32. The Divine Comedy – Victory For The Comic Muse

The album was preceded by ‘Guantanamo’, an absolute crock-of-shit ‘political’ song that made your toes curl and your soul itch. Things were not looking good. Then, with minimal fanfare, a French radio station played the first single, ‘Diva Lady’, one night and, thanks to the wonder of ‘listen again’ streams, I got my first exposure to the song that told me it would all be ok after all. It was a piss poor quality stream, but you could still make out an unashamedly ‘fun’ little song which, although not universally popular within the Divine Comedy fraternity, is one of many splendid moments on what marked a reassuring return to form.

‘Absent Friends’, seemingly held up as Neil Hannon’s best album by those who didn’t really love anything he did in his nineties lothario guise, was a limp retreat from the magical indie of ‘Regeneration’, with the suits dusted down again and the orchestras wheeled back in. It had its moments, certainly, but it felt too contrived. Certainly, ‘Victory For The Comic Muse’ could never have that particular criticism levelled at it, assembled as it was from random songs that Neil had lying around, including some written for, and rejected by, others. Recorded on an EMI-appeasing shoe-string over two weeks at the end of 2005, it would turn out to be a confident, almost strutting example of Neil’s wonderful songwriting.

Fans of woodsheds were given an aural hug by opening track, ‘To Die A Virgin’, while those who longed for more of the windswept balladeer were caressed by ‘A Lady Of A Certain Age’. ‘Party Fears Two’ offered a Divine-Comedy-by-numbers reinterpretation of an indie classic which somehow worked and ‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World’ ensured that words like ‘smug’ and ‘twee’ could still be trotted out by the non-believers.

But it’s the songs which didn’t receive too much fuss which actually make this album truly great. ‘The Light Of Day’ is regarded by some fans as MOR mulch that deserves a spot on daytime Radio 2 but not a Divine Comedy album. Suffice to say, I think they’re wrong. As delicate in its construction as many of the songs on ‘Promenade’, only smoother round the edges, and absolutely beautifully sung, ‘The Light Of Day’ gets me every time. It chugs at the right time, soars at that right time and goes for broke at the right time. It’s a more mature Divine Comedy, but it is done with supreme skill.

Yes, ‘Snowball In Negative’ is beautiful but the almost shameless Scott Walker love-in ‘The Plough’ is the other standout moment for me. Telling a delicious tale of derring-do over a dramatic musical backdrop, it positively screams ‘Scott 4’ at you. But, as we’re never going to hear that sound from Scott ever again, who can begrudge Neil such a splendid crack at it?

33. Beck – Sea Change

Before all the bleepy 21st century funk of Beck’s recent output, there came an album that far surpasses everything else he has ever done, with the possible exception of 1998’s ‘Mutations’. ‘Sea Change’ is Beck in classic songwriter mode and it is one of those records you simply must not cherry pick from. You need to start at the start and end at the end, wallowing massively in the melancholic soundscapes that come your way.

‘Guess I’m Doing Fine’ sounds like it might collapse at any moment, under the weight of its woes but the near funereal pace makes for a strangely captivating piece of music, even if Pitchfork did suggest on the album’s release that “he mostly just sounds constipated.” When things do pick up, admittedly only marginally, such as on ‘Lost Cause’ and ‘Sunday Sun’, the shuffling wonky-folk sound of ‘Mutations’ puts in an appearance but that’s as much respite as you’ll get.

People often say that sad albums can often serves two purposes. Firstly, they can act as a tonic and produce a strangely euphoric sensation. Alternatively, and more frequently, they can allow you a deeply satisfying period of wallowing. ‘Sea Change’ can certainly do both, although don’t wallow in it for too long as, I can assure you, it can be hard to come out the other side.

34. Sleeping States – In The Gardens Of The North

I was, I’ll shamelessly admit, pootling around the Norman Records and Boomkat websites in the hope of finding something good to buy. I was cross-referencing back and forth between their recommended lists and clicking as many audio samples as I could conceivably endure. About five albums in, I happened upon ‘In The Gardens Of The North’. The artwork, the fact it’s on the unimpeachable Bella Union label and the raving hyperbole of both sites drew me in and how glad I am that they did.

