Amherst College Radio, the modern sounds of modern Massachusetts
Lists
This is how we organize things!
WAMH’s 25 Favorite Albums of 2012
2Hey everyone! It’s just about the end of the year and it’s time for us at WAMH to let you know what we liked best from this past year in music. Here’s how this worked: any DJ who sent in a list of between 5 and 15 albums had their votes and point dispersal (which was based on rankings) tallied for the final list. I gave 5 points to each record for getting a vote and an extra 1-15 points depending on ranking. So without further ado, here are some great records:
T-24. Tame Impala: Lonerism (1 Vote, 18 Points)
On Tame Impala’s new record, the Aussie band offered a new take on old, psychedelic sounds and captured the heart of many a Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. indie fan.
T-24. Swans: The Seer (1 Vote, 18 Points)
Does Michael Gira get better with age? Perhaps. While 2010′s My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to Sky was a welcome comeback for the longtime great no-wave-leaning experimental rock band, The Seer‘s really where they reasserted their legacy. Over the course of two hours, the band touches on post-rock, stoic folk (a la Bill Callahan), experimental skronk, the old industrial sounds that characterized the band in the 80s, and even manage to work in a Karen 0 cameo that works surprisingly flawlessly. It’s an awesome listen and worth the time investment every time.
T-22. Jens Lekman: I Know What Love Isn’t (1 Vote, 19 Points)
Jens Lekman has been a WAMH favorite for as long as I’ve been around the parts and with good reason. His delightfully witty indie pop ditties are always a good deal of fun.
T-22. Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music (1 Vote, 19 Points)
Killer Mike preaches the gospel of the power of rap music and not just any rap music: this is literate, educated, and rightfully angry rap music, words slung like knives at much deserved targets (ie Ronald Reagan). It’s a wonder to hear how forcefully and intelligently Killer Mike puts together his rhymes and just as much a wonder to see how well producer, El-P, manages to meld together Mike’s southern flair with his own brand of dense, hard-as-fuck beatmaking (it’s also hilarious to think that TI rapped on an El-P beat and it totally worked). Killer Mike’s deserved the praise he’s finally getting since his early days working with Outkast but I guess it took something this good, for people to really take notice.
21. The Mountain Goats: Transcendental Youth (1 Vote, 20 Points)
What do you know: I just today signed a petition requesting that Mountain Goats mastermind, John Darnielle, be made the US poet laureate. I mean, his well of lyrical inspiration must be just eternally deep.
20. Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan (2 Votes, 21 Points)
Dirty Projectors have continued to strip away some of the more intensely experimental aspects of their sound, while still offering a unique brand of angular indie guitar music. The exciting results can be seen on Swing Lo Magellan, which features some of the band’s most instantly accessible songs (ie “Gun Has No Trigger”)
19. Cat Power: Sun (2 Votes, 21 Points)
2012 was the year Cat Power might just have become my favorite singer-songwriter ever (I mean, “Nude As the News” has to be the best rock song ever written, right?) And I can’t say I was in any way disappointed by her newest record, despite it’s turn towards modern day pop. Incorporating elements of electropop and hip-hop might seem weird for an artist known for her intimate, hushed, indie rock origins (a la Elliott Smith) but it works thanks to Chan Marshall’s still lovely, still intact voice (which even sounds pretty good when overtly autotuned).
18. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (2 Votes, 34 Points)
‘
“Video Games” and “Blue Jeans” are pretty good.
17. Joey Bada$$: 1999 (3 Votes, 39 Points)
There’s a reason people were excited when they found out Joey Bada$$ was going to be performing at Amherst. This dude’s the best young rapper in New York and that’s saying something. For fans of 90s New York boom bap, the free 1999 mixtape is a feast from a kid who didn’t even live through that era. Though it’s not merely a retread, these beats sound every kind of fresh and Joey’s rapping is at a level that shouldn’t be allowed for someone his age (17). He has a hot posse too in the Pro Era crew (though they suffered an immense loss recently with the suicide of standout member, Capital Steez) and it all makes for one of the most satisfying hip-hop releases of the year.
16. Beach House: Bloom (3 Votes, 39 Points)
Beach House refine their sound more and more with each release and with Bloom, they’ve come out with perhaps their most direct and immediately enjoyable record yet. Each song has the characteristic gauzy instrumentals, pretty lyrics, and anthemic choruses that have made Beach House a household name on the indie circuit. “Myth” might be the single best thing they’ve ever recorded. It’s really quite lovely.
15. Wild Nothing: Nocturne (3 Votes, 40 Points)
Likeable enough, perhaps.
T-13. Japandroids: Celebration Rock (3 Votes, 41 Points)
Japandroids may make standard sing-along indie rock but they do it as well as any band has in years and years and their new record is pretty much flawless: 8 anthemic rockers (1 of which is a cover of an old punk tune) with surprisingly great lyrical poetics, touching on the last moments of fuck-it-all fleeting youth, to match. It’s exhilarating and appropriately soundtracked the summer before my senior year of college and I can’t imagine not coming back to this one again and again for years to come.
T-13. El-P: Cancer 4 Cure (3 Votes, 41 Points)
If El-P had called it quits after the end of his legendary Def Jux label, he would have left quite a legacy: 2 bomb ass solo studio albums, incredible work with Company Flow, production on IMO the greatest rap album ever (Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein), and perhaps the best indie rap label ever (responsible for greats like CanOx, Cage, Aesop Rock, El-P himself, and Mr. Lif). Instead, he found a new group of great underground rappers to conspire with and began announcing his comeback with the mindblowing 2011 verse of the year that he dropped on Mr. Muthafuckin ExQuire’s ”The Last Huzzah”. And now he has both production on R.A.P. Music and his own incredible new solo album to show for 2012. The rapping/productioin here are as vicious, as cold, and as hard as El-P has always been known for, but their even more listenable, showcasing a slight sense of fun that people have often accused El-P of lacking.
12. Crystal Castles: III (3 Votes, 44 Points)
Perhaps stripping away some of the most punk elements of the sound that characterized their first two releases, their new one, III, finds them still churning out chilling, exciting dark wave electropop (their basically the best evidence for influence of Silent Shout).
