Best of 2011 -- Pt. 1

Well, since I failed to post at all in 2011, I figured it would be good to maybe post up what I've been listening to and what I think the best albums of the year were. This isn't terribly scientific but, the methodology for generating this list is pretty straightfoward: how did i rate the song in iTunes and do i still listen to it. Frankly, i think those are the two important factors there--at the time when is started listening to the song, what did i think of it (the iTunes rating), and then, months later, do i still listen to it/think it's a good song.

Three major themes emerged in 2011 in music: Brand New Retro, mainstream folk and saving your best song for a non-album release. Throwback sounds executed well and generated by artists and not labels has become a thing. Fitz & The Tantrums, Rome and a couple other artists catapulted into the mainstream this year, giving us sounds from yesteryear with lyrics, hooks and beats from today. Adele and Amy Winehouse pushed the BNR musicianship mainstream, and now, with the door open, other artists are entering the space. If this trend holds, we're a couple years away from some spectacular throwback sounds.

Folk, in the words of a record executive, is business code for, Music that doesn't make money. Mainstream Folk is perhaps proving that wrong, though, and enjoying some much deserved time in the big boy pool. Iron & Wine, long a college radio favorite, started pushing folk into the hearts and minds of people close to a decade ago. Big Bearded Sam Beam (AKA Iron & Wine) came out in 2002 with, The Creek Drank the Cradle, and it was magical. Soft, lo-fi, raw and emotionally true, it was a hard rejection of everything that was mainstream. Fast forward 9 years and now Iron and Wine's new album, Kiss Each Other Clear was a truly forgettable album--for me. I don't need phat beatz in my folk. Sorry, I just don't. Cue The Civil Wars (who are hard folk), The Dodo's (who are folk-influenced), Alexander (folk+) and Bon Iver (who are a weird combo of folk and 80's synth-keytar). To see how far folk has gone, do yourself a favor and google, gangsta-grass. (If you watch Justified, you know this type of music). We'll get into these albums below, but, it was a good year for folk.

Finally, musicians opted to withhold the best song they wrote or recorded from their major album release and instead chose to release it as a solo, a b-side or as part of a video game soundtrack. Let's address this trend in a forthright, objective and adult manner: Fuck that. If you've got a song that's that good, you need to put it out on your major album release. If you

don't realize that, the people around you need to--and they need to tell you that. If the people around you don't realize that it is the best song you'll put out all year, you need to get different people. I'm available to help.

In, maybe, a slightly particular order:

Radiohead, The King of Limbs It's a Radiohead album in the vein of their last couple. It's... good? Bloom, Morning Mr. Magpie, Little by Little, Feral, Lotus Flower and Codex are all good songs but nothing is great. For a good time, check out videos where someone puts new music over the video for Lotus Flower. My personal favorite it Welcome to the Jungle. Sadly, the best song that Radiohead put out this was, Staircase, off of, The Daily Mail & Staircase.

Putting out great songs that are not on the album you dropped in the year is a theme for 2011. We'll have more entrants into this category.

The Airborne Toxic Event, All At Once If you dig pop, and kind of, twangy, emo pop, you'll probably dig this album. Changing, It Doesn't Mean a Thing, All I Ever Wanted are all good songs that wont win musical awards, but will leave your foot tapping.

Alexander, Alexander

Alexander Ebert, the aforementioned Alexander, is the lead singer for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, which begs the question: Is Edward Sharpe Alexander Ebert's alter ego (a la Ziggy Stardust) or is Alexander Ebert Edward Sharpe's alter ego. Also, i think i just set the record for the number of names in a sentence that doesn't use a list AND I set the record for the most instances of the named Alexander in a sentence. That's the hard hitting analysis you've been missing, i know.

