1999: another shortlist for the incredibly pointless 999 albums project

Posted on April 14th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.

I am slowly compiling a list of my favorite 999 albums from 1951 to the present, playing by the same rules as the 99 albums list (no best-of compilations, etc). I'm doing this a year at a time. This is the second shortlist: my 1999 top fifty (the first twenty to twenty-five will probably make the final list). 1998 through 2000 was the most intensely obsessive stretch of new music listening in my life; this list may be the peak of albums that make people go "who the hell is that"? Yet in these three years I was more aware than ever of all the albums I didn't and couldn't hear, all the new music I couldn't follow. Many -- most -- of the albums in rateyourmusic's top fifty are ones I never heard, or heard once, or heard one song from. When Sonicnet got eviscerated by MTV and I lost my job professionally keeping up with new music, I abruptly gave up on digging for new music on my own, letting stuff come to me more than I pursued it; since then most of my active searching has been through the past, and there are far fewer obscurities on my new music lists.

Choosing among the top three in 1999 is one of the toughest decisions for me in any year:

1999

The Dismemberment Plan, Emergency & I
Of Montreal, The Gay Parade
Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
Lilys, The Three Way
Fiona Apple, When the Pawn...
Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
Self, Breakfast with Girls
Randy Newman, Bad Love
Applesaucer, Applesaucer
The Vandermark 5, Simpatico
The Negro Problem, Joys & Concerns
Abigail Grush, The Phantom Beat
Kristeen Young, Enemy
Bis, Social Dancing
Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive
Les Savy Fav, The Cat and the Cobra
R. Stevie Moore, The Future Is Worse than the Past
Shannon Wright, Flightsafety
Wilco, Summerteeth
Opeth, Still Life
Pinback, Pinback
Sam Prekop, Sam Prekop
Joel Forrester & People Like Us, Believe It
Lamb, Fear of Fours
Joe Henry, Fuse
Greg Brown, One Night

(a live album, but the songs are mostly otherwise unrecorded; originally issued on vinyl in 1982, but the cd resissue is the complete show.)
Archer Prewitt, White Sky
We, Square Root of Negative One
Built to Spill, Keep It Like a Secret
The Roots, Things Fall Apart
Friends of Dean Martinez, Atardecer
Jason Falkner, Can You Still Feel?
The Beta Band, The Beta Band
The Aluminum Group, Pedals
The Olivia Tremor Control, Black Foliage
U.S. Maple, Talker
Owsley, Owsley
Hovercraft, Experiment Below
Blinker the Star, August Everywhere
Etienne Charry, 36 Erreurs
April March, Chrominance Decoder
Prince Paul, A Prince Among Thieves
The Music Tapes, First Imaginary Symphony for Nomad
XTC, Apple Venus, Volume One
The Science Group, A Mere Coincidence
Oneida, Enemy Hogs
Kristin Hersh, Sky Motel
Clare Cooper, Valentine
Steve Coleman & Five Elements, The Sonic Language of Myth
Clive Gregson, Happy Hour

4 comments.

1989: the first shortlist for the incredibly pointless 999 albums project

Posted on March 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.

I am slowly, in my copious free time, compiling a list of my favorite 999 albums from 1951 to the present, playing by the same rules as the 99 albums list (no best-of compilations, etc). I'm doing this a year at a time. This is my 1989 top forty (the first twenty to twenty-five will probably make the final list):

