Twenty-Seven Points on "Burning Down The House" by The Cardigans and Tom Jones

I'm a big Talking Heads fan. Well, I say that, but Talking Heads are the kind of band that inspires weird levels of devotion, so let me walk that back. I like Talking Heads a lot.
I also like The Cardigans. And by "I like The Cardigans," I mean what you'd expect me to mean--I love "Lovefool" and whenever it comes on I immediately turn into a drunk sorority girl, complete with leaning-in-to-belt-out-the-chorus and the "WOOHOO" with your drink hand in the air. But I don't know any of the Swedish mid-90s pop giants' other work. I assume they're the historical bridge between ABBA and Robyn, and nobody's ever going to tell me different.
So imagine my shock when I discovered this:

I wasn't even expecting to find this. It came up on my sidebar while I was watching the video for Willy Moon's "Get Up (What You Need)," which, while being a very cool song that makes me want to go run up a mountain like I'm in a Nike commercial, has next to nothing to do with Talking Heads, Tom Jones or The Cardigans.
But find it I did. And my heart made the noise that a jar of pickles makes when you open it for the first time and break the seal. Given my adoration not only for the principals involved in this...thing...but for cover versions of familiar songs, here are 27 points on "Burning Down The House" by The Cardigans and Tom Jones.

1. Given that this is a live performance and I'd never heard this version of the song before, I'd assumed that this was a one-off tribute performance of some kind, like CHVRCHES' Janelle Monae cover. Not so. This was on an album, back in 1999. Reload s...holy crap. This might be the least absurd cover on the whole album.
2. No, seriously. Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy," by Tom Jones and something called Zucchero. This is like Mark Ronson's Version, except it's the direct-to-video remake starring Eric Balfour and James Remar. We are down the rabbit hole, my friends.
3.  I wonder if, since this was released as a radio single, there's a music video.
4. There is. It takes place on a holodeck with a bunch of backup dancers who are either computer-generated or wearing mylar bodysuits or both. 
5. An underrated weird part of this cover is that if you told me beforehand that if these two artists had covered this song in 1999, this is exactly how I'd expect it to sound.
6. That's what I'd expect after I slapped you in the face and called a witch doctor to cleanse my home of evil spirits, because I'm still not entirely comfortable living in a world where this song exists.
7. I've been listening to David Byrne sing these lyrics for more than a decade now, and it's impossible to overstate how much easier Nina Persson and Tom Jones are to understand than David Byrne. 
8. That's even more shocking when you consider that Persson's not a native English-speaker. Jones is Welsh, so he only kinda speaks English, you know what I mean?
9. Finding out Tom Jones is Welsh was more shocking than I'd expected it to be.
10. Tom Jones looks like Bruce Springsteen would if he went to Bruce Jenner's plastic surgeon.
11. I don't care how overproduced her voice is--I could listen to Nina Persson sing for ever and ever. I have a thing for smoky-eyed blondes with airy, vaguely nasally voices. I don't know why. I do know that I kept watching Glee for a full season and a half after it stopped being good, in large part because I am desperately and irretrievably in love with Dianna Agron. Like I almost went to see I Am Number Four in theaters. It's that bad.
12. Now for the real kicker. If you haven't watched the live video yet, do. Because I have never seen more brazen and embarrassing lip-syncing than I'm seeing out of Nina Persson.
13. A lot of the conspiratorially seductive appeal of "Lovefool" has to do with the effects on Persson's voice in that song, which are replicated in "Burning Down the House." Which is cool, but this is a live performance. And maybe they're running her mic through an effects board, but she sings this note-for-note the same way in the studio version, the Top of the Pops performance I embedded above and a third performance, which features the band playing in front of a set made to resemble an actual burning house, because subtlety isn't something the do in Europe, apparently.
14. Maybe she swallowed a Vocoder or something. But she's dancing around and the volume doesn't change at all based on how far her face is from the microphone. Nobody who has pitch control that good would record an album that makes her sound like a sexy robot.
15. Nina Persson is a robot.
16. That's gotta be at least moderately tough on the band, right? Knowing that they've got to be perfect, or else the vocal track's going to be off? Well done by The Cardigans there.
17. But seriously, she's smiling and shit. How can you smile when you're lip-syncing and Tom Jones is over there working his ass off? Seriously--that man's going balls-out on this song. Does she just not feel shame? 
18. This is like a two and a half minute song, in which she spends at least 60 seconds standing there head-bobbing and smirking. And not in the middle of a three-hour concert. One song. Can you not actually sing for 90 seconds? 
19. And this is like her one job. This isn't like Spacehog, where the one guy's singing and playing that awesome bass riff in "In the Meantime" at the same time. This is the opposite of that--she is doing none of the interesting things in this performance instead of all of the interesting things.
20. And look at Tom Jones, dancing himself into a flop sweat. There's a goddamn professional. That dude's old as hell, and you can't give even a noticeable fraction of the effort he's putting out?
21. I looked it up--Jones was 59 when this single came out. Persson was 25. 
22. Tom Jones is the one the women throw their underwear at, right? He deserves all the underwear. No underwear for you, Nina Persson. Not until you do your share of the work.
23. Maybe it's a good thing Tom Jones is putting all his energy into singing, because when he lip-syncs, he makes some terrifying faces. So much of that music video is right up in his face, and it's terrifying. 
24. He's got really scary blue eyes. Kris Bryant blue. Trent Cole eyes.
25. He looks the White Walker version of Bob Gunton.
26. You ever wonder how collaborations like this come together? I want a transcript of the conversation between Tom Jones' agent and The Cardigans' agent. Do you think he even knew who they were before they got to the studio?
27. What do you think David Byrne thinks of this? Eh, who cares. David Byrne is an asshole anyway. 

