if you are in the present, we now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress
(which is to say things are getting back to normal around here!)
((and don’t forget, you can find all my past Top Ten’s right here!)
#1 - THE BIGGER LIGHTS - BATTLE HYMN [spotify]
(feat track - “Terrible World, Give Me More” [spotify])
It’s kind of awesome when a band does something you had no idea they were capable of, no idea they were even interested in attempting, and does it spectacularly well. It’s not like The Bigger Light’s earlier work had screamed “untapped potential”. Neither of their previous releases had hinted at them being much more than a mid-level pop band; there were no indications the band had bigger aspirations, nor was there anything that made them seem particularly capable of more. Certainly there was no reason to expect such a sharp left turn. I almost wonder if The Bigger Lights should have changed their band name, because while Battle Hymn is (mostly) the same people, it’s not even comparable to what came before. It exists in a whole different universe.
I won’t dwell too much on the sound of the album itself; I think I got that pretty well covered over here. (It’s really not my best review, looking back on it. Parts of it read pretty smoothly; other parts are seriously clunky. I think I got tripped up by my own exuberance at times; that’s definitely a flaw in my game. But at least it does alright from a descriptive standpoint.) I will say that there’s nobody out there that I can think of doing anything quite like what The Bigger Lights are doing here, and that’s a big part of the appeal for me. Black Veil Brides and Falling In Reverse go for some of the same territory but both come off a little heavier, a little sludgier, a lot more cartoony. Too much KISS, not enough Crue. Meanwhile, the pop-punks are mostly content to play it safe. And the revivalists (Steel Panther I’m looking at you) seem to do everything with a wink and a nod. The Bigger Lights are playing in the pop-metal playground, but they’re over in the corner with early Crue and Van Halen and Guns N Roses, bands who saw metal and punk as part of the same tradition, who didn’t feel the need to concede one to the other. Battle Hymn takes the best of both worlds and builds something better than either alone.
With last year’s #1, half my blog was a rave about Foxy Shazam’s live set. Well, I’ve seen The Bigger Lights live before, but only in their earlier incarnation, and while they were solid enough at what they were doing, the material certainly didn’t lend itself to any sort of transcendant live performance. I don’t think they played more than a handful of shows featuring material that wound up on Battle Hymn; the few clips I’ve seen, while great sounding, were also being played to an audience entirely unfamiliar with the band’s new material and direction, so there isn’t a lot to go on in terms of response. And between the departure of drummer Ryan Seaman (whose contributions to Battle Hymn are absolutely crucial) and the recent announcement by vocalist Topher Talley that the band would be hanging it up for the conceivable future, and I suspect it’s likely I’ll never get to see this stuff performed live. (Even if the inevitable reunion happens, which seems to be the case for virtually any band of even minor reknown these days, I don’t know if there’s any fanbase out there craving this material; why cash in if you’re not going to cash in on it? I wish they’d at least had the opportunity to win people over with Battle Hymn.)
Which, while I totally understand the situation — it’s rough to keep slogging on when it seems like noone cares, especially when the realities of life intrude, and even more especially when you can avail yourself of different-but-equally-rewarding creative outlets that people do care about (and pay you for!) — still breaks my heart a little. These are songs that deserve to be thrashed along to, they beg to be heard with bodies flying overhead and elbows crashing into kidneys, so thick with tumult they are. Battle Hymn is the sound of bringing order to chaos, of asserting purpose into the random world swirling around us, of seizing control out of nothing at all, and that sort of thing is almost always at its best when experienced in the crushing sweaty entropy of the pit, a multisensory experience, physical as well as mental and aural. I can’t hang like I used to, but there are still a few bands worth getting in the pit for, if only because I don’t want to experience them any other way, and it sucks that I’ll almost certainly never have the chance here. (And besides, “Dear In The Headlights” is custom-crafted for group lighter-pumping. There definitely hasn’t been enough of that in my life!)
Still, in life sometimes most of the time all you can do is take what you can get; if this is all I’m going to get from The Bigger Lights, I’ll take it gladly and greedily. I’m disappointed to see them go, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve left any unfinished business behind. Battle Hymn is a clear, definitive artistic statement, the strongest I heard in 2011. That, plus eight totally kick-ass songs, made Battle Hymn an easy pick for my favorite album of the year.
review of Battle Hymn (published 7/12/11)
THE BEST OF THE REST
(feat. track - Amely - “Back To Love” [spotify] from The Raleigh Sessions)
This was an incredibly rich year for music. It was also a year in which I immersed myself very deeply in new music, maybe more than any year to date. At 28 artists, 2011’s “Best Of The Rest” is almost comically long, and yet there were another 20 albums that could have made this list had I not decided I needed to cut myself off somewhere. So don’t take this to be everything I liked this year; if it made this list, I really, really liked it.
