#96: Elvis Costello - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes

Elvis Costello - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
from My Aim is True, 1977

Elvis Costello's first record has a funny place in his discography . On the one hand, the whole record--from the masturbatory (literally) opening line of "Welcome to the Working Week" throught to (in the US version) the surprisingly sinister two-tone riffs of "Watching the Detectives"--sets up the archetypal Elvis Costello sound that would define his first three records and solidify his reputation as an "Angry Young Man," occupying the poppy sweet spot between the rage of punk and the hooky sensibilities of new wave and classic power pop.

On the other, the record is an anomaly--without the classic Attractions lineup (and in particular, without the keyboard of Steve Nieve, Costello's most important collaborator and the key contributor to the signature sound Elvis and the Attractions perfected on his second LP, 1978's This Year's Model), and featuring a much more straightforward, guitar-based sound than Elvis's later work. Produced by Nick Lowe, My Aim is True stands on its own as a beautiful, quirky pop record in Lowe's own vein, but simply isn't as rich and full of power tempered with sarcasm as his next two albums.

After almost 15 years of listens, I feel like I can hear the vaguely honky-tonk influences (brought out on the demo recordings included with subsequent American reissues) that Elvis shed with the Attractions, but that have always bubbled below the surface of his work. My Aim is True has always been a "what if?" record for me--what if Nieve's organ had been here, what if they'd played with a bit more power there?  Even Elvis seemed to realize the album's odd status in his own performances--when the Attractions played these songs, they changed in subtle but important ways, making them swing harder, bringing in odd tempos, jerky starts and stops. Elvis's most important acknowledgement of this sonic shift came at that famous SNL gig, when he decided (absolutely correctly, in hindsight), that the Attraction's new version of "Less Than Zero" just lacked the impact of his new, harder work.

The sole exception to the general air of incompleteness on My Aim is True is the song at #96, a funny little falling-out-of-love song cryptically entitled "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes." "Red Shoes," which swings at its own, slightly less frantic pace from anything else in Elvis's early canon, sounds entirely finished and of a piece--a perfect pop moment (with jangly guitars and from an artist trying to bridge his pub rock roots to this "new wave," captured in amber. The song features a fairly conventional story about a girl who, in Gram Parson's words, "loved those bright lights more than she" loved Elvis, and is told from the perspective of an aloof narrator who seems to have acquired a certain ironic distance ("I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused") from the recent proceedings. I have no idea why the angels wanna wear his red shoes, or what the eponymous shoes have to do with "his side of the bargain," why anyone thinks he's "too old." What I do know is that this song has probably the greatest lyrical description in all of pop history of what it does to a relationship to watch your girl get flirty with all the other boys at the bar, with a clever phrase in the middle that was an early proposal for the name of this here blog:

I was watching while you're dancing away.
Our love got fractured in the echo and sway.
How come everybody wants to be your friend?
You know that it still hurts me just to say it.

Unlike nearly everything else on the record, "Red Shoes" actually suffered from its "Attractionification," as seen here in a 1977 Top of the Pops performance, with a sharper, angrier vocal from Elvis, a more propulsive backbeat, and Nieve's organ swirling a bit more than was usual. The wry detatchment of the original was perfect, and even a superior band could make no improvement.



This version, however, has its own wry appeal (and is sonically quite close to the original) and it's worth a quick listen.



-Brandon

#96: Gorilaz - Clint Eastwood

Gorrilaz - Clint Eastowwd
from Gorillaz, 2001

I didn't like rap until the end of my freshman year. Up 'til then I thought it was completely fucking ridiculous -- but remember that this was the days of Back That Ass Up and Pony and that sort of thing, so I feel like I had a bit of justification even if I'm still totally to blame for not digging deeper. But then I was confronted with Deltron 3030. Right place, right time, right state of mind -- partly, but I think it clicked when I realized that it was more the song subjects than the genres that I didn't care for. To be trite and clichéd, there was more to it than bitches and hoes, and it took a futuristic space rap-opera to teach me that.

Deltron doesn't make this list; if we had 200 songs, there'd be three or four tracks from that album that would be in contention.

This song technically predates this epiphany, being released about two months prior. But I didn't hear it until I went back home for the summer. I retcon the start of my music geekdom to the prior November but, in reality, there was still a ways to go in the process. I was primarily listening to "good" music at this point -- well, primarily Tool and Weezer, but a lot of the other stuff I learned about the prior nine months -- except when I was driving. My car didn't have a CD player and all my music was on CDs. I think I had one of those 1/8" jack to cassette contraptions, but I listened mostly to the radio. And that's where I heard this song, usually at least once a day, for three months.

I loved it immediately. It was obvious: Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, as the Deltron emcee, was my gateway into the world of rap music and here, what is this?! Del's rapping on on this track that's playing on the only radio station I liked! I had to get into rap music! There's only two songs I specifically prayed to hear on the radio, and this is one of them.

Start with the groove, with the riff. It has this waltz feel to it despite being in 4/4 which, in combination with the minor key, gives it an off-kilter ominous feel. The irony of the chorus ("...I got sunshine in a bag...") furthers this to the point that it doesn't actually matter what else is going on in the song; the piece works well purely on atmospherics, though Del's rap braggadocio provides a ghostly veneer.

And then there's the enigmatic title. Wikipedia provides two connections: 1) The "sunshine in a bag" being a reference to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and 2)

Jamie Hewlett claimed during the documentary-film Bananaz that "The song isn't really about the actor Clint Eastwood, but more to do with the Melodica solo in the song".

But I like to think of it as a reference to High Plains Drifter. This is probably the most enigmatic of the Man With No Name movies (and, consequently, the first to not be directed by Leone), in which it becomes clear that he's a...well, let's call him an "avenging angel." I'm not going to break it down -- I may be completely full of crap -- except to say that he literally paints the town read and renames it HELL. So I think it fits well if you imagine the song as being from Eastwood's character's point of view.

#97: The Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy (Pete Rock Remix)

The Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy (Pete Rock Remix)
from the "Juicy" Single 12", 1994

There are rappers who had more technical acumen than Biggie Smalls, who put together more complex rhyme schemes and could speed up their raps into frantic tougne twisters. But no one ever rapped slow as well as Big did--giving us a chance to really hear every word, syllable and inflection, with a flow that sounded like water over the beat.

I didn't really listen to hip-hop in high school, and so I missed Ready to Die when it dropped, much to my detriment. While lots of rappers had spun stories of crime, coming up off the streets, and making it to the big time, no one had ever done it the way Big did--wrapping his life story in to his own experiences as a rap fan.* "Juicy" is remarkable not for the boasts or stories of excess (and the video, while brilliant on its own terms, does the glitz and glamour of a West Coast video somewhat clumsily), but because he grows up through hip-hop. For a guy's whose life was about as different from mine as possible, I feel like I knew exactly how he felt about his relationship with pop music the moment I first heard this song, because like me, he leaned on the experience of being a fan to get him through the worst of it.

And speaking of the worst of it, while I think that authenticity is a poor criteria for evaluating art, it's hard to deny that this line...

Born sinner, the opposite of a winner/
Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner

...is the most poignantly bad-ass moment in hip-hop lyric history.

But if you really want to know what's so tremendous about this song, look no further than this video, where Pete Rock (who came up with the original beat) participates in a discussion panel about his work. Check out 37 seconds in, where Rock and all these other well-known producers start to groove on the beat. A line of hip-hop royalty, bobbing their heads uncontrollably, captured by the song. Anything so good that it makes the guy who made it lose his shit is worth your time.



Critics and the internet intelligencia are divided on the relative merits of the "original" mix versus the Pete Rock "remix" (although, as Pete tells it, the "remix" was actually his original demo for the track, while Puffy bit the sample--Mtume's "Juicy Friut" for the album version). I'm certainly not going to go to the mattresses for the remix, but I'm partial to the thump and snare of Pete's version. Puffy's is probably more true to the sample, but it also sounds vaguely dated to me--not in an especially bad way, but lush, in a very particular early 1990s way. Pete's drums are, as always, timeless, and mesh even more seamlessly with Big's delivery than original. And it just sounds more New York.

And if you don't know, now you know.

*Yes, I know "Juicy" isn't the first song tell this sort of story. KRS-One's 1993 banger "Outta Here" does something similar (and KRS's personal story is even more deeply connected with hip-hop than Biggie's because KRS helped to create the core sound and vocabulary of gangsta rap), and Common's "I Used to Love H.E.R." came out around the same time. But while both are great songs, neither really captures the joy of "Juicy"--the pure happiness of Big's story of turning hip-hop into a new life ("Birthdays was the worst days/now we drink champagne 'cause we thirsty").

-Brandon

#97: The Stooges - Down On The Street

The Stooges - Down On The Street
from Fun House, 1970

I don't have much to say about this one, actually, so I'll keep it short; it's not tied to any specific memory or time and place. All I know is that it makes me so very happy when I put it on. Why? That riff, at home with the best of the dirty blues, and Iggy's vocals. He always sounded like a madman in those early days. Sure, there are other places where he sounds more insane, but I'd argue that he never sounds as dangerous as he does here.

