Whispers #1

Oh man! Opening up to that first page and seeing that Luna art felt like coming home. Home! I had wonderful flashbacks to my time with The Sword. Gosh, did I enjoy that comic. I’d almost forgotten how much until I opened Whispers.

So here we are! Issue one in what I hope will be a long series. So far, it's mostly set up: introducing the who, the what, the where, the when and the why for the series. There are definitely some similarities to The Sword in story tactics (is that the right way to say it? You’ll see what I mean.)

You see, back in The Sword, our main character was a wheelchair bound girl who found a sword that gave her magical powers such as giving her the ability to self-heal, or massive amounts of strength. In Whispers, we have a young man who seems to be "crippled" by his OCD, and we see him developing a magical power that's sort of like astral projection: the ability to hear loved one’s thoughts as well as possibly influence their behavior.

And, yes, it looks to be a hero’s journey of sorts. In the Sword, Dara used her powers to go and avenge her family’s death which she witnessed just before finding The Sword - the very thing the killers were after. This powerful weapon had a story that spanned history, a whole mythology that served as the original source of conflict for the whole story.

So far, in Whispers, the set-up is not as dramatic. So far! I’m saying that because, well, I read the first third of The Sword in the trade format. My recollection of it as one overall story comes from that fact, that I read most of it in very quick succession. Reading Whispers, I realized that it might have taken a couple of issues to really set-up the story, something I wouldn't have noticed. Reading it like this, in a smaller chunk, I wonder if I might be giving the information (the piece of story I just read) more emphasis than it really needs. If, for example, I was reading a collection of multiple issues of Whispers, would I be stopping to wonder why Sam (the main character) and Lily recently broke up? Or would I just acknowledge that bit of information (okay, they broke up) and keep moving forward? Would I get as irritated with Rico (a character that picks on Sam for his behavior), or would I just keep reading, having faith that Rico's behavior is necessary to the story and not something I should get that worked up about?

I don't know. It's worth thinking about, but it would be a tough thing to test.

And that brings us to....Astral Projection. Yeah. That’s kinda what this is about. That makes me a little bit worried. I’m sorry, but it does. See, with The Sword, even though it wasn’t “realistic” or “plausible” it was easy to understand. The Sword made her strong. Without it she was weak and vulnerable. Being able to visit people while you are sleeping/dreaming in a way that they can’t see you - I don’t fully yet understand how to grasp hold of it. Sam will be armed with information and therefore truth? He can influence events, perhaps? I’m not entirely sure. It's not like vampires. I wasn't sitting here reading Whispers and remembering all those awesome astral projection movies I watched when I was a kid. I don't have a bunch of daydreams about invisibly floating around in people's bedrooms. (I have a few, of course.)

But I remember how much I loved the Sword, and looking at these very first pages of Whispers...I want this to be that good. I would love to fall in love with something like that again.

Fingers crossed.

-Nina Stone, 2012

Prophet #21

A nice mix-up of Rip Van Winkle, Prison Pit and Conan (easier version: a French sci-fi comic), with guest appearances by the horrorshow that the dog becomes in The Thing, Prophet #21 does exactly what it had to do to meet up with the pre-show hype: it works. Delivering tone and building its world, skipping the corny character signifiers and logos that stand in for personalities and motives in the rest of the Image universe was the best move Graham could have made, forcing the reader to move closer to Simon Roy, an artist finished with his Otomo/Gipi phase and setting up shop in the "how would Jesse Marsh draw manga" school of obsesion. It's fun, and it's weird. If that's not your thing, there's plenty of the alternative available.

Wonder Woman #5
Art by Tony Akins & Matthew Wilson
Written by Brian Azzarello
Published by DC Comics

Now that Wonder Woman has successfully made it over the "hope it doesn't get cancelled" hump, isn't it time we address the fact that Hermes is wearing the ugliest sunglasses ever made, sunglasses that are second only to a backwards baseball cap in making a man look like a total toolbag? Even if we ignore his Woodstock '99 era rain poncho--and we really shouldn't ignore that thing, because that's as much a sign of the unfunny side of perversion as it would be if he was driving a white panel van with no windows--we're still five issues into a relationship where the most happening broad in the land has yet to tell her own brother that, oh, you know, he's wearing the same fucking sunglasses that Jerry Sandusky wore everytime he wanted to hide his tired eyes from the harsh light of a world where the rest of us don't fuck children in showers.

Daredevil #8
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Kano & Javier Rodriguez
Published by Marvel Comics

If any title is going to survive Marvel's bizarre creative tailspin, the smart money has to be on Daredevil, a book that's almost quaint with its slow-burn long tale plotting, most of which circles around the possession of a high end flash drive, packed to the gills with evil secrets. Even a tie-in with the Amazing Spider-Man (a series that is taking a short break from one piece of shit story arc so that it can rest its weary, shit-filled bones before it delivers what looks to be another piece of shit story arc) didn't slow it down that much, which comes as a surprise when you consider how little anyone, fictional or otherwise, wants to be around Peter Parker for a length of time more extensive than it would take to stab him in his stupid, stupid whining eyes.

