TOP 10 ROCK & POP CDS 2004

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 26, 2004 | by Leon McDermott

1NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS ABATTOIR BLUES/THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS (MUTE) IT'S been almost a quarter of a century since Nick Cave released the bats. He might have mellowed a little since then, but there's no danger yet of him turning into some grand old man of rock. He may be approaching 50, but there's still a fire of biblical proportions burning inside his belly. Abattoir Blues and The Lyre Of Orpheus are two of his best albums since 1997's superlative The Boatman's Call. The former is spiky, punchy, Cave's lyrics slashed up by Mick Harvey's guitar and ex-Gallon Drunk mainman James Johnston's organ, and has Cave singing about love, death and writer's block (on the glorious, ecstatic There She Goes, My Beautiful World). The Lyre Of Orpheus treads more carefully; it's a more gentle ride, but it's also dark and contemplative: the sound of a band revelling in and thriving on internal tension.

2FRANZ FERDINAND FRANZ FERDINAND (DOMINO) IF it seems an inevitability now that these four Glaswegians would make one of the albums of the year, it was no less obvious a proposition when Franz Ferdinand was released in February.

Hyped it may have been - with the breathless NME leading the charge - but there's meat on the bones of these skinny-boy songs. Arguably, the entire album pivots on the grinding changeover a minute into Take Me Out:

the point when a tinny rock song metamorphosed into a bouncing slab of white boy funk. But there's much else to love about this album: the nonemore-Jarvis seduction technique Alex Kapranos adopts in Matinee; the way This Fire might actually, and not just metaphorically, have the capability to "burn this city"; the dancefloor hedonism of Michael, which will have a whole generation of indie boys wondering whether they would, in fact, like to kiss that boy. Even if a new saviour of rock is appointed tomorrow, Franz Ferdinand will remain a classic guitar record; the kind of album that reignites the world's love for a city's music.

3BJORK MEDULLA (ONE LITTLE INDIAN) IT'S easy to dismiss Bjork. She's crazy.

She's kooky. She speaks with that funny Icelandic/cockney/New York accent.

Thing is, Bjork thinks about music on a different level to almost everyone else.

Medulla - almost entirely composed of the human voice, whether it's plain, untreated vocals, the guttural, spectral beatboxing of her collaborator Razhel, or an Icelandic choir - digs deep. It sounds entirely alien, and entirely familiar, and reaches back centuries in some of its arrangements, but is at once entirely of its moment: as full of instant, funky pop moments as it is rooted in the collective unconscious.

4ARTHUR RUSSELL CALLING OUT OF CONTEXT/THE WORLD OF ARTHUR RUSSELL (ROUGH TRADE/SOUL JAZZ) ARTHUR Russell died in obscurity in 1992, but these two compilations of long-unavailable material go some way to explaining why he was (and still is) so revered. An accomplished classical cellist who was a staple of New York's 1970s avant garde, Russell fell in love with disco, nearly joined Talking Heads, and then made the most gloriously melancholic but lifeaffirming music you'll ever hear.

Extended dancefloor workouts which forced disco's pioneers to rethink their approach; dreaming soundscapes and quiet, painterly love songs featuring just Russell's fragile, lovely voice and his inimitable cello playing. Buy them both: it will make you a better person.

5THE FUTUREHEADS THE FUTUREHEADS (679) FIFTEEN songs. 36 minutes. The Futureheads don't hang about much.

A debut blast of angular guitar pop that married tight, coiled riffs to multi-part vocals, sung in the band's native Sunderland accents. They were first pegged as a noisier Franz Ferdinand, but there's a different dynamic at work here, concerned not so much with funk as with sheer, explosive energy.

They sing about evenings in the pub (Decent Days And Nights) and working crap jobs (First Day): big songs about small things.

6SONS & DAUGHTERS LOVE THE CUP (DOMINO) ANOTHER of the new breed, though they appeared fully formed from Glasgow's buzzing music scene. It's only seven songs, but this mini-album is all drama: dark thoughts and dark deeds pepper the lyrics; the music hints at The Gun Club, and at PJ Harvey. But then, it also takes in mandolins and violas, and wonderfully, unabashedly Scottish accents. You'd like to think Johnny Cash would have been proud they named a song for him.

7PAN SONIC KESTO (BLAST FIRST) NOT so much an album as a thrilling endurance test, conceived in part as a musical response to painter Francis Bacon's use of the triptych. And like Bacon, this Finnish duo are at first difficult, but ultimately almost endlessly fascinating and rewarding.

The compressed, distorted electronic rhythms and shearing half melodies of Kesto transform into intricate, warm sonic explorations, and what at first appears brutal is revealed as beautiful.

8KANYE WEST THE COLLEGE DROPOUT (ROC-A-FELLA) INa year when British hip hop was being championed (not least in the form of The Streets and Dizzee Rascal), it still took an American to explain the real deal. West's career as a producer was halted after a car crash, which nearly killed him in 2002. This is his response: a witty, sharply executed album, funky, gospel-tinged in places, and containing - in Through The Wire and Jesus Walks - two of the best hip hop tracks in years.