The Year of the Rabbit in Review: the Best Albums of 2011.

Oh yeah!  Watership Down, motherfuckers!
How ya like me now?

"May you live in interesting times" runs the old Chinese curse, and as I bid farewell to the Year of the Rabbit with a middle-fingered departing salute and a scathing torrent of profanity, I got to admit, the bunny was a bitch, but she definitely didn't bore me.

Tonight we enter the Year of the Dragon, but before I greet that rascal, Puff, by boozing and barfing the past 365 days into into oblivion, I feel obliged to look back upon the works of his cruel, lagomorphic predecessor and despair.

Happy New Years, America.
 Thanks for the good time last year.
btw, How's that ass, this morning?  lol!
- Goldman Sachs!

2011 was another year where the super-rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and everyone else lost either their jobs, their homes, their savings, or their hope for a brighter tomorrow.  A lot of people finally got fed up with the international banking cartel's protection racket and at least tried to do something about it by taking to the streets all over the world.  To no avail.  Now that the smell of bong hoots, mouldy Birkenstocks, and unwashed dreadlocks has dissipated along with the wind of hopeful rebellion it wafted in on, things are pretty much back to normal, which is to say, totally fucked up and unlikely to change anytime soon.

Prime Minister Lego Man vows
to rebuild the Canadian economy,
brick by little, plastic brick.

Up here in the great white north, we somehow ended up giving a creepy, sweater-wearing, cat-molesting, right-wing, Lego Man look-alike a majority government, even though I've yet to meet anyone who voted for him or even considers him anything other than a total fucking douche.  Not long afterwards, the Harper-youth of Vancouver celebrated his victory with a kind of latter-day kristalnacht, lighting cop cars on fire, smashing windows, and looting  high-end merchandise from local boutiques.  Coincidentally, our local hockey corporation bungled the Stanley Cup final that same night, a loss many experts have also attributed to Harper's victory.

On a brighter note, 2011 wasn't a bad year for music.  It wasn't a great one either, but there were quite a few albums that, though maybe not of the life-altering-variety, were, nonetheless, undeniably fucking good.  There were also some surprises.  Perennial big-dick playas like Radiohead and TV On The Radio underwhelmed their harems of critics with puny, flaccid releases this year, which gave the odd musical omega male the opportunity to sneak in there and get a little some-some.

The thing I noticed most this year, though, was how prominently the theme of escapism featured in a lot 2011's best albums.  Often it was an escape into the musical past.  This years' releases by Destroyer, M83, Washed Out, and Youth Lagoon all reference the 80s, whether it be the verby keyboards that characterized a lot the decade's British synth-bands, the self-conscious professionalism of its production values, or simply the theme of the transformative power of sleep and dreams that artists working during ten years of Reaganomics, Spuds McKenzie, and the Dukes of Hazard, clung to like a tattered woobie.  Other eras were alluded to as well.  The Cults summoned the giddy ghost of the girl groups of the early 1960s and Fucked Up reincarnated the shit-kicking utopian ferocity of early punk rock while thankfully avoiding many of its more deservedly maligned cliches.  What would a rule be without exceptions to prove it, and idiosyncratic releases by tUnEyarDs, Colin Stetson, and Danny Brown (whose fucking hilarious parody of hip-hop bravado was the most refreshing thing I heard all year), do just that.

Come to think of it, maybe it's just me who wanted out of here this year and selected my best-of list accordingly.  It wasn't exactly a banner year for the old Reverend Dick.

Anyways, Happy New Years, bitches!

1. Destroyer: Kaputt.



Sometimes the worst ideas yield the best results.  Destoyer's Kaputt is an excellent case in point.  Dan Bejar takes some of the lamest, cheesiest, and most justifiably dated compositional materials from the 80s ("Careless Whisper"-style saxophones, Duran Durany basslines, white funk guitar licks, synth sequences that even Don Henley or Phil Collins would reject as too commercial) and crafts a sublimely beautiful masterpiece out of them.  Bejar's sings like a weary scenester whose "seen it all," but who is still capable of imagining a better world.  If nothing else, it was one reason not to hate the Coove in 2011.

