Tommy J’s Best Musical Selections from the year of our Lord 2014

2014 was a weird year and I finally feel comfortable saying that the year in music was no different. This decade has thus far seen some real standouts. To my mind, none has yet emerged for 2014. There was no shortage of good work turned in, but on the whole it feels messier and more difficult than years past. Maybe we’re just getting old. Here’s my attempt to summarize the stuff that I listened to and engaged with. Listed in some semblance of order relative to my preference.

Gist Is by Adult Jazz is the album that intrigued me more than any other, which in a year absent outright favorites – nothing has come close to the heights of Typhoon’s White Lighter or Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – adds up to my number one album of the year.

Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of by Andrew Bird is the album that spent the most time in my eardrums all year. To me, it is a warm blanket on a cold day. It is not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. It is seeing the forecast as a schoolboy and knowing you’ll awake to a snow day.

Built on Glass by Chet Faker is the immaculate midpoint between the austere electronic work of James Blake, the confessional falsetto of Bon Iver, and the delicious electro-pop of the Postal Service. Not unlike electro-pop catnip.

Post Tropical by James Vincent McMorrow is a lush and electronic paradise. Like a digital beach on a rainy day. Watch this video and never look back.

Sylvan Esso by Sylvan Esso is kind of a spiritual successor to Lady Gaga’s debut record if instead of continuing in the performance-art ironic nose-thumbing of Madonna, it was done in the coffee-house club mold where Bushwick meets Williamsburg and the women all drink whiskey and really like Radiohead but would also prefer it to be more fun and sharply social instead of introspective and kind of sad.

Lost in the Dream by the War on Drugs is a repurposing of the late 70’s stadium rock of Springsteen and Tom Petty in a totally hip and gloriously listenable guitar-based, reverb-drenched delicious little package.

Burn Your Fire for No Witness by Angel Olsen is an expansive, dark, rich album that does a lot of things and does them almost all right. Another big score of John Congleton.

Sunbathing Animal by Parquet Courts is the triumphant return of stoner-rock as the dominant mode of contemporary Brooklyn punk and teenage (now mid/late twenties)-angst. With more than a few nods to Television’s Marquee Moon

Black Messiah by D’Angelo & the Vanguard is just about pitch-perfect musicianship, another record that is massive and expansive but in a very tightly controlled, masterful way, with no missteps. I can think of no better record to sneak in at the end of the year and define what 2014 meant.

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We’re All Young Together by Walter Martin is the closest thing I’ve heard to a Raffi record since I was a boy, which is just absolutely delightful and all the better for also being a sneakily great legitimate indie-pop record with all the guest stars to prove it. It’s really just a lot of fun.

What Goes Around by Statik Selektah is the most overrated hip-hop record of the year. Sure it’s easy to sell low on DJ mixtapes, but he puts together a list of artists that’s hard to overlook and gets the best work out of them, all with beats inspired by the 90’s heyday. Great stuff.

Are We There by Sharon Van Etten is a great record that I am perhaps unfairly handicapping because her last one was so good and this feels not quite a step forward. A few missteps keep this out of the top ten, but it’s pretty great and is home to some of the year’s highlights.

Wig Out At Jagbags by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks is a ton of freewheeling fun. Malkmus has this very offhand ability that makes doing what he does seem easy until you realize moments later that he is a genius and his true genius is making difficult things look easy (and fun).

LP1 by FKA Twigs is the perfect encapsulation of the zeitgeist of the last wave of contemporary R&B it is dark and scary and sexy all at the same time and she’s the best at it so far.

1989 by Taylor Swift is the first album to go platinum of 2014. I couldn’t put it any better than Rembert Browne from Grantland:
(1) She’s a sorceress, (2) she’s a genius, and (3) 1989 is a very good pop album.

They Want My Soul by Spoon is yet another top 20 record by Spoon. These guys do power pop-rock better than anybody this decade. Period.

Phox by Phox is a hell of a debut from a talented group of musicians with a compelling frontwoman. Looking forward to their future.

Wine Dark Sea by Jolie Holland is a rambunctious take on American roots-rock music. Like a more clattery and less stompy Sallie Ford.

Indian Ocean by Frazey Ford is a slightly less rambunctious and more lush-soulful take on American roots music by way of Canada – 2/2 on the former Be-Good Tanyas.

St. Vincent by St. Vincent is a fascinating if self-indulgent record. Again, penalized for my own inability to overlook what I feel like is better work in the rearview mirror. Nevertheless, compelling. Annie Clark is one of the best and most interest guitarists working. (+1 John Congleton)

RTJ2 by Run the Jewels is the most talked-about hip-hop record of the year, for better or worse. For my money, I’ll take their debut, but I’m awfully happy their getting the attention they deserve. Killer Mike & El-P are both great at what they do and are doing essential stuff together.

Best Songs:
https://play.spotify.com/user/1212103938/playlist/1tnjuYKI1TrjkbGka5DFXv?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open

Talk is Cheap by Chet Faker

Talk is cheap, my darling
When you're feeling right at home
I wanna make you move with confidence
I wanna be with you alone

Cavalier by James Vincent McMorrow

I remember how cloth hung
Flexing with the forest clung
Half waist and high raised arms
Kicking at the slightest form
I remember my first love

Cathedral in the Dell by Andrew Bird

Looking to find love under the ice machine
But all we did was drink in empty bars
Stumbling drunk, we crawled back to our hotel room
I fell against you, felt your beating heart

Sing to Me by Walter Martin

Butterflies,
they fill my guts when I look in your eyes.
A heart that's young is filled with sweet surprise.
Only the innocent can sympathize.

The Imperial by Statik Selektah feat. Action Bronson, Royce Da 5’9”, Black Thought

Take that, and while you're at it, make my coffee black
I tried to tell you mothafuckas on Respond/React
I'm the nastiest to do it, as a matter of fact
Yo who your top 5? Jay, Biggie, Pac, Nas
I ain't tryna hear another name if it's not mine
Any side talkin', I'ma consider it shots fired
At the outlier, and start it up like a hotwire

Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars

I’m too hot (hot damn)
Make a dragon wanna retire man

Shake it Off by Taylor Swift

But I keep cruising, can't stop, won't stop moving
It's like I got this music in my body and it's gonna be alright

Hey Mami by Sylvan Esso

Her image it lasts and I know,
She floats along as she goes
She owns the eyes as she flies right through the sound
Moving her body all around town

Red Eyes by the War on Drugs

Flower my seed
Starts to accume please leave, their coming by soon
Does anyone care but myself?

