My 2011 Holiday Album Buying Guide
Always a bit bogus, these year-end "best of" lists. To start with, they're based on a completely false premise: Who says you have to stick to 2011 releases when buying holiday presents for your nearest and dearest? Still, there's something about a glossy new CD under the Christmas tree that's very alluring . It says, "I know you love music, and you're probably just as lost as I am in finding really worthwhile new stuff. So here are the newest tunes you've been too busy tweeting and Facebooking to learn about..."
In no particular order:
John Hiatt: Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns: Hiatt's best work in years -- a searing suite of vignettes about the forgotten 99% and the dying American Dream. It starts out with a howl of frustration ("Damn This Town") and ends up with two unflinchingly poignant elegies ("Adios To California" and "When New York Had Her Heart Broke"). Unpreachy, authentic, and full of rockin' righteous rage.
The Wood Brothers: Smoke Ring Halo: This brother act side-project for Oliver and Chris Wood has turned into something bigger than the both of them, situated at a country crossroads where jazz and bluegrass and Southern rock come to share a drink, swap tall tales, and eventually bay at the moon. There's a sort of rumpled ease about this album that belies their incredible musicianship; I love it when guys this good don't take themselves too seriously. Buy, buy, buy.
Black Keys: El Camino: How good are these guys! Their trademark sound -- pulsating R&B-flavored rock, with a gritty low-fi edge -- just makes me bliss out. It's a recent release, so I'm still wandering around inside its sound, but expect a blog post soon. And as the sticker on the cover insists (yes, I still buy physical product), this album should be played LOUD.
Nick Lowe:The Old Magic: Nick. Magic. And, yes, old, at least as in retro-styled. Nick's suave songwriting is as usual right on the mark, working that familiar territory of letdown, loss, and heartbreak (that voodoo that Nick does so well), but the more I listen, the more I'm impressed by the richness of Nick's vocals, ripening as never before in this crooner groove. Just because these songs are instantly enjoyable doesn't mean they don't grow on you. The more I listen, the more I . . . well, I was already in love, but this just twists the knife.
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues: No sophomore slump for these guys -- their second effort takes those haunting reverbed harmonies to a new trippy level. It's more ambitious and less spare than their debut album, as Robin Pecknold and company take a step or two away from their folky roots, but never fear, that melodic gorgeousness is still in full flower.
Nikki Jean: Pennies in a Jar: A great discovery, this album by Philly-based singer-songwriter Nikki Jean reminds you why you first fell in love with pop music. Not the yippy cheesy kind, but the classics, written by the great master pop songwriters who co-wrote these songs with Nikki. Cool concept: cooler album.
Fountains of Wayne: Sky Full of Holes: Four years since Traffic and Weather, FoW's first entry on the YepRoc label was worth the wait. Thirteen finely crafted short stories in song, with wistfulness and whimsy in equal measures; you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll definitely want to sing along.
Fionn Regan: 100 Acres of Sycamore: The Irish have always been great poets; singer-songwriter Fionn Regan just sets his to music, that's all. Wonderful folk-inflected music with a bit of Brechtian cabaret thrown in. I loved his first album End of History, and this follow-up is just as whimsical and existential. It takes a listen or two, but then it gets under your skin, like a long draught of Jameson's on a chilly autumn night.
The Jayhawks: Mockingbird Time: The long-awaited Jayhawks reunion album (has it really been eight years since Rainy Day Music?). The good news is: It's a Jayhawks album, and it picks up right where they left off. Did you expect new frontiers? Even Mark and Gary's wonderful 2009 duo album Ready For the Flood stuck to the brand: rich harmonies, melodic hooks, laidback tempos, and more than a touch of twang. Why tamper with a sound -- and a sensibility -- this soul-satisfying?
Foster and Lloyd: It's Already Tomorrow: Waiting eight years is nothing -- try waiting 21 years for Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd to record together again. (Not that I haven' t been perfectly happy, mind you, with Bill Lloyd's somewhat more pop-oriented solo stuff in the meantime.) But this reunion album is a gem, with tuneful, well-honed songwriting. It stays on the right side of the border between Americana and country music; just enough twiddle and twang but never a trace of cornpone.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Albums I thoroughly enjoy by artists I love, though not groundbreaking efforts:
Keb' Mo': The Reflection
Ron Sexsmith: Long Player, Late Bloomer
The Decemberists: The King Is Dead
Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys
RETROSPECTIVES:
Ben Folds: The Best Imitation of Myself: Love, love, LOVE Ben Folds; this 3-disc retrospective is packed with rarities, live tracks, and a sampler of Folds' most memorable tunes.
Various Artists: Rave On: A Tribute to Buddy Holly: How could this not be a treat, with such talents as Nick Lowe, The Black Keys, Zooey Deschanel, Cee Lo Green, Patti Smith, and My Morning Jacket on board?
Only a few shopping days left until Christmas -- what are you waiting for? And if you just happen to pick up a few of these for yourself...well, I won't tell.
Showing posts with label fleet foxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fleet foxes. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
"Ragged Wood" / Fleet Foxes
I guess it's good that there aren't so many record stores around anymore. Whenver I do walk into one, I'll impulse buy a dozen CDs at once, often on the flimsiest pretexts -- like, I heard one track on Sirius radio and liked it. (Of course, I'm probably more susceptible just because walking into a record store is such a rare event now.) That's how I acquired this debut album by the Fleet Foxes -- which then sat on my desk, unopened, for three months. No offense, guys, I just was overloaded.
By the time I finally listened to Fleet Foxes, I couldn't remember what they sounded like -- so when this gorgeous thing burst upon my ears, it took me totally by surprise. With Hollies-like harmonies and a rootsy, folk-inflected vibe (they almost outdo the Decemberists in their arty English ballad lyrics), they're much more romantic than I'd expected.
