Part 2: The Top 10 from Matt Rothstein

Today we continue with the Top 20 albums according to resident music guru (or nerd, depending on how you look at it) Matt Rothstein.

This is the first in what is going to be many posts wrapping up the year in music. Stay tuned for a top 100 tracks (though it might end up at 50, depending on how drunk we get) from Matt, myself, and absolute god Sam Walker, as well as my own thoughts on the crazy roller coaster ride that was 2010.

10. Lindstrøm & Christabelle, Real Life Is No Cool – It’s tough for an album released in the first half of January to keep buzz going until year-end listmaking time rolls around, especially when it’s not by a real buzz band. For whatever reason, I feel like this album never got the respect it deserved for being an absolute electropop powerhouse. More 70’s/80’s, disco/funk informed than Robyn, it’s a non-stop synth bliss-out, with the atmosphere often propelled by simple 16th-note hi-hat cymbals that give the album a feel of a chugging train of “space disco”, as some have labeled Lindstrøm. Once this album hits its groove on the pulsating funk of “Lovesick”, it does not let go.

9. James Blake, CMYK/Klavierwerke EPs – James Blake had to find a spot on my year-end list, even though he hasn’t released a full-length album yet (that comes next year, and from the first impression of lead single “Limit To Your Love,” it should be something spectacular), because he has been, without a doubt, the most innovative, forward-thinking artist of the past year not named Flying Lotus. Ostensibly originating from dubstep, his compositions are much less and more at the same time. With CMYK using chart R&B samples, and Klavierwerke sampling his own voice, he takes the skeleton of a song and rearranges it in ways I never knew were possible, dropping parts in and out, letting certain bits echo in the spacious silence that is always present, even when the music is going. It’s like he realized something about pop and electronic music that Miles Davis realized about jazz in Kind of Blue – you don’t need to fill every moment with sound to be interesting.

8. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening – Apparently this is the last album for LCD Soundsystem. So far, the reactions I’ve read have settled on “Well, this is an appropriate exit, and I hope James Murphy continues to make music.” FUCK THAT. This and 2007’s Sound of Silver (which I rank slightly higher) are both masterpieces of dance music. No live band makes more danceable music right now. Nobody. This Is Happening is a mature record about coming to grips with your own shortcomings, and hoping to find acceptance despite them. It’s also about saying “screw it, let’s dance” just as much. Opener “Dance Yrself Clean” is an explosion that reveals Murphy’s deep knowledge of music lovers. Of course you’d turn up the speakers during the painfully soft intro, and of course those speakers would then blow you the hell away once the synths come in like a bomb. Closer “Home” is sentimental, joyous, and the best use of vocal harmonies in a dance song I’ve ever heard. And everything in between is a wonderful journey that starts off exhilarating and uptempo with “Drunk Girls” and “One Touch,” before it slows down slightly and lets the real emotion in with “All I Want” and “I Can Change”. Everything after that is gravy. Come on, James. You know the world needs more of this music.

7. The Walkmen, Lisbon – The Walkmen’s last album, You & Me, was my favorite record of 2008. Perhaps my personal bar for them was set too high, but Lisbon disappointed me slightly. That’s not to say it isn’t brilliant; it is. It just reminds me too much of their last album while lacking its lyrical and thematic depth. That being said, there’s a phenomenal string of winners on this album, from opening song “Juveniles” through to “Woe Is Me”, after which the three remaining songs serve as a slow, soulful nightcap. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser’s lyrics are self-deprecating, thoughtful and weary, which takes on an air of frustrated energy on the uptempo rocker “Angela Surf City” and mockingly triumphant “Victory”, which, as Leithauser notes in the chorus, is “right beside me.” Lisbon stands along This is Happening, Body Talk and High Violet as an uncommonly mature record in an age in music dominated by youth.

6. Deerhunter, Halycon Digest – Deerhunter’s main lead singer, Bradford Cox, is a gigantic hipster. I used to hate him for that; plus I didn’t really like his music. Yet the way he’s progressed since I decided that, with the very good Microcastle and now this, suggests that he just wants to make music that I’d like more. Seriously, the maturation of this band from hipster noise-rock to 60’s pop-inspired rock has been masterful. “Desire Lines” (actually written and sung by guitarist Lockett Pundt) is like taking a shower in guitar that is pure and crisp, “Helicopter” takes that pure and crisp feeling and turns it into something delicate and nearly angelic, and my favorite track, “Coronado”, dispenses with purity entirely in favor of laid-back garage bounce, with the least annoying saxophone in a pop song I’ve ever heard.

5. Beach House, Teen Dream – I first heard this album in December of last year, and I thought that it would be tough as hell to beat for best album of the year – much like Merriweather Post Pavilion last year. Fortunately, 2010 has been an unbelievable year for music. Teen Dream still stands as an enormous leap for the band – an injection of energy and pacing where it wasn’t present before. I’ve been a fan of Beach House for a while, but at best, their first two albums were hazy and lethargic. Absolute stunners “Used To Be”, “Silver Soul” and “Norway” are the very essence of dreamy pop bliss, and Victoria Legrand has one of the most unique, enchanting voices in the indie sphere right now. Other albums may have made bigger splashes, but no record was more filled with understated beauty than this one.

4. Local Natives, Gorilla Manor – If comfort and happiness could be distilled and recorded, it would be this record. The amazing vocal harmonies don’t quit, and the African-inspired drumming is so much of the moment that a lot of people called these guys copycats, which is frankly ridiculous when you consider how many times every drumming style has been copied. The guitar is filled with playfulness throughout the album, but that and the drumming are both in service to the singing. My god, the singing on “Airplanes”, “World News”, “Cubism Dream”, and especially “Who Knows, Who Cares” – which is far and away my favorite pop song of the year – are nothing short of divine. It is damn near impossible not to fall in love with this band for their infectious enthusiasm for making catchy rock music.

