Albums That I Own

Moving day!

2010-06-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

The site's moved over to my personal server, www.rossgianfortune.com/albums. Please adjust your browser accordingly.

The Dropper

2010-05-29T01:47:00.000-07:00

Band: Medeski Martin & Wood
Album: The Dropper
Best song: The title track.
Worst song: I don't know enough about this record to make this distinction.

Today is the second anniversary of the saddest day of my life. It goes without saying that May has now become a dreaded month; Memorial Day is not the celebrated holiday I love anymore.

Losing a close friend is something that's outstandingly hard to comprehend; close friendships are defined in a way that few others are. Sure, mother/child relationships are something, but they generally have a definition. Romantic relationships can span many things, but they certainly work a certain way, definitions or not.

But, close friends all occupy different spaces. I tell Friend A different things than I may tell Friend B. My closest friend is someone I don't talk to very often; my favorite person in the world (a different friend) is someone I've not spoken to in about a year (we've texted, e-mailed, etc.). My closest friend here in DC is someone with which I have a complicated relationship, yet I still tell her more than nearly anyone else. I have another friend with whom I mainly talk about poop. But, I hardly talk to these people about baseball.

Which is to say that I have other friends for that. I have a friend who is a Philadelphia fan and he's become one of my goto people to talk baseball with. I don't mind talking Phillies; the Sox aren't much of a team right now. I have another friend with whom I talk about hockey. I have another friend here with whom I talk about our college friends. I have friends with whom I talk about our softball team or friends with whom I talk about the journalism industry or whatever. I have friends from HS with whom I talk about HS people (mostly, we bitch about Julia Allison, famous for being famous).

Taft was my closest friend and I tended to talk to him about all these things.

---

Taft and I entered graduate school in the same semester, the fall of 2007. It was a few months after our excellent trip to Wyoming to see our friend Kara get married. That trip is one of the fondest in an all-too-short lifetime of fond memories. We spent a lot of that trip talking about school, my Rolling Stone project and the general state of our lives.

Nevertheless, Taft moved out to Syracuse to do grad school while I did mine part time. This made for my calling him nearly every week on my drive home from school. In it, we talked about my frustrations with school and work, his excitement and passion for his grad school. We talked about the iPhone and the ability to work on the go. We talked about the girls who loved him in grad school -- my romantic advice to him when he left for school was this: "You'll have nothing to worry about, as humor is the currency in your educational pursuits." I was, to toot my own horn, correct.

This was an extentsion of our hundreds of conversations we had over the years, post-college, over Google Talk. I have them all archived and started rereading them a few months after Taft passed away. It's striking his level of caring, his concern about me, his concern about my friends. His intelligence shines through; a quick wit even in the strangest of media ("Mormons: having their repressed sexual desires come out in ways we never thought imaginable.").

And we talked about everything. I miss that so very much.

---

I have so many memories of Taft, but it's hard to pin one down. Cooperstown and the hubris we both had at the speedpitch tracking thing (I beat him by, I think one MPH). The goofy impressions of his ex-roommate from Taiwan ("Hey Tehft. I love you."). The Harry Caray voice. The nicknames we gave his ex-girlfriends. The nickname I gave him (Hurricane Taft). The trips to Lawrence and Kansas City in college. Playing tennis ball baseball on the lawns in college. High school radio. College radio. Goofing around at promo our junior year.

But, mostly, I miss talking to him.

---

For Taft's memorial service, I was partially in charge of putting together a mix of songs to play as everyone left the church. Taft was a huge jazz fan -- he was the jazz director at our college station under my administration -- and Medeski, Martin and Wood was one of his favorites. I put a song from this album on there; I don't know enough about MMW to know if it was a great song. I do know it's one that Taft liked. "The Dropper" is one that makes me cry whenever I hear it, despite it's pronounced peppy tone.

It's a great album. Taft was a great, great man, taken from us far too soon.

Five Man Acoustical Jam

2010-05-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Band: Tesla
Album: Five Man Acoustical Jam
Best song: No idea. I guess "We Can Work It Out" isn't a total disaster, but it's pretty bad. "Signs" was a hit, for what that's worth.
Worst song: Gah. This album is a mess.

Technically, this isn't an album that I own, but rather an album that I borrowed. Thanks to the good folks at the Prince George's County Library System, I took Five Man Acoustical Jam out from the library, largely on the success of the band's minor success in its cover of "Signs." So, let's be clear: I don't own this album.

Indeed, Five Man Acoustical Jam features four covers: "Signs," the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out," the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lodi." "Lodi" fits because Tesla shares a regional origin with CCR; both bands are from Northern California.

---

"Signs" is the overwhelming thing to remember from the record. Everyone knows the chorus, but the verses from the song are terrfyingly shitty. Released in 1971 by the Five Man Electrical Band, here's verse no. 1:

And the sign says "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I put my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine outstanding young man, I think you'll do
So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that, huh, me working for you."

You have got to be fucking kidding me. That sounds like it was written by someone who writes scripts for porno (The secretary! She's not pretty! Then she takes off her glasses! Bang! Hot!). And we're supposed to think that "long-haired freaky" is some sort of descriptor? Jesus.

It gets worse from there, with the lyrics covering the sign "Anybody caught trespassing will be shot on sight," with Tesla trying to bloviate about God being unhappy with that, all the way to the collection plate at a church. What a hot, steaming mess.

Conclusion: "Signs" is a crappy song. Do not enter.

A Tramp Shining

2010-05-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Band: Richard Harris
Album: A Tramp Shining
Best song: "MacArthur Park" is both the greatest and worst song.
Worst song: See above.

As evidenced by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson, actors-turned-singers need to have some grounding in musical theater to successfully make the transition to just singer. Richard Harris's background in musicals make him someone who could phrase songs properly. The Irish actor's turn in Camelot a year before made him perfect to intone songwriter Jimmy Webb's songs.

---

I should probably say something here about Webb. Like a Burt Bachrach for the middle of the country, Webb's compositions have a stateliness about them without delving into the crooning audacity of Bachrach's stuff. Harris' voice is not Glenn Campbell's; he can't handle the Webb arrangements as well as Campbell did.

Still, Webb's outstandingly talented as a songwriter. Like much of the late 60s AM-radio composers, he dots nearly everyting with swirling strings and flowery, romantic lyrics. "Name of My Sorrow" tells the tale of, well, a breakup. Well, a bunch of breakups. It's really over-the-top, but so is all of Webb's work.

---

Which brings me to the single most ridiculous song ever written. "MacArthur Park" is wondrous in its grandiosity, a full seven and a half minutes of strangeness. The song is ostensibly about love, but you'd be hard-pressed to figure that out, considering the chorus:

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

A cake. In the rain. Named after a public park in Los Angeles. It's raining. He's crying. He can't bake it again.

There are some fantastic songs about dessert. "Lollipop". "Sugar Sugar". "Savoy Truffle" is fucking brilliant.

But, man, "MacArthur Park" takes the proverbial cake as the best song about a pastry. For one, the unabashed sincerity with which Harris intones the record. It would be easy to camp up the "cake out in the rain" portion, but Harris' general lack of irony makes it such that the line seems anything but joking.

Similarly, the song's arrangement is patently insane. It starts with a harpischord and ends with what appears to sound like a full orchestra crescendoing around Harris' full-throated, sustained "Oh no!!!!"

Again, he's talking about a green-iced cake. In the rain.

---

Being that the Simpsons is the cultural touchtone of my generation (Insect overlords and such), one of the great references to the song is the name of Troy McClure's agent in the sublime "A Fish Called Selma." Jeff Goldblum's character, of course, is named MacArthur Parker.

In so many ways, that episode is so perfect because of the combination of reverence and mocking it has with regards to the classic film Planet of the Apes. The musical within the episode is amazing -- some have called it the highlight of the series -- and it highlights some of the insane aspects of the film. POTA is one of my favorite movies of all time partially because of this split; it's patently ridiculous to use apes as an allegory to human race. Moreover, it's wildly dated, with crazy jungle drums as the soundtrack and a young -- and decidedly hirsute -- Charlton Heston as the human. It's so very different than what we are used to now.

Now we use vampires.

---

Not surprisingly, "MacArthur Park" has been called one of the worst songs of all time. I do not agree.

Anywhere I Lay My Head

2010-05-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Band: Scarlett Johansson
Album: Anywhere I Lay My Head
Best song: "Town with No Cheer" is admirable
Worst song: "Song for Jo" is terrible.

Mitch Hedberg was an outstanding comedian, a stoner-generation's Steven Wright. One of my best jokes was about how he'd been asked to write a screenplay by some Hollywood folks because they'd seen his standup act. He then compared it to a chef: "You're a good cook, but can you farm?"

At some point, as a society, we'll stop caring when famous people consider themselves multi-talented. Singers try to act, athletes try to sing, authors play in rock bands, the list goes on and on. This is not to say that they can't multitask, mostly because many famous people skills end up working well for other famous people jobs. Case in point: our 40th president was an actor of some renown before he became a politician.

(Though, admittedly, politics is different than governing. Reagan was a masterful politician and was, uh, questionable as someone who actually, you know, governs and makes decisions.)

Nevertheless, models work as actors because we generally want our actors to look nice (Paul Giamatti aside). And, as long as the material isn't anything to be truly explored, any pretty can stand around and look wistful. And those spawned from musical theater, almost undoubtedly can sing. I have no doubt Nathan Lane could probably put out a decent album of standards.

---

In fact, "looking good" v. "singing" is a better analogy than anything involving acting. Either you look good or you don't. Either you can sing or you can't. While one can refine one's skill set, no amount of hard work (or stylists, in the case of looks) can make a tone-deaf (or ugly) person into a singer with chops (or a model). You can teach great-looking people how to act (bestill my heart... Penelope Cruz), but you can hardly make Paul Giamatti look good.

Which brings us to Scarlett Johansson. She's a beauty, no doubt, but she's hardly a singer. She tries and tries and tries. I imagine she's hired voice coaches. Anywhere I Lay My Head is -- save for one song -- all Tom Waits covers. Good songs. David Bowie helps with backing vocals. I have no doubt she got some great arrangers to rearrage Waits' songs. She most certainly had an autotuner, using it to its original purpose (to make off-key singers go on key).

But, her voice is pretty mediocre. It has no texture whatsoever. Her smokey, sexy low voice thing works when she talks but it gets real old real fast on the record. "Fannin' Street," for example is a dirge. She can hardly hold the tinkly melody of "I Wish I Was in New Orleans." It's not pretty, though, she clearly is.

In a way, it's like that Susan Boyle woman. She's got a lovely voice, but isn't pretty. It's not just that she needed a makeover. It's that she's unattractive. That's OK; a lot of people are unattractive (myself included). That's OK. But, she's superlatively skilled and sold a lot of records because her voice is beautiful and powerful.

You can't make someone a good singer, just as you can't make someone pretty. God help us when Ms. Johansson releases her next album. Allegedly, she's going to write all the songs on it. Yet another skill she doesn't have.

Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future

2010-05-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

Band: The Bird and the Bee
Album: Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
Best song: I'm kind of a sucker for tributes to, say, David Lee Roth ("Diamond Dave"). The title (?) track, "Ray Gun" is pretty nice, albeit a cheap Cardigans ripoff in some ways. "Birthday" sounds album like an Asian pop song, in a good way. "Fanfare" is awesome.
Worst song: "My Love" is just OK.

OK, so I've been swamped at work the last couple of weeks, so to keep on a normal publishing schedule, I've written something of a review. It's in haiku form. Double haiku, actually.

Voice is supple
Keyboards get tired quick
Lots of hand claps.

Los Angeles smells
This album shines despite
Derivative sound.

The Dark Side of the Moon

2010-04-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Band: The Flaming Lips (with Stardeth and White Dwarfs)
Album: The Dark Side of the Moon
Best song: Let me say that I don't think the album is really all that good, but rather kind of daring. The version of "Money," while not necessarily to my liking, is a really intersting update. That's probably the best song on the record.
Worst song: Hmmm. "Eclipse" isn't 1/10 as good as the original and is pretty boring.

I love the Flaming Lips. The single greatest rock and roll show I've ever seen is the Lips on the first leg of the Soft Bulletin tour in Columbia, Mo. in 2000. It was before the band had started playing arenas. Soft Bulletin had broken, but the band hadn't created the arena-show side of it; instead, Wayne & Co. simply had a projector, a bunch of puppets and a fuckload of moxie. It was awesome.

To say that the Lips have become bloated in some way would be to miss the point. This was a band that created Zaireeka in 1997; a four-disc set meant to be all played at once, in four different stereos. The Flaming Lips are not your parents' psychedelia.

Which, I guess, means it makes sense that the Lips would try and cover the greatest album in the history of music, the great turning point in music's lifeline. More than Sgt. Peppers, more than Tommy, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon proved that music could have an introspective, interesting, conceptual... All while adding a pop charm that has left Dark Side as a symbol of, well, everything. It's as iconic as the band itself. It remains unparalelled.

Do the Flaming Lips do it justice? Well, no. No one could. Perfection is what it is. I guess the grander question is this: Do the Lips add anything to the feelings/discussions/questions that Dark Side brings up? I'm not sure it doesn't.

In the discussion of any cover song/album that has to be the standard. The great cover songs -- Devo or Cat Power's "Satisfaction," Macha and Bedhead's "Believe," Run DMC's "Walk this Way," etc. -- bring something new to the song and augment it in some way. Chan's aching desperation in "Satisfaction" adds emotion to a great song and the phone in "Believe" makes for an aching, emoting review of the song.

And I really can't decide if this Dark Side adds much. Switching from "random hangers-on" to Henry Rollins for the little spoken word philosophical pieces makes for some odd juxtaposition, as punk rock god Hank doesn't seem to get the purpose of his acting. Peaches' best operatic impression on "Great Gig in the Sky" is worthwhile -- and, unfortunately, nearly note-for-note.

Indeed, part of the problem is that the Lips seem to be interested in changing very little on most of the record, while totally reinventing other parts. "Eclipse" sounds like a more lofi version of the original -- and, really, isn't a great deal of the brilliance of Dark Side its new adventures in fidelity? -- while "On the Run" is similarly clunky.

