Part Two—Smart Beats and Indie-Rock Treats
Didn’t read Part 1? Do it now!

I’m not a record store clerk. Nor am I a librarian. Or a music critic. I’m not particularly adept at sub-genre-ing genres. But I love music, want to bow down to the always-underestimated-and-never-lauded-enough women who created amazing music this year, and have for my sanity, categorized these mistresses of song—famous, infamous, critically lauded and hardly known—thus: the beat-makers; the rockers and the poppers; the Kate Bush-style Warrior Princesses; the don’t-box-me-in Across the (Genre) Universe ladies; solo singer-songwriters; soul singers; and country firecrackers. All of these ladies are burning up genres like some of our moms burned up bras in the sixties. And I think most of us can agree such indignant empowerment and liberation is not a bad thing, especially when it comes to music. Today, let’s just take a look at a precious few of the many great beat-makers and indie-rockers who dropped some pretty incredible albums this year.

All that glitters. All that’s gold. All that wails and stumbles and makes you spin in circles. Hail the hand-clap and the chorus. Let the beat hit you. Say hello to “the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums.” Scream along to the chorus. Shake what your mama gave ya. And respect yourself in the morning. Kate Bush, Blondie and Siouxie Sioux explained this to us in the seventies. Dance music doesn’t have to be disco. It doesn’t have to be stupid. It can hit you in the heart. It can last forever. Santigold, Le Tigre, the Ting Tings and M.I.A. testified this truth in recent years. These ladies (some with lots of accompaniment) are genius songwriters, brilliant vocalists and master arrangers who just happen to make great dance, pop and electronic music. If the world were fair, these are the artists who would be taking home the big bucks. And though the effects of their albums may not overflow Swiss bank accounts for the artists, they do something better—something Prince sang about on his classic “Money Don’t Matter Tonight.” They’re making sure our souls are all right (all right).

1. 

   Sleigh, I'm Gonna Live Forever!

   Sleigh Bells, Treats (Mom +Pop)—Hailed by critics and noise fiends and clubbers alike, this debut album’s relentless guitars upon samples upon choruses upon rhymes upon screaming upon sometimes barely discernible voices spins the brain into a mesmerized and hypnotized blank state of electrified energy, momentum and drive. No mind anymore. Just movement. You’ll wanna drive across the country at 150 mph. You’ll feel like you could swim across the Atlantic Ocean and back. You’ll feel alive again. Like you did when you were 16 and were gonna live forever.

2. M.I.A., MAYA (N.E.E.T./XL/Interscope)—For me, “Paper Planes” was love at first listen. Banging out a sample of The Clash’s “Straight to Hell” brilliantly beneath the catchiest, coolest spoken/sung vocals in recent memory complete with straight–up fearless lyrics, this song had me and my friends on the  floor with a dance  routine: mock gun-shot moves, cash register cranking, and surreptitious bill-sliding into our pockets (right on time, too). Her previous album, Kala, was my soundtrack for quite awhile, and MAYA’s got all that Kala did and more: a little more tenderness (“Space”); a few more accessible tracks (the highly catchy “XXXO” and “Tell Me Why”); and those political and social rampages she blows out so brilliantly, and even better this time—addressing our tech-attached, sleep-walking lives, unnoticed wars and big business greed (“Caps Lock”, “Meds and Feds”, “The Message”). MAYA leavens M.I.A.’s young, unbridaled fury with a tempered compassion. She gives listeners a lesson and lets us bounce. They be hatin’. But we keep rollin’. Righteously.
   
3. 

   Swedish, Therfore Cooler Than You

   Robyn, Body Talk Part 1 (Interscope/Konichiwa/Cherrytree)—Technically, this is electronic dance pop, but Robyn’s not a pop princess. First of all, she’s Swedish, which automatically makes her cooler than us. There’s intelligence, real power, and poignancy in these dance tracks. Think the sweetness of Lykke Li, a chilled-out-way-cooler Pink, and the energy of Ida Maria with some Blondie, Cyndi Lauper, nineties house and eighties pop thrown in. My top tracks include “Don’t Fuckin’ Tell Me What to Do”, “Cry When You Get Older”, “None of Dem”, “Dancehall Queen”, and every single track on the entire album.

4. Sia, We are Born (Jive/Monkey Puzzle)—Sia’s amazing jazz-range voice moves far and wide, hitting the depths and breadth of your past, your sometimes precarious emotional state and those tender spots you try to hide. Each song on this album sounds like it could be a top-ten hit. And in its entirety, a top-ten on the critics’ lists—neither of which is the case, but that doesn’t belie its worthiness. From rousing dance anthems like “Clap Your Hands” and “We Are Born” to heartbreaking ballads like “Oh Father,” this is a fully realized work of passionate genius from a true artist.
   
