TOP X ALBUMS OF MMIX: TOP OF THE LIST

X. Eras (by) Apse
Psych Folk / Ambient / Indie Rock

Imagine that the apocalypse happened tomorrow and the only songs to survive were a few random albums by Radiohead and the Beta Band—random choices, mostly, but that's not important. Now, imagine you could travel 500 years into the future, where you stumbled upon a small society that absorbed and worshiped those albums generations ago, until they fell apart and the only music left was what that nascent society could reproduce and play on its own. If that little tribe somehow had electric guitars, this album is what pop music would sound like by then—filtered through primitive, earthy motifs, bouncy and tribal, colorful and creepy. Most of the surface-layer elements of mainstream rock are washed away, leaving a rough, beautifully textured underbelly. In many ways, Apse's music never feels complete—the vocals are buried in the mix, indistinct and ethereal, like hearing a group of people singing in the distance, hidden by forest. The drums are heavy and tribal, the basslines galloping forward with equal intensity, and the guitar on Eras often does little more than create atmosphere. Many will dismiss this album as half-formed and undeveloped, but if it seems empty, it is only because Eras so perfectly captures a time and place that doesn't quite exist—not yet.

IX. The Other Truths (by) Do Make Say Think
Post-Rock / Jazz Fusion / Folk

Do Make Say Think is one of the longest running post-rock bands in the world right now (that has consistently released albums during the last 10+ years) and so it's rather astonishing that The Other Truths, their sixth, sounds so entirely unlike anything else out there. DMST ignores most of the typical post-rock conventions: reverb and delay pedals aren't used much here, and crescendo-style song narratives are almost nonexistant. The music is tide-like, an aggressive ebb and flow of folky, full-bodied rhythms and jazz-style drums. Song structures go wherever DMST wants them to go, and the music within seems casual, almost lazy—not in the sense that the band isn't trying, but that they've reached a point where they have such command over their compositions that their songs spin airy circles around you with a minimum of effort. This is a band at their creative peak, and there's nothing passive about this music, nothing timid. It's intense, it's soft, it's Westerny, it's spacious, it's jazzy, it's friendly, it's going for a drive and you're along for the ride. With each of the four tracks an ode to the band's own name—Do, Make, Say, Think—one wonders if the members of DMST already realized that they just couldn't ever top a masterpiece like this.

VIII: Axe to Fall (by) Converge
Metal / Hardcore / Punk

Here's the secret to enjoying Converge: drink six cups of coffee first. Axe to Fall is nowhere close to accessible; it's dense and complicated and so aggressive that it's hard to figure out whether you're supposed to bang your head or cower on the floor in fear. But listen to the piece as a whole, let the purposeful pacing and layered intricacies unfold and maybe, maybe you'll be whisked away to the frantic, brutal landscape Converge skillfully paints. Equal parts technical metal showmanship and hardcore mayhem, Converge succeed as much through their delicious array of guitar-tones as by their amazing ability to give such blisteringly-fast songs so much personality. Their sense of tension and relief is masterful, and though the album weighs heavily on the side of tension, it only makes those releases all the more orgasmic. On the few songs where Converge slows things down and expands their sound, one begins to see how all that personality gets wrapped up in these brutal tunes. The Westerny monotone of "Cruel Bloom" is a direct nod to Tom Waits, but that whiskey-soaked, shadow-filled slum is hidden within everything here. Listening to Axe to Fall is like playing Whack-a-Mole... with rattlesnakes instead of moles and a six-string in place of a rubber mallet. Fuck yeah.

