Guest column – 2010: the year of Lo-fi and orchestrations

I don’t get to listen to a lot of new albums every year, and I felt like my New Year’s Eve post had to reflect upon the best albums of the year, so I asked Sam to share her ten favorite albums of the year, and here they are!

10. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Lets see…could Arcade Fire put out a bad album?  It isn’t likely.  With the success of Funeral and Neon Bible, every indy kid and hipster sat with bated breath for this album to release this year.  It was not only better than those two but it blows them out of the water.  It is catchy and nostalgic, leaving you feeling like in 16 tracks you lived and entire summer. Songs like “Rococco”, and “Empty room” are catchy and fun but nothing leaves you with that feeling of cynicism and warm wistfulness like the first track “the suburbs”

9. Interpol-Interpol

So one of my favorite bands put out a new album…of course I am going to buy it.  That doesn’t mean I am going to put it on the top ten.  For example Weezer put out two new albums and a deluxe edition of Pinkerton….I own them but they are not going to be on this list.

Interpol however, they put out their self-titled album and it didn’t leave my cd player for two months straight.  I love this album.  It should also be noted that this is their fourth album to date and I didn’t really like the last album Our Love to Admire (which coincidentally is their only album not released on Matador records.)  So I walked very hesitantly into this album and was very happy with it.  It is like with this album they were saying they wanted to go back to the basics.  They pushed the rhythm section to the forefront with this album (where it should be!)  This album was pulsating and catchy.  “Barricade” is the best instance of the band showcasing the talents of their bassist, keyboards, and dynamite lyricist.

Hey look at that…I did a review for Interpol without having to compare them to Joy Division.  Who knew it could be done?

8. Small Black-New Chain

I like dance-pop.  I like synthesizers and noise.  Small black has this awesome way of fusing all of those things with lo-fi pop songs making it sound like they are making their own specific sound.  Songs like “Camouflage” are so reminiscent of the 80’s that at first listen you think…wait is this a cover of something? Wait, no, it just has that familiarity to it that makes the songs classic while also being so awesome and new. This album is just plain fun.

7. Wavves – King of the Beach

First of all I would like to point out…I don’t smoke pot.  I do however LOVE LO-FI!  Everything about this album makes you want to roll down the windows and turn up the volume.  Imagine, if you will, if the Beach Boys put out a punk album…it would sound a lot like Wavves.  This album is sunny and fun.  It is fierce and energetic.  It is addictive…like Nathan Williams (the band’s only member) would want…just like a drug.  The first song on the album “king of the beach”  is like a punch in the face of fun frenetic noisy good times all the way to the sunny spacey last track “Baby say goodbyes” Waaves packs the entire summer into one album.

6. Best Coast – Crazy For You

Its like NPR’s All songs considered said of Bethany Cosintino, she makes writing a pop song seem effortless.    It’s like she took lyrics from the diary of a 15 year old and then sang them with the sweetness and melancholy of a grown woman.  She takes inspiration from doo-wop, garage rock, lo-fi, and girl groups then she mashes in a whole lot of herself and puts out a record that just gets stuck in your head.  You can’t help but find yourself humming along with “Boyfriend” and “bratty b”.  This album provides you with some laid-back tunes in short bursts of near perfect pop.

5. Mavis Staples-You Are Not Alone

Ok I have a story to go along with this album.  The end of last month my grandfather passed away and I was driving home to see my parents.  I needed some music to play in my car and I grabbed this CD and tossed it in and right from the first song I should have known it was a bad idea.  Track two is the song “you are not alone” written by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and sung by the amazing Mavis Staples.  I had to pull over my car because I was sobbing.  This song had struck a chord so deep in me that a flood of emotion came pouring out of me.  I sat on the side of the highway and I listened to the entire album and I just let the grief pour out of me.  This album brought on a catharsis for me that I really needed at that time.  So it for sure hits home for me.

