Urbane Hymns

"And I feel like I'm a rider on a downbound train"

2007-11-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

#1 Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen, Columbia, 1984

I think this album makes clear the answer to Tony Danza's immortal question: "Who's the boss?" My Dad rocked this cassette in his '85 Mustang for years and I continued to listen to it at home and then my own car once he upgraded to a CD system. I've never really stopped listening to this album. For me, it's the consummate record of the working man, of the post-Vietnam depression and ennui of '80s America, of the economic downturn of the Reagonomics of my youth, and the fun, hope and despair found in human relationships. It's a bittersweet testament to my past and my country which, for good or ill, will always be with me. I hope this record stays with me too.

"I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard in the Bible"

2007-11-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

#2 Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel, Columbia, 1970

Both intimate and wistful, playful and profound, the last true record from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is about as close to album perfection as I have ever come across. While my parents had this record and played it occasionally, I never really wore it out until I received it as a gift from Sarah my freshman year in college. Since then it has been a regular source of both emotional and musical inspiration which, though it sounds like a Hallmark card, is really how I feel about this record. The stories and the sentiments on this record resonate with me on a level that's much deeper than pop enjoyment - though there's plenty of that here too. I guess Bridge Over Troubled Water is the most personal album I own and, considering I own and listen to so many, that's a pretty incredible accomplishment.

"Sometimes, everybody cries"

2007-11-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

#3 Automatic for the People, R.E.M., Warner Brothers, 1992

For many, many years I fought against letting this be my favorite R.E.M. album. While Murmer ranked higher than Automatic last time I listed, it has since fallen out of the Top 25 - not because it isn't an amazing record (it would make the Top 30), but because not only have my music tastes exploded since '01, but Automatic has slowly but surely risen to the top of my listening rotation. It has become more and more the go to R.E.M. record when I want to hear Stipe's soulful croon, Mills' bass licks, Buck's energetic hooks, or Berry's cogent percussion. I guess I've finally accepted the fact that everybody's favorite R.E.M album is also my favorite. Sometimes, everybody hurts. And Automatic hurts so good.

classic noodlanding

2007-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

# 2 & Yet & Yet

DoMakeSayThink (Cnstl. 2002)

After seeing the 8-piece play again the other night I feel ridiculous for waiting this long. Some of the most gorgeous instrumental songs/textures with flourishes of psych.,jazz, dub, and space rock. Ear candy to the max. Each instrument is its own earful, and taken together I find sheer loveliness.

#7, #6, #5

2007-07-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

#7 - Rancid. Out come the wolves.

#6 - Damien Jurado. Rehearsals for Departure.

#5 - Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City.

Gravity’s the winner

2007-07-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

#1 Uncle Tupelo, March 16-20, 1992 (Rockville, 1992)

As others have remarked here, the less said about the top favorites, probably the better. I should also note that I wrote a paper about this album for a creative non-fiction writing class in college, and that kinda burst into flames, so will try to keep this short. This record is Uncle Tupelo’s stripped down acoustic album. Several of the tracks are covers or arrangements of traditional or country gospel songs, including standouts “Atomic Power,” “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down,” and “Moonshiner” This album tops my list because it was almost quite literally a friend to me during college days – it’s very melancholy, of course, and good for all the post-adolescent self-pity, but it’s also very warm and inviting. It has a bit more of a Farrar than Tweedy vibe (though that might be Wilco-influenced hindsight), but it includes my favorite tracks of Tweedy as a singer. My favorite thing about this record is its ending – after a string of mostly desperate stories, the penultimate track, “Sandusky,” a bright instrumental, offers a glimmer of real hope. The last song, though (“Wipe the Clock”) is perhaps sadder than the rest and concludes with this great couplet – “Ain’t it hard/ when the spirit doesn’t catch you?/ Gravity’s the winner / and it weighs you down” – followed by 15 seconds of wailing harmonica. Then: end of disc. It slams the door on the glimpse of hope in “Sandusky”, but it does so while the experience of hearing “Sandusky” is still vivid. This album puts hope and despair right up next to one another; we know that one of them is the literal winner, but I always think of March 16-20 as suggesting that they are just two sides of the same coin. That, and Uncle Tupelo rules.

The baffled king

2007-07-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

#2 Jeff Buckley, Grace (Columbia, 1994)

This is surely a sign of a real character flaw, but I think that my #2 favorite of all time is also a guilty pleasure. It’s possible that I would feel less guilty about Grace if I liked it less, since really liking this album seems too tied up with the infatuation with the now way overblown mythos of the tragic mysterious genius of Jeff Buckley. (I also distinctly recall hearing “Hallelujah” played twice over misty teenaged montage scenes on The O.C., and that probably doesn’t help either). But I do really like it, especially for the ways in which it is conflicted, earthy, and even cheesy. On Grace, Jeff Buckley always seemed to me to be just as much or more a lounge singer and barroom cover-band leader as he was an otherworldly angelic figure. The cover of “Hallelujah” is still the best track, and the one most nakedly yearning toward transcendence, but it also is all about very earthy desires. (I heard a critic on the radio last week claim the John Cale’s version of the song is better than Buckley’s. That’s some contrarian bullshit, for the record.) Grace also puts “Corpus Christi Carol” right next to the most standard rocker on the album, “Eternal Life.” The effect is jarring, but a perfect encapsulation of how I think of Grace. It’s an album by a standard rocker who was a good, but not great, songwriter, but also an album that ably moves way, way beyond that. More importantly, though, it shows how the truly transcendent highs are only real or meaningful when they begin, and ultimately stay, within the mundane and prosaic language of rock and roll. Now I haven’t studied theology for a few years, but the title of the album strikes me as especially apt, because isn’t grace only grace when it enters into the ordinary and fallen world? Pure transcendence in pop music is what, Enya? Case closed.

Station started to fade. We picked another one up the very next day.

2007-07-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

#3 The Replacements, Tim (Sire, 1985)

I might have cheated to get this one in so high on my list. At the time when I had first received the email from Brandon to come up with a top 25, I hadn’t listened to Tim for nearly seven years, ever since I had this and over 100 other cds stolen. (By the way, if anyone out there ever finds a copy of Tim in a pawn shop in Christchurch with “SB” written on the disc, please report it as stolen. thx.) This album and band were my high-school favorites (I’m not that old, by the way – my introduction to the Replacements came through a cutout bin purchase of their final album All Shook Down shortly after they broke up). My comfortable, never-been-anywhere, never-drank-a-drop 16-year-old self obsessed over lonely desperate youth songs like “Here Comes a Regular” and “Bastards of Young” as if I had written them myself. I hadn’t replaced this record all those years because I had a copy of a Replacements greatest hits cd that had the better-known songs off Tim on it. But when I finally bought a copy last November, I realized/remembered how stunning the non-‘greatest hits’ tracks are. Yes, “Left of the Dial” = superclassic, but “Hold My Life”, “Swinging Party”, and holy shit, “Little Mascara” are also amazing songs. I never fully bought into the beery punk fuckup mythos of the Replacements (I’ll readily admit that “Lay it Down Clown” is a pretty average track). The Replacements/Paul Westerberg were always at their best in my mind when they balanced, as on this album, the disaffected proto-emo shtick with great pop songs. For that reason, despite Let It Be's reputation as the canonical Replacements record, I'll take Tim over it any day (OK, 6 days out of 7).

Windex tears flowed down the robot’s face; he never felt a mother’s embrace.

2007-07-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

#4 The Silver Jews, American Water (Drag City, 1998)

Well, nearly six months after I wrote #5, and over two months since anyone’s posted at all, I’ve finally decided that I can’t let this project die. Maybe my top 4 will fall in the forest with no one around, but at least I’m not a quitter.

I was initially going to say that American Water is country music for an alternate universe. I think it’s more accurate, though, if only slightly less banal, to say that this album is country music for an alternate universe that we just happen to live in. It’s frequently and bizarrely hilarious (I listened to this record for all of about 10 seconds, just enough to hear David Berman sing “In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection” on “Random Rules”, before I decided to buy it – see also the couplet from “Send in the Clouds” at the title of this post). Berman’s lyrics also reveal a darkly insightful edge to his (and our) comic world. This is best exemplified in “Smith and Jones Forever,” which I hear as the standout track. “Smith and Jones” draws a picture of the vast America that holds up and hides underneath our more comfortable world. Now, we’ve all seen things like the shirtless guy on Cops, so we can see our selves laugh at the obvious and pathetic humor in lines like “they sat there with their hooks in the water and their mustaches caked with airplane glue,” and “come let us adore them, California overboard, when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold.” But while still witty, the next verse’s “the alleys are the footnotes of the avenues,” also contains a grimmer truth. The most moving part of the song for me, though, comes in the final verse, where, accompanied by a muted bass line and barely audible and chaotic guitar notes, Berman begins a story: “got two tickets for a midnight execution, we hitchhike our way from Odessa to Houston.” More voyeurism of the underclass spectacle – an occasion for gothic carnivalesque adventure (tickets and hitchhiking). The next line, though, repeats the phrase, “and when they turn on the chair, something’s added to the air” at which point the snare and guitar drop back in for the word: “…forever.” Something’s added to the air, forever. That final shock of a word shoots through the humor, not negating it, but yet reminding us how the things we want to laugh at and to repress never fully go away when we want them to.

All right. I meant to keep this short. I also want to observe that while it seems wrong to say so, this album is my favorite project that Stephen Malkmus has been involved in. On to #3…

psyopus

2007-05-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

cousin Harrison at his trade with Psyopus.
Palladium - (Worcester, Ma)

#8 Bjork's Vespertine

2007-04-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Watching T.V. Movies on the Living Room Armchair

2007-04-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

#2 No Need to Argue, The Cranberries

It seems that, for many of us, the albums we listened to in our adolescent years continue to rise to the top. This one carried me through that time of loneliness and confusion and inspired me to make music myself. The first songs I learned to play on guitar were "Ode to my Family" and "Zombie." I sang along with Dolores until I was out of breath. To this day, my weak voice is somehow made powerful when I'm singing her melodies.

My favorite songs continue to be "Can't Be With You", "Daffodil Lament" and "Dreaming My Dreams."

Do You Believe What I Say Now...

2007-03-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

:: 01 ::

Weezer
The Blue Album

This album has always been there for me, singing the soundtrack of my life. When I'm sad, I listen to it. When I'm mad, I listen to it. And when I'm happy, I listen to it. How perfect could one CD be. I can't say enough about the emotional connection I have with it. I guess it goes back to those high school days, old girlfriends, and stupid people; and when Rivers Cuomo was the only person in the world that understood me.

That's it. I'm out.

Be Like The Squirrel, Girl

2007-03-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

:: 02 ::

The White Stripes
Elephant

I'm Calm Like A Bomb

2007-03-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

:: 03 ::

Rage Against The Machine
The Battle of LA

Because You Can't, You Won't, And You Don't.... stop

2007-03-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

:: 04 ::

Beastie Boys
Ill Communication

Out Of Her Head She Sang

2007-03-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

:: 05 ::

Foo Fighters
The Colour & The Shape

You Don't Know How Lucky You Are

2007-03-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

:: 06 ::

The Beatles
The White Album

Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where...

