via Black*Eiffel

I also loved Dave Sitek, who gave a short, strange, but fabulous performance. And, as usual, The National and David Bryne rocked! To my surprise, I also really loved Feist’s performance.

Entertainment Weekly wrote a great review. Bon Iver’s performance definitely deserved the A grade.

Ray Lamontagne, You Are the Best Thing

Blitzen Trapper, Furr

Bon Iver, Skinny Love

Coldplay, Viva la Vida

Keaton Simons, Without Your Skin

Mason Jennings, I Love You and Budda Too

Bob Schneider, Captain Kirk

Greg Laswell, What a Day

Blitzen Trapper, Ballad of Bird Love 

John Craigie, Somewhere She Can’t Find Me

Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma

William Fitzsimmons, Passion Play

Bon Iver, Creature Fear

Paul Curreri, Keep Your Master’s Voice in Your Mouth

Josh Dion Band, Movin’ On

OneRepublic, Goodbye, Apathy

Estelle, American Boy (this song just makes you want to dance!)

My favorite live show of the year was Ray Lamontagne at Radio City Music Hall on October 11th. I generally prefer to see him at smaller venues, but this particular show was pretty amazing.

Rolling Stone calls the music “positively boisterous, jumping from glam-y folk rock to latter-day R.E.M.” I’m not exactly sure what that means. Personally, I call it classic twangy folk rock, and the whole album rocks. My favorite tracks are Furr and Ballad of Bird Love.

Without question, it’s on my list of top albums this year. Check it out – available on iTunes.

Here’s a little background on the album from the Bon Iver Facebook page: 

“It wasn’t planned. The goal was to hibernate. Justin Vernon moved to a remote cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin at the onset of winter. Tailing from the swirling breakup of his long time band, he escaped to the property and surrounded himself with simple work, quiet, and space. He lived there alone for three months, filling his days with wood splitting and other chores around the land. This special time slowly began feeding a bold, uninhibited new musical focus.

This slowly evolved into days filled with twelve-hour recording blocks, breaking only for trips on the tractor into the pines to saw and haul firewood, or for frozen sunrises high up a deer stand. All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song. The end result is, For Emma, Forever Ago, a nine-song album comprised of what’s been dubbed a striking debut by critics and fans alike. 

Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for “good winter” and spelled wrong on purpose) is a greeting, a celebration and a sentiment. It is a new statement of an artist moving on and establishing the groundwork for a lasting career. For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut of this lineage of songs. As a whole, the record is entirely cohesive throughout and remains centered around a particular aesthetic, prompted by the time and place for which it was recorded. Vernon seems to have tested his boundaries to the utmost, and in doing so has managed to break free form any pre-cursing or finished forms. 

For Emma’s tracks consist of thick layers draped in lush choral walls, with rarely more than an ancient acoustic guitar or the occasional bass drum providing structure. Vernon sings the majority of the record in falsetto, which painfully expresses the meanings behind its overt, yet strangely entangled words. This newfound vocal path acts as each song’s main character and source of melody. 

Despite its complexity, the record was created entirely by Vernon with nothing more than a few microphones and some aged recording equipment. This homemade aspect shows itself in sections as creaks and accidentals are exposed in the folds of the songs, but is hidden well by the highly impressive and almost orchestral sound that Vernon managed to produce by his lonesome, within the creaky skeleton of his father’s cabin.”

It’s a ridiculously amazing album. Check it out. My favorite tracks: Skinny Love and Creature Fear.