Tomorrow, I’ll unveil my #1 album of the year. In the meantime, here’s a whole lot of stuff that didn’t quite make my Top Ten Twelve but still left a big impression in 2011.
Reviews I’ve written on any of these albums are noted. Spotify links have been included, where available.
Amely - The Raleigh Sessions EP [spotify]
Teen scene also-rans Amely drove the stake through their own heart this fall, but just before sputtering out, they turned loose this startlingly mature EP. The product of unfinished studio work intended for a new full-length, The Raleigh Sessions feels incomplete at times, and sags a bit toward the end, but when it hits (like on the Killers-esque lead track “Back To Love”) it hits hard, and vocalist Petie Pizarro’s newfound croon lends the proceedings a soulful emotional heft.
[review]
The Cinema - My Blood Is Full Of Airplanes [spotify]
Somewhere between the announcement of Lydia’s disbanding and the band’s resurrection a scant few months later, frontman Leighton Antelman hit the studio with producer Matt Malpass, and the album they cooked up together as The Cinema might be the best thing either has done in years. Antelman’s boyish vocals would make for a perfect soul-in-the-machine counterpoint if not for the fact that Malpass’ buoyant-but-downbeat indietronica is so chock full of soul to begin with. As Antelman intones on album highlight Kinetic, ”you can’t fight the motion // it’s kinetic // you can’t stop the moment // it’s electric”.
Cold Cave - Cherish The Light Years [spotify]
Wes Eisold’s (American Nightmare / Give Up The Ghost) latest project has garnered lots of comparisons to The Cure. To my ears, it sounds more like The Psychedelic Furs and early OMD fed through Sleigh Bells’ compression grinder. Either way, the overdriven bombast and huge choruses are exactly what I want out of rock and roll, even when it’s being played with keyboards.
Divided By Friday - Prove It EP [spotify]
Until a Fall Out Boy reunion happens, this is the next best thing. On top of getting their huge hooks and killer melodies just right, Divided By Friday also manage the much harder task of tapping the same emotional vein. Derivative, sure, but still worthy.
[review]
The Downtown Fiction - Let’s Be Animals [spotify] + Pineapple EP [spotify]
The Downtown Fiction aren’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but they do what they do really well, and in power pop that’s the magic formula. Let’s Be Animals takes the straightforward approach; Pineapple pushes into some new sonic spaces, dabbling in 90s alt-rock (of both the dirty post-grunge variety and the sunny Sugar Ray style). With both, melody rules the day.
*full disclosure — my brother worked on a number of tracks on Let’ s Be Animals
Edelweiss - Pre-Colombians EP [spotify]
I already dedicated a full post this year to raving about Edelweiss’ CMJ performance. Suffice it to say that I’ve been mildly distracted ever since they announced they were back in the studio. That’s ok, I wasn’t really planning on getting any work done this year anyway.
Every Avenue - Bad Habits [spotify]
It’s a tough time to be a straightforward rock band, but Every Avenue keep plugging on. Bad Habits is their most consistent effort to date, ten all-killer no-filler tracks that find the band stretching their range a bit at times but never forsaking their core sound for gimmickry. Any world that doesn’t have room for Every Avenue’s brand of muscular power pop is a world I want no part of.
[review]
Fireworks - Gospel [spotify]
Amidst the new wave of rougher, tougher pop-punk, Fireworks are a bit of a sonic throwback to the smoother sounds of the late 00s, full of pretty harmonies and background keyboard riffs, and that’s probably got something to do with why they seem to have been lapped by most of their peers this year. Which is a shame, because I defy you to find an album with a better opener/closer combo than Gospel’s “Arrows” and “The Wild Bunch”.
Gallows - Death Is Birth EP [spotify]
Intensity in ten minutes! When quintessential uber-Brit Frank Carter stepped away from the mic, there were real questions about whether Gallows could exist meaningfully without his manic presence, but what new frontman Wade MacNeil lacks in Englishness, he makes up for in pure, blistering rage. Gallows 2.0 is a whole new animal, and it’s a BEAST.
Good Problems - I’m Changing My World EP / Be Eccentric EP
Former Sing It Loud frontman Pat Brown’s overdriven nasality is a bit of an acquired taste (I dig it, personally), but the unrepentantly pretty hooks on these two EPs of easy posi-pop are undeniable. The well-buffed Be Eccentric ups the production ante from I’m Changing My World’s staples-and-tape aesthetic, but Brown shines in both settings.
