My iTunes says I
bought/acquired 72 2011 albums this year, although 5 of them are the
same Battles album (featuring Tom, Dick and Harry) and I'm not sure
Count Basie recorded One More Time in 2011. Had I not embarked on a
mission to purchase the "100 jazz albums that shook the world" list in
its entirety (alas not even halfway) I might have done better - who
knows, I might have even picked up the new Coldplay. Nah, probably not,
but still, out of that limited pool, here are the great, the good, and
the distinctly average.
Great EPs
I believe I only bothered with this last year because I wanted to give shout-outs to the James Cleaver Quintet and Glassjaw. As it happens Glassjaw gave away the Coloring Book EP at their show earlier in the year, and it's not bad at all. Still groovy but less heavy than the Our Colour Green series of Singles, it could be an interesting new direction, but is a brand new LP too much to ask for? Another to mention: the Crosses EP is neither Deftones nor Team Sleep, but it is at least 3/5 brilliant. Chino Moreno strikes again.
Disappointments of the year
This is what comes of comparing an artist to themselves. Granted new directions are not often appreciated until after the event, but none of these set the world alight:
Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events: It would be wrong to say that every recent album has been worse than the last, but it wouldn't be a stretch to venture that complacency set in a while ago at the DT camp. If they don't shake things up soon (and no, picking the replacement drummer that sounded most like Mike Portnoy does not count) they are destined to spend the rest of their career in virtuosic but utterly uninspired irrelevance.
Russian Circles - Empros: Geneva was always going to be a supremely tough act to follow but there's hardly anything here in the same league.
This Will Destroy You - Tunnel Blanket: Most of this is just noise.
Florence & The Machine - Ceremonials: More consistent overall perhaps than Lungs, but it doesn't hit the heights of songs like Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) or Drumming Song. It's cheesier and more mainstream too, so it feels like a step backwards. I'd much rather listen to Adele.
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will: The first track White Noise is astounding, but the rest is very average bog standard Mogwai, although that's hardly a bad thing I suppose.
Almosts
Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know: Much more varied than the preceding two albums, and a consistent fairly high quality throughout, but no standouts that I've found as yet. Maybe a few more listens are needed.
Hella - Tripper: Off-kilter, frenetic and mental as fuck. This is a solid and reliable effort, but they are a bit of a one-trick pony. Zach Hill continues to FTW nevertheless.
Battles - Gloss Drop: Easy to release your first album of stuff that sounds like absolutely nobody else, much harder to do it again. Nonetheless some great moments, not least Futura.
Bill Ryder-Jones - If: The ex-The Coral whizz-kid manages to release a pop-classical album that doesn't sound like it came straight out of a "how to write pretty string arrangements that will fool people used to three guitar chords" manual. No, sorry, it's much better than that - varied, genuinely and deeply beautiful in parts, and BR-J uses the whole orchestra like a virtuoso composer. Try Enlace (although the guitar solo at the end really really should have been cut) or Some Absolute End (The End). No-one recommends you read the book this is a soundtrack to.
David Sanchez, Christian Scott et. al - Ninety Miles: Several guys went to Cuba and played some Jazz very very well indeed.
Courtney Pine - Europa: He's cheesier and less virtuosic on record than he is live, but there's a lot to love on this Bass Clarinet only (although the man plays it like a Tenor Sax) album inspired by a certain place (can you guess where?), and with his band without a weak link among them.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I'm With You: This record was doomed to failure. It was a follow-up to Stadium Arcadium (only a single album's worth of good material but an epic double album nonetheless), guitar genius John Frusciante had buggered off, and it came sporting a throwaway title and shit artwork. It is from this position of underwhelming expectation that the record bursts out and lands much higher, if not to fanfare then at the very least to respectability. In particular, new guitarist Josh Klinghoeffer acquits himself incredibly well. Those of us familiar with JF's solo work already know JK's a great player, but he manages to pull it off in a setting far removed from the sparse, beautiful and minimal playing we've heard from him before. As for the album as a whole, most of the songs are artfully dark if not actually full-out sad, and, crucially in a band of their age and history, mature, and in Brendan's Death Song, Goodbye Hooray (this album's This Velvet Glove?) and Police Station we have some particular highlights.
