Beyond the live music lineup, Noise Pop 2011 boasts a great line up of film screenings and related events this year!
First will be the world premiere of This is Noise Pop on Feb 23, a documentary about indie rock via bands' Noise Pop appearances, followed by a Q&A with the director, editor and Noise Pop glitterati.
Also screening is a documentary about the ever-popular Jose Gonzalez called The Extraordinary Ordinary Life of Jose Gonzalez on Feb 23 and Look at What the Light Did Now, a film about Feist on Feb 24. Little Wings, the original author of the song "Look at What the Light Did Now," will perform after that film.
The much-anticipatedFamily Jams, a film by Kevin Barker about the 2004 tour of (formerly) San Francisco's own Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver will also screen on Febuary 24.
Howdy and Happy New Year, one and all. I've spent about a week and half, that is the first week and a half of 2011, listening only to the music I purchased last year and I've come up with a list of stuff that I am not only not sick of but ready to live happily ever after with. Here's what I love the most, my best picks for music released in 2010, and you know it's gotta be firm 'cause it's all I've been living on. Let's go:
Sun City Girls - Funeral Mariachi (Abduction)
This is the kind of record that you listen to repeatedly, one side at a time. I think I must have replayed side one at least five times before moving on to play side two again and again --- it's just a mesmerizing and solid piece of work, enchanting and haunted by an astounding breadth of world music influences (no doubt culled from field recordings, transmissions and the like Sun City Girls has gifted to the public via their Sublime Frequencies label, which pretty much makes them, alongside Mississippi Records, the Smithsonian Folkways of our generation). This release is held even more dear by the fact that it is the last Sun City Girls record due to the death of drummer and vocalist Charles Gocher Jr. in 2007. It's also a limited release, so get it while you can. In fact, it's the "get it while you can" of 2010.
Sun City Girls - "Blue West" from Funeral Mariachi
#1 Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti-
Before Today (4AD)
The first time I heard this album I knew it would be at the top of my list this year. It was really just a competition the rest of the year with these other albums to see if anything could overtake it but nothing could do it. I somehow resisted the temptation of Ariel Pink the last couple of years. Before Today was clearly the album for me and a perfect introduction to this band. I just didn't know how much I would be falling in love with the band and obsessed with this album. It is like a shoegaze soft rock mash up of all the songs that you have ever loved. You simply need this album in your collection. It is simply amazing!
listen to "fright night" by ariel pink...
buy the album at amoeba.com
#2 Avi Buffalo-Avi Buffalo (Sub Pop)
Oh, Avi Buffalo. I am so glad to have you in my life. Another album that I didn't really know I would love until I first listened to it. These guys are crazy young and ridiculously talented. The album is one of the perfect little pop gems of the year and I really couldn't stop listening to it for months. Seeing them open up for My Morning Jacket at the Greek was one of my favorite shows of the year. I was first drawn to them because they were from my hometown of Long Beach, but I fell in love with the album as soon as I heard it. It is addictive. This album will stay with me forever and forever connect me to my great year that was 2010.
Time for outside-work fun and general pop culture absorption was extra low this year, but what I loved in 2010, I loved hard. These are the things that made my heart sing over the past twelve months.
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Is there any point in writing about any other album than Joanna's? This triple album is clearly the work of the bright star of young music makers today. The difference between her and everyone else on the playing field? Nothing about her work is derivative: not her sound, not her writing and certainly not her voice. Album of the year, for sure...probably would even call it album of the past few years! It's that good.
"Soft As Chalk"
Mountain Man - Made the Harbor
Old timey yet thoroughly modern.
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Is there any point in writing about any other album than Joanna's? This triple album is clearly the work of the bright star of young music makers today. The difference between her and everyone else on the playing field? Nothing about her work is derivative: not her sound, not her writing and certainly not her voice. Album of the year, for sure...probably would even call it album of the past few years! It's that good.
"Soft As Chalk"
Mountain Man - Made the Harbor
Old timey yet thoroughly modern.
