Top 15 of 2011: #15

The blog always veers dangerously close to inactivity in December.  It’s the end of the semester, grading picks up, and after several months of grinding away, my lazy arse gets immeasurably lazier.  My previous blog bit the dust last December, and my threes of faithful readers probably noticed that things have been a little quiet around here lately.  I’m rallying, though, and it always seems like the best way for me to do that is to start writing about music.

I’m starting a week later than I intended, but roughly every other day between now and the end of the month I’ll be sharing my top 15 albums of 2011.  One caveat: I don’t make any claim that these are the best albums of the year.  I don’t even know what that means.  Hundreds of albums are released each year, and while I listen to a lot of them (a quick inventory of my hard drive shows me that I have roughly 300 albums released in 2011), I don’t listen to most of them, and there are certain artists and genres I avoid altogether.

So I don’t have the slightest idea what the best albums were in 2011.  All I can attest to is the albums that meant something to me.  These are my favorites, the ones that set my toes tapping or slugged me firmly in the ear-holes.  I present them in no particular order.  The numerical listing at the top of each post is file-keeping more than anything else.  I suppose #1 (when I get around to it) is my absolute favorite, but any of these are, in my opinion, worth a listen.

And away we go.

*****

Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!

I’m starting with the album that will be the least surprising to those who know me, or who have followed either of my blogs in the last couple of years.

Elbow’s Build a Rocket Boys! doesn’t scale the same heights as its gorgeous cloudburst of a predecessor (2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid), but it takes that album’s strengths and stretches them in exciting directions.  From the syncopated groove of “With Love” to the mariachi horns of “High Ideals,” Rocket Boys sees the band trying new things without sacrificing any of the emotional honesty that has always been its trademark.  Some of frontman Guy Garvey’s lyrics are more impressionistic than usual, but there’s a trio of songs in the middle of the album (“Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl,” “The Night Will Always Win,” “The River”) that are as affecting as anything he’s ever done.

The two standouts, though, are below.  The first more or less speaks for itself.  “Open Arms” is an anthem in the classic Elbow mold: a soaring, skyscraping chorus holding aloft Garvey’s poignant lyrics.  No one else does this thing like they do.

To try to describe this second song is a folly, but I’ll give it a shot.  “Lippy Kids” reaches right into my chest and gives it a squeeze, every single time I listen to it.  Full disclosure: Build a Rocket Boys! was released the day before my mom died, and while the entire album soundtracked that time and helped me come to grips with my grief, for weeks I couldn’t listen to this song without sobbing.  It is, for me, a song about getting older and about the peril of losing touch with who we were as children.  “Do they know those days are golden?” Garvey sings, and that captures it for me.  We rush through life with an eye on the future without taking the time to savor where we are.  I don’t have regrets, but I’d be lying if I said there aren’t times I wish I could relive, just to experience them, enjoy them, be in them.  “Lippy Kids” is a sepia-tinted lament, a burnished plea to remember who we are and where we come from.  It’s a deceptively subtle stunner, and if you asked me for my single favorite song of the year, this would be it.

Enemies Like This

Illness and the end of the semester have completely monopolized my time in the last week, but this article serves as a nice  little addendum to my previous post.  Here’s some more evidence that the toolboxes over at Fox News will cry about anything.  Those Republicans sure are sensitive when they’re not accusing Democrats of being too sensitive.

Fox News Business: The Muppets Are “Brainwashing” Young People to Hate the Oil Industry