I Am The Avalanche - Avalanche United [spotify]
Avalanche United was a long time coming, but pretty much everyone is in agreement that it was worth the wait. I’m still having a little trouble adjusting to the (great sounding) filled-out, studio-shined versions of “Brooklyn Dodgers” and “This One’s On Me” (formerly “The Drinking Song”) after years of hearing them live, but tremendous new tracks like “Amsterdam” and “Is This Really Happening” sure help smooth things over.
Into It. Over It. - Proper [spotify] / Twelve Towns [spotify]
August’s excellent Twelve Towns compiled tracks Evan Weiss had released on splits with acts ranging from Pswingset to Koji over the past two years; September’s Proper turned around and absolutely blew it out of the water, with full band recordings that ratcheted up the energy but preserved his quirky, midwestern emo throwback sound. Whether in troubadour mode or with his raging band, Weiss is consistently solid but always nontraditional (unless your tradition contains a lot of Braid and Mineral).
Jonah Matranga - You’re All Those Things And Then You’re None
The always-innovative Matranga released this album in two versions, one stripped-down and self-recorded, the other filled out with the crowdsourced contributions of friends and fans. Both find him in a particularly upbeat, if mellow, mood; the lazy swing of “Roots” and the perky “Sweet Life” are perfect Sunday morning music, and the collective version of “Happy-hee” might be the most upliftingly cheesy-sweet recording I’ve ever heard (no exaggeration).
K.Flay - I Stopped Caring In ‘96 Mixtape
K.Flay’s built her reputation as an MC, but on this three-part mixtape, it’s her dark, minimalist beats and creaky loops that really stand out, sucking up the vibe of Tricky’s Pre-Millenial Tension and spitting it back as post-millenial ennui. A photorealistic painting of a mythical now.
Little Bombs - Little Bombs [spotify]
If ex-Sing It Loud singer Pat Brown went the upbeat route, their guitarist, Kieran Smith, took a decidedly different tack — Little Bombs is a downcast and dour slice of late-90s tinged power pop, full of dark days and lonely nights. An unassuming little album that I seem to keep coming back to.
[review submitted, not yet published]
The Maine - Pioneer [spotify]
The Maine have to got stop releasing albums earlier in the year. 2010’s In Darkness And In Light was released the last week of December; it would have certainly made (at least) my Best Of The Rest list that year had I heard it in time. Pioneer didn’t come out quite as late this year, but there’s a good chance that, had I had the opportunity to spend significant time with it sooner, it would be in my Top Ten. The Maine’s latest evolution finds them pumping out the most mature, self-assured, well-crafted and hardest hitting music of their careers. Rock and roll ain’t dead yet.
[review submitted, not yet published]
Mod Sun - In Mod We Trust EP [spotify] / Blazed By The Bell mixtape / single tracks
The first time I saw Mod Sun was at Bamboozle 2010, playing the final set of the festival (at the same time as headliner Weezer was presumably rocking the main stage), with more friends on stage than kids in the crowd. 2011 found him raising his profile considerably: between a Rolling Stone contest, collaborations with folks like the currently-blowing-up Schoolboy Q, a weekly webcast that draws tens of thousands of “no fans just friends”, and even a cosign from Saved By The Bell’s very own Mr. Belding, it’s easy to lose sight of the music that underlies it all. But while this year’s flurry of releases were at times inconsistent, high points like “Take The Credit, Imma Keep The Change,” “No Girlfriend” and “Time To Celebrate” are among the best work Mod’s done to date and, more importantly, with each release he seems to be really finding his own unique sound.
Nocturnal Me - Two Faced EP [spotify]
While Dave Melillo’s long-awaited second release under his own name was a mixed bag at best, the EP he dropped earlier in the year under the guise of Nocturnal Me fires on all cylinders. Nocturnal Me seems to have become a catch-all name for all of Melillo’s non-singer-songwriter-ly releases; Two Faced finds him exploring pop r&b with a gift for melodic hooks and a suave, easy manner.
[review]
Richard Benjamin - Patience Is A Virtue Mixtape
Whether ridin’ hot over Kanye tracks or reimagining Hall & Oates for more cynical times, Benjamin’s delivery stays consistenly lithe and nimble. Adding just-right dollops of cocksure wit and ”aww shucks” charm to equal parts sleaze and steez makes for a winning recipe.
