Giacomo Puccini, Turandot

Well, I certainly wanted to enjoy Turandot, but my ability to do so was severely compromised by what are, to me, some major flaws in the libretto. As beautiful as the music is, it's hard not to notice the problems that Puccini himself died without overcoming. For starters, the whole thing is predicated on the notion of senseless murder ("Turandot the Pure /will be the bride of the man of royal blood/who shall solve the three riddles which she shall set./But if he fail in the test/he must submit his proud head to the sword!") That's a nice gimmick for a fairy tale, but it really doesn't make any sense. It's hard to imagine anyone actually being stupid enough to try this. He would have to be incredibly arrogant, and kind of an idiot as well. Enter Prince Calàf. As Act One opens, he's just been reunited with his blind father, the deposed king Timur, whom he had thought to be dead (and vice versa). Both are overjoyed to see each other (well, not literally in Timur's case because he's blind, but you take my meaning) and Calàf proclaims his eternal thanks to the servant girl Liù who was apparently responsible for leading his father to safety. A couple of minutes later, though, Calàf catches a glimpse of Princess Turandot and falls, apparently, madly in love with her, causing him to suddenly no longer care at all about the fate of his father or Liù.

And yeah, I get it, love makes you do some craaaazy things, but dude literally goes from "Oh daddy, I thought I'd never see you again! Thank you so much, Liù, for taking care of my father!" to, a minute later, "Hey Liù, if I die, take good care of pops for me, aight? I gotta go chase some royal tail. Peace!" Now, I understand that the librettists were trying to show the almost supernatural power of this sudden love spell under which Calàf has fallen under, which is why they spend half of Act One having everyone try to convince him not to pursue the princess. But then, if he's pretty much in thrall, is he really supposed to be brave? Zombies aren't brave. And if he's not in thrall, then he's really just an incredibly self-absorbed asshole. With drama, it's best for heroes to be at least somewhat sympathetic. Calàf, throughout the opera, is the opposite: his behavior is almost always reprehensible. And yet we are supposed to be on his side. This lack of a central, relatably human character ends up being the opera's fatal flaw, in my opinion at least.

In Act Two, we are introduced to Princess Turandot, who is revealed to be pretty much a psychopath who gleefully celebrates the beheading of every man who tries to win her hand. She tells us (and herself) that she's acting out of revenge for a female ancestor who was conquered by a man, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't agree that this justifies her heinous acts of gratuitous bloodshed.

This alone would be enough to ruin the opera for me. A Prince, who is either an asshole or a zombie, wasting his time and risking his life to marry a Princess whose chief pastime is cold-blooded murder? That would work for me only if the libretto's authors were aware of how crazy this is and played it as darkly comic, instead of the "love conquers all" theme that they were apparently going for.

Anyway, Act Three is where it all really falls apart for me. After having answered all three of Turandot's riddles, Calàf has, for reasons unknown to anyone but him, arbitrarily decided that he can win the Princess's heart by posing a "riddle" of his own: guess his name before sunrise and he will voluntarily put his head on the chopping block; otherwise, she has to marry him. This proclamation causes the princess to immediately order everyone under her command (which, I guess, is pretty much everyone in China) to find out what Calàf's name is before dawn, or else. Or else what? Death, that's what. Yes, the penalty for failure is death *again*. This princess LOVES MURDER.

Now, as you might expect, the princess's servants immediately go to Calàf and, in a kind of breathless desperation, plead with him, offering him pretty much anything he could possibly want if he will just tell them his name and GO AWAY. And then, when nothing they say gets through, they simply beg him to spare their lives from the cruel death that awaits them. And what is Calàf's response to all this? "Inutili preghiere! Inutili minacce!/Crollasse il mondo, voglio Turandot!" ["Useless entreaties! Vain threats!/Though the skies fall I will have Turandot!"] That's right. He doesn't even *pretend* to give a shit.

With daggers drawn, the servants insist that he relent. And just when they are about to give Calàf a well-deserved stabbing, a bunch of soldiers stomp in with none other than poor Liù and Timur. Having seen Calàf with them earlier, the servants know that they must know his name. The princess appears and the servants explain the situation. At this point Calàf does basically the only decent thing he does in the entire opera: he lies to Turandot, insisting that the two prisoners don't know him. Liù, in an incredibly selfless act of bravery that immediately makes her the opera's only true hero, says that she alone knows the prince's name.

