I think that Pete Seeger must have been the first music I heard, or at least how my parents sung to me at bedtime, and during car rides, and work like that, was infused with the spirit of him. He continued and maintained a kind of democratic populism that reinforced and reconsidered what folk music could be. I am glad that he lived to sing at Obama's inauguration, and I am glad that his politics shifted, moved and opened. I respect his pacifism, his environmentalism, how he taught, his commitment against racism, homophobia, and misogyny and how he admitted when he was wrong. I keep thinking about how quiet and earnest he was; and how he taught without being didactic. The 1960 Bowdoin Hall Concert Live recording is on Rdio, you should listen to that. (Thinking about the legacy of folk, and as much as I love Springsteen, he is not as populist as Seeger was, and people like Clifton Hicks and Frank Fairlane, while brilliant, have a recursive retreat to tradition--to keep tradition alive in your hand, that is the skill of a master). I still listen to Seeger, often. I will miss him.

two comments on nashville scene:

Two comments on Nashville Scene, including one that continues my defense of Luke Bryan: 
Critics' underrating of Luke Bryan suggests a fear of working-class pleasure, or at least an idea that working-class pleasure cannot be sophisticated. It might be dumb, but it is unironic, self-aware and incredibly well-crafted dumb. Anthony Easton 

The video for Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart" is what would happen if Douglas Sirk was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon. The music itself is angry, hysterical and deeply in control. The irony of a song so exquisitely ordered arguing in favor of chaos is a central part of Lambert's skill and charm. Anthony Easton

wrote this for ted: 

about the dallas buyers club

ANTHONY EASTON

Album List Blurbs:

Vampire Weekend — Modern Vampires of the City

When all of the discussions of capitalism and the city are about spectacle (Great Gatsby), or burlesque (Spring Breakers), or satire (Bling Ring), or apologetics (Republicans), this one is about loss and ennui, taking up all of the best things that James Murphy ever had to offer. It is solemn and pious, but those are virtues.

bday dinner yesterday at saint sacrament in montroyal--maggie, sarah, cim, ray!, brendan, travis, sabina, corri, jean marie, lana, alyssa--ribs and calavadas

bday dinner w/ ray and wendy. tripe, horse, opera cake, mousse. aviator, wines from the south of france.

A slightly less bizarre foundation was the “Anglican Congregation of the

Primitive Observance of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict.” This was founded in 1896by a former medical student, Benjamin (Aelred) Carlyle, who had been fascinated by the monastic life since the age of fifteen, when he had founded a secretreligious brotherhood at his public school. His choice of the religious name of Aelred, after a twelfth-century Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx who had written treatises on “spiritual friendships,” was a deliberate one, for a biography of St. Aelred by Newman’s companion, J. O. Dalgairns, had revealed to him “a monastic world in which natural and spiritual relations could be fused” (Anson,

Building up the Waste Places, p. 134).

Aelred Carlyle was a man of dynamic personality, hypnotic eyes, and extraordinary imagination. In 1906 his community made its permanent home on Caldey Island, off the coast of south Wales (outside Anglican diocesan jurisdiction), where, largely on borrowed money, he built a splendidly furnished monastery in a fanciful style of architecture. The life of this enclosed Benedictine community centred upon an ornate chapel where the thirty or so tonsured and cowled monks sang the monastic offices and celebrated Mass in Latin according to the Roman rite. As there was nothing like it anywhere else in the Church of England the island abbey inevitably became a resort for ecclesiastical sightseers, and many young men were drawn to join the community out of personal affection for Carlyle.

