Cups To The Stars: 2013 in Review – The Songs

I've been reviewing 2013 for quite a while now.  I wrote my first for-publication Best of 2013 albums list (for Magnet) back in October; then another, substantially different one (for City Paper) in early December.  I (just) missed the Pazz'n'Jop deadline (again), but anyway my list has again seen more fluctuation and rejiggering since then.

Basically it's either been a highly competitive year for albums or a highly confusing one – or possibly both: sometimes it's hard to tell if all the reshuffling is due to there being a ton of really strong albums vying for the spots, or a dearth of albums strong enough to really assert their place.  In other words, 2013 was definitely not a 2012 or a 2010 (i.e. a year with a huge, unassailable top 5+ – or possibly just a year with a new Hot Chip album), but it wasn't exactly a 2011 (lower key, smaller scale, off-cycle) either.  Or, maybe it was in terms of absolute great greats: ultimately, nothing stood out as an unmitigated 10/10; a fully satisfying #1 – Kacey Musgraves has held steady in that spot for a while, but it feels a bit like a default, and in any case it's not really representative of my actual year in listening.

Anyhow, there were unquestionably many really good albums that came out last year – enough that I've been inspired to make my list relatively long-form.  I've listed 24 of them below in the next entry, with some commentary (including my blurbs from the CP list), and you can find a whole bunch more over on the sidebar: numbered up to 100, just for fun, and subject to revision whenever I feel bored.  (oh yeah – and I totally reserve the right to list BEYONCÉ in 2014.)  (Actually, screw that...while I'm being revisionist anyway I'm sneaking it in now...no higher than #25 though.  Don't feel like search for any more jpgs plus I'm honestly not that sold on it.  Though maybe I'll live eat those words.)

First though: some songs.  2013 was an exceptionally good year for songs (or, if you like, tracks), but more specifically it was a truly great year for anthems.  Not every song on the list below was even a single, and many that were didn't exactly permeate broader consciousness (even on an indie level) to the extent that plenty of other great, probably equally list-worthy hits – by folks like Daft Punk, Disclosure, Drake, Haim [**big ups especially to the Lindstrøm remix of "Forever"**], Skye Ferreira, Paramore, Robin Thicke, Miguel [er, as featured by Mariah Carey and Janelle Monae] and Rhye [a few year-of-release quibbles there] – but almost every one of them feels, in its own way, powerfully, personally and specifically anthemic.  And, for sure, none more so than this one:

1. Neko Case: "Man"

"Night Still Comes" was the instantly familiar, deftly melodic, perfectly formed gospel-soul stunner that already felt like a pre-ordained cozy campfire classic from the first time we heard it (in my case, live at WilcoFest.)  "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" was the quietly staggering, heart-rending emotional centerpiece whose startlingly unadorned a cappella form precisely matched the stark, searing poignancy of its content.  But there was nothing on The Worse It Gets, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You that compared to "Man."

Maybe it's partly because I heard it several months before the rest of the album, but "Man" stands defiantly apart from the record surrounding it – and really, from Case's entire career.  (Her work with the New Pornographers only grudgingly excepted, because this feels like something else, something emphatically more forceful, even if it certainly takes a few pages from that book.)  It has a directness, a thundering force – like an electric jolt – that she's never really attempted otherwise, and it comes across with an unambiguous, surging certainty – those drums, those cymbals, the teeth-grinding violence of guitars on guitars on guitars – that's very tempting to equate with simplicity.

But as with the brilliant, seemingly baldly self-explanatory lyrics; even given the delicious, pivotal reveal that – no, it's not about gender, and she's not playing a role this time: "Man" is just what kind of animal she is – I get the sense that there's still a little more going on here than she's quite letting on; some evasion or elision in the pronouns and syntax.  (That's the animal part, maybe: just because Neko is, like all of us, a man, doesn't mean she's not still as mysterious as any other beast)  Still, who cares what kind of sense it makes or doesn't; there were few more inexplicably desirable states of being in 2013 than "dipshit drunk on pink perfume," and few assertions more satisfying or self-evident than the Neko-logical corollary to such a situation: "I AM THE MAN IN THE FUCKING MOON"

2. Classixx ft. Nancy Whang: "All You're Waiting For"

In which Classixx – two L.A. electro-scene gadabouts with a handful of quite good remixes to their credit, and little else to speak of – suddenly, shockingly live up to their name, x's and all.  "All You're Waiting For" came a title that was hard to take seriously – oh sure, another synthy, disco-ey burst of upbeat electro-dance blog fodder is exactly what we've been missing – but somehow became self-fulfilling, and undeniable.  This track does absolutely nothing new, but it does absolutely everything it needs to do.  It is a 100% pure, clinical-grade distillation of the ever-beguiling but so often lackluster 21st century dance/pop/house/electro axis – that nebulously shiny, blandly stylish domain of stock neon visuals and endless goofily-named remixers.  Every so often, though, somebody just gets it right.

It doesn't hurt that they enlisted Nancy Whang, who for reasons I have never really been able to understand, let alone articulate, is pretty the undisputed queen of this stuff.  What she does here is not much different from what she's done in the past for the likes of Soulwax, Juan MacLean and LCD Soundsystem (and again on a forthcoming banger from DFA also-ran Shit Robot), which is...not much, really.  Sing the words.  Maybe her voice just functions like a sort of seal of authenticity by this point.  But it does the trick – managing to invest some legitimate drama into the most banal lyrical imagery imaginable ("...got my bags packed, waiting on the driver curbside...")  On the other hand, the synths – inexplicably both crisp and pillowy – have the whole job pretty much sewn up before her voice even enters the scene.

3. D E N A: "Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools"

Nobody heard this.  Nobody cares about Kitsuné any more (if they ever did), which is only fair because most of what they put out really isn't very interesting.  But somebody should really start paying attention to D E N A, or Dena, or however she wants us to write it, because she has mad swagger like M.I.A. back in '05 and because this song is amazing, hilarious both conceptually and musically (that doorbell sample?!? – and that's not even mentioning the video) but without actually seeming like a joke, brilliantly deadpan, and also extremely banging.  And the EP has a bunch of really solid remixes on it too.  I like how, despite the titular mantra, she seems to be interested in the swimming pools far more than the other two items.  And not even because she's hot; most of the song is about how it's too cold in Berlin (and/or Bulgaria) and she'd rather be anywhere else.  I also like how it's a direct appeal to the listener: "If you're listening to this in a hot country, please come rescue me."  If you have a swimming pool, she promises "then we can be hanging."  Hey Dena, I've got a three foot deep inflatable one... does that count?

4. Caitlin Rose: "Menagerie"

Another head-scratcher of a non-hit (indeed, non-single), and this was on an album some people actually heard (and liked.)  I found the bulk of The Stand-In to be fine: well-produced but generally unexciting tasteful, all-purpose Americana.  But this song – for sure, the most power-pop thing on the record, almost but not quite to the point of being unrepresentative – hit me hard the first time I heard it (live at South by Southwest, which was also my first exposure to Caitlin Rose period) and I've been smitten ever since.  It's got a terrific thumping, thundering, shimmering production job (love that slightly grimey electric piano – really the texture of the whole thing are just great), the kind of riff that you can't imagine not having been around forever, and a brilliantly stinging kiss-off of a lyric built around a nicely understated Tennessee Williams allusion.  Simply said: a beautiful thing.

5. Little Daylight: "Overdose"

Another song I first heard at SXSW; more great thumping and thundering; another bone-simple but beautifully-deployed riff.  This is from the new band/project of my high school friend Nicole, formerly of Xylos, and while I still haven't heard much else they've done (and sadly their tour with the stacked line-up of Charli XCX and Kitten got reshuffled, although I did therefore get introduced to LIZ) but they have been playing shows with Bastille, which seems to augur well for their future.