Skrillex - Bangarang EP [spotify] / More Monsters & Nice Sprites [spotify] / assorted singles
Despite the fact that he still hasn’t gotten around to releasing a full length, it’s hard to deny that 2011 belonged to Skrillex. In addition to the two EPs he let loose, he either remixed or guested on (by Wikipedia’s count) 18 more tracks this year, with results ranging from “great” to “excellent” to “maybe the best thing ever” (that would be his remix of Benni Benassi’s “Cinema” [spotify]). Dude even made Korn sound good. Anything he touches is almost instantly recognizable — he might be operating within the realm of dubstep, but even if you funnel down to the microgenre of “brostep,” there’s nobody else who sounds remotely like Skrillex. He’s created a singular and unmistakable sonic palette of grindy squelches and bullfrog yawps, Transformer-in-a-trash-compactor noises that have been endlessly emulated but not-even-close-to replicated.
Stamps - Stamps Ventures Of A Lifetime EP [spotify]
Stamps co-vocalists Bob Morris (The Hush Sound) and Ren Patrick hail from Chicago and Houston, respectively, but Stamps Ventures Of A Lifetime is pure breezy California pop through and through, full of sneakily-infectious melodies and handclaps galore. Classic pop, the sound of sunshine.
That’s Outrageous! - Teenage Scream [spotify]
That’s Outrageous!’s first two singles made my 2010 Best Of The Rest list, and Teenage Scream lived up to their promise of massively-over-the-top hardcore adorned with shiny digital frippery, but intra-band drama led to founding member Tom DeGrazia’s summary ejection midway through the year. With DeGrazia gone, I’m curious to hear what That’s Outrageous! do next (his former bandmates assert that they were largely responsible for the band’s sound, and I’m curious to see if their follow-up bears this out), but I’d by lying if I didn’t admit I was twice as interested in his new project, Fast Times.
[review]
There For Tomorrow - The Verge [spotify]
I’ve always enjoyed There For Tomorrow’s live sets, but on The Verge they finally managed to capture their commanding presence on record. It doesn’t hurt that this is also easily the best set of songs the band has written; there’s not a dud in the whole bunch. This sort of straightforward alt-rock has really fallen out of favor in the last few years; seven years ago, this album would have been huge. As it is, it’s still a gem, albeit a hidden one.
[review]
Unicorn Kid - Tidal Rave EP [spotify]
Oli “Unicorn Kid” Sabin actually made my 2009 Best Of The Rest, but spent most of 2010 in label limbo after a signing with Ministry Of Sound failed to yield more than two ho-hum singles and a whole bunch of strife. Now back on his own, Tidal Rave picks up where Wee Monsters left off and bolts towards the future, with three sopping wet glissando-filled ravers that break out of the chiptune ghetto for bluer pastures. Up the seapunx!
We Are The In Crowd - Best Intentions [spotify]
I’ve been a fan of We Are The In Crowd going back to the handful of singles they released on iTunes in late 2009 in advance of their Guaranteed To Disagree EP, and it’s been a blast watching them grow from playing for tens of kids at out-of-the-way corners on Warped Tour to a mainstage slot at 2011’s Bamboozle. Best Intentions is the natural continuation of their earlier work, with deft pop craftsmanship, big big hooks and a contagious exuberance.
[review]
La Dispute - Wildlife [spotify] / Touche Amore - Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me [spotify] / Pianos Become The Teeth - The Lack Long After [spotify]
I have to be in a very particular mood to listen to hardcore/screamo/whatever it is you might wanna call these three, which means none of them got as much attention as they deserved from me this year. Three ambitious concept albums, each pushed the edges of what heavy music can be, and what it can aspire to, a little bit further out. They make me wish I was better at writing about heavy music. About the best I can do within my own limitations is tell you that, if you like heavy music, you need to listen to these three albums; if you can at least tolerate heavy music, you at least owe it to yourself to hear them.
#2 - GO RADIO - LUCKY STREET [spotify] / Deluxe Edition [spotify]*
(feat. track - “Lucky Street” [spotify])
I’m having a little trouble coming up with anything new to say about Lucky Street; I loved it from the very first listen, and wrote an unqualified rave** about it back in March, and my feelings haven’t changed in the least. It seems like most years there’s an album that I listen to in the first few months of the year, and just know that no matter what else I hear over the remainder of the year it’s going to land near the top of my list. (In 2010 it was Motion City Soundtrack’s My Dinosaur Life.)
The whole album just bristles with energy; the production is snappy, punchy, taut like a guitar string about to pop, everything the sound of electricity snapping across a gap in the wires. Moment after moment of eye-clenching intensity, tension and release, tension and release. I know they’re coming and they still get me every time, no matter how many times I listen Lucky Street never seems to lose that power.
