March 7, 2010
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE #3: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH - SOME LOUD THUNDER
In his novel HOCUS POCUS, Kurt Vonnegut relays the story about a guy who, as a kid, got stuck in an elevator. He was stuck for about twenty minutes; he thinks that this is a major point in American history; he thinks there is going to a banquet and a celebration afterward; finally the elevator starts and goes to the floor it's supposed to go to: the customers are simply waiting for the elevator, and the kid is surprised to find out that he was not a part of something important. This is Vonnegut's analogy for soldiers coming home from the Vietnam War - for me it is the experience of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's SOME LOUD THUNDER.
After all the rave reviews for first self-titled album from the band with the imperative for a name, I found it a bit underwhelming. They were not as interesting as the bands they were clearly trying to emulate, and their novelty wore off pretty quick. Alec Ounsworth, that energetic, raspy fellow who yells now matter soft or loud the music behind him, didn't seem to have a lot to sing about. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting much from their follow-up.
My friend, frequent blog-reader Bethan, gave me an advanced copy that I otherwise wouldn't have listen to. When I heard the first song, I imagined that something had gone wrong in the burning process: it seemed to start mid-lick. After one second, the lyrics came crashing in and neither the song, nor the album, never relented from the energy of that first moment. It was a brash, bold feat, and I've never heard anything like it before or since. Their first album was all catch and quirk and pop-tastic lyrics hidden by a grungy aesthetic, but this one immediately told you it would be nothing like that. The lo-fi style is never betrayed by any grander ambitions, and what remains is something at once stunningly personal and not quite attainable.
And that's where the Vonnegut comparison came up. I assumed I had heard the advanced copy of the album everyone would be talking about. I was flummoxed when I found, after its release, that the advanced reviews were so lukewarm, occasionally dismissive. But each I listen to it, I reassure myself that I'm right - I have no secret motive or ambition for selling this album; I'm merely surprised that it hasn't even developed a cult following.
The title track is a knock-out, a post-modern anthem never acknowledged. It's about being unable to communicate, a descriptive cacophony of noises that mirrors the frenetic sound. As Ounsworth keeps shrieking, "That's the state of my story / and it could be maybe something complete someday," we're reminded that much of the best music wasn't supposed to mean anything, and this album - with its artless cover and chaotic exuberance becomes a blank slate on which we can all project our meanings. Yet I find that its poetic even its discord.
And it's followed by the most gentle song CYHSH has ever sung, a mix of their familiar nonsense and a fascinatingly earnest love song:
"You're not like me
It seems that people stick like flies to you
And my mystery
Is just that I've no one to cling to"
"Emily Jean Stock," who is in reality Ounsworth's wife, highlights our insecurities in relationships while reminding us why they're so wonderful when they work. The song contrasts the beautiful, charismatic title character with the singer's realization that he doesn't belong with her. Knowing that this is about his wife makes its combination of saccharine intensity and vulnerable confession welcome.
The next show stopper is "Satan Said Dance," a perverse, ambitious dance number which mixes electronic music with actual electronic dissonance. Its absurd balance sounds like an explosion at the studio and speaks to and exemplifies the liberation of hedonism while parodying the earliest critics of the genre: if dancing is really Satan's lurid vehicle for God's creatures, it might end up looking and sounding something like this electro-nightmare.
The one-two-three punch that leads to the end of the album - "Arm and Hammer," "Yankee Go Home," and "Underwater (You and Me)" keeps this from being as uneven as their debut. Because SOME LOUD THUNDER is ultimately about the failure to communicate with anyone, even though we need that communication to survive, and its oscillation between those two extremes is what makes it moving even its dissonance, coming together in "Underwater." If the album opens with "All this talking / You'd think I'd have something to say" and closes with:
"We'll design a clever disguise
Or retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives
Underwater you and me"
Ounsworth ultimately gives us a love letter in spite of itself.
