2011 Cream of the Crop

I'm a bit dismayed when people say that they really didn't like any music that came out over the past year...that's never happened to me.  Even when I look back at years like 1985 (Howard Jones Dream Into Action, Jefferson Starship's We Built This City - which, I'm happy to say, I hated even then, Bryan Adams - Summer of '69 - my first rock concert, followed shortly after, fortunately for my continued interest in music, by a Husker Du show at the 'Cat's Arena in Bozeman, as they toured for New Day Rising), I liked a lot of that '85 music then and some of it, I still do.  This year of 2011 was no slouch either.  As usual, I spent a lot of time in the archives but there was no dirth of good, provocative, truly new music that's been created over the past 12 months.  Here are a handfull of some that have been most loved, respected, or re-visited for me...

>  PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
If I had to put down coin, this would be my record of the year.  It's a totally English album - one that acknowledges all of PJ's back-catalogue, everything that the Mekons have put to tape, everything in the catalogue of Anne Briggs, Fairport Convention, the Pogues, and all of the folk and punk music that has been wrenched out of the British Isles over the past 50 years - wrenched  because there's a real pain in many of these songs.  PJ explores war, politics, social and financial blights that have eviscerated the queen's island over the years.  It's got the stuff that made some of her first few albums some of my favorite albums ever, but it also does a brilliant job of bringing it all to the here and now - recorded in an ancient church in the nowheres of the English countryside, it is all about the here-and-now of All of our country's shakings and quake'ings.  

>  Richmond Fontaine - The High Country 
This is a brutal listen, totally beautiful, but heart-breakingly brutal.  Willy Vlautin writes songs that attain a southern gothic sense of deep dark nepotistic pain that even few novels can reach.  The High Country is a series of vignettes that build on the story of 'the Girl' and 'the Boy' who fall into a forbidden love, in a run-down, rain-sodden dead end of the Pacific Northwest.  Things don't go well - not at all - but the music veers from desultory day-in-the-life moments to life-changing non-decisions that just seem to happen, when high and drunk on muddy roads.  The musicianship is top-notch and the production and attention to sonic nuance is flat-out gorgeous on the vinyl version of this release (on the British-pressed Diverse Records rendition and, from what I hear, the well-recorded hi-rez state-side cd version too).  This is an under-the-radar gem that deserves many more ears to be raised to attention.  The last few releases by these guys have hit a lovely, cinematic, dark stride of Pacific-Northwest-Redneck-Noir that this one takes even a lil' step further....highly recommended.

great live studio rendition courtesy of the Line Best Of Best Fit Sessions 
>  Destroyer - Kaputt

LOVE IT!  This is one of my favorite releases of the past year, and one of the better and most unique ones of the past handfull of years.  Dan Bejar takes all of his scorn and bitter observations of the American Way (and, yes, that includes ALL of N. America with his Canadian lineage and his semi-removed/askance perspectives on our USA-ism's in general), and channels them through the musical canon of the past 20 years, with special attention paid to the late eighties/early nineties.  Horns are brilliantly deployed in late night jams that stretch almost all the way back to Steely Dan-era cool.  Just the right amount of synth. and eighties pseudo-funk liven the tracks that, in the end, in true Destroyer style, are most informed by the atmospheric moments of mid-70's Bowie.  And that ain't a bad thing at all.

worth it just for sec. 41 - 60... a great song too...seeing this album, along with Painter in Your Pocket performed live with full horn section was a big time Best Of 2011-Moment for me... 

 >  iceage - New Brigade
My faith in punk restored - incarnate.  A few teenagers from Denmark channel their record collections and no small dose of Ian Curtis in a skate-punk smash-shit-fest that is heavily colored by the wearing of  Nordic winter goggles gazing at a far-off So-Cal dream of surf and sun.  The drums are propulsive, the breaks are insane, and the fuzzy guitars are heavy, what's not to love?

