A New Blog For A New Year

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” – Anton Ego, Ratatouille

Hello and welcome to the new and improved Pretzel Logic! Today is the beginning of not only a new year, but an entirely new decade. In keeping with this sense of new beginnings, I’ve decided to revamp and focus Pretzel Logic for its second year of existence.

Things That Have Changed

-Content will be limited to only reviews and news, with the occasional random thought if I think it’s important. As much as I’ve enjoyed sharing lists of my favorite musicians and albums with everyone, I want Pretzel Logic to be more accessible and useful. This means dialing down some of my own personal opinions and list-making tendencies.

-I’m also going to be drawing heavily on what other critics are saying. A typical album review under the new Pretzel Logic regime will feature a sampling of what other people are saying about the work at hand, followed by my own opinion and final grade. This blog’s mission statement is to document and comment on music history as it is being written, meaning that being aware of what other critics are saying about these albums is very important.

-My manic posting rate will slow down somewhat. This new reviewing system requires more time and effort, since I have to both A) wait for these other reviews to be written and B) hunt them down. However, the flipside of this should be more in-depth reviews that really dig into how people are responding to new music.

-Finally, Pretzel Logic has a shiny new layout. Keep checking back over the course of this week as I add a few more bells and whistles.

My goal for Pretzel Logic is to do with words what sites like Metacritic and Acclaimed Music do with numbers: gain an overall sense of how critics are responding to new music. This blog will cover the albums that everyone seems to celebrating, along with those that everyone has united against and everything in-between. In the process, I hope to see history being written in front of me, as critics decide who the “winners” and “losers” of the this year’s music releases will be.

All the old Pretzel Logic content from the past year is still in the archive. However, from here on out (with one exception this weekend), Pretzel Logic will be a different beast. No longer will it simply be an outpouring of my own thoughts and opinions. Instead, I hope it will prove to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in what the world thinks about new music.

So, if you’re out there reading, don’t be afraid to interact. I want Pretzel Logic to spark conversations. If you’ve got opinions about the music I’m talking about, share them. If you think there’s music out there I should cover, please tell me. One voice of criticism is virtually meaningless on its own. Add your voice to the many others I’ll be showcasing on a regular basis.

Under Construction

Pretzel Logic will return on January 1st, remodeled and ready for a new year of action. In the meantime, quake with anticipation!

Furthermore, after January 1st, this site's URL will be http://pretzellogicmusic.blogspot.com. If there are any of you out there kind enough to have bookmarked my site over the past year, please update accordingly.

State Of The Pretzel Logic: December

Well, here we are at the end of the year. The weather’s getting chilly and the holiday season is breathing down our necks. Personally, I’ve had a fantastic 2009 and I hope that the rest of you did as well. In a few short weeks, we’ll have not only a new year, but a new decade. I can’t wait.

Pretzel Logic has been online since January 1. It’s been a constant source of pride for me and has given me the chance to hone my writing skills. It has also kept me much more aware of current music than I have been in past years. Over the course a single year, I’ve written 276 posts and reviewed 127 albums. I’ve had a great time and I hope anyone out there reading has enjoyed what I’ve had to say.

Unfortunately, I’m rapidly becoming cynical about the role music blogs play in the world. People seem to be placing more and more stock in their own opinions, resulting in a culture where no one really gives a shit what other people think. Twitter and the assorted new communications media outlets are undermining more in-depth writing by reducing conversations to 140 characters. All these factors are leading me to consider putting Pretzel Logic to rest for good. While it’s been a lot of fun for me on a personal level, I feel like it isn’t serving much of a purpose in the world.

I haven’t actually decided what the future of this blog will be yet. I’m going to take a break from blogging for the rest of this year and decide how I want to proceed. If Pretzel Logic does come back, it will be sometime in the first week of January, probably somewhat radically redesigned. If it doesn’t, than I want to thank everyone who’s been reading. It’s been one hell of a year.

Best Music of 2009, Pt. 5: Albums #5-1

#5
A Woman A Man Walked By
PJ Harvey & John Parish

A Woman A Man Walked By opens with the bombastic “Black Hearted Love”, but that one amazing track is actually wildly unrepresentative of the rest of the album. Its real emotional core lies in the twisted organs and PJ Harvey’s strained voice on “April” and the psychosexual intensity of the title track. A Woman A Man Walked By is not a comfortable album by any stretch of the imagination, but the feverish lyrics, combined with John Parish’s eerie, rustic music, create a fascinating and emotionally gripping ride from start to finish. Even the most beautiful songs on the album, like the mandolin-led “The Soldier”, are undercut by extreme tension. As always, Harvey is an absolute revelation as a singer, not performing songs as much as living them. A Woman A Man Walked By lets her show her full range, from terse growls all the way up to almost childlike shrieks. Harvey and Parish both bring a lot to the table as musicians and this album succeeds because both have an innate understanding of how all the various tools at their disposal can be combined into something great.

[original review]

#4
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II
Raekwon

Literally picking up exactly where the original Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… left off, Raekwon’s much anticipated (and much delayed) sequel finally arrived in 2009, becoming a welcome throwback to the great rap long-players that seem to be rapidly going out of style. While OB4CL2 has plenty of the usual Wu-Tang tricks (kung-fu movie samples, RZA’s crisp, dry production), the album also recognizes the amount of time that’s passed since Rae first started rhyming about crime, drug dealing and his Wu family. Multiple tracks pay homage to fallen Wu brother Ol’ Dirty Bastard, while Rae and the expected mob of Wu-related guests tackle the same old subjects from a wiser, more thoughtful angle. At the same time, OB4CL2 sounds immediate and more than a little brutal. “House Of Flying Daggers” is the best gangster rap anthem in years, while the queasy “Black Mozart” and “Surgical Gloves” maintain the dark edge the Wu-Tang Clan has always been famous for. Toss in a few great, radio-ready cuts (“Cold Outside”, “Mean Streets”) and you’ve got the best rap album of the past several years. It may have taken over a decade, but Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II is worth the wait.

