Something else that kind of made me not hate Coldplay so much occured when Sound Relief rehersals were happening (I live next to Moore Park Golf Course, by the way, in earshot of anything and everything that occurs at the SCG). When I went onto my balcony, I could hear a basic hum that was Icehouse practicing, not particularly interesting, so I went inside. About five minutes later, those sharp violins started off and a raw, live version Viva La Vida wafted across the whole of the general Moore Park area and into my loungeroom.. it was enchanting. I fell in love with it right then.
The next day I went back to resenting them. Creature of habit. But for a moment, they had me transfixed.
For two people from Zuzax, New Mexico, the duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (aka A Hawk and a Hacksaw) definitely don't sound like they're from anywhere near the United States. In fact, similar to their New Mexican friend and oft-tourmate Zach Condon (aka Beirut), A Hawk and a Hacksaw sound like they hail from Eastern Europe. Of course the Balkan region is what inspires much of their material in the first place, and they've spent significant time over there learning both about the culture and musical influences of the area. In fact, the band's 2007 EP "A Hawk and A Hacksaw and the Hun Hangár Ensemble" came about through the collaborations Barnes and Trost had with musicians in Romania and Hungary. It is these same musicians (and others) that make their mark all over the newest AHAAH album, "Délivrance."
Pink Mountaintops is a band that sort of functions as the yang to Stephen McBean's yin, in that it's what some in the music industry might dub a P.O.P. (polar opposite project). See, McBean is also more widely known as the frontman for psychedelic rock band Black Mountain, which is the loud, dark and cavernous band that also happened to release the critically acclaimed album "In the Future" last year. Pink Mountaintops has always taken a bit of a back seat to Black Mountain, mostly because it's supposed to be a McBean solo effort, though he always recruits friends and volunteers to help out with tracks. That, and Pink Mountaintops has been put aside a few different times as Black Mountain material pushed ahead in the line. So now's the time for the slightly lighter, more effortless pop sounds of Pink Mountaintops, and there's a new album titled "Outside Love" which is out today for your enjoyment.
Great Lake Swimmers isn't exactly a solo project under a pseudonym, but it almost might as well be. The only real constant GLS has had over four albums has been Tony Dekker (and, in many respects, Erik Arnesen as well), who pretty much does all the writing, singing and guitar playing on his own. Yet he always recruits a number of other musicians to join him in recording albums and touring, similar to what Trent Reznor is doing with Nine Inch Nails or even in some respects what Jeff Tweedy has done with Wilco over the course of that band's existence. So Great Lake Swimmers has always been a band despite many songs sounding like it's just Dekker and an acoustic guitar. It's a very singer-songwriter, folk/alt-country project, and most every GLS album has been great on one level or another. The last Great Lake Swimmers album, 2007's "Oniarga," may have been the weakest of the bunch, but that only featured a small downturn in quality compared to the two previous albums. Now Dekker is back, again with different collection of musicians in tow, for the fourth Great Lake Swimmers album, "Lost Channels."
When you're two people, apparently you can get a whole lot done. Such is the challenge that a man like Will Oldham faces on a daily basis. By day, you could call him a professional actor. He's been in several films, all of them independent but most of which saw theatrical release to some art houses. By night, he's Bonnie "Prince" Billy, a singer/songwriter with a penchant for soulful acoustic folk/country/Americana numbers and the occasional wildly reinterpreted cover song. He's been releasing music under various names since around 1993, but since he formally adopted the Bonnie "Prince" Billy name in 1998, there's barely been a year without a new album or EP. So between all the music and the 1-2 movies each year, the guy certainly knows how to keep busy. Today marks the release of his next album "Beware," and considering the amount of praise Oldham's albums typically get, I figured I might as well give this one a healthy listen and review.
