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After four weeks of ball-frostingly cold weather, February has mercifully yielded control of the calendar. Despite its chronological impotence, February did find time to produce for us a belly-warming assortment of new music (which we continue to savor, mmm). Unfortunately, we also choked on a few bitter concoctions along the way, and hoping to protect our dear readers, we have chosen to include those in this month’s report.
Without further ado, Brasky team is happy to humbly offer up our assertions on the best–and worst–of new music in February 2010.
Best Albums of February 2010
| Phantogram – Eyelid Movies | |
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8.5
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Brasky enjoyed this one so much that it got its own page: Phantogram Review
Sexy, bizarre, morose, delicate… this album is a winner and a solid early candidate for year end top-ten. |
| Local Natives – Gorilla Manor | |
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8.0
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Yet another Rookie album took Brasky by surprise: Local Natives are based in Los Angeles, but call to mind Seattle heroes Fleet Foxes and NY indie icons the Strokes. But the comparisons don’t stop there… almost every song is familiar yet instantly enjoyable. It’s safe to say that is the most quintessentially ‘indie’ record ever made. Local Natives scored some big play by gearing one of their singles toward NPR (even imitating ‘World News’ by singing ‘A bomb went off in the parking lot of a newly opened Sunni Marketplace’) and, of course, NPR gave them a shout out. Some reviews deride the ‘been done’ nature of this album, but with no new Shins album in sight and the Decemberists shadows of their former selves, Brasky would like to crown Local Natives as the hipster hit of 2010. |
| Bibio – The Apple And The Tooth | |
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7.5
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Bibio turned a lot of heads with his first release on Warp last fall, Ambivalence Avenue. As somewhat of an encore, Warp has released The Apple and the Tooth, which includes some new releases from Bibio plus a set of Bibio remixes by fellow Warp artists. Recent Warp remix albums have disappointed but this album is stacked with sick tracks (including a remix from Warp titan Clark) . Fans of glitched up folk, hi-fi idm, and grimy bass are strongly encouraged to check it out. |
| Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me | |
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7.0
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Brasky doesn’t usually review albums not recorded by human beings (Joanna Newsom is either an elf librarian or ten to fifteen cats cleverly arranged under a trenchcoat), but all kidding aside, this is an album worth mentioning. If any discerning music fan hasn’t yet understood that Newsom is among the top songwriters of the ‘millennial’ generation, this record should cement her reputation. Circuitous songcraft, enthralling storytelling, and downright WTF-worthy vocal curlicues make ‘Have One on Me’ a musical rarity: a startlingly original, suprisingly touching work of art. Our only gripe is that the 3-cd bohemoth weighs in just over two hours, with no musical whim left unexplored. Less than half of that time could easily have created the same mystique. |
| The Album Leaf – A Chorus Of Storytellers | |
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7.0
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Fans of beautiful, mellow music, can’t go wrong with Album Leaf. This LP is another elegant showcase of ambient post-music, emotionally evocative and deeply communicative. Album Leaf is a full band by now, so on this album, like the last, there are a couple songs that do include vocals to add some variety. Fortunately, the vocals never steal the attention, but instead swirl slowly in pools of soft sound. |
Album Flops of February 2009
| Massive Attack – Heligoland | |
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6.5
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All right, so it’s probably not quite fair to call this album a “flop”, but in doing so we also wish to show due respect for Massive Attack’s legacy. This Bristol duo has been producing down-tempo albums since the 1980s, widely regarded as the originators of trip hop. Heliogland features some the familiar voices of Martina Topley-Bird (Tricky) and Horace Andy as well as a few surprise cameos from noteworthy musicians. Star power and skillful production, however, were not enough to charge this album full of the vibrance and soul we have come to expect from Massive Attack, instead delivering a quirky assortment of uninspiring tracks. |
| Shout Out Louds – Work | |
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5.5
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We like the Shout Out Louds, we really do. We wanted to like this album and uphold high esteem for our favorite Swedish rockers. And maybe if it had just one great song or a couple share-worthy ones we’d tell you to run out and buy it. Reluctantly, we advise otherwise. The album has a few hummable tracks (See: the single “Walls”), but we simple got bored with it. Is it just us? |
| Hot Chip – One Life Stand | |
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3.0
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To quote one of our female contributors, “Weird shit. ‘Huh-man-nuh huh-man-nuh!’ Indeed. I feel like I just got dildo fucked at an electrotash roller derby event during gay festivities week.” We recommend not listening to this album unless that’s your thing. We’ll acknowledge that our dismissal of this album may be controversial, judging by some warm reviews out there, but… that’s weird, because this music is unpleasant. |
| Midlake – The Courage Of Others | |
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2.5
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Hipsters everywhere drooled all over their Member’s Only jackets for Midlake’s new record, but this album didn’t fool Brasky. It would be a must-listen if we all worked at Medieval Times or had never heard Jethro Tull before, but for those of us that do not fit either of those categories, this ‘sepia-toned slumber’ passed by like overcast clouds: unmemorable and depressing. NPR executives all clearly drank the Kool-Aid and offered this album as a free listen a couple of weeks ago, and failed to offer a prize for making it through the entire thing. A fitting reward would have either been a seppuku dagger or a big cardboard box with forty-five minutes in it. |
| Yeasayer – Odd Blood | |
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2.0
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Do people really listen to music like this? Yeasayer’s newest album sounds as if it is trying very hard to be tangential and structureless, which removes all enjoyability from this record. I could only imagine listening to this album under three conditions: 1. I was forced at gunpoint to do so, 2. I was trying to sound really cool and name-drop bands I was absolutely sure no one else had ever heard of/would ever hear, 3. I was doing an anthropological study on how Old World Monkeys respond to despicable wastes of time. |
| Xiu Xiu – Dear God, I Hate Myself | |
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1.0
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This real life Casey and his Brother routine defies belief. While some reviews come clean and make claims such as “[Dear God] is unlikely to win over new fans”, others somehow discard all credibility by asserting “[Dear God] marks a new level of maturity and self-awareness for the band”, while the album itself features high-brow instant classics like ‘Cute Pee Pee’ and ‘Chocolate Makes You Happy’. This is a palpably awful embarrassment that pulls the worst elements of the 1980s, gay culture, and electronic music together into a sickeningly self-absorbed shiny-object of a record. The album title hints at the lunacy it requires to create an amalgam of such repugnance. |
2 Comments
Giving Contra a 7.5 and Odd Blood a 2.0 gives me the impression that you need your head examined.
We were hard on Yeasayer’s album, sure. But 7.5 on Contra is not a controversial score.