Heartache With Hard Work

Rise – Rainer Maria

I’ve posted before about my love for Rainer Maria, who I think are one of the most underrated bands of the late 90s/early aughts. I came to them right as it seemed like they might be taking off (with 2001’s A Better Version of Me). They were being lauded by Pitchfork and they were so damn good that I just sort of processed them as a consensus great band on the way to big things.

They put out two more very good albums and then called it quits. And only in retrospect did I realize that they had never quite hit the big time like I thought.

Which is crazy, because they might well have been the best of the emo-rock bands that sprung up at the time. You want catharsis, you want hearts torn out? You want kick-ass rock songs? Then go buy yourself a couple Rainer Maria albums. You won’t be sorry.

This song is from Anyone in Love With You (Already Knows), their live record.

Impregnable Question – Dirty Projectors (from Swing Lo Magellan)

I wasn’t really able to get into the new Dirty Projectors album.  And really, I haven’t quite been able to love anything that they’ve done. But this song, precisely because it doesn’t really sound like a Dirty Projectors song, absolutely charmed me.

If I didn’t know better, I would swear this came out of the mid-60s. A little doo-wop melody, that slow-walking bassline.  And the ooooooohs just kill me.

If You Are To Bloom – Hum (from Downward is Heavenward)

Big crunching guitars, a nice little groove, and a series of deft little touches on the side.  It comes out of the same Chicago tradition of layered guitars and noise that gave us the early Smashing Pumpkins.  But where Corgan and co. went toward the pop and glam worlds, Hum just churned out big old space rock.

Despite growing up in the 90s, I was never really a 90s music kid.  My first (and truest) musical love was the 60s, and it took me until high school to acknowledge that the music of my own generation was really worthwhile.  At that point, the height of ‘alternative’ had already passed.

But in some ways, that was actually kind of a blessing.  It meant that I didn’t get burned out on all the knockoffs.  Which meant I was able to come to bands like Hum with somewhat fresh ears.  And well, they really knocked it out of the park.

Time Ago – Black Lab

Hey blog, long time since we’ve talked.

In an effort to liven things up around these parts, I’ve come up with a couple projects to keep my occupied with posting for a while.

First, I’m going to write a short post (pretty much) every weekday for the next few weeks, focusing on one song that struck my fancy that day.  These will mostly be deep-cuts from old stuff.  I tend to find that after spending the last couple months of the year digging into all the best-of lists and such that I burn out a bit on the new stuff.  And I want to spend some time now just sitting back with old favorites.  So I’ll be sharing those for a while.

My bigger project is inspired by my old Beatles-lists.  While I don’t want to plan anything nearly so grand with other bands, I do want to try a much more modest project: a short list of my top 10 songs from some of my favorite artists.  Keep an eye out for those sporadically over the next month or two.

Lucky Denver Mint – Jimmy Eat World

As our country lurches from crisis to manufactured crisis like a drunken sailor, the next big event on the horizon is the semi-annual renewal of the debt ceiling.  If you remember what happened in 2011, Republicans threatened to more or less destroy the American economy in the service of reducing government spending.  And we’ll have all that fun once again in the next couple months!

Now, the debt ceiling is just an insane piece of law in the first place.  It has nothing to do with the actual appropriation of money.  All that it does is control our capacity to borrow in order to pay off debts we’ve already incurred.  Which is to say: Congress is threatening to collapse the economy because they’re unhappy about the amount of money that they themselves have appropriated.

My current favored approach to dealing with this is the platinum coin approach.  An obscure provision (31 USC § 5112(k)) grants tremendous leeway to mint platinum coins of any denomination.  The exact text:

The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

The idea is to simply mint a couple platinum coins worth a trillion dollars, deposit them, and presto, the debt is two trillion bucks smaller.  It’s that simple.

Kevin Drum, who I normally agree with on most questions, is growing increasingly shrill on this subject.  The thing is, while he’s wrong, he is wrong in an interesting way.

Like it or not, the debt ceiling is legal. Congress has the power of the purse. On the other hand, using a ridiculous loophole in a statute about commemorative and bullion coins in order to evade the debt limit isn’t legal. Seriously, folks: just forget it. I know I’ll never have to pay up on a bet over this since it will never be tested, but this would go against Obama 9-0 if it ever made it to the Supreme Court.

It’s time to get a grip and leave the fever swamp thinking to the tea party. This whole thing is embarrassing. It will never happen; it’s an exercise in executive overreach that liberals are supposedly opposed to; and it would never make it past a judge.

There are three important elements here.  First, the debt ceiling generates fundamental constitutional blockages.  That is: the president is constitutionally obligated to spend the money which Congress has appropriated AND is constitutionally obligated to adhere to the debt ceiling.  But these two things directly contradict.  The result is a “constitutional showdown” to borrow some terminology from Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule.  The basic feature of constitutional showdowns is that they transcend ‘legality.’  They take those questions into the realm of politics.  And whoever ultimates wins the political game ends up stamping their interpretation of the law onto future decision-makers.  Think Lincoln during the Civil War: his acts weren’t strictly constitutional by the old standard, but he successfully enforced a NEW standard of judgment.

The point is that law is never as clear as it seems.  Interpretations may be better or worse, but they depend tremendously on the political background.  Faced with an impossible constitutional obligation, Obama may well have to develop a new approach to the debt ceiling which exceeds the confines of apparent legality, precisely because our current (contradictory) standards are generating a constitutional crisis.

