They gave me free reign to program the entire Tuesday Reviewsday segment this time. Tune in for new jams by Björk friend Arca, Cavanaugh (Serengeti + Open Mike Eagle), cool brainiac Martin Crane, and Shovels & Rope in tribute mode. Click through or stream here:
The good people over at Friends of Friends Music, in keeping with their founding each-one-teach-one ethos, asked their friends, and friends of friends, to contribute some sort of top ten (ish) music-related list of favorites from the past year. My contribution is below, but visit the FoF site to read entries by folks like Shlohmo, Ernest Gonzales (Mexicans With Guns), Lushlife, Clive Tanaka, Low Limit, TAKE, Garth Trinidad, Shaun Koplow and Jeff Weiss.
Like most folks that’ll contribute to this project, I could do this all day. To limit a “best of” list to ten entries is the cruelest of tortures to a real music geek, but the tradition exists for a reason: namely, to ensure we all get back to work. This isn’t definitive. These are the first ten wonderful music-related things that popped into my head, but considering the breakneck evolutionary pace and exponential expansion of our chosen medium, it seems fitting to shoot from the hip.
1) Destroyer goes Kaputt: There’s absolutely nothing I don’t love immensely about this album. Am I the only one who had an unrealized, unrecognized need to meet the lovechild of Steely Dan and Sade? Aside from Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, perhaps, but at least I know I’m not totally alone.
2) The Black Lips destroy a ballroom: Mere hours after watching Jared Swilley pinwheel a guitar body into the forehead of a grateful fan at Lollapalooza, I found myself thrashing in a chic hotel ballroom to “Bad Kids” while being pelted with TP rolls and complimentary vodka drinks. \\m//
And to be true, this one’s more like a 9. Easily in my top 5 for 2011. SPIN.
Basketballhead wants to have you over for breakfast.
Tobacco wraps up a pretty effing stellar year with a rap tape, essentially. Three new songs, four oldish ones, all with rappers on ’em for the first time.
On “2 Thick Scoops,” Chicago’s Serengeti sounds as raw and hulking as the lurching track itself. “Unholy Demon” features an unknown named Icicle Frog who sounds like a B-boy Mooninite making with the freak-freak.
But there’s more! Over at The AV Club.
Chris Writes Things 