UNTIL NEXT YEAR?

Hello reader!

! ! We hope this zine reaches you safely and with minimal damage to it’s precious pages. If there’s any dog-earring occured, you have only Her Majesty’s post officers to complain to.! It’s been a marvellous twelve months in the domain of pop music, with exciting new material surfacing from artists previously unknown complimenting the magnificent output birthed unto the world by artists established. We’ve had ginger girl band members going solo and putting out albums of decent material (Schizophonic they were not); a rotund chavette dominating charts across the planet with her tales of heartbreak and rolling around in cavernous underwater seabeds; and not to mention a cacophony of females, both solo and groups, edging out those boring men in the world’s collective musical consciousness. As a blog which often unfairly discriminates against men and openly only cares about women, well, that’s just fabulous.! We mightily enjoyed putting together our first zine a year ago, and while life engagements of a higher priority have occasionally stepped in the way of regular updating, the blog still remains one of our greatest passions. We love listening to music but we might love writing about it just a tad more. Have an absolutely fantastic 2012 queens.!! Editors of Shiny & New

ARTIST OF THE YEAR

NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

SINGLES OF THE YEAR

MUSIC VIDEOS OF THE YEAR

PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR

POP OPUS: A POEM

Kate Bush famously disappeared for 12 years between the underrated early 90s masterpiece, The Red Shoes and 2005’s double disc tour de force, Aerial. We weren’t sentient for most of that time (we were alive, just not mature or worldly enough yet) so we have to imagine what it would be like to be a Kate Bush fan during that time. Was it maddening? Frustrating? Probably. Would we have thought it impossible to ever get a new record from her ever again? Possibly. Would we have kept a candle burning for Kate, holding out hope, desperately, fervently wishing on a magic star for a comeback? It’s not out of the question.! What we defini te ly d idn ’ t foresee, however, was the happy circumstance of only having to wait 6 more years for the next release, and then getting TWO albums in one year. ! The first album, Director’s Cut, was an unexpected but welcomed reworking of selected tracks from Bush’s last two albums before her Big Hiatus (The Sensual World and The Red Shoes). The idea was interesting – Kate hasn’t toured since 1979, so we haven’t gotten to hear her rework her own songs to fit her changing style over the years – but it failed to ignite the full interest and enthusiasm of this ‘ere writer: not because I didn’t want the project, but because I wanted brand new material more. Kate releases fresh songs so rarely these days, and only twice (although at the time, once) during my awareness as a music fan, so my

outdone by my appetite for new material to sink my teeth into.! But much like Bush herself, who described in a radio interview to promote the project, how she took so long to complete the project because it took her a long time to find a way into a lot of the tracks, I found it difficult to find a way into this album. At first I was bemused: what was the point? On first listen, a lot of the changes seemed to have been miniscule and trivial, and if they were drastic, such as in “Rubberband Girl”, they were disastrously miscalculated. But I was being unfair, and I hadn’t given the album it’s full dues. For t h e record, as you may have noticed, this blog and zine is almost always written in the 1st person plural, as it is published anonymously, with no denotation of who writes what posts; but I have broken with that rule here simply because the two main writers (myse l f and ou r o the r m y s t e r i o u s fel lowe) disagreed so strongly on Director’s Cut at first. Whilst I struggled to understand the point or

enjoy the project, my compatriot dove in immediately and reaped great pleasure from repeated plays. I must say that this frustrated me. I wanted to enjoy the album too, but as previously mentioned, like Ms. Bush, I just couldn’t find a way in.! Then, recently, it hit me. I had been listening, trying to work out what purpose these reworked tracks served, when it struck me that I had already been given a brilliant idea. Now, when I listen, I really do imagine Kate performing these songs live, as if she’s embarked on a tour, playing a packed-out Royal Albert Hall. She starts tinkling away at an electric piano, the audience wait with baited breath. No one i s s u r e what