Baumann's Top 8 Songs of 2013

I'm not a music guy anymore. I used to be, but no longer--I've had three great writing loves in my life: fiction, sports and music, and I can only do two of them at a time. So as of right now, I haven't written a song or picked up my electric guitar or clarinet in almost five years, and the days of seeking out new and interesting music on my own are pretty much over. That's why I'm only doing eight songs--I don't have an original take on 100, and six of the eight songs on this list I got directly from either Paul Boye or Dany Sloan anyway.
But I experience music differently, I think, from the people who spoonfeed it to me anymore--only three of these songs are on Paul's top 100, for instance, though an equal number are off albums that put a song on his list but were left off themselves. And rather than trying to know all about modern music, I've decided to figure out why I like a song, ideally to figure out objective criteria. That's the purpose of this site, which I haven't posted on since May.
Anyway, all these songs were released in 2013--the real No. 1 song of 2013 for me was unquestionably "Call Your Girlfriend" by Robyn, which I only found out about this spring, but actually came out in 2011. In descending order:


8) "Wait for Love" by St. Lucia, from When the Night

When the Night, in an insane music year, was my favorite full album, and this spot could as easily have gone to three or four other tracks from the record. "Wait for Love" is an exceptionally well-written pop-rock track that climbs not only dynamically but in pitch as well, ascending from a bomb-ass bass line to a chorus that's heavy on falsetto.
It starts with just the bass and some synthy ephemera, then adds in, piece by piece, one vocal part, keyboards, cymbals, and then just gets generally louder. If I'd written this song, the dynamic contrast would've been obnoxious, probably with a full beat of silence before the chorus, but the crescendo from the verse to the chorus isn't that pronounced, a "how-do-you-boil-a-frog" elision from mezzo piano to mezzo forte. And by the time you're in a minute in, you get hit with the song's real party piece, and after that point you've got to just kind of bob your head and tap your foot and hope you're not driving for the next two minutes and thirty seconds.
Because that's when you get the quarter note triplets.
I once tried to make a list of the elements that make a pop song catchy, and came up with a list of about 30 rhythmic and melodic figures, but quarter note triplets stood out. The quarter note triplets in this song--you get them with the synth in the prechorus, but they're more pronounced in the vocal melody of the chorus--take you out of the groove you've been sitting in and nudge you a little bit each time, then grab you by the lapels on your jacket and toss you onto the dance floor and all of a sudden you're wearing a lei and khaki shorts and drinking rum out of a coconut through a straw.
Then the chorus ends and we start the whole process over, but with different building blocks to the chorus, including some punchy backing vocals, and then, everything but the steady synth and the lead vocals cut out for three beats before the pickup notes to the chorus. If this were a Dr. John song, there'd be a huge glissando at this point.
That the band is named for a small Caribbean island nation would probably put you in mind of a tropical aesthetic even if they sounded like A Perfect Circle. But this song is the closest I've come to partying on the beach in 2013.


