I’m going to make up some statistics on the Cloud Nothings’ Attack On Memory in an attempt to downplay what you’ll read about it. Their efficiency rate on this record is around 78.3/min, their +/- is +7.5 and they are 17% darker in the paint this record than the the last one. All of this number crunching is to say that this record is a little different from the last one. It’s an “aural assault of the heart” according to Time, so it has to be different from the frivolous-sounding self-titled jam. Only, it really isn’t. In fact, I’m contending that this record is essentially a continuation of a slow-evolving sound. Of course, the first record is poppy and the second one is angry. I’m just not convinced that the songwriting is dramatic or that Cloud Nothings write aural assualts. These are punk rock songs, plain and simple, and they speak to the angry misbegotten soul like punk rock is supposed to.

The emphasis of Attack on Memory has shifted from bright-guitars and complaints to minor chords, dark lyrics and a sharper philosophical sense. If there’s anything to believe on this record, it’s the record itself. Obsessively bleak, the lyrics are cleverly pathetic pandering to the release of personal turmoil. In this, Cloud Nothings has not changed. Instead, they’ve molded their musicianship to match their hopeless facade. Moreover, the opener “No Future, No Past” is a basic building song that ends with a multiply-screamed title of the song. The lyrics, en total, are: “Give up./ Come to./ No Hope./ We’re through. No Future/ No past.” The repeated commands are a warning shot for what becomes a recurring theme: life sucks, bros. Like, it totally sucks. Having belabored this point before, the capitulated methodologies might be boring if not for the presentation changes throughout Attack. “Wasted Days” is a haunting force on the record. The rumble of low-end, the clean guitar, and the motion of the drums are the most combined effort this band has seen. “I thought I would be more than this,” is repeated until 3 minutes in when the band breaks into a noise-infused build set to overly simple drum-and-bass. The big, angry ending isn’t so much endearing as it is a shock to the listener’s system before the bounce-back. “Wasted Days” is effective because it breaks down the usual balance between Cloud Nothings and the audience. The 9-minute jam basically breaks the third wall.

The gentler, more status quo tracks that follow are some of the best on the album. “Fall In” is a pop-gem, “Stay Useless” is a short complaint-rock hit. While the initial reviews are praising the melancholy of Attack on Memory, Cloud Nothings are still churning out simple point-of-phrase pop-punk gems: “I need time to stop moving/ I need time to stay useless” could have been written in 1997, but it feels perfectly in place for the winter of 2012. The best part is how each song is catchy but not overly anthem-like or penetrating. Even the repeated phrases feel like lessons in restraint rather than slogans. Honestly, I don’t know how or why these songs are so usefully catchy– perhaps their personal slant and non-political phrasings? Either way, the album progresses to a harder and louder sound without an eye roll, without a misplaced word or phrase, but with the listener in tow.

“No Sentiment” earmarks that louder, cymbal-bashing sound the record will be lauded for, but the chorus’ straightforward pounding beat and throaty vocal creates an odd crescendo. Attack is oddly self-aware as it ends: the guitars feed back, the drums hit harder, but the message remains clear. There is still no hope, no light. CN are in the next room listening to loud records on their headphones, their parents worried, but it’s cool. Brooding is a defense mechanism just like everything. Meaninglessness is not the opposite of meaning: “No one knows our plans for us./ We won’t last long.” It’s not as simple as “ashes to ashes” but it’s still an methodical understanding of tough times. CN will still come to the dinner table with their nice face on, their snarl and sad-sackery hidden for an hour.

“Cut You” ends a marvelous record the way we all expected. It’s a jealous, bitter post-break-up jam and it rules. This was the problem all along– one so simply stated but tough to define. “Do you feel safe with him?/ Did he give you everything?/ Is he gonna work out?” Questions. “I miss you ’cause I like damage. I need something I can hurt.” Answers. No, these aren’t the answers to the specific questions set forth, but it’s unclear if anyone really wants to know those answers. As the album ends, we notice how fragile this album really is; how damaged the psychological make-up of the songwriter can really be. If their early work is really all that different, how come I am reminded of the questions they asked in the past? How come I feel like this latest work is an extension of how nothing has made sense despite the clever exterior?

Let’s put it this way: if you use Jon Connor in a mashup, you’d have to make a new, good beat and start from scratch. He’s basically rapping over mashup material, like, it’s a pre-mashup. “Inside of You” is possibly the creepiest hook ever. “Place on Earth” is literally– and I mean the literal interpretation of literally– The Bangles’ song “Heaven is a Place on Earth” with him rapping over it. Seriously. And Connor goes in. He’s killing every song even though some of these songs are killing him. It’s not only that he’s too good for this, not only that he suffers from “every song gets released” diseases, it’s that I feel like I can hear him wincing his way through these watercolor producers. Dude’s an artist, he needs a proper canvas. This shit is parchment, my man needs some walls for murals.