Other good records include Explosions in the Sky - Take Care (x3) and the Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (backing tracks so good the rapping is almost unnecessary).
Special mention
A thoroughly deserved #9 album of the year in Kerrang! magazine for the James Cleaver Quintet's That Was Then This is Now. The Venn diagram circles of music being made by people you know, not signed by a major label, and simply great music, need not be separate - as embodied whole-heartedly by this band. The most striking thing about TWTTIN is not so much the ambition (segues - check, short segment style tracks - check, thematic reprises - check, tracks you've already heard - check, literary reference to one of the greatest novels ever written (American Pyscho) - check, jaunty Jazz Sax - check, string arrangements - check, 8 minute plus closing track - check), but rather how that ambition is fulfilled time and time again. All of these things mentioned fit in well - all are great ideas not shoehorned in just for the sake of it. And on top of all that they manage to carve out their own niche in a busy genre full of clones (as just a couple of examples, the clean vocals/the screamy vocals, the stabby guitar/the melodic guitar are not always in the places you expect, and all the more refreshing for it). Best of luck guys, long may the current wave of creativity and success continue.
Top 10
10) Adele - 21
Granted she may well turn out to be only a flash in the pan (although I for one am rooting for her to return to full health and ability), but in 2011 her success has been utterly deserved. What good though, would the anti-pop-starlet image be if her voice and songs were rubbish? Neither is so, thankfully, and what's more there is a lot more to her than "Someone Like You". Not until you get to track 7 (Take It All) does 21 begin to flag, but with the double whammy of a stunning cover of The Cure's Lovesong and the previous sentence's huge hit (although I'm given to understand it is somewhat overplayed) to end the album, I'm not complaining. A much better effort than 19, this is the sound of Adele finding her voice, and what a voice it is.
Check out: Set Fire to the Rain, He Won't Go
9) Pianos become the Teeth - The Lack Long After
Hard to pin down what's so great about this. Do they sound like countless other post-hardcore bands out there? Yes and no. Are they talented players? Undoubtedly. Do the songs have quiet moving moments? Check. Is it ever cheesy or whiny? Certainly not. Does Kyle Durfey's voice sound like it's going to shatter at any moment? Yes, but doesn't he sound utterly fucking genuine every step of the way? Absolutely. This is music with heart and passion and I challenge you not to be convinced by it.
Check out: Shared Bodies, Spine
8) Opeth - Heritage
I have a feeling this is what the half-arsed Watershed would have sounded like had Akerfeldt had the balls. In hindsight that album wasn't as wet (pun intended) as we thought at the time (and I absolutely adore that guitar work at the end of Burden) but the latest "Observation" (as Opeth call them) is a fully realised and (mostly) successful attempt at something new. Just like Damnation was, actually, but even without death growls this is still a largely heavy album. Flogging the comparison, Heritage is definitely more Prog and Jazz than acoustic ballad too.
I'm not convinced by all of it, I must say, although even the avant-garde experimentalism of Famine appeals to the Bitches Brew fan in me, and for some more straight-up cheesy (if I had an editor they'd have removed that word a few uses ago) Opeth there's always Slither (Ronnie James Dio tribute, as it happens). When it comes down to it though I think it's the acoustic guitar acrobatics that I really love about this album, so the standout tracks are for me where that is present.
