This has been a very good year for popular music. Some major acts that almost automatically get onto my “Best of” list didn't have releases of new material this year, but that just made room for others. Even things way down on my list are strong enough that in other years, like last year, they might have been higher.
As I did (mostly) last year I've provided for each album a link to the artist's web site whenever possible, a link to a review or two of the album, and a link to at least one video of a song from the album.
1. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid: Suites II and III – Here's one out of 23 videos. This one bears an obvious resemblance to this classic that still gives me goose bumps after all these years. Monáe's is better, and not only because it's not a cover but her own composition.
Janelle Monáe is astounding. She has ambitions as great as Prince or Isaac Hayes at their peaks, but at this point at least she realizes them more consistently. She has Michael Jackson's deft skill, but uses it to deal with mature concerns. She has Marvin Gaye's moral concern and despair, but expresses them with sparkling wit. Her voice has a tremendous range, with the ability to hit piercing high notes and hold them endlessly and she has complete control of tone that lets her scream, rock, croon or be saucy as each song requires.
NPR's The Current says it well: “ Monáe's delightfully fresh style combines the matching stage-clothes of 1960s Motown, the science-fiction storylines of '70s album rock (even prog), the virtuosity of jazz, the choreographed athleticism of the modern R&B stage show, the winking theatrical pomp of early Bowie, the soul-meets-shredding-guitar of Prince, and a little Grace Jones androgyny. But Monáe is more than just an appetizer sampler of her influences; in fact, it's easy to feel like she's not only working on Prince's level of uber-confident genre-mixing, but even matching Bowie for sheer audacity and originality.” The Current's interview with her on that page is worth listening to, too.
Here are more videos with her covering two different songs that show her range. One is by Prince with him smiling a little in the audience. Unfortunately it looks and sounds like it was recorded by holding a camera in front of a television, but what a performance! The other is by Charlie Chaplin and Monáe sings it beautifully, although with more melisma than some might like. It's just a coincidence, I suppose, but the Jewish barber's speech at the end of Chaplin's The Great Dictator seems to express the themes of The ArchAndroid.
After its mostly fast first half some have suggested that this album sags in the second half. It certainly slows down; it's not as immediately incendiary. That's fitting, because the narrative arc of the album moves into a stretch of separation, loss, and eventual acceptance. Those don't exactly prompt jamming dance numbers. After a few listens, though, I realize that these subtle, complex songs are the album's greatest achievements. The closest comparison that comes to mind is the collaborations of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. It's risky to try to think for someone who's gone, and especially for someone who when he was alive would never have allowed someone who looks like me to speak for him. Still, I think that if Miles were with us today he would be amazed by and in love with this album and this artist. I can't think of praise much higher than that.
One of those later, quieter tracks is 57821.
2. Roky Erikson with Okkervil River – True Love Cast Out All Evil - Goodbye Sweet Dreams
That someone could come roaring back this way from the edge of oblivion is an inspirational tribute to the restorative power of rock and roll and to the self-effacing friendship of Will Sheff and Okkervil River. I've discussed this album at length before, so I'll let it go at that.
Roky Erickson With Okkervil River_09_Forever
3. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz - I Walked
All Delighted People EP - All Delighted People (Classic Rock Version)
To give two records the same rank violates the way lists like this are generally done, I know, but since they're by the same artist and it's my list I decided to lump them together.
My initial reaction to The Age of Adz was, as the first full song says, “There's too much riding on that, There's too much, too much, too much...” Too many instrumental and vocal parts fighting against each other with too many notes, too many strange harmonies, too many noises that at first seemed nonmusical, too many styles. It just sounded like a mess that I might respect but would never listen to, in the same vein as Scott Walker's 2006 album The Drift.
The more I listen to it, though, the more fascinating it becomes. It has dynamics, with the quieter parts displaying a lot of the elements I so loved in the Michigan and Illinois albums: his beautiful melodies, his angelically gentle tenor, the ecstatic chorus, majestic horns, and the Philip Glass-like sound. The banjo is pretty much gone, though. This is not folk music any more. It's not any sort of rock, either, although it does have some wild guitar solos not found on the earlier albums. All of it, but particularly the faster, louder, more climactic sections, rise to a level of knotty complexity more like some modern music composed in the classical tradition. The more attention it's given, the more levels it reveals. What seemed only to be thorny turns out to be deeply lyrical. And those “nonmusical” noises turn out just to be music of a different sort. A long time ago a famous album used the sounds of a clock and a cash register as music, and I guess this is not that different!