the song is. Whatever the track, we haven’t heard it this way before. Then in come the vocals and everyone swoons in unison. Woops and cheers are heard. Someone screams “I LOVE YOU KATE BUSH”. Tears are shed. Hands are held. It’s “This Woman’s Wo r k ” . K a t e ’s v o i c e i s majestic, deeper, rougher, wiser, warmer. What a joy to here this tender interpretation especially considering even non-fans have heard the or ig inal p layed into the g r o u n d . K a t e h a s reinterpreted a masterpiece and it’s a joy to hear.! That’s how I started to enjoy the complex, difficult and sprawling Director’s Cut album: with imagination. Lord knows I’d almost forgotten how to use it. Once that started, I could barely contain mysel f . Kate a lso sa id, recently, in a radio interview with Jamie Cullum, how Director’s Cut had in many ways been a personal album, as it addressed a lot of issues she had had with the original recordings – it was something she “had to get out of the way ” be fo re she cou ld concentrate on her wintery album. That may be the case. Kate may have been being selfish (and extraordinarily and refreshingly honest when admitting it) but that didn’t mean that I – that we – couldn’t get something great out of it. “Never Be Mine” m e a n d e r s , s t r e t c h i n g languorously, content that it can unfold brilliantly without h a v i n g t o i m m e d i a t e l y

ensnare an audience, they are already listening intently, hanging on Kate’s every word. “The Red Shoes” finds a really satisfying groove that the frenzied original never finds the time to locate, featuring, in the process, Kate, hilariously, exclaiming “woop woop!” (yes, really). On “Moments of Pleasure” which has been given a stunning, pared down makeover, Kate finds emotional resonance in corners of the song that previously melted along into the rest of the piece. The humming melody that enters part way through cuts us in two with its beauty. ! All in all, it’s a mostly hit, tiny bit miss, fascinating side project from one of our all time favourite artists. Of course, ordinarily, this would warrant little more than a mention, but this is Queen Kate, mother of all music and celestial goddess who only releases new material once every fuchsia moon these days, so it deserves a lot of attention. ! Now, onto the new stuff. 50 Words for Snow arrived stealthily at the tail end of 2011 with little of the fanfare one might have expected from a new Ms. B u s h o p u s . P e r h a p s Director’s Cut stole some of its thunder? Perhaps people viewed it as another ‘side project’, being Christmassy in nature? Perhaps its short length and lack of hit lead single prevented it from finding as wide an audience as one might have hoped?

Perhaps it did find a wide audience but people are less hysterical about hermit KT emerging from her wild mansion to grace us with tunes. Who knows. But it felt like, if it was a snow storm, it was a silent one in the night, not a dramatic daytime flurry. ! Of course, this being Bush, this was no ordinary ‘seasonal’ album. Comprised of seven tracks, the shortest of which clocks in at just under seven minutes, this was never going to be an easy listen, either. On Aerial, Kate sang the number π to its 137th decimal place and on “Mrs. Bartolozzi”, she made doing a load in the washing machine sound both achingly sad and tinglingly erotic at the s a m e t i m e . S o w e w e r e expecting something cracking and odd. ! Cracking we got, and odd we got too, so the Godesses were clearly listening. The most talked about elements of 50 words for Snow are undoubtedly the eyebrow-raising having-sex-with-a-snowman epic “Misty” and the title track, which hears Stephen Fry read out 50 made-up words for snow as our p r o t a g o n i s t s h o u t s encouragement. As excellent and blindingly original touches as those are, they are just the tip of the figurative snowy-capped iceberg. Each song may have an intriguing gimmick or premise, but they are so well-constructed and deep, you could get lost in the songs for years. ! The aforement ioned “Misty” slowly whips itself up into a frenzy as it gets more and more hot around the collar, the

s i ng le , doub le and t r i p l e entendre lyrics culminating in Kate singing “I’m coming out on the ledge”. If you read that literally, without a dirty mind, you clearly don’t know the imitable Kate Bush. It’s a preposterous concept for a song, but it works so well, it’s wrought from such genius. It’s almost impossible to describe. ! Closer “Among Angels” i s p e r h a p s t h e m o s t straightforward and therefore tearworthy track: it features only K a t e , a p i a n o a n d s o m e (synthesized?) strings, a few drops of glockenspiel. I t ’s magical, not in the sense of the word often applied to half-decent children’s films, but in the true sense of the word. With a limited and obvious palette, our intrepid heroine paints such a stunning picture of wintry sadness and heart-swells that you wonder why anyone else would ever bother to tackle anything even vaguely approaching the subject. ! Twangy harpsichord-heavy “Wild Man” is so sonically odd and arranged in such an unconventional way, with wilfully repetitive verses seeming to lead nowhere before exploding into a chorus rife with shouting (that seems to come from a different song, but make sense as part of this one) that we weren’t even sure if we liked it on first listen. But of course we did. It creeped into our bones like the icy winters we’ve been having recently and roared like a big, deathly quiet, vicious blizzard. ! “ S n o w fl a k e ” , w h i c h describes the birth of a… well… snowflake, featuring howling acquired-taste choirboy vocals

