It’s been a good year when it comes to Turin Brakes. Besides the hugely successful Optimist Anniversary tour we got a lovely new EP featuring new song Rescue Squad and some brilliant covers (and remember Ascencion Day?). And there were some nice Summer festival appearances and little gigs that kept Ether Site active all throughout the year – and band activity makes it more fun for me to do this as much as possible. The band reached out yet again in 2011, with Olly providing backing vocals for Matthew Ryan and the band doing two radio shows for Resonance FM, amongst other little creative projects. Let’s hope they keep on doing that this year because it can bring out surprising sides of our guys!

Now OBVIOUSLY we want the band to release a new album this year, but they let slip in recent interviews that it might be a while before that happens. They don’t just want to do another album for the sake of it, but we will get one at some point. Cooking Vinyl is set to release the follow-up to Outbursts, and I think I’m speaking for most fans when I say: “GET TO WORK!!!!!”

Hopefully there’ll be more international tour dates like the one in Iceland that’s coming up soon. The rest of the world is waiting for Turin Brakes to bring The Optimist and other classic works to their shores… So hopefully, some intimate gigs can be scheduled in 2012. And hopefully, 2012 will bring some kind of new work. I really loved the second covers ep and hope the band can make some tradition out of it, to do little EPs with surprising things on it.

So that leaves me with revealing the song of the year. I had to check back when I saw the results… I couldn’t believe this song hasn’t been Song Of The Year before, but it’s that one favourite that’s always beaten by another one even though it secretly is always a favourite of most of us. Thanks to some Facebook campaigning by the band (thanks for that!) and some awareness raised at the Optimist gigs (thanks Claire!), more people than ever voted for this year’s edition. This makes me really happy. I’ve randomly selected the winner and contacted her… She will get her prize sooner than later. Thanks for participating everyone… And without further ado… Here’s the top 40 of this year, with the number one spot going to:

1 (4) Underdog (Save Me)
2 (8) Mind Over Money (2009 winner)
3 (1) The Sea Change (2010 winner)
4 (13) Fishing For A Dream (2008 winner)
5 (7) Painkiller
6 (6) Feeling Oblivion
7 (15) The Road
8 (19) Long Distance (2005, 2007 winner)
9 (18) State Of Things (2006 winner)
10 (3) Dark On Fire
11 (24) Mirror
12 (14) Stone Thrown
13 (25) Emergency 72
14 (42) The Door
15 (61) Last Clown
16 (16) Ether Song
17 (5) Rocket Song
18 (40) Red Moon
19 (50) Come and Go
20 (51) For The Fire
21 (10) Future Boy
22 (29) Last Chance
23 (41) Bye Pod
24 (53) New Star
25 (30) Rain City
26 (32) The Optimist
27 (31) Average Man
28 (17) Forever
29 (52) Little Brother
30 (37) Radio Silence
31 (22) Slack
32 (76) Asleep With The Fireflies
33 (02) Outbursts
34 (44) Paper Heart
35 (69) They Can’t Buy The Sunshine
36 (NEW) Rescue Squad
37 (47) Building Wraps Round Me
38 (65) Over and Over
39 (NEW) Underdog (Sally)
40 (09) Apocolips

So… the list continues further down, but this looks like a proper nice chart, right? Anyway, you could vote for 87 different songs (or versions) this year. But because people could only pick 6 songs, some songs didn’t get ANY love this year. It might also explain why some songs dropped quite a bit down the list, being liked a lot but not in people’s top 6 in general. However, I think the top 40 is pretty good reflection of the awesome songs the boys have released since they started. And if you disagree with that… Well… Better vote for YOUR favourite songs come November 2012… And who knows… We might even have a whole batch of new songs to vote for?

So, another year – almost – done! Time to vote for your favourite Turin Brakes songs and help choose the song of the year. As always, you can win a fabulous bootleg full of Turin Brakes goodness!

You can fill in the form on the website OR fill in the form at one of The Optimist UK tour dates thanks to the great Claire (who is doing the merch on these days – she’s seriously cool!).

All details can be found HERE.

(click to enlarge, eh!)

The blog promised lots of new activity from the band in 2011, including work on a new record and more fun. The first of those fun things is happening in April, with a gig in Liverpool (see here).  Let’s hope we’ll get more of these gigs while album writing and recording get underway.

As I said, 2010 was a good year with a brand-new album and a nice new single. Sea Change may not have hit no. 1 in the charts, but it was a hit amongst gig attendees and Turin Brakes fans. The free-spirited music on this particular song, with African drums making a live appearance in combination with the serious lyrics, breathed new life into a band and kicked off a great new gig year. I can know, because I attended 5 gigs in 2010 and none of those were less than “really good.”

We almost got another single in 2010, Rocket Song, promos were send out and the song was supposed to get a digital release in May, but this didn’t happen. What did happen was that the band performed this song (and Mirror) without amps on their tours. This resulted in quite intimate moments, different every time. And after the main set, Olly walked back on stage to sing Outbursts, possibly the most personal and upfront track of the band to date.

