ALBUMS OF THE YEAR: HONOURABLE MENTIONS

And so it begins! Today I offer five albums that just missed my actual album of the year list. More charitably, you could say these are #15-11 on my album of the year list. These are in no way, shape, or form bad albums; they simply didn't quite strike my fancy the way some other albums did this year. Listening to these alongside the ten, uh, eleven songs I listed in my last two posts would make for a great morning/afternoon/evening. Common threads that emerge from this list? It was a good year for hazy, dreamy music that inspired a vague sense of anxiety and dread. Also, all of these albums fit into existing conversations and conventions (some of them starting to seem well-worn at this point), but managed to transcend or expand the boundaries of those conventions and introduce new topics (or at least pleasing variations on old topics) into the conversation.

Albums of the Year 2011: Honourable Mentions

Pinch & Shackleton - Pinch & Shackleton

This album shares a lot of characteristics with other albums you'll see throughout this list. Ominous, creeping dread? Check. Hazy clouds of reverb? Double check. Vocal samples that have been treated and played with? Triple check. I'm not familiar enough with either Pinch or Shackleton to comment on where this lies in the spectrum of their respective bodies of work, but this is fantastic mood music. This album reminds me of the albums that I used to try and make sense of when I first started reading/hearing about "dubstep" via online music publications (c.2006/2007). It's certainly one of the most alien sounding albums on the list; the soundworld it describes is monochromatic, but it's a dense landscape, scored with furrows, deeply textured--an LV-426 if you will; the album that would play over the soundsystem in Hadley's Hope. An album that rewards close, repeated listens, I can see this retaining its potency for some time to come.

Com Truise - Galactic Melt

With the name and the cover art, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was going to be an exercise in the worst of chillwave c.2009. Com Truise skips the whole half-remembered, hazy recreation of the 1980s, though, by going straight to the source: his sound is pristine and straight out of 1985, with immaculate synths spinning out endless glistening arpeggios. When he relies on vocal samples, like in "VHS Sex," the album does get a little too comfortably chill and kind of sub-Neon Indian, but for the most part Galactic Melt delivers wonderful electro that's perfect for hot summer days and cold winter nights. The album is at its most effective when Com Truise is content to let the synths and melodies drift out into space, like on "Hyperlips" and "Ether Drift."

Shlohmo - Bad Vibes

With its woozy rhythms and decaying machinery sound, you could almost call Shlohmo's Bad Vibes Brainfeeder-by-the-numbers. There is something powerful in Shlohmo's melodies and production that transcends its surface similarities to that label's house sound, though. When the kind of cyborg dance music that Bjork's "Pluto" suggests takes over the charts and all the machines that make it are slowly starting to malfunction, this is the sound they'll make. It's as sensuous as the best R'n'B, but at the same time there's something strangely unreal and dreamlike about it all. There are two competing idioms on this album: the crackle and hiss of vinyl and the slightly overdriven sound of a decaying signal that has come to signify the past, ghosts, and melancholy (via artists like Boards of Canada and Burial) and a kind of futuristic, mechanistic sound (one that is rapidly becoming as much a part of the past as the vinyl crackle it ostensibly faces off against here). It's in his exploration of this tension that Shlohmo really captures a lot of what is fascinating in music in 2011.

The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

The Caretaker has been mining the combination of reverb, repetition, and edits for some time in his exploration of the aesthetic that would accompany the figure who gives him his name as he danced to the house band at the Overlook. An Empty Bliss Beyond This World takes these elements to a new level, though, purposefully repeating songs, focusing on only tiny snippets of old jazz recordings to evoke the feel of memory and its frailties (memory disorders like amnesia and Alzheimer's disease have been a constant reference point for the Caretaker's music). The narrative told by his song titles--"All You Are Going to Want to Do Is Get Back There," "Moments of Sufficient Lucidity," "I Feel as if I Might Be Vanishing," "Mental Caverns Without Sunshine," "The Sublime Is Disappointingly Elusive," to name a few--is heartbreakingly human: a longing to return to our happiest moments even as they vanish when we attempt to recall them. By no means "easy listening," An Empty Bliss Beyond This World is as profound a meditation on life as you'll find in music.

