I will hold my incredible taste and not my complete lack of social contacts to “blame” for having never before heard of the supposed pop sensation Justin Bieber. But I remember NSync, the Backstreet Boys, and similar disasters: These unforgivable icons who severed unscrupulously from the first rule of popstar trash ethics. (If you suck horribly as a musician, you must compensate with nice tits.) It would appear however, as recently discovered by ambient artist Shamantis, that this Bieber fellow has had you all fooled. Those vile record producers took his 35 minute Sigur Rós-esque ambient masterpiece U Smile and sped it up into some five minute trashy pop single.
Or maybe the moral of Shamantis’s experiment is that sound is all relative. The worst garbage on the market can speak in tongues. The complete version of U Smile 800% slower can be found and downloaded below. An abbreviated youtube version follows:
It might be old news by now, but yesterday Blizzard Entertainment set an official release date for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. It will be hitting shelves around the world on July 27th. That’s July 27th, 2010. No really. They mean it. Beta testing has been rolling for a couple months now. Of course, single player fans might have to wait longer than July to dig into zerg and protoss; Wings of Liberty is the first of a three part series and focuses on the terran side of the plot. The two that will follow, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, should couple with Warcraft Cataclysm to ensure Blizzard continues to collect my money for years to come. But who plays Starcraft single player anyway? If the game’s launching on July 27th, then presumably b.net is launching with it.
Expect mass swarms of BGH to overwhelm the competition at first, but it won’t be long before that map editor gets put to good proper use. All I’m really hoping for out of Blizzard is a revisit of Polaris Prime and Station Unrest, my two favorite maps. The rest is on the users. Unlimited map pitched battles? Turret defense? The Crash RPG series? A Day At School? The Chrono Trigger and Ogre Battle UMSs? Count me in. And what about those Risk maps that only started popping up a few years ago? Well, get to it all you programmers who actually know how to write triggers and the like. Until then I’ll be backstabbing 7v1 comp stomps. Who’s building a spire instead of drone rushing the computer for a quick easy win count?
I used to demand cookie recipes in exchange for checking allied victory. The 9-0 guys would actually hand them over. That’s what you get for not booting Is_Tab_Of_Ten.
Anyone who’s gone out after a Dropkick Murphys concert knows that barroom singalongs are not a thing merely of the past. But metal fans might not be so inclined, drifting off rather to less accessible places than the pub: enchanted meadows, the depths of hell, their parents’ basement, etc. Me, I would go to Finland. It was not until Ensiferum exploded into the world in 2001 that I realized quite how compatible beer and metal could be. I distinctly recall making pretty much everyone I knew at the time listen to “Goblins’ Dance”:
Ensiferum were not the first Finns to cross the Baltic at three hundred and twenty kilobits per second, but Finntroll, who released their debut in 1999, Midnattens Widunder, were just too bizarre at first to be more than a novelty. The band sang in Swedish (because it sounds more evil than Finnish, so they say) and merged some pretty dark metal with a Finnish folk style known as Humppa. On Visor Om Slutet they went acoustic and introduced kazoo solos. On Nattfödd and the Trollhammaren they incorporated something I can only properly describe as “pirate metal”, and on Ur jordens djup they went Caribbean. There newest album, Nifelvind, came out this February, and your guess is as good as mine. Raise a pint and bang your head, there’s really no other way to react to this. Here’s my favorite track off of it, “Under bergets rot”:
Korpiklaani really perfected this weird Finnish folk metal genre though. They appeared in 2003 out of the ashes of another folk metal band, Shaman, which I’ve not heard, and managed to release six albums in seven years. Korpiklaani are probably the most tame band on this list, a feat they accomplish not by turning down the distortion so much as by really infusing the folk and harnessing a talent to write an endless number of catchy, fairly optimistic songs. It wouldn’t matter which album I take the sample from; they all sound the same, and believe me, a decade from now I hope I can still say that. Enjoy “Kohmelo”, off of their 2009 album, Karkelo. The bitrate on this video is horrible, but you’ll get the idea:
After releasing a string of demos in the late 90s, Turisas put out their first full length in 2004. What can I say? It wasn’t very good. Despite offering drinking songs like “One More” (during which the frontman consumes an obscene amount of vodka live), they really seemed to miss the wave. But oh how the beer gods shined upon them in 2007. The Varangian Way was easily my favorite album of the year. It combines an odd mix of folk and prog (that word bears a horrible connotation in my mind, but Turisas do it right) with a ten track concept album telling the journey of Finnish viking mercenaries to Constantinople. I can’t call the whole album ‘beer metal’, though it’s a masterpiece, but the party atmosphere is a lot more apparent live. I present you with “In the Court of Jarisleif”, in which these viking travelers reach Kiev and well, get really wasted:
I could go on to tell of how Lordi won the 2006 Eurovision competition, an interesting testament to the odd ability of Finnish bands to be heavy, ridiculous, and yet still oddly appealing to the masses, but this topic does not require I stick to one country necessarily. I think I will conclude this chronology of heavy metal drinking music then with a short sail over to Scotland. Alestorm did not form until 2004, and released their first album in 2008. Upon doing so, pirate metal was no longer just a quirky side of Finntroll. (Interestingly, Trollhammaren and Nattfödd were released the same year Alestorm formed. A coincidence? I don’t know. The two bands have toured together.) I never liked rum personally, but I’ll take a shot for these guys. Enjoy “Keelhauled”, off of 2009’s Black Sails at Midnight. Yes, someone just said “yo-ho-ho” in a song and you didn’t roll your eyes:
And there our short journey ends. Folk metal emerged in the 90s, and due credit should be given to the likes of Skyclad and Cruachan, but the 21st century, and specifically Finland, marked its explosion from a small niche genre into one comparable in scale to big guns like death, black, and power metal. More to the point of this post though, always remember that folk is a celebration of the past, and that our forefathers were all alcoholics.
Thankfully, Finntroll, Korpiklaani, and the like incorporated humppa into metal and not the reverse. I leave you with a terrifying alternative:
Australia’s Channel 7 and our own glorious Fox News both featured a man flounder pounding on live television over the past day or two. Can you tell which is literal and which is figurative? I’m still not sure.
(Compliments to BBC World News for bringing the first to my attention. I’ve been reading them daily for a good many years now.)
You know, it would only be fitting to make Miranda Kerr the next hottie of the day…
Having seen 263 different bands live, and a good many of those more than once, I offer you a top 10 list based on ample experience. Oh there might be better live bands out there, but mark my words, these guys are among the very best.
10. Sunn O)))
1 time: 20090917
Recommended album: Black One, or their collaboration with Boris: Altar
Sunn O))) is what happens when an ancient mystery cult encounters electricity. This is probably the closest you can get in this day and age to a true pagan spiritual experience. This is amplifier worship in the literal sense.
9. The Mountain Goats
1 time: 20061029 No Children off of Tallahassee
Recommended album: All Hail West Texas
A funny looking man picks up an acoustic guitar and starts singing you a story about two young lads named Jeff and Cyrus. As the painfully awkward lyrics inform you of their botched efforts to form a metal band, accusing society’s lack of tolerance for holding their dreams at bay, you really start to wonder whether you should cheer the guy on or steal his lunch money. Then the story reaches its conclusion with a chorus of “Hail Satan! Hail Satan tonight!”, everyone in the audience is singing along, and you at last realize that it doesn’t really matter whether you understand the guy or not. This is delightful. If you bother to dig around a little, read more of the lyrics, catch the references here and there, you’ll come to find that John Darnielle absolutely “gets it”. The joke was on you. But it was a clever innocent joke, because everything this guy writes is just as honest as it is intentionally comical. Show up, sing along, listen to his stories, walk away smiling.
8. Týr
2 times: 20080516, 20080517 Hail to the Hammer off of various albums
Recommended album: Eric the Red
“Viking metal” is as much an ethos as a musical style. Indeed, I hesitate to label any but the most undeniable bands “viking”, as opposed to “folk” or “pagan”. But in Týr we find the true third generation of the genre, following Bathory and Falkenbach, with whom they share little stylistically save a knack for writing anthemic heavy metal pagan hymns. I never got into Týr much until I saw them live, but was impressed by their great vocal harmonies, trance-like song progressions, and most notably the confidence with which they could hold the stage even when singing a cappella. By the end of the night I was making arrangements to drive three hours away to see them again.
7. Cracker
3 times: 20060614, 20071031, 20090527 St. Cajetan off of Cracker
Recommended album: Garage D’Or best of compilation
Cracker are the most underrated band of the last 20 years. I’ve been a fan since Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) and Low were radio staples in the early 90s, but when I finally saw them live for the first time in 2006, I was blown away by their energetic stage presence. Johnny Hickman is a rock guitar guru, blending the established melodies with bluesy improvisations that at no point feel forced. David Lowery, nearly 50, rocks out harder than most younger musicians today. You’ll show up with limited hopes of tapping your feet to a few old familiar songs and discover a band that ranges from head-banging rock to slow tongue-in-cheek ballads to plodding blues-worship masterpieces.
