2009 was a great year for music. Much too good to be limited to only 10 songs. Here are 20 of the best, and my favorite, songs from the last year. 1. Grizzly Bear — "Southern Point" / Download No doubt at the top of most lists this year, Grizzly Bear really came into their own. Every track on this album is beautiful, complex and (finally) approachable. This song is the most stunning, skillful piece on the album and my favorite song of the year. [...]
These guys completely escaped my radar this year. How did that happen, when the band (really one-man producer/artist Benjamin Plant, with live accompaniment, similar to LCD Soundsystem) managed to craft the perfect throwback 80's disco-pop? It's a little Prince, a little Depeche Mode, a little David Bowie. Sometimes , from a 2009 EP of the same name, is the kind of dance music I love to love, and always hope to hear at the club. Buy / Download : Sometimes
I love the 60's folk-pop sound of this entire album. It's great music, but it's also music with a great vibe. The San Francisco based band is centered around Jason Robert Quever, and has made a major stylistic shift on this latest album from previous recordings. Style, not substance. The music was and remains graceful pop, crafted with a certain timelessness. It feels like something old, but rings with newness. 2007's wonderful Can't Go Back did the same thing in a completely different way (see the track "John Brown"). It's a sound that [...]
Where do band-name meme's come from, anyway? 2005 gave us so many wolf bands you'd have thought we'd learned our lesson. And yet, here come the bear bands. Grizzly Bear, Panda Bear, Minus The Bear, and these guys, Bear in Heaven. (Actually, there are a few more, but I'll spare you.) That said, if you can get over the weirdness of this recent bear explosion (there, that could be another band name…), you might find something to like. Especially with Bear in Heaven. It's what I would call space disco, although [...]
In spite of our delinquency at updating, this site is still very much alive. The end of the year wrap-up is coming soon, with expected best-of lists. Until then, look for a few new song reviews of tracks that didn't quite make it onto the list.
Dirty Projectors are so much Teh New that it's almost impossible to write about them. There's a little 70's folkiness to the guitar work. There's a little charming awkwardness to the lead vocals. And there's that atonal call-and-response chorus. It's a great effect, and really utilizes the power of voice for instrumentation. This band, and this album, feel different from what is going on elsewhere in music; with bands like Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, they're pushing us towards something unique and new. Buy [...]
Animal Collective gets just a little easier for me to swallow with each successive album. Merriweather Post Pavillion manages to take the wonderful, almost antagonistic strangeness of the band and make it not only listenable, but practically poppy. It feels as if the band has discovered the secret scientific formula for making a song infectious and enjoyable. "Summertime Clothes" feels like it might have been written on graph paper, but it gets me up out of my chair every time. It's as difficult to explain as it is to avoid; you can't help but [...]
The new album from solo artist Brian Glaze (of Gris Gris, formerly with Brian Jonestown Massacre) out on local label World Famous in SF is pretty goddamn catchy. Glaze not only cultivates but seems to embody the lo-fi aesthetic, making music that doesn't just sound like it's playing out of an AM radio, but like it belongs on an AM radio. Lo-fi is nothing new, but for me Glaze's album Green Living , and especially this track, pay out on some of the promises of similar artists like Ariel Pink. Where Pink takes a [...]
Alan Wilkis last album (reviewed last July ) gave me the impression of someone cultivating an early-80's radio rock sound. His new album, Pink and Purple has a much, much more pop-funk sound. Add in lots of electronic instrumentation and you get a Prince-esque sound; in fact, this song even has something of (gasp!) an early-Michael Jackson thing going on. I can testify however (based on when I first heard the album) that the MJ connection is nothing more than a convenient (or inconvenient, perhaps) coincidence. "Gotta Get You Back" is a great, [...]
I love Doves. "Kingdom of Rust" (album and track) is a reliable piece of work by a reliable band. I once thought these guys might save the R in rock music, but I've since given up that hope. They seem to have given it up as well. It may be more of the same, but who am I to complain? Buy / Download : Kingdom of Rust
Grizzly Bear is going to be all over people's top 10 lists later this year. And for good reason. There isn't a bad song on the album Veckatimest ; more importantly, there isn't a song that is anything short of incredible. "Foreground" is the album closer and while nowhere near the most impressive work on the album (see "Southern Point"), it's easily the most beautiful. My friend Michael put it best: "this song makes me want to peel my skin off!" Buy / Download [...]