Pure X - Pleasure

This album sounds something like a cross between Real Estate's Days and Deerhunter's Cryptograms. The music is as viscous as cough syrup and just as slow as that image implies. Like dreams during a nap on a humid summer afternoon, these songs seems oppressed by the close, heavy atmosphere, with vague hints of menace colouring the innocence of their structure. This is the most an album has reminded of Loveless in a long time, and if it's not quite up to its level, Pleasure is still an enchanting listen. It's a haunted take on 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll that's refreshingly free of Lynchian grotesqueness--feverish, hallucinatory, neon, psychedelic, yes, but not macabre or uncanny. The guitar work is fantastic, too: dig that feedback that twists back in on itself at the end of "Surface!" In a weird way, the lo-fi production can make some of Pleasure's tracks seem like cousins to songs like "Parties" and "Seriously" on Shlohmo's Bad Vibes.

  

This should give you some hints as to what'll be coming up in the top 10. I'll be posting my albums of the year list over the next ten days, starting with #10 tomorrow and finishing with #1 on Christmas Day. Feel free to join in the conversation with your own takes on these albums, lists of your favourite albums, and/or suggestions for things to check out.

AND ANOTHER SONG I'VE LOVED IN 2011

As I continue getting some year-end lists in order (I'll hopefully have the first round of album of the year stuff up tomorrow--honourable mentions/things that just missed the cut of the actual list), I came across an absolutely unforgivable omission to my "Ten Songs I've Loved in 2011" list. I didn't even consider this because for some reason I forgot it came out in 2011 (I was convinced it had come out in 2010). Anyway, here's an eleventh for my list of ten songs.

Burial - "NYC" off Street Halo EP

It's heresy, I know, but I have to admit that I've always found Burial's music kind of boring (though I've loved the idea behind his music since I first heard of him). I understand why everyone went crazy over his first two albums--and Untrue definitely has some great songs, like "Archangel," "Endorphin," and "In McDonalds"--but it was all a bit same-y for my tastes. I have no such complaints with this EP, though, and "NYC" is far and away my favourite thing Burial has ever released. As The Quietus put it today in their discussion of the preview of his new track "Ashtray Wasp," "Burial gets better with each release by becoming more and more like Burial, not a statement it's possible to make about many modern artists." Here, that's more than enough--it's quintessential Burial. There's nothing that I can really put my finger on to say what sets it apart from his other songs: it hits that Burial mood with all of his familiar sounds, but rarely have desolate wraiths of forgotten joy been so seductive (especially in the quiet moments with just those voices and the vapours of his synths). The hitches in the beat that crop up every now and again are quite nice, too, providing a kind of propulsion-through-hesitation that amplifies the sense of this sonic world falling apart before your ears (reinforced by his omnipresent crackle and ghostly hums). 

TEN SONGS I'VE LOVED IN 2011

I'm still trying to figure out some kind of albums of the year list (though the number of contenders is slowly but surely dwindling to a manageable number). I imagine that when I figure it out I'll post maybe one a day for ten days or something like that. A countdown! It might add some excitement to this space. Before I get to that, though, I thought I'd highlight, in no particular order, some songs that are off albums, EPs, and other such things that definitely won't be on my albums of the year list (I'm stealing this idea from Nick Southall). Think of this as something of a "Singles of the Year" list, though not all of these were singles.

Solange Knowles - "Left Side Drive"

Okay, yes, it's just Solange singing on top of the old Boards of Canada song of the same name (off the Trans Canada Highway EP), but she really manages to work well with the music. You could almost think (until the coda--although, this version is different than the one I've been listening to, and the vocals are a much better fit) that BoC had written the song for her. The chorus is particularly well done (dig that descending vocal line to kick it off), and I wouldn't be upset at all by a full album that sounded like this. 

Braids - "Lemonade" off Native Speaker

After hearing this song, I was really excited to hear the rest of the album. Unfortunately, it doesn't really live up to the promise of the single, but it's not bad for what it is. I'll be excited to hear their next album, at any rate. The sudden outburst of "Have you fucked / all the stray kids yet?" is a genuine surprise, but the real star is that gently burbling melody line that runs throughout the song.

Dum Dum Girls - "He Gets Me High" off He Gets Me High EP

This is basically just a classic girl group song sped up and with a little scuzz added to it (the start of the song always makes me think of something off Goo, but I can't think of what--"Kool Thing" I guess, but not quite), but damn if it isn't tight and well-written. Really, it's almost like some kind of platonic form--this genre distilled to its essence somehow. The explosion of the chorus is wonderful, and the long, stretched out "Be" at the end of the song  makes me dizzy with glee. Incidentally, I'd never seen this video until right now; I really like it out of sheer nostalgia--it looks like it was made in about 1992 (seriously, I swear there's an Eric's Trip video that looks exactly like this).

