The Best Of 2010 Pt. 4.

This will actually be the last installment of this series of posts. See the Hiatus Over Post for Details.

14: The Black Keys

Album: Brothers

Genre: Hard Blues

Label: Nonesuch

The first problem I’ve encountered trying to write about Brothers is simply the popularity of The Black Keys. Damn. Since the Hard Blues duo’s formation in 2001 the band has been gathering a steady head of steam, which seems to have come to a head last year with the release of Brothers, their sixth album. But first, I’m going to get something out of the way before we get to far into this: The Black Keys and The White Stripes are frequently compared and nothing like each other. They are frequently compared because they are both color-coded Hard Blues bands that are two-pieces. That being said, The White Stripes is Jack White with a backing band of one. The Black Keys are duo, which means, in this case, that they are two musicians playing WITH each other, not one musician playing OVER the other. Glad we got that out of the way. Now that The White Stripes have split, maybe I’ll hear less of this argument. On to Brothers.

The Black Keys do this thing where every few years they release a really good album and then tour. Sound familiar? That’s because that’s the formula lots of good bands follow. However, with the Black Keys, the difference is that those really good albums that get released every few years is EVERY album they’ve released since Thickfreakness. That was their second album. In 2003. Yes indeed. Brothers manages to prove for the sixth time that Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney can, and do, produce fantastic Hard Blues based Rock and Roll. But this time around things are a bit different.

The sound on Brothers is a bit… dare I say… groovier than on previous records. The Black Keys have always been good riff miners, but on this record the urge to groove takes over and we’ve got tracks like “Everlasting Light” which flows with a foot tappin’, head bobbin’, hand clappin’ motion and pretty soon, you too, will be groovin’ in your station wagon. “Everlasting Light” gets Brothers off to a good start, but the second track is my favorite. You’ll never hear a Blues musician sing about how the marriage is good and Dan Auerbach’s tales of womanly woe are particularly articulate on “Next Girl” a story of a beautiful girl who Auerbach can’t love because she can’t love herself, which features the catchy chorus of “My next girl/will be nothing like my ex-girl/I made mistakes back then/I’ll never do it again.”

I do find it ironic though that this song and the albums leading single, “Tighten Up” are placed right next to each other when in “Next Girl” Auerbach is signing “I wanted love/but not for myself/but for the girl/so she could love herself” is immediately followed by “Tighten Up’s” now famous opening lines of “I wanted love/I needed love/most of all/most of all.” “Tighten Up” is a good song but it doesn’t really sound like proper Black Keys to me. Then again, my feelings in that department are a little muddled because Brothers an example of The Black Keys doing a pop album (Pop the Structure not Pop the Genre.) The production is neatly nestled in a place between the cleaner sounds of Attack & Release and the rawer, harder feeling of Rubber Factory. But it’s that rawness that I miss. Rubber Factory was so fantastic because it was recorded in an actual rubber factory and it was mean. It could kick your ass. Brothers, while being a bit fuzzier than Attack & Release, sounds like The Black Keys being nice and I don’t know how I feel about that.

It does give way to some really lovely moments though, like the heartfelt “Unknown Brother,” in which Auerbach mourns the loss of a brother he never knew over some of the most sincere sounding guitars in recent memory. It’s a bit of a tearjerker. Look. I gotta rap this up. I really like this album. That should be clear enough: it’s on this list. If you like the Black Keys, you’ll like this. And be ready for the next few years when they release their next album and tour. Cause it will be good. Cheers.

Top Tracks: “Everlasting Light,” “Next Girl,” & “Unknown Brother”

13: Liars

Album: Sisterworld

Genre: Experimental Rock

Label: Mute

Sinister. That is the first word that comes to mind in describing Sisterworld, Liars impeccable fifth album. There’s a prolonged sense of dread enshrouding this record, if not the band itself. This is something that Liars have cultivated overtime, since their days as an angular Dance Punk unit in the vein of Gang Of Four without the politics. But that was their first LP and that was when things were normal. Since then, Liars have cavorted with witches on their sophomore record, explored spacious thought and sound with their critically lauded Drum’s Not Dead and recorded a self-titled pop album. Every time you think you can pin their sound down, they change, almost like they’re eluding you. The thing that remains consistent though is the ominous atmosphere. Almost everything Liars have recorded has an overtone of creepiness. Not B-movie creeps either, but surreal, Lynchian horror, the kind that is at one time thoroughly unsettling and strangely mesmerizing. Sisterworld is the culmination of that atmosphere, giving us a record of shadowy corridors and fantastic illusions.

