The First Annual William James Viti Awards

I put this off, time after time I could not bring myself to "rank" what I held to be the best albums of the year. It seems to me a terribly indulgent process to create such a list, especially when lacking the critical eloquence to communicate the motivations for my selections. Some songs, some albums simply resonate in a manner which cannot be completely, or perhaps accurately, appraised with words. Therefore, I decided to categorize these albums and songs based on fictitious awards. Music or sports analogies, those are the two vehicles that I turn to most when confronted with the difficulty of articulating my thoughts to others. So here are the 2010 William James Viti awards (Wijavis for short, if you're keeping track at home), and the proud recipients:

THE AWARD FOR: AS CLOSE TO PERFECT AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, OR ROY HALLADAY'S 2010 SEASON goes to -

Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz; Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; The National: High Violet

THE AWARDS FOR: MODEL OF CONSISTENCY AND NEAR GREATNESS,OR "KING" FELIX HERNANDEZ'S 2010 SEASON (he of thirty quality starts, six complete games, and an era of 2.27) goes to -

Vampire Weekend: Contra; Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks; Cee-Lo Green: The Lady Killer; Josh Ritter: So the World Runs Away; The Tallest Man on Earth: The Wild Hunt; Phosphorescent: Here's to Taking it Easy

THE AWARD FOR: JUST PLAIN FUN/GUILTY PLEASURE OR MY ROOMMATES WATCHED ALL OF "THE SING OFF" goes to -

She & Him: Volume 2; Gayngs: Relayted; Best Coast: Crazy for You; Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles; Tokyo Police Club: Champ

THE AWARD FOR: BEST ROOKIE/SOPHOMORE EFFORT OR JAY BILAS LOVES THEIR UPSIDE goes to -

The Morning Benders: Big Echo; O'Death: Broken Hymns, Limbs, and Skin; Delta Spirit: History from Below; Local Natives: Gorilla Manor; Girls: Broken Dreams Club

THE AWARD FOR: SO MUCH HONEY OR SMOOTHER SOUNDING THAN RAY ALLEN'S JUMPER LOOKS goes to -

Horse Feathers: Thistled Spring; Junip: Fields; Beach House: Teen Dream

THE AWARD FOR: VETERAN PERFORMANCE OR THE SHAQUILLE O'NEAL REQUISITE ALL-STAR VOTE goes to -

The Black Keys: Brothers; Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest; Dr. Dog: Shame, Shame; LCD Soundsystem: This is Happening; Deer Tick: The Black Dirt Sessions

THE AWARD FOR: BIGGEST SURPRISE AS I DISCOVER HOW MUCH FUN CONTEMPORARY BLUEGRASS/GRASS-ROOTS MUSIC IS OR THE DANNY WOODHEAD APPRECIATION MEDAL goes to -

Trampled by Turtles: Palomino; Chatham County Line: Wildwood; Carolina Chocolate Drops: Genuine Negro Jig

THE AWARD FOR: MOST PLAYED, ACCORDING TO MY ITUNES OR GOSH BRETT FAVRE, I JUST CAN'T QUIT YOU goes to -

Chatham County Line: "Crops Come In;" TV Girl: "If You Want It;" Gayngs: "No Sweat;" Megafaun: "Volunteers;" Phosphorescent: "It's Hard to be Humble When You're From Alabama;" Horse Feathers: "This Bed;" Deer Tick: "Twenty Miles;" Frightened Rabbit: "Nothing Like You;" Cee-Lo Green: "No One's Gonna Love You;" Kanye West: "Dark Fantasy;" Trampled by Turtles: "Wait So Long;" Sufjan Stevens: "I Walked."

The Rural Alberta Advantage

A week or so ago, my brother and I had a lengthy conversation about current Scottish groups and their musical similarities. Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Glasvegas, and Meursault share components, exhibit musical or lyrical parallels that are undeniable. Despondent verse coupled with swelling, intricate orchestration exudes from each of these five bands in a variety of forms. A shared musical tradition is the first, and most obvious, component to garner attention, and appropriately so. The local popularity of Idlewild during the mid to late nineties illustrates the subsequent influence that Edinburgh-bred quintet unmistakably had amongst Scots maturing and exploring their own musical taste in the ensuing years. Yet, what is it about the Scottish climate that inclines many toward such themes, yearning to rent open chest and skull alike so the audience can peer at crestfallen, beating heart and melancholic introspective thoughts? It is a subject that would require further, and more expansive scrutiny.

