We’ve made it…here you go…the Top 5…
Number 5 – Wonk Unit – Nervous Racehorse
This for me was a real grower of an album, as had been last years Muffy, so this year I am bringing the new Year in wearing my Nervous Racehorse tee shirt.
The great thing about this album is that it has a good range of styles from the very gentle opener Wood Pigeon with coos “all soft and quacky”, the straight up punk of Go Easy, the quirky The Trail, the shouty almost hardcore Depressed and the poppy ska punk of I love My Nagging Wife…which you can enjoy below:
Strangely this isn’t available to download (at least not from Amazon) so Buy Wonk Unit – Nervous Racehorse on CD
Number 4 – Sleaford Mods – Chubbed Up
The second entry from the mighty Sleaford Mods with their Singles Collection – Chubbed Up. The band released a series of limited 7″ from late 2013 through to the middle of 2014 and then released them as this album. Far more consistent than Divide and Exit and including two classic tracks – Jobseeker and Jolly Fucker which are worth the price of the album on their own. Here’s Jolly Fucker for your delectation;
Download Sleaford Mods Chubbed Up
Number 3 – The Shell Corporation – Mandrake
What an absolutely belting album this is – great US punk rock at its finest – gutsy and political. Some felt they were heading a little bit too closely to a Bad Religion vibe on one or two songs here but I don’t feel that detracts from what is an outstanding album that did not disappoint. Here’s The Death of Us…turn it up…
Download The Shell Corporation – Mandrake
Number 2 – Stiff Little Fingers – No Going Back
The return of Stiff Little Fingers – another long awaited album – their last album came out back in 2003 and this is another Pledge album – actually achieving 100% funding within just 5 hours, yep, there were plenty wanting to see this great album made…including me. Along with the album, as a pledger I got a special edition book style double CD including all the demo versions of the tracks and a rather excellent tee shirt…The band didn’t release any videos for the tracks but still hit number 1 in the BBC Rock Album charts on release. Here’s a live version of “When We Were Young”
Download Stiff Little Fingers – No Going Back
Number 1 – Lagwagon – Hang
We’ve made it at last – here’s my favourite album of the year…another long anticipated album – their last album was released back in 2005…so another long wait for this, but it was totally worth it…to quote Fat Wreck Chords press release “Hang is concoction of Hoss, Trashed, and Blaze, seasoned with Duh’s metallic overtones and Let’s Talk About Feelings’ strong sense of melody…” and I think that sums up why this is such a strong album…although I accept, if you haven’t heard any of those previous Lagwagon albums, you’ll be none the wiser 😉 I was going to link to the video of Made of Broken Parts…but embedding has been disabled – click the title if you want to see/hear that track, then I wanted to embed a live version of Obsolete Absolute, but that was disabled as well…sigh. So, I’ll share with you a stream of the track Poison In The Well – it’s all good really – you get three videos for the price of one…kind of! See update below!
So, a couple of years on and here’s a cracking unofficial video of Obsolete Absolute:
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