Your Love is Killing Me by Sharon Van Etten

Try to tell you this when I'm sober
How I feel about loving you
Try to remember all the turn of events
Being led by our own fantasies, fantasies

Lariat by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks

You got what you want/You want what you got
People look great when they shave
Don’t they?

Hi-Five by Angel Olson

Now we don’t have to take it too extreme
We’ll keep our hands, our legs, even our lips apart
But I’m giving you my heart
Are you giving me your heart?
Are you lonely too?

Hunger of the Pine by Alt-J

Sleeplessly embracing
Yawn yearns into me
Plenty more tears in the sea
And so you finally use it
Bedding with me you see at night
Your heart wears knight armour

Springful by Adult Jazz

So let us joy up and be springful!
Your provision is more than a mouthful!

Bored in the USA by Father John Misty

They gave me useless education
And a sub-prime loan on a craftsman home
Keep my prescriptions filled
And now I can’t get off but I can kind of deal

Oh with being bored in the USA

Birdman: Being willing to sort of die in order to move the reader.

***.5 by Tom Johnson

Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a dazzling piece of filmmaking. Emmanuel Lubezki claims director of photography credit here, bringing his tally of visually impressive, important films of this generation up to no less than four (Children of Men, Gravity, The Tree of Life)[1] and cementing his role as one of the most important figures in contemporary cinema. Formally, the film is stunning – it is likely that you have by this point heard that the central conceit is that it appears to be shot in one uninterrupted take – and it is this formal mastery that makes the film such fun to spend time with. The (nearly) all-drum score is equally inspired and a perfect match for the film’s stylistic joie de vivre, conjuring a mood and feeling quite like the jazz of Miles Davis at his creative peak. And the cast – at Mr. Iñárritu’s direction – puts in universally great work.

The film, however, is not without its faults. It has been frequently[2] derided as navel-gazing, and employs some postmodern flourishes that are, to be charitable, not fully successful. As much fun as the film is to watch and its accomplishments admirable, the freneticism borders on claustrophobic, filling up almost all of the two hours with some sort of camera-movement or dialogue with scarcely room for the audience to process the action or catch their collective breath. The wheels threaten to fall off in the third act, as it seems so often happens in film these days[3], and I am willing to commit to saying now that the ending did not “work” for me. All told, however, there is simply too much to love, too much brilliance to watch, and too much fun to be had to do anything other than recommend it without hesitation[4].

The central premise of Birdman is that Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) plays a former action-film actor who has been unable to replicate his success since turning down the fourth film in the Birdman series. He has now turned to theater where he is adapting a version of Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that he has written, is directing, and in which he is playing the main role. Narratively, Birdman is fairly straightforward. Things are not going well with the show, nor with Riggan personally, and we follow these threads through the phase of a production that theater folks might call “Hell week”[5]. We watch as Riggan struggles with his life and the show, the two mirroring each other in a tight choreography not unlike that of the cast locked in their tight ballet, weaving through the streets of New York, wrestling in the basement, or exploring confused sexuality in the dressing room, the camera swooping around the actors like a vulture. As mentioned, the cast is superb throughout, and will no doubt end up with some decorated hardware cabinets by next March – much is asked of them, and much is delivered – but the primary effect, for me at least, was a constant, head-scratching, “how did they do that?!” like in the dressing room scenes where the camera moves back and forth through a series of mirrors, occasionally pointing directly at them, without showing up in the frame itself.

The plot points read as fairly pedestrian and do little to fully explain what Birdman really is and what it does so well. Stylistically the film is jaw-dropping, but when it comes to substance, things become altogether murkier. There are question marks aplenty when Birdman is approached in totality. Indeed, Mr. Iñárritu infuses the film with a subtle, but pervasive sense of magic and surrealism. The film opens with a glimpse of a comet and a beach full of dead jellyfish. The first time we encounter the central character, he is there before us, in naught but his underwear, in full lotus position, floating in mid-air. Later, we see him twirl a cigarette case with extra-physical powers and similarly destroy his dressing room in a fit of rage. I am hesitant to presume Mr. Iñárritu’s intention with this technique. I could not come up with a satisfactory answer after just one viewing. But the important part, to me, is that I was too absorbed in the film’s strengths to much care to try and sort it out. The technique is no doubt meant to point to the psyche of the film’s central figure[6], but beyond that, I find the technique both affecting and a delight to watch, and I emerged from the film with little interest in dissecting it further. In that way, Birdman’s magic realism feels not unlike Haruki Murakami’s. Peculiar and mystical things happen, and attempts to explain them are secondary to how they make us feel. The film leaves plenty of room so that the technique can be ripped apart like the ending of Chris Nolan’s Inception – is Mr. Iñárritu leaving us clues? – but whereas I was bothered at Nolan’s techniques in that film – because they were central to the narrative - here, what is of importance is not whether Riggan has extra-physical powers, but that we care about him and the world he inhabits. At that, the film succeeds.

Much has already been written trying to identify what it is, really that Birdman is about. A favorite subject of critics in the early going is the film’s subject of the theater and film – either it is a celebration or condemnation of art or artists or a statement on the medium as it exists. Mr. Iñárritu himself has claimed that the film was inspired by his own meditation on mid-life. The use of theater conjures to my mind Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, a film that used the theater – and its central character, a director – as a metaphor for life. Approaching Birdman with these reference points in mind is not irrelevant – consensus suggests that the end result is much less fulfilling when it is approached looking for things that were never meant to be there.

And then there is the film’s intertextuality. Keaton, real-life former Batman, is the obvious one, cast here as the former Birdman. And the film is quick to point out to us that this is no coincidence – there is an early scene where Riggan sees a newscast about Robert Downey Jr. who has had his own career resurgence as Iron Man in the Marvel universe – and after an early “accident” at the theater when Riggan is discussing acting replacements with his producer, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), they run through this bit of dialogue:

RIGGAN

Find me an actor. A good actor. Philip Seymour Hoffman...

