lead me back to the place I'm from past the farms and the debris
I have read a number of reviews and commentaries around the internetz about Slave Ambient. While I kind of find myself disagreeing with a lot of the comparisons (Dylan, what?), many refer to the uplifting sound of their traditional American rock roots. They are clearly meant for a long car ride, turned up loud, sunset behind you. The reviews often leave it at that, though, and not The War On Drugs’ unique stylings.
Personally, I am not sure that traditional American rock is the right description for The War On Drugs. They are definitely closer to shoegaze, the proud genre of loud guitars and mumbled lyrics. The War On Drugs bring some different themes to shoegaze; instead of gazing at their shoes, they seem to be gazing at the open road. (Roadgaze?) A lot of their lyrics are blurry, but certain words jump out – harbors, freeways, rambling, trains, rattling in my brain, farms, debris, Northeast. There’s definitely some sort of world-weariness to the songs, that comes across in the words, the music, and the vocals. He’s just trying to get home, or somewhere. “There is a train we take downtown that buckles and bends from the weight of the ground,” Adam Granduciel sings, “You’ll understand when I leave so suddenly with breeze.”
Despite that weariness though, The War On Drugs have a quite uplifting sound. I think of it in terms of a Woody Guthrie, who also wrote tired-of-the-world songs that lifted you up. But The War On Drugs do it impressively without any choruses. Instead they hook you with the big chord changes, well-timed woohoos!, hypnotic bright drums.
And they make amazing use of the ambient instrumental tracks in between songs. While these tracks do add space between some of the more similarly-paced songs on the album, they also drive the whole thing. “Come To The City,” for instance, is a memorable song, but made even more so by “The Animator,” a 2-minute intro drone that brings “The City” to life. These ambient pieces, I assume, give the album its name, but more importantly make Slave Ambient cohere.
While The War On Drugs are ranked #6 here on my list, the actual ordering is not that precious. I’ve only listened to a couple of albums more often than this one this year. While “number of listens” is not my main criteria in ranking these, it does indicate that, man, Slave Ambient is something special.
the quiet singing in the language that we don’t know
Much of what I just wrote about Bon Iver, Bon Iver in my last review also applies to Lie Ices’ Grown Unknown. I guess I love this style! Like Bon Iver, Ices has made a patient, rich album that is also mysterious and intriguing. I usually try not to make random comparisons, but this one is apt, as Justin Vernon sings back-up on one of the songs. So, I like to think of these two albums as companions and complements.
Unlike Bon Iver, Lia Ices is a bit more mystical and mythical in her lyrics. “Love Is Won” appears to be about discovering forever/love as a “tiny jewel in the tiger mouth,” and strriving to “pounce so I can tame the cat / so I can find the myth and let forever out.” “Daphne” tells the story of the nymph Daphne who turned into a tree instead of surrendering herself to Apollo. A particularly amazing song, “Daphne” begins delicately, like you would imagine a Lia Ices song to be: her quiet and close voice over guitar and violins. Midway through, the song takes a turn, becoming heavier and more confident. The music parallels the story.
The more I listen to Grown Unknown, the more I am impressed with Ices’ voice. It never falls into cliched fragility or breathlessness, always maintaining strength. This makes these songs all the more memorable, as she keeps charge of their oft-changing nature. “Ice Wine,” as only her vocals and a string quartet, could have been insufferable with the wrong voice, but Lia Ices keeps it together, and fascinating. “I hate to leave you like the eyelash that flew,” is one of the few lines that can be distinguished: it is one of her more mysterious and dark songs. Other tracks also borrow a lot from classical music arranging, but always to add richness and texture (“New Myth” especially).
There were quite a few of these individual, creative, avant-garde female pop singers this year, from Anna Calvi to PJ Harvey to Kate Bush to name a few. Each were stunning in their own way, and Lia Ices was one of my favorites. Grown Unknown is bursting with musical ideas — folky songs, string quartet movements, seductive vocals, orchestrated stories — yet it is her voice that ties all these ideas together so brilliantly.