Turandot orders the soldiers to restrain Calàf. They do their best to extract the name from Liù with the aid of torture, but she defiantly says that she'll die first. Turandot orders the soldiers to stop and asks Liù how she can be so courageous. Liù answers with a long speech declaring her hopelessly unrequited love for the prince. After her speech, she stabs herself with a soldier's dagger, martyring herself for her love.

What would you expect Calàf to do at this point? Surely not wait for everyone to leave and then start making out with Turandot (whom he calls "Principessa di morte"), but that's exactly what he does. As the New Grove Dictionary of Opera puts it:

Clearly the man who can persist in his wooing of a woman of whom he knows nothing, and whom he has every reason to dislike, immediately after a slave-girl has killed herself for his sake, is bound to forfeit our sympathy.

The princess says of her new lover, "C'era negli occhi tuoi/la superba certezza …/E t'ho odiato per quella …/E per quella t'ho amato" - ["In your eyes I saw/the proud certainty of victory …/And I hated you for it …/And for it I loved you"]. I guess this is supposed to come off as cosmic and grand, like Tristan und Isolde, but in light of what has just taken place minutes before on the stage, it sounds unbelievably crass, shallow and cold. Whatever romantic feelings have just been kindled between the two lovers seems to be based on physical attraction and a Romantic veneration of the ego reminiscent of the novels of Ayn Rand. (Seriously, doesn't Dominique give almost this exact same speech to Howard Roark at some point in The Fountainhead?) You can tell Puccini wanted Turandot to be about love as a transfiguring force, but he never quite figured out how to resolve these problems, so it comes off as being more about a young man's horny hubris and a girl who celebrates his utter lack of modesty or conscience.

I can see why people still like the opera, especially as stunning visual spectacle accompanied by some gorgeous orchestral and vocal music. I, in fact, enjoyed parts of this opera a great deal. But as a whole, it feels like an empty vessel, a failure whose parts are greater than their sum.

Jeff Beck, Blow By Blow

What if I told you that the most celebrated instrumental guitar album of all time ends with a keyboard solo, on a track dominated by a string section (orchestrated by none other than George Martin), and from which the last note of guitar had faded away 3 minutes earlier? That it is an album in which song structure, melody, flow and balance all trump showcases of instrumental virtuosity, guitar-based or otherwise? And that it contains not one but two Stevie Wonder songs (one of which appears on no other album)? Does that sound like crazy talk to you?

If so, then it appears you haven't been properly introduced to Jeff Beck's 1975 masterpiece, Blow By Blow. The first album credited just to Beck (rather than the Jeff Beck Group), he obviously decided that this was to be something special, a more personal statement, perhaps. After all, you don't start working on arrangements with George Martin unless you've got it in mind to do something out of the ordinary. Martin, who ended up producing the album, is probably not the first name that comes to mind when you think of instrumental jazz-fusion, but his talents were in fact remarkably well-suited to what Beck was trying to achieve: a harmonious blend of soaring melodies, funky grooves and moments of wild improvisational abandon. They succeeded, on every level, probably beyond their own expectations.

My head almost exploded trying to figure out which song from Blow By Blow to present here. For an instrumental album showcasing Jeff Beck's guitar magic, you wouldn't think that narrative flow would figure into its construction so much, but you'd be wrong. The fact is, this damn thing is so expertly crafted that choosing one piece from it only makes me think about the pieces I'm leaving behind. One reason for this is that, as originally presented on vinyl, most of the songs on each side segued directly into one another. But this isn't like Miles Ahead where, to me at least, the songs could've gone in any order and are just made to segue as a kind of production trick. Here, the album is conceived as a unit of artistic presentation, much like the Beatles' output beginning with Revolver. (No doubt Martin has everything to do with the album's cohesive structure, not to mention the inclusion of a reggae-tinged version of "She's A Woman.") Just as Sgt. Pepper wouldn't be the same album if "A Day In The Life" was shoved in the middle somewhere, every song on Blow By Blow is placed where it is as carefully as syllables in a line of poetry.