JAKE

He’s doing the third Hunger Games.

RIGGAN

Michael Fassbender?

JAKE

Doing the prequel to the X-Men prequel.

RIGGAN

What’s his name? Jeremy Renner...

JAKE

Who?

RIGGAN

The... the Hurt Locker guy.

JAKE

Yeah. He’s an Avenger.

RIGGAN

Fuck. They put him in a cape, too?

The film is happy to point out actors that we know by their real names, yet the cast that we are watching are all actors playing characters – not explicitly “character” versions of themselves[7]. Norton’s career has been a bit more eclectic, but it does not feel like much of a stretch to imagine him also playing a caricature of his professional self. Norton has also had his own turn as a movie-superhero. Emma Stone is no exception here playing a sort of anti-Mary-Jane Parker. The film is rife with this sort of textual interplay. And then there is, of course, the short-story-adaptation as play within a movie dynamic[8] as well as the movie critic herself, which sends us spinning into an endless string of commentaries wherein critics are asked to be critical of Iñárritu’s criticism of film[9] criticism[10]. Or perhaps where we are all asked to imagine the relationship of any sort of critic in relation to any sort of artist, and maybe we should all be more Taylor Swift about it indeed.

Throughout the film, we repeatedly catch a glimpse of a quote on Riggin’s mirror: “A thing is a thing not what is said of that thing.” In the penultimate scene, we see Riggan’s production in its first official night. The camera turns to the audience delivering a standing ovation. In the corner of the frame we are shown one person not standing – the theater critic. She turns and leaves the theater as the audience delivers thunderous applause. The curtain rises[11]  on that yet baffling collection of words: “the unexpected virtue of ignorance”.

If I am to deliver my own interpretation, Mr. Iñárritu and company seem to have cobbled together a new sort of cinematic language, not unlike what Greg Michael Gillis[12] has done in the world of music – there is an acknowledgment that the history of the medium has established a common language amongst its audience, and using that common language, new and interesting things can be said. That is the language of Birdman. It is imperfect, but it is damn interesting doing it.

And then there is this: “It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies . . . in be[ing] willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort to actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet.” – David Foster Wallace

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[1] Thus far, Lubezski has only hoisted an Oscar once, for Gravity. Children of Men was narrowly edged by another visual stunner, Pan’s Labyrinth. It feels like a safe bet for to make Lubezki the early favorite to repeat for his work here.

[2] and (I’m 50-50 on this) fairly

[3] See also: Interstellar

[4] After all, my favorite book, Infinite Jest has an ending that I am perhaps equally ambivalent about, yet deeply love because it is full of more moments of individual genius than any other I have ever read. It seems foolish to penalize such works solely on the basis of their narrative cohesion when this sort of art seems barely to even care about it itself.

[5] The week of final rehearsals and previews before a production opens in earnest.

[6] It is no coincidence that the trailers are highlighted by Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”

[7] i.e. Michael Keaton is Riggan Thompson, former Birdman, one – important – degree separated from a caricaturized version of “Michael Keaton, former Batman”.

[8] Let me again remind you that there is no shortage of folks throwing around the words “navel-gazing” as is wont to happen when it comes to any sort of postmodern technique.

[9] Or, I suppose, theater criticism, but you get the point.

[10] A task that they seem to both relish and despise in nearly equal measure.

[11] So to speak.

[12] If you didn’t click through the hyperlink, he’s the guy who goes by “Girl Talk”

Interstellar & the Willing Suspension of Disbelief

** by Tom Johnson

If the last fifteen years of cinema have taught us anything, it’s that a Christopher Nolan film is an event to be paid attention to. He has twice surpassed the thousand million dollar mark, his eight films have grossed over $3.5 billion, and he is perhaps the central figure in the ascent of the blockbuster, with his Batman trilogy doing as much to transform the contemporary big-budget landscape as any other film or series since the Matrix or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.

This is the backdrop for Interstellar. You have no doubt seen the countless commercials and know that you are to head to the theater expecting the movie event of the year.

Interstellar begins on an Earth where, in the near future, humanity’s survival prospects have grown desperate. The ratio of nitrogen to oxygen in the atmosphere has taken a turn for the unfavorable, and with it have gone the crops, a new breed freshly stricken with blight each year. Little but corn is left to harvest. The dead and burnt blighted produce leaves in its wake perpetual dust and storms. Society and technology have been thrown into upheaval with little point of sending even the brightest to college as farmers have grown more valuable than engineers, fuel is running out, and everyone drives around in old trucks.

This setting is familiar – America’s dustbowl – and it is well-suited to McConaughey and his Cooper, the salt-of-the-Earth everyman with unyielding devotion to his children, in particular, his young daughter, Murph (played, in her youth, by Mackenzie Foy).

Early on, things become unsettled, pending apocalypse aside. Murph has “ghosts” inhabiting her bedroom and trouble at school – she has gotten into a fist fight with her classmates for the future’s redaction of the moon landing, a fact to which her father, evidently a former NASA pilot, takes exception. The “ghosts” in Murph’s room manifest themselves as gravity that shape dust from a duststorm into coordinates that in an early scene lead Cooper to a mysterious facility where he is tazed by an aggressive talking robot, reminiscent of Kubrick’s obelisk from the opening of 2001, before ultimately meeting Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand and her Professor father, the head of the new NASA – and Cooper’s old boss, played by Michael Caine. Minutes later, there is brief exposition which outlines that Cooper was a former NASA pilot (their best, apparently), and that the team is planning a mission through a recently discovered wormhole into the far reaches of outer space to explore possible life-sustaining planets and either A) Return to Earth to save all of humanity (and Cooper’s children) or B)Colonize the new planet(s) with “bombs” of fertilized eggs, abandoning the humans of Earth, but saving humanity in the process.

Young Murph is upset that her father would elect to abandon her on his quest into outer space, and thus is laid out the central thesis of the film: how fundamental a force is love, and how does such a force manifest across space and time.

