The Roots: Rising Down (2008)

(Def Jam)

RECOMMENDED

Of all the Roots' full-lengths since the all-time peak of Phrenology, it's clear to me that Rising Down is the most ambitious -- even now that they've wandered down concept LP territory this month. The most radical departures for a brilliant band that had grown increasingly pop-conscious (arguably mastering that mold with the wonderful Game Theory in 2006) are the overwhelmingly dour mood and emotional darkness, and moreover the amount of time given up to guest performers. The latter has become a trend on the Roots' releases, but the former renders Rising Down still something of a curio.

It's not that the band's maxed-out, organic R&B is any less persuasive and full-bodied. The sound still embraces a kind of romantic funk-jazz pastiche with stabs of '70s soul, and the hooks are as solid as they've ever been, especially during the album's largely irresistible midsection: "Criminal," "I Will Not Apologize," and "I Can't Help It" all feature some of the most explosive and involving choruses in the canon, and Black Thought holds his own against intrusions from Common, Mos Def, Talib Kewli and others as one of hip hop's moodiest and greatest MCs.

So what's the problem? I'm not sure that there is one, exactly; the album is an unerring and powerful document of an uneasy time that, we now know, was on the cusp of even greater discontent and disappointment. This is America in the 21st century: one long broken promise. The Roots aren't interested in explaining all this, only in tracking its consequences, so the album doesn't try to condescend or contextualize the distressing realities of 2008 -- it's uncompromising, and presumptive of our intelligence (one reason it's a good thing the upbeat and rather terrible single "Birthday Girl" was excised). It's just that with no light or real playfulness streaming through it, Rising Down is an actively depressing album that's only become more so through the years. The working class angst of How I Got Over and undun seems downright sunny by comparison, as does the sheer craft and messiness of Phrenology and Game Theory.

What Rising Down proves is that, when focused, the Roots can do almost anything, in this case steely-eyed funk that makes no apologies for its consciousness, its worries, its aging and the precision of its concerns and nightmares. Those are nightmares about the music business, the country, the supposed progression of minorities, and especially our political and economic future. Das Racist has shown us there are ways to do this and make it fun, but in some broad sense maybe it shouldn't be. On that logic, Rising Down would be the most impeccable hip hop LP of recent years if not for the number of times Black Thought steps aside in favor of far less skilled and interesting rappers. But that is a criticism of most recent Roots projects, and maybe it's time to face up -- these guys are too nice to find again the self-involvement that made something as crazy and beautiful as Phrenology. I still have every intention of growing old with the Roots, and I hope they keep letting us in.

Ali Farka Touré (1988)

(Mango)

RECOMMENDED

Quite remarkable breakthrough from the great Malian guitarist is purely and simply a blues album; no one can hear it without mentioning the grand conflict of whether this is a direct aping of John Lee Hooker or if Hooker's entire body of work -- and American blues as a whole by extension -- is merely an articulation of its African ancestry. Whatever the case, this burst onto the worldwide scene with blues and world music aficionados both with good reason: the songs are densely layered despite the simplicity of the recording sessions, and the music is in the end as immediately accessible to one reared on Western pop music, old and new, as anything in modern West African recording -- making this album a fine way in for an entire universe of music too seldom investigated by the American pop audience. (I'm guilty myself.)

The guitar work drones, plucks, and hypnotizes lovingly, but for me the highlight of the record is Touré's voice, an irresistible instrument that wraps most agreeably around the sparse arrangements of these sumptuously evocative songs. The beats are invisible, though you feel them in your bones, but the singing is an act of nuanced, explicit love.

The Best Records of 2011

***

TOP TEN ALBUMS

2010 was an exceptional year in which my cup ran far over for the top 10, with at least four additional LPs that richly deserved inclusion and even a year later I'm not sure I made the right decisions about which ones to leave off. This year was a different beast, and a more familiar one; one particular album eclipsed all others, the best thing I've listened to and reviewed in years, and while there were other wonderful records out (particularly #2-4 below, which would near the top of any year's list), nothing really stood a chance against the maverick that is Merrill Garbus, the kind of artist who makes everything else seem a little stale. By my count, in 2011 I listened to 81 new albums (the same as last year, weirdly), and ended up hearing nineteen I loved enough to add to the permanent collection. All those are listed below. Those numbers include remix albums and mixtapes.


