Dusting this place off to highlight some songs from 2011 that were good.  Check’em out (they’ll appear above this post, and I’ll try to do at least one a day until they run out).  It’s a little late I know but come on, 2011 was a weird year.

I feel some responsibility and obligation to apologize to Thom Yorke for not really listening to that Flying Lotus record.

Enjoy.

Here’s my Top 15 Albums Of 2010, descending order? (#1 is the best anyway).

…

15.
Pomegranates
One Of Us

Why?

Because they remind me so much of those Ottawa bands that I love (The Balconies, HILOTRONS), which means they make the kind of straight up indie rock music that makes me fall in love all over again with straight up indie rock and forget about all the meta shit at play with that particular genre of music.

..

14.
Baths
Cerulean

Why?

Because looking over the whole thing, all Passion Pit and Fleet Foxes and Burial and hints of the Postal Service, it’s about the perfect continuation of electro-pop you could ask for — fuzzy yet refined, concise and smooth, packed with hooks.

..

13.
Meursault
All Creatures Will Make Merry

Why?

Because I can imagine a big white lighthouse in Scotland, somewhere on the coast. And the lighthouse keeper, you know, he’s a bit of a crazy guy, and one day he says let’s convert this bitch from a lighthouse to a soundhouse, so instead of a giant beam of light, we’ll crank some indie rock or something out to the ships. So they dismantled the mirrors and the light and everything, and set up some really nice Paradigms up there, and then they just play this album on repeat, letting it float out through the fog and skip along the white caps. Surprisingly, the ships are okay. After pulling into harbour guided by the sweet sounds of the soundhouse and this album, one fishing barge captain even remarked: “That song, ‘Weather,’ it kinda sounds like 2010’s ‘Postcards From Italy’”.

..

12.
Frog Eyes
Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph

Why?

Because it’s a clusterfuck of ideas, sounds, instruments, and scratchy throats, but what it really is is an album that keeps on begging to be explored, asking you to quietly peer down its long corridors or loudly open a door and declare yourself. Dunno if that really does it justice, but this is the last one I’m writing, and time is of the essence.

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11.
Villagers
Becoming A Jackal

Why?

Because Villagers songs typically exist in the lyrical reality of Elvis Perkins (which is a sort of magic-realism type world, where weird images collide with day-to-day activities (see “Home,” etc.)), and that’s a world I can always use some more of. Because the production here is incredibly well thought out, and your ears will thank you as a result. Every back-up vocal, every horn, every guitar chord is meticulously placed.

Why not?

Because he kinda sounds like Conor Oberst, and his name is Conor O’Brien (really), which makes him a sort of potential double copy-cat.

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10.
The Radio Dept.
Clinging To A Scheme
Why?

Because this thing’s got effortless swings from danceable to maudlin, but still remembers that it’s an album as a whole, and not only that but a Radio Dept. album, and then not only that but maybe the best Radio Dept. album, which is some feat.

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09.
The Books
The Way Out

Why?

Because The Books are the only band who can successfully make albums that are Zen Koans (or make Zen Koans into albums). Or, how I like to think about it:

“is an excellent way of explaining or talking about The Way Out” is an excellent way of explaining or talking about The Way Out.

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08.
Nina Nastasia
Outlaster

Why?

Because it’s perfect in the way songwriting can be perfect, can spell out a sentiment, can retell or conjure up a story and make you actually care about it (especially when it’s something that you probably wouldn’t actually care about otherwise). But then more than that. Brave in that Nina Nastasia isn’t the best singer in the world, but she still goes with the most naked production in the world — the most vulnerable to scrutiny. Because the delivery of lines like “You can have my sixth grade picture” will continue to trip me up for as long as I live.

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07.
Surfer Blood
Astro Coast

Why?

Fuck why, let’s go on a roadtrip and play this shit from the stereo. We can drive to the beach with the windows down. No no no I don’t care that it’s winter now, and no no no I don’t care that you have Christmas shopping to do. I’ll give you this copy of Astro Coast for Christmas. Right now, in your car. What? No. Let’s fucking go before this CD ends. Get your swimsuit or whatever. Just listen to this shit. Yes, the next song is just as catchy. It’s about watching Twin Peaks which, while awesome, is not what we’re going to do today. Listen again. These songs are sparkling like a birthday cake.

