As mentioned previously, yr friends here at Clicky Clicky are putting together a series of now-sound rock shows at famed neighborhood establishment O'Brien's Pub in Allston Rock City. The next entry is this Wednesday, when we will be complicit in presenting three new Boston acts on the club's famed corner stage. We're calling this one A Very Clicky Clicksgiving and you are all cordially invited to come early, stay late and drink a beer (if you are so inclined/legally able). Bring some earplugs, cause it'll get loud. So what's on auditory tap?
Top-lining the event is the garagey indie project Philosophical Zombie, the latest outing from scene veteran Ted Billings, formerly of Age Rings and Slater. Wednesday's show serves as the Boston record release party for PZ's bracing debut long player Loneliness Is Blue And Not Blue. The collection presents something of a slightly more spontaneous approach to Billings' music, although it does not sacrifice any of the immense songwriting talent that has made him a person of interest on this blog during the last several years; indeed, Billings' last Age Ringsrecord and the solo record that closely followed were among Clicky Clicky's favorite records of 2011 and 2012, respectively. The rap is that the 10 songs that comprise Loneliness are the results of a writing exercise, and, with the encouragement and blessing of the fine folks behind Killer Wail Records, are presented mostly unretouched. Which is not to say that the record feels rushed or even incomplete -- quite the contrary -- but rather that it brims with potent urgency emphasized by an in-the-red production style. Loneliness Is Blue And Not Blue's best moments, such as opener "All Men" and "Father John," are fuzzy and distorted but never hazy, propelled by driving, insistent rhythms toward ready hooks. Closer "Wedding" tops both with Billings' shouted and sharply panned vocal tracks heard bouncing between shards of heavy down-stroked guitar. It's a dizzying effect that again meshes well with the live, fresh feel of the recording. Loneliness Is Blue And Not Blue is out now via New York based Killer Wail, and we are pleased to present below a stream of "Ash And Her," a more tender moment from the set that still leans heavily on guitars. Digital copies of the record are on offer right here.
Along for the ride Wednesday are area indie concerns New Dark Arts and Prom Night, two bands that orbit the same scene-iverse as those Boston acts we highlighted earlier this year in our Class of 2015 overview. New Dark Arts is the newly rebranded, emo-tinged indie rock project from Collin Coviello, a Boston transplant heretofore known for his work in BDAY BOY. Prom Night is a darker, denser, horror film-themed shoegaze project of Elizabeth Colour Wheel principle Mike Costa, who coincidentally also contributes drumming to New Dark Arts. Check out music from both acts via the embeds below. The show's particulars are all laid our in this Facebook event page, but to sum up: doors Wednesday are at 8:30 PM, it’s 18+ and the ticket will set you back eight American dollars. Speaking of tickets, those of you who like to plan ahead may acquire some at this link. -- Dillon Riley
It's safe to assume that no one is more relieved by the release of American Bedrooms than Ted Billings himself. Not only is the amazing and potent new collection being issued little more than a year after the most recent long-player from Mr. Billings' mothballed rock outfit (this is no small victory, as Age Rings' Black Honey -- one of Clicky Clicky's favorite records of 2011 -- somewhat infamously took four years to complete). But also the release of American Bedrooms likely serves at least in some small part as an exorcism of the feelings related to the events described therein. Most everyone has a story about where they were when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 occurred; Mr. Billings' American Bedrooms jumps off from that horrific day ("I was starting school when the planes hit," he sings in the opener "Freedom") to explore the songwriter's struggle toward peace of mind in the decade that followed.
While a substantial part of the ambitious, Townshendian narrative is fiction -- particularly the record's climax, "Rotten World" -- it's pretty heavy. Still, it doesn't weigh down the proceedings in the least: American Bedrooms is first and foremost a great rock and roll record whose eight anthemic songs comprise a concise psychodrama punctuated by brilliant, punchy power-pop. Perhaps because of its relatively short gestation period, perhaps not, American Bedrooms is a leaner, more lucid set of tunes than those on Black Honey. Where the prior record was rife with tunes marked by the surrealism of fever dreams, American Bedrooms feels refreshingly straightforward, almost literal. Musically, the record rides high on an undercurrent of vital punk mania; fuzzed guitars rule the day. The set's narrative arc spans both a slow-boiling, post-millennial confusion and disillusionment and a dark twist on conventional salvation (love, here not quite requited and complicated by a hostage situation...) that culminates in the dark ballad that closes the record.
