b/o 2010: pt I (25-11)

Looking for a predominant theme in my world, at least, it has been the Year Of Merge, comfortably placing four albums in the top 25, notching their first #1 album in Billboard, and topping it off with the resurgence of label founders McCaughan & Ballance's own band Superchunk, it has certainly been a year to remember for the Little Indie That Could...

The subtext would be: 'The Long Tail Rules...' Years from now, I suspect I'll look back on this time as being as much of a watershed as the early '90's, in terms of depth of releases. The List has been very tough to narrow down the last few years, and it's been a bonanza of great music. Last year tilted heavily towards veterans, this year seems more of a mix.

Without furthur ado:
#25) NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Together
Carl Newman and the gang bring it on home for 'Together', sharpening the songs, and adding the special bonus of a tour that included, (at some stops), all the original cohorts.

A pure pop extravaganza from the Canadian supergroup...

Key tracks: "Silver Jenny Dollar" and "Your Hands (Together)"











#24) VASELINES: Sex With An X
Any decade that has a Vaselines record can't be all bad. Wonder of wonders, 2010 saw the gang drop 'Sex With An X', dress up as a priest and nun in their video, and hit the road in style for a U.S. tour, while maintaining their bellicose goodness on record.

"I Hate The 80's" will serve as the statement on misguided nostalgia, and the final track, "Exit The Vaselines" closes another chapter.

Utterly unpredictable, and joyously bitter, that's our Vaselines!






#23) WARPAINT: The Fool
Long strange trip from the LA underground to this, their debut album. Intense and atmospheric, they could be the dark horse of the strongest LA musical scene in the last 25 years...

Key tracks: "Undertow" & "Lissie's Heart Murmur"











#22) SERENA MANEESH: S-M2: Abyss In B Minor
Tired of waiting for that My Bloody Valentine record that's hell bent on putting 'Chinese Democracy' to shame? Well, have I got something for you, or the noise rock fan in your life...They don't call it "Abyss In B Minor" for nothing!

Surprisingly tuneful, and always rocking new entry from Serena Maneesh that never really left the turntable all year long...

Key tracks: "I Just Want To See Your Face" & "D.I.W.S.W.T.T.D"





#21) BROKEN BELLS: Broken Bells
Danger Mouse continues his hot streak, this time picking up Shins frontman James Mercer for an album of dark pop bliss.

Branching off his recent work with the Black Keys and Beck, it's a deep record that rewards every new listen...

Key tracks: "The High Road" & "The Ghost Inside"











#20) SUN KIL MOON: Admiral Fell Promises
Dark cryptic record that poses as many questions as it answers...Perhaps not the greatest gateway to Kozelek's work, but at the same time a portal for a subset who might never have come across his previous work.

Stark insular take on the ususal Kozelek tales of people and the road, done all on one nylon string guitar. What at first could sound samey becomes a hypnotic trance...

Key tracks: "Half Moon Bay" & "Third & Seneca"






#19) SCOUT NIBLETT: The Calcination Of Scout Niblett
What might win the takeaway prize for cover of the year, the enigmatic photo only serves to enhance the spookiness within. A great grueling guitar album for those who bemoan the lack of such things in today's environment.

Key tracks: "Calcination" & "Just Do It".












#18) QUASI: American Gong
Really don't know when Janet Weiss finds the time, but Quasi steps back into the limelight with their strongest and most assured record to date.

A genuine rock and roll blast!

Key tracks: "Bye Bye Blackbird" & "Death Is Not The End".













#17) BEST COAST: Crazy For You
Simple stories of a woman, her cat, her boy problems, and her weed, or the lack thereof, set to fuzz blasted Spector tones...What indeed, is not to love?

Key tracks: "Our Deal" & "When I'm With You".














#16) ALOE BLACC: Good Things
Aloe Blacc runs over the sophomore slump with 'Good Things', an assured followup to his bedroom treasure debut 'Shining Through'...

Key tracks: "I Need A Dollar", which got some great exposure as the theme to an HBO show, and his reinvention of the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale".












#15) SHARON JONES & THE DAP KINGS: I Learned The Hard Way
SJ&DK return with an album perfectly pitched to these trying times...'I Learned The Hard Way' is bloodied but unbowed look at the state of things in the here and now, personally and politically.

The band is in as fine shape as ever, and enterprising late night show hosts should take notice: if there's one band that could possibly give the Roots a run for it's money as the default house band, the Dap Kings would be the one.

Key tracks: title track, "The Game Gets Old".






#14) BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE: Forgiveness Rock Record
Broken Social Scene return with their first LP in five years, a sprawling beautiful mess of a record that holds up to repeated listening...

Drew and Canning have dropped some of their most cohesive tunes, and it stands as a breakthrough record for them.

Key tracks: "World Sick", "All To All", "Art House Director", & "Texico Bitches".








