Part 4: 5-1
Part 3: 10-6
Part 2: 15-11
Part 1: 20-16

15. My Sad Captains – Here And Elsewhere

From the simple yearning perfection of opening song “Great Expectations” to the euphoria of “All Hat And No Plans”, this album by the London band set out its stall early – nothing particularly new, but lots of very well-executed straight-up pop songs. The downbeat vocals and the jangly pop melodies are simple and lovely. Of the five début albums in this list, this is the one you’d be least likely to identify as one.

Their playing is so assured and tight and the songs so familiar-sounding that they feel like a band who have been around forever. “Good To Go” could be mistaken for something by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and the sunny summer sound of the title track wouldn’t be out of place on an Aberfeldy album. A welcome reminder that albums don’t have to be challenging to be fulfilling – even if their second album doesn’t progress musically, Im not sure I’ll really mind.

14. Bishop Allen – Grrr…

If bands were compared to writers, Bishop Allen would be someone like P.G. Wodehouse – unchallenging and accessible, without a mean bone in their body, but still terrific fun and full of clever little touches. Their third album returns to their special brand of literate, lo-fi power-pop that they mastered on Charm School. Every single song on the album is upbeat, and it contains some of the finest moments of their career.

Darbie Nowatka-led number “True or False” is a joy, while the energy invested in “Cue The Elephants” pays off in the form of a super singalong while Justin Rice sings “”Can you and me save the city? I thought that we promised we would”, a line that encapsulates the effortlessly high aims of the band. Bishop Allen are the very model of a band who aren’t in it for the money – the polymathic guitarist and Alan Rusbridger lookalike Christian Rudder can’t be short of that – and their unselfconscious guitar pop is a welcome change from the other posturing hipsters of their native Brooklyn. Long may they continue.

13. Broken Records – Until The Earth Begins to Part

Post-rock is a genre which seems to have fallen from favour in the public consciousness over the last few years, so it’s with some pleasure that I saw the reception afforded to Broken Records’ début album. When I saw them at a DiScover gig at Notting Hill Arts Centre, they blew me away with their orchestral pyrotechnics. They’ve successfully recreated the explosive, grandiose sound for the album, and it’s a wonderfully confident début from a band with talent oozing out of them.

The climaxes are built towards and sustained in a fashion normally only managed successfully by instrumental post-rock bands, largely as a result of the incredibly powerful voice of singer Jamie Sutherland. After several singles in 2008, the ever-reliable 4AD picked them up and released this powerful, intelligent, thrilling record. They’re gaining more and more renown for their live performances, and if they can maintain quality this high, it’ll be no time at all before they’re huge. I can’t express enough how excited I am by this band. Also, how on earth was such a good band name left untaken for so long? It’s a mystery, but a slice of luck, because their name suits them perfectly.

12. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast/Useless Creatures

Armchair Apocrypha was always going to be a hard album to follow, and, in truth, this record doesnt quite scale the peaks his last album did, but Andrew Bird’s rehabilitation from curious jazz-folk singer to indie-rock hero continued with this double album early this year. Some of the songs (most notably “Fitz And The Dizzyspells”) were made for radio, while others were as layered and beautiful as anything he’s made (thinking in particular of “Oh No” and “Anonanimal”).

As hyper-literate and multi-layered as ever, Bird always surprises the listener with unlikely rhymes and references. It’s almost a year now since this was released, and the more I listen to it, the more I find to love about it. It contains a few cryptic Destroyer-style references to his own back catalogue and, not that it has a bearing on the music, the best cover and lining art of the year.

11. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

What can I say about this album that hasn’t already been said? Everyone’s heard it, and everyone seems to agree that it’s wonderful. It’s seen them go from being a fashionable folk band to being an essential part of the alternative music scene, and it must have brought a lot of welcome money in for Warp. Every song on the album feels both fresh and familiar – I can’t even imagine a world in which I hadn’t heard “Two Weeks”, and yet whenever it’s played in a bar or club, I’m delighted to hear it again.

If there is a weakness in the album, it’s almost that some of the songs are too good, which reflects negatively on the other, almost-as-brilliant songs. It’s hard to see this as a complaint, though perversely it might have been higher on my list if it hadn’t had “Two Weeks” and “Ready, Able” on it. They’ve rightly received remarkable acclaim for this album, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the best-performing album in many end-of-year lists. Also, their performance of this with the LSO a month or so ago was phenomenal and brought even more layers to some of the songs. It would be an injustice if they didn’t remain a massive crossover act, and I’m very excited about what they could be capable of.