6. Explosions in the Sky
1 time: 20070429 Your Hand in Mine off of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
Recommended album: The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
The name says it all. Granted I saw them main stage at Coachella on a sound system set to support Rage Against the Machine’s first gig in nearly a decade, I have to imagine their music completely encompasses any venue. Explosions in the Sky write songs so compelling that you will completely forget you’re at a gig. The music penetrates everything in its vicinity and thrusts itself into you so forcefully that no amount of distractions will diminish the experience.
5. The Decemberists
4 times: 20040627, 20040628, 20061024, 20090814
excerpt from The Hazards of Love
Recommended album: The Crane Wife
The Decemberists have evolved from a thoroughly entertaining sideshow into a complex, operatic experience, without losing track of their original nature. Last time I saw them they performed the Hazards of Love rock opera in its hour long entirety without breaks, then returned for a good half hour of interactive fun. Audience participation is required, but hard to resist when they’re marching up and down the aisles in parade, awkwardly yanking people out of their seats to perform weird skits set to their older songs.
4. Boris
3 times: 20070316, 20071019, 20080629 Farewell off of Pink
Recommended album: Akuma No Uta
A youtube comment for this video described Farewell as “probably the greatest sludge ballad of all time”. Remember that feeling of disintegrating into the world that you got the first time you listened to Converge’s “Jane Doe” or Explosions in the Sky’s “The Birth and Death of Day”? A video of Boris can’t possibly do them justice. The shear volume of sound is their most distinguishable characteristic. On songs like “Farewell” it will disolve you. On songs like “My Neighbor Satan” it will implode you. On songs like “Naki Kyoku” it will chill you out in a mellow bliss.
3. GWAR
5 times: 20060723, 20061124, 20070707, 20071006, 20090923 Womb with a View off of War Party
Recommended album: Beyond Hell
Ever seen a man in a pig suit get a spear jammed up his ass and split out the top of his spine? Ever get soaked in the blood and puss launching forth from the gaping wound, while a monster with a three foot dick sings about raping your girlfriend and feeding her to bears? …What, that doesn’t sound fun? Everyone should see GWAR live at least once. You will either become a cult follower or start going to church more.
2. Dropkick Murphys
3 times: 20070913, 20080307, 20090629 Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced off of Blackout
Recommended album: The Meanest of Times
If you’ve ever drank a beer and liked it, you are a Dropkick Murphys fan. Their gigs are more like giant parties… Well, parties with bagpipes and Guinness.
1. Blind Guardian
2 times: 20061210, 20061211 Mirror Mirror off of Nightfall in Middle-Earth
Recommended album: NiME or A Night at the Opera
Hansi Kursch is the King of the Nerds, and we must give our worthy sage the rightful placement he deserves. What happens when you combine Iron Maiden stage presence with the most epic melodies ever written and lyrics about the Dark Lord Sauron? Click and see my friend. Click and see.
I must have really been out of it these last three months. I was looking over some year-end lists and saw Arkona… then Kalevala… then Nokturnal Mortum… Since when did they all have new albums out? So I decided enough of this and got out my shovel. 1,097 album topics flagged as metal later, I had nine new releases by great bands between October 1st and now, and one from September that seemed sufficiently overlooked to merit mention. Some came as complete surprises. Others I’d acquired and then promptly forgot. Krallice aside I haven’t heard any of these prior to about two days ago, if at all. But these aren’t just arbitrary bands. They are all groups that have released albums I’m quite fond of in the past:
Arkona – Goi, Rode, Goi!
Аркона – Гой, Роде, Гой!
Napalm Records, October 28th, 2009 Russia
Arkona stand, in my mind, alongside Pagan Reign/Tverd’ at the forefront of pagan metal today. Ot Serdtsa K Nebu might have been too good to be topped, but this is bound to be an enjoyable album.
Dark Funeral – Angelus Exuro pro Eternus
Regain Records, November 18th, 2009 Sweden
I expect more completely standard Swedish bm… but who can complain?
Ihsahn – After
Candlelight Records, January 26th, 2010 Norway
Emperor’s frontman needs little introduction. For those of you who were, like me, disappointed with angL, note that I did listen to After once and I think it’s pretty solid. Expect the usual prog black metal that only Ihsahn can really pull off.
