JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2011 Edition)

The annual bad-sequencing mixtape series continues. I split it in two: songs off albums that were released 2003 and earlier, and the rest from albums 2004 and later.

Apologies in advance for the frankensequencing on Part 1.

The Best Mix Ever (2011 Edition) (Part 1 of 2)

TRT 1:15:20

1. Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot (Daydream Nation, 1988)
2. Pavement - Gold Soundz (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, 1994)
3. Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time (You Forgot It In People, 2002)
4. My Bloody Valentine - When You Sleep (Loveless, 1991)
5. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1995)
6. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean (Thriller, 1982)
7. Boards of Canada - Roygbiv (Music Has The Right To Children, 1998)
8. Modest Mouse - Gravity Rides Everything (The Moon And Antarctica, 2000)
9. Green Day - Basket Case (Dookie, 1994)
10. The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words (69 Love Songs Vol. I, 1999)
11. Brian Eno - By This River (Before And After Science, 1977)
12. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (Wish You Were Here, 1975)
13. Joy Division - Shadowplay (Unknown Pleasures, 1979)
14. Aesop Rock - Daylight (Labor Days, 2001)
15. Smog - Teenage Spaceship (Knock Knock, 1999)
16. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel (Out of the Shadow, 2003)
17. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (Fever To Tell, 2003)
18. Radiohead - The Tourist (OK Computer, 1997)
19. The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton (All Hail West Texas, 2002)

The Best Mix Ever (2011 Edition) (Part 2 of 2)

TRT: 1:17:27

1. No Age - Everybody's Down (Weirdo Rippers, 2007)
2. TV on the Radio - Staring at the Sun (Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, 2004)
3. The Walkmen - The Rat (Bows + Arrows, 2004)
4. Japandroids - Heart Sweats (Post-Nothing, 2009)
5. The National - All The Wine (Alligator, 2005)
6. Why? - Fatalist Palmistry (Alopecia, 2008)
7. Spoon - The Ghost of You Lingers (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007)
8. Junior Boys - Last Exit (Last Exit, 2004)
9. Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack (Drum's Not Dead, 2006)
10. Frightened Rabbit - Head Rolls Off (The Midnight Organ Fight, 2008)
11. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened (Microcastle, 2008)
12. Wolf Parade - I'll Believe In Anything (Apologies to the Queen Mary, 2005)
13. The Thermals - Power Doesn't Run On Nothing (The Body, The Blood, The Machine, 2006)
14. Jay Reatard - Oh It's Such A Shame (Blood Visions, 2006)
15. Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies) (Funeral, 2004)
16. Battles - Race: Out (Mirrored, 2007)
17. Born Ruffians - Kurt Vonnegut (Red, Yellow and Blue, 2008)
18. Lightning Bolt - Dead Cowboy (Hypermagic Mountain, 2005)

Lightning Bolt is last so if you don't like them, turn it off.

2011 Music: JDK's Best of the Rest - Albums

Instead of straight-up, arbitrarily ranking things or rattling off an alphabetical list, I'm going to do this Technical Oscars-style with esoteric awards that only really apply to one thing. All I'm missing is some pretty broad they usually rope in to host those nerdfests.

Best album that should've made my top five

EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

Simple logic: There's a lot going on here. After the epic, multi-stage opener "The Grey Ship," there's the mostly-spoken-word "California," the beautifully-haunting "Breakfast," the suicide lovesong "Butterfly Knife," and the guarded bombast of closer "Red Star" and its muddy-yet-triumphant guitar line. But most of all, I think I'll have to parse out the lyrics over a year or two before next year's Overlooked 2011 Albums lists. Also, give me this brand of introspection and social commentary over Tune-Yards any day.

Best album that should've made my top six

The War On Drugs - Slave Ambient

I really like this album. That's about it. I imagined it'd play awesome on a road trip but I haven't done one of those in a while. A lot of songs fade out, and I don't like that, and there are a lot of songs that are short instrumental non-songs, which I also don't like. However: If The War On Drugs go from the level of quality of Wagonwheel Blues to Slave Ambient on their Slave Ambient follow-up, we have a Most-Favorite Album of the Year contender.