Other times, though, the band switches things completely. "Money" sounds like it was processed through a Nintendo; this is not my particular cup of tea, but it's exactly the point of a redo of an album. It updates the song's "Taxman" feeling with a modern, computerized theme. Not a choice I'd make, but a choice nonetheless. A similar switch is the digitized alarm sound in "Time" and the requisite slowing down of the album's best track. Coyne appears to be whispering the song, emphasizing the thematic notion of reject as one realizes the finiteness of one's life. True, this takes away one of the key reasons that "Time" is so amazing -- David Gilmour's soaring guitars -- but it's an update nonetheless.

I can't figure out what to make of the update of "Breathe." Instead of a flying track, the Lips turn the song into a racuous stomp, with a tribal beat overlaying the song. Again, my intrepretations of the song notwithstanding -- shit, I'll give it to you anyway: this song is about birth and rebirth, not necessarily a party stomp or chaotic record -- I don't know if this fits.

And so it goes, I guess. The Flaming Lips try to pay tribute, but seem to miss the mark.

---

Of course, the elephant in this particular room is the nature of rock and roll post-modernism and the intrepretation of a theme. Dark Side of the Moon is brilliant partially because of its cohesive thematic lyrical structure that criticizes modernism, technology, cultural structures and the life cycle of a human... While embracing so many elements of those things. The band that so epically downplayed excess ended up putting on stage shows with lights and theatrics and the like. The band that mocked having a private jet galavanted around the world for tours. The band's opus is often looked at as a study in a man going insane...

Remind you of anyone?

Members of Radiohead bristles at the Floyd comparisons, but that band's success is, to me, a direct result of Floyd's paving of that path. Radiohead records dance around progressive rock while still keeping the public's interest. Radiohead brought electronic bits to music in a groundbreaking way (robot voice!) while examining the role technology plays in our lives ("Videotape," anyone? "Paranoid Android?"). Isolationn and humanity play huge thematic roles in Radiohead records, just as they do in everything Pink Floyd did in the 1970s.

So, in a way, the Lips' tribute is not the best tribute available to the album. Radiohead's success is.

---

This all brings to mind the question insinuated in the final sentence of Pitchfork's review of the album:

But the Flaming Lips and their co-conspirators can't settle on a color of the Floyd spectrum and run with it, leaving this Dark Side as a lunar capsule lost somewhere between a love letter and a joke.

Forgetting that I find the "the Lips must choose the Floyd period of their liking" kind of insulting (also, the idea that Dark Side is only about "insanity" completely misses the point of the album), I think it's important to examine Floyd's Dark Side as a symptom of American popular culture today. As I've written in many places here before, there's a certain irony that pervades a great deal of popular culture and I'm not sure where that begins/ends. I think my generation's lack of disaffection colors everything and I can give an example from my own life.

Though I'm nearly 30 years old, most of my friends and I drive shitty cars or have no car. This is because we live in an outstandingly expensive city, because we have post-graduate degrees and because our bourgeouis existance doesn't necessitate caring about cars.

So, I drive a 1995 Toyota Camry LE. It is, of course, a hand-me-down car from my mom. It's a flaming turd of a car with a busted radiator fan, dents and some sort of wheel problem. My friend drives a similar -- albeit older and smaller -- Japanese car. I want to say it's a Mazda, but I really don't know.

Anyway, last year, we were both kicking around the idea of repaiting our cars with spray paint, loud colors, etc. Then, the idea of putting flames on the sides of our respective cars:

Friend: it takes a week, but man, my car would be the shit.
Me: I mostly just want my car to look ridiculous.
Friend: haha
Me: Because [my car] is so boring
Friend: i think at some point i stopped thinking that stuff is ridiculous and instead is awesome.

The final bit is the operative part. At what point does an ironic love for something just become love? Part of the reason I love El Caminos and the idea of tricking out my mid-90s Toyota Camry is because those things are idiotic. They're goofy. Good for a laugh.

Which, on some level, brings me to my love for progessive rock.

The Lips' Dark Side -- and hell, the band's entire existance -- seems to be some sort of giant game of ironic love turning into unabashed love. The Soft Bulletin's tours were somewhere between ironic and bombastic. Like the progressive rock that Pink Floyd largely invented, Wayne Coyne's life seems to echo a Yes album cover, eschewing any idea of real life or what's considered normal.

He's created a giant 2001ish compound in his hometown of Oklahoma City. He's directed and written a low budget movie about Mars. On first glance, they seem like jokes, but the scope of each certainly means these things are not jokes. Coyne appears to be deadly serious.

Coyne's not the only artist like this. I saw Mastodon live this past week and the detail in which that band creates its art, album themes and records borders on the absurd. I wish I could say that I love all of these things; I don't. I wouldn't be caught dead, for example, putting up a Mastodon poster with the crazy Crack the Skye art. It's insane. I wouldn't wear a Mastodon shirt. Because they look ridiculous, but damn if Brent Hinds and Co. don't think their merch looks fucking awesome.

Culture seems to fall this way more and more. Glee is one of the most popular shows on television largely on the ironic love for song-and-dance numbers. Dancing with the Stars can't have a sincere following, can it? That show succeeds with a wink and a smile, right?

God, let's hope so.

---

Which is all to say this: In a post-modern world, Dark Side of the Moon endures. It endures in the legacy of the album, in Radiohead's success, in punk rock's idealism (fed as a reaction to Floyd's "bloated" stage shows), in prog rock's current existance (however tangential as, say, Mastodon's Crack the Skye may seem, it remains a Floyd-esque album) and in tributes like this one.

The Flaming Lips And Stardeath...

Boston

2010-04-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Band: Boston
Album: Boston
Best song: Every song on this record is amazing, but "More Than a Feeling" is the best.
Worst song: "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" is not the best song on the album, but it's damned fine.

Friday saw my first byline in the very reputable Atlantic Web site. The Atlantic is something of a high-minded publication, not dissimilar to the New Yorker and its ilk. The magazine focuses on some more analytical thinking and interesting subject matter. You know, the type of publication that publishes real writers.

As anyone who's trampled around this site has seen, I'm not much of a man of letters. Indeed, I use a bunch of similar rhetorical record review devices, bring up the same theories over and over, go on long tangents and, eventually, just misspell everything. I haven't considered myself a writer, basically, ever. My love has always been talking, criticizing and opinionating. That I've ended up doing it via the written word is just laziness, really.

In my dreams, I matter on talk radio or on a podcast or something wherein I talk. In my dreams, I'm a TV talk show host, but, of course, I'm not a handsome man and I never got into broadcast early enough for it to matter. I tried podcasting and that shit is hard. I'm too lazy to book people, edit the podcast, etc. I'd rather just sit down, fart out 500 words and hit publish. It's super easy.

Which is how I got here. A reporter for my actual awesome job (Web Producer here) freelances for The Atlantic and introduced me to the Culture Channel editor a couple of months ago. I guess Alyssa liked some of the stuff I'd written on my blog -- mostly the top 100 of the decade. So, I met the editor. Her pitch was partially to cover more stuff on the Atlantic site she was specifically interested in a non-pretentious person who bring a non-Williamsburg viewpoint to the site. I gave her the address to this site and mostly forgot about it.

So, come to Thursday and I got an email from the editor asking if I wanted to write something about Peter Steele, the dead guy from Type O Negative. I'm not the world's biggest Type O fan, but I do like them and have some of their records. I have a feeling the editor -- upon Alyssa's recommendation -- saw my top 100 of the decade stuff and saw that I had Mastodon and Isis in the top five and thought "metal." Sort of ironic, being that metal isn't even my most favored genre, but I do have a decent working knowledge of it. I can drop names.

---

Which has absolutely nothing to do with one of my favorite albums of all time. At one point in my life, I claimed that I listened to Boston at least twice a week. All the way through.

The guitar work on Boston's debut album is groundbreaking in that the harmonized solos and specific sound that Tom Scholz perfected. After attending MIT, Scholz essentially locked himself in a basement to record most of what would become Boston, while tweaking his guitars, amps and overall sound. Epic bought the demo -- Scholz wanted to release it as is -- and forced Scholz to spend some time in a studio with a drummer and vocalist. Scholz recorded most of the keyboard, guitar and bass parts himself (mostly in his basement, as he cut a deal with the album's producer).

Scholz hates the record industry (sample quote: "The [music] business would be a good thing, except that it's dominated by drug addicts and businessmen.") and a lot of that comes from his early experiences with this album. It's sort of outstanding that Scholz hated the process so much; the product is, essentially flawless.

Three singles from the album scorched the charts, including "Foreplay/Long Time," a near-eight-minute prog/pop opus. Of course, Boston was for many years, the best-selling debut album of all-time (Appetite for Destruction, I believe, has since surpassed it). The album has sold 17 million copies. It is no. 12 on the best-selling albums of all time.

The soaring guitars, Brad Delp's long reads, the easy basslines, the riffs... Boston is about as good as it gets. I still listen to it once a week.

Boston - Boston

Un' ora con Ennio Morricone

2010-04-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Band: Ennio Morricone
Album: Un' ora con Ennio Morricone
Best song: So great. The main theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is classic.
Worst song: All enjoyable.

So, I guess I haven't actually written about my week in Sicily yet online. It's been amost a month since my trip. Mostly, I haven't been writing because I've been super busy at work and home. I'm transitioning to a carless existance -- bought a bike, buying a scooter, etc. -- and my truest non-Nino love (softball) is back. Which is to say I've left writing by the side of the proverbial road.

Nevertheless, I spoke to my dad last week about my trip and to say that he was interested is something of an understatement. I wrote about this a bit in the Uzeda piece, but that was in anticipation of my trip, but the Sicilian trip was something that I needed to do to find something within me that connected me more to my homeland, my people and such.

I joke about being a self-hating Jew a lot -- well, "joke" may be mostly inaccurate -- but I have similar reservations about my Italian/Sicilian heritage. As I found out -- and had some impressions, going in -- Sicily is a place that's been shat upon for the past 2,000 years. Every ruling culture (and there have been many, from the Arabs to the Greeks to the Romans to the Italians to the Normans to the Spaniards) seemed to not understand the richness of the island and simply used it for whatever resources could be extracted -- or as a vacation home for its rulers. As a result, the island has a rich tapestry of gorgeous cultures mixing together, from the African couscous to the seafaring Spanish-influenced Italian seafood dishes to the sweet citrus of the Middle East. The architecture looks as much like Spain as any place, until you hit the Norman-influenced domes and the Roman piazzas and promenades.

In short, Sicily is so different from a place like Rome, it might as well be a totally different country.

---

To say that Sicily doesn't have a great reputation worldwide is something of an understatement. In the United States, La Cosa Nostra (our thing, aka the Mafia) is probably the main thing everyone knows about Sicily. Maybe Americans know that Sicily was a major bombing area for the Allies in World War II.

Within Italy, Sicily is thought to be a backwards, backwoods place. People make ufn of the Sicilian accent and the farming communities in the interior of the island. The island doesn't have the pedigree of the fine wines of Tuscany or the beautiful Amalfi beaches or the exquisite art or metropolitan feel of Rome or Venice. Like the American South, it's looked upon as backwards, silly and ignorant.

As such, it's been totally ignored. To say that Palermo is "lived in" would be wildly understating it. In talking to some friends about the difference between Rome and Palermo, I used the D.C. v. N.Y. comparison. D.C. is clean and full of tourists. Many of the sights are clean and presented for tourists; they're not used. The neighborhoods exist, but they don't look, shall we say, like anyone lives there (for the most part. Not entirely).

New York, on the other hand, smells like piss. There's trash in the summer that looks and smells like death. But, it's bustling and exciting and everything exists there in a blur.

I tried to explain that Palermo is like New York and Rome is like Washington in simply that way. Palermo is a beautiful, vibrant city, but it's a working city. The downtown area is full of shops, churches and markets where people actually shop, work and worship. It's not sterilized. I got lost in some crazy residential neighborhoods. There are souvenir shops, but they center around the duomo and the palace. Otherwise, it's just little coffee shops, grocery stores, scooter repair places, betting parlours and such.

---

That, of course, is avoiding the elephant in the room. Palermo is poor. Like, way poor. In showing some photos to a friend, she said "it looks more like Mexico than Europe."

That's not a bad way to look at it. Palermo's unemployment rate is far higher than the rest of Italy and the country is neglected. A lot of it is from the national government's ignoring of the island; I'd be lying if I said that the Mafia had nothing to do with it. Either way...

On the train from the airport to Palermo -- it's about a 20 km trip -- two things surprised me. The first was how strikingly beautiful the island was. Mountains in the distance, the sea in the foreground. Coral, orange groves, farms, villas, etc. I thought the photos in my guidebooks -- and on the Web -- were the type of thing that every guidebook has in them (as in, the best-pictures of a moment in time). Nope. Sicily looks like that every minute.

The other surprise was the amount of old, burned and bombed-out buildings on the island. I probably saw 5-10 of them on the train ride. It appears that they were bombed during the second world war and no one ever thought to rebuild or care for them. It's strikingly sad.

A lot of the stuff I've read talks about the huge amounts of people leaving the island in the 20th century. Everyone's getting out of Sicily, it seems. Hell, my ancestors left Sicily in the early 20th century and those who didn't go to the U.S. went to live in Rome, Turin and Milan.

It's hard not to see why, on some level. There's not a ton of opportunities in Sicily -- again, unemployment is way higher there than in the rest of Italy -- and it's detached from the rest of the country, for the most part.

---

Which is not why I've got such conflicting feelings about the place. Italy -- and Sicily, specifically -- is wildly xenophobic, ultra homophobic and somewhat racist; hegemony is the standard there. Every available guidebook suggests that gay and lesbian tourists had best stay the hell away from the island. So, culturally, it's not the hope that I strive for.

Similarly, Sicily's -- well, Parlermo's -- youth culture has a populist, trendy vibe that isn't my favorite thing in the world. Lots of bad, moussed-up hair. Lots of crazy makeup on the women. Lots of, well, white-trashy stuff going on. In essence, it's the European version of the Ed Hardy/Affliction junk. I can now undersand that maybe the Jersey Shore thing is ethno-genetic.

As you can imagine, I have little to no interest in this. I strive toward a lazy, midwestern aging hipster aestetic and fall very short. I cut my hair simply to make it as managable as possible; I wear a beard because I don't like to shave. Don't get me wrong, I'm oustandingly vain. But Italy is a country of people who really care how they look and often make choices I find to be absurd. It's an aestetic I can't get behind.