The All Delighted People EP is not an EP as it's usually thought of; its 8 tracks add up to an hour. Its sound is somewhere between Illinois and the Age of Adz, so it might be a way to transition to the full album. Its accessibility is also helped by the fact that both versions of the title song, together about 20 minutes, rework Simon & Garfunkel's “Sounds of Silence.”
An example of the EP's greater accessibility is Heirloom.
4. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs - The Wilderness Downtown This technologically innovative video will only work with Google Chrome, so here's another: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).
This has moved up several slots from an in-progress version of this list I posted elsewhere a couple of weeks ago. It's taken me (at least) a lot of listens; it's been played more times in my computer media program than anything else from this year. Finally, I get it, though, and songs that initially didn't stand out from each other now sound great, every one of them. This is not Funeral—hardly anything could hope to be—but it didn't have the circumstances that gave birth to that debut album, either. The toned down drama avoids the possibility of an accusation of empty bombast, which has swirled around Win Butler's and Régine Chassagne's ankles.
08 - Half Light II (No Celebration)
5. Antony and the Johnsons – Swanlights - Thank You For Your Love
This is a very hard album for me to say anything about. Trying to pin it down is like trying to logically and fully explain a particularly entrancing dream. I can say it's not as tragic as last year's The Crying Light. Now that still leaves a lot of room for moroseness, but “Thank You for Your Love” almost sounds cheerful. On the other hand, while that song is pretty traditional, many of them move into minimalism and other styles of contemporary classical music. Flétta, his duet with Bjork, is a good example of that.
This album is sure not to be to everyone's taste. My wife and daughter run away when they hear Hegarty's quavery, acrobatic counter tenor. For the second year in a row, though, he has made a foray into an enigmatic but necessary world.
6. The National - High Violet - Bloodbuzz Ohio
Last March when One Track Mind posted a link to Bloodbuzz Ohio I said on Facebook that if the rest of High Violet equaled that track it would be my album of the year. Well, it didn't and it isn't. It's not far off, though. Every track is good, despite or maybe because of lyrics that are evocative but totally elusive. Bryan Devendorf, let it be said, is an absolutely amazing drummer!
7. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest - Helicopter
Sleek, immaculately produced pop, like Pet Sounds for the electronic age, with a ringing, pounding sound.
8. Johnny Cash - American VI: Ain't No Grave - Ain't No Grave If there were an award for the most tearjerking video of the year, this might win it.
As with Roky's album, much of the drama of this one comes from its connection to the artist's biography. Some people feel strongly that personal history in music is a bad idea because it leads to sentimentality and self-indulgence. I suppose that is often the case. Sinatra singing “My Way” comes to my mind as an example of that. In Cash's case, though, compared to Erickson's, the biography is much longer and for better or worse it was lived much more in the public eye, so we can feel more connected to it. More importantly, that biography is linked to a vastly larger and greater oeuvre.
Like the rest of the entries in Cash and Rubin's American Recordings series, not every song is as good as the best. The worst is so good here, and the best so great, that the album as a whole is a success. The selection of the last track, the hopeful swan song for a life lived fully, could not be more perfect.
Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound
9. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor - A More Perfect Union
A Springsteenesque story delivered with the Irish punk punch of the Dropkick Murphys or Flogging Molly about being trapped, longing to get out, and the damage that can do to one's relationships and one's liver. The idea of using the Civil War as a metaphor for all that sounds contrived, but works very well. Beginning and ending songs with quotes from people like Lincoln and Walt Whitman doesn't come across as pretentious and even the 14 minute final track moves along ferociously without being boring, self-indulgent or repetitive.
This doesn't reflect their lyrics well, but it is a short shot of their sound:
Spots 10 through 19 share a lot of traits and there isn't a big quality gap between any two consecutive slots, or even that much between Plant at 10 and Mellencamp at 19. They are more or less guitar rock (Hopkins more; Weller and Jones, less). They use conventional harmonies and song structures a lot. They tend toward a roots/Americana sound (even Plant, but not so much the more British Weller). They like to use songs to portray a character and/or tell a story, so they often have a cinematic feel. They sometimes express an attitude toward the state of the world that I find compatible. For those reasons and more they all owe a debt to Bruce Springsteen (particularly fellow New Jerseyites The Gaslight Anthem, but maybe not so much Plant). For that matter so do Arcade Fire and Titus Andronicus, too.