The aforementioned "Freedom" is a tight, buoyant composition commencing with a choppy guitar riff touting Telekinesis-styled fuzz. The fuzz deepens and seeps into the vocal on "House On Fire," a tune that broadens the scope of the record to implicate the collapse of the domestic housing market ("I live in a house on fire, a foreclosure the price was right, we all choose how we're gonna die..."). The guitar part in the title track's verse echoes a bit of Bryan Adams' "Run To You." Thumping, relentless quarter notes from the drum kit anchor the slithering six-string part, but pointedly evaporate at the spine-tingling first chorus, which is ushered in over a solemn, ecclesiastical organ lick. The beat returns, as does the narrator's simple prayer for a facsimile of the American dream ("...all I want to do is to share an American bedroom with you..."). The narrator's misguided hopes of ameliorating his disillusionment and frustration via a romantic conquest, well, that doesn't go as planned ("... I thought you'd learn..."), but it certainly makes for a beautiful finale for American Bedrooms; the stunned admission "didn't see that coming" in "Rotten World" -- delivered amid a pretty cascade of synths -- is terrifically poignant.
Billings self-releases American Bedrooms digitally tomorrow; it is already available for streaming and purchase via the Bandcamp embed below. It is certainly among the best records released this year, although given its late entry it likely won't be recognized as such, sadly. The record will be feted tomorrow evening at The Middle East Rock Club in Cambridge with a record release show featuring a stellar bill. Not only will Mr. Billings and band perform, but also Midriff Records' flagship act, Boston post-punk titans The Beatings, will play, as will the acclaimed Dear Leader and Marconi.
You know who owns you for the front half of Memorial Day weekend -- and will be largely responsible for your inability to do anything the second half -- assuming you are unable to escape the gravitational pull of the greater Boston/Cambridge/Somerville triangle? No, not this guy. Radio in Somerville, that's who. Starting on Thursday (and we're assuming you are still banned for life from River Gods, because, you know, this), the new-ish little club that could is just killing it with non-stop rock 'n roll. It all kicks off with an evening of rock headlined by pop adventurists Future Carnivores and featuring support from slow-core stalwarts Travels. We've weighed in on recent releases by both acts, calling Future Carnivores' self-titled debut "the first refreshing surprise of 2012" here, and we reviewed Travels' most recent maxi-single here last October. Also performing Thursday are Dirty Virgins and The Wrong Shapes. The latter act features Future Carnivores' Bo Barringer along with Rachel Arnold on cello and vocals; the pair parleys sensuous pop that will please fans of same. More deets at the Facebook event page yonder.
Clicky Clicky faves Varsity Drag occupy the center square Friday night in their first performance in who knows how long. Too long. According to legend, if the trio doesn't play its hit "Summertime," we're all doomed to another six weeks of this treacherous spring we've been having (oh, it's actually been kinda nice...?), so let's keep our fingers crossed. As an added treat, 'Drag drummer Josh Pickering is also banging the cans strapping on a guitar and crushing out chords as part of power-pop purveyors Peter Buzzelle & the Soul Clinic Bible School's set, making a characteristically sweaty evening for Mr. Pickering doubly so. Unless it is, like, weirdly cold that night? Not gonna happen, right? The evening is rounded out by a set from BirdsMakeBirds, whose name proposition seems air-tight, and another from Black Fortress of Opium. Here's the Facebook event page; join the army.
You will hopefully have something remaining in your proverbial gas tank for a huge Saturday night at Radio, as that is the latest entry in Midriff Records' reliably awesome monthly residency. This month's event features a set from recent Midriff signatories Age Rings, who will be feting the release of their upbeat new Midriff EP AM/PM (which we wrote about here earlier). Also on the bill is one of the label's flagship acts, Eldridge Rodriguez, who are fresh from a much-discussed appearance on Clicky Clicky's own NOFUCKINGWHERE compilation (download here), as well as guitar pop act Cooling Towers and a tandem performance from Midriff-friendly Sarah Borges and Midriff's own Greg Lyon. Mr. Lyon, of course, among other things is also a notable solo artist on Midriff as well as the latest addition to the label's legendary founders, The Beatings. And those other things: Lyon's ethereal re-imagining of RIDE's "Paralyzed" graced the aforementioned NOFUCKINGWHERE, which compilation's art and layout were also executed by Mr. Lyon. Let's just go ahead and say it: renaissance man. And how about one more Facebook event page?
All that stuff above? All that is happening over the course of three consecutive nights this weekend at Radio. It's mind-blowing. Get into it. We're dropping some song embeds below so you can limber up your ears. Dig.
>> Boston institution Midriff Records will release next week Age Rings' AM/PM EP, a companion piece to last year's best-of-2011 long-player Black Honey. The EP is comprised of songs resected from the Boston-based indie rockers' original, two-disc version of the acclaimed long-player it issued to Kickstarter backers a year ago. Midriff's release of AM/PM is no surprise, as it had been the label's plan since releasing its one-disc iteration of Black Honey last November [review] to release the songs it had excised at a later date. And that later date is May 25, when Age Rings plays a release show for the EP on the occasion of this month's installment of the very successful Midriff Records residency at Radio in Somerville, MA -- but more about that early next week. In a sense, AM/PM is a bin of spare arms and legs. But while the EP doesn't explicitly illuminate any heretofore unrevealed aspect of Black Honey (or vice versa), that perhaps speaks to the deftness of Midriff's curation of the portfolio of songs comprising the original, double-disc Black Honey such that the releases are self-contained collections complete in and of themselves. Indeed, the EP is populated with understated but brilliant rock songs showcasing Age Rings fronter Ted Billings' reedy tenor and wry outlook. Standout cuts include the noisier, heavier fist-pumper "Dreaming Forever" and the characteristically uptempo-but-down-in-the-mouth shuffler "Think Myself Sick." It's hard to know what to make of last week's news that Mr. Billings has converted the ongoing sessions for Age Rings' follow-up to Black Honey into sessions for a solo record Billings characterizes as "a bit of a departure from AR." After all, we like Age Rings a lot. But time will tell. In the mean time, rest assured in the knowledge that AM/PM is a known quantity, six tracks of lean, rootsy indie rock.
