On the Web: bellx1.com Best Tracks: “Safer Than Love,” “Velcro,” “The Trailing Skirts of God”
19) Pete Donnelly - When You Come Home (Donnelly Music)
Pete Donnelly is the singer-bassist in The Figgs. He’s also been serving as the bass player for the new version of NRBQ that Terry Adams has been playing with for a couple of years. And Donnelly has spent some time on the road and in the studio with Soul Asylum. Oh, and his resume includes doing production and playing work for a lot of
On the Web: petedonnellymusic.com Best Tracks: “Original Wonder,” “The Only One,” “
18) The Black Keys - El Camino (Nonesuch)
Here was my only complaint about The Black Keys album Brothers in the 2010 edition of the RT20: “At almost an hour long, the only thing that drags the 15-track Brothers down is its length. They could have shaved off a couple of songs and saved them for their next album without diluting the impact of this one.” Well, it seems like they heard me and responded by cranking out 11 songs in just over 38 minutes. El Camino is a tightly focused album that ups the tempo while doubling the hooks. Producer Danger Mouse knows how to how to add the just amount of sonic sweetening (vintage keyboards, high pitched backing vocals) with out detracting from the powerful groove that singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have built up over years of touring. “Lonely Boy” deserves to be the out-of-the-box (jeebus, did I just use an ancient radio and records phrase?) smash that it’s shaping up to be, but El Camino’s best song is the epic “Little Black Submarines.” Calling that track an epic seems like a misnomer, since it’s only four minutes and 10 seconds. Yet I can’t think of a more appropriate description for Auerbach’s acoustic intro followed by a massive electric guitar riff and thundering drums. This duo has produced a lot of good music over seven albums, yet I don’t think they’ve done anything better than “Little Black Submarines.” If I hadn’t gotten this full album during the second week of December, it might have ranked even high on this list. (Gee, where have I heard that before?)On the Web: theblackkeys.com Best Tracks: “Little Black Submarines,” “Lonely Boy,” “Gold on the Ceiling”
17) Joseph Arthur - The Graduation Ceremony (Lonely Astronaut)
Joseph Arthur shifted away from his low-key vocals, acoustic guitar with some electronics template over the past few years by recording with a full on rock band, doing some experimental EPs and forming a Crosby, Stills and Nash-inspired trio Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison. The Graduation Ceremony sees him return to the roots of his career with the sound and style of songwriting that attached Peter Gabriel as a big supporter almost 15 years ago. It’s filled with lightly strummed acoustic guitars and Arthur harmonizing his hypnotic falsetto and his low register to a total ear-pleasing effect. Alas, it seems like it took some kind of bad break up to bring Arthur back to the best of what he does. These lyrics sound sweet when Arthur sings them, but damn, they’re all sort of depressing. I guess hearing about bad times goes down better when it’s wrapped in a gorgeous sonic haze.
On the Web: josepharthur.com Best Tracks: “Almost Blue,” “Out on a Limb,” “Over the Sun”
16) Friendly Fires - Pala (XL Recordings)
I need to give a shout out to my friend Dev Sherlock for turning me onto Friendly Fires. We did a podcast two years ago focusing on five albums from the past 20 years that changed his life and Friendly Fires 2008 self-titled debut was on that list. He gave me a copy of the entire album to use when producing the podcast and since I liked the two songs he chose to play, I decided to put the full album on my iTunes and listen to it on the ride home from work late one weekend night. By the time I walked upstairs at my stop, I was hooked. Their mix of indie pop with disco-like beats was irresistible to me. Pala sees the band upping the ante my making the production sound bigger, yet not diminishing the dance-y fun of their debut. Like the late lamented LCD Soundsystem, Friendly Fires are one of the few acts I could see listening to while comfortably sitting down like the old man I am, or dancing to with wild abandon at a club where I’d obviously be the “old guy making a spectacle of himself.”
