2009 Music
I'm trying to keep this tradition alive... Lord knows I don't write much anymore. But every year it takes longer and longer to piece together.
1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion/Fall Be Kind
Easily the most experimental album to ride high in the Billboard album charts, the Collective dice up their aggressively anti-rhythmic eperimental oeuvre with sing alongs. I imagine that listening to Animal Collective is like hearing My Bloody Valentine in the eighties or Neu! in the seventies, its simply a new strain of music one that is immediately absorbed and practiced by other acts. You can compare the beats on Beck's "Modern Guilt" released in 2008 and on Charlotte Gainsbourg's Beck-helmed "IRM" or the transition between Yeasayer's first and most recent album; hip-music has a new toy.
All the songs are built around hard polyrhythms but don't conform to many "dance" music templates. There's an unwritten rule in dance and funk, when the groove gets tighter or more aggressive, the lyrics should match suite and become serious. At least, that's how James Brown and Fela did it, and who could argue with that pedigree? Animal Collective turns this on its head and covers their dense soundscapes with adolescent chants, goofy sing-a-longs and the like. As a result the tone of the record is kept fairly light.
The Fall Be Kind EP is a separate entity of its own. "What Do I Want Sky" matches Merriweather's jubilant tone, but the overall feeling of the album is more direct and more melancholy.
2. The Antlers - Hospice
Imagine Jeff Buckley fronting Neutral Milk Hotel, and let me stress that's not hyperbole.
I like to place this album in the context of the 2000's, a decade that began with emo gaining a foothold in indie circles and breaking into the mainstream with acts like Dashboard Confessional. Contrast that style, with its lyrics typically swinging between self-obsessed and self-absorbed complimented by generic 4/4 rock structures to Hospice. Here's an album cataloging the painful process of watching a loved one succumb to cancer. The narrator is obsessed but largely helpless in this case, but stays committed to his grim task ("when the helicopter came and tried to lift me up/I put its rope around my neck/after that you didn't bother with the airlift or the rescue/you knew just what to expect"). In many ways "Hospice" plays like the musical equivalent of The Virgin Suicides where the male protagonists struggle to save the vision of pure-femininity-in-flesh from mortality. In the end the listener is only left with catharsis.
I ended up making a couple "best-of" compilations for 2009, and I could never work in an Antlers song. The truth is the album is of a piece, completely interconnected. "Atrophy" predicts the "Wake" with a musical motif and a fragile vocal.
3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
You have to wonder if Pheonix sensed the strength of the material they were piecing together for this album. I wonder this because of the odd inclusion of "Love Like a Sunset Part 1", both the longest song here and also the only unabashed filler track (though pleasant). Did the boys listen to play back of early cuts of "1901" and "Lisztomania" and recognize them as breakthrough tracks?
As it stands, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is probably the most enjoyable pop record of the past decade, with every track scoring points, even Sunset pt 1.
4. Blk Jks - After Robots
After Robots sounds like the follow up to "De Loused in the Comatorium" that Mars Volta failed to deliver. Imagine if "Frances the Mute" were nine tracks that stripped away the useless ambient noises and instead doubling down on the hard prog rock. There's unmistakable intensity propelling every track. Opener "Moalalatladi" screams right out of the gate with horns, guitars and multipart vocals vying for breathing room in the arrangement. "Lakeside" shows there's room for shifting dynamics and meditative structures without sacrificing the underlying drive. "Taxideremy" blasts off immediately while shifting tempos
BLK JKS hail from South Africa, who's indigenous music was last heard in the American mainstream grafted onto Paul Simon's woe-be-Boomer "Graceland" (Dave Matthews notwithstanding of course). On After Robots they could be mistaken for carrying the Nigerian flag since this music matches its drive to some of the classic Fela albums (think Aphrodisiac) and the Talking Heads songs that used Fela as their template (i.e. the hard charging "The Great Curve" or "Crosseyed and Painless" from the classic Remain in Light). As an American my ability to hear new African music is entirely dependent on what a label like Soundways releases or whether any aging British singers are trying for a radical career reinvention. It could take a decade to find out what's happening right now across the continent. So I sincerely hope "After Robots" is indicative of more African bands experimenting seriously in the American-type rock idiom. This one album's not enough.
5. Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Through the Devil Softly
You know Hope Sandoval, the voice behind Mazzy Star (Fade into You), and you make know the "Warm Inventions" better as Colm O'Clossig of My Bloody Valentine fame. Like the title implies, Through the Devil Softly is an album of temptation and sin and disquiet, a spiritual successor to "New York Tendaberry". Though Sandoval is neither as naive as Nyro nor as adventurous musically. She isn't offering herself to any Captain Saint Lucifers, and manages to come out of the ordeal unscathed sounding somewhat amused.
Musically Sandoval and O'Clossig build dirges of smoldering psychedelia, acoustic guitars set frame most of the songs, but there are a few electronica shocks to maintain the tension.
6. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
In structure its very similar to Wall of Voodoo's "Call of the West", with a gleaming bright single that is once "of the album" but not representative of the album. I can't quite shake that this is an album made by Grizzly Bear for Grizzly Bear. Outside of "Two Weeks" the rest of the album is incredibly insular, hushed arpeggios and muted drum thumps. Following Two Weeks are a series of songs that all begin tentatively but generally find an easy groove or soaring chorus after a couple minutes.
"Veckatimest" boasts an awful lot of good music if you're willing to listen on Grizzly Bear's terms.
