End of Year List Bonanza
Righty-ho, readers of Toad, here’s your chance to get stuck in and tell me what a clueless phillistine I am even more vociferously than you normally do in the comments section.
For the end of the year I will be making a few lists of my own: a Top Twenty list of albums, and a Festive Fifty of individual songs. However, it would be nice to have reader lists as well, so I reckon everyone should email a list of the following:
1. Top ten albums,
2. Top ten songs,
3. Top five gigs,
4. Surprise hit of the year,
5. Biggest disappointment of the year,
6. Publication of the year (blog, magazine, whatever – just not this one),
7. Best major label release,
8. Top tip for 2009.
And the Toad ones:
1. Favourite Toad thread this year,
2. Features you’d like to see introduced,
3. Best band you wouldn’t know about if you didn’t read this.
Email me your responses (email address can be found from the ‘Contact’ link above).
Secondly, I will be writing an end of year summary post, and it would be really nice if any of you wanted to do the same. Email me a couple of mp3s that you want to represent your ‘year in music’ and write a bit about anything you want, really, just something kind of suitable for an end of year roundup. I’ll try and get a couple of musicky types to contribute as well, if I can, just to add a little bit of flavour.
For now, though, my Festive 50 list stands at about seventy songs, and my shortlist for the album of the year is this: Barton Carroll, Bombadil, Langhorne Slim, Felice Brothers, Meursault, Devotchka, Elbow, Pale Young Gentlemen, The Low Lows, Aidan John Moffat, The Cave Singers, The Pictish Trail, Dodos, Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta, Donny Hue & the Colors, Micah P. Hinson, Ghostkeeper, Honeytrap, Johnny Flynn and Shearwater. I’ll whittle it all down over the next couple of days.
So until then, I leave you with something rather nice I happened across recently: a young lady called Hafdis Huld, from Iceland. She sounds so incredibly Waiting Room friendly that I assume DC must have played her before – not a million miles away from Soko or Hello Saferide, for example. She’s someone I intend to listen to more in the coming year, so see what you make of these two.
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‘mon the toad
I’m surprised not to see Samamidon on your shortlist for best album. He’s sure as hell on mine.
God Matthew,
Do you really think weve nothing better to do than sit around drawing up pointless and arbitrary lists, cataloguing and ranking things weve seen and heard throught the year, and trying to out-do one another in the annual “who can put the most obscure album in their top ten of the year” competition?
Are we really that sad?
(I thought I was finished, but youve kindly pointed out that Ive missed off the Low Lows album. And so its on to draft seven.)
ps I think there maybe should have been a coma between God and Matthew.
I wasnt referring to you as “God Matthew”.
Thanks for your time.
Peace.
x
also, “comma”.
Fuck, I’m tired.
can we exclude friends from our faves? cos i’m going to feel like a right brown nose twat
“who can put the most obscure album in their top ten of the year”
I am not approaching it on that basis. It’s hard enough already without adding another factor to the mix.
Feel free to exclude mates, Tom, just explain yourself so no-one goes snivelling to their mum about you being mean.
bart will win the obscure thing hands down……saying that one of my albums of the year is by somebody called ‘beyond the wizard’s sleeve’
My Kappa Roots is my favourite. His lyrics are just astounding and when he plays live it is simply incredible.
I have still to see Pablo actually, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. Apart from the fact that I want to see him, I am starting to feel like a totally ungrateful dick for not making it down to a gig. Him and the Foundling Wheel both have excellent reason to think I’m a bit of a prick at the moment, but I am just never free when they’re playing for some infuriating reason.
No Snow Patrol on your shortlist, Matthew?
I thought it would be taken as read that I thought they were the best band on the planet. I should hardly need to list them under those circustances.
Can we count EPs as albums?
There were some really great albums put out this year, but to me it was the year of the EP. At least half my favorite “albums” are EPs.
I personally will not be doing that, but sure, go ahead if you want to. It’s hardly the Guardian – we don’t have very strict editorial standards around here.
Tell your mates, too. The more people who enter lists the better. I’ll probably only publish half a dozen or so full posts though.
Will look forward to this. I published my Festive Fifty the other day, only to find out that those gits at the DMCA have removed another post. May they rot in hell.
What the fucking hell was it about this time? What an unspeakable bunch of cunts. As if year end Best Ofs are a threat to artist fucking livelihoods.
Can anyone spot the deliberate mistake on Anthony Gonzalez from M83′s best of the year list on pitchfork:
1. Chairlift: Does You Inspire You
2. MGMT: Oracular Spectacular
3. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
4. Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
5. Hercules and Love Affair: Hercules and Love Affair
6. Cut Copy: In Ghost Colours
7. No Age: Nouns
8. Free Kitten: Inherit
9. James Blunt: All the Lost Souls
10. Sun Kil Moon: April
I am genuinely surprised that 12 Tales From Winter City hasn’t made your shortlist, Matthew.
It’s on mine, and In the top spot.
The only thing that might topple it are a certain bunch of shouty lads from Edinburgh.
WHAT? I thought they were aggressively pretentious hipster kids? Christ on a fucking bicycle, that’s partly horrifying and mostly absolutely hilarious. What a bunch of clowns.
