The BAMS Awards 2009 - We Have A Winner!

Lloyd Meredith, from the mighty fine Peenko blog polled a large number of the Scottish music blogs to ascertain their favourite albums of the year. It's hardly a surprise that only one of my selections made the final list but I'm so far out of touch with what 'the kids' are listening to I might as well be on Jupiter.

Anyway, here's Lloyd's announcement of the results:

*drum roll*

"Hey Boys and Girls

Now for the moment you might have been waiting for/forgotten about, it's the results of all of your top ten albums from this year and you'll find out in a second who won. First off, can I just say a massive thank you to everyone who took part, I know that I caused quite a few headaches for some of you. Since this might become an annual event I have decided to give it a title. As the website/bloggers album of the year was a bit drab, I have decided to go with, 'The Scottish Bloggers and Music Sites Award 2009', or the 'Scottish BAMS Award 2009' (your choice, the BAMS bit just amused me).

Anyway, the bit that you have all been waiting for; our winner. After totalling up all of your top tens, it was good to see such a wide variation in your choices, in all we had a grand total of 166 albums represented and it really did go down to the wire. The winner for this year was........drum roll........The Phantom Band with "Checkmate Savage", who pipped the Animal Collective at the post. Having noted all of your top tens as they came through, it was fascinating to see how many different outcomes we almost had. Anyway, here's how the final top twenty looks (the scores are in brackets)

1. The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage (61)
2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion (54)
3. De Rosa - Prevention (53)
4. King Creosote - Flick the V's (51)
5. Withered Hand - Good News (45)
6. The Twilight Sad - Forget The Night Ahead (43)
7. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls (40)
8. Beerjacket - Animosity (38)
9. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More (32)
9. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career (32) - my choice!
11. My Latest Novel - Deaths and Entrances (28)
11. Malcolm Middleton - Waxing Gibbous (28)
13. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - s/t (25)
14. You Already Know - s/t (24)
14. Broken Records - Until the Earth Begins to Part (24)
16. The XX - s/t (23)
17. The Antlers - Hospice (21)
18. Sufjan Stevens - The BQE (19)
18. And So I Watch You From Afar (19)
20. Wilco - The Album (18)

If you would like a break down of how all of the voting panned out then just let me know and I'll send you the spreadsheets, god this is sounding far too business like. Anyway, here's the list of all of the blogs/websites that took part, it includes some ex-pats and our very own honorary Scot...
17 Seconds, AyeTunes, Dear Scotland, Earz Mag, Elba Sessions, Glasgow Podcart, Hooligans Lament, Jim Gellatly, JocknRoll, Jockrock, Kowalskiy, Last Years Girl, Love Shack Baby, Manic Pop Thrills, My Portiswasp Says, Off the Beaten Tracks, The Pop Cop, Products of a Gaseous Brain, Song By Toad, The Blues Bunny, The Daily Growl, The Spill, The Steinberg Principle, The Vinyl Villain and Under the Radar.

A mighty fine list if I do say so myself, thanks once again to all of you for taking part.

I have also managed to grab a quote from Andy from the band (hence the delay in me emailing you all). Here's what he had to say....

"This makes us feel very honoured because the opinion of people out there giving opinions is what matters most, rather than the financially influenced press. It always amazes me that people would take it upon themselves to go out and champion a band or an album or a band for no material gain, but it gives me faith in human nature. Blogs and reviews have been the only advertising we've ever had. Apart from all those people who got online and promoted us, we'd like to thank those little almost-stale doughnuts you get in big tubs from Sainsburys for keeping us fat during the recording. We obviously also have our Producer Paul Savage and the wonderful people at Chemikal Underground to thank for letting us do what we want. These guys are the quiet heroes of Scottish music for sure."

Cheers
Lloyd (Peenko)"

So there you have it, no Cheryl Cole, no Coldplay and, thankfully, no Joe McBlackberry. For the record I chose the following albums:

Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
Dropkick – Abelay Hotel
Trashcan Sinatras – In the Music
Colin MacIntyre – Island
Sergeant – Sergeant
Ian Brown – My Way
Prefab Sprout – Let’s Change the World with Music
God Help The Girl – God Help The Girl
Jackie Leven – Winter: Men in Prison/Munich Blues
Butcher Boy – React or Die

Dan Lyth's excellent The Fat Man and the Baby Boy was received too late.