Two of my favourite records from this year (although not "My two favourite records from this year") were Studio's "West Coast" and A Mountain Of One's "Collected Works". Both pull off the neat trick of coming across as new by sounding old, but with the old nestled comfortably inside heavy quotation marks. Hence, what they make is "songs", not songs. (And perhaps you could argue that listening to both is "fun", not fun. But I wouldn't agree with you.)
The difficulty with this approach is that one senses that both bands are travelling at speed down a very short cul de sac. (But then, I thought the same about LCD Soundsystem, who managed to come back with an album that majestically bolstered LCD Soundsystem's undeniable Style with unexpected Substance.) (But then, I also thought the same about Dungen's "Ta Det Lugnt", and this year's "Tio Bitar" hasn't, at least for me, added much to the sum of human knowledge.) So who knows where the future lies? For now, it might be best just to enjoy the present.
