noyoucmon

46. Let It Come Down

2010-11-28T03:11:00.003-06:00

46. Let It Come Down, Spiritualized (Arista, 2001)

Spiritualized, formed by members of Spacemen 3 after that group’s dissolution and led by Jason “Spaceman” Pierce, spent most of the Aughts in the shadow of their third album and masterpiece, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (’97). A natural progression from the opiated space-rock of the group Pierce led with Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember from ’82-’89, Spiritualized evolved beyond the majestically blunted grasps for sun-kissed ecstasy of its first two LPs for the sprawling sonic palette filtered through American blues and jazz forms of the monolithic Ladies and Gentlemen. While Lay Back in the Sun from second album Pure Phase (’95) serves as the definitive exaltation of hedonism, Ladies and Gentlemen lyrically focuses on heartbreak and how to numb its pain—one of hedonism’s darkest sides. The inclusion of horns, strings, and a choir sublimely embolden the effects-heavy arrangements. The album received a deluxe reissue in ’09, the only Spiritualized release to earn such a treatment in the Aughts. With the attention lavished on Ladies and Gentlemen between its release and reissue, it was easy to overlook the three studio albums released by Spiritualized in the Aughts.

Pierce fired several members after the release of Ladies and Gentlemen; by the time of Let It Come Down four years later, the group had been almost entirely rebuilt to include two former players from Julian Cope’s backing band. Though his band now barely resembled its first incarnation, Pierce’s lyrical themes of freedom, catharsis, and ascension remained present. Let It Come Down nakedly examines the dichotomy between flesh and salvation. It opens with a ragtime piano frill and Pierce singing, “Let’s see how high we can fly/Before the sun melts the wax in our wings”; this icarian dare, repeated elsewhere, is an apt metaphor for the wantonness examined therein. Though the habits outlined are excessive, they accompany idleness: “I’m planning on sleeping my life away” (Do It All Over Again); “I like to sit around/I’m just contemplating/sittin’ round” (Don’t Just Do Something); in The Twelve Steps, steps nine to eleven are simply staying in bed. Excess is celebrated most explicitly in this last song—a frantic rock blast startlingly different than the album’s several purely orchestral arrangements—which states bluntly, “The only time I’m drink and drug free/Is when I don’t have to pay for what I need.” The album’s side breaks emphasize the pattern of repeated abuse: side one, ambivalent laziness, likely hungover; a return to excess on side two; side three, its impact on loved ones; side four, Pierce’s pleas to God for salvation. The yearning for religious epiphany is mocked (“I don’t think I’m gonna find Jesus Christ/So I’d rather spend my cash on vice,” The Twelve Steps), wistfully discarded (“If Jesus is the straight path that saves/Then I’m content to live my whole life on the curb,” The Straight and the Narrow), and, on the final two songs, desperately begged for. Pierce originally performed the closing track, Lord Can You Hear Me, on the ’89 Spacemen 3 album Playing With Fire; here it is slower and bolstered by a gospel choir; Pierce’s repeated plea of “Lord can you hear me/Hear me at all?” makes for a compelling case that, despite earlier glibness, his pain his real and his torment about spirituality is no metaphor. When he sings “The devil makes good use of these hands of mine” on The Straight and the Narrow, he sounds helpless yet resigned to his choices. Let It Come Down suffered from the pressure of being the follow-up to a masterpiece, and is a denser, less immediate album, but perseverance reveals strengths that, in exposition and emotional impact, make it no less a stunning achievement.

Highlights: Do It All Over Again, The Straight and the Narrow, The Twelve Steps, Stop Your Crying

Sublime bit: The final two minutes of Lord Can You Hear Me, its arrangement swelling as Pierce and the choir plead for redemption.

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47. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

2010-11-04T02:43:00.006-05:00

47. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Of Montreal (Polyvinyl, 2007)

A person discovering Of Montreal via their breakthrough eighth LP Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? might not believe that they began as a lo-fi acoustic venture long on tedium and short on hooks. Led by sole constant member Kevin Barnes, the Athens, Georgia-based group made five albums with ever-expanding lineups—’99’s The Gay Parade lists six full-time members and twelve contributors—before Barnes retreated to record two albums almost entirely by himself. Satanic Panic in the Attic (’04) and The Sunlandic Twins (’05; see #68) were his strongest works to date, expanding on the earlier material’s fanciful concepts yet drab execution to produce a new sound flaunting complex, multi-tracked arrangements and borrowing heavily from ’60s-era psychedelic pop. Though the albums became increasingly solo productions, the stage show evolved into a theatrical extravaganza with a dozen or more people on stage, usually in costume. They managed to keep the spectacle from overpowering the music, and Barnes’s increasingly impressive songwriting and the band’s high-spirited performances made Of Montreal one of the most interesting working units of the late Aughts.

More compelling than the live show, though, is the density of Hissing Fauna’s songs in execution and lyrical content. The quixotic, elaborate style of its two predecessors remains; but, the manic bubblegum of songs like Suffer for Fashion and Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse are complemented by prominent servings of modern electro-funk. Gronlandic Edit is built on a light, pulsing bass groove, and Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider has a slithering, smoky vibe; far beyond these dance-minded subtleties, though, is the flamboyance of Faberge Falls for Shuggie and Labyrinthian Pomp, both sung in an exaggerated, Prince-like falsetto that Barnes attributes to his alter ego Georgie Fruit, “a black man who has been through multiple sex changes.”* While this persona affords Barnes’s lyrics a new aspect of sexuality, he uses no such guise to address the album’s most difficult material. Much of Hissing Fauna is deeply personal, examining Barnes’s separation from his wife, a self-imposed temporary isolation in Norway, and reliance on antidepressants. The album’s centerpiece is the twelve-minute The Past Is a Grotesque Animal, detailing the couple’s first meeting, courtship, and Barnes’s struggles with insecurity, progressing—all the while carried by a hypnotic, claustrophobic groove—to their tumultuous breakup; by its climax, Barnes is yelling “Let’s tear the fucking house apart/Let’s tear our fucking bodies apart!” It is a chillingly naked dissection of private matters, intensified by the fact that the two reconciled and his wife plays on the album. For all the costumes, playful gender experimentation, pop bliss, and jovial stage shows, the album often dares to forego metaphor to present some of the boldest self-analysis of the decade. Barnes’s later attempts to outdo its ostentation and complexity resulted in a return to the muddled confusion of his earliest releases. A dizzying album, at times even bipolar, Hissing Fauna is his high-water mark.

* See the November 2007 Barnes interview at http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7454-of-montreal/.

Highlights: The Past Is a Grotesque Animal, Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, She’s a Rejecter, Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider

Sublime bit: The “ooo-ooo-oooh” backing vocal that enters at 4:19 of The Past Is a Grotesque Animal and repeats for the next six minutes.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

48. Living With War

2010-10-22T01:34:00.003-05:00

48. Living With War, Neil Young (Reprise, 2006)

It was easy during the Aughts for even dedicated Neil Young fans to lose interest. After his strong ’00 folk-rock outing Silver & Gold (see #75), Young released a stretch of work more ignominious than his much-maligned ’80s output. The live Road Rock Vol. 1: Friends & Relatives (’00) was his fourth concert set in ten years, its arguable redundancy made worse by middling performances. His long-awaited studio debut with Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Are You Passionate? (’02), was a passionless assortment of half-baked blues and painfully weak vocals; next came Greendale, a tedious 78-minute concept album short on melody that Young nonetheless felt warranted two separate editions. During this parade of lackluster new material, Young waffled to the point of absurdity on his plans to release his long-promised Archives box set. By the time the inoffensive but forgettable country-rock outing Prairie Wind arrived in ’05, NOYOUCMON had decided to retire from buying Neil Young albums. Young’s next project proved so provocative, however, that even the most jaded fan was hard pressed to ignore it. Angry to the point of despair about the seeming futility of the wars being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, Young found inspiration in a newspaper article about in-flight surgery on military aircraft. Within a matter of days, he’d written an album’s worth of material whose immediacy—in both speed of recording and in tone—made Living With War the most galvanizing example of music as news since Young recorded the song Ohio with Crosby, Stills & Nash not three weeks after the Kent State shootings in 1970.

The material’s sound hinges on aggressive, metallic guitar, making for Young’s most raucous LP since Mirror Ball, his ’95 collaboration with Pearl Jam. Only bassist Rick Rosas and drummer Chad Cromwell accompany Young’s guitar on the core tracks (trumpeter Tommy Bray joins on two songs). A week after recording, Young overdubbed a 100-voice choir on each song, amplifying the united-we-stand communal sentiment of the lyrical themes. (Young released a separate edition of the album featuring the original unmixed tracks without the choir, titled Living With War—“In the Beginning.”) The album is an unapologetic vivisection of the Bush administration and the mid-Aughts home-front climate; as shown in the ’08 tour film CSNY/Déjà Vu, its politics drove conservative fans to wish physical violence against Young. The songs explicitly address the War on Terror, most famously in jaunty singalong Let’s Impeach the President with its strategic juxtaposing of self-contradictory soundbites from Bush speeches. More than one song addresses Bush’s disingenuous ’03 “mission accomplished” speech. Lookin’ for a Leader examines the possibilities for Bush’s replacement, presciently mentioning Obama nearly a year prior to his campaign announcement. Angriest is The Restless Consumer, a gush of emotions from frustration with advertising fatigue and American ostentation versus Mideast poverty to post-9/11 fear and anxiety (“Don’t want no damned jihad/Blowin’ themselves away in my hood”) while suggesting that not all wartime problems are the enemy’s fault (“But we don’t talk to them/And we don’t learn from them”); each verse ends with a repeated chorus of “Don’t need no more lies.” Those believing the album is anti-American need look no further than Families; its final chorus of “I just can’t wait to see you again in the USA” (recalling his ’80 song Hawks & Doves) is a declaration of the proud patriotism that Young, a longtime Canadian expatriate, feels for his adopted country. While its subject matter ensures that many will never accept it as a valid artistic statement, Living With War was, after over five years of dwindling returns, much-desired testimony that Young’s creative well had not run dry.

Highlights: Families, The Restless Consumer, Lookin’ for a Leader, Let’s Impeach the President

Sublime bit: Young’s breathless indictment of pharmaceutical ads, jihadists, and flag-draped coffins in The Restless Consumer.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

49. OOOH! (Out of Our Heads)

2010-09-25T18:02:00.005-05:00

49. OOOH! (Out of Our Heads), Mekons (Quarterstick, 2002)

Formed as a punk trio at the University of Leeds in ’77 before a reinvention in the mid-’80s as a more nuanced, expanded unit exploring British folk and American country music through a lens of sardonic and literary commentary, the Mekons have recorded regularly since their inception, with only the Fall matching their continuity and longevity. Much like the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, the Mekons have demonstrated an acute if sometimes ambiguous socio-political consciousness; for the Mekons, this often operates out of time. Anyone expecting their fifteenth LP, OOOH!, to be a direct analysis of the new post-9/11 world, then, may be confused to instead find a set of songs that opaquely invoke ritual, myth, and dissent from present-day England to the pagan sects of the pre-Saxon wilds. OOOH! began as an art show of the same name—the bulk of Mekons are also visual artists—revolving around, well, heads. History and mythology contain a slew of famous heads: the decapitated ones of Anne Boleyn, John the Baptist, and Jayne Mansfield; the allegedly frozen one of Walt Disney; the beguilingly poisonous one of Medusa; and a garden variety of various types of heads—shrunken, floating, missing; decorative heads placed on buildings as sentinels or superstition; the mo’ai stone heads of Easter Island. The songs of OOOH! use these stories as inspiration.

Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem opens the album with a ghostly intonation of its title’s acronym that sounds like a wolf’s howl. Clattering percussion strikes up and Jon Langford directs a call-and-response group vocal. “The sword is sharp/the arrow swift/the witnesses all seeing,” he sings, the rough-hewn arrangement suggesting a band of battle-worn troubadours heading for their final confrontation. The possibility of death is clear, of it resulting in “two brass farthings on my eyelids,” as sung in This Way Through the Fire, but as members of the Commonwealth-era radical groups listed in Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem would tell you, such is the risk of fighting for one’s cause. Much of the album addresses the solitude and introspection possible in the midst of such communal activity. In Bob Hope & Charity, the ragged-band sing-along continues although the story is of a flagging comrade hoping for telepathic connections with his mates. Tom Greenhalgh sings a version of traditional folk song Lone Pilgrim, about a private epiphany about redemption of the righteous. Susie Honeyman’s sad violin accompanies Sally Timms as she admits on the album’s quietest track, Hate Is the New Love, “how we still love the war” and “When we say we’ve had enough/We know we really want more.” Winter, with a largely acoustic but boisterous and ramshackle arrangement featuring harmonica, fiddle, Turkish saz, and prominent tambourine, shows optimism for calmer times after a pagan winter spent naked and drunk “in the belly of the beast.” The first verse of the Greenhalgh-led Only You and Your Ghost Will Know addresses a lonely traveler whose friends have died; in the second verse, he himself has frozen to death on the road. The album’s downbeat denouement, Stonehead, closes the proceedings with a reminder that one day, like the frozen traveler, “our memory will vanish from the memory of the world.” Its concepts may be less immediate than those of other Aughts-model Mekons albums (see #83 and #104), but the rewards of OOOH! are lasting and it is the always engaging group’s strongest album of the decade.

Highlights: Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Only You and Your Ghost Will Know, Winter, Bob Hope & Charity

Sublime bit: When the title chorus of Ghost kicks in after the group vocal of “First the chill and then the stupor/Then the letting go.”

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

50. A Star for Bram

2010-09-15T01:50:00.002-05:00

50. A Star for Bram, Robyn Hitchcock (Editions PAF!, 2000)

The Aughts began slowly for veteran British songwriter Robyn Hitchcock. His Warner Bros. contract ended after three albums (including Mossy Liquor, the vinyl-only companion piece to his Moss Elixir album, both ’96), leaving him without major-label support for the first time since ’86. Between ’00 and ’03 he quietly issued three albums on his own Editions PAF! label. This trio included Robyn Sings, a live double album composed entirely of Bob Dylan covers, much of which had previously appeared as an extended appendix to the Warner-issued, promo-only ’97 single for his song Beautiful Queen. The recycling of promo-only B-sides following the loss of a contract might seem an inauspicious move, were the performances not strong, sought-after material likely rejected for full release by Warner. Two years before Robyn Sings, though, slipped another unusual album, A Star for Bram. Released “under special license from Warner,” it arrived with the feel of a fan-club album and cover art almost replicating that of Jewels for Sophia (’99), his final Warners album. Often diminished as a mere collection of Sophia outtakes, Bram indeed includes two songs that appeared on the Warner-issued, Sophia-supporting promotional EP entitled Rare Jewels. While the Aughts would be Hitchcock’s most prolific decade, A Star for Bram was just one of a string of albums from the decade comprising outtakes, old material, or other oddities while masquerading as new releases. A Star for Bram is unique among its colleagues, however, as it is arguably stronger than any of the four “real” new LPs that Hitchcock issued in the Aughts.

Bram is a tempered, darker sibling to Jewels for Sophia. The Warner album is bright, often raucous, and comical; one can almost imagine a Warner executive opting against Bram’s less immediate songs and saying, “We want the funny songs, the ones where you talk about vegetables a lot.” While the two albums’ most haunting song (No, I Don’t Remember Guildford) does appear on Sophia and Bram is not devoid of levity, Bram is the more subdued record. It opens with two understated acoustic numbers; the second, the gently shimmering I Saw Nick Drake, is like a transcription of a dream, with Hitchcock meeting the long-dead British folksinger, doing chores together, and interacting in the surreal ways that only the subconscious can manifest; it is built on a transfixing repeated guitar figure and joined by Hitchcock’s highly reverbed wordless humming between the verses. Judas Sings (Jesus and Me) and I Used to Love You are both stripped-down ballads, the latter using only voice and piano. Bram’s electric numbers outnumber the unplugged entries, but these, too, are largely subdued. A minimal, sax-tinted groove supports the skeletal boogie of Adoration of the City; the mild skiffle of The Philosopher’s Stone features just Jon Brion and Hitchcock, the latter adding melodic accents with a “harmony machine.” The record’s two expository highlights are Nietzsche’s Way, its title punning on Spirit’s 1970 song Nature’s Way, and a new studio recording of Hitchcock’s nostalgic travelogue 1974, which previously appeared on the ’98 in-studio live soundtrack Storefront Hitchcock. A final thread connecting the album to Jewels for Sophia is a dub version of that album’s Antwoman that gives the lilting original an ominous tint. Hitchcock’s departure from the major-label system may have resulted in a circuitous new pattern of record-making, but as long as his catalog continues to generate albums as reliable as A Star for Bram it will be worth following.

Highlights: 1974, Daisy Bomb, Nietzsche’s Way, I Saw Nick Drake

Sublime bit: Those spectral, wordless choruses of I Saw Nick Drake.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

51. Just Beyond the River

2010-09-11T03:40:00.001-05:00

51. Just Beyond the River, James Yorkston and the Athletes (Domino, 2004)

James Yorkston hails from Fife, Scotland, also home to Fence, a musicians’ collective and label borne of Kenny Anderson’s bankrupt record shop. Anderson has recorded over two dozen albums as King Creosote; but, of Fence artists in the Aughts, it was Yorkston who held the highest profile. His demo, recorded after a spell with various rock groups, attracted influential DJ John Peel and resulted in a ’01 solo 7” on the Bad Jazz label. Entitled Moving Up Country, Roaring the Gospel and credited, for reasons unforthcoming, to “J. Wright Presents,” it is a soulful, sleepy shuffle that he reworked for his ’02 debut LP Moving Up Country. After one more split single and a compilation appearance, Yorkston signed to Domino and issued a bevy of singles and EPs with them before his first full-length. Yorkston remained part of the Fence community even after signing to a larger label, working with its artists including The Pictish Trail (aka Johnny Lynch, Fence co-director) and UNPOC. Yorkston’s own work descends from Scottish and Irish folk music, guitar-based but with traditional instruments—whistle, pipes, accordion, fiddle, bouzouki. His folk-based songs are often slow and deliberate, his voice rarely straying from a narrow range; the result is far from the celebratory jigs and reels associated with the traditional music of Yorkston’s homeland.

Yorkston’s second full-length, Just Beyond the River, again recorded with a loose association of musicians dubbed the Athletes, utilizes stronger compositions and more focused playing for a sound more starkly emotional than his previous works. On his debut LP Yorkston employed former Cocteau Twins bassist Simon Raymonde as producer; for River, he uses Kieran Hebden, who records electronic music under the moniker Four Tet. Hebden’s own work incorporates guitar, piano, and other acoustic instruments, and he leaves no trace of synthetics on Yorkston’s album; as with Raymonde the collaboration appears incongruous, but Hebden conjures a haunting, sometimes hypnotic aspect setting River apart from Yorkston’s other Aughts works. Several songs are skeletal, quiet affairs (We Flew Blind, Hermitage, This Time Tomorrow), and are countered by the swirling, push-and-pull, full-band arrangements of other numbers whose simple details—like the brushed drums in Heron—create both tension and resolution. Shipwreckers builds to a swell, just as the storm that drives it subjects to shelter near a warm hearth, before flickering out like faded embers at sunrise. In Banjo #1, Yorkston’s vocal melds with the banjo’s cyclical churn, matching the lyrical tension of a man apologizing to a leery prospective lover for his “need for clamour/my clumsy touch/and Catholic roving eye.” Two of the album’s highlights are its sole traditional numbers: a variation of the ancient European murder ballad Edward is the album’s most chilling song, the desolate arrangement and Yorkston’s triplicate repetition of the final word of every line creating an unnerving effect; closing song The Snow It Melts the Soonest has a firmer arrangement yet, like Banjo #1, mesmerically blends Yorkston’s vocals with the instrumentation. Yorkston recorded prolifically throughout the Aughts, and after this second full-length issued three more LPs and a host of singles, EPs, and limited-edition items. Just Beyond the River and its quietly gripping, tempered undertow is a close contender for the finest among these many releases.

Highlights: Shipwreckers, Banjo #1, Edward, The Snow It Melts the Soonest

Sublime bit: The fleeting, tense half-steps of the violin that press through the between-verse instrumental passages of Shipwreckers.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

52. Monsoon

2010-09-04T23:34:00.003-05:00

52. Monsoon, Preston School of Industry (Matador, 2004)

Scott Kannberg, AKA Spiral Stairs, co-founder and guitarist of Stockton, California-based erudite slacker kings Pavement, owned a sizeable batch of unfinished material after the band’s embittered ’99 dissolution. Author and singer of fewer than a dozen of the group’s nearly two hundred songs, Kannberg brought a more linear lyrical style to Pavement that countered frontman Stephen Malkmus’s penchant for stream-of-consciousness wordplay. Freed of the limitations of his former group, Kannberg was the only member aside from Malkmus to release solo material in the Aughts (bassist Mark Ibold worked with Free Kitten and Sonic Youth, but issued no material of his own). In ’01, Kannberg released the EP Goodbye to the Edge City on his own Amazing Grease label; rather than use either his given or stage name, he named his new project Preston School of Industry after a notorious boys’ reform school near his hometown of Stockton. Edge City is an engaging set of five songs ranging from the good-natured acoustic shuffle of Somethings Happen Always, with a horn part and, on the coda, a children’s chorus; to the muted introspection of How to Impress the Goddess Pt. 2; to the pop rave-up The Spaces in Between, the most ebullient track to come out of the Pavement organization thus far. Kannberg would expand on these forms with the first PSOI full-length, All This Sounds Gas (also ’01). The most striking aspect of Kannberg’s new music was its apparent sincerity, devoid of the sarcasm and brattiness that lent Pavement an aggravating charm yet ensured their sizeable catalog would be short on guilelessness.

The second PSOI album, Monsoon, is an even more affable outing than its predecessor. A shorter, breezier affair, Monsoon is built on the twangy acoustic-guitar jangle seen on parts of Edge City. Opening cut The Furnace Sun and mid-album highlight Her Estuary Twang are bright pop blasts with cheerful wordless choruses and bountiful hooks; the charming Walk of a Gurl ambles more slowly than its poppier cousins and includes a whimsical harmonica accompaniment. So Many Ways is almost a country ballad, its gentle pedal-steel drift giving the album its most peaceful moment. Line it Up most directly recalls Kannberg’s Pavement work (specifically his Hit the Plane Down from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain), with its slanted, cyclical riff and hectoring vocal. Guests on Monsoon include Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5, who plays mandolin on two tracks, and four members of A Ghost Is Born-era Wilco on the track Get Your Crayons Out! Monsoon would be the final recording of the Aughts to bear the Preston School of Industry name. In ’09, Kannberg reclaimed his Pavement-era stage name Spiral Stairs when he issued the LP The Real Feel. Promotional activities for the album, a glossier and mildly bluesy effort than the loose grooves of PSOI, were interrupted by the unlikely—and wildly popular—reunion of Pavement. While Kannberg’s solo efforts have been largely overshadowed by Malkmus’s, all have merits; Monsoon is the most pleasing of his three solo full-lengths and one of the most agreeable works in the Pavement family tree. (The Australian Monsoon on Trifekta Records came with a second disc titled Live in Chicago 2002 Bootleg from a tour supporting Wilco. This audience-quality recording is now more widely available via download, and is frequently mislabeled as coming from a 2003 concert.)

Highlights: Her Estuary Twang, The Furnace Sun, Caught in the Rain, If the Straits of Magellan Should Ever Run Dry

Sublime bit: The blissful exclamations of “ba-da-ba” on the choruses of Her Estuary Twang.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

53. From Here We Go Sublime

2010-08-05T02:54:00.005-05:00

53. From Here We Go Sublime, The Field (Kompakt Germany, 2007)

The Field is Stockholm’s Axel Willner, whose instrumental pieces merge moody, ambient atmospherics with the sparse, rhythmic repetition of minimal techno and trance. His pieces inhabit narrow ranges of tempo and modulation with a focus on cyclic grooves that do not always achieve resolution, sometimes simply fading out after a period of time. Willner occasionally employs glitch techniques, rhythmically utilizing sonic aberrations that resemble equipment malfunctions; but, his compositions are primarily smooth, hypnotic exercises with a moderately high beat-per-minute ratio. The mix of ambient soundscapes and upbeat dance-floor vibrations creates a dreamlike effect. Key to Willner’s music is his use of extremely brief samples—sometimes under a second long—that he manipulates and loops, creating new melodies that frequently become foundations of the tracks. He often samples other artists’ singing, perhaps only a single syllable or vocal sound. One of the earliest Field tracks, Action (from his label’s ’05 Kompakt 6 compilation), is built on a sliver of the flute introduction to Reach Out I’ll Be There by the Four Tops. While it is possible to hear the song as an original techno track and not recognize that it contains a sample, its use of a well-known sound lends it an extra subconscious resonance that can be haunting. After his first recording, an ’05 remix of Norwegian electro singer Annie, Willner released his first 12” as the Field, Things Keep Falling Down, and the aforementioned Action. Even before this, he had begun work on the tracks of his debut album; there would be another 12” and two more label samplers, however, before From Here We Go Sublime.

Over the Ice opens the LP with a minimal disco pulse that is not fleshed out until nearly its fifth minute. A manipulation of a vocal sample provides the song’s melody; it is looped in such a manner that, until an undeniably electronic pitch shift occurs, it sounds like a woman singing wordlessly. One may listen for years, as was true for this writer, before recognizing it as a syllable taken from a Kate Bush record. A Paw in My Face begins with a similarly throbbing beat and a synth hi-hat cymbal before the percussion is emboldened and a feather-light guitar accent begins to repeat. In one of only two explicit revelations here, Willner lets the guitar sample play out as the song fades, showing it to be from Lionel Richie’s ’83 hit Hello. This is devoid of irony or humor, and the original loop provides one of Sublime’s most genuinely appealing hooks. The samples do not overwhelm the songs; The Little Heart Beats So Fast, one of the album’s most playful arrangements, is propelled by an infinitesimal snatch of sound that sounds like a woman gasping “ahh,” but could easily just be synthesized percussion. In Everday [sic], a vocal sample begins at 4:45 that runs at a slightly different tempo than the rhythm, creating an entrancing warp of sound as the song builds and the two parts go, almost imperceptibly, in and out of sync with one another. The album’s most astonishing moment comes with the glitch-heavy, closing title track. Composed almost entirely of a ghostly set of samples, it sputters and reverberates for over two minutes before Willner undoes the straps to reveal a reverb-laden passage from the Flamingos’ 1959 doo-wop classic I Only Have Eyes for You. While Kate Bush and even Lionel Richie are easily understandable touchstones for an Aughts-era indie musician, the revelation of this relatively ancient source material is an astonishing way to close the album. After this debut LP, Willner remixed over a dozen other artists, and in ’09 issued a second album, Yesterday and Today, incorporating other musicians and full vocal tracks. Any of Willner’s works is worth attention, though Sublime remains his strongest to date and one of the finest techno albums of the decade.

Highlights: A Paw in My Face, Everday, Silent, The Little Heart Beats So Fast

Sublime bit: The Flamingos’ haunted doo-wop is mind-blowing in this context; but, the silvery guitar wisps of A Paw in My Face are truly sublime.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

54. Dark Days/Light Years

2010-08-03T01:25:00.002-05:00

54. Dark Days/Light Years, Super Furry Animals (Rough Trade, 2009)

The eighth album by Welsh quintet Super Furry Animals, Hey Venus! (’07; see #65), was the psych-pop group’s first on the Rough Trade label. Its streamlined blast of uptempo glam and the odd lovely ballad came at the new label’s behest, hoping for a return to the efficient vibe of the group’s ’90s work.* The tour that followed the album’s release was another stripped-down affair, the band cutting back on the props and stage dressing that made previous jaunts quasi-theatrical affairs. The willingness to tailor an LP to a record company’s desires might have been an ominous sign had the result not been one of the group’s most enjoyable records to date. Following Hey Venus!, drummer Daf Ieuan released his first album with side project the Peth and frontman Gruff Rhys issued Stainless Style, a collaboration with producer/programmer Boom Bip, credited to Neon Neon and ostensibly a concept record about eccentric automotive engineer John DeLorean. These solo detours, both on other labels, were evidence that Rough Trade would not strong-arm the band or its members into a specific vision. When the Super Furries regrouped to record their ninth LP, the sessions would culminate in their most stretched-out, challenging vision yet.

