Ten for '10: The Unblinking Ear's Year in Rock

The Village Voice Sound of the City panel recently asked if 2010 was the best year for music ever. I try to shy away from hyperbole myself but even if one ignores most of their (and, it seems, every other music critic's) picks (LCD, Vampire Weekend, the ubiquitous Kanye), 2010 was indeed a rather good year. In compiling the list below, I found myself with about six or so "definites" and 20 or so "could bes." That's a lot more than usual.

2010 was also the year we lost Jimmy Lee Lindsay Jr., better known to the universe as Jay Reatard. Though gone, his influence on the rock underground remains. It's been four years since he released his watershed solo debut Blood Visions. Also released the same year was Times New Viking's debut album and these two records cast a long shadow. The first few years of the 21st century yelled "Return of the Rock!" as loudly as possible but whatever moderate commercial success was achieved by demi-raw garage or post-punk revivalists fizzled by the middle of the decade. Of course, the music biz answer to failure is always "slick it up" and suddenly rock was in short supply once again.

While it's debatable on whether or not Reatard and TNV kickstarted the new lo-fi/DIY movement, they certainly seemed to remind many of the purifying, primal thrill noise and volume can bring to a pop song. Good records by interesting bands have been coming at a fairly steady clip ever since. Punk was finally (if only partially) reclaimed from the shopping mall and rock was not dead after all.

Or is it? This year, the Official Arbiters of Music Taste for the Young, White and Privileged seemed relieved that the lo-fi "trend" had run its course and it no longer had to pay lip service to a sector of the underground it didn't care for or understand in the first place. Evidence can be found in their dismissive, middling reviews of Woven Bones, Wounded Lion and Thee Oh Sees. Others found it difficult to distinguish what should be obvious sonic variety in different bands using the same basic rock vocals/guitar/bass/drums set up. At times, I feel like a teenage metalhead who can easily pick out the nuances between his favorite bands. Whereas to most people, it all sounds like the same unlistenable racket.

In any case, below is a list of the best rock music going right now. To my ears, anyway. Listed more or less alphabetically to free myself and the artists from the indignity of ranking. Accompanying each pick are either excerpts from past reviews or new text if I had not reviewed them previously. I'm sure some of you are going to download all of these at once. My advice: Pick the one that sounds most interesting you and try just that one. Music is a lot better if you take the time to enjoy it.

Casual Victim Pile compilation (Matador)
If Casual Victim Pile wasn't the record of 2010, then 2010 was the year of Casual Victim Pile. Released back in January, this collection of bands from Austin, TX was like a harbinger for the year to come. Many of the bands on the comp released good to excellent albums this year: The Young, Woven Bones, Dikes of Holland, Tre Orsi, Harlem, The Golden Boys' John Wesley Coleman. Others like Kingdom on Suicide Lovers and The No No No Hopes contributed standout tracks that have me looking forward to their future releases. Casual Victim Pile served as notice for every other scene to step up their respective games. Frankly, it might be one of the best regional comps ever. And Rayon Beach isn't even on it!

Grass Widow Past Time (Kill Rock Stars)
Rather than provide direct hooks to hang your hat on, Grass Widow invite you to luxuriate in their singular sound. Their voices (the band's harmonies are top notch) and instruments weave in and out of each other. Each element is distinct and sometimes oblique yet they seamlessly form a whole. That may read as being challenging and it can be but Grass Widow is also stealthily inviting. They prove that rock music doesn't need to loud or noisy to be uncompromising. Nor does it need to be traditionally catchy to burrow its way right into your brain's pleasure center. (Originally posted: 8/25/10)

Mantles Pink Information EP (Mexican Summer)
San Francisco's Mantles first came to my attention via their cut Woodist's excellent Welcome Home/Diggin' The Universe compilation. This made me feel like a fool as they had already released a handful of 7"s and a full length on Siltbreeze of which I was totally ignorant. I did manage to get my hands on this 5 track EP though. And, lucky me, it totally smokes. The Mantles have gotten the requisite VU/Paisley Underground/NZ comparisons but I heard healthy dose of Richard Lester Myers-style swagger and weariness in there as well. And really, you can never have too much of that.

