This is the time of year that lots of folks attempt “best of” lists, but I think we've reached the point in the development of popular music (at least as a business) that this is pretty tough to do. The weird consolidation of the music “industry” into only three “majors” (you can read about how that happened here) and an almost infinite number of “independents” - many of which consist of a guy, a computer, and a website - now prevents any sweeping analysis of “the year's direction” and how albums and songs fit into that. Today it's pretty much all genres and subgenres, and I guess you could do a “best of the year list” for each one of those, but who has the time?
I was recently going back and reading some old Crawdaddy, Creem, and Rolling Stone magazines, and it's amazing to look at the differences between then and now. For one thing, music made just two or three years earlier was considered “old.” But in terms of “best of” lists, the most important difference was how “taste” was defined and codified. Early rock criticism was mainly about developing the music, exploring new directions, and finding better ways to articulate the cultural ferment going on in the country and the world, especially among younger people who in those days were the main audience for rock as popular music. Rock “critics” felt they had a different role than film or classical music critics. They did not think of themselves as “arbiters of taste” or a “buyer's guide,” because it was assumed that you had already bought the album. People reviewing "Sgt. Pepper's" in 1967 were not telling people whether it was “worth buying.” They were trying to get inside its head, and you were there, too, because you bought the album the day it came out. Everybody did.
But back to 2011. Nowadays reviewers do have to be a “buyer's” (or “downloader's”) guide. As opposed to a core of musicians and bands and ideas and everything radiating out from that, now you have, in the words of the Felt Letters' 2009 song, “600,000 Bands."
And all of them, it seems, are recording music and either distributing it through the three major labels (if it is deemed “commercial” enough) or distributing it in some way on their own (as exemplified by the Felt Letters themselves). And each band seems to exist in a kind of vacuum - there are exceptions, but generally you can't imagine an established modern band saying, in the way that '60s bands often did, “once we heard that Deerhunter (or Beach House or Vampire Weekend, etc.) album, we realized we needed to change everything we were doing.”
In the face of this, I'm not going to list the “best of the year” but just highlight some stuff that interested me. For those who don't want to read all the way to the end, here's the spoiler (not in order of preference, just how they came to me as I was writing - and yes, I know there are 11, but I never said this was going to be a 10 best list):
tUnE-yArDs - "Whokill"
PJ Harvey - "Let England Shake"
Wilco - "The Whole Love"
TV on the Radio - "Nine Types of Light"
Herman Dune - "Strange Moosic"
Peggy Sue - "Acrobats"
Art Sorority for Girls - "Slow Dance"
Kanye West and Jay-Z - "Watch the Throne"
Das Racist - "Relax"
Adele - "21"
Toby Goodshank - "Truth Jump Fall"
First, let me give a shout-out to the pretty-awesome-yet-not-quite-list-worthy titles:
Tyler the Creator, who I've talked about before, so you know where I stand on this one - compelling psychodramas rhymed over lithe, stripped down beats, but drenched in nihlism and misogyny that's a little too real.
Drake: His music is smart, beat happy, and meticulously crafted, but I'd have fewer misgivings about the whole package if he would just get over himself - and if he considered women to be actual human beings.
My discovery of the year was tUnE-yArDs' Whokill, an album that also made it on to a lot of people's “best of” lists. Whokill was mentioned a lot this year in discussions about “post rock” (with bands like Oneohtrix Point Never, whose album Replica is not on my year's best list), but I'm not sure that's what this is - it's just one of the most dense, ingenious, and invigorating mashups of styles that's come along in quite some time. TunE-yArDs is mainly Merrill Garbus, who drums, plays ukelele, and sings (often along with herself, using multiple delays), combining African-influenced percussive vocals with drawn-out melodies reminiscent of bluegrass music (she started her musical career as an old-time fiddler). For live shows she adds a bass player and lately a couple of saxophonists. She has a huge, almost endlessly flexible voice - in the space of one song, she can sound like a burned-out rasta, an R&B diva, an Appalachian farm girl, and a Portland-style indie-rock waif (which is what she actually is). All this sits on top of hip-hop and rock beats that she creates with her voice or with various percussion instruments (and sometimes with the help of some friends).
