Best Music, Albums, Video, etc. of 2011

For Christmas I used to give the gift of music. Now music is free. Consider this your guide to the most theftable music of 2011.


1. The Rapture, In the Grace of Your Love

I think it was 2003 when the Rapture's debut Echoes was awarded album of the year by Pitchfork, heralding the dawn of a new age of Brooklyn disco hipster punk. In the ensuing years, however, the Rapture floundered while LCD Soundsystem, MGMT, TV on the Radio, and a cottage industry of indie (whatever that means these days) bands from Williamsburg moved into the spotlight. In recent times the Rapture lost one of its key members and nearly broke up, but with this new album they seem to have gained in maturity what they have lost in energy and edge. The mother of their singer, Luke Jenner, recently committed suicide, leading him to join a men's choir, and it certainly shows, because whereas dude used to have a scratchy punk yelp, now DUDE CAN SING. The opening track, "Sail Away," is an outstanding example, as is the title track and some of the dancier songs, like "How Deep Is Your Love" (which actually could pass as a gay disco anthem). There's some lame semi-religious or "spiritual" allusions in the music, as suggested by the album's title, but I'm willing to let that slide  if your mom commits suicide. Don't call it a comeback. Actually, do call it a comeback. Echoes is indeed one of the greatest albums of the past 10 years, IMHO, but In the Grace of Your Love marks their transformation into one of the greatest bands of our time. Don't get me wrong, nobody cares right now and the hype machine passed the Rapture by years ago (I'm not sure if Pitchfork even reviewed this album) but one day we recognize its greatness and you'll want to tell everyone how you were sooooo into that album before everyone else was. Bonus=music video for "Miss You" featuring kitschy 80s aerobics movie that doubles as softcore porn.

2. Girls, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Perhaps the most misleading band name in the history of music: Girls is actually just some guys, and as far I can tell pretty much just this one dude who plays guitar, sings, and writes the songs, all with a needle dangling out of his arm or neck or wherever he can still manage to find a working vein. Dude also looks a lot like a taller Kurt Cobain and seems to hail from San Francisco. I hear there's some crazy story about how dude was born into a cult of aliens or some bullshit like that. This is Girls' second full-length album, and it's a great rock album in an age when nobody makes great rock albums anymore. There's chunky Black Sabbath guitar riffs, an Elvis Costello snarl, and some moody power ballads to boot. Enjoy dude while he's still alive. Based on this video I would estimate he's currently about 6'2" and 75 lbs. Let's hope the video doesn't make crop tops fashionable for male hipsters, but then again how could it if it doesn't even look good on dude.

3. Tyler The Creator, Goblin

How can you call this kid anything except the black Eminem? Well, for one Tyler is more like an alienated skateboarding punk or devil-worshipping headbanger than an inner-city gangsta or wigga. In other words, he's much, much more white than Eminem in a cultural sense. But Tyler is also much like Eminem in the sense that his psycho-pathology is on full display for the listener and constitutes the raw material of the music. And it's really, really fucked up. On some songs (e.g., "Transylvania") I wish he rapped in French or something because I love the music (and sorry Tyler but how can anyone describe that your music as anything except "horrorcore?) but it's so grotesquely misogynist and homophobic that it simply becomes simply unlistenable. Some of the misogyny and homophobia is extremely juvenile--eventually he'll have to grow out of the stage of making "jokes" about butt sex and telling everyone that so-and-so can suck his dick, right? At least for now, he just sounds like what he is, which is a 19 year-old boy who lives in his grandmother's house, a teenage boy who's fashioned his rap persona into something that's more like a video game avatar (a "wolf gang"? really, Tyler?). The misogyny, unfortunately, clearly runs much deeper, is comparable to that of Eminem, and is absolutely violent to the core (Tyler's rape and serial murder fantasies are obviosuly hyperbolic yet reveal a profoundly disturbed psyche). That said, "Yonkers," "Radicals," and "Sandwitches" are surely 3 of the best songs of 2011, and IMHO total game changers for the future of hip hop music. If nothing else, we should be thankful that Tyler and some of the other Odd Future rappers have managed to make Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne sound nothing less than a thousand years old this year. The (odd) future of rap has arrived, so get used to him; it ain't gonna be pretty, but the best is yet to come. Best chorus of 2011= "kill people/burn shit/fuck school," prefaced by the disclaimor "if something happens don't blame me, White America. Fuck Bill O'Reilly."