Sort of like the Classixx track, this feels like an archetypal, Platonic ideal of a certain stripe of synthy, catchy, kind of gleefully dumb indie-pop.  (Particularly the oh-oh-ohs doubling the synth riff.)  And it is pretty dumb.  But it works.  What really makes it is how the arrangement keeps switching around to highlight different parts and keep things fresh, and especially the chorus that breaks down to just handclaps and funky bassline.  Plus the kind of unnecessarily epic drums, which push it into anthemic territory and make it especially great for biking to.

6. Dungeonesse: "Soon"

'90s-urban revival-core synth-pop; a semi-slow/sad ballad jam but still with a funky breakbeat, almost freestyle groove.  This one's really all about the vocals, particularly the floaty, self-harmonizing bits when the beat drops out.  Just gorgeous.  Also heartbreaking, in a way that goes beyond standard break-up song tropes ("half a love's not enough for the two of us to live on...soon we've gotta give it up.")  Sort of puts me in mind of Kylie/José's "Hand on Your Heart," another aching, reluctant plug-pulling.  Plus Jenn Wasner sounds so much like Tracey Thorn here and I'm just always gonna be a sucker for that.

7. Chvrches: "Gun"

Could have gone with any of several Chvrches jams really, but this is the first one that really got to me, and besides the other big singles actually came out last year, right?  (Was confused about why they were on the P4k list.)  Everything about this is so perfectly chiseled into place, every build-up and break back down (maybe my favorite is the live-sounding snare drums in the ramp-up to the chorus, as if all the synth instruments in the world just weren't enough to convey the requisite urgency.)  I keep thinking I've gotten sick of it – in some ways it is less sonically/structurally inventive/more pro forma synth-pop than some of their other hits – but then I try biking to it again and I can't help but smile.

8. Cayucas: "High School Lover"

Another big smiler.  More kinda-dumb but effective indie pop.  Sweet bassline, interesting percussion groove, understated surf chords and overall beachy vibe, and I like the syncopated vocal rhythm, with each line relaxed so far behind the beat so that it almost wraps around to the next bar, especially in the chorus.  Which is also really fun to sing.  They probably could have come up with something more interesting to finish it off than just repeating  the title phrase a bunch of times – also, the guy's voice is not the greatest – but whatever.

9. Lindstrøm & Todd Terje: "Lanzarote"


Comedy single of the year!  Travel agency commercial of the millennium!  (And the most durable, versatile "insert-your-own" 2013 running joke between me and E, applicable basically any time one of us mentions "going" anywhere.)  Also, how handy that it comes with a bonus seven minutes of typically immaculate LinsTerje synth-disco squiggles and arpeggios and crazy left-field harmonic shifts tacked on to the beginning.  They had to put that part first because otherwise they would have just kept on naming four-syllable destinations for all eternity, making each one sound more enticing than the last (...Santa Barbara! ...Mississippi!  ...North Dakota!  ...Mogadishu!  ...Sarajevo!  hmm...Purgatory!)

10. Veronica Falls: "Waiting For Something To Happen"

"Everybody's crazy – what's your excuse, baby?"  I probably unfairly underrated this album when it came out.  Yes, it's probably true that all the songs sound more or less the same.  But if they all sound like this, how is that really cause for complaint?

11. Vampire Weekend: "Unbelievers" 

Was this the most boring, most boilerplate-VWs track on Modern Vampires of the City?  Maybe so... at least it felt like the simplest, most straight-ahead pop song.  Which may be why it's the one that ultimately did the most for me.  ("Obvious Bicycle" a close second, just because it's so darn pretty.)  I'm all for musical ambition, but give me three chords, a largely repetitive, ambivalent lyric about religious relativism, and a surprise incursion of vaguely Celtic-sounding pipes and I'm a happy guy.  Also, more people should take inspiration from Buddy Holly generally (and "Peggy Sue" specifically.)  Oddly, the usually annoying and off-the-mark Paul Simon comparisons feel almost appropriate here.

12. Tegan & Sara: "Now I'm All Messed Up"

Gotta love back-up vocals that argue with (and/or straight-up contradict) the lead singer.  See also: "Shame" by Randy Newman; "Hypnotised" by Aberfeldy.

13. Kacey Musgraves: "Follow Your Arrow"

I think my favorite part is the "Or don't!" in the first chorus: wherein she encourages people whose their hearts tell them not to smoke pot to just go right ahead and not smoke pot.

14. Superchunk: "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo"

This feels like the first rock song on this list.  That may or may not be true but anyway this is maybe the purest rock'n'roll song of the year, in spirit and in substance.  So much indie-punk everyband evocation crammed into two short, sweet minutes – crammed into the back of the van, feet on the dash, half an hour at the record exchange..  I feel like it could have been even shorter though; what's all this business about Jackie Mittoo?

15. My Bloody Valentine: "New You"

2013: wherein I tried in vain to take away the pain of being a Loveless unbeliever, by seeing if I could get into MBV's follow-up record instead.  results: decidedly mixed.  but this swoony floaty gooey loveliness is clearly the best song Stereolab never made.

honorable mention:

Bibio: "À Tout à l'Heure"

Bleeding Rainbow: "Waking Dream"

Neko Case: "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu"

Foxygen: "San Francisco"

Kalabrese: "Purple Rose"

Lucius: "Tempest"
Paramore: "Still Into You"

Saint Rich: "Young Vultures"

Sophie: "Bipp"

Stornoway: "The Bigger Picture"

John Wizards: "iYongwe"

¿donde viven los bangers?

breaking from normal practice to post a couple of reviews ahead of schedule – these were slated to run in city paper (and online) today, but got bumped back due to space constraints... but i wanted to share b/c for once it seems i am (semi-inadvertently) in lockstep with the daily pitchforkgeist, in the sense that these albums both got Best New Music, today and yesterday respectively.  (and now it will maybe look like i was trailing hype trends by a week behind...oh well whatevs.)  sweet tunes, lame covers, check it:

Disclosure - Settle

Daft Punk can keep their randomly accessed analog memories; British brother duo Disclosure are using much more precise, calibrated means – pinprick-crisp digital beats, icy smart-missile synth hooks – to summon a very specific place (London – the predominant home turf of their myriad guest vocalists: Jessie Ware, Jamie Woon, AlunaGeorge...) and time (the turn-of-the-century heyday of sleek, syncopated UK Garage.)  No slight on our beloved Parisian disco-bots, but Settle (PMR/Island) – a crossover-ready club thumper that plays like Basement Jaxx's Remedy as reimagined by two-step maven MJ Cole – is looking like the dance party album to beat this summer.

Jon Hopkins - Immunity

Jon Hopkins is no stranger to warmly inviting, ambient-leaning soundscapes, as his collaborations with Brian Eno, Coldplay and Scottish folkie King Creosete all attest, but the producer's fourth solo album finds him aiming for something a bit rougher.  Just a little bit.  Six of Immunity (Domino)'s eight cuts are solidly beat-based; most of them appreciably danceable, many of them more expansive takes on The Field's lush, feathery minimal trance, commingled with Dntel's warmed-over glitch techno.  It all sounds pretty glorious, but it's the glacially-paced, nearly beatless, title track – the most luxuriantly billowing bliss-out Four Tet never made – that's perhaps most heartmeltingly resonant.

