THE FORTY-TWO BEST RECORDS OF 2011:
Part # 8

Almost there, folks.

10. The Beets – Stay Home (Captured Tracks)

“One day I was just a yellow yolk / then I grew up bigger and I broke..”

I wouldn’t have put good odds on one of my most played songs of 2011 being an acoustic ballad written from the point of view of an unfertilised egg yolk, but here we all are, and The Beets ‘Hens & Roosters’ seems to have taken on a mantra-like quality for me over the past twelve months. Not that I particularly relate to its woolly childhood/adulthood metaphors or anything, but… it’s just a really nice song, y’know? Moving without being moving, catchy without being catchy, it’s a perfect example of what makes The Beets such a special and inexplicably refreshing proposition in the current musical landscape. Just a nice little song. Simple and humble, it just works, y’know?

What could it possibly be, that can draw us back month after month to the ostensibly unappealing sound of a couple of shrill, whiny guys strumming chords on acoustic guitars whilst another shrill, whiny guy bashes a snare drum, as they sing rudimentary 90 second songs about “laying on the ground, yeah yeah” and “watching television, watching television”? How, in the second decade of the 21st century, when anyone with half a clue is sick to fucking death of indie-lifer earnestness and contrived, self-conscious geekery, can this possibly be a good idea for a band?

Don’t ask me man, but it seems to work. There is a kind of Vonnegut-like universality about what The Beets do: an understanding of the centrality of communication, and of the power of the obvious, well-stated. It will take them far. You could hear it distantly in the lolling, toe-tapping comfort of their earlier “Spit In The Face of Those Who Don’t Want To Be Cool”, and, now that they’ve at least figured out how to put the microphones in the same room as the performers when recording music, the essential strength of their songwriting shines through.

How often these days do you hear a band made up of culturally-informed white people, in which notions of influence and intent are both unknowable and largely irrelevant? Listening to The Beets, I have no idea what kind of records these guys like listening to, or what kind of music they are trying to make. Their music sounds like it simply is - instinctual and obvious and pre-existent. Clutching at straws, to could maybe tie them in aesthetically to the original ‘80s/‘90s strains of American ‘lo-fi’, in sound at least. Far removed from the tormented, egomaniacal face-pulling of all that Sebadoh or early Mountain Goats stuff though, The Beets have a lapsidaisical ‘so it goes’ take on life that seems far healthier, far more appealing somehow. Far more fun too.

Because yes, just to beat up on their enigma further, The Beets are out to entertain, rather than to wallow. Try as you might, you will be unable to deny the beat group swing of ‘Cold Lips’, or the horny hollers of – uh, I swear this song gets away with not being creepy somehow – ‘Young Girls’. I hate to tell you this, but with their beat up acoustics and their nerdy whining, The Beets are making you dance. What the hell?

Going a long way with very little, The Beets already have another LP out at the time of writing. I’ve not heard it yet, but I bet it’s amazing. I guess by this stage we can add them to the likes of chocolate-covered liquorice, Woody Allen and The Rolling Stones on the list of ‘things that shouldn’t work, but really do’.






9. Let’s Wrestle – Nursing Home (Merge / Full Time Hobby)

I like Let’s Wrestle. I listen to them a lot. I feel a deep kinship with their sense of humour, and their continuation of a particular lineage of self-deprecating British shambolism that can’t help but still align them to some extent with Swell Maps, TVPs and Half Man Half Biscuit, even as their musical prowess and career decisions take them across the pond to engage in more direct and efficient emulation of yr actual Dinosaur/Huskers type indie royalty.

It’s nice in a way to be reminded that groups who seek to honestly reflect the grim and strange peculiarities of the way we live in this country – and the stranger and grimmer things we choose to laugh at - do not necessarily need to do so whilst sounding like a lesser line-up of The Fall playing hungover krautrock in a condemned bingo hall. It is oddly spiriting to hear Wesley Patrick Gonzalez singing about inconclusive arm wrestling bouts, computer games, walking his mum’s dogs and “two Greek men fighting in a pharmacy” over compositions which – bar new bassist Sam Pilay’s sing-song bass lines and the lack of stubbley ‘90s earnestness – could have fitted in nicely on a Jawbreaker or Nirvana album.

Given how much I enjoy listening to about 60% of it, I would have rated this album even higher, but after a great first half I'm afraid it hits a severe slump in the middle, as Gonzalez’ write-what-you-know songwriting leads him deep into a trough of listless solipsism, incorporating some rather anaemic slow songs and reaching its nadir on ‘I’m So Lazy’ and ‘I Forgot’, respectively concerning the fact that he is lazy, and the time his girlfriend told him off for forgetting to pick her up from the station and do the shopping. And rightly so, the useless git. Don’t write a song about it, just get it right next time, as Bratmobile or somebody might have said were they consulted. Honesty and self-awareness in song-writing is one thing, but I fear that simply stating your faults over some dreary verse chords fails to achieve much on any level.