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Two years after the debut album "Loney, Noir" from Swede Emil Svanangen aka Loney, Dear, it's time for that sophmore effort. Now for more hardcore Loney, Dear fans, I may get chastised for calling the new album "Dear John" as being his second record. So in all fairness I'll mention for posterity's sake that after a series of self-released albums dating back to 2003, this new Loney, Dear album is officially Svanangen's second on an actual record label. And in fact he's moved labels from the first one, going from Sub Pop to Polyvinyl. But don't let that throw you or make you think there's something wrong with the guy's music or his record sales. No, in fact I think this Loney, Dear project is just starting to really pick up steam. This is proven all the more so by the new record "Dear John," which just so happens to be released today.
After a small delay thanks to multiple holiday parties and working overtime at my real job because many of my co-workers are on vacation, the good news is that this is finally up. In my list of best albums for the year, the top ten are always the most important (naturally). Consequently, this is also my absolute favorite post every year, so I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.
Indie pop bands are in many ways a dime-a-dozen, but when a special one comes along you want to hold onto it for dear life. What Los Campesinos! have going for them are a number of things - from intensely intelligent and snarky lyrics to a happy energy that turns bad days into good ones to just the right collection of kitchen sink instruments and harmonies that work together in the exact right way you need them to. This is indie pop so sugary it'll rot your teeth if you're not careful. You like handclaps and toy pianos and xylophones and songs about Spiderman and shout along choruses? This band has 'em all, along with so much more. They're young and smart as whips and their live shows are grand pieces of fun you need to see and appreciate. The band's "Sticking Fingers Into Sockets" EP was my favorite EP of 2007, and I probably would've placed their (second this year!) latest recording "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed" on this list as well had the band not been so careful to say that it's NOT an album or an EP (it's got 10 songs...so what is it then?). Whatever they choose to call the records they release, one thing is clear: this is one of those special indie pop bands you should be paying very close attention to. I expect bigger and bigger things from them in the near future.
Anthony Gonzales knows what he's doing with M83. After three albums of glittering shoegaze-y electronica with some arena-sized melodies, Gonzales chose to try something a little different for the third M83 album. As an homage to classic teen movies from the 80's, "Saturdays=Youth" focuses on synths and a more workable pop sound for thematic purposes. And while most every song could inevitably find a place within an old school John Hughes movie, there are a couple of special standout singles that might even be considered on par with a famed closing credits sequence like Simple Minds' "Dont You (Forget About Me)" at the end of "The Breakfast Club." The real tragedy here is that you'll probably never get to hear them in such a context. Unless you've got some movie editing skills and can insert "Kim and Jessie" in the credits of "Sixteen Candles" of course. Here's a hint: Putting on headphones and playing the song while your television is muted over an 80's movie has a similar effect. Really though, amid a decade that was marred with bad clothing styles and hair, you can consider M83's "Saturdays=Youth" to be one of the best byproducts of that distasteful era.
Trip hop is by no means a dead art form, but with Portishead in absentia, the genre didn't quite have the lustre it once did. Of course it could also be that trip hop was a sinking ship and Portishead smartly jumped off right before the iceberg hit. Returning from out of nowhere in 2008, Portishead's third (appropriately titled) album was less a return and attempted revival of trip hop and more of a dark-themed sonic experiment with dominant acoustic guitars and odd shifts in overall style. Some might call this album unbalanced or even boring, but it's essentially neither as every song is rapturously fascinating and directional changes purposefully effective. This is not the Portishead of the 90s, even though the members are all the same and Beth Gibbons' voice is as haunting as ever. Instead we're faced with a band that's pulled a caterpillar on us and emerged from their cocoon a beautful butterfly ready to finally fly free amidst the crushing power of today's music scene.