There would be no bad if it weren’t for the good, obviously. “No Apologies,” “No Thrillz,” “The Boom Bap Symphony,” “Gonna Make It” (f/ Freeway) and others show how good Connor is when he gets proper production work. It’s few and far between, but when Connor clicks, it’s magic. Busta says it after the opening track “Someone Like Me”: ‘Ya’ll better get ya’ll bars right.” Busta is wise and Busta is right. If Connor figures out the balance, he will crush the game. He’s hungry, angry and good. That’s a big deal. The best combination of soulful, talented and conditioned to destroy beats, Connor could stand out, but he may have to stand on a pile of rejected beats to get there. I’m waiting impatiently for the time to come.

During my break from 10L, I didn’t stop listening to music. I didn’t stop caring. I just stopped writing about it. I laid in bed and ate fried chicken (more like friend chicken, youknowhatImean?) and read stories from the NBA Lockout. I tried to care more about college basketball. I drank some and didn’t drink a lot at the same time. Hell, I’m not sure that I did much of anything else. Milk and vegetables spoiled a lot more than I wanted them to because I overshot my mornings by a mile and spent the days lamenting.

If anything actually offered me solace, it was the occasional jam with Chris Bathgate’s Salt Year and trying to figure out if I really liked Richard Buckner’s Our Blood. My relationship with music isn’t always as complicated as it is with Buckner, as Bathgate’s catalog can attest. I am drawn to every Richard Buckner album with delirious haste. Listening and re-listening, I’m hooked by the opening riff. Then, I lose something each time I finish the record. Is Our Blood to be appreciated in small doses? Is the listener really to dismiss the catalog each time he/she hears a new song? The challenge of ignoring an artist’s past is really on trial here*. There’s nothing really different about this record as compared to the last few releases, but is that such a bad thing?

Independent of those questions is the importance of how good the songs are. Two examples: “Traitor” opens on a dark note to lead into the lighter, folkier “Escape.” Both could be placed firmly in the Buckner canon without digression from the mean, but they both stand alone as disciple-worthy. If this was your first time hearing RB, the stand outs are all there: the scattershot lyrics over repetitive instrumentation. Buckner’s brooding voice creating everyman stories while seeming vague enough to be his own variance. “Let’s waste the night/ pay the price and get out of here/ It’s not enough/ Backing out just to disappear.” All the ‘we’ and ‘they’ and ‘you’ and ‘them’ in the place of names are there. The listener could easily feel like he/she is any one of those pronouns, a part of the larger picture of Buckner’s specificity. That is his specific gift, involving the listener no matter how cold and separated the music may seem.

There are some reaches on the album: “Collusion” has a long-winded outro that collides with “Ponder’s” instrumental dreamscape. Buckner’s not exactly known for these kinds of long, vocal-less stints and it shows he can back away from his conversational lyricism quite nicely. I don’t love them on the album, but I like the songs theoretically. It’s a halftime from human folly that seems much-needed though not necessarily fantastic. The difference in the two albums I can’t get over: when Buckner does something different it is forced rather than focused. Perhaps being a veteran has its flaws. Bathgate has a seamless transitional quality. Neither singer has terrific range while both know how to use their voices to accentuate their music effortlessly. Buckner just seems more repetitive this time around– albeit with a flair and gusto still missing from most songwriters’ catalogs. I can forgive him for repetition; for knowing his niche and staying safe? I’m still, so far, undecided despite my own aformentioned foray into the unspectacular safe zone.

Of Bathgate: some fiddles, some loops, some questions, some piano, some acoustic, some electric, some lyrical playfulness, some answers, some serious, some graciousness, some long, some short, some songs, some album. Bathgate doesn’t really have any peers since no one is doing what he does. He’s a student of the folk game; wants to severely change it without destroying it. “No Silver” is a classic that could just as easily be sung at a stranger’s campfire jam session as it could on a stage to no one in particular. “Poor Eliza” is a song of predestinated sentience and, like most of his work, showcases how a storyteller can learn as a song progresses. The buildups in this song are a catalog of what is to come: each song is a perilous warning, a story and an overall test of will.

Throughout Salt Year, Bathgate vacillates between heavy details and a light moroseness. “Levee” and “Borders” are persona-to-object rockers: they are clever songs that bring us to conclusions without conclusions themselves. “Borders” in particular is an anti-work song, but you’d never know it if you just let the riff wash over you. I admit to doing that a few times. The title track offers a drifting quality– pedal steel floats you through 17 years of wasted youth and forlornness. Bathgate creates his songs from a mold unlike any other songwriter I’ve experienced. It was the same way I felt about Richard Buckner years ago.