So here's the thing about Alex, if i may call him that: he took the okay parts of Eddy S. & The Ferrously Attractive Ingots, and left the best parts behind. There are fewer duets. There's less energy. It's got some fun AfroBeat in it, but it's also got some utterly unfocused schlok. It's good, but, this album could have been great. Awake My Body, Truth, and Bad Bad Love, are all fantastic songs. They would be better with Eddy's energy. But, really, they would be better with a producer who said, no, who called his bs and who said, let's stop straying into every genre put out in the last 30 years, and let's try and create a single, cohesive sound that might borrow from an eclectic swath of musical history, but that still finds and keeps a unified identity.

It is rather the same issue the ES&M0 suffers from.

Also, it makes me ask what the hell he's doing making a solo album after the debut album had such buzz and their live show was so great. Go be the positive ion to the iron lump's negatives, Alex. Go make knees bounce and heads bob and fingers uncontrollably drum on cubicle desks.

Fitz & the Tantrums, Pickin' Up the Pieces Get this album. It is Motown. It is new. It is catchy. It is hummable. It is everything you want out of an album--it's 5 bucks on Amazon.

Fitz and the Tantrums is part of the whole, Brand New Retro,

movement going on in music right now. People and music labels, for once, seemed to realize something at the same time: there's great old music styles, even if there aren't that many great old musicians left-- I love Aretha, Patti, Tony Bennet, etc, but you can't tell me they still have the pipes or the drive they used to have. Cue fans, and, suddenly, we've got Amy Winhouse, we've got Michael Buble, we've got Bruno Mars' asinine pompadour--and now we have Fitz & The Tantrums. Aside from an awesome name, their music is incredibly well put together and sounds both modern and retro-- Brand. New. Retro. It is an engrossing album that has a lot of replayability. It is also something you can put on when your parents are around that will actually make them sit up and listen and say, Wait... when was this recorded??

Rome, Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, Featuring Jack White & Nora Jones A throwback to 60's jazz and movie soundtracks from yesteryear, it has all the catchiness of Danger Mouse, the oozey Italian sex appeal that Fellini created and Luppi re-creates, and some of Jack White's best work to date. Nora Jones is a natural fit here and it just works for her to have a producer that says, Yes, No, Stop, Go. The whole album is good, but there are a few standouts, notably, The Rose with the Broken Neck, The Matador Has Fallen, and Her Hollow Ways. It is great reading music, and great house-cleaning music as well. Relaxed, but fun and with enough energy that you're not going to nod off. Also, typically can be found on Amazon for about 5 bucks.

The Big Roar, The Joy Formidable

They're Welsh. I'm Welsh. They're a solid "rock" band (if such a plain genre determinant can still be used) and I enjoy solid "rock" albums. They mix vocals and create harmonies with killer baselines and enough overdrive effects to choke a donkey. Their live set is super energetic and chest thumping. Eight of the twelve tracks on the album have a 4 or 5 star rating in iTunes. That is a stone cold lead pipe lock of an album. I Don't Want to See You Like This, Austere, A Heavy Abacus, Whirring, Buoy, Cradle, The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade, The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie, are all great songs. The Greatest Light... is probably my favorite, with the intro and outro and overall oomph of the track, but, hey, they're all good. If you're lucky enough to have heard them on the radio you've likely heard, Whirring. Good song, but they radio edit cuts out the drum-solo-jamboree. It is worth listening.

The King is Dead, The Decembrists This is a Decembrists album. If you like them, it is good. If you don't, it is bad. They continue to put out great folk-influenced country rock sung by a guy with a nasal voice and backed by a non-nasally woman. They will shortly put out a live version of the album--or maybe already have. They will then go back into the studio, rinse and repeat.

I'm unfairly poo-poo'ing this album because they don't change--which is good and bad. The Decembrist are you favorite local bar: reliable, fun but not hip, reasonably priced and full of skanks. Wait, no, strike that last part. You know what you're gonna get when you buy a Decembrists album, and that's exemplary, because sometimes you hear an album by someone you've previously liked and wondered what the hell happened. Other times, though, you want to go to the new place with the 100 different beers on tap or that bourbon bar or whatever--and the Decembrists will let you go there and be waiting for you when you want some solid, reliable music. Anyway, good if you like them, bad if you don't.

Part 2 coming soon... Maybe even before 2013!!!