Usagi Yojimbo Volume 6
By Stan Sakai
Published by Fantagraphcis

About half this volume of Usagi is taken up with stories where the samurai rabbit deals with the supernatural, while the other half--a multi part story called "Circles"--concerns itself with the warrior's past, albeit with a supernatural villian thrown in. There's also a quick, predictable one-shot involving a couple of conmen, but don't let the implication of shittiness that the word "predictable" brings with it take hold: there's enough great comic-stuff going on in the story to make up for the fact that you can chart every strand of plot the thing has after reading the first five--maybe four--pages. Sakai's ability to draw a character's motives into their facial features is one of his weirdest and most fascinating talents. It's easy to spot the bad guys in most funny animal comics, and that's why Usagi Yojimbo is a cut above the rest--the complexity on display here in the face of the depressed, one-more-scam swordsmen goes beyond the simple "he's a fox, and foxes are tricky".

"The Duel" is excellent preparation for "Circles", which is all about motives and revelations. Usagi decides to return to his former home, only to walk into another one of those hard-working townspeople versus rapacious bandits settings so popular in samurai fiction. He discovers an old friend and old enemy, both still alive, checks in on his estranged lover (who packs a revelation of her own), the friend-turned-rival that married her, and then there's a nice, long battle that lasts multiple pages without ever seeming the slightest bit self-indulgent. It's a lovely story, and what it lacks in humor (Usagi just isn't funny without Gen or that detective character around) it makes up for in earnest sincerity.

Lone Wolf and Cub: The Inn of the Last Chrysanthemum
Art by Goseki Kojima
Written by Kazuo Koike
Published by First Comics

If someone were to make a graph of the types of Lone Wolf & Cub stories, they'd first break them down into two major categories--the one-off ones where he earns money by killing people, and the ones where the ongoing narrative is pushed towards conclusion. Eventually, the entire book focuses entirely on that second category, all of which build to the most satisfying conclusion to any genre comic book ever published. That's not intended to be hyperbole: it's a statement of fact, albeit one that's only seen meager research. The greats of American genre comics--Eisner and Kirby--never got a chance (some quarters might word that "never took a chance", but not this one, and fuck those people) to play around with conclusions and finality anymore than Shultz, King and Herriman (a few of the greats of the newspaper strip) did. Leaving the question of whether genre requires an ending aside for a moment (a moment that could last an eternity, for how little I care to probe it), "The Inn of the Last Chrysanthemum" rests firmly in that first category described above: this one's all about the money.

One of Koike's most consistent methods of story construction is to focus the reader's attention entirely on the point of view of some new, as of yet unknown to us character. We follow that character through their (often depressing) life, they experience a few flashbacks that explain their current situation, at some point the Wolf and Cub arrive in their orbit, and then the story leads up to an (often violent) conclusion. In many cases, the story takes on an intense sense of danger and heightening panic after the appearance of the Wolf, because while this structure of story often appears in the overall saga, there's never any promise that the story will conclude happily for all we might hope it will. Sometimes the best the Wolf can do is mete out revenge for abuses suffered, other times he can only acknowledge them in word, and on a few occasions (not few enough to where the sting is ever lessened), he can only provide a quick, honorable passing for those whose long-term victimization leaves them unable to find any way forward in the mortal realm. "Chrysanthemum" is on the bleak end of the scale--the only bottom left for its guest protagonist, the "forlorn maiden, forced into a life of shame" is found in a blood drenched garden, and the only satisfaction found is in the bodies that the Wolf piles alongside her own. There's no pretense that it will be enough, but in keeping with Koike's plan, it's made clear: what matters is that debts get paid. What happens next is never our concern.

King-Cat #72
By John Porcellino
Published by John Porcellino

Even if you don't read the opening letter, where Porcellino admits that most of what you're about to read stems from a time period when, busted up by heartbreak and economic collapse, he "didn't do so good", you'd have to be one cold ass son of a bitch--or a non-Porcellino fan out scraping scabs--not to pick up on the general dourness of the whole enterprise. The crippling impact of a Faith Hill song? An out of nowhere "I don't want to be alive anymore" response to a Porcellino-standard observation of natural beauty and the change of seasons? It's not that these sorts of emote-heavy moments are a strange appearance in the guy's work--this is King-Creamballs-Cat we're talking about, feelings are what these little bastards always traffic in, occasionally to an embarrassing degree usually reserved for Thomas Kinkade--it's that they're being delivered in such a raw, unkempt fashion. There's no lesson at the end of this issue, no explanation given, just the implication that survival is the game, the only thing that Porcellino was going for. Each of these documents--even the moment of nostalgia that sees the guy flashing back to the irritating dopiness of youth--concludes on the same note: he made it when everything was coming at him knives out. Not every struggle has a t-shirt phrase to go along with it.