VII. Dyad 1909 / Found Songs (by) Ólafur Arnalds
Neo-Classical / Electronica / Ambient

Ólafur Arnalds released two stunning albums in 2009, and though it may be cheating to include both (or either, since neither is a true album in the strictest sense), this young Icelandic composer is just too talented not to be on my list. Dyad 1909 is easily my favorite of these two releases, though I felt it would be unfair to include it on its own. Compiled as the soundtrack for an experimental ballet of the same name, it contains three new songs, two old songs and one astonishing remix. Despite being part greatest-hits, the album is Arnald's most forward and heavy-hitting so far, overlaying booming electronica beats on top of his exquisitely minimalist violin and piano compositions. "Brotsjor" and "Til Enda" absolutely destroy, and since they're new, they're well worth the price of admission on their own. Like a glacier breaking apart and smearing you across the ice, Dyad is haunting, devastating, severe, desolate... and of course, heartrendingly beautiful. Lost Songs was a project conceived by Arnalds earlier in the year, in which he wrote, recorded and released a song every day straight for a week. The songs are short and focused, beautiful for all their simplicity, proving that Arnalds has a better mastery of space, atmosphere and emotional depth than perhaps any other composer working today.

VI. Sunden (by) The Waters Deep Here
Instrumental Metal / Post-Rock

This year's most random pick is also the album probably doomed to perpetual under-appreciation. Self-produced, self-released and almost totally unnoticed by anyone anywhere, Sunden didn't have me expecting much. And yet, in spite of the off-putting band name and barebones MySpace, this album's a total knockout. TWDH writes metal, and pretty straightforward metal at that. That's fine. Post-metal has been stale almost since the day it was born, and Isis-style sludge is getting extremely cliche by now. There may be only one guitar here, but the riffs are all over the place, tearing apart your face like a pack of rabid, unfed bears. The ass-kicking riffs never really stop coming, but instead of looping each or layering simple structures into a dense cloud of atmosphere, the guitarist bounces from one idea to the next, building a basic theme along the way. Songs wander into jazz-like labyrinths of rich, carefully-unfolding jams, meandering and smashing and crashing about without apparent direction before suddenly, satisfyingly hurling you back to the song's center. Though relatively straightforward and sometimes poorly-paced, Sunden proves that crushing, relentless metal can still contain plenty of flavor without resorting to scene cliches and rigid structural dogmas. The Waters Deep Here shows astonishing promise—now they just need to add an apostrophe to their name.

V. Hollow Be My Name (by) Eleventh He Reaches London
Post-Hardcore / Indie Rock / Progressive

Eleventh He Reaches London, like many bands on this list, knows how to combine disingenuous genres into a sound that flows from your speakers as a cohesive, tightly-composed musical personality. A concept album about 1800's Australian colonists who are pissed off at God and the Queen (or something), Hollow Be My Name presents something like a post-hardcore version of The Decemberists. The experimental mindset is there, but the songs are tight, focused and extremely forward, while intricate guitar work, unexpected tempo shifts and angry, rabble-rousing vocals keep the music from ever growing stale. That the album remains so fluid is merely a testament to the skill with which this Australian band composes. The clever, aggressive guitar-work carries most of the weight here, while the vocalist gives an equally incredible performance, showing as much versatility and energy as the rest of the band. Songs bounce along, perfectly paced and wonderfully detailed, unleashing just enough screamed rage, spoken-word growl and raw post-punk grit to make this far more interesting than mere rock'n'roll.

IV. Gin (by) Cobalt
Metal / Metal / Metal

With their third full-length release, two-man Cobalt has shifted the sound of their brooding pagan bonfire hymns from experimental black-metal to something more song-based but equally unorthodox. Gin is an homage to Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson, and the album certainly sounds like a drowned and dreary downward spiral to hell. Lyricist and vocalist Phil McSorley is a Sergeant in the US Army who served in Iraq, and the experience shows, even down to his voice, which rushes over the mix like wind bursting through a broken window. Cobalt has always struck me as one of the most sincere and yet disturbing metal bands out there, wasting little time on dick-wagging showmanship. Their heaviness never sounds like it's there just for the sake of being "metal," while their chilling ambiance, acoustic accompaniments and pulverizing guitarwork remain effortless. It should be noted that genius multi-instrumentalist Eric Wunder plays and/or writes—from what I understand—almost everything but the lyrics, and brings a coherency and energy that few five person bands can match, sculpting a sound that's both straightforward and yet crushingly morose. Every glimpse into pagan darkness makes Cobalt's music no less infectious—these men know how to write an absorbing, haunting song.