Tag Archives: Music

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012: #1 Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE

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This is the pimpest shit i’ve heard since Voodoo changed the way everyone made love 10 years ago. This is an elegant hip-hop/R&B crossover album, without the flamboyance we’ve come to expect from some singers. Frank Ocean is a smooth and classy dude and channel ORANGE is Exhibit A.

How do we value expressions of love? What about loss? What about the accompanying nostalgia? From where i rank this album, you can surmise my valuation of the previous questions. A lot of music is about amorous expressions and the mastery of capturing these emotions…To be able to do so as vividly as Frank Ocean is sublime. This is an album for everyone’s love…Doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, or what you stand for. He speaks to the love, loss and games that every one of us knows all too well.

The album’s opening track and single is, ‘Thinkin Bout You’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNBD4OFF8cc

Tell me that shit doesn’t make you tingle? Tell me it doesn’t make you wanna think about whoever is on YOUR mind right now? Human beings are passionate lovers by their very nature and Ocean knows how to appeal to our carnal desires.

He shows off his whimsy in ‘Super Rich Kids’ w/ Earl Sweatshirt. Waxing about the ritzy-titzy well-to-dos and their careless extravagant ways:

Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends
Super rich kids with nothing but fake friends

and dropping triple entendres like it’s nothing:

The market’s down like 60 stories
And some don’t end the way they should
My silver spoon has fed me good
A million one, a million cash
Close my eyes and feel the crash

While it’s important to note Ocean’s versatility of being more than just another R&B artist, i ultimately digress. Where channel ORANGE makes it’s lasting mark, is on the back to back to back tracks, Crack Rock’ to ‘Pyramids’ to ‘Lost.’ One of the best three song streaks i’ve ever heard on an album.

‘Crack Rock’  starts off with a beat that creeps and makes you move the second it drops:

Ocean’s beautiful voice straddling the line between baritone and tenor guides us through a desolate tale of addiction and the subliminal question of what the “fix” is.

The album climaxes on ‘Pyramids’ where Ocean starts by giving us a history lesson of Egyptian proportions. Painting the picture of his “Cleopatra” who is the subject of this song:

Much like the Queen, Ocean’s Cleopatra is tragic and her beauty is corrupt.

“What good is a jewel that ain’t still precious?”

She’s taken a turn and fallen into the trap of the pyramids…and Ocean takes us through the mystique of these pyramids, personifying them as the palace of sin and she is trapped inside. Lyrically, this dude is amazing. He confidently articulates his disdain for this beautiful woman and what she’s become, a stripper….But she still gets to him and still rattles his cage…And he’s helpless against the sexual siren…

Finally, ‘Lost’ completes the trifecta and Ocean sings about how fleeting love is within the movement of the lives of its moving parts, people. Truly my favorite song on this record and this absolutely stunning video of ‘Lost’ played over a montage of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited will blow your mind:

https://vimeo.com/47066015

“Got on my buttercream… silk shirt and it’s Versace”

For real? That’s the moneyest line i’ve ever heard. Makes me wanna go buy designer clothes, just to feel the high-end slik.

As if he couldn’t be money enough, he employs Outkast’s Andre 3000 for ‘Pink Matter,’ and i love Big Boi too, but damnit if Andre isn’t the pimpest dude in that duo. John Mayer makes appearances as a guitarist (say what you will about his singing, dude destroys the guitar.) There are so many other epic moments on this album that i’ve glossed over too. It’s a complete work that you gotta hear.

Ocean’s conceptual everyman audience hit a peak the day before channel ORANGE came out…when he made a stunning announcement in an open letter on his tumblr page (beautifully captured in this piece by the SF Bay Guardian’s Daniel Alvarez). It was the biggest leap of faith one could take in hip-hop/R&B… genres shrouded in misogyny and alpha-males. It crumbled a wall, called out the fabric of humanity and what we’re willing to accept.

This is an album that is highly respectful to modern themes and issues. He doesn’t neglect taboos and presents himself to be a real human being. Gay, straight, black, white, whatever….we all find ourselves and our instincts in the moments of carnal passions and impulses inspired by and within this album. This is the album that one day, many of our children will be conceived to…

Groundbreaking, provocative, powerful, daring, passionate, compassionate and a part of us. This makes up my #1 Album of 2012. An album that hopefully allows people to embrace who we are, who we want to be, who we want to be with, express ourselves and act on our most basic instincts. One love.

