Aural Fixation- Gavin B.'s Music Blog

jackhammer · 12-12-2010, 06:22 PM

Ade Edmonson also wrote the music to the T.V comedy plays Bad News and More Bad News which are just as funny as Spinal Tap in the affectionate piss taking of Heavy Metal and although the songs are intentionally bad, it is obvious that he genuinely does love music and has an ear for melody.

Best journal on MB in terms of eclecticism and narrative drive. Always a pleasure to read.

Zer0 · 12-14-2010, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavin B.

I've been meaning to check out Stereolab for a while now, and that song is good enough to convince me to do so. Thanks for that one. Is there any album or albums in particular you'd recommend to start with?

Gavin B. · 12-15-2010, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zero1986

I've been meaning to check out Stereolab for a while now, and that song is good enough to convince me to do so. Thanks for that one. Is there any album or albums in particular you'd recommend to start with?

My favorite album album by Stereolab is Mars Audiac Quintet. I have a sentimental attachment to the album because it became a gateway for me to appreciate the larger underground electronic music scene happening in the UK in the early 90s. I have a different recommendation for you because Stereolab has produced large and varied body of work since Mars was released in 1994.

There is an excellent retrospective collection of Stereolab's body of work over the past 20 years: Serene Velocity: A Stereolab Anthology. Serene Velocity is an excellent starting point for somebody that's new to their music. The collection also has the song Ping Pong on it which the one you like. Below is a link to the album at Amazon:
Serene Velocity Page @ Amazon

Gavin B. · 12-15-2010, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackhammer

Ade Edmonson also wrote the music to the T.V comedy plays Bad News and More Bad News which are just as funny as Spinal Tap in the affectionate piss taking of Heavy Metal and although the songs are intentionally bad, it is obvious that he genuinely does love music and has an ear for melody.

Best journal on MB in terms of eclecticism and narrative drive. Always a pleasure to read.

Edmondson may play it for laughs but he's no musical slacker. His slightly off key trumpet playing is the same kind of musical dissonance used by the best players of bebop and free jazz. Thelonious Monk was notorious for deliberately hitting sharp or flat notes for an ironic effect. Edmonson's Celtic band is no bunch of slouches either.... the Bad Shepherd's lineup has former members of such notable bands as Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull and the Maddy Prior Band.

I have one question for you, Jackhammer. Didn't Edmondson release a hilarious novelty song about being stalked by members of the Rolling Stones? I heard it a few years back and I've never been able to find it in the USA. It's possible that he didn't record the song but it sure sounded like him.

Gavin B. · 12-17-2010, 01:56 AM

BEST REISSUE ALBUMS 2010

The expansive Orange Juice anthology is a keeper for fans of pure pop.

My Favorite Reissue 2010:

Orange Juice- ...Coals To Newcastle
This scrappy power pop trio from Glasgow Scotland passed right under the radar during their 8 year lifespan from 1976 to 1984. The monolithic seven disc anthology is a bargain at the retail price of around $50. ...Coals To Newcastle has 142 tracks and gives you a better idea of Orange Juice's profound influence on as diverse a set of artists as Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, High Llamas, the Pastels, Jarvis Crocker & Camera Obscura. This treasure trove of pure pop wonders will finally secure a lasting legacy for a band that deserved so much more. Embedded below are a couple of songs from ...Coals to Newcastle.

Orange Juice - Simply Thrilled Honey

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Orange Juice - Consolation Prize

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Honorable Mention Best Reissue:

Nearly all of the "honorable mentions" are worthy of your attention. Be forewarned the 13 Disc Beatles collection retails for $147.99 and the 8 disc Kraftwerk collection costs $85.99. Both the Beatles and Kraftwerk boxes are worth the money if you can afford them because the sound quality of the remastered music is astounding. Ringo's drumming and Paul's bass playing, plus the often intricate harmonies of John, Paul and George are the biggest improvements In Mono remasters. The two albums by Serge Gainsbourgh are classics of the Sixties Europop movement & the album with Jane Birkin is a career benchmark for both Gainsbrourg and his future wife Birkin.

Rolling Stones- Exile on Main Street
Kraftwerk- The Catalogue
Serge Gainsbourg / Jane Birkin - Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg
The Beatles- In Mono
James Brown - The Singles, Vol. 7: 1970-1972
The Monks- Black Monk Time
Serge Gainsbourg- Histoire de Melody Nelson

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Coming Tomorrow: Best R&B- Rap- Soul Music Albums of 2010

Gavin B. · 12-17-2010, 01:56 PM

Best of R&B, Soul & Hip Hop 2010

Archandroid is an inspired and worthy addition to the rich cannon of Afrofuturistic music.

Best R&B-Hip Hop- Soul Album 2010: Archandroid by Janelle Monáe
Archandroid was the year's most completely original pop music album release and was head and shoulders above the critically acclaimed hip hop releases by Big Boi, Kanye West, B.o.B, Reflection Eternal, Freeway & Eminem.

Ms. Monáe's ambitious debut was a musical tour de force that was part old school soul music, part hip hop, part glitter rock, part electronic dance opus with elements of performance art. The album concept was based on a futuristic pop/rock opera story line. But it wasn't just the gimmicky theatrical elements of Archandroid that worked, nearly every track on the album was worthwhile and there was very little in the way of outtake filler on Archandroid. The album has been a true crossover success that appeals fans of hip hop, neo soul, and indie pop. Monáe's elaborately staged live tour shows of Archandroid played to enthusiastic audiences in both urban black performance venues and at the mostly white college kid's summertime alt rock festivals.

Ms. Monelle has said that her musical influences run the gamut from Bowie to Roxy Music, early 80s new wave synthesizer rock, to performance art icons like Laurie Anderson as well as the contemporary R&B and Hip Hop music she grew up with in her native Kansas City.

The theme of Archandroid draws heavily from Fritz Lang’s 1927 science-fiction film, Metropolis, which portrays a divided class system of workers and planners who coexist in the futuristic mega-city of Metropolis. Monáe’s trilogy focuses on an android by the name of Cindi Mayweather, a sort of saviour who is sent back in time to save the underclass of Metropolis from its oppressive class system. It’s a new take on an old theme, a theme that has always played a prominent role in African-American music. Archandroid is second part of a trilogy of Metropolis themed albums which began in 2007 with the release of Janelle's five song extended play cd, Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase. The final chapter in the Metropolis tale will be completed by late 2011 or early 2012.

Even if Archandroid hasn't become a blockbuster multi-platinum album like Kanye West, Eminem and Big Boi releases, Ms. Monáe's album sold 21,000 copies it's first week of release last May, however album sales have only been moderately successful, since then.

Archandroid is a dark horse nominee for the Best Contemporary R&B Album in the 2011 Grammy awards which could help Archandroid find a larger audience but I doubt that chart sales are a big priority for Janelle Monáe. No amount of album sales or phony industry awards can buy the sort of independent critical acclaim that Janelle Monáe has earned with this groundbreaking album. Archandroid is an inspired and worthy addition to the rich cannon of Afrofuturistic music.

