2013 albums

01 Mikal Cronin - MCII

02 Team Spirit - Team Spirit

03 Fidlar - Fidlar
04 Dj Koze - Amygdala
05 Darkside - Psychic
06 White Denim - Cosicana Lemonade
07 Vundabar - Antics* 
08 The Dying Falls - Pheromones*
09 Jeff the Brotherhood - Past 7 Recordings
10 Fuzz - Fuzz

11 Visual Transitions - Cape Cod*
12 The Range - Nonfiction
13 Daft Punk - Random Access Memories 
14 Don't Talk to the Cops - Champions of Breakfast
15 Tijuana Panthers - Semi Sweet
16 Factory Floor - ST
17 Kanye West - Yeezus
18 Forest Fire - Screens
19 Endless Boogie - Long Island 
20 Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

*Records by really good Boston bands you should check out

favorite albums of 2009

Better late than never. This was a weirdly weak year for albums, despite an incredible crop of singles. Its possible that this was due more to my listening habits than anything, but it wasn't like I wasn't finding time for complete album listens. It just seemed like the quality level on albums was very uneven.

Neither The Mint Chicks nor the Phoenix album felt like a #1 to me, but I gave the nod to the former because I got more front-to-back enjoyment out of it than any other albums of the year. I suspect the Phoenix album is better, and may even age better, but it didn't actually rock me as hard. The rest of the top 6 is rounded out by 4 interesting albums with very specialized uses, the japandroids and wavves albums provide energetic slices of post-grunge, and the Islands and TPOBPAH albums start off strong, but both crap out in the second half (which is becoming something of an Islands specialty). The grouping is more coincidental than planned, but its a concise way to stand in for my usual mini-reviews.

Don't get me wrong, there's good stuff on here, it's a combination of interesting experiments and solid rock performers. There's just not much that really blew my mind out. The good news is, 2010 looks to more than make up for it.

01. the mint chicks - screens
02. phoenix - wolfgang amadeus phoenix
03. dan deacon - bromst
04. dirty projectors - bitte orca
05. future of the left - travels with myself and another

06. busdriver - jheli beam
07. japandroids - post-nothing
08. wavves - wavves
09. islands - vapours
10. the pains of being pure at heart - the pains of being pure at heart

contenders

I just realized I never put up my 2009 albums list. Maybe its because 2010 already has a list that would compete with the whole of 2009's list. For now, here's my favs of the year:

1. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast - duh
2. Fang Island - Fang Island - ratatat + lightning bolt + journey
3. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach - possibly my favorite damon album since blur - blur
4. Free Energy - Stuck on Nothing - slightly shameless fun
5. Broken Bells - The High Road - ive cooled on this a bit, but still quite good

if you missed it

here are my favorite 50 albums of the decade.

tell me yours!!

serious frontrunner for 2010's best of list is Surfer Blood's Astro Coast. I am strangely super fucking obsessed with this album.

best albums of 2009 coming soon!

Favorite Songs of 2009

It was a mediocre year for albums, but a killer year for songs. The good news is, that makes it easier to share my favorite music of the year. List with listenable, if low quality, links follows. Enjoy!

1. Dananananaykroyd - Some Dresses (video)
One of my songs in a very long time, and there was no real question from Autumn onward that it would be my favorite of the year. Punches with energy and optimism over a series of manic beats, shouts, hooks and hooks and starts and stops and bursts of shouting and beats and hooks. And its, in detailed fashion, about making dresses, of all things? This is the best parts of the best parts of my year.

2. The Pains of Being Young at Heart - Young Adult Friction
This song will make you fall in love with the everything. Best played at 1000% volume hurtling down freeways.

3. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
I can't explain why this song is great. On paper its nothing special. And yet, stillness is the move.

4. Animal Collective - My Girls
Its surprisingly a nostalgia-inspiring song, given that it evokes, 2001 style, times long before and long after we're alive. Also an awfully original song, straddling the freak folk AC made its name on and a whole new kind of tripped out raveup. Still the most overrated album of the decade though.

5. Pearl Jam - The Fixer
Shockingly good song from a band I figured was finished. Everything just works here, best straight up pop song of the year.

6. Islands - Vapours
Great chorus. Its enough to make you wish the Unicorns were back together all over again.

7. Phoenix - Love like a Sunset
So pretty, such a good build. No trace of a hook as good as 1901's, but a much more satisfying, lasting song.

8. The Kingsbury Manx - Well, Whatever
The best song the shins never wrote.

9. Busdriver - Least Favorite Rapper
How come all busdriver's best songs involve him getting upstaged by his guest stars; Nocando's lines are some of the best rhymes of the year. Awesomely dense, spazzy production.

10. Dan Deacon - Build Voice
This is the perfect way to start this album. It is the onrush of the everything at once, and it can be as scary or as brilliant as you make it.