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06.
Los Campesinos!
Romance Is Boring

Why?

Because what do you know about Los Campesinos!? They have a fucking exclamation mark at the end of their name, which you can’t say about Animal Collective or The Shins. Even Godspeed’s exclamation mark didn’t make it to the end of the name. Premature exclamation. LOL. Anyways, Los Campesinos! are my band, and I love them in a way that you never can. But I suppose you should love them too, though I don’t think you can buy their first EP anymore… too bad for you (not for me though cause I bought that shit on the first day possible). I was there, man. Also, hey, their songs’ sentiments and ideas and criticisms are the kinds of sentiments and ideas and criticisms you want people to think that you have simply because you listen to Los Campesinos! (or other awesome bands with similar lyrics, but why bother with other bands because Los Campesinos! rule. 4eva.). Signed, Me, Aged 17 years.

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05.
The National
High Violet

Why?

It’s all about the worldview for me I think, the way it’s so desperate and bleak and paranoid in a kind of suburban, middle-class way, if that makes sense. It reminds me of an alternate-universe version of Tallahassee maybe, where the simultaneous pulls of love and hate (or healing and destruction) are so palpable and feel so real, where at first you ask how the people that occupy these songs could be so torn and so broken, but then realize that disintegrating relationships are always much more complex than just a distillation of a singular feeling.

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04.
PS I Love You
Meet Me At The Muster Station

Why?

Because these guys rock as hard as Japandroids, and as well as Japandroids. And all their songs have lines in them that you always just wanna shout out while the song is playing, and there aren’t too many albums that do that for me anymore.

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03.
Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

So this album, it’s kind of. Well. Picture this. A beautiful and scantily-clothed Phoenix crashes into Earth from another world and then a handsome man (who drives a really expensive car) has to take her from the wreckage of her crash and teach her the ways of humanity. He ultimately fails, because human society is actually really complicated and teacups are hard to hold when you are half-bird and have bird hands, and choking down a Thanksgiving turkey is even harder (because that would be cannibalism). So he gets kinda depressed about failing and then there’s a commercial for an industrial production of Swan Lake. In the end he learns some valuable information about what statues really are. He is also maybe given some sort of musical superpowers from the Phoenix which allow him to make the very album I’m offhandedly narrating. Because no one within human society can music like this for real.

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02.
Sufjan Stevens
The Age Of Adz

Why?

Because we need to praise artists who still strive to be ambitious, who run with the whims of their creative inner-voices, and who still have the desire and the wherewithal and the talent to make 25 minute closing tracks that are completely enthralling, hook-laden and enjoyable over the course of all of those 25 minutes, and THEN call you back for another listen. Because Sufjan has made an album that doesn’t rely at all on his usual narrative-driven songs (”words are futile devices…”), but it comes off just as emotionally resonant, powerful in its themes, and unified as a whole. And because The Age Of Adz is simultaneously everything a Sufjan album shouldn’t be (repeating repeating phrases, beats and snyths, auto-tune etc.) and still sounds like everything a Sufjan album is (exceptional composition, grandiose musical flourishes, excellently organized, etc.). “Do you want to love me more?” Sufjan asks. Yes. But I don’t see how I can.

..

01.
Future Islands
In Evening Air

Why?

Because it’s an incredibly saddening and accurate crystallization of what goes on in a break-up (read: it’s a concept album). And because I think it’s really hard to make a good break-up record, or one that people might take seriously. Because it’s full of the moments one is cursed replaying after a break-up — how you’re trapped to view the so obvious way that your partner didn’t look you in the eyes, or how you knew they weren’t thinking about you anymore. And because, musically, it’s full of frustration and powerlessness and ultimately it’s a thick soup of denial mixed with realization. And whether you love or hate the Meatloaf-esque vocals, you’re bound to feel the disenfranchised way they sound, caught under a grumble of noise — drowning a little. Which is the point. The vocals are everything — we need them, but we almost don’t want to hear what they’re saying, or how they’re saying it.

Here are my top 55 songs of 2010, in no particular order.  Sorry I was a bit lazy with this one, and a bit rushed for time, so no write-ups for each individual song.  I realize the sort-of irrelevance of throwing a block of text on the internet without anything meaningful alongside, but there’s nothing to be done now.  You can download them in groups of 10 from here (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-55) and I tried to make them at least a bit like “compilation albums” of ten songs each.

