Segunda-feira 3 Jan 2011, 22h:36
Three days deep into in 2011 and I'm still not sure what my thoughts were of 2010 as far as music goes. I know for sure nothing absolutely blew me away, and that a lot of the albums on other top 10 lists don't even appeal to me conceptually. Conversely, I did listen to a lot of very worthwhile albums and don't really recall too many works that flat-out disappointed me. As you should know by now, I rank my albums based the number of plays they received between January 1st and New Year's Eve of 2010. I do not count re-issues of old albums but do allow counts for live albums, even if the date the disc was recorded was not 2010. I do not count single, but will count EPs. (By my count, that made a little less than 60 albums eligible for consideration.) If albums have the same number of listens, I sort them due to a number of X-factors including the length of the album, with longer album length generally getting better rankings (but not always.) Moving on up to #1, here we go….
15. Ben Folds & Nick Hornsby, Lonely Avenue
If there's a knock on Ben Folds, it's that he can sometimes get too clever for his own good. His last studio album suffered from both cutesiness (Effington, The Frown Song) and also quite a lot of bitterness (Brainwasht, You Don't Know Me) Whether that factored in his decision to pass the lyric baton to noted author Nick Hornsby (High Fidelity, Fever Pitch) is up for debate, but the end result sounds a lot like a more contented, naunced Ben Folds solo album. The title track in particular is a great portrait of the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus and what fueled his creativity. The closing track Belinda also scores high dealing with a past-his-prime singer who's old flame was the basis of his biggest – and only – hit. Hornsby also has a few “aren't I clever” lyrics that don't quite click (Saskia Hamilton) ) but overall, the collaboration is a winning one.
14. Rufus Wainwright, All Days are Nights: Songs For Lulu
Like Ben, Rufus earns his keep songwriting through the piano, but whereas Ben can get too jokey, Rufus sometimes flirts too much with the grandiose. His last studio release Release the Stars was like eating a cake made entirely of frosting, which wouldn't have been as difficult if the songs and the lyrics weren't so world-weary and beaten down. There's still a distinct vibe of discontent and malaise in Lulu, but a more stripped-down recording philosophy (basically Rufus, a microphone and a piano) makes for a more rewarding experience. Rufus could have made the entire album about the loss of his talented mother earlier this year. Instead, he balances his insecurity over his mother's illness and how it affects the rest of his family (Martha) with his feelings with the rest of his life (Sad With What I Have, The Dream) There's also three sonnets by William Shakespeare, to which Rufus adds beguiling melodies and offbeat piano playing.
13. The Apples in Stereo, Travelers in Space and Time
Just when we think we have the Apples in Stereo's DNA strand decoded, the veteran Elephant 6 alumni add a few wrinkles to their pop fabric. There's no doubt they're still primarily a retro act, but with more reliance on keyboards and computer programming, they've gone away from the omnipresent The Beatles comparisons to more of an Electric Light Orchestra feel.The strange irony to this is that because a lot of other musicians are looking to keyboards and the 80s as a touchpoint, the Apples are more in tune to the top 40 than in their entire career. They ditched the “creating a new form of music scale” conceit that derailed New Magnetic Wonder and jam Travellers to the gills with bouyant, sleek pop hooks that match up well to anything on hit radio (best bets: Dance Floor and Hey Elevator) While lead Apple Robert Schneider remains the creative majordomo, the bandmates make the most of the shots they're given, especially the bouncy piano pop of No Vacation.
12. The Whigs, In the Dark
One of the many bands I'd heard of from a distance, but never got around to discovering. But I heard In the Dark's leadoff single Kill Me Carolyne which tempted me enough to delve into the whole album. Despite the Whigs' Athens, GA pedigree, the Whigs offer full-blown alternarawk, perhaps 1994/5 vintage. While it's dreadfully out of fashion in most circles, a little bit of stadium-sized drums and thick slabs of guitar wreckage still does it for me. The lyrics are a little weak (Someone's Daughter half-attempts to expose the morality of a one-night stand) but the Whigs do an admirable job flying the flag for the post-grunge sound of the mid '90s.