Best album that should've made my top seven


Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

ONP's move away from Returnal's electro-drone to semi-cinematic instrumentals is quite welcome.

Best album to fall asleep to


Bon Iver - Self-Titled

This is where I'm supposed to give the Bon Iver album obligatory propers. Granted, in the long run I vastly prefer this folky rock over the likes of Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, but my listening trends over the past few years have skewed toward noisier fare. I just can't get behind these kinds of records anymore; but then again, winter has descended upon Minnesota, and this seems as good of a don't-want-to-do-a-fucking-thing cold-as-shit winter-day album as any.

Best mellow album from a band that doesn't usually make mellow albums


TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light

I don't want to fall into the trap of calling NTOL the worst TV on the Radio album simply because it doesn't have any awesome uptempo numbers; "Caffeinated Consciousness" isn't anywhere close to their prior album's "Halfway Home," "Golden Age," "Red Dress," or the angry paranoia of "DLZ." But nothing can be written off that has such solid tracks as "Killer Crane" and "Will Do." The latter makes the case that this is TV on the Radio's "love" album after the visceral Bush-hate on Dear Science (never mind that it was released in Obama's election year). Nonetheless, it's amazing when a band simply lacks the ability to make a bad album.

Second-best road trip album (first being Slave Ambient)


Real Estate - Days

I've been told this album is awesome. Just sounds really slow to me. A summer album that had the misfortune of coming out in late fall. I like it because it laments and debunks nostalgia instead of blindly embracing it. Still having fringe regrets not seeing them at the 400 Bar (probably one of the smallest venues in the metro area); they rocked opening for Deerhunter, and while the drums sound polite on record, their drummer beats the shit out of his kit live. I can imagine that'd elevate "It's Real" from a tight piece to a roadtrip anthem.

Best song-based follow up to a long concept record that many found horrifically depressing


The Antlers - Burst Apart

I've tried and tried and tried but I can't get behind this album to the extent that I gushed over Hospice. And Hospice - outside of a few stand-outs - sounds mostly the same! And nearly every song on Burst Apart sounds different! That's probably why I'm drawn to "Corsicana," the very slow end-of-the-album track that probably best replicates Hospice's glacial pace.

Best collection of songs that has no coherent thesis

Black Lips - Arabia Mountain

This is like a singles collection. Not a problem when there are plenty of songs that get fairly close to the band high-water mark of "Katrina."

Best jury-is-stil-out album / Best 2011 album from a Broken Social Scene alumnus

Feist - Metals

No idea what I'll later think of this. I just rediscovered The Reminder a few months ago, and much like Metals, it's a disparate blend of pretty pop, driving urgency, and alt-country sensibilities. Great sequencing saves these records from sounding like a mess. "Undiscovered Firsts" gets the award for the best build-up of any non-dance song this year.

Best album that I've listened to three times

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

I'm sure reading some interviews or album reviews would help, but I have no idea what either St. Vincent or the album Strange Mercy are all about. All I know is I'm terrified that "Chloe In The Afternoon," the fantastic opening track, is really a euphemism for something that, if I knew what it meant, I wouldn't have nearly as many in-the-car sing-alongs to this.

Best Jay Reatard stand-in

Ty Segall - Goodbye Bread / Singles 2007-2010

I'm lukewarm on Goodbye Bread, but Segall's singles collection exhibit a raw fury that is almost terrifying in terms of its closeness to early Jay Reatard sounds. Let's hope Segall isn't far from making his own version of Reatard's blistering Blood Visions.

Best album which has a cover that looks like an American Apparel ad

Washed Out - Within and Without

Full disclosure: I stole that joke. Also, while I contractually hate everything "chillwave" (I refuse to type that "genre" without putting quotes around it), this album has such a specific, icy vibe that, like Bon Iver, will get a lot of play this winter.

Best Atlas Sound album


Atlas Sound - Parallax

Look out! Bradford Cox found the "cutout" Photoshop filter! Also: James Murphy wants his microphone back.

Like show-buddy Thom said, this year just felt weird without any sort of Deerhunter release. While it's unfair to compare Atlas Sound to Cox's band proper, this is the most Deerhuntery of his Atlas Sound albums. It's also fairly amazing to see how Cox, on his own, has progressed from the weird sound of Let The Blind... to the austere Logos and to the much-more-complete Parallax. 

