BEST COMICS OF 2011 LIST

These are the best comics I read on from last year.  Unlike music, I actually feel somewhat knowledgeable of what comics are new and cool (I read a lot of them).  These ranged from epic sized graphic novels to minicomis, to stories in anthologies, none of this is superhero related, oddly enough no manga.  So here is my list:

2011 BEST COMICS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Pope Hats # 2 by Ethan Rilly (issue 1 is good, number 2 is amazing)
Forming vol 1 by Jesse Moynihan (this is the best webcomic on the internet, the print version is gorgeous)
Thickness # 2 anthology (both DeForge and Brandon Graham have great stories, excellent anthology)
Wolves by Becky Cloonan (best mini maybe of all time, unsurprisingly from Becky)
Orc Stain # 6 by James Stokoe (I love orc stain)
Big Questions collection by Anders Nilson (epic)
Habibi by Craig Thompson (Craig Thompson’s follow up to Blankets)
Optic Nerve # 12 by Adrian Tomine (I’m glad Optic Nerve is back, this one’s full color with two stories, and the letters, oh man I miss reading the letters, also picked up a Tomine print)
Hark A Vagrant collection by Kate Beaton (everyone should read these)
Lose # 3 by Michael DeForge (Probably my favorite creator I discovered this year, I bought all available books of his at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest – all his comics are amazing.)
Love And Rockets new stories vol. 4 by Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez (I love love and rockets)
The Speaker by Brandon Graham in DHP #7 (Brandon Graham’s story is enough to put it on my favorites list, didn’t care for much of the rest of the issue)
Any Empire by Nate Powell (Nate Powell’s follow up to Swallow Me Whole)
Hair Shirt by Patrick McEwon (I just picked this one up, really malancholy and beautiful)

 

P.S. – Favorite albums of last year: Wye Oak – Civillian; Fucked Up – David Comes To Life

MY BEST OF 2009: MUSIC

Happy new year everyone, I hope you didn’t spend it like I did, with a 103 degree fever which I’m still recovering from. I haven’t posted in awhile so I wanted to give small recaps of the year through the always fun, best of lists. I think I’ll be making 3 or so of these perhaps with the general areas of: music, comics/books, other.

My own list of albums of the year (notice that not all the albums actually came out in 2009, I just bought them in 2009, although they’re all relatively recent) note that they aren’t in any particular order, I can’t really pick one album as an album of the year:

1. Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come (2009)
Another great John Darnielle work, I thought it a funny concept following his previous album “Heretic Pride”. As I understand it Darnielle is an avid churchgoer, and each track is named after a bible verse. That’s about as directly biblical the album gets, don’t get me wrong there is a lot of religious references in the songs as per usual, but John Darnielle has sort of reached this strange subtle multilayered genius with his lyrics, where you can’t ever really tell what he’s singing about whether it’s heartbreak or being a sacrificial slave in the circus maximus. Hannah and I saw him recently, and as per usual The Mountain Goats are really good live.

2. Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009)
I guess these guys are labelled as Black Metal but they’re far to experimental to be considered just black metal. Dimensional Bleedthrough is the band’s second full length album. I also got their first album, which is S/T, this year and it is equally amazing. There is so much technical shredding, and layered changes to every song that it almost sounds like an ambient album at times, if it wasn’t so fucking metal. Tied for my favorite metal album of the year.

3. Antlers – Hospice (2009)
Picked this up fairly recently, very dark and introspective album, brooding at times, all while being very pretty music.

4. Converge – Axe to Fall (2009)
Easily the best album since Jane Doe. I’ve always liked Converge, and Jane Doe remains one of my favorite albums of all time. Axe to Fall is really really hard, brutal hard. Tied with Krallice for favorite metal album of the year.

5. These Arms Are Snakes – Tail Swallower and Dove (2008)
I don’t know how I missed this album in 2008, but whatever, great record. These Arms Are Snakes are former members of Botch, by far one of my favorite bands of all time. This record is a lot tighter, controlled and angrier than their previous album Easter.

6. Wavves – Wavvves (2009)
If you don’t know Wavves it’s the project of Nathan Williams, and sounds like this awesome lo-fi, noisy, surf rock. Choruses like “I’m soooo bored” and having half the song titles involve the word goth in them seems to be a pretty good recipie for success. I saw the guy play with Zach Hill drumming which was fucking awesome.

7. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – The Century Of Self (2009)
I did not like the two albums following Worlds Apart, and I didn’t actually like Worlds Apart very much either. That said, this album is really good, a lot of comparisons have been made to Source Tags, and I think they’re pretty justified, Century of Self has a very large scope and is an epic album.

8. Matt & Kim – Grand (2009)
Really catchy stuff, high energy pop, and these two are really good live.

9. Fucked Up – Chemistry Of Common Life (2008)
Although they don’t sound really alike, this album reminds me of Refused- Shape of Punk To Come. Fucked Up is a punk band for sure but this album is unconventional in it’s non traditional 4-4 setup, heavily layered guitars, instrumental tracks, etc. all the while being very angry. I saw them play a special show where they only played this album, which was awesome as they had a bunch of extra musicians like Andrew WK and the Vivian Girls to play all the extra studio parts, these guys are good live. They have three guitarists, the band is huge.