(so, shitty s.q. on this video but it captures the live vibe better than most other YouTubes I saw...great live show, the most real punkin' and moshin' I've seen in a long while.)


>  Bon Iver - Bon Iver

This is a pretty obvious pick but totally necessary...it's one of the best things to be done, musically, in a long time.  We were lucky enough to see them perform at the State Theater in Mpls. this summer, just an awesome show that showcased how great these new songs are.  The arrangements are excellent, the vocals and lyrics perfect, the production is a bit weird but works well for the album - the guitars and some of the instruments are buried with the vocals put Way up front.  While his debut album was intimate and 'late-night', this one is painted in broader strokes - indicated right off the bat with the geographic city and state song-titles.  A great document of the evolution of an artist and album that is approaching a perfect 10. 

>  Shabazz Palaces - Black Up 
I always feel like a bit of a white-boy schmuck when I get psyched about hip hop albums in my year-end lists...as usual though, there're a few unignore-able thumping and, ahem, black,  albums to mention.  Black Up is, if nothing else, a hands-in-the-air celebration of everything the Digible Planets ever did back in 'the day'.  This was the era of guys like me to listen to, love, and actually be ok, listening and loving some honest-to-god hip hop.  NWA was cool, good - but not mine.  Beastie Boys were awesome.  And fer real.  But they were, and are, white boys.  Digible Planets sang some outrageously surreal, and real, lyrics.  Rapping and rhyming in a way that made Everyone feel good.  And laying down true beats that bridged a gap that was real in a music/social/racial/political way...they were game-changing, and friggin' awesome, and for just about everybody.  
Shabazz Palaces takes up this helm, 20 years later.  Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, now aka 'Palaceer Lazaro' is the primary guy here and the album shows that Butterfly's been Listening to music and has his finger on the pulse of current dub and the atmospheric raw-rubbed sound environments that have been explored in recent years by Burial, Ohneotrix Point, and a bunch of stuff that I just don't know... this album reeks of being nostalgic (and good weed) but I'm so happy that it's transcended that.  Butterfly is always cool like that.




>  Helm's Alee - WeatherHead
Brad Verellen from the one-off-wonder's Harkonen, and a master guitar amp builder, has put out two full lengths under the name of Helm's Alee.   It's a lineup configuration I love, two chicks - playing drums and bass - and singing, with Brad playing guitar and making sure it all sounds Awe-Full.  At the end of the day, I think I like their first full-length, Night Terrors, better, but this is an amazingly strong release considering the amount of (non) attention it got...part of it's fun is that it takes the total love of three people making a melodic, cool-sounding rock n'roll record, and makes it palpable...you can taste the fun they're having.   


>  Meg Baird - Seasons On Earth
A lot of music made over the past year or two has harkened back to another day and age - reverbed folk with banjo as a lead instrument is - against all odds - cool right now.  No complaints from me - in theory - but the level of earnestness and dumb-down'ed-ness seems especially high (see Dawes, Mumford and Sons, and to a lesser degree, Fleet Foxes).  This is where Espers and, the lovely/incredible lead singer Meg Baird, come into play to save the day.  Espers continues to put out absolutely amazing neo-folk-psychedelic tapestries in the form of music but their sound is streamlined and coelesced in the form of Meg Baird's solo albums, and specifically, in her new release.  The pedal steel of Marc Orleans is in and of itself, worthy of a Grammy.  It's nuanced, poetic, technically perfect, and mind-fuckingly soaring as good pedal-steel should be.  The way Meg's guitar harmonizes with her vocals is reminiscent of the first Joni Mitchell album and her voice, though similarly lovely, is more a nod to the British folk chanteuse-highest bar of Sandy Denny.  All this, yet unique and, somehow, contemporary enough to never be mistaken for anything but a voice of our new and confused millenia.