At first, you feel like you’re in a dream. Like you’re floating away. The album opens with beautifully rising vocal harmonies that lead into front man Angus Andrew’s almost slurred laments “I found her/with my scissor/ this heart fell/ to the ground.” He continues as the cello and bass come in: “I’m supposed to save you now/but my hands are flipping out.” The music and voices swells as he declares, “I’m a coward/in a self-built army/I leave this blood to dry.” Without warning, there’s a sound like a snap and the full band blasts in with a burst Noise Rock cacophony that whips up like a snare trap. The supposed dream turns into a nightmare within the blink of an eye. And from here on out you’re lost in the sea of creeping darkness weaving it’s way through the forest.

Liars is a trio these days, but they play the Radiohead card of being the kind of band where the individual members do not necessarily fill specific rolls but rather contribute as needed. And Sisterworld is an excellent album for it. An effective mixture of the Ambient Rock of Drum’s Not Dead and the heavier Noise experiments of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, with hints of the big riffs pioneered on Self-Titled, Sisterworld is perhaps Liars most eclectic outing to date and without a doubt my favorite. Because it’s creepy. But we know that at this point. No other Liars album quite captures the skincrawling eeriness of tracks like “No Barrier Fun” with it’s seasick cello and haunting heartbeat, or the slithering “Drip” which is an example of how Liars can be frightening by fooling you into believing that they aren’t there at all, while, in your bloodstream, they’re growing.

But some of the songs boast outright terror. The two best examples being the opening cut “Scissor” which I described in detail in the second paragraph and the psychotic fugue of “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant” the reverbed and delayed guitars of which make you feel dizzy while Angus Andrew illustrates a horror scene in which bums and cretins are stood against a wall and murdered. It’s kind of overwhelming, like being trapped in a fever dream, but that’s what they want. I realize that this all sounds very unpleasant, but you must bear with me. This album is actually quite gorgeous. And, as I mentioned before, it’s like a David Lynch film in that it is at one time unsettling and mesmerizing. Liars are capable of creating great beauty out of the twisted.

After the big sounds and hyper production of Liars self-titled album, Sisterworld comes off as a bit smaller at times, but the production doesn’t sound quite as over the top as before. Still sounds clean though and that’s a benefit to tracks like “No Barrier Fun.” And despite no huge sounds found on songs like “Plaster Casts Of Everything” from Self-Titled, Liars do achieve sweeping grandiosity on the most epic song on Sisterworld, the penultimate track “Goodnight Everything” which sounds like the band is playing the anthem of watching the sun set on the earth for the last time, even throwing a horn section into the mix along with the crashing drums and world ending guitars.

So in closing, if you’re a fan of Experimental Rock, dreadful ambience and spikes of Noise Rock existentialism, then I assure you that you will enjoy Liars’ Sisterworld. Just don’t get lost there; you might not be able to come back.

Top Tracks: “Scissor,” “No Barrier Fun” & “Goodnight Everything”

The Best Of 2010 Pt. 3.

16: How To Destroy Angels

Album: How To Destroy Angels EP

Genre: Industrial

Label: The Null Corporation

How To Destroy Angels is an exciting prospect. After Trent Reznor announced that Nine Inch Nails was going to quit touring in 2009, possibly forever, the legion of devoted fanatics like myself wondered what would come next. Reznor at one time reassured us that he would keep going in music and also dangled a carrot of mystery out in front of us. Would there be more NIN material? Would the rumored Gary Numan/Trent Reznor collaboration take place? What new music would the Industrial king unleash upon us? We didn’t have to wait very long. In 2010 Reznor and friends got together and created two excellent pieces of music, one of which was his and long time comrade Atticus Ross’ superb score for the sociopathic Facebook drama The Social Network, and the other was their (Reznor and Ross’) new band with Reznor’s wife and West Indian Girl front woman Mariqueen Maandig. They called the new band How To Destroy Angels.

