This wasn’t really a contest. And to anyone who’s been by my last.fm page lately (yes, that’s Seals & Crofts at #3,) it wasn’t really a surprise. Annie Clark, recording as St. Vincent, put out what was just a hair’s breadth shy of the album of the year. That honor actually rests with Deerhunter’s Cryptograms (see previous post) but only because that album held together better as a cohesive whole. This album is a little more fractured, but only because Ms. Clark’s imagination has run wild throughout. The number of music ideas on Marry Me is staggering. It’s a fantastic collage of sounds and melodies and moods and words that, months after its release, still resonates.

The album is meticulously produced. The sounds that we encounter on even a cursory jaunt through the track list are varied and precise. There are handclaps, horns, bells, piano, synths, harmonics and strings, often within the same 32 bar stretch. It’s an explosion of texture, and it’s all held together by Clark’s sense of melody and her throaty, pliable voice. One gets the sense that she’s a restless genius, trying out everything that comes to mind and having the audacity to pull it off. She played and toured with both The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens before putting this album together and it feels as if these ideas had been stored and were building pressure before she released them.

“Your Lips Are Red” is the embodiment of this chaos and beauty. It took a few listens before the genius of the tune struck me. It’s simple on the surface. There’s a driving rhythm. Interwoven throughout are off-kilter vocals, minor key guitar riffs and explosions of sound, little Trevor Horn-like bursts of cacophony. It’s aggressive, unnerving material, seemingly without form, but building to something (we hope) bigger and different. As it progresses it begins to get beneath the skin. The discomfort grows. We need it to turn somewhere, to resolve, to come into a different sort of focus. We’re off balance. We’re tilting.

The turn comes at almost the three minute mark, and what a jaw-dropping, head-spinning turn it is. Like a fading storm, the chaos recedes and we’re left with a strumming guitar, a mournful violin voice and then, finally, a full bore, major-key finale. “Your skin’s so fair / Your skin’s so fair it’s not fair,” she repeats, as if it’s supposed to make sense, but though it doesn’t really mean anything taken literally, we feel like it does, because the music somehow provides the meaning that the words do not. The piano still bangs away in the background, the strings still spin about like dervishes, and a chorus of voices join in, but it holds together and as the last violin settles into quiet, we get it. I don’t know how it works, but it does.

It’s powerful stuff. And I can’t seem to get enough of it. In fact, I’ve perfected a way to inject it intravenously. Saves the ol’ iPod battery.

So hey, that’s it for the Ten (12) Tracks That Mattered in 2007, but I’m not done bloviating about the year in music. Not by a long shot, so stay tuned. I’ve still got the runners up to talk about, the stuff I didn’t like (even though I was supposed to) and the stuff that I never got around to listening to but I thought I’d mention anyway in case you’re wondering where [your favorite band] is on the list. Plus, Delta Goodrem! Can you stand it?

St. Vincent: Pitchfork review

St. Vincent – “Your Lips Are Red”

Preconceptions. Sometimes you hear of a band, or see the cover of their album, and you immediately get it in your head that you’re not gonna like it. And usually, because your prejudices are so strong, you don’t. it took me six months to finally getting around to trying Cryptograms. There were plenty of reasons to avoid it. I’d heard it described as “noise,” for example, which, granted, isn’t very descriptive and could really be applied to music of any sort, or I’d gotten the impression from reviews, perhaps, that it was difficult, or maybe even I just assumed, based on the name, Deerhunter, that they’d sound like one of those bands I was supposed to like but didn’t, like The Mars Volta or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Or maybe it was because I didn’t realize that Bradford Cox has Marfan Syndrome. Who knows? It took me while.

When I finally got my mitts on a copy I dropped it in and hit play and walked away, content to let it try and win me over from the background. I went to another room. I forget why. Maybe I was hunting llamas. When I came back some really interesting noise filled the air. I actually forgot what I’d put on. I had to check. It was still Cryptograms, but rather than the atonal screech-a-thon that I, for some reason, had been expecting what I was hearing was lush, atmospheric and, well, lovely.

[photo by akmal naim]

It’s beauty with a blade hidden within its folds. There’s a central paradox in this stuff. It’s music borne of pain but it serves as a soothing anodyne at the same time. To hear it is to walk a lovely path, but to listen to it–I mean really listen–is to discover the darkness beneath the surface. It moves from one stage to the next, balancing noisy pop with shoegaze atmospherics, sometimes within the same tune (this one is case in point) and with such skill that it’s hard to believe that the album came out of sessions so fraught with confusion and depression and aimlessness.