2007-03-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

#8 - Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

If anyone on this list needs an explanation of how good this album is, you can email me. I don't expect my inbox to be filling up any time soon.

Favorites: Only Living Boy in New York, The Boxer, Baby Driver
Least Favorite: Bridge Over Troubled Water (ironic, no?)

In Memorium

2007-03-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Monday, 12 Mar 2007

Lead singer for rock band Boston found dead

WASHINGTON: Brad Delp, the lead singer of the 1970s and '80s rock band Boston was found dead at his home in southern New Hampshire on Friday, local police said.

Delp, 55, apparently was home alone and there was no indication of foul play, Atkinson, New Hampshire, police said.

With Delp's big, high-register voice, Boston scored hits with More Than a Feeling, Long Time, and Peace of Mind. The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s, but it remained active off and on, producing its last album Corporate America in 2002.

Delp was born in Boston, and bought his first guitar at age 13 after seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, according to his website. Since 1994, he spent his spare time working in a tribute band called Beatle Juice, the band's website said.

The band's website carried a statement, "We've just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll."

Walk into the Wild...

2007-03-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

#8 Harrod and Funck, Harrod and Funck.

The rest of the albums from here on out are virtually interchangeable. This has been one of my favorite albums since high school. A friend's older brother told us the story of how these guys would attract hundreds of people with their music on the sidewalks and subways of Boston. I saw these guys live at Calvin College and became an immediate fan. They are excellent musicians and great story tellers. My favorite songs on this album are Something, Walk Into the Wild, and the Lion Song (which my brother played for us at the rehearsal dinner before our wedding). I can't think of any songs on this album that I don't like. Unfortunately, they broke up in 1999 after only releasing 3 albums. Jason Harrod still makes music and has released a few albums lately (not nearly as good as the glory days) Check these guys out if you get a chance- http://www.harrodandfunck.com/

Bittersweet Symphony

2007-03-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

#1 - Urban Hymns (The Verve) 1997

My favorite album containing my favorite song, Lucky Man. This album has always been, and will likely always be, #1.

Backwoods Bazan

2007-03-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

Since many of you have a past/present with David Bazan of Pedro the Lion, I thought I would offer a link to an interview I did with him in the Fall that just now made it to virtual print.

Check it out here. Coming soon: My #3.

2007-02-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

#3 - Many In High Places Are Not Well - HiM

Believe it or not, I used to hate jazz...and I didn't even know what Afro-beat was. This band taught me to embrace them both. Doug Scharin uses percussion to penetrate every aspect of this group. Whereas most drummers provide the beat and fill in the empty space, he is the foundation upon which everything else is built. He combines these genres to create a perfect balance in a lively yet sensual sound.

The first tracks I heard on this album were samples (which Papa downloaded) of Slow, Slow, Slow (Slow Dub Low version) and The Way Trees Are. I couldn't get enough of either song and eagerly anticipated this album's release. Papa and I picked it up at CD Alley and then went to Mellow Mushroom for dinner. I vividly remember sitting in the parking lot (I think it was before we ate) listening to these songs. Wow. Although they were slightly different from the downloaded versions that whet my appetite, hearing them in their entirety was incredibly satisfying.

It took me a while to warm up to the album as a whole. I think it was because I heard the best songs first. Then I got to a point where I wore it out. Any time I had control of the CD player, this is what I would pop in. Seeing them live with Mice Parade only added to my adoration. They made a dingy, smoke-filled bar feel like heaven on earth.

I don't know how I can put two more albums above this one. It feels more accurate to say that this is 1/3 of #1.

Peter and his monkey laugh, and I laugh with them

2007-02-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

#5 Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West (Up, 1997)

The author Flannery O’Connor famously described the South as a place that is “Christ-haunted." Having lived in the South for coming up on seven years now, I’m here to tell you that Flannery O’Connor is full of shit. Forgive me if I misunderstand the rules of the undead, but for Christ to be able to haunt anything, wouldn’t he have to die first (again, I guess)? Believe me, Christ is far from dead in these parts. Saying that the South is haunted, to my mind, is essentially a way to say, “hey, every other person here is a Baptist, but we’re still cool and mysterious and gothic.”

Now, the South certainly does have more than enough myth and mystery to go around (listen to any album by the excellent Drive-By Truckers, for example). As The Lonesome Crowded West suggests, however, it’s much more accurate to say that the region that Jesus haunts is the wide wide American West. Unlike in the South, from the first years that my people first defiled the Indians’ holy grounds, the West has never taken well to the pieties and religions of its parents. And while j.c. certainly makes his presence known out there, this album envisions a tired-out deity who, in his very otherworldliness and flamboyance, blends in with the rest of the kooks. In Modest Mouse’s vision, God is a slob like one of us, but here the ‘us’ is a motley collection of angry cowboys, pornographers, grinning salesmen, get-rich schemers, and drunkard good-for-nothings.

Much like with The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse creates on this record a coherent musical and thematic world, but what makes this record slightly better, in my opinion, is that this one is more comic. From the first track, “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine,” wherein we all share an Orange Julius in America’s future ghost towns, through the last song, “Styrofoam Boots/It’s All Nice,” where the Big Man saunters through St. Peter’s (and his monkey’s) playground, “lookin’ a bit like everyone I’ve ever seen/ he moves like crisco disco, breath 100% Listerine,” this record puts forth an insightfully silly (but not entirely unserious) view of this great country. And though it sounds like a Very Important and Thought-Provoking Idea to say that a place is “Christ-haunted,” if we have learned anything from Casper and Scooby Doo episodes, it’s that ghosts are funny. The West is ridiculous. Cowboy Dan and “Doin’ the Cockroach” are ridiculous. And in this landscape, our buddy the carpenter’s apprentice (who appears in “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child”) and his apostles (in the heart-rending “Bankrupt on Selling”) are no different.

It’s not all fun times and chuckles, of course. The flip side of the car-salesman deity is the absent deity. In “Styrofoam Boots” we also hear that “well I’ll be damned,/ you were right, no one’s running this whole thing,” and “God takes care of himself, and you of you.” When we have a God reduced to haunting these (literally?) godforsaken places, even drunken Cowboy Dan can take his potshots (“He fired his rifle in the sky/ said, ‘God if I have to die, you will have to die’”). This unlikeable cowboy is a perfect metaphor for the utopian individualism and staggering hubris of the myth of the West, in which each person writes their own history. Even more than Ms. O’Connor, Cowboy Dan and Modest Mouse too are full of shit. Unlike with the countless myths of the South, however, at least this one doesn’t take itself all that seriously.

Clap Your Hands Say Low

2007-02-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

Any one else psyched about Drums and Guns coming out in March? Here's a taste courtesy of Sub Pop with three essentials: Mimi harmonies, handclaps, and backwards guitar.

Low - Breaker, from Drums and Guns

The Showdown

2007-02-20T09:55:00.000-08:00

Here's a shameless plug for Elizabethton's own, The Showdown. My brother constantly talks about these guys and how good they are, but naturally because I'm the big brother, and obviously cooler and wiser, I never gave them the time of day until now.

http://www.myspace.com/theshowdown
I was very pleasantly surprised.

They also made the cover of HM magazine this month. Their new album released today, and they are going to be at Gatsby's in Johnson City tonight for a release show.

Maybe little brothers get some right from time to time.

"Now I'm drinking drinking drinking drinking coca coca cola"

2007-02-19T19:03:00.000-08:00

#4 The Moon & Antartica, Modest Mouse, Epic Records, 2000

Though I'm guessing that Sean B might regale us with tales of that other Modest Mouse gem, The Moon & Antartica is the true opus for me. I got this record in Bristol right before Sarah and I moved to Durham and I don't think I stopped listening to it my entire first year at Duke. Or since, really. Scoffed by some as frontman Isaac Brock's sell-out album (read: first major label record), nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead of being methodical radio-pap, this record cuts a dark existential swath filled with movements from shoegaze to guitar panic and from punk spazz to acoustic balladry all within an unabashed self-transparency and lyrical truthfulness that opens the mental sinuses like a eucalyptus bath. I mean really, when I finish listening to this record it always feels like my mental state can breath again, freed from past baggage and future dirt (read: the stuff to which your body returns). For both Sarah and I, Brock, who also came from a kooky conservative Christian background, strikes a nerve with his honest, albeit blunt, theological observations. And the dynamic musical atmosphere doesn't hurt our love either. Rather than go on and on about each song, I thought I would post my Top 5 favorite lyrical moments from the record, along with links to the songs, so those who would like a taste can savor the flavor.

"The 3rd planet is sure that they're being watched by an eye in the sky that can't be stopped. When you get to the promised land, you're gonna shake that eye's hand." 3rd Planet

"I just got a message that said, "Yeah, hell has frozen over", got a phone call from the Lord saying "Hey boy, get a sweater. Right now." Tiny Cities Made of Ashes

"It's hard to remember we're alive for the first time. It's hard to remember we're alive for the last time." Lives

"It takes a long time but God dies too, but not before he'll stick it to you." I Came As a Rat

"And the one thing you taught me 'bout human beings was this - they ain't made of nothin' but water and shit." What People Are Made Of

Pick up your instrument and join in....

2007-02-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

#9, Mountain Heart, No Other Way

I guess it took moving to Southwest Virginia to discover how much I liked bluegrass. This is the type of music that is born among good friends and a campfire. It makes you want to pick up an instrument and play along. I was first introduced to these guys two summers ago at a concert at a local fairground and have been a fan ever since. The band is composed of a fiddle, bass, mandolin, and guitar player, along with a banjo player with no fingers on his left hand that can flat out bring it. If you are looking to diversify your music library a bit, I would suggest checking these guys out. My favorite songs are On My Way Back to You, Mountain Heart and Bosman...

When your shortwave dies & there's no one to listen...

2007-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

#9 - Vigilantes of Love, Audible Sigh
Those of you who know me have seen this coming for some time. Your only surprise may be that it isn't higher. My fanboy status for VOL may have declined over the past years, but this album abides as one of the true greats of the alt-country genre, and probably a snapshot of the band at its height. More talented as a poet than a musician, lead man Bill Mallonee crafted intense, literary lyrics that on this album finally got their due support from equally talented band members. Barn-burning rockers combine with quiet glimpses of hope and a raw brand of melancholy that few others can match. I still remember when I first heard this album: it was two weeks before I was getting married, I was living by myself in a tiny rented house on a farm in Bristol, Tennessee, and this came in the mail. Only problem: no stereo. I dug through still-unpacked boxes until I found my computer, dug it out, plugged in the crappy standard computer speakers and dropped the album in the CD-Rom slot. It sounded awesome.

Favorite tracks: She Walks on Roses, Extreme North of the Compass, Solar System (click for a listen)
Also available on Emusic: Check it.

I wanna be Bob Dylan....

2007-02-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

#10, Counting Crows, August and Everything After

I do realize this is a repeat selection and may raise some eyebrows as a top-10 selection, but so be it.... It's one of the most worn CDs in my collection. The Crows are one of the first rock bands that I remember liking. Their debut into the rock music scence was at roughly the same time as mine as our paths crossed somewhere in the early 1990s. This is an album that I enjoy listening to without skipping any songs. My favorite songs on the album are Omaha, Raining in Baltimore and Rain King (especially the extra-raspy "yeaaaaaaaaah").

