Hello everyone - long time no write. I haven't been too active on the music front lately, so I'm going to try and condense the last eight weeks of luke into one succinct blog post.

Dessa - A Badly Broken Code
Genre: trip hop, hip hop



This seems to be the Jukebox's album of the year so far. I don't think any of us are completely in love with it, but all of us like it a lot. Dessa reminds me of a female version of Sage Francis for some reason. She blends singing and rap in a way that's reminiscent of old trip hop, but she is undeniably a rap artist. I like that she isn't one of those female rappers that try really hard to show off how hardcore she is. She's content to just sing/rap about a broken relationship or use her intelligent writing to her advantage. This is the first I've heard of her so I may need to swim around in her back catalogue. God knows I don't have a lot of female hip hop!

The Antlers - Hospice
Genre: indie, music to kill yourself to



I'm about six months late to the Hospice party -- probably because the name of the band is The Antlers and who the hell wants to listen to a band named that -- but it finally clicked with me today. This album is equal parts brutal and beautiful - it is heartwrenchingly sad at times and then oddly inspiring. I'm not sure that 2009 had an album that stood out quite like Hospice. It took me ten listens to even decide if I liked it or loved it. The answer is love.

The Knife - Tomorrow, In a Year
Genre: opera, electronic, fucking weird



Wow. This album is bizarre. Silent Shout was one of the best records to come out in 2006 and the much-anticipated follow-up to it is a concept opera about Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. It is torturous to listen to at times. There's five minutes of a droning sound, two minutes devoted of a high-pitched beep that makes you want to cover your ears, and some of the strangest opera singing around. It is the kind of album that most bands don't recover from: once they jump off the deep end, there's no going back to the land of normal. The album gets a little bit more Knife-y by the end of it, but at that point it's already past the point of no return.

And yet, there's something bizarrely enticing about this disc. It is fascinating in its own strange way. I find myself listening to it and wondering how the hell they made it, and then when it ends I find myself grateful that my ears are not being pummeled anymore.

Why? Alopecia
Genre: indie rock/emo jewish hip hop



The album I listened to the most in 2009 is the album that should have been my 2008 album of the year, Alopecia. For some bizarre reason I just can not stop listening to Alopecia. Yoni Wolf's brutal honesty and clever as hell wordplay just keeps me coming back over and over and over. It's addicting. I think this album is very close to being my favourite album of all time at this point. I even hooked my girlfriend/fiance/whatever on it recently which makes me like it even more. I need to find a way to stop listening to this before I get sick of it.

Massive Atack - heligoland
Genre: lounge-hop



I was afraid to listen to this album. You see, Massive Attack really defined music in the 90s, first with the seminal Blue Lines and then with one of the best sounding discs of all time, Mezzanine. You couldn't talk about trip hop without somebody mentioning Massive Attack. It was impossible.

Then the 2000s happened and Massive Attack has been irrelevant ever since. 100th Window, while a decent album, never hits the highs of previous albums and while their recent EP was interesting, it wasn't top tier material. heligoland follows this trend of being merely average and therefore extremely disappointing. Massive Attack is a great band that I have great expectations for; when they come up short and merely put out an average album, it's almost worse than not putting out anything at all, especially seeing how this album took seven years to make. I find it hard to imagine a time where Massive Attack is relevant again - time has just passed them by, I think.

RJD2 - The Colossus
genre: instrumental rock, jazz, hip hop



Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. This is one of the most frustrating albums of all time.

At first, it's really cool, a varied instrumental album that manages to make you forget about how bad The Third Hand was. Kenna is an old fave of mine and does and his voice fits in well with RJ's instrumentation. The album stagnates a bit as it goes on, but considering how low he set the bar after The Third Hand, it's tolerable.

And then track 9 happens.



Four minutes later, you're reminded of how good RJD2 used to be and how he used to completely own the world of instrumental hip-hop. It doesn't help that Illogic is one of my favourite guys in the world of hip-hop. Suddenly he's invalidated the whole album by daring to compare it to Dead Ringer. It's not even close to being as good, but that doesn't even matter. RJD2 is officially a tease. RJD2, I hate you.