#1 Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE

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Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012: #8 Beach House – Bloom

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(I’ve embedded RapGenius links in the song title hyperlinks. Right click and open in another tab to listen to the songs and read the lyrics as you follow along to fully experience the depth of #8 Bloom)

[Press Play]

I’ll admit, I was a skeptic when this album came out. Maybe i just couldn’t accept the idea that something from Beach House could be as good as their previous release, Teen Dream (My #5 Album of 2010). Hence, it took me a while to immerse in Bloom and all that it had to offer…

I went to sleep…and had the same dream I had in 2010. The whole time in the dream, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s songs kept me in my comfortably numb alternate reality. I never wanted to wake up…and i floated…and kept floating, in a momentary bliss. Beach House is truly the soundtrack to my dreams. When I listen, i feel like i’m floating….it still feels like the “warm wood and cold marble” effect of 2010. Bloom is just as spectacular as Teen Dream and this pleases me greatly.

On ‘Other People’, Victoria sings about the fleeting nature of our friendships. We do our best to stay in touch, but in the end, much like our dreams, many of those that we’re close to inevitably come and go and follow their own life paths… Once you start to understand that Bloom is an album about how you live your life, the decisions you make, the people you meet and the different roads we all walk down, it really starts to reach the inner depths of your emotions and your psyche.

On ‘Lazuli’, Legrand compares the uniqueness of her subject to the qualities of a mystical, sapphire-like stone. You can’t pull this off without her beautiful siren song…her voice is what truly sets this band apart. It’s one of a kind…it’s angelic…it’s…well…it’s just about perfect…much like the collection of tracks on Bloom together encompass a near perfect follow-up to a perfect record; Both of which will surely stand the test of time.

I choose to end this post with ‘Irene’…the last song on the album and the first one that grabbed me:

“It’s a strange paradise” Legrand sings…..and i’m back in my dream. And i’m in an incarnation of paradise… But maybe it’s not a dream at all…Maybe the relationships that we forge with each other are the beauty of our reality….Are we living in our dreams? [puts headphones on]

beachhouse

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012: #9 Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory

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Dylan Baldi is a musical genius. He dropped his 3rd Cloud Nothings studio album by the time he was 20. I’m not talking burned CD’s sold at shows for $5 here. These are good, well-produced fucking records. The 3rd of which is today’s topic, the brilliant Attack on Memory engineered by the legendary Steve Albini (don’t dare call him a producer, he’s an audio engineer).

Attack on Memory is a powerful rock album, with shades of grunge and post-punk themes throughout. This is Baldi’s first album recorded with a full band and the depth of sound is markedly different from previous efforts. The kid absolutely shreds on guitar. His soft gravelly voice always complementing the star, hanging on his neck. I struggle with where to start you on this band, because all 8 tracks on this LP have their own identity. But it seems only appropriate to show you this beautifully crafted homage to the days of Busby Berkeley in the video for ‘Fall In’:

They waste no time hitting you right from the get go. Albini beautifully engineers the layered vocals with Jayson Gerycz’s memorable fills on the drums and then it’s Baldi’s guitar. It’s always about Baldi’s guitar, as it damn well should be. Tell me you don’t wanna hear more after that?

On ‘Stay Useless,’ we get Baldi’s youthful plea and understanding where’s he’s at in his life…and he sees himself moving up in the ranks, but is still just a kid inside and needs to kick back and chill on the regular…Surely we can all relate? Here’s the really cool video that looks like it came right outta Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation show:

This might be the best guitar album of the year and no other band has as much promise and forceful delivery as these guys right now. What scares me/hypes me up, is the thought of what Baldi & Co. are capable of after this album? I leave you with ‘Wasted Days’, the spectacularly arranged 9-minute opus that’s just a big fucking show off act in my opinion, cause these guys are unreal:

Is Baldi gonna one day just morph into Albini and turn into this alterna-rock God? It’s certainly looking that way.

cloudnothings

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012 – #10 Alt-J – An Awesome Wave

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What makes you biased? Are you unbiased in your opinions? Can you pass judgment on a band in a vacuum without knowing what you’ve already read or heard about them? I’ll admit, its incredibly hard for me to shut off and just listen to a band without knowing anything about them going into it and I doubt it’s easy for you too. And yes, i realize the irony of me, biasing your opinion about what albums that i deem to be the best 18 of 2012…But here we are.

