There’s a woman who lives in the extremely rich neighborhood in which I occasionally drive (where you can buy a house like this, in case you care or were curious) with whom I have enough of a rapport to have conversations of a relatively personal nature. Lately, a common thread of our interactions involves her making some complaint about how she can’t do whatever it is she likes to do when she’s not working her incredibly high-paying high tech job (likely at Intel—let’s just say I don’t remember exactly where she works, but I can estimate about how much she makes in a year based on the amount of guitars she owns). “You should be grateful you can have hobbies,” she’s said to me more than once. “Once you have property, that becomes all you can think about. You can’t have a hobby.”
I tend to get that kind of attitude from rich people—okay, not entirely rich folk, but let’s just say everybody over a certain tax bracket. I suppose it’s a natural human social response—if you’re around people for whom there is a particular existential paradigm, you tend to think to yourself something along the lines of it’s this way for me—this other person is in the same place as I am, so they must have things the same way. Regardless of the looks of disbelief this may undoubtedly cause in some of the folks reading this, there was a time in my life in which I ran with a fairly-well-to-do crowd—and, when I dated Erin, I rolled with an extremely-well-to-do crowd—and I can’t tell you how many times I’d find myself at a swank country club or one of those old-money women’s clubs, listening to some upper-middle-aged twat who’s never had to do an instant of manual labor in his life talking to me about how tricky it is to navigate tax and regulatory codes to make his money work for him like it was some kind of Sisyphean task (I shit you not—I’m talking the kind people that were “unemployed” for a while until they decided they needed a job and subsequently started a bank—and that was the dude who was actually logical and sensitive to how real people live), while I quietly played the listening game, pretending I either gave a shit or didn’t want to eat his fucking children. The kinds of conversations I’d overhear in places like that ranged from condescending grandstanding fiscal conservative dogma (“well, if those silly poor people would just stop being lazy and work…”) to condescending grandstanding post-hippie centrist bullshit. I can’t lie—it was hilarious to hear people whose interest on their investments totaled exponentially more than what I earned in a year talk about what “this country really needs,” truly convinced that their opinion was the right one solely because they were but a generational stop for lots and lots of money.
I don’t mean to paint all of these people in a negative light—again, some of them were actually pretty decent folks, especially when I was able to jump in whenever the conversation veered away from money—but the dominant ideological paradigm was so far removed from the reality of damn near everyone I knew (and know) that all I could do is laugh at them, the people who want to or live life according to the mythical notion that they can somehow achieve that level of status in a system specifically designed to keep the gargantuan inner circle closed to all but those preconditioned to have a financial leg up, and—most of all—me, for landing in a situation in which I was somehow playing Billy Ray Valentine, spectator to the kind of opulence people fly fucking planes into skyscrapers out of bitterness over and simply waiting for the moment someone revealed it all to be a big fucking joke. It blew my mind that people actually felt compelled to complain about the relative decline in value of a house they kept solely for tax reasons, or getting screwed on their commission by their firm because of a phone call one Saudi cousin made to their patriarch, when they still held onto more worth than I’ll likely ever see. Eventually, I reached the level of introspection in which I actually sat down and thought about how, somewhere maybe in one of those developing nations on the verge of busting down the wall in the Euro-hegemonic old boy’s club, some guy in Liberia or Sierra Leone or the Ivory Coast was back in his hometown on holiday talking about how some lucky bastard at university was bitching about having to put up with hanging around super-rich people when he himself had a new computer, a car of his own, and didn’t have to worry about getting blown the fuck up while walking down the street or the government being overthrown.
Hilariously enough, the fact that I have memories of meals at The Portland Club and the Multnomah Athletic Club that trigger whenever I drive through and listen to my passenger’s well-intentioned complaints is enough of a representation of class vacationing (if not outright mobility) that it’s taken me years to come to terms with it myself. I never really felt guilty, per se—I mean, it’s not like I was even trying to achieve that kind of status, either perceived or economic—but it was still an experience tied to so many different weird emotions that I never really felt like I took the time to process it for the hilariously awesome time it was.
