This is Where We Talk About Movies.

This location. This spot. We used to talk about life here. Now we talk about movies, and life through movies.

Michael Miller's Sure-To-Infuriate-But-Still-Reasoned Top 10 Albums of 2011

By Michael Miller

Disclaimer: When discussing any best of the year list, preference trumps quality. So really this list should be titled, "My favorite albums of the year." However, in order to be provocative, and to get the people going, the title will be THE "Top 10 Albums of the Year" (Editor's note: I altered this title slightly. It's my blog and I title blogs as I wish. Onwards!). When rating music, I am under the impression that music is about 80 percent taste and 20 percent quality. For example, I don't like too much opera, but I can understand the quality behind it. I cannot, however, understand how anyone would like my eight year old cousin singing "Happy Birthday" over and over. I personally enjoy a wide variety of music, which you hopefully will be able to see from the list below.

Now to the list. It is ten albums, obviously, three honorable mentions, with a paragraph of explanation/description for each album. This year was incredibly tough to rate, with more music to listen to than ever. I tried to sample everything I could this year, but there is no doubt I missed some great stuff along the way. Keep an open mind when reading/rating, and check out these bands/artists if you haven't heard of them before! So without wasting anymore time, here are the best albums of the year.

Honorable Mentions: Kanye West and Jay-Z - Watch The Throne. James Blake - James Blake. Feist - Metals.

10. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

I was at a country western-themed this year, and as I walked in, my friend and I joked about the odds of Fleet Fox coming on. Much to our surprise, it did. What Fleet Foxes has accomplished with their sophomore album is a better version of what they did on their first album: great vocals, swaying melodies, and something for everyone. They are soon to attain the "You can't hate this band" status. With this album, Fleet Foxes solidified a fluke: combining a-capella vocals with folk music and making it sound good. We can only look forward to their next installment of this weird genre.

9. Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

The King of Limbs was not In Rainbows. The King of Limbs was not OK Computer. It was not Kid A, and it was not The Bends. This was a negative to many critics. Radiohead did not continue the accessibility of In Rainbows, and it did not revert back to the crazy experimentation of Kid A. The King of Limbs is something new entirely, though. Radiohead tried something new, and it came out sounding pretty damn good. With a band this established, do we really want them to stay stagnant? Do we want them to ever have the same sound when one of their main strengths is sounding different but familiar? Personally, I like the familiar sound of Thom Yorke's voice coupled with the unfamiliar sound structure in all of their albums. Don't settle with Radiohead. Want more. They gave us more with The King of Limbs; appreciate it for what it is. I am not sure what that is yet, and I'm not sure I ever will. Isn't that perfect with this band?

8. Summer Camp - Welcome to Condale

Can being a poor band's Arcade Fire get you on this list? You betcha. Summer Camp is a new British pop rock band with a slew of members in which both men and women sing. Much like Arcade Fire's The Suburbs epitomized suburban life, Welcome to Condale creates a small town that seems all too familiar. The title track is an ear worm that should be considered on any Song of the Year list. With short, quick, poppy vocals to contradict slower, elongated guitar riffs, a pleasing sound escapes a weird base, the town of Condale. In summary, the album as a movie would be in the space between Super 8 and To Kill a Mockingbird.

7. Adele - 21

Adele had herself a year. 21 found that rare space in music where not only did it make a crap ton of money, but critics also drooled over it. We all have heard wonderful about it, so I will offer some advice to Adele's future career while pointing out certain flaws in the album (pretentiousness at its best). Remember, I still consider this a fantastic piece of art.

First off, Adele, for your next album, write all of your own songs. You can collaborate with song writers, but in the credits of your album, your name should be first and only on the majority of songs. Not one of many. If you are going to sing about personal stuff, fans have to know it is coming from you, and you alone. Also, you did a heartbreak album. Don't go back. Reinvent yourself on a different emotional plane. Lastly, you have an opportunity to not become the next Beyonce, Whitney Houston, or Madonna. Limit your ballads and look for new approaches to the new sound you have already achieved. Oh, and quit smoking. It's bad for your vocal chords.