After Cooper fails to reconcile with his daughter (but crucially leaves her a wristwatch, highlighting the film’s attempts to deal with the space-time continuum), the crew blasts into space and the film rockets head-long into a tour of special-effects-laden set-pieces. Along the way, we lose two crew members, meet Matt Damon’s Dr. Mann, and hear seemingly endless talk about the space-time continuum that the film will itself very soon disregard, but not before introducing us to a somber Casey Affleck and brilliant Jessica Chastain as Cooper’s now-adult children.

Trying to recap the story beyond the third act is largely futile without it sounding like outright satire, but brace yourself for a truly bizarre climax and Shyamalanian mental-gymnastics.

To me, Interstellar’s great sin is that it loses the audience on the wrong side of the willing suspension of disbelief, a concept that was first outlined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge back in 1817, but was perhaps best described by Roger Ebert in the Atlantic back in 1980: “You slide down in your seat and make yourself comfortable. On the screen in front of you, the movie image appears—enormous and overwhelming. If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories.” It is here that we can most robustly understand why Interstellar is a uniquely unsatisfying film – the movie is most assuredly not a good one; at no point are we absorbed into its fantasy. The plot holes emerge early, and pile on rapidly, and become far too distracting to appreciate the film’s strengths, none of which – not even the much ballyhooed visual effects – can save the muddled script.

Since his probable masterpiece, the Dark Knight, Nolan’s films have been teetering on the brink of failing to convince the audience to suspend their disbelief. Inception was a film of towering ambition with a controversial, if not unsatisfying, resolution. That film, however, reconciled its shortcomings with dazzling special-effects and its mind-bending and delightful structure. It remained narrowly on the right side of the willing suspension of disbelief because its high points were, at the time, so high; its audiences more willing to be absorbed in the fantasy. But even Inception had begun to point markedly toward a direction that Nolan had flirted with when he made The Prestige. As Scott Nye puts it “It's possible that when we talk about plot holes and the clumsy acknowledgment of plot holes, that's what we're really bemoaning: a lack of elegance.” The Dark Knight Rises moved yet further in that direction, eschewing The Dark Knight’s sleekness and moral center instead becoming rather a blunt object. It was, again, a film that succeeded, but only narrowly and in spite of obvious and glaring weaknesses, namely, as Roger Ebert wrote “it needs more clarity and a better villain, but it's an honorable finale.”

Interestingly, I found Interstellar to be almost exactly as bad as the sum-total of the frustrations of Nolan’s oeuvre to date, combined and unabated in one three-hour work. The blame rests largely on the screenplay. Whereas Nolan had allegedly spent ten years writing Inception (and even at that, the film barely remained on the right-side of plausible), here Nolan inherited his brother’s screenplay from a six-year-old project originally to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Nolan’s admirable attempts to reconcile real science with his filmmaking ambitions seem to have added further difficulty to the story’s structure. The result is a script that seems to have been reconstructed piecemeal from various past sources, which feels every bit as Frankensteinian as it sounds. The story never coalesces. The beginning goes on for much too long. The characters bizarrely and abruptly change in ways that feel tied to a presumed ending and not their own internal logic. The adherence to science and the latter set-pieces juxtapose bizarrely with the early rustic setting. And regarding the final, Shyamalanian plot twist, which ties bizarrely back into those “ghosts” that young Murph sees at the very beginning of the film, I have little to say other than that I hated it as much as any single device in recent cinema.

The movie is also loud, almost unbearably so, with a score as distracting as any I can remember. And one of the great disappointments of the film is that though it assembles sucha likeable cast, they struggle to do much with the source material. The whole thing is too incomprehensible to really create much of an emotional core, no matter how much they shout and flail and cry (and oh boy do they cry). Chastain definitively does the best work here, but the peculiarity of her character in the grand scheme of this story makes it feel largely for naught.

All that said, the film is still a Nolan film, and that he is still making huge, ambitious films is better for movies and better for us all, a fact that I will happily acknowledge though I view this particular effort as a failure. There is enough in this film’s ambitions that even though I found it to be uniquely unsatisfying, I would be remiss to call it a total waste of time. I disliked it, but I do genuinely believe that it occupies an important role in the current cinematic landscape, not unlike the way I feel about the music of Kanye West. Whether you love it or you hate it, it is fundamental in the landscape of the current art form. Though I consider Nolan (and longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister) and his ludditish hatred of digital cinema a much closer analogue to Jack White. I suppose that my greatest trepidation in this all is that Nolan seems to work best with some external thing guiding his formidable talent, and the success of his films at the box office is giving him more creative freedom, which has thus far not resulted in better movies.

There are two movies that Interstellar brought to mind that I would recommend highly: be reminded of the visual splendor of Gravity, or watch the subtle, beautiful handling of similar space-time issues in Voices of a Distant Star. 

Best Albums of the Decade (So Far)

I read Pitchfork's 100 albums of the decade so far and got a bit defensive and decided I needed to make my own list of best albums of the decade so far:

Best of the Decade (so far) – 2010-2014
60. Run the Jewels by El-P & Killer Mike (2013)
59.Brothers by the Black Keys (2010)
58. Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex by A Great Big Pile of Leaves (2010)

57. Birthdays by Keaton Henson (2013)

56. No Time for Dreaming by Charles Bradley & the Menahan Street Band (2011)

55. What We Saw From the Cheap Seats by Regina Spektor

54. Sylvan Esso by Sylvan Esso (2014)

53. Spaces by Nils Frahm (2013)

52. In the Mountain in the Cloud by Portugal. The Man (2011)

51. Landing on a Hundred by Cody ChesnuTT (2012)

50. The Idler Wheel… by Fiona Apple (2013)

49. Sunbathing Animal by Parquet Courts (2014)

48. Lost in the Dream by The War on Drugs (2014)

47. Burn Your Fire for No Witness by Angel Olson (2014)

46. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River (2013)

45. We’re All Young Together by Walter Martin & Friends (2014)

44. You’re Always on My Mind by A Great Big Pile of Leaves (2013)

43. Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (2013)

42. The Head & The Heart by The Head & The Heart (2010)

41. Shields by Grizzly Bear (2012)

40. Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus (2010)