2. Fucked Up: David Comes to Life.

The best punk album I've heard since, well, the last Fucked Up album.  The combination of Damian Abraham's Cookie Monster on PCP vocals and the layers upon layers of roaring guitars is the sonic equivalent of the scourging scene in Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  And yet, the album also radiates a kind of bestial beauty, helped in no small part by the use of soft female vocal harmonies and allusions to the work of minimalist composers like Lamonte Young and Steve Reich thrown into the mix.  If I have any criticism of David Comes to Life, it's that it goes on a bit too long.  Towards the end, it starts to feel like a ferocious bout of ball-slapping coitus that's starting to chafe a bit.

3. Danny Brown: XXX.

Danny Brown explores some unlikely and refreshingly unhiphoppity territory on XXX, delving into why he drinks PBR rather than Cristall, the highs and lows of looking for scrap metal to salvage, and the "I'm rich, bitch!"-type feeling he gets when he receives his income tax return.  It also features the best song ever about eating pussy.

4. M83: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.

On Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, M83's Anthony Gonzalez continues to muck around in the ooey-gooey textures of 80s synth pop, but without the affected coolness of some of his previous releases.  He heats up the sauce, here, so to speak, and the result is beautiful as always, but openly emotional rather than just moody.  Pretty, pretty shit.  

5. Cults: Cults.

On Cults' self-titled debut album, Madeline Follin manages to affect this weird, girl-groupy, pretty in pink, my pussy smells like cotton candy-kind of snarky, super-cool cuteness that I don't come across all that often or nearly enough.  If Nancy Sinatra's vibrator came to life and made an album, this is what I imagine it sounding like.

6. Washed Out: Within and Without.

Washed Out's music sounds like the bands name: imagine you're laying on a beach, the sun on your chest, the ocean lapping at your toes, while Enya gives you a suntan lotion hand-job all soft and slow-like.  Then you waken.

7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Belong.

A great little pop album.  Sweet, unthreatening, catchy tunes that make you bop your head from side to side as you cruise mallward down the highway in the new Cabriolet your dad bought you.

8. tUnEyarDs: w h o k i l l.

One of the few albums I heard and liked this year that was unlike anything I've heard before.  Quirky without being obnoxious.  Hip without being pretentious.  Okay, it's a little pretentious.  I mean, let's face it, it's not like this chick would ever hang out with you or anything.

9. Colin Stetson: New History of Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges.

I'm a big jazz fan, but I got to admit, I haven't really listened to all that many jazz album made in the last thirty years and those that I have sound like they were made fifty years ago.  This one doesn't.  At all.  Check it out.

10. Youth Lagoon: The Year of Hibernation.

No album title summed up the music of 2011 quite like Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation.  The album itself resounds with the moods and textures of just  this sort of long winter's nap, evoking something of those dreams when you fall in love with some unknown someone and then awaken to the sad realization that it was just a dream.  Fucking melancholy, to say the least.

Maximum Heartbreak Rock

I don't want to sound like an uppity douche or anything but I really hate riding public transit.  It's an assault on my sense organs.  The sordid spectacle of morbidly obese, indeterminately gendered monstrosities sprawled out over the courtesy seats, sweating, and panting, and dribbling purple slurpee all over themselves like a pack of track-suited Jabba the Huts is a constant reminder that my cherished belief in the universal brotherhood of man is a full-on fallacy.  On more than one occasion, I've sat down in a seat and felt the horrifying sensation of its previous occupant's urine seeping through my dress slacks.  I'm also not a big fan of the smell of farts.  A few years back, I had to ride the Main Street bus everyday to and from work and calculated, over a six month period, that I smelled 1.68 farts per ride on the Mainer.

Perhaps worst of all, though, is having to listen to the inane chit chat of the urban underclass.  What follows is a transcript of an actual conversation I heard the other day:

Hoochie No. 1: Then I called him and he was all like, "shit!"

