Vikings & Beekeepers

Boy that big list threw me off my schedule. Focusing on the last decade really prevented me from listening to anything new (or at least listening to it properly). I missed my first Quarterly Report and I’m two months late on the second one, so here’s a deluxe edition, which covers everything up until the end of June.

Now it’s time for a big breath and getting back to regular, non-list writing.

1. Fang Island Fang Island

Oof. Sometimes there are just those albums – the kinds that work their asses to please you, to make you smile, to make you laugh, to make you feel legitimate joy. That sounds like a pretty sappy thing to say, I know, but Fang Island is an album that is just bursting with good vibes and whipping them at your ears like an infinite barrage of ninja throwing stars in the form of the Beverly Hills 90210 theme. Actually, Pitchfork Reviews Reviews maybe put it best:

“Imagine if you’re climbing a really tough mountain with a really heavy pack and you climb and you climb and you struggle and you struggle and you finally reach the top! and there’s this ecstatic victory you feel when you reach the top. except it’s like a trick mountain and you keep reaching the top every ten seconds! and all the struggle has been left off the record so the whole thing is paroxysm of joy after paroxysm of joy…”

That’s Fang Island, an album that high-fives you over and over again until your hands are numb and all you feel is untold amounts of exhilaration. The album is a half hour, but it feels like it’s only two minutes long. That’s OK, though; you’re going to want to keep it on a loop for eternity.

2. Joanna Newsom Have One On Me

While Robyn is piecing together a three-part album one mini-LP at a time, Joanna Newsom decided to drop one gigantic, occasionally inscrutable, triple album at once. I’m not sure whose method is better, but it will be interesting to see when Body Talk Pt. 3 drops. In the meantime, Have One On Me feels like a very happy middle between Newsom’s sprightly and slight(ish) The Milk-Eyed Mender and the dense and convoluted Ys. The songs on Have One On Me are certainly fuller and more far-reaching than the ones on the former, but they’re less annoyingly indulgent and exhausting the songs on the latter. All 18 of these songs have something that connects and feels real and relatable. Admittedly, sometimes scouring through this whole album seems like an impossible task and I just listen to “Good Intentions Paving Company” over and over again, but extended listening yields frequent rewards. Maybe the best way to hear this album is to split it up like the Body Talk experiment, but it’s too late to do that now, so I’ll just have to enjoy this immensely pleasurable piece of indulgence as it is.

3. Shining Blackjazz

Despite its title, Blackjazz makes it abundantly clear what side of the jazz/metal divide Norway’s Shining stand on. In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster was a fine cross-breeding of the two genres, but Blackjazz is metal through and through. Some remaining jazz elements filter through (the speedy sax riffage of “Fisheye,” and the whole of “HELTER SKELTER,” a faster, harder doppelganger to Kingdom’s “REDRUM”), but the album is firmly entrenched in the hard stuff. The difference between Shining and everyone is in metal, however, is that Shining’s musical virtuosity is not an end in itself. Instead of documenting “madness” as so many metal bands before, Blackjazz sees Shining practically defining, sounding as loopy and disorienting as anything this side of early Boredoms (I’ve heard Mr. Bungle references, which I guess are fair). This is not a safe album to listen to, even when Shining are stompingly obvious for covering “21^st Century Schizoid Man” (think Devendra Banhart covering early T. Rex or The Tallest Man On Earth taking on Dylan). Blackjazz is a bizarre, scary journey and one that isn’t for the faint of heart or the easily intimidated.

4. Robyn Body Talk Pt. 1

Its brevity makes it a decidedly minor work for Robyn, but I’ll reserve judgment until Pt. 3 is released in December. At this point, Body Talk Pt. 1 is a terrific first step towards a real commercially viable electro pop masterpiece. Of course, the big songs are “Dancing On My Own” and the sublime “Cry When You Get Older,” two songs that match up to the best of the Swedish pop star’s impressive output, but what makes Robyn really special is the weird places she’ll go when she’s not making huge, sweeping pop spectacles. “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do” is misanthropic and a bit intimidating (especially for an album opener), “None Of Dem” is a cold-hearted piece of icy cool and “Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa” is heart-wrenching, even if I can’t understand a word. Robyn is on another level at all times. The future looks so bright.

5. High On Fire Snakes For The Divine

Matt Pike has made his masterpiece. Sure, Dopesmoker is a stoner metal classic and Death Is This Communion seemed like an impossible record to top, but Snakes For The Divine pulls out all the stops in ensuring that this will be the most invigorating metal record of the year. The entire album is epically wonderful, with deep album cuts like “How Dark We Pray” searing the flesh off your face, but I defy to get past the opening title track, with its showy finger-tapping and ever-altering directions. We’re talking one of the all-time great metal songs here, people. You need to hear it.

