Would Recommend: Action Button

I remember a year or so ago reading frustration - from, oddly, several unconnected places around the internet, as if part of some miniature unconscious zeitgeist - that video games, despite having become a huge cultural and commercial force of entertainment, didn't have much in the way of real criticism. In other words, lots of publications telling you how a game does x well and y not-so-well, but very few sources really trying to beyond and find something deeper. Which, I had wondered, might have had something to do with the inherently interactive nature of the medium itself, since "art" and "statements" and all that would seem to take a backseat to the bigger question of "can player 1 jump over this pit".

But, I have been proven wrong, at least by one website. Action Button Dot Net so far seems to be doing a great job of providing the kind of deeper insight I never knew I needed about my once-favorite mode of entertainment (now probably my third, but who's counting). The site design may strike you as off-putting as some review lengths (seriously, you think my writing is long-winded, check out more on FF XIII than you may ever want to read), but what's here is really good, insightful and unapologetic, and has made me rethink some of my own gaming opinions one way or another (though I still love Mario Galaxy).

Of particular note are the reviews of their 33 favorite games of all time. Check out their review of my number one and their number two, Super Mario Bros. 3, fascinating (the review) and enlightening despite taking 10 minutes of reading time to actually begin discussing the game in question. There's a particular bit that especially spoke to me, which I'll quote here - but behind the cut, since it works better in context of the review, so go read that first, seriously, I'll wait, my blog's got time--

--and so in talking about how part of the game's magic is inextricably linked to the times before Gamefaqs when gameplay was about discovery and trading secrets with friends and how often half the fun just came in running the little plumber around and trying shit and playing not to see how the story ended or to get all 101% of the hidden secrets but just to play the fucking thing, Tim Rogers asks:

"Did all this psychological kleptomania really spew from Super Mario Bros. 3, a game we played so much that it became literally incorrect to not crouch before jumping to catch the falling magic wand at the end of the airship boss battles? (The only true way for Mario to be victorious is for him to split-second-snap out of flying crouch and into triumphant standing, wand upraised.)"

...I mean... yeah, that-- that was me, in a nutshell, really. Me and my friends, growing up and playing this game. This paragraph is actual truth, what you might call Earned Resonance. And part of it's nostalgia, sure, but not at all the same kind you get from discussing, say, or The Goonies or Saved by the Bell. It's almost like the Internet isn't making the world a smaller place, just showing us how small it's always been.

Anyway: thumbs up. Would Recommend. Check it out if you like reading extensive, thoughtful essays on video games, and especially if you believe the medium's about more than just pressing buttons for a few hours. Which, if you're a real gamer, you should anyway, right?

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2009: The Year Freak Broke

It’s weird to me that my main motivation for finishing this list was to want to move on and start talking about the music of 2010. The new year is looking great already! Not that 2009 wasn’t also excellent. There was a lot of great stuff, most notably from established artists who found serious success in evolving their sound (they make up half of this list). Some exciting newcomers in here too, though; I’m excited to see where all of these guys go from here, whether we hear from them next in 2010 or 2020. At any rate, here they are: my Top 10 Albums of 2009.


10. Bear in Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth
Something about Bear in Heaven feels weirdly out of time. There’s something very familiar about this sound - maybe even retro - it remains hard to categorize. “Shoegaze without the gazing” might get you almost halfway. It’s a swirl of sound and texture - at times hazy and at others energizing - that still manages to pack in more poppy hooks that most actual “pop” albums this year. Weirdly against the grain of a year that itself felt against the grain, Beast Rest Forth Mouth didn’t need any tricks or gimmicks to stand out on its own merits.



9. Atlas Sound - Logos
Bradford Cox’s “solo” work can be pretty fucking contradictory, but that’s absolutely its intention. Just look at the album cover: that’s Cox himself up there, but with his face blurred out and a big hole where his heart should be. It’s a fitting illustration of an outfit that is primarily Cox’s, but easily shifts and grows to fit the ideas and abilities of his guest performers. It’s unfortunate that the tracks without guests comparatively suffer a little, but Logos still has “Walkabout”, the great Panda Bear song that could have been, and “Quick Canal”, the best Stereolab song never written. And that’s high praise indeed.



8. Mew - No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away
Mew’s angular nü-prog sound is, in some ways, as obtuse and uncool as the frustrating title of their new album. But there’s something to be said for letting go occasionally; OK, not just letting go, but really pushing everything to 11, as they do time and again on “Repeaterbeater”, “Hawaii” and “Vaccine”. Though not as immediate as some of their earlier albums, No More Stories finds them pushing in new directions; check out the fractured breakbeats on “Introducing Palace Players” and the unexpectedly uplifting piano riffs on “Sometimes Life isn’t Easy”. The album begins, fittingly enough, with a timeshifting haze of a track that makes as much sense played backwards as forwards. Its title? “New Terrain”, of course.


7. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
The entire industry of musical criticism fell all over themselves this year in praise of Animal Collective’s eighth album, and while I don’t think it’s the end-all of Indie Rock in 2009, it’s impossible not to recognize the genius and musicianship that created some of the year’s strangest hits. From the woozy gallop of “Summertime Clothes” to the near-goofy exuberance of “Brothersport” and, oh yeah, the completely inescapable “My Girls”, there’s no question that without Animal Collective, 2009 would have been a far more somber and less interesting year.


6. Dan Deacon - Bromst
Bromst found tireless party boy Deacon growing up and growing out, giving out without giving up. Using his classical training to create a dense album as thoughtful and adventurous as it is boisterous and party-ready. Nowhere was this evolution more apparent than at his live shows, where a 13-piece backing band did justice to every diverse melody and instrument used on the album, while Deacon himself still bopped over his turntables in the thick of the crowd, never once forgetting that even a thinking man’s party is still a fucking party.


5. Yacht - See Mystery Lights
On his own, Jonah Bechtolt provided a fun and optimistic - if somewhat gimmicky - counterpoint to a lot of the dour, over-thinking indie dance scenesters of the last few years. But the addition of Claire Evans with See Mystery Lights evolved the band from what could have become a novelty act into a full-blown musical force. They’ve gone from appropriating DFA to becoming one of its tentpoles; and if, with LCD Soundsystem increasingly silent and The Rapture unraveling, the movement’s old guard is beginning to fade, at least it’s in the hands of these two promising youngsters.


4. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
For my money, “1901” is the song that ate the world this year; you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfectly-formed 3 minutes of pop-rock anywhere else in 2009 or even the last several years. Lucky for us, Phoenix didn’t stop there, rounding out the rest of the album with so many other high-energy jams that you might confuse these elder statesmen of indie for the scrappy new kids on the block.





3. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Worst initial reaction I heard to “Stillness is the Move”: “Who the fuck is this, Mariah Carey?” It was as easy to hate on the Dirty Projectors as it was to love them in 2009, which I guess just comes along with sudden explosions in popularity. True, their howling, staccato tendencies aren’t for everyone, but those with an open mind will quickly discover that this twisted variant of pop has an intensity and addictiveness all its own. You’ll find it in “Stillness” and “Cannibal Resource” among others, but it’s Bitte Orca’s arguable centerpiece - the two-pronged rafter-shaking primal scream from Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian 3 minutes into “Useful Chamber” - that blows out the doors and really shows the heights that can be reached when you start looking in new directions.


2. Passion Pit - Manners
The common description of this album has been “like MGMT but the other half of the album is good too”. And… OK, it’s not entirely inaccurate. The latest Indie Dance Music It Kid From Out Of Nowhere, Passion Pit offered up a serious collection of jams this year, and while this kind of music can have a short shelf life (see: The Go! Team; MGMT, again), Passion Pit has actually been able to overcome this with daring, thoughtful composition and, seriously, that back-end of the album doesn’t hurt (Why “Let Your Love Grow Tall” hasn’t been made a single, I will never understand). There will of course be a new Indie Dance Music It Kid From Out Of Nowhere in 2010, but the question isn’t “who will it be”; the question is “can they outdo Manners?”


1. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
How much of our listening experiences do we owe to ourselves? Listening isn’t just a passive activity: every time we press Play, we’re also bringing our thoughts and desires and wants and preconceptions to the table. And everything we feel or know or think we know colors what we hear, which is why the same source material can give two people radically different listening experiences. So how much of my enjoyment of Veckatimest comes from my knowledge of the sheer amount of attention-to-detail work that Grizzly Bear put into their new album? How fair is it that our shared appreciation for Albums Greater Than The Sum Of Their Parts helped them secure a spot on this list above other albums I’ve listened to - and maybe even enjoyed - more this year? I couldn’t tell you. But any kind of intellectual second-guessing does a disservice to the masterpiece that Veckatimest is, from the opening thunder of “Southern Point” through the ethereal “Two Weeks”, the rollicking swell of “About Face” and the hard-won triumph of “While You Wait for the Others” all the way through to the measured, delicate end of “Foreground”. Sure, the listener will always bring their own opinions, but they’d be hard-pressed to argue with an album of this exceptional caliber.


Honorable Mentions

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains
Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
Japandroids - Post-Nothing
Metric - Fantasies
Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms

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