I may as well post this today since it is done. I’ve officially relistened to everything I got this year and ranked it. I’m going to do two new things this year. First off, I need to explain a little about how my taste in music (and art in general) has changed drastically. I’ll start with a quote from Franz Kafka

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe to the frozen sea inside us.

I’ve sort of lost interest in things that don’t really affect me. I still get and listen to lots of technically amazing musicians who are doing great original things. If this were last year Andrew Bird would probably be in the top 5 because there is no denying that he wrote some of the most complicated and original music this year. He is a phenomenal violin player and shows this off as well. But his songs sort of lack any real meaning.

Let’s face it. I’m a very moody person. I like to have music that hits a huge range of emotions, so that I can find something to sympathize with me no matter my mood.

So without furthur ado, the top 10:

1. The Antlers – Hospice
2. Imogen Heap – Ellipse
3. Land of Talk – Fun and Laughter
4. Loney, Dear – Dear John
5. Doves – Kingdom of Rust
6. The Swell Season – Strict Joy
7. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
8. Regina Spektor – Far
9. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
10. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love

The honorable mentions:
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orcha
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
M. Ward – Hold Time
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions

Now the ordering here was made with some consideration, but it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Everything above I thought was all around great. Essentially no bad songs. All original creative things. All technically great things with a good deal of emotional content.

The middle ground stuff:
Andrew Bird, Neko Case, Dan Deacon, Tortoise, Dodos, Animal Collective, F**k Buttons, Duncan Sheik, Other Lives

These had really good aspects and had some aspects I didn’t really like. All worth getting in my opinion, but not as well rounded as the top list. For instance, I think the songs on Neko Case or Animal Collective are the best of those groups when they are good. But when they are bad, they are some of the worst either have put out. This dichotomy could not be overlooked. Actually having to skip songs on an album is a major turn-off for me.

The subpar group is as follows:
Bon Iver, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Field, Mount Eerie

These were not worth getting in my opinion, but not totally completely horrible. I enjoy some songs and aspects, but not enough to make the “middle ground” list.

The bottom three I’ll go back to ranking:
Bad: Volcano Choir – Unmap
Worse: Holopaw – Oh Glory, Oh Wilderness
Worst: Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

Other than The Antlers, everything on the top 10 I expected to be there. They’ve all impressed me in the past. So mostly my surprises are in the realm of disappointments. I’ve already said this, but for the most part I was severely disappointed this year. The other surprise was sort of Loney, Dear. I only got this because he was touring with Andrew Bird. After a few listens I thought I had gotten everything to get to it. To my surprise 8 months later, I was still not bored of it.

My biggest disappointment has to be Bon Iver. He was number 1 last year and was very close to bottom three this year. Another big disappointment was Holopaw. This was bottom three. The first time I heard this group was at a party, and it was on in the background. Music people and non-music people alike were so drawn to its greatness that there were constant comments and asking who it was. I’ve never seen anything like that occur since.

I’ll leave this post here. I didn’t rank a top 10 list for individual songs, but I probably should have. If anyone would like me to elaborate more on specific placements, just comment, I’d be happy to. Also, if there are things you thought were great but I missed, I’d love to hear about it.

It is approaching that time again where I re-listen to every album I got this year and rank them. This will be much easier when I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs at my parent’s house over break. I’ll probably also blog about associated prime decompositions. But until then, I though it would be interesting to see how I feel about the list I made last year.

The old list is here. Well a first glance at the top 10 a few things immediately jump out at me. I’d definitely pull Bon Iver from the number 1 spot and completely remove Son Lux, MGMT, and Extra Life from the top 10. Son Lux is the only of those that I’ve listened to since last December.

My top 5 in some order (possibly not the one I’m going to list) would probably be Land of Talk, NIN, The Dodos, Lightspeed Champion, and The Helio Sequence. I still have to admit that Bon Iver was the most affecting and moving album created last year and still deserves top 10, but it didn’t last the way these other ones did.

I must admit right up front that this year has not been a great music year for me. I’ve been listening to things on my last year’s list and even further back more often than stuff created this year. Lot’s of my favorite artists put out new albums, and they repeatedly disappointed me.