6. Francis And The Lights It’ll Be Better

Halfway through “Going Out,” Francis Farewell Starlite (Worst. Fake Name. Ever.) sings, “If you’re going to play a sad song on the radio / Make it the saddest song of all time.” Listening to the surprising It’ll Be Better, you’d think what he really meant was that if you’re going to revive soft rock, fucking go for it and make it the softest, yacht-iest, Peter Gabrielist, most sentimental rock album of all time. Mission accomplished. It’s a professional sounding record that couldn’t possibly be less hip (although Peter Gabriel is due for a big revival if it hasn’t already come), but it’s really good, the hooks are really strong and it almost feels necessary to return to again and again.

7. Ted Leo The Brutalist Bricks

I’m sure one day the hidden genius of 2007’s Living With The Living will reveal itself to me, but in the meantime I’m calling it a comeback. Not that The Brutalist Bricks is actually anything overly exceptional, it’s more Leo-by-the-books than anything else he’s done (which is saying something), but that’s actually a good thing for me. The most Leoesque songs (“The Mighty Sparrow,” “Even Heroes Have To Die”) are still wonderful and exciting despite the fact they’re covering well-worn territory, while the hardcore-inflected “Where Was My Brain?” and especially the ever-changing “Bottled In Cork” show Leo hasn’t put his best days behind him. Good stuff, all in all, wish he was releasing albums more frequently.

8. Tame Impala Innerspeaker

It’s at roughly the four second mark of album opener “It Is Not Meant To Be” that I quickly realize why Tame Impala appeal to me. They sound like Dungen. The whole space-aged psychedelic sound is in form here, albeit less overtly rocking, in English and with a bigger boner for the Beatles (or at least Elliot Smith). The album is more cohesive and “songy” than anything by the Swedish rockers, but anyone who’s heard both bands will hear the resemblance immediately. Anyway, there are some great individual songs here with sturdy little hooks, but it’s just a nice sound to sit a chill out to. Recommended soundtrack music for a wasted Saturday sitting in your apartment vegging out.

9. Sleigh Bells Treats

The indie rock hype machine went into overdrive with Treats, which either means Sleigh Bells will be universally hailed geniuses by the end of the year or they’ll be persona non grata. I’m guessing a little closer to the latter, but there’s still a lot to live about this excitable, speaker-rupturing debut. First, Sleigh Bells sound like an effective melding of genres – metal, hip hop, funk, twee indie. It all comes together nicely to create a purely pop spectacle, which is a good thing. Second, Treats sounds huge. It just blasts out of the stereo, every sound over the top and cranked. Granted, sometimes the whole aesthetic is used to cover up a lack of great songwriting, but in the end, inevitable backlash or not, Treats remains a captivating album of its time.

10. The Hold Steady Heaven Is Whenever

So far 2010 has been a year that has seen several celebrated artists who claimed at least a short degree of prominence in the previous decade release albums that were either a minor step back (Band Of Horses), a negligible step forward (Vampire Weekend) or a by-the-numbers album release for the sake of releasing an album (New Pornographers, Spoon). The Hold Steady would definitely be in that group somewhere – where you feel they stand is a matter of taste (although most are calling Heaven Is Whenever a step back). No one’s going to be claiming this to be the best Hold Steady album and it’s probably not quite as good as a couple of the 11-20 albums, but I feel there’s a really terrific album in here somewhere and it needs to be defended at least in part. The first step is recognizing the issues that you can’t fix: pianist Franz Nicolay is gone and you can’t rightly replace the E Street oomph he provided in the past. At the same time, the band sounds legitimately fatigued, with singer Craig Finn singing in an awkward range (it’s really noticeable, I find, on “Our Whole Lives”).

That said, there are some great moments here. “The Sweet Part Of The City” is probably the wrong song to open the album (another issue: Heaven Is Whenever sounds like it’s starting mid-album, usually the point when Hold Steady start experimenting with their sound), but the slide acoustic is wonderful touch. “The Weekenders” is eminently quotable, “The Smidge” and “Barely Breathing” are great Hold Steady throwbacks and “Hurricane J” stands absurdly tall in the band’s already impressive oeuvre. So yeah, it’s officially “The Worst Hold Steady Record,” but who knew that taking a step back could sound so good?

11-20 (in no particular order): The Tallest Man On Earth The Wild Hunt, Surfer Blood Astro Coast, Sade Soldier Of Love, Blitzen Trapper Destroyer Of The Void, Earl Greyhound Suspicious Package, Harvey Milk A Small Turn Of Human Kindness, LCD Soundsystem This Is Happening, Laurie Anderson Homeland, New Pornographers Together, Nachtmystium Addicts Black Meddle Pt. II