No big surprise that Disclosure got the BNM status (though impressive that they leap-frogged Daft Punk on the score – more on that later); seems like a third of the tracks on the album were already being heavily hyped, and anyway it's just an obviously great album.  Though I haven't completely decided if I really think they're the second coming of early-period Basement Jaxx, which seems to be everyone else's go-to comparison (and mine) – if only because it's a lack we've been feeling for so long (if their next album gets as wild and wide-ranging as Rooty I'll be truly impressed; so far they seem to be mostly fitting their guest vocalists to their specific mold/choosing from within a narrow range, rather than letting collaborations broaden their approach – which is a totally reasonable approach, at least for now...anyway...)  But the Hopkins review was a bit of a surprise; as much as I'd been enjoying the record it seemed like the kind of thing that p4k might sniff at.  I guess you never know.  Anyway (as I wrote), it's the closing title track that really does it for me – precisely because it sounds almost exactly like one of the slow/gentle cuts on There Is Love In You.  It's the kind of perfect that could be stretched to an hour long and be all the better for it.

so anyway, yeah – as nate asked me recently (in english) – where do bangers live?  if you'll notice my unusually up-to-date "2013 scene" sidebar, i'm developing a pretty sturdy canon of 2013 hits.  i'll probably fashion these into a summer jams mixtape before too long (probably with that as a title) but in the mean time i thought i'd share a few of the most notable.  oh hey soundcloud (apparently that's the answer.)

  
most recently, i've been crushing super hard on this song by CHVRCHES (are we allowed to call them Chrvches in polite company?) – actually overplaying it to the point where I feel like I'm in danger of wearing it out.  not so far, though.  still sounds like crystal clear summertime sprinkles.  i guess i still need to fully parse the lyrics, but in the mean time it hits a whole bunch of tried-and-true electro-pop marks just so meticulously, and often with a little twinge of something extra... one of my favorites is the slightly martial (definitely live-sounding) re-entry of the drums after the breakdown (around 2:40)   dance with me?


not sure i can fully explain why this song has stuck with me so strongly – the rest of caitlin rose's album is good but this is a head-and-shoulders stand-out – but it just feels like utterly perfect pop.  i connected with it immediately when i saw her play live (before hearing the record), so that probably helped.  lyrics are great too, even the loose tennessee williams references which could so easily feel forced.  also great for such a sweet sounding song to be about such a dark destructive impulse.

 
so this is a "minimix" of all the different remixes on the 12", which is especially fun b/c it's exactly the kind of goofiness i would get up to. (qv my treatment of "mixed bizness" on superstar djs and "dancing on my own" on the 2010 mix.)  been banging this all year but it's clearly built for summer.


so i'm just hearing this remix for the first time now... nice stuff! reminds me a lot of the avalanches treatment of "i'm a cuckoo" (one of the all-time greats.)  i'm not gonna say it's better than the original, but it does a good job of translating the song's gooey saccharine sweetness into something very different.  hard to beat those super-chimey chirrupy mandolins, but hyperactive multi-tracked slap bass is a pretty good approach if you're gonna try.  what do you think?


I'm sure this song will get its due time to shine (VW don't like to go about things orderly, which is just fine), but as far as i'm concerned this is far and away the banger from MVOTC.  (It obviously doesn't come close to "Giving Up The Gun," which is one way, at least, in which the new album is a let-down – but it's a solid shot.)  I always want the blazing pianos to kick ("I know I love you...") when the bottom drops out instead ("I'm not excited...").  Why they gotta hold back like that?  (I do like the handclaps in this live version.)  Meanwhile "Obvious Bicycle" is so utterly beautiful, and "Hannah Hunt" works so well that it's really tough to pick a favorite track from the album as a whole...



feels so cheap (not to mention clunky! - i know it's supposed to feel casual but omg those dubbed-out curse words are just sloppy – even if actually including the curse words would be 10x worse) but dammit it works.  #on repeat.

as for Daft Punk...i didn't mean to pick on them in my Disclosure review, it was just an easy target.  I'm taking my time with Random Access Memories, have only given it three or maybe four listens thru so far.  So I don't feel ready to make a definitive statement.  there's a lot of fun stuff there, for sure, but it is clear that sequencing is a major issue – "Giorgio by Moroder" would make so much more sense later in the album rather than killing momentum on track three.  and what's up with putting a slow-jam second (in the "Aerodynamic" slot, if you will.)  a lot of the best stuff is in the middle of the album - esp. "Instant Crush" (Julian!!) and "Lose Yourself To Dance" although that song is just begging to be sped up a good ten clicks.  I guess I'm a little undecided on "Giorgio" but some of the other epics do work pretty well, especially "Touch."  (also "Get Lucky" is much improved at this length and with proper song structure.)  anyhow, i'll keep on living with it, gettin comfy.

Review Round-Up: May 2013

May was Massive.  This is partly just due to the quirk of it being a month with five Thursdays, but even so I had a lot to write about; enough that I'm splitting this round-up into two parts.  First, the record reviews:

Bibio
Silver Wilkinson

"I like the idea of comparing albums to seasons," wrote Stephen Wilkinson in the lead-up to his seventh Bibio album. And while he didn't call out any seasons specifically, you could perhaps take some hints from the album's May release date, dandelion-esque artwork and song titles like the opening "The First Daffodils." But this stuff is more than lovely enough to play year-round. It's fitting that the album is, seemingly, obliquely self-titled (in fact, "silver wilkinson" – like "bibio," and like the recurring seed-like shape on the cover – is a type of fly-fishing lure), as it has something of a full-circle, retrospective quality, reconnecting the UK producer with the gentle, naturally-inspired folktronica of his earliest albums for Mush. Ergo: lots of twinkles, dapples, hums, a sprinkle of rippling water sounds, and bucketloads of placid acoustic guitars. But the dramatic palette-expansion and eclecticism of his adventurous last two albums are hardly forgotten – they're just more fully integrated than ever before. So while "Raincoat" could share an umbrella with something from XTC's Skylarking, and the marvelously muted "Dye the Water Green" meanders from subaqeous folk blur to stately synthcraft, "A tout à l'heure"'s jaunty lo-fi funk of bests anything by Toro Y Moi, "You" blossoms into improbably sweet Star Slinger-ish glitch-soul and "Business Park"'s blurty, portamento'd IDM recalls vintage Plaid. This one's a keeper.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City
[Pop/Rock]

Don't let the grisaille cover-shot fool you: Modern Vampires of the City (XL) fully earns its summer-baiting release date.  It may be the subtlest, quirkiest, least immediate Vampire Weekend LP yet – it's arguably half ballads, and those pesky, overproblematized Afro-pop guitars are long gone – but the buoyant, ineffable lightness remains.  Even in the face of religious differences and ticking mortality, there's plenty of room for contrapuntal finery, hip-hop hypertext and '50s rock'n'roll dalliances ("Unbelievers"' delirious "Peggy Sue" beat; "Diane Young"'s pitchshift-Presley babybabybaby hiccups.)  Meanwhile, the band's melodies and bon-mots have grown ever richer and bonnier, and Ezra Koenig's singing voice has blossomed into a minor miracle.

Dungeonesse
s/t
[Pop/Electronic]

Baltimore-rooted synth-pop duo Dungeonesse resurrect a whole slew of turn-of-the-'90s dance styles on their joyous, generous, not at all crabby self-titled debut (Secretly Canadian): some hip-house, a little Hi-NRG rave, even a touch of New Jack Swing.  But their best stuff – giddy-in-love swoon-along "Show You"; achingly pretty breakbeat torch-ballad "Soon" – is closer to the soulful, warmly sophisticated electro-R&B of Soul II Soul or Walking Wounded-era Everything But The Girl, with Jenn Wasner (better known as half of indie bed-rockers Wye Oak) as an impressively potent, dulcet Tracey Thorn/Caron Wheeler substitute.  Now I just really want them to tour with Dragonette.

