Music: Finally We Are No One by Mum

Finally We Are No One: Lullabies For Adults

Finally We Are No One by Mum

The first time I discovered Mum was when another Icelandic band, Sigur Ros, posted a link with a glowing recommendation on their facebook page.  As a big Sigur Ros fan, I was immediately intrigued, and after checking out the link I was instantly hooked.  In some ways Mum remind me of Sigur Ros, as both bands are experts at creating beautifully atmospheric and emotional music.

Finally We Are No-One was the first album by Mum I listened to and right from the first listen it was an album which had me excited to have belatedly discovered such a cool and creative band.  The whole album is hauntingly beautiful and after a stressful day at work it's the perfect album to put on to help you switch off from the stresses of the world and drift off into a calming inner peace.

Music: Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft

Strange Weekend: An atmospheric album filled with ideas.

Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft.

There are some albums where the success of the album is down to the pure and simple brilliance of the songs.  Then there are other albums where the overall creative soundscape is what gives them their inventive genius and makes them stand out from the crowd.

Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft is an album which has a foot in both camps.  It’s without doubt a very creative collection of music and a refreshingly interesting album to listen to, but whereas with some artistic albums the soundscape covers up for the lack of quality songs, this is far from being the case with Strange Weekend.  Strip away the cool dreamy production and you’re still left with a collection of excellent songs.

Listening to Strange Weekend conjures up words such as floaty, dreamlike or even hypnotic and in fact the names of some of the songs such as Drifting In And Out and Put Me To Sleep suggest that Mauro Remiddi was in that chilled out state of mind when putting lyrics to his musical creations.

The Worthy Of A Bigger Audience 2012 Awards (Part 1)

My favourite album, book, iPod app, party and TV show featured on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience during 2012.

Worthy Of A Bigger Audience is only a small blog I run in my spare time as a hobby but I’ve enjoyed sharing my opinions on some of the music, movies, TV shows, etc, which I love and think deserve to be appreciated by a bigger audience.  So as 2012 is now at a close, just for a bit of self-indulgent fun I thought this would be a good excuse to revisit the reviews featured over the last few months and pick my favourite choice from each category.

So without further ado here are my favourite albums, movies, TV shows, etc, featured on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience during 21012…

The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable

Albums:

Wonder by Lisa Mitchell
Singing From The Grave by Anna Von Hausswolff
Proof Of Youth by The Go! Team
The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable
Pomme Fritz by The Orb
The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth
High Violet by The National

This was by far and away the most difficult category to decide and not just because I’ve reviewed more albums than anything else on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience.  I absolutely love all of the albums reviewed in the list above so if I was to compile my top fifty favourite albums of all-time then pretty much all of those listed above would be strong contenders for conclusion.  In the end though, I had to pick a favourite and I decided to go for The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable simply because it just keeps getting better and better with every listen.

Winner: The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable

Music: High Violet by The National

High Violet is an album you’ll still be coming back to years down the line...

High Violet by The National. It may take a few listens
before you appreciate its true musical quality.

The National are one of those bands who are very successful, critically acclaimed and have a passionate and dedicated following, and yet there still seems to be a large number of people who haven’t yet heard of them.

That’s possibly because High Violet is by no means a collection of radio friendly mainstream chart songs.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an album of exceptionally brilliant music, but you may find like I did that it takes a few listens before you start to appreciate the true depth of musical quality contained on High Violet. 

I personally found that the opening track Terrible Love and also Little Faith were songs which became favourites fairly quickly, but it took a few more listens before the genius of the rest of the album emerged.

Music: The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth

More people need to know about this album.

The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth ... deserves to
reach an audience just as big as Bob Dylan's.

The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth (stage name of Kristian Matsson) is an absolutely beautiful collection of feel-good songs which every time you listen to it will remind you how powerful music can be and how strongly it can touch your emotions.

Kristian Matsson’s chosen performing name of The Tallest Man On Earth should already be a clue to this, but his musical inspiration obviously owes more than a great deal to Bob Dylan (The Tallest Man On Earth being the name of a Bob Dylan song).  Both his vocals and his guitar playing style are clearly heavily influenced by presumably one of Kristian’s musical heroes and although this might be a controversial thing to say, in my opinion The Tallest Man On Earth and specifically The Wild Hunt deserves to reach an audience just as big as Dylan’s.  I realise that’s quite a big statement to make, but I seriously can’t understand how The Tallest Man On Earth isn’t much bigger than he is.