This is still more of a feat when you learn that about half of the tracks on the album were basically fashioned out of live-in-studio jams. I reckon the key here was Beck's choice of sidemen: keyboardist Max Middleton (who worked on the Sgt. Pepper film soundtrack with Martin), Chinese-Jamaican bassist Phil Chen and Guyanese-born, Trinidadian-raised drummer Richard Bailey. These are tasteful session players who know how to lay down seriously funky grooves without stepping on each other's toes. (Chen's playing, particularly on "Constipated Duck" - a title you must love or else you lack a soul - is some of the best 70's funk bass I've heard outside of a Parliament/Funkadelic or Sly & The Family Stone record.)

So anyway, call me unoriginal but I chose the first song on the album. Entitled "You Know What I Mean," I think it's a perfect introduction to the unique charms of this album: the funky upbeatness, the breezy, carefree nature of the melodies, the conversational tone of Beck's guitar. What I hope this song also demonstrates is the album's accessibility. Blow By Blow was not a #4 Billboard chart hit by accident; i.e., it's not just for wonky guitar fanatics or jazzbos. It's something special, an instrumental album that isn't all about itself in the way too many such albums are nowadays (too many albums in general, actually, but that's another topic). To put it more simply, it is fun to listen to.

You can probably find all the songs from the album on YouTube, but then you won't experience the magic of this album's flow and great segues. Do yourself a favor and download the highest-quality version of Blow By Blow you can find. It's an album that benefits greatly from high fidelity sound reproduction.

Best of 2009 Pt. XI: Runner-ups

Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear

There's something sinister about the way the drummer for Grizzly Bear plays. I'm not referring to the way he looks - I've never seen him. But there is something alternately robotic and primordial about his approach. It's distinctly not human - in fact, I'd be impressed but not surprised if drummer Christopher Bear was an actual fucking grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis in scientific terms). Hey, if they can dance and play with those little red balls, they can probably hit the drums with those paws. Okay, so that's a pretty crazy idea, but I swear it's the kind of stuff I think of when I listen to these guys. Hauntingly beautiful, like a natural vista of forest and mountain ranges, you might not realize how much you like this music until long after you first hear it.

Superficial Gossip
Ringo Shiina

In Japan, I get the feeling that even the more popular singer/songwriters feel less constrained by genre and era than they do in the U.S. and EU countries. Despite being one of the top female pop musicians/icons in her country, Ringo Shiina leaps across and between genre boundaries as often as the most experimental groups here. Shiina is so famous and renowned in her home country that, at the ripe old age of 30, she has already received an award from the Japanese goverment for her work. On this album, she moves comfortably from soul/R&B to funk to jazz to 50's musical to modern rock and electro - and she succeeds on all fronts, crafting an album so catchy and so unpredictable that I bet Mike Patton would kill to have made this. Awesome.

Carboniferous
Zu
Remember the band Morphine? Imagine if, after Mark Sandman died, they hired a new bass player and changed their sound to all-instrumental math-metal (a la Meshuggah) and made a ton of records in Italy, before signing to Ipecac and getting Mike Patton to do some guest vocals. That's pretty much how this sounds. Um, did I mention that it's awesome? Yeah, it is.

Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Secret Chiefs 3 (as Traditionalists)

Trey Spruance is the kind of genius I can never get enough of. He and his group of ridiulously talented musicians, the Secret Chiefs 3, are so multifaceted in the sheer number of genres they're capable of tackling that they've had to subdivide themselves into fictional "satellite bands" that specialize in particular sub-categories of music. In this case, we have one of the satellite bands, Traditionalists, making an album-length soundtrack to an imaginary Italian thriller/horror film. It's of course unbelievably amazing and well worth your time and $$$ - I just wish the film was real.

Wavering Radiant
Isis

Just putting out a new album automatically gets Isis a place on my "best of" list - all they have to do is not fuck it up, which they never do, so this one is pretty much a no-brainer for me. For those who don't know, Isis is pretty much the quintessential post-metal band, even though no one's exactly sure what post-metal is (hint: take sludge/doom metal, add keyboards - for atmosphere, not for virtuosic displays or solos - and long instrumental passages [some bands don't even have a vocalist], and you're pretty close). For those who do know the band, the question with regard to Isis is probably always going to be, "Is it as good as Oceanic?" The correct answer to that question will likewise always be: who cares? Oceanic is a great album but Isis have better things to do than satisfy fans of that album by making endless sequels to it. If you love Isis and want to hear something new from them, Wavering Radiant doesn't disappoint.