At a time when most bands seem to be stripping down, Go Radio are unabashedly big-sounding, sharp and clean but menacingly large, like a tight end making cuts downfield. Aside from the very occasional flourish, this isn’t about filling out a sound with lots of instruments; Lucky Street’s feel comes from taking the basic guitar/bass/drums and ratcheting them up to comic book sizes, not in an echoey atmospheric 80’s inspired way, but in some much more primal manner, one that induces instinctual response (that response is frequently something along the lines of “sing a line really loudly and inappropriately and then wonder why everyone is staring at me”). It’s the first of the band’s recording that matches the scape of Jason Lancaster’s songwriting, all grand moves and soaring choruses. Like a wave crashing down over me, I get lost in it’s churning power, I find myself having been swept away and unable to account for the lost time.
Lucky Street pushes the same synaptic buttons for me that so many of my all-time favorite albums do, from early teen years favorites like Live’s Mental Jewelry and Our Lady Peace’s Naveed right up on through last year’s list-topping Foxy Shazam. It’s basically tailor-made for my aesthetic preferences. There’s no way I couldn’t have loved it.
review of Lucky Street (published 3/01/11)
*I’m not a fan of the whole Deluxe Edition game, an old label trick to get superfans who already bought an album to pay for it a second time, and I’m doubly dubious in this case because a) Lucky Street is absolutely perfect as is, in both length and sequence (which is changed up slightly on the Deluxe Edition) and b) because the best of the added tracks can be found elsewhere. ”Ready Or Not” is on the band’s Welcome To Life EP, “Goodnight Moon” is on their Do-Overs And Second Chances EP, and their cover of Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” was released only months before the reissue on the Punk Goes Pop 4 compilation. There are only two new tracks, and then a couple of demo/acoustic versions of tracks on the original album. That said, both “Goodnight Moon” and “Rolling In The Deep” are absolutely essential tracks in the Go Radio catalog, so if you’re only going to own one Go Radio CD, you might as well pick up the Deluxe Edition.
**Looking back, there’s a lot of things I don’t like about the review I wrote; it’s clunky and disjointed and reads too much like one of those awful track-by-track reviews at times, and I think I overrelied on snippets of lyrics while simultaneously doing a poor job of contextualizing them. I find it harder to write about albums I love through and through than I do about albums with even niggling flaws. But there’s some nuggets of gold in there too.
#3 - MANSIONS - DIG UP THE DEAD [spotify]
(feat. track - “Seven Years” [spotify])
Christopher Browder, who records as the one-man band Mansions, is one dark dude. Sometimes he’s dark and brooding. Sometimes he’s dark and seething. Sometimes he’s dark and sad. Sometimes he’s just plain old dark. If you think you’ve spotted any light in Dig Up The Dead’s ten tracks of bummer rock and folky slowcore, reconsider.
And yet Dig Up The Dead couldn’t be further from the lachrymose self-involvement of baby-bat goth or acoustic emo. There’s no flourish here; where there’s pain, it’s pain as felt, not pain as acted out. Music this unabashedly sad is often a “look at me” ploy, but one gets the sense that Browder would prefer to be hiding in a dark corner right now, if it weren’t for the pesky fact that he makes his bones as a performing songwriter. He seemingly lacks even the will to quit. As he puts it on the album-opening title track, “I have never been free // but I have always been cheap.”
Still, no matter how dour, how plodding (when bro sings “adrenaline is not my blood // amphetamines are not my love” in “Not My Blood”, he ain’t lying), how bleak Dig Up The Dead feels, there’s something weirdly life-affirming about it. It takes a hopeful and rebellious heart to shout into the void, even if you’re just telling that void how void-y it is. As down as the album may be, when listening I never feel like I’m getting dragged down with it.
A lot of that can be chalked up to Browder’s skill as a craftsman; every hook is memorable, every phrase quotable. The recordings themselves are largely minimalist, but not underproduced; little moments like the dissociative self-harmonies on “Call Me When It’s Over” or “Blackest Sky“‘s near-false ending coda give lie to the tremendous care Browder’s put into his recordings.
It’s rare that I can listen to any album with an unwavering focus on one specific emotion regardless of my mood at the time, much less an album this intense, but somehow Dig Up The Dead plays well to all my dispositions. I can’t remember a single instance where one of its tracks came up on shuffle and I felt the compulsion to hit skip. The songs of Dig Up The Dead are very precise and strong evocations of a particular mood, yet they manage to consistently transcend that mood. I always feel like coming back for more.
(If you can find it, early copies of Dig Up The Dead were released along with an acoustic recording of the full album, and while it’s not essential, it’s more than just a quieter recreation. ”Blackest Sky” takes on all sorts of new dimensions, and not just because it’s the heaviest track on the original recoring; when transposed to a different key, it turns from a dark and desperate lament for lost youth to an almost wistfully elegaic paean to those years. Meanwhile, “Yer Voice“‘s tentative declaration of purpose twists into something approximating a love song. It’s a welcome complement to an already exceptional piece of work.)
