A brief note to those who
might not know what this is: One of my passions, aside from spending
an inordinate amount of time overanalysing Saturday Morning Cartoon
Shows, has always been music, and every December I like to come up
with a short list of what I consider to be the standout musical
events of the year. More often than not it's just a list of what I
felt where the most memorable and enjoyable albums and singles
released in the past 12 months. I'm not trying to claim any sort of
authority here. I don't consider myself a music critic or a
musicologist so I don't and can't listen to every single new piece of
music that comes out and as a result the scope of something like this
for me is by necessity somewhat limited. However, I do enjoy music a
great deal and listen to what I consider a fair amount of it, so I do
find myself having things to say about what I do get the chance to
hear. That said, this won't be a list of what I consider the
objectively “best” songs of the year, as I would never want to
make a statement that sweeping and general, nor will this be a list
of what I consider the songs that “defined” the year for the
majority of people (if I wanted to do that I'd pick something silly
and easy like “Call Me Maybe”, “Somebody That I Used To Know”,
“We Are Young” or “Gangnam Style”). No, this is a list of the
songs and albums that defined 2012 for me *personally*
Anyway, I've been doing this
for the past several years now, but it's typically been restricted to
social networking sites or my computer's hard drive. This is the
first year I have something of an audience, and this feels like the
proper place to post it. I think the case for music as Soda Pop Art
is a fairly straightforward argument, so I trust I need not go into a
lot of detail about the music industry and record executives or
“selling out” or anything like that. And, as I'm no longer active
on any of the places I used to post this sort of thing, I figured I'd
take some time to relate what my picks were for a selection of
previous years for those who might be interested in getting a basic
overview of my taste in music and the sorts of things I like to
listen to.
2011:
Single:
“Evaporation” by Swimsuit
2010:
Single: “Animal”
by Neon Trees
2009:
Single: “Bad Romance” by Lady GaGa
2008:
Single: “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa
With
that sorted, here's what 2012 was like in music for me:
One of the most remarkable
things about this year for me, and something that became rather a
reoccurring theme throughout anything I heard in 2012, is that while
I almost exclusively listened to new material being put by artists
whom I was already a fan of or at the very least knew of, almost
invariably the year marked a radical, decisive artistic shift for
those selfsame musicians. For me this was a year of familiar artists
putting out very strange and unfamiliar work, oftentimes the best
work I'd ever heard from them. There seemed to be something in the
air, the global zeitgeist, that exuded a feel of epoch changes and
paradigm shifts. Perhaps it had something to do with elections all
over the world and the fascination with the ever-looming end of the
Mayan Long Count calendar and speculation about what that might mean,
but at least in the world of music 2012 seemed to be shaped by a
myriad of bands and acts making a stab at bold reinvention and
metamorphosis. There were many breathtaking transformations to behold
and, unfortunately, more than a few failed experiments and dead ends.
Let's take a look at some of the most noteworthy:
Best
Single:
Fun fact: Each of the songs
on the list I discovered in one way or another through a video game
console. I am now at a place in my life where I find most of my new
music through Nintendo. I'm not sure if that speaks worse of me or
the current music industry.
3. “The Fighter”-Gym
Class Heroes feat. Ryan Tedder (May 31)
I have a bit of an affection
for sports anthems: I spent the majority of the 1990s listening to
them as that was the era where the genre had a large overlap with
dance music. I fully admit to enjoying the odd high-energy number and
it really does make a great soundtrack to run to. “The Fighter”
is something different though; not just up-tempo but also upbeat,
heartfelt and powerful. A cracking pop rap piece matched perfectly by
a plaintive piano solo, “The Fighter” is a surprisingly moving
and inspirational song that transcends its sports anthem pedigree to
become something even more universal.
I'll confess to not paying
Gym Class Heroes much heed in the past; I was never really a fan of
their sound and their lengthy list of influences leads me to wish
they were a bit more consistently excellent. But something seems to
have roused them to action here, paired with OneRepublic front Ryan
Tedder and Olympic gymnast John Orozco, as this is hands-down the
best song of theirs I've ever heard. The music video is a documentary
of Orozco's life as he trains for the London Olympics in his Bronx
neighbourhood intercut with footage from previous competitions he was
in and home videos of him as a child while Gym Class Heroes and
Tedder provide the soundtrack. Lead singer Travie McCoy describes
“The Fighter” as “serendipitous”, and it shows: The song has
a quiet, gentle strength about it as Tedder and McCoy alternate
poetic verses designed not only to pump the audience up, but speak to
their soul.
Everyone working on this
song was clearly inspired, and that in turn makes “The Fighter” a
deeply inspirational song. It's one of the most motivational and
affirmational songs of the year and has the potential to last beyond
it as well. Its overt connection to this year's Olympics, or at least
that of the music video, puts it in danger of becoming immediately
dated once the New Year rolls around, but I have confidence this song
can go the distance, just as it urges us to. Despite Orozco being the
impetus, this song's themes are timeless and universal and are
applicable to anyone who needs their faith and hope restored.
Frankly, there aren't enough songs like that and these are expressly
the sorts of times we need them the most. A world with “The
Fighter” is already a better, healthier and stronger one.
2. “Gang of Rhythm”-Walk Off The Earth (December 12)
When I first started
planning this post I originally intended to only spotlight one single
and one album, mostly because, like I said, I'm not a music critic,
have no aspirations to be one and don't feel comfortable trying to
pass myself off as any kind of authority on the subject. Then, just
as I sat down to start writing, this single came out. This was a
complication because “Gang of Rhythm” is, as it happens,
spectacularly, astonishingly, mind-blowingly good. I knew I had to
say something about it, but I'd already picked my favourite single of
2012 and now had to face the prospect of knocking that one off the
post to gush about this one. Eventually I said “screw it” and
expanded the post to three singles, three albums and three runners-up
just to include everything. So, if you're quaking in your shoes at
the prospect of yet another Soda Pop Art missive that rivals Ulysses
in length, you can blame Walk Off The Earth for that.
Walk
Off The Earth are an eclectic multi-instrumentalist fusion
folk band who have been
recording since 2006,
but started gaining widespread exposure this year thanks to their
tongue-in-cheek acoustic covers of 2012's most memetic pop hits.
They've amassed a rather extensive following on YouTube, and it
should go to show you how in touch with Internet culture I am that
the first I heard of them was when this music video showed up in my
Nintendo Video feed, as of
this writing, a week ago.
“Gang of Rhythm” is, I believe, one of Walk Off The Earth's first
original compositions, or at least one of the first to get attention
on a large scale.