The self-styled Lord Abbot of Caldey introduced practices into the life of his monastery which many outsiders, accustomed to the austere atmosphere of the existing Anglican men’s communities, found disconcerting. “Stories Toto Told Me” by “Baron Corvo” (Frederick Rolfe), which had originally appeared in The Yellow Book, were often read aloud to the assembled monks at recreation time, and during the summer months they regularly went sea-bathing in the nude. Nor did Carlyle make any secret of his liking for charming young men. Spiritual

friendships were “not discouraged,” recalled his biographer, himself a former

member of the Caldey community:

… and their expression sometimes took a form which would not be found In any normal monastery to-day. . . . Embraces, ceremonial and non-ceremonial, were regarded as symbolical of fraternal charity, so our variant of the Roman rite permitted a real hug and kisses on the cheek between the giver and the recipient of the Pax Domini at the conventual Mass. (Anson, Abbot Extraordinary, pp. 125-126)

(From UnEnglish and Unmanly: Anglo-Catholicism and Homosexuality by David Hilliard)

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2013:

1.Mavericks In Time

From Florida, which like Texas, merges Cuban, Mexican, Eastern European, and working class routes, the seamless, high energetic working out of multiple diasporic histories, might be the best example of a country music that from its beginning was polysemic, and against a homogenizing whiteness. Plus,the horns are absolutely monstrous. 

2.Jason Isbell Southeastern

He has a voice that is burnished like burled walnut, and the soft politeness of his delivery underplays some of the best written songs of pure heartbreak. 

3.Luke Bryan Spring Break Here to Party

His profound under-rating has undercurrents of a fear of working class pleasure, or at least an idea that working class pleasure cannot be sophisticated. It might be dumb, but it is unironic, self aware, and incredibly well crafted dumb. 

4.Neko Case  The Worse Things Get The Harder I Fight the Harder I Fight The More I Love You. It's her voice--the music is a strum and drang of indie rock, rockabilly and that place where Northern California empties into Oregon--all of that continues to be here, but the themes of violence intefering with a women's domestic life has the working class reality of Loretta and what could be more country than that. 

5.Ashley Monroe Like A Rose 

When this moves into the sentimental, the slow, or the balladic, than I lose interest. It is a rough album, and has not quite worked out what it wants to say. But she seems to be interested in what it means to perform and not just write. The rollicking, historically minded, often very funny, and often sexy, unsentimental quality of the best songs here, suggest another way forward. The album that got me excited about her voice, both in writing and in singing. 

6.Randy Travis Influence 1

Travis' neo-traditionalism has always been a slightly formalist jape since the beginning, but how he sings has deepened and widened since he has gotten sick, and this album of covers suggests a comfort with becoming an elder statesmen. In this sense, it is a diplomatic matching of equal talents. 

7.Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Harmer Childe Ballads

The folk revival continues, and although this has a foot in the cults of preservation, it's slippery and supple, a gorgeous set of performances that reflect the tradition of orality, and answers why another version, after thousands.

8) Alasdair Roberts and Friends, A Wonder Working Stone.

He is a Scottish traditionalist, in the same way that Louise MacNeice or Hugh McDiamrand are, Roberts ability to translate and disseminate the folk music of Scotland to contemporary aesthetic mores, is profoundly moving. See, his inclusion of Red River Valley into Scandal and Traces; or his percussive handclaps in Brother Seed, the cheeriest song about incest in recent memory. 

8.Sarah Jarosz Working From the Bone

NPR favourite, and closer to indie than the bluegrass she claims, she is here entirely for her haunting and gorgeous voice. 

9.Willie Nelson Let's Face the Music and Dance. 

Since the mid 1970s (Stardust) Nelson's albums of standards proves that he is one of the great interpretive singers of the 20th century. His voice has not worn out, so it is not the fear of death Americana, but a light and almost seamless depiction of someone who is comfortable with his own mortality. If this is his last album (God Forbid!) it would be a perfect note to end on. 

10. Valerie June Pushin' Against A Stone

Best blues shouter in a decade, and much like  the Mavericks, makes the argument about the wideness of country and the historical uselessness of genre categories. 

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2013:

1.Justin Moore I'd Want It to Be Yours: 

A dirty come on that wouldn't be out of place in the work of Ethel Waters, but sung with a wry smirk and an ass shake. Moore combines the come on with the lovers sentimental call, in a way that subverts and re-entrenches tradition. 

2. Miranda Lambert Mama's Broken Heart:

The video is what would happen if Douglas Sirk was born and raised south of  the Mason-Dixon, and the music itself is angry, hysterical, and deeply in control. The irony of a song so exquisitely ordered, arguing in favour of chaos, is a central part o Lambert's skill and charm. Here, she goes from strength to strength. 