7) "Let Go" by RAC, ft. Kele and MNDR, from Don't Talk To

This is a lovely bit of techno-post-punk melancholia from some guy I'd never heard of with Kele Okereke of Bloc Pary and MNDR, who I'd last seen providing the lead vocals for "Bang Bang Bang" by Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. It's a very steady, very repetitive beat that allows Okereke to really sit back and stay within himself. Okereke's always had a tremendously emotionally evocative voice, but in songs like "Flux" and "I Still Remember," loud and high and unhappy turns a little shouty. His voice coupled to this song is everything I liked about old, sad Bloc Party, but less analog and more mellow.
You should also check out the video, which I wanted to embed here but couldn't. It's about an extremely good-looking man who resembles a young Ben Kingsley with a wonderful mustache, who struggles to deal with his girlfriend, who looks like a goth Keira Knightley and loves to eat people. I want to live in the way this video looks, and it probably makes me like this song more than I would otherwise.
But where "Wait for Love" is a tribute to quarter note triplets, "Let Go" is a tribute to giving you exactly as much music as you need and not one beat more. It's almost invitingly simple throughout, with a steady bass and drum line without, and Okereke sort of hip leans his vocals into the void they fill. Never loud, never fast, "Let Go" settles into a groove and lets you live there.


6) "The Wire" by Haim, from Days Are Gone

This is the best-written song of 2013, by a band that might as well have been created from a checklist of things I like: keyboard-heavy a chick rock/power pop group that goes about its business with an earnest archness. "The Wire" is Weezer by way of Pat Benatar, blending vocals from all three Haim sisters in the cheekiest breakup song I've heard in years.
Haim's been the subject of quite a bit of backlash, most of it deserved--they're twee, and weird, and the product of stage parents, and Danielle Haim is really not a very good singer at all. I don't know that I've heard a criticism of the band or its music that wasn't entirely valid, and yet this album was on repeat on my computer for most of the summer.
I like that the "I just couldn't take it / I tried hard not to fake it" melody brings you up to the top of the stairs to the chorus, then goes back down to the ground floor and takes you there again. I like the interchanging lead vocals--if your lead singer is the worst vocalist in the group, you might as well pull off some boy band-style handoffs along the way. I like how shamelessly heavy this song is on three-part harmonies. I like that the lyrics wouldn't be horribly out of place in a normal conversation and still fit with the rhythm and phrasing of the melody--not doing this is my biggest pet peeve in music, and the reason why the most outspoken homophobe can't possible hate RENT more than I do.
I like that they're totally cool with dropping the beat, and that the bridge has the strings and running chromatic triplets out of a mid-90s pop-rock ditty. This song is sophisticated, calculated and completely beguiling at the same time, and it's wonderful.


  5) "Slipped" by The National, from Trouble Will Find Me
Most of The National's albums have one song that's slower, softer and sadder than the rest, and that song is pretty routinely my favorite track from that record. There's a time for music to be fun, but the music I love the most is sad music you listen to when you don't like yourself very much and want to like yourself even less than you do already. So in the tradition of "Runaway" and "90 Mile Water Wall," The National broke away from the polyrhythmic, higher-energy flirtations of the earlier tracks on the album, and went back to the place where I love them the most.
"Slipped" swells and rocks in its own way, and the lyrics are typically clever, but listening to this song is like getting dumped, walking out to the end of a jetty at sunset and just sitting there hoping the sea comes in and you get to feel nothing instead of sadness. It's beautiful and warm and desperate, and the line "It'll be summer in Dallas before you realize" will stick to your soul.


4) "Youth" by Daughter, from If You Leave
Five of the songs on this list came from albums that I was kind of lukewarm about. But "Youth" is the fusion of styles that I didn't realize I should've asked for. It's the rambling and swelling post-rock of Explosions in the Sky, complete with rapid-fire drums and ringing guitar parts. It's also the breathy, expansive vocals of Florence and the Machine and the desperate, accusatory tone of Deja Entendu-era Brand New. The end product, at least in this song, is the best of all three parts: dramatic, ambitious and heartfelt.
(And I'm breaking my own rule here--"Youth" was on 2013's If You Leave, but I prefer the version that was on the Daughter's 2011 EP The Wild Youth. Sorry.)
This is radio-friendly post rock, where the whispered laments of the first two verses really earn the concussive bass drum of the choruses, then in the third verse, lead singer Elena Tonra goes up the octave, while behind her a running cymbal roll and a buzzing guitar line build and build, like Fender trying to simulate what bees sound like. Of the eight songs listed here, this is the prettiest.


3) "Hey, Doreen" by Lucius, from Wildewoman
I was going to cap this list at five songs, but during the early stages of reading Paul's Top 100 list, I came across this track. The rest of the album I could take or leave, but holy shit is it hard to have more fun than listening to "Hey, Doreen." I was going to do a point-by-point explanation of the specific musical points that make it so enchanting, but I'll just say this: Imagine Fitz and the Tantrums had a loudmouth sister, and imagine that she crashed a Ferrari full of clowns through the front wall of your house. That's what this song is like.