If you ever get the chance, pick up The Complete Fun House Sessions, which gives you 19 different takes of this song (and the others on the album as well). It's fascinating to listen to the minute progression and realize how much skill and practice it takes to come off as this unhinged. I probably wouldn't have included this track in the top 100 if I hadn't gone through The Complete and realized just how much I loved it.

#98: Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl
from You Forgot It in People, 2002

During my first year in graduate school, I lived alone in a 500 square foot basement apartment down at the end of Pinckney Street in Madison. It had, among other features, a mostly obstructed view of Lake Mendota and the narrowest galley kitchen ever built. I had just moved away (about 165 miles up on Highway 151) from the first girl I'd ever really loved, exchanging her company for a ever-ending reading list of books and a set of classes that made almost no sense and in which I felt constantly inadequate. It was the first time in my life I'd ever really lived along (because, let's face it--Kim moved in to my apartment at Coe in early October the year before and never really left), and even though Madison wan't a big city in any real sense, it was all fairly overwhelming for me.

Aside from the school work and the long separation from Kim (punctuated by her semester in Madagascar), there are two memories from that year that really stick out in mind, 9 years later. The first is the slow transformation of Madison in my mind's eye, from of the scene the half-remembered and frantic visits I made as a high schooler during trips for various academic events into the place I ACTUALLY LIVED. That record store on State Street that I remembered in a glassy haze, like a fuzzy photo print, and the Jane's Addiction record Jed Dawson bought there right before we had to get back on the bus in 1996? I walked past that place on my way to school now. Everyday, my walk to work brought me past places I had dreamed about visiting for months at a time while I was in high school. The record stores were a constant distraction, and I let my guard down an awful lot that first year.

B-Side Records, Madison, Wisconsin

The other is less concrete, but no less important to me. I remember the way that the sun would come in off the lake on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in my apartment, catching me pacing the living room with a book in my hand, or sitting cross-legged on the scuffed wood floors next to my old mini stereo, shuffling CDs I bought down at the B-Side or the (late, lamented) Sugar Shack. This was the last year of my life when I had regular, easy access to both a dual cassette deck and a steady supply of cassettes, and I made the last real, honest-to-god mixtapes of my life on that floor in that apartment, taking all the new songs and albums from my time in the (not so big) city, shuffling them up, and sending them back on to Kim, 15 or 16 at a time.

The best mixtape I made that fall featured a fuzzy, druggy, and incredibly precious song from Broken Social Scene's second record called (somewhat awkwardly, like almost everything related to the band's early iteration) "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl." In her distorted, pitchy singsong, Emily Haines came through loud and clear, telling the boy exactly what she wanted from him:

Park that car, drop that phone,
Sleep on the floor, dream about me

Emily Haines

Along with the song's slow, sunny, banjo-laden crescendo, it was Haines' repetition of those simple phrases--over and over, like a mantra for warding off distracted lovers--that attracted me so strongly. Getting used to Madison, and school, and the rest of my life while keeping up the first real long-distance relationship I'd ever been in, my nightly talks with Kim were full of distraction. Work, and long walks, and more work, and the bars all beckoned for me (as did friends and college life for her), and as the months went by, we became short with each other over the phone, trying and mostly failing to keep up the easy intimacy we'd forged at Coe.

My mixtapes, and this song in particular, were like my own promises to her that at some point, no matter what else happened, I'd be able to give her my full attention--with occasional visits ("park that car, sleep on the floor"), but also with a real life together without those phone calls and distraction and distance, some day.  Despite almost 5 years of marriage, we're still working on the proximity thing.  But when I hear this song, I still think of that apartment, Madison, those phone calls, and those mixtapes.  And I still dream about her.

-Brandon

#98: Neil Young - Tonight's The Night

Neil Young - Tonight's The Night
from Tonight's The Night, 1975

Tonight's The Night was my introduction to Neil Young -- I'm not sure what that says, but I feel like it should mean something. See, I was a budding music geek when I got to college with a fairly sizable collection for a pre-napster teenager, but it was full of classical music and nu-metal. (Sometimes I still pull out the Rammstein (who do not make this list) to remember that things do in fact get better.) Then I met Lee and Brandon and suddenly had access to all this new music, their tastes as 'refined' as anyone I met, and I quickly expanded my palette.

I'll wait until the top 5 to get to the full conversion story. I'm not sure where this album fits in the story except that it's one of the first albums Brandon introduced me to, and I spent so many hours listening to it.

I feel that this album is great in spite of itself; it surprises me that it's so critically acclaimed (it's one of Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums and one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and Christgau giving it an extremely rare A). What I mean is, the 10 middle tracks -- excluding the two parts of the title track -- are so understated it feels like none of them can stand on their own, that they all need to be there for any sort of vision to take hold.

Except the magnificent title track. I can honestly say that I would not have given the album more than a passing listen if it didn't lead off with one of the best songs I've ever heard. And in the pre-digital file age, when we still listened to CDs, this meant that to listen to the title track, I was pretty much going to have to listen to the rest of the album.

Tonight's The Night is as bleak as pretty much anything else on this list, and would make the short list for any depressing mixtape. It doesn't sound that way: the riff -- sounds like it's comprised of bass playing single notes -- is fairly upbeat, accented by guitar lines from Nils Lofgren that wouldn't be out of place on any other mid-70s rocker. There's even a piano solo sounding like a slowed down Jerry Lee Lewis piece. I'm surprised it hasn't been sampled multiple times. It's good music, But it's everything else that makes it great.

So, Neil Young releases Harvest in 1972. It eventually goes multi-platinum, becoming the best-selling album of that year, making Young into a bona-fide superstar. It's a fine album, I don't particularly care for it outside of a couple of tracks, but I'm not going to hate on anyone who loves it (unless it's the only Neil Young they like, because c'mon man). Then two friends die of heroin overdoses: Crazy Horse's guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry and, apparently, this kind of mass fame didn't suit Young all that well. So, in 1973, he records Tonight's The Night the album, opening with the title track, which explicitly outs the theme:

Bruce Berry was a working man
He used to load that Econoline van
A sparkle was in his eye
But his life was in his hands.

The record label refused to release it, shelving the album for two years, hoping Young would record something commercially viable, something that would capitalize on the success of Harvest. He didn't. (Young would later be sued by his label for making music that didn't sound like "Neil Young"... which is one of the most badass anecdotes I know of in popular music.)

It's obvious why the label was apprehensive. Just listen. There might be a single or two here, something that could get the masses fired up. But not the lead track.

And that's one of the things that makes it great. I was deliberate when I called the track bleak: this is grief, alright, the darkest before it gets better, where depression gives way to, well... This is one great "fuck it" to everything from one of the great "fuck it" songwriters. This is fatalism as it should be; not quite acceptance because that assumes too much impotence, but the fight against ...whatever, winnable or not, since the fight is all that matters.

-----
The album ends with "Tonight's The Night -- Part II". It's good, more ramshackle and off-key than Part I, but for the most part pretty much the same song. It provides a good counterpoint to the original, inverting just enough to keep the listener unbalanced.




-Lin

#99 : Hans Zimmer - You're So Cool

Hans Zimmer - You're So Cool
from True Romance OST, 1993

More than any song on my list, this one takes me back to a a singe moment--a very particular night of my life. When I went to Cameroon in 2000 (Jesus Christ, 12 years ago), I had a fairly good idea that my life would be changed by the experience, but I'd be a fool to tell you that I was certain that I'd come out the other side as a professor of African politics. For that reason and others, my semester in Cameroon was one of the most important short chunks of time in my life--a period that influences my life every single day.

While there are a lot of people and a lot of memories that mean a lot to me from that time, the days and nights I spent with my two best friends --Dahveed Benson and Gustave River--were probably the most important. Dahveed was (is) my old camp counselor and sometimes boss at the Concordia Language Villages, as well as the former director of the study abroad program in Cameroon that I attended. Gustave was (at the time) his best friend--a rastafarian, reggee musician, and tailor with exceptional talent as a songwriter and clothing designer.

Despite being on sabbatical during my semester abroad, Dahveed was around for most of it, and it was with his help that I had most of my great adventures--his introductions to hundreds of Cameroonians across the country who knew before the rest of my group arrived in our sweaty blue minibus to ask for "Hubert," his urging that I take chances with food, travel, and crazy situations, and his beer. Oh, the beer. I ow my career as an Africanist to Dahveed more than anyone else.

So what of the song? My best, most memorable night in Cameroon was a simple one, about a month into the program. I'd been in country just long enough to have a twinge of homesickness, and Dahveed was getting ready to go on his own sabbatical adventures. So we decided to have a night in, with no pressure--no French, no planning or studying, no being "on" as very visible foreigners--just a case of Cameroonian beer and Dahveed's movie collection, sent to him film by film from the US by family and friends.

