I’m a bit late on getting to this, partly because I’ve been living in Mexico, where I don’t have access to a lot of the records that appear on this list. So I had to hump it back to the states for xmas, where some very generous donors allowed me to acquire I guess about half of these records.
Albums are listed chronologically. It was too hard for me to make a hierarchy.
1. Glasvegas – s/t. (Jan 6th) One of the things that makes Glasvegas’ debut record so damn good (and it is that damn good, despite what you may have heard) is how singular and coherent it is. The record sounds cavernous; unlike many other young bands, who struggle with finding an identity, Glasvegas is all Glasvegas, from the Jesus & Mary Chain-aping bass drumless setup to the crushingly emotive vocals (the Scottish brogue adds near-bottomless depths to anything, much like the way anyone speaking French sounds like a poet), the album takes you into its world and holds you there until the last note.
The first three tracks are a one-two-three punch no album this year, or in recent memory, can match: Flowers & Football Tops, Geraldine, and It’s My Own Cheating Heart that Makes Me Cry are three of the best songs of 2009. Elsewhere, the anthemic “Here We Fucking Go” of Go Square Go, the colossal build of Polmont on My Mind, the heartbreaking honesty of Daddy’s Gone, and the ambient melancholy of S.A.D. Light & Ice Cream Van’s closing duo make a near-perfect sequence. The unquestionable awfulness of Stabbed (singer James Allan giving a very detailed account of being stabbed over Moonlight Sonata. Seriously) makes the album even better, for making it ragged and a little bizarre. Their live performance reassures their status as a great new promise: they recreate the world of the record perfectly and far more powerfully, Allan so completely involved in the performance he seems to be coming from another planet. It doesn’t hurt that the band looks exactly like The Clash ca. 1976. More to the point, it doesn’t hurt that Allan’s complete absorption and dedication mirrors Joe Strummer’s.
2. Ida Maria – Fortress Around My Heart (April 14th) Ida Maria exploded out of Norway (via Sweden) with the passion of punk, the directness of Springsteen, and a catchy, incredibly tight musical attack. Even more tightly-wound live, the group does something very rare: they create pop music that is damn good, and damn good fun, without sacrificing their integrity or personality. The titular front woman began putting together the songs comprising the album as a young woman of 16 living in the middle of nowhere, Scandinavia. She discovered Rock and Roll through the record collection of a family friend and never looked back. Her delivery is uncompromising, defining the band's sound. She sings as though every song, every note, even, is the first and last she will ever sing. The watertight rhythm section adds volumes (and substantial volume) to each song, turning what might in less-capable hands be rote pop numbers into fierce, melodic beasts, like The Beatles by way of Post Punk. As with Glasvegas, their live show makes good on their promise, as they inject the album’s cuts with even more intensity and passion than on record. A very promising debut from a group that looks to improve with age.
3. Idlewild – Post-Electric Blues (June) Scottish stalwarts Idlewild found themselves labeless after mergers and buyouts reshuffled the structure and roster of the indie (Sanctuary Records) they had recorded just one record for (the stellar Make Another World). Looking to In Rainbows for inspiration, they decided to make an album on their own. They set up a pre-order on their website, allowing fans to get in on the ground floor. The deal: you pay for the record in advance, we use the money to record the album, we put your name in the liner notes and send it only to those who have prepaid once we’ve recorded and manufactured. Being a diehard and long-time fan, I signed right up.
Six months later, I got a little package from the British Isles. This record took me back to more innocent times, before the internet, when an album’s release was something highly anticipated. When I would run to the record store after school with my allowance, having heard the single a handful of times and seen the artwork maybe once or twice in the record store window, and pick up the cassette (I switched to CDs when I was 15 or so). I’d tare it open, put it in my walkman, and be taken into a new world.
I had heard only thirty or so unmixed, vocalless seconds of Post-Electric Blues when I first put it on. The experience of the album was completely transporting. Idlewild have managed to re-find themselves yet again, injecting the folk of Warnings/Promises with the rock of The Remote Part and a very gleeful, mischievous, newfound pop sensibility. The songs bounce and roll with abandon like children rolling down a hill. Roddy Woomble’s lyrics, always a highlight of a new Idlewild record, are in brilliant form. He turns phrases on their heads like no other vocalist, tossing out double negatives and trickily worded couplets and choruses that never mean what they seem to on first impression. A band for the ages, Idlewild manage to continually change while remaining very distinctly themselves. A phenomenal record that helped reminded me why I loved albums so much in the first place.
