2018 in taste and appetite - 1: Reading

If there was ever an "end" to meta-narratives it was only a brief moment, enjoyed by the few who could name it as such — an alibi for those with resources and the freedom to spend them. For the rest of us, common stories continue but with renewed urgency. Climate change presents a very real and tangible meta-narrative, even if we don't yet have eyes to see or ears to hear. What we value, consume and celebrate in this moment will forever be relativized by our current way of relating to the planet and the destructive systems that plunder it. History, it seems, will not be kind to us in 2018, no matter how much music we listened to or how many books we read.

We all have rituals that help us cope with the forces that lie beyond our control. Each day I check my news feed because I want to see a breakthrough, a way to avert the coming catastrophe or halt this environmental assault on lives around the globe. But this expression of anxiety — my need to keep up with the news cycle — usually makes me more anxious. Time passes. Sometimes I simply want that impending limit, however destructive, to arrive and prove once and for all that our current trajectory is doomed. In those moments, which are frequent, I realize the pessimism of my appetite. This is not fruitful behaviour, nor is it a healthy place to be. 

Much of what appears in the list below prevented me from lingering there, on the edge of my news feed, for too long. Twitter helped but it also didn't help.

This year, I spent a fair amount of time reading about aesthetics, mostly from Marxist perspectives. Terry Eagleton's major study, The Ideology of the Aesthetic was a springboard for readings from Kant, Schiller, Marcuse, Sontag, Ranciére, Ngai and others. Those readings, mostly essay-length, were left off the list. The big highlights of my year in reading were Billy-Rae Belcourt's poetry collection, This Wound is a World, Miriam Toew's Women Talking and John Berger's posthumous collection, Landscapes. 

I was able to see Belcourt read and discuss his writing with Rosanna Deerchild this past November. His ability to weave through poetics, theory and the politics of indigeneity left a deep impression on me. I've been following his work since finding him in GUTS magazine's "futures" issue. At once personal and philosophical, Belcourt's writing navigates around and through the loneliness rendered by colonization — a form of negativity that "stalks" indigeneity — all the while gesturing toward a future that can't be contained by settler logics. Belcourt thinks deeply about his writing practice, at an almost ontological level, but he avoids the pitfalls of esotericism or academic jargon. I look forward to reading more of his work down the road. 

Miriam Toews also came through Winnipeg this summer to promote her new book. I've never seen McNally Robinson so crowded. Women Talking takes its premise from horrific real-world events — over several years, hundreds of women and girls living in a conservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia were drugged and raped in their sleep. Toews's novel imagines a scenario in which the men of the colony have all gone to town, leaving the women behind to determine whether stay and fight or quickly pack up their belongings and flee. I found the novel quite moving and read it quickly. But in discussing the book with other Mennonites, I've come to realize that many of them have complicated feelings about the book and the way that it frames its subject matter. More than once I heard the complaint that Toews was stealing a story that doesn't belong to her and conflating cultural categories. How many of them actually read it, before levelling those critiques, is another question. I'm suspicious of those who treat Toews as inauthentic or even dangerous because she is "outside" the Mennonite church proper. Her work has always fallen somewhere between truth and fiction, and I can't help thinking that at least part of the Mennonite critique of Miriam Toews is couched in sexism. (It's not uncommon for Rudy Wiebe to be held up as the shining example of what a Mennonite writer should be.) Women Talking raises the stakes, helpfully for some, arguably less helpfully for others. 

In 2018, I continued to read more John Berger. Landscapes collects essays from his long career of art criticism but it's his discussion of drawing, which emerges in several essays, that interests me most. "For the artist," he writes, "drawing is discovery. . . . A line, an area of tone, is important not really because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see." Perhaps that is why I continue to draw, why it so often lifts my spirits. Drawing, at its best, is for me a practice of remaining open to the possibilities of whatever comes next. Often the effect of this practice arrives like the opposite of anxiety. 

Poetry
This Wound is a World by Billy-Rae Belcourt
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Fiction
Women Talking by Miriam Toews (2018)
The Kingdom by Emmanuel Carrère
No Strangers in Exile by Hans Harder
Little Fish by Casey Plett (2018)

Non-fiction
Landscapes by John Berger
Stolen City by Owen Toews (2018)
Martin Heidegger by George Steiner
Civil Imagination by Ariella Azoulay
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Mourning Becomes the Law by Gillian Rose
Aesthetics and Politics by Adorno et al.

Comics
Why Art? by Eleanor Davis (2018)
Beverly by Nick Drnaso
Wendy by Walter Scott
Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero by Michael Deforge

What I listened to in 2015

At this point in the year, it seems redundant, even annoying, to again tout Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly as the most important, if not the best, album of 2015. Anyone who follows the lists that accumulate around this time of year knows such designations mean very little. But perhaps this year is different. TPAB's surprise release in March was an event: that day I found myself glued to my Twitter feed, watching critics and others post their first reactions as we collectively experienced Lamar’s new album for the first time. Then came the think pieces: from celebrations of its artistry and explanations for its overwhelming amount of allusions and cultural references, to discussions of how the album links up with different social justice movements and how it may fall short. Along with provoking all this, Lamar's album performed the important work of disrupting familiar channels of white privilege in what felt like the most ambitious way possible.

On To Pimp a Butterfly Lamar isn't interested in preserving a safe space for listeners who choose to remain ignorant of what his album celebrates and what it condemns. For this reason, it remains a challenging, complex listen, from start to finish. To echo an old truism from one of my undergraduate theology classes: when we read scripture we don't simply interpret the text that sits in front of us; that same text also reads us. It's no coincidence that this point applies to TPAB in much the same way it applies to sacred texts. These works question the stability of our reading even as we question the reliability of their account. For listeners like myself, who haven't always known how to appreciate the music of nonwhite cultures (instead spending my youth in the comfortable recesses of indie rock) and whose fandom can very easily slide into appropriation, TPAB’s inaccessibility arrives like a revelation. Established voices will wax poetic about how Lamar's music is a testament to our times, that it represents the turmoil and trauma of what it means to live under white supremacy, as so many great rap albums have done and will continue to do time and again. But what makes TPAB so great is that, in addition to documenting and complicating our representations, it has little patience for its white audience. As kris ex writes,

[Lamar] took all of the acclaim he had received as a critical darling from his major label debut—the rightfully extolled good kid, m.A.A.d city—and doubled down on his Blackness, not for the entertainment of white people, but in near-total disregard for their experience of his conversation. He was Miles Davis playing with his back to the crowd, and in that sense, it's a miracle that this record has found the audiences that it has found.

For those of us who simply want to enjoy music on our own terms TPAB doesn't offer much. Rather, as it moves through what Lamar calls "survivor's guilt" and knits together the fragments of poetic monologue about Lucy (the temptation towards success, fame, or a flight from reality, aka the devil), TPAB confronts its listeners with wave after wave of radical truths, born out of Lamar’s own personal struggle to stay grounded and remain accountable to his community: a story that began on 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city.

I was late to the party. I first heard “Backseat Freestyle” and “Swimming Pools” the way a lot of people did: on the radio, in a social setting, wherever a catchy hook and ubiquitous chorus seemed appropriate. Like so many other casual listeners, I initially wrote off “Swimming Pools” as an ode to youthful debauchery when it was in fact a sharp indictment of substance abuse. It took me longer than most to finally listen to good kid, m.A.A.d city in its entirety, but it soon became clear why the album had been met with such wide acclaim. To hear “Swimming Pools” in its proper context is to Lamar’s this anecdote about drinking as part of a personal narrative, a grim precursor to the heartbreaking epic “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.” To hear it any other way is to miss something crucial to its message. The word “context” appears repeatedly on To Pimp a Butterfly, and if that’s not meant to be instructive, I don’t know what is.