Second, Drum’s characterization of the coin option as executive overreach is strange given his willingness to defer to a hypothetical Supreme Court action.  Such a decision would be judicial overreach to an even more extreme degree.   The job of the Court is to interpret the actual law, not to interpret the motivations or desires of those who made the law.  Even those (like me) who put a lot of value into the spirit of the law, or the principles which undergird it, do not think that the Court has free reign to simply ignore the direct (and quite clear) text.

When the law says the Secretary has discretion about denominations, it means that.   It doesn’t mean ‘the Secretary has discretion within the unspecified confines of what we meant.’  There is a reason that legislation is famously long and complex – it’s because this stuff actually IS complex, and you need to be precise.

The courts would likely refuse to even hear a case on this subject.  But if they did take it, they very likely would side with Obama, unless he was significantly losing the political battle (see above).

Third, and most importantly, Drum is correct that this would constitute a new assertion of executive power.  In a separate post he writes:

I want to ask something else: is this really the road liberals want to go down? Do we really want to be on record endorsing the idea that if a president doesn’t get his way, he should simply twist the law like a pretzel and essentially do what he wants by fiat? My recollection is that we didn’t think very highly of this kind of thing when we thought George Bush was doing it.

This is where he ends up being wrong in an interesting way.  This point is broadly correct.   The platinum option looks a lot like some of the assertions of executive power under Bush.

But really this just clarifies that treating ‘executive power’ as a good or bad thing in the abstract is mug’s game.  I have written extensively in the past about our overly deferential attitude toward Madisonian checks and balances, and this is a perfect case study.

I clearly do not think that Congress should be a rubber-stamping institution with no capacity to challenge the executive.  I don’t love the idea of war-making authority being permanently in the hands of the executive.  I don’t love signing statements which effectively pocket-veto bills.  I don’t enjoy executive discretion to torture or detain indefinitely.

But I similarly don’t like Congressional dithering.  I don’t enjoy the filibuster.  I don’t like that executive appointments are more-or-less permanently bottled in the Senate.  I don’t like the fact that the president can run on a clear set of agenda items, win by millions of votes, and then have no authority to enact those items.  I really don’t like that Congress can generate conflicting constitutional obligations which basically guarantee massive economic shocks.  And I like even less that they are apparently willing to wave that gun around in pursuit of their objectives.

All things being equal, I find the executive to be a more responsive electoral institution.  I find that in part because (for all the stupidity of the Electoral College), it’s usually the case that you end up president if the most people vote for you.  This is emphatically not the case in Congress where Democrats had a million more votes and yet somehow remain in the House minority.

All things being equal, I prefer representation on national questions (like: the basic fate of our economy) to be carried out by people with national obligations.  The president is president of the whole country and is responsive to the whole country.  House Republicans are responsible to an overwhelmingly rural and increasingly conservative subset of the population.

All things being equal, I prefer that governing be done by bodies with the capacity for decisive action.  The executive is a singular body capable of identifying goals and then pursuing them.  Congress is an inchoate body of conflicting goals, desires, and motivations.  It contains two chambers that don’t like each other, or anyone else. It retains a whole host of practices and regulations that further limit its capacity for action.

Put simply: Congress is a mess.  And while I don’t want new executive overlords, I am more than happy to permit some executive overreach on matters where Congress is manifestly incapable of functioning.

The debt ceiling is a pretty clear example of this.

This does not obligate me to uncritically endorse ALL executive power-grabs.  But a categorical refusal to accept the value of growing executive power because it reminds people of Bush would be a huge mistake.

Mint those coins, Mr. President.  Do it now and put this insane issue to rest.

As always, it’s limited to one song per artist (or else Japandroids would have placed  four songs in the top 10-15). And I’m continuing my tradition of not really talking about the whole song, but instead focusing in and highlighting the single best moment.

40. Wildest Moments – Jessie Ware
2:56 – Chilling and beautiful and sad and hopeful. She is really something special.

39. Heart Of The Continent – John K Samson
2:17 – John K Samson writes about Winnipeg in a way that makes it seem like every town in the whole world. This song is a companion to one of my favorite Weakerthans songs (“One Great City”), and lives up to its predecessor. There’s something marvelously perfect about the references in this song to “the crumpled dark.”

38. Bright Whites – Kishi Bashi
0:50 – There’s a reason this song was ubiquitous in that commercial over the last few months. Because it’s catchy as hell.

37. Video Games (youtube link) – Lana Del Rey
0:35 – Smoky, smooth, and dark gold. Like a good Scotch ought to be.

36. Near Light – Ólafur Arnalds
1:58 – Simplicity taken to the extreme. It is literally 5 or 6 keys, struck slowly and deliberately. But somehow, in the surrounding mix, it sounds like a revelation.

35. Varúð – Sigur Rós
4:55 – “We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows — not even God.”

34. You as You Were – Shearwater
1:24 – Running desperately, words almost tripping over the music, like…well…like an animal fleeing for its life.

33. We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monae) (youtube link) – Fun.
2:54 – This song probably has the biggest singalong chorus of the whole year, but it’s actually the bridge that really sells it for me.

32. Sunshine in Chicago – Sun Kil Moon
1:50 – World-weary and beautiful. His voice crackles and bends, and he offers a wry grin.

31. The Only Place – Best Coast
1:11 – The Best Coast album was a bit of a let-down, but I adore this bit.  It just screams California, a nice mixture of early 60s surfing optimism with 21st century post-alternative self-satisfaction.

30. Waking Season – Caspian
4:21 – This song is incredibly simple and you just know it’s going to catch fire at some point. When it finally arrives, though, it still comes as a shock.