Ask me if I think Jonathan Meiburg made the right decision in leaving Okkervil River to do Shearwater full time and I will instantly tell you a thousand times over yes. Meiburg is far too talented to sit back and play second banana to Will Sheff, and I think proof of that was written all over Shearwater's 2006 album "Palo Santo." With this year's "Rook," Shearwater took their intricate musical compositions to the next level and showed they belonged in the indie big leagues. What particularly sells this band and this album is Meiburg himself, both in the verbose lyrical tales he writes and the theatrically compelling vocal performances he gives on every single song. The man sells his pompously overblown verbiage by beltiing it to the rafters and inflecting such emotion he could make the telephone book sound like a thrilling novel. And I haven't even gotten to the gorgeously tempered instrumentation, where pianos and acoustic guitars and violins and clarinets and horns mix together and make sweet sweet love to your ears. Perhaps the best way to describe "Rook" as an album is to say it sounds like the soundtrack to a movie where a man takes an extensive journey through the woods and encounters horrible weather and dangerous animals. It's epic, it's sweeping and gorgeous, and most of all, it feels completely organic.
We all knew this was coming, in the sense that anybody who'd heard the Blue CD-R the band sent out last year was aware of Vampire Weekend's potential. And they effectively succeeded in their mission, securing plenty of hype with their Paul Simon-treading Afropop revivalist sound. It even got them a Saturday Night Live musical slot. But as it tends to happen when bands like this get too much popularity too quickly, the second half of Vampire Weekend's year was marred with backlash and attempts to tear them down. Though the general impression of the band may be quite a bit less favorable than it was this time last year, you've got to solely consider the music. Most of the songs from that Blue CD-R everyone loved wound up on the self-titled debut, along with a couple new songs that were just as good. There was so much praise and love for this album early on this year, and I myself felt the same way about it. Which is why I see no reason why my opinion should be affected or changed because other people may have gotten angry at the band and their new-found popularity. I stand by everything I've said about Vampire Weekend, and do still think this collection of songs is more than splendid. Backlash or not, Vampire Weekend made one of the best records of 2008. Haters can deal with it.
There goes Sigur Ros, trying something a little bit different yet again. They've been the band with the epic songs that build to crescendos so beautiful they'll bring you to tears. They've been the band that's invented their own language and sang an entire record in it. They've been the band that's attempted to reduce the size and scope of their music to fit closer into a pop realm. On their new album they took a stab at some freak folk and tried to take up Animal Collective's power via the song "Gobbledigook." And while most expected that early taste of the record to be evidence of yet another directional shift for the band, "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" turned out to be something a little bit different. Much more acoustic guitar-based and with a largely upbeat mentality, Sigur Ros chose to dig a brand new well when their old one was still overflowing with possibility. In the same respect, the band isn't content to keep mining the same sound over and over again, no matter how profitable it may get, because they're more interested in progression. They've progressed remarkably well yet again with their latest album, keeping many of the gorgeous and ethereal elements that made them so heavenly in the first place while taking a next step. What sound they might choose to pursue next is anybody's guess, but if they continue with their track record of stunningly excellent and heartwarming melodies then I know I'll remain more than faithful.
As much as I very much liked the past couple Deerhunter efforts "Cryptograms" and the "Flourescent Grey" EP, there was something about them that seemed a bit distant and "weird for the sake of weird" to me. I realized they were strong pieces of music, but struggled to fully embrace them beyond showing appreciation for what they were attempting to accomplish. Everything clicked into place upon the release of "Microcastle" and its counterpart "Weird Era Cont." this year. A large part of that might have to do with the lack of instrumentals and vocals that are easy to understand. The songs themselves also seem to have much more of a psych-pop bent, making them much more accessible. Either that, or my tastes have simply refined themselves. Whatever happened, Deerhunter have given us two albums' worth of material without a single weak track, and that's a feat wholly impressive unto itself. Nobody's calling it a double album, probably because the two records have different titles and were recorded at different times. No matter whether you call it a double album or merely 2 albums for the price of one, these collections of songs put together are amazingly better than most double disc records. And somehow Bradford Cox also found time to release a new (and very good) Atlas Sound album this year? Prolific is the only real way to describe it.
