Our Year in Music 2011 coverage has already featured our Top 20 Mainstream Albums of 2011, Listener's Poll Top 100 Spins and our Top Ten Videos of 2011. "Take Your Medicine" by The Quick & Easy Boys was voted song of the year and "Dum Dum Dah Dah" by The Nghiems took top honors as video of the year, and "El Camino" by The Black Keys was our Mainstream Album of The Year. In case you missed them, you can link back to those articles.
- Top 100 Spins of 2011
- Top 10 Videos of 2011
- Top 20 Mainstream Albums of 2011 (#1-10)
- Top 20 Mainstream Albums of 2011(#11-20)
Today's feature is The Top 10 EP's of the Year. Mini-reviews of these albums that have been posted elsewhere will be credited with links to the entire review, and I will select my personal favorite tracks from each album.
Later this week we will list our Top 50 Independent Albums Of The Year, the Year in Photos and (MY FAVORITE) the Best & Worst Album Covers of the year, along with our list of Top Compilation and Soundtrack releases of the year.
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful and musically enriched New Year. I thank you for listening to Jivewired Radio and for supporting indie music, and I hope you will continue to listen throughout the new year.
Best wishes for a musically-enriched 2012,
Mike
And now, on to the Top 10 EP's of 2011...
01. He Gets Me High by Dum Dum Girls
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
The title of that album implied a theme of transformation and realization, and in 2010, Dee Dee took her first steps toward becoming a more dynamic performer, harnessing her stage fright into a viable stage presence. That development continues on her new EP, He Gets Me High, a collection of four tracks that reveal the extent of her talent and range. The band's musical palette is larger and more sophisticated than that on I Will Be, and they make more dramatic and idiosyncratic use of the influences they wear on their sleeves. Just shy of 14 minutes, this EP further distinguishes Dum Dum Girls from the other bands drawing from this same well of fuzz-pop influences.
-- Pitchfork.com
Best Songs: Wrong Feels Right, Take Care Of My Baby
Team Photo: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
02. Submarine by Alex Turner
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
These songs comprise the soundtrack to a film called Submarine, directed by Richard Ayoade; it’s a dark comedy, about a 15-year-old boy wanting to lose his virginity and keep his parents together, and Alex’s songs woozily sway between all-out romance and magpie-eyed reality in a manner which suggests he remembers the vertically steep learning curve of those years all too well.
-- BBC UK
Best Songs: Stuck On The Puzzle, Hiding Tonight
Team Photo: It's Hard To Get Around The Wind
03. Long Live The King by The Decemberists
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Anything Decemberists singer Colin Meloy touches turns tragic. It’s in his delivery. Notes drop lower, and an ominous mood trickles in. These six tunes (cut during the sessions at Oregon's Pendarvis Farm for their acclaimed The King Is Dead release) further the group’s newfound roots influences. “E. Watson” plays like an ageless folk ballad, with backing vocals from Laura Veirs and Annalisa Tornfelt. “Foregone” throws on the country-rock influences, with pedal steel guitar lighting the way. “Burying Davy” builds to near progressive rock heights with guitars that replicate the '70s FM-radio experience. Even the earnest quick shuffle of the home demo for “I4U & U4ME” has a sense of hangover pervading its sense of joy, while their cover of The Grateful Dead’s “Row Jimmy” lurches with the decadent sway of early-'70s countrified Rolling Stones and “Sonnet” kicks in with a horn section. The group's firing on all cylinders here. For a collection of b-sides, this is pretty much essential listening.
-- iTunes Review
Best Songs: Foregone, Burying Davy, Sonnet
Team Photo: Row Jimmy
04. The Trip, Side 1: Illusion & Truth by Dr. Pants
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Before I get into specifics, let me tell you how absolutely addictive "The Trip, Side 1: Illusion & Truth" is. The song "Hipster Kids/Sexy Beards" is but one example. It's a song that will figuratively grab you, tie you down, beat you silly, hit on your sister, eat your lunch, steal your milk money and then have you begging for more. "Instant Insanity" provides more of the same. But while "Hipster/Sexy" does it with it's ironic and engaging lyrics, "Instant Insanity" has this amazing, ethereal bridge that is as scintillating as it is dreamy. The whole song has an almost late-1960s, electrified folk and psychedelic feel to it, reminiscent of bands like The Byrds and Fairport Convention, complete with a distorted, fuzzy guitar sound that is for lack of a better phrase, a total jam. At a time when artists are pioneering formats and new technologies, where uncharted genres emerge and transform and styles are ever-evolving, sometimes it’s nice to take a step back and remind yourself how equally powerful a retrospective nod to the past can be.