Nothing People Soft Crash (S-S)
Their debut, Anonymous, made my best-of list for 2008. Their second album, Late Night, was in some ways even better and surely would have made my best-of list for 09 had I bothered to make a proper one. Soft Crash, their third album in as many years, is better still. Such prolificness is impressive in and of itself but the substantial growth they've shown with each release in such a short period is simply astounding. (Originally posted: 6/30/10)

Reading Rainbow Prism Eyes (HoZac)
Reading Rainbow's stronger melodies easily distinguish themselves. Songs like "Wasting Time," "Always On My Mind" and the title track are some of the most infectious of the year, outclassing most of band's peers among the new naive. (Originally posted: 11/23/10)

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists The Brutalist Bricks (Matador)
The Brutalist Bricks is not any kind of departure from Leo's trademark sound. Rather, it distills his greatest strengths and offers some strongest melodies of his career. And it sounds fantastic, sporting crisp production with each element clearly pronounced in the mix. (Originally posted: 3/9/10)

Tre Orsi Devices + Emblems (Comedy Minus One)
I may have given the impression that Tre Orsi is merely some revivalist act. This is not the case. If they wanted to go that route, they could simply drive headfirst into cliché, which they thankfully avoid. Rather, the trio uses their influences as a foundation for their own style, simultaneously muscular and melancholy. That they could reclaim the soft/loud dynamic from nearly 20 years of terrible post-grunge and spin it into something distinctly their own on a song like "Best Kind of Failure" is nothing short of remarkable. (Originally posted: 6/8/10)

Tyvek Nothing Fits (In The Red)
This is the Tyvek album you've been waiting for. Though chaos is an essential part of Tyvek's approach, here they focus all the clamor and weirdness that sprawled all over their prior LP into their songs. The result is an unrelenting attack. Songs pummel you one after the other, never allowing you to catch your breath. (Originally posted: 11/9/10)

Wounded Lion s/t (In The Red)
Wounded Lion are not dissimilar to fellow Californians Nodzzz in their mix of rough simplicity and unrelenting catchiness. Actually, the band(s) I was reminded of most when listening to this platter were Big Dipper and the Embarrassment. Songs like "Hunan Province" and "Belt of Orion" seem to have inherited their sense of melody directly from Bill Goffrier's old bands, sources that are both fertile and infrequently replicated. (Originally posted: 4/27/10)

The Young Voyagers of Legend (Mexican Summer)
More than once I've seen the Young likened to the Replacements, probably because of singer Hans Zimmerman's passing resemblance to Paul Westerberg in voice and phrasing. It's a pretty erroneous comparison as the Young's music is wide open and exploratory, whereas the only thing the Mats were interested in exploring was the bottom of a Bud can. However, the false identification becomes easier to forgive when one realizes the Young don't have any easy precedents to reference. Are they the loosest post-hardcore band around or the tightest psychedelic trash? Live, I might say the former, on record probably the latter. It ultimately doesn't matter how one identifies them, of course, only that they're treading some exciting sonic territory that at once seems strange and alien yet undeniably, concretely rock. If you're only going to check out one album from this list from a band you've never heard of before, make it this one.

Honorable Mentions:

Best Coast Crazy For You (Mexican Summer)

Bottomless Pit Blood Under The Bridge (Comedy Minus One)

Dikes of Holland s/t (Sundae)

Fresh and Onlys Play It Strange (In The Red)

Idle Times s/t (HoZac)

Myelin Sheaths Get On Your Nerves (Southpaw)

Parting Gifts Strychnine Dandelion (In The Red)

Super Wild Horses Fifteen (HoZac)

Ty Segall Melted (Goner)

Welcome Home/Diggin' the Universe: A Woodsist Compilation (Woodsist)

New Release: Tre Orsi

Before I contented myself with making podcasts for solitary listening, I used to be a DJ. That is, I used to play pre-recorded music in a public space for the pleasure (or displeasure) of whomever was in the particular venue at the time. One record (well, double CD, factually) I always had on standby was What's Up, Matador? In my mind, it's one of the finest rock compilations of all time. It's almost certainly the best rock comp of the 90s, beating out strong contenders like Abridged Perversion and the Clueless soundtrack.

