This ten-disc, 183-song mix is a survey of some of the best and most notable music from 2011. It covers a wide range of artists and genres, and I think it's as comprehensive as it possibly can be while focusing on my personal favorites and omitting stuff I either don't care about or outright hate. I think you'll find that this serves as both a helpful guide to some of the year's most exciting music and a surprisingly listenable series of mixes. Discover new music, rethink familiar acts, jam out to nearly 13 hours of music. If you enjoy this, [...]
If music blogggers had to rally together to form a national sports team to represent their country, then Nailler9 wouldn't just get into the Republic of Ireland's, it would be their captain. The editor, Niall Byrne, is a respected figure in music blogging, both nationally and internationally, with a busy site that updates many times each week, leading from the front with his well-written coverage of new music from around the globe. As you can see from his gig guides, if something happens in Ireland in the new music arena then he's onto it. However, the [...]
Jan 25, 2011, 10:12am
MBV
Deerhoof - "The Merry Barracks" A lot of indie rock music is based on contrasting highly expressive guitar parts with deadpan or understated vocal performances, but Deerhoof push that dynamic to an absurd extreme. The guitar parts are always extremely flamboyant and tied in with rhythms that bounce all over the place. The music carries all the emotion, while the vocals by Satomi Matsuzaki are like a blank slate. She can be rather playful, but it's hard to get a read on her. Emotionally illegible, totally unknowable. This throws the music off in a way that is [...]
Jan 20, 2011, 10:24am MBV
Chain and the Gang - "Not Good Enough" There are countless love songs, but tough love songs are kinda rare, especially when they have nothing to do with sex and romance. "Not Good Enough" delivers a harsh message with a cheerful, friendly tune: "If you feel like you're not good enough then you're probably not, and you never, ever will be." Ian Svenonius sings the words with no particular malice or venom, he mostly comes across like someone who respects the listener enough to not sugarcoat a hard truth. It's important to note that he's not telling [...]
Jan 5, 2011, 1:20pm MBV
The Dø - "Gonna Be Sick!" The start of "Gonna Be Sick!" is a bit plodding and monotone, but as the song progresses, it becomes far more lively and colorful. Also, and the title may be a giveaway here, it gets to sound a lot more nervous. The emotional shifts are a bit jarring, and follow along with the piece's unusual tonal and rhythmic transitions and collisions. (I actually hear a lot of Can influence in this arrangement. Do you?) Olivia Bouyssou Merilahti's voice is especially great and expressive, investing her anxious words with enough drama to [...]
Last Sunday I pulled together a list of links to year-end posts from blogs and online magazines alike just before I posted my own Favourite Albums of 2010 list on Monday, but I failed to give you links to two very important (albeit different) posts, one which hadn't been posted yet, and one that slipped by my radar undetected. The first, and latest posting of year-end favourite lists comes courtesy of our good friends Herohill in Halifax, who spread their list of favourite Canadian LPs out over three [...]
Dec 15, 2010, 12:31pm MBV
Teen Daze - "Let's Fall Asleep Together" I look at the band name Teen Daze and the EP title Beach Dream , and I can only think about how it looks like the off-brand version of Beach House's Teen Dream . You know, like at the supermarket where Cinnamon Toast Crunch becomes Cinnamon Toasters, and Dr. Pepper becomes Dr. Thunder and a thousand other sodas with doctorate degrees. That said, despite their generic quality, the names are very well-suited to the music, which aims for a type of innocent dreaminess that has been very common [...]
Dec 10, 2010, 12:32pm MBV
Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "How Can U Luv Me" Just as I know almost nothing about Unknown Mortal Orchestra aside from that they hail from Portland, Oregon, I have no idea what the story is with this song. It sounds immediately familiar, like something I have known for years, but I can't place it. Some brilliant lost soul-funk tune, something like that. That said, I have no reason not to believe that this in fact an original tune. Maybe it's stealing something from somewhere, but I don't know. It could just be that these people are just [...]
Dec 6, 2010, 11:36am MBV
Fight Like Apes - "Come On, Let's Talk About Our Feelings" When MayKay sings the phrase "come on, let's talk about our feelings," she is mostly being sarcastic. It's a defense mechanism, a way of cutting through her own earnestness and sentimentality. The jokes, the irony, the dismissive tone - it's all about finding a way to deal with having "too many feelings." No amount of sarcasm could ever extinguish the fire in her voice, or temper the passion in her band's music. They're too hyper, too committed, too in love with their bold, colorful alt-rock tunes. [...]
Nov 22, 2010, 12:09pm MBV
Russian Futurists - "Hoeing Weeds Sowing Seeds" I like a lot of songs that sound like they are hurtling forwards, eagerly zooming into the future, and this is certainly one of those. The intro sounds like a warm-up - jogging in place before the drum fills comes in like a starter pistol, and it's off. I like the implied velocity, but most of the charm is in the voice and the melody - somehow all of these words and notes come together to sound like a smile. A smile running off into the unknown, optimistic about whatever [...]
