25 Albums, Bands, Exhibits, And Other Such Ephemera That Meant Something To Me In 2011
I feel like I experienced music differently in 2011. When music journalism is your 9-to-5 job, there has to be balance: What is for work and what is for myself? I still haven’t quite figured that distinction out, yet (and it’s been 13 years since I started writing about music), but what the following 25 albums, songs, bands, exhibits and more abstract music experiences (movie scenes, light installations) have in common is that they all meant something to me. And that’s the undefinable thing about music, yeah? This isn’t a profound realization, especially since the primary qualifiable thing about music (meaning) is completely intangible. But on some level and, I suppose, with some age, the parts of music that give meaning to me are starting to come together.
Some of the blurbs after the jump have previously appeared at NPR Music for my best metal and best outer sound year-end lists, and some of the text has been snatched from other write-ups, but more than half of it is new and completely unedited.
Touché Amoré, Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me [Deathwish Inc.]
Parting the Sea is not, strictly speaking, a traditional hardcore record. Its melodic hooks come out of Built to Spill’s best songs, its cathartic urgency comes out of D.C. bands like Rites of Spring, and, ultimately, Parting the Sea looks to the stellar ‘90s-era Victory Records catalog to get a sense of where it comes from, a sense of communal spirit. Touché Amoré is asking where hardcore was, is and where it wants to go. And that’s why Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me is my personal favorite hardcore album of 2011. Since its release in June, Parting the Sea has been my go-to record no matter what mood I was in, but especially when I wanted to be inspired.
Dwellings is an emotionally and musically complex progressive metal album which wrestles with our desperate and sometimes violent attempts to secure a place in history. It’s a heady concept, for sure, and normally I’d eye such academic subject matter with a suspicion, but Cormorant instills an emotional weight into each story and each flawless riff. There’s a surprisingly swinging rhythm section between blast beats and an attention to dynamic songwriting that often goes missing in the work of technically-adept metal bands that like to dismantle the genre. (Listen to Dwellings at Bandcamp.)
Frank Ocean, Nostalgia/Ultra [self-released]
Nostalgia/Ultra exhibits many the qualities I found disturbing about music in 2011, an unapologetic looking back that taps into times when we felt safer: The cassette tape rewinding interludes, the '80s movie samples, and for God’s sake a lyrics-replaced full-on cover of the bane of my existence, “Hotel California.” But where other new artists have dug into the past and just stayed there, there is still a tangible amount of pain to Frank Ocean’s nostalgia. He recognizes that not even our fuzziest of memories are pure, and channels that into a damn-near universal R&B recording.
Fucked Up, David Comes to Life [Matador]
Whatever I wrote for NPR Music’s 50 Favorite Albums of 2011, ignore it. The real reason I love David Comes to Life is because I feel like I’m in high school again, getting made fun of by punks because I do musical theatre, only this time, it’s the punks who are doing the musical theatre, and I’m barking the lead.
Country Music Hall of Fame
My lady and I spent a week vacationing in Nashville before a friend’s wedding in March. We both fell in love with the city, which surprised us both, I think. There was no shortage of live music, but the most surprising revelation of the trip was the Country Music Hall of Fame. I expected to like it, but we spent over three hours taking in three floors of Nudie suits, vintage posters, gold records, tricked-out Cadillacs, listening booths (thank you, CMHoF, for introducing me to Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 1”), incredibly well-conceived and executed computer kiosks… I was totally blown away. Given a different upbringing, I think I could’ve been a traditional country musician – it speaks to my love of revenge ballads and movies, hard-won lives and general whiskey-licked kick-assery… Nah, I’d still end up listening to emo and late '90s hardcore.
The Body with Assembly of Light Choir @ St. Stephen’s Church, June 24
In 2011, I saw The Body a total of four times in three different formations, all with the kind of volume that vibrates the very clothes on your own body. But on a tour with a DIY womens’ choir, both the tenderness and the damaging decibels of the doom-metal duo were on display, especially when they played St. Stephen’s (photo gallery), an Episcopal church just two blocks from where I live in Washington, D.C. Between the natural, but not too boomy reverb of the sanctuary and sitting in pews with an audience that likely had not been to church in who-knows-how-long, the performance was nearly a religious experience.
Nicholas Szczepanik, Please Stop Loving Me [Streamline]
The first time I really listened to Please Stop Loving Me was after watching The Tree of Life. Coming out of the dark movie theater, its soft, organ-like drones hugging my ears, Nicholas Szczepanik’s single 47-minute piece actually put me into a bit of an existential funk. Like Terrence Malick’s visual tone poem, Please Stop Loving Me acts like a series of tonal relationships pulled and stretched over each other, simultaneously existing out of time and in it. Its simplistic shifts are incredibly deceptive — just when you think you’ve figured the piece’s thematic core, darkened (yet inviting) textures seep through. But Please Stop Loving Me is by no means dark, just hopeful and bleak in a way that understands emotions as hues rather than blocks of color.
