Best Albums of 2011

It has been an amazing year of live music and fun with friends. I made a few new discoveries but found myself relying on a few favorites more and more. Here are my picks for the best music of the year, enjoy!

1. Bon Iver Bon Iver Justin Vernon spent last year collaborating with a children's choir, an arty folk collective, and Kanye West (!?) - extreme enough in their differences to make one wonder about Vernon's own artistic identity.  On his second full-length, Vernon confirms himself as an elastic, soulful, inventive and genuine voice in Americana.  The scale of his music has grown naturally to fit his ideas, yielding another beautiful, stirring group of songs. 

2. My Morning Jacket Circuital  If Evil Urges caught MMJ trying on some new threads Circuital finds them stitching those threads seamlessly into the fabric of past work.  They sound confident, loose, entertaining and fluid in their transitions from jam band excess, blue eyed soul, spare folk, pop and angular rock.  Their best work since Z. 

3. Black Keys El Camino The boys from Akron bring back producer Danger Mouse (Attack and Release) and a tide of popular support to infuse their tried and true fuzzy throw-back blues with an extra dose of soul, pop, and straight Zeppelin rock to keep things moving. 

4. Daniel Martin Moore In the Cool of the Day  Hymns for an empty church, Moore's simple arrangements of some traditional religious material reflect a quietly abiding faith in music as balm for every soul.

5. Wilco The Whole Love  With their recent run of studio albums [A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album)] Tweedy and friends seemed to downshift from probing horizons to a steady pace ahead of the much maligned Adult Contemporary pack.  The Whole Love finds the band ready to explore without leaving behind any fans they picked up along the way.

6. Blitzen Trapper American Goldwing  Chicken-fried steak is a cut of beef breaded and fried like chicken.  It is a staple of southern cooking.  American Goldwing is T.Rex breaded and fried in The Band's Big Pink, completing their transformation from noisy punks to Americana mainstays. 

7. Bright Eyes The People's Key Conor Oberst's artistic flourishes - drum machines, horns, spoken word interludes linking Christianity to aliens - can not diminish his still-excellent song writing.

8. Ben Sollee Inclusions  Sollee is quietly making a name for himself with rousing shows, bicycle activism and by blurring the edges of folk, bluegrass, classical and pop. Ever thoughtful and courageously creative Inclusions is by turns gentle and effervescent in its language and arrangement, bringing to mind Sufjan Stevens at his most accessible.

8. Steve Earle I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive After albums that veer into very specific corners of his own past (Townes) and an urban present (Washington Square Serenade) Earle seems to have found a path to the future in the better parts of both, with a few good stories to tell along the way.

9. Destroyer Kaputt  Dan Bejar continues to prove himself a brave and original voice in pop, this time looking more to jazz and soul to light his colorful stories. Kaputt is Bejar's confident take on looking back. It'll grow on you. 

10. Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues The whiskery ensemble is fast making this the decade of great big folk sincerity. Their woodsy harmonies and 1970s jangle-psych melodies still resonate, furrowing the field for the success of acts like Mumford and Sons. 

11. TV on the Radio Nine Types of Light  Past albums have seen them fold strains of soul and funk into their unique brand of frantic, expansive indie rock. Nine Types of Light swings the balance toward soul and offers a more introspective and romantic take on their sound.

12. The Civil Wars Barton Hollow  The no frills folk duo plays down the "aw shucks" country boy / girl act but still comes across all sweet and sincere, like The Swell Season for your front porch coffee commercial. Lovely... 

13. Okkervil River I Am Very Far  Will Sheff and co. add a deeper boom and a bigger bang to most songs reflecting the energy of their live show, but louder and heavier occasionally ends up being less tuneful and engaging. 

14. Iron and Wine Kiss Each Other Clean  Sam Beam is among the greatest folk singers of his generation, but dude needs to ease up on the weed and free-jazz.  Seriously. 

15. Jayhawks Mockingbird Time  The band's first album with original members since 1995's superb Tomorrow the Green Grass finds them aging gracefully.  The good news is this sounds just like a Jayhawks album, except for where it doesn't (High Water Blues). 

