Best of 2011 so far

As per usual, we of IKRS have been busying ourselves with coming up with what we think are the best tracks of 2011 so far. We might be a bit late this year with our half year lists, but hey, apparently we finally all got lives to attend to as well. My contribution can be found below the bump, that of the others is available via IKRS, and, if you're into that sort of thing, Spotify. 

1. Tune-yards – W H O K I L L (4AD)

You have to finish the way you started, so that’s what I’m doing: with a woman with ukulele. I’ve given up on even trying to spell her stage name the way she likes it, as frankly, it reminds of that time when each and everyone of my classmates suddenly seemed to have lost the capability of taking their fingers of the shift-key in a sorry attempt to come across cool on MSN messenger. So I’m just going to refer to her as Merrill Garbus, and as that is her real name, you can’t accuse me of anything. Her debut Bird-Brains (again: MSN trauma) already managed to catch my eye, but with the incredibly lo-fi production of that record - she literally recorded it on a dictaphone in her living room - she didn’t manage to reach her full potential. Fast forward to 2011 and we’ve got a new album – names are certainly not her strongest point – that fills in all the blanks left by after that first acquaintance. And where that might be one fine album, it is nothing compared to what her live performance is like. Just to see her set up loops of vocals, percussion and ukulele is an incredible experience, let alone the amazing sounds that sound from her throat once she actually starts to sing. ‘Hatari’ has made it one of my favourite live experiences ever, and even though it’s not on this album, I just couldn’t let it pass for this blurb. The animalistic sounds she manages to produce in that one track would scare away a lion. Seriously, go see for yourself and be amazed. From Whokill, ‘Gangsta’ and ‘Bizness’ are obviously the best tracks, but again, as addictive as they might be on the album, it’s nothing compared to how their live counterparts. Just listen to ‘Bizness’ – that intro, she does all of that live. There’s no backing tracks, she actually sings it. And the saxophones! It’s just breathtakingly beautiful.

2. Tom Vek – Leisure Seizure (Island Records)

Oh, the curse of liking albums better than someone else does and thus having your piece appear after Ilse has already written about it and the urge to then rewrite my bit so it won’t look as if I just copied her (we seem to be of very similar opinions with regards to this particular album)! Maybe it’s thus a good thing that we seem to have completely different ideas about which albums were worthwhile this year, as I’ve now only had to rewrite one entry. But hey, let’s get back to Tom Vek and pretend I didn’t just delete an entire blurb about ‘We Have Sound’ and missing his gig last month because I was too busy.

Tom Vek is the kind of artist who gets people falling over themselves trying to announce their bliss at his return to the active music when announcing a new album. At that point most artists would only be able to disappoint. But not Tom Vek. He’s got something up his sleeve, or in his swagger, that manages to live up to those expectations and come up with one of the best albums of the year. ‘Aroused’, ‘We Do Nothing’, ‘A Chore’, almost every track on the album could easily stand out in the crowd of indie / electro singles that have been released this year, but as an album he’s in a class of his own.

3. Austra – Feel it break (Domino)

The top 3! We’ve finally made it there! And this fantastic debut album by Austra definitely is a step up from the rest of my top 10. Austra, a band from Canada (of course, as what is a top 10 without some Canadian influences?) are just three people, whatever their musical compositions might believe you to think at times. Lead singer Katie Stelmanis has been going at it solo for well of six years now, but with the addition of two extra band members she has finally hit the right spot. It might sound a bit familiar, but Stelmanis used to sing opera. Seriously. For the second year in a row I’ve got a former opera singer in my top 3. Next thing you’ll know mountain bikers will be going road cycling and win the Tour de France. There are certainly similarities between Austra and Zola Jesus: the amazing voice, both starting out DIY but going on to discover actual production and the doom and gloom hovering in the background. ‘Lose it’ is probably one of the songs where those opera influences in her voice shine through the most, and contrast most with the electronica she has discovered since. ‘The Beat and the Pulse’ is my personal highlight of the album though: it’s dark, it’s danceable and it has this incredible hook that makes it into one of the best tracks I’ve heard this year. The rest of the album might lag behind a tiny bit behind these two tracks, but boy, if this is only their debut album I really want to see what they manage to pull out next.