7. Melody Gardot - My One and Only Thrill
I've yet to pay Norah Jones any mind, but maybe age is coming up on me because I immediately fell for Melody Gardot after catching her appearance on Jools Holand. She's a talented jazz vocalist. The songs, generally credited to Melody are all exceptionally strong. My only gripe is that she's a bit too eager to show off her scatting at any given opportunity. Take album highlight "Who Will Comfort Me" which is in essence a tightly coiled song built on a driving bass line that Melody playfully teases to wonderful effect. It would be better presented as a three and a half minute slab of focused jazz, leaving out the vocal embelishments that stretch the stretch the track past the five minute mark. But this is a minor concern.
Fair warning though, Gardot is the kind of artist with a back story, one that typically would be listed in her biography before her musical merits. I'm happy to say that I've managed to avoid finding out exactly what it is, as I've been happy taking the music on its own merits. I'd recommend you do the same.
8. ZaZa - Cameo
Straddling the thin line between "good" and "very good": Zaza is more in line with bringing "Galaxie 500" to its logical extreme rather than assembling a British shoegaze pastiche--the kind of music many of their contemporaries would build with the same tools. The vocals fall into two categories: "hushed" and "hushed falsetto" both variants drifting in reverb. This is also a platter that shares an aesthetic with the ragged electronica of Bibio or Flying Lotus. The beats generally sound programmed, and the guitars occasionally sound like guitars, but mostly everything echoes off everything else while marching toward slow burn climaxes.
Cameo is a decent length EP that works as a complete piece by virtue of confident sequencing. In this context, following a yearning "Arms Length", centerpiece "Repetition" is a candidate for song of the year.
9. St. Vincent - Actor
How do you rate an album where the bulk of the songs connect, but those that don't fall short by a fair stretch? I haven't been a big fan of John Congleton's production. He's sort of the low-rent Danger Mouse, who blunts the edges of the music and makes everything sound over-compressed, but still he and Clark fuel each other's imaginations throughout Actor.
Annie Clark's shtick isn't too far removed from Nellie McKay. Both cite similar influences and bear the same mischievous streak. But McKay introduced herself as the poison pill in Norah Jones shadow (debut album title "Get Away From Me") while Clark picked up the mantle PJ Harvey dropped years ago, more trouble than she's worth while still challenging indie audiences to take her on (debut album title "Marry Me" which read as much as a challenge as a threat). On Actor she builds up the legend, reveling in her volatile temperament while apparently getting the worse of if herself, as recounted on "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood": "all my friends aren't so friendly..."
The music never falters, but Clark occasionally stumbles into caricature by trying play up her dark indie persona. "The Bed" is a painful trope. Marrow's only failing are the lyrics, shallow and self absorbed, not unlike Shirley Manson on a good day, but the music veers from mainstream pop to Nine Inch Nails freakouts and back and is too significant to write off.
10. Double Dagger - More!
A stalwart of the Baltimore music scene, Double Dagger released "More" on Chicago's Thrill Jockey records, but the sound owes much to the key Washington D.C. Dischord bands of a bygone era. "No Allies" is a punk rock classic. "More" can be read as a manifesto for the punk intellectual, the legitimately threadbare hipster. This is a for those ill at ease with gentrification, but view surviving in a climate of crime and violence as a badge of honor (vocalist Strails recounts finding a bloody mess of a dead corpse on the way to a show and comments "I never felt more alive/than I did that night").
If this wasn't in the punk-rock context, many of the lyrics would come off as sloganeering ("But there's a Lie and there's a Truth/There's something in between: that's me and you"), but this isn't protest music, its more concerned with making sense of society. That besides, when set to blistering, guitar-less, music the effect is drawing battle lines in the sand.
A wonderful charged record.
And More!
Wye Oak - The Knot
The Knot finds Wye Oak strengthening their songcraft and moving their interplay into more muscular territory. The little legend goes that the group's debut "If Children" was recorded before the band became a touring unit. The songs featured precious multi-tracked vocals and hinted at Phil Elvrum's safest Microphones work. By the release of "The Knot", Wye Oak found their identity as an exceptional live band and started writing songs with performance in mind. The resulting album feels a little more country than folk, quite a bit more of the loud-soft dynamics, but the noise builds into white hot squalls not mainstream neo-grunge singalongs. Stack & co also found the best way to record Wasner's vocal tracks: lonesome in light reverb, the Chan Marshall treatment. She sings like a spirit, dead from a lover's wound. A good reference point would be Deer Tick's more rough songs (a group they often tour with) except with knowing, somber vocals.
The tepid reception from the press struck me as odd. Its as though the national writers pegged Wye Oak as a sister band to (fellow Maryland/Baltimore act) Beach House, and couldn't appreciate a solid "indie-rock" platter from the group.
Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
Hey, coffee shops and Apple stores need music too, right? Nothing wrong with that. Ambivalence Avenue is a smorgasbord of genteel soundscapes, muted harmonies and the occasional musique-concrete.
This one is very hard to leave off the the top ten, considering how much I listened to it.
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Shortly after Ten, Pearl Jam became Eddie Vedder's backing band. Stone Gossard admitted that the consensus in the group was that Eddie was the idol, the star, and the reason for the band's success. At any moment he could bolt for a solo career, leaving Pearl Jam in the lurch, so the rest of the group became subservient to Vedder's whims. It's really a shame since the confident music from Ten largely came from the glam-punk Mother Love Bone sessions. In terms of musicianship, I trust the Gossard-Ament-McCready axis more than Vedder. Did you know that Vedder penned Alive, Once and Footsteps as a story of a man who became a serial killer after learning his real father abandoned him and died? Seriously.
