Inside Nokia Music

It’s that time of year again when any given music blogger will be reflecting on their most defining and inspirational music moments of the year. As they commend the deserving, I marvel at the eclectic musical prowess of some of these bloggers with their promiscuous listening habits and I wonder if they’re capable of building lifelong attachments to these albums or if they’re only fleeting moments in time. I can swallow, spit, dissect or digest any song and drop an opinion in less time than it’s average 3 minutes… just like anyone… but music is more to me than that, I’m not in it to make musical acquaintances when for me it’s about longstanding and meaningful relationships.

Now I desperately wanted to compile my own top ten list, but upon reflecting on the year I came up short on albums I could wholeheartedly endorse as an accurate representation of what 2009 was to me in music…

… So one post at a time I’m chronologically listing my year’s most anticipated albums from those (or in part there of) who’ve earned their keep in my heart.

Part 1

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Having been utterly blown away by Take Me Out when it was released back in 2004, I quickly became a devout follower of the Ferdinand boys, anticipating every release since and I haven’t been disappointed yet. After meeting Alex Kapranos, Paul Thomson and nicest-celeb-I’ve-ever-met Nick McCarthy at the NME awards ceremony 2007 I was a little bummed to learn that the band would be taking some time off and only recording their follow up to 2005’s You Could Have It So Much Better in the new year.

It’s about this time I began to secretly enjoy selective pop tracks. I would soon come to learn that most of these were mostly by Xenomania, who it would turn out Franz Ferdinand would announce as co-writers on the following record which was pretty exciting stuff I thought. The band would later drop the idea and proceed business as usual, I’m guessing this attempt at developing their sound would in part be a reason why Alex Kapranos would come to say that a band like Franz Ferdinand would only ever sound like Franz Ferdinand… and that suits me just fine.

Released 2 days before my birthday, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand was the perfect album to kick off 2009 with it’s disco bass lines, dirty production and blatant Franz Ferdinandism. Interestingly, a download version of the track Lucid Dreams made it’s rounds before the albums release that would turn out to be a significantly different version of the one on the album, one which culminates in an unlikely Acid Trance instrumental outro and that would come to be hailed as the bands Magnum Opus. Personally I prefer the former for it’s choral arrangement, hook riff and live feel.

Other stand out tracks on the album include Live Alone for it’s picked disco funk bass line, Can’t Stop Feeling for how such a dodgy synth effect works so well for Franz Ferdinand, Katherine Kiss Me just for being so beautiful, No You Girls although almost destroyed by featuring in a television advertisement, and the absolute gem that is Twilight Omens… pure songwriting perfection in my opinion with possibly my favourite lyrics of the year.

Seen live this year:

Aye!… Hammersmith Apollo 9th March

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand as well as a comprehensive Franz Ferdinand back-catalogue is available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.