Audio Storms Best Albums of the Decade

Audio Storm’s
TOP 30 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Right, some of you may know that me and my friend Ed do a show on Radio Cabin called Audio Storm, on last week's show we counted down the 30 albums that, in our opinion, are the best of the decade just gone (the noughties.)

So just incase you weren't listening (which you almost certianly weren't) then luckily I've written them down and added my own personal thoughts on them, because I literally have nothing going on in my life, and attempted to sound all poncy like a music reviewer in the Guardian or some shit, but I mainly sound like a twat I think.

I own all these albums (apart from the ones I haven't written anything about, they are Ed's choices, although I do like what I have heard so have nothing against them) and I own the Young Knives album as well, but for some reason didn't write anything about it.

So I hope you enjoy reading it (if you choose to) and I hope you go buy all the albums because me and Ed said they are good.

I also hope you listen to Audio Storm's on Sunday nights from 7pm at www.radiocabin.co.uk

30. The Lancashire Hotpots – Never Mind the Hotpots – (2007)
Best Track – He’s Turned Emo

Although this is probably the only countdown of the best albums of the decade which will feature this particular record, we think it deserves it’s place, it does put a smile on your face, and it is thoroughly a noughties record, with many pop culture references. “Nigella, MySpace, Fall Out Boy” And an endless stream of songs about the new technology that has flourished in this decade.
It also has a nice little song about the inevitable globalisation of the country and the loss of Identity of a Lancashire town, when the singer strolls round his home town after been offered a job in Coventry, remembering all the memories he has of his Lancashire town. “they chopped down that tree to build an hmv...good” and “it’s all changed since my day, used to be a comet down there now it’s a Currys digital.” They play to a very stereotypical view of a Lanchishire resident, mentioning greyhound and whippets, there are little quips from the lead singer, which always make me smile and it is just a really fun album. Although it will by including it, this list almost certainly looses credibility.

29. Portishead – Third (2008)

28. Johann Johannsson - Fordlândia (2008)
Best Track - The Rocket Builder (Lo Pan!)

I only discovered this album lately, but I listened to it on the new medium of Spotify and fell in love with it, just beautiful haunting strings.

27. British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music? (2008)

26. Andrew Jackson Jihad – Issue Problems

Best Track – Brave as a noun

Not really an album, as it is just over 10 minutes long. But what a ten minutes, just brilliant from beginning to end, and most of these songs have appeared on some of his other releases, but I can not stop listening to this so that’s why it is here, 10 minutes of non stop music of lyrically intriguing, fast paced, beautifully punky anti folk. Tackling everything from murder, survival to love and the human race. Plus because now it is out of print, it is available for free on their website.

25. Howling Bells - Howling Bells (2006)


24. Decemberists – Hazards of Love (2009)
Best Song – The Rakes Song

A beautifully crafted rock opera masterpiece. An hour of uninterrupted, mystical, haunting epic story telling. And even if you don’t follow the story you can enjoy the sheer craftsmanship of it all.

If you don't then you have to hand it to them, they have written the catchiest song (The Rakes Song) about killing children.


23. David Croenburg’s Wife - Bluebeard's Room (2008)

22. Arctic Monkey’s – Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not - (2006)
Best Track – Mardy Bum

This may come as a shock to many Audio Storm fans as this is a popular band, but this will be the album that people look back on as the seminal album of the decade. It caught the public imagination and started a wave of “Indie” bands with twangy guitars and distinctive accents. Their indosyncrantic nature of writing showed that Alex Turner could produce some of the wittiest, clever most observant lyrics in modern mainstream music. “There aint no love no, just Montague’s and Capulet’s or banging tunes and dj sets.” And “so tense, never tenser could all go a bit frank Spencer and I’m talking gibberish, tip of the tongue but I can’t deliver it” and “He’s not from San Francisco he’s from hunters bar, I don’t quite know the distance, but I’m sure it’s pretty far.”
Their number one hit “I bet you look good on the dance floor” became an instant classic and the soundtrack of the MySpace generation. And will inevitably be played over montages of the noughties in future documentaries. The arctic monkeys retained some creditability by shunning the cameras and making few Television appearances, they followed up with a very impressive second album. Which showed the hype was justified, even if it was from Gordon Brown trying to get down wiv da kids!