In reviews the band has admitted to scrapping or hobbling any songs that sounded "too catchy" or might make good singles. This was a breaking point with me as a fan. Why even put out a product if you deliberately sabotage it? There were no major contractual conflicts a la Van Morrison or Prince. It's one thing for an artist like Prince to have a vault containing hundreds of compositions--at the time he was still releasing great songs, but its quite another for a major band to release ten years worth of what they consider to be second-rate material. How can a fan even justify paying for No Code or Binaural knowing that the good songs and riffs weren't even considered?
On their previous album, the eponymous "Pearl Jam", we got a few glimmers of a powerful band slowly waking up. If not for some unfortunate delusions of carrying Springsteen's torch, it might have been a legitimate come-back. Backspacer though jumps out of the gate with five unabashed rockers. They include "The Fixer" the best single the band's produced in a decade and the best on an album since Vitalogy back in '94. These songs, like the album itself are fairly succinct and show the influences of various bands that Pearl Jam only mentioned in interviews previously, there are touches of the Clash and the Dead Boys, as well as a few hair metal guitar-squeals snuck in under the radar. It's tempting to call this a return to form, but this is actually new territory for the group. Even the most compact rockers from their earlier catalog, say "Spin the Black Circle" or "Go", weren't rooted in Punk. Taken in the context of the album, the unabashed rockers really seem to be an excuse to allow Vedder to go deeper into MOR crooning than any previous Pearl Jam record.
On the balance Backspacer is the best Pearl Jam album this side of Vitalogy. But twenty years later, as a fan, I've given up on waiting for Ten part 2. I just wish Pearl Jam would reconcile with their legacy and their strongest work.
Seriously, leave that shit to Jonathan Richman.
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below
40 Day Dream (Beatles "Magical Musical Mystery Tour")
Janglin (Kinks "Well Respected Man")
Come in Please (Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil")
And more, I'm sure. "Up From Below" has the arc of a classic album, the way it builds to "Home" and then peaks on "Dessert Song", but the songs are fairly derivative.
A lot of hay was made on how the band is fronted by the singer from Ima Robot, which is strange since I've yet to meet anyone who's heard Ima Robot to begin with.
Japandroids - Post Nothing
Even while worrying about dying, these guys manage to have a blast. Nerd dude rock par excellence.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
I never imagined YYY's covering Smashing Pumpkin's "Zero", but when I glanced over the track-listing for It's Blitz I immediately hoped that the first track would see Karen O attacking the nineties rocker. Think of Nick Zimmer slashing through the key riff, or Brian Chase pounding away at a Jimmy Chamberlain beat. "Zero" is a song this band could destroy with a whim. Unfortunately, the actual "Zero" is an original track, a thin Karen O anthem a little too safe and a little too guarded. Coming off the "Is Is" EP, a release that showed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs could manage their better angels and better demons: it was possible to play to every facet of the bands character--post punk, post ballads, post hipster--and succeed mightily, It's Blitz feels like a calculated retreat.
Clearly Karen O, having done time as a bandmate, is being groomed for a solo career. Chase and Zimmer are still here, but the guitar and drums are so thin even the live instrumentation is somewhat indistinguishable from programmed effects and beats.
Had "It's Blitz" immediately followed the awkward "Show Your Bones", it would be a triumph, but pales in the shadow of the adventurous "Is Is" EP.
The Xx - Xx
This year's Vampire Weekend, though their album is so low key I doubt they'll achieve the same radio penetration. Hearkens back to Al Green's vocals, where ever line was a whisper and every song a conversation. The music is so spare it's very difficult to assign a definitive genre. So the guitar lines recalls Wire's "Blessed State", but this is not post-punk. The vocals hint at neo soul, but most songs avoid the essential drum and bass rhythms.
Cass McCombs - Catacombs
McCombs' Domino debut felt like a faceless, tentative exercise, something close to a career nadir. On Catacombs the nomadic singer rights the ship. Still this feels like a transitional record. McCombs has been slowly abandoning the dense lyrics of his earlier records like the "Not the Way" EP and "A", and focused on expanding the complexity of the music. Where his earliest songs might have been built around a single groove, PREfection tried to move toward a more conventional verse-chorus-verse structure but with an empty space in the arrangement where a guitar solo would fit (case in point: City of Brotherly Love). On Catacombs a few tracks wind up taking more risks with the song construction, starting off with "Dreams Come True Girl" which switches in tone and key and features a a prominent guest vocal.
By some stretch, the best song here is "You Saved My Life" which marries a Gorgio Moroder synth bass line to a pedal guitar, and a narrator who doesn't seem grateful to his unnamed savior ("And I can't blame you enough/When I'm dead to your mercy and your love") and doesn't seem to think he merits the kindness ("Rotten to the Core/Since Nineteen Ninety Four"). Complimenting the song is a wonderful low budget music video finding McCombs, awkward and anonymous, navigating a Chicago street party with a gentle interlude in the middle.
Elsewhere, "My Sister My Spouse" drips with signature McCombs foreboding. "Lionkiller Got Married" follows up on the autobiographical track from the previous album with nods to "Peggy Sue Got Married" along the way.