11. Phoenix - 1901
12. MGMT - Kids
13. Late of the Pier - Broken
14. Future of the Left - Stand by / Your Manatee
15. Japandroids - Young Hearts Spark Fire
16. Busdriver - Sorry Fuckers
17. The Mint Chicks - Hot on your Heels
18. Lee Fields - Ladies
19. Wavves - Beach Demon
20. Clues - Cave Mouth

and now

redrafted the same one and a half book chapters, much better now. more talk of infinities.

additions to possible songs of the year lists:
- Pearl Jam - The Fixer
- Phoenix - Love Like a Sunset

the latest

Here's all the stuff I wasn't quite self-indulgent enough to put on facebook lately:

- Book progress is slow, but ongoing. Finally nailed down the preface and all the underlying philosophical disagreements that my coauthors and I had. Drafted 1 and a half chapters so far.

- The design workshop we're organizing is going off like the 4th of July, though, it actually takes place in February. We have more big names coming than I even know how to be scared of.

- Favorite songs of the year so far:
1. Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction
2. Dan Deacon - Build Voice
3. Dananananakroyd - Some Dresses
4. Future of the Left - Stand by / Your Manatee
5. Busdriver - Least Favorite Rapper
6. Japandroids - Young Hearts Spark Fire

In roughly the order of overall impact on my year, though I'm pretty hot on that Dananananakroyd song right this moment.

noisy upancomers

there's a wonderful genre emerging that as far as i don't know doesn't have a name yet.

it's based in noisy, fast, cluttered, loud overblown vaguely-pop songs by desperate-sounding youths, singing about simple joys and existential terrors. there's parallels to grunge, in its punk-borne, diy feel, struggle-laden sentiment, and textured guitars. but its different; its faster, noisier and less defeated, its the music of kids trying to fight off problems so big they can't be sung about, just sung at, and sing at them we will. and the guitars are a ramshackle soapbox racer to grunge's rusty station wagon, with a driver shouting as he flies by that there's no time to stop, that we have to rock harder and faster just to stay ahead of thinking, over the clatter of wheels threatening to fly off sparking into underbrush.

grunge said 'yeah kids, life sucks, might as well quit'. this music says 'yeah life's horrifying and amazing, but maybe we can win at it'. its somehow hyper-modern, like punk ok computer.

grunge was quitting music, this is fighting music.

or at least running music.

for reference:
japandroids (young hearts spark fire)
the pains of being young at heart
(come saturday / young adult friction)
no age (cappo / teen creeps / everybody's down)
jay reatard
(always wanting more / blood visions / oh its such a shame)
vivian girls (lake house / wild eyes)
wavves (beach demon / so bored)
deerhunter (nothing ever happened / never stops)
and in retrospect, in their own synthy way:
m83 (don't save us from the flames / teen angst)

maybe I can call it post-grunge.

if you say it just a little ironically, that's just about perfect.

so far

The Pains of Being Young at Heart's Come Saturday and Young Adult Friction both stand a good chance of making my top 10 tracks this year. For reference.

Obviously, animal collective's my girls, is also on the shortlist.

Dan Deacon's new album is really great, but I can't decide if I can reasonably recommend it to anyone (which is, by personal account, everyone I know) who didn't like his last one.

Let's put it this way.

Spiderman of the Ring's was like being chased by 3 midgets in blue jumpsuits who were trying to tickle you with feathers. It was absurd and fun and made you smile if you had the right mindset, and at least a little annoying either way.

Bromst is like a huge gauntlet of 10,000 midgets with feathers that you're supposed to run through. On one hand, that's way more annoying. On the other hand, running through that many feathers is almost less ticklish, and the awe of the situation might get you to overlook the spazzy crassness of it all.

In less abstract terms, it is a much more dense, lush album, almost ambient at times, despite being made up of thousands of notes instead of drones. I really dig it, even though it sort of gives me the shakes.

Finally, for shits, here's my 2008 list if I had it to do again:

1. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
2. Bryan Scary - The Flight of the Knife
3. Dosh - Wolves and Wishes
4. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
5. Human Highway - Moody Mororcycle
6. Why? - Alopecia
7. No Age - Nouns
8. Beck - Modern Guilt
9. Jay Reatard - Singles (06-07)
10. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

in retrospect, already

among 2008 music that I've found in the last month, I'd make the following observations:

Bryan Scary's the Flight of the Knife should have been my number 2 or so album of the year. the glammy excess of Queen-via-Mika and Elton-John-via-Fluid-Ounces, the angular propulsiveness of The Chinese Album played double-time, plus I-Should-Coco-worthy bass runs and remarkably early-Genesis-esque proggy flourishes. always a couple beats ahead of you, its a super complex, super fun album; how often does that happen?

