(t5!) My Year In Lists 2011: Albums!

Albums I love, 2011

Technically, Beyoncé remains to be peerless. Mariah hasn’t done anything in a while, so no other female at this moment has better command of her vocals like she has. Everyone should automatically expect a terrific vocal performance from her in any kind of album by now. But what pushes 4 to another level is the experimentation that she amuses herself with, which has never been heard before in a Beyoncé album. Beyoncé’s fourth (obviously) is unquestionably her most complete album and it's pervaded with themes of monogamy, matrimony, and everlasting love. H.O.V.A. must be holding it down as Ms. Knowles’ boof boof if marital bliss can inspire her to be this sonically adventurous. It’s evident that not only is Jay-Z the greatest rapper alive, he may also be the greatest husband alive. The 4 tracks are schizophrenic; it is true modern R&B to its core, but it feels compelled to switch around stylistically, from guitar ballad to Major Lazer indie dance to Prince candy pop to drum-and-bugle banger to Afrobeat to etcetera

1+1
Countdown
Schoolin' Life

More often than not, a band or artist you love can be around for so long that you start to grow weary of them. That was the case with Wilco for me. I love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot so much that I want to take behind a middle school and get it pregnant (as the classic saying goes); A Ghost Is Born is still pretty good; Sky Blue Sky seemed too mature for my liking; and Wilco (The Album) was pretty much ignored. Needless to say, my relationship with The Whole Love had a false start. When I listened to guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche have a conversation with each other for the last three minutes of the first track, I lost interest right away. But after seeing it rank high on a few year-end lists, I gave it another shot, and I'm grateful that I did because listening to it all the way through demolished my first impression of it. This eighth album marks their return to that blending of uncomplicated pop/rock/country tunes and uncustomary textures that made YHF such a revolution. It’s still not as perfect—it’s still not the WHOLE love—but Im happy to announce that Wilco and I are back together.

I Might
Capitol City
One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)

In 2011, Adele was selling her records like it’s an addiction and Jessie J’s “Price Tag” was so overplayed that she became convinced that it’s about the money a little bit. It’s clear that there’s a British invasion currently going on in pop music, but I’m fearful that the majority is focusing on the wrong invaders. 21-year-old Brit Kathleen Brien—Katy B, for your convenience—is conquering pop charts that side of the Atlantic, scoring four top twenty singles from her debut album, On A Mission. Her voice is as smooth as silk, unafraid to belong among the upper class of R&B singers. She has enlisted today’s superstar producers like Benga, Geeneus, and Skream to escort the sound of the dance floor to pop radio. She is aesthetically pleasing, like the girl next door that you see downing shots at the bar. And yet she remains a virtual unknown everywhere else. I don’t understand it. Hopefully that will all change in 2012, because if I hear “Price Tag” one more time, I’m going to suffocate myself with a poison-laced pillow.

Katy On A Mission
Broken Record
Lights On

I never gave PJ Harvey the time of day before this album came out, mainly because her “best” albums—Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea of 2000, Uh Huh Her of 2004—didn’t do much for me. If her best LPs weren’t connecting with my aural tastebuds, then why should I care about the rest of her discography? So I find it odd that on PJ Harvey’s twentieth year as an acclaimed musician, I finally liked one of her releases. I doubt that it’s the World War I concept or the extreme Englishness of Let England Shake that I’m agreeing with, but whatever it is, it lured me into its world, which is outlined with dampened melodies and the hazy grooves of autoharp, zither, and vibraphone. This soundscape paired with PJ Harvey’s agitated vocals constructs a surreal atmosphere that helps you imagine the horrors of the war she’s attempting to mythologize. It was such a massive accomplishment that I’m actually thinking that maybe I just didn’t give Polly Jean a fitting consideration. Properly listening to Harvey’s other nine albums is my pop-culture resolution for 2012.

