—Minnesota, WI
BEST 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.
4. Dye It Blonde - Smith Westerns
Smith Western’s Dye It Blonde is a relatively standard rock album, with its distinct number of catchy chorus, bridges, and verses. As far as experimental or creative offerings, there isn’t much to go with - probably apart from the whispering voice of lead singer Max Kakacek, and the hopeless romantic qualities embodied in the songs. That’s probably the most creative and standard aspect at work here: how loving the songs appear, despite being from a relatively calming group. There’s a level of surf rock, blues, and even jazz at work here - in addition to influences from people like The Beatles and Elvis Presley - the work presented here is well-worn territory. But with all that being said, Dye It Blonde offers some of the best tracks of the year, as well as some of most thought-provoking. Tracks that immediately stand out on first listen are ones like “Still New,” where the guitars explode at the chorus with the power of certain Pink Floyd tracks, and the smooth moments of “Weekend,” which found itself featured in a Tommy Hilfiger commercial this year, probably wisely by both the band and the campaign. Those were the immediate tracks I got into, and probably “Imagine Pt. 3,” but this is only due to their placement on the album, because as a whole, Dye It Blonde has much more to offer than a few good songs followed by a few more that are a lot like it. Even in those moments on “Still New,” we find ourselves mesmerized by the music: “If this is all that you know, don’t go it alone,” we hear, and the whole album sort of has this quality of romance behind it, while still staying in those teenage years of freedom and summer. There’s an obvious connection to musicians like King Krule, who sing about love in frustration, where Smith Westerns seem to sing about it almost like worn territory they stay in. And when you see Smith Westerns live, that comes across as well - it’s an album that can be played over and over to the same effect, and it’s really a fun album at its hard. There might be a level of repetition here, but that’s only because what’s being repeated is something worth repeating, like on “Fallen In Love,” where we get moments like, “I’ll take the long way home, is there nothing else I should know?” (My ringtone for a while).
The best moment on the album, however, is probably on “Only One,” which finds itself at a slower pace, but a much more a effective one, and probably what Smith Westerns does best are its breakdowns, which can be heard on almost every track. They’re obviously incredibly gifted songwriters and performers, and “Only One” seems to be the staple for this, with its opening guitars and it’s middle section of turmoil. “Dye the World” also kind of has this effect: a long, dragging track that until its end stays with you - and it isn’t exactly as light-hearted as the early tracks, but it’s a good ending to what we’ve got here. But at the heart of Dye It Blonde is the feeling of driving, preferably in the summer, with the windows down, with sunglasses on, and not really caring about anything. If Women’s Public Strain is a winter album released in the summer, then Dye It Blonde is a summer album released in the winter. It’s got so much power behind its simplicity, and it’s what really shines through on the album. After all, Smith Westerns is a bunch of kids writing songs about how they’re in love and it sucks and they want to have long hair. It’s the easy-going version of what Wavves and Best Coast are doing, only they’re doing it in a way that pays homage to the past performers who did the same thing. Smith Westerns and Dye It Blonde as a whole might not be the most provocative album of all time, but it finds itself in the deserving place of one that can be listened to over and over with the same freedoms coming up over and over again.
3. Bon Iver - Bon Iver
There was a lot of me that wanted to hate Bon Iver, and that’s probably true for most people within the indie rock scene who found it incredibly annoying how popular “Skinny Love” got. “Skinny Love,” for its part, is an incredibly track that deserved the hype - and that’s maybe why I didn’t like Bon Iver. It was, after all, a guy in the woods recording tracks, and the beauty behind those tracks seemed to have no choice to but resonate with people. And the amount of times “Skinny Love” was played probably made me think that it wasn’t worth my time, like Arctic Monkeys or Death Cab For Cutie’s newer releases. It’s a bias that shouldn’t be there, but is there all the same, and needless to say Bon Iver had a lot of work to do, especially after several collaborations with Kanye West, which only cemented his position in pop culture even more so. Bon Iver is, though, much more than one would expect- and much more than people are giving it credit for, and it’s getting a lot of credit. Not only does it break us free of that first track “Skinny Love,” but it breaks us free of the entire album that is For Emma, Forever Ago, which for its part, was jumbled and a bit confused in its singularity, much like the releases of groups like Mumford & Sons, which base their appeal on one track and are forced to create an album around it. Not that either group did this, but the fact that those one tracks took off while the rest didn’t is a testament to how the album is perceived - Bon Iver surpasses all of that. From its opening moments, gone are the slow whispers of the woods, but instead are the feelings of those woods, which tell us even more than early Bon Iver could. There’ a level of mystery behind Bon Iver and all of Justin Vernon’s tracks: what are these songs about, why do they have this feeling behind them, and what does it all mean? Vernon goes to the woods, potentially destroys himself, and comes back with a masterpiece, and that’s what Bon Iver is. It’s good that it’s a self-titled album, because it comes much closer to the true nature of Bon Iver and Vernon himself, much like last year’s number three spot Marnie Stern. As a whole, Bon Iver is the epitome of the idea of an album - from start to finish it flows as one piece, and that’s why its so successful. There are immediate tracks that you pick out, but overall the whole thing is what makes it what it is - it follows albums like You Forgot It In People and Funeral in that sense, where it wasn’t a single moment that made it what it was, but the whole thing. “Perth” is just as important as “Beth/Rest,” and after more and more listens, you feel the power behind the album even more.
Bon Iver is, in all honesty, scary. No matter where you listen to it, and under what circumstances, there is something you can’t turn away from in the songs: the hollowness present there - and despite what you do, it comes at you in a way that other musicians can’t. “Skinny Love” didn’t do that: it had premonitions, but never hit you as hard as Bon Iver did. I relate it to the work of comedian Brent Weinbach in that I can only listen to it in given circumstances or else something might happen to me that I can’t control. You listen to “Holocene” and you’re not sure whether to run or to lie down or to cry or to laugh. Never in music has a whole album made me want to do more things or made me want to listen to it more: “And at once, I knew, I was not magnificent,” Vernon sings, and it’s not clear whether he’s talking about nature here or simply the entire scope of civilization. Bon Iver is, however, magnificent in its construction and execution, and as an album it hits you so hard that you can barely stand when you listen to it. “Wash.” is another good example of this: the strings that accumulate in the background seem to almost come with tears. You picture Vernon live (who I haven’t seen) and you can only imagine a silent room working along with him. Their not songs you yell to or chant to: they’re songs that you become yourself to. The hype and praise that Bon Iver is getting is well worth it, and it belongs along the ranks of the other great albums that leave you feeling something more and more each time you listen to it. I find myself becoming someone new each time I give it a listen, and it’s an album that no doubt in time will reveal more and more.
