I know it's February 2009 already, but this took me so long to write that I have only just finished it.

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Earlier in the year [2008] I made a post about my favourite songs of the year so far. Most of those songs were not actually released in 2008. It’s just that I first heard them in 2008. Therefore that post and also this post are fairly meaningless to anybody except me.

Overall I think that 2008 has been a record-breaking year for me discovering new music. It seems that I have nearly doubled the size of my library this year, although there are quite a few dud songs that I have collected, and many I have not yet listened to. In real terms I think that I have added about 25% to my library. I’ll have a look through my media player and see what new music I discovered each month of the year.

January

This seems so long ago now. I got Sonic Boom 6, Karine Polwart and Serj Tankian for Christmas last year. Sonic Boom 6 was considerably the best of those albums and showed a great degree of progression from their first and second albums. Arcade Perfect seems to have a classic song from every single genre of music on it. It’s deeply surprising that they are capable of making such good music at such young ages. They still have probably the best lyrical content I have heard from any band or musician as well. I believe that they are probably the most promising band of the future, anywhere in the world. I missed their last tour but they tour often, and I’m confident that they will make it in the world and achieve the success that so many of my favourite little bands have not managed.

Serj Tankian’s album took a while to grow on me, and is definitely inferior to any System Of A Down album. There really is a lack of Daron on it, and it seems that when Serj is on his own he resorts to some pretty absurd lyrics. I don’t usually care much for lyrics, but this is one of those albums where I think the artist thinks lyrics can make up for imperfect music.

I remember that in the run-up to Christmas I visited a record shop for the first time in quite a while. It was there that I bought compilation albums of Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and the Dubliners. The former two bands I already knew a fair amount about as I had listened to them throughout my life, although I had not heard most of their songs. These two CDs gave me the opportunity to re-discover some of their best material and hear some of the music they made from other periods in their careers. My parents only really listened to these bands between 1970 and 1980 so there is a large amount of later material I also needed to listen to. The Dubliners were almost new to me, having not heard any of their recordings for many years. A few of their songs came immediately back to me, like Rocky Road to Dublin and Seven Drunken Nights. Who could forget those? They are now one of my favourite bands, and this purchase inspired me to get back into Irish music. At the record store I saw other compilation albums by Dolly Parton and Joan Baez, both singers who I previously had heard very little of but who would be important members of my new-for-2008 library in later months.

Also during January I discovered the website http://www.pondlifestudios.com/ and downloaded all of the free mp3s I could find there. (You can also get all of Martha Tilston's RopeSwing album there for free. I strongly recommend you go there and get it as it is a lovely piece of work.) They have a wide range of small folk bands (although some don’t resemble folk that much) and I found some really good songs on there which could provide me with opportunities at a later date to find excellent music. Some of my favourite bands and music from the site were Hearth, Emily Barker, Sarah Curtis, PinknRuby and Mouse (Martha Tilston’s old band. She is how I found the website in the first place).

February and March

February and March were most notable for Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, two fairly different American folk singers. The only songs I had ever heard either of them sing were Big Yellow Taxi and Free Man in Paris. I think that Baez has a better voice than Mitchell, and she is still going strong too. I’ve heard Mitchell sing quite recently and she seems to have lost her fine voice, whereas Baez is almost identical to how she sang in her twenties. However, I feel that Mitchell often sings more beautifully and with greater feeling and emotion. I think that her album, Blue, is one of the best albums I have ever heard, just jam-packed with classics. My particular favourites are A Case Of You and California. My favourite Joan Baez song is by far Diamonds and Rust, which I have learned to play on guitar and might be my highest-played song of the year. I also realise that I prefer every single one of Bob Dylan’s songs when they are sung by Joan Baez, particularly Boots of Spanish Leather, which is a brilliant song when she sings it, and a boring monotonic sermon when Dylan sings it.