The band really went “all in” this year, both on record and live on stage. I’m very happy to report that this is all reflected in the Song of the Year results. For the first time since the contest is held (in 2006), we have a song of the year that was actually released in the year itself. Not only that, but the no. 2 is also a song from Outbursts. The new album got a whole lot of love this year and with an overwhelming amount of points compared to the rest of the top 10, I’m happy to announce that the Ether Site Song of the Year 2010 is:

SEA CHANGE

Now here is the full list:

01 The Sea Change

Based on the above results, Outbursts is the most popular album right now:

01 Outbursts
02 The Optimist LP
03 Ether Song
04 Dark On Fire
05 JackInABox

It will be interesting to see the results in a year’s time, see how Outbursts is holding up!

This Year

Now, 2011 will most likely be quieter than 2010 was, with the guys still working on new projects, but we’ll try to keep everything going on here.

• In April the band will play their first gig of 2011, with hopefully more to follow.
• Ether Site will pay tribute to the ten year anniversary of The Optimist LP on 5 March 2011, for which I’ll need your help. More on that later!
• Former TB support act Pete Lawrie will be releasing a debut LP, with a possible guest appearance for Turin Brakes (also, more on that later).
• There’ll be more free bootleg downloads coming up on this site.
• I’ll be launching a new Ether Site this year. If you have nice feature ideas, get in touch! Work is still very much in progress.

So here’s to 2011, may it be a good year! Thank you for visiting the site in the past year, I hope you guys keep on coming back in 2011!

And here’s a nice video of Turin Brakes in Crewe made by the wonderful Andrew Dolan. It was recorded on 2 December 2010:

From today, you can vote for your favourite Turin Brakes Song of the Year! The procedure is simple: select your 10 favourite songs and e-mail them to me. I count the votes and together we’ll pick the Song Of The Year 2010. For more info check this page (there you can also find the official e-mail form). Please select the songs you CURRENTLY enjoy the most (not necessarily your all-time favourites).

If you decide to join, you might be the winner of an original Ether Site t-shirt. Yes. It is AWESOME!

To see a list of what songs you can pick: check the lyrics & tabs section (cover versions don’t count). So any song from The Door to Outbursts, that was written and recorded by Turin Brakes. If you accidentally choose a cover, don’t worry, I’ll get back to you for a replacement song. You CAN vote for different (released) versions of the same song, i.e. Stone and Stone Thrown.

Closing date is 31st December 2010. More info here. Last year’s list looked like this.

1 Mind Over Money
2 Underdog (Save Me) (most UK votes)
3 Emergency 72
4 Painkiller
5 Fishing For A Dream (2008 winner)
6 Last Chance
7 Ether Song
8 Paper Heart (most popular ‘Outbursts’ song)
9 The Road
10 Feeling Oblivion
11 Blue Hour
12 Rain City
13 The Sea Change
14 Come and Go
15 Dark On Fire
16 For The Fire
17 Future Boy
18 Self Help
19 The Door
20 Forever
21 Full Of Stars
22 Little Brother
23 New Star
24 Stalker
25 Everybody Knows
26 Love Is All You Deserve
27 Rise
28 The Seagull
29 State Of Things (2006 winner)
30 Time Machine
31 Clear Blue Air
32 Jet Trail
33 Lasso
34 Never Stops
35 Average Man
36 Bright Golden Lights
37 Last Clown
38 Nine To Five
39 Other Side
40 Above The Clouds
41 Balham To Brooklyn
42 Long Distance (2005 and 2007 winner)
43 Over and Over
44 Starship
45 Stone Thrown
46 The Optimist
47 Building Wraps Round Me
48 So Long
49 The Boss
50 They Can’t Buy The Sunshine
51 Timewaster
52 Capsule
53 Here Comes The Moon
54 Real Life
55 Red Moon
56 Cumulous Clouds
57 Bye Pod
58 Ghost
59 Something In My Eye
60 Falling Down
61 Panic Attack
62 Asleep With The Fireflies
63 Jackinabox
64 Road To Nowhere
65 By TV Light
66 Slack
67 5 Mile (These Are The Days)
68 Brave New World
69 Eveready
70 Invisible Boy
71 Loopa
72 The First Time
73 Where I’ve Been (XFM Acoustic Version)
74 Where’s My Army

Thanks everyone for voting. Seems like a nice winner this year. New voting round starts on 1 October 2010! So stay tuned!

The top 100 will be played on the Christian O’Connell breakfast show on 11th December and voting closes on 30th November. All other info can be found here.

And while you’re in a voting mood, why not select your top 9 favourite Turin Brakes songs for the Song Of The Year competition?

I’ve updated the lyrics section with new additions. You can now find lyrics for the new tracks on Bottled At Source (Rise, Time Machine, Cumulous Clouds and The Seagull) and new unreleased songs Paper Heart, The Sea Change and Never Stops.

The Gigography and History sections will be updated soon enough.

The top 20 results can be found here: Song Of The Year 2008 – Top 20.

The annual ‘Turin Brakes in’ report, featuring all the results and statistics, and one more look on 2008 will be published on this website on January 16th (it’s the top priority after completing my thesis ). So stay tuned for that!

So what do you think of the results?

You may already have noticed: the Song Of The Year 2008 election is online and running. The first top 8s are already in, so why not make yours now and send it ethersite@gmail.com… More info on rules and prizes available here.

Happy voting!