Alright, let's get the magic in motion, shall we?
On no level is Metric's latest album anywhere near as good as the band's 2003 synth-pop-rock masterpiece Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? But outside of pure comparisons to that near-brilliant album, Live it Out is an interesting, engaging and largely loveable record. The synth sounds are still apparent on many of this album's tracks, but as a whole, Live it Out plays more like if Blondie and The Cars hooked up and had a hot Canadian daughter. It's catchy stuff, regardless of what you might have thought of the band's old style, and may think of its new direction.
Key Tracks: Empty; Poster of a Girl; Patriarch on a Vespa
Minnesota's Askeleton is mainly the brainchild of vocalist/guitarist/percussionist Knol Tate, and includes a wide variety of revolving door musicians. But with (Happy) Album, the band seems to get away from the whole one man show mentality, displaying more of a unified front, both in the songwriting and instrumentation. There's a greater consistency amid the album's dozen tracks than there has been in previous releases. For the brand of minimalist pop rock that the band is geared toward, this newfound solidarity creates much catchier, and generally memorable songs. Tracks like Cities, Not the People in Them, and its apparent antithesis, People, Not the Cities They Live in display the band's ability to rock, and still keep it cool and breezy all the same. There's not much posturing or serious intellectualism or artistry going on here; this is just a great pop record from a cool band. Pure and simple.
Key Tracks: Cities, Not the People in Them; People, Not the Cities They Live in; You and Your New Me
38. Fall of Troy - Doppelganger
The mainstream and underground music scenes combined are usually only good for about one, maybe two truly listenable screaming hardcore albums per year. This year I ran into about five or six I really liked. However, Fall of Troy's Doppelganger stood out to me above the rest. While bands like Thrice and Funeral For a Friend seemed content to just stick to the more marketable forms of hardcore, and other bands preferred to steer more into the purely esoteric direction, this record is really a striking balance between the two. The song structures are appropriately scattershot, veering wildly between off-tuned solos and odd time signatures, but it's all super tight. And while loads of bands do the whole mixing screaming vocals with melodic vocals thing, often times it just comes across as forced in one way or another. Not such the case, here. It's an album that both purists and fairweather genre fans can appreciate on some level, and it's a lot of fun to boot.
Key Tracks: Ace One, Scene One; F.C.R.P.E.M.I.X.; We Better Learn to Hotwire a Uterus
37. Sun Kil Moon - Tiny Cities
No sense in beating around the bush, Sun Kil Moon's Tiny Cities is the guy from the Red House Painters (a band I out and out loathed, for the most part) and a couple of backing musicians doing nothing but Modest Mouse covers, and it's completely bananas how good it is. Mark Kozelek (the band's creative force, and the aforementioned former RHP singer) has done something like this previously, covering ACDC songs and turning them into his own brand of meloncholy singer-songwriter-esque songs. But on this record, he straight up takes these songs and makes them his own. Compare and contrast: The Modest Mouse version of Tiny Cities Made of Ashes is an erratic and dancy piece of noise rock, with singer Issac Brock shrieking through most of it. On Tiny Cities, the song is transformed into an almost painfully pretty piece of folky acoustic rock. Every single song on this album is given the same sort of loving treatment, carefully crafted with similarly sparse production, beautiful vocals and unique style. It's a completely bizarre record, but one that can be easily taken in, all the same.
Key Tracks: Tiny Cities Made of Ashes; Space Travel is Boring; Trucker's Atlas
36. M.I.A. - Arular
Critics and obnoxious music snobs alike have basically been shoving Maya Arulpragasam's M.I.A. project as the next big thing in...well, everything. Is it dance hall? Is it electro? Is it UK hip-hop? Oh who gives a flying ass. Really it's just a weird mixture of all three, and it translates into a great party record. For all the critical acclaim, it's bizarre that all the hoopla comes to rest at such a generally un-snobbish result, but whatever. Arular is just a good goddamn bit of fun music. Its mixture of genres works better than it sounds like on paper, and it easily transcends most of the pedestrian dance hall acts the UK keeps shipping out. Lyrically, most of this record is fairly inpenetrable to those who aren't hip to the scene's opaque brand of slang. Supposedly there's a fair bit of political commentary contained within, but us Americans seem destined to just nod our heads to the rhythm with generally clueless looks. But hey, with beats this hot and the vocal energy to back it up, that's more than sufficient.