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Honorable Mention for Best R&B, Hip Hop & Soul Albums of 2010
In No Particular Order

Freeway- Stimulus Package
Corrine Bailey Ray- The Sea
Drake - Thank Me Later
Reflection Eternal- Revolutions Per Minute
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings- I Learned the Hard Way
B.o.B.- The Adventures of Bobby Ray
Big Boi- Sir Lucious Left Foot...the Son of Chico Dusty
Aloe Blacc- Good Things
Budos Band- Budos Band III
Erykah Badu- New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh
Fantasia- Back To Me
Martina Topley Bird- Some Place Simple
Mavis Staples- Only For the Lonley
Nicki Minaj- Pink Friday
Seal- 6: Commitment
The Persuasions- The Persuasions Sing the Beatles
The-Dream- Love King

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Coming Tomorrow: Best of 2010 Electronica & Dance Music

Gavin B. · 12-18-2010, 10:15 PM

Best of Electronic & Dance Music 2010

Subiza combines indie pop with full throttle techno of the Barcelona & Ibiza dance music.

Best Electronic & Dance Music Album of 2010: Subiza by Delorean

There were plenty of worthy competitors but a humble band that originally came from the rural Basque region of Spain that plays a hybrid of electronic and pop music produced the album that caught my ear and provided the richest rewards for repeated listening.

Subiza has more of an indie pop feel than any of the other notable electronic albums this year, which is why I probably like it so much. While Delorean's musical oeuvre is firmly within the realm of indie pop, the band also has an affinity for the full throttle techno of their native Barcelona club scene and has a close association with the Balearic Islands outernationalist style of dance music heard in the clubs of Ibiza and other fashionable Mediterranean island destinations.

AMG tells us that Delorean borrows from the same Balearic-influenced acid house style that New Order appropriated to craft their 1989 album Technique, an album that sparked a broader interest in the newly emerging house music trend. While agreeing with AMG's connection of New Order's music to the acid house style of the Balearic islands, Delorean's music has little resemblance to that of New Order's during their middle years. So what else is new, AMG?... Pop music has been borrowing from the past every since the Beatles rediscovered Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

Yeasayer, Massive Attack, Tricky, Crystal Castles, Toro Y Moi and Soundpool all released first rate albums. Some of those albums were bold and experimental. If you're going by Pitchfork definition of "good electronic music", perhaps those less commercial endeavors were more authentic, more experimental and therefore more commendable and worthy artistic expressions. I think that's just a bunch of horsesh*t from a bunch of self appointed public opinion makers who don't even trust their own tone-deaf ears to make a decision about what good music is.

Honorable Mention- Best Electronic and Dance Music Album of 2010
In No Particular Order

Armin Van Buuren- Mirage
Crystal Castles- Crystal Castles (II)
Massive Attack- Heligoland
The Octopus Project- Hexadecagon
Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno- Dog with a Rope
Toro Y Moi- Causers of This
Tricky- Mixed Race
Soundpool- Mirrors In Your Eyes

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BONUS RANT!

The State of of Electronic and Technology in Music- 2010

The rise of electronic music has made it possible for an anonymous guy living in a basement apartment in New Jersey to be his own John, Paul, Ringo and George. Using those electronic tools that same anonymous loner can self produce his own modern day equivalent of Revolver on his laptop computer. The rise of laptronica and the rapid development of cyberspace social networks like YouTube and Facebook, have created a career gateway that allows a musically talented person to become an international rock star without ever interacting with other musicians, playing a public gig, or signing a contract with a record label. Pop music stars like M.I.A., Katy Perry and Imogen Heap have launched successful careers using nothing more than a home computer, music software and the vast social networks of YouTube and Facebook.

By the end of 2015 I predict that a majority pop music wannabes will launch their careers via YouTube and Facebook which leaves the music industry irrelevant to the production, manufacturing, distribution, promotion and sales of contemporary music. In the year 2000, I predicted that file trading services like Napster & Gnutella would wipe the monolithic global music industry off the face of the earth by 2010. That didn't happen because the music industry waged war on the customer for theft of intellectual property which postponed the day of reckoning for another few years.

For my part, I'm resetting the music industry doomsday clock for the year 2020. The demise of big music is inevitable in a world where thousands of unregulated, decentralized social networks residing in the intangible domains of cyberspace are in full control the means of production and distribution of music. The only way to postpone the inevitable is to outlaw social networking on the internet.

The do-it-yourself technology of laptronica is beginning to blur the distinctions between mainstream pop & rock music & electronic music. Back when Silver Apples, Kraftwerk & Tangerine Dream were the only bands using synthesizers, you didn't need a PhD in Musicology to figure out the difference between pop music and electronic music.

Depending on your own uniquely personal perspective on exactly what electronic music is, the number of eligible bands within the electronic music genre can vary wildly. Nearly every contemporary rock or pop band uses tape loops, overdubbing, sound processors, MIDI or digital synthesis technology and/or other software programs available for composing, recording & performing music.

Even folk music neo traditionalist bands like Fern Knight, Espers and Kingsbury Manx enhance their recordings and live performances with electronic software.

If the forces of history are any indicator, electronic music is destined to blend within mainstream pop and eventually become mainstream pop. Some observers (including myself) believe that electronica has already become the dominant trend and the future of contemporary pop music.

It's hard to believe that there was a storm of controversy in the mid Eighties when musicians began using samples and pre-recorded tape loops to enhance their live performances. Back in 1989, we all wondered why anyone would pay their hard earned cash for a ticket to a concert where the band was playing pre-recorded music. As it turns out, John Lydon was right on the money when he declared that "rock and roll is dead", over thirty years ago. Mr. Lydon's own erratic career on the fringes of pop music is proof that the unreasonable raving madman is only artistic visionary that inhabits this violence prone, ideological post-industrial scrapheap of a world. The mad men, the visionaries and the provocateurs are the ones who shape the forces of our shared cultural history.

Lydon: The artist as a madman and provocateur

John Lydon is right about another thing. In this brave new world of social networks, electronic enhancement and laptronica the passion, fury and spontaneous messiness of the live performance has been relegated to the backseat and is now a secondary element of contemporary music. You can avoid the entire tedious process of paying your dues by playing the clubs and take the shortcut to fame in fortune by posting one good video of a song on YouTube that goes viral. Fame and fortune is a hollow accomplishment if your success is based on a single good 2 and a half minute home made video on YouTube.

I attended my first and only Public Image Ltd concert at the Ritz in New York City in 1981. The show erupted in to a full scale riot when Mr. Lydon appeared in silhouette behind a gigantic mural sized screen only to taunt the audience. Keith Levine, Jah Wobble and Martin Atkins, Lydon's PIL bandmates did little more than smirk and noodle around on their instruments as Lydon ranted on belittling the audience members as f*ckin' morons and idiots. After about 10 minutes verbal abuse from the ex-Sex Pistol hiding behind the screen, the irate audience began to pelt the screen with beer bottles which flew from the floor and overhead from the balcony. The audience surged to the stage to rip down the tarp and John Lydon remained on stage delighted with the results of of his social experiment in agit-prop theater. There was a riot going on! Finally an employee of the Ritz took the stage yelling "THE SHOW IS OVER, THE SHOW IS OVER" and the bouncers quickly mopped up the rowdier riot participants. Everybody was subdued and ejected from the club by the bouncers who restored the peace with the stunning efficiency of a well trained SWAT team. The whole show was over and done with in less than 20 minutes. As we drove back to Boston in the late night pouring rain, I said, "That was the best f*cking concert I've ever been to and they didn't even play a single song."

