Though individual artist and song names have been long forgotten, I remember how calm and soothing the music was, really accentuating the darkness and surreal beauty of the mostly empty highway we were driving on. Despite this captivating experience, however, my attention has never again been fully captivated by other pieces of ambient music, despite their quality. My consequential exposures never quite had the same magic as the initial.

Enter Nicholas Szcezpanik’s (pronounced, to my knowledge, ’skitz-uh-pan-nik’) Please Stop Loving Me, an album which singlehandedly renewed my interest in ambient music. This one-track, 47-minute-long journey is more fierce, more lush, and more engaging than most fully developed, traditional albums. Released last year, the album is not a difficult listen. The sounds are pleasant to the ear, never attempting distortion or over the top experimentation. And, while one almost hour long song may seem initially intimidating, the album does not feel long by any means. Nor, however, does it feel short; it just seems to be whatever length it wants to be, as it allows no reference points by which to measure its length. It has seemingly just begun, yet is always about to be concluded.

While easy to listen to, this should not be taken as a measure of it’s depth. Szcezpanik has a masterful understanding of his craft, shown in his precise attention to detail seen over every inch of the record. He understands the importance of variation, providing swells, chord modifications, and volume changes at precisely the moment you are about to become content with what is occurring. There are points of immense volume, and points of almost deafening quiet. The sounds are in once sense soothing, while at the same time ferociously engaging. This is not homework music. This is music to experience, to delve in to, to listen to multiple times and still find something new with each and every repeated listen.

I cannot say what Szcezpanik intends with the title of the album, Please Stop Loving Me. It is a heartbreaking sentiment, calling for someone to cease caring and move on from what they love. While there are no lyrics to deconstruct, no mood to convey from a singers intonation, what we can hear in the synthesizers and drones of the album is an astonishing amount of emotion that will likely take you off guard upon first listen. There is something about the construction of the music which is narrative, evoking pictures of lovers, skies, and an entire plethora of such images. You will not know precisely what emotions are being felt while listening. You will be both distraught and blissfully content, and have no reason for this.

At it’s end, Please Stop Loving Me will nearly make you break down and cry. Whether these are tears of happiness, saddness, or something in between, will never truly be known.

Name of Favorite Other WVAU Show
El Mexla

Name of Favorite Other WVAU Show
Nyighntime, Sounds of Space, and Garden of Leo

When I saw Cate Le Bon open for St. Vincent last February, I had only one real criticism: she needed a band. Thankfully, CYRK, her sophomore album, fixes that, and provides excellent results. Le Bon focuses not so much on catchy hooks or memorable choruses (though those are both pleasantly available at certain points), but on craft songwriting that is not afraid to take an unexpected or dissonant turn. Her voice is also engaging, unabashedly showing off a gorgeous Welsh accent that never loses it’s flavor. Honestly, CYRK is an excellent album that showcases the best of the singer-songwriter genre, combining simplicity with a surprising amount of depth. -Richard Murphy
RIYL: St. Vincent, Lykke Li, The Velvet Underground & Nico
Recommended Tracks: 1, 6, 9, 10

These two picks would mos def be on a list had I compiled my favorite tunes from 2011, but it’s early in 2012 and I have yet to discover new music that I can continuously blast and annoy my roommates.

Album: Washed Out, “Within and Without”

A resident of “Top 10 or 50 or 200 or 278,415 Albums of 2011” lists, Ernest Greene’s debut album under his stage name Washed Out has also found a home in my rotation. I’ve been riding the chillwaves of “Within and Without” since early fall and I don’t anticipate slowing the flow any time soon. Perfect for cruising in the car at night, Washed Out’s first LP swoops in on the electronic indie trend while pushing the lofty style boundaries and being effortlessly catchy.

Song: Fever Ray, “Seven (The Twelves Remix)”

Now, I’m not one for hyperbole, but this just might be the greatest dancing song ever to be made ever. I dare you to put the track on and try to not dance to the disco-influenced beats. Impossible, right? First heard at the greatest pub in London, The Lexington, and now a staple on every new playlist, this Fever Ray remix is surely a crowd-pleaser with staying-power.

By Marissa Cetin

I am from Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas calls to all the outsiders to unite in this seemingly small city. Nothing surprises me anymore. From the time I was ten I could have named 20 strip clubs. My middle school English teacher was once a stripper. I’ve seen a drunk man masturbate to billboards of call girls. The lights and constant ebb and flow of dreamers and addicts makes me forget the natural red rocks that surround me.

The most surprising part of Las Vegas isn’t the addicts who constantly scratch their scabs but rather the area that surrounds us. The city is consuming but the sheer emptiness of the vast desert that lies at the city’s borders makes even the grandest of hotels look small.

