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

5. Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels

I knew that the Swimmers had a lot of potential after their fourth album, “Ongiara”, did moderately well, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of beauty and catchy hooks that greeted my on this new album. Tony Dekker’s voice is stronger and more versatile than ever, and he’s ably backed up by the rest of the band. The song which initially stands out is probably “Pulling On A Line”, but every song on the album is delicately beautiful and evocative, especially during the quieter songs like “Stealing Tomorrow” and “River’s Edge”, when Dekker’s voice is the sole focus.

The second half of the album is softer and gentler than the first, which reminds me of Midlake’s Trials of Van Occupanther, but where that sounded as though it was designed in two halves to be played on an LP, this is much more of a CD-oriented album. The songs flow naturally throughout, with Dekker’s remarkable voice the golden thread that holds them together. Where Ongiara had highs and lows, Lost Channels has a plateau, and while it lacks any singalong, “I Am Part Of A Large Family”-style songs, it has beauty, precision and depth in spades. Everyone should hear this album.

4. George Pringle – Salon des Refusés

I’ve been waiting for a proper album from George Pringle for about three years now, and this year was the year it finally happened. After a few false starts, an EP and a single, she decided to put it out herself on her own wonderfully named label, Deth To Fals Metal Records. To say that this album is divisive would be an understatement – people seem either to love or loathe her instantly. If they loathe her, it’s usually because she’s unashamedly middle-class and astonishingly beautiful. If they love her, these attributes may play a part, but the biggest influences are her witty, incisive lyrics and her knack for a catchy beat.

Some of the songs here were already familiar, like “Carte Postale”, though old song “One Night In KOKO” is vastly different to how I remember it. New songs “Bonjour Tristesse” and “Physical Education, Part 1″ are just as sharp, though, and find Pringle more confident than ever. On the latter, she’s even confident enough for a little self-referential moment: “The guy who ignored me will come up to me and go ‘Man, you’re so cool, George Pringle’. It will be exactly the same as when Trip Fontaine said ‘You’re a stone fox’.” These clever little pop culture references pop up all over the album. Again, some people hate them, but the only one that grates with me is in S.W.10, when the music stops and Pringle says “So I closed that Diane Arbus book”. That really is the only blemish on a superb début album on which Pringle demonstrates her poetic abilities brilliantly. I just wish she’d play live more often.

3. Megafaun – Gather, Form and Fly

I’ve tried to see Megafaun three times this year and, for various reasons, failed every time. And the more I listen to this, the more I regret not having seen them now they’ve gone back to the US. A lot of the time, they’re lumped in with Bon Iver because they used to be in a band with him, but this is misrepresentative and undersells them. Their oeuvre is far more varied than Bon Iver’s, and musically they have far more in common with bands like Akron/Family and Feathers. From the beautiful “Kaufman’s Ballad”, the tale of how Gram Parsons’ manager stole and burnt his body, to freak-folk singalong “Solid Ground”, there’s as much innovation in this album as any I’ve heard this year.

On their début, Bury The Square, Megafaun channelled an unorthodox country sound, but here they’ve become almost undefinable. Influences are drawn from musical spheres as diverse as freak-folk, country, blues, stoner rock and even grunge. Despite the fecundity of their faces, they have little in common with the woodsy, Waldenesque style attempted by many of their more popular contemporaries. Every song is exciting, innovative and different to anything else released this year. Their reputation is blossoming deservedly fast, and I would be surprised if they weren’t headlining shows next time they visit Europe.

2. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Vs. Children

Etiquette was a big stylistic departure for Owen Ashworth, and it won him legions of new fans. Given the relative success of that record, it’s no surprise that he’s stuck to a similar formula for his latest album. In fact, he’s built on it. Where Etiquette was a collection of songs whose unifying theme was disillusionment with youth, here the predominant themes are bank robbers and uncertainty over parenthood. “Natural Light”, with lines like ‘I thought of things that we said/What if we’d had the kid/I guess he’d be fifteen” and “Killers”, a song about considering abortion, are among Casiotone’s saddest songs to date.

There’s nothing with the catchiness of “Scattered Pearls” or “I Love Creedence” here (although “Optimist vs. the Silent Alarm” comes close), but it doesn’t matter. The melancholy beauty of the songs here signifies Owen’s maturity as a songwriter. Owen is less keen to share around vocal duties than on other albums, reflecting an even more personal and honest approach to lyric writing thaan before, and the result is an album which maintains a mood for its whole duration. It may not be for everyone, but for me this is one of the very strongest albums of the year.

1. Le Loup – Family

When I reviewed this three months ago, I thought it was something pretty special. I still do. It’s just magnificent – every note, every sound fits together perfectly. In the last year or two, Animal Collective have become critically untouchable and marketed a distinctive sound. Here, Le Loup have borrowed that sound, added influences from bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes and Frog Eyes to create a sound which, while not necessarily entirely original, is still unlike anything made before. Both pastoral and psychedelic, it’s a joyous celebration of nature and, as the title would suggest, family.

It’s an almost unimaginable development from their début, which was largely electronic and very dark in mood. While The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly was very good, I have nothing but superlatives for this. The confidence required to play the same song twice on the album (“Beach Town” and “Neahkahnie”) is impressive, and “A Celebration” is one of the finest songs of the year. Laden with incredibly catchy hooks, the album is perfectly balanced and feels like a very organic piece, at the end of which you almost feel you’ve learnt something. Despite it only being released in September, I’ve probably listened to it more than any other album this year, and I haven’t grown tired of it in the slightest. For me, this is the record of the year by a country mile, and I’d urge anyone who hasn’t heard it to go out and buy it.

The top 20, in one handy list
20. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
19. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
18. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – S/T
17. The Duckworth Lewis Method – S/T
16. Vowels – The Pattern Prism
15. My Sad Captains – Here And Elsewhere
14. Bishop Allen – Grrr…
13. Broken Records – Until The Earth Begins To Part
12. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast/Useless Creatures
11. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
10. Espers – Espers III
9. Wilco – Wilco (the album)
8. Mum – Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know
7. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
6. Akron/Family – Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free
5. Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels
4. George Pringle – Salon des Refusés
3. Megafaun – Gather, Form & Fly
2. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Vs. Children
1. Le Loup – Family

Albums of the decade to come soon!