Every now and then, Mother Pop Culture will gift the mere mortals of this planet with a unique and rare treasure; a crimson-maned alabaster-skinned siren with vocals which slide along the scale as if they’re dripping in Crisco and a group of wildly talented and eternally generous producers behind them providing electronic musical landscapes to do justice to their oral offerings. In 2006, Siobhan Donaghy shrug off the remaining girl band stains and produced an album so exquisite in execution it became part of pop music lore - how could a teenage Sugababe disappear into the ether before returning with a record so varied, sumptuous and unique? Not only that , but how could it be such a spectacular flop? As in, only ever discussed o n f a n b o y forums as the a r t i s t i s n o w w o r k i n g a s a secretary at a PR firm. As in, wow. In 2011, we, the listening public, were given a s e c o n d c h a n c e . A chance to prove we could appreciate fantastic pop

music at its best, performed by a genuinely different star who could bring something new to the bland, monotonous and brain-cell-destroying chart as it stands now, infested with Guet tamon ia and rav ished by RedOnegitis. It seems we fucked up again. ! As inappropriate as it may be to begin our New Artist of the Year piece on a downer, it’s a fact that will dominate the rest of the article and unfortunately one we cannot ignore. Nicola Roberts, flame-haired goddess and a fifth of the UK’s finest pop group in over a decade entered the studio

earlier this year with Placebo producer Dimitri Tikovoi and a who’s who

of some of the most desired names in

electronica and p o p m u s i c r i g h t n o w ; Metronomy,

Dragonette and Diplo. Already this was enough to set gay boys off around t h e w o r l d ; t h e

alternative Cheryl Cole was working with the

alternative will.i.am. June arrived along with “Beat of My Drum” - a joyous three minute jam wi th the

with the alternative will.i.am. June arrived along with “Beat of My Drum” - a joyous three minute jam

with the hipster appeal of M.I.A. processed through an almost bubble gum level of frenzy, quite literally the anti-“Fight for This Love”. The album, Cinderella’s Eyes, followed a similar path of “this is quite literally the best thing we

have ever heard from a girl band member” - you know that feeling when you imagine your prayers to the gods of music have actually been answered, and all those hours spent fantasising about what you w o u l d d o w i t h a m o u l d a b l e , impressionable popstar weren’t wasted?! Unfortunately the heart breaking

truth is that in today’s horrendous throwaway record label culture, Nicola Roberts will never be a true ‘success’. An intelligent and talented young woman armed with intel l igent and talented producers has created a pop album

reviewers have found impossible to scoff at or mock, instead finding themselves consumed with admiration and adoration for the career evolution Nicola from Runcorn has fashioned. Chart posit ions say otherwise to record label executives. While Cinderella’s Eyes sits firmly in our, and many others’ top albums of 2011, we

cannot help but wonder whether she will ever be given the financial backing and

strength from a label to produce a follow-up. Not that we’re willing to totally write her o f f - t h e g i r l h a s a m b i t i o n a n d determination, and if nothing else she will return to Girls Aloud, knock out a couple more incredible albums and spend some her wages on continuing to prove you don’t need will.i.am behind you to create a wonderful piece of work. In the words of our shared idol Kate Bush - don’t give up.!

50 Words for Snow Kate BushYou’re probably sick to t h e b a c k t e e t h o f hearing about bloody Kate Bush by now, but that’s for a very good reason. 50 Words for Snow is a magical enchantment for the ears. Time travelling

lovers, dog-seeking ghosts, snowman-shagging and Being a Snowflake: The Opera all crop up.