Kalevala – The Cuckoo’s Children
Калевала – Кукушкины дети
Metalism Records, October 3rd, 2009 Russia
Possibly my favorite folk metal band, these guys play songs that would stand up in any epoch if you took out the metal guitar and drumming
Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough
Profound Lore Records, November 10th, 2009 United States
Krallice’s self titled was an easy contender for the greatest album of 2008. They take the concept of post-black metal started by Agalloch and Klabautamann and tie it to the end of an atom bomb. This will probably turn out the best album out of the ten here listed.
Månegarm – Nattväsen
Regain Records, November 19th, 2009 Sweden
An incredibly underrated folk metal band with tendencies towards black metal
Nihill – Grond
Hydra Head, October 13th, 2009 Netherlands
Ambient, spooky American-style black metal
Nokturnal Mortum – Голос Сталі (The Voice of Steel)
Oriana, December 26th, 2009 Ukraine
Nokturnal Mortum stand at the forefront of nsbm, their music so brilliant as to compensate for all radical ideologies, though their new album is a disappointment in my opinion. It’s still better than most else out there. See my review from last week for more details.
Temnozor – Haunted Dreamscapes
Темнозорь – Урочища Снов
Stellar Winter, January 3rd, 2010 Russia
Very folk-influenced nsbm, and much better than the new Nokturnal Mortum album if you ask me. (Not that it need be said, but we don’t ideologically support nsbm. The music still kicks ass.)
And last of all, for a band that never fails to confuse me:
Stíny Plamenů – Mrtvá Komora
Naga Productions, September 1st, 2009 Czech Republic
“The name of the project, Stiny Plamenu (meaning “Stinky Sewer”), was born from the feelings and emotions experienced while watching the sewer expanses illuminated by a flickering fire, the fascinating places beneath the town of Plzen became the inspiration for the lyrical content of the project. Mythological characters of the world of sewer lore soon appeared: Pan Cistirensky (“The Sewage Disposal Lord”), Pani z Vodarny (“Lady of the Waterworks”), Syn Poklopu (“Son of the Manhole Lids”), Mistr Jimac (“The Cesspool Master”) and some others. Stories about these figures are told in the guise of black metal pieces with a truly bestial sound.”
Ok, well I might have edited the English translation of the band name……
I got pretty excited when asked to write an article on Boris. After all, 2009 was their best year since Flood. I’m not kidding. In fact, it wouldn’t even be fair for me to describe their new material. I’d just be spoiling it. Instead let me help you piece it all together. Boris revealed 10 new songs last year, totaling 62 minutes and spread out over six different releases. Four of them were to some extent intended to be pieced together into one. The other two are just too good to exclude. Here’s what to look for:
split w/9dw – Golden Dance Classics (2009 Catune)
split w/Torche – Chapter Ahead Being Fake (2009 Daymare)
Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v1 7″ (2009 Southern Lord Records)
Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v2 7″ (2009 Southern Lord Records)
Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v3 7″ (2009 Southern Lord Records)
Japanese Heavy Rock Hits v4 7″ (2009 Southern Lord Records)
The first two are available on cd, but don’t ask me where. The Heavy Rock collection has to the best of my knowledge only been marketed on vinyl. Volume 4 is only available in a limited edition when you order 1-3 as a package from Southern Lord, and consists of a cover of some 1970 single by a band called Earth & Fire. Volume 4 and Chapter Ahead Being Fake both contain one Boris song, and the rest have two. Now go get all of them. If you’re downloading, note that Luna ends abruptly and Tokyo Wonder Land begins abruptly. While I’m not convinced that the former is by design, I have yet to hear of a version that contains the last few seconds of the song.
As for the order you should experience them in, the Heavy Rock Hits follow a logical progression (with the last track of 1 and the first of 2 being the only real downers out of all 10.) The 9dw split was released first, but Tokyo Wonder Land is definitely not an intro track. The abrupt ending and beginning I mentioned make for a logical transition between the very different styles of the two splits, and the monolithic mindfuck that is Luna would make Golden Dance Classics a downer of an outro, so I suggest Chapter Ahead Being Fake – Golden Dance Classics – Heavy Rock Hits as the most logical order to listen in. At least that’s how I queue them up.
