1. Japandroids – Post-Nothing
I saw the Japandroids play at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past summer. In short, they were fantastic, and they played with an energy I thought impossible for a duo.
Later that day I won a charity auction for some Japandroids merch. While I was cradling a vinyl of their debut Post-Nothing, I was asked by some blogger if they could briefly interview me about the band. I obliged, and the first question was, “How would you describe their music?”
I paused for a moment because, honestly, I didn’t quite know how to call it anything other than the blanket term of “rock.” Sure, others have said they’ve part of some 90s revival of something-rock and garage-rock, but I don’t even know what that means. I just know what I hear on their album and live on stage: fast, intense, distortion-heavy, drums-heavy songs that are anthemic without the weight of being called an “anthem”; lyrics that, despite my usual habit of ignoring, I’ve actually read and found out usually consist of little more than a few sentence bits sing-shouted over the course of a track; rock about escape, which one could argue is what rock is all about; escape from the nothing-towns of our youth, the friends we had just because we went to school with them, not giving a shit about the weather in our hometowns “‘cause we’re far from home tonight.”
All this over eight blistering tracks and thirty-five minutes and forty-four seconds.
One could mull over the corner the band has painted themselves into, and how a second record could bring a change in sound or a change in some sort of direction that would probably seem untrue to themselves. Maybe they should just bow out now and leave Post-Nothing as their ultimate work after two pretty-good EPs.
Regardless, Post-Nothing was my most-listened-to record of the year; I saw Japandroids play live twice and they are one of my best live bands I’ve seen; I have an autographed t-shirt pinned up on my wall; I dug my mom’s old record player out of the crawlspace so I could listen to Post-Nothing on vinyl; and, despite the killer single “Young Hearts Spark Fire” and the single-quality of every last track, Post-Nothing coheres into a brilliant album, and it’s by far my favorite of the year.
2. The Antlers – Hospice
In the same vein I love The Antlers’ Hospice as I do Deerhunter’s Microcastle. Both make the case for the dwindling trend of an album as a whole instead of just a collection of songs, beyond the simple trick of having tracks bleed into each other.
Unlike Japandroids, though, I have blissfully ignored the lyrics to Hospice. I only know that album highlight “Bear” is probably about an abortion, and I’ve read reviews and year-end lists that mention the overarching story of a cancer patient and death and all that gloomy stuff.
But even with subject-matter that wouldn’t play well as a good driving record, Hospice manages to reach cathartic heights I haven’t heard since The Arcade Fire’s Funeral. “Sylvia,” “Bear,” and “Two” have their slow points, which makes their triumphant apexes all the more majestic.
And, like Japandroids and my next-favorite album, the band is apparently a duo. Consider it the Year of the Duo.
3. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
Take former album Street Horrrsing and LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33 and create a synthetic bastard child and somewhere in its angsty teenage years you’ll get Tarot Sport.
Gone is the sometimes-huge disconnect between tracks of the still-brilliant Street Horrrsing and the toy-microphone screaming. Gone is the inner-map-of-the-mind noise-madness that defines the former and, fortunately, keeps it relevant (meaning Tarot Sport is no replacement). Here is, by god, a Fuck Buttons album you could dance to. Here’s an album that goes from the paranoia of “Surf Solar” to something as high-flying as the march-step “Olympians” and spaceship-to-Mars glory of ender “Flight of the Feathered Serpent.” If Street Horrrsing was a way to see inside your mind, Tarot Sport is the world surrounding, in all its chaos and beauty, absolutely seamless from fevered start to breathtaking finish.
4. Why? – Eskimo Snow
I’m usually wary of albums culled from the same sessions as the prior album. How can an educated listener think of them as anything but B-sides? That’s my continued problem with Radiohead’s Amnesiac, which has been called Kid B by many.
