Enjoyed Brett Anderson’s show at the Tivoli (De Helling) in Utrecht. Of the good: He’s not as aloof as he was in the past. Voice as strong as ever. Has stopped twirling his microphone. Of the bad: He’s been writing the same songs for the past 20 years. He needs to eat a few hamburgers.

I don’t listen to music as intensely now and I couldn’t tell you the titles of the songs of many of these albums, let alone what they’re about. I couldn’t tell you much about the bands or artists either. And I don’t pay as much attention to lyrics as I used to. Music plays while I’m doing something else and I don’t wallow in it. Occasionally a phrase will stand out, but I’m going mostly by melody now. So consider these the best melodies I heard in 2009.

U2 are the odd one out in a field of not so widely knowns. I don’t agree with Rolling Stone all too often, but yes, I too think Moment of Surrender is the best piece of music that I’ve heard this year, and possibly the best piece of music U2 have ever written and Bono’s ever sung. It should have been the single.

1. The Airborne Toxic Event – The Airborne Toxic Event
2. A Mountain Of One – Institute of Joy
3. M83 – Saturdays = Youth
4. Eden Ahbez – Eden’s Island
5. Moderat – Moderat
6. Darker My Love – 2
7. Reverend and The Makers – A French Kiss In The Chaos
8. The Black Atlantic – Reverence For Fallen Trees
9. U2 – No Line on the Horizon
10. TV on the Radio – Dear Science

Other albums I listened to that didn’t make top 10:

Bat for Lashes – Two Suns, La Roux – La Roux, Masters of Reality – Pine, M83 – Before the dawn heals us, The Horrors – Primary Colours, MGMT – Oracular Spectacular, Empire State Human – Audio Gothic, Kings of Leon – Aha Shake Heartbreak, Wild Beasts – Two Dancers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!, Martha Wainwright – Martha Wainwright, Noah and the Whale – The First Days of Spring, Soulsavers – Broken, The xx – xx, Julian Plenti – Julian Plenti is skyscraper, Joe Henry – Blood from stars, TV Ghost – Cold Fish, White Lies – To Lose my life

Natasha Khan’s tom-boyish, goofy performance was alright and the music was solid and I loved the way she dressed her stage… but I wasn’t feeling it. I hear so many other artists in her music and voice, and I’m not sure what makes Khan’s music hers. I kept thinking ‘Sounds like Tori Amos sounding like Kate Bush, not as distinctive’, ‘Sounds like Sinead… not as other wordly’, ‘Gosh, this is very Olwen Fouere’, (Who?), ‘Bit of Bjork, not as barking…’ I left before the end of the show. Ben Christophers played keyboards in the band. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

My first concert of the year was a bloody great one.

She’s 60 years old and her body puts the rest of us to shame. Fashionably late, fabulously wearing a different Philip Treacy hat for every song and – mostly miniscule – threads over her fishnet panty hose. In between songs she’d disappear to the side of the stage, all the while making lewd comments to entertain us: ‘Give me something to suck…’

Ms Jones played a lot of songs from her surprisingly good new album ‘Hurricane’, but she didn’t forget her greatest hits: ‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Pull up to the bumper’ (with on stage audience participation), ‘Nightclubbing’ and of course, ‘Slave to the Rhythm’, which she performed while gyrating a hula hoop.

It was the newer, more personal songs that touched me. The autobiographical ‘Williams Blood’ in particular, in which she channelled her mother talking to her daughter disapprovingly: “Why don’t you be a Jones like your Sister and your brother Noel?” But amazing Grace is blessed with the blood of her musician granddad Williams. She’s “wicked”, she says: “You can’t save a wretch like me…”

She closed the set with ‘Hurricane’ dressed in a flowing black robe, while a wind machine of giant proportions blew us and herself away.