---

All of that said, it was an amazing trip and one that had me feeling connected to my history like no other trip. In Palermo, I visited the Capuchin Catacombs and saw a body with my grandmother's unmarried name on it. As hokey as it seems, I felt an enormous emotional connection to the place after seeing this. In Caccamo -- the town from which my family came -- I found a sign for a local political guy named "Gianfortone." I knocked on the door, but got no answer.

I'm, I believe, the only living member of my extended family to have traveled to Sicily. As such, a lot of my cousins contacted me this past month, asking questions and wondering about the trip to Sicily.

It's a hard thing for me. I'm not a close family person and haven't seen many of these cousins in a long time (two years, probably). Part of this is because of my parents' divorce, part of this is my living on the East Coast. Part of it is because, you know, I'm a dick. But, part of it, also, is that I don't have any connection to my extended family outside of our shared roots.

I think this trip, if only for a second, helps that connection.

---

Sicily is a beautiful island, full of wonderfully pleasant people -- when I spoke in Italian -- and I've barely scratched the surface here as to the trip. But, I'd go back in a minute.

Oh, yeah. Ennio Morricone is awesome.

Un' Ora Con Ennio Morricone - ...

Ennio Morricone: 1966-1987 (2CD Set)

I Am Come

2010-03-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Band: Part Chimp
Album: I Am Come
Best song: The title track is perfect.
Worst song: It's only five songs and all are great.

While working earlier this week, I found myself in a Wikipedia loop. You know, one of those things where you look something up on Wikipedia, end up clicking on of the site's many interesting internal links and just keep clicking. It never ends. Wikipedia is nearly endless in its amount of interesting articles. I am a firm believer in the genius of Wikipedia.

Anyway, I don't remember how I got to Fucking, Austria, but I did end up there, somehow. Fucking isn't pronounced the way we, in the English-speaking world, pronounce it, but it's hilarious nonetheless. Apparently, the street signs were stolen so often that the town -- population 104 -- had to devise a way to make the signs theft-proof (concrete, welding, that sort of thing). English-speaking tourists would venture to Fucking -- 300ish km from Vienna and 120ish from Munich -- to have their photos taken with the sign. Often, they would steal the signs.

That's amazing.

More importantly, what's awesome about Fucking, Austria is that Germany has some pretty weird town and city names, as well. But, the fucking crazy thing about the German towns is that they have crazy town names... In German. So, instead of having a town called "Fucking" or "Shithole" or something (which German-speakers wouldn't think to be offensive, assuming they don't speak English), there are towns in Germany with names such as Faulebutter (Putrid Butter), Plöd (Stupid), Katzenhirn (Cat Brain) and my personal favorite, Affendorf. Affen means "ape." Dorf means "village."

Ape Village, Germany. Sign me up.

---

Which is so say that Part Chimp should play a show in Affendorf, solely for the band's name.

Part Chimp is a London group of minor reknown. Signed to Mogwai's Rock Action label in 2005, the band plays a noise/hardcore hybrid. It's impressively punishing and strikingly proficiently-played. The band is not without skill. The fury in "Bring Back the Sound" is Stooges-esque and the actual melody in "I Am Come" is pretty cool. "War Machine" has touches of Sabbath, while Dr Horse Pt II is a badass cross between a great doom song and being hit in the head with a dictionary.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy it. I Am Come: Approved for Affendorf.

I Am Come - Part Chimp

Stella

2010-03-21T00:38:00.000-07:00

Band: Uzeda
Album: Stella
Best song: "What I Meant When I Called Your Name" is amazing. "Wail" has an unstoppable riff.
Worst song: "Camillo" is just OK.

By the time you read this, I will be in Sicily, the province in Italy that is the historical home of my family. My father's family hails from a town called Caccamo, about 40 km from Palermo, the capitol and largest city of the island (the city where I'll be staying during my weeklong visit).

This is my second trip to Italy. I visited Rome in December 2006 and it was the best trip I think I've ever taken. Not only did I feel a sense of awe at the Roman ruins and the history of the city, but I also felt a certain connection to the city through my own Italian heritage. It doesn't really make much sense, but it's a similar feeling I got at Monticello or at the various sites around here in DC. They're meaningful, on some weird metaphysical level.

---

I sort of feel a bit of guilt in not having much interest in my maternal heritage. I think some of that is because we don't have the surefire knowledge that I do with my dad's side. The nature of European Jewry (well, at least my impression of it) is such that Jews were shuffled around a lot, thanks to some unpleasant government treatment. I've heard enough stories of the Cossacks sacking my ancestors' village after they'd moved to Lithuania, post-inquisition. That's all I really know about that side of my family; at one point, they were from Spain, then they ended up in Eastern Europe.

Which isn't to say that my Jewish heritage is of no import to me. That's insane. I wear a Star of David and am wearing one today, even as I traipse through an Italian island. I would like to go to Israel and learn more about the way way way back historical roots of my non-religion (I'm an atheist, though Judaism is the religion in which I was raised), though I usually say so under the guise that I like old stuff.

(Well, it's not a total guise. Despite not being anything close to Christian, I do want to see all the Christ stuff in the former Judea.)

But, it didn't work out that way. Israel is more expensive than Europe and, quite frankly, more dangerous. It's my next non-Italy trip, no doubt. But, cost just didn't work out this time. Too bad.

---

I don't speak much Italian, which will be a barrier in Sicily, where the 30% unemployment rate, Mafia rule and isolation have seemed to make the people a bit xenophobic. Italy itself is kind of racist and xenophobic -- a recent Repubblicca poll found that over 40% of young Italians "don't trust foreigners."

I'm writing this before I leave, but my plan is to try and apologize as much as possible for my bad Italian, ask people to speak slowly and, generally, not talk to many people. I've been e-mailing with my hotel (in butchered Italian, certainly) a few questions and they've been super helpful. Of course, I'm paying those folks when I stay with them, so they probably are forced to be nice. After all, they're in the hospitality industry.

---

Italian popular music isn't all that great. It's a lovely language, but there's not a ton of music that strikes one's fancy. Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti isn't a bad punk band, though they're mostly a gimmick. I mean, they wear skull masks.

Enter Uzeda. Named after one of the gates to the town of Catania -- the Sicilian city in the shadows of the Mount Etna -- the band's third album was produ-- er, engineered by iconoclast Steve Albini.

The record is decidedly math-rock-y and has Albini's stench all over it. The bass occupies a huge space, while the guitar screech in the manner of all things Albini, tearing your ears. Giovanna Cacciola's shout/sing vocals -- in English, by the way -- sound something like the combination of Made out of Babies' Julie Christmas and Bjork.

It's a fine album, with the swirling guitars of "This Heat" backing up Cacciola screaming "I'm a liar!" in the midst of a steady bass line. "Wailing" does just that, with an opening guitar wank straight out of the Big Black handbook. "Steam, Rain & Other Stuff" has an amazing guitar riff, while "Gold" is furied.

The guitar work is intricate, but not in a post-rock way. Like Albini's bands, Uzeda takes more from the Jesus Lizard than from, like, Yes. So, the guitar is more of a buzzsaw than a scalpel. I love this kind of music and am glad it comes from my family's historical home, even if Catania is on the other side of the island.

Listen to the album here.

A Moment of Stillness

2010-03-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

Band: God is an Astronaut
Album: A Moment of Stillness
Best song: The title track is perfect.
Worst song: It's only five songs and all are great.

I'm not sure where to start or not to start here, other to acknowledge that I'm not much in the way of a writer, so whenever I actually deal with an editor on something I care about, I am reminded that I am not an editor. I sometimes fall in love with my own wording on stuff -- in my job, I don't do much writing, outside of some headlines and such -- but because I write the way I talk, I get annoyed when an editor wants to change a non-hard news thing to something other than my original idea. Which, really, is just pompous. We'll do it more straightforward, Ross. Your pith is not needed here.

Which is to say that I'm so so so grateful for the Internet and the ability to work through my own Web sites to write stupid reviews no one wants to read. Even though, really, I don't have much to say, especially about records that are of little to no consequence.

That's where A Moment of Stillness exists. It's an EP from four years ago. From an Irish band most people don't know. That I bought because it was recommended to me on Amazon and I had a gift certificate (I, like you, hadn't heard of the band and thought they have a good band name). The Irish group isn't a band I pursued after my love of this EP. I liked it. I listen to it. I don't want more. I don't know why.

This doesn't often happen to me. I'm the kind of person who owns every Pink Floyd record, even the crappy, post-Gilmour ones. I have everything Death Cab for Cutie has ever released, including a dumbass split EP they did with the shitty indie band Fiver. I bought the fucking Shrimp Boat box set, people.

I think I realized that I don't want to sully the great band with the awesome name. Maybe it's because A Moment of Stillness isn't superlative -- post-rock often doesn't rouse exciting feelings in people. I sorta feel the same way about Russian Circles and This Will Destroy You, good post-rock bands that I enjoy but don't pursue.

Nevertheless, the title track from this five-song EP is sublimely good. It's a near perfect post-rock song, as it tilts upward with an intricate guitar line, no vocals and a slow build. While I haven't bought every record, I can wholeheartedly say that "A Moment of Stillness" is one of my favorite songs.

A Moment of Stillness - God Is...

Sex Change

2010-03-02T03:09:00.000-08:00

Band: Trans Am
Album: Sex Change
Best song: "Tesco v. Sainsbury's" is amazing and a snapshot of what Trans Am does best.
Worst song: "4,738 Regrets" isn't great.

I'm a passionate, passionate man and, recently, two of passions have collided to major press. Roger Ebert is one of my favorite writers in the world and Esquire is the best written magazine in the world. Will Leitch and Drew Magary -- both writers I enjoy and admire -- have weighed in and I've decided to do the same in my own little album-centric hole in the Internet. Ebert is appearing this week on ex-girlfriend-turned-close-friend (and, by the way, one of the most powerful women in the world) Oprah Winfrey's TV show and, of course, if you haven't read the Esquire piece, open this link now. NOW.

---

I share little with Ebert other than a home state, political/religious meanings and a love for Fellini, but like many of his admirers, I adore him. I have for a bit. Back before his illness, I used to lambast my friend Anne about movies she enjoys -- she likes shitty action movies -- when she disagreed with Ebert. I was genuinely hurt when he enjoyed The Passion of the Christ when I found it to be a steaming turd. His favorites are among my favorites (8 1/2, Kane, etc.) and his style of reviewing is strikingly accessible -- he's stated that he reviews movies for their intended audience , calling the star system "Relative, not absolute":

When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two. In the same way, if American Beauty gets four stars, then [The United States of Leland] clocks in at about two.

I love love love that rationale. Though I've never pursued writing as a career (and, as such, have never had to do any dopey star systems), I try to reflect that in my writing. I don't care for pop music as much as I like most metal, but if you like pop music, Britney Spears hits the spot. I hope to emulate Ebert in that way, in my writing.

And, on some level, all critics try to emulate Ebert.

---

Everyone seems to have an Ebert story, and my Ebert story is a nonstory. By reasonable thought, I probably should've preferred Gene Siskel. I met Siskel at my place of employment during high school and I tended to read the Tribune more than the Sun-Times in my early youth. Moreover, our next-door neighbors growing up were cousins of Siskel's and my mom never let me forget this, playing her usual six degrees of yenta game.

I've followed his work forever, it seems. I have several of his movies yearbooks -- started when Anne gave me one as a birthday present -- and I bought the Citizen Kane DVD solely for his commentary track. I've read Your Movie Sucks multiple times and will reread it again. While I should say I want to be like Lester Bangs or David Fricke or whoever, I think all critics want to be Ebert.

But, Ebert's work is outstandingly accessible. He kills bad movies in a way that's fun -- to make this about me again, I've never had as much fun as writing about the Eagles and Red Hot Chili Peppers.Way more fun than when I write about Death Cab or Tortoise or Mastodon. Writing about shitty albums is awesome. Writing about good ones is hard. -- and he intricately chooses his words about movies that are great. His review of Deuce Bigalow II remains my favorite review of all time for the final few paragraphs:

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

Schneider and Ebert have since made up, but Ebert still pulls no punches. He continues to see movies and he writes and writes and writes.

---

The Jones piece has gotten some press because of the almost eulogistic style of the piece. But, I'll say this about it: I find it uplifting. Ebert doesn't feel sorry for himself, though he certainly has every reason to (I get a cold and I complain to everyone who listens, by comparison). And by being off of TV, as the piece states, Ebert has truly found his voice. He's only gotten more prolific as he's lost his speaking voice and his ability to eat and drink. He's become a more passionate blogger and Tweeter and he's finally getting the press he deserves.

Which, really, is kind of sad. He's been brilliant for his whole career.

---

Morbid, callous and heartless as this sounds, it's serendipitous and the lucky, chaotic nature of the universe that Siskel passed away 10 years ago and Ebert survived. Siskel was a wonderful critic, but Ebert is superlative. The tragedy (and triumph, depending on your outlook) of Ebert's illness it that we are now all understanding his greatness. After posting the Chris Jones piece on Facebook, a friend comented, saying " As brilliant a writer as he is in other formats, he's, like, the perfect blogger." This is true but only part of the story.

Ebert's brevity is perfect for Twitter and his Twitter feed shows it. He throws out 140-character missives constantly, lambasting the stupid, promoting his friends and whimsically pointing us toward the true beauty of the Internet: the weird. His blog is flawless, with wordy dissections of Tom Waits records, memories of his childhood and the health care bill -- a particular point of interest, thanks to Ebert's illness and political leanings.

And of course, he's the perfect movie critic. His Web site is prolific in its reviews. As written elsewhere, he still writes and writes and writes. Illness hasn't slowed him down. He continues to write about bad movies in an entertaining way unknown by any critic.

---

As with religion, I'm a sports atheist (term stolen from one of my idols). I'm not concerned with A-Rod's personality. I want his stats. I don't care about "heart" or "chemistry." Show me the numbers.

Culture, of course, has no analog. I love music because it touches me in a way that nothing else does. I love Paul Thomas Anderson not because he references a million other movies -- if that's all I cared about, I'd be the president of the Martin Scorcese fan club. Despite the calls of "Hipster" thrown at me, I don't love David Eggers because he's twee. I care about his work because it hits me emotionally. And I'm not detached from Eggers' story. I'm not detached from our commons Suburban Chicago background or our love for the written word or our general outlook on life.

Which is to say that the point of this piece was to simply say this: Roger Ebert endures. If I put on my cultural atheist hat, I say this: Illness or no, Ebert endures. He's just as good a writer now as he was a year ago. His illness hasn't made him great, it's just made us appreciate his greatness. He didn't win a Pulitzer (you know I'll bring that up. I'm a journalist.) yesterday, everyone. He didn't write his obscenely great 8 1/2 piece last week, everyone. He's been doing this for forever.