The last song - the shouting and sounds of "Five Easy Pieces" is kind of a letdown; I wish it closed with the aforementioned "Underwater;" it's this that keeps it from being number 2 (but not number 1). But I will continue to sing the praises for the best album you haven't heard, listened to once, or didn't listen to carefully enough.
| By Andytown | 8:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 4, 2010
SHORT THOUGHTS ON THE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEES
Short Thoughts on the Academy Award Nominees:
AVATAR - It is what it is: a three hour spectacle that I have no interest in seeing again. Sigourney Weaver, adding humor and pathos, was a welcome presence because the Na'vi themselves were kind of dull noble savages. Their world, however, was anything but dull, and the 3D and the IMAX made it an enchanting experience, even if it was caught up in a pretty standard anti-imperalism narrative (the DANCES WITH WOLVES comparisons are appropriate). So while every beat of the story and its characterizations were familiar, the visuals brought it to the level of a really awesome documentary about space that you might see in a planetarium. If it wins the Oscar, it will be the ironic equivalent of a movie that is nothing like it: AMERICAN BEAUTY. We look back at its 2000 victory and wonder why; AVATAR will certainly be surpassed by better, more inventive movies that share its visual flourish. It's like a Cecil DeMille movie without the camp, but I found myself wanting the camp.
THE BLIND SIDE - Here is what this movie is saying, and sadly it is why some of its audience liked it: if poor African Americans could only get on board with the spunky upper-class ethos of white people, they would just be fine. Because other than its central virtuous manchild, all the people of color in this movie are repulsive stereotypes: at one point we see they are smoking weed and drinking malt liquor and talking about raping white teenagers around illegitimate children. I imagine the real Michael Oher story is one of nuance, complexity, and troubling projections about race, class, and culture. The movie whitewashes all those to tell a neat story about a rich white woman who teaches a black kid how to play football (literally; there is a scene when she tells him how to be an offensive tackle). It's inspiration is drawn from that, and the most troubling feature of the story - true and fictional - is breezed over in a hamfisted way: Oher ultimately went to play for a university for which his foster parents were consistent boosters. I really have no problem with this last fact - the family practically raised Oher for three years, they should have some say in where he goes to college - but the way the movie artlessly deals with it suggests that you should be suspicious. Sandra Bullock's performance is pedestrian at best, embarrassing at worst, and I say this as a begrudging fan: she was really quite good in 28 DAYS. But Bullock lacks the innate charm of a southern woman and broadcasts her confidence in actorly gestures. She succeeds because the story gives her offensive stereotypes to react to: the African American community with no perceivable values who, apparently, are there because they aren't enough like Bullock or Tim McGraw. It is unfortunate that this film will endure as a monument to an undeserving actor and a troubling "inspirational" tale.
DISTRICT 9 - This inventive, highly political alien movie worked for audiences because it established its premise quickly and effectively, putting us in an alternate universe that we never once questioned. Neil Blomkamp has made the first realistic alien movie, using the documentary style to good effect. The movie is fascinatingly bureaucratic, only enhancing the realism, and that commitment draws in much of its absurdity. But showing how ill-equipped contemporary diplomacy is to handle outsiders or "threats," we're left asking questions about the implications of any foreign policy. My issue with the movie is its protagonist - "Wikus." I couldn't stand him. He bugged the crap out of me. He distracted me. I kept wanting him to go away, and his central presence made the movie difficult to watch. But that strangely adds to the integrity of this piece.
AN EDUCATION - Carey Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance, making her a breakthrough star and eventually (perhaps) an icon. The iconography she fits into loves her: Audrey Hepburn, the early 1960s, the yet-to-come British Invasion. But mostly the movie is an anecdote to all those "manic pixie dreamgirl" flicks in which quirky romance leads to a freeing sense of individual perspective. This drama, more kitchen sink than soap opera, eschews such conventional readings. Peter Saarsgard is equally great - his Americanness makes him out of place even as his charming personality helps him to fit in: it's inspired casting. I loved the details of this movie: the dog races, the Oxford bars, and the papers by teenage girls about Jane Eyre. I didn't much care for the ending which, without spoiling too much, turns a denouement into the kind of conventional theatrics that the movie usually avoids.
THE HURT LOCKER - Jeremy Renner is the other breakout star of the year, and I've liked him even when he's been in awful movies as diverse as SWAT and NORTH COUNTRY. THE HURT LOCKER gives him a role he's born to play, and I wonder whether he'll ever be able to play anything but: a jockish, slightly thoughtful dude who is only happy when he's in some kind of immanent danger. THE HURT LOCKER is driven primarily by the performances of Renner and Anthony Mackie (who deserved a nomination but stupidly didn't get one), and the overt political commentary that has produced a number of forgettable movies about Iraq is gone here. Kathryn Bigelow treats the film as a character study under duress, and it works as such. That said, I wasn't as entranced as most audiences: it was fine piece of craftsmanship and a nicely intimate portrait, but nothing particularly profound or fascinating.