That night we watched his favorite move at the time--True Romance, a 1993 dark comedy and romance starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, and written (mostly) by a then-barely known Quentin Tarrantino. The movie is about one of the most beautifully beknighted and inconvenient love affairs in the history of cinema--the nerdy comic book store clerk played by Slater and his hooker with a heart of gold-turned wife Arquette, on the run from the mob with a bag of stolen cocaine. It's not a perfect move, by any means--although with star appearances by Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, and Val Kilmer, it ain't bad. But what's so great, so memborable about the film is its wonderful use of a mix of score and pop music--songs by Chris Isaac and Soudgarden mixed with Hans Zimmer's glockenspiel masterpiece, "you're So Cool." The song, which is a simple and clean, minimal, even, bit of echo-y percussion that builds to a slow climax over about 3 and a half minutes, plays ofer the opening and closing monologues given by Arquette's character, Alabama, a perfect match to her coquettish voice.

Despite the violence and gore predicated on Slater and Arquette's mad courtship and drug deal gone bad, the song ties their love into the narrative, giving it an emotional center in their relationship that many Tarantion films, with their hipper soundtracks full of jarring pop, lack. Over the next four hours, we watched it twice, Dahveed stopping on key scences to recite the dialoge, and me memorizing the scenes bit my bit. The night ended with a crazy drunken walk down to Gustave's tailor shop (where he was still working away at 2 AM on an old black Singer machine), more beers, and an even more drunkenly prepared can of potted French Cassoulet that Dahveed had brought over in his luggage several years before. It tasted of Heinz baked beans and duck fat, and it was brilliant.

Since that night, I've probably watched "True Romance" 30 times, each evoking memories of that night and a life I can't ever go back to. Dahveed and I are both married (he has two lovely young boys). I've never been back to Cameroon, and Dahveed left in the mid-2000s, burnt out on illness, ornaizational hassles, and a little witchcraft. Gustave, who meant so much to me that a picture of him and I still hangs in my living room (over my liquor cabinet, fittingly) disappeared in Amsterdam in 2004 (I think), jumping his travel visa and eventually making it to the US as an undocumented immigrant and asylum seekeer (asylum from what, we were never sure). My buddy Andre tracked him down in New York years later, but he wasn't the same--drugs, or hard living, or something else had made him into a person we didn't know any more.

There's no going back to the simplicity and (for me, at least) innocense of that first month in Africa, learning about what I loved and thinking about where it might lead. But that night, drunk as I was, that movie, this song (and even that cassoulet) were all perfect.

-Brandon

#99: Uncle Tupelo - Moonshiner

Uncle Tupelo - Moonshiner
from March 16-20, 1992, 1992

In 2005, I once listed Moonshiner as my favorite song. It's not, obviously, but without the methodological benefit that good data management allows, it was the first song I could think of that stood a chance of being my favorite.

I'm guessing that at least a solid 10% of the songs on my list are drinking songs in one way or another (and I had to cut one of my favorite drunk songs due to the constraints of the project!) but no one does the genre as well as Uncle Tupelo. (Another of theirs will appear later in this list.) I think the general ethos is succinctly described in their song Life Worth Living:

We're all looking for a life worth living
That's why we drink ourselves to sleep.

And another line in I Got Drunk --

You spend half your time just staring into a beer
What you need, you know, you can't find here

-- that hits close to the same meaning; but, for years, I thought the line was "staring into a mirror," and I still like that better.

Moonshiner isn't a Tupelo original but an older folk song covered most notably by Dylan, the Clancy Brothers, and Cat Power. None of these other versions can match the devastating power of Farrar's delivery. While I was never able to really get into Son Volt (significantly preferring Tweedy's Wilco) I rank Farrar exceptionally high on my list of favorite vocalists. The single thing that makes good singers great is not technical ability -- this is what American Idol and its clones miss -- but the relatability of not only the singer to listener but the singer to material. Basically, when Farrar sings

I spent all my money
On whiskey and beer
...
If whiskey don't kill me
Lord, I don't know what will

he sounds like he means it, like he knows exactly what that implies. Given the stories and Tupelo's other work, it's not hard to believe that Farrar believed he'd drink himself to death.

When you're young, drunk, and depressed, it's not hard to believe that whiskey is the way out, whether or not you want it to be.

The song is simple and self-explanatory in both music and lyrics, with little wasted movement. Three verses comprising an effective biography:

The first, the scene: a moonshiner who has dedicated his life -- not just professionally but mentally -- to drink.

The second, the existence: daily moving among drink and drinkers, wanting better. I've always taken the focus on women as another contradiction, with the drinking being both the reason for loneliness and the reason to not try and make things better.

The third, the end. What I think temperance always misses is the comfort that drink provides, that it makes the world smaller and easier to handle. It's easy when all you want and need is a drink:

Let me eat when I'm hungry
Let me drink when I'm dry
Two dollars when I'm hard up
Religion when I die

The whole world is a bottle
And life is but a dram
When the bottle gets empty
Lord, it sure ain't worth a damn

The best drinking songs are those that make you want to drink more and never drink again. The best drinking songs make you into a Kierkegaardian [Drunk] Knight of Faith, to believe that both are good and both are possible.

(The best drinking songs make you make references like this. I am not drunk enough yet to continue the metaphor.)

Of all the versions I've heard of this song, the Cat Power one is (a distant) second:



-Lin

#100 - Pere Ubu - Nonalignment Pact

Nonalignment Pact - Pere Ubu
from The Modern Dance, 1978

Since Lin decided to start with the delicate and minor-keyed "Via Chicago," it seems fitting that I should open with a thick slab of raucous noise--Pere Ubu's "Nonalignment Pact," the first track from their 1978 debut LP, The Modern Dance. Beginning with a series of shrill, almost painful shrieks from one of Allen Ravenstine's synths before dissolving into a nearly rockabilly guitar riff and the full-throated ravings of vocalist David Thomas (one of rock's few truly unique singers), "Nonalignment Pact" picks up where Pere Ubu's handful of early singles ("30 Seconds Over Tokyo," "Final Solution") with the late, lamented Peter Laughner started--with the sub-romantic ravings of a heartbroken Thomas, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

I wanna make a deal with you, girl
get it signed by the heads of state
I wanna make a deal with you, girl
get it recognized 'round the world.

Recognizing (as any decent scholar of international relations would) that the status of love depends upon the recognition of the community (isn't it obvious that Ubu would be constructivists?), Thomas begins and ends this song with the simple request that his ex-girl engage in a credible commitment to leave him the hell alone. The song careens on from there, at one point featuring Thomas's trademarked unhinged warble as he half scat-sings her "thousand other names." Naturally, these entreaties leave him winded, confused, and alone, barking out into the chaos and screaming again for her to just leave him alone. It's also fairly dance-able, in a spazzy, pogo and swing your arms around kind of way.

Ubu are a major touchstone for me, and not only because they're Ohio's number one all-time rock band. Back when I was young, impressionable, and still trying to figure out what punk rock was, David Thomas and Peter Laughner (who died before Ubu could record this record, but who will be making a return appearance in a later post) were among the first to show me that what I thought punk had to sound like was wrong, narrow, and no fun at all. The Modern Dance, along with Ubu's first singles (collected on the Terminal Tower compilation) were post-punk before there was punk, pushing boundaries that the NYC types didn't even realize existed. More than anything else, the joy I still get bopping up and down to this song late at night (and, in one memorable instance, tried to make up for my lack of interest in more conventional forms of parter dancing by urging my then-girlfriend, now-wife to join in) is the joy of knowing that we can make anything into punk, as long as we sing it with enough feeling.

-Brandon

#100: Wilco - Via Chicago

Wilco - Via Chicago
from Summerteeth, 1999

The last few tracks added to my top 100 list were amazingly difficult but the choice ultimately came down to what I thought was more important for this project: the songs I've loved longer or the songs I love more now. I picked the former, though I can't really say way. All I know is that if I had made this list 9 years ago, Via Chicago would be in the top 20, and that was good enough for me to make sure it made it in.

I don't care what it's actually about; the opening lines

I dreamed about killing you again last night
And it felt alright to me
Dying on the banks of Embarcadero skies
I sat and watched you bleed

and the wikipedia article can lead to an interpretation of a mangle relationship. For me, this is a song about homesickness, occupying the same emotional place as I'll Be Home for Christmas but without being a crappy song about Christmas.

And literally: I grew up out west and my family still lived there when I moved to the midwest for college and stayed for nearly a decade, living between 3 and 5 hours from Chicago. Nearly every trip back to the family involved a connecting flight through O'Hare. But the song invokes more the return trip, the sense of loss of something good. Every leaving -- to go back to the place without family, the place that for better or worse, was my real home -- came with a dose of sadness and thinking about the roads not taken. The hardest choices are not between good and evil or bad and worse but between good and good.

