2011. The sax is back! Chillwave disintegrates! Guitars get golden! Electronic music goes live! The headlines for a fine year in popular music were plentiful. Kanye and Jay-Z produce the first stadium rap album. Bon Iver creates another American folk-pop masterpiece. M83 fulfills the promises of its cinematic splendor. Radiohead defies expectations (again). Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs, and My Morning Jacket demonstrate that the axe is mightier than the sword. Fleet Foxes decide that the Beach Boys should add Simon & Garfunkel as bedfellows. Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro y Moi reprogram chillwave, consequences be damned.
Transitions were inevitable, too. R.E.M called it a day. (Or a few decades, to be clear). Ryan Adams started breaking hearts again. Destroyer went cosmopolitan, while Death Cab became pedestrian. Iron & Wine added some sax (of course) and left behind the quiet. Beastie Boys returned, still not quite adults. St. Vincent said she wasn't a cheerleader any more. The Drive-by Truckers, well, thankfully, maybe they didn't change.
The D Man enjoyed much of the new music--and most of the changes--in 2011. He also decided that, if a listener is honest, it is difficult to truly enjoy (and explore) more than about 40 albums a year. (Unless, of course, listening to music is your full-time job, which sort of sounds awful. Where would you turn to escape? To drive off in your car?). With that understanding, there are certainly several worthy albums that I missed, which always leaves me feeling a little unfulfilled or overwhelmed.
I wrote a poem several years ago with the following line: so many girls that I'll never kiss, so many mothers that I'll never miss. That sentiment also seems to sum up my feelings about all of the great records that I may never hear. My resulting wistfulness knows no bounds. But we only have so much time. So where to start? I suppose, in the end, that I take some comfort in this: my Top Twenty is always a fine place to begin the begin.
*An asterisk will be placed by every album that uses a healthy (or even judicious) dose of saxophone. Trumpets and other horns count, too.
On Destroyer's ninth album, Vancouver's Dan Bejar navigates the backrooms of the world, breathing cinematic life into a modern, urban noir. An atmosphere of rain-soaked city parks, throbbing nightclubs, and deserted downtown streets is described in exquisite language; Bejar's lyrical approach to his cosmopolitan subjects is nothing short of poetry. Musically, Kaputt melds watery bass-lines, smooth jazz, and new wave guitars into a lush canvas of scenesters, romantics, and playboys, all of them literate, wry, and wizened. Question: Can a record this stylized actually be the best album of the year? Answer: Need you even ask?
The words! Bejar's stream-of-consciousness is evocative. Serving as our guide and shaman--the Mystic Prince of the Purlieu at Night--Behar passes for a downtown Whitman, backed by a chorus of saxophones and trumpets sent from the reverbed heavens.
The juxtaposition of Bejar's city poems against his immaculate take on so-called smooth jazz--a form of music that some might perceive as ironic or worse--reinforces the powerful allure of his subjects and, arguably, may be the crowning achievement of Kaputt. "Chinatown," the year's best album opener, chronicles the magnetic pull of desolate, late-night apocryphas:
You can't believe
The way the wind is talking to the sea.
I heard that someone said it before,
I don't care,
I can't walk away, I can't walk away . . .
In Chinatown . . .
The solitary poet in "Blue Eyes" seeks refuge in the pursuit of romance:
You terrify the land.
You are pestle and mortar.
Your first love's new order:
Mother Nature's Son.
King of the Everglades: Population 1.
I write poetry for myself! I write poetry for myself!
You're a permanent figure of jacked-up sorrow.
I want you to love me. You send me a coffin of roses.
I guess that's the way things go
These days . . .
(Even Bejar's come-ons are shrouded in poetic signifiers, as he repeatedly whispers to his elusive lover I've thumbed through the books on your shelves. These lines come off sounding like the most intimate thing he could ever hope to say to a woman).
"Savage Night at the Opera" is an aesthetic show-down of sorts, the musician's shrugging confrontation with another musician (or perhaps even himself):
Yes. I'm familiar with your scene.