>> We were feeling a bit of a darkwave trend coming on when we last heard from Charlottesville, VA's Manorlady. We're not sure that has been borne out, particularly due to the apparent dissolution of the Lehigh Valley's best calling card in years, Soars, whose wonderful self-titled set seemed like another important focal point for the misperceived trendlet. But Manorlady soldiers on, thrives even, and the trio's latest collection Ego Oppressor will be self-released by the band June 18. Ego Oppressor will be issued as a CD/DVD combination; the DVD features an album-length, beat-synched video track to accompany the music on the CD. We don't think this will surprise anyone, but according to Manorlady fronter Aaron Baily, "[i]t's really, really, really trippy." The album remains true to the mid-fi and dark recordings from the band's last record, but the intensity level has increased. More aggressive tunes like the first preview track "Lines In The Corner Of Your Face" rock a little harder, while the dreamier, more subdued songs such as the pensive and nearly still "Sea Beast" -- check the Soundcloud embed below -- are more tightly focused. "Sea Beast," in particular, is exceptionally well-composed and the trio's skillful layering of guitar and synth (and even vocal parts) here hints at wide-open songwriting territory the band will find very fertile. Ego Oppressor will eventually be for sale right here, so keep checking back. We reviewed the trio's prior full-length Home a year ago here.
>> We think it is interesting that the term lo-fi has its heaviest associations bound to Guided By Voices' and Sebadoh's respective brands, while things like early Black Flag and Bad Brains recordings don't get discussed the same way (or at least not anymore). From a production standpoint, Richmond-based quartet Tungs has more in common with the Spot school of audio fidelity, at least based on the band's cracking new split release with scenemates Heavy Midgets, Sisters. There is something like a perfect balance to the overdriven productions contained therein; the split was released on vinyl and cassette by Bad Grrrl Records May 13. The music is boxy-sounding, post-punk that bleeds sizzling cymbals, high-hat and red-lined bass fuzz. The recordings practically throw off sparks due to the barely contained energy of the performances, and the rough edges don't detract from the experience; indeed the gritty power of the music on Sisters is the perfect antidote to the hyperclean, antiseptic recordings from the current crop of popular, smooth-pop guitar bands gracing the pages of a lot of music rags these days. But it's not just the everyman production values that make Tungs and Heavy Midgets stand apart: it's that the bands propound songs with character and imagination. Tungs' "Yossarian's Blues" warrants kudos for its vibrant, bristling take on Joy Division-derived punk. But that song seems almost conventional in comparison to "NewDiety," which touts ghostly, under-fi horns and Alice In Chains-indebted vocal yowling, or the pleasantly dubby wandering of "Bad Information." For its part, Heavy Midgets strike gold with its yearning ballad "Oh Susanna," which ends strong with a vast, feedback-flaring guitar lead, and the stuttering pop of anti-anthem "Come Get Me High," each strong enough to anchor a single in their own rights. Buy Sisters from Bad Grrrl right here or buy the digital version right here. Try before you buy via the Bandcamp embeds below.
We are exceedingly pleased to be presenting this Saturday alongside our friends at The Ash Gray Proclamation a sterling evening of rock and roll music. The bill, as the title of this post makes clear, features local heroes Hallelujah The Hills, Ted Billings of Age Rings, Richard Davies and The Blue Dress. The show is at PA's Lounge, and we are (briefly) coming out of our just-had-a-baby-show-going-hiatus to make the scene because, you know, we love rock and roll music.
Hallelujah The Hills, of course, needs no introduction, but if you gotta start somewhere like Jon Brion, we'd direct you to the recent, wonderful digital-only b-side"Some Of Them We Lost," which is embedded above and was introduced to us by Team AGP. The song, as we have quipped elsewhere, "at 3:11 ... all of sudden comes on like the vertigo of five too many shots of liquor, and you get up off the couch and realize you can't stand at all." The more recent work of Mr. Billings in Age Rings is well-known to readers of this blog; that band's Black Honey was among our favorite records of 2011, and Age Rings promised a follow-up entitled Magnum Love will appear sometime this year. Here's hoping that we get a little preview Saturday.