6. Anthony Hamilton - Back to Love

Two years ago, rhythm and blues was dead in the water. Trey Songz, Mario, and T-Pain destroyed everything that was good about the genre. The days of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were lost in oblivion. Then last year, Odd Future's Frank Ocean entered the scene, R. Kelly (Yes, the R. Kelly) made an album called Love Letter, Raphael Saadiq became more famous, and Beyonce made the best album of her life. The genre is not back to the days of Otis Redding and Ray Charles, but singers like Anthony Hamilton give us hope. Back to Love is soulful. Like R&B should be.

5. M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming

Quality trumps quantity. My father has been telling me this for about 15 years. M83 disagrees. Hurry Up We're Dreaming has 22 songs, some forgettable, a couple ear worms, and a few (Chris Collinsworth voice) phenomenal songs. This is the Speakerboxx/Love Below of Techno music. Techno is hard to classify M83 as. Like it is, but it's not. Check the album out and you will be impressed, and end up with the same problem as I did.

4. Wilco - The Whole Love

Wilco is back!

3. The Roots - Undun

Hip/Hop has evolved into numerous things, none of which have anything to do with 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Trying. However good that album was, this evolution is for the best. Hip/Hop is now critically acclaimed and is no longer seen as a genre intended for suburban kids pretending to have it tough. With the rise of sampling, excellent production, and independent labels, it is becoming a genre with loads of different styles and mediums. Childish Gambino produced his whole album by himself, concentrating less on beats and more on lyrics. Kanye West and Jay-Z had a different big-time producer on each track of their Watch The Throne. Hip/Hop is different, very different, from any other musical genre because of the difference within itself. All hip/hop no longer sounds the same. Tyler the Creator showed the world that "chorus" is just another word in the song structure of Hip/Hop and Rap music.

The Roots are the backlash of the evolution. They are classic. They are refined. The tracks "Make My" and "On Time" from Undun are contradicting tracks that hold the same essence -- old school hip/hop mixed with original instrumentals. The Roots, if anything, are consistent. They show up on an album and prove that hip/hop is about more than just beats and lyrics. They take a classic approach that throws 50 Cent out of the window, and reverts further back than Tupac and Dr. Dre. The Roots have the same original hip/hop sound, whatever the heck that may be.

2. Bon Iver - Bon Iver

With this album, Justin Vernon showed that one man can sound like one hundred men, and can indeed do it over and over again. "Holocene" is my track of the year, with "Calgary" in a close second. The album mystifies to say the least. If Bon Iver ends up completely dissolving traditional band structure, we shouldn't be surprised. This next year, we should all be begging for more.

1. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

St. Vincent's Wikipedia page starts like this: "Annie Erin Clark (born September 28, 1982) is an American multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter who performs as St. Vincent." This is the truth but it could not be further from the truth. Annie Clark plays the guitar incredibly. Her songs are original, and haunting. She is not a singer/songwriter in any sense of the traditional word. With the rise of the female vocalist/musician in indie music this past decade (best thing since Radiohead), St. Vincent can be seen as blurred among the crowd of musicians like Feist and Florence and the Machine. She should not be. Strange Mercy is complex, to the point that Adele's head would be spinning with curiosity as to what it all means. Strange Mercy is simple, with repetition of lyrics similar to Bon Iver or James Blake. The album is 11 tracks deep, all 11 having meaning and sounding great. The albums is complete, and thought out as a whole masterpiece. What puts it ahead of Bon Iver is the unforgettable tracks that become ingrained in one's head after a few listens. And the good kind of ingrained. I believe Strange Mercy could revive a life, or make the hardest human being break down and cry. If that is a little too much, so be it. St. Vincent had the best album of the year.

Michael Miller is a History major and English minor studying at the University of Illinois. Hurl any angry criticisms about his album selections at his Twitter handle, @MichaelKirkpat.