I also first heard of Kristin Hersh during February, an American new folk singer. I can’t say that she is that great, and I find a lot of her songs depressing and her voice sometimes gets a bit grating. Still, she is a worthy addition to my library. I also heard Foo Fighters latest album. It’s not quite as good as their previous albums, but they are certainly one of the best bands in the world nowadays, and I think they probably beat Nirvana on every criterion of quality now. Even Nirvana’s absolutely classic tracks like Lithium, Smells Like Teen Spirit and Rape Me are matched and bettered by songs like Everlong, My Hero and Best of You. Alanis Morissette’s live album, MTV Unplugged, was worth getting just for live versions of the songs from Jagged Little Pill, one of the greatest albums of all time. I think that Alanis is a brilliant songwriter and singer and continues to write good music, but could never hope to match Jagged Little Pill again. I think it is probably my second favourite ever album by a female vocalist, after Liege & Leif.

I should also mention again The Dubliners here. What’s strange about The Dubliners is that nowadays you can only really get their music by getting compilations, but at the same time they have many compilations which don’t usually overlap with any songs. I have no idea where these songs originally came out, or when. It’s impossible really for me to compare Dubliners songs with songs of most of my favourite musicians, simply because they are so different. These are the sorts of songs that you find it difficult not to sing along to, and they improve significantly when performed live, with the whole crowd singing and clapping along. Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew might be the best performers of Irish music of all time. When Ronnie died this year a whole era came to an end. I never really expected to attend one of his gigs anyway as he was already quite old, but I have enjoyed over the year watching videos of the Dubliners throughout their careers performing songs like Black Velvet Band, Whiskey In The Jar and Seven Drunken Nights. I think his death was the most significant to me of 2008.

April and May

I’m not sure how I first heard about Dropkick Murphys. They were definitely a band that I was faintly aware of, without hearing any of their songs. A few months before I had seen the film, The Departed, which featured the song, Shipping Up To Boston. I listened to all of the Dropkick Murphys albums simultaneously, but especially that one song, which is one of my favourites of the year. Dropkick Murphys represent a link between folk bands like the Dubliners, and the rock music I am more used to. Their versions of songs like Rocky Road to Dublin, Finnegans Wake and Lannigan’s Ball are exemplary, and Dropkicks are probably the most important modern band I have discovered this year. Hopefully I shall see them perform live one day.

Other notable new bands I heard in April and May include Rodrigo y Gabriela, Eva Cassidy and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Rodrigo y Gabriela are a two-piece band that don’t sing. I actually prefer them not to sing because their acoustic playing is so beautiful that it would be spoilt if anything were added to it. Their version of Stairway to Heaven is in the same league as the original. (I was tempted to say it was better!) I also heard Eva Cassidy during this month, who has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. I’ve realized recently that some singers have good, aesthetically pleasing voices and some singers have the ability to express intense meaning and beauty, but very few have both. Eva Cassidy is one of the few that has both in spades. I’m not sure if she is technically better than Sandy Denny, but I think she is a close second to her overall. Fields of Gold and Over The Rainbow are her best songs I think. If she could write as well as Sandy Denny then she would be a serious contender for my favourite musician of all time. I had already heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before several years ago, but didn’t bother to investigate them any further until now. I had previously considered their most famous song, Date With The Night, to be quite annoying when it first came out. Now it has grown on me quite severely, and their two albums are definitely highlights of my year. They have a youthful and exciting personality, and I always like a fast song, which most of theirs are. Prior to May I had only considered Maps, their slowest song, to be good, but now I rate songs like Phenomena and Pin higher. They’re definitely a band I look forward to hearing more from in the future.