21. Brakes – Beautific Visions (2006)

20. Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (2008)
Best Track – All Alright

Sigur Ros ‘s latest album “With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly” or “Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust” is brilliant beyond belief, and I think, my favourite of all the Sigur Ros albums. It has all the usual heart rendering beautiful, slow music. (I have stated in the past that Sigur Ros are the only band who has the power to make me cry!) But also on this album are more upbeat, happy tracks. My favourite of these is the second track on the album “Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur” It starts off with some muffled trumpets then, bursts in with some piano chords and the main riff starts, it continues, I defy anyone to listen to this track and not have a smile on their face. Sigur Ros are such talented musicians; this track shows that they don’t just use their talents for making quite sombre music. Halfway through the song breaks down and only the piano, violin and the instrument playing the main riff (sorry cant work out what it is) are audible then the drums and vocals kick back in, then the bass, then more vocals, then the strings become more noticeable, then the trumpets, then the drums get faster along with the vocals, (which also get higher). It’s building to something...I get exited, then all the instruments stop, and just the main riff instrument continues, suspended in mid air for a few seconds then...BANG! The drums kick back in along with all the other wonderful instruments, the victorious sounding trumpets capping off a truly excellent song.

This is the effect this band has on me and, I think, every other one of their fans. They have the ability to take you out of the real world, and into another. Sometimes you’re happy to be there, other times it can be upsetting, and even, at times, scary. Listening to this extraordinary band you paint your own images, meanings and subjects to the songs. As most of their songs they speak in, to quote the title of their songs, “Gobbledigook” or “hopelandic” their made up language, or just plain old Icelandic. Despite this you instantly know, or create, the meaning of the song.

When I listen to their music I get sucked in and become almost oblivious to my surroundings. For example I was listening to a song on my iPod from their new album, the song was called “Festival” and I was standing in a car park. I just shut my eyes, and was cut off from everything around me and for nine minutes or so I was in Sigur Ros’s world. Then when I opened them again, I did find it hard to re-adjust to normal life. Only a truly special band could do that to someone like me, and Sigur Ros are a VERY special band. Make no mistake about it.

19. Lightspeed Champion – Falling Off The Lavender Bridge (2007)

18. The Crimea – Secrets of The Witching Hour (2007)
Best Track – Raining Planets

The second of three albums in our countdown which are available to download for free on the internet. (Incidentally all of them done way before Radiohead had the idea) is a stunner. Secrets of the witching hour has an air the apocalyptic and bleak to about it conjuring up imagery such as “Terradactal taking on the helicopter gunship” “there’s no need to start freaking out, it’s just the end of time.” And “it’s all down hill once you learn how kids are made.” The lead singer’s strained; almost child like voice gives every song a bit more poignancy and haunting effect.
From what I believe this album has saved the band, who were repeatedly dropped from their record label, now have a steady run of gigs. And one of the songs of the album, Loop a Loop, was used in an advert for chewing gum, (Which ruined it a bit, although the advert did not feature the line in the song “throw another small child on the fire”)
A simply wonderful album, beautiful, haunting and epic, with the last line of the album “the bastard that made us all” sung by what sounds like a choir (though it’s probably vocal dubbing”) is spine tingling. A simply stunning album and it’s for free so you have no reason not to love it!

17. Kaiser Chiefs – Employment (2005)
Best Track – Saturday Night

This commercially successful album has made its way into the countdown, for sentimental reasons more than anything. This was the first album I (Nathan) brought which was recorded by a modern band, with my own money. I had just started listening to Radio 1, and this album kind of symbolised for me the start of my teenage independence in musical terms, listening to bands, buying records and moving away from what the local radio used to tell me was good, i.e. pop and stuff from the eighties. As you know now my music taste has now evolved and I tend to shy away from the more commercially successful music. But this album is still a great album, with many anthemic tracks which again were sing along hits to the noughties young at festivals.

