Favourite Albums/Songs of the Decade #30-21

Albums

30. Kill for Love - Chromatics

A sonic painting of a dense, futuristic but graspable cityscape. Textured nearly to the point of insipid perfection, it clogs every sense with a deep impassioned timbre. Tired synths and distant guitars float along Ruth Radelet’s disengaged, machinelike voice, troubled by the sinister social cessation of this nameless epoch. This is a world in which only pop music can be used to emotionally communicate; subsequently a world where Chromatics are kings. An enveloping atmosphere of longing for connection and tireless ardour, it’s a science-fiction noir-romance epic exploding through my speakers, and I love every second of it.

29. Ill Manors - Plan B

One of the best British albums of recent years is also one of the most (pleasantly) unexpected. I’d always associated Plan B with inoffensive Soul-Pop, largely ignoring everything he’d ever done before. Then Ill Manors pops up, and one thing it does particularly well is grab your attention. Following the aftermath of the London riots, Ben Drew’s patience with the demonization of the urban classes had withered. Loud, brash beats underscore Drew’s venomous, vilifying spits. Parallels can be drawn with his contemporary Killer Mike, but this political indictment hits closer to home. It’s Hip-Hop angrier, and more scathingly powerful, than I’ve ever heard it.

28. Kaputt - Destroyer

When people talk about the vast genre behemoth that is Indie Rock they generally ignore the jazz-infused Romantics which populate it. You know the bands, Dirty Projectors, Lambchop, and of course Destroyer. Since the late 90s Destroyer have been commanding this underappreciated niche, their wistful jaunts as memorably soothing as they are dissonantly critical. Kaputt bears an oracle’s wisdom, on, of all things, decadence and hedonism. The reverbed brass and mystified synths wander into the acid-dropped distance, leaving behind Bejar’s bemused pontification on the disappointments of superficial pleasures. The final track is suitably titled ‘Bay of Pigs,’ a reference to the hapless US invasion of Cuba in 1961, suggesting the vanity of excessive overambition.

27. Father, Son, Holy Ghost - Girls

Girls’s presence in music remains mythological, an ephemeral phase of modernised classic rock which vanished as inexplicably as it popped into existence. Everything from the Stones, to Zeppelin, to Deep Purple, are invoked in its stoically old-fashioned song-structures. There’s massive guitar solos, impeccably adjusted backtracks, flutes, organs, everything you’d expect from an album hypothetically classified under Rolling Stone’s ‘best rock records of all time.’ Father Son is no anachronistic elegy to the ghost of guitar music though, it might not be quite as thoughtful or as layered as Album, but Doug Boehm’s words are eloquent, provocative, self-aware, and occasionally they completely hit the spot.

26. Obsidian - Baths

Baths is one of the rarest of things in musicians; someone whose work can be legitimately categorised as poetry. A breathing contradiction, his overt Anime fanboyness on Twitter discords with his deeply morbid, obsessively erotic, beautifully expressive music. A malign product of Weisenfeld’s spat of E. Coli in 2012, he concocts something terrifying and interminable and gorgeous. The clinks of minimalistic percussion, the whispers of spectral piano, the glint of a reclusive violin, all balance Will Weisenfeld’s uncomfortable reflections, tainting them with requisite sympathy. For all his references to overtly sexual images, it’s his brief instances of agonising meditation which last; he comments, ‘I was never a poet.’

25. England Keep my Bones - Frank Turner

You can’t keep Frank Turner down. There’s not much subtlety to him, he bears his politics emboldened on his chest, and his reverence of rock’n’roll is celestially tattooed on his voice. England Keep my Bones is something slightly different (though ‘I Still Believe’ is probably the most explicit tribute to rock there’s ever been), an uplifting yet pensively sad testament to England. And here’s where the subtlety comes in. There’s patriotism in his glorifications of England’s landscapes and cultures, his venerations of its social institutions and traditions. However, there’s also the idea that something of England’s soul has been lost, that Turner actively trundles its landscapes in search of spiritual affirmation and simply can’t find it. It ends on a bizarre if interesting celebration of unilateral secularisation.

