Best National Act: MGMT
“You’ll never be as good as the Rolling Stones” is an actual line from “Flash Delirium,” the lead single from MGMT’s new headscratcher, Congratulations(Sony). It’s an odd moment of self-depreciation, but you’d be forgiven for having missed it, since it gets whispered atop the distorted bleats and aggressive zaps of the song — which proved to be as purposely inscrutable as the rest of the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2007′s Oracular Spectacular. Perhaps most of the votes in this category come from fans of MGMT’s earlier, peppier singles, like “Kids” and “Time To Pretend,” which were hammered into our skulls by commercial radio and movie trailers for a good two years. But even when they try to be the opposite of what people want, MGMT’s talent for a sharp hook and a jaunty mood unzigs every zag they try to pull. So they win the crown despite themselves.
Runners-up:
2. The Decemberists
3. Vampire Weekend
4. Phoenix
Best National Electronic/Dance Act: Hot Chip
Machine-made music designed for dancing often plays down the real-live-flesh artists behind the scenes. Which means that those who hang on long enough to assert their individuality often wind up shedding the very electro/dance trappings that made them notable in the first place. Such is the case with Hot Chip, who’ve turned quite a few heads with the success of One Life Stand (Astralwerks) — a collection that sacrifices the giddy whumping pleasure principle of older hits like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor” for the vulnerability and seriousness of “Thieves in the Night” and “Take It In.” As the evolution of the genre pushes onward and outward, it’ll be acts like Hot Chip — with memorable tunes and demonstrable heart — who’ll rise to the top.
Runners-up
2. La Roux
3. Four Tet
4. Fever Ray
Best National Female Vocalist: Neko Case
Cast your mind back to a time when it was commercial poison to put a female voice on the radio, and contrast it to now, when female artists are everywhere. And yet, at least according to you all, none of those newcomers could dethrone the force of nature that is Neko Case. Last year, she had just released Middle Cyclone(Anti-) when she took this category. Since then, Ms. Case has been touring and riding a wave of accolades for that song cycle, which has seen her branch farther from the roots rock of her past into torch songs, pop, and pure banshee weirdness, all with the same confident grace.
Runners-up
2. Annie Clark [St. Vincent]
3. Florence Welch [Florence and the Machine]
4. Victoria Legrand [Beach House]
Best National Metal Act: Mastodon
Mastodon might seem an unlikely act to be sitting atop the metal heap, what with their arty leanings and un-metal concept-album approach. Then again, their brutal reassemblage of the best moments of the discographies of Neurosis, Melvins, and assorted stoner/sludge-rockers amounts to a realignment of what is considered good metal after the doldrums of late-’90s/early-’00s nü-metal. Like Vikings hitting virgin shores, the bearded burly-men of Mastodon have been rampaging through the world of metal, taking the aggression of more underground acts and polishing it to a sheen in a way that endears them to year-end lists — as well as the car stereos of heshers worldwide. The result is a band who can rock international stadiums without having to wear stupid top hats or dress like clowns —thus earning the gratitude of serious metalheads everywhere for elevating the genre to within a fraction of respectability.
Runners-up
2. High on Fire
3. Sunn O)))
4. Baroness
Best National Pop Shit: Lady Gaga
Kings of Leon and Black Eyed Peas both scraped their way to the top through a long process of refining their appeal — but neither has captured the lightning-in-a-bottle combination of weirdness and newness that is the international pop-shit phenomenon Lady Gaga. At this point, her two-year campaign of shock and awe is beginning to wear out even her most faithful followers — but that only means that she’s dug past the topsoil into the deeper ground that is the casual music listener. Last year, said listeners were snapping their fingers inattentively to a radio hit; this year, they’re dressing up like maniacs and following her around. Eventually, the world will tire of her unbounded need to impress — but that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon.
Runners-up
2. Kings of Leon
3. Black Eyed Peas
4. Owl City
Best National Roots/Americana Act: Wilco
Truth be told, Wilco haven’t really played anything resembling the standard idea of “roots” or “Americana” since their 1995 debut album, but their unpretentious, low-key demeanor has defined a new post-alternative roots movement. Americana for a more . . . suburban America, perhaps. In any case, last year’s typically understated Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch) kept fans flocking to their shows and celebrating the band’s rep as a formidable live act (with the crucial involvement of guitar hot shot Nels Cline). Perhaps BMP voters recognize that this Chi-town act have a certain fondness for our area — their North Adams Solid Sound Festival is coming in August, with not only multiple Wilco (and Wilco-side-project) sets but a line-up that offers, uh, pretty much everything but roots and Americana.
Runners-up
2. The Low Anthem
3. Avett Brothers
4. Monsters of Folk
Best National Video: Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce: Telephone
Two years past the demise of TRL, you’d think that today’s kids would be tugging their parents’ apron strings at the sight of this category, asking, “What’s a ‘video’?” Except, that is, for this thing called the “Internet,” which is currently rewriting the rules of the form, encouraging boundary pushing in a much more exciting way than MTV ever did. Gaga’s collaboration with Swedish professional oddball Jonas Åkerlund is a match made in video-weirdness heaven: nearly nine minutes of iconic images that introduce the proverbial Peoria newb to the world of Matthew Barney–lite. Whether it’s a pair of sunglasses made from lit cigarettes or a revved-up Beyoncé visually stuttering along with the song’s glitches in a homicidal rage, the video pushes arty buttons that people didn’t know they had.
