The Daily Sabbatical

Several years ago I was so excited about these guys.  Liela Moss has such a cool, through the cigarette fog voice, and the band seemed to have the Velvet Undergroung drive down pat.  They never really lived up to the potential their first two eps showed, however, and the new(ish) album only disappoints further.  I mean, all the pieces are there, and some of the songs still have the right energy, but most of the time The DS just comes off sounding like a poor man’s Metric.

Without a doubt these guys sound best when the songs follow a steady, building beat a la Heroin and let the somewhat simple mix of guitars wash with Moss’s voice into something insisting.  Somehow, they just can’t make the jump to anything faster without sounding just poppy.  So, again for The Duke Spirit, not a bad album, but not the one they should be making either.

Sovereign.mp3

Some bloggers whinge and grouse (and gripe and whine) about year-end lists, calling them juvenile, obsessed with rank and order, and arbitrary.  To these critics, a  response in the classical argument form of tu quoque:  you write music reviews, jackass.  I, for one, find the year end lists an excellent source of new music, they help me to find the reviewers whose taste most clearly matches mine, and compiling my own gives me a chance to see the forest of the year’s musical offerings by closely examining the trees.  I’m almost always surprised at how good a year it turned out to be.  This year was no exception.

(Note:  Eric at drawerb pointed out that Radiohead, my previous number 3, was officially last year.  So, slide everyone up and add another excellent album to the list…)

10.  Notwist– The Devil, You & Me

Neon Golden was so good that any following album by Notwist will be crippled by the comparison.  Still, those head circling melodies are here and if there is a little less going on as far as song structure goes, sometimes simplicity is a good thing.

9.  Marnie Stern–This is it and I am it and you are it and so is that and he is it and she is it and it is it and that is that.

Somewhat embarassingly Ms. Stern is the only woman on my list this year, but she so clearly outrocks anyone else on the list that she’s an excellent representative for the ladies.  The innovative guitar work and the unrestrained vocals make this one of the year’s most energetic records.  (The album’s title may be annoyingly long, but it more than answers the question by posed by The Strokes.)

8.  Chad Van Gaalen–Soft Airplane

How can Chad Van Gaalen be Neil Young reincarnated when Neil is still alive?  Nevermind.  This Canadian’s third album sees him out of his small sophomore slump and expanding his songwriting horizons.  Best one man band I know of.

7.  Vampire Weekend–s/t

This makes private-school Robert, with a penchant for Peter Gabriel and Pennyloafers, very happy.  It makes public-school Robert very suspicious, in no small part because it is catchy as as an STD in Thailand.  Very difficult to dislodge from Car CD players.

6.  Fleet Foxes–s/t

I get tires of My Morning Jacket’s Jams despite my love of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James.   (Jesus!)  Fleet Foxes comes to the rescue with a debut that introduces us to one of the best vocalist’s going: Robin Pecknold.  The Breugel cover of their album tells you something about their sound–let’s call it Feudal Folk and move on.

5.  Mountain Goats–Heretic Pride

John Darnielle puts out his second best album–nothing will beat Tallahassee probably–but his second best is good enough to be one of the best of the year.  Darnielle’s songs give us a peek through windows we would otherwise never approach, in part because the folks inside might be playing with pistols.  Easily one of our best songwriters.

4. Devotchka–A Mad and Faithful Telling

Beirut and Calexico can put up their horns and balalaikas.  Devotchka wins the international sound award.  Take Roy Orbison, David Byrne, a Mariachi band and a polka band, put it all in a blender with a shot of vodka and you have Devotchka.  Transliterator might be the best song of the year.

3. Foals–Antidotes

There’s definitely something Rapture-ous about these guys, but where The Rapture left the races and went off the tracks, Foals gets the checkered flag.  Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, with guitar and bass counterpoint.  Pitchfork desperately needs to revisit their review on this one.