>  Jesus Lizard - Club
This was recorded in 2009, the first show on their reunion tour, in Nashville - in other words - their first live show together in over a decade.  Doesn't show.  It is blistering, sweaty, virile as fuck, tight and loud.  The sonics are lush and honest...live but not blurred or bloated.  All the 'hits' are here and sound spot-on.  This is an awesome release by one of the better bands that's graced our collective rock n' roll ears in the past 25 years.  Yow!

>  Grails - Deep Politics

What's in the water in Portland, OR?...(it's the killer weed!)...something's going on.  And only getting better. Earth put out a great album of desert-drenched instrumental explorations this year.  Agalloch has only continued to hone their heady stew of death metal wintery folk to a fine, baleful blade over the past few releases.  And Grails just put out an outstanding lp, their most refined and concise yet, if not achieving the ragged raw truth that the Black Tar releases revealed, Deep Politics is a precise showcase of all the aspects that have made them the purveyor of eastern-tinged psychedelia drone metal for the past handfull of years.  Buy it, Turn it up!

>  M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Epic and anthemic.  Less My Bloody Valentine, more Depeche Mode on this one but strikes a great balance between atmosphere and luscious, crescendo-ing pop songs.  Wasn't sure of this one at first but I keep wanting to listen to it.  So I do.  

>  Key Losers - California Lite
I have a friend who has five or six cassette tapes and cds - stuff that's continued to be put in boxes as she's moved from dorms to apartments to mortgage-world.  She just doesn't listen to music as an activity.  Weird.   I get the feeling that Katy Davidson, who is the Key Loser - backed by a stellar band culled from the Mount Eerie stable, doesn't listen to music very much either.  That her go-to stuff is mid-eighties Joni Mitchell, maybe an Arthur Russell mix tape or two, stuff a few quirky friends have recorded themselves.  She takes these dubious influences and has crafted them into a totally unique, but so refreshing and comfortable album that's a bit ineffable in it's appeal.  Kind of Lite rock, kind of Laurel Canyon rock, kind of timeless and not like anything else.  
>  Wye Oak - Civilian 
Not sure why this stands out so much because it doesn't do anything too unique -  Jenn Wasner singing and playing guitar, Andy Stack on drums, keyboards.  Sort of folk-leaning indie rock with a bit of crunchy noise and moments of shoegaze drifting here and there.  It's just good music.  

Runner's Up ...aka: Good Stuff /but doesn't/hasn't gotten as many spins:


Fucked Up - David's Town (and the awesome accompanying David's Town)
Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
BruteHeart - Lonely Hunter
War On Drugs - Ambient Slave

Tinariwen - Tassili

Lee Noble - Horrorism
Low Anthem - Smart Flesh
Tom Waits - Bad As Me
Ty Segall - Goodbye Bread
+ Great Reissues from 2011:
Beach Boys - SMiLE
Neutral Milk Hotel - complete discography box set (this is luscious!)

looking Minnesota, feeling California

There has been a fantastic spate of good albums coming out lately featuring artwork by Minnesota artists.  Of course, much of that music has been locally grown, and in our thriving lil' artworld, like supports like.  Many MN musicians either know, or are themselves, practicing artists/designers.  Due to the awesomeness of some of this music and probably, the geographically-obliterating tendencies of social media and internet marketing presences, Minnesota is really rockin' it in the rock n' roll design world.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver   cover by Gregory Euclide

I first saw Gregory Euclide's art at the Urban Bean coffee shop in Uptown about 12 years ago.  While there was a nodding resemblance to his current work - soft blues and greens, almost pastels, and layers of imagery that slide deftly between abstracted landscapes and well-rendered moments of realism - he has since drastically refined his drawing skills and expanded his approach to creating more sculptural paintings and installations.  I'm happy to have this gorgeous new Bon Iver on vinyl for the obvious sonic reasons, but it also offers a drastically  better viewing vantage on the surreal landscape that Euclide created for this cover art.  Reading like a Japanese scroll, the painting brings you up into the background space rather than creating a receding sense of deep perspective.  It's also somewhat easier to see, with the larger format of the lp,  that the paper Euclide created the painting/drawing on, has actually been ripped and crumpled, toying with the relative lack of pictorial depth by creating a literal depth of 3-D-ness with the piece.  There's a nice synergy between the artwork and the music here too.  The expanded palate of instruments Justin Vernon  uses on his new compositions create denser layers than on previous work, with banjos and staccato drum brushes standing sharp against the guitar and his wavering voice, both of which were recorded with a guazed layer of reverb and auto-tune. Overall it is, as they say, a nice package.