The Boy Least Likely To
The Great Perhaps
[Indie-Pop]

Not too much changes for The Boy Least Likely To.  Theirs remains a twee fairyland of notebook-doodle cartoon covers, tender little anthropomorphized hearts and cheery cotton-candy wisps of melody.  Even when they're singing about heartbreak, death and existential loneliness – as on a considerable portion of The Great Perhaps (Rough Trade), which is frequently more simultaneously cuddly and bleak than you might've imagined possible – they generally sound like they've just been given a jumbo-sized lollipop and a brand new pony.  The big news is that they've discovered synthesizers and drum machines, but naturally, Boy being Boy, only the very sparkliest, cutest ones are allowed into their toy box.

Sam Amidon
Bright Sunny South
[Folk]

Bright Sunny South (Nonesuch) is Sam Amidon's fourth album of artful folk revisionism, full of starkly evocative recastings of mostly traditional, public-domain material – shape-note hymns, British and American folk songs – plus smuggled-in Tim McGraw and Mariah Carey covers.  Despite the title, it's generally bleak stuff, time-worn meditations on a "short life of trouble" given new breath through Amidon's captivatingly plain, unaffected singing and sparse, thoughtful, occasionally volatile arrangements, and if it lacks the compelling thematic sweep of his previous albums it offers just as many moments of arrestingly human, history-warping resonance.

Dustin Wong and Takako Minekawa
Toropical Circle
[Experimental]

Baltimore-based delay-pedal virtuoso Dustin Wong and Tokyo's quirk-pop kewpie-doll Takako Minekawa are a couple of lonesome, loopy dreamers, and it's little surprise that their on-record rendezvous, Toropical Circle (Plancha), would float in an enchanting, delightfully fantastical sound-world unto itself.  Those who've missed Minekawa's breathy, perennially girlish coo – this is her first musical output since c. 2000 – know to expect some nursery-rhyme-grade cutesiness (indeed, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" gets riffed on a couple times here), but any whiff of pennywhistle preciousness is counterbalanced by a more inviting (if similarly childlike) aura of gentleness, curiosity and wonder that pervades the duo's wispy ambient daydreams and exquisitely odd noise-baubles.

Eluvium
Nightmare Ending
[Ambient]

Each of ambient composer Matthew Cooper's recordings as Eluvium has found slightly different tools to generate his dependable blanketing warmth and meditative calm, but the eighty-four minutes of Nightmare Ending (Temporary Residence) survey nearly the entire breadth of his soft arsenal: amorphous orchestral swells, texturally-distressed drones, gently chiming processed guitars and, most crucially, his patient, Satie-inflected piano playing, either starkly unadorned or enrobed in thick (and occasionally engulfing) clouds of static.  Apt finale "Happiness" somehow finds ample space for all of the above, plus a lovingly mellifluous tuba, ringing harmonics and a surprise visit from one of indie's most familiar, beloved voices.

Secret Circuit
Tactile Galactics
[Electronic]

Tactile Galactics (Beats in Space) is a remarkably apt designation for the psychedelic, electronic disco of LA's Eddie Ruscha, whose productions as Secret Circuit bear some family resemblance to the crisp minimalist precision, saturated color and inviting openness of his pop artist pop.  "Galactic," since they play like a more meticulous spin on the nebulous cosmic transmissions of Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, et al; "tactile" for the vivid clarity and conspicuous thinginess of his sounds: brisk, brittle high-frequency percs and wormy, spiraling melodics suspended above thick, chewy, acid-touched basslines, with acres of warm, welcoming, luminous space floating in between.

The Black Dog
Tranklements
[Techno/IDM]

Among the few producers still active from the "Intelligence Dance Music" salad days of the early '90s, Sheffield trio The Black Dog are well past the point of futzing with newfangled or ostentatious genre machinations: the music on their awesomely named eleventh album, Tranklements (Dust Science), is techno, both pure and simple.  Sometimes noisy, often bleepy, occasionally near-ambient, but always delivered with an industrial precision that belies its amply human musicality (body-bating machine-funk grooves, surprisingly lush melodicism) and, per longstanding tradition, neatly stitched together with quirky, interludic "Bolts."

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

get the lowdown on my hoedown

[hey, did you ("you"?) notice how i haven't been making any references to last.fm in any of my 2010 year-end hoo-hah? ha!]

the magnetic fields were one of my very top last.fm artists in 2010 (#3 in fact, behind joanna newsom and hot chip, – isn't it nice when lists line up with reality like that?), and they're probably going to become my overall most-played artist in a matter of days, due to my preparations for the upcoming 69 love songs cover party (which will be amazing) [and which was also part of the reason they scored so many listens last year, along with needing to bring my girlfriend up to speed, getting excited about the movie, and an autumnal obsession with "100000 fireflies"] however i didn't even really listen to, or like, their 2010 album, realism, all that much. but, there was that one very (overly?) catchy song [hm, they're very tiny there] about scientology, which is sort of like the title track for this mix, except that it's not actually on it (cuz i ran out of space, but maybe it's better that way anyway):

title: H'010NANNY! [SONGS of 2010]
date: december 2010. the 22nd-ish? format: cd-r,+blogpost
packaged: with 2010isLove, at least most of the time, together in a devious white foldy.

come and take our personality quizzzzzzzz:
1. "When I Still Have Thee" – Teenage Fanclub
2. "Zorbing" – Stornoway
3. "Ain't That The Way" – Devon Sproule
4. "I Heart NY" – Samuel
5. "Heaven, Sittin' Down" – Phosphorescent
6. "Gloria" – Jonny
7. "'81" – Joanna Newsom
8. "Free Translator" – The Books
9. "Hang With Me (Acoustic)" – Robyn
10. "You Better Mind" – Sam Amidon (with Beth Orton)
11. "You Are Not Alone" – Mavis Staples
12. "My Heart Is A Drummer" – Allo Darlin'
13. "I Didn't See It Coming" – Belle & Sebastian
14. "Horchata" – Vampire Weekend
15. "All Yr Songs" – Diamond Rings
16. "Hormones" – Tracey Thorn
17. "Love And Do What You Will" – ceo
18. "Indeed" – Georgia Anne Muldrow
19. "Whole New Way" – Scissor Sisters
20. "All Matter" – Bilal
21. "I Can Change" – LCD Soundsystem
22. "Alley Cats" – Hot Chip

i didn't make a "favorite songs of 2010" list, not really. i made this mix, which has already been much acclaimed ("massive," somebody said, or maybe it was "major"), and which i am enjoying (still) surprisingly much (unlike last year's songs mix [scroll down, scroll down] which i was kind of already sick of by the time i made it, and have barely listened since.) and now, so that you'll have something to listen to, and look at, while i ramble on about the songs/artists/albums(?), it's now also a video playlist:


1. "When I Still Have Thee" – Teenage Fanclub

wow, what a glorious song! pretty close to perfect, i think. simple structure, simple chords that somehow sound fantastically fresh. i love the gradually expanding arrangement: first just clean, eternal, Byrdsian jangle guitar (and a bit of piano for emphasis), sounding like a fanfare, then the drums (and full band) crashing in (with "the rolling stones") for verse two, and then, surprise, even more!: warm, glowy churchy organ, (right on the word "hymn"!) for verse three. and a few more crafty details: sweet lil guitar solo that builds right up to and wraps around the penultimate refrain, then a nifty little cadence to bring it back around one last time. hard to believe it's well over three minutes; it feels so much like an elemental 2:30.