The name is interesting, to begin with, because it traces the roots of Industrial back to an EP released by Coil, one of the godfather bands of the genre. Reznor’s particular brand of Industrial Music was always decidedly rockist in it’s approach, with Reznor himself having stated that he wanted people to get the full on Rock and Roll experience with NIN. How To Destroy Angels is something different in the regard that it focuses more on the Industrial & Electronic side of things than the Rock, and while the sound is unquestionably Reznor, it doesn’t exactly follow the same paths as before. Although, it should be noted that there is a comfortable familiarity in the sound pallet that Reznor draws from. You always know it’s his music and no other music can be mistaken for it. It is further impressive that, in using a factually limited selection of sounds and textures, no Reznor release ever sounds identical to any other. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just worth pointing out that he’s developed a unique sound and that How To Destroy Angels is not a break from it, just another step in it’s evolution.

The various styles played with throughout the EP’s six tracks all root in Industrial but all conjure up very different images and feelings. The opening cut “The Space In Between” is a slow tempo burner (pun intended, check the video,), which features Maandig’s sultry vocals over a droning wave of sound and electronic beats. The piece is almost Trip-Hop to me and I always think of this track and the final part of the EP “A Drowning” as almost being like an Industrialized Portishead, with Maandig serving as an even darker, colder Beth Gibbons. “A Drowning” is actually quite a good cut as well, being the EP’s longest piece; it’s got a lot of time to develop. It’s the least noisy and most calming part of the whole EP and it paints an almost romanticized image of sinking deeper and deeper into the depths below.

The Trip-Hoppy nature of those two tracks doesn’t belie the sound across the board though. “Parasite” for example is a very composed Noise collage with a beat, with roaring guitar blasts and distorted synth textures heavily contrasting the smoother, more engulfing feeling of “The Space In Between.” It’s actually fascinating to hear Reznor sounding lyrics as sung by Maandig. She’s got a downright beautiful voice that fits in perfectly with the Industrial noisescapes.

The reason How To Destroy Angels is exciting is that it is a projection of things to come. It fulfills the promise of new material as well as stoking the coals of anticipation even more. It also does a good job of setting this new band apart from Nine Inch Nails while still staying a part of the camp. Even though Reznor and Atticus Ross are on to their next project of scoring David Fincher’s American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, hopefully we’re going to be seeing more of How To Destroy Angels in the future.

Top Tracks: “The Space In Between” & “Parasite”

15: Sleepy Eyes Of Death

Album: Toward A Damaged Horizon

Genre: Post-Rock/Electronic Rock

Label: Sleep Capsule

It’s not something I think about all the time, but it does bother me to see the evolution of mankind’s relationship with technology pushing us closer and closer to a time and place where we’re all going to be linked into our Bluetooth headsets, constantly communicating with a giant motherboard computer system because it’s convenient. The melding of man and machine is not a prospect I relish, but from an aesthetic standpoint, the melding of organic and synthetic in a sonic sense is something that can be downright fantastic. In the case of local Seattle band Sleepy Eyes Of Death, the melding of the organic and synthetic is done in spectacular fashion and in the name of good music, a kind of evolution I can get behind.

Sleepy Eyes Of Death perform a kind of (mostly) Instrumental Rock in the vein of bands like Explosions In The Sky and Mono; spacious, transcendental music that hipper-than-now-tastemakers would have you refer to as Post-Rock. And seeing as how I’m a hipper-than-now-tastemaker, that’s what we’re going to call it in order to save time. The difference between guitar based bands like Explosions In The Sky or Mono and Sleepy Eyes Of Death is that Sleepy Eyes trade in two of their theoretical guitars for analog synths, which creates a towering, futuristic sound that engulfs you like a wave of white light.

Toward A Damaged Horizon is Sleepy Eyes’ sophomore release and it sees the line between electronic and organic growing even more indistinct to the point where the two parts are starting to resemble each other closely. The sound has also grown in size. Dark Signals, Sleepy Eyes’ previous release, was a solid album but it was very contained in feeling and only hinted at the scale that they would reach on Damaged Horizon. Here’s the metaphor: If Dark Signals was the feeling of looking over the night lights of city from a hill, then Damaged Horizon is the feeling of looking at the night lights of a dozen cities from an airplane, except you’re not looking out a tiny window, you’re looking as if you were the airplane, with stars above and earthly radiance below.