Lydon was right I was a f*ckin' moron who paid 25 bucks for my ticket to the circus and got conned the misanthropic clown lurking behind a screen. Lydon gave the audience an easy excuse to run amok for 20 minutes and they seized a once in a lifetime opportunity to stampede like lemmings into the abyss of madness. That element of danger in which the behavior of the performers and the audience exceed the limits of all rationality, is what's missing from today's rock and roll music scene. And I'm still the f*ckin' moron who wouldn't trade that 20 minutes of mayhem with PIL in 1981 for all of the gold in Fort Knox.

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COMING TOMORROW (well...maybe in a couple of days)- Best of Americana, Folk, Country and Roots Music in 2010

Gavin B. · 12-20-2010, 08:55 AM

Best of Americana & Roots Music of 2010

Best Roots Music Album 2010

A: Enlightenment B: Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) by Ray Wylie Hubbard

The hardest decision I made in my year end lists was choosing between Ray Wylie Hubbard and Mountain Man for best Americana/Folk/Country album of 2010. Both albums were stripped to the bones minimalist affairs.

Texan troubadour Ray Wylie borrowed from the delta blues tradition and gave us a snarling passionate message from a desperate man on the margins of a society gone mad, while Mountain Man, a Vermont based collective of four women, sang in the ethereal and haunting style of a rural Appalachian choral group, Both albums captivated me.

After agonizing over the choice, I decided to go with the raw and nervy musical effort by the poet/philosopher everyman: Ray Wylie. He's been a real survivor over the years and if he gets beyond his wild years, he may end up standing as tall as the Man in Black. Embedded is a live of Down Home Country Blues one of the album's 12 uniformly superb songs at Lonestar Music early this year.

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Special Mention for Best Roots Music Album:

Made the Harbor by Mountain Man
Mountain Man does deserve special mention for their debut Made In the Harbor album. There is an otherworldly spiritual quality to Mountain Man's music that quite unlike any music I've heard for a long time. Some critics thought the music was repetitive but I found the music mesmerizing. Reggae singer Burning Spear has be doing the same thing over and over for 4 decades now, but he does it so well that I'm still amazed at the power of his sincere roots music authenticity. Mountain Man doesn't play reggae music but their music is every bit as spellbinding as Spear's. This embedded video is an outdoor performance of Animal Tracks by Amelia Meath, Alex Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarle, live and direct from Austin Texas.

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Looking back on the year's roots music, it was a pretty tough and crowded field of artists, and three of my favorite artists Steve Earle, Marissa Nadler and Miranda Lee Richardson didn't even release albums in 2010. In a less competitive year the albums by Red Horse, Samantha Crain, Johnny Cash, 7 Walkers, Lissie, Jamey Johnson, the Tallest Man or Merle Haggard could have been worthy best album selections. It's a great year for roots music when ten different albums of 1st tier quality are released.

Honorable Mention- Best Folk, Americana & Country Music of 2010
In No Particular Order
Carolina Chocolate Drops- Genuine Negro Jig
Tallest Man on Earth- The Wild Hunt
Red Horse- Red Horse
Black Prarie- Feast of the Hunter's Moon
Samantha Crain- You (Understood)
The Secret Sisters- The Secret Sisters
Lissie- Catching A Tiger
Johnny Cash- American VI: Ain't No Grave
7 Walkers- 7 Walkers
Jamey Johnson- Guitar Song
Merle Haggard- I Am What I Am
Trampled by Turtles- Palomino
Mary Gauthier- The Foundling
Dr. John- Tribal
Robert Plant- Band of Joy
Alejandro Escovedo- Street Songs of Love
Justin Townes Earle- Harlem River Blues
Cowboy Junkies- Remnin Park
Crooked Still- Some Strange Country
First Aid Kit- The Big Black & the Blue

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Coming Before the Weekend
Best International Music 2010
Best Singer/Songwriter
Best Debut Album
Best Comeback Album

I'm hoping to finalize my best rock & pop music of 2010 post by Christmas eve, I'm still giving a listen to a backlog of worthy albums and don't want to leave any of the good ones off my list. I'm still coming across some real jewels that were released in October, November & December and all those releases deserve a fair hearing.

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Gavin B. · 12-22-2010, 09:40 PM

Best Debut Album 2010

My short list for best debut album for 2010 was crowded with so many eligible choices, I felt a kid at the FAO Schwarz toy store in midtown Manhattan who could choose only one single toy from the plethora of displayed merchandise. Many of these debuts have already received high placement on my 2010 Best of R&B, Americana and Pop/Rock lists and are exceptional albums on their own merits.

In a sense, I'm following the pack by selecting Sleigh Bells' Treats, because it ended up at the top of many Best of 2010 lists. There are debut albums that I personally liked better than Treats but selecting "the best" of anything requires one to step aside from his own biases and musical fetishes and exercise a certain amount of dispassionate judgement in the interest of critical integrity.

To be frank, I have no qualms about my choice of Treats as best debut album. Nonetheless, whenever nearly all of the heavyweight cultural opinion makers are singing the same chorus of fawning praise for a certain musical product, I become the skeptic. Subsequently, I subjected Treats to a higher standard of review because of my fear of being swept away by a united front of unwarranted praise for a mediocre album.

Rave reviews of mediocre albums are often contagious in the insular world of the media establishment. Cultural criticism is often an echo chamber that reverberates with the shared cultural perspective of the young, middle class, well educated, white indie music types. Whenever Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, All Music Guide, NPR & Newsweek unanimously praise the wonders of a dark horse indie album like Treats, my knee jerk reaction is to wonder why. This album passed my rigorous litmus test with flying colors and Sleigh Bell's debut album simply blew me away. Hear it and believe... Sleigh Bells never pass themselves off as this year's model and they're nobody's pet band. Artistic integrity is novel concept in an era when there's a waiting list of wannabe pop stars begging to sell their soul for 15 minutes of fame.

Best Debut Album of 2010- Treats by Sleigh Bells

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Honorable Mention- Best Debut Album of 2010
In No Particular Order

The Beach Fossils- Beach Fossils
Warpaint- The Fool
Mountain Man- Made the Harbor
Wild Nothing- Gemini
Glasser- Ring
Gayngs- Relayted
Freelance Whales- Weathervanes
Tame Impala- Innerspeaker
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
Janelle Monae- Archandroid

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Bonus Award!

Best Comeback Album of 2010- Love & It's Opposite by Tracey Thorn

There was a far less crowed field of nominees and the selection for comeback album was an obvious choice from my perspective. Tracey Thorn's Love and It's Opposite was a triumphant return for Herfordshire UK's favorite daughter. Over the past decade, the 48 year old Ms. Thorn has disappeared from public life while raising three children with life parter and Everything But the Girl collaborator Ben Watt. In 2007 Throne released a worthwhile but less than stellar 2nd solo album Out of the Woods. She refused to tour or promote the album and subsequently, sales of Out of the Woods flat lined without ever reaching the charts.

Her 2010 comeback release, Love and It's Opposite was so good that even as Tracey refused to tour behind it, the album couldn't be ignored because of her spectacular songwriting and the newly revitalized power of her expressive voice. Thorn's vocal mastery of the torch ballad genre and her talent for writing heartbreaking songs of alienation is fully intact despite the joys of motherhood and domestic bliss. The songs are all about the desperation of being alone in middle age and are as painfully honest as any music you'll hear in an era where the shallow worship of beauty and perpetual youth have become the zeitgeist of our times.