tremendous lyric too: again, quite simple but also wholly unexpected. yes, i enjoy mocking it for the preposterous pronoun in the refrain (which feels mostly like a blatant reach for a rhyme...though i suppose you could make an argument that it fits in with the "modern hymn" bit?) but it really just makes it all the more endearing(ly earnest.) elsa heard it as being about religion or god. it seems to be about several things at once which are really all the same thing: love, the goodness of life, and, most especially, music. specifically, [indie] pop, or rock and roll i guess; from the western isles to the tasman sea, i.e. scotland to new zealand, the heartlands of this particular strain of p!o!p!, incl. the name-checked go-betweens (who are australian) [and apparently this cornish band i have never heard of.] who knows what rolling stones song they're talking about [any wild guesses?], but i love that the singer describes it as being written "for him"...also, "a minor song in a major key" is reminiscent of erstwhile new world janglers the gigolo aunts but even better executed i'd say.

i never really paid too much attention to teenage fanclub, at least post-bandwagonesque (which i've liked but never loved), even though i always figured i should. and now, probably, i shall [also, see jonny, below.] i was surprised by how much their new 'un, shadows, sounded like the clientele (okay, a slightly more awake version of the clientele.) the whole album is pretty lovely, with lots of nice string bits and so on, but this one is far and away the standout for me...it's the kind of song, i knew right away, that will never lose its power to make me smile through any little heartbreak, and that is something to cherish. ok, on we go...


2. "Zorbing" – Stornoway

wow, what a glorious song! speaking of the western isles, stornoway is on one of them, though stornoway are not from there, they're from cowley, a part of oxford, which is mentioned in this song ["zorbing through the streets of cowley."] zorbing is highly fascinating, and i would love to learn more about it, but that's not really what this song's about. it's about love, of course, new love more specifically, and though zorbing is a pretty brilliant metaphor for the feeling (floating, tumbling, disoriented, inside a bubble), but wisely i think, they don't force it or make it fit too neatly, but find various other more and less outlandish ways (thunderstorms, sensory dissociation) to describe the same thing which are just as compelling.

this is one of those songs (like "when i still have thee," i suppose) that manages to express almost exactly the same feeling musically as it does lyrically; in this case an irresistible, barely controlled giddiness (the short eruptive trumpet breaks are almost too much – isolated from context they might be unbearably twee – but they provide exactly the release that the song needs.) another slowly building arrangement with wonderfully crisp details all arranged just so (love that slightly subliminal jaunty piano and of course the low laddish harmonies and bouncy bass.) and i haven't even mentioned the melody, which is a marvel unto itself.

this is the kind of song that, as i think rae said about hefner's "i took her love for granted" [which i wrote about at length here, and which it could probably argued is the solitary reason i am still a devoted darren hayman listener], makes me remember why i love indie-pop.

actually, for some reason [because this was technically first released in '09?] i'd intended to include "i saw you blink" instead, which is almost equally wonderful (the rest of beachcomber's windowsill, very very good as it is, is trying for something somewhat different and can't quite match these two pinnacles) but this fit better for some reason.



3. "Ain't That The Way" – Devon Sproule

wow, what a – well, actually this is a slightly different situation here. of course, it is glorious, like most everything the dazzling ms. devon does, plays or is. (even if the album this kickstarts, ¡don't hurry for heaven!, was a bit of a let down for me after her untouchably great last one.) this is a pretty astonishing piece of songcraft, right up there with "keep yr silver shined" and "plea for a good night's rest," which really could not have been written by anybody else. this one might actually be more immediately captivating and endearing than either of those. i don't know anybody else who does this thing, intricate and breezily poetic but homespun and humble at the same time, nearly the way dev can. actually, her poetics are less high-flown than usual here, and her virginny drawl (which feels maybe just slightly exaggerated on this one) makes it more feel even down-home.

not to get into too many of the little details, i'll just point out maybe my favorite lyric, in the surprise cyclical sorta-canon coda (which is all great), she hears on the way home "new ry cooder on the radio." then there are the little twinklies which lead us nicely into...



4. "I Heart NY" – Samuel
...a rather different vision of home. (hey, there's that word again...) a total out-of-nowhere hit for me (i have basically no sense of who or how many other people are even aware of it; i know next to nothing of this samuel, except that i think he's got a major label contract now. and i haven't heard any of his other songs, but i'm suspecting that maybe we all will in the near future?) an uncannily enchanting piece of candyfloss pop – unusually for this style [q.v. lenka, marit, etc.] sung by a male, which maybe tempers the candyflossness of it a bit (?) and partially explains why i hear a surprising degree of swag alongside the disney twinkles... could also be the zip-a-dee-doo-dah hip-hop beat (reminds me of "hard knock life" a bit) and the subject matter, not just that it's about new york (and a much more touching and cogent ode than, for instance "ny state of mind"), an unabashed celebration in spite of broken bicycles, pot paranoia, boredom and alienation. [also cf. hip-hop,] i like that "what makes [him] real" is the inexplicable queasiness he feels in his stomach.

p.s. i might have a soft spot for songs that mention coney island: "from out here," "strange powers," what else, lou reed of course, and that gybe! thing... (also, i was on coney island during a blackout!)



5. "Heaven, Sittin' Down" – Phosphorescent

aw sooky. another sweet groover. [nb. album version is better, but for some reason not on the yootoob...] the first time i heard this (on the train back from nj, as elsa was on her way moving up to boston) i was sure it was a trad. cover (partly because of the r.l. burnside album of the similar title, which i've not heard), but evidently no, it's a phosphy original, albeit based around a nicked line (cuz it is the title of a gospel oldie or sumpin.) well, add this one to the instant new sing-along standards pile, right on top of "wagon wheel" (and similarly, could easily see people just writing their own verses for this. i never even notice the verses anyway.)

i 'specially love the slightly loose, rushed scansion of that crucial, wrenching third line of the chorus ("i wish those nights of pleasure and those days of pain weren't so tightly bound.") never really thought about this, but the song sounds so jaunty yet is about utter exhaustion, so that's neat.



6. "Gloria" – Jonny

jonny = norman blake from teenage fanclub + euros childs from gorkys zygotic mynci, welshy goofball (though, as it turns out, maybe not quite as much of a goofy welshball as gruff rhys, cwwddyhthythgd.) seems likely he provided much of the goofiness of this song, but who knows. it's the first song from their free downloadable first ep (album coming soon, on merge!?) this is, awesomely, about gloria estefan, and if you hadn't noticed it's the third song on this mix so far to mention other musical artists by name, an appropriate unintentional theme for me. [i think there's two others still to come, unless james murphy slipped something by me.]

anyway, jonny, "gloria," short (!!) and sweet, couldn't resist. will probably be teaching this one at sing-alongs too.



7. "'81" – Joanna Newsom

sort of the obvious "single" from have one on me, i guess, in that it's short (but longer than the micro-sized "on a good day") and has a simple-ish, very catchy melody. "good intentions paving company" seems to be the consensus de facto standout, and it's also my favorite, in part because i love singing it and playing it on the piano. [but it's too long, natch, plus was already on the original (and frankly preferable) version of t-shirt weather. they're both spring songs, btw, unless this is summer.]

i love singing this one too – even though her phrasing is maddeningly difficult to pin down (slippery as a naked trout) – and i can almost imagine other people learning how to sing it as well, something i'd be hard pressed to say about any of her other songs (well honestly it's not true about this one either.) maybe it's more that i just want to sing it to other people, and have them hear it, and be comforted: "the unending amends you've made are enough for one life: be done. i believe in innocence, little darlin', start again; i believe in everyone."



8. "Free Translator" – The Books
equally as much comfort, utterly negligible sense. the story of this song is here. "Machines are dumb, but sometimes they do brilliant things because they can’t help themselves."

