# 15 (TM) Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones

Pop music has always been safe haven for an angry young man with a guitar. From A.P. Carter to Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan to Ted Leo, a solitary figure railing against social injustice and hammering away at the six string is a time honored and noble tradition. After serving time in agit punks Million Dead, Frank Turner adds his name to this list.

England Keep My Bones mines the same Billy Bragg territory as his earlier solo albums, with perhaps a bit less witty wordplay but an even more naked sincerity. You can't help but love a song as simple and brilliant as the rock-and-roll-will-save-your-life call to arms of "I Still Believe" or the rabble rousing "I Am Disappeared", which calls out country and self to have and believe in dreams, lest we all fade away.

Frank Turner - "I Am Disappeared" (from England Keep My Bones)
Frank Turner - "Thunder Road" (Springsteen cover)

#15 (MA) Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

Okkervil River might be the most under-appreciated band in the world. They turn out good-to-great albums like clockwork, richly textured, emotionally resonant, deeply fulfilling and beautiful things that ought to put them side-by-side with Arcade Fire as indie rock kings. But they don't inspire the same kind of cult. The hope is that they take the response as a challenge and keep striving, because there's a whole lot of greatness left to be teased out of this band.

# 16 (TM) Amanda Shires - Carrying Lightning

It is so hard to get heard over the din of an ever-expanding media maze of itunes, video games, facebook, twitter, radio, TV, commercials, movies, concerts and clouds - what's a girl to do? If you're Amanda Shires, you do it yourself . Although a veteran of tours and recording projects with such alt country luminaries like Jason Isbell, Justin Townes Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, Shires is just beginning to get noticed for her burgeoning, self-directed solo career. Her melancholy Texas twang recalls a less craggy Lucinda Williams with the emotional purity of prime Nanci Griffith.


Her fourth album, Carrying Lightning, is chock full of strong originals like the missed opportunity lament "When You Need A Train It Never Comes" and the whistling, banjo flecked lover's longing glaze of "Swimmer". It's also one of the best americana releases of the year - lyrically direct and emotionally potent.

Amanda Shires - "When You Need A Train It Never Comes" (from Carrying Lightning)
Amanda Shires - "Bees in The Shed" (from Carrying Lightning)

#16 (MA) Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

When you have fewer songwriting peers than you have fingers, when you're nearly a half-century into your career, it's nearly preposterous to think that you could create new music that fits comfortably in your canon. But Paul Simon has done just that. This is a graceful and winning collection, ten little reveries that I could have placed anywhere on this list depending on my mood, up to and including number one.

# 17 (TM) Jason Isbell - Here We Rest

For some reason, the Drive-By Truckers last few albums have left me cold, while former Trucker Jason Isbell seems to have stolen their mojo on Here We Rest, easily his most consistent record.


Here We Rest is rooted in its southerness, with a deep Alabama groove set to fluttering fiddles and sure-handed shuffles that make characters like the broken soul barfly in "Codeine" come alive even as they battle addiction, and his version of Candi Staton's southern soul standard "Heart on A String" sounds like a lost Delbert McClinton classic.

But the highlight is "Alabama Pines", whose lonesome loser has lost touch with home as he's stuck in a crappy little room in a nowhere town and aching to find his way back by pleading for "Somebody take me home, through those Alabama pines". As another great songwriter once opined, it's sadly beautiful.

#17 (MA) St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

I picked this one because it's in the vein of Massive Attack and Portishead, and every once in a while that's exactly what I need. I also picked it because it's fun to sometimes irritate Trip.

#18 (TM) The Postelles - The Postelles

For anyone who thinks Joe Jackson's Look Sharp was the perfect synthesis of punk rock's slutty edge and the magnificently manicured songwriting smarts of Squeeze's Chris Difford and Glenn Tillbrook, then the Postelles debut is the album for you. After being dropped by Astralwerks before releasing a single note, 2011 saw The Postelles long-gestating record finally glimpse the light of day.

Opening with the staccato guitar romp, call-and-response sizzler "White Night", The Postelles updates the 70's power pop template with the nervous energy that all those THE bands (The Vines, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Hives) thrilled us with a decade ago. They look unapologetically backward, and singer Daniel Balk's cheerful croon makes these mostly up-tempo gumdrops go down easy.

