Top 10 Albums of 2012

Ok, so I’m a geek that likes to compile lists. I have been putting together a Top 10 list of albums for a few years and this year it was extremely hard to narrow it down. I’ve even cheated by calling a tie for tenth place because I could not decide which one to leave off. The two main factors are: how much do I listen to the album and do I think I will still be listening to them in a few years. Here they are (drum roll please):

1. Eno: LUX

2. Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan

3. Neil Young: Psychedelic Pill

4. Japandroids: Celebration Rock

5. Mountain Goats: Transcendental Youth

6. Dan Deacon: America

7. Grizzly Bear: Shield

8. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory

9. Bob Mould: Silver Age

10. (tie) Byrne/St Vincent: Love this Giant

10. (tie) Bob Dylan: Tempest

My list may appear overly eclectic with a mix of older guys and younger groups but this year, so many musicians that I grew up loving somehow managed to remember how to make great music. I seriously put Young’s Psychedelic Pill among his best albums- maybe not as good as Tonight’s the Night or Everyone Knows This is Nowhere but damn close. Bob Dylan at his best is…well…the best. His new album Tempest is no Highway 61 or Blonde on Blonde but falls somewhere in the Blood on the Tracks/Desire range. While Eno has made good music over the past 30 years, LUX is possibly his best ambient album. It’s the follow up to Thursday Afternoon that I stopped waiting for 20 years ago. Likewise, David Byrne has been hit or miss in his solo career with his best work usually being part of a soundtrack project. Here he teams with one of my favorite younger artists, St Vincent to craft a fabulous album of quirky, off-kilter songs.

Closer to my age, Bob Mould has been spotty since Husker Du broke up with nothing that I found compelling in years. Silver Age is perhaps the record every Mould fan has waited for. The playing is urgent and the sound is great. The songs may not have the bitter bite of his best Husker Du work but since I’m much older now too, it hits the sweet spot for me.

I’m generally very forward looking and there are plenty of newer bands/musicians in my Top 10. Dirty Projectors are one of the smartest, most accomplished bands out there. At first I was disappointed with Swing Low Magellan since it seems more “normal” that there last couple of albums but the songwriting is so strong as is the playing. Japandroids, a guitar/drums duo, has probably spent the most time playing in my studio this year. It's a fun, short set of great punk tunes. I’m a big fan of John Darnielle/Mountain Goats and think this is his best album to date. His band has really come together as a unit and the addition of horns to some track fills out the sound. Dan Deacon is one of the most intriguing artists out there. He studied classical composition and now drives around the country in a custom built bio-diesel bus playing crazed electronic music with a large collective group out of Baltimore. The first 5 songs are well-crafted pop/dance pieces that really aren’t very commercial and the multi-section suite, America, makes me think of what Aaron Copeland may have done with computers and synthesizers. Grizzly Bear has another album of amazingly beautiful songs constructed to allow plenty of space to breathe. The production is absolutely perfect in creating a somewhat precious atmosphere. With Steve Albini recording the Cloud Nothings album, the sound is again, perfect for this raggedy punk-ish group.

Here are a few albums that I ultimately left off of my list:

Swans: The Seer

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Beach House: Bloom

The Walkmen: Heaven

Antlers: Undersea

Bang on a Can: Big Beautiful Dark & Scary

Sigur Ros: Valtari

Regina Spektor: What We Saw From The Cheap Seats

Art & Music

Having my arm in a sling has taken me out of the studio for a while. I've spent a lot of time reading and listening to music. Both activities are generating ideas, making me want to get to the studio even more.

I've been fascinated with Morton Feldman's music and how many of his ideas grew out of his associations with with members of the New York School. He was a very close friend of Philip Guston and composed two pieces titled For Philip Guston, the second one lasting over 4 hours. One of his first breaks in the music world came when Jackson Pollock asked him to compose the score for the famous short film about Pollock from the early 50's. Other works include a shorter pieces For Franz Kline and the gorgeous Rothko Chapel which was commissioned by the Menils to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the chapel in Houston. Feldman was committed to abstraction in music, painting and all other art forms. This commitment caused a premanent rift with Guston as the painter began to re-introduce objects into his work during his last decade.

Every artist I know is deeply interested in music though usually rock, not modern concert music. In writing the catalog Material World, I described one artist's work as sharing qualities with the musician Brian Eno. Since Eno is one of my all time favorite artists, this was a very positive remark.

A number of musicians are also serious visual artists. Eno has created numerous video and light installations. David Byrne of Talking Heads has worked in photography, film and installation. Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) quit music all together to concentrate on his painting for the last 20+ years of his life.

I'll be exploring the subject more thoroughly in future posts.

True Artists

So what is it that we try to achieve as artists. To have passion? Technique? Originality?

I watched a documentary about the punk band the minutemen last night and it struck me that these guys achieved what we all wish we could do. Listening to their music, even if you hate the style, there is no denying that these guys had awesome chops. There is no doubting their sincerity and passion. Now they were always striving for something a little beyond themselves which kept the flame burning. Their politics were sometimes naive but definitely earnest in their intent. Most of all- there has never been band, before or after them that sounded anything like them.

One of the things in my life I will brag about is seeing their show at the 9:30 club in the Spring of 1985 (they played the night before a rally to protest US intervention in Central America). Even more brag worthy was to spend an evening with them as they stayed at my friends' place after they opened for REM in Norfolk. They played a large chunk of Double Nickels on the Dime on Acoustic Guitars (Mike and D fought over the 12 string).