My 21 Favourite Albums of 2011

Because fuck a Top 20, that’s why.

21. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
An album that speaks to our times, with unsettlingly delicate orchestration and vocals illustrating lyrics that speak to the blood-soaked reality behind the bucolic image of English history.
Essentials: The Words That Maketh Murder

20.Kanye West/Jay-Z – Watch The Throne
Could it ever have lived up to the hype? Probably not. But in among the filler are a decent amount of straight bangers.
Essentials: No Church In The Wild, Gotta Have It, Murder To Excellence

19. Big K.R.I.T. – The Return of 4Eva
Up-and-coming Southern rapper Big K.R.I.T. delivers a mixtape with the tightness and cohesion of an official album, varying from bass-heavy trunk anthems to perceptive trips down memory lane.
Essentials: Rise And Shine, Dreamin’, American Rapstar

18. Dum Dum Girls – Only In Dreams
Classic girl-group garage-pop that rises above pastiche.
Essentials: Bedroom Eyes, Just A Creep

17. Danny Brown – XXX
This year Danny Brown gave us hilariously filthy lyrics, woozy drugged-up beats, grim tales from post-industrial Detroit, and a compelling portrayal of a post-twentysomething afraid they’ve missed the chance to make something of themselves. All on one mixtape. One FREE mixtape.
Essentials: XXX, Pac Blood, DNA

16. Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness
The riotous chroniclers of youthful indiscretions age (dis)gracefully into an indie band heavy on the heartbreak.
Essential: By Your Hand, Songs About Your Girlfriend, To Tundra

15. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Expansive, glittering dance-pop magic that sprawls but never bores.
Essentials: Midnight City, Reunion

14. British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
The deliberately archaic British Sea Power turn their attention to modern times with an album of squalling guitars and lyrics that form a perfect soundtrack to this year of protest.
Essentials: Who’s In Control, Mongk II, Living Is So Easy

13. The Roots – Undun
The Roots expand their scope further on this concept album, taking cues from jazz and classical orchestration to tell the story of one man’s life and death.
Essentials: Make My, Kool On, Lighthouse

12. Tom Waits – Bad As Me
The mad genius returns with an album that feels like a showcase of all his greatest successes, from gravel-voiced barroom stomp to eerie fairground tunes.
Essentials: Chicago, Hell Broke Luce

11. Doomtree – No Kings
A furious blast of insurrectionary punk-tinged hip-hop, railing against the established order.
Essentials: No Way, Beacon, Gimme The Go

10. My Morning Jacket – Circuital
Expansive, anthemic rock incorporating everything from electronica to country.
Essentials: Victory Dance, The Day Is Coming, Wonderful (The Way I Feel)

9. Random Axe – Random Axe
Black Milk, Guilty Simpson and Sean Price trade their differing but equally versatile mic skills over classic boom-bap producation.
Essentials: Random Call, The Hex

8. Girl Talk – All Day
Mixtape king Gregg Gillis mashes up another disco-friendly masterclass in pop.
Essentials: The whole thing.

7. Gang Of Four – Content
Just when we need them, Gang of Four deliver more spiky, bass-heavy tunes that dissect the rot within our consumerist cargo cult.
Essentials: She Said “You Made A Thing Of Me”, I Party All The Time, A Fruitfly In The Beehive

6. Frank Turner – England Keep My Bones
Billy Bragg-style singalong acoustic ballads with a progressive-yet-traditional concept of identity, community and remembering where you’re from.
Essentials: Peggy Sang The Blues, I Am Disappeared, Wessex Boy

5. TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light
Rich, textured songs that frantically race from contemplative noodling to get-down funk jams.
Essentials: Keep Your Heart, Will Do, Caffeinated Consciousness

4. Drive- By Truckers – Go-Go Boots
The quieter cousin to last year’s raucous The Big To-Do, this album indulges the Truckers’ storytelling side, from Southern Gothic to Modern Americana.
Essentials: I Do Believe, Used To Be A Cop, The Thanksgiving Filter

3. Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
Alex Turner and co continue their journey to songwriting geniuses with this impeccable collection of British pop soon-to-be-classics.
Essentials: She’s Thunderstorms, Black Treacle, Suck It And See

2. Wild Flag – Wild Flag
US fem-rock supergroup delivers blasting guitar-heavy love letters to the transforming power of music.
Essentials: Romance, Boom, Glass Tambourine

1. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
Impeccable songwriting and musicianship combined with country/Americana roots give this album a timeless quality.
Essentials: Don’t Carry It All, Down By The Water, This Is Why We Fight

Thought Bubble 2011 Reviewed

Last month I went up to Thought Bubble, the Leeds-based comic convention. It was my first time at an event like this; the draw for me was a combination of seeing artists and writers I liked, meeting up with people I was internet-acquainted with, and check out some more under-the-radar comics. And, of course, spending a bit of time back up in Leeds.The event was held across a couple of convention halls down at the Armouries, with some other venues drafted in for talks and other events. While it wasn’t the easiest of layouts to navigate, all the staff and volunteers on hand were absolute pros and ever ready to help out attendees.

From the initial rush of people at the start of the first day, things slowed down to a constant gentle press; the place was crowded, but never oppressive. And there were plenty of things to see. The convention was was very mixed in its setup, so “professionals” and self-publishers would have tables alongside each other. The atmosphere was very friendly and non-exclusive.

