Records From 2010 That I Slept On Until 2011

Please don't make the same mistake and ignore:

• Tame Impala - Innerspeaker (Dreamy psychedelic wigouts that get better with each listen. Why Don't You Make Up Your Mind is one for the ages and Jeremy's Storm is a beautiful tangle.)
• The Soft Pack - S/T (Super caffeinated garage rock. You need the whole thing but Answer To Yourself and C'Mon are powerpop with attitude, thanks to Dave Koe for this one!)
• Nina Nastasia - Outlaster (Another spooky, mysterious gem from Nina N. and a return to form after the dissonant You Follow Me)
• Deerhunter - Halycon Digest (I think I'm guilty of Deer confusion, probably like a lot of people. Just to set it straight, I'm not so much into Deerhook or Deer Tick, I'm into the one that makes understated indie pop with fragile melodies and crystalline guitar sounds)
• Weekend - Sports (I hate to say goth but it's goth in the ancestral sense of Joy Division and Bauhaus with added menace.)

(After I listed Deerhunter, I realized that I failed to get around to listening to the new Atlas Sound album yet, so that'll likely be on my list of Records From 2011 That I Slept On Until 2012. The queue starts here!)

Tracks Of The Year: Gangsta by Tune-Yards

Gangsta clocks in at 3 minutes and 59 seconds. At the 2:25 mark, the song completely and utterly derails. And yet, like a deranged marathon runner, like a thrice-reanimated zombie, like a cartoon car that loses its tires and then its wheels and falls apart only to win the race because its bumper falls across the finish line, Gangsta keeps fighting. Things fall apart, according to Yeats, Achebe and Questlove. But sometimes, things come together because they are falling apart.

I've sung the praises of Tune-Yards in the past, so I'll hop to it here. Gangsta and the Whokill album are the great leaps forward I'd hoped for after their sloppy-but-genius Bird-Brains debut. New flavors and sounds (and musicians) enter the mix but the creative spark remains. The risk of Bird-Brains' edgy spontaneity succumbing to maturity or polish (a.k.a. boringness) seemed high, but mere seconds into Gangsta when Merrill Garbus becomes the police siren she's sampled, you know that tame isn't going to an option.

Weirdness makes music fun for me, but Gangsta is powered by a monster groove and that's what keeps this song a must-listen for me. Those horns! That bass! Those drums! (And when each of those pieces resurface after that 2:25 mark, it's like they are trying to reignite the whole rocketship.)

You'll find Gangsta (and another dandy Tune-Yards jam, Es-So) on my Spotify playlist Marquee Mark's El Perfecto De 2011.

Oh, and I brought up Questlove for a reason, not just to be high-falutin'. Tune-Yards played Gangsta on Jimmy Fallon with the Roots and it was epic. Please do check out both versions.

Rediscovery Of The Year: Cry – The Rock*A*Teens (1997)

So, you’ve never heard the Rock*A*Teens? Now, why is that? Surely, it’s not because they shamelessly pilfered their name from the 50’s beat combo whose “Woo Hoo” has soundtracked a million commericals? Or because they were the only male-fronted reverb-overdosed rockers on Indigo Girl Amy Ray’s Daemon Records? Or the messed-up punctuation that probably made it hard for your local record store to even order it in the first place? Well, rectify that and dig into this Southern-gothic-noir gem.

Led by Chris Lopez, who went on to form the equally obscure Tenement Halls, the R*A*Ts are intense. The music alternates between driving and langorous – and the hard-luck subjects of the songs are so richly realized that you find yourself hoping that these are fiction and not auto-biography.

I’d always been fond of “Cherry Red Compilation” – a grimly nostalgic ode to mixtapes and lost loves – and this piledriver still holds up. But for some reason, I’d written off the album as a whole and let Cherry Red live on as a fragment of a mix (how novel!) So 14 years later, I discovered a raft of great songs that simultaneously celebrate and curse the life of a loser. “I Am Forgetting” is a brilliant rave-up. “Losers, Weepers” is a smoldering hanger-on. But “Black Ice” is the true epic. A tale of a crazed drive home – or maybe a Dixie death trip – dripping with gritty Carver/Bukowski-ish lyrics and sung with such a passion that if you aren’t feeling it by the first chorus, you may already be dead.

"Black Ice" is featured with a bunch of resurrected oddballs on my 2011 Rediscoveries Spotify playlist.

Fun facts: This album, along with the first R*A*Ts record, features an almost-inaudible Kelly Hogan. (I’m pretty sure that’s why I bought this is the first place – and probably why I shelved it, since I couldn’t hear one of my favorite singers.) And they ended up on the Rudy and Go-Go cartoon show’s compilation album. Vote Goat!.