The main debate over the Bon Iver album in regards to year-end lists is whether it should be considered as part of 2007 or 2008. As the record was self-released in 2007 but later re-released on a label in January 2008, this sort of debate is understandable. During Listmas last year, I set my stance in this conflict by simply stating I'd wait until 2008 because there were too many good albums in 2007. Well, I'm kind of eating my words now, because there was a large number of really good albums in 2008 too. Thankfully, after more than a year of listening to "For Emma, Forever Ago," I'm still just as enthralled with it as I was when I first heard it. Singer-songwriter Justin vernon recorded it in a remote Wisconsin cabin in the dead of winter, and I do think that's the best sort of environment to listen to it. That's not to suggest you should go out and rent a cabin in the Wisconin woods, but if you live in a place that gets a fair amount of snow I'd advise you to stay indoors on a cold and stormy day and turn some Bon Iver on. There's something so intensely profound in those sparsely recorded folk songs that if your heart were encased in ice it'd melt it. There's not much more you can ask from an album like this.
Considering that I placed the "Sun Giant" EP atop my favorite EPs of 2008 list, and that two out of my ten favorite songs of the year came from the band, one might expect Fleet Foxes's self-titled album to snag the number one slot on this list. Yet here it sits at number two. Every year I typically reserve the number two slot on my favorite albums list for whatever record I listened to the most, and that precedent remains true this year. In past years though, the album I listened to most was usually something less critically acclaimed or less popular. By comparison, Fleet Foxes are ratcheting up a fair number of #1 slots, and aside from vampire Weekend, I don't think I've heard more hype surrounding a band this year. Plus, unlike VW, I've heard no backlash directed Fleet Foxes' way. Those vocal harmonies are much too powerful and the songs too unconventional to catch any flak on them. It probably also helps that the Foxes haven't quite pulled down the massive attention that VW have. So why then, are Fleet Foxes ranked here? The simple answer is that I can't have two #1's. I'd call it a tie if I could, but I can't and felt just a little bit stronger about the album that's earned that top slot. Now that I've wasted so much time and space explaining why "Fleet Foxes" is not quite my favorite album of the year, I don't have much room to explain all the little bits that I love about it. Chances are though, you've already read far too much about this band anyways, so anything I'd write about would probably be a retread. All I'm gonna say is that if you've yet to listen to this album, do yourself a big favor and get it as soon as humanly possible.
My favorite album of 2006 was TV on the Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain." My favorite album of 2008 is TV on the Radio's "Dear Science." Of the hundreds of albums I've heard in those separate years, how is it that TVOTR is responsible for the two best? You can argue that I've got a bias towards the band, but honestly I'm only looking to give credit where credit is due. Honestly, I never thought TVOTR could come remotely close to matching or even topping "Return to Cookie Mountain," but here we sit and I'm even more excited about this band than I was 2 years ago. What they've very effectively done on "Dear Science" is to take the sound that's worked so well for them over the last couple records and refine it for mass consumption. Now I don't expect to be hearing the band in commercials and in the background on my favorite television shows - my expectations are realistic. Instead, I'm trying to suggest the band has found a delicate balance between the intensely complicated (but brilliant) song structures of their previous albums and the elements required to create a marketable pop song. More simply put, "Dear Science" is really easy on the ears while bubbling with intense complication underneath that shiny surface. People who have found TV on the Radio to be too obscure or challenging to try and get into now have much less of an excuse as these songs are more immediate and gratifying than they were previously. And though you might think the band has sacrificed something in their sound to add the extra polish and structure, nothing feels different or short-changed. The ability to accomplish such an arduous task of shifting your approach while maintaining sonic integrity is a feat unto itself. Thematically speaking, TVOTR deal with a number of big topics across the album, from war to politics to love and death. This is pretty much the norm for them, though I can't seem to recall their songs brimming with such energy and positivity before. Don't go in expecting a record filled with sunshine and rainbows, but if you're familiar with the band's earlier albums then you'll certainly hear the difference in outlook. It's not flat out optimism, but it sure is excitement in one form or another. And TVOTR's excitement in turn gets me excited (not in THAT way, perverts). There's not one moment on this album I'd consider moving or changing because everything works with pristine perfection. Now they're faced yet again with that impossible question of where they can go from here. It was a worrisome situation 2 years ago and we now know how that turned out, so keep your fingers crossed everybody - whenever TV on the Radio choose to step back into the studio, they may come out with yet another mindblowing masterpiece the likes of which we can't even think of at the moment.
