End-of-year-lists clog internet - please send plumber

Oh my gosh, it's the end of the year, and you know what that means! The best-of year-end lists for just about everything are currently making its way across every website, magazine and entertainment news program out there. (Random question: Does Vogue Knitting have a best-of list for, like, best yarn? Most ably producing sheep? Also: There's a Vogue Knitting magazine?!) On the one hand, I love these lists because they expose me to music, films, bits of news items that I missed during the year, and may enlighten the next year to come. It's especially helpful with sorting through the slush pile of albums that come out, distinguishing the ones I should give some more attention to. On the other hand, it limits my own capacity to view artists/albums/films as equals. How does one choose between The National's High  Violet or The Arcade Fire's The Suburbs when they are both such effective and affecting albums? And Sufjan Stevens' The Age of Adz - what if that's left off the list entirely (like it has been in a few places)? If Pitchfork tells me that Kanye West made the best album of this past year, that's going to be marked down in Wikipedia - Wikipedia! - and people will cite My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the best alum of 2010 because Wikipedia told them that Pitchfork said it was the best, and how can they be wrong? Of course, there's always lots of debate in the comments section of these posts, and that's healthy. It's part of the larger music community dialogue, and as no two music-lovers will ever have exactly the same end-of-year list, I really shouldn't worry. 

So I'll give a list and add to the slush - why not? My opinion will matter a lot less than Pitchfork or Stereogum's (at least to any average music site scourer. Also, I just realized that both those sites named Kanye as their number one of the year...), but in the end I would like to retain my ability to think for myself and continue to love the things I love.

10. Holy Fuck - Latin

My love for Holy Fuck is well documented. Although Latin isn't really a game changer, it did display a positive growth in the group's ability to funnel their live charisma into recorded material. This group is producing some of the most original dance electronic noise rock around and they aren't getting the recognition they deserve. I can only see them continuing their upward trajectory for their next full-length - let's just hope that we don't have to wait too long.

9. Owen Pallett - Heartland

It took me a while to get to Heartland, despite Owen Pallett's current position as reigning prince of Toronto's indie scene. With Heartland, Pallett (who recently abandoned his previous moniker, Final Fantasy, for obvious reasons) has crafted an album documenting the existential thoughts and woes of an "ultraviolent farmer" named Lewis. It's a concept record - not an ugly word, just difficult to pull off well - that follows Lewis' frustrations with God (conveniently-named Owen). It's like a warped pastoral, where things like nature and faith turn against Lewis and instead of calming, they drive him mad. Pallett is a classically trained violinist, and although his knack for dramatic orchestration is present, it's his experimental use of drum machine, subversive lyrics, and often off-putting mix of instruments that really highlight what's fascinating about his work. Naked drama mixes with opulence, and we come out the better for it.

8. Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Odd Blood is a psychedelic mish-mash of synth, odd vocoder-processed vocals, dark and at times ominous lyrics, and rhythms coming from all different directions and styles. With Odd Blood, Brooklyn-based Yeasayer manage to make their experimental rock without going too far and alienating potential listeners. The difficult tracks on Odd Blood - album opener "The Children" is a bit discouraging as a lead in to an otherwise melodically rich album - often blossom upon repeat listening after you get over the initial strangeness of what you're hearing. Each track is built, deconstructed, and swayed in surprising directions, all guided by singer Chris Keating's propulsive vocals. The Middle-Eastern influence is clear, but rather than adding a sense of novelty to their sound, it feels natural, almost lived-in right next to the rhythmic quirks that distinguish Yeasayer's sound. Odd Blood may be a more pop flavoured record than their 2007 debut, All Hour Cymbals, but this newfound sound creates a door into the warehouse that stores Yeasayer's - and the rest of the indie music world's - catalog of strange and beautiful sounds.

7. The Books - The Way Out

Found-sound collage noise electronic band with classical sensibilities - this is how I've been trying to describe The Books to anyone foolish enough to ask me about them. It shouldn't come as a surprise that The Books are hard to classify, and although this obscurity may be a barrier for some people, the payoff for more adventurous ears is constant. In The Way Out, the sampling is used to both clever ("The Story Of Hip-Hop") and poignant ("Free Translator") effect. It's rare that an album can have so many striking, honest portrayals like The Way Out does with "A Cold Freezin' Night" and "Thirty Incoming". This album is incredibly affecting; anyone willing to open themselves up to it won't regret the choice.