4. Trash Talk, Awake

Ok, so it's only an EP, 5 songs and a total of 9 minutes. But to paraphrase Johnny (or was it Dee Dee?) Ramone, they're actually long songs played quickly. Sixteen year old Ryan Moore thinks this may be the most important 9 minutes in the history of recorded music, perhaps rivaled only by "The Call of Ktulu," the lengthy instrumental that closes Metallica's Ride the Lightning. Plus, they're from Sacramento, which I have always called Excremento because I assumed that nothing good could come from it. Trash Talk consists of two black guys (who knew they were black people in Excremento? much less ones who play thrash punk??), a drummer who plays at simply inhuman pace, and a crowd-surfing singer with an unholy scream who I'm pretty sure is the next Iggy Pop. The shape of punk to come in a post-apocalyptic world of skateboarding in the empty swimming pools of foreclosed houses in decaying suburbs. So yeah it's only 9 minutes, but there's at least 10 times the amount of punk rock here as in that Fucked Up "David Comes to Life" bullshit. Best song="Gimme Death," but why are you still reading this when you could have listened to the entire record by now?

5.  Black Lips, Arabia Mountain

Last year it was the Black Keys who released an album I really liked on the heels of an apparently long career of releasing an albums that I really couldn't give a shit about. It looks like Black Lips is sliding nicely into that category this year, so perhaps I will need to create a separate category called "Back in Black" or something stupid like that. Next year's top candidate is the Black Heart Procession, because I can't see how the Black Eyed Peas are going to do anything remotely musical anytime soon. I don't know much about the Black Lips (or is it simply Black Lips?) except that they all look like they really need to get their ass kicked by someone who is doubly qualified to remove facial tattoos. Anyway....I hate to say it but this is one of those really infectious albums that you find yourself humming all day after one listen.  Best songs="Mad Dog," "Bone Marrow," and "New Direction." It's not rocket science, but there's a sweet fucking horn section and you can clap along at home, just like I'm doing now as if I were a toy monkey with a pair of cymbals.

6. The War on Drugs, Slave Ambient

We need to take a moment to talk about band names. This was a good year for music, but not for band names, and this one may be the worst of all. Who wants to risk being overheard to say, "Yeah, I really like The War on Drugs" or "Have you seen The War on Drugs live?" I mean Girls, Cults, The War on Drugs....it's as if musicians are deliberately trying to make themselves non-Googleable. The thing is that this is a really great album, and from a band I had never even heard of until recently. Its sound is fuzzy and distorted and refracted and ambient (like in the album title, duh) but it's also really good rockin' road trip-across-the-country music, so when you put the two together it sounds like meat-and-potatoes rock 'n' roll but in the new America where the heartland has been gutted into a hollow image of its former self. Think Springsteen or Petty in a new century where no one can be that earnest unless it's a truck commercial. Now about that band name....it seems that this guy Kurt Vile was once in this band, and his punky homage to the German composer gets my vote for best name of the year, but I wasn't as crazy about his album (still good overall, see below) as this one that get my vote for worst name of the year.

7. EMA, Past Life Martyred Saints

EMA stands for Erika M. Anderson, a young woman from South Dakota and clearly of some kind of Nordic descent who moved to Los Angeles and has now recorded what I think is her first solo album. I'm gonna describe her as a cross between Courtney Love and Robyn, and I think that description generally applies both to her look and style and her sound. There's some good hipster dance tracks like "Mailman" (video below) sandwiched between two fantastic, sprawling, almost Zeppelinesque alt-rock epics that begin and end the album ("The Grey Ship" and "Red Star," respectively). She's very young, the album is pretty raw and has some uneven moments, and so clearly this is still a work in progress. But I believe the ceiling of talent and creative vision is extremely high and that this is one who's going to be fun to watch and listen to for many years to come. Let's hope she doesn't cut or vomit herself to death before then.