11. Death Grips: The Money Store/No Love Deep Web (3 Votes, 44 Points)
Death Grips made news with their antics this year, shitting all over the major label that signed them b/c they weren’t being allowed to release their music on their own terms. But it was their singular blend of rap, hard electronic, hardcore, punk, and metal that really felt revolutionary, an undescribable but weirdly catchy, audacious sound palette that carried throughout their two full-length releases.
10. Grizzly Bear: Shields (3 Votes, 44.5 Points)
Done by another band, the sort of choirboy harmony-based indie folk that Grizzly Bear make would not be my thing at all. But Daniel Rossen’s guitar sounds wholly unique, and records like Shields are so precisely arranged to sound just straight-up beautiful that I can definitely buy into it. And while Veckatimest arguably a few boring stretches, Shields is pretty arresting throughout.
9. Schoolboy Q: Habits & Contradictions (3 Votes, 46 Points)
Kendrick Lamar may be the de facto leader of the Black Hippy crew, especially considering his stunning new album (which will show up later on this list), but Schoolboy Q is a singular rapper and voice within the crew in his own right, easily the zaniest, wildest Black Hippy. His raps take him anywhere and everywhere and the production on his new album wackily copped from a cover of a Kid Cudi song, Portishead, Genesis, and Menomena.
8. Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.a.a.d. city (3 Votes, 48 Points)
The narrative Kendrick Lamar rhymes through on good kid, m.a.a.d. city is stunning in its depiction of Kendrick’s troubled adolescence in Compton. He turns his past self into a wonderfully humanized characters who develops over the course of the album while struggling through drug/alcohol use, a gang lifestyle that results in the death of a friend, and a reformation that brings him to a place where he can focus on his musical career. It comes across more like a rhymed novel than a rap album and broke through my typical bias against West Coast hip-hop.
7. Diiv: Oshin (3 Votes, 51)
It’s like they took what already might have seemed a little boring about Real Estate (who’s last album was actually quite good) and decided to make an album out of that.
6. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory (4 Votes, 59.5 Points)
Along with Japandroids, Cloud Nothings helped revitalize indie rock this year, harkening back to the days of Superchunk, Cap’N Jazz, and other superbly catchy, emo-tinged giants. Steve Albini’s production lent the album a heavy edge and Cloud Nothings mastermind, Dylan Baldi, provided a serious supply of intelligent riffs along with his signature whine, all for an album with 8 masterpiece cuts that address the album’s thesis statement, “I thought I would be more than this.”
5. Chromatics: Kill for Love (4 Votes, 61.5 Points)
Offering the same sort of atmosphere that got people to enjoy the despicably silly film, Drive, Chromatics’ first album in a half decade was actually quite good, feature an hour and a half of late night driving music, beautifully orchestrated by the wonderfully named Johnny Jewel.
4. Purity Ring: Shrines (5 Votes, 61.5 Points)
Bringing together hip-hop beats, catchy high-pitched female vocal melodies, and dark, direct lyrics, Purity Ring captured some sort of post-Knife zeitgeist through dozen or so excellent songs that make up their debut album, Shrines.
3. Grimes: Visions (4 Votes, 67.5 Points)
IMO, this was the year’s most revolutionary, important indie record, speaking to a new non-masculine mode of music making. Grimes’ excellent pop sensibilities made the songs on Visions endlessly listenable while providing essentially unprecedented vocal and instrumental thrills. The album doesn’t rely on typical performative elements and perhaps that annoyed unexpecting listeners (including me initially) but look past that and you’ll see that there’s really something special here.
2. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do (5 Votes, 80.5 Points)
Every 6 or 7 years, Fiona Apple reminds the world of her powers to spew out pure genius. She did it again this year with The Idler Wheel and better than ever before, carving out 10 perfectly executed songs that lay her flaws out like cards face up on a table. “Werewolf” was the year’s best extended metaphor, “Every Single Night” the year’s best inner psyche freakout, and “Left Alone” the year’s best display of vocal prowess. Artist’s don’t need to be prolific when what they do release is of this level of quality.
1. Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE (6 Votes, 100 Points)
I believed it when it came out and I believe it now: this is the year’s best album and will be talked about as a ‘classic’ for years to comes. Frank Ocean destroys thoughts of authenticity by taking on a unique narrative voice (none of which may be his own) on each of the album’s ridiculously, lyrically astute and sonically rich songs. The various characters we see here–a crackhead, a stripper, a perpetually intoxicated super rich kid, an unrequited lover in the back of a taxi cab, a liver of the sweet life, etc–are fleshed out with observant detail as Ocean paints a full portrait of the city he lives in. This is what empathy sounds like.