That said, Bathgate took a chance with Salt Year. It is dissimilar from his catalog: more rock-n-roll than the predecessors, yet lonelier. The listener is not really invited to be a part of the story like Our Blood. We are left to figure out our place in the album. Instead of closing our eyes and being one with an all-too-well-known evening amongst the thresholds of important decisions– classic Buckner– we’re placed just outside the story and have to fight our way in. Buckner’s pathos vs. Bathgate’s ethos: this is the battle that brought me to both. There is nothing inherently wrong with either songwriter’s approach. They both created solid albums that I will revisit. Both have solid footholds in my want. Both have flaws. Neither can be blamed for those flaws because they are the greatest flaws in storytelling. Emotion is impossible to convey, yet these men did so with great effort and aplomb. Buckner’s flaws are heavier because he has always had them. Bathgate’s are new and unstable. Thus, Buckner’s flaws are forced but they are subtle. And neither has done the listener a great injustice here.

Me? I’ll be alright. There’s some cans of unspoiled black beans marking my efforts to grocery shop. I’ve got professional basketball back. I’ve got a philosophical argument to settle re: Buckner v. Bathgate. I may never publish the results. I’ve made my peace with Buckner’s repetition and Bathgate’s exclusions. I know, especially now, how inexplicably powerful the call to create is. And you create as best you can with the gifts you have, showcase them with the clarity they deserve and position yourself for the transition to either success or failure. It’s so rare to understand anything other than success or failure. Not to say I didn’t try to understand either in Salt Year or Our Blood, it’s just that some arguments should be settled, some should remain unresolved and others should have never surfaced. In this case, I’m better for having argued and for having given up arguing to enjoy the accompanying soundtracks.

*-A rule at 10L, not focusing on an artist’s past gives us a chance to write about an album instead what created it or our personal biases.

I’m not a genius by any means. I’m an average bro with a slanted opinion. I’m a half-wit, a writer’s writer, a stylist without a popular canvas. I know Girls and Watch the Throne and Wavves. I know Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. I know Kanye and Cudi. I know all the cool jamz people gravitate toward. I know them and I often like them. It’s just that, and I know I am not entirely alone, I tend to allay my hopes on the forgotten, misunderstood albums that receive little fanfare. For example, one of my favorite albums of all time, Jets To Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary is an audible eyesore– a series of strange canvases and literary intentionality. My love of later Superchunk albums (and early ones for that matter) isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just doesn’t matter. Problem is, the unintentional consequence of seeking the destitute and unloved albums in American music drives away readers as quickly as it allows self-satisfaction.

So what was different about 2011? The music was, but that’s to be expected. My attitude toward life? Not really. I changed locales, came to grips with some personal issues, etc. I didn’t change tastes, though. There wasn’t even a subtle shift. I like the same records now as I did then, just more of them. That said, I really do believe that three records absolutely stood out for me in 2011 for their styles, their movements, their irrepressible charisma, their difference engines in creating artistic masterworks. These albums bent genres, created new walls and unburdened a strange year for music as a whole. Think about it, 2011s most popular rap album may well have been made by one of the best producers in the world and he didn’t make the beats. Skrillex is nominated for grammys. Tom Waits put out an at-best mediocre album. Bon Iver became Bonnie Raitt (not a knock, that album rips in spots). All the while, Storms, Grails and Cymbals Eat Guitars created intimidating, challenging, beautiful records to little response.

Once the first official “riff’ of Grails Deep Politics hit, I knew I wasn’t reviewing the album. I don’t know how to describe the riff, what instrument is really involved, where the influences truly lie. Are they in love with Sergio Leone? Or do they love world music? Are they becoming more obtuse or are they expanding their palate? Is it both? Why do they insist on playing a detuned piano and why does it sound so damned good? There’s more questions than answers. Deep Politics‘ excellence is the only reward.

Effectively, post-rock is supposed to be the antithesis of story. The challenge of reviewing post-rock is to ignore describing it. Describing a Grails song is worthless: the swirl of guitars, the soft background noise, the Native American flutes and tinkering piano riffs are impossible to hand to someone unless in spiritual or musical form. I contemplated writing “Just get lifted and listen to this, guys, 10.0″ and that being the whole review. I really don’t know how else to sell it. DP is atmosphere defined by inward being rather than emotional triggers. Where Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai of their contemporaries succeed in manipulating volume and emotion, Grails leave a cold, dead trail of dependency. The record is morose by accident; the scientific arrival of parity in musicianship. Grails are equals with any other post-rockers or instrumental outfits, but they are on some next-level jams simultaneously. Describing Deep Politics is as impossible as listening to it without trying to figure out how to describe it.

