So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one In 2006 I turned 34. Being 34 sucked, really, really sucked. The month I turned 34 my employee told me he wanted to work in another department, my boss told me he was leaving for a start-up, and my girlfriend broke up with me. Both my work life and my personal life seemed to be falling apart. It kept on getting worse for a long time. It did not get better until after I turned 35. "Gravity's Gone" is what most of 2006 felt like for me. The album was released in April, more than enough time for it to be ready for my June swoon. At some point in that year it felt like I was never going to hit the bottom, so this song was perfect. What I really love about this song is the tone. It is not sad or depressed. I would say it is resigned and accepting. There is a 'fuck it all if this is the way the world is going to treat me' attitude in this song. I think that is why the song put a smile on my face as everything was happening. I guess that is part of the country music tradition. Listen: Drive-By Truckers >> "Gravity's Gone" |
Friday, October 23, 2009
2006 : 52 "Gravity's Gone" by Drive-By Truckers
Thursday, October 22, 2009
2006 : 51 "A Catalogue of Sounds" (excerpt) by Jakob Ullmann
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 A dry wind of fine dust particles. Hushed. A forgotten scientific textbook. Railroad clack. Motes. Indeterminate position. Upstairs neighbors rearranging furniture. Rust. Long discrete. Dull thump. Carved in wood. Scratch. Long continuous. Dry temp. A barely legible faded graph. A chart with no key. Flattened. Muffled conversation. Suspended solids. Table. Listen closely. Rustle. Rubbing produces static concentration. Smoke on the horizon. Relationships between unique elements. The bones of animals. Silence. Null columns. Erosion of stone and rock through slow processes. Etched in black. Motionless. A rock with blue scrapes. Sub-micron guest particles. The origin of language. Shutter click. A single index structure quickly degrades as time progresses. Location. Chair groan. Footfalls. Smudged stamp in a passport. Grit. Blurry sepia photographs. A bare branch. Relations between discrete objects. Fonts. Pitch tuning an instrument. Seed. A hierarchy of sounds. A joist where two lines meet. Fingers tapping. Silica. Dial tone. Shells and fossils. Minute. Chalk on your hands. An error in data. A broken fan. A thicket of trees. Boredom. Taking a longview. Decaying matters. Friction. Fallen branch. Amplify and multiply. Logos. Map of Clayoquot. Detrius. Resolution. Shadings of dark lantern shadows. Whimper. Creaky floorboards. Dead stars. Paint chips. Distant sigh. Oxidize. Wet bark. Peeling posters on a public wall. Frayed rope. Scribbled in the margins. A spade sliding in soft earth. Hissing desert wind. Hunger pangs. Grain. Curious buzzing. Bleached kite. Condensation. The outline of fog. Grey patterns in chipped metal. Hieroglyphs. Smell of cardamom. Fragments of brown glass. Calculations. Weeds never uprooted. A violin whispering lost memories in your ear. Listen: Jakob Ullmann >> "A Catalogue of Sounds" (excerpt) |
2006 : 50 "The Greatest" by Cat Power
Once I wanted to be the greatest I was never a Cat Power fan before The Greatest. There was something about this album that just captured me. It was one of those albums I listed to for weeks. It was in my car CD player for almost a whole year before I took it out. Now it really sounds like 2006 to me. There a resignation and loss to the song "The Greatest." You wanted to be the Greatest, but you know you will never be the Greatest now. In my head I can see a boxer coming to terms. If you do not want to be the Greatest, you cannot be a boxer; you cannot take that kind of beating without wanting that. Somewhere in me I know all these things to be true. Listen: Cat Power >> "The Greatest" |
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
2006 : 48 "Borneo" by The Fiery Furnaces
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I admit that I do not entirely get the Fiery Furnaces. I feel like a lot of their songs are over my head. There is something there, but I am not getting it. They are the kind of band that reviewers love to gush over because no one can call them on their opinions. They are the kind of band that maybe we would get if we were smarter. Then again, maybe not. I like "Borneo" because it has that feeling of wild adventure, all fit in 4:17. The pace and dissonance make the song hard to follow. I am not sure what it really means, but I am not sure anyone else does either. Listen: Fiery Furnaces >> "Borneo" |
2006 : 47 "Goin' Against Your Mind" by Built To Spill
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When I was younger, certain songs would make me think about ways to shoot a music video for them. That stopped happening once I got out of college. This song makes me want to shoot a music video again. The music of this song makes me see something; makes me think about the song's visual aspect. This song has a drive behind it that really makes my mind go into overdrive. It is a great feeling. If I was younger I would be moshing right now. Listen: Built to Spill >> "Goin' Against Your Mind" |
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
2006 : 45-46 Aught Music Roundtable: Remember That I Love You by Kimya Dawson
 Roundtable Part One: "Loose Lips"So if you wanna burn yourself, remember that I love you I bought Remember That I Love You because in 2006 I was in the middle of my K Records buying frenzy. Yeah, at that time I would buy any album that K Records put out on eMusic. That is who I was for a while. I guess I was coming to the Kimya Dawson party late, but at least I got there before Juno. Remember That I Love You is an amazing, heartfelt album with a lo-fi production that fits very well. Listening to the album, you feel like you are getting to know Kimya Dawson. There is a part of me that wants to draw comparisons Between Kimya Dawson with Daniel Johnson and John Darnielle, but I feel any comparison won't give Kimya her full due. She is making different music than either of them and she should be seen as such. This album has little nuggets of happiness, pain, fear and optimism. Back in 2006 I could not stop talking to people about this album, but I am not sure anyone listened to me. Roundtable Part Two: "I Like Giants"In 2009, I learned every word of this song, as part of a plan to sing it from memory. Unaccompanied. In public. Memorizing it wasn't all that easy: the song has a lot of words. It also has an unusual verse structure, with a lot of irregular repetition that proved tricky. But let's set the diabolical aspects aside and look at what else this song contains: a fable, an autobiographical narrative, a vision of religious practice that is both attainable and open-ended, an injunction against suicide made by the suicidal, and a prescription for how to move in the world meaningfully. When I sang it successfully I got a standing ovation. Listen: Kimya Dawson >> "Loose Lips" | "I Like Giants" |