Hoochie No. 2: No way!

Hoochie No. 1: No, totally!  He was like, "shit!"  Then I was like, "whoah!"

Hoochie No. 2: Oh my god! You were like, "whoah!"?

Hoochie No. 1: No, I know, right?  I was totally like, "whoah!"

Hoochie No. 2: Oh, shit!

I guess she should have known
by the way he parked his car
sideways that it wouldn't last.

For the more fortunate among you who've never had to use public transit as your main means of transportation, I assure you: this is by no means an atypical exchange.  Let's just say that, over the years, I've pretty much abandoned all hope of overhearing the answer to any of life's great mysteries while riding public transit.

But then about a week back, I kind of got my mind blown.  It started out predictably, which is to say, unpleasantly enough.  I boarded the eastbound Broadway bus, fought my way through the fart cloud, and sat down at the back across from a pair of mall-rattish tweens who were squeaking at one another in that shrill, smoke-detector-like vocal frequency that immediately made me wince, and clench my asshole, and regret my choice of seating.  From what I could gather, one of them was blubbering about some dude who'd just dumped her and the other was trying to console her.  My fight or flight instinct now activated, I was just about to bolt and go try and squeeze myself into the Jabba pack at the front when something altogether surprising happened.

Weepy Tween: I'm like, so sick of getting hurt like this all the time.  It's like, why can't it just ever work out, you know?

Wise Tween: Yeah, but that's like, the whole thing about love, right?  I mean, it only ever works out once.

When I heard this, I was totally, like, "whoah!"

Love.  Like the wise tween says, it only ever works out once.  And let's face it, that's only if you're lucky.  For most people, it never does.  Sure, they eventually find someone to bitch at and squabble with over whose turn it is to play the hand-held poker machine on the tour bus to Reno, but this seems less like love to me than it does a kind of detente based on the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Teen: I was like, totally high on crystal
when I met Uncle Jesse.

But why, though?  Why, when the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies is it so fucking hard to find somebody to love?  I mean, everyone wants it.  Everyone's looking for it, but then, when we think we've finally found it, it usually ends up not being reciprocated, or fizzling out after a month or so, or they cheat on you, or give you the clap, or get all drunk and coked-out and throw you down the stairs, or kill themselves, or whatever.  And even when those rare and oh-so-precious occasions of overlap occur, when you gaze into your lover's eyes and are pretty fucking sure that the mystical sense of connectedness you feel is not just your own love reflected back at you, that something miraculous has happened, that somehow, someway, you've crossed over into one another's soul-space and fused the flaming tonguetips of your beings...

you end up fucking it all up somehow.  Usually over something stupid that, when you're laying on your deathbed, alone, thinking about it, you're gonna be all like, "shit."

Things like:

Yeah, I love him, but he doesn't make enough money... and he always pisses on the toilet seat.

Yeah, I love her, but she's always blowing all my money... and she always freaks when I piss on the toilet seat.

Yeah, I love him, but he won't talk to me.

Yeah, I love her, but I wish she'd just shut the fuck up sometimes.

Yeah, I love her, but she won't dress up like Raggedy Ann and let me fuck her in the ass with her head in the toilet.

Yeah, I love him, but he won't dress up like Raggedy Ann and let me fuck him with a strap-on with his head in the toilet... oh, and he always pisses on the toilet seat.

And so forth...

Anyways, here's a bit of sonic sadness for the heartbroken, past and present.  The lonely.  The wounded.  And especially, those of you out there still searching for that power that could destroy you, but never would.

Stage One: Denial.

The Avalanches: "Since I Left You."

You know that false sense of freedom and endless possibility you feel right after you walk away?  That fleeting period of deluded bliss that typically ends after a day or two with a drunken, weepy, pleading late-night voicemail message that almost always goes unanswered?  Here it is, and you can dance to it.

Stage Two: Anger.

The Descendents: "Jean Is Dead"

Okay, granted, this song is about your lover committing suicide, but it captures perfectly the fucked-up, heartbroken rage of being ruthlessly abandoned by that special someone.