3. Carrie Underwood Two Black Cadillacs

Cinematic, and on the right side of camp, this rehabs the moribund story song tradition in country, and unlike the thirty year old Reba cover of Bobby Gentry's Fancy, which might be the last truly great example of the genre, it does so in such a way that the precedents are abstracted. 

4. Blake Shelton Boys Round Here

This might be a bit over stuffed, but from the electronic intro, to the lap steel guitars, from the hip hop vocalizations, to the quoting of Bocephus, nothing else this year has discussed the tension between old country and new, and about the problems of gate-keeping. This would be interesting, but the Pistol Annie's choruses, the tension between the spoken and sung in Blake's work, and the whole collapsing of  the ironic and the sincere--it's an amazing technical achievement. 

5. Valerie June Workin' Women's Blues

The blue collar energy of this, and the historical problems of capital, are almost as interesting, as how she shifts the meaning of what a work song could be. That the song is steady, without apology or exhaustion, and that it precludes the traditional role of motherhood or child-raising in favour of "working like a man" has a commitment to other narratives, which worked on the edges of blues, but has not quite reached the mainstream.

6. Dean Brody and Lindi Ortega, Bountry

This track might seem a bit silly, but still,  the delicately fingered steel guitar, the echoing vocals, and the updating of murder ballad and revenge, wiht one of the best choruses of the year. Made more severe, and less of a novelty by Ortega's smoked out twang. 

7.) Lady Antebellum--Downtown

After half a decade of odes to the back country, or at least the back 40, a country song that recognizes the profound call of a city, and it's pleasures is radically new. This is made even more powerful by the dry delivery and consummate skills of Hilary Scott. 

8.Jason Isbell Elephant 

The central metaphor could have fallen into the mire of cliche, but that Isbell manages to make it sound fresh, this might be because the album is about the failures of desire. Succeeding at failure, or at least depicting failure, is a mark of a writer who has gone from success to success. 

9. Kelly Clarkson Tie It Up

Making marrriage fun, radical, and a choice people want to make, not as soppy, or domestic, but as an example of pleasure for pleasure's sake, would not be a sentiment allowed in most genres-Clarkson's history as a rock singer, and Nashville's commitment to family values cross bread into a energetic hoe down, that seems as new as a song about this kind of commitment can be.  

10. Kip Moore's Hey Pretty Girl 

It might be a misogynist mess, but the compacted song writer, and the erotic potential that blossoms fully into something simple and gorgeous, marked by his warm voice and concise delivery, covers most sins. 

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2013:

1.Townes Van Zandt High Low and Inbetween 

2.Don Rich Sings the Songs of George Jones 

3.Stephen Sills Manassas

4.Various - Sorrow Come Pass Me Around: A Survey Of Rural Black Religious Music

5.Robbie Basho Visions of the Country

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2013:

1.Blake Shelton 

2.Kip Moore 

3.Jason Isbell 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2013:

1. Valerie June

2.Hilary Scott 

3. Sarah Jarsoz

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2013:

1.Ian Tyson/Corb Lund 

2. Frank Fairfield

3.Alasdair Roberts 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2013:

1.Miranda Lambert

2. Jason Isbell 

3. Brandi Clarke

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2013:

1.Pistol Annies

2.Lady Antelbellum 

3. Mavericks 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2013:

1. Dustin Lynch 

2.Amber Hayes 

3. Chris Weaver Band 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2013:

1.Valerie June 

2. Luke Bryan 

3. Mavericks

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2013:

1.Mavericks In Time

From Florida, which like Texas, merges Cuban, Mexican, Eastern European, and working class routes, the seamless, high energetic working out of multiple diasporic histories, might be the best example of a country music that from its beginning was polysemic, and against a homogenizing whiteness. Plus,the horns are absolutely monstrous. 

2.Jason Isbell Southeastern

He has a voice that is burnished like burled walnut, and the soft politeness of his delivery underplays some of the best written songs of pure heartbreak. 

