Record Store Day

TODAY IS RECORD STORE DAY! My favourite secular "holiday." It happens to align with my least favourite secular holiday this year (besides kick a ginger day...), but that's another story.

This year I'm in Calgary and so had to wing it on which record store to go to. I don't have a local favourite yet. So I went to Heritage Posters and Music. Fun little shop with a decent selection, but a little heavy on the posters/cds to vinyl ratio. What really made the place was the owner, didn't catch his name but super friendly and helpful and more on the fun side of the scale than the weird. Proprietors can really make or break a record shop, it's really their personality in a store.

On to the haul!

Only picked up three records this year because of a tight budget, but I managed to get some beauts:

Captain Beefheart: Strictly Personal
Strictly Personal is a bastardized arrangement of weird blues and re-recordings of some of the Mirror Man sessions, which was kinda wrecked by the record company at the time. Beefheart didn't like the final product in the end but there are some decent jams including "Gimme Dat Harp Boy."

Rating 6.5/10 (Almost Great)

Captain Beefheart: The Legendary A&M Sessions
The A&M Sessions are some of Beefheart's most straight ahead blues tunes, but man they rock! I love this short LP to death.

Rating: 7/10 (Great)

The Move: Greatest Hits Vol. 1
I haven't listened to this (or anything by The Move) with the exception of their single "Brontosaurus" as of yet, but will give a brief review when I get to it. British Invasion psychedelia suggested by Greg Godovitz, my studio manager at OCL Studios. And there must be something to it, because when I brought it up to the counter at Heritage the owner's eyes looked up with delight and surprise and said in a british accent, "The MOOOOVE!" So. Looking forward to it!

That's it for now! :)

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual (2013) Review

Just keep on rolling with these blog posts I guess.

I'm finding music hard to write about. I either feel like I'm being too general about how something sounds or what is good or not about it, or I feel like I get so detailed that it's a pain to read. Let's see if this works.

The Knife, for those of you who don't know, are a brother/sister duo from Sweden who make dark synth driven grooves. They broke through (spawning tons of dark-synth-pop wannabes) with their third album, 2006's Silent Shout. Philosophically, being a big band doesn't seem to jive with these siblings, because after Silent Shout blew up they split up to follow solo paths (one result of which was the awesomely bizarre Fever Ray record). When they did return together as the Knife, instead of making a logical follow up to everything they had done so far, they made a bizarre electro-opera which tied Darwin's life to the evolution of life on Earth. Strange, long, with few driving beats, it was super interesting, and alienating. But now they've made the huge, double disc monstrosity Shaking the Habitual, which both sounds like the proper follow up to Silent Shout/Fever Ray, but also shows that their dabbling in evolution seems to have had an impact.

This is an incredible record, currently my top contender for Album of the Year. The album kicks off with three back to back great tunes over 24 minutes. "A Tooth For An Eye" kicks it off, taking tight rhythms and bright sounds and managing to make them creepy. "Full of Fire" throws out any pretense of normalness with a huge banger of a track which distorts and disintegrates over nearly ten minutes, never slowing it's pace but never feeling too repetitive. Karin (the sister/lead singer) makes her voice distort and crack through both vocal and digital manipulation, sounding like a little girl one moment and an old man the next - climaxing with her yelling "Let's talk about gender baby, let's talk about you and me" in a deep baritone which can barely hold itself together. And then another shift to "Cherry on Top", which begins with 5 minutes of really cool droning noise which wouldn't be out of place on The Seer (one of last year's favourite albums), then morphs into a creepy little nursery rhyme, and then back into creaking drones.

If all this record gave me was these three songs, it would be enough to put this album in my top ten of the year. The intricate rhythms, the amazing sonic manipulations, everything I love about these guys, summed up nicely in 24 exciting minutes. But it doesn't stop there, that's not even half of the first disc!