“The only thing that might topple it are a certain bunch of shouty lads from Edinburgh.”
eagleowl?
Christ. What’s happened to my grammar?
I’ve got Bart’s disease.
(Which actually sounds like a real name for a disease!)
It probably involves sprouting vast quantities of ginger facial hair – a bit like Thompson and Thomson in Tintin’s Explorers on the Moon.
So why didn’t 12 Tales… make your shortlist then, Snow Patrol boy?
Here’s how an end of year Best Of list works, Dylan. On that list I write down my favourite albums of the year. Consequently, if something is not on that list, then… well, are you starting to form a suspicion as to why it isn’t there yet? Or would you like another clue?
Hi Matthew -texted you this morning, have done a post on it over at 17 Seconds, and JC did a post over at The Vinyl Villain. They have not specified which track, and I am absolutely staggered, and dismayed.
PS you at Weddoes tomorrow night?
Yeah, as if we’re going to worry about the opinion of a Snow Patrol fan.
No, Ed, sorry. We have guests at the moment, and I doubt going to a gig with a bunch of ageing indie kids is quite on their agenda. I’m going to write up the latest nonsense this weekend, and email Alex Petritidis at the Guardian. This is just fucking silly.
Sorry Dylan, just playing.
Me too. Hug?
Fuck off.
Beer?
Well I’m about to wander up to Camden for a pint. Feel free to join!
Ah right. I might be a little late.
No worries, Matthew, keep me posted…and sorry for badgering you for your support yet again!
Ed
Bart may not have a disease … but he certainly has a syndrome.
Bart’s syndrome
A form of epidermolysis bullosa with blistering of the extremities and intertriginous areas, erosions of the mouth, and deformed nails; probably autosomal dominant; there is often spontaneous improvement with no residual scarring.
I wondered why he looked so fucking weird most of the time. Must be that. Blistering, erosion and deformity? That’s our Bart.
when r you home btw – aren’t you sposed to be at Bowery? Tea is on hen.
“It probably involves sprouting vast quantities of ginger facial hair – a bit like Thompson and Thomson in Tintin’s Explorers on the Moon.”
Blistering barnacles! Your taste just gets better and better Matthew.
I’ve been lurking here for ages, figure I might send in a list…as soon as I finalize my choices! It’s a shame, though, that there haven’t been more showings of The Fall or thenewno2 in anyone’s list.
http://thesteinbergprinciple.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/top-ten/
my top ten albums can be found at the link above. too lazy to type them out again.
I believe my comment was deleted. oh well. if I am not allowed to be lazy and just add a link to my top ten then my top ten albums are in no particular order:
Meursault: Pissing on bonfires/kissing with tongues
Damien Jurado: Caught in the trees
Micah P Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra
Olafur Arnalds: Eulogy for Evolution
Finn: The Best Low Priced Heartbreakers You Can Own
Bon Ivor: For Emma, Forever Ago
Snow Patrol (yes Frightened Fucking Snow Rabbit Patrol): A Hundred Million Suns
The Low Lows: Shining Violence
Mogwai: The Hawk Is Howling
Sleepingdog: Polar Life
Why would your comment be deleted? Muppet.
Hello Marilyn, it’s always nice when lurkers come out of the woodwork. Please do submit a list – someone needs to dilute the same old shit we’ll be getting around here.
I did mention that it would be nice to email it in, along with the other questions, didn’t I? Stuff bunged in the comments section won’t be counted.
i was out with Ricardo last night and he was saying that he hopes that Toad puts up the Friday Five a little earlier today than he bothered to last week……i agree…..come on Toad!!!!
Yeah – put it up early!
I’m on a train from lunchtime and can’t use this laptop on the train’s wi-fi. So I’ll be offline til tonight..
Is Euan allowed to put the James compilation CD I made for him on his top ten? He’s really keen to – and asked me to find out for him…
I am thinking of editing Euan’s comment so that all of his top ten are James albums actually, just to teach him a lesson for not reading the assignment properly.
get fucked.
)
i love james
So does Euan. He goes to bed at night and rubs his penis all over his enormous collection of their albums and singles.
see my previous comment about you getting fucked.
Do you lick the albums all at once, or one at a time?
Welcome Marylin !! yay another girl, and you lot be nice to this one this time, ok?!
I’ll email mine in, although as a new blogger I’m not quite sure it’s a good list, but just a list of my favorite albums so it will be weird and twisted, expect nothing less from the Tart, eh?
Dylan, I have a collection of James if you’ve got the time… wink, wink
I bet my collection of James is bigger than your collection of James, Tart. Wink-wink-wink!
Oh Dylan, I’ll be in London after Christmas dearie…. with M.Chutney hehehe
Oh good Christ, what an ungodly picture that paints.
Jealous bastard :-p
hey toad….how long have we got to get the lists to you
Up to Christmas day, maybe? I’ll compile the reader lists between then and the new year.
[...] season, here at Song, by Toad. If you want to get involved and write your own list, then please do. Go here for more details. The more of you that contribute to that the better the results we will get, so don’t be [...]
[...] cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part the [...]