I also never expected my favorite album to come from someone who held the spot previously, but the iTunes “most played” playlist doesn’t lie. It’s a divisive one, but people who like it really like it.

I picked 15 favorites and several honorable mentions, plus a Favorite Columbus Albums list below — separate but equal in enjoyment and quality. As usual, I limit my lists to albums, so some EPs and 7”s I liked (e.g. Envelope, Sundown, Malefactors of Great Wealth, Dolfish) aren’t listed.

That is all.

15. Wussy – Strawberry

MP3: Grand Champion Steer

As Chip said about Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver, “One wouldn’t expect the heavily tattooed Cincinnati songwriter to produce his best collection of songs this late in his already highly-prolific career, but that’s exactly what he’s done.”

14. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

TV On The Radio – “Will Do” by Interscope Records

13. The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient

MP3: Come to the City

12. Tom Waits – Bad As Me

Tom Waits – Bad As Me by antirecords

I’ve never been a Tom Waits fanboy, but this record grabbed me and didn’t let go.

11. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

MP3: Helplessness Blues

10. Crooked Fingers – Breaks in the Armor

MP3: Typhoon

Best songs since Red Devil Dawn.

9. Southeast Engine – Canary

MP3: New Growth

8. Centro-matic – Candidate Waltz

MP3: Only in My Double Mind

7. David Bazan – Strange Negotiations

MP3: Wolves at the Door

6. A.A. Bondy – Believers

MP3: Surfer King

5. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

MP3: Cannons

4. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo

MP3: Jesus Fever

3. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse

MP3: Baby’s Breath

2. Gillian Welch – The Harrow & the Harvest

MP3: The Way It Goes

1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

MP3: Holocene

By now, I know every moment on this album, but I’m still continually surprised by its beauty. Seeing Bon Iver in Philly would also make my Favorite Life Occurrences of 2011 list.

Honorable mention:
The Roots – Undun
The Black Keys – El Camino
Dawes – Nothing is Wrong
Joe Henry – Reverie
Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
Richard Buckner – Our Blood
Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
J Mascis – Several Shades of Why
Tim Easton – Beat the Band/Since 1966 Vol. 1
Thao & Mirah – Thao & Mirah
Joseph Arthur – The Graduation Ceremony

Favorite 2011 Columbus albums:
1. The Black Swans – Don’t Blame the Stars
2. Lydia Loveless – Indestructible Machine
3. Times New Viking – Dancer Equired
4. Psandwich – Northren Psych
5. Saintseneca – Last
6. Blueprint – Adventures in Counter-Culture
7. Bicentennial Bear – Lost Summers
8. The Regionals – The Regionals
9. Psychedelic Horseshit – Laced
10. The Lindsay – Deep in the Queue

Honorable mention:
P. Blackk – Blackk Friday
Moon High – Six Suns
Shane Sweeney – The Finding Time
Tin Armor – Life of Abundance
Alyosha Het – The Purgatourist

Cotton Jones

Look, Life really is what you make it and as dumb and silly and boring and rehashed and cliche as that sounds, that’s the way the cookie crumbles brother. I really have been on a pretty intense YEAH! LIFE! YEAH! IT IS COOL! don’t sweat the small stuff kinda trip and it’s great. Let’s hang out, I will make you LOL. Life’s to short to be boring and stupid. Everyone should be cool and fun instead. Life should be more Celestine Prophecy and less 48 Laws of Power. Gnome sayin?

I totally forgot what is was like to get excited for shows and I totally forgot what kind of a bummer it is when a band cancels. Yes, let’s talk about the bands. I saw some doozies! Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers, Phantods, Ghost Shirt, The Altered States of the United Snakes, ipps, not Goes Cube (super bummed), Puscifer (Maynard James Motherfucking Keenan) and I even caught a David Bazan song or two. (I know right). 1-2-3-go! Read more! After the jump!