Check out: Haxprocess, I Feel the Dark
7) Machine Head - Unto the Locust
I think at this point in my musical listening maturity I might be the wrong target demographic - I'm neither a die-hard pre-The Burning Red fan nor a 13 year-old metal head discovering for the first time that a band named themselves after the Deep Purple album named after the twiddly things on the heads of guitars. That said, I haven't heard Through the Ashes of Empires or The Blackening and I did always think MH were pretty second tier. With the occasional whiny melodic bit, immature artwork (is that still important in this day and age?) and dodgy lyrics, I'm not completely overwhelmed by this record, but I'm certainly won over. Not many people would have thought they would up their games so much as players and song-writers (the first track is a three movement sonata for goodness' sake) or that they could pull it off so well. The band who debuted with Burn my Eyes then later bounced back from nu/rap metal with TtAoE/TB make their best album now? Astonishing. Well done gentlemen.
Check out: I am Hell (Sonata in C#), Be Still and Know
6) Thrice - Major / Minor
A fitting swansong. Given the deceleration following the Alchemy Index volumes I-IV I'm not overly upset by the "hiatus". Leaving behind a solid body of work they should be very proud of, Thrice are quitting while they're ahead (artistically at least, not sure they sell so well - which is, frankly, a crime). Whereas Beggars faltered in places (the cringing Starsailor-esque vocals for instance) upon the first few listens this sounded like a much better overall album, albeit without songs as good as The Weight. Then a couple of the tracks smack bang in the middle of the record struck me. On these in particular but also throughout the whole album we have near-perfect balances of beautiful clean guitar picking, heavy distorted bits, appropriate build-ups and the vocal singalong payoffs we've come to love ever since Vheissu. That is to say perhaps these are the sounds of a very good Thrice record, not an innovative one. Purists of the pre-Vheissu hardcore may even like Blur, while fans of the ballady stuff will go weak at the knees for Disarmed. And Dustin Kensrue maintains both his lyrical excellence and penchant for not ramming his quite extensive religiousness down his listeners' throats (it's there, but it's subtle, non-preachy and not dogmatic).
Check out: Call it in the Air, Treading Paper
5) DJ Shadow - The Less you Know, the Better
What a return to form this is. OK OK let's not get too excited. The dark and melancholy beauty, the enduring perfection of Entroducing and The Private Press this does not achieve, sure, but compared to the abysmal Outsider this is a masterpiece. I know he doesn't want to remake the same record over and over again, fine, but this is hopefully different enough to make Josh Davis realise he does not need sub-par Coldplay singer wannabes or narrow gangsta rappers to fit that criteria. Like the Outsider we still have original guitars, drums and singing at points here, and where there is rapping this time it's actually good, well on the excellent Stay the Course anyway. On the other hand, the vocals on Warning Call and Give me Back the Nights are interesting the first time but they soon become grating and track-skippable. The deceptively simple Sad and Lonely is intriguing - I'm not sure what I make of the bit where the strings join the piano in a different key - but also quite lovely.
A few duds aside, this is well crafted, at times catchy, at others quite heavy (I Gotta Rokk for instance) but always interesting. Mr Shadow emerges with his dignity and artistic integrity intact once more. And the title and accompanying artwork are a clever nod to the curse of celebrity, too.
Check out: Border Crossing, Stay the Course
4) Bjork - Biophilia
I didn't get Volta when it came out, nor did I make the effort to see her live at Hammersmith a few years ago. Big mistakes on my part. Bjork is one of the most consistently original artists out there, and one who manages to maintain the highest quality in their work no matter how weird or ambitious it gets.
Weird and ambitious Biophilia certainly is, musically alternating between sparse and minimal arrangements (no surprises there, but the fact that she can do so much with so little, time and time again, is astonishing), instruments Bjork invented herself and even some bits of drum and bass; lyrically telling the story of the origin of the world; and even distributing the album via individual-track iPad apps. I've only got it on CD, but as a straight-forward album, great artwork (again) aside, it's something quite unique. If you can't stand Bjork's warbling and at times very odd backing tracks, then this record wont convert you, but the rest of us will be rather enriched by the whole experience.
Check out: Crystalline, Sacrifice
3) Puscifer - Conditions of my Parole
This was a surprise. Even for the staggeringly huge Tool / APC fan I am, following the industrial and minimalist wank that marred most of V is for Vagina (your other bands are serious, you want to have some fun, we get it), there came the quite lovely Polar Bear (on the C is for **** EP) and now this.