Two other remarkable albums out this year were “comebacks” of sorts for two indie-rock standard-bearers, PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake" and Wilco's "The Whole Love." Trying to capture (along with TV on the Radio's "Nine Types of Light") the uneasy dissonance of the post-recession malaise, these albums are tuneful, carefully wrought and accessible. But they engage the problem from different directions - Harvey's a scream (or at least a shout) of pain, and Wilco's a wistful mumble in a dark corridor.
"Shake" is a concept album of sorts - England, war, what-a-bummer (and how those things are inextricably tied together). The title song begins, “The West's asleep/Let England shake/weighted down/with silent dead/I fear our blood/won't rise again” and proceeds from there. I've been thinking about it as a kind of companion piece to The Clash's "Sandinista!," a melancholy coda to a song like “Something About England," but you can also hear Harvey's disappointment at feeling that deja vu 31 years later.
TV On The Radio's "Nine Types of Light" is another recession baby. It shares some of "The Whole Love's" wistfulness, but is built on a little more of a hip-hop and world-music base, and is always aware of melody and structure. The singing's more out front as well. But this isn't exactly “in your face" - this is the music of almost dreamy desperation about societal disintegration. As they sing in “Keep Your Heart," “With the world all falling apart/I'm gonna keep your heart.”
An even more obscure wonder (although, yes, it's there on Amazon as well) is Art Sorority For Girls' "Slow Dance." The brainchild of drummer-guitarist-singer Daoud Tyler-Ameen (with the help of a bunch of mainly NY-based friends), this is an album of pure glorious “pop” - a "Pet Sounds" (or at least "The Raspberries") for the 21st century. It's a bit of a throwback (no “post-rock” here), but composed with such joy, arranged with such sophistication, and played so enthusiastically that it absorbs you after the opening bars and you don't care what decade it is. But the beauty of this album is that Tyler-Ameen is always cognizant of the present - he understands both delirious, unfettered pleasure, as in the album's title tune, as well as the dark corridors of tortured lives and destroyed families: “My Father calls on Sunday evenings/children are suffering somewhere/living in a boldfaced lie/and they all probably have my eyes...” (from “My Father”). In "The Graduate," he even manages a witty turn on the recently-graduated who haunt the major cities like ghosts in purgatory: “Before you know it/everyone you know lives in New York/once they find your favorite coffee shop/you just can't go there anymore...” This is the album Big Star might wish they had made in an alternate universe. It bellows, it croons, it stomps, it whispers, it plays both overdriven guitar and accordian. But you don't have to take my word for it. You can stream it here, and then by all means buy the download, and maybe Tyler-Ameen (whose day job is on the music staff of NPR) will decide to make another one. Key line: “antiperspirant is integral to everything we're fighting for.”
Finally, some other gems from this year that I 've gone back to again and again:
Kanye West & JayZ - "Watch The Throne": Not as consistent as the best work from either one, but everything they do is now a cultural touchstone, and worth exploring in depth. Just as Polly Harvey's England bears the legacy of war and empire, Kanye and Jay Z's America bears the legacy of race. This is us, y'all.
Das Rascist - "Relax": The new Beastie Boys, but funnier, and a more “real” rap crew, without the punk influence (except cerebrally). Irresistibly irreverent.
Adele - "21": Yes, yes, I get it. The mark of quality. The one person everyone can agree on, because she never does anything that makes anyone uncomfortable. But underneath the mountain of gold and platinum records, there's someone in there who can really sing. And write a song.
Toby Goodshank - "Jump Fall": This DIY folk-ish New Yorker's 15th (or 16th? Or 17th? - I've lost count) album is his most fully-realized. Once again his terrific guitar playing and singing are showcased, but with a more economical and tightly-arranged rock-combo foundation. And all in service of his psychedelicized, tongue-in-cheek, but starkly confessional subject matter.
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