Do your parties always fail?

Try putting Grouplove on at the next one. It’ll help.

Also, you may need new friends and/or personality.

PS. Never Trust a Happy Song album art is by Grouplove singer Hannah Hooper.

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Illustration by Troy DeShano

This year new music sharing will alternate with music-based illustration.

My 9-yr-old daughter has really been into The Beatles lately, and on the rare occasion that she takes a break from The Muppets soundtrack you’ll hear the Fab Four ringing from her iPod.

I thought it was pretty cool the other day when she had a friend sleepover and I could hear “Love Me Do” coming from her room and wondered how many sleepovers over the past 50 years have had that song in the background.

So in honor of her and her always classy tastes, here’s the first in what will hopefully be many Beatles-inspired illustrations from our house.

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Which is nice.

The subtle newness can be attributed on some level by the fact that it was produced  by Bon Iver and…

I suppose I don’t need to write anything else. She’s awesome.

Also. My giddiness hearing this new album was coming was cranked up a big notch when I saw the totally rad great lakes album art by Darren Booth!

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Totally obsessed with Delay Trees right now.

Kind of like Sigur Ros only more accessible (the songs are much shorter for one thing) and it is catchy and upbeat (but not too upbeat) and has these little wonderful moments of really intense energy.

I feel like I could recommend this to just about anybody.

While I’m wondering how some kid from Helsinki can write songs about everyday things, love, life and the apocalypse in a way that a kid from Michigan can appreciate, I noticed the band bio on their website:

In his early twenties, Rami started to write songs about the growing pressures of adulthood, unemployment, ending friendships and the long Finnish winters.

Ok.. That makes sense then…

Which makes me wonder… is art style, genre, medium or even tempo determined on some level by personal experiences? Even if Rami and I live on opposite ends of the Earth, but have long winters in common are we more likely to create things to which one another can relate? or feel inspired by or connected to?

Or just enjoy?

So many great things about this record. I love the opening to my favorite song on the record – the apocalyptic “Summer 2012″ — speak to me in tongues or through fire alarms.

That’s a winner right there.

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Rather than publishing my annual boring list of music that I like and think everyone else should (but probably doesn’t), this year I’ve just set up a Spotify playlist of my favorite albums from 2011. So you can just listen & decide for yourself.

A few times I’ve caught myself saying how 2010 was such a huge amazing year for new music and this year had a few gems, but nothing life-changing. (a justifiable statement considering 2010 provided classics from Sufjan, Arcade Fire and a Kanye West opus)

Maybe I was distracted by the fact that my by-far favorite album to listen to this year actually was released late December 2010.

But as I was throwing this playlist together I’m realizing I was wrong. (see list below for obvious reasons why)

In fact, even in the past couple weeks I’ve discovered new stuff that I didn’t even know existed that is totally making me double-take.

So spend your afternoon listening and let me know what you dig.

PLUS: There’s so much great stuff out there… check out other lists like IGIF and NPR

So listen along and enjoy some great tunes and let me know if you’ve been obsessed with that I missed! (i.e. The Antlers, Atlas Sound, Caveman, Wilco?)

Strong Odors: Favorite Albums 2011

• M83: Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
• Radiohead: The King of Limbs
• St. Vincent: Stronge Mercy
• The Joy Formidable: The Big Roar
• Feist: Metals
• tUnE-yArDs: W H O K I L L
• Wye Oak: civilian
• Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
• Jay-Z + Kanye West: Watch the Throne
• Cymbals Eat Guitars: Lenses Alien
• Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin’
• J Mascis: Several Shades of Why
• Ringo Deathstarr: Colour Trip
• R.E.M.: Collapse Into Now
• The Roots: Undun
• Delay Trees: Delay Trees (Totally obsessed right now)
• Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
• Bon Iver: Bon Iver

Strong Odors on Spotify

Strong Odors: Music-inspired Art Prints

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Both lyrically & sonically reminiscent of early Smashing Pumpkins (only without Billy Corgan’s voice) — Cymbals Eat Guitars manage to channel a number of different but familiar sounds while somehow maintaining their very own.

I love how they get creative with rhythms without falling into “experimental” category and have the guts to tread dangerously close to the “emo” cliff without falling into that dark, sad abyss.

Pretty much anything actually contemporary that sounds like 1991 I’m going to be freak out about.

I can totally see myself cranking this all day and then crashing on the couch for some Twin Peaks.