It would seem Maynard has remembered how to sing like Maynard. Listening to the first solo album, it was heartbreaking every single time he chanted pointlessly. Now the voice we know and love is back. Puscifer still isn't about the soaring transcendental majesty of Tool or the atmospheric song-writing of A Perfect Circle, but the backing vocals are there, that thing he does where he sounds like he's harmonising with himself is there, the beautiful shimmer is there. And not just on a couple of tracks either - ComP is full of amazing stuff: the industrial stomp of Toma, the originality, funny cowbell and the mid-section payload of Man Overboard, the tremolo acoustic guitar of Tumbleweed, the choking, aching, tear-jerking gorgeousness of Green Valley and Horizons, the genuine fun of the title track, the drumming of the one and only Jon Theodore,... I could go on all night.
Forgive MJK his previous transgressions - this should satisfy even those who expect the next Tool record to be decent.
Check out: Any of the tracks I've mentioned, or Monsoons, or Tiny Monsters, or...
2) Mastodon - The Hunter
2009's Crack the Skye is objectively still a masterful album, but it can be difficult, exhausting and a tad meandering at times. As for The Hunter - well it's still exhausting, but only in a good way. It has much shorter songs, it's straightforward (well, for Mastodon), catchier than a good cricketer and contains precisely 0.02% filler - to put it scientifically they pretty much nail it track after track.
Lyrically still a bit tongue-in-cheek ("I killed a man coz he killed my goat") but vocally on track with Crack the Skye's bar-raising singing, musically as impressive as ever (drummer Brann Dailor is not the only member who sounds like he has four arms), this is the awesome and mighty Mastodon trimmed of all the fat (except maybe the THX noise at the start of Creature Lives). This is a polished, accomplished and extremely fun record.
Check out: Black Tongue, Stargasm
1) Hiromi (the Trio Project) - Voice
I was already slightly aware of the diminutive Japanese lady jazz/rock/even-classical-sometimes fusion pianist in May/June when this album dropped, but when it did it turned my world just that tiny bit crazier. Scratch that. A lot crazier - I bought this album somewhere around 14/15 times and gave it out to mates, I bought her entire back catalogue, including three live DVDs, a couple of records she did with Bassist Stanley Clarke and her duet with Jazz piano giant Chick Corea, and I dragged my Dad to Cologne and Salzburg to see her play live a couple of times.
While her early stuff is largely Jazz fusion, all of her stuff is virtuosic to the point of insanity, but I find Voice the cream of the crop so far. It is a distillation of everything that is great about Hiromi - mainly her ability to play at warp speed but also with passion, love and fun, and without sacrificing something so cliched as a good tune - and at times she is beginning to show signs of beginning to show signs (sic) of restraint (several months on even I can finally admit she could do with this from time to time). Not the biggest fan of Jazz guitar, glad I am to have only Anthony Jackson on (Contra)Bass (largely perfunctory but always solid and the perfect foil to the other two) and the mesmorising Simon Phillips on drums. So they're a trio playing a bit of Prog, a bit of Rock, a bit of Classical, a bit of this, a bit of that, but all tied together by the Jazz sensibility.
Hiromi counts Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal and Chick Corea as her friends and sometime mentors, but I would hope their endorsement is superfluous. From the unnervingly simple solo piano chords that begin the album on the title track before all hell breaks loose with that repeated single note, the solo showcase that is the stunningly lovely Haze, the always tasteful and always incredible double-kick drumming that appears sporadically but appropriately throughout, the slightly more traditional Jazz of Now or Never, and the mind-boggling main solo of Labyrinth (the whole track is brilliant but who would have thought that mashing piano chords at 1000mph would be quite so life-changingly phenomenal?), this record nigh-on flawlessly redefines what it means to be "good at what you do".