What's Up, Matador? was not intended to be an overview of its era but simply a cheap sampler of bands on the Matador label through its first five years. Nonetheless, it plays like it's comprehensive: the definitive statement on pre-OK Computer/pre-Strokes/pre-suburban-emo-explosion indie rock. Disparate bands making different sounds, sharing some common influences and a commitment to doing it their own way. If grunge was America's punk and 1990s alt-rock its new wave, then WUM? was its Wanna Buy a Bridge?

While one of WUM?'s strengths is its variety and it's unlikely that any of its bands sought to sound like each other or even behold themselves to the parameters of a genre, there is an inescapable if almost intangible sonic kinship to some of the songs. Heartfelt without histrionic over-emoting. Cerebral with out being clinical. Melodically dynamic and instrumentally expressive without forgetting to bring the rock. (And usually mid-tempo.) You could hear it in songs like Yo La Tengo's "Tom Courtney," Liz Phair's "Stratford-On-Guy" and Silkworm's "Couldn't You Wait." You could hear it in cuts from non-Matador bands of the era, like Sebadoh's "The Freed Pig," Polvo's "Tilebreaker" and Versus' "Bright Light." I certainly wouldn't use the term "generic," but it was prevalent enough that I, however naively, considered it to be the "indie rock sound." That is, if someone said they were into indie rock at the time, that's the sound of which I thought they were speaking. And they usually were, more or less. (Nowadays when someone says they're into "indie," I have no clue what they like. But that's a story for another time.)

So why am I talking about one record when I'm ostensibly reviewing another? When I heard "The Engineer" from Denton, TX band Tre Orsi on the Casual Victim Pile compilation (coincidentally [or not] released on Matador 16 years after WUM?) earlier this year, it brought back a flood of warm memories of a bygone era. It wasn't so much the comfort of nostalgia as it was the thrill of rediscovery of a lost art, the head-slapping thought "Why don't more bands sound like this?" As good as Casual Victim Pile was (and it was quite good), "The Engineer" was head and shoulders the standout out track. I couldn't wait to hear more from Tre Orsi.

Today is the digital release of their debut album Devices + Emblems on the Comedy Minus One label. (The vinyl came out a few weeks ago.) "The Engineer" is here along with 8 (on the LP, 10 on the download) other tracks that prove this is a band worthy of your attention. I may have given the impression that Tre Orsi is merely some revivalist act. This is not the case. If they wanted to go that route, they could simply drive headfirst into cliche, which they thankfully avoid. Rather, the trio uses their influences as a foundation for their own style, simultaneously muscular and melancholy. That they could reclaim the soft/loud dynamic from nearly 20 years of terrible post-grunge and spin it into something distinctly their own on a song like "Best Kind of Failure" is nothing short of remarkable. I could cite other tracks as fine examples of their craft but, frankly, it seems a little redundant. There's simply not a bad one in the bunch.

In his review of this album for Dusted (which I'll freely admit is probably more convincing than this one), Doug Mosurock concludes "The notion of ‘90s indie rock might as well be folk music (or at least the sort of folk music we looked down upon in the ‘90s) but goddamnit, this is my folk music, and I’m sure more than a handful of you wouldn’t argue that it’s yours, too." I certainly concur, but I'll take it a step further. Devices + Emblems is one of the year's best albums. A subjective notion, sure. But if you wanted objective relevance you could head over the Hype Machine and let the algorithms steer you toward what's hot. I'm just a human recommending some human music. (Hey! That's another awesome comp!) Your reward is the same as mine.

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: The Terrible Twos

(Above: A fearsome twosome)

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I don't expect recognition of this anniversary that Google granted Pac-Man today.

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