He's the best we've ever had. This didn't happen overnight, but I'm glad everyone's taking notice. He still writes and writes and writes.

---

Roger Ebert has nothing to do with this album. I just wanted to write about Ebert today. This album is a great and, like Ebert, endures. It's one of the post-Futureworld albums from Trans Am, a fury of hard post-rock and thundering riffs. Sex Change, like Ebert's Twitter feed, is full of short, sweet missives. It doesn't meander. It's awesome.

Octopus

2010-02-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

(U.K. cover)

(U.S. cover)
Band: Gentle Giant
Album: Octopus
Best song: "A Cry for Everyone" is awesome.
Worst song: "The Boys In The Band" is mostly nonsense.

As previously mentioned elsewhere, I went throught a mini progressive rock period in my life. It was about a year long and I continue to hold a candle for the type of bands Roger Dean probably enjoys (he certainly works for them).

I'm no connoisseur; I've always simply skimmed prog rock for the bands that had influenced my favorite bands. Pink Floyd remains my favorite prog band and there's no real agreement about music people whether Floyd's work is really all that proggy. But, I do love and continue to listen to albums by Yes, Genesis, Rush and King Crimson.

Gentle Giant is considered one of the more influential and skilled progressive rock bands of the 1970s. Where Crimson's records are insane, dreamy and not tied to a particular national sound, Gentle Giant is a decidedly English band, with minstrel-esque strings and layered harmonies dotting the record.

The record is the band's hardest, with some interesting synth lines and some hard(ish) guitar riffs. John Weathers' drumming is not the star of the show -- Neil Peart seems to be the only one who did this in a 70s prog band -- but keeps excellent time. DErek Shulman's voice is clear and clean, with little in the way of embellishment. Again, classically trained musicians can pull off some excellent prog.

Lyrically, the album is pretentious, as is the progressive rock way. Evoking Camus, the album incluces lyrics such as "Everyone dies if only to justify life." Rush it is not.

"Knots" is bizarre and circus-sounding at the onset, with full band dropping in and out of the record. Based on a book by Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, the song is a mindfuck.

---

I bought Octopus largely on a whim. It's a difficult thing to justify; I mostly just wanted to grow my prog collection and add a band I'd not heard enough. I'm glad I did. Every time I pick it up, I enjoy it.

Octopus - Gentle Giant

Hot Buttered Soul

2010-02-14T01:29:00.000-08:00

Band: Isaac Hayes
Album: Hot Buttered Soul
Best song: Four songs. Four classics.
Worst song: See above.

I think I've mentioned this before, but just after I graduated college and moved out here to the DC area, I shunned modern and independent music. I dove headfirst into 1970s soul and picked up as many Curtis Mayfield, Bill Withers, Teddy Pendergrass and Isaac Hayes records as I could find. I eventually got into the O'Jays and the Ohio Players. They were the only records on my stereo for about 18 months in late 2003 into early 2005. Hot Buttered Soul is the best of those records.

---

It's easy to forget how odd Hot Buttered Soul is, as an album. Though it's not a part of our collective mind like Dark Side of the Moon is, it's similarly inaccessible. Isaac Hayes had been a songwriter, producer and session player for many years before Stax picked him up in 1967. Hayes' first record was a flop, containing more radio-friendly short tracks and medleys. Before he'd recorded Presenting Isaac Hayes, he'd written hits for Sam and Dave, including "Soul Man" and "Hold On I'm Comin." In an attempt to build up the label's catalog in the post-Otis Redding world, Hot Buttered Soul was promoted heavily, but Hayes demanded full creative control. It was quite a gamble, as Hayes was hardly the household name he is now.

The results are devastating. Hot Buttered Soul 75% covers and only four songs long. The record contains an eight (!!) minute spoken word introduction -- by the way, less than half the song's length -- to a soul version of a number one country hit. Which is not to say "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" is anything but brilliant. Because, really, it is amazing.

The criticism of Hayes' music is not incorrect. The songs on the album are a bit repetitive and drawn-out. My refutation to that is that the subtleties in changes in the song as it goes on are what makes the album so very amazing. The small arrangements in "Walk on By" around the ninth minute may not be grand, but they make the song move along. Like Daft Punk's amazing "Around the World," "Walk on By" adds and subtracts characters as instruments. (Let's forget, for a minute, that the song was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick and was written by Burt Bacharach.)

"One Woman" is the most accessible of the songs on the album, tells the classic musical story of an infidelity. Hayes' sweet baritone and string-and-piano-heavy production produces a dreamy feel completely lacking in the normal funk for which Hayes would become known. "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" is the only original on the record, with backup singers, the fiercest groove in funk and Hayes' awesome keyboard soloing filling the record. Like "Walk on By," the song adds bits and pieces to its nine-minute tableau as Hayes drops multisyllabic words about his brain.

(By the way, this album has sold over a million copies. These are the kind of things that remind me of my faith in the American consumer.)

Screw Shaft. It's not, but Hot Buttered Soul is, no doubt, Hayes' masterwork. It's one of the best albumns to bump in your car on a hot summer day or to warm you up in a snow storm.

Hot Buttered Soul - Isaac Haye...

Collector of Cactus Echo Bags

2010-02-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

Band: The Lonesome Organist
Album: Collector of Cactus Echo Bags
Best song: "The Lonesome Organist Theme" is great.
Worst song: All the songs are pretty short -- the longest is two and a half minutes -- so, even if you don't like it, you'll like the next one.

I don't remember which show Jeremy Jacobsen I saw open up, but I do remember the exact reaction I had when I saw him as the opening act: "Wow, this is totally awesome and totally unnecessary."

The Lonesome Organist is the side project of Jacobsen, keyboard player for 5ive Style. It is entertainment at its most vaudevillian. Seeing it for the first time -- I've seen Lonesome Organist thrice -- was a revelation. This straggly-looking dude strapped a guitar on, sitting next to a series of keyboards and a drum set. This it wasn't.

After the second time I saw Jacobsen's act, I bought Collector of Cactus Echo Bags at the local record store. Needless to say, it's a different experience. It's not bad, per se. It's just not much of anything. The songs range from silly circus music ("The Wind Up Bird") to bluesy, fake-JSBX-style rambling ("The End of the Road"). Clocking in at just under a minute twenty, "The Lonsome Organist Theme" is the album's highlight, as Jacobsen plays a reverb-y guitar while dancing around the organ keys and singing that he is, indeed, the lonesome organist.

I have no idea if Jacobsen is still trotting the Lonesome Organist thing around. I hope he is. It's worth seeing. Great live gimmick, just OK album.

Break Up

2010-01-31T01:57:00.000-08:00

Band: Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson
Album: Break Up
Best song: "Relator" is really good.
Worst song: "I am the Cosmos" should remain Chris Bell's, thank you very much.

As the Pitchfork review indicates, it's tough to try and recreate the fantastic Brigitte Bardot/Serge Gainsbourg pairings of the 1960s. The Pitchfork review also compares it to She & Him record (an album I hope to tackle here at some point).

I don't think either comparison is all that apt. The She & Him record comes from a totally different atmosphere, a Williamburg-meets-Silverlake hybrid. The Gainsbourg/Bardot records, of course, are of a completely different vintage and let's forget ever comparing Pete Yorn to one of the great songwriters of the 1960s.

The back and forth between Scarlett Johansson and Yorn doesn't compare to those, but it's nevertheless charming. Count me as the one person who actually thinks Johansson is a passable singer and Yorn's boring rock is perfectly suited for her voice. She makes it slightly more interesting -- yes, her version of Chris Bell's brilliant "I am the Cosmos" sucks" -- on songs like "Clean." And, again, while the interplay between the two isn't great, it's entirely fun as they both run through their smokey whisper voices on "Relator," for example.

---

I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for Mr. Yorn, as his Musicforthemorningafter record was the soundtrack of a birthday road trip my ex-girlfriend and I took in college. On its surface, it was probably a mixed bag; I was trying to get into a 21-and-over show, but was turned away (I would've litereally turned 21 at the show). We went to some museums, stayed at my friends' house. I didn't tell my family that I was going to Chicago and we broke down in St. Louis on the way back to Columbia.

(If you haven't seen Up in the Air, please skip the next few paragraphs.)

There's a whole thing in the film Up in the Air -- one of the best movies I've seen in the last five years -- about the notion of loneliness and the fact that so very many of our favorite moments are our most charished because not because of what happened, but mostly because of those involved. Our most memorable moments are seldom alone, good and bad.

I travel alone often and it's great. But, I'm shy, so I don't do a lot of meeting others and whooping it up. When I think of said solitary travels, it's hard to to imagine how much more fun some of those trips would be with a companion. The trip to Chicago was great not because a bunch of good and bad shit happened.

It was great because I was young and in love and having fun. Goofing off in the car, eating silly food at the museum, that sort of thing. We listened to Pete Yorn in the car. And while I find this music unendingly boring, it'll always remind me of that trip.

---

For what it's worth, count me among the people who find Scarlett Johansson outstandingly beautiful. She's a terrifyingly bad actress (and a little pale for my specific tastes), but, goddamn, she is great-looking. She truly is.

Break Up - Scarlett Johansson,...

Only By Night

2010-01-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

Band: Kings of Leon
Album: Only By Night
Best song: "Sex on Fire" is listenable.
Worst song: The rest of the album is ass.

I'm 28 years old -- I turn 29 next month -- and with my next birthday, I'll be one more year closer to my mental age of, like, 40. I'm not an "old soul" in the "wise" sense. I'm an "old soul" in the "curmudgeon" sense.

Sure, I like whimsy and strange, kitschy shit. I have bobbleheadsand a plastic sauropod and a framed picture of a T-Rex wearing a cowboy hat (this lovely fellow) all on my desk at work. I wear little buttons on my jacket and I wear sneakers approximately 340 days of the year. My apartment is solely decorated with the work of a one Jay Ryan.

But, generally, I'm not the hypnotic, spontaeneous, drinking-fun type that would reflect my age. I don't like getting intoxicated and falling down. Dancing doesn't attract me. I'm just not goofy enough, I guess. I'm too pretentious, of course.

---

So, let me tell you about my New Year's Eve experience.

A friend of mine called me with the idea that he has a friend that was buying a table at a (as he described it, basically) fancy(ish) nightclub downtown. Lotus, the place is called. My friend described it as a place that would necessitate my wearing a suit; he was going to do the same.

Now.

I like wearing fancy clothes and I own a tuxedo. So, the prospect of wearing said tuxedo is always exciting for me. Yes, NYE is kind of a silly exercise, but I'd feel like a big loser for not going out. And between this offer and the offer of going to a house party, I chose the club.

Here's the problem: The club was not really a lounge-y place that I expected 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy to frequent. It was a disco, with crazy lights, thumping bad remixes/medlies of top 40 songs, fat chicks in tight pants, greasy Eurotrash-looking guys in ill-fitting sportcoats, super expensive drinks and, of course, the thing that is "table service." This, needless to say, disappointed me. I was wildly overdressed -- I could've come in a sweater and a sportcoat -- and my personality could not been more out of place. This was the type of place that Diageo (one of the world's biggest liquor distributors) visits, with photographers and waivers for patrons to sign, saying that they won't sue if Diageo uses their image in an ad. I know this because I signed one of those waivers. The type of place where, you know, a woman tried to dance with me.

No question, I need to do stuff like this, largely to reinforce the fact that it's not for me. I enjoy it, in the sense that I love people-watching and it's, essentially, a safari for me. I might as well be on the Serengeti, watching a lioness eat an antelope. It's really quite enjoyable.

Enjoyable to do, like, once a year, of course.

---

Also: Despite my description above, I'm not a particularly evolved person. So, there were two facts that delighted me during the evening.

The first is that one of the bouncers to the club was a dwarf. I imagine this makes me a terrible person, one insensitive to those with disabilities, but... A dwarf bouncer is really awesome, right? I mean, aren't bouncers required to be huge?

The second is that, among the weird photographers, fat chicks drinking $20 martinis and dudes with bad cologne was a woman, seemingly hired by the club, dancing in her underwear. It was epic. She was incredibly fit and gyrating. It was like something out of a movie with a stripper storyline and an actress that won't do nudity (think Jessica Alba in Sin City). Underwar. Gyration. Ugg boots. It was insane.

---

I'm wholly unqualified to write anything about Only by Night other than to say that I heard a remixed version of "Sex on Fire" on New Year's Eve and it made me want to kill myself. It's the only really passable song on the album -- the melody is as infectious as H1N1 -- and to put electronica beats under it... Awful, awful times.

I'm not really into the dude's voice. If I'm going for rootsy almost-indie rock, I'll take Band of Horses, thank you very much.

Only By The Night - Kings Of L...

Live Phish Volume 13

2010-01-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

Band: Phish
Album: Live Phish Volume 13
Best song: Of course, it's really hard to screw up the Beatles, right?
Worst song: Just about any of the band's original material is kind of crappy.

I've never been a particular fan of jam bands, so I guess I'm particularly unsuited to write anything about Phish. I respect the hell out of the band's musical ability; these guys can clearly play the hell out of their instruments.

But, like too much metal, a lot of the masturbatory soloing doesn't strike me as much more than that. A near-15-minute version of band favorite "Harpua" doesn't strike me as much more than annoying.

Nevertheless, I own three Phish albums. The first is Round Room, a studio album my ex-girlfriend left at my house and never asked for back. The other two are Phish live recordings, four-disc sets of the band doing its "musical costume" for Halloween shows. The one reviewed here and Live Phish Vol. 15, the band's cover of Remain in Light. I bought both out of curiosity and don't love either.

---

It's kind of cliche to consider cover songs a blasphemy; I don't feel that way at all. I think cover songs are a wonderful homage. One of my favorite songs ever recorded is not only a cover, but a somewhat ironic one, with Bedhead and Macha covering Cher's "Believe." Seriously. Give it a listen.

I guess my worry about covering super-classic stuff -- like the Beatles, Zep, Sabbath, the Velvets, etc. -- is that it's something of a cop out. It's hard to make a crappy song good, it's not super hard to make a really great song somewhat decent.

And that's Live Phish Volume 13. It's nice. It's decent. It's a bunch of talented musicians playing a really fucking classic group of songs. It's kind of hard to fuck up "Glass Onion," you know?