29. Sad Eyes – Crystal Castles
1:57 – “Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.”

28. La Mort Blanche (Robert Hampson Remix) – Mogwai
12:46 – “The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed that the scythe was mowing by itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and precise by itself. These were the most blissful moments.”

27. The Sting – Vanessa Peters
2:24 – Quiet, beautiful, just a little bit ambiguous. It’s like falling in love just a little more quickly than expected. The bit of tension there–-the recognition that you’re opening yourself up to real pain-–is just part of what makes it special.

26. Kill for Love – Chromatics
0:16 – “We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.”

25. Same Love (feat. Mary Lambert) – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
2:04 – It’s not a great song in terms of the music (though Mary Lambert’s bit is well sung), but the matter-of-fact tone of his delivery and the pathos of the message hit me pretty damn hard. This may be hip-hop for the sensitive indie-kid, but since that’s pretty much what I am…

24. Strike Up Your Matches (feat. Matt Costa) – Love On A Real Train & Joachim Cooder
0:39 – Matt Costa’s voice is just amazing here. Whatever effect that is, I want to hear more of it.

23. Christmas Unicorn – Sufjan Stevens
9:40 – Turning “Love Will Tear Us Apart” into a Christmas carol = genius.

22. I Love It – Icona Pop
0:45 – Frankly, if this song were only 50 seconds long, it would rank even higher on the list. The single verse is just so big and stupid and dirty and amazing that it doesn’t need any more repetition. It’s all right here.

21. I Belong In Your Arms – Chairlift
0:35 – A staircase of descending notes is the single quickest way to my heart. I just can’t get enough of it. I think basically every one of these lists I’ve made over the years has included at least one track primarily based on this.

20. Werkin’ Girls – Angel Haze
0:36 – She starts out impressively, but this is the precise moment that you realize something really special is happening.

19. Ho Hey – Lumineers
1:16 – I have to admit, I’m a sucker for this sort of stuff. Give me some mandolins and heartfelt folk stylings and I’ll be a happy camper.

18. Ill Manors – Plan B
0:45 – Seething anger hasn’t sounded this good in a very long time. It’s the inchoate rage that precedes a precise listing of grievances or a platform for change. It could be misread as a simplistic critique of politics, but I think it’s the opposite. It’s a critique of the way that certain things are de-politicized, treated as outside the scope of reasonable debate.

17. State Hospital – Frightened Rabbit
2:59 – It’s emotionally fraught, but doesn’t pretend to the same kind of shattering intimacy from The Midnight Organ Fight. Which is an important thing for them. It speaks well of their ability to paint a picture of damage and loss, rather than rending open the wounds directly and letting the viscera pour out.

16. Losing You – Solange
2:53 – Her voice is just beautiful, and never more than here, with the production just starting to swirl back around her like the mists off a lake.

15. Inside/Outside – Tica Douglas
2:26 – Before you know it, everything has burst off into the distance. And all that’s left behind are the remnants of fireworks in your eyes.

14. Breathing Underwater – Metric
0:58 – I’m tempted to be contrarian and pick another part, but c’mon, this song is all about the chorus. She hits the sweet spot and magic ensues.

13. Capricornia – Allo, Darlin’
1:07 – This song makes me desperately want to visit Australia.

12. Closer (youtube link) – Tegan and Sara
0:36 – When it comes to Tegan and Sara, one thing you can count on: a great transition into the chorus.

11. Frailty (For the Dearly Departed) – Hammock
2:04 – “He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the threat of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, calling to love and to life.”

10. Genesis – Grimes
2:30 – I have no idea what on earth she is saying, and I don’t want to know.

9. Danko/Manuel – Jason Isbell
6:41 – And the walls of Jericho came crashing down.

8. Little Talks – Of Monsters And Men
1:33 – The vocal interplay is what really makes this song work for me. There is just something creepy and weird and amazing in his voice when he says “your mind is playing tricks on you my dear.”

7. The Hours – Beach House
1:29 – Remember what I said about the staircase of descending notes, and how it makes me knees weak? Yeah, so this song does that pretty well. I could listen to her sing “Don’t care about me” for days.

6. Scavenger – School Of Seven Bells
3:04 – One of the musical moments of the year. Her voice bursts out, and the whole sky erupts into a cascade of metallic fire.

5. It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy – Passion Pit
2:03 – “It’s the numbers, it’s the numbers, we don’t stand a chance” – when pitches seem to happen in slow motion and the baseball is the size of a grapefruit.  You turn and…unleash.

4. Howl – The Gaslight Anthem
1:27 – The pain is tangible, and the hope even more so. On an album that’s devoted to the idea that the radio really might just save us, this is the shining moment where it feels absolutely and completely possible. So when he sings “I waited on your call and made my plans to share my name” there’s nothing you can do but hope along with him.

3. Land Of Hope And Dreams (youtube link) – Bruce Springsteen
3:38 – One of my favorite Springsteen lines, followed by one of Clarence Clemons’ final recorded sax solos. When I hear this, I have to admit, it fills me with hope and dreams.

2. Emmylou – First Aid Kit
0:56 – The chorus of this song is just out-of-this-world good. But it’s all set up by those couple dipping notes on the guitar that immediately precede it. Sidenote: the bridge (at about 3:00) is one of the ten best musical moments of the year. And it’s not even the best part of this song!

1. The House That Heaven Built – Japandroids
3:25 – This song is all about the pauses and spaces in between the noise. The drums fall out, you’re poised on a knife’s edge. And when the tornado strikes again, it feels like it might very well be Judgment Day.

