HOT 100 2010
10 BELLE & SEBASTIAN
Long-beloved Glaswegian minstrels The latest chapter in the Glasgow band’s ongoing love affair with pop, and their first album in four years, Write About Love features a sonic palette that only those with a lifetime immersed in classic pop music could produce, and earned them career-best album chart positions in both the UK (number 8) and the US (number 15). Triumphant opener ‘I Didn’t See It Coming’ manages to pull off the patented B&S trick of being simultaneously atmospheric, melancholic, anthemic and funky – exactly the sort of multi-faceted killer combination that makes ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ a staple of indie dancefloors everywhere. Drawing 2010 to a heady close with last weekend’s
Bowlie 2 – the sequel to the legendary 1999 B&S- curated festival at Pontin’s Holiday Camp that inspired the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival phenomenon – and three shows at the Barrowlands, it’s great to have them back. (HB)
9 TILDA SWINTON Queen of Narnia and the art house If you blinked at the beginning of 2010 you would have missed Swinton’s nutty cameo in Jim Jarmusch’s even nuttier existential hit man thriller Limits of Control. A near career best performance followed in Italian dynasty epic I Am Love and come the year’s end she was still doing it for the kids as the White Witch in Narnia adventure, The Voyage of the Dawntreader.
32 THE LIST 16 Dec 2010 – 6 Jan 2011
She’s also actually been doing a lot more than that for the young ones. The 81/2 Foundation (eightandahalf.org), a cinema appreciation and education project Swinton founded with filmmaker and broadcaster Mark Cousins continues to go from strength to strength with the help of National Lottery Funding. (PD)
was sneakily released in August on the band’s website, or catch them at the Edinburgh Hogmanay Concert in the Gardens, where they’ll be headlining. Lastly, in breaking news, they’ve had ‘Many of Horror’ nabbed by X Factor’s Matt Cardle for his Xmas number one assault. (NB)
8 BIFFY CLYRO Arena-filling west coasters Simon, Ben and James have continued to pilot the Biffy juggernaut to success this year. Building on the commercial and critical acclaim of last year’s Only Revolutions, they’ve racked up a series of Best Album nominations, including Mercury, Kerrang and iTunes; a few Best Video awards for the shirtless piracy of ‘The Captain’; and a slew of high-ranking festival appearances in the UK and around the world, including T in the Park (their gazillionth appearance), Roskilde in Denmark and Summersonic in Japan, where Simon Neil underwent his eye-catching peroxide transformation. There have been rumours circulating that they’re due to start recording a new album after completing their sell-out arena tour this month; until then, fans can console themselves with a copy of the Lonely Revolutions b-sides album, which
7 KAREN GILLAN Time-travelling Invernesian This time last year, few people outside of her inner circle had heard the name, but now Karen Gillan has a miniature doll of herself. Or more specifically, in the form of Amy Pond, the all-new shiny assistant of Matt Smith. This young pair have managed to breathe life into Doctor Who and helped ease the pain of those grieving the loss of David Tennant. Gillan’s opening appearance in the post-Russell T Davies era was as a WPC strippogram, a fact weighted with irony given that this Telford College graduate made her telly debut in a 2006 episode of Rebus. Since then, she’s cropped up in Channel 4 ‘comedy’ series, The Kevin Bishop Show, and Beeb horror drama for teens, The Well, but ‘Amy Pond’ will prove to be a career-defining role. She also cropped up beside James Nesbitt in a supernatural thriller entitled Outcast and ends a triumphant year with the traditional Doctor Who Christmas special. (BD)