1 | DOVES | Kingdom of Rust | Astralwerks

“‘Kingdom of Rust’ is another sterling example of why the Doves should be household names and why they probably won’t ever be: their unwavering flair for producing mountainous, Wembley-worthy pop anthems that are nonetheless invested with a palpable degree of grace and humility.” – Pitchfork Media

“…moving from a hushed, organic guitar-bass-drums format to something more orchestrated and stormy—they show off all the tricks they’ve learned over the past 10 years, about how to build a big space and then fill it with an electric, multicolored haze.” – AV Club

Click the picture of Doves to see their performance of ‘Kingdom of Rust’ at the BBC Electric Proms with the London Bulgarian Choir in October 2009 …

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2 | GUSGUS | 24/7 | Kompakt.

“…this LP is a piece of genius. A highly recommended long player, with enough to satisfy even the most jaded electronic music fan, this will surely be on many people’s top ten albums list come the year’s end. “ – 365Mag International

“There is more techno at the root of the band’s sound on this occasion, but the soul still remains. In dance music few can sustain interest over the best part of 10 minutes, but GusGus pull that trick out of the hat every time with some really epic productions. In 24/7 they’ve just made one of their best albums of an increasingly impressive and formidable career.” – musicOMH

“Spacious luxuriance, indulging in glassy minimalist rhythms and snow-drift vocals…Iceland’s GusGus return with a shiny new LP displaying a sleek strain of euphoric techno soul. “ – Boomkat

Click the picture of GusGus to their video for ‘Add This Song’ …

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3 | THE XX | xx | XL Recordings

“For a debut album it’s brilliantly realised and contains not an inch of flab across its 11 songs. Debut album of the year? It’s beyond doubt.” – musicOMH

“The xx are four 20-year-olds from South London who make predominantly slow, furtive pop music, mostly about sex. After dozens of listens, it’s nearly incomprehensible to think that a group so fresh-faced produced it. It is so fully formed and thoughtful that it feels like three or four lesser, noisier records should have preceded it. The xx didn’t need a gestation period, though xx is nuanced, quiet, and surprising enough that you might.” – Pitchfork Media

“The xx craft languid, sparsely arranged love songs that recall atmospheric 80s acts such as the Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star. Better still, they betray their south London roots: gentle, plaintive melodies are framed by minimal beats that nod to dubstep and R&B. There is a lightness of touch at play that gives the XX a sophistication beyond their years. It probably means that their dream pop will become the ubiquitous dinner party album du jour.” – The Guardian UK

Click the picture of The xx to see their performance of ‘Islands’ on Later with Jools Holland …

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4 | THE BIG PINK | A Brief History of Love | 4AD

“A Brief History Of Love is by turns earth-shakingly frightening and blissfully embracing; a noise to damage eardrums, to destabilise bedroom walls; a sound to erupt from loudspeakers in city centres and fall out onto the streets as the 11th plague. It is – when it wants to be – decadent, riveting, rebellious and hopelessly romantic. They say timing is everything. Well, it has been a long wait for a British album like this, the kind that transcends age group appeal and inspires cool kids to form bands and geeky kids to lose themselves in music’s history.” – musicOMH

“A Brief History Of Love (blends) both the swirling, shoegazy elements of Creation Records and the raved-up psychedelic dance flair of the Verve. It’s a throwback sound and style that still manages to sound thoroughly modern, with big programmed beats and massive, spiraling guitars layered endlessly over an underlying lyrical thread that seems to try in vain to chronicle the mercurial history of affairs of the heart. The record gets off to a hazy, expansive start with the slow-burning, dreamlike groove of “Crystal Visions.” It sets the moody tone of the album perfectly, with its blend of screeching, fuzzed out guitars, hypnotic bass and an infectious beat. The album is brimming with cocksure confidence, and is packed with layer upon layer of compelling beats, rhythms and melodies, as well as a lyrical theme that everyone with a heart that they’ve given away can relate to.” – Culture Bully

Click the picture of The Big Pink to see their video for ‘Too Young to Love’ …

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5 | WASHED OUT | Life of Leisure | Mexican Summer