And that, to me, is Phish and Phish fandom. It's safe, it feels good and it's kind of easy, all told. They play mildly pleasant music masquerading as threatening (DRUGS! OH NO!). There's no question, this is a talented group of people, but their Vermont-soft hippy bullshit doesn't hit it for me.

I'll stick with Mastodon.

No Depression

2010-01-11T06:50:00.001-08:00

Band: Uncle Tupelo
Album: No Depression
Best song: "Whiskey Bottle" is a classic. The title track is amazing. "Factory Belt" is awesome. "Screen Door" is top-notch. Even with all those, "Graveyard Shift" is probably the best song on the record.
Worst song: "So Called Friend" isn't great.

One of the things that surprised me so much about the Rolling Stone 500 list (to which I devoted an entire year, by the way) was the total and complete lack of respect the list gave to country music in all of its forms. I don't say that as a fan of country music -- I'm not -- but rather as someone who knows a tiny bit about the history of rock and roll. To say country music has not influenced popular rock music is foolish, at best.

Still, country music forms are surpemely popular today. Taylor Swift, one of the most popular artists in 2009, sports a country pose often. Carrie Underwood and other such American Idol contestants have made their hay doing that genre of music. Christ, Garth Brooks was the most popular artist in the world for a bit.

---

I don't tend like country music -- I've stopped saying I don't like any country -- for the same reasons I don't tend to like blue collar rock. I'm not a street fightin' man and I've never worked in a factory (it should be said that the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen didn't, either). I've never rode the range. I grew up in the suburbs, crushing on girls with glasses and worrying about college. This is why I identify with, like, Pavement.

Uncle Tupelo, however, is a band I love. It's a love that's a little bit layered. The aesthetic notion of the band is the preeminent reason. Taking as much from Hank Williams as they did from the Minutemen and the Stooges, Tupelo had a punk attitude. They took Johnny Cash's devil-may-care attitude and wrote songs about the dead-ends of the industrialized midwest. While not my deal -- again, father a dentist, mother a court administrator, not exactly blue collar -- I do have some bleeding heart tendencies, so the plight of the downtrodden interests me. Certainly, Farrar's lyics paint a robust picture of that life.

Moreover, I'm a big Wilco fan, with Jeff Tweedy being a huge part of Uncle Tupelo before, they, uh, imploded (story here). Tupelo was from, basically, the same town as ex-girlfriend (the Collinsville/Edwardsville/Bellville area) and toured around there, so my college radio station was one of the first stations to play Tupelo. Famously -- at KCOU, at least -- Tupelo thanks KCOU on a few of their album liners and Farrar and Tweedy have consistently (with their respective bands) played Columbia. I saw Wilco twice in college and Son Volt once.

--

Indeed, one of the famed songs -- "Whiskey Bottle" -- on No Depression references my college town ("Liquor and guns, the sign says quite plain" is a reference to the "liquor and guns" sign on Business Loop 70 in Columbia.). In addition to, essentially, being the pinnacle of indie outlaw country, No Depression is a lyrical revelation. Nearly every song sounds like Southern Illinois.

"Life Worth Livin'" has the existential dread of the area, with Farrar lamenting alcohol's claming effect on a usesless life. "Screen Door" is a classic Tweedy composition, with him singing of the lack of a life outside the porch and the titular portal, as everyone is "equally poor." "Whiskey Bottle" shows the ways people deal with life. "Factory Belt" laments and celebrates the opportunities of life. "Graveyard Shift" has the fantastic guitar riff, as Farrar mentions the "same old walls closing in" as the entire band opens up the punk rock fury.

Indeed, despite being recorded in a little over a week, the songs are artfully arranged. The punk rock elements of the band pepper "Outdone" as the cacophony of the breakdown leads to vocal interplay between Tweedy and Farrar. "Screen Door" is augmented by a great violin. The Carter Family cover -- that's the band showing some regard to history -- works so well because it resonates on two levels. Before Kurt Cobain was recounting the depression of the suburbs, Farrar and Tweedy were arranging a song about the Great Depression into a modern retelling, implying the nature of boredom and depression in the modern age.

---

I don't think I'm overreaching in saying that No Depression spawned a genre. Indeed, alternative country is sometimes called "No Depression Country". A perfect debut and one you should also own.

No Depression - Uncle Tupelo

Best of the decade: 1-10

2009-12-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

10.

Band: Sufjan Stevens
Album: Ilinois

It's hard not to be repetitive when I've already outlined why I like Sufjan Stevens. Illinois is better than Michigan. The crazy arranged stuff is more fun, the subtle beauty is more subtle. "Chicago" is just such an amazing song, with Stevens' voice taking center stage.

---

It's hard to defend Stevens, certainly. How do you look at him and not see the decade-long backlash against hipsters in his music? Illinois straddles the irony/sincerity line as much as any record -- hell, all of Stevens' music is like this.

Stevens is almost a point-by-point recitation of a certain stereotype. Midwestern transplant to New York (not just New York, but the hipster-est of the boroughs, Brooklyn)? Check. Raised by hippie parents? Check. Soft-spoken? Check. Fully arranged, crazy music, buttressed by tender songwriter stuff? Check. Boyish good looks? Check. One weird thing about which is personal, but pervades his work (in Stevens' case, religion)? Check. Lyrics that are literate and layered? Check. Hell, Stevens' latest work is a multimedia project involved the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway! How much more hipster can you get?

The 2000s have seen both the expansion and backlash of "hipster" culture. A close friend of mine was a hipster for Halloween a few years ago and it was not considered weird. American Apparel ads traffic in this image, with waifish chicks, stubbled dudes and almost kiddie porn iconography. Pitchfork's Web site has become one a hitmaker. McSweeney's has taken over a certain corner of the literary world, even getting to the point that Dave Eggers wrote the adapted screenplay for the Where The Wild Things Are movie. Wes Anderson is a leading director, all twee and old Euro mod music. Video game makers use Matador back catalogs (MLB2k7), Sub Pop tracks (the Rock Band series) and Bloc Party songs (the EA FIFA series) to soundtrack their games. People -- myself included -- drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and aren't sure why.

Stevens has surfed along this wave, both negatively and positively. He gets a huge backlash (see my piece on Michigan and my friend's comment about it), but he also gets huge critical acclaim. This album, in fact, was Pitchfork's top album the year it was released.

Me? I love Sufjan. As somsone who wishes he was a hipster, I enjoy Stevens' music and think it smart and interesting. The 50 states project -- no, of course he's not going to go through with it -- looked to me to be awesome. I like his dopey theatrics and find them fun. But, mostly, I think his music is evocative, hook-heavy and brilliant.

Illinois - Sufjan Stevens

9.

Band: The Postal Service
Album: Give Up

It seems as though I'm getting to the point wherein I could write a book about Ben Gibbard, considering how much I've written about him. I know this isn't true; I don't have the discipline, knowledge, writing skill or interest in writing a book. But, really, I think about the guy's work a lot. Far more than a 28-year-old should.

---

It's certainly up for debate -- it's a debate in my own head, for example -- as to which is the best of Gibbard's work, but there is hardly any question that Give Up is in that conversation. Success-wise, it's certainly up there as the album has gone nearly platinum for Sub Pop. Similarly, the Postal Service's music has been used in advertisements, movies and television shows.

As with many of the albums near the top of my list, Give Up has an interesting gestation story which I will not recount here (our friend Wikipedia has the story).

---

How twee is too twee?

I say that as an unabashed Wes Anderson fan and someone who counts David Eggers as his favorite author. But, twee in music is a concept that often grates on me. Give Up isn't twee in the most strict sense of the word, but there is certainly a "too cute" thing about it.

So, there's the question: How does Give Up stay outside that distinction? It's all beeps, boops and Ben Gibbard's whispery "I'm a sensitive guy" vocals. There's little of the vitriol in Gibbard's best work ("Tiny Vessels," the All-Time Quarterback record, the second Death Cab album, etc.) evident on the Postal Service record.

Indeed, Gibbard talks a big "I only write sad songs" game, but he's nearly always wounded in his writing. He never puts out the anger needed in so many breakup songs (this is why "Tiny Vessels" is so great. It's stone fucking cold.), but rather plays the hurt ex-boyfriend. That's all good and well, but even on his great work -- Give Up included -- he doesn't sound strong enough.

All that said, there's something undeniably charming and engrossing about Give Up. It is, no doubt, infectious. In interviews, Gibbard and Tamborello studied popular music and attempted to copy the musical themes -- within the context of their own work, of course -- and make a record. Give Up does this.

I once wrote that Belle and Sebastian isn't good pop music and if you thought that, you're an asshole. I cannot say the same thing about Give Up, as the record is about a great as a pop album as recorded. Rolling Stone called it "cuddly little New Wave reverie," which is very apt.

The album is full of highlights, no doubt, but "Such Great Heights" is the near-perfect craft. The short guitar lines, the shuffling drums and Gibbard's soft vocal are all the type of thing that shoots up the charts. Gibbard's sugary sweet opening is among the great love song bits ever written:

I am thinking it's a sign.
That the freckles in our eyes.
Are mirror images and
When we kiss they're perfectly aligned.

Again, he dances around the easy love song dynamics, but reaserts the "we are perfect" motif. It's a striking bit of writing.

---

The rest of the album is similarly excellent, from the daydreaming "Sleeping In" to the rememberance of a relationship song "Clark Gable" to "Brand New Colony," a song nearly as sweet as "Such Great Heights." "Nothing Better" -- a duet with Jen Wood -- wasinspired by Human League's "Don't You Want Me?" and is a perfect update to the song.

Give Up is a wonderful piece of music, straddling the line of "too cute" indie and sincere pop music, dancing between singer/songwriter stuff and electronic music. Six years in, I still listen to it a lot.

Give Up - The Postal Service

8.

Band: The Strokes
Album: Is This It?

Maybe this is an overstatement -- as in, this is almost certainly an overstatement -- but the Is This It? represents a big change in music for me. The record's timing -- it was released in the United States in October 2001 -- made for it having a weird place in my head. The fall of 2001 was the fall of my junior year of college and the year I was supposed to go to CMJ Music Marathon for the Strokes' big coming out party and I couldn't go into the KCOU offices that fall without being reminded of this fact. Every day, another call or card telling us about the band. I still have lanyards and passes for their shows at CMJ.

Of course, right before CMJ happened, life in the U.S. changed. I'm not going to recount my story here. If you want to read it, click away. It was well-publicized that the song "New York City Cops" was removed from the U.S. release because of its less-than-great portrayal. But the point is this: I think of the Strokes and I think of the hype.

---

Indeed, RCA and the band's management promoted the Strokes more than anything I'd experienced. Our DJs were pestering me to put the record into our format way before I'd gotten it -- this was slightly before leaking records was huge.

I guess this shit has been happening for forever, but the Strokes record was the first time I'd ever experienced it as a member of the media (albeit college radio), but the Is This It? was almost the definition of "famous for being famous." In the college radio world, manufactured bands -- the Strokes have always been considered manufactured -- were looked at as some facisimile of a band. And I guess I saw it the same way, as more hype than anything else. A boy band with guitars, basically.

The Strokes were just another in the Kinks ripoff crowd; The White Stripes and Oneida were doing the same thing in a new minitrend. Garage rock was going to be the next emo or math rock and would pass just the same. That the Strokes were standing on the shoulders of the industry's hype machine made it that much worse.

Boy, was I wrong.

---

Is This It? is the strongest in a mediocre year for albums, but, man is it strong. The album is carefree in a way that screams youth.

It's easy to see the proto-punk aspects of the album. The band's guitar work has the a Velvet Underground feel at times, while it also has a sound reminiscient of a more hook-happy Televison. Rhytymically, it's a restrained MC5 or Stooges, with fury muted behind a crooning singer.

"Last Night," while annoying when overplayed, is a fun little romp. "Barely Legal" has the staccato beat of New Wave. "Take It or Leave It" is carefree, with Julian Casablancas' voice modulating between his raspy scowl and a sultry croon.

Not everything needs to be emotionally evocative. Is This It? evokes something different, an escape from the actual emotion of life.

7.

Band: Radiohead
Album: In Rainbows

I recently earned (earned. Ha!) my Master's Degree in journalism and the preeminent issue in that subject is the effect technology has had on the industry. Media, in general, has had to deal with technology in a way that few other industries have -- car companies aren't hurting because people are making cheaper Internet cars.

I guess I'd put the music industry in that "media" category. It started with FTP servers with bootlegs; I used to load up dialup to download Elliott Smith bootlegs on my parents' computer in high school. Napster then came onto the scene and made it such that any college student paying for music was, to be frank, a damned fool. The record industry -- big labels, small labels, artists, promoters, whatever -- wasn't making money for their work.

Threats of bullshit lawsuits and innovations in commerce has made it such that illegally downloading music is less of an blip on my radar screen, but torrent technology is clearly making it such that the record industry is still hurting.

And, really, that's for the best.

The music industry machine is a bullshit industry, as Steve Albini famously wrote in MaximumRocknRoll so many years ago. Bands don't get treated properly and the entire of the band has made something like five grand for a record that made the label three million. That, of course, is not right. This is why bands tour so much and try to sell so much merchandise.

Technology has made it such that artists will directly get their music to fans via the Web. No record stores, no iTunes, no Amazon. Just the band's Web site. We're not there yet -- a band has to have a gigantic following to do so -- but we will be.

Enter Radiohead.

The In Rainbows pricing scheme was a publicity stunt -- I think the band believed in the goodness of people, but it was still clearly a publicity stunt -- as "pay what you want" is clear nonesense, especially with DRM-free music. Nevertheless, it was revolutionary.

I've always joked that a Radiohead fan would buy an album of Thom Yorke farting into a mic. Radiohead's fanbase is rabid. And, as such, many people did pay for In Rainbows, even after it was released as a physical record, in stores. The album is one of the best-selling and most distributed albums of recent vintage. It was a brilliant publicity stunt and a brilliant way to bridge the gap between the artist and the fan.

---

Lost in the shuffle of the revolutionary release of the album is the brilliance of In Rainbows. The album is only rivaled by OK Computer and The Bends in strength of the band's albums. Letting Yorke dabble in solo work took the electronic fiddling away from the band, with an apparent emphasis on melody, craft and arrangments.

The cellos on "Reckoner" are funereal, while the atmospherics of "Jigsaws Falling Into Place" echo Yorke's seduction lyrics. "House of Cards" and "Nude" are pretty and delicate, while "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" swirls around Yorke's double-tracked vocals.