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS - Here is my favorite of the nominated films: like all Tarantino movies it is in love with movies, but this one is brash and bold enough to make the movies a means of liberation and history. My only complaint is that it isn't long enough: we needed another scene of the Basterds wreaking havoc in France. All the polyglots are remarkable: not only Christoph Waltz but also the many German and French speakers who make up the other heroes and villains - every beat they hit is just right. Tarantino takes two of his loves - World War II action movies and Sergio Leone Superhero Spaghetti Westerns - and maps it onto a historical terrain; the result reminds of the virtues and glorious excesses of both (their music, their revisionist history, their archetypes, their killer dialogue).
PRECIOUS - Didn't see it . . .
A SERIOUS MAN - It's probably my least favorite Coen Brothers movie other than the two in between THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I've noted before that the Coens are experts at diving into a dialect and a sub-culture and putting their own joyfully weird spin on it. A SERIOUS MAN, however, is a prolonged exercise in nihilism, both implicitly and explicitly, and in many ways this very, very Jewish movie resembles that most famous of Hebrew tales of suffering: the book of Job, with its endless suffering and backseat religious commentary. The Coens sit us through every painful moment: ineffectual Rabbis, Lawyers who need retainer fees, and (of course) a really stiflingly filmed Bar Mitzvah. It's the one Coen brothers movie that I've appreciated more than liked.
UP - I saw UP at a drive-thru with my girlfriend on a beautiful summer evening. So obviously I was in a good mood. I laughed the whole time - it's one of two Pixar movies that captures the goofy, go-for-broke charm and imagination of Disney flicks (RATATOUILLE is the other). The opening scenes are wistful and sad and go places that animated films uses don't.
UP IN THE AIR - I do NOT understand why everyone is freaking out about this movie or about George Clooney's performance. I've heard that Clooney is vulnerable, which means that this is the first movie he's made where he's allowed himself to look older than normal. But, come on . . . George Clooney is from Wisconsin and has two unglamorous sisters? And I found his "job" a bit disingenuous: every scene sounded scripted to give Clooney the winning shot. The best scenes involved the two females: Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga, but the worst had Clooney brazenly praising the airline industry. Even the final revelations didn't make this shallow; you leave thinking that American Airlines is an awesome company.
That's it!
| By Andytown | 6:41 PM | Comments (1)
February 28, 2010
MY ENEMIES LIST
MY ENEMIES LIST
(IF YOURE ON IT, LOOK OUT!)
1. DONALD TRUMP - YOURE WORTHLESS
2. E.E. CUMMINGS - CAPITALIZE YOUR NAME, MORON!
3. KATHERINE HEPBURN - YECH!!!!!!
4. PHILLIP RIVERS - I'M SORRY, I DON'T LIKE YOU AND I NEVER DID
5. FATS DOMINO - JOKES OVER, YOU'RE TO FAT.
6. BREAKFAST - YOURE NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY; I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS
7. MITCH ALBOM - NO!!!!!!!!!!!
8. ANDY RODDICK - I WOULDN'T PAY TO WATCH YOU HIT A TENNIS BALL IF MY LIFE DEPENDED ON IT
9. ANGELA LANSBURY - THAT'S RIGHT, I DON'T LIKE YOU, AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
10. GEORGE STEPHANUPHOLOUS - NOBODY CAN SPELL YOUR NAME RIGHT, YOU WEIRDO
11. LORNE MICHAELS - YOU FILTHY STINKING IDIOT
12. SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE - I HATE YOU AND THE SNOTBALL DETECTIVE STORIES YOU INFECTED THE WORLD WITH
13. THOSE IRISH HIPPIES FROM THE MOVIE "ONCE" - GET A HAIRCUT AND STOP SINGING, YOU DIRTBAGS
14. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV - YOU ARE THE WORST WORLD LEADER WHO EVER LIVED AND YOU KNOW IT
15. THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. - MORE LIKE THE (NOT) NOTORIOUS B.A.D.
16. PARLIAMENT - YOU BEAUROCRATIC GAP-TOOTHED MEATHEADS
17. DICK TRACY - YOU COULDN'T STOP A TRAIN THAT WASN'T MOVING, YOU BORING GUMSHOE
18. NEIL ARMSTRONG - YOU'RE ONE GIANT LEAP FOR JERKS.
19. JOSE CANSECO - STAY AWAY FROM ME!
20. MARTIN SHORT - YOU REMIND ME OF THIS KID IN MY FIRST GRADE CLASS AND I DIDN'T LIKE HIM EITHER
| By Andytown | 12:31 PM | Comments (3)
February 8, 2010
BEST ALBUM OF THE DECADE #4: ARCADE FIRE - FUNERAL
Remember those ads for THE DARK KNIGHT: "Why So Serious?" I'd like to ask that question to Win Butler and his memorial to a burning arcade, but I'm afraid he might cheer up. Butler's seriousness - one part Eeyore, one part U2, one parts a Clash-esque group of freedom fighters with guitars instead of guns - has resulted in two loud, seriously interesting albums. As I noted re: NEON BIBLE, there's nothing here that reeks of irony or the silliness that most bands indulge even amidst talking about pain and memory.
