15 Great Connecticut Albums From 2011

I know I promised to do a top ten list of my favorite Connecticut albums from this year back when I made my original list schedule, but it was too hard to narrow the list down to just 10. I simply heard too many good albums from my home state this year to pick so few as my favorites. I also found it too difficult to order them properly, so I just put them in alphabetical order. So, with that having been said, here is the next installment in my list series: 15 great Connecticut albums from 2011! Bandcamp links to stream each album are available when applicable.

1. boy crush - hauntr

Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop

 The High Pop singer’s debut album from his solo project boy crush demonstrates an impressive level of maturity that I never expected. Hauntr is a brief but memorable collection of fragile, lo-fi pop songs about ghosts. Apparently it was recorded in a haunted house, which you may or may not believe after hearing it.

2. Bust It! - Hell Is Other People

Hardcore Punk

Seeing Bust It! live at The Mannor last month made me feel like it was 1983 and I was in Washington, D.C. Their EP Hell Is Other People, released back in March, isn’t entirely derivative of 80’s hardcore punk, but it does have that same level of raw aggression and recklessness. It’s also a lot of fun too, as evidenced by the dynamic opener “Intro/Empty Drawer,” which somehow fits three or four distinct movements into three minutes.

3. Co-Pilots - All My Friends Are Crutches, Because God Knows My Legs Are Broken

Indie Rock, Emo

You could look at Co-Pilots’ All My Friends Are Crutches EP in two ways. In one sense, it’s an album that has perhaps the most potential of any new band in the Fairfield county scene to lead to something truly great, with its inspired lyricism, very lengthy, epic tracks that never get boring, and song structures derived from post-rock. On the other hand, it’s probably the most crushingly frustrating record I’ve heard in a long time, as much of the album’s potential is stymied by its demo-quality production. Thankfully, the band has announced that they will be putting out a new EP this winter. Stay tuned for more information on that! 

4. Fugue - YEARS

Post-Rock, Math Rock

In a year full of crushing breakups, Fugue’s disbandment was one of the saddest, especially for people in the Connecticut/Massachusetts scene. On their final EP YEARS, the band had just started to truly live up to their potential as a sweeping, dynamic, instrumental post-rock band. YEARS’ math rock inflections and subtle electronic influences set it apart from the pack of local post-rock groups, leaving listeners with a great last release to remember Fugue by. 

5. Giles Corey - Giles Corey

Slowcore, Shoegaze, Ambient Folk

Seeing this record here is probably no surprise to anyone who read my Top 50 Albums of 2011 list, on which Giles Corey claimed the top spot. I’ve said a lot about this already, so I’ll keep it brief here. It’s interesting that despite consistently producing great music, Dan Barrett’s Enemies List Home Recordings doesn’t really feel like a part of the local scene at all. The New England identity of Giles Corey goes much deeper — Back to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, from which Barrett’s solo project takes its name. Listening to these creepy, hollow sounding ghost folk songs in that context gives them even greater emotional power. 

Purchase the album HERE.

6. The Guru - Native Sun

Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop

No other record defined my Connecticut summer this year more than The Guru’s debut LP Native Sun, a joyful, resonant, and deceptively funky indie pop gem about youth. I caught tons of Guru shows over the summer, which were consistently packed, and witnessed these songs being brought to life, but when the summer turned to fall and the kids went their separate ways (Two went off to college together), I still had Native Sun blasting through my speakers to remind me of those summer nights.

7. Heavy Breath - Ugly Americans

Sludge Metal, Post-Hardcore

A lot of great punk came out of Connecticut this year, but nothing was as heavy or as badass as this. Heavy Breath’s Ugly Americans EP is a brutal indictment of American politics, culture, and society, conveyed through scorching bass and guitar grooves and delivered by chord-shredding vocals. If you’re pissed off at America, or if you just want to feel pissed off, Ugly Americans is for you.

8. Jerkagram  - We’ve Only Come To Leave

Math Rock, Post-Rock

Jerkagram is a pair of cerebral Connecticut musicians who, despite being well versed in art rock and angular math rock, really enjoy simply jamming together. Their debut record We’ve Only Come To Leave finds those two musical worlds colliding, with a stirring, semi-improvised mix of mathy guitar bursts and impressive percussive fills. Despite opening for artists like Kayo Dot and Marnie Stern, this album went under the radar, which is unfortunate. You should all check it out if this sounds like your thing.