Runners-up
2. Bat for Lashes, “Daniel”
3. Girls, “Lust for Life”
4. Raekwon, “House of Flying Daggers”
Best Local All-Ages Act: A Loss For Words
All-ages, a/k/a pop punk, could be the most disrespected genre this side of contemporary country. Meaning that when a band stick around in the all-ages trenches for years and years, they will inevitably have to reach for respectability. For Abington’s AL4W, that meant following up the success of 2009′s The Kids Can’t Lose (and touring the record with a grueling trek around the States and then through the UK, Russia, and Japan) with a new EP of Motown classics called, uh,Motown Classics (Paper + Plastick) that is nowhere near as ironic-pop-punk-cover cringe-worthy as it might sound. Whether they achieve said respectability remains to be seen, but throwing a spirited run-through of the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” into their otherwise moshtastic set of slamming, fun-time sweat inducers can’t hurt — unless you get landed on by some XXL crowd surfer.
Runners-up
2. Boys Like Girls
3. Four Year Strong
4. Vanna
Best Boston Rock Club Night: Born Of Fire (O’Brien’s)
Metal fans in Boston are tired of getting the proverbial shaft — reading the regional listings and seeing all the sickest metal shows skipping the Hub in favor of Wormtown and (boo!) Connecticut is enough to make your average Slayer acolyte retire his filthy denim vest. Fortunately, the past year has seen the explosion of Boston metal that is the Born of Fire night at O’Brien’s. The brainchild of erstwhile headbanger Zack Wells, BOF has brought us pairings of the region’s slaytanic best twice a month — so you no longer need to drive an hour or more each way to get your fix of Howl, Rat Corpse, and Sexcrement. This town is already a hotbed for some of the region’s (and the nation’s) top metal acts — it’s about time they got to play a club show in their own town.
Runners-up
2. Primitive Sounds at River Gods
3. This Is Why They Hate Us at Alchemist Lounge
4. Rescue Nite at Model Café
Best Local Metal Act: Converge
Converge had a great year. Their latest LP, Axe To Fall (Epitaph), found them breaking through to a more mainstream metal audience, thanks to the massively heavy thrum of walloping killdozers like “Slave Drive” and album opener “Dark Horse.” It’s actually been a top-notch year for metal in general, and that’s made the competition at the top even more insane. But “insane” is the environment in which Converge thrive, whether it’s the room-exploding fury of their live show or the claustrophobic intensity of their music (not to mention the howling screech of lead heckler Jake Bannon). The band’s relentlessly racing tempo is almost un-metal in its punk zip, but the arch weirdness of guitarist Kurt Ballou’s chugging ax is far too pained and brutal to be anything but capital-M metal. As long as Converge are still stalking the earth, it’ll be a tall order for any other band to take this category.
Runners-up
2. Doomriders
3. Gozu
4. Big Bear
Best Local Punk Act: Razors In The Night
The past decade has seen the myth of working-class Boston explode onto the national consciousness — be it through Dennis Lehane’s novels or Martin Scorsese’s films. Boston punk has been a similarly popular export, with its peculiarly trad take on disheveled anti-authority, and Razors in the Night have the attitude and the songs to represent their city. Vocalist Troy Schoeller would be an intimidating neck-vein exploder if he weren’t fronting such a fun band, with every glottal scream backed by anthemic gang shouts and catchy guitar melodies. Although Razors might seem somewhat reined in by their worship of early ’80s UK Oi! punk (their name itself is a song by street-punk legends Blitz), they find ways to mix up their sound, whether it’s the whiplash fury of humorous thrashers like “Hipster Holocaust” or catchy fist-pumper anthems like “Carry On.”
Runners-up
2. Dead Cats Dead Rats
3. Kominas
4. Refuse Resist
Best Local Roots Act: Kingsley Flood
If you consider rootsy Americana to be a dour yoke worn by groups of dreary Luddites afraid to cut loose and join the modern world, then you haven’t heard Kingsley Flood. Their roots cred owes to the masterful fiddle and mandolin playin’ and the whiff of Appalachia found on their debut, Dust Windows, but the music’s sheer exuberance is beyond time or genre. And though they’re capable of quiet introspection and moments of majestic solemnity (as on the organ-heavy “Cathedral Walls”), their fans ticked the ballot for the hip-shaking enthusiasm of their more boisterous moments (imagine a shotgun wedding gone off the rails). Lead Flooder Naseem Khuri has the authority in his voice to keep the whole thing from coming off like po’-faced creative anachronism, and the band’s boundless giddiness is enough to make you never want to hear a synthesizer again.
Runners-up
2. Joy Kills Sorrow
3. Tim Gearan Band
4. Tony the Bookie
See the rest of the winners here: http://thephoenix.com/BMP/Boston/2010/
What I love about the chorus to B’s current smash single, “Single Ladies” (“If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it”), are its blurry pronouns — quick, what does “it” refer to? First one could be the same “it” as in her older smash “Check on It”; the second might be her ring finger. The ambiguity sums up her divided musical persona far more effectively than the two-disc split-personality gimmick here (Anne Murray-esque balladry on the first, electro-slut club bangers on the second).
