M83: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (2011)

(Mute)

!! CAUTION !!

Read my CRANK review at Metro Times.

Most overrated album of the year. "Midnight City" is a great great great song, though.

R.E.M.: Collapse into Now (2011)

(Warner Bros.)

Believing in R.E.M. has always been a seductive practice. A band can fuck up repeatedly for a decade and a half and when they spent the sixteen years beforehand making so much of their integrity and quality control, you can lull yourself into a kind of destructive trust, particularly when the band is always so insistent (as they must be!) that whatever they've done recently is their artistic peak. This must be good, you think, I just don't understand it yet. When R.E.M. disbanded in September, the temptation was obvious; all the people who'd dismissed, ignored, or damned with faint praise their six-month-old fifteenth and final LP were almost predisposed to go scrambling back to hear the songs that would most assuredly be entirely different in shape and tone with this new revelation, that not only did it turn out to be the legendary college rock founders' swansong, it was always designed that way -- an unusual situation, to say the least.

Some of us gave Collapse into Now a less than fair shot in March, especially those of us who thought 2008's Accelerate, touted by the band and some members of the press as a great comeback, was a disaster and a deal-breaker. There is no denying that Collapse is an improvement, a step in the right direction, and it's easy to see how the new narrative thrust gives it a bit more emotional weight than it had before. But the best moment to end R.E.M.'s career, as agreeable as Up and Reveal and even parts of Around the Sun were, was plainly Michael Stipe's coy "I'm outta here" at the end of New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996, the last album before drummer and musical backbone Bill Berry's departure from the group.

Such as it is, Collapse into Now suffers from the same bizarre contradiction as all of the post-Berry material: it simultaneously tries too hard and is far too casual. As a performing unit, the band's never faltered; as songwriters, they lost their touch somewhere in the mid-2000s; and as studio maestros, they never recovered from the end of their partnership with Scott Litt, which curiously corresponded precisely with the exit of Berry, which even more curiously happened to coincide neatly with the acrimonious departure of former manager and confidante Jefferson Holt, which just as intriguingly corresponded with the band's infamous $80 million contract renewal with Warner Bros., back in the days when the record label was still under the same umbrella as the movie studio. Can it be that R.E.M. suffered from a Torn Curtain-style disillusion, just one that took over a decade to finally eclipse their energetic stubbornness?

Michael Stipe's vocal melodies and performances have routinely dropped in variance, mystery, and emotion since New Adventures; by this point, his work seems almost rote. His lyrics, much ado about tick tock and click clock, are a shadow of both the head-spinning free association of his '80s work and the sober straightforwardness of Automatic for the People. Even without these hurdles, the songs feel strained; "Discoverer" so desperate for an uplifting chorus it dissolves all pretense that would justify it; "All the Best" a somewhat cloying farewell song, the musical equivalent of Stipe's wave goodbye on the cover; the much-praised "Mine Smell Like Honey" a slice of calculated FM radio that has nothing really to do with R.E.M.; truthfully, I'm unconvinced by most everything except the winningly melancholy "Überlin" and portions of the Frankensteinian "Country Feedback"-"E-Bow the Letter" hybrid "Blue." I don't really mind "It Happened Today" either, though it sounds like it was designed for a band like Pearl Jam to cover, which conveniently enough is what happened.

Still, Collapse into Now is a better finale for R.E.M. than Accelerate by a longshot. At the very least, everything on it is pleasant and offers nostalgic echoes of the band's past triumphs, even if songs like "Every Day Is Yours to Win" and "That Someone Is You" (!!!) are no better than their titles. No matter how much affection you have for this band, and most of us probably have a hell of a lot, the feeling is inescapable that we're not really saying goodbye to a friend anymore, we're paying our respects to someone we once knew very well and haven't felt close to in a long time. In the press, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe have said a lot about the permanence of the band's friendship, how they will walk away with no issues simply because they want to. And maybe people just want to see drama. But these three men have felt so distant from their material for such a good while now, no slur on them, that it almost seems merely ceremonial to call this the end. Truthfully, it doesn't feel like we've been privy to much that's been deep inside them since their glory days -- and maybe that's the reason those were the glory days. But to this wonderful, maverick band I still say: goodbye and best of luck.

[SEE ALSO:]
Eponymous (1981-85)
Chronic Town EP (1982)

Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What (2011)

(Hear Music)

Paul Simon deserves the benefit of the doubt. His first solo album alone earned him a lifetime of goodwill as a shining star of intelligent pop music, so it's hard not to want to follow what he's getting at with all the spiritual imagery on his most recent album, but it's equally hard to get very much out of lyrics like "Check out the radio, pop music station / That don't sound like my music to me / Talk show host, what's that boy's name? / Politics is ugly"; that's from one of the God songs, entitled "Love Is Eternal Sacred Light." Does one have to be a Baby Boomer to understand this? Or just religious?