24. Sunbather - Deafhaven

In a curious defiance of the laws of sound, Deafhaven string together elements of Shoegaze, Post-Rock, and Heavy Metal to form something puzzlingly mellifluous and even beautiful. Sure it’s just rapid-fire drumming, screaming, and heavily dubbed guitars, but fragments fit the whole so well that it births melody, and I’m by no means a Metal fan. I can only put this discrepancy down to spotless song structure, a near perfect cohesion of isolated instrumental parts. So, what happens when you correspond the frantic magnetism of Metal sound and sincere musical melody? You get something that feels absolutely significant, that I have to listen to each chord and syllable with utter attention, even though I haven’t a bloody clue what he’s on about.

23. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire

The Suburbs is a rich eulogy of Arcade Fire’s formative years, and they’re lavished with a quadruple coat of nostalgic whimsy. It captures the excitement, the imagination, the boredom, the disappointment, the unbridled passion and austere disenchantment of childhood. It’s about how you could build a majestic empire from sticks and bricks in a day and then forgetting about it the next morning. It’s also about how this is gone, and gone forever. This naïve exuberance can never be reconciled, and it is just about as heartbreaking as anything. Right until the philanthropic, all-encompassing epic ‘Sprawl II’ sounds out Butler and Cos cavalcade of adolescence in a blistering, triumphant, and yes, elegiac march.

22. LP1 - FKA Twigs

FKA Twigs had been bubbling under the surface for much of 2013, the release of her single ‘Water Me’ had the internet converging in on itself, you know, because it was unprecedentedly good. Her first LP, suitably titled LP1, was anticipated so extremely that editors were complaining about the number of emails from staff writers begging to be the one to review it. So there was hype. Does it live up to it? More or less. Her uniquely pained vocals invoke an achingly vulnerable intimacy; she details sexual neuroses and catalogues romantic anguish. The album is essentially the diary of a dysfunctional teenager, but it works. Her quirkiness intoxicates rather than infuriates, a fascinating, haunting psychological study.

21. Trouble Will Find me - The National

One of The National’s greatest strengths is their consistency, their ability to produce pensive, emotionally charged, bitterly honest music ceaselessly. But on Trouble Will Find Me, which can sort of be construed as a break-up album, they out-do themselves. Whether it’s the Rocky surges of anger and frustration in ‘Sea of Love’ and ‘Graceless,’ or the achingly heartfelt ‘Heavenfaced’ and ‘I Need My Girl,’ Trouble Will Find Me is entirely regulated by turmoil of love. Each song is a singular appropriation of Berninger’s index of despondencies and successes, but ‘Pink Rabbits’ is possibly the best song Berninger has ever written, and one of the best break-up songs, well, ever.

Songs

60. Throw me in the River - The Smith Street Band

59. Wolf Dix Rd. - Iron Chic

58. Rapping 2 U - Das Racist

57. Wildest Moments - Jessie Ware

56. Anywhere But Here - Killer Mike

55. Phosphorescence - Tall Ships

54. Honey - Torres

53. We All Try - Frank Ocean

52. Yonkers - Tyler, the Creator

51. Kill For Love - Chromatics

50. Black Skinhead - Kanye West

49. Heavenly Father - Bon Iver

48. Use Me - Miguel

47. Destroy This Poem - Hallelujah the Hills

*No Video on Youtube. Listen to it though. Honestly it's good.

46. My Kind of Woman - Mac de Marco

45. There he Go - Schoolboy Q

44. I Belong in Your Arms - Chairlift

43. Ebony Sky - Young Fathers

42. Hannah Hunt - Vampire Weekend

41. California - EMA

Favourite Albums and Songs of the Decade #40-31

Albums

40. Let England Shake - PJ Harvey

You don’t get more alternative than Paulie Jane Harvey. The critical darling’s previous discography like Rid of Me and Stories From The City were polluted with angsty internal monologues and 90s-bleak disillusionment, but Let England Shake is a completely different direction. It’s an album about war, a potentially heavy-handed subject in any medium, but Harvey is quaint enough to separate herself from lecturous ideologues and general enough that she transpires with a common universality; for every War of the Roses reference there’s another about the UN. Harvey utilises countryside imagery effectually to unsettle the abnormality of conflict, and the record passes with an ethereal, disquieting beauty.

