My Top 5 Albums of the Year (That I Didn’t Make)

Well, Fiction’s doing his year-end music thing, and I like nothing more than to steal the spotlight from people. So here are my five favorite albums that came out this year that I didn’t make myself:

 

 

 

 

5. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

 

Anthony Gonzalez has always had an obsession with pushing 80’s synth-pop to its grandest extremes, probably making this double-concept album about a pair of dreaming siblings inevitable. Of course it helps also turning in his strongest batch of tunes, which previous M83 albums only hinted at. From the epic synthy rush of "Midnight City" and "Steve McQueen" to the jangly pop of "Year One, One UFO" to the tender Brian Wilson-strolling-down-Abbey-Road balladry of "Splendor", Anthony and his collaborators push themselves to the brink, resulting in an exultant, bombastic slice of pop heaven.

 

 

 

 

4. Wild Flag – Wild Flag

 After Sleater-Kinney’s lovely swan song The Woods in 2005 it really seemed like we might not hear from the SK girls again. Aside from blogging and appearances on Portlandia, Carrie Brownstein was troublingly quiet, and apparently burned out on the noise-making front. Which is what makes her (and SK powerhouse-drummer Janet Weiss) return in the form of Wild Flag such a stroke. Bringing in Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole, the girls seem ecstatic to be making music again. Their enthusiasm permeates every track, bursting with hooky ideas, gorgeous harmonies, all held down by Weiss’ amphetaminic and pounding drumming. It’s a joyous valentine to rock itself, and a welcome return of the reigning queens of indie.

 

 

 

 

3. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints

 To start, any artist that opens a song with the words "Fuck California, you made me boring" is Top 5 material at the very least. Is there anything better than a talented artist combining the sounds of every cool band of the last 40 years into one delicious sonic gumbo (well, in this case two things, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves). This is indie chaos-maven Erika M. Anderson has done on her stunning solo debut. Meshing Velvet Underground textures and wounded, dopesick vocals of a female Trent Reznor, EMA takes lovely pop songs, rips them apart and refuses them to her own bizarro logic. There’s "The Grey Ship", which sounds like "Jane Says" if it were sung by Jane, the epic and spacey "California", to the Nirvana-y ballad "Anteroom", the Nine Inch Nailsy ballad "Marked" or the Smashing Pumpkinsy ballad "Breakfast". But far from a grunge-biter, EMA blazes a sonic territory all her own, one of harsh ambiance and brittle beauty.

 

 

 

 

2. Das Racist – Relax

 It’s both hilarious and refreshingly non-bravado when Kool AD declares himself the "best rapper alive, I swear to god man" and then forgets how to say "John Carpenter" not eight rhymes later. As much as the crew of Das Racist may tongue-in-cheekly expound their spitting supremacy, it’s a relief to hear rappers with a sense of humor about themselves in this age of Kanye. Not that here isn’t a case to be made. On Relax they quickly build on the viral success of their youtube lark "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" with a barrage of stream-of-consciousness rhyming that is, whaddayaknow, very well delivered and packed with the usual name-checking (Miley Cyrus, Ron Paul) to the deliciously literate and learned (Infinite Jest, Stan Brakhage). Even better, they deliver on top of beats that overflow with brilliant ideas, from the kung-fu soundtrack up-cutting of "Michael Jackson" to the vocoded lunacy of the title track which does anything but to "Middle of the Cake", which sounds like they cut a weird track and then fed it a whole blotter sheet. It’s a hooky and disorienting tour-de-force that rewards close listening. Not too close though, since it’s likely to induce a contact-high.

 

 

 

 

1. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

 It’s not only been fashionable, but really fairly appropriate to pronounce the death of punk. Be it in 1980, after the death of Kurt Cobain, or even simultaneously at the same time it was born. I’d certainly abandoned hope that anything would ever match the gut-level ferocity and passion of The Stooges or The Clash. And I certainly didn’t think that if it ever were gloriously reborn, it would be by a pack of Canadians. However, on first hearing David Comes to Life, I felt so relieved to be wrong. Fucked Up’s Pink Eyes legitimizes the use of Hardcore Vox the way pretty much no one has before, and the rest of the band plug themselves in t

o his pure sound-and-fury and fire away for 78 of the most thrilling minutes I’ve heard in so long. Hearing David finally makes me feel what it must have been like to those disenchanted kids back in 1976 the first time they laid a needle on Ramones. There’s a concept here about death-and-rebirth, the pain of lost loves and other bushwa, but it’s largely irrelevant with tunes this good and energy this potent that doesn’t dilute or wane over the album’s not inconsiderable running time. It’s the sort of record that you don’t know how badly you needed it until it actually shows up. Buy it, treasure it, sacrifice your speakers to it.

 

 

 

Honorable Mentions

 

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi – Rome

Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

The Vaccines – What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?