Can you separate the fact that a band won the 2012 Mercury Music Prize (The UK’s highest yearly musical honor) from what you think about their album? Can you remain unbiased when some radio DJ tells you he’s about to drop a track from “the next Radiohead“? Fuck that. If you go into ANY band expecting to hear “the next Radiohead,” you’re gonna be pretty fucking disappointed. Every time. This is why i seek to beat Pitchfork to the punch with this list, cause when it comes critical bias, they take the cake.

So let’s throw everything away for once and I challenge you… to listen to Alt-J’s album start to finish and to not want to hear what comes next after the haunting ‘Intro’ into ‘Interlude 1’ and first track ‘Tesselate’. We’ll consider this a little experiment. I don’t want to bias your opinion, besides the meager information i already gave you and the number ’10’ arbitrarily placed in the title of this post. Or is it? You decide and then let me know what you think. Cause i wanna know. Drop me a comment, or shoot me a message, or whatever. Ok…..? Go!

Alt-J

Lastly, if you like what you hear. Pre-sale tickets for their April show at the Fillmore are up today: http://tixx1.artistarena.com/Alt-J/ Thanks for reading.

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012 – #15 Divine Fits – A Thing Called Divine Fits

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aaaaaaannnnnd…..Press Play:

Yes, that is Dan Boeckener of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs fame…..and why, yes…that IS Britt Daniel from Spoon too! Make no mistake about it, Divine Fits is a supergroup, built to rock. Heavy fucking hitter style. The unfortunately titled A Thing Called Divine Fits sounds just like what you’d expect from the next Spoon record, but the infusion of Boeckner ensures that this is a different project. Daniel does everything well and is a confident frontman in every sense of the role. Boeckner adds pizzazz where there’s already a shit ton and what ensues is one of the most fun albums of the year.

“Caaan’t you see me wavin I’m flaggin a ride” belts Daniel on ‘Flaggin A Ride’, a beautifully simple song. This is what Daniel does best..keeps it simple. Never taking as many chances as the flamboyant Boeckner, but that’s what we’ve grown to love about Daniel: He’s effortlessly perfect. Merged with Boeckner, Divine Fits is a wet dream for indie rock fans. Two of indie’s seminal figures joining forces like they’ve done this before.

Their early evening set at the Treasure Island festival had the most beautiful backdrop of the entire weekend. Picture listening to the enchanting ‘For Your Heart’  as the sun sets in the background, giving rise to an amber horizon beyond San Francisco’s skyline. Ok…now stop imagining. It looked like this:

photo (11)

Pretty fucking surreal. And as perfect as just about everything they do.  Whether its the dark infatuation in ‘Shivers’  or the boyish love in ‘Like Ice Cream’  Boeckner and Daniel take us through the Divine comedy (or fits as they like to call it) that love can be, while sitting at the big kids table of indie rock.

Divine-Fits1

‘A Thing called Divine Fits’ has been added to the Best Albums of 2012 Spotify playlist, check it out. #14 out tomorrow…….

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012 – #16 Blockhead – Interludes After Midnight

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NEW FEATURE: I’ve linked up with my ol’ buddy Maboo at RapGenius.com and some of the track hyperlinks now lead to the RG page with YouTube clips of the song, spotify links, lyrics and explanations…You can decipher em yourself too! Seriously cool stuff. Ok…back to the program:

I’ll admit…i’m an extrovert (surprise). But everyone needs time to reflect… zone out… and work…or think…. For me, i need an album i can throw on start to finish that’s gonna harness my concentration while providing the original score for whatever the hell i gotta get done. Interludes After Midnight is one of those albums…and a damn fine one at that.

Blockhead is a hip-hop producer from New York. Most notably, he’s produced what seems like every good track Aesop Rock has ever put out, like this one and this one.  Interludes (on famed trip-hop label Ninja Tune), is a collection of beats with samples layered over and over to create a sonata of sorts. The most ear-catching track on the album is the below, ‘Hungover Like Woah’, which describes how i feel more often than i’d like to admit…The 25-second spoken sample fades out, and the beat drops:

It puts me in a trance, where the relief from my brain’s woes lie squarely inside of itself. And i float away…..and keep floating… into this:

And i begin to rise out of my funk…and my brain starts to work and my head starts to bob up and down to the beat. The string samples and the distorted electronic horn sounds are mesmerizing and loop into the tracks whimsical closing track ‘The Robin Byrd Era’:

The samples blare: “Tic toc and ya don’t stop…tic toc and ya dont stop!”….”lips. and tongue. and cheeks. and eyes…” as the drum beat drops…and i’m smiling. Moving, doing…..and the interludes conclude…..and i just keep rolling onto the next Blockhead album on the discography. 

