Music: Adrian's Review of 2006

Best Albums:

1) Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say...
Hyped to death, overplayed by radio and embarassingly clung to by politicians wanting to be down with the kids, but still by far the best thing 2006 gave us. In blending the two most important British acts of the noughties - the Streets and the Libertines - Arctic Monkeys produced an album that is both a pop classic and a lyrical masterpiece. The highlight of an album of highlights comes at the end, with "A Certain Romance" offering as vivid a representation as you'll find of what it's like to be a young person growing up in Britain today.

2) Long Blondes - Someone To Drive You Home
The success of the aforementioned Monkeys brought about a plethora of very similar sounding (and frankly generally crap) bands from Sheffield passing observation on increasingly mundane parts of life. With their distinctive appearance and a female vocalist, The Long Blondes were bound to stand out from this cloud of mediocrity emerging from the Steel City. If not exactly original, Someone to Drive You Home stood out in a year of increasing blandness in British indie. The dark yet intelligent lyrics of lost female autonomy combined with wonderful pop songs create an album that's both packed with killer tunes and highly intelligent.

3) Brakes - Beatific Visions
Pithiness defined Brakes' excellent 2005 debut Give Blood, and rare is it to see musicians express a political view as succinctly as Brakes do in the first verse of opening track "Hold Me In The River": 'I woke up late and found my liberty lost / It had been written down in law as a security cost'. If only Sting knew such brevity. Beatific Visions' triumph is its electicness, with it never leaving the listener on one musical strand long enough to induce boredom. One moment vocalist Eamon Hamilton is pontificating animatedly about who would win in a battle between a porcupine or a pineapple (continuing, however eccentricly, the anti-war theme), the next he's moved onto the surprsingly touching "Mobile Communication". More consistent than British Sea Power, less stodgy than Electric Soft Parade, what was once a side-project has become a far more exciting prospect than the bands that originally formed it.

4) Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
2006 was not a good year for the singer-songwriter, with the genre suffering from the critical derision brought onto it by a certain Mr. Blunt, and Damien Rice's highly anticipated second album proving disappointing. Ben Kweller's eponymous third album represented a bridging of the gap between the delicacy of Coner Oberst and the summer pop of Ben Folds. Displaying a great sense of melody, maturity and consistency, this was one of the year's hidden gems.

5) My Latest Novel - Wolves
My Latest Novel have been described as the Scottish Arcade Fire; undoubtedly a flattering comparison, but one which does not entirely do justice to the originality of the band. They build up layers of sound, steadily increasing an impressive array of instruments before reaching a triumphant climax. This lacks the wrist-slitting inducing frustration of similarly whimsical bands such as Explosions In The Sky, with the songs always going somewhere and possessing enough hooks to make them stick in the listener's head. Subtle, but very sophisticated.

Top 5 Singles:
1) Flaming Lips - "The Yeah Yeah Song"
2) Divine Comedy - "A Lady of a Certain Age"
3) Dustins Bar Mitzvah - "To The Ramones"
4) Guillemots - "Trains To Brazil"
5) Jarvis Cocker - "Running The World"

Top 5 Gigs:
1) Divine Comedy - Newcastle - October
2) Art Brut - London - April
3) Arctic Monkeys - Sheffield - January
4) Dustins Bar Mitzvah - Newcastle - May
5) Captain Dangerous - Nottingham - December

Best Video:
Jim Noir - My Patch

Biggest Disappointments:
The Futureheads - News And Tributes
Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors
Razorlight - Razorlight
The Holloways - So This Is Great Britain

Tips for 2007:
Jamie T
Hot Club De Paris
The Maccabees
The Rumble Strips
Foals
Captain Dangerous