So, they didn't have two of my top 10 (which I posted earlier this month) so I naturally replaced them with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes EP's. This is to vote in the Hype Machine's blogger category for their Zeitgeist 2011 (I love end of year stuff!!)

Best Albums of 2011 #10-6

 10. Rise Against - Endgame I will always buy any album that Rise Against releases. I can't really say they're breaking any new ground with Endgame, but the ground that they've already broken is so rich in nutrients, that I could survive on it for many years to come. The track I've selected from Endgame is the one that I've listened to over and over. It features some good sampling from the film version of Catch-22. It may be the sampling, in fact, that makes the song for me. So, thanks, Joseph Heller!

Rise Against - Survivor Guilt

9. Foo Fighters - Wasting Light When Foo Fighters release a new album, it always feels like the first single is amazing and gets my hopes way up for the rest of the album. And while the rest of their albums are fine, they never really live up to the excitement of that first track. Wasting Light is the exception to that. The first single, "Rope" (the track I've picked to feature from the album), is fantastic. And it is representative of the amazingness of the rest of the album. I still need to spend some time with the second half of the album, but it's time I'm looking forward to spending!

Foo Fighters - Rope

8. Yuck - Yuck I know that if I was like 5 years older, I would get a lot more of the allusions and influences that make this album so enjoyable. There's like Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine and stuff, right? Well, in any case, I love the fuzzed out guitars, the wailing solos, the gorgeous vocals. This is a good driving album. Just don't, like, punch your windshield or window. I could have basically picked any song to feature, so I picked "Operation"!


Yuck - Operation

7. Radiohead - The King of Limbs This album was too short. That's my one complaint with it. I wish they'd put "Supercollider", "The Butcher", and "Staircase" on it, but I suppose it's their band and not mine. The trick to "getting" this album, I think, is to look at it as a dance album with a break to catch your breath in the middle. I've picked one of the "breather" songs to feature. The other being "Codex", natch.

Radiohead - Give Up the Ghost

 6. The Antlers - Burst Apart I did an actual review of this album back in September but what still gets me about this album is how it is, at the same time, so frigid and so cathartic! It's practically, well, bursting with potential energy. And it lets that energy loose only twice. If this was vinyl (and I'm sure it is, somewhere), it would be the last track of each side. The album closer "Putting the Dog to Sleep" is what I featured back in September, so here's the Side 1 closer:

The Antlers - Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out

Review: The Antlers - Burst Apart

[This was the review I wrote to apply for the gig at Listen Before You Buy that didn't work out due to my overbooked life. You might find that it has kind of a more serious tone than we normally see me having on this blog (I phrased that weird, don't you think?). Think of it as me putting on my "Review Voice". I'm going to try to start writing all my reviews with my "Review Voice"]

Burst Apart, the new album from Brooklyn trio The Antlers is a journey through a gothic Southern nightmare where nothing is certain. Images of teeth falling out, loose knots, drunken one night stands and loyal dogs being euthanized reinforce the themes of tentative devotion and eventual betrayal that The Antlers do so well.

One of my concerns with Burst Apart was that, because it’s not a concept album like Hospice, their previous album, I wouldn’t find the songs compelling. This is never a problem on any of the ten songs. Sure, there are lulls, but they serve to build tension and suspense. It was only on my fifth or sixth listen that I realized that “Tiptoe” is an instrumental. Each song conveys an atmosphere that is both exclusive and cumulative. It’s the same kind of thing you see in a collection of short stories.

Another concern that had troubled me was the drone. On Hospice, The Antlers had sewn a middle-pitch drone into all but two or three of the songs. The drone was about the same volume as Peter Silberman’s falsetto, so I was forced to turn the volume up in order to hear the lyrics, but quickly back down each time he hit a high note. It created a stress that actually helped solidify the tension of the story, but I hoped it wouldn’t find its way to this album. And it hasn’t. Silberman’s voice sounds gorgeous and the lyrics are perfectly clear.

Burst Apart is the kind of album that rewards repeated listens. The songs are simple, yet chilling. The Antlers aren’t breaking new ground, but they do find ways to cultivate a much-tilled soil. At the end of the day, Burst Apart won’t be one of those, “Where were you when you first heard this?” albums, but not every album can be. This is a solid album from a band whose best days are still ahead of them.

The Antlers - Putting the Dog to Sleep from Burst Apart