The Sauced Bulletin

The way I see it, year-end lists can’t be all fun and games.  Sure it’s nice to collectively praise all the great music that was released in the past year, giving credit where credit is due to artists who gave us worthwhile projects that we’ll be listening to and enjoying for years to come.  But what about those other albums?  What about the albums that let us down, that we hoped would be good because they came from artists we like, but then proved to be nothing but thinly veiled cash grabs, or wildly unsuccessful stylistic changes?  Basically, what about the albums that sucked?

That’s what this list is about.  It’s short and it’s mean, but it also serves a valuable purpose.  Because without highlighting how these bands failed, or changed for the worse, how are they ever going to change back?  They need to know that they fucked up, and we here at The Sauced Bulletin have reluctantly taken on the task of informing them.  So, check out the three most disappointing albums of 2011 after the jump.

3.  Hysterical by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Former indie blog darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah returned from their long hiatus this year sounding more like Coldplay than I’m sure anyone thought they could.  After following up one the last decades best debuts with a difficult, mesmerizing sophomore effort, there was a lot of pressure on CYHSY to either expand on and own that new sound, or return to their exuberantly catchy, albeit twisted, roots.  Unfortunately they did neither, choosing instead to smooth over all of their gloriously frayed edges and create one of the most boring records of the year.  Unflattering wall-of-sound production, non-stop dance beats and a lame, safe vocal performance from Alec Ounsworth combine to make one big blob of bright, shiny nothing.  It’s as if they tried to make every song “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth,” but totally forgot what made that song great.  Hysterical is the sound of CYHSY trying to please everyone, even the critics, but without pleasing themselves.  The lack of heart couldn’t be more obvious.

2.  Mine is Yours by Cold War Kids

In which the Cold War Kids turn to each other and say, “Hey, those Kings of Leon are really onto something!”  After two great records of bleak story songs bursting with heart, soul, personality, and wonderfully fractured arrangements, it’s obvious that these guys were just sick of not being big.  So they traded in everything that was likeable about them and went full Kings of Leon:  broad, cloying lyrics that mean nothing (when the first line on your album is “You change color like leaves in fall,” your in trouble), boring arena-rock music indistinguishable from any other band, and a complete lack of any kind of creativity or ambition.  But while it worked for the Kings (they suck now, but they’re huge), this fool proof plan totally backfired on the poor Cold War Kids.  They’re still not a big band and, on top of that, they’ve now alienated all of their original fans.  Way to go guys.

1. Circuital by My Morning Jacket

I can honestly say that I haven’t given Circuital a full listen since I bought back in May.  This is not because it’s so bad I can’t stand it, Lord knows the two albums preceding it on this list are worse, but rather because it depresses me too much.  After the unmitigated disaster that was Evil Urges, I had serious doubts about My Morning Jacket.  Then we caught a glimmer of hope with this record’s title track.  It sounded good.  It sounded interesting.  It had a guitar solo.  But alas, we ended up with this:  the most boring album of the year, released by a band that has truly lost its identity.

Circuital represents such a disappointment because of how good we all know My Morning Jacket can be.  Just go back and listen to It Still Moves and Z, the two records which, increasingly so, look like MMJ’s peak.  They are incredible.  The former rocks so hard and is so monolithic in structure that it’s impossible not to give in to the band’s southern-inflected swagger.  And Z will always, at least for me, be a reminder of where MMJ should be.  An experimental record that preserved everything great about their sound, while pushing it in unexpected directions, Z is brooding, fun, concise, outlandish, impressive, dark, and so satisfying, all at the same time.

None of those qualities exist on Circuital.  Instead, we hear a band playing it safe, trying consciously to “return to form” by giving us thumbnails of their former strengths, while never fully committing to any direction.  I had absolutely no desire to listen to this record after hearing it for the first time, but that isn’t even the worst part.  The worst part is the growing realization that the My Morning Jacket we knew and loved is totally gone, never to return.  Could Evil Urges really have really derailed them so completely?  Circuital certainly makes a case for it.  I mean, just listen.  They don’t rock out anymore.  They don’t swagger anymore.  They don’t pummel you in the gut with the force and majesty of long-haired Norse gods anymore.  Now they just write plodding, aimless mid-tempo rock songs, or cringe-inducing ballads, or silly half-assed jokes masquerading as “experiments.”  It’s a damn shame.

So there you have it, The Sauced Bulletin’s biggest disappointments of 2011.  Phew!  Glad that’s over, right?  Shit got real there for a second.  But don’t worry, we’ll have more fun in the coming weeks.  Get ready for The Best Debut Albums of the year, the Best Songs, some guest lists, and then The Top 20 Albums of 2011!