Describing
what makes “Gang of Rhythm”
such an unbelievably
fantastic song is complex, as there are a multitude of reasons for
this. I'll have you know this is very strange thing for me to be
saying, as I've never been especially a fan of folk music myself; I
don't have anything against the genre, but I've
failed to be grabbed by a lot of it
and it seems to have been taken over in
recent years by a
distressingly snobbish and
beardy contingent of
hipsters who look down on any
piece of music featuring more instruments then a lone acoustic guitar
and that lacks
seven different layers of irony. On “Gang of Rhythm” Walk Off The
Earth almost seem to be banking on a reaction
like mine, as they pull one of most deft genre subversions I've
ever heard.
The
song opens with a single guitar chord
and the lines “I've got this old guitar/the strings are rusty, but
it's all I need”, immediately leading one to believe this is going
to be yet another four minutes of strumming and navel-gazing. Slowly
but surely though, the rest of the band is introduced: A drum, a
shaker and then
a ukulele. Lyrically though, “Gang of Rhythm” is still at this
point a song about singing a song and doesn't give any indication
it's going to be anything other
than a basic, feel-good folk singalong.
Suddenly though, at the 48
second mark the song just erupts into
a chanting, stomping maelstrom taking the audience completely by
surprise as Walk Off The Earth declare “We're like a
locomotive/Under the big, hot sun/Just a chain in the gang of
rhythm/The song is never done”. It feels like the band have thrown
open the doors of the studio to let in an invigorating blast of world
music carried in on a summer breeze and everything has suddenly
become more global and more whole.
The music video is equally
charming, as the band play a chain gang on the run from a bumbling
law enforcement officer. It's simple, but beautifully shot and edited
as every climactic surge is matched with some stunning framing
wide angle shots and
culminating
in a giant party in an open field filled with happy, smiling, dancing
people and Walk Off The Earth are, appropriately, in the middle of it
all. Really, what more could you ask for? Leave
it to Canada, home of many of my very favourite things, to produce
something this deligthful.
I'll
be honest, this was very nearly my pick for number 1. “Gang of
Rhythm” is a beautiful and sublime bit of pure love. It's the polar
opposite of hipster: It's sincere, honest and speaks to everyone all
over the world because it genuinely belongs to the world. The rest of
the EP this song comes from, R.E.V.O.,
is generally just as brilliant, Walk Off The Earth's signature fusion
of folk, ska, reggae, punk, African music and pop continually finding
new ways to surprise and delight (a
particular favourite of mine is “Summer Vibe”, a perfectly
glowing little
composition that is now my new personal theme song).
Were it a little longer and were it not for one
track that's not
quite as successful as the
other three,
it would have been a contender for my album of the year. As it is,
“Gang of Rhythm” is a magnificent single, just about my favourite
bit of music released this year and I
heartily recommend it
to anyone. Unfortunately, it came *extremely* late in the year
and it just hasn't quite had the time to leave the sort of impact on
me necessary for me to name it the single
defining song of 2012 for me. 2013 though? I'd keep an eye on the
horizon, because I suspect we all just might Walk Off The Earth.
1. “Stay Gold”-The
Big Pink (January 11)
This was a really tough
choice. “Gang of Rhythm” is a remarkable song: It's truly
heartwarming and a fantastic piece of music. It's more than deserving
of being anyone's best song of 2012, let alone mine. The decision to
deny it the top spot it was not easy.
However, “Stay Gold” is
a thing of absolute beauty.
I pretty much wrote The Big
Pink off immediately as soon as I heard their 2009 debut single
“Dominoes”. At the time, I scoffed at it and instinctively
dismissed it and them as a transparent and ham-fisted attempt to rip
off My Bloody Valentine while at the same time diluting their sound
to a bare-bones pop hook that was offensively repetitive. Upon
reflection and four years of hindsight, however...I still think I was
right. “Dominoes” is rubbish: It's irresistibly catchy, but
mind-numbingly redundant and musically blasé. It also boasts a
chorus that is so stupidly and clumsily sexist it's abjectly
hilarious: “These girls fall like dominoes! Dominoes!/These girls
fall like dominoes! Dominoes!”, and as it's repeated 95 million
times throughout the course of the song you can expect to have it
drilled into your skull from now 'till eternity. Being played nonstop
on the radio all throughout the latter half of 2009 earned the song
no points in my book either, as overplayed ubiquity is the quickest
way to get me to hate something with the fire of a thousand suns.
While I stick to my guns on
that point, I may have underestimated The Big Pink because compared
to “Dominoes”, “Stay Gold”, the lead single from their second
album Future This, might as well have come from a different
planet. When I first heard it my jaw hit the floor: “Stay Gold”
is simply in a different league. Rather than My Bloody Valentine, The
Big Pink's big influence is now apparently the Cocteau Twins
(fitting, as they're signed to 4AD), and instead of sounding like
imitators, they now sound like legitimate successors,
as they combine that
unmistakeable chiming, ringing wall
of sound with a pop hook
structure for the ages. In another complete reversal from “Dominoes”,
instead of seemingly taking
over the entire library of every radio station in existence like a
particularly thorough and dickish cuckoo, the only place I've ever
heard “Stay Gold” played outside my computer is on
the soundtrack for this
year's reboot of the venerable video game series SSX,
which is where I first discovered it.
(I
will admit I'm cheating a bit here: As a single, “Stay Gold” was
technically released on November 14, 2011, but its parent album came
out in January and didn't really seem to make much of an impact until
it showed up in SSX, which
came out in February. Certainly it's because
of SSX I'm
familiar with the song and that's
what I most strongly
associate it with.
And anyway, these are songs that most defined 2012 for me personally,
and there was really no contest for the top spot on *this* list)
From
the outset you know you're in for something magical and special:
Opening right up with a
cathedral of ringing
synth leads and guitar distortion
and following through
immediately
with a thunderous,
earth-quaking drum beat, “Stay Gold” wastes no time and
effortlessly, confidently marches forward into what has got to be one
of the greatest opening lines ever: “A time to love, a time to
cry/And beat the darkness into light/We'll write our names across the
town/Up is up and so is down”. What follows is three and a half
minutes of rolling, flowing, towering 4AD pop strengthened
by hauntingly
oblique lyrics such as “These stings on our fingers just won't
go/Chrome letters, outlines, arrows flow/The words drip off, we watch
them fall/Desire of our mind is now written on the wall” and the
chorus' gentle yet earnest
appeal to “Stay gold,
gold/Shining the way for us to follow”.
If
this is the same band that was dancing in front of ice sculptures and
comparing loose women to falling
dominoes four years ago,
which I'm not even entirely convinced it is, it's entirely possible
The Big Pink may have just have pulled the most stunning and
comprehensive musical
turnaround I've witnessed
in recent memory.