Batman #5
Art by Greg Capullo
Written by Scott Snyder
Published by DC Comics

There's some serious self-indulgence going on here--landscape two page spreads for no purpose beyond the ability to say "hey, look, big", coupled with the demanding notion that you're reading about a secret society of owl-obsessed maze-building super-killers, and yeah, sorry, "owls" IS tougher to swallow than "bats", anybody who tells you different doesn't like super-hero shit in the first place--but that aside, this is actually a good little Batman comic. It doesn't deserve the over-the-top praise that it's gotten, but at the same time, it's totally understandable why that praise has been so hyperbolic: this has been the shittiest group of Batman titles in a long time. Having a decent issue show up, an issue that sees a plot humming forward with solid illustration to boot--that's going to get some knees buckling, especially amongst those who have been plugging their quarters into the super-hero slot machine since this New 52 thing started. But don't get too worked up: you've never met anyone who is going to read this thing twice, and you never will.

Thunderbolts #169
Art by Kev Walker, Tery Pallot & Frank Martin Jr.
Written by Jeff Parker
Published by Marvel Comics

Time traveling away from Marvel's bone dry continuity and hanging out amongst King Arthur, violence, Merlin, and lots and lots of titties--if you're using the word breasts to describe what Kev Walker's drawing, you really don't fucking get it and probably never will--Thunderbolts #169 (god bless them for keeping the inane numbering of this series) is one of those totally enjoyable comics that probably shouldn't get mentioned on a blog, because that's a sure fire way to see the thing get cancelled the next time Marvel wants to do one of their periodical "how can we fuck up the thing that people like and want to buy" (see the Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Force for examples, look under the paragraph heading "Really Shitty Art"). But hey, why not tempt fate?

-Tucker Stone, 2012

Lone Wolf and Cub: Dragon Tiger Cloud Wind

In this chapter of the greatest comic ever, the Wolf comes upon one of the men he left behind, a former samurai still living in the exact place where he last saw the Wolf: the day the Wolf seconded the samurai's former lord's seppuku. There's no hatred or ill feelings to be found on either side, and while the conclusion is totally foregone, it's delivered with a sense of respect for the ideals the story promotes. It isn't the first time that Koike plays a scene with that kind of emotion, but that doesn't make it any less lovely. The action is, of coruse, a demented pleasure to witness, with the most graphic violence handed off to the Wolf's shadow. The opening ten pages--silent but for a few cries of death--is a masterful depiction of slaughter that introduces the man far better than any dialog ever could.

Plastic Man Archives Volume 4
By Jack Cole
Published by DC Comics

While this volume has some of the best covers you'll see (if you're reading these things in order, which is totally pointless but probably the only way people are reading them, because they have numbers on them, see: assholes like me), there's a limit to how long you can stare at Woozy WInks believing an Eskimo woman is pawing at him when, in reality, he's being sexually harassed by a lusty polar bear, and that limit is probably the same amount of time it's taking you to parse this description. If you hold out until the last story--that's 180 pages of holding out, by the way--you'll be rewarded by the sight of Plastic Man turning into a gigantic whale for the purposes of seduction. Your mileage may vary, or whatever that asshole phrase is, but it's a sight that is totally worth your time. He turns into a horny red whale!

Amazing Spider-Man #677
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Emma Rios and Javier Rodriguez
Published by Marvel Comics

There's no better statement on the question of whether super-hero comics is in a weird, stupid place regarding their business state of affairs then the fourth page of this comic, which is an advertisement for a goddamned wax museum in Hollywood. Deal with that one for a second: an advertisement for something that's only interesting to the most antisocial deviant tourists on God's green Earth, a location that has no appeal other than the fact that, if it burned down to the ground, absolutely every warring group on the planet could come together and hold hands under the banner of not giving the remotest fuck. That's the absolute best thing that somebody at Marvel Comics--which is owned by a gigantic multinational entertainment conglomerate--could come up with to plaster into this comic. Spin some huckster positivity out of that, Sergeant Pepper. (The comic is excellent, if that still matters.)