#4 - SPARKS THE RESCUE - WORST THING I’VE BEEN CURSED WITH [spotify]
(feat. track - “60 Minutes Of Fame” [spotify])
When I’m assigned an album to review, I have a few little rules I’ve set up in my head: I need to give it no fewer than ten listens, over multiple sittings, over the course of no less than a week. I’m not sure if other folks are as process-driven as me; it probably says as much about how my mind functions as it does about my commitment to honoring the albums I review.
(And I do mean “honoring” — even with things I ultimately write negatively about, I feel like it’s only fair to the creator of a piece of art that I at least do my damnedest to understand what it is they’re doing, and why, and how, before I start spouting off opinons on it. More than even honoring that piece of music, it’s a matter of doing honor to the artform itself, and to art itself. Yeah, I’m pretentious like that.)
The ultimate goal of that kind of extended and (moderately) intensive listening treatment is to move beyond the “first impressions” phase and try not only to dig deeper into the theme, the language, the production and the purpose of the album, but also to make at least some sort of guess at its lasting value, the way that an album might (or might not) reward repeated listenings. I had a suspicion with Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With that it might be that kind of grower; sure enough, in the six months since I first wrote about it, it has gone from a solid “like” to a full-on “love”. (Ironically, the slight production shine, which I both knocked and overstated in my review, is probably responsible in large part for that effect.)
For a style of music (the mid/late-00’s flavor of pop-punk) that embraces simplicity of form and prioritizes immediacy at the expense of depth, a lot of times there isn’t much there beyond the giddy sugar rush of the first few plays, but Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With keeps pulling me back for more. From Alex Roy’s odd vocal tics to the lead guitar that swirls in circles behind the killer hook of “60 Minutes Of Fame“‘s chorus to the digitally chopped vocal in “The Weirdest Way“‘s pre-chorus to the handclaps that pop up behind the second verse of “Postcard Of A Tidal Wave”, the little production touches really pay dividends, turning each easter egg into a microhook; I feel like a little something new catches me each time I listen. Though the band has only released two full lengths, they’ve been together in one form or another for over a decade, and it shows in their songwriting chops, their knack for adding just a little bit more to each track than what it would need to be “good enough”.
But ultimately, beyond all that, it comes down to the fact that I just don’t seem to get sick of these songs. Ever. There’s absolutely no filler here. Of the twelve tracks on the album, I’d venture to say ten of them have been stuck in my head at one point or another over the last year. It’s still a regular occurrence. Big and memorable melodies throughout, with lyrics that are consistently compellingly revealing and (at times) maybe just a touch deeper than they let on at first blush.
Of all the albums I’ve listened to this year, Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With is the one I’ve come back to the most.
review of Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With (published 5/18/11)
#5 - ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK - HISTORY OF MODERN [spotify]
(feat. track - “History Of Modern (Part I)” [spotify])
It’s a little strange, but in a year where I listened to an absurd (at least by my standards) 250 new releases, I’ll remember 2011 more than anything else as the year I got obsessive over a band that formed shortly before I was born and hit the peak of their popularity two decades ago. I had been a casual fan of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark for a while now (1981’s Architecture & Morality has been a personal favorite for maybe four years), but this was the year I really fell down the rabbit hole.
Largely it was in part to finally seeing OMD live; their spectacular March show, their first in NYC since 1988, absolutely knocked me on my ass, and opened me up to the true breadth and depth of their catalog, and the two subsequent shows they played here in September only further solidified their greatness in my mind. I spent most of my summer and fall in full-on obsession, tearing through their back catalog, watching old music videos and documentaries on Youtube, ordering live DVD’s (including this absolutely spectacular performance from the band’s first-phase synthpunk prime packaged in with a european reissue of A&M) and figuring out how to rip the audio from them to carry around on my iPod. My last.fm charts are slightly wonky due to a nearly six month period last year where scrobbling was out of commission on my computer, but they were far and away my most listened to band in 2011. The year was, to my mind, The Year Of OMD.
And so in many ways this pick is a symbolic one, a placeholder for OMD’s entire catalog and the way it entered my life in 2011. And yet, History Of Modern would be deserving even without all that other stuff. From “New Holy Ground“‘s haunting sensitivity to “Sometimes“‘s downbeat Moby-isms to “The Right Side“‘s motorik chug to ”History Of Modern (Part I)“‘s bright apocalypse, History Of Modern finds OMD touching on virtually every style and mood they’ve played with in the past, and evidences their continued mastery of each. History Of Modern is not just a welcome return from one of the great, unfairly unheralded bands of the synthpop revolution, but a shockingly strong album from a band at a phase in their careers that generally finds artists engaging in a lot of laurel-resting and goodwill-coasting.
