It’s cold, dark and miserable in Camden – a night to turn your breath to crystal, decked out in the full complement of seasonal greys and browns. Your correspondent has been shivering outside a creaky old bar for fifteen minutes, before being revived, suddenly, by approaching, oblivious laughter. “You wanna come join us in our dressing room?” comes the greeting. Around the corner, a humble eight seater awaits, or as We Are Augustines will come to know it over the next couple of weeks: home. Remarking on how tidy it is, The Skinny climbs in and is confronted with three faces from which the smiles rarely stray over the course of forty minutes’ chat.

Frontman Billy McCarthy, plumped in the backseat in a porkpie hat, could pass for a burlier Brad Pitt. Bassist Eric Sanderson is urbane and dapper, and newly recruited drummer Rob Allen is the picture of contentment: all three are happy to be on board. It’s only fifteen minutes later, when Billy says: “we’re not a tragic band, despite having seen plenty of tragedy,” that a bright pink floods our cheeks, as an earlier preconception comes to mind. It had been decided that if anyone were to be forgiven for being miserable, it would be this lot. It doesn’t happen too often, but sometimes a rock band can surprise you for all the right reasons.

Their travails predate this current guise, and can be traced back to the days of Pela, a band Billy and Eric played in before We Are Augustines. Eric takes up the story: “The band hit a brick wall, due to a lack of opportunities and resources. We were on a label with a tiny budget. We had little or no support. We self-produced our first record and the label kept telling us that nobody liked it, which is not what you want to hear. Then the year-end came and we ended up on over 30 lists. We went to the label and asked them: “What the hell’s wrong with you?” We got to the point where we were selling out shows across the country but couldn’t afford to get to them. We were doing our own PR, management, merchandising, support, everything. Eventually the pressure got so great that the band crumbled and we broke up after seven and a half years. We were left with remnants of a record, no career, no support, no band, lots of debt and lots of binding contracts.”

At this stage, it’d be mad to expect sweeping changes from a new Lambchop record, and the loungy, intricate and patient Mr. M (Mr. Metuntil a libelous baseball mascot got involved) satisfies the rule, for the most part. But in its four-year gestation period (the longest in the Nashville band’s history), Kurt Wagner has added a few, subtle strings to his bow.

Since 2008’s OH (Ohio), Wagner’s collaborated with Cortney Tidwell on the collection of country covers, KORT. And while Mr. M never comes close to a hoedown, it contains some of the most direct songs to have flown the Lambchop banner, including a straight up love song: Never My Love. Alas, the finest moments remain when Wagner is at his poetic, observant best. “The wine tasted like sunshine in a basement,” he sings on the stellar Gone Tomorrow, reminding us that while new tricks aren’t beyond all old dogs, sometimes they just aren’t as good.

Damien Jurado’s last album was a game changer. Having spent 15 years churning out folk/folk-rock albums that were sometimes excellent, but otherwise showed little sign of progression, Saint Bartlett saw Jurado explore new depths of style and production, harnessing a bit of reverb and a set of strings to great effect.Maraqopa proves it was no fluke. Opening misstep Nothing In The News aside, this continues in the slick vein of its predecessor.

Whereas the opener morphs, ridiculously, into an excessive 70s superjam, the rest of the album is sparse, tidy and perfectly formed. Richard Swift remains at the mixing desk and shows again that he knows how to get the best from Jurado’s simple, plaintive melodies. The superb Life Away From The Garden, complete with a glorious call-and-response and the gorgeous Everyone A Star are the standout tracks on the latest installment of Damien Jurado’s second wind. Long may it continue.

Ten years ago, Leonard Cohen told a journalist that he’d “read somewhere that as you get older the brain cells associated with anxiety begin to die. So, I might have saved myself the rigours of monastic life if I had just waited until it happened.” And so, Cohen’s Zen-like demeanour tonight in the opulent Mayfair Hotel shouldn’t have come as a surprise: after all, his “monastic life” has continued since his ordination as a Buddhist monk 16 years ago, and at the ripe old age of 77 – coaxed out of retirement last decade because of bankruptcy – those anxious brain cells must be few and far between. Pleasingly, they seem to be the only grey matter on the wane.