Sleepy Eyes of Death gets a lot of comparisons to French Indie Rock band the M83, but while the two go in for similar sounds with their synthesizers, the M83 are using them to create structured Pop Music with hooks while Sleepy Eyes are making sonic panoramas that are not confined to simple Pop Song structure. However, Damaged Horizon also features the closest thing to a full on Pop Song that they’ve done so far with “The Sound Of Light Breaking Down” which is their attempt at creating an almost clubby dance track. And it works, proving that if the Post-Rock route doesn’t pan out, they could go in a more Daft Punk direction.

On the other hand, most of the tracks feature Sleepy Eyes at their most expansive, with songs that are breathtaking in scope and beauty. The prime example of this is the epic “Distant Horizons Bled Dry” which is their longest composition to date and also one of the most cinematic. It sounds like watching a fleet of star ships taking off for a journey through the stars, or perhaps a meteor shower exploding into digital rain. I apologize. This article has been a bit heavy on the longwinded metaphors. But maybe it’s appropriate; Sleepy Eyes Of Death are well known for a heavy visual component when performing live. I guess what I’m saying is: develop Synetheisa and then listen to this band.

Seriously though. If you’re a fan of the Post-Rock genre, you’ll like this. If you like epic synth music with soaring guitars and spot-on drums you’ll like this. And finally, if you like longwinded, heavily visual metaphors being used to describe sound (something you can’t actually see,) then you like my writing… which means you should give this album a try and I’m a cheeky bastard. Cheers!

Top Tracks: “Night Wires” & “Distant Horizons Bled Dry”

To be continued…

The Best Of 2010 Pt. 2.

18: Fences

Album: Fences

Genre: Folk/Acoustic

Label: Onto

Not everything needs to be complicated. In the rush of modern living we’re constantly being battered about by media overload, people overload and even thought overload. I’ve been told I think about things too much and I know I try to do too much in the space of a day and then feel bad about myself when I don’t meet my own impossible standards. It’s stupid really. You’re probably wondering what this has to do with Fences. I suppose it doesn’t really, but I can’t help but feel an ease of calmness settle throughout my being whenever I listen to this record. It’s a kind of tranquility that escapes us in our day-to-day lives, and being able to find such simple quiet within an album of music makes Fences worth whatever time you can give it.

Fences, the (mostly) acoustic folk project of one Chris Mansfield (a local yokel to my home town of Seattle,) brings my mind back to a simpler time and place: A place where you can be satisfied to sit on a hill overlooking the Sound and be content just to sit and enjoy the breeze and sunlight. Real sunlight. Cool breeze. Perfect summer weather, with no gadgets or loud noises to disturb you. That’s the place that Fences’ music takes me.

Mansfield’s music isn’t overly produced or super difficult: this is Indie Pop to a certain extent. Or Indie Folk Pop if you want to get technical. The songs are fairly simple in their verse chorus verse structure and built around Mansfield’s acoustic strumming and soothing voice. Of course, this isn’t exactly happy music. Fences’ songs are all about the sticky interactions of Mansfield’s interpersonal relationships. Love, loss and fucking up are the themes of the day, but the beautifully uncomplicated nature of Fences’ music allows the listener to identify particularly closely with him in a way you might have difficulty doing with even the most human of rock stars. Which should be a bummer, but the music provided by Mansfield and his backing band is just so damn pretty that you can’t help but feel good even as he sings “I’m fucking up/I’m fucking up/I’m fucking up everything” during the anthematic chorus of the album’s lead single “Girls With Accents.”