Pictured: Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers@Summit

Sometimes I’m not so good at planning ahead, especially after a pretty much epic two weeks. I remembered super last minute that Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers were on their way back to NYC from SXSW, I remembered how awesome Beat the Devil were, I remembered Shilpa was the singer for Beat the Devil, that they were playing Wednesday night at The Summit and I remembered all the cool kids were talking about her. Thank god I remembered to go to this. Super futuristic, totally retro vibe and Shilpa’s voice is out if this world, I think maybe she’s an alien! I mean, a harmonium? Have you seen these things? They look like they’re from Mars! For real though, Miss Shilpa Ray has a hypnotizing voice and her Happy Hookers are one of the tightest groups of players I’ve seen in a minute. Shilpa and I totally bro’ed down and I got her stoked to check out Warpaint. Til next time alien voice harmonium player from Mars!

Pictured: Phantods@Ravari

Basically, Shilpa got me stoked for awesome vocalists and knowing I was going to see Maynard on Sunday, I totally had to go get mesmerized by Gretchen King and Phantods on Friday evening at Ravari room. Quick shout out to openers The Lost Revival, whom I missed and closers/Donewaiting friends and 52 singles in 52 weeks dudes, Ghost Shirt. O.k. enough about those dudes, let’s get back to Phantods and how cool and fun they are. Like their tunes or not, there is no denying that this fantastic looking group are super tight and that Gretchen has golden pipes. If somehow I could have seen Shilpa, Gretchen and Maynard on the same bill I’m pretty sure that it would mean that I was on the island. L O S T. If you like cool shit and don’t hate it and aren’t stupid, go see Phantods or buy their music. At the very least, you gotta dig their song “Revival” and CD101, if you are reading this, quit sleeping and play it! I know you guys love cool shit!

Sooo…here’s where my super cool, totally rad weakened (see what I did there) took a turn for the bummer. I was super super stoked to see Brooklyn boys, Goes Cube at Carabar, but as life goes, a member of Goes Cube fell ill and was unable to perform. WAY TO GET SICK GOES CUBE DUDE. (get well soon) I’ve seen Goes Cube on a couple of occasions before and was jamming hard on their most recent jawn, “Another Day Has Passed” leading up to the show, man such a good fucking record. I mean, the easiest way to describe them is a heavy shoegazey post-Deftonesey kinda thing without any of the negative, dumb, stupid, retartar nu-metal connotations. Hope that makes sense and I hope I get to see these dudes in the near future. Goes Cube you owe me a rad set! Ima be real here, I drowned my sorrows for the duration of the evening. Pretty sure Ron was testing my metal (see what I did there) by feeding me as much Tullamore Dew as possible. I hung pretty tough though. Donewaiting goes hard.

Pictured: The Altered States of the United Snakes@Carabar

The Altered States of the United Snakes is a super group of sorts if you will. Matt Bisaro from Necropolis, Adam Smith from Necropolis and record label you should be paying attention to, Columbus Discount Records, Fred from Swampleather and Autistic Theater dude, Davey Highben. Totally listenabletoable experimental borderline psych rock weirdness.

Pictured: ipps@Carabar

ipps are cool! Mike O! Yeah! I was doing shots and arguing with Ron! Yeah! Go see ipps! Emily, Bo-go buy cool stuff for you’re soon to be cool baby at Lottie Da Baby Boutique! Yeah!

Pictured: Puscifer@LC

All right, now comes the part of the weekend that I was super excited about, Puscifer at the LC. I mean, things could have gone a little smoother, I forgot how annoying Tool fans are (the worst!) and I was reminded why I dont totally love big rock shows. (full disclosure I fucking love Tool and my username on a certain message board may or may not be thisoneholymedium, which may or may not be a reference to the Tool song “Prison Sex”)

I’m on this big synchronicity trip as of late and I just so happened to be seated next to the ColumbusUnderground reviewer and thought that was a trip. Then she said she didn’t know who Donewaiting was (I know right). Then she totally thought opener Neil Hamburger was MJK (I know right). Looking forward to the review. Whatever, here nor there. The worlds worst comedian Neil Hamburger started to show with his brand of “humor” and never having seen him before, I will admit to being entertained. I mean who doesn’t love bad Jackson 5 jokes, err, uhh, I mean Jackson 4 jokes.