Exhibit(ion) A: Preseason Skirmish With Wayne State

Illinois played their first exhibition game Tuesday night at Assembly Hall against Division II Wayne State. The key word to focus on is "exhibition." You learn very little about a college basketball team from an exhibition game, especially a team like the Illini who have seven new players on the roster. Some new light is shed on individual players, but teams cannot be totally evaluated based on an exhibition performance.

With that in mind, the Illini still took to the court to take on an opponent other than themselves, which merits some discussion. I imagine that the main question most Illini fans have is which half will be more indicative of the team's play this season. The halftime score was only 35-32 in favor of Illinois and Wayne State even held the rebounding advantage 16-12. Illinois quickly righted the ship in the second half though, spurred by Meyers Leonard and Brandon Paul's offense. Illinois' defensive aggressiveness finally paid dividends, as they outscored Wayne State 44-19 in the second half.

If I were to give a semi-informed, educated guess, I would say this Illini team will consistently perform somewhere in between the two polarizing halves. Bear in mind, starting point guard Sam Maniscalco was held out of the game as a precautionary measure, as were three other players that figure to contribute to the rotation in Myke Henry (knee), Devin Langford (broken finger) and Crandall Head (suspension). Head coach Bruce Weber toyed with lineups for most of the game and any semblance of the projected starting rotation rarely played together. Add in that it's the first game for a young team with many new parts and there is some explanation to the sluggish start.

With this in mind, let's explore a few positives and negatives that I observed tonight.

Positive - Defense: After two consecutive seasons of lackluster defense, characterized by apathetic effort and laterally lethargic players, Weber and Co. have assembled a group that should thrive on the defensive end. The perimeter defenders do an exceptional job keeping their man in front of them (something McCamey and Cole struggled with often) and the post players are big-bodied and unafraid to mix it up on the block. The rotations on defense are noticeably crisp as well, including the half-court trap that James Augustine used to execute to perfection. The effort is there, too, with players diving for loose balls and concerted attempts at physicality. Unfortunately, this leads to our first negative which is.......

Negative - Foul Trouble: There were 49 total fouls in the game, 21 of which were committed by the Illini. While this is a necessary result of aggressive defense, it was extremely counterproductive at times and led to bailing out the Wayne State offense that was mostly inept in the half-court against the Illini's tight defense. I was extremely impressed by the defense but the number has to decrease in order for this team to succeed. There is absolutely no way this team will be able to keep up offensively with Big Ten teams who are shooting free throws in the bonus for the majority of the game. This will be something to keep an eye in the early part of the nonconference season.

Positive - Mike Shaw/Tracy Abrams: I'll start with Abrams, who logged major minutes at point guard with Mansicalco's absence. Weber has said often that Abrams is the ultimate competitor during game situations and that was very obvious throughout the exhibition. I was impressed by his poise. The freshman assumed the point guard position and dished five assists to no turnovers. Moreover, he's an above average dribbler and would have easily had the second-best handles on last year's team behind McCamey. There have been many naysayers over the years shoehorning Abrams as a shooting guard that would never really succeed at the point. I would argue emphatically to the contrary and, if anything, I feel more confident that he'll be leading the Illinois over the next four years.

Shaw also impressed when given a larger role in the wake of the frontcourt foul troubles. Shaw was easily the most active player on the floor and recorded twice as many rebounds (8) as Leonard and Tyler Griffey in comparable playing time. It was no secret why he got those rebounds either; Shaw wanted it more than anyone else on the floor, elevating and using his large frame to secure errant shots. If Shaw could puts forth similar effort all the time, the freshman will be an integral part of the frontcourt rotation.