It feels nice to finally be in the single digits......

As the girls with pigtails were running from little boys wearing bowties their parents bought them

2007-02-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

#6 Death Cab for Cutie, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes (Barsuk, 2000)

Believe me, Julia and I viewed the scene in 2005 when we saw this band play Cameron Indoor Stadium (yes, really). We saw the braces and pimples. We saw the rapt crowd loft their open cell phones in the air and sing along to “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” So I am fully aware that the teenagers love their new pop heroes, Death Cab for Cutie. And that makes it odd, though no less true, to say that when We Have The Facts came out, it sounded improbably avant-garde to me. The reasonably opaque lyrics and inscrutable song titles that never actually appeared in the lyrics, the saturation of reverb, and the (what seemed to me to be) the glacial pace of half of the songs on the record – all of these things can probably be attributed to my musical naiveté, but I don’t think I was completely off-base. This album, I think above all their others, is the one that best stakes out a sound unique to this band. And it is the album that has, more than any other one in my top 25, created a fanboy. Before the Cameron show, I think I saw them play 5 or 6 times (R.I.P. Go! Studios in Carrboro, NC). Also, I will always hold a special place in my heart for the band that wrote the only song I know of that's (maybe) about being/loving a science grad student (“Scientist Studies”).

I can’t begrudge them their success at all – I think it’s well earned, and my opinion is that if teenagers are going to listen to something, let it be DCFC rather than something much worse. There is something sad, though, about seeing times change. I wore my DCFC t-shirt today as a sort of act of reclamation, but I have to admit I felt a little sheepish doing so. This isn’t meant to be an elegy – all of DCFC’s albums (and especially We Have the Facts) are in my more-or-less regular rotation, and upon re-evaluation, Plans, while still their weakest album, is much better than I gave it credit at first.

Finally, because there’s always time for a nutty idea, here’s my theory about DCFC’s career trajectory: On their next record, The Photo Album, Ben Gibbard sings this line, “and now we all know that the words were true in the sappiest songs.” This line, in 2001, was a brilliant insight.* It was a manifesto for trading in tired out 90s slacker irony for sincerity, and DCFC went about trying to enact this idea. But, when the results came out (a.k.a. Plans), old fans like me realized that maybe we kinda liked the irony more than we thought. On Plans, the songs are sincere, straightforward, heartfelt, and, well, a little too boring and sappy (or perhaps not the right kind of sappy – songs about summer flings and affected adolescent suicide pacts probably require some distance, but the best song on Plans “What Sarah Said” is effective because it is a sincere, blunt song about death, with a coda that repeats the line “So who’s gonna watch you die?” I think one must have a mind of winter not to think of misery while listening to this song).

*As the year 2001 suggests, I think there is also a political undertone here. Desire for the end of irony and for sincerity and trust was all well and good before our nation had lived through six years where we have been repeatedly told that 2+2=5 (or maybe better 2+2=tens of thousands of dead). A lot of things could be said here, but on a music blog let me keep it to: F*ck B*sh for taking away sincerity and for taking away my Death Cab.

Kiss me out of desire, not consolation

2007-02-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

#2 - Grace (Jeff Buckley) 1994

I knew full well twenty three picks ago that I'd have to find something graceful to say about my #2, but when it really comes down to it, I can't actually remember where I first heard Buckley or found this album. It certainly wasn't in 1994, but it feels like forever that Buckley has been atop my music collection. It's hard to describe my fascination with Buckley, his tragic death, or this near-perfect collection of seemingly organized (Grace, Last Goodbye, Lover) consciousnesses (Mojo Pin, Eternal Life, Dream Brother), but I realized upon a recent listen that Grace (and my #1) represent something very special: they were the two catalyst albums that first helped me define my own musical taste, my own style, my own expression. While I might consider Starflyer's Silver and The Prayer Chain's Shawl and Mercury to be my first encounters with what was a new, exciting, and wildly addicting new musical style, Grace represents the awakening I had into music of my own, music that wasn't enjoyed solely and secretly on the opening act of rebellion. In fact, the pleasure in listening to Silver and Mercury came in the music but first in the mayhem it reflected back onto what was otherwise a very sheltered youth. Grace is me, and when someone asks, as they often do, what kind of music I like, I never think style, always album, and artist. These top 5 albums are my music. I have no idea what "kind" they are or represent, but I am supremely comfortable in believing they are great without needing to feel like they make me look cool. I enjoy every minute of this album, and still wrestle to call one particular song my favorite among the others. Last Goodbye and Lover, You Should've Come Over (might be the best lyrics of any song I know) certainly stand out, as does Mojo Pin and Dream Brother, both of which seem to experiment with emotional tempo. Grace is possibly the opus and Hallelujah is much better here than it was with Cohen.
Without question, this album is a masterpiece. It's amazing to think what Jeff Buckley would be doing now were he still with us...

Welcome the Ugly Animal

2007-02-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

#4 - Monster - REM

As a long time REM fan, I must admit, this is a bold choice. It even surprised me. I own all of their albums from Murmur through Reveal and this one is my favorite? Yes, it is. I can finally admit it.

I owned Automatic first, but it was this one that made me a follower. I first heard it at a Young Life retreat. I remember the hotel lobby, the group of guys with "skater" cuts kicking around a hacky sack with this playing in the background. I had a huge crush on one of the guys and I bought this album to remind me of him.

I ended up loving it and went to see the infamous aneurysm tour in Hershey,PA. The show gave me mixed feelings. I was a hyper youth group Christian and Michael Stipe's first words on stage were "I am Satan." The video clips that played behind them were eerie. I specifically remember one of a teenage boy (who looked much like my crush) kissing his own hand over and over again. I thought, "Weird. I shouldn't like this." I turned away from Monster and bought all the other albums. These were much safer. I became a fan but this album fell by the wayside.

Years later, I feel I've come full circle. I still adore REM. I love all of their albums. This one is not the most musically impressive. The lyrics are enigmatic and down-right crass. But damn it if every song doesn't make you sing right along. If I'm going to pull one of their albums off the shelf today, chances are, its going to be this one. It opens with pop perfection in "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" and the intensity builds from there. The beautifully odd "Strange Currencies" and "Let Me In" provide points of respite in the midst of all the raunchy distortion. If Automatic for the People is their gem, Monster is their rock.

It still gives me a slightly uneasy feeling, like Michael Stipe is some dirty old man telling me all of his secrets. But I now know his past (and his future), so, when I listen, I understand that this is just a stage he is going through. This stage produced some amazing rock and now that I'm a grown-up, I can take it.

Pure magic matador

2007-02-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

#3 - Ghosts of the Great Highway (Sun Kil Moon) 2003

Of all the albums on my top 25 (including the next two), this is the only disc that still carries upward momentum - which could very easily carry this treasure to #1 in just a few more years. Writing this now, it's hard to believe I love two more albums more than this one. I have to thank Papa for this gift, probably the best piece of music I've ever received. This album has been played more than any other album in the last two years in our household, and with the re-release already on order, there is no doubt it will be playing several hundred times more. This is, without question, one of my favorite albums of all time, and surprising, felt so almost immediately upon first listen. Many of my favorite bands have since disbanded, so here's a prayer than Kozelek and his merry men keep on playing...

Carry Me Ohio is in my top 5 songs of all time. Lily and Parrots is my favorite song right now, and my daughter's, too.

Happy Valentine's Day, Salvador...

Back in place/ and I'm all up in your face...

2007-02-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the extended absence - I think you can tell who on this list is in graduate school. Job interviews, teaching, and dissertation writing (or staring at the computer screen for 5 hours and producing one paragraph) have consumed much of my time, plus the fact that we just reverted to dial-up internet (yes, it still exists) and uploading images becomes painful and slow....

So, in typical Aaron Cowan fashion, it's time to scoot in here at the last minute and catch up. In the words of Homer Simpson, "Put on a pot of coffee. Then drink it, and start making hamburgers! I'm pulling an all-nighter!"

#13 - Ben Folds, Rockin' The Suburbs
I probably don't really like this album more than Who's Next, The Joshua Tree or any number of others already on this list, but I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that, below the top 5 or so, this list is pretty arbitrary and random. The first track, "Annie Waits" lets you know what this album is all about right off the bat - great piano pop and handclaps. Of course, now that I'm a dad I get all weepy over "Still Fighting It." This album also wins the "Most Proper Names Used in Song Titles" award for its fun twisted biographical vignettes...plus, the title track mocks corporate white rap-metal, which, despite its now-dated references, is still funny. Good times.

Favorite tracks: Annie Waits, Still Fighting It, Not the Same

#12 - Beatles, White Album
God this album is so good. What else to say? Besides the aptly-described "art wank" of Revolution 9, I defy you to find one track on here you wouldn't want to hear at any given moment of any given day. The definitive proof that art and listenability are not mutually exclusive.

Favorite Tracks: See above

#11 - Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle
Thanks to my parents for raising me to love the music that would produce this music. And thanks to Forbes for telling me about it.

Favorite Tracks: Lion's Mane, Beard Stealing Bread, Upward Over the Mountain

#10 - Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline
One of the aforementioned albums my parents raised me to love. There aren't many artists that can release an album in a entirely new fake voice and pull it off, but Dylan inhabits the metaphysical stratosphere upon which other musicians fear to tread. The giant finger to all who still held on to the belief that Dylan was the spokesman for his generation, as he revealed himself to be the "song and dance man" he'd always insisted he was. Throw this on some night this spring when you're having dinner and see if it doesn't convince you, despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, that life is good.

Favorite tracks: Girl from the North Country (with Johnny Cash), Peggy Day, Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You

More later - horrible, horrible essays on WEB DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk await the wrath of my pen. The red ink will flow like rivers.....

"Could I turn this place all upside down, and shake you and your fossils out"

2007-02-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

#5 One Beat, Sleater-Kinney, Kill Rock Stars, 2002

We were at an "Obama in '08" rally on Sunday in Chicago that featured a surprising turn. Halfway through Obama's speech a group of about 30 protestors stood up and started loudly chanting that American troops should get out of Iraq. While Obama, to his credit, attempted to engage them, security removed them reasonably quickly. But the tone of the rally changed - real flesh and blood people had called attention to something that upset them and shattered the univocal "pep rally" atmosphere. Obama pushed on and smoothed it over as best he could, but the reality stood - protest as a counter to politics as usual, as a stab at the status quo, had left its mark.