On the Web: wearefriendlyfires.com Best Tracks: “Blue Cassette,” “Running Away,” “Show Me Lights”
15) Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Sour Mash/Mercury)
Two years after the Gallagher brothers imploded Oasis, they both returned with new projects this year. Singer Liam and most of the final lineup of Oasis joined forces in a new project called Beady Eye, which Liam brashly predicted would be just as big as Oasis. Um, I don’t think so. Beady Eye was perhaps the most half-baked piece of shit album I heard this year. A friend of mine sent me the unmastered advance that he’d gotten from a buddy in the
On the Web: noelgallagher.com Best Tracks: “If I had a Gun…,” “Dream On,” “Everybody’s on the Run”
14)
Fountains of Wayne
Fountains of On the Web: fountainsofwayne.com Best Tracks: “A Dip in the Ocean,” “The Summer Place,” “Someone’s Going to Break Your Heart”
13)
I don’t think I anticipated any album this year as much as I Am Very Far. The last two albums
On the Web: okkervilriver.com Best Tracks: “Wake and Be Fine,” “Piratess,” “Your Past Life as a Blast”
12) Bright Eyes - The People’s Key (Merge)
I for one was happy when Conor Oberst decided to make another (and, considering what he’s said in various interviews, perhaps final) Bright Eyes album. His last project, the solo disc Outer South, was by far the worst album he’s made since he was a teenager. The People’s Key ditches the rootsy vibe of the past few records Oberst has released and dives back into the modern/alt rock sound of 2005’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. “Jejune Stars” and “Shell Games” sound more contemporary (and are the catchiest musically) than anything he’s done in years. Of course, Oberst has to have some sort of spoken word piece to intro the album and on The People’s Key
On the Web: conoroberst.com Best Tracks: “Jejune Stars,” “One for You, One for Me,” “Shell Games”
11) R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros.)
(Note: I wrote this piece for as a Song of the Week for the RT 20 blog back in September after the band announced their breakup. It seems better to reprint that than a regular review.)
I had a feeling that this day would come soon. I wasn’t sure if it was this year, but after R.E.M. decided to not tour behind this year’s Collapse Into Now it seemed that a decision to split was inevitable. The hints were there in all the songs. The music that Peter Buck and Mike Mills composed quoted parts of the band’s catalog (“Blue” sounding like a sequel to Out of Time’s “Country Feedback,” “Oh My Heart” coming off like an Automatic For the People outtake) while Michael Stipe’s lyrics contained many references to people moving on with their lives (“Walk It Back”—Time, time, time it cannot revive/You, you can't turn away/You asked me to stay/but something needs to change; “All the Best”—“Let's sing it a rhyme/Let's give it one more time/Let's show the kids how to do it fine, fine, fine, fine.”). I wanted to ignore these signs and hope for more from this late career renaissance. I’m in the critical minority on this, but I think 2008’s Accelerate is one of their Top 5 albums ever and that Collapse Into Now keeps growing in stature every time I listen to it.
Full disclosure—I am friends with Scott McCaughey, who’s been a touring and recording member of R.E.M. for 17 years. During the decade I’ve known Scott I’ve gotten to see him play with the band three times. The pure joy he displayed performing his friends songs made me smile every time. I sent Scott a brief note on the day the split was announced. I told him how sorry I was to hear the news and hoped that he and everyone around the band was feeling okay. I added, “I'm sure it's a weird time since they're you're friends and bandmates. But at least they're going out on a high note with the last two albums.” He wrote back to me, “I do appreciate your comment about going out on a high note—I feel that way too.”
One of those high notes is “It Happened Today.” It includes more of those foreshadowing lyrics from Stipe (“And close in on a promise after, after all I've done today/I have earned my voice”) and the last 1:50 features Stipe, Mills and guest vocalist Eddie Vedder doing a wordless chorus that pulls you in and takes you to majestic heights. It’s a stunning moment in a career filled with plenty of them. I’ve never met Eddie Vedder, but from all accounts he’s a man that has respect and enthusiasm for the acts inspired him growing up. I saw his unbridled joy inducting—and singing with—R.E.M. at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies a few years ago. So I can imagine that he was honored, thrilled, and perhaps a bit nervous when the band asked him to sing on “It Happened Today.” I’m sure he wanted to deliver for R.E.M., and he most certainly does with a magnificent vocal turn on it.
I can’t put into words just how much this band has meant to me. All I can say is thank you to Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck (and Bill Berry too) for many years of providing comfort, inspiration and joy.
On the Web: remhq.com Best Tracks: “That Someone Is You,” “Oh My Heart,” “It Happened Today”
10) The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? (
One week in July I spent a lot of time at ye old work desk plowing through albums I'd been sent over...well...the past year? Maybe longer? There was a mess of discs to listen to, much of them pure crap. The Vaccines' What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? was by far the best of lot. A collection of quick, catchy Brit pop-punk songs that are witty? Hells yeah, count me in. The opening track "Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)" is the best
On the Web: thevaccines.co.uk Best Tracks: “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra),” “Post Break-Up Sex,” “Wetsuit”
9) We Are Augustines - Rise Ye Sunken Ships (Oxcart/Turnout)
Full disclosure: In the mid-aughts I worked at a friend’s bar with We Are Augustines singer-guitarist Bill McCarthy. So having any sort of critical distance is almost impossible for me. (Especially because one night the guy was instrumental in making sure yours truly didn’t get stabbed when I working at the door.) The band Bill launched while he was working at the bar was called Pela, and my goodness they were a powerhouse live. The three times I saw them play I feared that Bill or one of his bandmates was going to seriously break something (or someone) with the reckless abandon that they attacked their instruments. I liked Pela’s EPs and 2007 debut album Anytime Graffiti, but those recordings could never capture the passion I saw on stage from Bill and company. Pela broke up a couple of years ago, its’ life a victim of bizarre (Bill’s severe hand injury) and mundane (the usual label and management problems) circumstances. I ran into Bill on the train one Saturday morning and he told me he was starting this new project with one of the guys from Pela. What he didn’t tell me that he was coming up with an album that delivers the passion I saw him have on stage—and them some. Rise Ye Sunken Ships doesn’t contain your typical rock album subject material. Bill crafted a bunch of songs that explore his brother’s psychological problems, stint in jail and eventual suicide as well as his mother’s suicide. Its raw emotional material that’s not for the faint of heart, and Bill sings the hell out if it. Yet you never feel as though Bill is at his wits end. These songs are pulling him through this crazy story. And it’s one I suggest you should listen to.