Let England Shake
The Words That Maketh Murder
Bitter Branches

In order for people to dance to electronica, it has to have some form of structure: house thumps at 4/4, jungle is a looped Amen Break sample, dubstep slows the beat way down to make it seem sped up. It typically makes it easy to get enslaved by the rhythm, which is why the genre is lazily classified as “dance” music. Glasgow’s Rustie though doesn’t conform to those standards. His first proper album, Glass Swords, is like eating icing off an entire cake. Glass Swords is a challenge to dance to because Rustie (aka Russell Whyte) prefers sonics to rhythm, which should be admired for his courage since electronica artists rely on DJs populating dance floors to get some buzz. Rather than architecting a solid foundation, he inflated these tracks with video game noises, free-flowing ‘80s synths, echoing drums, and smudged slap bass. Instead of developing in your mind a beach party in Ibiza or a house club in West Village, the cold sharpness of each sound effect builds a habitat that has 8-bit, polygonal, multi-colored landscapes as decoration.

Flash Back
Ultra Thizz
Death Mountain

Cults get a pretty negative reputation, and for a good reason. Just watch Martha Marcy May Marlene to get a sense of how frightening it is to belong in one. Superficially, there’s nothing frightening about this Cults. The tracks in their self-titled debut are inspired by 60’s girl-group pop, and thus, the melodies of this boyfriend-and-girlfriend duo seem familiar and instantly appealing. But after careful rumination, it will eventually confess that hidden underneath the summery vibe are gloomy words that have a hint of desolation, cynicism, and apprehension. There’s a clever contradiction when lead singer Madeline Follin’s precious voice sing pop melodies with lyrics that talk about slight agoraphobia, kidnapping as a form of love, and sleeping with strangers to avoid loneliness. Essentially, Cults is a record that can be appreciated as either a summer jam or as a soundtrack for sinister deeds. Either way, it’s just as effective.

Abducted
Go Outside
You Know What I Mean

If you were expecting Toro Y Moi’s second album, Underneath The Pine, to be the familiar fuzzy chillwave like his earlier releases, then you would be slightly disappointed. Chazwick Bundick, as he’s also known as, has indicated that he’s bored with this movement that he was appointed to represent. Not that he has completely ditched the style either; there are traces of chillwave in here, but it’s just not as tangible. What is tangible is a sound influenced by disco; the tracks in Underneath The Pine struts like a peacock, entrusting a rotund funk bass, fearless synth runs, and steady 4/4 beat to enliven hipster dance clubs. He also relies more on his distinguishable falsetto, making it stand out more rather than letting it get engulfed by the fog of chillwave. Your preference between this and his older stuff will depend on how much you’re caught up with the hype behind the new genre, but one thing is for sure, this album is easier to tackle. Bundick stepping away from the genre and still coming up with a victory guarantees that he can still be relevant even after chillwave out lives its stay.

New Beat
Got Blinded
Still Sound

I used to sort through new releases every Tuesday hoping to add a favorite indie guitar rock album to my collection. But nowadays, I just find them so stale and flaccid. I think a huge part of why this is is because I don’t have time for giving a lukewarm album a second or third trial anymore, and the best indie rock albums usually doesn’t reveal its greatness on the first listen. Just give me the hits, the synths, the beats! I don’t know how but for some reason, I gave Wye Oak’s Civilian the concentration it deserved, and it’s a good thing I did because I would have discarded it after one run through. On the surface, the work of Baltimore duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack is typical indie rock—layered textures, inoffensive distorted guitars, vague songwriting. But after a while, the raw melodic exhilaration surprises you when you least expect it. Wye Oak knows when to stay quiet to make their peaks higher than they actually are. It may be a backbreaking climb to reach, but once you’re there, they reward you with a view that will leave you awestruck.

Civilian
Plains
We Were Wealth

Philadelphia singer-songwriter Kurt Vile is a little cocky, isn’t he? He has the brashness to name his past albums Constant Hitmaker, God Is Saying This To You, and Childish Prodigy. But to quote Kid Rock, it ain’t cocky if you can back it up. He just firmly believes in his own product, knowing that it’s the outcome of hardwork and dedication. Before putting his signature on a Matador contract in 2008, Vile had been recording and releasing songs at a hypersonic pace for years, establishing a steady group of impressed adherents as he continues to tinker with his smoker’s lounge brand of classic rock ballads. His most recent, Smoke Ring For My Halo, isn’t titled as confidently as his other albums, but it certainly one that he should be most proud of. For the first time, he’s recording in a studio with a professional producer (John Agnello, who’s been in sound booths with The Hold Steady, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr.), but hasn’t lost the dingy atmosphere that this childish prodigy has been constantly making hits with.

