The Albums of 2011 So Far, Part 1

It’s June, the sixth month in a twelve 12 month year. According to my math, we’re half way through the year, a good time to take stock of the albums of 2011 so far. The albums that I’ve heard so far, that is. I’m no longer writing reviews or DJing at a college station, so less music is coming my way. I’ve put my hard earned cash towards 14 albums this year and an additional 2 were burned from a friend. Of the 14 I purchased, 12 were actual CDs and 3 were purely digital purchases.

I was a convert to digital music only age after moving from Atlanta to DC, away from any cool and affordable place to buy new music. I was frustrated by dead end searches where I’d find a local record store online and then arrive only to realize it’s since closed down. Or in the case of the one record store a Dupont Circle, didn’t sell any disc for less that $18. I liked how digital music rewarded my impulsiveness and cheapness. And then CDs started coming out that I was really anticipating and suspected would contain lyrics and thought out artwork. So I’m now ordering CDs from Amazon.com and waiting a week for the deliveries. It’s not as romantic as heading down to Criminal Records in Atlanta’s funky Little Five Points neighborhood. But it’ll do.

Why do I share this information? I think it’s interesting how drastically the way I’ve gotten recorded music has changed over my life. Maybe I’m now more aware of this because I read Ripped last year, Greg Kot’s book on the music industry over the past 15 years. But I wonder if there was also as much change in obtaining recorded music the generations before me. If only my grandparents kept a music blog. I guess I’m the one whose got to start it.

In no particular order except the order I was inspired to write about them, on to the albums:

Okkervil River – I am Very Far

I’m tempted to heap compliments on this band for putting out some of my favorite music in the past 10 years. However, this is the last album of theirs that I’ll turn to when I’m jonesing for my Okkervil fix. The album starts off rocky, with their two most un-Okkervil like songs starting things off, percussive and repetitive then new wavey. After “The Valley” and “Piratess” it starts to sounds like an Okkervil record should. Or at least what this fan expected. It could be that I need more time spent with I am Very Far, but the my turn-off at the opening tracks are an obstacle. I will say that all these songs translated seamlessly into their amazing live show.

Jessica Lee Mayfield – Tell Me

I like it. Sometimes I love it. Most of the time I like it. It’s simple, it’s got a few guitar licks, some piano riffs, and some moments where a pop shine is tried on. The constant is Mayfield’s voice. It’s the sound of a lonely vixen with perfect pitch singing haunting melodies. One of the guys from the Black Keys produced it and it results in some Keys-esque licks, breakdowns, and odd element thrown in here and there that never distracts to the songs. Almost like the opposite of I am Very Far, Tell Me is front-loaded. The first two songs are the best. I highly recommend at least throwing down two bones for “I’ll Be the One You Want Someday” and “Our Hearts Are All Wrong.” But really, if you like those two you’ll appreciate the nine others.

Drive-By Truckers - Go Go Boots

I think I Drive-By Truckered myself out this year. All of sudden they became my favorite band. I finally explored back past Brighter Than Creations Dark and fell in love with most of the back catalogue. The band promoted Go-Go Boots as their album of murder ballads. Boots fits right in with everything else they’ve put out, but like they warned, it’s more subdued. For me, they’ve become a band that can do no wrong. So I’ll nit pick. The slower songs do get a little long without the excitement of unleashed solo. Shoana’s songs seemed shoe horned in but always get better over time. And Cooley’s songs . . . I can’t bring myself to take down a Cooley song. There’s such innocence to his hard living hard truths country ditties I can’t resist. His first lines he sings on Go-Go are: “I’m not good with numbers / I just count on knowing when I’m high enough.” I’m not even sure I know what that means, but I like it. And it only gets better from there. Mostly, it’s good song followed by great song. And Patterson brings it like he always does, winning points by trying too hard. This is one of the few new albums of the year that get my who hearted recommendation.

That’s it for now. The plan is for the remaining 13 to get their description before June ends.

Some uneditied ramblings on the year in music I've listened to so far

It's halfway through the year, a good time to take stock of my favorite albums of the year so far. Unfortunately, the list of albums I'd still like hear far out numbers what I've heard so far. So it'll be two lists. First, a few quick impressions of my favorites, then what I'd like to hear.