I can without a doubt say that my favorite couple of albums I listen to a lot year are not going to be reviewed because they came out several years ago. One of these artists being Joanna Newsom which I’ve blogged about a few times. I also have standard fallbacks like Interpol and Radiohead that just never get old. There have been a lot of “best of the decade” lists, and all three of these artists would definitely make that list if I were to do one.

I’m very much dreading having to sit through some of these again. But maybe I’ll be surprised now that they’ve had time to sit. I also might as well list the four albums I just never got around to getting that were really high on my list: Zs Music of the Modern White, WHY? Eskimo Snow, Blakroc (self-titled), and The Fiery Furnaces I’m Going Away.

I’ll definitely get them at some point, but I don’t like to just start listening to something and then quickly make a judgment call. More on this later.

I’ve sort of posted about Joanna Newsom before, but I really must come back and give her a full post. I really hate to use the album Ys as a perfect example of exactly what I think art should be, since it is such a polarizing album. I understand why, too. I completely understand where people are coming from that hate this album. There are people who say it is unlistenable (probably not a real word).

In any case, as I understand the back story, this is an album that recounts a full year of Newsom’s life. The lyrics are directly referencing actual, real, exact events of her life. But the lyrics are incredibly abstract. The concreteness of the events that they are based on gives the songs every bit of emotion and realness as if she were telling the events straight-up. The actual lyrical abstraction into story-metaphors allows the listeners to interpret into their own situation.

I’ve put serious listening into this album at three very different points in my life. All three times I have been 100% sure that I knew exactly what had happened in Newsom’s life that she was referring to. All three times my interpretations have been radically different. This is because I was identifying so well with the emotion and metaphor in the song. I am completely baffled at my current listening, but again it fits my situation perfectly.

To me this is exactly what art should be. It should be an abstracting of real life in such a way that the viewer feels as if it is exactly their own situation.

There are some interesting cases out there that I could bring up. The first that comes to mind is Connor Oberst (at least in the early Bright Eyes stuff). It is incredibly emotive and about some really intense things. Overall, Oberst is very specific lyrically. I think in this case that is alienating. As a listener, it is hard to change the details of these specific stories to really relate to them.

One thing I haven’t put a lot of thought into is whether this interpretation of great art translates well outside of the song/poem medium. My guess is it doesn’t. It seems like it would be hard to write a novel about a specific event, but keep everything really vague so that you don’t know what the event is.

There are many, many other aspects of Newsom’s music I could go on about, but I think what I just mentioned is the key element.

Maybe I should give some examples of her lyrics. I wish I could post the entire song Sawdust & Diamonds. It is so ridiculously abstract, but as I sit here reading it, it couldn’t be any more obvious what it is about exactly. Anyway, here is a part of it:

and the little white dove
made with love, made with love:
made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers

swings a low sickle arc
from its perch in the dark:
settle down
settle down my desire

The white dove is the relationship she is in. Although, she has created the relationship with care and love, it is also ad hoc patched together in places (the fact that glue and pliers had to be used). This doesn’t matter because she still desires the person and they’ll fight through it.

then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings
(cut from cardboard and old magazines)
makes me warble and rise like a sparrow
and in the place where I stood, there is a circle of wood
a cord or two, which you chop and you stack in your barrow

(First off, the “system of strings” is a recurring theme. Earlier it was mentioned: there’s a light in the wings, hits this system of strings/ from the side while they swing;/ see the wires, the wires, the wires)

The dove (relationship) is being held up artificially with wires. Again, the ad hoc construction of the relationship is mentioned since the dove is made of cardboard and magazines. She sees the wires. She is aware that it is artificial in some sense.

There is evidence of her resistance to falling in love with this person (“love, you ought not!/no you ought not!”). This is probably due to her being aware of all the faults and artificiality of the relationship. Perhaps she fears that her construction isn’t strong enough and the system of strings will collapse.

But she becomes aware that every relationship and person has faults. Resisting falling in love is not an option and it overtakes her at some point (“then the furthermost shake drove a murdering stake in/and cleft me right down through my center/and I shouldn’t say so, but I know that it was then, or never”)

In any event, I certainly have never interpreted the song this way before (I used to be convinced that it was about death, actually). And it baffles me, since this must be correct. But I had just as much evidence for my last interpretation. I’m not sure I will ever grow tired of this album.