Califone - All My Friends are Funeral Singers
Set against much of their discography, especially the prior release "Roots and Crowns", "Funeral Singers" almost sounds like standard alterna-roots. All the songs are fairly traditional, with verses and choruses. With the exception of a snarling "Giving Away the Bride", most of the "songs" on the album are played with traditional Rock and Folk music instrumentation. "Polish Girls" isn't quite a sequel to "Michigan Girls" (either in theme or overall quality) but it does place the album in the context of Califone's earlier "Quicksand/Cradlesnakes". Tim Ruttli could always sneak a tuneful lyric into relatively avant soundscapes, but he comes very close to delivering honest-to-goodness anthems. On Krill and Funeral Singers, he channels his inner Bruce Springsteen. "Funeral Singers" is a great slice of melancholia, "Bunuel" features an unexceptional lyric but a hard driving bridge.
One unfortunate trade-off: Rutli's guitar work is somewhat muted, shying away from the folk finger picking and instead focusing on a dirty strum.
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
I can't claim to be a fan of lead single "French Navy", but that aside My Maudlin Career might be the best release yet from Camera Obscura. The group leaves much of the Motown posturing behind and instead perfects their own languid country-tonk rhythm. 'Away With Murder' and 'James' both follow this template, lurches punctuated with periodic indie rock twangs and twitches.
Album closer "Honey in the Sun" wraps patent Tracyanne Campbell's yearning in a remarkably warm send off when she sings: "I wish my heart was as cold as the morning dew/but its as warm as saxophones/And honey in the sun for you..."
Raekwon - Only Built for Cuban Linx II
Considering the future of mainstream hip hop rests somewhere between Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi and Kanye West, an album about old school drug dealers and turf wars is somewhat quaint.
Highlights include Jihad where Ghostface Killer must defuse a standoff with his "son"; "Kiss the Ring" is built around a fantastic Elton John sample;
Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Pains of Being Pure at Heart
In between their painful debut "This is Your Bloody Valentine" and career breakthrough "Isn't Anything", My Bloody Valentine experimented with how to integrate singer Belinda Butcher. On the Ecstasy and Strawberry Wine EPs, Kevin Shields tried a kinetic sound full of crashing, chiming guitars and sweet duets. The release found common ground between early goth, American jangle-pop (a la Feelies and R.E.M.), and the early wave of C-86 bands. The Ecstasy-Wine era remains a unique transitional period for My Bloody Valentine, seldom reissued, and seldom sought out by collectors as it don't fit alongside the "shoegaze" nature of subsequent releases nor the Sonic Youth noise-workouts of earlier releases, nonetheless the music is rewarding and worth more than a listen.
In 2009 the Pains of Being Pure at Heart released an album that seemed to use "Ecstasy and Wine" as its sole musical influence while married to Belle and Sebastian tales of sexual delinquency. It wasn't half bad.
Assorted Mediocrity
Dam Funk - Toeachisown
Pronounced "Dame Funk". This kind of music would be fine in a club or party setting, where a single individual provides live music from dusk til dawn. On record flaws become evident. Funk certainly knows his namesake, but most of the jams sound like simple melody lines laid over the beats that came stock with a Casio keyboard.
Them Crooked Vultures
What a disappointment. While Josh Homme is a competent musician, able to write genuine rock and roll riffage, he's generally unable to bless his songs with distinct personalities. In the vintage QOTSA albums, Homme surrounded himself with supporting musicians who exude "character", whether Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan, Dean Ween, Dave Grohl, et al.
Them Crooked Vultures benefits from genius stunt-casting: drawing John Paul Jones back into rock performance. Its his blessing alone that elevates this platter of tracks from QotSA b-sides, in spirit but not in execution. Rather than rising to the occasion, listening to the songs here you get the impression that this is the kind of stuff Homme rattles off casually. By this point, its hard to separate Zeppelin from the past couple decades of mainstream riff rock--when assigning influences to riffs it's either Sabbath if slow or Zeppelin otherwise--so that the guitar work here recalls Jimmy Page (somewhat) is no surprise. Well, the guitar work recalls a couple facets of Page. The brilliance of the best Zeppelin albums lies in how many different and opposing textures could be tied into the same song, and how many of these could be sequenced on the same album. "Them Crooked Vultures" offers a few breaths of fresh air (Jones playing his trademark funk-organ goes a long way toward smoothing over the album's flaws), but little is done
All of the vocals sound like backing tracks, barely there, hardly registering. Homme sings in a icy goth self-seriousness that sinks any potential Lemon Songs (his delivery of "slick back my hair/you know the devil's in there" will draw a few groans). Between the riffs, thundering rhythms, and blank harmonized vocals, Them Crooked Vultures sounds at times like a Metallica pastiche. I almost wish Grohl contributed a few songs, just for variety's sake.
In the end this is "Josh Homme's Tribute to Led Zeppelin (staring Josh Homme)", five songs too long, a few ideas too short.
Q-Tip - Kamaal the Abstract
Q-Tip's legendary soul jazz album turns out to be an unfortunately aimless affair. The music here bears some resemblance to Miles Davis's later, unfocused, electric albums. While Tip does "sing" he isn't playing the balladeer. Mostly there are a few shout-out choruses, shared with some friendly voices before letting the band stretch out. The raps here tend to be focused but pedestrian (opening with an account of police profiling). The platter is at its best when it skews toward punk-funk a la Rick James (see "Barely in Love" which is no "Mary Jane"). To the album's credit, it manages to find a comfortable middle ground between the hip hop and R&B cliches of the 00's.
In the end "Kamaal" proves Tip a competant if unspectacular soul man. It would be best if this was the beginning of a serious and extended exploration of the soul side of Q-Tip, as it stands this will probably wind up a brief detour.
