2010: Faves and Duds

The swirling drain owned 2010: Chilton, RS Howard. None is the number. And yet, Swans & Three Mile Pilot came back from the beyond, so, hey.

(not proofread. Like you care.)

Singles:

"Troublesome Houses" - Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang (off Wonder Show of the World)

Oldham will never top this. So have sympathy for this album's other songs; while nice, none approach the melodic fountainhead of this heartbreaking paen to compulsive behavior's sad and inevitable destruction of relationships. "I once had a house / and my family knew/ where to find me / if ever they needed" changes to "but now they can't find me / they don't have my number." Thank God my two year old doesn't understand the lyrics, because it's the only song she wants me to sing to her at bedtime, and because it hits so close to home personally for her father.

"Dancing on My Own" -- Robyn

As soon as a I heard it, I thought 'fuck, I'm gonna have to listen to this a gazillion times and get tired of it.' As gorgeous pop melodies go, total winner, and the eurodisco synth arrangement belongs equally in a Stockholm disco as it should pump from the lousy dashboard speakers of some 17-year-old girl's beat-up Honda in suburban Ohio. While the lyrics catch that universal dilemma of stagging it to a dance situation and watching your object of desire grind someone else, the triangle's gender makeup seems certain (there's "Stilettos and broken bottles" "I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her") until Robyn sings "I'm not the guy to take you home."

"Silver Surfer Ghost Rider Go" - Trentemoeller

The bloopy bleepy, & it sounds exactly as the title advertises.

"Boyfriend" Best Coast

Like it before you hear it in a Levis commercial (or am I too late?). Also: Close your eyes, and it's 1993, and you're listening to Scrawl.

"Cloudbusting" -- Neil Halstead

Halstead (viva Slowdive!) does everything wrong here, from whisper-singing to attempting to cover the un-coverable Kate Bush, and yet his banjo, like Wilde's one comma, makes all the difference. Maybe one of only two Kate Bush covers I've heard in 30 years that succeeds (see the Futureheads' Big Country-esque take on "Hounds of Love"). From a children's album (Sing me to Sleep: Indie Lullabies) but so transcendent of that usual trash-bin.

"Record Collection (featuring Simon Lebon & Wiley)"

Mark Ronson and the Business Intl

One of maybe four highlights on an otherwise swing-and-miss album. Lebon sings the silly chorus with his now weathered pipes (I only want to be in your ... etc) which we wouldn't believe and believe even less after Ronson's chuckle-some, Brit-accented, faux hip-hop boasting: "I ride around town in a chariot/I get preferential treatment at the Marriot." And the beat kicks well.

Albums:

The Soft Pack - S/t

The best straight-ahead guitar album I've heard in a long time. Lots of healthy fuckyouness. They won't make bad records anytime soon, either, because the Soft Pack don't have a stylist, don't live in Brooklyn, and look like they surf and get stoned. They're funny and hate posers. Not a single track fails. Probably my favorite album of 2010 overall.

Gayngs - Relayted

They had me at their mutant cover of Godley & Creme's underrated "Cry," the best country song of the new wave 80s (that's how I always heard it), but the remainder of Gayngs's odd, auto-tuned-down and perverted r&b comes across like Tears for Fears giving electronically voice-modified testimony, in the dark, under a hood (thus it sounds like Peter Gabriel II&III) And then some cheesy brass cuts through the murk, and it kills anyway.

Capstan Shafts - Revelation Skirts

Relentless indie-pop, possibly overlong by five tracks, but there's no heir to GBV other than this one-man-gang. Improved studio skills have only hardened the punch.

Gareth Liddiard - Strange Tourist.

Perth's Liddiard is as good as Bob Dylan. Really? Yeah, really, and he might be better than Dylan because he hasn't made an album like "Down in the Groove." I don't care for lyrics; if something worked on the page without music, [Dylan, et al] would have put it on the page, wouldn't they? Liddiard routinely drops stuff like this in his haunted growl; here singing via a mail carrier in south Australia: "There are more things that you can know / than there are bodies in the snow / you don't have to be dead to walk the netherworld." With the Drones, Liddiard dropped similarly hard-wrought narratives ("She Had an Abortion and Made Me Pay for It") few other songwriters could earn, even without the Drones' rockist squall and gothic guitar noodlery. Here, Liddiard sets his guitar virtuosity (yeah, he's that too) to the background of slightly electrified acoustic picking, achieving a hybrid of John Fahey and Townes Van Zant if TVZ was angry as shit and sounded like Mick Jagger with an Aussie accent. Yeah. Sign on or ignore at peril.