Some would say, shockingly uptight.
21-gun salute to the Fallen Birds of the Sky.
I heard their record, it's alright . . .
Hey, Infinite Sense Of Value . . .
Hey, Infinite Sense Of Value . . .
Hey, Mystic Princie Of The Purlieu At Night!
I heard your record, it's alright . . .
"Poor in Love" is a confessional conversation amid personal (and man-made) ruin:
I was poor in love. I was poor in wealth.
I was okay in everything else there was.
Oh, I was poor in love.
She took me aside and said--
"Look I don't do this every day,
You got style! . . . All you've got is style!
I can see it from a mile away!"
Oh, I was poor in love.
"You were born okay.
Rich in name alone.
Your Jesuit profile will suit
The coming apocalypse!"
Oh, I was poor in love.
Poor in love . . .
Bejar's lyrical brilliance is a thing to behold, as the imaginative refrains keep coming with an almost blinding precision. Largely driven by the epiphanies strewn throughout the record, somehow, incredibly, each of the nine tracks on Kaputt managed to be my favorite song of the year at some point in time. The literary riches in "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker" and the incomparable 13-minute closer "Bay of Pigs" are almost too difficult to describe. And this is an easy-listening pop album?
The vocals!It would be too clever by half to call Bejar's duet partner, Vancouver singer Sibel Thrasher, a modern-day Dickinson because clearly she gets out of the house. Indeed, she would disagree that there is no frigate like a book--she has a voice that has seenthings. Where Thrasher's vocal counterbalance is womanly--even heavenly--Bejar's singing is cool, sophisticated, and dipped in a Dylan-esque quill. To help emphasize the free-flowing verses that permeate the album, Bejar reportedly recorded some of his vocal tracks while lying down on his couch.
The prologue!It cannot be over-emphasized: the degree of difficulty in pulling off this album is, well, off the charts. In lesser hands, the record would have sounded ridiculous, a lightweight rip-off circa 1981. Even the lyrics could have been a bumbling mess, untethered to the underlying music. But Bejar is no fool. Without sounding neither sleight nor overwrought, he weaves his nonchalant, lyrical asides across jazz-lite jams that, significantly, brim with sincerity, humor, and pathos. Bejar's sly bemusement is so casual, so off-the-cuff, one gets the feeling that he is worrying about something else at the same time he is explaining everything listeners need to know about the human drama.
Like some of The D Man's favorite albums during his adult life, I could think about--and discuss--Destroyer's record for the better part of the day. The album is such a bewitching aesthetic achievement, I feel compelled to write a thesis to unearth its virtues. Not surprisingly, such heavy lifting, while sure to be enlightening, is ultimately unnecessary with this immediate musical pleasure.
I can see for miles, miles, miles. Leave the parenthetical coasts and strike out for the continent. Consider the wide expanse and the places that unfurl. Minnesota, Wisconsin. Michicant. Lisbon, OH. Winnum, TX. Calgary. On Bon Iver's masterful self-titled album, Justin Vernon sets his earthworn gaze across it all.
With an album that was immediately hailed as a staggering achievement, it is already difficult to contextualize Vernon's second American masterpiece and the musical transformation that came with it. Vernon travels beyond the unconventional and folk-riddled province of the upper Midwest, the sometimes spare and insular scrawl of For Emma, Forever Ago. He goes continental. Expansive. While his songs retain their intimacy, Vernon refashions a realm of Americana, folk, and pop music that, candidly, few listeners could have imagined and even fewer artists could have conceived.
Put simply, Vernon's recontextualization is about textures. The feel of things. The feel of words, instruments, and sounds. The way a song moves, hangs in the air, crystallizes, then breaks apart. Like a Mercator projection, some uber-produced records lose their contours and become flat and one-dimensional. Here, the music is gilded with shapes and edges, a topographical foray into resplendent tangibleness.