Stage Three: Bargaining.

Marvin Gaye: "Please Stay (Don't Go Away)

R&B's greatest love machine summons every kilowatt of sexual potency he possesses to lure his ladyfriend back into his arms.  Guess what, kids?  If Marvin can't pull it off, neither can you.

Stage Four: Depression

Sinead O'Connor: "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Obvious and well, kind of cheesy, I admit, but before you groan, I challenge you to listen to this song during the early stages of a painful breakup and not start blubbering inconsolably like a five-year old whose turtle just died.  This soft rock favourite came on the radio at McDonalds one time approximately seven hours and fifteen days after I'd gotten dumped and I started gasping and McSobbing all over my quarter pounder.  McHumiliating.




Stage Five: Acceptance.

Frank Sinatra: "For A While"

The saddest of all the stages.  There's nothing more heartbreaking than the pain of not even feeling the pain anymore.  But with the onset of numbness comes a new if empty resolve.  Time to pick the kleenex up off the floor, throw out the empty Hagen Dasz cartons and bottles of cheap red wine, stop leaving the phone off the hook except when you call in sick to work, and proceed with the bleak business of getting your shit together and moving on... alone.  Here, old blue eyes sings like it's over with a capital "Oh."

Maximum Riot Rock

We're now over a month into the Occupy Wall Street movement and I'm starting to wonder if anything real or lasting is going to come of it.  My guess is, that eventually people are just going to get bored of the whole peaceful protest thing, and when the last hippy leaves, the forces of evil will go in, clean up the used condoms and Egg McMuffin wrappers, and then get on with business as usual: making the world a shittier place for you and me.

Already, the remaining protesters are starting to seem like the stragglers at a once-raging house party.  The Man has to stay up and keep his eye on them so they don't steal his stereo, but he knows that pretty soon, they'll all go home, wash their Che Guevara T-shirts, fire up the bong, and settle down to evening of reading Marcuse or watching 9-11 conspiracy videos.

Get in there and crush them before they start singing "Kumbaya."
I hate that fucking song.

And what then?  What becomes of the first large-scale public uprising in America in almost a generation?  Maybe nothing at first, I'm told.  Hey, these things take time, right?  Political consciousness needs to be raised.  Alliances between seemingly disparate parties formed.  The masses need to be galvanized, not along the familiar political lines of Right and Left, but according to the universal, immutable principles of Right and Wrong.

Basically, blah, blah, blah, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Part of me sympathizes with this approach.  I mean, when it gets right down to it, I'm a lover, not a fighter.  Given the proverbial Friday night choice between fucking and fighting, I'll take fucking, and so should you.  It'd be nice if love really could conquer all, but as so many of us have realized, love often isn't even enough to save a relationship, let alone the world.  And let's face it, Wall Street can't be saved.  It doesn't need to be occupied, either.  It needs to be razed to the fucking ground Hiroshima-style and the bankers and their political sycophants that aren't completely incinerated ground up into free hamburger meat to feed the poor.

Rome may not have been built in a day.  But it was burnt in one and it's about time we lit that motherfucker up.

From American Apparel's "Black Flag Collection:
Leather, zip-front "mad-bomber" jacket: $399
Bolshevik-gold, woollen scarf: $49
Hair by Vidal Sassoon, Beirut.

The Age of Aquarius is over, kids.  We gave peace a chance.  It didn't work.  As far as I'm concerned, what The Man needs now a good, hard, hate-fuck, and the best place to bend him over is in the streets, right in front of the Fox News cameras.

It's time to riot, bitches!

For those about to wreck, I salute you!  Here are some playlist recommendations for your ipod.

The Dead Kennedys: "Riot"

Maybe the best song ever about the perks and pitfalls of going to battle with the man.  Jello Biafra and company capture the giddy glee of hurling manhole covers through a Taco Bell window yet warn of the potentially futile clash with a better armed, better organized opponent.  Watch out, kids.  As Jello tells us, "Cops can riot all that they please."