Love and It's Opposite is a cycle of songs of an unglamorous life without the face-lift, the liposuction and the hair dye to conceal the grey. The subject matter of Love and It's Opposite may be the source of discomfort for some, but it also shows us that a talent as large as Ms. Thorn's cannot be ravaged by the passage of time. The quiet desperation of Singles Bar is an apt demonstration of power of Tracey Thorn's triumphant comeback effort.

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Honorable Mention- Best Comeback Album of 2010

Jeff Beck- Emotion and Commotion
Belle & Sebastian- Write About Love
Tindersticks- Falling Down A Mountain
Natalie Merchant- Leave Your Sleep

A Few Thoughts on the Honorable Mention Comeback Albums

Some folks will squawk about not selecting the Jeff Beck "comeback" album. The only problem with Beck's comeback is that he's been alive and well and has made four equally good albums in the past ten years. Don't fret, Jeff Beck is likely to become the sentimental favorite choice of music industry heavies at this year's Grammys. Those same music industry moguls completely ignored Beck's brilliance when he revolutionized guitar playing and invented psychedelic music with the Yardbirds way back in 1965. Without Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix would have likely ended up being a brilliant but anonymous session player at the Stax or Atlantic music studios. Beck will never galvanize rock music as he did in his glory days with the Yardbirds and the original Jeff Beck Group but it's hardly a comeback because Beck never went away, fell from grace or lost his touch. His body of work is every bit the equal of Clapton, Hendrix or Page.

Natalie Merchant's return with a sprawling a lushly orchestrated 2 cd epic of American and Celtic roots music was rather impressive. The only problem with the Natalie Merchant album is ...well, um. how do I put it?..it's a Natalie Merchant album (!) and most of the selections were sleep inducing. From my perspective, Natalie Merchant's career peaked in 1987 with the release of the 10,000 Maniac's feisty jangle rock album In My Tribe. There are 5 or 6 worthwhile selections out of Leave Your Sleep's overly abundant smorgasbord 28 songs. My advice is to cherry pick those songs and buy them as 99 cent single song purchases at iTunes or Amazon.

I enjoyed the latest Belle & Sebastian outing more than any other album they've made since Boy With the Arab Strap. Jazz/pop phenomenon Norah Jones adds to the fun by taking an unlikely turn at the microphone to sing along.

Tindersticks should have been the National long before the National was ever a band. After 20 years of being met with critical under acclaim, Tindersticks soldiers on and follows their quirky path remaining faithful to their musical mentors: L. Cohen, Ian Curtis, and Scott Walker. Falling Down A Mountain is remarkable because the vast majority of bands that have held together for two decades have run out of fresh ideas. By the 5th album, the best of bands go on auto pilot and start acting like they're ready cash in their chips. There's nothing more insufferable than a band hangs around a couple of decades to wear out their welcome. Tindersticks has more than earned their keep over the past decade. Falling Down A Mountain is simply too good to be somebody's 11th album.

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TOMMORROW

Best of Singer/Songwriters- 2010
Best of International & World Beat Music- 2010

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Gavin B. · 12-25-2010, 11:11 PM

Best Indie Pop Albums 2010

And The Winner for Best 2010 Indie Pop Album Is.... Nobody

FIRST, The Bad News.

There wasn't a single album released in 2010 that was unequivocally brilliant. The most critically acclaimed albums by Arcade Fire, Beach House, the National, Vampire Weekend, & LCD Sound System were first rate albums but none of them reached out and grabbed me, so I'm not going to name anybody's album as my favorite.

Those were the obvious choices but when the chips were down, Kanye West's crossover hip hop/pop album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy garnered the largest share of acclaim from the rat pack of music critics and opinion makers at both the mainstream and alternative outposts of popular culture.

My Over-the-Top Kanye West Rant

By default, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West's overblown, self indulgent and profane hip hop epic ended up on the top of the heap on most year end lists, because Kanye was smart enough to do the expected and claim the title of cultural zietgiest, as his own...whether he deserved all of those accolades or not.

For all of his messianic preaching to the choir, I got the unsettling feeling that Kanye West was trying too hard. Aren't brilliant artists supposed to make it all look easy?

Kanye's social and political observations on Dark Twisted Fantasy were shallow and trite observations that had little to do with the helplessness of those folks (black, white or other racial designation) who have been plowed under by the current global recession.

The pseudo defiance of Kanye's dark twisted fantasy panders to his base of affluent, young, suburban and mostly white fanboys, who think Kanye's rude boy slackness & alpha male chest thumping is really cool. Nevermind that his message completely ignores the global economic collapse, and makes no comment on the growing international cultural warfare between left & right wingnuts. Kanye also has no comment on the shameless attempt by wealthy and powerful elites of media oligarchy to bring down Barack Obama.

If only Bob Marley were around put Kanye on the path to being a musical visionary and a credible voice on behalf his downtrodden brethren. Kanye West has yet to learn a thing from the wisdom of his elders.

Kayne is the #1 selling music artist for the Universal Music Group, the largest monolithic global infotainment media company in history, and maybe that's why none of his social rage is directed toward the wealthy moguls who have declared class warfare against the have-nots & the powerless.

For my own part, I find Kanye West's relentless misogyny repulsive and his use of the minstrel show epithet, nigga, offensive. For all of the Kanye West's self congratulatory bravada and the dazzle of his undeniably brilliant production skills, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a hollow shell of an album when held any reasonable standard of cultural or artistic significance.

I won't apologize for this for rant against Kanye West, since he had no regrets about crashing the stage with his own rant when his most favored choice Beyonce. lost the Grammy competition to Taylor Swift. From my perspective both Beyonce & Taylor Swift were the lame choices of music industry moguls that reward Kanye West with a $17 million dollar annual income. In fairness let me add, that both Beyonce & Taylor are talented & perfectly charming human beings... I'm commenting on the boorish, self indulgent behavior of Kanye West and his refusal to check his ego at the door.

Now for the Good News.

Even as most of the critically acclaimed albums of 2010 failed to fire a spark for me, there was a deluge of "really good" (but less that "great") albums by debut artists and lesser known 2nd or 3rd tier artists.

There was such a plethora of beguiling and innovative music released by obscure bands with exotic names that it was hard to find the time to give each album a fair hearing. To complicate matters, some of the best albums had a self-consciously ragged and charmingly unprofessional studio sound which made it a challenge to sift out the less talented low-fi posuers and find the authentic talented artists with visionary ideas. I've spent the last four weeks playing a lot of bad music in search of a handful of musical gems that should be heard by a larger audience.

I decided to refrain from name a single album as the "best indie pop album of 2010" simply because there wasn't a single album that was uncontestably brilliant. The music that got the most rotation in my Zune player and on my weekly radio show failed to make most the Best of 2010 lists, but a few of my selections were mentioned by a handful of adroit music critics. My final short list of albums were subjected to repeated play rotation and endured throughout 2010 as a rewarding listening experience.

My 22 Most Frequently Played Indie Pop Albums

Listed roughly in the order of most frequent play on my stereo, Zune player and on my radio show.

Jj- Jj Nº 3
Kula Shaker- Pilgrim's Progress
Charlotte Gainbourg- Irm
Get Back Guinozzi- Carpet Madness
Warpaint- The Fool
Wild Nothing- Gemini
Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti- Before Today
Club 8- The People's Record
Port O' Brien- Threadbare
Jesca Hoop- Hunting My Dress
The Like- Release Me
James Blake- CMYK (ep) & Klavierwerke(ep)
The Pipettes- Earth vs. the Pipettes
Against Me!- White Cross
Love Is All- Two Thousand & Ten Injuries
Magic Kids- Memphis
The Liminanas- The Liminanas
Lost In the Trees- All Alone In An Empty House
OK Go- Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
The Parting Gifts- Strychnine Dandelions
Twin Shadow- Forget
Villagers- Becoming A Jackal
Goldenboy- Healing Is A Team Effort

The most favored choices of the musical opinion makers: Arcade Fire, Beach House, the National, Vampire Weekend, & LCD Sound System were all worthwhile albums that I played less frequently than the previously listed favorites of mine.