We're not going to lie: Richard Davies is totally new to us. But his inclusion on the bill definitely tells us that his music is something we'll want to hear. Word is that some of The Blue Dress guys will be backing Mr. Davies up for his set, which may or may not be akin to juggling swordfish or drinking moonshine from a sneaker, we don't know, but the proposition of the unknown is exciting. As for The Blue Dress (whose appearance here is apparently the band's first club show), we first became aware of the band last summer when the words "dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio..." kept wafting out of our IPod in an unusual context. The line, of course, is lifted from Joy Division's epic "Transmission," a song covered by many but perhaps most notably by Low. The Blue Dress tucked it into their demo "House Of The Demon," and that little hook -- mournfully delivered, but with a different vibe than Low's -- got us very interested in the band. The band's dazzling recent EP These Happy Golden Years is something we wish hadn't slept on in late 2011, because it has that perfect -- dare we say Kiwi-esque -- balance of melody and noise (and trumpet! which is sorta both!) that keeps us coming back for more. Check out "My Deth Ray" below:
It's going to be a great night, and we do sincerely hope you will come out and say "hi," it's been a long time since we've been among the indie rockers. See you then.
And here we are at the end of 2011. If you had told us a year ago that the things which transpired this year were coming, we would not have believed you. While for much of the year, and much to our frustration, music had to take a back seat to real life, that only increased its importance to this writer. Cross-country flights soundtracked by Broken Shoulder. Getting up to speed mornings listening to Rival Schools. Quiet weekends with J Mascis, summer vacation with Algernon Cadwallader and The War On Drugs, doing dishes with the The Henry Clay People. And when we could, we saw shows that kept us smiling long after they were over, not the least of which was the seismic bill we co-presented in late October featuring The Hush Now, Soccermom and Chandeliers. We even found time to draft major pieces on favorite acts Haywood (here) and Johnny Foreigner (here). But largely constraints on our time and tons of stress often meant quality over quantity when it came to the blogging life; fortunately in 2011 there was no shortage of exceptional music to keep us sane. Below are our favorite 10 records of the year. We are very excited for what 2012 will bring, even if it only brings a little more time to catch up on everything we didn't have time for in 2011. Thanks for reading. Stick with us, there's a lot more Clicky Clicky where this came from.
1. Johnny Foreigner -- Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything -- Alcopop!
Now that it's here, it's hard not to feel like everything was leading up to it, from the band's very first single in 2007 onward. Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything is a fully DIY proposition that is remarkable in its vivid realization -- especially considering the small amount of money involved in creating it. It's also a defiant statement from a band that has fought for everything it has got, including its continued existence. As fronter Alexei Berrow told us here in October, "It feels like there are a lot of people waiting to be like 'O Johnny Foreigner fucked up, inevitable, how predictable.' Vs. Everything is us making these possibly imaginary folks eat their stupid words." And, man, the record delivers the fire and hope, the desperate melodies and sublime sentiments. If you haven't already, make sure you hear the best record of 2011.
[review / buy / Spotify]
2. Benjamin Shaw -- There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet -- Audio Antihero
While this list of favorite records for the most part illustrates which albums we listened to most in the last 360 or so days, it also speaks loudly about what we value in the music we spend our time with. Benjamin Shaw's There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet is perhaps the best example of what we value most: an artist with a singular personality, a unique vision or world view that is ably and creatively captured in the stereo field. Mr. Shaw's chamber pop showcases a charming dourness and humor, cloaked within deftly arranged guitar, piano, strings and ambient curiosities. His vocal delivery is remarkably personal, and the resulting collection here is as cozy as it is ghostly. Each song presents soft and sharp elements, like a bag full of knitting, while making sure that there are as many melodic hooks as there are noisy cul-de-sacs. It's enchanting, and it is easily one of the best of the year.
[preview / buy / Spotify]
3. Age Rings -- Black Honey -- Midriff Records
The one that almost got away, Black Honey was shelved for more than a year during its difficult gestation. Somehow band fronter Ted Billings was able to gather up inspiration that had sifted through his fingers and complete the collection, some four years on from its inception. It's a marvelous, rootsy rock record with a vast arsenal of hooks supporting Mr. Billings' raw, heart-on-sleeve sentiments and wry sense of humor. Black Honey is a thrilling collection, from the bombastic openers "Rock and Roll Is Dead" and "Black Hole" to the haunting closer "Caught Up In The Sound." It was a real feather in local dynamo Midriff Records' cap to be able to put it out, and it feels like a gift every time we listen to it.
[review / buy / Spotify]
4. Destroyer -- Kaputt -- Merge Records
Oh, how we loved this one from the very first time we put it on, perhaps the most obvious sign that even before we climbed all the way up the umbilical noose of '80s MTV, we were immersed irretrievably in early '80s commercial radio. It bothers us that Kaputt is viewed by many as tongue-in-cheek (the video for the album's title track didn't help matters), as we genuinely love the recycled soft-rock sounds and "Miami Vice"-cool found on the record just about as much as all the "critically compliant" Brotherhood vibes. Of course, embossing Destroyer auteur Dan Bejar's characteristic witover top of Kaputt's confections makes it that much more irresistable. Every song on the record is a hit, and it is at the top of mind every time we sit down to put on a record. Another Bejar coup.