Wounded Rhymes Lykke LiA consistently excellent sophomore from our second favourite Swede, containing the appropriate ratio of tragically sad and fiery power ballads for 2011 hipsters. “I Follow Rivers”, “Youth Knows No Pain” and “Love Out of Lust” are exquisite paens to teenage romance filtered through a filter of Scandinavian grey.

Oh Land Oh LandMoving into Denmark, Oh Land produced a decidedly cheerier affair but with no less depth or spark. Disappointingly the album didn’t take off as miraculously as we had hope in the UK but

you’re doing yourself a disservice if you are yet to have checked out such gems as “Perfection”, “Rainbow” and “Break the Chain”. This is how excellent pop should be done in 2011.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver Bon IverA sparser, more adventurous soundscape with a wider variety of instruments and atmospheres contribute to an entirely more exciting album for Justin Vernon’s second effort. “Bon/Iver” is a blast of adrenaline from 1982 while “Calgary” and “Holocene” are welcome attempts to produce interesting, exciting music which sounds like nothing else at all.

Let England Shake PJ HarveyPerhaps the most lauded and critically revered work this year really is a masterpiece and fully deserved the plaudits it received. A met icu lous ly researched s low-burny meditat ion on war, v io lence and i ts devastating aftereffects, sonically it was great clouds of blood-purple dust and smoke rendered with auto-harp, and the mournful wail of PJ’s genuinely distinctive vocals.

W H O K I L L tUnE - yArDsThe second of two great albums by women about violence released this year, Merril Garbus’ lo-fi (but slightly less lo-fi) second work is a multi-layered tapestry of vocal textures and loops: like a wacky, tie-dye, rainbow, politically motivated onion. Lyrically surreal and adept it burns from abrasive battlecries to sweetly melodious lullabies with ease and purpose.

Ilo Veyou CamilleA dark horse, Camille came out of nowhere to release one of the year’s best albums with this epic quasi-concept work, Lynchian in its bizarre dreamlike qualities. Tracks vary from hyper-sexualised neo-baroque laments to satirical French patriotic ballads. Weird, yes, but perhaps the most starkly original record of 2011.

Metals FeistFeist may have accidentally shifted mainstream for a hot minute, but here she made an unmistakeably non-showy but raw and hypnotic album. The very definition of a grower, it seemed a tad unremarkable at first, but gradually took hold. The record doesn’t sound written so much as expertly constructed like a beautiful intricate cathedral carved into a big, deep cave.

We were first made aware of Björk’s intentions for her eighth studio album with the news of her approaching residency at the Manchester International Festival back in June. At the time, to tell the truth, we didn’t really care what the new stuff sounded like - we were just overcome with mindboggling excitement that we would finally have the opportunity to see our idol/icon/musical taste moulder in the flesh. However, the details which were available s o u n d e d increasingly more p romis ing w i th greater thought - a su i te o f mus ic b a s e d o n a n adoration for life and nature, as the n a m e s t a t e s . Some of Björk’s greatest works h a v e b e e n declarat ions of l o v e a n d dedication to the world we live in, including but not l imited to “The Ancho r Song ” , “Oceania” and of course “Jòga” . ! A s i t became apparent that the crux of the album would be its production as an ‘app album’ with a strong grounding in education we were wary of the direction the project would head in. Would the quality of the music be hindered by focus on alternative aspects? ! The suite begins with a quiet, intimate paen to the moon, fostering an atmosphere of anticipation with plucked strings growing in strength. What feels like the album’s real opener, “Thunderbolt”, follows; a Tesla coil generates electricity in varying notes creating a mood not quite as skin-tingling as the live show but still captivating. Björk roars “My romantic gene is dominant and it hungers for union” and all worries about any decline at all in her lyrical quality prove to be beyond foolish. The album’s divisive lead single “Crystalline” follows, with it’s charming MIDI-

controlled bells taking the listener on an auditory journey through the growth of a crystal - before a catastrophically good drum and bass finale. We’d be the first to cringe at someone twenty years into their career suddenly jumping over the already stale D&B ‘movement’ but tbqh, Björk was there at the start.! “Cosmogony” is a gut-wrenchingly beautiful hymn to the stars and universe.