Cohen’s here to hold court over the first playback of his new album,Old Ideas, which alludes as much to his advancing years and the shadow of death as it does to his strong, spiritual beliefs. Greeted onto the stage by the equally dapper, corduroy-clad Jarvis Cocker (this evening’s host), Cohen graciously bows to the assembled Who’s Who of Europe’s music press, removing his signature fedora for the only time in the night. His voice is an octave lower still, the wrinkles more defined on his face, and his shoulders slightly slumped. But he retains what will always be his essence: his wit. If there was ever any doubt that he would grow old gracefully, it’s been swiftly dispelled tonight.

“What’s it like listening to your own album in a roomful of people?” asks Jarvis, when the playback’s complete (there’s something wonderfully Lynchian about listening to Leonard Cohen sing about himself in the third person, while his handwritten lyrics are projected onto the wall, then looking up to see the back of his head, listening and reading along with you). “I wasn’t listening,” says Cohen, instantly, wryly. And so the tone is set. Cocker admits that the early Pulp album It was a rip-off of Cohen’s work. Leonard is flattered, but modest. “You just work with what you got. I never had a strategy. I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I never had the sense that I was standing in front of a buffet table.”

What unfolds is a delightful game of cat and mouse, in which Cohen hilariously shirks his interrogator’s attempts to find meaning in his songs. “I’ll buy into that,” he says, with a smirk, as Cocker expounds his theory on Darkness, one of the best cuts from the excellent Old Ideas. To those assembled, it’s a brilliant dose of good-natured schadenfreude. This eminent raconteur leads Cocker, so often an enigma toward the media, on a merry dance, until the questions are open to the floor.

Cohen holds forth on his womanising (“Back then it was agreeable to have a reputation or some kind of list of credentials so you didn’t have to start from scratch with every woman you walked into. Now it doesn’t really matter one way or the other.”), Chuck Berry (“’Roll over Beethoven / Tell Tchaikovsky the news.’ I’d like to write a line like that.”) and even indulges a populist query on Hallelujah (“I wrote many, many verses. I don’t know if it was eighty, maybe more or a little less. My tiny trouble is that before I can discard a verse, I have to write it. I have to work on it, and I have to polish it and bring it to as close to finished as I can. It’s only then that I can discard it.”) All the while, he’s humble, gracious and magnificently entertaining.

In the twilight of his career, Cohen, at last, seems content. The “rigours of monastic life” have vaporised his niggling self-doubt and depression. As he sits back, smiling at each question, no matter how ridiculous, it strikes us that Cohen the lothario has gone, replaced instead by Cohen the patriarch – the most relevant septuagenarian you could ever imagine.

Combining the beefy riffs of Tad Kubler, (erstwhile member) Franz Nicolay’s organ whirs and one-man sideshows and the pissed-up paeans of Craig Finn, The Hold Steady were one of North America’s most importable exports last decade. On his debut solo outing, Craig Finn shows that he possesses the song-smithery to thrive, even when stripped of the elements that had become almost indigenous to his art. The guitar-heavy days of Boys and Girls… feel like a distant memory while listening to Clear Heart Full Eyes, but Finn’s sharpness of tongue remains, on what’s an entertaining, if more contemplative complement to his main body of work. As ever, Finn takes his muse from the timeworn fields of love and loss, parties and hangovers, religion and sin, each handled with the swagger and precocity we’ve come to expect. No Future, a spurious breakup retort, threatens to steal the show, but Clear Heart… is absorbing from start to finish.

Twenty years ago, REM scored their first bona fide smash hit, when ‘Losing My Religion’ brought them unexpected (and, arguably, unwanted) transatlantic success. It was roughly four years after they’d left IRS to sign for Warner Brothers, when a section of early fans, disgruntled with the “poppier” aesthetic on 1988’s Green, started calling for them to call it a day. Most of those fans are probably in their mid-fifties now, but they finally got their wish in September. Better late than never, eh? The story demonstrates the incredible staying power of the Athens, Georgia band, who went 30 years without producing a genuine turkey (although they did their best withAround The Sun), and closed out their careers with the dignity and class that came to define them.

Matt Berninger of The National told The Skinny last year that they’ve modelled themselves on the band-democracy pioneered by REM. Since they started as a quartet in 1980, each member had equal say in everything, from the song structures to the album covers. But just as a democratic society will flounder if you remove the legislature or judiciary, when one of the pillars of REM was taken away, they stuttered. Despite a relative upturn over their last two albums, their post-Bill Berry output was sketchier and less inventive. They were missing a spark, but remained an excellent singles band, the best of which make it on here.

