The Year of McGee

Now that Prime Minister Dave Thatcher (who would have thought, after that exquisite, exquisite ceremony, that he’d decide take her name) has finally announced, in a cascade of blue fireworks and go-green smoke, that the still-new decade will be known, from henceforth, as the Tory-teens, let’s all hold hands take a look back at the musical breakthroughs and breakdowns of the first year of this politically-ridiculous era we call home.

First things first, let’s get the obvious out of the way: 2010 has been, by anybody’s standards, the Year Of McGee. When Alan decided, back in December of 2009, to step up and predict, via his Guardian blog, who he thought would be the biggest bands of the following year, the world scoffed: ‘MyDogJane? Paper Spaceman? Male Bonding?’ and we all giggled uproariously. ‘Fuck off McGee – you don’t know shit. I mean, have you just made those names up? Male Bonding? Why don’t you just waddle off back to Aberdeen or wherever it is you’re supposed to have come from? Stick to what you’re best at, yeah – noshing down on Glasvegas’ big ol’ skaggy bellend.’

And then it all kicked off – Thom Yorke’s cheeks finally fell off and Paper Spaceman, in a frankly bizarre sequence of unrelated coincidences, ended up getting the call and tore up their Glastonbury Friday night slot with an alacrity that, let’s face it, was kind of inevitable considering they only had four songs at the time, and the kids went nuts and bought that one red vinyl limited release single in their droves. And then PS set out on a nationwide tour with both Male Bonding and Avi Buffalo and the kids went so goddamn nuts that U2 and the Foos decided to call it a day, there and then, because nobody wanted either them or, indeed, their rotating stages anymore, and then – well, you know all this already. I mean, it’s not like I even need to mention what happened to MyDogJane. Or what didn’t happen to MyDogJane more like – am I right? Am I?

McGee’s ascent was, of course, as mercurial as Rough Trade’s much-touted indiepop renaissance was utterly, thrillingly nonexistent. At the last count, precisely fourteen people had bought the Vivian Girls’ record and three Betty and the Werewolves’. Oh God, and Michachu had that seizure that I’d always felt was on the cards. Not a good year for Rough Trade. Better luck next year girls.

Lord Gaga. Give it six months and it will be weird to think of him as anything else. I mean, we’d all seen the photos, right, but it was still pretty fucked up seeing him drag up that baritone out of nowhere right in the middle of ‘Poker Face’. Truly, the Monster’s Ball tour will never be forgot. Ditto the Strokes’ we-never-actually-split-up-guys reunion shows. Now, I, who was never that stoked (hahahahahahahahahaha!) about them headlining the Isle of Wight – felt, from the moment it was announced, that they could have done better. But for Julian to bring fellow-headliner Calvin Harris on stage mid-set and tell the rest of the band to shit off – this is the guy who’s going to be behind the Best Casablancas Solo Record Ever, we’re going to make delicious early90s-synthpop offspring together, believe! Well that kind of justified everything. What a douche. I look forward to hearing the rest of the band’s Julian-less record in the summer of 2011 – apparently, the provisional title goes something along the lines of Little Joy Nickel Eye Albert Hammond Jr.’s Solo Project. Can’t be worse than First Impressions though, can it? Am I right? Am I?

If 2010 was the year of McGee, then it was also the year of the micro-tweet. Twitter was getting pretty verbose, after all. Hence, I will attempt to summarise this year’s most high-profile releases with all the pithiness of the broadsheets’ own efforts in this direction: as the editors of the Telegraph, Times, Guardian, FT and the now-only-twelve-pages-long Independent so succinctly put it in that groundbreaking joint statement, ‘who needs arts critics when you’ve got Twitter.’

Vampire Weekend: shameless. Jennifer Lopez: shameful. Massive Attack: shame. Wu Tang: shhhhhh. The Streets: shameless. Gang of Four: win! Kid Rock: win! Limp Bizkit: hahahahahahaha. Beyonce: Marry me. I love you. I love you so much (oh balls, I’ve exceeded my character count). Eminen: shameless. The Goo Goo Dolls: … ZZ Top: shave. Madonna: shave. Xtina: shameless. Arcade Fire: shactually good. Unlike Neon Bible then (oh balls, I’ve exceeded my character count).

Oh Christ, and RIP Lily Allen. Somebody must have known she was getting though a fistful of mephedrone a day. We didn’t listen guys – we did not listen.

The moral of the story being this: predications about who or what is going to be ‘big’, or indeed ‘break’ the following year are, in almost every case, a stone cold waste of time (particularly is they tumble from between the heroin-flecked lips of bald, ugly Alan McGee).

The following are five exceptions to this rule:

1. If OK Go aren’t one of the biggest bands in the world by the end of the summer, I’ll eat my laptop. With gravy. Their new record, something about a Blue Sky or something, something like that, is the shiniest, dumbest, most openly derivative bricolage of things poached from Prince, Of Montreal, TVOTR etc. etc. to ever sound even a little bit okay. Terrified MGMT fans (apparently the new MGMT album is genuinely pretty weird) will lap it up loudly and pornographically.

2. The best album of the year has already happened. It goes by the name of The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project and is a criminally well-thought-out celebration of the cut-short life and work of the lead singer of The Gun Club, almost certainly the raddest band ever. Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch and Johnny Dowd all do delicious, hillybilly things to lost songs

3. Bourge-folk, that excruciatingly English, chummy, moneyed, let’s-all-wear-hats genre propped up by alumni of some of our finest traditional schools – see Noah and the Whale, Mumford and Sons et al – will go from strength to strength to strength thanks to the likes of Stornoway. All together now, ‘Conkers shining on the ground, the air is cooler, and I feel like I just started uni…’ Jesus. For those of you who don’t know, a member of Stornoway goes to Warwick University. Hurrah! My advice – pay attention to some slightly better Americans, Local Natives, instead.

4. The following artists really deserve to do tremendously well: Love Is All. Veronica Falls. Talons’.

5. Dubstep will almost certainly ‘die’. Only to be replaced by a genre with a name incorporating one of the following words: ‘Glitch’. ‘Fidget’. ‘Gutterhouse’. ‘Dog’. ‘Baudelaire’. ‘S. Pellegrino’. ‘Glove’. ‘Nurofen’. You won’t even notice. Happy new year!