Japanese landscape painting - artist unknown

I was fortunate enough to be at the Bombay Sweets record release show at the Turf Club this past Saturday night.  Brute Heart, Birthday Suits, Bombay Sweets, and Blind Shake - that's an amazing line-up already before you add in Michael Yonkers showing up late night to join the Blind Shake for 5 or 6 crazy-a*#! songs that would've been worth the price of admission alone...though the Birthday Suits set had already taken care of that.  Besides the sheer energy and great music that each of these sonically diverse bands brought to the stage, they also each boast excellent recent releases that showcase MN artists/designers as the aesthetic arbiters of our consumption of their products.  And how yummy it is!

Brute Heart has released 2 full lengths in the last couple years, 2009's Brass Beads and this year's Lonely Hunter.   The Brass Beads cover featured a painting by local duo Tynan Kerr & Andie Mazorol and the even better 2011 lp, Lonely Hunter, features artwork by local phenom Crystal Quinn.  

Brute Heart - Lonely Hunter    art by Crystal Quinn

Birthday Suits destroyed the Turf this night, as they do really everywhere they play.  Calm and incredibly mellow in person,  they   tear. shit. up.   on stage and they do it with aplomb. 

Birthday Suits - The Minnesota: Mouth to Mouth

Bombay Sweets were the new kids on the block tonight.  I didn't know them so much as the other bands and they stepped into their rock star spotlight with a bit more trepidation - seen through their overdramatized stage presence and apparent hesitancy to really stretch it out musically.   When they did stray from the page a bit and stretch things out, they were at their best and were a band I'd like to see some more of.

Artwork by Aesthetic Apparatus

The Blind Shake!  Shit...I guess I really had no idea who these guys were.  I'd heard the name enough but hadn't seen a show yet.  It seemed like they had emerged from a Navy Seals stake-out of Devo's house via a 1985 punk portal - channeling some revved-up version of Wire...then, about 1:30am, Michael Yonkers came out to join them...Minneapolis's wild-card-up-the-sleeve for the past 20+ years.  They truly kicked out the jams and put out another 40 minutes of amazing rock n' roll.   epic.  The artwork for their newest release features a painting by The Blind Shake's own Jim Blaha. 

art by Jim Blaha

It was a couple years ago already that POS put out his kick-ass Never Better album.  Artwork by Eric Carlson (also of Hardland/Heartland).  Carlson is a fantastic draftsman who balances a tight technical proficiency with defiant drips, smudges, and off-kilter decisions all created with a whip-smart graphic designer eye.

POS - Never Better   cover art by Eric Carlson

An aside:

Sooo, who cares.  the album is dead right?  The thumbnailed album art is just a marker of on the screen - not art anymore but just a blip of information to click on?  I'm certainly a bit old fashioned when it comes to this but I really think that album art is an amazing reflection, and sometimes even an arbiter, of contemporary pop-culture consumer's tastes.  Music is still the most broadly consumed artform out there...nevermind how 'artsy' your tastes are, music is being written, recorded, played, listened to, danced to, etc. by pretty much every demographic and right or left-leaning yahoo out there.

Back in the day, when the transition was being made from hand-cranked 78's and 45's to long-play 33rpm's, jazz was the primary music being pressed on vinyl.  From the very get-go, the graphic design of the album art was integral to the package being marketed and sold.  The Blue Note imprint quickly found their signature look in the graphic work of Reid Miles.