3.Luke Bryan Spring Break Here to Party

His profound under-rating has undercurrents of a fear of working class pleasure, or at least an idea that working class pleasure cannot be sophisticated. It might be dumb, but it is unironic, self aware, and incredibly well crafted dumb. 

4.Neko Case  The Worse Things Get The Harder I Fight the Harder I Fight The More I Love You. It's her voice--the music is a strum and drang of indie rock, rockabilly and that place where Northern California empties into Oregon--all of that continues to be here, but the themes of violence intefering with a women's domestic life has the working class reality of Loretta and what could be more country than that. 

5.Ashley Monroe Like A Rose 

When this moves into the sentimental, the slow, or the balladic, than I lose interest. It is a rough album, and has not quite worked out what it wants to say. But she seems to be interested in what it means to perform and not just write. The rollicking, historically minded, often very funny, and often sexy, unsentimental quality of the best songs here, suggest another way forward. The album that got me excited about her voice, both in writing and in singing. 

6.Randy Travis Influence 1

Travis' neo-traditionalism has always been a slightly formalist jape since the beginning, but how he sings has deepened and widened since he has gotten sick, and this album of covers suggests a comfort with becoming an elder statesmen. In this sense, it is a diplomatic matching of equal talents. 

7.Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Harmer Childe Ballads

The folk revival continues, and although this has a foot in the cults of preservation, it's slippery and supple, a gorgeous set of performances that reflect the tradition of orality, and answers why another version, after thousands.

8) Alasdair Roberts and Friends, A Wonder Working Stone.

He is a Scottish traditionalist, in the same way that Louise MacNeice or Hugh McDiamrand are, Roberts ability to translate and disseminate the folk music of Scotland to contemporary aesthetic mores, is profoundly moving. See, his inclusion of Red River Valley into Scandal and Traces; or his percussive handclaps in Brother Seed, the cheeriest song about incest in recent memory. 

8.Sarah Jarosz Working From the Bone

NPR favourite, and closer to indie than the bluegrass she claims, she is here entirely for her haunting and gorgeous voice. 

9.Willie Nelson Let's Face the Music and Dance. 

Since the mid 1970s (Stardust) Nelson's albums of standards proves that he is one of the great interpretive singers of the 20th century. His voice has not worn out, so it is not the fear of death Americana, but a light and almost seamless depiction of someone who is comfortable with his own mortality. If this is his last album (God Forbid!) it would be a perfect note to end on. 

10. Valerie June Pushin' Against A Stone

Best blues shouter in a decade, and much like  the Mavericks, makes the argument about the wideness of country and the historical uselessness of genre categories. 

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2013:

1.Justin Moore I'd Want It to Be Yours: 

A dirty come on that wouldn't be out of place in the work of Ethel Waters, but sung with a wry smirk and an ass shake. Moore combines the come on with the lovers sentimental call, in a way that subverts and re-entrenches tradition. 

2. Miranda Lambert Mama's Broken Heart:

The video is what would happen if Douglas Sirk was born and raised south of  the Mason-Dixon, and the music itself is angry, hysterical, and deeply in control. The irony of a song so exquisitely ordered, arguing in favour of chaos, is a central part o Lambert's skill and charm. Here, she goes from strength to strength. 

3. Carrie Underwood Two Black Cadillacs

Cinematic, and on the right side of camp, this rehabs the moribund story song tradition in country, and unlike the thirty year old Reba cover of Bobby Gentry's Fancy, which might be the last truly great example of the genre, it does so in such a way that the precedents are abstracted. 

4. Blake Shelton Boys Round Here

This might be a bit over stuffed, but from the electronic intro, to the lap steel guitars, from the hip hop vocalizations, to the quoting of Bocephus, nothing else this year has discussed the tension between old country and new, and about the problems of gate-keeping. This would be interesting, but the Pistol Annie's choruses, the tension between the spoken and sung in Blake's work, and the whole collapsing of  the ironic and the sincere--it's an amazing technical achievement. 

5. Valerie June Workin' Women's Blues

The blue collar energy of this, and the historical problems of capital, are almost as interesting, as how she shifts the meaning of what a work song could be. That the song is steady, without apology or exhaustion, and that it precludes the traditional role of motherhood or child-raising in favour of "working like a man" has a commitment to other narratives, which worked on the edges of blues, but has not quite reached the mainstream.

