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December 27, 2008

ANDYTOWN'S TOP 15 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

ANDYTOWN'S TOP 15 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR:

FYI - here is last year's list.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Cat Power, JUKEBOX; Patti Smith, TWELVE; Glen Campbell, MEET GLEN CAMPBELL; Al Green, LAY IT DOWN; Of Montreal, SKELETAL LAMPING; Gnarls Barkley, THE ODD COUPLE; British Sea Power, DO YOU LIKE ROCK MUSIC?; Aimee Mann, @%!# SMILERS; She & Him, VOLUME ONE

- On these: I'm a sucker for cover albums, like Cat and Patti, and so hearing Glen Campbell sing "Time of Your Life" is not just a gulity pleasure, it's an event. British Sea Power and Of Montreal always get better on more listens - so don't be surprised if I'm singing their praises more than some I included on the list. Aimee Mann's latest is more breakup stuff, which is delicious (if unspectaculary gravy for fans like me. If you haven't seen her often hilarious Christmas Carol, you should. Gnarls may be the most fun act alive. She & Him features the surreally cute Zooey Deschanel, and thus deserves special mention.

ALBUMS I DIDN'T LIKE AS MUCH AS THE REVIEWERS:

Fleet Foxes, FLEET FOXES; Vampire Weekend, VAMPIRE WEEKEND; Portishead, THIRD; TV on the Radio, DEAR SCIENCE

- A few words on these; I needed to give FLEET FOXES a few more listens. Nothing about "African tribal rhythms" makes me excited, and while there are several catchy songs on here, I picture Vampire Weekend enjoying a future album with "special appearance by Jack Johnson." I liked listening the noises Portishead made on their computer . . . the one time I listened to it. DEAR SCIENCE was something of a letdown after the transcendent RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN. Also, I should note that I was very excited about Beck's new album, and was only mildly disappointed when it was only good, and not great.

Special mention:

If you haven't checked out my friends at Bifrost Arts you need to. Even if you, like Nietzsche, have contempt for Jesus, you can't help but be impressed by these remarkable arrangements. Fans of Sufjan's xmas albums (and there are many) should appreciate the occasionally baroque, always interesting stylings of COME O SPIRIT. I am impressed (and jealous) that two people I know have put this together. Some of my favorites contribute - Dave Bazan, Sufjan, Isaac Wardell. Go to their myspace page and check out the title track, Come O Spirit - easily one of the best songs of the year.

TOP 15

(All the links were working when I added them . . . click on them to see them in Youtube.)

While this year did not see as many truly terrific albums as last year, I found fifteen worthy of mention. I don't know that my number one would make my top 5 from last year, but all these albums receive frequent rotation on my Ipod.

15. Bloc Party, INTIMACY

After the triumph of WEEKEND IN THE CITY, INTIMACY is neither as intimate as you'd want it to be or the continued ascension that WEEKEND would suggest for a band clearly working at a high level. Bloc Party continues to sing with a political-punk intensity that reminds you why they matter with each howling lyric, each rising chord. A song like "Mercury" is bold, at home on an album like KID A, and welcome in any club scene. This is the worst album by the Bloc, but they still continue to be a volatile, energetic group who continues to rock in interesting ways.

14. Dr. Dog, FATE

I am including an album I really don't like all that much in my top 15 . . . no album perplexes me as much as FATE, which should be better than it is. There are more awesome moments here than any album of the year, but there are also more irritating choices. I wish Dr. Dog could decide who they want to be, because on FATE they apparently want to be about five different bands. Still, I listened to this album a lot; its unevenness often as transfixing as it was frustrating.

13. David Byrne & Brian Eno, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS MUST HAPPEN TODAY

Despite the Talking Heads undisputed status as my favorite band ever, nothing David Byrne has done in his solo career is very interesting to me. I've heard tracks I like, but the only non-Heads work Byrne has done that intrigues me is his stunning Heads-era production with Eno MY LIFE IN THE BUSH WITH GHOSTS. Back together again, EVERYTHING is nothing of the ambient, tribal powerhouse of LIFE, which features some of the most remarkable sounds ever assembled. But what Byrne and Eno came together for recently was to produced a kind of companion piece to the late-period Heads, poppier efforts like NAKED and TRUE STORIES. Full of Byrne's trademark wit and Eno's inimitable production skills, and songs like "Strange Overtones" are definitely worth including on a "Best of Byrne" mix.

12. The Raconteurs, CONSOLERS OF THE LONELY

Continuing to be my favorite Jack White effort, the Raconteurs combine the White Stripes avant-garde stylings with a Big Star-inspired power-pop sound. Like its superior predecessor, BROKEN BOY SOLDIERS, Benson and White continue to form one of the oddest but most successful two-headed teams, and CONSOLERS is proof that their collaboration is a good one.

