2011 New Year's List

Believe it or not, this used to be a blog about music. Some of you may remember when I used to write reviews of new albums, along with the occasional essay. Simpler times. Times with more free time, really. I've spent the last four months being as busy as I've ever been, and the music listening has suffered as a result. I wish I could say I'm as well versed in this year's releases as I was in years prior, but I'm not. I'm really not.

It would be disingenuous of me to provide you with a Top 10 list. Getting past my lingering doubts about numbered lists, I don't think I've listened to most of this year's releases enough times to really get a sense of them. Having said that, I can still make some recommendations. Here are the things that did manage to bend my ear in the last 365 or so days.

Albums:
There weren't that many complete albums that held my interest, to be honest. Which could be due to my not paying attention, or maybe there just wasn't anything that really hit me right. There are albums I still want to talk about, though. A few I loved. A few were great. And a few I'm still not sure about, but I feel compelled to discuss.

Lykke Li's Wounded Rhymes was one of the two albums I really fell in love with this year. I still haven't listened to Youth Novels, her previous album, nearly enough, but that's largely because it always sounded a bit empty to me. Musically, it created the skeleton, and didn't put on the flesh. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but on her second album, Li elected to go big or go home. The album opens with "Youth Knows No Pain," as massive as opening tracks get. It's more than that; for this album, it's a statement of intent. In her writing, she creates the same corners as her last album, but here she fills them in. Some will walk away feeling like she stuffed them to the point of bursting. It helps, I think, that her singing is so restrained. Like her Nordic sister Annie, she turns her lack of emoting (to be fair, she does a great sad) into a strength. These tracks with a voice eager to share would be overwrought and too much. But Li's lyrics need something to drive them home, and, for her, it's the marvelously detailed music going on all around her. If you get the chance, pick up the actual single for "Get Some". The non-album b-side, "Paris Blue," is intoxicating in the right mood.

Alison Krauss & Union Station were not a band I had put high up on my list of expectations for the year, but I loved Paper Airplane as much, if not more, than anything else that came out in 2011. I listened to it almost every night in June, and it's easy to see why. The title track is my favorite piece of songwriting from the last year. The cover of "Dimming of the Day" is elegant, understated, and the perfect vehicle for Krauss' crystalline voice. "On the Outside Looking In" gives Dan "Foggy Bottom Boys" Tyminski a powerhouse of a bluegrass number. And throughout the album, you are reminded of what it's like to listen to people who can really play their instruments. There aren't many bands so fine-tuned at playing together as this lot. "Paper Airplane" along is a masterclass in handling dynamics and feel. And what's truly terrifying is that they make the whole thing sound effortless.

I'm happy to admit that I jumped on the Elbow bandwagon when most people did, around the release of 2008's The Seldom Seen Kid. In that time, I've really only listened to their first album, Asleep in the Back, and their latest, Build a Rocket Boys!. They are a band that requires time, under the best of circumstances, but they reward it fully; every time I listen to one of these three albums, I like it just a little bit more. Guy Garvey writes lyrics perfectly pitched between the every-day and the grand; He's Springsteen if Springsteen didn't sometimes leave me with the uneasy aftertaste of pandering. On the music front, as with all of their releases, this is a beautiful, patient album, full moments of intense quiet and cathartic release. It makes you wonder why more bands don't take advantage of both the "loud" and "quiet" opportunities music can afford. Probably because it's so damn difficult. Elbow used to be pegged as Radiohead/Coldplay also-rans. That has always been unfair. Radiohead are far afield in their own world. Coldplay are one of the biggest bands in the world. Elbow, meanwhile, have once again quietly made the argument that they are the best.

