Tag: 2010s

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Albums

Best albums of 2019: The honourable mentions (aka #10 through #6)

Good morning everyone! And happy Tuesday!

It is that time of year again. The end of the year lists have started flying about and some brave souls have even delved back to try to come up with their favourites of the decade. You won’t count me among those attacking such a daunting task. I had a hard enough time narrowing down my favourite albums of the year to ten this time around. Indeed, for me, it was a weird year in that besides perhaps the number one and two albums, I didn’t have consensus favourites. I had no preconceived notions, really, of what this list would look like before sorting through all the albums to which I have devoted time this year. And yeah, there were lots of them.

Still, I’ve been doing my own end of year lists for so long (many others have been generated before even the two others on these pages) that I’ve almost got this process down to an art. For the two previous years, I did these posts on Fridays but decided to change things up this time and by methodical calculation, determined that to wrap things up with a final post with my favourite album on the final day of the year, Tuesdays would be the day of the week of choice for this series. As always, I am starting things off with an ‘honourable mentions’ post, this post, listing out albums 10 through 6, and will countdown my favourite five albums, one each week, for the next five. Of course, I’ve cheated a bit with my photo at the top of this post. It shows four additional albums from 2019, albums in my vinyl collection that won’t appear in the list but bear mention nonetheless. A sort of honourable, honourable mentions, if that makes sense.

Of course, as we go through these albums, I welcome your comments and thoughts and perhaps even your own top ten favourites in the space provided below.

Here we go.

#10 Chromatics “Closer to grey”

I don’t know where my head was back in 2012 because when I listened to Chromatics’ fourth album, “Kill for love”, I thought it was… just okay. Well, that was so seven years ago and I am quite enthralled with their fifth album, this one. Seven years may seem like a long time between albums and in this day and age, it’s an eternity, but the group has not quite been inactive. There’s been some EPs and singles in the meantime and also an aborted album that might still see the light of day. But here we are now and “Closer to grey” is dark and breathless noir cinema, set provocatively in the middle of a sweaty 80s rave club. And yeah, the Simon & Garfunkel and Jesus and Mary Chain covers are spot on.

Gateway tune: “You’re no good”

#9 Elva “Winter sun”

I thought it a shame when I heard Allo Darlin’ were calling it quits in 2016. They had released a handful of excellent twee/indie pop records based upon the songwriting and vocals of frontwoman Elizabeth Morris. Then, because I followed that band on Twitter, I heard tell that Morris had formed a new band with her husband, Ola Innset, who happened to be a veteran of the Norwegian music scene. “Winter sun” is this new group’s debut and is also quite lovely. Morris shares equally the songwriting and vocal duties with Innset, adding an interesting dynamic that is taken further by mixing up quieter acoustic songs with louder, full band jams.

Gateway tune: “Athens”

#8 The Twilight Sad “It won/t be like this all the time”

I’ve been following Scottish post-punk quintet, The Twilight Sad, for their last few albums and can safely say that this fifth album of theirs is my favourite so far. That I’ve truthfully said that for each of their successive albums shows how great a band they are still in the process of becoming. A mind-blowing proposition, indeed. The music is dark, bleak, punishing, and yet, somehow, uplifting at the same time. James Graham’s intense lyrical delivery seems somehow more haunting given his thick accent and throws tons of weight behind Andy MacFarlane’s music.

Gateway tune: “I/m not here [missing face]”

#7 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Ghosteen”

Okay. So it’s taken me a lifetime to get into Nick Cave’s music. This is not an exaggeration. I tried many times over the years because I’ve always loved his lyrics. He just doesn’t make it easy. His seventeenth album, “Ghosteen”, isn’t any less than trying, beautiful, yes, but very difficult. If I hadn’t already succeeded with the start of the trilogy cycle of which this album is the final chapter, this album would likely not be appearing here. As it is, I don’t see myself necessarily slipping this on everyday, nor are there a lot of tracks that I could single out as, well, singles. However, “Ghosteen” is a very excellent album. Cave very much still has the power to surprise and to move us. The music here is synth heavy, augmented orchestral pieces and his normal narrative lyrics and deep baritone vocals have both been turned on their head. The results are haunting, to say the least.

Gateway tune: “Bright horses”

#6 The Soft Calvary “The Soft Calvary”

Like the Elva album above, here’s another project by an artist I like, working with her spouse, but in this case it feels like it’s more his labour of love with her support rather than a full-on collaboration. The Soft Calvary is Steve Clark working with Rachel Goswell of Slowdive and Mojave 3 (and a bunch of their recent projects). He takes the lead for the most part, writing most of the material, while Rachel adds her lovely, ethereal voice to the proceedings and sings lead on one track. The production is crisp and the effects give most of the album an otherworldly feel. The songs are well-written and stick with you well after you press stop or lift the needle. I love it.