Music: Pomme Fritz by The Orb

An interesting diversion from the predictable treadmill of mainstream music.

Pomme Fritz by The Orb.
An album to wash away the tensions and stresses of the day.

I should probably say straight away that some people – in fact most people – will probably listen to this album and think, ‘What the **** is this!?’  It’s not an album that was ever going to plant itself at the top end of the album charts for months on end.  But having said that it is an album that more people should check out and an album that deserves praise for trying something a bit different.  Actually, something a lot different.

A friend of mine listened to Pomme Fritz a few years ago and just didn’t get it at all.  To his unappreciative non-comprehending ears, some parts of it, in particular the third track ‘We’re Pastie To Be Grill You,’ were just crazy random nonsense.  I would argue that the problem was that he wasn’t listening to it properly.  If you go into this expecting a typical MTV friendly chart album of regular music you’re going to more than a little shocked, not to mention disappointed.

Music: The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable

Keeps getting better and better with every listen.

The Big Roar featuring the passion and energy of a live performance.

From the moment I heard the first chorus of The Everchanging Spectrum Of A Lie I knew I was going to like this album.  I just never realised quite how much.  Within a few listens it was obvious that this was one of those albums which just gets better and better with every listen.  By approximately the tenth listen I had realised it was going to be one of my favourite albums of the year, and by approximately the twentieth listen I realised it was possibly one of my favourite albums of all time.

Such is the strength of the songs that The Big Roar could easily pass for a collection of singles.  In fact if someone had told me this was a Greatest Hits collection I wouldn’t have doubted them for a second.

Not satisfied with simply creating an album’s worth of excellent tunes, however, The Joy Formidable have really thrown themselves into every song with the result being that many of the songs have the passion and energy of a live performance, whilst maintaining the quality production of a studio recording.  The end result is that you get the best of both worlds and you could say ‘The Big Roar’ sums it up perfectly.

Music: Proof Of Youth by The Go! Team

Proof Of Youth: Infectiously groovaphonic!

Proof Of Youth by The Go! Team ... infectiously groovaphonic!

I’m the type of person who usually needs to listen to an album at least five times before I can tell if I’m going to like it or not, so it was quite uncharacteristic when I heard a brief snippet of The Wrath Of Marcie on TV one morning and instantly loved it.  It’s the perfect early morning song to grab you by the scruff of the neck and fill you full of enthusiasm for the day.

The rest of The Go! Team's Proof Of Youth album is similar in style and has an early seventies hippie vibe to it, but repackaged for a modern audience.  I don’t know if the following analogy only rings true in my head, but if you took the music from Sesame Street and crossed it with Fatboy Slim then I imagine that you would end up with an album somewhat like this.  Doing It Right, Fake ID and I Never Needed It So Much Right Now in particular fit this analogy of sounding like they’ve been swiped from Sesame Street and given the Fatboy Slim remix treatment.

Music: Singing From The Grave by Anna Von Hausswolff

Brilliant And Beautiful

Singing From The Grave by Anna Von Hausswolff

At the time of writing Singing From The Grave is currently ranked at number 305,298 in the Amazon UK music sales chart.  I can absolutely guarantee that there are not 305,297 albums out there which are better than Singing From The Grave, so I’m on fairly safe ground when I state that Anna Von Hauswollf’s debut album is without doubt thoroughly worthy of a bigger audience.

I should point out straight away, however, that Singing From The Grave won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.  The album has a classical sound to it, so by no means is it a typically commercial album and it may therefore appeal to perhaps an older listening audience.

Music: Wonder by Lisa Mitchell

A massively underrated album by a massively underrated artist.

It’s not very often that I like an artist on first listen but when I first saw Lisa Mitchell supporting Newton Faulkner on his Rebuilt By Humans tour it was one of those rare occasions where I was instantly hooked.  From the moment she opened with Neapolitan Dreams I was literally filled with excitement and I knew straight away that I had to get her album.

The rest of her show that night was equally brilliant so not surprisingly I was just as impressed by her album Wonder.  This was one of those albums which I originally listened to over and over.

The stand out track would have to be ‘Oh Hark’ which incidentally is probably the most played track on my iPod out of a playlist of thousands of songs.  It has a brilliantly infectious happy summer feel to it and if there was any justice in the musical world it would have been a massive worldwide hit.  The fact that it wasn’t means that every radio playlister who overlooked this piece of musical genius should hang their heads in shame.