The staccato drum beats of "Perth." The sinewed guitars of "Minnesota, WI." The coin-dropped chinging of "Michicant." The deep-toned vocals of "Hinnom, TX." The gentle key-bounce of "Wash." The epic pulse of "Calgary." The songs, all of them so striking in their emotional connection, cut wide swaths across the open trails of your heart.
On the final track "Beth/Rest," Vernon becomes the indie-rock Peter Cetera, taking his emotional grandeur to its logical extreme. The song arcs out into soft-rock orbits, spinning off lush vocal effects, piano runs, glittery guitar solos, and sax interludes. The song teeters at the edge of overkill were it not so good, so heartfelt. Some listeners have cringed at the purported sappiness, as if Peabo Bryson were manning the soundboard. To that, I offer my condolences for missing out on a potent piece of populism.
Recently, a fawning critic said that the boombox scene in Say Anything has been saving itself for "Holocene." Under the weight of those and future expectations, where does Bon Iver go from here? If you have been listening, of course, the answer to that question is simple: anywhere he wants.
M83's awesome double-album, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, delivers on all of the promises that Anthony Gonzalez's prior records have made. His mastery of cinematic and cerebral electro-pop is on full display, spinning out gorgeous after gorgeous moment of life-affirming music. Cynicism dies in the face of his unyielding sonic optimism.
Like all great artists, Gonzalez has a firm grasp of his own aesthetic and a keen sense for how to harness its greatness. Where double-albums are often misguided, bloated, or short-handed, here the 22-track epic is clearly the inspired format for M83's diversity and expansiveness. Huge singles ("Intro" "Midnight City"), world-tinged pop tracks ("Reunion," "Claudia Lewis," "Steve McQueen"), swirling instrumentals ("Another Wave from You," "Echoes of Mine"), and strangely fantastic one-offs ("Raconte-Moi Une Histoire," "Year One, One UFO") are perfectly sequenced throughout the two sides. On their own, Side One and Side Two would merit placement in the The D Man's Top Twenty. Together, they equal impenetrable feats of symphonic electronic music.
Gonzalez's self-described "very, very, very epic album" extends the nostalgic magic of Saturdays = Youth and embraces the wide-screen electronica of Before the Dawn Heals Us. Enjoy the incredible live clip of "Midnight City," hands down the best single of the year. Yes, there will be sax, as it is obvious the menage a trois of live drums, laser synths, and 80's jazz feel like they were destined to be together.
Fleet Foxes' eponymous debut was a stunning delight, one of the best albums of the last ten years, and arguably one of the finest folk-pop records of all time. The Northwest band's second album, Helplessness Blues, is a thrilling indication that these musicians are in it for the long haul. So without further discussion, The D Man's favorite moments from the overwhelming abundance of melodies and harmonies.
Montezuma. When Pecknold sings and my mother and father in the beautiful, melodic opener.
Bedouin Dress. Not sure what that instrument is, but it sounds like a snake-charmer.
Sim Sala Bim. The opening stanza. He was so kind, such a gentleman . . . . Makes me feel like I'm sitting in some windswept parlor, something foreboding to come. Then it does.
The Plains / Bitter Dancer. The third act. Defying death incarnate. At arms length, I will hold you there. Enter bursting ooohs and aaahs.
Helplessness Blues. Arguably the most thrilling mid-song shift of the year; the song's second half is a fleeting burst of imaginative clarity and harmony. If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore.
Lorelai. The lilting music, the lush harmonies, all of it, right now. I was old news to you then, oooold neeeews, oooold neeeews to you then.
The Shrine / An Argument. Another exciting transition. Another brilliant, ancient-sounding song.
Grown Ocean. The swervy guitar licks. The building sense of urgency. Leaves me in shambles of joy.
Too many critics and fans have struggled with the fact that they could not place The King of Limbs in the unfolding Radiohead narrative. As if every studio album from the band should follow some discernable and linear path, building on (or running away from) the album before, some listeners failed to embrace an obvious fact: this time around, Radiohead just wanted to play to their own fancies, unencumbered from the heft of their singular and storied catalog.
