Top Albums of 2012, 10-6

I'd stay up all night, just writing and writing. I mean, like pages of dribble-- You know, about The Faces, or Coltrane. You know, just to fucking write.

You have to make your reputation on being honest and unmerciful. Honest. Unmerciful.

I thought I'd start this with two quotes from Almost Famous, a movie that I tragically only discovered this year and which espouses so many of the values I cherish about music and music journalism.   Like Famous's protagonist William, my experience as a music journalist is limited; it really only includes a semester writing for CMJ, though let's pretend my column in The Setonian did something for me other than provide piles of obscenity-filled hate mail.  Regardless of whatever limitations I might have, I'm following Phillip Seymour Hoffman's path and "writing and writing" honestly and unmercifully.  I hope you enjoy my opinions, whomever you are, and even more so, I hope you love this music as much as I do.

10. JENS LEKMAN - I Know What Love Isn't.  Jens Lekman's 2007 Night Falls Over Kortedala is not an album that I play all too frequently, but I almost always love listening to it.  This is fairly rare; even some of my favorite albums occasionally pass as background noise, but with Night Falls, I can't help but listen for my favorite lines, kind of like waiting for the funniest scene in your favorite comedy. Jens's quirky lyrics can rival some comedies, but they can also be solemn and sad, and the brilliance of Night Falls is its balancing of these complex, and often conflicting, emotions.  Take "A Postcard to Nina," where Jens pretends to be the boyfriend of his lesbian friend Nina to please Nina's kind-but-conservative father.  Jens recounts:

"Your father puts on my record, he says, 'So tell me how you met her.'
I get embarrassed and change the subject
And put my hand on some metal object,
He laughs and says that's a lie detector."

After this lighthearted anecdote--and the end of the awkward dinner--Jens writes to Nina, telling her to continue overcoming all of love's obstacles: "I'm sending this postcard just to say / Don't let anyone stand in your way, / Yours truly, Jens Lekman."  When Jens repeats "Don't let anyone stand in your way," he transforms a Hallmark-esque line into a stunning (and, yes, sentimental) moment, where the listener feels empowered to transcend with Nina.  The music throughout Night Falls captures Jens's ability to combine humor with a moral, mixing whimsical samples and instruments with somber piano and string arrangements.  Yet in 2012, five years after his previous full-length, Jens tones down the more theatrical elements of his music with the somber I Know What Love Isn't, an album that finds Jens coping with heartbreak.  This is a more somber songwriter than we've previously seen, but glimmers of Jens's lightheartedness still manage to seep through the sadness, making for a curveball of a long-awaited album that nevertheless meets its high expectations.

October Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way. 

Sun Airway at Hammerstein Ballroom, Oct. 3.

1. Sun Airway - "Close." These guys absolutely rocked as openers for the all-around awesome M83 show.  I remember thinking that their instrumental jams remind me of the smooth dream pop of DIIV, but the vocals, which resemble Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, are much more pronounced (or audible, you pick).  Now when I hear the pulsating drums and the winding electric guitars that jab against the twinkling keys and spacey atmospherics on "Close," I hesitate to draw comparisons; Sun Airway's music can stand on its own, and the band's impressive performance proved it.

2. The Cure - "Just Like Heaven."  I promised myself to listen to more Robert Smith after falling in "love" (har har har) with his cover of the Crystal Castles song from last month, and luckily for me this sunny pop gem happened to be on the Adventureland soundtrack (which isn't as good as the movie but still has its awesome moments).  On "Just Like Heaven," The Cure offer a gorgeous arrangement of strings, synths, guitars, and pianos, which makes the track so instantly likable.  The vocals find Smith emoting, some might say he borderlines squealing, over a girl, but I think it works: he's broadcasting his vulnerabilities through written and spoken words.