11. Brian Wilson, THAT LUCKY OLD SUN

After the redefining triumph of the SMILE rerelease in 2004, we all though Wilson would walk into the sunset and possibly return to some dark bedroom with a glass of wine and a bottle of pills. But Wilson's first new work in years (done with SMILE collaborator Van Dyke Parks) reminds us why he is the greatest genius in the history of pop music (hello hyperbole! But it's true). The early Beach Boys wrote about surfing and the sun in the least introspective of terms: girls, sand, waves . . . it reflected the immediacy of a scene. SUN is retrospective, and reminiscent of the excellent 70s efforts like SURFS UP and HOLLAND, its closest forebearer with its use of spoken word. Like HOLLAND, SUN is nostalgic and a bit sad, but still celebrates a place and a thing. I wish more people would hear this album.

10. Eef Barzelay, LOSE BIG

I saw Eef live in June, and he remains my favorite singer/songwriter. He is certainly the funniest, and he makes his bitterness subjective - there's no anger at the world, just at situations that usually revolve around himself. While his 2006 release, BITTER HONEY, was truly a solo effort (removed from Clem Snide, who may be my favorite band), LOSE BIG is like a Clem Snide album without Clem Snide. It isn't as pared down, as the sparseness that characterized the goofy, bittersweet ballads on BITTER HONEY is replaced by something a little more foot-tapping. We've seen both sides of the spectrum since Eef decided to start recording under his own name . . . I'm really curious to see what he'll do next. Interestingly, the last song on the album is my favorite CS song ever, "I Love The Unknown."

9. Magnetic Fields, DISTORTION

This is the most accurate title of the year. Stephin Merritt's hyper-literate (gay) break-up music continues to be a genre unto itself. Full of feedback, scratches, guitars that sound like they need to be tuned, he has really matched to form to his theme. I like the Fields because they go for it with concepts that make fun of the idea of concepts - whether it be an album full of songs that start with I, or the remarkable 69 LOVE SONGS. DISTORTION may be the best album they've put out.

8. Destroyer, TROUBLE IN DREAMS

"Prominent scars brought us together
beneath the light of the moon
It's not too soon
Flower-girl stalks the groom
A degenerate drunk on war,
grace should guide me Misty Poets
Introducing Angels
Introducing Angels"

TROUBLE IN DREAMS could be an extension of my favorite album of 2006, DESTROYER'S RUBIES. Bejar remains the most poetic of songwriters; his lyrics invoke ridiculous comparisons to really good poets.

7. Guns N' Roses, CHINESE DEMOCRACY

You're probably surprised this isn't higher. I've talked enough about this.

6. Weezer, THE RED ALBUM

I continue to be the only person I know who loves this album as much as I do.

Enjoy that last sentence. I wrote about it here. I could listen to "Heart Songs" for 24 hours straight. Like the Beach Boys did in the 70s, Weezer is imagining a world where they were never headlining anything, and got to sit back and watch without their engulfing ever-present celebrity. I listen to this and wonder if I heard a different album than all the critics who so openly panned it. Because it's my favorite Weezer album since their debut, and I realize I'm passing over the acceptable "masterpiece" of PINKERTON, the only Weezer album never to hit mainstream popularity which therefore makes it their best. THE RED ALBUM finds the powerpop of MALADROIT and MAKE BELIEVE at a crossroads with early songs like "In the Garage" and "The World Has Turned And Left Me Here." I think there are folks who want them to choose one or the other, and I'm fine with the schizophrenia. It seems to fit River Cuomo, one of those rare masterminds whose art and personality seem to dissolve into each other.

5. The Walkmen, YOU & ME

Besides that odd note-for-note remake of PUSSYCAT DOLLS, The Walkmen keep growing, making more exciting sounds, without every really compromising who they are or changing who they were. Hamilton Leithauser continues to sound like Bob Dylan's less-talented, less-intelligent (but better looking and less image-obsessed) brother, but the band behind him is dedicated to making a gloriously loud and intriguing noise.

In their relatively laudatory review of the album, Pitchfork has an apt summation of the band, "On both record and onstage, the Walkmen have always reached for the rafters-- often at the risk falling on their collective faces or completely overshadowing their moodier material." YOU & ME doesn't reach for the rafters, but it also tends to explode into passionate bursts that defy the ethos of the album: what is supposed to be a relatively subdued affair end ups transcendent by the sheer force of personality of the Walkmen. I know a lot of Walkmen fans thinks BOWS & ARROWS is the defining moment for the group, but I'll stand by YOU & ME with its sparse and haunting melodies, and look forward to what comes next.

4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, DIG!!! LAZARUS DIG!!!