The band's striking thesis -- technology is robbing us of our humanity -- has drenched every Radiohead album. In Rainbows is no different. The album opener, "15 Step," starts with a drum machine, only to be usurped by an an actual drum line. "Bodysnatchers" relies on a shuffling guitar and a uptempo beat to back up the tension in the fear of conformity ("Has the light gone out for you?/Because the light's gone for me/It is the 21st century"). The album's closer, "Videotape," recounts a judgment day of sorts, swirling around electronic elements of the song. It's pessimistic, of course, but equally beautiful.

In the abstract, it's a decidedly 2000s album. In the concrete, it's one of Radiohead's best.

6.

Band: Jay-Z
Album: The Black Album

Jay-Z's "retirement" album had the rapper working out a personal narrative before our eyes. With an eye toward Notorious B.I.G., The Black Album lets Jay paint a picture full of regrets, pronouncements and theses. It's a damned shame he has continued to make records because he could have gone out on top.

Calling one's album The Black Album is a not surprisingly egoist move by Shawn Carter, but not one unprecedented. Comparing his record to the Beatles' opus is silly, but we've come to know that Jay's record is fucking brilliant.

"Lucifer" is one of Kanye West's best productions, with a bouncing beat and Jay's philosphic look at life and death ("Bob" in the final verse may live or die). "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," as so many great rap records have done, brought an urban ethos to suburban America, popular culture and even the political arena, forgetting that the song is a grade-A Timbaland production. "Change Clothes" is a Neptunes wonder that has Jay looking at his place in the game, his time in life and saying goodbye to the silliness of rap. "99 Problems" is a strong early hip hop production (thanks, Rick Rubin!) and an even stronger storytelling situation about Jay's problems with the police and his quick thinking. "Moment of Clarity" is harsh and smart. The album's highlight is the trilogy of introspective career-examining songs near the start of the album. "December 4th" has Jay's mother telling stories about him, his early life and his growing up without a father. Jay fills in the blanks without a mother's rose-colored glasses, expressing regret and some sadness. "What More Can I Say" has Jay showing off a harsher flow, with an a capella bit in the middle. "Encore" completes the trilogy with a flourish, celebratng his

--

It would be easy to simply do as most rappers do and talk about stacks and guns and whatever. And Jay does some of that, no doubt. But, The Black Album is honest and smart. It's a man coming to terms with his mortality and the mortality of his career.

The Black Album - Jay-Z

5.

Band: Mastodon
Album: Crack the Skye

From dick joke enthusiasts to video gamers, Mastodon's 2009 Crack the Skye hits near the top of the list. Indeed, the album is Mastodon's attempt at moving away from Neurosis and Slayer and becoming more like Tool and Pink Floyd. The results are, needless to say, amazing.

Crack The Skye - Mastodon

4.

Band: Wilco
Album: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

If Radiohead can tell you how much the music industry sucks, the ballad of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an exercise in Albini's theory that the industry is a disaster. As the brilliant documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart touches upon, the making of YHF was full of band infighting and label problems. Warner wanted another Summerteeth and Wilco instead got indie rock stalwart Jim O'Rourke to produce the album instead.

What follows is shockingly good. Summerteeth is a certain type of near-perfect album with pop hooks and moving production, but YHT is better. Gone are the pop gems, though the hooks remain, layered on top of dissonant orchestrations, small samples and Jeff Tweedy's excellent lyrics.

---

The album's place in the decade is something of a coincidence. Released in early 2002, songs like "War on War" and "Ashes of American Flags" seem to be -- not unlike the overpraised and crappy Bruce Springsteen album the Rising -- written about the decade's defining, tragic moment. But, indeed, the record's release was delayed and delayed. Nevertheless, the songs have some cache in regards to the events, from the slow developing opener to the catchy and acoustic "Jesus, Etc." "Kamera" and "Heavy Metal Drummer" both recall wonderful days of old, with a nostalgia reserved for other bands.

In the way that it's a place in the evolution of Wilco -- from the country rock stylings of A.M. all the way to the dadrock of Wilco (The Album) -- YHT is a distinctly 2000s album.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco

3.

Band: Lil Wayne
Album: The Carter III

I wanted, so desperately, to put this album in the top slot. So desperately. I really love this album. It probably doesn't define my life or the times like the first two records do, herego, no. 3.

I'm probably overstating this -- certainly possible, as I am ignorant about most music and have a really small level of experience from which to draw -- but I'll compare Tha Carter to, probably, my favorite album of all-time: Dark Side of the Moon. Tha Carter is weird and it shows a man who can jump around genres and still put out a record that people (as in, the hoi palloi) love. In the same way that Dark Side is a prog rock record with outstanding hooks, Tha Carter III is a club record seemingly written and recorded by a man who truly doesn't give a shit. Like, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien-level of "don't give a shit."

That's an important distinction to be made. Rap music suffers as art -- in the eyes of mostly white critics -- for many reasons, but the overt commercialism in it is a huge part of that (other reasons include: a misunderstanding of black culture at large, overhomophobia in rap lyrics, off-putting videos.). One of Wayne's pre-Tha Carter III's most famous appearances was his hook on Fat Joe's "Make it Rain" single. On the best remix (listen here), Wayne is joined by about a million rappers (Actually, just DJ Khaled, Fat Joe, R. Kelly, T.I., Birdman, Rick Ross and Ace Mac) and it's striking to see the difference between lyrical styles. As in, Wayne isn't rapping just about how many stacks he has or how he's got cars. Indeed, Wayne uses some actual wordplay (making references to the Weather Channel, geography and TV) while T.I., basically, just talks about cars. Bleh.

Or take Wayne's guest spot on Keri Hilson's awesome "Turnin' Me On." Using the (very) sexual theme of the song, Wayne works blue and hopes that the chick's "Vagina's tight," maybe the only use of that word in a song that works, while then bragging about his skills down below by "I go underwater and hope your piranha bite." It's oddly charming, very weird and really clever. And those are just guest spots. The type of shit most artists just phone into the studio.

Even the best rappers spend a lot of time talking about much money they have. Even Tha Carter III has a fuck ton of that -- the best song on the entire record is about throwing money in a strip club, after all. But, while most rappers just fuck around and lazily rhyme "money" with "funny" and words with themselves, Wayne just stopped caring, at some point.

No, he's probably not a better person than T.I. or whoever. But, then again, maybe he is.

---

Much has been made about Wayne's work ethic, but I do wonder if all of this "I just record and let the label deal with it" nonsense is nonsense. On one hand, the few setlists posted online suggest he doesn't do play up his shows for album sales. Clearly, he just does whatever song is on his mind and he's recently recorded.

---

Rap music is the dominant genre in music and has been for some time. We're at a point wherein commercial music can be artistic and no one has done this like Lil Wayne has with Tha Carter III.

Tha Carter III - Lil Wayne

2.

Band: Death Cab For Cutie
Album: We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes

I've told the story on the podcast, so I won't repeat it, but Tony Kornheiser is the reason I work in journalism. My fandom of his has waned somewhat -- if I wanted to listen to old Jews complain, I have other avenues of doing that (my family) -- but I continue to listen to his radio show via podcast every day.

A frequent guest is sportswriter Liz Clarke. Clarke's utterly charming, slightly self-effacing and makes the show about 500 times better than it should be (Tracee Hamilton is similar, though less charming than Clarke). Like Kornheiser, Clarke's a big fan of Bruce Springsteen fan.

A few weeks back, she told the story of going to see Springsteen twice on this particular tour, including once in out of town to see him do Springsteen's second album in its entirety. Despite having seen Springsteen live over 100 times, Clarke still did this because the album was that important to her.

---

The All Tomorrow's Parties festivals have put on a series called "Don't Look Back" that does this sort of thing. Tortoise has performed for ATP, as have many other bands I enjoy (Dirty Three doing Ocean Songs sounded particularly awesome). This past year's Pitchform Festival similarly did such a thing, with Public Enemy, Yo La Tengo, Built to Spill and others doing classic albums. I wish I could've seen many of the shows, but they've mostly been away from me and I am poor.

I have seen Mastodon do Crack the Skye front to back on the band's last tour and it was, in Clarke's words, a religious experience. It's among the great moments in my concertgoing life and Mastodon didn't just kill it. They blew the doors off the 9:30 Club.

But, Clarke's reception of Springsteen's second album was larger. Her experience of Springsteen is larger, on some level, and I probably have more bands I adore than Clarke does. Seh's like many Springsteen fans I know: She'll see him several times on a tour.

In trying to identify a band I identify myself with as much as Clarke does, I don't know that I can. Most of my favorite bands... That doesn't work. I don't think I'd want to see any of Tortoise's records, front to back (not because all the albums aren't great, front to back. They are.). Indeed, post-rock is detached, on some level. I'd certainly not refuse Wilco, were they to play Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (or, for that matter, the sublimely perfect Summerteeth) at a local venue, but I had the chance to see them last year and didn't take it, as Wilco's most recent albums suck. Hard.

And Clarke's story just reminded me that We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes would be that album. I would absolutely fly out of town to see -- well, assuming I could afford it -- the band play it.

--

Look, it's no secret that music is a huge part of my life. I write these stupid lists and I put up these stupid reviews; music soundtracks nearly everything I do. I struggle constantly with my love of Ben Gibbard's songwriting and my fandom of Death Cab for Cutie.

This album was my introduction to Gibbard's work and it remains his best. While The Postal Service record is too twee and Death Cab's more recent albums meander far too often, We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes is the story of a breakup, with the ups, downs and in-betweens therein.

--

Albums are tattooed on our brains often because of the moment when we heard them. I've told the story before, but it remains, I love Death Cab's second record because I was at transitory point in my life. It occupies a brilliant, beautiful space. It speaks to all those with broken hearts, all those who have been taken apart. Unlike many of the albums on the list, it is timeless.

1.

Band: Isis
Album: Panopticon

Pitchfork's recitation of why "B.O.B." was the great included a line about the war that, sadly, came to define much of the decade:

The title-- aka "Bombs Over Baghdad", a phrase that sounded oddly anachronistic in 2000, sadly ubiquitous two and a half years later-- is only the start of it.

It's not an unfair assessment and, obviously, the tragedy that is the Iraq War has defined much of my post-college life. The war started my senior year and dominated three election cycles in that time. Thousands dead. Trillions of dollars spent. It's a war of serious consequence.

But, really, how can anyone talk about this decade without thinking in terms of Sept. 11? A few records on this list dealt with that tragedy in one way or another -- the catchphrasing of You Are Free, the loneliness of Sea Change and the overt politics of One Beat come to mind -- but nothing comes close to the all-enveloping nature of the emotion of the time like Panopticon. Like the concept and prisons of its name, the record takes over your brain, from the first second of "So Did We" to the final crunching riffs of "Grinning Mouths."

The album's artwork and liners mention security, and nothing feels like the security, fear and emotions that have overwhelmed the U.S. in our dealings with the world like Panopticon. Nothing gets to the isolation modernity gives us, within that context, like Panopticon does (Though, Radiohead has tried to do this). Nothing combines these things like Panopticon while using all instruments as phrase-constructors.

In a post-9/11 world (that is a phrase I never thought I'd put on this site), Panopticon is a letter of warning, a letter of reflection and a recitation of apology. Indeed, Isis accomplishes this all while maintaining a minimal lyric sheet. I'm not sure I've everheard a record say so much with so little in the way of lyrics. No, it's not instrumental, but Aaron Turner uses simple lines ("Backlit" features a lovely "Always on you" line to build the song's structure). Similarly, the guitar work is measured and phrased in such a way that the band is almost writing a concise story. The "Syndic Calls" guitar breaks are rhytmic and heavy, repeating and building. Like the best post-rock, Panopticon is not afraid of slowly constructing musical phrases.

Every time I listen to Panopticon, I marvel at how layered and beautiful it is, as an album. Relying on anticipation more than anything, the album has an unparalelled tension. Even with the cookie monster growl and a reminder of our fucked up existence, it's the album of the decade. Both gorgeous and reflective, it's brilliant.

Panopticon - Isis

Best of the decade: 11-20

2009-12-20T01:11:00.000-08:00

20.

Band: Mastodon
Album: Leviathan

And so it began.

My relationship with Mastodon began with an album that used a classic American novel as a metaphor for the band's trials and tribulations. It's a pretty stupid novelty, but I love the idea of music based on books. So, when I saw the furied whale album cover at, of all places, Target... I bought it.

I've probably listened to the full album somewhere in the neighborhood of, 500 times since then. Whereas Blood Mountain has some great tracks ("Colony of Birchmen," of course, is a classic), there are no mediocre songs on Leviathan. There aren't any average songs. Every song is good, every song is furious and true, with the wailing (whaling?) musicianship flying out of my headphones.

"Island" thrusts forward, eventually coasting into insanity. "Hearts Alive" is 13 minutes of movements, where "Megalodon" is the kind of exercise in guitar playing that Steve Vai wishes he could have accomplished (the beginning of "Aqua Dementia" would fit this, too).

And those are the lesser songs on the album.

"Blood and Thunder" is one of the band's signature songs, with a punishing drum sound and a Van Halen-esque guitar breakdown between Bill Kelliher and ex-banjo player Brent Hinds. "I am Ahab" has doubled guitar harmonies, perfect triplet repetition and Troy Sanders' best singing. "Seabeast" is all shuffle and anger. "Iron Tusk" has the best melodic guitar line this side of Iron Maiden. And "Seabeast." Oh, "Seabeast."

This is what metal should be, folks.

Leviathan - Mastodon

19.

Band: Grizzly Bear
Album: Veckatimest

Veckatimest was my favorite non-Mastodon album of the last year, buoyed by a handful of absolutely brilliant champer pop tracks. "Ready, Able" -- to cite one -- has timing, strings and atmospher-y production to be an awesome Portishead song. But, it also has the emotive songwriting that could be a great Death Cab song. And the combination of it all that makes it almost Radiohead-eque.

"Ready, Able," by the way, is the third-best song on the album.

18.

Band: Songs:Ohia
Album: The Lioness

A suicide note set to music and the inspiration for what I mistakenly called my "opus."

The Lioness - Songs:Ohia

17.

Band: Iron & Wine
Album: The Shepherd's Dog

Nearly the best in a mediocre year of albums, 2007's The Shepherd's Dog is no slouch. Sam Beam's best work shines on the record, with a full band production style missing from his previous work. Beam jumps from genre to genre, all while doing his signature Nick Drake-meets-the-American-South impression.

