*TRIUMPHANT ENTRANCE MUSIC*
Sunk, sunk, sunk, sunk, sunk"
And so, as with every year, the year end list rouses my writing spirit and shames me from my inertia.
This year was a good year for music I like, despite the fact that no album touched last year's favourite: Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me - which continues to delight and is a likely competitor for best album of the decade. (She topped my lists for the 00's...so why can't she top the 10's?)
Interesting note: four of the five artists that made it into my top of 2009 list release albums this year, and not one made it in the top 10 this year. This is both a reflection on the development of my own musical tastes as well as the new albums just not being (on the whole) nearly as good as the previous efforts. The one exception are The Decemberists, who made a better album than their last one, and are the only of the four 2009's who got close to this year's list.
With my favourite albums the word/theme/idea of Meditations because each one really seems to either sit in one idea/emotion/attitude for its entirety.
And now, without further ado:
THE BEST ALBUMS LIST! (Alphabetical)
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
This album may have the most obvious connection with the word "Meditation." Composed almost entirely of hauntingly gorgeous ambient vocal loops, these wordless hymns float in and out and around you and will take you to a beautiful - truly magical - place, if you let them. This is music to fall into, not to scrutinize. There were several more interesting and exciting albums this year, but I could never shake the indisputable sense of peace this album gave me, which is why it held in the top 10.
Favourite Track:
I think my favourite track is "White Flag". I say "I think" because I have a hard time not thinking of this album as a single work. But the main loop of "White Flag" sits lower and stands out. It also adds a real choir of voices (reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's "Ave Maria Guarani") partway through, along with delicate bass-guitar notes to fill in the lower register. The music is a peaceful surrender, head held high, and lacks any of the shame or cowardice associated with the white flag of defeat.
James Blake - James Blake
Last year James Blake release three diverse and fascinating EPs that made my list as a single entry of greatness, and I predicted this album being here this year. Sometimes albums that come out in January can get shafted on lists because you have listened to them for so long that the excitement is gone. James Blake's full length, while not being in heavy rotation at this point is still always a great listen. Instead of the distorted and decayed glitchy electronic music of the three previous EPs, his self titled album leans more towards singer songwriter, with lyrics and more structured songs, but it doesn't lose the old interesting feeling that was the initial draw. The big song that most people know him for "The Wilhelm Scream" is a beautiful meditation on that lethargic discovery of realizing you don't know much about anything you used to be sure of. The motif of "I don't know about my dreaming anymore," slowly decays and distorts until the melody is all but unrecognizable, just like his dreams. The rest of the album follows suit with thoughtful songs about friends and family and the ambiguity of life. Yet it ends with the hymn-like "Measurements," a caution to the listener, and to himself, that pride and bold doubts are revealed as "bones" next to "their faith in prayers." Despite the "forest cold" there is hope.
He also released two more EPs this year Enough Thunder, and Love What Happened Here. The first was pretty boring, despite a collaboration with Bon Iver, and made me worry about the direction James Blake might be leaning for the future. It was his anti-dubstep EP. Having come from that scene, Blake rejected the "farting contest" that a lot of mainstream dubstep (especially the American imports) has become. In doing so though, it felt like he crippled Enough Thunder, by removing pretty much any interesting beats whatsoever. The one saving grace for the EP was his gorgeous cover of Joni Mitchell's "Case of You" with just voice and piano - no manipulation whatsoever. Love What Happened Here, then, was a great relief to me. It harkened back to his original trilogy of EPs of glitchy, and delicate, manipulation of voice and melody, without feeling like a step back. As a result he's created yet another entry into my good books.
Favourite Track:
The two-part "Lindisfarne" is I think the best showcase of James Blake's sense of melody, space, rhythm and vocal manipulation. It begins with his voice, distorted, singing of kestrels with a sense of wonder in his voice. In response to their freedom he cries out in self pity and longing, "Beacon, don't fly to high," as if his hope rests solely in the inspiration the birds give him, and if he loses sight of them, he loses sight of himself. The song is named for a small island off the coast of the UK nicknamed the "Holy Island." There's some serious searching going on here. The song also has one of the most confusingly fascinating music videos of the year.
Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Unlike the majority of Bon Iver fans I know, I didn't love For Emma, Forever Ago. I understood the appeal of the story, but the music just didn't grab me how I wanted it to. TheBlood Bank EP was more interesting, but still not enough to make me invest any considerable effort. I perked up a bit when listening to Justin Vernon's contributions to Kanye West's self-destructive brag fest that was last year's MBDTF. And then I heard the first track for this record, "Calgary." It was a slow burner for me, but I kept coming back to it. It waslush and beautiful, and very different from the stark works I'd heard from him earlier - and that difference caught my ear.
Lush is probably the best description of this album. Sounds chirp and swell in and out of the hazy atmosphere that sits around every word and phrase of Vernon's multilayered voice. And there's percussion! The drums on this album are really well done. Nothing too straight forward or distracting, but swelling and carrying the emotion of the melodies and lyrics. Lyrically the album is interesting, but unfocused. Stand out lines for me include "And at once I knew I was not magnificent" on "Holocene" and "Never gonna break, not for a part in any gamut of the dark" on "Minnesota, WI." Most verses are impressionistic, melancholy, poems about friendships, nature, and loss. What makes this album stand out however, are those moments, in spite of the melancholy, when joyous rapture breaks through.
Favourite Track:
"Best/Rest" was probably the most talked about track when it came out, because it challenged so many conceptions of what was acceptable music for those in my peer group. It is insanely 80s and not in the "cool" way that music in the last couple of years has revelled in. It has a saxophone solo which couldn't exist without Kenny G (courtesy of Colin Stetson, who I will talk about at length later). It has the electric synth sound that your mom likes in her easy listening music (not mine...she only listens to classical). It has slide guitar. And yet, somehow, "Beth/Rest" develops and unfolds beautifully over it's five minutes without making me cringe. In fact, quite the reverse is true. The lush 80s sounds, arranged and tied together by Vernon's soulful longing feels more like a big hug than the dead cheesy plastic of Kenny G era muzak. And that is an accomplishment indeed.
**I started writing this on Boxing Day and it is now 2012, so I will try to write with greater brevity**
Braids - Native Speaker
Montreal's Braids surprised me this year. There was a single floating around my iPod that I must have downloaded off of Pitchfork or something, but whenever it popped up on shuffle it caught my ear. "Plath Heart" swells into a sustained and vibrating chord into which sporadic drums and guitars burst while a girls voice sings a beautiful, but quirky, melody which seems to have very little correspondence to much of the music. Singer Raphaelle twists her voice and manipulates her vowels (similar to Joanna Newsom on such tracks as "Good Intentions Paving Co.") so that the bizarre poetry and angular music seem to unite into a seemless organic flow. Lines like "when you scold me it leads me to implore the" and "push and push and push and push until out slides the Golden Baby" were really the only words I could pick out during a casual listen, but they intrigued me and drew me in. Upon hearing the rest of the album, the fascination continued. Non-melodies, strange time signatures overlaying each other, minimalist repetition, sparkling bell-like atmospherics, lines ranging from "Lemonade"'s accusatory "Have you f***ed all the Dragons yet?" to the title track's sexual (yet somehow awkwardly cute) fantasies ("And I know/that days aren't only about touching and loving you/but my my my my my it feels good...having you inside me") to song's about a dead sister (I think?)...this album is a strange window into a unique female mind strong, and opinionated, but willing to be vulnerable and acknowledging a certain clueless abandon. Tying it all together is that voice. Raphaelle alternates between singing sweetly enough to fit easily on Julianna Barwick's The Magic Place and screeching and squawking incoherently and aggressively like a wounded bird. And so the braids of her personality weave together with the music and reveal a large and fascinating heart.
