my top 50 albums of 2010, pt. 4
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20
Bad Religion
The Dissent of Man
Epitaph
The most workmanlike of punk bands, Los Angeles’ Bad Religion celebrated their thirtieth anniversary this year; buoyed by Greg Graffin’s eloquent, rapidfire vocal delivery and an eminently capable band of musicians whose tight harmonies and lightspeed playing belie their years, their newest record is full of blistering rock and stirring polemic. Every BR album seems to have at least one song that could stand as a band anthem, and on Dissent it’s “The Resist Stance”, with its fat guitar melodies, bullet-train drumming and Graffin's call-to-arms: “seeds of rebellion/lay outside your front door/if you nourish them and water them/they’ll grow into a healthy ‘What for?’” The song’s booming, cathedral production and rippling curtains of background “oozinahhs” don’t detract one iota from the ferocity and energy on display. The band have always found plenty of subject matter in excoriating false idols, whether it be the demagogues of the stirring garage-rock chorale “Someone to Believe” or the bankrupt economists and educators of the explosive, rollicking fusillade “Meeting of the Minds”. And to the naysayers who claim that each record sounds the same, look to tunes like “Cyanide”, its meandering pedal-steel guitar flirting with alt-country, or the rock-opera throwback of “The Devil in Stitches” with its “Jessie’s Girl”-esque palm-muting and tales of wayward youths. The seemingly tireless, seemingly ageless Bad Religion show no signs of slowing, extending their late-career streak with this, their fifteenth album.
19
Stereolab
Not Music
Drag City
London’s Stereolab have officially been on hiatus since last year, but the sessions for 2008’s Chemical Chords were so productive that this second collection has come about in the interim; curiously, it’s stronger than the previous record, a loose grab-bag of leftovers that show more spontaneity and curatorial breadth. Songs like “Sun Demon” are exemplary of the album’s relaxed attitudes; essentially two song scraps welded together, the first half is a Rube Goldberg machine, a meticulous, labyrinthine layering of guitar, synth, and xylophone that skitters back and forth in a frenzied 7/4, while the second half is a fluid, Krautrockian march, syncopated organ and drums bopping in lockstep. “Supah Jaianto” places jaunty piano under Laetitia Sadier’s languorous voice, the bridge breakdowns making way for highstepping drums and a bright, jazzy horn section, while “So is Cardboard Clouds” is alternately melancholy and ascendant, switching from little twitters of sound to boisterous fanfare as the song builds. And Not Music revisits some Chords tracks, culminating with the ten-minute Emperor Machine remix of “Silver Sands”; at three times the length of the original, the song becomes a robotic dance party, oscillators warbling and Casios ringing to exhilarating effect. Hopefully the Groop will return to the studio in the near future; in the meantime, this treasure-trunk trove should hold us over.
18
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
The Brutalist Bricks
Matador
New Jersey punk troubadour Ted Leo turned forty this year, but you wouldn’t know it from the frenetic playing and tales of wanderlust that mark his sixth LP, a tighter, more economic collection of quixotic indie-rock anthems than 2007’s somewhat bloated Living With the Living. “Bottled in Cork” may be the quintessential Leo song; at once worldly and insular, the infectiously catchy midtempo pop song tells of his band’s travels as far-flung Americans playing down their reputation on tour in Europe, ending up at an Irish bar where the refrain “tell the bartender/I think I’m falling in love” cycles endlessly in a gorgeous, lockgroove round. At the other end of the spectrum is the incendiary “Gimme the Wire”, a nervous cavalcade of Framptonesque licks and percolating anxiety, Leo’s masterful, elastic tenor rising above the scissoring twin melodies of bristling guitar. There are hooks all over this record, from the reedy crooning and jukebox balladeering of “Even Heroes to Die” to the piano-pounding, apocalypse-goading worry rock of “Woke Up Near Chelsea” to the big, elliptical basslines and shuddering, resonant strums of “Bartolomeo and the Buzzing of Bees”; Bricks positively crackles with electricity, and further establishes Leo as one of the great storytellers of the day.