10. Radiohead: The King of Limbs (s/r)
Back in the '90s, Radiohead rarely if ever got credit for their sense of humor, which lent Thom Yorke's sometimes oppressively maudlin lyrics a welcome hint of surreal levity. These days, now that they are the best they've ever been as a band and as a songwriting unit, they get called out for being overly cerebral and shapeless when in fact all they want to do is cut loose and have a sexy good time on the dance floor, even if it's with the caveat of an occasional ghostly ballad. So it is that Radiohead's club album, their nod to dubstep and to minimal R&B and (hell, why not) to Fleetwood Mac, somehow was sidelined as a lesser entry in their canon. To be frank, I'll take beat music this well-crafted and driving over Kid A any old time.
Best cuts: "Separator"; "Lotus Flower"; "Give Up the Ghost"
[Full review]


9. The Mountain Goats: All Eternals Deck (Merge)
John Darnielle's connection to his audience, direct and heartfelt and based entirely on the eloquently expressed hope and despair of his songs, is nothing short of remarkable. I witnessed this firsthand in May when we saw the Mountain Goats at Cat's Cradle and the mood in the room during the boisterous singalong to this album's opener "Damn These Vampires" was more or less the most electric thing I'd ever felt in a crowd. The Goats' Merge debut might initially come across as a bit of a hodgepodge; it reveals its meticulously maintained mood and its overriding theme of mortality slowly, each song given room to breathe in the band's most adventurous arrangements to date, including street corner doo wop and rip-roaring punk rock and some completely unabashed pop balladry. I don't know if it's their best album but it's likely their most listenable, and addictive.
Best cuts: "Damn These Vampires"; "High Hawk Season"; "Age of Kings"
[Full review]


8. Destroyer: Kaputt (Merge)
What makes Dan Bejar's eerie, phantasmagoric contribution to the '80s soft rock revival a cut above the mass chillwave of Washed Out and John Maus? Probably the feeling of surrender he gets out of these incongruous sax solos and the lush atmosphere, which he uses not as a force of nostalgia but an unsettling and beautiful harbinger of crushed dreams and lost, hopeless nights. It's not about the past, but the way we think of it. And it helps that the lyrics are works of dadaist, rolling-off-the-tongue genius in the vein of Dylan in the mid-'60s. You could live in Bejar's voice here as he tosses off whoppers like "Wasting your days, chasing some girls -- all right, chasing cocaine to the back rooms of the world all night"; many of us did so through the majority of 2011.
Best cuts: "Savage Night at the Opera"; "Kaputt"; "Bay of Pigs"
[Full review]


7. Wilco: The Whole Love (Anti-)
Everyone concedes that opening track "Art of Almost" is the most left-field Wilco track in many years, but the remainder of this excellent record offers finer, subtler pleasures -- as a melodicist, Jeff Tweedy is as assured as ever, maybe a little too much so. Whole Love is imbued with calm and even smugness that only periodically breaks through the expert fat-and-happy Dad rock populating this album; Tweedy clearly sees his adulthood diaries, though, as a chronicle of unrest. The cracks finally show and leftover mirror fragments of a broken heart burst through on the finale, "One Sunday Morning," a steady twelve-minute opus that never breaks the tension of its calmly repeated riff, one so lovely it can choke you up each and every time. The title's only appropriate; this is really the definitive album for a Sunday drive, early or late.
Best cuts: "One Sunday Morning"; "Art of Almost"; "Dawned on Me"
[Full review]


6. Cut Copy: Zonoscope (Modular)
Like Hot Chip, Cut Copy mark the ideal evolution of synthpop and disco as artforms -- not merely about slamdown beats and frenetic pacing, Zonoscope is a genuinely trippy and surreal collection of songs. It occasionally recalls My Bloody Valentine and fellow Aussies Tame Impala as much as Pet Shop Boys or Human League, who of course are here in spades. The pop smarts are breathtaking, especially on the mindbending "Down Under" / "Gypsy" hybrid "Take Me Over," but the key moments on songs like "Hanging On to Every Heartbeat," "Corner of the Sky," and fifteen-minute climax "Sun God" are when the band lets completely loose and the songs open up to Cinemascope flights of expansive fancy that seem to embody their buried romantic tendencies. And not that you care while you're dancing, but the lyrics are outstanding too. "Do you hear that voice inside your head whispering to live your dreams instead? Some people cling to what they know, but I woke up. Now it's time to go."
Best cuts: "Take Me Over"; "Corner of the Sky"; "Need You Now"
[Full review]


5. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake (Island)
A masterpiece of mood, Polly Jean Harvey's sober but oddly playful war album feels like some great piece of cinema. The same way something like Full Metal Jacket once recontextualized "Paint It, Black" and "Surfin' Bird," this record paints "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," "Summertime Blues," "The Bed's Too Big Without You," and Niney the Observer's "Blood and Fire" as the soundtrack to a gray-tinted series of stark images dating from WWI to Iraq. It's morbid, sure -- bodies falling everywhere, dear friends dying, men longing to see a woman's face -- but it's also a remarkably accomplished work of thematic consistency and restraint, not to mention genre snowballing (European and African folk, reggae, '50s rock & roll). Harvey's calculation of concept pays off with something movingly harsh and beautiful.
Best cuts: "Hanging in the Wire"; "The Words That Maketh Murder"; "In the Dark Places"
[Full review]


4. Atlas Sound: Parallax (4AD)
Bradford Cox doesn't sound terribly happy these days. I don't like to say things like this, but perhaps that's good for us. In interviews, he audibly strains to overcome to pervasive sense of loss that overwhelms not just the individual songs of this LP but its entire sound. And yet, as with Harvey's album, there is a sense of pop tweak and trickiness everywhere, resulting in the most accessible record to date under either the Deerhunter or Atlas Sound name. Cox's self-medication and the loveliness of his confessional voice, even just the sheer sense of private sadness the record brings forth, are worthy of Plastic Ono Band.
Best cuts: "Doldrums"; "My Angel Is Broken"; "Mona Lisa"
[Full review]


3. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up (Sub Pop)
Not just the most purely beautiful hip hop record of the year but of the last several, the debut album from Butterfly's new project (you'll remember him from Digable Planets, if you love great rap music) is also the rare modern LP in the genre that feels like both a strongly populist effort and a genuine advancement. Individual songs don't stick out, but individual tangents do; the entire record, a slow unveiling of funk and bliss, must be heard complete. Oh, and loud. These beats and rhymes insist on taking over a room and have no use for you if you'd prefer they didn't.
Best cuts: "Endeavors for Never"; "Recollections of the Wrath"; "Are You Can You Were You"
[Full review]


2. Das Racist: Relax (Greedhead)
On last year's "hahaha jk?" Das Racist laid out their manifesto: "We're not joking / Just joking, we are joking / Just joking, we're not joking." The bizarro hybrid of good, bad, dumb, and insightful jokes on their two mixtapes of 2010 and the sheer virtuosity of Heems and Kool AD's rapping lent the trio a cult following far beyond what their novelty hit "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" once suggested. So on their debut commercial album, they pull out all the stops and issue a jaw-droppingly proficient hybrid of a truly great LP of real and terrifically engaging hip hop and a parody of a truly great LP of real and terrifying engaging hip hop. But look, "Booty in the Air" is probably a gag on those moments when intellectuals like Lupe Fiasco and Pusha T try to sell themselves as temporary party rap icons -- and yet, it's a monster groove with hysterical lyrics ("She got her booty in the air / Like her booty was a cloud") so can you entirely dismiss it? Such is the eternal conundrum, this being the band that frequently asks all the white members of their audience to leave and gleefully watches the reactions of people not sure whether to take them seriously. That stuff irks some, but those who relish that tension and discomfort (Todd Solondz fans, and people who love the Magnetic Fields' ballads because they can't decide whether they're tongue-in-cheek or achingly sincere kitsch) will find soulmates in Das Racist. And on Relax, the gang leaps forward on production and hooks while paving the way forward for an increasing willingness for political and socioeconomic straight talk, which they do better than almost anyone. Unless, of course, they're jerking us around.
Best cuts: "Michael Jackson"; "Happy Rappy"; "Girl"
[Full review]


1. tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l (4AD)
At bottom, this is a singer-songwriter record; that's clearer if you keep in mind that, technically, Prince was a singer-songwriter. Merrill Garbus' tUnE-yArDs project still isn't so much a band as a tornado with a backdrop. I stood inches away from Garbus at a show in October and have never felt so much like I was witnessing some sort of a master at work. She hammers on her uke and pounds on her sticks and dances with her sax players but most of all, she sings, and her voice is a sometimes guttural, sometimes bracingly wild-scary-sexy instrument that rings out and pleads for others to share its curiosity and assurance. The mountains of people dancing like maniacs at that show suggest she's finding plenty of folks willing to participate. w h o k i l l is an oddball but direct, precise series of nine pounding body-music pieces, many of which toy with pop conventions before (or while) veering off in half-crazed directions, plus one creepy-crawly ballad. Every track is brilliant, a revelation, the most instantly lovable album for me since Yo La Tengo railed out with I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass. It's a portrait of an artist with confidence, joy, worry, despair (on the glorious "Doorstep"), all with the highest of ability. I really can't remember the last time I connected so intensely with a performer; I have to agree with Yoko Ono, who brought Garbus on stage with her a couple of months ago then turned to the audience after they collaborated on a cover of "We're All Water" and said "She's great, isn't she?" tUnE-yArDs demand and deserve attention, and Merrill Garbus is doing everything I want music to do, in the finest of traditions but while releasing material that's thoroughly unique. Can't wait for more, lots and lots more.
Best cuts: "Doorstep"; "Powa"; "Gangsta"
[Full review]

HONORABLE MENTIONS
(Others I loved in 2011)


TV on the Radio: Nine Types of Light (Interscope)
The first half of this intensely romantic, sensual fourth TVOTR album is so start-to-finish brilliant it's a bit difficult on first pass to appreciate the more obvious and traditional second half. All the same, "You" is the slowdance masterwork of the year, "Second Song" the best job anyone's ever done of marrying Prince to stark folk-rock, "Killer Crane" an extraordinary Brian Wilson-like ballad that sounds like the eulogy it turned out to be (for bassist Gerard Smith, who died just after the album's release). Even if it's the weakest of their LPs thus far, Nine Types turns the way forward for this genuinely great band.
Best cuts: "You"; "Will Do"; "Killer Crane"
[Full review]


