As one would expect around this time of the year, the internet is rife with “Best of everything” lists. Pitchfork and Stereogum bibles be damned!
This isn’t so much a Best Of list than it is a list of favorites. Every year, there only seems to really be 4-5 albums that you’ll continue listening to as the years pass on. These few are the ones that’ll probably make the cut:
Metronomy - The English Riviera
There’s something about Metronomy that’s built like the Italian international football squad: highly polished, efficient and even when they’re not handsome, they’re still likely to be photographed in crisp suits with tons of leggy supermodels in tow.
Wait, I’m supposed to talk about the music aren’t I? It’s good.
Kimbra - Vows
Pre-Kimbra, my impression of New Zealand had been hopelessly limited: kiwi birds, Jonah Lomu, the lush landscapes in LOTR, Flight Of The Conchords and that movie about that young girl and the whale. Who knew NZ also produces feisty, kick-your-sballs-to-your-gut musical phenoms.
Genuinely joyous and exuberant. Exactly like a big-breasted 22-year old girl with a spark of marriage-craziness would be.
Foster The People - Torches
Every year, there’s that one band that incites band-fatigue as a result of excess hype and overexposure (fault: Pumped Up Kicks). PUK turned out to be a gateway drug that eventually waned as one discovered the headier flavors hidden within Torches. It was an album that was hard not to enjoy when it was released in May. Come December, it’s still hard not to enjoy (the rest of) the album.
But I do wish they’d stop playing it on repeat in Giant and Kamdar.
Rubblebucket - Omega La La
Rubblebucket are an overwhelmingly upbeat eight-piece Brooklyn ensemble with a sound that can best be described as the best of Basking & Robbins’ 31 flavors, scooped into a gigantic waffle-biscuit bowl, eaten while ELO plays in the background.
Real Estate - Days
When The Strokes dropped Is This It, there was a masterful simplicity in their gritty, indie pop melodies and repetition of the same 6 chords. Of course, Is This It is not something that can be topped easily, but Real Estate’s effort is a refreshing take on the “making decent music using the bare minimum amount of effort” model.
Mayer Hawthorne - How Do You Do
I can wholly appreciate the finer points of Robin Thicke’s white-boy-got-soul thang. I’d appreciate it a whole lot better if he wasn’t constantly trying to have sex me up through my headphones. Enter Mayer Hawthorne: Robin Thicke, sans sex fiend gene.
Rachael Yamagata - Chesapeake
Every list should have a “pleasant surprise” inclusion, that one album you didn’t expect to like so much. I expected Rachael’s trademark wrist-slitting, Debbie Downer melancholia and instead discovered a lot of upbeat, ear-friendly optimism that would perfectly soundtrack American automobile TV ads.
Feist - Metals
Somewhere between trying very hard to get into this album and trying very hard not to include this, I gave up and acceded to the fact that this may not an album packed with tons of radio-hits, but it’s something that I’ll probably still be able to appreciate 5 years down the line.
Unspectacular but warm and familiar. Like a smelly sweater you wear whenever it’s cold outside.