Fatale #1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips and Dave Stewart
Published by Icon Image, hey maybe things are getting fun again

Containing some of Philips finest panels yet--first up that car flip, second the street scene--and adding another accomplished notch in the belt of the best colorist working, Fatale is a reward on a purely visual front. But the area where it might be even more interesting is on the writing front. Horror--if that's what you call the dreck currently ladled out by the shit merchants at IDW--is the prize pet of the low rent High Concept Kids, a loosely descriptive term I just came up with to define people who come up with 4 to 6 issue mini-series that are usually based around plot construction methods learned from Lego, i.e. taking Jack Bauer or Dexter clones and shuffling them together with bang up ideas like "zombies with ties" or "vampires with clits", plus a heaping dash of BBC references, cuz it's classy. Brubaker's the first real writer in a while to fuck with this stuff, unless you count Alan Moore's really weird rape sequel to Fish Police.

-Tucker Stone, 2012

Historical background: in my upper-middle-class, predominantly white-collar, Land's End infected, mega- conservative High School, I was considered artsy and “different”. And while that’s cool and all, I wouldn’t necessarily say that was a label I earned by doing anything particularly dramatic. I just happended to be living in a town/situation/cultural environment with an ingrown animosity towards creativity. I mean, it had to engage with these things in some fashion, if only to meet college preparatory requirements. And yet, even in the one tiny area where creativity was the actual purpose, it still operated with the strictest of observations. Channeled into the fewest possible outlets the community would allow, it ended up being: dancing school, band, choir, and a tiny bit of theatre. That was it. I don’t know what fine art students had on offer, if they could even find the support and guidance other communities provide with which to nurture their art. And when I decided that I wanted to be a dancer, that, by neccessity, took me away from school in a way that prevented me from participating in any extra-curricular school-related activities. The simple fact that I went somewhere other than the primary place that almost everyone went was all it took for me to earn the label as an "artsy" person.

I had an outlet for creative expression, sure. But, as I've come to realize, it was usually someone else’s creativity that I was expressing. That's what we were all taught to do there--to be the release for someone else's dormant fantasies of what a life of art might have been like for them. I don't regret it, and I can't say that I was cognizant enough at the time to have been disappointed it--I loved dancing--but enough time has passed for me to have no problem admitting that it might not have been the ideal situation for any of the parties involved.

Which leads us to this week: I’m having this late-bloomer, um, blossoming right now. I’ve dance and sung all my life, but my inner musician has always been there, aching to get out and replace the words of others with notes of my own. And now she’s out! Here I am, in Brooklyn, and just last night I enjoyed the first meeting of the new songwriter circle I’m now a part of (I even shared my latest creation!). Today I had a guitar and theory lesson, and with my new knowledge of some music theory (as well as some improvising), I came up with a bass line for my new song. Following that, I had an actual gig--I got paid to go rock my pink guitar and sing songs to children and their families. And I'm having so much fun doing all those things!

And the icing on the cake? Tonight I am reviewing Johnny Wander - Volume 2: Escape to New York, the night before I get to attend the release party for this comic and actually MEET Yuko Ota, Ananth Panagariya, and hopefully the rest of the gang. I am SO excited!!! Who’s having the time of her life??? That would be me. Totally me.

SO here we all are - the Johnny Wander folks and myself -- doing our thing ('s?) in Brooklyn. Doing my "thing” has also led me to reviewing comics with my husband's encouragement and support, and being so fortunate as to actually seeing a blurb of my review of Johnny Wander Volume 1 end up on the back cover of Johnny Wander Volume 2. (That’s all because I have the most awesome husband in the world.)

It's a great week, right?! In case it's not obvious, I am so thrilled to write about all of this right now. I loved this volume of Johnny Wander as much as the last. It is a 100% pleasure to read. Before sitting down at the computer to write this, I sat on the couch saying to my husband, “Oh and this one! Come look at this one! Isn’t that hilarious? Oh wait - you also have to look at this thing about Garies.”

Once again, as reader, I got to be a fly on the wall in the world of Yuko, Ananth, Conrad, John, Mike, Rook, and sometimes Evan and one time George’s. All that life is in this book. Is it weird to say that reading about their life made me want to stop and really observe my own a little bit more? It's not that I don’t. But from reading this comic, I feel like these are friends who really know how to enjoy their time together. It makes me want to be sure I'm doing the same. I realize that they are just showing us snapshots of part of their day(s) that, perhaps, are not all that special to them in the moment they are happening. However, writing and illustrating a series of vignettes about one’s life seems like a great way to capture time in a poignant way.It's way more poignant than taking digital photos or creating “clever” Facebook status updates does. (I'm not making fun! I'm talking about me.)

I’m sitting here, right now, flipping through the book in an effort to come up with my “favorites” to tell you about. And yet, with every page I’m like, “oh yeah....I LOVE that one! OH - and that one too....”

So let me gather myself up, again, and tell you about this book in case you’ve never read or seen it before.

Ananth, Yuko, Conrad, John and Mike, all live together (or did at one time) in an apartment in Brooklyn. And although along the way, some people move out and some move in, they all stay friends and hang out quite bit. This book is a series of one and two page vignettes, as I call them, illustrating their experience living in New York. Brooklyn, specifically.