If there’s any fudging on my part going on here, it’s in that I probably didn’t listen to History Of Modern quite as much as the other choices that made my list this year, primarily because I spent so much of my year (and particularly late summer / early fall) listening to the whole vast rest of OMD’s catalog, or at least large chunks of it. (I still haven’t spent much time digging into the post-Paul Humphries era, aside from the singles from that time; I should probably give at least Sugar Tax its proper due, judging from the reviews.) That wasn’t because of any real shortcomings on History Of Modern’s part, it was just a factor of a) time and b) the exceptional nature of OMD’s earlier work. History of Modern’s high points stand up to anything else in OMD’s catalog, and its consistency rivals that of anything they’ve done excepting Architecture & Morality. It’s a worthy album of their artistic legacy, and at this late stage in OMD’s career, that’s saying something.
[I’m quasi-violating one of my cardinal rules here: History Of Modern was, by all accounts I can find, released in late 2010. From what I remember earlier in the year, there was either a delayed American release or an American re-release or some such similar jiggery-pokery in early 2011, but even if I’m wrong on that account, this album (and all the attendent other stuff that comes with it) was too essential, too integral to my 2011 to be left off. Hobgoblins of small minds and such.]
#6 - PANIC! AT THE DISCO - VICES AND VIRTUES [spotify]
(feat. track - “Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met…)” [spotify])
I hold a big sentimental soft-spot for Panic! At The Disco — though I never did catch them in their early days (they barely played out), they came out of Las Vegas while I was living there, and more importantly, were largely responsible for the huge creative explosion that followed. But even beyond that, I remember being absolutely blown away by their debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. That record’s mix of dance beats and arena punk was unlike pretty much anything else before it (the closest band I can think of is maybe The Faint, who I also love, but who approached their music from a very different direction), and while it was uneven, its highs — “The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage”; “I Write Sins, Not Tragedies” — were truly, fantastically great. Which is why I was so disappointed when they got their foot caught in a rusty Beatletrap on the followup, Pretty. Odd. They shed so much of what was (perhaps naively) unique about themselves in pursuit of homage that felt like clunky style-biting at best and straight-up aping at worst. So it was with way more trepidation than anticipation that I approached Vices And Virtues. Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise!
The term “Beatlesque” is, on its face, so broad as to be largely useless — the Beatles were a great many things to a great many people; arguably, the most things to the most people of any pop music act. But considering the overt, stated influence the Beatles’ catalog held over the band during the writing of Pretty. Odd., it’s natural (and probably right) to look at Panic! At The Disco through that lens. It’s clear that the Pretty. Odd. period, while not leading to the band’s best work, was instrumental in stretching their range as songwriters in two particular, distinct and nearly-opposite “Beatlesque” ways: Vices And Virtues contains the most straightforward, most streamlined simple pop song in the band’s catalog (“Always”), and the most experimental, most adventurous complex pop song in the band’s catalog (“Nearly Witches”). Both work, brilliantly.
Between those tracks are successful experiments in everything from baroque pop to mariachi-tinged raveups to angsty funk, and with only one exception (opening track/lead single “The Ballad Of Mona Lisa” still isn’t doing it for me), they’re winners. (The deluxe editions [spotify1] [spotify2] of Vices & Virtues tack on a few more tracks; while none are essential — it’s a neatly concise album that’s clearly been intentionally sequenced for both flow and feel — there are some neat moments, including wild falsetto vocals from Brendon Urie in the bridges of both “Stall Me” and “Oh Glory” that push into new territory for the already-formidable singer). It’s an album with the sort of heavy layers of inventive production that reward repeated listens. It’s one of those rare albums where extra time in the studio didn’t result in an over-thought mess; the attention to detail really pays dividends.
It’s always funny (and a little sad) when a young band discovers the Beatles and starts acting like they’re the only ones to have ever done so; I’m a little surprised and a lot thrilled that P!ATD have moved through and beyond this phase in the best possible way. Next time around, I won’t get caught with my guard down.
review of Vices And Virtues (published 3/25/11)
#7 - PATRICK STUMP - SOUL PUNK [spotify] / TRUANT WAVE EP [spotify]
(feat. track - “Dance Miserable” [spotify] from Soul Punk)
It’s no secret around here that I’m a big fan of just about everything Fall Out Boy did, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that I feel the same way about Patrick Stump’s solo releases. Of all the post-FOB projects (Black Cards, The Damned Things, Burning Empires), Stump’s is really the only one I’ve connected with, and I’ve connected with it in a big way.