4. Rancid – Let the Dominoes Fall (June 2nd) Rancid took seven years to release this record. They are undoubtedly the definitive post-70’s punk band, and the album follows-up Indestructible, something of a defining statement for the band. In the interim period, many changes have taken place in camp Rancid, most notably the departure of founding drummer Brett Reed. Not long after its release, the record found it was into my hands on subsequently my stereo.
Full disclosure: Rancid’s …And Out Come the Wolves was the first CD I bought, at age 12 (my first album, on cassette, was Use Your Illusion I, Guns N Roses, when I was seven). They have been one of my favorite bands for more than half of my life. There is no way I can give Let the Dominoes Fall an even-handed critical write up. That said, it’s a record that I adore, and one that disappointed me at first.
I familiarized myself with Let the Dominoes Fall walking around New York City in the rain. It’s an album of punk anthems, ska tracks, and a few acoustic numbers, similar in pacing and song content to Out Come the Wolves and Let’s Go. This was what initially threw me off. If nothing else, Rancid is a band that with each record moves forward. From the dirty street punk of the first two records, they moved to the more classicist sound of Wolves, then three years on came out with a bizarre, ska-heavy, and fantastic Life Won’t Wait. Two years after that, they produced a 38 minute record with 22 songs, a paint peeling blast of early 80’s hardcore and crust punk. Then came Indestructible, an album that managed to bring together their many disparate styles. To hear a Rancid record that sounded like an older phase of Rancid caught me off guard, and initially put me off to the album.
As I’ve come back to the album some months on from its initial release, I’ve learned that it lives up to the sole promise of every Rancid record, all expectations aside: it’s an album filled with great songs and very little pretense. The songs are short, catchy, and expertly executed. The group’s vocals are strong as ever, and Armstrong’s lyrics in particular are intelligent, blunt, defiant observations of the world we live in. Though they are most often (and annoyingly) compared to The Clash, it seems as though Rancid are much closer kin to Pearl Jam.: they probably won’t ever re-ascend to their previous commercial peaks, but they probably don’t really care. What’s truly important to them is saying what they want to say, how they want to say it, while writing damn good songs.
5. Dinosaur Jr. – Farm (June 23rd) Listening to Dinosaur Jr.’s Bug, it’s hard not to hear every guitar rock album that came out between ’91 and ’97. To take it further, the track The Post packs every 90’s guitar rock staple into three minutes and thirty nine seconds: the sludgy, slow, bass-heavy verse; the melodic, bright, guitar-heavy chorus; the post-chorus epic riff; the squealing guitar solo; it’s all there, and more. Though Mascis and his shifting cast of backing players put out some great post Bug records, it was never quite the same.
When the original Dinosaur trio announced some shows for the release of their remastered records (Dinosaur, You’re Living All Over Me – for this guy’s money, the best record of the 80’s – and aforementioned Bug), an album didn’t seem in the cards. Then, all of a sudden, there it was – Beyond, a startlingly good album that managed to combine everything great about old Dinosaur while bringing a newfound maturity and laid back joy to their songs. Two years on from the that, the question was: where could they possibly go from here?
The answer? They could get even better. Farm is You’re Living All Over Me’s near equal, a seamless blend of epic 70’s rock, melodic punk, sludgy metal, pop melodiousness, and ridiculous guitar solos. The band’s confidence and ability is on full display. From the first note of Pieces to the last chord of Imagination Blind, the trio are locked into an unbreakable groove. Murph hits harder and more dynamically than ever, possibly freed from the rhythmic dictums of Mascis after all these years. Lou strums chords and hammers notes like the bastard child of McCartney’s unparalleled melodiousness and Lemmy’s relentless, bludgeoning inertia. Jay’s voice has after all these years settled into a very beautiful and easy space. His lyrics are sweet and his melodies fit the songs perfectly.
