03: 15-11

15. Tom Waits - Bad as Me

When I accepted this blurb assignment, I pictured myself sitting down and coming up with something funny and creative. Instead, I'm sitting in the middle row of my inlaws' Suburban in the early stages of a 14 hour drive to Chicago, awkwardly typing this on an iPad with a 75 pound boxer in my lap while my wife tries to persuade me to be Santa Claus for her family on my first foray into their huge family Christmas. I guess you could say I've got bigger problems right now. Oh well.

The AV Club calls Bad As Me "entry-level Waits for newcomers," and "a fun reminder of Waits’ ability to be a badass when necessary," and they sum it up a lot better than I would. I'm a relative neophyte to the Waits legend -- my knowledge of the man's catalog extends about as far as a casual familiarity with some of the landmark tunes -- but I've listened to Bad as Me since the day it leaked and haven't been able to take it off the table for too long since.

This album hit me in the gut like a slug of Old Granddad and the effects have been about the same. Starting with the call to arms that is "Chicago" and proceeding throughout, the cacophonous rot-gut anthems on Bad as Me hooked me from the start. Tunes like "Get Lost," "Raised Right Men," "Hell Broke Luce" and especially the terrific title track accomplish the same things that a great piece of filmmaking does: make a relatively tame guy who may well be sheepishly wearing a Santa suit in 48 hours feel like rock & roll for a little while. "No good you say? Ha ha! Well that’s good enough for me."

by coornelius

14. The Black Keys - El Camino

112th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 101

Limiting the eligibility of albums for the Top 25 voting to those

which come out at least a month before ballots are due.

______________________________________________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

December 15, 2011

Kickstand introduced the following Act; which was referred to the

Committee on albums of the year

______________________________________________________________________

An Act

Changing the eligibility of albums for the Top 25 voting to come

out from any in the calendar voting year to only those which are released

at least a month before ballots are due for the Top 25.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the

United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Does El Camino suck or not Act”.

SECTION 2. Change the requirements for an album to be eligible for the

www.ufck.org Top 25 list to only those which are released at least a

month before ballots are due for the Top 25.

(a) The Black Keys released their album El Camino on December 6, 2011.

The album was released a mere week before ballots were due for the

top 25 albums of the year on ufck.org, yet the album still placed.

(b) The record will either rise to greatness and become

acclaimed as one of the forum’s favorite albums or the more

likely situation in which everyone will realize it sucks in a

couple of weeks.

will allow boarders to give quarter four releases a proper

base of listening before casting their vote.

(d) Albums released between the month before voting and the

end of the calendar year will be eligible for the Top 25 in

the following year.

SECTION 3. EXCEPTIONS

If State Champion releases an album on a date after the month before ballots are due,

but before the end of the calendar year, then it shall be eligible for both years.

by Kickstand

13. Washed Out - Within and Without

12. The Kills - Blood Pressures

The Kills - Blood Pressures

What can or should or shouldn't be said about Blood Pressures? That it's a nearly naked body with but one or two loose garments hanging from its skin? That it contains the certain type of tension that boils up when those frustrating stretches of flesh are concealed, left only to the imagination instead of the full-on exposed show? That it doesn't give a damn what your name is or where you're from? That it knows the right words to sweep you out of the bar as if this were its last night in town? That its hair is a wild, tangled mess hanging in its face? That it trails a scent of grime and sweat and half a pack of cigarettes? That it's out back in the alley dialing collect? That it blew the last of its cash on pills and cabs? That its loaded whispers have got your wires crossed -- got you confusing put-downs for come-ons and feeling put-offs as turn-ons? That it's all look-but-don't-touch? That it's got a heart of black leather and lips of red metal? That its hands are stained with ink? That it can take you fast like a switchblade's swipe or slow and steady as the pour of a drink? That it's gonna call the shots in dark rooms and teach you a thing or two about discipline, about restraint? That it's boot heels to throats? That it doles out compliments with the back of its hand? That it makes its best impressions with claws and teeth? That the end always comes much too quickly? That when it does it's gonna make you flip it over and do it again? That it's never no never quite through with you yet? That it couldn't care less? That it's ready to go at a moment's notice and not the least bit impressed by what you've got to say or offer? That it's not lusting as hard as your wanting, making eyes? That it does as it damn well pleases? That despite what you were dreaming you mean nothing but a fix? That it's not asking you to stay? That it's only telling you to leave? That all of this is exactly what it's like every time The Kills make a record?