[buy / Spotify]
5. The War On Drugs -- Slave Ambient -- Secretly Canadian
We listened to this for hours and hours in the middle of a hot summer, and it reminded us of the boiling South Philadelphia summers of our mid-20s. The city's unbroken mesh of hot brick rowhouses, each one its own oven, windows thrown open to the constant street noise, noise that buzzes like the constant aural din that underpins Slave Ambient. A din, we'd argue, that is like a dialect unique to Philadelphians. We long for our days in that city often, and in a way Drugs fronter Adam Granduciel has given us the gift of hearing a piece of our history again amid his hypnotic, mesmerizing creation. Slave Ambient's icy coctail of Philly FM radio and motorik reverie gets better every time we indulge it. Each time we put the collection on we nudge the volume knob northward to sit back and bathe in a Bartowski-esque Intersect of musical data points, freejacking decades of Petty, U2, the Dead and on and on and on and on...
[review / buy / Spotify]
6. Algernon Cadwallader -- Parrot Flies -- Hot Green/BSM
More Philly, people. This time it's fist-banging anthems, lightning in a bottle, youthful vigor. Few things make us wish we were young again, but Parrot Flies is one of them. Somewhere in all the caterwauling and rocking out, there is a well-spring of positive vibes so potent that it not only has the ability to brighten our days now, but also to inspire in us the strange belief that we could go back and enjoy by-gone days more if only we had had Parrot Flies on one side of a C-90 stuffed in the dashboard tape player. Emo the way it was meant to be written and performed by dudes who do it themselves, from recording to touring to releasing their record. To steal a line from Stars, "when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire." Algernon Cadwallader live it, and Parrot Flies is so much delicious proof.
[review / buy / Spotify]
7. The Hush Now -- Memos -- Self-Released
They did it. The Hush Now's third record is a triumph of melody, of songwriting, of will. For years the band has been slugging it out in Boston, turning in increasingly dominating live sets, and finally, with Memos, the band released a recording that matched in execution the passion and energy characteristic of their visceralperformances. And beyond Memos just sounding good and feeling good, it touts the best set of songs the quintet has turned out yet, from the jaw-dropping ballad "Sitting On A Slow Clock" (which featured on our year-end songs list here) to the scorching guitar pop anthems that the band has made its stock-in-trade, Memos delivers, and we can't imagine the overground won't come calling for these guys soon enough.
[review / buy / Spotify]
8. Ringo Deathstarr -- Colour Trip -- Sonic Unyon
It took four years to get it, but we can't say it wasn't worth the wait. On the tail of an increasingly convoluted string of singles and EPs (different collections in the USA, UK and Japan with different configurations of songs, something of a collector's nightmare), Austin-based noise pop behemoths Ringo Deathstarr finally issued a debut full-length. It's an arresting amalgamation of shoegaze, punk and even dance-pop, and it's awesome. The trio is having better luck in other markets (it just toured supporting Smashing Pumpkins abroad and had a few dates in Japan with Johnny Foreigner), but Colour Trip gained some significant traction for The Deathstarr here. And we ask you, what's not to like? The record is a perfect calling card for the band's power, style and attitude, and listeners that write the band off as a My Bloody Valentine clone are both missing the point and just not listening.
[review / buy / Spotify]
9. Soccer Mom -- You Are Not Going To Heaven -- 100m
...the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen. You Are Not Going To Heaven is an exhilarating collection, from the Sonic Youth-styled buzzsaw of "(A) Natural History" to the blackout bludgeoning of the final 30 seconds of "Southern Bells." All six songs here are dynamite. Perhaps the only thing more exhilarating is experiencing the quartet's firestorm live. We honestly feel bad for any band that has to follow these guys on a bill, because after The 'Mom levels the crowd with its blissful and desperate noise (via Dan Parlin's mad-dog death-grip head shake, the steady cool of guitarist Bill Scales and bassist Danielle Deveau, and drummer Justin Kehoe's octopus arms), that show's over, man. It's just over ("...grab your stuff and go and nobody goes to jail..."). This EP is huge, and we can't wait for the next batch of recordings. Boston's next big thing keeping getting better, if not nextier.
[preview / buy / Spotify]
10. Los Campesinos! -- Hello Sadness -- Arts & Crafts
In some way it is difficult to believe that the band that issued the scruffy Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP in 2007 is the same act that crafted Hello Sadness. But there are a lot easy retorts to that sentiment, too, namely, well, it's just not the same band. The amount of living Tom, Gareth and the rest of Los Campesinos! have crammed into the last five years -- even if measured only by the 75 songs in our ITunes, you know, "band living" -- is quite astonishing. Hello Sadness is so emotionally broad and deep it is like the world's oceans, once you're in the water, it's just water going on forever, amazing songs like "To Tundra" and "Hate For The Island" so breath-taking there's no swimming across. There is a theoretic line between pop and art and this record is perhaps most remarkable for making that theoretic line so wide as one can not be pulled apart from the other at all. Amazing songs, amazing lyrics, so purposefully rendered.