3. The National, High Violet – All you need to know about how great this album is comes from the second song, “Sorrow”. A less careful band would take the climax of the song, at two minutes and twenty seconds in, and add a solo or a big flourish. Instead, we get a ghostly chorus for a precious few seconds. In fact, there isn’t a single ear-catching moment on the whole album. Nothing jumps out (except for Matt Berninger’s devastating voice), and oh baby, is the album better for it. The uptempo songs have a propulsion to them only makes Berninger’s baritone despair more poignant, and the slow songs…well, sometimes they just overcome the senses with their perfection, with “Lemonworld” being a case in point. An album in which every element is in balance has a beauty that is impossible to capture in words. If I could choose one album this year to just listen to alone, slightly drunk and with my eyes closed, it would be High Violet and it wouldn’t be close.

2. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty – Kanye’s album is great, but give me Big Boi any day. Not as forward-thinking, sure, but he keeps a level of consistent excellence from his rhymes, his beats, his hooks, and even his jokey interludes throughout the entire album, without the staggering amounts of baggage. The 80’s style futuristic bounce of “Shutterbugg”, the triumphant soul of “Shine Blockas”, and the absolutely dialed-in bounce of “Tangerine”, all without the maddening bullshit that Kanye attracts and invites? Please.

1. Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma – If I didn’t keep this unreasonably short, then I’d write a novel about this album, simply because there simply aren’t enough superlatives to heap on it. Visionary, mind-expanding, genre-defying; you get the idea. Throwing together instrumental hip hop, dubstep, free jazz, and pure ambition into an album that seems otherworldly at its very core, Stephen Ellison is a prophet for a perfect future of music that will never come to be – where incredible breakbeats, powerful synths, and virtuosic jazz sax and bass play together in what feels like outer space itself.

Part 1: Mr. Matthew Rothstein gives us his favorite albums of 2010

Well hey there, Internet. It's been awhile. I almost didn't recognize you. Sorry I've been so distant these past few months- so many things have just been happening.

I'll have the decency to be up-front with you and admit that I've been writing another blog about UC Denver and Denver's music scene. It's nothing personal, really, just business. I've also been working for a Colorado-based independent record label and playing in a few different musical projects.

But I realized how much I love you, baby. And how much I want to...... write......you.

But we're going to have to take it slow. I need some time to re-adjust. In the meantime, you can talk to my good friend Matt, who'll fill you in on everything that's happened this year. Here's part 1 of Mr. Rothstien's top albums of the year.

Part 2 will come when I feel like it. So don't hold your breath, but definitely feel free to get excited.

I’ve been ranking my favorite music each year since 2007, which is when I really started caring about current music, and without question, this has been the hardest year for choosing favorites (except the top two – those distinguished themselves rather easily) and probably the best year overall. Plenty of incredible music didn’t make the list, and here are a few:

Yeasayer, Odd Blood

PS I Love You, Meet Me At The Muster Station

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor

Mount Kimbie, Crooks & Lovers

Call Me Lightning, When I Am Gone My Blood Will Be Free

Cee Lo Green, The Ladykiller

Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt. Two (Return of the Ankh)

Dr. Dog, Shame, Shame

Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid

Fang Island, Fang Island

Girl Talk, All Day

Four Tet, There Is Love In You

Toro Y Moi, Causers Of This

20. Guido, Anidea – Dubstep as a genre continues to morph and expand faster and more impressively with each year, but the one thing that remains elusive for even the best of the genre is a great full-length record. Though he doesn’t have the chops for the huge singles of Joker or Girl Unit, Guido managed to do that which only a handful of dance producers ever do – make a cohesive, compelling album that is more than the sum of its parts. He excels at imbuing his synth and bass lines with genuine emotion, with some cinematic strings sprinkled in for extra pleasure.

19. Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz/All Delighted People EP – Both albums share a spot here, because for all the innovation and jaw-dropping complexity of The Age of Adz – and there’s a lot – Sufjan’s EP still stands up as a great continuation of what all of his fans wanted: brilliantly composed, symphonic folk-pop. That he came over the top just a couple months later with a challenging, yet deeply emotional symphony of freak-out electronic…something – it nearly justifies the excruciating wait.

18. Robyn, Body Talk – People who know me well know that there was a time when I swore off pop. Robyn is as much a reason as anything for that time in my life being over. Electropop composition that simply doesn’t have an equal, supporting lyrics that actually have something to say? This is pop that is about a light year or two above guilty pleasure. For God’s sake, have you ever heard a pop song as brilliantly written as “Call Your Girlfriend”?

17. Tame Impala, Innerspeaker – Today, 60’s psychedelic music sounds downright pastoral; especially given what prog rock did to the word “psychedelic” in the 70’s. Tame Impala’s true strength is taking the 60’s blend and really, truly making it sound psychedelic again, much like Caribou did with Andorra, only with more of an emphasis on actual rock elements, like absolutely on-point drumming and some great guitar riffs. What’s more, the album feels like a journey on the whole, with each song containing enough left turns to make it all feel much more full of ideas than the average record.

16. Curren$y, Pilot Talk – Though its sequel Pilot Talk II nearly equaled it just four months after its release, this album out of New Orleans is as drenched in pot smoke as anything I’ve ever heard out of hip hop (short of Madlib, who is not of this planet anyhow). Ski Beatz’s production is dirty (with, like, 40 r’s) funky, switching the BPM from an easy bounce, as in “Breakfast”, to the blunted crawl of “Audio Dope II”, which features steel drum that sounds like it came out of Tom Waits, with Curren$y drawling over everything with deceptively clever verses. Sure, he talks mostly about bud, but he is an internal rhyming poet. Believe the man – “Some of the good things that weed can do.”