In Las Vegas, I was raised by a single mother. I never knew specifics about my father but I know that he was raised in the deserts of Nevada. He loved the red sand, the cactuses, the billowing mountains. It was not until the beautiful singer and songwriter Joan Baez coerced me to retreat into the land that my father loves so dearly that it caused him to recoil from me.

Joan Baez captures the essence of the Southwest in the soulful song “In the Quiet Morning.” She speaks of a girl who is tormented by loneliness, much like the feeling one gets when they realize how epically minuscule they are in comparison to the vast Southwest landscape. She also remains true to the real essence of Las Vegas, a place before Jay-Z’s club openings and Criss Angel, but rather a place where the clothing on your back was enough to ensure a sense of content.

She embraces the natural in her song “In the Quiet Morning.” Her voice is not grandiose but rather sweet and simple alongside the noise of a lone guitar. The lack of fluff is central to this song’s dynamic and seems as though she is in the middle of the desert herself and happened to stumble upon a group of vagabonds with guitars. It is charmingly authentic.

The chorus is exceedingly cheerful and consists of the repetition of the words “la la la”. There is a sense of jubilation. I can only compare the chorus to the way I feel when I look at the desert landscape I once detested because of its reminders of my father, only to realize the frailty of human life and its beauty. The rocks that surround me will last far beyond my time and my father’s relationship. They have endured much worse than I ever will. I look to the desert mountains and Joan Baez, the woman who loved them so much, to remind myself to forgive because I am just a temporary fixture in the desert landscape.

By Michelle Merica

Event Director Ryan Gaffney’s picks:
1. Chairlift – Something
Chairlift has the misfortune of being a band with a song that was featured in an iPod commercial, because their big single “Bruises” is known by a lot of people as “that song from the iPod commercial” (or if you’re the guy in the audience from when they opened for Peter Bjorn & John, “the blowjob song”). It’s a shame because that overshadowed what was a really cool pop album that probably came from outer space. The lead single “Peculiar Paradise” suggests they haven’t lost their touch by touring for, like, years.

2. Franz Ferdinand
They’ve got two great albums and a pretty good one under their belt. It’s been three years since the last album, leaving the ‘nand comfortably in the window between “it’s been so long that they’ve lost their touch” and “cranking another album out too soon after the previous one.” Scientifically speaking, this album can’t not be good.

3. The Killers
Here’s a really controversial opinion: I like The Killers. Scandalous! World Humblest Musician Brandon Flowers promises that the new album will synthesize all the best parts of the previous three albums. Those albums all have distinct sounds that don’t necessarily sound like they would mesh, but this album is exciting at the very least for being so ambitious. Even if it’s not great, it will still be interesting.

4. Kaiser Chiefs/Muse
These are two bands I was really fanatical about in high school whose last albums were, in my esteemed opinion, a steaming pile and a bit of a let-down, respectively. Here, the anticipation is less of a “can’t wait to hear new music from groups I love” and more of a cautious “should I run their older albums over with my car” sense of dread. Don’t let me down.

Librarian Allie Porambo’s pick
Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror
I am generally a quiet person. I don’t like to brag or show off, and I would much rather prefer a night in watching a movie with some close friends to going out for a night on the town. When it comes to music however, there comes a time in everyone’s’ lives that you just need to be louder, more obnoxious, and cockier than the Donald Trump as the king of Karneval. And when I’m in that mood, I reach for Sleigh Bells.

Back in the summer of 2010, when their debut album Treats was released, the Brooklyn duo’s release was permanently stuck in my car’s stereo system. Whether I was dropping off my mom at Bunco night with her girlfriends or picking up my cats’ medicines, I’d turn up the volume, roll down the window, and feel like the coolest kid in the veterinary office parking lot.

Treats was the perfect mix of guitar-driven aggression and angelic vocals, and if the single Born to Lose is any indication, Reign of Terror will not be much different. Though the album may be dropping in February, I will certainly be blasting it from the speakers of the family van well into the summer.

Music Director Emily White’s picks:

1. The Return of Legal Music
Music sales actually went up in 2011. Major labels and album sales may be down overall, but music is more popular and assessable then ever before. I know that music pirating will never stop completely and I am by no means a supporter of SOPA or PIA as a means to prevent it– But my hope for 2012 is that the music business finds a better alternative. Ideally, legal streaming services like Spotify will iron-out their kinks, find a way to get more revenue back to the artist, and put a damper on illegal downloading.