6. Dean Brody and Lindi Ortega, Bountry

This track might seem a bit silly, but still,  the delicately fingered steel guitar, the echoing vocals, and the updating of murder ballad and revenge, wiht one of the best choruses of the year. Made more severe, and less of a novelty by Ortega's smoked out twang. 

7.) Lady Antebellum--Downtown

After half a decade of odes to the back country, or at least the back 40, a country song that recognizes the profound call of a city, and it's pleasures is radically new. This is made even more powerful by the dry delivery and consummate skills of Hilary Scott. 

8.Jason Isbell Elephant 

The central metaphor could have fallen into the mire of cliche, but that Isbell manages to make it sound fresh, this might be because the album is about the failures of desire. Succeeding at failure, or at least depicting failure, is a mark of a writer who has gone from success to success. 

9. Kelly Clarkson Tie It Up

Making marrriage fun, radical, and a choice people want to make, not as soppy, or domestic, but as an example of pleasure for pleasure's sake, would not be a sentiment allowed in most genres-Clarkson's history as a rock singer, and Nashville's commitment to family values cross bread into a energetic hoe down, that seems as new as a song about this kind of commitment can be.  

10. Kip Moore's Hey Pretty Girl 

It might be a misogynist mess, but the compacted song writer, and the erotic potential that blossoms fully into something simple and gorgeous, marked by his warm voice and concise delivery, covers most sins. 

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2013:

1.Townes Van Zandt High Low and Inbetween 

2.Don Rich Sings the Songs of George Jones 

3.Stephen Sills Manassas

4.Various - Sorrow Come Pass Me Around: A Survey Of Rural Black Religious Music

5.Robbie Basho Visions of the Country

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2013:

1.Blake Shelton 

2.Kip Moore 

3.Jason Isbell 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2013:

1. Valerie June

2.Hilary Scott 

3. Sarah Jarsoz

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2013:

1.Ian Tyson/Corb Lund 

2. Frank Fairfield

3.Alasdair Roberts 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2013:

1.Miranda Lambert

2. Jason Isbell 

3. Brandi Clarke

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2013:

1.Pistol Annies

2.Lady Antelbellum 

3. Mavericks 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2013:

1. Dustin Lynch 

2.Amber Hayes 

3. Chris Weaver Band 

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2013:

1.Valerie June 

2. Luke Bryan 

3. Mavericks

also edit, add intro, expand, fact check, etc the book.

1.  Continue Kurt Work.  (money ran out, but did for a lot of it)
2.  Continue Atlantic Work. (pitched 4 stories to them, none picked up)
3. Work on one Application, Conference Pitch, Fellowship, or the Like a month. (yep--resulting in pop matters, emp seattle, show at videofag, show at xspace)
4. Get a minimum B average (more than B)
5. Figure out Quebec Disability (not a good answer but yep)
6. Have one social event a week. (yep)
7. Ask someone new for social times once a month. (yep--resulting in Brendon, Cim, and others being close) 
8. Find things to do post-April.  (big trip, gaspe, and the like) 
9. Walk around new neighbourhoods. (yep)
10. Pysch Stuff. (yep)
11. Supercut (on hold, still need to think about it) 
12. CAMH Art Project (no on camh, sent an email to a couple of places) 
13. 6 Small Sermons for Satan. (videofag, october) 
14. Peice wiht Clint.  (now with tom, working on it) 

goals for 2014:

1.  pitch writing to pitchfork, popmatters again, post medieval, work for the journal, rhizome, no more potlucks, little joe, yeti, journal of country music, disolve. 
2. one conference proposal a week. 
3. regular cd review place
4. think about sex and country music website, journal, book one of something
5. find place for clifton hicks and snakes. see what's happening with maura. 
6. pitch art shows 70s big bush, design show, supercut, montreal satan, camh, )
7. film work with geoff. 
8. keep up with jukebox
9. a- average
10. thesis written. 
11. apply once a month for some money making venture. 
12. one hang out a week, with buddies. 
13. ask one person out a month 
14. seattle in april 
15. concordia conference in march 
16. xspace in april. 
17. chicago in july. 

i feel a bit ungrateful, because i appreciate the hospitality, but i am staying at my friends house and he has the two worst couches for sleeping on, one has a huge bar in the middle, and one is half again too small. also, because of the ice storm, no eggnog. but, last nights church service was moving, and the sky is lovely, and soon a small child will come down the stairs with full wonder, and lifes good. thanks for everyone.

