Top 10 Albums of 2011, First Half

Every Christmastime, a group of my college friends who either live in Massachusetts or are usually visiting family there for the holiday, get together for an evening of sushi and conversation; for most of us, it's the only time during the year we see each other. And this past Christmas, Tin Man and I were talking about how it's hard to keep up with bands we like, much less going through back catalogs of those bands who've been recording for a long time, because there's been so much new music we've been getting exposed to and enjoying. And while that's not a bad thing, I always have this edge of concern when I look back over past top 10 album lists and see so many recently released albums. I just don't want to turn into one of those people who thinks all "current" music is great and whatever came before is crap. I see it as something prevalent among students at Bluebell, and wonder if it's age-related - certainly some of the songs I discovered in college remain among my most cherished - or whether it's a general human temptation, the cult of the new, that old Progressivist strain, so much a part of the American psyche through the centuries. Yet here I am again, and can only write what I know, and for the first half of 2011, three of the five albums have all been released in the last six months.

Once again Grooveshark isn't playing nice with me, so there's no playlist at the end. I'll substitute lists of recommended tracks and let you explore iTunes, YouTube, or other avenues of online listening.

artist - album - year of release

5 - Spiro - Lightbox - 2009. During the 12 days between Christmas and Epiphany (you know, like the song with a forest of pear trees), Peter Gabriel's Real World Records label had a special sale where each day there was a deep discount on one album, with two of Peter's own albums bookending the promotion. Spiro's Lightbox was one of the albums I picked up, intrigued by the idea of a strings-only instrumentals-only band based in Bristol, England and influenced by classical and Celtic music. The four members of the group play violin, viola, mandolin, accordion, acoustic guitar, and cello; their music is exacting, cinematic, and produced close to the vest, steering a middle road between slick and folksy. For as much as I expected a sameness to the sound of the tracks, I was pleasantly surprised to find many different vibes and atmospheres developed, and some quirky moments that became more enjoyable the more I lived with the album (which, in my experience, tends to be true more often of classical music than other genres). So the fusion felt both organic and successful, and while I can't say I'll likely have this album in my car or on repeat in my apartment, there's a time and place for all things, and in a particular mood, this album is just right. Recommended tracks: A Small Light in the Far West, The White Hart, I Fear You as I Fear Ghosts, Wolves.

4 - Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge - 2011. While not quite as well known as her husband, Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn, with her primary instrument of clawhammer banjo, is steadily building a following of fans who appreciate her eccentric and often clever style of music which draws equally on Western folk & Celtic traditions and Eastern composition approaches, mostly from China. This means her albums have a wide swing of the pendulum, City of Refuge being no exception, as the Appalachian folk of "Divine Bell" moves to the almost-pop of "Chains" and the social justice storytelling of "Corner Girl" and "Dreams of Nectar" contrast with the madrigal-inspired love lyrics of "Ballad of Treason." There's "Bring Me My Queen," a gorgeous and academic meditation on feminism, and "Last Train," about the longing to simply run away and leave all your cares behind. Diversity of thought and diversity of execution are pretty much the watchwords for this album, and some of it works coherently, but some of it doesn't. She played a show at Bluebell last December, and watching her live was the impetus for picking up the album when it was released a month later. All in all, the first half of the record is stronger, especially musically, while the latter half drags in more than one place. I often find myself listening to the first 2/3rds of the record and then jumping back to the beginning. However, the title track itself is one of the best-written, almost-perfectly performed songs I've heard in years. That one song on its own earned the album a place in this list, and everything else is just icing. Recommended tracks: City of Refuge, Bring Me My Queen, Chains, Burn Thru.

