Word to your momma, your sister AND your brother! It's the time, it's 2009, get your laughing gear around the ten toppermost, poppermost musical confections of the year!
10. Raekwon - House of Flying Daggers
Wu-Tang! You gots to believe that this hip-hoppin' ghetto bastard is ALL about the Wu-Tang. It's not pushing it to state that it's my second favourite Tang, coming a close second behind "Poon". Anyhow, this banger from Raekwon the Chef sees him kicking it with most of his bandmates. After a slow beginning, it builds and builds like a gang of Polish chaps on crystal meth.
9. Jarvis Cocker - Leftovers (live video)
Good old Jarvis, as reliably cool, weird and sexually unnerving as ever. This is the best song off of his second album, which was produced by Steve Albini, hence the massive drum sound coming from inside the building here. This track sums up the albums musical mix of Roxy Music and Wedding Present and Jarvis' current lyrical concerns of self-loathing and sleazy carrying-on.
That's what it's aal aboot, yeah?
8. Camera Obscura - French Navy
Everyone's favourite Scotch indie kids, after Belle and Sebastian, with another blissful slice of bittersweet jangling wistfulness. The melody may be very similar to "Embarrassment" by Madness, but frankly, who cares? Madness are skill and so is this.
7. Skull Gang feat. Juelz Santana - I am the Club
More hip-hopping largeness, as Skull Gang and Juelz Santana bring us another "joint" celebrating the joys of heavy drinking in nightclubs, surrounded, no doubt, by the bitches and the hoo-ers.
What's wrong with a night in with a good book?
6. Basement Jaxx - Raindrops (audio only)
Everyone loves the Basement Jaxx, yeah? Two scrawny fellers hanging round the back of the stage, knocking out the tunes while a succession of fat lasses and thin chaps in tracksuits do their whooping/hollerin/rappin/MCing and that over the top. A nice bit of boxed fruit, you will no doubt agree.
Well, they've only gone and let one of the blokes at the back sing a number, haven't they? You never get that with the Chemical Brothers. Well, maybe they should, because this is a lovely bit of summertime sunshine dance pop, despite its title.
May have been a bigger hit if we'd actually had a summer and some sunshine this year, but those are the breaks.
5. Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden - Bonkers
If "Raindrops" didn't hit the motherlode vis a vis mass appeal, then this collaboration between pint-sized rapper Dizzee Rascal and New York big-beatmaster Armand van Helden certainly did. This bouncy bopper was massive everywhere, in the clubs, among the twat-hatted mud enthusiasts at the festivals and with cool, sophisticated weblog smartarses.
Bonkers!
4. LMFAO - I'm in Miami, Bitch!
Where we civilized Europeans have the sedate, rarefied pleasures of Benidorm and Ibeefa, your average American thrillseeker has to make do with the downmarket, end-of-the-pier charms of Cancun and Miami. This is the soundtrack to a million fratboys and fratgirls popping their cherries in a flurry of sunburn and perfect teeth.
The bastards.
3. Eels - Prizefighter
Somebody who has probably never attended a kegger or carried out a single midnight panty raid in his life is Mark "E" Everett of the band Eels. He should do, it might cheer him up a bit.
Notwithstanding his lack of "Animal House" style collegiate shenanigans, old laughing boy is still capable of banging out a good tune, as this, the standout track of this year's "Hombre Lobo" demonstrates.
2. Leisure Society - A Matter of Time
In a year mainly characterised by joyous dancefloor, it would take a rare band that could pull off the trick of performing melancholic yet uplifting folk-tinged chamber pop without sounding like another boring set of cunts a la Elbow, Coldplay, Snow Patrols et al.
Well, that rare band was this band. Proof if proof be need be that the hoary old corpse of the Indie Pop can still cough up some nuggets of gold among the tarry phlegm of the landfill indie chuggers who clog up the nation's festival stages all summer. There should really be more bands that feature cello and ukeleles.
1. N.A.S.A - Way Down
This year's best album was "Spirit of Apollo" by N.A.S.A. (North America South America) aka two DJ/producer fellers, one from the States, the other, you've guessed it, from somewhere in South America. They gathered an astonishing array of vocalists, rappers and musicians as diverse as KRS 1, David Byrne, Method Man, Lykke Li, Chuck D and M.I.A. and let them feast on a musical smorgasbord of old school hip hop, funk, soca, samba, aal kinds.
Tom Waits was on it as well, but I think he's shite.
Whatever, Trevor, this tune here manages to feature a member of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and still be Any Good. That's how skill the NASA chaps are. Of course, my bezzie mate, Wu-Tanger RZA absolutely kills it with his rap.
Happy hanukka, you schmucks!
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