clivemurray.com

Mucho splendido?

#090. Eluveitie – Spirit (2006) [spotify]

Eluveitie - Spirit

So, what do you get if you take poundingly heavy metal, add penny whistles and hurdy-gurdys, and sing over it in an extinct language? Eluveitie, that’s what! Yes, it’s more folk metal – this time hailing from Switzerland (the German-speaking bit, I think) and singing/screaming largely in Gaulish. Bloody excellent fun, this is.

TOP TRACK: #3 “Your Gaulish War”.

» Read the rest of this entry «

So. Away we go. My top 100 albums of the last decade.

Some of them I already reviewed in Rocktober, some of them will get a decent review, some just a couple of lines. Note also that unlike Rocktober, this chart takes in all genres – at least the ones that I listen to, which as mentioned before, is not really what you’d call a broad church of music.

Also, it’s a very rough list, position-wise. Any entry could easily move at least 10 positions or so in either direction depending on what day of the week it is, how much sleep I got the night before, how many drinks I’ve had etc. And it’s my list, my opinion, my party and I’ll scream and cry and kick and scratch if I want to. You may cry out in dismay “What, no (Duffy/Megadeth/Dizzee Rascal/Paolo Nutini/whoever)??? Again, it’s my list. You no likee, you get your own. (Anyway I still haven’t heard Megadeth’s “Endgame”…)

That is how it is, it could never be otherwise.

#100. David Bowie – Heathen (2002) [spotify]

David Bowie - Heathen

Is it cold in space, Bowie? Do you have just one spacesuit, Bowie, or do you have a few ch-ch-ch-changes?

Say what you like about Bowie – go on, say it – but you have to admit he doesn’t just churn out the same old stuff over and over. According to his Wikipedia page this 2002 release falls into his current “neoclassicist” era. I have no idea what they mean by that, but it sounds good. This is (as WP also points out) a very atmospheric album, with a dark melancholic almost ambient vibe running through it. Ideal for driving wistfully through the night along the A66 over the Pennines in February fog.

Do they smoke grass in space, Bowie? Or do you smoke Astroturf?

TOP TRACK: #5 “Afraid”.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Some time back, perhaps December or so, I happened across a link to NME magazine’s top 100 albums of the decade, spanning release dates from January 2000 to December 2009. Unsurprisingly if you know me, I found little to cheer about in this list. My taste in music is not what you would call particularly NME-friendly. But seeing it made me start to think about what my top 100 albums would be from that period. The earlier years were when hard rock started to re-emerge from it’s dormant post-grunge state, and though unbeknownst to me at the time, the mid-00s bore a whole new genre – one that has since captured my imagination in a way that no genre has before – Folk Metal.

I don’t claim to have a wide musical taste. No, really. It’s about 60% hard rock, 25% metal (folk and otherwise), 5% acoustic, 5% ambient/chillout, and 5% classical, according to a recent poll I just took of myself.

So I have spent the last 6 weeks or so compiling my own list. And you know what? I’m going to post it, 10 at a time, with very tiny reviews. Why? It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Only 6 albums appear on both my list and NME’s, and those are:

• Muse – Black Holes and Revelations
• Green Day – American Idiot
• Muse – Absolution
• The Coral – The Coral
• Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
• Radiohead – In Rainbows

But where do they appear? And what do I think of them? And what will be in the top 10? Well the answers to all these questions and less are on their way soon for whoever gives a monkey’s.

–c.