Sadies - Darker Circles

Dark Canadian psych-country. What the Grateful Dead could have been if the trust fund kids hadn't taken over around 1976.

Aloha - Home Acres

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Gabriel-era Genesis, and these guys know it. They don't always ape the prog-kings, but the influence is there in the marimbas and keys. Aside from Deerhoof's Greg Saunier, Cale Parks is the best drummer currently playing.

Foals – Total Life Forever

They remind me of the Police, that rhythm-lock thing, and although Foals fortunately avoid being fronted by someone like Stink, 65% of what they do is intolerable, just like the Police. But I didn't stop listening to almost every other track.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

Fucked up stuff. Truly. Billy Ocean on shrooms. "Round and Round" might be a Ratt cover, but only the bassline.

Caribou – Swim

Most electro noodlers sing, and most go back to pumping gas. Only Aphex Twin got away with it, and what he does can't really be called singing (because it's better than that).

Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest

I'm back on the wagon, Deerhunter. Keep it spacey.

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

Didn't think it possible, but this never slacks. Proof BSS is just making records they love rather than towing the line so Springsteen can jump onstage.

Tracey Thorn

Love and It's Opposites

Which is indifference. I didn't feel that for this album, nor hate it, so it's love - because I'm an adult now. Thorn's insistence on writing about the life of a middle-aged mother of a teenage daughter while luckily hailing from England rather than Nashville is instantly endearing. "Oh the Divorces," if you're my age (this year it gets Bad), hits bullseye.

Richard Youngs - Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits

As if John Cale made an album with Brian Eno, and it really sounded great (wait a second ...). Youngs's eerie baritone-tenor floats above electro pops and whirrs until an undistorted electric guitar tears off a straightforward rockist solo, and then the whole thing spins out into spaceagain. Scottish funeral acapella set to 70s space soundtracks.

Hon Mentions: Wavves, Three Mile Pilot, Walkmen, Matthew Dear, Brian Eno's "Small Craft"

dissapointments & duds:

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings – I Learned The Hard Way

See title.

Here We Go Magic - Pigeons

They're onto something, but I miss the space-i-ness of their debut. Here, MWGM forgoes Luke Temple's melody-ready pipes for a chugging jamrock that never really leaves the atmosphere.

Ra Ra Riot - The Orchard

Holy moly. The less said the better, and I love The Rhumb Line.

Sleigh Bells – Treats

And where do you go from here? Because someone does this every once in a while, this comes to mind.

The National – High Violet

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Mediocrity wins the day. And I think someone in this band must have stolen Nick Dawidoff's girlfriend, because his fawning, hyperbolic NY Times Magazine piece did more damage to the National's street cred than working on their next album with Diddy ever would.

Perfume Genius – Learning

in 2021, this'll embarrass someone who's 23 right now.

Teenage Fanclub – Shadows

It pains me. It ... pains me. I promise to try again soon.

Menomena - Mines

Did this even come out?

Gonjasufi - A Killer and a Sufi

There are hundreds of dub records from the 70s twice as good as this, and they all cost a dollar.

Working For a NFC - Jojo Burger Tempest

What the fuck happened? Are they trying to get out of a contract, or did the band dissolve during recording? At least they didn't buy matching cars and speed around town first.

semi-never roundup of newish album releases

But first, a word from Otto, our literary editor, on Franzen's Freedom: As usual, NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani's intern was reading a different book than I read. A surprisingly trashy (in comparison with The Corrections) 800+ pages of gossip following mostly unlikeable people as they fail or succeed despite their personality flaws, Freedom's only defense could be as a comedy, in the vein of Henry Fielding, Sot Weed Factor, et al. Yet I can't shake the suspicion that JF just phoned this one in, knowingly or inadvertently entitling the novel in reference to his life after the Oprah-money hit(s) his checking account. He certainly betrayed his literary intentions with The Corrections by denying Oprah in '01, back when no novelist with high intentions wanted that self-fulfilling notch on their word processor (nowadays, money talks&immortality walks). Franzen's first novel (The 27th City) remains his most entertaining, his second (Strong Motion) his biggest failure, and The Corrections his high water mark. Freedom is his gift to sales. I will bet beer that his next novel takes 20 years while he meanwhile achieves his current goal of becoming an eminent essayist, which will keep him off Oprah's list, forever and then some.