2. Pictures of Blue Ivy Carter
Will Beyonce’s genes prevail? We can only hope.

3. The possibility of new Spoon, Grizzly Bear, or Animal Collective
Some of my favorite bands are well overdue for a new album. Hoping these three come through in 2012 and give me something to look forward to!

4. The soundtrack to Moonrise Kingdom
Yes, Wes Anderson movies typically feature similar casts, themes and cinematography BUT they never fail in the soundtrack department. The trailer for his latest, “Moonrise Kingdom”, features Françoise Hardy’s “Le Temps De L’amour,” which bodes well for the rest of the soundtrack.

General Manager Alex Rudolph’s picks:
1. The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Ocean/Magnetic Fields, April 9 @ 9:30 club
My favorite band gets back to the label (Merge) and dense, gloomy synth-pop that originally turned me into a Stephin Merritt obsessive. After a trilogy of records made with mandolins, violins and guitars, Merritt has let himself return to his weapon of choice. The tracklisting is a little too punny and the album art is ridiculous, but when the funniest/saddest band in the world makes a return to form, you can allow them a few dud song names.

2. Pulp’s U.S. tour
When Pulp, the secret winner of the Blur/Oasis brit-pop war, reunited to play European festivals in the summer of 2010, I sat waiting for the announcement of American dates. And none came. And there was a year of silence. But then, earlier this month, they were revealed to be playing Coachella and this morning they announced a single date in New York. Tickets will be impossible to get and travel will be inconvenient, but there is a near-endless list of things I would do to see Common People live, and Pulp is about to test the limits of that list.

3. The World Forgetting About Odd Future

Music Director Maxwell Tani’s pick:
James Blake – anything
Although there are no signs that a new James Blake EP is in the works (hell, he released a new one a little over a month ago), I think we can be fairly certain that the 24 year-old British crooner has something exciting planned for 2012. Riding off the heels of 2010’s wildly successful CMYK and Klavierwekre EPs, 2011 was Blake’s year from beginning to end. His self-titled debut LP dropped in February, incorporating minimalist singer-songwriter piano and vocal stylings with his trademark post-dubstep splicing. He quickly followed this with two solid EPs, Enough Thunder further showcasing his angelic vocals, and Love What Happened Here harking back to his earlier punchy, sample-ridden releases.

The last two years have seen Blake successfully build and maneuver his way to the forefront of a genre that he has pioneered, fusing the unlikely pairing of balladry and cut-and-paste post-dubstep to create a sound uniquely his own. So while there is no clear indication of any new records from the already prolific songster, Blake’s penchant for ambitious experimentation, genre-defying innovation, and consistently frequent quality releases is enough to keep any music lover excited for more.

Web Director Maeve McDermott’s picks:
1. Sleigh Bells: Reign of Terror
It’s a real shame that Sleigh Bells pushed back their album release date from February 14th, because you can’t ask for a better Valentine’s Day antidote than baddest bitch Alexis Krauss. The sheer thrill of being wailed over the head by Sleigh Bells’ riffs has subsided for me by this point, and though the thought of a followup album of “Crown on the Ground” soundalikes may be tempting, Sleigh Bells’ sledgehammer guitars-meets-airy female vocals gimmick isn’t tenacious enough to stay interesting on a carbon-copy second album. It’s time for Sleigh Bells to evolve a little, and from the lead singles we’e heard so far from “Reign of Terror,” it sounds like Krauss and guitarist Derek Miller have risen to the challenge, adding a little nuance to their trademark genre-defying sound. Try to snag a ticket for Sleigh Bells at 9:30 on February 16, or catch them opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (wait, what?) this May.

2. The Shins – Port of Morrow
We all started listening to music somewhere, and I started with the Shins. As my adolescent music library ballooned from the OC soundtracks outwards, I’ve always been fond of the Shins, nothing more and nothing less. Some indie rock that introduced me to music in general has grown even more dear to me since junior high school, like Sufjan Stevens and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, while my pre-teenaged idolization of Colin Meloy and Ben Gibbard didn’t make it past 2007 (though I will indeed defend Transatlanticism always and forever). But my feelings for the Shins have remained constant, and I’ve immensely enjoyed their previous three releases while remaining entirely uninvested emotionally in James Mercer’s music. I’m curious to see where James Mercer takes his next release Port of Morrow, after he traded the sun-kissed preciousness of 2007’s Wincing The Night Away for the Danger Mouse-assisted Broken Bells project and basically handled every part of Port of Morrow’s recording by himself. And if the album sucks, I’ll be more than happy to just forget all about it and keep laughing about my 10th grade Motorola Razr cellphone with its “Phantom Limb” ringtone.