16. various artists Rave On Buddy Holly  Contemporary luminaries like The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket, Justin Townes Earle, and Cee Lo Green put their spin on the guy who should have been bigger than Elvis. Then again so do Kid Rock, Lou Reed and Graham Nash.

Kyle's Totally Shameless Twelve Days of Music Wish List, 2011

So much music, so little time.  These slipped by my ears in 2011.  If they manage to slip into my stocking that would be just fine.  Just fine indeed.

1. M83 Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
2. Kurt Vile Smoke Ring for My Halo
3. Wye Oak Civilian
4. X-Ray Eyeballs Not Nothing
5. Bonnie "Prince" Billy Wolfroy Goes to Town
6. The Kills Blood Pressures
   
7. Ryan Adams Ashes & Fire
8. Ha Ha Tonka Death of a Decade
9. Buddy Miller The Majestic Silver Strings
10. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit Here We Rest
11. Gillian Welch The Harrow and the Harvest
12. James Blake s/t

An Open Letter to the A**hole Who Keyed My Car

Yeah, what he said!

 What the fuck, asshole!

Seriously, why?  Why did you key my car?  And also fuck you for keying my car, asshole.  ASS!  HOLE!

Who does that?  I mean obviously you do, and maybe some mall-rat tweakers in Florida (no offense Florida), but seriously, who actually keys a car?

Yes, I parked very close to your excessive European sedan, but that was clearly a function of architecture rather than malice or even negligence on my part.  Good luck finding a parking garage in San Francisco with spaces wide enough for most cars. So yeah, things were tight, but not because I already hated you the way I hate you now, I simply chose not to merge the left side of the family van with a water pipe, steel railing and concrete wall.  These things would not yield no matter how loud I honked, yet I saw no recently etched offending mark on the building.  Are you a big fan of decaying, utilitarian structures shoe-horned into upscale business districts, or were you worried that the concrete walls might dull the key to your aftershave closet?  No, it never occurred to you that I parked that way for any other reason than to piss you off, so your reaction is completely understandable.  Except for it’s not and fuck you again, and fuck you some more.

We were briefly, uncomfortably close.  I get it.  In fact no one gets it better than me.  While my kids enjoyed crawling over the center console and birthing themselves through an eight inch gap, my wife and I did not.

I imagine you and yours also experienced a difficult time getting into your car, and for that I am sorry, or at least I was before you fucking ruined one whole side of my car with your spiteful little jagged piece of shit metal key and your mean idiot fuckwad attitude.  Maybe you had to suck in your paunch, walk sideways a bit, or pop the trunk and crawl around that Costco flat of Four Loko or golf clubs or sex toys or whatever you keep in there.  If that was the case then I am truly sorry I missed it.

What you missed while you were having lunch with Ms. Botox 2004 was my family's twenty minute, nine block quest for a parking space.  While you were enjoying a $40 plate of oxygen-free duck eggs over hand-bent carrot stems and raspberry cockle foam I was in a Mexican standoff with two other drivers for the last empty space in all of San Francisco.  While you stiffed your waiter for having an ethnic sounding name I negotiated a seventy-two point turn with multiple lateral corrections to maximize entry/egress potential for all parties involved.  Then there was the actual climbing over, squeezing out, and scrounging for coins to feed a still-active-on-Sunday meter which audibly mocked my horror upon learning that a quarter yielded only five fucking minutes.  Of course you already know about the heavy scent of urine in the stairwell because you parked there too.  Also it was probably your urine, so, asshole.

Did I mention that our destination was thirty feet from the hotel where we had been parked comfortably for free until check-out exactly twenty minutes earlier?  I thought about asking the desk clerk to keep our car there for another hour while we got a sandwich across the street, but we had already troubled them for late check-out and didn’t feel entitled to further special treatment.  So we moved the car because it felt like the right thing to do, you know?  Oh wait, you don't know, do you.  If you knew anything about doing the right thing you wouldn’t have Red Rock Pearl (#R519P) in the grooves of your stupid fucking key or a trunk full of sex toys and rocket fuel and non-native invasive species and injectable steroids probably, you dick.