Who am I kidding? It’s fucking bullshit for people that aren’t struggling to bitch about the minutiae of their success when there are others just as talented that were one missed interview question or personal connection away from being in that position.
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” — Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for Senator from the state of Massachusetts
I slept on my living room couch last night, unusual for me when my roommate is actually in town. The convenience of owning a sectional makes improvised bedding very simple: drag the portions into shape and slip into unconsciousness. It’s a testament to my warm-bloodedness that all I needed was a tiny throw blanket (and the clothes I was wearing); the heat shut off sometime around 2am (which I only know because I briefly woke up to my nose being cold) and I was too lazy to get up and walk one step to turn the thermostat back up.
My sofa has been in my family for the better part of 32 years (minus a stretch of time when it was owned by my then-married friends Greg and Riikka), originally purchased in Chicago by my maternal grandparents shortly before I born. Grandma and Pop-Pop took the thing with them for two moves—to Portland, Maine and then to Portland, Oregon—before finally parting with it when they moved from their house into their waterfront condo. Greg transported it in parts to his and Riikka’s apartment in the black Chevy Metro that replaced the white Geo he was driving when I met him; I think I visited them twice while they owned it. The couch came back into my ownership when Greg and Riikka took jobs on the Scholar Ship. By that time, I had my own apartment and was in need of a couch, and I considered it perfect timing. While I was homeless, I stored the couch (and everything else that couldn’t fit in my car) in a storage unit just across the river from downtown Portland. I was very excited to move into my current apartment, if for no other reason than I could actually bring my couch out of storage and use it. Owing to a logjam of other furniture, the sofa’s sections are split apart, only occasionally reuniting whenever I need something that can accommodate the length of my body.
I tend to hold onto things as a matter of principle, but I hope to keep this couch in the family for at least another ten years. It’s one of those things that just makes me feel comfortable. It’s consistent, I suppose, tied to memories of being a little kid using it to support my wobbly legs, of playing with sparklers in the humid Maine summer, of that 19-year-old redhead I took home with me when I was twenty-four, of my friends who my roommate and I have offered shelter to if they were traveling. It’s seen me as a happy baby and kid, as a confused teenager and as a miserable adult and, Giving Tree-style, it’s always been there for me, never ostentatiously calling attention to itself—just being.
This year evaporated. For real. It seems like yesterday I was freaking out over the Yuck album—which is good, I suppose, in that it actually did have some sticking power.
I also suppose this is one year in which there isn’t really much of a surprise at what’s on the list. It’s completely fair if you dismiss this as the rantings of a complete homer—wrong, but certainly fair. Still, I can’t get past it—there weren’t really a lot of new artists that spoke to me, and a lot of familiar faces released solid albums (so much so that I relegate the PJ Harvey and TV On The Radio albums to Honorable Mention); furthermore, the Helms Alee album did deliver on the considerable promise of its predecessor, and to deny it that just because it’s the predictable pick would be doing a disservice to the album, the band and, well, my own opinions. That said, I want to impress upon everyone just how good the #2 albums really were. I spent weeks going back-and-forth between the two before making it a tie.
