Picking up where the other five left off, here is the remainder of my favorites of the year:
DEERHUNTER – MICROCASTLE
Deerhunter – Microcastle
Bradford Cox had a good year. Though things looked bleak when guitarist Colin Mee left the band in late 2007, Cox refused to loose his head and somehow released two proper albums and one full length bonus disk over the course of 2008. Add to this the numerous other tracks he posted on his somewhat notorious and usually highly entertaining blog and you only begin to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Although the Atlas Sound album that Cox put out early in 08′ is worthy of much attention as well, it’s “Microcastle”, the newest Deerhunter record, that got my juices flowing and has spawned many salivating mouths and eagerly listening ears over the past few months since it’s been released. Though I’d found Deerhunter an interesting band before, there was an obtuseness that roamed through large shady spots of their back catalog that often wounded my attention span. This isn’t to say that I don’t like to meander, or that I feel pop music should always be pristine and simplistic, but the more structured moments of theirs on albums past made me so swoony that when they got all cryptic and self indulgently abstract, I would be left a little disappointed. “Microcastle” is the Deerhunter album I always wished for. Their sense of structural gradualness is still present and the atmospherics are still just as important as the songs themselves, but we have an album that is mostly made up almost entirely of actual songs here and damn fine ones at that. The fat is trimmed, the guitars pave a more melodic course and Deerhunter arrive fully formed as the pop band I always sort of secretly wished that they would become. Yay!
Here they are playing at the now defunct McCarren Park Pool, a favored venue that we Brooklynites bid farewell to this year:
OF MONTREAL – SKELETAL LAMPING
Of Montreal – An Eluardian Instance
Everyone has been splitting hairs over this album this year. Yes, it’s sometimes obnoxious and yes it’s bloated as fuck, but it’s also totally uncompromising, allowing itself to be exactly what it wants to be. Oh, and it’s also often catchy and funny as fuck. Add to this an accompanying tour that for its New York engagement had lead singer/songwriter Kevin Barnes emerge nearly naked on a live white horse and you have, whether you like it or not, a band that you must at least acknowledge as being fiercely creative and independent. If those qualities are often your cup of tea, I promise the challenges that “Skeletal Lamping” offers will serve as mere mole hills on your way to multiple nirvanas, all easily overcome by your overall enjoyment. Dance on fellow schizos and may it all hang out.
BON IVER – FOR EMMA, FOREVER AGO
Bon Iver – Blindsided
I know that I’ve set out to make this list unbiased, giving no album more weight than another and thus far that has been accomplished. When it comes to “For Emma, Forever Ago” however, I get a little soft in the knees. I don’t mean to say that this is the best album of the year, it’s far too small, intimate and hushed for statements like that, but if I had to pick a favorite, this would most likely be it. Singer-songwriter fare for the most part is a tough niche to make your voice heard in. Everyone thinks that they can get up, strap a guitar on and write a song, though more often than not the results turn out to be very general. With so few elements of sounds in their music, the singer-songwriter must transcend by way of limited means, a task that many Jewls and John Mayers try to overcome by playing out stereotypes and/or layering on thick banal production that leaves their music slick and meaningless. Every now and then someone comes along that unexpectedly makes the voice and the guitar sound fresh, new and vital, and this year that person is Justin Vernon, Bon Iver‘s leading (and only) singer and songwriter. Recorded mostly in a cabin in the Wisconsin woods, his debut album “For Emma, Forever Ago” is a minor miracle. It’s lyrics are immediate and poignant without being overly simplistic, his voice is strangely soulful for a white boy and constantly surprising with it’s tonal variates and the orchestration/production is subtle and beautifully atmospheric, crackling with a hushed intensity and creative left turns throughout, guiding you through its re-verb laden passageways slowly and threatening to evaporate at any point in time. Where many “folky” albums of somewhat similar natures come across as too slight or too simplistic melodically, “For Emma…” strikes a perfect middle ground with melodies that aren’t immediate enough to be cheesy but catch you with enough hooks to pave way for many familiar returns. This album has been out for a while now, but as January sets in, and the winter rears its icy head, there is no better time than the present to get to know this album, or to give it another spin. It is better than you think it is.
HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR – SELF TITLED
Hercules and Love Affair – You Belong
Disco never really died. It hibernates sometimes, but comes back whenever we get the itch for a slinky, silly baseline, which if you are ever restless and in need of dancing, is probably fairly often. For me it comes a few times a week. Shit. What am I saying? More like a few times a night. With the general state of irony reaching maximum capacity, it makes sense that now, more than any other time since the disco era, we would be seeing an influx of disco-y sounds overtaking dance floors and late night apartment parties. There has been a huge boom in the revival of the “<a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Disco”>Italo Disco” sound and just about every other dancy album this year at least has a nod or two to the era of platform shoes and cocaine (okay, so those things never really went away but you know what I mean). No album this year made as strong a case for disco as Hercules and Love Affair‘s has and they deserve all of the dancing till dawning that they have been receiving. Headed by DJ/Songwriter Andy Butler, members also include Nomi Ruiz, Kim Ann Foxman and Antony Hegarty ( also the man behind Antony and the Johnsons) who all share vocal duties. The result is not so much cheesy Donna Summer disco as it is early 80′s, underground, New York City style disco. Arthur Russell‘s production aesthetic is definitely a bit of a reference point here, however it is clear that this is no mama’s boy revival stuff going on. Andy Butler may wax nostalgic a little bit here and there, but these sounds are fresh as a new hit of your favorite upper, just as aware of the last fifteen years of dance music as they are the fifteen or so years prior. As if all this wasn’t enough the lyrics are also smart and the album has a mature streak of melancholy that lurks around its edges giving it a bit of weight and installing a lasting beauty. I’m sure we’ll be hearing these songs for years to come, and I’m more than happy with that probability.
BEACH HOUSE – DEVOTION
Beach House – Turtle Island
Sometimes I want to float away. I like to dance and flail even more than the next guy but sometimes I want to feel as though I could evaporate. I want to loose all sense of gravity and exist inside a sort of limbo, familiar enough to feel comfortable yet hovering above all responsibility and reality. Beach House always get me there. The music on “Devotion” is special; too distant to be read as tragic, yet tragic enough to be read as romantic. It makes me feel weightless and heavy at the same time, ironic and sincere, distant and urgent, younger and older. One year older. One year older.
Also if you don’t listen to Arthur Russell yet you should give him a listen.
Happy 09′
Go get laid.
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excellent!!