The rest of the album is in turns exciting, terrifying, meditative, and actively disconcerting. They also get outside of just electronic sounds on this record - it is called Shaking the Habitual after all. Without "You My Life Would Be Boring" has flute playing that reminds me of some of the weirder jazz records Don Cherry and Sun Ra recorded in the early 70s. There are tribal drum jams (closer to what was on Fever Ray) and there are weird chirping noise tracks. The record paces itself well, with tracks ranging from under a minute in length to nearly twenty minutes, and nothing is ever boring, or ever rehashed. Despite the fact that the basic elements are mostly represented in the first three songs, all of those elements take on new faces which themselves take on new masks. You can tell that this album came out of restless creative energy, but the best part is, it not only was born there, but it furthers the cause: of pushing and striving and destroying any and all boxes which might inhibit the minds growth.

Rating: 7.5/10 (Great +)

Return to a form of the former form / Ash Borer - Bloodlands

Well, I am temporarily out of musical projects to be working on. So I will attempt to write some reviews, or just blog posts music related. Briefer ones than usual I think.

First of all, there are three projects I have engineered/produced over the last year which are in that "finished but awaiting official release" phase. I am super proud of them and super stoked for them to come out. I will post about them in greater detail when the time comes.

******************

I want to kick off a new season of blogging by mentioning a band which has been slowly creeping up on me: Ash Borer. They are a Californian Black Metal band signed to Profound Lore. The last 3 years or so has seen an incredible explosion in the American Black Metal scene. There have been a few stand outs in this scene so far: Krallice, Liturgy, some members of the Black Twilight Circle collective, and Wolves in the Throne Room. I must confess that despite my love for these bands, the rest of the music to come out of the ABM scene has mostly bled together into one big blast beat, tremolo picked, incoherent screech.

Ash Borer however has cut through the milieu for me recently. It's not that they are breaking any new ground (the already mentioned bands above have done a lot of that already) and I've been trying to put my finger on why I kept going back to their 2012 release Cold of Ages. I think with the fairly new Bloodlands EP I am finally starting to be able to solve this connundrum. These guys aren't just great players with crazy chops playing as fast as they can, they are intelligent musicians who want to tell stories. Their songs take their time to get to the blast beats, it isn't just madness straight through. They build songs, drawing you in. They make you wait for the pay off and then kick you in the teeth. They're like professional fishermen, reeling you in, then cutting you just enough slack to let you think you've gotten through before hitting you even harder.

The production quality of both Cold of Ages and Bloodlands is better than a lot of black metal too. These are sonically rich albums, everything is crisp. There's no over-trebled hiss, like a lot of black metal has. Everything sounds good, and the songs are good. I don't know whether there has ever been a blast beat that has had a real weighty impact on me as much as the one which appears around the 7-minute mark of the 20 minute behemoth that is "Dirge / Purgation." Check it out below via ashborer.bandcamp.com

Rating: 7/10 (Great)

The Annual Music List: 2012

Quick foreword:
This year was very unique for me musically because this was the first year that I got to participate actively in the creation, recording, and production of a lot of great music. 9 months of this year were spent at Nimbus School of Recording Arts and I learned so much and met so many awesome people. So I start this post off with some shout outs to the bands/artists I got to work with this year; YOU GUYS made my musical year. Thank you!

Derrival
The Monarch
The Ruffled Feathers
Shadows

Also shout out about my cousin Kevan Chandler's band Innocent Smith, which released a really witty and heartfelt album called Losing Lungs, Finding God.

Another little side note:
This year was a pretty big one as far as my relationship with Hip Hop goes. Discovered some classics from over the years and also there were just a ton of great Hip Hop albums released this year; many more than will appear on this list.

PPS: Sorry bout the formatting (extra gaps in the first few reviews.) it's coz I wrote it in word and copied it in...too lazy to fix it now.