Many of the songs on To Pimp a Butterfly are made to stand on their own, but as with most Lamar’s output, they’re richer in context. Even his first single from the album, the controversially sunny “i,” is granted a second life: refashioned as a live performance that extends into a impassioned plea from Lamar to a restless audience. But among TPAB’s many incredible moments and transitions, the sequence of "Complexion (A Zulu Love)” and "The Blacker the Berry,” strikes me as the most brutal, the most honest and disruptive pairing on the album. Over a delayed beat and bassline, the former track finds Lamar negotiating with his ideals of universal human worth, where “complexion don’t mean a thing.” The song slowly builds into celebration of black diversity that culminates in Rapsody’s beautiful final verse. As the track ends, we hear Lamar’s voice reemerge: “Barefoot babies with no cares / Teenage gun toters that don’t play fair, should I get out the car? / I don’t see Compton, I see something much worse / The land of the landmines, the hell that’s on earth.” Then comes “The Blacker the Berry,”  Lamar’s unflinching survey of that grim reality: a struggle that not only encompasses the ongoing legacy of racism, but of gang violence, trauma, and a “generational hatred” in which Lamar finds himself complicit. As he emphasized back in April, this song is as personal as it is political. “When I say these it’s for myself, it’s therapeutic for myself, because I still feel that urge and I still feel that anger and that hatred for this man next door.” To Pimp a Butterfly tears down the distance between artist and audience, but it has no time for listeners who aren’t willing to meet it on its own terms.

Other albums from 2015 found their creators grappling with similar kinds of distance, but rarely was it dismantled so effectively or delivered with such urgency. These albums held my attention for other reasons. Apart from To Pimp a Butterfly, no album felt as intimate and attentive as Sufjan Steven’s Carrie & Lowell; no album was as electric and unabashed as Grimes’ Art Angels; and no album made nostalgic self-loathing so attractive as Tame Impala’s Currents. 

At the local level, one of my favourite Edmonton artists, Jessica Jalbert, joined forces with Renny Wilson (another former Edmonton stalwart) to make Faith Healer. Their album Cosmic Troubles surpassed my already high expectations with a heady blend of VU-inspired ballads and stoner lullabies. My most memorable concert experience was provided by Regina’s Andy Shauf, who drew a sold out crowd to one of Edmonton’s most remote venues and held us all in quiet reverence for the entirety of his set. As I prepared to leave Edmonton, Vancouver’s Weed released the aptly titled Running Back, which provided just the right soundtrack for my journey back to Winnipeg.

It was a year of transition for me, as I spent significant amounts of time living in four different cities, stumbling my way through new social arrangements while attempting to figure out my next steps. As always, I’ve found comfort and energy in the discovery of new music. These annual lists are a chance for me to take stock of the year; but more than that, they illustrate how all the music I’ve listened to this year has had a key part in shaping it. This music is an inextricable part of 2015, not only because of how it challenged and inspired me, but because it often reflected what mattered most.

10 favourite songs from the past year

1. Beach House – Sparks
2. Jenny Hval – That Battle is Over
3. Braids – Taste
4. Thundercat – Them Changes
5. Empress Of – How Do You Do It
6. Weed – Stay in the Summer
7. Tame Impala – The Less I Know the Better
8. Vince Staples – Norf Norf
9. Grimes – Realiti
10. Bjork – Stonemilker

And a full list of my favourite albums from 2015

1. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
2. Grimes – Art Angels
3. Faith Healer – Cosmic Troubles
4. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
5. Tame Impala – Currents
6. Andy Shauf – The Bearer of Bad News
7. Empress Of – Me
8. Vince Staples – Summertime ’06
9. Weed – Running Back
10. Thundercat – The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam
11. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love
12. Beach House – Depression Cherry
13. Lower Dens – Escape From Evil
14. Viet Cong – Viet Cong 
15. Deerhunter – Fading Frontier
16. Jim O’Rourke – Simple Songs
17. Joanna Newsome – Divers
18. Bjork – Vulnicura
19. Jessica Pratt – On Your Own Love Again
20. Jenny Hval – Apocalypse, Girl

Listing and listening in 2014

Like many privileged, semi-literate white males before me, I like to end the year by noting and ranking the cultural material I've been consuming over the last 365 days. I’ve been doing this for over a decade. My first year-end music list felt like a big deal. It appeared in my high school newspaper and caused a minor stir among my classmates for the very understandable reason that it was “out of touch” with what people were actually listening to. At the time, this judgment, which I was half expecting, only served to validate my elitism. Like many a high-minded idiot teenager, I held a naive disdain for popular taste and didn’t really understand what it meant. My list, like almost all published lists, was a performative act. But when I try to think about who I was performing for, I don’t get very far. In retrospect, that particular “best of” list looks like a way of proving (as much to myself as to anyone else) that I belonged to a specific category of taste, a cultivated sphere of discerning listeners. I imagine things would have been different had the internet been as pervasive then as it is today. Perhaps I’d have been more humble, less melodramatic and self-important. More likely, I’d have been a troll.

Over the last ten years, I’ve come to see my year-end ritual in a different light. (This critical pursuit was actually the occasion for first starting this blog back at the end of 2008.) For better or worse, I fall into the same social category as some of the loudest voices in the culture industry and, though I no longer try imitate them, I’ve realized that there’s little value in the kind of writing most of us produce when we make lists. Most of my past lists were attempts perform a certain kind of authority that is, I think, becoming less persuasive. As Carl Wilson has observed, there’s been a shift away from the kind of paternal criticism that used to dominate debates over artistic merit in the music industry. And yet lists persist, especially at this time of year.

Perhaps such lists are and have always been a form of clickbait, a promise of easy knowledge and authority. Perhaps my general cynicism for these rankings comes from a place of resentment; perhaps, deep down, I think I deserve a bigger platform from which to champion my favourite things. (This is certainly how I felt in high school.) Perhaps my waning enthusiasm also likely has something to do with my view of our list-driven culture as a symptom of residual patriarchy (and neoliberal competition) in which I still willingly participate. But even based on their own merit, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of year-end lists and reviews are lazy attempts to recycle old material and, as such, the writing rarely moves beyond grand, self-congratulatory pronouncements. Hopefully this short review of the music I loved in 2014 will be different, but I won’t make any such promises.

I wrote less about music throughout 2014 than I have in previous years, but I did manage to post a few brief notes on tracks by Ought, Chad VanGaalen, and The War on Drugs, as well as a lengthier writeup on the latest album from Wild Beasts. I had meant to write some shorter pieces about Sun Kil Moon, St. Vincent, and Flying Lotus but never had enough time to work through my impressions. Having a chance to sit down and synthesize some of this stuff is one of the things I relish most about the Christmas season. And just as I was starting to compile my list, the year in music ended with a big surprise.

Before D’Angelo’s sudden release of Black Messiah a few weeks back, I was fairly certain that my music appreciation in 2014 started and ended with the album Benji by Sun Kil Moon, an intimate and at times brutally honest collection of songs that burrows deep into the mundane concerns of a middle-aged man. It’s the kind of album that feels out of step with the most relevant parts of the pop landscape: the territory is far from new but that's also one of the best things about it.