16. The Robocop Kraus – They Think They Are the Robocop Kraus (2005)

Best Track – After Laughter

We discovered this band when they were supporting Art Brut at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, their live performance was brilliant. The lead singer sold me a T-shirt which was too small for me, I then told him how good I thought he was but didn’t have enough money to buy one of his albums.
The German indie electro band that are the Robocop Kraus, in this album created a brilliant collection of bouncy pop orientated, catchy songs with some fairly serious issues.
A friend becoming a religious fundamentalist for example in Concerned, Your Secular Friends and the song “Life Amazes us Despite our Miserable Future.”
A very enjoyable album.

15. Elbow –The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)
Best Track – Starlings

Quite rightly this album was presented with a host of awards upon its release. Such a magical body of work. Guy Garvey's, personal, beautiful, touching lyrical poetry accompanied by epic orchestral sounds.
The album produces songs about love, being in a band and the loss of a friend, with such tenderness that it is hard not to be moved by them. The anthemic power of “One Day Like This” can still make you feel incredibly happy and optimistic about the world, despite how many times it has been played over gaudy montages of weeping idiots or supposedly uplifting moments on the telly.

14. Tim Minchin – Darkside (2005)

Best Track – Ten Foot Cock and A Few Hundred Virgins

The first of three live albums from Minchin this decade, there seems to be no stopping his rise to stardom at the moment, but here is where it all started. A brilliantly crafted comedy show and the songs proved that this musical comedian was very special. As his songs were so brilliantly put together they could stand alone without out the comedy label being attached to them.
He injected the comedy song, with insightful, intelligent, philosophical, polysyllabic intellectual lyrics.
If it’s not laugh-a-line “Inflatable You” which is nothing less than a perfect comedy song, treading the line between innuendo with genuinely hilarious lyrics. Or the brilliant beat poem “Mitsubishi colt” or the superb “Rock and Roll Nerd” and the touching, thoughtful tones of “Not Perfect.”
Whether Minchin is attacking religion “Which suggests that God's omniscience
Is nullified by His ambivalence, Unless it turns out that He's impotent, And if God can't get a boner, I guess that explains the plethora Of huge erections in His honour -Because we all know a steeple's just a subconscious compensatory manifestation of a huge stiff penis” or the Israel/Palestine conflict “...why not, not eat pigs together?” He blends intellectual qualities with childish humour.
He raised the bar for musical comics and I believe that the he is the best of a generation. Always challenging always thought provoking and above all always funny. This was the show and the album where it all started for Tim.


13. Jeffrey Lewis – 12 Crass Songs (2007)
Best Track – Big A, Little A

This album is guaranteed to make anyone who listens to it, depressed, paranoid and angry. Bit don’t let that put you off. It is a stunning record. The brilliant Jeffery Lewis covers 12 songs by the anarchic punk band of the 70s, Crass, hence the name.
What Lewis does is add a certain depth to the songs that the original versions in their chaotic, unorganised (though great) recordings lacked. He presents the lyrics (some updated by Lewis) over stunning musical arrangements. The lyrics preaching about the sinister “systems” that have control over us all our lives, or the demise and commercialisation of Punk, are a still as relevant today as it they were when they were originally written.

12. The Young Knives – Superabundance (2008)
Best Track - Flies

11. Art Brut – It’s A Bit Complicated (2007)
Best Track – Nag Nag Nag Nag

Art Brut’s only album on a major label (EMI) and it is a cleaner produced, more polished sound, as opposed to the more “rough” sound of their first and third offerings, this is full to the brim with punchy pop tunes. However, this is not a bad thing; Eddie Argos’s unique voice carries the songs, and can’t help but make you smile. The lyrics are as witty and charming as any other Art Brut record “river deep and mountain high, there’s some lyrics that will never apply, because I don’t lie awake at night, dreaming of river depth or mountain height” or “all the best pop songs are girl meets boy, and there wasn’t one song that I didn’t enjoy, but I lacked confidence when I was young so things didn’t work out the way they get sung” and it is consistent as that throughout the album. For example the song “I Will Survive” is lyrically one of Art Brut’s best, I think.
The album also contains our favourite Art Brut song, ever. Nag Nag Nag Nag, which is an absolute (to risk sounding cheesy) corker of a song, and features the immortal line “I feel nothing for my peers except, envy and hatred...how many girls have they seen naked?”
This is a brilliant album not a bad song on it, from start to finish each song makes you want to jump around, sing along and smile.


