Hot Sauce Committee, Pt 2
RIYL: The Beastie Boys
The Beastie Boys returned in style after the mostly 'meh' To the 5 Boroughs. Solid hooks and clever lines throughout.
Ravedeath, 1972
RIYL: Droning bliss, the world's most melodic air conditioner
The year's most surprising album. I gave it a preliminary listen thinking I would easily discard it. That shit is haunting.
Tomboy
RIYL: Watery sounding music, lots of vocal layers, The Beach boys being played in a really big room.
Lots of highs, a couple dry spots in the middle. Still enough on the high end to come back to again and again.
Bad Time Zoo
RIYL: Doomtree, Really wordy rappers, books about 'Occupy wall street'
Sims rubs me the wrong way a lot of times, so the instant I preordered his CD, I wondered why I had done so. I proceeded to love it.
Take Care
RIYL: Really rich people humblebragging constantly.
I don't know exactly how I got to this point. The dude just makes catchy music that works as great as driving music during summer or winter, day or night. The production on his tracks fascinates me.
Castor, the Twin
RIYL: Jazzy female fronted rap, High swagger to body weight ratios
I had already heard a lot of these arrangements at Blowout VI, but the jazzier live band really gives Dessa that "chanteuse in a smoky bar" vibe that really fits these songs.
House of Balloons
RIYL: Lurid, debauched parties, Smooth crooning, drugs.... lots of drugs, sex
How to become a really big deal in 2011... work your ass off, release three albums worth of material. Oh yeah, make incredibly catchy songs that make six minutes feel a quarter that long (also, talk about sex and drugs a lot).
Noir
RIYL: Huge sonic landscapes, instrumental hip-hop that doesn't have anything to do with hip-hop.
Nothing could ever replace Endtroducing, but at times this feels like a slightly more cinematic version of that DJ Shadow masterpiece.
Smoke Ring For My Halo
RIYL: Acoustic guitars, cynical lyrics
Smoke Ring For My Halo was a welcome surprise. I didn't expect much out of it, since I'm not big into the wandering acoustic rock thing. Vile's arrangements just feel so much fuller than most of his genre.
James Blake
RIYL: Soul/Dubstep hybrids... are those a thing?
I didn't listen to a lot of Blake's output last year (I'm sure I'll remedy that soon enough), but this worked as a good introduction. Surprisingly good vocals and well constructed songs.
The Future Will Destroy You
RIYL: Pretty much anything. Seriously. Why aren't you listening to these guys?
Husband/wife duo Viva Voce are a great band that I haven't been able to get anyone into yet. They make good rootsy rock music. Sometimes she sings, sometimes he sings. Listen to their music.
No Kings
RIYL: Vaguely indie-ish rap that doesn't succumb to standard indie rap tropes
With "No Kings", Doomtree really branched out their production to new places. Almost all of them worked for me, and the rappers themselves sounded fresh and up to the challenge, ready to tear into that new direction.
Camp
RIYL: Clever lines and good hooks, smartasses, rappers who enjoy Rugrats
This album is kind of a combination of the bite I wanted from a Tyler, the Creator CD mixed with the pop and R&B sensibility that Drake infuses everything with. Thanks to Andrew for the heads up.
Cults
RIYL: Catchy, retro tunes with dark secrets, small, coastal new england towns
I didn't buy the hype last summer, but the debut album was alluringly dark, yet catchy. It was sort of like if Best Coast joined... well... a cult.
Burst Apart
RIYL: Sad songs, songs about the endings of beautiful things, the end of Old Yeller
I'm slowly coming around on The Antlers. Not just this album, but their whole discography. This one still reigns supreme, though. A thoroughly emotive and exhausting listen.
5. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of DeadTao of the Dead
RIYL: Doodling dragons on the back of your chemistry notebook
Trail of Dead keeps insisting on making the music bigger and bigger, at this point it's in for a penny, in for a pound. That means, that for every tightly spun barnstormer, there's a 17 minute proggy beast. Luckily, I enjoy it all.
The King of Limbs
RIYL: The Kid A side of Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Skittery Beats
I'll admit, if this wasn't Radiohead, I don't know if I would have given it as many listens as it needed to grow on me. Once it did, though, it stuck with me. There's not a weak track on the album.
Nine Types of Light
RIYL: All thing funky, the vocal stylings of Tunde Adebimpe
I was sort of surprised to see how much this album got slept on. It's definitely moving further toward TVotR's funky side than their previous offerings, but hearing songs like "Second Song" proves that's actually a pretty good thing.
Rolling Blackouts
RIYL: Cheerleaders, explosions (of confetti), saying everything in double dutch time
The formula hasn't steered them wrong yet, why would they change it - especially when they seem to have come closer to perfecting it here than ever before.
Bon Iver, Bon Iver
RIYL: Beards
It's the fashionable pick this year, but it got that way for a reason. I tried to resist the siren call, it didn't work. Each of these songs feels like part of my daily life at this point. If the lyrics don't quite have that naked emotional honesty that The National struck last year with High Violet (and I don't think they quite do), the music itself does more than enough speaking. It whispers, it strains, it breathes, it squalls - and Justin Vernon's weirdly compelling voice sails the album through that storm. In the Grammy nominated (!?) Holocene, he sings "...and at once I knew, I was not magnificent..."
Meh, I disagree.
Nice place you got here.
ReplyDeleteJust started listening to the Tim Hecker record. I think I'll dig it.