Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

Due to social engagements I rather left you all hanging, and so in an effort to keep the content rolling over I'm going to publish the next three entrant in the list year before uploading the top two, so you'll have to wait a little longer to find out who the winner is, but for now let's dive into the top five.

The cult of personality can get you along way in this world, where the celebrity obsessed culture has evolved to a perverse extent. Lily Allen has become this world and this scene's reluctant hero. While she may not want this mantle across two albums and over five years Lily has ascended the pop mountain and become the UK's most sought after celebrity. Surprisingly in a culture that has fixated itself upon the surreal, creating a do anything to get famous culture, Lily's rise can be attributed to two factors; honesty and abundance of genuine song writing talent. While It's Not Me It's You may arguably be the weakest start to finish album on this countdown, it is easily the most personal and the most affecting. The power in It's Not Me It's You lies in it's earthy honesty, this is an album without pretence, it's an album that for better or worse, plays like a stream of consciousness, the unravelling of an inner neurosis, a series of intimate confessions line up one after another. Therein lies Lily Allen's secret, while their are many layers to her artistry, at it's core her music is both completely remarkable and unremarkable, at the same time. It's Not Me It's You captures a moment in time in a person's life, someone's thoughts, someone's fears, someone's relationships, heartaches and occasional political musings. Lily puts forward her own internal dialogue it's personal and unique and yet simultaneously the neurosis of your average 22 year old girl (and bloke for that matter), this may seem totally unremarkable, but the level of openness, introspection and honesty is rarely heard in hushed conversations between best friends let alone on record for millions to hear. As a result Lily let people in, and they took her to heart, and as Lily found out she unwittingly made herself public property.

Now musically It's Not Me It's You's central weapon was juxtaposition, tracks like 22 saw Lily contrasting sweetie pie musical theatre flourishes with stark fears of a twenty something in London, worrying about finding love and finding direction before the prime time of her life passes her by. Never Gonna Happen and the brilliant Not Fair saw Lily in scathing form, unashamedly showing off her own cruelty as she couldn't forgive the guy of her dreams for being shit in bed, it was far removed from the sanctified balladry of Beyonce, this was real, this was honest, this was the type of girl both men and women could identify with, the genuine article, warts and all. As a result tracks that knowingly portray Allen as the villain only served to make her a hero, as these were the same moral contradictions that defined all our lives. The Fear the album's runaway number one single, remains an incredible and terrifying work. The line "I want loads of clothes and fuck loads of diamonds, I hear people die while they're trying to find them" remains eye opening, while it can be read on the one level as a simple joke about people's disposable morality it goes further, it's truthful, The Fear see's Lily admitting she doesn't know "what's right anymore". In one fail swoop Lily has defined the confused apathetic amorality that has dominated twenty first century western culture, while Lily extols societies ills she's also the first to admit that she's no better; she worries about the state of the world but really she's most concerned about making sure that she's "getting thinner". It's at this point you realize that It's Not Me It's You is not a witty jaunt played for laughs penned by a talented song writer, it's in fact someone's own deep introspection laid out in front of you, for the world to see. Of course the world saw themselves in Lily as she battled with the same fears, desires and hypocritical moral dilemmas we all have to face. In doing so Lily created the years most touching album and became a national treasure in the process. It's Not Me It's You was less an album, and more a window into a nations collective consciousness at a crucial and distinct moment in all our lives.

(Warner Bros. 2009, The Flaming Lips)

I have mixed feelings about this album, I adored it, I love it to bits, and I shall shortly shower an unending stream of praise upon it, but, on more than one occasion it has made me look very foolish. I'm not ashamed to admit it that every single time I listen to The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine when a little electronic burble of interference causes the beat to skip I end up reaching for my phone. Yes, the Flaming Lips actually incorporated the interference noise that occurs when you receive a text message next to an amp or set of speakers into a track, and yes each and every time I fall for it. In many ways this one cruel joke defines Embryonic and everything that makes the Lips great, in the middle of a beautiful piece of instrumentation they remain unafraid to throw in a self serving joke, and ask yourself this who other than the Flaming Lips would use a textual interference noise in a piece of such beauty? Embryonic then feels more like a celebration than a conventional album, in this one double album The Flaming Lips cram in all the off the wall experimentation, all the crunching grooves, all the huge riffage, all the silly jokes, all the drugs, all the sci, all of well...everything that has made the Flaming Lips who they are today. Embryonic may not be able to capture the magic in the bottle that made Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pop masterpieces, it instead sees the Lips create the album they've always threaten to make, a huge sci-fi psychedelic epic of limitless boundaries and endless creativity.