The Postelles - "White Night" (from The Postelles)
The Postelles - "California Sun" (from Summer Undercovers)

#18 (MA) Have Gun Will Travel - Mergers & Acquisitions

I was going to put Wild Flag's excellent album here, but Trip already got that one, so I'll offer up a left-field choice. I don't know much about Have Gun Will Travel, but Mergers & Acquisitions is a near-perfect mix of rustic and tuneful that will transport you to the halcyon days of early alt.country. This is the album Uncle Tupelo didn't make between March 16-20, 1992 and Anodyne.

Have Gun Will Travel - Time Machine
Have Gun Will Travel - Disappearing Kind

#19 (MA) Butch Walker & The Black Widows - The Spade

Butch Walker makes musical confections, sweet rock candy that cuts through the sour indie rock landscape. Once upon a time this stuff made you a star, but now it just makes you a cult hero to folks who want to enjoy new music but who don't subscribe to the new musical paradigm. Big hooks, big drums, sly words, plentiful beer, willing girls and cunning song craft all wrapped up in a shiny box and bow. It hits your body first and then works its way to your brain. A sugar rush in all the right ways.

# 20 (TM) - Foster & Lloyd - It's Already Tomorrow

Just as Foster & Lloyd's recording hiatus was able to buy a drink, it up and went on a harmony-filled alt country bender. Twenty-one years is a l-o-o-o-n-g break, but the rust is barely noticeable on It's Already Tomorrow, possibly the least touted reunion album of the year. And quite possibly the best.

What makes this partnership go is the marriage of Bill Lloyd's jangle pop guitar sensibility to Radney Foster's clear, warm vocals, but what makes it soar are the old school harmonies, two voices meshing as one on immediately memorable choruses. Sure their cover of "Picasso's Mandolin" is a misstep better left to the craggy story telling of the great Guy Clark, but the daylight fading, gracefully aging title cut reminds us of the Foster and Lloyd's Top 40 hitmaking heyday. And album closer "When I Finally Let You Go" is a heart tugging, father to daughter love letter that will inspire more "Ahh Seanie" comparisons than this author would care to admit.

By the way, go buy the fantastic This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark, which features our boy Radney absolutely killing "L.A. Freeway".

Foster & Lloyd - "It's Already Tomorrow" (from It's Already Tomorrow)
Radney Foster - "L.A. Freeway" (from This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark)

#20 (MA) Amy Winehouse – Lioness: Hidden Treasures

If you didn’t know this album was cobbled together from odds and ends after Ms. Winehouse’s death, could you discern it by listening? Maybe, especially once you noticed “Tears Dry,” an alternate version of “Tears Dry On Their Own” from the brilliant Back to Black album. But would it make the experience any less enjoyable? I can’t image that it would. Winehouse was one of the last contemporary singers who could fully inhabit a song, tugging at melody and tempo to make other writers’ tunes her own, and never resorting to studio tricks. Her buoyant takes on chestnuts ranging from “Our Day Will Come” to “A Song For You” never fail to charm, and they serve as a reminder of what a rare talent she was. You won’t find her death in this collection. Only her life.

# 21 (TM) - Fucked Up - David Comes to Life

Holy crap this album has a lot going against it - the NSFW for band name, the unrelenting hardcore growl of a mostly shirtless lead singer named Pink Eyes, the hard to penetrate (and understand) lyrics to a godforsaken prog-punk opera, a 78 minute running time - but every time I put this disc on my heart rate accelerates and I feel like a better man. This thing explodes in scream-along mayhem with force, anger, bile and a bulldozer's soft touch that takes its only breaths with the occasional sweet touch of girl group coos that leavens a song like "Queen of Hearts".


Rock and roll is dead? Nah... it's just Fucked Up.

Fucked Up - "Queen of Hearts"  (from David Comes to Life)
Fucked Up - "Turn The Season" (from David Comes to Life)

Etta James, 1938-2012

Johnny Otis, dead at 90

The obituary of a fascinating man is here.

