I could not escape Ke$sha, and although there are a number of things that annoy or that I find problematic, the stripped down, pleasure for pleasure's sake trashiness of the enterprise, refuses anything good or holy or pure or well constructed about the world. An avant garde gesture because it is so abrasive and ugly, much uglier then Gaga.
She can dance. She can sing. She dresses well. She is well versed in the organic and the mechanical, and makes her central image a hybrid of both. If bricalouge is one of the goals of post-modern art making, then the sheer ornery person without personae that Monae exudes suggests she might be the last modernists alive.
Martin Clarke's tiny, and exquisite Rural Routes 3 had the isolation and expansion of the prairie, and the geometric rigour of the city. A brilliant and gorgeous album of found sound manipulation, it refuses the traditional new music concerns about beauty, while still looking ahead and jettisoning any reactionary tendencies.
I think what makes me appreciate Robyn the most, is the ambiguous quality of her work. Though she appears in a genre that is known for precision and ecstasy, but nothing close to human emotions, the melancholy, the happiness, and the dancing as fast as i can mania compete and one never dominates. The album, called Body Talk, is about the failure of the body to communicate through the mind, think of it as Cartesian Dualism with a mechanical failure.
BRandon Flower's ability to create genuine story songs, narratives of disolution and decadence, and his obsession wiht carrying those stories via vocal skills, suggests someone wiht country or folk leanings. But the glam of this, the glitter and the starshine, have a luridness that seems unapologetic. That it lacks any humility what-so-ever, and proclaims its genius without anyone listening. Flamingo Outkaynes Kayne. That the album is about Vegas, by and from a local, and a local who understands that the (latter day) Saints and the (modern day) sinners merge in this mythical place in the American west, A shangri la that cannot exist, and yet does.
James Murphy makes me sad. I'm turning 30, and I have this fear of being an age that suggests I need to get serious, and tgive up all of this flirting with pleasure that I have spent the last decade and half doing. If my 20s were about drinking, fucking and eating like a Viking, Murphy suggests that my 30s will be nothing but disappointments, hurting bodies, and aching souls. A miraculous downer.
Arcade Fire's music has always annoyed me, indie boys whining for no good reason about shit that never really mattered, and it was all guitars too, and i have never been convinced of the values of guitars. After Neon Bible, I wanted to throw everything on the burning pile. But this prickly, and profoundly lonely album marks the ennui and boredom of a non place where nothing ever happens. To do that without melodrama should be well rewarded.
John Adams, who is known for geo-political chess peice drama, and tight, tiny clockwork peices, surprises us when his very American greatest hits can be remade or at least repackaged to work with the hyper high swoon of a Nina Roti melodrama. Outperforms Valentino's costumes and Tilda's cheekbones.
Jamey Johnson, for the sheer, unadulterated ambition, which country has been missing.
Black Keys are one of those bands that happens every couple of years that make me believe in Rock and Roll again.
Cee Lo Fuck You
I love how viral this went, and how quickly. I love, even though, Paltrow made my heart sad, it did not ruin the originally skill. I love his voice. I love how smooth and unbroken the whole thing is, how it is not a mess at all, though emotionally he might be, I love the sing along chorus. I love how all of the people who are falling over to praise it (NYT, People., EW) are unable to write the word fuck, and i love how innocous the word fuck has become.
Courtney Love Pacific Coast Highway
The demo is better then the single, but Courtney has always been good in that place where geography and gender collapse into a untenable desire for power and it's resulting sexual baggage.This ode to the end of the world, and going north instead of into the ocean is beautiful, but remained ignored because of the misogyny of the scene.
Fucked Up--Year of the Ox
Big vear daddy brings the noize, but with melody.
Janelle Morae
Because I am amused that the reincarnation of Fred Astaire is a petite black woman who looks better in a tux then anyone in living recent memory.
Mariah Carey ft Nicki Minaj -
Minaj seems to have done a dozen or more guest verses, and figuring out which would end up on the list was a battle until the very last moment. This one made it because i found the hyper performative femininity so draggy, and so self conciously strangely insecure about it.
Laura Marling
Mostly for her voice, her lilt, how she knows how to frame a hook, and the skill in updating the traditional with a tension between the very now and the timeless. One of the plainest, and most plaintive singers this year.
Duck Sauce
Just pure absurd fun, sort of an invocation to the gods of the city, for protection and for joy. Plus, a really hot video.
Gil Scot Heron
If anyone is surrounded by the devil, it might just be the cursed Heron. That he still is capable of making work that is so haunted by history, that the hellhounds are silenced from their baying by his voice. Glad he is back.
Josh Turner--I Wouldn't Be A Man
The profound eroticism that only occurs with in a context of devotion, the gender politics are lousy, but the tenderness and the domesticity is so blatantly about feelings without melodrama.
Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, Shame
Speaking of family, teasing at the limits of homo-socialism and homo-eroticism, as only the brits can, this turns the fear of being a teenage has-been into a gorgeous ballad about the nature of fame, and the desire for companionship.