Until The King of Limbs, diehards could trace the British band's notable progression--or re-invention--on an album-by-album basis. The story goes something like this: Pablo Honey (the uneven creep), The Bends (the alt-rock classic), OK Computer (the magnum rock opus), Kid A (the po-mo masterpiece), Amnesiac (the twitchy Kid A companion), Hail to the Thief (the brooding commentary), and In Rainbows (the glorious re-emergence). So where to put the new album? It is not an extension of In Rainbow's large-scale visions, although some traces made their way over to the new record. It is not a return to rock-centric guitars established by The Bends or OK Computer. It is not an insular retraction into experimentation like Kid A. So what gives?
To a certain extent, the record feels like the band's first singer-songwriter album, where Yorke's vocals are truly front and center. The surrounding instrumental flourishes, perceptive and patient, are seemingly employed to accompany the singer's wishes. Undoubtedly, the tightly-wound songs serve the band's continued fascination with rhythm. While some listeners may long for Greenwood's guitars to play more of a leading role, to a signficant degree, this is drummer Phil Selway's record. His meticulous time signatures are without peer.
The King of Limbs contains only eight tracks and is by far Radiohead's shortest record. As a result, the record feels cohesive and, for whatever reason, seems to flow toward and away from the immediate highlight "Lotus Flower." The first half of the record is filled with addictive rhythms largely fueled by Selway's sticks--the strange tracks grow increasingly more interesting with repeated listens. (See "Bloom," "Little By Little," "Morning Mr. Magpie," and the dub-stepped "Feral.") The second half of the record is a treasure trove of songs, starting with the spiritual piano dirge of "Codex," moving into the tender acoustic strums and vocal loops of "Give Up The Ghost," and signing off with "Separator," a track that only Radiohead is capable of conceiving and pulling off.
Maybe Radiohead defied convention (again?), producing a small, strange, beautiful, and rhythmically-challenging record that suggests, definitively, the band is as self-assured as ever.
Kurt Vile reconfigures the classic guitar album into an effortless and singular moment. His laid-back cool and sprawling, drawn-out vocal delivery are the perfect foil to his ambling guitar passions. The songs feel tossed off and unfinished and at the same time so perfectly executed. The record's amalgam of folk, blues, and psychedelia, rooted in stoner-tinged classic rock, burrows deep within each song, revealing a hazy world of living-room couches, garages, tour buses, and, significantly, friends and lovers coming and going.
"Baby's Arms" opens the album as the most honest rock'n'roll love song in years. "Jesus Fever" then jangles into the record's most catchy chorus, a surprise given that Vile's vocal hooks simply roll by with the music's nonchalant undertow. "Puppet to the Man" thrums with power-chord crackle, and it has the feel of the perfect kiss-off: Well i bet by now you probably think i'm a puppet to the man / well, i'll tell you right now, you best believe that i am.
Vile's overarching confession is perhaps summed up best in that song: Sometimes i'm stuck and then i think i can't unglue it. Not surprisingly, he searches for ways to get out of a jam or, at the very least, he talks himself into the necessary confidence. Consider the haunting "Runner Ups": My best friend's long gone / but i got runner ups.
Despite the personal discord, Vile breaks through with what appears to be his hoped-for mantra in "On Tour":
I wanna write my whole life down
burn it there to the ground
i wanna sing at the top of my lungs
for fun, screaming annoyingly
cuz that's just me
being me, being free
That exultation leads him to this: i'm just playing, i got it made, most of the time. Fortunately, Vile's gorgeous finger-picking reaches for the beauty in the gloom, and as a result, this dark and personal album sounds nothing short of transcendant.
If indie guitar pop is your thing, then this is your thing. The New Jersey band's sophomore album, Days, faintly traces the same hazy summer dreams of fellow east-coasters Beach House. Where the Baltimore duo's instant classic Teen Dream was awash in organ-drones and Victoria Grand's lived-in vocals, Days is carried by lustrous guitar intricacies and the band's easy-going, reverbed harmonies. Like Teen Dream, however, Days' deceptively unadorned melodies are difficult to ignore. The album packs a punch even when it sounds so sleight and weightless.