W h e n p e o p l e m o a n e d a n d complained there was nothing like t h e b e a u t y o f Ve s p e r t i n e o r g r a n d e u r o f Homogenic - we pointed them in t h e d i r e c t i o n t o w a r d t h i s swirling galactic opera . “Mutua l Core” translates the literally earth-s h a t t e r i n g m o v e m e n t s o f tectonic plates into a startling bone-shaker in lieu of “ D e c l a r e Independence” . Wh i l e t he re i s

some truly remarkable story-telling on Biophilia, it is perhaps the tale of a virus slowly infecting and conquering a beating, virile love which is most affecting. The music is so seductive, the lyrics so enchanting that the unengaged listener could easily mistake it for a straightforward ballad. “I knock on your skin, and I am in” hints at the malice hiding behind the charming flirtation. It’s a masterfully woven tapestry of a song and a true highlight.! B i o p h i l i a i s a n a m b i t i o u s achievement and unfortunately one we still believe fails to fulfil it’s true promise when it isn’t being performed on stage. That’s not to say that the music alone isn’t breathlessly exciting, awe-inspiring and truly wonder-inducing. We want to learn more about the miraculous phenomena she sings about, and we are so grateful for this curiosity. Applause.

Even a stan like this writer would admit that Amos’ last album was a misstep. It’s not that it was a bad album (in fact, compared to most other artists it was still weird and great) but it wasn’t up to her standard. Well her new album, Night of Hunters, is. But it’s different. Lush, sinuous, slow. It demands your patience. There are no drum beats. In fact there are no beats of any kind. There are plenty of tunes a n d w o n d e r f u l , t h i c k , g o r g e o u s instrumentation, a n d h e r u s u a l o b l i q u e l y r i c a l touches and a wealth of musical ingenuity. But this is not Mad, Angry To r i . No r i s i t A y a h u a s c a -dropping Tori. ! At first, despite the myriad o f d e l i c i o u s intelligent musical a n d l y r i c a l touches, that merit repeated listening (we literally notice something new every t ime we hear any of the expertly wrought songs) we were concerned that in actual fact, there is no true innovat ion here. Is s imply using the orchestration and arrangement techniques of the late Romantic period of Western Art Music and applying them to complexly structured and multilayered alternative pop/singer/songwriter songs innovative? Well: yes. These aren’t just songs orchestrated lazily for kudos or effect, this is a stunningly rendered narrative cycle, hot and heavy with potent imagery and opaque enough to be intriguing and feel slightly exotic, but familiar enough not to totally disconcert. ! And the stunning arrangements by long-time collaborator John Philip Shenale are not the sickly sweet, unimaginative orchestral arrangements that are usually featured in the work of pop artists, they are strange and compelling. All the instruments of the chamber ensemble: violin, viola, cello, oboe, clarinet,

flute, bassoon, etc. are given equal billing, and instead of taking turns or creating quiet, background texture, they run together, in a pack, like the title's hunters, ferocious, tangled, blending together, in close harmonies, running alongside melodies and pushing them onwards. ! On “Fearlessness”, after a violent cacophony of strings and woodwind builds it crests and soars, Tori singing “teams of horses

o f t h e p r i d e , followed his cry through the fire”. A n d o n t h e eponymous “Night of Hunters”, Tori a n d K e l s e y Dobyns, her niece, pass the melody b e t w e e n e a c h other, over music stately and dark. Midway through the song, a piano r i f f inconspicuously descends into a M e d i e v a l - s t y l e web and network o f c a l l a n d response phrases. “ C a r r y ” , t h e mournful, hopeful

album closer, has the sound of great sheets of mist rising off cold, grassy, planes as our heroine laments: "in the procession of the mighty stars, your name is sung and tattooed now on my heart, here I will carry, carry, carry you... forever". ! This is evocative music of total euphoria, with frenzied, mournful, lulling and baying networks of harmony and melody. There are sections, subsections, movements, drones, themes and variations, recurring motifs, pauses, peaks and troughs. As Tori puts it herself in the aforementioned "Carry": "Cathedrals of sound are singing". To attempt to describe it is to do it a disservice. ! We have waited years for Tori to return to music this tearfully punch-packing, difficult, soaring and brave and she has delivered. Her best work for a decade.