3 - Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues - 2011. Described to me initially as "six guys with beards from Seattle" Fleet Foxes' second album was very much an impulse buy, having heard only a few snippets from the first couple of tracks. Let's be clear about something from the start: most all their music is a rehash of other bands. The Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel are everywhere; likewise CSNY and America have a heavy influence. There's a little bit of Jim Croce, a smidge of Nick Drake, and a healthy dollop of British folk-rock/early prog bands like Pentangle and Renaissance. The interesting thing about Fleet Foxes is how they put all these influences together, making a collage of sound that's something more than pastiche and yet not quite homage. In other words, their music is largely but not entirely the sum of its parts, and it's that ineffable something which makes them interesting beyond a few cursory listens. The album has been intricately crafted, several songs making reference to others and the final track nodding to almost every other. Largely about the feeling of being lost in the world, some tracks address this theme squarely (the title track, "Montezuma," "Someone You'd Admire," "Lorelai") and others more indirectly, with perhaps the most accessible of these being "Battery Kinzie" which includes lyrics like "I came to your window, threw a stone and waited/At the door a stranger stood; the stranger's voice said nothing good/I turned to walk the frozen ground alone/all the way home." I haven't run into anything else in our day and age which is so close to early Paul Simon and yet can stand on its own.

Not every song is a home run; the few that hang their hat on lead singer Robin Pecknold's voice for grounding, rather than the music, tend to falter. Only once does the album descend into cliche, but the song in question, "Blue Spotted Tail," is almost unlistenable. At the same time, once in a while their ambitions show through, and often it's quite good: on the longest track, "The Shrine/An Argument," musical tension flip-flops in stark and satisfying ways within a proggy pastoral vibe before levelling to the musical equivalent of sunshine over the ocean, only to dissolve into a chaos of muted brass notes at the end. It's by far the most fascinating track on the record. Overall, the freshness of the band and album stems from the fact that the musicians and songwriters they fashion themselves after are, with perhaps the exceptions of CSNY and Nick Drake, very much out of vogue in today's music scene. (Everyone pays lip service to The Beach Boys, of course, but no one seems to actually listen to them much.) That Fleet Foxes can shamelessly borrow from all these disparate acts and then meld them into something more is an admirable feat. It's just once in a while on the record, things are a little too baldly stated: the opening line of "Bedouin Dress" is "If to borrow is to take and not return, then I have borrowed all my lonesome life." Just a little more creativity wouldn't go amiss. Recommended tracks: Montezuma, Sim Sala Bim, Helplessness Blues, The Shrine/An Argument, Grown Ocean.

2 - Pink Martini - Hang On Little Tomato - 2004. In February I was asked to bartend a mocktails party for the undergrad social house here at Bluebell that I'm the faculty/staff advisor for. And so I asked my colleague and friend Frosty for good cocktail party music, emphasis on "good." This is the album he gave me, which became an all-around win because it's so good, it's playable anywhere. I mentioned in the above review of Spiro's Lightbox that it satisfies a certain mood. Well, Pink Martini has been able to fit into almost any mood I've been in, winter, spring, or summer. A "little orchestra," Pink Martini has featured a mostly-stable roster of a dozen musicians trained in both classical and modern music, presided over by founder and pianist Thomas M. Lauderdale. However, my favorite definition of the group is by Lauderdale himself, who is quoted as saying Pink Martini is "music of the world without being world music. If the United Nations had a house band in 1962, hopefully Pink Martini would be that band." This album, the group's second of five to date, has 14 tracks, half of them sung in another language, from French to Italian, Japanese to Croatian. Some are covers; many are originals written by members of the group. The production is tight and glossy; if you think of a 1960s performance style recorded with 21st-Century equipment and production values, you'll have a good sense of the overall sound.

Along with the varied languages, the genres vary from lounge-act to singer-songwriter, or a film score to something just shy of a night at the opera. Singing duties are given to numerous individuals, with the range of a sultry female alto performance in "Lilly" to warbling baritones in "Kikuchiyo to Mohshimasu." A breezy, music-hall solo in "The Gardens of Sampson & Beasley" precedes a low, ruminating vocal filled with unrequited longing in "Veronique." The album earns the number 2 spot from me for two reasons. First, it plays constantly with tone, range, atmosphere, and execution, and everything is spot on. It's rare that I've heard an album so professionally done and yet so emotionally warm. Second, the songs have that rare quality of transporting a listener to another place and time, and letting him or her wander there for a while. This is expansive music, not narrow and not demanding of strict attention at all times. As someone who tends to like music you have to think about, this attitude is a welcome change from that, and the band does a great job of encouraging listeners to slip away on their gentle melodies and comfortable rhythms. It's a cocktail using top shelf spirits, and mixed well. Recommended tracks: The Gardens of Sampson & Beasley, Veronique, Dansez-Vous, U Plavu Zoru, Una Notte a Napoli.

