Subjectivism Ho!: A Top Ten Records of 2011 List (Pt. 1)
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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Destroyer - Kaputt
This should come as no surprise to most people who are reading this, as I’ve been discussing it at length and with great fervor all year. I honestly believe that Dan Bejar is one of the greatest lyricists working today; as Carl Wilson wrote in 2006: “When I listen to Destroyer, I’m hearing one of the few people ever to have the nerve not only to borrow those Dylanesque techniques, but to keep advancing them as if his life depended on it.”[1]
Dan Bejar has only continued to push his lyrical skill, with its wordplay and irreverence, in Kaputt. Much of the album directly references (and dismisses) the state of the music industry itself. In “Blue Eyes,” for example, Bejar sings “I sent a message in a bottle to the press / It said don’t be ashamed or disgusted with yourselves.” In the title track, Bejar notes that “Sounds, Smash Hits / Melody Maker, NME, / All sounds like a dream to me.” All of these were (or in the case of NME, are) influential British music magazines. But Bejar couldn’t care what these “taste makers” want.
This fits the musical style of Kaputt, which somehow makes the nostalgia epidemic in music seem okay. The style verges on easy listening (with a healthy bunch of Destroyer guitar runs thrown in) but the tension between that laid back style and the often serious issues raised in the lyrics, particularly in “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” (a collaboration with artist Kara Walker) refuses to be resolved by the album.
Much has been made of Bejar’s declaration in “Blue Eyes”: “I write poetry for myself.” Perhaps also relevant is his strangely credible statement in “Grief Point,” which preceded Kaputt by a few months as a b-side to “Archer on the Beach”: “I have lost interest in music, it is horrible.” Creating a record with this attitude somehow gives Kaputt an unimpeachable confidence, perhaps a devil-may-care attitude, which should be enviable for all artists.
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Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
Speaking of confidence, it takes a lot of confidence to make a rock opera, especially one with a plot that is as convoluted as the plot of David Comes to Life. The form of the rock opera was remarkable when it first emerged, but it was too frequently (and disappointingly) attempted, and now any band announcing that they are recording a rock opera is likely to be met with ridicule and accusations of over-reaching. Fucked Up tended to shy away from using the term “rock opera” on their blog, even, though the term certainly applies here.
But Fucked Up are no stranger to the strong concept album. Concept album is an unfortunate and imprecise term, of course, because even albums that are only collecting discrete songs generally have a concept organizing them. Nevertheless, as with “rock opera”, the term “concept album” is readily applicable to Fucked Up, whose equally acclaimed second album The Chemistry of Common Life was all about fungi and religion (to put it reductively). A major contributing factor to the success of David Comes to Life and the reason it works as a rock opera is the unity of the album as a whole. At 77 minutes (not including bonus 7” tracks or the half hour of fake-compilation music “from” the world of the story) it is by no means a short album, but there’s not really any material that could be cut and preserve the story as it is. Perhaps a better endorsement of the album would be the fact that of the 77 minutes, I can’t see any circumstances under which I would desire to cut any.
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The Former Soviet Republic - Is Made of This
A self-released album that made its way to me from the Irish countryside. I managed to stumble across this one and I’m thrilled that I did. This is essentially a solo album by I.H. Wright, with a few occasional guest musicians joining him. Wright has made a strong collection of folk songs that acknowledge their history without becoming subservient to it. “House of the Dying Moon,” for example, is titled after and written around the chord progression from the folk standard “House of the Rising Sun,” but the lyrics reflect a sad modern reality. “I wake, I go to work to stare at a screen / for hours on end, each day,” Wright sings in his husky whisper of a voice, perfectly suited to his songs, “The only woman I trust she does the same / five thousand miles away.”
Another key influence is seen in Wright’s decision to cover the title track from Bruce Springsteen’s album of spare Americana, Nebraska. The song fits in perfectly with the album; if I didn’t know the song originally, it wouldn’t have appeared to be a cover at all. Is Made of This is an album that is comfortable with its slow pacing, and is willing to wait for the right moment to introduce a melody or a lyric. This allows songs to take their time (three of the eleven cross the six minute mark) rather than be forced into a tight, marketable package. If I were in the business of making albums, this is an album I would want to make.
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Bon Iver - Bon Iver
This album is very widely acclaimed, and I wasn’t surprised when it ended up very highly placed (if not topping) a number of year-end lists. But despite this, I recently found myself in a conversation where I was asked to defend this album against claims that it was unfocused and sonically haphazard. Especially because I wasn’t particularly interested in “liking” this album but ended up doing so, I felt a need to stand up for it, even though so many already have.
For me, this album is a natural progression of what we’ve seen previously from Bon Iver. Especially in regard to the many musical side-activities that Justin Vernon has been associated with (Volcano Choir, Gayngs, Kanye West, et al.) in retrospect, For Emma Forever Ago seems more radical a sonic departure than Bon Iver. Other than on “Beth/Rest” which still feels too much like Phil Collins for my taste, the sonic space of the album feels like very fresh synthesis. The skittered drums on “Holocene,” for example, come more from hip-hop sensibilities than any “indie singer-songwriter” creation.[2] Also, it’s time to drop any “singer-songwriter” idea surrounding Bon Iver. The strength is in the band, especially as the lyrics are often buried in intonation or mixing.
Bon Iver subverts the image established by For Emma Forever Ago in more ways than one, however. For Emma came inseparably packaged with the PR myth of a broken man hunkering down in a cabin to write some songs. Many of the songs on Bon Iver are likewise linked to locations, but these locations are often specious. “Hinnom, TX,” for example is not a town in Texas at all. Hinnom is more linked to the Jewish concept of Gehenna, somewhat analogous to Hell, than it is to any real place.[3]Bon Iver is interested in the ideas of places as signified quantities than any real space. Seen as a reaction to the overwhelming presence of a specific place in For Emma, Bon Iver is doing more to change our expectations than perhaps fans of the first album wanted.
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Adam Lipman - The Western Bounce
Adam Lipman’s fourth album is almost certainly his strongest. It, like The Former Soviet Republic’s album, is spare songwriting with a carefully honed focus. Lipman’s songs on this album generally center on different aspects of gender relations: romantic, social, etc. There’s also a good dose of a more trademark Lipman quality—the self-doubt of the songwriter. “I’ll Allow,” for example, is an attempt at an assertion of masculine strength through violence, but acknowledging the infeasability or meaninglessness of such an action. “I would fight them if I knew I could,” Lipman sings.
Later in the album, the lengthy “Play to the Heart” draws to a close, and a single piano note announces the beginning of “Boys and Girls.” It’s a simple, repetitive song (the one line chorus is repeated for most of the song), but its comfortability with its own quietness makes it a calming change of pace. Almost a minute in, a woman’s voice that could not be more different from Lipman’s charming monotone appears and sings about the simple limits placed on her: “I just want to go where they go / Be with the boys and girls / Mama you just say no.” Lipman is not heard on the song, and his absence is felt, perfectly timed and well executed. When he returns on “Bounce,” it is through a veil, some sort of effect partially masks his voice. Bounce tells the story of a one-night stand as a conquest—“I’m assured I will win”—and the distance imposed by the vocal filter is heightened by Lipman’s absence from the previous song. The Western Bounce is an album with a complex message, one that has been carefully crafted and reinforced with things as minute as the production and sequencing, though it appears simpler.
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For space reasons, the next five albums are in Pt. 2.
