Best Album


Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
Roadrunner

With her dark cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls just coming into their own after two albums, Amanda Palmer didn’t seem due a ‘challenging’ solo album just yet, but bidding farewell to Dolls drummer Brian Viglione (albeit only temporarily) the ‘kooky’ singer seemed to find some of her best songs yet.

Though it’s billed as a solo release, less is most definitely not more on Who Killed…, an ambitious album accompanied by a photo book of ‘death scenes’, produced in collaboration with Neil Gaiman. Swaying from bombastic show tune brass on ‘Leeds United’, to black humour wrapped in kitsch sixties harmonies on ‘Oasis’, and with piano sparkles from producer and cult icon in his own right Ben Folds shining throughout, it’s an album with a manic, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink method, which somehow throws up something bizarrely accessible and instant, offering a clear, moving lyrical thread for listeners who want to dig deeper.




Best Concert

Semi-Precious Weapons


The Borderline
25 January

A few days before this gig Kate Moss was snapped wearing one of the New York glam group’s t-shirts and embracing androgynous frontman Justin Tranter elsewhere on their debut UK tour.

Hardly auspicious given the groups Ms Moss has played patron to previously, but in a turn up for the books Semi Precious Weapons proved their mettle, and earned themselves every inch of the fleeting London hype that followed. Mix the funky bass of the Chilli Peppers, eye for a hook of T-Rex and riffage of AC/DC and you have a rather tasty sounding band. Put the spirit of Iggy in a hollering, lighting rig-climbing, trannie monkey man and you have Tranter.

Put it all together and you’ve got a contender for gig of year, complete with usually coolly jaded indie boys and Moss wannabes detaching themselves from the bar to dance, scream and flash in appreciation.