39. Shallow Bed by Dry the River (2012)

38. Watch the Throne by Kanye West & Jay-Z (2011)

37. Gist Is by Adult Jazz (2014)

36. Post Tropical by James Vincent McMorrow (2014)

35. Muchacho by Phosphorescent (2013)

34. Bon Iver by Bon Iver (2011)

33. All Alone in an Empty House by Lost in the Trees (2010)

32. Cerulean Salt by Waxahatchee (2013)

31. Built on Glass by Chet Faker (2014)

30. Take Care by Drake (2011)

29. Tramp by Sharon Van Etten (2012)

28. Immunity by John Hopkins (2013)

27. Undun by the Roots (2011)

26. Overgrown by James Blake (2013)

25. Trouble Will Find Me by the National (2013)

24. Yeezus by Kanye West (2013)

23. Swing Lo, Magellan by Dirty Projectors (2012)

22. Fear Fun by Father John Misty (2012)

21. Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes (2011)

20. High Violet by the National (2010)

19. Diamond Mine by King Creosote & John Hopkins (2011)

18. 4 by Beyoncé (2012)

17. An Awesome Wave by Alt-J (2013)

16. The Suburbs by Arcade Fire (2010)

15. Break it Yourself by Andrew Bird (2012)

14. A Church That Fits Our Needs by Lost in the Trees (2012)

13. W H O K I L L by tUnE-yArDs (2011)

12. The King of Limbs by Radiohead (2011)

11. Let England Shake by PJ Harvey (2011)

10. All Day by Girl Talk (2010)

9. Contra by Vampire Weekend (2010)

8. The Archandroid by Janelle Monae (2010)

7. Strange Mercy by St. Vincent (2011)

6. Have One on Me by Joanna Newsom (2010)

5. Modern Vampires of the City by Vampire Weekend (2013)

4. The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens (2010)

3. Adventures in Your Own Backyard by Patrick Watson (2012)

2. White Lighter by Typhoon (2013)

1. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West (2010)

Some Thoughts on the 86th Annual Academy Awards & 2013 the Year in Movies

I really like watching movies. That said, I did not watch nearly as many as I would have liked, or should have in 2013. This is particularly apparent going back through the list and seeing what I did and did not see. Of the movies that I did see, 2013 felt like a year of movies more than willing to disappoint. I can scarcely recall a year where I went out to the movies and saw three movies as collectively bad as the Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3, and Ender's Game, particularly all in a row. Nevertheless, I also happen to believe that Gravity is the biggest revolution in filmmaking since The original Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Matrix before that. At any rate, the Oscars are tomorrow and though the Oscars have always had more to do with my love of trivia than justice in the world of cinema, here are some quick thoughts regarding the big show.

Best Picture:

Should Win: Gravity - I have heard all of the criticisms of the weaknesses on the story side and I disagree vehemently. Gravity is on the shortlist of most daunting cinematic achievments of all time. It changed the way I thought about movies. It deserves the hardware.

Will Win: Gravity - I'm sticking with my gut on this one. I found 12 Years a Slave terribly cold and difficult to like. Hard to remember a movie so difficult and brutal that won.

Best Actor:

Should Win: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club - MM famously lost 50 pounds for this role, and it really is one of the most dedicated performances you'll ever see. His performance is dazzling & heartbreaking. The year of McConaughey is upon us.

Will Win: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club - the Academy loves big performances and McConaughey delivered the biggest of the year. DiCaprio is overdue, and had the most screen time, but Wolf of Wall Street is not the film to win it for. Christian Bale was brilliant, but his performance seems understated in this field. Chiwetel Ejiofor carried what many believe to be the best movie of the year, but I still think this is McConaughey's to lose.

Tangent: Three spectacular overlooked male performances - Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight; Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis; Joaquin Phoenix, Her. Phoenix, in particular, delivered a graceful, gentle, brilliant performance. A masterclass in acting that you should watch and admire, but which doesn't have the requisite fireworks to earn the Academy's recognition.

Best Actress:

Should Win: Sandra Bullock, Gravity - It's hard to recognize how brilliant and beautiful her peformance was considering the technical achievments of the film that have far overshadowed the acting, and what is widely considered a weak story, but again I disagree - Bullock in many ways makes the best movie of the year work. We are not watching a CG film. We are watching a brilliant actress at the top of her game allow a brilliant director to craft a film that changed the face of movie making.

Will Win: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine - Blanchett is a brilliant actress and her talents are on full display in Blue Jasmine. She fully embodies and brings to life a difficult character. She's got the fireworks that the Academy loves to reward.

Supporting Actor:
Should Win: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer's Club - another brilliant performance in a strong film. Leto is expected to runaway with the hardware in this category. There's a strong slate of contenders, but nobody commited like Leto did. And he will be justly rewarded.
Will Win: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer's Club

Supporting Actress:

Should Win: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine - Blue Jasmine was an awkward, difficult film that didn't really land right with me, but Hawkins was the unsung hero of the performance. In that sense, her performance was perhaps one of the most important I saw of any this year. I think that Jennifer Lawrence's performance is vastly overrated - she was the weakest performance in a movie full of great performances and is being lauded simply for being likeable.

Will Win: Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave - She wore the difficulty of this film and all that it represents with astonishing dignity and poise.

Best Cinematography:
Will & Should Win: Usually this is one of my favorite categories. I love the way movies look & feel. Alas, the only two nominees I saw out of the bunch were Gravity & Inside Llewyn Davis. ILD seems like the big snub of the show - one of my favorite movies of the year that somehow didn't earn the tenth open Best Picture nomination - and Cohen brothers films are always gorgeously filmed, but Gravity changed the way movies are made. Gravity was uniquely gorgeous, and this award should be a no brainer.

Best Animated Feature:

Should Win: The Wind Rises. I am editing this post last second because I got to watch Hayao Miyazaki's final directorial effort, the Wind Rises, just under the Oscar gun. I am a biased Miyazaki fan who has long been a lover and admirer of his work, but the Wind Rises really is a masterpiece. It is perhaps the most visually beautiful hand drawn film I have ever seen, and it is equally gorgeous thematically and in content. The film is a moving portrait of a Japanese genius and national hero. It is on one hand, a biopic, but it is like no other biopic effort I have ever seen. It floats in and out of dream sequences and infuses its reality with Miyazaki's characteristic magic and whimsy. Apparently the film is also liberal in its application of facts, because Miyazaki's intent - and the effect - is to frame a series of emotions about genius and artistry and loss and what it means to be human. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is immediately the second best film of the year to my mind, behind only Gravity which I will again say, is a revolution in filmmaking. They are two of the best movies that I have ever seen and you should see them both.