Black Clouds & Silver Linings
Dream Theater

Thank god for prog-metal. No need to worry whether or not I'm a dork for liking Dream Theater. I *know* I am. There are more chops on display on a single DT track than most bands ever use in their entire career. It's refreshing to me to hear a band that doesn't hold back - these guys know how to play the fuck out of their instruments and they're not afraid of doing so. As usual there are a lot of lengthy tracks here with lots of contrasting sections - if you don't like 20-minute-long songs, don't bother with this one - actually, don't bother with prog, period.

Octahedron
The Mars Volta

I have noticed a tendency for Cedric Bixler-Zavala to parody certain stock phrases in his lyrics as a way of saying something familiar/catchy while subverting cliche. So, for example, "Since we've been wrong" subverts the usual "since you've been gone." That's just one reason I dig The Mars Volta. Another one, of course, is composer/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/mastermind Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's amazing musical gifts. This time around we get a bit more slow, melodic stuff, but if you're thinking this is a bid for mainstream success, how do you explain titles like "A Halo of Nembutals," and lyrics like "What a foul little temptress/your daughter's become"? And that's just one of the rare lines that doesn't sound like someone narrating their all-time worst acid trip. These guys are my favorite maniacs.

Middle Cyclone
Neko Case

I haven't heard any writer personify a tornado until Neko Case did it with the lead track on this album. "This Tornado Loves You" is one of the strangest love songs I've ever heard, but it's no less emotional for that. A lot of Neko's songs are like that - strange, yet strangely touching. All kinds of odd characters seem to inhabit the songs on this album, including birds, prison girls, and (I think) Sorrow. In "The Magpie To The Morning," besides the titular bird, there's also a mockingbird and a vulture, which "wheels and dives/Something on the thermals yanked his chain/He smelled your boring apex/Rotting on the train tracks/He laughed under his breath/Because you thought that you could outrun sorrow". On "Fever," Neko herself seems to be running from Death, whose "peculiar" songs she overhears. When he finally hears her "tiny heartbeat," he gives chase: "I heard him coming/shrapnel spitting from his wheels/His scything arms rake for my heels". Damn.

Best of 2009 Pt. X: Hold Time by M. Ward

For once an album whose charms aren't difficult to explain. M. Ward writes great songs, he covers other people's great songs (Buddy Holly, Don Gibson and Billie Holiday here), he plays great guitar, his voice is charming - what's not to love? Critics say Hold Time isn't as good as his earlier albums, which makes me glad I haven't heard them. I'll have something to look forward to, and if I disagree with the critics, even better.

I guess it's cheating to make this review so much shorter than the others, but I feel like if I kept going it would be just so many words. You should listen to this album - I think it's great. If I had to pick some adjectives to describe it, I'd say it was alternately blissful and contemplative - this is largely an upbeat album, as far as I can tell. Even the slow numbers seem more thoughtful than melancholy to me - like sitting back and gazing at the stars or watching the clouds go across the sky.

I think Hold Time is one of the best albums of 2009. Listen for yourself and decide if you think I'm right.

Best of 2009 Pt. IX: Moondagger by Deastro

When Deastro mastermind Randolph Chabot sings, "I'm a prophet of how things should be," he's not kidding, as far as I'm concerned. This is a fantastic album. Everything about it is close to perfect. Even the artwork for it is pretty much perfect. Chabot is an ambitious guy: his music is grandiose and majestic, like church music with a dance beat; meanwhile, his lyrics reference literature from Cormac McCarthy to medieval poetry (in the same stanza). He's young, he's talented and he's got a lot to beat his chest about.

Most of the tracks feature a traditional band with guitar, bass and drums and peppered with lots of synths. Besides sometimes sounding like disco church music, Deastro's songs remind me a bit of Deerhunter and Wolf Parade (maybe it's all that cavernous reverb), but a lot of the melodies seem more "naive" and carefree-sounding. New Order must also be mentioned, which seems like a clear reference point on "Kurgan Wave Number One" in particular. There's also a distinct Beach Boys-via-Panda Bear influence, which Chabot seems to directly acknowledge by directly quoting the vocal melody of "Bros" toward the end of one of the songs, the epically-titled "Daniel Johnston was stabbed in the heart with the MOONDAGGER by the King of Darkness and his Ghost is writing this song as a warning to all of us!"