2) "Song For Zula" by Phosphorescent, from Muchacho
I lied. I said sometime in August, I think, that "Song for Zula" was going to be my favorite song of 2013. And it's not. Sorry. It's close to perfect, though.
"Song for Zula" won me over with the first line: "Some say love is a burning thing / And it makes a fiery ring." The way this song twists the classic Johnny Cash line from its original form into the sequel: what happens when you fall in love and get your heart broken? The play on the Cash song is only the start of the lyrical cleverness. Love is a cage, a paralytic agent, an animal--all expressing betrayal and heartbreak after having been taken in by the facile love expressed in pop music.
"Song For Zula" is part of a running theme in songs on this list: it's a very, very simple song with one very strong asset (the lyrics, in this case) and all other components subdued and out of the way so they can't mess anything up.
The best argument for this song is just to go and read the lyrics as it plays, because the music gets across the kind of trapped, aching, disappointed feeling, but lines like "See, honey, I saw love / You see, it came to me / It put its face up to my face so I could see" drive home that feeling more than you might think when the poetry of a song is so often window dressing to the music. This is like country-and-western W.H. Auden. "Song For Zula" makes you want to feel what this man is feeling, not because it sounds particularly pleasant, but because the feeling is so beautifully and clearly laid out.
One last note--this is not mankind's first attempt at a long, melancholy song without a chorus. I remember experiencing Antlers' "Two" and Airborne Toxic Event's "Sometime Around Midnight" and thinking "Wow, this would be really cool if they ever went anywhere with the original theme." This is how you pull that off--you play just slightly with the melody and the dynamics and leave room for instrumental breaks. Just in case anyone was wondering.


  1) "Blurry Nights" by Hayden ft. Lou Canon, from Us Alone
I spent my first four months or so with this song not realizing how good it was because I kept getting tripped up by the time signature changes in the chorus. I remember driving overnight from Madison to Columbus in May and spending a large portion of the state of Indiana going back over and over the chorus trying to count it out. In the meantime, I didn't enjoy it as much as I would later, and I think it was in the interim that I declared "Song For Zula" to be my favorite track of 2013.
Hayden is a Canadian dude who looks like my AP chemistry teacher from high school, and while I don't think any of his other songs were bad, necessarily, this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. It's a folksy duet about, essentially, a drunken one-night hookup. The chorus, which I'll reproduce here, involves the most relatable musical production of asking someone to go home with you: "I don't know how to do this / But will you leave with me right now / Nothing good could ever come from this / In the long run, but let's not dismiss / All the fun we could have tonight if we forget how we might / Feel in the morning light."
There's no real incredible melodic, harmonic or dynamic part to this song, and it's kind of drowsy and meandering, but for some reason I find it just profoundly charming. I'm a sucker for cheesy duets, and this is kind of like "Islands in the Stream" for people who drink weird coffee and wear mustaches.
The final note: Lou Canon's voice. I've got a Spotify playlist for songs by female singers who make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And there's the occasional belting jazz voice and the occasional bawdy, sort of tavern wench aesthetic on the playlist, but Lou Canon's got a faint, airy voice that gives you the distinct impression of being breathed on, and I can't get enough of her. I'm blushing right now.
"Blurry Nights" makes me want to go out and fall disgustingly, fawningly in love with the first person I meet. You don't get to the emotional state that makes "Slipped" or "Song for Zula" or even "The Wire" possible without having been here first.

Paul's Top 10 Decemberists Songs

So Stereogum released another top 10 list of songs by artist with which I'm intimately familiar, so naturally, I've got objections and corrections to make. Though this one isn't nearly as far a departure from my own preferences as their National list was earlier this year, there are still changes I'd like to see. So I'll make them!

The Decemberists can be a divisive band; their music isn't aggressive, but the very characteristics that can make them a novel and enjoyable listen are also the qualities that can turn other listeners off. Colin Meloy's distinctive vocals, bizarre instrumental arrangements, esoteric and hyper-educated lyrics can either combine to charm or push away, with little middle ground.

Luckily for me, my takeaway from that concoction is an adoring one - for the most part - and I've enjoyed listening to enough Decemberists material to try and put together my version of a top 10 list.

10. The Sporting Life
Album: Picaresque

A bouncy song about an emasculated athlete (it's never explicitly said, but I always imagined the protagonist a football player) who comes up short in a big spot on the field and the ripple effect of disappointment among those in attendance. From the lead's flighty girlfriend to his disenchanted father to frustrated coach, it's not the most true-to-sport song ever written (although it doesn't hold a candle to that line in The Postal Service's "Nothing Better." You know which one) but it captures the spirit of the scene in a fun way. Even if it's all at the expense of this crushed athlete.

