Albums of The Year, post 1

One of the things I'm most looking forward to about this Christmas holiday is the chance to listen to some of the music from this year that I've not yet managed to hear, taking various 'albums of the year' lists as my guide.

So this morning I woke up, had a piss, went back to bed, opened up Spotify on my laptop and then reached for my copy of the new RockARolla, very kindly donated by my girlfriend, who just gave me a subscription for Christmas. Lovely stuff.

I won't list the mag's top 10 here yet, but for now will start by saying that two of the top 5 aren't on Spotify, so I will have to find some other way of sampling those. Of the three that are, I already own Neurosis' Honor Found in Decay, and have blogged about Neurosis recently.

Which leaves me with Baroness's Yellow and Green and Goat's World Music. And both start very promisingly musically but are then, for me, quickly ruined by their respective singing. Baroness musically are more like what I would be inclined to listen to often than Goat, although Goat perhaps have the edge in terms of novel interest for the same reason. In fact I found the Baroness pretty exciting for a couple of minutes, but then? Harmonies, and bad, bad lyrics... No.

And then when I stick on the Goat and it's again the singing that turns me off, more because of irritating repetition this time, I start to wonder whether there might be something wrong with me. Am I that misanthropic that while I can enjoy instrumentation, so direct a reminder of other people as the human voice is too much to bear?

But then I remember that the Neurosis album has lyrics too, if not exactly singing, as does plenty of other stuff I like. So no, it's just that I don't like Goat and Baroness. Phew.

Bonus PS
Spotify also doesn't host another of RockARolla's top ten, which I decided to check out after the disappointments above - Amenra's Mass V - however, it does have 2011's Mass IIII (not IV apparently), which I am listening to as I type, and this band, happily, could well be a grower.

Til later...