76. Loose Fur

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

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

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

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.

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80. The Forgotten Arm

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.
 
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