View my Grace Jones photos on Flickr

Whatever they say to hype their albums about reinventing themselves, going back to their roots, incorporating dance or electronica, U2 always end up sounding like U2. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I can never remember the titles of U2’s previous two CDs. They weren’t bad and contained some great songs, but they weren’t memorable to me as albums. No Line on the Horizon is.

I’m not religious, I don’t bleed for Africa, I’m not keen on stadium rock. What turned me on to U2 was as much their military beat as a certain Celtic mysticism, their affinity with the European landscape, their singer’s do-or-die delivery and their big ideas.

For some fans, Achtung Baby is the touchstone in assessing a new album’s worth. For others it will always be Pop. My U2 is more ephemeral, present in moments found across their vast back catalog. You can hear echoes of these moments all over NLOTH.

“Moment of Surrender” reaches levels of intensity on par with “Bad” or “Please.” There’s a dash of “Van Diemen’s Land” with “White as Snow.” You’ll hear some Zooropa in “Magnificent” and “FEZ-Being Born,” the latter of which harks back to The Unforgettable Fire, while the first is the 00’s “Gloria”. “Unknown Caller” has roots in The Million Dollar Hotel. “Breathe” comes from the same songbook as “Gone.” And you may hate the single, but “Get On Your Boots” is probably their most Achtung Baby-like track in 20 years, and the title song borrows a riff from “The Fly.”

This is U2 doing what they’re best at: being U2. Except in “Stand Up Comedy,” where they attempt to be Led Zeppelin. Give it up, lads.

Boy
The Electric Co
11 o’clock tick tock
An Cat Dubh

October
Tomorrow

War
Seconds
Surrender
New Year’s Day

The Unforgettable Fire
The Unforgettable Fire
Indian Summer Sky
Wire
Exit
A Sort of Homecoming
Bad

The Joshua Tree
Exit
Red Hill Mining Town
Bullet the Blue Sky
b-sides:
Lumimous Times
Silver and Gold
Spanish Eyes
Deep in the heart
Walk to the water

Rattle and Hum
God Part II
Hawkmoon 269
b-side
A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel

Achtung Baby
Zoo Station
Love is blindness
b-side:
Salome

Zooropa
Zooropa
Stay
The First Time
Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car

Pop
Mofo
Miami
Please
If You Wear That Velvet Dress

Passengers – Original Soundtracks 1
Your Blue Room

All That You Can’t Leave Behind
Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of
Kite

Best of 1990–2000
Electrical Storm

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
A Man and a Woman

U218
Window in the skies

Not yet on Spotify, but will be there soon:
No Line on the Horizon
Moment of Surrender
Cedars of Lebanon
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Fez-Being Born

1. Moment of Surrender
2. Cedars of Lebanon
3. No Line on the Horizon
4. FEZ-Being Born
5. Magnificent
6. White as Snow
7. Unknown Caller
8. Get On Your Boots
9. I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
10. Breathe
11. Stand up comedy

I didn’t at first but now I’ve heard the album a few times, I’m starting to hear the influences that were mentioned to me over the last few months. Kraftwerk (Being Born particularly, but No Line as well) more so than Portishead. Bits and pieces remind me of the Babel-soundtrack, but that’s obviously the band’s recording sessions in North-Africa paying off. A lot of the songs feature piano, which always reminds of Bowie.

Moment of Surrender takes me to a similar place as Kite did, but darker, more raw. It works on the tear ducts even if I’m not sure why. Must be something in the vocal.

A propos of nothing… I don’t think I’ve ever heard a rockband’s lyrics been picked on quite as much as U2’s. So Bono’s King of Clunk. You know, they do advise newsreaders to speak with a quirk. Why? Because it makes you listen.

I’m clearly in full U2-apologist mode and thus no fun anymore. Hey, I used to write in to the NME’s reader’s column to defend them. At least I gave up on that in the 80s.

My Death – David Bowie (Jacques Brel)
It was a toss up between his cover of Wild is the wind (Johnny Mathis) and this one. Used to hear this on the radio and learnt of ‘Baal’ and ‘Brecht’ through Bowie when the LP was released in 81/82.

