Best and Biggest of 2010

Since I doubt anything mind-blowing is going to come out either today or tomorrow, I present to you:

the Best and Biggest of 2010

This is a list of the best and biggest of 2010. How did I come up with this list? Very simply actually. Instead of thinking about buzz and hype and/or a load of aesthetic criteria to evaluate each album on some sort of numerical system and then rank them in some sort of order, I went with two very simple processes:

1. For the 10 best albums, I simply picked the 10 albums from this year that I listened to on repeat on my iPod, that is as a whole album, the most times. High replay value. That's it.

2. For the 10 best songs, I simply selected tracks from this year (that don't appear on my Top 10 album choices and) that immediately stuck in my head and/or hypnotized me into listening to them over and over the first time I heard them. Instant re-playability. That's it.

Those two systems left me with the following list(s):

Best Albums of 2010

1. Gemini by Wild Nothing - http://www.mediafire.com/?cvy54u2fsb5ar9m

2. Clinging To A Scheme by the Radio Dept. - http://www.mediafire.com/?mzgqkmztniz

3. New Chain by Small Black - http://www.mediafire.com/?addhw7fbcm3hvfv

4. Instant Coffee Baby / If You Leave It Alone by the Wave Pictures - http://www.mediafire.com/?addhw7fbcm3hvfv & http://www.mediafire.com/?gzmyk5wyzy5

5. Avi Buffalo by Avi Buffalo - http://www.mediafire.com/?lnzedt1hqmn

6. kills by jj - http://www.mediafire.com/?t107u4w33k5853v

7. Sir Luscious Left Foot: the Son of Chico Dusty by Big Boi - http://www.mediafire.com/?v1onmzki4oc

8. Causers of This by Toro Y Moi - http://www.mediafire.com/?5yzz4z2zlzy

9. Before Today by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - http://www.mediafire.com/?cjyikl3vy3r

10. Incredibad by The Lonely Island - http://www.mediafire.com/?ytkymuommjc

Best Songs of 2010

1. "The Polaroid Song" by Allo Darlin'

2. "Say No To Love" by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart


3. "Best Friend" by The Drums


4. "Go Outside" by Cults


5. "Goth-Star" by Pictureplane



6. "The Blues" by Primary 1 feat. Nina Persson

7. "Sundriped" by Com Truise



8. "Broken Dreams Club" by Girls



9. "A More Perfect Union" by Titus Andronicus



10. "Mien" by MillionYoung

In Conclusion:

As much as it pains me to admit it since I want to let things exist be narrative-less, there is a narrative here. It's a narrative running through these seemingly different-sounding artists, albums, and songs. It's the narrative of the entire decade and that is finally culminating in 2010.

2010 has been a year in which the most interesting music to emerge and jump leaps and bounds ahead of its musical peers is music that synthesizes a song format from the recent past and plays around with and within it in a novel and fun way.

It means that the best artists of 2010 have pinned down the mechanics and patterns of a recording technique or recording aesthetic from the recent past and have not only recreated the technique or aesthetic in a convincing pastiche that could stand-in or substitute or (perhaps most-importantly) sound right on a playlist next to "real" recordings from that era, but the artist has also had fun playing around within the format and pushing it to its structural and compositional limits and constantly reminding the listener that it isn't from a recently-bygone era because something about it will be so jarringly different.

Be that Ariel Pink's simultaneous homage to and destruction/reconstruction of 1970s AM radio pop in Before Today or The Pains of Being Pure At Heart's seemingly contradictory synthesis of Sarah Records introverted, anti-stardom with a post-Strokes, effortlessly efficient, big rock sound overloaded with hooks and riffs that Sarah Records never would've touched in the song "Say Not To Love," 2010 is characterized by that simultaneous fan-boy embrace and playful rejection of the sound of the recent past.

(Note: Incredibad doesn't exactly fall into that narrative entirely--it's fun, but not exactly pastiche--but it's undeniably one of the most re-playable releases of the year for other reasons probably.)

And that brings us to the biggest of 2010. Biggest disappointment, that is.