Can you feel it? # 16, Blockhead’s Interludes After Midnight:

Blockhead

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012 – #17 Purity Ring – Shrines

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I remember the first time i heard ‘Lofticries’ on SiriusXMU, the finest indie rock satellite radio station in all of the land. It was such a compelling sound…distorted vocals in the background, with this gorgeous female singer on the hooks over a memorable electronic beat. I slapped it on my Top 9 Obscure Indie Tracks of 2011 post at #7 in January. But what was this band capable of? Honestly, i thought they’d just be some one-hit wonder…didnt have it in em to put out something complete…But when the LP dropped, what we heard was a start to finish collection of tracks that picked up right where Lofticries left off.

Purity Ring’s Megan James, is so fucking cute and girlie in the way she sings. Referring to her “little belly” in ‘Belispeak’ and her “little ribs” in ‘Fineshrine.’ At first i was like: “What’s up with all the little body parts?” But then the tracks just flowed and poured out laments and reconciliations over Corin Reddick’s trippy beats…That shit is just plain cute and awesome. Here’s the ‘Fineshrine’ video:

And quite frankly…Megan James is “little”…and Canadian…and nerdy….and cute as hell. She reminds me  fellow Montreal native, Regine from Arcade Fire….and it just adds to the appeal of a solid first LP from a young, up and coming band, whom i’m sure can only hope to follow in the footsteps of a band like Arcade Fire (although they might need like 6 more band members).

PURITYRINGSHRINES

Diggin’ this list? Hit the ‘Follow’ by e-mail button to your right and get pinged via e-mail as soon as the next albums are posted! One love.

Spinelli

Albums of the Year, Music

Top 18 Albums of 2012: #18 Tame Impala – Lonerism

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Ready? Press play on this now:

No…it’s not the 1960’s..I can assure you we’re in 2012. Tame Impala is a psych rock band at its very core. I cant say i’ve heard a band that reminds me of The Beatles as much as they do, at least not in the last decade. It’s surprising how much these dudes look like classic Aussie alt-rockers Silverchair, but their sound couldn’t be more different. When listening to the above ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’, i just wanna collapse on a bean bag chair and daydream. Then when i throw on ‘Mind Mischief’, i just wanna wiggle around the room and space out like a hippie. (But not a smelly one, even though i notoriously wear Birkenstocks).

The band is the brain child of 26-year old front man Kevin Parker and are on the Aus-based Modular Recordings label. Their sound is so different from the lovely Australian synth-pop we hear from bands like Cut Copy and Van She (both also on Modular), that its no surprise how they set themselves apart and won the J Award for Australian Album of the Year. The single off the album, ‘Elephant’ has another cool video with psychedelic colors in the background and jams off into space:

These colorful videos do their sound justice. It’s like they’re playing inside of a lava lamp. A lava lamp that I now want for Christmas. Really cool stuff and Lonerism is truly a complete work. I just added it to my Spotify playlist: “Best Albums of 2012” Subscribe to it.  Also, check yesterday’s post for a rundown of how this year’s list will be released if you missed it. Check the blog again tomorrow for the next album!

Spinelli

Albums of the Year, Music

The Top 18 Albums of 2012: A Viral Experiment and The Final Cut

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Welcome! Have a seat and get comfortable, as my Top 18 Albums of the Year List has arrived. This year, we’re gonna do things a little bit differently… Rather than putting out the entire list all at once, i’m gonna drop an album a day, so subscribe and check back often (sometimes twice a day, to make sure i get my whole list out before Pitchfork publishes theirs).Also, I’m going to look to tag the artists on Twitter/FB with my posts to see what kind of responses and traffic spikes i see on the blog. Why? Cause it sounds really cool and I’m kinda bored/damn curious. This year’s list will have links to tracks as always. Some of the links will go straight to RapGenius.com where you can play the track on YouTube/Spotify, check the lyrics & explanations and even decipher ’em yourself…(Shout out to RG and my boy Maboo that i grew up with) So make sure to click on EVERYTHING. Hyperlinks galore.

