Subjectivism Ho!: A Top Ten Records of 2011 List (Pt. 2)
This is, of course, all my personal opinion. But in that opinion, these are definitely the best records of the year.
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tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l
Merrill Garbus’ old slice-and-dice approach is all over w h o k i l l and it could not be more appropriately applied. That approach to songwriting, though less pronounced than on tUnE-yArDs’ first album, engenders a violence that is crucial to w h o k i l l as an album. This is only further supported by Garbus’ admission that the album’s original title was supposed to be “Women Who Kill.”[4]
Violence is everywhere in w h o k i l l, perpetrated by a number of parties. In “Doorstep,” for example, Garbus sings “Policeman shot my baby as he crossed over my doorstep.” Garbus implicates herself in the violence as well—in “Killa” she sings, “Right or wrong I’m a new kind of killer.” In w h o k i l l, Garbus’ thoughts about society, sex, and community all meet in violence. Many of the most interesting moments on the album conflate several of these aspects in one experience, like in “Riotriot” when Garbus sings “I have a secret to tell you / About the night I met you / You had come to put handcuffs on my brother / Down in the alleyway / I dreamt of making love to you / Up on the rooftop, looking up at the sky.”
In the opening song of the album, “My Country,” Garbus twists the traditional American standard, asking: “My country tis of the / Sweet land of liberty / How come I cannot see my future within your arms?” The album that follows, a whirlwind of violence and confusion and tenderness and power, provides the answer.
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Cataldo - Prison Boxing
Violence is also readily apparent here, though it’s a very different violence. In this case, the violence is more that of defeat. The cover image for Cataldo’s third album, Prison Boxing, depicts a man reeling from a blow delivered by an unseen opponent. Or, as the case may be, from an opponent who has left the fight after delivering a jarring blow. The analogy makes more sense upon examining the context of the album. Eric Anderson, the main force behind Cataldo, describes it thusly: “A bunch of break-up/soul-searching jams.”[5]
The question of Prison Boxing is directly addressing is how to continue following the blows that are the losses of a partner and a friend.[6] “Let’s begin at the end of a bad year / With bad things at my back,” Anderson sings in “Deep Cuts,” the opening track on the album. “Deep Cuts” has two meanings, of course—one refers to songs in an artist’s catalog that are overlooked by casual listeners, a relevant worry for someone releasing a new album. The other is the literal meaning, in which deep cuts are serious wounds that need serious medical attention. Both have direct implications on Prison Boxing, which deals with the broad and ever-nagging questions of relevance and self-worth that have plagued artists (and non-artists) for centuries, if not all time. The strength of the album, however, is to make such broad questions feel small enough to be relevant. Anderson also doesn’t allow himself to get caught in any of the minutiae he ruminates on, and the tonal and thematic variance benefits the album immensely. What results is a more complex, and therefore more accurate depiction of Anderson’s situation, a depiction that belies Anderson’s claim in “Deep Cuts” that “A sketch is all I can provide.” Prison Boxing feels like, and is, more.
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St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
The presence of the self is strongly felt in Strange Mercy, which sees Annie Clark frequently singing using the first person perspective. This “I” that pervades the song is rather difficult to divorce from conceptions of Clark herself, which has made approaching Strange Mercy critically a difficult task.
For example, when Clark sings in “Cheerleader,” “I don’t want to be a cheerleader no more,” we believe that it is Clark telling us this. Much has been made of Clark’s striking appearance, and it makes sense in that light to hear “Cheerleader” as a song about frustrating the expectations that the public has for her, but also the way she’s allowed herself to fill that role. Both of her first two albums quite prominently feature her face as their artwork. So does Strange Mercy, but it’s markedly different—this time it’s just Clark’s mouth, trapped and violently pushing for freedom.
Clark’s dissatisfaction with herself and the world is poignant, especially on “Surgeon” whose chorus, “Best find a surgeon / Come cut me open” is both immediately arresting and painful. The idea that something’s so wrong as to require physically cutting into the body is not easy to hear. And it suggests that Clark does not feel comfortable in her own skin, which may be a key part of her complex relationship to the public. In the album’s closer, “Year of the Tiger,” Clark suggests that she feels a debt to the public that she is not yet willing to satisfy, singing “Oh America, can I owe you one,” but as a listener I have trouble conceiving of a way that the conflict could ever be resolved.
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Wye Oak - Civilian
Wye Oak’s third full length is a phenomenal leap forward for the band, whose first two albums I enjoyed but were not nearly as compelling as this one is.
Civilian deals with the tension between the sacred and the profane in the world, and the presence of the sacred within the profane. In “Holy Holy,” Jenn Wasner begins by singing, “Holy Holy Holy / There is no other story.” In other words, everything is sacred, the story of the sacred is omnipresent in experience. But Wasner is also aware of the limitations of this story; in the title track she sings “I still keep my baby teeth / in the bedside table with my jewelry.” It’s a striking and very mundane image that powerfully forces the imagery of the song into the profane, but nevertheless still feels fragile. In many cases, the relation of the sacred and the profane is reduced to yearning, which is palpable in a line like “I wanted to give you everything / But I still stand in awe of superficial things,” from “Civilian.” Perhaps a synonym for that yearning is spirituality, a quality this album is replete with.
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Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
I don’t think I need to devote many words to Bill Callahan’s songwriting, seeing as he’s been at or near the top of his game since 1999’s Knock Knock (released under the Smog moniker) at least. Still, this is a wonderful album that may be the most comfortable of the year. (You’ll note that comfortable does not mean complacent.)
As Sasha Frere-Jones noted, the music of Apocalypse “will make you want to sit very still, or ski jump, or both.”[7] This aptly encapsulates the somewhat odd experience of listening to Apocalypse, whose quiet coda, “One Fine Morning,” stretches for almost nine minutes, while on the same album the dryly funny “America!” also has a place on the album. In “America!” Callahan has a brief aside that is absolutely the funniest moment I’ve heard in a song all year; the whole song is hilarious.[8] The comfort that I mentioned earlier is what allows Callahan to include these very different kinds of songs, all of course masterfully written, and have it still feel tonally unified. Callahan’s comfort is an indication of his skill.
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Thanks for reading, and have a great 2012!