Oh wait. That’s what I’ve done every day this week…

I even learned something from Lenses Alien – I’d never heard of the Tunguska explosion. Pretty interesting stuff. Subscribe to the Strong Odors playlist on Spotify to listen along with me.

Another Tunguska

I emerged as if through a narrowed eye
into lashes of white sun from your apartment
and pollen clouds held absent sound
in gutted buildings we pray bridges and causeways
curl fast again like slap bracelets
and the skyline resets to a bare, hushed wilderness

I worship the day of the invisible wave
then a stream of revenants surged outward
like prominences from the sun
1927 an explosion
another Tunguska

and at once I was flat on my back
my skateboard rolled on down the hill
the congregating deer stood stock still
in the corridor of manicured lawns

remember you and I would get so high
we’d pass out with our shoes on
first light through leaves

this was back when my smoke would juke
and stutter in the highway crossbreeze

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[NOTE: If you're on Spotify, listen along to these albums while you read. I put them in a handy playlist for you. You can also catch highlights from these artists & all the others featured here by subscribing to the Strong Odors playlist]

Right now, maybe more than any other time in my life, my regularly rotating playlist is filled with females.

With awesome releases from bands like Joy Formidable, Wye Oak, Wild Flag so far this year, I’ve rarely heard a hint of testosterone from my earbuds in the past 6 months (except for maybe Radiohead)

“Accessibility” is kind of a difficult trait to determine in a recording. It seems to be the factor by which most consider an album or song to be “good.” If it’s accessible, if it has a great beat and makes you want to dance or drink coffee or whatever—if it’s got a catchy hook that sticks in your head or helps you sell cars or kleenex or insurance.

But I like to be challenged a little. Sometimes when you find something less accessible, it just means it is (like all the most wonderful things in life) an acquired taste. Here are a few fantastic brand new releases in order of how accessible they may be.. so if you haven’t the stomach for tUnE-yArDs, you may have to stick to Feist… but it’ll be a delight either way.

It seems like almost every album featured on Strong Odors in 2011 I’ve called my “most anticipated”… but this one really has been. (well, again..  except for maybe Radiohead).

There are just so many things to love about Feist. Her voice alone has the potential to change the world. She’s one of the very few artists in the universe that could record an acapella album (not this kind) and have it stand perfectly on it’s own.

So it’s no surprise that stripping down her sound from her last (amazing and successful) album suits her perfectly. The sparce accompaniament lets her voice and lyrics shine.

I think her ability demonstrated here to write in regard to relationships in a way very rarely seen in pop music is really fantastic. Rather than singing of the things we often see at the surface of relationships and their inevitable end (dating, heartbreak, butterflies) she delivers anthropomorphisms of the wildly dangerous and complicated roots of those superficial emotions.

Lonliness, Guilt, Fear, Bitterness, Hope are the main characters.

She says this of Grudge:

It stalked through the rooms
And then it tore the sheets off the bed
It ripped the books off the shelf it turned heaven to hell
It held me down tight
It took all my fight
It broke all the windows
It came flame from the kindle

If it rips you all apart, the grudge has still got your heart

This is one that like Helplessness Blues may never shake the world, but will still be spinning in steady rotation long after everyone’s forgotten why “spinning” has anything to do with music.

St. Vincent is the only one of these four who doesn’t have the advantage of a genius voice. Her greatest gift is her skill on guitar. I saw her live years ago and it was like watching a lion tamer. She could make that thing do whatever she wanted and somehow managed to record and play back loops all at the same time.

Her Super Friends league of connections is the key to taking her amazing raw skill and gifted songwriting to the next level. She’s a great example to young musicians as she’s played her role and worked hard supporting established groups for years before attempting to take flight on her own.

You’re awesome at guitar? Don’t start a band. Go make someone else look awesome and try to soak in a little wisdom in the process.

Listening to this is a quite a bit more challenging than the most popular of pop-rock ladies out there (Adele, Sara Bareilles, Ingrid Michaelson) because she isn’t following anything close to the formulas we’re so comfortable with, but stick with it… you’ll start craving it in no time.

In her typical fashion Bjork is pushing not just the boundaries of music as an art form, but as an industry as well.

Her newest album (if you can call it that) released today… sort of…

Ok. this is getting confusing.