  

Efrim Manuel Menuck - "Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows" off Plays "High Gospel"

The name alone conjures up ghosts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion etc., etc. (seriously, I could never keep track of all the things they added to that name), but this doesn't really fit either camp. It's obviously closer to SMZ, given that Efrim is in something like "rock" mode here and singing (quite well, too, though Katie Moore's vocals really steal the show), but the mood is different--less dire, more hopeful, almost triumphant at times. Disappointingly, nothing else of the album really reaches its power, though "I Am No Longer a Motherless Child" comes close.

Thundercat - "Daylight" off The Golden Age of Apocalypse 

Let me start by saying that I do love this album and I might yet convince myself to include it in my albums of the year list. There are a few dud tracks (the ones that sound a little too close to anonymous FlyLo demos/B-sides), but Thundercat's voice and playing are wonderful (I can see why Simon Reynolds included him as part of what he calls the rise of maximalism). This song isn't about chops (or is at least only incidentally about chops); when those sighing vocals come in with the trilling electric piano and tinkling bells, it feels exactly like daylight. Whereas a lot of the better songs sound very much like 1970s fusion, this wouldn't feel tremendously out of place on Cosmogramma, and it's stronger for that.

Tycho - "A Walk" off Dive

Put this and "Daylight" back to back in a playlist--they work really well together, with "Daylight's" synths trailing off into that gently distorted, echoing opening to "A Walk." There is a very obvious debt to Boards of Canada (especially c.The Campfire Headphase, cf. "Dayvan Cowboy," which puts it in a similar sonic environment to the Solange Knowles song above--possible collaboration? I'd listen to it) throughout Dive, but it's well-played and well-produced. If the songs aren't always quite there yet--Pitchfork's review is correct in pointing out that some dynamic shifts would be helpful, because your attention does want to wander--"A Walk" doesn't suffer from that problem. For five minutes while listening to "A Walk," everything about the world seems magical, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Radiohead - "Separator" off The King of Limbs

The highlight of a frustratingly uneven record, "Separator" wouldn't have sounded that out of place for the band sometime just after The Bends was released, if it weren't so relaxed and spacious. One of the advantages (though it can also lead to some deathly dull songs and albums) about bands having played together for a long time is that they play together well. If nothing else, "Separator" is the sound of a band who know how to play to each other's strengths doing just that. Thankfully, it is so much more: one of Thom Yorke's best vocals on the album; a nice, slightly funky, rhythm section; and those heavenly guitars that come in about halfway through. Why couldn't the whole album have sounded like this?!

EMA - "Breakfast" off Past Lives Martyred Saints

The "Fuck California / You made me boring" opening to "California" may have received much of the attention, but it's the uncomfortable "Marked" that has the album's most devastating line: "I wish that every time he touched me left a mark." Mark Richardson wrote an absolutely fabulous piece on "Marked" that, like most of the pieces he writes, says a lot more than I could ever hope to. My favourite song on Past Lives Martyred Saints, though, is "Breakfast" (sorry for the live version; there's no studio version on Youtube). It's relatively peaceful compared to the rest of the album, but as quietly heart-wrenching as anything else. It also reminds me of Deconstruction's self-titled album (especially some of the quieter songs on it, like "Son"), which remains an underappreciated moment in "alternative rock." And she sounds a good deal like Kim Gordon, though in singing mode, rather than grunting mode.

Fennesz - "Liminal" off Seven Stars EP

This is Fennesz in "Endless Summer" mode, unfurling gorgeous melodies wrapped in static. I can't say that it pushes his sound in any new directions, but it sounds great. Fennesz has mastered his own sound, one that's distinct enough to turn his name into an adjective, and this whole EP sounds like him playing with nothing to prove. Even the drums on "Seven Stars" just literalize Fennesz's deconstruction of early rock and roll, which he's been doing since Endless Summer (he does this better than more literal callbacks--like Deerhunter's recent stuff--manage to do, in my opinion). Anyway, "Liminal" (and the rest of the EP) sounds like a breather after the masterful, but quite dense, Black Sea, and it's a joy to hear.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - "Senator" off Mirror Traffic

Speaking of songs that don't push an artist's sound forward. . . There's nothing about "Senator" that Malkmus wasn't doing with Pavement in the 1990s, and part of the pleasure is hearing Malkmus write a song as good as something he would've written in Pavement. The stop-start structure gives "Senator" a lot of momentum, and it sounds like Malkmus and the Jicks are having fun. The latter point has usually been a warning light when it comes to SM + the Jicks' releases (has a talented band jamming ever sounded so interminable?), but here the listener can have fun, too. 

IT BEATS CHRISTMAS CARDS...