1989

The Pixies, Doolittle
Volcano Suns, Thing of Beauty
De La Soul, Three Feet High and Rising
NoMeansNo, Wrong
XTC, Oranges and Lemons
Kirsty MacColl, Kite
Dave Holland Quartet, Extensions
Peter Blegvad, Downtime
Joe Jackson, Blaze of Glory
My Dad Is Dead, The Taller You Are, The Shorter You Get
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Tangle
Bob Mould, Workbook
The Momes, Spiralling
Lou Reed, New York
Television Personalities, Privilege
Jane Siberry, Bound by the Beauty
Steve Lacy, The Door
Elvis Costello, Spike
Lyle Lovett, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
Glass Eye, Hello Young Lovers
Bob Stewart's First Line Band, Goin' Home
3 Mustaphas 3, Heart of Uncle
Lounge Lizards, Voice of Chunk
Thinking Plague, In This Life
10,000 Maniacs, Blind Man's Zoo
Pere Ubu, Cloudland
Bel Canto, Birds of Passage
Shrimp Boat, Speckly
The Frogs, It's Only Right and Natural
Neneh Cherry, Raw Like Sushi
The Ex, Joggers & Smoggers
Michael Penn, March
Marilyn Crispell, Live in Zurich
Jack Walrath, Neohippus
Ut, Griller
Muhal Richard Abrams, The Hearinga Suite
A Confederacy of Dunces, Tsk, Tsk, Tsk
The Wedding Present, Bizarro
K.D. Lang, Absolute Torch and Twang
Boiled in Lead, From the Ladle to the Grave

15 comments.

early reactions to new of montreal album

Posted on March 7th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is the best album they've done in years; possibly their first great album since The Gay Parade a decade ago. As much as I love Kevin Barnes's best stuff, as much as I enjoy even his run of the mill stuff, I hadn't expected him to have another great album in him after the last few pretty good ones. He's developed his bizarre pop style in various directions over his career, while still somehow having a signature sound, but this is a leap further away; darker (though he's always had a dark streak), more aggressive (though he's always etc), and while the enthusiasm for odd chord changes and melodies and harmonies is still there, it no longer sounds playful. The overall tone is angrier, lyrically and musically. And it's acquired a beat, and some funk. This may seem odd, when I've been talking about it being less playful, but in many places it sounds like the first Scissor Sisters album (which is fine with me).

Right now I'm pretty sure this will be among my contenders for best album of 2007.

2 comments.

album!

Posted on January 18th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

I'd read of but hadn't heard Animal Collective, and was astonished to find Feels at the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library. On first listen, I think this has a good chance of ending up on my 99 albums list as one of the two 2005 entries.

They have the spirit of the Incredible String Band in them.

2 comments.

the music, the spotlight, the glitter ball

Posted on April 29th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Badness.

A friend who knows how much I love both Ethel Merman and musical abominations has loaned me The Ethel Merman Disco Album.

That's what I said.

Velma thinks I should upload a thirty-second snippet, but I think the imagination is sufficient.

0 comments.

cabaret revival soundtrack

Posted on March 22nd, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Theatre.

I remember reading good reviews of Alan Cumming as the MC in the late-1990s revival of Cabaret. I don't know how he was on stage, but on the soundtrack he is dreadful, overplayed and vulgar without charm or polish. The MC is a balancing act; sure he's crass, but he's also slick. Cumming is all growls and whoops and nudges without actually bringing anything compelling to his singing; where Joel Grey was creepy and disturbing, Cumming just comes across as a lout. And he can't even keep his accent consistently. It's a hard part to nail -- there's no humanity to it -- but Cumming misses by a mile. Natasha Richardson is all right, but Cumming ruins just about the whole show for me. An especially annoying example is "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes," in which he plays it for goofs throughout, apparently not comprehending that the joke depends upon singing the song beautifully and sensitively. This may seem like a strange thing to say of the MC, but Cumming completely lacks subtlety, and the role demands it, behind the vulgarity. I think the word I'm looking for is deftness: Grey had it, while Cumming has fists of ham.

0 comments.

top five initially overlooked influential albums

Posted on January 24th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.

Luke asked for "Top five albums, musical genre of your choice, that (a) were completely missed in 'Best of' lists and year end polls in the year of their release and (b) have become more influential to their musical genre than albums that were in 'best of' lists and year end polls."

5. Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden (1988)
Yes, it's the new wave band that did "Talk Talk" and "It's My Life". No, this doesn't sound anything like that. Spirit of Eden is as massive a stylistic break as can be found in any band's catalog. It's not electronic, it's not pop songs -- it's barely songs. It has the quiet and majestic sweep of classical music without the bombast of prog rock; it has astonishing shifts of mood and power. It's delicate, but swells to moments of huge beauty. It's... hard to describe. I don't know if its influence has been nearly as great as the other albums on this list, but I hear the sound of this album in a lot of moody music that's come since: Tindersticks, Doves, Mogwai, Sigur Ros.

