MUSICALLY speaking, it's been quite a good year. There's been some very kickass albums that I haven't gotten to take a look at on here so I might as well round them up. I've given much love to Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, MF Doom, Jay Reatard, Wavves, Andrew Bird, Black Lips, etc but here are some bands I have, for whatever reason, omitted. So many apologies...
1. The Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca: Bringing to mind the Talking Heads is a good thing with me. Being endorsed by David Byrne, personally, is even better. Doing a reinterpretation of Black Flag's Damaged on last year's Rise Above sealed the deal- this band is pretty rad. Mastermind David Longstreth is apparently bursting with ideas, as every song on Bitte Orca seems to jump out of the speakers and shift gears on a dime, from lush jangly strumming to crashing cacophony. It's potent and may not all register the first time, but give it a few spins and you'll see something of genius is at work here. A grower.
2. Dan Deacon's Bromst: Another album bursting at it's non-literal seams with energy and ideas. Dan Deacon cooks up a good sophomore stew to 2007's Spiderman of the Rings. Though Bromst has it's atonal overload moments ("Red F"), it still has "Padding Ghost," Snookered" and the better portion of the album, basically. His songwriting and drum production has improved drastically and I'd imagine most of these songs would kick ass live (with a good crowd).
3. St. Vincent's Actor: An album of amazing lyrical depth which also bring some heat and rocks out from time to time. A former Sufjan Stevens collaborator, Anne Clark establishes her own aesthetic and I like it a lot more than some of her contemporaries like Regina Spector and Fiona Apple, because it has teeth and she has chops, being also a former member of Glenn Branca's 100 Guitar Orchestra. The songs "Actor Out Of Work" and "Laughing With A Mouth of Blood" will definitely be on a lot of year ends lists so here they are.
4. Birdy Nam Nam's Manual For Successful Rioting: This shit is bananas, just makes me go nuts like listening to Justice in 2007. It's in the same vein as Justice and Mr. Oizo- hard, fast distorted club bangers (and they're all from France). Dance punk if you will. Plus they do all of their instrumentation live, plus they're really hard, did I mention that?
5. Mos Def's The Ecstatic: Mos Def finally get back to his Black Star/Black On Both Sides form and that's a good thing for everyone. The Ecstatic seems a bit tossed off, but that's just what's endearing about it- everything sounds inspired, as if he's following his instincts instead of over-thinking like his last couple solo outings. He gains a lot from embracing Indian and Middle Eastern music via Madlib and Oh No and discussing the war like on "The Embassy" and Slick Rick's (dope) verse on "Auditorium." Mos Def sounds focused on making music and let's hope we can get a few more good albums out of him before his acting career takes over.
Honorable Mentions: Bibio's Ambivalence Avenue, Nosaj Thing's Drift, Dead Weather's Horehound, Dinosaur Jr's Farm, Yeah Yeah Yeah's It's Blitz!, Woods' Songs of Shame, Dan Auerbach's Keep It Hid, The Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love, Blank Dogs' Under And Under, etc.
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