4. Bright Eyes – The People’s Key (Polydor)

I’ve never been a big Conor Oberst fan. I like all his Bright Eyes, solo and Monsters of Folk output, but it never managed to really entice me. Maybe it’s my current obsession with sci-fi (for which I blame Alan Moore, who is even more amazing in person than of his comics might imply), but with ‘The People’s Key’ Oberst had me at the scorpion-men intro. The almost paranoid opening must have some sort of meaning, but as Oberst would rather leave his audience in the dark than use a powerpoint to present his album ideas in the way Sufjan Stevens has done on his last tour (and I’m to lazy to actually find a insightful review that does have the answers), I’m at a loss. But Conor Oberst still manages to sell out the Royal Albert Hall so he must be doing something right. And on this album, that ‘something’ would be writing actual songs that would do quite well as radio singles. ‘Jejune Stars’ and ‘Haile Selassie’ are just two of the tracks on this album that make me wonder why this hasn’t reached the level of exposure which would lead my mom to have a vague sense about who he is (on last inspection, she knew a surprising amount about the Kaiser Chief’s last album, meaning that someone is lacking in putting actual music out there).

5. Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact (4AD)

Ah, Gang Gang Dance, a band that, even though they’ve delivered some awesome albums over the last few years, still seem a bit unsure about their live performance on stage and thus rely on the help of a guy with a garbage bag and another guy with some crazy dance moves to make their shows worth their audience’s money. Or so they seem to believe themselves. I’m not saying these extra additions don’t make for an interesting show, but it feels to me as if the band is undermining, and underestimating, the quality of their music by putting their faith of attracting an audience on garbage bag waving friends. Especially since their latest and finest album should convince people that the band can manage fine on their own. Gang Gang Dance have been a long time coming. Their previous albums suffered a bit from the hit-and-miss syndrome a lot of bands seem to suffer from, but with ‘Eye Contact’ they finally seem to have gotten it exactly right. The album start off with the amazing ‘Glass Jar’ – and even though virtually every song that reaches the 10 minute mark is amazing in my book, this one deserves some extra credit. It is immediately recognisable as being a GGD track and manages to be interesting for the entire duration of the track, without being even remotely danceable for the first five minutes or so, which would be the main reason to listen to the band in the first place. If only they knew how to use ∞ appropriately they would have definitely ended up in my top 3.

6. Nicolas Jaar – Space is only noise (Circus Company)

This one took me by surprise. I think a track of the album popped up in one of the Drowned in Sound SpotiFriday playlists and I was immediately sold. There’s a hint of the Max Richter album I loved last year in there, but at the same time it goes in an entirely different direction. Unfortunately for me, that direction also seems to allow only for weekday midnight gigs, which is not something that is really an option if you’ve got 9 o’clock meetings planned the very next day. What is also unfortunate is that Jaar seems to think that space is only noise. As a self-acclaimed space nerd who’s had an interest in anything extraterrestrial since I found a book talking about a mysterious ‘planet X’ at my local library (which turned out to be Pluto, and had been discovered as early as 1930, just to illustrate how up to date local village libraries were ‘back then’) I can safely say that space is much more than that. Or less actually, as most of it consists of a vacuum which doesn’t even allow for noise to exist, we just so happen to live in that one tiny corner of the universe with an atmosphere that does allow for sound to penetrate the air. Space can never be ‘only’ one thing. It is way too vast, or maybe even infinite (thought that seems to be a bit weird if it is expanding, and there’s something paradoxical about an infinite thing expanding...) to use a term as derogative as ‘only’. But other than that: nice album.

