Best of 2011 -- Pt 2, The Singles and One - Offs

It is hardly news to anyone that music has as music sales have moved more heavily towards digital models, major labels have moved more heavily towards the killer single.  This isn't a hit on their attempts to market singles in the 70's, 80's, 90's and any other time when there have been big music labels, just the fact that it's a helluva lot easier to sell 1 million copies of a $.99 single than it is 100k copies of a $9.99 album.  You have to strike gold once rather than over and over and over again: It can be done, but, how much are you gonna risk getting trying?

This is merely pre-amble to the most annoying musical trend of 2011: the single that is simultaneously the best song a artist/band puts out in a year AND somehow not present on their major album drop.  Bon Iver, Radiohead and The National are all guilty of this.

Just to round this out I'm going to include a couple singles that were standouts--even if they were on the greater album.  Sometimes there is a single good song on an album smothered in mediocrity.  Sometimes, a single song is the only redeeming quality a 30 minute tour-de-suck has.  Sometimes major labels make albums for one or two singles--they make their money  and artists are left with 8 other songs and probably 28 minutes of CD space to fill as they please.  This leads to some great singles and some awful albums.  It's a trade off, really.  Sometimes you bet the teddy bear, and sometimes it pets you.

The True Singles--Major Label/Mainstream:
The Beastie Boys, Make Some Noise
Maroon 5, Moves Like Jagger  (DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!)
Death Cab for Cutie, You Are a Tourist

So let's discuss these.  The Beastie Boys are return with a pretty good album--not 90's Beastie Boys good, but, certainly better than, To the 5 Boroughs.  Make Some Noise is probably their best single in about a decade--and for a band that has dropped a laundry basket full of killer singles (Intergallactic, Sabatoge, Pass the Mic, So Whatcha' Want, Sure Shot, Root Down, Don't Stop) it's good to hear them back in action and doing what they do.  The 1-2-3, 2-3-1, 3-1-2 flow they're known for is in full effect and it's tight.  Yeah, they're older and yeah they sound like they're just having a good time rather than trying to "bring it", but...  okay? I'm cool with that.

Moves Like Jagger...  Look, it's catchy as shit and it's everywhere.  If this get stuck in your head, you're screwed, so, you might as well enjoy it.  And, let's face it, Jagger has some moves.

Hey, do you like droning , meandering albums full of self-felating piano experimentation and high production values?  You do?!  Then boy have I got an album for you!  Two Death Cabs, One Cutie!  I keed, i keed.

Death Cab's latest effort just didn't do it for me.  I have a well known anti-Ben Gibbard personal bias, but I'm a fan of a great deal of his music.  This album was a pass for me, though.  It just didn't grab me--the whole thing sounded like some musically inclined super-fan wrote a bunch of Death Cab songs based on their early catalog and then tricked them into recording it.  The album is redeemed only by the production values, but even they can't make this anything other than a mediocre pass. You Are a Tourist, is probably the most engaging song on the album and worth the .99 cents I paid for it.  I can't imagine shelling out 10 clams for this.  


The True Single-- Label Inset, Indie:
AgesandAges, No Nostalgia
The Naked and the Famous, Young Blood
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Belong

AgesandAges' No Nostalgia is a sweeping, open song that sounds like a road-trip. I can't think of a better way to describe it.  It feels like the song you put on as your friends all climb into the car and you set out with a full trunk and everyone telling ridiculous stories.  AgesandAges has this raucous, live feeling to their music--which is likely because they recorded a lot of the album live and unmixed with multiple people singing into the same microphone.  It gives it an energy that many similarly styled albums have been missing-- Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes being a great example of what I'm talking about.  The harmonies are gorgeous and almost choral given seven or eight people singing at any given time.  It is another entry into the Folk+ genre--this time, Folk + Jam.  They're young and good and I can also recommend their album, but, start here.  Toss it on in the car, roll down the windows and start a sing along.  I expect really big from them in the future and while I'm uncertain about their future fortunes or mainstream appeal, they should be making great music for many years to come.

Young Blood, by The Naked and The Famous, is  completely different from AgesandAges.  High production values, no folk influence at all, and a sick house beat with a killer hook, Young Blood is a great song and one that I have listened to many... many...  times.  I have this issue where when I find a good song I will put it on repeat--not the album, the song.  It drove my roommate in college nuts and it currently drives my wife batty.  This song just lodges in your brain and demands that you play it.  Repeatedly.  Until you want to gouge your ears out.