YOB, Atma [Profound Lore]
“Prepare the Ground. Awaken.” The last words from Atma’s lead-off track have been my mantra since August. And that’s what YOB’s second album since the band’s 2009 return from a brief hiatus (and sixth overall) is: A metallic mantra based on repetition that reaches deep spiritual meditation. But outside that ritual is an enveloping doom metal record that sees Mike Scheidt and company stretching beyond the riff. There is a flowering soul here, perhaps best exemplified in Scott Kelly’s (Neurosis) anguished guest appearances throughout. The riff is not the thing, the thing is the thing.
Julia Holter, Tragedy [Leaving]
Tragedy only came to my attention but a month ago, but I haven’t been able to leave its world since. And make no mistake, Julia Holter’s Tragedy truly inhabits a world unlike any other. Those attuned to the modern Gothic atmospheres of Zola Jesus and Grouper will no doubt be drawn to Holter, but she comes more from the Meredith Monk spectrum of sonically-challenging ladies. Bits of musique-concrète, noise, drone, dreamy '80s 4AD medieval-pop and avant-classical are the touchstones for an album centered around Euripides’ Hippolytus. But as academic as that all sounds, Tragedy pulls me into its emotional world as well, just as the curtain falls and the voices trail away at the finale.
Swans @ All Tomorrow’s Parties Music Festival, Oct. 1
At the Paramount Theatre, Michael Gira shepherded a swirl of foot-stomping chaos. And in five songs smeared over two hours, Swans was absolutely Wagner-ian in scope. The result was masculine and relentless, yet alluring in every respect.
The Psychic Paramount, II [No Quarter]
If Yes learned to jam on the ecstatic eternal, if the Mahavishnu Orchestra wasn’t so damn wanky all the time, if Tony Williams had discovered Can’s Tago Mago, if Comets on Fire kept making blown-out blues records instead of hippie-dippie noodles (I like those, too), then maybe, just maybe, that would result in The Psychic Paramount’s II. And as chaotic as all that sounds, II is all about controlling the pounding psychedelic cosmos, making it the best instrumental rock album of 2011.
Kelly Rowland “Motivation”
I didn’t spend much time listening to tapes in 2011 mostly because, first, a Jesus Lizard cassette got stuck in my car’s tape deck, and then my car died in the middle of a July road trip to Asheville, N.C. I don’t drive often, but it’s where I spent time with a revolving box of cassettes. But before a spark plug fired into my station wagon’s piston (yeah, I didn’t know it could do that either), I was left with radio. And since Washington, D.C., is nothing but talk radio and MORock, WPGC was my jam, and they played “Motivation” once an hour. Besides being a great sexed-up slow-jam, the radio wave compression turned two lines – “I don’t wanna feel my legs” and “You can do it, I believe in you, baby” – into in-the-red R&B noise every time, transforming the song into an S&M dungeon. (Watch the “Motivation” music video on YouTube.)
Autopsy
At the end of 2010, I realized that death metal was a serious blind spot in my metal education. I knew the major players, but they didn’t speak to me as strongly as the more blackened and doomed varietals. So I actually spent a lot of my own money and time on old records by bands like Morbid Angel, Incantation and Death, but Autopsy was the crucial part to my a-ha! moment. Not only was grueling madness of 1991’s appropriately-named Mental Funeral a mindscrew, but 20 years later, Macabre Eternal is somehow more insane. The compositions have the sublime swaggering bravado of Wagner and the kind of unfathomable terror I imagine young kids first had upon hearing “Black Sabbath” in 1970.
Keith Fullerton Whitman “101105”
The downright symphonic “101105” from a split 12" with Alien Radio manages to take Keith Fullerton Whitman’s recent modular synth improvisations (epiphanies unto themselves) and edits the results into a soaring realm not unlike the gorgeous arc of his magnificent 2006 live album, Lisbon. Seriously, guys, tears were streaming and face was beaming upon my first listen. It still gives me chills. (Listen to “101105” at Soundcloud.)
The Tree of Life
Yeah, I’m one of those wannabe film nerds that loved The Tree of Life, even and especially the universe creation sequence. It’s a bold narrative tangent that, if you’ll allow it, says more about the film, about Terrence Malick, and about filmmaking, than anything else. And that section simply wouldn’t have worked without film music composer Zbigniew Preisner’s dramatic “Lacrimosa” scoring Malick’s stunning imagery. (Watch the scene on YouTube.)
pg. 99
I wrestled with nostalgia somewhat obsessively in 2011. And when the influential post-hardcore band pg. 99 reunited for a couple shows surrounding some nice-looking vinyl reissues, I was admittedly excited, but still questioned the band’s motives in an interview for NPR Music. What began as a pleasant getting-to-know-you chat at a Chantilly, Va., BBQ joint turned into a two-hour conversation about what it means to grow older in punk rock and what responsibilities come with looking back. My reservations around nostalgia remain in tact, but experiencing the energy and joy around these two shows (I attended both, and recorded one of them for NPR Music) instilled a trust in not only these dudes but also in the kind of fandom that doesn’t know age.