   

   Sick of being happy?

5. Florence and the Machine, Lungs (Island)—Holy shit. Okay, I can say more. Just own it. Filled with raw honesty—like, “I’m really fucked up and in pain but damn I will blow your mind with these bitter hurricanes of song.” Even if you’re reasonably happy, you’ll get pissed. And if you’re scared, you’ll get strong. And if you’re embittered, you’ll have found revenge in each and every track. Just by listening. Man, music is amazing.

It does seem at times, that the guitars are disappearing, and well, I’m pretty sure that the four-tracks never really hit the girl scene too hard. Like alternative, however, the line between indie music and popular music is blurring quickly. However, artists can be great entertainers, but mere entertainers are never artists, no matter what critics, labels and charts try to sell us. Nonetheless, the list below has been painfully carved down to the all-female bands and female-led bands that killed it with their broad brushes of hook-laden pop, dreamscape beauty, rollicking guitars, gorgeous voices, heart-thrumming beats and incredibly brilliant songs by actual artists. So no matter where the labels and the critics and the charts shelve the very-hard-for-me-to-choose-and-define favorite pop/rock/dreamy/atmospheric albums of the indie and now-not-so-indie hits of the year, let’s just say that these five are simply awesome. With guitar!

1. 

   Beach House Breaks Hearts

   Beach House, Teen Dream (Sub Pop)—Victoria Legrand’s vocals, low and deep, lull and flow and roll like a sea—vast, powerful, boundless and sorrowful. Every track is like a lullaby bound to break your heart in the sweetest, most beautiful way—the way a child’s heart is first broken—indelibly. I dare anyone not to fall in love over and over and over again with this record. Like your first love, it’ll always stay with you. And in your heart, you’ll always go back.

2. Jenny and Johnny, I’m Having Fun Now (Warner Bros.)—I’m in love with Jenny Lewis. Now, technically, her partner—bona-fide songwriter Jonothan Rice—played equal importance in the creation of this record. In my little brain, however, he provides the harmonies necessary to turn the heart-catching tracks on this stellar album into perfect jewels of intelligence, disillusionment, disaffection and hope. I’m Having Fun Now (a sarcastic title to be se sure) is pure jangle-Americana-pop-genius-caustic-happiness-with-a-storyline…complete with a song about bondage on it.

3. Best Coast, Crazy for You (Mexican Summer)—A cross between solo Neko Case and The New Pornographers, but entirely its own, Best Coast and the gorgeous voice of lead singer Bethany Cosentino can be summed up in one word: innocence. Like a sunny soundtrack of memory, Crazy for You brings me back to the earnest high-school/college/early twenties loves that confounded and consumed me, the songs I screamed along to while driving through tree-canopied roads at top speed. Crazy magic. Crazy sweetness. Crazy catchiness. Crazy hope. Crazy not to own it.
   
4. 

   It's Impossible to Tire on Dum Dum Girls

   Dum Dum Girls, I Will Be (Sub Pop)—Yes! A girl garage band way worth its salt. Early sixties girl pop meets late-sixties Bob Dylan. Lyrically brilliant. Definitely not dumb. Definitely a one-listen-and-you’re-in-love record. Hilarious self-deprecation. Amazingly sing-able. If you get this on vinyl, you’ll wear the grooves out of it, to paraphrase my father. If you get this digitally, you can have it forever. And you WILL NOT GET TIRED OF IT.

5. The Corin Tucker Band, 1,000 Years (Kill Rock Stars)—Five years after the much-mourned breakup of one of the best bands in the history of the world (also known as Sleater Kinney, of which she was a member), Corin Tucker’s released an amazing album rife with the same raw power of her former band combined with some pure magic that belongs to her and her alone. It’s not a Sleater Kinney album, but it’s just as good. Something completely different, and something completely brilliant. Intense. Totally rocking. Totally heartbreaking. Never cloying. I like to think that the title comes from this famous quote: “Every woman is born a thousand years old.” And even if it doesn’t, the sentiment certainly fits.

When next we meet, I’ll talk about my Warrior Princesses, Across the Universe ladies and Soul Sisters. And after that, we’ll get into solo singer-songwriters, sassy country acts, and some very important female musicians whose voices now carry a thousand floors above us…in Leonard Cohen’s dream-house “Tower of Song.” Whew.