17
LCD Soundsystem
This is Happening
DFA
I’ll admit that up until now, I’d thought of James Murphy and his band of turntablist brigands as a singles act-entertaining as periodic bursts of output from a clever middle-aged hipster, but not really sustainable for a full-length. Happening proved me wrong; maybe it’s simply the consistency of the songs, or just the warmth that emanates from the album, a collection of hands-in-the-air dancefloor anthems that together feel like a mass invitation. The excellent “I Can Change” is a far cry from the sardonic name-dropping of earlier hit “Losing My Edge”; Murphy is now here with open arms, the vintage keys, drum machine shuffles and pulsating sinewave bloops underscoring his falsetto, the entreaty that “I can change, I can change, I can change/if it helps you fall in love” cut with declaration and fragility. Throughout the record, big sounds emerge out of nowhere like snakes released from a can, such as at the three-minute mark of opener “Dance Yrself Clean” when the huge Atari tones appear from thin air, or the big bass octaves that materialize to play counterpoint to the cluttered African drums in “Pow Pow”. But Murphy is still capable of playing the wry impresario on the absurd poetry of “Drunk Girls”, where he lays down navel-gazing quatrains (“drunk girls are like a night of simplicity/they need a lover who’s smarter than me/drunk boys, we walk like pedestrians/drunk girls wait an hour to pee”) over wailing guitars and driving percussion. It’s a total earworm, but then so is much of Happening, an hour-plus magnum opus for the big party.
16
Engineers
In Praise of More
KScope
Label troubles led to a four-year gap between ethereal rockers Engineers’ first two LPs; thankfully, a major lineup change (that fortuitously led to the addition of famed electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss) didn’t forestall their third album In Praise of More, which arrives just over a year after 2009’s excellent Three Fact Fader. “Twenty Paces” is the standout here, a six-minute encapsulation of the band’s hazy, cloudlike compositions; Simon Phipps’ breathy tenor floats above dark, doleful piano and interlocking guitar and bass, the song building to a blissed-out rapture of bouncing echo and clattery, architectural drum patterns. But the reformed group does leave its wheelhouse to experiment with new ideas, such as on the insistent title track, a bubbly cascade of futuristic synth chirping and dissonant fretwork; it’s as propulsive and immediate as anything they’ve ever done. Elsewhere, “To an Evergreen” is alternately disquieting and melodic, with shimmering, processed strings wandering through the piece like roaming ghosts, while “What It’s Worth” is reminiscent of the wispy shoegazer’s pop that marked their earlier records, the soft delay adding trails to the music like water smearing a painting. In a world where the hit machines produce ever more grating radio singles, Engineers’ music remains a gorgeous soundscape; many of the lush tracks on Praise are like entrances into an otherworldly dream.
15
Superchunk
Majesty Shredding
Merge
Chapel Hill’s Superchunk are as close to living indie-rock legends as you can get; their band has been making hyperactive rock and roll for twenty years, singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance run the hugely successful Merge Records, and drummer Jon Wurster has become a sought-after session musician, playing with everyone from REM to Katy Perry. And while it’s been nine years since their last studio LP, Majesty sounds as if not a day has passed, McCaughan’s ebullient, pinched voice as energetic as ever, his and guitarist Jim Wilbur’s intersecting leads making beatific, noodly bliss. “My Gap Feels Weird” is a blistering, off-kilter pogo, careening around its angles like a car on two wheels, the whole band bouncing to and fro like Muppets on amphetamines; “Digging For Something” is all infectious hooks and walls of sound, McCaughan’s penchant for smiling, arcane rhymes (“and we laughed when the peddleboat sank/we were dancing on the propane tank”) spilling out over the boisterious din. “Fractures in Plaster” recalls Mac’s recent Portastatic records, a midtempo epic with stately violin and big, stadium-ready choruses, while “Learned to Surf” is a quintessential song for the North Carolina college-rock scene, vacillating between trebly, angular fretwork and huge, punchy drums, McCaughan’s vocals trilling in symphony with the rollercoaster guitar lines. A nonstop fireworks show, Majesty Shredding is the most aptly titled record of the year.
14
+/-
Pulled Punches
Teenbeat
Over ten years, New York’s +/- have accumulated a lot of extra songs; the Japanese, Taiwanese, and European releases of their albums can be vastly different from their American counterparts, with rearranged tracklists and bonus B-sides. Completists should welcome Punches, a 19-song compilation spanning the trio’s decade of electronica-inspired indie-rock and serpentine prog-pop. “Walk in a Straight Line”, from the foreign editions of 2003’s You Are Here, is a dreamy contemplation, the delicate 5/4 music-box keys and light, scattershot drums making an ephemeral bed for the swirling, vaguely sinister harmonies; showing the collection’s breadth, this song sits next to the calamitous “Back and Forth”, a clattery collage of tweaky, machinistic samples, crashing guitars, and processed, overdriven singing. The band can also capably tackle straightforward melodies, such as on the shimmering power-pop and warm riffage of “Underfoot”, an outtake from 2008’s Xs on Your Eyes; new song “Knead” recalls the moody days of 90s alt-rock with melancholy chords and doleful vocals, but updates that sound with sprinklings of piano and funereal horns in the chorus; and “Reeling in the Years” (not a Steely Dan cover, but a bonus track from the Japanese Xs) is a gorgeous patchwork, the gently shifting time signatures like a rolling sea for the song’s gossamer folk shuffling and arcing male/female harmonies. Never short on ideas or rich, multinstrumental production, Punches is a remarkably cohesive compilation and great fan service to collectors.