9. This Is Why We Fight
Album: The King Is Dead

The Decemberists have made their mark on me with slower-paced anthems (we'll get to those), but this is a good example of a rallying cry done right. It's got a bit of heroic swagger to it in the first half, and then, after an instrumental interlude at about the three-minute mark, the song is stripped down to an acoustic guitar (and a single electric strum) before building back up, only to break down again into a (tamed) vocal war cry and accompanying drum raps. It's one of their finer uptempo moments.

8. The Bachelor and the Bride
Album: Her Majesty The Decemberists

To date, I'm still not 100 percent certain what the exact story of this song is. I understand it's about something of a troubled relationship - possibly even abusive - but the minutiae escape me even after 10 years. Normally, that'd be a detriment, but the exactness of the story takes a back seat to the way this song is structured and layered. Solemnly introduced with an acoustic guitar and the telling of a passed child, then joined by a traveling drum beat (a "carry on" mantra embodied in sound) and a morose synth backdrop. It's a bit heartbreaking to listen to sometimes.

7. Annan Water
Album: The Hazards of Love

The Hazards of Love is a failed concept album, a fantastical tale of love lost, redemptive rescue and (spoiler alert) Titanic-like end. It misses the mark in more places than I like, but where it manages to hit said mark most squarely is on this taken-out-of-context cut. It starts sharply when listened to solo (led in by the previous track's instrumentals) but otherwise stands well enough on its own even when taken out of the album's story. The basic gist is the story's protagonist is off to rescue his love from a captor, and is presented with a raging body of water standing between him and the way to her. The song is a plea to the river to calm enough to allow passage, with the promise of personal sacrifice in return for the favor. It's dark and exposes the end of the album's story before its time, but despite its strange pretenses (not uncommon in Decemberists songs) it manages to feel human and genuine, if a bit melodramatic.

6. The Engine Driver
Album: Picaresque

In the summer of 2006, I had a preposterous job. I worked in a cocoa powder processing plant in Swedesboro, NJ from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The early start meant waking up around 4:30-4:45 a.m. to get ready before making the 35-40-minute drive south from my folks' place in Cherry Hill. On many of those drives, cruising through an empty 295 under a pre-dawn sky, I found myself playing this song through a tape cassette adapter plugged into my boxy Zen jukebox. Few songs have captured a mood so perfectly. At the same time, this is a song about personal comfort, an acknowledgment that what you are may not be perfect, but lovable just the same. And if someone doesn't like that? Tough shit for them, not you.

5. The Tain
Album: The Tain

This might be cheating, but it's my list so to hell with rules. The Tain is, in reality, five songs combined into one on a single EP. Five distinguishable movements: drunken seaside bar shanty that goes from swaying to aggressive; a rain-soaked travelogue that catches flight at points; a creepy, female-sung verse that sounds lifted from some nightmarish carnival; a thatched overcoat punk ballad that leads into some of the prettiest, most soaring sounds the band has ever recorded. It's a strange journey that rewards every full listen.

4. The Mariner's Revenge Song
Album: Picaresque

There may be no song that better captures the spirit of The Decemberists as they are most widely known than this, a sprawling dirge of a parable told by its lead to a pursued quarry within the stomach of a whale that has swallowed them both. Yeah, really. The story gives the backstory, the motive for the pursuit, and inspires a bit of a rooting interest in this vengeful man.

3. 16 Military Wives
Album: Picaresque

I tend to stay away from most politically-charged tunes, but there's something funny about the bitten-tongue patriotism in Meloy's lyrics here. It also doesn't hurt that it's absolutely one of the most fun songs of the band's to listen to. It takes its fair share of pokes at the national way of doing things that still manage to ring surprisingly true, eight and a half years after its release.

2. July, July!
Album: Castaways and Cutouts

Mixed like a modern-day Beatles remaster with percussion and acoustic strings in one ear and electric strings in another, this song manages to be sonically unique even when it features one of the more typical instrument arrangements for this band (drums, guitars, bass, keyboard; no calliope or accordion or any of that!). Bonus: this song really isn't very political, but the YouTube uploader here decided to affix a picture of a butterfly with "eScoailist" beneath it, and that's made the video's comments hysterical, naturally.

1. On the Bus Mall
Album: Picaresque

Stereogum and I agree. Rather easily the best song in their catalog, this song combines the best of the band's musicianship and songwriting with touching, heart-rending lyrics of two companions' life on the road. Much in the way Interpol's "Untitled" kicks off Turn On the Bright Lights with music that defines its environment, that atmosphere of the companions' world here is set early: the empty, windy, rain-soaked street feeling carries in from the end of "Engine Driver" and lingers, lacing Meloy's lyrics with a dark night feeling that's simultaneously shiver-inducing and reminiscent of the warm blanket feeling you get while trying to avoid such things. It's beautifully done.