(also, the sufficient clues to the mystery of its palimpsestuous source material, which has had me curious for a while now, are in the comments to that tumbl. oddly enough – or not – this song does a surprisingly decent job of preserving the existential, open-ended feel of the unnamed original song which it "translates"; not unlike the semi-surrealist charlie king parody of said song i heard him sing years ago.)

i'd like to hear a bedtime story (a la "the story of hip-hop") or maybe a superhero comic about the instantly distinctive entities listed at the end of the song: the adventures of meteorological man and whirlwind girl, with their sidekicks, a careful goat and a talking plant. and a squid in a bag. etc.



9. "Hang With Me (Acoustic)" – Robyn

the best song of robyn's (aptly called) "magic 2010," i'm pretty sure. and, in this version, one of the few pieces of that output which comes close to matching the breathtaking, honest emotional nuance she achieved at the emotive peak (i.e. robyn's heart-stoppingly clear-eyed closing suite) of her magic 2005. [which isn't necessarily to say i like the disco single version any less.]

a subtly key moment: "i know what's on your mind/there will be time for that too": slyly, ambiguously supplementing her touchy-feely with some touchy-touchy, in a way that lets you know this couldn't have been written by anyone else (except maybe prince.)

oh, and just one little amendment i'd make, for my own selfish purposes: fall recklessly, headlessly in love with me; it won't all be heartbreak blissfully painful insanity.




10. "You Better Mind" – Sam Amidon with Beth Orton

awesome. [in the original, literal sense, even.] sam amidon was essentially new to me this year (though, turned out e's known him since they were at folksinging summer camp together), but this was maybe the most tragically overlooked alb of the year in my book. (even more than allo darlin', yes, because i recognize their somewhat more limited appeal, and because this is the more distinctive, original accomplishment.) this is both possibly my favorite cut (tho the sweetly sneaky r. kelly reenvisioning "relief" is close) and a good representation of the album as a whole. heard right, i think this song and this rendition just might be capable of putting the fear of god into ya. (also: nice to hear beth's voice again.)



11. "You Are Not Alone" – Mavis Staples

from old gospel sung by a young folkie to a song written by a young folkster for an old gospeller to sing. (and with moderately oppositional messages, to boot.) jeff tweedy wrote this for mavis staples' same-titled album, which he also produced, and much as you can absolutely hear the tweedy in it (the writing that is), staples and the song fit one another comfortably and completely. it's such an immediate standout (and instant classic) that it's a shame he didn't write more for the album.

message-wise, this isn't terribly far off from what joanna newsom tries to convey in "'81," and it's easily at least as powerful, probably more, particularly in the truly striking forcefulness the lyric adopts – taking on overtones of police aggression – in conveying its intent to get that message across: "open up this is a raid/i want to get it through to you: you're not alone." how fundamental that is, yet how hard to hear. by now we've seen quite a handful of old, faded (in terms of their visibility, at the very least) soul titans attempting to recapture some glory by basking in the genre's recent reflourescence, but this is one moment that really rises above the pack and manages to feel unambiguously vital.



12. "My Heart Is A Drummer" – Allo Darlin'

"deep down in the place where music makes you happiest," – i've said it before and i'll say it again: it's a place allo darlin' know well – do you really have life to waste on music that's less vibrant and direct and upfront than this song is? ok ok. it's not actually as good as graceland, and it doesn't have the carefully calibrated perfect-pop detailing of, for instance, the first two songs on this mix. (even the impressively convincing faux-afrique highlife outro, which in context doubles as a sly graceland nod, and which is the song's best showcase for bassman bill, the allo's greatest secret weapon – is more a triumph of feeling than of composition.)

no, this song's unabashed strength is in its personality, which, happily, is way more than enough to carry it. it's in the music, which positively bursts; it's in elizabeth morris' adorably accented vocal (notably, in the way she sings "telephieone"), and most of all, actually, it's in what she's singing. [also, it's in the fittingly handmade, albeit possibly too goofy, cankerblossom-esque video, which i hadn't seen until now – i've mostly avoided looking at the videos whilst writing these blurbs, probably for the best in the interests of ever getting this finished.]

"do i have to say i'm sorry for my happiness?" – she asks it almost weakly, as though it's actually a question. but there's more to the story than that: one of the things i love about this song is that it's about the comforting, satisfied self-knowledge of subtle, hidden depths of fortitude and resilience: the singer might seem all gushy and gooey as she slides her feet up and down the wall, but she's knows that she's actually stronger than you are. "baby, you don't know, but my heart is as strong as a drummer." (never mind that heart cancer might not be precisely what asthmatic smokers need to be mindful about.) some folks have pointed out the chorus' melodic similarities to cyndi lauper's breakout hit, which never really stuck out to me, but coincidental as that connection may be the two songs do have something similar to teach us: there is power in just wanting to have fun.



13. "I Didn't See It Coming" – Belle & Sebastian

polychrome in the 2010's
you go disco and i'll go my way

still not entirely sure how i feel about write about love as a whole (that is, whether i love-love it or merely like-like it) but this, track one, which just jumped out of the speakers from the first time i plopped it in, the day after it came out, at my birthday listening party, this just might be the best thing belle & seb have done since... well? waitress at least, though that's only two albums back. and this has a maturity and confidence that the closest parallels of that era ("your cover's blown"; "cuckoo," maybe; the excellent and overlooked "stay loose") don't quite.

eh, it doesn't really feel right to compare: in its stylistic freedom, formal adventurousness, impressionistic style, and fluid, unrepentant musicality, this consolidates many of the strengths of b+s mark 2; but then again, it also feels like something totally new. even if something about it (the lyric?) vaguely calls to mind "electronic renaissance." ["make me dance/i want to surrender" – what a dizzyingly potent little fragment.] anyway, it stands with the band's very best, of any era.

even if it flattens out a bit when it opens up (in the late-middle, before launching into the maddeningly beautiful tail-section that less-classically-versed music writers would probably describe as a "fugue"), and even though, when i'm listening to it, i wish it didn't fade out like that. or so fast. or ever. anybody can write about love: this song sounds like it. and the title makes it self-fulfilling prophecy.



14. "Horchata" – Vampire Weekend

my favorite songs from contra – an album that i adore for no real reason other than that i love listening to it, which sounds like a trivial statement but strangely doesn't feel that way [maybe it actually is as good as graceland?] – my favorite songs are all right at the end: "giving up the gun" (evidently my SotY), righteous banger "diplomat's son," and the momentously ineffable quasi-title track. but with the former well and adequately repped on both 2010islove and feet active vol. 1 (hm, i really ought to get that mix up here), and the latter on t-shirt weather, it was tricky to know what to rep contra with here, as few of the album's other great songs particularly stand out to me as being more great than the great rest. (according to my blog, the evidently-popular "white sky" was an early favorite of mine too, but i don't entirely remember that.)

i chose "horchata," even though it seemed a bit obvious, even though i initially thought it was overly goofy, because i really have continued to sing it, and it remains singularly playful and delightful, and also i liked the way it fit in to the belle&seb fade-out. at one point this song felt a bit like a hold-over from the sound of first album, but although it probably does work as a stylistic bridge to some extent it also definitely fits in, and works well as an opening statement.

my favorite things about this song are: the xylophones, the clattery offbeat rhythms, the full wistful singing on the chorus/bridge ("here's a feeling..."), the wormy, wiggly melody, the periodic mix-n-match drop-out-and-build-back-up that happens at the end, the all-over-the-place kitchen-sink arrangement, the sudden stop at the end. pretty much everything except for the lyrics, which are fun too.



