The Best 25 Albums of 2010: Part 2

6. Wheels On Fire - Liar, Liar

Following the demise of beloved Cincinnati bubblegum trash combo 20th Century Tokyo Princess, it was easy to anoint Wheels On Fire as the best band in Ohio of 2010. Coming from the slightly comatose and sleepy burg of Athens, Wheels On Fire didn't get the memo that rock n' roll was better back in the day, and instead worship furiously at the altar of the White Stripes, Hives, and Black Keys. Really though, what's so motherfucking wrong with that?! To an army of ears that went through boot camp trained by the clarion call of the Queers, Rancid, NOFX, Screeching Weasel, and the Mr. T Experience, the rock n' roll that Wheels On Fire crank out is hopelessly inept and trad. Sure, they talk about pretty girls a lot, but they do it without the slick sophistication of the 90s pop-punk tribe. That very same slick sophistication plants those bands squarely in 1995 and leaves them there in a frozen, severely shiny time capsule. Pop-punk got all hung up with perfectionism and kinda defeated the whole purpose of the whole punk rock thing in the first place. It was supposed to be the vessel of real live kids bashing out noisy, stupid pop songs, and that's exactly what Wheels On Fire do with reckless abandon. Their second LP features a run of AMAZING tracks called "Losin'," "Ambulance," "Land Of Haunted Houses," and "Black Moon" that stand right up there with the best of '60s garage, '70s punk, and the garage rock class of 2000. These folks aren't concerned with professionalism or establishing a mood or adding some kinda epic heft to their music. They just crank out the HITS! "Ambulance" sounds like a raucous bubblegum ditty that's run off the rails, substituting the morose sadness usually associated with catching your baby with another man, and instead dishes out a beating so severe that the paramedics get involved. In place of soul-searching and refection, we get tales of haunted houses, UFOs, and alien abduction. You know, important shit! "Stick Around" is the real classic here, grabbing you around the throat with haste, relaying a tale of pussy-whipped complacency, and getting the hell out of there before you think really deep thoughts. Hell, other bands are covering it already, and if that isn't enough of a tribute to it's genius, then I don't know what is. Liar, Liar is perfect in it's simplicity and more fun than just about anything else.

7. Demon's Claws - The Defrosting Of...

Originally saddled with the stupendous title of "Defrosting Walt Disney" before (I'd assume) the sue-happy band of Mickey's minions got wind of the situation, the third LP from Canadia's Demon's Claws is the scummiest, nastiest bit of basement rock n' roll to emerge in 2010. Despite being recorded in four separate sessions in different locales, it all manages to have the same foreboding, dirty, degenerate atmosphere. The guitars are pushed screaming into the red, the frequently incomprehensible vocals sound like they came from the bottom of the sewer, and everything is drenched in reverb and tribal rhythms, coming off like a seriously deranged seance performed by a bunch of drug-addled fuckups. Crude jolts of caveman rockabilly and country dot tracks like "Catch Her By The Tail," and for the most part, hooks are sacrificed in the name of suffocating atmosphere. I really don't know about the swamps-per-square-mile ratio of Montreal, but these motherfuckers must have climbed out of one of them! If the Black Lips have slightly cleaned up their act and settled comfortably into their role as the garage rock band it's OK for douchebag hipsters to like, then Demon's Claws have taken the basic template of their feedback-drenched epic Let It Bloom in the complete opposite direction, wallowing gleefully in the muck and mire. I mean seriously, have you heard "Fucked On Ketamine" yet?! This is one song that adheres to the maxim of truth in advertising. A song that probably intends to evoke the bad-ass vibe of classic outlaw country instead sounds like vintage country-punk Gun Club on designer drugs and turns the simple tale of retiring to the bedroom with a stripper and a mysterious baggie into a sadistic mystical journey.It all winds up with a pair of southern-style country-rock songs laced liberally with banjos and casual profanity that function as an easy landing-pad comedown for those who get wrapped up in the whole Demon's Claws trip. And what a trip it is!