But of course, with any Dinosaur record, it’s the guitars that rule the roost. Layered like sediment, the density and clarity of them is astounding. I Want You to Know packs as many rhythm and lead lines in its riffs and chords as anything on Hendrix’s First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The tender, soaring solos of the quiet numbers befit their bright melancholy, and the wailing of the rock tracks takes them to unparalleled heights. The album's high point (and year’s best track) is the near-nine-minute I Don’t Wanna Go There, a song that sounds equal parts vintage Dinosaur and Neil Young. Four and a half minutes in, after an astounding breakdown that sounds oddly like Sabbath playing a Birds lick, the solo kicks in, and it doesn’t wind down until long after the eight-minute mark. The beastly track highlights everything that’s wonderful about the album, and the band.
Farm is, flat out, front to back, a fantastic record, one of the great guitar albums of the past decade. It won’t be leaving my heavy-rotation pile for a long time yet.
6. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls (July 7th) It’s been a damn good year for the Scots. Glasvegas started the party on a wonderful note. Idlewild tried something new and knocked it out of the park. We Were Promised Jetpacks snuck in largely under the radar this summer, which is a shame, because they’re brilliant debut, These Four Walls, is so defiantly bursting at the seems with energy, joy, and fantastic songs, it feels like it’s flying around the room on a kite, not pumping from stereo speakers.
The four (very) young lads in WWPJ began playing together in high school. Like Muse, who appears also on this list, their first gig was a high school talent show, and they walked away with the top prize. The band continued to hone their sound and musicianship (which is phenomenally tight and reminiscent of the coiled blitzkrieg of the first Arctic Monkeys record) through countless gigs over the years. Coming to the attention of Fat Cat records via fellow Scots’ Frightened Rabbit’s myspace page, the Edinburgh quartet found themselves a record deal.
Their sound is nothing but youthful exuberance and the joy of music and life. Though the lyrics can err to the enigmatic and dour, they’re sung with such anthemic passion they become mantras of life and love. Anthemic is certainly the key word for this record: the band’s sound is a mix of the tightly-coiled post-punk of early Bloc Party, the explosive, beautiful instrumental interplay of Explosions in the Sky (with a drummer on par with EITS’; no small feat) and the fist pumping, punk-infused this-music-will-save-your-life passion of early U2.
Each of the album’s eleven tracks, save an instrumental interlude and an acoustic denouement, is a crashing wave of music. A few chords, some picked notes build to dizzying washes of groove. The rhythm section perfectly times their driving elements: tight, funky, melodic bass and colossal, rising, falling, rolling drums, carve dynamics from very basic progressions and riffs like expert sculptors. Each song is a sermon, growing in fervor until it explodes with passion at its zenith. Some wind down, others burn out, but each track pushes itself to its logical extreme, the band playing like their hearts might give out at any second. More than any debut this year, These Four Walls is the sound of a band that might very well take over the world, if they weren’t so modest. But then again, four (very) young lads from the British Isles were similarly impassioned and humble about thirty years ago…
7. The Antlers – Hospice (Aug 18th) The Antlers, a former solo project from frontman Peter Silberman, expanded to a full band on Hospice. More than the membership expansion, it’s the epic expansion of the band’s sound and focus that makes this record one of the most heartbreaking revelations in recent years.
In taking on death and illness, The Antlers have accomplished something many lesser bands have failed to do: they very accurately bore into to the shattered lives of those who have lost loved ones. Steering completely clear of the cartoonish, morbid, exploitative tone records on death usually take, Hospice is front to back a crushing, emotionally destructive account of the little details of death and loss. The very direct, simple lyrics, coupled with a melancholy sonic template reminiscent of the post-rock of Sigur Ros and Silver Mount Zion (moments on this record are eerily reminiscent of SMZ’s similarly melancholy He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms), and the weepy, plaintive song writing of Glen Hansard/Markéta Irglová and (hipsters recoil) Rush of Blood to the Head-era Coldplay, are enough to level an attentive listener. At times, Hospice, which is ultimately a very beautiful and cathartic record, is so sad and universal it’s hard to listen to.
The Antlers have managed something very difficult in music, and art of all mediums, for that matter. They have created a beautifully coherent and personal work that perfectly compliments its subject. In focusing on the intimate, Hospice becomes the universal. It is a very rare accomplishment, and a wonderful, if sometimes difficult to bare, album.