2010 Lives On

...mainly because I've been too lazy to listen to them until now. I'm adding Grinderman 2 and Innerspeaker by Tame Impala to the Best of 2010 albums list!

Poddish Redux: My Top 25 Of All Time

OK, in the old Poddish tradition, here are my top 25 most listened songs of all time (or at least from the onset of iTunes) as captured on 12/31/10. My advice to Archie Bell is to tighten up, you have been slipping in the ranks, my man.

Name - Artist (Play Count)

1. Lilting - Oh-OK (64)
   
2. Derailing - The Casual Dots (62)
   
3. Her Jazz - Huggy Bear (62)
   
4. leotard - tacocat (62)
   
5. Those Dancing Days - Those Dancing Days (62)
   
6. Audrey - Walking Concert (61)
   
7. Vegetarian Restaurant - Aberfeldy (59)
   
8. Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells (59)
   
9. Clap (See the Stars) - The Myrmidons (59)
   
10. Come On Let's Go - Broadcast (58)
    
11. What's Your New Thing? - Walking Concert (58)
    
12. One Glass of Water - The Bees (57)
    
13. Go Karts - The Bees (56)
    
14. Richard Dawson - B.C. Camplight (55)
    
15. I Believe In Miracles - The Jackson Sisters (53)
    
16. Badger - Let's Active (53)
    
17. Everything Thermals - The Thermals (53)
    
18. I Had An Excellent Dream - The Dentists (52)
    
19. The Youth - MGMT (52)
    
20. Safety Net - Shop Assistants (52)
    
21. Sugarcube - Yo La Tengo (52)
    
22. Bang Bang Rock & Roll - Art Brut (51)
    
23. Sink Venice - Ikara Colt (51)
    
24. Smile - Lily Allen (51)
    
25. Debbie Harry - Family Fodder (50)

My Favorite New Tracks Of 2010

As seen on Facebook...

Here are my most listened to songs that came out last year.

Name	Artist	Album	Play Count
When The Sun Don't Shine	Best Coast	Crazy For You	44
Your Name Is Wild	I Was A King	Too Pure Singles Club - January 2010	33
I Just Want To See Your Face	Serena Maneesh	S-M 2: Abyss In B Minor	31
Albatross	The Besnard Lakes	The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night	29
Super Soaker	Wavves	King Of The Beach	29
Post Acid	Wavves	King Of The Beach	26
Mmmhmm (featuring Thundercat)	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	25
Rill Rill	Sleigh Bells	Treats	24
Don't Tred	Frankie Rose And The Outs	Frankie Rose And The Outs	23
Heaven and Hell	Quasi	Repulsion - EP	23
I Will Be	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	22
Do The Astral Plane	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	22
King Of The Beach	Wavves	King Of The Beach	22
Hoola (Moscow Remix)	Archie Bronson Outfit	Hoola (Remixes)	21
Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	21
Song For Dan Treacy	MGMT	Congratulations	21
Girlfriend Island	Frankie Rose And The Outs	Frankie Rose And The Outs	20
Bang Bang Bang	Mark Ronson & The Business Intl	Record Collection	20
So I'll Say Goodbye	The Pipettes	Stop the Music - EP	19
Run the Heart	Sleigh Bells	Treats	19
Summer Mood	Best Coast	Crazy For You	18
It Only Takes One Night	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	18
Kids	Sleigh Bells	Treats	18
Rachel	Sleigh Bells	Treats	17
Jail La La	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	15

The Albums Of The Year: The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night

First off, I have to say I really don't like The Arcade Fire. They are so big and pompous and so militant in their hurdy-gurdy playing and anthemic in their choruses and it's just all a bit wearying to me.

So, why am I leading off a love note to The Besnard Lakes with a hissy-fit about the Arcadians? There's a lot of similarities... a husband-wife led band from Montreal writing and performing "Big Music" on an American indie label. But there's a greater warmth to me in The Besnard Lakes, even a playful sexiness that illuminates the epic nature of the music.

I was a fan of the previous album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (ah, yes, it's not like I promised no pomposity,) but the band fell off my radar over the last couple years. When I heard Albatross, the standout track from the new album, I immediately re-upped, though. Albatross sounds like Kim Deal fronting a My Bloody Valentine/High Llamas team-up (or maybe my pals Sixteen Deluxe working through a Beach Boys phase.) It's a definite lock in my Top Ten Songs Of 2010 list.

The rest of the album doesn't quite hit those heights, but there's a great sense of drama and tension throughout. Fortunately, the band understands how to throttle back and keep it small and appealing. Alternating male/female vocals and lush harmonies make a big difference here. Glass Printer is a great example of a wiggy guitar workout augmented by an indie chorale.

Oh, and just to be fair to The Arcade Fire... your name is significantly better than The Besnard Lakes!