Enter The Rural Alberta Advantage, a trio based in Toronto, whose 2009 debut release Hometowns exhibited, in my opinion, a high degree of similarities with that distinct Scottish sound. Hometowns represents a phenomenal premiere performance. It's thirteen tracks are executed with seasoned precision, and reveal deeply beautiful harmonies between male and female voices. The woefully demoralized nature of the verse initially drew my attention, soliciting comparisons with Scott Hutchinson's weary and fragile disposition. There are interior, shielded insecurities and doubts exposed with a fatigued frankness, whether lamenting the slow decay of love ("So wipe the sleep from your eyes / And I'll wipe 'em out of mine too / If we try to hold on, then I'll try to hold on to you / Well I shouldn't sleep all day / But it's half past noon / 'Cause I know we're taking a break / And I know you're leaving me soon") or the painful self-examination of withdrawal ("What'll I do if you never find me again / Sittin' in a province a million miles from my friends / What'll I do if you never want me again / Come with me, come back we'll live again / What if I'm only satisfied when I'm at home / Sittin' in a city that'll never let me go / What if I'm only satisfied when I'm alone). As those passions are articulated with increasing yearning and the shroud of stoicism is pulled back, the vocal influence of Jeff Magnum is eerily recognizable, and to a similar degree the musical motifs of Neutral Milk Hotel manifest themselves on Hometowns as well.

There is a uniqueness, however, in the trio's sound. In a majority of songs, percussion is dominant, or at least adopts a more decisive presence. Rapid or smoothly pouring like the soothing, constant crash of a waterfall, the synchronization of drums and cymbals can drive a track in a remarkably unique manner. We are so used to a guitar riff or piano chord planting itself in the foreground, that a reliance upon percussion to do the same is quite refreshing. "Don't Haunt This Place" and "In The Summertime" are indicative of this trend at its most successful, a manner in which, to my mind, only Maps & Atlases and Local Natives have achieved of late. It will be most fascinating to determine whether Rural Alberta Advantage's sound and verse mature on their sophomore album due in March.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas music can get a bit monotonous, some songs have been scientifically proven to turn your brain to mush if listened to repeatedly. Sufjan Stevens' Christmas catalog can only carry you so far in the holiday season, and here are a few tracks that make me think about Christmas. So, Merry Christmas and enjoy some songs that aren't Christmas songs but make me think of Christmas.

"Girl from the North Country"

"Four Strong Winds"

"Thirteen"

"To Be Alone With You"

Not Quite Friday Links

Magnificent Old 97's session at Daytrotter this week, their newest single "Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You)" illustrates how well this group has stood up over the years. You can also enter a contest via Daytrotter picking your favorite song of the year, with the chance to win some appetizing prizes.

Looking for something musically themed for your New Year's Eve celebration? Pitchfork has you covered.

Pitchfork also has you covered for your weekly does of Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes, with a new track entitled "Shell Games."

Of all the "Best of" lists that are circulating the blogosphere, Muzzle of Bees might have provided the most intriguing tastes of artists I had missed, especially the releases by Conrad Plymouth, Sat. Nite Duets, and Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore.

On a vastly more personal note, during the tender years of my youth I had the opportunity to see Richie Havens perform, although I do not remember quite having understood the magnitude of his past. Nonetheless, here is a neat little interview with the Mr. Havens, from Owl and Bear.

The Replacements: "Unsatisfied"

Paul Westerberg may not be a household name, at least if you were born in the late eighties or early nineties. I was first introduced to Westerberg and The Replacements while riding around with my father during my teenage years. At the time, I was enrapt with bands like The Strokes and The Libertines. Ever the musical mentor, The Replacements were one of those bands that my father would load into the cd dock because he hoped I would find similar enjoyment from a band that had pioneered the sounds I currently delighted in. He would take those fifteen or twenty minutes while we skirted around town on various errands, times where he was in sole control of the radio, to give me a little lesson in rock’s fecund heritage.

Let It Be has been the recipient of more than a few listens in the past few weeks. It is a fantastic album, a perfect encapsulation of The Replacements and an obvious indicator to the depth of inspiration that many alt-rock groups owe Westerberg and company. In the twenty-five or so years since this album was first released, songs like “Unsatisfied” and “Androgynous” remain among the ultimate archetypes of American rock music. Robert Christgau, the famed rock critic, awarded Let It Be with a grade of A+. When the album was reissued in 2008, Pitchfork reaffirmed the album’s potency by stamping it with a 10.0 (just as a point of reference, the only album to receive such an accolade from Pitchfork in 2010 was Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy).