Newish:

Fresh & Onlys - Play it Strange

A music writer needs to name the current (Wavves, etc) reverb-drenched punk pop movement. Oh, I think I should? Ok I, I will: Beachpunk! you heard it here first, and probably nowhere else second. The F&Os travel in Beachpunk's cleaner avenues, less distortion, more Johnny Cash/Sadies than Deerhunter. And, like many of Beachpunk bands, they owe the Rock-a-Teens a royalty check.

Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea

Enough tracks surpass and advance his work to date ("2 Forms of Anger" and "Dust Shuffle") to make up for those so reminiscent of earlier work ("Emerald and Lime," "Slow Ice, Old Moon") as to suggest outtakes or, to be unfair, lazy re-hashings; the fair argument being that when no one else, to this day, executes what you achieved in 1983, you can do it again in 2010. Fans like me have been waiting for this, and have no reason to be disappointed.

Deerhunter -- Halcyon Digest

Hurrah. I went away after Cryptograms, but I can return for this. Real songs, real songs, creepy reverb and clickety-clack percussion. Guitar in the right spots. Grownups!

Bryan Ferry - Olympia

If we won't have a new Roxy album, this could suffice. Immediate listens yield un-mistake-ably Eno touches, like the syth-keytar, or electric piano salted on most tracks. A pointless cover of Buckley-T's "Song to the Siren" should have been a b-side; otherwise, there hasn't been a more solid batch of solo Ferry originals (note I didn't say Roxy Music originals) since the late eighties.

Belle & Sebastien - Write About Love

I can't imagine being them. The bar is so, so high, and the fans getting so, so, old. I was never as gaga for B&S as some, and I suppose you're either all the way in or out. This release is no more than other albums, no less. I can always close my eyes and re-catch them on the Sinister tour. They were delightful.

Glasser - Ring

The duo is the new power trio. Glasser's perfectly executed combo of soaring soprano-alto vocals and inventive production leaves them acceptably unidentifiable from maybe five other current, similar bands. Their carefully placed quirks (yelping, hand claps) leave no doubt that NPR will do or has done a piece on Glasser.

Gareth Liddiard - Strange Tourist

Dudes try to write songs, and most go back to pumping gas. Or go back to pumping gas after they hear Liddiard, (formerly?) of the wonderful & noisier Drones. Solo con guitar here, rage-ful and dour, playful, sarcastic, and versatile -- he can bring it with tightrope walkers over Niagara Falls (Blondin Makes an Omelette") or narratives unique to his Perth hometown, all with turns of phrase grabbing a listener by the neck: "There are more bodies in the snow/than there are things you can know/you notice you don't have to die to walk the netherworld" ("Highplains Mailman").

Mark Ronson and the Business International - Record Collection

Anyone who can fully hate this is a buzzkill. What's more fun that a song matching Ronson's silly boasts ("My teeth are bright and my hair is clean / I wear Paco Rabanne like I was Charlie Sheen") with a chorus sung by Simon Le Bon? Or a tune about enjoying a bike? This isn't rocket science, it's tossed off pop, totally for sale, from a producer who's making coin and art elsewhere.

Catpsan Shafts - Revelation Skirts

Wowza. Most quirky lo-fi pop outfits seem to lose something when they go hifi (GBV, Blank Dogs), the trick being to go hifi before the songwriting powers have faded a tad. Like Arile Pink, the Capstan Shafts' mastermind Dean Wells has chosen the right moment, delivering a set (if overlong by three) of his best songs to date, rounded with a Superchunk-type rock arrangements sprinkled with power solos that, if not for their slight distortion, wouldn't be out of place on a Ratt record. Or a Superchunk record.

Zola Jesus - Stridulum 2

I'm not convinced.

Older but no less relevant:

LCD Soundsytem - That Happened

This might be the best record with a terrible single I've ever heard. "Drunk Girls" approaches self-parody, although therefore might also be his first legit hit. The less-ignorable rest of the album does it for me when my ear gets lazy enough for spiraling 1982-via-2003 guitar and oozing electro textures.

