Got Into This Year but, uh, it was a really bad year, new music wise, both for me and for the world. I had a lot going on and missed out on a lot of stuff that I would have liked to get and on the other hand most of what happened to music this year was terrible. So instead I'm going to try to do a top Top 10 Albums I
Got Into This Year and will note their release date.
10. Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - A Call to Arms - 2001
Saying "I have been listening to a lot of ska recently" is no longer cool, but it really was never cool. Not really. There were times when it would get you laid, but it would never be cool. The reasons are multifaceted but suffice it to say that, even during its heydays, Ska was too obscure for mainstream people to understand and too different for the indie scene to adopt. Indie, in all its forms, is a underground alternative to the mainstream. A genre that completely ignores the mainstream, even or perhaps especially if it does so while still maintaining the listen-ability and pop hooks prized by it, is somehow too close to home for the underground to be comfortable with. So it is often tarred as overly simple, often phrased as "it all sounds the same." Similar things were said about jazz and hip-hop.
Nonetheless it is clear that ska has fallen far in popularity since the 90s. One man who has consistently stood for quality composition in ska, as well as its continued existence as a genre, is Tomas Kalnoky. This is the guy who wrote all of the first Catch 22 album and then left the band because it was becoming too commercial. After a break of a few years the first thing anyone heard out of him was this album, and it is pretty spectacular, even if it is just an EP. It took me a while to get to but it was worth the wait. Born of a brief desire to get back to his roots as a classically trained Eastern European musician, the group fuses ska and Slavic music in a way that is very natural. In many ways the album is a transition point between his work with Catch 22 and his later work with Streetlight Manifesto. There are a lot of rough edges here but the listener is left wanting a full length very badly. One has been in the works ever since and Kalnoky assures people, whenever he is asked, that it is on the cusp of release. Rumors that his perfectionism being a reason for his leaving Catch 22 are totally unsubstantiated and tangential to this topic and you were very irresponsible to bring them up.
So I got into Lou Reed's solo work after he died. So what. Shut up.
8. Passion Pit - Gossamer - 2012
This is that album with that song that was in commercials about taking a walk. That song is actually a sensitive look at the American Experience in the modern world. The album is catchy and fun and full of similarly insightful looks at modernity. Fun fact: looking at modernity drove the lead singer mad.
The album is very good, but as an indie techno album from a year of indie techno it lacks a certain novelty. This is way better than the albums produced by peers Fun, Owl City, and Foster The People. It's just that after listening to all of them one is wary of the genre.
7. About E - Bongo - ??!! (Probably the early oughts?)
About E is the best thing to come out of this project. A band fronted by Arnold de Boer, who also apparently fronts every other rock band in Holland, manages intensive creative output while also being absurdly difficult to Google. His music is frantically energetic dance punk that makes the most of its lo fidelity and dutch mispronunciation of English to make catchy, clever songs.
6. Bears of Blue River - Remember the Killer Bee Scare - 2009
Oh My God this album. Another happy discovery of this project, I really cannot stop listening to this album. It is really a 4 song EP, which makes its addictive hooks, sweet melodies, and clever song writing just that much harder to walk away from. Work, the needs of family, personal hygiene, none will compare to the draw of this album. Please send help.
5. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories - 2013
This album's quality serves to show how terrible the rest of modern music is. Daft Punk uses the same technology as everyone else on the top 40: sampling. their music sounds lush and immerseive, even when it is being minimalistic. Everyone else on the Top 40 uses music like an inconventient thing they have to do between nip slips and getting high. If you don't want to make music star in a reality show. Otherwise I want some fucking attention to detail. If you are going to make music with samples, get enough to make music. Otherwise learn the fucking guitar. Or the piano. Or the Fucking hurdy gurdy. Arcade Fire did. fuck you. In fact the only issue I have with the album is the collaborations. Not because they are bad, in fact I think this is another area where Daft Punk showed the rest of Music how collaborations are supposed to work, its just a huge fucking pain in the ass for me to find the album on my iPod. I don't care that some tracks featured collaborations, I can read the liner notes, or read wikipedia. I know they want credit but I think that info should be stripped out when on MP3 playlists. Oh, you think I should search by album? Fuck you. Your mom is an album. That's a whole different menu. And don't get me started on random play. Fuck you. I'LL KILL YOU.
4. Arcade Fire - Reflector - 2013
Depending on who you are, Arcade Fire may or may not have raised a lot of questions with this album. One sort might listen to this album and find it spectacular, a masterpiece standing on its own, a painting in a dark warehouse, illuminated by a single spotlight. No questions in that case, it just IS, man. If you are of another sort, you might listen to this album and think "How is it that a band which brought the hurdy gurdy back to relevance sound so modern? Is it even possible for Arcade Fire to make a bad album? How can the modern pop charts be drowning in people claiming to draw influence from Caribbean music, but only a bunch of Canadians can get it right?" Yet another sort has never listened to the Arcade Fire, and reacts with increasingly angry bewilderment at their continued pop chart success. A forth sort had listened to this album and disliked it, but they were sadly hunted to extinction.