Will Win: Frozen. Despite my effusive praise for the Wind Rises, it seems to have missed its mark when it comes to the wider audience. Animated films still carry with them a stigma that they should look and feel and act certain ways - they should cap out at 90 minutes, they should stay in certain family-friendly realms - I have heard the truly perplexing criticism that the Wind Rises is "too adult-themed" (whatever the hell that even means - imagine saying that about a non-animated film and how much of a dolt you would sound like) to be a success. It has been taken issue that the characters smoke, that the subject of the film was the inventor of the japanese war plane that allowed Japan the aeronautical might to attack Pearl Harbor. None of these seem to be valid film criticisms, but they certainly seem poised to keep one of the most brilliant animated films ever made from collecting the hardware tonight. Frozen, to its credit, was cute, smart, and unconventional in its own way and was widely hailed as a return-to-form for Disney. But in reality, this is a no contest. The Wind Rises is a vastly better movie.

Gravity
The Wind Rises
Before Midnight
Inside Llewyn Davis
Dallas Buyer's Club
Her
American Hustle
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Captain Phillips
Star Trek: Into Darkness
The Place Beyond the Pines
Iron Man 3
Frozen
The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
The Wolf of Wall Street
Blue Jasmine
12 Years a Slave
The Great Gatsby
Ender's Game

ToJo’s Top Ten Albums of 2013 (And at least twenty others that you should also totally listen to, but don’t take my word for it)

With 2013 safely and officially in the bag, let’s do a quick recap of the year that was music, 2013. 2013 was a tough year to do a top ten, because there are about forty different albums that I could justifiably put in the number ten spot. The top five are about as elite as any top five this decade, but there are countless records this year that I loved just one hair below that that are all well worth your ear-ttention.

10. Random Access Memories by Daft Punk is the best feel-good, dance-pop (disco) record of the year. These guys know how to groove. They utilize an all-star stable of cameos to great effect. Like I said, there are like thirty albums that were fighting for this spot, but I would have been hard-pressed to leave off the grooving-est record of 2013 from my top ten. Instant sophisticated dance party playlist. Solid Gold.

9. Muchacho by Phosphorescent is lush and gorgeous; the most feel-good, feel-bad album of the year. Great for quiet nights & contemplative mornings, this record is complete in its aesthetic of wounded beauty, harboring one of the best songs of the year, “Song for Zula” with highlights throughout.

8. Overgrown by James Blake is a work of stubborn genius; my initial inclination was to judge Blake as a singer-songwriter type, as he crafted one of the best such songs of the year in “Retrograde”, but that is not what Blake is nor what Overgrown is, and it does not deserve to be judged as such. It is blues and electronica and production-forward soul and noise and dub-step and dance all rolled into one. It is a challenging and rewarding step forward.

7. Cerulean Salt by Waxahatchee is the best ‘90s power-pop record of 2013, straight out of the Alanis Morissette playbook, it is confessional, wry, smart and strong and a damn good listen.

6. You’re Always on My Mind by a Great Big Pile of Leaves is a shimmery, shiny, tasty delicious snack. Clocking just over half an hour with songs packed air-tight with hooks and harmonies and gobsmacking ear-goodies, the new AGBPoL record recalls Weezer at the height of their power, and it’s a welcome delight. Listen to this and say that you heard it before they got huge. Better yet, go see them live, because they put on one of the best shows you could see. Of particularly note is the brilliant drumming and rhythm section and maturity in the vocals and harmonies. There are some killer vocal performances on this record near the end. See also: Pizzanomics

5. Immunity by Jon Hopkins…I said of this record that it is “an electronic tour de force. Jon Hopkins is a soundscape guy, so it’s interesting to hear him playing with “beats” of a dance-floor variety, but the album is so much more than that. It takes a man with a classical background and an understanding of space and of beauty and the temporal to be able to make an album so fully-realized. It is a concept and it is a successful one.” Around midyear, and I stand by every word.

4. Yeezus by Kanye West is the best most infuriating record of the year. Love him or hate him, or hate him or hate him (I know that most of you still do), Kanye is at the forefront of the musical conversation. Every time he puts something out, I am interested. Yeezus is spectacularly, almost perfectly imperfect. It is ugly and crude and challenging and it has a mean soul. And it is fucking brilliant because of it and not in spite of it. Much attention has been paid to Kanye’s repurposing of civil rights lines and music “free at last” referring to a woman unbridling her breasts, the use of “blood on the leaves”, a song referring to the Jim Crow era and lynching, to recount his domestic and social life. And these things often feel distasteful, but they never feel disingenuous, and they are always challenging and fascinating. I guarantee you this is the record Drake and the rest of his peers spend their time angry masturbating to. Production flourishes and gaudy lines abound. And yet it is still brilliant.

3. Trouble Will Find Me by the National is an album that I initially struggled with mightily. It is an album so dense and packed with Matt Berninger’s droll, high-brow baritone and suffocating despair that I was initially turned off. I thought I wanted a record from the National that breathed more, that showcased the Dessner’s compositional talents and Bryan Devendorf’s unique drumming.  I stand corrected. When the record finally clicked with me, it clicked hard. The National here cement themselves as the leaders of the Brooklyn indie scene, growing and evolving, adding complex time signatures, and the most mature album of their career. Overflowing with beautiful imagery and dual-guitar attacks, this record is the most beautiful gray rainy day you've heard. In part, because the National finally give you a glimpse of the rainbow on the horizon, just off-frame.