There’s a bit of Rob Crow in his sound, but with more acoustics and less dreamlike vocals. Fences music is very grounded in reality and the painful situations that life puts us in sometimes. The album is short but sweet, a little more than half an hour of gentle sounds and stumbling relationships, with some excellent standout tracks. There are the obvious poppy singles of “Girls With Accents” and “Sadie” which features an almost Rock chorus and has Mansfield raising his voice above it’s usual, almost lilting register. But my favorite songs are these: the longest song on the album “My Girl The Horse,” which is a sad song (of course) about Mansfield’s failing kinship with a horse OR a sad song using the metaphor of horses to detail another breaking friendship/relationship. Either way, it’s a melancholy but gorgeous piece. The other favorite is “Your Bones,” the penultimate song on the album evokes the dark of a warm evening in August, with heartbreaking overtones. The subject matter of the song recalls the perspective of someone (Mansfield’s loved one,) telling him that they’re no longer in love with him and that there is someone else. The chorus is Mansfield pleading with his loved one not go. The song is very short, but I find something about it completely captivating, though painful.

Relationships are complicated. Fences songs are not complicated on a musical level, but on a lyrical level, the difficulties arise. The great balance of his music is the straightforward nature of the music coupled with thorny themes and stories. I hope you enjoy this record as much as I did, though you’re going to have to wait till the summer to enjoy it with a view.

Top Tracks: “My Girl The Horse” & “Your Bones”

Also Included: “Girls With Accents”

17: Ceschi Ramos

Album: The One Man Band Broke Up

Genre: Hip-Hop/Indie Rock

Label: Fake Four Inc.

(I like to write things in threes.)

Ceschi (pronounced chess-key) Ramos is the founder of Fake Four Inc., an indie label that’s been making waves as of late. In the grand pecking order of pigeonholing, keeping Fake Four in a box is difficult as they traffic in everything from post-modern Hip-Hop (Awol One, Factor & Dark Time Sunshine) to bizarre Indie Rock (Gregory Pepper, Pretend You’re Happy & Boy In Static.) The eclecticism of the label reflects that of its founder, as Ceschi has had his four finger (he’s only got that many on his right hand) in a number of different musical pies over the years, from his own Anonymous Inc. to Toca (a Indie Pop Fusion band with his brother David) to Metalcore growlers Dead By Wednesday. When flying solo though, Ceschi likes to blend his various influences into a strong hallucinogenic concoction in a sturdy Hip-Hop glass that’s meant to be enjoyed slowly, not downed in one gulp.

Ceschi’s most recent solo album, The One Man Band Broke Up, also happens to be the strongest work he’s done to date. His first collaboration with German beatsmith DJ Scientist, One Man Band is a concept album about the rise and fall of a musician named Julius and his one-man band The Bearded Savior. But Ceschi also uses the story of this fictional character to paint a real life portrait of his own fears of failure, problems with the record industry and the struggle of being an independent musician. In the realm of Underground Hip-Hop, Ceschi’s irreverent lyrical and delivery style puts him somewhere between the Spoken Word techniques of Sage Francis, the fantastic wonderworkings of Astronautalis and the unorthodox reconstructionist tactics of Onry Ozzborn. This, combined with DJ Scientist’s lo-fidelity audio sculptures, built from somber horn sections, crackling vinyl piano samples and dirty drum hits, makes for a tragically sad tapestry that is both fraying at the edges and breathtakingly beautiful.

Ceschi doesn’t have what you would probably call a “pretty” voice, but he’s a master of dexterous word play, and when he really wants to, can spit like a machinegun loaded with lightning… or shurikens. His tales carry the great weight of the story of Julius And The Bearded Savior, which, while a little difficult to follow at times (I don’t know how liner the narrative is,) is both a moody rumination and also possibly a cautionary tale to those who would try to tread the same path as Ceschi or even his fictionalized counterpart.

To get the whole of this rogues yarn, you need to listen to the album in full (something you should do anyways,) but it’s not as though individual tracks don’t stand out. My favorite cuts from the album come early on, with the 2^nd and 3^rd track. “Half Mast” sets the stage for the story as well as introducing us to a bit of Ceschi’s own back story. I should point out that the perspective for most of the album is Ceschi singing about Julius, though at times the lines between perspectives blur, as to when the story is Ceschi’s and when its about Julius. “Half Mast” and the world weary “No New York” are two examples of when the story could be about Ceschi or Julius interchangeably. “No New York” is actually another of my favorite songs and even features an appearance by Astronautalis, although he doesn’t really do much, just kind of mumbling at the end of the song.