There are two instrumentals on Moondagger and both are so well done that you realize this guy could easily get by without even bothering with lyrics. However, Chabot's lyrics are pretty great for the most part. Besides the literary references, religion (and perhaps the subversion of religion) comes up a lot: "I’m dancing for the world with a pentecostal fervor/While sonny the druggy cherokee gets his face kicked in/I’ve got a boombox blaring backward hallelujahs/I’ve got your picture in my pocket stained with rainbow watermarks." But even when he's writing a more traditional song of heartbreak, he saves himself from mediocrity via great lines like these (which to my mind recall Faust): "I’ll access the stars/I’ll read between the lines/Consort with scientists and maniacs/oh to find/A way back home a way back to your arms".

I realize that most of you aren't going to feel the way I do about this album, but I hope you'll give it a chance. The Pitchfork reviewer (I know I mention them too much) seemed almost offended that Chabot even *tried* to make an album as great as this. I hope most people aren't as arrogant and jaded as a lot of music critics seem to be - personally, I try not to lose my sense of wonder, my optimism, and most of all, my humility in the face of talent and hard work.

Maybe I feel compelled to say these things because this is the last review I'm finishing in this series. I hope you all like some of these albums half as much as I do - if not, I hope you all have music that you love just as much, or if not music, some other kind of art that fills you with joy and wonder the way the music of The Decemberists, John Zorn, Sunn 0))), Sunset Rubdown, Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Passion Pit, Bibio, Deastro and M. Ward has filled me with their new albums these past six months. Stay tuned as tomorrow I will present the runners up, albums that are also great but didn't quite make my own personal top 10.

Best of 2009 Pt. VIII: Ambivalence Avenue by Bibio

Like a lot of the best releases on Warp (one of my favorite record companies), Ambivalence Avenue is an album that rewards careful listening, especially in headphones. So much so that I didn't quite realize what was so great about it until I donned my own pair of Sennheisers and sat down to do nothing else but listen. Just one example: Fire Ant's stuttery, spaced-out middle section's cavernous excitement can really only be appreciated on a good pair of 'phones.

On the other hand, the title track, with its entrancing 3/4 rhythm and wonderful instrumental refrain, can be appreciated on any kind of sound system. Said refrain features the kind of cheery, unpretentious melody that one hardly seems to hear anymore. It almost reminds me of old Jethro Tull or some other 60's English folk-rock.

Jealous of Roses continues this exploration of the past with what sounds like late 60's funk à la Sly Stone: funky wah-wah guitars and falsetto vocals (mountainous gobs of spring reverb on the latter). All The Flowers shifts gears again, this time into some nice acoustic fingerpicking - I'm just guessing here but I think this is a pitch-shifted guitar and not some weird instrument with a sopranino range. Anyway, the sound is bright and bell-like, which seems to be a sound Bibio (aka Stephen Wilkinson, from somewhere in West Midlands, England) enjoys and may suggest a nostalgic looking-back to childhood.

Sugarette starts off with a high-pitched bell-like synth, a looped arpeggio that seems to linger after it disappears. Soon synth bleeps appear that sound straight out of Super Mario Bros. and take over the track - perhaps a reminiscence of a childhood spent playing Nintendo games (the aforementioned Fire Ant also features a recording of children playing some type of ancient video game). S'vive has as its foundation what sounds like a sample from a wind-up musicbox, all chimes and innocence.

There is a charming sense of wide-eyed wonder that pervades pretty much every minute of Ambivalence Avenue. Although in Jealous of Roses he chides, "You speak of love as a symptom of conformity," for the most part Wilkinson seems content simply to observe, record and report, rather than cast judgment, as in my favorite lyric moment on the album (from the track Haikuesque): "When she laughs/The piano in the hall/Plays a quiet note." This song also exemplifies another interesting feature of this album: many of the songs seem to "end" before the track itself does. In this case, after the song fades out, a recording of a man repeating a short prayer ("The Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me") plays over ambient synths, ending after a minute and fading out with the sound of tolling church bells. More reminders of childhood, perhaps?

But more than the innocence, more than the fun changes of sound and playing-with of genre, it's Bibio's sense of melody that gets me. He never seems to get bogged down in mere ambience or sounds and beats. There's always a strong melodic hook at play, no matter how weird things get. Even in Dwrcan, which features some of the album's most complex layering of beats and sounds, there are melodies that create lift and move the track along. So that when the glitchy, Autechre-ish beats appear about halfway through, you're already floating along on a cushion of airy, flowing notes and chords. Eventually the beats disappear and the last minute is a slow melody for ambient strings that fades out gradually. When all is silent, you may be tempted to play the whole album again. It's a temptation to which I've given in many times these past few weeks.