Best album by a band that has barely changed their sound across four records


Junior Boys - It's All True

I was ready to write off the Junior Boys until I saw them at First Ave. Apparently all of Minneapolis had written them off, since there were only about a hundred people in the entire Mainroom. Their show was a grab bag of all their albums - though only "Teach Me How To Fight" showed up off Last Exit - and I broke my piggy bank getting vinyls of Last Exit, So This Is Goodbye, and It's All True (and Begone Dull Care was absent, sadly). I came home and marathoned them all, and it came into sharp focus that Junior Boys are really fucking good. Miracle: "Last Exit" starting playing on my iTunes right now, and that's definitely my favorite JB song; nothing like that on It's All True, though marathon ending dance track "Banana Ripple" is begging for inclusion on an upcoming Dance Party.

Best challenging sophomore album that might be good, might be shit, don't know yet


Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien

Pick a cover.

Now I know why frontman Joseph "Ferocious" was a tad cagey when I asked him about the sound of their upcoming record (Lenses Alien) when they opened for The Thermals a while back. Reason being is that it sounds like everything. In a good way.

I'll venture out on this limb: I had similar thoughts about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's Some Loud Thunder (unsure if it was worth anything at all), but I'm pretty sure Lenses Alien isn't nearly as fucking terrible as SLT.

Best album of alternate takes that you can't really find anywhere


Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma Alt Takes

I was going to brave all sorts of insanity to pick this up on Record Store Day (a limited-edition 12" compiled from previously-online-only material) but instead found a download. People originally got these tracks - which are indeed alternate takes of Cosmogramma tracks, since FlyLo considers Cosmo his "jazz" album - by using this crazy scanning thing for their purchased Cosmogramma stuff. Even now that I have the Cosmogramma vinyl, I trust my downloaded copy is, more or less, the same.

Not sure why this is even here, since, A) I don't think many Flying Lotus fans read this, and B) If you're a Flying Lotus fan, you already have this. (And if you don't, hit me up and I'll send it to you.)

Best album reconstructed from fifty-year-old master tapes

The Beach Boys - The Smile Sessions

Further proof whenever I get into a pointless argument regarding my assertion that The Beach Boys were better than The Beatles. As their careers progressed, The Beatles got high; Brian Wilson went insane. The Beatles were tripping balls and Wilson was putting a piano in a sandbox and writing "Surf's Up" in only a few hours... while also tripping balls.

What's agonizing about the recovered Smile Sessions is how complete it sounds despite the fact that it is not complete. What would make it fully finished? More of a sound-collage feel, given that there aren't many actual songs here? Something totally left field because Wilson was nuts? Can currently-sane Wilson figure out what then-insane Wilson wanted? Doesn't matter, since I think this closes the chapter on Smile forever. (Disregarding that a lot of people thought the same thing after the Wilson-branded Smile.)

Add it to the unfortunate list of works of capital-A Art that are somehow incomplete, like Welles' original ending of The Magnificent Ambersons, or David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, or Lang's full Metropolis. At least we have a Smile with a 1960s sound instead of Brian Wilson's Smile from a few years ago, which sounds too clean and features a Wilson who can't get anywhere near his 60's-era vocal range.

I'm also probably the only person in the universe who thinks that "Surf's Up" - absolutely mind-blowingly beautifully gorgeous by every measure - would also sound unreasonably amazing covered by Thom Yorke on piano. Hey guys am I rite?

Best tribute album for an album I don't really like that much but a lot of people do

Spin - Newermind (track-by-track covers of Nirvana's Nevermind by various current artists)

Not a big Nevermind fan. Never have been. Probably because grunge turned into shit like Nickelback.

This album, however, is pretty fantastic. There are a lot of imaginative covers, even though my favorite is the not-that-much-different-from-the-original "Breed" by Titus Andronicus. Adding a backing chorus makes anything better.

Best EPs


Burial - Street Halo

Less murky than Untrue, but Untrue has enough murk to last us all the way through the nuclear winter when it finally comes.

Dom - Family of Love

Terrified that Dom - with only two excellent EPs to their name - will release an LP that has, I don't know, filler or something. My love for "Damn" is well-documented, and even for its cheesiness, I enjoy "Happy Birthday Party" far more than necessary.