“Life of Leisure has the bittersweet taste of the end of summer all wrapped up in a seventeen-minute package, quite a good set of songs for those days when you have to look back and think hard to remember everything – every sleepless night dancing, every star in the sky, the sound of waves on every vacant beach. Like night-swimming, half your face submerged, and the moon across the water. Like walking home on sandy streets lined with resorts, gently holding someone’s hand, feeling in your chest the distant pulsing bass from basements and passing cars. It doesn’t sound like dance music or party music or techno music – it is a sensuous electronic whirlwind…” – Pretty Much Amazing

“…the summer has wound down, the sun has gone and it has left nothing more than a nostalgic memory of adolescent youth – something captured by its unerring indulgence in 80s synth-pop.” – Dummy Mag

“The chief strength of the EP is the giant walls of beautiful noise that Washed Out can create. Through the use of warm and enveloping synths, the aforementioned whooshing vocals and slightly crackling textures, the “Life of leisure” EP creates an inviting and roomy headspace for you to drift away in. Coincidentally, considering the album’s late September release date, it makes a great backdrop for the waning summer.” – The Pointer

Click the picture of Washed Out to see their video for ‘Feel It All Around’ …

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6 | LADYHAWKE | Ladyhawke | Modular Interscope

“New Zealand multi-instrumentalist Pip Brown a/k/a Ladyhawke presents us with a treasure trove of found blips, as if the 1980s had been nothing but a gigantic mirror ball to smash and paste back together. Stylistic consistency be damned: for every moment of Gary Numan–esque synth hum, there are cheesy Super Bowl halftime Van Hagar keyboard rah-rahs. Still, there are enough silky-yet-catchy melodies and bludgeoning power choruses that you won’t stop to wonder whether this is supposed to be ironic dance music or crossover rock/pop or hip indie whatever.” – Boston Phoenix

“Heavily influenced by synth pop, new wave, and AOR in equal measures, Ladyhawke, sounds like a who’s who of ’80s pop. But despite its blatant retro vibe, it still manages to sound fresh thanks to its clever production and Brown’s fiery and vibrant vocals. Ladyhawke is unlikely to win any awards for originality but you’d be hard pressed to find a more consistent and hook-laden debut all year.” – All Music

“Ladyhawke’s louche synthetic pop is brazenly Bananarama, ridiculously ‘Rio’, and wonderfully Waterman, but the lack of posing – her sheer scruffiness – makes it the first credible ’80s pop record since ABC’s ‘The Lexicon Of Love’.” – NME

Click the picture of Ladyhawke to see her animated Thelma + Louise-themed video for ‘My Delirium’ …

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7 | FEVER RAY | Fever Ray | Mute Records

“…the enigmatic and chilling sounds of Karin Dreijer Andersson’s new project, an exercise in femininity, childhood, and unrest. Fever Ray is a growing, living, breathing document of what electronic music can be. This is an event. A happening. An understated album that teaches you what music is capable of right now. Andersson’s filtered voice, a trademark of hers, is here in full swing, and the effect is chilling and brilliant. The lyrics, as per anything Andersson has committed to song, is cryptic and frightening. This woman has been writing some of the most compelling and provoking pop songs in recent years, and all under everyone’s noses. This album is no different.” – Tiny Mix Tapes

“…with low, cloudy beats and Andersson’s rough and guttural delivery, Fever Ray is certainly ethereal. On “Seven,” Andersson sings about childhood memories and accompanied by spectral vocal chants and synth-heavy beats, it makes for one enchanting listen….particularly those booming, magnetic beats that combine light snares with wraithlike basses and enough otherworldly atmospherics to paint the dark picture that’s the cover.” – Delusions of Adequacy

“(Andersson’s) eponymous debut as Fever Ray is countless times more claustrophobic and creepy than her better-known project’s ‘Silent Shout’. It also holds its own against that incredibly strong record, mining similar depth of field (an epic, sludge-caked trek as always) but eschewing easier beats for black soundscapes that push back against Andersson’s poisoned breath.” – AV Club

