It's December 1st, so here comes the 1st batch of honorable mentions! Happy advent everyone (does one say that?), enjoy the festive season, whether it's raining, snowing, sunning or hurricaning outside wherever you are, although I really hope it's not the latter!
By the way, in case it wasn't clear: this list (as all of them have been) is going to be extremely diverse. There's no way you're going to like everything on it, unless you're me. I try to be as undiscriminating in terms of genre as possible, and a quick browse through this and previous years' lists reveal both gangsta rap, doom metal, instrumental jazz, acoustic folk, and everything in between, although my main focus is around the pop and rock shelves. So if you hit one or two albums that really don't sit well - stay tuned, there'll be something for you around the next bend!
I can't help it, I'm a sucker for post-rock. If you aren't familiar with the term post-rock, it's the genre with often instrumental, really long songs that feature repetitive guitar tinkering, everlastingly long crescendos, and skull-shattering, gigantic climaxes. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and I won't claim it's the most interesting genre in the world. The Texan quartet Explosions in the Sky is one of post-rock's godfathers, releasing their debut in back in 2000, and their 2003 landmark The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place was my gateway to post-rock and has remained their most acclaimed album. They didn't change their very rigid setup much, and so none of their subsequent releases have really caught my attention. But they shake things up on their seventh album, The Wilderness. Promisingly or perhaps uninterestingly, the standard reception of their seventh album The Wilderness has been that it's "their best since ...Cold Dead Place". And the key to the success is the introduction of some new elements. There are more electronics, some actual human vocals at a few key moments, and also some ambient passages, resulting in a way more diverse album than your "standard" post-rock recipe.
I've started doing something this year I never really appreciated before: listening to music while hiking in the woods. It may sound like a strange thing for a biologist to do. It's true, it's not the best for noticing all the things going on around you, but it sure is a fantastic way to listen to music. It's how Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool first clicked for me, and it cast a fantastic light on The Wilderness. Though obviously nature-inspired, The Wilderness feels more intimate and human than the grandiose events of post-rock past. Someone wrote that it's the same grandiose events going on, fireworks exploding in the sky or whatever, just that it's as if you're watching them more from a distance, paying more attention to the person beside you than the show itself. I liked that impression. and I'm beginning to really like this album. When I listen to it in the woods I find that it makes me really aware of my own situation, like how lucky I am to be where I am or how good the cold air feels on my face or that my ankle doesn't hurt when I run.
OK that was enough abstractions for today, I'll stop there. You might like this or might not, but I enjoyed it.
Best tracks: It's a cohesive whole, but with a long buildup, so I'll highlight "Logic of a Dream", "Landing Cliffs" and "Disintegration Anxiety" so you don't miss them.
By the way, in case it wasn't clear: this list (as all of them have been) is going to be extremely diverse. There's no way you're going to like everything on it, unless you're me. I try to be as undiscriminating in terms of genre as possible, and a quick browse through this and previous years' lists reveal both gangsta rap, doom metal, instrumental jazz, acoustic folk, and everything in between, although my main focus is around the pop and rock shelves. So if you hit one or two albums that really don't sit well - stay tuned, there'll be something for you around the next bend!
Wild Beasts - Boy King
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| Dark but bright, garish but stylish, unsettling but slightly alluring. Perfect for the music within. |
There's been a lot of music like this lately. R'n'B-inspired, synthy, moody, full of 80's-style production... you know the drill. A lot of it's been good, but for my part the good stuff tends to drown in the mediocre stuff that sounds generic and formulaic, and I've grown slightly tired of the whole scene. However, when Wild Beasts went down this road on their 5th album Boy King my interest was piqued. "Mecca" from their previous album has been a playlist favorite of mine, and I appreciate the Beasts' cleverness, sense of rhythm, catchy melodies and attention to detail. Boy King does exactly what I hoped with the genre: Plays on all its strengths - strong, sexy beats, exciting electronic touches and sparser, more effective instrumentation - and flips its standard lyrical tropes upside down: R'n'b is overstuffed with strongly male chauvinist lyrics and the artists somehow get praised for it, but here the narrator is the uncertain, sex-crazed, desperate one, idolizing the strong females all around.
It's a refreshing change of frame, eyeing modern-day masculinity critically. The glossy figure on the cover is immature, fragile, hollow and cracking all over, full of jealousy, and it's an impressive release from the four 30-year-old, white UK guys. In an interview with The Independent about the album, lead singer Hayden Thorpe says “The Boy King is so much bigger than us as an alter
ego. He's been to the gym, he's had his protein shake,” Thorpe says,
adding, “That hyper male character is in me, I’m a guy in a band for God's sake. My projection of self, my projection of identity is pretty
large. ... [Y]ou have to
ask, what is that masking? What insecurities and vulnerabilities is that
masking?”
The music is excellent too, especially on the first and last thirds. As I wrote about the cover (this may become a habit): dark, garish and unsettling, yet bright, cool and alluring.
Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial
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| Effortlessly cool cover. Was that picture border made in Word 98? |
Indie rock has seen better days. The throne that was so highly competed in the early 00s is now pretty empty. The Strokes, Hives, Shins, Sounds, Decemberists, Antlers, Wombats, Killers, Kooks, Libertines, Walkmen and so on have all gone quite thoroughly out of style. So steer away if you want, for here is a record in exactly that alley which adds nothing new to the genre. 24-year-old Will Toledo, a.k.a. Car Seat Headrest, has made a loud, gritty, ugly coming-of-age record with Teens of Denial, his first major-label original album after self-releasing eight (!) albums on Bandcamp.
If you don't feel like giving a prolific 24-year-old's ninth record of unoriginal grungy guitar rock a spin I don't blame you, but you'd be missing something. This could have been utterly boring, but it isn't. Teens of Denial is urgent, meaningful, funny, shocking, and most importantly, it rocks. The music is energetic, not just loud, and Toledo's sloppy singing feels truly emotional, not just ugly. The lyrics are oftentimes hilarious in their frankness, but I tend to laugh with him rather than at him when he tells bad jokes. The songs expertly portray the lazy, self-obsessed teens that think the world revolves around them, while they ultimately know nothing about the world. You see the "fake it till you make it" kids fumbling around blindly in the first steps of adulthood, but for all the idiotic things they say, teens are often the ones that see the world the clearest. Both sides of the coin are revealed here. The messy guitars really transmit the angst and pain and confusion this sprawling coming-of-age album needs. Even at one hour and ten minutes long, I enjoy listening to this whole thing through - there are enough awesome songs for that, and the occasional indulgence in a super-long intro or multi-part ramble-opus is totally justified . This record makes me both smile, think, dance, and shout along.
Lyrics snippets about the misplaced kids:
"You have no RIGHT to be depressed, you haven't tried hard enough to like it!!"
"Last Friday I took acid and mushrooms, I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit, in a stupid looking jacket."
...and the ones who profit on them:
"Hello my friend, we've been waiting for you for a long time. We have reason to believe that your soul is just like ours. Did you ever get the feeling you were just a little different? Well here's our web page, you've finally found a home."
Lyrics snippets about the misplaced kids:
"You have no RIGHT to be depressed, you haven't tried hard enough to like it!!"
"Last Friday I took acid and mushrooms, I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit, in a stupid looking jacket."
...and the ones who profit on them:
"Hello my friend, we've been waiting for you for a long time. We have reason to believe that your soul is just like ours. Did you ever get the feeling you were just a little different? Well here's our web page, you've finally found a home."
Best tracks: "Drunk drivers/Killer whales", "Fill in the blank", "(Joe gets kicked out of school for using) Drugs with friends (but says this isn't a problem)"
Explosions in the Sky - The Wilderness
 |
| Beautiful, complex. Natural and electronic elements mixed seamlessly. |
I can't help it, I'm a sucker for post-rock. If you aren't familiar with the term post-rock, it's the genre with often instrumental, really long songs that feature repetitive guitar tinkering, everlastingly long crescendos, and skull-shattering, gigantic climaxes. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and I won't claim it's the most interesting genre in the world. The Texan quartet Explosions in the Sky is one of post-rock's godfathers, releasing their debut in back in 2000, and their 2003 landmark The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place was my gateway to post-rock and has remained their most acclaimed album. They didn't change their very rigid setup much, and so none of their subsequent releases have really caught my attention. But they shake things up on their seventh album, The Wilderness. Promisingly or perhaps uninterestingly, the standard reception of their seventh album The Wilderness has been that it's "their best since ...Cold Dead Place". And the key to the success is the introduction of some new elements. There are more electronics, some actual human vocals at a few key moments, and also some ambient passages, resulting in a way more diverse album than your "standard" post-rock recipe.
I've started doing something this year I never really appreciated before: listening to music while hiking in the woods. It may sound like a strange thing for a biologist to do. It's true, it's not the best for noticing all the things going on around you, but it sure is a fantastic way to listen to music. It's how Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool first clicked for me, and it cast a fantastic light on The Wilderness. Though obviously nature-inspired, The Wilderness feels more intimate and human than the grandiose events of post-rock past. Someone wrote that it's the same grandiose events going on, fireworks exploding in the sky or whatever, just that it's as if you're watching them more from a distance, paying more attention to the person beside you than the show itself. I liked that impression. and I'm beginning to really like this album. When I listen to it in the woods I find that it makes me really aware of my own situation, like how lucky I am to be where I am or how good the cold air feels on my face or that my ankle doesn't hurt when I run.
OK that was enough abstractions for today, I'll stop there. You might like this or might not, but I enjoyed it.
Best tracks: It's a cohesive whole, but with a long buildup, so I'll highlight "Logic of a Dream", "Landing Cliffs" and "Disintegration Anxiety" so you don't miss them.