[original review]

#3
The Crying Light
Antony And The Johnsons

No album in 2009 could match The Crying Light for sheer beauty and grace. From the plaintive violins and fragile piano all the way to Antony’s peerless, unimitatable voice, this is simply a gorgeous album. However, tucked away behind all the wonderful, sparse music is a deep undercurrent of sadness. Antony’s voice may be beautiful, but it’s also incredibly haunting and filled with pain. The Crying Light is the sound of someone maintaining poise and composure in the face of a world that seems to be falling apart. When Antony sings “I need another world, this one’s nearly gone,” it feels like he’s ready to willfully fade away and leave this flawed world behind. When Antony’s voice finally begins to crack, during the powerful second half of “Aeon”, you start to becoming deeply worried about this vulnerable, pained figure. With only his astonishing voice, Antony evokes tremendous empathy in listeners. With music that matches his emotional-but-elegant style, The Crying Light is nothing less than a masterful artistic triumph.

[original review]

#2
Crack The Skye
Mastodon

How does an album that features lyrics like “the screaming arrows burst through my soul” and “please tell Lucifer he can’t have this one” become my second favorite album the year? The answer to the question is two-fold. First, Crack The Skye kicks ass. Mastodon have spent most of the decade refining their melodic reinvention of modern metal and all that work finally paid off with Crack The Skye, an album that’s simultaneously heavy as an actual mastodon, but also very accessible. They’ve got a Metallica-esque ability to craft great melodies out of distorted guitars, all while possessing a strong grasp on how to use dynamics to underscore the emotional content of their songs. But the second reason Crack The Skye is such an accomplishment is that it taps into a vein of very personal, human sadness. Written for and partially inspired by drummer Brann Dailor’s sister Skye, who committed suicide at the age of fourteen, Crack The Skye is a harrowing document of coping with painful loss and the disorienting confusion that comes with it. Of course, that’s all tied up in a semi-absurd story about Rasputin and astral travel, but the emotions are still quite visible. I sternly believe that Mastodon have been the best metal band of the 2000s and Crack The Skye is their best album, injecting some needed humanity into a genre that’s rapidly losing touch with its universal appeal.

[original review]

#1
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective

I’ll never forget the first time I heard Merriweather Post Pavilion. It was late December and I was holed up in a house, trying to outlast the Wisconsin winter. I was putting the groundwork for what would become Pretzel Logic in place, but I wanted an album to review for my very first post. It was brought to my attention that Animal Collective’s latest album had leaked online and, despite my general distaste for their music, decided that they would be a good, well-recognized band to launch my blog with. I tracked the torrent down, cued up “In The Flowers” and did my best to listen with an open mind.

Two songs in, I felt like my life had been changed.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is an album of contradictions. It’s dense, but also very light and airy. It’s warm and welcoming, but also very metallic and jarring. It feels profoundly organic, but was made mostly with electronics. Strangest of all, it features songs that are, for the most part, unequivocally happy, yet it feels somewhat down, even a bit mournful. I still don’t completely understand how Animal Collective did it, but they combined all these disparate elements into one singular piece of work that stands as one of the most compelling slabs of music released in the past ten years. From the lighthearted fun of “Summertime Clothes” all the way to the hushed (and weirdly underappreciated) “No More Runnin’”, all the songs on Merriweather Post Pavilion are different shades in one massive, multicolored ocean of sound. The crowning achievement is “My Girls”, which is one of the most touching and honestly joyful songs I’ve heard in my life, but the whole album maintains a similar level of quality. Twelve months ago, I couldn’t even fathom that Animal Collective could make an album like this. Now, here I am, waxing poetic about it on my blog. MPP was the first album I ever reviewed on Pretzel Logic and I’m overjoyed that, one year later, I’m still singing its praises.

[original review]

Best Music of 2009, Pt. 4: Albums #10-6

#10
Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear

I’d resisted Grizzly Bear’s homespun, warmly fuzzy music for a long time, but Veckatimest finally knocked down my last defenses. At a time when everyone and their mom seems to be starting up indie pop bands, Veckatimest doesn’t represent a radical new way of doing things, but it shows how powerful indie pop can be when done well. Soaring melodies combined with rich vocal harmonies is nothing new, but Grizzly Bear just sell their songs to you so well. There’s still a bit of that rural twang hanging onto their music, but with their subtle keyboards and layers of choir-like voices, the songs on Veckatimest sound strong and assured. Plus, the album features the gorgeous “Two Weeks”, which single-handedly sets the bar absurdly high for every other indie band trying to find that one perfect crossover single.

[original review]

#9
Face Control
Handsome Furs

Wolf Parade are rapidly starting to look like one of those “one-and-done” bands, who release a single great album and then essentially vanish off the face of the earth. Thankfully, one half of Wolf Parade’s core songwriting tandem, Dan Boeckner, seems to be really hitting his stride with Handsome Furs, his other band, formed with his wife, Alexei Perry. Going back to the singer-and-keyboardist synth duo model of the 1980s, Handsome Furs play stripped down music, but don’t think for a second that Face Control sounds weak. Boeckner’s barbed guitar and Springsteen-strident vocals provide the force, while Perry’s brittle electronic beats and stabs of keyboard give the music an edgy, stark quality. Songs like “I’m Confused”, “Evangeline” and the devastating closer, “Radio Kaliningrad” stand as some of the most cathartic and thrilling music released this year. Handsome Furs may still be treated as “that band with the other guy from Wolf Parade”, but with albums this strong, that could change in the very near future.

