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November 30, 2009
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE 30-21
30. The Arcade Fire, NEON BIBLE
There is a humorless earnestness to the best Arcade Fire songs; its best accomplishment is that these pretensions are not themselves laughable. When I saw Win Butler smash a guitar on Saturday Night Live in '07, I realized that he (like Jack White) was the kind of kid who really really wanted to be a rock star, but was experiencing the discomfort of being a critical darling. That mix of introspective integrity and showmanship is what makes the best songs so damn stirring - "Intervention" uses allusions mystical, historical, and spiritual in a way equally transcendent and unusual, and it is carried along by music that doesn't bear a trace of irony. If you can find the irony in the could-be-jokey title "My Body is a Cage," you'll defy me. It means what it says; the predicate nominative is a substitution for both the physical body and the body of work that Win sings about. Stuff controls him, nuff said.
These songs are often about being lonely even when you don't want to be, or occasionally they're about Haiti or some unnamed revolution. When people die in an Arcade Fire, it's a cause for a dirge, not a reflection. It's a tribute to the band's consistency and craft that no song on the album outdoes the others. They don't quite outdo the instant classic that was their first album, but they don't denigrate it either.
Best Song: "Intervention"
29. The Headlights, SOME RACING SOME STOPPING
In terms of listenabiliy, no album on this list exceeds SOME RACING SOME STOPPING. I saw them live in 2005, opening for a friends' band. I liked them then, but they've exceeded my expectations. The opening beats of "Cherry Tulips" signal the kind of absurdly joyful that follows. They're charming in the off-putting poetry they produce, capturing the fun that they must have in writing these songs and playing together. Maybe there is an angst beneath the surface here, but I've never noticed it and I listen to this album repeatedly (though their recent follow-up, WILDLIFE, venture into some darker territory). There's a lot going on in these songs - instrumentally, mainly, but these remain to score the soundtrack of someone's life who isn't rereading THE BELL JAR.
Listen: I have been trying to turn you on to this band for a long time. And you aren't listening. I am still the only person I know who likes them. I got all excited that they were coming to DC only to be met by numerous shrugs. Go to their Myspace page, buy this album. Get caught in the headlights.
Best Song: "Cherry Tulips"
28. Johnny Cash, AMERICA IV: THE MAN COMES AROUND
Not an album per se (which explains why its lower on the list), but it contains many of the songs that we associate with the Man in Black before he died. "The Man Comes Around" is grainy and apocalyptic, announcing the things he can do with his voice that he couldn't then do with his body. It was one of the last songs he wrote before he died. Mostly full of covers, there is a fascinating cover of "Personal Jesus" - perhaps overdone by the impresarioship of Rick Rubin - alongside more idiosyncratic stuff like "Desperado," "In My Life," and "Danny Boy." But all of the songs on the album, new and old, are all scenery for the cultural moment that was his rendition of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt."
I have never actually sat down to think of the best covers ever. It would be a long list, and one impossible to quantify. How does "Twist and Shout" compare with the myriad versions of "Hallelujah"? When a cover outdoes its predecessor it seems to negate the original; Cash certainly doesn't do that - as the now-legendary video proves, Cash uses it to reinvent his mythology and reduce his legend while cementing his status as one of the grandest of iconoclasts. Maybe this was Rubin's baby; Trent Reznor wasn't overjoyed that it had the potential to turn into a top 40 country hit. But Cash used this opportunity as a glorious swan song, as understated but powerful as the man himself, a fitting end for someone who needed a fitting end.
Best Song: "Hurt"
27. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, NO MORE SHALL WE PART
Most Cave fans grow frustrated at the influence of Warren Ellis, who popped on the scene and made Nick light years less disgusting. Until Ellis came along, you could still hear the traces of the guy who growled into the microphone for The Birthday Party. Along with 1997's THE BOATMANS CALL (my favorite Cave album), NO MORE SHALL WE PART is the kind of philosophical mission statement many hoped he would never make. But the guy writes novels, screenplays, poetry . . . we may as well get used to the fact that he's going to want to pontificate occasionally. And if it's this good, I don't mind. Cave would combine his former self with the new, more notably seriously post-Ellis version on the albums that followed - a weird, fascinating mismatch of allusion, street violence, and his gutter voice.