In that way, it's also cleanly associated in my mind with the process of growing up or the even more ineffable realization that we're responsible for our decisions and their consequences.

I printed my name on the back of a leaf
And I watched it float away
The hope I had in a notebook full of white dry pages
Was all I tried to save

Via Chicago has this melancholy and slight confusion to it. The prominent minor keys do the heavy work, but it's all the little touches, too. The short piano break starting at about 2:55. The feedback present throughout the song, providing an almost unnoticed sense of unease, which becomes more and more pronounced towards the end of the song, until it threatens to derail everything a minute early. But then everything drops and it's just an acoustic guitar and Tweedy singing, "I'm coming home. I'm coming hone."

-Lin

Top 100 Songs: Introduction (Part 2)

What Lin said.

Well, not exactly. Like Lin, I'm looking forward to a writing project that lets me reflect on a set of songs that I already feel like I know from the inside out. Rather than focusing passing judgement, I'm looking forward to being able to think again about why these songs are still so important to me, in most cases years after I first heard them. As an assistant professor still trying to find his feet (and get his tenure), I rarely have the time to sit and enjoy listening to music without some sort of ulterior motive--background noise when I read or write, to entertain, or to take the edge off a long walk to work. Despite the fact that I'll almost certainly have to turn in my music snob card for admitting it, I'd rather spend that time contemplating the grace, power, and perfection of these 100 songs than off on a search for the next new sound.

I've made lists like this before. Somewhere, it's possible that my friend Liz Mathews still has a CD of my "twenty favorite songs" circa 2003--a list heavy on The Lemonheads, and light on songs longer than 3 and a half minutes. I can't say that my process was as rigorous or systematic as Lin's. I don't really have data on what I listen to most often, or a rating system that's anything more than an ad hoc testament to how I feel sometimes at 1 AM and still flipping though old songs. Like with my own research, I made my list inductively, by pulling together a short list of my 15 or 20 absolute favorites and listening to them in epic late night sessions, seeing what they make me want to hear next.

The list is mostly guitar music, and I regret that I've not been able to get more, genre-wise, out of my dedicated Pitchfork reading from 2003-7. But it also reflects my efforts to get deeper into musics the indie set had left behind in the early 2000s--old blues, country, and soul songs, and the wonderful, half-forgotten bits and pieces I found there. My songs are, at first glance, older and more temporally disbursed than Lin's, reflecting that I was always better at digging music up after the fact than I was at following it when it was coming out.

When I finally got 100 songs in to some sort of rough order, I was surprised by what I saw. Old favorites from college were gone, replaced in some instances by deeper cuts on the same albums. When I read the list to Kim over the phone, she was at turns surprised by my revisionism (the songs that ended up making the cut by some of our favorite artists surpised me as much as they did her) and by my fidelity (my top ten has changed a lot less over the last decade then I expected). Ultimately, I found that what makes a good song for me hasn't changed all that much--I just know a lot more songs.

--brandon

Top 100 Songs: Introduction

One of the big realizations that the "listen to every critically acclaimed and personal desired album from 2010" project gave us was that neither Brandon nor I are particularly good at creating new content on a consistent basis. Personally, I blame a life that exists outside the internet, so I'm not too worried. We're going to do this new project, though, and it'll work much better. As I mentioned quite a few times, the hardest albums to review were the middling ones, the okay-but-not-great, the ones that weren't actually bad enough to pan.

Here, though, we're going to each go through our top 100 songs. So we've agonized over our lists and checked them multiple times and I think we're good to go.

And a thanks to our devoted readers, willing to put up not only with months of nothingness, but also the complete navel-gazing that is a project like this. These are not the 100 best songs out there. They're not necessarily "100 songs I think you should know." They are 100 songs each that mean something to us. We are connoisseurs of music and have spent years and many dollars in pursuit of knowledge of the subject. In that there may be some value to you, if only that it may introduce you to songs you don't already know. But no guarantees: one of the things that I learned in making my list is that I leaned very heavy on my formative years of music geekdom -- high school and college. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising.

Which means, you might already know all the songs on my list. (I'm not sure what's up with the outliers in 1970 and 1975 except that each year has one album represented twice. I also find it interesting that while the highest concentration is in the high school and college years, there are no songs from the year I graduated the former and started the latter.)

Very early on, Brandon suggested that we limit the list two only two songs per artist, otherwise our lists would be heavily skewed to our favorites and three quarters of the list would be from a half dozen artists. This wasn't a "hard" ceiling, as there were allowances for post-breakup bands, guest spots, and things like this. Essentially we just went with what made sense. This was my working definition:

* Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Son Volt count as three separate bands.
* CSN&Y is the same as CSN, but solo Young is different, even if the CSN&Y song is a Young song.

Quibble if you want, but it's the spirit that counts. Besides, I don't think there are any edge cases on my list.

I have a lot of tracks: one hundred songs counts as less than one-third of one percent of all tracks I have rated. I've been diligent for the last two years to rate every song I listen to -- which made compiling my list somewhat easier. So I queried my collection for everything with the highest rating. After culling the duplicates, I was left with 1651 songs. I went through this list, dividing them into four categories:

1) YES -- the songs that have to be included
2) PROBABLY -- the songs that should be included
3) MAYBE -- the songs that should be included, if I have room
4) NO -- the songs that aren't in the top 100

I took artist discographies as a whole and made sure that I only marked up to two tracks per artist yes, probably, or maybe. Even doing this, I was left with 157 YESs alone. Then, through this list, I marked "the ones that absolutely have to be included or else this entire project is a sham"...which gave me 81. Then I spent a few days agonizing over choosing 19 tracks from 76.

So, yeah, here we are. While the top 100 may be slightly different on a different day, I think it's as accurate as it possibly could be. I'm a little sad that it doesn't show a great deal of diversity: the only two pre-1960 songs are both classical works; country, blues, and rap are all under-represented. There's no reggae or jazz. There are artists I love that aren't represented at all (Old 97's, Leonard Cohen) but there are artists that I think have only one non-crap song (Xzibit). But it is what it is.

-- Lin

2010: M.I.A., Male Bonding

M.I.A.
/\/\ /\ Y /\ (Maya)
Released July 13, 2010

Short Notes: Or: On The Value of Lowered Expectations



Brandon: B-

It’s not at all surprising that critics were wildly divided over this record. It’s a radical departure from her quirky but club-ready sound on her first two (outstanding) records, more abrasive, processed, and artificial. I’ve only followed parts of the story of M.I.A. the artist, who’s global fame has put her artistic decisions under a new, intense kind of critical scrutiny. And like Kanye, she’s responded by pulling into herself, with tinny beats and processed vocals evoking a new distance between her and the listener. Mainstream critical outlets have responded much as they did for Kanye--heaping praise on this record as the statement of a more mature artist. But with the exception of the AV Club and Bob Christgau (who draws the comparison explicitly in his favorable review, suggesting that, as an insular, fuck-up record, Maya accomplishes its goals with “rather more success than Kanye West on 808s and Heartbreak) , the indie press that brought M.I.A. her first attention were rather brutal (Pitchfork calls it a “shambling mess.”)

As always, the truth is closest to Christgau. /\/\ /\ Y /\ is neither shambolic nor a masterwork. It’s not a fun record (no “Sunshowers” here), without much of the humor that made her so endearing on Arular, but the industrial crunch of tracks like “Meds and Feds” is reasonably interesting in its own right, as is the synthy “XXXO.” Even if half the songs here are duds, she’s still making challenging, original music that’s clearly aiming for capital-A Art, with all that comes with being that kind of pop musician. For better or worse, I’d rather hear M.I.A.’s take on krautrock (“Illygirl”) than the second half of the Lucky Soul record, which tells you something.

Lin: B-

For me, M.I.A. is in the same category as pre-Dark Fantasy Kanye: a popularly loved and critically respected artist that I just don't get. I mean, "Paper Planes" is a burner in every sense of the word, but easily my favorite version of it is the Diplo Remix with Bun B and Rich Boy which minimizes M.I.A.'s own input. I've not been impressed with any of her previous work; the albums are good enough to throw on for background noise or, presumably, dancefloor grinding but even the relatively intricate beats rarely force attention. /\/\ /\ Y /\, for all the comparisons to Kanye, is no My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family. It seems like more of the same, though those with more familiarity to her back catalog could probably point out the differences.

My favorite track here is "Lovalot," eschewing the bang of everything else with a more subdued, tense and paranoid beat the slithers it way through a story of terrorism or freedom fighting or whatever. "Believer" comes close to the same, but lacks any payoff -- all tension with no release. The rest of the album isn't a mess (as Brandon points out) but it's a chore to get through. Only "XXXO" and, to a lesser extent, "Tell Me Why" work in the more club-friendly format that most of her work trades in.

