Number Eight: Jason Isbell - Southeastern (2013)

Southeastern Records ■ SER 9984

Released June 11, 2013

Produced by Dave Cobb

Side One:	Side Two:
Cover Me Up Stockholm Traveling Alone Elephant Flying Over Water Different Days	Live Oak Songs that She Sang in the Shower New South Wales Super 8 Yvette Relatively Easy

I suppose it's a given that I know Isbell from the Drive-By Truckers, but the truth is I got into them via 2008's Brighter Than Creation's Dark, which postdates both his final album with the band (2006's A Blessing and a Curse) and his debut solo record (2007's Sirens of the Ditch). This put me in the strange and seemingly unenviable position of liking a band in what was considered a reduced state; many felt they'd declined severely after his exit, even with the natural caveats for the remaining members. It made me--as such things do--wary of his solo work, as it doesn't give the greatest impression of anyone's fans to often couch that fandom in dismissal of something else.

Still, during a random bit of shopping in 2010, I ran into his second post-DBT album, the one which eponymously named his band the 400 Unit, and fell madly in love (after all, wariness is not cause for dismissal, either!) with it. Since then, of course, he has released, inbetween that and this, 2011's Here We Rest, still with the 400 Unit, and in post-or-mid-I'm-not-quite-sure start to sobriety. A lot of people prefer that record and this one, as I even found zero songs from that favourite four years ago in the last set I saw him play.

A lot of people called this one out around release as a pretty solid candidate for album of the year (the first I recall being someone I used to work with) and in principle I most definitely cannot disagree. Here We Rest felt a little more scattered to me than Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit--not weaker, mind you, just less focused. While Southeastern abandons a lot of the rock that drives that self-titled record (not all, though), it stays the course it chooses to perfectly to find any criticism in this.

Number Nine: Toro y Moi - Anything in Return (2013, of course)

Carpark Records ■ CAK77

Released January 16, 2013

Produced by Chaz Bundick

Engineered by Patrick Brown, Second Engineer Jorge Hernandez

Mixed by Patrick Brown and Chaz Bundick

Mastered by Joe Lambert

Side One:	Side Two:
Harm in Change Say That So Many Details	Rose Quartz Touch Cola

Side Three:	Side Four:
Studies High Living Grown Up Calls	Cake Day One Never Matter How's It Wrong

Toro y Moi came to me via the broadcast that is staff overhead selection at one of the music stores I frequent on longer trips--Lunchbox Records in Charlotte, NC. The album had been out for all of two months when I heard "Cake" playing there and decided to go with an instinct I'd previously experienced during my endless trips to CD Alley in Chapel Hill in years prior. I'd never heard of Toro y Moi, nothing new for me and my complete obliviousness to modern independent music, except as it filters in by chance or through the few friends who track it.

As it was the one I heard (a reasoning that also inspired the purchase of records like Tobacco's Maniac Meat and Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation), it was the first one I purchased. Causers of This followed in April, and then it was the synchronicity of a work trip to Atlanta that led me to see Toro y Moi in concert in October last year. I picked up the rest of his albums, as well as a few odd singles and the 3x7" box set of bedroom recordings that was released as well. Still, Anything in Return is the one I return to most often.

At that show, Chaz was the closest thing I've seen to a superstar. Classixx opened for him (new to me, and worth checking out, as their Hanging Gardens could easily slip into an expanded top list for last year), but when he came out, it was unlike anything I'm used to in small venues or even large ones. There's a roar for bands, and everyone is often focused on vocalists, but the fact that Chaz does his albums "Prince-style" (in the impossible-to-read-in-the-LP notes, it mentions he performed the entire album alone) seemed to shift the tone, somehow. The crowd was larger, it was a different kind of music, a different kind of venue, but there was still something to it.

It's a bit strange, to be honest--not undeserved, but almost out of keeping with his music. He was first identified with the aptly-named "chillwave", one of those terms that seemed a flash-in-the-pan, but defiantly remains in use as many such things do, thanks to sheer bull-headedness. Unlike his earlier work, though, Anything is a lot more energetic. That said, the energy is of a subdued and extremely cool variety, in most slang senses of the world, and often even a bit of the metaphorical incarnation of the most "literal" use of the word.