The story behind Bon Iver’s first album, For Emma, Forever Ago was relatively famous. Justin Vernon withdrew into a cabin in the Wisconsin woods and recorded a sparse, isolated acoustic record. His second album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver (the actual title), is an artistic reaction to that.
The album cover is a great representation. A house sits there in the center, but instead of it alone, the view expands, revealing the world around it. The titles (and the title) of Bon Iver, Bon Iver are all meant to refer to places, albeit sometimes unreal ones (“Perth,” “Minnesota, WI,” “Michicant,” “Wash.,” “Calgary,” etc.). There’s more to the Bon Iver world now than just a lonesome cabin.
And musically, too, not just thematically. Bon Iver, Bon Iver feels more worldly and full, while maintaining Bon Iver’s trademark shimmer: seductive melodies, abstract lyrics, falsettos. “Perth” is a surprisingly complex recording, using a military drumbeat and guitars to bury all sorts of sounds that just barely leak out.
“Perth” leads into “Minnesota, WI” and “Holocene” and by now it’s clear–this is a gorgeous album. These songs have a patient flow to them, as they take their time and go through different sections and back and forth. There is very little intensity on Bon Iver, Bon Iver, as they leisurely flow where they are headed. “Holocene” for example does not build anywhere, it strolls. “Jagged vacance thick with ice / And I can see for miles miles miles,” Vernon sings, and as is his genius, I have no idea what “jagged vacance” means, but it FITS. This is not unusual in his lyrics. He has that ability to string words together that may not mean anything technically, but overall, they do/must. As he sings on “Wash.” “we’re sewing up through the latchet greens / I unpeel keenness, honey, bean for bean / Same white pillar tone as with the bone street / Sand is thrown.”
The album closes with “Beth/Rest,” which also clearly indicates that Bon Iver is making some of the bravest music around. He fully embraces a normally-maligned ’80s soft rock sound, and somehow turns it into a moody reflection closing this masterpiece of an album.
I first saw Bon Iver live a few years back when he was just becoming more known after his debut record, and I thought, “with his voice, guitar-playing, songwriting, this guy should be a superstar!” Bon Iver, Bon Iver does nothing to change that; if you like your music beautiful and rich and with feeling, nobody does it better than Justin Vernon.
For most of 2011 I was under the impression that I have become some old hag that simply couldn’t stand the “noise” coming out these days. I could barely find any new music that I liked or thought was compelling enough to listen to more than one time. Granted, I spent most of the year listening to the bums serenade me from the alley way and half the year without computer speakers as I awaited my belongings’ arrival in Seattle. I also spent the larger portion of this year without a car. It wasn’t until I was without a car that I realized my most intimate time with music is blaring it through my car speakers while dancing/driving or prepping for a social situation. This list is the best I could do considering my having a very music-less year (listening to Nirvana and Death Cab blare from the EMP down the street hardly counts). Since I can’t be bothered to pick favorites, this list will be in alphabetical order.
Beat and the Pulse is such a good song. It has all the components to it that warrant pretending you are in the music video while at home alone in front of the mirror. I love screaming along to this album, and I love the weird NSFW video that you can’t seem to find unedited anymore (Oh no! TITS!). For some reason I thought they were from Australia but instead they are from Canada.
When I saw that Grizzly Bear had a member split off to start his own musical project I was all over it like a cat in heat. There are some awesome dancy numbers on this album with slower counterparts. “Too late too far” speaks to me, every time I hear that song I can’t help but tell my cat “this song is so good!”. Anyhow the rogue member is Chris Taylor, apparently born in Seattle (yay!), and once stared me down when I went to see Grizzly Bear live in Orlando when they were a mere opening band. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I am flattered nonetheless.
