of-the-nation/world protest songs that resolve themselves in both resignation (No One Knows Nothing Anymore) and optimism (Tomorrow's Going To Be A Brighter Day), all recorded over five days in a Pasadena basement. And in the year that his old nemesis finally passed, Billy responded with more dignity than most.
Which brings us to Frank, in many ways the next generation's Billy Bragg, although his politics are far more complicated. Another artist virtually guaranteed a place in my year end countdown any time he sees fit to release a new record, and Tape Deck Heart was a sterling addition to the canon. Packed with hummable tunes, the latest set from Hampshire's punk rock Springsteen delivered an angry address on how love isn't like it is in the movies ("Amelie lied to me"), an appeal to parents everywhere (if you want your kids to grow up to be songwriters - don't be nice to them) and plenty of fist-in-the-air "I believe in the power of music" singalongs. Plus, if you were smart enough to buy the extended version, further classics involving time machines, undeveloped photographs and Gene Simmons. More smart, witty, thought provoking lyrics than you'll find crammed into any other record this year... with one possible exception (see below, #5). Oh, and live, Frank still blows the roof off.
My favourite TV character of all time is Andy Sipowicz, as played by Dennis Franz in NYPD Blue. Andy started out as a racist, misogynist, homophobic alcoholic, but over the course of ten seasons he was forced to face up to many of his prejudices, developing and changing like few TV characters ever do, while still remaining a loveable misanthrope at heart. As bizarre as it might seem, I see lots of parallels between Andy S. and Marshall M., although M&M is taking slightly longer to confront his intolerance and bigotry, there are signs of it on his new album... he even manages a "love song" (of sorts) dedicated to his much-maligned mom.
It's almost ten years since I paid any attention to Eminem, and to be honest, I thought I'd outgrown him. Following his last semi-essential album (Encore in 2004), he "retired" only to launch a half-arsed and ill-received "pop" comeback in 2009. So no one expected The Marshall Mathers LP2 to be much cop - particularly as sequels to successful albums are notoriously a one-way ticket to the bargain bin. (Tubular Bells II, anybody?)
But against all odds, Marshall has pulled it off. He even has the audacity to kick off the record with a follow-up to Stan, his biggest radio hit, in which the eponymous hero's brother comes looking for revenge. Along the way he debates the eternal question: "Is Eminem an 'Asshole' or a 'Rap God'?" while sampling everybody from the Zombies to Joe Walsh and spitting machine gun rhymes and quickfire quips that use up half the dictionary. TMMLP2 is frequently hilarious, often offensive, occasionally juvenile and always impressive. And while Eminem steals the "Most Self-Obsessed Songwriter" crown back from Morrissey, he also reveals a maturity and introspection only hinted at on previous outings. It's hardly redemption... but it's a surprising first step.
From rap to C&W - you can't accuse me of not at least trying to be eclectic. Brad Paisley is my favourite contemporary country star and Wheelhouse is his masterpiece, a tribute to the "land of cotton" from which he hails, addressing many of the myths, misconceptions and prejudices associated with or aimed at the Deep South. Now I've never been to America and, if I ever did, I'd choose New York over Tennessee, but this record still spoke to me, made me laugh, made me cry, and affirmed my life as music should. Love and hatred, birth and death, religion and politics, marriage and divorce, karate and facebook... all human life is here, with guest appearances from Eric Idle and LL Cool J (on the really-shouldn't-work rap/country crossover that offers a solution to all southern racism). Plus, the song below, which made me sob like a baby more than once this year... for obvious reasons.
Against all odds - including partial blindness and permanent tinnitus - this autumn, Paddy McAloon surprised everybody by releasing the first new Prefab Sprout material in 12 years (2009's Let's Change The World With Music was based on material originally demoed in the early 90s)... and it was as good, if not better than, anything he's ever recorded before. A set of flawless pop songs / short stories starring jewel thieves, teenagers, devils, magicians and trumpets left out in the snow: no other record made my heart fly and my smile beam as this one did in 2013. Glorious, heartwarming and beautiful; whether he's describing adolescence as "a psychedelic motorbike... you smash it up ten times a day, then walk away" or lamenting an old conjuror who "takes one last, one final bow... he's lost all his illusions now", Paddy may not use as many words as Frank or Marshall, but I'll be damned if the ones he does choose aren't all perfect. 2. Manic Street Preachers - Rewind The Film
On
the evening of September 9th, in the very moment my son Sam was delivered
into the world, the first single from this album was playing on the
radio in the operating theatre. At the time, I believed the lyrics of
the chorus to be...
Show me the wonder I have seen the purpose of the universe
...which
would have been perfectly apt. However, on further listens (and closer
perusal of the lyric booklet), it turns out the words are
actually...
Show me the wonder I have seen the birthplace of the universe.
Spooky, huh?
I
listened to this record a lot in the weeks following Sam's birth, and
many of the songs spoke directly to me, as though the Manics put
this record together with some foreknowledge of where my life would be
when it was released.
I am as tired as John Lennon sang
Conveying exhaustion like no-one else can
I'm no longer the centre of the universe
A bare admission that makes it seem worse
This
was also a record in which the group railed against there own middle
aged spread, mocking their younger, more bombastic selves thus...
Only in you do we see ourselves
Only in you can we see our end
So sick and so tired of being "4 real"
Only the fiction still has the appeal
They saved their greatest anger, however, for the establishment, proving the years haven't dulled their political bite.
The lies of Hillsborough
The blood of Orgreave
All the evasion at the BBC And the endless parade of old Etonian scum
Line the front benches, so what is to be done?
All part of the same establishment
I ask you again what is to be done?
John Grant's debut solo album missed out on my Top Ten of 2010 purely because I didn't get into it in time. I wasn't going to let that happen with the follow-up, and my pre-order was no disappointment. Even back in March, I knew this was going to be my album of the year - despite the fact that, musically at least, it's a little less cosy than its predecessor. Dance beats, electronica, a strong 80s influence... surely these things would spoil Mr. Grant's cutting and hugely personal songwriting? Not one bit.
Both a break-up album and a record on which JG comes to terms with being HIV positive, it doesn't sound like there'll be a whole lot of laughs to be had here... yet in fact, this is bitchiness central. Hilariously cutting, heartbreakingly honest, no other songwriter wore their heart on their sleeve like John Grant this year - not even Eminem! (He even swears more than Marshall, and a helluva lot more creatively.)
Remember walking hand in hand, side by side? We walked the dogs And took long strolls through the park... Except we never had dogs and never went to the park. Remember how we used to fuck all night long? Neither do I, because I always passed out I need lots of booze, to handle the pain
One minute he's comparing a former lover to "the Agent Orange they used to use in Vietnam", the next he's asking Ernest Borgnine for advice on how to cope when life deals you a shitty hand ("And when I think about everything that he's been through, I wish he'd call me on the phone and take my ass to school"). And then, of course, there's GMF, my song of the year. Don't forget - you could be laughing 65% more of the time...
So... those were my albums of 2013. What were yours? All recommendations will be given consideration...
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