39. Lost in the Dream - The War on Drugs

War on Drugs do to Pop-Rock what Fleet Foxes do to Country; they twist and mangle its traditional fundamentals into something defiant of genre and indefatigably wonderful. Lost in the Dream is an appropriate title, as its experience is that of gliding across a subconscious sunset, given flight by glazing guitars and a buoyant piano. When it’s not sailing you down a river of satin-silk melody it’s striding you forward with a sense of bass-guitar heavy resolve, that finding something inexplicable yet necessary is the objective of this utopia. I don’t really know what it’s about though. The lyrics are a bit contrived and blasé, but it’s a defect easily forgiven. It’s easy-listening for a post-internet age, a nuanced symphony of aural delights.

38. Section 80 - Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick’s first official release is disjointed, tonally abject, and ever so slightly portentous. It’s also a dramatic statement of the man’s godliness. He covers everything, and I mean everything. He’s got race, drugs, politics, sex, gender identities, love, death, solipsism, there’s even allusions to Emersonian transcendentalism. His wordplay is just as clever and expressive as you’d expect, his flow just as tight, controlled, lucid, and remarkably flighty. His production is impressively understated and sensitive for a rapper so early on in his career. Long before his infamous verse on Big Sean’s ‘Control’, Kendrick was instilling dread in his rivals. This wass a man announcing his arrival to the big time with an apocalyptic bang.

37. Matangi - MIA

Matangi received mixed reviews when it dropped in 2013. Let’s be honest, MIA being divisive is hardly a new trend. She reverts to the continent-hopping she exploited so successfully on Kala, both in terms of thematic context and in her ever-bizarre instrumentation and vocal cues. She doesn’t hold back either. In the first two minutes she’s reciting the names of countries to a frenzied beat, before continuing by declaring war on bankers. It’s an exhausting pace which never slows, except for the amiable ‘Come Walk With Me’ which asserts an unaffected, non-Brandesque commonality with the 99%. There isn’t a ‘Paper Planes’ level international colossus, but this a fierce, biting, charmingly wacky slice of counter-culture.

36. Plowing Into The Field of Love - Iceage

Iceage go even further left-field with Plowing, leaving behind the flaring post-punk of New Brigade and You’re Nothing for the pungent allure of stoner-infused acid-punk. It works incredibly well. Not only does Ronnenfelt’s voice suit the complementary melodies and layered backgrounds, but it consents them to bring further elements into play; say, piano, strings and brass. These additions never feel convoluted or trite, but serve to provide emotional heft to Ronnenfelt’s surprisingly touching confessions. He admits his ego has ballooned since Iceage’s unanticipated rise to popularity, and the awful implications he suffers as a result are imparted here. It’s startlingly powerful.

35. Acid Rap - Chance the Rapper

Have you ever heard anything so chill? Chance just doesn’t care about anything does he? Rhetorical questions are the mark of poor writing aren’t they? Chance’s flow is so irreverent to the point of appearing improvisational, as if he casts off each line with a shrug. He struts through the album with a garish boiler-room elegance, the couplet ‘riding around with my blunt on my lips/with the sun in my eyes and my gun on my hips,’ from ‘Pusha Man’ an effective synecdoche. There are psychosomatic insinuations but it’s unclear whether this is a drug-addled façade or heartfelt introspection. Not that it matters. If this summation is giving off the impression that it’s essentially an hour of a blissful narcotic haze then that’s because it is. 

34. Have You Ever Done Something Evil? - Hallelujah The Hills

The latest of latecomers to this list, having just discovered Hallelujah the Hills two weeks before I started writing, thanks to a very small Columbian acquaintance. It’s one of the best Indie-Rock albums of the decade so far, a very urban sprawl of troubled post-adolescent bohemianism. So right up my street. There’s fervent riffs, big themes of being yourself, accepting your conditions and believing in the feasibility of self-improvement, and some of the best songwriting you’ll hear in a long time. It captures brilliantly the nonchalant minimalism of 90s Indie a la Pavement along with the precision and bearing of 00s Math Rockers like Interpol.