Beach Fossils--S/t

Finally, some youts' who listen to Felt and Durutti Column. Me likey. Live, a total failure, but I saw them with a brand new drummer.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffitti --Before Today

I think it takes appreciating what a mindfucker Pink chooses to be; much like Beefheart deconstrcuted R&B, Pink has chose to the do the same with eighties synthpop. "Round and Round" is not a Ratt cover, and yet it is.

Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang - The Wonder Show of the World

The first track, "Troublesome Houses," ranks in Oldham's top 5. With the size of his catalog, that's saying something. Also, lyrically, it sounds like he knows what he's talking about, unfortunately. The rest of the record? Good napping music, I suppose.

New Release Roundup: Alex Chilton Took a Piece of Me Upstairs

New Orleans, you stole something from me, and I want it back.

Here We Go Magic - Pigeons
Not a turn for the better, but: moments. Less collage&mood and more Eno-ish pop than their still-unassailable debut. But - did Luke Temple injure his voice? On some tracks, he misses.


Aloha - Home Acres
What can I say? I just flat-the-fuck-out dig the emo Genesis (Gabriel-era, thanks). Darker, this one, but no less pretty and catchy.


Peter Gabriel - Scratch My Back
Sometimes, while I'm not rejoining Genesis for a one-off, four sold-out nights of "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" start to finish for a bazillion dollars a ticket at the Beacon Theater, I'm recording an abrasive yet innovative throwback, a 'melt'-era batch of covers of songs written by the African & Brazilian musicians I've employed over the years. I'm definitely not a great enough singer to justify orchestral backing on a mostly yawnfest batch of covers, like on "Scratch My Back." Hopefully, "I'll Scratch Yours" a tribute collection on which artists will cover my excellent stuff '77-'85, will asskick.


Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks

Ted! With this, you're almost back. It was funny to recently hear P-fork trash your last album, in a track review for the new one, and then edit it out because they gave that last album a way overblown 7.9 when it came out, a rating so inflated, for your only obvious failure of an album, that nobody was embarrassed of suspecting payola. Still gotta' work on those sometimes corny lyrics though - "no one lives forever?"(Even Heroes Have to Die) c'mon now. Luckily, songs like "Bartolomeo and the Buzzing of Bees" make up for it, and some some.


The Soft Pack - s/t

All the wrong attention is being paid to the wrong guitar bands. This albums kills. "Parasites."

Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Bomb. What were they thinking? Like Lindsay Buckingham produced by Jellybean Benitez.


Fang Island -s/t

Spare me. Didn't Naked Raygun do this thirty years ago? Also: Please don't sing.


Magnetic Fields - Realism

Nice enough, but I'll take last years "Distortion," thanks.

Sambassadeur - European

You might not be stopped in your tracks, but Sambassadeur will never hurt you. As light as a fly wing, and seemingly ornate by chance.

Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Hot Chip, reliably decent electro-pop dudes, simply don't boast the songwriting chops to justify the handful of ballads on here. With auto-tune.


Rogue Wave - Permalight

Do I hear Autotune here also? Zach, you don't need it. Someday you'll drop a greatest hits album that'll be the greatest. "We Can Make a Song Destroy" indeed.


Surfer Blood - Astrocoast

If I didn't need the last two lackluster albums by the Shins, why do I need this?


Shearwater - Golden Archipelago

While it may not be a scintillating an effort as previous Shearwater albums, no other contemporary band could this ably execute an immigration concept record of gorgeous piano-based art rock.


Robert Pollard - We All Got Out of the Army

There's so much, Robert. So much. Here's a challenge: At the end of 2010, take everything you write this year, and force yourself to write only nine songs out of all of it. Just nine, and each one must be under 3:35. I suspect it might be the greatest album any of us hear for a long time. While this one surely isn't, it's ok, but Robert: there's so much.


Horse Flies - Until the Ocean

Don't laugh. In 1986, the Horse Flies released "Human Fly," one of the creepiest yet prettiest records of the late eighties (their 92 release, " was uneven, but no less unique). Then, as now, they're erroneously stamped as folk, or of similar ilk to the jam bands they share stages with for their infrequent gigs. But "Human Fly" was Cramps-inspired (said so on the sleeve), and garlanded with lush violin lines, and propelled by electric banjo so heavily delayed it sounded like an alien helicopter. Word was a member had been homeless, and when they sang of sleeping out among the pines or living where it's grey, you believed them. Their upstate NY locale has only grown more depressed, and so "Until the Ocean," appearing 20+ years later, is equally effective, with eerie standards ("Drunkard's Child, "Oh Death")


Four Tet - There is Love in You

Bloopy-bleepy winner, ornate, rhythmic headphone music for those who prefer their beats with beauty. Nothing innovative, though. Eurythmics did this 30 years ago with their aborted 1984 soundtrack.