I listened to Kanye West's album three times from start to finish, and finally dumped My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in my computer trash can this morning when my music savvy wife belittled me for listening to Kanye West's misogynous garbage. I sheepishly explained I was listening to it for a post in my Music Banter journal, but she's was right... I should have dumped it after the first play. We all deserve better zeitgeist of these troubled times than Kanye West.

Have a happy holiday and let's hope the coming year ushers in a new decade of inspired creativity & an abundance of unconditional generosity from one & all.

===================================

12-12-2010, 06:22 PM	#251 (permalink)
jackhammer Ba and Be. Join Date: May 2007 Location: This Is England Posts: 17,331	Ade Edmonson also wrote the music to the T.V comedy plays Bad News and More Bad News which are just as funny as Spinal Tap in the affectionate piss taking of Heavy Metal and although the songs are intentionally bad, it is obvious that he genuinely does love music and has an ear for melody. Best journal on MB in terms of eclecticism and narrative drive. Always a pleasure to read. __________________ It be my music and film collection. “A cynic by experience, a romantic by inclination and now a hero by necessity.”

12-17-2010, 01:56 AM	#255 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	BEST REISSUE ALBUMS 2010 The expansive Orange Juice anthology is a keeper for fans of pure pop. My Favorite Reissue 2010: Orange Juice- ...Coals To Newcastle This scrappy power pop trio from Glasgow Scotland passed right under the radar during their 8 year lifespan from 1976 to 1984. The monolithic seven disc anthology is a bargain at the retail price of around $50. ...Coals To Newcastle has 142 tracks and gives you a better idea of Orange Juice's profound influence on as diverse a set of artists as Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, High Llamas, the Pastels, Jarvis Crocker & Camera Obscura. This treasure trove of pure pop wonders will finally secure a lasting legacy for a band that deserved so much more. Embedded below are a couple of songs from ...Coals to Newcastle. Orange Juice - Simply Thrilled Honey ======================================== Orange Juice - Consolation Prize ======================================== Honorable Mention Best Reissue: Nearly all of the "honorable mentions" are worthy of your attention. Be forewarned the 13 Disc Beatles collection retails for $147.99 and the 8 disc Kraftwerk collection costs $85.99. Both the Beatles and Kraftwerk boxes are worth the money if you can afford them because the sound quality of the remastered music is astounding. Ringo's drumming and Paul's bass playing, plus the often intricate harmonies of John, Paul and George are the biggest improvements In Mono remasters. The two albums by Serge Gainsbourgh are classics of the Sixties Europop movement & the album with Jane Birkin is a career benchmark for both Gainsbrourg and his future wife Birkin. Rolling Stones- Exile on Main Street Kraftwerk- The Catalogue Serge Gainsbourg / Jane Birkin - Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg The Beatles- In Mono James Brown - The Singles, Vol. 7: 1970-1972 The Monks- Black Monk Time Serge Gainsbourg- Histoire de Melody Nelson ======================================= Coming Tomorrow: Best R&B- Rap- Soul Music Albums of 2010 __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-23-2010 at 08:25 AM.

12-17-2010, 01:56 PM	#256 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Best of R&B, Soul & Hip Hop 2010 Archandroid is an inspired and worthy addition to the rich cannon of Afrofuturistic music. Best R&B-Hip Hop- Soul Album 2010: Archandroid by Janelle Monáe Archandroid was the year's most completely original pop music album release and was head and shoulders above the critically acclaimed hip hop releases by Big Boi, Kanye West, B.o.B, Reflection Eternal, Freeway & Eminem. Ms. Monáe's ambitious debut was a musical tour de force that was part old school soul music, part hip hop, part glitter rock, part electronic dance opus with elements of performance art. The album concept was based on a futuristic pop/rock opera story line. But it wasn't just the gimmicky theatrical elements of Archandroid that worked, nearly every track on the album was worthwhile and there was very little in the way of outtake filler on Archandroid. The album has been a true crossover success that appeals fans of hip hop, neo soul, and indie pop. Monáe's elaborately staged live tour shows of Archandroid played to enthusiastic audiences in both urban black performance venues and at the mostly white college kid's summertime alt rock festivals. Ms. Monelle has said that her musical influences run the gamut from Bowie to Roxy Music, early 80s new wave synthesizer rock, to performance art icons like Laurie Anderson as well as the contemporary R&B and Hip Hop music she grew up with in her native Kansas City. The theme of Archandroid draws heavily from Fritz Lang’s 1927 science-fiction film, Metropolis, which portrays a divided class system of workers and planners who coexist in the futuristic mega-city of Metropolis. Monáe’s trilogy focuses on an android by the name of Cindi Mayweather, a sort of saviour who is sent back in time to save the underclass of Metropolis from its oppressive class system. It’s a new take on an old theme, a theme that has always played a prominent role in African-American music. Archandroid is second part of a trilogy of Metropolis themed albums which began in 2007 with the release of Janelle's five song extended play cd, Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase. The final chapter in the Metropolis tale will be completed by late 2011 or early 2012. Even if Archandroid hasn't become a blockbuster multi-platinum album like Kanye West, Eminem and Big Boi releases, Ms. Monáe's album sold 21,000 copies it's first week of release last May, however album sales have only been moderately successful, since then. Archandroid is a dark horse nominee for the Best Contemporary R&B Album in the 2011 Grammy awards which could help Archandroid find a larger audience but I doubt that chart sales are a big priority for Janelle Monáe. No amount of album sales or phony industry awards can buy the sort of independent critical acclaim that Janelle Monáe has earned with this groundbreaking album. Archandroid is an inspired and worthy addition to the rich cannon of Afrofuturistic music. ====================== Honorable Mention for Best R&B, Hip Hop & Soul Albums of 2010 In No Particular Order Freeway- Stimulus Package Corrine Bailey Ray- The Sea Drake - Thank Me Later Reflection Eternal- Revolutions Per Minute Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings- I Learned the Hard Way B.o.B.- The Adventures of Bobby Ray Big Boi- Sir Lucious Left Foot...the Son of Chico Dusty Aloe Blacc- Good Things Budos Band- Budos Band III Erykah Badu- New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh Fantasia- Back To Me Martina Topley Bird- Some Place Simple Mavis Staples- Only For the Lonley Nicki Minaj- Pink Friday Seal- 6: Commitment The Persuasions- The Persuasions Sing the Beatles The-Dream- Love King ================================= Coming Tomorrow: Best of 2010 Electronica & Dance Music __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-26-2010 at 07:15 AM.