This is a non-math post with a math title! So today I started to slam into the metaphorical wall of studying. This week has been setting my alarm to get up and start doing old problem sets for as many hours as a human can do that for. My prelim exams are in one week. Unfortunately, this routine has gotten old fast and so I think I need to take tonight off if I’m going to do it again next week.

In any case, there are a few music review type posts I’ve been meaning to make, and here is my chance. The focus I guess will be on Imogen Heap’s Ellipse.

Typically I like Imogen Heap. I think I’m more fascinated with the strangeness that surrounds her than her actual music. The usual album of her’s has a few songs I love, and I kind of just skip through the rest. If you’ll recall my mid-year review, the first 9 months of this year have had a hands down best album for me. The Antlers Hospice is untouchable, which is surprising for something I’ve had for this long.

Well. Imogen Heap has really surprised me. This album rivals The Antlers for best. It will probably lose (for reasons we’ll get to), but at least it is on the same level.

First off, the variety on this album is amazing. It goes from electronic pop and dance to improvised solo piano to a song that is completely a capella. Secondly, the song construction is perfection on this album. If I were teaching music composition, I would use this album as a teaching reference. There are incredible subtleties throughout each song that keep the momentum and interest. Exactly when a section starts to get old, it will change. Heap’s ear for this is impeccable. The ability to alter phrase lengths and overlap ideas from earlier in the song to create suspension and resolution is amazing. She is able to take a 4 minute song through more ups and downs than one would think possible and still have a very natural flow.

Next, she has a song in every single key! This is a very interesting artistic choice. Unlike lot’s of album that only have a few key signatures, this album has the tone of every song distinct. As for time signatures, she also hits all the main ones and a few not so common ones. There are some very intense mixed meter songs on here.

Next, she probably plays hundreds of “instruments” on this album. I quote “instrument,” because lots of things are just hitting random things around her house. But it gives the overall feel of the album a very complex and mature sound that there is such a variety. (I’m pretty sure at one point she uses an ondes martenot?!)

Most of this probably is missed by the average listener (and by that I mean some of the reviews I’ve read that downplay the complexity). On the first couple of listens it sounds like a typical electro-pop album. I think this is another thing that makes it great. It is very subtle about its complexity. Someone who listens to lots of avant-garde and complex music can get a lot out of this as well as someone that just wants to dance to it.

Now on to why I think it isn’t the best. Note that I’ve missed talking about the lyrics. There are two (possibly three) songs that I just can’t fathom why they are on there other than just filler. The lyrics are just not about anything and have all sorts of cliche. The weird thing is that I can’t make myself skip those songs, because musically they are still really great.

I guess I have to be brief on my other reviews. A band I’d never heard of, but were on many other people’s top lists that were similar to mine was Sunn O))). So I got their new album without knowing at all what style it was or what to expect. Well, let’s just say it is probably the only time I’ve actually been scared by music. I was afraid of having nightmares that night. It was the darned scariest thing ever.

I have a rule where I can’t discard something as awful until I’ve listened to it all the way through 5 times, just in case it grows on me. But I was seriously going to just pretend I had never heard it all and forget the rule. Not even rank it. A few days later, I was curious to try again. Sort of a challenge to myself to not be scared. After the second time, I convinced myself that I could at least make it through the 5 rule.

I made it, and good thing for that rule. I would be surprised if this ends up making my top 5 or 10 of the year. It is sort of beautiful in its own way. I think the really interesting thing about it is that it is only four tracks long. But this makes it like a traditional symphony. I think this is on purpose. In fact, their use of brass instruments strongly reminds me of John Corigliano’s 1st Symphony (and now that I think of it, that symphony may have also scared me on the first listen). It sort of got me excited about how people are reinterpreting very old forms of music into their own style.

I was going to do one more, but I’m closing in on 1000 words, so I’ll end.

It is halfway through the year and thus time to present my thoughts on the music so far. As I did last year, I’m going to not give actually place rankings, just general categories. May as well do the COMAP ranking system.

Outstanding:
The Antlers – Hospice
Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Meritorious:
Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Loney, Dear – Dear John
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Honorable Mention:
Dan Deacon – Bromst
The Field – Yesterday and Today
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Successful Participant:
Bon Iver – Blood Bank EP
Duncan Sheik – Whisper House
M. Ward – Hold Time
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!

Some preliminary hilarious things to note are that despite Bon Iver being my number 1 best album of last year, it got the lowest ranking possible this year. Also, The Field is the only band I’ve ever liked an album so much that I actually wrote an Amazon review for it.