2.  Bon Iver–For Emma, Forever Ago

The most beautiful album of the year introduces us to Justin Vernon, the year’s most exciting new songwriter.  Sam Beam can relax–the gift doesn’t all rest on his shoulders now.

1.  Deerhunter–Microcastles/Weird Era Cont.

An album in the top spot should be difficult to describe, and this one certainly fits that ticket.  Deerhunter has thrown some elements of shoegaze in here, though without foregoing the crisp pop songs.   There are drifting, semi-psychedelic melodies as well as bass-driven tunes of a Sonic Youthy color.  This album just has everything.  Even without Weird Era Cont., the accompanying disc of outtakes and add-ins which would probably merit a place on this list on its own, Microcastles is the most complete album of the year.

One of the only good things about grading is that it’s the type of work I can do while listening to music.  (The same errors get pretty easy to spot.)  Keeping that in mind, I made several purchases yesterday.  Most of them consist of new stuff which I haven’t fully digested yet, but one deserves mentioning immediately: Neil Young’s 1971 Massey Hall concert, released last year.  I’m a pretty big Neil fan, but anyone with ears has to like this record.  The recording quality is just outstanding–I actually had to stop grading for most of the record because it pulled me in so completely.  Neil is playing solo here, and his guitar work is jawdropping.  He plays what were then “mostly new” songs, but which we now know as songs from Harvest.  I can’t post anything, because I’d probably get my pants sued off, but most people know what they’ll be getting.  If you aren’t a Neil fan yet, give this one a try.  It gives shivers.

I have a lot of admiration for Nick Thorburn, the guy behind Islands, The Unicorns, and several other projects.  He knows how to write a song, has a beautiful voice, and obviously has energy to spare.  Nevertheless, I never really grow attached to his albums.  Moody Motorcycle–a collaborative product of Thorburn and Jim Guthrie under the moniker Human Highway–is no exception.  I fall in love with songs for a moment and then kind of move on.  Nevertheless, I do fall in love for a moment–with the harmonies, most of all.  This is a strong album, really–much better than it was rated on Pitchfork, I think.  As the cover indicates, there’s a sort of sixties folk feel to many of the songs–excepting, most obviously, the title song which makes me think of Smashing Pumpkins for some reason.
I know this is a thoroughly conflicted review–that’s the nature of my relationship with Nick Thorburn apparently.  Still, listen to the track below–no one can deny that it is just lovely.

The Sound.mp3

If you have nightmares where you are pursued along the wharf with calliope music fluting your doom in the background, this album probably isn’t for you.  If you like the idea of Danny Elfman collaborating with The Clientele, however, listen up.  Misophone is a production of two guys from Bristol who are apparently cranking out songs left and right.  This is supposedly their thirteenth (or fourteenth?) album, though its only the second I find evidence of.  Whatever.  These guys have a flair for the tune, and could probably hang out with the Elephant Six crowd if they ever came out of their attic.  It rides the line between happy and very dark–sorta like a bad clown.  I have to say, the melodies are very simple and can get cloying after a while (especially with the oom-pah, oom-pah-pah on the bass clef) but they are incredibly entertaining in smaller doses.  For some, it will be essential listening.  For me, they’ll make their way into lots of mix tapes and will probably be played at the funerals of household pets.

Spisska nove ves.mp3

Fans of Field Music take note: the Brewis brothers are pursuing separate projects that are easily as good as recent FM output.  The Week That Was is lead by Peter Brewis, and it has a sort of 80s epic feel that reminds me at times of Tears for Fears and the early Peter Gabriel/Genesis.  For those who are cringing: stop!  TWTW is no mere repeat and they don’t deserve to be simply lumped in with the wave of 80s revivalists. If you don’t like the sort of scenic rock driven by keyboards and minor keys, you can probably leave these guys aside.  But what they are doing is neither easy nor boring rehash.  The ambitious scope of these works is to be applauded, and it’s a damn fine thing to have albums every now and again that are albums and not collections of songs.  I keep this one next to my cd player and just sink into it every couple of days.  More albums like this please.
The Airport Line.mp3

Back when I was a Providence boy, I went to see quite a few Stringbuilder/Purple Ivy Shadows shows, and even bought a few albums.  So, you’d think I would be a little quicker recognizing the elements of these bands in Death Vessel.  Instead, I went the first listen and a half thinking the vocals were sung by a woman and was mystified to discover that woman’s name was Joel Thibodeau. The confusion now all cleared up, and I have my bearings.