This conundrum exists in instrumental music without the lyrical fallbacks. There’s no other guidance than the imagination. Left alone, a listener tries to create the sympathies and travails. Certainly, Grails welcomes this, but challenges the listener to be destitute in blank space. There is nothing, the can be nothing. How, then, do Cymbals Eat Guitars create the same dead weight in Lenses Alien? CEG provide a wealth of lyrics on a myriad of angular topics set to waves of noise-and-drone feedback offset by loud pop riffs. The stories are at times dark, at times sentimental, but oddly inaccessible. I’ll never know if this is intentional since I want them to be mysteriously ineffectual. With each lyric’s consequence comes a random observation. With each beginning to the story comes an arrival to nothingness. For every “guy who killed a state trooper” there’s a “dirty hypodermic needle in the seat cushion of the movie theater.” It’s a confusing, tangled mass of treasonous behavior, control-issue barrages of noise and effortless musical superiority.

And that’s just the surface area. The real mass of Lenses Alien surreptitiously collides throughout the album. The lyrics often devolve into wails and caterwauls over grating noise before arriving at distinct moments of musical clarity. Their style is assaulting, purposefully. They are not the first to adopt sonic substructures to terrorize the listener. CEG are not defining anything. Conversely, they are the passive sentence construction. Lenses Alien meanders toward absence of meaning but never fully arrive in meaninglessness. They never fully arrive at perfection. It’s sloppy, slovenly cleanliness; hungover eyes roving a church service for likeminded sinners. Like Grails, they are an unpolished explosion of perilous clarity for those who are keen enough to notice. Each incomplete riff, polished bit of noise and overtly misanthropic lyric is a jewel for the occidental listener. Where Grails detune and deconstruct, Cymbals Eat Guitars self-destruct.

Both albums are beautiful and neither band have put out a bad product. Even the early Grails albums, though entirely different in scope and sound, were astounding. The first CEG record kills (and their cover of Superchunk’s Detroit Has a Skyline is a full-circle example of how things change but stay entirely the same, as stated earlier). I don’t think either band tried to be a musical dissident or contrarian in song, much like I don’t think I was trying to find the less-loved records as my favorites of all time. This isn’t nature-vs.-nurture, it’s rock music. While each band is as inaccessible as they are brilliant, they still desire to be heard, to be exposed and to write the song that inspires a listener. Deep Politics is a treasury of unlikely instrumentals and Lenses Alien is a treasury of unlikely sounds/lyrics. Directly in between them lies an experiment, a bridge between repetitive sound, vocal melodies and long-winded breathlessness. Directly between the rigidity of Grails and the experimental Cymbals is Storms’ Lay Your Sea Coat Aside.

Suffocating in simplicity and beauty, Storms debut album is the only album of the three that I reviewed this year. I won’t re-review it, but this struck me as an important point:

“More than a series of songs or a sum of parts, this record relies on the strength of the entire body of work. The songs don’t exactly bleed directly into one another, but each builds beautifully off of rhythmic guitar and layered vocals. Oftentimes, long instrumental leads fill voids in the image-driven lyrics. These are the silences of nature and the nurturing hand Storms provide to guide you.”

I accidentally defined the whole point of this article back in March. No, music isn’t nature-vs-nuture, but creation of music is. When an album is as good as this one, I’m led directly to its origin point. The songs guide you rather than direct you. There are no harsh reminders of imperfections. The imperfections fit in. Storms didn’t write a great record because they are great musicians. Sea Coat is consistently imagistic in the same way that Grails persist with odd textures and Cymbals use their off-kilter layering. The lulls and sways of each album are intentional and interpolating. Storms, with expansive simplicity, pursue a different idea of music yet they do so to the same end. They meld folk and foreign sounds to create the music, the myths of the sailor and the swells of the ocean with the same clarity I spoke of earlier. The fact that they do so more directly does not make this record accessible. It only makes Lay Your Sea Coat Aside brilliant. Grails does not make post-rock like Cymbals Eat Guitars are not indie rock like Storms did not create a debut folk record.

The difference in my favorite three records of 2011 wasn’t my attitude or surroundings. The difference wasn’t style or substance. The difference was that the creators manipulated their creations so well. Grails purified post-rock. Cymbals Eat Guitars invoked insouciance into a normally emotionally charged canvas. Storms vacillated between storyteller and artist. Each band defined their records perfectly despite their ill-fitting genres. The difference lies in significance which can be more important to me than slick styles or cleverness. Such roughshod elegance cannot be calculated by the masses, either. I’m not particularly popular in my love of music, but I know that these records are good. These albums aren’t going to sell millions of copies, create memes or hashtags, get me laid by writing this essay, or otherwise stimulate tumblr conversations with cool folks. They will, however, be astounding examples of how popularity and context rarely mingle and why I will continue to listen and preach, audience be damned. They are only defining me and my ever-evolving opinion.