10. Green Day – American Idiot (2004)
Best Track – Jesus of Suburbia

This generation’s seminal angry political album. Recorded in protest towards the Bush administration, it kick started a wave of good old fashioned political song writing, with artists complaining about mainly the war in Iraq.
This is a brilliant album and really captures the mood of many liberal, disenfranchised young people who felt alienated by the American government. The title track became an anthem for these people, but the rest of the album is equally as thrilling, all the singles were politically charged and characterised the way many Americans were feeling in the after math of September 11th.
All over the world people could relate to the band singing about paranoia, their annoyance at the government, the anger at the war and the state of the world. But take away the politics from this record and it is a brilliant piece of rock opera.
Plus the 9 minute epic, “Jesus of Suburbia” is one of the greatest rock songs ever written, I think. The lyrics and production on this song is something to behold, a masterpiece of modern music.
This album is so important because it was one of only a handful of successful, angry, politicised records and spoke for a generation and established Green Day’s place as a truly mainstream act.

9. The Mountain Goats – Tallahassee (2003)
Best Track – No Children
The Mountain Goats first non lo-fi offering tells the story of “The Alpha Couple” an alcoholic married couple who live in Florida.
The album paints a vivid picture of the couples’s lives, and their dependence on alcohol to stay together in their failing marriage. Each song is painfully realistic, particular highlights include “Game Shows Touch Our Lives” a beautifully touching song steeped in imagery and really emphasises the character’s need not just for alcohol but each other. “Oceanographer’s Choice” describes the couple giving into each other and having sex. And “No Children” is the brilliant, hateful, self loathing sing along tune.
John Darnielle's insightful lyrics and vivid depiction of his reoccurring characters are brilliantly bought to life in this album, and is a brilliant example of story telling within an album.

8. Art Brut – Art Brut vs. Satan (2009)
Best Track – Demons Out!
Art Brut’s latest offering revolves around two main themes. The bands dislike for mainstream music “...the record buying public, we hate them, this is Art Brut Vs Satan” and the sometimes disastrous effects of alcohol “I finally decided to tell you how I felt; I mistakenly thought that the drink would help.”
Whereas Art Brut’s first album was released by Fierce Panda, and so had an almost home made feel to it, and as we discussed before their second album, released by EMI had a much more polished feel to it, this third offering is somewhere in between the two, recorded as live by Frank Black in just a couple of weeks. And it shows; the record captures some of the energy that the band put into their live shows.
Eddie Argos is still on form with his humorous, clever lyrics “why is everyone trying to sound like U2, that’s not a very cool thing to do. Why would you want to sound like U2? Just press record and play it straight through”
Other topics covered include, teenage nerves when talking to girls on “Am I Normal?” Public Transport on “The Passenger” and DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake on, err, “DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake.”
Another brilliant record from the band.

7. Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobious Pip – Angles (2008)
Best Track – The Beat That My Heart Skipped

“I aint gonna take it no more” proclaims Scroobious Pip at the start of this album, before launching into an attack on the state of the music industry and fame culture. “Soulless music, artless lyrics, goalless movements, heartless gimmicks, controlled and clueless, careers lasting a minute. If this is the big life, well I aint looking to live it.” This is a theme which runs through the album, on Fixed he tells us that “hip hop is art, don’t make another pop hit, be smart.”
This album is lyrical poetry from start to finish. Each song is thought provoking whether it’s the comment on Human behaviour “letter from God to Man”, the poetic monologue littered with profound advice “waiting for the beat to kick in” or “Angels” the role play story of suicide and revenge killing that teaches us that “things in life aren’t always quite what they seem there’s more than one given angel to one given scene, so bear that in mind next time you try to intervene.”
Or “That Shout Always Kill” which is again littered with good advice plus more pop culture references than you can shake a stick at.
This is a sensational album, different, unique, intelligent and thought provoking this is a must have album, regardless if you consider yourself a hip hop fan or not.