3. Sean Nelson - Make Good Choices - 2013
Heartbreaking, wonderful, punchy pop country songs with witty lyrics and a collaborator list to make Bob Geldoff weep. I am going to do a full review later, and I ranted about how amazing it was at the time. Of course it got no press, let alone chart success; that wasn't even on the radar. Despite a few rough patches and shaky production, a spectacular album about everything that is wrong, mostly it is you. Oh yeah this is the guy from Harvey Danger. If you know me you know that I love Harvey Danger, and I was fanatical about this album. What could knock it so low?
2. Kimbra - Vows - 2011
I think most people who got into Gotye followed up on Somebody I Used to Know by looking up his other work. Some of them bought his albums, and that is fine. Like most people I liked the song but wasn't super impressed by his other work. I will probably buy his album at some point. But I am one of those who also looked up Kimbra, his featured vocalist. And. fuck. This girl is 23 right now, and she was 17 when she wrote this album. And. Dude I fucking tear up when I think about this album. It is so fucking good. She is a way better composer than I will ever be at anything I ever try to be. Even things like combing my mustache. no matter how good I get at it, Kimbra will be better at composing.
True, she had some good producers, and with pop tunes it is tough to tell how much is her until we get a second album, but she is the sole songwriter on all her songs except two, and those songs realy stand out. She is an amazingly talented artists and I really want to see the next thing she does. That said, this has to have been an insane trip for her, and I am fine with her taking her time. Some of her best songs are the singles, and the music videos are REALLY well done, so check them out on youtube.
1. Fountains of Wayne - Sky Full of Holes - 2011
This is one of the most perfect albums ever, certainly this band's best. All the songs are tight and there is little dead weight on the album. The lyrics are meaningful and rich and, as you would expect, extremely clever. The title comes from the last song, Cemetery Guns, which will melt your face. Just, clean off.
Depending on who you are, Arcade Fire may or may not have raised a lot of questions with this album. One sort might listen to this album and find it spectacular, a masterpiece standing on its own, a painting in a dark warehouse, illuminated by a single spotlight. No questions in that case, it just IS, man. If you are of another sort, you might listen to this album and think "How is it that a band which brought the hurdy gurdy back to relevance sound so modern? Is it even possible for Arcade Fire to make a bad album? How can the modern pop charts be drowning in people claiming to draw influence from Caribbean music, but only a bunch of Canadians can get it right?" Yet another sort has never listened to the Arcade Fire, and reacts with increasingly angry bewilderment at their continued pop chart success. A forth sort had listened to this album and disliked it, but they were sadly hunted to extinction.
3. Sean Nelson - Make Good Choices - 2013
Heartbreaking, wonderful, punchy pop country songs with witty lyrics and a collaborator list to make Bob Geldoff weep. I am going to do a full review later, and I ranted about how amazing it was at the time. Of course it got no press, let alone chart success; that wasn't even on the radar. Despite a few rough patches and shaky production, a spectacular album about everything that is wrong, mostly it is you. Oh yeah this is the guy from Harvey Danger. If you know me you know that I love Harvey Danger, and I was fanatical about this album. What could knock it so low?
2. Kimbra - Vows - 2011
I think most people who got into Gotye followed up on Somebody I Used to Know by looking up his other work. Some of them bought his albums, and that is fine. Like most people I liked the song but wasn't super impressed by his other work. I will probably buy his album at some point. But I am one of those who also looked up Kimbra, his featured vocalist. And. fuck. This girl is 23 right now, and she was 17 when she wrote this album. And. Dude I fucking tear up when I think about this album. It is so fucking good. She is a way better composer than I will ever be at anything I ever try to be. Even things like combing my mustache. no matter how good I get at it, Kimbra will be better at composing.
True, she had some good producers, and with pop tunes it is tough to tell how much is her until we get a second album, but she is the sole songwriter on all her songs except two, and those songs realy stand out. She is an amazingly talented artists and I really want to see the next thing she does. That said, this has to have been an insane trip for her, and I am fine with her taking her time. Some of her best songs are the singles, and the music videos are REALLY well done, so check them out on youtube.
This is one of the most perfect albums ever, certainly this band's best. All the songs are tight and there is little dead weight on the album. The lyrics are meaningful and rich and, as you would expect, extremely clever. The title comes from the last song, Cemetery Guns, which will melt your face. Just, clean off.
No comments:
Post a Comment