But PART demands your attention. "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" is probably the song that most ardent Seeds fan reject, but I find it to be one of his most authentic: Cave songs always operate between an hopeless present, a past that's worth forgetting, and a future that seems dire at best. But imagination has always been the Cave paradise; it's the place where he can escape the intellectual conundrums he always finds himself in (best exemplified on CALL, but hear too). Ironically, the snow is a grave instead of a winter wonderland, but the metaphor works to belie the emptiness he feels with some kind of surface beauty. Elsewhere, he's just as dire, but the piano gives us a glimpse of hope - in "God is in the House" he actually bothers to rhyme, and the results are off-puttingly catchy. This is the best album of an underrated prolific decade for Cave.
Best Song: "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow"
26. Brian Wilson, SMILE
The story is something like this: Brian Wilson wanted to create the greatest album ever made to outdo SGT. PEPPERS, but Mike Love had a really cool song about the cream he used in his hair. They got into an argument and Wilson ran to his bedroom and didn't come out until 1988, when he sang back-up vocals on "Kokomo" and made an uncomfortable cameo in FULL HOUSE. Then in 2004, he finally released that greatest album ever. Who knows what it would have been? We gets his "Good Vibrations," which is no better or worse than the original, and there's the kind of pop-whimsy (probably the result of collaborator Van Dyke Parks) that's miles removed from the cool guy fantasies of "I Get Around." Not as lonely as the later SURFS UP, and not as melodic as PET SOUNDS, SMILE may have ultimately been a disappointment in its own day. But these days it's pretty fantastic - the kind of concept album that started concept albums, and acts without the knowledge of anything that has happened since 1966. "Heroes and Villains" is one of the greatest of unheralded pop songs: it evokes the rapidly declining optimism of the late 60s while painting the world in a dualistic prism that is more complicated than it seemed. If SMILE lacks the killer tracks of the PET SOUNDS-era Beach Boys, it makes up for it by producing a coherent piece in the absence of 30-odd years of good Wilson-produced albums (the last was 1976's LOVE YOU). You have to listen to this thing the whole way through; trust me.
Wilson is apparently just as weird as he ever was, but I could imagine him becoming a dynamite producer for those bands who are made careers off the first time they heard "God Only Knows." That probably won't happen - instead he's off doing other unusual projects - his last, THAT LUCKY OLD SUN, was an amusing diversion. But SMILE remains. We don't have to piece together the fragments, which was kind of fun, but we see the tantalizing vision, however far removed from its most productive period.
Best Song: "Heroes and Villains"
25. Wolf Parade, APOLOGIES TO THE QUEEN MARY
Like their contemporary break-outers, Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade's debut is solemn and intense - brimming-to-exploding with suspicions toward technology and convention, revisiting a past that is equally troubling and necessary. Since then, Spencer Krug has shown a sense of humor, realizing that songs with that apply the theremin are funny whether you want them to be or not. But that didn't result in a better album than APOLOGIES, which relies on its power more than its listenability, and somehow comes out being an album with a remarkable degree of replay.
Released in 2005, APOLOGIES gets lost in the mix of the decades' best - even on my own Ipod. I often forget I have it, and then find myself wanting to listen to it. Its best songs are haunting - as "Same Ghost Every Night" is achingly symbolic and impressively serious. Ghosts are a central theme to this album: haunting memories, lost childhoods, and a supernatural that might be off not existing.
Best Song: "Modern World"
24. Of Montreal, THE SUNLANDIC TWINS
I didn't want to choose a "representative" title, which is why there are no Magnetic Fields albums on this list; while their collected output creates an impressive impression, no one album stands out. Of Montreal is kind of in the same boat, releasing album after album, each good, none particularly better than the other. A "Best Of" would be helpful, and after some scattered field work, I discovered that most of that imaginary collection would come from THE SUNLANDIC TWINS, a loose group of songs connected by melodic themes and similar instruments. It's typical work for Kevin Barnes' project - concerned with Wraiths, Norway, and their usual gift for matching their odd tunes with lyrics that make no damn sense (See the wonderful, incomprehensible "Forecast Fascist Future."