From guest lecturer Laurence Bass, this morsel on Common:

If we’re talking production over lyrics, this album would be the new benchmark of what it means to create a masterpiece. The boom-bap is resurrected and wears the garb of this generation’s sonics. However, a smarter listener judges on the inverse. Most of the songs are hook heavy, watering down the potency of his lyrics (keeping with the tread of every album since the 2002’s “Electric Circus,” a mixed bag of unnerving genius).

“In The Sky” and “Celebrate” offer more gristle than meat. The former speaks to the ever-changing definition of blackness under God’s eye and the latter is party anthem with the token dine at his side. Besides that, Common plays his own publicist—killing the Hollywood persona, evoking the dusty pen from his Chicago days. He falls short on attaining that lofty goal. “So Sweet” and “Raw” depict him bitchifying a naysayer and taking a bottle to the side of a drunk patron’s head. Carnage’s not your thing? Don’t worry, the romantic warrior cometh. “Lovin’ I Lost” is another song that gives him the leeway to supplant LL COOL J as the ladies’ MC. If there is a gleaming summit to this unlit valley, it’s “Gold”. The man is streamline with his verses and calculated with his theme. Songs like these are annoying because it offers a glimpse into Common’s effortless skill—but you have to sit through a sea of filler. For all you fiends of collaborations, Nas helps to make “Ghetto Dreams” a banger. Dark and vengeful, its Cottage Grove meets Queensbridge with no inkling of Madison Avenue or the Sunset Strip in the prose. The only knock against this track is that is follows the album’s opening, “The Dreamer,” which showcases Maya Angelou’s poem of people in bondage and dire straits surviving in the country. It’s tough hearing Common call a woman a ‘bitch’ in the next verse.

Though he makes up for shortcoming with a track like the over-orchestrated, John Legend-crooned “The Believer,” his album isn’t horrible, but the good shit is few and far between.

In an attempt to hit the big-time, I’m gonna start writing for 10L again. In and of itself, that’s exciting, right?

Plus:

– A new Life and Times record is coming in a few days.

– Drake’s supposed comeback to Common might solidify him as my least favorite rapper in history.

– ATDI reunion.

– New Cloud Nothings in February.

– The Freeway/Jacka Collabo.

– THIS.

And, on top of it, REVIEWS of these things. I’m sorry I got depressed and laid around and watched basketball and stopped writing and left you cold and dead and without love and then started like nine reviews but never finished them. There will be some “Shit we missed in 2011″ reviews. And some just plain “blog” posts to keep the site going stronger than before. Best records of 2011? Storms “Lay Your Sea Coat Aside,” Cymbals Eat Guitars “Lenses Alien,” Jon Connor “Season 2 Mixtape,” Random Axe “Random Axe” and other shit I will get around to talking about. So, yeah, I’m sorry we left. But we are sort-of back. It’s somewhat on.

Most people are unaware of the conditions in which an album come out. Gleeful ignorance, I like to think it. We hear what we want to hear: this song is about a  breakup, this one is about seeing some natural wonder, this one is about religion. Our assumptions go a long way toward the aura of songs– if only personally– while the constructions of an album matters more than we usually imagine. Take The Popovers’ first and forever only record Make It So! Each song is a simply crafted pop gem about exactly what you hear lyrically. Without the  vagueness and guesswork, the listener is completely in tune with what is happening in the song, rather than the external thought that usually conjures our aforementioned ignorance.

“Yoga in the Morning” is hardly the best song on the album, but it is a good example of the songwriting on the album. Easily digestible lyrics with female backups drive a fantastic pop song. This song is the definition of infectious. And the onslaught continues on my favorite song on the album– a keyboard infused doo-wopper in “Sad State of Affairs.” A song about a sad-sack roommate sleeping around, the Popovers’ best intentions are here. The omnipresent lyrics are borderline creepy in their caring and realistic in their admissions. Meanwhile, the verse-chorus-verse mentality expands here– no need for fancy transitions or big solos, “Sad State of Affairs” is good without trickery.

“The Worst in You” qualifies as a slow jam, but it still drives home the point: this is style over substance. A building, swirling verse is subdued in nature, but just as driving and lovely as any other song on the album. Sure, the context is sappy sadness, but the song is as vulnerable and fun as it is saccharine. It moves well into “Do I Make You Feel Uncomfortable,” a return to the pop-rock the album boasts on most songs. Starting with a solo, the song is one of the only male-only dominated vocal patterns. It’s rewarding to stray a bit from the norm.

No song strays from the norm like “It’s My Right (To Fall for the Wrong Person).” With a backbeat that likens more to electronica and a back-and-forth argument between the vocalists on their “relationship,” “It’s My Right” proves that Make It So! isn’t just a flashy record, it’s a clever one. The substance creeps in, making ignorance to The Popovers’ obscene amounts of talent impossible. Surely, pop records can be ignored when they are all flash, and Make It So! rarely falters in flash, but it is not so easy to ignore the brilliance of a song like this one.