15. Dosh, Tommy – It’s as if two clouds named “Yo La Tengo-style tranquil indie pop” and “cool jazz” just swept up together and breathed out this record. “Number 41,” which is a simply great indie pop song with tinges of country, feels nearly out of place on this record, which is mostly instrumental, if only because it feels the most like a song. Everything else just feels like an impressionist sketch, light as a feather and with washes of melody flowing over the listener like a summer breeze. And all of it’s kept together by percussion that is jazzy in a surprising number of ways from track to track.

14. Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record – Another album whose beating heart belongs to the drums. The wealth of guitar is a given when it comes to BSS, but I was honestly surprised when every song that hits its mark (with the notable exceptions of “Sentimental X’s”, which expands to synths for help with their rhythm sections, to amazing effect) leans on the drums. The huge fills of opener “World Sick” give the rain of guitars direction, the restrained-yet-nearly-frenetic pacing of “All to All” becomes more and more percussion-heavy as the song goes on, getting better and better, and the unrelenting stomp of “Meet Me in the Basement” is taken to another level by the clever cymbal lines that alternate throughout. The album gets long and not every song is a winner, but its overall force cannot be denied.

13. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach – Over the course of ten years and three albums, Gorillaz has gone from a cool, yet unfocused stoner joke band to a unified vision of frontman Damon Albarn, displaying amazing consistence in feel over the course of Plastic Beach. The balance between bright synth sounds and classical orchestration that occasionally evokes George Gershwin, especially on all-orchestra closer “Pirate’s Progress”, is cleverly shifted over and over throughout the album, with the requisite rapping that Gorillaz has always relied on for its hits seeming more out of place over such music, but not unpleasantly so. The focus that ties it all together is an emotional one, of disaffection and resignation in the face of an unpleasantly consumerist society, which hardly seems appropriate considering what a fun listen this is.

12. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs – I apparently liked Neon Bible better than everyone else I know, so only I seemed to be disappointed by this album. I expected something closer to the raw, world-conquering emotion of Funeral or the righteous fury of Neon Bible, and what I got was discontent and despair. But when I got over my expectations, I realized that despite it being more expansive than its predecessors, The Suburbs is a more unified emotional statement. Instead of an uptempo song providing a lift from a downer that precedes it, every new song is like a different camera angle on the same pissed-off suburban family – or, even more powerfully, refrains that only strengthen the potency of what we’ve already seen (sequels like “Half Light II”, “Suburban War” and “Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains). They may not have the desire for skyscraper singles anymore, but they know how to make albums better than they ever have.

11. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Anyone who enjoys writing about music could fill tomes talking about this album, which is probably why this is popping up as #1 on every major list I’ve read so far. My feelings toward the album are…complicated. Suffice to say, the album is musically brilliant, matched by great rapping by Kanye and all of his collaborators (except for “Blame Game,” which is a boring song with a funny, but way too long comedy bit by Chris Rock at the end). But Kanye continually invites people to tangle up his music with his public image, since even he can’t get them straight, so him being unable to decide whether he’s sorry for being a dick or whether he loves it takes away from the experience for me. I don’t want to be pissed off when listening to music, but that’s just me. It’s a very, very good hip hop album, but Kanye’s celebrity has elevated the album past where it’s deserved. (I mean, the first 10 since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Pitchfork? Really?)

Yeah, the Top 10 will be coming soon, along with lots of other year-end lists that will make you want to go out and catch up on this entire last year of ridiculously good music.

Magic Man's "Real Life Color" from Sam Walker

The following review comes from Mr. Sam Walker. As our regular viewers will remember, Sam writes a blog of his own called Whisky Solider. Check it the fuck out. Check it the fuck out NOW.

Real Life Color’s first track, Swell Song, begins with some crackling static and a keyboard drone, builds gently, eschews vocals, seasons itself with some xylophone hits, then deftly segues into next cut “Monster”, which rides its synth-pop backbone until it almost surreptitiously becomes big, beautiful, and anthemic. It’s a subtly glorious start for a largely unknown outfit, and as the brilliant “Monster” bounces along, a listener can take note of this minor blastoff and appreciate the fact that they are in good hands.

Magic Man is a Boston-based duo that’s just created some of the most infectious electronic pop on the market (the market being largely unimportant to the band, as they’ve decided to offer their album as a free download). Count Dan Deacon as a fan; the boys opened for him at Boston University in April. Real Life Color, their first release, was recorded by college sophomores Sam Lee and Alex Caplow at several different locations in France, and then edited and pieced together in the US via the Internet (the guys go to different schools). There is a certain French vibe to the album, in its playful, colorful delivery and its fun yet contemplative bounce, but Magic Man have created something that, for the most part, defies geographical pinpointing. This is a very accessible, kaleidoscopic slice of computers- and-keyboards, and a compulsory listen for anyone interested in finding what could be the next great indie pop sensation.

Wondering about Magic Man’s influences and sound-alikes is fun, but reductive. You’ve got the earnest, swimming electronics of the Postal Service, here all fuzzy and lo-fi, and when the vocals get excited, they’re oddly reminiscent of Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, but Magic Man are really just themselves. This is their own blend of electro-pop, heartstrong and lovely and full of passion.

“I’m feeling like a basement lover/Cross-eyed and buried under covers.”

There’s no shortage of highlights here. “Daughter”, another great track, is underlined by a Nintendo synth and a load of dazzling effects, and the joyous singing does it plenty of justice. The chorus defies one not to get moving. “Nest” is the penultimate track, and with its bubbling-up effects and vocals, it reaches a fanfaring peak and then settles into a more reflective second half. Eventually, the song breaks for the tape again, and it’s such a delicious progression here that its repeated use on the album is all but forgiven. And “Monster”, as previously noted, is the best song on the album, with its watery, background repeat of ‘hey-hey’, its dribbling drum machine, and its enthusiastic development.

“Sometimes we all need a taste of the season/Lately, I just want a chance to break even.”