#13) GRINDERMAN: Grinderman 2
Building on the dirty ass rock & roll of their debut, Grinderman 2 ups the ante with more assured songcraft, while not sacrificing the edge.

In places, the line between Grinderman and the mothership Bad Seeds is not erased, but certainly blurred. As long as Nick Cave is at the helm, though, you know what you're going to get...

Key tracks: "Heathen Child", "Mickey Mouse & The Goodbye Man", "Evil"

Bonus Points: Amazing remixes are available, including "Worm Tamer" as done by A Place To Bury Strangers, and "Super Heathen Child", featuring Mr. Robert Fripp.


#12) LONELADY: Nerve Up
Amazingly assured debut LP that builds on wired post punk rhythms but coalesces into a beauty all its own...

Key tracks: title track, "Marble", & "Cattletears".
















#11) SUPERCHUNK: Majesty Shredding
Heart warming return from North Carolina quartet with their first full album in nine years. Dial is firmly wrenched up to 11, and their energy level throughout shames bands half their age.
Followed by a series of blistering performances that left many a poor aging hipster all pogoed out.

Key tracks: "Fractures In Plaster", "Learned To Surf", & "Everything At Once".









Post script: 11 & 12 were the hardest things to kick out of my top ten, & led to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Mea Culpa: Albums that I haven't got to yet that would probably be very listworthy: Joanna Newsom's 'Have One On Me', and Gil Scott Heron's 'I'm New Here'...

Sun Kil Moon @ El Rey, Los Angeles, May 2009

(photo finishing by D. Willis)

Another night in LA, down the Hollywood fwy and through Tinseltown, winding down Wilshire, en route to the El Rey Theater, (for the first time); the event: Sun Kil Moon. Not only the opportunity to make a big check off the list of ‘never seens’, but also the first of two different shows in different zip codes w/my old running dog Cameron, from the 129…

It’s his home base, and he's all set up waiting with a prime spot against the wall, and advice about the show's 'no camera' policy, which speaks to the lack of accompanying media. One of the abstract shots came out pretty fun, so that's above.

The band entered to a raucous reception, then swung right into 'Glenn Tipton', as much a mission statement as a song...The show was weighted heavily to Kozelek's 'Sun Kil Moon records, "Ghosts of the Great Highway", and last year's "April". After that table setter, he aired out the Red House Painters chestnut, "Make Like Paper", giving the band it's head, finding a noisy groove, and generally giving the lie to the misconception of his shows always being hushed, church.like affairs. No doubt, it moved into meditative moments during the string that ran from "Last Tide/Floating", through "Like The River", "Down Colorful Hill", "Heron Blue", and an incandescent "Moorestown".

The tide turned with the high point of the night; a roiling, absolutely relentless take on “River”, from the Red House Painters ‘Old Ramon’. The guitars locked in and the groove kept building on and on for over 12 minutes, and as Cameron noted: “These guys don’t let go”. Astute, and notable for him not having heard the song before. "Tonight In Bilboa" was given a tender reading, making way for a charge through "Pancho Villa", and closing the set with a luminous reading of "Duk Koo Kim".

They came out to open the encore w/a delicate rendition of "Unlit Hallway", then backed it up with the Modest Mouse cover, "Trucker's Atlas" to much audience acclaim. Kozelek's way with a cover is part of the legend at this juncture. Kozelek came out one more time, alone, and threw out a brand new song before finally taking his leave. A fitting end to a magical night.

'08 cleanup-II (best albums)

Capturing a mood seems to be the only common thread in this year’s list…in some cases a zeitgeist, in others a creepy 'locked in my room’ vibe…These were the records that, no matter what name brand release momentarily occupied the spotlight, fought their way back into my heart and on my sound system…On that basis alone, they are the survivors…

The booby prize goes to RADIOHEAD’S In Rainbows, which was released in January on CD, but was already old news thanks to their ‘October Surprise’ digital release strategy, and was considered an ’07 release in my humble heart…the deluxe version came w/a second disc of very strong outtakes, 2-3 of which equal most things on the record. Worth finding the extras...

Honourable mention goes to: Kaki King, Los Campesinos!, Kills, Frida Hyvonen, M.I.A., Amanda Palmer, Beck, Gnarls Barkley, Fleet Foxes, and No Age for their latest releases, all records worth checking out…Cap of the year for producer could only be Danger Mouse, who helmed the Beck, Black Keys, and Gnarls records, and probably one or two i'm forgetting.

Enjoy the Grammies tonight, I doubt there will be much intersection w/this column...


10) AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB: The Golden Age
After a few years hiatus, Mark Eitzel reconvened the American Music Club a few years back in the wake of 9/11 to deliver the righteously angry ‘Patriot Songs’…Golden Age is no less incisive, but turns back to Eitzel’s signature portraits of the citizenry of this land, in all their glory…



9) OKKERVIL RIVER: The Stand Ins
Will Scheff is carving out a niche that back in the day would have earned him the weighty sobriquet of ‘new dylan’ and an avalanche of unwanted expectations…might still for that matter, but now he can dwell in the hype machine of cyber.space and fight off the 21st century equivilant. 'The Stand Ins' is more songs from the sessions that gave us 2007’s majestic 'The Stage Names'...it's not leftovers, it's not a sequel...it's another piece of the puzzles, as the artistically linked covers attest to. My favorite kind of record, the one you can keep going back to and get lost in...

8/8) (tie) BURIAL: Untrue/FLYING LOTUS: Los Angeles
Two sides of a coin...in the endless driving miles I’ve racked up this year, these two records hit it like chocolate & peanut butter…the rarest cases of sountracks for movies not yet made and worthy successors in the 'moody abstract beats' department to DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing…’

7) ABE VIGODA; Skeleton:
Just when one thought that nothing further could be squeezed from the basic punk template, here comes the beautifully named Abe Vigoda a loud, quirky northern CA band that has relocated to LA, and reminds me of At The Drive In in their salad days…relentless. They find themselves part of a group of LA bands along with Mika Miko & No Age that could conceivably be the finest trifecta that city has provided since the X/Blasters/Los Lobos outburst of the '80's. Time will tell.


6) SONS & DAUGHTERS: This Gift
Caustic, aggressive, and unjustly overlooked…this is the record where it all came together for them. Past records split the vocals male/female, but this time the focus is on Adele Bethel, and the band’s attack is vicious & melodic. Some say the band is too one.track, but like the Ramones, what a track!




5) JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD: With Blasphemy So Heartfelt
Simple songs that feel classic from the first notes, a punk Patsy Cline w/an assist from Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys, who helped create a great non.intrusive instrumental pastiche for her to work off of. All the attention on new female vocalists this year seemed to center on the UK brigade of Adele, Duffy, etc, but this young lady stole my ears and heart.



4) DIPLO: Top Ranking Santogold, A Diplo Dub
Yes, it’s a mixtape, but what a blast. Against all hope, (could he possibly top his MIA blast ‘piracy funds terrorism’?), indeed…the grooves are deep & hard w/the usual suspects throwin’ down on an airtight base of deep dub sides…He finds room for Aretha, Sir Mix.A.Lot, and the B'52's, as well as the featured Santogold, leavens it w/a cheeky sense of humor and doesn't drop a beat…a jam from start to finish.



3) SIGUR ROS: Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
One of a kind, sharpening their sound while continuing to defy all expectations in this post.rock world. They continue to conjure beautiful dreams…also, ‘Heima’ a documentary of their musical journey through rural Iceland is enchanting, heartfelt, and quite unexpectedly, one of the most engaging rock documentaries made…



2) PORTISHEAD: Third
Sound of the times, defining what is now a bygone era, (before ‘hope’), this most unlikely of comebacks, from a band that never went away, just stopped….Moving aggressively away from the sampling frenzy of their 90’s triumphs to a cold hard edgy groove, overlayed with Beth Gibbons’ inimitable vocalizings, it thoroughly captures the disconnectedness & overt dread of the last eight years, and I have a feeling that years from now, if the man’s name is so much as uttered, it will be a song from this record that creeps into my consciousness…

1) SUN KIL MOON: April
Pastoral acoustic laments and ominous thunderclouds of electric guitar woven together over Kozelek’s reveries of friends and love, lost and found. In every sense, the soundtrack to my year. The magic here is the way Kozelek takes all the disparate threads, musically and lyrically, that he's been playing with through the years under the names: Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon, and his own, and finds a place for them to coalesce. Constant movement, running from and running to are recurrent themes, and it's truly the journey, and not the destination.

more homemade goodness...

Replicating the previous post in intent, this is another trawling of user created treasure from YouTube. Previously we saw Timebomb 72's interpretation of Elliot Smith's 'Rose Parade', done with old found home movies...Compulsively viewable, i really want to crawl inside and know more of the stories, and more than anything, what Mr. Smith's reaction to this would have been...
Today, we'll tackle Katamai's vision of Sun Kil Moon's 'Moorestown'...Sun Kil Moon is the continuing adventures of singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek, who favors acoustic guitar and epic interior laments. Over the years he has incorporated a very specific visual aesthetic into his work, and the beauty of this user-professed 'quickly thrown together video of a drive' is how neatly it dovetails with the mood of Kozelek's song...



'April' is Sun Kil Moon's latest, perhaps a high water mark in a career spent pursuing a singularly idiosyncratic vision, coming to terms with ghosts of the past, yet setting the table to look forward. Over repeated listenings, the simple song structures unfold...
Major thanks to these users for sharing their visions...