“Deck Chairs” is, quite possibly, the most melodic and poetic song on the album with guest vocals that allow singers Tim LaFollette and Catie Braly to accentuate rather than carry– again, deviance from the norm is a plus. “I Think We Make Better Friends and I Don’t Want to Be in This Relationship” is an anthemic rocker with slow verses and a champion-drinker’s stance on a failing relationship. The mentality of the album isn’t so much sagging as it is overloaded at this point. The bleeps and bloops of the middle of the album are fading and the big, full guitars take over. “I Think…” is the second-to-last song, the longest on the record and, realistically, where the listener is ready for loud crashes and big guitars. As “Happy Go Lucky Guy” introduces horns and scene-stealing simplicity to finish the record, the listener is re-inundated with the simple rhythms, the well-placed piano notes and the easy-going, hardly perfect lyrics that kept us listening in the first place.

Of course, there’s a bonus song and it’s so damned catchy it hurts. And it has a back story, seen here, of it becoming the Dan Savage Lovecast theme song. But, I’m sure all of these songs have back stories. Thing is, I’m cool without knowing them. I’m totally fine letting my gleeful ignorance pour over these songs and freeze them as moments in time rather than try and figure them out. There’s nothing complex here, but there’s certainly something more than simplicity. I’m not sure I care to ruin the craft by trying harder than the songs want me to. Make It So! wants me to bounce in my car, forget why the songs are sad at times, even forget who’s writing/performing them. They exist for the sole purpose of existence, to be good despite themselves and to prefect a genre of which most people already have longstanding favorites. The Popovers have done all that, and I’ll bet they’re totally fine with the obscurity that comes along with the gleeful ignorance the listener embraces.

Ed. Note: I’d be remiss not to mention that the link I provided in the final paragraph is a link to the OftenAwesome series in which Tim is featured prominently as he battles ALS. I can’t recommend it enough. At times, the ongoing documentary shows his bravery, at times his vulnerability, but it continually shows Tim as he is. If you watch the series, that’s enough for me, but feel free to join the army, donate, buy one of the records, shirts or just get involved. Please get involved. Also, the Popovers album is available for download/stream here, and donations– to directly benefit Tim– are strongly suggested.

Note: I’m not sure what the actual order of these songs is. I have an early copy from the label, so I’m going with what I have.

I really don’t care much for the concept of Pharoahe Monch’s album as explained by the title. Instead, I care about PM’s ability to drop a consistently good, charismatic album. The album could be streamlined and the lyrics could be a little more concise rather than abstract or minutiae-laden. Pharoahe could have kept the R&B swells down and dialed up the intensity at times. Then again, he stars on a damn good album anyway.

W.A.R. begins (possibly– wikipedia has a different track listing) with the alternately astounding and inherently flawed “Assassins.” Jean Grae destroys the opening bars, Pharoahe follows and then, inexplicably, the mid-song skit kills the momentum before an otherwise fantastic verse from Royce Da 5′9″.  What could be the best track on the album gets too long, too outrageous and overly conceptual. Not to mention, Jean Grae? Not the best voice actor. The song is also preceded by a long narrative voiceover as pointless as the in-song skit. As much as I want to lambaste the production and lack of restraint, the next song completely changes the tone and effect of W.A.R..

“Black Hand Side” is exactly the kind of beat, rhyme scheme and set of guest stars I expect from a Pharoahe Monch single. Styles P and Phonte both kill it, PM stays the course and the real meat of the album begins. Set aside the overall “concept” of renegade assassins and you’ll notice the real concept is political and not unlike what PM has done in the past. When the robotic voices fade and the hokey futurism ends, W.A.R. becomes what it should– a rabid, politicized affair with racial overtones.  “Black Hand Side” is where PM ultimately succeeds, too. The whole album isn’t this strong but with high points like this, I can’t complain too much.

Then, the brilliance of “Clap.” A simple song with a clear message of intolerance for the semantics of race, “Clap” crushes an easygoing beat with spliced vocals. Pharoahe’s second verse is the money shot of the album: “We went from niggers to porch monkeys to negroes to blacks then back to niggers again but niggas is still hungry.” The rapid-fire history lessons (both personal and political intertwined) often forgo the stop-start balance of the beat to extend long, breathless rants. These are paragraphs rather than stanzas, lectures rather than poetry and the polemics are as tight as they ever have been. As the beat fades to straight-ahead clapping, Pharoahe attacks the listener as if to remind us, I am the one of the best in the world at this… when he’s focused.

“Evolve” is an acerbated continuation of “Clap.” The album is rolling nicely at this point, PM is really on point. “The Grand Illusion (Circa 1973)” is a ball-stopper, of sorts. A strange amalgamation of Citizen Cope’s backing, choral vocals, guitar swirls, strings and synth is an overabundance on a long song. A needless guitar solo capitulates the point, yet aggrandizes exactly how big PM wanted this album to go. As the song fades, the listener is left confused, bewildered. Was that a chilling look at what is to come? Or is it a one-off in the middle of a great album? The answer is complicated.