Much has changed for Antony Hegarty since Secretly Canadian released Antony & The Johnsons' second album I Am A Bird Now . But you wouldn't be able to tell from their latest work, The Crying Light . And that's a very good thing. Hegarty's voice is still beautiful, complex and touching. The music remains stark, almost painfully simple. The title track is a stunner, affecting and mournful. But so is the rest of the album. Nothing from Hegarty's efforts with Hercules and Love Affair has rubbed off here, but that's ok. [...]
Just in time for July 4th: some of my current favorite tunes for your listening enjoyment. If you're staying put or traveling this weekend, just promise me this: make sure to eat something bbq'd, for heaven's sake. I don't care if it's liverwurst or seitan dogs, just promise me please. Happy summer! Mark ZIP File Download Link Track List: Teddybears: Hey Boy Passion Pit: [...]
Remember when the "Wonder Years" was relevant? And Fred Savage was in a Pepsi commercial in the netheryears of the early 90s and he was writing a love letter, looks at the Pepsi can on his desk, and decides to use the word "effervescent" in the missive? Passion Pit is just that. Refreshing, perfect to quench that beginning-of-summer thirst for adventure, good times, and good tunes. Hailing from Boston and named one of the best bands to come out of CMJ 2008, Passion Pit is a fun, balls out electro band. Synthesizer and [...]
My music taste is intensely seasonal. Depending on whether it's spring, summer, fall or winter, my listening habits range from doggedly moody to superficial poppy. With 80 degree temperature and spring in full bloom in NY, my music tastes have definitely skewed towards the latter. Enter "Lalita" by the Love Language. Hot off their LP released on St. Patrick's Day, Lalita is a fuzzed out, lo-fi adventure through hypercolor flowers and fluorescent sidewalks. Starting with a drumroll and a sunny guitar hook, the song struts about with its unapologetic pop sensibility. It's [...]
"Well I met you at the blood bank/We were looking at the bags/Wondering if any of the colors/Matched any of the names we knew on the tags/You said see look it that's yours/Stacked on top with your brother's/See how they resemble one another?/Even in their plastic little covers/And I said I know it well." ...and thus begins Bon Iver's beautifully wrought single, "Blood Bank." What I've realized about Justin Vernon (alongside Iron & Wine and The Mountain Goats) is that he's a storyteller who happens to be a singer/songwriter. All of his songs provide amazingly [...]
I have 9,735 songs on my computer in iTunes. I don't know if that constitutes a lot, especially in the life of a music blogger. But it's a lot to me. It's hard to manage, to remember what all's in there, and most importantly to make sure you're listening to all of it on a regular basis. Near impossible, says me. Little surprise then, that I came across a band the other day that I had completely forgotten. Gideon Gaye , released in 1995, is the only album I have [...]
It's not hard to find something to crow about when Neko Case puts out a new album. The first track on her new album, Middle Cyclone is a pretty song about desperate love; what would you expect? Neko bemoans an absent love, imagining herself (but really, how much imagination does it require?) as a vengeful tornado, tearing apart towns and trailer parks in search of a missing lover. As spiteful as the lyrics are, the song itself really isn't; a chopped up, staccato guitar line keeps the tempo up, Neko's voice mournful but upbeat. [...]
I turned 30 in December. And I didn't really think that much of it. Being 29 was definitely hard but being 30 is pretty much like any other year. Except for the fact that someone recently asked how old I was and I told her, and then it finally hit me - I am 30. I'm a full fledged grown up. I should shuck fun and carefree vibes for responsibility and 401k's. But then, I regroup, I listen to a little Matt & Kim, and I'm good. Matt & Kim's sophomore [...]
Andrew Bird is a hell of a musician. And like all great artists, craftsmen and pursuers of personal perfection, he has moved himself deliberately away from the usual, the expected, and the comfortable, in order to bring perspective back to his work. Noble Beast is stylistically more eclectic-rock than it is folk, where he began his solo career in 2003. Bird did folk well. It was a more heartfelt, warm and natural folk sound than the indie rock world had heard from it's own. But as he's moved away from that sound (beginning [...]
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Monday Music – 28 May 2012
Bison - Quill