It’s best listened to as a whole experience. Tracks intertwine and stretch and bunch and do other non song-like things, so it was difficult to single out one cut, but “Spring Hill Convert” comes the closest to encapsulating what, for me, is the album of the year. (Yes, thought it’s my favorite album of 2007, my fave track of the year comes from somewhere else, as I’ll write about tomorrow.) And in a bitter twist, Deerhunter has ostensibly gone on hiatus. Hell. But then we hold no illusions. One can’t (and shouldn’t) hope for another Cryptograms. Cox has got a new project in the works (Atlas Sound) and he’s still making music. If we’re lucky, it’ll be bigger and different and completely strange and weirdly beautiful.

Deerhunter: official site, Pitchfork review & interview, amazon, itunes, the deerhunter blog

Deerhunter – “Spring Hall Convert”

The Pitchfork review of Autumn Of The Seraphs makes a good point. They claim that Pinback’s last proper album, Summer In Abbadon has more of an autumnal, frostbitten sound where as this new one feels more like summer fare. They’re right. When I go back and listen to its warm-ish tones and relaxed rhythms I can’t help but think of the lazy days of the school-free season. That helps these days. New Mexico weather has been chilly and gray. It’s almost possible to set the album on repeat and huddle in front of the speakers, hands extended, rubbing away the chill.

Pinback is intricate, precise and articulate indie pop music. The album is layered in ways that reveal new insights with each repeated listen. If you want to get an feel for the songs you have to listen to them more than once. “Bouquet” was no exception. There’s a division that happens at about 2:50 which turns the undercurrent of tension with which the song begins into a lustrous lament. The final lyrics go something like this:

You can take that how you want

I adjust the time
For you to be here

Don’t go

And you taste my tears
And we share our souls

I’m walking on my own
I’m walking all alone

But this is no straight recital of verse. True to Pinback form the voices leapfrog over the words, piecing music from lines in a decidedly non-linear fashion, lines that seem more constructed by how they sound than what they mean, and come up with something both potent and pretty.

Pinback: official site, itunes, amazon, nice fansite

Warm your hands:

Pinback – “Bouquet”

It was a fine year for Glen Hansard. In January his band, The Frames, puts out The Cost, which, but for an unexpected development, might have amounted to just another futile attempt to knock on the door of American Awareness. That development was the unexpected success of a teensy independent Irish film called Once. Written (and directed) by John Carney, it’s the tale of a pair of offbeat street musicians, who meet, make “beautiful music” together and, on occasion, wrestle vacuum cleaners. Glen Hansard’s starring role in the picture, along with the use of the Frames music throughout, brought attention to both him and his band. And then to seal the deal, his co-star in the film is Marketa Irglova, with whom he also recorded his “solo” debut, The Swell Season. This all made for a sort of built-in promotion machine. The Movie plus The Frames plus the Soundtrack equaled something close to a critical mass.

I had only heard of the Frames when Coachella rolled around last year. I hadn’t heard them. But I made it a point at the festival after reading this Allmusic review which mentions that they “often get picked ahead of U2 at being the best live band at home.” The live show was excellent, as predicted. The film? Amusing and simple and not manipulative in the way that music films can be. And the music itself? Well, here we are.

I’m into this tune because it’s got everything I love about a Frames song. It’s serpentine in construction, heartfelt in delivery and it’s got those swelling strings for ample sonic hugging. Also, the other obvious choice, “Falling Slowly,” which Hansard and Irglova released on Swell Season, has achieved market saturation. It’s in the movie, on the soundtrack, on their album and then, on The Cost, reworked in a bigger, grander style. We don’t need it here.

To get a sense of what the Coachella show was like, check out this video at YouTube, which catches them in their set opener, “Dance The Devil.” Especially worth note is Glen Hansard’s energetic outburst at about minute 4:10.

The Frames: amazon, itunes, popmatters (review of Once)

Enjoy:

The Frames – “Song For Someone”

How could I not? I mean, did Radiohead really need another amazing album? Couldn’t they have just slowly faded like U2? Well, apparently not. I liked their last album. Hail to The Thief had some interesting stuff on it. It was a bit of a return to their tighter Bends-y construction, a step away from the rampant experimentalism of Kid A and Amnesiac. So I didn’t know what to expect with In Rainbows, and frankly, I wasn’t dying to know. Radiohead released the album themselves in that peculiar “Pay What You Want” fashion that was either brilliant or daft, depending on your point of view. I paid nothing. I picked it up out of curiosity. And then I sat on it for weeks for some reason, perhaps not wanting to be disappointed, perhaps afraid of getting suckered by hype, perhaps I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. But finally, sitting at a coffee house tapping away at the novel-in-progress, I decided to give it a spin.