Click the picture of Fever Ray to see her video for ‘When I Grow Up’

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8 | I LOVE YOU AIRLINES | Love You Like Lions/Candyman | self

“I Love You Airlines is PT Barnum’s most opium-inspired kaleidoscopic carousel, replete with 2000 chartreuse bells and sapphire whistles, 13 sousaphone blowing cheetahs and 1 accordion playing Ganesh…it’s 3001 brass pipes bubbling and belching the symphony a caffeine-fueled Phil Spector composed on the Mighty Wurlitzer that appeared in last night’s dream dreamt by Dali, dictated by Roald Dahl: the sonically-glimmering soundtrack to a Post-modern film fantasia starring Holly Golightly gliding through the East Village glistening head to toe in diamond-studded Chanel, shot in glorious Technicolor by Busby Berkeley and projected on a huge screen suspended high above Cinderella’s Castle in Walt Disney World on a balmy, 72 degree night in late November….the southwesterly breeze carrying fuchsia flamingo feathers down to the Gulf of Mexico…and beyond…” – Management

Click the picture of I Love You Airlines to listen and/or download this very single for free, legally …!

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9 | DINOSAUR JR | Farm | Jagjaguwar Records

“Farm continues to present Dinosaur Jr. in both destroyer and dreamweaver modes (often within the same song)… and sounds like the best alt-rock album that 1993 forgot.” – AV Club

“Asserting itself as the loud and grunge master it sincerely is, J Mascis and crew have now found their fountain of youth with Farm. An album every bit as good as Beyond, it’s time to realize that not only is Dinosaur Jr. back, but the group sounds better than ever. This is one mighty album, one that will tower over others like the green shrubs that tower over the buildings on the cover. It’s amazingly brilliant and will endlessly reward with repeated listens.” – Delusions of Adequacy

“…it’s tempting to make a grand statement about J. Mascis and Dinosaur Jr. as heirs to the Young and Crazy Horse throne. Young’s genius is pretty inimitable, but there is something about this band– the way they mix noisy guitar and punk-ish slam with sugared melodies and faded choruses– that’s Young-worthy.” – Pitchfork Media

Click the picture of Dinosaur Jr to see their video for ‘Over It’ …

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10 | THE RAVEONETTES | In and Out of Control | Vice Records

“On a superficial level The Raveonettes’ bittersweet allure has been obtained by filtering surf guitar motifs and doo-wop standard-bearers like the Ronettes through whatever electrical machination it was that gave The Jesus and Mary Chain their brittle searing edge. This is their thing, their schtick. And for the most part, bending Phil Spector out of shape and dragging him by his shock of hair through a raft of distortional devices and all the while kicking the hell out of the ‘Leader of the Pack’ is a very good thing.” – Drowned in Sound

“Denmark’s The Raveonettes live in a sonic universe made up of girl-group pop, Velvet Underground ennui, Jesus And Mary Chain fuzz, audiobooks of Jim Thompson novels, and little else. Those sympathetic to their approach will find the group as alluring as ever, from the swelling, skeptical, summer-celebrating album-opener “Bang!” through the sing-along despair of the overdose-referencing “Last Dance,” and beyond.” – AV Club

“In and Out of Control finds the Danish duo keeping scarily consistent with their amalgam of 60s Wall of Sound-inspired pop, noisy garage-rock and bubblegum melodies. While the Raveonettes do little to shake things up on Control, they still have the unique and eerie ability to sugarcoat the most serious of songs with their infectious brand of music, whether dousing warm, fuzzy guitars and tender harmonies over “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed),” honoring The Cars on “Last Dance” or dabbling with dancier elements on “D.R.U.G.S.”" – Lost At Sea

Click the picture of The Raveonettes to see their video for ‘Last Dance’, singing bird and all …

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VERY HONORABLE MENTION

A Place to Bury Strangers : Exploding Head
Animal Collective : Merriweather Post Pavilion
Apse : Climb Up
Bibio : Ambivalence Avenue
The Drums : Summertime! EP
The Field : Yesterday & Today
The Horrors : Primary Colours
Memory Tapes : Seek Magic
Pains of Being Pure At Heart : s/t
Pains of Being Pure At Heart : Higher Than the Stars EP
SPC ECO : 3-D
Universal Studios Florida : Ocean Sunbirds