4. Wire, Pink Flag (1977)
Probably got more attention in the U.K. than it did here initially; it did not make the 1977 Voice Critics Poll list. The stripped-down, laser-tight, precise yet urgent punk of Pink Flag paved the way for turn-of-the-decade postpunk bands like Gang of Four and Mission of Burma, and is still heard today in the sound of bands like Spoon and Elastica (who famously had to pay for copping a riff from this album, though I think it was no more of a cop than many others that go unpaid). Wire were not content to stay in one place: their next album, Chairs Missing, is weirder, stylistically and structurally more ambitious and varied, moody, subtle, still urgent and tight. Chairs Missing hasn't had nearly the influence of Pink Flag, but it's my favorite rock album ever.

3. Slint, Spiderland (1991)
Love it or hate it, this is where post-rock begins. I love a lot of it, myself, at the same time that I think it's basically prog rock in a new more respectable guise. There's nothing here that you can't find in some of the art-rock of the previous twenty years -- Can, Univers Zero, Faust, etc -- but this is the album that coalesced the angular, pointy-headed sound of a hundred albums in the next decade, half of them seemingly coming from Chicago.

2. Big Star, #1 Record (1972)
Big Star didn't quite sound like nobody else at the time: the best songs of Badfinger and the Raspberries have the same ringing guitars and power-pop hooks and harmonies. But Big Star did it best and most consistently, and unfortunately by far least successfully. The first two Big Star albums were commercial stiffs, but their sound is preserved in a thousand power pop singles since. More than any other band, they focused the sound of the Byrds and the Beatles' pop singles and turned it into a genre. Probably best known to mainstream rock fans via the Bangles' cover of "September Gurls".

1. Killing Joke, Killing Joke (1980)
Bradley Torreano at Allmusic sums it up well: "Since 1980, there have been a hundred bands who sound like this; but before Steve Albini and Al Jourgensen made it hip, the cold metallic throb of Killing Joke was exciting and fresh. The harshly sung vocals riding over the pulsating synth lines of the opener 'Requiem' have a vigor and passion that few imitators have managed to match. The precise riffs and tight rhythms found in songs like 'Wardance' would influence a generation of hardcore musicians; yet 'The Wait,' with its thrashing guitars and angry vocals, would find itself covered on a Metallica album only six years later. That such a bleak and furious album could have such a widespread influence is a testament to its importance. . . . [T]his is an underground classic and deserves better than its relative unknown status." In a year in which a few influential cult albums made it onto the Voice Critics Poll list (Gang of Four's Entertainment! at #10, X's Los Angeles at #16, the Feelies' Crazy Rhythms at #17, Joy Division's Closer at #22, even Young Marble Giants' barely-disqualified-for-this-list classic Colossal Youth at #25), Killing Joke's debut didn't make the list. I don't remember anyone particularly talking about it at the time. I never heard it on the radio, even the briefly surviving new wave stations; I was turned on to it by my friend Jim Maier, who I think shopped randomly for odd music things and also turned me on to the two Tubeway Army albums pre-"Cars". (British readers may not know that "Are Friends Electric?", a smash over there, was nothing over here.) That first Killing Joke album was like a blast of the industrial dancefloor future. It was like being blasted in a wind tunnel. It was awe-inspiring and cathartic and disturbing. It inoculated me to the sound of Nine Inch Nails, which consequently seemed like attitudinal silliness pasted over music I'd already heard; later, Marilyn Manson would allow me to appreciate Trent Reznor's relative maturity and subtlety. Today the first Killing Joke album sounds a little tinny, a little thin; it needs a good remaster sprucing-up. But in the meantime I can still turn it up loud.

0 comments.

hindsight is a bitch

Posted on January 11th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.

I'm listening, for the first time in a few years, to Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque. It's pleasant in a pop-buzzy way: low on grabby hooks, but consistently melodically interesting. Never great, never bad.

But, hey, Spin Magazine? I have not forgotten that you guys called this the best album of 1991.