15. "All Yr Songs" – Diamond Rings

i mighta overrated this album (i really wanted it to be reminiscent of warren zevon..), but this song is supa dope, any way. it's got a peppy fun cheap/sloppy bedroom fi steez but secretly it is really neatly and snazzily arranged. lots of subtle stuff going on. it has acoustic guitar breakdowns! it has beach boy "oohs"! it has (synth) bass come in on the second verse! it has bongos, mixed low on the chorus! and: it has a vibraslap! (like free energy's "something in common," absolutely one of my favorite songs of 2010 that didn't come out in 2010 because it was only on the ep and not the album for some crazy reason, but otherwise should totally be here. i want to keep a running tally of vibraslap songs but it's hard to remember, as they're best when used sparingly.)

this song is also totally sweet in the lyrics/sentiment department too. the sunscreen part always makes me think about best coast, but i don't like any best coast songs nearly this much. she should be more sing-songy. oh-woah-oh-oh-oh-woah-oh-oh-oh. i guess this was viral-ish in '09 but whatevs i didn't catch it until the album this year. woot!



16. "Hormones" – Tracey Thorn

hard to get past the attention-getting (and admirably non-traditional) subject matter [her menopause coinciding with her daughter's puberty], which tracey treats in typically frank, affecting, non-sensationalized fashion, but the music of this is pretty great too; nicely groovy, handclaps, neat piano riff, nice guitar punch-ups. it's probably the best song on love and its opposite for both reasons – though "oh the divorces" is also something pretty special. it's an album i can certainly appreciate and respect plenty, tho (and i don't think it's just b/c of my age) it didn't quite floor me like out of the woods did (and does.) but that's an unusually special recording. anyhow, tracey is still one of my favorite voices, and i'm happy to spread the love.



17. "Love And Do What You Will" – ceo

there is something so befuddlingly other about the tough alliance and, now, ceo – having spent plenty of time with their albums, and writing about them, and digesting white magic in particular (and it's not a long album), i still feel like; for instance, out of the albums in my top ten for 2010, ceo's is by far the one i'm least able to comprehend, or feel like i connect with, on a human level. which can make it hard to say exactly how much, or even whether, and certainly why, i like it.

but it's equally hard to deny that they/he make some pretty fantastic music, phenomenal both on its own terms and in its utter singularity. i'm also pretty sure that white magic is even better, and even more sui generis, than the tough alliance output to date. and it's great both as an album and as individual pieces. this song is great, for instance. i can't really tell you what's going on – there are tons of interesting sounds, an interesting, syncopated beat, a catchy melody, a catchy riff or two, some enthusiastic singing – but if we can "love and do what love and do what we want we will," [as someone once said of prince's equally inscrutable "7": if "together we'll love through all space and time,"] it can't be all that bad, can it?



18. "Indeed" – Georgia Anne Muldrow

though i sort of half forgot about her for a while – after i missed her show and left my copy of king's ballad in matt's cd player (which i should try harder to recover) – i was rocking the GAM jams pretty hard in the early part of the year, and this is definitely one of the sweetest and the fonkiest. it's an entirely touching, heartfelt, if not a little quirky, celebration of kids: "i love the mess out the children..." who can't get down with that?



19. "Whole New Way" – Scissor Sisters

i feel a little bad that i didn't find better ways to express my love for scissor sisters in 2010. night work is a pretty terrific piece of work from end to end, definitely a surprise and a step up for a group i'd all but written off – much as i loved their debut (and it's probably only gotten better with time), it somehow never seemed like they were fully able to live up to their potential. but this one is a total treat, chock-full of pop thrills, and i don't really understand why it was so overlooked.

for some reason it's a little tricky to take individual songs out of the context of the album, maybe because they have such a strong shared stylized aesthetic. this song (which is also shoehorned in at the end of 2010islove, paired up with "rude boy" for a deviant little quickie) isn't necessarily my favorite thing from the album (i think i like "skin tight" and "running out" slightly more, though it's a hard call), but it might be the best stand-alone cut. it's pretty delightful, either way. "subtext"-wise, the entendré-filled lyrics are winking pretty impossibly hard (ana matronic's overly labored live introduction/"apology" for this song, both times i saw them this summer [on the same day] was almost wince-inducing), but that's obviously a lot of the point, and the fun.



20. "All Matter" – Bilal

by contrast, i have pretty much no idea what this song is about. (apart than love, of course.) didn't know what to make of this cat when i saw him open for erykah badu this summer, and after a bunch of listens through the in any event staggering airtight's revenge, i still don't really know, but i think it's a good kind of making. as intriguing and often enjoyable as it is, there's been precious little in the recent wave of loose, clunky, atmospheric, post-dilla "broken-beat" electro-funk, whether instrumental or vocal (erykah, quadron, flying lotus, sa-ra – stuff that, for instance, andy kellman loves) that's really grabbed me. this one did it with just one little ineffable snatch of liquid vocal soul magic, which feels like i could listen to it forever. "you ain't even gotta try/all you've gotta do is realize..."



21. "I Can Change" – LCD Soundsystem

the new lsd screensaver album is bookended by towering standouts ("dance yrself clean", "home") or else the singles are the towering standouts ("drunk girls", "pow pow") or maybe it's all standouts (well, except, sorry, "somebody's calling me") or, i dunno, but this is the slyly crucial centerpiece after all, a quintessential "album cut" only in that it is fully and undeniably in and of its album, not that it can't work outside of it, and in any case it's the best solution to the quandary that "all i want" doesn't measure up to "all my friends" (quite), and nothing here touches "someone great" (even if "you wanted a hit" has the right feel for it), and yet this is happening is somehow a more complete and cohesive and consummate work than sound of silver, half of which now almost feels like throwaways in retrospect (actually, it felt that way at the time, tho i still loved it, and i still love it.)

"i can change" has only a few changes, but plenty of good lines (bad poetry my foot), if maybe not as many quotables as some others. but more than that its string of casual, lucid observations about relationships (which might or might not add up to a narrative sketch i've never bothered to really trace) add up to a vaguely wry, witty, alternately (or simultaneously?) cynical and hopeful meditation on modern (always modern) love that doesn't need much coherence to be curiously moving. and failing that, the bleeps and the beats – which, perhaps tellingly, barely change at all over the course of the track – offer some motion of their own.



22. "Alley Cats" – Hot Chip

one life stand is my favorite album of 2010. what is my favorite song from one life stand? "brothers"? the title track? "thieves in the night"? ["happiness is what we all want/may it be that we don't always want"...pretty hard to argue with that] earlier mixtape inclusions "hand me down your love" (on t-shirt weather) or "i feel better" (on 2010islove)? i'd almost be tempted to say the utterly sublime osborne remix of "take it in," although of course that's not on the album.

the truth is, i don't have one. this is about as close to a perfect album – not just in the sense of having no weak tracks, but having no tracks that are even notably weaker than any of the others – as i can think of in recent memory (a strange arrangement, my post-facto #1 of 2009, fits this bill too.) which isn't to say to say that all of the tracks are perfect: indeed, i could probably point to distinct, frequently lovable imperfections in just about every one. (that's called idiosyncrasy, and it's a large part of the appeal...though admittedly it's not nearly on the level of, say, kanye west.)

just at the moment, though, i'm having trouble coming up with anything that's particularly imperfect about "alley cats." it's not especially good for dancing to. joe isn't a technically brilliant singer. the words are quizzical and often hard to make linear sense of... but in this context, that last is actually a decidedly good thing (and probably the previous one too) – the lyrics feel warm and thoughtful and personal and as full of odd inscrutable private codes and pet references as an intimate chat between two lovers.)