So I'll pick the SUNLANDIC TWINS even though it doesn't contain their best song ("The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" off HISSING FAUNA, ARE YOU THE DESTROYER) or their most impressive, cohesive representation (SATANIC PANIC IN THE ATTIC). But SUNLANDIC is the one album that you could perceive being played on the radio, and it's the one where I finally started liking them.
And yes, when you listen to this album, this album features the song that became Outback's commercial jingle for a bit. It's just as goofy and fun here as it is there, only not so specifically about an Australian-themed steak restaurant.
Best Song: "Forecast Fascist Future"
23. Cat Power, THE GREATEST
It has been an interesting decade, personally, for Chan Marshall. She recorded her defining album - THE GREATEST - that seems to hint at what she's capable of when she works with talented producers and backing bands (recorded in Memphis and featuring Memphis musicians - holla!). And she went batshit crazy on numerous occasions, often in front of people. THE GREATEST remains of what we can do with that voice; "Where is my Love" is the most romantic song of the decade, and it proves that Cat can do something besides cover other people, even though she is very very good at that.
In a typically snarky review that I remember being mad at for about a week, Pitchfork noted that the album begins with the upbeat Memphis rhythm section luring Cat into their word only to have Cat draw them back by the end. I don't find that very convincing, and it seems an attempt to intellectualize something that never happened so you can sound smart by writing about it (yes, that is how I feel about pretty much every review I read there). There's a balancing act of darkness and upbeat soul that you find in the best stuff that got recorded in Ardent, and not just in the songs that seem more "Cat Powerish" than the others - the entire album is fascinating because "Could We" exists in the same hour-span as "Love and Communication."
Bound to be derided as her individual songs show up in Zac Efron movies and Starbucks CD bins, recover the original intentions by listening to the source.
Best Song: "Where is My Love"
22. Low, THE GREAT DESTROYER
Low acolytes probably place this one in the middle of their list, but it's my absolute favorite - wall to wall great sounds that grow to a peak of intensity and sadness. Low has been and remains both my initiation and stopping point into something called "slowcore." That's not a word that has a whole lot of meaning to me, other than that "slow" seems an appropriate description. And beneath all the noise and pounding drums, there's a lot more here than just the snail's pace that people usually ascribe to them.
"Monkey" may be one of my favorite track one, side ones of the decade: its weird and kind of epic, as is the whole album - full of strange sounds and even stranger lyrics. I find myself listening to it constantly with no real desire to further delve into their catalog (as of now, the only other album I own is the 2007 release DRUMS AND GUNS). Because it just doesn't seem it can get any better than this.
Best Song: "California"
21. Ryan Adams, HEARTBREAKER
After a few of his formative years with Whiskeytown, Adams went out on his own and released a kick-ass debut and then spent the rest of the decade apparently squandering that social capital by being an annoying stage presence. If you, like me, get sick of Adams' constant waffling between punk rocker and country crooner, you probably are surprised that he puts on decent shows and often defers to his back-up bands (currently The Cardinals). But Adams continues to define his mythos by releasing three albums in a year (in 2005) and trying to top his break-out HEARTBREAKER. It's an unfortunate move, because HEARTBREAKER sounded so good when we first heard it, but now we have trouble removing it from the layers of Ryan Adams finely-crafted devil may care public persona that makes these beautiful songs sound schizophrenic.
"Come Pick Me Up" is an anthem to being rejected, and it's much more grounded than typical efforts; there's no attempt to turn it into something bigger, as the girl who continues to crap on him will steal his records and screw all his friends. This girl usually becomes Medusa even in Robert Johnson songs, but here she's just a chick who comes up with a smile on her face and does terrible things repeatedly because the singer lets her. That's good stuff - penetrating and soulful, and it operates on the interesting double meaning of the title and the endless, unsearchable ambiguities of the refrain: "You know you could; I wish you would."
The rest of the songs are both sweet and satisfying: I find myself listening to the title track "To Be Young" over and over again. Regardless of what he continues to do, it shouldn't sideline what he did.