It seems I work through a year's releases significantly less rampantly than some of my colleagues here - while icon could probably make a top twenty already I'm taking it easy.

Still though, initial impressions and rankings for a few choice albums:

Dessa - A Badly Broken Code
Dixon's Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eQL3BrRqM8

Can't quite boast the same highs as her debut False Hopes EP, but this is still a thoroughly excellent slice of hip-hop melancholia. There's something about this woman's voice and lyricism that just melt me - I can't think of a single female rapper quite as comfortable showing her tender side in her songs, and it's precisely that which makes her stand out. She focuses more consistently on the topic of failed relationships than on her EP; and while no one in hip-hop has covered that area as well as she does here, it still comes across as slightly contrived at times. It's also probably telling that the very best songs here (Children's Work, Dixon's Girl) are largely the ones which deviate from that lyrical formula. But after listening to A Badly Broken Code I don't want to marry Dessa any less than I did before it, so I guess that's mission accomplished on her part. She definitely has the potential to make an album better than this in the future, but for now I'm very happy with this one, thank you very much. 8.6/10

Eluvium - Similes
Leaves Eclipse the Light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpVzxGtyN6c

Matthew Cooper is a guy I'm glad the music industry has around. The best description of his music I've ever heard was "baby's first ambient," a quote which I've shamelessly stolen from a Copia review, but I don't see why that needs to be a disparaging comment. Sure, parts of Talk Amongst the Trees aside, he's never put out anything especially captivating or truly worth canonizing. But every single one of his albums have been cleverly put together, easy to listen to, and more importantly good. And despite what the internet might be telling you, Similes doesn't change that. Cooper's voice might not be the greatest, but it fits with his sound pretty seemlessly, and he has a pretty damn good ear for vocal melodies. I won't be praising this as anything mindblowing, but not everything needs to be. Similes is a consistently enjoyable and very pleasant album, and as far as reading music goes it's hard to do much better. 7.2/10

Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit
Bananfleur Overalt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kOVxteDAQ

Hell yeah, this is the album I've always wanted Jaga Jazzist to make. All of their releases before now have appealed to me on some level, but this takes all of their electronic, post-rock, modern classical and jazz influences and tosses them into a big fusion melting pot. It's barely possible to describe the sound of the thing as it's just so diverse, but it comes out sounded roughly akin to Zappa's more jazzy material filtered through the music scene of the last decade. The nine-minute centrepiece Toccata is arguably the most impressive thing here, with its Steve Reich percussion and booming brass, but the whole album barely puts a foot wrong anywhere - of the record's eight songs, only Prognissekongen and Music! Dance! Drama! fall beneath utter excellence. I wouldn't necessarily go as far as to say that this is their best album, but it's certainly their most impressive, and more importantly it's definitely the one which appeals to me most. Anyone with an interest in jazz, fusion or progressive rock owes it to themself to check this out. 8.1/10

I'll do the other four albums I've heard so far later on, perhaps tomorrow.

Okay, I'm really just posting this for Giggs. I'm still kind of speechless.

You can listen and download it for free here.

Artist: Dessa

Album: A Badly Broken Code

Genre: Hip-Hop

Heard of Dessa? No? That's a shame, but an understandable one; she's only released one official EP, and been featured on various Doomtree promos/experiments/etc, as well as appeared on a few of Doomtree acts' records -- like P.O.S.'s excellent album from last year. But she's finally getting an LP out there, and it's good. Female emcees are a rare breed, and even rarer are intelligent ones, but that's exactly what Dessa is. A Badly Broken Code is a solid album, an excellent showcase of her talents, and one of the better recent releases.

I'll say more on this album in my weekend summary next Sunday, once I get a better grasp of it, but I'm at loving this. I've had if for a little over two hours and I've already heard it three times. If you want to hear a sample, I've posted the first song, "Children's Work," over at Brave New Waves.

