The Year in Music

Musically, 2013 was an interesting year. Some strong albums from older, more established artists (David Bowie, Daft Punk, Johnny Marr) coupled with a decided 80's influence in the sound of a lot of younger bands (Ducktails, High Highs, Savages) made me wonder if I was listening to new releases from 2013 or 1988. Not a bad thing.

A few things that went into consideration when I put together this list: Hip-hop makes up a very small percentage of what I listen to (Deltron 3030 being the only representative here), so while I'm sure Kanye/Drake/Danny Brown/M.I.A./Eminem/whoever made some amazing music, they won't be on my list. Neither will Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus, or anybody not wearing robot helmets who played the VMA’s. There were also quite a few albums from names I would usually jump on, but for whatever reason, I just didn't spend enough time with their new stuff for them to be part of the list (you'll find them at the end of the post). Finally, outside of Tegan and Sara, Ducktails, and Kurt Vile, there were no obvious standouts for me this year, so rather than try to rank a lot of albums that were all equally interesting, I went with quantity: What follows are the 20 albums released in 2013 that I listened to the most. In these days of being able to listen to whatever I want whenever I want, if an album pulls me back for multiple listens, it makes my list for the year. Here's what I've had in heavy rotation for the past 11+ months:

Tegan and Sara, Heartthrob
My hands-down album of the year, as evidenced by more than double the listens of anything else on the list. Tegan and Sara albums have always been a little hit-or-miss for me, but the production makes Heartthrob their strongest one to date. It was a surprise to discover that the emotionally heavy lyrics one expects from Tegan and Sara benefit greatly from being wrapped in danceable, synth-heavy, new-wave hooks that veer well into sugary pop territory. Some of their fans are calling this their sellout record, but for me, it only added another dimension to their music, one that made it a lot more fun to listen to.

David Bowie, The Next Day

Superchunk, I Hate Music

Ducktails, The Flower Lane

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

Kurt Vile, Wakin on a Pretty Daze

Deltron 3030, Event 2

High Highs, Open Season

Johnny Marr, The Messenger

Arctic Monkeys, AM

Volcano Choir, Repave

Har Mar Superstar, Bye Bye 17

Caitlin Rose, The Stand-in

The Thermals, Desperate Ground

The Mary Onettes, Hit the Waves

Savages, Silence Yourself

Arcade Fire, Reflektor

White Denim, Corsicana Lemonade

Dawes, Stories Don’t End

Mount Moriah, Miracle Temple

If you're on Spotify (and if not, do it), listen to all of these albums for yourself:


Also, here's 20 more albums from this year that I enjoyed:
Local Natives, Hummingbird; Kate Nash, Girl Talk; Chris Thile, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1; Camper Van Beethoven, La Costa Perdida; Mogwai, Les Revenants; Yo La Tengo, Fade; Dinosaur Jr., I Bet on Sky; Shearwater, Fellow Travelers; Night Beds, Country Sleep; The Men, New Moon; Jimi Hendrix, People, Hell and Angels; Marques Tolliver, Land of Canaan; King Khan & the Shrines, Idle No More; Toad the Wet Sprocket, New Constellation; Julianna Barwick, Nepenthe; The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law; Josh Rouse, The Happiness Waltz; Foxygen, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic; The Deep Dark Woods, Jubilee; Deerhunter, Monomania

And finally, the albums that for whatever reason, I haven't spent enough time with to have an opinion on them yet. If you know who I usually listen to, you'll recognize a lot of names here:
Andrew Bird, I Want to See Pulaski at Night; Jason Isbell, Southeastern; Kings of Leon, Mechanical Bull; Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady; Sigur Ros, Kveikur; Forest Swords, Engravings; Yuck, Glow and Behold; The National, Trouble Will Find Me; Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City; Steve Earle & The Dukes, The Low Highway

The Movies of 2008

Great editing. Thanks to /film for the heads up.

