Year End List

I've been gearing up for this year end list for the past couple months, and I realized something: I can decide which records are my favorite, but I can't decide at all how to rank them. Also, I don't pretend to have listened to every album that came out this year. Some of the albums that everyone is going on about (i.e. Beach House's Teen Dream; Crystal Castles) almost entirely escaped my stereo this year. That's what next year is for.

GOOD

The National - High Violet
At first, I couldn't get into this record because it seems more like a collection of greatest hits than a proper album, then I realized that wasn't a bad thing. Every song is good enough to be a single, even though it's all as depressing as all get out.

Broken Bells - s/t
I love the Shins. I also love Danger Mouse. So when I heard that they had gotten together and recorded this spacey pop record with lusher atmospheres than either had ever made, I was already a fan. And when I listened to it, I wasn't disappointed at all.

M.I.A. - /\/\ /\ Y /\
M.I.A. is not a stranger to politically charged take-no-prisoners pop. She's just never been so brutal or so brave before.

Jonsi - Go
Sigur Ros has, for the past eleven years, been the go to band for orchestral hymns to the beauty and despair of what it means to be alive. So what happens when the lead singer is removed for a solo project? The same hymns, only faster and more playful, but on occasion, just as crushing. Like Thom Yorke's Eraser, this is a solo project that isn't as surprising as much as it is welcome.

Gayngs - Relayted

After two releases from Bon Iver and his work in Volcano Choir, I'm convinced that everything Justin Vernon touches is gold. Relayted is an excellent example, because it shouldn't have worked at all. Eleven songs of 69 BPM soft rock doesn't exactly sound awesome, but it is. Trust me.

BETTER

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Admittedly, I didn't give this as much of a listen as it deserves, but I still recognize it as a wonderful record. It says a lot about a band when they can release a great album that can be taken for granted. This is a fitting addition to Arcade Fire's already legendary discography.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
I first fell in love with Deerhunter for their atmospheric, ghostly noise rock with a strange sounding pop song emerging from the haze every few minutes. Here, the rock is considerably less noisy and their pop song is perfected. This is a record that sounds like it wished it was still the sixties, while being tragically connected to the present.

Spoon - Transference
Spoon is just plain good. And even though Transference has an unfinished quality to it, it's just as cohesive as anything else they've released.

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
Any time this huge group of people from every good band in Canada get together to record, the result is wonderful. This is indie rock from the guys who wrote the text book.

MGMT - Congratulations
Just about everyone I know hated this record, and I understand why. It's not an easy thing to make a record that you know will alienate your accidentally acquired fanbase, even if it's an incredible record. Here, MGMT harkens back to the psychedelia of the Doors and Syd Barret era Pink Floyd without sounding like a rip off.

BEST

Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
At some point during the funk barrage of the first three proper songs, you'll ask yourself, "Has Janelle Monae really not heard any music released since 1977?" But as you hear the punk rock pulse of "Come Alive" or the Britpop of "Oh, Maker," or the indie rush of "Cold War," you'll realize that she's heard just about everything that's been released since then, and somehow made an album that influence-drops James Brown and Jack White in juxtaposed tracks while still sounding cohesive. Also, it's a concept album about a messianic android that falls in love, but it's subtle enough that you wouldn't notice the first few times through.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
Dance music, as a genre, has a pretty fundamental flaw in that there's not really too much you can do within its boundaries of 4/4 beats and synthesizers, which is why most of it sounds like mindless pop music. This Is Happening is what dance music sounds like with a brain. And a heart. A lonely, contemplative, sarcastic heart.

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
How does Kanye West top a year of putting his foot in his mouth and acting the fool? By dropping the biggest and best rap album of his career. One listen will remind you that Kanye West is Kanye West, and no one does any of it better than Kanye West.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
It's no coincidence that the newest Gorillaz album found the animated live shows being replaced by live action performances featuring a huge crowd of performers, including Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, the Clash's Mick Jones and Paul Simon, legends Jeff Beck and Bobbie Womack, and in the center of the hugeness, Damon Albarn, who has been the hidden puppet master of the group all along. It's like in Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled and you see the real Wizard, only the man behind the curtain is bigger and more powerful and even more brilliant than you imagined in the first place.

