The Weeknd released three different mixtapes over the last year, but this one is by far my favorite. The beats are so slow and dirty, and the way he sings, it kind of sounds like aural sex. Look it up.
I got this album a lifetime ago when I was still working at the hospital and back when I was a delivery boy (oops that one's still true), but anyway, this is the hard rocking Foo Fighters album that everyone who loves hard rock should adore. It's straight forward, it pushes you around, and when it's over you feel like a badass, until you realize that Dave Grohl is, and always will be, better than you and me. Definitely the only mainstream rock album that I enjoyed all year (sorry Nickelback).
Indie Rock! The band with the hilarious name also strings along a bunch of good old fashioned indie rockin, cleverly lyrical, making me want to hit someone indie rock. Two standout tracks: It's a Corporate World is crazy catchy, one of those tunes you hear on the college radio station, your foot starts tapping and you know you need to find out who this is, and When I Open My Eyes, an angry, fed up song, grit your teeth and sing along.
Equipped with bloody stage shows, and a rampant critical following, these nineteen year old Danes know how to rock your fucking skull off. This album is stuffed to the gills with fist in your face hard thrashing punk rock. The twelve tracks rush by in less than twenty five minutes and at the end of the album, you've screamed out all your aggression. If you want a microcosmic sample of the album, download White Rune, the first song on the album. How can you lose with song titles like Rotting Heights? You can't.
Another free online mixtape, but it's so damn good. The beats are Dilla-esque, and on top of that we get some clever but also super smooth rhymes. If you like midwestern-style indie rap, the only kind I ever find myself gravitating to, then you'll like this. Straight up party tracks: Black Box, Fuckeverybodyhere, Doom x Gloom.
The Kills have been pretty consistent with their brand of fuzzy, female vocal driven, garage rock that they have been making since I was listening to Keep on Your Mean Side on the bus on the way to Scholastic Bowl (nerdy high school reference!!!!). Blood Pressures is clean, it's good. When it plays I can feel my heart beat syncing up with the chunky bass lines pounding throughout. Twelve songs of heartbreak and power. My favorite tracks are the tour de force DNA and the slow building closer Pots and Pans.
Honorary Mention Album
I didn't like the debut album from British, soul-electronic wunderkind James Blake in its entirety. Really, at all, the album has eleven tracks and I don't usually make it past the third.......However, the first three songs on this album are probably all in my top ten favorite songs of the year. So in honor of Unluck, The Wilhelm Scream, and most especially the slow building repetitive I Never Learnt to Share which churns along with the same two line refrain of "My brother and my sister don't speak to me/And I don't blame them" until it erupts into an electronic glitchy orgasm of sound, I felt that I needed to include this album in some way, if not on the actual list.
Cults was the first band signed to Lily Allen's label, In the Name Of, and they stun with this debut. With only one male and one female member, Cults still produces plenty of glittery, sparkly indie pop. Every song on the album is enjoyable, especially the chant inducing You Know What I Mean and Oh My God, a song about being bored and fed up with what's in front of you and just thinking about leaving it all behind. Plus, I'm a straight up sucker for chick singers.
My Morning Jacket is so good that even when they make an album that is not really my favorite of theirs, it is still better than most others. This album is good when it gets stepping but there are a lot of slow burning tender tunes on this album. Also, I listened to this album a good thirty seconds before I got dumped last year, so I guess it kind of got a little shafted in my mental database for that unfair association. However, I love the title track, Circuital, and Holdin' on to Black Metal is a freaking trip. My Morning Jacket maintains, treads water, still good stuff.
Over the last year and a half, Toro y Moi (Chaz Bundick) released his debut album (2010's Causers of This, which is straight up amazing), was called to go on tour, but unsatisfied with his albums danceability, he created another album that was more danceworthy (Underneath the Pine, more on this later), and six months later released this EP. Toro y Moi's chilled out dance beats pulsate through this album, it makes you want to go to the beach and take some drugs and float in the water while you watch the sunset on Mars. If that doesn't make you want to download these five songs, you are a fucking idiot.
What can I say? It's Radiohead, you know who they are, I know who they are. They make amazing music, it's what they do. When they really sit down and focus on making a proper album, we get the privilege of such genius as Kid A and In Rainbows. When they freestyle and don't want to take a whole lot of time focusing on every tiny detail of every second, we get King of Limbs. And guess what, it's still amazing anyways. Kind of a Kid A 2.0, I mean, who hasn't listened to this album already, you know what it sounds like, Radiohead is amazing, that's that.
