Favorite Albums of 2011 (and Some Stragglers from 2010)

Was 2011 a great year for music? No...I don't think so. If it's been a great year for music (for me, anyway), I have a hard time picking my top 10 albums. Sometimes I have a hard time picking my top 20. This year, I struggled to fill my top 10. It wasn't that there were that few albums that I liked. There were a lot of good albums. There just weren't a lot of great albums. I want my favorite albums of the year to exceed my expectations, not just meet them (even if I have relatively high expectations). So this year, it's just a top 7, + two 2010 albums that I didn't discover until 2011.

7) Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
 When Sam Beam released The Creek Drank the Cradle nearly 10 years ago, he was writing spare wisps of songs. The songs were quiet, but powerful. He could have released a few more albums like that and been remembered as someone who wrote pretty, sad songs--a modern Nick Drake (minus the tragic ending, one would hope). Iron & Wine's second album was actually pretty similar to the first, but then Beam started to evolve. If someone had told me a decade ago that he would release an album like Kiss Each Other Clean, I would have been incredulous. The songs are still powerful, and often still sad, but there's a richness to their sound and production that the early albums lacked. More instruments, more harmonizing, more everything. Sometimes more is less, but it works here. For the record, it did not work for me as well on 2007's The Shephard's Dog. That album seemed like more of an experiment of styles and came out as a bit of a mess. Kiss Each Other Clean is more cohesive. The opening single, "Walking Far From Home", quickly became one of my favorite Iron & Wine songs, but the whole album is highly listenable.

6) Alexander -  Alexander
 Alexander Ebert is better known for his work with Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros and he is a damn hippie. I have a top-40-listening co-worker who calls everything I listen to "hippie music", and though she's wrong about 90% of the time, I have to concede that Alexander is indeed hippie music. Slightly weird (but not that weird), trippy, hippie music. For those not familiar with Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros--and I highly recommend that you do familiarize yourself with them--the closest musician I could compare Ebert to is perhaps Cat Stevens, and probably Yusuf Islam (AKA, Cat Stevens). It's probably partly the beard, but their voices, their message, and their ability to write a good hook are not dissimilar. A fun album that I listened to way more than I expected to when I picked it up on a whim.

5) Say Hi - Um, Uh Oh
Say Hi is a boy named Eric, and he has also been making music for a decade. Eric Elbogen's music--whether under his original moniker, Say Hi To Your Mom, or the more recent Say Hi--has always been a bit spotty for me. Every album has at least a few songs that I really like, but 2006's Impeccable Blahs came the closest to being and album I really loved. On that album, every song was about vampires. Clever! But Um, Uh Oh achieves greatness without a clever gimmick. Every song--really every song--is a perfect little pop gem. Elbogen's formula hasn't changed much. Many of his songs are pretty much all chorus, but you know what? That's the part of the song everyone sings along to anyway. And that's exactly what I do when I listen to this album. I sing along to every song.
4) Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines
I first wrote about Michael Benjamin Lerner's sophomore album back in March, and I kept right on listening to this album all year long. I don't know how many times I have to tell people: listen to this band.

3) St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
My first impression of Strange Mercy was a good one, but after the first listen I honestly didn't think this album would creep into my top 3 albums of the year. But it did. Though some of the songs seemed somewhat jarring at first, I got used to it. As I got used to it, it became clear that this is Annie Clark's strongest work yet.
2) Grouplove - Never Trust a Happy Song
Of the top three albums here, Grouplove is probably the least challenging band to listen to for the casual listener. I wrote about my infatuation with this album earlier this year, and that infatuation has since evolved into a full-on crush. Even if Grouplove disappeared tomorrow--and I hope they don't--I can already tell that this album will be joining a relatively small group to fall into my comfort music classification. The music is not particularly innovative...it's just fun as hell.