Magic Man have no real ceiling I can place. Real Life Color is not a masterpiece, but it’s an accomplished album that suggests the band’s members have plenty more up their sleeves. At their highest points, these tracks seem destined to untie themselves and float high into the perfect blue sky like a clutch of balloons. They never quite do, but they certainly achieve some altitude.

Download the album for free on Bandcamp. With regards to compensation, the band only asks that you tell others about the music if you enjoy it. Consider my debt paid.

Sufjan Stevens Ushers Us Into The Age of Adz

Approximately 22 and one half minutes into “Impossible Soul”, the last track on Sufjan Steven’s new LP The Age of Adz, something strange happens. The dense electronic soundscape that dominates most of the 80-minute run time dies away and beautiful picking parts on a banjo and guitar remain. This shouldn’t sound strange to fans of almost any other Sujfan Stevens record, as he’s made his name in the last decade releasing LPs that sang about American heroes and lost love. (Anyone who was in high school 5 years ago can probably tell you about singing along with orchestral-influenced folk ‘hits’ like “Decatur, or a Round of Applause for Your Stepmother” and “Chicago” while driving around with friends.) The strange feeling comes because just 9 minutes before, Stevens gives us an auto-tuned vocal part that sounds like something R.Kelly or Kanye West might use before dropping a woofer-testing beat and a massive hipster sing-along. It’s hard to imagine those two things occurring on a record in less then 10 minutes, but it happens. Yet it almost feels like Stevens taking a bow, coming out behind the curtain after debuting his new sound and saying “See! It was me the whole time!” The Age of Adz takes the Sufjan Stevens experience to a new place, and while any kind of change can feel strange at first, this new direction might just be the stamp of the modern age.

It’s hard to talk about this album without going back 3 months ago to when Sufjan came out of nowhere and dropped the hour-long All Delighted People EP. The two versions of the new mini-epic and 5 other acoustic-driven folk songs were excellent reminders that Stevens continues to be indie-rock’s biggest overachiever. In an age where you can find 20 guys at any given open-mic night who fashion themselves the next big singer-songwriter, Stevens has always been ahead of the curve. His ambition with songwriting projects like “Greetings from Michigan” and the aforementioned breakthrough “Illinois” was apparent because of the sprawling length and incredible command of the craft of songwriting and arrangement. He’s also managed to write an experimental score to his film “The BQE” (yeah, the highway in NYC) and guest on records like “Dark Was the Night” and The National’s “Boxer” and “High Violet”. After four years since the release of “The Avalanche”, a record-long “Illinois” B-side, Sufjan released the EP on bandcamp.com without any prior promotion.

It made sense, then, that he would announce the coming of The Age of Adz because All Delighted People felt like a vehicle for him to show us how much tinkering he's done in the last few years. The EP ends with a 17+ minute song “Djohariah” that seems like an expanded version of a track called “Sister” from an earlier LP, the fantastic folk collection Seven Swans. (The titles are no coincide, given Djohariah is actually Sufjan’s sister. Great names those Stevens kids have.) Building up with a ripping guitar solo, the track drops into a proper “song” that features the clean guitar picking and pastoral harmonies we all love. Toward the chorus, however, a programmed beat appears and joins the guitar and vocal to bring the last minute of the song into an electro-folk realm. When I heard it for the first time, I was both moved and enlightened; the first came because I felt the song I just listed to contained everything that is good about music all in one, and the latter came because I instantly knew what any future Sufjan release was going to sound like.

It was no surprize that this new album does indeed ditch the banjo in favor of a beat machine. While the opening tune “Futile Devices” contains nothing but guitar and his-heavily reverbed voice, the just over-two minute track gives way to an electronic drop that sounds like something Aphex Twin might have left off one of his records back in the 90s. When the song actually starts and Sufjan's voice kicks in, the knob twisting only continues despite the familiar vocals on top. The tune itself could easily be played on just an acoustic guitar, and if he had written it a few years ago, absolutely would have been. But Sufjan definitely had his ear to the ground these last few years, and most of the tracks on the record would fit more on a mixtape with Animal Collective and Massive Attack and less on one with Bob Dylan or Andrew Bird.

The ambitious horn and string arrangement that made Illinois such an experience are no less present, however. The title track feels like listening to an orchestra, though it’s also impossible not to picture a few guys on laptops running Abelton Live and a MIDI synth sitting next to the conductor. Even slower ballads that would have fit on any other Stevens LP are followed with the trip-hop vibe of most of the rest of the set. Songs like “I Walked”, “All For Myself” and “Get Real Get Right” have legitimately dope beats under them, which is never something I thought could be said of a Sufjan Stevens song. Lyrically, this is really the first LP he’s released without a theme since his first (and mostly forgotten) record A Sun Came; even Seven Swans carried a predominately Christian-themed set of tunes. The Christian influence has come in and out of Sufjan’s songwriting, and “Get Real Get Right” finds him singing “I know I caused you trouble/I know I caused you pain/ But I must do the right thing/I must do myself a favor and/get real/get right/with the lord”, essentially a song about choosing the hard path over the easy and less-instantly-gratifying one.

Toward the end of the record comes “I Want to be Well”, which along with the final track might actually serve as the total summation of everything Sufjan Stevens has done up to this point. My personal favorite, its 6 and a half minutes can be thought of as two parts: The first half has a textbook-Sufjan lyric and melody with the backing female chorus and strings that call to mind the title track on Illinois. The only difference, of course, is the glitchy beat that replaces the Aaron Copland-esque piano we all loved 5 years ago. This leads into a guitar-vocal “breakdown”, where wet electronic sounds join the chorus as Stevens belts out over the top a verse that eventually ends with him wailing “I’m not fuckin around!” over and over as the entire bands kicks in for a truly moving ending. As if to truly seat the deal, the final track follows the same idea but has too many movements to count, with stylistic changes that verge right on the edge of ridiculous.

