Best of 2011--The "Weird" Stuff

Like every year, 2011 saw the release of two-scoops of good albums, a few great albums and a veritable cornucopia of shit.  I cannot emphasize the deluge of shit enough.  And while every year has their own musical micro-trends--for instance, this year with the Folk+ trend and the Putting Your Best Song on a Single/B-Side That Isn't Your Album BS Trend-- There are two other universal categories of albums that get released every year--the Yawners and the Headscratchers.  While they can be very different categories, they can also be two sides to the same coin.

The Yawners...  It would be easy to throw them into the Shit pile, but the thing is, they're not necessarily shit.  They're just... boring.  It's not that they are actively assaulting your earholes or causing you to forward on to the next song, it's that they just don't grab.  And then the next song doesn't grab you--and the one after that--and pretty soon you're left with an album of songs that are just unrelentingly uninteresting.  It is like being at a party where you read the Economist and Matt Taibi, and everyone else has only ever read OK!-- I'm sure they're lovely people, but, sorry, that just sounds boring.

The Headscratchers, on the other hand, are ones that maybe just don't connect with you--or, more aptly put, that you don't connect with.  I think everyone who listens to a lot of music has had the experience of listening to an album, shrugging, and saying, Yeah, this just doesn't do it for me--it's not bad, but it's not good and i could take or leave it, only to come back to said album 6 months, a year, or many years later and, listening with new ears, finally connect with that album.  Cursive's The Ugly Organ is an album like that for me; I listened to it, but I couldn't hear it when I first put it on.  I kept it in my iTunes library and then maybe a year later it happened to come up on a random playlist and Sierra caught me and lodged itself in my brain.  It was surprising to find out that the song came from an album I had previously written off--and an album that became, and remains, one of my favorites from the early 2000's.  

That's how I think of these albums--there's something buried in the music, but I just don't have the ears to tweeze it out.  Which is not to say that there are not just Boring albums--there are-- but understand that, in all but the rarest of exceptions, every album that gets published has an audience and people who like it and "get" it.    Someone is connecting with the album, even if it isn't you.  Those are the Headscratchers--the albums that someone is digging and that you can hear something in there, but you can't quite figure out what, and it could be good or it could be nothing.

So let's talk Headscratchers, because i don't think it's worthwhile to waste time on the Yawners albums--maybe i'll put a list in or something and if you feel strongly, write a comment and tell me why I'm wrong.

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins' Diamond Mine

There were a couple of big ones, but, the biggest had to be King Creosote & Jon Hopkins' album, Diamond Mine.  It is a quiet album with lots of ambient noise, sea sounds, accordions, soft acoustic guitar and an Irish/Scottish/Celtic feel to it.  Soft piano plays throughout the background on a number of songs and it feels like it should be gripping and pretty, and there are some songs that are pretty, but there's really only one song that reached out and got me.  It has a very Beirut feel to it, in that its style is old.  The song construction and instrumentation are from generations ago, but then the use of some ambient noise--in a cafe, in the kitchen at home, from the sea, from the hills as the wind is blowing and seagulls are kaw-kaw'ing--gives it a new feel while simultaneously strengthening that old-timey feel.  I'm not listening to an album on my iPhone; I'm listening to a couple of  men play their songs by the sea or down in the pub's common room--oh, and one of the village women joined in for this song, how pretty!

But then I go to the next song and i'm back listening to an album.  The difference in tracks breaks the spell that the album is trying to weave.  Shuffling this album in with others is more than spell-breaking, it is damning.

There's no auto-tuning, which is shockingly refreshing, and the singing style is very vibrato heavy, which is a bit of a turn-off for me.  Bats in the Attic is the best song on the album, but even that is a bit of a headscratcher as it kind of goes on for a bit and then just fades away without really hitting home with the full emotional weight that it could muster.

Ultimately, I think the Headscratcher part of this album is that it isn't punching it's weight.  It feels deep and weighty and at times I got glimpses of that power, but I rarely felt it.  It is a very digestible album and one that is worth a listen.  Again, $5 at Amazon.  I feel like I will return to this album in a year or two and have it speak to me, but, for now...  It is missing the connection.