In the last couple weeks, D’Angelo and The Vanguard have taken over my listening from Sun Kil Moon, and rightly so. There is much to love about Black Messiah: it’s fresh, effortless and moving. It grins with positive energy, it marches on with fists defiantly raised in a gesture of radical love. With the rising profile of racially motivated violence across the US, with reactionary attempts to depoliticize the crimes committed by predominantly white police in places like Ferguson, MO and New York City, with the ignorance of those attempting to displace and neutralize the very necessary point made by #blacklivesmatter, D’Angelo’s radically titled follow-up to 2000’s Voodoo was an album we all needed to hear. It’s been well publicized that D’Angelo, keenly aware of his album’s urgency, along with his team, worked his ass off to get the thing out as soon as possible. The final production on Black Messiah may have been rushed, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. After all, it was a 14 year wait. As D'Angelo explained on a pamphlet from the album's debut listening session,

Not every song on this album is politically charged (though many are), but calling this album Black Messiah creates a landscape where these songs can live to the fullest. Black Messiah is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.

Sun Kil Moon's Benji, then, can only be secondary, and the album isn't really suited for top spot anyhow. In fact, I'd argue that as one of the best albums put out by a sad white guy with a guitar in 2014 it needs to be heard alongside D'Angelo and The Vanguard. Released in early February, Benji takes some of the most sentimental, cliche-ridden topics in white guy folk music and explores them until they count for something. It is, in many ways, a good summary of white privilege: Kozelek sings about getting older, feeling uncool at shows and having to pee a lot; he describes watching helplessly as his parents age; he reflects on pivotal moments in his youth, he names his insecurities, loves and attachments; he revisits moments of confusion, resentment and joy that went unnoticed by everyone around him. Some of the most moving moments, however, are not about him. On songs like “Carissa” and “Micheline” Kozelek turns his attention toward individuals from his past who’ve been victims of tragic circumstances, people who’ve had to struggle against an absurd, indifferent existence.

Notwithstanding his baiting of the music press (to which Perfect Pussy's Meredith Graves gave one of the best responses), Kozelek held my interest through much of the year. His informal approach to songwriting was oddly compelling and I found much of Benji to be poignant and occasionally even beautiful. But Benji also has its limits. Kozelek committed to his anecdotal approach, honing in on the banal specifics of the everyday for a dense, univocal 60 minutes. It was a clever ploy. Benji’s understated form allowed Kozelek to say more than everybody else; his useless tiff with The War on Drugs seemed to carry that logic even further. Perhaps that’s why I found less straightforward albums by Flying Lotus and St. Vincent all the more compelling.

On Flying Lotus' fifth album, You're Dead!, Steven Ellison approaches his theme directly and dialogically without saying too much. Death is all too common and it comes all too quick. We glimpse it, we feel it; it’s a part of every human story. But it’s also profoundly individual and in this way eminently mysterious. On "Never Catch Me, my favourite song of the year, Kendrick Lamar joins Ellison for a powerful, instantly accessible distillation of You’re Dead!’s ambivalent embrace of the unknown. After the off-kilter jazz breakdowns of “Cold Dead” and “Fkn Dead," we meet hope paradoxically, in life's absence. The rest of the album expands the promise of “Never Catch Me,” playfully weaving in and out of something like consciousness and breaking down our linear expectations of time and the eternal return.

Cosmic concerns take all kinds of different forms and some are more familiar than others. Another big release of 2014, St Vincent’s fourth solo album, observes the futurity of our present moment by passing through a field of religious anachronism. On St Vincent, Annie Clark situates herself as icon, while we in the audience blankly nod our heads, lost in another thumping guitar line. In several different interviews, Clark explained that part of her intention with this album was to explore her own sound. In other words, it’s self-titled for a reason: it claims to realize the sound of Clark’s alter-ego, the sound of a saint.

So then, what does a saint sound like? More to the point, what does a saint of the (post)secular present sound like? What I liked most about Clark’s answer was that in each manifestation—her album, her lyrics, her videos and performances—she used her own static image as a point of departure. To me, this seems exactly right. Saints are typically accessed by sight, not by sound; it's easy to conjure up generic images of saintliness, the pale-faces of martyrs and mystics immortalized in Christian iconography. In this way, St. Vincent is an icon for the digital age, where the proliferation of sounds and images arrive from above and below. In the context of Clark’s discography, it continues an interesting progression: the more pronounced the artifice, the more robotic the appearance, the closer we get to something like truth or identity.

Earlier this year, Clark wrote a short piece for The Guardian about her experience using Twitter. "We perform our identities in the analogue and digital realm. Every tweet or T-shirt is a signifier that consciously or subconsciously communicates something about us to others."

St.Vincent’s preoccupation with the image is also what makes Clark’s cultural commentary on songs like “Digital Witness” so persuasive. Our lives, our experiences, our identities are always mediated by something, but digital platforms in particular enhance our visibility and, along with it, our appetites for spectatorship. Perhaps our orientation towards the glowing screen is less novel than we think. Perhaps we aren’t so different from medieval laymen, attuned to the icons that adorned their places of worship. We believe that we are accessing something that we all hold in common, a vehicle for transcendence, a way to participate in something greater than ourselves. Such naturalized rituals will become another era’s anachronism; but, as always, our desires persist within a contested history.

As Clark puts it, in a song inspired by her mother’s illness, “I, I prefer your love to Jesus.”

10 songs for 2014

Flying Lotus feat. Kendrick Lamar - Never Catch Me
Perfume Genius - Queen
Ought - Habit
D’Angelo - The Charade
Caribou - Can’t Do Without You

Viet Cong - Continental Shelf
Wild Beasts - A Simple Beautiful Truth

Lydia Ainsworth - White Shadows

Future Islands - Spirit
Ava Luna - PRPL

My favourite EPs from 2014

Lydia Ainsworth - Right from Real Pt. 1
Vince Staples - Hell Can Wait
Hush Pup - Waterwings
Speedy Ortiz - Real Hair
Baths - Ocean Death

My favourite albums of 2014

D’Angelo - Black Messiah
Sun Kil Moon - Benji
Flying Lotus - You’re Dead!
St. Vincent - St. Vincent
Caribou - Our Love
Jom Comyn - In the Dark on 99 (All the Time, All the Time)
Ought - More Than Any Other Day
Chad VanGaalen - Shrink Dust
A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Sea When Absent
Wild Beasts - Present Tense
FKA Twigs - LP1
Grouper - Ruins
Future Islands - Singles

Owen Pallett - In Conflict
Ava Luna - Electric Balloon
BadBadNotGood - III
The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
Swans - To Be Kind
Amen Dunes - Love
Cibo Matto - Hotel Valentine
Marissa Nadler - July
Mac DeMarco - Salad Days

Ex Hex - Rips
Angel Olsen - Burn Fire For No Witness
Perfume Genius - Too Bright

My most popular posts of 2013

1. An obligatory review of My Bloody Valentine's m b v
2. Pruitt-Igoe and the fate of modernist architecture
3. Notes on Capital, Vol. 1: Labour and reproduction
4. Some refractions from Arcade Fire's Reflektor
5. My top ten of 2013

My top 5 of 2012

1. Fiona Apple made an incredible album

Like Frank Ocean's channel Orange, Fiona Apple's fourth full length, The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Turner of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do was something most critics could get behind regardless of bias. Unlike the circumstances that surrounded Apple's previous releases, the press actually seemed ready for something this emotionally raw and thematically bizarre. The awkward release of Extraordinary Machine in 2005 (prefaced by the leak of demos from 2004, which sounded more like collaborations between Apple and her then producer Jon Brion) led to an uneven album, as well as a minor split between fans who preferred the new arrangements with Mike Elizondo and the fans who believed Apple's earlier demos with Brion to be superior.