Biggest Disappointment of 2010

Sufjan Stevens and/or Age of Adz

If anyone seemed oblivious to what made 2010 work it was Sufjan Stevens. Which is sad, because he seems like a smart guy from what he occasionally writes in the Asthmatic Kitty blog--and also, y'know, his music.

I know that it probably wasn't easy for him to follow up Come On! Feel the Illinoise in any way that could come close to satisfying the public and his audience, but even I could see that he had two obvious, easy options for achieving at least moderate satisfaction from the public and audiences:

1. He could've made a totally stripped-down, simple cycle of folk songs with no elaborate orchestration and emphasizing a back-to-basics approach. Imagine album of a bunch of songs like "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." and "Casimir Pulaski Day." (This would've been my preferred option)

or

2. He could've tried to "fit in" and make an album of 2010, in which he tries to play in the style-of-the-day but putting some sort of Sufjan stamp on it. Imagine Sufjan's trying to make a track ala Toro y Moi or Washed Out or Neon Indian.

From the sound of Age of Adz (and from the concert I experienced first-hand back in November at the Beacon Theater), it seemed like he tried (and failed) to do option 2.

Age of Adz was indeed electronic, but it didn't exactly sound like any particular electronic style that came before it, except for maybe a recent Of Montreal album drained of any fun and wit. Still, it's way too soon to be re-viving Of Montreal--and especially in such a half-assed way.

Instead, the album was overwhelmingly Sufjan-ey: hyper-clean electronic pop with elaborate, IDM-influenced, yet completely un-fun and funk-less beat programing mashed together with the occasional harmonic dissonance or tonal departure--y'know, for street cred among the academics.

But unlike the Illinois and Michigan albums, Age of Adz's was low (confusing, even) on concepts, great folk songs, and post-Philip-Glass orchestration. It sounded as if, in the years since Illinoise, Sufjan surrounded himself by yes-men that failed to give him honest feedback on all the bad ideas that went into this album as he was working on it.

And so without even going into the mess that was the Beacon Theater live show, Age of Adz and its creator stand as the biggest disappointment of 2010, if only for the wasted potential, unmet expectations, untimeliness and complete irrelevance upon release. Maybe time will be kind to it and, years from now, some musicologists will find some sort of use for the album. Perhaps they'll discover that this particular CD makes an unusually great frisbee or that the mp3s make really great... hard drive space wasters?

But I digress...

In (real) conclusion, 2010 was a swell year. Apart from Sufjan, everyone else did amazing work, including a ton of artists that I failed to mention here but deserve some major nods. 2011 is gonna have a hard time following up 2010.

Post-Snowstorm

So yesterday, last night, and this morning, snow poured down from the sky incessantly all over New York City and all over the rest of the northeast. Some called it a blizzard others a snowstorm, but since this is my first winter outside of Florida, I have no reference point and can only call it "lots of snow."

This morning, I finally went out around Clinton Hill, the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live, to explore and took a few pics and recorded some videos. What I saw was:

timeless...

...snowy stoops...

...and buried cars....

When I got home, I compiled all my video footage and recorded some instrumental music for arpeggiator-driven synthesizer and sleigh bells to go along with the video. I call the track+video "Snow Day" and you can download the track via MediaFire here or check out the whole track+video below (or in HD here):

Little Insects - Black Candy Cane EP

So in an attempt to both celebrate and oppose the proliferation of consumer culture that goes on around the holidays, here is a new, free Little Insects release. In other words, it's a gift to you (Merry Christmas!) but it's free and doesn't proliferate consumer culture around a time of otherwise rampant $$$ spending.

It's a two-song EP (or a single?) of Velvet Underground covers called Black Candy Cane EP made in collaboration with my friend Geannie of Saving Twilight. She sang on, decided upon and played guitar on the first track ("Femme Fatale") and then I did the second ("Sunday Morning.")