My two favorites of the year so far are Shame, Shame by Dr. Dog and The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth. Both feel like quick listens and are easy to enjoy to all the way through. Dr. Dog continue doing what I thought they perfected on their previous album, Fate, but apparently there was room for improvement. Having the two singers alternate each song is a nice touch. It keeps the sound fresh and almost gives it a mixtape feel. I perfer the snotty Ben Kweller-esque voice of Scott McMicken to the Beatles-era Paul McCartney scratchy yelping of Toby Leaman. And here comes the blasphemy part of this post: In my warped opinion Dr. Dog sound like the Beatles, but better and Tallest Man on Earth is like early Dylan but better. Not in terms of lyrics, but everywhere else. I'm glad I got that off my chest. Another one where I thought his (Tallest Man is just Kristian Matsson and a guitar) previous album, Shallow Grave was as good as it gets for frog throated (in a good way) singer songwriter. I was wrong, the new one is much catchier just sounds better. Both in terms of melodies and sound quality.

After that there are a handful of albums I enjoying skipping around the tracks, but not nearly as much as complete albums. There's Clem Snide's The Meat of Life, which packs a powerful punch without exactly rocking out. Lots of specifics about doomed relationships and the emotional toll shows.

Drive By Truckers' The Big To-Do is one that took a long time for me to get into. Their 2008 record, Brighter Than Creation's Dark is an all time favorite for me. Play that from track one on and you get the history of rock and roll, all genres, all tempos. It ebbs and it flows, it's got everything. The three signers compliment each other, all bringing their A game. The new one is mostly revels in that dirty classic rock sound and when bassist and sometimes singer Shonna Tucker pops up to lead a tune, it's not too long before I press skip. Last time around she provided some highlights and a perfect change of pace. So instead of going up and down and giving a full experience of what rock music can be, it's just one wallop to the head after another. Mostly. Now that I've given the album more of a chance I found some slower gems towards the end. But yeah, It's back to being Patterson Hood's show after feeling like there were three strong leads of last time around. And my appreciation for his songwriting grows with each listen. He takes rock and roll cliches of characters and doesn't necessarily flesh them out, but makes them real by plainly stating their motivations and stories with an attitude of sincerity and quick witted not given a fuck. Along with passionate classic rock riffs it a real person with a real story and a real insight by the end. Whether it's the alcohilic binging of "The Fourth Night of My Drinking," the blue collar shit on employee of "This Fucking Job," or the aging rock and roller hanging on a bit too long on "After The Scene Dies" the listener ends up with real affection for these good intentioned miscreants. And like I said earlier, it's rock and roll that wallops you over the head and gets you muddy, which can be very fun. Not many bands do that better that Drive By. I was just hoping they'd continue to excel in showing they had range beyond that.

One record that confused me was the new Band of Horses' Infinite Arms. I like a whole lot of songs on there but I think something went wrong with some of the production choices. I saw them live a few times performing some the new stuff and it got me very excited for this one. I'd like to give them a do over. Speed things up maybe. Make it rock more. Just do something different because I know these songs can sound less bland.

A feel good album I keep coming back to is Yukon Blonde's self titled debut. I'm a sucker for hippie influenced classic rock with lines like "I need rhythm, you need the groove, and I will make it to you." After a few months with this one in my listening rotation, I'm liking it a lot more than I did when I reviewed it. It goes better with summer weather.

Now it's time for list number 2: Albums I want. I'm just going to list the artist.
Titus Andronicus
The Hold Steady
The National
The New Pornographers
Broken Social Scene
The Besnard Lakes
Black Keys
Blitzen Trapper
Deer Tick
Delta Spirit
Gaslight Anthem

And two that I've gotten my hands on but I want to give another chance to after initially not making a strong impression: Josh Ritter and Morning Benders.

I can't believe I haven't even included the new Nas and Damian Marley and the new Reflection Eternal. I've really fallen off the hip-hop wagon this year.

SXSW 2010 Recap

I'm caught up on sleep one week after South by Southwest ended and I finally have the energy to put together a list of the links from my dispatches for Flagpole. Mom and Dad, here you go:

1) My first blog post from SXSW includes impressions of the bands: Ivan & Alyosha, Yukon Blonde, FM Campers, Mariachi El Bronx, and Dillinger Escape Plan

2) My second blog post is a continuation of the first night. The final three bands I saw the first day were Nas and Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley, Everybody Was In The French Resistance, then Morning Bender.

3) The third update from SXSW begins when my second day began. Bands I judged here included Grey Market, Romantica, and MyNameIsJohnMichael.

4) The fourth post begins with Califone then goes into my review of a lackluster GZA show from a few hours later.

5) On the fifth post I start to lose track of time and post reviews of shows in the order that I feel like writing them. Bands include These United States, Peter Wolf Crier, San Saba, The Whigs, and Deer Tick.

