Top Ten Albums of 2011: 10-6

10. P.J. Harvey Let England Shake

To Polly Jean Harvey:

I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve ignored your music for the last decade. I’m sorry I’ve treated you with a curious ambivalence. I'm sorry that when I thought of you I thought of a story line on Gilmore Girls. It wasn't you. It was me. I was wrong. I will change. As penance, I shall listen to Let England Shake over and over and over again. And this is very good for me.

Now I knew Harvey could sing. She jumps and shifts from bluesy punk to folksy ballads, to vocal shredding. That woman’s voice could both cut metal and melt butter. It’s that versatile. As a songwriter, Harvey also runs the gamut. She touches traditional folk, blues, punk, indie rock, and all shades in between. The net result is a wildly inventive and fun ride. I should point out that as an American, I have no idea what she's singing about. It’s very, very, very English. So, if any of you readers are anglophiles and want to set me down and explain it all to me: I’m all ears. I do know it is very political and is a love-letter to a land she loves but wishes were better. But I sort of appreciate the mystery of it all. I like the feeling that this is an album that is big and important and I just need to figure it out.

9. Alexi Murdoch Towards the Sun

Nick Drake is dead. Long live Nick Drake.

The reach of Nick Drake extends well beyond his meager output. Virtually every gentleman with soft vocals, introspective lyrics, and gently strummed acoustic guitar gets lumped in Drake. Some times it makes sense (Kings of Convenience, early Elliot Smith); other times it doesn’t (early Damien Jurado). The point being, there is a long tradition at play here. Like clockwork, a new "Next Drake" tries to take his place. It takes a lot for cream to rise to the top of this niche.

Enter Alexi Murdoch. If the second paragraph makes sense, you’ve got a feeling for Alexi Murdoch. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp. But when you take a song like “Some Day Soon” or “Towards the Sun” you know he’s special. He takes the profound and makes it simple “I love my father and I love him well”. Life becomes tiny moments of celebration and beauty.

8. The Roots undun

The Roots fill me with self-loathing. Hip-hop was my first love. And The Roots were at the top of the list of first artists I loved. Sometime around the mid to late 90’s my tastes changed. I also got it in my head that by being a Brit-pop/punk/shoegaze/hardcore/post-punk/emo/american/indie/twee fan, it meant moving beyond my hip-hop, ahem, roots.

I missed out on some groundbreaking work, notably everything done by the Roots. In the last two years I have begun the process of rectifying that. First there was 2011’s How I Got Over which won huge points for the awesomeness of doing duets that one would think could only happen in alternate universes (e.g. Joanna Newsom and Jim James of My Morning Jacket.)

As much as I liked How I Got Over (and everything else I’ve ever heard), undun brings it all together and exceeds it. Described as “orchestral hip-hop”, the Roots took their patented organic hip-hop (i.e. live instruments), bookended it with orchestral strings, and turned it into a cautionary tale of a street soldier’s rise and fall in the drug game told in reverse. I told a friend it was the audio equivalent of The Wire: the Musical.  If you haven’t seen The Wire, you should. If you have, you should very well be excited about what I’m saying.

I’ve heard the Roots described as hip-hop for people who think they don’t like hip-hop. Whether that’s fair or not is up to you. As for me, I find it to be great music regardless of genre.

7. Wye Oak Civilian

 

“I still keep my baby teeth/in the bedside table with my jewelry/you still sleep in the bed with me/my jewelry and my baby teeth”—“Civilian”

There is something brilliant in that chorus. There is so much unresolved tension mounting. The tension begins to spill over later in the song when Jenn Wasner sings “I wanted to give you everything/but I still stand in awe of superficial things/I wanted to love you like my mother’s mother’s mothers did”. On the one hand, there is the the lovers familiarity and vulnerability, symbolized by the bedside teeth, that is bred out of and indicative of a deep and abiding love. But on the other hand, there is recognition of her inability to do what she wants: love him unreservedly and completely.

For me this is a nearly universal human experience. We want to do something so perfectly that when we fail, we fail spectacularly. There is this constant tension between who we are and who we want to be. Not only do they pinpoint that tension here, they extend the tension throughout the whole album. Sounding much bigger than the two musicians that comprise the band, Civilian is a push-pull affair. It alternates between quiet acoustic alchemy before catapulting into squealing feedback. They never let the listener rest. Your existential tension is being played out between the speakers.

I do not know what religious background Wye Oak has. But to me, there is no surprise in the religious imagery that peppers the album. From “Holy, Holy, Holy”, Jenn Wasner sings “For the joy and secrets I have stored/here I lay awaiting my reward”. And on “The Altar”: “Everything and all/is ours/and it gives us our desire”. While these songs can be interpreted a myriad of ways, for me they are the sound of eschatology. They point to our ambiguous existence where we are becoming who we are meant to be. Our future contradicts our present. But at the same time transforms us, pushing us forward into who we are called to be. Crisis is an impetus for change. The tension of who are and who we’ll be carries us on.

6. Low C’Mon

The Timex of slowcore. While so many of their early contemporaries went the way of the dinosaur (Bedhead, Galaxie 500) or went new directions (Ida, Pedro the Lion/David Bazan, Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co./Jason Molina), Low has sort of remained the same. This isn’t to say their albums are interchangeable. Over time, Low has gotten both a bit faster in tempo and willing to really shred on their guitars. Yet there is something instantly recognizable about Low. Be it the distinctive and intricate guitar work of Alan Sparhawk, the steady and perfect drumming of Mimi Parker, their delicate vocal interplay, or the evocative lyrics.

One of the more underrated aspects of Low (and slow-core in particular with the notable exception of Pedro the Lion and some early Death Cab for Cutie) is their ability to write catchy songs. Low is mostly known for their painfully slow songs. But they’ve actually written some pretty memorable stuff: “Sunflower”, “Dinosaur Act”, “In Metal”, “(That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace”, “Canada”, “California”, and of course “It was Just Like Christmas.” The exception was that those songs stood out on those albums. In C’Mon there is an albums worth of those songs. With C’Mon, Low have made their most accessible album yet.

See also: Albums 5-1