I’m late to the game in posting any sort of top ten list for the year that was—that’s a game strictly played in December, I think. And anyway I don’t think I’d be able to rank my favorite albums of the year in any satisfactory heirarchy. There was some good, even great stuff—Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema both spring to mind—but there wasn’t that one band, that one album, that just shattered everything. There was no band that offered a brand new, unexpectedly masterful sound. For all the bands and albums I loved this year, I’d be hard pressed to say I heard anything new.
But worth noting is that a whole slew of groups that once knocked me out that way did have new stuff this year. Low’s The Great Destroyer; Sigur Ros’ Takk…; Sufjan Stevens' Illinois; and My Morning Jacket’s Z. And three of these albums (sorry Low) were indeed good or great, rightfully popping up on critics’ best of lists all over. Each of these groups share one thing in common: they’ve carved out an unmistakable sound. You know instantly that you are hearing them even if you’ve never heard the particular song that’s come on. They are all strong on first impressions. The challenge, then, is to keep it fresh. It can be a false comfort to know you sound unlike anyone else; the danger is sounding too much like yourself. For my money, the group I’d most written off was the one that really delivered: My Morning Jacket made the best album of their career.
I first heard MMJ back when their first album came out. I was a record store clerk bored with all the promos, desperate to hear something new—so desperate I decided to put on something from Darla Records, knowing full well that it was going to be twee as all get out. Well, that day was like a revelation. Jim James’s ultra-reverbed vocals soaring over the largely acoustic rock was mesmerizing, powerful, heartbreakin’—and catchy. I listened to The Tennessee Fire nonstop for a year straight. It possessed me.
Curious, then, that none of MMJ's following albums stuck with me too well. I'd played them out. I really liked the first half of At Dawn, but somewhere around the blues jam halfway through, they lost me. By the time It Still Moves came out, I'd completely lost interest. Problem being, I think, that they were too much the same. Maybe they got more rockin' as the albums went on, but substantially, it was the same reverbed-out formula (not to mention all of their albums are long).
There was a trajectory there: brilliant debut, followed by a relatively strong sophomore outing, and then a lackluster third album that seems too comfortable in its own sound. MMJ is ahead of the curve, but you can see the same thing happening with Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens (if you count their breakout albums, Agaetis Byrgun and Michigan, respectively, as their “debuts”). In each case, the first time I heard them, it was like an awakening—something completely and utterly unique. And I played the shit out all of them, literally months on end of listening to them over and over again. Sigur Ros came back with their next album, ( ). Like MMJ’s At Dawn, it was more ambitious, longer, more difficult to get through, but still admirable. You got the sense that the groups were stretching out a little now that they had a fanbase that would indulge them. And for people who missed the boat on the previous albums, these second albums still pack that brilliant first impression: their sound is still utterly their own and they haven’t worn out their welcome.
This is where I'm at with Stevens right now. I know I’m taking a few liberties here—Michigan was his third album, and Illinois his fifth—but Michigan was the one that put him on the radar, and Illinois is the more “official” follow up. Like At Dawn and ( ), Illinois follows the pattern: longer, more ambitious, more indulgent, but still strong. It’s not time to write him off yet. We reserve that for the third album.
The third album: that’s where I lost my faith in My Morning Jacket a couple of years ago, and where I find myself at odds with Sigur Ros right now. (And you can bet if Stevens makes a whispery forlorn album all about Swedes and dairy in Wisconsin, with those same McSweeney’s-esque song titles and banjo/woodwind backing band, that’s where I’ll be with him, too.) Your hope—and you do have the highest of hopes, because let’s not forget that this band did destroy you at one time—is the band will find a way to focus the newfound ambition of the last record and refine it through some modicum of growing musical sophistication. But no, my sense of the new Sigur Ros, Takk…, is similar to how I felt about It Still Moves: I can barely muster a sense of disappointment, because it met my expectations but fell well short of my hopes.
Where MMJ is concerned, I so much lost touch with what they were up to that I didn't even realize the new album had been released, until I saw a few polarizing posts sprinkled around the web. I was ready to toss it off, but the very fact that the new record inspired more than a yawn—in fact, that a few true fans felt it flat out sucked—propelled me to go to their site and check a few new songs out. I'd heard that they'd "changed"—accusations of a reggae influence, of all things!—so I now wanted to see just how so (and how badly).
And what do you know, I totally fucking love it. It’s easily one of the best albums of the year. They clipped off the jam-band urges, made their shortest record to date, kept the reverb on the vocals but brought clarity to the rest of the music—and they atoned for the greatest sin of their last album by making this the catchiest album they’ve made to date.
The good news is these guys have been one or two records ahead of Sigur Ros and Stevens. Here’s hoping both acts turn similar corners. (Speaking of losing the reverb, I’d love to hear a “raw” Sigur Ros. I’d love to hear something a little more abrasive. I think it could all be done in the way they are recorded; they wouldn’t even need to change the way they write songs). I’ve got my fingers crossed for all of them. Is it so much to ask to be astounded every time?
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