Look Out Hollywood....

Compulsive listmaker that I am, I keep a running tab on the best releases of the year, every year. I hear something good, it goes on there. My thinking is that if I write it down, I'll have more time to live with the albums and sort out my feelings about them by the time I have to share the list with you fine people. Though, it must be said that occasionally something gets a touch more consideration than anything else. When I found out that Chromatics had put their latest, the moody Kill For Love, on Soundcloud, that was all I listened to for several days. When one day my friend Joe Montone sent me a text asking what I thought of Father John Misty, it set off a chain of events, the latest of which is this post and which won't conclude until well after the first of May. Not only had I not listened to it, I had no idea what it was. Which made me feel rather silly because it was only the nom de plume of J. Tillman, the man whose music litters my film I Need You and who provides one fourth of the harmony voices of Fleet Foxes as well as playing their drums. He'd quit the band with the promise of new music, but how was I supposed to know that he'd be this quick about starting his third life? The album promised by the little I could find to read on the subject suggested something bigger and more open than his beautiful, sparse early efforts. Something that dripped with the ethos of its California spawning location. No familiar names in the liner notes, no familiar notes in the music. I was intrigued, if unnecessarily. The man could cough into a mic with the flu and I'd pay twice what it was worth to hear it. So when the promo showed up at Siren the other day, I threw it on so fast everyone's goddamn head spun.

 I played it twice in a row and then left it there. I talked it up with my friend/co-worker Ash, who, it should be said, is maybe the most picky human being alive when it comes to music. She digs old folk, blues and country, but draws lines even there that I often strain to fathom. She hears the new releases week after week of new artists yet only seems to enjoy the band Pontiak. I recommend music sparingly; I've been burned before. So it wasn't lightly that I offered the incredibly light seeming: "You might not hate it." The following afternoon I was at home when she asked me over the phone who this guy was. "He seems very nice from what little interaction we've had." "There are references to ethnobotany all over this record." I came in to the store to hear her namecheck somethings I recognized but couldn't put any meaning to, but evidently he was speaking her language. She caught the namechecking of Joseph Campbell, Cosmic Serpent, Ayahuasca, and heard what she thought might be references to Daniel Pinchbeck. She's an aspiring ethnobotanist and as such seemed to hear things in this album that I wouldn't. I caught his musical influences and all the references to the post-60s view of Hollywood, when they finally sat about discussing what they had just started to call the Golden Age. To me, the songs have the second-hand smoke of Jim/Brian Jones, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate and Bob Rafelson about them. She heard something else entirely, but we'd both heard it loud and clear. That is the mark of a great work of art.

When I heard the opening minute and a half of School of Seven Bells' Ghostory I called it the best album of the year, half-jokingly, but half-seriously because I could tell that they'd filled out their sound in a way that was logical given the . By one minute twenty one seconds it had been dethroned by Fear Fun by Father John Misty. The first song encapsulates the whole album pretty squarely, but it doesn't quite give you the whole picture. Listen to "Funtimes in Babylon" and you'll know that all of Fear Fun, due on the first of May, is unpretentious, just as expansive and gorgeous as he's ever been (though the mud covered forest floors and mist-shrouded barren landscapes of his earlier efforts have been replaced with flourishing farms and hills so green they're almost golden), and rounded out by orchestration that runs into every corner of the space, making sure that his voice is backed at every turn as if laying on a sea of hands carrying him from one end of a concert hall to another. Of course, what it doesn't tell you is how fun the record is in the meantime. You'll miss the hallucinogenic Van Morrison vibe of "I'm Writing A Novel," the honky-tonk revivalist pop of "Tee Pees 1-12," the acidic slow-burning waves of "This is Sally Hatchet" which features the greatest instrumental closing of any song this year (and that includes "Rodent" by Pharoah Overlord, but just barely). The album's influences are borderless, but also exactly late 60s California on the nose. It's a little overwhelming at first, but that feeling goes away when you realize how perfectly considered every song is, independently and in the context of the album. Tillman comes across as both disheveled truth-seeker, small before creation and ever eager to have his mind expanded and bed-hopping wise-ass lucky but not precisely grateful about not having been killed by his lifestyle. I'm not sure which I like better. The man with the shit-eating grin wearing a full beard and yesterday's clothes at the banquet gives us "Only Son of the Ladies Man" and "Well, You Can Do It Without Me," and truly sets the record apart from the first five Tillman records. But the man frightened and humbled by not understanding his place in the universe is the one whose voice goes to the most stirring and resonant places, as on "Now I'm Learning To Love The War," and stunning album closer "Everyman Needs A Companion," which is the most confessional song on a very personal record, and features maybe my favourite lyric he's ever sung: "I got hung up on Religion, though I know it's a waste. I Never Liked The Name Joshua. I Got Tired of J." How do you not fall in love with a crisis so identifiable which is yet the definition of exclusive? Everyone has to live with their name; you can change it, but who are you trying to convince ultimately? Tillman has thus explained the reason for his new moniker and closed out a completely shattering collection of sun-dried chamber pop right where we started, but infinitely better off. He still stands tiny in the face of the mysteries of the universe, every blade of grass, folk song and drunken evening a new universe to be contemplated, but we've got this record, and that, as he well knows, will last forever.

