Top 25 Albums of 2011 (#5-2)
5.) Tenement - Napalm Dream
Who is Tenement? Where did they come from? Without doing some research, I have no clue. So let me look them up. They’re apparently from the Twin Cities, and have put out some stuff in the past. Well no matter who they are, Napalm Dream is pretty flawless. It’s hard to think that a band has been playing for a while and not had any recognition yet with an album as good as this one. So what’s it sound like? Think Hüsker Dü except faster and with Dinosaur Jr. guitar solos. That’s a bit what it’s like. This is another album that is a ton of fun to listen to. Napalm Dream came out of nowhere and showed every Punk band that they’ve been doing it wrong for years.
4.) Summer Vacation - Condition
My first taste of Summer Vacation was the split they did with Joyce Manor last year. I missed it the first go round, but when I was scooping up the Joyce Manor discography while their buzz was at their highest I got the split. Instantly I thought, “Oh shit! The wrong band got famous.” That’s right. Summer Vacation are a better band than Joyce Manor, hands down. That’s probably not a popular opinion. But stop what you are doing and listen to Condition. While you are at it, get a copy of the split, and the demo SV did called Angry At the World (the band gives it away for free.) I’ve been talking about this band for months, and the Summer Vacation full length was something I really excited for, and they did not let me down. I wanted to hear new tunes by the band for a while and I spent a few days looking for a copy of the song “Team Captain” to complete my discography, because I knew it was supposed to be on the full length. When I finally found it, it blew me away. Is this what they sound like now? They took everything I expected and took it up ten notches. I can’t pick a song that I like more than the others, but if you need a recommendation, LISTEN TO THE WHOLE THING!
3.) Aficionado - Aficionado
I kept reading about this band called Aficionado online, but none of the descriptions I’d heard made me want to listen to them. People keep saying they sound exactly like Cursive, and call me a philistine, but I have no interest in Cursive. Yeah I know they’re supposed to be amazing, but something about them prevents me from getting into them. One day while I was goofing around online, I saw there was a split video from End of a Year Self Defense Family and Aficionado. It seemed like a cool idea so I decided to watch it, but kind of dreaded having to watch the Aficionado song before I could get to the EOAYSDF song. I’m glad I didn’t skip forward or else I would have missed a really amazing song. “The Things You Like” was everything I’d felt about people who call themselves “fans” of music. I loved the music, and the vocals really made me want to get my hands on their full length. Aficionado keeps getting called Prog, and since I don’t really know how to really define that term, I just equated them to the other “Prog” Post-Hardcore group Coheed & Cambria. Though there aren’t any shrill high vocals here. The funny thing is, the first time I heard the band I thought “they sound like Piebald.” Little did I know that Travis from Piebald actually shows up on the album for the song “Honesty”. I can’t recommend this album enough, it’s really good and No Sleep really does know what they are doing with their band choices.
2.) Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man
Andrew Jackson Jihad are easily in my top ten all time favorite bands. People Who Eat People opened the gates for me and I’ve devoured every release they’ve put out. Can’t Maintain shocked the hell out of me for it’s heavy use of electric guitars, but showed that a band can experiment with a new sound and still write incredible songs. And though the creative output of AJJ has been pretty limited in the last two years, I always knew that any full lengths they put out were going to be great. I’m going to say this now. This is my least favorite AJJ album. Now, that really says something if this is my least favorite of theirs, but it’s still number 2 on my 2011 end of a year list. Mostly because it has some of my least favorite songs they’ve recorded. I don’t really care for the song “No One”. It reminds me of one of the more boring Bob Dylan songs. I also don’t really like the song “Back Pack” because it feels like a rehash of “Lets Get Murdered”. Now that that’s out of the way, this album also features some of my favorite AJJ songs in “American Tune”, “Distance”, “Hate Rain On Me”, and a ton of others. The first half of the album is mostly plugged in songs, while the second is heavy on the acoustic that made the band famous in the first place. If you like Folk Punk, you’ll love Knife Man. If you like AJJ, you’ll definitely love it.
