best music of the year so far

The blog has been way too new arrivals heavy as of late, so here’s a longer view of what I’ve been loving. Five today, five tomorrow.

01 radicalfashion, odori

Still my favorite record of the year. Half piano-based, 20th-century classical album, half glitchy ambient electronic record, odori is prohibitively delicate and beautiful. “Shousetsu” is my favorite track, the piano parts meandering and the little electronic whirligigs buzzing and pulsating. When the piece opens up into just piano three-quarters of the way through, the effect is mesmerizing. Definitely give it a spin.

02 The National, Boxer

I really wasn’t expecting to like this record. Alligator I only liked in bits and pieces (and still do), and they just didn’t seem like the type of band that I would dig. I started to soften when some of those pre-release video clips surfaced (here), and the album did the rest.

03 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Some Loud Thunder (NOTE: Available in the UK only)

Another surprise for me. That “Yellow Teeth” song from the last record was pretty good, but in no way was I driven to care about the band much beyond that. But Some Loud Thunder is a really effing good album, especially “Emily Jean Stock” (snotty and playful; it coulda been on a modern version of A Hard Day’s Night) and, most of all, “Underwater,” probably my favorite song from this year so far. “Underwater” brings the melancholy in a big way (I am a sucker for that, if you haven’t guessed), making this a really gorgeous and sad-sacky love song, the chorus having this wonderful sense of togetherness, we’re all in this together even if it’s falling apart.

04 The Rakes, “Little Superstitions” (Ten New Messages)
Youth Group, “On a String” (Casino Twilight Dogs)
The Affair, “New Song”

Quoting myself on the Rakes:

A fabulously small song, the vocals tight and self-aware “on the subject of [his] love life,” singing in the chorus of “choking on your heart,” a vague and odd phrase whose meaning somehow could not be more clear. The real key, though, is in that pre-chorus, how the song backs into this wistful jingle with some snare gallops and singer Alan Donahue wishing, “Let’s make the most of it/ The time we’ve got together/ Get all the secrets out,” that last line delivered hurriedly, like when you tell someone “I love you” and half-hope they don’t hear it just in case you don’t like the response. And then the guitar doubling his voice in that “choking” chorus, recalling the best Pavement ballads (thinking of “Easily Fooled” in particular) except there is no distance, no insincerity. It’s an incredibly precious and special song, one with a small direct goal — in the defense of a war he is losing — with little fat, just heart.

As for the Youth Group song, it’s deliriously hopeful, but melancholy, too. The melody is sweet and plain — not much pretense, if any at all. The song came out of nowhere for me, but it’s stuck around throughout the year. Watch a live version here.

The Affair track is a new one that has yet to be released or even officially recorded, but it’s silly-great. There’s this thumping little exchange between the keyboard and guitar that drives the tune, a real propellant, and then Kali — who is my gal — singing too slowly above it (another thing I’m a sucker for), drawing out every syllable, and in the middle there’s a little “oooh oooh oooh” bit that slays me. I managed to swipe a rehearsal demo of the song from the band, and it sounds like the best tune Times New Viking ever wrote. I’ll try and get permission to post a clip for ya’ll at some point. I am smitten.

05 Ron Franklin, City Lights

I raved about this record when it came out, and no one seemed to care. Here’s what I said before:

This is a really special record. Ron Franklin is based out of Memphis, but according to a couple of articles I found about him today (read them here and here, both are fascinating), he spent time in New York and Amsterdam while writing really simple and pure Southern blues and rock songs, backed by one of the biggest Southern blues/rock legends of all, Jim Dickinson, on City Lights.

This album, his ninth, but the first on a bona fide label, doesn’t take many chances, and yet that’s somehow to its benefit. His voice is a soft tenor, very straight and plain in a manner that’s entirely to his songs’ benefit. It’s the directness, the lack of decoration, that makes these 12 songs so special — it reminds me a bit of the straighter songs on Wilco’s Being There, tunes that were born when they were written, not in their arrangement or recording. (I’m somewhat underselling the arrangements, as songs like “Lula Wall” are quite intricate.) The gospel reworking of Chuck Berry’s “Thirty Days” is particularly strong — love that organ! — but it’s the title track, so spacious and empty, that really slays me. Franklin’s voice sounds very much like Jeff Tweedy — this could easily have appeared on Uncle Tupelo’s total, utter classic, March 16-20, 1992 — and yet very much his own, too. He doesn’t have a great voice by any stretch, but he knows exactly how to use it. This is worth every download, I promise you. (Just to back this up even more, I called my father today to tell him to go buy this. Family recommended, even! I think the last record I so fervently suggested to him was that most recent Bobby Bare Jr. record, which was a real treat. He loved that one, by the way.)

I wrote all of that, and then someone in the user reviews named soulfulnotes topped me in five sentences:

I bought this on a whim. It sounds a lot like mid-60’s Dylan, which–to me–is a really good thing. Adequate song writing, certainly not Dylan. Audio quality is a little low, but good enough. Overall, a good buy if you like Dylan and The Band.

Every word of that is true.

Also, quick update, I bought my father the Franklin and the National for Father’s Day. Haven’t heard yet what he thinks.

The rest of the top ten coming tomorrow…