I attribute some of the uncharacteristic placements to the past couple of months in which my musical tastes having been doing an utterly complete shift. Also, what I consider to be great has a few extra components to it that it didn’t used to have which knocked Bird and Phoenix out of the top ranking.

Overall, I’ve had very few full albums I love from this year. Neko Case and M. Ward both have some of my favorite songs, but also have enough of songs that I just can’t stand that it was hard to rank as a full album.

So here is an individual favorite song list:

Andrew Bird – Anonanimal
Animal Collective – My Girls
Antlers – Wake
Dan Deacon – Get Older
Decemberists – Hazards of Love 4
Doves – Lifelines
M. Ward – Blake’s View
Neko Case – Red Tide
Phoenix – Lisztomania!

As usual. If you’re list looks at all similar to this, I’d love to hear about things you love that I may have missed/overlooked.

That’s all for now. I’ve made significant headway on Consciousness Explained so that will start up soon.

I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this before, but I have something I call a “five-listens rule”. Which means that I require myself to listen to an album five times all the way through no matter how much I hate it the first time, and not skipping any tracks even if they annoy the crap out of me. This is an excellent rule if you were wondering. It has saved me from making a fool of myself with things that I wasn’t too impressed with at first, but have since become some of my favorite albums. Sometimes it just takes time for something to grow on you. After the first five listens, I allow myself to actually make some judgements and skip around or never listen again if I want.

Now that that has been explained, I can move on to what I really wanted to discuss. There is so much music that comes out all the time that it is just impossible to listen to even a small fraction of it (unfortunately). This is where albums that I’d love to hate come in. I wish there were more things that I listen to once through and say, I hate this and then have more time to move on. What usually happens, though, is that after five listens I start to understand things a little better and don’t actually give up on things I should.

My first example is Beck. I find nothing overly amazing about Beck. I’ve never really fallen in love with any of his albums. I really wish they weren’t on that border, though. When he comes out with something new, I think to myself, “Well, I kind of liked the last one, so maybe I’ll love this one.” If I just hated it, then I could move on, not get anymore, and not keep returning. I’d love to hate Sea Change. I think it is his best. I’ve been listening to it recently, and am borderline loving it. Due to this, it is eating up time I could be listening to current music.

Next example, M. Ward. I was pretty bored with his new one Hold Time. Nothing particularly good lyrically or musically. Just pretty standard sounding stuff. I was on my fourth listen, and I still thought I wouldn’t listen after the fifth. But on the fifth something started to change. For some reason I started to like it. It is probably still my least favorite thing that has come out this year that I got, but it isn’t bad enough for me to stop listening. I’d love to hate it. (Actually, this album is the source of this post).

Luckily, after last year my wish for wanting to hate Conor Oberst finally came true. He releases stuff so frequently, and I loved the early stuff so much, that I just really wanted a good reason to stop getting his albums. Last year it finally happened with his self-titled solo album. I see that a new one came out, but I will successfully avoid getting it and listening to it.

Lastly, I should talk about someone I’d hate to love. That would definitely have to be The Mountain Goats. With 16 albums and 27 singles/EP’s, talk about time and money killing. People that love them must never get to listen to anything else.

I had a large sequence of heavy math posts before the past couple trivial ones. So since I plan on heavy math coming up soon, I’ll alleviate this tedium for my non-math readers. I haven’t posted on music since January with Andrew Bird and Duncan Sheik if I remember correctly, so it is about time to do that again.

I haven’t been keeping incredibly up-to-date in my music this year. I do have to say that even though Joanna Newsom has popped up on my radar several times, I never actually got around to listening to her until recently. I got the (in)famous Ys. I think it is fantastic. For those who don’t know, she is a harpist/songwriter. Her songs (at least on this album) are quite long (some close to 20 minutes). They are also through composed (no verse/chorus repetitions). This is sort of an ancient song form from when bards recounted entire histories in a song. I love the idea and wish it were used more. Also, she is quite experimental in style. The harp is prominent, but most use a full orchestra. The time signatures are very obscure and change rapidly. It is often not in a single key, with chords coming from all over. Yet the whole thing seems very fluent and never unnatural. Everything I look for in music.