3. Jeff Mangum, Jan 27 @ Lincoln Theater
Just because.
Editor’s note: Update – it was perfect.

The band premiered their revamped “Silent Running” soundtrack at the 2011 Glasgow Film Festival, as part of a series in which several artists composed and performed alternative scores to old films. 65’s take on the environmental space odyssey, the film that inspired the director of Pixar’s 2008 hit “WALL-E,” was so well-received the band decided to take it on tour, playing cinemas all over the UK. After further popular demand, 65 recorded their score, initially only released on vinyl and digital download in mid-November.

As a bit of a movie score geek, this was an exciting, intriguing new experience. How would 65 pull off exactly matching the pace of the film to their sound? Are you supposed to sit like when at the movies or stand like when at a gig? And where do you even look – the band or the screen? Answers: Lots of practice; sit; and both, the band played directly under the screen, so all that was required to switch your focus was a slight shift of the eyes.

The primary focus of the performance was the film, which was logical considering how the music so closely depends on the mood of the plot and pace of the editing. The band even made sure the audience was paying attention to the film, softening the volume when important dialogue kicked in so the audience wouldn’t miss out on major plot points.

The composition was in the same vein as Academy Award-winning “The Social Network” score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: a recurring, sweet piano theme floated over distorted, industrial guitar riffs and racing, determined drums. The range in styles and sounds featured throughout the soundtrack also shows off the band’s versatility. In the 90 minutes of movie, 65 seamlessly weave in and out of melodic piano, galactic electronica, “Twilight Zone”-esque synths and epic post-rock swells.

65daysofstatic managed to hit that perfect balance of composing a soundtrack that had all the qualities, served all the functions and unmistakably sounded like a movie score, all while maintaining their distinctive sound and staying true to their experimental, glitch-rock roots.

Here’s the trailer for the vinyl release of “Silent Running,” featuring music from the score:

65daysofstatic Silent Running Vinyl Release from 65daysofstatic on Vimeo.

By Marissa Cetin

In the spring of 2011, the stakes appeared to be set impossibly high for Fleet Foxes. Their debut LP was a massive critical and popular success that shot them into the upper echelon of indie stardom almost overnight; the three years Robin Pecknold & Co. spent crafting the followup through an arduous process of writing, scrapping, and rewriting only heightened anticipations. A sophomore slump seemed all but certain.

That’s exactly what Helplessness Blues would have been if Fleet Foxes had decided to turn out a repeat performance or to sidestep musically. Instead, Pecknold underwent a remarkable creative transformation, from a bearded dude crooning about meadowlarks to a full-fledged singer-songwriter with something meaningful to say and a meaningful way to say it. As a result, this album represents both a giant creative leap forward and a throwback to the classic works of great 1970’s singer-songwriters.

In Pecknold’s case, Paul Simon’s output with Simon & Garfunkel is an obvious touchstone; both share a distinctly boyish vocal timbre and grapple with similar themes of being frustrated by love, feeling old at 25, and contemplating one’s very existence. The difference between the two is that Pecknold doesn’t obscure his disillusions with overly wrought metaphors or ruminations of whether the theater is really dead. As a result, simple lines like “I don’t know who to believe” come across as sincere and relatable rather than preachy.

In addition to Pecknold’s emergence as a gifted singer-songwriter, the band as a whole has developed nicely. Full-throated harmonies abound (after all, this is still a Fleet Foxes album) but are complemented by darker instrumental passages and quieter moments of introspection that make for a more dynamic listen. Additionally, these musical shifts provide the perfect backdrop as Pecknold walks the fine line between innocence and cynicism.

Helplessness Blues certainly isn’t the most innovative or boundary-pushing release of the year, but those kinds of things hardly matter in the long run. What does matter is that when I look back at my young adulthood, these twelve songs will mean just as much to me as they do now.

By Peter Gill

#1 Song:
M83 – “Midnight City”

It’s hard to write about “Midnight City” without using hyperbolic claims (“BEST OUTRO EVER” or “THE CITY IS MY CHURCH”), but in a way, that sums up what this song is about: awe-inspiring wonder. Amongst a sprawling double-album full of fantastic tracks, “Midnight City” stands out as it throws one musical peak at you after another.

The song begins with its now instantly familiar synth riff, before unfolding into a straight-up enormous anthem. Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s vocal delivery is perfect: subdued and at times even slurred, but explosive and cathartic at all the right moments -just listen how “waiting in a car” turns into “WAITING! IN A CAR!” over the course of the song. And then, that sax solo hits. Dear God, that sax solo… I started this paragraph saying I wouldn’t make grand or hyperbolic statements, but the saxophone outro makes that fairly hard to do.