One
of the most endlessly fascinating things
about “Stay Gold” for me
is that while fundamentally it's actually a very simple pop song, it
manages to sound unbelievably complex and nuanced at the same time.
It has a straightforward verse/chorus/refrain structure that's really
rather basic, but The Big Pink's truly inspired innovation is to make
the song's operatic emotion its soul and play its passion as a
smouldering, circular rhythm instead of a climactic surge. While
verses and choruses are distinct, the motorik-meets-Fairy-procession
melodies and unwaveringly plaintive and pointed vocals cause them to
flow into each other such that the basic musical structure is
elevated to a point of unparalleled majesty and spledour.
I'm
not judging music videos per se
here, but I do look at them and they are something of a factor for
me. Even if I was just doing videos though, “Stay Gold” would
still come out on top without question, as it features one of the
most breathtaking and vibrant
videos I've seen so far this
decade: An explosion
of neo-Glam spectacle evoking
a moody and contemplative haze. Flashing, metallic prisms of energy
crash around a gender-balanced succession of models as the band
loiters by an urban dreamscape and stares into the space behind the
audience-It's incredibly fitting, tasteful and achingly beautiful. If
you can only watch one of these embedded videos in 1080p, please,
please make it this
one: It's a sight to behold.
It feels
like a miniature performing
arts installation and is
a closing argument for the legitimacy and continued relevance of
music videos as an art form. If we still had something
like the 1980s MTV
Video Music Awards that
celebrated such things, this would surely have swept all the categories.
There
really is no piece of music I've heard this year that is more
deserving of being on the SSX soundtrack
than this,
because “Stay Gold” is that
rare modern pop song, alternative
or otherwise, that remembers
it can be transcendentally powerful on a spiritual level: This is
elemental music, made of wind and storms and air meant to be sung out
into the world from atop a mountain peak as snowboarders and base
jumpers fly over your head, leaping headfirst into the wild blue. At
the same time though, “Stay Gold” is built on a core of very
mundane human emotion, as the lyrics also exude at times a love of
life, youth and friendship. It's at once glittering, radiant goddess
music and a toast to nightlife and street culture. It
may not have been the song that embodied what 2012 turned out to be,
but “Stay Gold” was the song that, for me at least, best
exemplified the potential of the New Year and the timeless earthly
truths and ideals we try to keep in mind as we mark nature's cycle
beginning anew each January.
A simply staggering achievement, and without
question one of the best songs of 2012, 2011, or just about any other
year for that matter.
Best
Album/EP:
Honourable
Mentions:
While nearly all of the
albums I heard this year were well-crafted, enjoyable listens, there
were some that, for whatever reason fell just short of greatness.
Each of these albums was released by a returning artist and none of
them are works any of them should feel ashamed about having in their
catalogue. However, in a year defined by returning artists surprising
me with firmly left-of-centre compositions and bold reinventions, being merely “good” was not quite enough
to make the cut. It does, however, still make them worthy of mention
and deserving of attention, so let's take a look:
The
Killers are possibly the most ludicrous band in the world and I still
unabashedly love them.
First
of all, the idea of a follow-up to Day and Age, The
Killers' last album from 2008,
is itself an odd
one.
In retrospect, an
act
who made their commercial breakthrough in 2004 and are named after a
pretend band in a New Order video, should have had the most obvious
and looming sell-by date in music history. And indeed, the
Day and Age tour
culminating in the 2009 Royal Albert Hall headlining show seemed
for all the world like The Killers going out in the biggest and
brightest Blaze of Glory they could muster as
Brandon Flowers jumped headlong into his best Glam Rock Space Messiah
persona, which he can of course do effortlessly because no one will
ever be able to convince me this isn't what Brandon Flowers actually
thinks he is. So, one can hopefully forgive me for giving The Killers
up for dead after they publicly crucified themselves on
a
neon palm
tree
at the end of the decade of Retro 80s fetishism (not
literally, but knowing this band it's a wonder it wasn't).
But
it's not the ghost of Day
and Age
that haunts Battle
Born,
The Killers' first new studio album in four years (a
title
which,
me being me, I simply cannot read without immediately thinking of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim).
If anything, it's that of Sam's
Town,
the 2006 follow-up to their beloved debut Hot
Fuss
and
that's not...really a good thing. This was the album that showed the
world for the first time how actually mad Flowers and The Killers
really are, conceived as it was as concept album built around the
actively insane goal
of throwing New Order, The
Cure, The
Psychedelic Furs, The
Chameleons,
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode, Simple Minds, U2,
Duran Duran, Queen, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen in a blender in
order to create the Born
to Run
for Las Vegas and the southwest United States. Sam's
Town
was an unholy Frankenstein monster of an album that simply should not
have existed and Flowers' attempts at heartland rock revealed him to
be the Vegas boy he so proudly is as
his lyrics were as thin
and full of plasticky verisimilitudes as the city itself. But
as fundamentally wrong as it was, Sam's
Town wasn't
at all bad, the band's actually commendable earnest conviction to
their misbegotten ideals kept it big, loud, epic, cathartic and,
every once in awhile, the majesty and pageantry of the whole thing
tricked you into thinking you were listening to something genuine
(also just like Las Vegas).
Battle
Born
sees The Killers returning to this approach: Everything is grandiose
and palatial and
the band exudes the seasoned confidence of the veteran performers
they now are. But the flip side of this is it also raises the
uncomfortable possibility The Killers simply got lucky on their
previous high water marks.
Nothing
here really stands out; Lead single “Runaways” is suitably
bombastic and balladic and is as full of Flowers' goofy and proudly
cliche-ridden lyrics as anything else he's
involved with is
(though let's be honest-If you're listening to The Killers in 2012
you're not really bothered by that much and neither am I), but it's
really the album's only real notable moment. There's nothing else
here I'd call especially memorable (with the possible exception of
“Deadlines and Commitments” and
the title track),
and certainly nothing that brings to mind the rapturous highs of “Mr. Brightside”, “When You Were Young”, “Human”, “Spaceman”,
or “This River Is Wild”. Indeed, without the 80s revival
zeitgeist that greeted Hot
Fuss,
the left-field experimentation with space rock and world music on Day
and Age or
the apocalyptic, era-closing feel that permeates it and Live
at the Royal Albert Hall,
The Killers have to fall back on their musicianship alone on
Battle Born
and, this being The Killers, there's not a whole lot to work with.
It's
not that this is an unskilled band or that
Battle Born
is a particularly *bad* piece of work, it just all
feels incredibly shallow
and
forgettable.