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REISSUES OF THE YEAR

** the majority of these came out earlier than 2009, but they were all new to me this year one way or another

A.R. Kane : 69
Beatles : Rubber Soul
Beatles : Abbey Road
Blueshift Signal : Surround
Simple Minds : Empires and Dance
Simple Minds : New Gold Dream
The Wake : Here Comes Everybody

John Hughes’ world of Shermer, Illinois was a microcosm of place and time you either knew or wanted to be a part of. It’s comfortable familiarity mixed with the pop edge of the time was a shock to the system in a celluloid atmosphere filled with movies like “Porky’s”, “Hardbodies” and “Hot Dog : The Movie”. Who on earth knew teenagers living in the Reagan excess of the 1980′s had thoughts beyond the next girl they were going to bag or how they were going to get the best keg in town? John Hughes to me had a rebellious streak in him towards the mundane in life that he was never able to shake, and thus expressed via humor & humanity in his films until the banality of the industry he worked in became too much for him. He had a deep understanding and respect for teenagers, and as Judd Nelson said after Hughes’ passing, he treated them not as children but as developing adults. That respect he showed made his target audience look at themselves and each other differently and more highly of themselves through his movies. When Ferris Bueller takes the day off from school to enjoy a beautiful sunny day with his friends, just like any working adult needs to do once in awhile, it resonated with an entire generation. When Andie fell for Blane in “Pretty in Pink” or Keith fell for Amanda Jones in “Some Kind of Wonderful” it showed kids were already looking past their parent’s comfort zone of whom they should fall in love with or even associate with. When big bully Andrew Clark shows his vulnerable side along with all his other detention-mates in “The Breakfast Club” it brought to light that despite their surface differences they realized they all had more in common with each other through the stories and experiences they’ve had than they could have ever imagined. Like most towns and cities, from the outside looking in it’s safe and normal, but digging deeper the people are far more complex, their stories are vibrant, the soundtrack to their lives is far weirder than the average radio station and everything is better because of it all. Turn on cable and flip around the stations and if you come across a John Hughes movie it becomes very hard to change the channel again. His movies are funny and intelligent, existing in a world of bright lights, incredible music and a positive view of the generation that lied ahead. Despite the greatness of the 80′s in my view, it didn’t have a lot of voices, but John Hughes was one of them. He wrote “Sixteen Candles”, “The Breakfast Club”, “Weird Science”, “Pretty in Pink”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Some Kind of Wonderful”, “Planes Trains & Automobiles”, “Shes Having A Baby”, and “Uncle Buck”, all of which he directed except for two. His list of accomplishments is much longer, but these are “quintessential John Hughes”. They may not be “Apocalypse Now” or “Gone With The Wind”, but they are of a greatness all their own for which they will live on for generations to come. As he wrote for one famous character, “Life moves fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” In my view, American cinema should consider John Hughes as one of it’s most influential and important directors. Rest in peace, Mr Hughes.

RECOMMENDED for ‘pushing the envelope’ and/or just great performances …
-Be Kind Rewind
-Jar City
-Synedoche, New York
-There Will Be Blood
-W.

AND THE AWARD FOR NOT NEARLY AS BAD AS SOME WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT OUT TO BE (but still not that great) …
-The Happening
-Valkyrie

“Dear Science is a rare thing circa 2008: a headphone record in the age of iPods and decreased engagement with music. This is a band that’s on top of its game: The members of TV on the Radio have done a middling debut and an excellent art-rock heavy follow-up, and now they’ve proved they can make an exhilarating album with great songs from front to back. Dear Science is another highlight from a band whose career has essentially been an extended one.” – Prefix Mag