It's an aphorism at this point that there's nothing original left to do in music. In the broadest sense, that is likely true. But I firmly believe that, working in specifics, there will always be something new to do. And lo tUnE-yArDs' w h o k i l l, an engrossing take on what popular music can be. The rhythms are always somehow jilted, but the music moves seamlessly between melodic and dissonant, between the angularly beautific ("Wolly Wolly Gong") to the riotous ("Gangsta") to the frustrated ("My Country"). As far as replay value is concerned, I am drawn to words more than music, which is why I will always rate The National above this, and Randy Newman above everything else, but the music gets you in the door in the first place. And this is some of the best music you will hear. If you like it a little weird.

It's likely this will become known as the Difficult Radiohead album, a title that seems to get perpetually back-shifted with each new release since it was first claimed by either Kid A or Amnesiac, depending on whom you ask. For my money, the difficult one is still Pablo Honey, but that's a cheap shot. The King of Limbs is definitely the low-key Radiohead album, which is both to its credit and detriment. The upshot is that it makes the outward statement of appearing calm while feeling anything but, and that's not easy to pull off. The downside? You have to pay it much more mind than previous releases, and I'm still not positive it rewards the effort. But I keep coming back to it, and I've not been the sort who would blindly follow a band anywhere for at least the last year and a half. The first half is where my uncertainty lies. But that half is texture. The second half, the songs, is hauntingly beautiful. And if none of it is knew, well, neither was anything on Hail to the Thief. I'll still get excited about the next one.

I want to spend more time with Bad as Me, but I want to spend more time with Tom Waits albums in general, so that's hardly surprising. It's harder and has more drive than what he's done before. There's no "Misery's the River of the World", in sense of arrangements moreso than tone. He takes a (modest) step away from the mad carnival director angle, and while I've yet to tire of that take, it's probably the right time. "Bad as Me" is the most immediately engaging song he's written. Everything before that and after doesn't quite stick in the mind, at least not yet; but, as I said, I'd like a
while longer with it.

St. Vincent's Strange Mercy is well worth listening to just for the second track, "Cruel," which a coworker described as the best song he'd heard in years. He might be right. St. Vincent specializes in putting together all these lovely, completely singable bits and pieces, and then slathering them with baroque arrangements and fuzzed-out guitar. It can have mixed results; her first album, Marry Me, isn't as good when you're not listening to it as it is when you are, while her second album, Actor, is flat-out awesome. I'm not sure what I make of Strange Mercy. The perfect "Cruel" aside, the songs don't come together for me. The verses are great, and then the choruses annoy me. And so it goes.

At long last, it is here. 40-odd years of waiting have seen the original tapes for the infamous Smile Sessions come out in an official release. Brian Wilson's final days as an uncontested genius on display for all the world to see. What separates it from the 2004 release of SMiLE, recorded by Brian Wilson and a few magic fairies? Well, for one, this one's actually sung by the Beach Boys. The first second of the album makes it abundantly clear as to why that matters. While the "Our Prayer" on 2004's album was beautiful, this one is transcendent. "Heroes and Villains" contains more twists and turns than most albums do. "Surfs Up" is haunting. Outside of that, I'm not so sure what I think. The music is often top-flight, but the lyrics, written by Van Dyke Parks, refuse to mean anything to me. Worse than that, they feel like they're striving for meaning. I don't mind meaningless prattle when it knows that's what it is. As for the extensive bonus material, Brian's solo demo of "Surfs Up" is my favorite thing here, including everything from the album proper.

I seem to be in the minority on Bon Iver, Bon Iver. I don't like it for reasons entirely unrelated to the embracing of soft rock. I've listened to it seven or eight times, in a multitude of settings and mindsets, and I just don't like it. I don't like how it sounds, I don't like how it's mixed. Some of it is beautiful, and Justin Vernon's voice remains an incredible instrument, but I just don't like it. It's too busy, I guess. I'm coming to piece with it. Everyone else can enjoy it, though. Don't stop on my account.

Another disappointment, ultimately, was Brad Paisley's new album, This Is Country Music. Unlike his still-masterful American Saturday Night, after a few spins, the new one smelled suspiciously like pandering. Which, too be fair, may have been an attempt to apologize for recommending on his last album that country music embrace multiculturalism. A final album note, I wish I had spent more time with Laura Marling's A Creature I Don't Know. She remains truly impressive.

