Editor's note: If you missed any of this week's selections, you can check them out here.
Mac McGuire
Album: Phosphorescent - Muchacho
Muchacho, Phosphorecent's latest and best release to date, opens with the angelic "Sun, Arise!," itself bookended by the closing "Sun's Arising," Matthew Houck wastes no time in letting the listener know this is an album of awakening. What is found in between is Houck's journey of redemption, religion, and love, highlighted by the successful pairing of both conventional alt-country elements (mariachi horns, pedal steel slide guitar, violins) and non (synths, subtle electronics, dubby beats). Muchacho features a stunning one-two punch, maybe the best of the year, in the weary and reflective "Song for Zula" and the powerful show stopper "The Quotidian Beasts." The former, which would take top song honors if not for my selection below, features a wandering, Johnny Cash quoting narrator who feels to be "disfigured" by love and will be damned if he "opens [him]self up that way again."
Song: The National - "Sea of Love"
Like fellow Brooklynites The Walkmen, The National seem to have mastered the art of aging gracefully. Those “Mr. November” days are long gone, while family and a potentially soon-to-be post-rock ‘n’ roll life seem to be the band’s focus these days upon the release of their latest album, Trouble Will Find Me. On the tense and building “Sea of Love,” though, the men in The National remind everyone that they aren't going soft quite yet in their most thrilling and immediate song since “Abel,” and maybe best since “Slow Show.” While rocking out is great and all, it’s the little things that make this track really stand out: the welcoming heartland harmonica, the haunting backing harmonies, and those passionate pleas to “Joe” to “don’t drag me in” during the song’s thrilling conclusion. The great music video certainly didn't hurt either.
Joe Speranza
Album: The Lone Bellow - The Lone Bellow
Picking an album of the year is a very, very difficult thing to do and without some kind of aggregate it is impossible to do objectively. So all you loyal Daft Punk and Vampire Weekend listeners, and all you Kanye West martyrs, keep that in mind as I explain my choice.
Back in January, I wrote a gushing review of The Lone Bellow’s debut album in which I actually included the line “listening to The Lone Bellow is a potentially life-altering experience.” I wasn’t on drugs and I haven’t quit my job to follow them on tour, but it’s fair to say that my initial bewilderment with how good they are has quietly devolved into casual fandom. I’ve relaxed quite a bit since I proclaimed that “every so often, a band comes along that might just change everything.”
They haven’t exploded like I fearlessly predicted they would, but the release of their album was very important to me and it’s why I’m calling it the album of the year – so far. I previously called them a “kind-of country-sounding band,” which is – I can admit it now – inaccurate. They are very country. And I’m okay with it. And I never thought I’d type that.
The reason they appealed to me back then – and this is doing a disservice to the quality of the album from beginning to end – was that they were a Brooklyn-based band that had just recorded a country album. I grew up outside New York City, in a place where admitting you liked country music was not only frowned upon but a serious character flaw. It was wrong to like country music. So naturally, The Lone Bellow intrigued me. It was finally “okay” for me to listen to country music. And that’s great, because The Lone Bellow is just a beautiful album. The harmonies and buildups are perfect, and – if I can make an intangible tangible – you can hear how much this album meant to them. For more specific details and to read why I loved the album check out the initial review, but what you need to know is that there was a lot at stake for these guys and they really came up big.
The Lone Bellow has easily had the most profound effect on me this year; in case you care, I almost picked Indigo Meadow by The Black Angels – which was a huge return to form for them – but I already knew they were great. The Lone Bellow came out of nowhere and is the sole reason I now consider country music if not decent, tolerable. That’s a pretty big feat, so cheers to them.
