I believe it was late last year that i discovered lala.com; a website where users could listen to (almost) any album in the world once through for free (legally), and then either buy the “web album” for a couple of bucks to keep listening to it or download the mp3 album at a competitive rate. Lala also let users sync up the music collection on their home computers so that they could listen to their music from any computer anywhere, so long as it had an internet connection (e.g. at work), no iPod required. In a word, it was AWESOME. And then Apple bought it and shut it down, and i’m still very pissed off about that.

Thanks to lala.com i was able to listen to just about every new album that came out in the first few months of 2010. I also listened to some “Top Albums of 2009″ lists, which is how i discovered UME. Although their 2009 EP Sunshower contains only five tracks, i totally fell in love with the album and the band. Nathan and i made a trek to Iowa City this fall to see them; alas, they canceled the show at the last minute. I’m definitely looking forward to a full-length album from them to come out in the new year.

For the most part, i’ve been pretty disappointed with the music released in 2010. There’s this HUGE low-fi/vintage movement, and i find it overdone and not very compelling. Sufjan Stevens, at least, took his experimentation this year in a new direction, so i thought Age of Adz was an interesting album. The National are still doing what they’ve been doing the last few years and i still really like it. Ra Ra Riot toned down their sound a touch with The Orchard and, sadly, it failed to hold my attention for very long. The Arcade Fire are doing different things but personally i don’t know what all the fuss is about. Their last two albums were both more enjoyable than The Suburbs in my opinion. I did, however, really dig OK Go’s new sound on Of The Blue Color Of The Sky, and who didn’t love all of the amazing music videos they put out to accompany it?

I did acquire a few albums this year that had more of a 2009 sound and therefore were more enjoyable for me. La Roux is one that actually was released in 2009 but didn’t really catch on until this year. LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening is great fun and is definitely going on my “party music” list. Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork is also good stuff, even if it is a total throwback to the ’80s. And i was very happy to stumble upon The Joy Formidable via Lala; their debut A Balloon Called Moaning is light-hearted and inspiring at the same time.

My favorite album of the year was Robyn‘s Body Talk, which she released in three separate parts and then as a full-length conglomeration at the end of the year. She managed to make me buy this album three times and it was definitely worth it. It’s pop, it’s hip-hop, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to listen to. I wish there had been more albums like this one this year.

Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is definitely worth a mention; it’s got some pretty great tracks but at the same time i still can’t love a lot of the things the mainstream men of hip-hop say about women. We’ve heard it. Move on.

Here’s a playlist of my favorite tracks of the year. Enjoy!

I feel bad that i don’t have a lot more to say than than he’s very talented and prolific and i really enjoyed his album Greetings from Michigan, but sadly that’s the only other album i own. His brand new release Age of Adz is quite a lot different from that album, which was largely acoustic and folksy. This one is electronic and experimental, and i don’t think it’s for everyone but i’ve certainly found it to be intriguing. I failed to find any sort of video to go along with it, but i have found something better: you can listen to the entire album right here! If you only have time for a song or two, the first track and the one called Vesuvius are my faves so far.

I believe i wrote last year about how much i loved Ra Ra Riot’s 2008 album The Rhumb Line. It’s truly a great work, so i was very excited to hear that the band would be releasing another full-length album this year and purchased it right away on the release date. The Orchard has a less driving sound than The Rhumb Line and didn’t hook me right away the way that album did, but it’s slowly shaping up to be a pretty sweet soundtrack for the fall. There are definitely a few gems that make this one well worth checking out. Here’s the first single, Boy:

For my birthday Nathan got me tickets to three different shows that happened here in Des Moines right around my birthday: Rooney, Phoenix and Tegan & Sara. Rooney was first, and it was a really fun little show in an intimate venue, and it was early in the day which turned out to be nice for us working types. Phoenix was the very next day, and their show was a little too loud and a little too packed and a little too blinding as far as the light show, but it was still fun.

Next came my actual b-day, which i spent trying on wedding dresses, watching Eat, Pray, Love and playing Apples to Apples with a handful of my lovely friends.

A few days later we saw Tegan & Sara, which was definitely an interesting show. They performed at Hoyt Sherman which is a really lovely old venue here in Des Moines. There was no opening band, and T&S played two sets: an acoustic set and one with the full band. During the first set they did some Q&A sessions which got to be a little long-winded, but they’re funny people so it was interesting to hear them talk about some adventures they’ve had both in the recording studio and on the road. We had to cut out of the second set a little early, but i still got to hear all of my favorite T&S songs.

Nathan’s gifts (comic books & concert tickets!)