It’s hard to talk about how much of a momentum killer “The Grand Illusion” is when “Hailie Selassie Karate” opens with pitiful vocals and mindless curse-laden “radio banter.” Even commenting on this song is a waste of time. PM goes in, but to this makeshift beat and awful vocals, there’s nothing to grasp. “The Hitman” tries to recapture the funkiness, the seriousness of W.A.R., but ultimately fails as a party song and as an indictment of modern radio (I think I’ve heard his particular rant hundreds of times). The circus atmosphere of “Let My People Go” is a miscue, but a move in the right direction– PM’s vocal level is even raised here. He wants to lead a best-in-show rather than a rap funeral march, and is willing to let organs lead him in.

I think you see where I am going with this review. As the album fails to keep coming with big beats and hard tracks, the meek beats and silliness inherit the album. As the lectures become preachy and the gospel/circus/R&B singing takes over, I’m less interested in how much cleverness goes into the wordplay, less enthralled by the politics and truth, less indebted to how much work PM put in. “Shine” and “Still Standing” are perfect examples. While I love the beats on both, the female vocals overpower Monch’s monotone and bring nothing to the table. “Still Standing” is a triumphant piece on Monch surviving the doldrums of both personal travails and the doldrums of the rap game. Thing is, we all know he survived. He’s told us in a lot of verses. The real story is how he plans on continuing to improve on his status.

He certainly won’t improve on the first few songs. Tight narratives, incredible lyrics, amazing flows, sick beats and a sense that maybe there’s some real reasons to stay focused define the album more than the grandstanding that is We Are Renegades’ downfall. When the album is humming, Pharoahe is absolute genius, when the beats and ideas falter, he is still on top of it all. He is still assuring us that he can carry us over the (big) top. You can envision his head nodding, finding the real evolution of the beat. You can understand his vision even if you aren’t entirely following it. As the metaphor weakens and the music itself is wavering, take solace in the fact that “Clap,” “Black Hand Side” and “Evolve” are extensions of his greatest gift; his abilities to craft with others who share a vision of stories to tell and real equality. W.A.R. isn’t great, but it is solid and that is good enough for me.

Combing through the highlights of this album is wonderful: there’s the complete sea change of opener “Wolves and Bells,” the gorgeous beginning of “Sweet Cup,” the repetition that sets off “Foxes,” the all-around godliness of “The Shipbuilder.” So many of the songs present strength of craft. So many parts ease over you like a blanket tucked slowly. Yet, talking about Lay Your Sea Coat Aside is pointless unless you consider the album as a large-scale project. More than a series of songs or a sum of parts, this record relies on the strength of the entire body of work. The songs don’t exactly bleed directly into one another, but each builds beautifully off of rhythmic guitar and layered vocals. Oftentimes, long instrumental leads fill voids in the image-driven lyrics. These are the silences of nature and the nurturing hand Storms provide to guide you.

Lay Your Sea Coat Aside depends so much on transition while seamlessly blending them. Album closer “Para Lole” sounds like a violent wind as it begins, but the guitar and gentle vocals lull the listener into safety. At no time does the chaos of wind chimes stop, but at no time do they seem threatening. The album centers on this paradigm: the harshness of nature and the violence of music is a calming experience when controlled. “Lady Frances,” for example, begins with a lot of blank space before a canvas of river images. The music follows the images with a rolling riff with the background ambiance still subtle yet jarring. The song fades as quickly as it built foundation, and the listener is left with silence. We’re also left wanting more, but immediately transferred to the humming of “Foxes.”

And so each song works. Storms lays out a perfect balance of note-heavy Spanish guitar work and long-held, breathy notes. They create a background, they build off it, they quickly destroy the background. At some point, it would make sense to get bored or listless. Or maybe just ignore the album as it progresses. Hell, that might even be the point of some of these songs. Problem is, the smokescreen of boredom doesn’t work. The listener’s brain is still wrapping itself around the bells, the quiet rhythms, the steadfast delineation of sound and the overall brilliance of the album.

Storms have created a narrow-sighted spectacle. They have tread lightly on substance and won a measured battle with subtlety. Lay Your Sea Coat Aside is porch music, Winter music, driving music, Spring music, wholly ignorable and timelessly memorable all at once. As each meandering song rests comfortably on the listener’s ears, each is a triumph. Whether wordless like “The Forest Year” or woven together in stirring parts like “Wolves and Bells,” the songs demand nothing but positive attention. If anything, the album’s airiness is undemanding of anything more than silence.