[original review]

#8
Préliminaires
Iggy Pop

Of all the albums featured on the list, Préliminaires is possibly the hardest to really dig into and appreciate. It comes with a reading list (Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island) and requires the listener to be aware of Iggy’s storied past. Clearly, this is a tall order for many music fans, especially as the world seems to be forgetting about Iggy at a frighteningly fast pace. However, as faux-New-Orleans jazz albums inspired by French science-fiction go, Préliminaires is an extraordinary accomplishment. Iggy does an admirable job of setting the themes of the book to music, but he also makes these songs deeply personal. Houellebecq’s story of an entertainer struggling to maintain his relevance and virility as he ages is something that must resonate deeply with James Osterberg, the sixty-two year old man behind the Iggy persona. After a demented career, full of ups, downs and too many self-inflicted injures to count, Iggy has finally let his mature, intelligent Osterberg side have free reign on his music.

[original review]

#7
Embryonic
The Flaming Lips

Yeah, no one saw this coming. Don’t even pretend like you did. The Flaming Lips spent the past decade getting increasingly mellower and mellower, recording some good music but getting frighteningly toothless in the process. All that changed on Embryonic, as the Lips unleashed a seething mass of static-drenched mind-fuckery upon the world. With its pounding bass lines, disembodied vocal samples and general formlessness, Embryonic is not for fans who were lured into orbit by the whimsical silliness of “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots”. Most of the songs have dark overtones, questioning the moral nature of humanity, with Wayne Coyne’s desperate, strained vocal performances leading the charge on many songs. The whole teetering mess reaches its inevitable climax with “Watching The Planets”, the cacophonous track that closes the album. Sure, the album may run a bit long, clocking in at seventy thunderous minutes, but the Flaming Lips have brought power and darkness back into their music. In my book, that’s a very, very good thing.

[original review]

#6
Fever Ray
Fever Ray

While it may not be the equal of the Knife’s Silent Shout, the 2006 masterwork by Karin Andersson’s more famous band, Fever Ray is still a stunning piece of music. While it shares Silent Shout’s icy, looming dread and disorienting vocal pitch manipulation, Fever Ray is ultimately a gentler, more personal record. This approach has strengths of its own, however, resulting in gloriously strange tracks like “Seven”, as well as desperately lonely pieces, such as the peerless “Keep The Streets Empty For Me”. Andersson has become a master of atmosphere, perfectly balancing industrial percussion, grinding electronics and twinkling keyboard riffs to create a sound that’s intensely oppressive, but also startlingly beautiful and haunting. While it may not be the most welcoming album ever created, Fever Ray is one solid, cohesive work from start to finish, from the bleak “If I Had Heart” all the way to the anthemic “Coconut”. The world might still be waiting for the next Knife album, but Fever Ray more than deserves the title of Silent Shout 2.

[original review]

Best Music of 2009, Pt. 3: Albums #15-11

#15
There Is No Enemy
Built To Spill

2009 taught me to never completely write bands off. Several of my favorite albums this year were released by acts that, this time a year ago, I was convinced had little redeeming value. Built To Spill were one of these groups and they showed me how wrong I was with There Is No Enemy. By paring down their sound to just the basics of jangling guitar, a strong rhythm section and ruthlessly catchy melodies, Built To Spill saved themselves from “overwrought guitar noodle-fest” land. “Aisle 13” and “Hindsight” provide the initial kick, before the album’s longer tracks take over. The subdued, mid-tempo sound of “Oh Yeah” and “Things Fall Apart” is something I could see myself becoming a huge fan of over time. Hopefully, Built To Spill will keep releasing music this well-crafted and steer clear of those monstrous guitar solos for a bit longer.

[original review]

#14
xx
The xx

I turned twenty-one this year. Conventional wisdom tells me I’m now entering the best years of my life. However, I also have to wonder what exactly I’m doing with my life. After all, this is also the year I saw a twenty-year-old pitcher beat my Seattle Mariners and the xx, a band of young English kids all younger than myself, release a beautiful, restrained and thoroughly complete debut album. While most people their (or, perhaps, “my?”) age record debuts full of raucous energy and angst, the xx shocked the world by recording mysterious, fragile songs, so totally at odds with what culture tells us “youth” is all about. The single “Crystalised” isn’t just their best song; it might as well be their mission statement. Stark, minimal and more than just a little romantic, the xx proved that English youth can do more with music than just rip off the Libertines.

[original review]

#13
The Eternal
Sonic Youth

Speaking of youth, how about Sonic Youth, who are, in fact, driven by a core of musicians who are now all in their fifties. Although their most volatile days are long behind them, Sonic Youth have been one of the few steady constants in music since the 1980s, mostly because they actually change their sound every few albums. After the relatively tepid Rather Ripped in 2006, the band turned things around for The Eternal, unleashing a cataclysmic wall of gritty guitar and shrieking noise, all carefully disguising some very sweet melodies. The exquisite “Antenna” may steal a chord progression or two from King Crimson, but it’s still one of the most beautiful and expressive songs the band has ever recorded. Plus, it’s nice to be reminded that Sonic Youth can still rock, as heard on “Anti-Orgasm”, “What We Know” and “No Way”. The band may be getting older, but you really can’t hear it at all in their music. They’re still more than willing to melt your face off with guitars.

[original review]

#12
Two Dancers
Wild Beasts

As British indie rock gets increasingly formulaic, predictable and just plain bad, bands like Wild Beasts should be treasured. Two Dancers, as an album, is essentially one huge creative risk, combining Hayden Thorpe’s effervescent falsetto with unorthodox percussion (bongos are a main instrument) and fey, wispy guitar melodies. Reinventing glam for our gentler, indie-oriented age, Wild Beasts’ music does so many things rock isn’t supposed to do. The band seems to play in some parallel musical universe, where the overt masculinity of most guitar music has been sucked away, leaving an elegant, stately, yet propulsive sound in its wake. There simply aren’t many bands that sound like this running around these days. However, based on the strength of Two Dancers, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more start popping up in future years.