6. Jonsi - Go

Go is an amazing record based on it's wonderful orchestration alone (fluttering flutes and swirling violins sit with a cacophony of rhythm section all under Jon Por Birgisson's ethereal falsetto), but it's been bolstered by the best live tour this year. For the most part, the album is exuberant and unabashedly joyful ("Go Do" and "Lilikoi Boy"), but there's also moodier shades of Birgisson's other project, Sigur Ros, in tracks like the beautiful "Tornado."

5. The Black Keys - Brothers

The Black Keys have single-handedly brought down and dirty blues rock back into fashion. They first came to my attention with 2008's excellent Attack & Release, then in 2009 they released Blakroc - a potentially disastrous collaborative album that paired The Black Keys' rock with a slew of different hip-hop artists (it was actually pretty good, and will reportedly be seeing a follow-up sometime in the new year). These guys do not rest on their considerable talent for crafting break-up ballads; they experiment and expand their sound, getting better and better with each record. Brothers is immediately accessible; opener "Everlasting Light" sets the tone for a classic blues rock album with a modern aesthetic twist. Despite the professional production polish behind Brothers, it still sounds as natural as any garage band practice, allowing singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach to let loose his genre-perfect wail while singing about crazy ex's ("Next Girl") and warn of the perils of a woman scorned ("Ten Cent Pistol"). Catchy hooks without lowest common denominator pandering, gnarled vocals to match crunchy guitar and drums, that abrupt shift in tempo and tone in "Tighten Up", that weirdly wonderful cover of Jerry Butler's "Never Gonna Give You Up" - all things that make up one of the best albums this year.

4. Caribou - Swim

From album opener "Odessa" straight through to closer "Jamelia", Caribou's Swim is a tremendous achievement in layering. Dance floor-ready electronic beats accumulate and fold in upon synth-orchestrated motifs, all while allowing for plenty of precious breathing room. The lyrical content is, like most of Caribou's catalogue, somewhat desolate (both in that there isn't a whole lot there, but also in the dark, emotionally charged places he goes). It's the musical ideas, however, that make Swim an outstanding record. Chord progressions appear, repeat, transform, and eventually explode outwards as a collection of well-timed beats-vs-synth-vs-horns (or woodwinds, or strings, or whatever). Caribou makes use of the distinct textures of different instruments like a painter utilizes her colour palette, elevating the borrowed '80s dance beats to a state with which both sound aficionados and straight-up dance enthusiasts can satisfy their addictions.

3. The National - High Violet

This and the following two albums are almost interchangeable as my number one album of the year. Listening to High Violet, you really wonder what sort of sinister pact The National have entered into in order to create music with such fantastic beauty. Singer Matt Berninger crafts affecting lyrical poems that tap into familiar feelings (depression in "Sorrow", abandonment in "Anyone's Ghost", or simply the things that go unsaid in a relationship in "Conversation 16"), only they're expressed in ways you'd never imagined before. I don't think there's any other singer out there that could deliver a line like "I was afraid I'd eat your brains" and make it simultaneously hilarious and touching. The lyrical content alone would be enough to make The National one of my favourite bands, but there are many musicians whose prowess with the pen doesn't always extend to their musicality. The National have come a long way to craft sonic landscapes to match their sprawling gin-soaked lyrics. It's the repeated humming, distorted two guitar chord opener for "Terrible Love", the regal horns on "England", and the drum lines throughout the entire album that show a sophistication that's far removed from their early bar-band days. As long as The National keep making music that, despite their stadium rock readiness, are intimate thoughts/conversations/feelings captured on mp3s, their albums will continue to appear on every year-end list they can grab.

2. The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Another high concept album, another stellar payoff. Shortly after its release, a friend described The Suburbs to me as "Funeral light." Every band that ever made a huge, sound-defining record, like Funeral was for the Arcade Fire, knows and has to live with the daunting task of distinguishing their follow-up records for every fan that will automatically say it's not as good as their other album. Thanks for the criticism, but now lets discuss the album in question based on it's own individual merits; when you do that (release yourself from the onus of having to compare every album with the one that came before it!) you will see that The Suburbs is an affecting look into consumerist-heavy, soul-deprived western culture. The Régine Chassagne-led "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" is one of the best tracks of the year; it's a constant on my iPod and its synth-pop brilliance will probably see that it remains so for a while to come. The rockier tracks ("Modern Man," "The Suburbs") are reminiscent of only the best Bruce Springsteen works, while the moodier pieces manage to wring new pathos out of the 'oft traversed territory of existential suburbanites.

1. Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz

Last year's number one album for me was Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. It was creative, psychedelic in parts, but overall melodic and accessible. This year's number one has the first two traits in common, but eschews the second two, making it a difficult work to get into. Certainly, the 25 minute album closer "Impossible Soul" (a song cycle with mood swings, a lengthy disco dance sequence, and some much-maligned auto-tune) is a tough sell to short attention spans; but like all good things in life, it's not supposed to come easy. Sufjan Stevens is not one to hold himself back too often, and good for him (for us!), because that's hard to do when every fan and critic around you is asking for more of the same. As neat as a record for every state in the US sounds, if you actually think about that sort of output - who would want that? It seems insulting that people would actually want an artist of Stevens' calibre to relegate himself to churning out a novelty album every year until he was well into his 80's. Although Illinois was an accomplishment in sublime song-craft, The Age Of Ads covers material that's much more immediately personal to Stevens, and the weird, stuttering electronic stuff mixed with the choir, string, and brass elements is thrilling to hear. I love how Stevens takes a line of music or lyric, plays it over and over (each time with subtle variations) until it has lost almost all meaning, then switches to something completely different. It's like when you repeat the word "tomato" 20, 30, 40 times until you can't remember what it means - it could mean almost anything! This is a recurring theme in The Age of Adz - even the title doesn't mean what you think it should. It can be read like an essay, with opener "Futile Devices" outlining the main argument in its closing line ("Words are futile devices."), then, for the rest of the album, Stevens' usual reliance on literary narrative is abandoned in order to outline the importance of more immediate, less artful words and sounds. With themes running from grand apocalyptic sighs, to the relatively small yet equally devastating death of a relationship, The Age Of Adz is as ambitious as it is long, as thoughtful as it is schizophrenic, and the best thing I've heard all year.

--
I realize that there's nothing terribly off-the-beaten-path here. I'm not trying to impress anyone with how obscure I can get. I just hope you think that my reasons for liking what I have hold up. What were some of your favourites?

Jens Lekman went to Brooklyn. I may have stalked him a little bit.

Jens Lekman live at The Green Building. All photos by Colleen Hale-Hodgson.

But only a little. To be clear, the desire to visit New York City was already there, I just needed a really good reason, and then I got this innocuous little e-mail:

Hi everyone,

I had some stuff to do in New York this winter so I figured I might as well do a small solo show while I'm theresince it's been so long.
It will be special and maybe we can have one of those houseparties afterwards, like we had last time?
If my friends neighbors are cool with that, I'll let you know.

Lekman plays the underused air xylophone while
holding the tambourine that touched my heart. 

I don't even remember signing up for Jens Lekman's mailing list, but I'm pretty glad past-Colleen did, because this sounded like a really cool show. I didn't act right away, so when I finally did look to see if I could buy a ticket I really shouldn't have been so surprised that the concert on Dec. 10 was completely sold out, and that scalpers were asking for upwards of $70 (original price: $17) for tickets on craigslist.com. I had just finished promising myself that I would be more spontaneous next time when yet another e-mail from Lekman' camp popped up with a promise of another show on Dec. 9. Message received, Universe.

Building an entire vacation around seeing one Swedish orchestral pop prince in Brooklyn on a cold winter night may sound crazy to some people, but with a year-long exile in South Korea looming, I saw an opportunity to appease my inner hipster's need for amazing concert experiences, and see if NYC was as great as I remember it being all at the same time.

Lekman's music is in turns irreverent and sarcastic, honest and disarming. He sings with a silky baritone, recalling romantic crooners of eras past. Most of his recorded material is lushly produced with brass, choral backing, and swooning crescendos of strings and samples. Lekman's show at The Green Building was a stripped down affair, with Lekman playing an acoustic guitar and some sparse drum accompaniment. He still managed to captivate the relatively small 400-person audience through a mix of natural charisma and humorous prattle. Earlier that week during a show in LA he premiered a new song he wrote about the night he tried to meet Spiderman actress Kirsten Dunst in his hometown of Gothenburg. He played that again, and it's about as funny as you would think something about stalking Kirsten Dunst would be.



