The Maldives are stupendous 8-man band from Seattle. They played at Birds on a Wire in March 2010, and it was all the theater could do to contain them; something I read about them somewhere described their sound as “Epic Americana”, which just about nails it. “Blood Relations” was one of the most visceral moments in the show—pure rock power that stirred everyone’s blood to move faster, singer Jason Dodson howling beautifully over the band’s astonishing four-axe attack. The song is about the shadow a father casts over his son and his son’s sons. Somebody somewhere is standing on his grave, but all of my children are carrying his name, goes the refrain. It’s a song for men; it gets at the ambivalence that grips us all, at some point, about our fathers. Sadly, most men who put this struggle in their work only wallow in it, never getting anywhere. But “Blood Relations”, I think, is the sound of a man fighting through it, grasping for the peace he knows that is to be had with his father’s shadow—no matter how elusive it may seem.

Buckner’s Since is my favorite record of his this week. “Ariel Ramirez” might be his most famous song (one friend says that no song better describes the hole at the center of that man) but “Faithful Shooter” is probably what really roped me in to the entire album. As always, it’s Buckner’s lyrics that really get at me; if poetry is a concentrated excess of language, they are poetry (even if the subject is ultimately rather maudlin…). These lines really struck me:

You looked up to her window from the backyard dusk/Hired as a shot, lingered as a crush

See I’ve only had a photograph to drag around

Would you take another trip with a candle like her/Strike another promise and watch it burn?

In which Matthew Houck’s band completes their transformation from spacey stoner folkies to kick-ass road band. On this song, and the rest of Here’s to Taking it Easy, the open-ended looseness of their earlier records is invigorated with focus and discipline—but its ragged-edged vibe still feels very much of a piece with almost anything off Pride (its kinship with To Willie is obvious). I do really love it when bands with experimental leanings corral their artier impulses into more structured song forms. Even more, I love it when bands like this get onstage at Letterman and UTTERLY kick the crap out of everyone in the room.

The lyrics are stupid—something about a slacker with no life and an ex-girlfriend or something and absolutely nothing interesting to say about anything—and the singing suitably listless. But, ho-lyyyy CRAP—at the three-minute-mark, this song just straps on a friggin’ jetpack fueled by pure riffage and starts melting your face right off your skull. By the four-minute mark, you’ve already turned the volume up well past anywhere it’s ever been before. At 4:15, “F*** YEAH!” is about as articulate as you’re gonna get. 5:17: you’re calling your buddies to come over so you have something to crowd-surf on. At 6:24, you’re skipping back to start this track over again. The rest of the record is pretty good, too, far and away the best thing ever produced by Florida surfers.

Song of the year, I think.

From my favorite record of the year. Sufjan really challenged himself and his listeners—setting aside, as he did, his banjo for electronics and twee prettiness for sometimes abrasive, ugly noise. Christianity Today’s review rightly concluded that fans of his older music put off by this record “will discover a more complex understanding of Stevens, who as it turns out, is neither a "Christian artist” nor an “artist who is a Christian,” but a human like the rest of us.“

Sufjan the human, however he may have left his old sound behind, still possesses unfathomable melodic gifts and a truly symphonic sense of composition. "Age of Adz” is a wild and uncontrollable and stupendous wall of sound and emotion, a song made up of bits of noise, stray sounds, and instrumental flourishes corralled into something beautiful and personal and giant. I discern in this something not unlike the creativity of God, whose Spirit hovers over chaotic creation and refashions it into something beautiful and new through the ministry of the Word.

Back to the record—while I do love Age of Adz on its own merits, chief among its virtues is how it recalls for me his Adz-heavy concert at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, which was so good I simply fumble for the words. And I love that this record, which I can spin anytime I want, serves mainly to testify about that unrepeatable, live event.

It’s stupid to even try to write anything intelligent about this song. “Gimme Shelter” is simply more a force of nature than a piece of music.