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The BEST PACKAGING of 2011 (The Year-End Awards)
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
By Chris Moore:
Album covers are nice, but there is something transcendent about artists who put their full effort into designing an album package that elevates their work beyond music alone and into the realm of physical art. This year, the award for best album packaging has to go to Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore’s solo release Demolished Thoughts. Though a fairly minimalist black and white design, there are – in addition to lyrics, the presence of which is no longer a foregone conclusion – a slew of drawings and a collection of poetry to complement the music. Tom Waits’ deluxe edition of Bad As Me comes in a close second, the booklet alone being a visual and lyrical experience, and the four bonus tracks providing a little extra for the true fan. Wilco’s deluxe edition design for The Whole Love, another close contender for the top spot, offers four additional tracks (with the wry take on Nick Lowe’s “I Love My Label”) and a beautiful booklet that includes a visually brilliant set of drawings.
Each of these albums is proof positive that there are quality physical releases still being produced, even in what is clearly the age of the digital release. This being said, I couldn’t help but point out two of the many terribly thin and unrewarding packages to see the light of day this year. These are, inversely, reason to stay at home and download.
1) Demolished Thoughts – Thurston Moore
2) Bad As Me (Deluxe Edition) – Tom Waits
3) The Whole Love (Deluxe Edition) – Wilco
4) Ukulele Songs – Eddie Vedder
5) Mine is Yours – Cold War Kids
6) Tripper – Fruit Bats
7) Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes
8 ) So Beautiful or So What (Deluxe Limited Edition) – Paul Simon
9) The People’s Key – Bright Eyes
10) Wasting Light – Foo Fighters (includes a piece of the original master tape!)
Honorable Mention:
All Eternals Deck – The Mountain Goats
Worst Packaging:
No Color - Dodos
El Camino – The Black Keys
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The BEST ALBUM COVERS of 2011 (The Year-End Awards)
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
By Chris Moore:
Even with digital releases, there are album covers. This seems to be the final facet of the artistry of the album that will survive into the next generation of music consumers, especially considering just how much we like colorful displays on our technology. Still, there’s something so much more gorgeous about a CD booklet or, even better, a vinyl LP. The five selections below – with an honorable mention thrown in because I couldn’t ignore it – are examples of the artists who still give attention to the complete package of their albums. It was a tight contest between the top three, and these are all albums worth checking out the next time you’re in a store that offers records, even if you’re only going to take a glance.
1) Sky Full of Holes – Fountains of Wayne
2) The King of Limbs – Radiohead
3) Cloud Maintenance – Kevin Hearn
4) The Valley – Eisley
5) The Whole Love – Wilco
Honorable Mention:
Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes
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The BEST VOCAL PERFORMANCES of 2011 (The Year-End Awards)
Monday, January 16th, 2012
By Chris Moore:
This is a tough category. All of the songs on the my upcoming top fifty songs list have excellent vocals, many of which are standout performances. However, there are also songs that go unrecognized on the top fifty list that are notable for their outstanding vocals. Thus, as a rule, songs included in the top fifty list are not considered here.
I suppose you could consider this my way of sneaking in an extra ten songs that I didn’t find room for on my best songs list, but I hope you’ll consider it an additional category. These ten songs are great in their own rights, but especially by virtue of the excellence of their vocals. Some are smooth, some are rough; some are passionately outraged, some are tenderly heartfelt. Taken together, they’re the standout vocal performances of 2011:
1) “Something to Believe In” – Parachute (The Way It Was)
2) “Estate Sale Sign” – The Mountain Goats (All Eternals Deck)
3) “Blue Spotted Tail” – Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues)
4) “Shakin’ All Over” – Wanda Jackson (The Party Ain’t Over)
5) “2012” – The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (La Carotte Bleue)
6) “When You Wish Upon A Star” – Brian Wilson (In the Key of Disney)
7) “Talking At The Same Time” – Tom Waits (Bad As Me)
8 ) “Sunloathe” – Wilco (The Whole Love)
9) “Bridge Burning” – Foo Fighters (Wasting Light)
10) “Amy, I” – Jack’s Mannequin (People And Things)
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The Weekend Review: September 2011 Report
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
By Chris Moore:
September was, for me, the slowest new music month of the year thus far, but if the only music released in a thirty day span is a brand new Wilco studio album, you’ll find me a happy camper each time. Jeff Tweedy and company have yet to disappoint me, and regarding The Whole Love specifically, Wilco has rarely impressed and entertained me so greatly (probably only once before; can you guess on which record?). Read on…
The Whole Love (Wilco)
Producer: Jeff Tweedy, Pat Sansone, and Tom Schick
Released: September 27, 2011
Rating: 5 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Born Alone” & “Dawned on Me”
From start to finish, The Whole Love exemplifies the Wilco experience: traces of what you’ve come to love, unexpected turns (particularly, this time around, in “Capital City”), and a careful sequencing that unites twelve distinct songs along a single thread. Bookended by relatively lengthy experimentation in the distortion-drenched, feedback-fueled romp “Art of Almost” and the pleasant acoustic twelve-minute narrative “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” the majority of the tracks on The Whole Love are concise efforts, ranging from the retro-stomp of “I Might” to the lush acoustic production of “Black Moon.” On most tracks, it becomes clear that it is not so much that Wilco is an experimental band so much that they are innovative in their arrangements, in their seemingly instinctive sense of how to blend movements in songs, which instruments to bring high in the mix when, and how best to (subtly) layer in beds of synthesized sound for atmosphere. From start to finish, The Whole Love is a striking effort: one of those albums that yields up new revelations with successive listens, one that begs to be left alone when the twelfth minute of track twelve fades and cycles back into to the first tentative moments of “Art of Almost.” If you hear only one new album this year, I would posit that Wilco’s latest disc is the most expansive, complete, fully rendered of them all; a true must-listen.
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