Albums of the Year '09!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's late! But 'better late than never' is what they say. So it's what we shall deliver. Here are our top 10 albums of '09. Twas a stellar year! Gushing and platitudes start here:

Blue Roses – Blue Roses
You may not have a clue who Yorkshire singer and multi-instrumentalist Blue Roses is, but if anybody can lay claim to Kate Bush’s ethereal, British folk throne it’s her. Her alternately wild, then almost classical voice and sound, contrasted with cut glass piano and spindly violin make for a debut album of authentic and sheer beauty.

Ellipse – Imogen Heap
We can’t think of another album we have waited as much for as this one. A mixed bag of emotions and moods like it’s predecessor, Ellipse brings us a song titled “Swoon” which somehow makes us actually swoon, a song named “First Train Home” which actually makes us want to go home and a track entitled “Canvas” which while having nothing to do with canvases, takes us to an Ibiza beach round about sunset, mojito in hand. Bliss.

Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson has stated that this may be the first, last and only album she’ll release as solo witch doctor-cum-electro warrior Fever Ray. If it is, then what a rare and troubling treat. Ms. Andersson had always made music as beautiful as it was horrifying as one half of The Knife, but here she did it alone, and created a unique and wonderful soundscape in doing so.

Lungs – Florence + the Machine
We began the year with a poisonous dislike for Ms. Florence due to a certain “Kiss With a Fist” being a pile of utter shite, but that was easily mellowed into a blossoming, ever-growing (even to this day) affection for what a million and one people have already termed “the new Kate Bush”. Plucking away at our heart strings with the same ease she shows with her harp, Lungs can do no wrong. A genuine classic.

Music For Men – Gossip
While the year may have seen a rollercoaster in terms of how popular Gossip stand with your S&N writers, this record is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and completely their best work yet. Whoever’s idea it was to bring synthesisers, house pianos and just a tad of disco into the mix deserves a big sweaty motorboating on Ditto’s tits.

Rated R – Rihanna
Thought you were left reeling in shock at Rihanna’s transformation from just-another-R&B-label-puppet to world’s biggest and bestest popstar in 2007? Well how about when post-trauma and publicity whirlwind, she came out with an album brooding, dark, cohesive, challenging, clever and still unmistakeably her?

Speech Therapy – Speech Debelle
Say what you will about Speech Debelle, but any woman willing to rap so candidly about trouble and angst against a backdrop of baroque strings, shuffling cymbals, sugar-spun guitar and haunting piano without ever bragging about or glorifying gratuitous sex or violence was brave and brilliant indeed.

xx – The xx
Minimalist name, minimalist album. From reading their influences (Aaliyah, Mariah Carey, Ginuwine) you’d be forgiven to think they would be bordering on N-Dubz territory. Couldn’t be further apart. A sparse, sweeping landscape of blips and beeps, contrasted with two hauntingly beautiful and moving voices make for a prime revision soundtrack and the finest companion of 2009 to fall asleep with. That’s a compliment by the way.

The Bachelor – Patrick Wolf
There are those who would have you believe that it doesn’t matter what an artist does in their private life, if the music is good, it’s good. And there are others who would have you believe it’s impossible to separate an artist’s body of work from their lifestyle choices or shenanigans. If you’re going to enjoy Patrick Wolf’s work you’re going to have to be firmly in the former camp. Mr. Wolf has made it increasingly difficult to like him over the past year or so. Fabricating stories for attention, showing his bare bottom in seedy and unsexy S&M videos, throwing multiple hissy fits, and lobbing heavy electronic equipment at music professionals in a seeming attempt to create an air of rebellion. Erratic and confounding behaviour.

Despite this The Bachelor is Patrick Wolf’s most coherent, lush and exciting album. From the pulsing, fluttering strings on energetic “Hard Times” to the exotic and glittery sitar on “Theseus” there is delight and cloudless beauty on almost every track. Tilda Swinton’s spoken interjections have not been to everyone’s tastes, but are chilling and reminiscent of Kate Bush and Eliza Carthy’s husky raucous cameo is both exhilarating and wonderfully pitched. Wolf may have parted ways with his major label for this work, but you wouldn’t guess. Here the string arrangements are thicker, deeper and more evocative and the songwriting more inventive and sophisticated. You may not see eye to eye with Patrick, and increasingly even his fans do not, but you can’t argue with an album so perfectly wrought and aesthetically stunning.

Two Suns – Bat For Lashes
From the moment you are introduced to this record with blood-chilling, mesmerising verse and lead into a trail-blazing, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck inducing rollercoaster ride through all manner of instruments and vocal contortions, you will be in love with Natasha Khan and her two suns. “Moon and Moon” is a three minute lump-in-throat moment through and through, “Siren Song” is desperately gorgeous and “Daniel” is officially the most fabulous 80s throwback of 2009 – and we all know 2009 was the year of 80s throwbacks. The video for “Pearl’s Dream” has to be one of the fiercest pieces of celluloid put to music of the decade – that blonde wig, that snarling wolf... ooh it always gets us going! – and “Sleep Alone” is leering, intimidating and gorgeous in all the right places.

There seems to be this magical crossing of wires between Khan’s ethereal elfin voice, the vast array of intricately played instruments utilised and the lyrical atmospheres effortlessly evoked with ease. Her 2006 debut Fur and Gold presented an undeniably interesting character – an artist with a bag of tricks which seemed to show promise for many further, better creations. Two Suns can only be a step in that impending process. In the wake of Kate Bush’s departure from our musical landscape (ignoring for a moment her recent fabulous “comeback”) we were presented with countless ‘quirky’ individuals clawing for a piece of her crown. Bat for Lashes is no Kate Bush – she seems to be in a league of her own. She has complete control of the music she creates and it seems to be coming from a genuine, entrancing place – she isn’t being ‘weird’ for the sake of being weird, Natasha Khan is a weaver of the most delicate tapestries, pieces of art which can take you from your desk chair or your train seat and push you through a tunnel of breathless emotions.

Two Suns is not only one of the finest albums of 2009 but of the decade, and we are pleased to say it seems the British public have recognised this with the success the album found upon release. We can only hope this provokes further, what we can only term as, genius from Bat for Lashes. We await eagerly.