Negatives - Nnanna Egwu: Much has been said about Egwu's inspired play in the offseason, including some speculation that he might receive minutes as the starter. Such speculation will have to be tempered for now, as Egwu only played 13 foul-plagued minutes before eventually fouling out. Egwu is skilled, no question about it. In 13 short minutes, Egwu scored 10 points, including 4-4 on free throws, and displayed some of that rumored motor by notching two steals and two offensive rebounds. Keeping him on the court will be the issue, though. Egwu will need to develop some defensive discipline in a hurry. The fouls he committed were mostly forced and could have been easily prevented. Egwu's offensive skill-set and 6'10" frame is extremely valuable in the frontcourt and will need to stay out of foul trouble to protect Leonard and Griffey.

The words to describe this team right now are these: extreme caution. This is a young team that will have a lot of trouble scoring at times. But the effort is there, along with defensive intensity, and that can mask a lot of offensive problems and even help in creating offense. This team has a long way to go, but they have a bright future. Just remember Illini fans, caution. Extreme caution.

Stories To Wake Up And Inspire

This morning I awoke purposeless.

That's usually not the case. Normally, I wake up, roll over, see the sunlight through my window and take it as a cue to start my day. A shower and some morning reading ensues and then it's off to busy the day with class, errands and interactions with people around me. Normally, I accomplish these morning activities dutifully and with workmanlike purpose. This morning was quite different.

I laid in bed for another five minutes, knowing fully that since I already saw that sunlight, I had no chance of falling back to sleep. I tossed and turned a little longer, trying to muster a reason to get out of bed on this Sunday morning -- and none came.

Then my phone rang. It was a stroke of luck really; if I hadn't woken up five minutes earlier I probably would not have taken the call. It was my sister, Natalie.

Natalie entered her senior year of high school last week and I'm envious of that. Senior year was a transcendent year for me, a perfect combination of a lack of responsibility mixed with the authority of being the oldest in school with all of your friends and I tried to make the best of it. I hope Natalie has the same level of fun that I had and I'm positive she will.

The first step in her senior year was to attend the Back to School Dance. Most of you are familiar with high school dances. Vice Versa was the best because you get to dress up to a theme and everyone looked great, Prom was generally pretty fun if you liked your date, and all the other ones fell into a void of mediocrity. The Back to School Dance was exceptionally mediocre.

Peoria Notre Dame, my sister's current academic institution and my alma mater, has been on a crusade that dates back to my senior year against a prevalent form of dancing -- grinding. It's a perfectly reasonable crusade for a Catholic high school to battle against. Grinding flies in the face of most Catholic tenets and sets a pretty poor example to wide-eyed freshmen every year. Above all, grinding is the most uninspiring form of dancing ever created. I'm not even sure it can be classified as dancing. Seriously, it's a disgrace. Even a dance like the Bernie is far more respectable than grinding and loads more fun.

For some reason, grinding continues to grace us with its presence and high schoolers can't get enough of it. So as PND administrators are patrolling the dance floor trying to corral any outbreaks of that diseased form of dancing, my sister (also an opponent of grinding) tells me the majority of the senior class decides to simply leave the dance and not return. Apparently, the majority included every senior except Natalie and her friends. I mean, I guess that's one way to deal with things, but what a crappy way to handle adversity.

Anyways, Natalie and her cohorts find themselves in a difficult position. They still want to have fun at their last Back to School Dance ever, but were abandoned by their unimaginative peers. Luckily, with a little brainstorming, they concocted an antidote to their precarious situation. My sister and her friends approached some freshmen boys who were outlying the dance floor and started to dance with them; actual dancing, the kind that's fun and active and exhilarating. They continued this for the remaining duration of the dance.

At this point in the story, I'm no longer languishing in my bed. I'm actually sitting on the edge of my bed and smiling because I know my sister just made those freshmen's collective nights. In a perfect ending to the story, Natalie was walking back to her car after the dance was over and happened to see one of the freshman boys they were dancing with climbing into his parents car. She decides to give him a friendly wave and, in response, the boy blows her a kiss! Now, besides the fact that the next time I'm in Peoria I'm going on a manhunt to possibly end this kid's life, that's inarguably the coolest thing that he's ever done. His irrational confidence is going to be off the charts for about two weeks, ending when he sees his life flash before his eyes before getting laid out by that hulked-out, monster sophomore linebacker at football practice. Order will eventually be restored.