Review: Disclosure - "Settle"

Basically by rule, pure dance albums are not meant to be listened to in headphones. You're supposed to hear these tracks EQed through a DJ's board and pumped out a stack or three as you scuff soles on a dance floor. And when you hear it that way - with or without some substance help - it's far removed from the headphone sound.

This can make it difficult to gauge how "good" a dance album can be when you take it away from its proper environs. Can you make enough different and interesting beats to make an album that's an enjoyable listen at home, where the flashiest dance move might only be a toe tap?

English duo Disclosure have come pretty close to doing just that on "Settle," a debut that has gone to No. 1 on British charts and peaked at 38 thus far in America. So there's little chance of denying their mass appeal. Given that the closest I usually come to this musical circle is dance rock like Franz Ferdinand or mash-ups with danceable elements like Girl Talk, I'm in new territory, but I had to see what the fuss was about, and if that appeal reached me like it has so many others.

Instead of going sample-heavy, Disclosure opted to stuff their album was guest vocals. Eight of "Settle's" 14 tracks have a credited feature in their titles, and those turn out to be the album's strongest tracks, typically. "Latch," "White Noise," "You & Me" and "Help Me Lose My Mind" are all stand-outs and feature guest vocals from Sam Smith, Aluna Francis of AlunaGeorge, Eliza Doolittle and Hannah Reid of London Grammar, respectively. They also form a set of bookends, sandwiching a midsection of the album that loses most of the momentum the first handful of tracks establish.

"Stimulation" pulses and buzzes, but never really goes anywhere. "Second Chance" has a chopped vocal sampling that doesn't really seem to jive with its mishmash of backing instruments. "Grab Her!" manages to be fun, but suffers from the same affliction as "Stimulation" in that the track never takes you anywhere, and so you're left to float in sound that just becomes background ambiance after a couple minutes.

Pardoning the less-than-stellar midsection, there's quite a bit to like on "Settle." The album mixes it up, but not quite enough to keep some tracks from blending into the background and losing bits of interest. There are a handful of tracks I'll come back to - I enjoy the hell out of "Latch" - but it might take a dance floor and a host of attractive people to get me into the rest.

Grade: 7.0/10

Top 10 Albums of 2013 (So Far)

2012 is a tough musical act to follow, but so far, 2013 is holding its own. Here's a collection of my 10 favorite albums from the year's first half, sorted by artist. And the greatest thing about this list? There are nearly three times as many not listed that could each stake a claim near the top by year's end, and that's before the rest of the year even gets its turn.

Ain't music grand?


Everything Everything - Arc

A quartet of eccentric Englishmen got together and made an album that's got touches of modern British rock in its more pop-leaning hooks (a bit of everything from Arctic Monkeys to Muse). Singer Jonathan Higgs leans on his falsetto to carry the majority of the album's tracks, and once that style and your ears get acquainted, the album becomes a fun listen, especially through the first four songs.

Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic

If Everything Everything are a bit delightfully weird, Foxygen are...well, just sort of weird weird. There's definitely charm in there, but with Sam France's vocals reminding you more of Lou Reed than Alex Turner and odd lines like "the aliens and armory backboned her cigar store" sprinkled throughout, "We Are..." may resist your attempts to get familiar. But persistence pays off, especially with the closing flourishes like the ones on "Shuggie" and "Oh Yeah."

Local Natives - Hummingbird

A lot of what made Local Natives' 2009 "Gorilla Manor" so endearing was how much fun everyone involved seemed to be having on it. Tracks like "Sun Hands" and "Camera Talk," filled with joyous shouting and exuberant piano mashing over pounded drums, were immediately winning and captivating. It seems a bit of an odd choice, in that light, for Local Natives to dial things back and refine the more serious side of their music on "Hummingbird," a release just as strong as "Gorilla Manor" but for wholly different reasons. It's emotional and sincere, deprived of exuberance but shimmeringly pretty in its execution, thanks to strong vocal work from Taylor Rice and Kelcey Ayer.

Mikal Cronin - MCII

A collection of immediately accessible, poppy fuzz-rock tracks that sure sound like the exploits of a converted punk songwriter. There's enough to tap your toes to while still feeling you can bob your head and drum on your desk at the same time. Standouts "Weight" and "Shout It Out" will give you your pop fix; "Change" and "See It My Way" will indulge the more rocking side of things; and "Don't Let Me Go" balances things out with a more casual vibe.