My next pick is Loney, Dear. He toured with Andrew Bird (possibly still is), which is why I checked him out. It was exciting at first. He has lots of energy and cool ideas. But the songs grew old quickly for me, and I consider it just an OK album. I’ll probably return a few times when I want some catchy upbeat stuff, but not a lot.

The really surprising one is Doves. I’ve been a faithful follower of the Doves for a long time. I have all their previous albums and like them a lot. I’ve always considered them good, but I think this album is actually great. It is truly an artistic step up from their previous stuff. The influences range from all over the place from blues to electronica/dance. They took an incredibly long time to put this out, and it is very noticeable. The attention to detail is impeccable. I never stop noticing all sorts of little things all over the place. The faster more electronic type songs build constantly in energy and intensity to great climatic moments. The more down-tempo songs have such a great blues or jazz feel that you would never expect from a rock band. Oh yeah, they are mostly a rock band, these are subtle influences I’m talking about.

Lastly, we’ll go local. I heard this guy Zach Harjo on the local radio station and was blown away. Fortunately two days later he was playing a concert a few blocks away from me. I attended and was even more blown away. He has an album that doesn’t seem to have released yet. I talked about Doves being good at infusing their rock with blues, but this is a different blend with the same idea. It is more like infusing blues with rock. Their live show with actual solos is fantastic. This band truly has the feel and sound internalized. It was quite a moving experience (which most people who have experienced really good live blues will probably tell you). I’m looking forward to seeing more from him, especially since he lives near me.

This amazing and awful thing happened this year. The two people that I feel a strong need to buy an album of on the day it releases both released their new albums at the end of January. These two people are Duncan Sheik and Andrew Bird.

Let’s start with the Bird. I am firmly convinced that this is his best album yet. This is a bit of a relief, since I felt that his previous one took a step down. I thought that his previous one fell massively in lyric creativity, and was much more mainstream musically. Although I was very happy in the direction he was heading with overall sound. That’s why I always recommend Mysterious Production of Eggs for someone interested in getting to know his music.

This album did the perfect combination. It kept going in the interesting sound that I liked from the last one, but brought back the lyrical inventiveness and quirkiness of his earlier stuff. In fact, I might argue that this album places Bird as the nation’s greatest creator of word play and association. Even the New York school of poets didn’t invent stuff this great. Here is something from “Anonanimal”:

I see a sea anemone
The enemy
See a sea anemone
And that’ll be the end of me.
…
Underneath the stalactites
The troglobites lost their sight

Sometimes the associations are much deeper than just in sound, though. I tend to classify Bird associations in the categories: juxtaposing two words that sound similar and have different meaning, juxtaposing two words that have similar meaning but don’t sound the same, or the most subtle of all, juxtaposing one word that conjures the other through societal associations. It is utterly amazing to hear this constant flow of associations that sometimes linger on an idea or flow through ideas that are completely unrelated except through sound. I tend to walk around as happy as can be.

Duncan Sheik brings a different side to things. If Bird is uplifting, nothing can be a bigger downer than this new Sheik album. Let’s just give two examples:

Lily keeps the lighthouse
She’s afraid of the unknown
She’s no ray of sunshine
So mostly she’s alone

No one cares about her longing
Or the dreams on which she’s fed
And though I’m sad to say it
She’d be better off dead

etc…as it runs through many scenarios in which people would be better off dead. The harshness doesn’t end there, though:

Life is like a sinking ship
And you are at the wheel
See the hulls filling up
You know your fate is sealed

Still you keep on trying
To steer the ship to shore
It’s time to learn a lesson
You should’ve learned before

There’s nothing you can do
And we don’t believe in you

I must admit that at first I was so engulfed by this album that I couldn’t even bring myself to listen the Bird for the first time. I was in some sort of shock that someone could write music like this. It moved and disturbed me. In the long run this album may end up getting a thumbs down, though. It is technically not a “Duncan Sheik” album, but him singing songs he wrote for some sort of musical or something.

I do like the on going narrative of the album, but the lyrics and music get a bit too music theater cliché at points. The album before this one was the cast recording of his musical Spring Awakening. The one before that wasn’t all that impressive to me either. That being said, it is without a doubt worth spending time with. I just have a feeling that it will get old fast and won’t be extremely friendly to re-listens. For the person unfamiliar with Sheik I’d start with either Humming (the most original and creative of his works in my opinion) or Daylight (the most polished and probably most listener friendly). Proceed from there as you wish.