But
I mean The
Killers have always been unapologetically shallow-They're
the definitive Las Vegas band,
writing
hollow
simulacra of emotion and playing
them like epic poetry. However,
in the past there's always been something to distract us from this
basic truism and allows us to get lost in the music for a bit, and
they seem to have finally come up empty this time. Without
the charge
of Hot Fuss,
the
refreshing
airiness of Day
and Age or
the
impassioned, religious zeal that defined Sam's
Town
and Live at the
Royal Albert Hall
The Killers artifice falls apart and they
don't quite leave the impression they ought to.
That
said, Battle Born
is
a solid, well made album of exactly the kind of material one
might
expect of
The Killers: You probably won't regret putting it on, but you might
not remember it after it's over.
It's
difficult to talk about Neon Trees without also talking about The
Killers, so it's probably a good thing I wrote about Battle
Born
first. Like
The Killers, Neon Trees are at least in part a retro throwback act
that plays with the trappings of 1980s electronic music and combines
it with a pop rock sound, and it's no coincidence they were
discovered by Ronnie Vannucci, Jr., The Killers' drummer. What
ultimately sets Neon Trees apart from The Killers
is firstly that Neon Trees draws their rock pedigree from The Strokes
instead of U2 and Springsteen and also that, well, they sound a bit
more like an actual band. While
The Killers revel in artifice and artificiality, building majestic
castles out of Styrofoam and stage props, Neon Trees are content to
keep their stakes comparatively small and on the whole sound much
more like real live people.
A
good example of this is their interactions with 1980s
culture, which feel far more honest and genuine than anything The
Killers have ever done: Neon Trees are certainly not afraid of
sending up the
trappings of
the era,
especially on songs like “1983”, a single culled from their 2010
debut Habits,
but the
difference is
when they do it the result sounds like
it was penned by someone who actually lived through the decade and is
slightly bemused by the nostalgia fetishism it's been subject to in
recent years instead of by a confused space alien who is under the
impression humans communicate primarily through Las Vegas stage
shows.
While
the 80s influences remain on Picture
Show,
most obviously on “Trust” (which sounds like Neon Trees are
hoping to channel Depeche Mode's Violator),
it
also sees them trying very hard to prove they're more than a
retro-tinted pop rock band. Almost too hard, in fact. There is a
curious 1950s
motif that permeates this album: The album art and music video for
lead single “Everybody Talks” deliberately evoke drive-in movies
and Neon
Trees display something of a fascination
with a '50s rock 'n roll sound throughout (contrasting with the '80s
and '90s veneer that defined Habits)
and it
all builds toward “Hooray for Hollywood” at the back end, a track
apparently written as a critique of celebrity exploitation, though
its hard to tell with such subtleties as having
vocalist Tyler Glenn read off a list of deceased actors
and musicians
for
30 seconds,
explicitly lingering on the call-and-response sequence “Amy/Whitney”.
Yes,
Glenn is no Lady GaGa, and, no matter how hard it tries at times,
Picture Show
is no The Fame.
But
aping Lady GaGa is not the only thing Neon Trees experiments with
here: Picture Show
also features a fair number of slow, romantic
power ballads that try to get across a softer, more gentle sound than
Neon Trees are typically known for. These are a mixed bag-“Close to
You” goes on for far too long for
a song of its type
(over 5 minutes) and while Glenn seems
to have been
aiming for contemplative he hit plodding instead.
“Mad Love” is youthful and childlike to the point of being
juvenile
and grating
and bringing in drummerXbacking
vocalist
Elaine Bradley for a duet here
and on a few other tracks
was perhaps a mistake: Bradley is a very skilled percussionist and
backup singer
to be sure, but as a lead vocalist she sounds
a bit out of her element to
me (also,
given the lyrical content of some of the songs on this album, having
two band members sing to each other is more than a little creepy).
The only place I
feel
this really works is “Still Young” which manages to be an
emotional slow burn without feeling forced or stretched. This is
mostly due to the fact it also preserves Neon Tree's trademark energy
and personality,
which means it feels far more authentic.
What
Picture Show
most feels like is the product of a band grappling with unexpected
fame and attention and having a bit of a hard time internalizing and
reacting to it. “Everybody Talks”, while unbelievably catchy,
sounds depressingly like Neon Trees trying to repeat the success of
their runaway breakthrough “Animal” and a lot of the rest of the
album feels like the band trying to backpedal away from the sound and
vibe of Habits,
hence failed experiments like “Close to You” and “Hooray for
Hollywood”. But
the very best parts of Picture
Show
demonstrate Neon Trees are not a one-trick act because they build off
the soul of their debut
and
translate it into the context of a new album, which is what any good
follow-up ought to do. Cuts like “Weekend” have the same charming
charisma and character that made Habits
such a winner and the
delightfully
epic closer “I Am The DJ” even proves the band can do songs in
excess of 5 minutes just fine so long as they fully bring themselves
to the party. Pity it took an entire album to get there.
What
Neon Trees are best at is being an unabashed pop rock act that looks
backwards and forwards at the same time while exuding a tremendous
amount of fun and warmth in the process. I feel I *get* Neon Trees as
artists and people far more than I do a
lot of other music acts. I certainly relate to them better than
just about anyone in
the pop charts, who mostly
sound less like people and more like soulless pop robots, or even
someone like Brandon Flowers: This is very approachable, human music,
not the overblown faux-Springsteen
gospel of a
somewhat hapless self-appointed
Space Jesus. I get the sense Neon Trees are people like me who I'd
probably get along well
with if I met in person, and
that's quite rare in today's pop climate. So long as they remember
that, they'll remain capable of true greatness
I
don't suspect any of my nominations and acknowledgments for recording
artists in 2012 will be
as controversial as this one. Explaining why I actually *like* Ke$ha
and enjoy her work has been a constant and regular challenge for me
ever since she first appeared on the pop scene three years ago. And
yes, I concede she's a very easy act to misread, that just means
she's always overlooked and misunderstood by music snobs. See, there
are really two people at play here: Ke$ha, the trashy, dirty,
unapolgetically boozed-up
party girl, and Kesha Serbert,
her creator, the savvy and observant travelling mystic and music
industry veteran. Both show up on Warrior,
the second full-length LP for the pair, and the tension between the
two is this album's defining feature.
Before
I go further with my review of Warrior,
I want to directly address those who doubt the existence of Kesha
Serbert
the artist. The thing is, despite the ubiquity of Ke$ha the
performing act, it was always clear to those who granted her more
than a cursory, dismissive
glance when she first hit the
scene it was precisely that,
an act. Serbert scored
a perfect on the SAT, had a working graduate-level knowledge of Cold War history in high school,
has over 65 recorded songs to her name that date from before she got
a recording contract and has written and produced for the likes of
Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, The Veronicas and Prince. She's not
stupid in the slightest,
far from it:
She's
probably one of the savviest people working in pop music today. Ke$ha
is the tongue-in-cheek result of Serbert goofing around in a
recording studio with her collaborators and making fun of what she
dubs with a laugh if pressed “white girl rap” that wound up
becoming ridiculously popular. The
easiest person to compare her to is, actually, John Lydon: Both are
artists with a deep love and understanding of music known mostly for
utterly taking the piss out of it by trolling on a global scale.
