And you thought the albums of the year list was it for the year.....well, you don't know me at all!
Keeping up the work ethic while the rest of the country has a two week skive, I've been listening to and reviewing records for YOUR pleasure, and the first of a handful of reviews in the coming weeks leading into 2012 is the latest from JEFF the Brotherhood, We Are the Champions.
Brothers Jake and Jamin Orrall used to be in Be Your Own Pet, but have spent most of the last six years as JEFF, creating rockin' sounds as a guitar/drums two-piece. On this new album, they sound like Weezer with the amps turned up to 11, and this turns out to be A Good Thing. As always, this review is brought to you by the nice people at The Line Of Best Fit.
So, clicky click hereto read all about it, and I'll see you in 2012!
So, we reach the top of the tree (so to speak) and there we find New Jersey's Real Estate and their sophomore album Days. As the weeks closed in on the end of the year and the thought of composing this list, I found myself listening to this album more and more, two to three times a day at one point, and in the end it just pushed Korallreven to number two. I could have copped out and had a joint number one, but what would have been the point of that? Days just snuck into my life almost unnoticed until it became a part of my daily routine; one of the most lovely and affecting - and utterly simple - records I've heard in many years.
Made up of singer/guitarist Martin Courtney, guitarist Matthew Mondanile and bassist Alex Bleeker, the band released their self-titled debut album in 2009, and followed up with this one - a record of simple nostalgia, yearning and nascent romance. Beautiful guitar lines grace Days from start to finish, like 'Major Leagues'-era Pavement, or the early jangle of R.E.M.
It's the simplicity of lines like "floating on an inner tube in the sun" from gentle album opener 'Easy' that capture the essence of this record. Each song seems like a variation on the same theme, and so Days hangs together wonderfully, from 'Green Aisles'. 'It's Easy', 'Out of Tune' and 'Wonder Years' (yes, such a track name was inevitable). Given the band are childhood friends, it's hardly a surprise they share the same warm and fuzzy memories.
It's a truly glorious record, and on 'Green Aisles', one of the finest songs of 2011, we find the perfect encapsulation of the whole theme of Days:
"the phone lines, the street lights, led me to you/
It's the album that's meant most to me in 2011, the one that I've enjoyed the most, and the one I catch myself singing songs from on a regular basis. If that's not reason enough, then I don't know what it. Days is a wonderful, charming guitar record, one that reaffirms that guitar music isn't quite dead yet, and shows that Real Estate are a very, very talented bunch of lads. Life-affirming music at its best.
Okay, okay, so I jumped the gun a little bit with my "album of the year" fanfare last month, but Korallreven's An Album by Korallreven is still the best example of the traditional album album, that is, a coherent piece of music that needs and demands to be listened to as a whole, rather than downloaded and broken apart into favourite moments.
The duo of Marcus Joons and Daniel Tjader was inspired to make this record following a visit to Samoa and witnessing the pure joy of the Catholic Church choir singing that takes place on the Pacific island - and you can hear that sunny joy throughout An Album. It's a record of fantasy summers, romance, the naturalistic joy in living things and, above all, a wonderful pop record.
Speaking to Joons after their recent marvellous show in Glasgow (and here comes some shameless self-promotion and back-patting) he said that some reviews (mine) managed to pick up on the idea that the record was a song cycle, and had to be listened to as such. This feeds into the makeup of the various mixtapes the band has released this year, and also the way that the tracks 'Sa Sa Samoa' and 'As Young As Yesterday' reflect each other and tie the first half of the record together, just like how the final trio of 'Honey Mine', 'A Surf on Endorphins' and 'Comin' Down' tie the dreamlike state of the second half of the album together.
Lit up by guest spots from Victoria Bergsman and Julianna Barwick, it's a joy of a dream-pop album, it's 1980s synthpop, it's futuristic 21st century electro at its finest. A good few years in the making, but worth the wait, An Album by Korallreven is just the beginning of a beautiful sun-dappled journey with these Swedish maestros.
If I judged this list on sheer heartbreaking beauty, the self-titled debut record from A Winged Victory For The Sullen would have walked it by a country mile. But it's about more than that, so Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O'Halloran's new project has just missed out on the top spot glory. However, each of the final three on this list are deserving of top spot, but a joint number one would have been a cop-out.
Okay, so it's very much a mood piece and you wouldn't stick AWVFTS on as a party record, but it's without question the most moving record of the year and one I've returned to time and again to uncover previously unnoticed layers of glacial genius.
An orchestral record calling on ambient, classical and post-rock, and recorded as a kind of posthumous tribute to Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, there'a a great well of sadness and emotion to much of the record, yet it also proves to be an uplifting experience. Consisting of piano and strings (some courtesy of Peter Broderick), these instrumental movements go from barely-there teardrop keys to grand swells of string quartets, and there's also choral backing, looped gentle guitars and washes of ambient synths. O'Halloran's piano work is the star of the show, just shading it from the gorgeous strings and Wiltzie's brilliant hand in making sure everything sounds perfect.