Phantogram - Nightlife

Phantogram, even after having headlined at First Ave., is still the best band that you don't listen to that your girlfriend will like as much as you do. Take note, guys.

Weekend - Red

Leave it to The Weeknd to think people I'm really into him when I'm really talking about the shoegazy, noisy bliss of Weekend. They started as a sort poor man's A Place To Bury Strangers on their debut LP Sports, but this EP shows that cleaning up their sound reveals that, my god, they can actually write decent tunes.

Best album art

Feist - Metals

It took me a long time to see the woman - Feist, right? - on the tree's lower branch. Give me a million of these instead of goddamn found photographs. And for the sake of my vinyl collection, other bands take note: Listing the band and album title on the art are greatly appreciated.


Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

If you think about the art it, like, will blow your mind and shit.

Mastodon - The Hunter

That beast has not one, nor two, but three lower jaws. Never mind that that'd make eating extremely difficult and that those extra jaws wouldn't do much. Think of it this way: What would you do if you ran into that in the woods? You'd run, my friend. You'd run.

Whenever Mastodon breaks up (and let that not be anytime soon), I'm going to frame all their LP covers because they're capital-A Art. Hell, let me just run them down.


Remission



Leviathan


Blood Mountain


Crack The Skye

(And now we're done with Mastodon.)


Washed Out - Within and Without

Same joke applies as above.

Best albums that didn't come out in 2011

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Said a million times but here it is again: Cosmogramma is so good it makes me want to quite making music. Or, well, trying to make music. 

And if you haven't heard it, don't just cherrypick and listen to the song with Thom Yorke as a guest vocalist. Listen to the whole thing. Then you'll understand.

Slint - Spiderland

Yes, it took me several years to finally realize that this is an amazing album. "Good Morning, Captain" gets all the credit, but I'm far more into the lush "Washer" and band-thesis-statement "Breadcrumb Trail."

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

This album is a party. Apparently the in-the-making-since-'05 follow-up is even more of a party. These guys put Girl Talk and The Hood Internet to shame.

Annie - Anniemal, Don't Stop (retail), All Night EP

(Note: The cover for the All Night EP is a fan-made cover, as All Night originally came as a bonus disc with the retail version of Don't Stop.)

I finally decided to stop using the leak of Don't Stop and picked up the retail version. While originally bummed some of my favorite tracks didn't make the cut, I was very glad to discover the bonus disc / fake EP All Night compiled them.

But Annie? Yep. If you look at my Last.fm stats for my massive Annie listening, it's clustered entirely around the time when I was making the short film Transmissions: Single Again. I had to do the same level of house-clearing as Transmissions proper, and I got into the habit of spinning Annie's whole discography when clearing and un-clearing my shooting locations. Highly recommended.

2012 also might be the year for her third LP proper. If she tours, I'll be in the front row. And only half of that has to do with her being hot.

(Random factoid: I listen to so much Annie during my Single Again shoot that I became one of her top listeners on Last.fm.)

Bear In Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Month

I guess I missed it the first time around. Probably one of my bad habits of picking up pretty anything BNM'd by Pitchfork and highly-rated by the AV Club, giving it one listen, and relegating it to the dusty corners of my iTunes. No longer the case, and it's nice to suddenly get into a band right around the time they should be working on a 2012 album.

That's it for now.

I'll write about 2011 songs some other time.

2011 Music: JDK's Four Most-Favorite Albums and Ten Most-Favorite Songs

I suppose I need to disclaim: I've had my four most-favorite albums of the year known for a few months, and I don't see anything on the December horizon that will radically alter my viewpoint. What else is there besides another James Blake EP? (Never mind that albums always slip through the cracks and get discovered in the next calendar year. In a later posts I'll gush about Flying Lotus's Cosmogramma as one of the most exciting pieces of music in a very long time.)

I also want to have a lead on everyone else's lists (I'm very insecure), though my No. 1 has been forgotten by every outlet the week after its release.

But no: I won't turn this into a shouting match with everyone else out there. This is how I feel about the music in my own vacuum. I also like to eschew the trend of nonetheless-subjective sites labeling these features as Best Of, like their Best is a definitive best. These are my favorites. Me.