Bruce Springsteen - "We Take Care of Our Own" (Listen)

We interrupt our 2011 countdown to acknowledge 2012.

# 22 (TM) - The Red Button - As Far As Yesterday Goes

Now Pop for Pure People

As Far As Yesterday Goes plays like an unwritten John Hughes movie, with looming heartbreak leavened by day-glo horns and impossibly sunny arrangements. Each chorus, each handclap and each strum screams pure pop. There are 60's nods everywhere - the "I Should Have Known Better" harmonica riff that powers opener "Caught in The Middle" to euphoric heights, the heavenly, Turtle-y "ba-ba-bas" of "You Do Something to Me" and album thesis "On A Summer Day" that plays like a full on celebration of Small Faces ultra-modness crossed with the elegance of Bachrach/David classic.

Teenage Kicks review of As Far As Yesterday Goes

The Red Button - "Caught in The Middle" (from As Far As Yesterday Goes)
The Red Button - "On A Summer Day" (from As Far As Yesterday Goes)

# 23 (TM) - Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

This album can inspire love and hate - I've both loved and hated it. Sometimes the ordinary lyrics ("Honey Bunny", "Magic", "Saying I Love You) seem like empty platitudes and songs veer off into Pink Floyd wankery territory ("Vomit", "Forgiveness), but then I find myself going back to this album again and again because it truly sounds wonderful and different - except "Vomit", which is an exercise in noisy tedium.


The lyrics are mostly uplifting (and ordinary, but they work) and who doesn't love an album that calls to mind the fractured, desperate beauty of Sister Lovers and the deeply touching melancholia of Sunflower / Surf's Up era Beach Boys.

Love... for today.

Girls - "Honey Bunny" (from Father, Son & Holy Ghost)
Girls - "Love Like A River" (from Father, Son & Holy Ghost)

# 24 (TM) - Wild Flag - Wild Flag

With a scorched earth policy that leaves no riff unturned, Wild Flag's joyous rocket launch sounds like 1977 in 2011. I hear the new wave mannerisms of Lene Lovich and the exaggerated strangulated yelp of Richard Hell, but Wild Flag carries not a whiff of punk revisionism or slavish tribute. This is breathtaking rock and roll in the moment, loaded with hooks and F-U-N.


Inspirational verse from the slam bang opener, the absolutely irresistible "Romance":

"You watch us sing, we sing till we're crying
We sing to free ourselves from the room
We love the sound, the sound is what found us
Sound is the love between me and you"

If you are not moving to this one, have someone check your pulse.

Wild Flag - "Romance" (from Wild Flag)
Wild Flag - "Boom" (from Wild Flag)

# 25 (TM) - Ron Sexsmith - Long Player, Late Bloomer

Eleven albums into a career that has flown mostly under the radar, Ron Sexsmith has had his praises sung by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Elvis Costello. Sexsmith writes rueful, self-deprecating songs about the painful joy of being in love. Long Player, Late Bloomer is more of the same, but only better with a strict no filler mandate among the album's 13 tracks.. The title song "Long PLayer" is a nod to his own survivor's instincts and his slow, gradual climb to the middle.


"I'm a late bloomer, I'm a slow learner
And I've turned the record over, I'm a long player
My song is my saviour, Got to raise it up"

His vocals cling to melodies like thick maple syrup on the edge of an amber jug, causing the world to spin a little slower while Sexsmith spoon feeds melancholy one bite a time.

Ron Sexsmith - "Believe It When I See It" (from Long Player, Late Bloomer)
Ron Sexsmith - "Give Me Love" (George Harrison cover)

# 26 (TM) - The Black Keys - El Camino

I am jumping on this train as it hits top speed. Forget all the comparisons to The White Stripes, and forget all the critical hosannas and flowery expositions of The Black Keys as rock and roll saviors, even though they might be. Let's celebrate the big fat choruses, the head-bobbing, hair-flyin' groove, the underpinning of greasy soul that lifts them above the fray. This is big, dumb rock in all it's bare chested glory. The Black Keys are 2012's Foghat and "Lonely Boy" is their "Slow Ride", as camaro rock as it gets.  

The Black Keys - "Lonely Boy"

Foghat - "Slow Ride"