13
The Futureheads
The Chaos
Nul
After 2008’s somewhat lackluster This is Not the World, Sunderland, England’s Futureheads are back on their game with The Chaos, a frenetic album full of supercharged post-punk and manic, complex harmonies; it's their best record to date. “Stop the Noise” features Ross Millard’s thickly-accented baritone, leading the shoutalong as the song stumbles forward in fits and starts, the razoring guitars and steady, cyclical drumming reminiscent of Wire or XTC at their jagged best; “This is the Life” is even more labyrinthine, the track following its own fractured orbit as the barbershop-on-speed shouts and sputtering rhythms combine to make for a heady, spiky rocker. The opening title track is all nervous energy and apocalyptic countdowns, Barry Hyde bellowing over the tense, chromatic blasts of guitar, his co-conspirators adding in splenetic “whoa-ohs” over the fat, swinging choruses, while “Dart At the Map” is driving and melodic, Ross again taking the mic for a spiel about waving flags and recurring dreams, the track bubbling and pulsating with an anxious energy. But it’s really the closer “Jupiter” that shows the full range of the quartet’s talents; a caffeinated hymn, the song plows forward as the musician’s voices lock up and split off, interwoven harmonies doing battle with the buzzsaw picking and pugilistic drums-and listen for the bright, a cappella round hidden at the track’s end. Elaborate and meticulous, blazing and volatile, The Chaos is a new highmark for the band, a sprawling, ambitious achievement.
12
Junip
Fields
Mute
Sweden’s Junip followed up on the promise of their earlier EPs with their first full-length Fields, a collection of minimalist, head-nodding jams that build in layers, resulting in some of the year’s most engaging, satisfying grooves. Standout “Without You” is a meditative slow-burner, Jose Gonzalez’s chordal fingerpicking and airy tenor floating over a foundation of heavy bass, climbing synth melodies, and rolling drums; the sound is warm and enveloping, the pulse like a heartbeat, an exercise in tension and release. The band’s simple, skeletal approach leads to moving, two-chord ruminations like “It’s Alright”, the nylon-stringed guitar as much a percussive instrument as a melodic one, the fingersnap rhythms and burgeoning, low hum of the piece building to a campfire march; “Always” follows a similar, back-and-forth sway, the stutterstep keys and Gonzales’s loping vocal arcs meeting and diverging like Escherian staircases. A regal melancholy suffuses the delicate patterns of “Don’t Let It Pass”, a dreamy, bittersweet piece of clockwork folk and stark harmonies, while the seven-minute closer “Tide” stacks its elements up to the sky, adding more intensity to the mix as the organs buzz, the guitars rattle, the bass throbs, and the whole thing percolates with energy until the inevitable tumbledown at album’s end. I’ve been a big fan of Gonzales’ haunting, austere solo work for years; in a way, Fields continues that tradition, a rich and productive collaboration where less is always more.
11
The New Pornographers
Together
Matador
Vancouver-based collective The New Pornographers have been making luscious, melodic confections for a decade, blending sunny harmonies and bright guitars for a contemporary take on Pet Sounds-style chamber pop; on Together they aim high with outsized hooks and some of their best lead vocals to date. “Crash Years” gives the singularly voiced Neko Case room to shine, belting out in her vivacious alto over bursts of cello, the bridges given over to melodic fits of whistling and the whole production shining like a jewel; if ever there was a song to make this band famous, this is it. “Up In the Dark” has one of my favorite choruses of the year, Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder joining voices to sing “what’s love/what’s love but what turns up in the dark?” over a raucous stomp, the organs soaring to the sky, the drums pounding a propellant pulse. “Your Hands (Together)” is theatrical and explosive, a cavalry of backup vocalists in concert for a tense, riveting rocker, the pressure building steadily, while the horns ring true on the torch rock of “My Shepherd”, the crescendos swelling, Case’s gorgeous voice a fiery siren, the cacophonous ending grand and beautiful. I can’t think of anyone that sounds like this band; they are explorers and architects, finding new dimensions to bring to their eminently catchy compositions, and Together is a welcome addition to their catalog.
Next: #10-01