Coil – Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
Coil completely decontructs Soft Cell’s dance floor hit, creating an elegy in the decade AIDS started making headlines.

Nature Boy – Jose Feliciano (Nat King Cole, et al)
I first heard this song in summer camp in 78 or so. It was played to me on guitar by a guy called Hans, he was one of the camp leaders. He tried to teach me how to play it, but I only mastered the jazzy chords a few years later. I found the song, which has been covered by many, on a Jose Feliciano album I found in our library. Since it’s the first cover I heard, it remains my favourite – though I haven’t heard it in years.

What Makes a Man a Man – Marc Almond (Charles Aznavour)
Almond brings more tears and a sob to this song than the slightly more understated Aznavour.

Lovelight – Robbie Williams (Lewis Taylor)
I was tempted to pick Robbie’s cover of The Human League’s Louise off of the same album, but went with Lovelight instead, because I didn’t know the song before I heard Robbie sing it. It’s one of those Hi-NRG songs I can’t get enough of lately.

Les Filles du bord de mer – Arno (Adamo)
This will probably be fairly unknown outside of Europe, in fact I didn’t know the song before I heard the Belgian singer Arno (ex-TC Matic) sing it live. It’s a crowd pleaser. Arno’s version slows it down, drags it out, makes it great.

Night and day – U2 (Cole Porter/Frank Sinatra)
Recorded for the Red, Hot and Blue album in support of AIDS charities and accompanied by a stupid video, this is one of my favourite U2 recordings. Obsessive love songs are the best.

Paper Thin Hotel – Fatima Mansions (Leonard Cohen)
Cathal Coughlan turns Paper Thin Hotel’s jealous lover into an axe-murderer. A left over from the sessions for the Cohen tribute album ‘I’m your man’, released on a sampler given away at FNAC.

Brother can you spare a dime – George Michael (Bing Crosby, et al)
Almost went with Somebody to love (Queen), but I’m really not that keen on the song, eventhough George covered it so brilliantly at Wembley. Anyway, I just wanted to include him. Love his voice.

Scorn not his simplicity – Sinead O’Connor (Phil Coulter/Luke Kelly)
Written by Coulter for his disabled son and occasionally sung by The Dubliner’s Luke Kelly. There’s many songs Sinead’s covered that I could have picked, not in the least Prince’s Nothing Compares to You, but this one is pure and lovely.

Better Days Ahead – Hothouse Flowers (Gil Scott-Heron)
A slow burner, a plea for love in times of trouble. Liam O’Maoinlai at his best, I think, forever hovering on the good side of sharp. It has a sax-solo that doesn’t get on my nerves. It was an extra song on the Flowers’ I can see clearly now-single, also a cover. I don’t remember ever hearing the original.

Heartbreak Hotel – John Cale (Elvis Presley)
John Cale has done my favourite cover of Hallelujah, the first version of it that I ever heard, long, long before it became fodder for the idols. But I’m picking his Heartbreak Hotel, because it takes a great song, demolishes it, and then rebuilds it. Really brings out the despair, as well.

By this river – Gavin Friday (Brian Eno)
Can’t have a list like this without our Gav. He picks a song, takes a good look at it from all sides, then twists himself inside of it until he thinks he wrote it. Then he makes you believe the same. He’s done that to Sinatra’s Cycles, Coldplay’s Yellow, Brel’s Amsterdam and Next, to Blue Velvet, Nina Simone’s Four Women, Hot Chocolate’s Put your love in me, his extraordinary cover of Singin in the rain, and many, many Kurt Weill classics. But I’m picking this more recent song, because it’s such an odd one out, and one of his best vocals.

Some of these songs, or their orginals, can be heard on this playlist I made in Spotify

It invariably means the band’s music has evolved and those fans haven’t. The music is simply no longer to their taste.

Perhaps the real ’sell out’ occurs when the world evolves and the band does not change with it.