When I didn’t have anything specific to get to, I was happy to wander around looking at the independent comics on sale, and watching wonderful artists like Sean Phillips, Cameron Stewart and David Aja doing sketches. (I often forget how calming and relaxing it is just to watch someone draw.) I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Dan White, Andrew Hickey and Illogical Volume, of the excellent UK comics blog collective Mindless Ones, and chatting with them about comics and other assorted nonsense.

I also happened to pick up some very good comics while there, the majority of which I would never have heard of otherwise. Some reviews below:

Cindy and Biscuit in: What We Did At The Weekend
Dan White (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Milk The Cat Comics

Dan White’s latest Cindy and Biscuit entry is in the best tradition of “kid’s comics”, in that it perfectly sums up what it means to be a kid; the instant switching between wide-eyed innocence and bloodthirsty attack mode, the value in discovering something all your own, and the inevitable bump as you’re brought back down to earth after yet another intrusion from the adult world.

The art means a lot here. Biscuit is drawn as the Platonic essence of dog; constantly either alert or in motion, his whole body converging to the sharp point that is his nose. And Cindy is all knobbly knees and elongated limbs, the perfect representation of the gangly awkwardness of childhood. This self-contained story of a girl and her dog fighting off an alien invasion is in full colour, brilliantly used to heighten the encroaching weirdness. It’s got action, comedy, and maybe even a little bit of poignancy too. Highly recommended.

Fight!
Jack Teagle (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Nobrow

I first found out about Teagle when I picked up his comic Jeff Job Hunter (also from NoBrow) earlier this year. A fun satire about a young jobseeker tasked with questing through an underground dungeon full of monsters in order to collect his JSA, it struck a sour chord with my experience of being out of work.

Fight! is the first of an occasional series, beginning with two wrestlers fighting as analogues of God and the Devil. Lou, the “Devil” character, is tired of his red skin and horns stereotyping him as the “heel”, and sets out to discover what happened to his famous wrestler father.

As with JJH, the simple, cartoonish art creates a pleasant blend of the surreal and the mundane. Teagle packs in as much as possible, with a back-up story on the inside cover and fake ads on the back. It’s decent, but I’d recommend Jeff Job Hunter over it.

Filmish #3: Technology and Technophobia
Edward Ross (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Chiaroscuro

This series of minicomics offers straightforward introductions to various aspects of film theory. They owe a great debt to Scott McCloud’s books – as in Understanding Comics and other works, a cartoon version of the author appears on each page to explain concepts to the reader and interact playfully with the contents of the panels. This issue looks at the way technology has been represented and criticised in films, from Chaplin’s Modern Times to Videodrome, Jurassic Park and Primer. There are cited quotes from academic texts, and a bibliography at the end for further reading. A neat idea, executed well.

Hitsville UK
John Riordan (Co-Writer/Artist), Dan Cox (Co-Writer)
Self-published

A spectacular technicolour pop-comix blast of greatness, Hitsville UK is a comics about the sense of romance that you get from all great music, and especially from stuff you stumble across by accident. The conceit of the comics is to profile several bands grouped around one start-up record label, allowing Riordan to take a different art style for portraying each act. The skipping between each different band and their various troubles gives the comic an excellent sense of pace, like it’s a bunch of old-school 2-page strips crammed together.

The off-kilter kookiness of the art and colouring suggest a world at right-angles to our own, where all the romance and promise of music still holds absolutely true. It’s pretty much perfectly designed to hit someone like me in their sweet spot, but don’t let my blatant bias put you off – it’s actually really good!

I Got Comics #1
John Miers (Writer/Artist)
Self-published

An large-format collection of art-comics stories where form reflects function. Contrast is a constant here; black versus white; colour vs space; the art playing out scenarios of antagonism, thesis and antithesis. Whether illustrating a philospohical debate, a family argument, or the story of the Tower of Babel, the stories suggest conflict as the essential stuff of the artists’ life. The tour de force here is the closing story “Ink Vs Paper”, a black-and-white fight scene taking place in a Japanese castle, between combatants who use the material of the comic against each other. It’s Spy vs Spy with a fourth-wall-breaking conceit.

Pope Hats #1 and #2
Ethan Rilly (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Adhouse

The first two issues of this series by Canadian cartoonist Rilly (released in 2009 and this year, respectively) are wonderful-looking, really well-constructed comics. Pope Hats follows Frances, a young law clerk who has to deal with the trials of her workplace and her flighty, hard-drinking actress roommate. Better critics than I have listed the artistic influences on display here, but I was taken with how much Frances looks like Tintin, sharing the button nose and black dot eyes of Herge’s boy reporter.

There’s a bit of Adrian Tomine in its portrayal of ennui among educated young people, and something of Dan Clowes in its static angles and deadpan realism. But Rilly avoids the worst tendencies of both writers (self-indulgence for Tomine, misanthropy for Clowes) by focusing in on the little moments when people my age stop and picture life passing them by. It’s hard to explain the appeal of this comic other than that it makes you feel for the characters. They’re drawn small, navigating a landscape of grids and straight lines, while trapped in their own thoughts, talking at cross purposes, unsure of how to break through to each other.

The two issues include one or two back-up stories, which is mainly a chance for Rilly to do some smaller vignettes. Along with the well-designed cover, it gives each issue a feel of being a more complete package; of it being a comic in a proper physical sense.