Individual Lists:
DJ Fresh Dipley:
1. Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.a.a.d city (20)
2. Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music (19)
3. El-P: Cancer 4 Cure (18)
4. Schoolboy Q – Habits & Contradictions (17)
5. Jarren Benton – Freebasing With Kevin Bacon (16)
6. Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror (15)
7. Joey Bada$$ – 1999 (14)
8. Rick Ross – Rich Forever (13)
9. Action Bronson – Blue Chips OR Rare Chandaliers (12)
10. Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (11)
Justin:
1. Death Grips – First 8 songs of No Love Deep Web and first 7 songs of The Money Store (20)
2. Diiv – Oshin (19)
3. Lana Del Rey – Born to Die (18)
4. Azealia Banks – Fantasea/1991 EP (17)
5. Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (16)
6. Schoolboy Q – Habits & Contradictions (15)
7. TNGHT – TNGHT EP (14)
8. Crystal Castles – III (13)
9. Purity Ring – Shrines (12)
10. Beach House – Bloom (11)
11. The Shins – Port of Morrow (10)
12. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel… (9)
13. Laurel Halo – Quarantine (8)
14. Peaking Lights – Lucifer/Taken By Trees – Other Worlds (basically the same album) (7)
T-15. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems (6)
T-15. THEESatisfaction – awE naturalE (6)
T-15. How to Dress Well – Total Loss (6)
Dan:
1. Beach House – Bloom (20)
2. Crystal Castles – III (19)
3. Diiv – Oshin (18)
4. Chromatics – Kill for Love (17)
5. Lana Del Rey – Born to Die (16)
6. Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (15)
7. Groundislava – Feel Me (14)
8. Lemonade – Diver (13)
9. Purity Ring – Shrines (12)
10. How to Dress Well – Total Loss (11)
Honorable Mentions:
Andy Stott – Luxury Problems (9)
Wild Nothing – Nocturne (9)
Death Grips – The Money Store/No Love Deep Web (9)
Spencer:
1. Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE (20)
2. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel… (19)
3. Swans: The Seer (18)
4. Grimes – Visions (17)
5. Allo’ Darlin – Europe (16)
6. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.a.a.d. city (15)
7. El-P – Cancer 4 Cure (14)
8. Japandroids – Celebration Rock (13)
9. The Menzingers – On the Impossible Past (12)
10. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (11)
11. Actress - RIP (10)
12. Joey Bada$$ – 1999 (9)
13. Bosse-de-Nage – III (8)
14. Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory (7)
15. Cat Power – Sun (6)
GM Tony:
1. Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (20)
2. Chromatics – Kill for Love (19)
3. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel… (18)
4. Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory (17)
5. Joey Bada$$ – 1999 (16)
6. Grimes - Visions (15)
7. Schoolboy Q – Habits & Contradictions (14)
8. Captain Murphy – Duality (13)
9. Purity Ring – Shrines (12)
10. Miguel -Kaleidoscope Dream (11)
11. The Walkmen – Heaven (10)
12. El-P – Cancer 4 Cure (9)
13. Mount Eerie – Clear Moon (8)
14. GOOD Music – Cruel Summer (7)
15. Crystal Castles – III (6)
Mari:
1. The Mountain Goats – Transcendental Youth (20)
2. Jens Lekman – I Know What Love Isn’t (19)
3. Wild Nothing – Nocturne (18)
4. Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel… (17)
5. Dark Dark Dark – Who Needs Who (16)
6. Cat Power – Sun (15)
7. Grizzly Bear – Shields (14)
8. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks (13)
9. Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls (12)
10. Reptar – Body Faucet (11)
11. Japandroids – Celebration Rock (10)
12. Tanlines – Mixed Emotions (9)
13. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan (8)
Ariel:
Top 6 (in alphabetical order by artist)
Chromatics – Kill for Love (17.5)
Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory (17.5)
Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel… (17.5)
Grimes – Visions (17.5)
Grizzly Bear – Shields (17.5)
Purity Ring – Shrines (17.5)
Andrew:
Toppest 5
Tame Impala – Lonerism (18)
Grimes – Visions (18)
Japandroids – Celebration Rock (18)
Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory (18)
Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (18)
Topper 5:
Death Grips – The Money Store (13)
Grizzly Bear – Shields (13)
Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan (13)
Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.a.a.d. city (13)
Wild Nothing - Nocturne (13)
Top 5:
Chromatics – Kill for Love (8)
Purity Ring – Shrines (8)
Diiv - Oshin (8)
Beach House – Bloom (8)
Chairlift – Something (8)
Movie Madness — Rocky
01 year ago
by Fred Shipley
in Lists
Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky has deeply permeated rap music in the past decade. Sly represents the underdog tough guy that every up and coming rapper wants to associate himself with. Here are seven great songs with seven great Rocky references. If you think of any more, shoot me an email.
- Jay Z – IZZO
Cops wanna knock me, D.A. wanna box me in, but somehow I beat the charges like Rocky - A$AP Rocky – Out of this world
Thinking of a Lambo, Bathing Ape camo, play with the money, turn Rocky into Rambo - Dangerdoom – Bada Bing
Look like Apollo Creed after he fought with Rocky - Dem Franchise Boyz – Lean Wit It Rock Wit It
I bounce in the club so the hos call me Rocky - Waka Flocka Flame – For My Dawgs
I feel like Rocky when he fought Apollo Creed - J Cole – Sideline Story
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Don’t you know I be in France where they throw they hands like Pacquiao. Not for my looks, cause my hooks can knock Rocky out. - Andre Nickatina – Crackin’ like Pastachios
Smack you like I’m Puffer Lang
WAMH’s Year End Album Countdown
1Hey everyone,
This year, we at WAMH decided to put together a list of our favorite albums that came out in the past year. There was a lot of variety between the 6 individual lists that were used to make up the year end list but at least the top 8 or 10 records represent some sort of consensus. So here it is:
T-25. The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
“In describing this album to me, Hope Wen said “I feel like I am listening to ghosts as they ballroom dance, but it isn’t frightening, and almost warm.” I think that’s an accurate description. Conceived as a way of capturing the experience of Alzheimer’s, Leyland Kirby looped old early 20th century ballroom recordings together to construct this album. What makes it seem so important is how effectively it goes from moments of sonic clarity to moments of little more than record hiss. But more than that, this is a beautiful record, one that’s as listenable and immersive as an experimental record can possibly be.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4m3XYyT-CM
T-25. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikFgmAv7xc
T-23. The Black Keys – El Camino
“It’s comforting that someone is still making music that sounds like this—and making it well. There’s no gimmick—it’s rock, it’s straightforward, it’s fun, and it makes me pretend I’m the guy from the “Lonely Boy” video when I’m alone in my car. The little sticker on the front of the CD doesn’t talk about hit singles or collaborators or glowing NPR reviews—it just says “Play It Loud”. That’s a sentiment I can get behind.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_426RiwST8
T-23. Marissa Nadler – Marissa Nadler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtpliEJEeVs
T-21. Atlas Sound – Parallax
“Incredibly prolific, self-avowedly monomaniacal, and outspoken to a fault, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox never does anything halfway. It’s unsurprising, then, that when he records solo under the name Atlas Sound, he goes all the way solo. Cox wrote, composed and recorded everything on the third Atlas Sound album, Parallax, on twenty-one different instruments, ranging from Telecaster to rhythm box to “collage.” This level of control allows Cox to go wherever he wants with his music, and on Parallax, he’s chosen to travel inward. The record takes the listener on a sonic and emotional journey into Cox’s interior landscape, with results that are often beautiful, sometimes difficult, and always interesting.” Taken from a review by Cara Giamo ’11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4G3-OSnMY8
T-21. Krallice – Diotima