“Unsatisfied” is set in motion by two intertwined guitar riffs, with the faint fingerprints of absentminded daydreams smudged across them. Westerberg’s yelp marshals the drums forth, securing a more regimented tempo, as he launches in to a verse that is so bare, yet so revealing: “Look me in the eye / Then, tell me that I’m satisfied / Was you satisfied? / Look me in the eye / Then, tell me that I’m satisfied / Hey, are you satisfied?” The palpable ache with which these queries are delivered is remarkably striking, given the simplicity of the lexicon. Furthering the weight of these loaded words is the uncertain direction in which they have been lobbed. Are they a probing introspection or the preamble to an argument littered with accusations and slanderous broadsides?

Within the orbit of “Unsatisfied,” never has bleak disillusionment sounded quite so beautiful. Whether it is the apprehension of desires slipping out of reach (“And it goes so slowly on / Everything I’ve ever wanted / Tell me what’s wrong”) or the reality that dreams so desperately craved are fiction (“Everything you dream of / Is right in front of you / And liberty is a lie”), Westerberg breathes out the odor of the shattering of naivete with each syllable. Such words are gently intertwined with the magnificent mourning pouring forth from the orchestration of guitars and percussion. Digging deeply with a gravelly strength, the track reaches its crescendo as the mantra of this splintered innocence is issued by Westerberg, repeating: “I’m so, I’m so unsatisfied / I’m so dissatisfied,” while a guitar weeps the highest of pitches against the backdrop. It is with that aching riff that “Unsatisfied” fades away, but the stain of the track’s echoing credo cannot be scrapped off quite so similarly.

Friday Links!

Fantastic Daytrotter session this week with Ryan Bingham and his backing band, The Dead Horses.

The Low Anthem sent my brain into an absolute state of shock and euphoria during their magically captivating set at this year's Newport Folk Festival. I am counting down the days until their album is released, but this track will have to sate my appetite until then.

A nice, little review of Johnny Cash's last American album from the No Depression family of blogs.

Pitchfork brings news of the first must-see concert of 2011, from my perspective. The calendar has been marked, and the anticipation can only grow from here.

Pitchfork counted down the year's best in songs and albums, ranking the best one hundred and fifty respectively, which has certainly provided some tracks and artists I had overlooked this year, great fodder for the last few weeks of 2010. Owl and Bear, on the other hand, composed a list of 2011's most anticipated records.

Week in Review

The first full week of December just came to a close, and I am sure that I am not alone in having my eyes and ears unjustly assaulted by countless "best of the year" lists. It seems as if every aspiring writer and every established critic becomes frenzied during the last month of the year, and what ensues is attempt after attempt at distilling the year's "best" into neat, compartmentalized hierarchies based on some preconceived, and often unfairly subjective, criterion. Admittedly, I had toyed with the idea of such a list, or better yet from my perspective, a grouping of awards, some comical in nature, that reflected my musical predilections over the past twelve months. That was until, I read this wonderfully written post via No Depression, one that I found myself sympathizing with greatly, entitled "This Was Going to be My End-of-the-Year Best of List, Until I Met Umberto Eco." I urge you to spend a few minutes reading this passage, and not just because Umberto Eco is perhaps one of the foremost authorities on medieval/classical philosophy and semiotics. Ever an author I have found myself drawn to, I won't delve too much into the specifics of the passage, but will only reiterate Eco's assertion that lists play a integral role in civilization: "And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible?" I found myself thoroughly questioning, with more internal deliberation and indecisive reflection than I'd previously thought a simple "best of" list required, how to put a concrete capstone on 2010 and music. I am not sure that it is possible, or even warranted given the vast bulk of artists and albums that we are exposed to on a day by day basis.

Such musing was inspired to some degree by the albums I listened to most these past few days, two of which were not released in this calendar year, but were equally new and fascinating from my standpoint. Both Dawes' North Hills and Chatham County Line's IV carry a distinct flavor of americana, with a nod to having drawn inspiration from more traditional American folk, blended together with more modern fancies. I missed Dawes at this year's Newport Folk Festival, opting to take in other acts I was better acquainted with. Their debut album has led some to vault the group into the same stratosphere as other rising indie-folk acts such as The Low Anthem and Delta Spirit. But I find some of their songs lack an immediate, indescribable sincerity in the vocal delivery that an initial listen can easily confuse for an overlying and undesirable flatness. The much of album is marked with that even-tempered approach, which lends itself well to the flow of some songs, but strips the credibility of frontman Taylor Goldsmith when he sings "I live less like a workhorse, more like a slave" and claims that he is "howling at moons" on "When My Time Comes." The concluding track, "Peace in the Valley," was, for me, the furthest resonating on the album. Here, finally, was a track on which an earnest quality to Goldsmith's lyrical articulation broke through.