“The songs are brighter, more vital, as energized and beautiful as they are portentous. It’s as if the band, poised at the precipice, on a dying planet crawling with ignorant citizens, surrounded by warfare and soulless machines and a precious bit of love, figured it may as well try to lasso the pageant of life. Violins and trumpets are everywhere, replacing distortion with graceful, majestic textures that feel no less forceful than a squalling electric guitar. And the warmth and sparkle make sense on an album so explicitly designed to connect with people.” – Boston Globe

maikaʻi aʻe mele
crying | golden age | love dog | dlz

Video for ‘Golden Age’ :

2 | EL GUINCHO | Alegranza! | Beggars-XL

“El Guincho’s debut album Alegranza is as bright as the feathers of the parrot, as sparkly as the fireworks, and as warm as the palm trees that adorn the cover. The music flows like melted butter, twists and turns like a mountain highway, and shimmers like the sun on a scorching summer day. The Spanish producer/singer throws a whole mess of ingredients into the mix, including various strains of world music (like Afro-pop, tango, Spanish folk music), indie pop, techno, and post-rock and sends it spinning into a blurred, whirling rush of sound that never falters.” – All Music Guide

“It’s fun and light, and even though for all I know he could be singing about the destruction of mankind, it is bursting with joy and happiness. And for once, you can actually dance to a dance record.” – Lost At Sea

“Born in the Canary Islands, Mr. Díaz-Reixa makes joyful music from an international assortment of loops and drumbeats — African, South Asian, Caribbean, Brazilian — and vocals, with free-associative lyrics in Spanish, that sound like a bunch of guys in a bar celebrating to endless three-chord refrains full of la-las. The repetition of the loops turns from mechanical to hypnotic to hallucinatory to ecstatic as the songs barrel along.” – New York Times

“The 24-year-old’s debut is a tropical soundclash of spiralling steel drums, looped, gnarled local songs and untrammelled joy.” – The Observer

maikaʻi aʻe mele
antillas | cuando maavilla fui | fata morgana | kalise

Video for ‘Palmitos Park’ :

3 | AMY WINEHOUSE | Back to Black | Republic Records

(This album came out in 2007, but I didnt hear it until this year, thus is makes the 2008 list.)

“Back To Black has a hook as simple as it is irresistible. Winehouse’s boozy, brawling, self-destructive ‘tude is hip-hop and contemporary, but her unashamedly retro sound hearkens giddily back to Motown and girl groups of the ’50s and ’60s. Winehouse might sing about sketchy acquaintances smoking too much of her weed, or a beau who made her miss a Slick Rick concert, but the songcraft is as lush as anything Phil Spector has cooked up.” – The Onion AV Club

“At first the songs on Amy Winehouse’s second album, “Back to Black,” could almost be unknown soul oldies from the 1950s and 1960s. The drums, strings and horns have a vintage production style, and Ms. Winehouse’s tart voice and sly, sultry phrasing sound largely unprocessed. Then the anachronisms kick in, from current slang and beats that hint at hip-hop to four-letter words and blunt references to sex and drugs. A 23-year-old English songwriter, Ms. Winehouse is decades too young for ’60s nostalgia, but she has come up with a wonderfully time-twisted batch of songs.” – New York Times

maikaʻi aʻe mele
he can only hold her | love is a losing game | tears dry on their own | back to black

Video for ‘Back to Black’ :

4 | M83 | Saturdays=Youth | Mute Records

“With guitars gliding across translucent synth lines, the songs are big statements rendered in cold neon. The dazzling thing about M83 maestro Anthony Gonzalez’s fifth effort is his uncanny success at recapturing the heart-leaping whirl of his generation’s ’80s touchstones. An admitted John Hughes tribute, “Graveyard Girl” collides Ride and the Cocteau Twins in an Encino arcade while “We Own the Sky” is heady digital shoegaze for a fog-filled ice bar.” – Paste Magazine