“Perhaps I overrate this album because it was the first metal album I got really, really into. Maybe it’s not quite next-Dead As Dreams good like I imagine it to be. With some distance, perhaps I won’t consider this the best metal album of the year. But for now, I know I’d rather be listening to Krallice than any other metal band on the planet. Diotima still sends chills down my spine every time I listen to it. It’s the type of album that’s constantly unveiling some new facet (I remember the first time I noticed the precision with which the bass guitar weaves in and out of the album’s layers of pitch blackness). In a year where black metal made significant strides in terms of entering into the indie consciousness, Diotima, for my money, was the darkest, most despairing, and ultimately most heart-racingly thrilling black metal album of them all.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwgbmwtQGFw
T-18. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
“Covering The Pop Group and Big Black this year, St. Vincent showed that she’s a total badass, a quality that all the indie dudes crushing on her might not recognize. But it’s not like she doesn’t have a badass strain in her own music. The songs on Strange Mercy might not bleed with the same force of EMA’s new album or pummel like Fucked Up does, but they’re mighty dark. The complaint I heard leveled against this album when it was reviewed on stereogum was that, as good as the songs are, St. Vincent never lets loose. I think that’s flat out wrong. She sounds angry and unleashed with the best of them, for my money. And it’s easy for us indie types to focus on songcraft, texture, and stuff like that but let’s not forget that what she does with a guitar is pretty killer also.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itt0rALeHE8&ob=av2e
T-18. Tom Waits – Bad As Me
“Of all the oldies continuing to release new material – Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, the always shitty U2, etc. – Tom Waits is the one who still has the most to offer. He sounded aged in the 70s and 80s so now that he actually is, his underground wisdom and general whiskey and cigarettes tinged badassery feel all the more poignant.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Ta3H-ck6s&ob=av2e
T – 18. John Luther Adams – Four Thousand Holes
“It’s a contemporary classical piece for piano, percussion, and electronics based on the chords from “A Day in the Life.” Listen with headphones.” – Chris Spaide
http://www.usaprojects.org/project/four_thousand_holes
17. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
“Before this album was released, Fleet Foxes were quickly becoming one of those bands that I had really liked once upon a time but now mostly skipped when they came up on shuffle. Helplessness Blues helped me remember why I’d liked them so much in the first place. Sure, some of the cheesiness (“I was brought up believing I was somehow unique/Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes..) gets to me, but the straight-up prettiness more than makes up for it.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhtk0jdFGc (watch the music video. It’s awesome)
T-15. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
“It seems like just about every British music blog and magazine has given album of the year nods to Let England Shake. And with good reason. Even for someone like me who’s never really vibed to PJ Harvey before, this bitter political screed is immediately striking. It’s arguably a bit over the top in places but it more than makes up for that with dark humor (as in the repetition of the line “what if I take my problems to the United Nations?”) and a murky atmosphere (particularly on “All and Everyone” and “In the Dark Places”) that feels reminiscent of the Bonnie Prince Billy’s classic I See a Darkness.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4w3zmpuhPI&ob=av2n
T-15. Mates of State – Mountaintops
“SOMEONE has to rep that awesome Mates of State album.” – Wesley Straton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA_fXfdv_hc
14. Okkervil River – I Am Very Far
“This came out at more or less the same time as the Fleet Foxes album, which was sort of a bummer because it didn’t get much attention. The details make this album—the cassette-player solo on “Piratess” or the gorgeous backup vocals on “Hanging from a Hit”—but it’s also just sort of generally badass and dark in an unimposing, genuine way.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCAAceeWA_Q
13. Drake – Take Care
Hey look. It’s Jimmy Brooks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzYzRmhPYmc
12. The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
“As far as WAMH (myself included) is concerned, The Mountain Goats can do no wrong. John Darnielle was writing hit records on Zopilote Machine and he still is now. And if you think there’s nothing new here, look no further than “High Hawk Season”, one of the best barbershop quartet anthems I’ve heard in years.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMj6tCQ1MNc
11. Beirut – The Rip Tide
“Beirut was one of many bands I was more or less apathetic towards before this year. Zach Condon’s voice was always just a bit too maudlin and warbly for my taste, and his gypsy circus songs only aggravated its extravagance. But this album gets it right—the unmistakable voice is still here, of course, but the straightforward sentiment and execution of these songs balances it perfectly.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzORRh6lzg4
10. Real Estate – Days
“I was pretty convinced I hated this album when it came out. It seemed like yet another chill, breezy, and altogether vapid indie release (see Era Extrana, Underneath the Pine, Within and Without, etc.). But ultimately, I caved and decided to give this one a second chance. And boy has it been worth it. While chill and breezy, Real Estate go so far beyond their trendy, indie peers by not being at all vapid. This sentimental look at careless suburban life (which is much better and far less preachy than last year’s The Suburbs) contains some of the best images indie lyricisim had to offer this year (ie “aimless drives through green aisles”, “see the cars on the 95/cutting through like a sharpened knife”), images that resonated oh so deeply with a lifetime suburban kid like me. As I’ve driven around Northern Virginia (suburbia USA for those not familiar) in the past few days, no music has resonated more than that on Days.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbznOLs3qYk
9. Frank Ocean – Nostalgia/Ultra
“Until Tyler the Creator and his crew of insolent teen buddies grow up, Frank Ocean will continue to be the only important, interesting Odd Future dude. This guy has the OF swag in that his music sounds troubled, vulnerable, and uncomfortable. But it’s lightyears ahead of Goblin, Bastard, Radical, and even Earl because it builds its swag on subtlety. The way Frank Ocean brags about his car like only a hip-hop dude can as a way of building up to a fantastical suicide, the way “American Wedding” seems sort of like Kanye’s “Hell of a Life” until you realize that his one day bride is a grad student in the midst of writing a term paper on hijab, the way “Novacane” uses its title image as a metaphor for the numbing effects that sex has on a med student paying for college by doing porn and the loving narrator who’s caught up in her cocaine-fueled lifestyle – this stuff has a novelist’s eye for poignant details. That’s why it’s so swagged out.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKkZIcnjhJY
T-7. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
“IMO, this was the year’s best guitar-driven album. Erika M. Anderson’s sounds so full of raw pain throughout this album that you can’t help but cringe each time you listen. But where this album truly bleeds, what makes it so visceral and hard to bear, is how submissive it is. EMA’s been abused, finds herself addicted to drugs, and watches the struggles of her friends, and just seems to accept it all. Nothing hurts as bad as the much talked about line in the song’s emotional centerpiece (“Marked”): “I wish that every time you touched me left a mark.” It’s easy to be turned off by the sentiments expressed, and the lifestyle captured on Past Life, but for anyone with a tolerance for experiencing pain through their favorite art, this album is pretty unparalleled.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux2dLHbvqFM