Let's not accentuate the negative though – after all, such bellyaching clearly comes from the same well as the self-deprecating observational funsterism of Let’s Wrestle’s better songs, and they do succeed in pulling things together nicely for the final stretch of ‘Nursing Home’, with a couple more delightfully ribald punkers and – a first for the band – a really successful quiet song. Written more in character than from first hand experience (presumably), ‘I Am Useful’s tale of an abandoned husband taking stock of his earthly achievements chronicles the inadequacies of modern, middle-class manhood in far more convincing fashion, like one of those real keepers Darren Hayman knocks out every couple of years. A very good song.

Perhaps more imagination and less reportage points the way forward for Let’s Wrestle’s continued maturation, but it pains me to think of such things. As long as they’re still spending at least some of their time bawling out tales of unlikely drunken escapades and supermarket encounters over messy pop punk tunes, I’ll be a willing audience.

Oh, and hey: that Steve Albini guy really knows how to record a great-sounding rock album, doesn’t he? Who knows, if he keeps it up he might be able to make a career out of it.






8. The Feelies – Here Before (Bar/None)

Seems like this record was pretty much slept on this year. Or at least, I didn’t hear much about it. Not sure why this was the case – I mean, everyone love The Feelies, right? I guess they must have just been hit with some of diminished interest/expectation fatigue that tends to greet new material from reformed heritage indie-rock bands. A shame, because I think for my money this is probably the best record they’ve ever made.

Admittedly, twenty years is a pretty big gap by anyone’s standards, but this is after all a band who took five years off between their first and second records, and almost as long again before making their third. This one, by my count, is their fifth, and the band’s unhurried method of operation is perhaps worth bearing in mind, given that ‘Here Before’ sounds less like a desperate grab at past glories and more like a natural progression and refinement of the band’s sound. The work of group of like-minded individuals who have always seemed to operate on the principal of coming together once in a blue moon when the time is right to make some music, and doing so; the kind of album one can presumably step up to make after two decades of selective song-writing and careful contemplation of the subtle mysteries of the indie-rock form.

Like The Bats, The Feelies have become enlightened masters of that form – secret chiefs of the fast-strummed guitar, the elegant chord progression, the casually melodic bass-line. Through the band’s early years in existence, founders Glenn Mercer and Bill Million seemed like rather nervous, retiring presences on their own records, putting The Feelies in the odd position of being a band led by two singer/guitarists but completely dominated by the rhythm section, a circumstance that helped define the unique sound of their ‘Crazy Rhythms’ material. Subsequent albums have investigated other means of fusing meaningful songcraft and guitar blather to the band’s more confident rhythmic muscle, and on ‘Here Before’, they’ve finally hit a perfect balance, leading to some of the most exquisitely exemplary post-VU guitar-pop ever realised.

As is ever the case with these things, there’s nothing particularly special to point out here, no big ‘HEY LOOK’ moments. Like a room full of modest masterpieces by some lesser known impressionist painter, it’s the beauty of the craftsmanship that stands out; everything in its proper place, with minor variations on established themes taking on major significance. On songs like ‘Change Your Mind’, Mercer sounds (and writes) like the kind of warm, fleetingly profound Lou Reed that we’ve always wished Lou Reed would bother to be more often, vague yet perfectly turned couplets intoned with laidback reassurance: “you believe what you believe / that’s alright, it’s fine by me”. Guitars – primarily clean-toned – clang and chime just the way you’d want them to as the chord-borne melodies ebb and flow, delicious fuzz busting out for some soaring killer solos, exactly at the point at which you need one. Factor in one of the most concise and muscular rhythm sections in the indie-realm keeping things sprightly even on the slower songs, and there are few ways in which these kinda songs could possibly get any better. Affecting, ego-free, finely wrought music of a classic vintage is to be found right here – the kind of thing that makes you feel like berating younger musicians for not immediately taking time out from what they’re doing to listen, reflect, and take heed of the myriad lessons to be learned herein.






7. The Dirtbombs – Party Store (In The Red)

From May 2011:

“The idea of recreating techno on rock band instruments is always a notion I’ve kinda liked. I mean if the point of your band is energy and repetition, you might as well go the whole hog, right? Groups who have tried this sort of thing before, such as Oneida, have often done just that, steering straight toward an extreme noise-trance whiteout, so it’s cool to hear The Dirtbombs pulling back from that precipice and remembering to aim for the dancefloor instead, to mix a few metaphors. The album’s title is self-explanatory – far from a crazy experiment or punker in-joke, this is an honest attempt to fuse the rhythmic drive and atmospheric cool of early American electronic dance music with the sound and fury of rock n’ roll, and by and large, a successful one, I’d venture to suggest.

More than just banging through the skeletons of Derrick May and Juan Atkins compositions in garage-punk style, Collins and co have worked hard to meet their source material halfway here, incorporating percussion loops, hissing distorted synths, extreme echos and a relentless motorik pulse into their arsenal, and splitting the difference between punk rock brevity and club-friendly 12” track lengths by sticking largely to a 4-6 minute middleground.