The National - Trouble Will Find Me

Expectation is a difficult thing to conquer. It had been three years since The National released "High Violet," an excellent album that marked the beginning of the band's emergence into the "big time" and transcendence from indie act to Barclays Center headliner. It makes to look at this year's "Trouble Will Find Me" as one of the year's most hotly anticipated record's in my book, given my penchant for the band and the impossibly long three-year wait. The band draws criticism for being deliberate and being far from immediately accessible, but patience in uncovering each of Matt Berninger's lyrics and the complex construction of each song (even if delivered simply) pays off in spades. As it always has with this band.

Phosphorescent - Muchacho

Sometimes, imperfection is what makes a thing great. In this case, it's Matthew Houck's occasional vocal cracks that make some of the tracks on the wonderful "Muchacho" stick with you. They add emotional flair to "Song For Zula." Heck, even the very first vocal note on "Down To Go" is slightly cracked. Really, it almost sounds off-putting when described that simply, but Houck's tortured and weathered vocal style is what sets "Muchacho" apart and part of what makes it such a memorable record, and that's not even scratching the surface of the song construction and instrumentation, varying from bar-closing piano dirges to the spirit-raising "A Charm / A Blade" and wonderfully manic "The Quotidian Beasts."

Sigur Ros - Kveikur

The typical M.O. for Sigur Ros is to craft sweeping, gorgeously ambiance with their music, a familiar build that ran out of magic on their last release, 2012's "Valtari." Down to a trio from a quartet, Jonsi Birgisson and Co. have made a darker, more ominous album in "Kveikur." That said, the album isn't without its high points either - "Rafstraumur" is the best example - and it's something of a redemption in the face of "Valtari," far more reminiscent of the transcendant "Agaetis Byrjun" than anything more recent.

Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob

Crossing over from folk to dancepop isn't a journey you see many artists make. I mean, I sure don't, anyway. But we find ourselves here with sisterly duo Tegan and Sara Quin doing just that, releasing an album of synthy goodness that hails as a noticeable departure from their previous work. It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that something out of the norm for a group seven releases in would sound so polished and confident, but the sisters pull it off with aplomb. Standouts include "Goodbye, Goodbye" and "I'm Not Your Hero."





Torres - Torres

I'm many, many listens deep in this self-made debut from Nashville singer/songwriter Mackenzie Scott and still can't figure out if she's actually 22 or someone well older. The themes and emotion with which she delivers the songs framing those themes belie her age; they make her seem wizened. In truth, given autobiographical songs like "Moon & Back" and "Don't Run Away, Emilie," you have little reason to doubt that weathered wisdom. This is one of the most assured debuts I've listened to in a long time; it's open-hearted and sad and touching and frightening and intimate and personal. Listen to it through headphones and let it envelop you.


Young Galaxy - Ultramarine

It's hard to start an album with three better songs than the trio that introduces "Ultramarine," a four-hit combo that sets the stage for a strong album, even if it peaks a little early. But it's not as if everything turns to sad after "New Summer," far from it. "What We Want," "Out the Gate Backwards," "In Fire" and the rest of the album hold all of their water just fine, thank you very much. "Ultramarine" is a very summery album, meant for the sun.





Don't see your favorite here? It may yet find its way atop the list by year's end. And take heart: there's still a whole half of the year left for things to change.

Review: Queens of the Stone Age - "...Like Clockwork"

Six years of quiet has a way of letting some of the neon glow out of a band. So it's been for Queens of the Stone Age, the musical Megatron composed of members of Kyuss, Soundgarden and Screaming Trees, plus an extended residency from Dave Grohl. QotSA has spent the six years since 2007's "Era Vulgaris" in recycle mode, re-issuing their self-titled debut and "Rated R," and touring them for a couple years in the interim. There was some splintering; lead singer Josh Homme joined Them Crooked Vultures, Dean Fertita joined Jack White's Dead Weather and drummer Joey Castillo left the band.

But, if the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Suede have shown anything thus far in 2013, it's that old dogs still have plenty of potential for new tricks. Whether those tricks turn out to be any good, well, that's far from a sure thing.

One personal knock against QotSA that I've held is I often found a lot of their tracks indistinguishable from the next. There was a sleepiness around their brand of metal that I found hard to full enjoy or become enveloped in. Still, I felt I owed it to my curiosity to investigate "...Like Clockwork," and I can't say I'm emerging on the other side all that disappointed.

There's a bit of the woozy-metal feel to opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," but it's mitigated with a few jolts - think of a "kick," a la "Inception" - of guitar and tempo shift that scrape some of the sleep off the tracks eyes. And it stays awake for a few tracks. New drummer Jon Theodore's straightforward percussion keeps "I Sat By the Ocean" moving, while the slow cook of "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" may slow the fuse's burn, but doesn't interrupt it.