For me, 2012 was essentially a year for good old fashioned rock and roll.  At least when it comes to albums.  There was a lot of great electronica, folk, and hip-hop–some of which is represented here and a bunch more will be on my list of songs.  But as far as complete records go, rock pretty much rules the roost.  If you’ve got your heart on a sleeve and a guitar in hand, chances are I liked your record most.

I settled on 20 albums for this list because these are the ones I can recommend wholeheartedly.  But really, the top 11 are a class above the rest, and #1 is miles ahead of anything else.

As always, this is a subjective project. This is a list of the records I liked this year. Nothing more. Hope you enjoy some of them as much as I do.

20. Mark Knopfler – Privateering

A double album from one of my all-time favorite artists. There are too many bluesy numbers that don’t really work for me to be able to fully endorse it. But still, out of 25 songs, you’re going to get a ton of fantastic guitar-playing and Knopfler’s voice is one of the rare ones that has been able to age really well. Pick your favorite 13 songs from the bunch, and you’ll have a very solid record.

Highlights: Yon Two Crows, Hill Farmer’s Blues (Unmixed 2-Track), Haul Away, Radio City Serenade, Seattle

19. Grimes – Visions

It’s DIY electronica with dreamy pop movements and vocals that sound like they are being sung through a wormhole from Alpha Centauri.  I held out on this one for a long time because most of the reviews RIYLed a bunch of artists that I don’t like that much (Mariah Carey, The Knife, Kylie Minogue, Lykke Li, etc.).  But the key thing is that Grimes somehow takes all the good bits and pieces and mash them together into something that goes beyond its references.  All of the slickness in those artists is obliterated in a sort of Cubist re-imagination of genres.  I can’t really say why it works, but it does.

Highlights: Genesis, Oblivion, Vowels = Space and Time, Nightmusic

18. Lucero – Women and Work

As they get further and further from their punk roots, the quality slowly declines. Still, despite the extra sheen, they’ve got more than a few good tracks on here.  “It May Be Too Late” is the sort of boozy ballad that this band is made for.

Highlights: It May Be Too Late, When I Was Young, Who You Waiting On?

17. Sufjan Stevens – Silver and Gold, volume 6 (Gloria)

The other four Sufjan Christmas records didn’t do a lot for me, but this one (roughly circa Illinois) unsurprisingly is my favorite of the bunch. It has a couple lovely originals, most notably “Lumberjack Christmas/No One Can Save You From Christmases Past” – which has Sufjan at his sprightly best.  Strangely, “Silent Night” (one of my favorite Christmas songs) is the only song on here I don’t like.  It’s just a bit too precious. The closer, however, is a rousing and warm take on “Auld Lang Syne” that stands on the right side of the fey line.

Highlights: Lumberjack Christmas /No One Can Save You From Christmases Past, The Midnight Clear, Barcarola (You Must Be A Christmas Tree), Auld Lang Syne

16. Of Monsters and Men – My Head is an Animal

Dark, weird, Icelandic musical romps with big horns and an energetic choruses. The quiet bits call to mind a dark, moonlight night and tender touches of fingertips.  And then the loud part comes in and you realize that you’re surrounded by some sort of Icelandic forest band, ready to melt back into the night when the quiet parts return.

The star here is, of course, “Little Talks” which is one of the songs of the year.  But while the rest of the album can’t come close to matching it, there are plenty of other nice little tracks.

Highlights: Little Talks, Dirty Paws, King and Lionheart

15. Olafur Arnaulds – Living Room Songs

Songs composed and performed in a living room, made quickly and then immediately performed. It’s a gimmick, to be sure, but a gimmick that manages to work brilliantly. The self-imposed limitations of environment and composition allow for a deep sense of intimacy and introspection.

What are at heart incredibly simple movements expand outward like crystal formations–moving at a glacial pace but taking on the most unexpected of hues. Most of these songs are built around an incredibly basic progression. But the intrinsic solitude is enlivened by the delicate infrastructure of the strings. Together, they combine to suggest the frisson of doubt at the core of our daily routines: is this really all there is, to trace these steps over and over? But rather than casting a dark shade with that question, they invite you to see the depth of possibility in even the very simple.

Highlights: Near Light, Ágúst, This Place is a Shelter

14. Love On A Real Train & Joachim Cooder – Love on a Real Train

An interesting idea for an album: Cooder sent out a bunch of backing tracks (loosely imagined as the soundtrack to an imaginary movie) to his friends and asked them to mess around with them and contribute vocals. It makes for a very collaborative record with a lot of variance but a basic unity at the core.

The tracks mix together glitchy electronics, gentle strings, dulcet vocals, and just a hint of what seem to be Asian (?) tonal influences. This finds its finest form in “Strike Up Your Matches” with a Tahitian choir sample, some delightfully off-kilter percussion, and an otherworldly vocal performance from Matt Costa.

Some of the best tracks here are mostly wordless. Petra Haden doesn’t sing on her two songs so much as she turns her voice into another instrument. On “Shinkansen,” Jon Hassell takes a bunch of tape loops and strings them together to form something genuinely weird and wonderful. I have no idea why it works so well, but somehow it does.

Highlights: Strike Up Your Matches, Shinkansen, Space Shells

13. Sigur Rós – Valtari

There’s nothing really all that new here, but try to imagine what it would sound like in the counterfactual world where Sigur Rós didn’t already exist. It would be a revelation. Jonsi’s voice is as weird and compelling as ever, and the peaks and valleys remain magical and ethereal. These songs don’t grab you with tremendous force, but with devoted attention you can find yourself getting lost in them. The build and release in “Varúð,” for example, is the aural equivalent of what it must be like to ride on a rainbow.