Anyway, without further preamble—
Honorable Mention:
Wizard Smoke - The Speed Of Smoke
TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Witch Mountain - South Of Salem
Shohmo - Bad Vibes
Elzhi - Elmatic
Special Mention:
Praxis - Profanation: Preparation For A Coming Darkness
Before I continue with the list proper, I wanted to give props to an album that I wanted to include on this list, owing to the fact that it didn’t get a proper, non-import release in the U.S. until this year. Praxis’ Profanation was one of the band’s finer moments, a work of remarkable coherence and focus despite having a veritable laundry list of guest collaborators (everyone from System of a Down’s Serj Tankian to Mike Patton to frequent Tricky collaborator Hawkman and Ghostface Killah). Had the album not been properly released in Japan back in 2008 and on a limited basis during the same year, I couldn’t in conscience put it on the list—I had it slotted at #8 for a long time before finalizing the list as you see it. Profanation, according to Praxis driving force Bill Laswell, was the last Praxis album, a mind-blowing end to a nearly twenty-year project, and definitely an album to check out.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes:
10) Snowman - Absence
Snowman’s farewell release (they announced their break-up as Absence hit stores) isn’t as stark as their previous album (2008’s no wave-y The Horse, The Rat and The Swan), nor is it as atonal; in fact, there are many moments on the album that are almost sweet. “Hyena,” in particular, throbs along a two-chord progression with atmospheric vocals, jangly guitars, and primal drumming. The rest of the album alternates between a weird, Cocteau Twins-esque fogginess and Shellac-y post-punk punishment—call it “dream core,” if you will—coasting to a somewhat unresolved ending, much like the band’s too-short career.
9) Tombs – Path Of Totality
This popped up on my radar at the tail end of the year, but blew up my iPod to the point I had to toss it on. And yes, it’s on everybody’s end-of-year lists this year, but with good reason—it marries the ferocity of more extreme blends of metal (I hesitate to throw around the term “black metal” post-Liturgy, but it fits here) with the edgier breeds of progressive rock in a way that somehow doesn’t sound obnoxiously pretentious—or even like Mastodon, for that matter. Tombs doesn’t adorn their songs too much, which works in their favor—Path Of Totality bruises and bashes from opener “Black Hole Of Summer” to the final strains of “Angel Of Destruction.”
8) Omega Massif - Karpatia
German instru-metal titans Omega Massif specialize in the kind of glacial-paced crunch long-since abandoned by the likes of Pelican, Isis, and Kayo Dot—that is, they’re actually okay sticking with the awesome riff that catches your attention instead of changing things up every sixteen measures. This Mogwai-esque restraint seems to have disappeared from instrumental post-rock sometime since the mid-1990s—shit, not even Mogwai uses it anymore—to the point at which anyone who doesn’t create sixteen-minute song “suites” out of four separate fragments of unfinished songs (I’m looking at you, Explosions In the Sky) is a welcome relief. All that said—Karpatia is actually a damn fine album that finds the band stretching its muscles (they actually have a complete song under four minutes—not an interlude, an actual song) and growing in a way that doesn’t involve them tossing a bunch of unnecessary shit everywhere in an attempt to justify the “post” prefix in their genre.
7) John Vanderslice - White Wilderness
The first of two albums involving the pAper chAse frontman/ridiculously prolific-and-awesome-super-producer John Congleton (see #6), Vanderslice’s first album with a proper orchestra (Bay Area-based Magik*Magik Orchestra) actually sounds more tender and intimate than the albums that essentially consisted of only him and Scott Solter (who cedes his longtime Vanderslice producer role to Congleton, and appears elsewhere on this list—see, uh, #6 also). While it’d be easy to say White Wilderness because of Congleton’s ability to bring out the most expansive of qualities in any band he records, the truth is that it’s Vanderslice, despite his penchant for pushing himself to the background of his own recordings, who makes this album shine.
6) The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
I won’t mince words: All Eternals Deck is the most arresting work The Mountain Goats have released since 2002’s paradigm-shifting Tallahassee. It could be argued, of course, that Eternals is just as much of a shift—although the sound and approach are somewhat similar to 2008’s Heretic Pride, it’s almost as if the band was sitting around one day and one person (probably bassist Peter Hughes, because he’s crazy like that) said “hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if we worked with Solter and Congleton on the new album?”, and then John Darnielle looked up from the game of dominoes he was playing with Suge Knight via Skype and got a stern look on his face for a few minutes before saying “Yo, yo, I can behind’at, but only if we work wit’ [Morbid Angel’s] Erik Rutan too, knaamean,” and Hughes and drummer Jon Wurster sighed because they knew it was just one of those things Darnielle does when he decides he wants to do something fucking awesome and they went and did all three things just because they’re the fucking Mountain Goats and can.
Oh, and the album kicks ass, by the way.