Instead, I point you in the direction of the recent live performance of this song on “Late Night.” Watch how the band reacts when the solo hits; there is no self-conscious posing, and no arms are crossed. Instead, everyone is lost in that musical moment, grooving and dancing away on national television. On a song that could fill up stadiums with its sound, it is that moment where even the people in the nosebleed sections would be losing their minds.

By Cameron Meindl

Editor’s Note: It’s been a blast counting down WVAU’s favorite music this year! A big thanks to all our fantastic contributors: Alex Rudolph, Jesse Paller, Louise Brask, Leo Zausen, Maxwell Tani, Richard Murphy, Sharon Din, Sean Meehan, Kevin Kunitake, Brian Waligorski, Austin Ryan, Jesse Drucker, Peter Gill, Cameron Meindl, Mike Creedon and Cassie Wiegmann.

Unfortunately, one of the best albums of the year (in my opinion) has been subject to some of the worst qualities of the music-listening world: shallowness, self-righteousness, and stubbornness. Listeners who were waiting for a logical follow-up to 2007’s brilliant In Rainbows instead got a follow-up that was something more experimental, a little harder to digest.

And so, rather than embrace the idea of a new sound, or use common sense to assume that a band like Radiohead, with a track record of almost two decades of excellent, critically acclaimed and publicly adored music, would maybe know what they were doing when it came to their own music, people jumped to the defensive and panned the album. Is it because it’s too abstract? Is it because it uses chords and rhythms they’ve never heard? Is it too different from what they expected? Are they upset because it isn’t being spoon-fed to them? What were Radiohead thinking, making music that wasn’t easy?

I have heard The King of Limbs called “bad” a few times recently, and tried to find a moment on The King of Limbs that sounds “bad” to me. Is the opener “Bloom” bad, with its crescendo of horns and strings as Thom Yorke’s voice opens up into a vast ocean of sound? Is the ethereal “Give Up the Ghost” unsatisfying? Does the punishing and cutting “Little By Little” lack something? I can’t hear it. Is the loneliness and beauty of “Lotus Flower,” the sound of a man searching for meaning within his own empty soul, a misstep? And is “Codex” too quiet, so poignant and so perfect on its own, that it forces you to look at your own imperfections and make real decisions about your life? Is that even a bad thing? I don’t think it is. The King of Limbs is one of the most radically gorgeous masterpieces I have ever heard. The process of listening to it has made me a better person, music listener, and musician. I pity anybody who can’t take the time to allow it to change them as well.

Music will always have its naysayers; people hated Beethoven in his time for his radical third period; people rioted at Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; parents forbid their children from going to Beatles concerts in the ‘60s and panicked when “The Chronic” cruised its way onto the radio in the early ‘90s. Sometimes it’s hard for music consumers to handle raw talent when it challenges rather than conforms to expectations. But this talent seems to translate into something more eternal than the people who assume the right to tell musicians how their music ought to be done. While they die, and disintegrate beneath the earth, the music lives on, as it has for Beethoven and Stravinsky and John and Paul and countless other targets of musical small-mindedness. It becomes an inspiration to future generations, and makes its indelible mark on the face of history, while the voices disparaging its creativity and free expression disappear, thankfully, from the musical subconscious.

I daresay that had the people who insult The King of Limbs been this age when Kid A came out, they would have said the same things. “Where’s my OK Computer Part II?” “This isn’t music!” “Why is this band progressing, they were so at my level before!”

Maybe they still are. Maybe you just need to listen harder.

By Jesse Paller

I know what they say about Lulu. But I listened anyway, and found out they’re completely wrong. The negativity surrounding Lulu started before the album even came out, with critics tearing apart the odd combination of Lou’s deadpan voice and Metallica’s power riffs, and internet trolls turning the repeated line “I am the table” into an instant meme.

Reed, who has for years seen himself as (and been) heavier than the critics give him credit for, refuses to acknowledge that the collaboration was odd at all, and for good reason. Although critics are still hanging onto his Transformer days, Lou Reed moved on long ago, switching to a heavier style (a la his 2000 album Ecstasy) that better suits his dark, poetic lyrics. The lyrics of Lulu itself, based on a series of plays written by German expressionist Frank Wedekind, are some of Lou’s darkest and most pretentious, and therefore called for something heavier than Lou could have done on his own. The lyrics are a combination of horror and history, with enough literary and cinematographic references to evade even the most fastidious reader, something made clear from the beginning of the album’s first and best song “Brandenberg Gate.”