T-7. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation
“Sometimes while listening to this album I just want to pinch his ears and tell him to speak up and stop mumbling, dammit. But then that drum machine kicks and the songs open up and it turns out Mr. Mumbles was justified all along.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEDPdybOeU4
6. James Blake – James Blake
“This seems to be the year’s great love-it-or-hate-it record. In fact, there’s perhaps more partisanship over this record in the indiesphere right now than there is in congress. I, for one, count myself as one of those who find this record to be a revolutionary reinvention of singer-songwriter music, one that relies as much on sonic manipulation as songcraft. James Blake has an inexplicably soulful voice and what makes this record so daring in my mind, is how willing he is to play with, affect, and manipulate it. It’ll be interesting to see 1) where JB goes from here and 2) whether this record proves to be as gamechanging as people like me think it is.” – Spencer Adams
5. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
“Two of the best albums of last year were Janelle Monae’s maximalist pop masterpiece The Archandroid and Flying Lotus’s futuristic electrojazz Cosmogramma. These two records themselves hardly line up at all, Janelle Monae’s being immediate, poppy, and readymade for mainstream success while FlyLo’s was difficult, intricately layered, and somewhat downbeat. Shabazz Palaces (fronted by a renewed Butterfly now going by the name Palaceer Lazomo) manages to meld the best qualities from these two disparate 2010 masterpieces into the year’s best hip-hop album, an afrofuturistic work that combines some of the most forward-thinking hip-hop beats of all time with sharp lyricism, and an immediately striking pop-jazz energy.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CbnYw-TgnE&ob=av2n
4. The Weeknd – House of Balloons
“Years down the line, this might end up being considered the year’s Important Album (see the AV Club article on the subject). Despite coming out of nowhere, The Weeknd’s first mixtape of the year seemed about as universally beloved as is possible in today’s musical world, while pointing towards an entirely new indie-indebted way of constructing R&B (this is surely the most gamechanging R&B record since Voodoo). By year end, every indie kid and their grandmother was bumping this, and The Weeknd was featured on Drake’s also much-beloved album. And all from a guy who writes songs that are about as dark and depraved as the parties and underworlds featured in Gaspar Noe’s last two films. As at least one commentator I’ve read has said, more than anything, what makes House of Balloons so incredibly listenable is just how good it sounds. The production is pitch perfect, the vocals are smooth, and the hooks are endlessly rewarding.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ex38L8xtNI
3. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
“Our favorite five college alum since Elliott Smith, Merrill Garbus is both an electric performer and an unsurprisingly smart purveyor of hipster angst. Don’t shrug at the words “hipster angst.” This isn’t the mindless rich kid angst that Sofia Coppolla so loves to capture in her movies. Rather, w h o k i l l is a deeply political and sociological album. Garbus is perceptive, frustrated, confused, and more than anything else she sounds refreshingly alive as she struggles with her own observations.” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1LI-NTa2s&ob=av2e
2. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
“No one can genre-flip better than Justin Vernon can. From For Emma to a foray into auto-tune and Kanye to the Twilight soundtrack to ‘80s schlock, Bon Iver makes everything work. On listening to this album, suddenly I think I like, or at least vaguely understand, Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby. Plus Holocene is just beautiful and nerdily named and its repeated “I was not magnificent” shows just how quietly brilliant Vernon’s lyrics can be when they’re comprehendible.” – Leah Fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ePlc3Gi_8
1. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
“I’d be completely fine if this synth-and-saxaphone 1980’s revival deal passed without further contributions to the genre, and substantial moments of this album wouldn’t seem out of place on the Breakfast Club soundtrack. That said, if anyone could make me appreciate this sort of music, it’d be M83. The openness and triumphant spirit of this album take something [in my opinion] painfully dated and make it timeless.” – Leah Fine
“This album is my church!” – Spencer Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3k_QDnzHE
Individual Lists:
Spencer Adams
1. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
2. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
3. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
4. Krallice – Diotima
5. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
6. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
7. Real Estate – Days
8. James Blake – James Blake
9. Frank Ocean – Nostalgia/Ultra
10. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life
11. Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation
12. The Weeknd – House of Balloons
13. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
14. Tombs – Path of Totality
15. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972
Tony Russo:
1. The Weeknd – House of Balloons/Thursday
2. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
3. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
4. Atlas Sound – Parallax
5. Marissa Nadler – Marissa Nadler
6. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo/So Outta Reach EP
7. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation
8. A$AP Rocky – Livelovea$ap
9. The Field – Looping State of Mind
10. Drake – Take Care
11. Real Estate – Days
12. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
13. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
14. Ty Segall – Goodbye Bread
15. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Chris Spaide:
Top 5:
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
James Blake – James Blake
John Luther Adams – Four Thousand Holes
Tom Waits – Bad As Me
tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
Second Place:
Drake – Take Care
EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
Frank Ocean – Nostalgia/Ultra
Quatuor Ebene – Fiction
Real Estate – Days
Third Place:
Bjork – Biophilia
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
Steve Reich – WTC 9/11, Mallet Quartet, Dance Patterns
The Weeknd – House of Balloons
WU Lyf – Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Matt McLellan:
T-1. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
T-1. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up
Next 8:
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Destroyer – Kaputt
Frank Ocean – Nostalgia/Ultra
Gil Scott-Heron vs. Jamie xx – We’re New Here
Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
James Blake – James Blake
Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde
The Weeknd – House of Balloons
Wesley Straton
1. The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
2. Mates of State – Mountaintops
3. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
4. Beirut – The Rip Tide
5. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Leah Fine
1. Okkervil River – I Am Very Far
T-2. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
T-2. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
T-4. Beirut – The Rip Tide
T-4. The Black Keys – El Camino
T-4. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation
7. Cults – Cults
I had a hard time putting this album on my list just because it doesn’t feel like a 2011 release—the slow trickle of singles and the slow build of hype makes it feel like Cults have been around forever. And any time another one of those singles appeared, I expected to dislike it—this isn’t my kind of music. It’s too sweet and glockenspiely. And yet, song after song, month after month, blog post after blog post, Cults stuck with me. I guess there’s just enough vengefulness to balance out the cute.
8. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
TV on the Radio has always appealed to me most with their slower, heavier songs, so Dear Science’s upbeat schizophrenia didn’t really do it for me. Nine Types of Light takes the songs that worked—“DlZ”, “Family Tree”—and more or less makes a whole album out of them. “Will Do” and “You” are right in my comfort zone—but then they swing a left hook with “Caffeinated Consciousness” and make me wonder why I ever doubted them at all.
9. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
10. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
It’s hard to call this album one of the best of the year, because the Low Anthem’s studio albums have never really lived up to the potential they show in their live performances. They’ve heavily emphasized how this album was recorded in an abandoned pasta sauce factory, but it leaves everything sounding a bit hollow and grating. Still, this album succeeds for its pure loveliness and creativity—the Low Anthem may be NPR fodder, with their singing saws and clarinets and folksy sensibilities, but they do seem genuine.
The Year’s Best Metal
1We at WAMH will be posting our big end of year list sometime in the next few weeks. Very little, if any, metal will show up on that list. But that doesn’t mean metal is a worthless, avoid-at-all-costs genre. It’s actually one of the most rich, expansive, and complex genres of pop music going right now. For that reason, I’ve decided to take on the role of metal enthusiast at WAMH and put together a list of the top 20 metal albums of the year. Here it is:
20. Ampere - Like Shadows (this is actually more of a screamo/hardcore release but it’s still really awesome and the band is pretty local (I think at least one of the members went to Hampshire back in the 90s))
http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=ampere+like+shadows
19. Machine Head - Unto the Locust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkjIAyd9hY4
18. Toxic Holocaust - Conjure and Command
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25JiM_5n_Kc
17. Yob - Atma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdxiEmvHVvI
16. Rwake - Rest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXE2WbmznUU
15. SubRosa - No Help for the Mighty Ones
Easily the year’s best female-fronted metal album, No Help for the Mighty Ones is like a doomy, more metal version of the music made by early 90s female alt rock greats. It definitely stands as one of the most melodic and accessible albums on this list.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMu6YS-FNHw
14. Ulcerate - The Destroyers of All
I have a tough time getting really into Death Metal. To me, it tends to be flat, less dark and despairing than black metal, less fast and furious than grindcore, and less melodic and riffy than sludge and doom. That being said, there are a few death metal records, like Ulcerate’s The Destroyers of All, that I find myself rather enjoying. What makes this album great in my mind is that it operates with a sense of chaos and anarchy, much like my favorite metal album of last year, Deathspell Omega’sParacletus. Also, the dudes in Ulcerate are from New Zealand which is cool/interesting/unique.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7kEwqPFytQ
13. Black Tusk - Set the Dial
I’ll admit, no sludge album this year came close to matching Kylesa’s superb Spiral Shadow, one that remains a year later, one of my favorite standby records. Black Tusk’s Set the Dial is nonetheless deserving of a crown for being at the forefront of 2011 sludge. The band finds their own unique place in the current Southern sludge landscape because of their own hardcore-inspired spin on the genre. This is a louder, faster album than you’d expect from a sludge band, but it maintains the sharp melodic sense and penchant for powerful, distorted guitar riffs that makes sludge one of the most exciting subgenres in current underground metal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F0-4cuNO6Y
12. In Solitude - The World, the Flesh, the Devil
For those who can’t get into most extreme metal but love bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, In Solitude is the band for you. The World, The Flesh, the Devil is classic meat and potatoes heavy metal, executed perfectly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ9thguGySI
11. Liturgy - Aesthetica
With the possible exception of Wolves in the Throne Room, Liturgy is probably the band on this list that’s most well known in the indie world. Heck, Liturgy’s hatred-inspiring frontman was buds with Ezra Koenig at Columbia. The “This is just hipster metal” authenticity complaints that so many haters have leveled against the band seem silly to me. Aesthetica is a furious, propulsive beast that could make even the dullest, most tedious moments and tasks feel urgent. Listening to this album in a physics lab this summer, I constantly felt as though a SWAT team was right around the corner. And for that, every second of this album’s run time kicks ass in the most metal way possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMMF2wHfQ9U
10. KEN Mode - Venerable
I could see Venerable being well-received by folks who don’t necessarily care for metal in general. Melodic and bursting with noise-rock energy, it’s a wonderfully addictive album that falls in line with the likes of Super Ae and Wonderful Rainbow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4qH3pcPsTs
9. Peste Noire - L’Ordure a l’etat Pur
Peste Noire sounds like a band of drunken French hooligans. They’re the most reliably fun black metal band I know of and sound just as hellishly goofy on L’Ordure a l’etat Pur as they always have. Perhaps it’s good that I don’t speak French b/c I doubt I really want to hear the band’s supposedly over-nationalistic, somewhat irresponsible lyrics. On a purely musical level though, I’ll eat up any new PN release at this point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9Gu8TNo9I
8. Blut Aus Nord - 777Sect/777Desanctification
If Liturgy soundtracked a Hollywood action movie, Wolves in the Throne Room a night in a haunted cathedral, and Peste Noire the only bar open all night in Hell, perhaps Blut Aus Nord would be best suited to soundtrack an evening spent wading through a murky swamp. I mean that in the best way possible. BAN make grisly, uncomfortable music that moves forward slowly while wallowing in its own murky atmosphere. 777Sect the first album in a trilogy and BAN’s first album of 2011, hones in on this aesthetic as well as any of their work ever has. But it’s their more recent record, 777Desanctification that really earned the band this spot. While still entrenched in the band’s swampy aesthetic, the album is startlingly unusual. For half a track to open the album, you could almost call the music funky. This paves the way for black metal backed by an electroindustrial sound that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard employed in good metal before. It’s damn exciting to see longtime black metal vets so thoroughly push their sound in a new direction.
