Favourite Albums of 2010

Very few of these actually came out in 2010.  But they were new to me.

1. The Rakes - Klang (2009)
Heard and loved Capture / Release when it came out in 2005.  Enjoyed it so much, in fact, that it took me until last November to move on to the other two albums.  Klang is short, sparse, and as melodic as it is dissonant; the definitive statement from these white-collar workers / weekend wasters.

2. Serengeti - Dennehy (Lights, Camera, Action) (2008)
Took me until this year to properly get to the third member of the "MF Grimm, MF Doom, Serengeti trinity."  This rerelease of 2006's Dennehy is a completely immersing, earnest and seriously funny record.

3. The Dudes - Brain Heart Guitar (2006)
This is one of the great Canadian rock records.  It has made me break into a weird sort of dance-run on my end of the night walk home more times than I can count.

4. Wire - Pink Flag (1977)
This is the only Wire album I have, and the oldest on this list.  You wouldn't know it to listen to it, though.  It's a breakneck album, leaving some of its best changes and lines unrepeated.  The only thing to do is to listen again.

5. tUnE-yArDs - BiRd BrAiNs (2010)
I have been kicking myself harder and harder for not seeing Merrill Garbus perform this summer.  She sings tribal lullabies over beats that owe more to J Dilla than to the coffeehouse circut I imagine she would still kill it playing.

6. Mekons - Fear And Whiskey (1985)
This album bounces along more than it rocks, and took me a while to get into.  It is a nearly flawless, semi-conceptual exploration of anarchic life on the British homefront.  But the best thing that can be said about it doesn't involve any of those words.  Did I mention there's violins?

7. P.O.S. - Never Better (2009)

A native Minnesotan and Rhymesayer fusing punk and hip hop.  This is a small album that sounds huge, with ideas to match.  His passion and swagger reminds me of his labelmate Brother Ali, except instead of an albino "raised by black men," he's a black man raised by white men with mohawks.

8. Vampire Weekend - Contra (2010)

I intentionally missed the first album in some sort of misguided protest of their name, but Contra is a continuation of its aesthetic except this time the majority of the songs are intended to be singles.  I don't care where they got those rhythms, as long as they keep playing them.  One thing that surprised me is that it's just as good on a rainy day.

9. The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

I had a couple singles since high school, but this year I listened to the whole albums, and this is definitely my favourite, probably because it's the least dissembling and delicate.  And the melodies, oh, the melodies.

10. Hot Hot Heat - Make Up The Breakdown (2002)
An album which surprised me considerably.  Especially for a debut, it's full of tremendously inventive and well-executed musical ideas.  Great performances across the board, infectious energy.  Inspiring.

11. Lifter Puller - Fiestas and Fiascos (2000)
This one gets an honourable mention as I'd heard it before but only came to fully appreciate it this year, once I'd worked my way through the Hold Steady's catalogue.  I think it best exemplifies everything that I love about both bands.  In 2011: I check out Half Dead and Dynamite.

K'naan

I hurried back to the main stage expecting to have missed the start of K'naan's set, only to find that Jimmy Cliff was still dancing with ageless exuberance.  While I went to get myself some free pita chips and humus, a gigantic mass of people converged on the second stage, and I resolved to watch K'naan from a far-flung grassy knoll.  I could barely make out his white shirt when he arrived to the largest pre-performance cheers of the day.  People were excited.

Heck, I was excited, and I wouldn't have been a year before.  I first heard K'naan when Wavin' Flag came out and condemned it as an ultra-international anthem bound for a dusty corner of a FIFA game soundtrack.  But the song's popularity confounded my expectations, and once I read a bit about him I realized that he's been confounding expectations his whole life.  Rock critic Robert Christgau's review of The Dusty Foot Philosopher finally convinced me to listen at least once.  As soon as I'd finished I listened again for the rhymes, then again for the rhythms, then again for the rock.