I didn’t listen to anything else for three days.

This isn’t peer pressure. This is not me going, “Oh Gawd, since everyone else says it’s good, I might as well squeeze it into the top ten.” This is me going, “Holy pus bucket, Batman!” which, in non-derivative slang translates to, “Heck, these guys have put out something really special.” It’s tough to single out a solitary track to represent this album, and indeed, as we climb higher in the ranks of Tracks That Mattered, we’re getting away from songs and focusing more on albums. But I love this one. “Bodysnatchers” is a paranoid, rapid-fire growl with rich, rounded guitars and a humming bassline. Thom Yorke howls about abduction and paralysis and defeat:

Has the light gone out for you?
Cause the light’s gone out for me
It is the 21st century
It is the 21st century
You can fight it like a dog
It brought me to my knees
They got scared and they put me in
All their eyes wrapped around my face
Although everybody else can see

This is classic Radiohead. The stuff I love, come back again to haunt.

Radiohead: official site, in rainbows (no longer available as a download), Bodysnatchers (youtube)

Listen and weep:

Radiohead – “Bodysnatchers”

A curiosity more than anything, this odd collaboration between Brit producers Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip has nevertheless been quite the phenomenon in both England and the States. There’s not much to it, really. Le Sac lays down the metallic beats and Msr. Pip speaks/raps through a series of commandments. I’ve come back to it a few times since I first heard it and every time I dig it a little more.

I think the appeal lies in its lyrics. There’s a stand being taken here. It’s a manifesto of sorts that cautions people from doing things like worshiping pop idols who are, in the end, “just a band,” or against assuming that anyone nice to children who are not their own must be a pedophile, and even insists that Phoenix be spelled more like it sounds. It’s all tongue in cheek and perhaps, this time next year, I’ll chalk this up to a sort of zeitgeist-y fad, but for now, I’ll keep playing it. At very high volume.

The video is worth checking out as well. Rather than embed it here, though, I’ll send you over to Techsploder, which posts the video AND the lyrics. There’s also a nifty Kam Denny Mix out there that does some great dance floor stuff with the track (also excerpted below.)

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip: myspace

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – “Thou Shalt Always Kill”

The night before my friend Michael and I hopped into the car and headed to Coachella we stopped off to see Earlimart christen the Echoplex in Silverlake. It was a stellar lineup. Opening for them were The Watson Twins, Sea Wolf and (that portable festival of exuberance) The Parson Redheads. When Earlimart took the stage they did so with a small string section (The String Dream Team) in tow. Earlimart have no problem creating a full, luscious sound, but having the string section up on stage kinda pushed them into a critical mass and helped bring their meticulously crafted album tracks to life.

Now, I’m an Earlimart fan. That’s a strange thing for me to say because in these days of music saturation, where every week some new indie band is popping from the woodwork and every previous band ever formed is releasing a new cd there just isn’t time to develop a fandom. I’m not certain how that happened, but I picked up the vibe way back in 2002 when I heard the Avenues EP. Treble & Tremble, with its gorgeous post-Elliot Smith essence and its seamless construction pretty much sealed the deal. That, and then seeing them burn through a marvelous set in their stomping grounds at Spaceland three years ago (did I really drink that many margaritas?)

So the interminable wait between that album and the release of Mentor Tormentor in August seemed even longer then the nearly four years it took. It also made the first notes of the album, as I finally got to sit down and listen to it, all the sweeter. That’s why the album’s opening cut, “Fakey Fake,” is here. As Nick Hornby writes about mix tapes, “you’ve got to kick it off with a corker,” and that’s just what they do. It’s the kind of song that says, “Hey there, did you miss us? Cool. Well, buckle up.”

The other cut, “Don’t Think About Me” is here for another reason. Which I won’t get into. Because it’s private.

Oh, fine. It has to do with a girl. But only barely, so shut up.

The album isn’t on any other year-end lists that I’ve seen (alright, there are a few exceptions.) I consider that a crime, but then that’s what fandom is all about. Catch them live if you can.

Earlimart: official site, amazon, itunes, the other Earlimart

listen:

Earlimart – “Fakey Fake”

Earlimart – “Don’t Think About Me”

My friend Dayle gets a fair amount of music from me. Or she did, when she was more into it. I would throw together a few small collections every so often and she would dutifully drop them onto her iPod and enjoy them. I specifically chose stuff she’d like, which is, of course, what you do if you’re a friend/music-pusher. But occasionally I’d slip something in there among the pop country and the female singer-songwriter choices that I knew she wouldn’t like but that would give her an extra boost of credibility on the dating circuit (of which she was an avid member) in the event a prospective boyfriend perused her collection to see what she’s into.