I’m not exactly sure why I kept ignoring recommendations that I should check out Class Actress, but I’m glad I finally caved. There are so many catchy songs on here. I haven’t heard pure pop genius on the level of ”Sheilia – Atlas Sound” until I heard her song “Keep You”. I don’t care what kind of music you are into, you will have that song stuck in your head. You’re welcome.
Ok… so I can be bothered that Purity Ring is in my top 2 for favorite of 2011. I can’t wait until an album is released. They are categorized as chillwave but I think that is bullshit, they are 5 triangle symbols away from being witch house and I refuse to take that back. The two songs they do give us makes me feel like a starved music whore that can barely rustle my jimmies with what I have. I need more.
How quaint! The alphabet allowed me to put my top 2 next to each other! However, I regret I already said I felt like a music starved whore in reference to Purity Ring because now I have to become something far more depraved to express how much I love Shad[]wb[]x. I have not been this excited about an artist since oOoOO. If I could pick an artist that fully envelops what I love about music, I wouldn’t hesitate to put this on like an overzealous hipster stuck teaching elementary school music. I love artists that prompt me into imagining having secret, dirty car sex to their music. Anyhow, I could gush on and on about how I would lez out for her but her music speaks for itself. For the addict: she has some youtube videos of her performing two songs that you can’t get on the EP.
I have been having a love/hate relationship with chillwave. I love the conception of chillwave, the early releases of MillionYoung, Discovery, Toro Y Moi still get me excited. Then, as time passed, it seemed that everything that was released by those bands were steps backwards and newer bands aiming for their style became copies of copies. If I already own Causers of This and Be So True, why would I download a band that sounds like a cover of something that was done right the first time? This is why I like Starfucker – Reptilians, it feels like a progression of chillwave rather than a stake of claim to the genre.
This album isn’t exactly new music, but a compilation of songs. I think. Honestly I know nothing about this band, the bits and pieces I read only confuse me. I know it is a duo, they signed with a label in the UK, their music reminds me of a very dark Psychic Ills, yes this is dark synth wave, and I really like their music.
Normally I’d be pissed that something like this is labeled as Witch House, but I actually ended up liking the band despite my expectations. Visions of Trees is more like Gang Gang Dance or Panda Bear. They have an ethereal electronic sound that is a bit more beat heavy than their counterparts. I imagine their music as the background to frolicking through a forest in springtime when suddenly awestruck by a beautiful waterfall, pink mist, and a group of prancing unicorns but, sensing the outrageous circumstances and their rare presentation, you decide to rest and observe nature silently while contemplating the finite within the infinite. There is nothing wrong with being a hippy every once and a while.
This seems to be getting more difficult every year! 2011 was filled with so much great music and I feel like I had such little time to appreciate that. This year’s rankings were truly the hardest ever to compile. Looking past the sheer volume of great new (and “newish”) acts which have emerged, old favorites returned with new offerings, there’s also the fact that my tastes have been diverging in two distinct directions.
My love for shoegaze has has come into the forefront this year, somewhat shattering the usual suspects for top 25 positions. Nevertheless, all those beautiful walls of noise simultaneously crashing down upon my ears couldn’t ever make up for good song writing and talented vocalists. I think that’s reflected in the mix of albums in this year’s Top 25.
I had originally planned doing “reviews” for the top 10. However, I only had enough patience and focus to get the top spot for you. I have included a sample mp3 for each of the top 25 albums. If you would like to grab all of these at once (plus a few bonus tracks), click here.
[UPDATE DEC 26 2011] The honorable mentions have been updated after reading my colleague betweenthesound’s amazing 2011 write up. If you haven’t seen that, you should go read it now (or perhaps right after you finish this post). She managed to (once again) slam me with a gang load of records that were way beneath my radar, but that would definitely have put huge dents in my Top 25 list as it stands.
In nearly every review, interview, blurb, or blog post post you’ll read about Ringo Deathstarr, you’ll find three common elements.
