Top 25 records of 2011

Below, behold my top 25 records of 2011 as submitted to Tiny Mix Tapes.

Yeah, I know, year-end lists are whatever. As always, the numbering is largely arbitrary. And there are inevitably a handful of great records I discover right at the November deadline (which is too early, by the way) or after - namely, there are a whole bunch of hip-hop mixtapes I managed to miss and a few sweet drone records that I've been digging on lately. Regardless, these are all albums I thought were pretty damn great. They come heartily recommended.

25. Stalley - Lincoln Way Nights (Intelligent Trunk Music)
Backpack-throwback type stuff from Rick Ross's new signee. Smart and smooth.

24. Low - C'mon
Latest album from slowcore heroes was lean and mean.

23. Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest
Solid stuff from Ms. Welch and longtime compatriot Dave Rawlings.

22. Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Glad I heard this one in time. Not an everyday listen, but remarkably poignant.

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Kate Bush: 50 Words for Snow

Kate Bush is weird in the best way. 50 Words for Snow is a great winter album yeah, but it's also sort of the perfect album for this specific moment in time, this season, on the calendar but also culturally, politically and on some base level of human existence. (Let this album occupy your headspace for a while.) It all sounds totally grand but it's entirely relatable in its weirdness, familiar despite being painstakingly new. My TMT review of 50 Words for Snow (a fast last-minute entry on my Top 25 of 2011, which I'll post here soon):

Kate Bush is of a time when pop singers didn’t need faux-lesbian makeout sessions to express nascent female sexuality, when eccentricity was not some contrived aesthetic end but a consequence of the creative process itself. For Bush, the beauty and weirdness of sex — of sensuality — was the basis of art. Her early music was shocking not for any overtly explicit content, but for its desperate attempts to celebrate sensuality in an age of technology and the vicious detachment it wrought.

Read the rest here.

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Mark Kozelek @ Aladdin Theater, Portland

Last weekend the lady and I braved the Sunday night sleepies to go see Mark Kozelek play at the venerable Aladdin Theater. It was a performance peppered with, how do I put it... uncomfortable moments. I'd heard tales of Kozelek's off-putting stage demeanor, of his impatience with excessive crowd noise and the like. The crowd at this show was impossibly submissive, hanging on every note the man played. Kozelek managed to alienate nonetheless. Still, he continues to be able to write a mean heartbreaker.

I wrote about it for Tiny Mix Tapes' recently revived live blog.

“Shit, I had a bunch of dirty jokes I wanted to tell,” Mark Kozelek deadpanned upon seeing a child in the front row of the reverent mid-sized crowd at Portland’s Aladdin Theater. It is itself a venue that demands some reverence, an aged and atmospheric place ideal for intimate performances such as this one. Kozelek’s most recent outing as Sun Kil Moon, last year’s Admiral Fell Promises, was a chilly and cartographic affair that sent listeners across the physical and emotional distances of the American West and through the tangled recesses of its creator’s wry and yet tortured headspace.

Read the rest here.

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Wilco: The Whole Love

Pleasantly surprised by Wilco's new one, since their last two outings didn't exactly inspire confidence for their career trajectory. Thankfully, the Tweedmeister and company have managed to break out of their formula-rock rut to deliver a startlingly fresh-sounding record in The Whole Love. Even though the title sounds like some gross, borderline-criminal pickup line from the Tweed Jacket. Oh, Tweedums, you so-and-so.

Looking back, it’s entirely possible that music critics and listeners alike put too much stock in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. That record, hailed both as Wilco’s breakthrough (true) and an infallible slice of American-made genius (more debatable), was and is still analyzed through a decidedly distorted lens. That the album was conceived and recorded long before September 2001 was of secondary importance in the minds of many who found a deep, if accidental, profundity in Jeff Tweedy’s blurred depictions of tall shaking buildings and general human malaise.

Read the rest here.

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MusicfestNW 2011

The piece I did on the always impressive MusicfestNW is up over at Tiny Mix Tapes. Though I didn't make a point to see some of the fest's many oldsters (Butthole Surfers, Archers of Loaf), I did witness some pretty spectacular sets from the new guard. Some (Ume) killed outright; others (EMA) seemed on the verge of greatness but were charmingly flawed. Great lineup this year, and though Iron and Wine confused the fuck out of me (and everyone), I was glad to see folks like Sam Beam venturing outside their comfort zones in favor of some next level ish.

My generation is truly lost. Most people feel isolated some time or another, but in our case, everyone seems to feel this way all the time. What do any of us have in common, besides the internet and the sickly persistent desire to always be connected? But to what? And to whom?

The MusicfestNW 2011 lineup boasted anachronistic names like Archers of Loaf, Butthole Surfers, and Sebadoh. Now, before we get too far, I should note that I didn't see most of these bands. They don't interest me much now. If it were 1994 or 1989 or whenever, I'd be all about it. But it's 2011, and these are not our artists, as much as we want to think they are. Never before has a generation so lustily consumed the culture of its forebears. It's one big memory daydream, like our whole society's turned into one big nostalgia pit ready to open up and swallow it all.

So it was with a warrior's countenance that I approached MFNW, with the constant nagging mental backdrop of time, time, time...

Read the rest here.

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Pickathon 2011 Review

I had a transcendent time at Pickathon, so much so that I didn't wanna leave. If you're able to go to this next or any year, I recommend you do so; it's as close to perfect as any music festival I've ever attended.

It’s Sunday afternoon, the third and final day of Pickathon 2011, and I’m staring at the old dancing hippie with the outie bellybutton. His rubbery skin, his shockingly lithe movements, his manicured white beard – it’s terrifying but weirdly alluring and I can’t look away.

It’s Sunday night and I’m overhearing a Pendarvis Farm resident explain to a performer what it’s like after the festival, when the crowds disperse and the music stops. Earnestly, he compares it to post-partum depression. “There are like 5,000 people here,” he says. “Then, all of the sudden, there are five.”

It’s Thursday, the day before the festival, and I’m pondering what Pickathon might be like. Perhaps unfairly, I’ve already stereotyped. (Hordes of dancing hippies, I imagine.) The folkish, rootsy lineup looks great, but it’s packaged with some red-flag buzz words (“Camping, hiking and a sustainability ethic”) that suggest a faint bouquet of moral superiority, that weird, cringeworthy mix of egoist libertarianism and mobbish progressivism that runs off the slopes of Mt. Hood and snakes its way into Portland’s water supply. But I will try to keep an open mind.

Read the rest here.

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Pickathon 2011

Gonna be covering Pickathon this weekend for TMT. LOOK AT THAT LINEUP Y'ALL! Mavis Staples! Bill Callahan! Wye Oak! Future Islands! Califone! Damien Jurado! I could go on. I'll be twatting this jam all weekend long, so check up on that if you're so inclined.

Haven't been camping in a long time, so let's hope I don't get eaten by bears. There are bears in the woods, right?

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Musicfest NW: September 7-11, 2011

Pretty amped for the return of MusicfestNW. Very nice lineup they've got going this year, heavy on the '90s reunion tip (Sebadoh, Olivia Tremor Control, Archers, Butthole Surfers) but laced with some pleasant surprises as well (Charles Bradley, Crooked Fingers, Centro-Matic).

I recapped the fest last year for TMT, and I'll be doing the same this go-around. I only hope Spike Can Dance makes a repeat appearance.

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