Nathan made me tacos and fresh tortilla chips, french toast, and strawberry shortcake for my b-day. It was all AWESOME.

First thing i saw when i got to work Monday. Love it.

The day after Tegan & Sara, we went to the Iowa State Fair. If you haven’t been to our fair, it’s pretty much the best one in the country. And i say that because i think Martha Stewart said it, or something. It’s all about excess: who grows the fattest pig, the biggest pumpkin, the most enormous stalk of corn; how many calories can we pack into a single $6 fried-on-a-stick commodity; how many big ol’ corn-fed Iowans can you pack into a few hundred acres? I used to absolutely hate it and now i think it’s great fun.

I really wanted to steal a little chickie. They’re SO CUTE.

The calf looked a little sad.

Our famous Butter Cow. Life-size, all butter.

The biggest pumpkin weighed over 1,000 lbs.

So *that’s* why they call it eggplant.

That cabbage in the back was the size of a beach ball.

…And these were tiny! I like photographing produce…

“Star Boars” sand sculpture

Jabba

A sampling of the many, many pretty quilts

This year we ate: mini doughnuts, some rootbeer, a couple of exorbitantly priced brewskis, fried cheese curds (a must), i had 2/3 of a tenderloin (it took a while to find one that wasn’t the size of a dinner plate), and a turkey leg which we took home and made stock with. Have i mentioned that we’re getting really into the whole “domestic” thing?

This is the video for the song Bulletproof, just one of many catchy and dance-able tracks from the fantastic self-titled album (which you can get for $5 on amazon mp3 right now):

This week i’m going to talk about The National. Their new album High Violet came out earlier this year, and while i don’t think it’s quite as good as Boxer it’s been steadily growing on me and i think it’s a really solid album. I discovered The National at pretty much the same time and in the same manner that i discovered Stars. I still don’t have their older albums, but i’m working on that.

Evidently The National doesn’t really “do” music videos, so here’s a live rendition of the track “Terrible Love” off of High Violet. There’s a little flub in the beginning, but keep watching.

I bought the new Stars album The Five Ghosts a few weeks ago and it hasn’t left my CD changer yet. (Yeah that’s right, i have a disc changer in my vehicle and i use it. Way old school.) I discovered Stars a few years ago as i was finishing up at college, i believe, when i first heard a remix of their song Your Ex Lover Is Dead on the college radio station in Ames and thought it was hauntingly lovely. I think their style has gotten more upbeat since then, and i enjoy both the old stuff and the new.

This is my favorite track off the album. It’s called Fixed. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

I acquired about twenty albums this year, and i think it’s worth mentioning that i only stole a handful of them. That’s right, i actually purchased most of the albums i’ll be talking about here. Not that i really think it matters, but it’ll make my mom happy.

I started the year off by buying We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, and that’s a reflection of the sort of tunes i listened to all year long. Very dance-y, high-energy stuff with just a few exceptions, including last year’s old-west-flavored Fleet Foxes and nineties-alt-punk-y Girl In A Coma, whom i was delighted to discover at the 80/35 festival this summer. I decided to buy their older album, Both Before I’m Gone, but i hope to also acquire their 2009 release soon.

Other indie/dance albums i enjoyed in 2009 include: Fantasies by Metric, Manners by Passion Pit, Miike Snow’s self-titled album which is very good, Phoenix’s very popular Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix which, in my opinion, is rather overrated as a whole, and probably my favorite album of the year: It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Many an impromptu kitchen dance party was inspired by each of these albums, but i think It’s Blitz! entertained us the most. We also streamed a lot of La Roux and Lady Gaga for a while, but i never actually got the albums. Poker Face really started to grate on my nerves after a while.

Another album i’d stick in the same genre is The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot. I love this album, and i spent half the year thinking it was an ’09 release, so i’m mentioning it in this post despite the fact that it was actually released in ’08. It’s such fun, and you’ve gotta love a rock band that includes a cello and violin on (i think) every track.

Ursa Major by Third Eye Blind has been growing on me steadily. It’s a pretty sad album, though, and these days i prefer to listen to happier music. Swoon by Silversun Pickups just wasn’t as good as Carnavas. The Resistance by Muse got a lot of people excited, but not me. I’ve listened to it a few times and it just never really grabbed me. The New Moon soundtrack, on the other hand… I can’t stop listening to it. It’s fantastic. And i wouldn’t be ashamed of that fact if it weren’t for the utter scorn that half of my friends feel toward anything and anyone associated with the Twilight Saga. But more on that in the Movies post.