33. Settle - Disclosure

Possibly the most popular House album of the past five years, and justifiably so. Admittedly, House isn’t my forte, but I like to think I recognise a good Dance track when I hear one, and in this case Settle is full of them. It’s one of those rare albums where you can discuss it with a group of people and each person will have a distinct favourite song. Whether it’s the pounding bass of ‘When a Fire,’ London Grammar’s fragile moan on ‘Help Me Lose my Mind,’ the Deep-House groove of ‘You & Me,’ or the brain-melting dissonance on ‘Latch,’ (my personal pick) there’s frankly something for everyone. Finally, a Dance record which unites the Urban Outfitters clique and the Topman crowd.

32. Are We There - Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten’s testament to heartbreak is just about as gut-wrenching an experience you can have listening to music. Break-up albums are often protracted and self-involved, too absorbed in their own misery to open the door for the listener. Van Etten isn’t really any different, it’s still indubitably about her, and her alone. What’s unique is how immersed you are in her world. It’s her rules, her pain, but it drowns you in its emotional debilitation. She is paralysed by melancholy, and so are we consequently. It’s only when it’s over can you consider it affirming, the bittersweet closer ‘Every Time The Sun Comes Up’ embracing optimism and regret in equal measure.

31. RAP Music - Killer Mike

The spiritual successor to Public Enemy is the resolute Killer Mike. A champion of civil rights and political liberalism, his recent breakdown at a Run The Jewels gig over the Ferguson shooting ruling one of the most powerful moments in music in 2014. RAP Music is angry. Very angry. Every institution imaginable is in his sights; capitalism, the senate, the media, racial stereotyping, Republicans (of course), and above everything else, the police. Mike justly rages and rants against America with some airless beats and grubby synthesisers, but he knows it’s in vain. He takes solace in the only thing he can, his ‘true religion,’ rap music. A whirlwind.

Songs

80. A More Perfect Union - Titus Andronicus

79. Afterlife - Arcade Fire

78. Blue Eyes - Destroyer

77. Gonna Die - Autre ne Veut

76. Avocado Baby - Los Campesinos!

75. Backseat Freestyle - Kendrick Lamar

74. Spanish Sahara - Foals

73. Zebra - Beach House

72. Heaven - The Walkmen

71. Hacker - Death Grips

70. Swimming Pools - Kendrick Lamar

69. Bad Religion - Frank Ocean

68. On Battleship Hill - PJ Harvey

67. Sorry - The Dream

66. Demons - A$AP Rocky

65. Under the Pressure - The War on Drugs

64. I Was a Teenage Anarchist - Against Me!

63. Video Girl - FKA Twigs

62. Monster - Kanye West

61. Stay Useless - Cloud Nothings

Favourite Albums/Songs of the Decade #50-41

I love music. I compulsively make lists that noone actually cares about. So, in a way this was inevitable.

Albums

50. The Electric Lady - Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae stormed to critical and commercial success with the funkadelic Archandroid, but The Electric Lady has a more even, bluesier feel to it. One issue with Archandroid was that it was so pristinely ornate that it was difficult to actually connect with. Something to appreciate rather than enjoy. Electric Lady is superior. The tidy production remains but it’s cosier, more affecting, intimate. The diversity is impressive, from the showboating prologue of ‘Givin Them What They Love,’ to the fluttery club-banger ‘Dance Apocalyptic,’ or the love ballad ‘Primetime,’ but nothing is as splendid as Monae’s impassioned wail.