9. M.T. Bearington - Love Buttons

Indie Rock, Indie Pop

The New Haven band M.T. Bearington have been working up to this release for quite a while, getting sponsored by the likes of Mates Of State and releasing a number of records since getting started around 2006. Love Buttons represents the apex of their vision: A smart, undeniably catchy indie pop record with just enough weirdness to stand out. I first saw the band live opening for Man Man back in October, and although I didn’t particularly understand the pairing at the time, it makes a lot of sense now.

10. Ovlov - What’s So Great About The City?

Indie Rock, Noise Rock, Shoegaze

Connecticut’s best 90’s indie rock revivalists put out an unmissable EP this year, entitled What’s So Great About The City? The album placed on my top 50 list, so I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say it’s an extremely catchy and memorable indie rock record with heavy shoegaze guitars. With just four tracks, you can sit through the record in just over 10 minutes, or replay this over and over again if you want.

11. Sinforiano Diaz - The Moosup Sessions

Indie Folk

Although Thomas Diaz, best known as the singer from The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, has been recording as Sinforiano Diaz for years, this is the first piece of recorded material from his solo project that I’ve been able to dig up. Although the four songs on The Moosup Sessions were not recorded this year, the album itself was made publicly available early in 2011. These songs — Fragile, delicate folk gems — give listeners a tremendous insight into the mind of one of the more enigmatic frontmen in the Connecticut scene right now.

Read more about Sinforiano Diaz / Download The Moosup Sessions HERE.

12. Suns - Be Good Boy

Indie Rock, Emo

Fairfield County trio Suns raised their stature earlier this year with their EP Be Good Boy, a record that brought an aggressive rawness to their indie rock product. The album’s not as consistent as I would have liked it to be, but it’s got a great sound and some singularly great songs. Fans of anthemic, angst-ridden indie rock bands like Titus Andronicus will definitely want to check this out.

13. Wess Meets West - Chevaliers

Post-Rock

This is another one that placed high on my year end albums list. Wess Meets West’s Chevaliers was one of the biggest and heaviest albums I heard all year, especially of the post-rock variety. With Fugue having disbanded, this decidedly smaller group now stands head and shoulders over their peers in the local post-rock scene, and this incredibly ambitious record solidifies their place.  

14. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - Are Here To Help You (split w/ Deer Leap)

Emo, Indie Rock, Post-Rock

Based on the amount of coverage that I gave it ever since its release, it should be pretty clear that The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die’s split with Deer Leap is one of my favorite records of the year. TWIABP’s side is the highlight, boasting four fantastic atmospheric emo songs that are easily my favorites from the band. Topshelf Records recently released the split as a 12”, and my copy came in the other day on white vinyl. It sounds fantastic, and I’m really glad I ordered it. 

15. Year In Review - I’m Sorry Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle

Pop-Punk, Indie Rock

The Fairfield County scene really cleaned up this year, as it turns out, with a number of great new bands sprouting up and releasing solid material. Year In Review is a pop-punk band from the area with indie rock credibility and none of the annoying cliches generally associated with that style of music. Their record I’m Sorry Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle is an EP comprising five songs about growing older, approaching adulthood, and losing the innocence of youth. It’s pertinent, catchy, and interesting, and definitely worth a few listens.

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Check back here tomorrow for the final installment in my list series, my 10 favorite shows of 2011. 

Giles Corey - Giles Corey (2011)

I’ve been purposefully avoiding reviewing this album for months for a number of a reasons. As excited as I was to get my thoughts about this record down into words after my first couple listens, I knew that I would not be able to describe the emotions contained within it in the way that it demands. I also knew that I would need time, effort, and a large number of serious, devoted listening sessions in order to fully understand the album. Even now, months later, I worry that I may still not have completely gotten the message. Despite the wavering uncertainty with which I am constantly forced to approach this record, there are some things about Giles Corey that I am absolutely sure of. For one thing, the sounds that are comprised by this album are among the most miserable and uncompromisingly sorrowful noises that my ears have ever borne witness to. I knew this was the case when I first heard the album, and it remains true to this day. 