Nicolas Jaar: Space Is Only Noise (Circus Company)
You don't have to be a lamenter of modern music, which I am not, to concede that very little of what we hear today feels truly identifiably new; I'm too much of a pop guitar stalwart to believe newness is what finally matters about music. But Space Is Only Noise carries more wisps of the new than anything I've heard in some time. And what's most bracing about it is its sheer accessibility; along amongst the wave of dubstep and electro-jazz breakthroughs of these past few years, it holds that proto-legendary vibe of the rare electronic record that any pop fan, especially any alt-pop fan, will understand and love. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Dig Your Own Hole, Play, and Since I Left You -- it's a short list but a profound one, of records that soared far beyond their target audiences and became a part of more lives than their creators likely imagined possible. As at so many other points when techno and electronica almost became mainstream, never before with a recording this subtle and quirky, I find myself on hearing Space Is OnlY Noise engaging in an undetached cry of joy for the future. It deserves to be as a communal as it feels, so make that happen, please.
Best cuts: "Problems with the Sun"; "Space Is Only Noise If You Can See"; "I Got a Woman"
[Full review]


Cults (Columbia)
At one point in that half-hour, Cults come out completely from behind the veil of irony for the stunning "Oh My God," a deliberate lyrical recasting of the Supremes' "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" and a passionately expressed paean to the fear of wasting one's life and youth, stuck in "the same ancient tradition": "I'm so tired of all these adult decisions / Oh my god, I'm ready to walk right out that door." Plenty of men have permitted themselves to express this claustrophobia; see The Graduate. But the way the vocal is complemented by the vibraphone, countered by the sludgy bed of guitars and bass, give us something resembling an anthem, not just about feminism but about breaking away, joyfully so, descending even into schoolyard chant at the "I can run away" mark. Fuck every self-regarding dismissal of this record -- the mastery of this track speaks for itself.
Best cuts: "Bad Things"; "Oh My God"; "Bumper"
[Full review]


Smith Westerns: Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum)
And one can't overstate the importance of that ringing guitar sound all over this pop record in a period of indie rock that's become known for studio manipulation and synthpop worship -- the attempted duplication, rather than evocation, of bygone noises. No interest in that from Smith Westerns; they're young, they're eager, and this is the noise of youth as we have understood it to this point. Rock & roll, right? These boys have captured this moment
Best cuts: "Dance Away"; "Weekend"; "End of the Night"
[Full review]


A$AP Rocky: LiveLoveA$AP (RCA)
Those demanding to know why RCA paid $3 million to sign this guy are asking the question in the wrong way. Properly, it is: does A$AP Rocky use the opportunity of this coyly released free mixtape to prove exactly why he was worth that paycheck? The answer is yeah, absolutely and unequivocally. Rocky's debut tape is the most convincing act of self-proof by a young man since The College Dropout seven years ago. More than just promising, it's the most immediately striking and appealing mixtape to surface in many, many years.
Best cuts: "Trilla"; "Peso"; "Demons"
[Full review]


The Decemberists: The King Is Dead (Capitol)
It was such a relief to get this increasingly commercially successful and alt-ignored band back from the prog rock doldrums of The Hazards of Love that it's tempting to overlook the result's minor excesses: I mean, maybe "This Is Why We Fight" is a bit ridiculous and "Rox in the Box" is just plain too much artificial folksiness. But any unfussy surrounding for Colin Meloy's frequently gorgeous songcraft, even as he's still weirdly obsessed with war and death and apocalyptic imagery, is welcome -- the ballads in particular are amongst the best and slickest work this once-scrappy unit has ever done. The studio lushness suits them well, with Gillian Welch and Peter Buck adding a welcome touch of grit. The Decemberists are reportedly laying low for a while to dream it all up again, so to speak, making this a lovely bow out for now.
Best cuts: "Calamity Song"; "Dear Avery"; "January Hymn"
[Full review]


Twin Sister: In Heaven (Domino)
It's a bias talking, really; after somewhat bland material from Tennis and the fine but mildly abrasive debut from Cults, I was overjoyed to get such a straightforward record of sinister baroque pop. The palette of influences here is enjoyably broad, and each cut has enough hooks for a full-length album. In a year rife with constant throwbacks, this stands out for me as one of the strongest.
Best cuts: "Gene Ciampi"; "Stop"; "Kimmi in a Rice Field"
[Full review]


Curren$y: Return to the Winner's Circle (Datpiff)
In fact, Return to the Winner's Circle is so good -- such fresh, smart party music with clever lyrics and phenomenal, no-nonsense rapping -- you wonder why nothing else Curren$y did in 2011 quite stands up to it. But who gives a fuck? In the last year and a half, the guy's released more music than most rappers put out in half a decade. Can't wait to see what the hell he gets up to next year.
Best cuts: "Role Model"; "Trophy Case"; "Frost"
[Full review]


The Antlers: Burst Apart (Frenchkiss)
It seems rather appropriate that the Antlers' highest profile opening slot was for the National, whose more masculine moodiness seems an ideal complement to this Brooklyn band's equally beautiful but somewhat less stoic atmospherics. The treasure the two bands share is an unassuming knack for anthemic songs that sneak up from below -- tunes as adept at blending in gorgeously to a dark soul-searching night's background as to careful study and obsession. The best precedent for this kind of intricately detailed, sad but rewarding music might be "E-Bow the Letter"-era R.E.M., when that band was at their most confident in the notion of submerging catchy songs in many layers of deceptively muddy sonics. The tension this provides, the air of discovery that results, is more than a little addictive.
Best cuts: "Hounds"; "No Widows"; "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out"
[Full review]