49. Sit Down, Man - Das Racist

Not only a great name, but a great group. The duo are another product of this decade’s ‘intellectual rap’ movement (CC: Childish Gambino & Logic), typified by their idiosyncratic production, academic allusions, pervasion of irony and wry humour, but most significantly an on-point social consciousness. There are funny stories about girlfriends and families, a pensive statement on rap as entertainment or lecture, and elegies to childhood, love, loss, and above all else, their reverence of rap. The money and fame’s good and all, but it’s all about the flow, really. My favourite joke; ‘they call me Dwight Schrute the way I eat beats.’

48. The Constant One - Iron Chic

There isn’t really a coherent theme to The Constant One, it’s rather just a series of separate empowering Punk-Pop bangers. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The riffs are positively furious, the lyrics unapologetically mawkish; the jibber about ‘burning free’ and ‘running endlessly,’ and the tone is fairly singular. It’s fifty minutes of undiluted frenzy, a homage to the sentiment of not giving a fuck and not giving in. It’s daft, naïve and there’s no subtlety whatsoever, but whoever said there needed to be? It is earnest, and upbeat, and it works so well. Honestly, it should probably be a lot higher.

47. Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes

It doesn’t quite live up to their eponymous debut, but man can they write harmonies. The weaving of guitars and Garfunkely sighing voices is as handsome as ever. And in usual form for Fleet Foxes the silences are just as pretty as the compositions, an effective dissonance which pitches hubris into vacuum. There’s a resonating sadness to Helplessness Blues, particularly on the title track and album monolith ‘The Shrine/An Argument’. It’s not so much an issue of life and death as living and dying; the turgid difficulty of the processes rather than the fear of the ideas. There’s a sense of disharmonious fragmentation, and an inevitable ending and conclusion, perhaps foreshadowing the band’s current hiatus.

46. The Monitor - Titus Andronicus

It opens with splendour, a song which charters one fresh-eyed, poetry-driven, rock-loving idealist’s entire journey from New Jersey towards paradise, and his ironically pathetic failure. But hey, he had a good time. It also features Billy Bragg and Bruce Springsteen references. In the same line. It’s one of my favourite openings to an album, a celebration of music’s power to inspire and of the ecstasies of doing what you want. Not so much nihilistic as philanthropically decadent, Titus Andronicus invite you to let go and not care. With titles such as ‘Titus Andronicus Forever,’ they clearly believe that immortality lies in the moment.

45. Sir Lucious - Big Boi

Want some controversy? Big Boi’s my favourite one from Outkast. Sorry, but he is. Just listen to Sir Lucious. It’s everything poppy Rap should be. It’s funny yet frank, instantaneous yet lasting, excitedly eccentric yet ridiculously catchy. From the bombastic ‘Daddy Fat Sex’ to the grandstanding finale of ‘Back Up Plan’, the record shudders with a confidence indicative of a master at his peak. Big Boi knows exactly what he’s doing, and when it comes to ‘Shutterbug’? Oh, it has the hook. And I mean THE hook. The entire song is a work of arrogant genius, but the nerve to foreground that ‘bubububum’ tempo is too much.

44. Lonerism - Tame Impala

Probably the closest thing we have to a sonic trip. This stonery, psychedelic, jungle of luridness is mesmerising. It captures you in its trance of introspection and feverish reflection, with all the frenetic synths, twangy guitars and overdubbed drums you can imagine. It sounds great, but it’s also deeply moving. A profession of isolation, and complete, well, loneliness. Whether its manifestation is transfigured in the anthemic ‘Apocalypse Dreams,’ punk-thudder ‘Elephant’, or emotional centrepiece ‘Why Won’t They Talk To Me?’ a direct collage to the listener of the helplessness of alienation, loneliness penetrates Lonerism.

43. Habits & Contradictions - Schoolboy Q

Schoolboy Q rose with Kendrick’s West-Coast Black Hippy crew, and as such is expectedly monopolised by sultry, exquisite production and a weed-clouded style. The drums are sagging and congealed, literally everything else; groans with an embittered resignation. So yeh, it’s a viciously pessimistic listen, reminiscent of Method Man and Mobb Deep at their murkiest. It’s never upsetting though, all this gloom serves to immerse you into a surprisingly complex psyche. Schoolboy expresses a desire to present intellectualism, but is constrained by addiction to cliché vices of money and bitches; hence, you know, the contradictions. One of the best rappers to emerge from the decade.