Curiously, in what seems like an unlikely turn of events (although Darnielle would probably say otherwise), it’s the Rutan-produced songs that end up working the best—especially “Beautiful Gas Mask” and “Birth Of Serpents” (the former being the album’s best track). The rest of the songs are just as solid, forming a surprisingly cohesive whole despite having been recorded in at least four different studios—but the Rutan-produced songs are just that much more transcendent, it leaves hope that the band works with him again.
5) Yuck - Yuck
Yuck was another band beginning to blow up at the end of 2010—their video for “Rubber,” with its full-frontal human and canine nudity, was almost enough to distract from how awesome the song itself was. Much has been written in more prestigious forums than mine about the band’s obvious 90s-revival sloppy post-punk style—with good reason, as their lack-of-fear of noise comes as a welcome respite from all the irritating, soulless, ball-less synth-crap, folk-crap, or epic-crap that seems to dominate independent music as if the 1990s (THE GREATEST FUCKING ERA IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC) never happened in the first place—but the best aspect of the band isn’t their style, but their technique. The opening chords of “Get Away” display a band built around two incredibly talented guitarists—Max Bloom and Daniel Blumberg—whose songwriting benefits from the presence of a tight rhythm section. Drummer Jonny Rogoff, the band’s Jew-froed American, keeps the band’s arrangements bouncing along (with bassist Mariko Doi), while Bloom and Blumberg’s guitars play tag. Whether they’re playing gentle (“Shook Down” or “Suck”) or pulling out the noise-tricks (“Operation” and, especially, “Holing Out”), Yuck’s youthful energy (none of the band members are over 22) pulls their obvious influences into delightful new territory.
4) Björk - Biophilia
Full disclosure: after Volta, which was good-but-not-great, I’d resigned myself to the fact that Björk wasn’t going to release an album of the cultural and artistic significance of Homogenic (one of, if not the best albums of the 1990s). Biophilia isn’t as great as Homogenic—very few things are—but it’s definitely a step up from her somewhat-meandering post-Vespertine output. From the shrewdly understated opener “Moon” to the almost lo-fi-sounding closer “Solstice,” Björk wisely uses Biophilia to create a somewhat understated (at least by her grandiose standards) approach, wisely letting her music do the talking. Even fuller disclosure: I haven’t bothered with the iPad apps that apparently accompany every track on the album—and, because of how pleasantly coherent Biophilia is, I’m not even curious about them—the album is that solid. “Virus,” one of the album’s early singles, is one of Björk’s most arresting love songs in decades, and the warbling atmospherics of “Dark Matter” and “Hollow” allow the singer to flex her muscles as a songwriter more than her previous releases (which at time seemed more dominated by her desire to use her collaborators’ vision more than her own acumen) have in over a decade.
3) Atari Teenage Riot - Is This Hyperreal?
Atari Teenage Riot’s abrupt, unexpected return in 2010 couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. With punk little more than an oft-exploited cosplay scene, electronic music back in its club-centric, insular world, and a wave of wimpy hipsters riding the post-ironic 1980s nostalgia wave flooding record stores and independent music websites with the type of ball-less, indistinct synth-pop that inspired the band’s creation in the first place, frontman/braintrust Alec Empire clearly decided he’d had enough. Enlisting longtime collaborator Nic Endo and American MC CX Kidtronik, he kicked out the incendiary single “Activate” last year. Is This Hyperreal? followed in mid-2011, building upon the single’s promise and signaling the group’s proper return. As far as music goes, ATR’s formula is blunt, brash, harsh, and completely radio-unfriendly: riot beats, riot noise, riot sounds, and vicious leftist lyrics. Using the same gear used in the 1990s, Empire and Endo craft a shrieking soundscape with a surprising maturity in their approach, deftly softening the blow when necessary (check out the outro to “Shadow Identity” or the surprisingly low-key title track). Kidtronik brings more to the group than his “featuring” credits on Hyperreal suggest; his vocal turns (especially on album highlight “Codebreaker”) are not only a deft, welcome change-of-pace from Empire and Endo’s relentless shouting—they’re an important reminder that the group owes as much to Public Enemy as they do Public Image Ltd.
