2011 End-of-Year Celebrations: TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2011 (Part 2)

10. TV On The Radio - Nine Types of Light

For all the art-rock gusto surrounding discussions of TV on the Radio, they seem to obfuscate that they can be a powerfully direct band and their fourth LP is perhaps their most approachable. Its message is simple: in the face of a fucked-up world at the end of its frayed tether, it’s important to take stock in what matters. Chiefly: love. That artsy title might not get to the heart of the matter, but the likes of You, Will Do and, most explicitly, Your Heart make it clear “With the world all falling apart/I’m gonna keep your heart.”

Where the Brooklynites’ honed their brand of horn-abetted art-funk on predecessor Dear, Science, they’ve slowed down for a contemplative set that sounds more comforting without damaging their rich scenery. The twin falsettos of Tunde Adibempe and Kyp Malone voice both alliterated poetry (Second Song) and inner-city mistrust (No Future Shock), with Dave Sitek’s adept production continuing to colour their rich sound with painterly detail. Most impressively on the record’s refined centrepiece, Killer Crane, where glowing piano chords meet slowly inked orchestral washes and metronomic banjo plucking.

It’s not all grace and tenderness, the wiry dance paranoia of Repetition and stomping crunch of Caffeinated Consciousness find the dancefloor beneath the emotional debris, but the lingering sentiment is of a band that cares. A feeling made all the more poignant when bassist Gerard Smith lost his fight with lung cancer. In retrospect, it hasn’t defined Nine Types of Light, and those who caught their recent visit to our shores can confirm their live show remains a relatively undiminished unit of funkified exorcism; but his contribution to another innovative, beautifully realised record is a fitting epitaph.

TV On The Radio - "Will Do" by Interscope Records

Wrangling The Written

So, last night I started rounding up some ideas and nominations for the annual The Good, The Bad & The James Blunt awards. Jumping the gun a bit I know, but since we're pretty much at the year's half-way mark I thought there's no harm in gathering my impressions and thoughts now. Besides, there's been a bit of online journalism floating around about the albums that have defined the year thus far. One of which I can highly recommend is Pitchfork's Overlooked Records of 2011 article, mainly because some of their selections coincide with mine - namely saxophone virtuoso Colin Stetson, Snowman's posthumous Δbsence, and Wild Beasts' soothing Smother. Excellent records all.

Along with the GB&JB ruminations, I was doing my research for my usual End-of-Year best/worst album covers list and discovered this ramshackle, but thoroughly knowledgable blog called Coverzplace. Be prepared to waste a good half-hour browsing through the thematic selections. 

We're digressing pretty quickly though, there's more to this post that jut sharing my 'net browsing habits. No, you're here so I can brag and show off my music writing right? Anyway, playing a bit of egotisitical catch-up with some record reviews. This way when it does come round to the end-of-year stuff, I can feel like I've informed my lovely readership - that's you, feel the love - with what's really mattered musically this year. 

So what better way to do that than to chuck up some of my writings for Beat, in easily linkable format:

tUnE-yArDs - W H O K I L L

Tom Vek - Leisure Seizure

Memory Tapes - Player Piano

Yeo - Bag-O-Items

Δbsence makes the heart...

It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard from Snowman, and as it turns out - the sad news is that we never will again. In the lead-up to the release of their third studio record, Δbsence (that’s with a triangle m’dear), the four-piece announced that they were to split, releasing the record ‘posthumously’. 

It really is the passing of a distinctly unique musical entity, they started as a bunch of chaotic rockers who took surf-punk and aggressive blues and mutated it into a galavnised mix of B-movie squalor and experimental abandon on their first two recordings, the appropriately titled Zombies on the Airwaves ofParis and their self-titled debut. However it was their sophomore, TheHorse, The Rat & The Swan that really saw the band undergoing something special. The result was one of the finest records of 2008 (as evidencedpreviously on AMR), a confident doctrine of brooding textures, cacophonic rhythmic battering and cathartic washes of shimmering feedback and iridescent instrumentation. The multicultural line-up of Snowman – Indonesian born Andy Citawarman, Joseph McKee, Ross DiBlasio and Olga Hermanniusson from Iceland  - had hit upon an alchemy that matched their crazed ambition and equally authoritative live show.

Leaving their home base of Perth behind, they then relocated overseas to record its follow-up. The resulting LP, Δbsence, contains many of elements from its predecessor; the warped Eastern scales and ghostly harmonies of Snakes & Ladders or the tribal drumming and layered chants that punctuate the (quite literally) animalistic lead single Hyena. Elsewhere the spikier moments have been traded in for warmer, ambient and electronic approaches to composition. White Wall grips with a hypnotic menace while Séance glowers with suitably spectral smoulder. The album then seems to waft towards a wraithlike fog of blissful oblivion through the hauntingly beautiful Memory Lost and unnerving yet mesmerising A Vanishing Act. By the time we reach the closing title track it’s clear that Δbsence is nothing short of a nocturnal triumph.