Best of 2009 Pt. VII: Manners by Passion Pit

Passion Pit employ the type of synth sounds the kids of my generation told ourselves we hated in the early 90s. Whether you listened to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's P-Funk-leavened hits, or whatever other vaguely angst-y music you were into (in my own case a curious blend of 70s rock and jazz, 80s punk and Primus), the synth-driven pop of the 1980s was decidedly lame in the flannel era (those two great early-90's bastions of taste, Beavis & Butthead, when coming across videos of "80s music," almost invariably made sounds of disgust before giving the inevitable verdict: "This sucks. Change it."). It wasn't until later in the decade that we realized we missed the sounds of our childhood and weren't in such a hurry to grow out of that stuff after all.

By now it's perhaps clichéd to reminisce over and to enjoy (with varying degrees of irony) the cheesiest of 80s music. It's been embraced everywhere, from VH-1 to YouTube to popular films (The Wedding Singer being one of the earliest examples that comes to mind; The Hangover, which features Mike Tyson listening enraptured to Phil Collins' AOR staple In The Air Tonight, is just the latest in a line of such references). We're truly living in a post-Rickroll age.

With 80s nostalgia a kind of cliché and darker angst seemingly reserved for hard rock and metal, what's a new indie rock band to do? Many go the "early R.E.M." route of mysterious lyrics and lo-fi production, wrapping the music in a kind of echoey haze. Music that seems to be about something and is vaguely earnest, but earnest about what you're not sure.

Bands like Passion Pit, usually burdened with the moniker "electro-pop," are following a different path. Using synthesizers and drum machines that either are, or are capable of replicating, the ones from 25 years ago (Yamaha's DX-7 is the most famous and most ubiquitous - with literally lots of "bells and whistles" and other bright sounds, this keyboard was used by pretty much any pop group from the mid-80s you can think to name), they're trying their best to write songs that suggest the past and its summoning of idealized childhood, while keeping things rooted in the present via modern production (both hi- and lo-fi) and, uh, mysterious lyrics. In effect, they are indie bands in retro-pop clothing. MGMT and Deastro are other examples, but on Manners, Passion Pit seems the most committed to the "good times" aesthetic. I think the Pitchfork reviewer compared listening to this album to remembering a great night out with friends, and it does have that character, even if the singer writes lyrics like, "That's a frosty way to speak/to tell me how to live next to your potpourri" and "Walls came crumbling/my thin skin trembling/with these salty wounds/my stolen gold inside the emperor's tomb."

Lyrics aside, this is not subtle music; it's more of a "wall-of-synths" experience. They go for the big and glorious choruses which, again, somehow feel like an idealized childhood where every wish is granted and magic is pretty much everywhere.

In other words, Manners is pretty much about fun and simple pleasures. And it's very consistent. All you have to do is check out the video for "The Reeling" and you'll get the vibe of the whole album. To quote Pitchfork again (because they are my betters, and one's betters must be respected and quoted often), "if you like one Passion Pit song, you'll probably like them all." I like 'em all.

Best of 2009 Pt. VI: Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors

I know, another album that's being hyped to death. I had previously written off Dirty Projectors, having only heard Rise Above. But this is way more engaging and fun to listen to, and somehow still just as bizarre. Put on your headphones so you don't miss anything or annoy your roommates and dig in, kids. "Cannibal Resource" starts the album with a head-nodding beat and the strangest harmonic progressions this side of 20th century classical music. Luckily this song also features lead singer/musical mastermind Dave Longstreth on vocals, so you'll know right away what you're in for. By contrast, the album's single, "Stillness is the Move," leaves the vocal chores entirely to Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, the group's female singers/instrumentalists extraordinaire.

I find it hard to describe this album. It's a unique formula, comprised of Amber and Angel's harmony vocals (including some crazy hocketing toward the end of "Remade Horizon"), Dave's own peculiar vocal melodies (some people really hate his voice, but I think it's perfect for the music he creates), lots of guitars and other stringed instruments (I think I hear mandolins but it could be something more exotic) plucking strange arpeggios and riffs, all over some deep, solid grooves provided by the bass and drums. It's a wonderful world to lose yourself in. The songs typically don't feature anything like a standard chord progression, and the guitars are rarely used to just strum chords, but even when they do, the effect is never anything like a standard folk or rock song. Melodies and whole sections come and go without repeating themselves. And yet each track has at least something resembling a chorus or a catchy hook. Overall, I guess I'd say they strike the middle ground between "serious compositions" and ordinary songs.