The album is not frontloaded though, every song is excellent and every song, even some of the odd interludes play a part in furthering the story. It’s not a very happy tale, as evidenced by the harpsichord driven “Hangman” whose cheerful chorus features the lines “hang in there hangman/swinging from the gallows/all the dust from your bones/will make the flowers grow.” The song is also a bit of a dead mans party, with guest raps from Shoshin, M!c King and Ceschi’s own brother David Ramos. But ultimately, The One Man Band Broke Up is an extraordinary album and showcases Ceschi’s best and most emotionally raw work thus far. I know I only seem to talk about sad albums, but if you’re going to pick just one album to get your woe on, pick this one. You can bob your head to this one.

Top Tracks: “Half Mast,” “No New York ” & “Hangman”

To be continued...

The Best Of 2010 Pt. 1.

20: Massive Attack

Album: Heligoland

Genre: Trip-Hop

Label: Virgin

Massive Attack are the O.G. of Trip-Hop. Practically having invented the genre in the 90’s, the band’s melding of Hip-Hop influenced delivery with electronica backed beats has become something of an institution of reliable synthetic music. While the group’s line-up has had slight shifts over their two decades+ of existence (Tricky was a member once upon a time,) the core duo of Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall has remained intact and they continue to produce heady albums of chilled out soundscapes that put their imitators to shame. Heligoland is their first album in 7 years and the first to feature the core duo working together again since 1998’s dark opus of Mezzanine. While their previous album, 100^th Window was good, it’s failing was that it shed what warmth there was in Mezzanine for an icy, almost crystalline sound that communicated a void of human contact, probably due to the fact that Del Naja produced the album without the help of Marshall.

Heligoland is far from the cold loneliness of 100^th Window and is, in a way, the opposite side of the coin from Mezzanine: where that album was a shadowy series of corridors, Heligoland might as well be broad daylight, filled with the light of the sun and warm breezes rather than the artificial heat of Mezzanine. Heligoland is, in fact, Massive Attack’s most organic sounding album since Blue Lines, their debut. I could fault this album for not being able to top Mezzanine, but really, I wasn’t expecting it to do so. Does it stand up on it’s own though? Certainly. Over the course of 10 songs, Massive Attack creates an engagingly trippy album that is abound with catchy sytnhs and gorgeous vocals.

Heligoland is Massive Attack’s most guest heavy album to date, featuring vocal contributions from the likes of Tunde Adebimpe (of TV on the Radio fame,) Martina Topley-Bird, and even Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn on the mournful “Saturday Come Slow.” However, despite the plethora of famous folks guesting on this album, the two best songs come from the core Massive Attack camp. The first of these two is the drivingly bass powered “Girl I Love You” which features the incomparable Reggae singer Horace Andy, Massive attack’s oldest and most reliable vocalist. While not an official member of the band, Andy has been singing with Massive Attack on every album since the beginning and he’s still their most effective voice. The song features a rumbling bass line backed by deep, resonant big band horn blasts that give the song a decidedly epic feel.

However, It is the final song on the album that takes home the prize for best overall track. “Atlas Air” features the cool, narcotized vocals of Robert Del Naja, Massive Attack co-founder and primary vocalist/programmer, over a progressively growing and morphing beat, which while beginning simply enough with just alternating stomping percussion, slowly becomes, through it’s seven+ minute length, a transcendental blitz of grooving, rhythmic synth lines that will have you tapping your foot and nodding your whole body in no time. To wrap up, if you’re a fan of Trip-Hop you need this record. If you like electronic music, you need this record. If you like Massive Attack, don’t expect a better piece than Mezzanine, but still cop this record. That’s all.

Top Tracks: “Girl I Love You” & “Atlas Air.”

19: Harvey Milk

Album: A Small Turn Of Human Kindness

Genre: Sludge Metal

Label: Hydra Head

Brief preface: This is likely the most challenging album I’ll be covering on the Top 20 list. It is not easy or light listening and if you are afraid of the dark void that eats away at your soul every day, pushing you ever closer to the edge of this mortal coil, then you should probably stop reading now. However. If you like Sludge Metal, the dark void that eats away at your soul every day and my writing, then by all means, keep reading.