Partly it’s that voice — soulful, blustery, half confident and half that sort of fake confidence that gives away, more than masks, insecurity. Partly it’s the sounds he toys with — I feel like there’s a serious funk current running thru pop right now (I found it this year in everyone from Lights to Cobra Starship) that’s right in my wheelhouse, and Stump plays it like a champ. And partly it’s that the dude just writes really good tunes.
Last Fall, New York Times music columnist James C. McKinley Jr. raised the Internet’s hackles with a story on the dearth of protest songs revolving around the Occupy movement. McKinley was taken to task (appropriately) for his deaf ear towards country and hip hop, perhaps the two most populist popular genres today, both of which have plenty to say on the subject. But if you’re the sort who’s insistent on getting your protest music from a white, male, rock-oriented performer, well I’m not sure anyone this year did a better job of harnessing, or at least elucidating, the zeitgeist than Stump. Tracks like Soul Punk’s “Dance Miserable” and “Greed” and Truant Wave’s “As Long As I Know I’m Getting Paid” put a laser focus on the strains of disillusionment and cynicism that were largely inescapable this past year. On an album that draws so much of its musical influence from the worlds of soul and funk, it’s hard not to trace lines from Stump’s 2011 work to albums like Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, products of similar economic times and social upheaval.
Those are obviously some weighty comparisons to make, and while I do think Stump’s work measures up favorably, it has become apparent that it won’t have nearly the impact, despite the fact that both its sound and subject matter should have broad appeal. To quote music journalist / Alternative Press Managing Editor Annie Zaleski on Stump, “[i]ncreasingly, any artist who’s been immersed in the Warped Tour/media-classified “emo” scene is branded with a scarlet letter, which prevents them from ever crossing over to a non-youth-oriented audience.”** This has held true throughout “emo“‘s transition from obscure subgenre to mainstream scene, even as its sound transmogrified from hardcore to scruffily-melodic indie to stadium punk. It would be a stretch to say Truant Wave or Soul Punk retain much, if any, connection to any of “emo“‘s many sounds, and Stump’s connection to its fanbase is now tangential at best (judging by the smallish crowds his headliner performances have drawn), but his history with that scene may have consigned him to permanent-Dangerfield status.
So be it. Despite its strange little moment in the sun (for which Fall Out Boy arrived right on time), “emo” — and its purveyors — were never mean to be cool. If Truant Wave and Soul Punk are consigned to being lost classics, well at least in the age of Bittorrent and Spotify they’ll merely be hidden in plain sight, always accessible to those who look hard enough. And maybe someday, after all the social trappings have long fallen away, when nobody remembers exactly why things were supposed to be so cool or uncool and people have to start judging based just on the music, they’ll get their due.
review of Truant Wave EP (published 3/06/11)
review of Soul Punk (published 1/13/11)
**I realized while reading the commentary on the 2011 Pazz & Jop Poll that I may have unintentionally plagarized some of Ms. Zaleski’s comments regarding Soul Punk, which she had previously shared on twitter. I’ve gone back and rewritten a portion of this entry, as well as credited her where appropriate. Mea culpa; all apologies! And if you enjoy smart, insightul and eminantly readable music writing, you should be following her on twitter or here; she “gets it”.
#8 - BALANCE AND COMPOSURE - SEPARATION [spotify]
(feat. track - “Quake” [spotify])
Separation takes the rudiments of Sunny Day Real Estate’s grungy proto-emo (and Jeremy Enigk’s gravelly keen) and slops on top of it a heavy Sapone-influenced crust, the sort that covered Brand New’s Daisy and Sainthood Reps’ Monoculture. (There’s also, dare I say, more than a hint of Seven Mary Three in the mix. Is that considered sacrilege?) It’s as ornery a record as I’ve heard all year, lyrically and sonically, a hissyfit, a temper tantrum, unguarded and unfiltered and unafraid. It both sounds and feels like dirt under the fingernails.
Which all might seem terribly unappealing, but the utter freshness of the sound and the skill with which Balance & Composure execute it make Separation truly compelling. It’s been a long long time since anyone’s really done this kind of thing, and even longer since it’s been done this well. For me, there’s definitely an element of throwback appeal. And yet Balance & Composure have successfully courted a fanbase that, in large part, was born during grunge’s dying days and came of listening age at a time when alt-rock was about as uncool as hair metal in 1993.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you view it as a new thing or as merely the zenith of old-thing revivalism, Separation is something special: one hell of a beautiful ugly album. If this is where the grunge revival begins (and really, it’s just about time for that cycle, right?) then I can only look forward to wherever it might go from here.
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