Best albums of 2011

Sorry for the delay, but we've all been a touch busy.

Tim!

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

The man is 70 but after about twenty years of relatively sedated albums Paul Simon's newest entry is strangely rejuvenating. He brings back his African and Latin American influences for a subtle complicated sound that simmers beneath his insightful, touching, and often hilarious lyrics.

Tyler, The Creator - Goblin

This album is seriously sick. It's disgusting. I was physically overcome with nausea while listening to this album. That's how offensive it is. I haven't been so shocked and revolted by someone's lyrics since I first heard the Marshal Mathers LP when I was 12. And I couldn't be more pleased.

Fox!

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
Radiohead - King of Limbs
Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
Tom Waits - Bad as Me
Danger Mouse - Rome
Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Cliff Martinez & Various - Drive

Scout!

1. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

-Well, what'd you expect. I'm not immune to beautiful harmonies, or sundrenched folk/country mixed with indie sensibilities. They might as well be recording these things just for me. I love Fleet Foxes. I think their compositions show a growth and ambition that outstrips even the "can you believe how easy we make this sound?" effortless gorgeousness of their debut. The first time I listened to this all the way through I saw an epic, a tragedy, the spanish civil war rendered in sonic brushstrokes. Maybe I'm the crest of a wave in an immeasurable tide by putting this at the top of my list, but I cannot refuse that this album had the deepest effect on me this year.

2. The Horrors - Skying

-Maturity means something when you talk about The Horrors. Listen to their debut album and EP and see five goths looking to spook the squares with their aggressively loud swamp punk. One album later and they'd accrued a sound that made perfect sense given the influences that occasionally broke through the impish twelve bar blues and yet represented a massive amount of growth. With their third album, they've expanded that sound to something with enough hills and valleys that you can lose yourself for days. Ride, Jesus & Mary Chain, Stone Roses, Sisters of Mercy, My Bloody Valentine, sure, yeah, but there's an optimism that escaped those bands. Maybe because they know they're just getting started. I realized not too long ago that whenever I can't think of what to listen to, I just put on Skying. After the thousandth time, you think I'd be even a little bored. Don't ask me, I'm just a fan.

3. TV On The Radio - Nine Types of Light

-I hesitate to make so much of this band's legacy about the death of multi-instrumentalist Gerard Smith, because while this record is a tribute to his contributions to the group's ever-evolving sound, it's also a celebration of not only his, but all of the band member's love of life. The most upbeat and beautiful of their albums to date, Nine Types of Light feels the most like a band playing in the same room. Whereas before they were architects building worlds together or chemists experiment with the DNA of post-punk and rock-and-roll, this album found them at their most relaxed. They've always been a kind of hive-mind, as evidenced by their trademark vocal blending, which here is more about support than mixing. Tunde and Kyp sing for each other, rather than as one voice, each given the breadth and space needed to showcase the resplendency of each man's range. And all the while Dave, Jaleel and Gerard split their time between crafting the usual tapestries of sound, but also just grooving. This was the band as we've never heard them, the same but different. Their sound may change forever; if so Nine Types of Light was as enlightening a closure to this part of their lives as anyone could ask for and will always be a testament to the five blinding talents that this band houses.