Ohio dudes Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival followed Neil Hamburger. I was busy telling anyone who would listen about how cool Donewaiting is so I caught about 3 songs of their set, definitely more of a performance/improv type thing, it was getting loud and hard to follow their banter and it was pretty much lost on me. Sorry dudes, Tool fans are the worst!

It was finally Puscifer time and we were all in Maynard’s house. Everyone had an assigned seat and there were no cameras allowed. The lights came up and the crowd was basically in the parking lot of “The Short Arm Inn” and Puscifer was performing right out front. I understand that there are a few different sets on this tour and this evening it was like a weirdo cross between Hee Haw, Dukes of Hazard and Deliverance. Maynard has a penchant for gettin all dressed up and tonight he looked like a deranged cross between Conway Twitty and Bo and Luke Duke. We were treated to some good timey country tunes like Cuntry Boner and a cuntrified version of the ode to big girls, “Queen Bee”. Check out real Donewaiting photog pics here.

It was fun and cool and tongue in cheek and sketch comedy and haha Maynard haha all these people would come and listen to you loop farts. Haha. I was losing patience fast for a multitude of reasons, but the lights finally dropped and shit was about to finally get mean. I was knee deep in 32 oz. draft beers at this point in the evening, so I’m not gonna front like I remember the order of the songs or some shit, but things pretty much went from Hee Haw to Deliverance just like that. We were no longer at the “Short Arm Inn”, more like the hotel from Blade Runner. Maynard and British singer chick Carina Round posted up behind some HD TV monitor thingies with fish eye camera’s in front of their faces and proceeded to rock the fuck out of the LC. They jammed “The Mission”, A Perfect Circle sound alikes “Polar Bear” and “Humbling River” and man I swear to whomever that I heard a Tool riff in there somewhere. The Puscifer crew was rolling deep with awesome musicians-Tim Alexander from Primus, Carina Round, Johnny Polonsky and the dudes From Ashes Divide. For some reason I found it kind of ironic that Pedro the Lion dude, David Bazan was performing at The Basement the same night. I went to check that out real quick after Puscifer, I was worried I would burst in to flames upon entrance. That didn’t happen but I was shooshed pretty much immediately. Go Figure!

I woke up on Monday and won CD101 Big Room passes (caller #10 what) to see Vampire Weekend. Wes Flexner post forthcoming. No shit.

Yeah! Life! Yeah!

MP3: Magazine (from Live at Electrical Audio; original version on Pedro the Lion’s Control)

During David Bazan’s last full-band tour, he and his tourmates stopped at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago and recorded some tunes live in the studio. The result, Live at Electrical Audio, is being released March 30 on CD and April 30 on vinyl. You can pre-order now, and all pre-orders come with an immediate download link.

Also, mark your calendars: David Bazan (w/ full band) and Headlights, March 28, for a Donewaiting.com/BenCo show at The Summit. Ticket giveaways, concert poster and all that jazz to come. Purchase tickets online here.

Track list and more album details after the jump.

