Yourstru.ly Presents: Twin Sister “Stop” from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Those harmonies! Tremendous stuff from one of my favorite bands of the year.

If 2010 was the year of the EP, 2011 was the year of the… not EP. While 7″s and Bandcamp singles haven’t killed the album off just yet, there was no shortage of tasty bite-size release this year. Read the rest of this entry »

James Ferraro / photo by David Greenwald

Here’s everything I posted on Rawkblog last month. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

If you missed Ryan Adams on tour this year (I saw him three times, four counting the Bob Mould tribute — not a humblebrag, just a regular one), this is a pretty great document of his 2011 setlist/magnificent performances/A+ banter. If you like acoustic guitars and can watch this set without heading directly to the record store to buy the man’s back catalog, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. Ryan Adams, performer of the year? I think so.

In the interests of sharing what I was listening to in between clicking “x” on Soundcloud pages and taking cranky notes, here are the pre-2011 albums I gave the most spins to (or discovered!) this year. All tremendous stuff and almost all of them are better than any 2011 albums.

Standard Fare – The Noyelle Beat (2010)
An album so great and life-affirming that I felt compelled to tweet about it nearly every time I put it on. (I suppose that’s damning with faint praise.) Turns out we’ve been doing emo wrong all these years — it took the Brits to nail it. If you’ve heard better guitar tones than the opening chords of “Love Doesn’t Just Stop,” I don’t want to know about it.
>> Listen on Spotify

The Softies - Winter Pageant (1997)
Decided after all these years that this is my favorite album ever, narrowly topping Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle. Unstoppably gorgeous and more rewarding than ever after literally hundreds of plays.
>> Listen on Spotify

Steely Dan – Aja (1977)
I’m not sure when all my friends decided it’d be a great idea to get into Aja by Steely Dan. But I couldn’t be happier that we did. The unironic Dan revival never quite peaked like the Hall and Oates one did, but that’s fine — Aja is for the discerning. Full disclosure: I sang “Peg” at vacation karaoke at the silliest bar on Catalina island and it was a top five moment of my year.
>> Listen on Spotify

Todd Rundgren – Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971)
Why didn’t my dad tell me about this?
>> Listen on Spotify

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast (2009)
You can’t approach Noble Beast looking for hooks. It’s a feast of aesthetics, a record you have to absorb on a good stereo with a warm cat in your lap. I shrugged it off when it came out (thought the songwriting was too loose), but that was a mistake.
>> Buy from Fat Possum

Harvey Williams – Rebellion (1994) and California (1999)
I went through a period of genuine obsession for two or three weeks with these records. Sentimental, funny and occasionally quietly mean-spirited, a weirdly refreshing twee rarity. Rebellion is the slightly better of the two.
>> Listen on Spotify

Mighty Clouds – Mighty Clouds (2010)
Mighty Clouds is one of those records you put on when you don’t know what to put on and then you realize you’ve played it 20 times. Fred Thomas is a straight-up pop genius on par with Kevin Barnes, Miles Kurosky and whoever you’d like to pit him against. If you are the owner of a Girls record, you should probably buy 10 copies of this.
>> Listen on Spotify

Always – Thames Valley Leather Club and Other Stories (1988)
A straight-up lost classic from the New Wave era. Doesn’t really sound like anything else. Unhinged yet wonderfully tuneful. Thanks to the remarkable blog Bigger Splashes for pointing the way.
>> Listen on Spotify

Buddy – Alterations and Repairs (2007)
Lovely proto-Death Cab sadcore. Came out five years too late for anyone to notice. I found the band in someone’s SXSW 2011 write-up, despite the fact that no one else seemed to know they’d been there.
>> Listen on Spotify

Curren$y – Pilot Talk I and II (2010)
Nobody put out better rap albums than this in 2011. Why did we not spend the entire year talking about “Breakfast”?
>> Listen on Spotify

The Long Winters – Discography
I renewed my appreciation of the brilliantly lyric’d power-pop band this year in anticipation of their new album, which is currently hiding out in the indie witness protection program. Even their apparent filler songs are tiny slices of genius.
>> Listen on Spotify

(Photo: Andrew Bird by David Greenwald)

This year, for the first time, I decided to try to keep a running log of everything I listened to, if only so I could ctrl+f to remember if I hated some new band I was being emailed about for the third time. (Yup.) I listen to maybe 5% of what I get sent and there are plenty of bands I listened to who didn’t make it into these notes, which means there are too many bands. I thought it might be worthwhile, or at least amusing, to share the list of bands that didn’t make it onto Rawkblog this year for one reason or another. Most of these totally unedited notes/opinions are based on hearing 30 seconds or less of one song, so, uh, if it turns out any of these bands are good, I apologize. (In fact, some of them are!) Also, I apologize in advance to the letter “Z” and the phrase “Bland of Boreses.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by David Greenwald

I saw Sharon Van Etten in a beautiful church at SXSW this year. She got a standing ovation. I couldn’t believe it, nor how consistently boring her songs were — I spent the whole set waiting for something other than an open chord to happen. “Serpents” solves that problem, surrounding the singer (whose vocals here ascend in distinguishability from “Is that Cat Power?” to “Is that the new Widowspeak? Pretty sure it’s not Cat Power”) with electric guitars that’d give Smokey the Bear nightmares and drum hits (from the Walkmen’s Matt Barrick) that land like Arctic hail. To Van Etten’s credit, even the lyrics bite harder: “You enjoy sucking on drinks / oh I will fall asleep / with someone other than you / I had a thought / you would take me seriously.” Suck on this, Lana Del Rey.

Sharon Van Etten – “Serpents”: mp3

(Tramp, which features every relevant Brooklyn indie rocker, is due Feb. 7, 2012, on Jagjaguwar)

Here’s Ryan Adams playing one of the better songs from this year’s Ashes & Fire, showcasing once again that this has been the best year in DRA performance history. Here’s my review of the show; look for the full session on KCRW tomorrow.