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December 27, 2009

BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE 20-11

20. Sigur Ros, ( )

I would say something witty like "these guys would be like the Beatles and there would be an Icelandic invasion if we could pronounce their names," but that would be stupid. I don't possess the music vocabulary to write about what's going on in their songs, and I don't speak Icelandic, so only the Wikipedia can help me know, for instance, that their name means "White Rose" and that one of their members goes by "Goggi."

But every Sigur Ros album is singularly stunning in a way that enhances the last and anticipates the next. This is typically strong stuff, perhaps not as resonant or revelatory as 1999's AGAETIS BYRUM, and a bit more dissonant, but it's an album you can both admire and like. I found myself, during a bleak February (the worst month for high school teachers), rotating between AGAETIS, ( ), and TAKK constantly. I have trouble distinguishing them, but I rarely was disappointed when it was time for a specific album to come up. And that's all I can say about it.

Best Song: I dunno . . . they all blend together; here's one.

19. Peter, Bjorn, and John, WRITERS BLOCK

WRITERS BLOCK is a departure for an electro-heavy band I don't listen otherwise - a warm, goofy, infectious compilation. Songs from it are always in my top 25 most listened on Itunes, particularly the much-mixed most popular track "Old Folks" but also the haunting last tracks "Roll The Credits" and "Old Cow." There isn't a bad song on this album, which is full of interesting sounds. There's an interesting narrative here that I've never made time to follow, something that wavers between joyous reflection and post-relationship malaise, which makes any of these songs a proof-text for whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment.

Best Song: Objects of my Affection

18. British Sea Power, THE DECLINE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

I won't praise this justly praised, very loud, very energetic effort from this curiously named non-naval force. Ultimately, I prefer a BSP mix from their three albums (DECLINE, OPEN SEASON, DO YOU LIKE ROCK MUSIC?), but their first is their signature and features all their best qualities: it always seems like they're a poor-man's someband or another, but they always end up impressing me with their ability to bring together disparate elements. BSP came along in the middle of the "weird guys wearing weird costumes being weird in concert" phase, and it wasn't as original as the Flaming Lips, who were popping out of pods and dressed as rabbits. So they always seem to be hanging on someone else's coattails.

But here's the thing: there is NO bad song on this album, and only about two or three aren't achingly awesome. "Lately" could be expanded into a symphony, and at 14 minutes, its one of the few songs that long that I would call too short. It blends dissonance and the clear talents of everyone in the band into questions about what it really means to make music, and does it while proudly displaying the same absurdity as other songs. If there's one thing I could do to this album, it's this - end the album with the charming, should-be-radio-hit "Blackout;" as it is, it's disjointed to hear this pretty piece of pop next to the epic "Lately." But even if its parts don't always come together, they're pretty amazing to see in pieces.

Best Song: Blackout

17. Spiritualized, SONGS IN A&E

I'll just quote what I said last year when I picked it as my favorite album of year: "Jason Pierce has already created a cult that, on a microcosm scale, Morrisey might be jealous of. Spacemen 3 are godfathers of about five different genres, and Spiritualized emerges to remind everyone they exist every so often. Pierce resists the cult by disappearing into other projects, but Spiritualized offers him the front-man job he sometimes resists, but clearly deserves.
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN WE ARE FLOATING IN SPACE may remain the defining Spiritualized album, and with good reason, but SONGS IN A&E is clearly his most personal work. Written during or after the long stint Pierce spent in the Accident and Emergency Ward because of respiratory failure (hence A&E), these SONGS form an at-times magical concept album about the cruel divide between passionate and unrequited love. Pierce competently works in a variety of noises (church bells, computer sounds) that enhance rather than distract, and the harmonies form touching chapters in between the songs that wear the influences of Pierce's friends and idols in every second (Springsteen, Daniel Johnston).
Critics raved about SONGS when it came out, but it's been noticeably absent on the year end best lists. But in a year when bands repeated themselves to good effect, I'm going with the ambitious power-drive of A&E as the best of the year."
Best Song: Soul on Fire

16. Spoon, GA GA GA GA GA GA

An album that I find myself listening to constantly - I'll argue with anyone that this is the best one they've ever put out. It captures their gift for the lost art of the three minute pop song - even the one that goes nearly five minutes feels like a short but perfect moment. The opening beats of "Don't Make a Target" are rhythmic in a way that anticipates the later songs, but there's something lonely and desolate even among the energy - like coming into the middle of a party. "The Ghost of You Lingers" is about as deep as they get: a lot of surface fears articulated with the utmost gravitas, ultimately making a lot of simple yet clear points about losing people and trying to forget them. We'll never know if that's the appropriate way to listen to this song, or this album, or if its just the meaningless words that accompany the experimental bombast, but it works.

Best Song: "The Underdog"

15. Sufjan Stevens, ILLINOIS

The grand mission that hasn't been fulfilled: Suf's plan to make an album about all fifty states. So far, he's 48 short, and in the years since his stunning breakthrough outside more esoteric circles, he's only put out a superlative B-sides albums, yearly awesome and unironic Christmas records, and some quirky side-projects. ILLINOIS remains as the harbinger of a follow-up that never was, and the ensuing response . . . perhaps that's why it never happened.

In "Chicago," the most oft-played of the bunch, Sufjan sings, "I fell in love with a place, in my mind, in my mind," and its that passion that carries the whole album - a sympathy matched with a completely unique quirkiness that drew so many fans to this weird, infectious concept piece. "John Wayne Gacy" does not hide its curiosity behinds layers of self-reference; it's the kind of story that has to be told if you want to understand a place, whether in your mind or elsewhere. Sufjan's commitment to this place is why I'm disappointed he hasn't continued to explore other significant places.