1. Trio from Austin
They’ve actually gone through a couple lineup changes over the past 5 years, but have mostly stuck to this formula. The creative element is lead vocalist/guitarist Elliott Frazier. After bassist Alex found her way into the band (2007) by apparently just showing up for practice, things have mostly settled down, just finding the right drummer (as of this writing / hopefully “final” – that’s Daniel Coborn).
2. These guys sound like My Bloody Valentine
Drownedinsound put it this way “ If in the meantime you’ve lost your copy of Loveless, you could do far worse than listen to Colour Trip.” Yeah, it’s true. Too bad Loveless
3. The bassist (Alex Gehring) (now going by “galexy”) is so hot
So there, that’s out of the way. If it’s a more recent post you might read about how these kids just toured the UK/Europe with The Smashing Pumpkins. I have to admit kind of hate those dudes, but ultimately it means more exposure for Ringo Deathstarr and so I guess it’s not a bad thing. Moving beyond those tidbits, you get into a the music.
In case you haven’t noticed I don’t do traditional reviews. I leave it to others to finely dissect the record. Instead of telling you how it sounds (just listen for yourself), I offer you how the record felt. Colour Trip hit hard for me. This was probably my favorite record Fever Ray’s 2009 debut, and going back further it would have to be Snowden’s Anti-Anti (2006). Before I totaled my car, this record could very often be heard at extremely high decibels pulsing through the streets of Baltimore weekday evenings. Dark reverberation and the haunting fuzz draped chanting of Alex form the basis of my song of the year – Two Girls (stream/download below). For the life of me I can’t tell you what the fuck she is saying, but she is saying it just right. Besides being the single most addicting track of 2011, there’s an equally worthy video directed by Alex, which you can also find below. Be forewarned: One might say it’s NSFW.
Austra – Feel It Break
Girls – Father Son Holy Ghost
Hunx & His Punx – Too Young To Be In Love
Metronomy – The English Riviera
Radical Face – The Family Tree – The Roots
Shad[]wb[]x – Lady Doome [EP]
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
SBTRKT – SBTRKT
Washed Out – Within & Without
Honorable Mentions [Enjoyed]
Arc In Round – II [EP]
Apparat – The Devil’s Walk
Battles – Gloss Drop
Björk – Biophilia
Big Black Delta – BBDLP1
Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind Of Fix
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Brazzaville – Jetlag Poetry
Chad VanGaalen – Diaper Island
Class Actress – Rapprocher
Com Truise – Galactic Melt
Computers Want Me Dead – Computers Want Me Dead
Cut Copy – Zonoscope
Destroyer – Kaputt
Dolorean – The Unfazed
Ducktails III – Arcade Dynamics
East River Pipe – We Live in Rented Rooms
Echo Orbiter – More Batteries
Feist – Metals
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
Grimes & d’Eon – Darkbloom [split ep]
Haley Bonar – Golder
Haujobb – New World March
Hercules & Love Affair – Blue Songs
High Places – Original Colors
IAMX – Volatile Times
Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow
LAKE R▲DIO – Delta
Little Insects – Brighter Than Darkness
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete – On Welfare
Lumerians – Transmalinnia
Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
Malajube – La Caverne
Morpheme – Infection
Niva – Feverish Dreams [EP]
Mogwai – Earth Division [EP]
Music for Headphones – Life.in.Mono
Niva – Feverish Dreams [EP]
ohGr – Undeveloped
Passwords – Passwords
Phantogram – Nightlife [EP]
Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t – Lost in the Pancakes
Prefuse 73 – The Only She Chapters
Rachel Goodrich – Rachel Goodrich
Seapony – Go With Me
Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde
Starfucker – Reptilians
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Traffic
Stevie Nicks – In Your Dreams
Stumbleine – All for your smile
Taken By Cars – Dualist
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Belong
The Rosebuds – Loud Planes Fly Low
The Sea and Cake – The Moonlight Butterfly
Tropic of Cancer – The End of All Things
TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light
Tycho – Dive
Ume – Phantoms
Vondelpark – nyc stuff and nyc bags [EP]
Wagon Christ – Toomorrow
Warm Ghost – Uncut Diamond EP
Wooden Shjips – West
Woodsman – Mystic Places
Wire – Red Barked Tree
Young Galaxy – Shapeshifting
Yuck – Yuck
††† – † EP
The Black Keys, somewhat surprisingly, are quite adept at evolving their sound. I say ‘surprisingly’ because at their core they’ve always been a two-man electric blues group (drums and electric guitar). Their first few albums explored this, leading up to the dirty blues riffs of Rubber Factory. They had mastered building atmosphere out of their swirling sound of ferocious riffs and powerful drumming.