A short list of better pop and rock albums from 1991:

The Pixies, Trompe le Monde
Nirvana, Nevermind
Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend (doing the same kind of thing as Bandwagonesque except much better)
Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger
Throwing Muses, The Real Ramona
Richard Thompson, Rumour and Sigh
De La Soul, De La Soul Is Dead
R.E.M., Out of Time
Superchunk, No Pocky for Kitty
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (I hate it, but historically it's a greater album by far than Bandwagonesque)
Slint, Spiderland
U2, Achtung Baby (I'm not a fan, but it has to be listed as a legitimate contender)

I could make a list of thirty more 1991 albums I think are better without trying hard, but that would be a more personal list. I think that any of the above albums, though, would be objectively better choices, with the benefit of hindsight (though the choice was an eyebrow-raiser at the time) than Bandwagonesque. (Well, okay, The Real Ramona is a personal choice, but it belongs with the albums above, damn it.) Note that with Nevermind, Loveless, and Spiderland you have three of the most influential rock albums of the decade to choose from (though predicting Spiderland at the time would have been a three-cushion shot, and pretty far off Spin's somewhat more mainstream brief).

There've been worse calls -- somehow the Village Voice Critics Poll for 1985 thought Talking Heads' Little Creatures was the album of the year, although at least 1985 was a pretty crappy year.

0 comments.

clap your hands say yeah

Posted on October 30th, 2005 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Badness.

Department of instant response:

So, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Reviews made this sound right up my alley. Boy do I not get it. It's well-crafted but unmemorable, the classic downfall of mediocre pop. Good harmonies but bland melodies.

Maybe it would grow on me, but there's one huge thing working against it: the unbearable lead vocalist. I like a lot of abrasive singers -- I mean, I listen to the Danielson Famile with pleasure -- but this guy has that piercing male whine combined with my least favorite affectation this side of melisma: he puts a little anguished choke or break of voice or agonised scratch into every fucking line. He's like a cross between Robert Smith and Gordon Gano. I want to smack him.

0 comments.

extraordinary machine

Posted on March 17th, 2005 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

Now that better music writers than I am -- and worse ones (but admirably enthusiastic) -- are openly writing about listening to Fiona Apple's shelved third album, I might as well mention that I've been listening to it every day, it gets better each time, it's striking and brooding and full of good lines ("A contemptible snob/He lived to put things in their place" "I'm so tired of crying/You'd think I was a siren" "Whatever’s in front of me is covering my view/So I can't see what I'm seeing in fact/I only see what I'm looking through"), the melodies are ominous, driven by percussive piano and harsh strings, and the whole thing is in a consistent and individual voice, a further progression in the logical direction staked out by When the Pawn...., with Tidal long ago left behind over the horizon.

I'll bet she manages to Wilco her way out of her situation, free herself from bottom-line bound ears, and find a home willing to let her be who she is and damn the lack of a hit single. No one expects Tom Waits to have a hit single; a smart record company would let Apple go where she wants for twenty years or so, and they'd make a profit, too. I'm not sure anyone at all above the indies is operating that way anymore. One way or another, though, I'm sure she'll get heard.

0 comments.

the reality soldier, the laugh child: the Minutemen, Double Nickels on the Dime

Posted on November 17th, 2004 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Musicians.

On another online forum, I was asked what my favorite album of the 1980s was.

The odd thing is, my knowledge of 1980s music is relatively weak. I'm much stronger on the 1970s and the 1990s. At least half the people in this conference know 1980s music better than I do. In the early eighties, I worked in a big record store -- the Seattle outlet of a chain called Peaches. It was an interesting experience in many ways, and I'm not sorry I did it, but it burned me out on popular music for years. It's astonishing to me now, but I went half a dozen years without following new music at all. I doubt that will ever happen to me again. I missed the advent of the Pixies, for crying out loud. By the time I knew I loved them, they were breaking up. Which means I was seriously getting back into music around 1990, 1991.

Just because I'm not qualified doesn't mean I don't have opinions, of course. So:

The Minutemen, DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME (vinyl version; both cd reissues cut songs -- though if cd is all you can find, get it anyway).