At just over an hour, Dark Days/Light Years is practically twice as long as Hey Venus! and the longest SFA album to date; on vinyl, it is a double LP (though running at 45 RPM) whose garish artwork—a collaboration of the group’s two previous art designers, Keichi Tanaami and Pete Fowler—sprawls across both sides of its gatefold jacket and a two-sided 24x24 poster. While its predecessor opened with a rollicking 43-second introductory theme, Dark Days slowly gurgles its way to the surface. Opening cut Crazy Naked Girls begins with 51 seconds of muffled speech, the sounds of tuning up, and a false start before an overdriven drum beat kicks in, followed by a clipped, nearly falsetto Rhys vocal recalling Prince before abruptly changing at midpoint into an acid-rock blues jam that churns like an extended outro for the remainder of its six minutes. Once through this virtual decoy the album returns to more conventional songwriting, soon making it clear that Dark Days is a groove-heavy affair. Several songs (most notably Moped Eyes and the nuttily titled The Very Best of Neil Diamond) are propelled by slinking arrangements worthy of the dance floor, even if the tempos remain at a low simmer. The eight-minute Cardiff in the Sun is the album’s centerpiece, its Kosmische chillout groove giving way to blissful choruses consisting of its repeated title. The album’s extended runtime means there is enough room for a handful of pop tunes, the best among them the pulsing jack-in-the-box rhythm of Inaugural Trams whose middle eight consists of a rap, in German, by Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. Against all odds, it is one of the album’s best moments. Another key pop track finds guitarist Huw Bunford taking lead vocals, the hideously titled yet wonderfully catchy White Socks/Flip Flops. The record ends as oddly as it began, though, with the ten-minute Pric, a throbbing rock groove that trails off at roughly six minutes for an extended ambient coda. A daunting listen on first blush, the album contains all the hallmarks that make Super Furry Animals one of the most inventive and charming pop groups of their time. While not as immediate as their previous works, Dark Days/Light Years sustains repeated plays better than most of the band’s catalog once its rhythmic secrets are unlocked.

*For just one account of the Rough Trade request, see this Gruff Rhys interview: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/gruff-rhys-super-furry-animals

Highlights: Inaugural Trams, Inconvenience, The Very Best of Neil Diamond, Moped Eyes

Sublime bit: When Inaugural Trams slams back into its peppy groove after Nick McCarthy’s spoken guest vocal ends at 3:24.

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55. Trouble in Dreams

2010-07-31T21:17:00.003-05:00

55. Trouble in Dreams, Destroyer (Merge, 2008)

By the time of his final full-length album of the decade, Vancouver singer-songwriter and Destroyer bandleader Dan Bejar had come a long way from the four-track adventuring of his ’90s work. The Aughts saw Bejar release six Destroyer full-lengths and a pair of EPs, as well as four albums as a member of the New Pornographers and two with Swan Lake (see #91). Even just since his previous Destroyer album, the ’06 breakthrough LP Destroyer’s Rubies, Bejar made substantial contributions to four different groups’ records, including performing the bulk of instrumentation on girlfriend Sydney Vermont’s ’08 album (credited to Hello, Blue Roses) The Portrait Is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty. If one looks only at the Destroyer material produced in the Aughts, the catalog reveals a series of ambitious and complex works: from his first masterwork Streethawk: A Seduction (’01, see #66) to the bold musical theater of the synth-heavy ’04 Your Blues and beyond, Bejar has repeatedly shown himself to be one of the decade’s strongest and most literate songwriters. His prolificacy and willingness to work as a secondary on other people’s albums have afforded him an ongoing opportunity to hone his writing and performance, and a sequential examination of his Aughts output also shows one of the decade’s most significant progressions in pop craftsmanship.

Trouble in Dreams came after a sequence of Destroyer albums sprawling in construction or thematic in execution; while its running time almost matches the nearly hour-long Rubies, Bejar’s ’08 effort feels like the first streamlined collection of Destroyer songs since Thief in 2000. While Bejar and Destroyer may seem synonymous, the project has been a group effort since ’98; its lineup has shifted progressively, though, and Trouble marks the first time in six years that Destroyer’s roster survived nearly intact from its previous record. Only longtime drummer Scott Morgan is missing, replaced here by Fisher Rose (who played vibes and trumpet on Rubies). As with most of Destroyer’s albums, Trouble was recorded at Vancouver’s JC/DC Studio with David Carswell and Paul Collins co-producing with the band, the latter one of Bejar’s New Pornographers bandmates. The album’s production is warmer than any of its predecessors, a departure from the ragged live feel of Rubies; most of its songs are slow-burning, sometimes almost sensuous ballads. The subjects often seem burdened by fatigue, concession, and a wish to get things over with; the album’s opening line is “Okay, fine,” the narrator of Blue Flower/Blue Flame concluding “A gray ashen sadness rises like the sun, oh well.” My Favorite Year recalls halcyon days before a blunt reminder that “now it’s gone.” The protagonist of Shooting Rockets, the album’s eight-minute centerpiece, whose “soul pukes,” finds lightness only in dreams because he has “street despair carved in my heart.” These songs are cloaked in bewitching arrangements that temper the gritty accountings of the lyrics. The State and Plaza Trinidad provide noisy interludes, delivering percussive crescendoes that provide sonic reminders of the characters’ emotional stress. Only on My Favorite Year and Dark Leaves Form a Thread does the mood approach ebullience; even then, though, the narrator is ambivalent: “No, it’s cool, you go, I’ll stay,” Bejar sings on the latter, “perfectly at home with this dread.” On its lyrical surface a potential gloom trip, Trouble in Dreams is Destroyer’s most sonically beautiful album and another gem in the catalog.

Highlights: My Favorite Year, Dark Leaves Form a Thread, Rivers, Introducing Angels

Sublime bit: Introducing Angels: its lush arrangement, Bejar’s hushed intonation of its title, and the silvery guitar riff slipping through its choruses.

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56. Gold Brick

2010-07-25T15:34:00.002-05:00

56. Gold Brick, Jon Langford (ROIR, 2006)

Chicago-dwelling Welsh expatriate Jon Langford is one of rock’s most prolific artists. While perhaps best known as a member of the Mekons from the Leeds punk class of ’77, Langford has made nearly three dozen albums with his other groups the Three Johns (’82-’90), traditional country collective the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, and cowpunk sextet Waco Brothers, as well as a multitude of collaborations with other songwriters. Along with his tireless musical schedule, Langford is an accomplished visual artist; his paintings often depict other musicians, particularly the country and western acts who have inspired his own music since the Mekons shifted away from punk in the late ’70s. Not until ’95 did Langford get around to issuing an LP under his own name; Misery Loves Company—credited to “Jonboy” Langford, along with the Cosmonauts—is a ramshackle but loving set of Johnny Cash covers (like his painting, Langford’s music often celebrates country artists). With ’98’s Skull Orchard, a pop-tinged set of songs in honor of his Welsh homeland, Langford delivered his first true “solo” album, not hinging on collaboration or homage. He would issue three more in the Aughts; works like Mayors of the Moon (’02, backed by Canadian alt-country group the Sadies) and All the Fame of Lofty Deeds (’04) are serviceable roots-rock albums melding cuttingly literate writing, amiable humor, and a keen insight to America’s cultural landscape. Langford’s next solo work, though, would take a confident and ambitious stride forward.

For Gold Brick, Langford took temporary leave of his usual solo label Bloodshot for NYC imprint ROIR, which had previously released Mekons and Three Johns one-offs. Subtitled Lies of the Great Explorers, or Columbus at Guantanamo Bay, it is an examination of post-9/11 American malaise and the impacts and shifting priorities of globalization. Its first half focuses on individuals: the subjects of Little Bit of Help are “programmed for survival”; Workingman’s Palace chronicles the pressing need for escape, usually “where the Old Style light still shines”; Invisible Man illustrates regular folks’ 21st-century uncertainty, overlooked “like a pin in a map or dust on the screen.” The title track addresses modernity’s solitude (“You leave home but you never leave home/Drive for miles in a car on your own”) and bland conformity (“The boring and phony/Are rocks for the lonely/To climb up on.”). The second half dissects the U.S. mise en scène: Gorilla and the Maiden depicts Cold War Chicago’s incongruities of strip joints, Nazi marches, and investors who “paw at a city served up in chains”; Tall Ships imagines the vessels that carried many to the New World, now simply “carrying cargo/that nobody needs.” An orchestrated cover of Procol Harum’s ’69 tune Salty Dog bridges the halves, in this context another depiction of immigration. The finest piece is closing track Lost in America. Composed for National Public Radio’s show of the same name and, in best Langford populist fashion, performed with musicians he found in the classifieds, it charts a course from pre-Colonial days to an imagined present where Columbus is detained by security and left to watch daytime TV, his mind reeling from the soulless progression of cartoons, game shows, and news-magazine exposés. An astounding expository achievement, it should reassure anyone mistaking Gold Brick for a mere indictment of America: “We’ll turn the planes around today/And make them fly the other way/’Cos we know we’re all here to stay/And you know where you are/When you’re lost in America.” Gold Brick examines a nation of proud individuals who may be a little worse for wear but who still believe in an American dream. It is Langford’s finest solo album to date and among the best work of his entire career.

Highlights: Lost in America, Gold Brick, All Roads Lead Back to Me, Invisible Man

Sublime bit: The beautiful arrangement of the title track, particularly Pat Brennan’s piano and Jean Cook’s violin lines.

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57. Truelove's Gutter

2010-07-22T01:45:00.005-05:00

57. Truelove's Gutter, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2009)

Sheffield songwriter Richard Hawley—former Longpigs guitarist and Pulp sideman—is one of those trusty musicians whose excellence comes from finding a suitable niche and treading that same ground over a span of albums, each of which has its strengths yet may seem interchageable to the casual listener. His solo material focuses on sentimental lyrics set to lush, old-fashioned pop arrangements that suggest a common ground between Buddy Holly’s orchestral work; the early rock material on Sun Records of the Elvis, Scotty & Bill trio; and jazz-pop singers like Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Hartman. After a mini-album and four full-lengths, including the Mercury Prize nominee Coles Corner (’06; see #84), Hawley adjusted his formula to produce his most masterful work of the decade.

The follow-up to Hawley’s poppiest album to date, Lady’s Bridge (’07), Truelove’s Gutter is a departure from the post-war dance-band crooner material that made helped to make his previous two albums so enjoyable. Here, Hawley does not abandon his proven form so much as he dials it down and stretches it out; this results in some of the most intimate, quiet material of his catalog as well as its most epic numbers. Hawley had done quiet material before—the bulk of ’02’s Late Night Final and the final third of Coles Corner focus on hushed, sparse compositions—yet on Truelove’s Gutter the calmness takes the form of meditations. Expanding on Hawley’s usual beat-combo instrumentation, the songs are accented by a bevy of unusual, sometimes arcane devices: a singing saw, the cristal bachet, a glass harmonica, the waterphone, Tibetan singing bowls, the Ondes martenot (the sole electric instrument of that lot, an early keyboard producing theremin-like vibrations). This non-traditional accompaniment lends a unique sonic undercurrent to the record; when the opening cut As the Dawn Breaks slowly builds from a swelling ambient hum, to name one instance, the organic instruments can easily be mistaken for modern electronics. Many songs on the album have extended run times, the average going over six minutes. Two pieces, Remorse Code and Don’t You Cry, are ten minutes long. Remorse Code is the album’s centerpiece; a ruminative, opaque depiction of drug addiction, it caresses a single, gentle riff for its duration. “The ship is wrecked/With all hands/Look to the reef/False lights from the land,” Hawley sings; the capsizing metaphor ends bluntly with a haunting chorus of “Those white lines/made your eyes wide.” No mere indictment of another person’s follies, its lyric concludes with “I was likewise/In those white lines.” Don’t Get Hung Up in Your Soul is the most desolate number, Hawley accompanied by an almost inaudible guitar and bass with the singing saw adding a far-off and lonesome tone. The album’s general quietude emphasizes the power of its occasional crescendo: the blazing orchestral swell that erupts in the fourth minute of the otherwise quiet Soldier On, for example, is the album’s most stunning moment in part because it happens only once. The songs of Truelove’s Gutter strip the bulk of filigrees from Hawley’s proven approach to pop songwriting, leaving its compositions laid bare. Sometimes almost painfully frank yet thoroughly compelling precisely because of its intimacy, this fifth full-length album of Hawley’s is a striking achievement that will long resonate as a peak of his career.

Highlights: Remorse Code, Open Up Your Door, Soldier On, For Your Lover Give Some Time

Sublime bit: Those knowing refrains of Remorse Code and the mournful guitar solos surrounding them, especially the one from 5:34 to 7:33.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

58. Carbon Glacier

2010-07-13T01:55:00.004-05:00

58. Carbon Glacier, Laura Veirs (Nonesuch, 2004)

At the end of the Aughts, Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter Laura Veirs had made a sparkling pair of pop-rock albums with her group (known first as the Tortured Souls and then renamed Saltbreakers for her sixth LP of the same name), but she began the decade as a folk-based artist fresh off her rough-hewn debut album (Laura Veirs, ’99). Her first Aughts LP, The Triumphs and Travails of Orphan Mae (’01), is a country-tinged acoustic song cycle about a woman journeying through the Western U.S.; its ’03 follow-up Troubled by the Fire is a largely gentle roots album, marking Veirs’s first prominent use of a full band and, though sparingly, a foray into the rock forms she would embrace more vigorously on later works Year of Meteors (’05, see #62) and Saltbreakers (’07). Each of her Aughts LPs—all produced by drummer/programmer Tucker Martine—evidences considerable stylistic development, yet the most arresting of her first six albums is her ’04 major-label debut Carbon Glacier.

The album possesses a chilly ambience, many of its songs creating stark and haunting moods suggestive of its cover art’s frozen vista. While Troubled by the Fire revealed Veirs’s interest in more aggressive arrangements, Carbon Glacier is a hushed affair, emphasizing her strengths as a folk singer yet adorning the acoustic material in a web of minimal electronics that sound more progressive than any of its predecessor’s revved-up efforts. Veirs’s singing voice, like her composition and production, has developed over time; on Carbon Glacier, though, its idiosyncrasies—recalling the thin-ice overreaching of Guyville-era Liz Phair—add further to the distinctive sonics. Though a wintry atmosphere runs through the album, it is not a purely bleak one; instead, the arrangements often conjure the crisp, quiet beauty of a moonlit blanket of snow. This is best evident in the opening song, Ether Sings. Veirs’s introductory midtempo guitar figure lasts only four measures before it is joined by an eerie, airy synth line, sounding almost like a theremin, that drifts away as quickly as it appeared; “Come with me and we’ll head up north/Where the rivers run icy and strong,” Veirs sings. After a pair of verses, the song returns to the original guitar and synth melody, joined by a muted viola pattern and a ghostly and beautiful falsetto of “aah-ha, aah-ha” that repeats for the final ninety seconds. Perhaps even starker is Icebound Stream, whose attractively lurching, repetitive melody sounds as if born of a hurdy gurdy whose batteries are running low. Veirs’s voice is high in the mix; the lyric, sung in a similarly mechanical rhythm, is a fever dream of anthropomorphized lightning that makes flowers bloom in reverse and photographs fade to white. The contemplative ballad Rapture marvels at the way humans capture art in permanence, “with photographs and magnetic tape,” and wonders if “love of color, sound and words/is it a blessing or a curse,” citing Kurt Cobain and “young Virginia Woolf/Death came and hung her coat.” Shadow Blues depicts a lover frightened by her own feelings: “I’ve learned that love is scared of light,” Veirs sings, describing a “blackened kiss” and a protagonist who admits “I am dark about the whys of wanting” before vowing to “dig a coal mine, climb down deep inside/where my shadow’s got one place to go.” The sonic tension is lifted only on The Cloud Room, an upbeat pop number with a near-funk drumbeat, presaging her later Aughts work. Carbon Glacier is an album keenly aware of the dangers of nature, the unrest that can lie just behind beauty, and the loneliness of time. From its vulnerable atmospheres comes the best work of Veirs’s first ten years of recording.

Highlights: Icebound Stream, Ether Sings, Snow Camping, The Cloud Room

Sublime bit: That wordless vocal coda from 2:13 to 3:30 of Ether Sings.

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59. I Am a Bird Now

2010-07-11T19:42:00.002-05:00

59. I Am a Bird Now, Antony and the Johnsons (Secretly Canadian, 2005)

Antony Hegarty, an England-born, longtime US resident, toiled for years in the experimental theatres and cabarets of New York City before an arts grant in ’96 enabled him to record professionally with other musicians. Hegarty named his nascent group after late transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, and constructed a sparse, piano-based sound featuring his theatrical, almost operatic singing voice. Their increasingly frequent late-Nineties live gigs got the attention of experimental artist-musician David Tibet, who had worked with Psychic TV and Nurse With Wound while leading his own group, Current 93, and operating the small UK label Durtro. Tibet offered Hegarty an album release, resulting in an eponymous ’98 LP. Hegarty’s talent arrived fully formed on Antony and the Johnsons, no surprise after eight years of live performance. A relatively straightforward set of piano ballads whose lyrics address difficult topics from romantic catharsis to psychosexuality, it is good in its own right but the least compelling of his three studio albums to date. It would be seven years before his next album; the group’s only new releases until then were the ’00 three-song Durtro EP I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy, two-thirds of which consisted of covers, and two minor split releases with Tibet’s Current 93 (half of a live EP and one studio outtake on a 7”). While Hegarty lacked in prolificacy, his connections in the NYC art world secured him numerous collaborations and film appearances; most notably, he sang lead vocals for two songs on Lou Reed’s ’04 live LP Animal Serenade. These guest spots were no preparation for the creative leap of his next studio album.

I Am a Bird Now is a stark, soulful set of songs addressing gender identity, dysphoria, and psychic ascension from traditional concepts of sexual classification. Twenty musicians and vocalists are credited, almost twice as on his debut LP, and only drummer Todd Cohen is retained. The accompaniment includes strings and horns, used judiciously with minimal arrangements reminiscent of a chamber ensemble. While Hegarty’s voice is the focal point, several other singers appear; Lou Reed contributes a spoken introduction to Fistful of Love, Devendra Banhart sings a brief aria on Spiralling, and Rufus Wainwright sings an entire song, the excellent What Can I Do? The finest guest vocal comes when Hegarty duets with Boy George on the emotional You Are My Sister; the performance illustrates the power of George’s voice, a reminder that his Aughts activity transcended his tabloid-level mayhem. “Hope there’s someone who’ll take care of me/When I die, when I go,” Hegarty sings on the opening cut, presaging the ruminations on death and transition he would examine closely on his next album, The Crying Light (’09; see #93); death is a theme on Bird as well, though here it is often followed by a second birth—that of the soul and sexual spirit. This is most pronounced in For Today I Am a Boy and, in the triumphant album closer, Bird Gehrl: “I’m gonna be born/Into, soon, the sky/’Cause I’m a bird girl/And the bird girls go to heaven/I’m a bird girl/And the bird girls can fly.” Hegarty’s compositions on I Am a Bird Now speak to the ecstatic truths of individual identity, with a command seen in few other singers of the time. His creative growth in the seven years since his first album represents one of the most startling progressions in Aughts pop music. Bird controversially won the UK Mercury Prize (not for subject matter, but for disputes over Hegarty's residency; the prize is intended for British recordings), and remains NOYOUCMON’s pick for best album of 2005.

Highlights: Bird Gerhl, Fistful of Love, You Are My Sister, Hope There’s Someone

Sublime bit: One comes along about every three minutes on this album, but the sheer emotion of his vocal on Bird Gehrl encapsulates them all.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

60. Sweet Warrior

2010-07-08T01:44:00.003-05:00

60. Sweet Warrior, Richard Thompson (Shout! Factory, 2007)

Richard Thompson is, it can be argued, a contender for greatest living guitarist. His knack for avoiding the limelight and his unique playing style that abstains from typical guitar-god blues hokum means that your average Crossroads Festival attendee might not think so, but an examination of Thompson’s work reveals an astonishing breadth, color, and agility seen in few other masters of the instrument. His first recorded work came as a member of English folk-rockers Fairport Convention, resulting in five studio albums from 1967 to his ’71 departure to pursue a solo career, and while the group continues to this day their most cherished material comes from the relatively brief Thompson era. Prior to his ’72 solo debut Henry the Human Fly, Thompson also served as a session man for a variety of artists that included Nick Drake. Following Fly, Thompson embarked on a joint career with one of that album’s backing vocalists, Linda Peters, who became his wife; they recorded six albums together before divorcing in ’82. While operating in traditional folk and folk-rock milieu on his own albums, Thompson has collaborated with a wide array of artists, including David Thomas, frontman of visionary rock provocateurs Pere Ubu; experimental guitarists Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith; Captain Beefheart drummer John French; and, in perhaps his strongest guest appearances, with Anton Fier’s avant-rock project the Golden Palominos. Thompson’s playing has figured heavily in a handful of films, most notably Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (’05). Were Thompson merely a brilliant guitarist, his nearly two-dozen post-Fairport studio albums would be a shallower pool; his exceptional talent as a singer-songwriter makes his albums rare demonstrations of first-class instrumental and rhetorical prowess coming from a single source.

Thompson recorded three studio albums in the Aughts, alongside a wealth of live albums (mostly fan-club releases) and the Grizzly Man soundtrack. Of the trio of studio efforts from the decade, Sweet Warrior (’07) is the last and finest, a return to electric work after the largely acoustic ’05 Front Parlour Ballads. Having left the major label system after '99's strong Mock Tudor, Thompson made Warrior on his own dime and shopped it to indie labels after its completion. A balance of pop tunes (Mr. Stupid, Needle and Thread, and the sax-driven jaunt Bad Monkey the best among them) and thoughtful ballads, the album embodies its title by examining the battles of romance. Elsewhere, though, the warrior concept is addressed in regard to the futile sides of war and military life (the concepts are mingled in an inner-sleeve photo of a flummoxed Thompson in military uniform and camouflage facepaint, flanked by beautiful women kissing his cheeks). Dad’s Gonna Kill Me refers not to fears of an angry father; the title instead invokes Baghdad and the fears of a deployed soldier in the face of unarmored Humvees, conservative home-front propaganda, and the specter of death. Even better is Guns Are the Tongues, the album’s climax and one of Thompson’s strongest pieces of writing. It is a ballad of a seducer and her line of soldier lovers, each of whom is enlisted to avenge her family’s history: “Guns are the tongues, Little Joe/The only words we know/The only sound that’ll reach their ears.” For every agonizing ballad there is a pair of upbeat, ebullient bursts of rootsy pop, balancing the album between confounding matters of the heart and weary stories of battle. If the album has a fault, it’s length—at 66 minutes, Sweet Warrior is a heavy listening commitment; yet, it is one with many rewards. At age 57 and in his fourth decade of recording, Thompson made one of his best albums.

Highlights: Guns Are the Tongues, Take Care the Road You Choose, Johnny’s Far Away, Too Late to Come Fishing

Sublime bit: The end chorus of Guns Are the Tongues and his soaring vocal on the last plea of “Dry the old eyes of my mother, Little Joe” at 6:02.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

61. Olé! Tarantula

2010-07-04T00:30:00.006-05:00

61. Olé! Tarantula, Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 (Yep Roc, 2006)

London-born songwriter Robyn Hitchcock has maintained a prolific solo career since leaving new-wave psych-poppers the Soft Boys in 1980. Issuing some three dozen albums, half of those being studio efforts and the rest comprising outtakes, radio sessions, live gigs, and revisitings of old work, Hitchcock has developed a devoted following while consistently delivering engaging new material. A certified English eccentric, Hitchcock built a reputation for unorthodox lyrics about vegetables, insects, and other such matter, though it is unfair to categorize him as a strict humorist or capable only of idiosyncratic composition. His quick-witted, picturesque writing makes him a natural descendant of influences Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and he has a knack for fragile beauty as much as for spirited, assertive pop music. While he began the Aughts with a dismissal from Warner Bros., leaving him without a major-label deal for the first time since the late Eighties, it would be his most prolific decade, producing six studio albums, another six of live material and/or outtakes, two comprehensive box sets of his ’80s solo work, as well as a Soft Boys reunion album, accompanying EP, and an exhaustive reissue of their ’80 LP Underwater Moonlight.

Hitchcock’s ’06 studio album Olé! Tarantula, his sixteenth not counting Soft Boys material, finds him recording with a dedicated group for the first time since the ’93 disbanding of his backing group the Egyptians.* The Venus 3 features several well-known Seattle-based musicians: longtime collaborator Peter Buck on guitar, R.E.M. touring drummer Bill Rieflin (also late of numerous industrial groups including Ministry, KMFDM, and Pigface), and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5 (the latter of which has also included Rieflin). The album also features among its numerous guest spots contributions from former Soft Boys Kimberley Rew and Morris Windsor. Most of Hitchcock’s previous Aughts work is reserved, acoustic music; stripped-down records like Luxor (’03) and Spooked (’04, his first on now-longtime label Yep Roc) are enjoyable, but are not among his most memorable efforts. Olé! Tarantula is, conversely, his most electrified album since his work with the Egyptians. It opens with two numbers that recall the finest of his ’80s pop heyday. The hard-edged Adventure Rocket Ship juxtaposes a yearning lover with cosmic detritus like “skeletons of spacemen” and time-warp romance (“I kiss you in the past”); next is Underground Sun, a summery pop blast whose sound masks its lyric about a deceased friend (“You lie so lonely/Listening to the silence of the graves/You don’t belong there/You belong down south among the waves”). A third pop blowout comes with ’Cause It’s Love (Saint Parallelogram), written with reclusive XTC frontman Andy Partridge yet unfortunately not boasting a guest appearance from its co-author. Reprised from the Japan-only ’05 odds-and-ends LP Obliteration Pie is (A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs; despite a new arrangement with an incongruous synth line, the Tarantula version remains an album highlight. The album’s closing song is its most haunting; N.Y. Doll is a moving account of the troubled last years of New York Dolls bassist Arthur Kane. Olé! Tarantula is a contender for Hitchcock’s best work of the decade; those craving more should seek out its companion EP Sex, Food, Death...and Tarantulas, which features live versions of Briggs and five other tunes from Hitchcock’s deep catalog.

* Or fifteenth, to those who insist on categorizing his 2000 LP A Star for Bram as a mere set of outtakes from the '99 Jewels for Sophia album. I maintain otherwise.

NOTE: As a proponent of wax, it pains me when I cannot recommend a vinyl pressing of an album; however, the vinyl pressings produced by Yep Roc are routinely substandard. Overzealous bass response, muddy mastering, and general poor fidelity render this label's releases best purchased on the compact disc format. I've heard both versions of Olé! Tarantula, and the CD trounces the vinyl version. If you do not care about fidelity, purchase a download of this album. The vinyl receives a NOYOUCMON "do not buy" warning.

Highlights: Underground Sun, Adventure Rocket Ship, N.Y. Doll, (A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs

Sublime bit: Underground Sun’s pulsing bridge (“One for the girl who went away/Two for the girl that went astray/Three is in between you”).

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

62. Year of Meteors

2010-06-29T02:12:00.009-05:00

62. Year of Meteors, Laura Veirs (CD version) (Nonesuch, 2005)

Colorado-born Laura Veirs, a self-confessed latecomer even to listening to music, fooled around in a college punk band before turning to songwriting as a distraction during an unhappy geology expedition to China. This composition foray resulted in a pair of self-released albums, beginning with a ’99 eponymous LP after a relocation to Seattle. Veirs’s music is rooted in folk stylings, with the occasional western twang; her coarse first record features just vocals and acoustic guitar. Her singing voice has an unvarnished quality much like the naïf sing-speak of Liz Phair’s early work yet with the timbre of Suzanne Vega. Also like Vega, who grew from straight folk to the complex electronic tapestry of the ’92 LP 99.9F°, Veirs expanded her sonic palette over successive albums. The instrumentation is augmented with each outing, first with double-tracked vocals, banjo, and mild effects; for ’03 third album Troubled by the Fire, a full band is added, with electric guitar, horns and woodwinds, keys, and strings; eventually, electronics would become a prominent part of her sound. Veirs’s early work earned considerable attention, resulting in a guest spot on three Troubled tunes by veteran guitarist and composer Bill Frisell, who also grew up in Colorado. By her fourth LP, Veirs would have a major contract, becoming label mates with Frisell on the Warner-distributed Nonesuch Records. Carbon Glacier (’04), her first Nonesuch effort, is sparse and ghostly, its aura matching the dark, wintry landscape of the etchings on its jacket. The folk tunes therein are accented with spectral, minimal electronics. The backing band, dubbed the Tortured Souls and featuring drummer, accomplished producer, and future Veirs husband Tucker Martine, would serve on the remainder of Veirs’s Aughts catalog.