4. Wye Oak - Civilian

-If I ever meet the two people who create the boundless, ecstatic rock music on each Wye Oak album, I have to first apologize for stealing one of their songs in my zombie film (I've made 70 cents so far; we can certainly split it, though my cast might be angry). Then I have to thank them for making something new and inspiring out of something so simple. Jenn Wasner's guitar works as a microcosm of the miracle of the band's sound. On "Two Small Deaths," the album's opening track, the tone is threadbare, only increasing in tremolo for the chorus, yet between that and the muffled bass, the plain keyboard hum and light drumming, there's a sound big enough to blanket a city. Wasner's voice by itself is a thing of mysterious beauty, and Andy Stack, her one-man rhythm section keeps up beautifully. They never overdo it, but every song sounds impossibly big. The whole canon of 90s rock was digested to make their sound, but it's given back in the form of an understanding hug. They've taken aggression and angst and softened it to comfort their listeners. The album has its somber passages, but the feeling one is left with is overwhelmingly hopeful, as if Wasner has seen what hurts you most and, as she professes in tragic album closer "doubt," she'd do anything for you if it felt right. An honest and humble rock album that has something deeply warming at the heart of every song.

5. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

-I have a weakness for bands with big, friendly sounds. Arcade Fire's oddball debut gave way to an immutable call to action. Broken Social Scene's sexy shyness has since become a clear throated shout, imploring you to feel at all costs. The War On Drugs have the same peaks in them, but their delivery is quiet, brotherly and cool. Each song, whether it's a laid back guitar painting, a slight but charging rocker or an icy wall of noise, has a welcome feeling, like a dozen hands on your shoulder affirming that you've done alright. The sound is effusively pleasant and everyone's on the same page, wrapping each other in their instruments, never letting anyone go it alone. A familial familiarity greets you with each return.

6. Dirty Beaches - Badlands

-My only complaint: I want more. Badlands couldn't serve up enough of Dirty Beaches trademark (in my head) mix of Warholian buzz and old fashioned rock and roll. Like entering an abandoned factory and breaking every window on your way in (Speedway King) Badlands soon gets down to business, playing Link Wray through a hundred year old ham radio. Taking rock arrangements, cutting them with distortion and playing them ad infinitum, Dirty Beaches does for rock what Godard did for genre; cut up it up, show you its insides and then see if his meddling makes you love it any less. A statement, sure, but also one hell of a good time.

7. Psychic Teens - TEEN

runners up: The Psychic Paramount - II/Psychic Babble - My Brother's Ears/My Sister's Eyes

-One of the best parts of editing this blog is that I get to make the rules. So while some people might recuse themselves of reviewing an album made by someone they knew, I get to celebrate them. I take no little pride in saying that I know some of the Psychic Teens and they're all awesome guys. That said, I was a fan first and TEEN is one of the best fusions of styles I've ever heard. Like Joy Division meets Lunes, Psychic have a sound I find irresistable, all reverb and gliding guitar and glorious, glorious feedback. This is dark and sexy as post-punk gets.

8. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

-A friend once said that anyone who doesn't like Radiohead is trying not to like them. Their sound's been picked apart, especially on this record which was born in the age of instant gratification and rabbit-hole style music criticism. What I will say is that after hearing this album, it very suddenly became difficult to listen to their earlier albums. If they were capable of this, why hadn't they always made albums this minimal, yet striking? It's a ludicrous question, because obviously it took years to get them here, but I couldn't be more pleased that they're here. Now if only they'd release a new record a year like the free jazz mavericks they've become. I love Radiohead and won't make excuses about including them on my top 20.

9. Real Estate - Days

-Being a fan of post-punk often makes you easy to please. Like a game of spot-the-reference, I feel happiest when I can put on a new album and hear that the people making it love the same things I do. Sometimes that's enough. Real Estate take the elements I love about The Feelies, The Replacements and R.E.M. and stir them into a shimmering, shining good time. With the layers of a Philip Glass Etude, the four members of Real Estate craft a timeless feel good record that's as relentless in its way as any metal record. The guitar sound here was chosen for a reason and its legacy is assured. By never wavering from their sound, Real Estate are placing themselves daringly in rock history. Let's see what they do next.