“The liner notes feature a sun-saturated photo shoot of a gang of sharp-dressed teens that could have been torn from a 1985 issue of Sassy. It’s hard to tell whether they’re the cool kids or the outcasts — but really, it doesn’t matter: romanticized confusion is the heart of Saturdays’ æsthetic. You can marvel at the ringer for Molly Ringwald on the cover while listening to the shoegazy “Graveyard Girl” (an homage to Pretty in Pink); you can take a lonely suburban summer drive to the electro anthem “We Own the Sky”; and “Kim & Jessie” is equally suited to moping or making out in your parents’ basement. This is an album steeped in a generation’s worth of nostalgia, but unlike most rehashed coming-of-age exercises, Saturdays = Youth manages, in its own small way, to offer something entirely new.” – Boston Phoenix

maikaʻi aʻe mele
kim & jessie | couleurs | we own the sky | graveyard girl

‘Kim & Jessie’ live on Pitchfork.tv :

5 | SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS | Alpinisms | Ghostly International

“…squarely within the domain of late ’80s/early ’90s dream-pop in terms of inspiration, (these songs) are relatively individualist, going well beyond the lucid psychedelia and discreet flickers of Afro-beat and contemporary pop.” – All Music Guide

“Spacey, ambient, and vaguely tribal, Alpinisms creates a landscape to get lost in. Alpinisms is a sensory experience, like downing a few tumblers of foreign liquor: too much will leave you lightheaded. Then again, everything is a better with a buzz.” – Lost At Sea

maikaʻi aʻe mele
half asleep | wired for light | connjur | prince of peace

Trailer for ‘Alpinisms’ :

6 | BROKER/DEALER | Soft Sell EP | Spectral

“80′s italo and disco infected uptempo house tracks from San Francisco’s Broker/Dealer with the excellent ‘Soft Sell’. The Italo/disco influences are subtle but apparent, with a long playing house track pushed by a perky bassline roll and luxuriant synthlines.” – Boomkat

“From the first crack of the kick drum until the very end, Broker/Dealer’s “Soft Sell” is the kind of soulful techno you want to gorge yourself on over and over again. The full analog bass stabs provide a perfect counterpart to the sharp arpeggios and marshmallow synth horn, which plays a sublime midnight melody.” – Urlaubshits

maikaʻi aʻe mele
soft sell | save it for later

Video for ‘Opening Night’ :

7 | THE RAVEONETTES | Lust Lust Lust | Vice Records

“Awash in heavy reverb and in-the-red treble, and drawing heavily from ’60s surf-pop, Lust Lust Lust, the duo’s fourth album, shakes and wriggles within a self-defined aesthetic that’s perfectly suited to tales of the dirtiest of the deadly sins. These songs don’t sound like love songs because they aren’t love songs. That the Raveonettes understand why that’s an important distinction makes Lust Lust Lust a sleazy pop masterpiece.” – Slant Magazine

“The Raveonettes’ fourth CD crackles like a transmission from some spectral AM radio station — one playing tunes from the supergroup that, in an alternate universe, the Ronettes, My Bloody Valentine, and the Velvet Underground formed on a lost weekend. Laced with languid two-part harmonies, fuzz-addled feedback, and bittersweet Spector melodics, Lust Lust Lust is a gauze-wrapped cocoon of an album.” – Entertainment Weekly

maikaʻi aʻe mele
aly, walk with me | hallucinations | blush | sad transmission

Video for ‘Dead Sound’ :

8 | SANTOGOLD | Santogold | Downtown Records

“You’d have to go back to Grace Jones in the early ’80s to find an African-American woman who comes on this strong with avant-garde club funk and weird rock shit. Combining new wave, ska, dub, grime, Baltimore club, and hip-hop in an ear-warping wash of 21st-century psychedelia, Santogold takes listeners on a trip to a hidden black America, where Santi White (aka Santogold) acts as tour guide through the alleyways of her mind and undoubtedly excellent iPod.” – Spin

“Severe, sumptuous beatbox dub, punky reggae and black-lit new wave. Santogold bursts with the arrogance of a world-beating hip-hop debut while thriving on vulnerability.” – Blender

maikaʻi aʻe mele
you’ll find a way | shove it | say aha | lights out | creator | starstruck

Video for ‘Lights Out’ :