Bold shadows on dynamically posed musicians - most not yet household names, often with a vibrant monochromatic tinted filter, and precisely modern and graphic font and text choices - designed with "a splendid sense of certainty"* and a new, for the time, importance placed on space - negative and positive - in the layout.  These were some of the first 'long play' albums (not 78rpm singles) being sold in the world ever! and the first introduction, on this scale, of black artists creating such phenomenally proficient and groundbreaking performances.  They were being packaged as such - iconic individuals, thoughtful and in charge of the proceedings contained within, and - just to slightly placate the biases of the times - not entirely black skinned, just a filtered touch of red, white or blue over the nicely sleeved package.


* from Robin Kinross, Eye Magazine, 2001

The Best of It

Now that Summer's finally established itself and the spectre of Autumn has already begun to creep onto my horizon, I'm looking back over music that's come out in the last 8 months and adding yet another list to my already teetering pile.  There's also a bunch of releases that are probably excellent that I just haven't heard -- some glaring holes such as the new Grails - Deep Politics, Radiohead - King of Limbs, Fucked Up - David's Town, Richard Buckner - Our Blood, and others that just haven't made the listen/purchase list yet.

So what have I been digging this year?

Bon Iver - s/t

A flat-out gorgeous album that was a bit of a 'grower' for me.  Much more fleshed out than For Emma, Forever Ago but still retaining a sense of the personal and intimate that infused that lovely debut.  Some of the production buries certain instruments too much, esp. guitars, but a great album as a whole.

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Sadly, I lost touch with PJ after her first 2 releases and missed out on a few of her stronger albums (To Bring You My Love and Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, esp.).  Though her new one is touted as a companion piece to 2007's White Chalk, I find it drastically more interesting and engaging.  She sings of war, collusion among nations, loss of faith in her country, all with an anger that can only come from a deep engagement and love of her muse.  She sounds more like her fellow angry countrymen, The Mekons, than I've noticed before - making use, like them, of non-rock n' roll instruments, esp. the Autoharp that is so prevalent on this album.  She was just nominated for England's Mercury Prize again - now tied with Radiohead for the most nominations for the prestigious award.  Go Polly Jean!

iceage - New Brigade

Straying away from the Dad Rock that somehow has seeped onto my turntable over the past couple years, iceage are a blast of teen hormone angst from 2011 via 1981.  The opening track(s) - Intro. into White Rune, literally make me laugh with their awesome-ness.  A swirly atmosphere kicks around for 30-some seconds, grinding industrial clatter that could be a song segue from early Sonic Youth before we're thrown head-first into the monstrous speeding riffs of White Rune which sputters a minute or so in as a breakdown tempo shift drops your jaw - as cool as any since Sebadoh's Gimmie Indie Rock - before throwing you back into the mosh pit to close it out.  This awesome-ness continues, with out letting up or retreading anything they've clearly been listening to on their parent's turntables for the duration of the album.  For 34 minutes, I'm 18 again.

Destroyer - Kaputt

Chasing cocaine, through the back rooms of the world, all right...

This is sung, deadpanned, with absolutely no irony or sense of sensation by Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer, always in the room with an amazing band, be it the New Pornographers or his current line up of the Destroyer band).  Well, maybe some irony...the video to Kaputt is awash in irony, flying whales, desert dance scenes, and other cerebral wankery.  On many of his releases, Bejar has been accused/applauded for sounding so much like Bowie.  Here he mines the 70's lite rock heavily but makes an album that is truly unique and fully his own.  His nod to Bowie is a brilliant one - side three (of the vinyl version) is a song series that basically updates what Bowie was doing with the latter half of Low.  It's a gorgeous wash of atmosphere and just-below-the-surface paranoia that is steeped with 1970's-era studio session brilliance but, listening through headphones at night, it's absolutely time-less.