A lot of people have read the first song, "Neighborhood #1: Tunnels" as some of post-apocalyptic nightmare. I don't: it seems like a nine year old boy try to talk a nine year old girl into running away with him and imagining the future. But what does he imagine in the future? Missing his parents. But the closing lines, where a "golden hymn" is capable of "purifying" his mind seems to be more mission statement than metaphor. We are dealing with someone who thinks music can change the world, who writes rock and roll polemics about being enslaved by modernity, and who harbors no mythologies about his childhood yet misses it dreadfully.
A lot of people think I'm taking their solemnity too seriously (haha), but I've yet to find any moment that seems like a throw-away. The second song compares a prodigalolder brother to a Russian dog who was sent to space to die. The Neighborhood is a prison, parents are wardens who we love nonetheless; the images of the neighborhood possess an otherworldly mystery: the shadows and streetlights hide secrets.
A while back I read a tome called GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE by some Rolling Stone writer, which did a pretty thorough (if typical) job of tracing the suburb from its earliest development and makes grim predictions (in 1993) that have more or less come true. If anything, that narrative seems a little familiar, and the Arcade Fire has done a nice job of complicating that. No matter how mechanical the reproduction of suburbs are, we will invest our "neighborhoods" with meaning nonetheless. We will memorialize its mysteries, amplify its secrets, mythologize its events, and make it the idyllic place it never was. And then we won't, which is why the words "Wake Up" are divested of their empowering potential: in this case, it's necessary to adjust, to feel things deeper, and to realize that its all a lie.
I admit my analysis of this album is sketchy. I really don't have the skills to do it justice. But if you can tell me that the last lines of the album harbor some hope, you'll defy me. Instead I think these guys are like Jeremiah-esque prophets, deeply invested in some tragedies that the rest of us ignore. Those lyrics:
I like the peace
in the backseat,
I don't have to drive,
I don't have to speak,
I can watch the country side
Alice died
in the night,
I've been learning to drive.
My whole life,
I've been learning.
| By Andytown | 7:28 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2010
BEST ALBUM OF THE DECADE #5: CLEM SNIDE - YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC
(FYI: This album might have actually been released in 1999 - according to the Wikipedia anyway. If you care about this, let me know and I'll mail you an apology sometime before my best of the 2010s list)
Nothing about Eef Barzelay, or the band he acts as an almost non-existent primary factor of, the rotating entity called Clem Snide is fairly original. Eef is a poet of melancholy, as were many others, and his band plays something between Alt-Country and standard Indie-Rock - this very fair Pitchfork review says so, and it's right. The band is neither particularly innovate or interesting in terms of what its been doing in a period when bands hop to the forefront by being innovate and interesting. Which is why you may not have heard of YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC, my favorite Clem Snide album (BTW, Pitchfork gave this a hyperbolically bad 2.1, saying it "begs for laugh tracks").
If Bob Dylan's melancholy was contrived to sound original, Eef's is so original it sounds contrived. When he sings, "Tonight we're going to party like its 1989," he reminds listeners like me that he participated in the same pop cultural phenomenons, and has been just as disappointed in them as harbingers of the exciting new era they were supposed to bring. 1989 had the Berlin Wall falling, and yet it was still kind of boring - there are things going on here that you might at first scoff at; like Clem Snide is being funny in the same way everyone else is. But they aren't.
THE GHOST OF FASHION, the album that followed, largely eschewed the somber melodies of this album and was their most critically and commercially popular - it featured the opening credits song to the cult-TV hit ED, but it was scrapped for the Foo Fighters song from the first season. GHOST rocks a little harder. I like listening to it, along with 2003's SOFT SPOT and 2005's END OF LOVE. But YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC combines both intimate sadness with Eef's recognition that he has to explain it. "Your Favorite Music," the title track only "makes you sad" - this is as trenchant an explanation as Nick Hornby's opening question from HIGH FIDELITY (paraphrased): "What came first, the music or the misery? Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable, or Am I miserable because I listen to pop music?"