Fifth album Year of Meteors is populated by confident, hard-edged pop arrangements, a departure from Veirs’s previous folk-heavy releases. Opening cut Fire Snakes begins with a gentle acoustic guitar pattern, Veirs eventually joined by simmering electro percussion, atmospheric guitar overdubs, and reverb-laden viola, creating an understated, glimmering vibe. Galaxies features a downbeat rock arrangement with a playful, oscillating synth line running throughout. Secret Someones is the most brisk number, its verses and choruses propelled by an insistent drumbeat and pulsing, double-tracked Veirs backing lines accompanying her main vocal. Like the ’06 Sonic Youth song Or (see #74), it climaxes with an excitable music fan’s series of questions: “Tell me/Did you make it to the show?/Tell me/What did you make of the drummer’s hair?/Tell me/About the atmosphere/Tell me/About the faces that greeted you there.” Parisian Dream is carried by a powerful drumbeat and vibrant viola figure; like the more delicate Spelunking, it uses a lighted lamp as a metaphor for a lover’s warmth. Though Veirs’s arrangements have become more complex, the album has its share of acoustic ballads; the finest, and the album’s most entrancing song, is Where Gravity Is Dead. To a stark accompaniment, Veirs sings of a willfully isolated figure who perplexes the narrator: “Don’t you wish for someone/To pull you on a string/Down from atmospheres/Down into a clearing/To kiss and box your ears?” Saltbreakers (’07), her next and final Aughts album, lacks the allure of her other two Nonesuch releases; Year of Meteors, though, is an often enchanting career highlight and captivating expansion of Veirs’s sound.

NOTE: I prefer the CD version over the vinyl version issued by Kill Rock Stars, as the latter includes a different version of Galaxies that features a guest verse by Seattle rapper Specs One (the pseudonym-happy gent doing business here as "Kotos the Rock Thrower"), which Nonesuch declined to include on their version. I hate to side with a major label when it comes to an artist's vision, but even the mellow groove laid down by Specs One—whose flow is, frankly, not the smoothest—is too much of an obtrusion for me when it comes to Laura Veirs music. Take your pick of formats, but know what you're getting.

Highlights: Where Gravity Is Dead, Secret Someones, Parisian Dream, Rialto

Sublime bit: Those pulsating choruses of Secret Someones and Veirs’s murmured backing chant of “Hey/Hey/Hey/Hey” throughout the bridge.

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63. Bright Yellow Bright Orange

2010-06-26T19:13:00.010-05:00

63. Bright Yellow Bright Orange, The Go-Betweens (Jetset, 2003)

Brisbane songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan produced six studio albums from 1978-88 with their co-ed group the Go-Betweens, earning wide critical acclaim and an adoring fan base in Australia and the UK. The group possessed a sparkling, jangling pop sound; more notable, though, was the two leaders’ songwriting and its uncanny ability to depict the mundane and invigorating aspects of romance, friendship, and everyday life and retain a masculine perspective without avoiding sensitive or feminine qualities. The continual lack of commercial success proving frustrating, the band parted ways in ’89 and its two leaders went on to separate careers while remaining close friends. Both delivered a handful of strong solo records in the ’90s. They occasionally performed their group’s songs together as a duo, until deciding to fully revive the brand with a new Go-Betweens album in 2000. For that effort, The Friends of Rachel Worth, Forster and McLennan created a new roster including Sydney bassist Adele Pickvance (with whom they had both worked) and, on drums, Janet Weiss of US indie group Sleater-Kinney (the other members of Sleater-Kinney guested, as did Sam Coombes from Weiss’s side project Quasi). The album was a striking return to form and on par with their best work, revealing the Aughts-model Go-Betweens to be a vibrant concern.

Bright Yellow Bright Orange is the second of three Aughts Go-Betweens LPs, and the eighth overall. The Sleater-Kinney contingent no longer present, Forster and McLennan are accompanied here by Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson (who played on Forster’s ’93 solo LP Calling From a Country Phone). The songs have a less explicitly acoustic feel than those of its predecessor, though the albums do feel of one piece. Bright Yellow opens with a pair of crisp rockers; Forster’s Caroline and I imagines the parallels between two unrelated people with the same birth year, in this case himself and Princess Caroline of Monaco (“It gave me something small I could feel/That maybe as you grew you knew how I’d feel”). McLennan’s Poison in the Walls follows, and could almost be interpreted as an oblique nod to the Go-Betweens’ prior run (“There’s nothing more that’s new/And where’s that brilliant juice/The flame that fired your heart/That made you want to start.”) In Her Diary recalls Forster’s previous quotidian character examinations like The Clarke Sisters (’87); the subject’s diligent record-keeping leaves her disconnected from her own memories, with nothing other than “Some kind of thing/That reminds her of a photograph/Of some people she’s known.” In Mrs. Morgan, McLennan reprises a character from the song Trapeze Boy on his ’91 Jack Frost LP (a collaboration with Steve Kilbey of the Church). Bright Yellow closes with two sparse ballads, first Forster's Something for Myself; “Trapped within an image/Unable to move,” its protagonist vows to “get a new strength” and move beyond his own hangups. McLennan’s Unfinished Business closes the album with a tender, quiet gesture to an exhausted friend: “Are you gonna make it?” Like all Go-Betweens albums, Bright Yellow Bright Orange is just a simple collection of outstanding yet unassuming rock-influenced pop songwriting; Forster and McLennan’s ability to produce such winning material nearly thirty years after their first single—while sounding as fresh as their younger contemporaries—illustrates their standing as one of the great songwriting teams of the Aughts.

Highlights: Caroline and I, Poison in the Walls, Old Mexico, Something for Myself

Sublime bit: Old Mexico’s choruses: “You were so excited/But you weren’t invited,” with shimmering acoustic guitar and Pickvance harmonies.

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64. Two Against Nature

2010-06-23T02:50:00.004-05:00

64. Two Against Nature, Steely Dan (Giant/Reprise, 2000)

It seemed nutty enough when, following some production collaborations, jazz-rock studio mavens Steely Dan regrouped for a ’93 concert tour to support frontman Donald Fagen’s then-current second solo LP Kamakiriad, playing their first shows since ’74 and making first use of the Dan name since their final (and weakest) album, the ’80 Gaucho. The group, swollen with session players and dubbed “The Steely Dan Orchestra,” opened shows with a Muzak-style medley of Dan hits before easing into a set including tunes from Fagen’s and guitarist Walter Becker’s solo work. This occasionally went beyond the sound of the group’s pristine, painstaking ’70s albums and into dullness, captured on the aseptic tour souvenir Alive in America (’95).* Kamakiriad was a pale shadow of Fagen’s first solo effort, the excellent ’82 The Nightfly; and Becker’s debut solo turn, 11 Tracks of Whack (’94), is the abomination of the Dan cosmology. Considering these inauspicious resurfacings, the notion of strong new Steely Dan product in the Aughts would have been a fool’s wager. It would have been no stretch to imagine the routinely out-of-touch Grammys bestowing an award on the reunited pair, out of simple familiarity; it was one of the most shocking music-biz turns of the decade, then, when their 2000 reunion album Two Against Nature beat out hot items Eminem and Radiohead’s Kid A to win Album of the Year (and three other awards)—and actually deserve it. For those who hadn’t heard the album, it was easy to presume this a Grammy blooper on the level of Jethro Tull’s notorious ’89 defeat of Metallica in the Hard Rock/Metal category; the reality, though, is that Two Against Nature is the best work from the Fagen/Becker camp since The Nightfly and the finest Steely Dan album since the 1977 classic Aja.

The reunion album’s main strength is its compositions. Kamakiriad and Gaucho are both too heavy on forgettable numbers short on hooks, and their flawless studio craftsmanship and light-jazz habits push the lesser material into elevator-music territory. Two Against Nature is impeccably played, courtesy of nearly thirty session musicians, yet its delivery is never dull. The planning of a high-level prank in Gaslighting Abbie, the syncopated funk of the title track’s voodoo exorcism, and the exhilaration of an undoubtedly inappropriate romance in Almost Gothic provide compelling narratives. Almost Gothic lends its enthralled narrator additional zing by giving each chorus a different lyric about the antagonist ingénue and an upward key change with each cycle. The grind of everyday life punctuated by long-anticipated romantic moments dominates: What a Shame About Me finds an unfulfilled bookstore employee accidentally reconnecting with an old flame; in West of Hollywood the suburban narrator, whose regular life finds him “way deep into nothing special,” recalls “She reached out for my hand/While I watched myself lurch across the room.” The naughty but good-natured romp Cousin Dupree scored its own Grammy songwriting award, though it does pale alongside its more nuanced companions here. Steely Dan released only one more Aughts album, Everything Must Go (’03), yet toured for much of the decade focusing mainly on the classic ’70s material; two more solo LPs followed (Fagen’s ’06 Morph the Cat and Becker’s ’08 Circus Money, both improvements on their respective predecessors). Each of these albums is adequate and will attract diehard fans; it is Two Against Nature, though, issued just two months into the decade, that holds up the best and delivers the finest material of the unexpected second incarnation of Steely Dan.

* I saw the group's Chicago-area gig in August 1993 and found it a largely soulless display of Dan-by-numbers. Fagen explained in an interview at the time, when asked if playing his old songs stirred up any feelings, that he preferred to operate detachedly and with no emotional investment during the reunion gigs—if memory serves, he described his method as "laser thinking," though I can't track down the specific interview (which I recall as being in Musician magazine). Steely Dan's press kits are awash with pranks and piss-takes, but even if this was another instance of intentional silliness it seemed to ring true during their initial comeback.

Highlights: Almost Gothic, Janie Runaway, Gaslighting Abbie, Two Against Nature

Sublime bit: Fagen’s delivery of Almost Gothic’s three different chorus lyrics, peaking at 3:15 with “First she’s all buzz/Then she’s noise-free.”

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65. Hey Venus!

2010-06-17T01:27:00.003-05:00

65. Hey Venus!, Super Furry Animals (Rough Trade, 2007)

Welsh psych-poppers Super Furry Animals began the Aughts in transition. Their label, Creation, closed in ’99 shortly after declining to release their fourth LP Mwng. The band had sung in English since their second release, the ’95 EP Moog Droog, in an effort to expand their audience; after three well-received albums that flirted with Britpop, allowing them a few chart successes, the Super Furries opted for a stripped-down, self-made LP in their native tongue. Released in ’00 on their own Placid Casual imprint, Mwng achieved unexpected chart success and a Parliamentary recognition for perpetuating the Welsh language. This linguistic tribute to the homeland would be short lived. The group soon gained major distribution through Sony, and Mwng’s follow-up, Rings Around the World (’01), was back to English; it boasted an increased budget, a guest spot from Paul McCartney on nearly inaudible sound effects (the group had worked with him the year before on the experimental Liverpool Sound Collage album), and the flair of being the first album simultaneously released as a long-form video on DVD. The band’s ’90s work is energetic and sprightly, inspired by ’60s psychedelic pop yet retaining a nervy edge, the affinity for impish wordplay and translingual puns intact since the days of the all-Welsh group Ffa Coffi Pawb from which Super Furry Animals emerged. The slightly mellower pace that began with Mwng continued through most of the group’s Aughts work, often serenely soulful though still possessing electronic-filled, wall-of-sound production tricks and spirited, fluent genre-hopping that ensure each album has its share of inventive and exciting tunes.

Just as Creation’s dissolution sparked a shift in band dynamics, the conclusion of their Sony contract resulted in a new approach. Signing to Rough Trade for their eighth LP, Hey Venus!, the band shifted strategy in several areas: production (replacing the previous two albums’ Mario Caldato, Jr., with David Newfeld); cover art (the first time since their ’96 debut LP that Pete Fowler didn’t handle the design); and, most importantly, a shift back to the high-spirited pop antics of their early days. Hey Venus! opens with the 43-second The Gateway Song, a barreling little ditty announcing itself to be “a numero uno singalong” that “brings us up nicely to the harder stuff,” before crashing into the breakup song Run-Away, a sonic update of boom-sha-la ’60s girl-group sounds with frontman Gruff Rhys opening with the recitation “This song is based on a true story, which would be fine if it wasn’t autobiographical” before a grieving session including the crooned lament “I still recall your banking details.” This frivolity continues on song like Neo Consumer, a wild glam stomper punctuated by a whooping refrain; it concludes, “I believe in death after life/Switch off the light/Bye! Bye!” Baby Ate My Eightball employs an absurd lyric about an infant who swallows someone’s drug stash, and while the topic is grimly unsavory the funky, near-disco arrangement makes it the album’s resident dance blast. The album offers more than just nutty romps; a handful of songs, most notably The Gift That Keeps Giving and the closing number Let the Wolves Howl at the Moon, are lovely down-tempo excursions. The band’s shortest LP by far at a breezy 36 minutes, Hey Venus! is also their most fun and a highlight of the Super Furry Animals’ Aughts catalog.

Highlights: Neo Consumer, Run-Away, Show Your Hand, Baby Ate My Eightball

Sublime bit: When Rhys shifts tempo ever so briefly during the closing chorus of bubbly pop-ballad showcase Show Your Hand, at 2:26.

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66. Streethawk: A Seduction

2010-06-15T01:20:00.004-05:00

66. Streethawk: A Seduction, Destroyer (Misra, 2001)

Much transpired between Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Bejar’s ’95 demo tape submission to the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s experimental Brave New Waves radio show under the nom de plume Destroyer and the 2001 release of his fifth full-length collection, Streethawk: A Seduction. Bejar began with his earliest work to formulate the literary approach that would make him one of the decade’s most celebrated indie songwriters, yet efforts like We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge (’96) and the cassette-only Ideas for Songs (’97) are middling juvenalia—fittingly issued on a vanity imprint dubbed Tinker—whose songs often sound less like compositions than the unplanned byproducts of learning how to use recording equipment. After City of Daughters (’98), his first release to benefit from the help of other musicians, a professional studio, obviously deliberate craftsmanship throughout, and a modicum of distribution, Bejar branched out, collaborating with two other groups. In 2000, he released albums with ex-Kreviss singer Sara Lapsley’s ebullient pop outfit Vancouver Nights (as guitarist) and ex-Zumpano frontman Carl Newman’s new group the New Pornographers (as songwriter and occasional lead vocalist). These efforts redoubled the strength of Bejar’s primary project; while City of Daughters is a dramatic improvement over previous Destroyer works, it still contains a fair amount of tentative writing and has as many brief musical sketches as full-fledged songs. Its follow-up, Thief, released the same autumn as the long-gestating New Pornographers’ debut, is a confident stride forward and the first exceptional Destroyer record.

As much of an improvement as Thief was, its ’01 follow-up Streethawk: A Seduction is an almost startling progression. Recorded with the same five-man lineup as Thief and with bassist John Collins producing his third consecutive Destroyer album, Streethawk bests its predecessors in production, performance, and composition. The labyrinthine, hyper-erudite lyrical style for which Bejar would become well known is in full flight here, each song a dense expository exercise. Many of the arrangements are propelled by piano; along with Bejar’s emotive, high-pitched nasal croon, this lends the jauntier portions of the album a Tin Pan Alley feel. Much of the album appears to address the music business. “Express your bloated self/Willful and indignant/In the face of somebody’s lord,” he sings on the refrains of The Sublimation Hour, an abstruse depiction of relations with a label boss; English Music addresses the futility of a budding songwriter (“Write your English music/Though you know it will come to no good”). A handful of the songs are primarily acoustic, especially on side two, but the album’s most sparkling moments come with the full band arrangements. Bejar often peppers his lyrics with cultural references, frequently recontextualized so that they barely register as such; this is more prominent than ever on Streethawk. A variety of bands, films, and other artists’ songs are addressed; the most dramatic instance comes in the extended coda of the seven-minute The Bad Arts with the repeated line “You got the spirit/Don’t lose the feeling,” paraphrasing the climax of Joy Division’s ’79 song Disorder. A full analysis of the album’s allusions would require an essay of its own. His final album before signing to Merge, the label that would remain his home into the Teens, Streethawk: A Seduction is an early Destroyer classic that established Bejar as a serious contender for indie rock’s songwriting crown. Remastered and reissued by Merge in ’10 after a gap in availability, it is Bejar’s first essential work.

Highlights: The Sublimation Hour, Beggars Might Ride, The Crossover, Streethawk I

Sublime bit: When the guitar solo kicks in at 3:29 of The Bad Arts, presaging the vocal melody of the song’s Joy Division-quoting coda.

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67. Nixon

2010-06-12T01:34:00.003-05:00

67. Nixon, Lambchop (Merge, 2000)

Kurt Warner quietly led his Nashville group Lambchop through the bulk of the ’90s, keeping his carpentry day job while releasing four LPs and one mini-album between ’94 and the decade’s end. His collective, boasting a dozen or so members from release to release, slowly polished a modest sort of American musical quilt bridging country, rock, and soul. Wagner’s natural voice is folksy and unadorned with a slight twang; he is capable of lush crooning, though, and from time to time uses a convincing falsetto. The band’s instrumentation is broad, including piano, organ, vibraphone, strings, horns, and an assortment of percussion; the arrangements often understated, most songs unfold casually at quarter speed. The music is often elegantly sparse, the ballads complemented by the occasional rave-up and, especially in the lyrics, a mild irreverence all the more striking because of the sedate music. The group’s first clutch of releases, through the ’96 EP Hank, show a group finding its sea legs; often pleasantly shaky but not without success--2nd LP How I Quit Smoking (’96) is an early high point--their ’90s catalog is a charming set of preparatory materials for the bracing work they would accomplish in the Aughts.

Nixon, the sixth Lambchop record, expands on the developments of its predecessor, What Another Man Spills (’98), which included a faithful Curtis Mayfield cover, Give Me Your Love. Just as when Porter Wagoner invited James Brown to the Grand Ole Opry, this crossover reveals the continuity between soul and country. Nixon, in turn, is Lambchop’s soul album. It swings more than any of the group’s previous work, and Wagner employs a passionate falsetto on nearly half the tracks. Of Nixon’s soul showcases, You Masculine You and What Else Could It Be are sung entirely in falsetto, the latter with a sleek, mature disco arrangement; shimmering violin cascades are provided on that track and several others by guests the Nashville String Machine. Grumpus is a grooving, brawnier affair, Wagner’s vocal skirting the rhythm ever so slightly and shooting to the higher registers at the end of the bridge. The Book I Haven’t Read is even given a Mayfield co-credit, due to its similarity to his ’85 tune Baby, It’s You. The album’s one single and the band’s only near hit, Up With People, is anomalous in the Lambchop catalog; a pulsing number with a diamond-sharp gospel chorus, its refrain finds Wagner and the choir freely declaring “We are screwing/Up our lives today.” The album’s finest expository achievement is Nashville Parent. The epitome of Wagner’s ability for documenting the mundane, it depicts domestic scenes of standing against the kitchen counter with arms crossed, neighbors fighting after a drinking binge, and spitting on the sidewalk but ending up having to wipe it off your shirt. All of this is delivered in a silky vocal befitting a Johnny Mathis record, the accompaniment the first shining example of the smooth country-soul melange the group would perfect on later albums like Is a Woman (’02) and Damaged (’06; see #90). The performances and Mark Nevers’s production are leagues beyond earlier Lambchop works. The accomplishments of Nixon served Lambchop well; the band heretofore largely unknown, Nixon scored them Album of the Year in UK magazine Uncut. That they would go on to even bigger musical accomplishments is testimony to Lambchop’s status as perhaps the most underrated rock group of the decade. As for Nixon’s relation to the 37th President, his administration concurred nicely with the rise of the modern soul and disco to which Lambchop pay homage on what is their first great album.

Highlights: Nashville Parent, Up With People, Grumpus, You Masculine You

Sublime bit: When, achingly, Wagner sings the line “You look pretty swell/In your new position” for the second time in Nashville Parent at 4:57.

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68. The Sunlandic Twins

2010-06-08T00:27:00.009-05:00

68. The Sunlandic Twins, Of Montreal (Polyvinyl, 2005)

The arrival of The Sunlandic Twins marked the seventh full-length album attributed to Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes, the Athens, Georgia, group’s sole constant, recorded the first five albums with a revolving cast of three to six members; as part of the Elephant Six community—a collective of like-minded Athens musicians and artists—the various lineups shared members with groups like Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, and Marshmallow Coast. A common thread of the Elephant Six music is the influence of ’60s psychedelic pop, revealing itself to varying degrees on the various bands’ records yet becoming a prominent touchstone for Barnes’s work in the first half of the Aughts. His earliest material, such as Of Montreal’s ’97 debut LP Cherry Peel, is largely acoustic, nearly lo-fi, and dominated by playful, almost juvenile examinations of relationships. The early Of Montreal years showed Barnes prolific almost to his own detriment and in sore need of an editor; with a weakness for intricate conceptual projects (though, like many such works, often with impenetrable story lines) and twee, fanciful arrangements sometimes missing musical conventions such as choruses, albums like the nearly tuneless The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy (’98) and the 70-minute Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse (’01) can make for extremely trying listens. Following the ’03 dissolution of the group’s primary label, Kindercore (Of Montreal never recorded on the Elephant Six label itself), and the departure of two band members, Barnes downsized the project and recorded the sixth album, Satanic Panic in the Attic (’04), almost entirely by himself. Proving that sometimes less is more, it was the best Of Montreal album to date, a full realization of the swirling world of technicolour pop-sike he’d tried for with Coquelicot; this time, though, the whimsy was controlled, the sprawl largely mitigated, and—most importantly—the songs were full of hooks.

The Sunlandic Twins, issued almost exactly a year after Satanic Panic, repeated the formula of nearly solo, hook-laden pop music; it is reminiscent of ’60s-era lysergic sonic adventurists like many populating the Nuggets and Rubble compilations of period music, as well as the natural progression of early-’90s psych revivalists like Jeff Saltzman’s Cerebral Corps. While Satanic Panic sometimes feels claustrophobic, as if trying to include too many musical ideas in some of the songs, The Sunlandic Twins is a balanced set of compositions whose inventiveness and impeccable execution show Barnes to possess a knack for studio wizardry suggestive of the indie-pop version of Todd Rundgren or Prince (not to mention incorporating stylistic qualities that would fit nicely on songs by either of those artists). Several songs incorporate multiple movements, creating miniature pop symphonies (an approach Barnes would exploit to an extreme degree on the ’08 Skeletal Lamping). The album contains some of Barnes’s most personal lyrics to date. Oslo in the Summertime, about Barnes’s temporary relocation to Norway, mentions his wife by name; So Begins Our Alabee, a love song to their baby daughter, reveals his worry that “I never want to be/Your little friend the abject failure.” The album came with a four-song bonus EP—another testament to Barnes’s restless prolificacy—but it’s the LP proper that dazzles. There would be two more Of Montreal LPs in the Aughts, alongside a seemingly endless line of singles, EPs, and compilations; The Sunlandic Twins is near the top of the heap.

Highlights: Forecast Fascist Future, So Begins Our Alabee, The Party’s Crashing Us Now, I Was Never Young

Sublime bit: Barnes’s voice rising to a jubilant howl on the final line of “May we always/Stay/Stay/Gentle,” 3:36-3:48 of Forecast Fascist Future.

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69. Wagonmaster

2010-06-05T01:43:00.003-05:00

69. Wagonmaster, Porter Wagoner (Anti-, 2007)

Missouri-born Porter Wagoner never quite captured the zeitgeist that allowed some of his contemporaries to resonate outside country and western circles. An inveterate traditionalist, Wagoner made some mainstream inroads with his long-running TV program The Porter Wagoner Show (’60-’81), its middle years featuring regular cast member and duet partner Dolly Parton. With his gaudy Nudie suits, bountiful pompadour, and taste for cornpone humor, Wagoner cut a figure that on first blush might seem best relegated to the cast of Hee Haw. A closer look at his career, though, reveals a firm command of serious material. Matched only by Cash, Wagoner recorded the earliest country concept albums; efforts like Confessions of a Broken Man (’66) and The Soul of a Convict (’67) go beyond well-worn country tropes of hard luck and show a keen insight on topics like depression and mental illness. Issuing 81 charting singles since going solo in 1952 after leaving his local group the Blue Ridge Boys, Wagoner well earned his position as ambassador and unofficial host of the Grand Ole Opry.

Like far too many country legends, Wagoner endured a dry spell in the ’80s. His 35-year deal with RCA ended and he did one-offs for a handful of labels until calling it quits in ’86. He continued to perform; it wasn’t until 2000, though, that he released another album, the outdated-sounding The Best I’ve Ever Been. Aside from the fortuitous ’02 Unplugged, his Aughts recordings were then limited to poorly curated gospel compilations in the ghastly tourist-country ghetto of labels like TeeVee. In ’07, the luck previously afforded a handful of his contemporaries (see #119 and #121) was visited upon Wagoner when a proper, well-equipped record company plucked him from recording obscurity at age 79. While those artists’ comeback efforts incorporated modern pop covers, rafts of indie-rock guests, or adoring though counterintuitive curators, Wagonmaster presents the artist undistilled and in his own milieu. Produced by Marty Stuart, himself a country veteran, the album is backed by Stuart’s excellent band and the production is crisp and tasteful. Like many aged country singers, Wagoner emphasizes material from earlier in his career; a whopping five songs are new recordings of material from his ’71 LP Porter Wagoner Sings His Own. The pacing is reminiscent of a variety show, with a Stuart-sung hoedown theme opening and closing the record and a similar intermission at midpoint (in which Wagoner joyfully exclaims, “Everybody have a good time, son!”). The album’s first full song, Be a Little Quieter, is its most celebratory in execution despite its lyrical wish that a departed lover’s memory wouldn’t echo through the narrator’s hallways each night. Two other early-’70s pieces examine hard life through sunny arrangements: Albert Erving depicts a lifelong bachelor who cherishes a wood carving of an imagined lover, and My Many Hurried Southern Trips, a Parton co-write, is sung by a bus driver who shuttles all manner of troubled souls. Hotwired, a cover of an ’06 country-rock tune by Arkansas singer Shawn Camp, is a bit of a misfire, yet Wagoner’s delivery is charming. Wagonmaster’s most famous tune is Committed to Parkview, a Cash composition about a mental hospital in which both men spent time. Wagoner’s opening recitation ends with “I hope I never have to go there again,” his voice bearing no trace of storytelling gimmickry. A shining accomplishment after twenty years in record-company wilderness, Wagonmaster stands among the best country albums of the Aughts; sadly, it was Wagoner’s final album, as he succumbed to cancer just four months after its release.

Highlights: Be a Little Quieter, My Many Hurried Southern Trips, Fool Like Me, Brother Harold Dee

Sublime bit: The chiming group vocals that come midway through each verse of Be a Little Quieter are sheer spine-tingling country gold.

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70. Good News for People Who Love Bad News

2010-05-31T19:24:00.004-05:00

70. Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Modest Mouse (Epic, 2004)

Major-label deals for indie rockers didn’t come as thick and fast in 2000 as they had ten years prior. It was with some surprise, then, when in that year suburban Seattle’s Modest Mouse wound up on Epic Records. Since 1994, the group had recorded two full-lengths and four EPs for a smattering of labels including Washington state’s K and Up. These records emphasized a staccato guitar sound, unpredictable chord changes, and the odd drift into experimental sonics; their most distinctive element, though, has always been the voice of singer/guitarist Isaac Brock. While capable of straight, melodic singing--sometimes almost like a huskier Daniel Johnston--the raspy-voiced Brock often uses a twitchy, nearly strangulated delivery prone to howls and shouts. Brock’s lyrics are complexly arranged and often avoid typical verse/chorus structure; alongside the intricate music, this can make for a somewhat claustrophobic effect. The band’s first Epic effort and third full-length, The Moon & Antarctica (’00), is a dense, hour-long album with an expanded aural palette and a more introspective, melancholy feel than their other material. It was successful enough to warrant an Epic release of associated tracks, outtakes, and demos, the ’01 EP Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks, even though half of that material was previously released on the indie EP Night on the Sun.

Modest Mouse’s fortunes grew even further with their second Epic full-length, Good News for People Who Love Bad News; on the back of unlikely hit single Float On, the album went platinum in just four months.* Their shortest LP to date at just 48 minutes (its predecessors averaged nearly 70), it is also the brightest and liveliest. The band now grown to a quartet (and without longtime drummer Jeremiah Green, who would return later in ’04), the instrumentation expanded to include mellotron, pump organ, timpani, and other accents. The album opens with a ten-second fanfare performed by New Orleans legends Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The simple nursery-rhyme cadence of the first proper song, The World at Large, eases the listener into the album before third track Float On’s jaunty ode to optimism. No plain “don’t worry, be happy” embarrassment, its characters get fired, collide with police cars, get scammed by hustlers, and lip off to friends; silver linings prevail, Brock ensuring us “We’ll all float on OK.” The buoyant second single Ocean Breathes Salty boasts an even poppier score. A good portion of the album is given to jolly if skewed arrangements; Dance Hall is a frantic stomp, Bukowski an accordion-sweetened lament on bad behavior, and This Devil’s Workday a sinister march backed by the Dirty Dozen. Closing track The Good Times Are Killing Me features contributions from the Flaming Lips, who also mixed the track. The sequencing and departure from the band’s usual epic running times is a key asset for Good News, avoiding the listener fatigue marring the group’s other strong releases. The album’s exceptional follow-up, the ’07 We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, saw the unexpected addition of former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr; though lacking the conviviality of Good News, it is arguably an even stronger album. The Moon & Antarctica is regarded by many fans as the high-water mark** (also garnering an expanded and remixed ’04 reissue and a 2010 deluxe vinyl reissue); despite all this, at decade’s end Good News for People Who Love Bad News remained the band’s most accessible, enjoyable work.

