Year-end has
rolled around yet again and I’ve been sitting at my computer
for two days now trying to rack my mind for the things that
really blew me out of the water. As always, my brain is a
vapid hole where things go to be forgotten and thus the
things on this list don’t accurately represent the entire
year. It’s just the things that most definitively stick out
in the cloud of music that buffets my brain on a near
constant basis.
As always, thanks for reading. Don’t drink too much nog at
the holiday party. It always ends with your boss touching
your ass.
Noah's Year-End List
12) Rangers - Xochilmo
Xochilmo is a journey in to the cracked VHS of a
fuzzy 1980s sci-fi/horror flick. It’s strange and long and
brimming with pitch changes and rhythm bursts and oddity in
all forms and I absolutely love it. It might just be the
first 18 minute song I’ve ever played enough times to wear
it out.
11) Twin Steps - Junkie
Song
I saw Twin Steps in a basement and fell in love with this
mix of thrashy garage, noise and 1960s melodies. It makes
you feel like you’re wearing a hoop skirt, smoking meth from
a pop can, and head banging all at the same time. Do I need
to remind you that this is a good thing?
10) Breakers - Gem Club
When Hardly Art sent over there new release from Chicago’s
Gem Club I was reticent. Earnestly emotional and built
around sweeping bits of orchestral composition, it seemed a
little too much Bon Iver mixed with James Blake. But after a
rare repeated listens, it’s grown on me. Christopher Barnes
makes sad, beautiful music, some of the best around but he
never becomes sappy or overly emotional. Yes, he reminds me
of Bon Iver and James Blake, but only the best parts.
09) The Caretaker - An
Empty Bliss Beyond This World
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World feels like the music
you hear in the backgroud of the creepy antique store you
stop in to look for records. You don’t really know where it
comes from or what versions of the songs your hearing are,
but they’re there. Bubbling up in to the loose corners of
your brain reminding you of something.
08) Disappears - Guider
Disappears released Lux a few years back and though
good, it felt mired in gloom. An album to listen to on the
darkest day of winter. Their follow-up Guider
continues the constant swell of psych-tinged, kraut-feeling
guitar, but does so with a healthier burst of sunshine. I no
longer want to toss myself from the Golden Gate Bridge after
listening to Guider, just smoke something illegal and sink
in to the velvety cushions of my imaginary couch.
07) Yalls - Yalls
Electronica has really been giving me the once-over this
year and I find myself more and more drawn to the strange
world Bay Area musicians are taking it. Yalls might’ve
crafted the best of these albums this year, a 19 song opus
that bounces between Ratatat and Atlas Sound and edgy
experimental music with no shortage of talent to pass
around. Germs might be the underground hit of the
year.
06) Burnt Ones - Black
Teeth And Golden Tongues
I’ve gone on record with my opinion of bands aping the
pre-hair rock bands of the 1970s: it’s a fun sound, but
after two or three jaunts down that road, I’m pretty bored.
Unless I’m listening to Burnt Ones. A three piece with a
heavy T-Rex influence, Burnt Ones manage to capture the rock
and roll spirit of 1974 without turning it in to a
fraternity theme party. I caught a late late night show of
there’s a few months back and was melted in to a puddle by
their infectious energy and ability to push "good time" to a
new level. Black Teeth And Golden Tongues is perhaps
my favorite full release this year, with every track
knocking on the door of T. Rex without devolving in to
imitation. There’s a lot of bands this year playing in this
sandbox and Burnt Ones are the only ones keeping my
attention.
05) The Mallard
The Mallard, a dear friend of mine, has come a long way in
2011. If you’d taken a snapshot of her one year from today
you would’ve seen a one-woman band playing eleven minute
sets and then sheepishly retreating from the stage. And she
was amazing then. A year later she’s acquired a bassist and
a drummer, been signed to Castleface, is awaiting her debut
album, and has made the evolution from timid front-woman to
high-pantsed rock star. Her new album sounds like surf rock
recorded inside a haunted mansion, but more than that it
sounds like the emergence and evolution of an artist to look
out for.
04) Positive Destruction
I’ve been on the lookout for a blog that not only agrees
with my, admittedly, narrow musical focus, but one that
points that laser focus at the amazing Bay Area music scene.
I will look no further than Positive Destruction. Let it be
known, I’ve written a smattering of pieces for Positive
Destruction but only after I’d fallen head over heels for
the well thought out and well curated selection of singles
and videos from the best and the brightest in the Bay Area.
If you’re looking for what’s next in San Francisco, start
here. I certainly do.
03) Case Studies - The
World Is Just An Empty Void To Fill
Jesse Lortz melted you as one half of The Dutchess and The
Duke and now he’s back to crush the remaining bits of your
heart in to nothingness with Case Studies. You Folded Up
My Blanket Like We Were Already Lovers is one of the
great songs of the decade. It followed me across the
Midwest, an addiction I had no need to cease. This is every
painful bit of love lost you’ve ever had, compressed in to
song form and slingshot in to your ear drums. Beautiful and
heartbreaking all at the same time.
02) Thee Oh Sees
I can’t remember a year since I first discovered Thee Oh
Sees (opening for Annuals at Neumos in Seattle of all
places) that they haven’t consistently defied my
expectations of them and ended up somewhere near the top of
the single digits for my year-end list. 2011 is no
different. Two albums (Carrion Crawler/The Dream,
Castlemania), a split record with Australian
brute-rockers Total Control, and lets not even get started
with singer John Dwyer’s record label Castleface and the
slew of amazing artists released through that. Thee Oh Sees
music has grown tighter and looser and stranger and longer
all at the same time and I’m already excited to see what
their next year will bring.
01) San Francisco, The
Bay Area
I’m not shocked that nearly my entire list is made up of
artists from the Bay Area. I’ll be honest, if not for a yen
to have a less narrow remembrance of my year in music, it
would’ve been even heavier on Bay Area musicians. San
Francisco is the first town that has sucked me in to its
music scene. Even when I lived in Seattle, and wrote for
this site, I never found myself as obsessed with a
particular group of musicians as I do here. Garage, fucked
up electronica, noise, doo-wop - whatever, The Bay Area is
doing it right now, and if you ask me, they’re doing it
better than any place in the nation. Call me bias, I am.
- Noah Sanders -
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