Walkmen – Lisbon
In that elegantly disheveled mutter-wail thing of his, frontman Hamilton Leithauser starts new album Lisbon off by singing: “You’re with someone else tomorrow night/ Doesn’t matter to me/ ‘Cause as the sun dies into the hill/ You got all I need.” He’s sad and pathetic and needy and yet somehow still smooth, which is sort of the central animating paradox at the heart of the Walkmen. They make these wounded, anxious songs, but they make them so confidently, with such unearthly rich-guy assurance. The band’s specific style of indie rock is very rooted in a scrappy, scratchy New York tradition that dates back to the Velvet Underground or Bob Dylan, but their take on it is theirs and theirs alone. You know one of their songs right away when those winding, circular guitars and surging drums and gargling vocals kick in. They’re so performative in their sadness, but that stuff never rankles or comes off tantrumy, since the band is just so good at this stuff. There’s a song on Lisbon called “Woe Is Me”, and it’s not even remotely a joke. Great song, too. Read the full review
Black Angels – Phosphene Dream
Opener ‘Bad Vibrations’ is every bit the song its title suggests, a wobbling and ebbing intro of throbbing guitar barely making space for Alex Maas’s strained vocals, which throughout the record sound like they’re coming from somewhere down the hall, spreadeagled against a corner, deep inside some personal void. The sting, in this case, is very much in the tail, as eerily picked lonesome guitar segues into a brisk up-tempo motorik for the final quarter of the track. Granted, it’s neither rocket science nor re-inventing the wheel, but the best moments of Phosphene Dream categorically prove that The Black Angels are at their best when they just let things roll on by. Read the full review
Of Montreal – False Priest
False Priest is a generally enjoyable record. In all honesty when I started listening I hated it, hearing it as nothing more than a silly and pointless indulgence without any sort of consistency or narrative to keep me engaged. After a few listens though I realised that yes, it is silly (the opening two songs in particular) but it can also be unashamedly enjoyable for the listener too. It’s easy to try seek meaning from this record and at times it shows itself: there are a few references to Barnes’s childhood, letting us delve a little deeper into his mind while there are also songs that could be interpreted as continuations of “Touched Something’s Hollow” where Barnes explores what having an alter ego can do to his mind. For a record with a title like False Priest you might even expect Barnes to explore the nature of religion and its effects or even the effect it had on him more deeply (he grew up in a Catholic household). Instead at the end of the record he seems to take up the role of preacher, dismissing the idea of having faith in a God. For a free spirit like Barnes it seems odd to have him judging us for once. Read the full review
Blonde Redhead – Penny Sparkle
Despite its deliberate evolution on each previous album — a habit kept up since 1995 — Penny Sparkle marks Blonde Redhead’s most dramatic shift yet, a record that eschews organic instrumentation for synthesizers and drum machines on a near-total scale. Penny Sparkle is a dense, textural affair that Makino likely knew would be lost on a portion of the band’s post-punk die-hards, and perhaps the shift initially evaded her, too. Regardless, the band emerged from Scandinavia with a fantastic document of their modern electronic taste, a record that, while not their best work, serves as a rewarding continuation of the band’s trademark pop elegance, sensuality, and otherworldliness. Read the full review
5. 2009 Has Been a Great Year for Music: Whatever your genre preference, there’s been a lot of wonderful stuff coming out in 2009. It’s impossible to be brief and concise conveying the scope of quality 2009 titles. Some of my personal favorites include Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport, Fever Ray’s Fever Ray and Beirut’s March of the Zapotec/Holland. Of course, I’ve barely scratched the surface.
4. Vinyl’s Still Going Strong: The resurgence of vinyl’s popularity over the last few years has been an absolute blessing for audiophiles. We’re at a point now where it’s safe to assume any given album will see a vinyl issue, often coupled with a voucher for an mp3 download of your purchase. These days, it’s a no-brainer picking sides in the format war. (Incidentally the only new record I purchased on both cd and vinyl this year was Bad Lieutenant.)
3. Reissues Abound: The extent to which an old album can be cleaned-up, remixed and remastered is staggering. 2009 saw the best-sounding records of the 60′s, The Beatles catalog, reissued and sounding vastly improved. It’s nothing short of revelatory to listen to one of your favorite albums after a top-notch remastering. Currently, about half our staff are obsessively listening to and extolling the virtues of the magnificent sounding reissue of King Crimson’s Red.
2. A Good Showing From The Elder Statesmen: Question: What do Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Yoko Ono have in common? Answer: They’ve all been producing music for over twenty-five years and they all released great albums this year. 2009 has been kind to the old guard, or should I say the old guard has been kind to us in 2009? There’s been so much good stuff from established acts this year, one could ignore all the newer artists and still have plenty to listen to.
1. We Are Still Here: It’s been a tough decade for the music retail industry. CD burner’s, legal and illegal digital music distribution and the prevalence of mp3 players have all put a tight squeeze on our livelihood, and yet we’re still here. Truthfully, it’s a bit of a miracle we’ve managed to hang in, and for that, we are greatly thankful. It’s a lot of hard work, but we believe in it and are proud to continue to make tangible music product available to those who want it.