[preview / buy / Spotify]
[*We accidentally deleted this post from late December; here it is in all of its glory once more. -- Ed.]
Well, rock fans, it was a really strange year, one in which we personally and professionally -- and, yes, even to a certain extent here on the blog -- accomplished a great many big things. And all the ups and downs -- transcendent live sets on local stages, solitary post-midnight walks across frozen parking lots in the midwest -- had their soundtrack. Below are our picks for the 10 best songs of the year. These, as usual, are largely determined by our raw ITunes playcounts, although we also gave a little more weight to recent releases that would have been otherwise penalized by coming along later in the year. The list, most of all, is a chance to point to standout songs, regardless of whether the records they are sourced from garnered a slot on our year-end albums list, which we hope to publish before 2011 is gone.
There is an almost complete Spotify playlist of all the tracks that you can access right here; we say almost complete because for whatever reason Spotify doesn't have or won't recognize The Hush Now's wonderful 2011 set Memos. In the few instances possible, we've augmented our copy with embeddable streams, as well, which among other things affords you the opportunity to listen to a nice live recording of Ringo Deathstarr's superlative dream-pop ode "Kaleidoscope." We're already looking forward to big things in 2012. Thanks for reading,and keep an eye out for our aforementioned year-end albums list -- as well as a list or two from Mr. Piantigini -- in the coming days.
1. Johnny Foreigner -- "You vs. Everything" -- Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything
[listen at Spotify]
We struggled over the decision to make this song our song of the year, as opposed to "Alternate Timelines Piling Up." And what it came down to is that while "Alternate Timelines..." is stunningly beautiful and sad, "You vs. Everything" is a self-empowerment song. It's up-tempo. And we need all the adrenaline we can muster these days. Johnny Foreigner is no stranger to anthems, but here the band has finally gone ahead and pointedly created a break-neck paced, fist-banging anthem for you and me. It's one highlight from their year-topping third full-length Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything, which we reviewed last month right here.
2. Rival Schools -- "The Ghost Is Out There" -- Pedals
[listen at Spotify]
Our love for the chorus of this song is boundless. The melody, the ease with which fronter Walter Schreifels looses the syllables from his lips with his immeasurably emotive (tired/sad/happy/wistful/learned/heartbroken) and scratchy voice, the lyrics: it all kills us every time. Remarkably evocative, and yet we haven't any real idea as to what this song is about. But that is a sure sign of excellent songcraft -- the emotion and melody are extremely potent even if the intent is equally as fuzzy. Sing with us, now: "floating in spaaaaaace, the ghost is out there, so you're not alone." We didn't review Rival Schools' 2011 record Pedals, but it kept us company on a lot of cold winter mornings in a far-off place early this year.
3. Benjamin Shaw -- "Home" -- There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet
[listen at Spotify]
There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet will be lucky if it garners footnotes in the year-end lists of the wider, music-writing masses. But the fact is that as soon as we heard the record we sort of felt like someone had handed us a suitcase stuffed with a massive amount of unmarked bills. Or kittens. Well, ghost kittens. With bloody fur around their mouths. Dressed up as tiny little brides and grooms, top hats and veils, little holes for the tails, the whole bit. But anyway, Benjamin Shaw's record is a massive achievement, one that offers a singular but remarkably whole and detailed world view. That is no more apparent than during this epic song. We've seen other writers discussing Mr. Shaw's record that seem to suggest that the rich sonic appointments get in the way of the presentation, of, presumably, Shaw's voice and acoustic guitar. We vehemently disagree. The production on Cabernet is magically vivid and balanced and perfect, as "Home" perhaps best exemplifies.
4. Los Campesinos! -- "Hate For The Island" -- Hello Sadness
[listen at Spotify]
Gareth Campesinos! continues to decry when necessary the application by misinformed writers of the label "twee" to his band's music. Perhaps if he could get everyone to listen to "Hate For The Island" as many times as we have, he can save his breath and go back to tweeting about football and dames. The song is perhaps the most convincing argument that can be made to support the idea that while Los Campesinos! clearly began it's career as scrappy indie poppers, the band's present and future is more cerebral. This song is almost art rock, and the artfulness with which it is made speaks volumes about the massive talent that is propelling the
collective into a band middle-age that seems more promising with each new record.