My favourite song was probably “Swept Inside,” maybe “Impossible Soul” though.

Photo is from Jon Rafman’s 9eyes.

Here you go.

01. “Graceland” by The Tallest Man on Earth
02. “Fast Jabroni” by Surfer Blood
03. “Facelove” by PS I Love You
04. “Kon Tiki” by Plants And Animals
05. “Mr. Peterson” by Perfume Genius
06. “I Didn’t See It Coming” by Belle and Sebastian
07. “Round and Round” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
08. “All To All” by Broken Social Scene
09. “Tryst With Mephistopheles” by Owen Pallett
10. “Eyesore” by Women

11. “A Flower in a Glove” by Frog Eyes
12. “Tightrope (Featuring Big Boi)” by Janelle Monae
13. “Runaway [feat. Pusha T]” by Kanye West
14. “Mouthful Of Diamonds” by Phantogram
15. “Swept Inside” by Future Islands
16. “Lovely Bloodflow” by Baths
17. “Home” by Villagers
18. “All That Remains” by Hari And Aino
19. “Walking Far From Home” by Iron & Wine
20. “Natural Light” by Sun Kil Moon (Casiotone Cover)

21. “Cry, Cry Baby” by Nina Nastasia
22. “Tyrant Destroyed” by Twin Shadow
23. “Crazy For You” by Best Coast
24. “Suicide Kings” by The Octagon
25. “Cameras” by The Whiskers
26. “The End Of The World Is Bigger Than Love” by Jens Lekman
27. “Lawn Knives” by GOBBLE GOBBLE
28. “Conversation 16″ by The National
29. “Try Try Try” by Antarctica Takes It!
30. “Castaways” by Shearwater

31. “Weather” by Meursault
32. “I Can Change” by LCD Soundsystem
33. “Bombay” by El Guincho
34. “hahahaha jk?” by Das Racist
35. “Mayor” by Mount Kimbie
36. “Shutterbugg by Big Boi
37. “Woah Billy! by Lucky Soul
38. “Create Your Own Reality” by Pomegranates
39. “Free Translator” by The Books
40. “Impossible Soul” by Sufjan Stevens

41. “A More Perfect Union” by Titus Andronicus
42. “Blue Gowns” by Blue Hawaii
43. “Drive-Thru” by Shugo Tokumaru
44. “Alors On Danse” by Stromae
45. “The Sounds Are Always Begging” by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & The Cairo Gang
46. “Cruiserweights” by The Extra Lens
47. “Straight In At 101″ by Los Campesinos!
48. “Die” by Carissa’s Wierd
49. “Rill Rill” by Sleigh Bells
50. “Whip My Hair” by Willow Smith
51. “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire
52. “Enchantee, Janvier” by Woodpigeon
53. “You Stopped Making Sense” by The Radio Dept.
54. “Limited Space” by Yellow Swans
55. “Love More” by Sharon Van Etten

Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken word album makes me wonder why there aren’t more spoken word albums out there that make it to the “mainstream” or to blogs or to music magazines.  Maybe it’s because it’s easier to sound unpretentious if you’re singing your poems in a melody (i.e. you sound like a musician if you’re singing and a poet if you’re speaking).  Maybe it’s because a requirement for success in spoken word is a great voice, or at least a voice whose timbre is unusual or interesting (i.e. memorable).  Anyway Scott-Heron doesn’t sound pretentious and has a great voice, so win-win there, though the “Flashing Lights” sampled opening and closing tracks from the album, I’m New Here, kinda bug me, simply because their content doesn’t line up with the content in “Flashing Lights,” and so, a bit of a dischord.

Though it’s just occurred to me that the “Flashing Lights” beat could be a sample itself.  I might look it up.  Here’s hoping for some kind of russian doll situation.

Whenever she gets nervous and scared she goes to the phone.  She stands with the receiver to her ear and stares at her own eyes in the mirror.  She waits listening to the dial tone and thinks wobbling science fiction thoughts.  The dial tone buzzes and drones in her mind while she ponders the brandishing of laser swords and how spaceships always seem to meet nose to nose as though outer space is actually a two-dimensional plane.  The light shines in through the window like a little Hawaii beach lamp and she holds the phone and waits.  She’s feeling a bit less nervous already, a bit more confident, a bit more assured that life will continue with the steady pace and calm of a Japanese movement wristwatch.  She sees herself sigh in the mirror and waits.