Some of them are major stars enjoying late career artistic, if not commercial, resurgences (Plant, Petty, Jones, Mellencamp). Others haven't been quite so famous, but have been well known and respected for a long time and are now doing some of their best work (Weller, Jason and the Scorchers, Los Lobos, and Escovedo). This is only the second major album for The Gaslight Anthem, but both have been outstanding. Rich Hopkins has been laboring in relative obscurity for a long time and remains there—he's new to me—but he truly deserves to be among this company.
10. Robert Plant – Band of Joy - Angel Dance, a cover of a song by Los Lobos.
“Jimmy who? I'm having a great time on my own with my new mates, thank you.” The last time that meant a partnership with Alison Kraus. This time it's all Plant's show, but backing him up are Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin.
A Townes Van Zandt song:
Robert Plant_10_Harm's Swift Way
11. Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs of Love – Anchor
Who else suffers a greater disjunction between the success his body of work deserves and the success he has? Very few.
Several of the tracks were co-written by Chuck Prophet and the great Ian Hunter appears on one. On this track he has help from some guy named Bruce:
12. Rich Hopkins and the Luminarios - El otro lado/the other side - El Otro Lado
Passionate songs with a Southwest version of REM's and Tom Petty's drawl, influences who point in part back to the Byrds. Traditional without seeming to have been encased in amber, which is how Dr. Dog struck me. His song El Otro Lado is one of the best songs I've heard this year. It towers over the rest of a generally excellent album in some of the same ways Joe Henry's masterpiece Our Song did over his 2008 album Civilians.
"If you've got the dream/as hard as it may seem/you can change anything, it's up to you!"
13. Tom Jones - Praise & Blame - Burning Hell
A late addition to this list and the big surprise of 2010. It particularly came as a surprise to an executive at his record company, who sent around an internal memo calling the album a “sick joke” and earning himself endless mockery. This is no joke. It is deadly serious.
Jones' role in Scorsese's 2008 PBS series The Blues opened my eyes to the fact that Jones was not merely the panties magnet caricature I long thought he was, and this seals it. It is an powerful reworking of several traditional blues and gospel songs, a few originals that hold their own well, and to start of a riveting cover of Dylan's “What Good Am I?” from Oh, Mercy:
The first obvious comparison for this album in Johnny Cash's and Rick Rubin's American Recordings albums, and it does shoot for the same gravity and simplicity. Another good comparison is Neil Diamond's 2005 release 12 Songs, in which Rubin rebuilt Diamond's image by stripping away accumulated layers of glitz and corn. Ethan Johns has done the same here for Tom Jones.
14. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Mojo - Something Good Coming
One of the best albums of new material in years from one of the most consistently excellent bands in the country. There's more of a band feel, too, with Petty's pop tendencies and his place in the limelight pulled back some so the band as a unit with its blues rock roots can shine more, like on "U.S. 41."
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers_08_U.S. 41
15. Paul Weller – Wake Up the Nation - Wake Up the Nation and Find the Torch, a Paul Weller documentary by Julien Temple
Sometimes a little appropriately placed anger is a good thing. He sounds more awakened and energized than he has in a while, and more ready to rock. I loved 22 Dreams, but at points its sprawl and its experiments got the better of it. With 16 songs in 40 minutes, this is more tightly disciplined, Like the Who, for instance, or the Jam.
16. The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang - American Slang
Another album of quintessentially American rock n' roll by the second best band from New Jersey. A good example of the quality of this year's releases; this is way better than being #16 might make it seem.
This track starts out with a bit of a Van Morrison feeling:
04 - The Diamond Church Street Choir
17. Los Lobos – Tin Can Trust - Tin Can Trust
These guys have been doing it so well for so long—it's been 26 years since they put out the classic How will the Wolf Survive? By now the music seems to flow out of them as easily and naturally waves on the ocean, but they always find a keep it fresh and vital. Rock, blues, and Mexican elements blend into the stew, not a melting pot, each enriching the others.
