Okay, I know it’s already mid-March, so it may seem a little late to be posting the third and final instalment of my 2010 year-end best-of music list—more like the idleness of March than the ides of March. However, I have been a little preoccupied with other things, like trying to find a job.
But since I’ve posted the first two parts already, I just need to finish it off. I can’t move on to other topics until I wind this up. I suppose I could have simply stopped after Part II, but then I’d be neglecting some of my favourite music from the past year. So here we go…
Music I Liked in 2010: The Final Chapter.
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Dr. Dog, Shame, Shame
It’s always a treat when you discover a “new” band through tracks posted online for free download. Better when they seem pretty good and so you decide to take a chance on their latest CD by going to an actual bricks-and-mortar-record-store to purchase it. And best of all when that CD turns out to be full of great songs. It’s enough to restore your tattered faith in the record biz! Well, okay, let’s not get too crazy. But that was how I came to know Dr. Dog’s sixth full-length release, Shame, Shame.
For this CD, their first release on the ANTI- label, the Philadelphia-based band worked with co-producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith), the first time they’d worked with an outside producer. It was a good decision. Schnapf brings the same detailed but non-smothering production that he contributed to Smith’s best albums, Either/Or, XO and Figure 8.
These songs are slightly on the quirky-indie side and they’re catchy as all get-out, with lots of musical hooks, nimble arrangements, and nifty back-up vocals. What also strengthens the band’s hand is that it features two singers in guitarist Scott McMicken and bassist Toby Leaman, the band’s founders and songwriters. They’re about to launch a spring tour, so if they come your way, go check them out and give the dog some bones.
Favourite tracks:
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Spoon, Transference
I’ve been a big fan of this Austin, Texas band for the past 10 years. My introduction to Spoon was courtesy of a CMJ New Music Monthly magazine CD insert from March 2001. We used to get the magazine at work at Columbia House. If I got to it first, I could tear out the CD before anyone else got their hands on it. The first track I recall hearing was Lines in the Suit. The next Spoonfeeding I remember, possibly from a subsequent CMJ CD sampler, was the song The Way We Get By. Among all the other cuts, it stood out like a cactus in a rose garden. That was when I knew I was onto something special.
Spoon combine the basic elements of the rock’n’roll toolkit (guitars, drums, bass, analogue keyboards) with whiffs of punk, vestiges of the more austere varieties of ’80s new wave and other influences, onto a minimalist palette that gives their records a bracing immediacy. And of course, let’s not forget the vocals and writing of the one and only Britt Daniel, who’s become one of the great leading lights of indie rock. It’s the delivery, the spirit, the warts’n’all directness. Others labour at a style (I’m thinking here of the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy’s absurdly roundish pronunciations or Conor Oberst’s mannered intensity), but Britt Daniel just is. Like all the best rock’n’roll singers, he’s a natural stylist.
Where their previous release, 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, employed a beefed-up sound occasionally augmented with horns, Transference features a more stripped-down aesthetic, and while it might not be quite as consistently solid as its predecessors like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or 2005’s Gimme Fiction, it was still one of the highlights of the year for me, and that’s been true for any year Spoon releases a CD.
Favourite tracks:
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The Beauties, The Beauties
Famed for their Sunday night residencies at Toronto’s hipster honky-tonk the Dakota Tavern, where they formed in 2006 (singer/guitarist Shawn Creamer is a co-owner), word about the Beauties began to spread around town a couple of years ago. With their self-titled debut release, the band lived up to the local hype in spades. This was one of the CDs that kept me company when I drove solo from Toronto to P.E.I. and back last summer. Good driving music, day or night. For some reason, it seemed especially apt for the landscape of the upper Saint John River valley in New Brunswick.
Favourite tracks:
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The Black Keys, Brothers
The Black Keys—guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney—is another of my favorite bands of the past decade. They seem to have really hit their stride over the last couple of albums, especially with 2008’s Attack and Release and now with the 2010 release Brothers (I’ll also throw in an honourable mention of Auerbach’s excellent 2009 solo album, Keep It Hid).
Brothers sounds and feels like one of those breakthrough albums where a band puts it all together. This is gritty, blues-based, soul-pleasing stuff.
And besides, their videos are the BEST!
Favourite tracks:
Next Girl (What’s not to like about hot bikini chicks, a dinosaur puppet and a disclaimer scroll!)
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Band of Horses, Infinite Arms
Upon my initial acquaintance with Band of Horses, I dismissed them as another band mining the dense-ethereal-reverb-drenched-middle-Americana-layered-vocal-harmony thing that others such as Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and even My Morning Jacket were doing—and mostly doing better. But with Infinite Arms they raised their game and produced an album rich in melody, hay-sweet harmonies, compelling compositions and lots of great guitar work.
Favourite tracks:
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Band of Heathens, One Foot in the Ether
As the saying goes, one good “Band of H-name” deserves another.
Now, truth be told, this CD was actually released in 2009, but I got it in 2010. And here I must invoke the loophole inherent in the name of this series of blog entries: “Music I Liked in 2010″, i.e., not “2010 Music I Liked”. See what I did there? Heh heh. Yup. Gotta get up prit-tee early in the mornin’ to fool ol’ Jimmer.
Anyway, I first saw these guys on “Austin City Limits” and I was very impressed with their songs, their singing, and their musicianship. Plus I love the fact that there are three individual frontmen, each of whom was a singer-songwriter on his own before banding together heathenly. Each can carry the spotlight one moment and blend into the group dynamic the next.
After listening to their entire catalogue streaming for free from their website, I bought their latest album, One Foot in the Ether. It’s a fantastic album. Soulful, blues-y, rootsy, gospel-fried, southern country-rock. Great songs, killer harmonies, top-notch playing.
Their “Austin City Limits” episode is available here (after Elvis Costello’s excellent set).
Favourite tracks:
The irresistible LA County Blues. This guitar riff got stuck in my head for days. Plus, it’s inspired by Hunter S. Thompson.
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Honourable Mentions
Elvis Costello, National Ransom
Alejandro Escovedo, Street Songs of Love
Neil Young, Le Noise
Jim Bryson & The Weakerthans, The Falcon Lake Incident
The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You
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What about you? What’s some of your favorite music of the past year, or even more recently?