I loved the first record, and K'naan rocks unabashedly heavy on Troubadour, with as much recourse to guitars as Somali traditional and Ethiopian jazz samples.  Onstage at Osheaga, however, I realized that some of my favourite moments on the new album would have to be left out by the four-piece band.  Chubb Rock's verse on ABCs, for instance, or Adam Levine's inimitable falsetto on Bang Bang (though the band's vocalist tried).  The only guest spot they got to sound like the album was Kirk Hammett's guitar on If Rap Gets Jealous, which left me as nonplussed live as it did on the record (I much prefer the version on Dusty Foot Philosopher).

Hip-hop backing tracks are difficult to replicate live, and I wasn't expecting the band to do so, but early in the set they seemed a little loose, especially on the slower songs.  They picked it up later with energy-filled renditions of Bang Bang and Soobax.  K'naan ended with just the chorus of Wavin' Flag, probably leaving out the verses because Jimmy Cliff had gone overtime.  Or maybe he knew the chorus was all the crowd needed. They certainly needed no encouragement, and in the end neither did I.  I think the sun even came out from behind a cloud for the finale.

Japandroids

Since Owen Pallett was done a bit early, I had a chance to get back to the main stage to catch the end of Sarah Harmer's set.  I stuck around for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros as well as Jimmy Cliff.  As far as I could tell, they played solid, unremarkable sets.  Leaving Cliff's excellent orange-shirted band to finish another chorus, I ran across the festival grounds to see Japandroids, a Vancouver garage-rock band whose debut Post Nothing I had picked up a few weeks before.

When I got to the stage, I wondered what was wrong.  There were only two guys on stage, a drummer and guitarist.  Where was the rest of the band?  After the first song ended and no one else appeared, I began to realize that I had been duped.  This was not the first time this had happened; the White Stripes and the Black Keys had both fooled me into thinking they were more than duos in the past.  Which, for me, puts Japandroids in pretty good company.

Or perhaps it just puts their album in good company.  Live, I thought they sounded a bit trebley and thin, despite guitarist Brian King's three-amp system (two Fender combos with miked Marshall cabs, and a smaller Fender in the middle).  His and drummer David Prowse's energy was undeniable but uninfectious; listening to the album, I itched for the mosh pit, but the afternoon Osheaga crowd was unmoved.

Maybe there just wasn't room for moshing.  There's no question that Japandroids held the most tightly packed crowd of the day (before the headliners on the main stage) throughout their rapid-fire set.  There was tons of room onstage, but hardly room to clap in the crowd.  I realized I'd be happier just listening to the album on my own, and headed back to the main stage.

Owen Pallett

After the Walkmen ended, I hurried across to catch Owen Pallett's set over at Sennheiser's green stage.  When I got there, he was about two songs in, and annoyed.  His vocals, or maybe his violin, kept feeding back in the monitors; so much that he finally told the soundman to cut them completely.  This might have been a workable situation for most performers, but Pallett's is a live looping show, building a wall of sound by playing over what he has just recorded.  Without monitors, he couldn't hear what he'd already played, which made it near-impossible to play over it tightly in one take.  I felt for the guy.

I remember getting his 2006 album He Poos Clouds not long after it came out, and being astonished that anyone (let alone any group) would attempt this sort of music live.  I've played classical violin since I was four, and that was the first time I'd heard classical licks, dynamics, and instrumentation put into a pop framework.   His latest, Heartland, is bigger and louder with synthesizers, guitar, and even a Jesus and Mary Chain-esque drumkit on a few tracks (added to the tympanis and suspended cymbals of the previous record).  And once again, it's as easy and as rewarding a listen as this sort of complex instrumentation has ever been.

Most of the songs Pallett played were from the new album, with a couple from an even newer record yet to be released.  I imagine he's not one to play the same songs over and over; of course, when you're essentially building the songs in front of people and it takes a minute before the verse can be in full swing, it would make anyone more self conscious about their song choices.  The great thing about this sort of approach is that he's painting a picture onstage instead of dragging on an old, dusty canvas.