Not a famous album, perhaps -- certainly not a bestseller -- but beloved by many; probably the greatest American punk rock album, and one of the albums that signaled how far punk had traveled. The Minutemen were three musicians: bassist Mike Watt, drummer George Hurley, and guitarist D. Boon. Each of them was a terrific player, and you wouldn't get bored listening through the entire record one musician at a time. But what made them a great band was their peculiar fusion. They were self-described "disciples of the three-way," and their songs were perfectly balanced, each of the three of them contributing in equal measure; no band has ever sounded as free of ego as the Minutemen.

The Minutemen were charming in many ways that could have been annoying, if they weren't so intelligent and sincere. For example, they were self-mythologizing, singing of their lives and their past and their subculture and their homespun philosophies (condensed to their own specialized catchphrases); they were famously from San Pedro, working class, garrulous, political, not afraid of their brains but not overbearing. They swung effortlessly from social and international stridency to songs about their punk childhoods to songs about showers needing to be repaired. They somehow managed to be unique without being merely eccentric, self-conscious but not painfully so, friendly but bracing, like the most interesting regulars at your local bar. They were cool as only people who don't give a shit about cool can be. They covered Creedence, and Steely Dan, and Van Halen, not from irony but from love, and believe me, when they did that, they were the only punks that did.

The Minutemen chapter in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life (the book's title comes from a song on Double Nickels) is my favorite, because D. Boon and Mike Watt come across exactly as I thought they would: two opinionated friends who can't stop arguing.

Boon [proudly]: I'm just the average Joe, the guy who has been a janitor, a restaurant manager--

Watt [impatiently]: But the average Joe doesn't write songs. He... doesn't... write... songs.

Boon: Well, this one did.

Watt: You're not an average Joe.

Boon: This one did.

Watt: You're a special Joe.

Boon: I was borne out of being average because of my rock band.

Watt: No, no, because of these tunes. D. Boon, you're special and you've got to cop to it. You've got to cop to it, you're special.

Boon [exasperated]: All right! Ever since I was five years old, people said I could draw! Let him draw!

Watt [triumphant]: That's right. That's why I'm in a band with him. He's special.

Double Nickels on the Dime was a touchstone for those who saw punk not as a set of empty attitudes and posturings but as a point of view toward life, a constant questioning, a do-it-yourself ethic, a valuing of everyday experience, a championing of making your life what it ought to be and not in some other model. It's the stone-cold truth that Double Nickels changed lives, opened people up. It was the last great thing the Minutemen would do; during the making of their next album, Boon died in a van crash when his girlfriend fell asleep at the wheel.

"I live sweat, but I dream light years." --the Minutemen

0 comments.

mother of us all

Posted on March 9th, 2002 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.

Blender has a list of top 100 American albums. Most of the selections are good, obvious, or at least defensible. They do a couple things I don't like in lists of this sort: they mix albums and compilations, but inconsistently -- I'll get back to that -- and they dabble. They make a few nods toward jazz and country -- Kind of Blue, Johnny Cash, you know -- just enough to make a pretense at being not ignorant, but not nearly enough to actually give jazz and country a fair shake. To my mind, you either have to give jazz and country their due, and let the best of them compete on an equal footing with the best of rock, or just ignore them and admit that the list is only really about rock'n'roll.

The most sigh-inducing thing is their number-one choice, though, which is Madonna's Immaculate Collection. It's not that I don't believe there are some people who would claim it's the best American album ever made; I just don't believe Blender thinks so. I think it's a transparent controversy generator. After a whole list of hipster favorites, we top it all off with a big populist anti-hipster choice! Which of course is a play at being really hip. Except it's not a card they've been playing through the list, so it doesn't convince at the end. Sure, sure, Madonna. Whatever.

And they have to stretch the spirit of the exercise to make the choice at all: since apparently no individual Madonna album could be put at the top of the list without inspiring derision, they chose the hits collection (and a fine collection it is). But what of, say, Stevie Wonder? There he is at number four with his great Innervisions. Maybe you could argue that Immaculate Collection is better, somehow, than Innervisions. But what if you chose Stevie Wonder's hits package (Original Musiquarium) instead? Is Immaculate Collection better than that? Seriously? Better than the best of Bob Dylan? than the best of Joni Mitchell? the Supremes? James Brown? Duke for god's sake Ellington?

0 comments.

All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

- G.K. Chesterton

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