If you’re familiar with Giles Corey at all, you probably know the backstory here. At some point in 2009, singer/songwriter Dan Barrett (best known as one half of the black metal-influenced shoegaze band Have A Nice Life) attempted suicide. Although he had started Giles Corey before that, the project developed as a way for Barrett to catalog and diarize his thoughts and experiences after his close brush with death. The self-titled debut album of this project was released in late April of this year, having been in the works for nearly four years. Giles Corey is the consummation of Barrett’s long-standing misery and nearly unbearable depression, and although the record’s concept is labyrinthine and mysterious, these themes are conveyed directly in its atmosphere and tone, as well as in its lyrics. 

Because the record clocks in at nearly an hour in length, the nine songs on Giles Corey are predominantly lengthy, sustaining their soul-crushing sound over running times that often exceed 6 minutes. Most of the songs follow one of two distinct formulas that Barrett employs on the record. Most of the highlights begin as quiet elegies, often featuring only Barrett and his acoustic guitar, and build up over time to breathtaking crescendos will full instrumentation. For example, the opening track “The Haunting Presence” starts with Barrett’s chilling voice delivering a mournful eulogy for Giles Corey himself, who was pressed to death during the Salem Witch Trials for failing to admit either his guilt or innocence. As Barrett sings over the sparse and repetitive piano arrangement, an unshakable sense of dread comes over the piece. Soon after that, he adds in multi-tracked harmonies of his own voice, a technique which he uses to a great extent on Giles Corey. Within minutes, the song explodes into a terrifying storm of voices sounding as though they had just been let been let out of Pandora’s box. The last two minutes feature the sounds of Barrett sitting at his piano, pounding the keys as he cries and screams indecipherable moans into a cheap tape recorder. According to the liner notes that accompany the CD version of Giles Corey, this segment was recorded while Barrett was wearing what he refers to as “the Voor’s Head Device” — a black plastic bag covered with a fabric bag tied at the neck with a rope that is just loose enough for the wearer to maintain consciousness. Even without this added knowledge, “The Haunting Presence” is a genuinely frightening piece of music at face value, and it’s in good company on the album.

A number of the other standout tracks follow this formula. “Blackest Bile” is initially striking in how subdued it feels, but Barrett’s strumming and humming soon take on a darker tone as the listener realizes the implications of such a relaxed sound on this overwhelmingly depressing album — It’s the sound of a man entirely sure of and comfortable with his intentions to end his life. By the time this realization occurs, it’s already too late — Dark, reverb-heavy percussion and layered orchestral instrumentation are added to the arrangement, and any semblance of hope disappears. Later on, “Grave Filled With Books” begins again with just Barrett’s guitar and lofty voice, but quickly swells into a lush, full piece complete with gospel-influenced vocal harmonies. It sounds like he’s singing at his own funeral. The album’s biggest highlight comes in the middle, in the form of an album centerpiece called “Spectral Bride” that again follows this crescendo-based formula. It begins with a choir of ghostly, multi-tracked Barretts singing over a bright sounding acoustic guitar, and proceeds to build and build upon itself over its 7 minute duration until it reaches its glorious climax. Massive sounding drums, keyboards, and horns all come in, along with more harmonizing vocals, all building up to the tears-inducing chorus. “And if I don’t survive, I’ll still be by your side,” he sings, “Just clad in ghostly white, I’ll be your spectral bride.” I think it’s safe to say that it’s the most emotional moment that I’ve heard on a 2011 record.

Most of the remaining songs serve as bridge points between these well-defined standout tracks, and are often more experimental in terms of song structure and arrangement. “Empty Churches” features a remarkably eerie vocal sample about mysterious “voices of unknown origin” being detected by radio operators during the 1940s. The sample extends throughout most of the song’s duration, and Barrett creates deep instrumental atmospheres underneath to intensify the mood that it procures. The subsequent track “I’m Going To Do It” conjures disturbing and uncertain feelings with its hazy sonic palette, forming a stark contrast with the hushed but frighteningly sure sounding lyrics. Although the lyrics are not exactly subtle (what did you think a song called “I’m Going To Do It” was going to be about anyway?) they are incredibly powerful nonetheless. 