The disadvantage is that without monitors, this way of playing is virtually impossible.  Pallett and his guitarist/percussionist exchanged wry glances throughout the set, and stage banter was curt.  "We're not really a festival band," he said, "I don't have a lot of 'he said blah, I said blah' stories."  Even if they didn't really seem to be enjoying their set, I sure did.  Somehow it was still together, tight; often completely different from the album version, but even more exciting for it.  I just laughed when he walked offstage with five or ten minutes left in the set.  Sure, they weren't a festival band, but for three quarters of an hour they had managed to make me forget I was at a festival.

The Walkmen

Matt Kassel's blog (coldjazz.blogspot.com) has got me thinking that I should return my own blog, which has been pulled in more directions than a compass at a magnet factory over the years, to music writing. I've also just been to Osheaga and I'd like to have my impressions recorded somewhere so I can look over them in a few years after I have forgotten them.

Though the Walkmen came on at one in the afternoon, there was no way I was going to miss them. I remember hearing "The Rat" on a Chocolate Skateboards video several years ago, and I got their singles soon after. Maybe they're tired of that song by now, or maybe they opened with it, but what I heard came mostly from their latest album and the one due out in September. They were surprisingly clean cut, which mirrored the faithful renditions of the album versions with which they bombasted the gathering crowd.

Though Paul Maroon's guitars were drenched in all the reverb his overdriven Fender Twin could muster, the Walkmen's sound worked because their instruments, refreshingly effect-free, sounded good on their own. The same held true for Hamilton Leithauser's vocals, which managed to be both unaffected and affecting, on-key and off-kilter. They held together like only a guitar, bass, B3, and drumkit can: a colour-by-numbers rock band, but an earnest and hardworking one.

No one worked harder than Matt Barrick, the drummer, whose jockey-like stature was only equalled by his jockey-like ability to drive the group forward. He played the drums right-handed, but with his right hand crossed under his left, an unusual playing style which probably came from his tendency to hit the highest toms with it instead of the snare during most of his beats.

That was the most peculiar thing I could discern in the whole of their set. The Walkmen are not a surprising band, but they have unusually good material and a phenomenal sound which speaks to very sober equipment choices and a coherent vision of their sound. The equally sober 1 p.m. crowd seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. It makes me wonder what it'd be like to see them play a late-night set, when all the lights and smoke trained on them would actually be visible. They would probably play "The Rat" then. And it would be raucous.

Then Go

You've got a foolproof excuse to hang out
I have nothing to be worried about
And I wonder, in time... I flounder in doubt
Should I go?

You've got so, so many friends
I've no idea where I fit in
I follow my lines, poison my pen
I'm careful to keep more than I expend
And then go

Oh, now, I'm not a quitter
Come now, don't be so bitter
Somehow, I'll find a reason to stay
Away

You've got a strained note to your laugh
Following mine after the joke's passed
And I wonder if I'll find I don't know the half
If I go

You've got a new bold look in your eyes
I've a new bold hand on your thighs
I'd be a partner in crime if only I were to try
And not go

Head Full

I am a boy with a head full of god
Lungs full of secondhand smoke
I play guitar and sing in a bar
In between lines of coke
You're bringing me downtown to the movies
I'm coming down on living room couches
I've been in love for my whole life
I've been in love for my whole life with you

Can I tell you a confession of mine?
I'll write you a note
And now that I've opened my heart and signed
I can leave you with a quote
"It's opener there in the wide open air,"
It's opener there
I've been in love for my whole life
I've been in love for my whole life with you

Give me a minute I'll just waste your time
Give me a minute and I'll waste your time x2
You're bringing me downtown to the movies
I'm coming down on living room couches
I've been in love for my whole life
I've been in love for my whole life with you