NATERNET

My Top Ten Albums for 2011

(Youtube playlist with vids from each band on my list, again in no particular order)

I have been putting off my end of the year Top Albums list for weeks now. Not because I can’t decide which records were my favorite, but I’m having a hell of a time writing up blurbs about each record to justify their selection. Coming up with effusive praise for music that I spend hours listening to never used to be so difficult. In fact, not-entirely-deserved hyperbole used to  come pretty easily. Now I’m having a difficult time even justifying why I listened to some of these records at all. Not because they’re bad or regrettable or anything, but because the words just won’t come. It’s been frustrating. 

I started to worry that my love for music was beginning to wane. That perhaps I was outgrowing the very act of falling in love with a record. Ever since I hit 30, I’ve been steeling myself for that inevitable disconnect with new music that seems to hit so many people. That time when you eschew new music and start to surround yourself with the greatest hits from your personal “glory days.” I referred to this a few years back as “the time when you stop living for new experiences and start dying with comforting certainties.” I thought it was a particularly cold statement to make about other people, but that didn’t make it any less true. I’m not quite there yet, though.

It literally just occurred to me when I started writing this that I no longer feel the need to go to extraordinary lengths to justify what I like to anyone. That’s essentially what all of the write-ups for Albums of the Year, or Movies of the Year, or Anything of the Year is- justifying your taste to other people. It’s not that I don’t still love music the way I always have, I just don’t feel the need to explain that love to blunt outside judgement. I like what I like and that’s it. It’s kind of a freeing, actually, to not feel the need to explain why I unapologetically rock out to guilty pleasures like Wugazi or become moved to tears by Rural Alberta Advantage’s “Two Lovers.” 

So, instead of long-winded write-ups breaking down why the chorus on The Joy Formidable’s Cradle is so amazing, I’m just going to give a few sentences on what made me like each album, saving both you and me time that would be better spent enjoying the music. 

Here is my list, in no particular order. 

The 4 on the Floor - 4x4 : This hard-driving Minneapolis band struck a chord with me when I first caught the video for their song “Working Man Zombie.” It wasn’t until later, while talking to a childhood friend who lives in Minneapolis and knows the band, that I realized that some of the band members grew up mere miles from me in northern Minnesota. Sometimes life is too weird and sometimes that weirdness makes a damn good blues rock record. 

Wild Flag - S/T : For reasons that should be relatively obvious, I never really got into the whole riot grrrl scene. (I’m relatively laid back and not prone to rioting, also I’m not a “grrrl”) But this record has an infectious energy that’s hard to deny AND it rocks pretty damn hard. 

I was lucky enough to be part of the crew that shot an in-studio session Wild Flag did for OPBmusic and they are even more arresting in person.

Charles Bradley & The Menahan Street Band - No Time For Dreaming : Charles Bradley’s personal story is compelling enough (look it up, you’ll be moved) and the Menahan Street Band is more than solid. 2011 or 1961, this is a great soul record no matter what year it was released. 

Oh yeah, I got to shoot an in-studio with Charles Bradley, too. (humblebrag)

Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing : Sometimes, a record evokes a point and time from your own personal past. That’s what the newest from the RAA does for me. 

Joy Formidable - The Big Roar : For three people, the Joy Formidable sure makes a hell of a racket. Since their debut EP, A Balloon Called Moaning, I’ve been impressed with their unbridled passion to create really emotive music that still sounds so effortless and honest, while simultaneously blowing your eardrums to kingdom come.

Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer : To be honest, I was surprised to hear such an accessible and straightforward album coming from one half of the notoriously schizophrenic and obtuse (but in a good way) Fiery Furnaces, but there it was. Eleanor Friedberger has made a great pop record while still maintaining her verbose, idiosyncratic delivery. (OPBmusic session)

Blind Pilot - We Are the Tide : If being earnest has a sound, I would imagine it would closely mirror We Are the Tide. The heart behind this record just wafts through your speakers and settles around you like a comforting blanket. Despite the wide-open instrumentation, it feels desperately intimate. (they did an OPBmusic session, too)

Wilco - The Whole Love : This is a good record. That’s the most apt description I can think of and yet it’s also an indictment of how far Wilco has fallen creatively since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I know I might be living in the past, but every album since that 2002 release has slipped further and further away from their creative apex. 

This is the sound of a band on auto-pilot, and that’s a damn shame. 

In the end, I think this record feels disjointed. It’s forgettable because each great track, “I Might” for example, is followed by a clunker (in that case, “Sunloathe”). The great tracks still manage to carry it just enough to make it a good record. 

Tune-Yards - WhoKill : A vibrant, beautifully chaotic collection of songs. So discordant yet so right. This has been a slow-burner for me. It sounds better each time I listen to it. 

Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines : This is a breakup album that makes you feel good about the breakup, while simultaneously wallowing in it like a little bitch. Not an easy feat, but a very catchy record.