Some older albums that i got this year include: Third by Portishead, which i didn’t think lived up to all the hype even though “Machine Gun” is a really great track, Red Letter Year by Ani DiFranco which disappointed me pretty thoroughly, The Con which is a good solid Tegan & Sara album, The Shepherd’s Dog by Iron & Wine who never really makes a bad album, Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire for whom i discovered a whole new appreciation and a bunch of Ryan Adams albums which i find quite enjoyable.

So, to wrap up, here are a couple of lists:

Steph’s favorite albums of the year:

1. It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot (yeah, 2008, whatever.)
3. The New Moon Soundtrack
4. Miike Snow by Miike Snow

Steph’s favorite tracks of the year:

1. “Sleepy Head” by Passion Pit
2. “1909″ by Phoenix
3. “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. “Silvia” by Miike Snow

Have yourself a little dance party.

Since this is also the end of a decade, i’d like to crown Coldplay as the band of the aughts. A lot of my favorite bands hit their peak back in the nineties – Third Eye Blind, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead (this is arguable), Bjork, and Ani DiFranco to name a few. But Coldplay released their first album, Parachutes, in 2000. Since then, we’ve watched them go from little-known newbies to one of the biggest bands in the world, and with good reason. They’ve released four studio albums and two live albums in that time. I’ve seen them in concert twice, and it was one of the best shows i’ve seen. Of all that they’ve accomplished, though, Parachutes is still my favorite piece of Coldplay work, and it’s also my favorite album of this decade. If you don’t own it, i think you should.

Gangsta’s freaking Paradise!

Death ain’t nothing but a heart beat away,
I’m living life do or die, what can I say?
I’m twenty-three now, but will I live to see twenty-four?
The way things is going I don’t know.

This is one of the songs that sparked my deep love of music at the age of ten.

Here are some photos of my favorite performances:

Tilly & The Wall, photo by Matt Sorensen for Rock Iowa

Girl In A Coma, photo by Laura Lou09

The Envy Corps, photo by britrockatthetop

In all, we saw:

Tilly And The Wall
Modern Skirts
Maps And Atlases
Girl In A Coma
Man Man (Nathan loved this one )
Wild Sweet Orange (disappointing)
Margo and the Nuclear So-And-Sos
Broken Social Scene (I was most looking forward to this one – pretty sweet)
The Envy Corps
Ben Harper (from afar)

Girl In A Coma took me by surprise. They’ve got a punk-y*/’90s alternative sound that i loved, and a lead vocalist with such a great voice.

To say nothing of the rain, the festival was full of people so colorful that for a moment i felt like i was back in Eugene, Oregon. There was a booth selling tie-dye, an all-vegetarian food vendor from whom i bought the most delightful coffee frappe, and a bunch of girls walking around wearing nothing but denim shorts and paint. These “painted ladies” were meant, as the artist herself said, to be “living decorations”, which i found to be terribly demeaning, but i guess it takes all kinds.

It rained lightly all day Friday and continued to be overcast on Independence Day, but by the end of The Envy Corps’s set all the dreariness had been chased away. That band never disappoints me. The crowd really got into it at this show, which can be partly attributed to the fact that by 8pm when they played, most patrons were half-saturated with Old Main beer. They put a few bars of “I Want You Back” into “Story Time” in honor, of course, of Michael Jackson, and that made me pretty happy. The fireworks display after Ben Harper was decent, and a vast improvement over the blunder last year which caused me to miss all fireworks displays altogether on the 4th.

*BTW – by “punk” i mean the original genre which arose underground in the eighties and all that sort of thing, not the whiny bands who flaunt too much eyeliner and feign a damn-the-man attitude while selling records on major RIAA-controlled labels which some people for whatever reason use the term to refer to.

Spiralling by Keane

“Do i smell doughnuts? Who could eat a doughnut at a time like this?”
(imagine the Geiko gecko saying it–that’s what Thom Yorke sounds like.)

They didn’t say much more than that, but they played probably every In Rainbows song and most of Kid A, along with a few older songs. Fake Plastic Trees was my favorite. I can die happy now, i told Dan.

It was worth the twelve hours in my tiny car, especially since Dan drove the whole way home through the night and let me sleep. Not worth the effort, though, was getting my ass out of bed and to work this morning, only to be promptly canned. Given the pink slip. Laid off. Not fired, exactly, they didn’t want to have to let me go (quote unquote) but times are hard and there’s this block and well, someone had to get chopped.

Whew. Just like that. Two weeks severance pay and then i’m on my own. I’m a full-time job seeker now, and i don’t figure i can be picky anymore. I’ll be pretty much applying all over the country, i think, and let my career take me where it will.

I’m scared, but this is probably the kick in the ass i needed to really make a change. And–hey, at least i get to sleep in. A LOT.