Favourite Track:
"Glass Deers" is the strangest track on the album. It begins with a long guitar and synth loop which then begins to have pretty bells swell in over it with soaring vocals. Then the lyrics start and they don't quite swell like the rest of the music, as if the mind and heart are at odds. "I found my place in the wishing well/ I found my place not feeling well...Oh, I am f***ed up." And then, as that voice begins to crack and screech, there is the most bizarre description of an intimate encounter possibly in any song: "His back bone is grabbing my hand" "He doesn't make any sound/ he just slaps my thighs." And yet, it is at these words that her voice is the least beautiful, the most distorted, unmelodic. She begins to screech, almost as if in anti-orgasm, anti-ecstacy, anti-intimacy. And then the ironic punch line. It is his silence and physical aggression which "makes a man." Braids writing is at it's most provocative, interesting, and darkly humorous where cynicism and great emotion clash, and "Glass Deers" exemplifies this.
Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
"I consoled myself with rudimentary thoughts/And I set my watch against the city clock/It was way off."
Bill Callahan has been making records for over two decades now, and I never paid attention. I really probably should have. Especially when he used to dated my favourite artist of the new millennium (so far) and lent his deep baritone voice to one of the truly magical moments on her breakthrough album. This year however, as with Braids, it was a single which kept popping up and demanding my attention. A simple guitar picking - somewhere between Josh Ritter and Johnny Cash - accompanies "Baby's Breathe", a song which tells a story of a marriage doomed from the outset, the lyrics and accompaniment are perfect. Delicate, sad, regretful, but changing pace, moving, and then bursts of percussion to drive the madness, and atonal guitars howl like wolves, and yet the gentle melancholy never leaves.
The rest of the album follows suit. Tales of isolation, complaints of misrepresentation, ironic nationalist manifestos - this is lyrically my favourite album of the year. And musically it stands up as well. Where Josh Ritter is happy to stay fairly safe in his folk-rock tower (which I'm quite fond of actually), Callahan explores: "America" is almost disco(!!); "Free's" is reminiscent of Astral Weeks' folk-jazz fusion with its flute solos. Callahan is a first class story teller, and his deep and rich voice, and melancholy soul draws me in to his beautifully painted worlds.
Favourite Track:
This is really hard for me to pick. "Drover" drives against convention. "Baby's Breath" is devestatingly beautiful. "One Fine Morning" has that two chord back and forth (which I love) as it spins with hymn like piano into a hymn to becoming "the hardest part [of the road.]" But I think it'ss the quietest moments on the album, the most earnest moments, which are the best. And the quietest moment comes on "Universal Applicant." Trapped at sea, a flare goes up and silence fills the track until, with almost hilarious mock solemnity, Callahan whispers the sound effect "Fwooshh..." and "to the universe [the flare] applies." And I am reminded of that great poem "This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." But it's not over. To add insult to injury, the flare, both the hope for survival and the icon of life's brevity, returns to his small life boat and it burns. All he is goes down with the ship.
"And the punk/And the lunk/And the drunk
And the skunk/And the hunk/And the monk in me
All sunkSunk, sunk, sunk, sunk, sunk"
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
This album is a meditation on disintegration. Hecker has taken samples of an organ, recorded in an old church, and turned them into evocative texture paintings with titles like "In The Fog", "Hatred of Music", and "The Piano Drop." There is no favourite track. Just go for a walk and lose yourself in the fog.
Liturgy - Aesthethica
And now for the most controversial metal album of the year. Hurray.
First of all, screw the controversy. I'm deciding now to avoid talking about it as much as possible. Look it up yourself if you feel the need...it has little to no impact on the music itself.
Black metal originates from the Nordic regions of our planet and has generally been associated with church burnings, dramatic black and white "corpse" face paint, pagan celebrations and raspy high pitched screechings accompanied by blast beats and really terribly mixed guitars. In the last couple years, North Americans have begun to claim their own stake in the black metal scene with a more nihilistic and atmospheric approach - and generally better mixing. Krallice was the first band which caught my ear with their album Dimensional Bleedthrough - an exhausting and exhilarating uninterrupted shred-fest with jazz-like chord modulations and guitars which danced counterpoint to each other wonderfully. Although Diotima, this year's Krallice effort, is excellent, it didn't expand enough from the earlier works to quite make it into the top ten (although it was in my considerations at all times.)
