Last year was an odd one for music. Politics reared its ugly head during an election year, and musicians, who we all know are the real experts on foreign policy, seemed to come out of the woodwork to denounce “the war,” falling back on rehearsed soundbites and incoherent vitriol. The whole thing was made all the more disappointing by the fact that there simply wasn’t anything very good coming out from the major labels. U2 did an okay record with a ponderous title, but it traded mostly on nostalgia, and it appears that R.E.M. is just a hollow shell of its former self without Bill Berry.
As usual, there was some truly great work done this year, but it flew under the commercial radar. Thankfully, Emo appears to be dead, and we’ve finally seen the end of “Post-Rock” as the new Prog. Acts like Tortoise treaded water, while others redefined themselves and came out all the better for it.
Not much happened in electronic music this year, and I found myself listening to alot more rock. Good thing, too, because there were a few stunning records for the genre, and what’s more, with the democritizaion of the industry that’s taken place through online dealers and P2P networking, alot of these folks stand to get the publicity and exposure they deserve.
Case in point: Funeral by the Arcade Fire. This was one of those, “okay, I give up” records that I finally got after listening to everyone I know frothing at the mouth about it. Believe the hype. There’s a big difference between angst and true grief, and this record traffics effectively in the latter. Inspired by the death of several family members, Win Butler and Regine Chassagne set their pain to music and ended up creating one of those records that makes you think that maybe there’s some life left in Rock after all. Alternately passionate, resigned, grandiose, messy and beautiful, it’s an amazing piece of surreal and personal autobiography that gets better on every listen.
Butler’s artless put poignant singing (think of Grant Hart) fits the desperate and pleading quality of his tracks, while Chassagne’s plaintive voice strikes a dead-ringer for a more refined Siouxie (check out the wonderful imagery on “Haiti”). The backing borders on chaos at times, but these guys are better than they let on, and there’s no lack of good ideas here. There simply hasn’t been anything that could top the sheer rush and lasting attachment of this record in a long time. This year’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It in People
This looked like a disaster on paper: a collective act from Toronto with a goofy name, comprised of folks from several very artsy post-rock acts (Treble Charger, Silver Mt. Zion) who decide to do a pop record. The actual result is as amazing as it is unexpected. This record hits like an ice-cream headache and never loses its momentum. Utilizing something like 14 musicians in various capacities, it should have been a mess, but what we actually get is a record of amazing, catchy songs with wonderful instrumentation and incredible discipline. Even though it switches gears every track, it still holds together somehow. This is the great record Sonic Youth never got around to making, and in a perfect world, this’d be all over the radio for the next three years.
Bark Psychosis: Codename: Dustsucker
With the last record, Graham Sutton created a whole genre unto himself. Then he dropped off the face of the earth for the better part of a decade. He returns here and writes like nothing’s changed in the intervening time.
Thank God for that, too. This record refines and perfects the approach he took last time around, and it ends up being as haunting and elegaic as anything you’ll ever hear. Deserves to be held in the same classic status as Hex.
Twerk: Living Vicariously through Burnt Bread
Shawn Hatfield deals in field recordings and found-sound, and he uses them as the basis for deceptively complex electronic music that doesn’t sound the least bit processed. Each track feels like a living system into itself. Unique in approach and effect, it stands out easily from the rest of the stoic paint-by-numbers crowd on Mille Plateaux.
Lali Puna: Faking the Books
Nothing groundbreaking, but solid and somehow reassuring. Valerie Trebeljahr’s imaginative lyrics and Markus Archer’s (Notwist) production work well together, and it comes off as quirky without being fey and catchy without being saccharine. The balancing act itself is impressive, but the material is insidiously memorable as well.
Max Richer: The Blue Notebooks
An imaginary soundtrack for Kafka’s notes, this is a minimalist work based on strings and slight electronic treatments. Similar to Johannsen’s Englaborn, but somehow bolder and more haunting than the usual fare being cranked out on the conservatory scene. Immersive, subtle and effortlessly gorgeous, this is one of those records that finds its way into the subconscious over time.
Pretty Boy Crossover: Always Buildings, Always Cities
An oft-overlooked Australian electronic act who are largely ignored stateside, these guys have been churning out excellent, if unobtrusive, music for several years now. A quiet and hazy record that rewards repeated listening.
Tim Hecker: Radio Amor
Another record of shortwave transmissions from the edge of music. Hecker’s work is just as easily defined by feel as it is by sound. Motives ebb and flow on a bed of radio chatter and static, and what appears random at first turns out to be something intricate and tighly wound on second glance. An immersive record that conjures images of the aurora borealis or the open sea at night, it gets an amazing amount of mileage from the slightest of source material.
John Xela: Listen with Xela
A great example of the mix-tape as a work of art unto itself. An eclectic hodgepodge of all the great stuff you didn’t hear last year, mixed with a deft hand and an ear for good sequencing.
Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
Proof that faith and humility still have a place in a jaded world. Stevens follows up last year’s sprawling and quirky survey of his native Michigan with a quiet record of semi-devotional folk songs. Never preachy or syrupy, this is a simple narrative of faith and yearning that gains its own weight from the slight but well-played banjo and guitar arrangements. “Sister” and the overwrought “Transfiguration” are a bit much, but the rest of the record is simply pristine and moving.
Modest Mouse: Good News for People Who Like Bad News
Not quite as ambitious but much more consistent than The Moon and Antarctica. Isaac Brock reigns in the experimental tendencies of the last record to deliver something more direct, and it comes off like a stateside answer to XTC’s early greatness.