After about 7 or 8 complete listens to this in the last two weeks, I can’t help but compare this to another album: Radiohead’s Kid A. When it was first released in 2000, it was met with mixed reviews. Some correctly predicted it contained the sound of the future while others panned its departure from the brilliant rock songs that made Radiohead famous. Since that time, of course, it’s been almost universally recognized as one of the defining albums of the last decade, and influenced an entire generation of musicians. While it’s certainly too early to tell what The Age of Adz’s effect on music will be, one has to applaud Stevens for never settling for the expected. It's why he remains such a brilliant artist who will continue to surprise us for years to come.

Afro Cubism

Music is the universal language. It is incredible that every person who hears something is affected differently by it, and every person who learns to play a tune will play that tune differently. Some might call it style, and others might just call it personal expression.

Either way, the beauty of music is that is requires no real learning curve- you don't have to speak Portuguese to understand why a bossa nova song is great, and you don't really need to understand music theory to know that Beethoven was on to something special.

There might be exceptions, of course. (Free jazz certainly comes to mind.) Being a musician surrounded by other musicians in a community can often be difficult, because it's easy to loose sight of the fact that a vast majority of the listening (and buying) public are not musicians. They don't give a fuck how a song is made, just that they enjoy listening to it. Understanding the technique may further the appreciation, but there's one thing that cannot be taught in any school: soul. All the greatest have it, and when you see it you just know.

The Buena Vista Social Club was a Cuban music club that thrived as one of Havana's hottest places to dance to great music in the 1940s. The place served as a hotbed of great musicians, who played son music, a mixture of traditional Cuban music with pop and jazz, together for the masses of Cuban clubbers. (Back when clubs were filled with swave dudes and suits and gorgeous women, not skanks and club rats). The club was shut down shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when the Communist government made it difficult for anyone to put on a show with good music. Fuck the man.

In the mid 1990's, however, producer Nick Gold invited guitarist Ry Cooder to a session where members of the old Cuban legend to collaborate with African high-life musicians. Everyone showed up but the Africans, who couldn't get their vistas approved to come. Since the studio was already booked, the remaining cast decided to record some son music. Made in just six days, The Buena Vista Social Club was never supposed to happen the way it did. But after its creation, the record was an international smash that won both five million copies in sales and a Grammy.

More then a decade later, the original project has been resurrected. Just check out the video for the rest. Awesome.

Sam Walker and 'Sisterworld' from Liars

Please help me in welcoming friend-of-show, writer-extrodinare, and alleged apprentice

meth cook Sam Walker to the Joyful Noise team. He's going to be showing up everything else that has even been posted on here, and raising the bar for the entire blogosphere at large. So watch out, interwebs. This shit is gonna blow minds.....

Liars have a curious muse. This is the creative spirit that encouraged them to ditch their debut album’s relatively accessible (and timely) snotty dance punk for a follow-up concept album about old American witch trials, presented in harsh textures and noise cascades, with nary a melody in sight (to be fair, the artsy lady also possessed them to conclude said previous dance album with a half-hour long track). Surely, wrapping up a sophomore project of such complexity and difficulty would persuade Liars to take a small break in the warm waters of the conventional? Hell no. The boys sped headfirst into another concept album dominated by tribal drums, complex rhythms, and furious chanting (2006’s masterpiece, Drum’s Not Dead). The point being: Liars are gonna keep listening to whatever it is that’s giving them these fucked-up, wonderful ideas, and they really don’t give a shit if you like it or not.

Their latest album, Sisterworld, finds the band in full and familiar not-giving-a-shit mode, muse firmly on their shoulder, as they once again deliver on their unspoken promise to be modern art-rock’s most unpredictable act. Sisterworld is looser, conceptually, than some of its siblings, but it retains the full force of Liars’ favorite ideas: the textural tinkering, the intertwining sounds and feedback, the electronic mindgames, the searing, punched-up guitars, and, like the cherry on top of this freaky, freaky sundae, frontman Angus Andrew’s haunting vocals, shifting from a catatonic mumble to a falsetto to a deep drone, sometimes even within the same song. That’s not to say it isn’t naturally a shift from their previous works. It’s obvious that Sisterworld is looser and spacier than anything they’ve done before; it creates its own breathing room and then uses it to its full advantage, even as the tracks remain sparse.

“I dragged her body to the parking lot/I tried to find her a savior right there amongst the cars.”

Analyzing a Liars album by the individual tracks is largely pointless. Sisterworld is a mood piece, like most of their works. It develops in full and tells an abstract story bit by bit and noise by noise.

Still, there are some highlights worth mentioning. First single “Scissor”, and I use the term ‘single’ dubiously in the context of a Liars album, pokes its head slowly out of its hole, with quiet violin and piano and high background voices, then cracks the whip in a major way, as Julian Gross wallops his drums and the guitars come crashing in from nowhere, and just as the listener adjusts for this shift in speed, “Scissor” slows it back down, snapping all our necks on the way. Just for good measure, there’s another, similar breakdown at the end of the song. As Pitchfork aptly put it, this is pure “whiplash rock.”

“Liars skulk in the dark on the delightfully spooky “Drip”, a slow creep that segues into “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant.” The latter features a relentless metallic crunch and a snarling vocal performance over static-y synth, creating something both grating and fascinating.

“Why’d you pass the bum on the street/’cuz he bothered you!”

“Proud Evolution” is the obvious album centerpiece and, despite what I said before about assessing individual Liars songs, stands with the finest tracks the band has ever produced. It creates an entire, beautiful world out of its parts, starting slow and then sprinting forward as the track’s title gets repeated in the background and the epic, dreamy soundscape totally devours your brain. It’s both intricately rewarding and immediately likable. Between it and “The Overachievers”, a surprisingly straightforward (in a good way) punk cut, Liars almost come down to earth to mingle.

