The Homegrown Snob

Duran Duran – “Girl Panic!”

Want to watch supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell stumble through debauchery and swank hotel living as “members” of Duran Duran? Here’s your fix.  Serially overlooked Duran Duran made a very clever longform video for this great song last year. Sorry I’m just getting around to posting it.

Kate Bush – “Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe”

A segment of this eerie, beautiful track from Kate Bush’s wonderful 50 Words for Snow gets a shadow puppet video. The story, about a ghost searching and waiting for her lost dog to come home, works perfectly.

The Dandy Warhols – “Plan A”

From their overlooked Welcome to the Monkey House, this piece of ear candy is destined to be stuck in your head the rest of the day.

David Bowie – “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)”

Quentin Tarantino’s resurrection of this nearly forgotten David Bowie 1982 collaboration with Giorgio Moroder made “Inglourious Basterds” even more memorable. It also made for one of the best film + music moments of the decade.

Welcome to 2012!

Here’s a slew of yummy new tracks for you to savor as the new year unfolds.

The Shins – “Simple Song”

The teaser from James Mercer’s band’s fourth album, Port of Morrow, is a sublime piece of guitar-pop with a melty love-story center. Go ahead, tell me you don’t want to fly away when Mercer’s voice reaches for the heavens on that chorus. And then there’s that last verse: “Remember walking the mile to your house/ A glow in the dark/ I made a fumbling play for your heart/ And the axe drove the spark.”

For those of us underwhelmed by the Broken Bells project, the way backwards is forwards. Port of Morrow is out March 20.

Kathleen Edwards – “Change the Sheets”

Here’s the first single from her upcoming Voyageur, out Jan. 17. For those unfamiliar, Edwards is one of the best singer-songwriters to emerge this century. Her last album, Asking for Flowers, was a flawless mix of narrative songs, political statement and personal angst. “Change the Sheets” is by far the most produced-sounding thing she’s ever done — keyboards, blippy guitar loops, reverb for miles — but holds fast to the melancholy undertow that defines her best work.

She deserves to be a household name. Maybe Voyageur will do that for her.

Nada Surf – “When I Was Young”

This MTV Buzz Bin band cum adult alternative heart-on-sleevers has a new one out Jan. 24, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy.

“When I Was Young” starts gently – a little Simon & Garfunkel-y – and unwinds into slow-burning guitar-and-strings tale of growing older and wiser. It’s a real grower, and the “what was that world I was dreaming of” chorus is bound to get you humming later. 

Mazzy Star – “Common Burn”

They of the classic “Fade Into You” (remember 1994??) return after 15 years. Hope Sandoval sounds just as lovelorn and achy as she did in the ’90s. If it’s not as transcendant as MS’s biggest hit, it’s still nicely restrained and pretty. No complaints here.

Iron and Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean

For the life of me, I can’t understand how this record has been so completely ignored.

Sam Beam continues to stand out among the glut of neo-folkies now clogging the indie scene. That he’d make his best record, with his most diverse, playful and immediate set of songs, seven years and five albums into his career is still surprising. The gleefully eclectic arrangements — African rhythms, layered harmonies, jazzy sax solos — alienated some old fans but brought a focus to his songs rather than distract from them.

Out of all the albums I heard in 2011, Kiss Each Other Clean brought me the most joy. I must have played it 100 times. It still floors me.

 That it’s introspective without being dour and upbeat without being disposable makes it a rarity in a world of self-obsession. Here’s a record to enjoy: in private or with company, in the car, as background noise, or as a puzzle to contemplate slowly, carefully, piece by piece.

“Walking Far From Home”

“Rabbit Will Run”

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Harvey took home her second Mercury Prize (the UK version of the Album of the Year Grammy) for Let England Shake, a concept album about the tolls of war.

At first stuffy — lyrical details culled from WWI reports dangerously border on sociology-thesis territory — the record eventually buries itself in your brain. Whether it’s the insistent strum of “The Words that Maketh Murder” and its cynical climax or the heartwrench of “The Colour of the Earth,” Let England Shake is designed to stay with you. Even if it rarely rises above a whisper.

It’s conversational, dry and matter-of-fact and probably Harvey’s least accessible collection. It’s also one of her most rewarding and very nearly album of the year.

“The Words That Maketh Murder”

“The Colour of the Earth”

Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow

If all of 50 Words for Snow was as perfect as its first four songs, there’d be little reason for 2011 year-end lists at all.

When she gets it right – taking her time to unfold fantasies and imaginative tales of lusty snowmen, ghosts searching for lost dogs, snowflakes bound for a child’s hand and Yeti – it’s as close to perfect as Bush and the whole of art-pop ever get. Beneath all the whimsy and spookiness, there’s a theme to all these songs: a desperate longing to be together, or at least not be alone.

