First of all, a happy new year to all of you (a bit late, I know…). 2010 has been a good year, for Turin Brakes fans. The year ended with a exclusive Christmas cover from the boys (White Christmas) and a new blog:

(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!