Perhaps most people will find a diet of Hiromi difficult to exist on, but if you want to experience the sound of someone who is so at one with her instrument it makes you imagine she could do anything, look no further. She's playing a residency at Ronnie Scott's sometime next year. Hopefully some of you will accompany me.
Check out: Voice, Labyrinth, Haze, Delusion
Thank you and Happy Christmas 2011
Great EPs
I believe I only bothered with this last year because I wanted to give shout-outs to the James Cleaver Quintet and Glassjaw. As it happens Glassjaw gave away the Coloring Book EP at their show earlier in the year, and it's not bad at all. Still groovy but less heavy than the Our Colour Green series of Singles, it could be an interesting new direction, but is a brand new LP too much to ask for? Another to mention: the Crosses EP is neither Deftones nor Team Sleep, but it is at least 3/5 brilliant. Chino Moreno strikes again.
Disappointments of the year
This is what comes of comparing an artist to themselves. Granted new directions are not often appreciated until after the event, but none of these set the world alight:
Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events: It would be wrong to say that every recent album has been worse than the last, but it wouldn't be a stretch to venture that complacency set in a while ago at the DT camp. If they don't shake things up soon (and no, picking the replacement drummer that sounded most like Mike Portnoy does not count) they are destined to spend the rest of their career in virtuosic but utterly uninspired irrelevance.
Russian Circles - Empros: Geneva was always going to be a supremely tough act to follow but there's hardly anything here in the same league.
This Will Destroy You - Tunnel Blanket: Most of this is just noise.
Florence & The Machine - Ceremonials: More consistent overall perhaps than Lungs, but it doesn't hit the heights of songs like Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) or Drumming Song. It's cheesier and more mainstream too, so it feels like a step backwards. I'd much rather listen to Adele.
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will: The first track White Noise is astounding, but the rest is very average bog standard Mogwai, although that's hardly a bad thing I suppose.
Almosts
Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know: Much more varied than the preceding two albums, and a consistent fairly high quality throughout, but no standouts that I've found as yet. Maybe a few more listens are needed.
Hella - Tripper: Off-kilter, frenetic and mental as fuck. This is a solid and reliable effort, but they are a bit of a one-trick pony. Zach Hill continues to FTW nevertheless.
Battles - Gloss Drop: Easy to release your first album of stuff that sounds like absolutely nobody else, much harder to do it again. Nonetheless some great moments, not least Futura.
Bill Ryder-Jones - If: The ex-The Coral whizz-kid manages to release a pop-classical album that doesn't sound like it came straight out of a "how to write pretty string arrangements that will fool people used to three guitar chords" manual. No, sorry, it's much better than that - varied, genuinely and deeply beautiful in parts, and BR-J uses the whole orchestra like a virtuoso composer. Try Enlace (although the guitar solo at the end really really should have been cut) or Some Absolute End (The End). No-one recommends you read the book this is a soundtrack to.
David Sanchez, Christian Scott et. al - Ninety Miles: Several guys went to Cuba and played some Jazz very very well indeed.
Courtney Pine - Europa: He's cheesier and less virtuosic on record than he is live, but there's a lot to love on this Bass Clarinet only (although the man plays it like a Tenor Sax) album inspired by a certain place (can you guess where?), and with his band without a weak link among them.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I'm With You: This record was doomed to failure. It was a follow-up to Stadium Arcadium (only a single album's worth of good material but an epic double album nonetheless), guitar genius John Frusciante had buggered off, and it came sporting a throwaway title and shit artwork. It is from this position of underwhelming expectation that the record bursts out and lands much higher, if not to fanfare then at the very least to respectability. In particular, new guitarist Josh Klinghoeffer acquits himself incredibly well. Those of us familiar with JF's solo work already know JK's a great player, but he manages to pull it off in a setting far removed from the sparse, beautiful and minimal playing we've heard from him before. As for the album as a whole, most of the songs are artfully dark if not actually full-out sad, and, crucially in a band of their age and history, mature, and in Brendan's Death Song, Goodbye Hooray (this album's This Velvet Glove?) and Police Station we have some particular highlights.