http://grooveshark.com/#/album/777+The+Desanctication/7209648
7. Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage
It’s weird to think that a black metal act got an 8.6/BNM on P4K, an A on the AV Club, and were featured in a New Yorker article. But hopefully now the indie kids will start to take more notice of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room. The band’s brand of black metal is epic in the same way GY!BE’s brand of indie kid beloved post-rock is and pounds listeners into submission in the same way that Lightning Bolt do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AdfkejJDao
6. Primordial - Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand
A lot of the albums on this list take a while to unfold (it’s in the nature of black metal especially, for the textured despair to only resonate after quite a few listens). Redemption at the Puritan’s Hands strikes at the heart from its very first moments. In front of a heavy classic metal attack, the vocals here boom with all the force of Zeus, carrying this album and lending added gravitas to the epic lyrics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMCbOW7u1k
5. Amebix - Sonic Mass
I hadn’t heard of crust punk pioneers, Amebix, before this fall. I’ve still yet to listen to Arise! or Monolith, the legendary albums that the band made their name on in the 80s. So the argument over whether Sonic Mass is real authentic Amebix or just some Killing Joke-copping sign of a rusty, aged band is lost to me. As a newcomer, all I hear in Sonic Mass is some of the year’s best punk/metal. Like Circle of Ouroborus’s Eleven Fingers, this is as much a punk/post-punk album as it is metal, but it rocks nonetheless and for the first album from Amebix since 1987, it sounds mighty fresh and invigorating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnCk7hDkT-0
4. Trap Them - Darker Handcraft
I can’t claim to know what the line between grindcore and hardcore is (if any really exists). This sounds more to me like Trash Talk than Pig Destroyer or Napalm Death. And what really makes it stand out, putting in Trash Talk’s territory, is the expert melodic sensibilities the band has. “The Facts” has the best hook I’ve heard in a extreme tune (metal or hardcore) all year. The second half of the album becomes homogenously grindcore-y (in no way a gripe, it’s still pretty intense stuff) but for much ofDarker Handcraft, Trap Them throw out hooks left and right to guide their assault.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E6Bpoetzgs
3. Circle of Ouroborus - Eleven Fingers
Crossing Joy Division-style post-punk with black metal was an act of pure genius. These disparate music styles share an intense darkness that works to meld them seamlessly together on Circle of Ouroborus’s Eleven Fingers. Unyieldingly bleak,Eleven Fingers sounds as much like punk’s big buzz album of the year (Iceage’s New Brigade) as it does like black metal’s (Wolves in the Throne Room’s Celestial Lineage). I guess then that of all the album’s on this list, this is the one I’d most recommend to those typically resistant to the genre. Circle of Ouroborus have, in actuality, managed to craft, to my mind, the best homage to Joy Division since Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EuYri03DpY
2. Tombs - Path of Totality
Not to be confused with Korn’s dubstep album The Path of Totality (likely the closest competition Lulu has for the worst album of 2011 crown), Tombs’s Path of Totality is awesome. Not falling easily into any metal subgenre, it might be the most indescribable album on that list, which is a large reason it works so well. For any fans of loud, mean experimental music, this record comes highly recommended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed6MssPgmeE
1. Krallice - Diotima
Perhaps I overrate this album because it was the first metal album I got really, really into. Maybe it’s not quite next-Dead As Dreams good like I imagine it to be. With some distance, perhaps I won’t consider this the best metal album of the year. But for now, I know I’d rather be listening to Krallice than any other metal band on the planet. Diotima still sends chills down my spine every time I listen to it. It’s the type of album that’s constantly unveiling some new facet (I remember the first time I noticed the precision with which the bass guitar weaves in and out of the album’s layers of pitch blackness). In a year where black metal made significant strides in terms of entering into the indie consciousness, Diotima, for my money, was the darkest, most despairing, and ultimately most heart-racingly thrilling black metal album of them all.
WAMH’s Favorite Reissues of 2011
0Here’s WAMH’s first list of the season as put together but Tony Russo (of the class of 2015). It’s a list of the best reissues of the year and a pretty damn good one at that.
For me, reissues are a matter of rediscovery. A good reissue is not made by adding an extra layer of production, or releasing studio outtakes, but about injecting something old into my life and thereby making it somehow new again. So as enjoyable as it is to listen to a reissued, remastered Liquid Swords on vinyl—or the SuperDeluxe version of Nevermind or another vinyl issuing of Dark Side—these are albums I’d felt were already immortalized. With that in mind, here is my list of the 10 best reissues of 2011, followed by release year
- 1. The Beach Boys – The SMiLE Sessions (Recorded 1966-7)
This should be on the top of every album of the year list for reasons that are clear after listening, but its hybrid new-ness puts it in a reissue category.
- 2. Talk Talk – Laughing Stock (1991)
- 3. The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency & I (1999)
Unlike some reissues, the bonus tracks flow perfectly with the rest.
- 4. The Olivia Tremor Control – Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle (1996)
The Jesus Mary & Chain – Psychocandy (1985)
A beautiful combination of noise and melody.
Archers of Loaf – Icky Mettle (1993)
Ride – Nowhere (1991)
Loveless gets all the love, yet this shoegaze album is nearly as great.
Ty Segall – Single 2007-2010
It is not new music & not quite a reissue, but deserving of a spot nonetheless.
MF Doom – Operation: Doomsday (1999)
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On (1971)
Ok. This is a classic, immortal album, but the lyricism altogether too relevant in our tumultuous times.
Honorable mentions:
The Reatards – Teenage Hate
So bad it is good.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version
Technically this hasn’t come out yet, but I expect my ODB love to be rekindled by a cappella versions of “Brooklyn Zoo.”