The third track on the album, "Ragged Wood" is a sweetheart. It hits you right off with a wall of harmonized vocals -- "Whoa-oh-oh" -- for a split second I think it's gonna be Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time," that's how classic that doo-wop opening is. (Maybe it's the reverb, too -- taking a page from My Morning Jacket, boys?) But once the verse gets under way, we're in folk territory, with Robin Pecknold freewheeling through a jaunty melody: "Come down from the mountain, you have been gone too long / The spring is upon us, follow my only song." Vintage pastoral, that. They're not afraid of using metaphor, that's for sure: "Settle down with me by the fire of my yearning," he urges her. "You should come back home, back on your own now" -- Pecknold's plaintive vocal sells this for all it's worth. I like the fact that it's the woman who's roaming here, the man who's fretting by the fireside (shades of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Be Home Soon," one of the sexiest songs ever.) "Darling, I can barely remember you beside me," he sighs in verse two. We're talking urgent.
The song structure is more jazzlike than traditional pop, though. After two verses, they shift into a bridge, the reverbed vocal harmonies sounding almost a cappella over a light finger-picked guitar. And they're going full-bore poetic: "In the evening light, when the woman of the woods came by / To give to you the word of the old man" -- wait, who are these people? He doesn't explain, nor does he explain the characters in the next couple: "In the morning tide, when the sparrow and the seagull fly / And Jonathan and Evelyn get tired." But seeing the old people in twilight, the young lovers at dawn, has a lovely poetic resonance; it's like he's tracing the arc of his own relationship. And if his girl doesn't get home, they'll never get to be the old folks in the picture.
Morphing into an instrumental break, the song hushes down to a simple syncopated guitar lick (I love how it circles dizzily around, repeating like a tic), gradually layering on vocal ohs, then a bass line, then cymbals. By the time we get the whole drum kit, they've shifted into yet another melody, a series of cautiously climbing chord shifts -- with harmonized vocals, naturally -- "Lie to me if you will / At the top of Barringer Hill." (I'm assuming there's a girl somewhere who knows Barringer Hill perfectly well.) Then the melody crests and spills over, "Tell me anything you want, / Any old lie will do / Call me back to you." Oh, he's helpless in love, all right. Mama likes that.
Jeez, if these guys are this distinctive-sounding on their first album, I can't wait to see where they go next. No wonder they generated such viral My Space action and drew concert crowds way before they even secured a record deal. Who needs label PR when you've actually got a sound?
Ragged Wood mp3
I guess it's good that there aren't so many record stores around anymore. Whenver I do walk into one, I'll impulse buy a dozen CDs at once, often on the flimsiest pretexts -- like, I heard one track on Sirius radio and liked it. (Of course, I'm probably more susceptible just because walking into a record store is such a rare event now.) That's how I acquired this debut album by the Fleet Foxes -- which then sat on my desk, unopened, for three months. No offense, guys, I just was overloaded.
By the time I finally listened to Fleet Foxes, I couldn't remember what they sounded like -- so when this gorgeous thing burst upon my ears, it took me totally by surprise. With Hollies-like harmonies and a rootsy, folk-inflected vibe (they almost outdo the Decemberists in their arty English ballad lyrics), they're much more romantic than I'd expected.
The third track on the album, "Ragged Wood" is a sweetheart. It hits you right off with a wall of harmonized vocals -- "Whoa-oh-oh" -- for a split second I think it's gonna be Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time," that's how classic that doo-wop opening is. (Maybe it's the reverb, too -- taking a page from My Morning Jacket, boys?) But once the verse gets under way, we're in folk territory, with Robin Pecknold freewheeling through a jaunty melody: "Come down from the mountain, you have been gone too long / The spring is upon us, follow my only song." Vintage pastoral, that. They're not afraid of using metaphor, that's for sure: "Settle down with me by the fire of my yearning," he urges her. "You should come back home, back on your own now" -- Pecknold's plaintive vocal sells this for all it's worth. I like the fact that it's the woman who's roaming here, the man who's fretting by the fireside (shades of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Be Home Soon," one of the sexiest songs ever.) "Darling, I can barely remember you beside me," he sighs in verse two. We're talking urgent.
The song structure is more jazzlike than traditional pop, though. After two verses, they shift into a bridge, the reverbed vocal harmonies sounding almost a cappella over a light finger-picked guitar. And they're going full-bore poetic: "In the evening light, when the woman of the woods came by / To give to you the word of the old man" -- wait, who are these people? He doesn't explain, nor does he explain the characters in the next couple: "In the morning tide, when the sparrow and the seagull fly / And Jonathan and Evelyn get tired." But seeing the old people in twilight, the young lovers at dawn, has a lovely poetic resonance; it's like he's tracing the arc of his own relationship. And if his girl doesn't get home, they'll never get to be the old folks in the picture.
Morphing into an instrumental break, the song hushes down to a simple syncopated guitar lick (I love how it circles dizzily around, repeating like a tic), gradually layering on vocal ohs, then a bass line, then cymbals. By the time we get the whole drum kit, they've shifted into yet another melody, a series of cautiously climbing chord shifts -- with harmonized vocals, naturally -- "Lie to me if you will / At the top of Barringer Hill." (I'm assuming there's a girl somewhere who knows Barringer Hill perfectly well.) Then the melody crests and spills over, "Tell me anything you want, / Any old lie will do / Call me back to you." Oh, he's helpless in love, all right. Mama likes that.
Jeez, if these guys are this distinctive-sounding on their first album, I can't wait to see where they go next. No wonder they generated such viral My Space action and drew concert crowds way before they even secured a record deal. Who needs label PR when you've actually got a sound?
Ragged Wood mp3
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