The final three tracks are mostly instrumental, but nevertheless are among the strongest on the record. I particularly recommend “Fjögur Píanó” for some of the prettiest piano music you’ll hear this year.

Highlights: Varúð, Fjögur Píanó, Varðeldur, Ekki Múkk

12. Metric – Synthetica

It sounds like a Metric album. No bad songs, and most of them are pretty good. What else needs to be said?

Highlights: Breathing Underwater, Clone, Nothing But Time

11. Vanessa Peters – The Burn, The Truth, The Lies

It has a little bit less of the grandeur that some of her other work had displayed. But in its place is just a wonderful summer record, full of jangly guitars and choruses that are just begging to be hummed. Once you dig in a bit, you start to realize that it’s actually a bit darker than you’d first sensed. But after a few more listens, the fundamental optimism takes back over and you start to hear the stories about loss and doubt as part of a broader narrative about the importance of connections.

It’s the sort of record that would slot perfectly into a road trip, right in between an old Gram Parsons record and a new Aimee Mann one. Which is to say: it doesn’t really sound like the music of 2012, but neither does it sound old or dated. There’s a sort of timelessness to these sort of songs–I can imagine that I would have loved this record as a kid, but can just as easily picture myself sitting in a rocking chair listening to “No Decision,” content at a life well-lived.

Highlights: The Sting, Copilot, The State I’m Living In, No Decision

10. Beach House – Bloom

It’s never really made sense to me that I didn’t like Beach House. Lo-fi, sun-dappled, dream-pop. Just a hint of a shoegaze aesthetic, with surprisingly dense textures. What in the world is there for me not to like? But for some reason, it just never clicked.

Well, fortunately, the cognitive dissonance can now end. Because Bloom is great, in all the ways that people have been telling me that the other Beach House records were great. It’s lush and beautiful and it sounds like every Ronettes song smushed together and then played in a special living room concert just for me.

Highlights: The Hours, Other People, New Year, Myth

9. Hammock – Departure Songs

Nineteen mostly-instrumental songs, most of which are over six minutes long…this is not a record to be easily digested. Hammock has been one of my favorite drone-ambient artists for a long time. With this record, however, they have officially jumped from that category squarely into ‘post-rock.’ Which is to say: this album sounds BIG.

The defining feature of Hammock used to be the sense of aching loneliness. The quiet solitude of horizons that stretch beyond sight. The slow, almost-imperceptible breathing of the universe. With this record, they have taken the same basic core elements, but given them purpose and infused them with a new energy. In a sense, their previous records were ruminations on entropy, while this record feels like the active force of life which struggles against the dying light.

It could so easily have all gone wrong. There was so much beauty in the sparseness. And while the desperate vitality of life is a noble subject, it also lends itself very easily to overindulgence. But I’m incredibly glad they took the risk, because the result is something moving beyond words.

Highlights: Frailty (For the Dearly Departed),  Together Alone, (Leaving) The House Where We Grew Up, We Could Die Chasing This Feeling, Pathos, Mute Angels

8. First-Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar

How do these two Swedish girls so perfectly capture the spirit of Americana? It’s a marvel.

The absolute standout track is “Emmylou” which is a tribute to some of the country partnerships of old: “I’ll be your Emmylou and I’ll be your June, if you’ll be my Graham and my Johnny, too.” It’s an ode to love, companionship, partnership, and a long history of music. The vocals remind me a lot of The Innocence Mission – with that haunting, shimmery catch in their voices. On that chorus my heart just melts to a puddle. And the slide guitars!

Elsewhere, the opening track “The Lion’s Roar” has some absolutely perfect vocal harmonies and the closer “King of the World” is a great stomping conclusion, with Ring of Fire horns and a Conor Oberst interlude. And yes, it all works together perfectly. “This Old Routine” has a great slide guitar bridge, and that wonderful feel of an end-of-the-night ballad. And “I Found a Way” reminds me of the dark tracks you’d find buried on an old Neko Case album.

This is, very simply, a self-possessed and flat-out beautiful record.

Highlights: Emmylou, King of the World, The Lion’s Roar, I Found a Way, This Old Routine

7. School of Seven Bells – Ghostory

This is the breakthrough album that School of Seven Bells have been presaging for quite a while. As always, this band is defined by the interplay between Alejandra Deheza’s silken voice and Benjamin Curtis’ dream-soaked synth soundscapes. In the past, that formula has been somewhat undone by the tendency to overplay the drone component. On this record, however, they find a much more secure balance.

The strange thing is that, on an album that is so clearly built out of artificial textures, all the imagery that comes to mind comes from nature. It is elemental in the classic sense: fire, water, earth, and wind.

Opener “The Night” is fire: albeit a cold-burning version. Earth is the two closing numbers: “White Wind” and “When You Sing” which move with the slow but implacable certainty of continental plates. Water is “Lafaye” which scatters like raindrops on a windowpane. And wind is in two tracks at the center of the record. First there is “Reappear,” where Deheza’s vocals wrap themselves around the music – shielding the delicate breaths from the rattling winds outside. It’s the eye of the storm, settled in the middle of the record, a vantage point from which the rest of the album takes shape. And “Show Me Love,” which immediately follows, is its refraction. If the former is the quiet interior of a raging storm, then the latter is the deathly quiet outside once the storm has passed.

