#1
BEACH HOUSE - TEEN DREAM
BEACH HOUSE - TEEN DREAM
I always loved Beach House's sound, and adored their song "Heart of Chambers", but it wasn't until Teen Dream that I was really taken by them completely. Once hearing it, I found myself leaving the album on repeat the whole day for at least a few months. Calling it background music is an insult, because it's not, but the album sets an atmosphere and mood that is immensely satisfying and pleasant and tranquil and introspective. It doesn't demand your attention, it simply overwhelms you and creates a space you find yourself wanting to return to often.
#2
VAMPIRE WEEKEND - CONTRA
VAMPIRE WEEKEND - CONTRA
After such a popular debut album, I was very interested to see what Vampire Weekend's sophomore album would produce. Let's just say they're 2 for 2. The instrumentation is more sophisticated than their first album, with more layers and richer sounds. They evolve while maintaining their signature sound. If I had one complaint, it would be the track "Giving Up The Gun", which sounds like one of the songs a band records for an album, but ultimately leaves off because it's not that great and doesn't fit in with the rest of the album. Unfortunately, it makes it's way on the record. It's not that it's horrible, it's just mediocre and for some strange reason the second longest song, whereas every other song is concise and unique and playful and engaging. But I digress. Contra is a fantastic album that will always make me think of driving around Kauai with Junna in an open-top Jeep under blue skies and sunshine. Which is...pretty cool!!
#3
SADE - SOLDIER OF LOVE
She might be averaging only one album a decade, but they're always worth the wait. Soldier Of Love nestles itself immediately among Sade's previous masterpieces, bringing with it a bit more edge and attitude. Bath time just got a whole lot sexier.
#4
SALEM - KING NIGHT
Every time I listen to Salem, I'm reminded of the movie High Fidelity. In it, there are these two little punk skateboarder kids who get caught by John Cusack shoplifting a motley collection of records and a manual on how to record music at home. Later, he hears some music being played in his record store and asks one of his employees what they're listening to and is told it's a band those punk skateboarder kids formed called The Kinky Wizards. The music is an impossible mishmash of a century of sounds and influences, somehow coalescing to create a divine denouement for all of music ever. It sounds like nothing and everything all at once, with seemingly dozens of layers intricately placed and thoughtfully combined to form a new breed of song never before conceptualized, let alone heard. John Cusack's character is blown away and immediately tries to become their manager. Salem, to me, achieve in real life everything The Kinky Wizards are supposed to have achieved in the fictional High Fidelity. I get the impression many people hear Salem and think it is noise. And to them, maybe that's all it will ever be. But to me, it's something that can be listened to endlessly with a new discovery found every time. There is such precision and attention and detail in every second of sound. Musically, I admire their craftsmanship immensely. For me, it's as close to fine art as music gets.
#5
THE WALKMEN - LISBON
It's pretty hard to top a perfect album, and the last album from The Walkmen, You + Me, was perfect. Fortunately, they stuck with the sound that they achieved on that album here again on Lisbon, and while it doesn't come together as a complete album the way You + Me did, it does its best and gives us more of what we loved. "Stranded" is a particularly excellent track, utilizing heavily the lush horns that have to be some of my favorite sounds in music these days.
#6
KINGS OF LEON - COME AROUND SUNDOWN
These guys wisely stuck with whatever producer dragged them out of the backwoods and into the clean, polished sound that made them full-fledged rock stars with their last album Only By The Night. There's no doubt Kings Of Leon earned their stripes and are probably very much enjoying cashing in and being dressed in designer duds and dating model girlfriends. Everyone seems to love the music, so I guess it's a win-win. Plus, anyone who loved them before their producer-polished sound can now complain about how they used to like them before they sold out and became mainstream. So I guess that makes it a win-win-win. Nice job, guys.
These guys wisely stuck with whatever producer dragged them out of the backwoods and into the clean, polished sound that made them full-fledged rock stars with their last album Only By The Night. There's no doubt Kings Of Leon earned their stripes and are probably very much enjoying cashing in and being dressed in designer duds and dating model girlfriends. Everyone seems to love the music, so I guess it's a win-win. Plus, anyone who loved them before their producer-polished sound can now complain about how they used to like them before they sold out and became mainstream. So I guess that makes it a win-win-win. Nice job, guys.
