My Favorite Music of 2014

Here we go again.  This yearly list is one of the last remaining rituals from when this blog was much more focused on reviews of and discussions about current art and media; I used to post frequent movie and music reviews, and slowly over the years it morphed into a much more personal blog.  Early on, I posted multiple year-end “favorite” lists (I avoid calling them “best of” lists, but only because it seems to piss some of you off).  One year I went as far to make a Favorite Poetry, Favorite Television, Favorite Magazines, Favorite Movies, and Favorite Music lists!  The last 3 or so years, I have only made a music list.  I still like to closely follow new-release movies, but I can no longer make a pointed effort to see enough of them in a timely fashion to make a comprehensive yearly list.

If you have any interest, you can see past year’s music lists here (they did go even further back, but they were on MySpace blogs that have unfortunately disappeared):

Favorite Music of 2013

Favorite Music of 2012

Favorite Music of 2011

Favorite Music of 2010

Favorite Music of 2009

As per usual, if you are a person who routinely gets mix discs and other neat stuff from me in the mail, a mix disc featuring a selection from all of this year’s listings is already in the mail on it’s way to you.  If you are not one of these people and want to be, leave a blog comment/ send me a Facebook message/ text me/ call me/ hit me up on Tinder (huh?) and I’ll put you on the list!  Now, the winners:

This was an especially fertile year for music for me; I’d estimate I listened to approximately 80 new-release albums this year, and really loved about half of those.  This was by far the most difficult year I’ve had when it comes to narrowing down my selections!  Some of my favorite artists had no releases this year, so it was easier to not play favorites and just judge what moved me the most.  Here are the top fifteen, in order:

15.  Modest Mouse, “Lampshades on Fire”

This is the first time in the history of my lists that I have included a single song instead of an album, but I didn’t see as I had a choice.  Modest Mouse’s new album doesn’t come out until March 2015, but this lead single, which was released about 3 weeks ago, has been almost the only thing I’ve been listening to since it came out.  An absolute piece of snarling perfection.

14.  Real Estate, Atlas

If you have any idea what “shoegaze” rock is, and you haven’t heard this album, may I suggest you stop being an idiot?

13.  Phish, Fuego

Finally a return to form after a number of disappointing releases, Fuego finds the band weaving tight, crisp jams over sparse but giddy lyrics that start to hint at the pains of being post-middle age, with a little bit of supreme confidence thrown in for good measure.

12.  Parquet Courts, Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea

This New York post-punk-post-pop-pre-rockabilly (huh?  Here I am just joking; the music media loves to label Parquet Courts in so many ways it is ludicrous; they just make “rock” music, albeit kinda…punky?  Amateury?) really hit their stride this year, releasing two back-to-back masterpieces (the second, Content Nausea, being released by their alter ego band, Parkay Quarts).  These taut, coiled, short screeds blast at you like beautiful insults; they are loveable songs that you want to run from.

11.  The Orwells, Disgraceland

The Orwells steamrolled onto everybody’s radar this year with this unforgettable performance on Letterman.  That song (called “Who Needs You”) also features some truly daring lyrics: “You better count your blessings/ kiss your ma and pa/ You better burn that flag/ ’cause it aint against the law!/ Listen up forefathers:/ I’m not your son/ You better save the country/ You better pass the flask/ You better join the army/ I said: no thank you, dear old uncle sam!”.  When their full-length album, Disgraceland, was released shortly after the Letterman appearance, it didn’t much matter that it was a disappointing collection of small-talent noise rock: “Who Needs You” was a song debut good enough to buy them a few years of grace period.

10.  The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

These home-grown Philly boys blew me away with the first track on this album (while not their first album, it’s their first ‘major’ album, and the first I’d heard).  The album is aptly titled, as, if I had to name this genre of rock, I’d call it Dream Rock.  Standout track “Under the Pressure” was my anthem of early summer this year, and provided a soundtrack on repeat for my visit home to Central PA and my friend Michael’s wedding.  I have a clear memory of sitting in my dad’s car after arriving to her wedding, blasting the air conditioning, listening to “Under the Pressure” on repeat, and waiting to get out of the car until I saw someone I knew.

9.  El Ten Eleven, For Emily

One of the more unique “post-rock” outfits in the biz, this duo utilizes looping and custom instruments to create full, intensely emotive sounds.  For Emily is just a 5-song EP, but it is far from a toss-off and there is zero filler.  The production is crisper and cleaner than I’m used to from these guys; I can hear the guitarist’s fingers on the strings, a pleasant departure from the more clinical sound of their earlier (and still amazing) records.