[original review]

#11
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Unwieldy name or not, there’s no way around the fact that the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are absolutely adorable. Sunny, exuberant and virtually exploding with energy, it’s impossible not to get swept up in the waves of positive energy that radiate out from their songs. Then, once you’ve cracked through that joyous surface layer of their music, you’re rewarded with surprisingly detailed lyrics, tackling the usual themes of young love and romance from all kinds of entertaining angles (just check out the library-lust of “Young Adult Friction”). In many ways, the Pains are just the latest link in a chain of bands that can be traced back to Belle & Sebastian, the Smiths and beyond, but for at least one album, they’ve proven that they deserve a spot next to all those other great purveyors of geek-love anthems.

[original review]

Best Music of 2009, Pt. 2: Albums #20-16

[Note: only full-length studio albums were considered for this list. Therefore, EPs (Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind) and compilations (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’ White Lunar and the AIDS benefit Dark Was The Night) are not included here, as awesome as they may be. Making lists like this is arbitrary enough as is. Adding compilations and short-form releases only makes things more complicated. But seriously…go check the other 2009 Favorites out. They’re all quite impressive.]

#20
Rain Machine
Rain Machine

Escaping the narrow confines of simply being a “side project,” Kyp Malone, who by day sings and plays guitar in TV On The Radio, came into his own in a big way this year with Rain Machine. Without TVOTR’s furious guitar rush and Tunde Adebimpe’s roaring vocals to distract attention, Rain Machine reveals Malone as a gloriously emotional and potent songwriter. He can do the whole in-your-face rock thing, with songs like “Give Blood”, but he can also restrain himself and write tracks like the eleven-minute long “Winter Song”, while magically keeping something that unwieldy from becoming boring. Topped off by his expressive voice and urgent delivery, Malone and his band have created something that should be familiar to TVOTR fans, but engaging and unique in its own right.

[original review]

#19
Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
Patterson Hood

The Drive-By Truckers are a wildly prolific band and it almost feels weird to have a year go by without a new studio album from Alabama’s finest. Thankfully, the band did treat us to two solid stopgap releases this year: The Fine Print, an impressive b-sides and rarities collection, and Murdering Oscar, the second solo album from the band’s guitarist, singer and all-around leader, Patterson Hood. Playing with his band, the Screwtopians, Hood has compiled a frighteningly strong set of songs, written at various times over the past decade. Yet, over the course of the album fifty minutes, a cohesive sound and style emerges. Party country shitkicker and part keen social observer, Hood and his band churn out blistering southern rock and heart-wrenching balladry to back up Hood’s sharp lyrics and nuanced character sketches.

[original review]

#18
Years Of Refusal
Morrissey

There’s something about Morrissey that can be insanely frustrating. The Pope of Mope has made an entire career of his self-fulfilling lyrical obsession with no one ever loving him. Plus, when he’s not singing about that lack of love, he’s singing about the qualities that make him unlovable. It’s a vicious cycle and Moz has shown no signs of jumping off his specific hamster wheel anytime soon. The upside to all this is that Morrissey is in the middle of a full-fledged career renaissance as of late and Years Of Refusal is the best album he’s released since the 1990s. Heaven knows he’s still miserable now, but his dourness is balanced out by the short, sharp rock of his songwriting compatriots, Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer. At the ripe old age of fifty, the Mozfather sounds as vibrant and caustic as ever.

[original review]

#17
The Sound The Speed The Light
Mission Of Burma

As far as I know, there is literally no precedent for what Mission Of Burma have accomplished this decade. How many other bands can break up after recording only a single (admittedly legendary) album… and then reunite nineteen years later and end up recording material that sounds just as immediate and thrilling? It helps that during that absence, alt-rock was flung into the mainstream and Mission Of Burma were retroactively given demi-god status, but still… The Sound The Speed The Light is almost too good. The dry, brittle sound of their 1982 debut, Vs., is replicated wonderfully on this new album, full of angular guitars, dissonant bass and pummeling drums. It only took, y’know, twenty-seven years, but Mission Of Burma have recorded their second full-length masterpiece.

[original review]

#16
Album
Girls

“Do we really need a Californian Elvis Costello?” This is the question I’ve been asking myself since Girls debuted with Album earlier this fall. Without a doubt, the San Francisco-based band wears its influences on their thrift-store-bought sleeves: two parts Costello pen-wielding nerd vocals, one part Beach Boys harmonies, some Buddy Holly to taste and voila! However, the appeal of Girls is that they take all those classic pop touchstones and turn them into something that sounds weirdly contemporary. The growls of static and noise that underpin songs like “Morning Light” and “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” show that the band see themselves as more than just a jukebox on legs that waltzed out of a 1950s diner. Plus, few bands this year could match Girls for sheer, heartstring-tugging balladry, with the heartfelt “Lust For Life”, “Laura” and “Hellhole Ratrace” proving that teenage angst and emoting can still be wonderfully appealing in this post-emo age.

[original review]

Best Music of 2009, Pt. 1: The 1st Annual Pretzel Awards

True fact: music bloggers love December. After a whole year of listening and reviewing and so forth, we finally get to write up organized lists, showcasing what we feel has been the best music of the past twelve months. We wait all year for this chance to arbitrarily declare one album better than another, then brace ourselves for the inevitable deluge of outraged comments. Maybe it all sounds dumb and a bit pointless, but there’s something strangely thrilling about lists, countdowns and crowning one specific set of songs the “Album of the Year.”