We are treated to illustrations of things like their coffee mug collection, or the preparation or eating of a meal - as well as its aftermath - art about doing art, backstories such as Yuko’s “traumatizing dental misadventures”, excursions, and interludes about the newest addition to their home - the cat, Rook.

(I have to say that this might be my new favorite part. Anything about Rook. I’m a sucker for cats. Every single section that was about Rook and his quirkiness, or about cats in general, always had be laughing with recognition. I love that they’ve captured some uninterrupted cat behavior and brought it to life. Rook is drawn so well. The subtle changes of the height of his ears, the way he cocks his head when he’s inspecting something, the tiny little adjustments that cats make? It's all really well drawn. I adore him. (So if ya’ll ever need a cat sitter - I’m your girl.)

As a matter of fact, I continually find myself stopping to enjoy the facial expressions as they are drawn. Each individual comic seems to be set up with an opening frame that delivers the who, what, where and when. Then there is the conflict or the joke, and somewhere in the final frames is a close-up on the facial expression of one of the characters. And its often so subtle - just a stare, or eyebrows drawn slightly closer together - but every time it lands like a punchline. I LOVE it! (I find it hilarious how John so often is drawn with a bothered expression.)

The experience of reading Johnny Wander Volume 2 makes me understand why people like reading graphic novels and comics. And that’s a big thing for me to say. I’m not one who grew up reading comics, and I feel like if you didn’t grow up reading them, it's not something you get into later in life. But I’m finding that I thoroughly dig autobio comics, especially in this form. This material is so relatable, and like I said, it inspires me to observe and enjoy my own life more.

Perhaps that’s why this week is so cool. It's not necessarily cooler than any other week that I’ve been having. But as I’ve been reading Johnny Wander, I’ve stopped to observe the vignettes I get to have in my own life, I get to reflect, and I'm finding myself enjoying it even more.

It is an exceptionally cool week, however!!!! And I cannot wait for tomorrow night to hang out with these folks. It's gonna be like walking into a book and hanging out with my favorite characters. Who gets to do that?!?!? Me, that’s who. :)

-Nina Stone, 2012

10. Frank Ocean - Nostalgia/Ultra

In a year where R&B had an out-of-nowhere renaissance, between mainstream radio and weirdo online only releases (seriously, it may not be the best album but The Dream’s “Wedding Crasher” is probably my most-played track of the year), Frank Ocean managed to not have any competition in great songwriting (or in a few cases rewriting other people’s eh songs as great songs, fudging the “your favorite hip hop/r&b artist’s taste in rock is about the same as your mom’s” rule by making a Coldplay track pretty listenable). Subject matter, this is as much about sex and relationships as the Jodeci he takes a swipe at in one of the interstitials, but there is a breadth of language and approach to subject matter on this record that makes Nostalgia/Ultra different. “Novacane” draws a parallel between a need to be numb and the current studio-frankensteined style of his genre, but still manages to walk us through a pretty specific story in a way you only see in golden age rap and singer-songwriter deep cuts. “We All Try” positions Ocean’s relationship with his girl by laying out his entire belief system. “Songs For Women” playfully navigates the before and after of becoming a songwriter to get with girls, and what it feels like when the one girl isn’t interested. A pretty rote love song is bookended with a monologue from Eyes Wide Shut, seemingly tearing into the misogyny of the track itself. On “There Will Be Tears”, Ocean gives us the heartbreaking ballad, but instead of being lovesick for a girl he sings about growing up without a father and losing his grandfather. He sings his heart out, and it hurts, and not in the way that these kind of songs ever hurt to listen to. All of Nostalgia/Ultra takes what are essentially genre tropes that have been worn smooth and impersonal and make them personal to Ocean in ways that show how idiosyncratic an approach he can take without really changing up what an album like this should deliver. Everything here is a presentation of Ocean’s personality - from the videogame cartridge noise to the way he approaches sex, and how well it speaks to you has everything to do with how you respond to him.  -SW

9. Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4Eva

The truth is, coke rap was always a metaphor for the music industry. Just like most rock bands’ second albums are secretly about the process of making a second album, raps about hustling on the corner are really raps about hustling to get into the studio. Hustler’s remorse is just self-doubt. Measuring weight = measuring sales. The good shit is the good shit. Keys open doors… to your new career! But these days every rapper is his own label, accountant, and marketing department. Rappers like Nicki Minaj and Kanye West use the music industry itself as a lyrical focus. So what’s the metaphor now?