Longstreth writes all the music for Dirty Projectors (although Amber got co-writing credit for "Stillness"), the project he began as a freshman at Yale University's School of Music. The album he made that first year of college - The Glad Fact - is astonishing and well worth listening to. In fact, most of the Dirty Projectors' back catalog is worth seeking out, although I'm still not crazy about Rise Above.

Best of 2009 Pt. V: Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective

I confess: I'm really late to the party. I didn't know about Animal Collective until I read this post from Hipster Runoff. I also didn't know about Hipster Runoff until I followed a link there from another blog. Shame on me! But I have an excuse: I'm incredibly unhip. Also, the past few years have been rather odd and complicated for me, the end result being that my knowledge of what has been going on in indie music since about 2005 is practically nil. And even before that I wasn't really too savvy (I tend to be the guy who discovers a "cool new band" way later than everyone else, although Metacritic helps me out these days).

So when I first heard Merriweather Post Pavilion in January, I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what the hell was going on. Parts of it sounded like the Beach Boys, parts of it sounded like rows of effects pedals jamming with themselves. I hadn't a clue, but I had the feeling that if I listened to it enough, it might begin to make sense to me. I was right: repeated listenings made all the odd noises and samples seem more natural and many of the vocal lines started to careen around in my head at random times during the day. Before I knew it, I was hooked, and I had to hear more. So I started collecting their earlier records, and again I was shocked. They were even weirder, with crazier vocals and more acoustic instruments instead of synths and samples. Eventually I was sitting there listening to Here Comes The Indian in my headphones, paying attention to everything I heard, and it struck me that these guys were, if not geniuses, close enough for me.

I think Animal Collective have made some of the best and most interesting music of this decade. If you've never heard anything by them, I highly recommend taking the same route I did. Start with Merriweather and work your way backwards. If you're as slow as I am, be prepared to listen a few times before the beauty of this music starts to sink in.

This review feels redundant because I know this album was hyped to death and most people have already heard it and made up their minds already. But I had to write something, even though I wanted to just write "DUH" and be done with it. Ok, now I'm really done with it.

Best of 2009 Pt. IV: Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown

Spencer Krug seems to like saving the punchline for the end. There's a part of almost every song on Dragonslayer, usually between 1 and 2 minutes before the end, where something new is revealed. In the first few songs, to get the listener to notice what's going on, the music actually stops for a second - this is where most songwriters would end. Instead, the song continues with new lyrics, sometimes a new melody, and always a slightly different take on things. It's sort of like a bridge, but it's a bridge to nowhere - we never get back to the chorus or verse. (The one seeming exception to this rule, "Nightingale/December Song" still changes the lyrics of its refrain at the end.) This, along with Krug's usual lyrical tendencies (he seems to be having a conversation with someone he knows and you don't) helps explain the beguiling difficulty of this album. These songs demand your attention, yet expecting them to make sense is probably asking too much.

The whole album seems to have an elegiac feel, as if Krug is saying goodbye to something, although it's not exactly clear what that something is. "I think maybe these days are over," he sings on the opener, "Silver Moons." If I can indulge myself in a little armchair analysis, I'll take a guess that the complexity of Krug's songs has something to do with a fear of making music that is "merely" pop. And yet his lyrics seem to me also to reveal a fear of being so obscure as to be regarded as irrelevant. In other words, I think he's grappling with a need to feel like what he's doing is very important. I think this explains not only the complexity but also the grandiosity of many of his songs: the allusions to Classical figures and themes, the march-like choruses where he sings a line and his bandmates have to repeat it. I'm not saying this to criticize him - all his tricks work, pretty much. But the last song on the album, "Dragon's Lair," seems to indicate a longing to break out of the indie world and into something bigger, longer-lasting and more meaningful: "So you can take me to the dragon’s lair/or you can take me to Rapunzel’s windowsill./Either way it is time for a bigger kind of kill." Your guess is as good as mine as to what those two alternatives represent, but like the song says, either way it must be "bigger".