BEST OF 2011

Going “underground”: A year end top ten

By Matt Ashare
Published: December 28, 2011 

A GREAT ESCAPE: Jane's Addiction took cues from TV on the Radio

It didn't take long for Perry Farrell to make a clear declaration of intention earlier this year on The Great Escape Artist, the first new Jane's Addiction studio album since 2003 and the best disc they've recorded in a good twenty years. "I've replanted my feet back in the underground," he declaims in the opening verse of "Underground," the disc's first track, before going on to admit, "I'm a hustler/I'll never give up on the underground," when the chorus rolls around.

       For Farrell, a trip back to the "underground" meant bringing David Sitek of the mercurial Brooklyn band TV On the Radio on board to help write, record, and produce The Great Escape Artist. And Sitek's talent for artfully deploying futuristic digital embellishments in a hard-rock context turned out to be just the right medicine for Farrell and co.

       But that wasn't the only strategy for mounting a comeback in 2011. R.E.M. and Beastie Boys returned to what they do best on two of the better albums I heard this year, as did former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus, who delivered his best solo album yet. And, with Colin Meloy at the helm, the Decemberists borrowed a couple of riffs (as well as guitarist Peter Buck) from the R.E.M. playbook for The King Is Dead, a folk-rocking tour de force that also featured backing newgrass songstress Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings.

       Along with Sitek's TV On the Radio, there were other artists who, to varying degrees, continued pushing boundaries without falling off the rockist map — Radiohead and Wilco were two of the more notable bands who fit that description. And yet, Danger Mouse, the DJ/producer who did more than anyone else to popularize the futuristic mash-up when he combined the vocal tracks from Jay-Z's The Black Album with samples stolen from the Beatles' "White Album" on 2004's "The Grey Album," was all about analog this year, bringing a certain epic pop grandeur to the dirty garage blooze of the Black Keys and creating swooning spaghetti western soundscapes for the voices of Norah Jones and Jack White on the faux soundtrack Rome.

       Which brings me, somewhat inelegantly, back to the "underground," that increasingly mythical place/space where all the cool kids hang creating art and stuff — a state of mind Patti Smith (who guested on and was an inspiration for R.E.M.'s Collapse Into Now) poetically evokes in her memoir Just Kids. In a year that saw a Toronto-based band of outsiders called the Arcade Fire surprise everyone by taking home top honors at the Grammys for an album, The Suburbs, that came out on an indie label based in Durham, NC (a Grammy first), it's worth asking if perhaps there is no longer an underground. Maybe what we're moving toward is an ever-shifting multiverse of undergrounds that encompass everything except the most blatantly commercial pop artists, the Lady Gagas of the world. Or maybe we're already there. In any case, here are my picks for the ten best albums whose gravitation fields I found myself caught up in this year. . .

1) TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light (Interscope).

       I’ve heard Wilco referred to as America’s answer to Radiohead. And I get it. They’ve got a charismatic frontman who’s not afraid to mess with the formula in sometimes surprising ways that verge on the experimental without tossing hooks and melodies into the ambient abyss. But, for my money, these Brooklynites have done more to redefine the sound, feel, and texture of accessible rock than anyone on this side of the Atlantic over the past decade. “Nine Types of Light” delves deep into the realm of unrequited love and finds, well, all kinds of light at the end of a dark tunnel. They may lack a Thom Yorke-ian focal point, but they’ve got two soulful singers and, in multi-instrumentalist David Sitek, a player/producer who’s beginning to look more and more like an Enoesque visionary.

2) The Decemberists, The King Is Dead (Capitol).

       Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Colin Meloy, the brains behind the band who are the Decemberists, set aside some of his loftier concept-album ambitions and simply wrote an album of concise songs that aren’t based around some grand scheme involving Japanese folk tales or obscure British folk singers. “The King Is Dead” is that album. Meloy’s literary smarts serve him well here, but they don’t overshadow the simple joy of the jangling surge of the very R.E.M.-ish “Calamity Song” or the Neil Youngian power of the anthemic “This Is Why We Fight.” Finally, a Decemberists album that doesn’t require footnotes.

3) The Black Keys, El Camino (Nonesuch).

       Having resettled in Nashville, this Akron-bred duo haven’t so much left their garage-rock roots behind as built a multi-leveled mansion of their own peculiar devising around it. At heart, they remain gritty, meat-and-potatoes rockers. But, with Danger Mouse’s help (producing and playing keys), they’ve taken the concept of the stripped-down duo to places that even the White Stripes never quite found.

4) R.E.M., Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros.).

       Now that R.E.M. have officially called it quits after three decades together, this disc has taken on a meaning that transcends the music. Still, it’s great to hear Michael Stipe, Pete Buck, and Mike Mills finding their way back to the kind of jangle-and-drone riffs they patented on their way up, and proclaiming “Let’s sing it and rhyme/Let’s do it one last time/Let’s show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine. . .” Mission accomplished.

5) Jane's Addiction, The Great Escape Artist (Capitol).

       Don’t want to give David Sitek, who not only helped write and produce but also played on much of this album, too much credit. But something shocked this once tired LA band into bringing it on in 2011. Jane’s have always struck me as being more about riffs and attitude than hooks and melodies. Here they’ve got all four. . . Some things are still shocking. . .

6) Wilco, The Whole Love (Anti).

       I’ll keep this one short and sweet: basically, if this is the future of Americana then I’m buying into it big time. Moody and melodic, rootsy and resonant, ambient and alluring, The Whole Love is the product of a band who aren’t afraid to try anything in the name of making a song stick.

7) Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Mirror Traffic (Matador).

       By the time Pavement broke up in 2000, they were something of an indie-rock jamband, as Malkmus’ skewed guitar tones began to overshadow his provocative lyrics. As a solo artist, he continued down that road, but Mirror Traffic is a return to what he did best with his old band: great lyrics, great guitars, and more than enough slanted slacker enchantments to keep things interesting from beginning to end.

8) Jolie Holland, Pint of Blood (Anti).

       Holland, a Texas grrrl, has a captivatingly quirky voice and sideways delivery that sets her apart from your average roots-folk artist. And, on Pint of Blood, she’s come through with the kind of album I wish Lucinda Williams were still making. At times poignant, at others defiant, it brings an edgy attitude to the realm of artsy Americana.

9) Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (Capitol).

       If you’d told me even just a couple of years ago that the Beasties would be rapping well into their forties, I’d have laughed and said, “I hope not.” Been wrong before. And I’m happy to say I am again. Maybe it’s that the Beasties function more like a band than a trio of MCs, but they continue to hang together with all the fast-rhyming wit and production smarts that have always kept them one step ahead of the game.

10) Arctic Monkeys, Suck It and See (Domino).

       My Brit pick of the year, and not because they did an internship of sorts with desert-rock magus Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. No, the track he plays on here is album’s only real clunker. The rest of the disc is all about singer/guitarist Alex Smith’s sneeringly smart songwriting, and the tuneful bash-and-churn of the band.

RUNNERS UP:

• Tom Waits, Bad As Me (Anti)

• Radiohead, The King of Limbs (TBD)

• Maria Taylor, Overlook (Saddle Creek)

• Patti Smith, Outside Society (Sony Legacy)

• Fountains of Wayne, Sky Full of Holes (Yep-Roc) 
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/28/best-music-2011-ar-1572984/