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
When I was living in Chicago last summer, I came across three new Sufjan Stevens songs on YouTube that were unlike the Sufjan I knew before. They were glitchy, frantic, hugely long, and beautiful. Since that first listen, I had waited for any news on a new album like a puppy waiting for his owners to come home with dinner. When All Delighted People came out in the fall, I was disappointed to find those three tracks missing. But when he said, "But wait, there's more! New full length in a month!" I waited again, and was delighted to find those three songs, plus an entire album to match.

Nathaniel's Turntable Log, Nov. 8

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico

Radiohead - Amnesiac

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Danielson Famile - Tri-Danielson!!! (Alpha)

mewithoutYou - [A-->B] Life

Gorillaz - Demon Days

Kid A

I was planning on doing this huge retrospective review on Radiohead's Kid A ten years after its release, but I missed it. Kid A is now ten years and eleven days old. It's still the most ambitious, unbelievable, multilayered, creative, and well executed album I've ever heard.

So there you go.

The Ever Prolific Mr. Stevens

Ever since the release of Illinoise and the claimed 50 states project, EVERYONE has talked about how prolific Sufjan Stevens is. And why not? Illinoise's tracklist peaked at an incredible 22. Add to that a collection of tracks that didn't make it onto the final cut and you have a staggering sum of 43 tracks for one project. Funny, though, since he's so prolific, he hasn't released a proper album since Illinoise five years ago. We had the Outtakes collection (The Avalanche), a box set of his 5 annual Christmas EPs (the most recent of which was released in 2006), the orchestral ode to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (The BQE), and a revisit to his pre-Michigan instrumental album "Enjoy Your Rabbit," arranged for orchestra and relabeled "Run Rabbit Run" -- note that the last two were released in 2009, three years after any other release. What has Sufjan been doing all this time, besides living his dream of succeeded Aaron Copeland as the Great American Composer and leaking a new song via YouTube bootlegs here and there?

Sufjan answered in early September with the release of an unannounced digital EP attached with a post-it that said "p.s. Full length coming in October." So here we are, October 13, with two albums on our hands--the folksy/chamberpopish, hour long "EP" All Delighted People, and the glitch/electronica/orchestral/psychedelic schyzophrenia that is "The Age of Adz." It becomes clear upon listening to both that in his spare time (which he's had five years of), Sufjan has had a musical redirection, claiming a new vision and a sea full of ambition and bravery to make that happen, and, ever self-aware as he is, knew how a personally disparaging album filled with hip-hop landscapes, mountains of synthesizers, and guitar freakouts might disappoint anyone waiting for a spiritual sequel for the narrative driven folk and pop of Illinoise. And so, nice guy that he is, Mr. Stevens offered us All Delighted People, a collection of tracks balancing his more 'classic Sufjan' tracks with hints of the atmospheric, apocalyptic monster that would follow.

Individually, each has different strengths and weaknesses. All Delighted People has the sorts of songs we've come to expect from him and finally puts to record some of the songs he's teased fans with live (such as "The Owl and the Tanager," featuring Annie Clark of St. Vincent!). On the other hand, though, it's sometimes hard to stave off the feeling that the entire EP is just another collection of non-album songs to make fans happy. The Age of Adz, chaotic as it is, is impeccably arranged. Each explosion of the orchestra, each note of the freakout guitar, each swear word (those with visions of Sufjan the Superchristian might want to avoid "I want to Be Well" with its repeated refrain of "I'm not f***ing around, I'm not, I'm not"), each glitchy beat of the drum machine is deliberate. As schizophrenic and upside-down as the album seems, this is an album crafted by someone who knew what the crap he was doing.

