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November 21, 2009
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: 40-31
(I've taken out the intrusive album covers, but kept the music)
40. The New Pornographers, CHALLENGERS
My favorite NP album is everyone else's least favorite. I feel TWIN CINEMA and MASS ROMANTIC are a lot of nice parts that don't really come together perfectly - like a "Best of" compilation. Being a supergroup has its issues, and the magic of the Pornos is that they bring together all these disparate points and make bellowing pop music - it obscures the random emptiness within: the messed-up poetry that doesn't really go anywhere. With songs like "Challengers" and "Myriad Harbor," CHALLENGERS approaches the coherence that their previous efforts lack; a lack, I realize, that many champion. But in this case I could see them not for the sum of their talented parts, and it's the one time I haven't wished I was listening to one of their solo efforts. The best song (below) is the perfect combination of Carl Newman's power-pop and Dan Bejar's rambling, troubadour instincts.
Best Song: "Myriad Harbor"
39. The Walkmen, YOU & ME
Last December, I wrote "YOU & ME doesn't reach for the rafters, but it tends to explode into passionate bursts that defy the ethos of the album: what is supposed to be a relatively subdued affair end ups transcendent by the sheer force of personality of the Walkmen." I still think this is an inspired effort by the group, who remain relatively obscure because they don't use their obvious skills to put out anything that would be played on the radio. The sparse, kind of lonely lyrics are augmented (for the first time) by a kind-of tinny echo, particularly on track 1, side 1 - "Donde Esta La Playa." The gang is describing a world that they're kind of tired of living in but don't want to leave - the momentary highs and memorable defeats. It's impressive work.
Best Song: "A Long Time Ahead of Us"
38. Radiohead, HAIL TO THE THIEF
I've had much to say about my failure to appreciate or even admire AMNESIAC. It kind of reminds me of this puzzle on the back of a box that Lisa finds in THE SIMPSONS; all of her friends get it immediately, but she can't. If AMNESIAC is that box, I've looked at it for a while, and I can't figure out the puzzle, and I'm getting tired of the puzzle. My strategy is, when I'm driving, to listen to all the Radiohead albums in order, as to better appreciate it. It hasn't worked, mainly because as I'm listening to the noise and cluttered sound of "I Might Be Wrong," I'm just wanting to skip ahead to HAIL TO THE THIEF.
Not that THIEF is The Beach Boys in terms of its listenability, but its full of an indecipherable anger that at least makes it exciting. In some ways, this seems like the most perfect achievement of both their intellect and their creative capacities, even if it is their fourth best album.
Best Song: "When I End and You Begin (The Sky is Falling In.)
37. Neko Case, FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD
I saw Neko in 2006. She was a little, red person singing into a bad sound system. I didn't realize how little until she was inadvertently standing next to me. It's hard to believe that such a powerful voice comes out of such a little person; she's incredibly coordinated, holding the guitar and balancing herself while not exactly pulling a Janis Joplin on stage in terms of physical activity. FOX CONFESSOR may not be her most assured album - that's MIDDLE CYCLONE, or her mission statement - that would be BLACKLISTED. But FOX offers her telling stories, singing songs about people who have it worse than she does, reflexive and wistful yet always passionate.
Best Song: "Star Witness"
36. Eef Barzelay, BITTER HONEY
"That was my ass you saw bouncing
Next to Ludacris
It was only on screen for a second
But it was kinda hard to miss
And all those other hoochie skanks
They ain't got sh*t on me
And one of Nelly's bodyguards
He totally agreed"
When Eef and Clem Snide broke up (before the eventually got back together), nobody really noticed. Eef was the mastermind of the group, and I hoped for and got the best out of his solo career. His songs are almost anachronistic in their creativity. If it weren't for his skills as a musician, Eef might be Weird Al or Allan Sherman - the above lyrics from the title track are as much a rhetorical exercise as any kind of familiar song-writing. Eef embodies a dancer at some kind of hip-hop music awards, at first grotesque, then tragic, ultimately sad in her self-awareness, but finally confident: "Don't hate me 'cuz I know just what this world is all about."
On BITTER HONEY and LOSE BIG, Eef is typically morose but atypically low-key. Clem Snide records often balanced out Eef's spleen with some foot tappers that were only slyly pessimistic. Here he drops the sly - but he's still the wordsmith and underrated tunesman that he was when was in Clem.