1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion/Fall Be Kind
Easily the most experimental album to ride high in the Billboard album charts, the Collective dice up their aggressively anti-rhythmic eperimental oeuvre with sing alongs. I imagine that listening to Animal Collective is like hearing My Bloody Valentine in the eighties or Neu! in the seventies, its simply a new strain of music one that is immediately absorbed and practiced by other acts. You can compare the beats on Beck's "Modern Guilt" released in 2008 and on Charlotte Gainsbourg's Beck-helmed "IRM" or the transition between Yeasayer's first and most recent album; hip-music has a new toy.
All the songs are built around hard polyrhythms but don't conform to many "dance" music templates. There's an unwritten rule in dance and funk, when the groove gets tighter or more aggressive, the lyrics should match suite and become serious. At least, that's how James Brown and Fela did it, and who could argue with that pedigree? Animal Collective turns this on its head and covers their dense soundscapes with adolescent chants, goofy sing-a-longs and the like. As a result the tone of the record is kept fairly light.
The Fall Be Kind EP is a separate entity of its own. "What Do I Want Sky" matches Merriweather's jubilant tone, but the overall feeling of the album is more direct and more melancholy.
2. The Antlers - Hospice
Imagine Jeff Buckley fronting Neutral Milk Hotel, and let me stress that's not hyperbole.
I like to place this album in the context of the 2000's, a decade that began with emo gaining a foothold in indie circles and breaking into the mainstream with acts like Dashboard Confessional. Contrast that style, with its lyrics typically swinging between self-obsessed and self-absorbed complimented by generic 4/4 rock structures to Hospice. Here's an album cataloging the painful process of watching a loved one succumb to cancer. The narrator is obsessed but largely helpless in this case, but stays committed to his grim task ("when the helicopter came and tried to lift me up/I put its rope around my neck/after that you didn't bother with the airlift or the rescue/you knew just what to expect"). In many ways "Hospice" plays like the musical equivalent of The Virgin Suicides where the male protagonists struggle to save the vision of pure-femininity-in-flesh from mortality. In the end the listener is only left with catharsis.
I ended up making a couple "best-of" compilations for 2009, and I could never work in an Antlers song. The truth is the album is of a piece, completely interconnected. "Atrophy" predicts the "Wake" with a musical motif and a fragile vocal.
3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
You have to wonder if Pheonix sensed the strength of the material they were piecing together for this album. I wonder this because of the odd inclusion of "Love Like a Sunset Part 1", both the longest song here and also the only unabashed filler track (though pleasant). Did the boys listen to play back of early cuts of "1901" and "Lisztomania" and recognize them as breakthrough tracks?
As it stands, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is probably the most enjoyable pop record of the past decade, with every track scoring points, even Sunset pt 1.
4. Blk Jks - After Robots
After Robots sounds like the follow up to "De Loused in the Comatorium" that Mars Volta failed to deliver. Imagine if "Frances the Mute" were nine tracks that stripped away the useless ambient noises and instead doubling down on the hard prog rock. There's unmistakable intensity propelling every track. Opener "Moalalatladi" screams right out of the gate with horns, guitars and multipart vocals vying for breathing room in the arrangement. "Lakeside" shows there's room for shifting dynamics and meditative structures without sacrificing the underlying drive. "Taxideremy" blasts off immediately while shifting tempos
BLK JKS hail from South Africa, who's indigenous music was last heard in the American mainstream grafted onto Paul Simon's woe-be-Boomer "Graceland" (Dave Matthews notwithstanding of course). On After Robots they could be mistaken for carrying the Nigerian flag since this music matches its drive to some of the classic Fela albums (think Aphrodisiac) and the Talking Heads songs that used Fela as their template (i.e. the hard charging "The Great Curve" or "Crosseyed and Painless" from the classic Remain in Light). As an American my ability to hear new African music is entirely dependent on what a label like Soundways releases or whether any aging British singers are trying for a radical career reinvention. It could take a decade to find out what's happening right now across the continent. So I sincerely hope "After Robots" is indicative of more African bands experimenting seriously in the American-type rock idiom. This one album's not enough.
5. Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Through the Devil Softly
You know Hope Sandoval, the voice behind Mazzy Star (Fade into You), and you make know the "Warm Inventions" better as Colm O'Clossig of My Bloody Valentine fame. Like the title implies, Through the Devil Softly is an album of temptation and sin and disquiet, a spiritual successor to "New York Tendaberry". Though Sandoval is neither as naive as Nyro nor as adventurous musically. She isn't offering herself to any Captain Saint Lucifers, and manages to come out of the ordeal unscathed sounding somewhat amused.
Musically Sandoval and O'Clossig build dirges of smoldering psychedelia, acoustic guitars set frame most of the songs, but there are a few electronica shocks to maintain the tension.
6. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
In structure its very similar to Wall of Voodoo's "Call of the West", with a gleaming bright single that is once "of the album" but not representative of the album. I can't quite shake that this is an album made by Grizzly Bear for Grizzly Bear. Outside of "Two Weeks" the rest of the album is incredibly insular, hushed arpeggios and muted drum thumps. Following Two Weeks are a series of songs that all begin tentatively but generally find an easy groove or soaring chorus after a couple minutes.
"Veckatimest" boasts an awful lot of good music if you're willing to listen on Grizzly Bear's terms.