On the Web: weareaugustines.com Best Tracks: “Chapel Song,” “
8) Wilco - The Whole Love (DPM/Anti)
Gosh, what do I write about Wilco this point? Every single one of their eight studio albums (10 if you count the Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg) has made the RT 20. Besides The Figgs, they are the band I’ve seen the most in the 16 years I’ve been living in
On the Web: wilcoworld.net Best Tracks: “Dawned on Me,” “Art of Almost,” “One Sunday Morning”
7) The Baseball Project - Vol. 2: High & Inside (YepRoc)
(Full disclosure: I wrote the bio for the Baseball Project’s first album, and I did the same with Volume 2. I liked it, so I’m just going to reprint a slightly truncated version of it.)
What happens when your band's debut album is a run-scoring hit with both music and baseball fans? If you're The Baseball Project, you grab some friends to fill out your bench, take batting practice by writing songs for ESPN and deliver a strikeout pitch with Volume Two: High and Inside. The new album from Steve Wynn, Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon and Peter Buck is another winning collection of songs about the game's greats that will be pleasing to those who love America's pastime—and fans of intelligent, melodic and fun rock.
When the first Baseball Project album, Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, was released in 2008 Wynn, McCaughey, Pitmon and Buck had yet to play one note as a unit in front of an audience. But after playing throughout the
The quartet invited a lot of their friends to help out on Volume 2. Wynn explains, “We had wanted to include some like-minded baseball rocker pals on the first record but there just wasn’t time so we were able to open the door this time around.” Into that open door came contributions from Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard (who adds backing vocals to “Ichiro Goes to the Moon”), Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, The Decemberists’ Chris Funk and John Moen, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, who supplies lyrics and the lead vocal on the Minnesota Twins anthem "Please Don't Call Them Twinkies." Twins fan Pitmon had bonded with Finn over the team when the
Indeed Craig. And things do come together very nicely on Volume 2.
On the Web: thebaseballproject.com Best Tracks: “Please Don’t Call Them Twinkies,” “1976,” “Fair Weather Fans”
6) The Decemberists - The King Is Dead (Capitol)
Thank you, Colin Meloy. You dimmed my enthusiasm for your band with The Crane Wife, and then drove me far, far away from your camp with the overblown concept album The Hazards of Love. Oh my, did I despise that album. So when I heard that Meloy wanted to go back to simpler song structures and not have an overlying concept for The King Is Dead, I was a bit hesitant. Yet Meloy was true to his word—this is a batch of simple songs, with touches of country rock and an R.E.M. influence through it like no other Decemberists album. And to his credit, Meloy didn’t fight that and got Peter Buck to play 12 string guitar on the two most blatant R.E.M.-like tracks (“Calamity Song” and “Down By the Water”). Gosh darnit, he won me back! Yet Meloy’s greatest achievement with The King is Dead might not be his returning me to The Decemberists fold. It could be making me listen to an album that features the always irritating, faux-alt country singer Gillen Welch. For some reason I’ve always disliked her material (and thought her partner David Rawlings had the worst masturbatory guitar face ever—and he’s soloing on a freaking acoustic guitar, c’mon!) and thought her whole rootsy presentation was a big scam. Obviously, I realize that I’m probably 100% wrong on all of those points. Yet who doesn’t like having some irrational hatred? The Tea Party has it every day. (Oh, wait. Not a good example there.) Anyhoo, her harmony vocals on the majority of The King is Dead are, gulp, very good. I guess Meloy had the last laugh at my expense.
