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When Let It Be... Naked came out my friends talked about where it fit into the history of the Beatles. I was, and still am, of the mind that it is outside the canon of the Beatles' career. As much as people say that this is what the Beatles wanted at the time, you cannot know that is true. They let Phil Spector take control of producing the album and Let It Be was the result. On the Let It Be... Naked side of the argument, my friends say that it is truer to what the Beatles wanted. My problem is that too much time has passed. The Beatles might say they remember what they wanted, but as years go by, how can they be truthful? The passage of time is meaningful when it comes to art. I love the Let It Be... Naked album, but is is still outside the Beatles' career for me. It is like a classic movie re-edited because that the director did not get the final cut, but that is still secondary to the original release. It does not mean I did not enjoy having Let It Be... Naked all these years later. Listen: The Beatles >> "Across The Universe" |
Friday, August 21, 2009
2003 : 48 "Across The Universe [Naked Version]" by The Beatles
2003 : 47 "Best Friend" by Rhythm & Sound w/ Love Joy
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My love of funky Germans knows no bounds. From 1993 to 1995, Berlin dance music producers Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, operating as Basic Channel, took the crystalline edges of techno and transformed them to liquid and vapors, obscuring the beat matrix until it was little more than a retinal afterimage. The sound was at once distant and warm as bath water, the throbbing comedown after the endless Friday night of Detroit/Berlin dance floor motivating. There was a third city in the mix: Kingston, Jamaica. Oswald and Ernestus's post-BC work is a steady progression away from the techno and deeper into dub. As Rhythm & Sound, they turned down the BPMs and brought together an all-star team of dance hall artists to make Rhythm & Sound w/the Artists. Rather than overwhelm with their signature abstractions, R&S lay back, giving wide berth to a series of stand out vocal performances from legendary Jamaican artists. Check out the low smolder from Love Joy on "Best Friend." In addition to the few R&S records, they have reissued several titles from the American reggae label Wackies. These reissues are a treasure trove of sides that were formerly only available to obsessed and thick-walleted collectors. If you like deep, sprawling dub and stony dancehall, seek out these discs. Listen: Rhythm & Sound w/ Love Joy >> "Best Friend" |
Thursday, August 20, 2009
2003 : 46 "The Soldiering Life" by The Decemberists
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Jeremy and I have a debate about the Decemberists. He has told me that he finds the Decemberists to be to pretentious—and he is a man with a high threshold for pretentiousness. He says that he cannot stand any Decemberists song that has a subject matter pre-1960. I am on the other side from this. I am not listening to a whole bunch of bands who are singing about history all the time. Clearly there is a space for two or three bands that are making music that likes to remind you of the past. If this was a whole musical genre I might have a different feeling. I cannot think of another indie-pop song that is about being a World War I infantry man in the trenches. There not many bands I think can pull off a song like this. Not only it the topic interesting, but the lyrics are amazing. There is so much in the lyrics that I often have a different feeling what this song is about. I think some of that pretentiousness makes the song better.
Listen: The Decemberists >> "The Soldiering Life" |
2003 : 44-45 Two tracks from The Civil War by Matmos
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So around the time this blog first turned its attention to 2003, my sometimes-collaborator Laura Janine Mintz and I exchanged a few e-mails about doing a joint write-up on Matmos' The Civil War. We set up a collaborative Google document into which to post various fragments of commentary, with the idea that we'd somehow shape it into a finished product somewhere down the line. We never quite managed to finish this. A bit of a shame, really: it would have reflected nicely upon the record, which, made by partners / lovers M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, is as fine a piece of harmonious musical collaboration as this decade has to offer. Or is it? The album intially seems like an extended comment on life in contemporary polarized America—due in part to its sonic emphasis on militaristic sounds such as marches (listen, for example, to the album's opener, "Regicide") and due in part to the timing of its release (three years into the Bush presidency). But then you have Daniel himself claiming, in The Wire, that the album was at least partially inspired by "the domestic civil war between us as boyfriends and bandmates." So perhaps the creative dysfunction that de-engineered our fledgling roundtable was the more appropriate homage? Entropy saluting entropy? This is, after all, a band who has acknowledged a criticism that "all our songs are essentially the same: they start out with an orderly grid or set of patterns and then they fall apart and unravel." But The Civil War builds things back up as much as it tears them down. Look, for instance, at "Reconstruction," which begins with "a noisy, chaotic section" and then resolves into "a very tranquil, melodic end." I include it here not only to make a point about creative processes but also to do justice to a statement by Laura, salvaged from our broken-down notes, where she says "This album is one of the best examples of an albumy album that I can think of. Sure, you can listen to one track, but you can't understand any of them without listening to all of them, and all hang together superbly without really sounding very much alike, apart from the endless beat of the march." —Jeremy Bushnell (and Laura Janine Mintz) Listen: Matmos >> "Regicide" | "Reconstruction" |
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
2003 : 43 "Retrieval of You" by The Minus 5
I love music about music. For some reason it is usually people singing about being on the bottom of that exchange. It might be easy to sing about being a failure, has-been, or never-will-be. This decade has a whole bunch of good examples of music about music. What is interesting about this song is how the music is light and upbeat, but the lyrics are dark and ominous. The revenge lyrics are more fitting for heavy metal than they are for indie pop.