Now to the Records of the Year! (in alphabetical order):

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do
Produced by Fiona Apple and Charley Drayton

The Idler Wheel… is a sparse album, if you’re only listening to the arrangements. Lyrically and emotionally Fiona Apple covers a huge amount of ground and the spaciousness of the music allows her voice and words to cut through and hit hard. These open arrangements have the odd effect of occasionally creating a sense of claustrophobia, almost as if she is sitting too close and singing only to the listener; a personal concert that you cannot turn away from.

This is essentially a break up album, there is pain, anger, longing, pleading, and everything else you’d expect, but backed and reinforced with a unique turn of phrase and powerful vocal performances.

The album begins with the chiming of bells on “Every Single Night” which is mostly an unaccompanied melody with the refrain of “I just want to feel everything.” “Daredevil” follows up with “I don’t feel anything until I smash it up.” Daredevil has some of the most intense vocal passages where Fiona’s vocal chords twist up and spit out “WAKE ME UP!” to a frantic brushed snare beat. This album definitely required some physical pain to create.

It’s hard to convey in words how effectively the arrangements match the emotion of the songs. Sometimes the piano is very present and upbeat and other times it is awash with dissonant strings and feels very far away. “Valentine” contains one of my favourite couplets. “I’m a tulip in a cup, I stand no chance of growing up.” Another appears on “Left Alone.” “How can I ask anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?”

“Werewolf” is one of the most immediate songs and sums up the whole album pretty well: “I could liken you to a werewolf, the way you left me for dead, but I admit that I provided a full moon.” I think this album is so powerful because it jumps back and forth over the fine line of blaming the other and blaming oneself and knowing full well that both parties share the guilt of why things went wrong. Regret, pain, wishful fantasies of things working out, fond memories all collide and blur until the picture is both complete and unclear.

There’s only one track that feels at all misplaced: the album closer “Hot Knife.” I love the song and lyrically it works, but production wise it is a multilayered vocal round which is really the only song which FEELS like it was tampered with in the studio. There’s plenty of recording brilliance and manipulation throughout, but this song SOUNDS like it. It does however end the album with strength and an energy, almost as if in admitting defeat she can pick herself up and face the world again.

Fiona Apple is more honest than many of us have the courage to be and in being so opens doors for us to feel her raw humanity, and in turn we get to feel more human ourselves.

Favourite Track: "Periphery"

"Periphery" is just barely ahead of "Left Alone" for my favourite track. It moves well, the riff is really catchy, her vocals are at turns strained and sing-song, and the lyrics are some of her most acerbic. “All of that loving must have been lacking something if I got bored trying to figure you out. You let me down, I don’t even like you any more.”

Baroness - Yellow & Green
Produced by John Congleton

Yellow & Green was my favourite album of the year for about half the year until a few amazing albums starting giving it some competition. This is a double album and runs over an hour. I have liked Baroness’ previous efforts (Red and Blue) and loved their combination of great heavy riffs, that Atlanta holler (see Mastodon), and a surprisingly delicate musical approach of interweaving melodies, riffs and rhythms. Yellow & Green both outdo their predecessors by miles in almost every area. The melodies are stronger, and while the vocals are cleaner and a little more up front (which has led to some fans complaining about the band going soft) there are some seriously crushing and triumphant moments.

One thing I like about this album is the subtlety of the effects and tones used. The whole thing sounds totally unified and yet every track does something different, every ringing note has a different effect which keeps it interesting and yet it isn’t distracting (like some tracks on the new The Mars Volta album…)

A lot of the best moments are on Yellow, but there aren’t enough lulls to stop me from listening to both discs back to back. “March to the Sea” is one definite strong point. It combines all the traits I described above. It starts with a gorgeous guitar melody and then kicks in (with a fill reminiscent of "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and then just gets heavy with dueling guitars swirling around. I love that I can hear everything in the mix on every track. Each line is distinct and nothing is by accident. And yet it never grows stale like some albums which are too planned out.