8. Willis Earl Beal, Experiments in Time

The supremely “artsy” blues-psychedlia-R&B crooner of last year’s exquisite Nobody Knows came back right away with a solid follow-up; however, Experiments in Time lacks the urgency and necessity of his previous efforts.  Still, Time succeeds where most artists fail: every moment of this is something that could only have been made by Beal.  Everything he does is unmistakably his, a quality that is more and more rare these days.

7.  Hey Rosetta!, Second Sight

Those of you who have followed my blog for years now may be surprised by this band’s new album ranking seventh on my list this year (they’ve released two albums since I started making lists, each one ranking #1 on their release year).  I continue to maintain Hey Rosetta! as my favorite band (although it keeps being by thinner and thinner margins) and my discovery of them about 6 or 7 years ago remains a defining event of my life; alas, nothing stays perfect forever.  There are lots of moments to like on Second Sight, and a few of these songs would turn up on mix CDs I might make of the band; however, the breathless, emotion-drenched moments I crave from them are a bit too infrequent, and the times the band tries to stretch and evolve often sound too under-developed.  Nonetheless: solid, earnest, and soulful.

6.  Mono, The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness

The premier Japanese post-rock band has finally made their masterpiece in these two simultaneously-released twin albums; Dawn explores the light, uplifting possibilities of this genre, and Darkness its depressing underbelly. Both albums are instant post-rock classics; when listened to back-to-back, it can be a damn-near enlightening experience.

5.  Delta Spirit, Into the Wide

Finally this band, who I have always loved, completely lets loose.  They get big and epic.  These are songs about hearts as big as prairies, unchecked regret, the loss of innocence, and the decay of America.  The tales are told through booming guitar loops and underlying synth structures, long atmospheric intros and cacophonous crescendos.  Singer Matt Vasquez’s voice breaks in just the right places, just the right amount of times, like a pubescent boy finally learning to control the caged beast within.

4.  This Will Destroy You, Another Language

This year, This Will Destroy You entered the small league of BANDS THAT ALWAYS MESS ME UP EMOTIONALLY.  This intense, emotive post-rock group from Texas (where else have we heard of a Texas post-rock band?) started out my year amazingly, as I worked my way through their back catalog and they made my life better.  I was caught off guard late in the year by the release of a new album!  Another Language doesn’t often reach the sublime levels of their early work, but some standout tracks (“Newtopia”, “Dustism”, “Serpent Mound”) can make a comfortable home with their best material.

3. Stars, No One is Lost

This band just keeps on growing on me.  They are wholly unique.  They fuse an indie/alternative vibe with a pop sensibility and then throw in melancholy, defeatist lyrics for a sound and feeling you simply cannot get anywhere else.  No One is Lost absolutely has to be their best album yet.  You leave it dancing your ass off, but with no idea what to feel.  The emotional confusion that Stars provokes is completely intentional and positively riveting.

2.  Warpaint, Warpaint

The album is self-titled, but it isn’t their debut album (it’s their third).  This album slithered under my skin from moment one.  It is sinister, sexy, and deliciously complex.  It is bombastic, mathematical, dynamic, coiled.  It punches, swerves, licks, plays.  The four women in Warpaint refuse to make “chick rock”, but they also do not ignore that they are women; this is rock music made from a woman’s perspective, but for everybody.  It’s not about being a woman, it’s about the experience of life, of living in bodies, the depth of feeling, the smell of smoke, the touch of a raindrop, barely felt.  This album is a sensual gut-punch.

1. Silver Mt. Zion, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything

This is not music for everybody.  This band–and especially this album by this band–is a pretty unhappy affair.  It does not focus on the good things in life.  It’s about dirt, pain, rot.  It is, at times, about rising above these things, about triumph–but it is about triumph as afterthought, as happenstance.  This is perhaps not a complete and accurate portrait of life: but it is not a perspective without its truth.

This downtrodden thematic perspective is accompanied by the band’s usual lengthy, repetitive, droning postpunk post-everything mess rock, but with a little (a little) more typical song structure than usual.  Like I said: this isn’t for everybody.  But you know who it is for?  Me.  While not a single song on this album could ever come even remotely close to being played on the radio (I think most radio stations would pay money to keep it away) it is, to me, one of those rarest things in modern music: true art, worthy of museum display.

 

 

Seth’s Favorites of 2010: Music

It’s that time of year again: time for my much-anticipated (by me) year-end favorites lists!  However, I won’t be going whole-hog like I did last year; this year there will only be two lists: music and movies, and of course the movies list has to wait till the very end of the year, as most of the best movies get released right at the tail end of the year for top-of-mind Oscar consideration.  But I’ve looked at a bunch of upcoming CD release schedules and it seems safe to compile my music list at this point.