Album List Blurbs:

Vampire Weekend--Modern Vampires of the City.

When all of the discussions of capitalism and the city are about spectacle (Great Gatsby) or Burlesque (Spring Breakers) or satire (Bling Ring) or apologetics (Republicans); one about loss and ennui, taking up all of the best things that James Murphy ever had to offer is necessary. It is solemn and pious, but those are virtures.

Kanye--Yeezus

I hate its misogyny, I cringe at its homophobia, I worry about its racism--all of that needs to be said, but that he could chart a record that sounds this ugly is only half of his audacity. The other half, is how he interleaves all of that ugliness into genuine desires for political change. I don’t know if I hate him, but he never bores me. Plus, it’s only 40 minutes long.

Janelle Monae--Electric Lady.

A queer feminist reclaiming of an Afro-future, with much more hope than the apocalyptic future presented on the previous, equally brilliant Archnoid.

Montanna Roberts--Coin Coin Two

As a practicing Christian, who practices liturgics, and occasionally preaches, there is a conversation on how hymns are used. Priests can be authoritarian, and quite snobbish, and so there is much dismissive about popular favourites. In a keening, often difficult, always prophetic discussion on the nature of African American speech and music, Roberts makes an optimistic argument about a people’s faith. That she ends with the often lambasted hymn about walking with Christ in the garden, and  that she earns that sentiment, was this year’s spiritual highlight.

Miley--Bangerz

For a year that finally proved that Disco won--the song for the after party, and for someone whose godmother is Dolly, she channels Stevie less self consciously than anyone who tries to hard has (Ryan Murphy, I’m looking at you).

Earl The Sweatshirt--Doris.

His narcohaze flow, and the angular beats, sound like wind through a deserted street corner. It might be the most self aware album of the year--in the art of making music, and the failures of making lives.

Teagan and Sara--Heart Throb

The lesbian folk singer in the late 1970s, released a song called I Love Women, that worked the middle of a venn diagram of the first wave of liberation music, somewhere, between Olivia Records and Casablanca. Folk disco never really took off, but everytime I hear this, i think of the possiblities, and how much sense it made that the folk singers took this left hand turn somewhere north of Xanadu. (sorry, wrong Olivia)

Lorde--Pure Heroine:

I wasn’t convinced until Ann Powers on NPR placed it in conversation with Smells Like Teen Spirit, and  then the loneliness made sense.

MIA Mantangi:

The politics are dumb, and she isn’t any more naive, but ignore the words, and how the flowing of intellectual capital stiffens and she builds, further, wider, stranger. The excitement of the thing, is spending more than an hour for the thing to collapse, and how it never does.

Daft Punk--Random Access Memory:

For proving that Analog might matter still, for the rise of a disco paradise the Garage never imagined, for working new and historical, but not being nostalgic, for the cult of Giorgia Moroderer, who I will never not pay homage to, for hearing it in and out of deps, from car windows, in the mall, in night clubs, in clinic waiting rooms--how it stalked me from Edmonton to Toronto to Gaspe to Montreal, through the summer, not relenting past winter.

Singles:

Luke Bryan--Crash My Party

What might be the most controversial album on the list--his voice is calm, authoritative, and seductive. His surety, and his commitment to pleasure remixes what American music might mean.  

Titicia--Don’t Touch Me

A gorgeous, open, and polyrhythmic masterpiece of erotic longing, breezes through without losing a consummate vocalists skill.

Yoko Ono--Bad Dancer:

She doesn’t gloat when she notes she has been playing the Avant as Pop game for longer than most of her collaborators have been alive, she just invites them to a studio and lets them groove. The most open thing I have heard, in a fairly open year.