one life stand, from its title on down, is overflowing with fresh, simple, unexpected and economical figurative yet immediate ways of talking about love, and this song has several: "we wear each others heads like hats"; "you painted a song...and now it is in my lungs"; the wonderfully succinct list of why people are like unhappy cats ("restless, needs attention, loses patience, seeks affection.") also, this song, like the album in general, recognizes that love is not only about two people: there are also pets, and parents, and plants, and even pop bands ("do you dig germs?"), and a whole lifetime full of those things together, even when the things you love want to kill one another, all of that, all together, is what makes up a life of love. that's all.

tracks of my ears

some more of my favorite 2010 musics, as featured in the occasional citypaper tidbit "one track mind," which is not too bad a pun. including my holy trinity -of-the-year (-so-far): j. newsom, v. weekend, h. chip, [l. system are angling for that coveted tier too, but it's not happening, not quite yet], none of which i have written about in album-review format, so i slip a bit of that in too, not all of which made the print edition. meanwhile i've softened (just a bit) on jj's new album since i reviewed it for amg, but that's probably because i haven't been listening to Nº 2 very much:

JJ, “My Life”

It’s hardly the most representative moment on JJ Nº 3 – the downshifted but still worthy sophomore outing (Nº 1 was a single, cotton on?) from these often sophomorically inscrutable Swedes – but there’s something hauntingly resonant about this cover (of a 2008 single by The Game) that makes it more than just a jokey album-opening WTF keeping us from the typically blissy electronic indie-pop that rounds out the disc. Continuing with their well-established Lil’ Wayne fascination (exhibit A: the “Lollipop”-sampling Nº 2 standout “Ecstasy”), JJ strip Weezy’s auto-tuned chorus down to nothing but sparse, brooding piano and Elin Kastlander’s laconic, heavily reverbed dream of an alto, zeroing in on the bluesy pathos at its death-obsessed core – and it’s startlingly, legitimately chilling. Of course, in the track’s final seconds, they just had to throw in a tease of ATC’s c. 2000 bubble-house hit “Around the World (La La La La La)” (which happens to have the same chord progression), and trick us into thinking it was an impishly ironic bastard-pop gag all along. Spoilsports.

Joanna Newsom, "On A Good Day"

Have One on Me, Joanna Newsom's tremendous third, is unambiguously big business: a lavish triple-set brimming with multi-minute epics; a breathtaking and idiosyncratic monument to her ever-mounting ambition. But it's also big-hearted and bountiful enough to be more than a simple extension of (its predecessor) Ys' fancifully lofty, esoteric myth-making – it glances back at least as frequently to the humbler, human scale and (relative) simplicity Newsom first wooed us with on The Milk-Eyed Mender. "On A Good Day," just shy of two minutes, is the shortest song in her catalog and easily the simplest thing here (just that inimitable voice – which has matured and mellowed marvelously in three years – and her utterly glorious harp playing) but none of that makes it any slighter a work than, say, the daunting nine-minute "Baby Birch." In four brief stanzas, sharing a single, unspeakably sweet melody, Newsom nimbly but lucidly sketches the emotional arc of her whole two-hour opus – essentially, a tender resignation to love's loss coupled with a recognition of its ultimate perseverance – complete with a characteristically striking nature metaphor and an ever-so-subtly snide sign-off line. Oh Jo, we missed you so.


Vampire Weekend, "I Think Ur A Contra"

One of the surest clues to Vampire Weekend's staying power, to my mind, is that they really know how to end an album. Much as the elegantly restrained "Kids Don't Stand a Chance" wound down their debut on its most invitingly leisurely (and arguably most tuneful) moment, Contra's semi-titular closer wafts in like the gentlest of breezes, a seductively soothing respite after nine frolicsome tracks of restlessly inventive kitchen-sink pep. For the first time in half an hour, "Contra" (which they should totally release as, like, the seventh single) feels in no hurry to get anywhere in particular, letting that initial cotton-candy shimmer linger as a wispy tropical lilt emerges gradually through the haze. Meanwhile, our boy Ezra sets his memory and his melody adrift over a bygone love affair, linking romance and revolution (with a vague Clash nod) in one of his more lucid lyrics, sung as pretty as you please.

funny story: none of the three songs above were actually performed in the concerts by the respective artists which these blurbs were ostensibly promoting. not too big a surprise in the case of jj, who were possibly even more befuddling in person than i would have predicted (though i should have thought more about what their bosses the tough alliance were like live.)

joanna only had time for a "reduced version" of her album – though the setlists of her two-day stand could definitely have included more variety – but surely she could have squeezed this one in? not that i minded hearing most of the set again the second day...would happily have continued for many days more.

as for the v-dubs, kind of amazingly, they played every single song on both albums (plus one obscurity) except for the respective last track on each album. of course, the hot chippy chippers broke the spell...damn straight they played "brothers." and with a trumpet too! other than that, total dance party!

Hot Chip, "Brothers"

Hot Chip's glorious new album is full of unassumingly simple, earnest, starry-eyed songs about the primacy and profundity of love and human connection; songs about monogamous commitment and domestic contentment and taking care of stray cats. It's a total sudser, in the best possible way. But the part that really makes me well up, every time, is when Joe Goddard sings about playing video games with his friends. Despite its thumping synth-house underpinnings, "Brothers" has the austerity and hushed intimacy of a hymn. Melody-wise (and especially harmonically), the song could hardly be more trivial, but that just makes its statement of wild, death-defying brotherly love (likely written about his bandmates – even if there are five of them, not, as he sings, four – but instantly, obviously, universal regardless) ring all the more sweetly, heartbreakingly true.

saw these guys last night, alongside true o.n.e.-track o.n.e.ders yeasayer. my concert-going buddy complained that she couldn't tell from reading this whether or not i like the song. that's a good point: that isn't really what i'm talking about here, is it.

Sleigh Bells, "A/B Machines"

Talk about boom boom pow. This week's Rolling Stone features Will.i.am blathering about the hidden avant-garde qualities of his group's world-conquering one-note-wonder: "Fool, it's the most complex s--t you could even fathom." I doubt you'd catch Brooklyn duo Sleigh Bells – one former hardcore punker, one erstwhile girl-group pop tart – claiming anything of the sort about their own equally giddy, bombastic racket, which is just as pea-brained, if a good deal more black-eyed. Beyond its bruising, preposterous levels of overdrive, "A/B Machines" actually has three notes (at least some of the time), though it only has one lyric: Alexis Krauss, on that next-level digital spit, explaining the locations of her machines. Actually, it's a bit stupefying to think that there could be any more than one (barely functioning) set of machines involved here. Must be complex.

bonus One Track [exclusive!]:

La Roux, "Bulletproof"

La Roux sure do lead a thrilling, treacherous life. Well, so the titles of their singles would have you believe: the well-coiffed dance-pop duo debuted with "Quicksand" and assailed the UK charts with the ferocious "In For The Kill." Even if it's all metaphorical (yeah, they're pretty much just love songs), there's enough real menace and fierceness in their tracks for the violent conceits to hit home. Nowhere is that more true than on "Bulletproof," their finest achievement and the most urgent, insistent, and utterly invincible sliver of synth-pop from a decade of unabashed retro-wonkery. Call it an '80s-retread if you must; you can’t shoot it down. Ben Langmaid's gritty keyboards pierce like tiny neon shards, and Elly Jackson's spitfire vocal delivery (she of the Tilda Swinton-esque androgyny and opinionated, dubiously-reasoned public statements) offer nothing but glisteningly sharp edges. That is, until the song's gleaming chorus – the sort that's simply one line repeated four times, because that's all it needs to be. "This time I'll be bulletproof," Jackson wails, betraying the slightest hint of vulnerability. More likely, we're the ones who need protection.