Last year I couldn’t be bothered doing a best albums list, and in a way I was quite right because I discovered a few of my favourite albums of 2008 in the first part of this year, such as Devotion by Beach House and Deerhunter’s Microcastle. I agree to a large extent with Jamie from Conquering Animal Sounds/The Japanese War Effort when he says, “music is not a competition”.

 This year though I was asked to compile lists by a couple of fellow bloggers and felt it would be rude to refuse.

THE “SCOTTISH BAMS” ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

 I was kindly invited by Peenko to contribute to The Scottish Bloggers and Music Sites Award 2009 top ten albums of the year. He asked a whole bunch of (mostly Scottish) music bloggers to take part and although it wasn’t specifically Scottish albums he had in mind, in the end the crown was taken by Glasgow’s The Phantom Band. Head over to Peenko’s blog to find out the full list and also to read a very gracious quote from the Phantom Band’s Andy.

Six of the albums from my own top ten made it in the top 20 – you can see my list below. I will be listening to the others, most of which I haven’t heard yet, at the earliest opportunity.

 My Top Ten:

•  King Creosote – Flick The V’s
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
• Withered Hand – Good News
• The Phantom Band – Checkmate Savage
• The xx – the one with the big X on front
• Ambulances – The Future That Was
• My Latest Novel – Deaths & Entrances
• Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous
• Grizzly Bear – Veckamist

No.10 I have disqualified as not only was it embarrassing I have just realised it came out in 2008!

The other “BAMS” who took part:17 Seconds, AyeTunes, Dear Scotland, Earz Mag, Elba Sessions, Glasgow Podcart, Hooligans Lament, Jim Gellatly, JocknRoll, Jockrock, Kowalskiy, Last Years Girl, Love Shack Baby, Manic Pop Thrills, My Portiswasp Says, Off the Beaten Tracks, The Pop Cop, Song By Toad, The Blues Bunny, The Daily Growl, The Spill, The Steinberg Principle, The Vinyl Villain and Under the Radar.

 MY FIVE BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Secondly I was invited to contribute to Finbarr Bermingham’s Five of the Best series on his Scrawls & Bawls blog (which also features his superb interviews with the likes of Johnny Rotten and Frightened Rabbit as well as Five of the Bests by my pals Nick and Ally amongst others).

 This is the five albums of the decade that are most important to me – I certainly don’t claim that this is an objective choice, just those which I personally enjoyed most. I really enjoyed writing this too, mainly because of Finbarr’s excellent questions which helped spark memories of the great gigs I’ve been to since the turn of the decade.

 My top 5:

 1. The Fall – The Real New Fall LP (formerly Country on the Click)

2. James Yorkston – The Year of the Leopard

3. Arcade Fire – Funeral

4. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois

5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell

 Go here to read the full story…

The Rest of The Best 

And in no particular order, some other albums which meant a lot to me this decade (in some cases my tastes have changed a lot since then):

•  Arab Strap – Monday at the Hug and Pint
• King Creosote – Bombshell & KC Rules OK 
• Britney Spears – Blackout (and it’s not just me, the Times has it as the fifth best pop album this decade!)
• Uncle John & Whitelock – There is Nothing Else
• The Strokes – This is It
• Herman Dune – Giant
• Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus – Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
• Out of Season – Beth Gibbons & Rustin’ Man
•  Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not – Arctic Monkeys
•  Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – P. J. Harvey
•  A Ghost Is Born – Wilco (for some weird reason I’ve not heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot yet)
•  Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
•  Original Pirate Material – The Streets (Locked On, 2002)
• The Pictish Trail – Secret Soundz Vol. 1
• 24 Hour Party People Soundtrack
• Thom Yorke – The Eraser
• Malcolm Middleton – Into the Woods & Fluxy.. the one with crappo the clown on the cover
• Bjork – Vespertine
• The White Stripes – White Blood Cells & Elephant
• M.I.A. – Arular
• Evan Dando – Baby I’m Bored
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
•  Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP (yeah, I know)

THE LIST OF OTHER LISTS TO END ALL LISTS

 Or perhaps not, but here’s a few other excellent end of year/decade lists:

Said The Gramophone’s Best Songs of 2009

Last Year’s Girl – Best of the Noughties

The Steinberg Principle’s Top 50 albums of the decade

Evil Stu (an occasional contributor to this blog) and  his not very evil music lists

Tommy from Found’s excellent Christmas computerscheisse laptop mix

The Skinny’s Scottish Albums of the Decade 

Contrast Podcast Festive Fifty (only part one is up so far)

 If you made a list and I didn’t mention it here let me know in the comments. Or just say hello!

