Before I get to my top 10, though, I should mention some albums for which I had much greater expectations and a few that I thought were good, but didn’t rise to the band’s potential.
There were several big disappointments for me this year. Wilco’s new album Wilco (The Album) was a big one for me. Though “Wilco (the Song)” and “Bull Black Nova” are great, the album as a whole is sleepy and uninspired. I listened to it a few times and forgot all about it. I had higher hopes for Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight: Franz Ferdinand but found mostly the same formula without the energy of the first two records. Dan Auerbach, one half of one of my favorite band’s, The Black Keys, put out a solo record that I found really lacking.
Some albums were good but not quite top 10 material for me but worth mentioning:
Pearl Jam: Backspacer -- A nice album from the grunge godfathers. A few slow clunkers away from my top 10.
Telekinesis!: Telekinesis! -- A fun, guitar pop album with moments that recall Summerteeth Wilco.
Them Crooked Vultures: Them Crooked Vultures -- Great hard rock riffage from an awesome, super power trio. Ultimately, though, the songs get away from the group a few too many times.
Mighty Mighty Bosstones: Pin Points and Gin Joints -- Nothing new here, just that classic Bosstones sound.
Nirvana: Live at Reading -- What else is there to say about this album? It’s a two-CD collection of a great band at the height of its abilities. An awesome performance to remind you why the band kick-started the alt-rock of the ‘90s. Definitely a favorite, but I thought I’d save space on my top 10 for new music.
OK, now for the top 10:
10. Dinosaur Jr.: Farm.
Dinosaur Jr. reunited Lou Barlow and J. Mascis for 2007’s Beyond, the first time the two had played together since the original band split in the late ‘80s. And what do they do? Put out the best material of the group’s entire catalogue, including J Mascis’ well-known Dinosaur recordings of the ‘90s sans Barlow. The music on Farm is more of Beyond. It’s raw ear-bleeding rock with the explosive drumming of Murph and the roaring guitar of Mascis, perhaps the most unrecognized guitar genius of his time.
9. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
This album snuck up on me. At f
irst listen its just really nice guitar pop with little substance. SingerThomas Mars’ vocals waft like light background noise… He might as well have been singing in French. But the songs are infectious and better performed than I first gave them credit for. I found myself waking up with “Lisztomania,” “1901,” and “Lasso” on my mind. I’d hum the tunes to myself and sing the breezy lyrics. The French band’s fourth studio album is a work of power pop perfection.
8. Reverend and the Makers: A French Kiss in the Chaos
A friend introduced me to this band. He’d seen it perform on the Later… With Jools Holland. So I started listening to A French Kiss and became intrigued by the band. You could hear the dancy Brit pop influences -- Stone Roses and Blur -- but what makes the band interesting is Jon “Reverend” McClure’s sharp songwriting. He attacks everything from modern advertising to the war in Iraq with a uniquely British snark. These are songs with a keen social consciousness that belie their party music foundations.
7. St. Vincent: Actor
Texas songwriter and guitarist Annie Clark -- who goes by the stage name St. Vincent -- played with some interesting acts before venturing out on her own in ’07. She was a member of the weird and psychedelic Polyphonic Spree and later was a member of singer songwriter Sufjian Stevens’ touring band. Actor finds Clark in really terrific form. It’s a collection of haunting and beautiful songs, “Actor out of Work” recalls Arcade Fire; “The Strangers,” hints at Portisehead. But the album is wholly original. This is Clark finding her own voice -- a voice with real promise.
6. Silversun Pickups: Swoon
OK, so this band owes an awful lot to the early ‘90s sounds of the Pixies, Sonic Youth and above all the Smashing Pumpkins. In fact Silversun Pickups share a lot more than initials with the early ‘90s alt-rockers. Both bands share walls of distortion, vulnerable, melodic vocals, dance-beat drumming and a bass player in high heels. The Silversun Pinkups aren’t just a throwback, though. The songwriting is fresh and the performances are heartfelt. This is a fun album, both hard rocking and gorgeous.