42. Kaleidoscope Dream - Miguel

It’s an album very explicitly about sex and only sex, but its very staging is ridiculously seductive so there you go. Miguel is actually very likeable, his carnal entreaties are tinged with genuine affection and passion, and his voice is both angelic enough to elevate his pleas as fantasy, yet everyman enough to ground these fantasies as plausible. Take opener ‘Adorn’ for example, it’s like every pop love song that’s been released for the past twenty years, yet it’s somehow more. More endowed, more urgent, more zealous. This translates to the rest of the album; the attestedly vulgar ‘Pussy is Mine,’ is an ironic poem of sexual frustration and hurt, and it’s bloody hard-hitting.

41. Here and Nowhere Else - Cloud Nothings

I really, really love Cloud Nothings. Attack on Memory was an ardent defence of the opportunity to ‘Stay Useless,’ an avowal of the uncertainty and stress of post-college (just what do I do know?) that’s becoming frighteningly relevant for myself. A capitalist society determines that we decide what we do for the rest of our lives right now. Here and Nowhere Else is Baldi’s counter-argument, that happiness and self-contentment cannot be dictated by socio-economic responsibilities. You can still be a white-collar cog and rebel. There’s a thunderous, infectious optimism that shatters, climaxing with my favourite song of 2014, the invariably ceaseless ‘I’m Not Part of Me.’

Songs

100. Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes

99. Oldie - Odd Future

98. Talk is Cheap - Chet Faker

97. Goshen 97 - Strand of Oaks

96. Rory - Foxing

95. Came Out Swinging - The Wonder Years

94. Runaway - The National

93. Pac Blood - Danny Brown

92. Believer - John Maus

91. Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala

90. Cruel - St Vincent

89. Queen of Hearts - Fucked Up

88. Under Pressure - Logic

87. Cold War - Janelle Monae

86. Let's Get Out of Here - Les Savy Fav

85. Desperate - Ugly Heroes

84. Suffocation - Crystal Castles

83. Hood - Perfume Genius

82. Book of James - We are Augustines

81. Sunday - Earl Sweatshirt

25 Favourite Albums & 50 Favourite Songs of 2014

Basically what it says on the tin.

Albums

25. The Future's Void - EMA
24. Sea When Absent - A Sunny Day In Glasgow
23. Oxymoron - Schoolboy Q
22. They Want My Soul - Spoon
21. Under Pressure - Logic

20. Built on Glass - Chet Faker
19. Everybody Down - Kate Tempest
18. Home Like Noplace Is There - The Hotelier
17. Beyonce - Beyonce
16. What Is This Heart? - How To Dress Well

15. Hell Can Wait - Vince Staples
14. Ruins - Grouper
13. Lost In The Dream - The War on Drugs
12. Transgender Dysphoria Blues - Against Me!
11. Throw Me In The River - The Smith Street Band

10. My Favourite Faded Fantasy - Damien Rice
9. Burn Your Fire For No Witness - Angel Olsen
8. Here And Nowhere Else - Cloud Nothings
7. Plowing Into The Field Of Love - Iceage
6. Are We There - Sharon Von Etten

5. Present Tense - Wild Beasts
4. LP1 - FKA Twigs
3. Carry On The Grudge - Jamie T
2. RTJ2 - Run The Jewels
1. Benji - Sun Kil Moon

Songs

50. Chambers - Cymbals Eat Guitars
49. Blue Suede - Vince Staples
48. Water Fountain - Tune-Yards
47. Say You Love Me - Jessie Ware
46. Your Deep Rest - The Hotelier
45. Dogs - Sun Kil Moon
44. Fancy - Iggy Azalea
43. In Remission - The Menzingers
42. Thuggin - Freddie Gibbs & Madlib
41. Attack - Rustie