2006 : 44 "Warmer Climate" by Snow Patrol
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A bonus track off the UK release of Eyes Open which, for me, outshines all of the other songs. The sentiment behind "Warmer Climate" is hardly new or revolutionary but the lyrics are just plain gorgeous, making it feel like something more, something bigger. Maybe it's the warmer climate Listen: Snow Patrol >> "Warmer Climate" |
2006 : 43 "Binary Girl" by Mathematicans
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I do not know what to call this song. I am not sure if it is geek-tronica, nouveau wave, lo-pro-tool-fi, or something else. I know it is enjoyable and makes me want to dance. That is all that is important. Let's have some fun and play this song again. Listen: Mathematicians >> "Binary Girl" |
Monday, October 19, 2009
2006 : 42 "Get Lonely" by The Mountain Goats
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I am not sure what else there is to say about the Mountain Goats. They are one of the best acts of the decade. Their songs are deep, dark, expensive, narrative and more than I ever expect. I feel like they have passed me somewhere and it is no use for me to try to keep up. I just listen and try to learn something. There is more there than I can say. Listen: The Mountain Goats >> "Get Lonely" |
2006 : 41 "Once Again" by Girl Talk
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I hesitate to say that 2006 was the year that mash-ups "grew up," because a youthful insouciance—even a brattiness—is really central to a good mash-up. It's not a form that can really be said to "mature." But 2006 was the year, it seems to me, that a few people began to realize that if they wanted to stand out they were going to need to do more than just line up a vocal track with a backing track that kinda fit with it in some kinda funny way. They were going to need to do much more. They were going to need to take it to a whole new level. Of the people who tried to complexify the form, the most impressive, for my money, was DJ Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, whose average track combines not two but dozens of culture's most memorable hooks, utterances and incantations. I wouldn't ever have thought that I'd buy an entire album of mash-ups, but Gillis' Night Ripper (2006) provides a pleasure-yield so concentrated that it easily qualifies as one of my favorites of the decade. Listen: Girl Talk >> "Once Again" |
Sunday, October 18, 2009
2006 : 40 "Notion" by Karl Blau
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Sometimes I think I love K Records bands because I mostly have them to myself. If I mention the name Karl Blau to most the people I know, they think I am talking about someone I work with. They have no idea I am talking about a musician I really like. No one else in my life has ever mentioned the Beneath Waves album. I am not afraid of other people finding out about Karl Blau, but I just think they never will. Listen: Karl Blau >> "Notion" |
2006 : 39 "Tall Green Grass" by Cory Branan
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One of the things I love most about "Tall Green Grass" is the story that Cory tells when he plays the song live. A friend passed the live recording on to me about the same time that I got the album, so to me the story is as much a part of the song as the lyrics. The song feels like summer, those kind of wasted summer days that aren't wasted at all because doing nothing and lying about in fields with your friends is the best way to spend a summer day. Warm molasses midnight on a Mississippi star Listen: Cory Branan >> "Tall Green Grass" | "Tall Green Grass [Live]" |
2006 : 37-38 Two tracks by Mates of State
"Fraud in the 80's"See the glow up above Every even year in the 2000's I took a trip to Portland. Even though I only lived there for one year, it is still one of my favorite places to go. It is a great place to get away from the life I am living for a few days. Because of all Portland's great record shops, of course I would always visit one while I was up there, and I would buy an album that had just come out. In 2006 the album was Mates of State's Bring It Back. I took the title as a sign that I should buy the album. I could not have been more lucky. It is one of my favorite albums of this decade. I love angry music. Not music that is full of rage, but rather the anger of "Oh yeah? Well, I'll show you." The kind of anger that makes athletes want to win. "Fraud in the 80's" has that kind of anger. You can hear it in the keyboards, the drums, and singing. It is the kind of anger that makes me want to turn the stereo all the way up and speed on the freeway. "Like U Crazy"I saw Mates of State play as the first act before Death Cab For Cutie and Spoon. The last song they played was "Like U Crazy." When they play it live they use a section of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" as the bridge. When I heard it, I thought that it was even better than Cat Power playing "Crazy" as an encore. I thought it was a nice way to take a song that just came out and add it to their song that just came out. Somehow this made the song even better. Listen: Mates of State >> "Fraud In The 80s" | "Like U Crazy" |
Saturday, October 17, 2009
2006 : 36 "We Love You Michael Gira" by Ben Frost
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I don't know anything about Ben Frost that can't be found in his Wikipedia entry, which isn't much. His 2006 album, Theory of Machines, is one of the most unabashedly beautiful things I've heard in a long time. This track has a regrettable title, but I'm willing to let that slide. Listen: Ben Frost >> "We Love You Michael Gira" |
2006 : 35 "Don't Fade On Me" by Magnolia Electric Co.