---

Male Bonding
Nothing Hurts
Released May 10, 2010

Short Notes: More shoegaze/lo-fi pop that doesn’t reach the heights of other shoegaze/lo-fi of 2010



Brandon: B

Fitting right in with the noise-pop of bands (I don’t like all that much) like Vivian Girls and No Age, Nothing Hurts is a stomping, echo-y barnburner that veers between the nearly Husker Du/early Dinosaur jr /first Nirvana record (“Your Contact,” “Crooked Scene,” “Paradise Vendors”) and the more plodding drone of their contemporaries (“Franklin”). I’m not particularly into shoegaze when it’s not cut with equal or better parts of pop sensibility, and for the most part, this album holds my attention with solid riffs that overcome the affected, echo-chamber vocals. At 29 minutes, the shoegazy parts of this record I find less compelling never really subsume the punk I like much more. Not my favorite fuzzed-out record of the year (Dum Dum Girls and Ariel Pink write better songs, and balance their fidelity affects with more compelling pop), but not bad.

Lin: C

Like Brandon, I’m not particularly into shoegaze -- except when it’s an accent to a heaping pile of metal. And since I have this growing, well, ‘hatred’ is the right word, I guess, of muddied lo-fi pop music, my favorite thing about this album is its short short length. This strikes me as far more generic than the albums Brandon mentions (Ariel Pink, etc.) which also makes it worse, committing the dual sins of being bad and uninteresting. “Pirate Key” almost piqued my interest there for a second, making it my favorite track on the album, but the rest of it is like driving through Western Nebraska, trying to find a radio station with a strong enough signal.

2010: Los Campesinos!, Lucky Soul

Los Campesinos!
Romance is Boring
Released January 26 (Wichita Recordings)

Short Notes: Scotland’s answer to Vampire Weekend?



LIN: C+

I think the Budweiser commercial using the opening of Los Campesinos!'s "You! Me! Dancing!" is brilliant. (I tried to find a copy of the ad online, but couldn't. If any readers can find it, post in the comments, please?) The build-up has just the right amount of tension that when it breaks it releases a flood of endorphins. Unfortunately, the song is six minutes long and goes downhill from there -- so I like imagine that the Bud commercial is simply a video for the song.

Which has little to do with this album before us, which I found really quite boring. (Cue headlines: Romance isn't boring, but Romance Is Boring is boring!) Nothing here comes close to the opening 90 seconds of "You! Me! Dancing!"... or, really, to the rest of that song, which I don't even much care for. I generally have more tolerance for music that is interesting or novel even if it fails. Even shit I hated (c.f. Girl Talk/Joanna Newsom) I have more respect for since it was 'good' enough to elicit an emotion at least. For whatever reason, I think the melodramatic song title "I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed. Just So You Know." pretty much sums it up.



BRANDON: B+

Not surprisingly, I’m a Los Campesinos fan. This kind of literate (with the big words and such), half-spoken, sunny pop has always been my stock-in-trade, the third strand of my core musical identity along with alt.country and old-time blues and country. I listened to their first record, the jittery, manic, and surprisingly angry Hold On Now, Youngster on repeat during my “lost” year of graduate school in 2008, screaming out the opening track, “Death to Los Campesinos!” with the windows down in the van on the way to Woodman’s.

Romance is Boring is a bigger, sonically fuller record. Los Campesinos are getting weirder, closer to Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart guests), and further from the bands I was hearing in them in 2008--Frightened Rabbits and Vampire Weekend, for starters. The more conventionally structured songs--”Romance is Boring” and the too-clever-by-half but still pretty great “Straight in at 101”--are the most successful, though, as lead singer/frontman Gareth Campesinos! (yes, they’re that kind of band) channels a prep-school version of Craig Finn or (perhaps more aptly) Eddie Argos from Art Brut, ranting about the failures of hipster love. “Straight in at 101” in particular really works for me, the story of a fumbling love played out by a kid who plays at hipsterdom, camouflaging his adolescent assholery (and love for a good chorus) with tight pants, mussy hair, and picky eating:

I think we need more post-coital
and less post-rock
feels like the build-up takes forever
but you never get me off.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s why no one has sex while listening to Tortoise.

Unfortunately, too much of this record is given over to the very boring drone and repetition he’s criticizing--songs that lack the hooky vitality of this band’s best work. I still love it, but songs like “Coda: A Burn Scar int he Shape of the Sooner State” and “I Just Sighed, I Just Sighed, Just So You Know” are eminently skippable, which isn’t what you want from a taut pop record.

---

Lucky Soul
A Coming of Age
Released April 15 (Elefant)

Short Notes: British retro-pop that occasionally overcomes its genre trappings



BRANDON: B-

I love a good genre exercise as much as the next guy, and tamborine-heavy girl-group-baiting pop isn’t a bad genre to play with. It’s heavy on convention, offering a tight format that, with the slightest tweaking or transgression, can easily become something much more. And when Lucky Soul go straight for the hand-clapping, cliched sweet spot, these songs overcome the fairly ordinary songwriting to become something fairly compelling, if slight--like a less punky, British Detroit Cobras. The first four tracks on this record do this very well, mixing lilting “whoa-oh” choruses (“Whoa Billy”) with driving mid-tempo numbers that sound like Northern Soul outtakes (“Love 3”) and the lovely, string-laden “Up in Flames.” But when the songs tray too much from the faux-Northern Soul format, the record is mostly forgettable. Such is the danger in plying “retro-pop,” as Lin has often noted: why would you put on new derivatives when you can listen to the real thing?



LIN: B

Which is amusing, since I like the first half of this album a great deal. Part of it is assuredly a reaction against the muddied lo-fi of the indie-acclaimed best-of pop albums of the year that I continue to rail on. The two released singles ("Whoa Billy" and "White Russian Doll") captures the raw joy of the best late 60's girl groups, making it perfect for summer listening. "Love 3" is fits in nicely, a lean two minute slice of tightly constructed soul pop. In many ways, this tracks are what I've always wanted from Belle and Sebastian but never got. But Brandon's right: outside of the title track, nothing on the second half of the album distinguishes itself from its sources or its contemporaries. But 3 pretty great and 2 pretty good tracks is enough for a 'B' and a qualified recommendation, if you like this sort of thing.

2010: LCD Soundsystem, Lissie

LCD Soundsystem
This Is Happening
Released May 18, 2010(DFA/Virgin)

Short Notes: This may be happening...but is it a good thing?



Lin: B+

I've only recently come to the point where I'm willing to say I like dance and/or electronic music. Part of the reason is exactly what that statement usually implies: I started my musical journey in a much different place and shunned the sounds that didn't correspond with that ethos. But it's also my mostly-quixotic belief that one ought to be able to explain why one likes what one likes and it took awhile for me to feel like I could do that. LCD Soundsystem was one of the gateways for me, though it took me a long time to realize it.

What makes Murphy's first two albums particularly special to me is that they feel like albums: coherent and complete artistic statements, not just a collection of potential singles. Coming from a rock background and having my musical education take place in the (barely) pre-mp3 error, this means a lot. So much of dance music seems to be made for short attention spans, it's nice when music presents a fuller argument.

This is Happening also seems to do this -- definitely to the albums' credit. But it lacks the vitality of the second and, especially, the first. I want my music to grab me and force me to listen to it. A singer needs to have the force of will to convince the listener that they have something to say and that they know what they're talking about. Listen to something like "All My Friends" and you can hear it. Or "New York I Love You" or "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House." I don't hear it on the new one. It sounds too complacent. The "B+" rating is probably too low, given from a place of disappointment: the music here matches that of his earlier work and the lyrics are still top-notch. But it's missing the emotional component that makes it essential.



Brandon: A-

Having listened to this record now almost a dozen times, I think I get why James Murphy decided to end this project and move on. That’s not a commentary on the quality of the record (which is, I think, quite high, if not quite as good as Sound of Silver), but I think you can hear it in the music, in the extended, more meandering songs that make up most of This is Happening. As Lin suggests, this is a much less immediate record than the two previous LCD Soundsystem outings, and excepting the gleeful “Drunk Girls,” there’s not a song under just shy of six minutes long. “You Wanted a Hit,” indeed.

That said, I find this record quite powerful. There’s a lot less tongue-in-cheek flippancy in these songs, which ride dancily along on some real angst. “Pow Pow,” which I think of as one of the album’s standout tracks, juxtaposes the goofiness of the onomatopoetic chorus and throwaway diss lines directed at Village Voice writers with some real self-contemplation--about the perils of he scene, failing relationships, and opening oneself up to new experiences. And the opening track, “Dance Yrself Clean,” is a monster. No one does wry lyrics with minimal beats as well as Murphy, and this is his apotheosis, the distillation of his band’s signature sound into a blurting, thumping, kraut-rock mess of emotion. Murphy’s vocals have never been better than on this track either, as he switches effortlessly from his normal singsong-y delivery to an affecting yelp. All in all, a worthy swansong.

---

Lissie
Catching A Tiger
Released August 17, 2010 (Fat Possum)

Short Notes: Sunny, blonde Cali folk-pop-rock that doesn’t really know what it wants to be.