11. Crowded House, Intriguer
Although he's best-known for a song from 1987 (“Don't Dream It's Over”), Crowded House's Neil Finn has been steadily building a catalogue both dense and substantial. With his Seven Worlds Collide project, he's able to ensnare the cream of the musical crop from pole to pole and spearhead a pop/rock summit. These days, Finn's legacy is showing beyond mere records and concerts as his sons are becoming respectible musicians in their own right. Both his family and his travelling jones show up huge on Intriguer – there are songs about being on a night-train in Russia and being out of sorts in Amsterdam, while Liam adds some lead guitar and his wife sings back-up. There are plenty of great pop songs (Saturday Sun shines brightest) but the whole album hangs together and encourages repeat listens.
10. The Roots, How I Got Over
Being Jimmy Fallon's house band on his late-night chat show hasn't tempered this Philly crew one iota. If anything, they've become more focused, dissecting much of the filler that plagued their earlier albums and delivering tight platters of groove and mood. How I Got Over's clock seems eternally set at 3am, the darkest part of night before the sun arrives… you can hear it in the lonely piano riffs and in the brittle drum fills, and certainly in the effective delivery of Black Thought, who IMO is the MVP of this disc. There's a lot of A-list assistance here (John Legend, Phonte of Little Brother, The Monsters of Folk and Joanna Newsom) but the Roots don't need anyone's help to get their point across here.
9. Spoon, Transference
While I've never been a hardcore Spoon fan (well, except when eating breakfast cereal, because, c'mon, a fork!?) I always like to check them out, as they're an act that takes pleasure in changing and evolving with each new release. I like some more than others, and I suspect Transference will be on the more positive end of the equation. In their own strange, lo-fi way, Spoon are a studio band, and part of the fun in hearing their stuff is seeing how slyly they add in a little console magic. (Is Love Forever? seems to be propelled by a loop of a tape-op machine stopping.) But Spoon can handle a song – and in The Mystery Zone, a groove – on its own, and the results are as catchy as they are peculiar.
8. Dead Heart Bloom, Strange Waves
After his trifecta of EP releases in 2008, Dead Heart Bloom a.k.a. Boris Slasky left himself a large territory of fertile musical ground to set himself on for Strange Waves. The end result was slightly psychedelic dream pop with a distinct rustic and rootsy feel. While he stays more or less in a blissful, gentle frame of mind, his excursions into Nick Drake-like folk (Meet Me) or tense post-punk (opening track Someday Will Not Come Again) don't come across as reaches at all. Matter of fact, these songs sound very lived-in and familiar, which is a testament to Slasky's songcrafting skills. The matter of him breaking through now seems more a matter of “when” rather than “if.”
7. The Like, Release Me
The Like had to deal with a few hurdles upon release of their second LP Release Me. First, the band took half a decade to follow up their tasty debut Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? If that wasn't enough, they completely ditched the winsome anglophile guitar guaze that coated their debut and embraced a garage-y take of the mod 60s sound, complete with farfisa organ. What remained consistant was the pop prowess of singer/songwriter Elizabeth “Z” Berg, who pours on haughty charm and go-go oomph. I have no clue how Walk of Shame didn't become a breakout hit, but there are about four or five other tracks that would have been splendid follow-ups. The biggest drawback is that Release Me is not built for all season. Instead, it's a summer album all the way, devised and engineered to be played in a speeding car with the top (or at least the windows) down.
6. Sun Kil Moon, Admiral Fell Promises
If The Like conjure up a warm, sunny afternoon, the 4th release from Sun Kil Moon evokes a lazy Sunday afternoon. Those pining for Mark Kozelek's loud electric guitar outbursts he pioneered with Moon and his previous band Red House Painters might add “dull” to my description, as this disc is all acoustic, and seemingly just Kozelek by himself. Basically, those familiar with SKM's 2008 work April will see this as an album full of Blue Orchids. Kozelek has never feared an acoustic approach, but his turn towards more classical playing, gives his songs a refreshing new framework. Even if his guitar picking is more complicated, his lyrics a still life portrait of life while traveling and pining for sort of home (3rd and Seneca finds him assigning colors and phrases to the cities he's visited) and his muted, bruised voice like a comfy old sofa.
