10. Jacuzzi Boys - Glazin'
I originally had this record placed a few slots lower, but after I realized how much I walk around singing Glazin's best hooks to myself like I quoted Simpsons references as a teenager, its position in the top ten was a given. I reviewed it back in October and said, "It's all sun-baked and easy-going and might be the best soundtrack for barrelling towards the beach in a sand-flecked beater that I've heard by a band not ending in 'each Boys.' Well, let me back up the hyperbole truck a little bit. It's not THAT good, not by a long shot, but it's definitely one of the top three mid-fi/glitter/beach/surf/punk/power-pop albums I've heard since the mighty King Tuff Was Dead record was unleashed back in 2008...It's slight and genuine and unassuming, and perhaps it treads too close to the T. Rex bubblegum formula that King Tuff perfected, but this trio of youngins have a real knack for crafting serious hooks, punctuated by frontman Gabriel Alcala's playfully bratty vocals." The POWER side of Jacuzzi Boys' power pop style was definitely on display when they played the Comet here in Cincinnati a few months back, giving these sugary tunes a stiff kick in the ass and proving that they aren't just a bunch of beach-baked softies. Let's hope that these Miami boys can keep this roll going on their next LP.
9. Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams
(Sub Pop)
Kristin "Dee Dee Dum Dum" Gundred is a total anomaly in the world of lo-fi garage indie pop rock. Refreshingly free of pretense, she is happily married to a dude from noise-rockers Crocodiles and loves her mama so much that she put her on the cover of several Dum Dum Girls records. I've been obsessively listening to rock n' roll since preschool, and have gotten to a point where every simple three-chord punky love song sounds kinda PHONY, but Dee Dee's robust vocals imbue every inch of Only In Dreams with the kind of passion that is sorely missing from 93% of most music these days. With "He Gets Me High" (one of the greatest love songs written in my lifetime) in her back pocket, Gundred and her band evoke classic 60s pop music, nervy Prentenders-style new wave, and Madonna's 80s slow jams, making almost everything else that came out this year sound vapid and shallow by comparison. Mama Dum Dum passed away some time before this album was finished, and side two forms a gut-wrenching cycle of songs that could move even the most hardened cynic to tears. The slowly stopping heartbeat pulse of "Coming Down," the joyous, "don't give a fuck" hospital bed delusion of "Wasting Away," and the final track "Hold My Hand," where Dee Dee repeats over and over "Oh I wish it wasn't true, but there's nothing I can do except hold your hand till the very end" form an astonishing tower of real-deal emotion that will shake your ass up good and proper. No other album released this year comes close to the simple, honest emotional bloodletting on display here.
8. Blouse
Somewhere around the middle of summer, I fell out of love with the primal, punky garage rock n' roll that I've been tirelessly championing for the past few years. I'm still not sure if it was just burnout, or the releases coming out in that style were lame, but I'm 100% sure that Blouse's first 45 "Into Black" was the record that led me down a deep electronic pop hole for a couple months. It sounded like a lost top 40 radio hit from 1989, with vocalist Charlie Harper's smoky Julee Cruise croon and an insistent ringing guitar riff straight out of the New Order playbook inhabiting a Twin Peaks netherworld. Both tracks from the single appear on this debut LP, and the other eight songs travel along the same mysterious, hazy path, full of robotic drum machine beats, droning synth textures, and the kind of moody subtlety and depth missing from much of today's music. Dig the sultry groove of "They Always Fly Away," and don't be surprised if you wake up four minutes later in a different world, where pale kids with hairsprayed black tresses still made the pop charts every once in awhile. Sure, it kinda sounds like the music you'd hear seeping from the Starbucks sound system, but Blouse takes pop music in a dark, sensual direction that hits all the right spots. That's a slightly more articulate way to say that this record is full of SEX JAMS, but I'm sure you get the point.
7. Wax Idols - No Future
(HoZac)
Lots of punk rock bands put out perfectly acceptable records in 2011, delivering respectably tough slabs of standard-issue entertainment without stepping over any lines, but No Future stands on top of the lines and pisses all over them. One of the few things that bug me about the current wave of garage punk bands is that they're too busy singing about cavemen and candy and walking down the street next to their baby to say anything IMPORTANT. Sure, I love escapism as much as the next guy, but there's gotta be artists out there that can stir some shit or else the rock n' roll balance will implode on itself. Enter Hether Fortune and the Wax Idols, breathing fire all over the ten tracks on this record. A few months back, I wrote "No one wants to write anthems anymore, no one wants to hurt some feelings, no one wants to step on anyone's toes to make a point, no one wants to step up and speak out. Guts and passion are in short supply, and the silence is ready for voices of dissent to make a whole lot of fucking NOISE. In a world where Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon can get divorced and the fiery loudmouths of my youth can be turned into placid NPR correspondents and VH1 documentary talking heads, who can whatever percentage I'm supposed to be in look to for ideas?!...[No Future is a] a kick in the balls for the MOR indie rock dweebs out there that cling to tired 70s singer-songwriter retreads and dismiss anything more challenging as juvenile and unlistenable." Wax Idols took a bunch of classic influences, infused a steaming dose of passion, and made tons of bands look inept in the process.
6. The Paperhead
It's impossible to listen to the debut LP from Nashville's The Paperhead without thinking about the story surrounding its recording. These three pals graduated high school, spent the summer putting together this psychedelic daydream of a record, and went their separate ways off to college in the fall. Every second of The Paperhead is soaked in woozy summer nostalgia, and it sounds way more mature and poised than a bunch of eighteen year-olds reminiscing about junior high bong sessions. Wait a minute, these are teenagers?! This music was made by recent high school graduates in 2010, not journeymen British blues rockers tripping balls on brown acid back in 1969?! No fuckin' way! Daring and heady and just skirting the edge of proto-prog rock, The Paperhead crafted an album which sounds like a gritty reboot of S.F. Sorrow sans pretension, and reclaimed the good name of jam bands from peasant-shirted folk singers who fill amphitheaters with ghastly fusions of world beat and bad 70s Zappa. They dig into the same record collection and sense of small town isolationism as the Elephant 6 collective, but this collection of swooping tape loops, out-there tabla freakouts, and carefully constructed Rubble-style pop moves combine into an album that sometimes jolts and jars like fitful, anxious sleep, guiding the listener into blissful candy-colored dreams and terrifying nightmares depending on where you drop the needle. They've already accomplished more that most people do before they reach drinking age, and The Paperhead sound like they're ready to close the door on childhood and push on to a new dimension.
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