June

This might have been my most active month, musically. I set myself the challenge of collecting all of the albums of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. I’m not sure if I managed that because I was overwhelemed with albums as they probably have about thirty in total. I haven’t listened to them all yet, and I suspect that each band has a few “dud” albums, but I was definitely surprised to find that they have good albums from both ends of their careers. I re-discovered many more Steeleye Span songs that I hadn’t heard in many years, like Rosebud in June, Saucy Sailor, Weary Cutters, Elfin, Demon Lover, Searching for Lambs and Betsy Bell and Mary Gray. To re-discover a song that you last heard when you were four or five years old is a truly brilliantly nostalgic experience. It’s like re-opening a door in your mind that has been shut for years and years that you didn’t ever notice has been shut at all. I told my father that I only recognized about half of the songs on one album, Tempted and Tried, that it appeared to have one half consisting of forgotten gems, and a second half that seemed plainly new to me. He replied that the effect was probably due to the fact that when he first got that album, he only liked the first half and I ended up only hearing the first half on it that he copied onto cassette tapes to play in the car on holidays. I was also delighted to hear more early songs that feature Sandy Denny, on albums like Unhalfbricking and What We Did On Our Holidays. Although neither is as good as Liege and Leif, one can still recognize that the combination of Nicol, Thompson and Denny makes an extremely talented band. Some say that Liege and Leif is so inexplicably good because of the very short-lived line-up that featured on the album, but the other alums that feature Thompson, Denny and Nicol are also very worth listening to. It turns out that Fairport Convention and then Steeleye Span are the two bands I have listened to the most this year, followed by Joan Baez, so these two months were surely the most influential of the year for me.

Two other musicians I listened to in June were Dolly Parton and Bob Marley. I don’t think I listened to a single song written in the last decade in June. Like Steeleye Span I had heard Bob Marley during my youth as we would sometimes listen to him in the car too, usually whenever my mother was not present. Dolly Parton however, besides the classic song, 9 to 5, was very new to me. A couple of years ago I heard Jolene on a jukebox in the pub and asked somebody who it was. Since then I’d had her in the back of my mind and finally decided to get more of her material. Jolene is still my favourite song of hers, but it’s closely followed by I Will Always Love You and Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That? Dolly Parton’s is not like any music I’ve ever listened to before, more resembling pop music than folk music. She does have an astounding, unique voice and enthusiasm, which are always a great combination. I much prefer her version of I Will Always Love You to Whitney Houston’s version. Houston might have a technically better voice, but there is no feeling behind it like there is with Dolly.

July

During this month I discovered two new ways of getting music. Firstly I found some software that lets you download music off Youtube, with the disadvantage that the recording is in mono. Secondly, a friend taught me how to use Google to find websites where people have uploaded mp3s. Suddenly a huge archive of potential music opened up, much quicker to download than using torrent software. I don’t even know if it’s illegal or not. (PM me if you want to know the method, or the website with 2000 classic tracks on it) Using this method I found a lot of recent pop songs and classic rock songs like The Beatles and Rolling Stones. Typically it’s much easier to find music from more famous bands as it’s more likely that somebody has uploaded them but you do occasionally find rarities as well. Using this method I searched for a few bands that I was moderately acquainted with in order to once again expand my musical horizons. I listened to albums by Kate Rusby, All About Eve, cKy and Pendulum. Of these I think that cKy have the best potential, and probably win the award for the band I discovered this year with the best average quality of track, as they have some real classics spread over several albums.

Two other significant events from this month included my first gig in a while, seeing Cerys Matthews at the Glee Club in Birmingham and my discovery of a talented singer-songwriter on YouTube. It had been nearly ten years since I had first and last seen Cerys, when she was singing with Catatonia. Since their break-up I had listened to her first album, Cock-A-Hoop, but not really liked it and considered the matter closed, especially as her voice had deteriated probably due to her drug and alcohol binges that saw her quit Catatonia. I also didn’t much like the country and western sound of her album. After seeing her in Birmingham I was glad to discover that she had gone down the path of more traditional British folk music, and was also playing some old Catatonia songs with a good band. Her voice was also better even than I remember it from the early days of Catatonia, so she has definitely re-emerged for me as a future talent. Secondly, while on YouTube I discovered an American girl singing covers of some songs and performing her own songs under the name, Ignore The Sun. I thought they were good enough to justify buying her album for $5 or so, which she was kind enough to post for free!