The lyrics on Sisterworld, when intelligible, are typically portentous and threatening, but with a dark hopefulness that most clearly perseveres in the stunning album finale, “Too Much, Too Much.” As with Drum’s Not Dead, Liars choose to cap off the disc with a gentle, cathartic piece that allows Angus Andrew to get downright syrupy after all that chaos.

“We’ll throw jackpots in the air/We’ll put flowers in your hair.”

Who knows what this album’s supposed to mean? Anything you want? Anything it makes you feel? Of Sisterworld, Andrew explained, “We're interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like L.A. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society.”

One thing’s for sure: the always underappreciated and underestimated Liars are out to play again. Lock up your daughters and enjoy the madness.

Top 42 Tracks of the Year (So Far), or, Calling All Music Lovers!

I've said it often before in the short time I've run this blog, but I truly think that this is one of the best years for music in a very long time. It seems that with each new week, there's a new wealth of great tunes and bands emerging from all corners of the world that provide us all with the necessary energy to get through the day. The next four months of 2010 will no doubt bring some great new releases, but already I'm totally satisfied with the human race for creating such incredible things for each other.

It's with this in mind that I created this playlist on my Itunes of my favorite tracks of the year so far. Ranging from hip-hop to rock to electronic and everything in between, this is the music that is currently moving through my head and has defined this year for me in many ways.

This list is not in any order other then to make an awesome mix CD or DJ mix. It's difficult to really say what I think the 'song of the year' might be, just because I think that a 'favorite song' almost always relies on the mood you're in at the time. Right now, I'm ready to declare that new Sufjan joint 'Djohariah' the best freakin song of all time, but the EP was just released a few days ago. Although seriously, ending a totally epic EP with an 18 minute song containing every single sound that's possibly good in modern music is truly a feat to behold.

If you look at this list and think that you'd really love to have these songs, then read below.............

1. LCD Soundsystem- Dance Yrself Clean

2. The Black Keys- Next Girl

3. Broken Social Scene- Texico Bitches

4. The National- Anyone's Ghost

5. Big Boi feat. Sleepy Brown & Joi- Turns Me On

6. Local Natives- Sun Hands

7. Flying Lotus- Computer Face/Pure Being

8. The Tallest Man on Earth- Drying of the Lawns

9. The Tallest Man on Earth- King of Spain

10. Wolf Parade- What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)

11. Beach House -Zebra

12. Delphic- Counterpoint

13. Avi Buffalo- Truth Sets In

14. Tame Impala- Solitude is Bliss

15. Cypress Hill feat. Pitbull, Marc Anthony, and a totally sweet CSNY sample- Armada Latina

16. Wavves- Post Acid

17. The National- Bloodbuzz Ohio

18. Fuck Buttons- Flight of the Feathered Serpent

19. The Roots feat. Joanna Newsome- Right On

20. Erykah Badu- Turn me Away (Get Muni)

21. Broken Social Scene- Meet in the Basement

22. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti- Round and Round

23. Fang Island- Dreamer of Dreams

24. Fang Island- Careful Crossers

25. Rusko- Dial My Number

26. Ratatat- Neckbrace

27. The Dead Weather- The Difference Between Us

28. Gorillaz- Some Kind of Nature

29. Gorillaz- On Melancholy Hill

30. Eli 'Paperboy' Reed- Name Calling

31. The Chemical Brothers- Snow

32. The Chemical Brothers- Escape Velocity

33. The Mile Markers- Revival

34. Here We Go Magic- Collector

35. Yeasayer- Rome

36. Hot Chip- Thieves in the Night

37. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti- L'estat (According to the Widow's Maid)

38. Frogs Gone Fishin'- Herb

39. Phantogram- When I'm Small

40. Foals- Miami

41. Jaime Lidell- Completely Exposed

42. Sujfan Stevens- Djohariah

If any of these songs seem interesting to you, then I issue a challenge. I started this blog earlier this year as a way to share new musical discoveries. It was my intention to not do all of the sharing myself, but to enlist the help of friends to join in on the fun. While some people have stepped up and contributed some great reviews, we can definitely do better.

So......

For anyone who emails me at hjguitar@gmail.com with a review of something they're really dug lately, I might respond with a response containing this playlist. I say might because I'm all about following copyright laws and whatnot and it would be totally illegal for me to post those songs here, but I highly recommend you try (insert evil smile here.......)

Even if it's just a few sentences, the point here is just to spread the great music around and let as many people as possible know about something you've really enjoyed. I think music is one of the best art forms because it's an experience that can (and absolutely should) be enjoyed by many people at once. Everyone will most likely take away something different from that experience, that's the beauty of it. The more people who know about a band you really love, the more people can get that same joy you feel when you listen to it; and in that way, you're just as much a part of that music as anyone else.

For those reading into this list, you'll notice an absence of material from great acts this year like The Books, Arcade Fire, Best Coast, The Drums, and many others. I didn't want to include everything because I want to know what you guys think of that stuff. I also didn't include any additional info about these bands because I don't mind getting reviews of bands on this list. If something on here really did it for you, then let us know why.

Thanks, and I'll be watching out for your emails. With any luck, there will be many more reviews on Joyful Noise in the very near future.

Brilliant project, brilliant cover from a brilliant band

The Swell Season covers Neutral Milk Hotel

I've been obsessed with the majesty that is Neutral Milk Hotel's mid-90s indie rock bible In the Aeroplane Over the Sea since it was first shown to be way back in high school. And I know I'm not alone- anyone who hears it can't deny the crushing passion and insanely emotive songs and performance.

Which is why it's just so perfect that The Swell Season, a band build on the same ideals of pure passion in its songwriting and execution, would chose to cover one of the standout tunes from that record for this AV Club project. The sheer existence of this song makes the world a slightly better place.