As for Hetfield being a table (although it is impossible to ever know for sure what Lou means in his lyrics), the lyrics seems to come from a climactic scene in Wedekind’s “Eardgeist: Earth Spirit,” wherein Lulu hides one of her many affairs by stuffing her lover under a table. Lulu, like the plays on which it was based, has been almost universally rejected by its contemporary audiences, but I for one am totally on board with what amounts to Lou Reed’s most adventurous lyrical experiment to date.

By Sean Meehan

It is more than understandable that Annie Clark is perhaps the most lusted-after woman in indie-rock today (she tops the list of Stereogum’s top indie crushes of 2011), but for slightly less obvious reasons than one might suppose. Beyond her stunningly good looks, skin so-fair-it’s-not-fair, impeccable style, and impressive musicianship (any of which would be more than enough for anyone, including me), Clark’s attractiveness lies in something far more complex and fascinating displayed on her third studio album: her undeniably intelligent, incredibly sexy, and fascinatingly modern themes and lyrics, delivered playfully dark, coy, and aloof style.

These musings/lustings aside (for now) Strange Mercy is easily Clark’s most fully-formed musical vision. Her diverse palette effortlessly blends cinematic orchestration and groovy snyth funk to create a sound uniquely modern and inventive. Clark is clearly a master of her craft, weaving dense choral and orchestral arrangements with melodic hooks and gnarly distorted guitar riffs. And while complex musicality oftentimes bogs down overambitious indie bands, Clark manages to juggle the more offbeat moments with the familiar, never forgetting the power of an irresistible guitar hook or a hypnotizing beat. There isn’t a dull moment on the record, as each three-part harmony gives way to a barrage of fuzzy hooks, which is layered upon a string section, which is layered upon a funky bass line. The album is dark, hypnotizing, and innovative, and demonstrates Clark’s compositional genius as she creates an record of film-noir-funk uniquely her own.

Clark’s attractiveness would be obvious to anyone (this is fact not hyperbole). But besides the surface image of girl-with-guitar-writes-elaborate-art-pop (again, certainly enough to entice a fair deal of worshippers), the subconscious key to her swoon-inducing lies with her creative, clever, eloquent, and suggestive lyrical content coupled with her beautiful, strange, haunting vocal delivery. And however intimate the songs become, Clark remains slightly removed, always toying with her male prey with a sideways grin that shows that she knows exactly the effects that her doe-eyed approach has on men. If Strange Mercy is any indication, Clark is still laughing with a mouthful of blood, and she knows the future has big plans for her.

By Maxwell Tani

#2 Song:
St. Vincent – “Cruel”

Ever wonder what would happen if Disney princesses joined the ranks of a brain-eating army of zombies? If so, one thing can be sure, St. Vincent has the sound track to this hypothetical zombie classic covered. And the song, “Cruel,” the second track off of St. Vincent’s newest album, Strange Mercy, would be the opening song. The juxtaposition of St. Vincent’s angelic vocals with her crunchy guitar riffs invents a distinctive mood unlike any other track this year. You can’t help but be creeped out, enchanted and driven to dance around the room all at the same time when listening to “Cruel.” And personally I can’t help but create this princess-zombie drama in my head every time I hear this track. It’s impossible not to picture Cinderella, Belle and Sleeping Beauty staggering after you in their torn gowns, chanting along to this song.

By Cassie Wiegmann

“This is not a place,” Justin Vernon coos on the album’s glacial introduction, “Perth.” Bon Iver’s first album (2008’s haunting For Emma, Forever Ago) is largely associated with its creation during his heartbroken retreat to an isolated northern cabin, a detail that adds special poignancy to its spare beauty. But Bon Iver’s second self-titled album has no place, no context. It finds Vernon removed from his isolation, severed from a painful past, and placed in a world with more money, time, and support to create his art. The ensuing album one of history’s greatest celebrations of the power of absolute music. Vernon himself said that this is the music he had been waiting to make since his childhood.

A love letter to music, the album contains the entire scope of music’s best qualities. At times, it is perfectly simple. Others, It is grand and complex. It is subtle and it is completely, exuberantly overdone. It is vast, but it is also intimate. There is no limit on the music- any number of guitars, basses, horns, keys and even drum sets are used to fully iterate every possible aspect of every chord. Coupled with Vernon’s knack for poignant, sweeping chord progressions, the effect is devastating.

And then there’s his voice. Every music reviewer has picked their own words for it: “wounded,” “soaring,” “keening,” “expressive,” “enchanting,” even “unfamiliar” (I read a lot of music reviews). But it is all of these, and it is none of them. There’s no word that can even begin to capture the blessing that Justin Vernon received with his voice. His lower tones are warm and comforting, but his falsetto is heartbreaking; you listen and you feel your soul getting chills. The lyrics on this album are largely abstract and impressionistic; they mostly exist simply to allow his voice to bring you along with it. Not to say the words are meaningless; when he proclaims “and at once I knew I was not magnificent” (a lyric for the ages) among the gentle sunbeams of “Holocene,” and the music swells around the words as if to disprove this humbly arrogant claim, you can’t help but feel taken along with it.