I’ll be counting down my twenty favorite albums of 2009 over the rest of this week, but to start things off, I’m sharing the 1st Annual Pretzel Awards, showcasing some of the best non-album accomplishments in music this year. So, without further ado, I give you the best music of 2009:

Best Songs of the Year (alphabetically by artist):

-“My Girls”, Animal Collective, from Merriweather Post Pavilion
-“Least Favorite Rapper”, Busdriver, from Jhelli Beam
-“A Machine For Loving”, Iggy Pop, from Préliminaires
-“Fuckingsong”, Jarvis Cocker, from Further Complications
-“Oblivion”, Mastodon, from Crack The Skye
-“Belvedere”, Patterson Hood, from Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
-“Black Hearted Love”, PJ Harvey & John Parish, from A Woman A Man Walked By
-“These Are My Twisted Words”, Radiohead, non-album single
-“House Of Flying Daggers”, Raekwon, from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II
-“Hooting & Howling”, Wild Beasts, from Two Dancers

Short-Form Release of the Year:
-Fall Be Kind EP, Animal Collective

Musician of the Year:
-Noah Lennox, for having a hand in Animal Collective’s amazing album-and-EP one-two punch, as well as his winning guest vocals on Atlas Sound’s “Walkabout”.

Music Video of the Year:
-“House Of Flying Daggers”, Raekwon, dir. Erick Sasso and Brian Wendelken

Debut Album of the Year:
-Fever Ray, Fever Ray

Most Promising New Act:
-The xx

Best Opening Track of the Year:
-“Oblivion”, Mastodon, from Crack The Skye

Best Closing Track of the Year:
-“Foreground”, Grizzly Bear, from Veckatimest

Most Disappointing Album of the Year:
-Begone Dull Care, Junior Boys

Acclaimed Album I Didn’t Understand of the Year:
-Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix

Single Worst Thing to Happen to Music This Year:
-Auto-Tune reaches its maximum cultural saturation point

Good In Theory...

Artist: Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse

Album: Dark Night Of The Soul

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaboration album between producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse, Virginian indie band Sparklehorse and a whole slew of guests, made a lot of news earlier this year. For reasons that have still not been made one-hundred percent clear, the label EMI prevented the album from being released. It’s believed that the problem stems from a distribution deal Danger Mouse signed, but no concrete information has actually come to light. All we know is that, instead of grimly accepting their fate or bogging everything down in court procedures, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse found a novel way to get their music out there. They ended up releasing a well-packaged version of the album, including a blank CD, so that fans could find one of the many leaked versions of the album and burn it onto the CD themselves.

I’m fully in support of what Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse are doing. I think it’s refreshing to see artists using the inevitable album leaks as a force of good, instead of freaking out or blogging irately about it all. However, as for the actual music on Dark Night Of The Soul…well, it’s ok. The album is essentially a huge showcase for the wealth of talent Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse have assembled, but many of the songs never really get off the ground or establish their own identity.

There are highlights. “Little Girl”, featuring a wonderfully mumbling Julian Casablancas from the Strokes, is one of the few moments when the music, lyrics and singer’s voice all mesh together to create something that sounds natural. The off-kilter cadences to the words suit Casablancas’ slurring, flat delivery perfectly and the shimmering guitar adds some subtle tension. The opening track, “Revenge”, is another success, featuring the entirety of the Flaming Lips, playing in full-blown, anthemic mode. Danger Mouse’s rich production suits the band’s dreamy vibe perfectly and makes me wonder what an entire album of Lips/Mouse collaborating would sound like.

But too many of the tracks just don’t sound comfortable with themselves. The hacking hard rock of “Angel’s Harp”, featuring Pixies’ Black Francis, goes absolutely nowhere and mostly just sounds like third-string garage rock. The similarly overblown Iggy Pop vehicle, “Pain”, is cursed with a disorienting, unstable chord progression and hamfisted lyrics (“there are good people in this world of bombs, but sadly I am not one”). Then you’ve got a whole chunk of mellow, throwaway tracks during the album’s second half, such as interminable “Everytime I’m With You”. These songs never have anything beyond a simple verse-chorus-bridge setup and the singers don’t even add variations with their voice. While the initial song beginnings are often quite interesting, when they end up stretched over four minutes, they get dull and lifeless.

Thankfully, the album ends with one of its best songs: the crackling, moody title track, featuring none other than David Lynch, who designed the booklet accompanying the blank CD. There are moments of fascinating artistic clarity and collaborative magic sprinkled throughout Dark Night Of The Soul, but they’re simply too few. The guest singers rarely sound comfortable with the lyrics being put in their mouth and the music often sounds labored and weak. I appreciate everything Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse are doing in terms of music politics with this album. I only wish the music could have a similar edge and liveliness.

The Curse Of Quirk

Artist: Devendra Banhart

Album: What Will We Be

Year: 2009

Grade: 2.5 pretzels

Being quirky is a trap. On one hand, being an unusual and “weird” musician limits the number of people who will likely enjoy your music. But, if you ever stop being strange in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, you end up alienating the people who like you because you’re a weird musician. No matter what you do, someone, somewhere is going to be annoyed and confused by the music you’re making. If Devendra Banhart doesn’t know this feeling well already, he will soon, as What Will We Be is a jarring departure from his usual “freak-folk” sound.

After building a following on the backs of warped, profoundly unusual albums like Rejoicing In The Hands (2004) and Cripple Crow (2005), What Will We Be is definitely Banhart’s most accessible, coffee-house-ready album yet. His usual oddball melodies and skewed lyrical perspective have been replacement by traditional acoustic strumming, shot through with a inexplicably funky set of rhythms. “Baby” features a bouncy baseline and lots of skittery, country-ish guitar squiggles, while “Goin’ Back” could pass for an M. Ward song. For whatever reason, Banhart has exorcised most of his established identity from his music, resulting in an album of folkie-indie dreck, far too similar to what I hear every day on my college’s radio station.

