18 & 17 (The Elliot School Assembly)

This post is basically an ode to a Putney school. Incredibly, both eighteen and seventeen in ze list are ex-naughty boys and girls of the same Elliot School, an institution that refuses to stop churning out the most gifted young musicians in the country.
The schools most recent exports find themselves with my eighteenth favourite track of the year. In all honesty, I was slightly dubious of The xx prior to hearing them, purely because of the name. Idiotically, I presumed that a band with a name such as theirs would produce a dense, noisy and pessimistic sound leaving any listener with a combination of frowns and gurns.
Atmospheric, delicate and romantic - it's too easy to fall in love with The xx and their incredibly cool album. If Cool was a country then it's national anthem would probably be 'Islands' and I'd be one of it's many refugees.

18. The xx - Islands [Mediafire]

We all have our own 'summer anthem'. Now hanging loose in Brighton, The Maccabees too were products of Putney schooling, not to mention sharing detention with Hot Chip, Four Tet and Burial. Love You Better has sun, sea and romance written all over it.

17. The Maccabees - Love You Better [Mediafire]