If you’ve been buying up the IRS remasters, you won’t need this compilation. If not, then it’s worth the money for the wonderful clarity shone on songs like Gardening at Night And So. Central Rain. Of course, everyone will gripe about what’s been left off (personal favourites Cuyahoga, Perfect Circle and Near Wild Heaven being notable absentees), but this is the best and most intelligently selected REM compilation you’ll get. It’s a fitting epitaph to a fantastic band, who’ve exited stage left, leaving us to stew forever over what the hell Stipe sings on The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Former front man for Lift to Experience, Pearson reemerged from a ten year hiatus this year with one of the most harrowing albums your ever likely to hear. The Last of the Country Gentlemen documents the fallout from a failed relationship in bitter, vicious and sprawling style. Coming in around the hour mark, with just seven tracks, it’s not an easy listen, but these songs will consume you if you give them a chance. Mostly, it’s just Pearson and his guitar, but occasional strings from the likes of Warren Ellis augment the mournfulness. When I spoke to Pearson earlier this year, he told me that every time he plays these songs live, he vows it will be the last. He was subdued and admitted to still being an emotional train-wreck. After forty minutes of chat, though, he had come out of his shell somewhat and was giving me tips on touring Texas and growing beards. A true country gentleman, indeed.

Interview with Josh T. Pearson here

9. J. Mascis – Several Shades of Why

Along with Magnolia Electric Co. by Songs:Ohia, this is the album that helped calm my nerves when I missed a flight from Seoul to Sydney earlier this year. £800 out of pocket and stranded in a horrible airport, it had to be something special. I never really got into Dinosaur Jr., Mascis’ old band, and was surprised by how much I loved this. For a start, it’s completely different than anything I’ve heard from Mascis: stripped back acoustic songs, gorgeous strings swooning over his weary, gravelly melodies. Beautiful stuff.

8. Christina Vantzou – No. 1

Along with Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid, Vantzou is one half of The Dead Texan. She’s apparently the former girlfriend of Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse), and I first came across her through the videos she produced for him. I think those two names are a good starting point when trying to describe this album. It’s got the emotional weight of a Sparklehorse record, transmitted through the ambient swells of a Dead Texan. In a year in which Tim Hecker’s (admittedly excellent) Ravedeath, 1972 stole the plaudits for Kranky Records, his stable-mate Vantzou sneaked in under the radar. This is, in my opinion, the superior album. Best served with powerful headphones in a quiet room.

7. The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient

“There is little doubt whose band this is these days. But Granduciel’s voice is acquiescent throughout. Sometimes he whoops (‘Come To The City’), sometimes he sneers (‘It’s Your Destiny’), but for the most part, he is content to bury himself in the maelstrom of swirling guitars and driving percussion. In accepting sole control of the band he and Kurt Vile started in Philadelphia eight years ago, Granduciel has proven himself the equal of his celebrated, erstwhile sparring partner. Slave Ambient is a fine album that deserves to be recognised amongst the finest to have seen this lap of the sun.”

Full album review here

6. Conquering Animal Sound – Kammerspiel

Rarely does a debut album manage to combine wonderful, fresh experimentation with intelligent, fully-formed songsmithery as well as Kammerspiel. Despite being loaded with bleeps, beeps and shuffles, it feels and sounds wholly organic. Anneke Kampan’s crystalline, elfin vocals are the most charming to have crossed these lugs in some time, and the songs are perfectly written to accommodate them. In other years, this would have been much higher up my list. That it’s not in the top five reflects upon how fantastic 2011 has been for albums.

5. Wilco – The Whole Love

I’ve been a big fan of Wilco since I bought A Ghost Is Born on the strength of hearing ‘Muzzle of Bees’ on a cd given away with a magazine in 2004. That said, my listening has mostly been confined to the albums that preceded that year. Sky Blue Sky was too light, the eponymous Wilco far too patchy. Finally, seven years later, A Ghost… has a worthy successor. The Whole Love is a wonderful listen, from start to finish, bookended by the two best tracks Wilco have recorded in years. Interviewing Glenn Kotche, the drummer, earlier this year, he said the band haven’t ever been this content. Rather than engendering complacency, it’s inspired them back to their ingenious best: a welcome, overdue return to form.

