Austin’s The Strange Boys will be playing on Sunday, November 20th. Get their album Live Music at the store and you will get VIP entry and meet and greet with the band. RSVP on Facebook. The show is at 4 pm.
As you may have noticed, we have some new members posting their best of lists this year. I’d like to welcome my friends Dustin, Brianne, and Gabe to the site. I’ve said it before but I truly believe that Late Night Wallflower is headed in an exciting new direction with the new clientele assembled. Along with a face lift, you can expect this site to become a fully function zine again. More interviews, more columns (from both us and friends / musicians), and new….attitude (yeah!). I’m excited to welcome these three on board and I look forward to seeing where the site goes as it heads towards it’s fifth birthday.
Thanks for reading and here’s to an awesome 2011.
-Matt
And now, onward with my favorite records from 2010. It was definitely a good year for new music.
Superchunk – Majesty Shredding (Merge)
Hands down, my favorite record of 2010. In a time where Pitchfork dominates what people give their attention to for 7.8 minutes and the chill-wave movement drapes its dreadful cloak of hip douchebaggery over the masses, it was refreshing to have these indie vets come back from a nine year absence and show everybody how it should be done. Every song on Majesty Shredding is so insanely infectious and lacking of any sort of pretension. No bullshit, just fun; certainly a mantra that more bands need to live by. Personal favorites include “Learned To Surf” and “My Gap Feels Weird,” but I’d be hard pressed to find one second of weakness on this record. It’s rare that you see a band this far into their career releasing their best material, but Superchunk has done just that.
Superchunk “Learned To Surf”
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Screaming Females – Castle Talk (Don Giovanni)
Yet again, Screaming Females released an absolutely stellar full-length this year that was slightly outshined by another band on my year end list (last year was Reigning Sound). I hope it doesn’t develop into Buffalo Bills syndrome. Regardless of all this ranking hoopla, Castle Talk is by far the best album the band has put out. It was pretty well-documented that the band had a rough year but instead of self-destructing, the band channeled that angst and frustration into powerful and inspired songs like “Normal” and “Boss.” If I had to pick one word to describe this record it would be urgent. Even though they’ve fallen short of the number one spot again, Screaming Females show the most promise of anyone on this list. When I talked to the band earlier this year, they spoke of expanding their sound for the next record. What that will be exactly, I can’t say, but I’m excited to see it.
Screaming Females “Normal”
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Nobunny First Blood (Goner)
Nobunny represents everything that is impulsive and unrehearsed about garage rock. While other bands are trying to figure out genre tourism, whether they should aim for 60′s Phil Spector Wall of Sound or Rockabilly Revival, Nobunny’s getting naked on stage, lighting stuff on fire, and shaping a live experience into performance art a la Lux Interior. Part rambling auctioneer, Jenkum user, trash culture purveyor, Justin Champlin AKA Nobunny is a true original. Apart from the very 70s sounding “Blow Dumb,” this album picks up where his first release Love Visions left off.
Nobunny “Blow Dumb”
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Tyvek Nothing Fits (In The Red)
Taking tense, brittle, minimalist punk and making it all their own, Tyvek seem to be swallowing and regurgitating what the Urinals were doing in the early 80s. The racket is more vexed on Nothing Fits than previous material. If you’re a fan of moshable, pogo-worthy, hardcore punk, this is for you.
Tyvek “4312″
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1. Future Islands In Evening Air
I saw Future Islands play a free show this summer and I immediately got it…or at least I think I got it. It looked like a high school drama teacher singing in a band that could have easily fit on Factory Records circa ’82. I loved the whole theatrics of it, the juxtaposition of the enigmatic complex character singing in front of two stoic backup musicians. But it wasn’t until I got In Evening Air until I noticed they were so much more than that. That behind it all were songs of heartache and desperation that sometimes were wrapped up in metaphors, but at other times were almost too brutally honest, all set to a beat you could dance to.
Future Islands “Tin Man”
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2. Superchunk Majesty Shredding
During the summer of 09’ Superchunk took the stage at New York’s South Street Seaport and gave a 45 minute set of un-relentless charging pop punk. They gave the audience what they wanted, and had more fun than than any kid wearing skinny jeans. Seems like they kept the mantra of fun and energy alive when they recorded Majesty Shredding with plenty of sing along choruses set to four chord guitar riffs. The album simply delivered everything you want out of a Superchunk, everything we had been craving for the last 9 years.
Superchunk “Rosemarie”
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Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (4HD)
Before getting hold of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, I was afraid it was going be just another addition to the “Disposable Records of the Year” list (you know, those records you like for about a two week span, but quickly forget about as the calendar pages turn and other releases take their place). I have always been a fan of Bradford Cox and his many musical endeavors — and God, was I glad my apprehensions were quickly proven wrong. You could say I fell in love with the fluidity woven within the record’s prose; weaving between a soothing sound of self-destruction on tracks like “Earthquake,” to an elevated dreamy pleasure found on songs like “Fountain Stairs.” Really, it is the nonpareil subtleties of this record — like when Bradford’s voice reaches that crescendoing wail about two and a half minutes into “Helicopter” — that really makes Halcyon Digest my number one choice for 2010.
Deerhunter “Helicopter”
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Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (XL)
The Monitor hit a particular chord for me in 2010. From start to finish, the album serves as a reminder of the naive days when we all felt invincible — looking for answers to questions we didn’t have and embracing friendships formed over long, liquor-quenched nights. Within the first minutes of listening to the album’s opening track, “A More Perfect Union,” Titus Andronicus sets the stage of sitting in the driver’s seat, as the windows are down, the volume is up and your friends are in the backseat drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes. The brisk freeway winds are swallowing drags of cigarette smoke as you race the beat of dawn, but you never quite manage to do so, and by the end of the record its all gone. It is probably my affinity towards North Jersey that draws me closer to Titus Andronicus with each release, but as a full-length follow up to 2008′s The Airing of Grievances, I could not ask for more from this album. It is a look back on honesty and youth at its finest; reminding us we were not always as jaded as age may have made us, as we sit alone listening to records in a dusty Greenpoint lofts.
Titus Andronicus “A More Perfect Union”
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