Sound Screen Album of the Year

Hooray for lists! It’s 2010, and to celebrate the newest addition to the Gregorian calendar, the staff at Sound Screen have all gathered together in order to give you reasons to love the last 12 months in the world of music.

A valiant 15 people put their thoughts forward, each giving one album their full attention and telling you what makes it great, which track in particular is the most wonderful and how the release could be improved, as well as other nominations worth a mention which didn’t quite make their final cut.

Album of the Year Part I sees Alasdair Morton, Richard Chamberlain and Tom Brown look at The Wildhearts’ Chutzpah!, Gotthard’s Need to Believe and The Flaming Lips’ Embryonic.

Album of the Year Part II has James Barrett mulling over InMe’s Herald Moth, Amir Adhamy addressing The Happiness Project by Charles Spearin and Kristina Georgiou singing the praises of Alix Perez’s 1984.

Album of the Year Part III, meanwhile, has Priscilla Eyles, Adrian Hieatt and James Michael Parry putting stock in Florence + the Machine’s Lungs, Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown and Billy Talent’s cleverly-titled third album Billy Talent III.

Album of the Year Part IV demonstrates how Stephen Jones, David Ellis and Lucy Clapham can speak highly of Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca, the Manic Street Preachers’ Journal for Plague Lovers and The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die.

Finally, Album of the Year Part V sees Matt Gardner getting behind the only compilation on the list, Brainlove Records’ Fear of a Wack Planet, with Thomas Brewster attaching himself to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart by, er, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, as well as Adam Fletcher completing the mammoth task with Why?’s Eskimo Snow.

We’re hoping to bring you a few more offerings of this ilk in the coming months, but for now, our thanks go out to those who spent valuable time before Christmas putting together their nominations. Either way, Sound Screen is proud to be kicking off the year in style.

Don’t like what we say? Tough luck. This feature is so saturated with Epic Win that we may not be able to hear you throw all your toys out of the pram, nor get the reception on our mobile phones to call a JCB to pick them all up and put them back inside.

Matt Gardner