Simon hits the right note with opener "Getting Ready for Christmas Day," a low-key but subtly fiery state-of-the-union anthem with an almost soul-crushing sense of sadness and loss. His confrontational impressions here of class, mortality, and desperate melancholy are as effective as anything he's written. He sinks the knife all the way in twice: "I got a nephew in Iraq, it's his third time back / But it's ending up the way it began / With the luck of a beginner he'll be eating turkey dinner / On some mountain top in Pakistan" and again, at the end: "If I could tell my Mom and Dad that the things we never had / Never mattered; we were always okay / Getting ready for Christmas Day." Musically, the song contains the album's riskiest strokes, before Simon slips as expected into his comfort zone of middle-of-the-road, slightly Africa-informed Dad-rock. His singing isn't what it used to be, reaching for something unattainably playful on "Rewrite" and striving hard for a direction that eludes him on the deadweight ballad "Love and Hard Times."

Simon's God lyrics come across as a bit maudlin and silly, and sometimes irksome -- none of his acclaimed witticisms on "The Afterlife" really seem especially new or inspired. But when he pulls it together, with something subtly moving like "Dazzling Blue" ("The CAT scan's eye sees what the heart's concealing / Nowadays when everything is known") or the knowing, shattering death song "Love and Blessings" ("Maple trees just a little bit duller than the memory of the year before"), he can choke you up with no warning whatsoever. As he pushes 70, he's as capable of stirring insight and emotional impact as ever. It's the weird smugness (jokes about Jay-Z, most of the omniscient-being and afterlife stuff) I could do without... but maybe I'm just not ready and the pessimism will come with time. I honestly think that "playing games with time and love" is what it's all about, and feel no great conflict about the beauty in science. Simon's been a bit too serious for me for quite some time. The scary thing is that in a year marked by two major deaths in my family, he's starting to make a lot of sense in certain moments.

PAPA: A Good Woman Is Hard to Find EP (2011)

(Hit City USA)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Read my Metro Times review.

This too came and went with virtually no notice a couple of months ago. Do yourself a solid and check it out. Few songs have meant more to me these last few months than "I Am the Lion King," and despite its eyebrow-lifting title, "Let's Make You Pregnant" is just as affecting.

Twin Sister: In Heaven (2011)

(Domino)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Read my review at Metro Times Blogs.

Another excellent album I must come out and rally behind late in the year, as it's been forgotten in favor of Cults' (admittedly great) debut and St. Vincent's (good but not as good as this) Strange Mercy. This is the most solid and eclectic female-led pop confection around at the moment, with a full breadth of disparate influences, Nico to the Supremes to dream pop to Middle Eastern mystery. So much of the great music released in 2011 has been dreary, fatalist, beaten; how nice to hear a great fun record again. Just try not to be won over by "Gene Ciampi."

Curren$y: Verde Terrace (2011)

(Datpiff)

By my count, Curren$y's put out five records in the last year -- two actual studio albums (Pilot Talk II and Weekend at Burnie's), and at least three mixtapes. Even for the obsessive fan, it's a lot to keep up with, and given how uninspired and redundant this DJ Drama tape is, it's tempting to scream something or other about OVERSATURATION. There is such a thing, you know.

But then you hear something like "Hennessy Beach," a glorious chillout that audaciously samples John Coltrane's "Naima" and is maybe the peak of Curren$y's recorded output so far. I think "Naima" is the all-time greatest piece of recorded music. So am I offended that it's now overlaid by lyrics about weed and precum? Fuck no. It's a thrill, really, and so is Curren$y's rapid-fire rant on "Smoke Sumn," his wind through the undeniably grand "Music to Ride To," and the sheer ridiculousness of "My Life Is a Movie." ("My life is a movie / So people be watchin' / Just to see if I still can get shit poppin'.")

I wish more of Verde Terrace had that kind of chutzpah and ambition. Curren$y remains an unfailingly good rapper; his jokes are tricky, his weed talk is amusing, and he seems to always be on point even at his laziest. When an artist is a machine like that, they live or die by the quality of the beats and sounds that surround their performances. This doesn't crackle and pop like Ski Beatz did, frankly. I can't help but feel that the best material from this and Curren$y's other 2011 releases could've made one killer LP along the lines of last year's brilliant Pilot Talk, still his best work thus far. As it is, rooting through his catalog to find the gems really feels like too much work at the moment.

(I also must register a complaint about the abysmal sound quality of Verde Terrace, but that's unfortunately a risk we run with free mixtapes. If not in musical quality, we certainly do get what we pay for at times. I hope we someday get a cleaner version of "Music to Ride To," at least.)

[SEE ALSO:]
Pilot Talk (2010)
Pilot Talk II (2010)
Weekend at Burnie's (2011)
with The Alchemist: Covert Coup (2011)

Youth Lagoon: The Year of Hibernation (2011)

(Fat Possum)

RECOMMENDED

Basically: thirty minutes of some guy from Idaho intoning softly into a microphone with serviceable bedroom pop noise around him. It's not nearly as bad as it sounds. The melodies are imaginative enough, and if the moony atmosphere is enough to put you to sleep, it's possibly by design. No one should begrudge something so simple as pretty music when it's recorded as responsibly and effectively as it is by Trevor Powers.

Much of the value of Year of Hiberation is strictly musical -- the warmth and open-air sunniness of the guitars and hazy, barely-there production offset the anxiety in Powers' gentle falsetto. Simple, ethereal, and calming, this music is ideal for a mood lift -- or a good sulk, really; the atmosphere never falters. The Muzakification of indie rock never sounded so agreeable.