Baby's Arms
On Tour
Runner Ups

If one calculates rock stardom by the artist’s sheer ability to horrify suburban parents, then—especially in a rock world currently populated by metrosexual jerkoffs and indie weirdos—Tyler, The Creator is perhaps the only true rock star of this young decade. I accept that he’s not mainstream enough to incite an anti-Tyler, The Creator movement, but, man, this 19-year-old is as terrifying as your worst fears, expelling threats of rape and murder of women, infants, homosexuals, and celebrities. I’m not a big fan of censorship either but I’m not even sure I would let my future children listen to him. His official debut Goblin is not just about shock value though. Sonically, Tyler, The Creator’s beats are evocative and tenacious, its lo-fi DIY sensibilities furnish the album's atmosphere with a barrel full of grit. And his flow is like toxic ooze, slowly working its way to contaminate minds via ears. For the collective good of our youth, let’s pray that he doesn’t get a bigger following than this. Although upon hearing this, I’m afraid that it might be too late.

Yonkers
Transylvania
Sandwitches

Zach Condon’s Beirut has always been a trip. I don’t mean it in the way druggies use that word, although I’m sure that the horns, accordions, and ukeleles can sound kaleidoscopic with the right narcotic. Condon actually tries to take you in a voyage somewhere with each album. His debut, Gulag Orkestrar was a magical journey to the Balkans, and his sophomore record, The Flying Club Cup, was your tour guide in an excursion to France. With The Rip Tide, Condon’s first album in four years, he changes it up by bringing you to where he considers his home. These tracks are named after American places (“East Harlem”, “Santa Fe”) this time around, and without the burden of confronting a specific culture, Condon is free to explore a style that he is more comfortable with. This flexibility allows him to focus more on composing premier melodies and perfecting his Stephin Merritt impersonation, and more importantly, it also results into a more confident and more immediate effort.

A Candle's Fire
East Harlem
The Rip Tide

Here’s the how-to guide on making chillwave: Step 1: Unearth a forgotten early 90’s pop/electronica track and take a small snippet; Step 2: Add some digital reverb. Be generous to the point where the original sample is unrecognizable. Step 3: Distort and change the pitch a bit. It’s kind of like soaking a piece of paper in tea to make it look aged. Step 4: Write lyrics about escapism and wanting to be free. Step 5: Overdose on Diazepam and sing the lyrics using a catchy melody on top of your master work. And voila! The process is absurd in its simplicity, which is why I can’t comprehend how Washed Out make his sound like it’s groundbreaking shit. Earnest Greene has been associated with the Chillwave genre since its emergence, and instead of trying to evade the label, he has accumulated 40 minutes worth of unmistakably chillwave material and ran with it. Because of Within And Without, his first proper studio album. he’s the definition of the genre. You look up Chillwave in the dictionary and you see his picture.

Eyes Be Closed
Amor Fati
Soft

I’ve created things in my bedroom. This blog, school projects, forts, Facebook accounts, mp3 cds. Oh, if those walls could talk. However, I’ve never created in my bedroom anything as enchanted as Youth Lagoon’s The Year Of Hibernation. Youth Lagoon is fundamentally 22-year old Idahoan Trevor Powers, and he successfully conceived all by himself an admirably intimate debut in the same place where he sleeps at night. “It’s just me in my room with my eyes shut,” he confirms in “17”. He dabbles with deteriorated vocals, synths, piano, and percussion loops as a backdrop for his stories from his childhood, stories about his surroundings, and stories that detail his disabling anxiety. There’s something endearing about a kid in a bedroom making spellbinding music on his own, but there’s also something sorrowful and dark about it. That alienation is evident here, and you can't help but feel compassion for Powers. I’m fully aware of the transcedence he has created while imprisoned in his room, but here’s hoping he gets to go out more for the follow-up, for his own good.