“I Follow Rivers” - Lykke LiThe album’s second single re-uses instantly recognisable

imprints from “Little Bit” mashed up with aggressive, commanding lyrics. An impressively powerful song, it’s an excellent example of her ever-improving song writing and

production skills and why Swedes do it better. The Magicians Remix even manages to surpass the mastery of

the original.

“I’m Into You” - Jennifer LopezBy no means are we J. Lo fans, but we cannot deny she’s put some absolute ‘tunes’ out in her time. Pleasingly, she

shows no sign of letting up and still manages to attract producers with the talent to create perfect pop songs. It

makes us feel lucky like a four leaf clover.

“Beat of My Drum” - Nicola RobertsOccasionally, maybe one or twice a year, we’re privileged to

be introduced to something like we’ve literally never heard before. This is Diplo’s take on bubblegum, a Major Lazer

remix of Daphne & Celeste. No other song has given us more life on a dancefloor this year.

“Virus” - BjörkLilting percussion, effortless strings and the most charming

arrangements composed from hundreds of little bells creates a deceptive message for the listener, as inside this -

on the surface - charmingly romantic Biophilia highlight resides a darker core. A tale of infected and infecting love.

“I feast inside you, my hostess you”

“Wild Man” - Kate BushA panoramic, slightly 90s

stargazer chorus that is at once swoony and weird,

texturally different from almost everything else being

released currently or in the past five years. Tbh, what

you’d expect from Goddess Kate.

“Disaster” – JoJoIn a year that will probably be remembered as a great one for mainstream ballads and painfully childish novelty dance, this emotive midtempo managed to pass completely under the radar. A shame considering it is billowing, brutal and blustery with lovely melodramatic lyrics about “the bullet” that “killed me”. Effortless and indulgent heartbreak pop.

“Don’t Hold Your Breath” – Nicole ScherzingerSpeaking of great pop that passed under the radio. This peaked at number 1 in the UK but seems to have been forgotten in a heartbeat. We actually prefer the leaked demo to the final single version, but this is a classic purepop uptempo masquerading as a disco ballad with a glittering sad chorus that sounds timeless, despite its performer’s grating strained vocals.

“Desire” – Anna CalviThis slinky noirish number opens with a medieval drone before unfolding into a panoramic epic. It may lack the opulent excess of a Florence track, but more than makes up for it in songwriting skill: complex and sophisticated without seeming to try, and full of aching sensual tension, with a lush, strange orchestral texture created almost entirely from guitar. A stunning achievement.

“Wonderland” – Natalia KillsNatalia Kills may be a brain-dead nonentity (or she may not be, we literally don’t know) but this song, with its frightening Snow-White-haunted-tree-style gargoyle chants and euphoric impassioned leap from first chorus to second surprised us with its original production sound and expansive and oddly hopeful fairytale-themed riffs.

“Countdown” – Beyoncé“Oh, killing my softly” Bey moans over lush, bittersweet and sad but militant horns on one of the year’s sleeper hits. The song’s genius is switching between R&B sass, refreshingly sober romantic sentiment and glorious pop emoting without barely breaking a sweat. Danceable and modern-sounding without pandering to cheap trends.

T h e r e a r e m a n y w a y s o f measuring a music video’s success: view counts , comments , rev iews, fan reactions, music channel requests. These are all measurable to various extents. Then there’s the unquantifiable. When we firs t heard Beyoncé ’s Great B ig Comeback single “Run The World (Girls)”, we were exhilarated at its feminist message and interesting choice of sample, but we couldn’t help but feel a little deflated. Where was the melody? Or the chorus? All of that melted away, however, when we watched the video which caused major tingles to break out over our scalp, arms, legs and the rest of our bodies (interesting fact: Major Tingles is the name Major Lazer – responsible for “Pon de Floor”, the song Beybey sampled – have given to their inhouse

cat).! Big cats, bafflingly strange choreography, riot gear chic, heel-kicking, weave-shaking, 200 dancers, nail gloves, synchronised explosions, drooling hyenas, crossed-jet-streams, sardonic saluting, sandstorms, flags, rearing horses. It’s the video that had it all in a flurry of strange imagery and symbolism. You can say what you want about Beyoncé (and many have, especially this year, with an underperforming album and singles) but she seems authentically feminist: with her all-female band, and dancers celebrating body sizes of all varieties and her insistence on equality and education. This was a great video that really did lift an otherwise abrasive song.

