The band at #5 is actually the work of just one man, sometimes actor Alejandro Rose-Garcia. When he’s not trying to expand his acting career (he was on Friday Night Lights and Sin City 2!), he’s creating and performing folky, americana music as Shakey Graves. And the War Came is his second album, and it’s no joke that I’m placing it in the top 5 of the year. It is solid from start to finish.

In the same vein as Prince or Matthew Houck (aka Phosphorescent, last year’s #1 band), Rose-Garcia performs most of the instruments on the album. He does have a few guest stars, most notably Esmé Patterson, who shares songwriting credit with Rose-Garcia on three songs on the album and lends her beautiful voice to the harmonies on those same three songs (including “Dearly Departed” above).

Rose-Garcia resides in Austin, Texas, and he sometimes sings with a purposeful, lazy drawl (most prominent on the track “Pansy Waltz”), lending a flare of Nashville to the songs. Overall, the album feels very alt.country, in a good way. The stories he tells on the album revolve around relationships and living life. As he said in this interview on NPR’s World Cafe, this album is about “what it means to love and be loved. It’s a responsibility album.”

“Dearly Departed” is the most approachable song on the album, but it verges on cringe-worthy in all of its hand-clap glory. I fear it could reach the same level of over-played insanity that the Lumineers (fellow Dualtone label-mates), Of Monsters and Men, or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have reached in years past. You can see Rose-Garcia and Patterson perform the song live on Conan, from a show back in October. I also recommend this live set on KEXP, from back in August. Four great songs, and you can really see the talent bubbling over.

I love this album. I can’t recommend it enough. Get. It. Now.

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6. Nicky Nack by tUnE-yArDs
7. Not Art by Big Scary
8. The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett by Eels
9. Owl John by Owl John
10. LP1 by FKA Twigs
11. Black Hours by Hamilton Leithauser
12. Give the People What They Want by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
13. Lost in the Dream by The War On Drugs
14. Warpaint by Warpaint
15. Heal by Strand of Oaks
16. Stay Gold by First Aid Kit
17. This is All Yours by ∆
18. Brill Bruisers by The New Pornographers
19. Only Run by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
20. Augustines by Augustines
21. El Pintor by Interpol
22. I Never Learn by Lykke Li
23. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes by Thom Yorke
24. The Voyager by Jenny Lewis
25. Voices by Phantogram
26. Morning Phase by Beck
27. Hungry Ghosts by OK Go
28. Run the Jewels 2 by Run the Jewels
29. Cosmos by Yellow Ostrich
30. Teeth Dreams by The Hold Steady
31. With Light & With Love by Woods

2009-2013 Top 31s

White Lighter by Typhoon

Do you like the lush sound of an orchestra, complete with horns, stringed instruments, and percussion and/or the inherent pain and suffering heard in every word Bright Eyes ever sang? Then you will like Typhoon. No, Conor Oberst is not in the band, but Typhoon’s lead singer, Kyle Morton, sings quite like him, with an amazing amount of emotion dripping off of every syllable.

Morton is one of 11 people in the band. Yes, eleven. There are three horns, and two each of guitars, violins, and drummers. I’ve seen the band cram onto a too-small stage while managing to find room for two full drum kits (usually front and center) as well as the rest of the amps — let alone 11 people. It’s quite a feat.

The benefits of touring with a band this size are obvious. Too often you hear these amazingly rich albums with horns and strings, but then the live experience is significantly diminished by either a) the strings and horns are recorded and played back via the push of a button, or b) the arrangements are modified significantly to accommodate a smaller touring band. Sometimes these new arrangements are quite good, and it’s nice to hear songs reimagined for the live stage, but Typhoon brings the real deal. What you hear on the album is faithfully restored on stage, with a mixed group of eleven late-20s/early-30s happy hipsters from Portland, bouncing and giddily playing to their hearts content.

I define their music as a derivative of “Americana,” a la Head and The Heart, or the overplayed hand-claps of The Lumineers or Of Monsters and Men. But where those bands stick to the road previously traveled, Typhoon chart their own course. These songs are complicated, with orchestration that would amaze the squarest of symphony goers. And Morton’s lyrics of heartache and the pain of everyday life, sung with the conviction of apparent autobiography, are beautifully touching. There are similarities in the notes to bands like The Decemberists (also from Portland) — not in subject matter or voice, but in rich layers of sound and an educated definition of what makes for a good composition.

This album, White Lighter, is the band’s fourth full-length. I discovered their 2010 album too late to put it on the Calendar that year (it would definitely have been on there), but their 2011 EP A New Kind of House made the list in 2011, at #23. If Morton’s voice doesn’t immediately put you off, I believe there’s something in this album for everyone. Give it a listen, buy it, and then wear out the grooves in the record, as I’m sure I will be doing over the next decade or so.

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10. Hummingbird by Local Natives
11. If You Leave by Daughter
12. Pedestrian Verse by Frightened Rabbit
13. The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River
14. The Next Day by David Bowie
15. Reflektor by Arcade Fire
16. We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic by Foxygen
17. Lanters by Son Lux
18. Howlin’ by Jagwar Ma
19. Impersonator by Majical Cloudz
20. Dream Cave by Cloud Control
21. Mole City by Quasi
22. Phantogram by Phantogram
23. Julia With Blue Jeans On by Moonface
24. Uncanney Valley by The Dismemberment Plan
25. Event II by Deltron 3030
26. Wise Up Ghost by Elvis Costello and The Roots
27. Us Alone by Hayden
28. Pure Heroine by Lorde
29. Shaking the Habitual by The Knife
30. False Idols by Tricky
31. Let’s Be Still by The Head and the Heart

2012 Musical Bacon Calendar
2011 Musical Bacon Calendar
2010 Musical Bacon Calendar
2009 Musical Bacon Calendar

#5 on the 2014 Bacon Top 31

#9 on the 2013 Musical Bacon Calendar