For the past couple years, a friend of mine has put together a small booklet of stories, poems, and pictures and mailed it out as a combination Christmas card/present. The people whose work is in the book do not necessarily know each other, but we all know her, and it makes for an interesting collection of work and people. I think that the whole idea trumps any kind of form letter or standard Christmas card. The deadline for getting stuff to her is in a few days and I just sent off my submission. If having deadlines and things like that sounds a little draconian for this sort of thing, well, she's smart enough to realize she won't get anything without them (to say nothing of the logistics of printing all of the booklets up and mailing them out to all the contributors). She's also involved in more serious publication of creative work here, if you are so inclined.

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination--and I'll never claim to be--a creative writer, and this is probably about the exact level to which anything I write should be shared: among friends and without any pretensions toward being "art."* Anyway, this is what I submitted. No points for guessing what it's a description of (the title is a pretty big tip-off):

Pleasures

A crack in the void.

Then, sound:

a balloon in the darkness,

four taut wires,

spectral hands pulling a crinkled sheet flat,

snaps, frozen.

The myth of the world in black and white

before the movies invented colour.

Like I said, I labour under no illusions re: the ultimate value of this little piece, but writing it was a fun half hour. Thankfully, there's nothing that requires the submission to be cheerful or to be about Christmas or anything like that. 

*For those who would make the argument that all writing is creative writing, I will respectfully disagree. I see what I do as inherently different from creative writing (I would be happier, though still not satisfied, with critical writing as a descriptor), and the distinction is, in fact, quite important to me in terms of purpose and goals.

MORE STRUGGLING IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF YEAR-END THOUGHTS

Eventually, I will have time to write here on a regular basis again. I keep telling myself that in the hopes that it will magically be true. So far, it has not worked. Ah well, one final push through to the end of the semester and it may very well be true.

It's mostly been a week of irritations, highlighted by a spectacularly pointless meeting on Friday in which I had to endure someone claiming a) that an organization with less than 25% of its members participating (and probably a smaller percentage of its members voicing their opinions and voting) is an example of a democratic organization and b) that charging dues is, in and of itself, a threat to a democratic organization. Sadly, those were not the most ludicrous statements made in that meeting. It would be comical, but these are supposed to be intelligent people, so it's just sad instead. Had I any political ambitions (I don't), they would have died a slow and painful death in that conference room on Friday afternoon. More uplifting was receiving word that a panel I'd submitted with some colleagues to the Louisville Conference has been accepted. I got that email at the start of the week. Would that I could have switched Friday with Monday this week.

I'm starting to whittle down my list of albums of 2011. Initially I'd thought that this year would have less of an obvious pick at the top of the heap compared to last year. Nothing seemed quite as earthshaking as Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma. However, it turns out that there have actually been several such albums this year, they've just been more subtle about it. In fact, the problem now is distinguishing between a good album and a very good album. 2011 has been a surprisingly top heavy year: the albums that are good are very, very good, but there are a lot that seem pleasant and enjoyable now but that I can't see myself listening to next year (some of them haven't even managed to make it to the end of the 2011 without sounding a little tired to my ears). A few might yet have a resurgence, but, by and large, the best before date on some of what I thought were my favourite albums of the year turned out to be much sooner than anticipated. 

The other surprising thing for me has been the dominance of electronic albums in my preliminary lists. I'm by no means a rockist (or I at least stopped being one a few years ago), and I can say that there's been a general trend towards more electronic music in my listening over the past five or six years. I can easily see this year's list not containing a single "rock" album per se, though, which would be a first. I can't say that I'm any kind of connoisseur or that I have stellar taste--I've poked around a little bit on YouTube to listen to the "brostep" that Reynolds talks about here, here, and here: it sounds largely anonymous to me, like everything I tuned out every time I tried to get into electronic music earlier in life; certainly I don't quite understand the cause for celebration of one (often irritating) feature of the music, though this post is an enlightening read--but I'm definitely on board with the things I like.

Speaking of things I like, this is an old favourite (and I'm surprised I got into this as early as I did--I think that I mostly assumed it was of a piece with "Djed" and accepted it on those terms) that I've been listening to on repeat lately (in between a lot of Tim Hecker--I've got a post on him that I'm trying to finish up) as I read and write. Talk about holographic music! It sounds like a malfunctioning computer's idea of music for a tropical vacation.

Oval - "Do While" (1/3) - off 94 Diskont (1995)

 Oval - "Do While" (2/3) - off 94 Diskont (1995)

Oval - "Do While" (3/3) - off 94 Diskont (1995)