You can stream it via bandcamp here:

And this is the cover:

Galaxie 500-ish: Dean Wareham Live At Music Hall of Williamsburg

On Friday, December 18, 2010 Dean Wareham (and his un-announced, un-billed wife Britta Phillips) played a set of Galaxie 500 songs at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Here's how it went down.

The night began with an amazing, yet seemingly out-of-nowhere performance by a band calling themselves only the incredibly-difficult-to-Google name of The Building (so just look on bandcamp.)

They consisted of a combination of more-or-less traditional rock music instrumentation of bass, guitars, sampler, and drums with traditional, well, traditional music instrumentation of cello, clarinet, and violin, seated just next to the band. But unlike the over-blown, self-indulgent train-wreck that many indie-rock situations and combinations such as that can easily become, The Building played a somber set of subtle songs merging rich, jazzy harmonies with their own post-punk take on jangle pop. In many ways (fittingly) reminiscent of Galaxie 500, but in even more ways completely different and more harmonically elaborate.

You can see and hear most of one of the last song they played, called "Twenty Years," in the video below--or at least what I managed to record before an employee of the venue asked me to turn my camera off. This song is also available as a free download from their website.

The Building "Twenty Years"

It'd be a stretch to say The Building "rocked," because they played to an audience of early-birds most of whom (including yours truly) sat quietly indian-style and awestricken on the floor by the stage. However, they slowly, quietly and politely proved that real rock bands try too hard.

The Building's amazing set was followed by the considerably less-amazing, Cheval Sombre.

While in an almost any another context, Cheval Sombre wouldn't be a bad band, they were a major step-down from The Building. Chevel Sombre's ensemble consisted of a violinist, a Casiotone player, and a multi-instrumentalist switching between melodica, lap-steel guitar, and omnichord. Normally, this would be an entirely fascinating ensemble, at least arrangement-wise, but they nearly bored me to death because they were lead by a highly uncharismatic, seemingly generic, acoustic-guitar-playing singer-songwriter buried under layers of reverb and/or delay rendering his lyrics unintelligible. This is not to say that unintelligible lyrics always suck, because that can actually be awesome when the total-effect of the music is enough to pull it off. However in the case of Cheval Sombre, unintelligible lyrics are unacceptable because the music supporting these lyrics just fails at the composition and performance level. About the only good thing I can say about Cheval Sombre's set is that it left most members of the audience with peace of mind and without the fear of "missing something good" while they went to the bathroom before Dean Wareham's set began.

(For obvious reasons, there is no video of Cheval Sombre.)

Finally (and boy do that I mean that adverb), Dean Wareham took to the stage along with his (surprise!) guest and wife Britta Phillips.

There were others, but, since their names were neither Naomi Yang or Damon Krukowski, their names and what they played don't really matter. Oh yeah! Here're two more pictures of Dean & Britta:

Their set consisted of mostly the hits of Galaxie 500. They played most of the songs I wanted to hear from On Fire, except for (my favorite) "Tell Me."

Galaxie 500-ish - "Strange"

Galaxie 500-ish - "When Will You Come Home"

Between and during the songs, here are a few things notable things that happened in no particular order:

• Dean apologized for his voice.
• Dean proceeded to screw up (vocally) only about 1% of the time and then sing pretty amazingly the other 99% of the time.
• Dean read a fan letter in which a female fan said his new book, Black Postcards, was pretty good but that he was a jerk for cheating on his wife during one part of the book and requested that he play the song about eating Twinkees in line.
• Dean introduced "Decomposing Trees" simply by saying that he "used took a lot of acid."
• Dean talked about and drank "special" cold medicine.

After these events, the band walked off stage and the audience begged for their return via applause. They returned the stage along with the singer of The Building and performed an amazing, Bob Dylan (by way of Nico) cover:

Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips - "I'll Keep It With Mine"

And (finally) the band closed out the set with a cover of the Joy Division/New Order (and, in my opinion, contender for greatest-ever) song "Ceremony" in nearly the exact same style of Galaxie 500's amazing cover from On Fire.

Galaxie 500-ish - "Ceremony"

All in all, two out of three ain't bad.