Brute Heart - Lonely Hunter

The mighty Brute Heart.  I think of those who shambled out to watch Husker Du and the Replacements in the early '80s as they gigged around the Twin Cities and beyond - sometimes not even knowing about the ripples of influence that were spiralling outward from their plop into the collective consciousness (ie.  I heard a 90 min. Husker Du set on Bozeman's KGLT college radio in 1987 that turned my head around - I still have it on Maxell 90 min. Chromo.(no Dolby) cassette tape -  and then I saw them at Bozeman's MSU basketball court/stadium in 1988!...what venues were they playing in Mpls. in these days I wonder?..).  Anyways, will we look back on seeing Brute Heart in a similar way?  Those who saw the Raincoats in the early 80's or still talk about Throwing Muses shows as shambolic rituals where they played Pearl with an acoustic guitar intro...yep, Brute Heart is this type of experience...a great band that has put out yet another great album capturing this moment of their ascendance.

City of Music: Brute Heart from MPLS.TV on Vimeo.

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

Bedroom Garage Rock.  That's what I said the opening band for Thurston Moore was like as Emily and I headed out on a Hot date night (hot like 100+ deg. hot).  That is, picture garage rock being raucaus noisy guitar rock made by snotty teenagers drinking cheap beer in their parent's garage...Bedroom Garage Rock is made by older dude - singular, dude - in his bedroom, drinking good beer/pot on acoustic guitar but holding tight to that virile inner punk-ass 17 year old.  Add a great band and awesome producer (John Agnello of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. fame) and you've got the best album Vile's done yet.  Lots of melodic folk-y rockers buried under a psychedelic warm haze with a few tunes that border on Tom Petty-style classic rock.  

Jessie Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter - Marble Son

I love Jessie Sykes and she loves me...so she wrote on the lp I bought from her when she opened up for the late Mark Linkous nee' Sparklehorse a few years ago at 1st Ave.  Though her last album wasn't great imo, it featured some laid back but still fiery guitar work from Phil Wandscher (ex. Whiskeytown guitarist) and, of course, Jessie's smoky voice.  The new one has limited spins for me so far but it definitely sits high on the year's best-of list already.  Way heavier and full of life than the last release, some of the songs veer towards psych-rock work-outs with dark, slow passages that erupt into heavy riffage and then soar off in guitar jam wonkery that mashes bits of Black Sabbath with Jefferson Airplane.  The production is beautiful - capturing the surprisingly loud and boisterous songs with as much finesse and detail as the softer subtle moments.  Her voice is still awesome too.

The title of this post, of course, refers to the best music of the year so far - from a totally objective viewpoint (ahem)...it is also a line from one of my favorite poets of late - one I keep coming back to and gleaning new tidbits and tiny revelations from :

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

~ Kay Ryan (from The Niagara River)

A few honorable mentions that are no slouches:
Wye Oak - Civilian
James Blake - s/t
Earth - A Beaurocratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction (a 2010 reissue I know but...awesome!)
J Mascis - Several Shades of Why

Skull Defekts @ the Turf Club

Opting to see the 'other band playing their first US show in Minneapolis this week'  (cc: The Volcano Choir), I walked into the Turf Club this past Sunday night with few expectations.  I knew some Lungfish - Daniel Higgs' band from many years ago that boasted solid post-punk rock credentials from the Dischord label ala' Fugazi/June of '44/ Rites of Spring -era DC scene - but don't know too much of the Skull Defekts, the Swedish psych./garage-rockers that Higgs is fronting for this tour and their most recent release.
A fairly mellow scene percolated as locals whitesands/badlands set up on the new side stage of the Turf Club.  The ambient, wall-of-noise sound-scapers, w-sands/b-lands, quietly boiled up a churning stew of emo-tethered atmosphere.  Squalling then quiet noisy dissonance with a constant battering of percussion - I found them a little too tied to the vocals of Casey Holmgren who brought the otherwise ambiguously (in a good way) soaring and engaging aural explorations to a flattened level of indie-rock been-there-ism.  Overall though, a good band that I'll be excited to see again and hope they can attain some of the nuance and mystery their excellent vinyl release - Seeding The Clouds - displayed in spades last year. 