Blurred Lines--Robin Thicke.

It has the best chorus of the year. Pharell completely changed his game, which might be the third or fourth time he has done that. The falsetto is so un-natural (and the song is about the problems of nature) , and is used so well. It might be dumb, but it is hyper aware about being dumb, and that is one of the secrets of  the come on song. It’s hot. I don’t want to hug him. I want to fuck him. Or more importantly, I want him to fuck me. In an age of song, then response song, the pleasure filled, archly ironic remix by New Zealand Law Students bring pop this year to a full circle.

Carrie Underwood--Two Black Cadilliacs:

Domestic melodrama at its finest, the story song could be something straight out of Sirk, with the heavy formalism. That it manages to have a chorus so monstrous, thunder sounds, and keening guitars, that it becomes so formalist, and is not operatic or ironic, is a testement to Underwood’s  consummate skill.

Brigett Everett--What I Gotta Do

I got most of my music off of Youtube this year, and this cabaret icon, without an album but with a live show at Joe’s pub, is the gender queering soul anthem to the nature of what one can and what one cannot get on a New York Street Corner. Made even better by the fact that she might be the best belter since Mama Cass (and don’t lie to me, you can imagine Cass singing What I gotta do to get a dick in my mouth” )

Sissy Nobby--Loopy

A hedge maze of quotes and refutations, becomes the anti-eminem on the way to making the best bounce track of the year.

Laura Mvula--Green Garden

The percussion, including handclaps, are so summer, and so peppery, just a refreshing roll across the tops of Mvula’s gorgeous voice.

Kelly Rowlands--Dirty Laundry

All of those Spector produced artists, trying to work out what they feel, against the power of bad men, and monolithic producers--Rowland is one of those tell-alls, but with an autonomy. By making a record to dispute the records, she provides the best testimony that Beyonce, like all sorts of geniuses, might have been monstrous. The production is so spare, it makes this, and other revelations (domestic violence) even more stark in relief

Mapie--Don’t Wait:

Even over crappy laptop speakers, how this production doubles up, splits, and doubles again, like a slightly paranoid five line skink, is a masterpiece, made even more complex by a voice that roars towards the oceanic. If this is the future of Swedish pop, their future is long assured.

Angel Haze--Echelon

Such an angry dis track, so delightfully specific in its rhetoric, so well constructed in its pure hate, she enters the boys club almost to fuck shit up.

Ciara--Overdose

The overdose as love metaphor seems so overdone, so played out, but how Ciara sings Doctor, how she pops that middle c, and how she ends up sliding around a track that just plays at being taut, suggests a possible new way forward for pop vocals.

Best Coast I Don;t Know How

Messed up, roughed up, torn apart harmonies, stitched up, and made up into a perfect Frankenstein’s monster, but more Califonia, and less arctic moors.

http://harmonicait.tumblr.com/post/70932306726/country-music-is-only-awful-when-youre-slut-shaming

Wombat Tunnelling!

gorgeous example of hypertext writing.

Parr's photos taken out of car windows in Lagos, work on the problem in a different way than Friedlander's incorporation of the car into the frames of the shot, or Ruscha's building of an infastructure. IT might be an element of technology.

ellen altfest is like pearlstein, without  all of the still life elements, and with men, she paints hair really well

gary panter and charles burns monster mashup  by eric reynolds on vine.

extensive photos  and written text on drum kits from the 20s and 30s.


60s lutheran kitsch reworking of the creation.

on the 12 dollar phone

on cunninglingus and hiphop

Los Angeles' funiculars are democratic, and an example of excellent public transport, and this history suggests a kind of revival.

brilliant, heartbreaking reporting on the final days of Randy Savage.

i want to go here and learn how to auctin cattle

the naitonal instutie of mental health in the uk, is changing what it means to be treated for schizophrenia, suggesting more autonomy for people who have the disorder. 

dozens of examples of vernacular typography in florence

some interesting behind the scenes shots

photos inside the 70s era nagakin capsule tower in toyko

jack peirson Her ancient solitary reign 2006

great historical photos o women in mens tailoring

judges son kills himself on the edge of the temple grounds in vegas

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