Ponytail's Celebrate the Body Electric is probably my #3 favorite song of the year. it just builds and collapses and builds, and uses lulls and noise and discomfort to set up one spazzy, grinning climax after another. it puts you on a leash and jerks.

Late of the Pier's Fantasy Black Channel probably would have made my top 10 albums too, but at this point the actual state of that list has gotten all quantum physics.

My favorite albums of 2008

With comments!

1. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals - Yet again, Girl Talk has just the most enjoyable, most listened to album of my year.
2. Blitzen Trapper - Furr - I loved how weird these guys were, but mellowing out was somehow a winning move. Wonderful, rocking, soulful album.
3. Why? - Alopecia - Just killer rhymes, the best hooky one-more-listen bridges of the year.
4. No Age - Nouns - Great, propulsive, noisy album.
5. Beck - Modern Guilt - People take Beck for granted, I posit that if this was a band's first album, it'd make everyone's top 10.
6. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive - It makes me nervous that each of their last few albums is less amazing than the last, but this is still a great one.
7. Jay Reatard - Singles (06-07) - Add this guy to the list of musicians I want to be for some reason, right under david bowie and dan deacon.
8. Los Campesinos! - We are Beautiful, We are Doomed - Happiest album of the year, most heartbreaking album of the year.
9. Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls - Oh girls, you know so much.
10. Islands - Arm's Way - Half of an incredible album.

This is as I originally posted it at the end of the year, I already have regrets though. The human highway album (moody motorcycle) would probably be as high as number 3 or 4 if I had paid it proper attention before now. Also, I just listened to (previous number 1 album of the year winner) Wolf Parade's album 4 times straight tonight. It lacks the hooky propulsiveness and overal roar of their previous one, but it would probably at least crack the top 10 if I were to redo it. Maybe, it bumps islands, but maybe not the vivian girls, so it depends it the human highway album is taken into consideration. Might still have just missed out. Complex.

Bonus!

Favorite 10 tracks of the year!

(With links to the songs in some form or another [don't watch the max tundra video, its distracting and vaguely bad].)

1. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened - Just builds perfectly, the most satisfying, well crafted, hit out of the park, one more time, song of the year. Backing parts grow to solos and soon you're drowning in hooks, exhausted on the shore at the end of the song. Throw in a killer crunchy bass sound and a perfect, disaffected, defeated, post-grunge sentiment and you win.
2. Why? - These Few Presidents - I'm sorry Yoni. Its not fair. The Vowels or Fatalist Palmastry could also totally make this list, but I feel like spreading the love. There are several songs on this album that are equally crammed with good hooks, this one will have to stand in for them, if nothing else on the strength of the wasp bridge. Great bass sound too.
3. The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer - Great propulsive energy, great song to open a show with.
4. Cut Copy - Feel the Love - I do.
5. Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again - The glitch version of nothing ever happened; great buildup, strangely relatable lyrics for me this year. Love it love it love it sometimes.
6. Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love for Planet Earth - Might have made the top 10 anyway, but one post-dawn german train ride listen propels it right on up. Noisy, awful, gorgeous.
7. Los Campesinos - We are Beautiful, We are Doomed - God fucking dammit.
8. Human Highway - The Sound - Simply killer beat, I miss the unicorns. Once again, a band gets cheated, Pretty Hair could just as easily occupy this slot, or one near it.
9. The Cool Kids - 88 [original version here, actually like the clean version better, but still good] So raw. Bonus points for kicking off my favorite mix of the year (thanks chad!).
10. The Dodos - Ashley - Really pretty, ethereal song. Probably deserves to be higher, but this was more of a batshit high energy year for singles for me; I just didn't have that much time for pretty.

Finally, two discussion questions / gripes on the year:
- Where was all the good rap? And no, I couldn't get into Tha Carter III.
- Where is the band with the holy shit new sound? Where's this year's The Books, The Go Team, Jason Forrest or Dan Deacon? I wasn't quite as voracious in finding music this year, who did I miss?

Hope you found somethinig you dig. Peace!

games

its so true

Games are making progress as an art form. Finally.

I don't think I'm even being sarcastic.

If you have a pc, sincerely do try gravity bone and spelunky if you want 20 minutes of joy, or 12 hours of your life to disappear, respectively.

questionblock.com

for those that didnt catch my status update, put some NES art at questionblock.com, more to come.

live (hawaii) basketball at 3:20 am

dope.

really?

"In the second half, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming and Ron Artest all left the game with minor injuries" - AP

If you follow basketball at all, this is like a parody headline for the Rockets. I knew that mcgrady and yao were fragile and at least one of them would fall to injuries again this year, but all 3 of these guys in one game? "Minor" aside, in credible.