  

Bob Marley: "Burnin' and Lootin'"

Bob usually sticks to preaching the love and praising Jah, but as he was well aware, sometimes even them belly full of Jamaican patties and a lungful of ganja smoke just doesn't fucking cut it, blood clot.  I and I is hungry for meaningful political change... and a pair of Air Jordans, a bottle of Crown Royal, and a hella big plasma screen.




Blitz: "Someone's Gonna Die Tonight"

In any constructively destructive act, the forces of mookish thuggery need to be given a certain amount of leeway.  And nothing gets a gang of ballcapped date-rapers to smash glass and light shit on fire quite like this ode to indiscriminate hooliganism by the British Hardcore band, Blitz.




N.W.A.: "Fuck Tha Police"

Not all cops are bad.  Just most of them.  Unfortunately, even the good ones are still the unwitting minions of the Dark Lord, Sauron and, as such, they're also likely to be the first of the nocturnal forces we clash with.  And they'll have to be fucked.

Preferably in the ass with their heads down the porta-potty hole.

Maximum Lover's Rock

Hey Babs.  Can we do it without a condom tonight?
It makes it feel so... you know... plastic.

The other day, I was awakened from my afternoon nap by the sound of my upstairs neighbour's bedframe pounding furiously against the ceiling.  This happens all the time.  Upstairsy's a big hit with the ladies.  He's got that pasty, scrawny, Michael Cera-style look that seems so in vogue right now, and he offsets it nicely with a tribal lower arm tattoo and pierced eyebrow, giving him a bit of that I-don't-give-a-fuck-what-my-grandma-thinks-type edginess.

Now, normally I'd be happy for him.  I mean, let's face it, this is a rare historical opportunity for pasty, scrawny dudes that may never come again.  Why I hesitate to give him the old thumbs-up is that Upstairsy doesn't make love to his ladyfriends.  To hear him go at it, you'd almost think he hates them.  We're talking Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!  Hard.  Fast.  Relentless.  Well, for a few minutes, anyways.  To give you a clearer idea of the tempo, he's recently taken to blasting "Fire Woman"by the Cult, and hacking away at his female callers to the beat of it.  

I'm not kidding. 

In case you're unfamiliar with this sure-fire way of getting a horny hipstress in the appropriately ironic frame of mind, check it out:

As I lay there in the fart sack, suddenly an image of this band-geek turned hipster douchebag tagging some hapless emo-chick from behind while whirling his Arcade Fire T-shirt around over his head Vancouver Canucks playoff-style flashed vividly through my mind.  I couldn't help but wonder,  

"What the fuck is the matter with this guy?" 

And then it hit me.

Porn.  Upstairsy's in his twenties, so he's part of that new generation of guys who learned how to fuck from watching porn rather than from actually fucking women.  Now, I don't want to be hatin' on the young pups or anything, but I've been fucking women for almost two decades now and, though I'm by no means a lady's man, over the years I've learned a thing or two from my fumblings in the dark.

For one thing, porn is for jerking off.  That's it.  It's really not meant to have any sort of instructional value.  No doubt there are exceptions but, by and large, most women's idea of a good time isn't to have Peter North spit on them, tear their ass apart, slap their tits until they're beet red, and then finish in the mouths while they gaze up adoringly at him like he just bought them the complete Sex In The City box set on DVD.  If you want to get women to do this shit and make like they're lovin' it, usually you have to pay them.  Or get them addicted to drugs.  Or both.

Anyways, I realize there's not much I can do to counteract the desultory effect of porn on twenty-first century lovemaking, but in the spirit of thinking globally and acting locally, I figured I'd better do something to try and clean up the mess in my own backyard.  But how?

And then it hit me.

I decided to make Upstairsy a mix-tape and slip it under his door.

"Even After All," Finley Quay.

A perfect tune for foreplay, an area where Upstairsy definitely needs to up and prolong his game.  Slow down, little dude.  Let your fingers do the walking and your tongue do the talking.  This track's a little short for truly effective pre-coital preparation, but Upstairsy's got a long way to go and I'm thinking baby steps are best to start with.