She’s still best using only her expressive voice and hesitant piano, tugging the heart in unexpected ways. “I might know what you mean when you say ‘fall apart’/Aren’t we all the same/ In and out of doubt?” Bush reassures us mortals on “Among Angels,” pairing her gifts for wild imagination and deep empathy to close her best, most adventurous album in 22 years on a comfortingly human note.

“Wild Man”

“Snowflake”

Wild Beasts – Smother

Not exactly a “breakthrough” album in terms of popularity, Smother certainly feels like an artistic milestone for this little U.K. band.

Mining territory somewhere between new wave and Antony and the Johnsons, creating a set of songs that combine a musical economy with far-reaching conceits of lust and deception. Yeah, Hayden Thorpe’s sometimes pretentious vocals could take the average listener a while to get beyond, but I found myself returning to these 10 quietly seductive songs and discovering new layers and reasons to eventually love them: quietly exotic drum loops, unexpected builds into toe-tapping, distinct melodies, an unshowy confidence and sense of drama.

Wild Beasts’ll probably never be household names, but with Smother they stumbled upon a sound that’s timeless, urgent and subtle — a rarity in the pop-flash world of the early 2000s. 

“Albatross”

Florence and the Machine – Ceremonials

In a year when Adele and Lady Gaga made the headlines and topped the charts with bold statements, Florence Welch labored over Ceremonials melding similarly big sounds with unconventional emotions.

She struggles over stagefright in a relationship (“No Light”) cavorts with ghosts (“Only If For a Night”) imagines herself drowned (“What the Water Gave Me”) and rises euphoric (“Shake It Out”). She hops genres with similar ease, contorting gospel, gothic pop, Lennon-esque melodies and stadium rock into her own sound.

As big as the music is — crescendos threaten to overwhelm her in almost every song — Welch’s banshee wail and her particularly visual songs are the focus. Ceremonials is more entertaining, more confident and more personal than any of her pop peers’ 2011 albums, cementing her place as one of this new breed’s biggest talents.

“Shake It Out”

“No Light, No Light”

Richard Buckner – Our Blood

Somehow, Buckner’s been languishing in obscurity for about two decades, creating one of the best catalogs of any of his indie/alt-country peers without ever getting his due.

The dark Our Blood — his eighth album — won’t change that. Borne of struggle (he was near broke when the tapes were lost or stolen TWICE), these snaky songs rarely approach rock, preferring to uncoil in fits of words and phrases able to be interpreted in more than a few ways. His gruff voice and spare guitar increasingly augmented by harmonies, pedal steel, bells and organs, Buckner continues to wander a path into what has become a signature sound built of common parts.

No one else has his touch — subverting a comforting melody, sneaking alienation into familiarity — coming off like a big brother and an observant stranger within the same song. Our Blood is his most adventurous and one of his best, even if his spookiest.

“Traitor”

Portugal. The Man – In the Mountain In the Cloud

This indie band with the precisely punctuated name went major-label in 2011 with its fifth album, In the Mountain In the Cloud, a collection of glam-rock tunes built around John Gourley’s trippy lyrics and Chipmunk-styled falsetto.

As the frontman and chief songwriter, he’s got style to spare: out-Bowie-ing Bowie on “So American” and going dewey-eyed on ballads like “Once Was One”. The best cuts here rival anything else I heard this year, especially the trumpet fanfare of “Everything You See (Kids Count Hallelujah)” and the chugging “All Your Light (Times Like These)” and the undeniable “So American.” 

There’s not a dud on In the Mountain …  And when these guys are on fire – like when they rise from a sneakily whispered riff to a mountain-toppling climax on “You Carried Us” — they seem untouchable.

“So American”

“All Your Light (Times Like These)”

R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now 

Remember when R.E.M. was still a band?

It’s still a little hard to believe they’ve called it quits, even if they seemed to be showing their age the last few years. While a lot of critics turned up their noses at Collapse Into Now — what ended up the band’s final album — few albums made me as glad in 2011.

This was R.E.M. being comfortable with what R.E.M. is: a once revolutionary and now sturdy, weathered guitar pop band. Yes, most everything here sounds like an echo of past hits: “Uberlin” opens like “Drive,” “Mine Smell Like Honey” and “That Someone Is You” are spritely retreads of their ’80s heyday, “Blue” even pulls in Patti Smith a la “E-bow the Letter.”

But you’d be pressed to find any other band making songs as simple and gorgeous as “Oh My Heart” and “Walk It Back” – nothing less than the pinnacle of Stipe’s late-period nakedly personal reflection. If this is the way it ends for them, little of the mystery but most of their dignity intact, it’s an ending I’m happy with.

“Oh My Heart”

“Uberlin”