The Year of Pleasant Surprises

Obama aside, 2008 was a difficult year all around, and pop culture seemed to reflect that. I started working on some top ten lists to close out the year, until I realized that in most categories, I couldn't come up with more than three things that really impressed me. In fact, so much of what was produced this year was uninspired, uninventive, or just generally disappointing that it was almost a surprise when something turned out to be good. So, in recognition of that, here are my 12 pleasant entertainment surprises of 2008.

Wall-E. A kids’ movie about cutesy, animated robots that chirp and beep more than R2D2. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi story about a trash-collecting robot and his pet cockroach left behind on a over-polluted planet. A cautionary tale about the environment and the evolutionary effects of technology and lack of exercise. A sweet romantic yarn about a Hello, Dolly-obsessed loner who finally meets the woman of his dreams and crosses the galaxy to win her heart. Wall-E is all of these and more. Add in the fact that the two main characters barely speak any dialogue in the first 45 minutes except to repeat each other’s names, and you would expect this would make for a deadly boring, convoluted mess. Enter Pixar. If ever you doubted the genius of this studio, here’s all the proof you need. Wall-E is an incredible piece of moviemaking. So much is communicated through the smallest gestures, toots, whistles, and slight changes of expression that the lack of dialogue is barely noticeable. Hands-down, one of my five favorite movies of all time.

The Rhumb Line, Ra Ra Riot. An amazing mix of strong songwriting, catchy melodies, and driving strings made this my favorite album of the year. There’s a surprising amount of world-weariness for such a young band, and it gives the songs a lived-in feeling, even if you're only hearing them for the first time.

“Spiralling,” Keane. This track is so undeniably catchy, I almost forgive them for the bad 80’s synthesizers. OK, who am I kidding? The synths make the song.

The Dark Knight. I knew it would be good. I just didn’t know it would be this good. Total game-changer for all comic book films to come.

“M79,” Vampire Weekend. Imagine Graceland-era Paul Simon scoring a Wes Anderson flick. This song encapsulates everything that is great about VW’s debut.

Feed the Animals, Girl Talk. The most incredible mashup mix I’ve ever heard. So dense and complex in its use of samples that Wired devoted a full-page chart to breaking down one track from the album.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Proof that even Joss Whedon’s free time doodlings are works of genius (he wrote this to keep his mind fresh during the writer’s strike). Joss Whedon + Neil Patrick Harris + a musical about a supervillain’s video blog = comedy gold.

“Viva La Vida,” Coldplay. Yes, this song is overplayed. Yes, it may have been plagiarized. Yes, the album as a whole is so-so. No, I don’t care. It’s still impossible to get out of your head.

Iron Man. Not as gritty as The Dark Knight, but still a hell of a lot of fun. Favreau took the source material seriously, and Robert Downey Jr. was born to play Tony Stark. I went in with high expectations, and they were all met.

Lyle Lovett at Red Rocks. I maintain the belief that all Red Rocks shows are automatically 10% better simply because of the venue, but Lovett didn’t need the help. Despite the fact that I hardly knew any of his music, I was enthralled. Lyle is a true entertainer, and his band is top-notch.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson. This book was recommended to me almost simultaneously by my mom and Stephen King, which is strange, but also a testament to its appeal. The variation on a locked-room murder mystery (in this case, it’s a locked island) kept me turning pages all the way to the end...which I really enjoyed, despite it’s non-Hollywoodness.

Alpinisms, School of Seven Bells. Former Secret Machines guitarist Ben Curtis teams up with twin sister vocalists to create a new genre: atmospheric New-Age indie rock. This album is a gorgeously dense creation, full of layers and textures. Yet when I heard the Bells play an acoustic set on KEXP recently that stripped away all the effects, the songs held up.

“The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” Weezer. Rivers puts on his Freddie Mercury hat and writes a 21st-century “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Good luck not singing along with the chorus.