Best Song: "Come Pick Me Up"
Posted by Andytown at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2009
VICKY CRISTINA NO THANK YOU
I love Woody Allen - I love the way his films oscillate between psychological realism and gleeful absurdity. I love the moment when he pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a cardboard movie stand-up, and I love the part in PLAY IT AGAIN SAM when he asks a girl what she's doing Saturday, and she tells him she's committing suicide, and he asks her what she's doing Friday. I like it when he sneezed and shot cocaine everyone and I like the way a Marx Brothers movie made him think life was worth living. I like Woody Allen movies that everyone likes (such as the ones I've mentioned) and I like the ones that no one likes: CELEBRITY, A MIDSUMMER SEX COMEDY, STARDUST MEMORIES, SMALL TIME CROOKS, and EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.
Woody Allen is neither overrated or underrated; he's an academy award winner who makes a movie every year and some of them are great and some are mediocre. Over the last ten years, his output has been spotty, redeemed by MATCH POINT and - in some eyes - the recent VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA.
I couldn't agree less. Here is a film that doesn't capture any kind of live reality, yet tries to make bold statements about the nature of love. Three of the most beautiful people in the world (Bardem, Johannson, Cruz) occupy archetypes instead of characters; this was also a problem in MELINDA AND MELINDA. And they live in the kind of remarkable luxury that refuses to acknowledge a world that operates on any reasonable currency.
This has been a big problem for post 1980-Woody, who himself is a rich man and could never make a movie about the kind of schlubs who showed up in his wonderful, hilarious early work. These part-time teachers, out-of-work actors, fledgling comedy writers, and graduate students live in two bedroom apartments that the actors playing them probably couldn't afford. This spiritual problem carries over to VICKY: Barcelona apparently has no poverty; both American and Spaniard alike live in villas and mansions that Woody probably scouted on tourist calendars. This is because, I imagine, these are the kinds of places he goes when he visits Barcelona. It is an opulent fantasy that never acknowledges its opulence, and a luxuriousness that is ridiculously acknowledged as the status quo.
Cruz plays a troubled artist type and Bardem plays a Don Juan. Bardem's character has the potential to be the most interesting: he's far from the neurotic Allen surrogates that act as protagonists in most of his recent films (most recently played by Larry David). But no one like this has ever lived or will ever live - he's without nuance or narrative, and Bardem salvages it just because he's so damn interesting to watch. But the characters are crazy and passionate only so much as Woody needs them to be and never more.
(Side note: Bardem must be 5 foot 2; both of the actresses in the film are taller than him. He and Tom Cruise would stand side by side in a line-up)
(Another side note: I recently rewatched RAIN MAN - I've said it before and I'll say it here: Cruise gives one of the best performances of the 80s in that film and no one ever notices it. He makes the movie work).
There is a threesome between three of the best looking people in the world and it's referred to nonchalantly. At one point Johannson, Bardem's new lover, allows him to sleep with his ex-wife, who he still admits infatuation with. We don't see the conversation that allows this to happen, probably because Allen was too lazy to write it. The whole movie is clumsily explained in an intrusive, unnecessary voice-over. If ever "Show Don't Tell" were needed outside a creative writing class, it's here.
Barcelona looks great and the music (as always) is evocative. But it exists in a world of doll-houses and landscape photos. There was an excellent movie about Barcelona, and it was called, fittingly enough, BARCELONA. This is a romance that isn't romantic, a sex comedy that is only vaguely sexy. I mentioned doll-houses and this is my problem with Allen and it's my problem with Sam Mendes: they get the world's biggest playsets and churn out something hacky, clumsy, and unoriginal.
Woody Allen was once a great director, but if this is the best he can do, he needs to hang it up. This film lacks the charm and the deep insight that marked his post ANNIE HALL work, as well as the brilliant wit that has carried him from stand-up comedy to movie-making legend status. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA is the worst movie he's ever made, and it will be a while before I consider seeing another one he makes.
Posted by Andytown at 5:55 PM | Comments (0)
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."