 1) tUnE-yArDs - Whokill
I, like most people, am usually doing something else while I'm listening to music. That's not to say that I'm a passive listener, but I'm a busy guy and I need to multitask. So when a song--or in this case, an entire album--makes me stop doing whatever else I'm doing, that's saying something. The first time I listened to Whokill, I was at work. It was a very unproductive 40 minutes. I'm fairly certain I just sat there with my headphones on, grinning from ear to ear, and probably failing to resist the urge to chair-dance in my cubicle. Merril Garbus manages to defy genre, convey her politics, and be incredibly entertaining, all on a single album--often in individual songs. Impressive. Listening to her music, watching her in her videos...I can't remember the last time I saw an artist throw self-consciousness out the window so completely and make it work. This was the girl in high school who danced like a spaz and didn't care what people thought of her. Yeah, she got teased, but the ones who got her really, really liked her.

and from 2010... 
--Allo Darlin' - Allo Darlin' 
Allo Darlin' is sort of the musical equivalent of watching the movie Juno. Now that will either be a selling point or a deal breaker, depending on who you are. For me, it's a selling point. These songs are clever, cute, and catchy, but never cloying. These are songs about love, watching movies, listening to music, and making chili. If I could write songs, these are the songs I would want to write. I think that's the highest compliment I can pay. I would want to write catchy songs that make me happy, and preferably I would like them to be sung by a woman with a pretty voice. Not a beautiful voice. That's an important distinction for some reason. I like a pretty voice, and Elizabeth Morris supplies that. I don't feel like I'm selling this album enough. It's awesome. Please listen to it.

--Carolina Chocolate Drops - Genuine Negro Jig
I initially bought this album because, having lived in North Carolina for 6 years, I really liked the name of the band. Lucky me that the music turned out to be pretty incredible, too. I have heard a member of the band describe their music as "black minstrel".  Not sure what that means exactly, but I generally find that the harder it is to describe a band's sound, the more I like the music. There's certainly an old-timey flavor to these songs, but their mix of old songs from the earlier half of the century, covers of modern tunes (their version of "Hit 'Em Up Style" is amazing), and originals keeps it fresh.

Concert Review: Telekinesis/Blind Pilot/The Broken West/Say Hi

So I actually went to a show last night--possibly my last one before the next bun comes out of the oven. It needed to be a good one, and when I saw that Blind Pilot and Say Hi were playing a double bill at the Middle East (with two Merge artists I'd never heard of), it was a go. It's rare, for me at least, to see four bands in one night and not have at least one of them suck. There was no suckage last night, so...yay! The breakdown of the sets:

Telekinesis
I nearly bumped into Michael Benjamin Lerner, the man behind Telekinesis, in the bathroom right before his band's set. An apparent Telekinesis fan started chatting him up while he was peeing, and for a guy who's clearly new at this indie rock pseudo-fame thing, he handled the situation well. Lerner is clearly a nerd, but he's a nerd who can rock your socks off, and I can dig that. Though he wrote and performed all the music on his forthcoming debut album, he (wisely) brought along a band for the tour. Lerner himself played drums and sang, which you just don't see all that much. The rest of the band was capable, if slightly bored looking. Lerner pretty much made up for that lack of energy all by himself however, and was the quintessential "I'm just so happy to be here" guy. The songs were punchy little numbers, and almost too short. Just as you were getting into them, they were over and the next song started. All in all, it was a fun set. I put a lot of faith in Merge, arguably one of the best indie labels out there, and I think they've got a potential winner here. Though sadly, the band has thus far failed to move a single object with the power of their collective minds.

Just a side note, I've never seen such a petite bass player. Seriously, her bass guitar was nearly as big as she was. She was also very cute, and I'm pretty sure my single friend didn't stop looking at her for the entire set. But for real, she could have fit inside her own bass case.