Tis the Season
0With December right around the corner and winter vacation inching ever closer, I can tell you precisely what excites me most about the end-of-year holiday season: lists. Sure, I’ll get presents and see family and be treated to pies and cakes and maybe even go to some sort of New Year’s party this year. But, for me, all that pales in comparison to the excitement I get reading through myriad lists summarizing the best that the arts had to offer this past year. It’s news to few who know me that Los Campesinos!’s Hold On Now Youngster is among my all-time favorite records. It’s a vibrant, energetic record with plenty of sing-along moments and just the right amount of glockenspiel. But what really gets me every time when I listen to that record is just how well these people embody the nerdy, obsessive indie kid persona that so thoroughly defines me. And perhaps the greatest example of this is on the song “My Year in Lists.” The idea of making a song that explicitly name checks end of year listmaking is so specifically an indie kid thing that you just know how firmly entrenched the dude(ttes) in Los Campesinos! are in nerdy indie culture. “On your request, I compile a list of my top five resolutions for this year.” Plenty of folks make resolutions but it would take real dorks to feel the need to organize these resolutions neatly into a best-of list.
Yes, end of year listmaking is a definite part of indie culture. Mine the comments section for sites like Stereogum and AV Club and you’ll notice many a commenter talking about their end of year lists. Sites got so antsy this year that midyear lists started to pop up in more than just a few places. And trust me, nothing gets people bitching and moaning about P4K quite like the publication’s various end of year or best of decade lists. If Bon Iver goes #1 this year, any of you who like that record (which is indeed quite good) will surely have to put up with the “You just like that b/c Pitchfork said it was the best record of the year. Such critical groupthink going on around that record. I don’t get it, it’s so boring” comments for months and perhaps even years to come (look up Brandon Stosuy’s article on why MBDTF wasn’t actually that good and you’ll know what I’m talking about).
I think I’m in the upper echelon of list obsessives. I have spent the past month listening to every record I even remotely enjoyed from this past year in the hopes of maybe coming up with some best of list. What I come up with will likely include upwards of 75 albums, each one of which will be explicitly ranked. I can tell you my top 5 at this point (M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming at 1, EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints at 2, Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up at 3, Krallice’s Diotima at 4, and tUnE-yArDs’ w h o k I l l at 5) but beyond that, I will legitimately stress out over where to rank the 70 some odd records that I include. I will actually get upset with myself over how to reconcile my love for a particular record with the fact that it’s barely squeaking into the top 50 on my list. And this is just my album list; my song list will spark even more internal battles. I can do movie lists without too much trouble b/c I only see so many in a year but the current pop music landscape is so expansive that I just have no control over my own listmaking compulsions. And beyond listmaking, I will content myself with reading and rereading lists from P4K, Stereogum, The AV Club, Tinymixtapes, and whatever other sources of lists I can find for weeks to come. I will likely stay up until 1 AM eastern time (when P4K publishes new material) every night the week their lists come out to see where each individual song and record places. I have even attempted to get other WAMHers to submit end of year album lists with the hopes of putting together a comprehensive end of year list to represent WAMH as a whole. I really do have a problem and I know that.
The probably is almost surely an innate thing, not just something I’ve picked up as I’ve delved into the world of music nerdery. I can remember making “favorite _____ of all-time” as early as when I was 8 (I think my favorite song at that point was “All the Small Things” but I definitely also had like a top 20 or 30 list beyond that). And I have been consistently ranking things ever since. Though not an especially clean person, I think I lean towards the personality type that’s neurotic, unspontaneous, likes plans, and needs to categorize. My relationship with music is truly an obsessive one and that manifests itself in my need to rank and organize music. Lists are a way of thinking about music neatly and concretely. The desire for neatness, concreteness, and organization is likely common among blog readers and writers as it takes a sort of compulsive neurotic obsessiveness to care about pop music as much as these people do. The same innate factors that drive many people into music nerdery likely are what compel these same people to make lists.
For all their tidiness, lists are of course difficult, incomplete things. That’s why they spark so much angry commentary. There’s too much music in the world these days for any one list to comprehensively cover every worthwhile release from any given year, yet alone any given decade. My own lists will stay away for the most part from breezy, mellow, chill indie pop while including quite a lot of aging indie vets and quite a lot of music that employs screaming, howling, and growling in its vocals as opposed to conventional singing. I know going into my listreading that likely only one writer that I read will include Trap Them in their list which seems completely insane to me. But then again, I’m sure friends who see my lists will ask me where Real Estate is. Comprehensive lists are just so damn difficult to make. I’ve been attempting a best albums of the 2000s list and a best albums of the 90s list for upwards of a year at this point and the same thing has happened with both. As I’ve listened through the music I have, I’ve continued discovering more and more music that I was missing. These lists have been scrapped for now but I’ll surely feel compelled to look back at them soon enough. Heaven for me would be a place where I could concretely rank my favorite songs and albums of all time without constantly second guessing myself.
But as difficult, annoying, and addictive lists are, ultimately they’re awesome. Lists are actually the best. I may now sound like a drug addict trying to defend heroin, but I mean it when I say lists are fun, helpful, and just generally great. They may come from obsessive impulses, but realistically, they’re made to share with friends. They’re made so that we can kill time arguing about or agreeing with somebody’s top 10 and they’re made so that somebody new to the game can have a hand catching up. As an aspiring indie kid my senior year of high school, Pitchfork’s best of decade and best of year lists were the best thing ever. I would go home from school every day and pass so much time going through these lists one by one, listening to every album on them. It was exciting for me to be discovering music that I would have never heard of otherwise. I mean the hip folk my age these days aren’t listening to Gang of Four, Television, Kraftwerk, Another Green World, I See a Darkness, The Dismemberment Plan, Television Personalities, Nurse With Wound, The Pop Group, or Oval. It took lists and the sort of canonization that comes from lists for me to discover these artists/albums. And furthermore, the short blurb writing format that every listmaker uses produces some of the best music writing around. With no room to be analytical, these blurbs can be personal, enlightening, and give the reader a real feel for what an album/song sounds like without seeming dry or pretentious.
So if you find yourself wrapped up in lists this holiday season, don’t feel bad. They’re good family fun for everyone. Make your own, share it with your friends, bitterly compare it with Pitchfork’s and drink some eggnog. Because lists are what the holiday season is really about.