101

101
Keren Ann

Pop music is all about the sound. The writing is secondary. That's not to say the writing is less valuable, as the best bands are those where the writing and the sound come together in glorious, glorious congress. But the sound is where it starts, even for the writing snobs such as myself.

In movies, great acting can make an alright movie very, very good. "Rachel Getting Married" comes to mind. But in pop music, a great sound can make a mediocre song mind-blowing. "Be My Baby." I need say no more.

This brings us to Keren Ann. Her songs are... they're good. Often just alright, honestly. For my money, she's only ever written one exceptional song, "Lay You Head Down". But hers is a sound that makes me want to cry. And I mean that as a compliment.

Her new album, 101, changes none of this. The songs are... decent. None of them stand out in my mind, save for "Sugar Mama," which someone should have told her to cut from the final product, and "101", which I'm going to give its own entry in a few days. But the album is hypnotically, even perversely, listenable. The sound of the music and the sound of her voice are a wonderful combination. Her lyrics are often clever in a pleasantly ignorable sort of way. But the songs themselves just don't stick with you. The whole almost never equals it's parts. This has been a consistent problem throughout her career.

I should note that I really enjoy Keren Ann. I don't include her on my list of favorites, but I did get very excited when I found out she had a new album coming out. I don't fault her for not writing better songs, because she never sounds like she wants to; it's almost as if she writes the songs she does only because she needs skeletons to hang her arrangements on. If I didn't love the sound of her voice, I would say she should become a producer. She's that rare artist who has a sound so good, and it is good, that it completely and utterly transcends her songs. There are countless artists who would kill for that.

Something in the Water

It seems to have all started with ABBA.
The first indications of the genetic mutation which predisposes the Swedes to being absolutely brilliant pop songwriters could be seen in the stream of albums released by Anni-Frid, Björn, Benny, and Agnetha during the 1970's. Nobody else could write songs as cunningly catchy as "Waterloo" or, lest we forget, "Dancing Queen". After they broke up in 1982, the mutation went dormant for about 15 years, but they were clearly an indicator of what was to come. Think of them as the Magneto or Charles Xavier of the Swedes.

The new class started to make themselves known with the Boy Band craze at the close of the last millennium. I could have said century, but Max Martin, the Swedish Svengali responsible for a remarkable array of hits ("...Baby One More Time", "It's My Life," "Since U Been Gone," "Raise Your Glass", and "I Kissed a Girl" are but a meager portion of his contributions to radio's Top 40 over the last 15 years), wrote half of the songs on Backstreet Boys' Millennium, one of the more successful albums of all time. I'm aware of Martin's contributions to pop music, and I'm still stunned every time I read his curriculum vitae.

One of Martin's first successes was in 1997 with, naturally, a fellow Swede, pop siren Robyn. Their powers combined to give the world "Show Me Love," which remains one of the better singles of the era. After a weak second album, Robyn took some time and returned five years later firmly in control of her own career. Working primarily with Swedish writer Klas Åhlund, the self-titled album she released remained an unequaled piece of art-pop perfection until her own series of Body Talk albums came out last year. It seems that the only person in Robyn's league at the moment is Robyn herself.

Martin is unapologetically commercial, and there's nothing wrong with that. ("It's Gonna Be Me" by 'N Sync just popped up on shuffle. It's Martin.) Robyn is beating out her own path, making music that should, by all rights, be hugely successful, but manages to stay just below the radar. Commercial viability aside, they are both clearly touched by the same blessed mutation as the mighty ABBA.