For a good example, look to the 25 minute closer "Impossible Soul" and watch as it goes from electric piano led verse (complete with a an almost constant drum fill and chaotic guitar solo interlude) to a single female voice singing over a trumpet section fighting with a flailing synthesizer being slowly joined by more and more voices and a drum machine until it all collapses over three minutes into a wash of delay feedback and electric piano accompanying Sufjan's autotuned voice, which in turn leads into an 80s dance throwback with gang vocals. And if that's not enough, after that dance party slowly dies down (the vocoder is the last to leave), another drum machine kicks up with another orchestra fighting for its life as Sufjan and a few low voices repeat the coda until, again, that all collapses, and we are left with Sufjan, the man, and his folk-style, finger picked guitar, long absent and his whispering tenor at last relaxed after an album of hollering over chaos.

Basically, this album is great, but it's weird. So here go the recommendations. If you want another Seven Swans, All Delighted People is for you. For the more adventurous, grab The Age of Adz and give it the kind of listen it deserves. Over and over again.

The Dreaded Hurley

Weezer is my favorite band. Whenever I say that, I have to postscript it by clarifying that I mean their first two albums. I've mentioned that I found Green and Maladroit moderately enjoyable, but have found just about everything else unremarkable and, sometimes, even abysmal (Beverly Hills...). This is why when I heard about their release of an eighth record--and so quickly on the heels of the embarrassment of Raditude--I was skeptical.

Then, something strange happened. They prereleased the first track, "Memories." Out of curiosity, I decided to check it out, expecting something equally as inane as "I'm Your Daddy" or "Can't Stop Partying." But I loved it. It was well crafted and evocative and tasteful, and it made me feel like I was in high school again. So of course, when the record was released, I gave the entire thing a listen, and I was not disappointed.

After "Memories," "Ruling Me" is a superfun powerpop song similar in spirit to the better tracks on Green--only better than anything on Green--complete with the background Oohs and Aahs that made us love Weezer in the first place, and classic Riversisms, like "My ocular nerves went pop-zoom." The album continues with the beautiful ode to slackerism "Trainwrecks," which sounds like a lost single from the early era with synth runs and ambient feedback squeals thrown in for good measure, which get me every time.

As the record progresses, the songs sound less like throwbacks and more like a new, more acceptable Weezer--especially the track "Smart Girls," an ode to Rivers' favorite quality in a woman that's starts off with a cheesy drum machine and synth solo. It's also one of my favorite tracks on the record.

It's important to note that this record doesn't sound like the missing album between Pinkerton and Green. Weezer has, somehow, matured through the string of less-than-good records and come up with a way to mix the qualities that made them so likable in the first place with new ambitions and production strategies--an orchestra finds its way in at several points, and the traditional guitar solo for every song is largely missing, which some may find disappointing.

Personally, I never thought Weezer would release and album I would love again, and I was mistaken. It's not Pinkerton, but it's more than good enough for me.

The Suburbs

Admittedly, I was a little late getting onto the Arcade Fire wagon. I first heard them on Goshen College's radio station without knowing who it was I was hearing, and just knew that whatever it was, it was a dang catchy song ('No Cars Go' is the single in question). A few weeks later, I bought Neon Bible off of a fleeting reference a friend made, and was well pleased. After two years, I finally picked up Funeral during a spree of buying new music, and didn't really listen to it until I heard 'Wake Up' in the trailer for 'Where the Wild Things Are.' But at that time, Funeral couldn't hit me the way it would have when it first came out, and Neon Bible couldn't impress me with its scope compared to their debut. I just knew that both records were different--and wonderful.

Their newest release, The Suburbs, continues their winning streak. The record is filled with bittersweet ruminations on growing up and adolescence filled with a commentary on the emptiness of suburban sprawl paired with catchy arrangements that occupy the space between orchestral arrangements and post-punk inspired pop songs. The one strange thing about it, though, is that it doesn't really strike me as incredible or groundbreaking or even too remarkable. Is it bad? No. Is it not as good as anything else Win & Co. have done? It's just as good at least. The phenomena occurs The Arcade Fire has raised their bar so high that coming out with remarkable records is what is expected. But they've come to do great music so well that you hardly notice, and that is what's remarkable.

Mixtape!

After a long gap, I have finally made a new mixtape. For your listening pleasure, I present to you Multitrack Sneakattack, vol. XI: Shooting Stars in Your Breakfast Cereal.

Enjoy.