It's a Good Time to Love Music

It might be a huge overstatement to say that this is the best year of music I've ever experienced. But isn't that what having a blog is all about?

What strikes me so much about this year's output of popular music is not just the sheer volume of good releases, but the fact that every genre of music imaginable has seen some incredible releases. It's not just a great year for indie rock or hip-hop or electronic music. It's a great year for music, almost as if everyone is starting to figure out how to make consistent releases.

It's hard to deny the internet's place in this creative excellence. With so many downloadable tracks, blogs/web zines, and myspaces pages available at the click of a mouse, it's not hard to see how it easy it was for the bar to be raised. If a band is just starting to get going in Normal, USA, they can easily surf the Internet and find their influences from every corner of the globe. Sounds are hard to pin down to one area of the world anymore, because as soon as something good hits the internet, it goes viral in a matter of hours.

Protesters outside of last week's G-20 summit can complain about globalization all they want, but it's done nothing but help us music lovers.

So I'll say what so many indie rock acts have been recently keen to sing about: just keep surfin'.

Local Natives- Gorilla Manor

This is the debut release from the LA-based band, released in the UK last year and hitting our shores in February. In many ways, this is a total summation of everything in the indie-rock zeitgeist in the past few years, from the harmonies of the Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Steves ('Shape Shifter') to the over-active drum and percussion parts that have dominated rock drumming lately (the excellent album opener 'Wide Eyes'). Like most good records, this one really comes down to the songs, which take their cues from not only folk and Grizzly Bear-ish ('Sun Hands') influences but also from 70s soul and funk (check out the awesome 'Airplanes').

The Chemical Brothers- Further

The Chemical Brothers are legends. Pioneers of popular big-beat/house music, they have nothing to prove to anyone. This new album, released just a few weeks ago, sounds fresh and takes their sound in a new direction. Opening with the unexpectedly beat-less track 'Snow', it's obvious they were going for something different. The track has a simple but lovely vocal melody sample that slowly works its way into a reverbed out transition into the monster 'Escape Velocity', which places you right onto the club's dance floor. It's as good of a one/two punch as I've heard on a record all year. The rest of the album continues this progression, from the guitar-driven intro of 'Dissolve' to the new-wave influence on 'K+D+B'. Good work, Bros.

The Roots- How I Got Over

The Roots just kill it. They've always killed it. And as Jimmy Fallon's nightly house band, they kill it even more. I was a bit nervous to see them take a steady gig like that, as the potential for them to get complacent and stop making new music was absolutely there. However, nothing seems to stop these guys. In fact, being on a talk show where so many different acts stop by has only helped to improve their sound. Case in point is the opening track 'A Piece of Light', a great intro that features the female back-up from the Dirty Projectors. Yeah, they opened their record with a slow back-up track featuring the same chicks who back up the whitest frontman in show business. As if that wasn't enough, they even have a track with Joanna Newsome. And it totally works.

Two tracks later comes the Monsters of Folk re-interp 'Dear God 2.0', which throws out everyone but Jim James and features some of Black Thought's best verses in years. In fact, Black Though is on point for the entire set, and the rest of the band has never felt so on it's game. So the moral of the story is that if you want to get as good as you possibly can as a band, find a talk show and sit in with as many of the acts as you can.

Wolf Parade- Expo 86

Whoa. Released just last week , Wolf Parade's latest LP is a big step forward. The collective list of projects that the 4 gents in Wolf Parade have individually been a part of is easily a few pages long, and this new record is proof positive that experience pays off in spades. Not only are the tunes good, but this contains some of the coolest arrangements imaginable, from the Modest Mouse kind of thing on 'What Did My Lover Say? (it always had to go this way)' to the tripped-out middle of 'In the Direction of the Moon' and the bombastic rock-out of closer 'Cave- O-Sapien'. Like rock? This one's for you.

Ratatat- LP4

This is just plain cool right here. Ratatat are two NYC-based producers that make most of what you heard on a laptop in their apartment. What makes this so striking is that it's hard to pigeonhole the sound as just 'dance' music, because there's certainly much more going on then this that. All instrumental, they use string and guitar samples just as easily as synthesizers and drum loops, which creates a sonic experience that never really gets old.

Flying Lotus- Cosmogramma

This is an extension of the above review. As good as Ratatat and their new album is, Flying Lotus has taken electronic music in a completely new direction. This was shown to me by contributor Matt Rothstein, and I think he might have a review coming, so I'll go easy on talking about the actual music itself.

What I do want to comment on is how Flying Lotus has shown us what 'laptop' music can be. A true visionary, Fly Lo has created here a completely unique sonic world for us to live in. It's such a cohesive effort that guest vocals from heavyweight Thom Yorke just kind of blend in with the rest of it; the pace is really that good, with songs seemingly blending together. Contained on this album is the best of IDM, jazz, and hip hop, just to start. The combination of sounds was no doubt a painstaking process to undertake, but Steve Ellison has shown us exactly what can be done by one man with some basic gear.

I'll admit that this took me awhile to 'get' this. At first, I really couldn't understand all the noise or appreciate just exactly what was going on here. But after about the 3rd or 4th time, it clicked and I realized that Cosmogramma is, if nothing else, a benchmark for where music is. As I've said before on this blog, the best music being made today is not merely just one thing. What's so exciting about being a music lover these days is the amount of cross-over that exists in so many of today's acts. And I think that Flying Lotus is the ultimate mix. It's hard to process at first, but if you're willing to go with it, it'll pay off big time.

To Conor Oberst

Dear Mr. Oberst,

Please make another Desaparecios album.
The Monsters of Folk is great, and of course we all love Bright Eyes.

But seriously. If you can make something even just half as good as 'Read Music, Speak Spanish', the world would be much better off.

