—A Treatease Dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 Questions, 1 Answer)
TOP 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.
10. In The Grace Of Your Love - The Rapture
After four years, one doesn’t know what exactly to expect from The Rapture. And having never been a devoted listener to their previous albums, I had even less to work with – apart from the catchy dance aspects of Pieces of the People We Love. However something was already appealing about In The Grace Of Your Love – maybe it was the intriguing cover art, featuring one of the band member’s father riding a surfboard, or the belting opening moments of “Sail Away.” But what really ended up doing it was “It Takes Time To Be A Man,” whose background piano melody grinds itself out for a solid six minutes without ever giving up. And after re-listening to the album several times, the final track makes even more sense – it’s an ode to how painful the album was to make, and how painful it was to listen to, in the most beautiful sense.
Simply put, In The Grace Of Your Love is a masterpiece in the purest sense. It’s radically different from the band’s previous work, and yet radically different from other bands out there as well – which makes The Rapture hard to define at all. Their music blends from rock-based anthems to eighties-techno grease to quiet love songs – but who is the love for? We work our way through the eleven-track album with really no direction, and it’s obvious that we’re meant to be doing that. For a band who have been around for so long, and had so much happen, the album is a testament to a group who finally figured out what they want.
The obvious standouts are the aforementioned “It Takes Time To Be A Man,” which builds to a blinding saxophone; the tone tapping “In The Grace Of Your Love,” which finds the listener singing along just as much as listening; and the single “How Deep Is Your Love,” which makes you want to dance much like old Rapture did. However, it’s all the songs combined, and their level of intensity, that really makes this album. You can put it on from start to finish and feel good about it. It’s realistic, and yet obtuse – it’s saddening, and yet happy. There are moments that find you wanting to escape, and moments that make you want to draw closer than humanly possible. And it’s all evident from start to finish – in those opening moments of “Sail Away,” which elude to what’s the come, and the closing moments of “It Takes Time To Be A Man,” which lets the listener decide how things will go. Not only is it the band’s best album, but also it’s the most realized. Instead of settling for anything else, they built what they knew we’d have to build with them, which is what makes In The Grace Of Your Love just as much a Rapture album as an album for everyone else. So much so that I’m wiling to set aside the obvious Christian references and just enjoy the music – a first time ever for me. And maybe it’s the melodic tunes or the catchy jingles that make me do that, or maybe it’s the deep feeling that everything is right here, and that it can’t get any better.
9. Black Up - Shabazz Palaces
There’s a lot to not know about a group like Shabazz Palaces, and a lot of that is their doing. In fact, I was the one who eventually got them on Wikipedia, they’re so obscure. When I first listened to their debut album, Black Up, I knew nothing about the group and perhaps its better that way. Shabazz Palaces will never become the rap music that people listen to on the radio, and that’s probably for the best - it’s experimental, bizarre, and rooted in beats that are hard to follow manage. With that being said, it’s the best rap album that’s been put out this year, topping other giants of the rap game to become the most prospective group out there. It’s made of Ishamel Butler, who was a part of the critically acclaimed group Digable Planets, but when you listen to albums like Blowout Comb, there’s something lacking, and I think that was time. Butler is old now, he’s got influences from everywhere, and particularly the struggles of being black in a culture that loves to talk about the struggles of being black. The albums final song “Swerve…” features the final moments with a chant proclaiming: “Black is me, black is us, black is free,” into infinity, slowing closing itself out and then bringing itself back it. It’s a mantra that works beautifully for the end of the album, and accomplishes what other black artists have been trying to accomplish all this time only to fail. There’s a power behind the lyrical aspects of Shabbaz Palaces, and that’s based in years as well (“I lost the best beat that I had,” he says in the opener “Free Press and Curl”), and in addition to that it’s got some of the best beats out there, which groups like Clams Casino and Araabmusic can’t seem to match no matter how much I listen to them. And it’s most evident on “Are You…”, which starts with the lines, “It’s a feeling,” before breaking into its second half - both halves work together to make up probably the best rap song this year. It’s such a powerful song, and will continue to go unnoticed because of its bizarre structure, much like that of a Madvillian song, with less influence on the samples.
Butler obviously has an intense emotional connection with the music he’s making, and that’s why he doesn’t have to rap about money or drugs or girls in the way that other rappers have to. Instead of making a song like Childish Gambino’s attempt in “Heartbeat,” he creates a real love song on “A Treatease…” which isn’t showing up anywhere else in the scene, even though he’s pretty much rapping about fucking somebody. It’s songs like these that continually bring new things to the listeners, and that’s why Black Up might be the album I’ve listened to most this year, because it has the quality of being both comforting and unnerving at the same time. The songs feel familiar, you trust Butler, and he trusts the music. And as a whole, the album works epically together, more than any long winded concept album could. Black Up and Shabbaz Palaces as a whole is a mature project, and it’s rooted in respect for the best and realism of the future. It’s why there’s an immediate feeling of worth to what the group is doing, and why Black Up works so well. And I wish I could say that I know where it comes from, but I don’t. And I guess that’s part of the fun of Shabbaz Palaces: you really have no idea what’s coming next, no matter how many times you listen to the album.