Lyrically the album is vague and the most of the songs convey more of an emotional impression, usually on the nihilistic/negative side (“I wish I was drowning, then I could watch you burn.” The singer states on “Little Things.”) but the album avoids depression with its gorgeous melodies and huge moments as display on the instrumental “Green Theme.”

I was really worried when I heard that Baroness had a really bad accident in their tour bus this fall, rendering all of the band members hospitalized. I’m glad to hear that they have recovered and are hoping to get back to touring as soon as possible.

This album is a pretty huge achievement and I’ve listened to it more than any album released this year and I still find some new gem to enjoy every listen.

Side note: the singer does all of the artwork for the baroness albums as well as for a lot of other bands. The art, like his music, is an ornate and gorgeous juxtaposition of the morbid and the beautiful.

Favourite Track: "Back Where I Belong"

This song has my favourite lyric/melody combination. It starts as a frustrated complaint of ending up back in a bad relationship, “stuck with you… back where I belong.” But takes a turn at near the end with a gorgeous moment where they, for a split second, remember the better days of love they enjoyed as young lovers. “When we were kids we never felt so young. Take me to a hazy Sunday morning.”

Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory
Produced by Steve Albini

Attack on Memory is angst and frustration incarnate. The singer flips between total apathetic paralysis and a deep seeded anger at the futility he sees in his life. The album begins with the repeated statement “Give up, come to.” Life has “No Future/No Past” and is just a cycle of passing out and waking up. Life is lifeless.

Musically this album hearkens back to late 80s early 90s indie such as …Trail of Dead and Sonic Youth a la Daydream Nation. And it’s refreshing to hear a band that feels like it just wants to play hard and loud and just get lost in the cacophony.This album is simple but never boring. Aggressive but introverted. Apathetic yet threatening to explode at any moment. And explode it does.

“I thought I would be more than this!”

“Fall In” with its harmonies and “Stay Useless” with its enigmatic chorus are the catchiest tunes on the album and are a welcome relief after the wonderfully harrowing “Wasted Days.”

The album pounds along for just over 33 minutes, but when it ends it’s hard to know if you’ve been listening for just a moment or for hours. The final track is called “Cut You” and is a creepy letter to an old flame asking questions like “Does he hurt you like I do? Is he gonna work out? I need to know. I deserve to know.” Dude is dealing with some serious issues, but Cloud Nothings have managed to turn them into a concise and kick ass album.

Favourite Track: “Wasted Days”

Running near the 9 minute mark this track takes up over a quarter of the album and is a distressing but compelling journey. There are more than one great riff in this song and which flies along at breakneck pace for about three minutes until it suddenly breaks down. Weird noises flit in and out like inhuman babble and a huge crescendo builds and builds until the song explodes into a frantic energy again while the singer screams, “I thought I would be more than this!” over and over and over until the song collapses in on itself. Anyone who has struggled with identity or has been disappointed with how things have turned out cannot help but relate.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Self Produced

At their prime, Godspeed You! Black Emperor were one of the most interesting bands around with their incredibly complex and long (like 20 minutes a song long) compositions which blossomed slowly and enveloped you in their sound before crushing you with a powerful wall of sound. They were pioneers of the crushing wave of post-rock that erupted in the early 00's (Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, etc.)  'Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, their first album in 10 years, gathers some unrecorded material from that time (some of which has been played live in the meantime) and manages to faithfully maintain and increase their tradition of powerful post rock. Few bands live up to their name after a 10 year break, so it’s wonderful that Godspeed have not only survived but delivered something that expands, rather than merely sustains, their legacy.

The album consists of two twenty minute tracks and two short(er) compositions of just over 6 and 8 minutes each. Like all of their material each song is essentially a giant crescendo. On some of their previous work there were moments where I felt that the slow builds served no purpose, were just there for their own sake. I feel that this album has more of an obvious arc to it which I enjoy. The title really fits. It really feels like some massive beast is struggling up out of the mud, breaking free, and roaring at the clouds before taking wing. The two shorter interludes also provide more movement to the album than some of the more cumbersome moments of other albums.