With her new album, Wounded Rhymes, Lykke Li makes a serious argument for being granted membership into this formidable and exclusive assemblage. While her first album, Youth Novels, was very good, and very catchy, it lacked the clear display of ambition necessary to gain full rights. If she wanted to bring any guests in to use the pool, Robyn, Max, or Klas would have to sponsor them. Wounded Rhymes is a different beast entirely. Where Youth Novels had a delicate, almost mock-low-fi aesthetic, Wounded Rhymes is a pop leviathan. It is loaded with dense, elephantine beats, perfectly conveyed by opener "Youth Knows No Pain" and standout "Get Some." Tucked in between the rumblers, the are gentle songs such as "Unrequited Love," a song in 6/8 which is played with appeasing lack of precision and cast Lykke as a girl at the corner of the bar, bemoaning her misfortune. The title is derived from the lyrics of "Sadness Is a Blessing," a sublime Phil Spector pastiche. It is loaded with unique electro-pop touches, some tucked way in the back of the mix. It is ear candy with a serious brain. It may be my favorite album to come out so far this year. Whether or not it holds that distinction until the end of the year, it makes me grateful for whatever those Swedes have been putting in the water.

You & I

One of the distinctions between an art and a science is that an art cannot always be explained.

For example, "Why do baking soda and vinegar volcanos work?" can be met with "The acetic acid in the vinegar engages the sodium bicarbonate in the baking soda in a double replacement reaction, and what little baking soda isn't broken down overflows as the produced carbon dioxide expands within the confines of the volcano." But ask me why those final, mighty chords in Beethoven's Fifth always send chills down my spine, and you'll likely get no more than a shrug.

This is, of course, one of the appeals of the arts. Munch's The Scream is a strangely captivating painting, and you can't really, for all the art history and composition and color theory classes in the world, tell me why. You can explain the parts forever, but they will never equal the whole.

Yesterday, for example, I spent about fifteen or twenty minutes listening to The La's' "There She Goes?" over and over again. It is a good song: The lyrics are generally about love without being inane (the pop equivalent of being an instrumental, really), Lee Mavers' voice has a nice combination of the sweet and the gritty (It occurred to me yesterday that I would love to hear Spoon take a crack at this song, actually), and all the guitar parts are hypnotically simple. But I can name about 1,000 other songs with the same qualities. So what is it that makes this one song so compelling? You can't tell me, and I can't tell you. It is the simple magic of the pop song.

This is what we are accustomed to with music. We cannot explain what separates the very good from the transcendental. Same goes for individual lyrics. It's been well over a year since I heard "Conversation 16" by The National for the first time, and I'm still reeling from "I tell you miserable things after you are asleep." This is a poor example, because that lyric is so brilliant in how it encapsulated the situation that it speaks for itself. So how about this: In the Robyn song "Get Myself Together," she drops the line "I can't tell what's right or wrong, and I wish that something could be done, but I'm not that clever." Every time she sings "I'm not that clever," I can feel it in my heart. And I have no idea why. Again, though, this is within a good song.

I'm significantly more interested in when this happens with music we may not normally give much credence. On "You & I", the otherwise unremarkable new album by The Pierces (a conventionally attractive sister duo who somehow managed to become friends with the bassist for Coldplay), there is one song, "We Are Stars," that seems touched by this magic. "I could think of nothing worse than to sail this universe without you," either the blonde one or the Burnett one opines. And I find it genuinely moving. In the middle of a soppy song in the middle of a soppy record. Yet I keep returning, time and time again, to experience that moment. If only they could figure out how to make that magic last the length of a song, or even an album.

But, of course, if they do that, they'll have found the pop equivalent of the Holy Grail.

Location:Boston, MA

Suck It and See

Suck It and See
(2011)
The Arctic Monkeys

I think T'Arctic Monkeys have been, as David Brent would say, having a laugh. With each of their three albums, the modern Saviors of British Rock have gotten heavier, and, to their peril, more serious. The dangers of a rock band taking itself seriously are myriad, and history is littered with Be Here Nows to serve warning.

Humbug showed them disappearing up their own asses. And I think they've figured that out since then. The first single off of Suck It and See, "Brick by Brick," followed where they left off, and the second single, "Don't Sit Down, Cos I've Moved Your Chair," said what I'd feared: Their desire to become the British Queens of the Stone Age had over-run all common sense. And they'd all grown beards. None of this boded well.

