CD of the Year: Tiger Cats - Isle of Dogs

How does one choose just one favourite album of the year? Should it be the one that knocked you for six on a first hearing, the one that you admired rather than loved but nevertheless admired an awful lot, or the one that  sneaked up on you gradually so that eventually you found yourself putting it on over and over again, even when you’d set out to play something else entirely, until eventually you ended up playing it more than any other album in 2012? Well, needless to say I’ve gone for the last.

On early plays, my knowledge of all the 1970s bands that these bright young things from east London had been influenced by (from T. Rex to Television) tended to detract from an appreciation of how well they had transcended those influences. But gradually the volume got pushed up, and the wholly organic way they had integrated bright, shiny Congolese-style guitar and polyrhythms with intense yet playful indie rock elements - not to mention the sophisticated structures of their alternately heartfelt and amusingly sarcastic songs - revealed Isle of Dogs to be the best new pop/rock album I'd come across in ages. And you’ve got to worship at the feet of a band who namedrop their influences in such an inventive way as this, from “Vapours”:

“I dream of an imaginary record shop
Staffed by new wave
One hit wonders
We got Jonah Lewie
We got Jilted John
We got The Only Ones
We got the guys who sang “Turning Japanese”
I think it was
I think it was
I think it was The Vapours”

Tigercats evoke the spirit of the Velvet Underground without even for one moment imitating them: take note, most other indie bands in the land.