Such is the sound of Sleater-Kinney's amazing and profoundly moving One Beat. Written and recorded during the hey-day of post-9/11 American nationalistic furor, it galvanized and focused my attempt to deal with the dark political turn following the attack on the World Trade Center. The record became, for me, the sound of dissent. Opener "One Beat" is in my Top 100 songs of all time, using powerful drums and angular guitars to anthmically challenge consensus in the name of reason and progressive thinking. When Corin Tucker asks "If you think like Thomas Edison, could you invent a world for me?" and answers "Now all that's on the surface are bloody arms and oil fields" it's more than a political statement about current events - it's a call to think and create a new mode of engaging old problems, to take the Man head on and "shake you and your fossils out." The sentiment is genius and the music is rocking: a perfect combination. "Far Away" moves from the ideological to the personal, as Tucker relates what it was like nursing a newborn baby on the morning of September 11 and getting that phone call we all got: "Turn on the T.V." As she "watches the world explode in flames" and prays for her family's safety, a bigger question is on her mind: "Why can't I get along with you?" It's a simple query that doesn't hide behind a blind xenophobia or a fervent anit-nationalism, but that strikes at the heart of human realtions - why does difference often lead to violence? "Combat Rock" utilizes military drum work from the exquisite Janet Weiss to drive home a homily on protest everyone from Thomas Paine to MLK, Jr would agree with: "Since when is skepticism un-American? Dissent's not treason but they talk like it's the same." Powerfully prophetic words when you think about their context in 2002, a time when the machinations of the Iraq War were only nascent to the public but, as we now know, very prominent in the Bush administration's agenda.

Despite my opening diatribe, however, much of the album isn't focused on political issues. Love song "Oh!" brings emphatic tones to Carrie Brownstein 's empassioned "Nobody figures like you figured me out," and the horn driven feminist anthem "Step Aside," which has a band member name-dropping call and response section that demands a "knife through the heart of our exploitation" and commands to "disassemble your discrimination." Narrative "Prisstina" tells the tongue-in-cheek story of a young college girl tempted by "your dirty rock n'roll" but who ends up leaving her boy toys behind for a bright future. Portland gets a shout out on "Light-Rail Coyote," which focuses on the economic geography of the city, and "Funeral Song" recalls Hot Rock-era SK in the verse and then explodes into the chorus of "Turn out the light" with theramin and a pounding Janet. As Sarah referenced in her post on this record, closer "Sympathy" is perhaps the most moving song on the record. It is, more or less, Corin's prayer over her sick infant who almost died after birth and contains some of the most earnest and haunting phrases in my Top 25: "There is no righteousness in your darkest moment, we're all equal in the face of what we're most afraid of." In powerful seasoned punk style, One Beat utilizes this sentiment to prove that prayer and dissent are really just two sides of the same thing: hope.

Catch Up

2007-02-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Ok, so here's a hasty conglomerate of more albums that I truly love. However, since I'm drowning in school again, I hope these one liners will convey my feelings sufficiently.

Cat Power The Covers Record - Flakey like pie crust when interviewed or on stage, Cat Power's strength lies in her smokey vocals that come close to M. Ward in their deliciousness.

Work Clothes 5 Song + 3 - The eerie low-fi quality of sound, the sparse and spacey instrumentation and just enough lyrics lace this together, and every time I hear 'Turn Your AC On High' I think of loading up cars after Sandra Lou shows in the humid hot of NC summer nights.

Broken Social Scene You Forgot It in People - Sexy, Sexy, Sexy

The National Alligator - Something about the direct, self-assured delivery of these Brooklynites compels and embarrasses me at the same time, but 'Daughters of the Soho Riots' is so beautiful it makes up for all of their swagger

sad & warm

2007-02-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

# 3 Gold

Starflyer 59 (tooth&nail, 1995)

This album came out right after I got my license and found a home in several places; my/grandma's '78 Malibu and in my headphones as I lay down for sleep. In my post about Silver I talked about my introduction to shoegaze. Well, this album has defined shoegaze and rock for that matter since I first heard it. Following on the heels of Mercury my ears did in fact get lucky twice in the same year, but in a 'messed up' way. Boy did I Need this album at the time and still do today. I just can't believe I put the walls of feedback and overdrive into my ears night after night as I tried to fall asleep. I was 16 years old and though a lot of things were indeed a mess all around me, I wasn't supposed to acknowledge it.

Well J. Martin wrote about 'feeling the mess' and being miserable in a most naked way. Supposedly he spent a month pretty much alone in the studio making this and at one point didn't see the sun for a week. Much like Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt, rock genius seeps out in times of turmoil (and heavy drug use). 11 songs of feeling down because old friends have gone, times have changed, and no one seems to care. But he did put out the invite for those feeling miserable to take a walk his way (2 of my grandparents died in '95). Alright then... right there was my home, in amongst the sweetest overdrive, feedback, tremelo, solos, and dead drums I have ever heard.

I've never heard a more menacing song than 'Dual Overhead Cam' with its dynamics and bass and soloing and ear-splitting feedback. As with most of my favorite albums, there is mystery aplenty within the lyrics and even in the tones of the solos as well. No song is bombastic in that he tries to outdo himself; no, the freakouts are lazy and thick. And when he again hits the stompbox, the melodies are gorgeous. What else? This track order is my bench mark for how to make an album seamless, and I haven't listened to much noise/rock since then because of it. I had the original cd and always thought there was a perfect 1st half (1st 5 songs) and even better 2nd half (last 6). Then he released it on record with the division b/w those songs and I knew I had a treasure.

It was the first record that I bought as I didn't even know that bands still made records. My dad soon after gave me his record collection and Gold is the only record of mine that holds a place in his record box. Family members then starting asking me and C.Ultra in a 'you know they make cds now' tone; ''who still makes records?' Thats where that love began. It's odd that as much as I can't stand 1 word song titles, 'Indiana' with its "baskin in the blue skies of your eyes" takes the cake. At this point I can't really say anything. Do I need to mention how the last song 'One Shot Jaunita' is the best closing track ever and how strange it is and how at the 3:10 mark the 3 soloing guitars....This was my favorite for a decade, and if you ask me on the right day, I'd have to say it still is.

I love Java

2007-02-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

#5 Degung - Bulan Dagoan - Gendtra Pasundan Degung Group

About four years ago, I decided to become more familiar with world music. I was teaching preschool music at the time and was supposed to do a "music around the world" summer program. Although I checked out several books of multicultural kids songs, I wanted samples for the children to hear. This is when I discovered the Putumayo label.

Out of necessity, I began with World Playground. Over the next few years, I picked up a few Putumayo CD's for grownups as well. One of them was Music from the Tea Lands. The last track on this CD, Kang Mandor, was unlike anything I'd ever heard. The artist, Ujang Suryana, is a blind bamboo flute player from Indonesia. He is accompanied by a traditional gamelan group. This song helped me relax during pregnancy. I put it on repeat to fall asleep by almost every night.

Papa, of course, noticed my infatuation with the song. He, being a music sleuth, found this Degung Group album featuring Suryana and gifted it to me. Now, instead of one song, I have an entire album to put on repeat. It is only fitting that it was playing in the hospital room at the exact moment Efrim was born.

canvas the town and brush the backdrop

2007-02-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

many of you know that big cougar, papa and mama, lucky, and myself compiled our top 15 favorite records of 2001. fortunately for me, papa shoegaze still had many of our lists in tact, and was kind enough to email me my top fifteen albums so that, for sentimental and comparative reasons, i could look over it.

its amazing to look back, glancing over all of the records i held so dear. every story is still attached to each number, each record, each cd, and though the stories are still so meaningful, sometimes, sadly, the records arent anymore. the way we grow and change as people as represented by two lists of our favorite records. how many remain? how many change?

making a phone call to papa shoegaze, we couldnt specifically remember any rules, spoken or unspoken, about compiling our list 6 years ago. but for some reason, i felt that there was a "this album must be able to purchased somewhere" ideal. for obvious reasons, this is why we all felt cheated with trey's inclusion of a homemade pearl jam mix tape. thats right.

HOMEMADE
PEARL JAM
MIX
TAPE.

not to say that we were angry, but keep in mind that one cannot purchase treys "eddie gonna rock ya" mix at your local record shop or from amazon. not that you would want to; the songs and track order, chosen by a third party meant something to trey, and the logic behind it would never have the same effect on anothers ears. i, too, was pseudo guilty of bending this rule; my number 15 was a record by a friends band, glamour house, called "the mechanics." true, one couldnt stroll into sam goody and snag a copy, but--my logic warranted--if one looked hard enough you could contact colen and buy a copy.

but how could one chart an album that doesnt exist?

the simple answer: in good faith, you cannot.

when i was in high-school, i remember watching VH1 a lot. too much. in a Behind The Music, a small clip featured one of my favorite artists sitting at a piano and singing a song that i couldnt wrap my hear around. the clip featured the album name at the bottom of the screen. i had to have that record. this was the time in my life where i started playing music, and i know that this record was going to be important to me. i had my dad take me to the mall right then. but the record wasnt there. i tried again a few weeks later. still, it wasnt on the shelf.

college is a time of discovery, and of the things i learned, about the world and about myself, the three things topping the list in my freshman year at JMU were as follows:
-html is easy to learn if you dont have any friends,
-your dorm-mates will hate you if you set your alarm to go off at a time when you are not IN your room to turn it off
-bootlegs are awesome.

the thing about live bootlegs is there is a defined track order; this goes before that because its how the band played it live on this date in this year. studio bootlegs are different because there isnt a set-list to follow. hell, i cant even really think of any other studio bootlegs to begin with. googling the record, which was originally to be title "dumb angel," one can find a host of theories as to which songs and pieces went in which order. but there was no REAL way to know, and the creator wasnt talking.

i looked over all of the 'evidence' and decided for myself which goes where. i even made a cover--front and back--as well as a disc label. i listened to that bootleg for months. every time my parents came to pick me up from JMU, i knew i could listen to that record exactly three times through. so i did. the music was sweeping. the album itself had more ups and downs than roller coaster. it was simultaneously beautiful, fun, scary, haunting, prophetic, silly, complex and simple. it was everything one could ask for in a record. except, i had to remind myself, it wasnt a record.

in the fall of 2003, my then-girlfriend and i were going to see a movie. her friend henri called her, and among other things told her to notify me that a certain musical genius was about to not only COMPLETE this work but also to play it live. irritated as she was, i turned the car around and drove back to her house. i had to read it for myself. right then and there.

i know it's not the SAME record, i know it's a re-recording. but i dont feel slighted. for whatever reason, 1966 wasnt the time for this work to released. fate decided to let it come to me at the same age that it's writer was when he started. to sum up, the album that was never to be finished was finished, and the record that was never meant to make my list has.

brian wilson's 'teenage symphony to god' is now on it's way into the heavens.

#4

BRIAN WILSON-smile
RELEASE DATE: september 28, 2004
LABEL: nonesuch

I think back to the time/ when i wouldn't drink wine...

2007-02-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

and they taught me right and wrong, black and white....

Was digging through some stuff in the basement and came upon these gems that I thought some on here would appreciate. I'll never forget the night I first saw "The King's X" or those who taught me "the fine art of friendship (meaning of love)...."

Some Pleasure Before Business

2007-02-08T17:14:00.000-08:00

So before I dive into my serious Top 5 Albums, here are my current Top 5 "guilty pleasure" songs that, you know, help me get through the dirty dishes every morning. I think my secret pleasures are emo and rap and, well, a mixture of the two. Terribl...y delicious?!?!

MC Lars - Ahab

Stanford grad samples Supergrass to illustrate Moby Dick. Kids these days.

Brand New - Sowing Season

Emo to screamo and back again. God I miss Mineral.

Mastodon - The Wolf Is Loose

Metal for people who forgot they liked metal. Strike that, LOVE metal.