This album is not something to throw on in the background. It demands your full attention. At times we feel like the clouds will continue to close around us forever, but then light bursts through.

Favourite Track: “We Drift Like Worried Fire”

The second of the longest compositions has much to offer. It’s always hard to pick “favourite track” on a Godspeed album because each covers an enormous amount of ground. So I’ll say this, the last 8 minutes of “We Drift Like Worried Fire” is kind of like a summary of the whole album: plodding along in dismay, a huge fight for freedom, bursting through and then a sobering moment of reality but ending in a much better place than you began, and hope of even better things ahead.

Julia Holter - Ekstasis
Self Produced

Julia Holter’s last album, Tragedy, was a masterpiece, a bizarre opera based on an ancient greek play which combined high baroque pop sensibilities with sound collage and yet kept a certain simplicity of soul. This year’s Ekstasis contains more focused songs, and has a higher production value (Tragedy was very raw and much of it self recorded.) and, although it falls short of the previous work, is still wonderfully captivating.

Each piece is very impressionistic. 80s synths blend together with new age melodies and classical string arrangements and medieval chants. This is meditative music which refuses to remain still.

The second track, “Our Sorrows” ends with a gorgeous chant, immediately to be juxtaposed by "In The Same Room"’s drum machine and harpsichord driven refrain “I can’t recall this face, but I want to.” Julia creates a wonderful swirl of keyboards and vocal lines which overlap and weave in and out of each other throughout the album and often feels like a combination last year’s The Magic Place by Julianna Barwick and Native Speaker by Braids, both which made my top 10 of 2011.

“F’ur Felix” is feels like you’re exploring a foreign bazaar. And yet you could never quite place where in the world you could be. It’s a magical in between place which also boasts one of the catchier riffs on the album.

I find it hard to explain this album. Here, in short, is why I love this album: It beholds a magical world with a childish sense of wonder and yet filters all it sees through mature eyes. That is no small feat. A perfect example of this is the song “Four Gardens” which begins with a girl’s giggle but sings about waiting patiently for love.

Float away into Ekstasis.

Side Note: Julia Holter recently released an expanded version of Ekstasis which includes some re-arranged and re-recorded versions of some songs on both Tragedy and Ekstasis which are wonderful but cannot replace the initial versions in my mind.

Favourite Track: “Ekstasis”

At nearly 9 minutes, "Ekstasis" really provides the time for Julia’s ideas to progress and develop. The groove is slow but not slack. Everything builds, it is a peaceful celebration of wonder. Then everything but the saxophone cuts out and then even that falls silent and when the voices begin again you feel as if you have stepped through some veil onto holy ground but the journey is not over. The pace increases and drums become the most prevalent instrument while church bells chime in the distance. A disjointed and strange bass groove carries you along. And always the voices remind you, “This is the ekstasis.” Then just as suddenly as they began, the drums disappear and you are left floating between a cello and a saxophone which play you off to sleep.

Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
Produced by Dr. Dre (and a million other guest producers)

Oh. Damn. This album is good. Gunna say it's tied for the top spot of the year. Hailed as an instant classic and drawing many and much deserved comparisons to Illmatic this album kicked the doors in when it was released. Kendrick Lamar has created a hip hop album that far surpasses a bunch of great hip hop albums released this year. good kid, m.A.A.d city is subtitled "a film by Kendrick Lamar." and it's true. This is cinematic. This is good story telling. This is complex character development.

The album opens with a group of young men dedicating their lives to Jesus in a prayer. It's kind of shocking at first, but this album tells a story which touches on many areas of life and it is rich with meaning. Produced by Dr. Dre and a bunch of other great beat makes/musicians, this is a sonically rich album with plenty of ear candy. The beats are in turns laid back, aggressive, sad, hopeful and hazy, depending on the situation the protagonist finds himself. In theory the story follows a young Kendrick who heads out to meet up with a girl, gets sidetracked by some buddies, gets into some trouble and then has to deal with the consequences. The mental and spiritual journey these events take him on become his story.