David Bazan | Live At Electrical Audio
CD/LP Pre-order date: February 18, 2010
Record Label: Self-released
Format: CD / LP / MP3

Recorded live at Electrical Audio in Chicago, IL on October 28, 2009

1. I Do
2. How I Remember
3. When We Fell
4. Magazine
5. Never Wanted You
6. Cold Beer & Cigarettes
7. Heavy Breath
8. Keep Swinging
9. Fewer Broken Pieces
10. In Stitches

David Bazan: bass, vocals
Blake Wescott: guitar, vocals
Andy Fitts: guitar, keyboards, percussion, vocals
Eric Elbogen: guitar, keyboards, vocals
Casey Foubert: drums, percussion

Recorded by Matthew Barnhart
Mixed and Mastered by TW Walsh
Photos by Bob Andrews and Caleb Palma

1. Larry Jon Wilson – Larry Jon Wilson
I won’t lie. Talking to Larry Jon and producer Jerry DeCicca (Black Swans) about this album, learning about its origins, and visiting Wilson’s back catalog gave me a heightened appreciation for this masterpiece. So context helps, but even if you know nothing about the back story, this is a stark, beautiful album from start to finish from one of the forgotten country outlaws. Wilson’s Georgia baritone is the sweetest thing I heard this year. For Townes Van Zandt fans, this is required listening.

MP3: Feel Alright Again

2. The Love Language – The Love Language
It’s a rock n’ roll cliché and a PR flack’s dream: Guy breaks up with girl, drinks heavily, pisses off all his friends, eventually sobers up and retreats to his parents’ house to record an album on a four-track. But man does this cliché jangle with some of the best in-the-red pop songs I’ve heard in a while. Stuart McLamb’s Chapel Hill band signed to Merge in October and is slated to have a new release in August, and after seeing the full band (now a 7-piece) put on a terrific show at the Wexner Center in the fall, McLamb’s next outing could be even better with a little help from his friends.

MP3: Manteo I MP3: Lalita

3. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Every aspect of Andrew Bird just keeps getting better—his voice; his gorgeous, multi-layered violin arrangements; his whistling. It makes for a backdrop so compelling that he can sing about proto-Sanskrit Minoans, porto-centric Lisboans, Greek Cypriots and Hobis-hots and have you nodding your head in agreement instead of scratching it in confusion.

MP3: Oh No

4. Kurt Vile – Constant Hitmaker; God is Saying This to You…; Childish Prodigy
I’m grouping these together so I can squeeze more in, but all three LPs probably deserve a separate spot for different reasons. God finds Vile filtering his psychedelia through John Fahey and Neil Young; Childish kicks the volume up a notch and tones the lo-fi down; and Hitmaker, the best of the three, plays both sides with casual brilliance. “Freeway” is one of my favorite songs of 2009.

MP3: Freeway

5. The Antlers – Hospice
Hospice is one of only a few albums this year that completely transports me whenever I give it my full attention. (Brian Harnetty’s Silent City is another.) A concept album about a hospice worker and a young patient, the songs swell like Sigur Ros then retreat into gingerly tapped piano, lightly strummed guitar or shimmery synth. It’s in those quiet portions that Silberman employs his alabaster falsetto — more hushed than Jeff Buckley but less wispy than Antony Hegarty. Back in March, the Antlers played a show at Cafe Bourbon St. in front of me and maybe three other people. I’m thinking there’ll be a few more in attendance next time.

MP3: Bear

#6 onward + Columbus list after the jump.

6. David Bazan – Curse Your Branches
We’ve talked about Bazan a lot recently, so I’ll let this photo/video/recap do the explaining. Just know that Bazan’s crisis of faith led him to create the best album of his career.

MP3: Bless This Mess

7. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
Yo La Tengo’s performance at Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville was my favorite show of the year. It helps that they played a whole lot from this record. I love that no matter how many perfect, three-minute pop songs Ira, Georgia and James write, they’re still not afraid to beat your ass with 10- and 15-minute feedback-laden wallops.

MP3: Here to Fall

8. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
“Well I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again.” This is post-Smog Callahan at his best — sinister and sweet. And the pristine production on this record complements his deep deadpan perfectly. (P.S. It’s been a good year for Drag City.) (P.P.S. Remember that Used Kids performance? Good times.)

