*Yawns, stretches*
Is it winter already?
Good evening and happy Thanksgiving folks. I’ve wondered aloud (publicly and inappropriately) when I should finally sit down to write my passive-aggressive music review for calendar year 2012 a great many times over the past couple months, and I’ve finally settled on TONIGHT, which is a HOLIDAY, because music traditionally was only allowed to be played on holidays. Of course, traditionally, there were a lot more holidays than there are now, but most of them were variations on the same celebration: the harvest. I learned all of this in school I think.
“…and then Pocahontas came down from the mountain, bearing two of every musical instrument…”
Anyway, fine. There was a lot of music this year. But, not like, scattered throughout the year like in previous years. No, most of the music that came out this year inexplicably came out in the month of September, probably because music in general is such a new medium that record labels scarcely know to market or sell it. Let’s go down the list letter-grade-style, from best to worst, shall we?
01. “The Carpenter” by The Avett Brothers (Sept): A-
02. “Blunderbuss” by Jack White (April): A-
03. “Tempest” by Bob Dylan (Sept): B+
04. “Charmer” by Aimee Mann (Sept): B
05. “Carry Me Back” by Old Crow Medicine Show (July): B
06. “Wrecking Ball” by Bruce Springsteen (March): B
07. “Voyageur” by Kathleen Edwards (January): B
08. “Kokou no Gadan” by Kyojaku (March): B
09. “Bear Creek” by Brandi Carlile (June): B
10. “Break it Yourself” by Andrew Bird (March): B-
11. “La Grande” by Laura Gibson (January): B-
12. “Like I Used To” by Lucy Rose (Oct): B-
13. “I Bet On Sky” by Dinosaur Jr. (Sept): B-
14. “Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now” by Justin Townes Earl (April): C+
15. “A Tear in the Eye is a Wound in the Heart” by Black Prairie (Sept): C+
16. “Mirage Rock” by Band of Horses (Sept): C
17. “Babel” by Mumford & Sons (Oct): C-
18. “Ownerless” by Everest (June): C-
19. “The 2nd Law” by Muse (Oct): C-
I’m not including EVERYTHING I’ve been listening to that came out this year…
So, I don’t command the objective respect when it comes to letter-grading and rating music that I do with film, and I acknowledge that unlike the absolute truths which I unveil through reviews for film, these are more or less my subjective opinion. That being said, I pretty well stand by most of this. “The Carpenter” really caught me off guard and I think collectively it’s the Avett Brothers’ best album to date. Jack White’s album is just great through and through. Dylan’s is really solid, but it took me a bit to get into, as most of the tracks are well over 3hrs in length. Brandi Carlile really surprised me because I haven’t really enjoyed her previous albums (there were a few songs here and there I dug, so I gave this new one a try) and boy, she really went pretty much straight alt-country with it, so, good on her. Kyojaku is Japanese math rock, so you can go ahead and ignore that one.
But really, Mumford & Sons was really underwhelming. As others have described it, it’s pretty much a straight continuation from their last album, and seems like it probably would be better suited as a b-side to the first one. And yeah, Muse, not so much. There’s nary a track on the album that’s enjoyable all the way through, and most of it comes off as… I dunno, something that’s not my style. I’m sure they were totally all about it in the recordings, and you get the impression that they’re just doing whatever they want to do, which I absolutely respect, but, you know, not really my thing mostly.
I’m also on track to well exceed the amount of films I saw last year (and TV shows, for that matter). I’ll obviously have my year-end breakdown (as is tradition) in a couple months, so look forward to that as being much more credible than this post.
EDIT: Gah! I just realized that apparently The Old 97’s just had a new album come out on October 9th. Ugh. This will most likely throw EVERYTHING off.
This pretty well captures how I just felt.
The Glass City 