[Tie] 2) Oddisee - Rock Creek Park
DC-based Amir “Oddisee” Mohamed’s Rock Creek Park was treated much like a mixtape when it first appeared in early September (at least as far as hipsters were concerned), and with somewhat good reason: it’s a largely instrumental affair, largely a showcase for Mohamed’s skill behind the boards. Regardless of how you classify it, though, Rock Creek Park is an unqualified revelation, a perfect jolt of retro-inspired hip hop with a post-millenial spin, like DJ Shadow with more of a sense of focus and less of a fear of being pigeonholed. From the soulful styles on “The Carter Barron” and “Mattered Much” to the more funky “Uptown Cabaret” to the somber, pensive “Closed After Dark,” Rock Creek’s instrumentals are range from head-nodding to the kind you just have to stand up and say “damn” to. The vocal tracks are even more amazing, particularly “For Certain,” which takes “Closed After Dark” and adds some of the most emotionally arresting verses in recent memory. Oddisee apparently has another, proper album in the works; if it’s half as good as Rock Creek Park, it’ll be an album of the year contender next year for sure.
[Tie] 2) True Widow - As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth
”Jackyl,” the first cut off the Texas band’s unwieldy-titled LP, begins with a slow, simple drum beat that slows down even more after two measures, setting the tone for the album before a single melodic note is played or sung. Indeed, As High As The Highest Heavens is as single-minded in its purpose as it is clever in its execution: it doesn’t affect the listener’s personal atmosphere so much as gather the listener up, wrap them in sound, transport them light-years away, blow them into millions of pieces and scatter the pieces around the cosmos. Singers Nicole Estill (bassist) and Dan Phillips (guitarist) trade lazy, ethereal vocals as their instruments thump and flutter; drummer Timothy Starks keeps the vastness of the band’s sonic space as centered as it can possibly be. The band’s self-classification as “stonegaze” couldn’t be more accurate; “Blooden Horse” and “Boaz” roar with metal grit as much as their vocals kiss and tease, and “Skull Eyes” and “Doomseer” dance through druggy, reverb-drenched hazes to annihilate the listener in paroxysms of almost-sexual intimacy.
1) Helms Alee - Weatherhead
“Predictable Zero,” you sigh wearily. It’d be easy to say you were right: I found Helms Alee’s Night Terror by accident in a record store and immediately shoved them to the top of my “favorite bands” list, eagerly awaiting a follow-up like little kids wait for Christmas. A couple of years passed, the band handling their day-to-day businesses and grown-up lives, and anticipation of the follow-up reached a point at which I declared it had damn well better be awesome.
And then Weatherhead came out, and it was even more awesome than I wanted it to be.
Broader in scope than Night Terror, heavier, more intricately melodic, and downright ambitious, Weatherhead manages to blend all of the band’s apparent influences into a blistering explosion of flowing, shimmering sound. From the delicate acoustic guitars of “Anemone Of The Wound” to the ferocious post-punk bite of “Ripper No Lube,” from the overdriven, Bob Mould-esque guitar strains of “Mad Mouth” to the germanium diode-crushing guitar stomp of “Pretty As Pie,” from the ethereal female vocals on “8/16” to guitarist Ben Verellen’s thunder-summoning roar later in the very same song, Weatherhead manages to go absolutely everywhere while still maintaining a coherent vision and distinct identity. That Helms Alee is not a band as wildly popular as Nirvana, Slayer, or Metallica is one of the world’s greatest injustices; hopefully, Weatherhead is just another stop for the band on their way to the top of the world.
"I have to be very careful here not to cast everyone who uses 15+ mics on a kit to eternal damnation. VERY CAREFUL. I have heard drum recordings that sound good with 20 mics on a drum kit, but I’ve also had very delicious water from a muddy pond once when I was lost camping."