***

OTHERS I LIKED IN 2011
Over the Rhine The Long Surrender (Great Speckled Dog)
Gang Gang Dance Eye Contact (4AD)
Björk Biophilia (Nonesuch)
St. Vincent Strange Mercy (4AD)
Curren$y Weekend at Burnie's (Warner Bros.)
Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx We're New Here (XL)
Gang of Four Content (Yep Roc)
James Blake (A&M)
Wire Red Barked Tree (Pink Flag)
Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes (Atlantic)
The Bats Free All the Monsters (Flying Nun)
Jay-Z & Kanye West Watch the Throne (Def Jam)
Beastie Boys Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (Capitol)
Real Estate Days (Domino)
Iceage New Brigade (What's Your Rupture?)
Red Hot Chili Peppers I'm with You (Warner Bros.)
Okkervil River I Am Very Far (Jagjaguwar)
Oneohtrix Point Never Replica (Software)
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Belong (Slumberland)
Sepalcure (Hotflush)
Wye Oak Civilian (Merge)
Male Bonding Endless Now (Sub Pop)
John Maus We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Ribbon Music)
The Chemical Brothers Hanna OST (Back Lot)
The Field Looping State of Mind (Kompakt)
Times New Viking Dancer Equired (Merge)
The Weeknd House of Balloons (s/r)
Youth Lagoon The Year of Hibernation (Fat Possum)
EMA Past Life Martyred Saints (Soulterranian Transmissions)
Tennis Cape Dory (Fat Possum)
The Mountain Goats All Survivors Pack (Merge)
Yuck (Fat Possum)
The Strokes Angles (RCA)
OFF! First Four EPs (Vice)
Iron and Wine Kiss Each Other Clean (Warner Bros.)

EP'S I LOVED IN 2011
PAPA A Good Woman Is Hard to Find (Hit City USA)
Crystal Stilts Radiant Door (Sacred Bones)

EP'S I LIKED IN 2011
Colleen Green Cujo (Art Fag)
Darkside (Clown & Sunset)
Surfer Blood Tarot Classics (Kanine)
The Decemberists iTunes Session (Capitol)
The Decemberists Long Live the King (Capitol)
The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian (Warner Bros.)
Vampire Weekend iTunes Session (XL)

***

BEST SONGS OF 2011
Limiting to one song per album, but not per artist. Last year I posted this with few hefty revisions past initial impressions and I've regretted it since then, uncomfortable for instance that I chose "Take It Easy" over "Anchorage" and "Runaway" over "All of the Lights." I've done my best to be more fluid this year, approaching the evolution of my relationship with these songs over time.