* See the RIAA database at http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinum.php.

** For just one piece of testimony, see a May 2004 Metacritic readers' poll showing the album winning the top spot by a 21% margin at http://forums.metacritic.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/576108/m/5581031/showpollresults/Y (retrieved May 31, 2010).

Highlights: Ocean Breathes Salty, Bury Me With It, Float On, The View

Sublime bit: The tense build-up and resolution of penultimate track One Chance, running from 1:36 to 1:58.

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71. Bugged

2010-05-29T23:09:00.002-05:00

71. Bugged, Babybird (Echo/Roadrunner UK, 2000)

Experimental actor and amateur recordist Stephen Jones spent much of the ’90s making hundreds of solo demos, releasing many in a series of inventive and irreverent lo-fi albums under the moniker Baby Bird. They revealed Jones to be a natural at numerous styles--ambient instrumentals; aching, falsetto-laden ballads; nutty, Casio-driven pranksterism; and effortlessly catchy pop. Each came with a postcard asking listeners to vote for their three favorite songs. Interest brewed in the British press, and after his fourth LP Jones scored record deals in the UK and US. For the big-league debut, Ugly Beautiful (’96), Jones and his touring band recorded slick new versions of songs chosen by the postcard voters; a few new tunes were recorded as well. One of the new tunes, the bubbly You’re Gorgeous, became a #3 UK hit and the group was temporarily swept up in the commercial tidal wave of Britpop. After this, Jones issued a fifth solo lo-fi work, Dying Happy (’97); for the next studio album, Jones and the group (less keyboardist Huw Chadbourne) retreated from the high-spirited stylings and chart pressures of Ugly Beautiful. There’s Something Going On (’98) is not short on catchy tunes, but is weighted more heavily toward dark, melancholy material; the album is stronger and more unified than its catch-all predecessor. No more hits were forthcoming, though, and the group’s US label dropped them without releasing the album; as the Nineties ended, Jones and Babybird returned to cult-act status.

The third Babybird album, Bugged, appeared in the first year of the new decade, the group down to a trio including new member and longtime Babybird engineer and collaborator Matt Hay. The most energetic, inspired Babybird record to date, the beat-happy Bugged opens boisterously with the thumping, guitar-spiked dance tune The F-Word (later used as theme music for TV chef Gordon Ramsay’s cooking show of the same name). Eyes in the Back of Your Head and Till You Die follow a similar raucous model, but the album’s most sparkling moments come with its calmer tunes. Fireflies has a gentle drum loop and simple piano line, its choruses of “If I find them/I’m going to kill them” highlighting Jones’s knack for turning caustic lyrics into pretty melodies. Wave Your Hands manages to spin a cliche into a beautiful multi-tracked vocal showcase (“Throw our hands in the air/And wave them in the air/Like you just don’t care”). The album has the plushest arrangements of Jones’s catalog to date; Hay’s programming adds many fine touches, like the synth trumpets in Getaway and strings on All I Want Is Love. After Bugged, the Aughts saw Jones release three albums under his own name (including two sets of ambient “soundtracks”) and an ’08 double album eponymously credited to Death of the Neighbourhood. He occasionally revisits the Babybird label, as with the ’06 Between My Ears There’s Nothing but Music; for an ’02 box set of the lo-fi recordings he even made a sixth volume, The Black Album. They all have their moments, but Bugged is his strongest Aughts release by far and a perfect entry point to his complex discography for those unable to locate his classic lo-fi albums.

Highlights: Fireflies, The F-Word, Wave Your Hands, All I Want Is Love

Sublime bit: The shimmering, minimal piano lines that flit through the choruses of Fireflies.

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72. Candylion

2010-05-27T02:35:00.002-05:00

72. Candylion, Gruff Rhys (Team Love, 2007)

After more than five years fronting Welsh pranksters Ffa Coffi Pawb and another twelve with the like-minded Super Furry Animals, amiable singer-guitarist (and, with short-lived ’80s group Emily, drummer) Gruff Rhys released his first solo record. The ’05 Yr Atal Genhedlaeth is a crisp and energetic 29-minute Welsh-language romp played almost entirely by Rhys. Before his next solo effort, Super Furry Animals released their seventh album LoveKraft (also ’05). A departure for the band, it was their first to feature substantial songwriting and lead vocals from members other than Rhys. They also approached the LoveKraft sessions with a new strategy to collect songs that sounded of a piece rather than individually striking, resulting in the rejection of numerous Rhys compositions from the final lineup. This surplus of songs lent itself to the creation of another Rhys solo record, resulting in Candylion. While much of Yr Atal Genhedlaeth has a sparse, minimal feel due to its origins as a true solo project, the songs on its follow-up possess more fully realized arrangements, many reminiscent of the eclectic, psychedelic pop of LoveKraft. Candylion features a larger supporting cast than Genhedlaeth, most notably the backing vocals of Lisa Jen Brown of Welsh folk-rock group 9Bach on seven tracks. Like LoveKraft, this second Rhys solo LP was co-produced by Mario Caldato, Jr. (best known for his work on several Beastie Boys albums); also like the work of Rhys’s primary band, most of the album is sung in English.

Candylion is a whimsical effort, its playful sleeve showing a cardboard lion and pictures of Rhys assembling it. The album opens with a sample of prog group Seventh Wave’s ’74 tune Things to Come, reduced to a short bongo-and-synth theme like a news program’s intro music, and a spoken introduction by Caldato’s wife Samantha: “Welcome to Candylion, an album of songs for acoustic guitar and voice. But this isn’t a song; this is just the beginning,” before the gentle loping of the title track’s glockenspiel and light-funk drums kicks in. The Court of King Arthur is a jaunty harmonica-tinged shuffle; Beacon in the Darkness is a shuffling country love song with pedal steel; Now That the Feeling Has Gone has a mischievous arrangement alternating between blithe jazz-combo verses and gloomy, portentous choruses. Con Cariño is a pulsing, Spanish-sung lullaby; the latin-flavored Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru, one of two Welsh-sung entries, is the album’s most spirited tune. An ode to automobile cruising, its repeated title (meaning “driving”) sounds like an English exclamation of “goody goody goody!” The fun face of Candylion often disguises darker lyrics: the seemingly sugary title track finds Rhys singing “Dreams can come true/Nightmares also...We’re flying in love/Or falling in hate.” The narrator of Lonesome Words sees “Vultures in the sky/Ready to pounce down/On my corpse one day.” Cycle of Violence concludes, “Dirty bombs and clean ones/Look the same if you look closely.” Coming last in the Candylion track list is its most audacious entry. Starting with another intro by Ms. Caldato (“Candy Airlines welcomes you aboard flight F-U-N”) and taking up a full third of the album’s running time is the 15-minute Skylon! To a slow-burning, subtle groove, Rhys spins an outlandish, comical tale of a bomb disposal expert who winds up on an airplane stuck next to an actress he despises. He thwarts a hijacker, diffuses a bomb, ponders letting it explode for “The golden opportunity/To dispose of a TV personality,” but saves the plane; after escaping death together, he falls in love with the actress and they--of course--have a love child. A rare epic tune that stays amusing after repeated listens, it caps off a fully enjoyable detour from one of the Aughts’ most colorful songwriters.

Highlights: Skylon!, Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru, The Court of King Arthur, Candylion

Sublime bit: The breezy sensuality of Cycle of Violence’s bubbling-brook arrangement, especially the strings and Rhys’s overdubbed harmonies.

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73. 21st Century Man

2010-05-22T23:54:00.002-05:00

73. 21st Century Man, Luke Haines (Fantastic Plastic UK, 2009)

Auteurs frontman and pop diarist Luke Haines was the enfant terrible of Britpop, earning a reputation as a self-aggrandizing heir to the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, though with a penchant for erudition and withering analysis rather than abstruse ranting and lager consumption. The Auteurs having disintegrated in ’99, Haines eased into solo work with the ’01 soundtrack to the Paul Tickell film Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry (see #101); notwithstanding his solipsistic but dazzling ’03 re-recordings of the Auteurs’ high points on the wry self-celebration Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and the Auteurs, Haines’s Aughts work saw his narcissistic qualities fade with age. A few months before 21st Century Man, he issued the ’86-’97 autobiography Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall; its introduction states: “When I sat down to write this memoir I was surprised how much of this stuff was ricocheting about in my subconscious: youth, ambition, failure, depression, excess, spite and stupidity. Now I think it has stopped. I am a recovering egomaniac.”

21st Century Man, like its predecessor Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop (’06; see #118), still encompasses criticism of middle-class life and its weaker-minded participants, societal conditions in England, historical overviews of post-War culture, and himself. While Rocker depicted ’70s England, 21st Century Man works as a millennial-era assessment informed by the past. The record opens quietly with Suburban Mourning, a mid-tempo account of a neighborhood so happy that a couple of “Satanists” don’t even feel comfortable there, where people live and die never knowing how bland their lives are. The lilting Love Letter to London, as pretty a ballad as Haines ever recorded, addresses those who have babies and move away (“We’ll not see them again/It’s just like the Blitz, the countryside groans with the stress and the strain”). “They said that they loved you/But they used you as a playground/When they were young,” Haines sings, resentful of those who hedonistically suck the city dry before abandoning it when they feel like growing up. The two-minute oddity White Honky Afro is the catchiest tune here, a tale of a 1979 accident in which Haines was hit by a car and the subsequent unrelated suicide of the driver’s son; the repetitions of its title in each chorus provide the record’s catchiest hooks. The title track is the album’s finest number, a personal account of post-war 20th Century Britain where “they tried to give us a collective memory” through culture, politics, and folklore, though “now everything’s turned to dust.” It contains the most stunning line of Haines’s career: “What can you do when you’ve made your masterpiece?/That’s what I did in the Nineties/I was all over the Nineties/Yeah, I was all over in the Nineties.” In admitting that his star fell over ten years ago, the man who outrageously reviewed his own catalog in the liner notes of Das Capital, giving six of eight albums a five-star ranking, managed to seal up his finest album in a decade with one of the greatest songs of his career.

Highlights: 21st Century Man, White Honky Afro, Love Letter to London, English Southern Man

Sublime bit: The breathless, insistent, and inscrutable refrain of White Honky Afro, coming in four separate rounds during the song’s two minutes.

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74. Rather Ripped

2010-05-20T01:51:00.006-05:00

74. Rather Ripped, Sonic Youth (DGC, 2006)

Sessions for the NYC noiseniks’ fourteenth full-length studio LP began with the group once again a four-piece, temporary fifth member Jim O’Rourke (see #77) having left the group after touring behind the ’04 Sonic Nurse. Rather Ripped would be their ninth and final Geffen studio release since their 1990 major-label debut with the company. Described by Thurston Moore as a “super song record,”* the album boasts an immediacy making for the group’s poppiest, most accessible outing since ’92’s Dirty, even when its handful of ballads are considered. The urgency of many of the songs comes from stripped-down, streamlined playing largely absent among their last several albums’ pensive art-rock. The lyrics too suggest a new approach, often skipping a tendency for abstract, beat-poet metaphor. A handful of songs unflinchingly address relationships, lending the record a theme of domestic scrutiny that was a striking change of pace for Sonic Youth and, though no claim is made to autobiography, particularly interesting considering the real-life marriage of band members Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. The album’s vinyl version, pictured here, came housed in a textless, monochromatic variation of the fully titled blood-red compact disc release, suggesting an old mimeographed punk gig flyer; the outdated computer fonts inside harkened back to ’80s Sonic releases like Master-Dik and The Whitey Album; then, there was the message “goodbye sonic” on side one’s label; all of this provided additional intrigue: one could almost believe the band was giving a nod to the old days before breaking up, until realizing the goodbye message was plastered over an old photo of soon-to-be-former boss David Geffen. Rather Ripped--named for a long-defunct Berkeley record store--is no bastion of secret symbolism, but simply the decade’s most direct, unfettered Sonic Youth recording.

The album blasts open with two of the most propulsive numbers of the band’s career, the Gordon-sung Reena and Moore’s Incinerate. Both songs are tightly wound, with straight-on, four-on-the-floor drumming from Steve Shelley and clean, speed-strummed guitar licks by Moore. “It’s four alarm, girl, there’s nothing to see/Hear the sirens come for me,” Moore sings in Incinerate, immolated by a witchy lover. Guitarist and third singer Lee Ranaldo contributes Rats, another charged number and the album’s most complex lyric, its three bridges and choruses structured differently like a prose poem, about a toxic push-and-pull relationship always ebbing back to the point “when your love has died/and you rat on me.” The album’s most uncharacteristic song is the seven-minute, Moore-sung Pink Steam. It opens with a dark, heady groove, almost bluesy, before an extended guitar solo whose melody echoes the eventual vocal line that does not kick in until the song’s five-minute mark. The lyric sheet on the band’s Web site (there is none included with the album) denotes the line, “I’m the man who loves you mother,” but this is easily heard as “I’m the man who loves your mother”; taken as the latter, the lyric turns the song into a creepy depiction of preying on a girlfriend’s daughter. Jams Run Free, a Gordon vocal of an impressionist Moore lyric, provides the album’s centerpiece; “I love/The way/You move/I hope it’s not too late for me,” she sings, the album’s tense interpersonal analyses put on hold for a testimony to sheer feeling. Ending the record is Moore’s hushed Or, a tender denouement imagining a young fan’s awkward questions to a favorite band: “How long’s the tour?/ What time you guys playing?/ Where you going next?/ What comes first/ The music/ Or the words?” Sonic Youth’s next studio LP, The Eternal (’09), found them back on an indie label, Matador, continuing to pursue the energetic spirit of Rather Ripped yet coming nowhere close to the ebullience and vitality of their final Geffen album.

* College Music Journal, February 3, 2006.

Highlights: Incinerate, Reena, Jams Run Free, Pink Steam

Sublime bit: Yet another in Moore’s long line of exhilarating arpeggiated guitar solos, running from 3:05 to 3:30 of Incinerate.

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75. Silver & Gold

2010-05-16T20:13:00.004-05:00

75. Silver & Gold, Neil Young (Reprise, 2000)

When 2000 dawned, it had been over three years since the last Neil Young studio album--the longest gap of his 31-year solo career. That record, the pleasingly disjointed ’96 Broken Arrow, came shortly after the death of Young’s friend and producer David Briggs; the two had worked together for 26 years. A tour with Crazy Horse followed, along with the ’97 double-live Year of the Horse, as of this writing the last full release with his longtime backing band.* He spent the rest of the ’90s working on two projects: Looking Forward, his first record with Crosby, Stills & Nash since ’88 and only their third studio LP since their ’70 debut; and his 25th solo album, Silver & Gold. For his first Aughts release, Young returned to the acoustic stylings visited most recently on the ’92 Harvest Moon and several times before, most famously on his ’72 hit album Harvest. Harvest loyalists tend to claim any country-leaning Young album as a sequel. Emphasizing this suspicion for some is the appearance on Silver & Gold of the aforementioned albums’ steel guitarist Ben Keith and backup singer Linda Ronstadt; however, Ronstadt (along with fellow occasional Young collaborator Emmylou Harris) sings on only one song, Red Sun, and Keith’s return speaks not to a planned third part of Harvest but to Young’s tendency to keep a handful of backing bands that he rotates depending on the musical needs of his current project. Another habit blurring his catalog’s lines is the return to old compositions when the time is right; for Silver & Gold, he revived a pair of unrecorded songs dating to ’82 (the title track) and ’84 (Razor Love), both of which he’d played live in the years since.**

The revisiting of songs almost twenty years old matches the album’s themes of reminiscing and reevaluation. This is most explicit on Buffalo Springfield Again, the most upbeat number and a candid account of Young’s memories with that group in the late ’60s before their acrimonious breakup (“It ate us up/Now I ain’t sayin’ who was right or wrong”); hearing the group on the radio, Young imagines a reunion, stating “I’d just like to play for the fun we had.” Parental love is addressed in two songs. Daddy Went Walkin’ is a warm account of a father’s mundane activities and set of observations--the gathering of firewood, his corduroy pants and plaid shirt, riding in a car with a dog--concluding with an idealized depiction of the father’s love for the mother. When not reminiscing, Young examines the solidification of existing relationships. In Red Sun, Young’s narrator imagines a placid future with a lover, adding “I dreamt that my mama and daddy were there.” Opening cut Good to See You describes reuniting with a lover, its title’s simple sentiment amplified by the deeper emotional resonance of a permanent homecoming. Distant Camera asserts, “Life is changing everywhere I go/New things and old both disappear/If life is a photograph fading in the mirror/All I want is a song of love to sing to you.” A line in Without Rings addressing communication failure--“My software’s not compatible with you”--was a howler in a pre-Web 2.0 society, yet resonates more keenly a decade later when so many relationships are mitigated online. An ambling, amicable album, Silver & Gold was Young’s last strong release before a flaccid six-year stretch, a tender acknowledgment that love is our most precious asset.

* The 2003 album Greendale is credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse, but does not include the entire group. Crazy Horse guitarist Frank Sampedro did not participate due to Young's conclusion that the album required only one guitarist.

** Razor Love is shown on Silver & Gold credits as having a 1987 copyright date; bootleg recordings reveal performances of the song as early as 1984.

Highlights: Good to See You, Buffalo Springfield Again, Razor Love, Distant Camera

Sublime bit: The emotion in the verse endings of “I feel like I know what my life is for” and “I feel like making up for lost time” in Good to See You.

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76. Loose Fur

2010-05-13T01:11:00.007-05:00

76. Loose Fur (Drag City, 2003)

The eponymous debut of Loose Fur, a trio comprising Jeff Tweedy of roots titans Wilco, experimental composer/producer Jim O’Rourke, and indie art-rock drummer Glenn Kotche, came two and a half years after its recording. In the interim, Wilco endured their record label’s notorious rejection of the ’02 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, its eventual release and widespread acclaim, and a line-up change including Kotche’s replacement of longtime drummer Ken Coomer. The polarization of Wilco’s sound that came with the aggressively experimental Foxtrot made it easy to presume Loose Fur an offshoot of Tweedy’s newfound sonic adventuring; but, it was the other way around. An unexpected meeting with O’Rourke and Kotche galvanized Tweedy after his increasing dissatisfaction with early Foxtrot sessions. Invited in May ’00 to perform with an artist of his choosing at Chicago’s Noise Pop Festival, longtime art-music buff Tweedy picked O’Rourke after his recent discovery of the composer’s ’97 album Bad Timing. O’Rourke suggested including his friend Kotche, and festival rehearsals were so productive that before the live show the three had worked up the skeleton of what would become their debut album.* Like Bad Timing, which consists of four lengthy instrumentals, Loose Fur finds inspiration in extended soundscapes. Its six songs running as long as nine minutes, the album takes cues from not only the conceptual work of O’Rourke and Kotche but also from Tweedy’s pop sensibilities and the singer-songwriter tradition occasionally explored by O’Rourke in his solo material (cf. his ’01 LP Insignificance, much of which features the other members of Loose Fur).

Opening cut and aborted Wilco number Laminated Cat begins with O’Rourke’s atmospheric effects and a minimal, mid-tempo Kotche bass-drum beat with skittering handheld percussion. A detached Tweedy vocal enters nearly a minute later with the ominous line, “Springtime comes and the leaves are back on the trees again/The snipers are harder to see, my friends.” At the midway point Tweedy’s vocal ends and a cyclical, nearly Krautrock bass-and-guitar groove kicks in; the remainder of the seven minutes focuses on this riff and its variations. Album closer and third Tweedy vocal Chinese Apple begins as a delicate folk piece with finger-picked acoustic guitar, then bleeds into a two-minute noise interlude before a reprise of the vocal melody and gentle conclusion augmented by a stripped-down O’Rourke piano line. Liquidation Totale, an instrumental with a banjo part and herky-jerky guitar motif, wends through several short movements before a cacophonous finale. O’Rourke delivers two lead vocals; Elegant Transaction is a startling replica of ‘70s adult contemporary subverted by lyrics such as “Like urine loves cold slate.” So Long, draped on a dirge-paced lyric about alienation, is the album’s most avant-garde piece and a percussion showcase for Kotche, a rare rock drummer creative enough to perform compelling solo gigs. His innovative performance here seems to spur on Tweedy, who contributes equally inspired and challenging electric guitar improvisation before the song concludes with a bucolic “da-da-da” vocal coda from O’Rourke. The group released a second Aughts LP, the more pop-based and less memorable ’06 Born Again in the USA. The trio’s debut is the keeper. A challenging oddity, it facilitated Tweedy’s creative rebirth yet stands as a substantial, rewarding piece of new American modernism in its own right.

* For a thorough overview of the collaboration's origins and eventual impact on Tweedy's main band, see chapters 15-16 of Greg Kot's strong biography Wilco: Learning How to Die (Broadway Books, 2004).

Highlights: Laminated Cat, Chinese Apple, Elegant Transaction, You Were Wrong

Sublime bit: That hypnotic groove in the second half of Laminated Cat, especially from 3:35 to 4:45.

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77. Murray Street

2010-05-11T02:02:00.013-05:00

77. Murray Street, Sonic Youth (DGC, 2002)

By ’00, noise-rock veterans Sonic Youth had long straddled two worlds--the avant-garde community; and, through its long-term contract with Geffen Records, the pop music scene, MTV, and the mainstream press. In ’97, the group began a series of experimental, improvisational recordings called Musical Perspectives*, released on their own SYR label and providing a catalog running parallel to their “pop” releases. By the end of the Nineties, they had released four volumes. The third, the hour-long, three-song ’98 Invito Al Cielo, was billed to Sonic Youth/Jim O’Rourke. A longtime producer and musician also active in the pop and underground music communities, O’Rourke became a fixture on nearly all of their releases until joining the band as a full-fledged member in ’01. His tenure would be limited, leaving the group in ’05, but Sonic Youth recorded two studio albums with him in the line-up; the first of these, Murray Street, is one of the best of the group’s five mainstream Aughts albums.

Sonic Youth titled their ’00 Geffen album NYC Ghosts & Flowers; continuing this contemplation of their home base, they named twelfth full-length Murray Street for the location of their studio. The 9/11 terror attacks interrupted recording; located three blocks from Ground Zero, the studio sustained some damage. Though much of the album was written before the disaster, a mixture of sadness and determination informs many songs.** While Ghosts & Flowers was a spartan and tense but hushed affair, Murray Street is a more organic recording. The eight-minute Rain on Tin points back to the long jamming that began with the 25-minute The Diamond Sea on ’95’s Washing Machine; confident yet tempered guitar lines replace the abrasive maelstroms of their earlier material. The song’s eight minutes consist almost entirely of a guitar jam, its clean, spiraling arpeggios reminiscent of NYC forbears Television. The album’s centerpiece is the Lee Ranaldo contribution Karen Revisited. A Thousand Leaves (’98) included his song Karen Koltrane, which asked “Are we still together/Will she stay forever”; Karen Revisited, a loose sequel, finds its subject damaged by fast living and peaks with the devastating proclamation of “See you/Some time?/Ask/Me/If/I/CARE!” before melting into a simmering eight-minute noise coda. The album’s most incongruous tunes are the spasmodic Kim Gordon number Plastic Sun, the shortest song by far at just over two minutes; and Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style, featuring two members of sax-heavy noise outfit and early Sonic Youth contemporaries Borbetomagus, which could’ve fit on their ’92 noise-pop excursion Dirty. Disconnection Notice is a rumination on the melancholy side of iconoclasm, and the Kim Gordon-sung Sympathy for the Strawberry closes the album with a pensive, almost free-form vocal marked by snatches of beautiful melody. Inextricably linked to the tragic time in which it was created, Murray Street possesses a humanistic quality not always present on Sonic Youth recordings. It is a quiet and overlooked gem in their expansive catalog.

NOTE: On the vinyl version of the album, the sequence of the CD's third and fourth tracks, Rain on Tin and Karen Revisited, are reversed to fit everything on a single LP; the difference is not pronounced enough to recommend one format over the other.

* Informally, but more commonly, referred to as the SYR series.

** For an in-depth examination of the group's experiences in the aftermath of 9/11, see David Browne's excellent 2008 Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth (Da Capo Press), specifically pp. 353-361.

Highlights: Karen Revisited, Rain on Tin, The Empty Page, Sympathy for the Strawberry

Sublime bit: The aforementioned climax of Karen Revisited, coming at the 2:21 mark.

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78. Aw Cmon

2010-05-07T02:04:00.002-05:00

78. Aw Cmon, Lambchop (Merge, 2004)

The Aughts began on a high note for Nashville country-soul adventurers Lambchop. Their ’00 album Nixon was named Album of the Year by UK mag Uncut at a time when the fluctuating confederation of over a dozen members was relatively unknown in their homeland. ’02 follow-up and somber epic Is a Woman was an artistic breakthrough and their best-produced LP to date. These albums’ success allowed frontman Kurt Wagner to quit his job laying floors; with his new free time, he embarked on a project to write a song a day. Wagner still a reticent pop musician after nearly a decade of recording, the project served as a self-legitimization exercise and provided him with enough material for two albums. In ’03, Lambchop was commissioned to perform a live score to a festival showing of F. W. Murnau’s 1927 silent film Sunrise. Wagner incorporated his daily songs into that effort, and Lambchop’s ninth album, No You Cmon, would open with an instrumental named for the film. By 2004, releasing two albums on one day was no longer the dazzling stunt it was in ’91 when Guns ’n’ Roses issued Use Your Illusion I & II or when Bruce Springsteen broke up the E Street Band to unleash ’92 career nadirs Lucky Town and Human Touch. In ’02, Tom Waits brought dignity to the tactic with fraternal twins Alice and Blood Money. Lambchop’s UK label, City Slang, released the band’s diptych as a regular double LP with two titles; stateside, however, Aw Cmon and No You Cmon remained two separate entities.

Aw Cmon is the superior of the two albums. While they are similarly structured, boasting the lushest arrangements of the band’s career to date, uncharacteristically including numerous instrumentals, strengthening their unique amalgamation of soul and the Nashville sound, and operating with a sense of levity absent from their predecessor, Aw Cmon simply possesses stronger and more memorable songs. No You Cmon is the group’s weakest Aughts effort, an occasionally silly record whose arguable highlight is the quasi-instrumental doo-wop lark Shang a Dang. Aw Cmon opens with instrumental Being Tyler, starting with a sprightly, mildly funky bassline reminscent of earlier rhythmic Lambchop efforts like their ’98 cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Give Me Your Love before blooming into a breezy orchestral flourish. Aw Cmon’s other instrumental, Timothy B. Schmidt, wryly named for the Poco/Eagles bassist, is a bouncy, mid-tempo, piano-led pop confection. Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise climaxes with a slowly chanted vocal line reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s ’67 nutty operetta Brown Shoes Don’t Make It. “I hate candy/But I like rain,” opens I Hate Candy before gliding into a slinky groove on choruses of “Where’s my little trouble girl/There’s no real trouble, girl.” Something’s Going On finds Wagner’s voice deeper than ever--going to nearly subwoofer levels on the bridge--his vocals syncopated to the point that they almost function as percussion despite an intricate lyric about anxiety that manages to name check Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles. The album’s most earnest number, the aching, piano-and-string-laden Steve McQueen, addresses the value of honesty: “Make sure we never ever stand in each other’s way/When you got something that you got to say that’s real/Look to each other.” Aw Cmon, along with its slighter sister, provides the most fun in Lambchop’s dense Aughts catalog; a playful record, often sensual and occasionally as poignant as their more sober recordings, Aw Cmon demonstrates the band’s increasing virtuosity while remaining true to Wagner’s singular, homespun sense of wonderment.

Highlights: Something’s Going On, Steve McQueen, I Hate Candy, Timothy B. Schmidt

Sublime bit: When Wagner pleads, if ungrammatically, “Take me serious,” 2:48 into Steve McQueen.