Athens, Georgia’s Harvey Milk are no stranger to tackling subjects of misery and mortality in their music. The Sludge Metal trio’s previous work, Life… The Best Game In Town dealt closely with the fear of death and it’s inevitability, all the while creating slamming noise-ridden Sludge music, which they’ve become famous for. But the odd truth of Life… is that Creston Spires, Harvey Milk’s unassuming looking front man, considers it to be their worst work to date. Now, personally, I find that Life… is a truly excellent album and also the album that got me into the band. But that aside, Life… is Harvey Milk’s pop album. The songs are contained to themselves, they have noticeable hooks, even rough melodies at times and all of them feature blistering guitar solos that cause the listener to keep in mind Harvey Milk’s classic rock roots. A Small Turn Of Human Kindness on the other hand, is about as far from pop in structure and sound as the band’s sound is from the sound of Athens, Georgia’s most well known musical export: R.E.M.

A Small Turn Of Human Kindness clocks in at roughly 37 minutes in length, features seven tracks all of which are less individual songs and more individual movements in the overall composition of the piece. The album flows together so seamlessly that it is hard to tell where tracks end and begin, and while none of the tracks can really stand on their own, when experienced as a whole, the albums arch and execution becomes more powerful than anything the band has constructed before. Whereas Life… was a sturdy collection of Harvey Milk’s various styles and ranges, A Small Turn focuses into one truncated path, that of the slow tempoed, grinding engine that is their forte. The music has taken on an intensely minimalistic approach, with the dirge-like chords and molasses paced drumming dragging through the album like a body through the muck. That, coupled with Creston Spires’ anguished vocals, makes for a truly harrowing listening. All to drive the concept of the album home.

The band has always had a sense of humor about themselves before now, and rightly so: Metal is an inherently ridiculous genre sometimes. But on A Small Turn, all humor and self-deprecation is abandoned in favor of lyrics and atmosphere so bleak and colorless that this might as well be a Black Metal album. It’s not melodramatic or campy kind of seriousness; it’s grim and stone-faced, like there’s been a death in the family. Appropriate too, as the albums story is that of the events leading up to a suicide. The six tracks prior to the finale all build upon each other, revealing new turns and shifts in the grim story until we reach the brutal conclusion of “I Did Not Call Out” in which, amid devastating crashing riffs, Spires’ wounded water buffalo cries describes the suicide itself and how he has done nothing to prevent it.

Sonically speaking, this is a horror movie of the first rate. Not a loony monster movie or something from the Saw series, but a tale of the darkest parts of the human condition, which leaves you feeling cold and alone. Like Nine Inch Nails’ suicide opera, The Downward Spiral before it, this album is grimy, scary and perfectly constructed. It is free of irony and utterly disturbing to listen to. It’s also one of the finest things Harvey Milk has ever set to record and one of the best Metal albums from last year. I’d be extremely gentle with this album. It is not for the feint of heart. But if you’re a fan of challenging Sludge music, then you’ll like this as I do.

Top Tracks: Not Applicable. The nature of the album negates my ability to decide on individual tracks to single out. For your listening pleasure, I have included two of my favorite tracks from Harvey Milk’s previous album, Life… The Best Game In Town.

To be continued...

The Best of 2010 Pt. 0: Intro.

So 2010 totally just happened… yes, of course we’re still talking about this. I didn’t do much writing last year and didn’t cover anything music related that happened last year in my writing that I did do. So while I’m tackling other topics, I’m also going to take you back through my 20 favorite records (with additional two special prizes) of 2010 in reverse order. A lot of fantastic music was released last year and it’s given 2011 a high standard to rise to. By the by, If you think 20 records is a long list, keep in mind I was paring it down from about 50 or 60. OK. So on to criteria be in the Top 20:

• The record had to be originally released in 2010. So no re-releases.
• I have to have heard the record in full. If I didn’t hear it, I can’t count it now can I?
• I have to have heard the record in 2010. (There is a special exception.)

Not that hard as you see. Mostly, I just had to like the record enough to listen to it multiple times and not get sick of it. This series of articles will feature two records every post counting down from 20. I hope that you find something you like in all of this. You never know, you might find something cool you missed out on. So here goes. But first, I’d like to award the special prizes.

The Best Of 2010 Pt. 0: Special Prizes.

22: BlackTusk

Album: Taste The Sin

Genre: Swamp Metal

Label: Relapse

Special Prize Awarded: Because I didn’t hear it until 2011.

