40. Pigeons - Si Faustine
39. Ou Où - Baron Von Baron
38. Kemialliset Ystävät - Ullakkopalo
37. Forest Swords - Dagger Paths
36. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love is a Stream
35. Avey Tare - Down There
34. Chris Schlarb - Psychic Temple
33. The Last Dog to Visit the Center of the Earth - Colossus Archosaur
32. Caballos y Entusiasmo - Hidropony
31. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
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30. TOMO - Butterfly Dream and Other Guitar Works
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see that I just recently reviewed this one. An absolutely gorgeous instrumental guitar/drone album with magical healing qualities for the body and soul.
Women Public Strain
(2010, Jagjaguwar)
RIYL = The Velvet Underground, Crystal Stilts, The Soft Boys
Understanding this: Women are complicated. Aren’t they? I mean one minute you think everything is great, some steady, rhythmic conversation, it’s a nice day, there’s a breeze, then, like a rogue wave, your muted, suddenly underwater, scraping away at some unnatural din rubbing against the silence. And afterwards there’s no explanation, just an awkward tilt, and eventually a bass line. But what can you do but love ‘em. Women, I mean. Don’t the complications – the weird fractures, the blessedly beautiful moments, their hair, pale skin, pale guitars – constitute the crush? And that first date, wasn’t that a whirl. It can be hard dating a manic-depressive, but when she’s so beautiful, and with so much charm. Who knew it could turn into a relationship. The ups and downs, those slow times, everything is becoming a bit more familiar, the back of her neck, the neck of her guitar – low and pulsing – it’s not much that you even want to leave that white-walled house of hers anymore – old and bare, on the west side – it’s enough to just sit on the couch, to watch old movies in the middle of the afternoon, those short, cold kisses lingering on. It’s a steady beat, beautifully wrought, a situation that makes you say something about perfection as you drown in the light sifting through the blinds, thin strips of sun across your face. It’s lonely a bit, beautiful, subtly brilliant. Lets never break up.
Little Women Throat (2010, Aum Fidelity)
RIYL = Zs, Talibam!, MoHa!
Wait, what did I say about Zs and New Slaves? Oh yeah, that it was absolutely enormously monstrously terrific, or something, and that you weren’t likely to hear anything like it this year. While that remains largely true, Throat, the debut album from Little Women (which proceeded New Slaves in terms of release dates) is, well, lets call it a, um, lets call it the only album with an internal weighting system (un)balanced enough and the exterior costuming belligerent and malevolent enough to have a chance at breaching New Slaves to crumble its internal organs to the floor. Surely Little Women and Zs are like minded enough in their crunching aesthetic to be friends in the real world – they’re certainly contemporaries – but what is this music of not an assault? Its cantankerous tones battle absurdly like the razor pronged talons of an industrial garage cock fight. But if I must compare, if Throat demands to be slotted up next to the very best albums released so far this year (which it undeniably does), know that, straying from the consistently demonic New Slaves, Little Women also offer valleys of beautiful reprieve, sections classy enough to share breathe with Joanna Newsom’s immaculate Have One On Me. I suppose that is the key here. Little Women present a jaw dropping dynamic of primal explosiveness in step with elegance and melody, structure even. There is a fluidity from one end of spectrum to the other that proves Little Women are beyond gifted in their ability to both hone in on the essence of their instruments, turning out a cordial listening experience, and likewise to allow their instruments to own them and burst forth in animal bits of terror. Because Throat is an animal. A birdlike creature really. Dual headed, represented by byzantine squawk and purr of alto and tenor sax, the creature patters about maniacally crashing into any and everything in its path. The bone structure and legs of the creature (of which there is approximately five – legs, that is) are represented by the maverick drumming, and the body as a whole, a static glitching façade, by the constantly contorting guitar work. It’s a new breed with very few reference points. Sure, there is a beak, but two of them, and legs, but five. And the fact that it is never clearly concrete, almost a hologram, is equally troubling. What is it? Jazz? Rock? Noise? Yes, yes, yes and no. I’m having a difficult time dialing back my enthusiasm about the one actually, so just know that it was really hard for my not to preemptively anoint Little Women’s Throat as the best album of the decade and we’ll call it even.