I fell into the latter category, and I remember being blown away by the Extraordinary Machine demos; they made good on the promise of 1999's When the Pawn... (which arguably remains Apple's best record) and took her songwriting in a much stranger direction. Brion's signature in the productions was unmistakable. The songs were dark and despairing, but Brion's orchestral arrangements achieved a balance between the ruthlessness of Apple's musical ambition and her mad swell of romantic energy. Apple's concern, and the reason why the album was delayed and reworked before its proper release, was that Brion's compositions overshadowed her songwriting. Upon re-listening, Apple seems wholly justified and it's clear that she's been careful to avoid the same problems since.

Musically, The Idler Wheel... is Fiona Apple's sparest record. The accompaniment of percussion (and any instrumentation beyond the piano) serves her material, which is always jarringly personal and, for that reason, always slightly askew. As The Onion's AV Club review put it, "the production feels compulsive, not calculated." This distinction works to describe most of the album, and I'd argue that Jon Brion's earlier work with Apple achieved the same effect despite working from the opposite direction. Apple's persona is dangerously excessive. In this year's Valentine's Day post, I suggested that for Apple, love always occurs at a pathological level. The point is distilled throughout the songs of The Idler Wheel..., but the line that lays it out best occurs in its centrepiece: the playful, sporadic "Left Alone." "How could I ask anyone to love me," Apple realizes, "when all I do is beg to be left alone." The whole "I'm my own worst enemy" thing is one of the worst pop culture cliches, and though Apple's project frequently suggests as much, she avoids reducing her emotions to the rational and the obvious.

2012 was peppered with news about Apple's run-in with the law, her touching responses to fans, and her tour cancellation (she wanted to spend time with her dog who was dying of cancer). (My favourite interview/article, which celebrated her as a "musical hermit" came courtesy of New York Magazine.) The headlines were amusing but The Idler Wheel... provides us with a self-portrait of real depth, and it has album artwork to match (assembled from a stack of designs and doodles that Apple gave to her record company). As an amateur critic, I can say without reservation that The Idler Wheel... is Apple's strongest and most cohesive artistic statement yet. As a longtime fan, I can also say that she's finally delivered on her promise in a style and format that allows her songwriting to thrive. I've always had pretty strong convictions with regard to Fiona Apple and it's nice to finally see internet buzz machine working in her favour. God knows she deserves it.

Fiona Apple: "Left Alone"


2. The "garage rock" revival revival













Remember popular music in 2001? Remember the attempts of taste-making dinosaurs like Rolling Stone and Spin to market a "return" to rock and roll, despite proclamations by major bands like Radiohead that "rock is dead"? Looking back, the connection between the changing face of music journalism and new trends in popular music has to be made. For the teenage me, those rags were the real engines that drove musical exploration; they were resources, guides, and often oracles for the next big thing. But by the turn of the millennium, they were also becoming outdated and increasingly selective. So it makes sense that a return to the hallowed tradition of rock (in bands like The White Stripes, The Vines, The Strokes, Interpol, and countless others) would give magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone a boost.

All this preamble, simply to say that 2012 saw a minor surge in critically successful albums that bear some resemblance to the garage rock revival of yesteryear. Or, at least they pick up where some of those other bands left off, which is also to say that despite the seeming groundswell of 2001, garage rock has never really gone away. My favourite "rock" albums of this year came from retro outfits like Tame Impala, The Men, Thee Oh Sees (who've been plugging away for the better half of a decade), and their prolific wunderkind pal, Ty Segall.

Australia's Tame Impala released their debut back in 2010. It was an awesome mess of pop hooks and psychedelic guitar effects. Lonerism works with the same kind of energy, but this time around there's a focussed theme and the songs are simply tighter. In a similar way, Putrifiers II is Thee Oh Sees at their most polished and listenable. If indie rock has a sound that it should striving for, it's captured by Thee Oh Sees. Songs like "Floods New Light" and "Wax Face" are exceedingly ballsy jams, while "Wicker Park" closes Putrifiers II with an amusing swell of strings that makes for a comic conclusion to a very different sounding album. It would be easy to describe Thee Oh Sees' sound as "disaffected" but there's plenty of feeling here; it's just that most of the time, it's put in its proper place, amid all the bullshit.

Tame Impala: "Mind Mischief"

Thee Oh Sees: "Wax Face"


3. The year of the loner

Along with a glimpse of Fiona Apple's brooding ego and Tame Impala's sonic embrace of alienation, Sharon Van Etten's Tramp gave the loner in me plenty to chew on. Folk singer-songwriters are a dime a dozen, but Van Etten (like Fiona Apple) demonstrates how compelling one can be in the wake of failed relationships: she stands as a flawed source of resolve, but also site of doubt and despair. Tramp is easily Van Etten's best, and as title might suggest, the album isn't simply a breakup record; it's about a compulsion toward heartbreak and isolation, the passage in and out of relationships, over and over again. It's a dozen breakup albums rolled into one. No surprise, then, that Tramp is at times ridiculously sad. "Warsaw" opens the album with a resounding note of futility. Moments later, the chorus of "Give Out" finds Van Etten mourning her relationship before it even takes off: "you're the reason why I'll move to the city, you're why I'll need to leave." The comparatively upbeat lead single, "Serpents," continues in a similar tone, addressing the speaker's self-projections head-on through a former partner who "hold[s] the mirror to everybody else." Every one of Tramp's songs is heartbreaking (even "We Are Fine," her decisively optimistic duet with Beirut's Zach Condon) and it's hard not to be swept away by the power of Van Etten's emotional despair. So, in conclusion, be careful with this one.

Sharon Van Etten: "Give Out"


4. Est. Brooklyn, 2009













Speaking of history repeating itself, 2012 saw the release of new albums from three of the biggest Brooklyn indie bands and one of its most overlooked, each of whom released their previous (breakthrough) full length in 2009. Unlike all the critical fanfare that accompanied Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective's latest record, Centipede Hz, came and went without much notice. Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors, on the other hand, released some of their best material. Since 2006's Yellow House, I've been a big fan of Grizzly Bear and I was prepared for an album that would continue in the direction of Veckatimest. For better or worse, Shields does not do that. Initially, I found it rather dull and bleak. It took some time, but once I had an access point ("Yet Again"), Shields became an expansive record, full of some really epic moments. The compositions are dense and meandering, while the conceptual terrain is equally dark and plodding. For me, this resulted in what was probably the most immersive listening experience of the year. With Shields, Grizzly Bear has created a rich and sombre world, one that I couldn't easily escape and still don't really want to.

David Longstreth's latest with the Dirty Projectors marches forward with a less totalizing and more optimistic outlook. The songs on Swing Lo Magellan mark a real improvement over 2009's Bitte Orca (which I still consider to be one of the previous decade's best albums) because they take what's best about the Dirty Projectors' sound, composition, and approach and make it personable. The pretence of Longstreth's lyrics has also been toned down (though he did follow the example of Kanye's "Runaway" video and direct a eccentric half-hour film based on the album). And although the song structures are slightly more conventional than they have been, this approach finds the Dirty Projectors at their best.