Other good records include Explosions in the Sky - Take Care (x3) and the Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (backing tracks so good the rapping is almost unnecessary).
Special mention
A thoroughly deserved #9 album of the year in Kerrang! magazine for the James Cleaver Quintet's That Was Then This is Now. The Venn diagram circles of music being made by people you know, not signed by a major label, and simply great music, need not be separate - as embodied whole-heartedly by this band. The most striking thing about TWTTIN is not so much the ambition (segues - check, short segment style tracks - check, thematic reprises - check, tracks you've already heard - check, literary reference to one of the greatest novels ever written (American Pyscho) - check, jaunty Jazz Sax - check, string arrangements - check, 8 minute plus closing track - check), but rather how that ambition is fulfilled time and time again. All of these things mentioned fit in well - all are great ideas not shoehorned in just for the sake of it. And on top of all that they manage to carve out their own niche in a busy genre full of clones (as just a couple of examples, the clean vocals/the screamy vocals, the stabby guitar/the melodic guitar are not always in the places you expect, and all the more refreshing for it). Best of luck guys, long may the current wave of creativity and success continue.
Top 10
10) Adele - 21
Granted she may well turn out to be only a flash in the pan (although I for one am rooting for her to return to full health and ability), but in 2011 her success has been utterly deserved. What good though, would the anti-pop-starlet image be if her voice and songs were rubbish? Neither is so, thankfully, and what's more there is a lot more to her than "Someone Like You". Not until you get to track 7 (Take It All) does 21 begin to flag, but with the double whammy of a stunning cover of The Cure's Lovesong and the previous sentence's huge hit (although I'm given to understand it is somewhat overplayed) to end the album, I'm not complaining. A much better effort than 19, this is the sound of Adele finding her voice, and what a voice it is.
Check out: Set Fire to the Rain, He Won't Go
9) Pianos become the Teeth - The Lack Long After
Hard to pin down what's so great about this. Do they sound like countless other post-hardcore bands out there? Yes and no. Are they talented players? Undoubtedly. Do the songs have quiet moving moments? Check. Is it ever cheesy or whiny? Certainly not. Does Kyle Durfey's voice sound like it's going to shatter at any moment? Yes, but doesn't he sound utterly fucking genuine every step of the way? Absolutely. This is music with heart and passion and I challenge you not to be convinced by it.
Check out: Shared Bodies, Spine
8) Opeth - Heritage
I have a feeling this is what the half-arsed Watershed would have sounded like had Akerfeldt had the balls. In hindsight that album wasn't as wet (pun intended) as we thought at the time (and I absolutely adore that guitar work at the end of Burden) but the latest "Observation" (as Opeth call them) is a fully realised and (mostly) successful attempt at something new. Just like Damnation was, actually, but even without death growls this is still a largely heavy album. Flogging the comparison, Heritage is definitely more Prog and Jazz than acoustic ballad too.
I'm not convinced by all of it, I must say, although even the avant-garde experimentalism of Famine appeals to the Bitches Brew fan in me, and for some more straight-up cheesy (if I had an editor they'd have removed that word a few uses ago) Opeth there's always Slither (Ronnie James Dio tribute, as it happens). When it comes down to it though I think it's the acoustic guitar acrobatics that I really love about this album, so the standout tracks are for me where that is present.
Check out: Haxprocess, I Feel the Dark
7) Machine Head - Unto the Locust
I think at this point in my musical listening maturity I might be the wrong target demographic - I'm neither a die-hard pre-The Burning Red fan nor a 13 year-old metal head discovering for the first time that a band named themselves after the Deep Purple album named after the twiddly things on the heads of guitars. That said, I haven't heard Through the Ashes of Empires or The Blackening and I did always think MH were pretty second tier. With the occasional whiny melodic bit, immature artwork (is that still important in this day and age?) and dodgy lyrics, I'm not completely overwhelmed by this record, but I'm certainly won over. Not many people would have thought they would up their games so much as players and song-writers (the first track is a three movement sonata for goodness' sake) or that they could pull it off so well. The band who debuted with Burn my Eyes then later bounced back from nu/rap metal with TtAoE/TB make their best album now? Astonishing. Well done gentlemen.