7. Melody Gardot - My One and Only Thrill
I've yet to pay Norah Jones any mind, but maybe age is coming up on me because I immediately fell for Melody Gardot after catching her appearance on Jools Holand. She's a talented jazz vocalist. The songs, generally credited to Melody are all exceptionally strong. My only gripe is that she's a bit too eager to show off her scatting at any given opportunity. Take album highlight "Who Will Comfort Me" which is in essence a tightly coiled song built on a driving bass line that Melody playfully teases to wonderful effect. It would be better presented as a three and a half minute slab of focused jazz, leaving out the vocal embelishments that stretch the stretch the track past the five minute mark. But this is a minor concern.
Fair warning though, Gardot is the kind of artist with a back story, one that typically would be listed in her biography before her musical merits. I'm happy to say that I've managed to avoid finding out exactly what it is, as I've been happy taking the music on its own merits. I'd recommend you do the same.
8. ZaZa - Cameo
Straddling the thin line between "good" and "very good": Zaza is more in line with bringing "Galaxie 500" to its logical extreme rather than assembling a British shoegaze pastiche--the kind of music many of their contemporaries would build with the same tools. The vocals fall into two categories: "hushed" and "hushed falsetto" both variants drifting in reverb. This is also a platter that shares an aesthetic with the ragged electronica of Bibio or Flying Lotus. The beats generally sound programmed, and the guitars occasionally sound like guitars, but mostly everything echoes off everything else while marching toward slow burn climaxes.
Cameo is a decent length EP that works as a complete piece by virtue of confident sequencing. In this context, following a yearning "Arms Length", centerpiece "Repetition" is a candidate for song of the year.
9. St. Vincent - Actor
How do you rate an album where the bulk of the songs connect, but those that don't fall short by a fair stretch? I haven't been a big fan of John Congleton's production. He's sort of the low-rent Danger Mouse, who blunts the edges of the music and makes everything sound over-compressed, but still he and Clark fuel each other's imaginations throughout Actor.
Annie Clark's shtick isn't too far removed from Nellie McKay. Both cite similar influences and bear the same mischievous streak. But McKay introduced herself as the poison pill in Norah Jones shadow (debut album title "Get Away From Me") while Clark picked up the mantle PJ Harvey dropped years ago, more trouble than she's worth while still challenging indie audiences to take her on (debut album title "Marry Me" which read as much as a challenge as a threat). On Actor she builds up the legend, reveling in her volatile temperament while apparently getting the worse of if herself, as recounted on "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood": "all my friends aren't so friendly..."
The music never falters, but Clark occasionally stumbles into caricature by trying play up her dark indie persona. "The Bed" is a painful trope. Marrow's only failing are the lyrics, shallow and self absorbed, not unlike Shirley Manson on a good day, but the music veers from mainstream pop to Nine Inch Nails freakouts and back and is too significant to write off.
10. Double Dagger - More!
A stalwart of the Baltimore music scene, Double Dagger released "More" on Chicago's Thrill Jockey records, but the sound owes much to the key Washington D.C. Dischord bands of a bygone era. "No Allies" is a punk rock classic. "More" can be read as a manifesto for the punk intellectual, the legitimately threadbare hipster. This is a for those ill at ease with gentrification, but view surviving in a climate of crime and violence as a badge of honor (vocalist Strails recounts finding a bloody mess of a dead corpse on the way to a show and comments "I never felt more alive/than I did that night").
If this wasn't in the punk-rock context, many of the lyrics would come off as sloganeering ("But there's a Lie and there's a Truth/There's something in between: that's me and you"), but this isn't protest music, its more concerned with making sense of society. That besides, when set to blistering, guitar-less, music the effect is drawing battle lines in the sand.
A wonderful charged record.
And More!
Wye Oak - The Knot
The Knot finds Wye Oak strengthening their songcraft and moving their interplay into more muscular territory. The little legend goes that the group's debut "If Children" was recorded before the band became a touring unit. The songs featured precious multi-tracked vocals and hinted at Phil Elvrum's safest Microphones work. By the release of "The Knot", Wye Oak found their identity as an exceptional live band and started writing songs with performance in mind. The resulting album feels a little more country than folk, quite a bit more of the loud-soft dynamics, but the noise builds into white hot squalls not mainstream neo-grunge singalongs. Stack & co also found the best way to record Wasner's vocal tracks: lonesome in light reverb, the Chan Marshall treatment. She sings like a spirit, dead from a lover's wound. A good reference point would be Deer Tick's more rough songs (a group they often tour with) except with knowing, somber vocals.
The tepid reception from the press struck me as odd. Its as though the national writers pegged Wye Oak as a sister band to (fellow Maryland/Baltimore act) Beach House, and couldn't appreciate a solid "indie-rock" platter from the group.
Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
Hey, coffee shops and Apple stores need music too, right? Nothing wrong with that. Ambivalence Avenue is a smorgasbord of genteel soundscapes, muted harmonies and the occasional musique-concrete.
This one is very hard to leave off the the top ten, considering how much I listened to it.
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Shortly after Ten, Pearl Jam became Eddie Vedder's backing band. Stone Gossard admitted that the consensus in the group was that Eddie was the idol, the star, and the reason for the band's success. At any moment he could bolt for a solo career, leaving Pearl Jam in the lurch, so the rest of the group became subservient to Vedder's whims. It's really a shame since the confident music from Ten largely came from the glam-punk Mother Love Bone sessions. In terms of musicianship, I trust the Gossard-Ament-McCready axis more than Vedder. Did you know that Vedder penned Alive, Once and Footsteps as a story of a man who became a serial killer after learning his real father abandoned him and died? Seriously.