Flaming Lips – Embryonic
Embryonic leans heavily on the Lips’ formative 60s/70s psych-rock influence (like In a Priest Driven Ambulance‘s “Take Meta Mars” before it, Embryonic‘s formidable opener “Convinced of the Hex” grooves heavily on Can’s “Mushroom”), but never before has the band recorded an album so unwaveringly sinister, or so devoid of pop-song levity. (Hell, even Zaireeka had “The Big Ol’ Bug Is the New Baby Now”.) Wayne Coyne no longer assumes the role of the endearingly creaky, puppet-toting crooner. Instead, he’s a world-weary fatalist describing scenes of environmental holocaust in a chillingly unaffected monotone on the rampaging “See the Leaves”. Or he’s a cult leader deviously summoning his minions on “Sagittarius Silver Announcement”, before leading them to a fiery demise on the monstrous, stoner-metal onslaught of “Worm Mountain” (featuring fuzzbox-stomping assistance from MGMT). (Read Full Review)
Baroness – Blue Record
Baroness’ rock is both intricate and blunt, and like most music that’s intricate and blunt, is easiest to classify as metal. Sure enough, they’re neck deep in the scene, recording for a premier label and doing artwork for Guitar World. Staring at frontman John Baizley’s Art Nouveau jacket art, you can glimpse what sets them apart, though. Like their album titles (this one follows up Red Album), there is a conspicuous absence of heavy metal’s favorite color and mood. Baroness don’t have much about them that’s black.
Leaving out darkness would seem to be as fatal as ditching overdrive or the kick drum, and it’s not completely absent. They do slash through minor scales and kachugga-chugga plods, tones that would metalicize middle-of-the-road rock. But for metal, Blue Record is uplifting. When the twin lead guitars lock in with each other and spiral up though notes together, it’s bright, bright stuff – southern rock, essentially, and it makes up meaty sections of the songs here. But just as often, it’s simple; icy notes hang in the air while Baizley howls listlessly and rhythms grind like machines. (Read Full Review)
Del & Tame One – Parallel Uni-verses
The album starts off with soulful production by Parallel Thought, who makes the most of this full length effort. Weaving between samples while bringing a true underground sound that compliments the emcees, Thought shines. By setting the tone from get go, Del and Tame, at times struggle to reach the bar. When they do, they clear it without effort. Both revert to spitting those conscious verses, with sporadic humor throughout that grabbed our attention 15 years ago. At times, they struggle to diversify their content, which can make it hard for the listener to differentiate between tracks due to the lack of variety. In same breath, that same struggle provides the album with a stability that is often unheard in today’s soundscape. (Read The Full Review)
Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart
This enjoyable sense of exploration, which prizes levity in a genre that usually amounts to an artistic wasteland, is invaluable. It also proves how much life is left in the songs, and how much other artists have succeeded at butchering them (Rod Stewart comes to mind). It’s not hard to imagine a few of these versions sneaking in with the Burl Ives and Bing Crosby classics that define the season. And there’s the added bonus of Dylan’s voice, which he wittily exaggerates to a creepy level, almost emulating a scratchy Tom Waits growl. Profoundly weird but still cozy, Christmas in the Heart paints an appealing holiday picture: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost scratching at your ears. people under the stairs (Read The Full Review)
The following albums are all classics that belong in any serious music fan’s collection. Another thing they have in common is that only the most hopeful among us expected them to be as good as they are. Join us, as we consider five albums no one expected to be good that came out great.
Bob Dylan – Time Out of Mind Prior to the release of this album, Bob Dylan may have been popular, but he hadn’t been relevant in nearly two decades. His catalog throughout the 80′s and 90′s is a laundry list of underwhelming mediocrity, championed by only his most die-hard fans. With the release of Time Out of Mind, Dylan re-established himself as a first-rate song-writer and lyricist. Not only did it measure up to the best of his other works, it was one of the best albums of the decade. Dylan, whose voice had degraded to frog-throated rasps, had never sounded so vital.
New Order – Power, Corruption & Lies Movement, the first release by New Order, did little to dissuade people who were skeptical that Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris would be able to escape the shadow of their former group, Joy Division. The demise of Ian Curtis seemed to herald the death of his former bandmate’s music careers. Indeed, Movement, despite its exceptional moments, sounds like an attempt to rehash the Joy Division sound. With Power, Corruption & Lies, New Order were truly born. All the hallmarks of their sound are fully in place, and the album included perhaps their most enduring song, Blue Monday. To many, it represents the band at their peak.
George Harrison – All Things Must Pass After the Beatles break-up was made public in tandem with the announcement of Paul McCartney’s first solo album, all eyes were on Paul and John. How would the members of the greatest song-writing partnership in history fare on their own? While that’s fascinating topic its own right, the biggest surprise in the Beatles solo output is Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Arguably the best of all Beatle solo records, ATMP is a double LP without an ounce of fat. Harrison delivered the best songs of his career in a single serving, a considerable accomplishment from a man who held his own in the company of the Lennon/McCartney colossus.
Portishead – Third Eleven years after their previous studio album and a decade after the genre of music they’d helped to define had become a memory, the idea of a new Portishead album was perplexing to say the least. Sure, it could have been a pleasant throw-back to days gone by, or a regrettable taint on a brief yet immaculate career, but Portishead defied expectation and delivered an instant classic. Without shedding the aesthetic that defined their sound, the band incorporated a variety of new influences and techniques to create a stunning, broad and cohesive piece of music that reminded us Portishead are, as they say, the shit.
Hank Williams III – Lovesick, Broke and Driftin’ Hank III’s first solo album, Risin’ Outlaw, was a huge disappointment to fans of the William’s Dynasty. Overproduced and undistinguished, it seemed as if the grandson of the legendary Hank Williams was capable of little more than exploiting his family name. With Lovesick, Broke and Driftin’, he made amends. True to the spirit of his grandfather, Hank III broke new ground and defined modern outlaw country music. Not only did he do right by his grandaddy, he cast a shadow over his father, Hank Williams Jr, whose music seems rather safe by comparison.