Natalie finishes telling the story and I confess that it's probably one of the better ones I've heard in awhile. I tell her to keep living the dream and joke that she should jot down the kid's address for my future reference.

After the phone call ends, I look out the window and the sunlight has a different, inviting quality to it. I make a coffee and bagel and head to my balcony, where I'm greeted by the most beautiful day in recent memory. A cool breeze is blowing through the trees, people are walking by with smiles on their face, and Maroon 5 is playing softly through the screen door. Some days are easy to start and others are much harder.

Sometimes, a morning story helps.

Blog Revamping

Quick service announcement: I started this blog with the intention of posting often, which is mostly the point of blogging and writing in general. I didn't write the catchy sub-header for the blog so that you would take a seat, get comfortable, grab a drink, and then wait around for two months before I innocuously post again. That's actually rather rude of me and definitely not fair to you, the readers.

So, as the title of this post has suggested, the blog will be undergoing a revamping process. The changes will not be physical, but ideological. I'm hoping, time permitting, that I will make 1-2 posts per week. As the sub-header (read: official mission statement) states, we'll be talking about life - current events, my memories, movie reviews, sports, my family - and having fun in the process. Hopefully, my productivity persists throughout the year and no road bumps are met on the way. As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the first post of the new era later tonight.

My Favorite Moment of Sophomore Year

A year ago I got the writing itch and decided to start a blog. My first post detailed the top five moments of my freshman year -- a compilation of events and memories that defined my first year in college. Heading into this summer, I fully planned on returning to the format and creating my list for sophomore year. I even started writing the post, getting through moments 4 and 5 before becoming increasingly bored and letting it sit around for awhile. Six weeks later, I tried to return to finish the post and couldn't do it. Something felt wrong and I quickly realized the reason why: I wasn't doing these moments enough justice with little 300 word write-ups that were brief summaries at best. Instead, I went to work on writing about my favorite moment of sophomore year in a little more depth than usual.

(Sidenote: the runner-up this year was Halloween weekend and, specifically, the Friday night of Halloween weekend. I came to the conclusion that Halloween is off-limits for this post in the future because, let's be honest, dressing up and celebrating is too much of a fun time to not be memorable. This year's Halloween spawned "Lonely Pokey" in which a too-drunk Derek, dressed in a Pokey costume, aimlessly meandered around the party we were at to the point that he looked incredibly sad and lonely. Trust me, it was hilarious. Our group, consisting of Bert and Ernie, Pokey and Gumby, and myself in gangster attire, then invaded an empty Geo's basement and started an awesome dance party, prompting the eccentric DJ to say, "It's like watching Saturday morning cartoons on acid!" Only three months until Halloween 2011!)

My favorite moment of the year was actually an entire day, the penultimate one of the school year for me. The day was the spiritual sequel to Picture/Jersey Night (yes, that night is important enough to be a proper noun from here on) in that we knew we had a limited time together before we went our separate ways for the summer. In fact, it was the last day the core group of us were together. Luckily, we were gifted an entire day to fill with engaging activities, and we did just that.

I had my car in the campus area for the past month, which opened up some avenues for us in terms of the scope of our adventures. Since I was parked in the Kappa parking lot, we made some idle chatter with our friend Molly before Derek, Brian, Jeff, Jack and myself piled into my tiny Mustang to embark on a journey to find a bowling alley. Unsurprisingly, the nicer bowling alleys were located in obscure places or were closed in the daytime, so we figured the Illini Union was a safe bet. After a pleasant round of bowling, we ventured to the nearest Old Chicago for some fine dining in our polo shirts and cargo shorts. It was on the way to Old Chicago that we made our major discovery of the night. Apparently, an unheralded member of Young Money, Jae Millz, has a penchant for rapping unintentionally funny things about the woman he's been with. I think this song sums it up nicely. I don't know where he comes up with some of that but, needless to say, it became our mantra for the night.