So.

My four most-favorite albums of 2011:

1. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Current play count: 87

Highlights: "Bloom," "Codex," "Give Up The Ghost"

The King of Limbs already seems to be the Radiohead album that time forgot. It's probably as easy to make that conclusion because it didn't have the brilliant pay-whatever marketing scheme as In Rainbows (a lesser album that I can deride as Radiohead: Greatest Live Hits, especially with "Nude" and "Videotape" finally showing up in an album proper.)

What I like most about the albums is, for the first time since Kid A, Radiohead has placed far more emphasis on sound than riffs or hooks. The hypnotic loops that open "Bloom" immediate state the aural thesis of the album, and through the band's always-fabulous sequencing, by the time we get to the stripped-down "Give Up The Ghost," it doesn't seem anywhere out of place.

The opening track and most others feature a rather restless drumming style from Phil Selway, so much so that their touring lineup includes a second drummer on his own set. This restlessness points that Radiohead, after almost twenty years as A Big Thing (if you want to go back to 1993's "Creep," which any good Radiohead fan hates but begrudgingly admits allowed the band to record 1995's The Bends), they're still looking for ways to push forward. One, not many bands have been around that long, and two, if they have, they most certainly don't have the same lineup as when they started. Radiohead plays with all its original members, and all songs are attributed to the entire band. It's an idea that seems rather quaint in today's landscape where most bands are known by their frontman or -woman. (Hell, even I get confused with the duo of brothers that comprise the rest of the Matt Berninger-fronted The National.)

While many point to "Lotus Flower" as the album's centerpiece - by its track placement, its status as lead single, its unfortune music video, and the fact that it's the best dance song Radiohead has ever made - I think "Codex" is the real standout. Thom Yorke's fractured lyrics and the EQ-shifting, cascading piano create one of the most gorgeous textures of the year, and it's the only song without a direct narrative that elicited as strong an emotional response (though quite a different response) as last year's epic "Four Score And Seven" by Titus Andronicus. "Codex" paints a vivid, haunting scene: "Sleight of hand / Jump off the end / Into a clear lake / No one around / Just dragonflies / Flying to the sun / No one gets hurt / You've done nothing wrong." Later verses end with, "The water's clear / And innocent." The horns also add a regality to the piece, and the (I assume?) Johnny Greenwood-arranged strings make it seem tepidly optimistic, almost a mirror image of the similar-sounding "How To Disappear Completely" off Kid A.

And "Give Up The Ghost"? The first time I heard that on the very hour the album came out, I was totally blown away. A lot of the In Rainbows excitement was that it was a Radiohead-with-guitars album, and it's fitting that The King of Limbs' penultimate track succeeds brilliantly as an acoustic piece. It was almost surreal to see Yorke and Greenwood pull it off so beautifully on Jimmy Fallon with only two guitars, a loop pedal, and a laptop for the metronomic kick drum. (See it here, which will probably get pulled.)

Radiohead has been a tease by releasing "Supercollider," "The Butcher," and a Live From The Basement cut of "Staircase" separately despite Limbs only running barely over a half-hour. While the Limbs remix series is absolutely gigantic (considering all the alternate versions surfacing that didn't make the 12"), the lyric "If you think is over then you're wrong" off final track "Separator" gave diehards false hope of a second album lurking around the corner. It's a consolation prize, then, that the band claims they're going back into the studio early next year. And while they've acknowledged a desire to move away from concept-based records like OK Computer and Kid A, if The King of Limbs is indicative of the direction they're moving, I'm sure to spend a future date awake in the depths of night, waiting for the downloads to go live in England.

2. James Blake - Self-Titled

Current play count: 40

Highlights: "The Wilhelm Scream," "I Never Learnt To Share," "Limit To Your Love"

Oh, the strange trajectory of James Blake. His 2010 EPs showed his crazy genre-hopping range, and while many fell in love with his self-titled LP because the man revealed he can sing, this is probably one of the weirdest singer-songwriter albums ever made.

I can admit my own history with Blake's first full-length: I got the leak, really liked half of it, joined the backlash, was bored to tears during half his live set (post-show noogies aside), and then discovered how sequencing a double vinyl can really draw attention to the disparate movements of his music.