8. Tom Waits, Bad as Me

OK, so I'm middle-aged and middle-class, and I like Tom Waits, so fucking sue me, but he released an amazingly vital album this year, beginning a opening song called "Chicago" that chugs along like a great blues song worthy of its name. The accompanying video below, featuring sepia-toned footage from Chicago during its industrial heyday, is also excellent. Other standout tracks="Talking at the Same Time," "Bad as Me," and "Hell Broke Luce." I know Tom Waits has turned himself into a caricature of the bohemian poet-bum, but I still find something compelling about that, and this could be his best album since Bone Machine.

9. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy

I sort of wish I didn't like this album as much as I do. I'm pretty sure St. Vincent is just this one woman, and she's just so damn vanilla, I think her real name is Annie to boot. Few things annoy me (not to be confused with the things that anger me, which is multifold and growing) more than fake edginess, you know that Urban Outfitters, Zooey Deschanel brand of "hip." Just so precious and so cute it makes me want to strangle a kitten in the middle of an Ikea. I would say the next four artists and albums on this list fit that bill perfectly, so perfectly that I could see them on some sort of Urban Outfitters compilation CD: St. Vincent, The Weeknd, M83, and Cults. I put them on this list because I enjoyed their music this year but felt like a complete tool while doing so. Drake and Bon Iver would probably be asked by Urban Outfitters to curate that compilation, but they're both off my list because I detest the former and believe that the latter's album from this year is totally overrated. As far as St. Vincent, to me the standout tracks are "Cruel," "Northern Lights," and "Have Mercy." The video for "Cruel" is sorta cool, but then again it's just so vanilla-edgy, like ooh the Brooklyn hipster lady doesn't want to be trapped in a nuclear family, ooh she equates it with being kidnapped, how subversive! Someone alert the guardians of patriarchy, we've got another defector on the loose!!!

    

10. The Weeknd, House of Balloons.

, Did any album get more hype this year than this one? To me the sound is very reminiscent of Massive Attack and Tricky, but with a more soulful singer in the tradition of Prince. Every song is about drugs, or coming down from drugs, or having sex on drugs, or having sex while coming down on drugs. This album has some great tracks (especially "House of Balloons-Glass Table Girls") and some weak filler, and the constant references to drugs and the party life get old really fast. Yeah we get it, you did so many drugs that the "e" fell out of the Weeknd. You almost had me thinking that the balloons were of the 99 and red variety, but really you mean the kind that have drugs in them. Gotcha. Winkwinknodnod. That said, the video below is one of the greatest pieces of audio-visual awesomeness assembled this year, mixing "Glass Table Girls" with the footage of that guy who walked on a high wire between the twin towers, the Baquiat documentary, and some goovy 70s slow-motion dancing. Enjoy!

  

  

11. M83, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.

M83 is basically this French dude (but does France have dudes?) who has mastered the sound of 1980s O.G. MTV pop and soundtracks from John Hughes films, so if you close your eyes while listening to this album you can almost picture scenes for an ill-advised sequel to the Breakfast Club. The opening track with the singer Zola Jesus is outstanding. The next song, "Midnight City," is obviously a big fat pop single (video below), and it's already being used in a Victoria's Secret commercial of all places. From there the rest of the album has its high and lows but mostly just goes on for too damn long, and that's the risk you take when you do a double record--it can go either to the white album or use your illusion end of the spectrum. My favorite song has some French title but it basically has a little kid telling a story about psychedelic toads that make you see and hear things vividly after you lick them. It's so cute it almost makes me want to have a kid just so we can do drugs together.