But Why?’s Eskimo Snow is the comedown to last year’s Alopecia. Singer Yoni Wolf seems to be either apologizing or embarrassed of the massive guilt-admissions that peppered the band’s 2008 offering, in which Wolf dug down into some ugly shit like, “Sucking dick for drink tickets at the free bar at my cousin’s bar mitzvah / Cutting the punchline ‘cause it ain’t no joke.” Here, he seems more pensive, more guarded, still willing to admit “sporting my ex-girlfriend’s dead ex-boyfriend’s boxers” but unwilling to finish the statement “I need to quit doing all this random fucking,” just letting the anticipated word fizzle after a long-held F (which I thought he’d let rip at their live show, but didn’t).
So sharing the Alopecia sessions is probably the reason for the band releasing two albums in two years. Because of the strength of Eskimo Snow, I might have to revise my opinion of multiple albums culled from single sessions.
5. Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains
Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Why There Are Mountains falls into the sort of space as The Antlers’ Hospice. It doesn’t, however, have any clear singles. Some might point to “Wind Phoenix” as a standout track, but I see it as the long-coming burst after the four-minute build up of “What Dogs See.” And one of the band’s more accessible, stand-alone tracks, “The Living North,” comes at the very end of the album. Not to mention the album starts with “And The Hazy Sea,” a six-minute marathon with as many peaks and valleys as some entire records.
6. Dan Deacon – Bromst
I was talking to my friend Dan Kricke shortly after the leak of Bromst. I was already a big fan, and he was a bit on the fence. “I think what you don’t like about it is that it’s like a bunch of ‘Big Milk’s,” I said, referring to one of the slower, more contemplative tracks on Deacon’s schizophrenic Spiderman of the Rings. It’s arguably true, which may be due to the nature of Deacon using more “analog” equipment, like marimbas and vibraphones and all that stuff that was tucked in the back of the BHS orchestra room. Counter that, though, with the revealing documentary about the making of the album, which shows off Deacon’s new favorite toy: a computer-programmable piano capable of hammering out notes faster than human fingers could possible play.
Still, Bromst is a solid step for Deacon in terms of both his impossibly-complex compositions and his more toned-down, simple melodies. For those who fear change, there’s still “Woof Woof” and “Get Older.” For those thinking Deacon might get locked into his bright-neon-plastic cage, listen no further than the plaintive “Snookered,” which feature vocals by Deacon (“been wrong so many times”) that haven’t been contorted to Woody Woodpecker-esque shrillness, or the beautiful, computerized-piano ending of “Slow With Horns / Run For Your Life.”
7. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
I didn’t really “get” Yellow House until I drove to my parents’ house on a predawn Christmas morning a few years back. Veckatimest, however, seemed poised as that fearful indie promise – a “crossover” record – once “Southern Point” slammed right into “Two Weeks,” which is the first song since Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that I’m pretty sure I’ll have stuck in my head when I’m eighty years old.
There’s been a lot of ballyhoo concerning the album, from the “Two Weeks” Letterman premiere to the album showing up on the Billboard charts its first week to the Jay-Z sighting at a Grizzly Bear show. This all, of course, underscore the fact that it’s a fantastic album that lived up to the hype that the band was piecing together said “crossover” record after the acquired taste of Yellow House (that is, for those who venture outside of repeat listens of “Knife”).
But, like most of the albums on this list, it’s up here because it’s an album-album. Some might download it and delete everything except “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” off their iPod, but I’m in it for the long haul. For me, Veckatimest starts with “Southern Point” and I’m sure as hell not done listening until the gorgeous closer “Foreground” goes silent.
8. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
I guess I’ve fallen into a trap that may or may not have been baited by the Dirty Projectors themselves. Much like the weariness associated with “crossover” records, here is the DP’s “accessible” album.
But other than “Stillness Is The Move” and “Useful Chamber,” what’s so accessible about it, really? Can anyone tell me what time signature most of these songs are actually in? Or how profoundly weird the track “The Bride” is without even hitting the three-minute mark?
After, I suppose, months of trying to figure out all this, the answer came pretty simple: it’s the first record in recent memory in which the singers can actually sing. It’s not just empty prettiness: all that other stuff – the weird guitars, the math-rock beats – keep it interesting. That, and from here to forever, the long-as-hell ending of “Stillness Is The Move” will segue into a beatmatched “Teardrop” by Massive Attack on every mixtape I make for the rest of my life.
Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.
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