As we hurtle towards 2012 and the holiday season, TheVine has asked our critics to give us their Top 10 best music "things" from over the past year -- whatever the hell they may be and in whatever haphazard fashion they so declare. Go.
--
My favorite music-related things of 2011.
10. Going to ATP New Jersey
Even if it was
only for a day.
9. Lady Gaga takes a fall
A little birdy who happened to witness the shoot that
Gaga did for Vanity Fair recently told me that that her Ladyship was unable to move in the ridiculous platform shoes she was wearing, had to be carried from location to location by assistants, and — at one point — ended up falling on her arse. Hopefully this proves a lasting metaphor for her entire "career", which basically involves being the musical equivalent of the kid at kindergarten who insists on playing dress-ups when everyone else wants to play chasey, and then stands in the middle of the room shrieking until everyone looks at her.
8. Adalita, generally
For people of a certain early thirtysomething age, Magic Dirt have been part of the musical landscape for as long as we've been listening. Their second EP
Life Was Better came out when I was 17, and got played to death (and a tatty poster of that iconic orange-with-white-stripes cover adorned the wall of my equally tatty bedsit for years). I watched them on
Recovery, saw them play at the first Big Day Out I attended, watched as their music changed and grew as I did the same. Years later, I summoned up the courage to talk to Dean Turner once backstage at the Corner, drunkenly regaling him with plans of a book I planned to write on the Melbourne music scene — he listened patiently and good-naturedly, offering tips and ideas. I was too shy to talk to Adalita.
The fact that the band's history was so cruelly truncated by Turner's death in 2009 was of course the least of the tragedy of his passing — he had a wife, two young children and a legion of friends and admirers who miss him still. But for fans, the fact that Adalita returned with a solo album this year (an album to which Turner contributed before his death) was cause for huge celebration. And the fact that it was one of the
best albums of the year… well, that was just the icing on the cake.
7. Weird synth music
In a year when guitar-based indie music got bearded and beige (cf. Bon Iver), thank heavens for the surfeit of bands and solo artists making fascinating music with synths both analogue and virtual — from the lysergic soundscapes of Motion Sickness of Time Travel and the evocative abstraction of Oneohtrix Point Never, through the witchy vibes of Sleep ∞ Over and Zola Jesus, to the neo-synthpop of John Maus and the bright hypercolor pop of newcomers like Grimes -- a heap of the best music of 2011 had no guitars in sight.
6. Lost Animal's Ex-Tropical
Strange, sinister arrangements built around the hitherto-undiscovered combination of narcotised tropical pop music and cheap drum machine beats, all illuminated by surely the best songwriting talent in Australia today (with the possible exception of one Gareth Liddiard). It's basically not been off my stereo since I got it.
5. The video for UNKLE and Nick Cave's 'Money and Run'.
This was released before the advent of the Occupy movement, but could hardly have captured the political spirit of the year better if it had tried. It's disturbing, thought-provoking, and evocative of the unpleasantness and savagery that lurks under the civilized veneer of the privileged few:
4. Interviewing Justin Timberlake…
…while embarrassingly blotto on French champagne. Living the dream, etc.
3. EMA, generally
"Breath of fresh air" is an awful music industry cliché, but EMA was a genuinely exciting and refreshing presence in 2011, a songwriter whose songs are wrenched from some dark place inside and yet remain totally relatable, a performer who's both endearingly down-to-earth and also oozing with star power. If you miss the chance to see her when she's in Australia next year, you are hereby deemed a foolish, foolish person.
2. The return of HTRK
Much of what I've written about Adalita above could equally be said of HTRK. The suicide of founding bass player Sean Stewart in London last year was unspeakably and unimaginably sad, and as with Adalita, the sheer fact that Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang are making music again post-loss is cause for celebration -- let alone the fact that they produced
a fantastic record.
1. Seeing John Maus play live
Everyone with an interest in Ariel Pink's philosophy-teachin' synthpop compadre probably knows by now that his live shows are fairly manic affairs. But earlier in the year, I headed to Glasslands in NYC to see him, not really knowing what to expect, and was confronted with the spectacle of a man wailing, gnashing his teeth, beating his chest and howling into the void, all to the soundtrack of hammering home-made beats and epic synth sweeps. Seeing a performer and being absolutely blown away happens once a year if you're lucky. This was it.
Tom Hawking