MP3: Eid Ma Clack Shaw


9. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
The great thing about Dirty Projectors is that anything that may come across as high-minded is balanced with something high-spirited. No other band is this brainy and this fun.


10. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
I know, if you’re a blog reader (or even if you’re not), you’re likely beyond tired of this band and this album. But seriously. The deliciousness of this record cannot be denied.

11. Atlas Sound – Logos
“Walkabout” just may be the best song released this year. More Bradford Cox/Noah Lennox collabs, please.

MP3: Walkabout


12. Justin Townes Earle – Midnight at the Movies
Steve Earle’s boy plays country- and blues-inspired folk songs with the conviction of a modern-day Leadbelly, yet his take on the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait” shows that though he’s indebted to Americana music, it’s more of a gate than a fence.

MP3: Mama’s Eyes I MP3: What I Mean to You


13. fun. – Aim and Ignite
I wrote earlier that this record “sounds like Freddie Mercury and Paul McCartney getting drunk at a carnival, then catching a Broadway show. There’s copious strings and accordions and Wurlitzers galore, all gallivanting next to Nate Ruess’ impressive, addictive tenor. So ‘fun.’ is exactly that.” This is the best ready-for-radio pop album of 2009.


14. The Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come
John Darnielle’s best songs capture the darkness of the human condition yet still feel uplifting in some way—a thread of human dignity facing an overwhelming heartache or obstacle. This Biblical concept album is no different.

MP3: Genesis 3:23


15. Volcano Choir – Unmap
Justin Vernon’s collaboration with Collections of Colonies of Bees proves his voice goes well with anything and everything. Even when he’s talking gibberish in a digital haze.

MP3: Island, IS


(16. XX – XX
OK, last-minute add… I was really late getting around to this record, but, wow… Amazing, super-clean production and sparkling hooks that slowly form like icicles. Good stuff. Looking forward to the Wexner Center show in April.)

Columbus albums:
1. Brian Harnetty – Silent City
2. Wing & Tusk – The Secret of Toadflax Tea
3. The Receiver – Length of Arms
4. Times New Viking – Born Again Revisited
5. The Sun – Don’t Let Your Baby Have All the Fun
6. Sinkane – Sinkane
7. RTFO Bandwagon – Dums Will Survive
8. Monolithic Cloud Parade – Children with Wolf Heads
9. This is My Suitcase – The Keys to Cat Heaven
10. Bird and Flower – Here We Cease Our Motion

This ranks as one of my favorite shows of the year. Bazan’s alternately booming and gentle voice filling the intimate Clintonville living room felt like a special treat. He played lots from Curse Your Branches, a couple of Bazan-ized Christmas songs (see above) and a few covers (including an unexpectedly great version of Tom Petty’s “Climb That Hill”). I should go to more house shows.

After the jump: More words, more photos, plus videos of “Hard to Be,” “Please Baby Please,” “Harmless Sparks” and a better-quality version of the beautiful Julie Doiron cover “Will You Still Love Me in December?”

^^That was my favorite of the night. Fit the mood, the season and the intimacy of the living room.

It wouldn’t be a Bazan show without plenty of interaction with the crowd (“Are there any questions at this point in the show?”), which I love. There were a whole lot of “What’s your favorite ___” questions, but Bazan was affable and candid. We learned about his most-loved bands (The Beatles and Deerhoof), wild escapades in West Virginia, that his 5-year-old daughter’s favorite song off Curse Your Branches is the title track (funny) and that Bazan’s current system of beliefs is pretty similar to where he was when he wrote and recorded that album.

Having longtime collaborator Casey Foubert (Pedro the Lion, Crystal Skulls) present added a lot, especially on a song like “Bearing Witness.” His contributions were always tasteful and welcome.

Bazan will be back in Columbus with a full band on March 28 at the Summit.

From Friday’s David Bazan house show in Columbus. (Kim Rottmayer‘s photos and HD video from the show coming soon…)

mp3: David Bazan – Bless This Mess