I wrote an unsuccessful statement of purpose for grad school around Eef's transcendent "I Love the Unknown," a loose narrative about a guy who quits the job his dad gave him, refuses to love the girl who loves him, rides buses to nowhere, and tells a psychiatrist that he's afraid of "going through life feeling numb." And when he tells us in "Messiah Complex Blues" that "I wouldn't die for your sins," it's at once a rejection of faith and an endorsement of the idea of a Messiah. Nobody working in popular music has dealt with issues of faith and spirituality like Barzelay; as a cultural commentator, he's incisive without making each song a polemic. It's a shame Johnny Cash died before he could cover "Messiah Complex Blues" (or a number of CS songs; my dream album would be AMERICA V: CASH COVERS CLEM SNIDE).
Maybe, like the "favorite music" to which the title indicates, this album is supposed to make you sad. But it ends up always making me feel like I have a fellow traveler, someone who can't really articulate what's going on, but wants to bring the night alive with laughs, as he suggests as an anecdote to the awful party in "1989." I suppose everyone doesn't want to spend time with that guy, who realizes that the party isn't any fun but anticipates making fun of it later. He's kind of like that "Debby Downer" character from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, but I think you can see that mixed in a with a desire for something awesome, something "unknown," that creaks out from behind the sad violins and ironic horns. You feel like you know him.
So there's one last shoutout for my favorite band who no one has heard of.
| By Andytown | 1:07 PM | Comments (2)
January 4, 2010
TOP 50 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: 10-6
10. The Strokes, IS THIS IT?
I immediately caught onto The Strokes, hopping on an already full-to-capacity bandwagon, because they seemed loud, disgusting, and vaguely untalented. But they've proved anything but - after a few years adopting the personas of lounge singers, they're something an elder statesmen to bands who are much, much worse than them, and maybe Julian Casablancas reformed by seeing what junk he spawned. Yes this album is influential and its influence is, mostly, not very good. But I like to think of it in terms of ITS influences - Velvet Underground and Guided by Voices among them. And while this album probably isn't as incendiary as it seemed in 2001 (wow), what with the gloved hand touching the woman's bottom and all, it is only bad if you've listened to it 200 times. And I have and I still like it.
"Hard to Explain" remains one of my favorite songs of the decade - a loud homage to the kind of music they liked -
Raised in Carolina, she says:
" I'm not like that"
Trying to remind her
When we go back
I realize that devil-may-care is usually used to refer to profligate sons of extremely religious shopowners from the 1800s, but it seems to fit the vibe of the Strokes lyricizing. When they announce, in "Hard to Explain," that "this place is a zoo," they are not technically speaking in the pejorative. And "grandsons" may not understand what happened "Last 'Nite," but that - to ape Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs - is what makes it fun.
PS - you should find the bootleg copy of "New York City Cops," a song they often play live which states the titular subject is simply, "not very smart." It's so stupidly subversive . . . I saw them play it live and it was a highlight.
Best Song: "Hard to Explain"
9. Josh Ritter, THE ANIMAL YEARS
Josh Ritter falls uncomfortably into a category of singer-songwriters who lack his ambition or experimentation with lyrics. First, let's forgive him for being named "Josh" - and not "Bob" or "Bruce" and recognize that on his signature he channels them both without aping either. And that he seamlessly enters references to Laurel and Hardy that make those two black and white goofs a haunting allusion. The lack of pretension in Ritter is what makes him endure, he churns out effortlessly lines like "the keys to the kingdom gets lost inside the kingdom" (Bob) and "Packs of dogs and cigarettes For those who ain¹t done packing yet" (Bruce)
"Lillian Egypt," "Girl in the War," "Here at the Right Time," and "Good Man" are a fine introduction to Ritter's work, but many might be put off by the gravitas and poetry of the second to last song, "Thin Blue Flame."
"I became a thin blue flame" begins a song full of endless ambiguity that never gets unraveled. It's sublime - both wonderful and terrible, full of clouds, clowns, and God - if he's up there - "in a cold dark room." Questions are being asked without being phrased as questions, and Ritter lets the modernist imagery take over along the way with a relatively simple sound. It gets louder, then softer, then louder - Springsteen's Nebraska mixed with Dylan's imagery without, and I have to emphasize this, stealing from either. Were it an actual poem, it probably wouldn't be published in the NEW YORKER, but its great stuff nonetheless, reaching transcendence through some pretty weird passageways - unlike some of these guys, Ritter doesn't sound like he's too enamored with his college creative writing class.