2nd Opener - Zomes (interesting for a couple songs, then, yawn...it was midnight on a Sunday...)

Daniel Higgs, first of all, seems to be a charismatic dude.  On the new Skull Defekts lp (Peer Amid on Thrill Jockey) - his first outing with them, he is an extremely competent front man for the band -  his vocals and "lyrics" carry the show (not to knock the blistering and beautiful musicality of the band).  Walking around the Turf, drinking tea and allaying any hopes of anyone else having an even slightly cool beard, he turned heads and owned the space that he occupied.  This turned out to be important because one of the roles Daniel Higgs plays for the Skull Defekts is that of shambolic shaman.  From the moment he stepped on the stage, he grasped a small wooden drum under one arm and alternatively busied his arms with loosely robotic dance undulations or the rapid beating of this hand-held Balinese percussive instrument Daniel translated the name as being 'Waves of Joy'.  He played the shit out of that thing.  His hand flicking upon it faster than I could follow - though, even when the rest of the band was totally silent, I couldn't hear a peep out of his 'Waves of Joy'...he seemed to enjoy it.
A keyboardist, guitar, bass, two drummers - one on a kit, one playing three empty 5 gallon plastic gasoline drums with mallets, and then Daniel Higgs incanting over it all.  Despite a strong kinship with bands such as The Fall, the Ex, and early Sonic Youth, a significant discerning difference is the sense The Skull Defekts are making their music and Higgs exists separately - filling in the spaces that he deems need filling - sometimes with poetic ramblings, recountings of his dreams, or with lyrics he wrote to actually fit over the music.  When he forgot the lyrics to one of the songs, he told us so and resumed beating his 'Waves of Joy' and shouting out hoots and moans over the 3 punishing chords the Defekts pounded out.  It was as if the band could play their angular, repetitive, mandalas of garage rock over and over with totally different incarnations of Higgs' contributions each time.  To the benefit of all, each rendition I heard - in concert and, even more, on lp, was unique and stood up as a testimony to both the entity of the band Skull Defekts and to the vocal/lyrical/ shamanic contributions of Daniel Higgs.

PS.  Those who dared to look, saw a scantily-clad dude in a white tank-top and brown fedora breakdancing the shit out of the 'mosh pit', replete with some boss hat-brim swipes and wind-up robot moves.  At first, I admit I scoffed at his moves, but by the end of the evening, he was poppin' and lockin' in a way that I haven't seen since I was 17...color me jealous...

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Coming clean ~ I'm woefully uninformed on a handfull of key PJ Harvey albums. Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea.  Is This Desire.  Uh Huh Her.  Don't know them too well, which only makes my life less rich because of everything I do know of her and her solid catalog - it's filled with varied, smart, rockin', just damn good music.  Her earlier albums have always held a tender and roughly worn spot close to my heart. Dry and Rid Of Me crash and clamor along with a Capt. Beefheart blues fracas, a sex-fueled 'we're not gonna take it cause I'm busy givin it to ya' stomp, grunge to out-grunge anything else of the time but the edges softened by cellos and PJ's hushed moans and groans.
Let England Shake comes on the heels - 4 years later, but still - of White Chalk, somehow a sister album to this lovely release. Recorded in the same 19th Century church overlooking the chalk white cliffs of Dover, with the same outstanding cast of supporting/collaborating musicians and producer (John Parish, former Bad Seed Mick Harvey, and Flood, respectively) the musical ante is upped here and the fingers are pointed with much more alarming alacrity and precision.
First off, this is an absolutely gorgeous album. Deeply dark and affecting, sure, but gorgeous - the instrumentation, the production and the overall SQ (props to Arcade Fire and anyone else who records their albums in old churches - there are some righteous atmospherics lent to the whole by just setting up in there), and then the lyrics. Oh, the lyrics...PJ has never, to me, had the greatest voice. She uses it to great effect and all but her attitude, delivery, and the lyrics far surpass the actual voice that belts it out. Here too, this is true, though on a couple tracks - like on the lovely 'On Battleship Hill' - she slides into a high register artfulness that reminds me of Joanna Newsom (bordering on Bjorkishness too) and it works great for her and for the song. Still, the lyrics are key to this album - no matter how brilliantly supported they are by the music - and they're smart, provocative and scary. Polly Jean is pissed and pissed for her countrymen and for everyone who've lost people in useless wars or been frustrated by the seeming necessity of war - which, of course, is everyone.  She delves into the history of warfare - mostly sticking to England's involvement, as well as culling from Iraq and Afganistan front-line testimonials.  She doesn't mince words here but between the wincing truths she wrings moments of poetic reprieve.
                             I have seen and done things I want to forget;           
                             soldiers fell like lumps of meat,                         
                             blown and shot out beyond belief.                           
                             arms and legs were in the trees.                                