It is magical if you listen with headphones, as the mixing is encapsulating.  The rest of the album is okay, but ultimately not on the same level as this cut.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are this year's winner of the 30 Odd Feet of Grunts' Worst Band Name Memorial Award.  Is there a more emo, whiny whiny boo-hoo, i-wish-i-was-grass-because-then-i-could-cut-myself-and-people-would-notice band name?  I mean, really?  This whole album loses a lot just due to the name on the cover.  Awful band name aside, this is a good song.  A very good song, actually.  It has a very Temper Trap meets Silversun Pickups feel--big wall of sound, overdrive pedals in all their glory, soft, vaguely feminine vocals when a man is singing, the whole shopping cart.  It's catchy and worth listening.


The Singles that Should Have Been on the Album
Bon Iver, I Can't Make You Love Me
Radiohead, Staircase
The National, Exile Vilify


Here are three songs that are, without question, the best song that each artist put out this year--and Bon Iver's self-titled second full length album is really, really good.  (We'll get to that later).  We've already discussed Radiohead's latest effort and found it wanting.

Yes, i know, technically, that High Violet, which is The National's latest album, was released in May 2010, but, this song was written at the time and didn't make the cut, so it counts.  There is no foot fault.  We are not over the line.  Mark it a strike.

Exile Vilify was released as part of the soundtrack to the game Portal 2.  I cannot begrudge the game a song of this caliber--frankly, the song and the game sync up perfectly and work to illicit some solid emotion responses from viewers/listeners.  That being said, Why the hell wasn't this song on High Violet?!  It is perfect--and I mean, 100% could not be better, it is at the absolute top of my all time favorite songs list.  It is sweeping and simple.  It is emotional and strained with a huge soundscape and Matt Berninger's baritone.  The production values are top notch and it mixes modern rock instrumentation with a strings section while a piano hook drives this song deep into the, I must listen to this song on repeat, part of your brain.  Just get this song.  This is a song where great headphones or speakers really shine--the timbre and resonance you get from a solid pair of Sennheiser's add's another layer to an already dense song.

If The National is just going to drop singles like this for games, then, fine, whatever--i guess their albums are filler in between incredible stand-alones?

Radiohead is no stranger to a weird release cycle--they announced The King of Limbs about 2 seconds before it was released--but Staircase is a bit of a departure for them.  Part of a two track release (paired with, The Daily Mail) Staircase is better than the sum of the King of Limbs--and the thing is, they know it.  When they were on SNL earlier this year promoting TKoL, they played Lotus Flower (the first single from the album) and they played Staircase.  So, to summarize, they had a big audience to play two songs for in order to boost sales, and instead of choosing two from the album they were promoting, they played one song from the album and another from a side release.

Finally, and most fantastically, BonnieVer Bon Iver covered the Bonnie Raitt classic, I Can't Make You Love Me.  Even though Bonnie Raitt didn't, in fact, write the song, I think everyone will always associate it with her as it was written for her to sing and she was the first one to do it.  Aside from the heartbreaking rendition of what is, arguably, one of the saddest songs written in the last half century, it feels like the authoritative version of the song, which is...  surprising.

You have, no doubt, heard the Jeff Buckley cover of Hallelujah, which was originally penned by Leonard Cohen.  It has been covered ad-naseum, with few improvements.  Cohen originally recorded it, and it is a serviceable rendition, but Buckleys' is the best.  Rufus Wainright's version is is up there as well (sadly, his version is held back by his nasality and desire to sing through his nostrils).  Anyway, Cohen, the original artist and author of the song, might have been the first, but when i think of Hallelujah, I will forever recall Jeff Buckley's moving magnum opus instead.

That is where I'm at with Bon Iver's stripped down, piano-solo version.

Just Vernon's falsetto drips with emotion and plays and he alternates between his standard high pitches and his more rarely used lower registers.  It is music to listen to while you stare off into space, contemplate your life or regret losses and loves.

The one detractor on the song is a bit of a recording mishap--he reds out at one point and you can hear it on higher end recordings.  For a song--and an artist of his caliber and recording studio access--this is just unacceptable.  You can hear his intake of breath at the start of the song and the 3 minutes later the mic is capping out?  The sound engineer should be embarrassed.

Single recording error aside, this song is a masterwork--and it is a b-side to the first single.

As the band toured late night shows and played a song or two, he played this song roughly half the time.  The song he used to sell his album was a song that was absent from his album!  Double-you.  Tee.  Eff.

On the one hand, this trend slays me--why withhold your best song from the full album release?  Wouldn't you rather drive people to spend the 10 bucks to buy your full album instead of ensuring they buy a single, .99 song?  They aren't even off-cycle releases--all of these songs were either written with the album or recorded nearly immediately after the album went to press--and we aren't talking about artists who record an album and then sit on it for 6 months to create anticipation.

I'm sure there's some reason but for the life of me I cannot figure it out and it is annoying.

Part 3 Upcoming: Good Albums.