My Favorite Music 2011

I find it nigh impossible to write about music, and although I don't suffer from the misconception that anyone in the rest of the world cares what my favorite music was this year, the truth is I love reading other people's lists. It means I should spend time with something, it means the chance of--sniff--sharing. So in the spirit of sharing, not narcissism, I offer my favorite music of 2011. BTW, it's friggin hard narrowing down a list to something manageable. With limited exceptions, the order below is arbitrary.

1. Cut Copy – Zonoscope. 

Push comes to shove, my favorite band. As should be apparent from most of these albums, I’m a sucker for the dancey electronic stuff, and these guys seem like the U2s of it. That is, I can imagine this stuff filling arenas and not just clubs or bedrooms. Listened to this more than anything else this year, I’m sure. They’re the (my) INXS of the 2010s--forget the U2 comparison. I'd never seen the video below before, but it looks sort of like if David Lynch ripped his own Obsession ads off in order to make one for Nike.

2. Little Dragon - Ritual Union.

Really solid album through and through. Gotta kinda smooth, funky Prince feel but cold--they're Swedish, after all. Great guest appearance on SBTRKT record, too. As the video below proves, they do this stuff live. Nice fashion sense as well.

3. Tycho - Dive.

Discovered late this fall, but I feel confident in keeping it on my list. This is the sort of intricate electronic music you can listen to as closely (or not) as you like, and hear lots going on. Really listenable, but stays fresh--fresher, in my opinion than Washed Out. Which I do like.

4. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up. 

I've always thought Digable Planets were underrated, particularly their Blowout Comb album. This is a comback of sorts. Again, actually interesting to listen to--as opposed to, say Watch the Throne. Which has its undeniable charms, so long as you don't care to listen closely or hope to hear anything new. Look...it was on my list...but push come to shove, I think I've heard it before. Not this. Enough talk about Watch the Throne. Stream Black Up in its entirety below.

5. Ford & Lopatin - Channel Pressure. 

80s inflected electronic. Just listen.

6. SBTRKT - SBTRKT & Step in Shadows. 

It's pronounced "subtract". Once I could wrap my head around that, quickly fell for this fast DJ, eletronic stuff. Maybe it's the mask, but I often think of Soul II Soul when I listen to this.

7. Metronomy - The English Riviera. 

Did you catch that album title? I like it. Watch and listen to the video below. You will know within 5-10 seconds whether you like this band.

8. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient. 

Rock-n-roll 2011. The lead singer’s voice has got a weird Dylan thing going on every now and then. Come to think of it, I think I hear Marshall Crenshaw in his voice. Marshall Crenshaw? WTF? They sound lots better on the album than in this clip.

 

9. Peter, Bjorn & John – Gimme Some. 

There’s no “Young Folks” on this album, but such a song only comes around once in the lifetime of about a thousand bands. I think this is their best overall album—the most consistently pleasing, at least.

10. Phantogram - Eyelid Movies. 

Again, electronicky rock that doesn't get old. Check out "Running from the Cops."

FURTHER NOTABLES:

Atlas Sound – Parallax. Came out too late and listened to too little to put on the list. But Bradford Cox will always have a spot somewhere on my year-end list.

Black Keys - El Camino. Just doing my part to continue the Black Key’s media blitz and adding some rock to my list. This is an instant pleaser. You don’t like the Black Keys? What’s wrong with you?

Gus Gus – Arabian Horse. The Icelandic electronic act that just keeps going. Put this on and go about your business. You’ll feel better about whatever it is you’re doing.

Wugazi. Has this DJ marketed a “This is not a Wu-Tang Clan/Fugazi shirt?” Because he should. Get this album: it’s free and it’s great.

Washed Out – Within and Without. Previous album put me to sleep. Not so this one.

Beastie Boys. When this first came out, I listened to it a whole, whole lot. Not so much since then. But I still think it’s their best since Ill Communication. And more so than anything else, this one probably falls victim to the Woody Allen syndrome on end-of-year lists.

Foster the People. Horrendous performance on SNL. Dude should not try to dance or be a rock star. But I like the album, not just the one track that got them on SNL and the radio play. Really stupid lyrics, most of the time.

