IKRS Countdown: Onze favoriete albums uit 2010 - Nr. 1

Onze eindejaarscountdown! De tien favoriete albums van Linda, Ilse, en ondergetekende uitgebracht in 2010. Favoriet, omdat iedereen natuurlijk andere dingen leuk vindt en andere connotaties heeft bij de muziek en thema’s/genres die we daarin kunnen terugvinden. Dus dit zijn niet objectief de beste albums, maar de albums die op ons om de een of andere reden de meeste indruk hebben gemaakt. Enjoy!

Favorite albums of 2010: 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2

Nr. 1 – Linda
Album: New Love
Artist: Former Ghosts

If my putting this album on number one comes as a surprise, then you obviously haven’t run into me this year. I have been absolutely infatuated with Former Ghosts this year. Last year’s Fleurs ended up pretty high on last year’s list (third place, I keep an excel file) and with the prospect of live performances this year, I was excited. And wow, I wasn’t disappointed at all when I saw Freddy Ruppert perform live for the first time in May this year. He was preceded by Parenthetical Girls who were all kinds of amazing themselves, and I and the rest of the audience just stuck around for Freddy thinking he could never amount to very much after just having seen the best gig of the year. How wrong were we. During his set the sheer display of emotion on Freddy’s side made me feel so uncomfortable that I wasn’t even sure whether to applaud or slap the girls who were drunkenly screaming at him (I now know I should’ve gone for the second option). It was also the first time I heard ‘New Orleans’ and saw a grown man cry on stage. Wow.

It got even better, if ‘better’ is the right word in this case, when I saw him in his home town of Los Angeles. He performed the track ‘Mother’ that night, the night of his dead mom’s birthday, while his father and brother whom both had never seen him perform under the denominator of Former Ghosts were standing right behind me creating the illusion that Freddy Ruppert was looking right at me each time he almost succumbed to tears. It was heartbreaking. Then he finally released New Love and I just so happened to be the first person in the world to find the vinyl waiting for me on my doormat. So through the magic world of Twitter, the first glance Freddy Ruppert got of his own finished album was of a picture I send him of my album (followed by weeks of harassment by people wanting me to upload to thing, so for future reference: no I will not).

The album itself is brilliant. I love each and every track on it, though ‘New Orleans’ and ‘Bare Bones’ are my absolute favourites. The lyrics seem so simple and the emotions so raw, I’d almost wish I’d have a break-up to get through so I’d have a proper reason to put this album on repeat. To be quite honest, this album has made me a little bit afraid to fall in love. The emotions behind lines as “I waited my whole life to find you / But I’m not the one you waited your whole life to find” and “Oh stop my heart from beating / Oh I’m so tired of not sleeping / Oh love, keep it away from me” make me doubt the lines it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Random Track: ‘Winter's Year’ (feat. Yasmine Kittles)

Nr. 1 – Ilse
Album: New Love
Artist: Former Ghosts

Former Ghosts is a project by Freddy Ruppert, a man haunted by demons in the forms of death and lost love. He deploys his synth/drum machine to deal with this darkness, which according to Pitchfork “sounds like what might've happened to Joy Division if Ian Curtis had bought a Casio and a four-track and fired the rest of the band”. On occasional songs Freddy calls in the help from Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart on guitar and Zola Jesus’ Nika Roza Danilova on vocals, the whole combination creating an incredibly intense and emotional, almost brutal debut album ‘Fleurs’, which was released last year. My first encounter with Former Ghosts was somewhere late that year too and since then, the music very slowly and gradually found its way into my modestly regular listened to bands. This turned into a more extensive listening habit after seeing Freddy Ruppert live for the first time, in May this year, which was a gut-wrenching experience I can tell you. It was like watching someone publicly chastising and tormenting himself, as the emotions and intensity are even more effective live than on record: Ruppert screams, dances and sweats all the frustration out of his body; making it appear he’s not just haunted, but also possessed by demons. I have seen him twice more since then, both great gigs, but somehow it wasn’t as shocking as that first time.

Then came the new record titled ‘New Love’ , which is just as depressing as ‘Fleurs’ and besides Freddy’s obsession with lost love it deals with the fear towards his new love and the possibility this relationship might fail too. Besides Nika and Jamie, we also have Yasmine Kittles (TEARIST) lending her voice on ‘Winter’s Year’ and ‘I Am Not What You Want’. I actually prefer the songs with Freddy Ruppert solo as there is only him to focus on, making it ‘easier’ to absorb his anguish. ‘Taurean Nature’ and ‘The Days Will Get Long Again’ particularly set your teeth on edge when performed live, as Freddy angrily spits out the words “I will love them more than you”. ‘New Orleans’ and ‘And When You Kiss Me’ are brilliant songs too. Seeing how often I’ve listened to this album since it came out, and how Former Ghosts really ‘made’ my musical year, I don’t think there’s any other logical place than this ending up at first.
Random Track: ‘Only in Time'

Nr. 1 – Stef
Album: High Violet
Artist: The National

Not highly surprising, no, as The National stands for everything I love in arts and music. Abstracted visions on contemporary urban life where emotions and detachment rampage freely right through each other, one more confusing than the other. From the muddled first track to the orchestrated ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’: the songs exhume feeling, atmosphere, and a sense of, yeah, this is what I’m feeling/thinking/wanting right now. A feature not many artists will ever achieve in one album, let alone with their whole oeuvre. Small fragmented pictures like “But I won’t follow you into the rabbit hole / I said I would, but then I saw / Your shivered bones / They didn’t want me to”, “Go out tonight with your headphones on again”, “With my kid on my shoulders I try / Not to hurt anybody I like” really feel like snapshots, paintings, or short films. But there’s more, the anxiety, not the picture outside but the emotions inside: “It takes an ocean not to break”, “I don’t have the drugs to sort it out”, “Yellow voices are swallowing my soul”, “What makes you think I’m being led to the flood?”.

Then there’s the music as well. More orchestrated than ever before, the band is really expanding their sonic pallet. The horns, the sounds on ‘Afraid of Everyone’, but also the different kinds of guitar. And then there’s the impressive drumming as well. Not only are the individual sounds impressive, but it is especially magnificent how everything meshes together to really bring out a certain feeling, a certain atmosphere. A shimmer of hope, or the madness to accompany the lyrics of Berninger; the music is always adding to the message, either by fully supporting it or by adding another layer to the story. It is another chapter in the victorious campaign of The National that was started with Alligator and continues with this fine, fine album. As you may have found out by now, I’m a sucker for things that somehow tie in with what I’m thinking of what I find confusing about contemporary urban life. I don’t think there’s a band that ties in better with what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling than The National, and that goes for this album as well. My favourite album of the year, with not a song I would skip.
Random Track: ‘Anyone’s Ghost’