Perhaps Embryonic's greatest triumph is it's ability to bring such scope and wild creative together into one coherent package across a double album. There is a genuine flow to this album, it fits together in a remarkable organic nature and the first half of the LP flows like a dream, as moods blend together and elide to create a gorgeous whole. There is no doubt that tracks like If and Evil taken in isolation seem incomprehensible but taken as a part of the bombastic journey from superb Convinced Of The Hex to the eerie emptiness of Gemini Syringes they feel utterly essential. This is without doubt a bold statement in 2009, we've had plenty of talk of the album dying as an artistic medium, and to an extent it's true, but this has not stopped The Lips crafting a knowingly expansive and independent work. Even stand out single the endlessly vibrant Silver Trembling Hands is part of a musical journey and feels hollow taken out of it's intended context. The empty space on this album is also thrilling, their are long periods of intense instrumentation, where grooves are allow to build or fade away as they see fit, the result are tracks like The Ego's Last Stand that could never be released as singles but stands as true epic master-work, of atmosphere and mood. As a result the Lips have created if not their best album to date, their most definitive, an album that encapsulates the spirit, ambition and desire of one of alternative musics true trailblazers. This is their magnus opus, for once a double album in the spirit of The White Album that benefits from it's own indulgence that would only lose it's charm were it touched by the editors pen.

In pop music every so often a band will come around with a track so staggering, so beautiful and so powerful that it stops you dead in you're tracks. It may not quite be a JFK moment, you may not remember where you were when you first heard it, but when you first hear the gorgeous Two Months it will without doubt leave a timeless mark upon you. In a year where pop music started out on the right footing with Lily Allen, La Roux, Natasha Kahn and Florence Welsh striding into the pop charts only to be replaced by the old stalwarts of conservatism Simon Cowell and the X Factor, it was in fact and an album on the fringe, never meant for the mainstream that would produce pop's most beautiful and defining moment. Away from the wars between Joe McEverly and Rage Against The Machine, it was the outsiders not the insiders who were making the year's most infectious pop music. Grizzly Bear and Veckatimest captured the spirit of the 21st Century by making music whose beauty is matched only by it's creativity and intricacy, this album never courted the mainstream, yet it flourished and in Two Months and While You Wait For The Others created two most beautiful pop songs imaginable. It followed in the newly created tradition of Fleet Foxes in creating an album unashamed of it's own folk and baroque pop sentiments and yet channelled these influences into ethereal gorgeous pop music that is simply too infectious and too heart warming to be labelled alternative and is too successful to be considered underground or arty.

What is truly staggering about Veckatimest is it's internal contradiction, across the album we are treated to these lush richly arranged track like Fine For Now or Southern Point, where the arrangements are so vibrant so crammed full of flourishes, sweeps and crescendos that it almost feels over produced or burdened yet at the tracks core are these simple beautiful melodies and multi-part harmonies that even on first listen are so striking and immediate that they reach in and pluck (or should that be coo?) at your heart strings. It's amazing that these two factors manage to balance at all, their is so much going on, each arrangement is crammed full of buzzing, wurring, cooing and pulsating drums that you should be constantly distracted and overwhelmed, and yet you're not, you're attention is never drawn from the powerhouse vocal performances. Of course all this discussion of music seems fruitless, this truly is an album to be experienced, describing Foreground will never do justice to a track so richly textured, beautifully sung or cleverly arranged. While at times Veckatimest can feel laboured it never ceases to astound, and it's most astounding feat is it's accessibility, this is an album that's open to everyone, it has all the hallmarks of the avante guard but it's simply too infectious, too hummable and too inescapable, it hooks you on the first listen, it's harmonies are too well pitched to be resisted, it's music is too inspiring and too captivating, ultimately Veckatimest is just too damn good to be denied.