A lesson in performance

Stealing other blogs' ideas

The sterling Old Rope blog has recently been discussing great song intros, and WHTB couldn't resist the opportunity to nab the idea and post a personal favourite. Who could forget this timeless classic?

Squirrel Song - Shellac:

On occasion, rock'n'roll has been known to produce artists whose schtick is schlock - yer Alice Coopers, yer Marilyn Mansons, whatever. Invariably they have been lambasted by well-meaning (but ultimatey idiotic) pressure groups as evil, sinful or corruptive. Lord knows what these groups would make of Shellac's 1000 Hurts album, which opens with a prayer to the lord to kill his cheating wife and her partner. The cuckolded Steve Albini - not reknowned for the cheeriest of music at the best of times - positively spits abuse all over the record, but it's best summed up with the savage, disjointed riff that opens Squirrel Song, and his caustic, venomously ironic narration over the intro: "This is a saaaad fuppin' song... be lucky if i don't bust out cryin'...". Then Todd Trainer's monstrously loud drums tear into the speakers, and for one brief moment it sounds like rock'n'roll could actually be powerful enough to summon demons. It can't, of course, but that brief moment sure is exhilarating.

Sentences You Don't Often Hear In Work #5

"Don't donkey-punch me!"

Sentences You Don't Often Hear In Work #4

"...But he also talks to animals."

Pegasuses XL - The Antiphon

The first time I put this record on I thought it was a crock of shit. Crystalline but familiar synth sounds of yesterfuckinmillennium plus agonised yelping and blah blah blah. After a few more spins, I’m still not convinced that it ain’t a crock of shit; for all I know that may be the whole point. But what I do know is that it tears my guts out and lays ‘em down on the tarmac in nightmarishly weird new forms that’d make HR Giger vomit up his cornflakes, and I want more. It’s puke ugly and blood violent, yet strangely beautiful, like a chemical burn in the shape of a snowflake. It’s blowing my fucking mind.
(Ernest Jenning Recording Co.)

Sentences You Don't Often Hear In Work #3

"Do you know what this reminds me of? When Noah built that ark. Do you remember that?"

Sentences You Don't Often Hear In Work #2

Strictly speaking, this is dialogue rather than a sentence. But anyway:

Girl (after some deliberation):"I don't know who Eamonn Holmes is."

'Hilarious' chap next to her: "Sherlock's brother."

Girl (after much, much more deliberation): "I don't know who Sherlock Holmes is either."

The Bombed-Out Church

St Luke's, Liverpool

On the edge of Liverpool city centre, on the corner of Leece Street and Berry Street, lies the hollow shell of St Luke's church. Struck by an incendiary bomb towards the end of the Second World War, the building (known affectionately to locals as 'the bombed-out church') remained largely unused until 2003, when arts collective Urban Strawberry Lunch began hosting musical events, photography installations and film nights.

It's a brilliant reinvention for one of the city's lesser-widely-known, but potentially more recognisable landmarks. WHTB spent a long time wondering why they hadn't gone one step further and simply opened it up as an open-air club called The Bombed-Out Church, until finally managing to haul some flabby backside down there for a showing of cold-war-paranoia-sci-fi-classic The Day The Earch Stood Still. As magnificent as the structure is, all attendees to these events have to sign a form declaring their awareness that the whole thing could, like, collapse around us. AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. Sheesh! Ok, possibly not the best home for a club full of pissed idiots twitching and jerking to floor-shakingly-loud bass and beats. But as long as you bring a jacket (even on these delightful summer evenings, it can get pretty nippy) it's a lovely place to take in a movie.

Forthcoming screenings, should you catch this blog in time, include FW Murnau's Nosferatu (4th July) and Jean Cocteau's La Belle Et La Bête (5th July). There's also a plethora of other stuff coming up, which you're advised to check out. Hooray!

Sentences You Don't Often Hear In Work #1

The first in an occasional series! First entry:

"...and that's why my dentist is in jail."

