Stocki's Summer Review of 2003
Life can often be far too hectic to really digest albums. They arrive in the post or I purchase on a Monday so many new releases that I skim and look for songs for my radio show or scan for a review that I am doing first and foremost for this web page but might be picked up by this webzine or that magazine.
The holidays in Ballycastle gives a chance to play albums with a little bit more depth. We have no television so it is novels and records and time to take it in. This particular summer I have discovered tjhat I am not the sad old out of touch man I thought I had been. I am discovering the newer bands and loving them. Bands like The Thrills, The Coral and Super Furry Animals have been hogging my CD player. So here is my top ten albums of the summer of 03, so far!
1. MAGNET – ON YOUR SIDE
Simply beautiful lullaby music by a Norwegian who obliterates the joke of his country’s bad results in the cheesy Eurovision Song contest. So gorgeous that it takes you a log time to realise how bleak and sad the songs are. As comfortable an album as your ears will ever wear.
2. THE THRILLS – SO MUCH FOR THE CITY
Dublin’s south east boys meet California’s west coast sound and give us an album as full of sun, sand, summer skies and surf and the most accessible collection of singles to come our way in a long, long time.
3. BELL X1 – MUSIC IN MOUTH
Dublin again! These guys are a late addition to the list. A varied bunch of songs that can glimpse Radiohead’s The Bends, U2’s Bullet The Blue Sky and The Frames For The Birds as they pass by to an album that is full of lyrical wit and ingenuity that creates great anticipation for where they will go from here.
4. ATHLETE – Vehicles and Animals
When the BBC showed us their Glastonbury performance I had to hoke this one back out and fall in love with the songs like El Salvador, One Million and Beautiful. There are shades of Squeeze but with better melodies and vocals. Bright pop with fun, bounce and not a shortage of depth.
5. KINGS OF LEON – Youth and Young Manhood
If Lynyrd Skynyrd were in their late teens they would cut the length of Freebird by 10 minutes (live version!) and rock out with the edgy raw drive of these preacher’s sons and a cousin! And they wouldn’t even have to shave or cut their hair. Turn it up loud!
6. GRANDADDY – SUMDAY
I am a late discoverer of the lush textures of Grandaddy but as I discover their back catalogue I think that Sumday is their most fully formed masterpiece. Great songs in a great context with tweaks and squeaks and in all the right places.
7. YO LA TENGO – SUMMER SON
As I was buying Grandaddy the guy in HMV suggested Yo La Tengo. He was not wrong. Sounds like twilight in the desert. Easy on the ear and hard to not like.
8. THE SLEEPY JACKSON - LOVERS
The hardest work to get into but the scraps of the sixties have never been shone up to shine so well especially the heavy George Harrison influence.
9. SUPER FURRY ANIMALS – PHANTOM POWER
My students have tried before and five albums in I had not understood these Welsh celts. Phantom Power wins me over with its pedal steels, Crosby Stills and Nash touches as well as s depth of social and political comment noticeably absent in most of the other current crop.
10. COSMIC ROUGH RIDERS – TOO CLOSE TO SEE FAR
Hailing form Glasgow I reckon this is how Ricky Ross would have Deacon Blue sound if they were just starting out now. The Scottish equivalent of The Thrills this is just jam packed with melodious guitar pop.
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