Underrated/Overrated (Part One)

Over the next few weeks I thought I'd go over a few of the most underrated and overrated albums of the past couple years. So here are the first two to get us started...

UNDERRATED ALBUM

HALF MOON RUN - Dark Eyes
I actually heard about this album early December in 2012 and I even wrote about the finishing track "21 Gun Salute" here. When I wikipedia-ed them, it told me that they'd released Dark Eyes in 2011 and the first thing I remember thinking was "why have I not heard anything about this already?!" So I listened to the rest of the album on YouTube, loved it but didn't hear anything about it for a while afterward. Then earlier this year people started to finally pipe up about them. I started seeing them on quite a few festival line-ups and a couple of my friends finally started talking about them. Turns out that their album is yet to be released in the UK, regardless, this album needs a lot more appreciation it is pure gold. Some of my favourites on the album are "Drug You", "No More Losing The War", "She Wants To Know" and "Call Me In The Afternoon". I'm very excited to see them live this summer - and it's definitely about time that others started getting excited about them too...

OVERRATED ALBUM

COLDPLAY - Mylo Xyloto
Now, I'm not saying that this was a bad album as such but my goodness did this get hyped! Coldplay have released some quality music over the past few years and so naturally when they were set to release their fifth album in 2011 people were excited, but this was too much excitement. Adverts were everywhere. You couldn't be anywhere without hearing something about this album. They performed on The X Factor and all of a sudden they were everybody's favourite band. Of course the phrase "album of the year/decade" was being thrown around a lot. Safe to say, it had a lot to live up to. So when I heard the album I was extremely disappointed. Aside from the obvious stand out singles "Paradise", "Charlie Brown", "Hurts Like Heaven" and "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall" (of which the latter was not even that great), every other track was so far below average. The album didn't flow that well. I wasn't entirely sure what genre the album was supposed to be. Despite its 10/10 build up, it's probably a 6.5/10 album. Best track on the album...