Brandon: B-

After hearing the opening track, the quirky, clanging, poppy “Record Collector,” I had reasonably high hopes for this record. “Record Collector” is an endearing, soaring pop song (if a little overstuffed with ideas that depart from the solid structure of the first minute), with Lissie’s Stevie Nicks-lite vocals focused and taut. But the wheels come off with the second track, the regrettable, limp “When I’m Alone,” and the record becomes something of an eclectic mess.

I don’t know Lissie’s back catalog, although her debut EP got enough buzz to put her on my radar (and thus on the list), but she sounds like an artist who’s either not yet certain of what kind of songwriter/performer she is, or like an artist whose management is deeply misguided. There are at least four producers on the record (including Kings of Leon collaborator Jacquire King and British singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt), and the album veers wildly from piano ballads in a West Coast Regina Spektor mould (“Bully”) to galloping quasi-country (“Little Lovin’), straight pop-country in the Dixie Chicks mould (“Cuckoo”), and the sort of shuffling blues that gets you a deal with Fat Possum (“Needle Starts to Fall”).

“Stranger,” which sounds like a remastered Petula Clark B-side and is one of the stronger tracks, doesn’t even remotely fit with the rest of the album. Although it’s a charming (if slight) pop song, it disrupts the album’s flow, and might have been better served as a single or the lead track of an EP. Nothing here is particularly bad (although “When I’m Alone” and “Oh Mississippi,” co-written by Harcourt and sounding just like a turgid British take on classic American folk balladry, are the weakest links), but none of the good ideas are fully developed, either. I’d be curious to hear a record on which Lissie herself takes control. For what it's worth, the live video I've posted above of "Cuckoo" sounds far better than the album version, and I suspect she's a compelling live performer who's got a shot at making a good record with better direction in the studio.

Lin: C+

Catching a Tiger starts off well enough and I start to think of yet another way to say "it's alright but unspecial." Then it takes a turn for the worse, putting in a couple of totally skippable tracks. The nadir is the inexplicable inclusion of "Stranger" which, at best, sounds like the girl group heyday or, at worst, a Best Coast knock off. It makes no sense in context of the album and takes me out of the listening experience. It's indicative of the album's major problem: it has no ethos or point it's trying to make. It's scattered, but not in the schizophrenic way, which can turn out okay; no, it tries too hard to be everything to everyone (at least in an indie context -- this is no repeat of the Katy Perry album). There's some decent moments here (first single "In Sleep," perhaps, or "Look Away"), but nothing to recommend it over the couple dozen similar but better albums we've also reviewed here.

2010: Kylesa, Laura Marling

Kylesa
Spiral Shadow
Released November 9, 2010 (Season of Mist)

Short Notes: Metal for the non-metal people, but it’s plenty hard in its own right.



Lin: A-

This, more than any album, was the one I looked forward to reviewing the most when we compiled the master list of 2010 albums. It appeared on many of the year end best ofs, both general lists and those that specialized in metal. And while I've gotten more into, for lack of a different descriptor metal-metal over the last year or so, I still tend to gravitate more towards those artists working with in a traditional 'rock' -- and, by extension, blues -- framework. Which is not to say that this album is "traditional" (whatever that would mean), just that this would be another great entry point into the genre if you're looking.

In writing this review, I found myself whistling along to the riff in "Forsaken," if that tells you anything.

The same part of me that wants to throw this one on the playlist is the same that loved Baroness's Blue Record from 2009. Kylesa doesn't quite reach the highs of Baroness, but they're more consistently on while mining, more or less, the same vein. You can consider this on par with that, an effective one-two counterargument for those that believe Mastodon is the standard in 'crossover' metal. Many reviews of Spiral Shadow like to point out its psychedelic flourishes; while I think they're overstating its influences (as in: you probably shouldn't go into this looking for Hendrix-as-metal), but it is a point of contrast to the other bands I mentioned above.

Brandon: A-

As I’ve mentioned before, the metal records on our list are the hardest for me to review. Even though I’ve listened to more metal since November than at any other time in my life, I still can’t really say that I understand most of it. I can’t really channel the emotion that I hear in Agalloch for myself, and unlike nearly ever good punk band I know of, most metal doesn’t make me feel like I understand how the songwriter and the musicians feel.

That said, this record is without a doubt my favorite metal record of the year. It’s not the best--it lacks the gravitas, the impact, and the clear vision of Agalloch’s metal masterpiece. But you can bet I’ll be listening to Spiral Shadow in 2012. The album starts off a bit slow, with the sludgy “Tired Climb” and the speedier but undistinguished “Cheating Synergy.” But things start to get more interesting from there, and by the time track 5, the rather epic “Don’t Look Back” comes around, Kylesa’s rather unique sound (dual drummers, male/female harmonies, the latter sung by Laura Pleasants, whose occasional lead vocals provide an enjoyable variety) comes together into something that sounds, well, like hard rock with a real kick. This record has its proggy and stoner moments, but the best songs sound like a tremendously aggro version of The Pixies or Dinosaur jr (I can almost hear Kim Deal on the title track). It’s probably obvious that I’d like a metal record where many of the touchstones are post-punk/pre-grunge bands I already enjoy, but this record is plenty heavy, too--just not in a way that get in the way of a good hook every now and again. Also, this record has the strongest second half of any record on the list with a relatively undistinguished side one. Recommended.

---

Laura Marling
I Speak Because I Can
Released April 6, 2010 (Astralwerks)

Short Notes: 21 year old British folk prodigy evokes the golden age of British folk



Lin: B+

Like nearly all folk albums, I Speak Because I Can works best at its darkest:

There's hope in the air
Hope in the water
But there's no hope for me
Your life serving daughter

In these moments Marling's able to hang with the best of them, continuing the line from Lost Highway through Knoxville Girl and into No Depression. Maybe it's just the British folk thing, but let me throw in one of WhoopeeInHell's patron saint Richard Thompson as an "at her best" comparison. I love ugly things said beautifully; Thompson is a master of this, Marling easily could be.

The problem is that these moments comprise less than half the album's 37 minute run time. The rest are not bad exactly but are undistinguished. First single "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)" is a good example of this. It's power rests on the lyrics of nostalgia and homesickness, but it's such that, if you don't get the same feeling or buy into it, it's filler. My apophenia wants to draw a connection to Billy Bragg's "A New England" and while there's a good chance they are completely unrelated, the newer song doesn't stand up as well.

I'll come back to this album in the future since the highs ("Hope In the Air", "Devil's Spoke, "Alpha Shallows", "What He Wrote") are high enough and I'll like it more than I do now. I have and listen to so much music that it's rare I'll put on the same album more than once a year (...if that) if there's not something the grabs me on first spin. Folk, Country, Singer/Songwriter -- these are the genres that suffer most. I'll throw on metal when I'm just looking for something to listen to while doing other things, Hip-Hop or Dance when a driving beat is necessary, Rock as the all-purpose go-to. More than the louder genres, albums like this are best when they're familiar: "comfort" is often vital to liking the music, but that's usually only attained via repeated listens. This is true in other genres, sure -- the classics are classics for a reason -- but because of the bedside sing-along or front porch relaxation or cathartic ethos, it's so much more essential in folky music.

Brandon: A-

I agree with Lin about the Richard Thompson comparison, although I think I’d cite the albums he made with Fairport Convention with the amazing Sandy Denny more than his solo work. Like Denny, evoking the emotions of loss and pain are what Marling does best, taking folk cliches (her fingers squeaking on the chord changes on “Made by Maid” to evoke intimacy) and turning them into quotidian but quite moving stories of romantic loss. Of course, she’s not the singer Denny was--her young but husky, tired voice sounds more like Chan Marshall’s--but the songwritinghere is consistently quite strong. My favorites are different than Lin’s (“Blackberry Stone,” “ Rambling Man,” which sounds the most like classic Brit folk, and the title track), but I concur that this record is well worth the time.

2010: Katy Perry, Lady Antebellum

Katy Perry
Teenage Dream
Released August 24, 2010 (Capitol)

Short Notes: This is how major label pop ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper that consists mostly of whipped cream shot from aerosol cans attached to large breasts.



Lin: C

My office has taken to this game of rickrolling each other with Rebecca Black's "Friday." I've heard the original so many times now and many of the remakes/parodies. The original video has over 140 million views and nearly 2.8 million 'dislikes.' Perry's album was nominated for a best album grammy and is certified multi-platinum. With maybe two exceptions, I'm not sure I could tell these two artists apart. (Not helped by Perry's "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)" which is actually inferior to Black's weekend ode.)

Let's get the good parts out of the way. Second single "Teenage Dream" is why I included the album in the first place, as a friend with a generally good taste in music claimed it was one of the best singles of the year. True? No, but it's alright in so far as it goes. "E.T." and "Circle The Drain" provide some much needed gravitas (comparatively) and could be saved by the right type of mixtape.