There were other new songs, which fuels my hope for a new album sometime in the new year. Old favourites were also brought out ("Black Cab" and "Kanske är jag kär i dig" were particular highlights for me). About two-thirds of the way through the show some backing samples were added in and the night got more danceable. Lekman broke out the tambourine, which he soon handed off to one very lucky audience member (ok, it was me. I almost died from giddiness.). With the weight of keeping beat for the rest of the show resting on my shoulders, I can't really say I remember it very well. There was some dancing, choreographed airplane arms, and two encores (which I think my tambourine-led chorus of hand-claps had a lot to do with), and then it was over - but not before Lekman promised that after the show he would sing into the ear of anyone who had a special request. With that tantalizing thought in mind, I stuck around for a bit for the crowd to clear, and was not disappointed when Lekman came out and started chatting with the stragglers.

I won't bore you with a detailed recounting of the whole encounter, but I will say that I did get a song (the last verse of "A Postcard To Nina") and a very apt message with his signature. Ten points to whoever can tell me what song this comes from:

So, was it worth travelling to NYC all by myself with no local contacts or knowledge of how to work the subway system? Yes. Of course, the Lekman show was not the only thing I did that weekend, but I think it was special enough to make the trip worthwhile even if the rest of the trip was filled with long lines at Macy's and rude cab drivers (I didn't do any shopping and one car service driver said I was pretty enough to be a model!).

For a more detailed review of the show,  plus a bunch of pictures (you may even spy yours truly if you squint a bit), head over to BrooklynVegan.com.

On Rockism, or why electronic music shouldn't kill your buzz

Sufjan Stevens: singer/songwriter, folk music god, sometimes synth agitator. Photo by Marzuki Stevens.

A few things have got me thinking about this electronic music "trend" (I didn't realize it was a trend, but other websites tell me it is, so there I go) that's been sweeping the blogging music press for the past year or so (even though it's been around since at least the '80s). Like all waves in music, people either love and embrace it, or loathe it and crucify every artist who dares to include a Prophet '08 synthesizer in their recording studio.

Take this review on noripcord.com of Sufjan Stevens' The Age of Adz for example: The reviewer, Alan Shulman, says that he has "(n)othing against electronic music, though I confess I mostly hate it," which is the first clue that he isn't the right guy to be reviewing this particular Stevens album. Prior to that comment, Shulman says that Stevens has "taken an unfortunate page from the Animal Collective playbook and subjected his minimalist material to maximalist arrangements." To be fair, That's exactly what Stevens did with the much lauded 2005 album, Illinois, only with piled on woodwinds, brass, banjo, violin, and any other decidedly analog instrument he could get his hands on.

Rockism is the belief that some music and musicians are more authentic than others. Although I hadn't heard this term until recently, it applies to a lot of music criticism, and to the strongly held beliefs from obsessive music collectors the world over. It seems like a lot of musical pundits have placed any musician that utilizes electronic quirks under the umbrella of "not authentic." Nowhere has this reaction been more vehement than with established artists (like Stevens) taking their casio's out for a spin. On the one hand, yes these artists may just be latching on to a popular trend that isn't always what's best for their sound (although it's an imperfect example, Kanye West's ill-conceived foray into the precarious world of auto-tune on 808s & Heartbreak could be perceived as an artist overextending his reach), but on the other hand there are artists whose musicality extends beyond the guitar, the piano, the limited range of a human voice. The exploration of one's personal sonic universe is opened up by new technology - always has, always will. Like with any instrument, it's all in how you use it.

Animal Collective. Courtesy animalcollective.org.

I admit that when I first heard Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion I didn't get it either. It sounded like a lot of melody-shy noise layered into an unintelligible heap, resulting in little emotional appeal. I must have had my old lady ears on because I can't even remember why those were my initial thoughts. I resisted for a long time (months, even), but I was either too lazy or too stubborn to take the album off my iPod. At first it was the catchy hook nested in the repeated "For my girls" on "My Girls," then the haunting and earnest questions raised in "Also Frightened," and then the whole album just opened up for me. Suddenly, the gradual ebb and flow created by the bizarre, overlapping squeaks/bleeps/sirens and other synthetic sounds appeared as just another expertly told story using a new type of orchestra. Far from being emotionally adrift, this album had discovered a new way to explore youthful pathos while using a medium that young, digital device-savvy people understand almost too well.