8. The Living Sisters - Love To Live

This album earned its spot in the top 10 on account of how goddamn PRETTY it sounds. Kicking off with a circular acoustic guitar riff in a haze of harp plucking and gentle harmony voices, "How Are You Doing?" sounds like a warm blanket hovering over your bed waiting patiently to take you away to a world of blissful hangover dreams. I'm fine, how about you? I'm fine, too! Everything is perfect and in it's place, and everytime you'd expect a honking saxophone solo or restrained keyboard line, it's there. Many of the albums I've heard this year sound like the last disgruntled howl of the sexually frustrated male, banished to the garage to work out his bitterness and sorrow on his own time, so it's nice to hear this overwhelmingly female perspective. I'm surprised that mainstream rock critics didn't cream all over this record, since it features the daughter of critic fave/drug burnout Lowell George and siren-voiced Becky Stark, who helped create a perfect album a few years back with Lavender Diamond called Imagine Our Love. Combine those voices with the smoky drawl of Eleni Mandell and you have the classic girl group close-harmony sound of your dreams. I can't be the only lonely music nerd that flipped out over Love To Live this year, right?! Just listen to "Double Knots" and hear how white girls are showing out in 2010 like vintage Salt N' Pepa, teasing and tempting until they just wanna jump in the water and take off all their clothes. Wait, what?! Like I said, it sounds so pretty, but hidden behind all the overwhelming cuteness there's a seething, simmering sexuality that puts the dudes to shame. Like they say in "Good Ole Wagon," get outta my sight, I'm done playing tricks. You gotta go to the blacksmith's shop and get yourself an overhaul. Nobody wants a baby when a real man can be found, you've been a good ole wagon, but daddy you done broke down. The Living Sisters know that you don't need a bevy of garage-sired guitars to prove that you're pretty and vicious at the same time. They're too busy killing with kindness, son.

9. Sleepy Sun - Fever

Even in 2010, when endless musical thievery has given every genre of music a new life, progressive rock still has a bad name. Me? I blame it all on the emos. Not the current crop of auto-tuned mall-emo rockers, mind you, but the math-rock emos of the recent past. I'm talking about pussy-boy college graduates in tight sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses laying delicate mathematical guitar runs over shifting time signatures that had to have come from endless Adderall-spiked nights pouring over their music theory textbooks. Remember when every horn playing band-geek reject turned up in a ska band in 1999? Their equally lame percussion and jazz guitar-toting compatriots were plying their trade in bands on Polyvinyl in 2002. That shit is awful, just AWFUL! It makes me really happy that a band like Sleepy Sun can come along in the present day and rescue the good name of prog and bring it back to the days of 1972, where hairy bastard collegiate burnouts took rock music into playful, unexplored territory, wiping the mathematical equations from the blackboard and instead launching into wild spasms of sonic freedom. Sleepy Sun doesn't make prog rock in the traditional sense, so you won't hear any dizzying displays of mechanized instrumental prowess lifted from your dad's dusty Yes LPs, but you will hear a suite of nine songs that veer from passages of tranquil beauty to moments of unspeakable horror. Fever really does have that classic album feel, instantly familiar yet filled with tons of "what the fuck?!" bits that keep you coming back again and again. Folky campfire harmonies crash into strange Can-style funk beats and then blast off into epic feedback-soaked guitar solos, and you really don't know what the hell they're doing, but everything is safe and calm. The reverb-soaked blasts of harmonica that kick off the album closer "Sandstorm Woman" leads you into a revelatory soup of post-blues Haight-Ashbury guitars, molasses-slow melody, and tribal hippie exploration, and then howls it's way into outer space. Fever is probably the best mix of heavy rock and prog since the monolithic debut LP from Captain Beyond. Believe it! Yeah I ain't gonna lie, Sleepy Sun may have indulged in some psychedelic drugs before making this record, but don't let that scare you away. Any enlightened mind can hop a ride on this rollercoaster with the same results.

The Best 25 Albums of 2010: Part 1

1. The Strange Boys - Be Brave

I proclaimed this LP the best release of 2010 back in March, and I'll be damned if it didn't carry itself through and beat out a TON of other worthy releases to claim this top spot all these months later. I just kept listening to this goddamn thing over and over again, and if you prodded me, I might be able to come up with something just as good from the last couple of years, but right now I'm drawing a blank. Yep, it's THAT GOOD. If the last decade only brought us contrived Americana bullshit, pop and hip-hop songs more produced and refined than a McDonalds cheeseburger, and faux-epic indie rock that sounded mostly like really pretentious U2 leftovers, then bands like the Strange Boys heralded nothing less than a rock n' roll revolution. Shitbag kids of the internet generation revolted against all that revolting garbage and went back to the fucking garage, bashing out incredible hybrids of 60's pop, 70's punk, 90's alt-rock, and the Strokes/White Stripes axis, bathing it in a comforting blanket of lo-fi haze and distortion, and spit it all out by the hundreds in a series of crucial singles and LPs that exposed all the aging hipsters clutching Animal Collective, Of Montreal, and Deerhunter records as the frauds that they are. Back in March, I said: "Though the presentation is still loose and easy-going, Be Brave shows a band maturing with rapid speed, evolving into something that resembles the World's Greatest Rock N' Roll Band more than sane minds would care to admit. Call it Exile On Sixth Street. The music on this LP is timeless and universal, so forgive the outrageous hyperbole. Sometimes, music hits you at just the right moment, capturing the right mood and feel so perfectly that it attains instant sentimental value. After all, it's only rock n' roll, and the Strange Boys haven't forgotten." A triumphant live set at Cincinnati's Midpoint Music Festival sealed the deal, displaying a band that is wise beyond their years summoning the past spirits of rock n' roll effortlessly, and giving hope that the next decade will finally take artistic expression out of the hands of the bean counters and decisively put it back into the hands of the kids making the loudest racket. If you haven't heard Be Brave yet, then what are you waiting for?!