I missed the impromptu set by The Three Craws at Homegame earlier this year, so I was delighted when my friends Iain and Aileen, who live in Aberdour, got Mel and I tickets to go see them at the Aberdour Festival.

As it turned out, we were already heading to Fife that weekend to visit my mum and her partner, who were renting a little holiday house in Lower Largo, so we were able to head to Aberdour on the way back and catch the set.

In case you’re not aware, the Three Craws are James Yorkston (James Yorkston), King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) and the Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch). Now individually these are three of my favourite songwriters/performers, so to see them all together at the same time was a joy.

They played a wide variety of stuff – at the beginning they took turns to play one of their own songs but they soon went off into what was obviously an improvised set of great folk songs and tracks by their friends including by Kenny’s brother Gordon, who has recorded so many great songs under the name of The Lone Pigeon and with the Aliens and the Beta Band. The highlight for me though was an absolutely storming version of Adrian Crowley‘s Walk-On Part.

I have to admit I didn’t know this song previously but on my return I immediately bought his album Long Distance Swimmer so I could listen to it on repeat whilst furiously knitting my brow and wringing my hands at the pointless absurdity of life, drinking whisky and smoking crack (er ok, whilst having a nice cup of tea).

What’s so great about the Three Craws, in addition to the silly banter and improvised nonsense, is their harmonies. Their voices complement each other so perfectly it was stunning to hear.

So, yes – I couldn’t resist making another wee video. I hope the Craws don’t mind me including some personal footage of my visit to Fife with clips from their performance – and I suppose this is a bit of a companion piece to my Homegame video seeing as I missed them at that. I have to admit, and this is coming from an avowed city lubber, I think I’m starting to fall in love with Fife a little bit. Hope you enjoy it.

Vimeo:

YouTube:

 At the beginning of the video James Yorkston is referring to a gift he was given of a crocheted tortoise, hare and fox – go the fence forums to get a closer look..

If you’re lucky enough to be heading to the Green Man festival this year in Wales, you’ll see the Three Craws there, along with various other Fence Collective peeps.

Also worth checking out are these live acoustic performances by King Creosote in Hyde Park for the website www.bandstandbusking.com especially if you want to find out what the actual words to ‘Rims’ are… hint: it’s not “let me remind you that you had a menu”

I have to admit I found the prospect of sitting down to a whole album of ‘proper folk’ rather off-putting, even though it was recorded by James Yorkston (who it is no secret I am a massive fan of).

You see, my old man is the folkie really and I consider myself more of an aficionado of modern/urban/anti-folk. And while I’ve enjoyed the traditional folk covers included on Yorkie’s last couple of releases, with his storming version of Lal Waterson’s Midnight Feast on ‘When the Haar Rolls in’ and an early version of Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk on his ‘Roaring the Gospel’ compilation, it was always within the context of his original songs.

Despite these songs origins, spanning the entire UK and Ireland, and the fact this was recorded with a different group of musicians, the distinctive Yorkston style remains (apart from the singular Spanish tune, a Galicia gypsy hoe-down which may well be my favourite track for its sheer novelty).

See, Yorkston embodies the characters in these songs as if they were his own; and he changes the melody when it suits him – and James Green and the accompanying musicians from the Big Eyes Family Players add their own influences, bringing Can and Johnny Cash inspired basslines to the mix, as well as a hypnotic combination of accordion and strings.

One thing this collection seems to bring to light is Yorkston’s apparent obsession with “a poacher’s life”, being a poacher, and generally hunting and/or poaching quite a bit – the tracks Hills of Greenmore, Thorneymoor Woods, and Rufford Park Poachers all feature such bloody activities heavily. Yep, he seems quite taken with that whole poaching thing. As a non-meat eater this was all a bit disturbing for me as I listened to it whilst drifting off to sleep at night, and I awoke with vivid pictures of dying, bloody animals in my mind. Not one to send Morrissey for Christmas, I suspect.

Of course this is a little unfair, as the first track, Hills of Greenmoor is on closer listening, from the point of view of both the hunters and the hunted – the kind of clever twist in perspective that still hasn’t permeated into mainstream songwriting and doubtless never will.

Truth be told, tracks like Little Musgrave which comes from way back in the 16th century, are quite amazing stories set to melody that would rival the best River City omnibus.  There’s a haunting quality about these dark, twisted tales that have been passed down the generations because they still ring true in quite a spooky way, like the best ghost stories round the campfire. So whilst not completely converted, I do think I will explore the world of trad folk a little more, and Yorkston’s own track-by-track liner notes are the best place to start for hints on where to look if you’re interested, with plenty of info of who have recorded these songs before such as the “bonny” Anne Briggs.