Blind Pilot
This was the band I was most looking forward to, and they met and surpassed my expectations. Blind Pilot is or was originally just two dudes, Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski , but the band that got on stage last night was much more than that. When six people get on a stage and start tuning their trumpet, standing bass, vibraphone, banjo, ukulele, mandolin, etc, then one tends to be wary. Too many wacky instruments can lead to a big ol' mess if not done correctly. But this band pulled it off with aplomb, and they enhanced the music from what was already an excellent album. I wish could find out the name of the woman who played the banjo, uke, and dulcimer (and on one song, the drums), because like The Dude's rug, she really tied the room together. The banjo, so often a scorned instrument, meshed remarkably well with the songs. This group had clearly been playing together for a while, and they seemed to be sincerely enjoying what they were doing. Even the banter was good.

They pretty much played most of the songs from their one and only album, as well as a few new ones (sorry I don't keep track of playlists like certain other bloggers, but I'm just too lazy). The new songs were great, and I sincerely hope it means another album is forthcoming. I also hope the album is recorded with this band. If so, I predict Blind Pilot is going to be on the radar of a lot more people in the next couple years.

Here's a video of the closest thing I could find to what I heard last night:


The Broken West
I probably have the least to say about this band. It's not that they were bad, but Blind Pilot was just a tough act to follow. Another Merge band, the music was pretty solid, but I was completely unfamiliar with the songs and I couldn't tell you what a single one of them was about. Stylistically, they reminded me of The Figgs, a band I really enjoy listening to when I hear them, but not a band I actively seek out very often. Good stuff--not great stuff--but good stuff. I kind of had the feeling they were having an off night though...I think they only played about 5 songs, then suddenly they were done with nary a "goodnight and thanks for coming." Kinda weird.

Say Hi
I just blogged about Say Hi's newest album the other day, and that post pretty much summarizes how I feel about the band. I didn't have super high expectations for their set, but I wanted to stick around for a band I'd been listening to off and on for years. Much like Telekinesis, the band that's actually touring with them right now, Say Hi is essentially a one man show, with Eric Elbogen recruiting whoever's handy for his tour band. Elbogen played his new album sequentially from start to finish, which was fine, I guess. I understand The Decemberists are doing that with their new album on the current tour, but that's a concept album, so it's a bit more understandable. As far as I can tell, Oohs & Aahs is not a concept album, so why play it like it is? At least they wrapped up with two of my favorite songs from my favorite album, "These Fangs" and "Sweet Sweet Heartkiller" from Impeccable Blahs.

Two things I found myself thinking about during their set. One, Eric Elbogen looks exactly like how I'd imagine Jay Sherman's son looking like, all grown up. Have no idea who Marty Sherman is? Here:

Yes, I am a pop culture geek. Two, and more importantly, I never really appreciated the odd structure of most of Say Hi's songs: they're all chorus. Whereas most songs are "Blah blah CHORUS blah blah blah CHORUS blah blah blah CHORUS" (wow, you can tell I never had any formal music training), Say Hi's songs are more like "Blah CHORUS CHORUS blah CHORUS CHORUS CHORUS CHORUS" full stop. In other words, it's like Elbogen stumbles upon two or three lines that sounds really good and just runs with it, generally unconcerned about whether or not they can or should be considered a real song. This is kind of a backhanded complement I suppose--I do genuinely like a lot of his songs. But they're simple. Some of them are REALLY simple. But any good ear worm has to be.

Mini Music Reviews, March 2009 Edition

So I've actually been listening to a ton of music the past few months. I wish I had time to write at length about every album--not that many people care about my opinion, but because sometimes I'm really not sure how I feel about an album until I put my thoughts into words. I'm going to try to catch up on a few albums of note that I've been listening to...some are old, some are quite new. In the interest of time, both mine and any readers, I'll keep'em short, and even throw a letter grade in there for easy reference.