Check out: I am Hell (Sonata in C#), Be Still and Know
6) Thrice - Major / Minor
A fitting swansong. Given the deceleration following the Alchemy Index volumes I-IV I'm not overly upset by the "hiatus". Leaving behind a solid body of work they should be very proud of, Thrice are quitting while they're ahead (artistically at least, not sure they sell so well - which is, frankly, a crime). Whereas Beggars faltered in places (the cringing Starsailor-esque vocals for instance) upon the first few listens this sounded like a much better overall album, albeit without songs as good as The Weight. Then a couple of the tracks smack bang in the middle of the record struck me. On these in particular but also throughout the whole album we have near-perfect balances of beautiful clean guitar picking, heavy distorted bits, appropriate build-ups and the vocal singalong payoffs we've come to love ever since Vheissu. That is to say perhaps these are the sounds of a very good Thrice record, not an innovative one. Purists of the pre-Vheissu hardcore may even like Blur, while fans of the ballady stuff will go weak at the knees for Disarmed. And Dustin Kensrue maintains both his lyrical excellence and penchant for not ramming his quite extensive religiousness down his listeners' throats (it's there, but it's subtle, non-preachy and not dogmatic).
Check out: Call it in the Air, Treading Paper
5) DJ Shadow - The Less you Know, the Better
What a return to form this is. OK OK let's not get too excited. The dark and melancholy beauty, the enduring perfection of Entroducing and The Private Press this does not achieve, sure, but compared to the abysmal Outsider this is a masterpiece. I know he doesn't want to remake the same record over and over again, fine, but this is hopefully different enough to make Josh Davis realise he does not need sub-par Coldplay singer wannabes or narrow gangsta rappers to fit that criteria. Like the Outsider we still have original guitars, drums and singing at points here, and where there is rapping this time it's actually good, well on the excellent Stay the Course anyway. On the other hand, the vocals on Warning Call and Give me Back the Nights are interesting the first time but they soon become grating and track-skippable. The deceptively simple Sad and Lonely is intriguing - I'm not sure what I make of the bit where the strings join the piano in a different key - but also quite lovely.
A few duds aside, this is well crafted, at times catchy, at others quite heavy (I Gotta Rokk for instance) but always interesting. Mr Shadow emerges with his dignity and artistic integrity intact once more. And the title and accompanying artwork are a clever nod to the curse of celebrity, too.
Check out: Border Crossing, Stay the Course
4) Bjork - Biophilia
I didn't get Volta when it came out, nor did I make the effort to see her live at Hammersmith a few years ago. Big mistakes on my part. Bjork is one of the most consistently original artists out there, and one who manages to maintain the highest quality in their work no matter how weird or ambitious it gets.
Weird and ambitious Biophilia certainly is, musically alternating between sparse and minimal arrangements (no surprises there, but the fact that she can do so much with so little, time and time again, is astonishing), instruments Bjork invented herself and even some bits of drum and bass; lyrically telling the story of the origin of the world; and even distributing the album via individual-track iPad apps. I've only got it on CD, but as a straight-forward album, great artwork (again) aside, it's something quite unique. If you can't stand Bjork's warbling and at times very odd backing tracks, then this record wont convert you, but the rest of us will be rather enriched by the whole experience.
Check out: Crystalline, Sacrifice
3) Puscifer - Conditions of my Parole
This was a surprise. Even for the staggeringly huge Tool / APC fan I am, following the industrial and minimalist wank that marred most of V is for Vagina (your other bands are serious, you want to have some fun, we get it), there came the quite lovely Polar Bear (on the C is for **** EP) and now this.