Interview with Glenn Kotche (Wilco) here 

4. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

“Taking his lead from some of the artists he’s worked with (Kanye and Mitchell, particularly), he’s surrounded himself with talent (the stellar bass saxophonist Colin Stetson is an especially noteworthy addition), and worked with them to take his songs to new and fascinating places. Bon Iver is a producer’s album, with the visionary Vernon at the helm. Far from inducing anthrophobia, his spell in the woods seems to have nurtured dexterity in collusion, which can only get more interesting in the years to come.”

Full album review here 

3. Dustin O’Halloran – Lumiere

“From the opening track, ‘A Great Divide’, O’Halloran raises the concept of thaw: the icy tinkling of light percussion, washed over, like daybreak, by the warmth of rising strings and sparse piano. It’s evocative and it’s brilliant. Even having played this album through the freezing, dark winter, the suggestion of spring is never far from the listener. Throughout, there is the uncluttered feel of a new start, breaths of fresh air and life. ‘We Move Lightly’ is loaded with hope and anticipation: the rising piano arpeggio being drawn towards something special and invigorating by the strings that surround it. The simple, sextet of notes that marks the climax of album centrepiece ‘Fragile No.4′ is breathtaking.”

Full album review here

2. Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place

I’ve tried to describe this to a few people, and failed miserably. I usually start by saying: “It’s a woman singing; but there aren’t any words. There are hardly any instruments, either.” At which point, the person normally says: “You mean like Enya?” No, no, no. Let’s try again. Julianna Barwick makes her music by looping her voice, over and over, layering it, and adding subtle bursts of synth, percussion, guitar and piano. It’s unlike almost anything else I’ve ever heard and Magic Place is, quite simply, one of the most exquisitely composed bodies of music I’ve come across in years.

1. King Creosote & John Hopkins – Diamond Mine

The first time I played this, I was waiting for a bus, on a busy street in Gwangju, South Korea, which stank of fish and drying chilli. Fife? I may as well have been on the moon. But I was instantly captivated. After listening to the first track (proper) about eight times, I promptly did so with the others in succession. It took me a full day to get through the entire album. The songs on Diamond Mine already existed somewhere in KC’s never-ending oeuvre, but Jon Hopkins has brought them to life, in full technicolour. The production is breathtaking; the melodies spectacular and King Creosote’s voice heartrending; a devastating triumvirate. In the best year for music I can remember, this is, for me, head and shoulders above anything else.

Interview with King Creosote & Jon Hopkins here

20. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

I was introduced to Perfume Genius late last year and instantly fell for his fragile-as-eggshell melodies, emotionally brazen lyrics and lower-than-fi production. This year, Youth Lagoon has filled the vacuum in my eardrums left by Perfume Genius. The Year of Hibernation is a beautiful, gentle album. Trevor Powers’ voice crackles as the tape hisses across ten near perfect pop songs. In parts, it’s (slightly) more buoyant than Perfume Genius, though. It’s nostalgic, yes, but looks to the past through spectacles a tad rosier than some of its peers.

19. Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise

I was living in a tiny, one bedroom apartment in Korea when this album came out. I remember firing it up to eleven, and lying on my bed, before eventually dozing off. I woke up confused and disorientated. The record had sent me into some of the strangest dreams I ever recall happening, inhabited by Jaar’s samples and narrated by the deep, gravelly voices that appear on the album. Space Is Only Noise is powerful, inventive and innovative. That its author had only just reached 21 when it was released helps this album become even more extraordinary.

18. Loch Lomond – Little Me Will Start A Storm

“Lots of albums pack an at-face-value emotional punch, and for obvious reasons (Antlers’ Hospice being a great example). But it’s less frequent that they come so stealthily loaded, the mood woven gently into pop songs. In that respect, Little Me… evokes The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot, amongst others: the preservation of memory, the articulation of emotion synthesised sweetly, euphonically, gracefully… perfectly.”

Full album review here

17. Beirut – The Rip Tide

While it’s always nice to see an artist as explorative as Zach Condon, I worried for a while between the second album and this one that he’d lost his way slightly. Would he ever return with a consistently excellent long player, which had, well, songs and that? The Rip Tide is an emphatic “yes”. It’s his best record since Gulag Orkestar and boasts some of the finest songs he’s ever written.

16. Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older

If the cherry atop the latter half of the year in Scottish music was Arab Strap’s one-night-only reunion at Sleazy’s, then one of the highlights of the first was this staunchly miserable affair. Aidan Moffat told us that his post-Arab Strap days haven’t given him reason to be cheerful, but nor have they blunted his razor sharp lyricism. Multi-instrumentalist Bill Wells provided deft, often lovely musical backing on an album that gets better with every listen.

15. Lanterns on the Lake – Gracious Tide Take Me Home

This is the album I’ve heard latest this year that’s made it onto the list. I heard it in November and wasn’t initially too taken by it. Noticing it creeping up on a few end of year lists, I revisited it and was utterly charmed. An album out of Tyneside that’s as sonorous and sweeping as the best of Sigur Ros, complete with the best male-female shared vocals since Lanegan and Campbell.

14. The Antlers – Burst Apart

Their first album, Hospice, blew me apart, even if it took me the best part of a year to get into. Burst Apart isn’t as stark, nor is it as obviously bleak. It is still, however, a fine album, and packs a significant emotional punch. ‘Putting The Dog To Sleep’, as a case in point, is particularly vitriolic. But whereas Peter Silberman would have whimpered the lyrics on Hospice, he’s almost defiant here when he sings: “Prove to me, I’m not gonna die alone”. I’m fairly sure The Antlers are the most interesting and exciting of all the Brooklyn bands right now.

13. Rob St. John – Weald

I first heard Rob St. John through a cd with his name scrawled on it in messy handwriting, passed to me at a party about five years ago. The two tracks were sparse, but powerful. There was nothing on it, however, that suggested he had an album like this in him. Weald reminds me a lot of David Thomas Broughton’s first album – particularly in the inventiveness of his guitar work. Naturally, then, it’s not a happy album (there are few of those in my collection), but it’s one of the most positive musical developments I’ve heard this year.

12. James Blake – James Blake

Twelve months ago, I bemoaned the lack of variety on my end of year list. As an annual rule, men with beards and guitars would populate it. They’re still here, but I like to think they’re keeping more eclectic company these days. I didn’t give James Blake a chance for a long while, mainly because the word “dubstep” was usually in close proximity to his name. I’m a professed musical snob and shamefully sidestep whole genres, often to my own aural detriment. Blake isn’t one to be pigeon holed though. There are some beautiful tracks on here, many of which are more structured on vocal gymnastics than tinny beats.

11. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

“Parts of the album – thematical and conceptual – have been in Gonzalez’s head since he was a child. When recording, he seems to have taken his foot off the brakes of adulthood and let his sense of wonder run wild. “I had a lot of crazy dreams when I was a kid,” he said at the time, smiling. Not many artists do regression as stylishly as this.”

Full album review here

Interview with Anthony Gonzalez here

Numbers 10-1 will be available tomorrow

This is the second piece I did for The Skinny’s chart. This one came in at number two for the year.

There’s a set of symptoms that are common to those who spend an extended time socially isolated, including social anxiety, depression and an unwillingness to readjust and coexist with others. A cursory glance at Justin Vernon’s recent discography suggests that indie’s very own Christopher McCandless hasn’t struggled with the latter. Since returning from the Wisconsin log cabin that helped make him famous, he’s played a starring role on Anaïs Mitchell’s folk operaHadestown, pitched up alongside Jay Z, Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross on Kanye West’s last smash, lent his pseudo-R&B falsetto to a couple of Gayngs records and laid the foundations for an exciting project with James Blake. It’s little wonder Vernon’s had to cry off with exhaustion (he recently described the moment in which he turned down a collaboration with Neil Young because he was too knackered).

But there’s a reason why the queue to work with Justin Vernon is snaking round the block, and if it was evident on Bon Iver’s first album For Emma, Forever Ago then the follow up hammers it home with aplomb. The debut presented a man with an uncanny ability to take the emotions in his head and transfer them first to his sleeve, and then to tape. For Emma is a wonderfully melodic, yet painfully bleak tale of love and loss that had ‘hit record’ plastered all over it. And sure enough, it brought Vernon and Bon Iver to the eyes of the world.