Titus Andronicus - Monitor

If we needed proof that indie rock is being made by kids too young to remember any of the albums made by the robot who replaced Bruce Springsteen around 1987, these NJ howlers provide it by cramming 1000 words per song into bloodshot swamp anthems of forlorn love, drinking, and not-giving-a-fuck (all that noise about the Civil War? huh.). That sounds better than it is after 3 songs. I sure hope they know how funny it is that their name, on this album's cover, appears in the same font as Big Country's did throughout their career.


Clipse - Til the Casket Drops
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Sadly, hip hop’s legacy includes a litany of riveting breakthrough records (Clipse’s “Hell Hath No Fury” being one of the ten best, ever) followed by boring albums limply celebrating newfound fame. Which means “Til the Casket Drops” might gain video airplay for Clipse, but rock-guitar-backed boasting about hitting the bling-time simply jumpstarts my narcolepsy.

Blacroc -s/t
I couldn’t pick a better rock band to collaborate with rappers like Raekwon, Pharaoh Monch, RZA, Mos Def, and the ghost of ODB, than the Black Keys, whose rock albums always retained a swagger other bands lack. On this, they don’t merely back MCs but add choruses and leads. It works about half the time. But EPs don't sell.


Gorillaz -Plastic Beach

Maybe. Blur fans will need to change their underwear, I suppose. Never understood the Blur craze, tho. Saw one of their first ever shows, found it very pedestrian.


Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

I found the duo version of FB unbearable. This full-band approach better suits FR's arena-pop anthems; it especially works if they continue to insist on singing with Scottish accents intact. Although they could have added a violin.


Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox - Various

An amazing lineup covering Knox's songs with and without Tall Dwarves, all to benefit his bills following a stroke. If that isn't reason to buy it, this may also contain one of Jay Reatard's last recordings.

Beyond their Greatest Hits Comp, There is no Reason for the Existence of the Following::

1) The Smithereens

2) The Foo Fighters

3) Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

4) The Cars

5) The Rolling Stones (not one album a masterpiece all the way through, not even Exile)

6) Belle & Sebastien (do they have a hits comp out?)

7) Any of the solo Beatles

8) The Four Tops

9) The Pretenders

10) Orange Juice

11) Ultravox

12) The Bee Gees

13) The Jam (tho it pains me; but yeah.)

14) Madonna (pick one)

15) David Bowie (there, I said it)

16) The Beach Boys

17) Soundgarden

18) Beck

19) Elvis Presley

20) Lou Reed

I'd Rather Be Bob Stinson in His Coffin than Lou Reed in his Limo: Top Albums & Tracks of 2009

Goodbye to the Sextape Decade.

Albums, no order:

The Clean - Mister Pop
The greatest band formed before 1980 and still making music.

Wilderness - (K)no(w)here
Really an EP, but I'll take anything. Pre-attack music for pirates.

Future of the Left - Travels with Myself and Another
McClusky can be made a dim memory if FotL's records continue to be this angry and catchy.

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou - Vol 2: Echoes Hypnotiques
A reissue, but a total holy shit moment: 1) the best drummer I may have ever heard 2) beats not invented for another 10 years 3) a guitarist who sounds like Ira Kaplan back when Kaplan was in diapers 4) a mixture of funk and Latin styles from lands (Benin, Niger) forgotten by current African pop revisionists. This was so previously lost on the world that you can be sure that any schmuck who says "oh yeah, I knew about those guys back in 19--" is a total, fucking, liar.

The Soft Pack - The Muslims EP
Chickenshit name change notwithstanding, the best rock band you're about to hear about. New record drops Feb '10. Latest single is the shzzzt.

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown
A sentimental choice, but his reunion with himself is his only worthwhile reunion.

Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
DIY punk-bloopy bleepy with big beats and mutant beauty.