Posters
Cannons
Daydream

We’re all terrified of getting older, scared of the idea that time has passed us by. On the opening line of Fleet Foxes’ second full-length, Helplessness Blues, Robin Pecknold sings, “So now I am older than my mother and father when they had their daughter/what does that say about me?” It’s a question he asks himself, but it’s so existential that it would be arduous for us to avoid contemplating the same questions ourselves. While we do that, Fleet Foxes sets the most beautiful setting for us to do some soul-searching. Their intimate acoustic guitars and rich harmonies dream up a vibrant autumnal landscape, a world of crisp breezes and colorful leaves. They have already cultivated this style of folk music on their self-titled debut, but the band refuses to become stagnant, making their songs more complex and daring. What worries me though is that Pecknold is only 25, and I’m three years older than him. If he’s already having a significant quarter-life crisis, I should be panicking like crazy, right?

Montezuma
Helplessness Blues
Someone You'd Admire

Here’s the thing, I really hate Drake. When he raps, he sounds really abrasive. What’s more, the shit he’s saying with that abrasive voice is either annoyingly whiny even when he has nothing to whine about, or annoyingly boastful even when he has nothing to boast about (not just yet, at least). But, damn it, it’s really difficult to hate on this Degrassi High alumni when he brings together albums that are as alluringly crafted as Take Care. One listen to his second full-length nd you’ll be able to determine that Drake is a sad bastard. He’s sad about being famous, he’s sad about all the girls he sleeps with, he’s sad about his famous exes (such as Rihanna and Nicki Minaj), he’s sad about not being able to connect with anyone at the most exclusive parties, he’s sad about being drunk all the time. But before you can shake your head at all of his unimportant problems, you find yourself lending him an ear, sympathizing that this douchebag’s world is crumbling. The fact that I love this album makes me hate him even more.

Marvin's Room
Underground Kings
Doing It Wrong

I guess I need to be from England to get the joke. But after investigating it more thoroughly, I think I get why this title is quirky. You see, lead vocalist singer Joseph Mount is from Devon, The English Riviera. It’s a place that isn’t exactly indistinguishable from the ritzy lifestyle of The French Riviera. From what I’ve read, Devon’s all lifeless and spiritless, a place that wishes to be something else entirely. And that’s what the concept of Metronomy’s The English Riviera is built around; it’s the desire to escape the small town mentality and this dreary coastline. Even the style of their music is trying to run away from its own blandness. Metronomy is a lot like Hot Chip; the rhythm section of drummer Anna Prior and bassist Gbenga Adelekan tries to break loose with a lascivious atmosphere, but it’s bogged down by Mount’s vapidity, singing about being spiteful about his out-of-his-league ex-lovers and dancing at funerals. This tug-of-war results into a charming awkwardness, the musical equivalent of a dancing Mr. Bean

We Broke Free
The Look
The Bay

The most interesting songwriters know that life isn’t always peaches and cream. They’re able to convert their hardships, heartbreaks, and grief into intriguing lyrics and beautiful songs. Slow Club realized this for their second album. The South Yorkshire duo’s 2009 debut, Yeah So, is animated and twee and proof that something too sweet can give you tooth decay. Their sophomore effort, Paradise, is candid and sorrowful, yet it’s somehow easier to relate to. Now I’m not saying you now have to slit your wrists while listening to Paradise, because there are still a considerable amount of sweetness and charm in these songs, especially those emanating from the folded-over harmonies of Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson. But the extra dosage of emotion just drives their vocals (particularly Taylor’s who takes the lead more often here) into ranges we didn’t know they’re capable of. It’s a little disturbing that their tears and pain are putting a great big smile on my face.

Never Look Back
Hackney Marsh
Gold Mountain

Because of the dazzling works of countless pop musicians over the years, from The Beatles to Michael Jackson to Abba to Justin Bieber, pop is usually assumed to be sunny, cheerful, and preferably danceable. But Zola Jesus is evidence that pop music that is dark, cold, and gothic can be just as excellent. Zola Jesus’ superbness is completely dependent on Russian-American singer/songwriter Nika Roza Danilova extravagantly operatic vocals. The backing music of Conatus is a dreary cemetery, with corners that are filled with shadowy minor chords, overcast strings, and pounding drums. Danilova is a ghost-like figure in this place, all pale faced and white veiled, standing radiantly and defiantly in the middle of all the gloominess. When she reaches for the classically trained high register, and the hairs on your arms fail to stand up, then better check your pulse. You might just belong in that mournful cemetery that Danilova spookily haunts at night.

