Oh, the written word. So rigid, so unyielding. When committed to writing, ones’ capricious fancies are frozen in time, never to escape or change. When I wrote earlier to complain the death of the indie music boom, I was simply voicing some concerns over the artistic trajectories of musicians whose earlier works mean a lot to me. Thinking about it, I was just ranting. But typing it out seemed to make my thoughts so much more dramatic, my conviction of a downward trend in musical creativity so much deeper. Even by the end of the post, I seemed to backpedal, for fear of appearing too definitive in my assessment.
This caution has turned out to be well-founded, at least for now. Many of the artists who had me worried or disappointed (e.g., M.I.A., Antony, Avey Tare, and even Sufjan Stevens) have provided some pleasant surprises for 2010, and the year has yielded a nice crop of great music as a whole. From exciting newcomers (Janelle Monae, Twin Shadow, etc), to impressive solo debuts (Big Boi, Jonsi), to welcome revivals of classic sounds (Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno), there’s a lot to enjoy from this year.
For almost as long as it’s been out, I ranked the Knife’s “Tomorrow, In a Year” as my favorite album of 2010. And it’s still way up there among my favorites, still haunting and beautiful. But an unlikely contender has since creeped up the ranks, gaining my attention and eventually my heart. I think--at least in this current state, with this current exposure to the albums I’ve heard--I would actually say that the (phenomenal!) second album of Crystal Castles is the best thing to come out this year.
When I first heard this one, my instant reaction was that it was a dilution of what made their debut LP appealing. Admittedly, though, when I first heard that first LP, I found it more grating and gimmicky than appealing, but those punk mutations of video game sounds were too damn charming for me to gripe about for long. I had to admit, as should everyone by now, that songs like "Crimewave" and "Love & Caring" are among the cream of the crop of music from the past few years.
While the debut was punchy and immediate, its sequel introduces a depth to the CC sound that many (including myself, at first) mistook for unnecessary polish. It’s true that the new one’s not as sonically jagged as the first, but polished it surely isn’t, and necessary it is (note: this particular definitive commitment of thoughts to the typed word is likely influenced by the cold, dark winter nights that currently plague me). “II” might lack the novel edge of its predecessor, but it trades that novelty for much better things. First, it’s got variety, which will almost always win me over. The best moments of Castles I are still fucking exciting stuff, but let’s admit it: it’s tough to get through the whole thing without skipping a bunch of lesser tracks. This second one though is very nicely balanced and consistent. And while the band’s brilliance was previously only exemplified by their rave-ups, this has a lot of quieter moments that are just as powerful as the club stompers (e.g., “Violent Dreams”).
In addition to pure listenability, the Castles have added so much to their trademark sound: a dark, murky sensuality; a psychedelic paranoia; an ineffable frailty lurking within their washes of distortion and vocal treatments. To me, it’s almost like a fusion of the Knife’s Silent Shout with the second half of Sung Tongs by Animal Collective, which probably explains why I love it so much. All of these albums are fresh and exciting in sound, and yet all are singularly and profoundly expressive as well (and I must say that they all make me wish they were around when I was still doing drugs—it’d be so great to hear their twisted soundscapes in various altered states, but that’s neither here nor there). I’m hoping that others who were initially underwhelmed by the band’s tweaking of their sound will eventually come to appreciate this as being the better effort. Slow-growers like this demonstrate why professional reviews of music just don’t have a grip on the way music works. And this is especially problematic for tastemakers who are constantly on the hunt for the next new sound, or next big act. It’s very likely that there’s music to be enjoyed every year, it just sometimes takes time to reveal itself.
So, with all that in mind, let me finish by crowning Crystal Castles (II) as “The Greatest Fucking Album of 2010 In Any Genre! No Question About It!”
Next week, a post complaining about how music will likely suck in 2011.
It strikes me that 1) Crystal Castles are the bomb, 2) Best of Year lists are always fun to read, and 3) such lists don't fully reflect how we encounter music these days. Not that they are supposed to or have to. Perhaps they are the product of music criticism styling itself as objective, perhaps they are a holdover from times when radio singles and TV videos dominated how listeners accessed new music. As the years go by, its getting easier and easier to discover old tunes that sound just as new to the ears as new releases, and so it seems slightly strange, at least to me, to characterize a year only by its first issues. Of course, people have always looked to the past to re-discover timeless gems, and so this is not solely the result of digital technology. For teenagers, all music, classic or just released, is new music. But perhaps the digital age makes this general tendency much more obvious. Faced with an open if virtual catalogue of songs popular, avant garde, classic, neglected, forgotten, homemade, etc., we can discover the old just as regularly as the new, teenagers or not. So, at the risk of turning Year End lists into idiosyncratic soundtracks, I suggest a post about music that defined 2010 but was not released in 2010 (though re-releases can surely count).
ReplyDeleteTop of my own list would be Amanda Lear!