I have become entranced with the possibilities that electronic music holds. In contrast to Shulman's assertion that all these bleeps and bloops obscure the heart that's at the core of music like Stevens', I believe that these noises are getting at a deeper, more primal human emotional state than was previously unexplored in his earlier work. For The Age of Adz, it's a letting go of formality, allowing movement and immediacy to guide both the artist and the audience through one of the most over-explored areas of the human condition (that would be love, and the loss of it) - and doing so in an imaginative and thoughtful way.

I'm done with the snark. We all have our opinions, but writing off albums or entire bands because they don't conform to your preferred method of musical creation isn't productive. But this is music, so artists will rise and then fall into obscurity, sounds are constantly diverging from one-another, and popular taste is always evolving. By the time this post goes live it will already be irrelevant and no one will care about electronic music (maybe they're more worried about rape gaze?). Being an active participant in the love of music is both beautiful and exhausting - and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Buke and Gass @ Sneaky Dee's, December 4, 2010

Buke and Gass (Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez). Photos by Colleen Hale-Hodgson

If you're a fan of the popular WNYC radio show Radiolab you may have heard of the peculiarly named Brooklyn-based duo Buke and Gass. The group was featured in the April 20, 2010 edition of the show entitled "The Loudest Miniature Fuzz," where they talked about the bizarre but wonderful music they make with their homemade instruments - a modified baritone ukulele and a guitar-bass hybrid. They brought their wacky setup to Toronto's Sneaky Dee's last night, where, sadly, only a small crowd of people were there to witness the eccentric sounds come to life.

Local one-man outfit Doldrums opened the night with a noise-heavy electronic mosaic of vocal-layering and synth psychedelia (sometimes I like to call live performances like this one "push-the-button rock"). With some clever sampling and creative, chopped-up drum-machine riffs, Doldrums makes for some immerse listening, and would be something good to see live after some fine-tuning (the beats were out of sync with the electronic swirls several times, and the sound was way too loud for the small crowd and small venue). That said, the voice layering was fun and well done, and I'm digging the recorded material on MySpace (or is it My_____?), so check that out if you can.
Second openers Talk Normal (comprised of drummer/vocalist Andrya Ambro and guitarist/vocalist Sarah Register) followed up with a reverb-fuelled set featuring rollicking rhythms (which I especially enjoyed) and guitar drones under stark lyrics. The experimental spirit of the performance made it notable, but I feel that a more in-depth exploration of their natural dynamics (the space between loud and quiet, drone and melody) would elevate the music past other similarly grungy rock outfits.

Buke and Gass's setup is the epitome of DIY-spirit; Arone Dyer (the Buke) sits with a sound pedal beneath one foot, a ring of bells tied around her ankle, and metal jingles fashioned to her other shoe. Aron Sanchez (the Gass) keeps the beat with a kick drum, which is filled with two tambourines that chime with every beat. All of their instruments (including the amps) are homemade.

Aside from the marvel of seeing these musicians multiply their two person sound into that of a full, five-piece band, Buke and Gass are a delight to watch. Dyer is has an affable and magnetic personality. She'll laugh at her own jokes, tease her band mate, and encouraged everyone to dance like no one is watching. The acoustics in Sneaky Dee's is not the best, so her voice was often drowned out by the clamour of their instruments, but from what I did hear her voice is high and sweet and full of character.

Dyer displayed some mad uke skills.

Buke and Gass make twangy, genre-bending music; they are at times folky, often rock and punk influenced, with a touch of pop to round everything out. Their sound is unique, much like the instruments they play, but they use familiar song structure and well-honed musicianship to build catchy songs that draw the listener in, then let them linger on the complexity within each strummed string.

These days, "experimental" is often synonymous with "electronic," but Buke and Gass manage to explore without dipping into synthesizers or sound boards. While the homemade instruments may come off at first as a novelty - something notable only because it's different - they add a fundamental shift in the texture of the music, allowing for sophisticated arrangement while keeping the feel organic. See this band live, give the album a listen - I dare you to tell me otherwise.

**

NPR Music has a "Tiny Desk Concert" with Buke and Gass that's worth a look. Also, if you're so inclined, you can purchase either their debut album Riposte (which just made it on to NPR Music's top 50 favourite albums of 2010 year-end list), or you can pick up their EP, +/-, which, true to B & G spirit, is presented in lovely homemade packaging.