Deck of C(ar)Ds

Last year I once again stuck to my ‘One-CD-a-Week’ campaign, regularly buying one album of (new) music each week of the year. This is my third year of doing this, and although I have picked up 52 new albums (actually, a little more as I didn’t count the handful (armful?) of CDs I picked up in second hand record stores), this year I seem to have purchased less ‘new’ (2014) releases – only 34 of the 52 were ‘new’ this year, although mitigating this, a further 5 were old albums that were reissued in 2014. It’s been noted elsewhere that the reissue market seems to be growing as my generation’s nostalgic yearnings and disposable income both rise, so maybe this isn’t such a surprise. On this point, though, it’s interesting to note that whereas 20-year reissues used to be the norm (see Ride, below), the bar now seems to be set at 10 years (see Interpol), which is really stretching it a bit – doesn’t a car have to be 20 years old to be deemed a ‘classic’?

Highlights of the year? AOTY hands down has to be Lost in the Dream by The War On Drugs (coincidentally the only band I managed to see live this year. Other than that, the albums I’ve probably been listening to more than any others are the solid They Want My Soul by Spoon, and then Turning Blue by The Black Keys, and Ultraviolence by Lana Del Rey – the latter two sharing some common DNA (Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys produced Lana Del Rey’s album, and his guitar is all over it). Coincidentally, these four are probably the most mainstream of my purchases this year, so maybe I’m finally (and undeliberately/reluctantly) slowing down…

On the flipside (see, people who don’t remember vinyl just don’t appreciate that term…), there have also been a few albums that I really should have taken everyone’s advice and just downloaded the one good track they played on the ‘wireless’. Too True by Dum Dum Girls was certainly one of those – Lost Boys and Girls Club was pretty decent, but the rest of the album just sounds like Heart – and ’90s Heart at that. The Broken Bells album was the same – Holding Onto Life was curiously outstanding, but the rest of the album just lacked the same emotional intensity. Still, two turkeys out of a batch of 52 isn’t too bad. And if I hadn’t insisted on buying the whole CD, I would have missed some album-only gems from Desert Noises, Francisco The Man, and even Alt-J, whose best stuff is certainly not the ‘singles’…

So this year (2015) I’m going to continue buying one CD a week. I say ‘CD’, but I know that won’t always be the case, as the new Decemberists album is being released on vinyl and/or download only, and I’m sure there will be others that that will only be available as a download. This year the Dead Heart Bloom EP was the only ‘album’ that I downloaded and don’t have the physical CD for, but I think the majority of them were purchased from Amazon with their wonderful Autorip feature, so the CDs themselves are just piled up, still shrinkwrapped. And I’m still going to pay for music. Despite Spotify, Pandora, and a whole raft of filesharing sites, I still like to put my money where my ears are, and support the artists I believe in. Apart from Dum Dum Girls – you people owe me $11.00 ($11.99 for the CD minus the 99c I’d actually pay for an MP3 of Lost Boys and Girls Club)…

Those CDs in full:

1. Throwing Muses – Purgatory/Paradise (2013)
2. Pale Saints – The Comforts of Madness (1990)
3. Lush – Spooky (1992)
4. Warpaint – Warpaint (2014)
5. Dead Heart Bloom – So It Goes (2014)
6. Broken Bells – After The Disco (2014)
7. Dum Dum Girls – Too True (2014)
8. Courtney Barnett – Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (2013)
9. Phantogram – Voices (2014)
10. Morrissey – Your Arsenal (1992/2014)
11. I break Horses – Chiaroscuro (2014)
12. Nothing – Guilty of Everything (2014)
13. The War On Drugs – Lost In The Dream
14. We Were Promised Jetpacks – E: Rey (Live in Philadelphia) (2014)
15. Black Books – Black Books (2014)
16. Yellow Ostrich – Cosmos (2014)
17. Elbow – The Take Off And Landing of Everything (2014)
18. Adorable – Footnotes (2008)
19. Afghan Whigs – Do To The Beast (2014)
20. Colourmusic – May You Marry Rich (2014)
21. Spirits and the Melchizedek Children – So Happy, It’s Sad (2014)
22. Iska Dhaaf – Even The Sun Will Burn (2014)
23. The Orwells – Disgraceland (2014)
24. The Black keys – Turn Blue (2014)
25. Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence (2014)
26. Various – NME CD86 (1986/2014)
27. Grace Jones – Nightclubbing (1981/2014)
28. Slint – Spiderland (1990/2014)
29. Morrissey – World Peace is None of Your Business (2014)
30. Ride – Going Blank Again (Reissue) (1992/2012)
31. Ride – Nowhere (Reissue) (1990/2011)
32. M83 – Saturdays = Youth (2008)
33. Sun Kil Moon – Benji (2014)
34. Blonde Redhead – 23 (2007)
35. Desert Noises – 27 Ways (2014)
36. British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall (2011)
37. Slowdive – Just For A Day (2005)
38. Cheatahs – Cheatahs (2014)
39. Ty Segall – Manipulator (2014)
40. Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights (2004/2014)
41. Spoon – They Want My Soul (2014)
42. M83 – Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2014)
43. The Warlocks – Heavy Deavy Skull Lover (2007)
44. Thurston Moore – The Best Day (2014)
45. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead – The Tao Of The Dead (2011)
46. The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave (2014)
47. Bob Dylan – The Basement Tapes Complete (1967/2014)
48. Hookworms – The Hum (2014)
49. Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animal (2014)
50. Glass Animals – Zaba (2014)
51. Francisco The Man – Loose Ends (2014)
52. Alt-J – This Is All Yours (2014)