You know when one of your ears randomly goes a bit muffled for a while and it sounds like you’ve somehow shoved a pillow down there? Or when you try to put a CD on in the car on the way back from a gig? Or the sound of music early in the morning when your brain is still aligning itself with the concept of being awake? That’s kind of what this record sounds like. It’s almost deliberately ever-so-slightly out of sync with, well, something. The understated, almost mumbled vocals are beguiling and the gentle ebb and flow of much of the music is quite remarkably affecting. I didn’t for a second think that, when I ordered the CD that day, it would become one of my albums of 2009, let alone make it into this list, but it really has won me over in the dying months of the decade.

Each track is notably different and yet comfortably familiar. If you like your acoustic, melancholic indie then this is for you. But then if you like the sparse but minutely crafted soundscapes of Peter Broderick then this is also for you. It may not strike you as something remarkable on your first listen. Or your second. But give it a bit of time and it will get you. I’m sure of it. I can’t imagine not loving this record now and I know I still have many, many months more enjoyment to ring from it.

35. Rufus Wainwright – Poses

I can’t actually remember when it was that I first heard him, but I can remember trekking to the Royal Festival Hall in London to see him do one of a spattering on UK shows in September 2004. We had amazing seats – my eyes pretty much directly in front of and directly in line with Rufus himself. Keane were there for the ride, ruddy-faced hay-muncher, Tom Chaplin was stood mere inches from us at one point as he checked his mobile before going back in. He must have been really excited about the concert as he’d gone all red. Oh, wait.

Rufus was in spellbinding form and, from that day, the love affair was truly on. I’d already picked up ‘Want One’ and this album, ‘Poses’, prior to attending the gig but they were played solidly for weeks afterwards, so in thrall was I to this natural performer, gifted entertainer and passionate performer. I’m well aware that many people don’t see the appeal, saying he slurs his words, neglects his melodies and is unbearably smug. On occasion, I’ll grant them the last one, but I even find that endearing. Rufus and his band finished their performance at the Royal Festival Hall that night in full witches costumes, pointy hats and all, swaying around to ‘Oh What A World’ and it was bloody marvellous. I left absolutely beaming and had his songs bouncing round my heard for the duration of the three hour coach ride home.

For a while, ‘Poses’ was my favourite Rufus album and, had I compiled this a year or so ago, it may have appeared higher in the list. Having said that, it’s a beautiful collection of musical endeavour. ‘Greek Song’ and ‘Poses’ are charmingly complex, while ‘One Many Guy’ is a startlingly great cover of one of his father’s songs. ‘Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk’ is the big pop moment and is ludicrously catchy, not unlike ‘California’, a distant cousin of Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case Of You’. However, ‘Rebel Prince’ just edges the rest of them. It’s a swooning, sensual performance of a masterfully constructed tune and it even has the dubious honour of having been covered by The Beautiful South.

36. Radiohead – Kid A

It was my final year of school and I was just starting to realise that you actually had to work in order to get A levels when a friend pushed a certain CD into my hands. It had a crappy little inlay made in Word with a grim little font but that didn’t really matter as it contained eight tracks from ‘Kid A’ which he had downloaded from the internet. We were late adopters of the internet, my family. We’d only just got a computer and it was dial-up all the way. The aforementioned friend – Chris, should he happen to ever read this – was quite the opposite and had been pissing around on the net for years prior to this and this was the first time it had ever impacted upon me. He told me that it wasn’t what I might be expecting and that he didn’t really know what he thought of it. Sounded interesting enough to me.

I remember playing it through a shitty little green Alba CD/cassette player at school and being quite taken aback. I instantly loved ‘Idioteque’ and kept playing ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, trying to decide if that nagging sensation was like or annoyance. A few of the tracks had little messages embedded and little strategic clicks. Where the hell he’d got the songs from, I didn’t know but it was pretty clear that it was all a little dodgy. Still, hearing that music upfront was an absolute joy and it’s one of the last times I can remember an enormous ‘event’ album appearing without any serious internet clamour preceding it.