10. Here We Go Magic – S/T (2009)
I sort of picked this up randomly, but it’s a great one. Very chill and catchy, but also pretty ecclectic if that makes sense. Didn’t realize this guy’s based out of brooklyn too.

Honorable Mentions: Isis – Wavering Radiant, Legion of Two – Riffs, Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion, Major Lazer – Guns Don’t Kill People Lazers Do, Coalesce – Ox, Charles Spearin – The Happiness Project, Sunn O – Monoliths & Dimensions

Shows seen: Krallice (twice), The Happiness Project, Mountain Goats, Sufjan Stevens, White Mice, Wavves (w/ zach hill drumming), Fucked Up, Melt Bannana, Mount Eerie, 3 Inches of Blood, Lightning Bolt, Blonde Redhead, can’t remember the rest but it was a pretty good concert year. Also to note, I saw Liturgy like at least 5 times this year as they seemed to open for every band I went to see, they’re a good metal outfit, with a really good drummer.

Albums I want to pick up: Sunny Day in Glasgow’s second album, new Mos Def album, new MF Doom album, Fever Ray, new Lightning Bolt

Looking forward to in the immiediate future: new Four Tet album in Jan. and show at Le Poisson Rouge in Feb.

Random quick recap of the past. Probably from February to July. OH GOD.

In no particular order, this is a doublebow that hannah and I saw from the top of our apartment building a while ago. This was right after a storm, I actually think it was raining. June and May were really rainy, like seattle, like 25 out of 30 days were raining. July was sunny.

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QUEENS, Flushing Meadows, Ghost Park

I took a trip to Flushing Meadows on Sunday.  I decided to go there after lunch at the taco garage.  Anyways I biked to Flushing Meadows which was pretty ridiculous, on the way there.  Of course I got lost as soon as I got into Queens.  Nothing makes sense there, 60th Street is next to 60th Place is next to 60th Ave is next to 60th Lane, and all the numbers to that. Some streets with the same number run perpendicular to one another.

Flushing Meadows/Corona Park is the this huge park in Queens.  Shea Stadium, the US Open thing, Queens Museum of Art, some science thing, and remnants of the former worlds fair – which I was especially interested in, are all there.  Good ‘ol Karl brought up the topic of ghosts recently, and Flushing Meadows definitely has the aspects of a ghost world.  The former worlds fair is littered with these really huge megabuildings, which are in a fairly abandoned and dilapidated state.  While around it hundreds of thousands of people are playing in the park, around these hulking monoliths.  They seemed strange to me, very ghostlike in that they are urban voids, you can’t enter them but they consume a really large amount of space, are very sculptural in a 3 dimensional sense, and activity happens everywhere until you reach the threshold of the void.  The structure above commanded most of my attention, there’s some new building attached next to it, but it was closed, maybe if I got there earlier I could have gone in, but all in all the thing is now a birdhouse.  The Mount Olympus for the bird gods of Queens.

A few more pics and thoughts after the cut.

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movies/outta the way PECK!

watched willow, and superbad.  not back to back, but within the last few days.  that’s the new problem hannah and I have with our life, netflix.  next up is kicking and screaming, and not the will farrell movie, which is actually pretty funny because he has a brother who is as old as his son.  what’s also funny is I didn’t realize that sorsha and madmardigan actually fell in love for realz during the filming of willow and married shortly after.  we are going to do a movie night sometime but I don’t know when, and what the hell to watch because there are so many movies/shows in the world.  i had never seen superbad before, it’s funny.  I also didn’t realize how much non stop fighting/action was in willow, as a kid I sort of thought the story was more balanced in pace, but I guess I was just wrong or had a.d.d. because there is a battle like every 2 min.  I also didn’t realize that there half of willow’s lines in the movie were just yelling “madmardigan wait!” or “madmardigan stopppp!!!” or “Kaya!!!”, etc.  hahaha.  Also learned (i’m learning a lot) that the actor who played willow is like the ruler of all midget actors, if you look at his filmography he’s in everything that has ever needed a midget in his lifetime!!  anyways, willow imho a perfect kid movie.  back to movie night, would a sealab night be cool? or the proposed forever thai night ie Ong Bak + The Protector + thai food be cool?  or like John Carpenter night ie BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA + THEY LIVE be cool?  there are entirely too many options.  hahhaa oh god i just thought of the ultimate: PITCH BLACK + FAST AND THE FURIOUS + XXX + CHRONICLES OF VIN DIESEL + a five course meal of mountain dew and code red.

IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT! IN THE PIT!

SOME THINGS

I was a college dj for four years while in school.  the station was kcpr and it was probably one of the nicest parts of my college experience.  having an access to a huge amount of great music and constant updates on new releases with a great community of like minded music lovers was actually more awesome than it sounds.  Although in retrospect I did take a year off when I was abroad and when I returned most everyone I knew was graduated, the new kids were cool and it turned out to be a good year station wise.  I’m still coping with not being a part of that station.  Searching for new music is an annoying/rewarding task, I’ve sort of forgotten how to do outside of a college radio station atmosphere.  Anyways I will post some short reviews of cd’s I bought.

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