And then there's that title. Suck It and See. Stay classy, boys.

So imagine my surprise when I listened, and it ended up being an album of mostly melancholic guitar pop. A pleasant surprise if ever there was one.

It isn't a great album. Turner's lyrics are maturing well, but as far as the music goes, nothing much more than "competent" comes to mind. I've listened to it three times, and I can't hum a bar of anything. But that's not the point here. In an age where the release of an album no longer means anything, The Arctic Monkeys made me nervous, and they made me wonder. And don't think they don't know it.

I found out the other day that "suck it and see" is slang for giving it a try. Touché, T'Arctic Monkeys. Touché.

This Is Country Music

This Is Country Music
(2011)
Brad Paisley

Bob and I used to debate the merits of contemporary country music. Most of these conversations escape my memory, but there was one time when I brought out my two major sticking points: The lack of breadth in subject matter, which relates directly to my biggest problem, the vaguely patronizing way with which the genre seems to treat its audience. In response, he nodded sagely and said, "Simple stories about life."

Now, whether you agree with him or me, this is still my problem with country as it stands today. Bob looks at country music as presenting the audience with what they want, simple stories put into song. I feel like the genre is constantly insulting its own audience by practically refusing to talk about social issues or complex stories. The world isn't always a happy place in country music, but it's always cut and dry. The envelope containing the accepted subject matter in country is very narrow.

For about a decade now, Brad Paisley has been finding very clever and very subtle ways to push that envelope. Most of his songs concern the normal fare; "I love my wife", "Weren't we stupid when we were young?", "Fishing and hunting while drinking beer is paradise on this Earth", etc. But his writing is so witty, it doesn't sound like he's pandering. He's not writing about these things because he knows it's what the audience wants: he's writing about them because he is, in many ways, a traditionalist, and they are the conventions of the genre he loves.

But every now and then, he lets out a song like "American Saturday Night," about multiculturalism in America. Not a big deal in most genres of music, but country is, both fairly and unfairly, thought of as the last bastion of racism and intolerance. So that was actually a pretty big deal. And that it was a hit made it even better. Most of the audience missed the point, yes, but that's not his fault.

So it's a little disappointing for me when This Is Country Music, his newest album, opens with a title song that features everything I don't normally like about country. Take this verse as a prime example of what I'm talking about:

Are you haunted by the echo of your mother on the phone,
cryin' as she tells you that your brother is not coming home?
And if there's anyone that still has pride and the memory of those,
that died defending the old red, white, and blue,
this is country music, and we do.

Maybe it's just me. I don't like it when music panders that blatantly. And I expect Paisley to be better about this kind of thing. It's as though he feels he may have over-played his hand on American Saturday Night, and so he's here to make amends.

The biggest complaint about This Is Country Music is that it's too long. If Paisley had cut it back from 65 minutes to 35 or 40, it would be an absolute slam-dunk. As it is, songs like "Be the Lake" and "One of Those Lives" are accomplished and entertaining enough, but they never amount to more than filler. And while country music is all about giving the people what they want, which is usually more, Paisley is smart enough to know better. Still, a remarkable talent at what I can only assume to be the peak of his powers. It may not be a great album like his last one, but it's still damn good.

LCD Soundsystem

"New York, I Love You" was, and, it seems, forever shall be, the last song LCD Soundsystem ever play in a live setting. Tonight, after a three-hour farewell show in New York City's Madison Square Garden, James Murphy's band of miscreants hung it up for good. And I don't blame them.

I came to LCD Soundsystem slowly, after reading a number of glowing reviews for 2007's Sound of Silver. I picked it up at a Newberry Comics in Connecticut, and I can still remember listening to "Get Innocuous!" for the first time, driving in my car at night with my best friend from high school sitting next to me. Music that doesn't just ride a groove, but relies on it, was new to me. Despite being the simplest form rock can take (and I mean that not in reference to its execution, but to its form), I took ages to warm to it. But it worked its way in, and "Get Innocuous!", "Time to Get Away," and "North American Scum," the opening salvo of Silver, slowly bore deeper and deeper into my mind.