After some time the voice comes through the receiver, politely giving her instructions about what to do with a phone displaced from the receiver for such an extended period of time.  She listens, feeling the world fall back into place.  Feeling herself settle like a coin on the ground. She waits until the voice is finished speaking.  She hangs up the phone.

She will confirm to anyone that there’s no sound in the world, in the expanse of space-time, or in the vastness of the universe, quite like your own mother’s voice.

I’m not sure what’s more difficult: imagining that a nine year old is the creative centre of this, or how it feels to be born into a situation of hereditary celebrity — everyone knowing who you are and following you around since birth.

Yesterday she spent the day on the phone talking over her friends and wishing for the way things were to be the way things are.  She drank two beers at the corner slop and drove about three miles away from humanity, parking beside the corn fields that became more common the further away you got.  She ran into the field with her heels on and chased after the pecking birds that had been without adversity for years.  She felt above all like the corn stalks themselves — pecked away at, unmoving, at the mercy of powerful forces that were, for better or worse, totally unaware of the existence of such inconsequential lifeforms.  She stood there with her arms out, waiting.  The birds were all gone and the corn was still and she was still, too.  She let the corn forgive her for everything.

[Photo by this person.]

Janice couldn’t think of any way to ask Herbie out.  She didn’t have classes with him, except gym, and didn’t know any of his friends.  She was nervous because all the other six grade girls were getting boyfriends and she was afraid that Herbie would be someone else’s boyfriend or that all the girls of the school would start to say that she didn’t know anything about boys.  She could try wedging a note in the vents of his locker, but she didn’t know where his locker was, and the janitor — walking by a short time later — would probably snatch it and toss it into the trash.  Or Davey would find it accidentally, blown on the floor, and make trouble for her until she had to change schools.  She could try to talk to him in the library, but the librarian, stern old Mrs. Fairshaw, would make her life worse than losing Herbie to Clara in Homeroom 8 if she was caught talking about those things.

Life was dim, confusing, filled with nerves.

About a week later in gym class Janice was running through enemy territory when she stopped to catch her breath.  Capture-the-flag made her anxious but she always seemed to find herself there, on the other side, unsafe and unsure where an attack might come from.  She had never found the flag, or held it, but she felt productive trying.  She was walking steadily when she heard footsteps up the trail.  Fast steps.  She turned but it was too late, Herbie tagged her in the back with his long, reaching arms.  In a moment her fatigue made her feel helpless and dizzy.  Woozy and strange.  Herbie was there, sweating and even surprised that he had caught her so suddenly.  Making her feel like a wobbling top.  Making breathing unbearable.  She swallowed what seemed like her whole self and then with words that fell out of her mouth like shelved books in an earthquake she asked Herbie if they could be boyfriend and girlfriend.  Herbie stared at her and paused.  She waited, unsure if she had even asked a question he could answer.  He smiled.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.  “Come on, let’s go.”

He walked her to the jail, holding the end of her sleeve.

Carissa’s Wierd:
Drunk W/ The Only Saints That I Know
Die
The Color That Your Eyes Changed With The Color Of Your Hair

somewhere
in the sahara desert
where the sand stretches out
and blows in the breezes
for miles
there’s a boom box
leaned up
to a palm tree
by an oasis
where you can hear
by pressing play
the entirety
of your memories
set into songs

and wouldn’t you know
in its mystical wisdom
that it chose this one album
for the moments
spanning high school
instead of songs
i was actually digging
at the time

(and wouldn’t you know
that this album
is by the guy
from band of horses
all muffled and aloof
singing to himself
under a blanket
in his bed

but who’s the girl
and why together
do they always sound
like they’re whispering
their sad
soft secrets
into air ducts
of buildings
they plan on
burning down
with gasoline?)

i let the memories
flood out
from the speakers
sat sifting
the sand
thinking what kind of songs
would be playing now
from this very boom box
if i had heard
carissa’s wierd
when i was seventeen

and also
couldn’t help wondering
if the mirages
had returned

[songs from/album in question: They'll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003]

Gobble Gobble – Lawn Knives

this might be better than that baths album.  more to come on that one, though.

and anyways i feel i gotta get back into it to retain an insect wing’s worth of credibility come year end list time.