12. Cults, Cults

I blame it on the White Stripes. There's this new cliche in white indie hipster culture where boy meets girl, but instead of going to a tree and k-i-s-s-i-n-g, they sublimate all that frustrated sexual energy into making music and forming a band. So like the 50% divorce isn't enough, the new generation has to take the battle-of-the-sexes to another level where now couples have to try to keep a band together too? I don't know what the story is with these two in Cults. They sound somewhere in between Sleigh Bells and Beach House if you want to stay within boy-meets-girl genre. Thankfully they sound nothing like the Moldy Peaches. Their scruffiness is, however, suspiciously attractive, and I'm pretty sure they're a couple of rich kids who met at NYU or some other wretched part of Friends-ified Greenwich Village. I want to hate them, and I think we can all rest assured with the knowledge that I probably will learn to hate them in time, but for now I can't deny the catchiness of "Go Outside" or "Abducted." Video mixes "Go Outside" with cool video footage from Jonestown (cuz they're named Cults, duh).

13. Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra

Frank Ocean is a key member of Tyler the Creator's "odd future" collective, but his music ventures from hip hop into the more soulful style of D'Angelo, even sometimes drifting into the perverse (and certainly diseased) territory of R. Kelly. Frank Ocean's style is 70s retro funk meets hip hop hedonism, sort of like if Marvin Gaye actually sang about all the drugs he was doing during his heyday. The sound of the album is also formatted to sound like a mixtape, with the sound of a tape ejecting evidently having replaced the crackle of the needle on a record as the new retro sonic fetish of choice for this odd future of musicians (the Weeknd also released House of Balloons as a mixtape). This yields some amusing moments, like when Frank Ocean raps his own song about a wedding directly over a recording of "Hotel California," or when we hear a snippet of Radiohead followed by the complaints of his girlfriend, who wants to hear Jodeci. Then, again, the sound of a tape being ejected. Standout tracks= "Songs for Women" and "Lovecrimes," the latter of which ends with Nicole Kidman's seething monologue from Eyes Wide Shut.

14. Iceage, New Brigade

Imagine a Joy Division or Clash cover band of 18 year-old boys living somewhere in Scandinavia where there's nothing better to do than try to perfect your covers of Joy Division or Clash songs. Day after day, these kids just bash away at their instruments in some abandoned factory or warehouse. Then gradually their rehearsal sessions develop into some songs, and much to everyone's surprise they start getting a lot better, very suddenly. That's where we're at with this band Iceage--exciting, but very raw. They play as hard and fast as a hardcore band should when they're young, and there's lots of upside from them as they get a little older. The next great industrial band for a post-industrial age. Standout tracks: "White Rune" and "New Brigade," remainder of album is uneven.

15. Wilco, The Whole Love.

Another year has come and gone, and Wilco has released yet another album, just like Radiohead, the Foo Fighters, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Do you care? No, you don't. Actually, it's one of their best in many years, and the first song in particular ("The Art of Almost") has all kinds of cool rawk guitar shit that they haven't done since the similarly underrated A Ghost Is Born. Do you care now? No, you don't. At times it sounds like Jeff Tweedy is jumping up and down like "Hey guys, check me out, I'm doing some different over here. You haven't heard this shit! I'm being experimental." To which average Wilco fan replies, "That's great Jeff, but I gotta run the kids over to school now, maybe I can sneak in a listen later today while the kids are napping in the minivan on the way to soccer practice." To which Jeff protests, "No man, don't do that, this album is way too loud and rocking, it'll wake the kids!"

16. TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light.

Like Wilco, TV on the Radio released what I believe is their 43rd or 44th album (fun fact check=only their 4th) and it's good in the way that every other TV on the Radio album has been good but never quite great.Each album has maybe two or three great, great songs, and this one's are "Second Song" and "Caffeinated Consciousness." Dude's singing is still amazing, especially on the former. But basically I'm going to just add these to an ongoing playlist of TV on the Radio songs like "DLZ" "Wolf Like Me" and "Staring at the Sun" that together make up one helluva greatest hits album. Unfortunately, once you've come to believe that some band is always going to be good but never great, it gets harder and harder to get excited about each new release. Sorry to hear one of their members died from cancer this year.