40. Man Of The Year - Schoolboy Q
39. Face Again - How To Dress Well
38. The Promise - Sturgill Simpson
37. 3Jane - EMA
36. Digital Witness - St Vincent
35. Seasons (Waiting On You) - Future Islands
34. Close Your Eyes - Run The Jewels
33. Divorce & The American South - Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties
32. In Love With Useless - A Sunny Day In Glasgow
31. Holding - Grouper

30. Habit - Ought
29. Transgender Dysphoria Blues - Against Me!
28. Heavenly Creatures - Wolf Alice
27. XO - Beyonce
26. Fiona Coyne - Saint Pepsi
25. The Lord's Favourite - Iceage
24. I Don't Want To Die Anymore - The Smith Street Band
23. Get Up - Young Fathers
22. Ocean Death - Baths
21. All The Rage Back Home - Interpol

20. Violence - Andy Stott
19. Chandelier - Sia
18. Talk Is Cheap - Chet Faker
17. BFG - Loyle Carner
16. Under Pressure - Logic
15. Goshen 97 - Strand of Oaks
14. The Beigeness - Kate Tempest
13. Shake It Off - Taylor Swift
12. Under The Pressure - The War On Drugs
11. Video Girl - FKA Twigs

10. Zombie - Jamie T
9. Ben's My Friend - Sun Kil Moon
8. Oh My Darling - Run The Jewels
7. Heavenly Father - Bon Iver
6. A Dog's Life - Wild Beasts
5. The Greatest Bastard - Damien Rice
4. No Black Person Is Ugly - Lil B
3. Can't Do Without You - Caribou
2. Your Love Is Killing Me - Sharon Von Etten
1. I'm Not Part Of Me - Cloud Nothings

Music Review September/October 2014

My favourite albums and songs from September and October.

September

Albums

5. Too Bright - Perfume Genius

4. El Pintor - Interpol

3. A Little Late - Loyle Carner

2. Syro - Aphex Twin

1. Carry On The Grudge - Jamie T

Songs

10. Did I Ever Love You - Leonard Cohen
9. Right on Frankenstein! - Death From Above 1979
8. The Prophet - Jamie T
7. Queen - Perfume Genius
6. Minipops 67 - Aphex Twin
5. BFG - Loyle Carner
4. All The Rage Back Home - Interpol
3. Never Catch Me - Flying Lotus
2. Black Rage - Lauryn Hill
1. Zombie - Jamie T

October

Albums

5. Our Love - Caribou

4. Hell Can Wait - Vince Staples

3. Ruins - Grouper

2. Plowing Into The Field Of Love - Iceage

1. Run The Jewels 2 - Run The Jewels

Songs

10. Waste Your Time - Ex Hex
9. Against The Moon - Iceage
8. Blue Suede - Vince Staples
7. Crown - Run The Jewels
6. Shake It Off - Taylor Swift
5. The Lord's Favourite - Iceage
4. Say You Love Me - Jessie Ware
3. Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck) - Run The Jewels
2. Holding - Grouper
1. Can't Do Without You - Caribou

The Scottish Labour Party: An Obituary

Whatever the result of the referendum on September 18^th, Scottish Labour will never be the same. Over the past two years it has caused irreparable damage to its own reputation, estranging and insulting both its target middle-voters and its most loyal supporters. Many of the once proudly Labour Scottish left are divorcing themselves in favour of pastures new in the Scottish Greens, SNP and, curiously, UKIP.

Labour’s adamant, almost ruthless determination to remain with the union has come at an unprecedented cost. It is the only remotely left party which has sided with No, and its public image is inextricably linked with Tory politics; the policies of staying in the UK. One, potentially catastrophic, failure of Better Together has been their awful communication of No’s positive arguments. Labour, as not only an integral member of Better Together but its foreground, are seen as culpable in the ‘Bedroom Tax,’ NHS privatisation, welfare reform and food bank endorsement. They are considered ‘Red Tories,’ scoffing at the notion that life in the UK will only deteriorate without offering a whiff of a constructive alternative. The widespread feeling in Scotland is that this is a party very much centred, a party absent of the spirit of Keir Hardie, Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan, and many Labour voters have had enough.