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79. ’Sno Angel Like You

2010-05-04T01:17:00.014-05:00

79. ’Sno Angel Like You, Howe Gelb (Thrill Jockey, 2006)

When people discuss “Americana” music, the tendency is to think of southern-based, country-inspired tunes--fiddles, twang, the high and lonesome sound. Howe Gelb may be based in Arizona and his music more evocative of the desert and the sparse southwest, but his work since 1985—solo, collaborative, and with his primary group Giant Sand—qualifies him as one of the longest-running purveyors of Americana. No stranger to electrified rock yet frequently operating acoustically, Gelb’s labyrinthine catalog covers wide swaths of styles from loose-limbed, rootsy boogie to albums of piano-based instrumentals; he often plays by feel rather than running through deliberately charted material. He has a penchant for revisiting old works, including reissuing albums with new cover art, titles, and reassembled track listings. Select any record at random, though, and it will contain at least a handful of rough-hewn gems. It is this sense of reliability that makes his ’06 album ’Sno Angel Like You all the more special. Standing tall among his sometimes interchangeable flood of releases, the LP is billed as a solo record—his twelfth, if one counts everything from fan-club items to digital-only EPs—but is notable for featuring Ottawa, Ontario’s Voices of Praise Gospel Choir. Invited to a blues festival there in ’03, Gelb was transfixed when he saw the choir perform. Asking their director, Steve Johnston, if it would be possible to record secular music with them, the response was, “Sure, if you keep it positive!”

Gelb took his work with the ten-person, co-ed choir as an opportunity for new music and for reworkings of Giant Sand tunes from as early as ’88, as well as three solo tunes by Gelb’s late best friend, longtime collaborator, and occasional Giant Sand member Rainer Ptacek. Though presented as a secular record, much of 'Sno Angel contains inspirational messages. Gelb had long held bigger ideas for some of this material; an earlier version of Get to Leave, from the ’95 Giant Sand oddities LP Backyard Barbeque Broadcast, opens with Gelb saying, “This is a gospel song,” though it resembled nothing of the sort. 'Sno Angel opens almost tentatively with a new version of this tune, carried by a barely-there guitar plucking and a gentle percussive time-keeping, the choir contributing understated harmonies on the choruses; they break into laughter at the end, giving some idea of the good times had during these sessions. Rather than remaining locked in the full-bore, ecstatic overkill that sometimes plagues modern gospel, Voices of Praise contributes effective accents to the songs: in But I Did Not, they provide a countervocal, following each of Gelb’s accounts of nearly committed sins with a tempered singing of the title; their work in Hey Man and Love Knows (No Borders) is pure soul balladry; the slinky groove of That’s How Things Get Done finds them adding nearly sensual ah-oos before delivering the soulful R&B choruses. A handful of tunes afford them more traditional gospel-choir duties, the finest being the funky Howlin’ a Gale; the hardest-rocking tune here, it features Gelb on ripping electric guitar and full-throated choruses from the choir. Those seeking more should check out ’Sno Angel Winging It (Live), an excellent ’09 CD/DVD combo featuring an ’06 Ottawa gig including material from the studio album, one new tune, and yet more reworked Giant Sand songs. Gelb’s work with Voices of Praise may have been a one-off, but more music from this bountiful collaboration would be welcomed.

Highlights: Howlin’ a Gale, But I Did Not, Neon Filler, That’s How Things Get Done

Sublime bit: The swelling build-up to the first glorious chorus of Howlin’ a Gale, beginning at 1:53.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

80. The Forgotten Arm

2010-05-01T03:16:00.003-05:00

80. The Forgotten Arm, Aimee Mann (SuperEgo, 2005)

By 2000, fifteen years had passed since Virginia-born singer-songwriter Aimee Mann and her band ’Til Tuesday had a top-ten hit with the MTV staple Voices Carry. In the interim, the group released two more albums, including their overlooked final LP, Everything’s Different Now (’88), and Mann issued two solo full-lengths. Both of her ’90s solo efforts were clouded by record-biz problems; pre-fab major label Imago collapsed a year after releasing her ’93 solo bow Whatever, and ’95’s I’m With Stupid saw her with Geffen who found fault with her inability to reproduce Voices Carry. Buying out her own contract and clearing the cobwebs with substantial contributions to the score of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’99 film Magnolia, Mann recovered by setting up one of the first artist-run Internet distribution channels for her own music; all of her Aughts work would be released domestically on her own SuperEgo Records. Her first Aughts LP, the ’00 Bachelor No. 2, was a critical success and best solo work to date. It proved that alternative business models could be profitable for a major artist, and Mann was a rare example of a video-age pop star whose abandonment of typical industry trappings resulted in some of her finest work. Next was Lost in Space (’02), a respectable set that holds up better than her ’90s work yet is not as compelling or effortless as its predecessor. After an ’04 concert outing, Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse, came her fifth solo studio LP, The Forgotten Arm. It was easy to be suspicious of this record. After the slight step backward of Lost in Space, a concept album about an alcoholic boxer wasn’t the most promising sign. Even if the concept was just a mechanical trick to drive the writing process, it didn’t matter; The Forgotten Arm turned out to be a highlight of Mann’s career.

John and Caroline meet in the opening track, Dear John, when she sees him boxing at a fair on Mann’s home turf of Richmond. Caroline reveals almost immediately that “there’s something wrong with me,” while John soon thereafter ups the ante by leaving to go to rehab (Goodbye Caroline). She stays true to him, even though he’s “Going Through the Motions” and, as another song title describes John’s recalcitrance, “I Can’t Get My Head Around It.” Their trajectory is predictable, not by any fault of Mann’s but because of the pattern of the addict: promises, relapses, promises. Caroline and John’s story ends with them reunited once again, in another hotel in yet another city, their love undeniable and Caroline concluding “All I want to do today is make you happy.” The album is compelling not because of the characters, though, but because of Mann’s sharpened songwriting. The songs on The Forgotten Arm are some of her most focused, inspired compositions, and the performances are among the most spirited of her solo career to date. As with all of Mann’s albums, she and her band (here featuring guitarist Jeff Trott) are skillful and polished; the tasteful production of fellow songwriter Joe Henry avoids any charges of wanton slickness. While on first blush The Forgotten Arm seemed a troubling concept, those who persevered were treated to a triumphant expository accomplishment that, song for song, may be Mann's best album.

Highlights: Goodbye Caroline, Dear John, Video, That’s How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart

Sublime bit: The way Mann’s voice descends on the words “nicotine cloud” at 2:09 of Goodbye Caroline as the song upshifts to its driving coda.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

81. Mr. Alien Brain vs. the Skinwalkers

2010-04-28T02:23:00.009-05:00

81. Mr. Alien Brain vs. the Skinwalkers, Psychic TV/PTV3 (CD version) (Sweet Nothing/Cargo, 2008)

Singular British eccentric artist and musician Genesis P-Orridge, born Neil Megson in 1950, worked in confrontational performance and visual art from the late ’60s, forming notorious industrial-music pioneers Throbbing Gristle in ’76. They dissolved in ’81 and P-Orridge formed the less scandalous but still uncompromising Psychic TV. During some thirty studio albums and even more live LPs, P-Orridge, the only constant member, charted a musical course ranging from acid house, ambient, and pop-oriented psychedelic music. Deciding to move more toward spoken word material, P-Orridge disbanded the group in ’99. In the mid-Aughts he returned to both outfits, reforming Throbbing Gristle a year after the ’03 reactivation of Psychic TV. Sometimes using the moniker PTV3, the band issued the Hell Is Invisible...Heaven Is Her/e album in June ’07. PTV3’s lineup included Lady Jaye Breyer, P-Orridge’s partner with whom he famously underwent a series of plastic surgeries to more closely resemble one another. This relationship would inform the bulk of P-Orridge’s work in the Aughts.

While preparing for an '07 US tour, Breyer died of stomach cancer complications. The mourning P-Orridge withdrew from work obligations. It was with some surprise, then, when Mr. Alien Brain vs. the Skinwalkers, the second PTV3 LP, appeared just over a year later. While its predecessor is a garish, bloated orgy of psychedelic indulgence, Mr. Alien Brain is a disciplined collection not free of levity yet profoundly focused in its grief. That said, the apparent desire to create a new album as a memorial to Breyer that included her own contributions means that it is derived from a hodgepodge of sources: a handful of new studio cuts, a remix of a song from Hell Is Invisible (New York Story) and a Breyer poem to P-Orridge that appeared on that album’s vinyl version (I’m Making a Mirror), and five songs recorded live in the studio for an uncharacteristic hour-long Psychic TV feature on National Public Radio’s World Cafe program. It is these NPR recordings that provide the album’s most astonishing material; they are impeccable performances largely lacking the usual rough edges of radio sessions, especially a gripping ten-minute straightforward rock ’n’ roll cover of the Velvet Underground’s Foggy Notion. The most compelling piece, though, is a cover of Syd Barrett’s No Good Trying. It begins with a 45-second loop of a disturbing sample from Barrett’s 1970 LP The Madcap Laughs finding him nervously failing to hit a note and asking to start the song again. P-Orridge’s masterful repurposing of this uncomfortable moment sets a watchful tone for the album. Original tunes Trussed, The Alien Brain, and Pickles and Jam further explore dark moods; along with Foggy Notion, a new performance of the poppy, joyous ’86 Psychic TV b-side Papal Breakdance and the closing I Love You, I Know--a playful Breyer/P-Orridge dialogue reminiscent of the ’69 Lennon/Ono Wedding Album--provide happy emotional relief. The vinyl issue has a different track listing, omitting a song and adding an incongruous side of concert material and a Monks cover that already appeared on the ’06 Silver Monk Time tribute LP; the CD version is stronger. It is an intense, resolute album, sometimes peculiar in its choices, and perhaps the finest recording of P-Orridge’s lengthy and storied career.

Highlights: No Good Trying, Papal Breakdance, Foggy Notion, Trussed

Sublime bit: Foggy Notion’s rock ’n’ roll absolution, peaking at 6:38 after an extended bridge with a blissful “Whoooo!” as the band kicks back in.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

82. Sun Giant

2010-04-26T01:51:00.001-05:00

82. Sun Giant (EP), Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop, 2008)

The acclaimed full-length debut by Seattle folk-rock quintet Fleet Foxes was preceded by the nineteen-minute Sun Giant EP. Released digitally and as a tour souvenir in February ’08, the five-song work received an official physical U.S. release in April of that year just two months before the Fleet Foxes long player hit the shelves. Appearing so close together, the two recordings came to be seen as companion pieces: Sub Pop’s vinyl edition of Fleet Foxes included a bonus 12” of Sun Giant; the overseas market received a two-disc “special edition” of the records (but using the full-length’s cover art); and Pitchfork named the conjoined works the best album of 2008 (though, it should be noted, the magazine originally reviewed them separately). Even the band blurred the lines between Sun Giant and Fleet Foxes, as a single from Sun Giant (the EP’s highlight, Mykonos) was released nearly a year after the full-length was released. All of this inter-record miscegenation makes sense, for both releases capture the young band at the beginning of a rise to critical acclaim unusual for a group at the time of its debut album. The band toured to rapturous response--particularly in the UK--and earned rhapsodic reviews in the music press; in its July 2008 issue, UK magazine MOJO hailed the full-length as an “instant classic,” giving it five stars. The album is an impressive achievement (see #95); song for song, though, taken on its own the Sun Giant EP is an even more distinguished release. The strengths of Sun Giant are attributable in part, perhaps, to its chronology. Though predating the album by a season on the release schedule, it was recorded a few months after the full-length. It avoids, then, the introductory jitters and tentativeness sometimes natural for debut EPs; that was reserved for the group’s regionally released eponymous EP, sold on tour and in the Seattle area in late ’06 and long since discounted from the official Fleet Foxes discography.

Like the full-length, Sun Giant opens with an a capella piece. While on Fleet Foxes the unadorned singing was just a fragment, the EP’s first song is almost composed almost entirely of unaccompanied vocal harmonies. “What a life I lead in the summer/What a life I lead in the spring,” it begins, echoing the naïf wonderment demonstrated by the wide-eyed philosophical ruminations in the liner notes of the band’s ’08 releases. Its 46-second coda of quietly finger-picked guitar and distant humming gives way to Drops in the River, a Sun Giant highlight that illustrates the band’s ability to create a booming, powerful sound without relying on volume or bombast. The musical accompaniment low in the mix, including the drums whose parts seem reduced to floor toms and quietly crashing cymbals, the song’s brawn comes from the reverb-drenched harmonies that are the hallmark of the ’08-model Fleet Foxes. The record’s centerpiece, Mykonos, possesses its boldest arrangement; Pecknold, his voice here husky and reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen, sings lead; only on the song’s extended coda do his bandmates join him on harmonies. Nature is, as on the full-length, a lyrical theme; winter turns meadows brown, leaves are strewn on window frames, and snow covers treetops. The aforementioned two-disc edition of this material appends one song to Sun Giant, the Mykonos b-side and traditional British ballad False Knight on the Road; it fits well stylistically with the group’s original material, but as the only cover in their catalog to date it does sit better in its first home as a flip side. However the music is packaged, Sun Giant is a striking set of songs as worthy of consideration as its more famous full-length relative.

Highlights: Mykonos, Drops in the River, English House, Sun Giant

Sublime bit: The climax of Mykonos, from 2:25 to 3:23, starting with an understated drum fill before swelling with the EP’s strongest harmonies.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

83. Natural

2010-04-24T01:11:00.003-05:00

83. Natural, Mekons (Quarterstick, 2007)

For a time in the mid-Aughts, it was easy to think that the Mekons, veterans of the late-’70s Leeds punk scene, had fallen silent for good. The majority of the band kept busy with other projects, and scattered across the globe (with a preponderance living in Chicago at one point or another) they had few chances to work as a cohesive unit. The ’04 LP Punk Rock, comprising re-recordings of Mekons tunes from ’77-’81, seemed a self-issued eulogy. Years passed with no full group live appearances. There was no record-company turmoil keeping them from recording as in years past. The arrival of Natural, then, was a relief to those in the cult of the group’s endearingly ramshackle live performances and literate yet pragmatically informal milieu. The sassy militancy of their earliest work long gone, Aughts-model Mekons kept the rough-hewn melangé of guitar-bass-drums and violin-bouzouki-cümbüs harvested since their ’80s entrée to country and roots music while departing further from the rowdy energy of their ’90s work, nostalgic back-catalog visits notwithstanding.

Natural is, described lazily, an acoustic album; more accurately, though, it is a “natural” album. The band’s ’00 effort Journey to the End of the Night (see #104) featured songs of apprehension and worry played very softly. Natural is no mere wheedly-dee unplugged outing, and is often as worrisome in its subjects and more noisy in its execution as Journey. Where that album’s dread spawned from the complicated vagaries of modern life, Natural is concerned with more earthy matters. The Mekons tradition of peppering the inner sleeve with quotations, narratives, and historical trivia returns; while on Journey they pertained to tales of the grim urban underworld, Natural utilizes the likes of Charles Darwin, Scopes “Monkey” trial commentator H. L. Mencken, seventh-century astronomers, and geological talk and discussion of ancient stone formations. The material world is generally met with suspicion; the Tom Greenhalgh-sung Zeroes and Ones, the album’s most aggressive track, describes ominously a world where reliance on technology leaves us “Strangers in nature/Aliens from god,” the alienating aspects of perpetual connectivity and accessibility leaving us “Lost forever, never lost.” The sparse, hushed tune The Old Fox is a delicately pretty depiction of foxes walking over ice and searching for food in dustbins, their habitats bleeding into human society. “Conditions are difficult/And full of responsibility,” we are told, as the voices of Greenhalgh, Jon Langford, and Sally Timms intertwine, trading gently overlapping vocal lines. “It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks,” reads a quote from poet Anatole France; the Langford-sung Cockermouth embraces this spirit, its narrator rambling through the countryside. “Jet fighters swooping loud and low/Rehearse for Armageddon,” but the protagonist gleefully sheds his clothes, conjures Thoreau, and gets lost on purpose. “We used to dance/Around the stone head/It used to sing to us,” sings Langford in the haunting closing track Perfect Mirror, reprising a theme from the ’02 LP OOOH! (Out of Our Heads). Natural knows that the temporal and the synthetic are forever mingled, the significance of antiquities such as stone heads permanently muted, but reminds us that it will always be beneficial to take walks and get lost.

Highlights: The Old Fox, Shocking Curse Bird, Diamonds, Zeroes and Ones

Sublime bit: The impassioned plea, after ten largely muted and reserved songs, of the group vocal on “Planets swirl, bodies entwine/I can’t hear you, you’re cutting out” at 1:53 of the album’s penultimate track, Zeroes and Ones.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

84. Coles Corner

2010-04-20T01:44:00.003-05:00

84. Coles Corner, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2005)

The son of working-class Sheffield musicians, Richard Hawley grew up playing guitar and toured with bar bands by age fourteen. In the mid-’80s he played with Treebound Story, an indie-pop quartet reminiscent of Echo and the Bunnymen who recorded a handful of EPs and a Peel Session yet never managed to complete their debut LP. The bulk of the group, including Hawley, then spent a stint as the Lovebirds; shortly thereafter, he joined local outfit Longpigs, with whom he had his first pronounced success outside of the region. A relatively undistinguished Britpop group, they nonetheless earned significant commercial success in the UK before disbanding in ’99 after two albums. Hawley’s next gig was as touring guitarist for fellow Sheffield mainstays Pulp. Upon hearing some Hawley solo demos, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and bassist Steve Mackey encouraged him to pursue them further; the result was Hawley’s ’01 eponymous debut EP. Hawley would go on to release five full-lengths in the Aughts. After over fifteen years of dutiful guitar work in other people’s groups, it seemed unlikely that Hawley would make a convincing frontman; more unexpected, though, was Hawley’s knack for writing lush, romantic ballads informed as much by post-war British popular music as by early rock and roll and country-and-western troubadours and delivered in a resonant croon that recalls not just Elvis Presley but pop vocal giants like Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra. Hawley’s music is also reminiscent of Nick Lowe’s Aughts work (see #103 and #117); Hawley’s luxuriant approach, though, transcends the tight, minimal techniques of Lowe’s romantic soul music.

For Hawley’s fourth solo release, Coles Corner, he gained his first appreciable distribution deal, with Mute Records, after the dissolution of his previous label, Setanta. Like most of his Aughts works, the album is named for a real location in his beloved Sheffield; in this case, for a famed meeting place for blind dates. The songs depict courtships truncated, interrupted, and unrequited. The title track opens the album majestically with a lavish introduction by a seven-piece string section. “I’m going downtown where there’s music/I’m going where voices fill the air/Maybe there’s someone waiting for me,” sings Hawley. This loneliness continues on tracks like I Sleep Alone and Tonight; in the latter, he sings “Maybe I should call her/Ah, but then she’ll know.” Hotel Room finds a couple acting as surrogate lovers, its narrator singing, “It’s time I met someone like you.” The album’s finest piece is The Ocean, its orchestral swell accompanied by a towering, impassioned Hawley vocal. Much of the album recalls ’50s-era vocal crooners; Hawley’s love for early British rock shows through, though, including the light skiffle beat of Just Like the Rain and I Sleep Alone. Hotel Room features a swoon-inducing Hawaiian lap steel solo. The album closes with a murmured take on the traditional number Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? and the late-night instrumental Last Orders, a piano piece that bleeds slowly into layers of ambient hum as if to wash away the pain of heartache. The sentimental snapshots of Coles Corner make for Hawley’s first great record.

Highlights: The Ocean, Coles Corner, Just Like the Rain, Hotel Room

Sublime bit: The last 2:45 of The Ocean, beginning with Hawley’s final chorus that kicks in at 2:51.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

85. Black Sea

2010-04-16T01:47:00.005-05:00

85. Black Sea, Fennesz (CD version) (Touch UK, 2008)

Austrian guitarist and laptop composer Christian Fennesz was the Aughts’ leading practitioner of ambient and electro-acoustic improvisation, releasing three primary albums during the decade* and a dozen more records in collaboration with other artists ranging from electronic mainstay and Yellow Magic Orchestra keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto to alt-rock songwriter/guitarist Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. Fennesz’s solo material, beginning with ’95 debut EP Instrument, consists of challenging instrumental pieces combining melodic structures with drones, static, and glitch techniques that rely on choppy, discordant noises approximating the sounds of damaged equipment, short circuits, and other aberrations (the song Before I Leave on his ’01 LP Endless Summer, for example, sounds almost entirely like a skipping compact disc). In ’99 he released the two-song single Fennesz Plays featuring his interpretations of the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black and the Beach Boys’ Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder), the purported cover versions so unrecognizable that royalty-controlling agents allegedly determined the original artists’ writing credits to be unnecessary. Other artists use these compositional methods in abrasive, confrontational manners, such as the jagged, grating eruptions of UK duo Autechre whose seemingly impenetrable glitch opus Quaristice was released the same year as Fennesz’s fourth solo album Black Sea. Fennesz utilizes them in more understated ways, often as an accompaniment to his effects-laden guitar or as one element in a set of layered sonic accents. This is music devoid of rhythm, melodic only occasionally and in the sparsest sense. From his first full-length, the ’97 Hotel Paral.lel [sic], to Black Sea, his final album of the Aughts, his music grew progressively nuanced and calm.

The music of Black Sea is as desolate as the winter vista on its cover. The first two minutes of the ten-minute opening title track contain the album’s harshest sounds; a squall of static and industrial clamor brings to mind the noise of a shipyard before giving way to a gentle acoustic guitar pattern at the three-minute mark. Slowly, the guitar is met by an undercurrent of gurgling static suggesting the rolling waves of the sea. Two of the album’s finest pieces feature guests: The Colour of Three, with pianist Anthony Pateras, features walls of Fennesz’s treated electric guitar, forming abruptly like an electric charge before dissipating slowly over a bed of Pateras’s prepared piano that sounds like deep bells pealing in slow motion. The album’s centerpiece, Glide, features labelmate Rosy Parlane, with whom Fennesz released a joint single in 2000; recorded live, the nine-minute piece opens with a sound like distant wind blowing; echoing, erratic percussive accents create tension before the first hints of melodic progression begin near the piece’s fourth minute, taking six minutes to build to a crescendo before fading glacially to silence. Black Sea, like all good ambient music, rewards its patient listeners with immense beauty, and its author is the premier ambient musician of the decade.

NOTE: The vinyl version, which has different cover art, omits The Colour of Three and another tune, Vacuum; as such, it is not recommended.

* His second solo album, Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08", is often said to be a 2000 release; however, its original release, in a limited-edition slipcover, came in 1999, with the 2000 issue being its second pressing in a regular jewel case.

Highlights: Glide, The Colour of Three, Black Sea, Saffron Revolution

Sublime bit: At 5:50 of Glide a single, high-pitched tone rings out; it is subtle, but marks the piece’s climax and the beginning of its fade to silence.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

86. The Taby Tapes

2010-04-13T01:46:00.013-05:00

86. The Taby Tapes, Nanook of the North (Best Kept Secret [cassette] Italy, 2003; Hidden Agenda US, 2004)

The thriving Swedish scene saw many of its indie-leaning acts make global headway during the decade, with Peter Bjorn and John, the Knife, the Soundtrack of Our Lives, and Jose Gonzalez among the most well-known. Urbana, Illinois, distribution company Parasol was perhaps the Aughts’ key U.S. champion of Scandinavian pop music, and all of the acts mentioned above either got their first stateside releases on a Parasol label or their first American distribution from the company. For every Parasol-related act that broke through, ten more didn’t; NOYOUCMON did not hear them all, but argues with confidence that the most charming may be a mysterious LP credited to Nanook of the North.

Originally issued by the Italian cassette-only label Best Kept Secret before its formal release by Parasol’s Hidden Agenda imprint, the album has a disingenuous backstory. The Täby Tapes allegedly collects the tales of a young Inuit man traveling from Alaska to Täby, Sweden and his resultant culture shock and interpretation of matters of love and the ways that geography informs one’s psychology. Many of the songs are duets in which “Nanook” (who receives the bulk of the vocal and instrumentation credits) is accompanied by a series of female vocalists depicting characters ranging from a dead poet, a dragon, and the town of Täby itself. Nanook’s music is a sweet, gentle sort of electropop, augmented by acoustic instruments and nostalgic technology such as mellotron, stylophone, omnichord, and optigan. There is no Nanook, of course; the project was helmed by Swedish musician/ engineer/ producer Mattias Olsson and his colleague and fellow studio wiz Olle Söderström. Olsson previously played in a series of prog-rock bands including Änglagård, Pär Lindh Project, and White Willow before moving on to poppier horizons with acts like the female-led Pineforest Crunch (which also featured Söderström) and AK-Momo; his production discography is equally lengthy.

While The Täby Tapes is heavy on concept, its storyline is negligible. The real story lies in the warm, plush electronic arrangements and lyrical dialogues between Olsson/Nanook and the many female guest vocalists. Olsson’s knack for combining pop melodies with affecting beauty insures that many of the tunes possess a keen sublimeness; much of this also comes courtesy of Olsson’s duet partners. The splendor is most apparent on the album’s first full track, Karin Boye’s Grave. A platonically romantic conversation with the Swedish poet who killed herself in 1941, it juxtaposes youthful excitement with the departed’s longing for vitality. Nanook fantasizes of Boye as his contemporary, giving life another chance and joining his band. “We would have loved your style,” he sings; Boye, sung by Camela Leierth, has a simpler notion: “I would have loved to be alive.” The quest for love is the album’s main theme. Israel and Palestine - A Solution has a loaded title, but reveals less about world affairs than it does of the need for companionship. St George and the Dragon uses beast-slaying as a metaphor for conquering heartbreak; in Hey Fragile, Nanook concludes “Living is easy, my ass/It’s a warzone.” The occasional umbrage does not subdue the album’s overall optimism and dazzling winsomeness. A second Nanook album was announced as early as ’04, but the decade ended without it. Olsson’s prodigious output with other acts and stewardship of his Roth-Händle Studio have kept him busy. One hopes another decade does not close without new material from this exceptional and lovely project.

Highlights: Karen Boye’s Grave, Israel and Palestine - A Solution, St George and the Dragon, Phonecall

Sublime bit: The album is filled with them, but the interplay between Nanook and Boye’s ghost is chillingly gorgeous.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

87. Headache City

2010-04-08T01:11:00.007-05:00

87. Headache City (Shit Sandwich, 2006)

The modern-day independent garage rock scene can be a daunting one for casual fans to navigate. Rarely covered by mainstream press--certainly not the likes of Rolling Stone, but also not given much time by Pitchfork and its peers--it lives in its own niche of specialists, enthusiasts, and fanatics; usually eschews record labels whose focus expands into other genres; often sticks to off-the-wall, low-budget venues for live gigs; and confuses the terminally unhip with a half-dozen genre descriptions that all point back to crude and fast punk with ’60s and ’70s sonic influences. Band discographies are frequently limited to 7” singles, if the band in question got to record at all, and line-ups can bleed together until indistinguishable. This is not a land occupied with much frequency by NOYOUCMON, but one band that rose above the din in the Aughts was Chicago’s Headache City.

Bassist Dave Head spent the mid-’90s as guitarist for influential Austin punk quintet the Motards; following their split and a brief stint with Texas outfit the Secret Lovers, he moved to Chicago and formed White+Outs (not to be confused with the White-Outs of Columbus, Ohio) with local guitarist Mike Fitzpatrick and fellow Austin transplant Arman Mabry. They recorded one single in ’03 for fledgling Chicago label Shit Sandwich (name taken from This Is Spinal Tap; logo parodying that of iconic ’70s punk label Stiff) run by one Norah Utley, also known on the scene for fronting Airbrush, a comical punk mime troupe. Later that year, Head and Fitzpatrick began a new project with Utley on keyboards and drummer Darcie Miller, releasing a three-song 7” in ’04 on Utley’s label and credited to Headache City. The group went on to record a full-length LP, also for Utley’s imprint, in early ’06. By the time of that eponymous debut, Miller relocated to Memphis and left the drum stool to be filled by novice Lisa Roe. Headache City is a twenty-nine minute blast offering a more melodic, poppy stripe of punk than the ’04 single’s darker vibe and the brash ‘n’ snotty abrasion of garage rockers like Head’s old pals the Motards. Fitzpatrick’s vocals are more tuneful than your average punk shouter, and Utley’s keyboard--typically set to “organ”--is the group’s secret weapon. The lead track from the single, Kneejerk Reaction, is revisited in a less meaty but more hyper arrangement and with a new ascending vocal melody on the chorus that gives the rerecording an energetic edge. The title track is a tough, tense rocker with obstinate organ punctuation and a rousing melodic resolution in its chorus. A previously unrecorded White+Outs tune, Throw Up Red, is tackled, fitting nicely with the new group’s aesthetic. The album’s final three tracks, beginning with Livin on the Edge of a Knife, end the album in a breathless whirlwind; final track Dont [sic] finds Fitzpatrick pleading, over a storming beat, “Don’t/ Don’t/ Don’t/ Don’t/ Do not go tonight/ I won’t/ I won’t/ Ever be all right,” as Head and Utley provide swooping, wordless backup vocals. Headache City made two more singles and a second LP in the Aughts, all without Utley and with no replacement on keys; some of this material is a bit drab. Fitzpatrick and Roe served concurrently in CoCoComa with Roe’s husband, Bill, recording two Aughts LPs. Each of these is enjoyable, but the rough charms and melodic sensibilities of Headache City make it the essential piece of these bands’ Aughts discographies. [By decade’s end Fitzpatrick had relocated to New York, leaving CoCoComa but still maintaining a Headache City Web profile.]