Shortly after dinner we took a leisurely drive to Wal-Mart to try on goofy hats, buy a ball for Four Square, and hear the worst story of all-time from a Wal-Mart employee. From there, we returned my car to the Kappa house (which became a sort of home base for us the rest of the night) and started up a rousing game of Four Square on the Quad. After an hour of Four Square, we made our way to Geo's for a refreshing and casual $1 bottle. I felt slightly weird doing such a blatantly adult act after a childish game, but it was a proper summer send-off to our favorite watering hole. We figured that an appropriate end to the night would involve returning to home base again to present a birthday gift to an under-the-weather Molly, and along the way we picked up Satyen Patel. I'm sure Saty made a lasting contribution to the day, but I can't really remember right now. As the wee hours approached, we dropped off Jeff, who had been a gamer all day even though he had a final the next day, and Jack, Brian, Derek, myself, and the nefarious Satyen strolled around campus conversing and sharing witticisms, trying to fend off the impending sunrise that would mean the end to an extraordinary day.

I realized during those hours that it was the first time in recent memory that I didn't want a day to end. Looking back, I also came to the realization that this memorable day was very comparable to an average day of my childhood, minus the driving and the casual beer at Geo's. Back then, all you needed was a game of Four Square and a couple of friends to have fun. Now, a day exempt of school, stress, or work becomes the most memorable day in a person's year, even though I would've classified it as a completely normal day ten years ago. It's a sad realization to come across, but I'm also grateful to have made the connection, if only because it made me appreciate this day a little more and hopefully paves the way in the future for more days like these. Nights like Halloween will always be remembered as special times, but there's something mysterious and exciting about the prospects of any regular day morphing into a memorable one. And with my friends, I wouldn't be shocked if it happens a couple more times before we graduate.

Dropping Everything, If Only For A Second

Usually, I kick off the summer blogging season with a post about my Top 5 moments from the previous school year. That post will be appearing by the end of the week but since I decided not to write at all until the middle of the summer, I'm not really interested in chronological blogging at this point. What broke me out of my summer slump was a particular experience that happened on the Peoria County roadways today, and as with any moment that gets me thinking, I felt the sudden compulsion to write about it immediately.

I was cruising down a two lane road around sunset hours. My windows were down, and the music was at deafening levels (A Tribe Called Quest, I believe) as I comfortably soaked in the summer evening. Before long the quaint driving was interrupted by faint sirens and flashing lights in the distance. The road was not crowded but there were more than a few motorists out driving and, noting the impending presence of an ambulance, pulled over to the side of the road in a hurried fashion. I unconsciously did the same without a moment's hesitation -- it's an obvious sign of common decency to stay out of the way of an ambulance on duty. Once the ambulance safely and swiftly passed me, I flipped on my turn signal, pulled back onto the road and continued my pleasant summer drive.

As I drove, I couldn't help but be pleased about the event that just transpired. Not the fact that the ambulance was en route to a situation where someone was likely in great distress, but the fact that myself and other motorists stopped everything we were doing in order to make it easier for a group of people to resolve a dire situation that was bigger than all of us. We are almost always hellbent on envisioning how to accomplish things on a daily basis to fit our convenient schedule that rarely do we take the time to assure someone else's convenience. But that's exactly what happens when we encounter an ambulance with sirens blazing. I tried to find an equivalent to this phenomenon in other walks of life and the only comparison I could draw would be national anthems before sporting/important events. The national anthem is usually a formality, though; an expected step in a process to begin a baseball game or a high school assembly. In the case of a speeding ambulance, it is always unexpected and still we act accordingly with the utmost unselfishness.

And it is that feeling of unselfishness that stuck with me for the remainder of my summer drive, inspiring within me hope that even in a society of increasing nonchalance that a group of people can in tandem accomplish something for a greater good, or a good that may not be directly related to them. We'll never know who that ambulance was for, but maybe our selflessness contributed to saving a life tonight. It's enough to make you smile as the summer sun sets, if only for a second.