Listen: The Minus 5 >> "Retrieval of You" |
2003 : 42 "We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Shins (covering The Postal Service)
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I sure do love a cheery-sounding little ditty about a nuclear apocalypse. I prefer this version to the original precisely because of the incongruous cheeriness. Listen: The Shins >> "We Will Become Silhouettes" |
2003 : 41 "Let A Good Thing Go" by Gemma Hayes
When you are lonely, some songs appeal to you because they remind you of that loneliness. Those are the songs you commiserate with. "Let A Good Thing Go" is one of those songs for me. It hits a note on the xylophone of my soul, hard and true. This song vibrates through me, reminding me of the lonely days of 2003. It is not where I am, but the song is still strong enough to bring up those memories. Listen: Gemma Hayes >> "Let A Good Thing Go" |
Monday, August 17, 2009
2003 : 39 "Freetime" by Kenna
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I used to work in a retail store which received frequent deliveries of new and promotional albums from Sony. Kenna's album New Sacred Cow was one of these. We played it in the store a few times, and while no one else had much of an opinion on it, I was hooked. Not to be confused with Keane, Kenna is (I recently found out) an Ethiopian-American artist who opened for Dave Gahan in 2003. This track is synthpop which is so heavy on the pop that it's almost a bubblegum Depeche Mode; Kenna's voice is heartfelt, although the lyrics are not terrible deep. I found it addictive. It is the shiny, fruit-flavored lip gloss of music. Kenna, as Wikipedia informed me years later, was dropped from Sony without little fanfare and never really found a niche. It's a shame. This song is the perfect soundtrack for all your activities which call for a whole lot of style and not a great deal of substance. Listen: Kenna >> "Freetime" |
2003 : 38 "Handshake Drugs" by Wilco
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I saw Jeff Tweedy do a solo concert back in 2005. It was amazing when he played this song. It really changed the whole tone of the concert, at least for a few songs. The audience sang along with him, almost in a show of support. It felt like a moment of courage. He was willing to say something about himself and expose himself to the audience. We returned that courage with love and support. Before the song he said something about having problems. The song feels personal and open. I have no idea if it is or not. At the time I felt that putting this song out on an EP (More Like The Moon) was a way to say something to the Wilco fans, the people who really cared. Listen: Wilco >> "Handshake Drugs" |
Sunday, August 16, 2009
2003 : 37 "I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life" by Manitoba
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Here's how I imagine the Manitoba album Up In Flames came about: Kieran Hebden, a vinyl-collecting nerd, secludes himself in his bedroom with a trove of purloined break-beats which he proceeds to integrate into new sonic constructions, full of ornament and embellishment. To this task, he brings an omnivorous sensibility, raiding, in approximately equal measure, the fire energy of 60s jazz, the blasted-out, disorienting energy of late-80s-early-90s shoegazer rock, and the twentieth-century avant-garde love of sound for its own sake. He emerges with ten tracks that resemble Cornell boxes: idiosyncratic, meticulously built, self-contained, slightly airless yet weirdly vast. It's a deeply cerebral project, yet, like the best hermetic projects, it has, as its end, the aim of discovering something that is beautiful, blissed-out, and ecstatic. Listen: Manitoba >> "I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life" |
2003 : 36 "Farewell Transmission" by Songs: Ohia
Long dark blues I am not sure what I can say about Jason Molina, Songs: Ohia, and Magnolia Electric Co. I love that the song "Farewell Transmission" is on the last Songs: Ohia album. I think it is a great statement to make as an artist. It is a great song to start off an album with. With that said: all of the members of Songs: Ohia went on to be members of Magnolia Electric Co., so I am not sure that this was much of a final album. Yes, Magnolia Electric Co. went a different musical direction than Songs: Ohia, but that does not mean the name needed to change. I love that this song is over seven minutes long and feels epic. I can forget that I am listening to the same song. The vocals, guitar and drums are just straight head. I think it pulls on that line between alt.country and rock. It is one of those songs I keep going back to. Listen: Songs: Ohia >> "Farewell Transmission" |
2003 : 34-35
Aught Music Roundtable: Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project by Mirah and Ginger Takahashi
Roundtable Part One: "While We Have The Sun"This wonderful little album is valuable for many reasons, but not least because it functions as a documentation of a particular creative process. As explained in the liner notes:
One month is about a perfect chunk of time to complete a humble, human-scale creative project, and many of the songs on this album are essentially commenting on what it feels like to live a humble, human-scale, creative life. This crystallizes memorably on "While We Have The Sun," a tender meditation upon life and death:
Roundtable Part Two: "Oh! September"This is the right time of year for this song. September is coming and the summer is ending. This song makes me think of the last few weeks before school starts. Those weeks when you try to squeeze all you can before you need to go back to reality. Between the bass line, the horn blare and the clapping, you would not be able to keep me off the dance floor with this song. I love any song that can put a smile on my face right away. No matter how I am feeling, this song puts me in a better mood. Bring on the carefree days when we still can.