Like I said, I don’t want to go into detail about the songs, because they’re really something to experience, not describe. Suffice to say I consider Boris’s 2009 collection as a whole second only to Flood as the best hour of music they’ve yet recorded. Expect to be blown away, beaten into a pulp, chilled back out, then taken on a roller coaster through the extremities of Boris’s present potential, all the while wondering if it’s one big joke. Enjoy what would have easily topped my year-end list could I call it a singular album. And check out the rest of the splits eventually. 9dw and Torche contribute some nice tunes.
For whatever it’s worth, my favorite tracks are Luna, 8, and Black Original. Tokyo Wonder Land comes close.
Necrosomethingorother here, I’m going to be doing periodic album reviews for a while. My first one involves some rather controversial material, but hey, it’s what’s new in the metal world.
As I write I am acquainting myself with Nokturnal Mortum‘s sixth studio album, leaked Christmas day when I was too busy to notice. The Voice of Steel starts off where the Eastern Hammer EP ended, hurdy gurdies blazing in a mind-blowing intro, and then slowly transitions into some weird amalgamation of pagan nsbm and spacey Pink Floyd guitar solos. It’s still got some battlecry sopilka breakdowns of classic Nokturnal Mortum, the intense tribal drumming that first greeted us on To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire’s Cheremosh, the violin over epic synth that characterized Weltanschauung…
But it also has clean vocals and Pink Floyd guitar solos, and I’m just not sold on them yet. The Voice of Steel is in some ways amazing, in others irritating. It’s a decent album, no doubt about it, but it sure wasn’t what I was hoping for. Nothing would have made me happier than a whole album of the Eastern Hammer remake of Kolyada, and that The Voice of Steel is certainly not.
The album has some real gems, notably Shlyakhom Sontsya. It also has tracks like Moei Mrii Ostrovi that would fit in a lot better on an Amorphis album and just clash entirely with the group’s extremist views. They’re trying to mature musically, but they have to mature mentally first to really pull it off.
Extremism has produced some amazing music over the years. Wrath of the Tyrant, Det Som Engang Var, NeChrist, they all share in common a level of passionate convictions taken so far as murder, arson, or white supremacy. Obviously I don’t have to condone these acts to appreciate their origins, but the musicians have to come to terms with them eventually. Ihsahn seems to recognize his youthful escapades as a childish outlet for his anti-Christian views and now writes more mature music effectively. His album After, another new release, is pretty damn impressive. He can still frown on the Christian culture of servitude without letting it consume him and his innate musical talents. Meanwhile you’ve got Varg writing dissertations on the likelihood of Aryans being an advanced race from outerspace, and I have pretty low expectations of his forthcoming album.
I hear in Knjaz Varggoth’s new music a reflection of this Vargian state of depravity. Their old songs embodied folk, and they believed in it so thoroughly that they took on extremist views, but that was only the lyrical focus. NeChrist was packed with anthems to what the band barely understood, aggression married to mysticism, white supremacy only a catalyst. The aggressive desperation with which they summoned a bygone era made their music a mirror into the past. It was as though the songs they played were ancient melodies shouting, screaming to be heard once again over the clamor of modern rock by any means necessary. I can’t expect another masterpiece like NeChrist, maybe not even something as good as Weltanschauung, but a stylistic evolution means a mental one too, and I hear in songs that combine clean vocals and Gilmour guitars with cries for the motherland the path of Varg, not Ihsahn. It’s hard to appreciate music that’s neither passionate nor mature. The Voice of Steel is not culture triumphant, it’s more like a methodic racial manifesto. Come on Knjaz, either sustain your fire or light a new match, don’t slump into dogma.
For a far more heartfelt nsbm album, check out Temnozor’s 2010 offering, Haunted Dreamscapes.
Can a truly fair assessment really be made? Like any other year, 2009 offered a vast assortment of great albums across many genres. How does one weed through all the hype to extract them? I for one listened to over one hundred new releases in 2009, yet the top 30 I compiled out of this fell into very few other lists. With so much music available these days, my year-end list is like picking up a handful of seashells and calling one the prettiest in the entire ocean. What I want to do here instead is couple my own experiences with two other sources and come up with a more balanced top ten of what we should all go back and listen to, whether I’ve heard it or not.
Let me qualify each.
*The Pitchfork Reader Poll – Pitchfork used to be the most widely respected source of music news around, and while their editing staff has fallen into irredeemable disrepute, the reader poll maintains a degree of legitimacy that few other sites with a 10,000+ voter base are likely to attain.
