Best of Music
Nate LipkaIssue date: 1/15/09 Section: Music
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Lead man Jim James long-ago proved himself to be one of the most recognizable and talented songwriters and voices in the alt-country genre.
And his versatility on the ska-tinged, keyboard-heavy experimentation of 2005’s Z was refreshing.
But his work on Evil Urges perhaps vaults him into the upper echelon of great American singers of this era.
James switches styles from track to track with nimble ease, drawing on cues from legends of the past. “Highly Suspicious” sees James ditch the Tennessee twang in favor of a bizarre, near-psychotic Prince-like croon. “I’m Amazed” is a straight-forward Southern rock ditty that could’ve conceivably been pulled straight from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s catalog.
It’s difficult to think of any other band that could jump from James Taylor to Neil Young so smoothly without compromising its core essence as My Morning Jacket has, a feat that makes Evil Urges an instant classic.
9. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals (Illegal Art)
In a year in which sampling, a hip-hop staple, was largely abandoned in favor of boring re-treads guised as groundbreaking experimentation (we’re lookin’ at you, Kanye), Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals is as refreshing a use of the familiar as anything else to come out of 2008.
Gregg Gillis unapologetically weaves 322 unauthorized samples together into a party-moving master-mix to end all master-mixes; a creative, dynamic effort that’s equal parts staggering and hilarious. It’s like a pop-cultural grab bag, a fizzed up concoction that sees the likes of Outkast, Roy Orbison, Pete Townshend, Rage Against the Machine, Huey Lewis and the News and Sinead O’Connor mesh together seamlessly – and that’s just on the first track.
The number of samples would require a keenly-tuned ear and several re-listens to note them all, but the recognizability of each makes every shift on the album seem like a familiar friend coming around the corner.
8. Sleeping in the Aviary, Expensive Vomit in a Cheap Motel (Science of Sound)
Expensive Vomit in a Cheap Motel (2008’s most visually vivid album title, to be sure) is a far cry from last year’s, Oh, This Old Thing?, a handful of punk tracks that clock in at under 25 minutes.
Instead, the Madison band churns out a raucous, whiskey-slurred bit of lo-fi folk that’s a big change and an even bigger improvement.
The new material sounds as if lead man Elliott Kozel has been listening to just as much Sebadoh and Neutral Milk Hotel as the Kinks and the Violent Femmes. The result is an unpredictable conglomeration of wry alt-country and some wicked harmonica.
It all makes for a 45 minutes of youthful desperation, intoxicated exuberance and catchy pop. One of the year’s best.
7. The Dutchess and the Duke, She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke (Hardly Art)
The beauty of simplicity is gleaming on The Dutchess and The Duke’s debut album, She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke. A guy, a girl and a guitar (with the occasional handclap and flute toot, for good measure) make for a most endearing end result: a near-perfect road-record.
Signed to Hardly Art, the duo is unlike most of their counterparts at sister label Sub Pop, shunning grandiose production for an understated, folksy lo-fi soundtrack suited for the dusty trail. Certain albums were born to wander the country (almost everything from Neil Young and Springsteen’s catalogs), and this one certainly qualifies.
Pair it with a windy mountain road, as I’ve done, and it only seems natural. The points of reference are numerous – and perhaps hard to believe. She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke stands on its own, starched stiff by nothing more, perhaps, than unrepentant honesty. Not cheerfulness, necessarily, but truth, a quality even the most jaded can appreciate.
6. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology (Lost Highway)
Ryan Adams’ rep for booze and chemical-fueled tantrums often precedes his art. Hell, sometimes it even destroys it. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to Cardinology, an aching, beautiful – and yes, pulled-together – gem. Last year’s even-keel Easy Tiger hinted at a turnaround, yes, but the new record feels like a miracle, an effort marked by consistency and unmarred by laziness, Adams’ calling-card in the past.
The opening “Born into a Light” sets the tone with country twang at its twang-iest. “Go Easy” follows, a showcase of Adams’ best soaring Bono impression. “Fix It” is a beautiful lesson in redemption aided by brilliant overlapping guitar-work. The album rolls on as such; a dynamic force equal-parts country and classic rock.
Any and all loose ends are tied up by album-clincher “Stop,” perhaps the most heart-felt, unforced anthem of Adams’ career. The song – and the album – are quite a statement from a historically unbalanced fellow. Hopefully, he can keep it up.
5. Johnny Flynn, A Larum (Mercury)
Calling a Brit charming here in the States doesn’t really carry much weight. Tea is charming. The Union Jack is charming. Hell, even Hugh Grant’s post-Divine Brown mug shot was rather charming. But South Londoner Johnny Flynn’s debut A Larum, bubbling with Olde World magic and wit far beyond his 25 years, is so brimming with charm that even Lucky the Leprechaun would be jealous.
The subtle touches in the record’s musicality are delightful – a rolling rhythm section, banjos and ukuleles and the resounding antique Reso-Phonic guitar all provide the perfect backdrop for a Flynn’s startlingly inspired song-writing. His lyricism varies from cerebral to understated and observational. With the pure sincerity and the confidence of a master story-teller, Flynn gently guides the ebb and flow of the album with ease, from reflective and regretful songs to pub-friendly classics.
Johnny Flynn’s enthusiastic blend of folk, blues and British charisma is timeless, and yes, charming. And not a hooker in sight. Brilliant!