I became aware of Chatham County Line after reading a particularly tasty and informative post on Muzzle of Bees, and IV features the same beautiful acoustic arrangements as the key track "Crop Comes In" from the quartet's 2010 album Wildwood. Not to detract from their newer album, the range of lyrical ability and the corresponding harmonies on IV are one of its most distinctive attractions, at times chilling on "Birmingham Jail," which swells with the haunting fiddle during the bridge, and equally thrilling tales of past loves from "The Carolina," a sweet track, off which the influence of traditional folk rolls thickly. As I mentioned in my last bit, Clem Snide's The Meat of Life has also been on the pallet of late. Like Dawes and Chatham County Line, it is difficult to assign or singularly categorize Clem Snide as being of a particular genre, with the inclinations of a variety of musical styles heaped in conjunction. Additionally, I spoke about Eef Barzelay's songwriting ability, whose adeptness at illustrating acrid burning and helplessness of the deterioration of a relationship bares no better archetype than a verse from "Walmart Parking Lot:" "Punched in the brain, in the gut, in the tear ducts too / Feeling more than a little unsure I couldn't make it through / How I cried all day, my heart a twisted knot." Barzelay's skill and flare for remarkable descriptors of emotion may derive from being raised bilingual, a nugget that my brother offered up while we discussed some of the more unique and overlooked American songwriters of this generation.

Friday Links!

Here are just a few news bits to digest as the weekend looms only a few hours away:

The Delta Spirit have been touring and managed to release an EP on the heels of this year's History from Below, a magnificent sophomore album. The Waits Room EP features a few new songs and some recrafted versions of earlier ones, a review of the EP and of Delta Spirit's concert at Webster Hall in New York.

No Depression brings news that Dawes, Deer Tick, and Delta Spirit frontmen banded together as early as the fall of 2009 to record under the name Middle Brother. The album is due to be released in March of 2011.

A beautifully poignant posting about everything music-related in 2010, from Aquarium Drunkard.

And from Pitchfork, a chance to weigh in and rank your personal best and worst in 2010.

Clem Snide: "BFF"

My brother and I exchange music like many folks exchange sports factoids, well we do a bit of that as well. A few days ago, he hit me with a song that has become an instant favorite of mine. Clem Snide was probably one of the first bands I remember my brother feeling passionately drawn to, and with good reason. Frontman Eef Barzelay crafts wonderful, soul-bearing lyrics, with musical accompaniments that mirror the spouting of emotions exquisitely, whether feverishly hectic and haphazard or a slow-plodding stream of aches and doubt. After a few years devoting himself to solo projects, Barzelay turned in a 2010 album, The Meat of Life, with his bandmates that simply ranks among the very best work Clem Snide has produced to date.

The track "BFF" is a classic Clem Snide song, featuring Barzelay's frank and deep-reaching emotional lyricism fused with uptempo guitar work and furiously-paced crash of drums and cymbals. Amazingly, "BFF" runs just under two minutes in length, but is injected with such an expanse of feeling, both uncertainty and self-abhorring futility, that it demands the listener to play it back again and again. Barzelay vacillates between closeting his fears, with the opening line yearningly delivered: "Trust me you don't want to know how I really feel," and throwing the door wide open on persistent anxieties in the chorus: "What if what I want is, and what if what I need is / Just a little more than all your love / All your love, all your love." He covets a comfort and spiritual sanctuary from his counterpart that he knows he cannot garner. The track reeks of chord progressions that have become a staple of alt-country bands such as the Old 97's and Drive-By Truckers, which adds amicably both to the playability of the song and Barzelay's conflicting, dithering outbursts of the emotional. "BFF" is one of the core tracks from an album that has been vastly overlooked in 2010.

News to Make You Smile

A heartwarming little news bit from Pitchfork that Jeff Magnum performed live this weekend in Brooklyn. Neutral Milk Hotel has long been a favorite of mine, and their work has had a profound and sweeping influence on a generation of artists. Take for instance Meursault's "One Day This Will All Be Fields," a track off their recent All Creatures Will Make Merry album. The song features a verse that, coupled with the starkly stripped guitar work and somber, dreary delivery, can mistaken for nothing if not a nod to Magnum and his former band's most well-known song: "And we will descend from the sky / and we will bury you alive." There are dozens of similar examples littered throughout the past decade. Magnum's reclusive habits in the wake of Neutral Milk Hotel's success are well documented, and his hiatus from recording and performing have only heightened the legend of his genius. Too see Magnum taking even the smallest of steps back into the public light is heartening, not only for his fans but for the man himself. Such news does indeed make me smile, and turn up "Holland, 1945" or "Two-Headed Boy" just a little louder. Hell, I almost titled this post "Jeff Magnum Performs in Brooklyn, Will Viti's Heart Skips Beat in Boston."