—Lord Knows Best
TOP 46 ALBUMS OF 2011
And so, we’ve reached the end of the year, and it’s time for the annual roundup of the year’s albums. This year’s total number came out to 46, for some reason. We’ll be counting down the albums to number one this whole month.
46. Witchhunt Suite EP - Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
Over the course of Ariel Pink’s long and illustrious career, there has been much transformation – probably the most blatant of that was his latest LP, Before Today, which allowed for Pink to reach a mainstream audience that were turned off by his original lo-fi sound; regardless of how you feel about that earlier career, one can say that Ariel Pink is a staple in the experimental underground scene, with roots going back over a decade. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s been working on the epic, sixteen-minute long track “Witchhunt Suite” for ten years now, only to release it now – what is surprising however, is that it’s essentially an ode to September 11, 2001, which many artists have tackled as a creative starting block, and yet few have managed to capture the incident itself.
Disappointingly, “Witchhunt Suite” doesn’t necessarily do that. It’s a montage of sorts, as Pink wrestles with the event over the EP-length song that goes through about as many transformations as his career itself. It’s rooted essentially in audio tidbits that Pink no doubt picked up himself from various sources, and then collaged together with his unique brand of both cheesy instrumentals and terrifying vocals, which is probably why the song feels about as exhausting as Before Today as a whole. Before Today was one of the best albums of 2010, and yet could be listened to over and over without any real emotional connection, apart from it being incredibly catchy and at times heartbreaking. “Witchhunt Suite” tries and something more, however, which you can see even from the title – an obvious reference to our country’s obsession with finding Bin Laden, who crops up in the song several times. But instead of using the song as a focal point for an emotional response to 9/11, it feels more like an emotional response to the whole existence of the world. “The human race,” Pink sings, “is an invention of the worst kind.” And maybe he’s right, because in the end, as a society we allowed for 9/11 to occur by making it a possibility.
So why does “Witchhunt Suite” find its way into our hearts if it’s rooted more in Pink’s rambling decade than our own dedication to his music or 9/11 itself? Well, it’s a testament to him as a artist just as much as it is to that fateful day. The song explodes, and then comes back together; falls apart and then finds us again; it asks for about as much as it gives. And differing from other lengthy tracks put out by similarly entrepreneurial artists, it knows that it’s a handful. It’s very self aware, which is probably why it leads into its fateful ending of “We’re gonna get him – we got him!” which is repeated essentially until the end of the song, where we hear a electric guitar riff that essentially belongs at the Super Bowl. What any of this is doing here is insignificant to both Pink and to the listener – is he poking fun at us as a society, or rather celebrating Bin Laden’s demise along with us? No one will really ever know with Pink, but here we are with the song all the same. And if it is only a testament to his career, it is one that deserves a listen.
45. Badlands - Dirty Beaches
I assume that Dirty Beaches would have no qualms with the ideology of his music being on first listen horrid to perspective vans. It’s dirty and grimy and rooted very deeply in the lo-fi scene, to the point of which his work is almost unlistenable. What usually makes up a Dirty Beaches song is a background sample, filtered several times, before Alex Zhang finally sings over it, screaming at times almost in desperation. He’s released other recordings as well, that follow this immediate response, perhaps more instrumental, but all the same a dirty sound – it’s fitting that his name be Dirty Beaches. His earlier album, Night City, was a quieter, less messy approach, as was the split single he put out earlier this year, featuring the beautiful B-side “Gone To Hell Come Friday,” however Badlands is a revelation for this performer. When his voice finally clears through the rest of the music, you can hear obvious Elvis references, mixed with the surf-rock movement that originated around that time. All of this, devoted to darkness of bad recordings, seems to be contradictory at first, which is part of the reason why the album works.
The first song that immediate sticks out is the charged “Lord Knows Best,” which is Zhang love letter to sampling and dirt, and it’s apparent through the entire track. The album breaks for a moment from its screeching and allows for the listener to completely submerge themselves into the tracks. And this song as a building block leads us into the rest of the album: the restless natures of “Horses” and “Sweet 17,” and the tiring “True Blue.” And then there’s the long-winded “A Hundred Highways,” which finds us even more in the wilderness, and there’s nowhere else we’d rather be. There’s a lot to unpack here, obviously, and it’s a shame that most listeners won’t do it.
In an age that calls sampling almost ordinary, Zhang is putting a spin on it – maybe it isn’t a good thing. Sure, there’s a lot to be done there, but in what way? He takes it and turns it, making the samples into something else entirely, almost asking for them to be bad. And if there’s any point to all of this, it seems almost as if we’re supposed to revel in it as much as he does, which is another reason why the album works. Dirty Beaches doesn’t make it easy for us, even in it’s quietest moments – it’s a short, messy album that sits as much in darkness as an album can. Figuring out what’s real and what’s fake isn’t so much a chore as a hobby for the listener, and Zhang knows that. There are parts of the album that don’t work – it tends to fall of towards it’s end, and parts of it simply feel like we’re being toyed with, but when we get a break from this and finally get into good music, it’s there. That is, of course, if one is willing to listen.