#7
THE MORNING BENDERS - BIG ECHO
Considering The Beatles were so influential, you don't hear about all too many bands being compared to them. The Morning Benders, however, have just that fortunate distinction. It's not so much that they sound like them, but more that they're really excellent songwriters who love melody and are quite good at structuring songs. On Big Echo, the band goes for a bigger, wall-of-sound vibe with drawn-out breakdowns and slow build-ups interspersed amongst sing-a-long choruses and smart verses. A solid second album from the Bay Area boys.
#8
KANYE WEST - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY
KANYE WEST - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY
A lot of people have this as their number one album of the year. It doesn't hurt that Pitchfork gave it the extremely rare 10.0 rating. I've always been a fan of Kanye. I think he has very good taste in everything he does. I've always liked much of his music and this album is certainly the best collection of tracks I've heard from him. I guess it just comes down to the fact that I don't entirely care that much about rap or hip hop or whatever category this falls into. That's just full disclosure. I think it's an excellent album for what it is, and I especially love the middle section of the album. But there are also parts of the album that I absolutely can't stand. For some reason, rap albums tend to put these moments that might be compelling or funny once, but hearing it every single time you listen to the album or a track makes you want to smash your head against a wall, or skip the song, or just not listen at all. There are several moments like that on this album. For instance, Chris Rock on "Blame Game" going on and on and on and on about a woman's pussy for nearly three minutes. This is immediately followed by "Lost In The Woods" featuring Bon Iver, something that could have been genius, but is instead ruined by Auto-Tune, my single most hated trend in music today. On "Runaway", the big single that Kanye performed pretty much every single place he could prior to the release of the album, he writes a chorus that has lyrics so silly it's hard to take the rest of this gorgeous song seriously. Perhaps people love all this stuff. In fact, they probably do. For me, though, it limits my ability to listen to the album with any frequency, and when I do, I have to skip over these parts. There's a lot to love about this album, but there are some questionable choices that hold me back from considering it a perfect 10.
#9
ARCADE FIRE - THE SUBURBS
The thought I keep having when I listen to this album is this: It's just not important. Nothing about it really matters. Yes, they continue in their Arcade Fire ways, and keep the sound that they've always had. It's not like they tried to do something different and failed, they kept right on with the keepin' on and created an album that is probably what was to be expected. There's the urgency. There's the angst. But I guess it all seems a little going-through-the-motions to me. The lyrics don't move me, and I'm not entirely sure they even move those who are signing them. The fact that they titled the album The Suburbs should really say it all. It's probably the biggest cliché available to a band to complain about things like the suburbs and the numbing sameness of the sprawling emptiness of blah blah blah. With that said, it's far from a bad album. I obviously liked it enough to include it here. The music is outstanding and the songwriting and production are right on point. These folks know what they're doing. I just wonder how much it matters to them anymore.
#10
TEAM GHOST - YOU NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG TO ME
Being a big fan of M83, I was excited to hear that one of the original members was putting out this album. It ends up, however, feeling more like an EP in that it's only seven tracks, and the first track is really more of a synthroduction than an actual song. There's also not much of a feeling of cohesion. None of this, however, detracts from the experience of listening to a collection of good songs, as long as you approach it with that mindset. "A Glorious Time", in particular, is an excellent pop song almost reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine. Several other songs sound a bit like Massive Attack. Each song ends up feeling pretty different from the next, and it seems like Team Ghost is more interested in just writing songs as they come to them than developing a signature sound and working within those parameters. Which is just fine.
TEAM GHOST - YOU NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG TO ME
Being a big fan of M83, I was excited to hear that one of the original members was putting out this album. It ends up, however, feeling more like an EP in that it's only seven tracks, and the first track is really more of a synthroduction than an actual song. There's also not much of a feeling of cohesion. None of this, however, detracts from the experience of listening to a collection of good songs, as long as you approach it with that mindset. "A Glorious Time", in particular, is an excellent pop song almost reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine. Several other songs sound a bit like Massive Attack. Each song ends up feeling pretty different from the next, and it seems like Team Ghost is more interested in just writing songs as they come to them than developing a signature sound and working within those parameters. Which is just fine.