I think it is finally time to formalize my arguments and make them rigorous. Today I engaged in an argument that occurs periodically in my life. The Beatles were not a great band. In fact, I think it is hard to even make the case for them being a good band. This status that they have achieved that makes them beyond musical criticism needs to be torn down.

So I’ll do this in an argument/rebuttal format. My basic argument is that the main things I look for in music are originality, interesting chord progressions, interesting melody, technical proficiency, musicality, thought-provoking or interesting lyrics (quite reasonable things), and my basic argument is that not only are the Beatles lacking in some of these categories, they actually severely lack in every single one of them. So. The burden of proof is on Beatles lovers to find me songs that satisfy any of these criterion. Nevertheless, I will still go through and debunk the standard arguments in favor of The Beatles.

Argument 1: You have taken them out of context. In the context of the time period, the music they were creating actually was original.

Rebuttal: This is a lie. Both classical and rock musicians had been doing far far more original things before the Beatles came around (though it was very little known and certainly not “popular”). They were almost a set back in terms of musical progress. The I-IV-V progression has been around since Mozart (and earlier). Catchy melodies or “hooks” were certainly not new. And what was their music about? That’s right. The same exact thing that all pop music that came before it was about. Now I’m not making claims about their influence or popularity here. That is undeniable. But please don’t tell me they were doing anything original.

Argument 2: You are judging them unfairly. All bands have to make a public appeal to get their foot in the door before making serious music or else they will sink before they hit the water. Even bands that you think are original like Radiohead got public appeal before going the artistic route (as with Kid A). You should judge the greatness based on their later albums and not on the early ones.

Rebuttal: I partially agree. But I think the same criticism still applies to their later albums. I’m not claiming that every Beatles song ever was awful, but a significant majority (at least 80% but probably more like 90% or higher) do not fit in a single category of greatness that I listed. This is not merely ignoring a few bad songs. But even if it was just a few bad songs, I would still start to question a band’s greatness from that. A truly great band should be discerning and careful enough about what they release to make sure they aren’t tainting their albums. A few bad songs on an album indicates to me that a band may not be good enough musicians to realize those songs were bad. Even the most avid fans must admit that most of what The Beatles released was filler just to get another album out. There were few good and original ideas on any given album.

Argument 3: It isn’t the music that makes them great. You are missing the point. It is the time period and the statement and the look and the feel of the generation that they were portraying etc blah blah blah. You need to look at the whole picture and not just a piecewise analysis of the music.

Rebuttal: OK. That’s fine and all. But that doesn’t make them a great band. That makes them good public figures. They played the game well. In fact, they played so well, they’ve somehow convinced the public that they are a good band. Let’s not confuse these two things. They were great at capturing an era and sound of the era, but they were not a great band. This distinguishing feature is my point. I’m glad we agree.

Lastly, let’s talk about one of my favorite tests for a bad band. If I can listen to a song I’ve never heard and it is so cliche and unoriginal and boring that I can actually sing along with it on my first listen (yes, that means I caught on to the melody and lyrics so easily that I can predict what they are before I even hear them), then you are not writing interesting music. I just can’t understand how people can listen to things like that without being bored out of their minds.

It’s that time again. This will probably be a long post, but I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week or so preparing this (estimating about an hour per album, then 37 hours of listening).

Top 10 albums of the year:
1. For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
2. Some Are Lakes by Land of Talk
3. The Slip by Nine Inch Nails
4. Punch by Punch Brothers
5. At War With Walls and Mazes by Son Lux
6. Third by Portishead
7. Visiter by The Dodos
8. Falling Off the Lavender Bridge by Lightspeed Champion
9. Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
10. Secular Works by Extra Life

Now to make this easier, basically every major top albums of the year list has already come out, so I know what is strange and what isn’t. Bon Iver, Portishead, the Dodos, and MGMT get at least nods from everyone. Land of Talk isn’t too surprising considering Justin Vernon produced it. NIN probably needs some justification. Well, I’m not a NIN fan, but this album released for download for free, so I said, “Why not?” Imagine my surprise when it blew me away. Lyrically it is quite introspective and philosophical. The songs range from hard rock, to electronica, to beautiful soft soundscape. It is truly an album by a virtuoso.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Punch Brothers. They are sort of like a bluegrass band, yet fully compose their music. The first four tracks are a “suite,” and are more intricate and fully developed than most classical music I know (and I started college as a music major). It really deserves the number 4 spot, or maybe even higher.