ILLINOIS still finds new fans, and I imagine that it will resonate with younger audiences (for good reasons) more than any other album of this decade.

Best Song: "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!"

14. Beck, SEA CHANGE

My favorite Beck album is his most significant departure; it's often debated among Beck fans, as it signals a move away from the experimental goofball that everyone fell in love with. As he oscillates between those two personalities, I hardly prefer one to the other, but am glad that such a talented human being is willing to explore both sounds. We could see the Beck of "Mutations" or "Odelay" taking a title like "Guess I'm Doing Fine" as his latest collage of fascinating sounds, but it's actually a pretty accurate way of the way this album feels. "Paper Tiger" is gloomy and eerily deprecating while the optimism of "Sunday Sun" gets lost in everything that's going on around it; who ever thought Beck would be compared to Nick Drake? But that's the mood that occurs here.

Beck had a good decade, but his star has neither risen nor fallen; an album like SEA CHANGE isn't likely to open him up to more audiences, but it further endeared to an artist I liked, and made me like him more.

Best Song: "Paper Tiger"

13. AC Newman, GET GUILTY

Were I to make a "Best of 2009" list, it would be short. I didn't freak out quite as much about any of the albums that most people loved - Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Phoenix, The Dirty Projectors - and the only two that I find myself repeatedly listening to were by members of the New Pornographers - Neko Case's MIDDLE CYCLONE and A.C. Newman's awesome and mostly-unheard of GET GUILTY. It's a grand album, from its opening licks that tells you exactly what you're going to get: Newman's inimitable ability to create diverse harmonies bound by a common mood and energy.

On the opening line of the opening track, Newman sings, "There are about ten or twelve things that I can teach you; make of that what you will." When he gets to the last one, he's telling us, "You have to got to be . . . ****ing kidding me." That's what we're dealing with here - the dance floor rhythms of "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer" and the dour indecipherability of "Young Atlantis." Newman rocks this sucker out; I can listen to every one of these songs at any moment of my day. To describe it would be ridiculous, so I won't, but continue to endorse it so that Newman finds new fans.

Best Song: All My Days and All My Days Off

12. Bishop Allen, CHARM SCHOOL

My love for Bishop Allen and their debut album is linked to my discovery of mumblecore. MUTUAL APPRECIATION - which will show up on my fave films of the decade - starred B.A. frontman Justin Rice, a bespectacled doofus with a good attitude. "Things are what you make of them," he tells us, on a song that got me through a tough period of my life, or "Ghosts are good company." He does a weird remix of "Eve of Destruction" that shows his gifts for entering stories In Media Res. And "Bishop Allen Drive" is achingly romantic without being about romance. These guys have a gift for picking stellar back-up singers, like the luminous Kate Dollenmayer, mumblecore star of FUNNY HAHA.

The album itself features an ambitious array of allusion and anachronism (and alliteration!), which makes them seem Decemberist-lite, though Charm School came out before the Dec.s breakthrough, PICARESQUE. It features an interesting sampling of Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" that takes that title and applies it more universally, drawing out the alluring melody of the original while sacrificing the dated draft-card burning doom and gloom. And "Things Are What You Make Of Them" should become a mantra, particularly its closing verse: "and you know what I mean; yeah you know what I mean." But it never became a hipster rallying cry, even as its taken on a lot of significance with me.

CHARM SCHOOL may ultimately be too twee for those who got really excited about Animal Collective or, for that matter, Nirvana. It's an album and a band that doesn't seem interested in any of the bigger issues, and yet their poppy roots still sound experimental; that's probably why, outside of "Click Click Click" (from 2nd album THE BROKEN STRING, and the soundtrack to a camera commercial), they've yet to show up anywhere except the random Independent movie soundtrack. But this an affecting and effective album, an album whose surprising mix of whimsy and melancholy acted as the soundtrack for a turbulent moment I wanted to end, yet remains as residue for what I think I like about the things that I like. And you know what I mean. Yeah, you know what I mean.

Best Song: Things Are What You Make of Them (this is an interesting version, different from the album, that was used for the craptastical farce "Saved," and inexplicably is scoring a bunch of highlights from HALO - I guess b/c he repeats the word "Halo or Hello")

11. Pedro The Lion, CONTROL

My introduction to Pedro still stands as my sentimental favorite, and no amount of David Bazan's neuroses is going to make me dislike this album. Bazan made his name as a darling of the Christian rock crowd, but CONTROL signals the break (I think) from the early PG-rated stuff to the ironic and angry energy of CONTROL. At first adamant about his faith, Bazan has since been elusive, and the results have been surprising. CONTROL marks the last good work he's done, and I'll argue that with anyone (though ACHILLES HEEL, the last official Pedro the Lion, has its moments).

On control, Bazan's anger often takes the form of an overwhelming frustration, put to music and given exclamation by his wit - in Bazan's ruminations about sex, capitalism, childhood, and some of the big questions, there's always the welcome aspect that he doesn't understand any of them, and that makes his commentary less incisive, more personal.

Bazan sometimes reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Krusty the Klown becomes a rage-fueled stand-up comic, and that makes his sometimes-audience, me among them, the Homer Simpson who shouts out things like "Don't you hate pants?" We want Bazan to articulate our frustrations, and he used to do it as well as anyone - without preaching to us, where the anger on the surface collides with the intellect and curiosity beneath it.

Best Song: Indian Summer; which isn't available, so here's the equally good Magazine

| By Andytown | 2:25 PM

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Posted by: Seth at December 27, 2009 5:24 PM

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