2. The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream

If the Strange Boys soundtracked that awkward transition between cold weather melancholy to white hot summer sun, then the Black Angels supplied the music that brought everything back to ice and snow all over again. Phosphene Dream went in an entirely different direction, flying over to the dark side of garage rock psychedelia in a wash of doomy organs, blazing feedback, and that same electric jug sound that was all over the best 13th Floor Elevators jams. A couple weeks ago, I wrote "I wasn't really looking for music that summed up the way fall snuck up behind me with a sucker punch, but somehow it found me. I guess it's just another one of those cosmic coincidences that it starts off with a song called "Bad Vibrations." These dudes have done too many of the good drugs, and know what happens on the other side. Can you tell a wish from a spell? A hug from a lie? They both make you feel so gone. Phosphene Dream isn't really an album of songs, but one of moments and moods. There certainly isn't anything new here, just a bunch of stuff churned into a nasty, paranoid, creepy, darkly psychedelic summer hangover that tells you what's what and what it really thinks of you." It's supposed to be a concept album, but I've never been able to figure out what those things are all about. I didn't need a linear story to realize that this LP came from a really dark, deep, seedy part of the brain. Phosphene Dream sounds like 40 or so minutes of the worst drug trip you've ever been on, or maybe like how kids of the 60s felt the night before their hearing in front of the draft board. I like happy-go-lucky garage punk and sunshine pop as much as the next guy, but sometimes you gotta quit being optimistic and dive in the deep end. The Black Angels aren't the first band to mix lonely, eerie reverb riffs with epic, nasty distorto feedback freakouts, but they've done it better than any band I can think of from the last few years.

3. Bare Wires - Seeking Love

If the Black Angels were over in Austin probing the inner reaches of the brain, then Matthew Melton and the Bare Wires were busy getting real dumb over in Oakland. We're talking glue-sniffing, White-Castle-destroying, losing your car keys levels of dumb here. Artificial Clouds, the Bare Wires' first LP, would have made last year's list if I'd only heard it in time. Lead Wire Matthew Melton has an impressive knack for taking your average '70s lunkhead rock song, scissoring out all the bombast and unfortunate facial hair and only leaving the bare essentials: chugging rifforama build-ups leading into stomping, handclap-worthy verses and stadium-filling hooks. Seeking Love simply doesn't fuck around, getting in and out in less than twenty-four minutes, leaving your head crammed with instantly memorable lyrics and dirty rock n' roll guitars. It kinda reminds the average rube of the Ramones spinning a couple of Thin Lizzy records back in the day. In August, I wrote "If anything, Seeking Love sounds TOO familiar, with a few tracks sounding eerily similar to the opening riffs on Artificial Clouds, but Melton always throws in a new wrinkle to keep things fresh until the next perfect chorus comes around. "Romantic Girl" is the bonafide power-pop jam of the summer, with a little bit of "hey girl, can I get your name girl" lyrical come-on that gives way to a stomping beat that's a little too fast for glam and a little too slow for punk, and the whole thing ends up sounding like a vintage '78 single that would trade on eBay for hundreds if anyone could find the damn thing. Melton seems like he's hitting the stride that Bob Pollard of Guided By Voices captured in the mid-'90s, effortlessly pulling hit after hit out of his ass in a lazy yet determined fashion. This is real-deal, lightning in a bottle shit, and I'd gladly buy four or five more LPs that come from this same well of wicked creativity and inspiration." That about sums it up, folks. This one is a keeper.