Gateway tune: “Bulletproof”

Check back next Tuesday for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #5 Dum Dum Girls “Bedroom eyes”

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Lots has changed for Kristin Gundred since 2011, when she released “Only in dreams”, her second full-length as leader of the group, Dum Dum Girls. At that time, she was performing under the name “Dee Dee” (not “Dee Dee Penny”, as many have erroneously reported, including myself) and she had just released an album with a full band that many critics were seeing as the start of something. However, we would unfortunately only see one other LP* released under the Dum Dum Girls name, 2014’s “Too true”, on which Gundred returned to recording by herself and moved ever so slightly away from the noisy, wall-of-sound washes and 60s girl group melodies. Afterwards, she dispensed with the idea of Dum Dum Girls completely and rebranded herself Kristin Kontrol, going all synths and glam. Somewhere amidst all this, she also divorced with her husband and sometimes collaborator, Crocodiles frontman Brandon Welchez.

“Only in dreams” was my introduction to Gundred and her beautiful voice, an asset that she was only just starting to showcase on this particular album. It happened to also be my gateway to a few other likeminded bands that had somehow escaped my notice to this point, bands like Best Coast and Vivian Girls that riffed on the 60s girl group but upped griminess factor on the wall of sound. I had, on the other hand, already been exposed to the similar ethos of The Raveonettes, a band with whom I compared this album when trying to get others as hooked on them as I was. It didn’t surprise me, then, when I read in the album’s liner notes that it was co-produced by The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner.

“Bedroom eyes” was the second single released from “Only in dreams” and also appears second in order of play. It has all that noise and peppy beat that you’d expect and Gundred imbues her vocals with longing, singing about missing her now ex-husband while they were both away on separate tours. It transports you back to a simpler time but doesn’t leave the current age so far behind that you forget how that so-called simpler time wasn’t so simple. Beneath the glorious jangle and shine and chiming backing harmonies is a toughness. Just watch the video that plays on all the videos that might have been made at the time. Kristin and her band members are all decked out in black, sexy and sneering, not at all like the delicate flowers the influencing groups back in the day would’ve been portrayed.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

* And an EP

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #6 Rich Aucoin “It”

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I made mention of AUX TV a few times during my Best tunes of 2010 series. I had somehow come across the channel during a random surf at the high end of my Rogers Cable offerings back around the beginning of the 2010s. I almost immediately made the connection that the channel actually played music videos* like MuchMusic used to do, especially at certain hours of the day. One of these happened to be in the early hours and it became part of my morning ritual to turn on the channel while I made and enjoyed my morning coffee. I discovered many a new tune and artist in this way, just check here and here for a couple examples from that Best of 2010 list.

Unfortunately, AUX has since changed formats and been rebranded but I mention it today because this is where I first heard tell of Rich Aucoin, seeing the video for “It” one morning and loving it from the start. If you haven’t seen the video, you should definitely take the time to peruse it below. It strings together instantly recognizable scenes from famous films, like Forrest Gump, The Princess Bride, E.T., Top Gun, Ghostbusters, amongst others, and places Aucoin and his cronies as active participants in the scenes. Many of these films are ones from my youth that I’ve seen numerous times and of which I have fond memories, so it never fails to bring a smile to make face when I watch it. However, I remember it took me a few times watching it originally to catch who the artist that was performing the track because I was always busy brewing coffee at the time or AUX TV would have its titles screwed up. One time, I swore they said “Roch Voisin” but I knew that couldn’t be right. Eventually, I got it nailed down and I went out to hunt down the album on which “It” appeared.

When I listened to Aucoin’s debut album, “We’re all dying to live”, I was very impressed that the rest of the tracks were just as phenomenally put together as “It” and so full of joyous orchestral music of epic proportions. However, I didn’t truly understand the energy and the joy until the following year when I saw Rich Aucoin perform live at Ottawa Bluesfest. His sets are less performances than they are celebrations. He blurs the lines between performer and audience, shattering that glass wall with the use of multimedia, by joining the audience in front of the stage, and employing the use of a parachute, all to create a miasmic, organic, celebratory event. I saw him again a few years later at the Toronto Urban Roots Festival, a set to which he invited the good people at Choir! Choir! Choir! to join him onstage for this entire time slot.

Yeah. Rich Aucoin is all about sharing and caring. He’s almost like a care bear in this way. Indeed, even the most jaded in the crowd can’t help but be pulled in by his exuberance and energy and zest for life. Though the “It” that he doesn’t want us to keep within our heads isn’t quite clear, we know by inference that it cannot be good. The tinkling piano that would have us floating up, Bugs Bunny style, into the clouds, our toes flapping us up like wings, says as much. And the imbued verve and the singing choirs are all working to convince you that we should indeed all be dying to live. Hallelujah to that.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

* It was especially cool because the channel focused on new and emerging independent artists.