5. Pernice Brothers, Goodbye, Killer
For the longest time, Joe Pernice's albums have stood together thematically either due to the lyrics or to the production approach. So the biggest eye-opener with this one is that there's no one unifying sound or one single theme tying the songs together. It's still a great album, with one of Joe's most uptempo numbers (Jacqueline Susann) and one of his most endearing excursions into power pop,Something For You. Add in the expected sad sack laments like The Loving Kind (“I'm never gonna be….”) and diary entries of a crumbling relationship (F***ing and Flowers) and Goodbye, Killer is ready to be enjoyed and replayed for those who love their guitar pop with a cerebral and slightly calloused edge.
4. Josh Rouse, El Turista
Another old friend to my top 15 lists, Josh Rouse may live in Spain now, but with his album he's got a passport to Brazil via other warm, exotic places. In reality, this is one of his more populated albums in terms of sound and instrumentation, but entering the ears it sounds as easy-going and laid-back as his spare acoustic ditties. The tropical rhythms compliment Josh's smooth song stylings in numbers like Sweet Elaine and I Will Live on Islands. Josh salutes his new locale by singing a third of the album in Spanish, including Valencia which works up into quite the lather. Josh evens attempts to bring back the Civil War-era folk ballad Cotton-Eyed Joe from the purgatory Rednex banished it to, and gives it that bleary-eyed early morning vibe Rouse excels at.
About all I knew about this band is that they reside in roughly the same geographical area as Mew, a band I'm quite smitten by. Then I heard Swim which sounded like the prom theme at Lewis Carroll High. Oh No Ono are certainly not endowed with Mew's rock swagger, but more than make up for it in new wave presence and iciness. The rest of Eggs (only a 2010 release here in the States) is equally adorned in mystery and glitter; there's a certain sense of a helium leak, and not just in the lead singer's voice. At it's more uptempo spots, they sound like a Fraggle Rock version of the Super Furry Animals; when the pace becomes more deliberate, they're the Flaming Lips with their phasers set to “Art Rock.” Even the two somewhat plodding songs at the end doesn't harsh this LP's mellow. I look forward to having future long and strange trips with these guys.
Easily the biggest shock of the countdown for me. I, like much of the music nerd audience, got my ear bent by Interpol's stellar debut Turn On the Bright Lights but I tired of them much more quickly than others. Anticshad a few good tracks, but mostly seemed by-the-numbers and dispassioned. But their major label bow Our Love to Admirewas even more tossed off, with only leadoff track “Pioneer to the Falls” digging into my cranium. As I heard of the former Great Blog Hope jettisoning their big label for their old indie label and later losing their bassist, I was starting to look at this album as an exercise of schadenfreude than something I would enjoy. Was I ever wrong. If this is Interpol's last LP (as the rumor mill seems to be indictaing) they close their career with an ambitious song cycle about regret, jealousy, and personal turmoil. Sure the leadoff single Barricade is their most groovable slice of vinyl since Obstacle 1 (hmmmm….similarities much?) but the rest of the 10 songs manages a deft balance between majesty and malice, with guitars occasionally slicing through the sonic fog like headlights. The songs build tension like scenes in a good cinematic thriller, and the little sonic nuggets lurking in the background just accelerate the process. (Yes, this is a total headphones album.) I keep going back to this album and find new things to enjoy, and really, isn't that the endgame?
1. The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
No one manages to combine prog rock, shoegaze, and post-rock with psychedelic edge quite like the Besnards. Honestly, I thought their previous effort The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse would be hard to top, but Jace Lasek, Olga Goreas and company ramp up the intensity and stretch out the sonic melodrama. Yeah, they're still singing about trains and being spies, and they still sound great singing, especially together but here they push themselves both aggressively (Glass Printer which is a sludge of sound going downhill) and delicately (closing track The Lonely Moan which is a sigh of release at the end of the album.) Each of these eight songs has at least one moment that reaffirms my passion for music, and that's a good reason it stayed in rotation long enough to become my 2010 record of the year.