Avalanche
Hikikomori
Shivers

Seeing words like “avant-garde”, “experimental”, and “noise” on an album review can be repellent, particularly if you don’t know anything about the artist in discussion. Normal people aren’t adventurous in nature, so they tend to stick to what they are familiar with. tUnE-yArDs, the avant-garde experimental noise pop project of New England’s Merill Garbus, isn’t helping their cause by stylizing her moniker and her second album, w h o k i l l, the way she did. It just seems like she’s being eccentric for the sake of being eccentric. But trust me when I say how endearing this album sounds. I can do a half-ass job describing it to you, saying how it’s sort of a cross between Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective, declaring that it sounds like a discordant fusion of African worldbeat, jazz, and R&B. But there are no proper comparisons and providing a summation of the astounding range of styles would be unjust. One thing I can tell you is that vocally, very few can touch Garbus’ level. Just trust your ears and give this a shot. You’re welcome.

Es-So
Powa
Bizness

So Drake made you give him a shoulder to cry on, and Childish Gambino struggled with his double consciousness. Tyler, The Creator made the conservatives uncomfortable, and everyone really likes Shabazz Place apparently. Still a respectable list, but truthfully it has been a slow year for rap albums. It wasn’t like last year when two rap albums (Kanye’s and Big Boi’s) populated the peaks of everyone’s year-end lists. My theory is because everyone else caught wind of the fact that Jay-Z and Kanye West are releasing an album together, and they faced the reality that anything they drop can only be second best. Watch The Throne isn’t Hova and Yeezy attempting to coexist in the same track though; this album is their dojo. Jay-Z is trying to cement his legacy in every verse and Kanye’s eager to prove that he’s not the protégé he once was. And sure, an album made by two of rap’s elite will never live up to the hype. But one listen of Watch The Throne should confirm why these two are the proper contenders for rap’s throne.

No Church In The Wild
Lift Off
Niggas In Paris

The revolutionary works of artists like The-Dream, Drake, and Kanye West and producers like Danja and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart have inspired an influx of forward-thinking revisionists like Toronto’s Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd. The Weeknd twists our already established notions of what R&B sounds like and he comes up with a sound that's fresh and, at times, otherworldly. His free mixtape, House Of Balloons, is a fascinating example of outside-the-box thinking in music. Its core is still very much contemporary R&B—sugary hooks, melodramatic tenor, writhing time measures, songs about sex, drugs, and heartbreak, swear words. What’s clearly different though is the production. If not sampling from indie pop favorites like Beach House and Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Weeknd is creating grimy-looking loveliness using hollow 808s and creepy synth organs. He’s essentially uniting the haziness of indie with the expressiveness of R&B. Tastemakers are dubbing this underground phenomenon “Hipster R&B”, which reeks of pompousness and elitism. Whatever it is, whoever it’s for, House Of Balloons is plain fantastic.

High For This
House Of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
Wicked Games

The music listening community has gotten so used to Radiohead releasing radical and massive sounding albums that it seems as if they need to continually top themselves in order to remain in everyone’s good graces. When they put out a low-key album like The King Of Limbs, a lion’s share of their fan base was underwhelmed, mainly because it's not on the same level as their past iconic records. But honestly, if judged without prejudice, this album is far from unimpressive. Radiohead has recorded a concise album without any flaws. All eight tracks perform on small, subtle shifts, rhythm sections operate like tiny gears in a watch and highly controlled melodies are employed to raise and release tension. It’s obvious that they’ve been swayed by avant-garde electronic artists like Four Tet and Caribou, and that sonic kinship may be the reason why I’m incredibly enjoying this. Radiohead is at their finest when they take these experimental influences and integrate them into their own style, making their muses widely accessible to people with more traditional preferences.