My wife wants to believe that your side-view mirror grazed our car, and I love her dearly for that.  I was willing to agree with her at first.  I could swallow hard, admit that this was simply an unfortunate incident caused by proximity, physics and friction; that people are lovely and accidents happen.  Then I looked at the mark.  Really looked.

I saw the way that deep, ragged scar dipped out of line in a few places, how it left no transfer of plastic or paint.  I licked my finger and rubbed at the mark knowing that plastic and paint would come off leaving only a burnished streak or shallow dent.  I discovered shiny metal dust and a gouge all the way to gray primer.  I am neither a detective nor a physicist but I'm pretty sure that your mirror, if attached to your car and moving along a consistent horizontal trajectory would, with adequate pressure, leave a mark corresponding to the physical properties of said mirror.  You fucking keyed my car.

Which brings me back to the beginning.

What the fuck!  And seriously?  And asshole.

Clearly I’m upset.  In my state of distress I have allowed myself the indulgence of using ugly words to disparage you.  I have invented cruel and ridiculous qualities and attributed them to you, and what’s worse, I have done so from the behind the cowardly curtain of the internet.  Just another jaded weirdo taking a piss on anyone unlucky enough to be downwind.  Writing this may not accomplish anything – it doesn’t even make me feel better because I know that every time I open the door I’m going to see a big gash in the paint (asshole) – but at least I’m not destroying anything.

I actually tried to put myself in your shoes.  Your stupid pointy alligator loafers, three sizes too small for me by the way.  I come back from lunch with the hooker on one arm and her chihuahua on the other to discover the entire middle class of America parked inches away.  How am I supposed to get into my car, I wonder?  And what the fuck?  And asshole.

But that’s as far as I get.  Somewhere in between recognizing the problem and solving it, which you clearly did, you also decided to fucking key my fucking car.  I can imagine getting through the incredulity and anger then resigning myself to contortion.  Maybe, maybe if I couldn’t let it go, I would perform the only acceptable parked-car-driver act of aggression available: I would leave a note.

You would come back to your car and find a note on your windshield that read “CLOSE ENOUGH, ASSHOLE ?!?”

Of course I would spend the rest of the week regretting it.  What if that was somebody’s grandma driving that car?  Now who’s the asshole?

In this case it’s easy.  You are the asshole.  You did not leave a note.  You key-plowed my car.  At least a note gives room for a silent rebuttal.  I can crumple your note and throw it dangerously to the floor as if to say “Who are you calling asshole, asshole?”

What am I supposed to do with this scratch in my car?  Obviously I will fill it with touch-up paint, but that never really works.  So there’s a mark, a reminder.  But a reminder of what?  That I should stay in suburbs?  That the city is intended for rich people with plenty of space to put their pretty things?  That it’s hard to find good parking?  That people are assholes with sharp keys and tiny girl feet?

The city is beautiful and difficult, and I will always come back.  People are also beautiful and difficult, and I will always give them the benefit of the doubt because, never in a million years, no matter how angry I might be, would it occur to me to key your car, and I refuse to believe that I am somehow the exception in the greater social contract.

Some part of me would like to be the guy who could find satisfaction in punching you so hard you lose an eye.  In reality, however, that would break my knuckles and get me arrested.  Who am I kidding, I’ve never hit anyone.  I don’t even like to yell at people.  It sounds childish and I just end up apologizing.  More than likely I would suggest to you what I might have done:  you could have left a note.

But it's too late for that, so I’ll make myself weary spending a few midnight hours and far too many words telling myself that I’m right and good and that you, John Q. Keyscratcher of the North Fuckington Keyscratchers, are a filthy stunted shit-eating worm.  It’s an exercise in emotional exhaustion, really, like letting a child wear himself out throwing a tantrum over the Matchbox car the neighbor boy ate.  I’ll type out all the clever nasty things I can think of until it seems silly then I'll stop, have some pretzels and go to bed.  Dickhole.  Tiny penis.  Poop.

Still, though.  Seriously?

Asshole.