8. Arctic Monkeys – Humbug (Aug 25th) By now we’re all very familiar with the tale of the Arctic Monkeys: Four lads from Sheffield start a band. They’re good friends, they like a pint and a night at the disco. Inspired by Roots Manuva and a British pop wit-lyricism that stretches from the Kinks to Blur, Alex Turner spins cheeky tales of working class boredom and frustration over tight, energetic punk anthems. The group records, puts tracks on myspace, gives out CDRs for free at their shows. A few months later, their first record becomes the fastest selling debut in British history, toppling giants Oasis.
Two albums later, the Arctic Monkeys, now in their early-to-mid 20’s, are a very different band. On Humbug, they’ve relaxed, uncoiled, and found a very different groove. The album was recorded in the Joshua Tree desert with Queens of the Stoneage frontman Josh Holme, and sounds very much a product of four Northern Englishmen in a very different landscape, drinking beer, taking mushrooms, and letting themselves go to the mind-altering expanse of the desert.
Though the riffs on Humbug are similar in pattern and progression to those on their previous records, they’re looser and heavier. Songs plod, bounce, veer, and stomp in very unexpected ways. The addition of organs and haunting background vocals enrich and deepen the Monkeys’ sound in subtle, eerie ways. In stopping to smell the roses (or take psychedelics in the desert), the Arctic Monkeys have created a record that cements much of the promise of the first two albums while taking the band to new places, hinting at an even more exciting future for the group.
9. Muse – Uprising (Sept 15th) With each new Muse record, the question is: What can they possibly do that they haven’t done before? (The second question being of course: Can this band get anymore ridiculous? the answer to which is yes). Uprising answers that question with symphonies, choirs, clarinet solos, excerpted French operas, paeans to the Eurasian super continent, and a few rousing rock/dance numbers.
Continuing in the vein of Blackholes and Revelations, Uprising presents a collection of very cohesive songs in a very coherent sequence. The band is very much focused on creating a seamless series of tracks that incorporates all of their disparate influences. That they succeed in chucking a ridiculous number with multi-tracked vocals to rival Queen and Chopin nocturne as an outro next to a fist-pumping synth ballad next to a barreling hard rock track with a two-minute plus, fuzz-bass driven, organ drenched, Pink Floyd-esque midsection, attests to their staggering songwriting talent, not to mention their balls of steel.
The virtuosic ability of the band is on full display. Chris Wolstenholme’s bass lines veer from upper-register finger-picked melodies to funky five-string slapping without ever sounding ostentatious or out-of-place. Dominic Howard drives the band, expertly dictating the tracks' dynamics with his fills, dance beats, and newly added programming (the track Undisclosed Desires, programmed entirely by Howard, is a fantastic dance/R&B single reminiscent of both Prince and Timbaland). And of course there is Bellamy. Continuing the trend set forth on Blackholes, he’s reined the falsetto in a bit, in favor a rich, multi-tracked mid-range (expect when they decide to bust out the ridiculous harmonies, which does happen) that perfectly compliments the song-writing decisions of the record.
Of course, one of Muse’s best assets is their ability to write incredibly passionate, driving, emotionally rich songs with a sense of humor. Look no further than Guiding Light, a colossal power ballad with the emotional depth of the best of U2’s pop moments and a guitar solo straight off a Van Halen record. The solo is completely absurd--the album’s bonus DVD, which is, as previous Muse DVD tie-ins have been, fantastic, shows side-by-side via split screen Bellamy recording then listening back to the solo. Recording, he’s all technique and attentiveness. During playback, he dissolves into hysterics at the ridiculousness of his solo--and hilarious, though is a small enough part of the track not to ruin its punch.
All said and done, Uprising is another fantastic collection of songs that, due to the band’s prodigious talent and attention to detail, cohere into an even better album. The concluding thirteen minute, three-part symphony is a hauntingly beautiful, surprisingly restrained (as symphonies go, at least) culmination to a great record. Naysayers need to keep waiting, for Muse have yet to fall flat on their faces due to the weight of their own ambitions.
10. Converge – Axe to Fall (Oct 20th) Converge has built a career on surprising listeners. After three flat out classic metal records (Jane Doe, You Fail Me, No Heroes), each of which is sonically and stylistically unique, how can they continue to surprise us?