Feral
Lotus Flower
Codex

I haven’t figured out yet if Lykke Li is a chameleon or someone with multiple personalities, because she can persuasively alter herself from song to song. On Wounded Rhymes, she can either be a honey-coated princess, a mischievous seductress, a cyborg dance diva sent from the future, or the ghost of one of Phil Spector’s girl-group songbirds. Her voice also undergoes several transformations, mimicking the timbre of some of pop’s favorites: the extra-terrestrial screech of Kate Bush, the nasal concoction of Nelly Furtado, the dusky delivery of Imogen Heap, the audacious croon of Robyn, the twangy accent of one Pistol Annie. That constant metamorphosis makes Wounded Rhymes a record that is rich in detail. If her debut, Youth Novels was a charmingly amateurish claymation, then this is a fully realized Pixar film, It probably goes without saying by now that this has a more eclectic collection of songs, but it goes with saying that the Swedish indie pop star became more effervescent and more confident here, whatever it is she decided to become.

Love Out Of Lust
Get Some
I Know Places

The Antlers’ conceptual debut, Hospice, is one of the most underrated albums of the last five years. It received almost unanimous praise from critics for being luscious and atmospheric, yet it’s overlooked because no one is willing to venture into that depressing tale between a hospice worker and a terminally ill patient more than once. Thankfully, their second go-round is merrier without compromising that hazy and hypnotic, accessible and rewarding, brand of indie rock. However, Burst Apart is in high spirits only in comparison to Hospice; Frontman Peter Silberman’s world is still in shambles. Using arguably the best vocals in rock right now, he recounts his damaged relationships that he’s frustratingly stuck in, detailing the subsequent admission of defeat and submission to loneliness in the process. Hopefully, The Antlers finally receive a proper acclaim for this worthy successor.

I Don't Want Love
No Widows
Corsicana

Search the Tumblr account of Internet success story, Frank Ocean, and download his self-released mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra. Don't worry; thanks to his label Island Def Jam’s negligence, it’s free of charge. The label decided to cast him aside after him signing him to a contract last year, so the frustrated Ocean used Twitter to set them straight. Referring to this cocaine-themed compilation of introspective R&B and sprightly remakes of Coldplay and The Eagles songs, he posted last March, “I did. this. Not ISLAND DEF JAM…” An "i. did. this. not ISLAND DEF JAM…” and then “fuck Def Jam & any company that goes the length of signing a kid with dreams & talent w/ no intention of following through…” After seeing the adulation Ocean received after Nostalgia, Ultra, Def Jam announced that they will release this mixtape as an EP entitled Nostalgia, Lite and will further reward him with a full-length in 2012. I guess major labels tend to forgive and forget quickly when they know they’re sitting on a gold mine.

Strawberry Swing
Novacane
Swim Good

It’s easy to forget while you’re admiring artists from afar that they are, first and foremost, fans of music. Take Girls’ Christopher Owens, for instance. After being shielded from the world by being born into the Children of God cult, he figured he had some catching up to do in terms of appreciating canonized music. In Father, Son, Holy Ghost, he wanted to pay homage to those musicians that he missed out on when he was younger. Five decades worth of critically acclaimed music is distinguishable in this second full-length, sometimes various ones within the same track. There’s the sunny surf-rock of The Beach Boys, there’s the slow-burning guitar ballad of Elliott Smith, there’s the technicolor prog-rock of King Crimson, there’s the twangy country-rock of Neil Young, there’s the shadowy space-rock of Pink Floyd. You walk away from this album wanting to go through your record collection all over again, and I’m sure that’s exactly what Owens wants you to do.

Vomit
Forgiveness
Jamie Marie

Don’t call James Blake’s voice “soulful”. Calling someone “soulful” is regressive at best and borderline racist at worst. If you wish, you may call it “unexpected”, because every delightful sneak peek that we got from James Blake before 2011 consisted of either chopped-up vocal samples or highly synthesized and multi-layered clips of his own vocals (which everyone thought were obscure vocal samples anyway). For his self-titled debut album, everyone was waiting for a masterful collection of micro-dubstep arrangements, but everyone received a bonus surprise when the production had this much singing on top. You may also call his vocals “haunting”, because Blake’s ghost-like croons evoke a painful loveliness that rivals Antony Hegarty. You may even call it “sparse”, because Blake understands as well as any expert musician that the absence of sound can be as emotive as any swelling instrument. But whatever you do, never call it “soulful”. Save that adjective to describe Adele.