After Rubber Factory, they started exploring. Attack & Release was produced by famous indie hiphop producer Danger Mouse, who added bits of soul music to their sound, and even other instruments sometimes. Maybe The Keys weren’t just a blues group, but a retro group. Their next album, Brothers, was not produced by Danger Mouse, but was still a big success. These were very good records, but to me, both lacked the ferociousness of Rubber Factory. I bring this up not to criticize, but to compare: El Camino ecstatically brings that ferociousness back again.
This was immediately evident in the first moments, a nasty feedback-drenched riff that kicks off “Lonely Boy,” with explosive touches of keyboards, horns, background singers. The lyrics are standard blues: “I got a love that keeps me waiting,” but the impatient music undercuts that. The pounding drums of “Dead And Gone” come next and it is clear that this album will not relent. “I’ll go anywhere you go!” Dan Auerbach sings, and you know he will. El Camino has more memorable sing-along choruses than any other album this year, that’s for sure.
“Gold On The Ceiling” is another entirely nasty riff, enhanced by Danger Mouse’s electronic keyboards. Danger Mouse was actually a third member of The Black Keys, co-writing the songs on El Camino with them, as opposed to merely producing. Instead of just rawness, the three of them work to get the drama and sounds and moments just right. “Little Black Submarines” exemplifies this, beginning as a gorgeous acoustic track. It feels like a much-needed calm moment after the first three tracks, but that doesn’t last too long. It soon explodes like the rest of the songs: “Everybody knows that a broken heart is blind.” Even if these songs are less bluesy, per se, they still roar the blues as much as anything The Black Keys have ever done.
I could keep going on like this through the entire record, but by now the template is well-established, and the second half stays on track. In the same way Rubber Factory was a culmination of their blues rock trips, El Camino perfects their more recent retro soul rock blasts.
Black Up “Free Press And Curl”
atmosphere
spooky
free
infinitum
hypnotic
dark
YOU
felt
glacial
“it’s a feeling”
patient
Digable Planets
shifts
rap
Nubis
trippy
minimal
chant
Youlogy
awkward
smart
ice
cool like dat
endeavors
jazzy
collage
space out
atypical
smooth
creative
odd “Yeah You”
music capers
postulate
swerve
Shabazz
Palaces
In that dream I could hardly contain it / All my life I will wait to attain it
As I wrote about St. Vincent a few days ago, the songs on Helplessness Blues are extremely adaptable – everyone might get something different out of them. Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes’ songwriter) embraces this adaptability with such beauty and craft, yet also providing an intricate mystery, that you cannot help but be left wondering, what are these songs?
I do not necessarily have a concrete explanation to that question, but certain things are woven in, continually hinted at, embedded in the songs. As the title indicates, Helplessness Blues does explore the feeling of longing for something unattainable. On the title track, he explains: “If I know only one thing it’s that everything I see of the world is so inconceivable I barely can speak / I’ll come back to you someday soon myself.” That’s the helplessness part, the inconceivable. Yet from within it he find some hope to pull him out, to latch on to.