The answer presented by Axe to Fall is incredibly simple: by punching us in the throat. Album opener Dark Horse begins with a stampeding bass line, typically overwhelming Converge drumming, and a classic metal lead. When the chorus hits, we realize Converge has learned a new trick; with Jacob Bannon’s vocals a restrained, half-sung shout during the verse, and the guitar playing an up-high lead, the full force of the band isn’t totally present. All of it crashes in during a horrifyingly heaving chant-chorus with a brutal double-kick drum assault.
After the second chorus, the track slows into unexpected territory, building quickly into a head-crushing breakdown. All of this happens in less than two minutes. The breakdown carries the song to the two and a half minute mark, it kicks back into the opening stampede, and then a quick blizzard of feedback.
Axe to Fall brings us D-beat (complete with lead guitar and backing vocals from Uffe Cedurlund of Entombed and Disfear), thrash, flashes of doom, a title track with a break down big enough to topple buildings, intricately timed post-hardcore, and, the coup d’etat, a closing duo of nearly all-acoustic Tom Waits homage with Neurosis frontman Steve Von Till on vocals, and an epic seven-minute finale with melodic vocals, electronic textures (compliments of the members of Genghis Tron), and shades of Neurosis and Isis that is somehow classic Converge and something completely new.
Guitarist Kurt Ballou is undoubtedly the best producer in heavy music. His work on Axe to Fall serves to reiterate his position. The album amalgamates the rawness of the previous two records with the devastating low end of Jane Doe. The bass and bass drum occupy a very intense and large piece of the aural pie, the rest filled in with guitars that are warm and brutal, something between the sound of a classic tube amp and Entombed's soul crushing heaviness.
All-in-all, Converge have outdone themselves yet again. By taking a more streamlined approach to songwriting, they leave their indelible mark on myriad genres, without the record sounding like a hodgepodge. The addition of a slew of guest players (members of Genghis Tron, Neurosis, Entombed, The Red Chord, Blacklisted, former Converge bassist and Cave-In leader Steven Brodsky, among others) adds flavor to the record without it ever sounding like someone else’s project. Converge has produced their best album since Jane Doe, redefining what the genre is capable of yet again.
An Alternate Opinion
Enough records have come to my attention in the aftermath of writing this piece--mostly because I am no longer living in Mexico, and have access to a number of albums I couldn't get my hands on south of the border--to merit an alternate cast of characters. Here are seven records that didn't make the cut, but should haven (and for the record these are in no order at all):
1. Mos Def – The Ecstatic. The Ecstatic is a number of things, though first and foremost it's the great post-Black on Both sides record we thought we might never get. After the aimless wandering of The New Danger and unlistenable trash of True Magic, Mos reconnected with everything that made him love hip hop in the first place. The results are astonishing.
Another thing that The Ecstatic is is everything Blueprint III is not. Jay Z attempted to create a canonical hip hop record that incorporated everything from psyche rock to 80's pop to Golden Area rap. He was reaching for a defining statement, and he failed miserably. Mos, however, has taken that same template, and flown high. There are horn driver stompers, Middle Eastern samples, wild psyche guitars; pretty much everything but the kitchen sink. And it's almost always successful.
Lyrically, Mos is back on top of his game as well. Front to back, apart from the pretty awful No Hay Nada Mas, in which he raps in one of the worst Spanish accents in recent memory, the record is filled with eye-opening lyrical turns and typically brilliant metaphors. One of the best: "The windows on the ave look like sad eyes."
The Ecstatic is a remarkable return to form, and a great hip hop album.
2. Mastodon – Crack the Skye. Though Mastodon perpetuate the stereotype that metal bands can't spell, they break down enough musical barriers that it doesn't really matter.
Crack the Skye is less a logical progression from Blood Mountain than an understandable quantum leap. Though album opener Oblivion begins with a familiar riff, it quickly shifts into a thrash boogie around which Brann Dailor's drums wind and warp. Through the rest of the record's seven tracks, Mastodon keep the wallop to a minimum, working instead on building dizzying structures from their prodigious musical interplay.
Mastodon have developed a great knack for building hypnotic patterns that break into whiplash changes in key and tempo and unexpected moments. The heavy riffs pack a greater wallop in this template, as do the band's dynamics in general.
With Crack the Skye, Mastodon have managed to produce an album that is at once prog and metal without sacrificing the integrity of either genre.
3. Jonsí and Alex - Riceboy Sleeps Riceboy Sleeps is one of the best albums in the Stars of the Lid catalog, and I mean that as the most sincere praise. Though the record is unmistakably touched by the Sigur Rós frontman's signature sounds, it is also a superb example of a sublimated ego.