Days is played with such casual exactness, the album brings to mind the precision of The Sea and Cake, only breezier, warmer, and embossed with reverb and delay. Though the band is likely capable of producing intricate post-rock, the loose feel of this album is vintage melodic pop, recalling the lush and artful melodies of the Byrds, early-R.E.M., and The Shins. During certain moments, the band's vocal shimmer even suggests the Beach Boys, as the songs are transported by suburban-garage guitars that hint at the surf just a short drive away.
Like many indie records of the past several years, Days allows you to create a contextual narrative in your head, rooted in a very specific place or time. For The D Man, that place and time is a youthful summer not too far distant and the carefree romance that slowly evaporates under the long afternoon of my memory. The result is, without a doubt, hypnotic.
Trevor Powers is 22 years-old and hails from Boise, Idaho. His debut album, The Year of Hibernation, is not what you would expect to hear from the spud state. With carefully-crafted and eminently listenable bedroom arrangements, the record's daydreams envelop lyrical anxiety in sonic guaze, attempting to cover up some of the emotional bewilderment. But the artist's vulnerability results in another kind of clarity: a striking musical confession.
On its face, The Year of Hibernation is an unvarnished and home-made blend of buried vocals, keyboard runs, and guitar interludes--the sound of a young and independent musician overhearing his deeply-guarded thoughts. But the emotional complexity of the record is arresting. A clash of joy and mourning, Powers jettisons perfect understanding in favor of emotional honesty. To that end, Powers reaches a small contextual transcendance, a Bon Iver-like DIY recording of a private place and time: the excavation of the artist's youth.
The record runs at just over a half-hour and it feels like a short but unflinching conversation with your best childhood friend, a foray into enchanting memories and painful separations. Where the vocals are buried in the mix, seemingly emerging from the recesses of memory, Powers' instrumentation is clear-cut and in the present-tense. The crystalline keyboards give shape to the intentional spaciness, creating gravity with each note, while the spindly guitars appear from the outer reaches to punctuate his expressions.
The Year of Hibernation's one-word songs are, put simply, small but powerful vignettes of youth. "17." "Posters." "July." "Daydream." "Afternoon." And just when things get too heavy, the music gives way to an exuberance that only the young at heart can understand.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's second album is no sophomore slump. Belong takes the band's propulsive shoegaze pop from their pleasurable debut and adds a layer of early 90's guitar crunch. Much has been made of Flood's arena-filling production (see U2, The Smashing Pumpkins) and the revival of alt-rock's fuzzy atmospherics. But more needs to be said for the band's inherent charms that are largely evidenced by the single thing great albums cannot do without: great songs.
It takes one listen to realize that the hooks are everywhere--Belong is instantly accessible and enjoyable, song after song, especially for listeners that get giddy over chiming guitars or dreamy synths. But the Brooklyn band has clearly elevated its status beyond writing love letters to The Pastels, My Bloody Valentine, or The Smashing Pumpkins, relying on the merits of their own power-pop brightness. Understandably, the guileless vocals of Kip Berman and Peggy Wang lend the band an irresistable attraction that cannot be summarized as mere tweeness. Belong simply sounds too big for that.
The opening title-track goes toe-to-toe with the best "track ones" of the year. The delightful ditty "Heart in Your Heartbreak" is euphoric sadness that only a pop song could celebrate. Other standouts include "The Body" and "My Terrible Friend." Ultimately, the band's message could be summed up by the music video below: just plug it in, play, and make someone happy.
Superb dance or pop music is not too difficult to find--unless you happen to be surfing your FM radio stations. For every great dance-pop track produced by a big-label act (and there are a few), listeners have to wade through denizens of derivative drivel. Twenty-five years ago, bands in the vein of Australia's Cut Copy actually received mainstream airplay--think New Order, OMD, Tears for Fears, Pet Shop Boys. But fast forward to the present and almost everything that passes for Top 40 radio is a bad club song--awful lyrics, lowbrow beats, and unimaginative rhythms fill the airwaves.