I can't fault this record at all; staggeringly beautiful and deeply emotional, ambitious but never grandstanding for the sake of it, A Winged Victory For The Sullen is an astonishing achievement.
With Strange Mercy, the saucer-eyed, stunning, Texan Annie Clark took the beauty of her previous two albums and added a darker edge, more intricate and inventive guitar work and ended up with her best record to date.
The opening of 'Chloe in the Afternoon' sets the tone for the album, a saucy tale of S&M, sung with Clark's delightfully demure voice, and then disrupted by some metallic and destructive guitar playing. Annie Clark has to be one of the finest shredders around at the moment, and her brutal riffing and enigmatic soloing dominates Strange Mercy. Witness the hammering on the repetitive "I, I, I" of 'Cheerleader', or the tricksy yet poppy lines on 'Cruel', or even the discordant punk-funk of 'Dilettante' and you know you're in the presence of greatness.
Even though most of the sensual role-playing sung about by Clark is very much her taking on a character, this doesn't mean there's a lack of emotion on the album. In fact, compared to the surface of Actor, Clark reveals much more of herself on Strange Mercy than we've experienced before as listeners.
It's a swooning, sweet listen, a juxtaposition of Annie Clark's angelic vocals and devilish guitar playing, confirming her position as a unique artist and the finest female performer of 2011.
5 - Josh T Pearson : Last of the Country Gentlemen
Josh T Pearson spent many years in the wilderness following his part in Lift to Experience's 2001 record The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, an epic psychedelic rock record. Pearson suddenly quit playing music, disappeared into a series of dead-end jobs, occasionally playing and famously appearing on the cover of the sadly-missed Loose Lips Sink Ships magazine. Along the way it's clear there's been some issues : broken relationships, mental anguish, substance abuse? But suddenly this year, Pearson returned with a new record, detailing intimately what's happened in his life for the past ten years.
A confessional country record, mostly captured live, it's filled with sadness that builds across lengthy and meandering acoustic guitar lines, occasionally accompanied by the swell of strings. The centrepiece of the album is the 13-minute 'Honeymoon's Great!Wish You Were Her', a song full of Pearson's despair and inner troubles, a plea to a woman he's hurt, a long cry begging for forgiveness. It's a magnificent testament to Pearson's talents as a song writer, and is nearly matched by other moments like the anger of 'Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ' and the troubled self-help of 'Country Dumb'.
It's never an easy listen and isn't a record you'd put on for a chilled night in, hence the appearance at number five in this list. Live, I saw Pearson twice this year, his music interspersed with a series of jokes, he had the audience in the palm of his hand throughout, commanding silence before playing his music. If we need a Hank Williams or Johnny Cash figure for the 21st Century, it's Josh T Pearson. We can only hope there's not another long silence before we hear more new music from him. Last of the Country Gentlemen is a glorious record and an incredible emotional journey that demands your attention.
Nanna Oland Fabricius gave us the best pure pop album of 2011, combining carefree solid-gold tunes with an indie approach to music making. So, while the songs on Oh Land are incredibly catchy, there's layers of instrumentation, gleaming production and an understanding of art shared with kindred spirits Lykke Li and Robyn. It was sad to realise that the mainstream music industry and media would come to ignore such classic pop music, focusing instead on the latest vapid "look at me, aren't I sexy?" yelpings from the likes of Rihanna. Still, you and I shared this record together, and it was quite uplifting, wasn't it?
7 - The War On Drugs : Slave Ambient
With Slave Ambient, Adam Granduciel and his boys combined the guitar power of Bruce Springsteen with the motorik Krautrock of Neu! and Harmonia to produce a record of hazy drones, Dylanesque country meanderings and pedal-to-the-metal indie rock classics. Whether it's the driving glory of 'Baby Missiles', the swagger of 'Come to the City' or the slo-mo comedown of 'Blackwater', Slave Ambient was always a thrilling listen, and a brilliant achievement from a young man who has still got plenty to give. The new Springsteen? Maybe, although old friend and ex-bandmate Kurt Vile might have something to say about that.
6 - M83 : Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
There's just not enough double albums made any more, but thanks to Anthony Gonzales' (and guests) ambition, M83 returned with their defining statement, an album that redefined the word "epic". As always, instrumentals and spoken word interludes peppered the record, but it's the moments when everything combines, as on the magnificent 'Steve McQueen', that you can truly understand Gonzales' vision. It's as if he threw the great moments from the last three records (Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, Before the Dawn Heals Us and Saturdays = Youth) and came up with Hurry Up - a near perfect encapsulation of nostalgia, dreams and everyday life, spread across two discs of stunning music.