On Return of 4Eva, 25-year-old Mississippi native Big K.R.I.T.’s industry talk seeps out between the UGK-indebted tributes to wood grain that define his album. He claims that rap labels aren’t interested in signing someone who’s just rapping about country shit. They’re not interested in someone aiming for a collection of songs rather than a monster single. That may be legit; it may be part of K.R.I.T.’s mythos. Either way, it’s K.R.I.T.’s relationship with his own career that gives Return of 4Eva its poignancy. When he’s not fetishizing his tires, K.R.I.T. is transparently working through the artist’s process—ambition, second thoughts, trying to be the person your family and friends see you as. Every time he contemplates writing a gangsta track or wonders if his deceased grandmother has been pulling strings for him from beyond the veil, K.R.I.T. taps into that larger metaphor—how you fight or buckle against the seemingly unmovable forces in your life, especially when it seems like you’re not built to succeed. That’s the difference between coke rap and industry rap: there’s no underdog in the crack game.

“Couldn’t pay the rent, but passed up on the deal because it wasn’t right,” K.R.I.T. raps on “Dreamin’,” “Sometimes you gotta wade the storm.” You’re not going to get better life coaching from the Clipse. -MB

8. WU LYF - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

The cover I usually see attached to WU LYF’s Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is a simple collage. A shard of a picture of raging fire tearing through tall, dry grass sits on top of a picture of storm clouds burrowing through mountaintops, just below a crystalline sky. WU LYF’s music is similarly elemental, a torrent of swells and decrescendos, with singer Ellery Roberts’ anguished voice calling out through the flames.

Go Tell Fire to the Mountain’s vinyl album cover is even more intriguing. It primitively depicts a group of people embracing and celebrating at the edge of a body of water, itself in front of a pyramid-shaped hill. WU LYF’s full name is displayed—World Unite: Lucifer Youth Foundation—and at the top, against a white background, sits a modified cross with a W at the top. Because the cover’s not as immediately visually striking, the vinyl album could conceivably be lost and rediscovered in a record bin decades from now, mistaken for a relic from a tribe or cult. And that’s exactly what it sounds like, from the passionate sweep of the orchestration to the organ-led songs to the chanted choruses. When lyrics do creep out through Roberts’ garbled annunciation, they are often familial (as on the self-explanatory “We Bros”), adoring (he is as unafraid to say “I love you” as anyone since Billy Corgan), or primal (the most articulated lyric is the refrain “I’m spitting blood”). It’s as if Go Tell Fire to the Mountain has been unearthed from a colony, tucked away somewhere in the Western hemosphere, where the inhabitants worship at the church of Broken Social Scene, and even the discontents are occupying bro street. -MB

7. Wooden Shjips - West

While I have few music examples beyond Watch The Throne at hand, it certainly seems like 2011 was a year where our more reliable sluggers failed to get on base. David Fincher continued his post-Zodiac “i’m taking some time off from hard work”, Soderbergh remade Full Frontal with disease in place of the jokes, Thom Yorke accidentally labeled his new solo album as a Radiohead one, and then there’s that aforementioned West/Z team-up, which confirmed what we’ve all long suspected: Hova did actually retire, he just forget to take Shawn Carter with him. Enter: The Shjips. These San Francisco psych merchants have been steadily building better tracks for a solid six year bent, and West is one of their strongest and most accomplished collections to date. (The word album doesn’t really fit for West--the songs have a tendency to sound a bit better when presented side to side, and yet each of them is best experienced singularly; that way, the sea of conclusions they present remains navigable. It’s the same problem a short story collection creates. History tells us we read books cover to cover, and yet the pieces need you to give them their own private space.) There’s no denying that the Shjips will, for some, forever be relegated to the retail wallpapering category currently teeming with psycho heroes of past and present. That’s just the rules of the game, as much a subtitle as the old Parental Advisory used to be. But every once in a while, pull this one out and really give it a listen. Underneath the drone, distortion and shimmering chords, you’ll find a living center, pulsing with life, as hard as nails. Watching these guys get better is never going to get old. -TS