Fortunately, Cut Copy are caring curators of the dance-pop past. The band's third album, Zonoscope, is proof that dance music can be exciting and sexy without sounding sleazy. With a firm grasp of avant garde aural textures (the album was produced by Ben Allen of Merriweather Post Pavillion fame), Cut Copy loads up on never-ending layers of beautiful synths, funky guitars, and groove-inducing percussion. Somehow, the globe-trotting tracks still feel spacious, allowing Dan Whitford's hypnotic vocals to smooth everything over.
Zonoscope jumps off from the fantastic In Ghost Coloursand promises a buoyant and bright engagement--the hooks, drops, and runs literally glitter across the album. Not surprisingly, a starry-eyed euphoria dominates the record, and as the songs bleed into each other, culminating with the 15-minute "Sun God," one senses that pop bliss was never so close at hand.
Slave Ambient reverberates American road-rock--Dylan, Springsteen, Petty--and the echoes sound fresh and sometimes dazzling. Kurt Vile's Smoke Ring for My Halo bandmates Adam Granduciel (guitars) and Mike Zanghi (drums) recorded a meandering, open-road album that harkens back to a straightforward (and much-beloved) rock ethic: wide-open, guitar-heavy jams that take you somewhere. Anywhere.
The songs have no proper choruses but they manage to sound anthemic--the sprawling guitar intricacies and chugging rhythm section propel listeners toward big-sky dreams. The record immediately feels hopeful, even if the deep-cut tracks require--and reward--repeated listens. The band's superb EP Future Weather, also released this year, is a necessary companion.
Granduciel shares some of Vile's lyrical phrasing, drawing out and emphasizing the long vowels. Depending on the song, he captures the essence of multiple vocal influences without pandering to a convenient one-off vibe. If this was not one of The Traveling Wilbury's favorite records this year, then Tom has some explaining to do.
Admittedly, The D Man really did not know where to fit these next three records into his list. So this just seemed like the best place. The Antlers, St. Vincent, and Ryan Adams have very little to do with each other, but their excellent records merited recognition and discussion.
Burst Apart by The Antlers. A gorgeous and spare slice of indie-rock, Peter Silberman wants to break your heart with his falsetto. Where Hospice created emotional wreckage with shards of spinning hope, the Brooklyn band's second album picks up the pieces in a most mesmerizing and keyboard-infused fashion.
Strange Mercy by St. Vincent. Annie Clark is striking. So is her music. Once an Illinoisemaker for Sufjan Stevens, Clark is now the main event. A compelling dissonance arises from her imaginative arrangements, guitar arpeggios, and vocal gymastics. Indie chicks unite!
Ashes & Fire by Ryan Adams. The D Man's long musical affair with Ryan Adams has been well chronicled. His latest record is a return to the basic acoustic premise of Heartbreaker and the numerous tracks that so many have fallen in love with. Musically, there is nothing earth-shattering in this collection of songs, except for the subtle genius of a gifted songwriter that is slowly revealed after repeated, worthwhile listens.
Big-event albums rarely work out as well as everyone hoped. (See Lou Reed and Metallica as Exhibit A). Watch the Throne is clearly an exception. Jay-Z and Kanye West, the two biggest rap superstars on the planet, teamed up for an album that, while not equaling their best individual efforts, was an entertaining and creative success. Consider it the best tag team of two heavyweights in their prime since Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage.
Like the bombast of pro wrestlers, Jay-Z and Kanye rap about their egos, wealth, and fame--the braggadocio knows no bounds. While many have criticized the social implications of the pair's so-called luxury rap, the content certainly makes for some enjoyable lyrical swagger: I'm the Hermes of verses, sophisticated ignorance, I write my curses in cursive. Where Jay-Z often sounds like the stable breadwinner, Kanye relishes his role as hip-hop's playboy, even though he often laments the hollowness of his pursuits. This conflicted self-awareness, in the midst of overwhelming narcissism and materialism, is part of what makes Kanye such an intriguing lyricist and pop-culture phenomenon.