...Like a shit-eating rabbit on speed! OFFICIAL!

It's entirely in keeping with WHTB's work ethic thus far that it should take this long to produce a piece on the sad passing of former NME journo Steven Wells last week. The web is currently bulging with tributes to the man (Swells to his friends, fans and indeed foes), and in any case I'm sure it would fill him with disgust to think of anyone still preoccupying themselves with his death a week after the event, so I'm not going to even attempt anything approaching an obituary or anything of the kind. Similar but better sentiments can be found on the sterling Old Rope blog, along with links to some other great pieces, all of which which you are sincerely advised to check out instead. Not to mention his final column for the Philadelphia Weekly.

What i will say is that, as a mere reader, I learned a lot from Swells. His writing style was frenetic, breathless, hugely imaginative, supremely daft, intensely clever, often provocative and always entertaining. He also enjoyed capital letters an awful lot. But as a music hack, he frequently challenged the status quo and heartily encouraged people to make up their own minds.

This is important. Because, when you think about it, (whisper it) pop music doesn't actually matter that much. But for fuck's sake, don't tell anyone that! Ideas and opinions are essential, because they define who we are - and what's more, they can be really fucking exciting. So why waste your time devoting yourself to ideas you only half-believe in? If you like pop music, scream it from the rooftops! Defend it to the hilt! Pour forth your venom onto the charlatans and nay-sayers and tedious notions of 'taste'! COMMIT!

So there you go. I know it's not an especially heartfelt tribute, but I think I'd only end up repeating things that other folk have already said far more eloquently than I could hope to. Instead, I'll sign off with a couple of great tunes that the great man would approve of.

Thanks again, Swells.

Daphne & Celeste - Ooh! Stick You!


Butthole Surfers - Sweat Loaf

Start all over again

While i'm on the subject of comics, and by extension cartoonists, here's a great short by Lev Yilmaz. My girlfriend (the right honourable and most righteous Sazzlebox) introduced me to his work a couple of years ago. It's rather good.

I suspect I relate to this one rather too much:

I started to holler

For the record, I’m fully aware that WHTB is utter cack. Rarely updated, thin on content and wheezing under the weight of poor grammar and awkward sentences, it’s a poor excuse for a blog. Thankfully I only have a handful of readers, who are too thoughtfully decent to spray these pages with comments detailing the many faults of these rather-too-idle musings, but apologies to all of you for dithering.

Right.

Anyway.

Since a couple of years have elapsed since my last visit to Liverpool’s quarterly comic fair, I decided to rejoice in the splendour of payday and head down. After partaking in mildly embarrassing conversation in the Marriott hotel (“Hallo, I believe there is a comic fair in here today?” “No, there isn’t.”), I managed to establish that the Liner hotel was, in fact, the correct location of the event, and sheepishly trundled off in that direction.

Comic fairs are an uncomfortable business. Sparse attendance only serves to heighten the embarrassment all concerned, and unless you’re a huge fan of widely-available back issues of mainstream superhero comics, you’re likely to come away disappointed. WHTB feels especially for a certain type of vendor whose stall attracts no attention whatsoever. Perhaps inevitably, these lost souls always seem to be accompanied by their disinterested spouses. Disconsolate yet resigned, the vendor sits wth arms folded, in total silence, whilst their other half’s glance darts around the room; seething resentment building towards these uncharitable nerds who will not approach their stall. “You must have the wrong stuff. These people aren’t interested,” s/he will occasionally remark, visibly fuming that a Saturday afternoon has been wasted in the presence of middle-aged singletons and sweaty, acne-plagued 13 year-olds. The vendor nods silently, and my heart breaks every time.