This year Liturgy stood out in a quickly blossoming North American Black Metal scene for a number of reasons. First of all, despite the fact that Aesthethica unquestionably does everything a black metal album should, it goes above and beyond. Diotima's technical work is more complex and difficult, but Liturgy allows breathing room and experimentation to take root under the impeccable and relentless chops. This is actually what initially turned me off of the album - it seemed almost too accessible. However as time has gone on, I have come to find that the multifaceted approach (while resulting in some less pristine moments) has been a draw as layers continue to reveal themselves with addition listens.
What does this album do that the others don't? First of all, when you read the lyrics, you don't want to crawl into a snowbank and fall asleep forever. Despite embracing the chaos of the Black Metal world, Liturgy sets itself apart in it's focus. Rather than staring at, and screaming challenges at, the abysmal eternal void which - the focus of most black metal lyrics - Liturgy chooses to stare at and scream challenges at God and the eternal universe. Still dark, still raging, but with some underlying positivity. Secondly, they embrace other genres and styles. There are a couple moments which resemble eastern chants (see "Glass Earth" - one of which is one of the low points of the album...but still demonstrates my point), there is an instrumental break in "Helix Skull" which is essentially a mathematical, minimalist, guitar tapping exercise, and "Veins of God" starts out with a down-tempo, grungy, blues riff that Mastodon is probably jealous of. All the variety has had metal "purists" up in arms, but really it's quite nice to see a band embrace music as opposed to a scene.
Really, the name says it all: Aesthethica is about beauty. Beauty in chaos. Beauty in rebellion. But beauty nonetheless. And this celebration of beauty, with all it's intense technical ferocity, keeps me coming back for more.
Favourite Track:
It's hard to pick. Most tracks, despite the albums wider range, flow and blend together really well. There are a few obvious starts and stops (between LPs for instance) but for the most part this album is a whole piece. "Glory Bronze" stands out though. This is partly due to the fact that it is the most unashamedly major and triumphant while in no way giving up any ground on the technically wonderful and crushingly complex chord structures. Ahhh but every time I listen through the album while actually looking at which track I'm listening too, something else stands out. My favourite track will probably change until the day this album stops being played.
Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges and the Those Who Didn't Run EP
Colin Stetson is the coolest artist that you have listened to but never heard of. Heck, it took me a month or two after falling in love with Judges before I realized that I'd seen him live! I saw him on stage with Arcade Fire at Deer Lake Park for their tour supporting Neon Bible, and I remember being impressed by "the guy playing the big saxophone." The man played horns on one of my favourite Tom Waits albums (Alice) and I didn't even know who he was for cryin' out loud! Sigh. Well I am ignorant no more. The man has played on more cool records in the last decade than probably anyone else, including Dear Science, The Suburbs, and this year's majestic Bon Iver. But it wasn't until I heard Judges that I "met" Colin Stetson and came to appreciate him. The track that sank it's teeth into me first was a cover of Blind Willie Johnson's 1920's "Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying." The original was a powerful blues song, but Stetson's rendition (featuring vocals from Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond) is straight up haunting. Shara's voice adds an emotional tension to the piece as it is, but the saxophone playing elevates the song from it's blues roots to a tense transcendent hymn of lament.
About Stetson's saxophone mastery. There are very few musicians I have heard recordings of in the last few years who push themselves towards mastery of their instrument - and many of those who do produce impressively technical works which really are just glorified scales. Heck yes, the man can play scales, but Steston's playing goes beyond technicality to embrace human emotion on multiple levels.
Now, the music on Judges is wonderful and evocative by itself, but I can't get over how it's made. First of all, Colin Stetson is one of a very few musicians who play bass saxophone. The thing is almost as big as he is. Secondly, the music on both the LP and EP, which sound like they were created by layering multiple saxophone takes, are all (with very limited exceptions) one man, playing one take, with no overdubs. Read that again. In an age of autotune, limitless layering and processing power, that is nearly unheard of. But to top it off, it sounds like there's a whole band - percussion, guitar, choir - playing at once. But it's just the brilliance of Stetson as a musician as well as how the sounds are miked.