4. Ty Segall - Melted

Possibly the worst phenomena to pop up since computers became cheap and plentiful is the rise of a particularly odious musical genre called "bedroom pop." Weiners all over this great land are abusing Garageband and Fruity Loops with gusto, churning out a shitload of introspective, insular, densely layered one man band records that are the aural equivalent of masturbating while gazing intently upon your navel. Luckily, Ty Segall is a snot-nosed kid that doesn't give a fuck about self-absorbed nonsense, instead singing about real important shit like chicks, rock n' roll, drugs, and more chicks. Melted takes the one man band out of the bedroom and back into the garage, gleefully attacking these eleven songs with a healthy mix of teen angst and outrageous sonic freedom. It all sounds like prime bubblegum pop, coated in fuzz and scuzz, run through a blender, and emerging on the other side wrapped in helium-addled voiceovers laden with smug "don't you get this?!" jokes. Segall has cranked out a pair of solid records in the past few years filled with competent garage punk bangers, but none of it compares with how he's put it all together on this one. A couple months ago, I wrote "On this third solo record, dude is seriously stretching out his sound, effortlessly mixing in dirty piano and fruity flutes into "Caesar," and coming off like the White Album-era Beatles huffing paint on "Sad Fuzz." That just might be the best song on the whole LP, mixing heavy-handed, space-filled Ringo drums with a "please don't be sadmybabynow" chorus that's been stuck in my head for about ten minutes or so of every single day since I heard it the first time. Silly as it sounds, Segall might be channeling the mid-'90s archetype of Beck (or maybe the mid-'70s archetype of Todd Rundgren), cranking out one-man-band rock n' roll and coating it with bum notes, studio chatter, and inside jokes, almost daring the listener to come inside his world for a minute to have a look around." It might not be as perfect as your average "bedroom pop" album, but it sure is a hell of a lot more fun.

5. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart

As you read along in this list, you'll realize that most of the entries are unabashedly retro. Well, I apologize in advance for preferring the sound of people running on emotion crowded around each other in a room bashing out the real shit in favor of nerds with computers creating radio hits from ones and zeros. I've spent enough time in the rock music trenches to become a snob, and like a wine or beer snob, I like my shit AGED. I like it bottle-conditioned, soaked in bourbon barrels, smooth but still rough around the edges, and a little bit dusty. Black Mountain came out a few years ago with a debut LP that fused heavy Sabbath riffs with Manson family singalongs, then followed it up with a monolithic record called In The Future that melded Zeppelin-style misty mountain guitar freakouts with meathead Hawkwind speedfreak rhythms. Now, they're back with a stellar LP that puts everything together and sounds like a lost post-hippie classic from 1975. Laced with massively overdubbed Hammonds, otherworldly sounds, and layered with gently strummed acoustic guitars, Wilderness Heart explodes with life and joy, full of smiles from big city kids having their fun with the blues. Seriously folks, we are part of the cut and paste generation, taking history and context and putting our own slant on it without reverence or guilt. Just drop the needle on this record and hear how the rapturous bliss of "The Hair Song" fades into the paranoid, synthetic terror of "Old Fangs," and forget about the current political climate. Just listen to those spacey keyboard lines and that throbbing bassline. Just hold it together, man, until it's time. It's all such a blur. Put your brain to the side and listen! "Radiant Hearts" is like a climb up the beanstalk of male/female vocals, and it all comes tumbling down on the "Rollercoaster" weighing on the Nintendo kid's shoulders. Woah, and that's just the first side! Wilderness Heart is heavy and fun and thoughtful. Let those spirits ride.

Random Old Records Podcast #26

Well shit, has it really been a month already since I last posted an episode of Random Old Records? Guess so! Anyway, here is Random Old Records Podcast #26, and it's a bit all over the place. It kicks off with a set of classic glam rock by Mott The Hoople, Sparks, and others, then runs through a whole bunch of new and old psych and prog from the Black Angels, Darker My Love, Ween, Nektar, and Caravan, and it all ends up with a blazing set of 90s punk rock from Rancid and NOFX. WEIRD, but it all seemed to make sense when I was putting it together, so hopefully y'all will get it. Download it and tell all your friends, and as always, thanks for listening! Click through to the comments section for this episode's playlist.

Also, don't forget to tune into Real Punk Radio at 4 PM EST today for the streaming premiere of the new show, and keep your web browser locked in all day and night for a steady 100% DIY stream of punk, garage, hardcore, and psych rock n' roll! Keep checking this page too, since I will be posting my top 10 LPs of 2010 in the next few weeks, as well as posting a Real Punk Radio-exclusive podcast highlighting the best songs of the year. Keep warm, folks!

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