M.I.A.’s Arular was one of those tastemaker albums. Just as I’d guessed, Dayle didn’t like M.I.A. at all, in spite of my occasional needling. But I thought that some day she’d stumble across it and give it a spin for heck’s sake, or some dude would spin that little browse wheel and go, “Wow, Trisha Yearwood AND M.I.A.? You’re so eclectic!” and a relationship would be born. I don’t know if it worked or not. She’s engaged now and I never asked whether it was because of M.I.A. But yours truly is set to be spinning the tunes on wedding night and I’m gonna do everything I can to drop this track into the mix somehow, bride’s wishes be damned.

There’s a lot of great stuff on Maya Arulpragasam’s newest album. In fact, of all the year-end lists I’ve perused, this is the only album that consistently finds a place in the top ten. I guess I’m no exception. I like this track in particular. Its noisy, confrontational bounce is perfect for summertime, top-down, music appreciation. And hell, listen to it loud enough and you might just attract a soul mate.

At least, that’s my fantasy.

M.I.A.: official site (might induce seizures), allmusic, itunes, amazon

listen:

M.I.A. – “Boyz”

I was in Australia when the last interesting album by Nine Inch Nails came out. That was The Fragile, and the year was 1999. A few years ago, his follow-up to that album was released. With Teeth it was called. I barely noticed. I mean, sure, I listened to it, but there was nothing that struck me as interesting or great about it. It wasn’t “interesting” in the same way The Fragile was. And the word, interesting, is hardly a compliment. There’s stuff to love about The Fragile (the smoldering build of “Somewhat Damaged,” for example,) but most of it was, well, just good. It didn’t come close to the towering greatness that was The Downward Spiral, an album so good and so nuanced and so complex that if I were making a list of the ten Albums That Mattered Most in All Of My Recorded Time, it would likely claim a berth.

I needn’t explain why, when Year Zero came out, I was hardly expecting much. Even its crazy marketing, which involved mysterious websites and numerous clues of a sinister nature that alluded to the album’s theme, served to bolster my anticipation. But damned if it wasn’t a halfway decent album. In fact, there are moments of aggression and beauty on it that make me wonder whether it isn’t the true follow-up to Spiral. “Zero Sum” is a good example of what I like about Nine Inch Nails at their best. Reznor has a knack for building a rough, saw-bladed rhythm and then plucking notes of delicate beauty out of the air around it and weaving them together. This tune is on the thoughtful, pensive side. Indeed, it kinda jogs along at a quiet pace, and taken out of context of the album itself, which tells a dark and metaphorical tale of a world gone seriously awry, it loses some of its power. But here it is anyway. Take it and love it and call it your own.

Nine Inch Nails: itunes, official site, allmusic review (glowing)

listen:

Nine Inch Nails – “Zero Sum”

So here’s what I do. During the course of the year, as I listen to new music, if I run across something that strikes me as very cool I drag it into an ongoing playlist. through the year it grows. Come year’s end, I’ll pore over that list and for the fun of it, figure out which ones I liked best. Why do I like one track over another? Why does anybody? All I know is you’re in a place, at a certain time, and something crashes into your field of view and does a slinky hip-wiggling dance.

All five or six or you regular readers remember my going on about Nicole Atkins in much the same terms barely a month ago. Maybe it’s proximity to the incident, but I still love this tune. It’s got a massive, sweeping sound that perfectly complements Atkins’ ferocious voice. I think the reason this track edged out the other from the album (check that previous post to hear “Love Surreal”) comes right at the 2:20 mark:

But with all is trouble
When I close my eyes, you never go away
I’ve tried everything, still you won’t change
Is it better if you go…

That gorgeous high note would shatter crystal. Breakups have never been so sweet.

Nicole Atkins: website, allmusic blog post, myspace, rolling stone

[And hey, as long as I'm posting lyrics, can I rant for a moment on the utter nightmare that visits me every time I try to deal with a lyrics site? Is there one out there that's reasonably complete and doesn't grab the back of your head and pummel your face with ads and pop-ups and then give you the same incomplete and/or incorrect result that's available on every other lyrics site? If you know of one, comment me on it. Please.]

Listen:

Nicole Atkins – “Together We’re Both Alone”