There were so many good albums this year that I couldn’t make the decision to rank them, and I know that’s not the most important decision anyway, so this year’s best-of list is in groups with no internal order. This is the art I spent my cherished/wasted time consuming this year. Hope everybody’s upcoming year is full of growth.
Albums, Best of the Best:
- Franz Nicolay – Do the Struggle – tentative cynic-folk, sincere show-rock (9B review)
- Swearin’ – Swearin’ – last 20 years of music on exhibit in your garage
- Branden Barnett – Verse, Chorus, Curse – pop perfection, radio ready (9B review)
- Hop Along – Get Disowned – gallery of guts (9B review)
- Grabass Charlestons – Dale & the Careeners – rock perfection, finds you through juke
- forgetters – forgetters – another verse in The Schwarzenbachian Epic, the story of us
- Joel Plaskett – Scrappy Happiness – textbook construction (9B review)
- American Aquarium – Burn.Flicker.Die – you know (9B review)
- Jeff Rosenstock – I Look Like Shit – he shits out gold; bathroom Brian Wilson
- Chris Wollard & the Ship Thieves – Canyons – listen loud. Louder.
- Teenage Bottlerocket – Freak Out! – most fun record
- Waylon Thornton – Pale Jewel – and the other half-dozen or more albums he put out this year (9B review)
- Toys that Kill – Fambly 42 – botanist rock
- Lee Baines III & the Glory Fires – There is a Bomb in Gillead (9B review)
Albums, Rest of the Best:
- Snakehealers – Cure All – ex-Takers muscle up
- Waller – Stoke the Fire – country satisfaction guaranteed (9B review)
- Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball (9B review)
- Your Heart Breaks – Harsh Tokes & Bong Jokes – misfit rock, very important band
- Cheap Girls – Giant Orange (9B review)
- Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas
- Carolyn Mark – The Queen of Vancouver Island (9B review)
- Red Collar – Welcome Home
- Nervosas – Descension – punk from Columbus OH that spins off the best east coast punk like Bouncing Souls and Sticks & Stones. Formidable radness.
- The Only Sons – When the New Wears Off (9B review)
- Cory Branan – Mutt (9B review)
- Nook & Cranny – Nook & Cranny (9B review)
- The Ones to Blame – Better Times (9B review)
- Japandroids – Celebration Rock
- A.C. Newman – Shut Down the Streets
- Nude Beach – Nude Beach II (9B review)
- Mo Kenny – Mo Kenny – featuring a badass David Bowie cover
- The Corin Tucker Band – Kill My Blues
- Catherine Irwin – Little Heater – arguably the best lyricist alive
- Tender Trap – Ten Songs About Girls – Amelia Fletcher is a super hero
- White Lung – Sorry – punk from Vancouver!
- Bits of Shit – Cut Sleeves – punk from Australia!
- Rational Anthem – Sensitivity Training – punk from Sarasota!
- Kelly Hogan – I Like to Keep Myself in Pain – this album grew on me the most, listen to “Daddy’s Little Girl” again (9B review)
- Hard Girls – Isn’t It Worse? – FFO: GBV, PVMNT, SLKWRM
- Guided By Voices – The Bears for Lunch – most consistent of the trio of reunion albums
- Dowsing – It’s Still Pretty Terrible – Chicago rock with nerd-soul and skillz
- Bedford Falls – Elegant Balloons (9B review)
- Waxahatchee – American Weekend – released for free last year, official release this year, and now Katie Crutchfield yields results if you search for her on Pitchfork. Unstoppable Crutchfields. (9B review)
EPs, 7″s, Demos:
- Pity Sex – Dark World – pair with Hop Along’s Get Disowned and get to smashing and crying
- Lemuria – Varoom Allure
- Great Neck – Demo (9B review)
- Ben Trickey – Open the Sky
- Sebadoh – Secret
- H.R. Gertner – Nothing I Want To Give Up Yet (9B review)
- Billy + Joe – Breathe (9B review)
- Elway – Hence My Optimism
- Ryan Sheffield – The Shadowbox (9B review)
- Caitlin Rose – Piledriver Waltz – Arctic Monkeys covers from Record Store Day
- Alex Kerns & Mikey Erg! – Split 7″ – Kerns is an idea man
- Pseudo Kids – Stay Glad
- Cayetano – Demo – Philly is murdering
- Joey Kneiser – Moonlight for the Graveyard Heart
- Returners – Demo – Buffalo NY dark rock featuring Tony from Failures’ Union
- Big Eyes – Back from the Moon
- Tigers Jaw & Tiny Empires – Split 7″ – bar-band Morrisey-ing from Tigers Jaw and some real furious shit from Tiny Empires
- Juice – Demo – like Gustavo Rivera’s stories, poems, or his last band St. Dad, the new project Juice is addictive. Half-real words, half-real sounds, some songs are melodic as Van Morrison, others are as decomposed as a long-dead whale–a constant reinventory of the familiar and the foreign.
Reissues, Lost Albums
- Tony Flaminio – The Grim Repair – from the head of the Failures’ Union, reissue of 2003 cd-R
- Karen Dalton – 1966 – haunting voice and banjo recorded over porches and kitchen tables at her cabin in Boulder CO
- Michael Hurley – Back Home with Drifting Woods – unreleased 1964 sessions from the freak folker and gorgeous yodeler
- Jawbreaker – Bivouac – the glory
Books
- Padgett Powell – You & Me – nothing has to be as shitty as everything is; read this for energy
Reasons to Stay Alive Next Year
- Drag the River, Lenny Lashley, Billy Bragg, Sebadoh,Tin Armor, and Failures’ Union full-lengths. Freakwater playing shows again.
Stay free,
Mike