Simlarly, in “Bedouin Dress,” Pecknold longs “just to be at Innisfree again,” a simple dream of being elsewhere. This dream is symbolized later in the song, when “in the street one day I saw you among the crowd / In a geometric patterned dress / gleaming white just as I recall / Old as I get I will never forget it all.” Wherever he is, dreaming about Innisfree, he found this hopefulness in a crowd.
This all is just the grand view of helplessness. More intricately, Pecknold drops hints of being a soldier, nature, existentialism. He does not go deep into documenting the terrors of war, instead using it as a metaphor of the blues. “Montezuma” for instance is mostly existential wondering, but right that end he drops the reference: “Oh man what I used to be / Montezuma to Tripoli.” “Bedouin Dress” from its title only seems to indicate he is on some foreign shore, for some reason. Far away, longing to return. As you can see from these examples, the military stuff is very slight, and that’s what I mean by Pecknold writing so intricately. He drops just enough for things to perhaps be seen if you’re looking; and even if you don’t see it, it adds mystery and depths to the feelings.
The music is also intricate and beautiful. Perfect acoustic guitars roll into gorgeous and chilling vocal harmonies and melodies, in almost every song. “Sim Sala Bim” begins calmly, and slowly mutates into some intensity. “Battery Kinzie” has more rhythm, “Someone You’d Admire” is of that famous “Fourth Time Around”/”Norwegian Wood” tempo. While the songs share parts, they are diverse enough in sound so as not to get repetitive or desolate. Fleet Foxes have perfected their style so that it draws you in, so that you can’t help but want to explore the helplessness blues.
I’ve written about Lykke Li a couple of times on here, and bothtimes I hinted at the general over-produced nature of her albums. And while I still believe that to be true, every time I step back a bit and just listen and take a wide look at Wounded Rhymes, I really dig it. I love her songs and every time I listened, I liked it more, so the album just climbed up my rankings here.
Lykke Li herself calls the songs “hypnotic, psychotic and more primal” (according to Wikipedia), which is probably the best description of Wounded Rhymes ever. The music throughout the album is catchy pop songs, at its core. I dare you not to be left humming along to “I Follow Rivers,” “Rich Kids Blues,” “Jerome,” any of them really. But this pop nature is rarely pure. Everything has a slightly eccentric twist. The driving rhythms are tempered by quiet melodies, flashes of country and rock and dance and ambient flesh the pop songs out. Lykke Li, perhaps unexpectedly, can blend genres as easily as anyone.
As for the “psychotic and primal” part of these songs, much of that is in the lyrics. Each song is extremely direct. The songs are always very much in the now. “Once again it’s happening…” she starts on “Unrequited Love.” “I know places we can go, babe.” Later, she flat-up declares, “I’m your prostitute / you’re gonna get some.” Most of the songs are in the present tense, and come off quite urgent.
Along with this urgency, most of the songs are also entirely one-direction. That is, there is little indication that love is being returned (“Unrequited Love”), the rivers want to be followed (“I Follow Rivers”), Jerome won’t leave (“Jerome”), that she can actually get love out of lust (“Love Out Of Lust”). That’s what makes these songs so cool and unique, but perhaps also what is slightly off-putting about them as well. “I ranted / I pleaded / I begged you not to go,” and does that ever work? The pain and wounds she sings of — they’re real, but also in a way… not so much. “My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight,” she melodramatically sings, “sadness is my boyfriend, oh sadness, I’m your girl.”
I also should note that I’m probably just barely scratching the surface here. A lot of the stuff she writes about has deeper levels, about selling out as a musician (“I’m your prostitute / you’re gonna get some”) and all this heartbreak may not necessarily even be relationship-based. As she explained the metaphor in this interview, “A lot of times, you’re breaking your own heart. For me, it was realizing that what I thought was love really isn’t love. It’s about that, the ghost of love.”
Those depths in the music and the feelings are what kept pulling me back into Wounded Rhymes, one of my favorite albums of the year.
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