It’s not superhero comics that I’m after, in any case. My interest in the market-dominating titans of Marvel and DC has wavered, slowly evaporating into the vaguest of lingering affections. This manifests itself these days in cinema trips, to nostalgically partake in the latest big-budget powers’n’spandex action-fest, and criticising American nerd-com The Big Bang Theory for getting minor details wrong (at times I can’t help but feel I identify with the show’s protagonists for the wrong reasons).

The reason for my trip, as per usual, is to locate old indie comics. There are still gaps in my collection (if I can use such a horrible word – hack! Spit!) of Peter Bagge’s phenomenal Hate and Neat Stuff comics, and frankly I’d like to fill them. Whilst his oevre is often lumped in with fellow doyens of the Fantagraphics publishing stable such as Black Hole creator Charles Burns or Daniel Clowes of Eightball (and specifically Ghost World) fame, Bagge’s artwork is quite unlike his peers’. Filled with frantic, meticulously-drawn characters, it lurches from merciless all-targetting satire to warped slapstick to utterly shameless gross-outery. It’s well worth checking out. Naturally, good fucking luck finding any of it at a comic fair.

Peter Bagge's Hate comic: Buddy Bradley gets het up

Instead I wander from table to table, ignoring the innumerate boxes of Superman, X-Men and the rest to flick through carelessly-laid-out ‘INDIES’ sections, and presumably find nothing as per usual. My queries are most often met with a forehead-slap and an exclaimed “Fack me, mate, I’ve got thaaaaaaaaahhh-sands a’them at ‘ome!” before a flyer with an email address is thrust into my hand, thereby missing the point that I’m attempting to buy things here so I don’t have to bother to do so on the internet. Otherwise it’s a quizzical look along with a “What?” Either way, I move along.

Eventually, and just as I’m about to give up hope and head back home, my search is successful: one unmarked box reveals a veritable treasure chest of mid-to-late 80s and early 90s Fantagraphics anthology comics. It’s not strictly what I’m after, but I trust Fantagraphics enough to feel assured that this stuff is going to be gold. Jeremey Eaton’s A Sleepy Head Tale, Glenn Head’s Avenue D, James Sturm’s Check-Up and a whole four issues of Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy (edited by sterling comic-journalist Joe Sacco) are my glorious prize, and the vendor is so delighted to get rid of them that he only charges me £20 for the pile. Not bad at all; ebay would’ve set me back a lot more.

First issue of Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy, edited by Joe Sacco

Gleefully clutching my prize, I reflect on the afternoon. Not especially dismal; it could have been worse. And at least I can view fanboy markets with a slight sense of detachment these days - comic fairs are essentially where the childish glee inherent in superheroism is utterly wiped out by the snobbishness of the collector’s market. I’ve left the world of caped crusaders behind, and this afternoon has largely served as a reminder of why I was so glad to do so.

Seriously, comic fairs fucking suck.

I never wanna be lukewarm again

Seeing a treasured band for the first time is always an exciting prospect. A few days ago I went to see the latest incarnation of Chicago's Joan of Arc at my fair city's finest new venue The Kazimier. It's a delightful building, which rather feels like a cross between a disused Victorian theatre and the beautiful kids from The OC's sheeny shiney gigspot. Both previous shows i'd seen there were made all the more enjoyable by these pleasant surroundings, so I was pretty stoked to be there to take in an act i've been enjoying for a fair few years now. Even if it's a band with ten albums to their name, of which i only own the first two.

JoA is essentially the brainchild of one Tim Kinsella, to whose work i was initially exposed in my first year of university. A friend from Glasgow, responsible a decade ago for introducing me to a good deal of second generation emo, made me a tape which featured Kinsella's high school punk troupe Cap'n Jazz. This song, in particular:



Personally, i love Little League. It's a great little burst of hyper-energetic indie spaz, with a cute lyrical theme (when you can make it out amidst the yelping), a gloriously absurd breakdown section and a fucking good tune to boot. But i can understand why it might not be everyone's cup of tea. I can understand equally why folk might not like their late-90s reformation under the name Owls (with JoA temporarily defunct at the time). Again, i think they're ace, albeit for different reasons. No longer trying to hurtle through abstract song structures at breakneck speed, they'd managed to slow down and acquire a certain textural grace. With Tim Kinsella's deliciously surreal wordplay much more audible, and guitarist Victor Villareal creating brain-stretching sonic shimmer underneath, Owls' solitary album wanders through abstractions both melodic and rhythmic to stunning effect. Here's a snapshot from a live show:



But anyway! Joan of Arc. And more pertinently, the show. Things began well with a blast of inventively exhilarating noise from London's Shield Your Eyes, before The Love Of Everything brought their indie subtlety to proceedings. Local mainstays Hot Club de Paris showcased their post-punk wares before JoA finally hit the stage at 11.30pm.

Kinsella has admitted in recent years that music is no longer the main priority in his life, and it certainly showed as he yawned and complained his way through a two-hour set of downbeat guitar-led fumblings. And yet it was still great, for some reason. Admittedly, the quality of his backing band (and if we're honest, that's exactly what JoA has been since their inception in 1995) helped matters somewhat, as did the rather large amount of Red Stripe quaffed by yours truly at this point. Indeed, WHTB's main source of irritation was the realisation that the sound has changed drastically since those early records i picked up a long time ago. No longer split between experimental folk, electronic drone and fractured emocore, it looked and felt as though a band who attract as many accusations of pretentiousness as plaudits have taken significant steps towards a more conventional, sombre approach. And whilst it was still great, it just wasn't the Joan of Arc i wanted to see. i'm trying to temper this sense of disappointment with reassurance that i still had a great night, but somehow it wasn't what i really wanted. Perhaps if Kinsella had interspersed his lunatic poetry with a sense of enjoyment, thigns might have been different.

I'll sign off with a clip from the Joan of Arc i wish i had seen. Peace out, y'all.

You were right when you said "all we are is dust in the wind"

Two months since my last post! Shocking.

There are few things more upsetting for a music fan than the demise of their favourite band. So it was for me with Urusei Yatsura in 2001, although a little over a year and a half previously, I'd already experienced something similar with Pavement. (Lo-fi-ologists will doubtless scream my ignorance at the fact that the Yatsura were blatant copyists of Stephen Malkmus' Stockton anglophiles, and although i always knew who was ripping off who, I can't really explain why i fell further in love with the Glaswegian 4-piece. Timing, i guess.)

I can still remember the joy of discovering that Stephen Malkmus' debut solo album (initially to be entitled Swedish Reggae, til he realised that wasn't especially funny) was on its way. It was 2001 and i was already thoroughly bored of my first year of university. It seems like Pavement-lite now, but Malkmus' first effort was one of a series of records that saved my summer that year. Here's the bizarre choice for a first single:



Since then, Malkmus seems to have grown into his 'slacker' reputation far more naturally than he ever did with his old band, and his work has become increasingly complex. It's still great, just less immediately fun than he used to be. And fair enough - he's earned the right. It just moves me less.

So recently, i belatedly decided to check on his old bandmate Scott 'Spiral Stairs' Kannberg's new band The Preston School Of Industry. I always liked Spiral's Pavement songs, from the blatant Fall-theft of Two States and Hit The Plane Down to the scuzzy heartfelt pop of Date w/Ikea and Kennel District. In retrospect it seems odd that i didn't get round to checking out Preston School a helluva lot earlier. In any case, I'm glad i did. There's something about his mid-life country-pop guise that's rather becoming. Even if his voice isn't the most distinctive, there's something lovely about his second album Monsoon that almost seems more Malkmus than Malkmus at times. Most excitingly, he finally sounds comfortable. There's not a lot to this song below, and in a way that's the most perfect thing about it:




Anyway. I've not touched on Steve West's Marble Valley, but this'll do for post-Pavement projects for now. More up-to-date references next time, honest. I'm just getting down what i've been thinking about for now.