7. Destroyer – Kaputt (Dead Oceans)

Dan Bejar, the main man behind Destroyer, is one of those people that somehow nestles in the immensely complicated network of Spencer Krug-related musicians. I have given up on actually understanding how those Canadians are all connected in one way or other (and I say one, but I bet that once you start looking closely, they’ll have been in three, if not more, bands together at some point and will have spawned even more). But none of that really matters as it’s the music that we’re really interested in. Destroyer has been around for quite some time now: Dan Bejar can compete with bands such as Of Montreal in releasing more albums than anybody actually realises (this is number 9) and this one just might be his best. It contains the epic ‘Bay of Pigs’ which already saw the light of day on an earlier EP. On that EP it was the centre piece, the reason the whole EP existed, but on this album it feels a bit out of place. The rest of album is mix of folk and pop, with some blues influences here and there (anything with a saxophone qualifies as ‘blues’ in my book) and this 11 minute shout out to electronics just doesn’t fit in. It is nitpicking though, as on the whole it is one the best pieces of music I’ve heard this year (but hey, that’s what this countdown is all about) and there has to be some reason why this hasn’t ended up any higher on my list.

8. EMA - Past life martyred saints (Souterrain Transmissions)

I’ve dealt a lot with the EMA this year, so I’m glad they’ve managed to release an album. Unfortunately, the EMA I’ve been dealing with is also known as the European Medicines Agency and not Erika M. Anderson, who is the one that has actually released this beauty. It’s probably for the best though, as I don’t think the EMA are particularly musical and Anderson has already proved herself with her previous band Gowns. Album opener ‘The Grey Ship’ is perhaps the best example of why this is such an amazing solo debut: the tempo changes, the build up, the lush voice, just the right balance between a lo-fi sound and an actual production team. But maybe that was to be expected as her album has been released on the label responsible for Zola Jesus’ European releases (the same one that urged her on to expand her fantastic Stridulum EP to a full album). I like the darkness that looms through most of these tracks, much in the same way as they did on Zola’s EP/single release streak from last year. She might miss out a bit with regards to singing ability in that comparison but she makes up for that by using some interesting song structures and by not being younger than me.

9. Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip (Club AC30)

I like it when a band has put some thought in their band name (or stumbled across a brilliant idea quite unexpectantly, as might rather be the case here). I think Ringo Deathstarr has by far been my favourite this year.Their album might be described as a paint by numbers copy of My Bloody Valentine, but I’ve never been much into the latter, so call me ignorant, but I really love Colour Trip. Most tracks sound like they’re being played on a soon-to-be-retired phone on a noisy train, but even so the catchiness manages to reach the surface. Live they were amazing too. Amazingly loud mostly. My love for them might be somehow related to them playing the last ever gig at my favourite London venue the Luminaire (caught some of my favourite gigs ever at that place, not to mention the brilliant warnings written on the wall in that venue telling people to shut while the bands are playing). Maybe I ought to just listen to MBV and likes a bit more, but to be honest I never really loved the likes of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (cringeworthy band name BTW) and countless others so this band must be doing something right.

Helen Arney – Animals and other songs about science (N/A)

As we, for the first time ever, actually had rules for making these top 10 lists, I decided to bend them a bit (I’m a rebel). ‘Cause that’s the whole point of having rules in the first place: bending them (also, I’ve been relentlessly watching reruns of Futurama as if it was Friends, hence my current obsession with bending). So here’s my first entry: a loose collection of songs that haven’t been released to form an album, or even an EP. They’re just some tracks that got released during 2011 and just so happened to end up on the same bandcamp page, forming some kind of cohesion between them as they were all coming from the perhaps a bit estranged mind of Helen Arney. And I like them. Mostly because they are incredibly nerdy and played on a ukulele, but also because they are just really catchy. ‘Animals’, a biologically correct song about sex, must be my favourite, if only because of that description. With just vocals and ukele, the songs aren't very complex musically, but lyrically they are all quite brilliant. If you're a bit of a nerd, even a tiny bit (and who secretly isn't?), you'll love this.