And now the bad. Generic. Cloying. Tries to hard (c.f. "Peacock" which has barely more subtlety than your average ICP track). Generic. Boring. It loses nearly all the comparison games: compare, for instance, the Snoop Dogg-featuring track "California Gurls" with Robyn's Snoop Dogg featuring "U Should Know Better." It's inoffensive pop music -- a common critique of the genre, but much more damning since it so wants to be edgy. And maybe it is. If you're 12.


Brandon: C

Let's start with the positives. The singles--the ones I'm regularly exposed to, living in a region of rural Ohio without a classic rock radio station, and requiring, despite my impeccable liberal elite credentials, the occasional break from NPR--aren't half bad, as far as these things go. Of course, I'm increasingly mystified by teen-oriented pop (I was warned this would happen, but it snuck up on me a little) but there are things Katy Perry does rather well. I've never particularly cared to be "young forever," there's a certain naive charm to "Teenage Dream," and it's got a big ol' chorus. "Firework" works well as a Pink-style, vaguely rocking song about empowerment, and even though Snoop Dogg's verse is a travesty, "California Gurls" has a legitimate hook. So there's that.

But even evaluated on its own terms, there's a whole lot of mediocrity here, most of which will probably seem obvious to the sorts of people who read our blog. But lest you think I'm some sort of anti-pop snob, I'd like to rehearse the arguments, anyway. This is the sort of music audiophiles provide as evidence that the MP3 format has led to the decline of production values. Even her best tracks sound hollow, with big beats, synths, and the occasional instrumental flourish (as with the sax in "Last Friday Night [T.G.I.F.]") all compressed within an inch of their lives, with no depth to the arrangements. It's not that I have a particularly good sound system, but this record sounds better on the earbuds I use at the gym than on my home stereo. I was surprised at just how obvious the hollowness was--this is a decay in quality that wasn't evident even in the pop records ten years ago. Thankfully, it's still not entirely crowded out more complex soundscapes (Gaga, for example, who despite her reliance on pretty straightforward 4/4 Euro-dance beats, makes music that's at least passable on headphones).

Lyrically, the story is much worse. Beyond the singles, there's really not a listenable song here. Part of it is that Katy Perry's persona is really unpleasant to me--there's not even much nodding and winking here with regards to the sexual content ("Peacock"). Rather than simply being sexy, this just sounds forced, sort of like the cheesy single-entendres of the terrible self-titled Liz Phair record of a few years ago. Perry lacks a musical (as opposed to visual/public) identity. She tries to "rock," but doesn't do it as well as Pink or even Avril Lavigne (whose "What the Hell" is actually quite pleasant, although the video is product-placed within an inch of its life),



and she does the sexual liberation thing lyrically in a way that makes her (or rather, her handlers) seem rather desperate for the male gaze and its approval. She tries to nod towards hip-hop, but as Lin notes, doesn't come within a mile of what Robyn is doing. She's not the singer Christina Aguilera is, and the Auto-tune and pitch-correction are all over the place on these tracks. There's just not much reason to listen to this record given the available alternatives.

And this leads to Brandon's deep thought for the day: When will artists like Katy Perry simply stop releasing albums all together? Given that her sales (less that 200,000 units in the first week) really don't compete with what was possible in the late 1990s, and given that pop albums like this get huge initial sales bumps from deep discounting at places like Amazon, why not just release a steady stream of $1.50 singles, rather than an album that ends up being marked down to $5 to get a big sales bump? If an artist like Katy Perry can release three or four Top-5 singles in a year, why bother with filler-laden albums that get slagged not only by me, but even by more mainstream critics? Since album sales don't seem to drive the revenue stream the way they once did, why dilute your best product with the likes of "The One That Got Away?"

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Lady Antebellum
Need You Now
Released 26 January 2010 (Capitol)

Short Notes: It's one of the biggest albums of 2010, but when your grandchildren see it at their local post-modern flea market in 2045, they won't even recognize it.



Lin: C+

Five dollar albums from Amazon will be my death, allowing me to pick up, on a whim, zeitgeist albums without a significant amount of guilt. (Most albums are worth getting for $5, you see.) I knew, of course, the quadruple platinum, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, most downloaded country song EVER (and 9th overall), the all-around massive chart hit "Need You Now." Hell, it's my father's ring tone. I like the song, but it's unclear at this point if it's due simply to familiarity or the psuedo-nostalgia of being loved by people I love. So there's that.

The rest of the album is generally generic pop country that Main Street Nashville has been producing for years. Maybe it's because I generally stay away from the genre, but I have a higher tolerance for the unexicitingness of mass produced country as compared to mass produced pop, hence the higher grade than the Katy Perry, even though they have similar sins. Lady Antebellum's songwriting is stronger, with some moments that threaten to break through the walls of my cynical detachment. ("American Honey" and "Something 'Bout a Woman" being the two best examples.) For better or worse, Lady Antebellum sounds more earnest in their begging and pleading than a number of the artists we've reviewed, even though it's been overmanufactured, removing the rawness that is necessary for it to truly be a positive. Anyway, more likely than not, you already know whether or not you need to pick this one up, and I'm in no position to convince you one way or another. For what it’s worth, this is the best ‘C’ album of the year.


Brandon: D+

My reaction to this album is the mirror of Lin's. I think I tolerate fluffy pop (I do watch "Glee," after all) better that I tolerate post-Shania/Faith country dreck. There’s really nothing here I find either interesting or clever. This is pop-country crossover at its most eager, referencing Skynyrd and Springsteen (“Perfect Day” and “Stars Ahead,” in which they refer to themselves as a “rock and roll band”) in the lyrics while aiming square at the teenage girl/mother of teenage girl nexus. There’s an equal number of happy and sad songs (although nothing too unhappy), and with two lead singers (Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley), there’s enough variety here to keep anyone from catching on to the underlying lack of variety. Lin’s right that the songwriting is stronger here than on the Katy Perry record, but this is still country/pop by the numbers--professional, but forgettable.

The day that I listened to this record, I also happened to attend a flea market. Since there aren't a lot of buried treasures at a rural Ohio flea market (mostly, people are selling recent NASCAR memorabilia and used DVDs), I typically look through the stacks of old records that are often an afterthought for most vendors. I've occasionally pulled some good stuff this way--especially country from the 1960s and lesser-known classic rock albums--but mostly, the sorts of LPs that end up at these kinds of things are what people were actually listening to 50 years ago. I see an awful lot of dog-eared copies of Andy Williams, Johnny Rivers, Peter Nero, and Herb Alpert--sappy, sentimental, and string-laden, and often in the form of Christmas records or record company samplers.

My point isn't to be needlessly mean, but when people my age (even musically plugged-in kids like me), think about what was important about pop music in the 1960s, this isn't what comes to mind. Sure, it was on the charts, but so was a lot of other better material. We forget just how ubiquitous this sound was in lower middlebrow American culture, and when I hear Lady Antebellum (or Rascal Flatts, or the execrable Sugarland), this is what I think of. If it were the early 70s, Lady Antebellum would be guesting on the "Lawrence Welk Show." This is the kind of music that, in an earlier time, would have left a demonstrable physical presence of its former popularity, but no one in the future would have been able to hum.

But times change. This record has moved 3.2 million, but with the rapid change in technology, it’s unlikely to have a flea market afterlife. This is the record that, in effect, defines pop music in 2010. No one I know thinks of Whipped Cream and Other Delights as the music that best captures the essence of 1966,

but it was the best selling album in the US that year. It’s unlikely Need You Now will be as well-remembered as its chart success would suggest. Since its legacy isn't guaranteed by an overwhelming quantity of physical media, how will we remember it at all?

2010: Justin Townes Earle, Kanye West

Justin Townes Earle
Harlem River Blues
Released September 14, 2010 (Bloodshot)

Short Notes: Steve’s kid grows up.



Brandon: B+

I’ve got a soft spot for Justin Townes Earle. He’s Steve Earle’s kid, and named after his dad’s good friend (and SMWiH hero) Townes Van Zandt. He’s also best known around these parts for his revelatory cover on pretty much my favorite song ever: The ‘Mats’ “Can’t Hardly Wait”. But honestly, my first couple times through this record, it really wasn’t working for me. Growing out of his more youthful alt-country sound and into a retro sound that sounds a little like the recent Preservation Hall Jazz Band (the one with Andrew Bird, Jason Isbell, and Buddy Miller) album stripped of (most of) the horns. It’s a little dixieland, really. But it’s grown on me substantially--most notably the lilting, romantic “One More Night in Brooklyn” and the swinging blues “Ain’t Waitin’ ”--and I’m inclined to think it’s a nice album for a Saturday afternoon.