Labour have reverted to scare tactics, and in many ways it has backfired considerably, the notorious #BTPatronisingLady TV advert being a recent example. By propagating fear and pessimism rather than countering Yes’s message of hope they have disenchanted No voters as well as Yes; voters who were expecting their individual campaigns for the UK to be supplemented by Better Together’s impassioned plea for union rather than thinly veiled threats over post-Independence. They are an incoherent, divided, contradictory mess, their empty promise of ‘further devolved powers’ in the event of No ringing hollow.

This in turn connotes one of Labour’s biggest weaknesses; an appalling lack of leadership. Starting from the top, Johann Lamont-SLP leader. After the SNP delivered on their manifesto of continued free higher education after their election in 2011, Lamont, a year later, publically condemned their policies in September 2012; parenthetically, condemning the dogma of a centre-left party. In her September speech she claimed that social democracy, a political structure similar to Norway’s, was impossible without higher taxes. Her tone was critical of the SNP, but this form of social democracy is a fundamentally Labour ideal. She then refrained to comment that such control of tax regulation would require further powers. This was one of the first major indications of her personal ineptitude, and her, and Labour’s, leftie retreat. A symbolic misstep which suggested that Scottish Labour’s politics were overtly Neo-Liberal. This has been fairly symptomatic of her guise for the past two years; delicately ironic Westminster subservience and resolute Holyrood disapproval. 

Onto Alisdair Darling, the face of Better Together. As Chancellor of the Exchequer for Gordon Brown’s three years as PM, he oversaw Britain’s financial collapse, backed excessive public funding to bail out a private firm (Northern Rock), and administered the 2008 Budget’s 10% income tax band, which many argue to be the first spark of recession austerity measures. Indeed, it was the 2008 Budget which initiated Labour cynicism for many voters. He was also, infamously, complicit in an expenses scandal in 2009 where he allegedly changed the location of his second home four times in four years, which provided him with the funds to furnish his Edinburgh house, and buy a London flat. 

Expanding on the theme of expenses frauds, we come to Jim Murphy, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development and one of BT’s most dedicated champions. In 2012 it was reported that Murphy was one of 27 MPs involved in an expenses row, after it materialized that he had been receiving income from rented properties in London while claiming £20,000 a year in expenses. Though not technically illegal, it triggered outrage that he, a supposed man of the people, was exploiting the Commons for profit while his constituents suffered severe austerity agencies. That he is also a Zionist, a passionate defender of the Iraq War, and that he never turned up to vote against the ‘Bedroom Tax,’ does not paint a favourable picture for Labour voters. The party and its public figures have lost the support, but more importantly the trust, of concrete Labour voters, regardless of their Indyref propensities.

Though they’ve injured their reputation with Nos, they’ve mutilated it with Yes’s. Lamont, Darling, Murphy, and the likes of Alistair Campbell and Douglas Alexander, refer to Yes supporters, with an empirical thoroughness, in the pejorative terms ‘nationalists’ and ‘separatists’. Social Media Yes supporters are ignorantly pidgeonholed as ‘cybernats,’ grouping each and every single Yes twitterer as seething, vile, angry low-lifes. No supporters are, incidentally, ‘patriots’. The word is representative of their general attitude towards Yes advocates. Through a calculated and collective demonization process, Labour have systematically alienated over half of their electors. Twenty years ago, most Yessers were dedicated Labour voters; now they’re told on a daily basis by their party’s major members that they’re deluded and ill-informed for aspiring to a true social democracy, and that they’re inherently sinister for wanting to break up the union. I doubt most Yes’s will forgive them unless there’s significant change after the referendum. I won’t.

If Scotland votes Yes, Scottish Labour has an opportunity to rebuild, reassemble, and possibly reassert itself as the workers’ dominant party; this, obviously, imports a comprehensive shake-up of personnel, a Labour Party befitting of Old Labour, but the current structure as we know it would be defunct. If Scotland votes No, Scottish Labour could in all likeliness fade into Lib-Dem obscurity, even its most centre-left devotees abjectly disillusioned with a party who have pitilessly betrayed their foundational principles to remain with the British establishment.