Also, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Cults, New Division.

Someone I can appreciate but that just didn’t make the top ten: James Blake.

Someone I just don’t like: Bon Iver.

Stuff I’m immediately going to listen to after looking at all the other lists: Kendrick Lamar – Section.80, Wild Flag – Wild Flag.

News & Pepper Spray Class Outline

Today I decide to make use of our shortened Thanksgiving week and do the job that I'm supposed to do. That is, teach media criticism. It's late in the semester. Some things have gotten put off or lost in the shuffle. For my television criticism class, that's been discussion of the news. One reason I don't typically dwell on news in television criticism is that it's an area I know gets attention elsewhere in the curriculum. Aside from that, outside of the field of Television Studies, for many in academia, TV criticism = news criticism. There's plenty else to talk about, and I usually do.

This kind of thinking has allowed me to not dedicate too much of my time to a subject which greatly frustrates me: Fox News. And yet, it must be dealt with. What I did today was use the Occupy Davis Pepper Spray incident as an opportunity to examine how news entertainment mediates events and renders them meaningful in particular ways. I started with my typical lecture material on the history of the news going back to the Camel/Plymouth News Caravan in the 1950s. I have a DVD which includes one 15-minute broadcast. This shows the sponsored format of the news, the reliance on library film footage, and also the role of the media in defining/speaking to the nation. It concludes with a great promo for NBC bringing an atomic test in the Nevada desert to audiences...arms race as TV event. Below is a different episode, but pretty much the same deal.



I'll skip over the rest of the lecture on the rising stature of TV news, from making up for the Quiz Shows, to "loss leader" status, to the Vietnam War and the post-Watergate investigative journalism mania. Cue Network. Bottom line, 80s and 90s news is just another profit-generating entity. Thus, news must be entertaining. Here we discuss Hallin's strategies to make the news entertaining. Must students grasp right away Character, Conflict, Dramatic Structure, Images/Graphics, the News Family, and then the fun one, Populism. Actually, they tend to get that one, too, but it does require a bit more teasing. We talk about "man in the street" type interviews and the celebration of common wisdom, but today we added a bit more nefarious version to the mix. That is, the rampant anti-intellectual hypocrisy of Fox & Friends (which my colleague Jeff Jones is currently writing about as not so much "news family" as "high school clique").

We watched the following clip from the Daily Show, in which Stewart "outs" Carlson's intellectual cred in the face of her claims she doesn't understand such mind-boggling concepts as "double-dip inflation" and "czar". This is about the halfway point of the following clip.

Kitchen Cops, that ain't. Interesting conversation about populist performances by political candidates followed: for example, George W. Bush clearing brush. Then we watched this clip from O'Reilly Factor with Megyn Kelly talking about how pepper spray is one of the basic food groups. Basically. I decided to show this clip prior to the unedited YouTube footage of the Occupy Davis incident, because it really shows some aggressive meaning-making going on.



Where to start? That must be watered down pepper spray? I'm disgusted again and I can't finish this post. If it meant I could subsequently vomit on Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly, I might take a hefty dousing myself. No questioning of ethics. O'Reilly pisses me off not by just saying we can't Monday morning quarterback the police, but asserting we can't tell what's going on. Yes, we can. We don't need this explained. It's self evident. Also: notice how the clip edits together Davis footage with that from Berkeley, which does show protesters physically clashing with police. This helps lend credence to the suggestion we can't "know" how the protesters were behaving or whether the police action was warranted. Bullshit. Seriously. Can't revisit.

Then there is the complete 8 1/2 minute clip. I showed this and asked how understanding of the event changes when seeing the entire thing. Thank goodness the BoingBoing article that featured this clip (or was it a Facebook post) that said to watch the whole thing. Otherwise, I might have given up. It truly is a revelation.



My students' reaction was immediate and echoed my own. While they may have started with the question in their heads of whether the actions were somehow warranted, by the end what is impressive is how they have taken power. Watch footage of protests on television, and who wants to be a part of that? Here you see a crowd of protesters in control, effectively shaming the police. It stands as an inspiring piece of television, as well as a disgraceful document of nonchalant abuse of power.

More Derelict Modern at Camp K Photos

See the related blog post.