Jeff Mangum seen (and heard) in Brooklyn

So in case you haven't heard, a pre-Christmas miracle happened in Brooklyn: Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel might rose from the dead (or wherever he's been hiding) to play one, tiny, un-promoted show in Brooklyn's The Schoolhouse performance space. If you are like me, and were not part of the tiny audience of <100 people, you can live vicariously through mp3 bootlegs.

Download the mp3 bootleg below:
Jeff Mangum @ The Schoolhouse in Brooklyn, NY 12-03-10

(via International Tapes)

Briefly Back From Brooklyn @ Uncle Lou's in Orlando, FL

Last Sunday, November 28th was my last night in Orlando, FL. I had spent a few days there celebrating Thanksgiving with my family and hanging out with a few old friends and now the subsequent days working extra hours at my day job to make up for the hours I didn't work while on the trip--hence the delayed posting here. Anyway, for my last night, I could think of no other way to spend my time than by playing a small show at Uncle Lou's on Mills Ave. with two of my favorite Orlando musicians and inviting my friends to come and see us play. The e-flyer for the show looked kinda like this:



The night began with an intimate performance by Phil Defile (aka Phil Ileto aka the Defilers aka WPRK DJ of Hex Enduction Programme) on a mountain of vintage keyboards and his trademark, gentle vocal delivery.



He played the haunting, season-appropriate song "Witch Vllg," which is track B6 or so on his fantastic, ultra-single, Fall Subscription Vol. 2.

You can download the track for free here: http://www.mediafire.com/?vf2mpf834uc4n2g or watch the video from the show below.

Phil Defile - "Witch Vllg"



After, Phil, Saving Twilight took to the Uncle Lou's stage, or really just the rug and area by the pool table that serves as a stage.



Since the last time I'd seen them, fellow, Orland-based singer-songwriter, Lauren Carder had joined up with founding member Geannie Friedman and drummer Andrea Knight. They unveiled a new song written as a collaboration between Friedman and Carder called "Beautiful Now."

Saving Twilight - "Beautiful Now"



Geannie also contributed to Phil's Fall Subscription Vol. 2 with an equally amazing track about coat collars and Keruoac Books called "Twilight." You can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?m7utb3p9mjm879k

That night also marked the debut/final-performance of Giant Insects, who took the "stage" after Saving Twilight. This was a band made up of myself, Omar Delarosa, and Casey Schwarz (of Little Insects), Isaac Pinedale (of Wheels Above), and Andrew Santorelli.



We had only minimal rehearsal time and I admire Casey, Isaac and Andrew's boldness for going through with the show with so little preparation before hand and going along with my crazy, hair-brained, Giant-Insects scheme. In fact, only Casey, Andrew and I really got to rehearse together the day before and Isaac just somehow showed up and pulled off an amazing performance, entirely rehearsal-free on old and new Little Insects songs such as these, awesomely captured to digital camera by David Hood:

Giant Insects - Casio Drone/ Stop Taking Advice From Songs



Giant Insects - Feeling Just Like 20 Bucks



Giant Insects - Burn The City



The night ended with a very special, guest appearance by Christopher Paul Stelling, a Central Floridian now also-living in Brooklyn like myself and visiting Orlando for the holiday also like myself. The guest appearance was setup and made possible by awesome Orlando musician and all-around-mover-and-shaker, Matt Kamm, whose current project Telethon, amazes me more and more with each subsequent release. He played an intimate acoustic-set with some vocal support from Julia Christgau. Unfortunately, I have no photos or video of his performance since I spent some of it putting away our equipment and loading it into various vehicles (this is one of the many limitations of being a blogger/musician/etc. at the same time.) However, you can check out some of Mr. Stelling's amazing folk music on bandcamp here: http://christopherpaulstelling.bandcamp.com

As the night came to a close, I felt very warm inside. Not only because it was awesome getting see and play with all these old friends, but because I've been living in New York for almost 6 months now in relatively cool weather and Orlando, by contrast, just feels incredibly warm to me now in a literal, climate-sense as well.