The skits (and there are lots) rather than just being interludes contribute to the story greatly. Voice mail messages from Kendrick's mom begin annoyed that the car is missing and end up just praying that Kendrick remember who he is and that he get home safely. 
Kendrick's brilliance as a performer is not limited to his great word play and narration, he actually morphs his voice so that it sounds different on nearly every track. Some of this is achieved with effects, but just as much is his own versatility as a vocal artist.

There aren't any low moments on this album. There are good, great, and amazing moments. The album is mostly somber and self reflective, but there is humor and energy. Some of the most poignant lyrics are in "The Art Of Peer Pressure" which can be summarized by "Really I'm a peacemaker, but I'm with the homies right now" after describing jumping and terrorizing someone. Another stand out track is "Swimming Pools (Drank)" which hides lyrics about a dangerous drinking habit under the guise of a party track. A third stand out is "Backseat Freestyle" which is supposed to reflect on young Kendrick's mindframe (it's supposed to be his first freestyle in highschool.) As such there's a lot of classic rap humour re: sex and violence, but it creates a bold contrast to the conscientiousness most of the rest of the album shows. I also can never get that opening "Martin had a dream! Martin had a dream! Kendrick have a dream!"

The final track I'll talk about is "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst." It's a song for those who have gone before. "Promise that you will sing about me." It's 12 minutes long. Which is crazy for a hip hop track. But it moves, it grows, it mourns. It has some shocking moments, and after it's all over the prayer for salvation comes back, this time led by an older black woman who chastises the boys for being angry when anger solves nothing. It's powerful stuff. 

This album is about life examined. It's honest. It's hurting. It's strong and vulnerable. It's an amazing piece of art by a young artist.

Favourite Track: "The Art Of Peer Pressure"
It's super hard to pick a favourite for good kid, m.A.A.d city, but I think the powerful truth of how easily we can be swayed if we're not careful sticks with me. The beat switch halfway through is awesome too.

> Frank Ocean - Channel ORANGE
Self Produced (with a few co-producers including Pharrell)

This year Frank Ocean made people who don't like R&B listen to, and find they like, R&B. That's quite an achievement. This album easily covers the most musical ground out of any album on this list. Frank Ocean is a stylistic chameleon, but the album maintains a pure vision because of his voice. It is a powerful and emotional tool which never shakes your attention.

The album opens with the sound of a Playstation (the first one) starting up. For anyone that listened to his last release Nostalgia/Ultra, this shouldn't be any surprise. He talks a lot on that album about video games, anime, and other fairly nerdy pursuits (for a potential R&B heartthrob). Frank has had a crazy couple years tho: Joined Odd Future when everyone was listening to anything those boys put out; guest spots on The Weeknd and Watch the Throne, being threatened with legal action by The Eagles (!!!) for his re-writing of "Hotel California" as "American Wedding" (exact same music, all new lyrics) etc. He's matured a lot, there's a lot more thoughtful writing on Channel ORANGE, but the kid is still there. On "Pink Matter" - one of the more reflective feeling songs on the albums - he references Majin Buu (THIS GUY BELOW)

from Dragon Ball Z, followed closely by a lazy sounding but always on point Andre 3000 verse.

"Super Rich Kids" is maybe the best summary of the dichotomy Frank Ocean is living. "Too many bottles of this wine we can't pronounce... the maids come around too much. Parents ain't around enough....Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends. Super rich kids with nothing but fake friends." He wants to be young and restless, but he's too aware of what's wrong with everyone, including himself. "We are the [Xanax] Nation" Earl Sweatshirt raps. A generation of over medicated avoidance.

This is probably the most cleverly produced album of the year. Multiple genre's and styles and seamlessly blended and woven together to paint a picture of a sensitive, but wreckless life. One that's trying to be lived to the fullest but is too aware of it's own short fallings to really take off. It's a sad story. But not too sad. Just kinda numb, with all the emotion just raging below the surface.

