Sunday, January 8, 2012

Rockaliser Radio 2: Rockcast of Consensus

Recalling vintage 1994-era Siskel & Ebert, your Rockaliser writers have independently cast the same vote for 2011's best album, and it's not what you think...unless you've browsed through this blog in the past week and read our lists in written form, here and here--then you know it's Destroyer's Kaputt.

As with last year, I invited my esteemed colleague onto my weekly radio show, which broadcasts Sunday nights live from the Radiohive studios in Manhattan, to talk about our favorite music of the year. Once again it was an excellent discussion, and apart from a momentary Internet shortage toward the end there were fewer technical errors this time around (errors of judgment, on the other hand, still number plenty). Feel free to stream our live "Rockcast" (as we have taken to calling it) below. It's an entertaining two-hour listen, with a murderer's row of high-quality music selections. How much of our discussion will be devoted to Bun B? Will your host be able to summon more precise language to convey music he likes than "hardcore rockin' beats"? Is the Spinal Tap reference at the beginning intentional? And how will either of us justify the lack of SuperHeavy commentary? None of these questions will be answered, befitting the uncertainty of today's troubled economic climate [\desperate end-of-year think piece].


An mp3 of the Rockcast is also available here. For convenience, our respective lists sans commentary:


1. Destroyer, Kaputt
2. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
3. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Belong
4. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
5. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
6. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
7. Wye Oak, Civilian
8. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
9. Low, C'mon
10. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For?


1. Destroyer, Kaputt
2. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin'
3. DJ Quik, The Book of David
4. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
5. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
6. Blouse, Blouse
7. Boris, New Album
8. A$AP Rocky, LiveLoveA$AP
9. Mutemath, Odd Soul
10. Yuck, Yuck

Thanks to my colleague for an excellent conversation, and for introducing me to a few artists (Van Hunt, Shabazz Palaces) who would have otherwise slipped past my radar. Thus endeth the season of Rockaliser EOY festivities--time to get on to some real writing!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Nathan's Favorite Music, 2011 Edition

1. Destroyer, Kaputt
The smoothest, most immersive listening experience of 2011, by a considerable margin. Singer/songwriter Dan Bejar takes a few compositional cues from AOR and soft rock but this nine-song set is the opposite of anodyne--it constantly teems with fresh ideas, from the silvery disco pulse beneath to the proudly anachronistic flute and sax solos on top. If there's a theme to this list, it's that the best music of 2011 didn't care what year it was.

2. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin'
Saadiq is a veteran showman, producer and arranger, but his bounteous command of classic soul productions usually lags behind his skills as a songwriter. Not so with Stone Rollin', an album of immaculately-orchestrated tributes to different eras of soul, entirely devoid of retro-gazing. In 2011, no album made more mellifluous use of the Mellotron, an instrument not traditionally associated with soul and R&B, modern or otherwise.

3. DJ Quik, The Book of David
He may call himself a "crucial if not lesser-known artist from the West" but the pristine beats of The Book of David demonstrate that Quik, if not before, definitely now deserves a place in the top tier of West Coast hip-hop. Few late-career rap albums are as restlessly committed to an unstoppable groove--in Quik's eyes, funk and hip-hop are always mutually reinforced properties, etymologically unrelated to the overprocessed goo-goo synths of much modern hip-hop.

4. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
Though Big K.R.I.T. has garnered a reputation as a Southern rap virtuoso, his 2011 mixtape Return of 4Eva is more than just a collection of a creatively-expressed drawly Southernisms spat over crunkified click tracks. K.R.I.T. is also rapper of great depth and range, and his evocations of life in rural Meridian, Mississippi give this album a country flavor that puts most rap from the city, Southern or otherwise, to shame.

5. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
Just when you thought Fucked Up's massive three-guitar sound couldn't get bigger, they embark on the most epic undertaking of their career--a three-part, eighteen-song concept album about a dude in a lightbulb factory. The overall "concept" might be a bit lost among the fuzz and stentorian talk-vox, but the twin totems of beauty and aggression endemic in Fucked Up's best work are still there, to a transcendent, almost tiring degree.

6. Blouse, Blouse
Call them a dream-pop trio from Portland, but that really fails to do the sounds of Blouse justice. Coasting on the familiar 80s combination of gothic synths and ethereal lady vocals, Blouse makes novel use of common instrumental techniques. Their self-titled debut album is alarmingly dense, averaging an impressive two or three massive hooks per track. Consistency of this sort is harder than it looks.

7. Boris, New Album
In a characteristic move, the beloved Japanese metal band Boris set out to confuse fans as much as possible by releasing three albums in 2011. Attention Please was the more electronic-oriented release, while Heavy Rocks concentrated more on the band's aggressive punk-metal roots--but it was New Album, occupying a nebulous middle between those two extremes, that I found the most compelling. From careening Timbaland percussion stabs to string-laden metal monsters to the occasional dalliance with J-Pop, the diversity of tunes contained was unmatched in metal, or anywhere else.