Despite this universal theme, Let England Shake is a heavily-leaning English album. I can't help but place it next to many things from the Mekons, especially their amazing Journey to the End of the Night. This is music that would sit firmly and comfortably on a worn stool in late night drinking sessions in any south London pub but ultimately it sends you out into the street to rage loud and lonely against all the sad, mad wrongness that's brought upon us.
                               Let me walk through the stinking alleys
                               to the music of drunken beatings,
                               past the Thames River, glistening like gold
                               hastily sold for nothing.

Thanks Polly Jean for your anger, your frustration, and your restraint in the face of all this, and for putting out another kick-ass, lovely album.

Hell-Friggin'-O to 2011!!

We're only a couple weeks into the new year...already fraught with sick kiddo, too many snow storms to count, and currently - approaching negative 20 deg. on a Thursday night, a ginger-bourbon in hand and a couple new tunes spinnin'. All in all, a pretty great kick-off to the new year. oh, and a full moon tonight, a soft 1/2 inch coating of fresh snow to hide the crud out there, and some great tunes in the queue and books on the nightstand. When I was outside this morning at 6am, a flock, nay, a murder, of 100+ crows flew overhead as the bitter cold sun rose against the fading full moon, nary a one dared to desecrate the silence of the moment, even the flapping of wings was silent in the crisp air.

I'm currently nuts over the new Destroyer, Kaputt (at the Cedar Cultural Center April 12). Softer listening than previous outings and a lot more emph. on 70's late night horn sections - if Van Morrison was David Bowie and his Astral Weeks was then sessioned by a 1978 crew of porn soundtrack musicians, we'd be gettin' there...+, of course, some extremely choice songwriting moments and steller production choices. plus, there's this crazy cool video...

Destroyer - Kaputt from Merge Records on Vimeo.

The new Iron and Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean (def. not wild over the title..) is so different than the first couple I&W albums - what I'm stuck on cuz' I didn't ever pick up the past few (the Calexico split and Shepard's Dog...) yet it's very much a Sam Beam affair. It also appeases a personal jones for the Postal Service new one which we'll probably never see, nice female harmonies, some tasteful keyboarding, great, gentle songwriting chops on display...
link to a cool NPR session where they played the whole album live
...reminds me of Laura Nyro -styled music and I also keep thinking it's the new Decemberist's album somehow...pretty lovely though anyhow.

New Akron/Family?! - called, somehow, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. cool video that's an appropriate mind-fuck...haven't heard the rest of the album yet so I'm not sure what else to say...except their first one and Angels of Light releases stand as some of my fave aural stuff ever...this is a great sounding song and gives me an excited thrill at least to see them live at the Cedar Cultural Center this Feb. 25th, and a premature psyched buzz for the album release in early Feb.

So It Goes by Akron/Family from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.

Are these the 2011 BreakOut albums?...dunno yet, but they're esp. good a few listens in and I look forward to more of 'em.