Chris Reinhard's Reverie Machine

GQ has different men’s 10 Essentials. What are yours?

Ten essentials that every man should own? Yikes. I’ll get completely panned for this…but here goes.

1. A good pair of boots.
2. Raw denim jeans, fitted by a tailor.
3. A timeless pair of sunglasses.
4. A traditional baseball cap.
5. A real wallet (preferably leather, or with leather accents).
6. Enough solid-color button-down shirts to last one week.
7. A weekender bag that complements your style, whatever that is.
8. One tie that you can wear with anything you own (this is a bare minimum).
9. A portable device and a pair of (good) headphones you can use to listen to music.
10. Socks and underwear you won’t mind showing to new people.

Ask me anything

Best Music of 2010

I always hoped that my year-end lists (which I’ve been writing now for about six years, since before PunkDiscovery.com went away) would enlighten people to listen to things they hadn’t heard before. And yet, the older I get, the more of my favorites I end up identifying on Rolling Stone’s list. It’s disgusting. But I guess that’s just a product of the convergence of mainstream and independent music. Nobody’s safe from Rolling Stone anymore. So I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

I could have made a list of 30 albums I really enjoyed in 2010, but I’ve got other things going on. 20 of them (plus an honorable mention) should do you just fine.

A request: please read the reviews. There’s nothing on the list itself that’s going to surprise you…and I didn’t write 100 words 21 times over for nothing.

A warning: there is some objectionable language in these reviews. There are also mentions of narcotics. None of this is my fault.

Honorable Mention: Yeasayer – Odd Blood

I considered leaving Yeasayer’s second album off this list out of spite; it isn’t difficult to notice the band’s transition from neo-hippie-drum-circle-enthusiasts to buzz-band-with-ambitions-to-make-it-big, what with all the extra electronic influence on Odd Blood. And I would have left it off, too, if it weren’t for the fact that every song on it is incredibly fun to listen to. Besides, it would be a little hypocritical of me to punish the band for transcending the incense-laden world of useless hippie-dom, right? I mean, this is kind of like them getting a real job—and actually working hard to keep it.

20: Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager

Swagger alone is enough to put Kid Cudi’s sophomore effort in contention for album of the year, but the fact that it improves on some of Man on the Moon: The End of Day’s flaws—most notably, the unplanned emptiness surrounding some of its production—merits a nomination. Sure, there’s not as much of the deeply detached, stoner-cool content on this latest record—probably because Cudi swapped out most of his hash for something stronger—but as a whole there’s no denying the superiority of Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. It’s science.

19: Tokyo Police Club – Champ

In what is surely a surprising coincidence, Canada gets a ton of love on this list. And while it doesn’t wholly deserve it (*cough* Avril Lavigne *cough*), these Ontarians do. On Tokyo Police Club’s third record, Dave Monks ditches the thesaurus and croons youthful, careful lyrics like a contemporary John K. Samson. And the music is better this time around, too, mimicking lyrical thoughtfulness with a gracefulness that rarely finds itself onto so-called ‘pop-punk’ albums like this one. In the end, it’s not so much that Tokyo Police Club abandoned the buzz-band roots that defined them on earlier records; rather, they found a way to smooth and punctuate them with mature, unabashed elegance.

18: Sleigh Bells – Treats

You remember the last scene in V for Vendetta, when Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is playing while Parliament is blown to smithereens? I’d be willing to bet that if director James McTeigue had Treats at his disposal back in 2006, he’d have strongly considered using its opening track, “Tell ‘Em,” instead of the old standby. That’s what this album is—it’s one big fucking explosion after another. And sometimes, thanks to airy, plume-of-smoke-above-the-flames vocals from Alexis Krauss, there’s beauty in the middle of those explosions.

17: Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

While Gorillaz’s biggest asset surrounding their debut album (and its follow-up) was the fact that not many people were quite sure who they were, 2010 provided listeners with an opportunity to focus on the worldly, multilayered, worthy-of-a-Danny-Boyle-movie masterpiece that is Plastic Beach. And while there are a few moments when the album falls back on cheeky gimmicks—I’m looking at you, Snoop Dogg—it is, for the most part, a better record than Demon Days. That statement alone is enough to merit it a spot on this list.

16: Twin Shadow – Forget

My friend Kamtin (who many of you know as the brains behind The Chain Gang of 1974) recently coined a subgenre on Twitter: “I’m starting a genre for myself and calling it “Hughes Wave”.” And while everyone who can recall the soundtrack to St. Elmo’s Fire or The Breakfast Club will have no trouble understanding the reference, I may, unfortunately, be forced to bear him some bad news: Twin Shadow got there first. Wrought with clean, syncopated bass lines and quasi-tropical percussion, Forget might as well be a collection of lost Simple Minds singles produced by Erlend Øye. You know, if Simple Minds had more than one single and Erlend Øye was a producer.

