Joe Ayling

Albums of the Year

10: Foals - Antidotes
Strong album with lots of experimental sounds, great drums and quite euphoric. This album carries the mantle on from last year's breakthrough by The Klaxons, who mastered the art of integrating dance with rock. We all know dance is dead but Foals and The Klaxons seem able to bring it back to life in a better form.

9: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Best thing to come out of New York since The Strokes, and I really want to see them live, but it will be interesting to see the next album and if they can keep up with great songs like 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa' and match lines like "who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma". Sorry, couldn't resist it.

8: The Verve - Forth
Eagerly anticipated comeback album that definitely lived up to expectations. Ashcroft's solo career was plagued by some kind of early mid-life crisis, I think, but his fellow Wigan band mates obviously 'complete him'. Songs like 'Judas' and 'Rather Be' signal a return to form. The first time time I heard 'Love Is Noise' on the TV live from Glastonbury I wondered whether it was old material - it sounded that good. However, this was eventually overplayed and the "aha aha aha" bit grinds more than an annoying ringtone now. In short, having originally thought 'Love is Noise' would be the making of Forth, it turned out to be the breaking of The Verve's comeback.

7: The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
Polished album that defies Alex Turner's age once again. The first two songs of the album - 'The Age Of The Understatement' and 'Standing Next To Me' - flow seamlessly into each other and the orchestral feel continues as the album goes on. On the downside, the epic horror movie notes are a bit too much at times. A nice one-off album but Turner should probably resume Arctic Monkeys business until he can fill that suit out properly.

6: Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul
Maybe it's because I give them ten more listens than anything new, but Oasis always get me hooked eventually. 'Shock of the Lightning', 'Way Over The Line' and 'I'm Outta Time' are all great tracks, and other songs on the album are quite blues-y. Probably their second best album since Morning Glory, because Don't Believe The Truth was epic too. Oasis have their critics in abundance but let's face it, they've rediscovered what they're good at and they always deliver.

5: Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Written in a log cabin by a heartbroken hippy, this album is a real grower and also a thinker. The lyrics are cold but also very reflective and close to the bone. Honest songwriting is something to be applauded, as is anything that makes you ask why. If I'd discovered this sooner, it may have been further up the chart.

4: Pete And The Pirates - Little Death
Really excited about these guys. They don't really come with a reputation but have very catchy and likeable songs like 'Knots', 'My Understanding' and 'Doesn't Belong To Me'. The lyrics have frequent mentions of sleep, drinking and relationships and communicate adolescence/student life perfectly. Lyrics like "get out of bed and it's the wrong one" remind me of funny lines used by Lennon on Revolver.

3: Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Deserved prize winner, and the first album by Elbow that's ever really caught my imagination. Quite climatic, and a consistently good album without too many stick out singles, which helps it flow. 'Grounds For Divorce' will obviously go down in history, but there are much better-written songs on the album in my view. For example, in 'The Bones of You', when Guy Garvey sings: "When out of the doorway the tentacles stretch of a song that I know, and the world moves in slow-mo, straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day." Quite a varied album and 'Weather to Fly' sounds like The Eurythmics!

2: Kings Of Leon - Only By The Night
So The Kings of Leon are back to their best, but there is a catch. Their pop following, KOL abbreviation and songs like 'Sex on Fire' are enough to make any dedicated follower of Youth and Young Manhood want to be sick! For this reason I ignored Only By The Night's release for weeks, unworried I might be missing out judging by the mediocrity of their previous few albums and frightened to further dent my wonderful memory of four bearded hillbillies giving it their all for the love of the game.

As the weeks went by though I started to hear singles, live tracks, interviews and hype in the background, and could resist no longer. On my first listen I was instantly hooked, and had to take their commercial success on the chin like a dinner party with your best mate and his annoying girlfriend.

Highlight of the album is 'Cold Desert' and the line: "Jesus don't love me, no one ever carried my load, I'm too young to feel this old”. 'Use Somebody' and 'Crawl' are also awesome tracks.

1: The Courteeners - St. Jude
A moody band from Manchester with a lead singer called Liam... Let's face it I was always going to love these guys! The songs are less Oasis and more like The Smiths though and lead singer Liam Fray is obsessed with Morrissey (see the line "do you know who I am I'm like a Morrissey with some strings"). You'll smirk at the harsh one liners and descriptions of mad nights out he gives on St. Jude. 'Not Nineteen Forever' was their main single but other top songs on this album include 'Cavourting' and 'No You Didn't, No You Don't'. This album moves seamlessly from rock to ballad to rant, and is about as edgy as they get. You're not nineteen forever, but my musical taste will be as long as there are bands like The Courteeners around.

Tracks of the Year

10: Oasis - Way Over The Line
9: MGMT - Time To Pretend
8: Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
7: Doves - Grounds For Divorce
6: The Last Shadow Puppets - Standing Next To Me
5: Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
4: Pete And The Pirates - Doesn't Belong To Me
3: The Verve - Rather Be
2: Kings Of Leon - Cold Desert
1: The Courteeners - What Took You So Long?

Emperor's New Clothes 2008

TV On The Radio - Dear Science

It's Good, But Not That Good 2008

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

Guilty Pleasure 2008

Take That - The song that goes "sha la la la"

Innocent Pain 2008

Glasvegas - A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)