Sloth

Unlike last year, which I spent mostly in a haze of reissue nostalgia with the equivalent of aural comfort food, this year was split in half between great new-to-me discoveries (The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Skeletonwitch, I Was A King) and incredibly solid late-career offerings, sandwiched between two absolutely titanic metal releases: Mastodon’s Crack The Skye and Baroness’ Blue Record. I also spent a summer getting weirdly addicted to 70s and 80s dub records, for which I have no real explanation except that Mad Professor, Scientist and King Tubby are awesome.

I make no claim to listening to every single album released in a given year, so this “best of” is my favourite of whatever penetrated my consciousness in the last year of this kidney stone of a decade.

Mastodon – Crack The Skye
Shrugging off the claims of hipster metal* that they’ve been sagged with since Leviathan, Mastodon take their already-existing penchant for prog-rock that was circling around the edges of their music and blows it up to epic proportions. Crack The Skye is a no-shit concept album about (among other things) astral travel, Russian mystics, teenage suicide and the Devil, pretty much in that order. 70s prog metal is the cornerstone musically, but that doesn’t stop the occasional detour into surf rock or Rush-style time-signature mindfuckery. Crack The Skye is the sound of a band for whom barriers officially no longer exist. And just for the record, I would murder somebody for a Mastodon/Boris collaboration.

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Fitzgerald be damned, because it turns out some American stories do have a second act. Dinosaur Jr., once on the short-list of Bands That Will Never Ever Reform Because They Fucking Hate Each Other along with the Huskers and The Smiths, buried whatever hatchet they had about five years back and, this year, cranked out a perfect companion to 2007’s Beyond. Actually, Farm might edge out Beyond - it keeps the trademarked massive Mascis guitars but adds some sharper songwriting and a weird freak-country vibe to some tracks. This might not be as flat-out essential as Bug or You’re Living All Over Me, but at least this past year I played Farm more than I did those. There’s something to be said for aging slackfully.

Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions
There’s a difficulty with putting Sunn O))) on this list, because I genuinely thought this was the best album I heard this year, but given what Sunn O))) is – the absolute extreme end of the experimental metal/drone spectrum – it’s sorta hard to recommend cold. This is the kind of music that reveals itself slowly, over many listens, and one that requires a lot of the listener in order to appreciate. That said, the last track “Alice” (a reference to John Coltrane’s wife, which makes more sense than you might think) is a revelation, starting from the usual doors-of-Hell-opening dronescape of detuned distortion horror and slowly crawling it’s way towards an airier, disarmingly beautiful resolution. Monoliths & Dimensions is not friendly, and it won’t meet you halfway. But it’s the most uncompromising, powerful music I heard this year.

Baroness - Blue Record
I loooooved Baroness the second I heard their first full-length, Red Album, back in 2007, which was basically Mastodon if Mastodon met at a Fugazi concert instead of High On Fire. The Blue Record ups that ante quite considerably – instead of the songs feeling like a collection of admittedly awesome riffage stitched together, they sound more like, well, songs. The album is sequenced together incredibly well, so much so that when a song from up pops up in a random mix I almost invariably feel compelled to load up the whole thing and listen to it start to finish. The only potential misstep here is the opening to “Steel That Sleeps The Eye”, which is probably the closest I’ll ever get to liking Kansas, but even that resolves itself into much asskickery. Put it in a cage deathmatch with Crack The Skye for metal record of the year.

Polvo- In Prism
Even among indie and alternative fans of the 90s, Polvo was a criminally underappreciated band. The mathiest of the so-called math rockers, Polvo’s wild tunings and lurching rhythms would make even Lee Ranaldo pause. The albums weren’t always successful front-to-back, but even the songs that didn’t work certainly held your attention. Flash forward twelve or so years and suddenly Polvo resurfaces with a record that keeps what made them so interesting but turning up the rock portion of their math-rock equation to much more satisfying levels. Perhaps it’s the inclusion of a new drummer that makes Polvo Mk. II a better, stronger rock outfit, but most of the credit must go to Ash Bowie’s maturing voice, which winds it’s way through the hills and valleys of In Prism more organically than before. The year’s best surprise.

Shrinebuilder - Shrinebuilder
Most supergroups stink. Sad, but true. All too often, supergroups try to find some tepid middle ground that manages to satisfy none of what makes the members’ original bands musical impulses. So imagine my bewilderment at Shrinebuilder, a band composed of Dale Crover (Melvins), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus), Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep) and Scott Kelly (Neuosis), which manages the trick of leaving each members’ unmistakable music imprint intact while creating something unique to all of them. Cisneros is the key here, as his bass lines have the same kind of loopy hypnotism found on those great Om records, and clearly the rest of the band builds on it. Best track is unfortunately the first one, “Solar Benediction”, which manages to move from the stoner vibe you’d expect from these four dudes into some odd and off-puttingly beautiful territory. Also: best album cover of the year, hands down.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal
I’m getting tired of telling people that Sonic Youth are still good. Before The Eternal, they hit a career high with me with 2002’s Murray Street, the best guitar record you’ve never heard, and the subsequent records were almost as good. But The Eternal sees them finally leaving the warmth of the major labels for the mighty Matador Records, and as if to celebrate their return to indie status Da Yooth hand us a record that could snuggle comfortably between Sister and Daydream Nation. There’s a glorious diffusion reminiscent of the old SST days on The Eternal that was missing from this decade’s Geffen releases, but Sonic Youth have progressed beyond noise-for-noise-sake and now use sounds and tones like a grand master uses paint. You know, at this point they might actually be eternal; it wouldn’t surprise me to awaken from cryogenic sleep one hundred years from now to discover they’re still making awesome, awesome records.

Slayer - World Painted Blood
Holy fuck, what a kick in the teeth this record is. Listening to this is like watching a bouncer in his fifties who looks like he might be past his prime suddenly turn around and kick the living shit out of a gang of teenagers. After getting Dave Lombardo (who is to drums what a jackhammer is to a sidewalk) back in the fold on Christ Illusion, Slayer shift into high gear and deliver what might be their best record since Seasons In The Abyss. The thrash songs alone should shame bands half their age.

Tortoise - Beacons Of Ancestorship
Another under-the-radar release from Tortoise, and a huge improvement on their last somewhat tepid record. Tortoise never released anything that I would call bad, but they also seemed to be one of those bands that for better or worse were not capable of surprise anymore, which is sad because they were maybe the most innovative bands of the 90s, fusing rock dynamics with jazz instrumentation and a cut’n'paste Krautrock mentality. But Beacons Of Ancestorship find Tortoise stretching out in all directions, from the hilarious techno deconstruction of “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” to the hardcore bass blowout of the unpronouceable “Yinxianghechengqi”, Tortoise manage to tweak and fiddle with genres while still being unmistakably Tortoise. The second half of the record retreats into more familiar territory, but that shouldn’t colour the highs of the first.

* In other words, bands known outside of the readership of Terrorizer magazine.