2. Modern Vampires of the City by Vampire Weekend is remarkable, in many ways, for all of the reasons that the new Arcade Fire record isn't: VW are a band that I was initially inclined to dislike for stupid, white-privileged, first-world reasons – that the rich white kids from Columbia make “world music”, minus all of the actual struggle and social acuity of Graceland (their last record, Contra). I grew to love Contra, and then their self-titled debut that I had somehow missed. They are both brilliant records, driven by front man Ezra Koenig’s keen sense of song craft and melody, creating infectious and clever little hooks and ditties that proved my stupid first impressions desperately wrong. These guys are a legitimately great band. Period.  I hesitate to say that Modern Vampires of the City is their best record yet – I have grown to love all of them deeply and uniquely – but these guys just cranked out their third great record in a row, a record that is sophisticated and smart and diverse, that is clever and sentimental and nostalgic and that covers disparate sonic territory all the while maintaining a core aesthetic. And they did it all with minimal fanfare, with no talk of concepts, no production by Brian Eno, no attempt to be “the next U2”.  I, for one, am glad they did. If this was anything other than the 21^st century and I had listened to this on anything other than strictly digital formats, I would have worn through numerous physical copies of this record already. And would be sure to do so several more times going forward.

1. White Lighter by Typhoon is the best album of 2013. I am, admittedly, a sucker for high-concept, high-composition chamber indie music. Typhoon happened to release the best such record of the year. The album proceeds like a symphony, or like scenes/songs from a “film/that I will never make”.  Driven by lead-singer/song-writer, Kyle Morton, it is rare to find a band with eleven full-time members that feels so tight and dexterous, they churn through styles and time signatures and various syncopations, weaving tales of heartbreak and hope. White Lighter is a cinematic musical masterpiece. Put this in your ears, close your eyes tight, and listen on repeat. That was how I spent countless hours this year.

Top Songs of the Year:

1. Young Fathers by Typhoon: like watching your favorite movie of the year in four and a half minutes.

“When you're young you're hot
You have your whole life before you
Everyone will adore
You'll grow up, you'll be an astronaut
or anything you want.”

2. Even if We Try by Night Beds: Gorgeous. Haunting. Best Male Vocal Performance of the year. Check the music video for a real trip. Kind of like Jason Molina said: “try and try and try…just to be simple”

“Stumbling down the hillside
In the waning moon light
Hear me, calling
And wailing on the doldrums”

3. Retrograde by James Blake:  to regress, retreat, go backward

“I'll wait, so show me why you're strong
Ignore everybody else,
We're alone now”

4. Sonsick by San Fermin best female vocal performance of the year? Check it live.

"I'll fall for you soon enoughI resolve to love
Now I know it's just another fuck
Cause I'm old enough
Sell lies like they're only drugs
It'll pick me up"

5. Black Skinhead by Kanye West: Kanye at his angriest. And it works.

"Enter the kingdom
But watch who you bring home
They see a black man with a white woman
At the top floor they gone come to kill King Kong
Middle America packed in
Came to see me in my black skin"

6. Pink Rabbits by the National: a rainy day; hopeful heartache

"I couldn't find quiet
I went out in the rain
I was just soakin' my head to unrattle my brain"

7. Song for Zula by Phosphorescent: something hauntingly, heartbreakingly primal

"All that I know love as a caging thing
Just a killer come to call from some awful dream"

8. Hannah Hunt by Vampire Weekend: A slow moment from their record illuminates their talents as composers

"If I can't trust you then damn it, Hannah
There's no future, there's no answer
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time"

9. Youth by Daughter: dontgottatalkthatmuch

"And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one
'Cause most of us are bitter over someone"

10. Immunity by Jon Hopkins: The sounds of contemplation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8eQR5DMous

Another 40 albums well worth your attention:

11. Birthdays by Keaton Henson

12. Run the Jewels by El-P & Killer Mike

13. Wed 21 by Juana Molina

14. The Stand-In by Caitlin Rose

15. Lanterns by Son Lux

16. Ceremony by Anna Von Hausswolff

17. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River

18. Twelve Reasons to Die by Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge

19. San Fermin by San Fermin

20. The Jazz Age by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra

21. Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon by KT Tunstall

22. Dysnomia by Dawn of Midi

23. We the Common by Thao and the Get Down Stay Down

24. Wonderful, Glorious by Eels is Eels

25. Like a Rose by Ashley Monroe

26. Ghost on Ghost by Iron and Wine

27. Love’s Crushing Diamond by Mutual Benefit

28. {Awayland} by Villagers

29. Amok by Atoms for Peace

30. Space by Nils Frahm

31. Annie Up by Pistol Annies

32. Dream River by Bill Callahan

33. Reflektor by Arcade Fire

34. Woman by Rhye

35. Same Trailer Different Park by Kacey Musgraves

36. …Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stoneage

37. The Worse Things Get, The Harder I fight… by Neko Case

38. AM by Arctic Arctic Monkeys

39. Untamed Beast by Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside

40. Acid Rap by Chance the Rapper

41. Southeastern by Jason Isbell

42. The Electric Lady by Janelle Monae

43. Repave by Volcano Choir

44. New Moon by The Men

45. Fade by Yo La Tengo

46. The Invisible Way by Low

47. Light Up Gold by Parquet Courts

48. Dormarion by Telekinesis

49. Once I Was an Eagle by Laura Marling

50. Nothing Was the Same by Drake

EPs:

I Want to See Pulaski At Night by Andrew Bird

EP by Cassandra Jenkins

Fade Away by Best Coast

Rival Dealer by Burial

Movie Soundtracks:

The Hunger Games OST

Inside Llewyn Davis OST

The Great Gatsby OST

Post Script:

As great a year in music as 2013 was, it was also a year in which we lost Jason Molina, which loss introduced me to his music. I had previously been unaware of Molina's vast oeuvre. It is a sometimes unfortunate fact of how much great stuff there is to consume that such great stuff gets passed over. But the loss of Molina, which has since led to my connection to his music, may well end up being the most lasting musical memory I have of 2013. A ten-year anniversary edition of Magnolia Electric Co. was released this year. Especially if you have not heard it, you would do well to give it a thorough listen.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/03/18/174646022/jason-molina-a-folksinger-who-embodied-the-best-of-the-blues-has-died

Best of 2013 Playlist

2013 Contenders album of the year shortlist. Full albums.

The Best of 2013 (First Half)

With the first half of the year officially over, it’s time for a quick recap of my favorite album releases from 2013:

1. Cerulean Salt by Waxahatchee is cohesive and impassioned; a tour of the sounds of the last two decades of power pop with great force and emotive songwriting. Two albums in, watch out for Waxahatchee. Katie Crutchfield is on her way to being an establishment.