1. tUnE-yArDs "Doorstep" [w h o k i l l]
2. Cut Copy "Take Me Over" [Zonoscope]
3. Das Racist "Michael Jackson" [Relax]
4. Smith Westerns "Dance Away" [Dye It Blonde]
5. Wilco "One Sunday Morning" [The Whole Love]
6. PAPA "I Am the Lion King" [A Good Woman Is Hard to Find EP]
7. TV on the Radio "You" [Nine Types of Light]
8. Big KRIT "Rotation" [Return of 4Eva]
9. Big Black Delta "Huggin' and Kissin'" [Recordings EP]
10. Mozart Parties "Black Cloud" [non-LP single]
11. A$AP Rocky "Trilla" [LiveLoveA$AP]
12. Curren$y "Hennessy Beach" [Verde Terrace]
13. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks "No One Is (As I Are Be)" [Mirror Traffic]
14. Jay-Z & Kanye West "Niggas in Paris" [Watch the Throne]
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart "Even in Dreams" [Belong]
16. Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx "My Cloud" [We're New Here]
17. Holy Ghost! "Some Children" [Holy Ghost!]
18. The Mountain Goats "Damn These Vampires" [All Eternals Deck]
19. Twin Sister "Gene Ciampi" [In Heaven]
20. Curren$y "On G's" [Weekend at Burnie's]
21. Azealia Banks "212" [internet-only]
22. M83 "Midnight City" [Hurry Up, We're Dreaming]
23. Cults "Bad Things" [Cults]
24. Lykke Li "Get Some" [Wounded Rhymes]
25. Björk "Moon" [Biophilia]
26. Chains of Love "Breaking My Heart" [non-LP single]
27. Atlas Sound "Doldrums" [Parallax]
28. Pusha T "What Dreams Are Made Of" [Fear of God II: Let Us Pray]
29. Feist "How Come You Never Go There" [Metals]
30. Radiohead "Separator" [The King of Limbs]
31. Destroyer "Savage Night at the Opera" [Kaputt]
32. The Decemberists "Calamity Song" [The King Is Dead]
33. St. Vincent "Cruel" [Strange Mercy]
34. New Build "Finding Reasons" [non-LP]
35. James Blake "The Wilhelm Scream" [s/t]
36. No Joy "He Cried" {Shangri-Las cover} [non-LP single]
37. PJ Harvey "Hanging in the Wire" [Let England Shake]
38. Heavenly Beat "Faithless" [non-LP single]
39. Danny Brown & Black Milk "Zap" [Black and Brown]
40. Depeche Mode "So Cruel" {U2 cover} [Q Magazine Achtung Baby tribute]
41. Male Bonding "The Saddle" [Endless Now]
42. Red Hot Chili Peppers "Did I Let You Know" [I'm with You]
43. Curren$y "Role Model" [Return to the Winner's Circle]
44. The Strokes "Machu Picchu" [Angles]
45. The Mountain Goats "Catherine Antrim's Kid" [All Survivors Pack]
46. Nicolas Jaar "Problems with the Sun" [Space Is Only Noise]
47. The Weeknd "What You Need" [House of Balloons]
48. J Mascis "I've Been Thinking" [b-side]
49. The Antlers "Hounds" [Burst Apart]
50. Radiohead "The Butcher" [non-LP single]
51. The Decemberists "Hey! That's No Way to Say Goodbye" {Leonard Cohen cover} [iTunes Session EP]
52. Over the Rhine "Soon" [The Long Surrender]
53. Colleen Green "Rabid Love" [Cujo EP]
54. Crystal Stilts "Frost Inside the Asylum" [Radiant Door EP]
55. The Mountain Goats "Thucydides II-58" [internet-only]
56. Shabazz Palaces "Endeavors for Never" [Black Up]
57. Wire "Please Take" [Red Barked Tree]
58. Azealia Banks "Grand Scam (Lyrical Exercise)" [internet-only]
59. Olivia Tremor Control "The Game You Play Is In Your Head parts 1, 2, and 3" [non-LP]
60. Real Estate "Green Aisles" [Days]
61. The Flaming Lips "Hillary's Time Machine Machine" [gummy skull]
62. Gang Gang Dance "Romance Layers" [Eye Contact]
63. Woods "Skull" [split 7"]
64. Bibio "K Is for Kelson" [Mind Bokeh]
65. Escort "Makeover" [Escort]
66. Darkside "A1" [Darkside EP]
67. Beastie Boys "Nonstop Disco Powerpack" [Hot Sauce Committee Part Two]
68. Charlotte Gainsbourg "Paradisco" [Stage Whisper]
69. Surfer Blood "Drinking Problem" [Tarot Classics EP]
70. Dom "Things Change" [internet-only]
71. G-Side "Look Up" [iSLAND]
72. The Weeknd "Lonely Star" [Thursday]
73. Still Corners "Cuckoo" [non-LP single]
74. Cass McCombs "The Same Thing" [Humor Risk]
75. Tennis "Tell Her No" (Zombies cover) [non-LP single]
Times New Viking "California Roll" [Dancer Equired]
Okkervil River "Piratess" [I Am Very Far]
Zola Jesus "Seekir" [Conatus]
Gang of Four "A Fruitfly in the Beehive" [Content]
Bleached "Electric Chair" [b-side]
John Maus "Keep Pushing On" [We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves]
Old 97's "How Lovely All It Was" [The Grand Theatre Volume Two]
Race Horses "Benidorm" [non-LP single]
Casimer & Casimir "Anne Cherchait l'Amour" [non-LP]
Wye Oak "Fish" [Civilian]
EMA "Grey Ship" [Past Life Martyred Saints]
Yuck "Milkshake" [non-LP]
The Flaming Lips & Neon Indian "Alan's Theremin" [With Neon Indian EP]
The Bats "Simpletons" [Free All the Monsters]

Peter Gabriel: Up (2002)

(Geffen)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It really doesn't seem like this was almost a decade ago. In the early days of my internet access, when I was a new and sprightly Peter Gabriel fan, I remember following the updates and dispatches from the recording of this album on the web religiously. Its release seemed always to be right around the corner -- 1998 came and went, already six years past the predecessor Us, then year after year until by the time the record came out I was out of high school and attempting to create a life of my own in a terrifyingly sparse apartment. One of the happiest things about the autumn of 2002 was that Up, when it arrived, actually exceeded my expectations. But it quickly became so tied to that time, a frightening period of unemployment and fast-forwarded maturing, that I put it away for years shortly after that Christmas. Hearing it now, I'm taken completely aback at how many memories are tied to it, how vividly it brings back those times to me. I thus cannot guarantee I'm approaching this without bias. But since it recalls some very difficult times and I still find it a joy to listen to, I have a feeling it's as good as it seems to me.