I’ve raved about Son Lux before. His music is sort of like NIN, but more approachable. The only reason he is lower is that lyrical basically nothing happens. Lightspeed Champion is really amazing and did get some recognition on lesser known lists. He basically is what would happen if you had someone trained in rap and death metal have a revelation and start writing country music. Yes. It is the most unique sounding band on the list. Lastly, Extra Life has the most sophisticated artistic vision on the list. This group uses Renaissance and earlier melodies and incorporates it into modern “math rock.” This one will probably take the most listens to start to understand.

Honorable mentions:
Blue Lambency Downward by Kayo Dot
Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes
Dear Science, by TV on the Radio
Keep Your Eyes Ahead by The Helio Sequence

I don’t think anything needs justification there.

Bottom Five:
Conor Oberst by Conor Oberst
The Airborne Toxic Event by The Airborne Toxic Event
808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West
Perfect Symmetry by Keane
Liferz by Blood on the Wall

Let’s start with Blood on the Wall. I only got this because half way through the year, people who had nearly exactly the same list as me also had this. Big mistake. The thing I dreaded most about listening to the year again was the fact that I knew I had to listen to this garbage again. I almost deleted it from my ipod to pretend like I never got it in order to not have to review it again. Keane usually does stuff I like, but this time the lyrics are horrifically cliche and the music your standard pop. Even worse, they try to spice it up with all these random electronic effects which just makes a bad pop song near unlistenable.

The Kanye album is boring…and bad. The Auto-tune thing sounds very outdated and is used on every track. The background music is even worse with minimal drum machines often sticking out like a bad remake of cliche ’80’s music. Most surprising of all is Conor Oberst, though. I love him usually. Again with the awful lyrics. I never use lyrics to judge an album as I am much more musically than verbally inclined, but when they are this bad it is unavoidable. “He’s gonna DO IT. He’s gonna DO IT. He’s gonna DO IT by hand.” (referring to a post man delivering a letter). Or the upbeat country song in which the phrase “I don’t wanna die in a hospital” is repeated almost exclusively.

Enough of that.

Albums that were evaluated that fell somewhere in between:
Pretty Odd by Panic at the Disco, Some People Have Real Problems by Sia, The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, Modern Guilt by Beck, Quaristice by Autechre, Lost Wisdom by Mount Eerie, At Mount Zoomer by Wolf Parade, The Stand-Ins by Okkervil River, Viva La Vida by Coldplay, Another World EP by Antony and the Johnsons, Water Curses EP by Animal Collective, Volume One by She & Him, Rearrange Us by Mates of State, Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie, Attack and Release by The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend, Lucky by Nada Surf, You & Me by The Walkmen

The attentive reader will note that it is not in alphabetical order and thus it actually is in the order that I ranked them (Pretty Odd being the highest non-honorable mention and You & Me being basically awful but not bottom 5).

As for the top 10 individual songs:
1. “Midnight Surprise” by Lightspeed Champion
2. “Head Down” by NIN
3. “Raise” by Son Lux
4. “Future Reflections” by MGMT
5. “Give Me Back My Heart Attack” by Land of Talk
6. “The Wolves (Act I and II)” by Bon Iver
7. “The Season” by The Dodos
8. “Broken Afternoon” by The Helio Sequence
9. “DLZ” by TVotR
10. “The Bones of You” by Elbow

Props go to The Helio Sequence, TV on the Radio, and Elbow for not having an overall top 10 album but having some great individual song. Also note the placement of Bon Iver at 6 despite having the number 1 overall album. I found this interesting. You just can’t beat Midnight Surprise. Look it up on youtube or something. It is an epic (something like 8 minute) song spanning all sorts of genres. Constantly changing keys and tempos and time signatures and styles and textures. Yet it all continues to flow. I hadn’t listened to the album as a whole in probably 8 months, so I was shocked that I forgot how great that song was and had to make it number 1.

Note that many great bands were not reviewed due to time and monetary constrictions. If you have a top band that you think I overlooked please comment! (I’ve gather from other lists that Deerhunter and My Morning Jacket I have to check out).