Not that Jonsí is much known for his ego. However, his ability to completely remove himself from the music and allow the beautiful ambient textures of the record to speak for themselves is powerful and welcome. Unlike a number of other high-profile musicians, Jonsí does not use this side project, created with his partner and fellow musician and artist Alex Somers, to further his career or any other narcissistic aesthetic.
Riceboy Sleeps is a lovely and fleeting album that walks a fine and brilliant line between contemporary ambient drone and classical string quartet composition.
4. Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions Yes yes, I know. Another Scottish band. Though Biffy Clyro fans from the days of yore aren't particularly pleased that the band followed up their psuedo-break through Puzzle with an even poppier album, Only Revolutions is very much a consolidation of the band's strengths.
The basic template for the record is incredibly simple: heavy riffs, mid tempo grooves, and enormous choruses tempered with some left-field time signatures and instrumental choices (opener Captain has both a horn section and a church organ). The closest kin to Only Revolutions is Muse's absolution, though unlike Muse, who always had the stadium pomp lurking in their songs, Biffy Clyro are very much a band reared on punk and rock--three chords, drums, bass, guitar, and lots of passion.
In many ways, Only Revolutions sounds a good deal like what Nirvana could have been if Cobain had gotten over himself. Oblique lyrics, colossal guitars, and catchy pop songs drenched in distortion and loaded with hooks.
5. Poison the Well - The Tropic Rot Poison the Well ultimately sabotaged their own career by being as good as they are. The band managed to produced two of the defining records of the early 00's metalcore explosion before ditching the drum trigger and Slayer riffs for a more abrasiveness heaviness and indie-rock melodiousness.
What all of this means is that, while fans of extreme metal wrote them off for their emocore songs, fans of emocore wrote them off for becoming too extreme. Fans of alternative metal and the odd indie rock kid who has some Melvins and Mastodon records associated the band with douche bags in basketball shorts and Shai Hulud t-shirts, and PTW found themselves in a difficult position.
But they continued to produce some of the most brutal and original metal of the century so far. The Tropic Rot consolidates the pure, unadulterated abrasiveness of You Come Before You and the experimental, indie-rock heavy sounds of Versions. The album charges forward on a backbone of thrashy hardcore riffs, finding a punishing heaviness in epic, mid tempo power chord progressions not dissimilar to Boris. Unlike many vocalists in heavy music, Jeff Moreira manages to sound less like a petulant child and more like a man with enough pent up fury to be genuinely frightening.
More than any band in the post-Converge metalcore landscape, Poison the Well have managed to find their own sound that is built upon the warmth of tube amps and hair-raising aggression and unexpected melodies of Moreira.
Whether or not former guitarist Derek Miller's new project, Sleigh Bells, brings any indie credibility to PTW is irrelevant; with Tropic Rot, they prove once more that they are an essential metal band.
6. La Roux - La Roux La Roux is a great pop group. A male-female, vocalist-songwriter duo, the pair apes the formula championed by the Eurythmics to great effect.
La Roux often come under fire for having a cold sound, and though the sterile production of their record certainly stifles warmth, it's hard to find such cosmetic nitpicking relevant with a record that's as catchy and entertaining as this one.
Certainly, you shouldn't come to this album expecting it to change your life, but any fan of the grand tradition of electro pop that spans the generations from classic groups like Soft Cell to contemporary masters The Knife will find lots to love in this album, as will fans of innocuous, hella catchy pop in general.
7. Lady Gaga - Fame Monster Lady Gaga can do no wrong. Everything she touches turns to gold. The singer-songwriter/oversexualized performance artist has an unparalleled ear for pop hooks, dance beats, and simple chord progressions, and an inimitable ability to make all of these incredibly rote musical staples sound fresh time and again.
Much like her most obvious touchstone, Madonna, Gaga is able to make pop music that is pure, musical, fun, and worthy of all praise once the tit-mounted machine guns, soda-can hair dos, and lesbian-prison fantasy videos have been stripped away.
Gaga is posited by her label as some sort of avant-garde in the world of pop, and yet despite her incredibly contemporary sound and style, she couldn't be further from this: she is nothing more or less than a classic pop artist.
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