Nicholas Jaar's Space is Only Noise

Let me just put this out there right now: this album is not going to be for everyone.  It is decidedly weird and could best be put into the Future-Jazz, Minimalist, Acoustic-Techno genre.  However, since such a genre doesn't exist I'll have to content myself with saying that Nicolas Jaar's debut full length album, Space Is Only Noise is a down-tempo eclectic collection of samples, beats, random Francophone dialogue, a man reading, water, rain and sea noises, remixes and Jaar's own voice.  Piano abound and there is a lot of bits that sound like he stuck a microphone in a rainstick to sample the noise of a bean falling.  It is kind of creepy-fun-bizarre and a bit of a different sample noise.

The album has a lot going for it--and it is all the more impressive considering that Jaar is a 21 yr old student at Brown. I think, by way of comparison, I was writing an ethnography on fraternities and drinking when i was 21, so, hey, there's that.  He's been in the dance scene for a while, although i have a hard time imagining any of these songs being real club movers or shakers--they're all pretty low and slow songs that make for good headphone music.  They are not songs that make people dance.

But they are good songs.  The album feels cohesive and like a manifestation of some very specific vision that Jaar had or has.  He uses the same techniques on different songs to tie them together and each song has its own melody and beat, which for a techno album is a bit of a rarity.  Too Many Kids Finding Rain in the Dust, has a very Nick Cave feel to it--I actually thought it was a remix of Red Right Hand when i first heard it--but he turns that track into something wholly his own.

The samples from a man reading from some book are fantastical, and probably my favorite part of the whole album.  Jaar uses cuts from the same documentary or book (no idea what it is from) to open or close a couple of tracks and it sets the table.  The intro starts and it's like the appetizer-- you're interested to see where this goes.  The start is there.  You're hungry for more.

But the meal never comes.

The Headscratcher part is that, like Diamond Mine, Space is Only Noise, fails to land a punch when it has you on the ropes.  It has all the elements that i want in an album--interesting, catchy, makes me pay attention and says, Come and understand me, and yet?  And yet...

Maybe this album requires that you be in a specific frame of mind or that you being a certain kind of headspace--there are those albums and I can accept that.  My gut feeling is that this is one of those albums, and that's while I'll put it firmly into the Headscratcher column at this point.  Worth a listen to see if you can hear what it's saying.


Wye Oak, Civilian

Wye Oak is a duo out of Baltimore who have consistently put out OK music -- damning with faint praise there, I know -- and they've done so again with their latest effort this year, Civilian.  The title track is, without doubt, the best off the album and the rest of the album...  eh?  It just doesn't live up to that song, but it sounds like it should, which is what makes this a Headscratcher.  They had a great song on the album--kind of the same way they have on their previous efforts--but have been unable to turn that one song into even a couple of songs.

Or have they?  I feel like they may have and I just miss it?  I'm not sure.  I listen and feel like there's something more there but whatever it is, eludes me.

I think part of my issue with Wye Oak is that they are a duo.  I have issues with duo's.  They just don't have enough sound, in my opinion.  Either they mix the hell out of an album to give them a full sound, or they play multiple instruments and mix it together to get that sound or they bring in outside artists to play on the album and record them, slap their duo label on it and mention the other guys in the liner notes, or, they sound like shit.  Four options: no more, no less.  And then you have to think about the live show--do they bring other artists along and, again, tour as a duo that just happens to play with another 4 guys or do the just play as the two of them and have it be the aural equivalent of throwing a hot dog down a hallway--Hey, there's someone practicing on stage at the club, wanna go??

No, no I do not.

Their style is a self-described Folk+, in this case, Folk + Indie + Pop + Shoegaze Noise.  It has some great moments and their signature move, as it were, involves rapid and wild swings on decibel level.  They're apparently very big fans of the verse-CRASH-Chorus-CRASH-Bridge-CRASH-Chorus-CRASH style of song writing, and hey, that has a place, but it feels like a crutch that they're using to hide that it's only the two of them.

But here's the other issue:  Where is the folk part?  I hear indie, I hear pop, I hear some wall of noise and some shoegaze.  I do not hear folk.  Using an acoustic guitar at times does not make you folky.  Non-piano keyboards really don't make you folky.

Here's the long and short of it: grab the single, Civilian.  Maybe listen to the rest.  Let me know if you hear something in there and if you find the meat, rather than the shell.  As it is, Headscratcher.