Unlike the big three I've mentioned, Here We Go Magic hasn't really been subject to the hype of the indie music buzz machine. Their 2009 debut drew equally from the baroque pop of Grizzly Bear and the DIY electronica of Animal Collective. This time around, however, we get a crisp and restrained sounding record that takes its nautical title (A Different Ship) quite seriously. Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich assists with an album that is at times energetic ("I Believe In Action"), unabashedly romantic ("How Do I Know"), and perfectly subtle ("Over the Ocean," "Alone But Moving," "Miracle of Mary"). The latter, slower ballads leave me thinking that frontman Luke Temple has been listening to a lot of Talk Talk, and one can never listen to too much Talk Talk.

Dirty Projectors: "Gun Has No Trigger"

Grizzly Bear: "Sun In Your Eyes"
Here We Go Magic: "Over the Ocean"


5. R&B is very cool right now

This one is pretty self-explanatory. 

My favourite albums from 2012

1. The Idler Wheel ... - Fiona Apple
2. Lonerism - Tame Impala
3. Putrifiers II - Thee Oh Sees
4. Tramp - Sharon Van Etten
5. A Different Ship - Here We Go Magic
6. Swing Lo Magellan - Dirty Projectors
7. Shields - Grizzly Bear
8. Spooky Action at a Distance - Lotus Plaza
9. Hair - Ty Segall & White Fence, Twins - Ty Segall, Slaughterhouse - Ty Segall Band
10. Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
11. Total Loss - How to Dress Well
12. Animal Joy - Shearwater
13. Sweet Heart Sweet Light - Spiritualized
14. The Haunted Man - Bat for Lashes
15. Open Your Heart - The Men
16. 2 - Mac Demarco
17. Oshin - DIIV
18. channel Orange - Frank Ocean
19. Nootropics - Lower Dens
20. Moms - Menomena

Some favourite music videos from 2012

Retro-spective: My favorite albums of 2011 (5-1)

(Click here for the preamble and for albums 10-6, illustrated and illuminated.)

5. Colin Stetson - New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges (Constellation)

Most of the music I enjoyed this past year fit within familiar pop conventions and made use of familiar sounds. Musically, I'm a creature of habit: just as inclined toward repetition as I am toward novelty. Colin Stetson's solo record stands out not only because his vertigo-inducing songs avoid easy categorization, but because he uses unfamiliar sounds to channel the chaos of a forgotten (I want to say "Old Testament") world. To do this, Stetson bypasses most of the studio wizardry that other solo artists normally rely on. No loops here - just a muscular man and his massive machine. Along with his much talked about circular breathing technique, Stetson uses several different mics (variously located on his instrument and his body) to produce a wide range of primordial sounds that actually seem to capture the kind of archaic violence suggested by his (very pretentious) album title. The result is so utterly brutal, at once so mesmerizing and jarring, that Stetson's collection quickly became one of the most divisive and disturbing albums of the year.

4. Wye Oak - Civilian (Merge)

Here's what I wrote about this album back in May. For the most part, I think it still holds true:

It's a soothing, satisfying record: cohesive and gentle, but incredibly cathartic and uncompromising at the same time. It's the kind of record, in other words, that you'll want to listen to all the way through. This is going to sound like the worst kind of cliche, but for me, Wye Oak have found a paradoxical balance, the fullest expression of which can be found in the alt-rock of the early 90s. So it's a little creepy how much this album seems suited to my tastes.  Wye Oak's second proper LP highlights a stunning vocalist (Jenn Wasner), ample feedback, grungy breakdowns and lyrics with vaguely religious themes. For instance, there seems to be an ongoing dialectic between Creation and Evolution in Wasner's lyrics that's oddly compelling. Musically, things appear relatively stripped down (the band performs as a two-piece), but every so often Wye Oak's sound becomes incredibly expansive.

3. Sandro Perri - Impossible Spaces (Constellation)

I was introduced to the wispy voice of Toronto's Sandro Perri back in 2006 with his second proper album, Tiny Mirrors. I still like much of what I heard, but at the time I thought it sounded a little too stripped-down, a little too straightforward for a folksy singer-songwriter with clear Afro-beat influences (and a major debt to Arthur Russell). What I saw as shortcomings five years ago were perhaps over-corrected on Impossible Spaces, a cohesive collection of songs I honestly didn't think Perri was capable of. In interviews he's made it clear that he took every one of those five years (since Tiny Mirrors) to work on the new record. And it shows. The grand scope these songs--their dynamic structures and lush instrumentation--is carefully balanced by the intimacy of Perri's softly sung narratives. I tried to flesh out one of them (the ten minute epic "Wolfman") in the image above.

2. The Antlers - Burst Apart (Frenchkiss)

A haunting, absorbing chamber-pop album from Brooklyn's finest students of atmosphere and emotion, Burst Apart demonstrates that there is life after the kind of trauma explored on the Antlers' 2009 debut, Hospice. But if the conceptual overload of Hospice has indeed been left behind, it's only just barely. These songs speak of emotional collapse and relationships that are doomed to fail. Each track sounds as though its teetering on the edge of something terrible--be it chaos, the abyss, or isolation. Combine the apocalyptic tone of Menomena with the sublime reach of a group like Sigur Ros and you might have something close to the Antlers' sound. Despite the deep darkness of Peter Silberman's vision, Burst Apart is oddly comforting. For all the acknowledgments of subjective depravity, ineptitude, and confessions of deceitfulness, Silberman hits on something similar to St. Vincent's Strange Mercy and ultimately refuses to give himself the last word.

1. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake (Vagrant)

As expected, PJ Harvey was rolling in accolades by the time 2011 came to a close. Clearly, I'm in agreement with most critics when they praise Harvey's latest album as her best in a decade, but I'll confess that it's not a record I put on unless I'm in a particular mood. To tell you the truth, I've spent less time listening to and more time thinking about Let England Shake. It's impossible not to. And that's part of the reason I think this album is so strong--it effectively gets under your skin and stays with you. The music is catchy, at times eerily familiar thanks to some well-chosen samples from other artists; but once Let England Shake wins you over, your left to deal with a batch of heavy (and, at times, heavy-handed) questions, the kind we normally try to evade. Back in November, I wrote a lengthy Remembrance Day meditation on Let England Shake that should help to explain why I think this album was so important and so necessary for 2011. I guess I'll leave it at that.

Retro-spective: My favorite albums of 2011 (10-6)

This year I've gone a little overboard in my exhibitionism. Alongside the usual long-winded review you'll find original illustrations for each of my ten favorite albums. Some draw on a particular song, others are straightforward portraits; still others aim for something more personal and evocative.

In a year crammed full of nostalgia--from Destroyer's 80s homage to The Horrors' big-haired shoegazing, not to mention the forceful return of early 90s guitar rock via The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Yuck, etc.--one album stood out for in its effort to draw this kind of memory work--and its politics--into question. But alongside PJ Harvey's meditations on nation and violence, other artists pushed through familiar territory to produce new sounds. Earlier this year, James Blake had the press swooning with his dubstep-infused R&B and Colin Stetson channelled something chaotic and primordial with his multiphonic saxophone, while both Annie Clark (St Vincent) and Chad Vangaalen entered the ambivalent spaces of domestic life with tragicomic results. With every year it becomes more difficult to narrow down and organize a list of my favorite albums--I've pared it down from thirty or so. Strong releases from stalwarts like the Dodos, Wild Beasts, Bill Calahan, The Roots, and Stephen Malkmus require some mention, as do new discoveries like Iceage, Dog Day, Main Attrakionz, Braids, the Weeknd, Shabazz Palaces, Peaking Lights and Jessica Jalbert. For many it was the year of Bon Iver, a charming enough folk-singer who turned out to be incredibly polarizing (producing among some of my friends the longest Facebook debate I've ever taken part in). Meanwhile, Radiohead fans had to grapple with a surprisingly weak showing from a band whose fans have come to expect nothing less than game-changers--besides a viral video, it seemed less an RH album--less a cultural event--than a blip.