2. Birthdays by Keaton Henson is stunning in its pained beauty. Birthdays is so fragile and beautiful, it feels almost like voyeurism to listen to it, which is a unique and affective feeling for a record to inspire. In a word: breathtaking.

3. Immunity by Jon Hopkins is an electronic tour de force. Jon Hopkins is a soundscape guy, so it’s interesting to hear him playing with “beats” of a dance-floor variety, but the record is so much more than that. It takes a man with a classical background and an understanding of space and of beauty and the temporal to be able to make a record so fully-realized. It is a concept and it is a successful one.

4. Yeezus by Kanye West is a statement. It is short and dark and industrial and angry and forceful. Every new Kanye record is an event. He is steering popular music unlike any other major artist working today. Kanye makes music the way Michael Jordan played basketball. At its best, this is the best record of the year, but it is not without its swings and misses. It feels to me like a hard play in the paint, where Kanye makes a miraculous bucket under pressure, but misses the freethrow. Despite its near-misses, Kanye has made one of the most essential albums of the year to date.

5. Muchacho by Phosphorescent is meditative; a 21st century soundtrack for quiet nights and contemplation, filled to the gills with lovely songwriting and a gentle production touch. I could listen to the opener, “Sun Arises”, a sort of one-man, electronic-drenched Fleet Foxes all night long, before it lurches directly into “Song for Zula”, one of the best songs of the year, and never looks back.

6. Annie Up by Pistol Annies is a trio of badass honky-tonk ladies at the top of their badass honky-tonk lady form. In a lot of ways, the first half of 2013 was the year of the honky-tonk ladies and this is arguably the best of the best. It’s often dark and subversive and tongue-in-cheek, but above all it is fun, and the arrangements are solid and the harmonies are air-tight.

7. Random Access Memories by Daft Punk is the new Daft Punk record. Duh. Aside from Get Lucky, which seems to have been the runaway track of the first half of 2013 (at least in the social circles that I orbit around), Daft Punk made a glorious 13 track record mixing clever homages, vintage dance cuts, and thoroughly modern electronic badassery. These guys just keep slaying dragons.

8. The Stand-In by Caitlin Rose is situated perfectly at the sublime intersection of traditional country, alt-country, and pop music (which is, admittedly, a personal weakness). Part Neko Case, part Ryan Adams, part Fleetwood Mac, this record covers most of the territory at all points and in between and combines to make for a damn fun listen for all the right reasons.

9. Modern Vampires of the City by Vampire Weekend is Vampire Weekend’s third great record in a row and proof-positive that these guys are here to stay and at the forefront of the Brooklyn/NYC indie-establishment. The record is twisty and turny and always clever, it knows when to be restrained and when to rock out. It is nothing if not solid from the top to the bottom.

10. Twelve Reasons to Die by Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge is the shock of the year for me. Adrian Younge outdoes the RZA and gives Ghostface a format to sound like he’s back in mid-‘90s form. Immediately accessible and eminently listenable, this make-believe soundtrack was a great move for both artists and is the best true hip-hop record of the year.

11. Like a Rose by Ashley Monroe is everything that the Pistol Annies record is if a bit sweeter and truer and less bombastic. Clever, sharp, occasionally scathing, occasionally gorgeous. Ashley Monroe is having herself a year.

12. Ghost on Ghost by Iron and Wine is the album the Iron and Wine should have made (and I’m glad they made it). The Iron and Wine that started out with bedroom recordings and moved onto the dusty, pastoral Americana they shared with Calexico have taken that horn approach and added more jazz elements and advanced time signatures. The songwriting is as gorgeous and earthy as ever. It all fits very well and adds up to one of the best albums of their career and of the year.

13. Woman by Rhye is perhaps the sexiest music of 2013. It is subtle, it is androgynous, it all feels like a silk slip on soft flesh. It works.

14. Trouble Will Find Me by the National is maybe the wordiest and most poetic record of the year. The National build beautiful little dollhouse soundscapes up around Matt Berninger’s droll baritone with a backbone of double Dessner guitar attack and Devendorf rhythm section (Bryan’s drumming is particularly essential). I must admit, it took me a moment to warm to this record. Initially I felt like it was buried under the relentless weight of Berninger’s baritone, and it didn’t feel like progression from High Violet. I hope one day that these guys will make an album that breathes a bit more easily. A few listens later, however, I was spellbound. It is somehow both heavy and delicate. They add some odd time signatures to their bag of tricks on this one. Its highlights are every bit as breathtaking as their finest work.

15. Overgrown by James Blake is the still inconsistent work of a truly captivating talent. James Blake is fascinating if frustrating, which this record can be. From the title track through Retrograde (easily one of the best tracks of the year), the album is nearly sublime, and it is on that basis, that I award this with the number 15 spot, despite my hopes that he will become slightly more focused and less self-obsessed and noodly as he progresses.

16. Wonderful, Glorious by Eels is Eels, with E at age 50, still making essential, personal Americana. A bit more freewheeling than the Eels of Blinking Lights… and Electro-Shock Blues, this record is the Eels of Shootenany & Souljacker making personal, gritty rock interspersed with heartwarming ballads. These guys are hall-of-famers

17. We the Common by Thao and the Get Down Stay Down is a quirky little pop/indie record from an overlooked talent and Thao’s most accessible and fun record to date, with particular help from Jon Congleton and an assist from Joanna Newsom.

18. {Awayland} by Villagers is a well-realized meeting of elctro-folk; it is literary and smart and complete.

19. Same Trailer Different Park by Kacey Musgraves is the final of the honky-tonk women powerhouses on this list, and like them it is clever and aware and sharp and agile, at-once disarming and charming, it is a force of traditional country songwriting in the 21st century

20…Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stone Age is the second-biggest surprise of the year; I never expected to care about the new QotSA album, much less love it. I am shocked and awed by the sonic diversity and precision of this record. They explore territory that I never expected, and it is striking and awesome.


A Youtube Collection of a song or so from each release:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbJCM0q25r1rJK0VhWKQmzqUuuZ5TffJY