4. GZA, Pro Tools (Babygrande)
Pro Tools began as a GZA-chosen compilation of sorts, a showcase of the best up-and-coming producers and rappers in the business that would allow the Wu-Tang legend a behind-the-scenes venture, for once.
Producers? Check. Mathematics, Bronze Nazareth and, of course, RZA, among others, lent their hands on the production side. But what about emcees? After rallying up some solid guest features, GZA came to the conclusion that the hip-hop world has known for years: it’s hard to top GZA The Genius himself.
Overshadowed by bigger Wu-personalities, GZA is perhaps the biggest voice of the Clan, the best storyteller. The master lyricist flexes his muscles over a bevy of beats on Pro Tools, all soaking with vintage Wu rawness but varied enough for a remarkably streamlined listen.
Pro Tools isn’t only the best rap album of 2008, but GZA’s best solo work since Liquid Swords and one of the best Wu-bangers in recent memory.
3. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
All hype aside – and yes, Sub Pop’s latest darlings were met with a firestorm of it in ’08 – Fleet Foxes is the type of debut you swear you’ve heard before, but haven’t heard anything like it.
Like grainy home movies spliced together with sparkling footage from the future; a harkening to the past but no particular era at all. Or a ’70s AM radio signal that no one had the privilege of hearing, until now. It’s a happy medium that’s both beautiful and brilliant.
Glorious four-part harmonies are the Seattle outfit’s strength, and they know it. They shimmer over rolling, twangy soundscapes (the opening “Sun It Rises”), careen right along with rolling, frolicking folk (“White Winter Hymnal”) and perhaps most poignantly, stand alone on occasion (the lyric-less “Heard Them Stirring”).
And even when the group eschews the harmonies for Robert Pecknold’s refined croon, as they do on the barochial “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” the results are rather stunning.
2. Portugal. The Man., Censored Colors (Equal Vision)
Taking a cue from the region in which they were born (no, nowhere near Lisbon), Portugal. The Man. have created a record – Censored Colors – that’s as sprawling, mysterious, breathtaking and, yes, epic as Alaska itself.
Portugal. The Man. – not actually an individual, but a band, headed by singer John Gourley – teamed up with Phil Peterson and Kirk Huffman, two-thirds of Seattle’s Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground in recording the record, and they didn’t skimp on the bluster. It is as big as the Northern wilderness, and thanks to its untethered indie roots (it’s the band’s first release on independent label Equal Vision Records), the record is just as untamed.
Split in two parts, half one of Censored Colors soars along on the wings of many-layered vocal harmonies, distorted guitars, chugging rhythms and orchestral strings. The piano-tinking “Lay Me Back Down” is an aural practice in the psychedelic, while Gourley’s soft falsetto lends itself to the powdery fallen-snow folk on “Created.” It’s lyrical prog-rock at its peak.
Part two unravels into a slew of boundary-ignoring compositions, a blur of jazzy, whirling, hazy, dreamlike experimentation.
The soulful breadth of the album as a whole is at once dizzying and exhilarating, a tremendous accomplishment.
1. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)
The back-story behind the year’s best album is one we’re pretty sure we’ve heard before, a sort of modern take on Thoreau’s “Walden.”
In the wake of two breakups (both former band DeYarmond Edison and a romantic relationship), Justin Vernon retreated to a remote cabin in the woods of Northern Wisconsin during the coldest months of winter (the name Bon Iver is a loose take on “bon hiver,” French for “good winter”) with hopes of finding some measure of escape from it all.
Whereas other artists desperately seek out a cathartic experience, Vernon seemed to have stumbled upon it by sheer circumstance. With boredom, loneliness and introspection as his muses, presumably, Vernon churned out a raw-edged, folksy beauty built on little more than acoustic guitar and brute honesty.
Vernon reflects on love (“For Emma”) loss (“The Wolves, Act I and II”) and regret (“Blidsided”) in a soulful, unforced falsetto often overdubbed for added depth.
At the closing of “Walden,” Thoreau comes to a rather tidy conclusion, that man must “step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
By Vernon’s own admission on disc-clincher “Re: Stacks,” his stay in Wisconsin brought no such transcendental conclusion. “This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization,” Vernon croons. “It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away/Your love will be safe with me.”
For Bon Iver, the music of For Emma, Forever Ago itself is the revelation, a masterpiece born of solitude and an unflinchingly revealing sense of humanity.
NICE TO MEET YOU
These new artists made waves in 2008 with their dazzling debuts
The Cool Kids, Bake Sale (Chocolate Industries)
BMX-loving hipster rap
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL)
Highly-hyped chamber pop
Daniel Martin Moore, Stray Age (Sub Pop)
Sleepy, soothing acoustic ditties
The Knux, Remind Me in Three Days (Interscope)
N.E.R.D and Outkast’s LA lovechild
King Khan and the Shrines, Supreme Genius of King Khan (Vice)
Germany’s favorite international soul review
Duffy, Rockferry (Polydor)
Like Amy Winehouse, but cleaner
Santogold, Santogold (Downtown)
Electro-infused dance floor gold
Fuck Buttons, Street Horrrsing (ATP)
Atmospheric, low-fi mind-fuck
Foals, Antidotes (Transgressive)
Insect-inspired dance-rock
Lykke Li, Youth Novels (LL)
Sugary Swedish indie-pop
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