Bobbysix.com's End of Year Review 2011 - Bobby Townsend

Over the next few days, all of Bobbysix's contributors will be sharing their highlights of 2011, culminating in the announcement of our overall album/song/movie/gig of the year later this week. Today, Editor Bobby gets the ball rolling: 

Top 10 albums
1. A Creature I Don’t Know - LAURA MARLING
Marling's most expansive record and also her most accessible, it proves her to be one of the most honest, intelligent and breathtakingly talented artists in music today.
2. Twerps - TWERPS
Twerps is the sound of a band growing up and finding their sound. This is an album that could soundtrack long summer days spent falling out of love.
3. Bad As Me - TOM WAITS
Existing fans will love it, while newbies will find this the ideal place to begin their Tom Waits collection.
4. Ceremonials - FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
The art-pop of Ceremonials exudes impressive confidence from a woman on top of her game, while retaining enough of a dark edge to keep it interesting.
5. Vows - KIMBRA
Vows is a soulful, textured, vibrant triumph of a debut which immediately establishes Kimbra as a unique and genuinely exciting new artist
6. In Your Room - CAMERAS
The most refreshing thing is that, rather than front-loading the big singles, as so many albums do nowadays, it ebbs and flows like a set-list and feels very much like a musical journey.
7. Veronica Falls - VERONICA FALLS
A beguiling, intriguing coming together of dark and light, it is really rather wonderful. Melancholy never seemed so much fun.
8. Milk Annual - CAITLIN PARK
The delightful truth is that the nuanced, beautiful and outstanding Milk Annual is actually a unique sounding record. And you can't say that very often these days.
9. Smoking in Heaven - KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS
If the rubbish that litters commercial radio station playlists had one-hundredth of the honesty, heart and soul that this record does, the music world would be a much more satisfying place.
10. Yuck -YUCK
This album doesn't sound derivative in the slightest, but rather is a fresh and exciting post-grunge offering with a DIY ethic.

Top 10 songs

1. Defeatist - CAMERAS 

  

2. History’s Door - HUSKY

3. Cameo Lover - KIMBRA
4. Who Are You? - TWERPS
5. Walk Like Thunder - KIMYA DAWSON
6. Even Though I’m a Woman - SEEKER LOVER KEEPER  
7. Found Love in a Graveyard - VERONICA FALLS
8. Back in the Crowd - TOM WAITS
9. Endless Summer - THE JEZABELS
10. Covered By Snow - DEAD LETTER CHORUS

Top 10 gigs
1. FLORENCE + THE MACHINE - Seymour Centre, Sydney
So magical was the atmosphere in room during this perfect occasion that to step back into the real world felt painfully mundane. This was a wonderful and unforgettable night.
2. DAVID FORD - The Empire Bar, Belfast
At the midway point, Ford ran down the street in order to play a song at Duke Special and Phil Jupitus’ gig. They passed him on the way and came to read some poems at The Empire Bar.
3. KIMBRA - The Metro, Sydney
Her effervescence was complimented by her band as finger-clicking, red-suited male backing singers boogied in the background. She even managed a mid-set costume change. 

4.SEEKER LOVER KEEPER - St Stephen’s Church, Sydney

A night in a warmly-lit church watching three talented and charming musicians can be aptly summed-up in a single word. Lovely.

5. THE GRATES - The Metro, Sydney

With the combination of infectious pop, post-grunge and a singer that owns the room with her lust for life, tonight once again proved that to see The Grates live is to best understand them.

6. CAMERAS - Changing Lanes Festival, Sydney

While their atmospheric sound is best suited to playing in the dark, they still gave one of the performances - if not the performance - of the day (pictured, left)

7 SIMONE FELICE - The Vanguard, Sydney

His voice was beautiful, ethereal, transfixing and when he bowed at the end of the gig he did so with the awkward charm of a five-year-old having performed in the school nativity play.

8. KIMYA DAWSON & AESOP ROCK - Manning Bar, Sydney

It was a rare joy to see two such different artists sharing a stage and creating an evening of such eclecticism.

9. THE JEZABELS - Homebake Festival, Sydney

Singer Hayley Mary has something of the Kate Bush about her in terms of her vocal and the band's pop songs were powerful and engaging.

10. HOWLING BELLS - The Standard, Sydney

Simply, they sound like a proper band, with clean, strong guitar driven indie songs and an excellent vocalist in Juanita Stein.

