1.31.2011
Starting now, I’ll be doing a monthly wrap-up of the best albums and releases. I’ll shoot for five a month, but we’ll see how it goes.
Destroyer – Kaputt: Cantankerous singer-songwriter-genius Dan Bejar gets sexy and synth-y on the totally unexpected Some Girls of chillwave. [REVIEW | Buy from Merge]
>> “Chinatown”: mp3
MINKS - By The Hedge: As much an ’80s 101 course as it is a stunning distillation of shoegaze, New Wave and C86 influences by a new band that already sounds deep into its career. [REVIEW | Buy from Captured Tracks]
>> “Cemetery Rain”: stream
Geotic – Mend: Free guitar loop-centric ambient record from Baths’ Will Wiesenfeld. I’ve been falling asleep to it for days. [REVIEW | Download from Geotic]
>> “Find Your Peace”: mp3
The Radio Dept. – Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010: A strong, if incomplete, overview of the band’s extensive non-album discography. [NEWS POST | Buy from Labrador]
>> “The One”: mp3
Apex Manor – The Year of Magical Drinking: Assured, ramshackle power-pop from members of defunct greats the Broken West. [REVIEW | Buy from Merge]
>> “Under the Gun”: mp3
Also notable: Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean, Lia Ices – Grown Unknown, Dolorean - The Unfazed, John Vanderslice – White Wilderness, Foster the People - Foster the People EP.
Related: 2011 Album Release Calendar
2011, Best of 2011, Lists
1.4.2011
Destroyer / photo by David Greenwald
Though we’re just a few days into January, 2011 already has a full slate of exciting newcomers, returning favorites and yet-to-be-announced possibilities. (Radiohead!) 35 of my most anticipated albums after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
2011, Lists
12.16.2010
Best of 2010: EPs/Singles | Songs | Albums | Rawky Awards
Since I’ve already made my feelings about rankings, best-ofs and lists in general clear, here are a few things you need to know about 2010: For those of us nerdy and foolhardy enough to keep up with Internet indie culture, there were more “relevant” albums to listen to than ever before. Thanks to a blogosphere in which any band with an MP3 can find someone to like them (and in which I caught a lot of shit for saying a few bands sucked without paragraphs of justification ), I spent nearly as much time investigating bullshit trends as I did attempting to listen to albums that were actually good. Making matters worse was the embarrassing coincidence of indie heroes from the Arcade Fire to James Mercer’s Broken Bells to Broken Social Scene to the Hold Steady — the Hold Steady! — making the most average, unexciting albums possible. And finally, while release dates have been a joke since Kid A leaked a decade ago, in 2010, a number of bands decided to start dropping albums on Bandcamp or Topspin or whatever whenever they damn well felt like it — which is great and progressive but also means I was stumbling into really good new records (Mighty Clouds! Summer Fiction!) days before putting this thing together. (it is also presumably the reason why the Dirty Projectors/Bjork mini-album did not blow everyone’s minds.)
All that said: If you like music, every year is a good year for music, and I’m happy to have sorted through a considerable amount of witch house, garage fuzz and indie R&B (pro tip: coming from Minneapolis does not make you Prince) to arrive at this very worthy top 50. One more word on rankings: this list is basically tallied by “How much do I want to listen to this album again when it is not actually on?,” a measure that skews toward three-minute pop songs and away from Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom ‘s occasionally brilliant self-indulgence marathons. Sorry, folks. O.K., enough preamble: here we go. Read the rest of this entry »
2010, Best of 2010, Lists, The National, The Radio Dept.
12.15.2010
Best of 2010: EPs/Singles | Songs | Albums | Rawky Awards
In the five years or so I’ve been doing this, I can’t remember a better year for songs. I actually spent most of Saturday ordering a top 100, went a little crazy and decided nobody needed me to rank seven hours of tracks. So here’s a top 50. Every single one of these tracks is incredible, and yes, even Ke$ha. For the record, I allowed two songs per band in a few special cases because not including both Sally Seltmann jams would be a lie (though I did cut two Best Coast songs). Also, No. 51 is Lady Gaga (“Telephone”) and if Nicki Minaj had done all the verses on “Monster,” it’d be No. 1 (but you already knew that). Have at it: Read the rest of this entry »
2010, Best of 2010, Jens Lekman, Lists, SSLYBY, The National, The Radio Dept.
12.14.2010
I always assume my readers mostly agree with me or they wouldn’t be here, but that’s not always the case — sometimes, Britney Spears is your most anticipated album of 2011. All the absurd glory of the 2010 Rawky Awards after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
2010, Best of 2010, Lists, Rawky Awards
12.13.2010
Best of 2010: EPs/Singles | Songs | Albums | Rawky Awards
The album isn’t dead. But, like the dinosaurs, it may not outlast its smaller, warm-blooded colleagues. In 2010, the EP became something more than a tour curio or a year-end reminder of a band’s existence. For bands unable or unwilling to make the artistic and financial investment of a full-length release, the EP became the perfect format: long enough to showcase what a band could do without being too short to pass off as a one-MP3 wonder and just right for self-releasing and giving away free, as so many groups chose to do this year. For this Twitter-addled writer, sub-20-minute run-times meant I ended up reaching for EPs and singles, for the first time, much more often than I did albums. Though the year’s best handful of statements did come in LP form, I consider this list nearly interchangeable with my album of the year list and hope you will, too. Making an album is always a gamble, but for the bands on this list, going short was a sure thing. Read the rest of this entry »
2010, Best of 2010, Lists
9.10.2010
I’ve written a lot this year about how the bigger names in indie rock have almost unanimously decided to stubbornly release extremely adequate 2010 albums. Not bad, not great. To document this phenomenon, I’ve decided to rank these mid-range classics for the year so far. (I would be remiss not to note that most of these earned Pitchfork Best New Music 8+s, which is the new “Three stars means never having to say you’re sorry,” maybe?) Anyway:
1. The National – High Violet
2. The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
3. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
4. Midlake – The Courage of Others
5. Sun Kil Moon – Admiral Fell Promises
6. Liars – Sisterworld
7. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
8. Vampire Weekend – Contra
9. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
10. Interpol – Interpol
I’m looking forward to sighing and adding Sufjan Stevens’ Age Of Adz to the top five. Thoughts, folks?
(Editor’s note: In this year’s “good-to-great” range and thus not on this list: Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me, Spoon – Transference, The New Pornographers – Together)
2010, Lists
