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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
Posted by Andytown at 2:25 PM | Comments (1)
December 16, 2009
ORSON WELLES AND MR. FOX
We had better go ahead and get used to Zac Efron being a big star. And why shouldn't he be? Unlike Shia Labeouf, he doesn't coast on being a mildly witty, kind of goofy-looking star of action movies. Efron is damn talented: he can sing, dance, and he's got the kind of matinee idol looks that transcend time: only the 70s would have been unkind to him, grouping him in with George Hamilton and all the Robert Redford wannabes who were shut out when the industry was looking for the next Dustin Hoffman.
Efron is better than inoffensive, worse than great in Richard Linklater's gloriously entertaining new film ME AND ORSON WELLES. He sings, smiles, and has a kind-of whiz-bang clean-cuttedness that hides his intentions always on the sly. But he and the always-boring Claire Danes are merely scenery for the best performance of the year from Christian McKay.
I know nothing about McKay; neither do you. Check out his IMDB profile - not even a supporting role on LAW AND ORDER. But he looks the part and gives it the necessary gusto. Welles is a force of nature, a boy genius who walks into the room with false humility only to vehemently prove he's smarter than everyone else. He's a master of two mediums (theater and radio), and the film closes as he sets his eyes on another (film). McKay dominates every scene he's in, and Linklater shoots him appropriately - the camera follows him, or the camera centers on him even as others are more pertinent to the context of the shot: it's as though Welles the character is implicitly directing the scene.
There's a rogue's gallery of long-forgotten actors and personalities, lovingly embodied on the surface without any unnecessary depth by Linklater: Norman Lloyd (later to become famous by falling off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur) is a ham; George Colouris (a Welles regular) is an arrogant neurotic; Joseph Cotten (who had a great run in the 40s) is a slick ladies man with a good heart. And there are dames, divas, and Guffman-esque critics to boot. But the movie belongs to McKay, and it's to Efron's credit that he lets him have it. The romantic intrigue plot is not what you'll come away talking about, but it doesn't make it a worse film: it allows us to see Welles in all his bluster and bravado. In that sense, it's a nice conceit.
Linklater is an interesting cat. DAZED AND CONFUSED is one of my favorite movies, but I'm only fond of a few of his others: not really big on the SUNRISE flicks (mumblecore does that so much better), thought SCHOOL OF ROCK was overrated, and FAST FOOD NATION an interesting misfire. But SLACKER (which spawned mumblecore, I get it), DAZED, WAKING LIFE, and A SCANNER DARKLY make a fascinating aimless canon: dreamy flicks about people wandering around and trying to figure out what it's all about without ever really getting there. I never would have thought he would have been up to the task of a period piece, particularly since he muffed THE NEWTON BOYS, but the result is an unfussy, energetic portrayal of a period and a scene. The final set-piece - Welles' contemporary revisioning of JULIUS CAESAR featuring fascists and a Mussolini-like Caesar - is accurately realized without ever calling attention to its own artifice.
So I'm happy to give one glowing recommendation (see it!); here's another. Surprise! I like Wes Anderson's latest movie - THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX. It's his funniest movie since BOTTLE ROCKET, and its charming without the rough edges of some of Anderson's best characters. Mr. Fox reminds me of the lovechild of Dignan and Royal Tenenbaum - he has the former's good nature and the latter's need to control things.
I've always thought a pretty typical, unheralded moment in Anderson's filmography is when Royal meets Chaz's kids at the playground. He sees their dog Buckley, and says, "Sit Buckley." Anderson always thrives on characters who like to plan events that might fail magnificently, who try to control that which utterly evades them: Dignan's cold-storage heist, Max Fischer's aquarium, Chaz's protection of his children, Francis' trip through India, Zissou's hunt for the Tiger Shark. Mr. Fox is no different, and that's probably what drew Anderson to Roald Dahl's lovely little book.
There's a joyful subversive sense of the radical here: Mr. Fox is stickin' it to the man and still unabashedly a hero. He's a fox who rejects no one - the animal kingdom has never seemed more democratic and communal. Even an evil rat has a poignant moment. And the father/son stuff, always more complex than it seems in Anderson, is just a nicely wrought here as it has been before.