6) And lastly, click this sentence to read the piece that ran in the actual printed publication. I tried to put the weekend experience into 300 words.

7) But wait! There's more! One blog post I never got around to finishing includes the other bands I saw over the weekend. Well, not all, but most. It's too late to put it on Flagpole.com now, but here it is below. Bands include Timbre Timber, Band of Horses, Jakob Dylan with Neko Case and Kelly Hogan, Dr. Dog, and a mini all star event including Billy Brag and Tom Morello. I'm leaving it unedited for your reading pleasure.


Church in Austin is Awesome
With noise blasting out of every nook and cranny, two nearby churches offered a respite from the chaos with reverential settings where music could be heard clearly and from the comfort of a pew.

Timbre Timber
Hypnotic magnetism through delicate plucking, a crying violin, and a pedal steal guitar almost put me to sleep. It wasn’t boring, it just begged the listener to close their eyes and visit the world they were creating on stage.

Recommendations
Buy the album? There’s just too much out there now for me to recommend a delicate atmospheric album.
See them live? Yes

Band of Horses
A great laid back rock and roll band playing cut selections from two previous albums and previewing more rollicking joints from the new one.

Buy the album? If you don’t have the first two, get them now. If your ambivalent about Band of Horses making a more straightforward rock follow up to the hypnotic first two, rest assured that the new direction is a good thing.
See them live? Yes. I’m not sure if the church setting actually added anything to their set. For me, I enjoyed them more when I saw these songs performed in a more typical music venue. They rock out in a relaxed way, but it’s still music for rocking out.

Jakob Dylan with Neko Case and Kelly Hogan
After some deliberation, this music critic is ready to endorse the ex-Wallflowers front man. The acoustics of the church helped his set of Americana ballads go down like a good wine. Dylan (‘s son) raspy voice has an worn down appeal that at times can be thin, but was given a full body by harmonizing with the powerful voice of Neko Case and her touring back up singer, Kelly Hogan.

Buy the album? It’s not cutting edge but it’s professionals giving a genre their best effort creating music that goes down like a fine wine.
See them live? Forget about your cred for an evening and have a go at this once chart topping son of an icon.

Speaking of Established Bands with Albums Coming Out This Spring

Dr. Dog

I Caught A Moment

Part of the fun of SXSW is the chance that you might see more well established musicians, even rock legends perform in smaller settings than otherwise possible. I finally caught one of these moments, with one music celebrity sighting after another. First, Billy Bragg took the stage for a solo set, then Wayne Kramer (from MC5) did a set followed by Chris Shiflett, guitarist from the Foo Fighters. Then they all did some songs together. It was all very low key, a nice touch for a past midnight show on the second to last night of the conference/festival. Then Mike Mills of REM took the stage for a rocking rendition of Neil Young’s “Ohio,” including a very exciting “four dead in Ohio!” moment towards the end of the song. Then things turned into a stirring rock and roll show with electric guitar solos with aggressive tude. A new band call Street Sweepers Social Club with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Boots Riley from The Coup. I mostly know Boots from the tour he did with Galactic way back when, so I wasn’t too surprised to hear him emceeing to non-hip-hop beats. This was exciting stadium ready rock. After going to the myspace pager after the show, it strikes me as the big aggressive rock music that is contagious live, but I just don’t have enough of the “big aggressive rocker” in my personality to get much out of the album.


Read more about the first part of the set here: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2010/03/billy_bragg_pla.html

Hear Street Sweepers Social Club here: http://www.myspace.com/streetsweepersocialclub

I Recommend: The New Clem Snide and LaLa.com

"Punched in the heart, in the throat, in the kneecaps too," begins Clem Snide's new album, The Meat of Life. There's no musical build up, the album jumps right out the barrel with this unabashed nasal powered declaration from singer songwriter Eef Barzelay.

Pleasant music with a sad sack singer is a recipe for success, at least for my tastes. And this album does that job perfectly. A little less depressing than The Mountain Goats breakup album "Get Lonley," it does the job I was talking about in my last post. That is, it works as background pleasantness as well as something to sink your teeth into.

I recently got this album for free on lala.com, a site that Pitchfork and AV Club started using to give you a taste of the music you're reading about (click on links to read about and listen to The Meat of Life from the respective websites). I'm not really sure how the whole thing works so far. I think it allows you to listen to a song once for free, then you've got to log in and you've got 5o or so credits, with each one good for a song. Once you get the song you can listen to it on your computer but it's still not an mp3 you can put on your ipod. For that, it looks like each song is 79 cents, or 20 cents cheaper than i-tunes. I've got to explore this thing a bit more, but it may replace i-tunes as my mp3 purchasing go to site.