Middle tracks "My God is the Sun" and the guest-laden (Elton John??) "Fairweather Friends" are the album's stand-outs, powerful, anthemic (by QotSA standards) tracks that seem to put the band's members at their best throughout. And the antithetical, grimy shuffle of "Smooth Sailing" punctuates the album's strongest stretch. Unfortunately, the 11 1/2 minutes of the album's final two tracks do little to carry on the momentum, with "I Appear Missing" tending to meander and bury an otherwise interesting guitar hook and the title track closer, a brooding piano ballad that leads into a swirl of guitars that tries to climax but never quite gets there, feeling out of place.

Fans of the band's more traditional stylings should leave feeling satisfied. "Clockwork" is a good mix of old and new, but it feels lacking in ambition and seems to fall short of whatever bar it has set, as if it wanted to be more and just couldn't quite reach the summit.

Grade: 7.75/10

Review: The National - "Trouble Will Find Me"

One of the questions I ask myself the more I listen to a song or album is: "am I being fair?" It seems tough to project an objective air about something you so openly profess your love for, as I have on a few occasions with the National, a band that has been a staple in my library for nearly (only) seven years.

With the release of their sixth LP, 4AD's "Trouble Will Find Me," I began asking myself that question even before I heard a word. Would I be fair to this record and judge it on its own merits, or would my history with the band color my glasses rose and render objectivity impossible? Fortunately, I think I've been able to hear this record objectively, and can evaluate it as impartially as I hoped I would be able to.

Opener "I Should Live In Salt," a tune Matt Berninger penned about his brother - and documentarian - Tom, starts off with an element immediately unusual to the band: strummed guitar chords. Brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner have a penchant and preference for picked notes, so to hear a strummed acoustic open a National album feels like it'd be indicative of a sea change.

In reality, though, that's pretty far from the truth. "Trouble" continues on the path "High Violet" began to blaze three years earlier: a more expansive sound in production, metered energy with moments of soaring emotion. Sufjan Stevens's influence was fairly evident on "High Violet," and more than a few of the vocal harmonies on "Trouble" evoke the feeling that he had something to do with it.

Singles "Demons" and "Don't Swallow the Cap" follow up, with the former packing more punch than the latter, especially once comfort sets in with its unusual time signature (me not being an expert, I can't recall if it was decided to be 8/7 or 7/4 or something else entirely). That trend continues into "Fireproof," the album's weakest track, which doesn't meander but doesn't ever get any more interesting as it goes.

What saves the album from a downward spiral starting right then and there is "Sea of Love," arguably the album's finest track, as the next to play. It serves as a transition that brings us out of the album's prologue and into the heart of the order. Energized by some trademark Bryan Devendorf drum rolls and  a (restrained) yelling Berninger quizzing a "Jo," (or "Joe?") "what did Harvard teach you?"

"Trouble's" second half is pretty emotionally evocative, even by National standards. Berninger's smoother, post-smoking voice has a softer feel to it, and rarely has he seemed more vulnerable than on tracks like "I Need My Girl," the "oldest" of the album's tracks with live performances dating back to 2011. "This Is the Last Time" feels like the signature National song of the post-"Boxer" era, a calm starter that blossoms around Berninger's heart-on-sleeve lyrics until the frontman is shouting "I won't be vacant anymore / I won't be waiting anymore" as a proclamation of recovery...only to have the song grind to a halt as he confesses, "Jenny, I am in trouble."

Each of the album's second-half songs have a signature characteristic (or more). "Graceless" and its traded drum hits; "Slipped" and its poignant tag "I'll be a friend and a fuck-up, and everything / But I'll never be anything you ever want me to be;" "Humiliation" and its woozy lyrical drift; "Pink Rabbits" and its wonderful piano hook; and "Hard to Find" with its perfectly executed Sharon Van Etten cameo.

All of these things are solid elements and make for strong songs. They remind the listener that yes, this is the National you're listening to, but not quite the National you've grown up with. There is no "Mr. November" or "Fake Empire" on this album, no song that immediately registers as something really important and with limitless repeat play potential.

It's funny how that's the standard now with this band, and the one against which they'll be judged for as long as they continue to make music. If that's perceived as a slight, it's only because there are no fatal flaws on this album. There are flaws, to be sure, and those flaws are a bit more noticeable than those on the previous three albums. Its high points register about as high as the pinnacles of those previous albums, though, and "Trouble Will Find Me" will belong in the discussion of the year's best albums.

Grade: 9.0/10