The most striking thing about Up is that in its sprawling runtime (only one song doesn't exceed six minutes) you can hear the passing of the near-decade it took to create. The songs are meticulous, every sound and arrangement quirk and strange detour clearly as intricately conceived and considered as anything I've heard an artist of Gabriel's stature attempt. It's an audacious effort -- the thick walls of musical stunts and the perfect delicacy of all elements, in particular Gabriel's vocals (his most nuanced ever) and his subtle but striking integration of the pulsating African beat he toyed with more explicitly and frankly less effectively in the '80s. "Sky Blue" manages to improve on the joyously frenzied but achingly slow-paced bassline of "Don't Give Up" with an even lovelier, simpler vocal and chorus; the melancholy between the verses, the falsetto, the backing vocals, everything perfect -- one of the moments it's so clear there's no one else who can make pop music like this. Opener "Darkness" is an equally impressive jump ahead of classic "The Rhythm of the Heat" with its crashing, weaving dynamic and sophisticated, oppressive bleakness.

Of course, as any album largely recorded between 1995 and 1998 and stubbornly tweaked for four years after inevitably would, Up also betrays some weaknesses and tragedies that draw forth from the passage of time. Sobering is the 1997 loss of legendary Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose presence lights the mournful "Signal to Noise" aflame. The song wasn't finished when he performed it onstage with Gabriel in the mid-'90s, but one of those televised renditions is the source of his contribution as heard on disc, the kind of technical wizardry that Gabriel has always taken for granted. He uses such resources more cleverly and responsibly than most anyone, another reason I'm crestfallen he's grown even more lethargic with the release of new material since Up, as I'm sure any future music of his would and will be a major technological coup with substance to match. A less happy consequence, though, of the wide gulf between the '90s and the release of the record, and now even more so, is the record's lone serious gaffe. Inexplicably issued as the single, "Barry Williams Show" is a mortifyingly self-serious jab at Jerry Springer and his trashy talk show, a nearly forgotten subject now that was already long irrelevant in 2002. The song isn't a horror musically, but its dire humorlessness make it a sore thumb on an otherwise tremendously beautiful album.

But what's remarkable about the great zigzagging of years across these ten tracks is their consistency of mood. As Us was an album about romance, the gaining and losing of human relationships, this is Gabriel's tackling of birth, growth, and death. The first half peaks with the absolutely massive "Growing Up," a stark answer song to the earlier Motown pastiches like "Sledgehammer" and "Steam"; no longer pure or sensual in his joy, Gabriel is here a somber worrier, the undeniable and room-shaking beat crashing up against the central theme: "Growing up / Looking for a place to live." For all the song's playfulness, it's rife with a central sense of guilt and regret. Later on, "I Grieve" sets the sharpest gutwrench of loss to an oceanic but incredibly subtle soundscape that gives another vocal nuanced in its sadness the immersive center stage. The enormity of the chorus may be the most artistically masterful moment on record from Gabriel. Even the doorways to a thousand churches in "In Your Eyes" seem trite in comparison.

Up surrounds from beginning to end with lovingly crafted noise that serves primarily to linger in memory as unresolved conflict, a beautiful and precise mess evocative of life itself. The closing suite of ballads "More Than This" and emotional powerhouse "Signal to Noise" are the point when the veil is simply gone, no memory of "Shock the Monkey" or Genesis whatsoever, just all an embrace and injection of regret and longing in a chilly, unforgiving world. All of Gabriel's music is big-picture stuff, favoring science and craft over emotion and impulse, but in its final effect on the listener it can be devastatingly personal and communicative, like all of the best African music that's inspired Gabriel throughout his solo career. This is a distinctly Western effort, but its essence is universal.

John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (1964)

(Impulse!)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

Somewhere on Long Island on December 9, 1964, this was recorded. The bang of a gong signals thirty-three minutes of transporting music, the sort of work that can make the agnostic believe -- not because it's simply so good it forces piousness but because the music itself exudes the idea of spirituality, of a great artist's surrender to a maybe incorrect but vivid and single-minded notion that he does not control his own gifts. The words that come out, the lyricism of his saxophone, the skittering wonder of his solos and arrangements -- these have the feel of something beyond mortal understanding.

That's the non-artist's perception of the artist talking. Someone like Coltrane is to us indistinguishable from a magician, so that the rational aspects of A Love Supreme's creation, something so far beyond mere criticism and parsing out in words, attain a mythical and almost holy aspect. You don't have to be religious to gather the grandness of the mantra, the reaching out toward the heavens in every second and every note... because even if you're not, an LP like this becomes your text of worship, your own deep and throttled awakening.

"Acknowledgement," lifting the curtain and letting us swim in its grace and love, and "Psalm," leaving us reeling from its manic mysticism and gradual bending toward some emotional abyss. But without the two central songs, neither song receives its tonal counterpoint. The virtuosity of "Resolution" fulfills every notion of avant garde jazz with its unrelentingly gorgeous, evocative melodic lines that roll back into simultaneous unease and closure. Theoretically wilder but more contained and elegantly beautiful still is "Pursuance," a musical descent into chaos that never seems unrestrained or without design, the ultimate evolutionary connect-the-dots into strangely perfect noise, all the way down to Jimmy Garrison's startling bass solo. The four cuts each resolve one of the others, the two sides a complete moment unto themselves -- but the entire half hour in sequence is so lovely and strange as to be next to unbearable. With no exaggeration, this is as wonderful as American art gets.