Top 10 Films

1. Submarine

2. Bill Cunningham New York

3. Snowtown

4. Midnight in Paris

5. We Need To Talk About Kevin

6. Black Swan

7. Senna

8. Drive

9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

10. The Guard

Top 5 TV Shows

1. 24 Hours in A&E

2. Match of the Day

3. Boardwalk Empire

4. At The Movies

5. Q & A

Top 5 radio shows/podcasts

1. Kermode and Mayo’s Film Reviews - BBC Radio 5Live

2. Guardian Football Weekly Podcast

3. Arvos - FBi Radio

4. Desert Island Disks - BBC Radio 4

5. The Allnighter - FBi Radio

Favourite interview of the year

There were a few actually. It was a joy to chat to Florence Welch, even though it was at 7am and I hadn’t been to bed from the night before. I also enjoyed doing a face-to-face with Juanita Stein from Howling Bells. Our interview would lead to me drunkenly teaching her how to use the DJ decks at Sydney’s World Bar the next night. Speaking to Britany Nola was very interesting. I always enjoy interviewing models, as they have so much to say and are rarely afforded the opportunity. Her words about human rights and tolerance were inspiring. However, my favourite interview was with Laura Marling. I adore her work - firmly believing her to be the best lyricist of her generation - and I enjoyed catching up with her, as we first spoke over three years ago, when she was a shy 18-year-old. Though she is now a pretty big deal, it was lovely to discover that she remains as unassuming, polite and friendly as she was back then.

Highlight of the year.

Being able to attend the first Brighton & Hove Albion game at The American Express Community Stadium was an incredibly emotional end to a 14-year journey and something I will never forget. However, my actual highlight came at Sydney’s Metro Theatre in September. I was attempting to woo an especially beautiful lady when a young man came up to me and said “Excuse me, I just wanted to say I love your blog.” It is the only time in my life I have appeared cool and his timing was excellent.

2011 in words

Regina Spektor once told me that, "Man plans and God laughs." She could very well have been talking about my 2011. A fucked up fruitcake of a year, starting in the snow of England, ending in the heat of Australia, via Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe. An era ending. Stolen moments in Budapest. A head resting on my chest in Sydney. Tourbus hilarity on the motorways of Britain. New friends on both sides of the world. A crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.  

Prediction for 2012

Our new website is going to blow your fucking minds. Watch this space.

Bobby is the Editor of Bobbysix.com. He has written for publications and websites including CNN, Drum Media, Inpress, BBM, Time Off, Rip It Up and The Argus. He has also appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC 7. He splits his time between Australia and England.

Laura Marling interview

When I first spoke to an 18-year-old Laura Marling in early 2008, she talked of her disinterest in stardom and of how creating great art meant more to her than fame ever would. She absolutely had no desire to be the Next Big Thing.

Fast-forward three years and she has managed to gain critical acclaim, winning Best British Female Solo Artist at the Brit Awards and Best Solo Artist at the NME Awards while also capturing the hearts of the record-buying public. Although there is no doubting she has stuck to her guns – her beautifully-crafted folk music still bursts with the same honesty and integrity that has been so important to her since the very beginning – there is also little denying that, in 2011, Laura Marling is a big deal.

“It doesn't feel that way, from where I sit in a café in London,” she chuckles. “It's very lovely to hear...” She pauses, half-starts another couple of sentences which try to make sense of her career trajectory, before settling with, “I try not to think about it too much.” Regardless of the awards and big-selling records, it's very apparent that we are talking to the same polite, gently-spoken and completely unassuming young lady that we were three years ago.

As, according to Marling, England “crawled to the end of what has been a miserable summer,” her third long-player, A Creature I Don't Know, was released to the general acceptance that it was her finest work to date. Considering the plaudits she had already received, that's quite the achievement. While the album deals with the themes that Marling is best known for – strength, weakness, love, womanhood, desire, yearning – the most noticeable difference between this and her previous offering, I Speak Because I Can, is that there is a touch more levity this time around. “When I made I Speak Because I Can, I felt like I had to do myself a service and make a point, for my own sake,” she says of her incredibly solemn second record. “This album felt like it was just going to be a lot of fun to make. Some of the lines I came up with for The Muse and All My Rage make me chuckle when I sing them now. Yeah, it's not so serious.”