15: Tame Impala – Innerspeaker

I’m sure I’m not the only one who can listen to this record and perfectly picture John Lennon, sitting on a giant beanbag, wearing a kurta and singing into a studio microphone while Yoko Ono taps a tambourine against her leg. It’s been some time since a singer really copped Lennon’s vocal style as closely—and as well—as Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. And while it’s only my speculation, I think it’s safe to assume thatInnerspeaker is the kind of album The Beatles might have made later in their career…if someone hadn’t gone and broken up the band.

14: Local Natives – Gorilla Manor

I was never a big fan of Cavil At Rest, so it surprised me to discover that the sounds wafting off of Gorilla Manor were made by the same group of guys who used to put on pop-punk shows during lunchtime at local Orange County high schools. But I digress; Local Natives have rocketed themselves past their past and into the spotlight on this record, and with good reason: the 12 tracks on Gorilla Manor are mature, dynamic and wrought with lyricism that feels as timeless as it does topical.

13: Four Tet – There is Love In You

Imagine, if you will, a completely lucid acid trip. (You don’t have to have taken acid to follow along, so stay with me.) You can transform anything you touch, poke holes in the sky, slow down and speed up time at your leisure. That’s kind of what this record feels like. The plucky minimalism of Four Tet’s 2010 offeringThere Is Love In You is among the sexiest sounds I’ve heard all year. Lounge-appropriate as it is headphone worthy, the album’s tracks provide the kind of understated slow builds few artists can achieve. It doesn’t hurt that many of the tracks top seven minutes or more.

12: Delorean – Subiza

Ibiza’s a place I’ve never been, but if it feels anything like this record sounds I want to go there now. Spanish club kids Delorean capture the essence of a sublime night out with Subiza, toying with lots of high vocal pirouettes, house beats and very few slow bits. I kind of feel like, if there was a nightclub everyone in heaven wanted to get into, this is the record you’d hear when the bouncer finally let you in. Oh, and Diddy is definitely there in his white suit, too, pouring you a glass of Ciroc.

11: Wild Nothing – Gemini

I don’t have a damn clue why every musician remembered what it feels like to go to the beach this year, but Wild Nothing makes any frustrations I might have had with all of the bandwagon chillwave crap float peacefully out the window. You could lay any track from Gemini over that scene from The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman is floating at the bottom of the pool, and it’d probably be even more serene than Simon & Garfunkel made it. Or, just put this on next time you’re riding your bike on a sunny day…because that feels really good, too.

10: Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest

Idyllic, wistful pop isn’t anything Deerhunter hasn’t given us before, but something about Halcyon Digesthits a lot closer to home than their previous records. The breathy, watery backdrop that characterizes most of the record is at once both rich and minimal. The tracks feel like eight millimeter film lapping against a reel, dots and scratches pocking a screen with nothing left on it but the memory of a memory. And somehow, within that distant memory, it’s not hard to find something you can relate to. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that this album feels nostalgic, even though it’s not.

9: How to Dress Well – Love Remains

Okay, so remember how I mentioned that party in heaven everyone wanted to go to? There’s something better than that: the after party. And How to Dress Well’s amazing debut Love Remains is the playlist. Mellow, piercing sounds amble through the darkness like fingers over the curvature of a human body, searching for a safe place but never quite finding it. Am I making you hot? Because I’m listening to this record while writing these words, and I might be getting a little carried away there. This album sounds how Bon Iver would if Justin Vernon was trying to get laid.

8: Black Keys – Brothers

You’d think an album that’s been completely, utterly, shamelessly bastardized by 90 percent of mainstream media would feel a little tired after six months of car commercials, HBO programs’ closing credits and NFL TV timeouts. And, you’d be right. But the truth that courses through the Black Keys most recent set of 15 blood-boiling, leather-jacket-clad tracks is the same truth the band has represented its entire career: The Man can not, and will not, ever bring down rock and roll, no matter how big his bank account. Besides, commercial success never shortened Dan Auerbach’s beard now, did it?

7: Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Give it up for 2010’s most erratic and completely insane musical genius. We all knew Kanye was crazy before: the bravado, the personal comparisons to Michael Jackson, 808s and Heartbreak. I don’t think anybody was quite ready for the barrage of batshit that came out of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Still, intertwined in all the self-lauding and self-loathing, there are moments on this album that feel so novel and ambitious that nobody else—nobody less crazy than Kanye West—could ever pull them off. Plus, everything Nicki Minaj puts her mouth on turns to gold (heyo!).

6: The National – High Violet

There’s rarely anything funny to be said about The National’s music, but there’s plenty of profundity in every measure. On High Violet, the gracefully-aging ensemble presents some of its most confident material yet—but the difference between this and, say, All the Wine, is that it’s a quiet confidence that only the wise and wearied are lucky enough to possess. Plus, “Bloodbuzz Ohio” is one of the best songs the band has ever written, and that’s saying a hell of a lot. (Side note: I, too, would like to be covered in Rag & Bone. Can someone make that happen?)

