Top 11 records of the year

Yes, 11...I missed one.  This has been published in various places online...here's the full thing:

Shearwater, Rook (Matador)

-My favorite record of the year.  Opener "On the Death of the Waters" literally startled me out of my seat, and the record only gets better from there.  So fragile and devastating – it constantly teeters on the edge of precociousness but always gracefully stays balanced. And the attention to detail is stunning – from instrumentation to the packaging to the "hidden" track on the LP version, the whole thing is as lovely and perfect a piece of Art as was released this year.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Anti)

-For some reason, I missed putting this on my published top 10 lists.  I don't know why – maybe because Nick Cave has been one of those most consistent songwriters for such a long time its easy to take him for granted.  And nothing has changed.  Cave's lyrics are still packed to the gills with biblical, literary, and hypersexual references ("Mr Sandman the inseminator, he opens her up like a love-letter and enters her dreams") and the Bad Seeds make another case for being the best backing band in popular music – the Grinderman project has clearly shaken them up a bit, and they dig into Cave's juicy songs like a pack of hungry wolves.

 

Sun Kil Moon, April (Caldo Verde)

The devil is always in the details when it comes to Mark Kozelek. And in a long career filled with subtlety, April might be the most subtle of the bunch – which says a lot. Still, like a dreary, rainy day of the title month, the music has a way of quietly seeping into your consciousness until you’re not sure if you’re hearing his heart breaking or yours. 

Calexico, Carried to Dust (Quarterstick)

Shrugging off the playing-it-too-safe misstep of Garden Ruin, Calexico return to doing what they do best – and create yet another cinematic, genre-blending masterpiece. Despite their top-notch songwriting and impeccable musicianship, Calexico are always one of those bands that somehow slip under the radar, which I find consistently baffling.

 

Bob Dylan, Tell Tale Signs (Columbia)

-There’s not much else that can be said about Bob Dylan.  What makes this set stand out are the musicians backing him up throughout – their willingness to follow Dylan’s every whim makes the songs especially essential and revelatory.

 

Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

-This is the aural equivalent of the abandoned house in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – somehow both ephemeral and eternal, and constantly mysterious.

 

The Walkmen, You & Me (Gigantic)

-You & Me could be the hungover older cousin of Beach House’s Devotion. Every song feels like a hazy, shifting memory of the drunken evening before it. Tempos rarely rise above a crawl and Hamilton Leithauser’s weathered rasp calling out “Moonlight, oh moonlight help me sleep/There’s too much weight on my mind” feels like a prayer for just one more hour of sleep before dawn.

 

Okkervil River, The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar)

-While not as immediate as The Stage Names, this companion piece doesn’t have a weak song in the bunch – and Lost Coastlines, Pop Lie, and Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979 rank among their best.

 

The Felice Brothers, The Felice Brothers (Team Love)

-We bought this album on tour and listened to it incessantly. There are a lot of bands who love Dylan and the Band circa the Basement Tapes. But so few pull off that sound so casually and seemingly effortlessly that it transcends the mere “Revivalist” tag.

 

Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)

-Who would have thought that the loss of songwriting partner Jason Isbell would result in this band’s strongest record yet? Brighter than Creation’s Dark is yet another dark-as-night but ultimately redemptive set of songs. Featuring some of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s strongest material (check out Daddy Needs a Drink and A Ghost to Most, respectively), the addition of John Neff on pedal steel and Spooner Oldham on keys only broadens their musical palate.

 

The Notwist, The Devil, You + Me (Domino)

Rather than the giant stylistic leaps made between previous records, The Devil, You + Me finds the Notwist exploring the niche they discovered on their breakthrough Neon Golden. Despite their pop inclinations, I don’t know of any band who arranges noises so beautifully – from burbling synths to glockenspiel to the 21 piece orchestra that accompanies them on some tracks, this is a band primarily interested in SOUND.  Vocalist Markus Acher’s voice, much like Bernard Sumners of New Order, adds a distinctly human element over the sometimes alienating proceedings whirling around him.

 

Yes We Can (immediately compromise our morals)

Mere hours after Obama's victory, crowds still thronging in the streets, postings started appearing on DC's Craigslist with people offering to rent their places out for visitors to the inauguration.  

This is not a new trend, of course - lest we forget, as the battle was raging at First Manassas there were already people picking bullets up to sell as mementoes.  As capitalistic streaks go, we Americans are about the best.

What strikes me most about this instance, though, is the fact that it seems to be a negation of so many of the things that helped Obama to victory.  How many volunteers spent months knocking on random stranger's doors?  Talking to people on the street?  Basically opening up their doors and their lives because of something that they actually BELIEVED in.  And all...unpaid.

The real win in this election - albeit briefly - might have been for Actual Human Contact.  For looking someone in the eye - not via Facebook or Myspace or Twitter or blogging or any of the innumerable ways to communicate online, but by combining that with actually looking someone in the eye.  And that's certainly something we need more of right now.   Something that might not be profitable or easy or comfortable - but that rings true.

Early on in my band's history, we decided that we would do our best to not stay in hotels and instead find people to offer up their homes.  Which sounded absurd at the time, but which we've done - for over 3 years now.   And we've all put up innumerable musicians in our houses/apartments/parents houses.  We've met some of the most amazing people through this proces - sometimes people who will stay on my own floor, and sometimes people who I'll never have the chance to return the favor for.  It has - to use a cliche - restored my faith in people.

So it seems to me like - overidealistic as it might seem - if this tide of good will is going to continue, now is the time for people to open up for reasons bigger than a few extra bucks.