I've split the list in half, with the first five following below. I'll try and post my top five in the next several days.

10. Chad Vangaalen - Diaper Island (Flemish Eye) 

It's not his best record, but it's probably his most consistent. If you like restrained guitar noise and conventional folk-rock this is the Chad Vangaalen album for you. It's full of moments that can only be described as "heartwarming" (but in Vangaalen's imagination, I'm sure this kind of description gets at something more perverse or grotesque than sentimental). Although it pays lip-service to domestic topics like child-rearing, relationships, etc., Diaper Island is still full of the wonderful weirdness, humor and creativity we've come to expect from Vangaalen. This illustration is based on one the album's more frenetic tracks, "Freedom for a Policeman." The song would be a straightforward punk jam about a violent encounter with the law were it not for a hilarious bridge/breakdown, where the policeman's blows slow down and we become privy to the psyche of an agent whose enforcement of the law is momentarily suspended--suddenly, at the level of fantasy, something sappy and pathetic comes into view. That's my take, anyway. Vangaalen's at his best when transforms the familiar into something strange and surprising.

9. James Blake - James Blake (Universal)

I'm not usually one for singer-songwriters, but James Blake is in a separate class. A poppier dubstepper, Blake introduced me to the wonderful world of sub-bass--his album also convinced me that I need a new stereo/soundsystem to appreciate the depth of his sound. It all sounds effortless. Sure, it's pretty music with a wide appeal, but each of the songs on Blake's debut retains a degree of darkness that keeps his music compelling, mysterious even.

8. Destroyer - Kaputt (Merge)

Dan Bejar has been kicking it for nearly two decades. In my mind, this is his best album since 2001's Streethawk: A Seduction. Those of us who've been craving layers of ambient brass and woodwinds over top mid-tempo electro beats can pass out with smiles on our faces. The much-hyped 80s motif has found an appropriate home in Bejar's well-oiled hands, and the result isn't so much sentimentalized nostalgia for a wasted decade as it is reminiscence of parties we were too young to appreciate.

7. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy (4AD)

"Forgive the kids for they don't know how to live." It could be a simple accusation, but St. Vincent's Annie Clark spends the greater part of her third album accepting responsibility and dealing with the crushing guilt of her own failings. Part of what makes her so compelling is the feeling that she really shouldn't have to do so--that she's constantly reacting preemptively against what people think of her. Songs like "Cheerleader" "Neutered Fruit" take a confessional, prayerful tone that's anything but comforting: she's constantly putting herself into question, at one point memorably imploring a surgeon to come cut her open. The whole thing seems like a perverse, sacrificial offering--not so much an apology as a window into her own twisted psyche. Strange Mercy is "strange" for a variety of reasons: musically, it's adventurous and unconventional; lyrically, it's honest and evocative. But despite her best efforts to lay bare her own depravity, Clark seems unable to produce anything that's not beautiful, or at the very least, compelling. Indeed, it's strange that this confusing existential mess could be delivered with such force and candor and still require mercy. For Clark, the error of self-interest--manifested in her own guilt-ridden account of despair--is always there, lurking in the shadows. As with Terrance Malick's recent film Tree of Life, Strange Mercy succeeds in showing us how productive the traditional dialectic between nature and grace can actually be. "It's not a perfect plan," she sings on "Champagne Year," "but it's the one we've got."

6. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien (Memphis)

Along with a handful of well-recieved albums from the past year (such as those from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Yuck, etc.), this album sounds like it could have been released fifteen years ago and would have had no trouble finding an audience. (Here is where I would normally list a bunch of bands that New York's CEG sounds like, but it's obvious enough.) But as nostalgic retreads of the 90s go, this is by far the most dynamic and well-crafted. It's also the most melodic guitar based rock record I heard this year. The songs on Lenses Alien are the kind that harness and transform the abrasive energy of teen angst into sheer catharsis. That description's a bit overstated, but so is my subject matter. For all the missteps (such as "The Current") and cringe-enducing lyrics (that more often than not resemble bad high school poetry), I'm won over by the unapologetic delivery of Jeremy D'Agostino's vocals. Sometimes he sounds like Conor Oberst in the worst way; other times his belting sounds like a real exodus.

top music videos of 2011

Usually I don't have the patience for an entire 4-minute music video. (It must have something to do with the internet, cause my attention-span seems properly drawn-out when I'm consuming other bits of pop-culture.) Below are some of the videos that sustained my pathetically short internet-attention-span for their full duration--a real feat! This is by no means comprehensive (clearly), so before you start questioning the glaring lack of Beyonce on this "list," know that I'm no Beyonce-hater. "Countdown" is a great song and the video is quite impressive; but I've never been able to watch it straight through--it's kind of overwhelming and a little off-putting--but that probably says more about my own anxieties and shortcomings than it does about anything else. Enough with the caveats. Enjoy!

"Cruel" [Directed by Terry Timely] from St. Vincent's Strange Mercy. Domestic life is tough, especially when your stuck in the 1950s, especially when your psychopathic step-kids are calling the shots.



"Fish" [Dir. Kathryn Fahey, Michael O'Leary] from Wye Oak's Civilian. Silhouetted puppets, biblical allusions, and neon lights are combined in this quirky, stunning tale of evolutionary origins.




"Lotus Flower" [Dir. Garth Jennings] from Radiohead's The King of Limbs. Thom Yorke dons a bowler hat and gets freaky. If you've ever seen me dance, this will look vaguely familiar.



"Riding for the Feeling" [Dir. Archie Radkins] from Bill Callahan's Apocalypse. This continuous shot of a soaring ski-jumper uses artwork from Max Gaylon. It might be just one note, but it's one worth sustaining. And that's part of the point: a utopian fight against the ceaseless flow of time. Some peaceful stuff right here.



"My Machines (feat. Gary Numan)" [Dir. DANIELS] from Battles' Glass Drop. A postmodern "myth of sisyphus," or something equally pretensious to that effect. Probably a good thing to watch before you start your Christmas shopping. Also: Gary Numan!



"The Shrine/An Argument" [Dir. Sean Pecknold] from Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues. I'm always impressed with animated music videos, but this is undoubtedly one of the best I've ever seen. Made by the brother of FF frontman Robin Pecknold, "The Shrine/An Argument" falls somewhere in-between Where the Wild Things Are and The Lion King. It appears to be all paper-based, but the incredible lighting effects and the grainy, orange tint help to align the images with the nostalgic fantasy-folk sounds of the Fleet Foxes.