When you combine all these elements, the result is the album’s greatest triumph: “Scavenger,” which is the best song they have made to date. The synth explosions circle around like an ion storm, but seem to be tightly wound together in some kind of intricate lace. Meanwhile, Deheza voice is like liquid darkness, dancing and weaving through the coils.

Highlights: Scavenger, The Night, Reappear, Show Me Love

6. Passion Pit – Gossamer

This is a great record in large part because it doesn’t try to be anything more than it is. There is no one song with the huge hook to get all the hipsters bobbing their heads, no chorus that tries too hard to impress. It’s just 45 minutes of music that delivers perfectly on the promise of the album title. If ever there were gossamer music, it’s here.

The best example is “It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy” which grows on me with every listen. It follows a pretty traditional song structure (verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus) but they just do it so darn well that you couldn’t possibly care. I’m a huge fan of musical transitions, and there is no more basic form of that phenomenon than the shift from verse to chorus and back. And this song is pretty much a textbook example of how to do it right. The verses stamp along at a stately pace, the choruses come in like a ton of bricks and just when the sweetness of the chorus risk overwhelming you they come back with the august longing of the verse. Rinse and repeat. It’s stupidly simple, but it takes a special kind of genius to stick the landing.

Elsewhere, “Constant Conversations” is the much slowed down version of the same effect, where they get a chance to show off the vocal harmonies. “Cry Like a Ghost” charts a middle course, with a slightly woozy blend of candy and buzzing synths. “Hideaway” is the quintessential case of a song that could strike you as a knockoff of themselves if you wanted to be ungenerous, but if you turn a slightly friendly ear to it will reveal itself as a pure pop gem.

Highlights: It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy, Cry Like a Ghost, Constant Conversations, I’ll Be Alright

5. Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball

The Boss is still very much The Boss. I had some doubts after his disappointing Working on a Dream, but those concerns have been completely wiped away. Wrecking Ball is right there in the conversation for his best work since the mid-80s.

The best songs shine like jewels. At the front of the list is “Land of Hope and Dreams,” which has actually been kicking around for a decade at this point, but finally gets the studio treatment here. And it’s a tour de force. You get basically the entire Springsteen mythos here: trains, lost souls, community, redemption, and a killer saxophone solo from the Big Man (one of his very last, sadly). And the fact that the mode of reference (trains!) is almost anachronistic these days is actually part of the point. It’s a call to remember what is great in our past, not to say that we can go back, but to caution us about what it means to move forward.

You get the same kind of sentiment (phrased in a different way) on “Wrecking Ball.” Sung from the perspective of the old Giants stadium, waiting to be knocked down, it strikes a tone of defiance, resolution, and acceptance. It’s a great metaphor, because you get the sense that this is really a song about Bruce himself, and the ever-present fact of age. All things must pass, and he knows it, but that doesn’t mean there is no honor in standing astride of time shouting no. If the end must come, he says, let me face it proudly and make the very best of what is left to me.

Sure, there are a couple goofy tracks on this record. And no, it doesn’t all work perfectly. But when it does work, the heights it scales are glorious.

Highlights: Land of Hope and Dreams, Wrecking Ball, We Are Alive, Rocky Ground, Death to My Hometown, We Take Care of Our Own

4. Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

It’s called Handwritten, and you get the sense that this appeal to authenticity is not just an affective thing with them. In lyrics, style, attitude, and every other way imaginable, these guys want to communicate the importance of doing things the right way.

That means a lot of things. It means a commitment to the true spirit of rock and roll. It means believing that anthems of love and passion really do contain within them the possibility of becoming something more. That redemption is rare but real, and all the more precious because of its rarity. That the coolest kid around is the one who can dare to be earnest.

The highlight of the record is “Howl.” This seems to be a deliberate attempt to return to “Thunder Road.” There’s a girl whose dress waves, a guy with a car offering to take her away. But it’s pitched toward the future, to a Mary who said ‘no’ to the first offer. She stuck around, went to school, and made a life for herself. And now our hero sends out a final missive: you know where you can find me, and all those plans I made might still have some life in them. It works because it’s audacious, it works because it feels REAL, and it works because Fallon absolutely sticks his lines.  The rest of the album can’t quite match it, but it provides the core around which everything else works.

Highlights: Howl, Mae, Handwritten, Here Comes My Man, 45

3. Jason Isbell – Live from Alabama

Okay, there’s something kind of absurd about calling a live album one of my favorites of the year. But I don’t care. This record is just that good.

A good live album should give you something new. By that standard Live from Alabama is a glorious success. In quite a few cases, these live performances have now become the definitive version for me.

In its original form “Outfit” felt like a letter being put to song. Now, Isbell’s voice is expansive, the accent is set free, and the guitar sings. You can feel the longing in the father’s voice, the hope for his son, and the deep concern. It’s a mixture of paternal love, of warning, of concern that his son will surpass him, and of soaring hope…that his son will surpass him. And better than pretty much any song out there, it conveys what the South means to those who love it: a deep passion, tinged with a sense of humor about how badly they want to escape sometimes.

The best song on the album is “Danko/Manuel” – another Truckers-era song that has always been good but is now transcendent. I always felt like the aspirations of this song exceeded its capacity to tell the story. The homage to Danko and Manuel seemed a little bit untethered, the ghost of an idea rather than the manifestation. I see now that this was wrong. The lack of detail in the story is precisely the point. It’s simply the architecture for the sound – for those ethereal horns, for Isbell’s croon on the chorus, for the insistent drums. It’s a song about what it means to sing and play – and the impossibility of making it about anything more specific is precisely the point.