5: LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

While—and many will disagree with me on this—the fourth and presumably final installment in the LCD Soundsystem catalog isn’t the most important, groundbreaking or even listenable, that’s not to say it isn’t another progressive (and wholly satisfying) journey into the mind of the world’s most self-deprecating eclectic. James Murphy doesn’t write songs; he writes exploratory pieces of art, dashing from one musical ideology to another as often as he pleases. This is particularly evident on the second half of This Is Happening, where Murphy’s lyrical jabs, as Byrne-esque as they may be, paint the singer as a jittery, unsure, uncomfortable mess…and somehow, everything turns out right.

4: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Granted, the droll and characterless qualities of suburbia don’t conjure up the same grandiose emotional responses as death and sacrilege—but somehow, indie rock’s darlings managed to make them sprawl across the sonicsphere (how’s that for a neologism?) like miles upon miles of identical three-bedroom houses across a formerly beautiful vista.  The Suburbs is more subdued than the band’s previous work; none of the chanting, very little of that upper-maximum intensity that characterized Neon Bible. Just a lot of little bits and pieces that, when vigilantly placed amongst one another, make a whole lot of sense.

3: Beach House – Teen Dream

While chillwave, glo-fi, witch house and every other undeterminable genre reared its (not always) ugly head in 2010, a handful of artists made good by sticking to things that the rest of us are actually capable of comprehending. Beach House did that, and they did it well. A more complete release than Devotion, the very attractive pair’s second album Teen Dream is full of wandering, hook-laden songs that hearken back to Mazzy Starr (and, at times, even further back to “White Rabbit”-era Jefferson Airplane). So hazy. So cool. So near the top of this list.

2: Vampire Weekend – Contra

These arrogant bastards couldn’t earn a second of my time in 2009. I called bullshit on their Hamptons-meets-Bowery schtick and wrote them off up until the very moment I heard Contra; it was then that realized I was the arrogant bastard, after all, assuming there was nothing real about the band’s approach. Contra is a brilliantly concise work that combines punk with afro-beat with musica tropical to form pop in its purest form. Honestly, it’s so good that for a short time, listening to it made me want to wear a panama hat, white cotton pants and a god damned cable-knit sweater around my neck. But I didn’t; I just resigned to giving the record a spot near the top of my year-end list.

1: Jónsi – Go

I need an Icelandic friend. I mean, it would be cool to hit the bars with this ghostly white, skinny dude with jet black hair who didn’t speak good English, but was very clearly brilliant. And he could explain to me about his fabled land and why everyone there just happens to be an artistic genius. Because, based on everything I’ve ever learned, people from Iceland are all absolutely radiating talent and there’s no explanation for it. Jón Þór Birgisson is surely one big reason I believe that generalization to be true. The man invented his own language and sang it on Sigur Rós’s earlier albums; he’s responsible for the most elaborate stage setups I’ve ever personally seen (better than GaGa’s, y’all); and even on his own, he’s capable of capturing more emotion—and more bombast—in a single musical moment than U2 ever has. So,Go is my favorite record of 2010. It’s impossible not to be lifted by the cartoony falsetto, the sweepingly epic orchestral arrangements or the broken English lyricism. It’s a perfect album in the sense of its unrelenting positivity. And while it should come to no surprise I chose this (I’m a little obsessed with over-the-top energy), that should in no way deter anyone who hasn’t heard it from listening with a keen ear…and, ideally, with some very loud speakers.

Elsewhere, I’m active.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m not really blogging here anymore, but I really would love if all of you said hello to me in other places. I’m much more active elsewhere!

Twitter
Facebook
303 Magazine
Motive

I still got love up in this club, it’s just not happening as often. 

The Interns

On Friday I spent my afternoon talking to recent graduates at a job fair for the New Denver Ad Club. Now, unsurprisingly, this isn’t the kind of thing Motive does on a regular basis. It’s hard enough for us to find employees with experience; finding interns who are prepared for the kind of hell we’ll put them through is another story.

To be completely truthful, I know that I can be a little judgmental when someone isn’t keen to doing things the way I have learned to do them. I laugh a little about corporate process; I don’t have any desire to wear a suit to work, even for a little heftier paycheck; I’m not all too concerned with best practices, so long as the things I do turn out relevant, original, and creative. So when I sat down at this job fair booth to interview potential internship candidates, I found myself wondering why nobody had ever told them to be themselves as opposed to trying to fit a pretty picture more suited to pre-millennial applicants.

Some of the kids I talked to were smart, ambitious, and genuinely interesting. Most weren’t. Most of these kids had no sense of who they were, and if they did they weren’t comfortable showing it off. I remember being in college and having a couple of professors who encouraged me to be myself…are these types of mentors not as common as they should be?

I’m not totally sure what I’m trying to get at here, but I think the gist is that if you’re a college grad looking to work in a creative environment, you should act the part. Be excited! Be ambitious! Be yourself, and people like the ones who work at my agency will undoubtedly be more interested in hearing about your abilities.