While A Creature I Don't Know, which Marling demoed at home before giving the full band treatment, is her most expansive sounding album, lyrically, it is still weighty, intelligent and challenging. Happy to let the listener decide which parts are autobiographical and which are fiction, her inspirations are far-reaching. “It comes from a lot of different places now. Maybe more so than before. I'm not more of a magpie, but I'm more willing to accept that I'm a magpie now. I take a lot from books and from conversations that I overhear.” For instance, lead-single Sophia was inspired by Rebel Angels: Robertson Davies' novel about God's female counterpart. Meanwhile, the song Salinas refers to an “obsession” Marling had with John Steinbeck's wife which manifested itself after reading the biography she penned about her husband. Yet the refrain of the song (“I am from Salinas, where the women go forever,”) refers indirectly to a friend's girlfriend who died when their baby was a year old. The song perhaps acts as a microcosmic example of how, rather than handing straightforward lyrics to the listener on a plate and delivering a tale from start to finish, the album as a whole uses themes and ideas to create a story. “When I was putting the songs together, there seemed to me to be a narrative. I think when I got to writing The Beast, I'd already written half of the album and it became apparent that the themes in it had cropped up in other songs. So, it's organic to a point, until I become aware. Then I know there are things that I want to deal with.”

Just as the themes develop naturally, so does the music. “I have a guitar wherever I go and if I've got a spare moment I pick it up. Sometimes a song comes and sometimes it doesn't. I don't tend to write things down. An idea or an emotion will crop somewhere and it will plague me for a while until I've written a song about it. As I pick up a guitar, I'll tinkle around and put it in a different tuning until I find the tone that I feel is appropriate for the mood I'm in, and then they just kind of form, I suppose,” she says of her technique almost dismissively, as though she were talking about some half-baked ditties rather than the beautifully constructed folk music that has critics clambering for superlatives. “I wasn't taught guitar professionally – I was taught by my Dad – so I've never really known what key I'm in or what chords I'm playing. I think that's been the biggest bonus, because I don't tend to think about chord structure or song structure. So many of my songs don't have middle-eights.”

A new album, of course, means a tour, and after playing around the UK and the US she'll be taking her band to Australia in the new year for a series of dates that includes a slot at the Laneway Festival. After a debut visit over four days in 2008 which saw her “completely insane with jet lag,” she returned with her band in 2010. “I remember playing at The Famous Spiegeltent [in Hyde Park] and I was amazed by how different the audience was to other audiences I had played for. They were really attentive in a different way than I'd come across before. It was really good.”

When talk turns to the longer-term future, unsurprisingly there seems to be no big master-plan. Already so lauded and with such an impressive back catalogue at just 21 years of age, there's the genuine prospect that Laura Marling could go on to become one of the all-time greats, yet, of course, she plays the idea down. “I think I'll do it as long as I have stuff to write about and then at some point I hope somebody will tell me to stop, if needs be,” she laughs. “For the moment though, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing.”

Interview by Bobby Townsend. It first appeared in Sydney's Drum Media.

Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

When a teenage Laura Marling released her debut record, her depth and maturity was lauded. A even better second album followed and this year she won Best British Female Solo Artist prize at the Brit Awards and best solo artist at the NME awards. So it is with high expectations that her third long-player arrives.

Produced by Ethan Johns (Kings Of Leon, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne, Emmylou Harris), the album isn't quite an unknown creature but, while the overall tone is similar to her stunningly serious and brooding sophomore record, it certainly reaches in more directions and has more levity. For instance, country rock opener The Muse is as jaunty a musical offering as we have heard from the English songwriter, The Beast builds to an unexpected rock-out and All My Rage is a frantic sea shanty. In keeping with the record's ambition, Marling's vocal range continues to grow as well. In the more upbeat moments, she hits some high notes with near gay abandon, while her rich, almost spoken, tones perfectly fit the darker songs. Crucially, her lyrics remain typically stunning. As well as weaving through her music beautifully, her emotive, weighty words read like poetry. “He longs for the woman who will conquer his lust/ He screams in the night/ I scream in the day/ We weep in the evening and lie naked and pray,” she sings forlornly on the desperately beautiful, finger-picked Night After Night.

A Creature I Don't Know manages to be Marling's most expansive record and also her most accessible, and proves her to be one of the most honest, intelligent and breathtakingly talented artists in music today.

Review By Bobby Townsend. It originally appeared in Sydney's Drum Media.