The following are some of my most eagerly anticipated albums of the past year (and what I actually thought of them)

1. radiohead – in rainbows

Having pre-ordered the album weeks before, a group of us sat around my living room furiously refreshing our inboxes in anticipation of the email from W.A.S.T.E. that would usher in the In Rainbows era of Radiohead. So much was caught up in the revolutionary electronic distribution that all sight of the actual music was lost for a few weeks, but as the zero hour approached, I started to wonder a few things. Just how electronic Radiohead would be after hearing Thom Yorke’s solo album? Which song would be this album’s craziest? Could we be fortunate enough that we’re getting another Amnesiac? What we got, though, was nothing I could have expected—a cautious Radiohead album.

So many of us grew up with our musical tastes following the ebb and flow of Radiohead releases. We cut our teeth on The Bends, matured with OK Computer, and then threw caution to the wind and became more avant-garde with every album that followed. If I learned anything through this progression, it was that standard pop-fare and radio sensibility are a thing of the past. Radiohead couldn’t stand to produce the same album over and over again, so why should we accept the same from any other artist? Unfortunately, In Rainbows fails to produce the same feeling that you’re hearing something new and unique. Gone is any sort of experimentation, instead producing an album that may have seemed exciting after The Bends, but lacks the same punch and sense of musical exploration that OK Computer through Hail to the Thief elicited.

Don’t get me wrong though, In Rainbows is a solid little album; it just doesn’t live up to the lofty expectations everyone who has listened to any previous Radiohead album should have had. If any other moniker adorned the album cover, I would probably think it a good first effort with a lot of room to grow, but this is the seventh full-length release from one of the most respected bands in the world. I suppose the weight of expectations shouldn’t be a deciding factor in a new record, but for Radiohead to come back to well-worn territory with a very good (but a bit pedestrian) offering seems like a step in the wrong direction for the Oxford outfit.

2. Spiritualized – Songs in A&E

Since the demise of Spacemen 3, Spiritualized has taken the reins of the space rock genre, steering it through ethereal realms closely linked with drug use and mental anomalies. Eighteen years and six albums later, the frenetic music of Spacemen 3 is long gone, replaced first with drone and shoegaze music, then incorporating large orchestral arrangements and blues vocals. Songs in A&E is a work in contrasts: perfectly paced, it moves between high-energy and slow songs, horns and other-worldly sounds, punchy vocals and painful confessions.

The Album was written for the most part years ago, but in 2005 Jason Pierce, the brains behind and only constant member of Spiritualized, fell deathly ill with bilateral pneumonia and spent over a month in the Royal London Hospital’s Accidents and Emergency ward—hence the title, Songs in A&E. The strains in Pierce’s voice on the album’s moodier songs suggest a memory of the times he spent there on his deathbed, and that maybe he recorded his vocals while there. While all of Spiritualized’s work is intensely personal and reflective of Pierce’s life, Songs in A&E is an accident, having been previously written by Pierce about a family that wasn’t his.

The same people who compare panda bear to the Beach Boys for the glut of vocal harmonies could have a field day with this album and the beautiful male/female duets. The obvious highlight is the first single, Soul on Fire, but for me the best part of the album is Death Take Your Fiddle. A slow, bluesy number, Pierce gives us a strange vision of a land with space-blues, highlighted with passionate vocals, computer beeps and glitches that I can’t come close to identifying. It’s an old art mastered in the Spiritualized way. Songs in A&E reinforces my long held notion that when a Time Warner box set spanning space rock is released, it is going to be nothing but Spiritualized albums. It’s another great contribution from a band with seemingly endless creativity.

3. Portishead - Third

I guess I’m going to have to find a new trip-hop jones. When Portishead’s aptly titled Third was announced, I thought that trip-hop itch would finally be scratched, but as far as I can tell, it’s going to linger forever. Third really is a good album, but it may as well be a different artist than Portishead it’s so different. The only lingering element from the glory days of Glory Box is Beth Gibbons’ vocals, which are on par with anything she’s ever done. It’s been 11 years since Portishead hit shelves, so only naïveté would suggest that nothing has changed since then. The beats accompanying the vocals are a lot gutsier than anything Portishead has tried before. It’s a bit more difficult than Dummy or the self-titled album, but the more I listen to this album, the better it and each album preceding it feel. While part of me laments what I’m taking to be the death of trip-hop, the rest recognizes that Third really is a great album and looks forward to where Portishead goes from here.

4. M83 – Saturdays=Youth

What to say about Saturdays=Youth…I’m not sure I even like it. The shoegaze ethic that colored all of M83’s previous releases is certainly still there, but not to the same extent it previously was. The press that surrounded the release of the highly anticipated fifth album from the French shoegaze unit stated that the album’s focus was on song structure. This made me a bit uneasy, as that tends to mean that a desire for singles was ever-present in the production process. That didn’t turn out to be the case, thankfully. Instead, what Anthony Gonzalez released sounds like the kind of pop that came out in 1986, with large booming drums, heavily effected vocals, and a Cyndi Lauper ethic that makes my skin crawl. At times, the old ways of M83 come out and there are some great songs, but they still make me want to shower after I listen. I’m going to enjoy this one on strange, unsettling levels for another few weeks, then pretend that it never existed.