Albums Of The Year – An Introduction

This year, I haven’t been listening to that much new music. Combination of things, I suppose – tinnitus, laziness, Skyrim, fecklessness – but by and large it’s been trawling through older music and the cursory listen to favourite artist’s new records.

And so there hasn’t been much action round here, which means my normal end of year round-up would seem a bit odd, what with me going on about records that I haven’t really talked about. And there only being about four of them. So instead follows five short-ish essays about the bands who have released albums this year, that I’ve been to see live (mostly), and that I very much enjoyed. As is customary with me, this’ll go on till next year.

But first off, two quick honorable mentions. Firstly, Daniel Rossen, of Grizzly Bear fame, took a slight detour earlier in the year and released a solo EP which was easily as good as most of “Shields”. And secondly, I had the sheer joy of going to a gig and seeing a support act that I quickly realised would be a fixture in my sporadic listening for some time to come. That act was RM Hubberd, who ticks a few of my boxes by:

a. Being a writer of largely instrumental acoustic guitar numbers (with added guitar thwacking for good measure)
b. Being Scottish
c. Being simultaneously miserable and funny as fuck.

So there you go. Seal broken. Go and buy these two records. Both will make your lives better.