The girlish sounding Thibodeau is the singer/songwriting force behind the misleadingly named Death Vessel.   They hail from Rhode Island and present a very pleasant, light brand of Americana that prizes melodies over hootenannys.  The songs often involve shy, semi-poetic vocals sung over picked guitars with a relatively sedate rhythm section.  It’s pretty, but for me it doesn’t stick.  I do find choruses repeating in my head after the tracks close, and I admire Thibodeau’s sense of melody, but I’m neither really challenged nor seduced by anything on this album.  It just doesn’t hold my attention.  It’s a shame, cause there’s a lot here to like.  Just check out the utterly charming opening track below and you’ll see what I mean.

Block My Eye.mp3

This album has absolutely knocked my shit out. I’ve enjoyed previous Made Out of Babies efforts as a sort of a loud novelty, admiring their punk commitment, but I was unprepared for The Ruiner. Reminiscent of Silverfish, Daisy Chainsaw, and some of the Amphetamine Reptile bands of the 90s, MOB comes in with a pummeling bass and layers of guitar sounds that make me want to punch holes in my walls. Julie Christmas, the band’s vocalist, sounds like a damaged Bjork screaming (right on pitch, mind you) over the band’s screwy hooks and drives. This is like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with balls. I’ll bet not many reviewers have this next to Devotchka on their year’s best list, but who cares. Love it.
Cooker.mp3

Six years ago The Notwist released Neon Golden, the best album of that year. Mixing beautiful songs with glitchy beats, they beat The Postal Service to the punch and, in my opinion, their songs have remained fresh while those of Gibbard and Tamborello have faded. A good part of the reason is that The Notwist uses guitars to excellent effect, both in establishing rhythm and in supplementing the melody. This summer sees the band return with more of what makes them great. Markus Acher’s songs are as strong as ever, with lyrics that remain intriguing by dodging the obvious and with tunes that have to be forced out of the head before they take it over. The Devil, You + Me doesn’t knock me over like Neon Golden, but that’s a lot to ask Expectations are high, and to be sure, music has moved on a bit since 2002, so there’s no revolution coming with this album. Nevertheless, it’s bound to be one of my favorite albums of the year, and I suspect that if its ranking is determined purely by number of spins in my player it will be a competitor for the very top place.

Gloomy Planets.mp3

If you’re going to name a band after a celebrity, you couldn’t do any better than Abe Vigoda.  After all, it was Barzini all along.  AV has generated a goodish amount of buzz with the releast of “Skeleton,” their second release, and touring with fellow Los Angelenoids No Age has raised their profile even further.  It was hearing about their live show–hearing that it blew No Age off the Stage–that led me to check out the album.  My judgment, in the end, is that I wish I’d seen them live.  Not that the album is bad.  It’s certainly not: it packs a consistently hard punch from track one to track fourteen.  Led by furious drums and layered, ringing guitars, every song is a swirling soup of sound.  It is, though, a little too consistent for my tastes.  It’s not hard to catch on to the tricks here, and though I really like both the ideas and the execution, it’s a little bit one-trickish.   I’m also not wild about the muted production which keeps the drums and guitars from popping out of the speakers and leaves the vocals consistently low in the mix.  Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be impressed, and some people willgo wild for this.  If you like the idea of hearing Man Man meet Animal Collective, you might be one of them.

Bear Face.mp3