***

I was supposed to use this blog to write about football as well as records (and, er, other things), and so far this has been brushed to one side a little.

This is probably an appropriate time, then, to declare my undying love for manager David Moyes and the entire Everton side - especially the following individuals: Tim Cahill, Phil Neville, Phil Jagielka, Mikel Arteta, Stephen Pienaar, Joleon Lescott, Marouane Fellaini, Tim Howard... actually, i was right the first time. The ENTIRE side. More coherent musings to follow after this week's terrifying-on-paper semi-final with Manchester United. Come on, boys.

***

I'm listening to Radio 1 and once again I'm appalled to discover how little of its content I enjoy. Aside from Talking Heads and Van Halen it's been shocking. I'm not sure exactly when my tastes and that of Radio 1's 7-10pm slot diverged, but they seem to have done so quite drastically. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Although, thinking about it, if that means I'm of a different demographic to one that might appreciate the horrible bletherings of the terminally-self-impressed Zane Lowe, then fair enough. Easy target, schmeasy target.

The light never shone down on you

It's happened again. For the second straight 45, everyone's favourite mod-punk-indepop northern soul enthusiasts Comet Gain have released a 7" where the a-side is totally and utterly trumped by the b-side. Just as the sub-disco skronk of last year's Love Without Lies (Twee As Fuck) couldn't compete with the lesser-known loveliness of Books Of California, their latest effort Herbert Hunke Part I (Germs Of Youth) revels in lazy Velvet Underground strums and retro-hipster drawl, without even approaching the heights of its far-sweeter flip No Spotlite On Sometimes. Comet Gain have always been obsessed with the beauty of failure, but they've never looked quite so much like their failure was more by design than accident. Anyway...

I first heard of Comet Gain when they earned a place on the NME's never-ever-mentioned C96 compilation (a theoretical homage to the famed cassette of ten years previously), which i didn't quite manage to order at the time. I could never find their releases, unfortunately; the entire band had quit, save for singer David Charlie Feck, and a new line-up had been assembled before one of their 7"s finally turned up in Liverpool in 1998. That was Jack Nance Hair, which i can still vividly and excitedly remember discovering in HMV's tiny vinyl section, along with a Freeboy/Mercedes split on Stupid Cat Records which had a hand-coloured sleeve. Jack Nance Hair became an instant mix tape classic for me, and if you've ever received a compilation tape made by my own fair hand, chances are you own this song. It's perfect. Still one of my favourite record purchases of all time.

It opens with soft acoustic chords and gentle drumming, energy, beauty and restraint combining to create an instant sense of nostalgia, as Rachel Evans intones a beautiful poem about the artist's dedication to his/her work, no matter how flawed it may be. The Eraserhead star's notorious barnet (from David Lynch's absurdist feature-length debut) becomes a metaphor for the honesty and inevitable folly of Comet Gain's music, and it's all capped with Feck's gentle croon declaring, "I don't know why I do the foolish things that I do," as though the universe may unravel if he doesn't figure it out. Beautiful. And there are few more perfect lines in pop than "young, free and single - like the crack in a 45". Ah, if only they still made singles as uniquely wonderful as this. Instead, i'll have to make do with the gorgeous slices of melancholic indiepop that they whack on the other side of the vinyl.

Anyway, here's some clips of Comet Gain. One from the original soulboy line-up in 1995 (that left to form Velocette):


...and last year's drum machine-led piece of noisepop:

The sound of confusion...

I'm reading Stevie Chick's predictably-stunning Sonic Youth biography Psychic Confusion. Fascinating stuff, but it's also making me feel oddly nostalgic for my teens, and my first real exposure to 'experimental' music of any description.