Song: A$AP Rocky & Skrillex - "Wild for the Night"
In the same way people remember where they were and what they were doing during major, catastrophic events, I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard “Wild For the Night” by A$AP Rocky and Skrillex. I was driving on that uneven stretch of road around the 219/I-90 merge where you start to think your car might just fall apart when all of a sudden, I heard the unmistakable, ghoulish voice of A$AP talking about his pistol and his morning routine. I thought okay, whatever, if my tires blow at least I’ll go out listening to a decent song. This was also around the time when I was deciding whether or not dubstep sounded better or worse than a fax machine and whether or not Skrillex was a genius or a joke. The 45-second mark of the song – the transition from the talking-with-your-mouth-full voice of A$AP to the button pressing brilliance of Skrillex – settled it pretty quickly; “Wild for the Night” literally made me smile and figuratively made everything clear: Skrillex is the shit and dubstep goes quite nicely with rap.
Ryan Wolf
Album: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Perhaps the first contemporary album to use Wikipedia and Miley Cyrus as artistic references without sounding shallow or smugly elitist, Push the Sky Away feels immediately prescient. Nick Cave and company demonstrate their continued awareness of the developing world we inhabit, crawling in its search for knowledge, placing faith in man’s flawed faculties while the Internet gathers and spreads human-generated information that may or may not reflect reality. As the all-knowing Google emerges as a man-made idol, Push the Sky Away returns to the flesh, favoring physical bodies and blood. Finding mystic qualities in seemingly neutral modern technology, Cave’s low-key, mid-tempo pastiche is deeper, darker, and more frighteningly astute than superficial listens suggest.
Song: Vampire Weekend - "Ya Hey"
Throughout Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend exchange class-focused secular musings in for serious religious introspection. On the record’s boldest, most full-frontal grappling with the spiritual, indie-pop royalty meets its Maker, addressing complaints, doubts, and praises to Yahweh (or “Ya Hey,” according to the inverted Outkast song title). Concealed within Exodus’s burning bush, God refuses to reveal his identity or “name,” obscuring the cosmic plan “through the fire and through the flames.” Earth’s searching onlookers may be left schismatic and confused, but Vampire Weekend’s fusion of inspired chants and chipmunk crooning sees beyond vicious ironies and mortal “mistakes” in this 21st century open letter to the Creator.
Nick Torsell
Album: Disclosure - Settle
I’ve been having trouble keeping up with the amount of great music coming out this year. Not because I haven’t been paying attention, but because it seems like every time a record takes hold of my mornings and nights, a new one knocks it from its place, clamoring for attention. The past two months have been unbelievably rewarding for me listening-wise, with three of my favorites releasing excellent additions to their catalogs. Boards of Canada, Daft Punk, and Kanye West, whose music has meant very different things at different points in my life but all had an enormous impact on me, all came through, and I’ll be digging through their newest records for years to come.
But my record of the year is from a group who more than lived up to my high expectations after following their steady stream of remixes and singles, Disclosure. Settle, the 22 and 18 year-old Lawrence Brothers’ debut record, is body music, joyful and confident in a way that finds a way into your subconscious, coloring the daily rhythm of your routine. Settle is crowd-pleasing in the best way, endlessly appealing and diverse and never once pulling back from the throttle.
Song: Kanye West - "Blood on the Leaves"
“Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliché for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.” That’s Kanye in his recent New York Times interview on how his mother’s passing has affected his music. His tracks have always had a tinge of melancholy starting from College Dropout, but there’s a startling shift starting at 808s And Heartbreak where Kanye turns American Gothic. “Blood On The Leaves” is Kanye at his lowest, but also his most triumphant, reigning in a massive TNGHT beat to his own image. When that first TNGHT sample comes in around the minute mark, it’s a chilling moment, the brassy drums boasting Kanye’s total release. It’s the best representation of Yeezus’ apocalyptic nightmare-scape, a long way from a pink polo and a backpack.
When I’m looking for the latest country music, I always end up in one spot – 103.1 WIRK. I was even lucky enough to catch up with Keith Van Allen in the streets and got free ‘Rib Round Up’ tickets. Just one of the many events that keep me tuned into www.wirk.com