6. Half Man Half Biscuit – CSI: Ambleside (2008)
Best Track – Took Problem Chimp to the Ideal Home Show

Half Man Half Biscuit show that they still have it with this brilliant album with tales of, and annoyances at, the 21st century.
Nigel Blackwell’s lyrics are as witty and as sharp as ever. For example in the blistering opening “Evening of Swing (has been cancelled)” “And a plague fell upon the Retail Park And a storm broke over Henman Hill And the christening party arsehole Who hitherto had blurred My conception of man as nature’s final word Was fleeing from the lava His SatNav pleading thus: “I’m not from round here mate, you should have got the bus” Enter then a real rat pack Millions pouring in And Ezekiel punched Dan Brown And the nights are drawing in And your Evening of Swing had been cancelled”
The biting and hilarious lyrics continue “If you look carefully in the background of The Scream
The couple on the bridge are both Robson Greene” and no target is safe, the song “Totnes Bickering Fair” is a snipe about those kind of new age hippies who go on “journeys of self discovery” and install “solar heating” or “vow to rescue donkeys.” Blackwell cuts through all of this with the brilliant chorus “I’m going to feed our children non-organic food...and with the money saved, take ‘em to the zoo.”
Or if it’s, my personal favourite on the album, “Took Problem Chimp to the Ideal Home Show” which is a song about taking a chimp to the ideal home show “in the heart of darkness there are no hassle free cabinets” Nigel Blackwell snarls.
There is not a song on this album that won’t make you crack a smile, the album ends with the six minute rant “National Shite Day” all about a day where everything seems to be going wrong or has been put there to annoy the lead singer. He shouts the immortal lines “I try to put everything into perspective Set it against the scale of human suffering and I thought of the Mugabe government
and the children of the Calcutta railways This works for a while But then I encounter Primark FM”
Brilliant!

5. Jeffery Lewis and The Junkyard – Em Are I (2009)
BEST TRACK – If Life Exists

He has been described by Jarvis Cocker as “The best lyricist working in the US today.” And this album from 2009 justifies this claim. With Lewis wrestling with life, death, theology and everything in between.
In “Whistle Past the Graveyard” talks about the big question and ways up all the big theories and comes out with gold such as “If we lived for ever we’d really wanna find out, so what a relief we all die, so there is nothing to worry about.”
This level of insightful although humorous lyrics continue through the album “going bald is the most manly thing I’m ever going to do” or the line “I tell the earth thanks for the hair, the skin and the bone, although I slowly give it back I still appreciate the loan” a quote I may have to put on my tombstone.
On the song “Broken Broken Broken Heart” although a familiar subject in popular music, but Lewis manages to turn the song in to something which only he can and makes it sound like no one has ever written a song about a broken heart before.
Or in “Bugs and Insects” he paints an idyllic view of the afterlife as being too crowed for humans because all the zillions of bugs and insects who have died over the years take up all the room.
And “roll bus roll” would be brilliant to see live as it has so much sing along appeal
Plus if that’s not enough for you, the album ends with “mini the moocher from the future” a beautifully surreal, comic book, tale.
Jeffrey Lewis is one of the most consistently interesting, special, unique and talented song writers in the world, his lyrics are like streams of poetic consciousness, as well as being thought provoking and charming.

4. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree (2005)
Best Track – This Year

This 2005 offering from John Darnielle's Mountain Goats is a stunning record. Focusing on the singer’s childhood, and his relationship with his abusive step father. To whom he dedicates the album to in the linear notes.
The Sunset Tree is incredibly personal, and at times when listening to the songs you can feel intrusive because of the songs content. For example the songs “has thou considered the tetrapod” and “Pale Green Things” are almost unbearable to listen to as the power of Darnielle’s voice with just an acoustic guitar really shines through.
Each song is touching and personal, whether it refers to love or death or domestic violence each song takes you right back to where the singer is talking about and you are right there in the moment. Lines like “I'm in the living room watching the Watergate hearings
While my step father yells at my mother.
Launches a glass across the room, straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover.
lean in close to my little record player on the floor.
so this is what the volume knobs for.” From Dance Music
The sign of a very special song writer.
The album ends with Darnielle remembering the day his step father took him to the races, the song then ends with him receiving a call from his sister informing him of his step father’s death.
This is a simply sublime album.


3. Harvey Danger – Little By Little (2005)
Best Track - Little Round Mirrors

Little By Little is the bands third album, this album is far more piano based with only one song, “Cream and Bastards Rise” which would fit on the other two albums. The sound is far more polished and the two stand out tracks for me are “Moral Centralia” and “Little Round Mirrors” which is a beautifully sad song about someone who likes music too much, which judging by the fact I’m writing a massive blog about how much I like a band, I can relate to. Although towards the end of the album their are darker songs such as “What You Live By”
And “Diminishing Returns” which is about urban and social destruction which was should have been played at the end of every news bulletin during the credit crunch over pictures of bankers who had lost their jobs walking out of their office. Which features lyrics, like the bleakly profound “...Progress shall be defined by your position on the bridge as it burns...”
And in a break from usual depressing biting form, there is a almost unbearably sweet love song in “happiness writes white” which also features the most cynical line ever written in a love song though, which is “now you’ve come along, there’s one less thing wrong.”
Sean Nelson retains his label as one of the cleverest, greatest and most underrated lyricists of our time with this album with his words staying with you for a long time after the record has stopped playing. But possibly my favourite line in the whole album is from a song called “Incommunicado” which goes “I dreamed we were alone all night in a house made out of beds...and nothing happened!”
If you don’t believe me about how good this album is, then go see for yourself, as they gave it away for free on their website, again long before Radiohead did, so you have no excuse, most albums worthy of the label “classic” aren’t free!

2. Harvey Danger – King James Version (2000)
Best Track – Why I’m Lonely

“King James Version” which was a far more angry sounding album, and sounds as if the band doesn’t know whether they want to keep the sound of the first album or go for more piano led melodies which would dominate their next album. It is a stunning piece of work steeped in religious, political and cultural references, and after only a few listens you will fall in love with it.
I found this on the internet, in which Sean Nelson describes his feelings about the album and writes about it much better than I could.
King James Version, the difficult second Harvey Danger album—not the Bible translation, silly!—was released seven years ago yesterday, on September 12, 2000. Writing sessions began in December, 1998, recording started in March or April of 1999 in Bearsville, NY, and continued in fits and starts throughout the next year. By the time it was finished, the major label that bankrolled it no longer existed, and the entire music business had entered an upheaval that, frankly, has yet to end, and isn't likely to.

Though the initial trajectory of the album was away from pop (away from melody, away from fun, away from humor, away from anything the band was identified with or, indeed, was good at), time had a way of guiding us back toward our strengths, and the resulting push and pull made an album that not only reflected the tumultuous life of success, self-doubt, internal wrangling, yearning to prove ourselves to a largely indifferent audience/totally indifferent label, and unavoidable immersion in the depths of narcissism we'd been living, but turned to the elements of that tumultuous life for thematic and even musical inspiration. What I hear when I listen to the album is not the sound of my life in 1998-2001, but the sound of our little band striving (sometimes together, but often against one another) to make it sound more like we thought it should sound. More than anything else, I think, we wanted to make an album that no one expected from us. An album no one else could make. An album that made no concessions to any idea (ours/theirs/yours) of a popular audience. An album you had to seek out. An album you had to work to love. KJV is unarguably that, right down to Tae Won Yu's beautiful/terrible/perfect cover art, which expressed our band's fractured mental and psychic state, or relationship to ourselves, our city, our project, and each other brilliantly. It's also a mess (possibly because we micromanaged him into the ground). There are sounds I hate on the album, but far more that I love. More to the point, having never before or since put so much of myself into anything with so little to show for it afterwards, there are sounds I never got over the fact that more people didn't hear. Almost never. Having met a lot of people who did hear the album and to whom it meant something, I think I am now. Which is better than never, but goddamn...