The show-stopper from the band's best-of-2011 album isn't a big guitar anthem -- well, there are those, too -- but this bar room ballad, the definitive live version of which the band delivered to open its triumphant tour homecoming show in October. We've written for years about The Hush Now, and have seen them at least a dozen times live, but the band was still able to surprise us with this heart-string tugger. When the horn solo gently nudges itself in the door, it reveals a heretofore unrevealed facet of the band. Fronter Noel Kelly, who provides the horn solo here, probably can't rival Chet Baker on brass, but certainly the vocal performance on "Sitting On A Slow Clock" is worthy of the classic Chet Baker Sings. We reviewed Memoshere in September.
Another of noise-pop phenoms Ringo Deathstarr's perfect pop songs, in the mould of its early gems "Sweet Girl" and "Your Town." As the band broadens its pallet to incorporate more dynamic, electronic rhythms and bassist Alex Gehring's vocal contributions become more prominent, it is nice to hear that fronter Elliot Frazer is still willing and able to return to this creative well, apparently at will. Slowly spiraling guitar chords, yearning vocals, simple but unbeatable melodies. "Have you seen her, she's a kaleidoscope...?" Perfection. Check out this awesome live version from last summer. We reviewed Colour Triphere in May.
7. Age Rings -- "Caught Up In The Sound" -- Black Honey
[listen at Spotify]
Sadness and beauty and inevitability, this song's packed with all three and sheds chunks of all of them as its spring-loaded trudging drives the tune from behind a curtain at stage left, across the spotlit center stage, only to disappear behind the curtain at stage right, like a four-minute Beckett play. From its recursive opening lyric to the gently twirling backing vocal that carries it out, "Caught Up In The Sound" is a breathtakingly vivid, down-in-the-mouth love song. As we observed in our review, the song is the perfect closing track to the Midriff re-release of Age Rings' Black Honey, which we reviewed here in October.
We were really afraid this record was going to get hated on by the wider critical populace of the Internerds, as we'd seen (and heard, on the Sound Opinions podcast) some express distaste for the latest collection from Dan Bejar's Destroyer. Not because we need to have our love for this validated -- the relative anonymity of certain of our selections are certainly a testament to that. But as we were saying to the Koomdogg during a forthcoming episode of the CompCon podcast, we just found it hard to believe that a songwriter known to be a shapeshifter (in the same vein as our hero Kurt Heasley of Lilys) was going to be penalized for making a record that many would prefer to pigeonhole derisively as "soft rock." Our pal Bill from Soccer Mom actually has a great genre identifier for the smooth sounds of Kaputt -- "errand rock" -- which references the music his mom played in the car during his suburban upbringing. We totally get that. But we also think that there is a sufficient amount of New Order present in Kaputt along with the other smooth sounds to satisfy even the snootiest indie rocker. Either way, the collection is wonderful, and its dreamy chorus immediately wormed its way into our head and has never left. "Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME, all sound like a dream to me..."
All of this song is wonderful, and, indeed, all of Parrot Flies is wonderful. But this song has a moment, a huge, huge moment, that makes it the defining song Algernon Cadwallader's sophomore set. It's when the singer is shouting -- and he's always desperately shouting -- something like "and there's nothing bittersweet about that, and now something, something something something THE CHINATOWN BUS something something something" etc. Having never taken the Chinatown bus, we don't know why we find the reference so evocative, but we do. Something about the freedom to make mistakes, the freedom of being young and unencumbered by Life's Big Things. Something about joy, which is something that pervades not only this song, but the whole of Parrot Flies. We reviewed the record here in August.
10. The Henry Clay People -- "The Honey Love He Sells" -- This Is A Desert EP
[listen at Spotify]
This is a pretty damn excellent song, life-affirming in its outrageous pacing and punchy delivery. But what perhaps makes this so invigorating, such a breath of fresh air, is that we swear mere months before this EP came out, The Henry Clay People announced something like a hiatus from music. And as we quipped elsewhere, we're glad the hiatus didn't "take," because this song is a barnburner.
New York! The monsters of Boston indie rock are coming for you: two bands, two boroughs, two nights. That would be Eldridge Rodriguez and Age Rings, neither of which include any members of Van Hagar, Saturday the 19th at Piano's in Manhattan, and Sunday the 20th at Public Assembly in Brooklyn. It's E.R.'s first New York show with a new line-up. That's tantamount to juggling flaming chainsaws! Maybe! And Age Rings just released one of the best records of the year. Full show details at the Facepalm invitilation page right here on the Interzuzzzzes. Listen to songs. Be the ball.
So we're fewer than 24 hours away from the big show at this point. We've told you all about the Age Rings record already. Also on the bill is Guillermo Sexo, and we've already told you all about their record, too. You may not know that the band is just recently back from a tour, or that it had intended to -- as the flyer above suggests -- use tomorrow's show to launch a single from the recently released full-length Secret Wild. However, the single -- for Secret Wild's moody and dynamic opening track "Color The Noise" -- hasn't gotten itself together yet. Double However! Guillermo Sexo will have on hand for the show the white vinyl of the aforementioned full-length, which the band hasn't previously had in-hand for a local live date. You want that vinyl. And obviously you want Age Rings' superlative Black Honey. So take an extra baby-sitting shift, or rake an extra yard or two, whatever it takes to make sure you've got your record-buying and liquor-drinking cash tomorrow night. It's the big, big show. Get into it.