Colin Stetson practices circular breathing - the art of continuously pushing air through an instrument without dying. Apparently he runs and does yoga for multiple hours a day just so that his body can perform/create the sounds that are captured on this record. There are three mikes. One on his throat to capture his throat humming (while still playing scales and arpeggios...); one on the keys to capture the percussiveness of his fingers playing the notes; and one room mic for the actual saxophone tone - all mixed amazingly and naturally to create the remarkable effects on the album.
Those Who Didn't Run extended the techniques on Judges with two tracks (over ten minutes in length each!) and showed a more free jazz improvisational side to the LP.
Favourite Track:
"Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying" is not the most impressive song technically, nor is it the most creative. But it is the most human; the most emotional. It stirs something in my soul. The only thing I haven't mentioned about the track is the saxophone tone. It sounds more like the downtuned, overly distorted, tonal experiments of Sunn 0))) than any saxophone I've ever heard. Seriously amazing.
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Couleurs Libres
A second emotionally intense saxophone record! Coin Coin derives its name from a distant great aunt of Matana Roberts. It is her story but tied up in it is an abstract history of African Americans - Gen De Couleurs Libres translated means "Free People of Colour." This jazz record is so captivating that upon a single listen right before christmas this year, it rocketed into my top ten. There are beautiful droning sections - Matana Roberts has worked with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. There are chaotic free jazz improvisations. Matana's voice is first heard 7 minutes in, at the beginning of the second track, and it disturbs. It is not human. In fact, it sounds like a tortured saxophone. And right there, you know this is special. The record then unfolds with Robert's narrations of Coin Coin's story, from slave, to free black woman, to slave owner herself.
"Negros are for working...I was only sixteen. There will never be any pictures of me."
Throughout the record not only does the story of Coin Coin carry you along, but a history of black music in America as well. Melodies, motifs, styles, drift in and out of the more free form narrations, teasing your memory with old movie soundtracks, a hymn mostly forgotten, gospel choirs hiding around corners of your mind. In some ways this album functions a lot like The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady - probably my favourite jazz record ever - in that the music dances and each part talks to each other; each instrument has it's own character and attitude.
"Hustling to survive so that others may strive to be something more than me. I am twenty-five. There will never be any pictures of me."
I also love the fact that there is a second voice speaking french, just slightly further back in the mix, which both doubles and opens a new facet to the story. I can understand a decent chunk of the french, and it sometimes repeats exactly the english, and other times makes bold statements of identity - almost like a primal subconscious screaming out to be heard, but left misunderstood or ignored.
I could go on and on. If you buy one challenging record this year, one that takes you outside your comfort zone, make it this one. It is harrowing, and rewarding. I am thrilled to hear the future chapters of this Coin Coin cycle. Apparently 5 are being performed live (each between 45 and 60 minutes) and there are notes for up to 10 chapters. An insanely ambitious project which couldn't have gotten off to a better start.
Favourite Track:
"Libation for Mr. Brown: Bid 'Em In..." is the centerpiece of the whole album, and encompasses so much ground it's hard to know where to start. Based around a simple chain gang refrain, the song begins as an auction for the sale of Coin Coin, as told by the auctioneer, who brags of the young woman's "merits" before selling her for 7 dollars. And yet where as in other parts of the album Robert's voice is harrowingly disfigured...here she sings more sweetly than anywhere else - "You can rape my mother...You can slap me...You can brand me...All you got to do is bid me in." It's disturbingly detached... and it turns into a bluesy jazz refrain in a introducing-the-band sort of way. "Mister bass man, doo ba do doo do doo, bid me in!" But finally in the last 30 seconds of the 10 minute song, the band explodes into chaos. Coin Coin's brave face cannot hold in, no matter how sweetly her story is sung, the anger and pain of her life. The song is not necessarily the best representation of the whole, phenomenal work, but it holds the key.
Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch The Throne
It feels weird ending with this one. Especially right after Coin Coin. I've been challenged by my Nimbus peers that these guys don't make good music. I'm not great at defending it to be honest. But. but. but...Ok here's the deal. The production is effing HUGE and bombastic and the arrangements are lush, diverse and provocative. After the other meditations this year, on loneliness, alienation, disintegration, memory and identity - after a lot of seriousness - I think this record was a much needed break. This is a meditation on luxurious excess - in presentation and in content and in lifestyle. "Photoshoot fresh, lookin' like wealth, I'm 'bout to call the paparazzi on myself."
Under that gold-plated album cover, the most expensive samples ever, the de/re-construction of a 6-figure car (see music video below), after and under all this, these two insanely rich mutha-muthas still somehow end up touching on something more than "money, ho's and rims again." - to quote another Yeezy song. On last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye perfected his ability to be vulnerable about his faults while telling you how much better he is than you. Watch the Throne is less self pity and more reality. There is way more partying on this album, but the somber sides of fame and wealth, and the realities of culture that these not-so-young-anymore men came up in, have rubbed off. There's nothing transcendent in this music, but the ability to be both higher than the clouds and rooted in the moment is a remarkable feat. On no track is this dichotomy better exemplified than on "Murder to Excellence" which is basically a manifesto on the pain and glory of the life these guys live.
I said this album was a break from seriousness. The middle melancholy section is surrounded by some of the most over the top hip hop you've ever heard. "Why I Love You" begins with a huge hook and beat and then drops the beat for the verses in exchange for a synth and guitar crescendo. "H•A•M" (my favourite rap abbreviation since G.O.A.T.) has gothic choirs wedged between 808s and boasts of sexual conquest and wealth. "Niggas in Paris" has become the epitome of the excess that The Throne stands for - being played up to ten times in succession(!) as an encore on their tour. "That s*** cray!"
This album feels like the Book of Ecclesiastes - Vanity Vanity/Meaningless Meaningless/ Every Thing is Meaningless Vanity - without the humble conclusions of the great teacher. "Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment....Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."
Favourite Track:
"Otis" is easily my favourite track of the album. I love Otis Redding and this song is inspired by him and samples him. It's fun. It's outrageous - "I invented sweat." - and the back and forth between 'Ye and Jay is seemless. Super fun.
Honourable Mentions (Alphabetical):
The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
Girls - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Nicolas Jaar - Don't Break My Love EP and Space is Only Noise
Krallice - Diotima
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Psychic Paramount - II
Trash Talk - Awake EP
St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
Tom Waits - Bad As Me
Other Mention - Lulu
This year Lou Reed and Metallica release the most ... something ... record. This is a messed up listen and has been labelled with "Worst Album Ever." Pitchfork gave it a 1/10. Lou Reed says it's probably the best thing by anyone ever. Both are, in my opinion, incorrect. Lulu is a pretty bad album. But I've heard worse this year - maybe not more difficult or abrasive - but more boring, which is a worse crime. The Metallica boys do their thing, whatever that is, and Lou reads (pun!) amoral sexual and violent lyrics. There are great moments ("Junior Dad"), hilarious moments (James Hetfield singing "I am the table!" numerous times on "The View") and painful moments (hearing the phrase "spermless like a girl" forty times in ten minutes.) Probably the most talked about, least listened to, album of the year, I keep finding myself turning to Lulu, perhaps in self torture - but the album is kind of about that, so it's fitting right?
Some Additional Tracks - Including Guilty Pleasures:
**Note: Some links are a little NSFW and may contain profanity**
Nicki Minaj - "Super Bass"
Thee Oh Sees - "The Dream"
Dirty Beaches - "Sweet 17" and "Lord Knows Best"
Lana Del Ray - "Video Games"
Maher Daniel & Matthew Dekay - "Tauben"
Drake - "Lord Knows" and "Marvin's Room"
Destroyer - "Chinatown" and "Bay of Pigs"
Frank Ocean - "Novacane"
The Weeknd - "High For This"
Cormorant - "Unearthly Dreamings"
Final Note:
One of the coolest music videos ever. I don't even care about the song.