Heartless Bastards - The Mountain
Listening to Erika Wennerstrom's voice is like taking a warm swig of good bourbon. It's smooth, but simultaneously has a bit of an edge to it. The songs here aren't quite as catchy as those on their previous albums, but I keep coming back to this CD even though I've had it a couple of months now. It's been a good winter warmer and it's a decent addition to this underrated band's discography. B+

Unbunny - Sensory Underload
This was a 2008 album, but I picked it up relatively recently, and I'm glad I did. The only band I could really compare Unbunny to is maybe Grandaddy. The songs are short, fairly lo-fi for the most part, and really catchy. I like nearly every song here (though "Water and the Spanish Tongue" and "Mandi" are stand-outs), and I find myself putting this on a lot considering it was an impulse buy. I'm even surprising myself a bit by giving it a solid A.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
I'm always hesitant to get the next Animal Collective album because I think they're consistently overrated by music critics, particularly the Pitchforkians. That said, I think this is one of their more accessible efforts and I'm glad I picked it up. Still not something I could to listen to frequently, but I'll listen to it more than pretty much any other Animal Collective album. B

Ben Kweller - Changing Horses
Kweller kind of blew his load on this one when he released the EP, How Ya Lookin' Southbound? Comein..., last year. Pretty much all my favorite songs from Changing Horses were on that EP, so the full length effort was a bit of a let down. There's nothing wrong with the other songs, but they strike me as a bit more disposable. So why not just dispose of them and go with the EP? C+

A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
This was my first Newman album outside The New Pornographers, and though it doesn't rate as high as any given TNP album, it's still pretty good. It's been a bit of a slow burn for me, and I definitely like the second half of the album better than the first (particularly "The Palace at 4 A.M.", "The Changeling (Get Guilty)", and "All Of My Days And All Of My Days Off"). But man, this guy knows how to write a quick little pop song. B+

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
And speaking of New Pornographers. I rarely use the adjective "sexy" to describe anything, but Case's voice is pretty damn sexy. I could almost listen to her sing the phone book. Instead I get to hear her sing some interesting covers and several quirky originals. The oddness of these songs--such as singing from the point of view of a tornado or tiger--is probably what is keeping Case from going more main stream. Oh well. The indie crowd is happy to keep her to ourselves for a while. A-

Clem Snide - Hungry Bird
I confess that I've only listened to this album once, and perhaps my expectations were too high. Clem Snide has put out some of my favorite albums over the past decade, and they were supposedly broken up as of a few years ago with front man Eef Barzelay pursuing a solo career. This album was apparently salvaged from some of their older stuff, and I kind of wish it hadn't been. Barzelay can write songs that are dour or witty (or if we're lucky, both), but the bulk of these songs lean towards the dour alone and it grew tiresome. I'd say better luck next time, but I doubt there will be a next time. I'm bummed that one of my favorite bands wrapped things up on such a sour note. D+ (the "+" is for old times sake)

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
I'm so not the target audience for this album, and I'm honestly surprised that I like it as much as I do. Here are a few possible reasons why. She's profane. Unlike Britney Spears dancing around being naughty with a song on her last album called "If U Seek Amy", Allen just comes out with a song called simply, "Fuck You." Her songs can be funny, like "Never Gonna Happen", and they can be sweet, like "Chinese." Or maybe I just like her accent. Whatever the reason, I'm giving it a B+.

Bishop Allen - Grrr...
Another one I haven't listened to all that much, but a bit of a let down after The Broken String, which I really liked. I definitely need to give this one some more play time, but so far only a few songs have jumped out at me as particularly good, and I can't say anything's great. So far, only a C+



Say Hi - Oohs & Aahs
Say Hi (formerly Say Hi to Your Mom) is always a little hit or miss. Usually, I like about 1/3 to 1/2 of an album and the rest is just meh. Sometimes I like the whole album, like Impeccable Blahs, but the last album, The Wishes and the Glitch, didn't do much for me at all. Happily, I can say that this latest album falls into the 2/3 very good category. Maybe I just have to be in the right mood for a Say Hi album, but it's undeniable that Eric Elbogen can write a hook like nobody's business. I might also just be getting my own hopes up because I'm seeing the band live for the first time in a few days. Maybe I'll get sick of this album sooner than later, but for now it gets an A-.