www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbHTaPk8Qmk

• • Sound Opinions hosts Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis have compiled their year end lists into mixtape form. Curious to see what made the list? Oh, you know, the usual: Wilco, White Mystery, CAVE, — Lindsey Buckingham.
• • Windy City Rock’s Andrew Hertzberg has compiled a nifty list of New Year’s resolutions aimed at becoming a better music blogger.
• • TThe Chicago Tribune thought the MCA’s “sound garden” exhibit was the perfect fit for Andrew Bird’s music.
• • Hopefully, you’re not sick of “Best Of” lists yet, because the Sun-Times broke down the best Chicago concerts of 2011.
• • Gaper’s Block has the deets on reggae outfit Midwest Hype’s EP release party this Thursday at Schubas.

What a long strange trip it has been. All obligatory yearbook quotes aside, 2011 has been an interesting year for music. I spent all year questing after that one (or ten) album that would kick my ass, make me want to dance and/or make me fall in love so hard I can’t breathe by the end of it. Odd requirements, I know, but at least now I have many excellent contenders for future ex-husbands.

10. The Cell Phones – Hospital Spaceship
There’s just something so undeniable about music that dares to skip the hellos and get right down to hard and fast grooves. On the Cell Phones’ recent EP Hospital Spaceship, the band cranks up the bass, pounds the hell out of the drums and lulls you into submission with dulcet harmonies that skyrocket into powerful wails. The Cell Phones gathered their DNA from bits and pieces of art rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Pretty Girls Make Graves, but I’d dare to go a step further that singer Lindsey Charles has a bit of a Monique Powell of 90s ska outfit Save Ferris in the mix due to Charles’ impressive range. Hospital Spaceship definitely leaves you wanting more.

9. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
Who knew moving to Los Angeles was all TV on the Radio needed to get its mojo back? Living in Brooklyn allowed TVotR to absorb and incorporate darkness into its music but its latest, most aptly named, album Nine Types of Light focuses on the brighter, shinier aspects of subjects, like love. The atmospheric noise has taken a backseat to more conventional pop rhythms. If you need a soundtrack in which to aggressively spaz out, then cool it down and bring it back around, Nine Types of Light is that record.

8. Tiny Fireflies – Change
Truly this EP is all puppies and rainbows. Chicago duo Tiny Fireflies managed – over the course of four songs – to create an aural experience that is the true equivalent of baskets filled with rainbow-colored puppies. The vocal harmonies are innocent, yet sweeping and the guitars are forlorn and heartwrenching. Somehow we all come out a little bit better for the struggle.

7. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Mirror Traffic
’90s alternative rock veteran Stephen Malkmus proves again and again that he doesn’t need to re-invent the wheel to create an album jam packed with sexy guitar solos and his trademark cutting wordplay. Malkmus may never fully escape Pavement’s shadow, but Mirror Traffic shows he’s not necessarily afraid of that legacy.

6. Das Racist – Relax
It’s easy to dismiss Das Racist rhymes as silly, especially when they craft songs around the idea of a combination Pizza Hut-Taco Bell, but the simple truth is the group can rap about anything and it will sound amazing. The flows, much like the beats are effortless. Before you know it, your head is dizzy from all the bopping its been doing. Plus “Brand New Dance” is the jam.

5. Sloan – The Double Cross
Canadian power-poppers Sloan celebrated their 20th year of existence by releasing their 10th album of upbeat, saccharine goodness. There’s nary a track on The Double Cross that doesn’t fill you with warmth, harmony and good time jams. It doesn’t really matter that the lyrics get a bit serious here and there (“Shadow of Love” or “Beverley Terrace”), but you gotta dance it out.

4. Wilco - The Whole Love
For someone who hasn’t spent a whole lot of time worshiping at the altar to Wilco, this entry is fairly surprising to probably no one but me. Somehow, I stopped fighting and let The Whole Love in. From its attention-grabbing experimental pop opener “Art of Almost” to its upbeat Beatles-style rocker “Dawned on Me” to its grassy, Americana-tinged “Capitol City,” Wilco prove that they can do it all, and do it pretty damn well. Well played, Wilco. Well played.

3. Disappears – Guider
2011 was a pretty big year for Disappears. The Chicago noise rockers lost drummer Graeme Gibson, gained Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, traversed the continents and managed to record and release a few records. Guider introduced us to Disappears as an experimental outfit, moving away from its predecessor’s (Lux) more accessible garage rock-colored chops. With Guider Disappears got spacey, ramped up the distortion and created tracks that were full of vibrating, hypnotic rhythms. You literally couldn’t ask for anything more.

2. Wild Flag – Wild Flag
The term supergroup is thrown around quite a bit, but when the members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium and The Minders combined their old-fashioned rock prowess with genuine love of creating and performing, the outcome (to no one’s surprise) was intense, magical, and above all the definition of super.

1. Le Butcherettes – Sin, Sin, Sin
About every ten years, music gets a female musician so ferocious, so talented, so off-the-fucking-walls that their star rises well above everyone else. Le Butcherettes frontwoman Teri “Gender Bender” Suarez takes this torch and runs with it both live and on the group’s debut Sin, Sin, Sin. Suarez’s sensuous moans, raging wails, accompany lyrics that cover everything from injustice to politics and the art world with ruthless alt-rock precision. The music cuts to the bone, enters your bloodstream and infects your brain. I could live with this album on repeat, and probably will.