Key Tracks: Bingo; Hombre; Galang
35. Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
Glasgow's Boards of Canada has been making decidedly mellowish electronica for years now, and The Campfire Headphase doesn't really futz with the group's formula too much. If anything, this album benefits from the best production quality a Boards of Canada release has ever seen. It maintains that sort of scratchy, senescent sound that the music has always had, but the beats are arguably the best they've ever been. There's also a melodic quality that wasn't so much missing from past records, but seems more at the forefront here. The end result is one of the best cool-out records of recent years, and the perfect soundtrack for your next moment of relaxation.
Key Tracks: Chromakey Dreamcoat; Dayvan Cowboy; Oscar See Through Red Eye
Creating a follow-up to 2001's self-titled debut must've been a heady task for Damon Albarn, the driving force behind the band of cartoon heroes that makes up the Gorillaz. For as ludicrous a labor of love as that first album was, it was a fairly resounding success, almost in spite of itself. Demon Days does suffer from a bit of a sophomore slump, but obviously not too huge of one. Feel Good Inc. was one of the biggest hits of the year, and with good reason, considering it's easily the best song the record has to offer. But there is more beneath the surface level of the album's main single. Songs like Kids With Guns and Every Planet We Reach is Dead evoke the same sorts of desolate emotions that were in abundance on the previous record, and the MF Doom collaboration on November Has Come ALMOST makes up for the total lack of Del Tha Funkee Homosapien this time around. You can't quite call it more of the same, but you can't really call it a departure either. It's simply another weirdly listenable album from Albarn and his collaborators that's damn near impossible not to get attached to.
Key Tracks: Dirty Harry; Feel Good Inc.; Every Planet We Visit is Dead
Sigur Ros has made its mint creating trancendentally minimalist music that primarily consists of vocalist Jon Thor Birgisson indecipherably chirping in Icelandic over etherial guitars and keys, and deconstructed percussion for around eight or nine minutes at a time. On Takk, none of the above has really changed radically, but there is certainly a bit more in the way of oomph to the music. The songs are unmistakable in style, but the crescendos come sooner and harder, and the rhythmic base goes more rock than ever before. Takk certainly has its moments of tranquility, but they're broken up more frequently by distorted guitars and crashy cymbal hits than ever before. It's almost as though the boys from Iceland sat down one day and came to the conclusion that they just wanted to rock--as much as they were capable of rocking, anyway. The newfound chutzpah gives the band a dynamic that it wasn't necessarily lacking previously, but is more than welcome all the same.
Key Tracks: Glosoli; Saeglopur; Milano
32. Weerd Science - Friends and Nervous Breakdowns
In between Coheed and Cambria records, drummer Josh Eppard apparently went and made a hip-hop album; and lo and behold, it's pretty goddamn great. Eppard's delivery is faster and more furious than your average white boy rapper, though also manages to avoid the trapping of just sounding like another angry Eminem wannabe. The subject matter often centers around the usual kinds of material found on a rap album--an underprivledged youth, aggressive posturing towards those who might have smack to talk, and whatnot. But all of it is brought to the table with believable skills and some serious heart. Certainly, Friends and Nervous Breakdowns has its moments of outlandishness. In Girl, Your Baby's Worm Food, he speaks at length about forceably aborting the fetus of an overly promiscuous ex-girlfriend, and in Blueprint, he instructs a female friend on how to put his broken body back together, piece by piece. As potentially offensive and off-kilter as such material can be, Eppard handles it well, and the tonal shifts between the quirky and the hip-hop standards, mixed with shockingly excellent beats make for an eclectic and surprisingly adept rap record.
Key Tracks: Conspiracy Theories Without Mel Gibson; Blueprint; In a City With No Name
31. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
Don't adjust your stereos. Apologies to the Queen Mary is not a lost Modest Mouse album from the late 90's brought to light--it just sounds like one. Maybe that's because MM singer Issac Brock produced the record, or maybe it's just because the members of Wolf Parade seem so head over heels in love with the sorts of wobbily indie song structurings and high-pitched vocals that Modest Mouse practically coined back in the day. But this isn't just some bad soundalike. Wolf Parade is a talented group of musicians, and the songs do have their own unique qualities. Interjections of synth and piano lines along with periodic moments of heavy rocking counterbalance the more frequently oddball melodies and loosely woven deconstructionist indie pop sensibilities that make up much of the album. It's more than a little esoteric, but musically sound, and at times, near brilliant.
Key Tracks: You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son; Grounds For Divorce; Fancy Claps
That's all I can fit into one journal entry. Look for another installment soon.