5. Arctic Monkeys: Humbug
This band has been overhyped, even by the hype-happy British music press. But the four-piece English rock outfit deserves every bit of high praise its earned since its frenetic debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Humbug finds that band slowing (way) down the pace for a Sabbathy sound inspired a great deal by producer Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures). Still present, though, is singer Alex Turner’s keen, critical lyrics -- a British rock staple that goes back to the Kinks. Humbug was a risky shift in sound, but one that definitely paid off.
4. The Veils: Sun Gangs
This band grabbed me with the single, “The Letter,” a tour-de-force song of beautiful reverberating guitars and the remarkable voice of front man Finn Andrews (son of XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews). Andrews is a great songwriter and a wonderful singer -- though his is a voice that you likely wither love or hate. Sun Gang’s is a grand album, equal parts intense and melancholy.
3. Sonic Youth: The Eternal
I’m not sure Sonic Youth needed a comeback record. They’ve never really gone anywhere, but The Eternal is such a good album it’s hard to believe the band’s members are in their 50s. Kim Gordon has move from bass to guitar and vocals and Mark Ibold from Pavement was brought in on bass. The addition gives the band a solid rhythm section with the brilliant Steve Shelley.
The incredible thing about Sonic Youth is that they continue to challenge your ears some 30 years after their founding. The trademark guitar squalling and chugging is still there, but it still sounds as though the rest of rock hasn’t caught up with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. From the opening track “Sacred Trickster,” (maybe the best Sonic Youth album opener ever) the band is full of energy. Other great songs include “Antenna” and “Malibu Gas Station.”
The Eternal is what a rock record should sound like --edgy, loud, mysterious and it kicks a lot of ass.
2. Neko Case: The Middle Cyclone
I love Neko Case. There is no comparable singer songwriter. The New Pornographer member has been outstanding as a solo artist for the better part of this decade. Her two most recent Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and The Middle Cyclone are beautiful albums of strange, haunting songs about death, jealousy, killers, nature and more, all delivered by Case’s gorgeous voice.
The Middle Cyclone shares a lot with its predecessor. These are songs that might be classified as genuine Americana -- roots music that struggles with the strange and murderous reality of the New Land. Middle Cyclone stakes the same path and subject matter with reverberating guitars and echoing rhythm sections -- a sound that is simultaneously new and ancient. Case is mesmerizing right from the first track: “This Tornado Loves You” a song sung from the perspective of a Tornado chasing after an unnamed lover.
Sings Case: “Carved your name across three counties / Ground it in with bloody hides / Their broken necks will line the ditch / 'til you stop it, stop it /Stop this madness / I want you.”
It sounds impossible, but the song works. It’s chilling. Case is not only the most compelling female artist I’ve heard, she’s one of the most wonderfully strange songwriters, period.
1. Doves: Kingdom of Rust
The Doves have quietly compiled an impressive body of work over the past decade. Since it’s 2000 debut, Lost Souls, the Doves have recorded perfectly consistent albums of ambient-tinged, dancey indie rock -- a sound at which British indie acts have excelled since The Stone Roses.
2009 found the band topping 2005’s masterful Some Cities with this year’s wonderful and overlooked Kingdom of Rust. Kingdom is not an album unified by theme and pace, which is what you’d usually look for in a great album. It is, however, unified by the Doves’ adventurous sonic palette, a space-rocking sound that is comparable to Radiohead. Jimi William’s vocals have a consistent quality that bind the songs together no matter the stylistic influence -- tracks draw from from Johnny Cash “Kingdom of Rust”) to Blondie (not kidding. Listen to “Compulsion” and compare to “Heart of Glass”).
The Doves manage to make every song really terrific. Even when “Compulsion” plunges the band into Blondie-like disco-pop, the band retains something grand. Every song on the album is an accomplishment. “10:03” builds slowly into a loud rush of big-guitar chord power and “The Outsiders” and Greatest Denier” are some of the band’s most muscular rockers to date. The band does beauty well, too. The melancholy “Birds Flew Backwards” is a slow, penatrating song and the anthemic “Lifelines” closes the album with a rush of optimism
Kingdom of Rust is a big album with perfect production. It’s not the synthetic overproduction of Weezer or the contemptible fellow Englishmen, Muse. Each Kingdom is composed of big, spacious songs with spectacular arrangements of cinematic proportions. It’s an album you can easily get lost in and by far, my favorite of the year.
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