This instrumental track, an exception, shows what great guitarists both Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo are:
18. Jason and the Scorchers – Halcyon Times – Moonshine guy (live)
Reunited after a long hiatus—it's been 14 years since their last studio album—these guys are still scorching, that's for damn sure. “Crash and burn rock and roll, we've got it going on,” as the last track says. Good songs don't hurt, either.
19. John Mellencamp – No Better than This & another review - No Better Than This
As AMG says, “The first thing that grabs the listener... is its sound: mono -- recorded live to an Ampex 601 tape recorder circa 1955, with a single microphone without mixing or overdubs.” That, the simple instrumentation, and Mellencamp's scratchy voice give this album a dusty, back road feeling of honesty. His songs avoid the epic drama they've sometimes been burdened with, but they hold up to repeated listening. The album might have benefited by being changed up more,
John Mellencamp_01_Save Some Time To Dream
20. John McLaughlin & the 4th Dimension - To the One - The Fine Line
This is so different from everything else on this list it seems unable to be compared to the rest in a meaningful way; is it really #20, or is it #1? Not knowing, I still felt that I had to stick it in somewhere. More than one reviewer thinks of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme when discussing it, and you can't be in a better neighborhood than that.
John McLaughlin & the 4th Dimension_04_Lost And Found
Honorable mentions:
Band of Horses - Infinite Arms – Laredo I'm still a sucker for that Poco/Jayhawks sound, and these guys do it about as well as those models.
The Black Keys – Brothers - Tighten Up, a funny video. This s a very good record, much more deserving of Grammy nominations than the dreck that usually gets them. Since they're from Akron I like them, too, because you always like to see hometown boys make good. There are many others still more deserving.
Eden Brent - Ain't Got No Troubles - The Making of "Ain't Got No Troubles" You may not have heard of Eden Brent. I hadn't until I heard an NPR feature about her, but when I heard it I went straight home and got her album. I gather that among the diminished but faithful remnant of fans of contemporary blues she's quite well known. Great piano playing, great singing and good songs that don't rely on blues cliches.
Field Music - Field Music (Measure) - Them That Do Nothing In terms of musical complexity and originality this matches anything in this list below Sufjan. At this time at least I find it a little too smart, too intellectual. It's my most recent acquisition on this list, but I haven't found a tug at my heart or a visceral kick in it yet, so it remains down here.
Jeremy Messersmith – The Reluctant Graveyard Since this might be the least known name in this list I'll include two contrasting videos: faster slower. Effervescent pop with morbid lyrical concerns whose cartoonish delivery doesn't
Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away - Long Shadows & The Curse It's a good thing to have tasteful, finely wrought music and thoughtful, sensitive lyrics, but too much taste and sensitivity can be a little dull, and that may be the case here. Still, it's a grower: every time I listen to it I like it better. There's no telling where that might take it if the year were longer.
Konono No. 1 – Assume Crash Position - Lufuala Ndonga (a song from a previous album) Konono No. 1 @ Prospect Park July 17th 2010 When it comes to taking a hypnotic groove and launching it into the stratosphere and beyond no one is better than these folks. I miss hearing what I would call songs, though. I'd probably rate them higher if I knew what they were singing about.
Mary Gauthier – The Foundling - The Foundling Films, a 10-part video story “I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and subsequently surrendered to [an orphanage] in New Orleans, where I spent my first year. I was adopted shortly thereafter... I searched for, found, and was denied a meeting with my birth mother when I was 45 years old... The Foundling is my story.” On the surface this sounds obnoxiously narcissistic, I know, but it's done with so much courage, compassion, insight, wry humor and good music that in the end it doesn't come off that way.
Teenage Fanclub – Shadows - Baby Lee (The best video I could find for this album. Maybe in these days of straitening the record labels don't want to invest in producing a video for a band in the downward tapering part of its career, especially if at its zenith that career was good, but not massive.) That this fine album is only an honorable mention is indicative of how good a year this has been. No other song in it has as strong a hook as Baby Lee, but it's an enjoyable listen all the way through.
Tracey Thorn – Love and Its Opposite – Oh, The Divorces! Literate, restrained acutely observant songs about breakup and its aftermath, delivered mainly by Thorne's piano and wonderful voice.
And yes, I suppose I'll give a grudging nod to Beach House's Teen Dream. Some lists have even made it #1. It does have a lovely sound. But so far I find the center that sound's wrapped around to be vacuous. Will anyone remember any of those songs in 2011?
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