Biggest disappointments of the year:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Thanks for ruining yet another beloved franchise, George.

Chinese Democracy, Guns N’ Roses. We waited 11 years for this? It’s obvious Axl has a frustrated Stephen Sondheim hiding inside him. I just wish he wouldn’t put the G N’ R name on that stuff.

Less than 100 people showing up for Matthew Sweet’s October show at the Fox Theater. That’s just sad.

Wrapping Up

As I’ve been sitting at my computer finishing up my Christmas shopping, I set up a playlist in iTunes for all the albums I own from this past year, and what I’ve discovered in retrospect is this: As musical years go, this one didn’t blow me away. I saw a lot of great live shows*, but as for album releases, meh. I’ve been looking over other folks’ year-end lists, which range from the tragically hip to the simply tragic, but barring one album, there’s nothing that screams “classic”. That said, I didn’t have much trouble coming up with a top ten for ’07. Here’s 2 through 10 in no particular order:

Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

The Shins, Wincing The Night Away

Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City

Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha

Galactic, From the Corner To The Block

The National, Boxer

Kings of Leon, Because of the Times

And the easiest decision? The hands-down, no-contest, numero uno? I’m probably one of the few people who paid for it, and it’s been worth every penny.

Radiohead, In Rainbows

A few more Honorable Mentions:

Cabin, I Was Here EP
Ted Leo & Pharmacists, Living With The Living
Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II
Band of Horses, Cease to Begin
Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
Elliott Smith, New Moon

*Of all the shows I saw this year, Neil Young was my favorite, simply because I had waited so long to see him and it was still an amazing show. Bloc Party and Wilco were also highlights. What follows is an in-order list of every artist I saw live in 2007: Elvis Perkins > My Morning Jacket > Béla Fleck & the Flecktones > Adem > Badly Drawn Boy > The Noisettes > Bloc Party > Hot Hot Heat > Snow Patrol > Rush > Wilco > Everything Absent Or Distorted > The Broken West > Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band > Clap Your Hands Say Yeah > Das EFX > Kings of Leon > Editors > The Decemberists, > Black Rebel Motorcycle Club > Cake > Nina Storey > Little Ones > Meese > Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s > Ian Ball > Lords of the Underground > Art Brut > Spoon > The Flaming Lips > The Awkward Stage > Lavender Diamond > The New Pornographers > Crown City Rockers > Blackalicious, > Pegi Young > Neil Young > Jason Collett > Feist. Whew.

Year-end, shmear-end...

So I thought about doing a 2005 wrap-up like I did last year, but to be honest, I'm kind of tired of year-end lists. Instead, here's a few things I covered at one point or another this year. Some of them were released in years prior to 2005, but they're all things that made my year enjoyable.

• sudoku
• going to England for the first time
• Bloc Party's Silent Alarm/Silent Alarm Remixed
• Sufjan Stevens's Illinois
• Danger Doom's The Mouse and the Mask (and all of MF Doom's music that I heard this year)
• Eric Johnson's Live from Austin, TX
• Matisyahu's Live at Stubb's
• Gorillaz's "Feel Good Inc"
• Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek"
• Weezer's "Perfect Situation"
• Doves at the Vic Theater, Chicago
• the 2nd night of U2 at the Wachovia Center, Philadelphia
• Gift of Gab & Lateef/Mike Relm/Twilight Sentinels at the Patio, Indianapolis
• Kings of Leon at the Music Mill, Indianapolis
• discovering Last.fm
• Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line
• the last two minutes of Layer Cake
• the fact that Batman Begins was nothing like Joel Schumacher's Batman movies
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Chuck Dugan is AWOL by Eric Chase Anderson
• Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
• My Name is Earl
• Arrested Development, on TV and DVD
• the Freaks and Geeks DVDs
• the Spacecataz bonus feature on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume Four DVDs
• Cartoon Network's Star Wars: Clone Wars series