Or how about that Blood Pressures is the one-night-stand album of the year? Hell, I'll leave it to you to decide.

- Bradford

"Future Starts Slow"

"Satellite"

"Baby Says"

by Bradford

11. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

A Helpless Impression of Helplessness Blues by The Fleet Foxes

My qualifications to write this blurb are two-fold: One, all the albums I was passionate about this year were apparently unavailable. Two, I have a somewhat substantial beard. It seems with a band like this, and a record like the one they put out in 2011, this latter qualification is oddly fitting, if not tacitly required.

The proper care and feeding of a beard of this magnitude is something adapted quite well to suburban coffee shops, the basement of your parents’ house after age twenty, ironic bars that only serve beer in cans, lumber camps, and the various social and political institutions of religious extremists. It takes a certain desperation for a disaffected youth to do this to himself. This same quality is why, I suppose, someone of this disposition would like this band and this record. It comes from our kinfolk. Which is why I’m kind of surprised why the Fleet Foxes are only on my radar because the Swedish teen sister act First Aid Kit, who are hopelessly adorable and immensely talented, put up a DIY YouTube video of themselves singing “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” in the most Bergman-esque Swedish forest ever captured on webcam, got a gazillion hits, and have spent the last whirlwind of a year backing Lykke Li and recording a 7” for Third Man Records. Which is one of my favorite singles of the past year. But I digress.

I can’t say anything about the Fleet Foxes that hasn’t already been said by a barista over the counter of a Caribou Coffee in Rochester, Michigan or a record store clerk with a hipinion account in Salt Lake City, Utah. I could go on and on with platitudes about why this band matters, why you should like this record, how it’ll change your life, sound great in your earbuds on that long train ride home, or perfectly accentuate that grande double espresso shot soy chai latte with whipped cream or whatever that you just paid like six bucks for. Plainly, I could put on a show and act like I’m passionate about a band and a record I’m not particularly passionate about. But I won’t do that. And ufck hasn’t done it, either. As of this moment, the last post in the Helplessness Blues thread came on May 10^th, exactly one week after this record dropped. In fact, there was exactly one post made after the release date. It stuck with you guys so much that you buried all thought of it on Page 7. Then voted it Top 25 anyway. I’m sold.

On this record, Robin Pecknold, a celebrated unwashed in that grand Seattle tradition of the great flannelled scruffball, finds himself stuck in that same rut all of us hipster twenty-something single dudes seem destined to discover. Just got dumped, coming to grips with approaching (or passing) the wrong side of 25, can’t find a decent razor, resisting working as a barista for as long as possible, etc. And what better way to react than to drench your melancholy in reverb, Beach Boys-esque harmonies, muddled, distant guitars, and auxiliary percussion that would make any middle school band director putting her Christmas program together blush with envy. At times, it almost sounds like he’s trying to recapture the magic of a lost Graham Nash solo record from between Songs For Beginners and that follow-up that wasn’t any good anyway. Which I’m sure makes everyone as unexcited as the prospects sound.

When Pecknold isn’t attempting to put together folksy, fun, Renaissance-esque ditties that sound like the soundtrack to a real-life version of The Legend of Zelda (see “The Cascades”), he’s exploring the aforementioned issues of growing up, being sad, and not getting laid. That is, if you were doing these things in a mountainous college town inhabited by scruffy winged cherubs gifted with the ability to harmonize on demand. Perhaps the most pained exercise in these sentiments is the bloated, 8-minute “The Shrine/An Argument,” a paean to a lost relationship seemingly recorded for posterity along the road to Mordor. With discordant saxophone for effect. Like that general post-breakup funk, it lingers on far longer than you’d care to admit, leaves you drained, yet oddly refreshed when it’s over and you can move on with your life. Which is the exact moment you realize that you really could have done without minutes five through eight, just like months two through four, but there’s no way you could have known it at the time.

Helplessness Blues, ultimately, is a good sophomore effort of a record, but one for a certain place and time. Life gives you the cues that it’s time to get over it, and all you have left at the end are the various things you created on the way when you weren’t listening hard enough to hear them. For Robin Pecknold, I think this record will stand for a certain point in his life, one that in time will fade into the realization that it really wasn’t all that hopeless after all. For me, it stands for scissors, and the realization that they’re pretty good for when you realize it’s time to grow up.

by Aram