Sometimes I think we put far too much energy toward all the wrong things. Sometimes I think we were utterly delusional. Sometimes I wish we had done every single thing differently. But sometimes I think KJV is a legitimate cult gem that will one day join the ranks of Oddessey and Oracle and The Village Green Preservation Society or at least fucking Pinkerton or whatever. Not likely, I know, but I still have a dim wish.

Mostly, though, I'm glad to find myself thinking about it less. I do wish it a happy birthday, however, and many happy returns. (Thanks to iTunes).

1. Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock and Roll (2005)
Best Track – Formed a Band

I used to listen to a great little digital radio station when I first got my digital radio, called “The Storm” (which our show’s name plays tribute to in Audio Storm) it was a radio that played non stop music all day, and was run by a robot who had once broken into the studio and taken over the studio and killed all the presenters and would now do the same links throughout the day, occasionally impersonating Sean Connery. The station no longer exists, but the music it played was brilliant, not only the good mainstream stuff, but strange, wonderful music which I’d never heard before but wanted to hear more of, but the robot (or the scrolling text on my DAB digital radio) never used to tell me the names of the songs or artists.

One of the songs I heard on there started with repeated hits of a snare drum, then a catchy riff, and then in came in a man who couldn’t really sing, but was so excited to be proclaiming how he had got “a brand new girlfriend” by the middle of the song he was ecstatically shouting to me, “I’ve seen her naked, TWICE! I’ve seen her naked TWICE!” I instantly fell in love with this song, and had to tell Ed the next day at school, I sang him the line, he laughed. And then we both went on a quest (mainly on Google) trying to find this band. We typed in “brand new girlfriend song” but only found a song by a country singer called Steve Holly. We never put the “naked” line in because we were worried what results that would throw up.

Eventually we found out that the song was called “Good Weekend” by Art Brut. I went on the internet and researched them and discovered they had an album, I then went into HMV, and got them to order it for me, and then spent money I was suppose to buy Christmas presents on it. Gave it to my mum to wrap up to give it back to me for Christmas, that Christmas I drove my family mad by constantly playing it and dancing around the conservatory to it.
I was utterly besotted with this album, the cheapness of the packaging, (the cover wasn’t even a proper booklet, something I’d never seen before!) the sound of the album. I was hearing someone who couldn’t sing shout over music which didn’t sound like it was produced properly, it sounded as if it was home made. And I loved it.

From the opening track, which is the greatest opening song to a debut album EVER, Formed a Band, with the immortal chorus “Formed a band, we formed a band, look at us we formed a band!” It encapsulates the innocence and the hopes and dreams of being in a band “we’re going to write a song as universal as Happy Birthday”

The excitement and enthusiasm of the lead singer, Eddie Argos that he was in a band did not stop through out the album. Simple yet clever lyrics.

This album taught me that anyone could make music; you didn’t have to write about what everyone else wrote about. For example there are songs on this album about not being very good at sex, and songs with choruses like “modern art makes me want to rock out” and “I’m considering a move to LA.”

And two songs at the end “Stand Down” and “18,000 Lira” which don’t really fit with the rest of the album, which seemed to be very much based and about the lead singers life and views. I later found out that it was because Argos originally wanted to write a concept album about an Italian terrorist he had read about, but could only manage two songs.

This album is nothing less than an alternative classic, featuring classic songs such as the teenage love song “Emily Kane” and made me realise that like Eddie Argos sings in “Bad Weekend” “Popular Culture no longer applies to me!” Me and Ed have since seen the band live, met and spoken to Eddie Argos twice and got his facebook and phone number (because he agreed to do a telephone interview with Audio Storm, the nice man that he is), bought all their albums and merchandise and as many b-sides that we can get our hands on.

Bang Bang Rock and Roll by Art Brut is Audio Storm’s best album of this decade, the noughties.