While
her mainstream debut Animal/Cannibal
(not to be confused with the Neon Trees hit from the same year with a similar title) was meant purely as
a bit of fun, Warrior
comes from a bit more of a personal place, apparently the result of a
several-year spiritual journey Serbert went on where she travelled
the world alone living
out of a sailboat (which, an aside, immediately makes her something
of a soul sister to me as that's precisely my life goal) and written
around themes of discovering enlightenment in a nomadic lifestyle and
a love of life. With a pitch like that, I
was really looking forward to this album and hoped this would finally
be the year that proved Kesha Serbet is a legitimate and respectable
musician to all the reactionary
critics who sneered at her in
2010 calling her “filthy”
and “gross” before engaging in a truly despicable
bit of slut-shaming. Indeed,
the year opened with a fantastic sign as she released,
fittingly, the wonderfully
oblique and
challenging “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)”, a
collaboration with The Flaming Lips and Biz Markie
that ought to prove her artistic credibility once and for all.
Unfortunately, at the other end of the year Warrior
itself came out and...didn't quite measure up.
Warrior's
main problem seems to be a demographic one. While “2012 (You Must
be Upgraded)” was written for a loyal, seasoned and
comparatively small art rock
audience who could be expected to be used to something like it,
Warrior is written for
a much, much larger audience of Ke$ha faithful keenly tuned into the
current pop landscape and many of whom listen to her completely
sincerely and unironically. In
fact, Warrior is so
much of its time it's a weakness
and a distraction-The
LP's been out barely a month
as of this writing
and parts of it are already badly dated: The pop dubstep sound that
permeates large swaths of the album is going to age as gracefully as
glam metal, Rick Santorum is
bewilderingly mentioned on “Dirty Love”
and lead single “Die Young” is now fantastically inappropriate in
the wake of recent events (pity, as it's actually quite good and one
of the best crafted radio
pop songs you're likely to find today).
This
maddening dichotomy that haunts Kesha and Ke$ha is in full force
here, and indeed it's even
literalized at the level of individual tracks: A reoccurring theme
sees Serbert doing calls-and-responses with herself and alternating
between wildly different singing styles and polar opposite song
structures. It's exceedingly clever, as so much of this album is-The
handiwork of a consummate professional is self-evident. In addition,
Serbert's firm grasp of
musicianship and music history is clearly
on display here:
Following the frequent nods to Kraftwerk on her debut, Kesha
continues to do well by her influences and prove her music geek cred
here with an obviously
Asia-inspired album cover and, on the record
itself, by collaborating with
Iggy Pop, Wayne Coyne and Alice Cooper, sending
up The Strokes and Joan Jett
(and managing to one-up them
both) on “Only Wanna Dance
With You” and “Gold Trans AM”, respectively and giving what
appears to be a shout-out to, of
all things, Orchestral
Manoeuvres in the Dark's “The
Romance of the Telescope”
on “Past Lives”. Serbert also throws out what might be a barbed
critique of Adele on “Thinking of You”, which tells the story of
a neurotic, passive aggressive pop starlet who keeps phoning up her
ex-boyfriend to brag about how over him she is despite clearly being
anything but (even as Serbet herself
amusingly channels Adele and
mashes her up with Phil Collins' “In the Air Tonight” on “Love
Into the Light”).
The
big problem is, unfortunately, that Warrior
remains a Ke$ha album. Serbert's stabs at authenticity and
experimentation are constantly dampened and hamstrung
by her need to put put out a big, AAA mainstream pop release. Because
ultimately, no matter how wonderfully intriguing Kesha Serbet may be
as person and an artist, it's Ke$ha who sells multi-platinum records
and who has legions of loyal fans who adore her and her raunchy,
tawdry excess. Serbert is happy to oblige, seeing it as she does as
just another facet of living a rich
and full life, and far be it
for an old, antisocial stick-in-the-mud like me to complain. I have
nothing against the gleeful, tongue-in-cheek
id celebration and love of
living Ke$ha embodies,
especially as she doesn't
seem to take any of it seriously:
Sometimes it's good to let loose, have some fun and be unapologetic
about it. But the troubling part of it for me is it seems to be
holding her back somewhat as an artist. The
archetypical example of this is “Supernatural”, a song supposedly
inspired by an out-of-body experience Serbert had with Tantric sex
but which sounds like a cheap and shameless lift of Katy Perry's
“Extraterrestrial”. And if there's one person Ke$ha probably
wants to avoid comparisons with it's Katy Perry, the self-appointed
queen of vapid tween pop who is on record saying she doesn't consider herself a feminist (apparently the two are friends in real life which
would explain some things, but I maintain Perry's public persona and
Ke$ha's are
fundamentally different and irreconcilable).
Warrior
is a very, very good 2012 pop album, probably the best you can find.
It's a straightforward
demonstration that Ke$ha is a much more skilled and honed pop
craftswoman than even some of the other people on this list:
Warrior is
exquisitely produced and far more intelligent and heartfelt then
pretty much anything else on the charts, and
each and every song is immediately distinct and memorable (albeit not
always for the right reasons).
Serbert's singing, often criticized for its heavy reliance on
autotune, is superb here, and she delivers some thoroughly
stunning moments on
“Wherever You Are”, “Love Into the Light” and
“Crazy Kids”, the latter of which features a truly
elegant and sublime
climactic tone shift that deftly
and unexpectedly changes the
whole feel of the song
(indeed, the autotune on Animal/Cannibal
was an aesthetic choice spurred by the type of music Serbert was
trying to satirize. She can sing perfectly well, as this album duly
shows).
It's
not that Warrior is
a poor album by any stretch
of the imagination: It's incredibly cohesive, solid and polished and
“Die Young” and “Wherever You Are” are just about perfect pop
songs, but
it could have been so much more: The
overwhelming feel is that while this is Ke$ha's high water mark,
Kesha Serbet has consciously decided to play it safe and keep the
stakes low. This is not helped by misfires like “Wonderland” and
the Iggy Pop duet “Dirty Love”, neither of which work at all in
my opinion. If Kesha is this
generation's John Lydon, she's an alternate universe Lydon reluctant
to leave his Sex Pistols phase behind
and who seems only tentatively willing to embrace Public Image Ltd. I
started the year expecting Warrior
to be Ke$ha's
Metal Box-Instead,
it's Never Mind The Bollocks v2.1
and that's not *quite* the same thing.