It’s been a huge year in my world for new music.  As such, I was simply unable to limit my list to a top ten list.  So what follows is my top 15 list of albums released in the calendar year 2010.  As always, a bangin’ mix CD has been made featuring all of the entries, and it can be yours simply for the asking.  So ask.  It’ll change your life!  Anyway, here’s the list:

15.  We Are Scientists, Barbara

I’ve been resisting We Are Scientists for a few years–liking them but not loving them–finding their sound just a little too “poppy” for my tastes.  And this year’s Barbara maintains that pop bent while getting a bit bristlier, brasher, brazen.  Head-bobbing fun with a slight smell of incense.

14.  Menomena, Mines

These Portland experimental indie rockers jumped out at me very recently after a kickass performance on “Last Call with Carson Daly” (people make fun of this show, but it is hands-down the best showcase for fringe music on broadcast television).  You can see that performance here.  Yes, the whole album is that good.  Plus you can learn from Carson how to pronounce the band’s name.

13.  Kings of Leon, Come Around Sundown

The Kings’ unique blend of Southern rock with Eastern indie aesthetic and teenage-boy wet-dream lyrics are, unfortunately, gone for good it seems, after this album and it’s predecessor, Only By the Night, have proven.  However neutered their new shiny studio-sheen may be, these are still good songs that haven’t quite veered from the band’s main mission of honesty in a dishonest world.

12.  Cold War Kids, Behave Yourself

I’d have charted the latest Kids’ album higher if it weren’t just a 5-song EP.  Of the 5 songs, 3 are great and 2 are useless; I figured that’s a pretty good ratio.  The slow-rolling opening track, “Audience” sounds very boring, and on the tenth listen becomes a pressure cooker of awesomeness that almost makes my head explode.  A gem of hidden nuance.  Here’s hoping for a full-length album in 2011.

11.  Black Mountain, Wilderness Heart

These hard-rocking Canadians usually rock a little too hard for me.  I’ve been a fan for awhile, but most albums have 5 songs for me and 5 songs for a demographic of slightly “headbangerish” types.  And while Wilderness Heart is a heavy album, they’ve incorporated a bit of “Americana” sound into the mix; think Huey Lewis and John Mellancamp sitting in with Black Sabbath.  Me likes.

10.  Spoon, Transference

  These guys are basically some of the grandaddys of what we might flippantly call “indie rock”, and a new Spoon album is nothing to ignore.  What amazed me the most is how they came at us with more snarl and venom (both lyrically and musically) than they had in the past; unlike most musicians, they are not aging into happy, content men.  The dissonance and dejection of standout track “Written in Reverse” is an especially tasty treat; vocalist Britt Daniel’s lyrics take on the quality of a maniacal Shel Silverstein.  Few rock lyricist bother with such intricacies.

9.  Interpol, Interpol

  The post-punkers’ fourth album (self-titled) is also their best to date; scorching, intricate rhythms and time signatures and pleading, near-death-experience vocals.  Few bands know how to leave empty spaces in their music with such expertise as Interpol.  You’ll be just as impressed with the wall of sound they don’t create as with the one they do.

8.  Stars, The Five Ghosts

Watch:

7.  Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter can be seen as a freak-show band, at times, veering from a populist mainstream sensibility all the way to unlistenable experimentation.  But 2010’s Halcyon Digest boils away most of the band’s stylistic pretenses and finds the heart at the song’s cores.  Sure, sometimes I still think This band is not comprised of folks I’d want to hang out with, but they made an album that is, above all, compelling.

6.  Drive-By Truckers, The Big To-Do

 One of the few bands I legitimately call “alt-country”–with an emphasis on the alt—the Truckers have always specialized in telling tales about the bizarro nature of American culture, usually with twists involving tragedy, redemption, and the sad and glorious nature of everything in between.  But the stories have never been as vivid as they are on The Big To-Do; lead track “Daddy Learned to Fly” is a study in lyrical simplicity and inference that I’m tempted to call it Faulknerian.  Other standouts, like “The Wig He Made her Wear” and “Drag the Lake Charlie” may sometimes try too hard, but no track on this album fails to try hard enough.

5. Mumford and Sons, Sigh No More

The new-ish country/ shoegaze/ psychedelia/ bluegrass fusion group isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds, but there is definitely plenty of fiddle and banjo to go with the bass and guitars as they swell and wane through this bombastic album’s wild ride.  Not re-inventing the light bulb, but still pretty unlike anything I’ve heard before.