Listen: Mirah & Ginger Takahashi >> "While We Have The Sun" | "Oh! September" |
Saturday, August 15, 2009
2003 : 33 "Plea from a Cat Named Virtue" by The Weakerthans
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A song sung from the perspective of a cat who is worried about its owner's depression. Brilliant idea, brilliant lyrics, really engaging song.
Listen: The Weakerthans >> "Plea from a Cat Named Virtue" |
Friday, August 14, 2009
2003 : 32 "Dying in Stereo" by Northern State
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There is something about this Northern State album. I listened to it over and over again. I got it right before a road trip I took. I just could not stop listening to it. It was like there was a code for me to break. It was a strange combo of lo-fi hip-hop, conscious rap, and post-riotgrrrl rock. I am not sure how many rap albums can I use the term feminist with a straight face. One of the things makes Dying In Stereo interesting is that lacks the overproduced sickness that is all over '00 hip-hop. The only disappointment is that their later albums lack what makes this album so special. Listen: Northern State >> "Dying In Stereo" |
2003 : 31 "When U Love Somebody" by The Fruit Bats
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This love song contains four lines, which is really all you need in a song that sounds like summer. This jangly love-mad song makes everything but the idea of love disappear—it is a bright, light feeling of the present, recalling a brief memory "on the bus" to fix the flighty sense of desiring and then the flood of feeling and music washes everything else away with it. It leaves only this joy of love in the movement of the music. You want to say more, but—"bite your tongue"—it needs no more, more would break the spell. Listen: The Fruit Bats >> "When U Love Somebody" |
Thursday, August 13, 2009
2003 : 30 "Hearts of Oak" by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
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Ted Leo and the Pharmacists was one of those acts that everyone was talking about before I ever heard them. When I say "everyone" in 2003, I mean everyone on Live Journal and the blogs I was reading at the time. There was so much blog hype about the Hearts of Oak album, I thought it could not be as good as everyone said. It was not what everyone said it was: it was better. It has what all my favorite rock acts of this decade have: a straight-ahead approach to music, just enough production, and a little sense of humor. Ted Leo is proof to me that there always going to be a new rock act that will catch my attention. As often as I think there is no new rock left, there is always a little more. That is reason enough to listen to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Listen: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists >> "Hearts of Oak" |
2003 : 29 "Cathnor" by Keith Rowe and John Tilbury
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One of the pleasures of Keith Rowe and John Tilbury's Duos for Doris is that we're invited to understand the double-album (comprised of three long, fully-improvised duets) through the situation surrounding its recording. The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote that the universe is composed of stories, not atoms. I buy it. Or, at least, I buy that narrative-making is pretty high in the hierarchy of cognitive devices that make up subjectivity. But narrative-making is a double-edged sword for me when it comes to music appreciation. In my experience, the impulse to frame through story is irrepressible and automatic—like a Netflix pop-up. And sometimes it's almost as irritating as a pop-up. For instance, while I'm listening to my favorite recording of Beethoven's 9th—conducted by Furtwängler and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic during WWII—Nazis often crop up in my head. And it isn’t just generic Nazis—whatever those might be—it's usually baby-faced Nazi soldiers sitting in the audience in full regalia, scared straight by the paranoia & tenderness of the 4th movement, weeping at the full weight of their sins. Then one begins to slide his armband off involuntarily. And so on. Can I just get back to the music please??? But with Duos for Doris, framing the soundscape through narrative is encouraged as a way of getting closer to it; given my habits of mind, this pleases me immensely! The album is dedicated to John Tilbury's 96-year-old mother Doris, who, according to the inscription on the album cover, passed away two days before the recording session. Consequently, hearing Tilbury's Feldman-esque piano improvisation as an attempt to address his feelings on the passing of his mother, and honor her in the process, is better than acceptable—it's probably expected. The album is called Duos for Doris after all. Additionally, Keith Rowe (guitar/electronics) makes it clear in the album notes that his sense of musical space during the session was highly influenced by Doris' passing and his close relationship with John. So, the framing story is the passing of Doris and the musicians’ feelings about it. Understood in that context, it's quite moving to me how unsentimental Duos for Doris is. The album could