"Boy With A Coin" is a godsend.

The Shepherd's Dog - Iron & Wi...

16.

Band: OutKast
Album: Stankonia

There is a stop on the DC Metro (our version of the subway) that serves Springfield, Va. It also serves a neighboring town called Franconia. I always think of this album when I get on the train that goes toward Franconia-Springfield.

---

I hate to continue to dive into the race-card pool, but is this record nearly as popular with black people as it is with white people? I have to think that it's not. Stankonia is nearly the picture of my Kanye West theory -- that any strangeness/introspection/oddities=great for the mostly white rock critic audience that reviews most record -- with the Source giving it a good, not great review (four of five stars, though, in its defense, Vibe gave it a 9 of 10). On the other hand, Village Voice, Pitchfork and AV Club have all given it perfect or near-perfect marks. In fact, "B.O.B." was Pitchfork's number one track of the decade. Friend of the site Alyssa loves OutKast.

I can't help but look at OutKast and think "Decemberists." Great idea, not great in practice. The production on their records is pedestrian, at best. The duo's flow is choppy, at best. Listening to their records is mostly just a chore. I want to like OutKast -- I aspire to the pretentious white rock critic archetype. I really do. But, the duo has one good album, nay, great album.

Ranked -- properly, I'd say -- 359 on the RS list, this album is great.

Stankonia - OutKast

15.

Band: Broken Social Scene
Album: You Forgot it in People

Released the year I graduated college, I did not find this record until some years later. This happened largely because I mostly eschewed new music in the immediate time after graduation, especially the critically acclaimed stuff. I've recovered and love Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and this record, but lost Animal Collective and TV on the Radio somewhere in the mix.

Anyway, I've written about the soft, muffled brilliance that is this albm, mostly wrapped in stories of breakups and weird experiences. I'm always surprised that no one comments on these stories.

You Forgot It In People - Brok...

14.

Band: Cat Power
Album: You Are Free

Pretty strange that Dave Grohl makes two appearances on my list, neither time for the Foo Fighters. God, I hate that band (save for one fucking brilliant album released a while ago).

---

Framed within the top 100 of Pitchfork's list, I adore You Are Free. On first listen, I was in love and with each subsequent listen, I enjoy this record as much as that first listen. Like the best lyricists, Chan Marshall's words can go a million ways, but evoke something in each track.

You Are Free - Cat Power

13.

Band: Yo La Tengo
Album: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Yo La Tengo has been a constant in my indie rock life. They were the first band a friend Andrew showed me. It was this album that made me feel like I belonged in college. And it remains a band I enjoy with those important to me.

And Then Nothing Turned Itself...

12.

Band: Kanye West
Album: The College Dropout

There's no two ways to say it: Kanye West's debut album is amazing. He isn't the rapper that, say, Jay-Z is, but he's a superlative producer and writer. His lyrics are clever, instrospective and conscious. He dances on the line of bizarre commercialism and self-diagnosis on the album, hitting up religion (for the album's worst song) also for good measure.

"Through the Wire" is an autobiographical dance through the story of West's car crash that led to his jaw being wired shut. "Two Words" is an anti-establishment romp with guest sots from The Harlem Boys Choir, Freeway and Mos Def. It's the album's best track. "All Falls Down," based on a Lauryn Hill sample, is the most self-reflective song about the black community since Tupac's "Changes," only about 100 times better. "Slow Jamz" started West's stupid love of Jamie Foxx (though, the Twista rap on it is brilliant), yet remains a great song. "The New Workout Plan" is sarcastic and clever. "We Don't Care" is West's motivational rap, done first.

The album is catchy. It's smart. It's great.

---

Look, Kanye West clearly thinks his shit doesn't stink, which is annoying. But, he can back it up. He's flat-brilliant. His writing is clear and smart, emphasizing his own insecurities to make a larger point on tracks like "All Falls Down." His production is striking and catchy. Yes, he shouldn't have fucked up Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the VMAs. Yes, I'm tired of his blogging. Yes, his fashion line looks ridiculous.

But, as long as he keeps producing records like this one, he's great. As long as he's a musician, I want to hear what he's doing.

The College Dropout - Kanye We...

11.

Band: Tortoise
Album: It's All Around You

I'd say that Tortoise's five proper album is departure, but the brilliance of Tortoise is that the band doesn't really have a formula from which to depart. The first record was a wonderful post-rock album that largely set the standard for the genre, while 1996's Millions Now Living Will Never Die started out with a 20-minute song. TNT is tight and worldly, while Standards uses electronics and prog-rock.

The title track of It's All Around You is among the band's best songs. It's an exercise in layered production, with vibes, drums and a brilliant Jeff Parker guitar line leading the way. It's the best instrumental of the decade, rivaled only by Mogwai's "Friend of the Night."

Best of the decade: 21-30

2009-12-13T03:50:00.000-08:00

30.

Band: Battles
Album: Mirrored

As previously written, Mirrored is the sound of the future, for worse or for (mostly) better.

(Album preview here.)

29.

Band: Beck
Album: Sea Change

Once of two Beck records to be on the RS 500 list (440), Sea Change still makes me cry. "End of the Day" was part of a terribly difficult time in my life -- the record was favored by a close friend who has passed away -- and I can't listen to the song without going back to the days around his passing.

Forgetting the personal aspects, when Beck tries to be super serious guy, he generally doesn't pull it off. But, Sea Change does. He's not goofy. He's not one genre or another. He's just a man, singing sad sad songs over swirling, glorious arrangements. Lost cause, indeed.

Sea Change - Beck

28.

Band: Kanye West
Album: Graduation

While Late Registration was too flashy and 808s & Heartbreak was too emo, Graduation was West's attempt at stadium rap. He'd toured with U2 and wanted to do what U2 does. Only, you know. Not shitty.

So, he took more electronic influences ("Stronger"), spacey sounds ("I Wonder") and, shit, Steely Dan ("Champion") to make something of a personal record. Drawing on inspirational music, he sounds as much like a Hallmark card as a rapper ("If you admire somebody you should go head and tell 'em/ People never get the flowers while they can still smell 'em" from "Big Brother," for example).

This is not a bad thing. West's an introspective guy, as his first single ever (a record that will be tackled next week), "Through the Wire" showed. But, on Graduation, he kicks this up a notch. While his first two record were The Wire, his latter two have been Friday Night Lights. Both are brilliant.

Graduation - Kanye West

27.

Band: Mogwai
Album: Mr. Beast

Mogwai's music is the most evocative post-rock music ever produced. As intellectual as most post-rock is, Mogwai's hits you in the emotional parts of your brain. Despite their protests, it's music to which listeners ascribe every emotion and event. "Friend of the Night" is the example. Haunting and evocative, it's the record you hear late in the evening, contemplating your next move while tears softly hit the pillow.

Mr. Beast - Mogwai

26.

Band: Ryan Adams
Album: Heartbreaker

Though he's no Steve Earle, Ryan Adams' first solo record is as good as anything Earle has produced. Heartbreaker has Adams modulating between sensitive country guy and sad country guy, with a few uptempo fun numbers thrown in for good measure. "Come Pick Me Up" is one of the saddest, best songs ever written. It's as pitiful as it is beautiful.

Heartbreaker - Ryan Adams

25.

Band: Jay-Z
Album: The Blueprint

Kinda sucks that one of the decade's great record was released on the decade's defining day, doesn't it?

---

I always wonder, in terms of black artists, if the simple formula to gain mainstream acceptance is simply "act in a way that is acceptable to the most white rock critics."

Now.

That statement is about as loaded as it can get. And maybe every generation of white people finds black culture more acceptable (after we try and co-opt it [coughELVIS-EMINEMcough), so that's a a moving goalpost altogether. And maybe I'm stretching it.

But.

This white person sees The Blueprint and hears soul samples and Doors samples and Jay-z impersonating Frank Sinatra as much as he is impersonating Rakim (forgetting that I hate Sinatra and love Rakim). That's not necessarily why I love the record, but I can see why other people like it.

---

Again, there's some Kanye West/Lil Wayne thing happening here. Jay's more instrospective on songs like "Heart of the City" and he appears more thoughtful on tracks like "Song Cry." But, really, The Blueprint is a fucking banging rap record. "Jigga That Nigga" has that great club shuffle, while "Takeover" is a diss track that's not as blunt as, say, "Hit 'Em Up." It's actually smart. "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" has the greatest non-Lil Wayne line in rap history ("He who does not feel me is not real to me, therefore he doesn't exist. So, poof. Vamoose, sonofabitch."). "Girls, Girls, Girls" has B.I.G.'s listmaking, with the bravado of a lothario, all surrounded by a masterfully sampled Kanye West production (Jackson 5, anyone?).

It's a great record, black or white.

The Blueprint - Jay-Z

24.

Band: Calexico
Album: Hot Rail

Tucson's favorite sons have always combined the best of brash Mexican music and the softer side of American popular folk music, but Hot Rail is the apex.

Hot Rail is a spaghetti western. It's a facisimile of a West that probably doesn't exist, full of emotive cowboys -- not the terrorizing bank robbers, themselves a fiction -- with wild women and fearful scorpions. It's rapid fire battles and long treks with no starvation and a beautiful dessert. It's a pleasant old man at the garage to take in your mid-50s Chevy truck with the rounded hood and a local bar owner whose establishment has been passed down through generations.

It's "Sonic Wind" and "Ballad of Cable Hogue" and "Service and Repair."

23.

Band: 50 Cent
Album: Get Rich or Die Tryin'

As he showed on his later albums, 50 Cent doesn't have much of a flow. He's not an outstanding writer. Outside of Dr. Dre (which is like saying "outside of the home runs, Mark McGwire wasn't a good player"), he doesn't work with great people.

Still, Get Rich or Die Tryin' is a masterful album. Sure, a lot of that is Dr. Dre's hand. "In da Club" is one of the best club records around, entirely because Dre is the king of that groove. "If I Can't" bumps like "California Love" because Dre produced both. "Heat." "Back Down." Same stuff.

But, 50's flow fits his thing as well as anyone. Pure "I'm a bad motherfucker" gangster rap was falling out of favor in 2003 (Eminem killed it, partially), and 50's story -- shot nine times, nihilistic philosophy, etc. -- coupled well with a very scared American populace made for a great combination. Moreover, 50's voice is perfect with this combination. Gritty, draped in Kevlar and Hemingway-ly short, 50's flow is mean.

Indeed, Get Rich or Die Tryin' is undeniably brutal and kind of mean-spirited. There's little in the way of fun-loving humor ("I love you like a fat kid loves cake" in the slow jam "21 Questions" being the exception) and the only jokes are almost entirely at the expense of Ja Rule in "Back Down" (sample line: "Your mammy, your pappy, that bitch you chasing/Your little dirty-ass kid, I'll fucking erase them"). The sad fact, though, is that "Back Down" is a fun song, easy to sing with and fun to listen to.

It's a harsh world. Get Rich or Die Tryin' reminded us of that.

---

Just to think out loud here...

50 Cent being shot nine times is folklore now, but do people really know the full details of what happened? He basically snitched on his old crew from Queens, naming names on a record called "Ghetto Qu'ran (Forgive Me)." It was supposed to be a track on his first (never released) record, Power of the Dollar. Well, let's just throw it to Wikipedia:

According to an affidavit by IRS agent Francis Mace, law enforcement officials believed that the shooting of 50 Cent in 2000 was in retaliation for the lyrics of the song.

Not to get too far into the details of the morality at play regarding snitching, but. What the hell was the point of naming all these people in the song? I am unequivocally for artistic freedom, but I do want to express my criticism on this action. It seems unnecessary on a song that mostly sucks anyway. What's the gain?

Get Rich Or Die Tryin' - 50 Ce...

22.

Band: Queens of the Stone Age
Album: Songs for the Deaf

QOTSA, moreso than friends Mastodon, is a band that really opens metal in a way that's less ridiculous. Indeed, QOTSA doesn't put out theme records -- well, except that for this one -- in the way that Mastodon does. Sure, Mastodon is harder (and a better band, really), but it's no surprise to me that QOTSA are a more popular band. They don't sing about, like, dragons and shit. And, of course, Josh Homme's pop sensibility is not without merit.

Songs for the Deaf is notable for its guests, mostly. Mark Lanegan lends his vocals to a bunch of songs, notably the superlative "Hangin' Tree" and even better "Song for the Dead." Dean Ween plays guitar on a few songs. More importantly, of course, Dave Grohl's drumming nearly makes the record. The aforementioned "Song for the Dead" is, basically, a lesson in thump.

The album falls off toward the end -- it's a theme album refelcting driving from Homme's of Palm Springs up to Los Angeles, with very irritating radio things buffering songs -- but the first seven tracks are pure hard rock. Album opener "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire" -- once you get past the radio bullshit -- is furious and screaming, while singles "No One Knows" and "Go With the Flow" are catchy and fun ("Go With the Flow" batters while it massages). "The Sky is Fallin" has a swirling guitar and "Hangin' Tree" has Lanegan's best vocal this side of, well, "Song for the Dead."

Songs For The Deaf - Queens of...

21.

Band: Sufjan Stevens
Album: Michigan

Boy, people hate Sufjan Stevens, which is sort of understandable. A friend of mine has said "So, I have a theory that no one who played in a high school concert band can possibly like his stuff," which is probably true. Stevens puts out heavily arranged songs with far too many instruments for something that is nominally "indie" and "DIY"."

Though I enjoy said arrangements -- I'm basically musically illiterate -- they are all fair points. And there is evidence of this on Michigan, the first of Steven's 50 albums about the 50 states (of course he's not going to finish it), as even the opener "Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)" has a swarming trumpet.

But even if all those things annoy you -- they don't annoy me. I love Stevens' descent into arrangment craziness -- there is "Romulus," Stevens' best song. "Romulus" is not just a beautiful song, but a strinking one about familiar love, parental neglect and desperation, told softly over a picking guitar line and an easy piano. Stevens' adds his own signature (a banjo, specifically), but his angel-pretty voice is the reason to hear the song. It's not "Chicago" or eight minutes of "Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)." It's simply a really great storyteller singing a beautiful song.

Greetings from Michigan - The ...

Best of the decade: 31-40

2009-12-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

40.