Maybe I'll learn more about it at SXSW, which I'll be attending next week and reporting on for Flagpole. I'm very excited.

Wait, hold on, I just looked at lala.com's wikepedia page and it looks like it's owned by Apple. This new discovery just became a lot less romantic. But it's still cheaper than i-tunes, so why wouldn't I use it. Apple actually bought lala.com last year for over 80 Million dollars. With that kind of money you could pay full price for the whole CD package.

My Opinion On Opinions

I reviewed the new Dessa CD I was talking about a few blog posts ago. Pretty early on I call it "great." And I definitely felt that way at the time. However, I haven't listened to it since I handed the review in a few weeks ago. Well, I scanned through it once to see if I really liked it that much and decided I didn't feel like listening to it at the time. I credited that humbling experience to not feeling like listening to any hip hop at the time.

Looking back, it was a fun CD to review. There was a lot going on. The CD works best as the center of one's attention. When called on to perform background duty it can get distracting. A great album has to work on both levels.

This is why I hate having to cement my opinion in a published piece. I like to waffle back and forth and explore why I like it and why I don't like it. I used to run my reviews by Kyle, my old roommate before I handed the in and he usually said the same thing: I can't tell if you like it or not. Now my girlfriend tells me the same thing. Both tell me they like the reviews better when there's an obvious opinion. This makes complete sense.

I also like it better when I'm reading or listening something with a strong opinion. After all, I'm a pretty staunch liberal but I find myself listening to conservative talk radio more than I'd like to admit. I like it because it's interesting to hear a strong opinion. And the more it sounds like a conspiracy theory the more entertaining it is.

So why I don't I write like I like to read, with strong controversial opinions? I'll think about that one.

Jumping Into Okkervil River

I was looking for a comfy soundtrack to a lazy Sunday morning last weekend and ended up listening to an Okkervil River concert from npr's All Songs Considered. I added one of the "related stories" to play after the concert.

And I got hooked. A variety of NPR shows have done stories on the band. I ended up listening to them all. Each one basically rehashes the same story with about one or two new nuggets a piece. Good stuff for a slow learner. I had no idea how interesting the band was.

The band's name comes from a short story where the main character falls in love with this singer through her recordings. He finds out she lives nearby, by Okkervil River, so he goes to find her but is disgusted by her. That separation, the one between song and singer, or action and the actor, is a theme that seems to be visited in every one of their songs. Fascinating stuff, bordering on brilliant.

I also realized how little I pay attention to lyrics. I thought you could classify me as an appreciator of lyrics, but after hearing stuff I totally missed from songs I've heard over and over I had to rethink this belief. I can really get into a specific verse, chorus, or even a clever couplet, but concept songs can pass me by. It's hard to pay attention to a story while all that music is going on. My mind drifts. This is not a bad thing. I am now listening to songs I liked before but now on a new level. For example, I listen to "War Criminal Speaks" from Down The River of Golden Dreams and "Savannah Smiles" from The Stage Names with new ears.

As a fun exercise, I recommend searching for a band whose gotten the same npr treatment (or just do the Okkervil thing) and put all the stories on a playlist. The stories are usually short and maybe you'll find a live session or two. I wonder how many bands have this many features on npr's site. Maybe I'll try Drive By Truckers next.

If only the kid me knew I'd be leaning on npr to get my music entertainment. NPR?!? Yes, the station I used to claim made me car sick when my mom would listen to it in the car. The days of B97 are over. It's a crazy world. The Saints are Super Bowl Champs.

The Week in Rabin: Two good reads

I'm recovering from my recent bout of Who Dat fever. Time to get back to the real world. That is, until all the officially licensed stuff I purchased comes in. I might be a sucker. But the Saints are Super Bowl Champs, and for whatever reason, that makes me feel great. OK, enough, back to other stuff:

Nathan Rabin from the AV Club was on a role this week. First, he started a feautre where he'll be taking a critical ear to the Now, That's What I Call Music series. Great stuff here. The time capsule randomness of Aqua-Radiohead-Everclear back to back to back tracking is something that needs to be explored. Come on Barbie, let's go party (ah ah ahhh).

Second, he reviewed two tell all autobiographies of hip hop vixens who slept with Nas. Well, one wasn't really a vixen. I'm a sucker for hip-hop beefs, and Nas vs. Jay Z and The Source vs. XXL were some of my favorites.

Maybe it's time I actually pick up his own memoir published last year.