2012 was a badass year in music. From where i’m standing, indie rock made impressive strides and the electronica influence kept steadily permeating through its veins. Boundaries are being broken, sounds are evolving and while there’s still a lot of crap that sounds the same, the evolutionary cycle of independent rock and roll is still very much in motion. THIS is what i value in music. Is it different? Is it fresh? Does it sound like something i haven’t heard before? Is the artist truly being expressive, or is it just mindless babble? Innovation and originality appeal to me.

Even hip-hop saw some faces stick out in the crowd, crossing the mainstream line, but still remaining conscious and dropping some seriously quality stuff. Two albums stood out in particular, which i’ll delve into in this list, but it felt like there was hope for hip-hop again; that maybe we’re starting to witness a resurgence of conscious hip-hop. Weaving a tale from start to finish on an album. Be it about where you’re from, or what you’ve been through, rather than ignoring the path you took simply to stroke the life you lead. “Da Art of Storytellin'” (c. OutKast/Slick Rick) if you will, is what i miss the most in hip-hop, but found it this year a couple of times….

What the 2011 List predicted as far as electronica and electronic fusions being the future, came alive in some artists and unsurprisingly, most of them were from the UK.

Anyways…before i get started, i want to use this first post to tout the albums that were on the outside looking in on this list. Narrowing the list down to 18 albums is tough and ultimately this entry might be the most fun of them all, since it focuses on a range of different artists, rather than the singular focus i’ll give to an album on each post. But enough babble…Here are the VERY worthy casualties that sat JUST outside of the Top 18.

Japandroids – Celebration Rock – Canadian post-punk rockers. So. Much. Energy. One of my favorite shows of the year too, complete with A FUCKING MOSH PIT. Made me feel like a kid again. Highlights: ‘Fire’s Highway’, ‘Continuous Thunder’ Also, here’s a really rad photo i took at the show:

Grimes – Visions – Unique beyond words. This tiny little Canadian girl makes some of the most intriguing electronic beats. Her videos are a wild interpretive masterpiece, like this one for ‘Genesis’:

Wild Nothing – Nocturne – Coastal, synthy vibes. Last year’s ‘Gemini’ also worth checking out. Highlights: ‘Disappear Always’, ‘Shadow’

Sharon Van Etten – Tramp – Probably the last one to go from the list. Great effort from this Jersey-born singer. Highlights: ‘Give Out’, ‘Serpents’

Poolside – Pacific Standard Time – Great chill out album. Highlights: ‘Next to You’

Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls – I defer all descriptions, videos, links, etc… to my April blog post on the Shakes.

Sinkane – Mars – Sudanese musician on James Murphy’s DFA Label. A testament to how versatile DFA’s artist lineup is. Highlights: ‘Jeeper Creeper’

Father John Misty – Fear Fun – Not gonna lie…this one really hurt to cut out. Holy cow what an artist. His stage presence is remarkable and you might know FJM as J.Tillman of Fleet Foxes fame. I love how ‘LA’ this album is and his set at Outside lands 2012 was the best surprise of the weekend. The single off this album, ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetary Sings’ was quite possibly the single of the year, with a must watch video featuring Aubrey Plaza:

Matthew Dear – Beams – Oh how I love the Ghostly International label. Dear represents one of their flagship artists and while ‘Beams’ ultimately didn’t make the cut, Ghostly is stil represented. here’s a badass video for ‘Her Fantasy’:

Gary Clark Jr. – Blak and Blu – We might have the second coming of Jimi Hendrix on our hands with this one. This guys absolutely shreds on the guitar. Here’s Gary performing ‘You Saved Me’ (God I love this song) on my very favorite radio show on the entire planet, KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic:

Welp…those are the outsiders. And as you’ve seen, I’ll feature all sorts of links to tracks, videos, sites, articles, etc… to make every post super interactive so you can experience the music and not only who the artists are, but also where they’re from and what goes into their projects. I’ll keep a running playlist of each album on Spotify and only add the albums as the posts come up, for maximum suspense! Hit ‘subscribe’ when you find the list on my Spotify page an you’ll get an alert when the album gets added.

I’ll post on FB/twitter every day when a new post is out, but count on somethin every day for the next couple of weeks. Feel free to subscribe to this blog as well. Ok…..

Here we go!

Spinelli