[…]

Let’s just say that ‘Cosmic Cars’ and ‘Alleys of Your Mind’ are your new favourite late night driving tunes, ‘Tear The Club Up’ will make perfect entrance music for your forthcoming wrestling career, and ‘Strings of Life’ and ‘Jaguar’ both sound like beautiful sunrise-insomnia trance-outs that could have been pulled straight off some newly unearthed Arthur Russell/Sleeping Bag session.

As just about every review of this album has noted, the beatless 22-minute fuckaround of ‘Bugs in the Bass Bin’ does stand as something of a stumbling block to overall enjoyment, but if you’ve got the patience to let it play through once or twice then even that starts to make a twisted kinda sense. Exactly WHAT kind of sense, who the hell knows, but I was certainly liking it a lot better by the end than I was at the start.

But basically, if the idea behind this album is one that appeals to you, rest assured The Dirtbombs do it about as well as it can be done, and you can go to the record shop with my blessing for the triple-LP set, just as I will hopefully do when I have a lot of money and have already bought enough Detroit techno records to assuage my aforementioned ignorance. Just like 'Ultraglide in Black' and 'Life, Love & Leaving' served to point me in the direction of a ton of soul compilations ten years ago, funnily enough... hmm, go figure."






6. Charalambides – Exile (Kranky)

Until I saw this up for pre-order at a couple of my favourite record shops, I had no idea there was a new Charalambides album out.

In the five years since their last official album for Kranky, I’ve touched base a few times with Christina Carter’s prolific stream of solo releases, which have veered from the sublime (‘Texas Working Blues’) to the practically unlistenable (‘Masque Femine’), but have largely lost sight of the no doubt many and varied projects Tom Carter has occupied himself with in recent years. Since the band cancelled a bunch of tour dates and more or less faded from view in ’07 (I think?), I’ve had no idea whether or not the two were even still making music together, and, pushed out by new sounds, new concerns, Charalambides’ music had largely faded from my mind.

So to be sitting here looking at these mammoth slabs of vinyl – eight songs, seventy five minutes - is something of a cause for celebration here in my little world. Or at least, I think it is. It occurs to me that I’m a very different person now to the one who has heavily into Charalambides midway through the last decade. Might the more humourless, stentorian folk-recital aspect of their work now just kinda really bug me? Will I really be able to get myself in the appropriate mood for this kind of angst-wracked, spectral blues very often? Might it all be a bit, y’know, demanding for my slovenly, pop/punk loving verge-of-30 self?

Midway through play # 1 of side # 1, as blinding waves of crystalline lead guitar thread their way into ‘Desecrated’s cloudbank of multi-layered string sustain, I get my answer. I’m staring at the speakers, anything else I was planning on doing this evening wiped from my mind entirely. The spell is cast again; I’m in their thrall. This music is f-ing incredible.

It is demanding at times, no doubt about that. ‘Wanted To Talk’ on side four could probably ruin a party five doors down the street – eleven and a half minutes of Christina delivering plain song lyrical lines delineating what seems to be a breakdown of marital communication over a continuously repeating pattern of six guitar notes. Even at their most ‘difficult’ though, Charalambides songs have a kind of mighty, invisible heartbeat behind them, a steady rhythm that continues even when almost no sound at all is in evidence, drawing the listener into the wordless, subconscious intimacy of their self-contained world. And even the pitch darkness you sometimes find there doesn’t seem like too bad a place to be. It’s always calm there, even in the midst of misery and collapse. Real ‘eye of the storm’ stuff.

Then when they do finally tear down the blinds and let the sunshine in – the triumphant guitar pyrotechnics of ‘Into The Earth’, the vast, desertscape string drone of ‘Before You Go’, the tangled bliss of ‘Words Inside’ - the effect is almost indescribable.

In fact, ‘Exile’ for the most part strikes me the most immediate and powerful music Charalambides have ever made – a monumental testament to everything they’ve ever set out to achieve. Perhaps their masterpiece, if there’s anyone out there still listening.

Or that’s what I think at the moment, anyway. I only got this record last month, and I’ve not really had the time to process it properly, to immerse myself in it as much as I would like to.

Y’know what I should do more often? Lie on the floor and listen to music. I mean just lie there, no cushions or anything, not doing anything else, and just listen. I used to do that quite a lot, now I barely ever do. This would be an extremely good album for that kind of immersion I think.

After all these years, the heaven-scraping splendour that this duo can pull out of two guitars and one voice is still a staggering and terrifying thing. It would be an unfathomable cliché to say that it makes my hair stand on end, except that it really does.

This is an album that deserves to have many more words written about it, only listening to it makes words seem so stupid.

Labels: best of 2011, Charalambides, Let's Wrestle, The Beets, The Dirtbombs, The Feelies