The Best Indie-Pop of 2011
[6 December 2011]
By Dave Heaton
PopMatters Associate Music Editor
Indie-pop seems like a niche but also a broad category. DIY musicians are sprouting up everywhere you turn, on your block and on your Facebook. Pop music is in everything; it is all encompassing. There are persistent strains of pop in “indie” music of all genres, in your electronic, rock, ambient, singer-songwritery folk, even hip-hop. Yet when I think of indie-pop as an entity, it’s music that’s predominantly pop (versus predominantly rock or folk) that also has an inherent interest in the classic format of a song.
This year, the indie-pop music that made me stop and take notice wasn’t necessarily the high-energy splice-and-dice hybrids or the cutesy, catchy super-melodic stuff, though there still were fetching examples of both. Call it a sign of our (hard economic) times if you will, but in 2011, the most memorable pop songs, while colorful and big and romantic, tended to keep a lot of gray around, to portray the world as one big melancholy ball of confusion.
None of this is political music, in an overt way, but the weight of the hardships of the world often hung in the air, standing as a reminder not just of our particular moment, but of the universality of human suffering, frailty, and uncertainty. The fogginess of life is expressed in various ways within the confines of this list—be they grand, reaching-out-to-the-audience statements or small, individual ones.
Some of these bands might not be “indie-pop” in a music history way, though most definitely are, in heredity, influence, or spirit; for example, the #2 band on this list just released a heart-shaped 7”-vinyl single dedicated to their hero “Lawrence”, of Felt. But that’s crucial to the mutability of pop music, the way our most interesting musicians can express themselves within the essential form of a song, while also changing, even upending, how we think about songs, about what they are and what they do to us. 
Dave Heaton
10
Bart and FriendsStories with the Endings Changed
Bart Cummings, of the Cat’s Miaow and other great Australian bands, started his Bart and Friends project, which includes various members of other good bands as “friends” changing with each release, with an album in 1998 that stands for a few of us as an under-recognized classic of the era. Last year’s release of a new CD, nine years after the previous one, was a joy. This follow-up is at least as good: a collection of charming, melodic, tender, happy, and sad little pop songs about life and love and the fleetingness of it all. That temporality is mimicked by the brevity of the songs and of the CD itself, considered a “mini-album” sometimes but feeling to me like an album. Style-wise, what he’s doing isn’t much different from what he did over ten years ago, but that’s something to celebrate, as his songs are affecting and immaculate as ever.
Bart & Friends - Who Am I to Say No by Lost And Lonesome
9
The BatsFree All the Monsters
New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records and its related bands get written about like something of the past, an influence more than a musical entity worthy of our attention now. Yet here, in 2011, we’ve got a new, eighth album by the Bats (plus another stellar David Kilgour album). The basics of what they’re doing hasn’t changed much since 1987: melodic guitar-pop, with a lot of atmosphere and feeling wrapped up in melodies that will haunt you, and keep coming back at you when you aren’t paying attention. And yes, newcomers will hear in their songs, the old or the new ones, traces of a lot of bands you’ve come to love over the last couple decades. The Bats were here first, and they’re still here, and in great form.
8
The Ladybug TransistorClutching Stems
Four years have passed since the last Ladybug Transistor album, which came four years after its predecessor. That, combined with frequent lineup changes, is enough to make each album feel like a comeback and a reinvigoration, even if the band’s ‘60s-influenced, lazy-autumn-day, orchestral-pop sound hasn’t changed that much since it started out back in 1996. Gary Olson’s songwriting is consistent in approach, and consistently good. Still, their seventh album does feel like a rebirth—not because it’s drastically different from their other albums, but because it’s livelier in tone than the last couple, somehow particularly emotional in the lyrics and delivery, and as good overall as anything they’ve done before. It’s a cliché to say that certain contemporary pop music sounds timeless, but somewhere in its fabric, timelessness seems integral to what the Ladybug Transistor does, and does well. It’s music evocative of places and people, and the way we link emotions to the memory of them.
7
SeaponyGo with Me
The young Seattle band Seapony combines in its sound a few of my favorite indie-pop styles of the last couple decades: amateur songwriting in the Beat Happening tradition, pretty melodies over drum machines (à la forgotten bands like Alsace Lorraine), and a woman’s voice sweetly singing about sad things, like—what else?—heartbreak. The album flies by in about a half-hour, like a summertime fling that leaves behind both romantic memories and a bitter aftertaste. They’re too sincere about sentimental matters to be fully embraced by the music press; both the PopMatters and Pitchfork reviews were on the low end of the spectrum and they’re the likeliest band this year to be derisively referred to as “twee”. Yet they’re a classically indie-pop band whose minimalist, breezy style puts a fresh face on beloved formulas.