9 | COLDPLAY | Viva La Vida | Capitol Records

“Gone are Chris Martin’s piano recitals and gone are the washes of meticulously majestic guitar, replaced by orchestrations of sound, sometimes literally consisting of strings but usually a tapestry of synthesizers, percussion, organs, electronics, and guitars that avoid playing riffs. Gone too are simpering schoolboy ballads like “Fix You,” and along with them the soaring melodies designed to fill arenas. In fact, there are no insistent hooks to be found anywhere on Viva la Vida, and there are no clear singles in this collection of insinuatingly ingratiating songs. This reliance on elliptical melodies isn’t off-putting — alienation is alien to Coldplay — and this is where Eno’s guidance pays off, as he helps sculpt Viva la Vida to work as a musical whole.” – All Music Guide

“‘Viva…’ truly goes stratospheric: on the magnificent orchestral pop title track, where Martin imagines himself as a deposed French king reduced to sweeping the streets; on the bruised ‘Yes’, like Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode lost in a desert duststorm; on the Satanic blues hymnal of single ‘Violet Hill’. As the record rounds up with the thumping ceilidh of ‘Strawberry Swing’ and the disjointed Elbow-ish crescendo of ‘Death And All His Friends’ you can only applaud Coldplay’s daring within their Big Music remit. ‘Viva…’, like those revolutionary French peasants at the palace gates, is steeped in traditionalism (Irish folk, Deep South country and blues, churchy classicism) but striving for something greater, grander, better. And with mainstream success guaranteed, by over-reaching themselves Coldplay are perfectly placed to decree the shape of the new rock order with album five. King Bono is dead; long live the kings.” – NME

maikaʻi aʻe mele
life in technicolor | cemetaries of london | lost! | lovers in japan | strawberry swing

Video for ‘Lost!’ :

10 | MADONNA | Hard Candy | Warner Bros.

“Madonna hasn’t delivered this many vapid floor fillers on one disc since her debut, and maybe not even then. Aside from a little careerism on the dance floor, there are few confessions here—nothing political, nothing too spiritual, no talk of fame, war, or the media. It’s just what America ordered.” – Slant Magazine

“On Hard Candy, she’s like an aging master thief sneaking into the temple of pop goodies for one last big score. Album 11 is good-naturedly smutty, not confrontationally nasty, but it’s a veritable filth bath compared to the C-SPAN sermons and confessional strumming of 2003’s dreadful American Life or the woozily self-actualized club trance of 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. But respect for her originality won out, and (the producers) invoke the bubbly electro synths of early Madonna and the squishy grooves of early -’80s Prince/Rick James funk to invent slinky, playful music with undercurrents of adorable psychosexual intrigue.” – Blender

maikaʻi aʻe mele
heartbeat | incredible | beat goes on | dance 2night | devil wouldn’t recognize you

Video for ‘Give it 2 Me’ :

11 | BARRY ADAMSON | Back to the Cat | Central Control

“Things get mighty murky on Back to the Cat, which finds Adamson lurking halfway between the gutter and the neon. It’s a shirk away from the sick caricatures in search of a soundtrack aesthetic played out on many of his past albums. If Wayne Newton is playing at the Stardust, Adamson is across town at the dive bar with all the down-and-out losers just cashing out on their way to a cheap motel after pawning away their hopes and dreams. It’s probably safe to assume that somewhere in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s fictional universe of Sin City, the collected works of Barry Adamson are constantly playing. Beneath his cartoon martini lounge jazz-pop lies an openly repressed depravity. His icy exteriors are so slick and cynically confident that you can picture them inhabited by a world rendered only in black and white, eternally clouded by the smoking embers of a seemingly endless supply of discarded cigarette butts.” – Pop Matters

“If there’s a common thread to what Barry Adamson has brought to music over the last 30 years, it’s a sense of drama. Stylistically, he’s all over the place – Back to the Cat, like the last few, ranges between jazzy IDM and ornate pop productions. He can’t resist adding layers, be it a layer of sound, a shade of meaning or a musical reference. That’s the conundrum of his work – he makes background music that demands close listening. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t gotten more work doing actual Hollywood soundtracks. Naturally, David Lynch has taken advantage of his work. The two share a knack for making sunshine as unnerving as the shadows.” – Dusted Magazine

maikaʻi aʻe mele
straight ’til sunrise | spend a little time | walk on fire | psycho_sexual