*An anonymous music group’s poll – My anonymous source requires a level of interaction, diversity of taste, and depth of exploration that qualifies the bulk of its hundred or so voters as thoughtful individuals with enough experience to make legitimate choices.
*Me – I’m a metalhead with indie inclinations, and completely distanced from media hype. (No, I don’t read Pitchfork, and I only realized Phoenix were popular when I heard 1901 playing at a Steelers game.)
So here are ten albums of 2009 you should go listen to. Never mind what styles they are. Never mind that I haven’t heard half of them:
1. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
This ranked as my second favorite album of the year, #9 in my anonymous group, and #28 on the Pitchfork reader’s poll. Why should you hear it? Pitchfork’s reviewers gave it a pathetic 5/10. This album got voted in because it was so damn good that no amount of negativity could stop the masses from voicing their opinion.
2&3. Mastodon – Crack the Skye
and Converge – Axe to Fall
I placed Crack the Skye at #6. My music group gave it 14th, and Pitchfork 33rd. Axe to Fall got 15, 25, and unrated in the top 40 overall but #2 in metal albums. Why should you hear them? Metal doesn’t get much attention these days, but unlike Wolves in the Throne Room, these two bands rose to celebrity status through quality releases. Sure they ranked high due to hype, but I can attest that both are good, albeit not the best, metal albums of the year. It’s safe to assume you’ve already heard them if you’re a metal fan, so I speak to everyone else in saying these are your best bets for sampling what the genre had to offer in 2009.
4. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
In the top 5 on both sites, I haven’t heard it myself, but a metal fan who I respect marked this as the best album of the year. That’s enough to tell me that hype alone didn’t place them so high.
5&6. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
and Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Both placed #1 on one site and in the top 5 on the other. Both were also hyped more than perhaps any other releases this year. But I have heard and enjoyed WAP, not on any provocative level but enough to recommend it. Animal Collective have released decent enough albums in the past that I am confident this one would have at least made my top 30 had I heard it. With music this hyped one has to ask “is this actually great, or am I just fooling myself?” Well, I can safely count these two as “pretty good” in their own right. Great? You be the judge.
7. Peste Noire – Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor
This French black metal masterpiece is hands down the best album of the year that I’ve heard, but it didn’t make any group charts so I respectfully held it until #7. Here is my reaction the day I first heard it: This is brilliant, fascinating, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Their ambiance of hate is gone. What replaces it is something I can’t quite define, but it’s captivating. If Famine hadn’t coined it “Black’n’Roll” I think the term still might have popped up, but it’s also a whole lot more than that. The 60s-70s rock and roll styles it incorporates, while similar in construct, conjure nothing of the sort to mind. Instead, it gives this sort of ironic (I hate that term applied to music criticism, but it fits here) lively essence to a dismal, filthy Dark Age. Take my irc reaction: “Track three feels like I’m dancing circles around someone in a torture chamber randomly sticking hot pokers into them and really enjoying it.”
8. The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
I placed this album at #4, and again no one else gave it attention. I have no idea why. I haven’t heard any of their other albums. Perhaps their earlier releases are even better? This jazzy indie disc contains some of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard. Just listen to the last track, Take Me Around Again, and try and tell me you don’t walk around singing the barely sensible lyrics for weeks on end.
9. The xx – xx
Here’s another album I haven’t heard yet. The reviews I’ve read of this really make me think I’ll hate it, but as the only other album that made both polls’ top 5 there surely must be some merit to it. I said the same thing about M83 last year, and Saturdays = Youth became a staple album for me in the months that followed. Maybe I won’t be so lucky this go around, but love it or hate it I would be doing my music sensibilities an injustice to not check it out. The same goes for you.
10. N.A.S.A. – The Spirit of Apollo
Has this discredited my entire list? Maybe. It didn’t place in either poll, but the Pitchfork editors gave it a 1 out of 10, so there must be something good about it. They went so far as to write up an eight paragraph review about how impressively unpretentious it is. “[The] beats on this album are total washed-out dorm-room funk . . . “The People Tree” is an excessively polite bloopy organ groove. “Way Down” is the reason acid jazz no longer exists. “Hip Hop” is a horribly boring attempt at ca. 1998 sunny smiley-face West Coast indie-rap. And on it goes.” In other words, this album ignores all expectations of taking music to a new level and just gets down to business with fun, catchy, simple songs that anyone can enjoy. You mean hip-hop doesn’t have to be angry or arrogant? Amazing! I ranked it my 3rd favorite of the year.
Through the Shattered Lens 