10. The Coathangers - Larceny & Old Lace

I like the idea of Riot Grrrl more than I've ever connected with any of its tentpole albums. I was never a girl in the 90s and so I miss out on the politics to a degree and can't see through the sound to the message as clearly as its proponents. An album with all the hallmarks of that sound but whose style is much more about the No-Wavers of the late 70s? Pull up a chair and tell me about yourself. From the first time I heard them, while filming their performance in Siren Records, the Georgia quartet roared their way into my heart. Half saccharine posturing, half dissonant violence (their named after an illegal abortion, after all), The Coathangers would be a tough listen if the hooks weren't so indelible. The fact that they're adorable in spite of themselves helps too. They have it all, really.

11. The Rapture - In The Grace of Your Love

-If this record had nothing but "Blue Bird" it'd still be on here, but it's also got the typical electro funk fusion I love so much about The Rapture. And of course, it's got Luke Jenner's one-of-a-kind voice. Loving The Rapture means loving Jenner's raspy howl first and the band's dark disco sound a distant second. This time around they prove equally adept at rockers as with their usual Parisian salon electro pop, and thank god. If they'd never written "Blue Bird" my life would be less full.

12. Lisa Hannigan - Passenger

-"Home," the name of the first song, would have made a fine album title. The Irish singer-songwriter's sophomore release is the aural equivalent of laying by a fire in a cabin with the love of your life, boundless potential stretched out in front of you. Her compositions are stronger, her arrangements richer, her sound that much more endearing, her voice as warm and sweet as hot cocoa and soft as snow.

13. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

-Though she has the avant streak of Kate Bush, not to mention the capable voice, Annie Clark's goals are a little different. She's outthinks her rock contemporaries and outplays most of them too, like Thurston Moore doing Philipp Vandre. The hooks occasionally get lost under her dissonant orchestration, but they're there. She's at once more adventurously strange and poppy than on either of her last two records, producing pop gems like "Cruel" and "Cheerleader" and journeys like "Strange Mercy" which meanders through an electronic haze to reach one of her greatest choruses and that's saying something. It was for her that I coined the phrase "Transcendental Pop." She evolves more each time and watching her do so is always important, but the record has joys that even the uninitiated will love.

14. Gauntlet Hair - Gauntlet Hair

-Gauntlet Hair sounds like a demolished apartment building screaming its history in the seven seconds between implosion and full collapse. It shares the lives that have passed through it in abstraction and delivers it in the kind of echo-filled howl you can only hear when you live up the stairs from a passionately argumentative couple. It boils with life and feels loved and hated, angry and content. No other record this year sounded like Gauntlet Hair; rather, the feeling I got listening to it was more of a half-remember conversation, an overheard flirtation, of kids playfully laughing at a public pool. It's the rhythm of life transcribed in crashing symbols and guitar that's stuffed with chorus and reverb.

15. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

-Again, what could I say that you haven't thought? Harvey's most cinematic and playful release in her life. Like Serge Gainsbourg producing wartime blues, Harvey's found a niche she's never explored, sounding like the kind of thing you'd hear in a tube station during the blitz or at a mod club while David Hemmings tries to solve a murder, but of course much more modern and sexy than that implies.

16. Tom Waits - Bad As Me

-Heart Attack & Vine: The Reckoning.

17. Sonic Youth - Simon Werner A Disparu

-In a cruel twist of fate, an album made for someone else, a movie that most of their fans will never see (indeed that most have never heard of), may wind up being the last Sonic Youth album. If the legendary group doesn't survive the divorce of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, most people will believe (through stubbornness or perfectly understandable ignorance) that The Eternal is their final statement. And in a way it is. It's the last album they grew from nothing. Simon Werner was born out of a truly sexy French film of the same name and so the image spawned the sound (though try watching the film and imagining it without SY's involvement. It's impossible), but as a career summing cap, it would stand if it had to. Though it has the simmering rock of their later records, it also draws heavily from the shimmering slinky sounds of Sister, one of their most under-appreciated records. No one says a word the whole time, they let their guitars and drums talk for them, which is how I'll remember them. Not a rock band, but four people in synch, letting their hands guide their conversation and letting beauty rise to the surface, whether by design or by accident. They might shy if you called them artists to their face; Simon Werner is a minor masterpiece. Whether or not it's their last, it's just as brilliant as any in their canon.

18. Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams

-Sticky sweet and lovely as sin, like The Ronettes blasted through a jet engine.

19. Chad VanGaalen - Diaper Island

-Chad will always do precisely what he wants to. His sound is unique and lovely and I hope he never changes.

20. Washed Out - Within & Without

-Diaphanous bedroom music that sounds like lovemaking instead of crying, for once.

Honorary - Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side of the Luk Thung Underground

- A brilliant compilation of Thai psych music from the 70s. Truly amazing sound.

Best EPs of the Decade

Ok, the other thing that I take issue with in decade long recaps of anything is that there's little chance that any reviewer has heard absolutely everything. I work at a record store and before working there was one of its more frequent patrons, so I've heard a lot, but not everything.I couldn't if I wanted to. Anyway, when I say best, you gotta know I mean favorite. What the hell's the difference? No one's going to present you objectively with the best anything. That said, these EPs are better than most albums so...yeah. Go out (or online, as the case may be) and buy these because I want my bands to keep making records and these are proof that great music is made outside of the album format and the music industry's grubby claws.

Best EPs of the Decade

Com Lag [2+2=5]

by Radiohead 

After Radiohead released Hail To The Thief they were all I wanted to listen to, so imagined how bummed I was when I heard that Japan would be getting a tiding over in the form of an EP but the rest of us could kiss Radiohead's ass. Luckily the EP, the excellent Com Lag was only in international limbo for about a month before I found it at Siren Records in Doylestown and it quickly became one of my favorite releases of the year. The songs all seem to match the macabre blue-and-white cover art, ranging from the laid back "I Will (LA Version)," "I Am Citizen Insane," and "I Am A Wicked Child" to the paranoid "Paperbag Writer" and "Where Bluebirds Fly," which could be soundtrack pieces for a Quay Brothers short. It showed every aspect of Radiohead's not inconsiderable talent, the electronic music, the blistering live show (a live version of "2+2=5") and Thom Yorke's devastating voice. "Gagging Order" and the acoustic version of "Fog" are killer live tracks and two of Yorke's most beautiful compositions. I used to take Com Lag on car trips near wooded areas because it was the perfect companion for dark, spooky, unexplored areas.

EP To Be You And Me

by Broken Social Scene

Those of us quick enough to buy Broken Social Scene, the Canadian collective's self-titled second record with lyrics, fourth release overall, were treated to the cleverly titled EP To Be You And Me, a collection of cool noise and sensitive rock in equal measure. Starting with the ethereal "Her Dissappearing Theme" and getting more mileage out of electronic instruments and cool percussion than either Broken Social Scene and You Forgot It In People with "Baroque Social" and "No Smiling Darkness / Snake Charmer's Association." The rockers are top notch, too; "Major Label Debut (Fast)" provides a charging alternative to the slow-moving original on BSS and somehow feels like the more relaxed song. "Canada Vs. America" is one of the band's biggest and best songs period. With Justin Peroff's frenetic drumming, who solos as much as any guitarist while still providing rhythm, and that tremendous horn part, the song is, like Radiohead's "Cuttooth," the perfect B-Side and on an EP that feels like a great forgotten album. When I stayed with Jo-Ann Goldsmith in Toronto while filming I spotted among her many books and things Free To Be You And Me and for a minute felt like I had uncovered a pretty important part of my and their history. Maybe I didn't find anything hugely significant to the rest of the world, but to me it was huge. The record that EP To Be is attached to changed my life, and taken together, they're gospel.

Friend

by Grizzly Bear

Everyone got really surprised when Grizzly Bear released Friend and discovered it was as long as a regular album. There are differences, of course: Friend doesn't feel nearly as well concieved but there are some truly brilliant moments to be found within the album's 11 songs. Many are just re-imaginations but they feel like totally new songs; "Alligator" is still just as weird as before but "Little Brother" and "Shift" come away with a new, eerie lifeblood. The best tracks run the gamut from scary to sublime, from the creepy Crystals cover "He Hit Me," to the musical quaalude that is "Deep Blue Sea." The covers and remixes are...well, I'm not the best person to talk to about remixes and though I like the Band of Horses take on "Plans," I feel like there was more ground to be covered. Anyway, stick around until after "Deep Blue Sea" closes because the best track on the record is hidden; it's also the best thing Zach Condon has ever done.