Love,
Joyful Noise

The Tallest Man on Earth 'The Wild Hunt'

I have a few longer posts in the works, but for now I just could not resist talking about this. Singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, aka, The Tallest Man on Earth, has more buzz then a hive of bees. Corny puns aside, anyone who reads about music on the Internet has no doubt been told that this guy is the closest heir to the folk-king throne and he that plays some of best-written tunes of any modern act playing today.

If you already know that, then you probably also know that these songs are crafted by a introverted Sweedish guy. Yeah. A Swede.

The Bob Dylan comparison is an obvious one, but hasn't every singer-songwriter since Dylan sounded like Dylan, even just a little bit? What separates Matsson from everyone else is that he goes back and hints on the American roots/folk music that inspired artists well before the Greenwhich Village scene in the 1960s started coping them. When Dylan first started, people said he was just ripping off Woody Guthrie, so this latest folk re-interpretation can be seen as just another angle. However, his incredible folk-picking style takes its cues from bluegrass and Delta-blues more then it does from the jangly strum of a Dylan or Neil Young. His voice is deliberately recorded to sound like it was recorded in a tin can in a Mississippi basement in 1920, except the brilliant production takes the 'glo-fi' approach that is so popular today and uses it to take this old-timey feel into another level of the stratosphere.

The new record on the Dead Oceans label, The Wild Hunt, contains nothing more then an acoustic guitar, voice, and maybe a banjo for 9 songs, followed by piano-driven track that contains some of the best grand piano reverb I think I've ever heard on a record. At a brisk 35 minutes, it's a listening experience that comes across as carefully constructed, with songs often preceding the logical feel of the last. Just about every song is a gem, and their sequencing hooks you in by track 2 and never really lets up. Beginning with 'Trouble Be Gone', the album has a pace that is unrivaled by any folk record I think I've ever come across. The haunting 'Drying of the Laws' is followed by the raging 'King of Spain' (no doubt a great set-closer) and followed by the minor intro to the brilliant 'Love Is All'.

Like Nick Drake's Pink Moon or the more recent classic For Emma, Forever Ago from Bon Iver, a single man standing in a room singing and playing the guitar is elevated by the phenomenal execution. Much like those two artists, Kristian Matsson seems like a really out-going guy if you just listen to his songs. His live act contains the kind of energy and raw passion that is captured by the record, but to hear him speak you realize that is a true artist-type. There have been many great introverted poets with a larger-then life stage persona that have graced music, and I think it's safe to say that The Wild Hunt is on par with the best of their work.

The cover of the album contains the perfect image for this music- a long highway, where the destination doesn't seem to be of consequence. The aforementioned piano track 'Kids on the Run' is the perfect closing moment for a record dominated by guitar, and it's opening lyric 'Oh meet me when the morning fails on the field of desire/Oh meet me when I lost my part in the choir in dusk' captures the level of poetry that exists throughout the entire set. It's hard to say if these are songs about running away or running toward something, but the beauty is that it doesn't matter. Just pick a direction and let it take you there.

Tunes to start the summer

Summer is made for music.

Once the weather gets warm and the sun starts shining more, it's impossible to resist the urge to lay out on the lawn and bliss out to great new tunes.

And bands know this- so they release their albums just in time for you to create the subconscious playlist for the summer.

And here's what mine is starting to look like:

Broken Social Scene- Forgiveness Rock Record

Canada's finest musical collective (sorry, Godspeed. Where y'all been?) has a pretty tremendous track record of great releases, which made this particular one a very anticipated record. And it certainly doesn't disappoint. From epic opener 'World Sick' to super-cool tunes like 'Arthouse Director' and 'Sentimental X', it's pretty solid all around. Plus it features my top 2 most hilarious song titles of the year, the fuckin sweet 'Texaco Bitches' and the instrumental insanity of 'Meet Me in the Basement'.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti- Before Today

So this is the guy who made those records that your hip friends played in their cars two years ago. The same guy who you were told made records where he performed all of the percussion sounds with his mouth and his mouth alone. He's a good songwriter and an even weirder person, and hes finally decided it's a good idea to have real people backing you up if you want to be taken seriously.

Most of this record is pretty solid lo-fi indie rock, but the third cut, 'L'estat (acc. to the widow's maid)' is easily the coolest fucking single track I've heard this year. Starting with an Animal-Collective-ish intro, it moves into a jazzy verse and a 1969 psycadellic-era chorus, and then ends with a jam that would make Pink Floyd proud. Worth the price of admission alone, it shows that in today's day and age, it's not hard to blend 5 different genres into a 4-minute song.

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed- Come and Get it

So get this. Eli Reed is a Boston-born musician who moved to the south when he was in his teens, just so he could play in a gospel church and learn all he could about the blues. I swear to god, this sounds just like pre-pedophile Michael Jackson at his best. Anyone who doesn't get a smile listening to the old-school funk of 'Name Calling' or the smooth R&B/soul that permeates the entire set, I seriously hope you can find counseling soon. Go get this now, because neo-soul is here and getting bigger everyday.

Woods- At Echo Lake

I don't care what anybody says, this band is pretty freakin cool. I really enjoyed their 2009 release 'Songs of Shame', and this new set only improves upon a very interesting formula of post-rock, new-wave bands like Television and hippie rock acts like the Grateful Dead, mixed randomly with lo-fi folk. Sounding like you don't care is hard to do, but Woods pull it off pretty damn well.

Avi Buffalo- Self Titled

I just got this record a few days ago, but it's already shaping up to be one of my favorites of the summer. These guys are no older then 20, and yet have figured out exactly how to craft excellent tunes that are perfect for the long, late-night drive home on a warm evening.

Stay tuned in the coming days for a weigh-in from Matt Rothstein, our senior 'awesome shit you have to listen to right now' correspondent, as well JFN''s first live concert/festival reviews. Fuck yeah.