Posted by Andytown at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2009
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: 50-41
(The pictures and songs for these are subject to removal; hopefully they won't be eradicated. I apologize if the format is shaky - I did the best I could)
50. Josh Ritter, THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO (2001) 
Ritter's first album at times sounds like it was recorded in his basement. Two of its ingredients may well have been love and sweat, but it introduced the world to one of the few singer/songwriters who doesn't seem like he's stealing all his pages from someone else's songbook. I discovered Ritter on Pandora, and finding him is pretty much the only reason I hold out hope that a computer knows how I think. While never aping his influence, in "Me & Jiggs" he wears his influences on his sleeve. Much like Townes Van Zandt, his songs capture and romanticize an aimlessness that needs to be escaped, but no one wants to. "Harrisburg" is a ballad without ever reaching to the dated ambitions of balladeers. It showed a lot of promise that has (in my opinion) since been fulfilled, even if he isn't showing up on the radio alongside people who he is much, much better than.
Best track: "Harrisburg"
49. Raconteurs, BROKEN BOY SOLDIERS (2006) 
The genius of Jack White, while obvious in principle, has always eluded me. I can see why the Stripes represent so many things to so many people, and why a few of their songs are exciting, but I tend to find White to be the kind of polarizing artist who announces his own brilliance, where every song is a statement. But I love his less ambitious side-project, which seems to be the kind of music White would make if no one knew who he was, if he had never played Renee Zelwegger's boyfriend in COLD MOUNTAIN. On BROKEN, "Hands," "Steady As She Goes" and "Broken Boy Soldiers" resemble a power-pop that no one seems dedicated to making any more, as each song seems uncalculated and loud - befitting more of an 8-track than described on the pages of the Village Voice. I've never gotten into Benson's solo stuff, but he seems to channel White's obvious creativity and energy into a format that deserves to be listened to, not analyzed.
Best track: "Hands"
48. A.C. Newman, THE SLOW WONDER (2004) 
Those who "follow" me will be surprised to find this so low. As much as I love on Newman and have recommended this album, I'm really only drawn to the first three songs - "Miracle Drug," "Drink To Me Babe, Then," and "On The Table." These songs are bit less coy than most New Pornographer efforts; breezy, light, and fun - if the Pornographers are Newman's attempt to do late period Beach Boys/Beatles, his solo career shows him trying to do their early stuff. Newman is the svengali of the NPs, and I have a weird relationship with him - I prefer all of the solo work of Bejar, Case, and Newman to anything they do alone. But this album at once enhances the supergroup and the individual behind it.
Best Track: "On The Table"
47. Beck, THE INFORMATION (2006) 
Almost ignored among the heroic output of the little guy this decade, THE INFORMATION brings together the sarcastic kid who was literally throwing instruments against the wall in his studio with the mellow, reflective guy on SEA CHANGE. The result is some truly memorable tracks - "Think I'm In Love" brings together the focused doubt of SEA CHANGE with the wandering noise of ODELAY. Like everyone else who got excited about Beck in the 90s, I've picked up every album and found that it doesn't meet my expectations. With artists like Beck, that always tends to be a critical indicator that he's failing to live up to that early promise. Or it represents an iconoclastic spirit that can't be contained. You could argue that THE INFORMATION is Beck's contribution to the house music industry, a scene he had some leg in starting. But I prefer to think of it as a thoroughly listenable album that finds him doing what he does best.
Best Track: "Think I'm In Love"
46. Bruce Springsteen, DEVILS & DUST (2005) 
After the stellar THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD in 1995, Bruce Springsteen has continued to consistently exist without doing anything superlative. Which is fine, even if his top his five for me (NEBRASKA, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, TUNNEL OF LOVE, BORN TO RUN, THE WILD, THE INNOCENT, THE E STREET SHUFFLE) happened before 1987. A guy with such an expansive catalog and shining star that can be sorted neatly into two groups (E Street Boss and Nebraska Boss) really doesn't have time to reinvent himself. MAGIC proved he could still do the E Street thing and make an album you can tap your foot to. But I prefer DEVILS to its other 2000+ NEBRASKA-like effort THE RISING. It's unusually low-key and yet somehow incendiary enough to make Starbucks refuse to sell it in their stores. It isn't so much an anti-war album (the way it was covertly marketed) as a typical rumination on loss, love, good people in bad places, and - yes - war.
