Kimbra - “Wandering Limbs”
There’s a lot going on in the chord progressions and melody of this song that didn’t really shine forth in the over-produced album version. Find a picturesque alleyway, strip it down to the bare essentials and perform it with a Robbie Savage lookalike and wa-hey, you have an almost-masterpiece!
Side note: in terms of capturing single-take live music performances, the lapel mics used must’ve been of the amazeballs variety.
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.
Egh. A lot of people seem to find this cute. Me? I think this is a dead giveaway that She and Him (badabing!) were probably banging behind Ben Gibbard’s chubby, perpetually depressed back.
Yes? No? Maybe?
Right? Riiiiight?
So basically, Scott Weiland minus the drugs = neo-nazi rapist Michael Buble-wannabe? Is no one else creeped out by his vacant gaze?
Whoa. Playlist roll? Playlist roll, betches.
On a side note, there’s a nostalgic comfort in coming up with playlists on 8tracks. It harkens back to high-school years where all you really needed to preoccupy yourself on a Sunday afternoon was a notepad, a 2-deck radio, a stack of cassettes and a naive sense of musical superiority (everyone else, was after all, listening to Vertical Horizon).
In no particular order, these are my 18 favourite tracks birthed from the musical foetus of 2011:
Notable mention: Saddest Song Of 2011 honors ought to go to The Antlers for “Putting The Dog To Sleep”. Moody, sun-obliterating mojo going on there…
More playlists on my 8tracks page.
This is Part 2 of the wedding playlist I’m putting together for the technically-weds (registered but yet to be ceremonied) Edwin and Ai Lin.
It’s decidedly more low-key compared to Part 1, so as to subdue the drunkards and overeager dancers as the night winds down. That’s how it normally works, right? Right?
I so wanted to include a token Bon Jovi love song but then, that’d be letting Ian win, wouldn’t it?
So, back when I used to work with Junk, we had a campaign called Junk Records - one of those “Behold! It’s a search for fresh new talents in the scene!” kinda thingos. One of the bands that made the final cut was Halfway Kings, my toss in the hat courtesy of someone on my Facebook circle posting up links of their YouTube ditties.
As with a host of names that got a break through Junk and moved on to bigger things, I can very clearly identify this as one of those cool moments where I got to be a cog in the wheel of a band that has rightfully and deservedly moved on to greater things - extrapolating their influence from the periphery of the YouTubes and illegal, guerilla-style street gigs to seeing them play in music festivals, become sneaker ambassarors and really, who knows what else?
For now, they’re content to celebrate their 2-year anniversary with a small do in a cosy little furniture store in Bukit Bintang called Pieces (next to No Black Tie) this Saturday, 26 November. Apart from Halfway Kings themselves, I’ll be playing too along with The Impatient Sisters - y’all are invited too!
Come hang, there’ll be drinks and good music and hand-made Mr. Fox face masks for you shy types! Event is free. More deets here!
This is Part 1 of the wedding playlist I’m putting together for the soon-to-be-weds, Edwin & Ai Lin. Tracklisting:
Part 2 on the way. In the meantime, feel free to drop critiques, recommendations, suggestions or dodgy spam links to win an iPad 2!
Update: Listen to Part 2 HERE