Nov 12, 2010, 1:33pm MBV
Matthew Friedberger - "Shirley" Matthew Friedberger's voice always seems to be a little different on his solo recordings than when he sings on Fiery Furnaces records. He's a bit bolder with the Furnaces, his intonation is more blunt, sort of dense and blocky. I think this is because he writes those songs with and/or for his sister Eleanor, whose tone is always rather assertive. There's a particular lyrical rhythm to those records, it's very distinct and unusual and I think if you fall in love with it, you end up being a sucker for pretty much everything [...]
Nov 11, 2010, 11:58am MBV
Das Racist featuring Chairlift - "Fashion Party" One thing Das Racist excel at doing is calling attention to imbalances in social power, and highlighting ways we can be ignorant of and/or insensitive to other people's contexts often without necessarily having negative intentions. Some of these misunderstandings and tensions get laughed off, sometimes they are cause for sharper words. A lot of the time their critique falls somewhere in between, as they go for a lot of ambiguous targets. There's always this understanding that these race and class relationships are complex, that histories are tangled and confusing, and we're [...]
Nov 5, 2010, 1:06pm MBV
Britta Persson - "Some Girls Some Boys" Britta Persson is very good at writing about the confusing romantic stalemates that can occur between a pair of awkward, shy, emotionally reserved people. In previous songs, such as the lovely "At 7," she came at this from a more frustrated perspective, but in "Some Girls Some Boys," she's clear-headed and patient, waiting out the confusion and ready for the moments of genuine communication and connection. The form of the song follows its emotional arc - the verses are pensive and vaguely uncomfortable, ruminating on what could be [...]
Nov 2, 2010, 1:33pm MBV
Mr. Dream - "Learn the Language" I put off listening to Mr. Dream for a while because two members of the band are colleagues of mine. I try to avoid music made by people I know for reasons you can probably understand if you give it a bit of thought. I'm glad I set that aside and gave it a shot because as it turns out, they are making exactly the kind of brainy yet very physical rock music that is always desirable but generally scarce, especially in the past decade. "Learn the Language" is a lumbering giant [...]
Oct 28, 2010, 12:22pm MBV
Pigeons - "No Other Way" Very few of the words being sung in this song actually sound much like words to me. This is just fine, mainly because the emphasis in this arrangement is a bit skewed - what would normally be foregrounded is shifted to hazy accompaniment, and the noodling lead guitar part is presented with sharp focus. Luckily, this doesn't destabilize the track. If anything, this makes the whole thing seem warmer, richer, cozier. It's got that feeling of super-comfortable exhaustion, when your mind softens up a bit and you focus on detail rather than [...]
Oct 27, 2010, 10:08am MBV
Reading Rainbow - "Always On My Mind" It wasn't too much of a shock to find out the two members of this band are a married couple - they sing with each other like people in love. "Always On My Mind" is about struggling with a long-distance relationship, and missing someone very badly and hating every moment of being apart. Given that this is a married couple who are also an indie rock duo , I imagine this means they are singing about their ultimate nightmare. The song itself is a brilliant, elegantly constructed, extremely catchy [...]
Oct 26, 2010, 12:32pm MBV
James Rabbit - "Options" No one makes neuroses sound as fun and exciting as James Rabbit. "Options," basically a song in which Tyler Martin freaks out because he can't figure out a way to get through to an elusive girl who is "free of all media", places all its emphasis on the thrill of the chase. The song barrels forwards, totally urgent but also quite gleeful, and eager to take on the challenge. It always sounds good-natured and sweet, but that especially comes through when the song drops into a slower waltz section that contrasts [...]
Oct 21, 2010, 2:30pm MBV
A Sunny Day In Glasgow - "Drink, Drank, Drunk" The most surprising part of this song comes at the very beginning - a clear, bold lead vocal in a Sunny Day In Glasgow song! As the song moves along, we get back into their comfort zone of soft-focus haziness. It's a gentle slide from lucidity to dreaminess, and the shifts in the composition mirror the progression in the title. The lyrics follow a similar path - they start off very assertive and direct, attempting to talk someone out of bad behavior, but as the song gains momentum [...]
Oct 19, 2010, 11:25am MBV
Warpaint - "Undertow" Warpaint's "Undertow" is like a granddaughter to Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," both in sound and substance. In the music, you can hear Stevie and Lindsey filtered through years of indie and alt rock - languid chords and plaintive vocals picked apart and reconfigured with a stoned haze and a vague post-post twitchiness. Lyrically, it's the same sort of song - someone at the end of a relationship, addressing this person they still love, but from a distance. It's the thing you do when you're having a serious discussion with someone inside your head, saying everything [...]
Oct 18, 2010, 2:14pm MBV
Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 10/15/2010 Desire Lines / Hazel Street / Never Stops / Memory Boy / Rainwater Cassette Exchange / Don't Cry / Revival / Little Kids / Fountain Stairs / Nothing Ever Happened / Helicopter / He Would Have Laughed // Basement Scene / Spring Hall Convert / Fluorescent Grey I should have written about this show after I saw it, rather than waiting a few days. I don't remember enough of the specifics - there was a lot of awful things on my mind during the event, and the following [...]
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