Here We Go Magic -s/t
You'll believe me if/when they make another record.

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
How these pedal-inventing shoegazers continue to kick ass so consistently is beyond me. I'm not selling my Skywave singles, thanks.

tracks:
Bon Iver - "Blood Bank" Wow.

Morrissey - "Something is Squeezing My Skull"

Delorean --"Big Dipper"
David Byrne and Brian Eno - "Strange Overtones"

The Clientele -"Share the Night"
The XX - "Islands"
The Presets -"If I Know You"
Wild Beasts - "The Devil's Crayon"
Micachu & the Shapes - "Lips"
Mos Def - "Auditorium (Ft Slick Rick)"
Viva Voce - "Red Letter Day"
Super Furry Aninals - "The Very Best of Neil Diamond"
Clark - "Growl's Garden"
Art Brut - "The Replacements"
Bat For Lashes - "Daniel"
Papercuts - "Future Primitive"

Mini Music Reviews: New Release Roundup Vol 1

Don't call it a comeback. More coming, too.

Reviews for the time-challenged:

Big Star - Keep an Eye on the Sky
This kicks any record off any desert island list I've made in the past. There's so much on this collection that I hadn't heard, all of it good -and I call myself a fan -- that my skull cracked open from such pop delicacy. These guys threw away demos and songs most bands would suffer amputation to have back.

Mission of Burma - The Sound the Speed the Light
Sometimes it's so hard to say goodbye. But goodbye.

Lou Barlow -- Goodnight Unknown
I can't get enough of this record. It sounds great, and LB smartly varies the instrumentation for his best batch of songs since Sebadoh called it a day.

Vivian Girls -- Everything Goes Wrong
Disclaimer: I usually prefer the sophomore releases from meteoric overrated phenom bands. That said, album #2 justifies VG's zombie-girl harmonies with improved songwriting and leavens their psych-garage stomp with surprising turns of guitar sqwuak. There's some there, there. Henry Darger is proud.

The Clientele - Bonfires on the Heath
I always knew they had a funky drummer underneath their Al Stewart-sings-for-the-Zombies wistfulness. A nice style reinvention. May I have some more, sir?

Reigning Sound - Love and Curses
The second-best garage-rock record you'll buy this year, next year, or last year.

Marmoset - Tea Tornado
Don't sleep on 'em. Their albums of about ten years ago populate my lost-and-unfairly-unsung files along with the likes of Ganger and Polvo. Creepy post-pop with a Pavement influence.

Sally Shapiro - My Guilty Pleasure
Not as boringly pleasurable as her nuwave disco throwback debut, but I admire this one more for its dark impulses and colder tones. Still forgettable, overall.

Yacht - See Mystery Lights
I don't see it. Trusted people recommend this, so I'll give it a second shot, but there's no there there. In a year, no one will listen to this.

Robert Pollard - Elephant Jokes
A good one! He makes so many, that's all you need to know.

Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependence
Simon and Garfunkel via Jobim. Alright, I'm down, but KoC increasingly risks outright soft rock, even if this sounds wonderful at dusk while making dinner in an empty house.

Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
Not among their usual excellence. I'm trying. Really. But it hurts.

Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
In the top five for 2009 so far. For me to enjoy the bloopy bleepy, it has to sound DIY and misguided. The tone is retro, even 8-bit, but the song composition is far-thinking, fun, and spooky-good.

The Soft Pack (formerly The Muslims) -- s/t
Didn't get booked much under the original name, ay guys? And you wimped out? No matter. You've made a dynamite rock record. Stay snotty.

Delorean - Ayrton Senna EP
Believe the hype. Like a Lighting Seeds album covered by Cut Copy.

JJ - No2
Nah. A wind blew, and this left my memory forever.

Skygreen Leopards - Gorgeous Johnny
Less a keeper than their last record, Gorgeous Johnny suffers from a case of the Accessibles, or the high stakes disease, and thus we get the Straight Folksy, sans weird.

Dodos - Time to Die
Quality aside, is this truthfully a new album? I can't tell it apart from the previous release.

Jay Reatard - Watch me Fall
Fall you did, but I'll keep watching.

Jandek -Skirting the Edge
Whatever's said, you can't listen to him alone while drinking, or you'll kill yourself. No other artist can claim that.