It would seem Maynard has remembered how to sing like Maynard. Listening to the first solo album, it was heartbreaking every single time he chanted pointlessly. Now the voice we know and love is back. Puscifer still isn't about the soaring transcendental majesty of Tool or the atmospheric song-writing of A Perfect Circle, but the backing vocals are there, that thing he does where he sounds like he's harmonising with himself is there, the beautiful shimmer is there. And not just on a couple of tracks either - ComP is full of amazing stuff: the industrial stomp of Toma, the originality, funny cowbell and the mid-section payload of Man Overboard, the tremolo acoustic guitar of Tumbleweed, the choking, aching, tear-jerking gorgeousness of Green Valley and Horizons, the genuine fun of the title track, the drumming of the one and only Jon Theodore,... I could go on all night.
Forgive MJK his previous transgressions - this should satisfy even those who expect the next Tool record to be decent.
Check out: Any of the tracks I've mentioned, or Monsoons, or Tiny Monsters, or...
2) Mastodon - The Hunter
2009's Crack the Skye is objectively still a masterful album, but it can be difficult, exhausting and a tad meandering at times. As for The Hunter - well it's still exhausting, but only in a good way. It has much shorter songs, it's straightforward (well, for Mastodon), catchier than a good cricketer and contains precisely 0.02% filler - to put it scientifically they pretty much nail it track after track.
Lyrically still a bit tongue-in-cheek ("I killed a man coz he killed my goat") but vocally on track with Crack the Skye's bar-raising singing, musically as impressive as ever (drummer Brann Dailor is not the only member who sounds like he has four arms), this is the awesome and mighty Mastodon trimmed of all the fat (except maybe the THX noise at the start of Creature Lives). This is a polished, accomplished and extremely fun record.
Check out: Black Tongue, Stargasm
1) Hiromi (the Trio Project) - Voice
I was already slightly aware of the diminutive Japanese lady jazz/rock/even-classical-sometimes fusion pianist in May/June when this album dropped, but when it did it turned my world just that tiny bit crazier. Scratch that. A lot crazier - I bought this album somewhere around 14/15 times and gave it out to mates, I bought her entire back catalogue, including three live DVDs, a couple of records she did with Bassist Stanley Clarke and her duet with Jazz piano giant Chick Corea, and I dragged my Dad to Cologne and Salzburg to see her play live a couple of times.
While her early stuff is largely Jazz fusion, all of her stuff is virtuosic to the point of insanity, but I find Voice the cream of the crop so far. It is a distillation of everything that is great about Hiromi - mainly her ability to play at warp speed but also with passion, love and fun, and without sacrificing something so cliched as a good tune - and at times she is beginning to show signs of beginning to show signs (sic) of restraint (several months on even I can finally admit she could do with this from time to time). Not the biggest fan of Jazz guitar, glad I am to have only Anthony Jackson on (Contra)Bass (largely perfunctory but always solid and the perfect foil to the other two) and the mesmorising Simon Phillips on drums. So they're a trio playing a bit of Prog, a bit of Rock, a bit of Classical, a bit of this, a bit of that, but all tied together by the Jazz sensibility.
Hiromi counts Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal and Chick Corea as her friends and sometime mentors, but I would hope their endorsement is superfluous. From the unnervingly simple solo piano chords that begin the album on the title track before all hell breaks loose with that repeated single note, the solo showcase that is the stunningly lovely Haze, the always tasteful and always incredible double-kick drumming that appears sporadically but appropriately throughout, the slightly more traditional Jazz of Now or Never, and the mind-boggling main solo of Labyrinth (the whole track is brilliant but who would have thought that mashing piano chords at 1000mph would be quite so life-changingly phenomenal?), this record nigh-on flawlessly redefines what it means to be "good at what you do".
Perhaps most people will find a diet of Hiromi difficult to exist on, but if you want to experience the sound of someone who is so at one with her instrument it makes you imagine she could do anything, look no further. She's playing a residency at Ronnie Scott's sometime next year. Hopefully some of you will accompany me.
Check out: Voice, Labyrinth, Haze, Delusion
Thank you and Happy Christmas 2011
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