Highlights: Danko/Manuel, Outfit, Dress Blues, Decoration Day, Goddamn Lonely Love

2. Allo Darlin’ – Europe

Absolutely pitch-perfect jangle pop. There is no artifice; just the simple joy of being alive in a world with such beautiful music. “You haven’t felt this way since 1998” they sing on the title track, and that’s exactly right.  This is the greatest record that Sarah Records never got a chance to give us.  Or, alternatively, this is the record I have desperately been hoping that Camera Obscura might produce.  But more than anything else, it’s music to fall in love to.

Highlights: Capricornia, Northern Lights, Europe, The Letter, Neil Armstrong

1. Japandroids – Celebration Rock

Perfection doesn’t always have to mean flawless, or transcendental. It doesn’t have to mean chiseled with the precision of Michelangelo’s David. There are moments of perfection that you get from imperfect situations. This record is perfect in the same way that stepping into a brisk night feels perfect after being trapped in a stuffy room. Or the way that a first kiss is perfect, even if you don’t end up spending your life with that person.

The first time I heard this record, I knew within the first 20 seconds of the first track (the stomping/shouting explosion that is “The Nights of Wine and Roses”) that this was going to be a contender for album of the year. And things only continue upward from there. “Fire’s Highway” is a thunderbolt of a song. It cuts through the ether and sets fire where it connects. And, long after the initial strike, the reverberations rumble around you.

If Celebration Rock is a perfect piece of rock and roll, then the tip of the spear which drives this point home is “The House That Heaven Built.” Addressed to a departed love, it combines the dense imagery of a walk through the remnants of a civilization with the most explosively straightforward, plaintive, and heart-wrenching chorus I can ever remember hearing:

When they love you (and they will)
Tell ‘em all they’ll love in my shadow
And if they try to slow you down
Tell ‘em all to go to hell

And the sound of it all. Oh god, the sound. This song taps into every conceivable reservoir of rock and roll power you can imagine. The drums are insistent, marching along with implacable resolve. There is a single stomping beat that drives everything forward faster and faster. And then there is a backbeat, the clashing of cymbals, and the ever-rising sense of explosive potential.  This is a song to build empires around.

It seems almost beside the point to call this the best record of the year (though it certainly is). Celebration Rock simply brushes past the need for analysis or comparison. Just listen to it. You’ll be happy you did.

Highlights: The House That Heaven Built.  Also: the whole damn thing. Seriously, go buy this record right now.

Honorable Mentions:

Amanda Mair – Amanda Mair. Scandinavian indie-pop, singer-songwriter fare. Lacking the one standout song that would have put it on the list.

Palomar – Sense and Antisense. I hoped for so much more out of this album, but I have to say that it simply feels like the unwanted B-sides from their last (fantastic) record. Which is still good enough to get an honorable mention, but not the barn-burner I was hoping for.

Chromatics – Kill for Love. Too much atmosphere – not enough pop. But still: the atmosphere is well done and the glimpses of pop are great, too. This is a wonderfully constructed record.  See also: Crystal Castles – (III). 

Lana Del Ray – Born to Die. A third of the album is good, a third is mediocre, and a third is terrible. Knock out the useless tracks and you’d have a pretty nice record.

Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city.  I haven’t quite decided how much I actually like this album.  But it’s undeniably great.  Check back with me in six months to see whether I’m still listening to it.

Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues

Christmas is a borderlands between memory and imagination.  It is a time for reminiscence, for thoughts about those who have passed, for simple mornings full of wonder and anticipation.

It’s a beautiful day because it allows us to look backwards on our past selves: who were straining desperately against the bonds of time to push forward into the great unknown. Having now traversed that space, we could so easily turn a cynical eye on the whole thing.  There is so much pain to come, so much ill-understood.  The innocence of that past joy could be darkened by wizened understanding.

But the beauty of human beings is that we can somehow escape that spiral.  There is something outside of the terrible dialectic of nostalgia (sophomoric and insipid) and cynicism (nihilistic and cold).  Where pain that lies ahead is accepted, without allowing that knowledge to dull the memory of our hopefulness.

Merry Happy, everyone.

Let’s Not Talk About It – The Mendoza Line

Filibuster reform is on the agenda. Since I’ve talked at length about my frustration with the modern Senate (with the filibuster as the worst offender), I wanted to make a couple of points here.

First, I want to make sure to register my disappointment with the scale of supposed ‘reform.’ For all of the back and forth about talking filibusters and what precisely they can be used for, and so on, it’s just worth mentioning that no one seems to support the most basic (and best) type of reform. Namely: if 51 Senators support a bill, it passes.

Our system is full of veto-points already and I just don’t see the value of imposing a supermajority requirement in the Senate. It’s already an anti-democratic institution, which grants far more power to citizens who live in small states than those who live in more populous ones. When you combine that with the House, a president who can veto, and the severe restrictions on the power of the national government imposed by our federal system, you’ve got a bunch of gum in the works already.

In the long term, I have a hard time believing that the de facto 60-vote requirement for bills getting out of the Senate has any chance of lasting. It’s an artifact of the past two decades and unsustainable in the long term. Given that, I support getting rid of the incoherent interregnum and simply doing away with it immediately.

But if you’re looking for halfway points (as the Democrats in the Senate appear to be), the ‘talking’ filibuster is really not the way to go. The notion that forcing them to talk will somehow improve things seems to rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between filibusters-for-delay and filibuster-as-de-facto-supermajority-requirement.