12-18-2010, 10:15 PM	#257 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Best of Electronic & Dance Music 2010 Subiza combines indie pop with full throttle techno of the Barcelona & Ibiza dance music. *Best Electronic & Dance Music Album of 2010: Subiza* by Delorean** There were plenty of worthy competitors but a humble band that originally came from the rural Basque region of Spain that plays a hybrid of electronic and pop music produced the album that caught my ear and provided the richest rewards for repeated listening. Subiza has more of an indie pop feel than any of the other notable electronic albums this year, which is why I probably like it so much. While Delorean's musical oeuvre is firmly within the realm of indie pop, the band also has an affinity for the full throttle techno of their native Barcelona club scene and has a close association with the Balearic Islands outernationalist style of dance music heard in the clubs of Ibiza and other fashionable Mediterranean island destinations. AMG tells us that Delorean borrows from the same Balearic-influenced acid house style that New Order appropriated to craft their 1989 album Technique, an album that sparked a broader interest in the newly emerging house music trend. While agreeing with AMG's connection of New Order's music to the acid house style of the Balearic islands, Delorean's music has little resemblance to that of New Order's during their middle years. So what else is new, AMG?... Pop music has been borrowing from the past every since the Beatles rediscovered Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Yeasayer, Massive Attack, Tricky, Crystal Castles, Toro Y Moi and Soundpool all released first rate albums. Some of those albums were bold and experimental. If you're going by Pitchfork definition of "good electronic music", perhaps those less commercial endeavors were more authentic, more experimental and therefore more commendable and worthy artistic expressions. I think that's just a bunch of horsesht from a bunch of self appointed public opinion makers who don't even trust their own tone-deaf ears to make a decision about what good music is. Honorable Mention- Best Electronic and Dance Music Album of 2010 In No Particular Order Armin Van Buuren- Mirage* Crystal Castles- Crystal Castles (II) Massive Attack- Heligoland The Octopus Project- Hexadecagon Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno- Dog with a Rope Toro Y Moi- Causers of This Tricky- Mixed Race Soundpool- Mirrors In Your Eyes ============================= BONUS RANT! The State of of Electronic and Technology in Music- 2010 The rise of electronic music has made it possible for an anonymous guy living in a basement apartment in New Jersey to be his own John, Paul, Ringo and George. Using those electronic tools that same anonymous loner can self produce his own modern day equivalent of Revolver on his laptop computer. The rise of laptronica and the rapid development of cyberspace social networks like YouTube and Facebook, have created a career gateway that allows a musically talented person to become an international rock star without ever interacting with other musicians, playing a public gig, or signing a contract with a record label. Pop music stars like M.I.A., Katy Perry and Imogen Heap have launched successful careers using nothing more than a home computer, music software and the vast social networks of YouTube and Facebook. By the end of 2015 I predict that a majority pop music wannabes will launch their careers via YouTube and Facebook which leaves the music industry irrelevant to the production, manufacturing, distribution, promotion and sales of contemporary music. In the year 2000, I predicted that file trading services like Napster & Gnutella would wipe the monolithic global music industry off the face of the earth by 2010. That didn't happen because the music industry waged war on the customer for theft of intellectual property which postponed the day of reckoning for another few years. For my part, I'm resetting the music industry doomsday clock for the year 2020. The demise of big music is inevitable in a world where thousands of unregulated, decentralized social networks residing in the intangible domains of cyberspace are in full control the means of production and distribution of music. The only way to postpone the inevitable is to outlaw social networking on the internet. The do-it-yourself technology of laptronica is beginning to blur the distinctions between mainstream pop & rock music & electronic music. Back when Silver Apples, Kraftwerk & Tangerine Dream were the only bands using synthesizers, you didn't need a PhD in Musicology to figure out the difference between pop music and electronic music. Depending on your own uniquely personal perspective on exactly what electronic music is, the number of eligible bands within the electronic music genre can vary wildly. Nearly every contemporary rock or pop band uses tape loops, overdubbing, sound processors, MIDI or digital synthesis technology and/or other software programs available for composing, recording & performing music. Even folk music neo traditionalist bands like Fern Knight, Espers and Kingsbury Manx enhance their recordings and live performances with electronic software. If the forces of history are any indicator, electronic music is destined to blend within mainstream pop and eventually become mainstream pop. Some observers (including myself) believe that electronica has already become the dominant trend and the future of contemporary pop music. It's hard to believe that there was a storm of controversy in the mid Eighties when musicians began using samples and pre-recorded tape loops to enhance their live performances. Back in 1989, we all wondered why anyone would pay their hard earned cash for a ticket to a concert where the band was playing pre-recorded music. As it turns out, John Lydon was right on the money when he declared that "rock and roll is dead", over thirty years ago. Mr. Lydon's own erratic career on the fringes of pop music is proof that the unreasonable raving madman is only artistic visionary that inhabits this violence prone, ideological post-industrial scrapheap of a world. The mad men, the visionaries and the provocateurs are the ones who shape the forces of our shared cultural history. Lydon: The artist as a madman and provocateur John Lydon is right about another thing. In this brave new world of social networks, electronic enhancement and laptronica the passion, fury and spontaneous messiness of the live performance has been relegated to the backseat and is now a secondary element of contemporary music. You can avoid the entire tedious process of paying your dues by playing the clubs and take the shortcut to fame in fortune by posting one good video of a song on YouTube that goes viral. Fame and fortune is a hollow accomplishment if your success is based on a single good 2 and a half minute home made video on YouTube. I attended my first and only Public Image Ltd concert at the Ritz in New York City in 1981. The show erupted in to a full scale riot when Mr. Lydon appeared in silhouette behind a gigantic mural sized screen only to taunt the audience. Keith Levine, Jah Wobble and Martin Atkins, Lydon's PIL bandmates did little more than smirk and noodle around on their instruments as Lydon ranted on belittling the audience members as fckin' morons and idiots. After about 10 minutes verbal abuse from the ex-Sex Pistol hiding behind the screen, the irate audience began to pelt the screen with beer bottles which flew from the floor and overhead from the balcony. The audience surged to the stage to rip down the tarp and John Lydon remained on stage delighted with the results of of his social experiment in agit-prop theater. There was a riot going on! Finally an employee of the Ritz took the stage yelling "THE SHOW IS OVER, THE SHOW IS OVER" and the bouncers quickly mopped up the rowdier riot participants. Everybody was subdued and ejected from the club by the bouncers who restored the peace with the stunning efficiency of a well trained SWAT team. The whole show was over and done with in less than 20 minutes. As we drove back to Boston in the late night pouring rain, I said, "That was the best fcking concert I've ever been to and they didn't even play a single song." Lydon was right I was a fckin' moron who paid 25 bucks for my ticket to the circus and got conned the misanthropic clown lurking behind a screen. Lydon gave the audience an easy excuse to run amok for 20 minutes and they seized a once in a lifetime opportunity to stampede like lemmings into the abyss of madness. That element of danger in which the behavior of the performers and the audience exceed the limits of all rationality, is what's missing from today's rock and roll music scene. And I'm still the fckin' moron who wouldn't trade that 20 minutes of mayhem with PIL in 1981 for all of the gold in Fort Knox. ============================== COMING TOMORROW (well...maybe in a couple of days)- Best of Americana, Folk, Country and Roots Music in 2010 __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-26-2010 at 07:20 AM.