As a result, the finished album was largely familiar to me – annoying message and clicks removed – and for a little while I played little else. ‘Optimistic’ and ‘The National Anthem’ are glorious beasts, while ‘Morning Bell’ and ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ are some of the finest, glacially atmospheric pieces they’ve ever released. I could offer a quick review of the album, but it’s all been said before. Suffice to say, it meant a lot then and means a lot now.

(I’ve mentioned the glorious 2001 Later Special before, but if you’ve still not seen – or even bits of it on the recent deluxe editions of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ – you can see pretty much all of it in high quality here.)

37. Josh Rouse – Nashville

While the law of diminishing returns seems to have, rather sadly, applied to Josh Rouse’s music since the release of this album, it’s still one hell of a peak. A master of the gentle singalong, Rouse has the uncanny knack for making songs that suggest a comforting familiarity, even on first listen. On his early albums, indeed every one leading up ‘Nashville’, this was a great strength, although recent outings have suggested that it is possible for him to sound ever so slightly too familiar.

This album is his masterpiece though, littered with jangly melodies, soaring guitar parts and the measured deployment of his syrupy sweet vocals. And, let’s be clear about this, he has an absolutely gorgeous voice. There’s no way round that. It’s not rugged, it’s not lived in and it doesn’t sound quirky. It just sounds lovely and sometimes that’s exactly what you need. Sometimes you need Teenage Fanclub. Sometime you need Trashcan Sinatras. And, sometimes you need Josh Rouse. Largely upbeat, ‘Nashville’ is a great pick-me-up record, guaranteed to have me drumming along by smashing my hands down on my legs and bouncing childishly in my chair. ‘Winter In The Hamptons’, ‘It’s The Nightmare’ and ‘Saturday’ are all fine examples of power-pop Josh, as literally nobody refers to him.

What sets this album apart from all of his others is the heart-meltingly beautiful ‘Sad Eyes’, which quietly shows up, eight songs in. The lyrics are simple but affecting but it’s the music that really delivers on this one. Slowly building from understated piano, through some deft violin touches to a full-blown crescendo of layered backing vocals and the kitchen sink itself, it is a majestic four minutes and forty-eight seconds of splendour. Will make you cry when sad too, I can assure you.

38. Joan As Police Woman – To Survive

There’s much to love on the first full studio album by Joan Wasser, she who be Joan As Police Woman. ‘Real Life’ is a strong collection of songs, all propelled forward by her breathy, powerful vocals. But ‘To Survive’ is the one that gets me every time. It took me an incredibly long time to realise that there was more than one song on this album, so resolutely did I fall in love with the third track, ‘To Be Loved’. From the moment I heard it till, well, now, it absolutely melted my heart and tickled my metaphorical fancy. It is a near-perfect pop song and yet it doesn’t have a stadium-shagging chorus or a naggingly infectious beat. In fact, it shuffles along, slightly awkwardly, Wasser’s voice mellifluously wafting over a masterful musical backdrop. I still adore it and suspect I always will.

In attempt to avoid song fatigue, I ensure that I spent some time with the rest of the album and was overjoyed to realise that the other nine songs weren’t too shabby either. ‘Honor Wishes’ sets out the soulful and sparse stall and the record never looks back. The hypnotically throbbing bass on ‘Holiday’ hints at a darker undercurrent while jangly acoustic guitar gently layers itself over the top, while ‘Start Of My Heart’ is a love song of quite startling simplicity benefiting further from a wonderfully emotive vocal.

Rufus Wainwright creeps in for the album’s finale, ‘To America’, but don’t be foolish enough to think that he’s there to bolster proceedings. In the nicest possible way, he simply isn’t needed. There’s enough to make you staggeringly glad that you shelled out your cash on this one, long before you get to the last track.