 First single Martinmas Time

 An insight into the recording of the bonus disc accompanying the album (which I haven’t heard yet!)

Sign up to the Domino Records mailing list to get the song I Went to Visit the Roses for free.

This month
James Yorkston releases ‘When The Haar Rolls In’, his follow-up to
2006′s sublime ‘The Year of the Leopard’. Whilst that album was
beautifully produced by Rustin Man, this time Yorkston has taken the
helm himself and the result is a rich and full sound – tempered, of
course, with his usual wry lyricism. His label Domino are also
releasing a limited edition box-set which will include loads of extra
goodies including an exclusive covers CD – and one lucky punter will
find a special ‘Golden Ticket’ which will entitle them to a James
Yorkston track written especially for them – and performed in their own
house (geography permitting). As gently spoken and beguiling in person
as he is on record, the most famous member of the Fence Collective chatted to me over the phone from his home in Anstruther, Fife, about the ever-present haar, being stalked by
nutcases and doing ‘a Willy Wonka’.

So is the title of the album an attempt to educate people outside of Scotland about the meaning of the word ‘haar’?

“It’s
funny you say that, because no one seemed to know what it was at all,
in fact they still don’t! The guy from Domino, when I first told him it
was going to be called ‘When the Haar rolls in’, he thought I said when
the hare rolls in, as in the rabbit-like creature, and I thought, well
if he was going to let me call it that, then it means that I’ve pretty
much got free reign to call it what I want!”

This time round you produced yourself – did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to do?

“For
both Just Beyond the River and ‘Leopard’ we’d had one problem or
another which meant that something hadn’t quite gone right, so it was
like an unfinished business thing. I’m 36 years old, and if you know
what it is you want to do there’s no need to have a producer there. 
And I thought I want to go in there and make it as beautiful as
possible, and that’s why it’s sounding really lush; there’s a lot of
different instruments there and it’s really varied, which is what I
like. With the last record I was quite aware I could have gone on to
make another dark acoustic record along the lines of Just Beyond the
River, but i wanted to do something different because I thought I’d end
up painting myself into a corner if I repeated that. so that’s why Year
of the Leopard’s got electronica on it and it’s got me singing falsetto
and stuff, I was trying to do something a wee bit different. So when I
got to this one, I don’t really think about whether I should or
shouldn’t do something anymore.”

Would you say Year of the Leopard was something of a breakthrough album for you?

Absolutely
- people talk about second album syndrome and I had it for Year of the
Leopard, I was really worried about it, but it was a record I just felt
that, well I’ve done this now, and now I can do anything. So it was a
breakthrough album, but in a way it was because i realised that
whatever I did the oceans were never going to boil, i was just going to
release another record. Magazines like Q and Mojo, they must review
over 100 albums every month, and they’re the lucky ones that get in the
magazines and get the publicity. So there must be a thousand albums
released a month at least. But ‘Leopard’ is a great record, I”m really
fond of it, and people call out for songs from that the whole time.”

On
the current album you do a very powerful cover of Lal Waterson’s Midnight Feast
- and you’re joined by Norma and Mike Waterson and others – how did
that come about?

Lal Waterson is one of
my favourite songwriters, she’s up in the top three or something. And I
got asked to be one of the musical directors for the BBC concert that
we did last year. Lal died ten years ago – so it was me and her son
Olly who did it, and we had loads of people such as Kathryn Williams,
Eliza Carthy, Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, so it was a big show. I
did two songs, that and ‘At First She Starts’ and I just thought it
sounded amazing – and I thought why don’t I chance my arm and ask them
to record it and they just said yes straight away.”

How did it feel to have all those great artists cover your songs for the bonus covers CD?

It
was mad because they all started arriving at much the same time, and
I’d just click on my inbox and pretty much everyone was saying “here’s
the song James, I don’t think I’ve done it very well, and you don’t
have to use it if you don’t want”. I listened to them and I just
thought they were brilliant, there’s some amazing versions on it. 
There’s quite a few them, like Adrian Crowley’s and Charlotte Greig’s
versions which I think are better than the originals. I was also
delighted when David Thomas Broughton said yes, he did a few different
versions of my songs and some of them were just crazy, but the version
of St. Patrick he’s done is one of my favourites.”

And you are also doing ‘a Willy Wonka’?

(Laughs).
Yes, that was Domino’s idea! They put a lot of money into my albums,
they give me money to go to the studio, they pay my musicians to
record, etc and they came up with this idea to promote the album and I
just thought well it’s the least I can do, so long as I’m lucky and
it’s not a nutcase!  Without going into details there have been a few
nutcases in the past, and you can print that. In fact, it got to 5 I
think, but they were different kinds of nutcases. I was going to say
it’s flattering, but it’s not, it’s just annoying!