To explain: the romantic version of the filibuster (Mr. Smith, Sen. Stackhouse on the West Wing, etc.) is all about one person trying to hold up business by refusing to stop talking. That is: they talk in order to shut down the normal order of business – to make a point – to delay. The goal of the modern filibuster, however, is simply to prevent bills from passing.

Making people talk will have zero effect on their ability to achieve their goal (preventing the bill from passing). Not only that, it will eat up floor time – which is actually kind of important. The whole reason the Senate adopted ‘dual tracking’ was to enable the majority to get on with their business while the minority was filibustering one bill.

Forcing ‘live’ filibusters just returns things to that state of affairs. The minority gets to eat away valuable time that could have been spent on other things. Again, it’s not a Jimmy Stewart situation. It won’t be one guy standing there for months. It will be a rotating cast of 40+ people, all happy to take a turn on the stage for an hour to recite ttalking points. They will have no shortage of stuff to talk about, and even if they all repeat themselves, who cares? Meanwhile the majority has to sit there while the cameras endlessly film the opposition.

Why this is supposed to deter filibusters, I have no idea.  For a far more extensive discussion of what would happen, see this excellent post by Jonathan Bernstein.

The basic problem here is that it all ultimately comes down to what it actually takes to pass a bill. If you’re not willing to change the 60-vote requirement (that has become the de facto rule in the last couple decades, and particularly in the Obama administration), then any other change is going to be pretty meaningless.

That said, here’s my personal filibuster reform idea: when you file cloture, you count the Yes votes. If you get more than 50%, those votes are then banked for the rest of the Congressional term. At any point, the majority leader can attempt to ‘end debate’ on the bill, and the minority is responsible for getting the 41 votes together to prevent cloture.

The effect: you can indefinitely filibuster something if you really want. But in order to do so, you have to commit to keeping at least 41 votes in DC at all times. You want to kill the bill? You can do it, you just don’t get to go home to see your constituents.

The House That Heaven Built – The Japandroids

Records like this don’t come along very often. For all the simplicity of rock and roll, it’s somehow exceptionally difficult to harness its raw power without getting caught up in the pageantry. Rock so easily gets bloated, falls victim to its own clichés. So it’s the rarest of things to hear a band who can lay everything on the table without the slightest hint of pretense or doubt.

On the aptly-titled Celebration Rock, the Japandroids do precisely that. This is a record for the ages.

I’m now at a point in my life where I can really understand how Pitchfork went all-in on the And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead album 10 years ago. Some folks scoffed at the idea that a simple rock record could be a perfect 10.0. That rating, they thought, was reserved for Abbey Road or Let It Bleed or Blood on the Tracks.  Maybe Radiohead.

But that’s wrong. Perfection doesn’t always have to mean flawless, or transcendental. It doesn’t have to mean chiseled with the precision of Michelangelo’s David. There are moments of perfection that you get from imperfect situations. This record is perfect in the same way that stepping into a brisk night feels perfect after being trapped in a stuffy room. Or the way that a first kiss is perfect, even if you don’t end up spending your life with that person.

The first time I heard this record, I knew within the first 20 seconds of the first track (the stomping/shouting explosion that is “The Nights of Wine and Roses”) that this was going to be a contender for album of the year. And things only continue upward from there. “Fire’s Highway” is a thunderbolt of a song. It cuts through the ether and sets fire where it connects. And, long after the initial strike, the reverberations rumble around you.

Rounding out the opening trio of songs is “Evil’s Sway” which is a dirty little piece of garage rock. At the heart of the song is about as straightforward a piece of rock and roll lyricism as you’ll ever find (with a shoutout to Tom Petty): “oh yeah, alright. On the last and lashing out, it’s evil’s sway tonight.”

“Adrenaline Nightshift” is probably the most straightforward rock song on the record, driven by a very simple riff and the power of love and youth and boundless energy.  And “Younger Us” touches on the same themes with just a touch less effect.  These are songs to care about, to feel deep in your marrow, to drink deeply.

Still, for all the great stuff up to this point, it’s the final two tracks that completely steal the show.  If Celebration Rock is a perfect piece of rock and roll, then the tip of the spear which drives this point home is “The House That Heaven Built.” Addressed to a departed love, it combines the dense imagery of a walk through the remnants of a civilization with the most explosively straightforward, plaintive, and heart-wrenching chorus I can ever remember hearing:

When they love you (and they will)
Tell ’em all they’ll love in my shadow
And if they try to slow you down
Tell ’em all to go to hell

And the sound of it all.  Oh god, the sound.  This song taps into every conceivable reservoir of rock and roll power you can imagine. The drums are insistent, marching along with implacable resolve.  There is a single stomping beat that drives everything forward faster and faster.  And then there is a backbeat, the clashing of cymbals, and the ever-rising sense of explosive potential.

But the essence of this song is found in the pauses and spaces in between the noise.  Those moments when the drums fall out are poised on a knife’s edge.  And when the tornado strikes again it feels like it might very well be Judgment Day.  See 3:25 for the finest example of this.  This is a song to build empires around.

After that sort of intensity, you’re going to have to take a breath.  Fortunately, the album closer “Continuous Thunder” allows you to do precisely that.  Though with this band, even the ‘low-key’ songs pack an enormous punch. It condenses the whole album into one glorious question: “Would we love with a legendary fire?” as the guitars swirl around and build, and build, and build.  And there really is nothing but continuous thunder.

It seems almost beside the point to call this the best record of the year (though it certainly is).  Celebration Rock simply brushes past the need for analysis or comparison.  Just listen to it.  You’ll be happy you did.