The Clean - Mister Pop
&
The Bats - The Guilty Office
You can have your anti-folk, your glo-fi. For me, the prettiest two albums this year hail from roughly 30-year old groups from New Zealand who also share bassist Robert Scott. The Clean improve upon their relaxed yet ornate altar ego, al la "Unknown Country," and the Bats continue the lush, elegaic ballads of "Couchmaster." Punch me with kiwi.

Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another
There is no better album of abrasive, catchy, and funny post-rock also named after a memoir by war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Few albums of anything else, this year, were better. Mclusky, I gladly hail your fading memory.

The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
Please do.

Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
What street is this?

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Like a pop music bon-bon. Radiohead gets high on Steely Dan's stash. I like it, but I need a shower.

Julianna Barwick - Florine
I'm won over by choral oddness. Less Enya, thank god, than it is Kate Bush, but it sings a fine, fine line.

Gossip - Music for Men
Like their name, there's no good reason for them. But like their name, I enjoy Gossip now and then. Someone who thinks they're hip will recommend this to you in about four months.

Lydia Lunch - Big Sexy Noise
Made it with Gallon Drunk! Who cares how bad?

A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Ashes Grammar
My goodness: a winner of swirling, atmospheric psychedelicism. I still haven't absorbed it fully, but that's my fault, not theirs.

The XX
Another guilty pleasure, this one a studied-cool batch of hip-hop inspired guitar lounge with spookiness produced-in. Young Marble Giants with an Aaliyah fetish after too many Cure records.

Grizzly Bear - While You Wait for the Others (feat. Michael McDonald) [single]
I love them for this. Although an obvious career-restarter-coup by MM's agent, I'll take this ex-Doobie Brother's low register take on GB's melt-rock.

new release roundup: Oh, the Underwhelm-ment

Peter, Bjorn, & John - Living Thing
D.O.A.

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
Welsh supervillians glass-blow ELO-meets-Elephant6-collective magic pop. They release oodles of albums, so I just picked this one. The others might be as good, or just marginally different depending on your mood. Best moment: "The Very Best of Neil Diamond," with its Bollywood-meets-Love nuttiness, tops most of their catalogue.

U2 - No Line on the Horizon
Completely un-listen-able noise pollution.

The Animals - Deluxe BBC Files (1964-1967)
Don't sleep on the Animals. Their version of "Paint it Black" is nuts, and Eric Burdon was maybe Europe's best blues howler for these short years. I always wished the Who had hired him.

Doom - Born Like This
I love the guy, but I usually end up breaking out my KMD vinyl. Sue me, I'm old. And yet all the skillz in the world, which Doom has, can't justify another tired sampling of ESG. Unless they got paid.

Here We Go Magic - Here We Go Magic
Love this. Folk songwriting shot through analog vs. electro instrumental breakdowns. It creates a world.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains
It was a good thing for music when the Blind Melon singer died. Always remember that.

The Strange Boys -And Girls Club
It's working on me, in a way I like. Young bucks could do worse than worship Dylan's Highway 66 sound with a sharp ear for Bob's guitar playing. Reminds me of the Deadly Snakes, at times. Jack Oblivion, meet your next production job.

Art Brut - Art Brut Vs. Satan
Like Super Furry Animals, Art Brut requires your ownership of only one album. Sigh. This one is a as good (or boring) as the others, but I declare myself sweet on it for a tongue-in-cheek 'Mats mash note ("The Replacements,") where hilarity results when a music geek's dilemma repeats as fiery drama: "second-hand records/ are cheaper /Reissue cds - /extra tracks!"

Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Vernon repents for the song-less wankery of "For Emma" with a stunner of a title track that is better than all of his previous albums, under any name, put together, and better than anything else you can name. It might be my 'track of the year" if I wasn't too lazy each year to make sure I had such a track of the year.

Condo Fucks - Fuckbook
A band named after yuppie twerps infiltrating Yo La Tengo's bohemian dream of Hoboken? I love you, YLT, and did a year or so of hard living as your neighbor there, but the art-town dream died with those tenement fires set by landlords in the late eighties. Thanks for this raucous, growling set of covers. Play more Slade, always.

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
This getting a bit Spinal Tap. And who has the time for an infrequently beautiful and complex concept album? The next one better be 12 pop singles, Meloy, or you're dead to me.