The Wilhelm Scream
Lindisfarne
Limit To Your Love

If you’re Justin Vernon a.k.a. Bon Iver, and you just released a critically praised debut built from loneliness and pain, what do you do for an encore? Go out and get dumped again? Attempt to catch mononucleosis from someone? Lock yourself in a wintry and secluded Wisconsin cabin just for the fun of it? No. Justin Vernon decided to go the opposite route. He welcomed the massive popularity, acclaim, and friends in high places that his 2008 debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, rewarded him with and became more collaborative and ambitious. Every track still contains the intimacy that made Bon Iver a delight, but everything sounds fuller and more opulent in this self-titled sophomore effort. Listening to For Emma transfers you to a place where you’re sitting alone in front of a campfire in a snowy desolate woods; Bon Iver is like standing triumphantly on top of a mountain, marveling at the beauty of the world. His falsetto used to be this quivering, delicate, woodwind sound. Now he deploys it with considerable aplomb, proud of the fact that he's a one of a kind talent in the world of music.

Perth
Holocene
Towers

I hate saxophone solos. I’ve always subscribed to the belief that there’s no way you can make it sound good. It either sounds cheesy like Huey Lewis & the News or the SNL theme song, or sleezy like Kenny G or “Careless Whisper”. When I was first exposed to the saxophones in Destroyer’s Kaputt, I thought the whole thing was a joke. I thought this was Dan Bejar being ironic, the aural equivalent of hipsters rocking Urkel fashion. However, you then quickly realize that the tracks in Kaputt aren’t like rain on your wedding day; they are legitimately terrific. The adaptation of soft jazz and lite FM rock that Bejar presents here proves that saxophones can be heartsick and exultant. And sexy? Sure, in an unapologetically awkward way, like when old couples try to spice up their relationship with sexual experimentation. But just because it’s uncouth, it doesn’t mean it’s unpleasant. In fact, that awkwardness coupled with Bejar’s apathetic delivery makes this sound like it’s not taking itself too seriously, which eliminated a lot of the cheese.

Chinatown
Savage Night At The Opera
Kaputt

Back in 2008, I was listening to Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna while in my car with my wife (who was still my girlfriend at the time), her brother, and her cousin. A few songs in (probably right around “Blue Nile”), both my wife’s brother and her cousin started dancing in the backseat but in a mocking manner, expressing amusement at the incongruity of their conventional form of dancing and this alien noise coming out of my speakers. Then all three of them burst out in laughter, followed by my wife apologizing for my eccentricity. “Marc listens to weird music,” she says. They laughed harder. My feelings were hurt, considered lashing out against all three of them, but figured that I was outnumbered and would most likely have never won. I switched it to Lil’ Wayne or Ne-Yo or whatever the masses are overplaying that month.

Fast forward to 2011. I was driving my co-workers back from lunch and Eye Contact was playing in the background. Everyone was pretty quiet—possibly because everyone was bloated and sleepy due to the gluttonous intake of Vietnamese food—until one of them asked who we were listening to. “Gang Gang Dance,” I said proudly. “They’re pretty good,” he said. And everyone in the car nodded in agreement. I turned the volume up and brushed my shoulder off.

I’m going to attribute this change of opinion to the fact that Gang Gang Dance's latest album is tons more accessible than anything they’ve ever released. Eye Contact is still a celebration of avant-garde rhythm, irregular noise, and Lizzi Bougatsos’ warbled voices. It’s still a successful blend of diverse influences like psychedelica, noise-rock, worldbeat, techno, and various forms of hip-hop. However, this successful, irregular, avant-garde blend that this Manhattan band is celebrating isn’t as alienating. They’ve embraced their tendencies to construct colorful pop soundscapes, which only exist in moderation on their past tracks. They’ve also minimized the amount of experimentation in Eye Contact, focusing more on developing a jubilant fusion of styles and sounds.

I wish I could have used the same sample group for both albums, just so I can control a lot of the variables that led me to this hypothesis. For all I know, I just married into an evil family that ridicules everything that I like. Or I just have co-workers who like the same weird shit as I do.

Glass Jar
Mindkilla
Romance Layers


That's my story and I'm sticking to it.