While I’m aware that Banhart’s star has been rising the past couple of years (even featuring a cameo in Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist), I can’t quite understand why he’s chosen to release an album this dreary and drab. If anything, I usually relied on Banhart to release albums that alienated me through weirdness, instead of boringly slick production. Yet, here I am, listening to the piano-led slow jazz of “Chin Chin & Muck Muck”, which has nothing more interesting than its title going for it.

I’m the first person to admit it: artistic growth happens. I’m not in a position to say what Devendra Banhart should or should not be recording. All I know is that What Will We Be doesn’t hold my attention and sounds suspiciously similar to every other interchangeable singer-songwriter winning the hearts of college students the world over. Perhaps this is all a calculated move to appeal to a wider audience and, as the cynic in me is quick to point out, it could actually work. But I can’t help but be disappointed when I hear an artist sacrificing the qualities that make them unique. Please go back to being insanely weird, Devendra. I’ll probably still be alienated by your music, but at least I’ll respect you for it.

December Disappointment

Artist: Clipse

Album: Til The Casket Drops

Year: 2009

Grade: 2 pretzels

It’s been three years since Clipse’s last album, the impressive and complex Hell Hath No Fury. The appeal of that album came from the winning combination of beats provided by the Neptunes and the intricate lyrical interplay between brothers Malice and Pusha T. It was also a downright creepy album, full of sinister keyboards and songs that skirted around the immorality of drug dealing and crime. Glorifying criminal activities through good music and witty rhyming is, of course, nothing new, but Clipse managed to reinvent that specific wheel in a very good way, bringing the danger back into gangster rap. Now, in 2009, the same Clipse/Neptunes team has released Til The Casket Drops, a album Clipse themselves refer to as “long overdue” in the very first song. However, Til The Casket Drops is barely even a shadow of the great album that preceded it.

Rap has a very complicated relationship with becoming successful. The vast majority of rap debuts focus on the struggles of life, while dreaming of a day when music will bring success and wealth into the rappers’ lives. However, for those lucky enough to actually make it, success can end up destroying most of what made their music interesting in the first place. Clipse have become as much of victim of this as anyone else. Til The Casket Drops is a collection of exceedingly awkward songs, riffing on the clichéd themes of massive wealth, drug use and adoring-but-manipulative women.

The album’s overall mission statement (and second single) is “I’m Good”, a lightweight ode to money, cars and bitches. Pharrell drops by during the chorus to add some backing vocals, but the whole thing just lacks any real weight. From its insanely obvious title, “I’m Good” is just an annoying slice of lazy narcissism. Even stranger is “Footsteps”, on which Clipse taunt other rappers who they think have been ripping them off (“I’ve been the inspiration for all you industry dick-tasters”). The problem with this argument is that, while Hell Hath No Fury was a critical favorite back in 2006, Clipse haven’t exactly broken into the mainstream yet. If anything, with Til The Casket Drops, they’ve put themselves solidly in the “followers” camp rather than the “leaders.”

The rest of the songs on the album deal with expected themes of evil, sexy women (“All Eyes On Me”, “Counseling”) and drugs (“Door Man”, “There Was A Murder”). There’s just nothing new here. Worst of all, Malice and Pusha T mostly just come across as foolishly arrogant. On “Kinda Like A Big Deal”, the lyric “it’s a blessing to blow a hundred thou in a recession” just sounds horribly callous. Even stranger than the lyrics are the beats providing the usually reliable Neptunes. Pharrell and Co. have cooked up far too many half-baked, unmemorable synth jams for Til The Casket Drops, with virtually no catchy hooks or earworms in sight (with the exception of the descending piano line on “Popular Demand”). Clipse and the Neptunes had the world in their hand after Hell Hath No Fury, but with this new album, they’ve taken way too many steps back. We waited three years for…this?

A New Era Of Autobahn

Artist: Beak>

Album: Beak>

Year: 2009

Grade: 4 pretzels

Beak> is a strange and intriguing sideproject by Geoff Barrow, one of the founding members of Portishead and their master of all things beat and rhythm related. Rarely do you hear about drummers/percussionists releasing sideprojects or solo albums, but Barrow isn’t exactly your average, snare-smashing drummer and Beak> is a lot more than just a few stray ideas that weren’t fit for the next Portishead album. Despite Barrow’s well-documented love of hip-hop, Beak> looks towards a whole different musical genre for inspiration: krautrock.

In the early 70s, Germany had a particularly antsy and artsy generation on its hands and many of these youngsters decided to form bands. However, rather than gravitating towards the druggy excess of Westernized rock, these college-educated kids formed bands like Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk, creating hypermodern music that tore huge holes through established musical conventions. Perhaps one of the most striking innovations that came out of the scene (eventually dubbed “krautrock”) was the motorik beat, a relentless, repetitive rhythm that evoked the hypnotizing ups and downs of driving on the autobahn.

In Beak>, Barrow utterly and completely embraces the motorik concept. The majority of these songs chug insistently forward, never really becoming up-tempo but always retaining a sense of momentum. The thudding bass and crisp drumming of “Pill” is a prime example. “I Know” speeds things up somewhat, but still has that robotic sameness to its rhythm that becomes oddly compelling over the course of an entire song. Disembodied voices float over the top, drowned in a fog of distortion and voice-altering effects. It’s a stark, cold and ultimately very dislocating experience.

I can’t help but feel that Beak> will end of up being one of the more ignored album releases of the year. Sideprojects don’t usually get much press, especially ones that owe huge debts to arty German music from almost forty years ago. However, I think this album deserves much more praise and a higher profile. It’s one of the most enjoyably strange albums I’ve heard all year and proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. Despite Barrow’s presence bringing it attention, Beak> is an entirely different creature from Portishead and should be treated as a completely separate entity.