What about when you lose control of the Adam of your labors? Most everything you read on the Internet about Age Rings fronter and songwriter Ted Billings references his affinity for the work of writer Bret Easton Ellis, but we can't stop thinking about Mary Shelley and her most famous protagonist. If you've not had the privilege of undergraduate instruction in English Literature, then perhaps you're unfamiliar with analysis of "Frankenstein" implicating what it means to create, the relationship between creator and creation, and the ramifications of the former losing control of the latter. Which is what happened to Mr. Billings, who left Age Rings' ambitious monster abandoned and lifeless on a gurney for 18 of the 48 or so months it took to gestate the original, 20-song iteration of the feverishly vivid and ear-burningly beautiful Black Honey.
"When we started the first leg of the recording, we made the moronic decision to play the 'let's release an Internet single!' game. Twice. So any momentum we had was completely stunted by trying to finish (recording, mixing, mastering) a two-song single to try and catch a buzz or whatever. Idiotic, never again," vows Billings, whose bandmates include bass player Andrew McInnes, guitarist Will Spitz, keyboardist Alex Sepe, synth player Peter Baker and drummer Steve Sherwin. "And so when this totally didn't work, it was frustrating and extremely embarrassing. That, coupled with a pretty nasty bout with depression/self doubt, led me to scrap the entire thing. I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder, 'cause a year-and-a-half later, out of the blue, I started thinking about it again... and made the decision to finish it."
We don't have our notes from 20 years ago, and don't recall what would be the important parallels here between Shelley's creation and Mr. Billings' bout with Black Honey. But we wonder whether, between dreaming the plot and agreeing to put her name on the book for its second pressing, Shelley was wracked with the kind of doubt that precipitated Billings walking away from Black Honey for a year-and-a-half. Thankfully, after devoting four years and at least a few thousand dollars of fan donations to finishing the follow up to Age Rings' acclaimed 2006 debut Look... The Dust Is Growing, a double-disc version of Black Honey was self-released May 21. Fortunately for us the record is getting another jolt across the bolts, because we don't know that we ever would have heard Age Rings' astonishing amalgamation of roots grooves, pop hooks and noisy interjections had Midriff Records' top brass not put it in our hands. Which is sort of the point of the Boston label's new, leaner, 14-song version of the record.
"It's like the 'if a tree falls in the woods, but no one hears, did it ever even fall'-type thing," Billings explains.
Midriff's new formulation of Black Honey isn't abridged so much as it is re-imagined and re-sequenced.
"There are little chunks that are in the same order, but the feel of it is definitely different," Billings says. "I actually really like listening to it this way. The interesting thing to me, as a listener, and having lived with this thing for so long, is that you can sort of start anywhere. I spent a long time thinking about how the [two-disc version] would play out. Like a long, long time. But now, listening to it pared down like this, I feel foolish for doing so."
In the final analysis it is likely time well-spent: Black Honey is one of the very best records of 2011. Even so, it's hard to envision a version of the record that doesn't begin with the amusingly self-defeating "Rock And Roll Is Dead" and end with the paralyzingly affecting "Caught Up In The Sound." The former tune bursts open with volleys of discordant notes before charting a verse with a melody that doesn't quite resolve. The chorus establishes a blissfully noisy center amid handclaps and a bed of what sounds like low brass. This one song is so perfectly realized that you start to understand where the months and years went while Age Rings was making the record. But there's still a lot of record to go, and it is all equally as brilliant. Album closer "Caught Up In The Sound" is perhaps Black Honey's biggest treasure. The tune touts a momentum and inevitability -- underlined by the fact that the verses and choruses drone into eachother -- that renders the love-stung vocal even more poignant. It's a devastating final track; it's a huge artistic achievement.
Remarkable moments appear at every turn in Black Honey: the brilliant swerve of the tape slowing the final moments of "Ender" through various keys only to resolve into a slow groove for the final minute; the twisting slur of the lyric "I smoke Parliament menthols /watch Headbangers Ball" in the opening number; the unhinged falsetto at the tail end of "Big Black Hole." The collection can also be vibrantly lucid, particularly the understated and downbeat travelogue "Ups And Downs" that features Gibbardian narration about bad times like "a crowd gathered outside when I got kicked out of The Middle East, I left my car and called a cab, told the driver 'Quincy.'" "Head Up High" has an undeniable chorus studded with a bright piano melody that will never leave you.
Midriff releases its concise Black Honey this Saturday, and Age Rings supports the release with a show the same night at Radio in Somerville, MA, with dreamy standouts Guillermo Sexo supporting. Marconi and The Future Everybodys will also perform. Age Rings is already looking to the future; the band will begin recording a third record tentatively titled Magnum Love in January at Watch City Studios in Waltham, MA, the same studio where Black Honey was tracked.