8. A$AP Rocky, LiveLoveA$AP
As my colleague has previously noted, 2011 was a big year for insurgent rap from the likes of Odd Future, Lil B, Danny Brown, etc, but I bet that in 2012 I won't be spinning anything from that 2011 repertoire as often as LiveLoveA$AP, Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky's breakthrough mixtape. Augmented by spacey, codeine-inflected beats from the likes of Clams Casino and Spaceghostpurrp, 24-year old A$AP spits like a emcee repping an extra decade's worth of self-assurance. The result is a rare mixtape with almost too many classic tracks to name offhand.

9. Mutemath, Odd Soul
Bands like New Orleans' Mutemath--solid, dependable and exciting purveyors of mainstream blues rock--are an undervalued commodity in America. Mining everything from classic NO jazz to Peter Green-style blues guitar freakouts, Odd Soul is first and foremost an album filled with remarkable performances, from musicians who have clearly spent years learning to play together aggressively and effectively. There's a soulful side to these heavy riffs that give this a more playful and funky edge than recent material from, say, the Black Keys or other blues rock revivalists.

10. Yuck, Yuck
Speaking of bands not made for these times--the London-based Yuck might have garnered more comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement than any other artist in 2011, but that doesn't take any value away from the explosive energy of this debut. In my opinion, Yuck isn't a perfect album (it does lose some energy towards the end), but as far as debuts go I cannot imagine a more youthful-sounding rejoinder to the pre-end times rhetoric of so much "2011 in music" think pieces.

Honorable Mention: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We're New Here
A year ago, I gave Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here the highest accolades on my list of 2010's best albums. Back then, it was his big comeback album, but now it has become his swan song--Scott-Heron died in May, ostensibly during the planning stages for a followup to I'm New Here. A few months before, however, XL Recordings put out a remixed version of the album, with new productions from Jamie Smith (the bassist/singer from the xx). Though Gil Scott-Heron's vocal contributions are the same as before, We're New Here is at least 60% its own beast, and at the very least, a more rattly, electronic type of experience than the original I'm New Here. It isn't exactly a different album, but I would be remiss if I did not mention it in some fashion--it, as well as its dead creator, one of the greatest poets and musicians of the last 50 years. RIP once more Gil--and Poly, Gary Moore, Teena Marie, etc. etc.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Refrain From Being Lame: Aaron's Favorites, 2011

1. Destroyer, Kaputt
An icy melange--flutes, saxophones, synthesyzers, Sibel Thrasher--that travels from diaphanous to propulsive, from merely wry to really and truly devastating.

2. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
A band with a talent for outdoing itself, even when that no longer seems possible. Fucked Up's trio of guitars again concoct a sound as large as their vocalist, with melodies arriving from every angle. David has few roots in punk, but courses with the life-saving power that made punk special in the first place.

3. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Belong
Pains have emerged from the library stacks, with their bookish songcraft intact. Ecstasy may have been a catalyst, by the sounds of it, but their idea of the perfect rock LP suffers not a bit from being twenty years old.

4. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
Harvey's dense folk passes by in a violent rush, unsparing in its studies of war, death, and ideology. The most restless songwriter since Neil Young, PJ hasn't repeated herself once, here brandishing her autoharp as a weapon.

5. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
Annie Clark's guitar work is so texturally weird I often forget she's actually playing a guitar. Strange Mercy's buoyant art-rock is shot through with strange undercurrents--songs like "Cruel," "Suregon," and "Year Of The Tiger" dash in new directions each time I play them.

6. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
The sound of a man driven mad by the noise of the city, filtered through beats constructed on a glowing monitor in total darkness. Or so I imagine: what I know for sure is that Shabazz Palaces' debut marks the most stunning reinvention since Daniel Dumile first donned a mask.

7. Wye Oak, Civilian
On their third, Wassner and Stack cut back on the blasts of surging guitar, following a tenser, more post-punk path. Wye Oak are still the most mournful rock band on the planet.

8. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
Big K.R.I.T. references OutKast on two of his album's first three songs, but he's not just recreating the funk and bounce of vintage Kast. K.R.I.T., who mans the boards as well as the mic, pays tribute to the South by crafting a new addition to its canon.

9. Low, C'mon
Low make American Music in the way Neil Young does: brilliantly, toying with convention according to their idiosyncrasies. The Sparhawks' vision is, of course, a terrifying one.

10. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For?
A record that seems to have exploded out of Paisley Park--Van Hunt's cacophony is soulful, punkish and dripping in day glo. He's the rare songwriter making music about the Great Recession that sounds and feels like our times. Maybe that's the mechanism...


I wrote about most of these artists during 2011: Destroyer, Fucked Up, TPOBP@H, PJ Harvey, St. Vincent, Wye Oak, Low