December 2011
29 posts
1 tag
Well, howdy!
Hello to anyone who might have clicked over here from this great New York Times blog post by Dan Kois (which we definitely would think fondly of even if he hadn’t honored us with a number-nine spot alongside The Millions’ Year in Reading, the project that inspired this project)!  You can read a kinda long take on what Unbest is all about right here. To put it more simply: Unbest is...
Dec 30th
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Rachel Bailey on Talking Heads’ “This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)” (from Speaking in Tongues, 1983) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  There are times when you are traveling that the gravity of how utterly alone you are becomes suddenly, shockingly real and all you want is to go someplace that feels like home. For me, it was on the street in front of 21Via di San Francesco a Ripa...
Dec 30th
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Erin M. Routson on Crime Mob’s “Circles” (from Hated On Mostly, 2007) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify, YouTube) I set it as his ringtone. It seems kind of ridiculous, but rap ringtones have had a place on my phone since a beeped-up version of T.I.’s “Rubberband Man” blared from the tiny speaker of my old Motorola in college. But this song, this was the one that...
Dec 28th
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Kim Huston on Morrissey (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  godiminbadshaperightnow: Morrissey Royal Oak Music Theater December 18, 2011 If I learned one thing from this show, it’s that I’m not the Morrissey fan I thought I was. I am a fan of his entire discography; I have a Morrissey nightlight. I thought that was commitment. I thought going to a Morrissey show alone might be the most depressing thing I...
Dec 27th
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Pete Rorabaugh on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove” (1981), The Avett Brothers’ “When I Drink” (2006) and New Order’s “Everything’s Gone Green” (1981) “Let’s Groove,” Earth, Wind & Fire We have a close family friend, kind of like a little sister to me, who is a huge Earth, Wind & Fire fan. A...
Dec 27th
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Jeremy D. Larson on Third Eye Blind’s “If There Ever Was A Time” (2011) (YouTube, SoundCloud)  Every time I read a “hard” news article, I feel useless—like I’m somehow in tacit agreement with the things I’m opposed to just because I wrote up another tour announcement for Vetiver. I’m not saying that music conversations should cease and we should all focus on socio-political...
Dec 27th
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“You may also have noticed an increase in the amount of both hip-hop and radio...”
– Sean T. Collins [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 22nd
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Susannah Young on EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints (2011) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  Totally out of step with Unbest’s mission, my thoughts for this piece actually stemmed from writing my year-end album blurb assignments for Prefixmag. This year, I totally won the lottery and got to write about St. Vincent, PJ Harvey, and EMA. In writing about St. Vincent, I started thinking about the...
Dec 22nd
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ljm: i’m always hilariously late to the top forty hip-hop game, and i don’t say that in a self-congratulatory OH I DON’T BELIEVE IN TV way or whatever (first of all because i…love tv, obviously). i hadn’t listened to anything harder than “that’s what little girls are made of” by raven-symone for about fifteen years when i learned, this year, that...
Dec 20th
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Lyndsie Bourgon on The Black Keys’ “Everlasting Light” (from Brothers, 2010) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  It was very early in the morning, when she took her last breath. 12:30 a.m. in mid-August, almost five months to the day that they found tumors on her lungs and ovaries. The evening before had been a flurry of phone calls cross-country—no, she wasn’t going to make it out this...
Dec 20th
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Jason Sanderbeck on Kurt Vile’s Smoke Ring for My Halo (2011) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  Every so often, I’m reminded that I am part caveman. While this revelation has manifested in numerous forms over the years, at least two of them directly involved Kurt Vile. In 2009, I caught the prolific singer/songwriter and his Violators at the Grey Eagle in Asheville, N.C. Beside that date in...
Dec 19th
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Jill Guccini on Florence & the Machine’s Ceremonials (2011) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  Ceremonials by Florence & the Machine has been entangled in my brain cells for the last two months in a way an album has not been in a long, long time. As I grow older I find my experience with music to be increasingly further away from what it was when I was a teen; I listen more to music that I...
Dec 17th
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Dylan Kight on Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago (2008) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) I discovered For Emma, Forever Ago in July of 2011. I had heard of Bon Iver on numerous occasions, but didn’t go seek the record out. I was in California. More specifically the bay area. My wife left me while I was on the second day of this trip. She was at home in Atlanta. I was out west. I was...