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When someone breaks up with you, every song is a breakup song. You hear breakup songs every time music comes on. Even songs you might not have seen as breakup songs at other times are breakup songs now. It is even better if the song has some nice Country/Blues guitar riffs. A song like this gets stuck in the moment. Even when you get over the breakup the song is still a breakup song. It is one of those things you just need to leave in the past. Listen: Magnolia Electric Co >> "Don't Fade On Me" |
2006 : 34 "Book of Baby Names" by Bound Stems
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She says my name. I say, "Julia." (knock) She understands? (enter) I say, "Sorry, Stacy." I say, "Just kidding, Tina." I say, "All right, Margaret." (wind through party) I say, "Come on, Wendy." (aside) How long can I go without saying her name? How long before I run out? I enjoy this this song for some strange reason. There is a story here, but not really a story. It is a small clip of an interaction between two people. It is enough to make me want me to know more, but there is no more to know. There is something amazing in that. She doesn't know how recently I've been reading a book of baby names. Listen: Bound Stems >> "Book of Baby Names" |
Friday, October 16, 2009
2006 : 33 "(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?" by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
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With quite a few of my selections for this project, I've written about how some female singers can sound strong and fragile at the same time. Mark Lanegan does that perfectly on this track. He and Campbell sound amazing together on this disc, but I almost wish that this particular song was a solo for him. I'm not saying I love you, I won't say I'll be true, There are very few songs that can be evocations of both masculinity, insecurity, and sensitivity. Lanegan sounds tough, but there's much more being painfully pushed down below the surface. Jeremy wrote about The National expressing masculinity in the 21st century on the track "All the Wine." While these are two vastly different songs, I think that "Come Walk With Me" is another chapter in intelligent musical looks at what it means to be a man, fraught with complexities and a myriad of emotions. Listen: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan >> "(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?" |
2006 : 32 "People Get Ready [Live at Lollapalooza 2006]" by The Frames
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I know that live album banter has been done to death. I know that it has been played out to the end. I just the love version of this song. I love the way he asks the audience to sing along, the reference to the Bible, and how he calls his mother during the song. Some times you just need to give in to that indulgence. Listen: The Frames >> "People Get Ready" |
2006 : 31 "Georgia...Bush" by DJ Drama and Lil Wayne
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I still have a difficult time writing or even thinking coherently about Hurricane Katrina and its impact. I remember spending hours online in 2005, reading the news reports, my sensation of horror growing wider and deeper as the disaster unfolded. I strained to get a mental handle on the full scope of it, but never quite managed, certainly not enough to develop anything meaningful to say. Fortunately, other people persevered where I quailed, and we now have our share of relevant statements on Katrina. If I were going to pick one song that "says something" lasting about the disaster, I'd choose Lil Wayne's "Georgia...Bush," a track that serves as quality evidence of Chuck D's famous assertion that hip-hop is the "CNN of Black America." In just under four minutes, Wayne discusses governmental incompetence at both the national and local levels, logistical difficulties for returning residents, conspiracy theories about the levees, and 1965’s Hurricane Benson. Wayne's political invective is satisfyingly inflammatory, but ultimately his verses provide no catharsis: he lingers on images of misery and death, leaving a lasting sensation only of irreperable harm, a thing that his anger—and ours—can't erase. Listen: DJ Drama and Lil Wayne >> "Georgia...Bush" |
Thursday, October 15, 2009
2006 : 30 "Crazy Logic" by Arty Fufkin
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I was never a huge mash-up fan. Most them just sound like clever novelties and not something that I want to listen to over and over again. I find most of them unlistenable after two or three times. This one, though, is the exception. "Crazy" and "The Logical Song" together feels like a stroke of genius. There is just something so perfect with adding these songs together. Listen: Arty Fufkin >> "Crazy Logic" |