This was also the month that I returned home so I got the opportunity to listen to more of my parents’ music that I previously had not bothered with, like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, David Gray, Leonard Cohen and Donovan’s Sunshine Superman album. It was here that I realized that I much prefer Joan Baez to Bob Dylan. I also managed to convert the multi-album, The Clash on Broadway, which a friend had given me in a strange format, so I got to listen to it. It’s still one of those albums that I need to listen to again when I have the opportunity, but sounds promising.

August and September

This period was probably the slowest for me musically this year, as I spent most of my time writing my dissertation and exercising for a bet. In August, Brody Dalle’s new band, Spinnerette, finally released their first track and gave a preview on their website of their upcoming album, which sounds pretty good and I will look forward to in 2009.

For the second year in a row I went to the Moseley Folk Music Festival which is held over three days very near to me. Like last year I only went to one day, and this time it rained all day which was fairly unpleasant. Last year I saw Fairport Convention here which turned out to be my most-listened band of 2008, and I also first heard Martha Tilston, one of my favourite current singers. This year I saw John Tams playing and first heard Ruth Notman. I don’t think she’s quite as promising as Martha Tilston but she definitely has potential.

October

This was another reasonably slow month for me as I was out looking for a job for most of it. I decided to investigate the world of girl power and listened to the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud. I had been watching X Factor so was probably a bit more open to pop music than I usually am. I only listened to their best-of albums, and the Spice Girls one was reasonably enjoyable as they were the group that was most well-known about a year or two before I began to develop my own musical taste. I found a lot of Girls Aloud songs annoying. It seems to me that none of them have good singing voices but when they sing together they sound alright.

I happened to be watching late night TV this month and saw Jeff Beck playing with a band live at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. I had previously heard Jeff Beck on Jools Holland but only now did I begin to “get it”. He played alongside Eric Clapton for one song and I realized that I don’t much care for Clapton whereas I do for Beck. I suspect that Clapton is slightly technically better but his playing doesn’t sound as good. Jeff Beck seems to play exactly what you want him to play as you’re listening to the song, as if he’s reading your mind and translating your vague mental notes into real musical notes.

My third discovery this month was the Irish folk singer Noel Murphy. I had bought my father a best-of album of his for his birthday and listened to it myself and found it to be high quality stuff. He manages to combine comedy with sincere feeling on many of his songs, but unfortunately for me he has now stopped performing live.

November

This was the one month that I added more to my library than probably most of the rest of the year put together. I remember vividly that one day I had heard Smokey Robinson’s song, Tears of A Clown on the radio during the day. Thankfully we now have a digital radio as I wouldn’t have known who it was otherwise. I went online and used my Google-searching method to look for the mp3 of the song and to my delight found a website that purported to contain the 2000 best tracks prior to the year 2000. Apparently a Dutch radio station had played all of these songs in the run-up to the end of the millennium and somebody had uploaded every single one onto a website, which I had now found. A few of the tracks were rubbish Dutch and European ones, but at least 1500 of them make up the bulk of Western rock and pop music since the 1950’s. A lot of the songs were incorrectly labeled, which will take me a few hours of work at some point in 2009, as well as a lot of listening hours. There’s so many of them that I can imagine not having listened to them all into 2010.

Throughout the rest of November I listened to three of the most different female singers imaginable. I had heard Katy Perry’s song, I Kissed A girl, on the radio and quite liked it, so got her album, One Of The Boys. As far as I can tell it’s the best album of the year (i.e. one that was actually released this year), and really the only good new music I heard in 2008. Her voice isn’t fantastic, but she has a personality that only a very attractive girl could have (much like Sarah Silverman), that makes the album fun to listen to, with lots of killer riffs that sets Pop-Rock apart from Pop and rock.