In reviews the band has admitted to scrapping or hobbling any songs that sounded "too catchy" or might make good singles. This was a breaking point with me as a fan. Why even put out a product if you deliberately sabotage it? There were no major contractual conflicts a la Van Morrison or Prince. It's one thing for an artist like Prince to have a vault containing hundreds of compositions--at the time he was still releasing great songs, but its quite another for a major band to release ten years worth of what they consider to be second-rate material. How can a fan even justify paying for No Code or Binaural knowing that the good songs and riffs weren't even considered?
On their previous album, the eponymous "Pearl Jam", we got a few glimmers of a powerful band slowly waking up. If not for some unfortunate delusions of carrying Springsteen's torch, it might have been a legitimate come-back. Backspacer though jumps out of the gate with five unabashed rockers. They include "The Fixer" the best single the band's produced in a decade and the best on an album since Vitalogy back in '94. These songs, like the album itself are fairly succinct and show the influences of various bands that Pearl Jam only mentioned in interviews previously, there are touches of the Clash and the Dead Boys, as well as a few hair metal guitar-squeals snuck in under the radar. It's tempting to call this a return to form, but this is actually new territory for the group. Even the most compact rockers from their earlier catalog, say "Spin the Black Circle" or "Go", weren't rooted in Punk. Taken in the context of the album, the unabashed rockers really seem to be an excuse to allow Vedder to go deeper into MOR crooning than any previous Pearl Jam record.
On the balance Backspacer is the best Pearl Jam album this side of Vitalogy. But twenty years later, as a fan, I've given up on waiting for Ten part 2. I just wish Pearl Jam would reconcile with their legacy and their strongest work.
Seriously, leave that shit to Jonathan Richman.
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below
40 Day Dream (Beatles "Magical Musical Mystery Tour")
Janglin (Kinks "Well Respected Man")
Come in Please (Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil")
And more, I'm sure. "Up From Below" has the arc of a classic album, the way it builds to "Home" and then peaks on "Dessert Song", but the songs are fairly derivative.
A lot of hay was made on how the band is fronted by the singer from Ima Robot, which is strange since I've yet to meet anyone who's heard Ima Robot to begin with.
Japandroids - Post Nothing
Even while worrying about dying, these guys manage to have a blast. Nerd dude rock par excellence.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
I never imagined YYY's covering Smashing Pumpkin's "Zero", but when I glanced over the track-listing for It's Blitz I immediately hoped that the first track would see Karen O attacking the nineties rocker. Think of Nick Zimmer slashing through the key riff, or Brian Chase pounding away at a Jimmy Chamberlain beat. "Zero" is a song this band could destroy with a whim. Unfortunately, the actual "Zero" is an original track, a thin Karen O anthem a little too safe and a little too guarded. Coming off the "Is Is" EP, a release that showed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs could manage their better angels and better demons: it was possible to play to every facet of the bands character--post punk, post ballads, post hipster--and succeed mightily, It's Blitz feels like a calculated retreat.
Clearly Karen O, having done time as a bandmate, is being groomed for a solo career. Chase and Zimmer are still here, but the guitar and drums are so thin even the live instrumentation is somewhat indistinguishable from programmed effects and beats.
Had "It's Blitz" immediately followed the awkward "Show Your Bones", it would be a triumph, but pales in the shadow of the adventurous "Is Is" EP.
The Xx - Xx
This year's Vampire Weekend, though their album is so low key I doubt they'll achieve the same radio penetration. Hearkens back to Al Green's vocals, where ever line was a whisper and every song a conversation. The music is so spare it's very difficult to assign a definitive genre. So the guitar lines recalls Wire's "Blessed State", but this is not post-punk. The vocals hint at neo soul, but most songs avoid the essential drum and bass rhythms.
Cass McCombs - Catacombs
McCombs' Domino debut felt like a faceless, tentative exercise, something close to a career nadir. On Catacombs the nomadic singer rights the ship. Still this feels like a transitional record. McCombs has been slowly abandoning the dense lyrics of his earlier records like the "Not the Way" EP and "A", and focused on expanding the complexity of the music. Where his earliest songs might have been built around a single groove, PREfection tried to move toward a more conventional verse-chorus-verse structure but with an empty space in the arrangement where a guitar solo would fit (case in point: City of Brotherly Love). On Catacombs a few tracks wind up taking more risks with the song construction, starting off with "Dreams Come True Girl" which switches in tone and key and features a a prominent guest vocal.
By some stretch, the best song here is "You Saved My Life" which marries a Gorgio Moroder synth bass line to a pedal guitar, and a narrator who doesn't seem grateful to his unnamed savior ("And I can't blame you enough/When I'm dead to your mercy and your love") and doesn't seem to think he merits the kindness ("Rotten to the Core/Since Nineteen Ninety Four"). Complimenting the song is a wonderful low budget music video finding McCombs, awkward and anonymous, navigating a Chicago street party with a gentle interlude in the middle.
Elsewhere, "My Sister My Spouse" drips with signature McCombs foreboding. "Lionkiller Got Married" follows up on the autobiographical track from the previous album with nods to "Peggy Sue Got Married" along the way.