Silence is what it continues to get. I drove on a quiet afternoon with the hum of a motor and a collapsing of the sun over roads. Blinding perspicacity, rather than the light penetrating my windshield, is all that kept me going as I realized I had forgotten to re-accelerate with the rising speed limit.  An angry motorist reminded me to do so, but all I could really do as he passed me was smile like the child holding her “Sweet Cup.” I was so involved in Lay Your Sea Coat Aside that I impeded my own anger. All this on the first listen. I can really only tell you the songs get better as you replay them, nodding, marinating in exactness and solitude rather than the distances you may still have to travel. Better the way they sing it though, “It’s hard to know how we got here or how we get home.”

What if I told you I had a record filled with the passionate ramblings of the last man on Earth? You’d obviously be in disbelief, but I doubt you’d ignore the idea entirely. Degeneration Street is an album filled with battle cries, pleas to an unknown God and pleas for battle cries possibly unheard by man or God alike. I’m not quite sure what The Dears’ wasteland is caused by: be it zombies, vampires or some hybrid monster we’ve never seen, the cause of turmoil is unimportant. Instead, the wealth of songs, brilliance of instrumentation and studio trickery take the sting out of the destructive loneliness of being alive in a cold, dead, still-violent world.

But what if I told I was totally not sure if Degeneration Street was really about all that? Opener “Omega Dog” has all the vagueness it needs to leave me guessing: It happens, but what is it? There’s shaking and the title is all “last man on earth,” but really, what the hell is this song about? Is it an introduction to general melancholy or a specific story? “I’m the only one,” is repeated as the song drifts into a noisy finale, but the only what?

And what of “Blood?”  The gory images contained in the song are all well and good, but there’s an “us,” and an unfocused narrative driven by one of the best rockers I’ve heard from Dears (of whom I am a huge fan). Above the swells of distortion and the harpsichord arises a conspiratorial tone, but who is the accused? “Since I was a baby/ I have always been this way./  I can see you coming from a billion miles  away.” Dears have put together a hodgepodge of terms, woven them into a group of stories and assigned them a cool name, but am I just to ignore their interconnections? Am I searching for too much? I love this song, sonically, vocally, but I really want to get it.

At this point we are given “Thrones,” a rejection of both Heaven and Earth. No one “has the guts to bear a cross or a switchblade,” but there is a battle cry to “give up on heaven/ give up the throne.” The distinctions are clear in “Thrones.” No guts, no glory, praise be damned. “Lamentation” is a reversal of roles: a prayer song with dynamics beyond quiet-loud. Reaching a height of madness while keeping perspective, “Lamentation” is one of the best songs on the album. In fact, I found myself finally trying to clear my mind of the album’s persona. I was finally awash in the sound rather than the fury, as it were.

By the time the short, instrumental “Torches” bleeds into “Galactic Tides,” it’s clear that a sea change has occurred. The rock anthems are fading into slow, methodical confessionals. It’s almost as if the heroism of Degeneration Street is now oblivion. The point of the album may not be entirely clear, but the motivation is definite. “Yesteryear’s” uptempo Brit-pop feel doesn’t overshadow the calculations of the previous three songs. Trials and tribulations of the album are focusing in on a personal disaster yet-to-be-named rather than the obliteration we get in “Omega Dog.”

The semantic journeys continue later: “Tiny Man” is an epochal escape song. Gathering family and friends, heading underground and staying away from events unnamed is a continuing theme, but not quite so important as it is in “Tiny Man.” It’s unfortunate that the album begins to stall: “1854″ is indicative of the larger problem of Degeneration Street. It is a problem more important than the failed themes or dramatic presentations.

The album’s main strength is the songwriting, but the weakness is so prevalent. Degeneration Street is so, so long and so, so overly emphatic. By the time the title track drags to the finish, the listener has been shown the importance of survival so many times that “Get me through the night/ Get me through the Winter/ Get me to the sun/ Or we’ll all be gone” is empty weight. Passionate as it sounds, there’s no way to know how awful the consequences are. “1854,” as aforementioned, is the beginning of the end– a song that stands on its own as fantastic, but is just another epic. Since each song is gigantic in scope or perfectly specific in its cry for justice, what, then, of the stories themselves? Vague calls and battle cries can damage the most ardent fan, and make enemies of new listeners.

Trying to barrage the listener with importance and ballast, The Dears have disconnected from what makes them great: leaving the listener dazed, confused, and still headstrong. As much as I want to know the outcome of the protagonist(s) of each song, I am quite tired of their preaching. As much as I love the largeness of theme, I am confused as to the purpose of Degeneration Street. Is this a zombie story or a series of beliefs from a beleaguered soul? Either way, I’m impressed with the scope but harrowed by the search. It’s not as if I wasn’t trying, either. I’m totally down for a journey, but I like to know where I am going at some point. I guess I’m left with a few lovely songs, at least, as I fall back from battle.