On the Web: decemberists.com Best Tracks: “Don’t Carry It All,” “Down by the Water,” “June Hymn”
5)
It’s rare for an artist to make some of their best work in the same year they mark their 25th anniversary. Buffalo Tom is one act that can stake such a claim. Skins is probably their finest album since 1995’s Sleepy Eyed. While they can still rock out and come up with great hooks for their faster tracks, Skins really shines with its more personal, introspective and quieter numbers like “Miss Barren Brooks,” “Paper Knife,” “Don't Forget Me,” and “The Hawks & the Sparrows.” Bill Janovitz, Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis have found a way to gracefully transition into their 40s by making songs about true grown-up concerns, like a father struggling to hold his life together on “The Kids Just Sleep.” Don’t worry, the hooky rock you’ve come to expect is still here with “Down” and “Guilty Girls." Both sides of Skins mesh perfectly in “The Big Light,” a song by Janovitz inspired by the murder of his gay uncle Vince and the aftermath of going through his possessions. Janovitz’s blogging about the incident (go to BillJanovitz.com and read the entries from November 2009) was one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in the past five years. Somehow he was able to transfer all those feelings into song that—if you don’t know its inspiration—seems like a great anthem. It’s one of the best songs Janovitz has ever written and worth buying Skins just to hear that track.
On the Web: buffalotom.com Best Tracks: "The Big Light,” “Guilty Girls,” “Don’t Forget Me”
4) The Head and The Heart - The Head and The Heart (Sub Pop)
The Head and The Heart don’t do anything highly original on their self-titled debut. But just like The Vaccines back at number-10, hearing it executed so perfectly is just a joy to behold. The Seattle sextet mix-up Americana, country-rock, Beatlesque pop, ’70s folk-rock with a dash of Crosby, Stills and Nash in their songs about love, traveling, ghosts, cats and dogs and more traveling. (Really, these guys like penning lyrics about going to or leaving places around the country. It’s a great road trip album.) The harmonies between guitarists Josiah Johnson and Jonathan Russell and violin player Charity Rose Thielen are pure ear candy in song after song. And the band’s secret weapon is keyboardist Kenny Hensley, whose piano lines propel the songs and give them a bit more heft than other harmony driven acts as of late, such as The Head and The Heart’s labelmates Fleet Foxes. Hopefully The Head and The Heart’s sophomore effort album won’t disappoint me like Fleet Foxes’ did.
On the Web: theheadandtheheart.com Best Tracks: “Lost in My Mind,” “Down in the Valley,” “Sounds Like Hallelujah”
3) Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines (Merge)
I have to credit my former co-worker Kerry DarConte for turning me onto this band. One day out of the blue she sent me a link to the self-titled debut from Telekinesis—without even another word in the email. I wrote back, “I assume you think I should download this album—and you’re not sending me a virus.” She replied that I should, and that I should shut up. (Or something like that. I can’t dig that far back into my work email at the moment.) So I did download that album and listened to it one morning on the way into work—and it actually made me really happy, a feeling that even lasted through part of the work day! I decided that day I needed to download their new album 12 Desperate Straight Lines, and I was thrilled to learn it was even better. Telekinesis is essentially Michael Benjamin Lerner—he plays every instrument (when I saw them live at
On the Web: telekinesismusic.com Best Tracks: “Car Crash,” “You Turn Clear in the Sun,” “
2) Middle Brother - Middle Brother (Partisian Records)
Middle Brother combines the talents of three friends—Deer Tick's John McCauley, Dawes's Taylor Goldsmith and Delta Spirit's Matt Vasquez. These three singer-songwriters went into studio with a few songs and an idea of making an album that would help cross-pollinate their fanbases. They more than succeeded. They crafted an album that equals and at times surpasses the work of their main bands. They are, bluntly put, supergroup that is indeed super. That this is a true collaboration comes shining through on the opening track “Daydreaming,” which features a world weary lead vocal from McCauley and some tremendous harmonies from Goldsmith and Vasquez. On the next song “Blue Eyes” these guys sound like they’ve been playing and singing together for years. Vasquez and Goldsmith do a co-lead vocal that sounds so right I’m amazed that never recorded together before. Parts of their main bands shine through now and again (“Someday” sounds just like Delta Spirit while “Million Dollar Bill” ended up on the new Dawes album Nothing Is Wrong in a version that sounds identical) but most of the time Middle Brother sounds like a great band that happens to have three lead singers. And any group that covers The Replacements rarity “Portland”—and comes close to improving upon the original—is one I definitely hope to hear from again.
On the Web: middlebrother.com Best Tracks: “Blue Eyes,” “Someday,” “Million Dollar Bill”
1) BOAT - Dress Like Your Idols (Magic Marker)
A tip of the hat to must go to my friend Bill Pearis. I never would have heard of
A bonus beyond the great music on Dress Like Your Idols is that the members of BOAT are some of the coolest, down to earth musicians I’ve met the past 16 years. Bill ended up introducing me to D. Crane after a show at The Rock Shop in
On the Web: boat.ohnodisaster.com Best Tracks: “Landlocked,” “Forever in Armitron,” “Classically Trained”
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