17. Kurt Vile, Smoke Ring for My Halo

 

Like I said, I love this guy's adopted moniker for being punk yet slyly refencing the German composer. The album is certainly good but I don't think it deserves all the praise it's getting from Joe and Jane Pitchfork. Unfortunately, when singing about religious freaks or being a puppet for the man, Kurt Vile seems like one of those guys who thinks he's a lot smarter than he really is. Lots of the same things apply from the War on Drugs review, basically this is heartland music for a land that has no heart. Standout tracks: "In My Baby's Arms," "Smoke Ring for My Halo." Cool hair.

18. Everymen, Blood's Thicker Than Water

What the fuck, I'm gonna throw out some props to my friends in the local Lake Worth scene who made a pretty good first album this year and have done well on their various tours across the U.S. They're good guys and they're still dealing with an awful tragedy where their washboard and guitar player fell off a balcony and sustained some serious brain damage. I've heard both both the demo version from last year and this full-length, and I've saw them play live more than I saw the members of my own family this year, so it's been nice to watch them progress and root for their success. The album is genuinely good, a kind of hobo-punk sound featuring banjos and violins and washboards yet played at a frenetic hardcore pace. Imagine a troupe of tattooed vagrants doing Minor Threat covers with banjos. Actually this album might rank higher on this list except for the fact that they went into the studio and totally butchered my favorite song of theirs, a tune called "Bottle of Tears" that used to be performed as a let's-all-get-drunk-and-sing-our-blues-away-together type of anthem, and for some inexplicable reason they turned it into a slower, allegedly darker, melodramatic and overproduced piece of shit. Fortunately I just substituted its place in the mix with the demo version, but you can't.  Standout tracks: "Yellow Porch Blues," "Not a Good Long Term Plan," and "Don't Rain on My Parade." Video from last summer's Lake Worth festival:

19. Cerebral Ballzy, Cerebral Ballzy

I've already written one blog about this band and Trash Talk and the revival of early 80s American hardcore, and you can read that here. Basically if dig this revival the bands are like Black Brains or Black Threat, if you don't then they're Minor Brains or Bad Threat. You know how I feel about Trash Talk. This one I'm on the fence about, though still excited. First of all, as many people have already pointed out to me, we have yet another case of a terrible band name. But this black kid who's on the vocals is really compelling to watch, and someone in that band has a good sense of punk roots because they too released a mixtape this year with all kinds of classic punk bands that kids today wouldn't necessarily know about, like Stiff Little Fingers. Yet they are also intimately linked with the Adult Swim channel, who released their album through their website. This is a thoroughly commercial entity, but their first song is "Don't Tell Me What To Do" with lyrics about how people are always telling them do this, drink that, blahblahblah--in short, they could be the new face and sound of corporate "non-conformity" and all the contradictions that go with it. I foresee a new line of skate shoes with the slogan "don't tell me what to do" emblazoned on the side. Other standout tracks: "Cutting Class," "Insufficient Fare."

20. Metallica and Lou Reed, Lulu

This album didn't really make my list, it's more of a "dishonorable mention." Do you realize how amazingly terrible this is? The ill-advised collaboration between these two seemingly incompatible artists who are long past their point of relevancy is bad enough. But it gets worse. Evidently the album also has some theatrical basis, whereby Lou Reed wrote a bunch of lyrics based on the work of some misogynist German playright. So alongside Metallica's metal we have lots and lots and lots of words, words about doing violence against women, but also words that don't make any sense together, and not in that cool Dadaist, Captain Beefheart kind of way. It sounds like a bunch of middle-aged douchebags woke up one day and decided to relive their old glories as a metal band, and then while they were warming up some homeless schitzophrenic guy wandered in and started saying a bunch of random shit on the microphone. From day one I have been totally enthralled with the horribleness of this album in the same way I was enthralled with Gigli. Standout tracks=none, although the 95 minute (!) album does begin with Lou Reed "singing" this gem: "I would cut my legs and tits off when thinking of Boris Karloff."