Enjoy!

2010 is just around the corner, which means exciting things here at the Rebellious Jukebox. Did I say exciting? I meant things. Hopefully our little gang of rebellion -- we need a name to call ourselves. The Jukes? Rebels? I don't know, one of you more clever ones think it up -- will find more inspiration than we did in '09. I know that there are a few things I would like to do in the New Year for the blog: I'd like to keep track of all the (new) albums I listen to on a weekly basis, because, as much as I like RYM, I think it's a bit clunky for that; I'd like to put some focus on Vancouver artists before and after the Olympics, where the focus of the world will be on the place I live; I'd somehow like to integrate this and my tumblr, which I would also like to put more effort into; and a whole host of other things. Let's see how well I follow through!

Since we are near the end of the year, lists have been popping up all over the place. What about ours? Not sure yet. We may all add our lists here individually, or there may be some combined list. Who knows! Expect more in January, probably, while the others touch up theirs. At the very least, my personal list will, most likely, be posted on my aforementioned tumblr and RateYourMusic account on January 1st. And since we're near the end of the decade, a top 100 albums of the decade list is in order, right? That will probably completed in April, I would imagine.

Oh, right, the point of this post. The leaks!

Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) - Heartland

Genre: Baroque Pop

Year: 2010

Try.

Owen Pallett's a pretty neat guy. While he's now trying to move away from his jRPG influences, and rightly so as they were beginning to wear thing, he has in the past created two really good albums based around his ability to loop a violin and play it in ways in which I'm sure weren't intended. He's now stretched out quite a bit more. The new album is entirely orchestrated, references his past, and might be his best album yet. It sounds nothing like his former albums, but still sounds like Owen Pallett. That makes sense, right?

Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring

Genre: Pop

Year: 2010

I haven't given this album too much attention yet, but it's every bit as fun as the first one was, with the added maturity of a few years that was hinted at on their second 2007 album, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. Everybody needs a fun band to bust out every now and then on their iPod/Zune/Achros/what-have-you, and Los Campesinos! fit the bill perfectly.

Try.

Artist: Toro Y Moi
Album: Causers Of This
Genre: Glitch pop/Chillwave/Indie

Another album from the future here, this time both in release date and actual sound. I've been listening to this for the past few days now and the richness of the electronics and production have been blowing me away. No matter that I can pick out maybe a dozen words from the whole album, the music is gorgeous and scattershot, relaxed yet ready-made for a party. Layers of voices and hollowed out pads pulse throughout the whole album without stretching too thin. The chops and cuts made to the beat and instruments feel natural and serve to define the music through their own tasteful restrictiveness instead of by creating chaos. Depth of songwriting shows through the ambiance (not ambience) wells on tracks like Minors and Thanks Vision, the latter of which is an absolutely stunning drive of chilled beauty. Causers Of This is immaculately put together and an early favorite for the coming decade.



Well let's test it out!

Artist: Beach House
Album: Teen Dream
Genre: Dream Pop

Do I really need to go into Beach House? I think we're all aware of this Baltimore sweetheart. They, seemingly, came out of nowhere three years ago to rave reviews from Pitchfork, Your Official Music Publication, for a somewhat-unique sound at the time. Not many bands were creating a shoegaze, lo-fi, dreampop concoction like they are now. The simple yet elegant nature of their debut earned them many fans who would, undoubtedly, stick around. Beach House came back with Devotion two years later, which I felt was a bit of a letdown, though I appear to be in the minority. Most of what that album covered had been done on their debut in a superior fashion, but so it goes. Devotion had some solid tracks, but as a whole I didn't feel it was as strong as the first. Teen Dream responds to this in a large way.

Beach House have given us their more mature record yet, and we should be thankful. It's simply stunning how beautiful it is. The production is more crisp (thanks, Sub Pop!) than what I'm used to in a Beach House record, which is a good thing, and I think it lends the album a more intimate sound.

This album needs more listens, by you and me alike.


MU