TI - What You Know

ATL represent. This one gets stuck in your head.

Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arm Race

This sounds like the Backstreet Boys. And then it becomes the Backstreet Boys, only with fast guitars and drums.

Now, with this out of my system I can move on to more important things . . . like the laundry.

(PS - For the uninitiated, to listen to the files or download them follow the link and then scroll to the middle of the page and click "Download for free with FileFactory Basic" then scroll again to enter in the code it gives you. After that, it will give you a link to the file to either listen or download. Yeah, it's annoying. But it's also free.)

Pocket Full of Shells

2007-02-07T14:56:00.000-08:00

:: 07 ::

Rage Against the Machine
Evil Empire

The perfect band to listen to when you're either (A) Mad at The Man, (B) Working late because someone else dropped the ball, and/or (C) Just plain mad.

Tracks of Note:
Bulls on Parade, People of the Sun, Year of the Boomerang

Soon Your Sugar Daddies Will All Be Gone

2007-02-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

:: 08 ::

Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar

My Dad used to sing and play all the classic Johnny Cash songs, especially Folsom Prison Blues, when I was a kid. I guess that's why I'm such a big fan now. Everytime I'm coming back home from a business trip or vacation, Hey Porter always pops into my head. It's just an upbeat, simple song about a simple southern boy coming home.

Hey porter! Hey porter!
Would you tell me the time?
How much longer will it be till we cross
that Mason Dixon Line?
At daylight would ya tell that engineer
to slow it down?
Or better still, just stop the train,
Cause I wanna look around.

Hey porter! Hey porter!
What time did ya say?
How much longer will it be till I can
see the light of day?
When we hit Dixie will you tell that engineer
to ring his bell?
And ask everybody that ain't asleep
to stand right up and yell.

Hey porter! Hey porter!
It's getting light outside.
This old train is puffin' smoke,
and I have to strain my eyes.
But ask that engineer if he will
blow his whistle please.
Cause I smell frost on cotton leaves
and I feel that Southern breeze.

Hey porter! Hey porter!
Please get my bags for me.
I need nobody to tell me now
that we're in Tennessee.
Go tell that engineer to make that
lonesome whistle scream,
We're not so far from home
so take it easy on the steam.

Hey porter! Hey porter!
Please open up the door.
When they stop the train I'm gonna get off first
Cause I can't wait no more.
Tell that engineer I said thanks alot,
and I didn't mind the fare.
I'm gonna set my feet on Southern soil
and breathe that Southern air.

Tracks of Note:
Folsom Prison Blues, Hey Porter, Get Rhythm, Cry Cry Cry, I Walk the Line, Hey Porter, Get Rhythm

On His Italian Leather Sofa

2007-02-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

:: 09 ::

Cake
Fashion Nugget

I'm not very good at describing music, (See numbers posts 10-25) so I'll keep this one short and get out of the way. Here goes. Yeah, it's old news to say that you love "The Distance," but it'd probably make my top 5 favorite songs of all time. I love the "quirkiness" and soul of Cake. 1 part white funk, 2 parts Vegas crooner, mixed with a liberal dollop of spoken word poetry night. Bake at 350 degrees. Serve warm.

Tracks of Note:
The Distance, Frank Sinatra, Italian Leather Sofa, Race Car Ya Yas

Your Rehearsed Insanity

2007-02-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

:: 10 ::

Foo Fighters
Self Titled

Would we even know Dave Grohl's name had Kurt not taken his own life? Or Sean "Puffy" Combs' name had Biggie Smalls not died? ... to be honest, I guess I don't know what his name is now... is it still P. Diddy? All I can be sure of is I'm glad these guys are out on the street 24 hours a day fighting foo so that we can enjoy our liberty.

Tracks of Note:
I'll Stick Around, Floaty, This Is a Call, Big Me

It's Magic.....

2007-02-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

#11 Every Breath You Take..... The Police

This album can make a 300 mile trip up I-77 feel like a half hour. I would argue that it is one of the greatest road trip albums of all-time. I do realize that I may be breaking Urbane etiquette for publishing an album of collected singles, but that is the chance I am willing to take for this one. It would be too difficult to pick my favorites, so I guess I'll just list my bottom two- De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da Da and King of Pain.

Another version of this miniature Rome to set fire to

2007-02-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

#7 Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge, 2006)

So an upstart 2006 release elbows its way into my top 10. Hey, 2006 was a good year for music, and the fevered, obsessive listening that this record caused made me feel like a headphoned teenager in my parents' basement. The presence of Destroyer's Rubies, in my top 10 is justified by its quality, but it also stands in for optimism about excitement over music in the future. Having just turned 30, I am in desperate fear of waking up one day to find out that I only listen to music I discovered between the ages of 18-28. Destroyer’s Rubies, in other words, gives me hope that I will continue to be thrilled by music, both by new releases and by yet-undiscovered back catalog records.

Let me explain myself in typically long-winded fashion. One of the most distinctive aspects of this album is its wordiness. Dan Bejar has a skipping, dollar-word filled cadence that, though it certainly does not neglect meter, rushes through these songs as if to attempt to say everything at once. His lyrics seem to be designed for the ultra-in group – multiple references to his own songs, to obscure parts of his hometown of Vancouver, to the rock canon (Floyd, Zep, the Beatles, “Losing My Religion”). Yet, the (almost)-to-the-point-of-parody hipster intellectual rambling also shows a real awareness of the limits of words’ signifying power. (And I suspect that many, if not most, of the obscure lyrics are not meant to be deciphered). Note, on the one hand, the countless references to the visual arts – just to share the song titles, there’s “European Oils,” “Painter In Your Pocket,” and “Watercolors Into the Ocean.” In fact, you might even say that Rubies is about art and painting, making it almost literally an exercise in ‘dancing about architecture.’ And then, on the other hand, the most distinctive vocal/lyrical link among the songs is the ‘la da da da das’ that feature prominently in six of Rubies’ ten songs. These nonsense syllables, if you want to get all pseudo-academic about it (and you probably don’t) seem to highlight the ultimate failure of “high-art/poetic lyrics’” rock music (which is of course a self-criticism as well as a criticism of the Bob Dylan-esque “authentic American bohemian intellectual” idea of rock music) because they expose the idea that the only things that really authentically signify in rock are barroom sing-alongs.

And the barroom la-da-das, if you skipped the end of that last paragraph, are incredibly fun and catchy. Another secret about this album is that, far from being an impossibly esoteric art project, it is actually a straight-up classic rock record. Bejar tries to hide it (or makes the listener work for it) by kicking off the album with “Rubies,” a 9-minute song that doesn’t really have a chorus. (I love that song now, but I’ll admit I foolishly skipped it 8 out of the first 10 times I listened to Rubies). On the face of it, this is a ‘difficult’ artsy record, but as the shuffly countrified strum of the second song “Your Blood,” indicates to all who are brave enough to soldier on past “Rubies,” we are in familiar waters here. Unlike some other Destroyer records (the Air Supply-meets-Nintendo Your Blues comes to mind), this one is, sonically at least, very accessible. I think it is definitely an advance on the classic rock idiom – Bejar is a highly inventive songwriter and by no means a slavish copier – but it’s not musically revolutionary (my mom heard this in the background one time this summer and asked me, “Is this David Bowie?” The clever and correct answer to this question would have been “Essentially”). As Bejar sings in “Looters Follies,” “A life in art, and a life in mimicry … it’s the same thing!”

In fact, its fundamentally traditional, even out of step, feel might ultimately be what already makes it one of my all-time favorites (and perhaps what, despite glowing initial reviews, made it absent from many critics’ year-end lists. Prof. Cougar didn’t even put it in his top 30 of the year – an omission that actually had me second-guessing my ranking.) In a time when individual song downloads and ringtones rule, Rubies presents a compelling argument for the viability and relevance for the supposedly lifeless form of the album. When classic rock has either been ossified into 50-song radio playlists or bastardized as turgid (or is that turd-gid?) acts like Audioslave, Nickelback, and Daughtry, Rubies shows that this tradition still has much to offer. Can the dead classics live on into the 21st century to be aped and bastardized and otherwise destroyed by new generations of artists? If so, it might be because of this record.

promises me I'm safe as houses as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers

2007-02-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

i am picky. very picky. and i am very rarely neutral. i usually love something or i hate it, and sentiments of 'okay' are few and far between.

looking over my list, and knowing what i know about myself, my tastes, and my general dissapproval of everything melodic, i find myself amazed at how many albums were contenders to take seat on my top twenty five.

i thought long and hard. there certainly had to be guidelines. so what, i asked myself, makes a favorite record? and as best as i can relay, here are the neccessary steps to a record being a cornerstone of my listening personality.

PHASE 1: shock and awe. this is amazing. i cannot stop listening to it. at any point of the day i catch myself whistling the melodies and harmonies of some or all of the tracks on the record, when i'm not catching myself singing along.

PHASE 2: anger. why didnt i think of that hook? why couldnt i capture that drum sound? why is that vocal so fucking perfectly nestled in the mix between those sweeping synths and that rockin kick? i feel the need to study. to dissect. to decide if this is the real deal or if my ears are messing with me.

PHASE 3: bliss. i know every word. i know every note in the solo. i know the way the feedback sounds. my foot knows when the kick drum does that "up-one-two" that one time in the bridge. i anticipate the harmony on the last chorus. i know on which channel the shaker resides, and to which side the claps are panned. and i can perfectly emulate exactly where the drums kick in on my steering wheel. for every song.

i never question the track order, because i know without track two coming before track four, the album wouldnt have that bump in the arc. there is no such thing as shuffle, no skipping tracks, and no repeat track one on a favorite record, because there are no stand out tracks. each is as important and perfectly placed as the letters in the alphabet. sure, there are exceptions to some of this, but if i only like a record for the first four tracks, doesnt that mean it's a cd which contains some of my favorite songs rather than a favorite album? a cohesive album is a conceptual artform that is quickly diminishing with iTunes and iPod shuffles. consumers no longer think about the care taken to put a record together, so artists stop putting in the work. maybe this is why only a handful of albums on my list were completed in the last 5 years.

fuck you apple. fuck you steve jobs.