“No One Is Every Going To Want Me” begins in that same amorphous form, but eventually experiences a radical change in dynamic as it congeals into a propulsive and high energy fuzz folk song. The turbulence that the song undertakes, and the speed with which it changes shape help emphasize the dark and dramatic nature of the subject matter. 

But not only is Giles Corey about suicidal depression; it’s a downright depressant in and of itself. One of the reasons that I didn’t want to review the album back when I first heard it was that I thought its effect would be more powerful as the weather got colder, and now that winter is approaching and we’ve already had a major snowfall here in Connecticut, I can say that that is true. Nevertheless, even when I was listening to it on warm days during the summer, the music still made me feel as cold and desolate as I ever have. My most profound (and potentially damaging) experience listening to Giles Corey came in August, when I went out into a flash flood with my headphones and a raincoat and explored the park and river near my house. As I stood on the wooden bridge overlooking the swelling river and listening to this record, I was overcome by an intense feeling of utter meaninglessness and insignificance in the world. Despite how personal Giles Corey is, there is something about this music that taps into a universal human notion of suffering and pain. 

On that day during the summer I felt it, and I’m sure that as the snowfalls start to become more frequent here in Connecticut, where Dan Barrett and I both coincidentally live, I will feel that intensity again. In some ways, I fear the coming of that time, but I know that I will be able to appreciate the record all the more for it. Hearing Barrett’s heart-rending and unflinchingly honest lyrics in the context in which he presents them produces an emotional reaction from me that very few other pieces of art have. Maybe it says more about me than it does about Giles Corey, but I would rather let myself slip into the uncertain whirlpool of depression under the influence of a beautiful, near-perfect work of art than by my own selfish mistakes or by any other external influences on me. If Giles Corey is going to be the record that sends me to wherever Barrett was, I wouldn’t want it any other way. 

And yet, maybe it doesn’t have to be. On Enemies List’s artist page for Giles Corey, the artist bio describes that Barrett used Giles Corey after his suicide attempt “to search through any and every piece of written word that he could find to determine if life were worth living.” Although the overwhelming majority of the Giles Corey record would suggest that it wasn’t, there is one moment in particular that suggests otherwise. After the massive, lurching “No One Is Ever Going To Want Me” comes a much more subtle and lucid song. The plaintive, pining ballad “A Sleeping Heart” is Giles Corey’s one moment of hopeful tranquility — a calmness in the midst of a raging storm of hopelessness. At only three and a half minutes, it is dwarfed in length by the album’s other songs, but it is even more powerful because its simplicity. It’s not exactly happy (the song begins, “If I die, and I will…”), but it finds Barrett for once putting someone else before his own issues. The sweet and even romantic yearning that he expresses in the song is almost powerful enough to reverse the misery and sorrow of the preceding 45 minutes, and if “A Sleeping Heart” were the closing track, I would argue that Barrett found a reason to live through his Giles Corey project after all.

Sadly, it isn’t. It is a most crushing realization to experience such a lovely and uninterrupted moment of hope, only to see it swallowed up in the very same storm of which it was wrenched free. The final track, “Buried Above Ground”, even sounds like a storm as it slowly swells and tosses itself with dissonant strings and distant horns in its lengthy instrumental intro. By the time the vocals finally come in towards the end of the song, they arrive echoing the same lyric that made the opening track so chilling: “There’s a devil on my back.”

I wish I could say that writing about Giles Corey has helped me come to terms with the record more, but in retrospect it has only made me more uncertain about it. I’ve already written nearly 2000 words on the subject, and I feel as though I could write at least 2000 more. What I can tell after digging into Giles Corey as deeply as I have tonight and for the past six months is that this record is mentally provocative in a way that very few other albums I’ve heard are. I believe that this alone warrants a listen from anyone who reads this review. The rating below this paragraph is rather insignificant in this light, but I’ve left it there for those of you who like seeing numbers. If a high score will convince you to buy or listen to this incredibly important record, then it’s my duty to give it a high score. 

9/10

Key Tracks: “The Haunting Presence”, “Blackest Bile”, “Spectral Bride”

Giles Corey is available for purchase on CD from Enemies List Home Recordings. It is listed at $25, and includes a 150 page book written by Dan Barrett to accompany the recording.