But mostly this movie is funny. Every backdrop, song cue, and anthropomorphic personality is lovingly conceived; my personal favorite is Owen Wilson as a passive but brutally sincere polar bear coaching a sport too ridiculous to be described (it involves long division, and lighting a pine cone). And the constant digging is like something out of DIG DUG.
- My friend Jake wrote a much better review of ME AND ORSON WELLES on his blog - check it out.
http://thenighteditor.blogspot.com/2009/12/portrait-of-welles-as-young-man.html
Posted by Andytown at 10:56 PM | Comments (1)
December 6, 2009
SATURDAY NIGHT NOT-ALIVE
Last night's Saturday Night Live was unusually funny - that's a back-handed compliment for a comedy show. Comedy shows should be funny, and SNL hasn't been. Its Obama imitations grasp none of the nuances of the character to exploit for humor, so what we're left with is a caricature with no comedic potential. Fred Armisen does a fine imitation, impressive really, but it isn't funny. The digital shorts have been lame, and lack the energy of the live format. Its best performers - Forte, Sudeikis, Hader - have been underutilized so that the more manic, slapstick personalities like Wiig and Thompson can take the stage and shout, scream, dance, and make wacky voices. (Also, Andy Samberg has his moments, and he's clearly the breakout star, but his Swedish Chef was waaaay off; he didn't even attempt to do the accent!)
But last night, perhaps because the guest lacked the talent to carry any of the sketches, Sudeikis, Hader, and Forte were showcased. Also Bobby Moynihan, who is clearly pretty gifted, and the two newcomers who I can't tell apart. The best skit was the last one featuring Forte and Sudeikis - a glorious piece with layers and layers of absurdity and allusion about a man inexplicably dressed as Colonel Sanders applying for a job as an Astronaut who steals a potato chip. At its best moments (before it devolves into gross-out humor), this skits recalls MR. SHOW with its singularly driven vision and attitude of "I don't care if you think its funny, this is what we're doing." I also find it hilarious that they keep referring to the purloined snack as a "Potato Chip."
These three guys have proven their comedic skills off the SNL stage - Sudeikis in 30 ROCK, Forte in FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS and some Bob Oedenkirk projects, and Hader in SUPERBAD and ADVENTURELAND (Hader needs one more solid supporting role in a hit movie to start thinking about being that Will Ferrell type, but it looks like that mantle will be assumed by Samberg, who is not nearly as gifted or funny). Along with Armisen, they need to be the ones carrying the show. Forte's clueless sports announcer is a perfect showcase for his quirky and inventive talents; a few years ago, they had him playing G.W. Bush, which shows how wrong the show tends to get it.
But sadly, there seems to be some strange ultimatum about promoting the hell out of Kenan Thompson. Since I've had DVR, and don't have to watch it live, I've watched SNL for the last four years - it's been mostly unrewarding, but I have grown to love Hader and sometimes fast forward to his bits. Thompson often dresses in drag and always hams it up. The results are unrewarding: he's a professional but he's rarely funny. Most of the time he plays a hysterical black person who dominates the scene. It's rarely funny, and it's sometimes vaguely racist - particularly because he's the only black actor on the show. So they often play him against someone who is not black, but is pretending to be.
It is the failure of the show to cast some other funny people of diverse ethnicities. They have got to be out there, but when the show peaked, they always had a Tim Meadows or Chris Rock or Garrett Morris or (best case scenario) Eddie Murphy. When Maya Rudolph has to guest star as Oprah, that's a problem, and when the only vaguely Hispanic-looking Armisen has to play Obama . . . another problem. But SNL continues to round out their cast with white hipsters who are good at playing white hipsters. And to remedy this, they rely on the not-so-talented Thompson. This myopic casting vision has haunted SNL since Tim Meadows left, and I find caricatures like the one where Thompson plays a large black woman who tries to trade sex for a dress repulsive. It plays on the worst stereotypes, doesn't comment ironically on them, and ultimately is grotesque and offensive.