Here's the second half of my Top 50 Songs of 2008 list. We covered a whole lot of ground yesterday, but rest assured everything is bigger and better with this last set of songs. For those of you looking to gain insight as to what might appear on my Top 50 Albums of 2008 list by surveying this list, I should tell you that there's very little parallel between the two lists.
Tracklist:
. wow. sia is amazing. the ex-
. technically, this album came out in december of 2007. but it didn't really make much headway until 2008 when the duo went on tour. yeah, i saw the movie, and i wanted to cry. and the songs tug on my heartstrings because they're so full of powerful emotion that you can actually feel it entering your pores and freezing your blood. an album i could wallow in forever. <3
. it's no secret that i love this band. back in march, they released their first full-length album, and it's still in rotation on my various iplayers. usually i can pick two songs i go back and forth with, but this album has six strong repeat-worthy tunes. i love this album like mary katherine gallagher loves the smell of her armpits. 
. thank god for this album. had i not had it to pull me out of a funk, i'd probably have bed sores right now. seriously. when i listen to this album, invisible hands made of musical notes pull me up off my ass and make me shake my tushy and fling my hair. 
. the only person i can give this award to: more depressing than damien rice. mhmm. david ford makes me find that corner of my soul that houses feelings of misery and hate - and he makes me deal with it. he's the reason i don't have to pay for therapy. well, he's part of that reason. there are many other artists who also contribute to that...
. finally, a group of kids who sing good songs with great lyrics and even more amazing music behind it. wait, don't they call this "talent"? why is it that the mainstream-indie attention (i know, that is an oxymoron; but you should know what i mean by that) seems to be lost on a bunch of crappy sounding bands just because the boys wear pants that are way too tight? wake up, people. this is a band you need to know, and you need to listen to. 
. i got to be one of the first to hear the band debut some songs from this album live this year at sxsw. and it was glorious! when i got the album, i listened to it for days. i've also been found at a bar in the west village drunk as a skunk screaming about how much i love 'no baby i' and 'ride.' i think that might be a good indication of my relationship with this album. laid-back, full of fun, and willing to keep you company at the bar. 
. a band i discovered at sxsw. they're not selling out arenas, but they're definitely making my subway rides easier to deal with. this band has a down-home sound that might make you think whiskey is a great idea, even if you're not a whiskey drinker. 'brooklyn bridge' is my hands-down fave track and appears on a good number of playlists in my library.
. no list is complete without the british invasion. so here is another one. i never paid attentions to this album until 'love it all' showed up on my pandora station, and then i revisited it, and i lurve it. it's mindless and fits in with everyday music, but has that little extra smidge of brit rock. 
. it was bound to round out the list. maybe it's that little spiritual factor that i find so endearing about this album. or maybe it's because just because i'm losing doesn't mean i'm lost. or maybe it's the violins and rolling the dice. i could listen to these songs a thousand times a day and never get sick of them. but, isn't that what coldplay is all about? i commend them for a job well-done, yet again. bravo, chaps!
The first album by Anathallo, 2006's "Floating World," received mixed reviews. While I read a large number of positive things about it, Pitchfork slammed it for being something in the range of "a cheap Sufjan Stevens imitation." I was on the fence about it myself, liking it enough to just barely recommend it, yet seeing the merit in the Sufjan imitation claims and worrying it'd paint the band into some sort of corner. So it's with a certain sense of apprehension that I decided to give the band's second album, "Canopy Glow," a try in order to find out what's been learned since we last heard from them.
FCM #16 - Songs I Loved In Elementary School Wow, I totally feel dated. I bet you do too! Big Welcome to Dan today, glad we've got the QA department represented. It's Dan's birthday today, so be sure to wish him well. 
Album: Bajofondo - Mar Dulce (Decca)
Swedish shoegazer 