One critic called Watch the Throne rap's first stadium album. When the Jigga Man and Ye visit audiences from Madison Square Garden to the Staples Center, there will be no one in the crowd doubting the record's arena-filling possibilities. Sure, there are a couple misses (never again, Beyonce), but several tracks will easily transform to en masse delivery. "Church in the Wild," "N***** in Paris," "Otis," "New Day" (me and the RZA connect!), "Welcome to the Jungle," "Murder to Excellence," and "Made in America" are all worthy of throwing down hard-earned cash to see the best in the business do their thing. (If you were wondering, clean versions of the album are available--this is a family-friendly site, yo!)
Elbow could be the biggest underrated band in the world. Maybe that is why the band's last record was called The Seldom Seen Kid. With noteworthy influences like Peter Gabriel, Talk Talk, and Radiohead, the British band's musical trajection has been steep, and despite the artistic difficulties preventing them from doing so, Elbow keeps making better and better records.
Guy Garvey's lyrics are understated and potent, with a strain of nostalgic whimsy befitting a modern English bard. The band's growing songcraft is rich in volume dynamics, as Garvey admittedly believes "it's incredibly boring and shortsighted if a band sticks with just one sound song for song. An album should take people on a journey." So it goes with Build A Rocket Boys!
On album number five, Elbow moves with a purpose. The songs are prim and proper, like neatly trimmed lawns or well-tended gardens--every instrumental stroke is in its place. The arrangements are meticulously crafted and the melodies suberb; a sense of traditional, made-for-sheet music songcraft holds everything together. Sure, Elbow may be criticized for being decidedly un-rock-'n'roll, as there is no sense of abandon or messiness in their approach. But this is music meant for a proper performance, even the big stage, and it is certain to be carried aloft by Garvey's unmistakable pipes.
After watching Elbow's set at Glastonbury, there was no denying that the band could sound huge, important, and, yes, inspiring. Tracks like "Open Arms" turned into massive stadium sing-alongs, and the band's earnestness never came across as weepy sentimentality. On the record, this same sincerity is marked by musical restraint and Garvey's always-believable voice. The songs always sound good.
"Dear Friends," the last track of the album, is a beautiful British pop song, serving as a great bookend to the opening magic of "Lippy Kids." Speaking of that fine song, how many recordings are guaranteed to give listeners chills? That is an absolute given during your first listen as Garvey answers his own question of seizing golden days: Build a rocket boys!
The future of music is here. Or at least the sound of the future. So-called chillwave, with its processed effects--vocals, synthesizers, loops--is often a compelling reclamation project: sifting through the musical scrapheap of yesterday in order to build the sonic structures of tomorrow. Though it is wildly unfair to group these three artists together--especially given the disparate vibes on their 2011 releases--there is no denying that their musical force is responsible for pushing boundaries and creating backlashes that, ironically, stem from the disintegration of a perceived musical trend.
On Chaz Bundick's second full-length, Underneath the Pine, he delivers a warm electro-pop affair that leans on the past for inspiration, filtering through an analog lens groovy beats and ambient immediacy. Combining some of the best elements of chillwave with a deep immersion into sonic textures of yesteryear (think Deerhunter but for dance/R&B music), Toro y Moi comes of as the coolest and grooviest technician in the neighborhood. Smart kids need dance music, too.
On Era Extrana, Texas' musical cyborg, Alan Palomo, went to Finland to be reprogrammed. The Atari-bit beats of his lo-fi debut, Psychic Chasms, have been replaced by the consoles of the future, resulting in a more hi-def experience. The catch? The mid-winter decay of the production--even the decay of the very future--feels chilling in the cold hands of the love-sick and anxious programmer. The lesson? Virtual love is always elusive.