Lin: B-

Earle had been on my "List of Artists to Check Out" for some time, but before this album came up in the list I hadn't heard any of his work. This should be right up my alley: Earle's dual namesakes (both of whom I like), signed to Bloodshot, and spoken well of by friends with similar taste. But I find this more unexciting than anything. It's fine, but it's not as interesting as, say, the recently reviewed Joe Pug album. In a way, it reminds me of why it took me so long to get into Lucero: excellent on paper but merely competant and boring in execution. I can get why people like this, but I need something just a little bit more.

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Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Released November 22, 2010 (Def Jam)

Short Notes: A motherfucking monster.



Lin: A

I want to hate this album. I find Kanye's previous albums extremely overrated, with something like 6 good tracks spread among the four albums. His public persona and actions are ridiculous. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy appeared on nearly every end of the year best of list, usually near the top. I want to hate it, but I don't. This is the album where I finally see the same genius that everyone else does.

So, at this point, there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said by critics more talented than me. Cultural zeitgeist, critical darling; one of the most vital albums of the year, forcing you to pay attention as it spins not uncontrollably but purposefully into inextricable self-psychologizing and ultimately a self-destruction or, probably more accurate, a de-mythologizing. (Or is it the opposite?) Yes, the title is appropriate.

I mean, seriously:



I have no idea what that is, but I’ve watched it about two dozen times over the last 3 days. It's not properly a music video (2 minutes long?), more like promo for a video. Or a teaser for the album. Regardless, it’s utterly fascinating and seems oddly indicative of the album-as-listening-experience. "POWER" is one of the highest highlights on the album (even though I'm tricked every time by the riff-less Crimson sample) and that video is ridiculous in every awesome way. But there's also "Monster" with the somewhat disturbing video and fantastic verse by Nicki Minaj (who also provided the best moment on Drake’s album). And “Runaway” -- entirely deserving of Pitchfork’s “second best track of the year” designation. There’s exactly one less-than-good track and my biggest complaint is that the highs are so high I don’t have the patience to listen to the merely great tracks and skip ahead.

Highly recommend. This is a pick that everyone got right.

Brandon: A+

This record is a lot of things. Kanye West is a complete and total asshole--a terrible person whose misogyny is irredeemably banal (and brutally violent), a casual, almost lazy racist (there’s a lot in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ rather brutal takedown of this record for The Atlantic Monthly to agree with) and a remarkably narcissistic man, even in the golden age of over-exposed celebrity. Parts of this album make me a little sick.

I’m also increasingly convinced, after listening to it a couple dozen times, that he might have made the greatest hip-hop record of all time.* My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is clearly rooted in his earlier work--the soul samples, the electronic thump, the biting self-criticism that undermines the bravado. But it’s also something different, something more. Musically, it’s without a weak or slow moment. The beats are huge, and even the non-singles bring me back for repeats. Lyrically, this is ‘Ye’s best rapping. His style is plastic, and despite his unquestionable talent, is without a clear identity of its own--affecting a Lil Wayne-style flow on “Monster,” technically proficient if not silky smooth most of the time, and without a distinctive characteristic. In terms of the flow, most of the guests here--Raekwan, the remarkable Pusha T, Jay-Z, especially--are demonstrably superior. But Kanye blows everyone away on every single track here, mostly with sheer bravado and pathos. Has there ever been a more pathos-laden rapper than Kanye? He’s a master producer, but nothing he does feels technical. That doesn’t mean he’s not calculating, but he has a remarkable talent for sounding immediate.

I’m not inclined to waste more time trying to describe the record, because I’m not sure I can communicate just how remarkable it is. Let’s just say that “Runaway” is probably my song of the year. It’s 6 minutes of Kanye viciously undermining himself and his less self-conscious doppelganger Pusha T (of the mighty Clipse), followed by what amounts to Kanye’s version of Neil Young’s Trans--his painful lament, pitchshifted into incomprehensibility with Autotune, as though he wants us to know how much he hates himself, but he just can’t quite bear to say it out loud. And truthfully, self-loathing is the dominant theme of this record. Kanye seems to genuinely hate himself--he’s constantly chipping away at his own arrogant bravado, even when, as in “Monster,” he spends most of the song in classic self-promotion.

This is rap’s White Album: a big sprawling, genius mess, with Kanye’s personality crisis providing the John, Paul, and George parts (Rick Ross is Ringo. I kinda hate Rick Ross). Absolutely crucial.

*Note: If it's not this record, what is the greatest hip-hop album of all time? Illmatic? The Chronic? Ready to Die? Something old school, like It Takes a Nation of Millions... or Paid in Full? Hip-hop is increasingly (hell, popular music is increasingly) a singles game, and I'm not sure how many more defining album-length statements hip-hop as we know it right now has in it. The strongest argument for this record as opposed to the finest 90s records is that Kanye seems to be aiming for something--musically, obviously, but lyrically, too--more complex, more universal (by way of the particularity of our fame culture), more ambitious. If this is The White Album (or maybe hip-hop's Dark Side of the Moon, in its ability to be proggy but hit the mainstream), then Illmatic sounds like Elvis's 1956 self-titled--great on its own terms, but clearly the product of an earlier time.

2010: Jonsi, Josh Ritter

Jonsi
Go
Released April 6. 2010 (XL)

Short Notes: Sigur Ros frontman makes a pop record, mostly.



Lin: B+
A solo album essentially in name only, where the best moments are those that come closest to his main band. It's more accessible than Sigur Ros, probably, but accessibility was never their problem. There's still the majestic chord progressions and non-English singing, but the songs are shorter and generally less complex. It's real easy to say that if you're a fan of Sigur Ros, this is a worthwhile purchase, though it doesn't reach the level of Sigur's better albums. Indeed, this is a "throw it on and don't think about it too hard" album that doesn't require much active listening as many of the tracks blend together in one long drone-y atmospheric. The one track that stands out here is "Tornado," which has the pathos of the first Sigur Ros album.

Brandon: B-
Among the many terrible things I have to publicly admit in order to write for this blog, I must confess that I never enjoyed Sigur Ros. Most of my college friends and a number of my grad school friends absolutely loved them--bought rare releases, saw them in concert, described the rapturous experiences they had with the music. I just never felt it. And so in as much as this isn’t like Sigur Ros (and Lin’s right--Jonsi brings the pop here alongside the weird), I prefer it. The lead track and single, “Go Do,” is a piece of commercial-ready post-millennial dream-pop, its insistent happiness and upbeat attitude verging on The Polyphonic Spree. The rest is a little more eclectic--lots of blips and beeps and vocal manipulations alongside the soaring verses-as-choruses and cheery orchestration. It’s a little saccharine for me (even with the weirdness), but it has it’s charms. It sounds like something a Cirque de Soleil performance could be built around, if they were so inclined. I’m not sure if that’s an endorsement or not.

---

Josh Ritter
So Runs the World Away
Released May 4, 2010 (Pytheas)

Short Notes: Much-loved singer-songwriter mostly succeeds



Brandon: B-
Josh Ritter’s 2003 record Hello Starling is much beloved by the the indie singer-songwriter community. It’s a justifiable classic of the last decade in songcraft--wordy, clever, built less on hooks and more on long, intricate verses that tell simple stories with lots of memorable lines. His newest outing isn’t nearly as strong, although it has its rewards. Sonically, Ritter’s work is a lot more diverse now--more orchestration and a much more dynamic mix of tempos and sounds. When this plays to his strengths as a storyteller (“Folk Bloodbath”), his way with a slow crescendo (“Change of Time”), or he works out a relatively straightforward hook (“Lantern”), this works out. But too often, the music is too busy when the songs are least interesting (“The Remnant”), or his use of drone-y keyboards for atmospherics (something one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Richard Buckner, has done expertly) falls flat (“See How Man Was Made”).

Of our run of singer-songwriter albums, I like this rather less than the Joe Pug album, or even than the Ben Weaver or Doug Paisely albums--all of which are less Randy Newman, or even Freedy Johsnston or Ron Sexmith (read: less polished and literate) and more, well country. Ritter’s strengths are his quirks as a writer, but I think he works best musically when he plays it simple and straight.

Lin: B+
Even now, after I've spent such an inordinate amount of time learning about popular music, I can name only two and a half good musical acts from my home state of Idaho. So, I have a particular nostalgic love for Josh Ritter's music, even though someday I'll end up owning this shirt and didn't hear him until I left the state. (Nonetheless, Ritter's 2006 track "Idaho" always heightens any remaining homesickness.) Despite having some wickedly good tracks in his oeuvre -- Hello Starling's "Kathleen" is one of my all-time favorite songs -- Ritter's never made a front-to-back great album. That's not changed with So Runs The World Away, which follows a similar format to his previous work: fairly inconsistent but with a couple of pretty great tracks. The highlight is "Folk Bloodbath" a reworking/retelling of the Stagger Lee and Louis Collins fables. (There's some meta elements at work here, too, if you're familiar with the Mississippi John Hurt 'originals.') If you're already familiar with Ritter's work, this is a worthy pick-up. If not, there are better places to start (Hello Starling) or, better yet, get someone who knows to make you a mix.