(Subject to change.)
10. Tom Waits,Bad As Me
For this, his twentieth (20th!) studio album, Waits broadened his horizons by shrinking his scope. The instrumentation is gentler, the production is starker, the running times are shorter and the album is, as a whole, a modest affair. That just gave Waits’ strongest instrument, his mouth, its own place to shine. His crusty, bourbon-soaked growl is the star now, chewing out his legendarily head-spinning wordplay on a stark musical landscape. Waits seems to have purged his creative demons for now. That just makes his personal ones all the more fascinating.
9. tUnE-yArDs, w h o k i l l
Who is Merril Garbus? From what Amazonian war country does she hail? She wails, slinks, raps, and otherwise rocks her way through w h o k i l l as if daring the music itself to keep up with her, which it only barely can. But the musicsounds like her too, a sound perfectly fashioned to her own voice and heart as surely as if it’s an extension of her own body. And she belts with such force that it seems destined to become a part of yours too.
8. Childish Gambino, Camp
The best parts of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy were whenever it revealed hints of Ye’s insecurities behind all the bravado. Donald Glover flips that equation on its head in this goofy, self-aware dance between insecure nerd and egotistical douchebag, Camp is not great rap as much as it is fascinating rap – the inner monologue of a comedy dork trying to be all things to all people, with the good sense to not censor the struggle. He wants to be Lil Wayne and he wants to be Diablo Cody. And, not unlike his ill-fated TV show, the desire to be taken seriously is at odds with the desire to be a self-aware parody – and though that may be what’s holding Childish Gambino back from super-stardom, it may just also be the reason Jay-Z and Kanye need to be watching the throne.
7. Arctic Monkeys, Suck It and See
Call it their Batman Begins, a back-to-basics re-purposing of their own source material. It’s still guitar rock, generally in the vain of Black Sabbath and Iggy Pop, but is studiously informed by the band’s past successes and missteps. Not as inaccessibly foreboding as 2009’s Humbug or as expansively post-modern as their sophomore effort, Favourite Worst Nightmare, this music is poppier and more immediate while remaining brawny and nuanced. In many ways, it’s the Arctic Monkeys most rewarding album yet. And better yet, it’s a promise that they’re just getting started.
6. St. Vincent,Strange Mercy
“Lush Orchestration” is one of those five-dollar music reviewer terms that is almost filler, divorced from any meaning other than, perhaps, the ability to pile a melody ontop of a harmony. Strange Mercy however, is an indictment for any of us who might have been silly enough to mistake anything but this ilk for lush orchestration. It’s ambitious, sound woven through sound until your ears are all awash in strange hums and textures you didn’t know existed. Annie Clark could easily be the quirky, sexy flavor-of-the-month indie songstress so popular with execs right now, but she’s too smart and courageous for that, too burdened with the pioneer’s spirit. While her contemporaries are trying to be adorkable, she’s striving for, and achieving, greatness.
5. Beirut, The Rip Tide
Fame doesn’t suit Zach Condon. There’s nothing in his peculiar brand of Balkan folk songs married to plaintive, if pretty, melodies to suggest easy application to television soundtracks or pop playlists. And yet, in what should be an encouragement to us all, Beirut is a bonafide crossover success. The Rip Tidewent a long ways towards securing his place as, if not exactly the next Iron and Wine, then certainly an eager upstart. The Rip Tide highlights everything that there is to like about him and, indeed, independent music in general. It’s eclectic without being bloated, whimsical without being twee, likeable without selling out and dense without being pretentious. It’s the sort of music that should be famous.
4. M83, Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
A sprawling, scrawling, stupendous, wide-eyed flight through the cosmic dreamworld of that is Anthony Gonzalez’s unfailingly fantastical head rush of imagination. The sounds may bloom into glowing ‘80s throwbacks, feverish drum batterings and urgent cacophonies of libertine romps, but the roots are deep in Gonzalez’s childhood; these sounds stem from our bygone days as surely as if they were plucked from our toy chests. A rare, enthralling madcap experience.
3. Black Keys, El Camino
The cover of El Camino is not an El Camino at all, but an old van allegedly reminiscent of the Akron, OH’s old tour transport back when they were just trying to keep their own lights on. That it’s on the cover now, as one of America’s biggest bands, is supremely fitting, because they’ve retained that same my-girl-done-left-me romp and stomp of those early shows now that they’re headlining arenas and on the cover of SPIN. It’s noisy and glamorous, but it’s also so utterly primal, so impossible to hate, how did nobody ever think to write these songs before? Maybe it’s just, around 1980, everyone moved on from a genre of music that had plenty of miles left on it, and the Black Keys were the only ones who didn’t get the memo. Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach aren’t so much rock and roll’s saviors as they are its bodyguards, keeping a hazy, black-and-blue eye on things. And if you want to declare rock and roll dead, you’ll have to go through them. May God help you.
2. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
“All You Need Is Love.” “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” “Fitter Happier.” And now to the annals of generational anthems, we may as well add the profoundly affecting title track off the Fleet Foxes’ sophomore album. Rarely has a band dare sound as deeply uncool as this bunch, and even more rarely has that gamble’s payoff been more rewarding. Their sound is so full, so complete, that they come across like one of those traveling family singing groups – though even those outfits would weep with jealousy at these swelling harmonies, these plucking rhythms that strike so perfectly. But Robin Pecknold’s thoughtful, reflective lyrics are as mesmerizing as the prettiest lilt on Helplessness Blues. You feel like he’s singing outside your bedroom window, rhyming his journal and firmly grasping thoughts that have slipped through your fingers like sand. His finger isn’t on the pulse, it’s digging under his own skin and finding something close to universal. A perfect album.
1. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
By the time Justin Vernon got around to releasing a proper follow-up to For Emma, there was little left to be written about him. He was a bearded angel from the saddest possible Heaven, come to deliver a desolate miracle we didn’t know we needed. Nobody was more fed up with his immediately living-legend-y status than he, and he wasted no time in attempting to prove that he was more than a glum folkster, with his EP’s and side projects. But nothing could have prepared anyone for this, Bon Iver, a rich study of almost impossible beauty. From the first infinitely lonely guitar riff of “Perth” to the final, layered echo of “Beth/Rest,” there isn’t a moment that isn’t perfectly calibrated to turning the tiniest of your neck hairs on end. There’s no mistaking any of it for anyone but the same guy who made For Emma, but it pulls the strands of what made that album great down deeper into denser, fuller, richer layers of curiously comforting loneliness that thrills and soothes and saddens and uplifts all at once. And the lyrics. My word. Nonsensical, every last one – so what is it about them that echoes so deeply in the heart? The “I can see for miles and miles and miles” on “Holocene” reverberates up and down the spine as though Vernon was singing your very name. And the chilling near-shout from “Calgary:” So it’s storming on the lake little waves our bodies break/There’s a fire going out but there’s really nothing to the south” lacks any coherent thought at all, but you’ll find yourself singing it aloud in your most solitary moments like an ancient incantation, bent on summoning whatever holy muse Vernon has proven himself an expert in courting.