new music january

Less than a month ago I was busy rating and ranking my favourite albums of last year. January isn't even over yet and here I am with a handful of albums I won't be shoving aside any time soon. Notable releases like Pantha du Prince's Black Noise and Four Tet's There is Love in You have yet to sink in. Currently I cannot get enough of Toro Y Moi's electronic masterpiece (?), Causers of This (set to be released in late February), the first of two long players he plans to release this year. Closer to my comfort zone is Surfer Blood's debut Astro Coast, a catchy straight-up indie rock record that steals the best elements from bands like Built to Spill and pre-crappy Weezer. Heavy guitar driven songs that sound as familiar as Pavement. Nothing too complex here, but with the right formula I'm a pretty easy sell. Probably the most essential album to released so far in 2010, however, is the latest opus from Owen Pallett, who's dropped the Final Fantasy moniker due to legal worries -that's my guess anyway (he know's he's gonna be huge in a couple months). Heartland is an album I still need to give a significant amount of time to. It's much larger in scope than anything he's done before, both musically and conceptually. The album is a collection of twelve monologues from Heartland's main character, Lewis, a farmer from a place called Spectrum. Over the course of the album Lewis eventually vows to kill his creator (i.e. Pallett). Hmm. Meta-narrative much? The final album of this rant is Beach House's third album, the more adventurous Teen Dream. Like all their work, it's dreamy folk-pop bolstered by droning atmospherics. I've been listening to this album for a month now and I'm convinced it's their best. How could it be anything less with a song like "Norway"? I can't believe we're only a month into the new year and there's already a wealth of fantastic new music out there. If this continues my head might explode. But thinking back to this point last year, a good number of us were already convinced that Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion was going to be the best album of 2009. Some of us tend to get ahead of ourselves.

the order of things

This time of year is always dominated by lists, rankings, and evaluations. This blog is clearly no exception. How appropriate, then, to stumble upon this entertaining interview with the Italian semiotician/man of letters Umberto Eco. Among other things, Eco explains how lists gesture towards the infinite and move beyond our human deficiences to help us stave off death. Lists always indicate more; they are both reductive (imposing order on chaos) and excessive/anarchic (they lead to more lists, expanding and transforming old definitions).

So why is Eco so interested in lists? "I can't really say," he admits, "I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences."

Nice one. I wonder what he'd make of High Fidelity.

top 20 albums of 2009

I try not to be too objective with these things, but I'd argue the case for any of these albums if I had to; I'd call them "great," "classic," "essential;" all those words that academia hammers out of you. Some of these albums were encountered via the websites I frequent (for links, see the sidebar to the right); others literally fell into my lap at contributor meetings for Stylus Magazine; still others were from artists I've been following for some time, whose albums leaked early and were (illegally) downloaded. Don't worry, I bought them eventually. Sometimes, it's nice to hear exciting music before it's over-analyzed, cast aside or raised up for all to see.

I've included the album covers because I think this year boasted some pretty amazing album covers (there are definitely a few brutal one on this list as well). And I've posted a link after each blurb, so you can get a sample of the albums I'm praising.

I think that's enough of a preamble. Here goes:

20. Bear in Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth (Hometapes)
This list is full of Animal Collective copy-cats; some of them even place above AC. These guys are, like a lot of others on this list, hail from Brooklyn. Let's just say, I like the darkness they conjure in these spacious pop anthems. I'm not really sure what their album title's getting at, but their blend of Southern rock and ambient synths --it's refreshing.

Listen: Wholehearted Mess

19. The Clientele - Bonfires on the Heath (Merge)
No one likes to say it, but The Clientele is really a one note band. Though some are a bit more upbeat than others, their albums are pretty similar: light, open chorded guitar pop. Alisdair MacLean, doesn't have much range as a vocalist, and yet I absolutely love his voice. Warm, refined and inviting, The Clientele don't experiment much, but their rainy day music is done well and the atmosphere's they manage to create are captivating enough to keep me coming back.

Listen: Harvest

18. Cryptacize - Mythomania (Asthmatic Kitty)
This one was a surprise, but then, I've learned to trust Asthmatic Kitty when it comes to cute indie-pop. And this album is no exception. Nothing life-changing here, but the quality is high, the album is fresh, consistent, and the melodic hooks are plentiful.

Listen: Tail & Maine

17. Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free (Dead Oceans)
As a whole, the album is a bit of a letdown. I'm not expecting them to recreate their debut, but a little more cohesion (and a little less of the drugged-out inaccessible bits) would be nice. That being said, the truly great moments --"River" and "They Will Appear," for example-- are phenomenal: simultaneously restrained and excessive, at once small and grandiose.

Listen: River

16. DM Stith - Heavy Ghost (Asthmatic Kitty)
He's weird but I like him. With a good editor, Stith could put out a great album; this one was excellent, but you get the sense that among the diversity of sounds presented here, he's still trying to figure himself out as musician. Visual artist by day, and now an indie-folk darling by night, Stith clearly evokes labelmates like Sufjan Stevens and My Brightest Diamond, but he's far less restrained: more willing to let go of his songs and let the spirits get out of control.

Listen: Pity Dance

15. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (Anti)
At first, I wrote this one off. Perhaps I wasn't ready for another Neko Case album. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood definitely got a lot of rotation at one point and I won't pretend that I'm not still enamored with it. Middle Cyclone felt less accessible; my first listen was forced. I thought I should try as hard as I could to like it, but only after I'd completely given up and one of my profs played it over and over one afternoon did I realize that you can't force this stuff. When you let your guard down, Case sweeps you off your feet like she's not even trying. That voice is simply irresistible.

Listen: People Got A Lotta Nerve

14. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilian (Domino)
This was Animal Collective's year and only a fool would deny it. They deserve to be at the top of nearly every list that matters (as opposed to this one...ha!). I'm not going to apologize for not putting them higher; they don't need any more support. As on past releases, dub, trance, and Afro-pop figure into Merriweather Post-Pavillion's spaced-out mixture of synths and rhythmic clatter. If MPP lacks anything, it's the rough and tumble charm that defined AC's earlier output. As the infectious beats of "My Girls" and the jolting harmonies of "Brothersport" demonstrate, Animal Collective are crossing over. And depending on your outlook (and elitism), there's never been a better time to give them your ears.

Listen: My Girls

13. Bat for Lashes - Two Suns (Parlophone)
Clearly deserving of this year's Mercury Prize, Natasha Khan put out the most metaphysical album of the year. I've been wanting to say that for a long time. The comparisons to Kate Bush are definitely appropriate but Khan definitely has her own unique touch. From the opening battle-cry ("Glass") to the tragedy of romantic possession ("Daniel") and the subdued Tori Amos-esque piano ballads (which are way better than anything Amos has ever done), Khan gave us an album to get lost in, an album that brought you into a different universe, where everything is imbued with mystery and the sweeping melodrama of teen angst.

Listen: Daniel

12. Point Juncture, WA - Heart to Elk (Homemade)
With the power to reinvigorate the most jaded pop-music voyeurs, the third album from Point Juncture, WA features matured arrangements blend shoegaze feedback, kraut-rock and horn lines that would make Broken Social Scene jealous. It’s hard to resist the rare urgency of “Biathalon,” while the epic “Sick on Sugar” delivers enough hooks and harmonies to melt the coldest of hearts. This band from Oregan still hasn't got the recognition it deserves; this is the album that should have broken them.
Listen: Sick On Sugar (live)

11. Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue (Warp)
When someone releases three albums in one year, critics tend to get even more critical --unfairly so, in my opinion. This is a great album that keeps surprising you; each time I've put this on for guests I've had to field questions about the music I'm playing: "Are we still listening to the same group?" "Who is this again?" Bibio's second (and best) of the year is an album that turns heads. Boards of Canada are the most frequently cited comparison, but I'd throw in Caribou as well. It's folk-electronica that can be bouncy and contemplative all at once. This year, Bibio's willingness to venture out into a diversity of sounds was unmatched.

Listen: Ambivalence Avenue

10. St. Vincent - Actor (4AD)
This album was a huge leap for the woman behind 2007's Marry Me, which was cute and well-crafted, but not particularly attention-grabbing. Actor gives us a taste of what lies beneath: the violent corners that threaten to undo Annie Clark's squeaky-clean persona. And it offers some of the catchiest (and the darkest) melodies of the year on songs like "Marrow" or "Save Me From What I Want" or "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood." And the drumming, like all the instrumentation is phenomenal. Less like Sufjan, more like Slayer. A natural progression, I think.

