A God-awful Small Affair

So yeah... this is the second thirty, which in hindsight is rather an arbitrary number, but I've been busy with stuff and just want to build more suspense for the top twenty. So, in the mean time, enjoy these not-quite-good-enough offerings. #50 - "Love Illumination" - Franz Ferdinand Did anyone notice that they released an album? ANYONE? #49 - "New Slaves" - Kanye West Probably the best verse on the album. #48 - "Something About You" - Dornik 2013's spiritual successor to Frank Ocean's Sweet Life . Smooth. #47 - "This Ladder is Ours" - The Joy Formidable They're going to take at least 10 of these to make them as instantly loveable as, say, CHVRCHES, but in the mean time I'm happy to see them bash out jams like this. #46 - "Back Together" - Annie HOUSE-POP HAS REACHED NORWAY. Wonderful. #45 - "5AM" - Katy B I was kinda hoping for some more Diplo following 2012's Danger EP

This'll be split into three parts: the first fifty, the second thirty, and the top twenty. I hope there's at least something here you may enjoy. #100 - "Sonnentanz" - Klangkarussell A bit of a surprise hit around September, this German sundance isn't exactly the liveliest thing imaginable but it sure is gorgeous. I prefer this version to the vocal one that charted. #99 - "I Appear Missing" - Queens of the Stone Age I found it difficult to pick a song from the album to feature on this list, but this one just about stands out as the most dramatic. #98 - "Flatline" - Mutya Keisha Siobhan It was a little unfortunate releasing this in the wake of HAIM, I guess. Not Dev Hynes' finest contribution to pop, not even in the past 12 months, but still largely more enjoyable than anything by the Sugababes since 2007. #97 - "Move" - Little Mix I've said many times that the build-up to the chorus is a touch disapp

    If I'm honest, there haven't been many albums this year that have stood out in record stores or made me stroke my iPod with small fits of affection - out of their sheer appearance, at least. Here, I compile ten that're at least "quite pretty" and OH BOY ARE THEY. #10 - "Nothing Was the Same" - Drake I didn't go much on the album itself, with the exception of a few singles, but the way in which this double-whammy was parodied on t'internet was mildly amusing.   #9 - "Old" - Danny Brown Is it a dig at Macklemore's Heist record? Is it a Napoleon reference? Either way, it's pretty b old ha ha ha ha hahaha hahaha ha. #8 - "Paracosm" - Washed Out It's a matter of time before this pattern is on a T-shirt I buy, I suppose. #7 - "Long.Live.A$AP" - A$AP Rocky Don't really consider myself a fan of him after how drawn out his breakthrough was and how 'm

Before I bestow any praise let me get my bad blood out of my system, so I can enter the festive period drained. The following may not be the worst of ALL released this year, but just of what I had the misfortune of hearing. Apologies in advance. #10 - "Union J" - Union J My last review will prove that I don't have a total intolerance of UK boybands, but one of the most cringeworthy music moments of the year was sitting down to watch Kick-Ass 2 and seeing their music video not-so-subtly shoved in by promo-folk. Let's hope this is the last we'll hear of them. #9 - "James Arthur" - James Arthur Not a good year for self-titled X Factor releases, is it? Idiotic motormouth with no ability to rein it in on his vocals. Agonising listening. #8 - "Magna Carta Holy Grail" - Jay Z He fell off a long time ago but I never suspected he'd ever produce something so dull and so lacking in life as this. #7 - "The 1975" -

 'O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. 'O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.' It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, And the deep river ran on. Reviewing a One Direction album is a little like whispering at an Aerosmith concert and expecting to be heard. With that in mind, I'll keep it brief: 'Best Song Ever' and 'Midnight Memories' are rather lovely indeed once you get past their staggering resemblances to Baba O'Riley and Pour Some Sugar on Me respectively. They're not the only small brushes of cock-rock going on either: 'Little Black Dress' is probably their worst song to date and goes absolutely nowhere, and sounds a bit like Jedward trying to emulate Queen. As one would predict, they're at their strongest when p

Looking back over the career of Spears is a little like rediscovering your old Bebo account: a handful of moments that defined your childhood and teenage years shrouded by an overall sense of embarrassment and tackiness. The breakdown, the sleazy music videos and the tabloid relationships all help build up the impression that she's an interesting personality when in reality she's just been the most prominent example of a puppet since Kermit the Frog. Her overwhelming lack of intelligence, talent and unique identity has bewilderingly left her path to world dominance unobstructed, but her story has made a couple of decent albums. Blackout and Femme Fatale might not have had the same hits and dominance that singles from her earlier bubblegum phase carried, but they were slickly produced and excellently timed to make her breakdown and recovery all the more compelling. Blackout may have been a little exploitative, sure, but her whole career has been built on exploitation. &quo