Biophelia has been getting a lot of hype this year, not because of the complex concept she’s addressing—the infinite connections between music and creation—but primarily because of the brand new way she’s chosen to share her work with us.

The album stands alone as another great collection of recordings that are both challenging and delightful, but tackling such a complicated theme inspired Bjork to do more. So she collaborated with scientists and biologists and programmers to create the Biophelia iPad app.

The free app released this summer and she’s been releasing each track off the album weekly since then. With each purchased mini-app you don’t just hear the song but step into a world of animation and essay and technology that creates the whole experience. In perhaps the first truly interactive listening experience ever, you even have to power to manipulate the tempo of certain tracks, changing the base line as her melodies soar above.

I’ve said before, I’m not a huge Bjork fan, but she’s one of the most respected and influential artists of my generation.

Check out this Bjork portrait in my shop!

I call this album “inaccessible” but that’s not really the truth. The real truth is that it is the most very challenging thing I’ve heard in a really long time, even more challenging than Age of Adz. As with Age though, if you’re up for the challenge, it is totally worth it.

Upon first listen you’ll be seeing question marks for sure… but it has this indistinguishable quality that keeps you coming back for more. It’s not pretty… it’s harsh and heavy and borrows a lot from freestyle jazz (something I hate)… but for some reason—like a great novel with all those same qualities—I couldn’t put it down.

And I quickly went from question marks to exclamation point.

Handing this over to someone else is no easy task and comes with a paragraph or so of exhortation… stay strong… keep listening… eventually you’re gonna love it.

[NOTE: If you're on Spotify, listen along to these albums while you read. I put them in a handy playlist for you. You can also catch highlights from these artists & all the others featured here by subscribing to the Strong Odors playlist]

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I’ve got a predilection for music recorded the old-fashioned way—live in the studio.

There’s some fugitive quality that comes along with recording a group of artists playing as a team that you just can’t capture mixing each individually recorded part on a computer or whatever.

And when it comes to punk rock, the thought of recording parts just smells funny—like when you see a basketball game scene on TV… no matter how accurate they make it it still feels wrong.

Punk should not be sterilized. It can’t be, really…

So when I heard that the debut from these four alt punk veterans coming together as WILD FLAG was recorded live, my most anticipated album of 2011 got even more anticipated.

Is there a word for that? I checked thesaurus.com and found nothing.

With their “supergroup” status and Brownstein charisma, these ladies could have basically taken a dump on tape and it would have sold. Thousands of hipster yokels would have hailed it as a groundbreaking piece of ironic satire.

But that didn’t happen.

Because  with the eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head wisdom that seems to be exclusive to women (and elusive to the rest of us), the band toured for over a year testing new material, getting to know one another, enjoying themselves and learning how to effectively play together before they began recording… just as if they were neophyte teens testing fate in the rock world.

Besides the wisdom & patience in the process, it’s evident in the songwriting as well… you gotta love grown-ups playing punk music because they’re just not all that bent-out-of-shape anymore and they actually know what they’re talking about now.

As far as I’m concerned WILD FLAG met my expectations – smart, fun and loud. I can only imagine how awesome these girls are live.

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I’ve been wanting to blog about this all year… but unfortunately (at least for you readers) I’ve been far to busy working on my art show and my new project—Maker’s Market—to have any time to devote to unleashing various odors upon thee.

However… I can’t put this off for any longer.

I’ve got a handful of new albums on rotation that have become my playlist for the summer (even though I’m way behind on writing about them), but this one by The Joy Formidable has firmly taken it’s place as my default go-to album whenever I’m scrolling up-and-down the list trying to make a listening decision.

The songs seem to be written from that rare but intensely kinetic place between heartache and resolution.

It is the moment when you realize you can’t continue living a zombie life.. crying yourself to sleep or avoiding human contact or binging on junk food… The moment you slap yourself across the face and stand up.

And the accompanying music to the tales somehow manages to harness the energy required to shake off the chains of loss and take your first step back into independence.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything with the energy of The Big Roar.

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Continuing my pension for posting every single thing Spike Jonze ever touches…

In 1994 Spike Jonze Directed a Beastie Boys video for the song “Sabatoge,” which instantly became my favorite all-time music video and made me a lifetime fan of both Spike and the Beasties.

This short-film (or long-form music vid?) just released – with Spike making more awesome stuff with the Beastie Boys.

I know at least a couple dudes who are gonna flip out when they see this.

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