Best Song: Reno
45. Elf Power, BACK TO THE WEB (2006) 
Elf Power has been making something like folk music albums for quite a while - some pretty awesome, some merely okay. BACK TO THE WEB is my suggestion for an entry into the goofy mysticality. It threatens to be prog rock at every juncture - and no one wants to listen to Rush lyrics when Rush isn't playing behind them. But WEB works because of some pretty excellent melodies and haunting choruses. Not all their songs hearken to the depths of the fairies of Mordor. "An Old Familiar Scene" could exist outside on an album that didn't also include a song called "Peel Back the Moon, Beware!" There's something symbolic in their work that I've never bothered to decipher and thankfully - unlike the Prog - I don't need to in order to enjoy it.
(I saw them live at the Hi-Tone in Memphis in 2006 with about twenty other people in the audience. They put on a great show; no spiders and flies onstage, I promise)
Best Song: "The Whole World is Waiting"
44. The Strokes, ROOM ON FIRE (2003) 
When I first heard ROOM ON FIRE, I decreed that the Strokes had bought too much into their own hype and produced a mediocre follow-up to their breakthrough. Now I think the opposite. We needed some remove from Julian Casablancas trying to nail all the good looking girls in his audience. This was the transition to them becoming the disgusting house act that made it and a band who likes to try new things (are you listening to this model, The Killers?). There aren't as many memorable tracks on ROOM as their debut, but the album holds up rather well. "You Talk Way Too Much" seems like the lost track from that first album, while "The End Has No End" and "12:51" are odd departures that transcends anything on THIS IS IT. It showed that The Strokes refused to fall into the one-hit wonder narrative we all secretly hoped they would.
(I saw them in 2006 and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen; I was expecting them to be cutesy and stupid to the audience but they just rocked and rocked hard. Well done, guys)
Best Song: "12:51"
43. The Decemberists, PICARESQUE (2005) 
If you had talked to me in 2005, I would have told you how much I loved this album and the band; how it was refreshing to hear a group dedicated to using their songs for stories, how their vocabulary was inventive and inspiring, how much I thought the line "I am writer, a writer of fictions" seemed to be an imperative not only for this band but a whole new direction of Indie Pop.
And now I'm just lukewarm on the Decemberists and I'm not sure totally why. Overexposure? Possibly. That when I saw them live they led a sing-along? Perhaps. That Colin Meloy's precociousness seems like the kind of thing you grow out of after your first creative writing class? Probably. In any case, it's been a situation of diminishing returns . . . THE CRANE WIFE and THE HAZARDS OF LOVE were more of the same, and each time it's less moving, and each time they don't smack you in the face with their creativity - or if they do, it's annoying instead of interesting.
None of the allusions they have are particularly interesting, they all thrive on what Tracy Jordan calls "wordplay!" "The Sporting Life" is the best - it takes an incident of youth sports clumsiness/awkwardness through the eye of an absurd objective reserve. It's funny, catchy, and inventive - Meloy at his best. At his worst, he sings about "coquettes" and uses adjectives like "gadabout." But I still find myself wanting to listen to PICARESQUE quite a bit, despite its indulgences, despite its put-upon fancy. I still really like this album.
Best Song: "The Sporting Life."
(Kudos to this fan-video! This is proof of the quirky following the Decemberists have.)
42. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, DIG! LAZARUS DIG! 
Cave's most recent album with his Bad, Bad Seeds is a mélange of everything he's ever done. Here's his thoughts on literature ("We Call Upon the Author to Complain"); here's his use of allusion to bring out something seedy ("Night of the Lotus Eaters"); here's his mix of nihilism and hopefulness ("More News from Nowhere"); here's his rumination on God ("Jesus of the Moon"). The contemporaneous side-project of Grinderman gave him an excuse to be a angry, sex-crazed old man, and that guy is a collaborator on this album. I tend to think about the Grinderman album as one of a piece with DIG! - but while keeping similar themes, Cave tones down the poetry and ratchets up the guitars for what many are seeing as a revival. I disagree; I think this is Cave doing what Cave has always done: playing around with a bunch of different genres in his own distinct voice.
Best Song: "Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl)."