Beyonce “Countdown” music video
It’s just kind of the best everything of the year, innit? Love you, Bey. (Watch the “Countdown” music video on YouTube.)
Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries by Jon Kristiansen
Jon Kristiansen is a metal scholar with a fanboy’s heart. In 20 printed issues over 25 years, Slayer Mag covered the black and death metal scenes with the zeal of teenager repeatedly discovering Black Sabbath for the first time. But Kristiansen’s foremost heroes (and friends) were the members of Bathory, Celtic Frost, Morbid, and, crucially, the Norwegian ne’re-do-wells in Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone and Emperor. In 744 pages, Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries collects the bulk of these interviews among Kristiansen’s stunning portraits (and humorous “Arne Babb” cartoons), the exhaustive text of which practically forms the unholy black and death metal bible. But what truly sets Metalion apart are Kristiansen’s stirring reflections on the controversy and collapse of the mid-'90s Norwegian black metal scene, engulfed in murder and arson, and what it meant to keep that tainted music alive for a world then reliant on postage stamps for tape trades and mailorder catalogs.
John Fahey, Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You [Dust to Digital]
Maybe what’s most humbling about this incredible artifact is that not even John Fahey really knew what he was doing. There are tons of epiphanies on these early Fonotone recordings, and the care and curatorial detail from Glenn Jones and his assembled crew is nothing short of groundbreaking, but to hear Fahey’s failed blues singer attempts as “Blind Thomas” or sometimes questionable free-form improvisations with a flautist tell a story that few have heard.
Drive
Even though I felt like I was watching a 100-minute M83 video at times, Cliff Martinez’s original icy synth score and Nicolas Refn’s four brilliantly handpicked electro-pop songs got inside Drive’s grim fairytale like few soundtracks do. It also continues a precedent set in motion by Daft Punk’s moving Tron: Legacy soundtrack to the Chemical Brothers’ kick-ass work on Hanna that electronic music deserves serious film-scoring consideration.
Robyn “Call Your Girlfriend” music video
What I love most about Robyn is her empowered desperation. “Call Your Girlfriend” is just Robyn in what looks like a high school gym, dancing hard in a frame thinner than widescreen across a not-too-flashy light show. More than any other artist — pop or not — she fights with every single word, every last melody, every dramatic (but not drama queen) dance move. Robyn is what I imagine a real pop star should be. (Watch the “Call Your Girlfriend” music video on YouTube.)
Milk Run by James Turrell (1996)
The Hirshhorn’s ColorForms exhibit took a simple theme and presented a decent narrative around abstracting color, which I took in as Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s bliss-noise-pop album Love is a Stream provided an audio to my visual in earbuds. But when I turned off my iPod and walked into a pitch-black hallway leading to Milk Run, I suddenly had a synesthetic experience. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, James Turrell’s light installation felt like music, like Loveless without melody, like Cluster & Eno painted in soft reds instead of smeared blues. But the only sound in the room were shuffled feet and swishing winter coats.
Wild Flag
I knew I could count on the ladies of Wild Flag (I don’t need to name them, do I?) to make the year’s only true rock 'n’ roll album, perform the most electric live show I’ve seen, well, since Sleater-Kinney’s final tour, and write the new music lovers anthem (“Romance”). Really, I’m just glad this band exists.
Neurosis @ Maryland Deathfest, May 27
A thunderstorm loomed overhead as the members of Neurosis debated performing at one of Maryland Deathfest’s outdoor stages. It was tense in the audience as Neurosis live gigs become rarer each year, but with some delay and the final okay, there couldn’t have been a more perfect backdrop. The set leaned heavily on Given to the Rising material, but brilliantly ended with powerfully cathartic “Through Silver and Blood.” It was a cleansing ritual rendered in decibels.
Aspidistrafly, A Little Fable [Kitchen Label]
Oh, those last-minute contenders. A Little Fable literally came out just two weeks ago from a boutique-y, handcrafted label based out of Singapore and it’s already a daily listen. The impossibly-named Aspidistrafly has created the kind of barely-there chamber-folk record made in living rooms with bedroom eyes. With acoustic guitars softly picked over field recordings, fanciful piano flourishes, sorrowful strings and April Lee’s wispy vocals, A Little Fable will remind folk devotees of Vashti Bunyan and early 2000s indie kids of Ida, yet finds its own leaf-covered path.
All photos are courtesy of the artists except GPOY (Erin White), The Body (Tucker Walsh/NPR), Swan (Gisel Florez for NPR), pg. 99 (Reid Haithcock for NPR), Wild Flag (Shantel Mitchell for NPR), Neurosis (Laina Dawes/Handshake Inc.).