Rants and Raves

J.Ro’s Top 8 of ‘08 (Part 3)

Here comes my #4 and #3 albums of last year, can you believe it?  I know, I know, it’s been months.  I really like making the “end of year album list”, but it unfortunately takes me most of the next year to finish writing them up.  By the time I’m done, it’s time to start the next one.  Well, I hacked through a good portion of the writing for the Top 4 on the plane back from L.A., so hopefully it won’t be so long before #2 and #1 are up.  Share your comments and disbelief below.

8-5, in case you forgot: “Evil Urges”, My Morning Jacket; “Vampire Weekend”, Vampire Weekend; “Let Live and Let Ghosts”, Jukebox the Ghost; “Real Emotional Trash”, Stephen Malkmus.

4. “What Doesn’t Kill Us”, What Made Milwaukee Famous

A really outstanding breakthrough album by this Austin group that I hadn’t heard of one year ago.  I was made aware of their existence by an out-of-the-blue text message from my friend Nick: “check out the new album by, what made milwaukee famous,” it read, “it is eclectic and fantastic.”  And indeed it is.  It seems a lot of young bands trying to establish themselves fall into one of two traps: either they get pigeonholed into one particular “sound” and find it difficult to venture away from that style (or are not well-received when they try), or else they place such an emphasis on branching out to different styles that they lose any sense of an identity.  But WMMF strike just the right balance, making each song unmistakably their own, while leaving me excited to see just where they’re going to push the sound next.

“Blood, Sweat, and Fears” starts things off with this dark, driving guitar fuzz that’s never really repeated on the album, before climaxing with an echo-y a capella bridge.  It’s followed by the catchiest song in the set, “Sultan”, which with its alternating strummed acoustic and choppy electric chords, horn backing, and pop hooks, could basically be a Spoon song (a comparison that should be taken as a compliment by any band in the Austin scene).  From there it’s just strong song after strong song, cranking up the energy without getting aggressive and screamy, mellowing things out without killing the flow, and even incorporating synths without sounding 80’s-cheesy.  By the end of the album, they’re letting loose with spare acoustic arrangements and campfire-sing-along hooks: “Somewhere, in the middle of the night, everything’s gonna be alright, alright…”, and “Life is what you choose / Love is what you make / Success is based on chances that you take”.  Revolutionary sentiments, no.  But comforting, uplifting, and ultimately they just sound right.

3. “Furr”, Blitzen Trapper

I’m excited by the continued development of what I dubbed “neo-pastoralist rock,” with a confluence of folksy acoustic song bases and postmodern spacey noises (see Beck’s “Mutations” and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” for the origins), into the full-on indie folk eruption of the last couple of years.  The movement is being pushed forward by established artists like the Decemberists and Andrew Bird, and also by newcomers like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, but my favorite such release from last year was this rootsy set by Portland, Oregon’s Blitzen Trapper.

As an aside, I’ve only recently realized just how awesome the Portland music scene is.  In addition to longtime residents like Elliott Smith, the Decemberists, and Modest Mouse, it seems the environment is so perfect for eclectic indie rock that Stephen Malkmus, the Shins, and others have actually relocated there from other places to be part of it.  Pretty fantastic; I love that city.  Anyway, now that I’ve referenced plenty of other bands in two paragraphs, let’s talk about Blitzen Trapper…

“Furr” takes the good things that were going on in 2007’s “Wild Mountain Nation”, and smooths out some of the rougher edges into an indie-folk tour de force that could be equally appreciated by hipsters or lumberjacks.  There’s still a ton of eclecticism, and noisy dischordant romps like “Love U” contrast with sweet, classic-sounding country songs like “Stolen Shoes & a Rifle”, but that helps to highlight the real neo-pastoralist gems “Black River Killer”, “God and Suicide”, and “War on Machines” (yes, good titles abound, and I’d start with any of those three songs if you want to know what Blitzen Trapper sounds like).

Truly the key track on the album, though, is the title song, which efficiently and elegantly takes us on the narrator’s path to adulthood as he turns from man to wolf and back to man again: “Now my fur has turned to skin, and I’ve been quickly ushered in to a world that I confess I do not know / But I still dream of running careless through the snow”, he pines near the end.  Or maybe it’s not metaphorical.  Maybe it’s actually about werewolves.

In a weaker year like 2005 or 2006, this could have been a runaway #1, but the strength of the top two albums from last year drops it to third overall.  Stick around to find out what they are… any guesses?

© 2009 The Nomenclature.