A year later, I picked up the debut album, LCD Soundsystem, in New York City, while on a day off from my job as a camp counselor. It also took me some time to warm to, and, in fact, I would say I'm still working on it. But there is a reason for this. When LCD Soundsystem started, James Murphy was already clever. His songs could make you move, and his words could make you laugh. But there wasn't any heart. As cliché as that sounds, it's the truth. Much of what he says throughout LCD Soundsystem is genuine, but there isn't a moment of honesty to be found within its 100 minutes. That's what Sound of Silver changed, and that was what made me love this band. "Someone Great" and "All My Friends," the central pillars of Silver, remain two of the most touching, moving, honest, and thrilling songs I know. They are without question two of the songs I hold most dear.

After three years, in 2010, LCD Soundsystem released This Is Happening, with the proviso that it would be the final LCD Soundsystem album. From almost any other band, it would have felt like an expression of frustration in being out of ideas, an excuse to duck out before hitting bottom, or a desperate grab for the "No, no, please don't go"s. But there was something about the way Murphy delivered the news that made me okay with it. The band were getting bigger than he wanted them to be; not that he didn't want LCD to be popular, but James Murphy seems to be one of the rare sorts who are truly about the music, and he expressed repeatedly a desire to be free to do other things. So it was with knowledge of what was to come that LCD released their third and final album, and launched an extensive tour. And it was very, very good.

As I said above, what set LCD apart, starting with Sound of Silver, was Murphy's honesty, his willingness to put it all out there in between the songs meant only to make you sweat. This Is Happening epitomizes what made them so special. Movers like album opener "Dance Yrself Clean" were better than any of the other dance music being put out there; if you saw it live, you know nothing demolishes a concert venue like "Dance Yrself Clean." Meanwhile, "All I Want" and "I Can Change" were two staggering pieces of honesty in a scene that tends to pride itself on being one step removed from the situation.

It is an irony that has not been ignored that LCD Soundsystem became a flagship band for the hipster scene. The first single, "Losing My Edge," was an ironic play on the hipster mentality, an out-of-step hipster from way back talking about all the new kids and how the internet has leveled the playing field. Murphy never seemed to want the status of a Hipster hero, and, while he never turned out a song as blatantly hipster-bashing as Arcade Fire's recent "Rococo," he kept his distance. He just wanted to make great music. He never tried to deny his influences, and he never tried to hide them. Most bands would feel like naughty children if you pointed out the similarity of the guitars on "All I Want" to David Bowie's "'Heroes'". Murphy nodded and said, "Yep, that's where I got that from." And kudos to him. In an age with as much music as there has been, there's no point in pretending your influences don't exist. Embracing them gives you more freedom to do what you want, and to come up with something interesting.

I had the good fortune this summer of seeing LCD Soundsystem three times. The first time was at the Pitchfork festival in Chicago last summer. It was transcendent. The eight minutes of "All My Friends" are frozen in my mind, a series of perfect moments. But it was during the final song of the night, "New York, I Love You," that I saw a flash of what we'd all truly be losing when LCD threw in the towel; three-quarters of the way through the song, the music gave way to an acapella rendition of Alicia Key's "New York". And it was stunning. I discovered in that moment that a band which always seemed to rely on repetition to hammer the point home didn't need it at all. They just liked it better that way.

There was no acapella rendition of "New York" in tonight's finale. LCD Soundsystem are no more. Their Wikipedia entry even says so. And while this is the first time I've had to say goodbye to an extant band which means something to me, at least they never rode it out, and at least they never seemed to take it for granted. James Murphy has left behind something flawless, on his own terms, and now he's free to do whatever he wants. Wouldn't you want it that way if you had a choice?