Listen: Marrow

9. A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Ashes Grammar (Mis Ojos Disco)
Ambient and all over the place. This album is full of melodies you wish you could capture, but they're alway just beyond reach. When the hooks do finally crystalize, like on "Failure" they seem to disappear just as quickly. With 25 tracks of wide-ranging sonic experimentation, this beautiful and challenging album builds on the strengths of their overlooked 2007 debut.

Listen: Failure

8. Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian)
With a weird infusion of pastoral imagery and the macabre, The Crying Light, is a significant and complex step forward.“Let's take our power back,” Antony belts on “Aeon,” one of a handful of deceptively up-beat, almost celebratory tracks scattered throughout this haunting collection. The Crying Light is undoubtedly challenging, but it's even more absorbing because of its otherworldliness. And that's where it's power lies.

Listen: Aeon (live)

7. Julie Doiron - I can wonder what you did with your day (Endearing Records)
Here's an album that wasn't at all hard to love. “Consolation Prize,” is a guitar driven surf-anthem with lots of hooks and tight harmonies. The equally grungy “Spill Yer Lungs” harkens back to Doiron's days with Eric's Trip. As always, Doiron's heavier fare never skimps on melody. I can wonder what you did with your day isn't only one of Doiron's strongest albums to date (it's my favourite!); and it's further proof that she's currently among Canada's best songwriters.

Listen: Consolation Prize

6. Here We Go Magic - Here We Go Magic (Western Vinyl)
Another Brooklyn band that draws Animal Collective comparisons, Here We Go Magic have created a stunning debut, full of intense emotion and mesmerizing sounds. My only complaint is that it's too short. Standouts like "Fangela" and "Tunnelvision" could go on forever and I wouldn't complain. Like the best artists, Here We Go Magic reveal the infinite potential of those fleeting moments of consciousness.

Listen: Tunnelvision

5. Atlas Sound - Logos (Kranky)
Can we all agree that Bradford Cox is a genius? Though the quality of his prolific output may wane from time to time, he's no slacker when it comes to a transcendent melody or a big hook. He knows precisely how to give it the support it deserves. That, I believe, is one of is gifts. There are a lot of reasons why I'm a fan of this album. It's got a wicked (theologically suggestive) title; its got a pair of incredible collaborations ("Walkabout" ft. Noah Lennox, and "Quick Canal" ft. Lætitia Sadier) that showcase his guests without compromising his style or sound; it's introspective ("Attic Lights") and hopelessly romantic ("Sheila") without being sentimental or solipsistic. Bradford Cox; just watch him go!

Listen: Quick Canal

4. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (Warp)
Here's something that spans that generational gap between hipster kids and their parents. To older ears it sounds classic and inoffensive (all that crooning!), but Veckatimest is strange and catchy enough to make you wonder how they do it. Group vocals may be on their way out, but as long as Grizzly Bear is still writing such fantastic songs, the naysayers will have to allow for exceptions like "Two Weeks" or "While You Wait For the Others." A lot of people have called this a letdown, but I don't really know where else they could have gone after 2006's Yellow House. This is Grizzly Bear at the top of their game; crossing over was inevitable, but I'm still dreading the day that I walk into Starbucks and hear these boys from Brooklyn pumping on the stereo.

Listen: Two Weeks

3. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca (Domino)
It's nice being validated. When this leaked back in the first days of summer, I was engrossed by this album, sure that I'd never heard anything like it before, certain that this was going to be huge; and it was. It's hard not to sound like a prick, so I'll stop praising foresight. I'm usually wrong, anyhow. Their fantastic live performance (opening for TV on the Radio) confirmed for me that these guys are exceptionally talented; I mean, I wasn't sure how some of these songs (like "Bitte Orca" or "Stillness is the Move") would translate into a live performance, but they did and halfway through the latter, I could sense a change in the audience: suddenly, everyone was mesmerized, helplessly locked into the incredible vocal performance, the fantastic urban groove of "Stillness is the Move" (second only to Animal Collective's "My Girls" as the pop single of the year). As I've said, this is a great experimental pop record, weaving together Afro-beat, jazz, hip-hop, folk --but it also rocks hard. The opening track, "Canibal Resource" features a completely unexpected set of female vocalists who instantly throw off this track's momentous guitar hook. This battle between angelic harmonies and the scattered crunch of David Longstreth's unique compositions frames the entire album, making it an album that's impossible to shake.

Listen: Stillness Is The Move

2. Micachu and the Shapes - Jewellery (Rough Trade)
Hard to believe Mica Levi was only 21 years old when this came out. There's not a single dud here. No misguided melodrama, no existential angst. Every track is instantly catchy and creative, full of young energy that refuses to settle down. Equally refreshing is how the androgynously voiced Levi resists taking herself too seriously. She doesn't tone down her cockney. She doesn't just use a vacuum and pretend it's a studio trick, she actually sings about it. She's open and in touch with her feelings, but it's not the sort of self-involved seriousness you get from most young artists. She can sing about relationship and breakups with honesty and a sense of humour "Think I've made a massive mistake. . . . And I put your things all over the floor, if I jump from my bed I could smash it all," she sings on "Floor." The following song, the tongue-in-cheek, paranoid "Just in Case" features one of my favourite lines from the record: "And I won't have sex 'cause of STDs." But it's "Turn Me Well," the song with "the vacuum now turned on" that I've grown the most attached to. It's a cathartic break-up song ("You squeezed my heart so tight tonight. You must return it before you leave"), but Levi is aware of here emotional neediness. "Wrong" is a close second: a good sample of Levi's uncertainty about her relationships that's just as musically all over the place as anything else on this record with it's off-kilter synths, heavy chorus and prominent cow-bell. This was an album I couldn't stop blabbing about, an album I thought everyone should hear; months later, I still feel just as passionate about it.

Listen: Turn Me Well

1. Wild Beasts - Two Dancers (Domino)
England's Wild Beasts top a list dominated by artists from the UK. Like Micachu and the Dirty Projectors, Wild Beasts possess a sound and a style that is uniquely theirs; and they've managed to write some of the years best songs, while crafting a cohesive album that demands repeated listens. A major critique leveled at the band's last debut, besides its patchiness, is that it often seems to fall back on the eccentricity of vocalist Hayden Thorpe's falsetto. Two Dancers, however, shows a band with depth, still just as willing to prop up the seedy corners of modern life for anyone who dares to listen. As with Limbo, Panto, vocal duties are evenly shared among Thorpe and the velvet-voiced Chris Talbot. "All the King's Men" incorporates both voices to great effect. Thorpe and Talbot are the "boys who'll drape you in jewels, cut off your hair, and through out your shoes," finding themselves caught somewhere between fairy tale romance and misogyny. Underwritten by a tight bassline and a bouncy beat, "This is Our Lot" is about a dancing pair "quiffed and cropped" holding "each other up heavy with hops". It's a tightly wound pop song; the kind you could imagine Radiohead pulling off if they allowed themselves to be a bit more straightforward. "The Fun Powder Plot" is another good example of the band's now signature lyrical twists: "This is a booty call - my boot up your asshole." The poppier turns of Two Dancers are well suited to the album's duality, all the while poking fun at the fine line between desire and disgust. Like many great artists before them, England's Wild Beasts taunt us with the ambiguities we'd like to ignore and they do it in the most captivating way.

Listen: This Is Our Lot