ALBUMS
6. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Second albums are dangerous territory. You can be like The Long Blondes and wait a while to make a total disappointment of a record - or in the case of this band, you can give it 8 months before releasing your second LP. Yeah, that's what Los Campesinos! did with WAB,WAD in October - very much the Sunday morning to the wild Saturday night of Hold On Now, Youngster. It kicks off with "Ways To Make It Through The Wall" which links beautifully into "Miserabilia" - the middle of the album is much calmer and arguably maturer than that of their debutbefore rounding out the album with the brilliant "All Your Keyfabe Friends". Still the perfect match between pretentious and pop.
AND BEST PACKAGING EVAAA
SONGS
12. Elbow - Grounds for Divorce
"I'VE BEEN WORKING ON A COCKTAIL CALLED GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE ... WHOA-AAh-OOH-OO ..." yeah you get the picture. Mercury Prize winners Elbow served this up, the leading single from their Seldom Seen Kid LP. Admittedly found through Desperate Housewives adverts on e4, it's the middle chorusy bit that makes it for me - a castle-stormer of a riff. It's got soul.
11. Estelle featuring Kanye West - American Boy
IF YOU JUDGE ME FOR THIS I'LL BREAK YOU. Because didn't this song break its way into the heads of everyone in Britain this Easter? It reminds me of the way in which I completely fell in love with "One Thing" by Amerie. A really awesome r'n'b song hidden in the middle of all the awful stuff that genre seems to have produced - it's so perfectly simple and so infectious, you just can't get bored with it. Despite the fact that Estelle appears to have given up on the hip hop style she began with, she's certainly had more success with this - one of the most iconic songs of the year.
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