In May 1996, i was 13. Sucked in by the excitement of the then-prevalent Britpop era, I'd been reading the NME for about a year, and much of my musical education was informed by that self-same paper (which was still a reasonable term for it at the time - it was still a good four years before its descent into Top Man indie's answer to Hello!). That month, however, I chose to pick up a copy of Vox, largely inspired by the cover feature on my recent discovery, the Manic Street Preachers. The feature itself was fine enough, but as I browsed the record reviews, i stumbled across a tiny acknowledgement of a series of reissues for a band that I'd seen mentioned before. That band was Sonic Youth, and Vox hack Tommy Udo's evident passion for their 80s work piqued my curiosity.

It was all down to two titles really. Their first full album Confusion Is Sex had been repackaged with an EP darkly titled Kill Yr Idols. Given that i was beginning to question the validity of wanting to be a pop star, this synched up perfectly with my barely-formed thoughts, and although i would never have known to express it this way at the time, the sheer rhetorical nihilism of the statement was both dangerous and exciting. Then there was also Daydream Nation - a delightful juxtaposition of words that any teen can relate to, especially one whose head is being turned by the wonderful world of the electric guitar. I wanted these records. Of course, a 13 year old's budget rarely stretches beyond singles, and it was 1997 before I got to hear any of their revered racket. A chance encounter with one of my school's more notorious punk stoners resulted in me nervously asking if he had heard the Youth. Within a few days I had borrowed his copy of their breakthrough post-grunge scree-rock album Dirty, and my journey had begun.



Within a few moments of the opening bars, my mind was blown. By this stage, the most 'out-there' music i'd heard was Pavement's Brighten The Corners, and both Blur and Urusei Yatsura's attempts to sound like that band. I'd heard noise before - but not on this scale; not left wild and chaotic and totally untamed - the album's first track 100% opened with squalling feedback and atonal guitar skronk that rang throughtout the song (except for a few carefully chosen moments of haunting respite), while the melody and riffs were perversely supplied by the rhythm section. Compared to the louder sounds i was used to, like the metallic pop of Nirvana's Nevermind, this was debased and savage, and i instantly wanted more. The rest of the record didn't quite connect with me in the same way, disappointingly, or at least not for a few years. But it was enough for the time being. For Christmas that year i received a copy of Daydream Nation, and instantly fell in love. Again, I didn't get it all immediately - but it was still baffling and huge and viscious and beautiful and terrifying and endless and amazing. To this day i'm still learning more about that record and why i love it.

And so began my interest in noise. This falls by the wayside occasionally - as devastatingly enthralling as it can be, i still like my pop tunes. But when i'm in the mood, music that's experimental and challenging and engaging can be utterly inspirational. And my interest begins with this one band.

Here's some clips of synapse-melting sounds that i probably wouldn't have chanced upon without Sonic Youth:

Sun Ra


Glen Branca

I ripped your heart out from your chest and relaced it with a grenade blast

New Year's resolutions are a curious business. Mine, of course, is to update this blog more often. But it's always interesting, in January, to see just how many people strengthen their determination to get fit, and equally, how many of them realise they've wasted the cost of gym membership by February.

The gym is, of course, where good looks and whatever you have resembling dignity go out of the window. It's a wholly necessary evil - that metabolism don't work like it did when i was 16 - but it would be nice if we didn't have to look so pathetic. NO-ONE escapes this in the gym. It is no place for sexual aesthetes. Skintight clothing reveals bulging, wobbling flab in all its revolting glory, while gelatinous fat breasts bob up and down in perfect rhythmic time with the crosstrainer; ripples of flesh ebbing and flowing up and down the body. Insert your own 'and that's just the fellas'-style joke here (although it lamentably IS the ostensibly stronger sex to whom I refer here). I don't look at the girls. I can't. For one thing I have a long-term girlfriend, and for another, I'd be too embarrassed even if I did. The gym reduces me to a panting, crimson-faced heap of sweat - not the best look for the alpha male on the prowl, i shouldn't imagine. The gym robs us all of our cool, assuming we have any to begin with.