Highlights: Kneejerk Reaction, Headache City, Suicide Summer, Livin on the Edge of a Knife

Sublime bit: Utley’s surprise vocal turn on the choruses of Suicide Summer; her breathy, stuttered croons of the title are the album’s cherry on top.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

88. In Rainbows

2010-04-04T19:25:00.003-05:00

88. In Rainbows, Radiohead (self-released, 2007; TBD, 2008)

Just after the release of their fourth album Kid A in fall 2000, Radiohead appeared on Saturday Night Live playing new songs The National Anthem and Idiotheque. A complicated, electronics-heavy performance also featuring live horns, for many viewers this was a jarring, exhilarating first glimpse of the band’s new sound. As previous LP OK Computer (’97) had been hailed as an instant classic, anticipation for Kid A was high. The abstrusely experimental record abandoned the guitar-based, melodic efforts of their first three LPs yet managed to debut at #1 in the U.S., possibly the most unconventional album to chart that high. Kid A would come to be revered as a watershed, earning the top slot on numerous critics’ assessments of the Aughts. As the band opened the decade in a bracing, confrontational way, so they ended it; self-released seventh LP In Rainbows subverted industry paradigms by appearing with nearly no advance notice, available for download directly from the band at the price of the buyer’s choice. Offered as such for roughly two months, with many buyers opting to pay nothing, the record still hit #1 upon its physical U.S. release, selling millions of full-price copies and leaving the music industry in its wake.

Discussion of the album’s distribution model often overshadows that of its music, despite its quick ascent to the top of many critics’ ’07 year-end lists. This aside, the album marks a creative renaissance for Radiohead. The ’02 LP Amnesiac consisted of songs recorded at the same time as Kid A; not precisely an outtakes record, it is the group’s dreariest effort. ’03 follow-up Hail to the Thief is an improvement, an occasionally aggressive and more emotionally articulate set of songs that lags due to its length. In ’06, frontman Thom Yorke released his debut solo LP The Eraser, a primarily electronic effort. Its sonic inspirations continue on In Rainbows, whose opening track 15 Steps begins with skittering electro-dubstep percussion before being joined by a fluid bassline and gently chorded guitar riff. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi opens with a similar percussion figure, this time played live by Phil Selway; the drums propel the song through an insistent crescendo, ending abruptly for a verse before crashing in again. The avoidance of typical verse-chorus-verse structure that began with Kid A continues here, the songs often progressing through distinctive movements without repetition. The album is more soulful than most previous Radiohead efforts, often courtesy of Colin Greenwood’s bass. On tunes like Jigsaw Falling Into Place and Bodysnatchers, they actually swing like a rock group. Not all the tunes are groovy rockers, though; Faust Arp features an impressive string arrangement courtesy of the Millenia Ensemble, and All I Need boasts an orchestration based on piano and Selway’s cymbal washes. In Rainbows bears repeated plays better than any Radiohead album of the decade. It would be a fool’s errand to quibble with the importance of Kid A, which conditioned millions of fans for experimental music’s rise in the mainstream during the Aughts. In Rainbows, though, born in a happier time for the band than Kid A, is one of the finest albums in a now lengthy career that has seen many highlights.

Highlights: Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, Videotape

Sublime bit: The hypnotic guitar picking described in the title of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, along with that tune’s ethereal Yorke vocal.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

89. High

2010-04-02T01:45:00.004-05:00

89. High, The Blue Nile (Epstein/Sanctuary, 2004)

Glaswegian trio the Blue Nile has many of your average cult act’s badges of honor: by decade’s end, they’d recorded only four albums in 29 years; they rarely tour; as late as spring 2010, they had no active Web site. Unlike the average gritty cult rock group, though, the Blue Nile is a polished adult contemporary outfit whose first album was commissioned by an electronics company in need of slick music to test stereos. Their first record, the ’81 one-off single I Love This Life, is an anomalous upbeat rejoicing; still, the hallmarks of their later work are present--earnest lyrics of the human condition; the sturdy, weathered yet emotive vocals of frontman and composer Paul Buchanan; and impeccable arrangements built on beds of synths. The ’83 debut LP A Walk Across the Rooftops and ’89 follow-up Hats depict urban ennui and romantic yearning, alternatingly sparkling and tranquil, the latter generally considered their high-water mark. ’96’s Peace at Last saw a musical departure, many of its songs built on acoustic guitar, its lyrics shifting to matters of contentment and permanence in love.

The sole Blue Nile effort of the Aughts, fourth album High, returns the group to synth-based music. It recalls aspects of the trio’s Eighties work, conjuring rain-spackled pavement and the soft night lights of the city. The lyrical themes see a convergence of Buchanan’s earlier studies of urban life’s melancholia and more recent examinations of family life. The Days of Our Lives and the title track mournfully depict the vagaries of modern life that pull us away from our loved ones; traffic is used as a metaphor for inertia. In the former, he creates sketches of men and women, possibly looking for each other without knowing it; in High, he sings “Look at the morning people/Going to work and fading away.” The most mournful number, Because of Toledo, is an acoustic piece reminiscent of Peace at Last and sung in third person about a lonely, transient world of motels, diners, and “lipstick and cocaine traces.” The world-weary observances of strangers are balanced with the album’s more personal moments. At their most optimistic moments, the songs still maintain a sense of longing. The narrator of Everybody Else wakes up happy, feeling lucky, but disclaims “I don’t want to be everybody else/When are we gonna be ourselves?” The hopeful young girl in She Wants the World just makes the narrator say, “Stop bringing me down.” Broken Loves finds a parent taking stock in his own failed romances and promising to help steer his young son away from a life of the same. A repetitive keyboard figure pulses throughout the song, with no choruses or melodic resolution, capturing the stress and momentum of real life. High, like the rest of the Blue Nile’s work, is a starkly passionate effort that manages earnestness without being overbearing. Its lineup intact after nearly three decades, the Blue Nile is a stalwart group whose glacial recording pace makes its albums all the more special. While its seniority in the catalog finds Hats generally considered their high-water mark, High is arguably their strongest work.

Highlights: I Would Never, She Saw the World, The Days of Our Lives, Because of Toledo

Sublime bit: Buchanan’s aching croon of “Is there anybody there who knows me?” at 1:39 in I Would Never.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

90. Damaged

2010-03-30T00:54:00.002-05:00

90. Damaged, Lambchop (Merge, 2006)

A lot transpired for Lambchop and leader Kurt Wagner in the thirty months between the ’04 joint release of the Aw Cmon and No You Cmon LPs and their ninth studio work, Damaged. The fluctuating Nashville collective, often claiming over a dozen members, had made eight studio albums in a decade, each a progression of their meticulous, elegant update of the ’50s Nashville sound melding country with strings and its ’70s Countrypolitan descendent that subtly incorporated soul music. In ’05 they released the CoLAB EP, a mutual effort with ambient duo Hands Off Cuba--consisting of Lambchop members Ryan Norris and Scott Martin. Three of its four tracks find Lambchop tunes rearranged into unrecognizable electronic pieces; this work would figure heavily in the creation of Damaged. Early ’06 saw two rarities compilations released, both titled The Decline of Country and Western Civilization and featuring different track listings in its US and UK guises. Most grave, though, was Wagner’s series of health crises including jaw replacement surgery and a bout with prostate cancer. He recovered, his difficult year informing the typically quotidian lyrics on Damaged. The album’s inner sleeve features an x-ray of his jaw.

Despite these troubles, Damaged was the lushest, most beautiful Lambchop album to date. Recorded by their longtime producer Mark Nevers, its sound is more luxurious than that of earlier Lambchop records and is bolstered by string arrangements on three tracks; the songs are linked by electronic interludes constructed by Norris and Martin from samples of the record’s own material. More subtle than the pieces on CoLAB, they give the album a finespun undercurrent. Numbering eighteen musicians here, the complex orchestrations of Lambchop circa late-summer ’06 seem to hinge on the understated guitar of William Tyler and the deft piano of Tony Crow. Wagner’s lived-in baritone is mixed higher on Damaged; on the ’04 albums it was often so low that it disappeared among the accompaniment. While those LPs featured many upbeat tunes stemming from a Wagner project of writing a song every day for a year, the songs on Damaged stretch out, revealing their more premeditated gestations. The album opens with its most absorbing number, Paperback Bible. A literal transcript of a radio call-in show devoted to trading household goods, it exemplifies Wagner’s knack for making the mundane heartbreakingly lovely; Crow’s rationed piano lines appear every minute or two, adding more fragile beauty. I Would Have Waited Here All Day is a rare male-sung song with a female narrator. It depicts a woman who spends afternoons at home waiting for her lover to arrive, noting that “The fading sense of anticipation/Is something I’ve come to know”; when he does pull into her driveway, she resignedly concludes “it’s been a lousy day.” The sole straightforward tune from CoLAB is reprised, here titled Prepared [2], to whose swelling string quartet Wagner declares “I am the most undisciplined of man.” The closing number, its title taken from the band’s ’06 rarities compilations, is a bombastic, angry survey that takes in the indie-rock blogosphere (“You see your Pitchfork I-rock saviors/And I’m sorry, I still prefer Jim Nabors”), Wagner’s health problems, and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, each verse concluding with the fuming “Damn, they’re looking ugly to me”; by song’s end, the self-deprecating, romantic Wagner has calmed, quietly concluding “And I’m still alone/But you’re good looking.” Damaged is a striking album, borne of artistic growth and personal difficulty, and a highlight of Lambchop’s expansive body of work.

Highlights: Paperback Bible, The Decline of Country and Western Civilization, Fear, The Rise and Fall of the Letter P

Sublime bit: The entirety of Paperback Bible; or, alternatively, Tony Crow’s sparkling piano lines that run intermittently through that song.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

91. Enemy Mine

2010-03-27T18:23:00.003-05:00

91. Enemy Mine, Swan Lake (Jagjaguwar, 2009)

There is a temptation to call any meeting of individually accomplished musicians a supergroup. If this is accepted, Swan Lake surely qualifies, if on a smaller scale than, say, Emerson Lake & Palmer. What Swan Lake shares with the likes of ELP is a love for prog rock--not twenty-minute organ solos, but lapses from typical song structure and a penchant for fantastical, thespian lyricism. The members come from a clutch of Canadian groups known as wordy, prog-leaning dramatists: Spencer Krug, frontman of Montreal’s Sunset Rubdown and co-leader of Wolf Parade; Carey Mercer, singer/guitarist for Victoria outfit Frog Eyes; and Vancouverite Dan Bejar, occasional lyricist and vocalist for the New Pornographers but most accomplished as the chief of Destroyer. All have unusual voices. Krug and Mercer are sometimes hard to distinguish, but Mercer’s voice is the more frantic stripe of tremulous melodrama. Bejar’s voice is high and reedy. In Swan Lake, they all take turns singing lead. They have relatively similar writing styles, and before their ’06 debut LP Beast Moans had worked together in various capacities. Krug served on-and-off in Mercer’s Frog Eyes, and Bejar made an ’05 EP credited to Destroyer but using a Krug-less Frog Eyes as its backing band. All of this cross-pollination makes collaboration obvious, and Swan Lake retains the feels of its members’ groups while shaping its own sonic identity. It most closely resembles the swirling, avant-pop theatre of Sunset Rubdown, but is even more arcane and gothic (not goth); Bejar, the strongest lyricist, has in Swan Lake a more oblique template than usually afforded him in his other work, and Mercer’s twitchy, clamorous Frog Eyes outbursts are tempered by Swan Lake’s more deliberate pace.

But what of Enemy Mine, their second LP? More focused and engaging than Beast Moans, it emphasizes the side project’s long-term viability. Opening tune Spanish Gold, 2044 builds from a ragtag arrangement like a faltering New Orleans funeral procession into an ostentatious production finding Mercer name-checking Palinurus, Julliard, and Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire before bellowing, “I left this bullwhip/On the nightstand” to Bejar’s wordless, gliding backing vocals. This is heavy theatre. One senses an aura of camp, particularly on Mercer’s tunes (the nutty cover art of a courtroom sketch is another giveaway to this triad’s strange humor). Krug’s Settle on Your Skin is a hyper piano blast and the LP’s most upbeat number. His second contribution here, Paper Lace, would appear three months later on Sunset Rubdown’s Dragonslayer LP, continuing a Swan Lake habit of blurring the boundaries between the side project and the primary group (Beast Moans included a tune that would reappear, dramatically rearranged, on Destroyer’s Trouble in Dreams LP; the Krug-penned Paper Lace also features the character Jackie, a name that haunts many Bejar compositions). The album’s most stunning moment comes in Bejar’s Heartswarm. It opens with a gently strummed acoustic guitar, a heavily reverbed but gentle drum cadence, and a delicate piano figure; Bejar then sings, “Do my eyes deceive me/Or is it truly springtime in Paris for that piece of shit?” Bejar has a knack for injecting profanity into lyrics without gratuity, and this is about the finest example. A willfully pretentious lark combining the quirks of three difficult, arty groups, Swan Lake is not for everybody. Fans of its members’ other bands require these records, though, and at the Aughts’ end the best entry point for Swan Lake remained the perverse delights of Enemy Mine.

Highlights: Heartswarm, Paper Lace, Peace, Spider

Sublime bit: That first line of Heartswarm and its jarring, hilarious juxtaposition of the coarse with the lovely.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

92. Into the Woods

2010-03-24T01:15:00.003-05:00

92. Into the Woods, Malcolm Middleton (Chemikal Underground UK, 2005)

Malcolm Middleton toiled for ten years as half of Scottish duo Arab Strap, providing musical accompaniment for longtime pal Aidan Moffat’s bleary-eyed tales of romantic misery. Over six studio LPs they earned a reputation as humor-filled but forlorn wretches, the tunes often half-paced and drifting with Moffat’s mumbled, nearly spoken vocals giving vulgar accounts of wasted nights and squandered relationships. Following their fourth LP, both released solo albums. Middleton’s 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine (’02) rivaled any previous Arab Strap work, revealing a keen songwriting wit yet lyrically rooted in oppressive self-hatred. Its closing tune, Devil and the Angel, is a signpost for much of his starkly autobiographical solo material--the angel whispers encouragements; the devil tells him, “Malcolm, you’ll never be good at anything/And your songs are shite.” Middleton reveals it was just a dream, shaking it off to then say that he agrees with the devil. Arab Strap made two more albums before splitting, with their second solo records sandwiched between. These final group works were their best, no doubt invigorated by the freedom the two found in their solo careers.

Just four months before Arab Strap’s final studio album, Middleton issued his sophomore LP Into the Woods; it is a striking progression from all of his previous work. Joined by fellow Scots Barry Burns of Mogwai on piano, Delgados drummer Phil Savage, and Arab Strap collaborator Alan Barr on cello, Middleton produces a set of energetic, whip-smart tunes built on Arab Strap’s electro-folk customs and encompassing full-blown pop orchestrations. While many songs mine the self-loathing territory of 5:14, they are mitigated by the dynamic arrangements; in moments such as the gently descending verses of Monday Night Nothing, lines like “I need to crash this piece of shit into a tree that fits” are even beautiful. The album crashes open with the sparkling Break My Heart, a comical forecast of a relationship doomed to either fail--or succeed, but ruin his career. No Modest Bear incorporates heavy techno-dance beats alongside an uncharacteristically positive lyric to a lover (“No more despair/No more being scared”). The album’s highlight is Loneliness Shines, its driving choruses filled with swirling walls of electric guitar recalling My Bloody Valentine’s most frenzied shoegazing attacks. Middleton is a world-class miserablist: he resents seasons (Autumn is a “fucking cunt”), he gets stabbed on Christmas (Burst Noel), and he apologizes for his face (Bear With Me and A Happy Medium). In A New Heart he sings “I’ve been asked to write a song without a swear word or a slight/At myself or another,” later noting “I almost got accosted by the good old negative.” His next three Aughts solo albums tempered these indulgences a bit; still, none comes close to the strengths of Into the Woods. A remarkable confluence of instrumentation and Middleton’s drollery, it bests his former group’s entire catalog and serves as the finest introduction to his prolific solo career.

Highlights: Loneliness Shines, Break My Heart, Monday Night Nothing, No Modest Bear

Sublime bit: Those walls of guitar squall that explode with every chorus of Loneliness Shines.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

93. The Crying Light

2010-03-17T02:30:00.009-05:00

93. The Crying Light, Antony and the Johnsons (Secretly Canadian, 2009)

After fifteen years of singing and conceptual performance in the NYC art scene, Antony Hegarty found success with his second studio album, ’05’s I Am a Bird Now. Controversial winner of the Mercury Prize—an award for UK-only artists, and the England-born Hegarty had lived in the U.S. since age ten—Bird is a nakedly emotional examination of gender identity draped in Hegarty’s ethereal yet muscular croon. In the years after Bird, Hegarty filled many guest slots, most notably working with Lou Reed as well as serving as vocalist for Andrew Butler’s electro-dance project Hercules and Love Affair on their eponymous ’08 LP. Hegarty’s personal recording pace is slow at best, however, and when the hotly anticipated The Crying Light arrived it was only his third album in eleven years.

The four-track EP Another World preceded The Crying Light by three months, its title track appearing on both; the two records’ aesthetic presentation echo that of I Am a Bird Now, cloaked in wordless sleeves with stark, monochrome photographs capturing real-life examples of gender fluidity. While Bird's explorations of sexual identity were housed in a photograph of Warhol transvestite associate Candy Darling, The Crying Light and its related EP show male Japanese conceptual dancer Kazuo Ohno. Ohno pioneered a highly conceptual style of dance termed butoh, embracing controversial sexual themes as early as the 1950s, its performers often in drag. Ohno performed into his nineties; confined to a wheelchair and 102 years old at the release of The Crying Light, his work’s trajectory echoes the themes of Hegarty’s LP: nature, the soul, aging, and transmutation. While Bird examined people’s relations to themselves, Light finds its subjects relating not just to the world around them but also to eternity.

Another World’s narrator, readying for death—or perhaps just some type of metamorphosis—says goodbye to temporality. “I need another world/This one’s nearly gone,” sings Hegarty, suggesting it may not be him that is dying; he lists a dozen things he’ll miss, including sea, snow, bees, and things that grow, before concluding “I’m gonna miss the wind/Been kissing me so long.” This evocative, romantic hymn is the album’s centerpiece. The Crying Light’s music is even more delicate than the piano balladry and dark, restrained pop of I Am a Bird Now. Guitar and bass do figure in the Johnsons’ roster here, but several songs find the group and pianist Hegarty accompanied by a chamber orchestra and the arrangements are beautifully austere. The record’s feng shui is impeccable; there are 27 musicians credited, yet the album’s sound is never cluttered or overwhelmed by activity. One Dove, for example, features a variety of percussive crackles, a horn section, and a recorder embellishment, but the song still feels clean and spacious. Kiss My Name is the album’s mid-tempo pop showpiece, its elegant melodies propelled by a twirling string arpeggio and gentle flutes. In its sparkling, poppiest moments and soberest ruminations alike, The Crying Light is among the Aughts’ most lovely, gripping sets of songs, and with I Am a Bird Now it forms one of the decade’s most stunning pairs of albums.

Highlights: Kiss My Name, Epilepsy Is Dancing, Aeon, Another World

Sublime bit: Hegarty’s urgent, impassioned repetitions of “That man I love so much” in the closing verses of Aeon, a love song to Father Time.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

94. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

2010-03-13T01:27:00.007-06:00

94. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon (Merge, 2007)

Spoon’s sixth long player and final Aughts album, the daftly titled Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, finds the Austin group’s music sharpened and streamlined. Half fidgety, tight pop songs and half breezy white-boy soul, the record was Spoon’s most concise and economical record to date. While the junior executive indie rockers’ Aughts catalog consists of four smartly appointed LPs of increasing achievement, these can appear interchangeable to the casual listener; while earlier efforts like the ’01 Girls Can Tell, for example, is built on the same blueprint of taut yet groovy guitar-based backing and Britt Daniel’s obliquely clever lyricism reminiscent of an art-school Elvis Costello, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is more focused, entertaining, and memorable. As I’ve noted elsewhere (see #108), the Spoon LP you favor may come down to drawing straws; should you decide on this effort, though, the rewards may last longer.

With the group’s lineup in flux at ’05’s Gimme Fiction after the departure of longtime bassist Josh Zarbo and much of that record recorded by Daniel and drummer Jim Eno, Spoon’s Ga lineup is stabilized as a quartet, including bassist Rob Pope of then-dissolved emo veterans the Get Up Kids. Horn and string guest spots spice up a handful of tunes. At just over 36 minutes, Ga is about as long as any Spoon album but unlike some of the others it is the kind of record that zips by, begging for another play. This is in despite of the peculiar placement of The Ghost of You Lingers as the album’s second track; founded on a pounding, one-note piano riff that dominates the song’s three-and-a-half minutes (and whose phonetic approximation provides the album’s title) and with little other sonic meat on its bones apart from a handful of competing, disembodied vocal fragments, the song is long and jarring enough to make listeners with short attention spans turn off the record. Should the casual listener persevere, the album’s truest reward comes at the third track with a shift to crisp pop mode, continuing at a pithy clip for its remainder.

The band is literate enough to feature a 1963 photo of American sculptor Lee Bontecou on the album cover but classy enough to avoid referential pop-culture overkill in its songs, and much of Daniel’s wordplay on Ga is more abstruse than ever. Only The Underdog and Finer Feelings offer explicitly linear narratives, the latter an account of a hapless chap from Memphis seeking salvation in the help-wanted or dating sections of the local paper, whichever comes first. Don’t Make Me a Target, with its “Nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls/That come from a parking lot town,” evokes the slightest whiff of politics. As important as the album’s lyrics, though, are its arrangements. Split between the jaunty yet tough-edged pep of tunes like The Underdog (built sunnily on invigorating acoustic guitar, a soft horn arrangement, and handclaps) and the slinky groove of Eddie’s Raga and Don’t You Evah (a cover of a theretofore unreleased song by NYC trio The Natural History), the record is paced brilliantly, at least after the confounding gambit of its second track. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is strong while remaining freshly loose and, despite the mix-and-match tenor of Spoon’s catalog, it is as spirited as they'd yet gotten and it makes a respectable choice for the finest record they’d recorded thus far.

Highlights: You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb, Don’t You Evah, Finer Feelings, The Underdog

Sublime bit: How each chorus overlaps with the first line of the next verse in Eddie’s Raga, one of a handful of great uses of vocal overdubs.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

95. Fleet Foxes

2010-03-10T02:09:00.003-06:00

95. Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop, 2008)

The Aughts saw your average musical bedroom putterer, emboldened by the Internet’s democratization of recording and distribution, switch from guitar to computer. There’s nothing wrong with that; yet, wading through the resultant piles of DIY bleeps and bloops, it’s heartwarming to see people who grew up downloading music and still find resonance in creating it out of wood and steel. Seattle’s Fleet Foxes, led by Robin Pecknold, age 22 at the release of his band’s debut full-length, create a warm and lush acoustic-rooted sound emboldened by moving vocal harmonies. The band’s work recalls numerous musical ancestors, most notably Crosby, Stills, and Nash, yet never lapses into nostalgia or reactionary posturing. Their songs are gentle, yet possess a confidence and strength belying their years.

Pecknold and fellow guitarist Skyler Skjelset began playing together in high school, recording prolifically until the desire to incorporate additional instruments necessitated the addition of members. They recorded an eponymous EP in ’06 to be sold at gigs until the small pressing ran out. It is the anomaly of the group’s Aughts catalog, most of its arrangements bright and poppy; its execution a tad off-kilter, by decade’s end it pointedly remained officially unavailable. Its final song, Icicle Tusk, foreshadows the music they would record for Sub Pop: its verses marked by a tempered acoustic guitar figure, a melancholy lilt in Pecknold’s lead vocal, and wrapped in the group vocal harmonies that would carry the band to fame.

The Fleet Foxes LP was preceded by their ’08 Sub Pop debut the Sun Giant EP, recorded after the full-length but issued as a stopgap as to have some more merchandise available on tour. Both are more intimate and rustic than the ’06 demo. The LP opens with an a capella fragment influenced by the Southern tradition of Sacred Harp music, a form of group singing with no leader whose concept is reflected in the album’s numerous songs on which Pecknold is not the sole vocalist. The songs are drenched in reverb, lending the album a cavernous feel and a sense of timelessness. Pecknold’s lyrics are full of mountains, forests, and the creatures therein, the protagonists often yearning for absent or detached loved ones. Death is often closeby. The subject of Your Protector is asked to “lay to die beside me, baby”; the narrator of Meadowlarks asks, “Hummingbird, just let me die/Inside the broken holes of your olive eyes.” Most poignantly, Tiger Mountain Peasant Song asks, “Dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die?” The nearly jaunty, almost round-robin White Winter Hymnal beautifully describes dripping blood as turning “the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.” While the lyrics are frequently morbid or foreboding, the music conjures promise and positivity; the arrangements resplendent with soaring, wordless vocals and exultant guitar lines. This juxtaposition is seen best in Ragged Wood, which sounds like a cry of victory though its lyrics are about a lover who “Can barely remember you beside me/You should come back home.” The band’s command of intimate, ageless music earned them much acclaim at an early stage, and Fleet Foxes is one of the most impressive debut albums of the decade.

Highlights: White Winter Hymnal, He Doesn’t Know Why, Ragged Wood, Quiet Houses

Sublime bit: Those spiraling verses of White Winter Hymnal, and the way the wordless vocals kick in after “strawberries in the summertime.”

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

96. White Blood Cells

2010-03-07T16:23:00.004-06:00

96. White Blood Cells, The White Stripes (Sympathy for the Record Industry, 2001; V2, 2002)

The White Stripes became the most successful in a line of two-person, post-punk rock groups ranging from Flat Duo Jets and House of Freaks in the ’80s to Aughts contemporaries the Black Keys, the Kills, and Japandroids. The Detroit-spawned co-eds transcended their garage-blues indie roots to become bona fide rock stars in an era when the Internet-led polarization of the music business made that a harder task than ever. Led by mercurial polymath Jack White, the band is highly conceptual, aware of the power of presentation, and rich in mystique (the once-married couple famously claimed to be siblings). Their effectiveness is due to talent and masterful control of image, not merely reliant on the novelty of being a twosome.

White, born John Gillis, worked as an upholsterer while playing in numerous conceptual local groups. Still working with other bands, he started playing in mid-’97 as the White Stripes with his new wife and novice drummer Meg White. The couple played raw, energetic, punk-inspired blues rock, releasing a debut single in ’98. Gillis’s country-punk outfit Two-Star Tabernacle continued until ’99, the two bands sharing songs including a handful that would end up on White Blood Cells. As late as 2000, he released music outside of his project with White. By then, the White Stripes had released their eponymous debut LP and ’00 follow-up De Stijl was not far behind; for the next five years, though, the White Stripes would be his primary musical project and Gillis would no longer use his given name. The White Stripes (’99) and De Stijl are full of short, biting workouts carried by Jack’s blazing guitar work and Meg’s simple, primal drumming. White’s guitar playing, like his obvious influence Jimmy Page, harkens back to early 20th-century blues; Robert Johnson, Son House, and Blind Willie McTell covers appear on the two albums. The band is no mere tribute act, though, and Jack White possesses a wide storytelling range affording his lyrics a theatrical distinctiveness.

The third White Stripes album, White Blood Cells, is a striking progression that earned the duo a major-label deal and their first gold record. The sixteen original songs, most under three minutes long, remain informed by blues while making room for acoustic cowpoke jangle (Hotel Yorba); brash, snotty punk (Fell in Love With a Girl), and gentle, nursery-rhyme balladry (the nearly percussionless We’re Going to Be Friends). The Union Forever is a slow-broiling, oblique interpretation of Citizen Kane, accompanied by an ominous, churning organ background. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground and I Smell a Rat are arch, melodramatic pieces, the latter featuring teasing Spanish guitar arpeggios and almost operatic in its vocal delivery. The entirety of the 50-second Little Room finds Jack’s vocals accompanied only by a pounding, static drumbeat; the album’s closing fragment This Protector is a duet featuring Jack on piano. The variety of musical stylings, the songs’ exhilarating efficiency, and the sharpened dynamic between Jack and Meg make for one of the decade’s strongest albums. The White Stripes would remain compelling throughout the Aughts, releasing three more full-lengths, but their breakthrough effort White Blood Cells remains the finest distillation of their talents.