Indeed,
unlike something like Battle Born,
which is, I feel, entirely passable and that
nobody who skips it is going to be missing anything of real value,
Warrior is quite
strong and I'd earnestly recommended it to anyone reading this post.
There are moments of genuine
greatness here that truly
show how talented Kesha
is as an artist, a performer and an observer. I
very nearly called it one of my the best albums of the year, and even
after all this it's still one
of my favourites. But in the
end, the sin Warrior
commits is almost greater
than the one that holds down
Battle Born: Instead
of being merely phoned-in and forgettable, Warrior
is a badly flawed
masterpiece: A great album
that's simply
not as great as it could have been and
that
doesn't seem especially interested in realising its full potential.
And that's enough to keep it off the podium.
Best
Album/EP:
Have
you ever had one of those moments where you discover an
idea you never would have thought of yourself, but in hindsight seems
bleeding obvious? In particular, did you ever find someone who has
put two or more things together that you never would have
conceptualized
in the same thought, but, once you see it, seems like the most
natural blend in the world? In mid-2011, I had one such experience
when I stumbled upon a new fusion genre that quickly became my
favourite trend in music today: Post-Punk Surf Music.
I'm both a passionately spiritual surfer and someone who probably
would have felt very at home in the European and British art house
punk scene of the early 1980s, and even I would never have dreamed to
mix these two styles together. I guess I can count myself lucky there
is a whole movement of unspeakably talented artists in the
contemporary indie scene, mostly in California and the tropical
Pacific, who did, because the result is the most perfect and
refreshing sound I've heard in ages.
There
is as wide a spectrum of musicians and styles in this Post-Punk
revival movement as there were in the original one: Swimsuit takes a
bare-bones motorik
percussion section
reminiscent of Joy Division
and early Neu! and melds it
to crashing, tumbling
yearning vocal harmonies and
bright, classic surf rock guitar melodies while
indie darlings Seapony seem drawn more to shoegazers like Galaxie 500
and My Bloody Valentine. Superhumanoids
fashion airy, warm and emotional ballads out
of Man-Machine-era
Kraftwerk and Tropical Popsicle go for a darkly psychedelic, almost Goth lens
that calls to mind Bauhaus and early Echo and the Bunnymen, giving
them an utterly unique sound and perspective.
For
my money though no act I've yet heard has seized upon the potential
offered by Post-Punk Surf Rock to quite the extent of the San
Francisco-based Craft Spells. Meticulous readers (those still awake
after all this at any rate) will remember I picked their debut album
Idle Labor
as my favourite
album of 2011, and with good reason: It's bloody
fantastic. In
his review of Idle
Labor,AllMusic's Ned Raggett describes it as
sounding like “...what
might have happened if Morrissey -- or maybe more accurately a
Morrissey fan from 1986 -- had barged in on the sessions for Low-Life
or Brotherhood in the
absence of Bernard Sumner...” and while that's about as fitting and
accurate description of what Craft Spells sounds like as anything, I
feel it also does the band a bit of a disservice. Front Justin Paul
Vallesteros is no copycat, and while Craft Spells is at once
immediately reminiscent of both New Order and The Smiths, their
sound is unquestionably their own. In fact,
Vallesteros has done his homework so well and understands this
scene so innately Craft Spells sound eerily like they actually belong
to the era they're paying homage to.
But
Craft Spells are no out-of-time throwback act either,
and have their gaze fixated on the surf rock fusion only made
possible by the current scene. This
is even more abundantly clear on this year's Gallery, and
it has to be good if it puts Craft Spells high on my lists two years
in a row: Downplaying some of
the Morrissey-fan-meets-New-Order novelty of their debut, this EP
sees Craft Spells further honing and refining their unique voice and
making sure to put the contemplative guitar lines, which meld so
seamlessly with the alternative dance making up the rest of the
sound, front and centre. Vallesteros sounds more confident and
assured in both his singing and composing and is, to be blunt,
already a stronger and
more poetic songwriter then Bernard Sumner ever was (much as I love
New Order, lyrics and vocals were never their strong point). This
is very much an album for beach and ocean people: Lyrics like “Feels
like a paradise/As I watch the sun dance above her eyes” on
“Warmth”, the breezy,
sunny and introspective dance rocker “Leave My Shadow”
and the sparkling, shimmering instrumental chorus on “Burst”
evoke the vibe of the lifestyle with the same vividness the greatest
80s art rockers displayed.
Gallery
may not be a bold, unprecedented turning point for Craft Spells in
the way something like “Stay Gold” is for The Big Pink or “2012
(You Must Be Upgraded)” was for Ke$ha, but it's just as much
a statement of purpose as either of those efforts.
It's a solid display of what makes this band so special and sign
of their growing confidence and self-assurance. As
far as I'm concerned it's the
best
Post-Punk release of 2012, and it just might have been a contender to
be one of the best of 1986 too.
Well, if I could give out an award for “Biggest Surprise of 2012”,
this probably would have to be it.
If
there's one thing I absolutely did not expect to see this year, or
any year for that matter, it was a new Public Image Ltd. album. I
knew John Lydon had pulled together a few PiL reunion shows in 2009,
but I never expected a whole new album and record label to come out
of that. Nevertheless, This Is PiL showed
up under “New Releases” at the end of May on my AllMusic feed
of all places, leaving me utterly gobsmacked and feeling
a bit guilty
I hadn't heard of it sooner.
A
bit of background for anyone as in the dark about this as I was:
Despite his public perception as a somewhat laughable washed up punk
sellout,
John Lydon has not been resting on his laurels in the decades since
That Which Is Not, the
previous (and what most I
presume took to be the last)
Public Image Ltd. album.
Lydon has apparently always wanted to keep
the band going, but due to
life commitments in the 1990s and financial and bureaucratic holdups
in the 2000s has been unable to do so until now. Lydon
shopped the idea of a new album to every record label he could get
ahold of, but nobody was interested in associating with Public Image
Ltd. (though they were all perfectly happy to sponsor
The Sex Pistols going on the nostalgia circuit, to
which Lydon agreed
reluctantly).
Eventually
realising he would need to do this all on his own, Lydon spent the
better part of a decade and a half buying back all the rights to the
PiL name and back catalogue. Since there was no way he could have
afforded this himself, Lydon eventually agreed to become the
spokesperson for Country Style Butter to raise the money he needed.
While his butter ad campaign has been universally reviled and
derided, every penny Lydon made doing those ad spots went into Public
Image Ltd., providing the funds for him to start his own record
label, reclaim the rights to the band and finance a new album, a new
tour, studio space and the infrastructure to physically press all the
copies of the LP. You can make fun of Lydon all you want for his
butter commercials, but just know we wouldn't have PiL or this album
today without them, being literally the only way Lydon could find
to raise the kind of money he
needed. And that would be a real shame, because This Is PiL
is one of the best albums Public Image Ltd. have ever put out.