"Time Of The Season," The Zombies.

A bit on the vanilla side, I admit, but I want Upstairsy to avoid getting his nasty on right off the bat.  Word of warning, little dude: don't thrust exclusively on the "Ah..." in the verse parts, otherwise you'll probably get laughed at.

"I Wanna Know If It's Good To You," Funkadelic.

Upstairsy's about eight minutes in at this point, so I'm guessing he's ready to get hisself all funked up.  And at times like these, nothing hits the G-spot quite like the P-Funk.  There's also a great freak-out section toward the end of the song, where Upstairsy can really lose his shit. 

"Dirt," The Stooges.

Upstairsy usually doesn't make it all the way through "Fire Woman," so, at fourteen minutes in, this seven-minute track might be overkill.  Still, its something for him to shoot for other than the reservoir at the end of the condom.  As the title suggests, this tune's got a gritty, unwholesome vibe to it, one replete with tension-filled build ups and explosive releases.  In my mind, it's always best end with a bang rather than a whimper.     

Maximum Bath Rock

I'm not exactly the warm and fuzzy type.  Come to think of it, I'm kind of a pig.  I like wrestling, and cheap draft beer, and late night phone sex informercials, and I always order the biggest hamburger on the menu.  I'm not crazy about guns, but I'd have no moral qualms beating a home invader to death with a baseball bat and burying his intruding ass in the backyard.  On more than one occasion, I've embarrassed my girlfriend by getting shitfaced in front of her colleagues on said colleagues' liquor, and then barfing all over her Volkswagen on the drive home.  I detest hippies, and think that any public protest that doesn't end with bankers and politicians being strung up in the town square with their testicles in their mouths or, at the very least, with someone hurling a cinder block through a Starbucks window is, frankly, kind of gay.

Having said all this, I'm not altogether out of touch with my inner metrosexual.  I use a deep moisturizing lotion to offset the effects of aging.  I trim my pubes.  I wear a spicy, musky vanilla cologne to cover up the smell of cigarettes.  And I love a good bubble bath.  After a hard day of posting gay porn on fundamentalist Christians' MySpace pages, sometimes I just want to light some candles, pour myself a glass of moderately priced Merlot, and slip into a hot, steamy, satsuma-scented suds bucket.  At times like these, Slayer or Captain Beefheart just won't do.

Me needs a little Bath-Rock to take the pain away.

Anyways, here's some suggestions.  Rub-a-dub-dub, bitches!

Leonard Cohen: The Best of Leonard Cohen.

L. Cohen is the dad we all wished we'd had.  Wizened, but empathetic.  Strong, yet soft - like a world-weary Jewish muppet with a flair for poetry.  Cohen's probably fucked more women than Paul Stanley, but unlike the starchild, he loved every last one of them.  A word of warning: this shit is super soporific.  Don't nod off and drown, kids.

 Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago.

This album snuggles up against you like a groggy lover, but never pokes its dick into your bum cheek.  Justin Vernon's falsetto is actually soothing rather than irritating, even as he croons mournfully of love lost.  Perfect for Sunday morning hangovers.    

 
Frank Sinatra & Tom Jobim: Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Besides Miles Davis, Sinatra is the coolest man who ever lived but, unlike Miles, he never threw his women down the stairs.  This selection of Jobim's bossa nova classics captures the master in deliciously melancholy mood.  Best served before bedtime.  

Caetano Veloso: A Little More Blue.

Caetano in exile.  He huddles on the cover beneath a pale blue Nordic sky, looking cold, and miserable, and fifty degrees Farendheit from home.  This is his attempt to seek solace through sadness, solitude, and song.  Highly recommended when you need a good cry.


Marvin Gaye: What's Goin' On

This one's for the ladies.  Particularly for those of you for whom tub-time is rub-time.  Lean back, part those soapy thighs, and let Marvin take you on a magic carpet ride to a land where no man's idea of foreplay is spit, and they always know where your clit is.