Highlights: Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Fell in Love With a Girl, We’re Going to Be Friends, Offend in Every Way

Sublime bit: The 110 seconds of Fell in Love With a Girl create a breathless excitement, relieved only by Jack White’s between-verse moaning.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

97. The Hungry Saw

2010-03-04T01:05:00.012-06:00

97. The Hungry Saw, Tindersticks (Beggars Banquet UK/Constellation US, 2008)

Nottingham group Asphalt Ribbons recorded four EPs from ’87-’91; their brisk pop jangle just missed the rise of Britpop. After the band’s move to London, Ribbons leader Stuart Staples reformulated the musical approach, regrouping as Tindersticks. The sextet debuted in ’92, releasing a handful of singles before delivering an eponymous first LP in autumn of the following year. The new band’s specialty would be somber, introspective balladry led by the gentle baritone of Staples and accompanied by sumptuous arrangements of strings, brass, and woodwinds. This iconoclastic stance of measured sophistication in a British era of flashy, frantic noisemaking earned them attention that their previous incarnation’s poppier approach was unable to do. Three double albums in a row, each increasingly proficient yet demanding, led them to near exhaustion after ’97’s Curtains. Refocusing again, now bringing soul music into their orchestrations, the group’s next three studio LPs would be shorter, more focused efforts. By ’03, after six studio efforts and two soundtrack albums, the group once again found itself at loggerheads. Staples released his first two solo works with no sign of new Tindersticks material, and the band appeared finished. Invited to play a one-off gig at London’s Barbican in September ’06, the original Tindersticks lineup convened for the final time. While Ribbons veteran Dickon Hinchliffe and two other Tindersticks founding members departed after that concert, Staples and organist David Boulter found a rejuvenated interest in working together under the old banner. Beginning cautiously with the joint curation of children’s compilation Songs for the Young at Heart, the pair started work in January ’07, with longtime guitarist Neil Fraser, on what would be the seventh Tindersticks long player.

The Hungry Saw features sixteen musicians; their names, including the founding members’, are arranged alphabetically on the credit sheet as if to emphasize the new beginning; it is dedicated to “everyone at the Barbican on 17 September 2006,” confirming the original lineup’s final concert as crucial to the band’s next phase. This first record by the refurbished Tindersticks is no dramatic departure from its predecessor Waiting for the Moon (’03); string arrangements once written by Hinchliffe are handled here by Lucy Wilkins and Calina de la Mare, and Terry Edwards contributes brass arrangements as he did on earlier works by the group. The songs still focus on soulful, orchestrated balladry, interspersed with complementary instrumentals composed by Boulter. While doubtfully intended as such, the lyrics can sometimes be imagined as commentary on the group’s resilient past: “And still we try/To reach for what has gone behind/But they’re here,” Staples sings in Yesterday’s Tomorrows. “Sometimes I wonder about the turns we took to get here,” Staples sings in the closing number, “but our song is carried on the wind.” Enduring years of effort in various incarnations, with varying levels of acclaim and energy, Tindersticks closed the Aughts as unlikely survivors. The Hungry Saw revealed the core trio of Staples, Boulter, and Fraser to possess a streamlined vitality despite those turns they took. The group sounds more spirited here than it had in years, and it is more engaging than half of its predecessors. A real case can be made that it is their finest album.

Highlights: Yesterday’s Tomorrows, The Hungry Saw, The Turns We Took, The Flicker of a Little Girl

Sublime bit: The climax of Boobar Come Back to Me, beginning when the backing vocals kick in at 2:08 and running through 3:08.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

98. She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke

2010-03-01T23:45:00.011-06:00

98. She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke, The Dutchess and the Duke (Hardly Art, 2008)

Plenty of bands willfully mine the past. The Chesterfield Kings and the Fuzztones made careers out of fabricating ’60s garage rock sound and spirit to an extent that the unwitting might think they were ’60s acts. Jellyfish and Redd Kross approached the same nostalgic Zeitgeist, but from a decidedly modern point of view. Countless groups of the ’80s “paisley underground” took cracks at capturing the spirit. Ragtag Seattle outfit the Dutchess and the Duke make no attempt to imitate or pay homage to any scene, yet somehow manage to outdo the bulk of groups who work(ed) desperately to tap the ’60s psyche. The only explicit nod to a cultural past are the placards displayed on the cover of the duo’s debut LP, a familiar signpost to those who’ve seen the Subterranean Homesick Blues sequence of D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan film Don’t Look Back, and the occasional use of outmoded lingo like “supersonic jet plane.” The music of their first album, though, feels separate from time, a spiritual cousin of the aforementioned garage apostles yet devoid of mimicry or strained stabs at authenticity.

“Duke” Jesse Lortz and “Dutchess” Kimberly Morrison are veterans of numerous garage, surf, and punk bands, playing together in two of them, the Flying Dutchmen and the Sultans. Weary of that circuit’s party-focused grind, Lortz wrote ten tunes for jangly acoustic guitar and simple percussion--shakers, tambourines, and handclaps--addressing personal topics not compatable with his other projects. Morrison provides vocal counterpoint, adding simple flute to a handful of numbers. The sparse instrumentation and Lortz’s raspy voice, startlingly like Mick Jagger’s, evoke a campfire singalong featuring the Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones. If She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke is destined to weather ’60s comparisons, it should be noted that it is no Technicolor pop-sike trip: it instead suggests the grittier days of Haight-Ashbury after the part-time hippies left for suburbia. Many songs are jaunty enough to mask the gloom of Lortz’s lyrics; his characters are often in impossible positions, unsavory binds, or raw malaise. “There’s a boot heel that’s under your chin/That says you ain’t never gonna win,” goes The Prisoner; in Out of Time, Lortz sings of a man who’s “Got an itchy trigger finger sticking in your side/Holds you tight and at that range he ain’t gonna miss you/And no one else will girl cause you’re already dead inside.” Out of Time and Back to Me both casually mention survival prostitution. “Ain’t you sick of hearing things are gonna work out,” asks Out of Time, its narrator frustrated because “Everybody talks a lot of pretty stories/But when they talk you know they don’t even look you in the eye.” The final tune, Armageddon Song, is a rollicking piece featuring group vocals by Lortz, Morrison, and their studio companions that seems to poke fun at the album’s bleak tone, concluding “Everybody knows it, baby/We’re all gonna die.” The next D&D album, ’09’s Sunset/Sunrise, ratcheted up the production values a bit yet isn’t as compelling as the raw debut. It’s hard to imagine that the musically roving Lortz and Morrison will continue long as the Dutchess and the Duke; but, regardless of their longevity, they’ve created one great work in their debut album.

UPDATE: In October 2010, the Dutchess and the Duke indeed announced their intention to split, their final show scheduled for late November 2010 and Lortz going on to a new group called Case Studies.

Highlights: Reservoir Park, Out of Time, Strangers, Mary

Sublime bit: The final minute of swelling choruses of I Am Just a Ghost, the album’s epic showstopper at a mere four-and-a-half minutes.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

99. For Emma, Forever Ago

2010-02-26T02:05:00.004-06:00

99. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver (self-released, 2007; Jagjaguwar, 2008)

For Emma, Forever Ago is an album borne of circumstance rather than intention, a personal document whose primal expression and slow-burning catharsis allow it to resonate emotionally with listeners despite an impressionist approach that, like its cover image of an iced-over window masking the trees outside, offers beauty while rendering much of the content inscrutable.

In late ’06, following the breakup of his marginally successful group DeYarmond Edison, Justin Vernon decamped from the band’s adopted base of Raleigh, North Carolina, to his birthplace in Northwestern Wisconsin to spend the winter alone gathering his thoughts at his family’s cabin. He did not plan on a cohesive project; nonetheless, he fiddled about on instruments and recording equipment he’d brought along to pass the time between cutting firewood. Over the ’06-’07 holiday season, Vernon’s noodlings took shape and resulted in a new solo project he dubbed Bon Iver, a malapropism for a greeting meaning “good winter” that he picked up from watching Northern Exposure DVDs. Vernon issued the songs, originally intended as demos, in a small ’07 vanity pressing that caught the ear of Bloomington, Indiana, label Jagjaguwar, who issued the work nationally the following year. Vernon had recorded three previous solo albums and five more with groups, yet it was the unintentional cabin demos that brought him acknowledgment.

At its core a folk record, For Emma, Forever Ago features Vernon on acoustic guitar, makeshift uses of a drum set’s components, and a soulful falsetto recalling Lindsey Buckingham. Vernon’s adept engineering, use of effects, and layering of overdubs gives the album a dense, warm atmosphere belying its solitary origins. It is an album heavy on feelings--while the songs generally seem to deal with alienation from and within relationships, Vernon’s vocals are opaque and more is communicated through inflection, tone, and dynamics than by language. Frankly, Vernon is not a dazzling lyricist, and more enjoyment may be had if one avoids the provided lyric sheet that reveals the songs to be packed with free-association tangents. What is most striking about the record, then, are its moods and the strength with which his abstruse inner journeys can speak to the listener regardless of clarity. Snatches of language, allegories for Vernon’s personal explorations, slip through. Repeated like mantras, phrases such as “So ready for us/so ready for us” (Creature Fear), “What might have been lost” (The Wolves) or “Would you really rush out/for me now?” (Blindsided) produce an aura of ennui, reflection, and the confusion that follows a relationship’s end. The album’s most lucid piece, Skinny Love, finds Vernon abandoning his falsetto to sing, full-throated, a list of reminders to a flame who claims her “love was wasted”: “I told you to be patient/I told you to be fine/I told you to be balanced/I told you to be kind”; not so much angry as lamenting, it is the LP’s most gripping song. As he does with romance, he seeks equilibrium within himself; Lump Sum concludes, “Balance we won’t know/We will see when it gets warm.” Vernon followed For Emma with an EP of new songs, Blood Bank, its title track a straightforward composition; its remainder, though, consists with varying success of mood pieces like those of the album, an approach he continued on an ’09 collaborative LP with the band Collections of Colonies of Bees. Those efforts feel more contrived than the raw emotion of For Emma, though, and its cabin demos are his first timeless work.

Highlights: Skinny Love, Creature Fear, Lump Sum, Blindsided

Sublime bit: Vernon’s between-verse wails of “My my my/My my my/My my” in Skinny Love.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

100. Nocturama

2010-02-23T01:11:00.004-06:00

100. Nocturama, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Anti-/Mute, 2003)

After the ’96 throat-clearing of the grimly themed Murder Ballads, Nick Cave produced two successive albums of somber, mournful songs departing steeply from the frenetic rock arrangements enlivening his earlier work with the Bad Seeds and the sonic terrorism of his previous group the Birthday Party. Cave famously opens ’97’s The Boatman’s Call by intoning “I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” and its ’01 follow-up No More Shall We Part is only marginally more dynamic than Boatman’s melancholy explorations. The albums provide some of the most beautiful songs in Cave’s catalog; but, they are lengthy and proceed at a funereal pace and make for draining listening experiences.

On his twelfth studio LP with the Bad Seeds, Cave adjusted the formula. Nocturama retains the slow, earnest piano ballads but juxtaposes them with raucous, full-tilt rock numbers. This can be jarring, especially if not listening on vinyl; it is an unusual Aughts album in that its sequencing seems to have considered the side breaks of a phonograph record. Side one begins with three pieces reminiscent of No More Shall We Part. He Wants You is an aching account of a man who “is straight and he is true”; making it more aching is the benighted male certainty that his love alone is enough to sustain it for two. Right Out of Your Hand contains some of the album’s most vivid imagery (“airborne starlings circle/over the frozen fields”) and a protagonist as misguided as his predecessor; “Give a sucker an even break/he’ll lose it all every time,” Cave sings, before admitting that “you’ve got me eating/right out of your hand.” Bring It On follows, a duet with Chris Bailey of fellow Australian punk veterans the Saints that blossoms slowly into an impassioned arrangement unlike any that Cave attempted since the mid-’90s. Like much of Nocturama, it is emboldened by the fiery violin work of Warren Ellis. Even after flipping the record, side two’s opening cut Dead Man in My Bed is like a finger in a socket after the gentle evolution of side one. Its frantic, clattering sound sits awkwardly before the rest of side two, which is a mirror image of side one and whose highlight is another ballad of romantic loyalty, Rock of Gibraltar. The original double vinyl had a blank fourth side; side three is consumed by the 15-minute Babe, I’m on Fire, a breathless, demented rant echoing the fever pitch of Dead Man in My Bed yet three times as long. Boasting an outrageous 38 verses, it is a litany of bizarre characters from “the backyard abortionist” to “my mate Bill Gates,” all of whom exist only to concur with Cave’s crazed testimony of “babe, I’m on fire.” It is a novelty whose relegation to the vinyl’s side three makes it a de facto bonus track, but it is an exhilarating novelty that foreshadows the frenzied tone of Cave’s later Aughts work with the Bad Seeds and his side project Grinderman. Nocturama’s schizophrenic nature raised some hackles among Cave fans (perhaps including longtime Bad Seed guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who resigned after recording) and while it does scan less evenly than its two predecessors it is a more enjoyable listen.

Highlights: Right Out of Your Hand, He Wants You, Rock of Gibraltar, Bring It On

Sublime bit: 3:30-4:15 of Right Out of Your Hand, as Cave’s voice entwines with the Bad Seeds’ backing harmonies, his voice pitching up at 4:09.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.

Bubbling Under Wrap-Up

2010-02-21T17:45:00.021-06:00

With the revelation of album number 101 the "Bubbling Under," or honorable mention, section comes to a close and we prepare ourselves for the proper Top 100 Albums of the Aughts. It should be noted here, once again, that the list is one of favorites and not of critical analysis; and, as with any list of this type, the "final" rankings really capture a moment in time--in this case, the literal end of the decade that the list represents--and not a definitive statement. Some of these albums will fall out of favor with me. Others will grow in stature so that they would rank higher if I rewrote the list in a few years.

I've spent the past seven weeks listening again to the 25 albums that compose Bubbling Under. So far, the list contains no embarrassments or albums I wish I hadn't included. As I know from my 1999-2000 examination of the Nineties, which I've revisited multiple times since then, opinions can change radically over time. I will continue to buy Aughts releases that I had no chance to evaluate during the decade of their original issue, and may like them more than Aughts albums I bought upon initial release. Also, placements on a list of this nature can represent ephemeral, whimsical feelings; undoubtedly, I could shuffle the 25 albums of Bubbling Under around in dozens of permutations.

FAVORITISM VERSUS EXPOSURE

Today, a wealth of possibilities exists for a music fan to track his or her listening habits. iTunes, playlists, and online services can maintain a count of the songs a person plays, and these kinds of statistics capture trends and cycles in a way that memory cannot. If a person keeps no track of what is listened to over the course of a year, much of which was heard will be forgotten.

About twenty years ago someone asked me if I tended to listen to certain records at certain times of the year: were my habits seasonal, nostalgic, or cyclical? I didn't know. I decided in 1992 to keep track of everything I listened to. This would include only music that I played intentionally--no radio play, chance listening in public spaces, or concert attendance would count toward what I came to call "the Log." In 1992, there was no iTunes program to do it for me; so, I did it all by hand. I abandoned my efforts after a couple of months, but the thought remained compelling and in 1993 I relaunched the Log and have kept it ever since. A stack of notebooks became computer files somewhere in the Aughts and now I do it on a spreadsheet that allows me to shuffle the data at will and get a snapshot of the year--or, if desired, of years at a time. It took me a while to develop a reliable methodology, so the figures for 1993 followed a weak measurement protocol and can't be compared to those of 1994 to the present. In 1994, my brother joined me in keeping the Log, giving me someone with whom to compare my endless listening statistics. At the beginning of that year, we introduced a point system in which one play of an album is worth 10 points and one play of an E.P. is worth 4 points. So, if an album has 129 points it's been played approximately 12.9 times. This requires me to keep diligent track of what I listen to, and it's gotten increasingly difficult to perform accurate measurements as reissues with bonus tracks and discs have proliferated. At any rate, what is supposed to be fun sounds merely clinical in these terms, so let's just move on...

Does a person listen the most to his or her favorite music? For casual listeners, perhaps. For record collectors, I argue that it is far from true. I don't buy as much music as some, it is true, but I buy music at an alarming rate compared to most people. My collection includes plenty of comfort listening; but, I also tend to buy in a wide variety of genres and movements with which I do not have a familiarity or comfort. I prefer my listening to be challenging and, at times, scholarly. To illustrate how I don't listen to my favorite music most often, let's take a look at what the Bubbling Under list would look like if arranged by frequency of play.

The first number in parentheses is the album's placement on the Aughts Bubbling Under list; the second number in parentheses is the number of points the album received in the Aughts; the next figure represents the album's ranking in my overall list of albums played in the Aughts/Since 1994.

So, the first album here was the most-played Bubbling Under album of the Aughts; on my list of Aughts favorites, in came in at 108; it got 196 points in the Aughts; it was the 13th most-played album of the decade; and, finally, is the 48th most-played album since I started keeping track in 1994. And so on. Tiebreakers are determined by what album was played most recently.

1. (108) Gimme Fiction, Spoon (196) 13/48
2. (125) Behind the Music, The Soundtrack of Our Lives (157) 46/113
3. (115) Before the Poison, Marianne Faithfull (140) 65/159
4. (104) Journey to the End of the Night, Mekons (137) 74/175
5. (120) Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp (125) 99/222
6. (105) Uh Huh Her, PJ Harvey (124) 102/225
7. (124) Deep Cuts, The Knife (122) 106/233
8. (122) Pocket Symphony, Air (115) 125/273
9. (118) Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, Luke Haines (104) 160/343
10. (121) Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn (103) 165/352
11. (111) Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 (103) 167/354
12. (106) Velocifero, Ladytron (101) 176/372
13. (109) Cripple Crow, Devendra Banhart (93) 202/426
14. (107) The Silence of Love, Headless Heroes (92) 208/436
15. (117) At My Age, Nick Lowe (90) 217/453
16. (123) That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson (88) 228/473
17. (101) Christie Malry's Own Double Entry OST, Luke Haines (83) 256/527
18. (110) Lullaby for Liquid Pig, Lisa Germano (83) 257/528
19. (103) The Convincer, Nick Lowe (78) 288/591
20. (113) Black Sheep, Julian Cope (78) 290/593
21. (114) Imperial Wax Solvent, The Fall (78) 291/594
22. (116) Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case (77) 296/600
23. (119) Charlie Louvin (77) 297/601
24. (102) Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Bill Callahan (71) 344/682
25. (112) Oh, My Girl, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter (64) 427/790

Based on these figures, the only Bubbling Under albums whose favoritism literally equal their exposure are Mekons' Journey to the End of the Night and M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us; statistically, this is a fluke.

You may wonder, for example, how one could possibly be familiar with an album he's played fewer than seven times (Jesse Sykes's Oh, My Girl), let alone qualify it as a favorite. This may be an artifact of the massive volume of listening that I do; in the Aughts, I listened to over 3,600 different albums and EPs. Adding up the points for all that listening comes to 115,642 points--the equivalent of eleven thousand albums. When a person has eleven thousand albums to listen to, he or she may be lucky to hear something twice, let alone seven times. Taking a look at the figures above, I was surprised by the top result. While it is one of my favorites from the decade, I would've said you were nuts if you'd told me that Gimme Fiction was my 13th most-played album of the decade and 48th most-played album in the first seventeen years of the Log era. This is how the Log can reveal truths that memory never could. The truth about favoritism and exposure emerges most bluntly when I look at Bill Callahan's Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, which was played a little more than seven times in the Aughts and at the close of that decade ranked 682nd overall: I am far more intimately familiar with Callahan's album than I am with the Spoon LP. I could hum most of the Callahan album from memory, can anticipate every nuance when I listen to it, and simply like it more. Spoon's nineteen plays, then, in some ways mean far less than Callahan's seven plays.

While it may not be interesting to float around in one man's listening arcana, you may extrapolate from these figures things about your own habits. If you really want to find out what your own habits are, though, I urge you to develop a point system and keep track yourself rather than relying on computer programs. iTunes play counts and the like are far less accurate and leave less room for the inevitable grey areas that surround any auditory experience. Keeping a Log can enable you instant access to all kinds of wild info--the fifty most-played albums of your twenties, the fifty most-played records of the Clinton administration, and so on. Like hardcore record collecting, keeping track of your listening is a trainspotter's pursuit. The real trends don't reveal themselves until you've done it for a while. 2010 marks the eighteenth year of the Log, and I plan to keep doing it as long as I am able.

MY LIST VERSUS OTHERS'

My list will appear pedestrian to some folks; partly unfamiliar to others; and, to the most sheltered listeners, willfully obfuscatory. Out of curiosity, I've compared my Bubbling Under list to the scores received by the same albums on the critical analysis Web site Metacritic. Metacritic collects reviews from a variety of sources--Web sites, newspapers, blogs, and so forth--and analyzes them to produce an aggregate score that represents the critical consensus on a particular album. The categories below are those used by Metacritic; the number in parentheses is the album's "Metascore." All information is current as of this writing, February 21, 2010.

Metacritic: Universal Acclaim
Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn (97)
The Convincer, Nick Lowe (86)
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case (84)
Gimme Fiction, Spoon (84)
At My Age, Nick Lowe (82)
Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Bill Callahan (82)
Imperial Wax Solvent, The Fall (81)

Metacritic: Generally Favorable Reviews
Cripple Crow, Devendra Banhart (79)
Uh Huh Her, PJ Harvey (79)
Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp (78)
Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 (76)
Before the Poison, Marianne Faithfull (76)
Lullaby for Liquid Pig, Lisa Germano (76)
Velocifero, Ladytron (73)
That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson (70)
Pocket Symphony, Air (63)

Not Covered By Metacritic
Behind the Music, The Soundtrack of Our Lives
Black Sheep, Julian Cope
Charlie Louvin
Christie Malry's Own Double Entry, Luke Haines
Deep Cuts, The Knife
Journey to the End of the Night, Mekons
Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, Luke Haines
Oh, My Girl, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
The Silence of Love, Headless Heroes

The critical rankings of any writer will be open to argument and dissatisfaction; Metacritic is a little less culpable because it represents the positions of many critics. Still, I personally find Van Lear Rose to be wildly overrated despite it ranking as one of my Aughts favorites--as of this writing, it is Metacritic's second-highest rated studio album "of all time" (i.e. since the site's inception in 2000). I would've lost any bet that told me Imperial Wax Solvent would earn "universal acclaim" from anyone; it also surprises me a fair amount that both Nick Lowe albums from my Bubbling Under list earned that same accolade.

WHAT'S NEXT

Next on NOYOUCMON is the proper Top 100 of the Aughts. We'll forget the statistical analysis for now, and focus on what's really important--the music. The essays will be longer, the selection of tracks I identify as album highlights will increase from three to four, and I'll even treat you to the impossibly subjective and ephemeral delight of each album's "most sublime moment." As with Bubbling Under, new essays will be unveiled every few days and counting down to #1 before New Year's Day, 2011. [UPDATE: As with any passion-run blog, life sometimes gets in the way of publication plans; as of New Year's Day, 2011, I was only up to #45. The list carries on, to be finished when the time is right.] And on to #100...

Bubbling Under #101. Christie Malry's Own Double Entry OST

2010-02-20T14:52:00.008-06:00

101. Christie Malry's Own Double Entry OST, Luke Haines (Hut/Virgin UK, 2001)

By 2000, Luke Haines’s cantankerous Britpop counteragents the Auteurs appeared all but defunct. Their ’99 LP How I Learned to Love the Bootboys and its self-referential, career-assessing lyrics was preceded by the ’98 debut of Black Box Recorder, a group fronted by Sarah Nixey but featuring Haines as musical director. It was confirmed with his first two solo works in the summer of ’01--the Christie Malry soundtrack and, one month later, the regular studio outing The Oliver Twist Manifesto--and the Auteurs name would surface again only on compilations. Working on someone else’s vision would seem anathema to Haines, but the plot of Christie Malry--based on a ’73 B. S. Johnson novel about a man who vengefully applies bookkeeping protocols of credit and debit to his life, resulting in anarchy and terrorism--is ripe material for the spleenful Haines. Like many soundtracks, Malry contains numerous instrumental passages; a sultry, pulsing, seven-minute version of Nick Lowe’s I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass is Haines’s first cover*; closing track Essexmania is, even if only out of sarcasm, a thumping club raver. Discomania, a slashing, oblique overview of Malry (“I’m anti-everything,” “I like people when they keep their mouths shut”) trounces the version that appears on Oliver Twist; in fact, Malry bests its follow-up altogether and, despite its incidental filler and appeal likely restricted to Haines followers, is a rare soundtrack that bears repeated listening. It is easy even for fans to dismiss an artist’s soundtrack work, but Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry includes material essential to the Haines/Auteurs cosmology.

*Prior to the recording of I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, on the '98 album England Made Me, Haines's group Black Box Recorder did record a cover of Althea & Donna's 1977 song and 1978 UK hit Uptown Top Ranking. Haines plays on the recording; however, as it is sung by Sarah Nixey and not Haines I do not consider it to predate I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass as his first cover version.

Highlights: Discomaniax, Discomania, I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass

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Bubbling Under #102. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

2010-02-19T01:39:00.010-06:00

102. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Bill Callahan (Drag City, 2009)

Bill Callahan spent fifteen years making esoteric, folk-derived music under the name Smog, issuing eleven LPs and seven EPs. The early works are nearly outsider music--willfully lo-fi, avoiding typical song structure, recorded alone under wildly deficient conditions. Smog grew to be more professional, collaborative, and dynamic; a scan of the catalog, though, finds many deadpan, dirge-like meditations sung in a jarring baritone and not lacking in humor but emphasizing the desolate. With Woke on a Whaleheart, (’07), Callahan began using his own name. The LP continues with the fuller instrumentation, but also the occasional tunelessness and meandering. With the follow-up, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Callahan evinced a remarkable leap forward, creating an engaging, warm set of songs surely among his best works. Recorded with a full band and adorned with subtle strings, French horn, and drums where Smog may have ambled percussionless, it is earthy yet elegant, recalling the soulful country of Nashville group Lambchop. The sonic warmth betrays the lyrical ruminations: “I am a child of linger on,” he sings in The Wind and the Dove; “Show me the way/To shake a memory,” begs the narrator of the comical Eid Ma Clack Shaw. Nature is prominent; birds, wind, and trees populate the songs. The album’s closing track is the ten-minute Faith/Void, a contemplation of gnosticism in which Callahan presents his proposal and conclusion at once: “It’s time to put God away/I put God away,” repeats the verses. It is a striking way to end an album filled with temporal concerns. Smog is dead; long live Callahan.

Highlights: Too Many Birds, Jim Cain, Faith/Void

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Bubbling Under #103. The Convincer

2010-02-17T01:28:00.007-06:00

103. The Convincer, Nick Lowe (Yep Roc, 2001)

The birth of Nick Lowe’s third career phase is well documented. Lowe’s first Aughts release, The Convincer, was his first for indie home for the aged Yep Roc and the third in what he would later dub the Brentford Trilogy, along with The Impossible Bird (’94) and Dig My Mood (’98). With these albums, he abandoned frantic rock and roll and repositioned himself as a gentlemanly balladeer. On Mood, he began shifting his focus from roots music to genteel crooning reminiscent of Sam Cooke; this new style dominates The Convincer. Slinking opening cut Homewrecker sets a misty, rhythm-and-blues tone; its sparse arrangement emphasizes Lowe’s voice, placed high in the mix. The subject matter familiarly relies on gently self-deprecating and optimistic stories of moral failures and deficiencies in love. The man in I’m a Mess believes he will one day “quit this blue address,” but abandoned by friends and lovers he’s not sure when. Between Dark and Dawn advises another jilted soul to “Wait ’til the sun comes out/You’re gonna wonder what the fuss was about.” The bachelor of Lately I’ve Let Things Slide admits, “Smoking I once quit/Now I’ve got one lit/I just fell back into it.” The finest song, Cupid Must Be Angry, has a lush arrangement with a double-tracked Lowe vocal and dazzling treated trumpet solo by Wayne Jackson. Casual listeners will likely find Lowe’s post-’94 work a blur of the same stylistic ground. Each album is worth closer examination, but The Convincer is the finest; and, as fun as his ’80s work may have been, Lowe’s modern style will undoubtedly have a longer shelf life.