• • Since today marks the start of Wilco week here in Chicago, it’s fitting that Daytrotter unveiled the much-anticipated Wilco session today.
• • The AV Club’s Kyle Ryan takes a look back at the year in…BAND NAMES!
• • BAwwwNNN EEEeveyughhh, I mean, Bon Iver played UIC Pavilion last week and WindyCityRock has a review.
• • Local pop act Clip Art, lead by Andy Rosenstein, will perform every Monday in January as part of a Schubas residency.

Yes, Tweedy and Co. have teamed with Chicago’s kernel institution, Garrett Popcorn, for a collectable The Whole Love tin of the sweet, sweet Midwestern maize.

From November 1 until November 24 Chicago area Garrett Popcorn Shops will offer a The Whole Love bundle, which is a one gallon (!!!) tin of Garrett’s Chicago Mix popcorn that features a lid with The Whole Love cover art and includes a CD of the record.

The cost is $43.99 (I’m assuming that is a little more than your average popcorn tin?), but $4 from each tin sold will be donated to the Jane Addams Hull House Association to aid in their work to improve social conditions for undeserved communities.

So, I leave you with this Chicago: Does anyone actually eat this stuff?

wilco

People just won’t quit trying to make cassettes happen again.

Wilco plan to release a limited edition cassette of its new album The Whole Love that will feature a few Hipstamatic photos submitted by fans.

All any Wilco fan needs to participate is listen to The Whole Love for inspiration, take a Hipstamatic photo and name it after one of the tracks on the album. Simple enough, yeah?

The deadline for submissions is this Saturday, Oct. 15. So get cracking because if Wilco says they’re bringing back cassettes, then they’re bringing ‘em back. The group will then choose the top five photos to be featured on the cassette cover.

For more information on how to enter and to see the submissions so far, click here.

As odd as it may sound that Wilco is finally hitting their stride on their eighth studio album, it might be true. After two landmark records, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, Wilco opted for a more roots-y, straightforward feel for their most recent releases, Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album), which resulted in good but not great. This time around, however, The Whole Love finds Wilco striking a perfect balance between the familiar and the adventurous.

Leave it to Wilco to out-Radiohead Radiohead in 2011. The Whole Love opens with not only Wilco’s most heavy hitting number to date, but aside from Jeff Tweedy’s vocals, it doesn’t resemble anything the Chicago outfit has ever attempted in the past. An off-kilter drum beat gives way to rising strings before the song opens up into a dark, sexy groove. And then Nels Cline unleashes a frantic, abrasive guitar solo. It’s pretty much the counter attack of his melodic grace from “Impossible Germany.”

The song is startling and might even be unsettling for fans who gravitate to the band’s more mellow material. But “Art Of Almost” isn’t surprising. Wilco have always pushed the envelope musically stretching their alt-country beginnings into soulful, bluesy, jazzy and experimental rock spectrums.

While the rest of The Whole Love never quite reaches the intensity of “Almost,” it does feature some of Wilco’s most radio-friendly and accesible moments. Bouncy retro-pop makes “I Might” an extremely fun romp that’s powered by a Flaming Lips-esque fuzzed out bass. “Born Alone” is typical Wilco in that melancholy lyrics, “Without the blowing stone/ The kids are unabashed/ Loneliness postponed/ My eyes deceiving glory/ I was born to die alone,” are masked by a rollicking power-pop sheen complete with some quirky guitar work reminiscent of Ghost‘s “Hummingbird.”

The record’s second half is filled with songs more typical of Wilco’s more recent releases, but the band simply sound far more refreshed and energized. “Open Mind” is a slow burning acoustic take that floats along on big western melodies, and the warm and folky Whole Love” is ridiculously catchy with it’s summery vibe.

The 12-minute album closer “One Sunday Morning” is not only an album highlight but an instant Wilco classic. The song is hauntingly beautiful with a feathery guitar riff over which Tweedy dustily tells of an an apparent religiously fueled father-son dispute.

The Whole Love finds Wilco in a comfortable place. They have learned to fine tune their old approach but still are capable of exploring new sonic territory. It took a few years and albums, but with The Whole Love, Wilco are once again at the top of their game.

Wilco -- “Born Alone”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqEB0MyGdY

• • NPR is now streaming the new Wilco album, The Whole Love.
• • Jim DeRogatis has another installment of the highly entertaining The Vortis Diaries on his WBEZ blog that details their problematic gig earlier this month at Subterranean.
• • Greg Kot profiles local R&B/hip hop/jazz up-and-comers Kids These Days for the Chicago Tribune.
• • WindyCityRock.net reviews last week’s BRAIDS and Painted Palms show at the Empty Bottle.
• • Gonzo Chicago has a sweet, sweet video of Music Tapes’ Julian Koster and Robby Cuchiarro performing the song “Spare the Dark Streets” in an alley behind the Bottom Lounge last week.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqEB0MyGdY

While this signing may not stack up to say, Derrick Rose signing with the Bulls, it is vaguely similar in that both the band and the label are straight products of Chicago. And that’s always a good thing, right?

Anyway, if you’re new to JC Brooks & The Uptown sound, then you obviously don’t get out much. Their punky take on classic soul and Motown has kept Chicagoans groovin’ for more than four years. Plus, you’ve probably seen their funky cover of Wilco’s “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” which has caught of the attention of Wilco main man Jeff Tweedy himself and even new Mayor Emanuel (the band played his inauguration concert).

JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound are set to release their Bloodshot Records debut, titled Want More, this fall. This Summer, however, they’re hitting the road. Check out their complete tour dates, including a stop at Chicago’s Taste Of Randolph Festival in two weeks, after the jump.

JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound:

Thursday June 16 – Ravinia, Highland Park, IL
8pm, opening for Robert Plant & the Band of Joy