And if the music disproves this lyric, I agree with it. Because this album is magnificent. “Perth” is like the onset of a storm in a giant desert, with the spare wind whipping up a piece of trash and an old memory, before gigantic guitar chords strike like the very lightning and thunder of the heavens and tear your soul asunder. “Towers” warms you like a fire, and the feeling from listening to “Michicant” is comparable to finding an old letter from a lover lost in the past, reading it and feeling the old emotion spring up within you. The ethereal piano in “Wash.” is like the escape of a glorious dream in the cold morning.

I heard “Calgary” in a restaurant once, and suddenly every person around me looked like a saint. And that’s what this album does. It makes the world feel like a better place than it really is. Closer “Beth/Rest,” with an electric keyboard straight from the ballads of the ’80s, does this best. Yes, it is cheesy. Yes, it is unrealistic. But that’s what we need. We need sounds like this, sounds so over-the-top beautiful that they seem too good to be true, but exist anyway. That is what this album does. It encapsulates beauty and expresses it with beautiful music, and there is nothing you can do but sit and allow it to overcome you and carry you through every emotion of the human heart. You will live Bon Iver feeling tiny next to it, but, antithetically, with a heart the size of the world.

By Jesse Paller

#3 Song:
Battles – “Ice Cream”

To say that Battles flaunt their whimsical side on “Ice Cream” would be an understatement, as the math-rockers trade in their usual intricate, grinding rhythms and dissonant melodies for one of the most unexpectedly playful songs of the year.

The hyper-detailed nature of the prog rock Battles is known for making can be distracting – not necessarily in a bad way, but just in the sense that on both of the band’s recordings and especially live, part of enjoying Battles is marveling at the music’s complexities. It’s a testament to the band’s talent that for their heavy focus on technically intricate music, they can still churn out one of the most groovy pop songs we heard in 2011.

“Ice Cream” is pure sugar-high bliss, and it’s immediately obvious from the eyebrow-raising first fifty seconds of huffing and puffing in the song’s intro that Battles is trying something new. And silliness suits Battles just fine, as they complement Matias Aguayo’s nonsensical lyrics with bouncy steel drum-soundalike synths to create a deceptively multifaceted and perfectly danceable track. With “Ice Cream,” for probably the first and last time in the band’s career, Battles makes it sound easy.

By Maeve McDermott

Did your 2011 lack the dark comedy lyrics of folk punk, the danceable melodies of your favorite 2009 synth-pop band, the belting choruses of your emotional middle school years, and the DIY New Jersey attitude? Have no fear, The Front Bottoms are here.

On their self-titled debut from Bar/None Records, singer Brian Sella looks back on his dream of killing his father with a baseball bat, the summer he took steroids to attract the opposite sex, and when he wished a certain someone to sleep so he could take pictures of them to hang on his wall. The album standout “Swimming Pool” floats around in imagery associated with the classic film “The Graduate” while containing one of the more shocking tape recordings of the year.

You won’t know whether to cry, sing-along, or laugh your head off to this album of the year. Honestly, why not do all three?

Front Bottoms – Swimming Pool from Third Revelation on Vimeo.

By Mike Creedon

With his first major release, Frank Ocean emerges as a broken-hearted sensitive crooner (a.k.a. an oddball) in the OFWGKTA crew, the angry youth-driven group that the public has deemed to be the worst thing since unsliced bread. While parents worried themselves silly with the Wolf Gang’s violent-sex crazed dirty raps, Ocean silently dropped one of the year’s softest, most honest releases. Listening to Nostalgia, Ultra. is like thumbing through old high school yearbooks, even if school didn’t consist of smooth R&B jam and sweet love-story heartbreak.

What sets Ocean apart from his R&B contemporaries is his songwriting ability. Layering well thought-out lyrics atop drum kicks of a genre more crudely known as “modern-day baby-making music” isn’t typical. Yet, Ocean does it well and with style. The strength of Nostalgia, Ultra alone landed the 24-year-old studio time with Beyonce, Nas, Kanye and Jay-Z.

Nostalgia, Ultra. is a trip down memory lane and the tour guide is the sweetest member of the crew that yells, “Kill People. Burn Shit. Fuck School.” He’ll point out teenage misfortune, young love and everything else necessary to make Nostalgia, Ultra. exactly what its title advertises.