be kitschy and fond; the story could be "devoted son expresses feelings for dear sweet mum," or "I’ll see you soon in the glorious dove-white kingdom of heaven." Instead, Tilbury and Rowe honor Doris with probing, pained, slowly unfolding pieces that come across as honest explorations of fundamentally perplexing and new terrain. What is this like? What do we see here? Feel here so soon after she left us? Of course, it's Tilbury's mother that died, and knowing that transforms his clean touch, in places, into a form of contact with Doris. It also transforms Rowe's detached wintry sheets of static into a kind of sophisticated caress. He keeps his distance, providing support by giving Tilbury the space he needs. And Tilbury takes it—there are long stretches of nearly quiet, meditative space on this double-album. Reviewers like David Toop and Brian Olewnick see overwhelming restraint in these stretches. I do hear restraint in them, a holding back, but mostly I hear their glacial tempo and spareness differently, more as a kind of intense, watchful, carefulness born of exploration in an emotional landscape that is shockingly new to Tilbury and Rowe, musicians who have played together since 1965 (since 1981 in the avant-garde ensemble AMM). They know each other so well... and yet here Tilbury and Rowe find themselves in a new place, one of anger and loss, heat and tremendous hollowness, Doris and John, Keith and John, excitement at the newness of it, sadness at the newness of it, and relief that they’re here together. This album is heartfelt and honest and, yes, a little bit strange—in the way all good eulogies are. It brings loss alive. The excerpt here is from "Cathnor," the first piece on Duos for Doris. Listen: Keith Rowe and John Tilbury >> "Cathnor (excerpt)" |
2003 : 28 "Brand New Colony" by The Postal Service
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I love how this song starts. It conveys the feeling of an eight-bit video game sound effect. I know that sound is trying to manipulate me and my love for eight-bit video games. I still love that they decided to start the song that way. This is one of those songs that captures my attention no matter where I hear it. It has the kind of feeling of joy that makes music special. The Postal Service album Give Up is my favorite album of this decade. I might say that a few times during this project, but I cannot say there is an album that is better. For that reason I would like to say Death Cab for Cutie is the Band of the Decade. I know this is a strange claim about a side project, but listen. Ben Gibbard is half of the Postal Service. Chris Walla produced a number of acts including the Decemberists and Tegan & Sara. That is a pretty far reach. This is one of those albums that make my eyes light up when I talk about it. It is perfect in the way that something with no follow up can be perfect. I doubt there will every be another Postal Service album that will ruin how I think of it. Listen: The Postal Service >> "Brand New Colony" |
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
2003 : 27 "Invisible" by Fischerspooner
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The very first time I heard the jet sample that kicks off the first track on this album I fell in love with it. It was one of those albums that for whatever reason struck me in such a way so that I will always remember where I was when I first heard it. In this particular case I happened to be visiting with a good old friend out in Arizona. He put the album in his car's CD player and we started to drive around Phoenix. Since that time I have listened to this album hundreds of times. I just love the place this album takes me and the state it puts my head in. I find this album really easy to program to: I believe it has something to do with the pulsing synth bass and melody lines as well as the uniquely artificial sounding percussion. The vocal effect treatment lends an ethereal or other-worldly quality to the imaginative lyrics and I like that many tracks feature both male and female leads. Overall I find that the sound design reminds me of the (progressive?) electronic music from the late 80s and early 90s. There is definitely a video-game-like quality to a lot of the bass lines and melody lines as well as a good bit of dance and disco too. All of the tracks on this album are very good so I suggest listening to one of my favorites— "Invisible" —which is representative of their sound. Listen: Fischerspooner >> "Invisible" |
2003 : 26 "Never Did No Wanderin'" by The Folksmen
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The greatest moments of musical parody during my lifetime have been performed by one band. I do not care if you call them Spinal Tap or The Folksmen, they know how to make fun of a genre like no one else. They hit another home run in the movie A Mighty Wind. This song is great because it is a road song about having never traveled. It really goes out on one of the big topics in folk music. Every folk musician has a tramp song; it is a key part of the genre. The Folksmen say they "Never Did No Wanderin'" and ask why so many folk acts like to claim to be hobos. It is a brilliant idea. Listen: The Folksmen >> "Never Did No Wanderin'" |
