(With the end of the year closing on us, I've decided to bang out some quick reviews in order to get through everything I enjoyed this year, with the hope of having enough time to reveal my album of the year choice sometime in the next couple of days.)
El Camino - The Black Keys
After the exposure they gained from Brothers (their best charting album and single at the time, 5 Grammy nominations, 3 wins, and being the soundtrack for just about every commercial in 2010), The Black Keys were probably under more pressure to produce than they have been in their decade-long career. They came through with El Camino, 11 tracks of exactly the kind of blues-inspired rock fans of the band have come to expect.
The easiest comparison for The Black Keys is The White Stripes, and while the analogy is favorable, it's also lazy. Yes, they are both two-piece outfits playing 12-bar-burners, but to call The Black Keys a Stripes knock-off doesn't give them enough credit. Over their career, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have pulled from the full history of rock to find inspiration. My two favorite albums from them, Brothers and Rubber Factory, appeal to me for their reach towards Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. On El Camino, with the help of producer/co-writer Danger Mouse, they continue their exploration of the blues, while moving even further back at times.
Lonely Boy, the first single from the album, is one of the ballsiest songs to be released in the past 10 years. Any bar fight scene should have this playing over it, including movies already made. (The idea of watching Road House with this album constantly in the background would make the experience 100 percent better, which would be about the same as not watching Road House.) Gold On the Ceiling is the best ZZ Top track since that song from Back to the Future 3, and has an intro riff that sounds like it was written by a drugged-up Joe Perry. Run Right Back and Stop Stop would fit right in on a 50's-rock satellite station, assuming anyone with satellite radio listens to 50's-rock.
Time will tell if I turn back to this album ages as well as Brothers has over the short-term, but the early returns have been enough to keep me looking like a fool to anyone who has seen me driving around listening to this album.
Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
I do not care about production values. Not only do I not like them, it could be argued that I actively dislike them. A great example of this is the Foo Fighters, a band that has written some of my favorite songs of the 90's, as well as being fronted by the drummer for one of my favorite bands ever. Despite these factors working in their favor, I find much of their post-millennial output to be unlistenable, and it's due to the fact that they have polished themselves down to something that is no longer interesting. I like rawness and unpredictability in the things I listen to, even in the more precise artists I listen to. (Andrew Bird comes to mind here, someone who is a bit notorious for the work he puts into making an album, but still manages to sound like he is writing the songs in studio as he plays them.)
This outlook on music would hold up almost flawlessly for me, if not for the Fleet Foxes.
On both of their full length albums, they have achieved a sound bordering on seamless. The instrumentation, the melodies, the vocal harmonies (MY GOD!!), it all sounds like they spent weeks perfecting every detail. Maybe, because it feels like they never rely on that production to be the focus of their songs, and instead use the arrangements to let their songs shine at their brightest, that it never seems to bother me. Or maybe it's because it's winter, and the sound like falling snow, if falling snow would get it's act together and make the kind of sounds we all know it can make.
I'm not sure anything on Helplessness Blues hits me quite as hard as the best moments on their self-titles debut, but the album feels a bit more complete overall. The title track is most-likely the strongest track on the album, and it's hard not to have an easy smile on your face while listening to Bedouin Dress, and it's hard to pinpoint much that disappoints. (An Argument being an exception. I fail to see how the album, or the track, is any worse without a minute and a half of horn noise. Wilco has that covered.)
Either way, throw on the album, sit by a fire, and make the best out of grey skies.
The King Is Dead - The Decemberists
Listening to music is a little different for anyone who has ever played music. It's not that we enjoy it any more than someone else, or that it makes us any better than someone who hasn't, it's just different. It can bring an automatic response of comparison. One of my favorite feelings while listening to something new is of being blown away by the talent and ability of whoever it is I'm listening to (see the above review). Wishing I had the ability to write and/or perform a song makes me even more appreciative of what I'm hearing. This is a fairly common occurrence, seeing as how I'm sitting her writing about music instead of writing music. What's less common, but possibly more impressive, is hearing something so simple and seemingly easy that you feel like you could have written it, and you're mad at yourself for not coming up with it first.
Don't Carry It All is not an overtly impressive song. It's structure is fairly straightforward. The inclusion of violin and mandolin certainly add to the song, but they don't make it overly grandiose. And while Colin Meloy certainly has a rather unique voice, it's not like many people would be mad to hear someone else sing his songs. (To be clear, I like his voice, my only point is that I don't think anyone would call him the male Adele.) All of this, and it's still the best Tom Petty song since, well, Tom Petty.
Music in the internet/iTunes/Spotify era is a pretty fantastic thing. It gives almost any access to things that wouldn't have been available not that long ago. (I'm pretty sure I've made this point before, but let's just pretend this is for all the new readers, okay?) This has made for a landscape where there is a sound for just about everyone, which is a great. I like having access to music whose influences could come from, conceivably, anywhere (or even nowhere, I suppose). But there is something to be said for a band that writes fairly basic, Americana-folk-rock, that still manages to sound inspired, and The Decemberists manage to do it better than anyone (sorry, My Morning Jacket).
Don't get me wrong, The Decemberists are a very talented group of musicians, it's just that their talent as players takes a backseat to their ability as songwriters. The King Is Dead is 10-straight tracks of song-crafting expertise. It would make a strong case for the best album I heard this year if not for one other album this year.
But that is a review for another time, and that time will hopefully be tomorrow or the next day.
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