RUN THE WORLD (GIRLS)” - BEYONCE CALL YOUR GIRLFRIEND - ROBYNCons ide r i ng she bas i ca l l y

OWNED our last zine with her absolute destruction of 2010 (when we say destruction we mean destroying all your faves) you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d give her a break. However, it would be impossible to ignore the masterfully simple video Robyn put out for her final single from the incredible Body Talk campaign, “Call Your Girlfriend”. And when we say simple... well... she basically runs riot off her tits on MDMA rocking some vintage Mel B Buffalo platforms and a bubblegum fluffy stole she stole from Romy and Michele throwing the most ridiculous shapes with the most ridiculously cute smile and we just want to BE HER. Basically the video is so good/groundbreaking/earth-moving/genre-defining it earned a spoof from

some ‘famous’ Saturday Night Live presenter on YouTube and if there was ever a seal of approval it has to be that, right?! Generally the video output from the Body Talk era wasn’t that fabulous - we didn’t really care because of the quality of the music itself - but “Call Your Girlfriend” more than made up for it. Simple videos are the new complicated sense-assaulting ones. Who hasn’t wanted to dress up like a lesbian Spice Gir l f rom the Val leys and throw themselves around a strobe-lit industrial warehouse while wailing about the lack of cock from the guy you want it? That happens to us ALL THE TIME.

Seeing Tori Amos at the Royal Albert Hall sounded like a total DREAM when it was announced, and turned out to be a dream ‘in real life’, too. Even though we missed out on buying good seats and ended up in the very last row, right at the top, in the gods, the balcony, we still had an incredible time and felt, that if nothing else, our sky-high seats afforded us a great view of the venue and wonderful expansive sense of scope.Tori is extremely well suited to these relative enormo-venues, so it’s a shame she doesn’t play them more often. The place was packed and she ended up adding more dates so there’s clearly demand. When she blazed through “Precious Things”, the vast dome almost shook, and before each song, there was a magical prickling silence as every fan in the house held their breath, desperate to

know what was gonna happen next. Oh, that is, except ONE fan, who happened to be sitting right in front of us. Yes, that’s right, our otherwise flawless night was almost ruined by some drunken tomfool talking loudly almost every second. As she left people clapped her out. It’s a testament to Tori’s greatness and the brilliance of the gig, with its complex and stunning new string quartet arrangements, that we still came away awed, in spite of this. Highlights include hearing three Boys For Pele songs in a row (“Beauty Queen/Horses”, “Mar ianne” and “Mr. Zebra”) , fierce, melodramatic opener, “Shattering Sea” and the heart-rending strings from “Winter” played by a jaw-droppingly talented string quartet, underpinned by the Goddess Amos, in her diaphanous lycra creation, echoing around the vast hall, peaking & soaring & inspiring

In April it was revealed that Björk herself would be  premièring  her brand new body of work , Bioph i l i a , a t t he Manches te r International Festival, located in our home city. Quickly snapping up tickets for two nights, we awaited with uncertainty, having not heard any of the new material prior. To cut to the chase, we haven’t quite seen anything like it. We have been serenaded by the woman standing literally  two metres away from us singing one of our all-time favourite songs, “Unravel”; we have witnessed a giant Tesla coil spark shiver-inducing electricity to the tune of one of the most atmospheric and beautiful songs she’s produced and most importantly we held hands as we heard the Icelandic all-girl choir sing the opening notes of “Jóga”, our favourite song ever, for the encore. It was an absolutely magical night

and we have never felt so intimate or close with an artist we genuinely love. The woman walked past us at one point so close we could have jumped over the rope - no enormous steel barriers here - and stole her away in a burlap sack. It was remarkable. The show itself was an incredible spectacle; at several points we felt like we were witnessing the worship of nature on a scale not dissimilar to that found in church. A pre-programmed organ played in the corner while Björk sang to the high heavens about the high heavens, after a sonnet to the moon and a dissection of a virus. It had to be seen to be believed. We felt genuinely privileged  to be witness to such an enormously high standard of work and performance, and have experienced the full gamut of emotions in two hours. It’s not often that happens.