From The Cliffs

by Guillemots

In 2006, I started rediscovering the best of the 1980s British bands. My jumping off point for that endeavor was discovering Guillemots because friends of mine who were around for the bands they sounded like (Blowmonkeys, The Jam, etc.) told me how much they appreciated their sound. The thing about Guillemots is that yes, you can take a trip back to the best of British Pop/New Romantic music, but also, these guys write bitchin' songs. The hooks are nonstop, the instrumentation just eclectic enough (Aristazabal Hawkes' upright bass cuts the band apart from most of their peers and Fyfe Dangerfield's keyboard swells do the rest of the work). Dangerfield's voice happens to be one of the best of any modern band and it shows through beautifully on songs like "Cats Eyes" and "My Chosen One" and especially "Trains To Brazil." "Trains" is one of the best songs of this or any decade and though I listen to it every other day I still haven't gotten tired of it. From The Cliffs has six excellent pop songs and one sprawling watery love song, "Over The Stairs" which forecast the kind of songs Guillemots would write on their debut record Through The Windowpane. Though "Love Song #43" and "Trains" wound up on Windowpane, fans of Dangerfield's songs ought to buy the EP because otherwise they'd miss "Cats Eyes" and "Who Left the Lights Off, Baby?" two of the most inspiring and wonderful songs on the record that both rival anything on Through The Windowpane and most other songs of the last ten years. From The Cliffs is an unprecedented beam of light.

Heads Up 

by Death From Above 1979

I bought this EP not expecting much, then ten minutes later I was permanently deaf. Heads Upis ferocity incarnate. In an age of two man bands, DFA1979 had the most assault-like aesthetic. One guy on distorted bass and a singing drummer. Sebastian Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler understood rock music and delivered it like a shot through a syringe, if only for one album and this truly great EP (they have 19 original songs in all. That they made as big an impact as they did is pretty impressive when you consider that figure). In between sampled clips of what sound like old Japanese toys, Keeler and Grainger beat the shit out of their instruments with rock songs both catchy and awesomely intense. When you tread the ground between metal and indie and manage to make a credible stab at both, you've got my undivided attention, especially if you're too loud to ignore.

Heavy Head

by Gentleman Reg

Gentleman Reg is one of the decade's most under-appreciated songwriters (and dressers, but that's a different post) and it took about ten years for him to break through to where people could find him. His first few albums are great and when he signed to Arts & Crafts he finally had access to a crisp, Canadian alt. sound and a bunch of people to help him get there. After he released Jet Black with the help of members of Broken Social Scene he put out an online only EP called Heavy Head with two covers, two remixes and two new songs with help from Owen Pallett and Joel Gibb from Hidden Cameras. The remixes don't do much for me (though they're pretty good). No, the meat of the record is on those four normal songs. The covers are great, Chris Isaacs' "Wicked Game" sounding painfully human and Stevie Nicks' "Wild Heart" a wispy and effortless rocker. And anyone who can get me to like Stevie Nicks, has got my respect and admiration. The two original songs are great, too. "Justified" is gorgeous and Pallett's violin together with Reg's voice and slick songwriting make for excellent companions. I felt weird spending five bucks on a slip of laminated paper, but when it turned into Heavy Head my woes were quelled.

Hvarf/Heim

by Sigur Rós

The one thing I regret about seeing Sigur Rós was that I wasn't closer to the stage because I would have killed to see Georg Holm playing the bass during "Hafsol." Long unreleased, it found a home on Hvarf/Heim the EP companion to the Heima documentary DVD, released around the time that the In A Frozen Sea vinyl box set came out. As I didn't have 200 dollars to blow, I was happy with Hvarf/Heim which combined B-sides with a strikingly crisp live set comprised of acoustic renditions of some of their prettiest songs from previous records. Sigur Rós could really do anything and fans would buy immediately but Hvarf/Heim was a carefully considered release and didn't feel the least bit perfunctory. The band were simply bringing us some of their best songs in their current evolutionary state. It made perfect sense and is one of the most gorgeous releases of the decade.