6
Amor de DíasStreet of the Love of Days
Amor de Días was treated by largely as a side project of the Clientele, and maybe it is, but if so it’s also a side project of the less famous but equally great band Pipas. Since neither band is making music right now, is it really a side project at all? It has neither the slightness nor the dead-end-road quality that the phrase implies. Musically, it weds qualities from both of the other bands—the melancholy surrealism of the Clientele, the spunky transient pop melodies of Pipas—but also feels like something completely new, taking mystical folk music and dreamy pop wandering, and building off them into something strange and beautiful. The marriage of the two styles would be welcome enough, but there’s also a quality here that says much more musical territory is waiting to be explored. There is both depth and openness in this music, not to mention images, melodies, and sounds that keep calling us back to them.
5 - 1
5
King Creosote and Jon HopkinsDiamond Mine
Scottish singer-songwriter King Creosote, Kenny Anderson is ridiculously prolific, releasing somewhere around 40 albums since the late ‘90s. They are interesting, exciting, and erratic. Diamond Mine feels different, and it is. A collaboration with electronic musician and producer Jon Hopkins, whose 2009 album Insides rightly received a lot of critical acclaim, Diamond Mine has one consistent sound, and an alluring one at that. Hopkins created the musical backdrops for Anderson to sing over. The music presents an inviting, comforting, and strange atmosphere, with bittersweet tones melding with field recordings to create a sonic place we feel like we’re visiting.
4
Architecture in HelsinkiMoment Bends
For its fourth album, the Australian pop group Architecture in Helsinki dialed back from the manic tendencies of its previous album, without diluting the focus on rhythm that also marked that album as different from the ones before it. Moment Bends has an abiding interest in both the moment, represented by super-hummable, could-have-been-radio-hits-in-the-‘80s tunes and an overall dance-club atmosphere, and the ways we could build moments into something greater, marked by a lyrical interest in the notion of paradise and in creating one. Musically, the album has an island vacation feeling that matches that theme; it’s airy, bouncy, and pretty. Of course there’s disappointment and regret woven into the album, as with any actual vacation. Yet overall it’s also a distinctly hopeful album, one where everyone is dreaming of something greater and the music seems to be striving to fulfill that vision.
3
The Pains of Being Pure at HeartBelong
For their second LP, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart worked with Flood and Alan Moulder, men behind the boards for numerous classic albums in the greater “alternative rock” world. It’d be easy to make too big a deal of that, but they did no doubt help the band achieve the fuller, bolder sound of Belong. Befitting their influences, their songs have always had a shy, quietly witty personality along with the catchy melodies. Here that’s true, but it’s all painted with brighter colors, turning their songs into the big-stage anthems we didn’t know they could be. What once were cute little choruses now feel like bigger statements; nice melodies now seem like something with broader appeal. This isn’t just because of the production. It’s growth in songwriting, in musicianship, in the whole package of how the music is put together. More than just reminding us that they’re not a flash in the pan, Belong should make listeners excited for the future of the band.
2
GirlsFather, Son, Holy Ghost
Look at Girls quickly, and you might take them for a buzz band or stylish fad. The videos look like ads from a hipster marketing firm. They’ve been hyped by many run-of-the-mill music blogs, after praise from Pitchfork, the tastemaker those blogs follow. Take all of that, and throw it away. Girls is special. Christopher Owens has not just a knack for writing melodies and witty, open-hearted lyrics; not just a way of taking music of the past—especially, but not only, early rock and its pop precursors; not just a distinct slant on life and his own way of expressing it. But he also an advanced understanding of the effect that music has on listeners and an even more developed way of tapping into that, so you can feel like a song is speaking to you, while also knowing that the singer is telling you that’s what he’s doing and that he knows it’s all part of the beautiful trick that is pop music. In that context, sometimes he will sing the most banal sentiment, and make you feel it as truth. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the band’s spacier, more muscular second album, takes all of that to the next level, making a serious mark on us, while advancing what the band’s music sounds like.
1
The CaribbeanDiscontinued Perfume
The Washington, DC trio The Caribbean doesn’t fit snugly into the genre of “indie pop”, in the sense that you imagine it as a genre with neatly drawn boundaries. They don’t fit into any genre, really, yet they’re working in the realm of pop songwriting, in the world where a band sets a mood, a singer takes words and sings them melodically, and the listener takes it all in while unconsciously tapping his foot and singing along. The Caribbean work in that realm, but they do it like undercover agents. They’re living it, quietly, outside the attention of most people, and also changing it up. Their music is seemingly nondescript—they’re not flashy enough, young enough, or hip enough to get significant press—but filled with corners that fascinate, confuse, touch, and stalk you. Their fifth album is especially puzzling and emotionally affecting. Like scientists, they’re quietly experimenting, but like journalists or novelists, they sing of ordinary people who, of course, aren’t really that ordinary, and their life crises, which resonate strongly with our own. It’s an album of people stuck between what they want to do and have to do, of people who find themselves at an existential crossroads though no one around them notices. Not that many people are noticing the Caribbean, either, but their music has the power to sneak up on you and take you firmly by the hand.
Published at: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/151816-the-best-indie-pop-of-2011/