6. Destroyer - Kaputt

Dan Bejar sings on the final track of Kaputt, “Bay of Pigs (Detail)”, that he “was 20 years old in 1992”. Which places Kaputt in a different context than almost all of the past decade’s 80s nostalgia - or modified nostalgia where New Order and The Swans were as big as they are now remembered, instead of Phil Collins and Ultravox. Here, cultural memory is slammed back to jibe with actual history, and while the lyrics can poke at “Message In a Bottle”, the songs sound closer to Nothing Like The Sun, with all the weird issues of ego, race, pretension, pandering, nostalgia, and “lifestyle music” that can come with. All of it being dealt with by a guy who probably went to punk and indie shows to avoid ever listening to music like this at the time. Kaputt is an absolutely gorgeous record, one that finds the perfect way to present the lyricist side of Destroyer, because all the clusters of words and references don’t feel over-labored, instead they seem to slide along these songs. While Destroyer has been a motherfucker guitar band and a digital-only chamber pop orchestra, “ease” isn’t the kind of word you’d ever have associated with Bejar before now. There is a sense that in making an album like this, combined with the words he does “why’s everybody sing along when we built this city on ruins” - that Kaputt is a refutation of the kind of fake nostalgia records that are everywhere nowadays, the problem being that this essentially the same thing. So instead Kaputt feels like a call for a tempering of nostalgia with the kind of personal desolation every one of the records he’s referencing tried to cover up. This is where the rebellion came to die, and do cocaine and make some money. Those albums are all about the emptiness of being a rock star, but also the emptiness of singing about that. All the big statements, the gestures towards relevance, towards social conscience, and searches for love, all the stuff that dominates the record (even though in Bejar’s hands the words are wrong) were there because you’ve got to sing about something, right? It was music to listen to at dinner, before you broke out the coke, no one was listening anyway. But maybe now we are. -SW

5. White Hills - H-p1 

While Pitchfork (and Pitchfork’s readers, and those White Hills fans who preceded both) have made any number of excellent cases for why the best White Hills is the White Hills you go see live, the argument seems like one lacking in necessity--after all, who says that both can’t be great, even if it’s not in equal measure? (“Great” didn’t all of a sudden get worse than good, did it?) And yes, some of the complaints have merit: the parts during the twelve minute “Paradise” where the Hills start playing with what sounds like the hissing suction straw popularized by dentists does get old around the fourth time you hear the album, and sure, “A Need To Know” seems like little more than baby’s first remix of cool movie scores. But any quibbling is drained of its strength when cast against this album’s four front attack: “The Condition of Nothing”, opening the album with a hellish descent into psychedelic metal oblivion, courtesy of the heaviest guitar available. “No Other Way”, with it’s whirling repetition and unpredictable swell, adding up to the most dynamic interpretation of being drowned since childhood nightmare. And then there’s that Basinski sounding decay at the end of “Monument”, leading up the title track, “H-p1”, and the return of vocals, albeit vocals that lurk behind the savage sonic constructions that opened the album in the first place. Angry, loud, and surprisingly political--it’s okay to forget, but yes, this is a protest album, as strongly felt as they come--“H-p1” serves as the album’s crushing send-off. It’s exciting and rewarding, the most straight ahead “song” of any that the album contains, and it’s a great reminder of the ease with which music can capture emotion at its most blunt, at its most raw. A lot of people got pissed off in 2011. White Hills? They just remembered that anger isn’t supposed to be fucking boring. -TS

4. The Weeknd - House of Balloons

I spent most of 2011 trying to find something--absolutely anything--that could closely approximate the excitement found when “Power” gave way to “All of the Lights” leading up to “Monster”. Nothing. It felt unfair, actually. Kanye’s Twisted Fantasy showed up at the ass end of the year and basically annihilated 2011 for me, it became the thing everybody had to beat, and that trio of songs was the specific height that bar got set at. When the Weeknd came along--as it was for most of us, I found out because somebody else (we all have a Marty Brown, I just happen to have access to the original model) pointed me in that direction--it wasn’t an immediate, drop-to-the-knees revelation. It was mostly just joy that somebody (besides Lonely Island) had figured out that R&B gets way more interesting when it quits trying to appeal to the Steve Harvey’s of the world and starts singing about big asses and fucking somebody’s brains into a pile next to the laundry, which you also should probably have sex with. Fuck it: you're not going to out-seduce the classics in the field, so why not out-vocalize every rapper alive: steal that attitude, and make up a story. That’s what Weeknd did on Balloons, although it wasn’t until “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” worked its way into my subconsciousness that I finally caught on to what I was hearing go down. The song suite is one of the strongest cases for the album’s production, a steel rimmed mix of stripper extravaganza and bathroom sanity check reliant on the popularity of stripped down dubstep and naked hip-hop beats amongst film portrayals of insanity. It’s creepy shit, sure--this album failed the can-that-voice-fool-mom test, f.y.i.--but that’s just a byproduct of how well the premise got nailed. It wasn’t a full-on concept album, thankfully. Instead, it split the difference--story, with narrative attention split amongst subjects and audience, a ballsy mix that somehow managed to avoid the danger of turning into a musical or (considering its delivery device) performance art. A song like “Wicked Games” lulls one in to connivance, rolling itself around like infatuation while, in reality, pleading for (and then condemning) attention, including us in the obsessive asides “Tell me you love me/I know you don’t love me”, never pretending that the playing field is an even one. (It’s not for nothing that the perspective is so one-sided--when there is a response, it’s a tinny, child-like one. A strong woman would make this whole thing way too weird to stomach.) “Keep it up” would be the mantra, if, you know, the guy hadn’t already proven himself pretty capable of doing so. -TS

3. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints

Past Life Martyred Saints is a series of journal entries, indulgent and raw, comprised of rambles and sentences repeated ad nauseum so as to find a hidden meaning between the letters, teasing out ideas through admonishments, fragments of stories, shout-outs to spurned friends, thoughts of self-mutilation, twisted idealization of her grandparents—you know, all the teenage stuff you’re still going through in your early twenties. But, even though she repurposes Bo Diddly’s humblebrag, “I am just 22; I don’t mind dying,” Erika M. Anderson is 29 years old. It’s to her credit, then, that her first solo album in the wake of a break-up with her boyfriend and Gowns collaborator, Ezra Buchla, sounds less like a fragmented emotional exercise, and more like a tightly-coiled emotional assault. Eight out of nine songs are downtempo, and they’re all propelled by a stately death march, punctuated by peals of industrial noise. At one point, EMA lets out a long groan that’s somewhere between a growl, a howl, and a burp—like much of the album, it might be embarrassing if it weren’t so visceral. Even the a capella round, “Coda,” is pretty in spite of itself. On it, droning voices sing, “These drugs are making me so sad”—an observation usually made after time and distance. So maybe Past Life Martyred Saints is Erika M. Anderson allowing her 22-year-old teenage self to whirl and spit within her while externally keeping a rigid front. You know, like an adult. Like an adult who knows that teenage feelings never really go away. -MB

2. Clams Casino - Instrumentals

Clams Casino, a 23 year old producer who works with his collaborators by email, is mostly known as a producer for Lil B. Sonically, his music is hip hop production. The beats are minimal, they build and recede the way a good backing track is supposed to. But Clams Casino is taking that structure and the immediate instinctual understanding that goes with listening to it, and does it with sounds and styles that are alien to hip hop production - the go to comparisons here are Warp records, M83 at their most digitally fuzzy, 70s Tangerine Dream, the late night comedown weirdness of Burial and Photek, Capcom games for the Super Nintendo. All of which it might be assumed Clams Casino probably wasn’t listening to for inspiration. So the sense of haze, the patient approach to bass, the manipulation of voices, the languid keyboards, they’re all decisions that have been come to because he thinks they sound good. While this could be a resume record, as a lot of producer-instrumental comps can be, the final result is a cohesive whole. Which is strange considering how these tracks could have been selected at random from the 200+ on Casino’s hard drive, but the final result is a journey which builds on the track which comes before it, whether it be a wide vista full production or a raw loop of an obvious sample, each of these tracks fare better on their own than in their original intended state as showcases for rappers. Unlike a lot of music that you can apply “haze” to as a descriptor, there is a sense that you can never call Instrumentals a stoner record. It’s too propulsive, too minutely detailed in it’s attempt to shudder off the rails that Casino has laid out for each track. It never does, but it’s the trying that makes it compelling. -SW

1. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up 

One of the only hip-hop albums released on Sub Pop records, quietly promoted with a series of eclectic videos (one a Burnett/Heron mash-up featuring a mass grave and bleeding pigs, the other a whimsical interview featuring the loveliest--and yet most incongruous--pairing imaginable), including songs bearing titles like “A treatease dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)" it was no surprise when Black Up turned out weird. Coming at it without knowledge of pedigree--that it was Digable Planet’s Butterfly, grown-up and partnering with a multi-instrumentalist whose father is essentially African music royalty--the album’s initial bite was even fiercer, only eclipsed in audaciousness by Death Grips decision to open their 2011 album with a statement of purpose culled from an extended Charles Manson sample. But whereas Exmilitary ran itself headlong into exhaustion when the actual tracks began, Shabazz Palaces made good on theory: hip-hop’s great frontier might remain in its sound, and in the willingness of its participants to explore. On the image and statement front, you can file Shabazz's avant-garde artiste next to Twisted Dark Fantasy's real time celebrity psychopathy and Big K.R.I.T.'s termite work on today's carpenter--it's been a year of Platonic ideals. The trick to Black Up's success is in its confidence--this is a zealous album, consumed by the creativity of its creators, track after track after track of noise and unpredictability, the only constants those muffled explosions that crowd the ear and decide the tempo, while lyrics laced in double meaning and split second point of view changes swarm through wherever allowed in tight bursts of fire. Nothing sounded like this, and yet the hypnotic quality often worked to overpower the stink of newness, working--as Sasha Frere Jones so aptly put it, Black Up is the “loveliest fog”--to keel its listener over, exhausting and educating. And it accomplished it all--the intellectual satisfaction, the tromp through newness, the challenge, the weird--without lecturing, while still being compelling, still grinding out the necessary rhythm. This was the high wire act every year deserves. -TS

-Marty Brown, Sean Witzke & Tucker Stone, 2012