Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill
Neil young makes a statement here. That statement is: "I am senile, and I don't care what you think." This album starts with a twenty seven minute jam, and has two other songs well over the fifteen minute mark. He also states that he's going to "get a hip-hop haircut," which is the best evidence agaisnt anybody that they're going senile. And because he's senile, Neil Young does whatevere the hell he wants. Therefore, Neil Young proves that rockers are like fine wine: they can age into the perfect state of coolness. This music is best listened to loud. Headphones are acceptable, as long as they drown out all ambient noise of the supermarket. I listened to this album while grocery shopping and I was lost in a haze of a bygone time, when this supermarket would be smaller and their might be woodchips on the floor. The lighting would be a halogen tone, rather than the weird soft warm brown light they fill that place with now. It was a time when they needed get high and turn their amps up just to breathe man. Neil is keeping it a live.
Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods
It's tough to be the Silversun Pickups. When you're a band with such a definitive sound - hell, when you invented your own sound - you have the curse of having to push boundaries and also sound just like you did. I know people who say that the original EP, Pikul, was the only "true" Silversun Pickups album. That is, it is the only thing made by the Silversun Pickups that sounds like the Silversun Pickups should sound. So this might have been a bit of an underwhelming release. But it did what I hoped it would do: retain the Silversun Pickups aesthetic while expanding into new kinds of sounds. And really, that's what every band should do. Unfortunately, that kind of artistic sensibility gets bashed by fans and critics alike. Anyone who does so is a martyr in the Ozone Orthodoxy.
Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls
This was the perfect soundtrack for riding on a Greyhound bus. I was on the bus because they wouldn't let me use a hamper as a suitcase on an Amtrak train. I apparently need to invest in a duffle bag or something. But this music is the kind of music where you can't buy a duffle bag. You can't even by whiskey to drown your sorrows at missing the train. And there is no nice man who will let you exchange your train ticket for a bus ticket. Also, the protagonist of the title track is 22, which is something I can relate to.
While I seem surprisingly willing to talk about music on the internet, I have a hard time talking to strangers about music in real life. I don't remember how it happened, but I told someone that I was excited to listen to the new Calexico album. He asked what they sounded like. The best I could come up with was "kinda like if Wilco had a lot of south of the border influences." Laid back, dark and brooding, sweeping horn swells, acoustic guitar montunos, upright bass, the perfect soundtrack for aimlessly wandering the southwest.
Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - The Heist
I think this is the first time I've recognized an iTunes number one selling album with more than a blurb. Maybe Dispatch's eponymous EP got to number two, I'm not sure. But that's not the point right now. The album was independently recorded and produced by the duo. No major label was involved. I'm not mentioning it because it's what makes this album remarkable. I'm mentioning it because I think this is what makes this album great. Mainstream rap is clogged with excess and extravagances, but this polished without being ornate. Bonus points for the humility as well; most mainstream rap gravitates to statements of grandiosity, and while I know that trash talking is a viable element of the art form, once you get an album contract you have to deviate from that subject matter. Macklemore will admit he has problems, owns up to his alcoholism, stands up to homophobia, and, allegedly, only has twenty dollars in his pocket.
The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have come a long way since leaving El Paso in a van with At the Drive-In at age seventeen. This album may represent the band coming full circle, in their own strange way. When it was in production, Rodriguez-Lopez described Noctourniquet as "just future punk!" He also was willing to relinquish some creative control, which he has had a notoriously tight grip on previously. This is stripped down, with mostly standard length songs, no ornate horn sections, no ambient buzzing, no five movement suites. Most of the weirdness, and in fact, most of the sounds in general, are electronically generated, and the intricate drum beats, I suppose, make this their dubstep phase.
When I saw the Mars Volta in 2011, they were a minimal five-piece, with one of the members only using a MacBook to make sounds of some variety. Cedric was running around stage, dancing with the mic stand, doing backflips, and at one point tried to rip his shirt off, but for the most part they were subdued. Omar was motionless, the top button on his shirt buttoned, concentrated on picking out the intricate polyrhythms on his left-handed guitar. At this year's Coachella reunion of At the Drive-In, reports indicate, there was no rocking, no thrashing, the energy they brought to the stage as teenagers wasn't there anymore. Being the Mars Volta seems to be taxing on everybody involved. It's been eleven years since De-Loused In the Comatorium, and with every year my hopes that we're going to get another one of those diminishes a little more. This year I think I was willing to put them down for good. But I'm glad for the output from this duo on the last two decades, including this fine piece of whacky craftsmanship.
And speaking of bands in their dubstep phase...
Muse - The 2nd Law
Yes, all you die-hard Muse fans are going to hate me for recognizing this one. It's like the bastard child that should be locked in the closet and fed fish heads and residue from the gruel pot. Say what you will, but this concept-ish album about entropy may be the band's finest effort. Sure, the title suite is a little, well, dubsteppy. They were always trying to be epic, they always had dense carpet of sound going on. Even the haters have to admit, there is some solid guitar work and impressive vocals on this album. Every band has that album when they are at or past the apex of their stardom and puts out their "mature" effort, and I think for Muse, this is that album. Not that it's a bad thing at all. It's much more carefully constructed than The Resistance, and the musicianship is better than even on Absolution. Just don't let the whole entropy thing bum you out.
Check back soon for PowerTier II
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