Savannah, Georgia is home to a powerful trifecta of Metal bands. Baroness is likely their most well known export with Kylesa second behind them. But my favorite of the moment is a decidedly vicious trio called BlackTusk who, while sharing similar roots with their hometown brethren, traffic in a much doomier, swampy kind of Metal than either of the aforementioned bands. Taste The Sin, BlackTusk’s third LP, finds the group pummeling their way through ten aggressive thunderers that will leave you shaking in your boots or pumping your fist in the air. Whichever comes first.

BlackTusk’s particular aesthetic takes many cues from their contemporaries (High On Fire being one example,) but they also trace their style back to the Hardcore Punk of Black Flag and the more Classic Metal of bands like Motorhead. The blend of methods results in an album rife with deep, grooving riffs, beastly drumming and war crying vocals. The best example of this combination comes with the song “Way Of Horse And Bow” an anthem of horsemanship during a time of war with an utterly ferocious riff backing it up. When BlackTusk cries “Mount! Your! Steed!” you better already be in the damn saddle. The song arches nicely through speed and aggression, ending with slow, punishing Metal glory.

The other best track is the scathing betrayal tirade of “Twist The Knife” a muckier piece than “Way Of Horse And Bow” the song thrashes around while the three members of BlackTusk bellow scornful roars against the one who has betrayed them, declaring this enemy to have words of shit as they twist the knife again and again, further undercutting their reliability.

In closing, if you like Swampy, Sludgy, Hardcore influenced Metal music, then you will certainly enjoy BlackTusk’s Taste The Sin. I felt they deserved an honorary prize, because if I had heard this record last year, it certainly would have made the Top 20.

Top Tracks: “Way Of Horse And Bow” & “Twist The Knife.”

21: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Album: VS. Redux

Genre: Northwest Hip-Hop

Label: Self-Released

Special Prize Awarded: Because it’s a Remix EP.

Last year… whoops… two years ago now, local emcee & producer duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis dropped their debut collaboration; the impeccable VS. EP. The EP combined Macklemore’s downright wholesome, self-portrait style of rapping with Ryan Lewis’s Indie Rock sample heavy production to create one of the best local releases of 2009 and just one of the best collections of songs I’d heard all year. And one of the best parts was they released it for free. Fast forward to 2010. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis re-release the VS EP as the VS Redux, with additional remixed tracks by Jake One, Budo, P Smoov, Sabzi and Ryan Lewis himself.

The VS Redux has done quite well by them, even charting to the Top 10 on iTunes soon after it’s release. Now, the only thing that keeps this record from the Top 20 is that it is both a re-release and a remix album. But it’s still fantastic. The original seven songs from the VS. EP are all quite strong by themselves and the additional content shapes this up to one of the best Hip-Hop records in local memory.

The strongest of the Remixes is probably Ryan Lewis’s tormentingly gorgeous remix of “Otherside” Macklemore’s painful tale of his drug addiction (he’s now over two years sober.) This version of the song does away with the Red Hot Chili Peppers bass sample and builds a more live band arrangement with an additional chorus provided by local singer-songwriter Fences, which serves to add to the haunting loneliness of the song. In severe contrast, P Smoov of Mad Rad and Fresh Espresso comes in to add some much needed levity with his decidedly lighthearted remix of “Irish Celebration” which takes Mack’s send up of his Irish heritage and turns it from a more refined barroom cheer along to a mad dance spectacle. After “Otherside,” though, the break is much needed.

Jake One contributes a solid remix of “Crew Cuts,” Budo turns “The End” into an even more beautiful song, but my favorite song from the EP is without a doubt Sabzi of The Blue Scholars reinvented version of Macklemore’s “The Town” possibly the most heartfelt song I’ve ever heard about Seattle and the history of it’s Hip-Hop scene. Not many pieces of music have ever moved me to tears, but “The Town” comes damn close. If you are a fan of Hip-Hop or want to hear one of the best artists local to Seattle, then get thee to whatever music outlet you use and cop the VS. Redux. You will not be disappointed.

Top Tracks: "Otherside (Feat. Fences) [Ryan Lewis Remix]" & "The Town (Sabzi Remix)"

To be continued...