Year End List #1: Music

The end of the year must be a breeze for anyone in charge of content for most media outlets. All you’ve got to is repackage short media clips, put them into some sort of coherent hierarchy and, boom, you’ve got a year end list that you can run and rerun for three weeks. VH1 practically wrote the book on this shit and people eat it up so much that they’ve devoted ALL of their programming to the regurgitated-media-clip-with-sarcastic-unkown-comedian-commentary format. It’s a great way to mail it in so I’m going to go ahead and take a page from that playbook and do the same with some year end top six lists. I don’t post all that much so I won’t really have the luxury of simply repackaging old posts but let’s be honest people, Slurry Beta and its staff aren’t exactly held to very high standards….or any at all.

Top Six Best Albums of the Year

There are no others. These are the best.

6. M. Ward, Post-War

Sounds like: one of your dad’s records, remastered and updated somehow. But only if your dad was a massive John Fahey fan and apparently there were about five of them back in the day.

Best When Listened To: late at night when alone and inebriated. There aren’t any of those moments that are inexplicably loud that might jar you out of any attempt to fall asleep while retaining your dinner, if you know what I mean. You probably don’t.

5. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Sounds Like: Not really sure, but it’s awesome.

Best When Listened To: while at Bobby Digital’s house. He won’t stop talking about how much he loves female singers.

4. Josh Ritter, Animal Years

Sounds like: music made by some dude in northern Idaho sitting in a one room shack for an entire winter thinking about war, Biblical metaphors, and animals. Definitely the best song writing this year.

Best When Listened To: Sunday mornings when making breakfast. You got up early. You’ve got supplies for French toast and all day to make it. You put on a pot of coffee and flip on NPR only to hear a couple of jackasses talking about cars. Good time for Animal Years.

3. Band of Horses, Everything All of the Time

Sounds like: My Morning Jacket meets The Shins. They have a few drinks, the Shins convince MMJ to shorten their songs and make them feel guilty about putting weird carnival music on their last album, Z.

Best When Listened To: on a packed bus or train during a weekday when you need 45 straight minutes of music as you stare out the window. At least that’s when I listen to it and it seems to be uplifting and poppy enough temper my fear of crowds. In case you didn’t know, I’m from a small town and people scare me.

2. Built to Spill, You in Reverse

Sounds Like: a great rock band returning to form but teetering on the edge of a bit too much “noodling” as my friend, Seven E, would call it.

Best When Listened To: driving at night. Of course, I don’t know that for sure since I don’t have a car but that’s what I think of when I listen to it. Man, this is a pointless blog post. Sorry, people.

1. Sparklehorse, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain

Sounds like: the result of a heavily medicated, musical genius shut-in taking 5 years to make an album.

Best When Listened To: a few years after you’ve nearly lost your legs from passing out for 12 hours with them curled under your body. No, it didn’t happen to me but it did happen to the lead singer, Mark Linkous, about 7 years ago. The music’s been really great since then but he apparently still needs help walking. If you ask me, that makes for a perfect album!

Honorable mentions

Bobby Bare, Jr., The Longest Meow; Midlake, The Trials of Van Occupanther; The Decemberists, The Crane Wife; Mojave 3, Puzzles Like you; Shearwater, Palo Santo; The Secret Machines, Ten Silver Drops; Centr-o-matic, Fort Recovery.

That’s it, folks. If you disagree with my list here, go ahead and log onto Blogger and create your own blog, asshole.