"The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts They were coming together they pulling apart And angels everywhere were in my midst In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed I wondered what it was I'd been looking for up above Heaven is so big there ain¹t no need to look up So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air Only a full house gonna have a prayer"
Ritter's next album, THE HISTORICAL CONQUEST OF JOSH RITTER, was something of a letdown, but I know people who love it (update: I listened to it again and enjoyed it more). But this album nears perfection in a way that a guy this new to the world shouldn't be able to.
Best Song: Thin Blue Flame
8. Destroyer, DESTROYERS RUBIES
Yes, Dan Bejar is a troubadour - that's not a back-handed compliment. His lyrics are dense, vaguely melodic, full of wild abstractions and lines that seem lifted out of Finnegan's Wake. It isn't, obviously, for everyone; the songs Bejar sings are usually the weirdest on any of the New Pornographers albums, and occasionally the most awesome (as on Challengers). And Bejar has a cult like no other - the scarily exhaustive Destroyer Wiki takes some of the mystery out of what should be endlessly complex: telling us, for instance, that the lines "typical me, typical me" in track one ("Rubies") are ripped from a Smiths song. In fact, the Wiki records about six references to iconic bands or singers in "Rubies" alone.
But no matter what you can tease out of a typical Destroyer song, what remains magical is what you cannot. And it's wild poetry, indeed - carried along by an epic sense of place and mood. Each song on "Rubies" captures the feeling that Bejar strives for on all of his albums, as Andy Battaglia writes from the AV Club, "a literary exercise in just how far songs can stretch to make sense of the words within them."
Bejar teases us by making the songs sound so DAMN meaningful - each one capturing a memory that we'll never be able to decipher, so we have live in the moment he captures musically. But his images, while approaching some kind of redundant imagism for its own sake, always reflect rather than deflect his creative urge, his desire to do something that no one else is doing. And it that, he is wildly successful.
Best Song: "Your Blues"
7. Radiohead, KID A
There is nothing else to be said about this album. I agree with all the praise it gets. It did what few similar projects did: built on an agreed-upon masterpiece with something new and equally celebrated. KID A did all the things we expected of Radiohead, while doing them in ways that none of us imagined they would. My narrative with Radiohead, unlike most, begins with KID A - it was the album I understood all the rest of them through: the earlier poppier sound of THE BENDS and the grand achievement of OK COMPUTER, followed by the dissonant dissent of HAIL TO THE THIEF. That its B-Sides, as of yet unloved by me, make many top 50 lists is an understatement to the creative capital this band possessed in the early ots.
I confuse a lot of people with my insistence that VANILLA SKY is a wonderful, albeit extremely flawed, movie and it was hearing "Everything In Its Right Place" as Tom Cruise drives through an unoccupied New York that only exists in his dreams, that made me give KID A another listen; I got it. So did everyone else. Thanks Cameron Crowe.
Best Song: "Everything In Its Right Place"
6. Wilco, YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT
Another album that really doesn't need much revisiting from me, but I'll reflect on a few songs.
"Heavy Metal Drummer" is one of the songs that makes me happier about music, and the opening lines, "I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands I used to go see in the landing in the summer" could begin a novel. It hints at a memory at once lucid and elusive: there's a girl who loved those drummers, and there's innocence that paints the landing and the music that happened there as an impossible paradise: that is EXACTLY the way we reminisce about our teenage years: that Wilco goes for the shameless romanticism of this song is why so many people love them, I think, and it's the harbinger of their last two albums, each of which have taken this wistful moment and elaborated on it. And fittingly enough, there is some pretty superlative drumwork.
But there's also the deep, simple longing of "Poor Places" ("I really want to see you tonight"), the coded dissent of "War on War," and the giddy euphoria of "I've the Man Who Loves You." I'm always struck by how the bizarre lyrics of "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" gradually become more cohesive, how it moves from the surreal nonsense of an "American Aquarium Drinker" to "What I was thinking when I let you back in."
The story behind this album is more momentous than the album itself, but the drama behind its production and release, and the way it seemed to be a mirror for every artist/"the man" dichotomy that ever played out, tends to be unnecessary background noise for the album itself. That's unfortunate, yet necessary. Too many people have seen I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART and saw the band at their most griping (which, all things considered, was handled with considerable maturity). Jeff Bennett's recent death was an unhappy ending to that narrative, but it should not challenge the best album they've ever made.
Best Song: "Poor Places"
TOP 5 TO COME (Individually wrapped)
| By Andytown | 2:37 PM | Comments (0)