Best Song: "The Ballad of Bitter Honey"
35. Clem Snide - END OF LOVE
The last album before Eef embarked on his solo-career is odd because its upbeatness doesn't anticipate what would come after. "Jews for Jesus Blues" and "The Sound of German Hip-Hop" could make a Jens Lekman album, while "Fill Me With Your Light" resists the irony-barometer that shoots mercury toward the ceiling on any other album. Even "End of Love," ostensibly a song about a break-up, wouldn't sound out of place at the Grand Ol' Opry with its twang and upbeat melody. "Something Beautiful" makes every CS compilation I've ever made - warm and goofy dork rock, expertly produced. It's Clem at their funniest and least bitter, a fitting goodbye to music they wouldn't make anymore once Eef left the band behind.
Best Song: "The Sound of German Hip Hop"
34. Bloc Party - A WEEKEND IN THE CITY
It's unfair to put the British supercool of Bloc Party above the bespectacled doofus who sings Clem Snide. WEEKEND didn't capture America the way it did its native soil, where political statements are judged less for aesthetic reasons than for the way they capture the reigning consciousness. For all their cool, these guys are doom-and-gloom prophets. You can't hunt for witches, after all, unless there are witches, and there seems to be an equal danger to giving up as there is fighting back. That song - "Hunting for Witches" - is a response to the 2005 bombings; so we're in that camp, where a gro The Bloc doesn't seem as smart as most of their Brit counterparts; while they channel the rage of The Clash on this album, they certainly fail to reproduce it. But what's left is a pretty fantastic bunch of songs, loud with energy and invention.
Bloc Party's other two albums haven't had the rotation on my Ipod that WEEKEND has had. It's clearly their best album, but there is still hope they might have their best work yet to come.
Best Song: "Hunting for Witches"
33. Wilco - SKY BLUE SKY
I got pretty pissed off about the critical lashing that this album got. Pitchfork called it "dad rock," which was at once disingenuous and a catch-all criticism for all the things people don't like about post 2003 Wilco. I admit that I'm not as in love with their most recent album, but SKY BLUE SKY is the most quiet work they've done in quite a while, at least since BEING THERE. It's more whimsical, less concerned with using dissonance to say important things that their lyrics don't. At the time, I was pretty angry with all those who felt the direction of their career should go more towards the quirky variations of A GHOST IS BORN; but now I tend to see SKY BLUE SKY as an album that should announce better things, rather than coming late in a declining discography. But that's always been one of the things that Wilco does best, defying expectations while exceeding them. I believe that SKY BLUE SKY does this as well as any of their previous efforts. Were I to introduce someone to the band, I'd use this one.
Best Song: "Sky Blue Sky"
32. TV on the Radio - RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN
Perhaps TV on the Radio felt old by the time they first appeared because everyone in Williamsburg had gone out drinking with them. But if you weren't one of those lucky few (a small portion of the population who makes up a huge portion of its defining finicky tastes), there's something pretty cool about the mélange of sounds that they produce. I imagine that in the 'Burg they were cool five seconds before they were uncool, but COOKIE MOUNTAIN resonates because it is loaded to the boiling point with great songs, each trying to outdo each other. It doesn't share the reserve of its original listeners, and that's why TV continues to matter. "I Was a Lover" tells you this is going to be a really good listen, and it has been for each of the 100 times I do. Strangely, this is some of my favorite study music.
Best Song: "Dirty Whirl"
31. Death Cab for Cutie - PLANS
I don't enjoy any DCFC album except this one, and this is the one that most avid fans get the least excited about. I find it to be a pretty beautiful album; poetic yet lively and refreshingly uncool. "Marching Bands of Manhattan" actually seems to be about marching bands, while "Someday You Will Be Loved" - for some reason - reminds me of the closing credits song from BETTER OFF DEAD. I often refer to acts like DCFC less as emo (it doesn't seem to fit), nor even as navel/shoe gazers: I saw them live and they actually rocked pretty hard. But "Wuss Rock" is the way I choose to categorize them, and it's not as pejorative as it sounds even if it is at best a back-handed compliment. Not everyone can be NWA, or even the MC5, and the Death Cab offers the best of its kind. While most argue that TRANSATLANTICISM is the best of their catalog, I prefer the gentle, slightly angry moans of PLANS.
Best Song: "I Will Follow You Into the Dark."
| By Andytown | 1:06 PM