On Ernest Greene's proper debut, Within and Without, the lap-pop whiz creates a dreamy, synth-washed pallette that could be the movement's love child. Lush, beautiful, and romantic, Washed Out's arrangements contain an understated elegance that cannot be dismissed as mere background music. The live instrumentation amps up the decibels while retaining the music's hushed ambience. Gorgeous stuff.
My Morning Jacket is one of the best rock bands on the planet. The band's live shows are an experience, punctuated by yelps and open-road thunder and interspersed with strains of folk, alt-country, and reverbed psychedelia. With Circuital, the band's sixth studio album, the Kentucky jam-rockers settle into a comfortable, loose-sounding groove that attempts to approach the band's live feel and sound. While there is nothing quite like an MMJ show, this record at least reaches for that feeling, which, thankfully, will have to be enough.
Recorded in an empty Louisville gymnasium, Circuital returns to the band's core sound, perhaps a knowing retreat from the scattershot experiments on the much-maligned (but now underrated) Evil Urges. While the record does not equal the band's best work on It Still Moves and Z, Jim James and his merry men seem no worse for the wear. Indeed, there is a lyrical confidence and freedom on this record that bodes well for the future.
Check out the country-rock jamming of the title-track, the dire-warning beats of "The Day is Coming," the sweet folk of "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)," the hard-knock lessons of "Outta My System," and the choir-rock dangers of "Holdin' On to Black Metal." And please take note: underappreciate these guys at your peril.
Yuck's self-titled debut defies pastiche with fuzzy guitar bashing that is propulsive, catchy, and endearing. The band's melodic core is dipped in an alt-rock sheen (think Dinosaur, Jr. and The Breeders, to name just two), and the hooks are embellished with just enough distortion to allow the hard-hitting pop songs to breathe.
In the recent nostalgia of late-era college rock and early-90s alternative, Yuck's debut stands out, hinting at future possibilities of taking venerable sounds into unheard places. The British band's arty guitar noodling on some of the spacier tracks suggest as much. Significantly, there is a sweetness to the band's approach that unpacks the angst of grunge, making the record sound more youthful, even celebratory at times. No doubt that the shared vocals by siblings Daniel and Ilana Blumberg enhance the less confrontational mood.
Highlights include opening track "Get Away," alterna-anthem "The Wall," and the perfect pick-me up "Georgia."
Beirut's third album feels like an old friend. Earthy, well-worn, and honest, The Rip Tide sheds some of the sonic clutter from Nathan Condon's previous efforts but still sounds loose and improvisational. In terms of companionship, consider this music Sancho Panza, unfailingly finding ways to lift you up with stories and good humor despite an overarching pain of longing. Indeed, the record could be the soundtrack to the indie version of Don Quixote.
Condon hails from Santa Fe, and where his earlier albums explored Balkan and other European fare largely gleaned from his travels, TheRip Tide carries him closer to home, sounding like a record forged in the American Southwest. The horn arrangements are a canvas-expanding backdrop for what are certainly Condon's most melodic collection of songs. The songs evoke history, deserts, and lost loves, a search across the broad panorama of rock and sky that dominates the landscape.
"Sante Fe" is a call home accompanied by stuttering keyboards and soul-warming trumpets (Sign me up Santa Fe / And call your son). "Vagabond" is the desperate return, albeit sun-bleached and hopeful (Left the vagabonds / a trail of stones / forward to find my home). But will there only be endless drifting? On the album's gorgeous title-track, Condon contemplates as much. (So the waves and I found the rip tide). Yet somehow, amid the wanderlust, Condon makes all of the right connections.
(Of course you should have known that The D Man shreds)
The D Man is not looking forward to the songs that we will be playing when the world ends in 2012. So it seems wise to remember the good times from the past year.
Most albums that drop at the end of the year are big commercial records designed for the masses. The majority of those records are, obviously, more commerce than art. But some gems appear just as the year is closing out. Check out the video for "It's Real" from Real Estate's sophomore album, Days. It's real good. Props to Stark the Vinyl Shark for letting The D Man know that this record must get into the rotation.