Davila 666 - s/t
Not new, but I slept on it and saw them open recently for the Reigning Sound. 6 or 7 dudes (all related?) of Puerto Rican descent, haling from Oakland I think, concerned with writing clean but hungry garage pop. If you can't dig the language barrier, it doesn't matter. Everything's catchy. On In the Red, too. Hope this helps them cash in.

Grizzly Bear - Vaeckatimest
Pitchfreak is going to spill their coffee all over themselves for this (8.8 or above), and justifiably so, since no one currently sounds like Grizzly Bear, whose crystalline, melodic waltzes approximate a dream you had in which the Alan Parsons Project was covering mid-career Brian Eno in the front room of an abandoned house in rural Maine. "Ready, Able" is another track of the year contender.

Bonnie Prince Billy -Beware
I know, I know, he's top shelf when compared to the riff raff, but I can't help wondering if WO is stretching himself too thin. Great Americana near-country, yes, but if I close my eyes you could tell me this is one of his last two BPB albums. I do wish he'd act more (see "Old Joy" or Kanye videos.)

The Boy Least Likely Too - The Law of the Playground
Volkswagon commercial: Scottish pop!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
It's over.

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Oh, the horror of underwhelm-ment. After this, to conserve my love for Ms. Case's career, I imagine I'm an innocent teenage girl discovering Case's music for the first time via Middle Cyclone's swirling, NPR-ready folk-dirges, which sound like early PIL in comparison to my Miley Cyrus mp3s. Case is still the best singer I've seen live, though. Bring back the Sadies, lady?

Tim Hecker-An Imaginary Country
Ambient instrumental landscapes from their best practitioner working today. But sounds like all analog instruments. Long live Seefeel, if that's why.

Dan Deacon -Bromst
You're not Brian Eno yet, Dan, and some tracks come closer to homage than influence. But this is a step ahead for Deacon, as far as complex pop with an electronic base, because I can't hear the computers at all this time. If I close my eyes.

Grand Duchy - Petit Fours
Ultimately unsuccessful but intriguing effort by Black Francis to craft a weird, Psychedelic Furs-like album of duets and processed guitar.

Jeremy Jay - Slow Dance
I wanna like this more than I can. Part Jonathan Richman, part Suicide, Jay can play some fine guitar but doesn't vary his demo-like spookiness with any levity or melodic variation. Hiring a female backing vocalist and horns might do the trick.

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
Singer Natasha Khan could one day be bigger than deities, but her arranging partner ain't no slouch himself; imagine Sandy Denny surviving death and making a Kate Bush record in 1985.

Papercuts - You Can Have What you Want
"Future Primitive" is one of the few songs this year I kept on repeat. Not much else here will leap out of the speakers, but psych-folk never really offends, either.

Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
See title, middle word.

Death -For the Whole World to See
Believe the hype. The 1975 missing link between the MC5 and Bad Brains, although there is something to be said for the Saints and Ramones getting here first. But Death reminds me of Squirrel Bait, weirdly, and they're angrier than latter two bands; hence MC5 & Bad Brains comparisons. Mind-blowing to be convinced it was recorded when they say it was.

the Mummies - Uncontrollable urge (live 1991)

#3 in Bands I miss Most from the 90s: The Mummies.

"This next one goes out to fuckin' me"

Maybe the best cover song of the 90s.

Good freakin' God I miss the Mummies. They get my vote for the greatest song title ever: "Sooprize Package for Mr. Mineo!"

skywave -don't say slow

#4 in the "Bands I Miss Most from the 90s"
While all you neu-shoegazers were still wearing Garanimals, I was scooping up Skywave seven inches without reading the price tag. Ackerman went on to help form A Place to Bury Strangers, which is alright, I guess, but Skywave had the songs. "Don't Say Slow" is not at all Skywave's only high point. Good luck finding their output - all of it was self-released, I believe -- unless you live in the Fredericksburg, Va area, where they were based and didn't seem to care to leave much.

I miss these guys mostly because I can't play it around the kids or they get angry.

Gang Starr - Mass Appeal

#5 in the "Bands/Artists I Miss Most from the 90s"
Gang Starr might have dropped their debut in '89 and a decent - actually excellent -- album in 2003 ("Ownerz"), but they're of and by the 90s. Most of their product still makes the likes of fitty, snoop, etc, sound like punks.
I represent /set up shit like a tent, boy / you're paranoid/ because you're my son like Elroy"