Dec 15th
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My Listening Year, 2011
austinkleon: Ten great albums I listened to this year: Jay Z & Kanye West, Watch The Throne (2011) If Decoded was my gateway drug to Jay-Z, this album was the gateway drug to Kanye. Favorite musical memory this year was listening to it driving around Maui in a rental SUV. (Appropriate setting + vehicle.) Rick James, Street Songs (1981) This album was my Prozac in 2011. I can’t stand...
Dec 14th
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Melanie Killingsworth on Arcade Fire’s “Keep the Car Running” (from Neon Bible, 2007) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)  I grew up in an extremely conservative fundamentalist setting. (And then got out, and then grew up wanting to be a writer, and then started an essay with a clichéd bit about my childhood.) My first exposure to music, my exploration of various genres and the lengths to...
Dec 14th
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Kim Huston on Drake’s Take Care (2011) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) godiminbadshaperightnow: After awhile girl they all seem the same: Drake, “Take Care,” and the desire to get vulnerable I have a love-hate relationship with Drake’s Take Care.  I’ve been hard pressed to understand why since I enjoyed So Far Gone and Thank Me Later. I’m not averse to emotional, introspective or...
Dec 13th
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Marcus Rosentrater on Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (2011) (iTunes, Rdio, Spotify, Constellation Records) On July 13, my friend Bryan sent me a link to an album over chat. The moment I hit play, the music sucker-punched my usual buoyancy, sweep-kicked any tonal sensibilities from under me and I was pinned under its cosmic weight for three days, provoking images of...
Dec 13th
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“This is not a “best of 2011” music list. I didn’t hear or read or see all the...”
– Seth Colter Walls—”100 Great (Not Best!) Songs of 2011,” The Awl [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 8th
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“I think my favorite movie this year was Submarine directed Richard Ayoade of the...”
– Toddrick Spalding—Sub Pop Records’ Top 10 of 2011, Friends of Sub Pop Edition [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 8th
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“When Coop discovered the black circles inside the square packages lining our...”
– Scott Tennent—”Best Songs of His Year, Per My Small Child,” Pretty Goes with Pretty [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 7th
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“As usual, I don’t feel at peace with my year-end list, because everything is in...”
– Kyle Ryan, The A.V. Club [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 7th
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“The Softies - Winter Pageant (1997). Decided after all these years that this is...”
– David Greenwald—”Best of 2011: Vintage Discoveries / Heavy Rotation,” Rawkblog [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 7th
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“But for me, Top Ten lists bring out the bratty anti-authoritarian, the...”
– Emily Nussbaum—”I Hate Top Ten Lists,” The New Yorker A sympathizer in TV land. [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 6th
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“Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent the past year doing the vast majority of my...”
– Nitsuh Abebe, a grammar [Honorary Unbest]
Dec 6th
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Another note
We have finally figured out how to enable Tumblr’s submission function for this blog. We are geniuses! (We are so not geniuses.) You can now submit right here in addition to all the other ways previously (and perhaps way less conveniently) suggested.
Dec 6th
3 notes
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“For two of the last three years, including this one, there has been at least one...”
– Grayson Currin, Pitchfork While Unbest is in collection-mode, let’s celebrate some kindred spirits in year-end-list frustration, starting with Grayson Currin’s celebration of Dust-to-Digital’s …I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces. More on the way. [Honorary...
Dec 6th
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Hello everyone! Plus, some encouragement and...
Tumblr tells me we have about 50 followers at this moment. Considering this whole idea was just a vague notion in the back of somebody’s head this time yesterday, we’re pretty pleased. If just half of y’all submit something, we’ll have an excellent first month to look forward to. Interested? Here’s how to submit! Feeling stumped? Here are some things that might...
Dec 2nd
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Welcome to Unbest.
Learn what we’re about, send us your words, and stay tuned for more!
Dec 1st
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About Unbest
The problem Designating something as “the best” can be tricky, especially when it comes to music, which occupies such intensely personal space in our human lives—even among folks who deal with it professionally (or “professionally,” some/they might say). There’s a place in this world for best-of lists, of course—and a time, too. Usually that time is the end of the...
Dec 1st
8 notes