You know it's been a decent year for music when some of my favorite artists release albums that don't even crack my own top 20. Missing the cut this year, but just barely: Liars, Air, Mum, Bjork, Super Furry Animals, Paul McCartney, Suzanne Vega. Bjork! BJORK didn't make the list! I am amazed at myself. Here we go, literally counting down:
20. Six Organs of Admittance - Shelter From the Ash - I don't hear Six Organs of Admittance mentioned enough in discussions of either post rock or psych folk. They make a lovely hybrid of both. Ben Chasny is also underrated as an indie rock guitar god. Chasny's been churning out fairly good albums fairly consistently every year since 2001, and Shelter From the Ash is another fine collection of drone-based psychedelic acoustic guitar workouts. Also, check out that wild crazy psychedelic cover art!
19. The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City - I saw the Fiery Furnaces live for the second time this past June (I wrote about the first time, if you recall, here). Even having seen them before, I was unprepared for the total mindfuck that I witnessed. They didn't so much deconstruct their own back catalog as slaughter it, rip it limb from limb, and create an ungodly Frankenstein monster out of the parts. If the songs were nearly unrecognizable before, they were completely unrecognizable now, able to be discerned only by listening carefully to the lyrics. I mention it now because it sets up how weird an experience Widow City is. On one hand, it's a fairly simplified version of the Furnaces' trademark insanity, featuring some calm, straightforward songs that actually wait for the next track to start before veering off on a hairpin turn toward something completely different. On the other hand, it's got some of the only music ever recorded that approximates the careening freight train that is their live show. It sounds like something a live band could actually play, mostly due to the fact that Matthew Friedberger's assault of multi-tracked splatty synthesizers and organs has largely been reduced down to a relatively basic lineup of guitar, bass, drums, and, um, mellotron (I said RELATIVELY basic). It makes for some surprisingly simple rock songs ("Duplexes of the Dead") and some insane prog-rock freakouts ("Clear Signal From Cairo"), and most importantly, a sign that the Fiery Furnaces are evolving, however slowly. And they can go as slow as they want as long as they keep making good music.
18. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky - I guess this is Jeff Tweedy's rehab album or something, I don't know. It took me awhile to realize that it was subtle, not simply boring. Unfortunately, a lot of people never got that far. There are plenty of keepers here, though, even if none of them provide the heart-rending devastation of, say, "Reservations." But Christ, I'm not listening to Paul McCartney's new stuff expecting to hear "Hey Jude" either, I can forgive Wilco if they never make another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as long what they do make is still good. A Ghost is Born wasn't (at least I didn't think so); Sky Blue Sky is.
17. The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army - Up until this album, pretty much every Polyphonic Spree song could have been called "Sure, Life is Bad Sometimes, BUT YOU ARE AWESOME!" And I would have been ok with that. I would probably have paid to hear that song 12 times every two or three years as long as they wanted to keep making it, because it was great, but now there's this whole "army" concept we've got to deal with, and the technicolor dream robes were ditched in favor of black fatigues. Clearly the new album would prove to be darker and more confrontational, and... oh, come on. When I saw them in June, they wore the fatigues, but by the time the encore came around (which ended up being almost as long as their set), and they wove their way through the crowd to retake the stage, they were back in their old robes. They're still the Polyphonic Spree, they're still just peachy as can be, except now there's some sort of nonsense about marching to take on the world and unite it with love, or some such thing. As with their previous two albums, you'll either love it or hate it, but they're still the same old, huge, bombastic, psychedelic, pompous, subtle-as-a-brick, anthemic, Polyphonic Spree.
16. Kanye West - Graduation - It turns out that being the world's biggest rap star isn't enough to keep Kanye West from being cripplingly insecure sometimes, which is no surprise to anybody who's heard about his various antics at awards shows and other stuff that would suggest that Kanye is a Grade A jerk. Luckily for us, he spins that insecurity into some Grade A pop music. Compelling lyrics and indelible tracks: it's another good Kanye West album.
15. Gruff Rhys - Candylion - Gruff Rhys eats sunshine for breakfast and poops out sweet li'l melodies at night. See earlier review.
14. Robert Wyatt - Comicopera - If you need a little history lesson, Robert Wyatt started his career as the drummer for 60s psych-proggers The Soft Machine. In 1973, he fell from a third story and suffered a spine injury, and was paralyzed from the waist down. This pretty effectively ended his career as a drummer, but it started him in a second career as a solo artist, making some very strange and very sad music. This one fits right in. Ol' Rob is still pissed at the world, and very insecure sometimes, it would seem, and... there are some songs in Spanish, and I don't know what those are about, but it's all still a sad, strange, but lovely affair.
13. Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust - These guys make it sound easy at this point. It's a particular brand of that peculiar genre called "post-rock" that actually exudes warmth and spontaneity, and even song structures that don't go exactly where you expect them to every single time (I'm looking at you, Explosions in the Sky). This one is so laid back that it could pass as folk music if it wasn't so deafening from time to time. Do Make Say Think: still the kings of the "post-rock" mountain.
12. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver - Now this is more like it: a cohesive and solid LCD Soundsystem album. I'm nominating these guys (or this guy, I don't know how much of this stuff is just James Murphy blah blah blah) for the most improved award. If they'd have dropped the last song on the album this could have cracked the top 10. As it is, it's still one of the few album-length achievements that make me believe that "dance music" is a concept worth exploring.
11. Caribou - Andorra - Every time Dan Snaith makes an album he drifts further away from electronica and more toward psychedelic pop, and with Andorra, the transformation would seem to be complete. This is an album of bright, lushly arranged, gorgeous pop music, as thoughtful in the winding nature of its songs as in its ornate instrumentation. Snaith's knack for great melodies shines in a way it never has before, and for a guy who made his name as an electronic producer, this sounds amazingly like it could have been released in the 60s and filed next to a Soft Machine or Tomorrow album (obscure 60s name-dropping music nerd alert! Also I just read the above writings and realized that this is two Soft Machine references in one post, a new record.).
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