1 - Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane - 2011. Though in the last handful of years Alison Krauss has released a best-of collection and the phenomenal Raising Sand album with Robert Plant and T-Bone Burnett, it's been seven years since the last proper AKUS album. But their unique brand of bluegrass hasn't aged a day. 2004's Lonely Runs Both Ways, made relatively quickly after the amazing success of the group's live album in 2002, had a rushed feeling to it, as well as a bit of everything but the kitchen sink thrown in. While not a bad album, it felt bloated, especially since half a dozen of the tracks were obvious b-side candidates tossed in to ride the wave of the group's success. The stronger songs were sometimes drowned out. Musically leaner, and lyrically perhaps even lonelier, Paper Airplane is a stunning achievement which bridges the band's usual haunts of bluegrass, newgrass, folk, country, and pop in a natural, almost off-hand way. Three standout tracks propelled it into the number 1 spot for this half of the year. The opener and title track, penned by one of the group's standard go-to songwriters, Robert Lee Castleman, is a true songwriter's song, delicate and powerful at the same time, filled with quiet longing and honest, heartbreaking reality. It's a showcase for Krauss' voice, and she displays a sage knowledge of when to have restraint and also when to aim for the rooftops.

The album closer, a cover of Jackson Browne's "My Opening Farewell" is perhaps one of the most balanced songs between Krauss' voice and the band's music, both spiraling together like steel cords, resulting in a weighty interpretation at once poignant and joyful. If the relationship spoken of in "Paper Airplane" is fragile, the relationship here is affectionate. Though both relationships are ending and both passions are going, the range between the emotions involved is varied, and real, and performed very, very well. In between these songs (in fact, smack in the middle of the album) is the third outstanding track, a cover of Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day." Now, this song in particular, about the stark need of one person for another, has been significant to me for over a decade now, my first exposure to it being John Sayles' 1999 film Limbo, a movie still intensely important to me in several ways. The AKUS version is simply the best I've ever heard. It takes me outside of time for a few brief moments. And that's really all I can say about it.

A strength of the band has always been its shared vocal duties; when Dan Tyminski is singing, Krauss is almost always playing violin, adding another texture to the music. Tyminski's distinctive voice has, if possible, gotten even better over the past half-decade. The three tracks he sings on ("Dust Bowl Children," "On the Outside Looking In," and "Bill and Bonita Butler"), rollicking tunes all, suit his talents well and help broaden the band's palette; Krauss' voice is beautiful but has no grit, which is just fine with me, but it's nice to have some vocals the metal gutters can shiver to, not just the glass windowpanes. Various songwriters, all talented, round out the rest of the album, all the songs originals save the two covers already mentioned. Krauss' brother Viktor, another AKUS writing mainstay, adds the catchy "Lie Awake," while Aiofe O'Donovan, the lead voice and sometime writer for Crooked Still (who made an appearance in this past December's top 5 albums) contributes the sad and sprawling "Lay My Burden Down." The ever-sharp Tim O'Brien writes "On the Outside Looking In," and Lori McKenna with two co-writers gives us the anthemic "My Love Follows You Where You Go," one of only two "happy" songs on the record.

I follow a group blog which AKUS member Ron Block (banjo and guitar) is part of, and in talking about the band getting back together to record and then tour for Paper Airplane, he talks frequently of how they're like a family, and how easy it is to come back together as musicians and friends (even though of course there's the usual number of arguments about music which happen). I would imagine that's the only way a band can stay together for just about 25 years. That a 25-year old band can still be making fresh, enjoyable, captivating music together is rare and to be cherished. I'm excited to be seeing AKUS live for the first time at the end of July, and quite pleased to say their new record is #1 for me this time around. Recommended tracks: Paper Airplane, My Love Follows You Where You Go, Dimming of the Day, Bill and Bonita Butler, My Opening Farewell.