Melbourne quartet Cut Copy have been gently wooing the world with their fine craft of heartening, warm dance music for nearly a decade now. 2011's Zonoscope was one of the most warmly-received albums of the year, and found chunks of it wriggling their way into TV adverts and our collective subconscious. This time around, though, the influence is a lot less electropop and a great deal more house. Almost everyone has picked up upon a Screamadelica feel to their fourth LP, but rather than cement itself as a firm gamechanger like Primal Scream did in the early 90s, Cut Copy are getting quite the lukewarm reception. A largely unnecessary intro paves the way for the album's first fist-pumping moment, the brassy, in-your-face title track that unleashes Italo-house piano keys, Whitford's token laidback drawl and a generally classic-90s feel (the synths in the second verse remind me of Gala's era-defining Freed From Desire ). They take a turn for the more generic thou

If it's not quite the jump from Bob Dylan to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, it's the closest recent equivalent, a prodigious rate of development for such a tyro talent, all the more remarkable for not being reliant on significant musical progression, so much as raw songwriting ability. [*] Andy Gill really does talk out of his arse, doesn't he? There are three types of Jake Bugg: There's the "just been to L.A." Bugg, cultivated by producer Rick Rubin, with his stickers of Americana and blues stamped on his suitcase, resulting in 'Kingpin' and its self-aggrandizing arsery ("all the eyes are on your crown/ people want to take you down", he fears). He might be fit to support the Arctic Monkeys one day. There's the "I'm still Jake" Bugg seen on the album opener 'There's a Beast and We All Feed It'. It sounds exactly the same as his debut's hit Lightning Bolt but

Coming up next in my "lovely things I forgot to get around to listening to earlier in the year" series is the refreshingly consistent Laura Marling. 4 albums into a career that's seen three of them nominated for the Mercury Prize and one of them good enough to pick up a surprising BRIT Award in 2011, Marling is my age. How depressing. For the third time now, producer Ethan Johns is at the helm after a relatively quiet year (his only other contributions appear to be to Paul McCartney and the Vaccines after 2011's A Creature I Don't Know ), but that he should oversee The Vaccines Come of Age is a happy coincidence: Once I Was an Eagle has a startling sense of her own coming-of-age. Fighting her demons (opener Take the Night Off addresses her own demons directly: "be gone from my mind, at least/ let a little lady be"), the album has a remarkably endearing quality in its growth and progress into its final track. "I know there's no helpi

It's odd that a girl that just three years ago was in the top 5 of the singles and albums chart (here in the UK) now sits in a position where only 3 major (and I use major generously - Digitalspy, the Daily Star and, uh, SoSoGay) media outlets have bothered to give her sophomore effort a review. The album went on to chart at a not-terrible #25 here in October, but you'd be forgiven for never knowing it was out at all. What typified her debut was a sense of childlike fun: cute, loveable little songs like Skinny Genes and Pack Up made her stand out in a year of dance-heavy chart-toppers. This one documents a break-up (from Good Charlotte frontman Benji Madden, no less) and the ensuing recovery, and as is to be expected, some of the results are quite firmly embedded in serious, soul-searching territory. The influences here are certainly made quite obvious: opener 'Waste of Time', and later on 'Make Up Sex', are practically screaming The Miseducation of Lau

I remember seeing Dev Hynes during one of his stints as the project Lightspeed Champion on an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and just writing him off as one of those weirdly-dressed electrohipsters that now constitute about 50% of new music I listen to. Whilst at the time they were competing to stand out above the wave of indie-rock that dominated the charts (this same TV series had appearances from The Hoosiers, Pigeon Detectives, Reverend and the Makers, the Cribs, Scouting for Girls, Foals... they were dark times, okay?) they now command total attention and - as well as making everyone fall in love with their own releases - seem to write the hits (well, not actual hits, but excellent pop songs no less) for everyone else. Hynes, gearing up for this second Blood Orange release, penned Sky Ferreira's Everything is Embarrassing , Solange's Losing You (a matter disputed by Solange, who appears to have gone to her sister's class of Taking Credit Where It's Undue

Rating: 1/10 Highlights: It ends Avoid: The whole thing. It's got her husband from Nickelback on it. She's written a song called seventeen for fuck's sake. She's 29.  Artwork Watch: Here. Up next: Blood Orange