Even after the millennium, SNL continues to be a star-making factory: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are both doing great work; Will Ferrell is still a mega-star even after a few box-office flops; Samberg has clearly broken out and Hader and Wiig are about to. But the show needs to dedicate itself to something it only rarely does: being a venue for people other than funny white people (Murphy and Rock being the obvious exceptions). When the only black actor they have is mainly a vehicle for making fun of black people, that's a problem.
I don't know what to make of Seth Meyers. When he was a full-time cast member, he was awful: terrible at imitations and bad at anything else other than playing a straight man (when he would occasionally lapse into laughter, unlike Sudeikis who nails the above scene). It would be reductive and fallacious to blame him for the bad scenes and others for the good; for all I know, but someone had to green-light the "disgusting, imbecilic black woman shopping" sketch, and I can't think Meyers was surprised to see it. Someone is deciding to showcase Thompson and Wiig over the three guys I've mentioned; and they dropped Casey Wilson, who was (in my opinion) funnier than Wiig because she didn't mug so much.
Why do I keep watching? Because it's easy and I can fast forward through the commercials. Often I've stopped watching before Weekend Update. But the show should develop into the new millennium, because I think it's lost its hipster audience, and needs to acknowledge that.
(Maybe I'm too hard on Wiig, but all of her characters seem to be a thirty second joke stretched out into five minutes. It's obvious she's a talented comedienne, but most of what she does relies on mugging, shouting, and portraying only slightly divergent versions of menopausal women. She's got potential)
Posted by Andytown at 1:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 3, 2009
I HAVE TO ADMIT SOMETHING
I have to admit something: I am obsessed with a one minute clip from a TV show I know nothing about. It is a show that is mostly disreputable and that contains over about 1000 footage I have no intention of watching. The background music is a song by a band I know nothing about, nor have ever heard another song by. I don't know any of the characters' names. It is a scene that was ridiculed prominently and famously by Andy Samberg on Saturday Night Live - it is:
The "Hide and Seek" scene from the OC
I have watched this clip over thirty times. Seriously.
I don't know why, but I think this scene is masterfully edited and that the music matches the scene both ironically and emotionally. I recognize that perhaps because I know nothing about this show, and have not seen a bunch of mildly talented generic good looking probably whiny young adult "actors" muff it with absurd rich-kid melodrama, that it gains some of its power. But as a one minute clip, this is pretty great stuff.
What a weird and awesome match of music and moment! I'm struck by everything about it: the darkness and shadows of the room, the suspense over the dude who is going to hit the guy who looks like Russell Crowe with a telephone (!), the girl who holds the gun like a girl who has never a gun, the way the unusual music and the manipulated, peculiar voice of the singer kicks in right when the bullet hits and both jars and makes more potent the impact, the way the blood cakes on the shirt and then drips, the way dude turns toward her, the symmetric layout of bodies on the floor as the music becomes a bizarre angelic chorus, the wordless eye of God last shot of a bunch of characters looking at the scene as the music provides no commentary whatsoever. The fact that this is apparently the last scene of a season, and that it fades out afterwards.
People tend to write me off as a high-culture contrarian or, at best, a high-culture contrarian wannabe. True, I guess; I don't watch reality TV and I find professional wrestling repugnant and uninteresting. I attempt to validate myself and my taste by expressing my genuine love for Burt Reynolds movies, but also comes across as ingenuine, and then my snobbishness is challenged as an affectation. I spend a lot of time wondering whether I am, in fact, a pseudo-intellectual poser who finds rhetorical means and aesthetic theories to validate the things that I think should be considered objectively good (like Neutral Milk Hotel and MOBY-DICK) but I wonder if I'm only liking stuff because other people like it.
And I just don't know what to do with this scene.
I'm writing a paper on THE FEDERALIST PAPERS about the linguistic/rhetorical/syntactic concept of "iconicity" - where "discursive form often enacts representative content" - that's working at the sentence level, of course, but its basically when form and theme work together so well that the former not only enhances the other (which it is supposed to do) but seems to make the implicit meaning absolutely indispensable and ultimately persuasive.
And I don't know, I feel like this scene kind of does this. It may not be a perfect match of background and foreground, but it works pretty beautifully.
I am thinking of going to see a mental health professional.
Posted by Andytown at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)