I’ve been asked to wrap up the music of 2011With some scheming rhymes for my pop savvy brethrenI didn’t devote the time to this as a loveworn project,didn’t have the brains to think up an overarching subjectOr a slick metaphor, so this will hardly be cohesive,Just some poorly paired words lacking thematic adhesive,I’ll try and make up for it with some dazzling witticism,But it’s mostly going to be shade and slapdash criticism.So to start off, a mention of Pixie Lott,(The Lipsy drenched pop star that personality forgot)She was Young, Foolish Happy, pop’s Denise Van Outen,With that centre parting and blandness she’s been flaunting.This has also been the year of up and coming Jessie J,With all those deafening melismas there’s nothing more I can say.A voice so big I can’t even get a word in edgeways,So I’ll opt for one of several clunky seguesAs I turn to the fatalistic album that was Britney’sfull of the same groans and growls, such a vocal tease;She has reappeared, noired up and over-femmed,But with a lack of passion that left listeners underwhelmed,Poor Brit, chained to the industry, chained to her conservator,Who keeps her churning out emptiness like a capitalist Voldemort,She needs to borrow some soul from angst ridden AdeleFor whom the year has gone considerably well,She’s managed to ‘smash it’ aged just 21,Is there any Grammy left that that girl hasn’t won?That was rhetorical, I’m sure there are some,But that’s no reason for her to roll in the deep feeling glum,She’s created a song engrained in the collective consciousnessDoused in enough self-pity to make you go delirious-I’m not throwing shade at Someone Like You,But maybe she’d be better off fucking somebody new?Someone new that’s not as stale as Lady GagaBeing cutting edge is not singing in your bedazzled braTelling the world that she was Born This Way,with all that organic pretention, much to our dismayJudas, Marry the Night, then You and I,Will her Madonna impersonation ever run dry?Or will it keep powering on like Katy Perry’s Firework,Nothing like being compared to a Catherine wheel gone beserk,Fired up from the hijinks of Last Friday Nightyou are some pyrotechnic display setting the sky alight

Like the volcanoes and magma in Bjork’s BiophiliaIn which she waxes lyrical about viruses and silica

And other natural phenomena hard to rhythmically implementAs hard to capture as her newly invented instruments

She should have just done what Katie B didAnd write an album about the snow under which the earth hid,

Wenceslasaire with a dash of icy Bertie,A heart melting snowman who got down and dirty,

Another pop star with melodious progenyUsing members of the family to break the vocal homogeny

They should start a power group, Lourdes, Bertie, Natashya,The next generation to go forth, invent, enrapture,

Tori’s daughter, heard on Night of HuntersThe album released on a new label for classical music punters,

Woozy clarinets, songs about battling trees,Orchestras and concepts navigated with ease,

To produce a sound innovative and at once anodyneQuite unlike Harvey’s account of the combat frontline

In her album that had England all shook up,Won her accolades and the Mercury cup,

Alright, it’s a prize, not the Triwizard tournament,But she won it none the less with her account of the winter of our discontent,

Pretty bleak girl, you could do with some Cinderella Eyes,Instead of all those murders and curdling war cries,

and have a dance, not march, to the beat of Nicola's drum,a beat so eclectic she has us under her thumb,

but not quite as eccentric as Merrill's whokillan album as layered and deep as a musical landfill,

Full of noise, chaos, the clang of (Feist's) Metals,a canadian with a voice as soft as falling petals,

God, I'm suffering from a case of Wounded Rhymes,trying to write about Lykke but commiting verbal crimes,

I need someone to show me some Strange Mercy,or play some to distract me or deter me

from limping through this pitiful poem,that does not provoke thought just invokes nauseum,

Somebody stop me from Talking This Talk,Rhymes so naff they would make Rihanna baulk,

now thinking of her in all her newfound nineties gloryhas me muddled enough to terminate this poetic story

of the year that was, the music that has been in it,here's to the next one, as 2011 is the bitch I quit.