I was reading the BBC news website one day and came across an article saying that a female Columbian singer had died recently, Yma Sumac. I am of the disposition that if I hear about a semi-famous female singer who I have never previously heard about, I usually research them to find out if they are any good. I got hold of her best-of album and listened to it and was taken aback. She has one of the strangest operatic voices I have ever heard, and is capable of singing very deeply and very highly. Sometimes she sings so high that she sounds like she’s whistling, like on the song Virgenes del Sol. It’s hard to describe her style but I could correctly call it “old-fashioned”, sounding like it came from the 1920’s but that is typical of underdeveloped countries like Columbia.

Thirdly I decided it was time to invest in some more albums by Eva Cassidy, Live at Blues Alley and Imagine, the former of which contains her cover of Sandy Denny’s most famous song, Who Knows Where The Time Goes? I definitely prefer Sandy’s version.

Also during November I saw Leonard Cohen at the Birmingham N.E.C, one of the best gigs I’ve ever witnessed, which is strange as his music really is not the sort of thing I usually listen to.

December

At some point at the start of this month I looked at my profile on http://www.Last.fm : a website that tracks what music you listen to on your computer, and checked out some of the recommendations of bands based on the bands I listen to. This is definitely a resource I plan on using more often as I can look at it and tell quite early on that some of the bands I would like. Two bands on my front page that I had never even heard of before were 7 Year Bitch and The Gits. Apparently they were both loosely connected to the Riot Girl movement in the early 90s in America. First I listened to an album by 7 Year Bitch and quite liked it. They reminded me a lot of Bitch Alert and Hole. One song stands out, M.I.A, about the singer of The Gits, Mia Zapata, who at the time of the recording had been recently murdered and nobody had been prosecuted and the case was thought to be closed. Later on somebody was caught and later given a life sentence. With this knowledge I began listening to The Gits and soon enough genuinely regretted the death of Mia, who is clearly a talented singer and songwriter. Three times this year I have discovered brilliant singers as a result of hearing about their deaths: Eva Cassidy, Yma Sumac and Mia Zapata. I suppose that’s part of life and I shouldn’t read much into it, but there’s definitely a different experience involved in listening to a singer who you know to be dead: that’s certainly the case with Eva Cassidy who became world-famous after her death was reported, and it’s eery listening to The Gits knowing that their effervescent, strong-voiced and feminist singer, Mia, was later raped and murdered in a random attack in the middle of the street.

Another discovery I made before Christmas was Sandy Denny’s album, Borrowed Thyme, a group of home recordings and demos that were never released on any album. In many cases the quality is quite bad on them, but they are so worth listening to because they are from the early portion of her career when her voice was at its peak. Sandy’s voice, at its peak, is the best voice that has ever been sung, as far as I know. Even if the songs are hard to hear, or inferior to songs that later were recorded, the passion with which they are sung is phenomenal and they are worth listening to just for that reason. I have lately come to realise that Sandy Denny is my favourite artist in any sense of the word. She has both the vision and ability to express any emotion. She is the David Lewis of art. This also brings me onto Fotheringay 2. I already made a post about a month ago about this album so I went say much about it here except that it was the musical highlight of the year. Just to hear newly-released material from Fotheringay is a bloody miracle. I wonder if they actually hold the record for longest length of time between album releases with 34 years.

The final CD I listened to before the end of the year was Martha Tilston’s latest album, Of Milkmaids and Architects. it had actually been out for about a year before I got hold of it, but last year was a busy musical year for me and I only just managed to get hold of it. She is probably the best folk musician I know of who is currently writing music, followed by Karine Polwart. There’s something about her that is very spiritual (I never use that word). She has music in her blood, as her father is quite a famous folk singer too. You get the impression from listening to her that she would be writing and singing professionally even if she was deeply unpopular. The thing is I actually don’t rate her voice that highly. In terms of pure vocal ability she pails in comparison to the Dennys, Corrs and Baezes of this world. Her voice breaks on nearly every line. In that sense she’s very much like Janis Joplin. She’s not just using her voice to express deep beauty but breaking through her parameters and explicitly demonstrating what she wishes to convey. She isn’t at all limited by her voice which makes her one of my favourite modern singers.