In fact, the only reason we go is so that, after hiding all signs that we do work out at all, we hope that we might eventually look ever-so-slightly better. And therefore cooler. So the fact that we have to wait innumerable aeons for any given machine, every January, only seems to prolong the agonies we put ourselves through in order to attain that distant goal. Fuel is then added to this fire with the knowledge that the ones causing this extra waiting time will have lost interest, patience or will power by February, thus inferring that our agony is trivial. I mean, Christ, I've not kept up my New Year's resolution very well, but at leat it's not fucking up anyone else's regular routine.

More self-important OTT rants about the gym to follow - until I at least start to look like Dolph Lundgren, at any rate.

***

My last post was all about how great new music is. Such a shame that I've followed this up with a week spent listening almost exclusively to the Gin Blossoms and Redd Kross. Ah well. I'll get out of the 90s one day.

Getting older makes it harder to remember...

Ok, so this hasn't quite gone to plan. New Year's Resolution! More frequent blogging! Starting now!

For the last few years I've felt increasingly like I don't get new music. I flatter myself that I'm an enthusiastic consumer of pop music, both underground and overground. In fact, I've always thought that I devour, rather than merely consume it. I suppose this is symptomatic of (or perhaps a contributory factor to) my ridiculously short attention span. The positive aspect of this is that I have a pretty decent record collection, if I do say so myself, and one of the most enjoyable things a guy can do, in my opinion, is research a band thoroughly - what they used to sound like, whether the members used to be in other bands and what they used to sound like, who their influences are and how much I'm gonna dig on them... great fun. Geeky, yeh, but what the hell.

So it came as a surprise to me a few years ago when I started to lose interest in contemporary stuff - there was just nothing exciting me. It was worrying. I mean, what do you do when your passion suddenly seems to hold no future for you? I suspect it kicked in with the arrival of what my friend Phil refers to as 'Top Man indie' - it was the first time music had made me feel too old. Without wanting to get all melodramatic, in your mid-20s that's a bizarre place to be.

Luckily, after a surge of xmas presents, vouchers and things, the end of 2008 helped me realise that there's still plenty of stuff out there that I love. It's not all over for me - thank fuck! Hooray for needless fretting! So with this in mind, I present my top records of 2008! Enjoy!

10. Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee - S/T
Imagine a record destined to make zero impact upon the public consciousness. This was surely it. Ex-Hefner frontman and current indie legend Darren Hayman teamed up with The Wave Pictures' David Tattersall to create a gorgeous piece of magical London bluegrass. But whatever your thoughts on the premise or its commercial viability, there were few records released this year that exuded such joy. Indiepop approaches to country music (and its various subgenres) have rarely scaled the heights of this album.

9. Times New Viking - Rip It Off
I'm fairly sure that, for a lot of people, TNV represent little more than an untamed, untalented and ultimately unlistenable indie rock trio. But from the first time i heard them (cruising Myspace for acts to watch at ATP) to the 3 times i got to see them in 2008, they've been sheer rock'n'roll excitement throughout. Yeh, it's sloppy and chaotic, and on record you have to search even harder for the bubblegum delight underneath the fuzz, but dammit, it's FUN! Like trying to catch early Pavement demos on a cheap long wave radio whilst pouring cherryade and sherbert into your mouth.

8. Mudhoney - The Lucky Ones
Earlier this year, John Robb reviewed this record for Plan B. Looking back on grunge, the Gold Blade ringmaster suggested that Mark Arm's garage rock veterans left the best and most important legacy. I'm not sure how far I agree with that statement, although I'd be pretty hard pushed to choose between Touch Me I'm Sick and Lounge Act if asked. In any case, this fine effort showed there's still bite behind their snappy bark; a sterling collection of hip-shakers and floor-stompers that added a delicious groove to their heady blues broth.

7. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
One of two artists what I managed to catch at this year's ATP and immediately write off. Note to self: when searching for party bands whilst horribly drunk in a badly-ventilated indoor festival, do not announce to all and sundry that an acoustic act is bad simply because they did not make you want to jump up and down. For Emma... is beautiful; constantly teetering on the edge of histrionic but somehow retaining its footing. Lush falsettos and subtle electronics only add to the sweetness on display.

6. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
If ever a hip-hop record had me sold from the concept alone, it was this album's sterling single Dr Carter, in which Wayne plays a consultant for rappers suffering from problems with their flow. It's brilliant, hilarious and addictive, not to mention big-headed. Although possibly not as big-headed as the self-aggrandising couplet of the year: "Take away the basketball, the football team / Now all we got is me to represent New Orleans" (from Tie My Hands). What, just you? Brilliant.

5. Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs
There was a lot of talk this year about Death Cab reinventing themselves, and when needlesly-long single I Will Possess Your Heart crashed into the 6music playlist, I couldn't help but feel like it may have been for the worse. Luckily, I needn't have worried. It's classic Death Cab really, and even the five minute Pink Floydian intro to the single makes perfect sense within the context of the full record's natural flow. If anything has changed, it's Ben Gibbard's new 'character study' approach to lyrics, which perfectly offset sunny collegiate indie-pop like No Sunlight; surely one of the best tracks to grace a DCFC record thus far.

4. Fleet Foxes - S/T
Sub Pop appears to have been on the hunt for a new Shins ever since New Slang's appearance on the Garden State soundtrack converted innumerable movie viewers into hardcore fans of literate, vaguely psychedelic, folk-tinged indiepop. Fleet Foxes are the latest pretenders to the Albequerque heroes' throne, and an album crammed with Beach Boys harmonies and 'baroque folk jams' can only encourage more listeners to jump on their heavily-crowded bandwagon. From rural American whimsy to pure sun-drenched pop, this is a record to be cherished; where each track drifts into the next with the gentle, natural glide of twigs in a stream.

3. Vivian Girls - S/T
Of all the hearts that Brooklyn's Vivian Girls have won, it's interesting that the resurgent C86/twee/indiepop/whatever scene seems to be claiming the trio as their own. This may be due to the reverb-heavy, borderline-shoegazey production of their album, or certain sonic similarities to the likes of the Shop Assistants. Either way, it does not take much probing to note that the girls are, to all intents and purposes, a pop-punk band along similar lines to Bratmobile, Onion Flavored Rings, Party Garbage or Cub, and this gloriously messy debut showcases every possible reason to love them in just over 20 minutes. What's not to devote oneself to utterly?

2. Deerhunter - Microcastle
Brandon Cox's Deerhunter are the aforementioned other band that I managed to cast aside in derision at ATP Vs Pitchfork. After months of reading about how amazing they supposedly are, I gave in and spent some vouchers on their latest opus. And good lord, it's magnificent. I'm quite, quite happy to withdraw any previous comments i may have made about this band. From its richly atmospheric production to its intricately-arranged, crack-level-addiction tunesmithery, Microcastle is an endlessly enjoyable record that leaves me breathless for more.

1. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
I love this band. It's been years since I've even come close to liking a contemporary band as much as I adore The Hold Steady. And this fourth effort only served to illustrate why. It's not so much a reinvention of their formula - Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould fighting over the mic amidst rippling Springsteen pianos and arena-sized choruses - as a refinement of it. Opening and closing with two of the finest songs of their career (Constructive Summer and Slapped Actress) doesn't detract from the stuff inbetween, as the band play around with new wave synths, stadium balladry and doom-laden psych-blues in what is surely their most complete album yet. It helps that Craig Finn is one of the finest lyricists in rock today, and the multi-faceted narrative he weaves throughout Stay Positive is utterly compelling. If they continue at this stunning rate of pace, lord only knows how immense their next record will be.

So there you go. My records of the year for 2008. New music's ace actually, isn't it?