We continue our look at the best debut albums of the last ten years with our second half-dozen of choices, so with no further ado, here’s our second batch of favourite first appearances on the album charts.
La Roux – La Roux
While we’re chomping at the bit fir a new collection of tracks from La Roux, their self-titled debut was one of the musical highlights of the year.
The distinctively quaffed singer delivered the ultimate love letter to the world of 1980’s synthpop, with an album dripping in so much retro style it only spoke in neon colours and Miami Vice quotes. From the insanely cool opener In For The Kill, this is an album that absolutely makes the absolute most of its electronic base, all precise beats that make a surgical scalpel look like a blunt axe.
It’s even a them that carries over to Elly Jackson’s almost synthetic vocal, with the merest hint of slack in her vocal instantly snapped out and it being effective in a way that it almost seems targeted for the pleasure centres in your brain.
This is an album that sounded like it had been found in Marty McFly’s DeLoran when it landed in 2009, ice cold in the way that only lets electro thrive.
Band Of Horses – Everything All The Time
While the first couple of tracks offer a strong opening, it’s The Funeral that is this album’s real starting point though, a song of incredible power and drama that it makes nearly all other tracks obsolete.
From there, the album just takes off, becoming a stirring and utterly entrancing collection of rock anthems that are utterly timeless. It’s when the band slow down the tempo and embrace their gigantic chords and Ben Bridwell’s distressed voice lead the charge and really spread its wings.
Short but sweeter than a truck full of Mr Kipling’s finest products, possibly the finest thing about this stellar debut from Band Of Horses’ is that they’ve been able to kick on and better it in the following years.
Get Everything All The Time here
Lady Gaga – The Fame
You don’t go from zero to the biggest pop star in the world by chance. Lady Gaga managed it back in 2008 with a pop album so infectious that the UN was inches away from calling it a pandemic.
From the dancefloor fillers Poker Face and Boys, Boys, Boys all the way through to the timeless Paper Gangster, this is an album jam packed full of quality from an artist with supreme confidence right off the bat.
The reissue, something we usually hate over here at FemaleFirst towers, only made the album a more complete package, adding the addictive Beyonce collaboration Telephone and Alejandro to the mix.
The only trouble with The Fame was that it was so good, anything less would be a crushing disappointment. Unfortunately Born This Way proved to live up to that unfortunate prediction.
Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
Nostalgia has become a real defining aspect to post-millennium music, with artists reaching back in time for inspiration. While the debut album from the Scissor Sisters may be the absolute epitome of that, it’s in absolutely all the right ways.
Pulling influences from David Bowie, Elton John and Pink Floyd (for more than just Comfortably Numb), the New York collective’s feel good album is a compelling tribute to the artists of the seventies. With both catchy sing-along singles and far slower, contemplative numbers that seem separated at birth from Elton at his most psychedelic.
It was a massive success both critically and commercially, generating both review scores and sales that the band simply hasn’t been able to repeat since, going seven times platinum in the UK (interestingly it didn’t break into the top 100 in America).
While the band is currently on hiatus, their self-titled debut still stands as one of the best mainstream introductions of the last ten years.
Agnes Obel – Philharmonics
The Danish singer might easily be the smallest artist of our group here, but her first album Philharmonics is something that should have gotten far more recognition than is has outside of her native land.
This is an album so stripped back it comes as a shock, with very often just Agnes’s haunting voice and her piano all to be heard. We wouldn’t want it any other way though, as she uses that simplistic beauty to deliver a truly touching album, full of quivering emotion.
It was met with critical adulation when released in 2010, winning her the prizes for Best Album, Best FemaleArtist and Best Debut at the Danish Music Awards.
Gnarls Barkley – St Elsewhere
After producer Danger Mouse somehow managed to mash together The Beatles and Jay-Z, everyone was waiting to see what he was going to do next. Gnarls Barkley was that project and their first album scertianly didn’t leave any of those incredibly high expectations left dangling.
The pair were positively catapulted onto the mainstream scene with the chart-topping hit Crazy, but it was just the tip of the iceberg, with their album St Elsewhere a wonderfully creative collection of tracks that crossed genres as easily as most people cross the road. At times trippy dance, sometimes pure pop and other times venturing into the realms of soul, all with a massive smile on it’s face.
The album was to deservedly get nominated for Album Of The Year at the Grammys in 2007 and went on to win Best Alternative Music Album at the prestigious awards ceremony that year.
That rounds up our list of the best debut albums of the decade, but was there any that jumped out at you throughout the last ten years? Let us know in the comments section and make sure to see what our other choices were right here.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Gnarls Barkley Lady GaGa La Roux