Highlights: Cupid Must Be Angry, Lately I’ve Let Things Slide, Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart

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Bubbling Under #104. Journey to the End of the Night

2010-02-15T18:22:00.005-06:00

104. Journey to the End of the Night, Mekons (Quarterstick, 2000)

It is pushing it to call Mekons a punk band thirty years after their birth at a Leeds art school. Their ’04 album Punk Rock featured reworkings of their ’70s material, a nostalgic lark alongside their later work that has long taken influence from American country music, English folk, and Jamaican rhythms. Mekons began the Aughts with 14th LP Journey to the End of the Night, its nocturnal themes of paranoia, dread, and lucklessness miles away from the ribald studies of sexuality on their prior record, Me (’98). Journey brims with anxiety: in Neglect, the narrator stands before a mirror, nauseated, practicing asking for £10,000. In Last Weeks of the War, Jon Langford sings “I wipe the tapes but they keep playing/They haunt me another day.” The song title Tina refers to no woman but to an acronym for “there is no alternative.” Phone numbers are lost during fights, people appall themselves with impulsive confessions, and life flashes before the eyes “in the most unsatisfactory way.” Love is mentioned only as furtive or a source of agony. The band plays in hushed tones, not entirely acoustic but capturing the wee-hour loneliness of the cover image. Sally Timms practically whispers her lead vocals. For all the gloom, the music is not without joy; the closing tune, Last Night on Earth, boasts the album’s most jubilant arrangement while lyrically alluding to suicide. No mere retort to their live reputation as a reckless troop of jesters, the melancholy world of Journey gives voice to Mekons’ inward travels and sleepless dawns.

Highlights: Tina, Neglect, Powers & Horror

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Bubbling Under #105. Uh Huh Her

2010-02-13T00:46:00.005-06:00

105. Uh Huh Her, PJ Harvey (Island, 2004)

The dissonant, tarpit-slow riff that opens PJ Harvey’s sixth* studio album Uh Huh Her sounds like the dragging knuckles of a dimwitted proto-man; the LP’s title, like something he might mutter. The cover picture is an intentionally unflattering snapshot of Harvey sitting in someone’s car, as if about to drive off somewhere unsavory. The twilit beauty of her previous album, ’00’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, departed strikingly from her typically raw approach; in return, Uh Huh Her is her most fractious, confrontational album of new work since ’93’s Rid of Me. The gentler moments’ explorations of insular, uncomfortable emotions are as unnerving as its bellicose, hard-featured aspects. Produced and performed by Harvey alone (less the drums and some backing vox), the album is less a confessional than a glimpse of secret thoughts. The lyrics deal more frequently than usual with the specter of lovers, summarized well by the title of The Desperate Kingdom of Love. In The Letter she pictures a lover closely examining a handwritten note, admiring “In my handwriting/the curve of my ‘g’,” and imagining, erotically, him licking the envelope when sending his reply. Conversely, Cat on the Wall finds its narrator compulsively and anxiously replaying a saved voicemail when she hears “our song on the radio”; the angst peaks with the angry threats of Who the Fuck? The closing number The Darker Days of Me & Him summarizes manhood with a shortlist of neurosis, psychosis, psychoanalysis, and sadness. Uh Huh Her is Stories From the City off its meds, contemplative, and ashamed yet determined. The two disparate albums constitute her finest work of the decade.

*If you don't count '93's 4-Track Demos, which I don't because 60% of it is songs from Rid of Me; seventh, if you count her first album-length collaboration with John Parish, '96's Dance Hall at Louse Point.

Highlights: The Letter, The Life & Death of Mr. Badmouth, Shame

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Bubbling Under #106. Velocifero

2010-02-11T01:21:00.004-06:00

106. Velocifero, Ladytron (Nettwerk, 2008)

UK electropop quartet Ladytron recorded their first four LPs in the Aughts, ’08’s Velocifero the last and best. Fronted in tandem by Helen Marnie and Bulgarian-Israeli Mira Aroyo, Ladytron possesses a cold, shimmering exterior indebted to ’80s new wave dance music, krautrock, and Kraftwerk. The two singers rarely stray from a threadlike range, their voices entwining in detached, near-monotone harmonies that create an icy tautness. After the anemic ’01 debut LP 604 and ’02’s improved yet meandering Light & Magic, Ladytron refocused. They leapt forward in ’05 with the stunning Witching Hour, whose more sophisticated lyrics and arrangements (including, for the first time, prominent guitar) made it the band’s first essential work. With the streamlined Velocifero (pidgin Italian for “bringer of speed”; also, a brand of motorized scooter), the evolution is even more dramatic. Gone are the short, ponderous instrumentals, and every song feels essential to the album’s narrative arc; the arrangements more often escape their sonic comfort zone (especially on the closing cut Versus, a duet between Marnie and guitarist/programmer Daniel Hunt). Aroyo sings two tracks in Bulgarian, including the ominous opener Black Cat and a cover of the ’96 tune Kletva by the country’s top rock band, Shturtzite ("Crickets"). Ladytron remains most effective on the dancefloor, but Velocifero’s excursions elsewhere show the tremendous growth since the fledgling attempts of their earliest work.

Highlights: Ghosts, I’m Not Scared, Tomorrow

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Bubbling Under #107. The Silence of Love

2010-02-09T00:08:00.000-06:00

107. The Silence of Love, Headless Heroes (Names UK 2008; Headless Heroes/World's Fair US 2009)

The 1983-91 work of 4AD Records’ studio project This Mortal Coil presented haunting, gothic vistas filled with arcane covers performed by a revolving cast from the label roster. Its coda was a ’98 LP credited to the Hope Blister, using the original pattern but with a static lineup. Those wanting more of this can take solace in their spiritual descendants, Headless Heroes. Organized by NYC A&R man Eddie Belazel, the project finds a group of session pros (including guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and drummer Joey Waronker) tackling obscure folk nuggets by artists like Jackson C. Frank, Vashti Bunyan, and Linda Perhacs, and a few better-known tunes such as the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey and Nick Cave’s Nobody’s Baby Now. The A&R origins and players’ slick pedigrees betray the warm beauty brought to the project by its lead vocalist, Alela Diane. Chosen by Belazel and producer Hugo Nicolson after lining up the material and musicians, she had made only one LP of her own, the ’06 The Pirate’s Gospel, a collection of lush yet tentative country-tinged folk. As with the Hope Blister and Louise Rutkowski, The Silence of Love is Alela Diane’s hour. While it deviates stylistically from her solo work, she handles the songs as if they were written for her. The sumptuous arrangements are seasoned with strings, trumpet, lap steel, and organ, rendered to most spectacular effect on the Philamore Lincoln song The North Wind Blew South. Alela Diane would go on to higher glories with her next solo album; one hopes, though, that on occasion she returns to Headless Heroes for rest and relaxation from the rigors of composition.

Highlights: The North Wind Blew South, Blues Run the Game, To You

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Bubbling Under #108. Gimme Fiction

2010-02-06T00:33:00.004-06:00

108. Gimme Fiction, Spoon (Merge, 2005)

Austin, Texas, songwriter Britt Daniel and his band Spoon are the sophisticated workmen of indie rock. They create a sound that manages to be simultaneously luxe and taut, avoiding gimmickry and adding only the occasional tasteful ornamentation such as piano or effects. On Gimme Fiction, Spoon’s fifth album and third of the Aughts, five songs were recorded solely by Daniel and longtime drummer Jim Eno; former bassist Josh Zarbo returns for one song and the rest is handled by session players. Spoon, regardless of roster, evokes classical influences like late-'70s Elvis Costello, solo-era John Lennon (see the piano-led opening cut The Beast and Dragon, Adored) and the Rolling Stones without betraying their own modernism or devolving into pastiche. Daniel’s voice has a narrow range that he escapes only with the odd falsetto, and while each Spoon album has its general stylistic differences they are, arguably, largely interchangeable exercises in cleverly written, sharply arranged millenial-era rock for post-graduates. So why Gimme Fiction? For one, its arrangements are more interesting and diverse than its predecessors, with plenty of piano, resulting in the band’s least monochromatic album to date; for every archetypical Spoon pattern, there is a departure like the prickly disco minimalism of I Turn My Camera On, the nearly sunny pop of Sister Jack, or the opaque almost-dub of Was It You? Picking a favorite Spoon LP may come down to personal whim, but one could do worse than Gimme Fiction.

Highlights: Sister Jack; The Beast and Dragon, Adored; My Mathematical Mind

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Bubbling Under #109. Cripple Crow

2010-02-04T23:26:00.006-06:00

109. Cripple Crow, Devendra Banhart (XL, 2005)

Influential ’04 compilation LP The Golden Apples of the Sun chronicled the decade’s psychedelic-informed acoustic, or “freak folk,” scene, its half-Texan, half-Venezuelan compiler Devendra Banhart serving as the subgenre’s unofficial leader. Banhart’s ’02 debut* Oh Me Oh My is certainly freaky--its brief voice-and-guitar numbers are bizarre and spooky; on songs like Nice People, the 21-year-old Banhart sounds downright unhinged. Alongside Apples, he released two solo albums in ’04; glossier than his debut yet still simple guitar-and-voice affairs, they remain relatively eccentric yet show him to be more than a willfully bizarre outsider. His fourth LP, Cripple Crow, includes his first full-band recordings. Nearly two dozen musicians contribute, and the result is the most welcoming and enjoyable of Banhart’s six Aughts LPs. At 74 minutes and 22 songs (and another eight on its vinyl version), Crow can be a trying exercise. The sprawling work comprises Spanish-sung folk (Santa Maria da Feira, Quedateluna), ’50s doo-wop (Little Boys), fuzzed-out psych funk (Long Haired Child), groovy singalongs (Chinese Children, I Feel Just Like a Child) and plenty of oddball sketches (The Beatles, Dragonflys); less novel yet perhaps more gripping, though, are the aching ballads (Korean Dogwood; the title cut) that provide breathing room from the album's nuttier moments. A glance at the song titles show a preoccupation with childhood, and Banhart’s lyrics make frequent literal reference to the womb. Detractors complain understandably that Banhart needs an editor; but, on Cripple Crow he is at his most playful, sincere, and free, creating the perfect distillation of his personal aesthetic and his musical community.

* Banhart did record an album prior to Oh Me Oh My; 2002's The Charles C. Leary, on the Hinah label, had extremely limited availability and is long out of print. As such, the Young God-released Oh Me Oh My, which benefited from national distribution, is generally regarded as his debut.

Highlights: Korean Dogwood, Long Haired Child, Cripple Crow

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Bubbling Under #110. Lullaby for Liquid Pig

2010-02-02T00:47:00.006-06:00

110. Lullaby for Liquid Pig, Lisa Germano (Ineffable/iMusic, 2003; Young God, 2007)

The five ’90s solo LPs by former John Mellencamp violinist Lisa Germano include some of that decade’s most startling music. Her elegant, atmospheric sound masks her confessional, self-deprecating lyrical explorations of grim human conditions, frequently addressed nakedly and devoid of metaphor. Germano continued to write after retiring from the business in ’98; five years later she released Lullaby for Liquid Pig, the first and finest of the three albums she’d record in the Aughts. All of them are hauntingly sparse, her breathy vocals wending through the gauzy, electronics-laden and often percussionless arrangements almost with the feel of tone poems. Pig explores a handful of topics: shame; loneliness; submission; and, most notably, alcoholism. Four songs explicitly discuss alcohol dependency. When she sings “Hate will grow with your alcohol glow/You get used to the show” on Pearls, it is as if from experience. Guest appearances by Johnny Marr, Wendy Melvoin, and Neil Finn slip by unnoticed, blending seamlessly into Germano’s dreamlike soundscape. The album, reissued by Michael Gira on his private label after the original issue quickly fell out of print, is a difficult listen; still, the unshakable melodies that drift through the album’s glaze of beautiful regret rival anything Germano has done.

Highlights: Paper Doll, Candy, It’s Party Time

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Bubbling Under #111. Before the Dawn Heals Us

2010-01-31T19:29:00.008-06:00

111. Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 (Mute, 2005)

French electro duo M83’s first two albums consisted primarily of cinematic, ambient instrumentals; ’03’s widely acclaimed Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts saw Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau sonically evolve leagues beyond the drifting mood pieces of their ’01 eponymous debut. Fromageau quit after touring Dead Cities; while Gonzalez did record four of that LP’s pieces by himself, it seemed unlikely that the next M83 work would be a stylistic leap making its precursors appear wan and primitive. Before the Dawn Heals Us, recorded primarily by Gonzalez (six songs tellingly co-written by his filmmaker brother Yann), bolsters the M83 sound with powerful, aggressive arrangements and a bold production style inspired by ’90s shoegaze. Guitar is used more than ever; Loic Maurin’s authoritative live drums are used on eight songs; and several songs have full-blown vocal tracks, a first for the band. This new approach aside, Gonzalez’s songs are still built as mood pieces; one can easily imagine any song here playing as a camera soars above a landscape like the album cover’s skyline. The quintessence of the form comes with instrumental “A Guitar and Heart,” with its layers of echoing, propulsive synths and guitars and Maurin’s booming drum fills marking each segment. Gonzalez is prone to earnest drama, including two spoken parts by actress Kate Moran that some will dismiss as histrionics. Most notorious is Car Chase Terror, whose lengthy dialogue will prove a dealbreaker for some listeners; one tolerates an uncomfortable sequence in a film, however, and Gonzalez challenges us to do the same with an album. Before the Dawn Heals Us documents one of the decade’s strongest evolutions in pop music.

Highlights: Don’t Save Us From the Flames, Teen Angst, Car Chase Terror

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Bubbling Under #112. Oh, My Girl

2010-01-29T00:16:00.003-06:00

112. Oh, My Girl, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter (Barsuk, 2004)

Seattle pair Jesse and Jim Sykes led Hominy, whose rootsy girl-n-guy harmonies recalling L.A. rockers X resulted in one ’98 LP. When their relationship ended she kept the surname, forming a new band with ex-Whiskeytown guitarist Phil Wandscher; in the new decade they would release three albums to increased exposure and success. Sykes’s own material operates on a different plain than cutesy Hominy tunes like “Sunny Days and Raisinets.” Her husky voice is the focus, despite its dynamic limitations; it conjures a hazy, quarter-speed world of gothic country that rarely swings but frequently allures, a beautiful gloom later earning her a guest slot with doom metal bands Sunn O))) and Boris. On her first solo LP, ’02’s Reckless Burning, the recipe is complete yet cloaked in a drabness absent from her next album and finest work of the decade, Oh, My Girl. Where Burning sometimes plods, Girl captures the zeitgeist perfectly. The songs call upon ghosts and departed lovers, the season is usually winter, and happiness has passed: “We used to be free,” opens Birds Over Water; “We fell through the cracks,” she sings in Grow a New Heart. This wistfulness remains even on the album’s liveliest cuts; the bright arrangements of songs like Tell the Boys and The Dreaming Dead foreshadow the pop-influenced explorations of her next album, ’07’s Like, Love, Lust, and the Open Halls of the Soul. Of her Aughts work, though, Girl best captures her haunting talents.

Highlights: Your Eyes Told; Oh, My Girl; Tell the Boys

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Bubbling Under #113. Black Sheep

2010-01-27T00:49:00.005-06:00

113. Black Sheep, Julian Cope (Head Heritage UK, 2008)

Since his days as an ’80s new-wave star to his ’90s period as an eccentric activist lost in the major-label system, Julian Cope took a breather from pop to reengineer his politics and public image without disowning his past. His last widely distributed work, ’96’s Interpreter, was followed by a series of self-released experimental and meditational music. His first song-based studio LP in seven years, ’03’s Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day, was a taste test for a run of four double albums he’d release under his own name in the Aughts on his private label Head Heritage. The music recalls the forms of his ’90s work, yet is marked by an even more radical political intellectualism while still often aesthetically lovely. The fourth and strongest of these, Black Sheep (not to be confused with his band Black Sheep, whom themselves released two double albums in ’09), is an indictment of religion. Cope espouses a hardcore paganism whose philosophies overlap with those of the black metal scene; instead of burning churches, though, Cope writes history essays and lectures at the British Museum. It would be hard to enjoy Black Sheep without a patience for the protracted drama of anti-Christianity pieces like Psychedelic Odin or The Shipwreck of St. Paul, but even without the patience one may be stunned at how catchy a jangling sing-along can still be when it’s called “All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers).” Cope’s post-Sheep Aughts work does lean uncomfortably toward anarchism for my taste; but, he remains a fascinating polymath. Newcomers begin elsewhere; old fans take caution.

Highlights: All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers, These Things I Know, Psychedelic Odin

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Bubbling Under #114. Imperial Wax Solvent

2010-01-25T22:29:00.008-06:00

114. Imperial Wax Solvent, The Fall (Sanctuary UK, 2008)

Mark E. Smith has obstinately recorded under the Fall brand since the clattering punk days of ’76 and through two band-wide dissolutions, including an ’06 tour during which half of the band defected. Imperial Wax Solvent is his 28th studio LP as the Fall; the only people still listening are likely the longtime fans as stalwart as Smith himself. The follow-up to Aughts nadir Reformation Post-TLC (’07), Imperial is among the better half of their six Aughts full-lengths. Smith’s penchant for wankery disguised as musique concrete is at a minimum; his vocals sometimes appear extemporaneous, but the songs sound intentional compared to the one-offs cluttering Reformation. Wolf Kidult Man is a stomping rocker that recalls the Stooges; Strangetown is the album’s requisite cover (a ’70 cut by UK blues group the Groundhogs); the skewed pop of I’ve Been Duped is penned by Smith but sung by his keyboardist wife Eleni Poulou. The centerpiece is the hilarious, eleven-minute 50 Year Old Man, Smith’s rants therein including that he knows what comes out on CD, he’s not impotent, and he doesn’t like to reuse hotel towels. His tongue has dulled a bit; but, on this final album of the decade, Smith’s acerbic punditry and groove-heavy bandmates du jour make for the best Fall release in five years.

Highlights: Wolf Kidult Man, I’ve Been Duped, Senior Twilight Stock Replacer

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Bubbling Under #115. Before the Poison

2010-01-24T16:18:00.007-06:00

115. Before the Poison, Marianne Faithfull (Naive UK, 2004; Anti- US, 2005)

2004 marked Marianne Faithfull’s fourth decade in music. From her ’60s pop-folkie days and embroilment in the Rolling Stones coterie to the shattered disco majesty of ’79 comeback LP Broken English, her personal difficulties have lent her work a resolute gravitas. A writer when it suits her, Faithfull flourishes in collaboration; as with ’02’s Kissin Time, which placed her with Beck, Billy Corgan, Blur, and Pulp, her eighteenth LP Before the Poison aligns her with markedly younger alt-rockers, the bulk of it written by PJ Harvey and Nick Cave. Both trade in dark, emotional explorations and are natural pairings with Faithfull, resulting in a stronger record than its sometimes naff predecessor. No Child of Mine, which appears on Harvey’s contemporaneous LP Uh Huh Her as a one-minute acoustic snippet, is here a fully-fleshed number about the dissolution of family, Harvey’s harmonies wrapping ghostily around Faithfull’s coarse croon. My Friends Have, a mid-tempo rocker built on a dissonant Harvey riff, is an earnest ode to those who have “Always been there/To help me shape my crooked features . . . and pushed my enemies out of the picture.” The title track, lyrics by Faithfull, seems to describe the ruination by drugs and decadence of her ’60s teenage wonderment. Bacchanalian shouter and musical departure Desperanto finds Faithfull doing a sprechstimme rap about “the language of despair” to the rollicking chants and hoots of Cave and his Bad Seeds. Damon Albarn of Blur returns with one co-write, and the album closes with Jon Brion’s Weill-invoking City of Quartz, Faithfull’s vocals accompanied by a tinkling music box. It is a delicate comedown from the spectrum of loss and desire that composes Faithfull’s finest album of the Aughts and one of the finest works of any of her four decades.

Highlights: My Friends Have, Crazy Love, The Mystery of Love

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Bubbling Under #116. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

2010-01-21T01:07:00.014-06:00

116. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case (Anti-, 2006)

US singer-songwriter Neko Case got her start in toss-off punk bands, later crafting a singular writing style influenced by western honky-tonk but also encompassing soul, torch ballads, vocal jazz, and pop. The clarity and range of her remarkable voice (arguably reminiscent of Linda Ronstadt) makes her one of the era’s most compelling vocalists. After the juvenilia of Case’s punk work and ’97 cowpoke solo debut The Virginian, her talents have grown with every studio effort. Fox Confessor, her breakthrough fifth LP*, is the least country-oriented of her work thus far. The band features members of Giant Sand and Canadian group the Sadies, as well as the Band’s Garth Hudson and Flat Duo Jets guitarist Dexter Romweber. Case’s penchant for evoking animals’ tooth-and-claw nature is evident throughout, and the lyrics brim with alluring details—nightgowns sweep pavement, letters cascade down a staircase, eagles swoop down from semitrailers. A sense of reckoning and the opaque aspects of loss, disaster, and loneliness imbue the songs; when brighter times lie ahead it may be irrelevant, as with the narrator of That Teenage Feeling who “don’t care if forever never comes.” Case’s dynamic voice brings a sense of optimism and beauty to even the darkest moments. Fox Confessor is her first essential album, catapulting her beyond the alt-country ghetto and into songwriting’s big leagues.

*I include live '04 LP The Tigers Have Spoken in that count, as only one of its tracks has appeared on a Case studio album; the '01 Canadian Amp is an EP, not a full-length.

NOTE: Under no circumstances do I recommend the original gatefold vinyl pressing of this album on Lance Rock Records, and it receives a NOYOUCMON "do not buy" warning. While I generally prefer vinyl to other formats, this first Lance Rock pressing of Fox Confessor is among the rare vinyl albums that I have found to be inferior to the compact disc version. It sounds as if it were mastered from a digital source—if so, then it defeats the purpose of vinyl altogether—and has none of the warmth one expects from wax. Additionally, my copy, purchased new, has numerous flaws that affect playback in ways that an untouched 180-gram vinyl pressing should not be affected. Even casual vinyl listeners may be put off by the poor sound. If you want to buy Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, please purchase it on compact disc or a legal download. [UPDATE: Lance Rock has since issued another pressing, in a single-pocket jacket; I have not heard this version and thus cannot attest to its sound quality.]

Highlights: Margaret vs. Pauline; Hold On, Hold On; The Needle Has Landed

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Bubbling Under #117. At My Age

2010-01-18T22:04:00.010-06:00

117. At My Age, Nick Lowe (Yep Roc, 2007)

Pub rocker and prolific producer Nick Lowe ended a five-year hiatus from solo work in ’95; At My Age is the fourth studio LP of his new era and twelfth overall. Over a decade after repositioning himself as a debonair roots crooner, some clamor for the frantic new-wave rockabilly soul man of yore; those familiar with the breadth of his catalog know that it’s his newer work that ages better. While his previous LP, ’01’s The Convincer, benefited from a lush, smoky aura, At My Age is a trim, sharp set of stately skiffle, western-flavored vocal jazz, and an early-’60s country-pop vibe conducted so expertly it suggests Lowe would’ve been at home forty-five years ago in Nashville. An inveterate interpreter, Lowe tackles a handful of country covers ranging from the ’59 Charlie Feathers tune The Man in Love to closing track Feel Again, popularized in ’76 by Faron Young. Lowe’s sprightly acoustic guitar provides a base for most of the tracks, but the most unique aspect of the At My Age band is the horn section appearing on the bulk of tracks. Understated and low in the mix, it nimbly accents the songs, at times adding a nearly mariachi flavor without overwhelming the tunes. Lowe originals The Club and Hope for Us All are the finest here in a run of lovelorn, jovially self-deprecating numbers; People Change features lovely backing vocals from Chrissie Hynde; and the record’s best-known song, I Trained Her to Love Me, is a tongue-in-cheek account of the damages incurred by poorly managed serial monogamy. At My Age may make your grandmother dance, but it’s for good reason. Few artists age as well, and Lowe’s ’00s output is eminently more enjoyable than that of the artists he got famous producing.

Highlights: People Change, The Club, Hope for Us All

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Bubbling Under #118. Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop

2010-01-17T00:04:00.004-06:00

118. Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, Luke Haines (Degenerate Music UK, 2006)

Sardonic pop diarist Luke Haines fronted unwilling Britpop figures the Auteurs through the ’90s; Rocker is his second proper solo album. His notoriously self-aggrandizing habits are matched only by an erudite writing style that serves as a gazetteer of post-WWII English cultural history sending US listeners scurrying to Wikipedia for explanations. Rocker examines the England of Haines’s childhood through the pre-punk ’70s. This is done most densely on the mildly sarcastic Here’s to Old England, which catalogs British life’s mundane aspects in the shadow of troubling newspaper headlines. As is typical, grim signposts are plentiful: allusions to two different serial killers; an examination of the pedophilic downfall of Gary Glitter in Bad Reputation; The Walton Hop is named for a teen disco known as a preying ground for sex offenders. For every such topic, though, there is a reference to football clubs or variety shows. In The Heritage Rock Revolution, Haines savages musical groups’ opportunistic reunions (“It’s been 25 years since you’ve had an original thought in your head”), the choruses ending knowingly with a riff from Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded.” The title cut is a throbbing electro-disco track that mocks the pretension of art students; otherwise, the album is more guitar-heavy than the bulk of his solo work. More cohesive than its predecessor (’01’s The Oliver Twist Manifesto), Rocker is also Haines’s most light-hearted work to date--no small accomplishment.

Highlights: Going Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, Here’s to Old England, Fighting in the City Tonight

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Bubbling Under #119. Charlie Louvin

2010-01-14T23:45:00.008-06:00

119. Charlie Louvin (Tompkins Square, 2007)

Charlie Louvin and brother Ira sang together for a decade prior to their ’56 debut LP; famed for their close harmony that mixed gospel and the secular, the duo split in ’63 but later influenced many rock artists. Charlie recorded actively into the mid-’70s; Ira died in a ’65 car wreck. Like many country singers, Louvin’s star faded in the ’80s. Austin roots label Watermelon tried to revive it in ’96 with new LP The Longest Train; in ’02, sloppy Tennessee label Country Discovery issued another, The Sound of Days to Come. In his 80th year Louvin received a proper new contract, from NYC’s Americana label Tompkins Square. Its eponymous first fruit boasts a band of new-Nashville pros and a stable of guests, both country vets (George Jones, Tom T. Hall, Marty Stuart, Bobby Bare) and rockers of varying pedigree including Elvis Costello, Will Oldham, and Jeff Tweedy. Four members of Nashville indie outfit Lambchop appear throughout, including Louvin’s co-producer Mark Nevers. Louvin’s writing heyday behind him, covers and rerecordings (including three Louvin Brothers songs) dominate. The guest vocalists contribute harmonies or the occasional verse, and the music is straight traditional country. The most notable song is the great Ira, an emotional tribute to his brother that appeared in different form on the ’02 LP. “Your voice is strong, though you are gone/’Cause I still hear your part,” sings Louvin, still devoted to his lost partner 45 years on. Charlie Louvin was a success and by decade’s end he had recorded three more LP's for his new label; the first is the finest, but more important is that after years of poor stewardship Louvin found a capable, supportive record company and a new audience to support him in his twilight years.

Highlights: Ira, The Christian Life, The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea

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Bubbling Under #120. Seventh Tree

2010-01-13T00:33:00.007-06:00

120. Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp (Mute, 2008)

Alison Goldfrapp worked in the mid-’90s as a session vocalist, singing with such electro-centric UK acts as Orbital, Dreadzone, and Tricky. In ’99 she formed a duo of her own in London with another session musician, Will Gregory, and gave it her name. Their 2000 debut, Felt Mountain, is a melange of atmospheric, electronic cabaret. Seventh Tree, their fourth LP, replaces the electroclash of ’03’s Black Cherry and the cold glam-dance crunch of the ’06 Supernature with gentle, warm performances whose muted electronic frameworks are draped with acoustic guitars and strings. The drumless opener Clowns is carried by a softly plucked guitar, and is the most atypical piece here; but, its tone resonates even through the album’s poppiest moments. Alison Goldfrapp’s dynamic soprano covers more stylistic ground here than ever, from the ponderous murmuring of Clowns to the soaring choruses of Little Bird and the assertive pop of Caravan Girl. The lyrics often counterbalance the pastoral moods: Clowns addresses a childish, shallow figure (“What’d ya wanna look like Barbie for?”); the bubbly Happiness mocks a cult’s cynical promises; A&E (the UK equivalent of a US emergency room) concerns a person who waited in vain for a lover’s call only to wake up in hospital, possibly after a pill overdose. Yet the album is no gloomy affair; the songs retain a hopeful glow that matches the late-summer sunlight of the cover art. Goldfrapp’s shape-shifting Aughts output contains many fine moments, but none of the decade’s four albums is as fulfilling and cohesive as Seventh Tree.

Highlights: Caravan Girl, Little Bird, A&E

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