4.  The National, High Violet

 It’s hard to describe The National.  At first listen they might seem boring, unfocused, even untalented.  But listen a few times and grand schemes reveal themselves, and crescendoes fall into place where you hadn’t even heard them.  Suddenly it’s as if you were translating a book in a language you had not even known before, and now the language on the page simply snaps into focus.  On High Violet, lyricist Matt Berninger’s words have become cryptic tomes of modern art worthy of a Thomas Pynchon novel.  “I gave my heart to the Army./ The only sentimental thing I could think of. / With colors and cousins and somewhere overseas/  But it’ll take a better war to kill a college man like me. / You and your sister live in a lemonworld. / I want to sit in and die.”

3. Band of Horses, Infinite Arms

2. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

There can be little doubt that Arcade Fire is the most important rock band of our time.  Their intent is serious but not pretentious, artistic but not demeaning.  Their songs are meant to sound really good but also make you think.  It’s no accident that their most vocal fan is David Bowie; their music harkens back to a time when heady, serious material could fill stadiums and make people dance to songs about the disintegration of the modern family unit, or the trappings of fame, or plain old death.  Not everything, they claim, is about sex.

The Suburbs is their most ambitious album yet.  It’s an old-fashioned concept album about—you guessed it–the suburbs.  (it’s a subject more ripe from examination than you may imagine)  Ultimately, the band doesn’t pass much judgement on the rise of the suburbs, but they do pass judgement on human nature (seems it’s usually bad, sometimes good), because it seems even in the paradise of the suburbs, human nature is still in charge.  Most music critics love the album but charge it with being overlong; I, too, will raise that charge.  There are at least 4 and as many as 6 unnecessary songs that are only tangentially related to suburbs, bringing the album dangerously close to 2 hours long.  But what do we expect from greatness?  Sometimes I think David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” is actually half an hour long!  The Suburbs would certainly be my album of the year if this had not been released:

1.  Grinderman, Grinderman 2

 Grinderman is a side project of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  NOT a side project of Nick Cave, but the band in general.  You take the Bad Seeds (generally a large band of 6 or 7 members, depending what year it is), strip away all but the four core members, and erase any of the tender, thoughtful, delicate lyrics and themes in Cave’s words, and you’ve got Grinderman, a band of 50-60 year old men wailing away on instruments with a rascal intensity and Cave rasping about sex, violence, loss and being a badass in the most poetic, virulent, bold fashion imaginable.  Their debut album of 2 years ago thrilled me, but this one takes a huge motherfucking cake.  Cave is, aside from a musician, a highly respected poet and screenwriter, and when he lets loose what some might call his id, there are very few things more pleasurable to this fan.  Buy the CD; there’s an incredibly packaged deluxe edition for a very reasonable price. 

So, there you have it folks!  Another year’s worth of my favorite music.  What a satisfying year it’s been!  Remember to send me a text, e-mail, or leave a comment of you want a copy of this kickass mix disc!

Great song titles by the band Stars

“In Our Bedroom After the War”

“Take Me to the Riot”

“Today Will Be Better, I Swear”

“Your Ex-Lover is Dead”

“Set Yourself on Fire”

“What I’m Trying to Say”

“He Lied About Death”

“One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead)”

“The Last Song Ever Written”

“We Don’t Want Your Body”

“I Died So I Could Haunt You”

“What the Snowman Learned About Love”

“Counting Stars on the Ceiling”

“A Thread Cut with a Carving Knife”

Monday’s Song: Stars, “Take Me to the Riot”

Take Me to the Riot

Grey skies and light fading,
headlamps making patterns on the wall.
Uptown it’s dead now
but out here no one seems to care at all.
Slick girls and sick boys and each one lining up to take it home.
They hold tight their coin and
they pray no one has to see them fall.
I’m there, yeah, I serve them,
the one with the empty looking eyes.
Come closer, you’ll see me:
the face that is used to telling lies.

Saturday nights in neon lights,
Sunday in the cell.
Pills enough to make me feel ill,
cash enough to make me well.
Take me, take me to the riot!

You sprung me, I’m grateful.
I love when you tell me not to speak.
I owe you but I know you,
you’ll have me back but it’s gonna take a week.
What now kid?  Which way love?
Will we ever make up and be friends?
Good news is my shoes is
lined with all my nickels and my tens.
Let’s do them! Just feed me;
I hate when I have to get to sleep.
You despise me and I love you.
It’s not much but it’s just enough to keep.

Saturday nights in neon lights,
Sunday in the cell.
Pills enough to make me feel ill,
cash enough to make me well.
Take me, take me to the riot,
and let me stay!