Handicappin' The Grammys

Ahhh, my favorite time of the year: Grammy season. When all of America comes together to celebrate crushing banality and mediocrity in our popular music. When industry experts cast their votes for the very best music has to offer, which is a complete conflict of interest since they want their own CDs to sell. When we get an answer to that age old question: “Dear god, this is the music Americans want?!”

Ok, that’s a bit harsh, but c’mon. The Grammys suck and there’s no way around that. This is the institution that decided that the best album of 1977, a year of complete musical upheaval and pioneering all over the world, was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. There’s also that whole Jethro-Tull-beating-Metallica debacle, but enough’s been said about that. The nominations for the next wave of glorious music industry irrelevance were announced yesterday and I want to go through the major awards and handicap the races a bit. In a month or so, we’ll find out whether I was even in the ballpark or not.

Album Of The Year
-I Am…Sasha Fierce, Beyonce
-The E.N.D., The Black Eyed Peas
-The Fame, Lady Gaga
-Big Whiskey And The Groogrux King, Dave Matthews Band
-Fearless, Taylor Swift

T-Swift and Beyonce have to be the favorites here. Fearless has already run rampant through the smaller award shows, but Beyonce is simply Beyonce. She’s the kind of iconic-but-not-cutting-edge singer the Grammys love. Of course, DMB is the most inexplicable nominee here, so they’ll probably win.

Song Of The Year
-“Poker Face”, Lady Gaga
-“Pretty Wings”, Maxwell
-“Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”, Beyonce
-“Use Somebody”, Kings Of Leon
-“You Belong To Me”, Taylor Swift

“Single Ladies” should take this without a contest, but watch out for dark horse “Use Somebody”, which is going to absolutely steamroll through the rock awards. Again, Swift is riding a wave of awards right now, so she’s definitely a contender.

Record Of The Year
-“Halo”, Beyonce
-“I Gotta Feeling”, The Black Eyed Peas
-“Use Somebody”, Kings Of Leon
-“Poker Face”, Lady Gaga
-“You Belong To Me”, Taylor Swift

Without the overwhelmingly awesome “Single Ladies” casting its ominous shadow over everything else, “Use Somebody” and “You Belong To Me” lead the pack for Best Record. This could also be where they throw a bone to Lady Gaga, who was denied Best New Artist status by a month or so.

Best New Artist
-Zac Brown Band
-Keri Hilson
-MGMT
-Silversun Pickups
-The Ting Tings

Dear jesus god, what a horrible field. MGMT, Pickups and the Ting Tings all don’t have a chance, since they fall into that “edgy music” category. Keri Hilson didn’t make big enough waves this year to really have a chance either, so it will probably fall to Zac Brown Band, who we’ll probably never hear from again. That’s how these things tend to work.

Finally, just because it’s the token category aimed at hipsters like myself…

Best Alternative Album
-Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Brian Eno/David Byrne
-The Open Door, Death Cab For Cutie
-Sounds Of The Universe, Depeche Mode
-Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix
-It’s Blitz!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Grammy voters have two choices here: A) the “old choice”, giving the award to Eno and Byrne because, hey, they’re kind of important, right? or, B) the “young choice”, It’s Blitz!, because Yeah Yeah Yeahs have finally sanded away all those dangerous sharp edges and have become something truly boring enough for the Grammys to love.

Not that I’m bitter or anything…

Who's Simon Defending Now?: Kanye West

Alright, alright, Imma let you finish…but I have one of the best Who’s Simon Defending Now? pieces of all time. OF ALL TIME!

Oh Kanye. How you make life difficult for us all. It’s been a rough year for Mr. West, as he has continued to fend off the ever rabid media while managing to repeatedly embarrass himself with moronic comments. He cemented his legacy as a world-class nutcase by interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs in order to promote Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video instead. Kanye’s sense of shame is apparently a myth. He’s rapidly becoming more famous for his oddball personality and public relations snafus than what he actually does for a living: making music. This is why for my final Who’s Simon Defending Now? piece of the year, I’m defending, against all odds, Kanye West.

Despite the fact that he burst onto the scene only six years ago, with 2004’s The College Dropout, Kanye has arguably been one of the five most defining musicians of this entire decade. He’s managed to win over not only pop fans (who, as we hipsters know, will accept anything the radio plays, right?) but also music critics. He’s one of the few mainstream rappers who’s seen as “acceptable” for uber-trendy college students to listen to. He’s collaborated with an all-star cast of musicians in the past ten years and his fingerprints are all over a sizeable chunk of this decade’s chart-topping music. Whatever you personally feel about Kanye, you’ve got to admit that the man has been very successful in a very short period of time.

Then there’s the music itself. While Kanye is far from being a particularly blessed lyricist, he compensates by being one of the more inventive and risk-taking producers working today. From the hyperspeed “chipmunk” soul voices on The College Dropout to the skronking horns liberally spread throughout Late Registration (2005). He can also stumble upon lyrical snippets that exist in a wonderful grey area between absurd and awesome, such as the mind-boggling “I’m like the fly Malcolm X/buy any jeans necessary” line from Graduation’s “Good Morning” (2007). I wholeheartedly believe that Kanye is a genius, but he’s a unique and absurdly idiosyncratic one.

Then there’s 808s And Heartbreak. His fourth album, which was suddenly dropped upon the world just over twelve months ago, remains one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated albums of the entire decade. Lost in all the whining and moaning about Auto-Tune is the fact that 808s is a startlingly personal and risky gesture for a mainstream rapper. He really, truly took rap somewhere that no one else was going with the genre and, personally, I think he knocked the whole thing out of the park. After releasing three albums of increasing braggadocio and ego-stroking, he delivered a masterpiece of frozen electronics and heart-on-sleeve emotions.