41. The Hold Steady, STAY POSITIVE 
The Hold Steady has been making awesome bar-music throughout the decade. Their songs about drinking, going outside to smoke, and realizing you'll wake up hungover are a near-perfect match of form and theme. I tend to think of these any time it's 2 AM and it will take another hour to get home (fewer and further between these days, but still). Craig Finn has been called a "troubadoor," which I think is a pretty stupid description. His songs compete with emptiness and meaning - being "Sequestered in Memphis" is both a good memory and a regrettable situation. Which is why the music suggests pure awesome while the lyrics describe total depravity. This is my favorite of all their albums, and I'm really excited that they show no signs of stopping.
"In bar-light, she looked all right;
In daylight, she looked desperate
That's all right, I was desperate, too"
Best Song: "Slapped Actress"
Scroll down for my honorable mention
Posted by Andytown at 12:16 PM | Comments (1)
November 7, 2009
TOP 50 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE - HONORABLE MENTION
Hi everyone.
I'm back.
I'm returning to you so I can participate in these addictive "Best of the Decade" lists. As anyone who knows me knows, I's all about the lists. I have lists of my favorite condiments (1. Horseradish), favorite kitchen appliances (4. Crock Pot), favorite kinds of 7-Up (1. Cherry), favorite moments in the Cosby Show (6. When Christopher Plummer shows up and starts quoting "Julius Caesar.")
So it's a natural that this rarely read, slightly disreputable blog is a forum for that.
The ots did not have the significant, paradigm-shifting breakthroughs of the 90s - no spiritual equivalents of Nirvana or Pavement. The bands who did shift paradigms in the 90s and survived through Y2K were some of the more productive acts out there: Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Wilco. But there's nothing about, for instance, TV on the Radio or The Strokes who shook foundations the way any number of bands were doing at any point while Val Kilmer was still a big movie star and THE SIMPSONS was still good.
What's to blame? CD Burning? Napster? Metallica? MTV? Youtube? Online Radio? XM Radio? Eminem? The on-going saga of CHINESE DEMOCRACY? George W. Bush? Record Labels? The idiots in the Dandy Warhols?
In 1988, NWA released perhaps the most incendiary cultural documentary of my lifetime, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON. And whatever you want to say about the Generation X moniker, there were a lot of mission statements coming out. In 2009, we've waded through the administration of one of the hated figures from a counter-cultural perspective, and what is the defining document that's been produced from the music world? AMERICAN IDIOT? HAIL TO THE THIEF? Those stupid "Vote Kerry" compilations that come out in 2004? I imagine there's more of a narrative in hip-hop, but I'm so ignorant of it that I'll just leave that to the chroniclers who know more than me.
But even if there's not a lot to define the decade - nothing like grunge to kick things off and the independent revolution to close it, as in the 90s - I still found 50 albums that I really, really like. I'm not going to attempt to define these in some kind of dashing aesthetic terminology. I really don't care if the organs in Arcade Fire albums offers a dissonance that keeps them from reaching transcendence, for instance. That stuff is out there, and I can't write it. So mainly I'm going to tell you why I like these albums. They will get, I suppose, progressively more enthusiastic.
And you'll be able to see right away that either I missed a lot or a lot missed me: hip-hop, House Music, The White Stripes, Indie Dance, the Fleet Foxes, the highs and lows of Kanye West's musical genius/terrible personality. There will be (probably) two kinds of respondents - those who find me esoteric and those who find me laughably predictable because my tastes so commonly mirror everyone else's.
I'll publish ten at a time. I'll work on my 50-41, but in the meantime, here's the honorable mention:
51. Bishop Allen, The Broken String
52. My Morning Jacket, Z
53. Iron & Wine w/ Calexico, In the Reins
54. The Shins, Oh Inverted World
55. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
56. Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
57. The Walkmen, Bows & Arrows
58. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
59. Guns n Roses, Chinese Democracy
60. Bruce Springsteen, Magic
61. Clem Snide, The Ghost of Fashion
62. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
63. British Sea Power, Open Season
64. Weezer, The Red Album
65. Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans
66. Calexico, Garden Ruin
67. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
68. Mason Jennings, Boneclouds
69. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema
70. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nocturama
71. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, And No More Shall We Part
72. Spoon, Kill The Moonlight
73. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
74. Destroyer, Your Blues
75. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youths, Bloodthirsty Babes
Posted by Andytown at 11:36 AM | Comments (3)