====

it was called the Concert For The Masses. an additional date added to this bands 1988 international tour coming to climax in pasadena, ca. and seeing it, hearing it, for the first time--albeit on dvd--was an amazing experience.

there are few bands with the staying power as the artists behind my number 5 pick. and of those artists, even fewer consistently put out critically and commercially successful records in a genre that swims against the currents of mainstream tastes.

the year was 1987. according to my birth certificate i was 6 years old. according to billboard, the highest selling album of the year was george harrsions's "cloud nine." i am not completely certain as to what i was listening to in late 1986/early 1987, but i have an inkling that it was either my "cabbage patch kids christmas" audio cassette or something by the King.

whatever the case may be, i am so glad my six year old ears hadn't heard this band yet, for surely i wouldnt have understood. or maybe it would have made me the coolest, saddest, six year old on the block. there's no way to know.

we live in a world of brand recognition. consumers are so quick to spend a buck, but need the comfort of that familiar logo on the box. fortune 500 companies spend more money on making sure you recognize THEIR logo than the competitions than they do on the actual merchandise they are cramming down your throat. in this regard, major record labels make it very hard for up and coming bands to surface in a mainstream market. everyone loves music. music gets us through tough times in life. it gets us sanely into work. it gets us from fredericksburg to chicago, on no sleep, safely. but people are so hesitant to discover new music because they dont know it exists. the wont go check out their potential favorite new band playing down the street, because they have never heard their name. because of this, agents and publicists, smaller record labels and even young bands themselves are so quick to associate their name with a larger one; 'we sound like ________ and ____________' or 'recommended if you like ____________' are common phrases and comparisons you will find on websites, cd cases, and newspaper articles. hell, for myspace music profiles, they even have a special section devoted to this. you fill it out when you sign up for your account.

i was in a small band that had local press, a publicist, a website and a myspace page. needless to say, whether we wanted them or not, comparisons were inevitable. maybe it was my deep voice, or maybe it was the electronic over- and under-tones, but of all of the comparisons we received, one would not stop popping up. and the reality of it was...i had never heard of them.

finally, one day, i decided i was going to listen to the band we were constantly being told we were 'paying modern day homage' to. looking over their immense back catalog, i wasnt quite sure where to start. so i started at the beginning.

i wont lie, i recognized songs. but i was hesitant to like them. why should i? i didnt recognize the name. but, one week apart, for 5 weeks i digested their work. one by one, snatching up work after work until i got to week six/album six. i rested there. it was a new plateau. one could easily see how tailored the members roles had become, and how well they wore those hats. the arranger and engineer, obviously influenced by the like of phillip glass, made the works build and destruct, rise and fall; he made the songs breathe. the one using that breath was the handsome singer, somehow putting voice to the words of these songs. and he hadnt written note one. the songwriters shoes were occupied by yet another member. i was amazed that a group could work in this way for so long. i was amazed at what i was hearing. after proceeding through all of the necessary phases of acceptance, i realized i had clearly found their peak; i had found their "mercury."

and i think back to how worried my parents would have been had i, as a six year old, realized the profound meaning i have come to know in the words and music of this record. the places it takes me ("i'm taking a ride with my best friend / i hope he never lets me down again").

"Sitting target
Sitting waiting
Anticipating
Nothing
Nothing"

i'd have been the coolest, saddest, six year old on the block.

#5

DEPECHE MODE-music for the masses
RELEASE DATE: January 1, 1987
LABEL: mute /reprise / wea

music for the masses, remastered and in 5.1 surround

One And One And One Is Three

2007-02-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

:: 11 ::

The Beatles
Abbey Road

I wasn't a fan of The Beatles until I bought the Beatles One album, then realized I knew almost every Beatles song. What power! for a band to have most every song engraved into the dna of several generations. There's not much else one can say, other than it's a burning dream of mine to recreate the Abbey Road photo... how original.

Tracks of Note:
Come Together, I Want You, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

Could've Been A Genius If You Had An Axe To Grind

2007-02-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

:: 12 ::

OK Go
Self Titled

Chin up, Chicago... you still have OK Go. Thanks to the band's guerrilla marketing genius on YouTube with the treadmill video, I started liking the radio hits from their second album. So I took a listen to their first album and loved every song. They have a way of writing the catchiest tunes that just stick into your brain. This is a band that I didn't want to like, it's poppy and happy - but when I searched my feelings, I knew it to be true... they're just good. I defy you to listen and not be immediately put into a better mood. In fact, any Bears fan with murderous feelings toward Grossman should first take a deep breath, count to ten, and put on some OK Go.

Tracks of Note:
What To Do, Get Over It, Hello My Treacherous Friends, CCCinnamon Lips

.....

2007-02-04T15:22:00.000-08:00

:: 13 ::

Nirvana
Nevermind

There's nothing I can say.

Tracks of Note:
C'mon

Two Turntables and a Microphone

2007-02-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

:: 14 ::

Beck
Odelay

To me, Beck embodies the "Alternative" label more than any other artist. I love the different sounds from low tech sampling to old school folk-hip hop... fusion, thing. Plus any artist that is non-compromising and constantly pushing music to new, original heights should be applauded. (The Information has the coolest album art concept of all time.) This album just works, and Where It's At is on the soundtrack of my life.

Tracks of Note:
Where It's At, New Pollution, Devils Haircut, High 5

i'm dressed in white noise, you know just what i want so please...

2007-02-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

i would like to start our by apologizing for my absence.

this almost killed me. there was barely time to sleep, much less focus my attention and write something meaningful. prior to our winter break, i had written a post about my next record. i wanted to just pull it up and post it during my frantic editing, but i think i accidentally lost that flash drive somewhere. it breaks my heart, because i felt like it was worded just so. but regardless, maybe some time has offered greater insight to my next pick...or maybe it wont do the record justice and just suck horribly.

===

i am a baritone. i'll admit that. but in the summer of 1996, i was a crooner. my soaring falsetto rose above the buzz and hum and grumble and feedback, and note for note i sung along. it feels like that time of my life was filled with the excitement of new music. every album in my cd collection was a gem, this perfect piece of wonderment. maybe its because that time of your life is where youre most impressionable, and where you form your music taste...or maybe its because they just dont make them like they used to.

as already mentioned by papa shoegaze and lucky strikes, the prayer chain's "mercury" is quite an achievement of modern christian rock. i'll admit that too. but something odd happens when you dont grow with a band, when you are introduced to them in the peak of their existence; anything following will never live up, and none of their prior work ever quite has that same magic. when you arent there to connect the dots with them, you can never fully appreciate the leaps they took to get there. you only hear it for what it is. if you dont grow with a band, they dont grow with you. and it's in this way that it's so easy to take an album for granted.

i took "mercury" for granted.

soon after, the prayer chain disbanded and, sadly, i didnt feel much. where papa and lucky might have felt sorrow for their break-up, their absence never did strike the same droning, reverbed, indian-influenced chord with me. curiously, out of huntington beach, came a blazing record by a california-cool duo with some familiar faces. this band is everything i loved. it's like the two members put "shutdown, vol. 2" in a blender with "nowhere" and "pychocandy" and pureed to perfection. reverb and falsetto. shakers and feedback. layers of guitars and noise and dirt and rattle. the grooviest beats and the most laid back lyrics about serfs and queens. i was not going to make the same mistake with this as i had with "mercury." i would not take this record for granted. this album WAS and IS a gem.

or maybe they just dont make 'em like they used to.

"thank you! the lassie foundation"

#7

THE LASSIE FOUNDATION-california
RELEASE DATE: ??/??/96
LABEL: velvet blue music

*NOTE: usually i link to the amazon page where one might purchase the record in discussion. but this record is out of print. thusly, i have included a link to a lassie foundation retrospective collection which contains, among other things, the "california" record in it's entirety.

===========

i had just moved out of the dorms. this was an exciting time in my life. the year i moved into my first apartment, the year i first had a thanksgiving party and attended my first wine and cheese snob-fest, i purchased more records than any other point in my existence. i am, to this day, still finding records--good or bad--acquired during this time, shoved anywhere one can cram cd's; lunchboxes, giant rubbermaid bins, old book bags. hell, if i hadnt wrecked my first explorer, i'd still be pulling jewel cases out of the seats.

when someone you care about introduces you to a new artist or record, you cannot listen to a lyric or hear that bassline without being warmed by the memory of them. the melody summons some ghost from the past, and you thank it, and kindly ask it to not disturb your listen with the rattle of it's chains.

but what do you do when an artist you love was introduced to you by someone you hate?

ponder that for a moment.

for the same reasons that ran through your head, i did not want to like this artist. 'she sounds too portishead' i would say. or thoughts like 'why cant they decide which they want to rip off; 60s pop, haunting folk, sultry cabaret, or electronic-tinged orchestral dance?' then i realized i loved this band for all of these reasons.

to understand a band, one must look no further than the people who make up its pulse. its soul. the voice of this duo is a classically trained siren, who lent her vocal talents to tricky, orbital and add n to x before meeting with her partner in crime to develop this group (which borrows her last name). her cohort is a classic synth-nerd, with too much time on his hands and too many synths to fill them.

if there is one thing that fascinates me more than duo's, it's a group that hasnt played their first live show before their record has elevated them to international celebrities. their live debut was at the Somerset House; a swanky, high-brow opera house in which audiences were treated to the eclectic stylings of this twosome and their backing band; a 20-piece orchestra made up of 3 percussionists, 4 synth players, a bassist, and a string section. the visual makes the aural make sense, and only adds to my whims that this is classical music for kraftwerk or depeche mode.

try as i might, i wanted to hate them. but i couldnt. the drums were blippy. pads and orchestral strings shared sonic space with a bass that sounds as if it were being thumped by carol kaye. at any given point, you cant tell if you're listening to a symphony in a great church or two people locked in a closet whispering to not wake the neighbors.

but, oddly enough. this post isnt about this bands first record. it's about their follow-up.

if their freshman effort was the groups red-carpet, smile-at-the-camera-and-wave, media-friendly interview, then their sophomore release was their grainy, nightvision-colored sex tape.

a dirty, sweaty, heavy-breathing-in-the-corner-of-some-dive sex tape.

and they made no appearance on oprah to apologize. turns out, thats who they are; thumping basses. fuzzy, squealing synth-leads. whispered vocals that turn into operatic orgasms in crecsendo. the soundtrack to your wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-sweating dreams. it's amazing when you find yourself blushing, time and again, after you finally realize what you've been singing along to driving down the highway in the middle of the night.

"before you go and leave this town / i want to see you one more time / put your dirty angel face / between my legs and knicker lace"

still present are the harpsichords and pads. the soft-spoken honesty and the over-the-top, other-worldly trance it draws you into. but gone is "utopia." unless, of course, your idea of utopia is a dominatrix in a top hat. if nina persson is an angel, allison goldfrapp isnt afraid to use her pitchfork.

#6

GOLDFRAPP-black cherry
RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2003
LABEL: mute

Every artist is a cannibal

2007-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

#4 - Achtung Baby (U2) 1991

From the minute we announced we were ushering in the top 25, I knew this gem would be somewhere near the top. This is, without question, U2 at their pinnacle, their best album ever. All of you have heard this album, but when is the last time you really listened to it? Let's just list the songs you already know you like:
- Even Better Than The Real Thing
- One
-Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
- Mysterious Ways
- Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World

Those are five fantastic tracks, but anyone who has really listened to this disc knows that this happens to be a glorious concept album, held together by the ebb and flow of emotion wound up in both Bono's lyrics and the band's experimental, psychodelic sound. To me, The Fly might be the most brilliant song on the album, serving as the fulcrum for everything that follows.
One thing I noticed this week while getting into this album again in anticipation of posting it was the thick layer of metaphor that Bono uses throughout the album. I thought about counting all the metaphors but quickly realized there were just too many. It's almost like a code language. I can't break it, yet, but I can tell you this album is mixed with imagery that seems to evoke a variety of moods. The album cover represents that truth perfectly...

Sitting in an armchair, my head between my hands.

2007-02-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

#6 Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? - The Cranberries

I was a sophomore in high school. I was young, only 15, so I wasn't driving yet. My best friend, Sarah, was and she took me everywhere. The first time I heard this was in her car. She insisted on taking me to get my hair cut so I would "look older." Somehow I ended up with the perfect Angela Chase. This album became the soundtrack of my so called life.

Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine

2007-02-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

#7 Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel

In addition to the title track, this one gave us El Condor Pasa (If I Could), The Boxer and the epic The Only Living Boy in New York. Every album they did was a masterpiece. This one is my favorite.

CREEDANCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL NEVER WROTE ONE CRAPPY SONG MOFO!

2007-02-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

My number #9 best album is EVERYTHING EVER WRITTEN BY CC(f'n)R.

"The workers are going home"

2007-02-01T17:52:00.000-08:00

#6 Weezer [The Blue Album], Weezer, DGC Records, 1994

This record discovered me just when I discovered music. After a childhood composed of my parents' vinyl collection and oldies radio, and an adolescence of musical putrescence (let's face it, to be in Jr. High between '89-'91 meant bad news for your music taste), I finally stumbled my way into the emerging "alternative" musical explosion heralded by Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Green Day. The first album I got that was not mother-approved was the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication which came as a green cassette that did not stop playing in my car for a month. My realization that I could sculpt my own musical taste was a revolution in my thinking. So after seeing a video on MTV one day before marching band practice (shudder) that brought together crowd chatter, ridiculous lyrical content, and dogs running loose, I decided to take my musical experience once more into my hands and made a mental note to pick up an album by the strangely entitled Weezer (check out that very video below). Once I had it, there wasn't a week over my last two years of high school that didn't see it played at least ten times. I would liken the fetish that developed with Weezer and I to the Starflyer fetish that captured Papa Shoegaze, Captain Ultra, and Lucky Strikes. I could not stop listening. I listened on headphones while I mowed the yard. I listened driving to and from work, school, church, wherever. I remember distinctly getting in trouble for being late to homeroom one morning because I could not turn off "Only in Dreams" before it was over while listening to it in the school parking lot before school started. Of course this love didn't end with high school, and another fond Weezer memory is of myself, Sarah, Bowman, and Bowman's housemates singing along to the entire record on our way home from a quarry in Knoxville. It was a real "Tiny Dancer" moment. For this reason and many others, The Blue Album was, and is, too good to be real.

From the moment the acoustic picking of opener "My Name is Jonas" kicked into walls of distorted power chords, I knew I had found a keeper (side note: my self-chosen drumline nickname my senior year of high school was "Jonas"... double shudder). I found myself marveling at the sheer ironic lyrical bliss of "No One Else" and the mind-numbingly good mix of acoustic and electric on "The World has Turned and Left Me Here" as Rivers Cuomo emoted the spark that started emo: "I just made love to your sweet memory one thousand times a night." Radio staples "Buddy Holly," with its incredibly good Spike Jonze "Happy Days" theme, and "Undone - the Sweater song" were good, but third single "Say It Ain't So" blew me and other geeks away not just by its kick-ass clean up stroke to dirty alternative down stroke progression and lyrical complexity, but by the fact that the video featured hacky-sack and Stormtrooper helmet cameos. But the geekdom appeal doesn't end there, as "In the Garage" name drops a love of KISS side by side with a love of D&D and "Surf Wax America" can be taken both as an embrace of alternative sports in a pre-Warp Tour era as well as a thinly disguised metaphor for masturbation. Genius. But the final track on The Blue Album is my favorite. It is, after all, the reason I received one of the few reprimands of my high school career. It is also the reason Papa Shoegaze and half of Liston Hall will never forget a certain bass line. It's a song who's intense emotive outpouring is so focused that it's almost transcendental. It's a song that makes sense only in dreams. Just like this album.

Global Warming

2007-02-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

#8 Tempo de Amor - Smokey and Miho

I feel conflicted about posting this on an icy cold day. This record is the antithesis. It is dripping with warmth. My skin becomes golden by just listening to it.

Coincidentally, Papa and I discovered this band during a visit to Pa Senior in California. After reading an article about them in one of the local weekly papers, we were intrigued. Unfortunately, we read it a day too late and missed them playing at a local bar. We picked up this EP at Lou's and found sunny So. Cal. to be the perfect setting.

All of the songs are covers of Brazilian composer, Baden Powell, sung in Portuguese. It can be classified as "world jazz" but the beats are more reminiscent of latin dance. When listening, it is hard to resist the temptation to shake your hips. Miho Hatori's vocals slide up and down the scale in every song. The melodies are completely unpredictable, yet she sounds as if she could sing it in her sleep. She and Smokey Hormel make a perfect pair. Independent of her, he has composed music for two David Lynch films, The Cowboy and the Frenchman and The Straight Story. (All that I've heard of him seems the opposite of anything from Angelo Badalementi.)

As the predicted wintry mix has dwindled, and it begins to rain, I realize this is the perfect day to post this record. If we can't get any snow, I might as well be sitting on the beach sipping a salty margarita.

"Mother Superior jumped the gun"

2007-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

#7 The Beatles [The White Album], The Beatles, Capitol Records, 1968

30 tracks. 29 pieces of pop perfection. 1 eight minute art wank. 1,000,000 reasons to keep dropping the needle. 'Nuff said.

The Coolness of the Evening Light

2007-01-31T17:52:00.001-08:00

#9 Suburban Light - The Clientele

The cover art for this album personifies The Clientele's sound perfectly - hazy, intriguing, minimalistic. Having seen this band twice, it is how I picture them as well. Three average guys with no flair about them, emanating a mysteriously enticing vibe. The most impressive thing about this band is that they are a trio. Having attempted to create a full sound with three people, I know how challenging it can be. (We called in a super hero to help us.) These guys pull it off with ease. The guitars are hauntingly seductive. The drums are simple, sometimes jazzy and always perfect. Alasdair's voice floats above it all as he poetically muses over things that most of us would pass by without noticing.

While I also enjoy, The Violet Hour and Strange Geometry, this album is by far my favorite. I think it is due to the fact that the songs were originally released as individual 7 inch singles. Each song flows into the next, yet still stands out in some respect. Their other albums are much more cohesive and I tend to skip to my favorite tracks. Its hard to pick a favorite on this one, but one track of note is (I Want You) More Than Ever. The cover of this single is also quite lovely as displayed on a shelf in our living room.

2007-01-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

And she lifts her head when I kiss around her neck...

2007-01-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5 - Old Ramon (Red House Painters) 2001

Any album that opens with a song about a cat that can make you cry belongs in the top 5. Thankfully, there's only one album I know that can do that, and it just happens to be RHP's best work and one of my all-time favorite albums. As a long time fan of Kozelek's crew, I found Old Ramon so refreshing in college that I actually bought two copies of the disc (and promptly lost one...). It's by far the most light-hearted (but still poignant) and listenable release from the band and seems to catch fire in all the right places. Between Days opens with a strong chord and Kozelek's rare holler and never lets up again. Cruiser flirts and teases with over 8 minutes of melancholy. River rolls on at a never too long 11+ minutes too, but it is Byrd Joel and Michigan that really hold this record together. Byrd Joel, one of my all time favorites, might just make you feel good about death and loss, if that's possible. It sticks with you for hours afterwards and never quite releases you. Michigan reminds me of summers and summer flings and finds a way to wrap it all together in a visual image that trancends the music itself. Maybe that describes all of RHP's catalog, or just Kozelek himself. I could listen to him read the phone book and enjoy it.

Oh, that we could always see such spirit through the year

2007-01-30T19:50:00.000-08:00

#8 Vince Guaraldi Trio, A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965)

Plan A had me writing this one a month and a half ago. But perhaps that’s for the best. I assembled my top 25 just before the onslaught of 40-year retrospectives on this album, and when Christmas rolled around, I felt much less clever than before. I feared that I was getting caught up in the seasonal hype, or even worse, getting caught up in a tacky nostalgic Zeitgeist moment. One thing about Christmas records, though, is that they disappear from our stereos, if not our consciousnesses, come Jan 1. Now that I no longer worry about getting sick of hearing of this record (and in fact am now saddened to think that T-giving is 10 months away), I stand by my decision to rate it so high.

Plan A also had me writing this blurb with the record playing in the background. Since the holidays are over, I can’t be listening to Christmas music. So I’ll have to do this one by memory, even though – and here’s where I might surprise you – I don’t have this record etched into my soul. Like everyone else, I watched the TV special almost every year, but I didn’t own a copy of the soundtrack until 2002. In other words, this record still holds surprises for me. I think that’s what makes A Charlie Brown Christmas not just a great Christmas album but a great album, full stop. Everybody knows how warm and cuddly and eggnog-and-fireplaces it is (and surely, “Linus and Lucy” is a heavyweight in the ‘most joyful song ever’ competition). But it can be easy to gloss over its appropriately icy Christmas edge, to gloss over Guaraldi’s amazing patience and use of silence and space. There’s more than a twinge of holiday loneliness here. Just compare it with contemporary popular Christmas music. Contemporary music is popstars and Mannheim Steamroller, with sounds and effects crammed together and piled on top of one another, downright enforcing holiday cheer. Saying, YOU WILL BE MERRY, OR ELSE. Much like the TV program, (which, if you haven't seen it recently, is so different from current TV pacing and narrating style that it may as well have been made in Eastern Europe), the music on this soundtrack takes its time, explores neglected corners, meditates on the holiday, and isn’t afraid to let children express the emotions and thoughts that we don’t even let adults express anymore.

Plan A, finally, had me not getting sonned by Papa S. I remember having a conversation with him a couple of months back where we revealed to one another our plans to include Vince in our top 25s. I was sure that if he hadn’t revealed A Charlie Brown Christmas by #5, he wouldn’t do it at all. I was ready to call him out. But pride goeth, etc.

And Behold...

2007-01-30T18:21:00.000-08:00

# 4 A Charlie Brown Christmas

Vince Guaraldi Trio (Fantasy, 1965)

Good Grief. Such spirit through the year? Well, I only want what I have coming to me, I only want my fair share. That is...such Beauty Everywhere.

Efrim speaks....

2007-01-30T17:29:00.000-08:00

#12 Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison

Johnny Cash may or may not have made my original top 25 but a significant event happened that skyrocketed him to a top 12 artist. It occurred at Thanksgiving this year when my year and a half-year old nephew Efrim left the Thanksgiving table asking for "Johnny Cash." Sometimes it takes a toddler to remind you what good music really sounds like. His favorite song seemed to be "Walk the Line", which isn't on this album, but this is when I started getting back into Johnny. I really like the story of this concert that is included in this album. My favorite songs are Folsom Prison Blues, I Still Miss Someone, and Jackson.

Hmm … right. I practice many styles.

2007-01-29T19:15:00.000-08:00

#9 Wyclef Jean, The Carnival (Columbia, 1997)

What’s worse, a top 25 devoid of hip-hop, or one with a single token album? Nowadays, it seems that an unfamiliarity with hip-hop is tantamount to massive unhipness, if not covert racism (well, at least this album appears higher than the album by Stephen Merritt, that unredeemable cracker). Well, my list is what it is, and The Carnival is what it is, too. Wyclef Jean and his self-proclaimed eclectic genius might now be a symbol of overreaching, but that shouldn’t diminish just how the captivating this album is. In a world of overly frenetic and über-masculine hip-hop, the Carnival sounds loose, laid back, and even charmingly pastoral, even when talking about catching bullets in one’s goose.