Band: Pinback
Album: Blue Screen Life

As mentioned in the bit about the Raconteurs, this list is often a romp through my life story since Jan. 1, 2000 (and mostly since May 2003, my college graduation). Thhe deeper I go into the list, the more I find the records that soundtracked my daily existance: The Metro, playing video games, girlfriends, whatever.

Blue Screen Life -- and this is going to sound weird -- is my time at The Washington Post, specifically, the Metro rides there and back. The album was my most listened-to during that time. It seemed that it was the only thing on my iPod at the time. For whatever reason, I needed to hear a song about computers ("Offlinke P.K.") or a sweet tribute to a dead fish ("Penelope") or a thumping math-rock song ("Prog") or the lament of "Boo."

And, man, it sounds just as good now as it did them. I loved that album and still love it. Angular guitars, two-man vocals and snap drums make for a great record and one that holds up.

Blue Screen Life - Pinback

39.

Band: Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Album: The Brave and the Bold

When my favorite band and one of the premier songwriters teamed up for a covers album, it was clearly going to be interesting. Though everyone doesn't agree, I'd argue that the record surpassed even the highest expectations, with interesting arrangements and wonderful playing by everyone involved.

The album is not for the faint of heart, of course. The album starts with a sped-up version of a song by a (obscure, by Americans, at least) Brazilian guitarist. Other bands covered include the horrifying Don Williams, the unctious Richard Thompson and Melanie (of "Brand New Key" fame, though they don't cover that song). Probably typical for the backgrounds of those involved, they cover Lungfish, Quix*O*Tic and the Minutemen, but moreovers, the highlights are the three most-known artists the band covers: Devo, Springsteen and Elton John. Oldham's voice on "Daniel" is tender, energetic on "That's Pep!" and perfectly desperate on "Thunder Road." Indeed, the cover of the Springsteen classic is stripped of its nonsense and boiled down to a few things: A great lead line brought to the front and played on vintage synths, a start-stop beat and a lyric that yearns for something more.

I've heard a bunch of versions of this song and none is one tenth as good as this one. It's the perfect cover: a reimaging of a song.

38.

Band: Deltron 3030
Album: Deltron 3030

Crappy Roland Emmerich movies aside, the end of the world is a pretty scary concept. Hip hop supergroup Deltron 3030 paints a surprisingly clever and surprisingly possible picture of said event on the group's self-titled 2000 release. I love the album and believe it to be Del tha Funkee Homosapien's best work and among Dan the Automator's, as well. "Virus" is amazing.

Indeed, it's kind of easy to forget, but a lot of people were really scared that the entire grid was going to explode on Dec. 31, 1999. Of course, that was all overreaction, but people were genuinely scared. Ah, 1999. You seem so long ago.

37.

Band: Cat Power
Album: The Covers Record

Because an album can't be in the top 10 based on one song, I'll just say that "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is the best cover song ever recorded. Anyone who compares it disfavorably to the original completely misses the point.

This was actually the album that introduced me to Cat Power. Released my freshman year of college, it was reviewed at our station by one of my idols, a dude named John. He spoke of its charms and I finally picked up on the beauty that is Chan Marshall's voice. I've been in love since.

The Covers Record - Cat Power

36.

Band: 90 Day Men
Album: To Everybody

I could've sworn that I've written about this album before, but it appears I have not. I guess I've started to write about To Everybody a few times and stopped or something, the mark of a truly great, undescribable album.

Indeed, to say To Everybody is math rock is to say that, like, Tha Carter III is a hip hop record. Sure, yeah. It is a math rock record, but it's so much more. It's what the form should be.

What similarly striking is that To Everybody is a small moment in time for 90 Day Men, not a great band. Their others records are passable for what they are, but th turgid repetitivness of Panda Park was largely unbearable and a direct contrast to the dynamism of purpose and lyrical interest shown on To Everybody.

And those opening seconds of "I've Got Designs on You?" Pure cacaphonic heaven.

35.

Band: Jens Lekman
Album: Night Falls Over Kortedala

The longest unpublished thing to come from my metaphoric pen would be the piece from over the summer on this album. My girlfriend had just broke my heart and left town for three weeks. That sort of thing'll mess with even the strongest, healthy person. For a self-involved idiot like me? Bad times. Basically, I took Lekman's gorgeous chamber pop album, parsed nearly every word and tried to apply it to my own heartbreak. It took me a week to write, and three edits.

That I could extrapolate that much from a record is not a testament to my lunacy as much as it is a testament to the album's grandiosity. It should probably be higher.

Night Falls Over Kortedala - J...

34.

Band: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Album: Ballad of the Broken Seas

I really underwrote this album when I reviewed it originally. Campbell's voice is heavenly and bounces off Lanegan's Tom Waits impression to huge success. The guitar work is intricate and the arrangements are really lush. Moreover, "Revolver" is a counfounding, cryptic song. The lyrics are hard to figure and the harmonies are just off.

It's also among the 10 or 20 best songs released this decade.

33.

Band: Justin Timberlake
Album: Justified

Justin Timberlake's debut album showed the world that he wasn't just another pretty face and a nice dance step. Working with some great producers -- Timbaland and Pharrell, specifically -- Timberlake was a revelation, a blue-eyed soul singer to actually enjoy.

"Rock Your Body" is pure sugar, but brilliant in its joy. "Senorita," silly as it sounds, lodges itself into your brain and "(And She Said) Take Me Now" has that great stutter that often eludes hip hop. "Like I Love You" has a great guest appearance from Clipse and "Take It From Here" is the slow jam for the ladies.

These songs are all good and well, but "Cry Me a River" is the breakup song to end all breakup songs. Likely written about Britney Spears, the song's production is pure Timbaland, with little synths and shuffling beats. Timberlake's voice gets into a crazy falsetto range that, on its own, is strange. In the song? It's a perfect ache.

Justified - Justin Timberlake

32.

Band: Ludacris
Album: Back for the First Time

When I first moved out here, "Act the Fool" (from some dopey soundtrack). was unendingly popular. The only two radio stations of which I was aware were the top 40 station (Hot 99.5) and the sports radio station (Sport/Talk 980, which is now ESPN 980), so I heard "Act the Fool" about 1,000,000 times that summer. It sucked.

Which is sort of crazy, because Ludacris' first major record is so very good. Back for the First Time -- an album largely culled from the independently released Incognegro -- is a revelation. Save for troll (well, only in looks. I'm sure he's a nice fellow, but, man is he ugly) Jermaine Dupree and one track by the Neptunes, Back for the First Time is self-produced or produced by Atlanta-based Bangladesh.

Beats schmeats. As a friend recently said of "What's Your Fantasy?" "This song is repetitve." The key is that Ludacris is the Drew Magary of hip hop, dropping loving references, blunt object phrasing and overall smiley fun to hip hop. Indeed, there is a distinct lack of humor in hip hop -- a smirk every six months from Jay-Z and a DXM-induced giggle from Lil Wayne do not count -- and Ludacris is nothing if not funny. "Ho" is a three-minute joke, while "What's Your Fantasy?" is the first goofy sex rap with the oustanding "pick up your thighs and call me the Pac Man" line said with a wink and a smile.

Sure, "Southern Hospitality" isn't drop-down funny, but the video sure is. He dies! He's upside down! Awesome.

Back For The First Time - Luda...

31.

Band: The Shins
Album: Oh, Inverted World

The album that launched Zack Braff's idea (also mine) that he knows something about music.

Oh, Inverted World - The Shins

Best of the decade: 41-50

2009-11-30T01:56:00.000-08:00

50.

Band: Wale
Album: The Mixtape About Nothing

In making the list, I said I wasn't going to put any mixtapes on this list -- Lil Wayne would've been a bigger presence, for sure -- but I just couldn't put a list of great music of the 2000s without this record. Living here in DC, Wale is a big fucking deal. He's really talented and is a huge part of the DC hip-hop scene, whatever that is. He calls himself Wale Ovechkin, echoing the city's one great athlete.

---

I know I keep saying that I don't feel comfortable with some of the positions on this list and I'm sorry about repeating that. I really put this thing together in a short amount of time and any list of 100 is going to have regrettable placements.

I'm not sure I'm so uncomfortable with this placement, but something keeps eating at me. Mostly that Seinfeld is among my favorite TV shows and to have Wale produce a record that revolves around that... I mean, come on.

The album is great. It follows the show's convention of using the article "The" before every song, with "The Cliche Lil Wayne Feature (It's the Remix Baby!)" using Wale's "Nike Boots" track as the basis for an outstanding pairing (one that most certainly cost Wale a lot of money). On the record, Wale is introspective and grownup -- indeed, "The Grown Up" samples the "We're not men!" speech from the show as a backdrop for Wale's personality crises. "The Kramer" examines racism, both in and out of hip hop, while "The Bmore Club Slam" uses that genre to craft an excellent track. "The Artistic Integrity" has Wale examining his our muse and his ability to get the message that he wants out clearly.

And so it goes. Wale is a tortured artist, on some level, and by using the great "show about nothing" to work out something about himself.

49.

Band: Okkervil River
Album: The Stand Ins

I've covered this ground already, but Okkervil River's second album about fame is dark, smart and catchy. "Lost Coastlines" is among the best songs of 2008, if not the best.

The Stand Ins - Okkervil River

48.

Band: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Album: Shake the Sheets

Another record I've covered, but Shake the Sheets is a really great record with tons of energy. It's Leo's best record and his subsequent records have been pretty crappy.

Shake The Sheets - Ted Leo & T...

47.

Band: Arcade Fire
Album: Funeral

Universally, Funeral is acclaimed. Its metacritic score (90) is ridiclously high and just about everyone has the record near the top of their lists, both of the decade and of 2004.

But, it's more than just the things that make critics enjoy it. It's finely assembled, beginning with the lovely string arrangement that stars in album opener "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)." "Une Annee Sans Lumiere" is layered, vocally, with a quick pace and a lovely guitar.

Lyrically, it dances around, all with themes strong enough to hold attention. "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" has the ability to fully grasp a suicidal depression with which many of us are all too familiar. "Crown of Love" is forlorn while "Rebellion (Lies)" is plangry (angry and pleading), a combination emotion that few bands can pull off. "Une Annee Sans Lumiere" describes band home Montreal. "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" even strikes the tone of a band looking toward adulthood.

At times, it's more impressive intellectually than it is in practice. As in, I don't listen to it as much as I do the albums ahead of it on the list. Still, every time I listen to Funeral, I enjoy it.

Funeral - Arcade Fire

46.

Band: Mastodon
Album: Blood Mountain

No question, Mastodon's one of my favorite bands. Blood Mountain is the most uneven of the three Mastodon records I have on the list, with several forgettable songs, though none are bad, per se.

Of course, it remains on this list (and midway through it, too) because of a few great tracks. "Colony of Birchmen" is certainly in the "best Mastodon track" conversation, as is "The Wolf is Loose."

I wrote about it here and I don't disagree with most of that review. Crack the Skye and Leviathan are far better.

Blood Mountain - Mastodon

45.

Band: Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
Album: The Dust of Retreat

Though not necessarily special, there's something very warm about The Dust of Retreat. It's not challenging and it's not boring, but rather something in the middle. It is nearly flawless in presentation and content (that stupid kitten song notwithstanding). It is, in many ways, the apex of the sensitive guy indie rock form.

The Dust Of Retreat - Margot &...

44.

Band: Neko Case
Album: Middle Cyclone

I really thought more people would respond to what I wrote surrounding (I don't say "about" because the piece isn't really about the record) Middle Cyclone, but they didn't. So it goes, I guess.

Anyway, the album is really quite striking and since its spring release, was touted as the best of 2009. I do love the album, though I've not picked it up since I saw her in the spring touring the record.

Middle Cyclone - Neko Case

43.

Band: Pedro the Lion
Album: Winners Never Quit

David Bazan's fire and brimstone sprirituality comes through on this 2000 album, as he constructs a plotline to an album decrying politics, its world and the temptations therein. As he said in an interview after the record was released:

This record is a complete, connected narrative from the first to last song. There was a theme I wanted to communicate: Damnation for the arrogant, judgment for the judgmental.

Bazan has a clear view of right and wrong (I think he's since been unborn or whatever it is when you're no longer a born-again) and the record provides that. Moreover, the record sounds great, like a Red House Painters album narrated by Damien Jurado. Bazan's baritone is sparse when it needs to be, warbly when he gets angry and desperate when needed. "Bad Things to Such Good People" is probably his best song, with "A Mind of Her Own" a close second.

Despite its mediocre reviews, I continue to love this album.

---

As I found myself listening to this album (and, honestly, Funeral), it just reminded me as to how hard putting together this list was. I sped through it and probably put a lot of records in the wrong order. Here's the thing, though: Anything in the top 50 or so is a really good album and anything in the top 25 is a near-perfect track. I love every single one of these records. Funeral is at 47 because I don't listen to it as much as I probably should and Winners Never Quit is one I don't enjoy as much as I used to, largely due to age (both mine and the age of the record).

So, that's to say that I love all these records.

Winners Never Quit - Pedro The...

42.

Band: The Raconteurs
Album: Broken Boy Soldiers

There was a period in my life, I shit you not, in which I would've put this album at no. 1. No joke. There was, probably, a six-month time wherein I listened to this album every day. I loved this record and continue to think it is the best thing Jack White's done.

Now? I love the record and every time I listen to it, I enjoy it. That's pretty high praise, no doubt, but I don't know that it's anything other than a really fun rock and roll record. That's great, sure, but it's nothing to write home about. I probably should've put, say, Funeral higher.

Still, it's melodic and fun. White's simplistic songwriting is augmented well by Brendan Benson's tinkering from all sides. Their back and forth vocals make "Level" so great and "Yellow Sun" so chipper. "Store Bought Bones" is the best garage rock song to be released post-1969. The title track is whiny and fanastic and lead single "Steady as She Goes" breaks no barriors, but rules nonetheless.

Broken Boy Soldiers - The Raco...

41.

Band: Sleater-Kinney
Album: The Woods

With One Beat, Sleater-Kinney evolved and on the band's final album, they were complete. Incorporating a production style more reminiscient of Hendrix than Bikini Kill, the band's only Sub Pop release is furious and full. Really, who would've thought that S-K could've put out an 11-minute song?

Corinn Tucker's voice is at its best on "Night Light," as good an album ender as existed in the decade. "The Fox" shows her scream as well, with "Roller Coaster" showing all the angular guitar-y-ness of Modest Mouse. What a record and what away to go out.

The Woods - Sleater-Kinney