It's
immediately clear This Is PiL is the product of a band and a
creative visionary with a love of music, something to say and the
freedom to be able to say it any damn way he pleases. Most “comeback”
albums I've heard from bands of this vintage have been anything but
in my opinion, being painfully obviously born out of a need to
quickly and messily cash in on the nostalgia of aging fans to make
ends meet, exemplified most clearly by Echo and the Bunnymen's in my
opinion frankly embarrassing output from any point after about 1985
or so. Even when they're not deeply cynical and uncomfortable, more
often than not there's something about comeback albums that indicates
that while the artist who put them may not yet be irrelevant, they
might still be a bit passed their prime, such as Siouxsie Sioux's
surprisingly tepid and tentative MantaRay or Orchestral
Manoeuvres in the Dark's more-disappointing-than-not History of
Modern (although my frustrations with that particular LP may stem
from my own overinflated expectations for it just as much as its
actual quality. That said, I still argue OMD themselves were the
biggest source of those inflated expectations). This Is PiL,
by contrast, comes right out, declares itself a rousing statement of
purpose and proudly wears its consciousness and soul on its sleeve.
This Is PiL
sees Lydon reuniting with his Happy?-
and 9-era
collaborators and while that may arouse ire from longtime PiL fans,
on this album they prove themselves perfectly up to the task put in
front of them: This is the most musically interesting and diverse
Public Image album since at
least The Flowers
of Romance. Lydon's
affection for world music and stylistic fusion, and that of the rest
of the band, is the clearest here it's possibly ever been, as PiL
mashes up
reggae, hip-hop, spoken-word performance art and Metal
Box-esque Post-Punk with
matter-of-fact skill.
It plays like nothing so much as a distillation and condensation of
the various sounds, styles and influences Lydon has experimented with
over the years (while at the
same time forging a clear path forward)
in an effort to write down exactly what Public Image Ltd.'s musical
philosophy is, as befits
an album bearing the title it does.
Thematically,
Lydon seems primarily interested in exploring on the experiences,
tragedies and hardships he's lived through and
reflecting on how much his home country of England has changed
without him, especially on “Human” (not to be confused with The Killers song of the same name from Day and Age)-Although residing in Los
Angeles, Lydon returned
to England to record this album. Lydon also seems to
express disillusionment in the health of society in 2012 and sadness at the fact it hasn't progressed more than it has over the
course of his life, most
obvious as he launches
into a despair-filled rant on “Terra-Gate”.
At the same time though,
This Is PiL is a very positive
and proud
album firmly about defiance and camaraderie. “Deeper
Waters” showcases Lydon's love of sailing and conveys a sense of
solitude and solace with the ocean and the larger universe that only
someone who spends a great deal of time on the waves would be able to
and “Lollipop Opera” is a charming 6-minute epic about trashing a
hotel room dedicated to his “Lollipop Mob”; apparently Lydon's
amusing attempt give a collective name to his fans along the lines of
Lady GaGa's “Little Monsters” or Ke$ha's “Animalz”.
The
standout track has to be lead single “One Drop”, an upbeat and
charging reggae fusion piece in which Lydon rallies his Lollipop Mob
by boldly declaring “We are the ageless/We are teenagers/We are the
focused/Out of the hopeless/We are the last chance/We are the last
dance” and ending with the heartwarming and affirmational line
“Born in London/Out of London/But really, we are born everywhere”.
The video is terrific, a
delightfully up-yours anti-music video filmed with a single shaky
handheld camcorder and featuring scenes
of the band screwing around in the farmhouse studio they recorded in
intercut with shots of London taken from the backseat of a car. Lydon
and PiL are reaching out to anyone young at heart with a
revolutionary soul all over the world, no
matter the age, gender, culture or creed, and “One
Drop” is a pure, positive and unashamed call to arms. It's powerful
and indignant, but it comes from a desire for love, peace and
solidarity. And that's as
good a description of John Lydon as any:
“One Drop”, and This Is PiL
as a whole, show without
a shadow of a doubt that while his
spirit may have weathered, the years have taken none of the edge off
it, nor have they robbed it
of its sincerity and relevance.
The
ghostly echoes
of a party at some mid-1960s high roller club materialize
out of the darkness. First a
sombre keyboard riff, then an explosion of horns and percussion led
by unearthly lounge crooner
harmonies, and finally it all comes together in a stomping,
out-of-control, in-your-face, histrionic hip-hop number. That's how
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour open their second full-length album, Out
of Frequency.
Cosmopolitan Danish pop outfit The Asteroids Galaxy Tour made their
recording debut in 2009 with the self-consciously kitschy and fun
Fruit, an album that brought to mind images of Sly Stone and
Frank Sinatra in smoky casino lounges through a distinctly playful
European lens. Consisting of bandleader Mette Lindberg, producer Lars
Ivarsen and a rotating succession of world music performers, The
Asteroids Galaxy Tour's trademark sound can best be described as a
mixture of 1960s lounge music, pyschedelia, hip-hop, 80s electronica
and bubblegum pop. The band first gained notoriety in 2008 when they
attracted the attention of Amy Winehouse and their debut single “The Sun Ain't Shining No More” was used in an iPod commercial. They
again hit global notoriety when “The Golden Age”, the lead single
off Fruit, was used as the theme song for a popular ad campaign for Heineken in late 2010, resulting in its re-release as an
expanded EP in April of 2011.
Though the paragraph above may not be the most ringing endorsement
the band has ever had, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour have always been
more then purveyors of ad jingles. Fruit displayed an
impressive spectrum of musical styles and the effortless way the band
played them off of each other gave it a unique feel all its own.
Furthermore, jangly bubblegum pop, though present and very well done,
actually made up a comparatively small fraction of that album's
sound, Lindberg and Ivarsen preferring slower, more contemplative
grooves on the whole. All the same though, after Fruit and the
Golden Age EP I was prepared to chalk up The Asteroids Galaxy
Tour as a charming and talented, if somewhat fluffy, novelty act.
Then this year happened.