12-20-2010, 08:55 AM	#258 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Best of Americana & Roots Music of 2010 Best Roots Music Album 2010 A: Enlightenment B: Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) by Ray Wylie Hubbard The hardest decision I made in my year end lists was choosing between Ray Wylie Hubbard and Mountain Man for best Americana/Folk/Country album of 2010. Both albums were stripped to the bones minimalist affairs. Texan troubadour Ray Wylie borrowed from the delta blues tradition and gave us a snarling passionate message from a desperate man on the margins of a society gone mad, while Mountain Man, a Vermont based collective of four women, sang in the ethereal and haunting style of a rural Appalachian choral group, Both albums captivated me. After agonizing over the choice, I decided to go with the raw and nervy musical effort by the poet/philosopher everyman: Ray Wylie. He's been a real survivor over the years and if he gets beyond his wild years, he may end up standing as tall as the Man in Black. Embedded is a live of Down Home Country Blues one of the album's 12 uniformly superb songs at Lonestar Music early this year. ================================== Special Mention for Best Roots Music Album: Made the Harbor by Mountain Man Mountain Man does deserve special mention for their debut Made In the Harbor album. There is an otherworldly spiritual quality to Mountain Man's music that quite unlike any music I've heard for a long time. Some critics thought the music was repetitive but I found the music mesmerizing. Reggae singer Burning Spear has be doing the same thing over and over for 4 decades now, but he does it so well that I'm still amazed at the power of his sincere roots music authenticity. Mountain Man doesn't play reggae music but their music is every bit as spellbinding as Spear's. This embedded video is an outdoor performance of Animal Tracks by Amelia Meath, Alex Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarle, live and direct from Austin Texas. ===================================== Looking back on the year's roots music, it was a pretty tough and crowded field of artists, and three of my favorite artists Steve Earle, Marissa Nadler and Miranda Lee Richardson didn't even release albums in 2010. In a less competitive year the albums by Red Horse, Samantha Crain, Johnny Cash, 7 Walkers, Lissie, Jamey Johnson, the Tallest Man or Merle Haggard could have been worthy best album selections. It's a great year for roots music when ten different albums of 1st tier quality are released. Honorable Mention- Best Folk, Americana & Country Music of 2010 In No Particular Order Carolina Chocolate Drops- Genuine Negro Jig Tallest Man on Earth- The Wild Hunt Red Horse- Red Horse Black Prarie- Feast of the Hunter's Moon Samantha Crain- You (Understood) The Secret Sisters- The Secret Sisters Lissie- Catching A Tiger Johnny Cash- American VI: Ain't No Grave 7 Walkers- 7 Walkers Jamey Johnson- Guitar Song Merle Haggard- I Am What I Am Trampled by Turtles- Palomino Mary Gauthier- The Foundling Dr. John- Tribal Robert Plant- Band of Joy Alejandro Escovedo- Street Songs of Love Justin Townes Earle- Harlem River Blues Cowboy Junkies- Remnin Park Crooked Still- Some Strange Country First Aid Kit- The Big Black & the Blue ==================================== Coming Before the Weekend Best International Music 2010 Best Singer/Songwriter Best Debut Album Best Comeback Album I'm hoping to finalize my best rock & pop music of 2010 post by Christmas eve, I'm still giving a listen to a backlog of worthy albums and don't want to leave any of the good ones off my list. I'm still coming across some real jewels that were released in October, November & December and all those releases deserve a fair hearing. ==================================== __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-21-2010 at 01:56 PM.

12-22-2010, 09:40 PM	#259 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Best Debut Album 2010 My short list for best debut album for 2010 was crowded with so many eligible choices, I felt a kid at the FAO Schwarz toy store in midtown Manhattan who could choose only one single toy from the plethora of displayed merchandise. Many of these debuts have already received high placement on my 2010 Best of R&B, Americana and Pop/Rock lists and are exceptional albums on their own merits. In a sense, I'm following the pack by selecting Sleigh Bells' Treats, because it ended up at the top of many Best of 2010 lists. There are debut albums that I personally liked better than Treats but selecting "the best" of anything requires one to step aside from his own biases and musical fetishes and exercise a certain amount of dispassionate judgement in the interest of critical integrity. To be frank, I have no qualms about my choice of Treats as best debut album. Nonetheless, whenever nearly all of the heavyweight cultural opinion makers are singing the same chorus of fawning praise for a certain musical product, I become the skeptic. Subsequently, I subjected Treats to a higher standard of review because of my fear of being swept away by a united front of unwarranted praise for a mediocre album. Rave reviews of mediocre albums are often contagious in the insular world of the media establishment. Cultural criticism is often an echo chamber that reverberates with the shared cultural perspective of the young, middle class, well educated, white indie music types. Whenever Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, All Music Guide, NPR & Newsweek unanimously praise the wonders of a dark horse indie album like Treats, my knee jerk reaction is to wonder why. This album passed my rigorous litmus test with flying colors and Sleigh Bell's debut album simply blew me away. Hear it and believe... Sleigh Bells never pass themselves off as this year's model and they're nobody's pet band. Artistic integrity is novel concept in an era when there's a waiting list of wannabe pop stars begging to sell their soul for 15 minutes of fame. *Best Debut Album of 2010- Treats* by Sleigh Bells ====================== Honorable Mention- Best Debut Album of 2010 In No Particular Order** The Beach Fossils- Beach Fossils Warpaint- The Fool Mountain Man- Made the Harbor Wild Nothing- Gemini Glasser- Ring Gayngs- Relayted Freelance Whales- Weathervanes Tame Impala- Innerspeaker Surfer Blood - Astro Coast Janelle Monae- Archandroid =================== Bonus Award! *Best Comeback Album of 2010- Love & It's Opposite* by Tracey Thorn** There was a far less crowed field of nominees and the selection for comeback album was an obvious choice from my perspective. Tracey Thorn's Love and It's Opposite was a triumphant return for Herfordshire UK's favorite daughter. Over the past decade, the 48 year old Ms. Thorn has disappeared from public life while raising three children with life parter and Everything But the Girl collaborator Ben Watt. In 2007 Throne released a worthwhile but less than stellar 2nd solo album Out of the Woods. She refused to tour or promote the album and subsequently, sales of Out of the Woods flat lined without ever reaching the charts. Her 2010 comeback release, Love and It's Opposite was so good that even as Tracey refused to tour behind it, the album couldn't be ignored because of her spectacular songwriting and the newly revitalized power of her expressive voice. Thorn's vocal mastery of the torch ballad genre and her talent for writing heartbreaking songs of alienation is fully intact despite the joys of motherhood and domestic bliss. The songs are all about the desperation of being alone in middle age and are as painfully honest as any music you'll hear in an era where the shallow worship of beauty and perpetual youth have become the zeitgeist of our times. Love and It's Opposite is a cycle of songs of an unglamorous life without the face-lift, the liposuction and the hair dye to conceal the grey. The subject matter of Love and It's Opposite may be the source of discomfort for some, but it also shows us that a talent as large as Ms. Thorn's cannot be ravaged by the passage of time. The quiet desperation of Singles Bar is an apt demonstration of power of Tracey Thorn's triumphant comeback effort. ================================= Honorable Mention- Best Comeback Album of 2010 Jeff Beck- Emotion and Commotion Belle & Sebastian- Write About Love Tindersticks- Falling Down A Mountain Natalie Merchant- Leave Your Sleep A Few Thoughts on the Honorable Mention Comeback Albums Some folks will squawk about not selecting the Jeff Beck "comeback" album. The only problem with Beck's comeback is that he's been alive and well and has made four equally good albums in the past ten years. Don't fret, Jeff Beck is likely to become the sentimental favorite choice of music industry heavies at this year's Grammys. Those same music industry moguls completely ignored Beck's brilliance when he revolutionized guitar playing and invented psychedelic music with the Yardbirds way back in 1965. Without Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix would have likely ended up being a brilliant but anonymous session player at the Stax or Atlantic music studios. Beck will never galvanize rock music as he did in his glory days with the Yardbirds and the original Jeff Beck Group but it's hardly a comeback because Beck never went away, fell from grace or lost his touch. His body of work is every bit the equal of Clapton, Hendrix or Page. Natalie Merchant's return with a sprawling a lushly orchestrated 2 cd epic of American and Celtic roots music was rather impressive. The only problem with the Natalie Merchant album is ...well, um. how do I put it?..it's a Natalie Merchant album (!) and most of the selections were sleep inducing. From my perspective, Natalie Merchant's career peaked in 1987 with the release of the 10,000 Maniac's feisty jangle rock album In My Tribe. There are 5 or 6 worthwhile selections out of Leave Your Sleep's overly abundant smorgasbord 28 songs. My advice is to cherry pick those songs and buy them as 99 cent single song purchases at iTunes or Amazon. I enjoyed the latest Belle & Sebastian outing more than any other album they've made since Boy With the Arab Strap. Jazz/pop phenomenon Norah Jones adds to the fun by taking an unlikely turn at the microphone to sing along. Tindersticks should have been the National long before the National was ever a band. After 20 years of being met with critical under acclaim, Tindersticks soldiers on and follows their quirky path remaining faithful to their musical mentors: L. Cohen, Ian Curtis, and Scott Walker. Falling Down A Mountain is remarkable because the vast majority of bands that have held together for two decades have run out of fresh ideas. By the 5th album, the best of bands go on auto pilot and start acting like they're ready cash in their chips. There's nothing more insufferable than a band hangs around a couple of decades to wear out their welcome. Tindersticks has more than earned their keep over the past decade. Falling Down A Mountain is simply too good to be somebody's 11th album. ============================== TOMMORROW Best of Singer/Songwriters- 2010 Best of International & World Beat Music- 2010 ============================= __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt

12-25-2010, 11:11 PM	#260 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Best Indie Pop Albums 2010 And The Winner for Best 2010 Indie Pop Album Is.... Nobody FIRST, The Bad News. There wasn't a single album released in 2010 that was unequivocally brilliant. The most critically acclaimed albums by Arcade Fire, Beach House, the National, Vampire Weekend, & LCD Sound System were first rate albums but none of them reached out and grabbed me, so I'm not going to name anybody's album as my favorite. Those were the obvious choices but when the chips were down, Kanye West's crossover hip hop/pop album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy garnered the largest share of acclaim from the rat pack of music critics and opinion makers at both the mainstream and alternative outposts of popular culture. My Over-the-Top Kanye West Rant By default, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West's overblown, self indulgent and profane hip hop epic ended up on the top of the heap on most year end lists, because Kanye was smart enough to do the expected and claim the title of cultural zietgiest, as his own...whether he deserved all of those accolades or not. For all of his messianic preaching to the choir, I got the unsettling feeling that Kanye West was trying too hard. Aren't brilliant artists supposed to make it all look easy? Kanye's social and political observations on Dark Twisted Fantasy were shallow and trite observations that had little to do with the helplessness of those folks (black, white or other racial designation) who have been plowed under by the current global recession. The pseudo defiance of Kanye's dark twisted fantasy panders to his base of affluent, young, suburban and mostly white fanboys, who think Kanye's rude boy slackness & alpha male chest thumping is really cool. Nevermind that his message completely ignores the global economic collapse, and makes no comment on the growing international cultural warfare between left & right wingnuts. Kanye also has no comment on the shameless attempt by wealthy and powerful elites of media oligarchy to bring down Barack Obama. If only Bob Marley were around put Kanye on the path to being a musical visionary and a credible voice on behalf his downtrodden brethren. Kanye West has yet to learn a thing from the wisdom of his elders. Kayne is the #1 selling music artist for the Universal Music Group, the largest monolithic global infotainment media company in history, and maybe that's why none of his social rage is directed toward the wealthy moguls who have declared class warfare against the have-nots & the powerless. For my own part, I find Kanye West's relentless misogyny repulsive and his use of the minstrel show epithet, nigga, offensive. For all of the Kanye West's self congratulatory bravada and the dazzle of his undeniably brilliant production skills, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a hollow shell of an album when held any reasonable standard of cultural or artistic significance. I won't apologize for this for rant against Kanye West, since he had no regrets about crashing the stage with his own rant when his most favored choice Beyonce. lost the Grammy competition to Taylor Swift. From my perspective both Beyonce & Taylor Swift were the lame choices of music industry moguls that reward Kanye West with a $17 million dollar annual income. In fairness let me add, that both Beyonce & Taylor are talented & perfectly charming human beings... I'm commenting on the boorish, self indulgent behavior of Kanye West and his refusal to check his ego at the door. Now for the Good News. Even as most of the critically acclaimed albums of 2010 failed to fire a spark for me, there was a deluge of "really good" (but less that "great") albums by debut artists and lesser known 2nd or 3rd tier artists. There was such a plethora of beguiling and innovative music released by obscure bands with exotic names that it was hard to find the time to give each album a fair hearing. To complicate matters, some of the best albums had a self-consciously ragged and charmingly unprofessional studio sound which made it a challenge to sift out the less talented low-fi posuers and find the authentic talented artists with visionary ideas. I've spent the last four weeks playing a lot of bad music in search of a handful of musical gems that should be heard by a larger audience. I decided to refrain from name a single album as the "best indie pop album of 2010" simply because there wasn't a single album that was uncontestably brilliant. The music that got the most rotation in my Zune player and on my weekly radio show failed to make most the Best of 2010 lists, but a few of my selections were mentioned by a handful of adroit music critics. My final short list of albums were subjected to repeated play rotation and endured throughout 2010 as a rewarding listening experience. My 22 Most Frequently Played Indie Pop Albums Listed roughly in the order of most frequent play on my stereo, Zune player and on my radio show. Jj- Jj Nº 3 Kula Shaker- Pilgrim's Progress Charlotte Gainbourg- Irm Get Back Guinozzi- Carpet Madness Warpaint- The Fool Wild Nothing- Gemini Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti- Before Today Club 8- The People's Record Port O' Brien- Threadbare Jesca Hoop- Hunting My Dress The Like- Release Me James Blake- CMYK (ep) & Klavierwerke(ep) The Pipettes- Earth vs. the Pipettes Against Me!- White Cross Love Is All- Two Thousand & Ten Injuries Magic Kids- Memphis The Liminanas- The Liminanas Lost In the Trees- All Alone In An Empty House OK Go- Of the Blue Colour of the Sky The Parting Gifts- Strychnine Dandelions Twin Shadow- Forget Villagers- Becoming A Jackal Goldenboy- Healing Is A Team Effort The most favored choices of the musical opinion makers: Arcade Fire, Beach House, the National, Vampire Weekend, & LCD Sound System were all worthwhile albums that I played less frequently than the previously listed favorites of mine. I listened to Kanye West's album three times from start to finish, and finally dumped My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in my computer trash can this morning when my music savvy wife belittled me for listening to Kanye West's misogynous garbage. I sheepishly explained I was listening to it for a post in my Music Banter journal, but she's was right... I should have dumped it after the first play. We all deserve better zeitgeist of these troubled times than Kanye West. Have a happy holiday and let's hope the coming year ushers in a new decade of inspired creativity & an abundance of unconditional generosity from one & all. =================================== __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-31-2010 at 05:29 AM.