By Kevin Kunitake

Past Life Martyred Saints is an album that encompasses the feelings of disappointment and creeping failure that singer EMA experienced after moving to California to become an artist; her own account being that of devastation and emotional implosion that left her drained. Since then, she’s been offered redemption through the retelling of her struggle in what can be described as stark naked emotion that continuously sends sparks soaring up your spine.

It’s the delivery, striking lyrical imagery, and dark atmosphere that sweeps you up into her world. Her deft reversal of simultaneous devastation and beauty is powerful and lucid. The instrumentals give her songs a dreamy feel, yet they are unforgiving in their presence. The subject matter that she sings about is subjective and personal, yet without being cloying she reaches out and taps into a universal vein of raw emotion. The songs vary instrumentally in their sound and influence which covers a wide experimental range, but the album stays cohesive through EMA’s unrelenting voice and the feeling that her lyrics have broken bad; like sonic variations on her tragedy of losing everything.

By Sharon Din

#4 Song:
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Let’s get this point out of the way: “Helplessness Blues” is an absolutely gorgeous song. Robin Pecknold’s melodies are as strong as ever, and the group harmonies are consistently sublime. But then again, you already knew that would be the case with the Fleet Foxes. So what is it that makes “Helplessness Blues” so special?

Try the improved songwriting of Pecknold, who now relies on introspective lyrics rather than simple, repeated lines dressed up in pretty vocal arrangements. Over an urgently strummed acoustic guitar, Pecknold muses over the loss of identity before succumbing to the fact that he might actually be content with said anonymity. However, by the time the full band arrives and makes its mark on the track, Pecknold reconsiders: “Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen.”

A song as great as “Helplessness Blues” is proof that Pecknold and company aren’t willing to just merely be faces in the ever-growing indie-folk crowd; in fact, they are positioned to become its leaders.

By Cameron Meindl

And a love of Beyoncé/Top 40 radio/pop music as a genre isn’t necessary to appreciate “Countdown.” It’s true that Beyoncé at her worst can exemplify the bloated nature of pop today– the split personalities, the over-the-top riffing, the meme-worthy music videos. But thankfully, Beyoncé has mostly managed to avoid the pitfalls of obnoxious pop stardom by assuming a relatively old-fashioned take on fame – keeping exposure of her personal life to a minimum, co-writing her own material, and even daring to experiment with what a pop hit can – and should – sound like. If only they could all sound like “Countdown,” Beyoncé’s most innovative, genre-spanning, peculiar and utterly triumphant song to date.

It’s easy to peg the other songs on 4, Beyoncé’s newest album, for their Top 40-bound treatment– the powerhouse anthem (“1+1”), the ebullient radio-ready love song (“Love on Top”), the empowering kiss-off track (“Best Thing I Never Had”), the laid-back party song w/requisite rap verse (“Party”) and the club banger (“Run the World (Girls)”). And then, there’s “Countdown. ” The song sounds straight-up weird on first listen – do those numbers even make sense? On what planet are pop hits structured like this? Did she really just say “Me and my boof and my boof boof ridin?” Take another listen, or two, or twenty, and all the song’s little quirks eventually bleed together into a non-stop sequence of flawless hooks.

Knowles has described the song as a cut-and-paste endeavor, saying of the production, “I was like a mad scientist, putting lots of different songs together.” “Countdown” is experimental for current pop music’s standards, and for all its borrowing from afrobeat, funk and Boyz II Men, the song’s spirit belongs to Queen B alone. You can dissect “Countdown” to try and pinpoint what gives the song its sparkle: the dancehall percussion keeps the tempo rolling, the marching band horns provide an irresistible bounce and the xylophone gives the rhythm a nimble backbone, all complemented by a few well-placed finger snaps. Beyoncé’s vocals are perfectly appropriate, in a rare performance that’s uncharacteristically understated but big in all the right places.

But the sheer radiance of “Countdown” is far more than a sum of the song’s parts. At the core of Beyoncé’s by-the-numbers extolling of her man’s strengths, beneath all the swagger, is the word “still.” From the song’s very first line, where she sings, “Killin’ me softly, and I’m still falling/Still the one I need, I will always be with you,” “Countdown” is dizzy with bewilderment. It’s as if Beyoncé can’t quite believe her luck; that for all the shitty dudes she’s trashed and raged at and cried over in “Irreplacable” and “If I Were A Boy” and “Ring the Alarm,” she managed to snag a good one. “Countdown” proves that Beyoncé’s at her best when she’s deliriously in love, and thankfully for pop music, she’s still crazy after all these years.

By Maeve McDermott