-- Jivewired.com
Best Songs: Hipster Kids/Sexy Beards, Instant Insanity, Gas Planet
Team Photo: Bowling With A Genius
05. Freaking Out by Toro Y Moi
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Toro Y Moi’s latest EP, Freaking Out, provides a counterpart to his earlier 2011 effort. Gone are the smooth bass guitar, the drum kit, the acoustic guitar strums – in other words, the actual instruments – replaced here by electronic drums, layers of polyrhythmic synth lines, and heavily effected vocals. It’s a return to the sound of his first full length, last year’s Causers of This, but with a distinctly synth-pop disco sound, straight from the 1980s. There’s still some funky-ass shit on here, like the keyboard wah-wah and slick bass synth of “I Can Get Love”, the longest and therefore most dance-friendly track, or the popping new jack snare drums of the sexy “Saturday Love”.
-- Consequence Of Sound
Best Songs: Saturday Love, All Alone, I Can Get Love
Team Photo: Sweet
06. A Good Woman Is Hard To Find by PAPA
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Hands down, one of the better albums of the year. I don’t know if it has the wherewithal to take over the other albums nominated this year, but it should be mentioned in a class of elite albums. As a band, these guys smash it out of the water: from the drums to the vocals and everything in between, this is one of the best summer jams of the year. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear about PAPA a few months from now, maybe a year or two. Think of it like how The Black Keys progressed. Relatively unknown for a few years until Brothers last year, which exploded out of nowhere.
-- 402productions.com
Best Songs: Ain't It So, Let's Make You Pregnant,
Team Photo: Collector
07. Crown Imperial EP by Crown Imperial
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
This EP is not only a taste of the band's Velvet Underground/Cure infused potential but also it's a tease of what could be an incredible full-length album.
-- Nathan Poppe: Look At OKC
Best Songs: Sunglasses, Elevator
Team Photo: I'm Static
08. So Outta Reach by Kurt Vile
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
So Outta Reach is polished with the same sonic cloth as the excellent Smoke Ring for My Halo released eight months prior. (These six songs are the same bonus tracks that appear on the deluxe edition.) These compositions share other qualities with that album, including superb guitar work, muted drums, reverb, and Kurt Vile’s recognizable vocals matched to effortless melodies and wry lyrics. “The Creature,” with its elaborate fingerpicking, is a stunner that would have fit nicely on Smoke Ring. The rest are simply good songs that deserve to be heard. “It’s Alright” rides a chugging riff that builds up power as it goes. “Life’s a Beach” and its title-track counterpart share some lyrics, as well as a general bouncy vibe. “Laughingstock” is a rugged rocker anthem with some of the album's best guitar playing. And on a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Downbound Train,” Vile sings it fairly straight yet makes it his own with a wall of filthy guitars.
-- iTunes Review
Best Songs: The Creature, Downbound Train, It's Alright
Team Photo: Laughingstock
09. Nightlife by Phantogram
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Taking cues from trip-hop and dream pop (Portishead seem to be an important reference point), they never seemed shy about being upfront with their influences. Despite cryptically nicknaming their sound "street beat," the tag made some sense-- the hard-edged urgency of said beats undercutting such lush romanticism felt perfectly suited for those long, late staggers home. So it's with the appropriately titled Nightlife EP that we find the twosome refining and tweaking some of the ideas put forth on its debut without entirely resting on its laurels, and offering a few of the band's best songs to date.
-- Pitchfork.com
Best Songs: Don't Move, Turning Into Stone, 16 Years
Team Photo: Nightlife
10. An Argument With Myself by Jens Lekman
Buy It At:
Band Website | Amazon | iTunes
Although it only clocks in at 17 minutes, this five-song EP is a pleasantly jumbled affair that shows Lekman’s lyrical facility continues to improve, while his stylistic palette continues to broaden; he has moved well beyond the simple, twee clone-work of his earliest releases. Little filigrees of baroque pop decorate stiff, self-conscious funk (“New Directions”), while gently warm acoustic numbers like “Waiting for Kirsten” are rendered into slow-burning, handclap-ready tunes.
-- Paste Magazine
Best Songs: Waiting For Kirsten, New Directions
Team Photo: An Argument With Myself
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