39. Graham Coxon – The Spinning Top

I remember dashing down to what was then a Virgin Megastore in Leeds one Monday during my time at uni in Leeds in order to grab one of the limited edition 7” pressings of ‘Freakin’ Out’, a marvellous power-punk single from Graham Coxon’s fifth solo album, ‘Happiness In Magazines’. The rough cardboard sleeve and garish artwork impressed but it wasn’t until I put it on the turntable, turned it up really very loud and started pogoing round the room that its position as one of my all time favourite bits of vinyl was assured. I soon stopped pogoing, by the way; a man of my size combined with a wooden floor do not a happy stylus-groove situation make.

And so vinyl has gone on to dominate my relationship with Coxon’s solo output. Although I owned the early albums on CD, it wasn’t until vinyl copies entered the collection that I really took them seriously and, similarly, it wasn’t until my double vinyl pressing of ‘The Spinning Top’ arrived that its standing in my collection was awarded. Having said that, I’d had the chance to hear it a little way ahead of release and duly loaded it onto the iPod and then left it for a bit. One Saturday evening, feeling full of cold and ensconced within more pillows than I thought we owned, I stopped scrolling at this album and set it going. When it came to a close, almost seventy minutes later, I was a little shocked to realise how well it had held my attention. For the next couple of days, I played little else. By the time the vinyl arrived, I already knew the album inside out and yet I was still ludicrously excited to play it.

What music it contains. Grizzly Graham is still there on ‘Sorrow’s Army’, sweetly innocent Graham pops up on ‘Feel Alright’ but new and improved folksy Graham steals the show. ‘Look Into The Light’ rightly won comparisons with Nick Drake, ‘In The Morning’ is an epic thing of gentle beauty which is pretty bloody splendid from the off but completely slaps you around the face when it starts properly noodling about around the five minute mark.

It’s a remarkably effective left turn after the commercial sound of the final two EMI albums and the lo-fi approach to the four before those. It is Coxon’s masterpiece, I’d wager, and while it received little attention due to the media frenzy over the return of his old day job it was one of the stand out releases of 2009.

40. Dan Arborise – Around In Circles

A reasonably uneventful summer is coming to a close and I’m increasingly turning to old favourites when it comes to my listening. It’s not so much that I have any problems with the new music appearing, I just want to wallow a bit in the tunes that will truly comfort me and offer an aural hug.

My regular visits to Reveal Records in Derby continued apace, although little was being bought and for a number of consecutive visits I’d left with very little. As I came to the end of almost thirty minutes of browsing around what was a relatively small shop, I realised that I wasn’t paying attention to the rack I was working my way through. Instead, I was transfixed by the lulling guitar sound coming out of the speaker just behind my head. I stood there for another four minutes, staring at nothing in particular, until all nine minutes of the track had entered my world.

Three minutes later, I was in possession of a copy of Dan Arborise’s debut album, ‘Around In Circles’, featuring that track that had awoken me from my musical nostalgia trip – ‘To The Sea’. The whole album is a work of effective understatement and is utterly charming. ‘Let Me Be’, ‘Beauty Through Her Eyes’ and the aforementioned ‘To The Sea’ remain some of my favourite songs to this day and have, in somewhat oxymoronic fashion, a gently euphoric feel about them that can calm this often antagonised mind. It didn’t sell many, the world barely noticed its charms but, while it might not be as trail-blazing as some of the stuff to follow on this list, if you like ‘To The Sea’, it is an album I can only implore you to investigate. You can thank me another time.

Just Played’s 40 From The Noughties

Right then. Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be posting about my top 40 albums from the past ten years. The order will inevitably seem wrong by the time I finish, and I’m sure there will be some albums missing which you think should be there. I can’t vouch for these being the BEST 40 albums since 2000, only that these are 40 albums that mean an awful lot to me and which I truly love listening to. Hopefully, that’ll come across in the writing. Feel free to comment as we go, it might be fun!

And yes, there will be a normal end of year list in the last week or two also. I can’t guarantee I’ll update this every day, or how many albums will get posted each time, but it will be done by December 31st, 2009. I promise.

First one coming shortly.