To say Out of Frequency is a step forward from Fruit is
like saying travelling from Baffin Island to Tierra del Fuego is a
jaunty Sunday drive. After opening with the aforementioned
*three-part* art house-come-lounge-rap epic “Gold Rush,
Pt.1”/”Dollars In the Night”/”Gold Rush, Pt.2”, The
Asteroids Galaxy Tour immediately launch into the aggressive and
unforgettable “Major”, upon which the singer who just last year
was talking about hangin' with the Rat Pack is now delivering a
devastatingly scathing condemnation of authoritarian ambition by way of a
Paul Weller-esque story song about the rise and fall of a military
junta against the backdrop of gang warfare. The music video is
similarly shocking, as fans used to the goofy retro fun of “The
Golden Age” are treated to stock footage from the fall of the
Berlin Wall and South African apartheid riots intercut with scenes of
Lindberg strutting around in what can only be described as a military
themed dominatrix outfit before joining the rest of her band wailing
away at their instruments in front of a spartan backdrop.
Occasionally this is broken up by Lindberg barking the command “Now
blow it up!”, set to shots of detonating bombs, rockets exploding
on the launchpad and gasoline fires. In case her point somehow wasn't
clear enough, Lindberg closes the song with the equal parts snarling and
chilling lyrics “The big transition/You passed audition/No more
opposition/NO!/Only pure demolition!/It's Major Ambition!”
In the hands of a lesser band, this jarring attempt at such a
comprehensive image reversal would be laughable at best and
disastrously humiliating at worst. But Lindberg, Ivarsen and their
collaborators are not idiots; “Major” is still very much an
Asteroids Galaxy Tour song, it's just no-one expected them to have a
song like this in them. This is a surprisingly bare-bones piece,
featuring primarily horns, a saxophone, a percussion section and
Lindberg's trademark crooning. It's a no-bullshit hip-hop song that
simply replaces the electronic sampling with a brass section and, as
a result, is a shockingly natural evolution from their earlier
material. The perhaps uncomfortable truth to be gleaned from this,
however, may be that The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, a kitschy Danish
bubblegum outfit, are now playing on the level of Public Enemy.
Ironically, this may be some of the purest, most hardcore hip-hop and
gangster rap in the pop landscape today. This is the most stunning
transformation of a band this side of “Stay Gold”, but while The
Big Pink pulled it off in a single, their album was a bit more
changeable. Out of Frequency is a cohesive, comprehensive and
unapologetic album-length statement: Of course it had to top my list.
What's really remarkable about this though is that The Asteroids
Galaxy Tour actually manage to follow-up on “Major”...by
transitioning effortlessly into the campy electronic disco number
“Heart Attack” as if nothing had happened. “Heart Attack” is
perfectly sugary and silly but, amazingly, it doesn't feel out of
place at all and this is when it finally becomes clear what The
Asteroids Galaxy Tour have pulled off here. Out of Frequency
is not a panicked abandonment of the themes that made the band famous
in pursuit of artistic credibility, its the maturation and evolution
of those themes to a higher plane of existence.
Like their previous work, and like so many other artists on this
list, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour run through an entire gamut of styles
here: The toothy-yet bemused James Bond piss-take “Cloak &
Dagger” mingles with the goofy '60s pastiche “Mafia” (which
sounds like what we might have expected “Major” to sound like
before we actually heard it) and the willfully progressive
embellishment of “Arrival of the Empress (Prelude)” and “Theme
From 45 Eugenia”. Nothing sticks out or feels like it doesn't fit:
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour have a handle on an extremely disparate
group of styles, influences and decades and they make it all blend
together seamlessly. It's not clear the band is sending up various
eras as much as they are assembling a giddy musical kaleidoscope that
only they could stake a claim to. This is indie pop designed and
played like art rock, and not once does Mette give any indication
it's not meant to be taken just as seriously, even if it is on
average more fun.
The whole album reaches a dizzying watershed on penultimate track
“Suburban Space Invader”, a marvelously over-the-top space
rock/pop rap confection that has to be heard to be believed. Almost
the inverse of “Major”, “Suburban Space Invader” is a
cheerfully upbeat and lyrically bewildering piece of work that
alternates between descriptions of downtrodden nomadic youth and,
well, space invaders, complete with abduction and probing and
everything. It is unlike anything I have ever heard, and is also
amazing. It seriously rivals “Major” as the standout track
on Out of Frequency and with its memorable singalong structure
and uplifting message (according to Mette it's about showing people
how to be proud of who you are and where you come from no matter the
circumstances) it's one of my favourite songs of the year, all-stop.
Elsewhere The Asteroids Galaxy Tour's innate ability to build off a
myriad of styles and slightly hardened sound is just as apparent.
Last year, they recorded a tongue-in-cheek cover of Men Without Hats'
“Safety Dance” and played it as part of their live setlist. This
year, they performed another cover: A stripped-down, acoustic
rendition of Iggy Pop's “Lust For Life” which they play
absolutely straight. Astonishingly, not only do they make the song
work flawlessly after removing all of its rock excess and replacing it with
horns, tambourines and shakers, they do so while Mette manages to
completely avoid imitating Iggy Pop. She doesn't deliver her typical
rap or lounge singer croon either, instead seeming to, bewilderingly,
channel Tom Waits. Unbelievably, this works, and works really, really
well. Not only do The Asteroids Galaxy Tour make the song wholly
their own, they do it while giving the distinct impression they're
far more capable and deserving of handling Iggy Pop's material then
Ke$ha.
Mette has a propensity for lyrical density and her singing style is a
bit of an acquired taste, so I can completely understand someone
being hesitant to embrace music like this. Also, maybe some people
might turn up their noses at this kind of band outright, fiercely
objecting to The Asteroids Galaxy Tour lending their song to a beer
commercial, or similarly to John Lydon peddling butter or “Stay
Gold” showing up in SSX, but the harsh reality is that the
music industry is not a profitable career path right now, especially
if you're a young upstart band or one that prefers to circle the
indie circuit. But really, if you think about it, this is a far, far
better way to monetize music then the approach used by, say The
Killers (and to a lesser extent Ke$ha) where the music itself is the
mass-market product: I mean hey, at least Mette *likes* beer-she
wouldn't let her song be used by a company she doesn't support. And
honestly, if it weren't for those cross-promotion campaigns I might
never have discovered any of this music, and that's a potentiality I
shudder at. This is the best music I've heard in years.
Personally, I have no problem falling in love with a band known
primarily for jingles. I mean, at the very least if we can turn out
commercials with jingles of *this* quality, that speaks very well
for the music taste of ad executives. And, as I hope I've showed,
there's far more to The Asteroids Galaxy Tour then Heineken and Apple
ad spots. This is a genuinely talented and exciting band who have
just now come into their own and are well past deserving of serious
attention and respect. Out of Frequency is absolutely
everything I loved about music in 2012: It's savvy, creative,
global-minded, pointed and critical while remaining positive and
uplifting, sounds like absolutely nothing else, and was an entirely
unexpected grand slam. Here's to the best for music in 2013, provided
I can stop listening to the music of 2012 long enough to appreciate
whatever it might have in store.
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