Once again, Australia's best-read former heroin-junkie/punk rocker digs into his bag of literary and Biblical allusions to produce a funny, compelling, insightful album - only unlike his other post 2000 efforts (and pretty much everything he's produced in collusion with Warren Ellis), this one really rocks. Last year's side project, Grinderman, backed away from the sensitive, smart guy image Cave has been grooming for the last decade, at least since the grimy and unrepentant MURDER BALLADS made him the poster-boy for wayward goth kids and Irish academics. Grinderman was an onslaught of angry masculinity that seemed directed at no one in particular, and (depending on how you look at it), it's either a guilty pleasure or fuel for the fire.

But DIG!!! combines the Cave who wants to be seen contemplating a bust of Orpheus with the guy dedicated to mocking the rules. "We Call Upon The Author" is anthemic, an informed and often hilarious attack on intellectual culture, and the title track could define Cave's icon - Lazarus comes back from the grave only to rediscover all the sin the world has to offer. Where in THE BOATMAN'S CALL, Cave decided to show both the problems and absolute necessity of faith, here he mocks himself for believing in anything at the same time as he refuses to believe in nothing.

In a typical move at once pompous and awesome, Cave invokes the Lotos Eaters, turning both Tennyson's poem and Homer's lazy loafers into some furious story about a relationship that doesn't work and a drug that just might. This is why I love Nick Cave.

3. The Hold Steady, STAY POSITIVE

I resisted the Hold Steady at first; I don't know why. Something about the Craig Finn's voice reminded of that weird guy from the Crash Test Dummies. I kept expecting Bruce Springsteen to pop out and tell them to stop stealing his act from the 70s. I've since grown to love them, and STAY POSITIVE is proof that they are playing some of the best bar music that exists. Of all the albums on the list, this is the latest one I've discovered, and I listen to it about eight times a week. As the AV Club notes, it's a record "for blasting and getting blasted."

The Springsteen comparisons are fitting, and not at all detrimental. They invoke the same good-time sense of doom of the best songs the boss sang before he heard Suicide and decided to make music without the signature of the E Streeters. The infective piano and happy guitars bely a sense of meaninglessness that can be escaped at the same time as it confines . . . you don't have to tell me about being (as the second best on the album tells us) "Sequestered in Memphis."

There are those who will say STAY POSITIVE is not a breakthrough, and that's probably because it isn't a departure. But I think they do here better than what they did on the excellent BOYS IN GIRLS IN AMERICA. Making the best bar music imaginable, and doing it with an intelligence that often goes unnoticed.

2. The Headlights, SOME RACING SOME STOPPING

I saw The Headlights open for my friend's band (the cool and sadly defunct This is Goodbye) in the Young Avenue Deli in Memphis. Immediately, I knew they would one day achieve some level of success, or at least some really excellent album, and SOME RACING SOME STOPPING is that album. Lead singer Erin Fein sings with unapologetic melodic glee over songs that only occasionally hint at a loneliness that could possibly be erased by pop music. The effortlessly poppy "Cherry Tulips" should be stolen for a terrible romantic comedy any day now, probably over a montage where the two come to discover some phony love for each other, and it will be the best thing about this wretched, currently-unproduced movie. The arrangement of this song reveals a joy of making music, and the hope that such music can inspire.

Which isn't to say that this is merely a perfect album to make the CD changer at the Gap (though apparently it has) - the anxieties are drowned by those pretty melodies, by Fein's chameleon voice which blends perfectly into each song. Adored by several, but relatively unknown, I hope that SOME RACING SOME STOPPING becomes your next Itunes purchase.

1. Spiritualized, SONGS IN A&E

Jason Pierce has already created a cult that, on a microcosm scale, Morrisey might be jealous of. Spacemen 3 are godfathers of about five different genres, and Spiritualized emerges to remind everyone they exist every so often. Pierce resists the cult by disappearing into other projects, but Spiritualized offers him the front-man job he sometimes resist, but clearly deserves.

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN WE ARE FLOATING IN SPACE may remain the defining Spiritualized album, and with good reason, but SONGS IN A&E is clearly his most personal work. Written during or after the long stint Pierce spent in the Accident and Emergency Ward because of respiratory failure (hence A&E), these SONGS form an at-times magical concept album about the cruel divide between passionate and unrequited love. Pierce competently works in a variety of noises (church bells, computer sounds) that enhance rather than distract, and the harmonies form touching chapters in between the songs that wear the influences of Pierce's friends and idols in every second (Springsteen, Daniel Johnston).

Critics raved about SONGS when it came out, but it's been noticeably absent on the year end best lists. But in a year when bands repeated themselves to good effect, I'm going with the ambitious power-drive of A&E as the best of the year.