Very important. Fence has been a real help quite a few
times in my musical career, one way or another. When I first started
out there would be gigs in St. Andrews and they released my first album
and individual tracks of mine on their samplers, and they were just
great fun to jam with and to play gigs with. And then, again, after
Moving Up Country, I kind of retired back to Fife, because it went down
really well and I ended up touring for ages and ages all around the
world, and I was exhausted, and when I came home Fence was a lovely
thing to come back to musically, because it was all very relaxed. And
now,  since I’ve just moved back to Fife, again it’s proving to be a
great thing, it’s really nice to be among people who can understand the
kind of irrational but crazy love that we have for music – they don’t
question, they just do it; they don’t say ‘shouldn’t you just get a job
in a bank?’

Finally, are you happy to be back in Fife?

Yes,
although Edinburgh’s a lovely city and I was extremely happy there,
when I moved out it was like a heavy weight had left my shoulders, it’s
a strange thing to understand, but living back here at the moment feels
100% right. The only thing I miss is that it takes me an extra 2 hours
to get down to London, and I have to go reasonably frequently so those
extra two hours are a pain in the arse.

You need a private helicopter!

Yes,
I need The Skinny to put me on the front, and give it your first ever 6
star review, and get all your punters to go out and buy it and a copy
for their mum and dads, then I’ll go and buy myself a helicopter!

When
the Haar Rolls In is out on 1st September 2008. You can hear songs from
it and the ltd edition covers album on this month’s I Hear a New World
podcast. James Yorkston plays the Fence Club on 17 September at The
Caves, Edinburgh.

1. James Yorkston – Queen of Spain www.jamesyorkston.co.uk
2. The Pictish Trail – I Don’t Know Where To Begin www.myspace.com/pictishtrail
3. Rozi Plain – The Lang Toun (James Yorkston cover)
4. David Thomas Broughton (James Yorkston cover)

See www.myspace.com/jamesyorkstoncoversalbum for more info.

See the September 2008 issue of The Skinny for my interviews with The Pictish Trail, King Creosote and James Yorkston of the Fence Collective. 

www.fencerecords.com

Published today by The Skinny

If you want an insight into James Yorkston’s new album The Year of the Leopard, it’s perhaps best to start with the title track. “The line ‘It won’t be so easy, this year of the leopard’ was partly inspired by a book called The Leopard by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa.” Yorkston explains. “The main character is a guy who’s struggling to come to terms with the world as it changes around him. Then in my home village Kingsbarns, in Fife, somebody let a puma loose which reminded me of the book as I thought the puma must be feeling out of place as well, and that also inspired the song”.

Perhaps intent on recording a soothing antidote to such displaced feelings, Yorkston teamed up with producer Paul Webb (aka Rustin Man) after hearing his acclaimed collaboration with Beth Gibbons, Out of Season.  “I really liked that record, it wasn’t too new and spangly and shiny, or too old fashioned, so it was just what I was looking to do really. We used old valve microphones and recorded everything onto tape – some of it was bounced back & forth about four times just to get that warm feel.”

It is an enchantingly warm and intimate record, but Yorkston says it is less autobiographical than 2004’s Just Beyond the River. “The last record was really personal, I wanted to make this one more abstract and take a step back from that. There’s a song on the last album called Hermitage which people used to call out for at gigs, but I couldn’t play it live because the lyrics are way too raw. If you’re trying to do that within a relationship you just end up digging deeper into the angst which is a pretty miserable thing to do – and it could get you into a lot of trouble!”

Despite this, Yorkston’s lyrics are no less insightful or resonant.  Summer Song deals poetically with long-term commitment whilst As I Awoke, which features Fence songstress HMS Ginafore, is a heartbreaking take on infidelity. Although Yorkston is signed to Domino Records his Fife connections mean, like Ginafore, he remains an integral part of the Fence Collective. “It’s just like asking my mates. I also had King Creosote and the Lone Pigeon on my first record- I’d be foolish not to.”

Which brings us to Yorkston’s backing band the Athletes who aren’t credited this time round, although Athletes Reuben and Doogie (who have both also been absorbed into the Fence family) do play on some of the tracks.  “We didn’t fall out, we’re still good friends. When we finished touring the last album I had two new songs and I didn’t feel I could ask the band to go and rehearse just those songs, it would have just made it awkward, so they got involved later on.  This one is definitely a James Yorkston album- all the arrangements are mine, I did most of the work!” And who could begrudge him that, given the beguiling result, which offers some peaceful respite from that ferocious animal, the modern world.

Published in the Skinny Magazine, 2006