Jeff Tweedy produced this album and wrote several of the songs and arrangements.  This is one of those albums that if you are familiar with Wilco you can hear Tweedy all over this.  This album covers everything from Gospel traditionals with “In Christ there is no East or West” and “Downward Road”, and then she grabs ahold of covers of Randy Newman’s “Losing You”,  Allen Toussaint’s “Last Train,” and John Fogerty’s  “Wrote a Song for Everyone”.  It is obvious that Mavis knows how to walk the line between the secular and the sacred because really aren’t gospel and blues talking about the same thing…getting to a better place.

4. The National- High Violet

So this is the 5th album The National has put out since 2001 and it wasn’t until 2007 with The Boxer that people really took notice of them.  I know that is when I picked them up for the first time.  I loved The Boxer, it received critical acclaim for a reason…because The National is a great band.  High Violet doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it surpassed my expectations.  It has a very Midwestern appeal from band members who grew up in Ohio before they ran off to NYC to make it famous.   Seen in “Bloodbuzz Ohio”  the centerpiece of the album, it feels almost nostalgic without losing its relevance.  The refrain “I still owe money to the money, to the money I owe” seems almost like an anti-springsteen anthem.  This album is intoxicating and meaty.

3. Lost in the Trees-All Alone in an Empty House

I can’t tell you something about this album that I DON’T like.  It is orchestral, it is folky, it is poppy, but it never tries to hard to put these elements together.  They just sort of weave in and out of each song.  You have songs like Mvt 1 and mvt 2 that are totally orchestral arrangements that can shake you up musically and remind you how brilliant modern composers really are.  Then you have a song like “fireplace” that is a pounding rock song driven by haunting and sad lyrics.  Two songs later (and my personal favorite) there is “a room for your paintings to hang” which is nothing but fast paced acoustic pop.  This album is brilliant on so many levels that I have a feeling that this band and it’s composer Ari Picker will grow to become something huge in the years to come, the rest of the world just needs to catch up with his genius.

2. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record

Alright so here it is…this album is another one that I knew I would like before I heard it.  I just never knew how much I would like it.  Every listen it grew on me more and more.  This band has 9 members…seriously.  If you have that many people in your group you better be an orchestra or a choir. Or you could be Broken Social Scene, and sport members of your band like Leslie Feist, Emily Haines (lead singer of Metric), Amy Millan (Stars) Evan Craney (also of Stars)…and many more.  That’s right BSS is a SUPERGROUP!  Personally I hate supergroups.  I find them to be just another reason for Jack White to put out an album.  WELL…this is different kind of beast all together these people are actually talented and want to have another forum to showcase that amazing talent.

This album has strong rock anthems like “World Sick,” “Forced to Love,” “Ungrateful Little Father,” and “Water in Hell.  Millan, Fiest, and Haines vocals are engaging on “Sentimental X’s” and “Highway Slipper Jam”.  Then you have “meet me in the basement”  with it’s huge strings and “guitarmonies” shows you what this group can do with an instrumental song.    This album really shows a variety of talents in a cohesive way.

1) Frightened Rabbit

Ok so anyone who has ever talked to me about music in the last year has heard me talk about this album…a lot.  But in the end I feel like that is what makes a truly great album, my ability to keep coming back to it and finding more and more depth to it and new things to love.  Winter of mixed drinks was that album for 2010.  It came out the first week of March and I announced that it was my album of the year and nothing else came out that changed my mind.  This Scottish band has a way of weaving such sadness and struggle into beautiful melodies.  This album covers everything from death and loss to spirituality and devotion. You can hear it in the lyrics but the songs always leave you with such warmth to them.  You can tell that the sadness is meant as liberation, and it is a major theme of the album as seen in “swim until you can’t see land”.   I recommend it to anyone with ears…seriously plug it in your earholes.
“The Winter of Mixed Drinks” looks at life’s ice and snow from the perspective of a dawning spring.  –allmusic.com