I really feel like I didn't do this review justice. There's just too much. Go listen.

Favourite Track: "Pyramids"
Ok, so I kinda avoided talking about this up top. But this really is the reason I love this album in a nutshell. Another 10 minute mindblowing track (only the second half is in the video up top). This starts off as fantastical story about an Egyptian princess named Cleopatra who has been stolen away. "Set the cheetahs on the loose!" The beat evolves as the story morphs dreamstyle. "Chandeliers inside the pyramids tremble." And then suddenly the song shifts dramatically, and the dream is over. Now a lonely Frank lies in bed as his girl dresses to go work [strip] at the Pyramid. "She's workin at the Pyramid tonight." So he hits the town to try and forget, "Bubbles in my champagne, let it be some Jazz playin" but there's still a sentimental longing for the girl who's workin at the Pyramid tonight. It's crazy. But it works. And I love it.

Oh ya. And there's that John Mayer Solo. 

Purity Ring - Shrines
Produced by Corin Roddick

This album blends so many opposites together in such an awesome way that it makes me giggle sometimes. It's chill. It's fun. It's downtempo and dark, but fun and catchy. The lyrics are sung by a really cute female voice, but they are bizarre and morbid and just plain weird. As a result I am rarely not in the mood for this album. If I'm happy the beats and melodies make me happy. If I'm down, the atmosphere is just murky enough that I'm not annoyed by what made me happy. If I'm exhausted the beats are just chill enough but not lugubrious. Shrines is a masterwork in tightrope walking.

Favourite Track: "Fineshrine"
To those lyrics I was talking about. This song opens like this: "Get a little closer, let it fold/ Cut open my sternum and pull/ my little ribs around you." But the melody is so sweet. And the beat moves as weird vocal swells swirl. Just a great tune. Followed by another. Followed by another.

Swans - The Seer
Michael Gira

And now we come to the second double album on my list and the album which ties Kendrick for Album of the Year. THE SEER. Weep! Woe! Despair! This album is just freaking bleak. And it is passionately bleak for very nearly two hours. Tracks range in length from under 2 minutes to over 30 minutes in length and very few minutes in any way relent. It is, in many ways, the inverse of 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! This is claustophobia incarnate. The story, loosely, seems to be about a young boy with a special gift for seeing what others cannot, torn from innocence, and thrust into a sort of deranged and enlightened lunacy which people fear but are drawn to. That's how I feel about his album. It is scary and yet it draws you in.

So much to talk about. The drums are huge and pounding. The repetitive riffs are hypnotic and distressing. The squalor of sound! It really feels like you're being chased through the slums of a foreign land for a lot of these tracks (especially the beginning of "Mother of the World") And yet along with the moments that sounds like a higher fidelity outtake of "Sister Ray", there are moments which sound more like Earth's more recent droning, Ennio Morricone influenced, Spaghetti Western, doom paced, compositions. But even those slower meditative moments - like the uber creepy lullaby "The Wolf" ("Wash me in your bloodlust") - never allow a moment of ease. It's always the calm before a new storm or an eye in the storm or a mental collapse of exhaustion because of trying to endure the storm.No rest for the wicked. Prime example? The 32 minute monstrosity which is the title track. Bagpipes, church bells, droning organs, disjointed cymbal rolls, all erupt at once in an extended cacophony of madness. Then the frantic dulcimer with lumbering drums being dive bombed by guitar slides. And then a crescendo into madness that would make Godspeed proud. 

"I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. "

There is some amazing drum work going on while the Seer further loses his mind in the immensity of what he's seen.

Perhaps the only break is the 4 minute opener of disc two, "Song for a Warrior" where Karen O guest stars in an (actually pretty) country ballad before things go totally south and crazy again.