Is Is

by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I though the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were lost for a minute there. They had those solid first records then...Show Your Bones, which was a downer in the utmost. They came back, though, and hard with Is Is, a five song EP that, to borrow a phrase, "flat out fucking rocks." Rediscovering dirty no-wave like they used on their first album, they crank up the reverb and the volume and Nick Zinner, Brian Chase and Karen O roar in equal measure with equal volume. Nick Launay, famed producer of Public Image Limited and Gang Of Four, brought out that switch-blade sharp edge they had dulled down for the sake of the highly commercial and thus unappealing (to me)Bones. "10 x 10" and "Rockers To Swallow" show them mining new depths and "Down Boy" has one of the raunchiest guitar riffs Nick Zinner's ever come up with. Is Is has the feeling of a sonic ambush and since then Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been back on the right track, producing It's Blitz,their best album yet.

A Lesson In Crime

by Tokyo Police Club

Great rock records are difficult to find, Tokyo Police Club proved this when they released their super disappointing Elephant Shell. Elephant Shell wouldn't have seemed like such a bummer if their previous release, A Lesson In Crime, wasn't such a kickass debut. Combining ultra-tight drum intros, grungy bass riffs and screaming post-punk echoey guitars and Dave Monks bedroom drawl, the band pioneered a rock sound equivalent to the strain of movies known as "We Have Seen The Future And It Sucks." Monks' lyrics incorporate images of sci-fi weirdness and dystopian landscapes and the band rocks the shit out of the seven songs on A Lesson In Crime. Barely more than 15 minutes long, Tokyo Police Club made themselves out to be the best club band on the continent with their first EP.

The Moan

by The Black Keys

Sometimes EPs can be like gifts; The Moan just showed up one day in the Black Keys' section and much air drumming ensued. What I love about the Black Keys is that though they have a very specific sound, they manage to present it slightly differently on every release, but it's up to die-hards to figure it out. The Moan is the dustiest of their releases, sounding like an unearthed LP from the late 60s (a cover of The Stooges' "No Fun" and The Sonics' "Have Love Will Travel" help the feel of a time capsule). The guitar notes fight to get out of the speaker and the drums sound a touch muted; Dan Auerbach's shout is husky as ever. The bluesified covers of the two late 60s gems help define the kind of attitude and fun that Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney bring to their music.

Sun Giant

by Fleet Foxes 

Everyone loves Fleet Foxes. I mean...right? I don't mean to presume but I haven't met anyone with a vehement or casual dislike of Fleet Foxes. Anyway, purists are all "The EP is better than the album" and I'm all "no!" I like Sun Giant a good deal, but it's got nothing on the album, though it has some of the same inch-thick atmosphere and of course killer harmonies. "Mykonos" is the standout; the rest of it could have sucked and Sun Giant still would have been great, but the other songs are pretty excellent too. "Sun Giant" is a bit too deliberate a throwback for me but "English House" is pretty awesome. The whole record carries the blueprint of their cabin-in-the-woods, country vibe and is really pretty from end to end.

The Tain

by The Decemberists

My friend Blair loves telling people his favorite Decemberists song is "The Tain", but only because he loves the Andy Smetanka animation that accompanies it on the DVD they put out a few years ago. The animation is pretty sweet and so is the song that underscores it, a 5-part 18 minute epic about battle and birth and hounds that is an obvious precursor to The Hazards Of Love with its repeating themes and dire subject matter. It's a big, early-70s blast of proto-metal and nerdy guitar theatrics and it's pure, unadultered Colin Meloy at his best.

The Wings & The Waters

by Laura Jorgensen 

Going to school in Boston means occasionally brushing up against the endless well of creativity that is Berklee College. More recently that meant learning about Laura Jorgensen. Laura happened to sit next to me in Intro to Film Scoring and she's also made one of the best EPs I've heard in years. Combining bare-bones accordion compositions with her otherworldly and limitless voice, she sails through four sombre yet hopeful songs. Like a siren luring ships aground, her voice wraps itself around the fog-like accordion and she uses every syllable like a signal of something new and exciting she can't simply say. This is a sort of cheat as you will have no way of knowing about Laura or her excellent EP, but she's someone to look out for (she records a full-length sometime in the next two months if I'm not mistaken) and she's just as capable an artist of most everyone on this list. Incidentally I asked her to come up with an image for the EP but I've got nothing from her yet so we'll have to settle for an old-fashioned photograph.