Califone - All My Friends are Funeral Singers
Set against much of their discography, especially the prior release "Roots and Crowns", "Funeral Singers" almost sounds like standard alterna-roots. All the songs are fairly traditional, with verses and choruses. With the exception of a snarling "Giving Away the Bride", most of the "songs" on the album are played with traditional Rock and Folk music instrumentation. "Polish Girls" isn't quite a sequel to "Michigan Girls" (either in theme or overall quality) but it does place the album in the context of Califone's earlier "Quicksand/Cradlesnakes". Tim Ruttli could always sneak a tuneful lyric into relatively avant soundscapes, but he comes very close to delivering honest-to-goodness anthems. On Krill and Funeral Singers, he channels his inner Bruce Springsteen. "Funeral Singers" is a great slice of melancholia, "Bunuel" features an unexceptional lyric but a hard driving bridge.
One unfortunate trade-off: Rutli's guitar work is somewhat muted, shying away from the folk finger picking and instead focusing on a dirty strum.
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
I can't claim to be a fan of lead single "French Navy", but that aside My Maudlin Career might be the best release yet from Camera Obscura. The group leaves much of the Motown posturing behind and instead perfects their own languid country-tonk rhythm. 'Away With Murder' and 'James' both follow this template, lurches punctuated with periodic indie rock twangs and twitches.
Album closer "Honey in the Sun" wraps patent Tracyanne Campbell's yearning in a remarkably warm send off when she sings: "I wish my heart was as cold as the morning dew/but its as warm as saxophones/And honey in the sun for you..."
Raekwon - Only Built for Cuban Linx II
Considering the future of mainstream hip hop rests somewhere between Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi and Kanye West, an album about old school drug dealers and turf wars is somewhat quaint.
Highlights include Jihad where Ghostface Killer must defuse a standoff with his "son"; "Kiss the Ring" is built around a fantastic Elton John sample;
Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Pains of Being Pure at Heart
In between their painful debut "This is Your Bloody Valentine" and career breakthrough "Isn't Anything", My Bloody Valentine experimented with how to integrate singer Belinda Butcher. On the Ecstasy and Strawberry Wine EPs, Kevin Shields tried a kinetic sound full of crashing, chiming guitars and sweet duets. The release found common ground between early goth, American jangle-pop (a la Feelies and R.E.M.), and the early wave of C-86 bands. The Ecstasy-Wine era remains a unique transitional period for My Bloody Valentine, seldom reissued, and seldom sought out by collectors as it don't fit alongside the "shoegaze" nature of subsequent releases nor the Sonic Youth noise-workouts of earlier releases, nonetheless the music is rewarding and worth more than a listen.
In 2009 the Pains of Being Pure at Heart released an album that seemed to use "Ecstasy and Wine" as its sole musical influence while married to Belle and Sebastian tales of sexual delinquency. It wasn't half bad.
Assorted Mediocrity
Dam Funk - Toeachisown
Pronounced "Dame Funk". This kind of music would be fine in a club or party setting, where a single individual provides live music from dusk til dawn. On record flaws become evident. Funk certainly knows his namesake, but most of the jams sound like simple melody lines laid over the beats that came stock with a Casio keyboard.
Them Crooked Vultures
What a disappointment. While Josh Homme is a competent musician, able to write genuine rock and roll riffage, he's generally unable to bless his songs with distinct personalities. In the vintage QOTSA albums, Homme surrounded himself with supporting musicians who exude "character", whether Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan, Dean Ween, Dave Grohl, et al.
Them Crooked Vultures benefits from genius stunt-casting: drawing John Paul Jones back into rock performance. Its his blessing alone that elevates this platter of tracks from QotSA b-sides, in spirit but not in execution. Rather than rising to the occasion, listening to the songs here you get the impression that this is the kind of stuff Homme rattles off casually. By this point, its hard to separate Zeppelin from the past couple decades of mainstream riff rock--when assigning influences to riffs it's either Sabbath if slow or Zeppelin otherwise--so that the guitar work here recalls Jimmy Page (somewhat) is no surprise. Well, the guitar work recalls a couple facets of Page. The brilliance of the best Zeppelin albums lies in how many different and opposing textures could be tied into the same song, and how many of these could be sequenced on the same album. "Them Crooked Vultures" offers a few breaths of fresh air (Jones playing his trademark funk-organ goes a long way toward smoothing over the album's flaws), but little is done
All of the vocals sound like backing tracks, barely there, hardly registering. Homme sings in a icy goth self-seriousness that sinks any potential Lemon Songs (his delivery of "slick back my hair/you know the devil's in there" will draw a few groans). Between the riffs, thundering rhythms, and blank harmonized vocals, Them Crooked Vultures sounds at times like a Metallica pastiche. I almost wish Grohl contributed a few songs, just for variety's sake.
In the end this is "Josh Homme's Tribute to Led Zeppelin (staring Josh Homme)", five songs too long, a few ideas too short.
Q-Tip - Kamaal the Abstract
Q-Tip's legendary soul jazz album turns out to be an unfortunately aimless affair. The music here bears some resemblance to Miles Davis's later, unfocused, electric albums. While Tip does "sing" he isn't playing the balladeer. Mostly there are a few shout-out choruses, shared with some friendly voices before letting the band stretch out. The raps here tend to be focused but pedestrian (opening with an account of police profiling). The platter is at its best when it skews toward punk-funk a la Rick James (see "Barely in Love" which is no "Mary Jane"). To the album's credit, it manages to find a comfortable middle ground between the hip hop and R&B cliches of the 00's.
In the end "Kamaal" proves Tip a competant if unspectacular soul man. It would be best if this was the beginning of a serious and extended exploration of the soul side of Q-Tip, as it stands this will probably wind up a brief detour.