I lived so long with the MP3s that it was quite refreshing to get the "deluxe" vinyl put out by Polydor UK/Universal. While at-the-head bonus track "Tep And The Logic" is utterly forgettable, it lends a lot of weight to the off-kilter starter "Unluck." The end of side one and the start of side two is the one-two combo of the layers-added-to-layers "The Wilhelm Scream" and strangest-song-of-the-year contender "I Never Learnt To Share," which runs the gamut of Blake's arsenal: his early-20s croon, harmonic vocal overdubs, short-and-to-the-point lyrics, murky synths, keyboard runs, guitar (yes, guitar!), dubsteppy bass, and a bass freakout that, live, is known to shake the foundation of any indoor venue.

And while Feist cover "Limit To Your Love" was made entirely his own by Blake, just knowing it's a cover weakens some of its power; but not as the first track on LP2. Given the delicate nature of the song, it's interesting that Blake decided to unleash the most dubstep-agreeable bass wobble during "Limit." And given his propensity for brief, cryptic lyrics, Blake wisely sings a fraction of Feist's rendition. I'm trying to veer from hyperbole, but it's probably my favorite cover ever. It's one of the few that surpasses the original, like Hendrix's take on "All Along The Watchtower" or that one guy who did The Knife's "Heartbeats" on guitar.

The tail-end of the album looses far too much steam, though, and Blake mostly sits behind his piano and sings pretty. You can draw a line from the end of his LP to recent EP Enough Thunder, which doesn't have much of what originally drew listeners to Blake. The same worry can be projected onto his upcoming December EP, as well as Blake's own comments in interviews that he increasingly feels more creative simply sitting down at a piano and singing.

Not to say I'm writing off Blake completely. That was the thrill of his three EPs leading his self-titled; he's a musical chameleon, and he can do all sorts of crazy shit all by his lonesome. Maybe he'll get into dance music. Or pull a Lil Wayne and start playing guitar onstage. That's what's exciting about a young producer who, with this exposure, has the bankroll to experiment. Regardless of what happens to Blake, next time I see him live I expect the same First Avenue-shaking bass, either from an old track or something new.

3. Battles - Gloss Drop

Current play count: 28

Highlights: "Ice Cream," "Futura," "Wall Street"

Yeah, I'm the guy who didn't like Mirrored. For every "Atlas" or the criminally-short "Leyendecker" or mind-blowing closer "Race: Out," there was something that went absolutely nowhere (and took a hell of a long time going there) like "Bad Trails" or "Tij." Those last two Mirrored cuts seemed like expanded experiments from their hit-and-miss B and C EPs.

So while the departure of "vocalist" and multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton left a hole that furthered Battles' growing pains, Gloss Drop is a far more complete-sounding record than its predecessor. It might lack the sheer unpredictability of Mirrored - to grossly oversimplify, Gloss Drop sounds like walking through a carnival midway in the year 2050… after having dropped acid - and the debate will never end about whether or not it was a good idea to bring it guest vocalists (especially considering how it magnifies the logistical considerations of their live show, which was the best show I saw this year, by the way). But what about the songs?

I can't think of any other album this year that pummels the listener with not one, nor two, but six sequential tracks that rightly earn the suspicion that the members of Battles aren't human. "Africastle" blows up after an austere opening. "Ice Cream" has the best front-end accelerondo in ages, followed by such joyous delirium that EA licensed it for their FIFA 12 commercial (and makes the game seem far more fun than reality). "Futura" might have a 4/4 time signature, but it turns math rock on its head by seamlessly propelling forward what starts as a simple jam into a massive, brooding juggernaut of an instrumental; never mind that legendary drummer John Stainer hits his hi-hat at intervals that may seem random but totally lock the track into place. It's like there's a very complicated equation in his head that determines when he strikes. "Inchworm" is a little slow but by track four we need a breather. "Wall Street" and "My Machines" zoom forward with a hint of the darkness that characterized a lot of Mirrored's moments.

And while I don't intend to trash the entire second half of the record, LP2 doesn't have nearly as much to offer. It took their live show to convince me that "Sweetie & Shag" is a good song, and while it served as their encore, closer "Sundome" seems to have been picked as the last track simply because it's Gloss Drop's longest.