Video for ‘Straight ’til Sunrise’ :

12 | NEON NEON | Stainless Style | Lex Records

“Strap yourselves in, close the gullwing doors, and prepare for the ride of a lifetime. For this is Neon Neon and their concept album telling the story of John DeLorean and his motor car – a tale of speed, drugs, sex, glamour and financial ruin. And now the narrative has music to suit it, as Welshmen Gruff Rhys and his partner in time travel Boom Bip go back to the future in their search for one of Detroit’s most flamboyant sons. Rhys may not be a petrol head but Hollon clearly is, and dresses up his music to reflect that. The music could hardly evoke the 1980s more strongly. As a document of its time, Stainless Style is remarkably successful. Taken on the base level of being an enjoyable pop album, it also triumphs handsomely. An indulgence not to be passed over or taken guiltily.” – musicOMH

“Car visionary DeLorean created the iconic DMC-12 featured in Back to the Future, and here Rhys plays the story-telling Marty to Hollon’s synth-bothering Doc, with Yo Majesty, Fatlip and Spank Rock’s Naeem Juwan jumping on board for the ride. Like its subjects’ career, the album’s highs are heady. Songs about hot girls and fast cars, assembly-line porn and Michael Douglas are wrapped in kitschy, itchy Italo disco softened by Welsh whimsy. I Told Her On Alderaan is a Thompson Twins-meets-the Cars fantasy, while the soulless electro of I Lust You perfectly mirrors the values of DeLorean’s decade. Detours into hip-hop and rap slow down the fast-paced action, but Neon Neon have poured as much love and attention to detail in this prototype as their hero put into his.” – The Guardian

maikaʻi aʻe mele
i told her on alderaan | michael douglas | dream cars | steel your girl | sweat shop | belfast | luxury pool

‘I Told Her on Alderaan’ live on BBC2′s Culture Show :

13 | AIR FRANCE | No Way Down EP | Sincerely Yours Sweden

“Gothenburg, located on the west coast of Sweden, averages highs in the upper 60s in June; in recent years, however, the city has produced some of the sunniest music in the world. Tropical rhythms and warm-weather themes color releases by Jens Lekman, the Tough Alliance, Studio, and the Embassy. Signed to Sincerely Yours, Air France invited listeners to their “Beach Party” with last year’s too-good-to-be-true On Trade Winds EP. Air France’s latest, the 23-minute No Way Down EP, is better. If No Way Down is about a place that doesn’t exist, it’s a place where fairy tales are true and where old pop culture ephemera can– in Air France’s fertile musical imagination, at least– live happily ever after.” – Pitchfork Media

“Air France are yet another product of this brilliant Scandinavian conveyor belt. Their debut EP – 2006’s On Trade Winds- was a cacophonous masterpiece brushed by Tropicalia and flighty, cloud-bursting grooves. Follow-up EP No Way Down (is) equally lush; flooded in Casiotoned symphonies and cut-paste-splatter samples that left the palate whetting, desperate for more.” – Spins and Needles

maikaʻi aʻe mele
june evenings | collapsing at your doorstep | no excuses | no way down

Video for ‘Collapsing At Your Doorstep’ :

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VERY HONORABLE MENTION

Adele : 19
The Black Seeds : Into the Dojo
Bloc Party : Intimacy
Bohren & der Club of Gore : Dolores
The Breeders : Mountain Battles
Scarlett Johansson : Anywhere I Lay My Head
Minotaur Shock : Amateur Dramatics
Oasis : Dig Out Your Soul
Thievery Corporation : Radio Retaliation
Ting Tings : We Started Nothing
Tricky : Knowle West Boy
Windsurf : Coastlines

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SOME GREAT TRACKS, BUT JUST A FEW

Chairlift : Does You Inspire You
Cranes : Cranes
The Dandy Warhols : Earth to the Dandy Warhols
Sigur Ros : með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
The Verve : Forth