Scottish, post-punk, indie rock. I have no idea whatsoever of where I stumbled upon this album but it filled my entire fall Zoo experience with some nice loud music, mixed with some melodic guitar, and super intense drums. This album is full of cool songs, the ear drum berating Boy in the Backseat, and the meandering, distant vocals over silent guitars in the closer Pear Tree.
Number one sign that the British are more musically educated as a country than we are: No one in America knows who The Horrors are but this album was number five on the British charts. So fucked up. Anyway, this album is like eighties, gothy, experimental Brit-rock. When singer Faris Badwan cries in his low baritone "You gotta give me your love/You gotta give me more" on You Said, it makes my heart cry. I know how that shit feels. You do too, don't lie to yourself, no one's looking. Just deal with it.
Number one album to be played when I am blacked out and flat out demanding that we listen to what I want, and then followed by me dancing around with my eyes closed. The English Riviera is filled sleazy, European, electronic beats. It's simple, it's innocent, it's got synthesizers, if I put on The Look, I know someone is going to yell out "Aww, yeah!" Do yourself a favor, listen to this album.
The DJ with the funniest name ever, creates an album that sounds like a threeway between a synthesizer, a VCR, and a bong. It's bubbly, it sounds like an 80's orgy, full of cocaine, lasers, ColecoVision, and a keyboard. I don't know how to describe this album any better than that.
Pronounced "Subtract," another DJ, Sbtrkt creates simple groovy songs, mostly distorting the bass and throwing in all kinds of percussion. With plenty of guest vocals abounding, the album stays fresh throughout. This album is a freaking gem, and honestly these top seven are all amazing, these are the cream of the crop.
I know PJ Harvey has been around forever, but until now I had never ventured into her territory. This album is all about war, just a simple album about war, except for the sensational song writing, Harvey's beautiful vocals, the sound effects. I especially like the trumpet that is played throughout the somber The Glorious Land. The whole album sounds like a warning against a foreboding future, but it's also catchy as hell.
Neon Indian (Alan Palomo)'s second album is a gigantic departure from his debut, Psychic Chasms. While the first sounded like it was made at an acid party in his garage, Era Extraña is a well produced 80's dance party being played through a computer and full of angst and nerves. It's dark but it's also light, the fuzz and the glittery synths bouncing off of each other playfully. This album finds the balance, I can't wait to see what's next.
Down-tempo electronic beats mixed in with sampled vocals, mostly single sentences repeated sparingly. The self-titled debut from the duo consisting of DJ's machinedrum and Praveen, is absolutely beautiful. Soft gentle beats, haunting vocal samples, it is completely flawless. And while it mixes all of these noises together, there is an overwhelming feeling of emptiness and melancholy. I love this album.
Damon Albarn created this album while touring during the autumn of 2010, mostly on an Ipad. It's pretty amazing how talented some people are that they can create an amazingly layered and satisfying album of dancy electronic music during their downtime on the road. Shytown is probably my favorite song, it sounds like cruising down Lake Shore at night, the lights drifting around you, and Detroit is like a straight up disco punch in the face.
Washed Out (Ernest Greene) has created a masterpiece. Chillwave has never been expressed as beautifully as it is on this album of slow down-tempo songs that drift along, rapturous pulsating synths, drifting in and out. Echoes is certainly my favorite song of the year and it is almost my favorite song ever, I have only had it on my computer for eight months and it is the number one played song. This album surfs my brainwaves and sinks into my subconscious. If you are scared, drunk, strung out, happy, sad, tripping, tweeking, rolling, stumbling you will like this album.
I would say that from the day I moved into our apartment, August first I believe, until the end of September, I would come home from work at the Zoo and turn on this album. Every day. Dance music made underneath a wave. Gloomyish vocals pull you in and out of some sort of trippy mushroom induced dream. You can't adjust your eyes, you can't tell what the fuck is going on but you don't want it to stop. This album needs to be listened to, it changed the kind of music I listened to, no joke. This is my favorite album in a year that really was an enlightened one, musically, for me. Kudos Toro y Moi, I can't wait for you to put out seven more albums in the next two years.
No comments:
Post a Comment