I suppose it's more of a disconnect between the two parts of the album rather than one being good and the other bad. It's like LP1 contains all the singles and accessible material, and LP2 has a fair amount of bold experimentation amid going-nowhere half-songs. Given that "Dominican Fade" runs 1:49, 1:11 for "Toddler," and 2:06 for "Rolls Bayce," it's not a stretch to think that Battles couldn't really come up with a way to extend those concepts. "White Electric" is the second-best song out of the run, and it straddles the line between day-at-the-carnival Gloss Drop and the intergalactic war of Mirrored. Granted, it takes a hell of a long time to build; there isn't a cymbal crash until 3:15, and from there it's an aggressive, moody track that works by itself but seems lost between "Rolls Bayce" and "Sundome."

Battles' uneasy progression gets the same leeway I'm giving James Blake. Gloss Drop is a fantastic musical statement, and while it's doesn’t have the dizzying highs of Mirrored, it's far more on-message about what Battles, as a band, can achieve musically. And, like Blake, who knows what's next? A new member who can hand in larynx-melting yelps like Braxton? An emphasis on guitars? No guitars at all? I think the only solid fact about Battles is John Stanier, who has the indie kingdom's distinction as being a drummer who's the most-famous member of a band. And, seeing him smack that six-foot crash live, he deserves all credit.

(I want to live inside that music video.)

4. Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

Current play count: 7

Highlights: "Queen of Hearts," "The Other Shoe," "Running On Nothing"

Now here we have the wildcard. I think "weird" is this year's theme, and David Comes To Life fits that pretty well. You have Pink Eyes' throat-scalding yells backgrounded by rock-solid instrumentation that isn't anywhere near the sludgy hardcore you'd expect from the frontman's voice. And then you have a hardcore punk band apparently telling a very convoluted story across eighteen tracks that span an hour and seventeen minutes.

That last part is probably why I've only listened to it, in full, seven times.

And will I ever understand the story concept? Will I even look up the lyrics? Nope. The music simply rocks so hard there's no need to look elsewhere for satisfaction.

I guess I sense something about this album. I know I'll play it well into 2012, whereas a lot of my listed 2010 albums have vanished from my playlists (biggest offender: Arcade Fire's The Suburbs). There's energy and passion in both David Comes To Life and Fucked Up (who, unfortunately, might be on the outs after hearing Pink Eyes' comments about his exhaustion with touring), and in the indiesphere these traits are usually swapped out for lifeless loops and cynicism.

Bonus point for using motifs. Haven't heard many of those on solid rock albums in a long time.

(Album version)

(Kids-singing-along version)

Whew.

I'm quite spent, and I still have to tackle my ten most-favorite songs of the year. Some I already covered above, and for the rest I'm going to try to limit them to a single sentence.

Ten most-favorite songs of 2011:

1. Battles - Futura

At 2:14 I love how the doom-and-gloom chords cut out and clear the air before moving onto the next layer of complexity.

2. Radiohead - Codex

Random factoid: When drawing the sketches for Meridien K chapter headers, I drew about ten that were all "scenes" of what this song would look like.

3. James Blake - Limit To Your Love

Also random: James Blake somehow looks quite different in real life than in his music videos. He looks so fragile and brittle in videos but he's a normal dude.

4. The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love?

Obligatory left-field choice, but I can't deny a good four-on-the-floor track.

5. Iceage - White Rune

I just get depressed when I read how young these guys are.

6. TV on the Radio - Killer Crane

"Killer Crane" has the best last nineteen seconds of any song this year.

7. Dom - Damn

(Couldn't find a non-live vid.)

I'm almost afraid for Dom to make an LP after two awesome EPs. Is there such a thing as an EP-only band?

8. Yacht - Shangri-La

Great 2011 lyric: "If I can't go to heaven let me go to LA." Yacht is the most underappreciated band on DFA.

9. Washed Out - A Dedication

Still looking for a slow-dance partner for this track. Love it when the beat comes it.

10. Tune-Yards - Powa

I fucking hate Tune-Yards, but not this song.

So those are the two big categories to get out of the way. I'll whip up another post to cover the rest of notable 2011 music say… next week?