The music is all awash with joy. It's such a perfect mess of contradiction: messy and aggressive, defiantly artistic, but succinct and careful -- technically ideal, even, but never bristling before its passion. A Love Supreme lends us no worldly deconstruction of its emotions. Like all great art, it doesn't need to because it is emotion -- everything pure and right, everything completely fulfilled as Coltrane's but finally no one's but ours.

[SEE ALSO:]
Giant Steps (1960)

The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love (2009)

(Capitol)

Hailed in certain circles as an ambitious masterstroke, derided elsewhere as a ridiculous prog rock video game manual set to music, the Decemberists' fifth album is most assuredly their most divisive. That's little wonder since it marks Colin Meloy's full-fledged, off-puttingly sincere attempt at a Concept Record, that great rock & roll disease that's swallowed up so many great minds since the days of Smile and Sgt. Pepper. Meloy deserves a hard-line, passionate defense against those who believe he's a blowhard and a myopic elitist, but material like Hazards makes it very hard not to see the other side's point. The larger perspective, though, is that a fine songwriter will fail at crafting a concept album for the same reason everyone else does: because concept albums are a really stupid fucking idea.

As a composer and lyricist, scruffily pretentious tendencies and all, Meloy is analogous to Ray Davies in the '60s. After signing to RCA in 1971, Davies sent the Kinks down a mortifying rabbit hole of LPs that consisted of "acts" and "scenes" and "characters." Fans of both bands can think of The Hazards of Love as Meloy's Preservation. As with that two-part horror, the scant virtues are primarily measured by the willingness of the hardcore fan to sift through the scene-settings and interludes and guest vocalists and so on to find, like, the songs. The number of actual songs, not counting obliquely generic rants like "The Rake's Song," comes to something like five, out of seventeen tracks. That's along the lines of Smile, another truly baffling project some guilty pop culturalists swallow as high art.

It's neither possible nor worth the trouble to parse much out about the plot Meloy has crafted here, which involves fairies and shapeshifters and children dying and a lot of other stuff you'd expect the Decemberists' primary architect to find interesting. Complete goofiness, all of it. A pity, really, because some of the musical ideas and motifs aren't half-bad. The Arcade Fire cascade of "The Wanting Comes in Waves" and the repeated mutations of the main theme are haunting when addled neither with guest Becky Stark's shrill preening (the early standout "Won't Want for Love" has tension to die for if you can ignore her contributions) or with the earsplitting overuse of thudding RAWK electric guitar effects.

The sheer outlandishness of the prog rock ideas here overwhelms all; there's something morbidly cool about hearing ghost children sing the chorus near the end, and the band does a decent job of aping Genesis and ELP, but being good at something that's not worth doing is a dubious premise. This is all, frankly, sort of embarrassing, and not a little hard to listen to. Even the good vocal performances, by Meloy and especially by My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, frequently get drowned out by Zep-Floydian plodding. And the fact that we're supposed to believe each of the singers is playing a "character" does not help.

Two major caveats, though, to dismissing Hazards: In late 2009 my girlfriend and I saw it performed live. It's a different beast entirely on stage, with so much aplomb and intelligently bleak theatricality that even the hardest-core haters are (or were) bound to enjoy themselves; Meloy was so enthusiastic during "The Rake's Song" he nearly made me care about his daft, emotionless plot, and "The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)," really just a reprise, really came out and across as a stunningly strong piece of work, one of the band's top songs to date. The spontaneity and verve of the stage performance expanded and improved the album many times over.

Secondly, this really strongly brings back that entire period of mid- to late-2009 to me. As long as I concentrate on those memories and not on the queens and princesses and forest creatures, I can appreciate some of Hazards -- and it's mine to make what I want of it, so why not. At any rate, one assumes Capitol is overjoyed -- prog rock having long since passed its peak of popularity -- that the Decemberists reverted to somewhat conventional songwriting and structure on 2011's The King Is Dead. Hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty glad too.

[SEE ALSO:]
The King Is Dead (2011)
iTunes Session EP (2011)
Long Live the King EP (2011)

Okkervil River: Golden Opportunities 2 EP (2011)

(s/r)

Look, as a fan of this fine band, one can't really complain about receiving five new recordings for free, and in a lossless format to boot. The chief virtue of Golden Opportunitues 2, though, is the way it continues to forward the Wilco-like advancement of Okkervil as the ultimate American melancholy bar band. These covers of obscurities from Bill Fay and Ted Lucas, plus a rather dour "Dry Bones," are so dense with smoke you can almost feel the ambience of the dive in which you might imagine the band playing, as nearly unrecognizable here as they were backing Roky Erickson last year. Will Sheff's never sounded so muted, for one thing. The best description for this session, really, is "drunk." Whether that's a compliment or a complaint will largely depend on how fond you are of the band in general, and little to do with how you felt about their fine I Am Very Far, the much more traditional LP from earlier this year. A depressive state will undoubtedly help.

[SEE ALSO:]
I Am Very Far (2011)