I think if I were to rate my favourite albums of this year (i.e. non-compilations) they would be:

1. Sonic Boom 6- Arcade Perfect
2. Joni Mitchell- Blue
3. Eva Cassidy- Songbird
4. Fotheringay 2
5. Martha Tilston- Of Milkmaids and Architects
6. cKy- Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever To Tell
8. Dropkick Murphys- The Meanest Of Times
9. Katy Perry- One Of The Boys.
10. 7 Year Bitch- Viva Zapata!

Apparently the bands and musicians I have listened to most in 2008 are the following:

1. Fairport Convention
2. Steeleye Span
3. Joan Baez
4. R.E.M.
5. Dropkick Murphys
6. Sandy Denny
7. The Dubliners
8. Green Day
9. Donovan
10. Karine Polwart
11. Joni Mitchell
12. System of A Down
13. The Gits
14. Manic Street Preachers
15. Hundred Reasons
16. Catatonia
17. Foo Fighters
18. Bitch Alert
19. Kristin Hersh
20. Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Before I conclude this piece I have to say a farewell to several people and bands in 2008. Firstly, Hell Is For Heroes split up. I saw their last British gig in December. I have to say it wasn’t that good. The fans didn’t really get into it until the last song when they realised that if there was a time to mosh it was now. HIFH should be noted for their truly incredible first album, The Neon Handshake, and their absolutely electrifying live shows when they were touring it. So their latest album and their final tour was definitely a massive upset. I will miss them, but I think they may have always been destined to bring out one breath-taking album and fade away thereafter.

In other news, I think that Bitch Alert broke up. I can’t say for sure but they haven’t toured, even in Finland, for about 18 months now and their website has become idle. They might be back but I doubt it, because they have always been a small band and they just can’t survive out there. They are probably the most consistent band I have ever known; the only band with three albums in my all time top 20.

2008 saw the deaths of Ronnie Drew and Yma Sumac. The second one is a bit bittersweet for me because had I not heard of her death I wouldn’t have heard of her anyway. Ronnie Drew lived a long life, entertained many, many people and will be remembered as a folk hero.

So what does 2009 have in store? Well I currently have a re-mix album of SB6’s Arcade Perfect which I haven’t listened to yet. Some people would be cynical of a band that releases its album twice with the songs re-mixed, but I know for a fact that they wouldn’t have released it unless it was brilliant, and I’m saving it for some point in 2009. They’re also the sort of band that could have a new album before the end of 2009.

At some point this year I’m expecting Courtney Love’s new album to come out. I quite liked her first and all of her Hole material, but I don’t know what to expect from this one. As far as I know she’s gone quite acoustic so it might have potential. Some of her other acoustic songs are brilliant but I think she does work better thrashing around and screaming, so we’ll have to see.

I’m also expecting Melissa Auf der Maur’s new album this year which has been about 6 years since the last one. I have no idea what to expect from it. Spinnerette, Brody Dalle’s new band, are also releasing an album this year. I heard a short clip of all the tracks on the album and it sounds good, although it’s hard to tell when you hear about ten songs in one minute.

There’s a possibility that My Vitriol will release their second album this year. It’s been nearly ten years since their first album so we’ve been waiting a long, long time for it. Their first album is one of my favourites of all time so I just don’t expect them to match it at all. I could be pleasantly surprised though.

I’m not sure who else will have records out this year. Hundred Reasons? No Doubt? Green Day, possibly? Karine Polwart might. If 2009 is anything like 2008 then in a year’s time I’ll be writing a review of the music of 2009 without any of these names in it but with a lot of names of people I currently have never even heard of. That’s why life is worth living. :)