Part of me is tempted to draw comparisons between The Seer and the second half of Salman Rushdie's literary masterpiece Midnight's Children. Bleak, but wonderfully expressed, and fantastical in nature.

You really have to drown in this album. Or swim away. It's not for everyone, but it's a remarkable experience.

Favourite Track: "The Seer"

Really this track could stand alone. So much crazy stuff happens. So much heavy chaos. Right at the half way mark there are these waves and waves of heavy chords. Unrelenting. You feel like surely the world must be ending. And then you realize that there are 16 more minutes. And you feel like...these waves could actually go on for 16 more minutes and I would not be able to turn away. Fortunately, Swans mastermind Michael Gira decides to not drive us quite as completely mad as the Seer, and the track enters a desert of harmonica loneliness before it rises, like a ghost.

Honourable Mentions:

Note:

I just couldn't decide on my tenth for my top 10. So I'm going to write a mini review for 11 Honourable Mentions. (No Links. Look em up!)

Black To Comm - Earth - The most Scott Walker influenced album I've heard in a while. Very detailed and textured compositions which require close listening.
Burial - Kindred EP - Burial kills it again with his subtle and deft producer's hand giving pre-Skrillex dubstep new life. These are long compositions which grow and collapse and rise again. Gorgeous.
Death Grips - The Money Store - Could have been my number 10 maybe if I'd got it earlier in the year. Insanely aggressive in its exclusion of others, angrier than most metal albums, and featuring the brilliant Zach Hill on drums, these are some of the weirdest and coolest beats going. Totally bizarre and abrasively awesome.
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan - Never got into Dirty Projectors before this. Really weird art rock with plenty of strange harmonies and melodic ideas, as well as some really interesting lyrical ideas.
Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music - This album just ripped my head off. So political. So hardcore. So uncompromising.
Krallice - Years Past Matter - Krallice again just barely misses my top ten with another amazing black metal/prog metal/shred fest of unrelenting ferocity. The complex rhythmic and modular developments this band consistently puts out is amazing to me.
METZ - METZ - At just under 30 minutes, this album is a punch in the gut and a kick to the teeth of teenage angst. Super fun, super fuzzy, super good.
The Mountain Goats - Trancendental Youth - Another band who consistently releases great albums which barely miss the top 10 mark. Now with way more horns!
Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction - I don't usually go for more straightforward metal. I like it weird. And I even more rarely go for metal with sung vocals (as opposed to harsher vocal manipulations). This album just had some really great, doomy, tunes which I was really impressed by.
Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light - If you can find me a more Beatles influenced album released this year I'll be surprised. You definitely won't find a better one. More songs life and death and depression and God and girls with names like Mary and Jane. Some really great tunes.
Split Cranium - Split Cranium - ISIS broke up. I was sad. Aaron Turner (the lead singer) joined Split Cranium for some super fun, crust punk, hardcore goodness.

Other Mentions:
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Bat Chain Puller - This is the album which the record companies rejected and was replaced by 1978's Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). 35 years later we finally get what the Captain had intended. It's basically a more blues'd out version of Shiny Beast. But I love it.

Scott Walker - Bish Bosch - This album makes Lulu look like it made sense. Scott Walker is both making fun of himself and his fans while taking his art deadly serious (listen to those knives being sharpened.) Probably the only person who can make a fart joke sound like a death threat nightmare. 



Favourite Tracks (not appearing on the above 20 albums):
Beck - "73 - 78"
Big Boi featuring Kelly Rowland - "Mama Told Me"
The Harpoonist and the Axe Murderer & Portage and Main - "Wake Up"
Japandroids - "Younger Us"
Carly Rae Jepsen - "Call Me Maybe"
Jordan Klassen & Facts - "A Silent Sphere"
Kanye West featuring Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz - "Mercy"
Taylor Swift - "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"
Schoolboy Q featuring A$AP Rocky - "Hands on the Wheel"
Jessie Ware - "Wildest Moments"
Jack White - "I'm Shakin'"