As with many pop stars (Michael Jackson, for example), it can become hard to separate their music from their public persona and the attending flock of gossip-hounds, bloodthirsty photographers and sensationalist entertainment reporters. However, it’s important to remember that the art and the artist are, in fact, completely different things. When you hold 808s in your hand, you aren’t holding a piece of Kanye himself. You’re holding a disc of music and you can choose to listen to it in whatever context you want. Just always remember that the music itself is a separate entity and you can enjoy it without condoning the behavior of the artist creating it. Kanye’s ego continues to lose him more and more fans, virtually by the hour, but I urge people to remember his music. He’ll never be a perfect person. But his quirks, inane ramblings and self-mythologizing have allowed him to create some great, landmark songs and albums. He deserves a place alongside Eminem and Jay-Z as rappers who have dictated what hip-hop (and pop music in general) has sounded like this decade and will probably sound like for years to come.

Our Powers Combined...

Artist: Them Crooked Vultures

Album: Them Crooked Vultures

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

On paper, Them Crooked Vultures seems like a band that can do no wrong. Let’s just look at the math here:

Josh Homme (of Queens Of The Stone Age) on guitar
+
Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters/Nirvana fame) on drums, his rightful place in the world
+
John Paul Jones (of this obscure little band called Led Zeppelin) on bass

That’s it. A classic power trio, built around three key players of three different decades of music. This isn’t just a supergroup of classic rockers joining hands for some money-cultivating nostalgia trip. Them Crooked Vultures features two members who are on the cutting edge of modern rock and one insanely famous bassist. In the abstract, Them Crooked Vultures seem unstoppable.

Which is why their self-titled album is a bit of a disappointment. No band call live up to the hype these three men can conjure up just by putting their names in the same sentence. I’m sure no one was expecting some kind of glorious QOTSA/Zep/Nirvana hybrid band, but people are allowed to dream a little bit, aren’t they? I won’t lie: when I heard about Them Crooked Vultures, I got very, very excited. It’s been a long time since commercial hard rock has anything going for it and TCV seemed to have more potential than the Dead Weather or any of the other high-profile bands running around lately. Basically, my hopes were a bit high.

The weirdest thing about Them Crooked Vultures is how much it sounds like a QOTSA album. Homme’s voice and guitar playing absolutely dominate all thirteen songs, overshadowing his historic rhythm section. Grohl also happens to be a QOTSA alum, so we’re already accustomed to his pummeling style fitting in behind Homme’s warped guitar licks and clear voice. Meanwhile, John Paul Jones does little to really distinguish his bass playing. It’s impressive enough that a sixty-three-year-old man can rock this hard, but his basslines mostly just reinforce Homme’s guitar…not unlike what you’d hear in QOTSA. Them Crooked Vultures could easily pass for either a Queens album or a volume of Homme’s Desert Sessions series if no one pointed out who exactly he’s playing with.

While none of the songs are bad, there’s a dangerous monotony to the album. All the songs share a heavy, mid-tempo vibe, featuring densely layered guitars and a fairly strong rhythm. On early songs, like “Mind Eraser, No Chaser”, that style is thrilling. However, over the course of fifty minutes, things began to blur together. It isn’t until the relentlessly groovy “Gunman” that the band really throws the listeners a changeup…and that’s the second to last song.

Them Crooked Vultures ends up sounding less like a jaw-dropping collaboration and more of a testament to Homme’s ability to impose his musical will on every other musician he plays with. TCV play with what an established Homme sound and there’s very little in the way of other voices creeping into the picture. The names are going to bring this band a lot of attention, but they can’t really hide the fact that Homme is totally and completely in charge. He also hasn’t offered up (or allowed) a lot of musical range on this album and the whole project has ended up suffering as a result.

Growing Pains

Artist: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Album: Higher Than The Stars EP

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

Animal Collective aren’t the only band topping off a very successful year with an EP full of new material. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart were arguable the strongest “rookie band” this year and are already appearing on critics’ end-of-the-year lists. Their self-titled debut was a remarkably upbeat and enjoyable album, reminding cynical listeners (such as, say, myself) that blissful, youthful and joyous music can still be pretty damn awesome.

The sad part about the Higher Than The Stars EP is that it doesn’t maintain the sunny, rolling momentum of the debut album. The opening title track sounds like a slightly stale reimagining of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979”, with its dreamy keyboards and wistful melody. The fuzz-soaked guitar roar is sadly absent, rendering the song somewhat toothless and dull. It’s certainly quite pretty, but it doesn’t stick in your mind once it’s over.

The EP’s best songs are tracks two and three, “103” and “Falling Over”. The former finally brings the guitars back, with chords crashing all around and Kip Berman vocals picking up some nice power and confidence. “Falling Over” recalls the Scottish Postcard Records sound, from its Orange-Juice-baiting title on down. The guitars jangle and Berman sings a suitably fey chorus of “don’t you, don’t you touch me, just be cool.” “Falling Over” is particularly encouraging, since there’s nothing like it on the Pains’ debut. My persistent fears that this band would turn out to be a one-trick pony may have been unfounded…

Ah, but then “Twins” shows up and the Pains go back to sounding unmemorable. The chorus’ sentiment of “everything good is gone” is sadly way too close to what I, as the listener, was thinking. Despite having all the expect elements of a good Pains song in place, the end result just sounds hastily thrown together and half-hearted. Higher Than The Stars also ends on a very odd note, with a radical remix of the title track, subtitled the “Saint Etienne Visits Lord Spank Mix”. Upending the band’s usual exuberant guitars and propulsive energy, this mix stretches the song out to almost seven minutes and builds around a hypnotic set of keyboard lines and a club-ready dance beat. The end result it something that really accentuates the ground’s boy/girl harmonies and wistful yearnings. It’s an unusual, unrepresentative, but not unenjoyable end to an EP that repeatedly has the listener wondering just where this band can and will go next.