Feel good hits of the 14th July

1. '46 Satires' - The Besnard Lakes
As with the rest of Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO, the album opener just gets better and better with every listen.

2. 'Graceless' - The National
From graceful to 'Graceless'. Just one of the many reasons Trouble Will Find Me is now looking like a dead cert to appear in my end-of-year Top Ten.

3. 'Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans' - Smashing Pumpkins
Once upon a time, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness was my absolute favourite album. The inspiration to pick it off the shelf and dust it down came from having to listen to this repeatedly as part of Stan's new rigid bedtime routine (not nearly as bad as you might imagine, actually). Anyway, 'Porcelina...' is essentially Mellon Collie... in a nutshell - excessively long, lyrically juvenile, but spectacularly good.

4. 'Untitled #8' - Sigur Ros
Talking of spectacular, the final track of ( ) is just that, and always reminds me of its position as the stunning finale of their incredible Glastonbury 2003 set.

5. 'Bear' - The Antlers
I'm pleased to report it's still as emotional exhilarating and exhausting as ever - and that goes for Hospice as a whole.

6. 'Out Of Touch' - Lotus Plaza
Why it took me so long to decide I really like Lockett Pundt's contributions to Deerhunter albums and to therefore invest in one of his solo outings in the Lotus Plaza guise, I have no idea.

7. 'New Slang' - The Shins
This track (yes, the one from Garden State) has been ringing around my head ever since reading and posting about Sub Pop's 25th birthday. Just a terrible travesty that this near-four minutes of sunlit loveliness ended up being sold to appear on a McDonald's advert...

8. 'Junk Yard' - The Birthday Party
A thank you to Matt Korvette of Pissed Jeans (another Sub Pop act) for pointing me in the direction of this, having claimed in an interview that this one clip is the prime inspiration behind everything he and his band does. Nick Cave had BIG hair back then, while Mick Harvey looks like the one member of the band who's there on work experience...

9. 'In The Backseat' - The Arcade Fire
Unfairly neglected in the context of the rest of Funeral, I feel - but then it's not exactly an album short on highlights.

10. 'If I Had A Tail' - Queens Of The Stone Age
I'll be honest - ... Like Clockwork has been a huge disappointment so far, this track and maybe a couple of others notwithstanding. Can you hear Arctic Monkey Alex Turner's vocal contribution? Nope, me neither.