And then there is the nostalgia factor: I don’t know if I went to one party from 97-99 where I didn’t hear at least one (and usually multiple) tracks from this record. In fact, all the memories of social time spent with this in the background made it impossible for me to listen to The Carnival in the intervening years. Only when B.C. sent out the call to compile a top 25 this past year did I dig this one back up and realize that I still love this record. It still makes me overly nostalgic, but putting it on the stereo with the fam and seeing an eighteen-month old dance to it certainly eases the pain.

So many good moments here: the crooning sample that intros “To All the Girls”; that sweeping string line in “Gone Til November”; …we are not stopping for no red lights tonight!...; the entrancing French rap + Lauryn Hill’s belting chorus of “Sang Fezi”; …even in New Haven, gunpowder…; the loving and deserved homage to the Bee Gees; F-R-E-S-H.

Finally, as the ultimate evidence for my love for this album: I even like the skits. Down Lo Ho? Bishop? Classic.

P.S. Oh God I almost forgot "Mona Lisa," aka the song that did the impossible: make me like The Neville Brothers. Take a moment to comphrend the magnitude of this.

all the old ghosts will let you know

2007-01-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

# 5 Mercury

The Prayer Chain (Rode Dog, 1995)

Acid, middle eastern, kinda hard to describe euphoria. Cousin C.Ultra and bro Lucky have already told us about their having been mesmerized by this album at some point as well. Talk about nostalgia, little E had just gone up to get ready for bed and so I was lying down listening to the last few tracks and just like when I was 16, fell under the spell. Something jarred me and I realized I been staring at the ceiling for close to 3 songs, totally immersed. I wasn't near sleep, I wasn't thinking about the day, responsibilities, etc., I was just being taken from earth and was brought abruptly back again. I still believe that was their intention...too far out for the label, the lead singer, the market. And too bad it still hasn't been heard by loads of people. When I put it on during dinner tonight, Sugar said '() Sigur Ros?' I made her wait for it and then she noted how the album isn't dated one bit. From that first minute of drone I remember thinking what? I thought they were grunge and by the end of the album I realized my little ears were getting lucky twice in the same year. I didn't need to listen to much else the rest of that year and thus began me being somewhat choosy with my albums moving forward and let down with what I was used to. The main thing that struck me, drew me in, and has influenced me ever since was the sheer fact that they took the time to let things unfold and crawl and seep in...the length of songs...namely two 9 minute tracks... that was the topic of one night's conversation on the front porch between Lucky and me 12 years ago. Oh, I forgot about the background vocals...Captain?

My Empire of Dirt

2007-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

:: 15 ::

Johnny Cash
American IV: The Man Comes Around

I love all of the American albums, but this one is by far my favorite. Does anyone have a cooler singing voice than Johnny Cash? I'm not afraid to say that most of the songs on this album make me want to cry. But that's Johnny Cash, one moment he has you laughing at Sue, next you are rocking out at Folsom, then you find yourself weeping and sucking your thumb in the fetal position to Give My Love to Rose.

Tracks of Note:
Hurt, Personal Jesus, The Man Come Around, Give My Love to Rose

Yes yes yes it was profoundly meaningless

2007-01-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

#10 The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs (Merge, 1999)

In the early days of this millennium you may have caught me calling this album/set a work of genius. Three years ago, it would have been in my top 3. It obviously no longer is, and this is why: about the time that the follow up to 69 Love Songs, i, came out, I read an interview with Stephen Merritt (the songwriter on display here) in which he laughed off the notion that his songs had any real element of sincerity to them. Now, such a statement is, on the face of it, spot on, as Merritt’s songs are populated by the most ridiculous collection of misfits, maudlin self-pitiers, and delusional obsessives. And I mean that it the most complimentary way – Merritt is, hands down, the most clever and witty lyricist active today. These songs are funny. But as good as a comedy record can be, comedy records never hold up beyond a handful of listens. Sure, these songs are funny – but in my mind, many of them are also incredibly moving (listen to “I Don’t Believe in the Sun” and tell me otherwise). So, upon reading Merritt’s interpretation of his own songs, I decided, hey, I’m not going to let him decide how I listen to this album. Death of the Author and the rest. Thus says Sean: 69 Love Songs is not a comedy record. However, I couldn’t get the nagging idea that these songs are indeed fundamentally ridiculous out of my head, and it has affected my opinion of 69 Love Songs. The way I see it, if these songs aren’t actual love songs, or if there isn’t at least a core of real emotion to be found somewhere in this collection, I don’t want to listen to it any more.

In case you were wondering, I still listen to it.

Now that I’ve gotten the negatives out of the way, it is now time to rave. Julia and I encountered this album when we lived in near penury in New Zealand (I’ve been required to tell you that Julia liked The Magnetic Fields first, and I, in fact foolishly mocked them before I became educated), and we had a very small record collection. In fact, an artificially reduced record collection – we got this right at the time when I had my entire record collection stolen from our house (while we were in the house, too!). So, we essentially lived and breathed Magnetic Fields for months, and we would trade observations about which song this week was the greatest pop song ever written. I remember poring over this album in exegetical detail, reading the companion booklet in real time with the recordings maybe a half-dozen times. (Do I need to mention that I was unemployed at the time, which -I guess- may have contributed to the above-mentioned poverty?) So, 69 Love Songs may be smirky and (please god no) ironic, but despite itself, I would probably still say that 69 Love Songs is the best and most important work of pop music in the past 20 years. (And as a totally nerdy aside, I wonder – and would like to pose this question to others here – if this album has directly contributed if not created the extremely pop-friendly climate in professional rock criticism. I realize that it might just as equally be a gimmicky footnote in pop history, even if I feel otherwise).

"Got hips like Cinderella"

2007-01-28T19:22:00.000-08:00

#8 Doolittle, Pixies, 4AD, 1989

In 1996 I had a collision with the Pixies. My roommate and I lived beside a dynamic duo who refused to play anything other than the Pixies and so, day and night, eccentric rock with a latin flair and a deranged frontman seeped through our walls and traversed our halls...kind of like the words of the prophets. But not quite. I distinctly remember hearing about the Pixies in high school as influences on Nirvana but I didn't hear their music until the second week of my freshman year when what I thought was a track from a current hardcore screamo band erupted from our next store neighbor's room. When I inquired, I was informed the band was the Pixies and the track was "Tame," which, if you've never heard it, is pretty damn attention-grabbing. While I didn't get to borrow the record that was playing (it was Doolittle), I did get Trompe Le Monde out of the bargain (it's my second favorite Pixies record) and over the course of the next few weeks wore out tracks like "Planet of Sound," "UMass," and perennial favorite "Alec Eiffel," which graced Side 2 Track 1 of my first mixtape of my second semester of my freshman year ("Alec Eiffel" is still one of my favorite Pixies song). My interest in the Pixies waned with my interest in punk and Nirvana, however, when both my relationship with Sarah and her folk tendencies and my desire to really get to know The Beatles put all modern rock on the backburner for a time. Fast forward to 2001 and I discovered a used copy of Doolittle at Radiofree Records. Dear reader, suffice it to say the love was back or, dare I say, Black. Though it barely made it in the '80s, coming out as it did in '89, Frank Black and his players present a powerful composition that could very well be the best record of that decade. Fifteen tracks of pure pop energy with punk sensibility get the juices flowing, beginning with the sweet bass lick and guitar hook of "Debaser" and ending similarly with the menacing "Gouge Away." Black's ability to ratchet up the drama with his ridiculous vocal range is complimented perfectly by Breeders co-founder Kim Deal's bass lines and background vocals. Drummer David Lovering sets the standard for pre-"alternative" drummers pretty high and lead guitarist Joey Santiago beckons more licks than a Tootsie Pop. The lyrics are generally far beyond any kind of narrative interpretation, but the self-loathing of both "Wave of Mutilation" and "Gouge Away" are pretty pointed - Frank Black was (and is) a disturbed musical genius. But he can also be playful, as evidenced by the light pop of "Here Comes Your Man" and "La, La, Love You" or the buffoonery of "Mr. Greives" or "Crackity Jones." But my favorite song on the record and my favorite Pixies song period is "Monkey Gone to Heaven." There's something about the haunting cellos, Deal's background emoting, and Black's metaphysical math that I love: "If man is 5, then the devil is 6, and if the devil is 6 then God is 7." I don't know what it means Frank, but I never understood the Trinity either.

2007-01-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

# 6 Glow

The Innocence Mission (A&M, 1995)

Probably the one and only true 'pop' record on my list this younger album from Karen and Don Peris comes in six notches higher than their Befriended mostly because of time and my nostalgia. Sugar Mama purchased this album before we were together but while we were friends in Bristol, TN. The more we hung out, the more I heard the album; becoming ever more curious of its contents and origins. As I mentioned in my #12, they hail from near Lancaster, PA. Well, all of the myths surrounding that place and its way of life coupled with Sugar coming from PA set up in my mind some idealic pastoral community where people actually lived the stories in these songs. As my list has probably shown, the music I enjoy most is highly personal and that which hopefully (for me) will stand the test of time.

'Keeping Awake' opens the album with a song about Karen not being able to fall asleep because someone (a relative) she loves has come over and she hears them from upstairs. A quarter of these songs reference relatives and family members coming over, going on picnics, taking trips, etc., and while it's not clear who these people are it really doesnt matter. She seems to have a heightened spiritual sense and usually uses nature and the weather as backdrops for many songs. Her anticipation for what each new day can bring and the way in which she wraps those moments into a four minute song is why I like all of it. And Don's guitar is dripping with reverb and wobbling with tremelo the whole way through. They choose to bring Light into the world... and as I allowed myself a 30 sec. listen of a track off their forthcoming album I asked myself how? make music? with children?

#10 RADIOHEAD, ok computer

2007-01-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

How could this NOT be on this list of top #25 at least 19 times? This is the album that gateway-ed us to electronica, this is the album that gave us that computer talking voice thing, this is the album. Period. This is my number one album of all time, but like I said before...my list isn't in order.

2007-01-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

# 7 Feel

Nagisa Ni Te (Org, Jagjaguwar, 2002)

Utamono is the so-called Japanese genre which has been translated as 'a sweet lovely song sung at a harsh noise meeting.' That's what Nagisa Ni Te (On the Beach) is all about. Simply put, Feel is avant garde for the simple moments with a little fuzz mixed in. Main man Shinji Shibayama has been crafting these lovely psychedelic songs now for over 20 years but it wasn't until about 10 years ago that he found his inspiration in the fleshly form of Masako Takeda (cover). As I would later come to find out, Shinji sang a lot about Masako on the first Nagisa album and by this time was now singing with her (not always harmonies, but beautiful call and response).

During a late night trip to Radiofree Records about 4 years ago I had put a few albums on the counter before Viva to purchase. Based on what I was buying and what we were talking about at the time (can't recall) he led me over to the two Nagisa albums on the shelf. He thought I'd like this one a little more than their first- On the Love Beach (barely, and for one reason, no Masako), and maybe its because it was the first one I heard and how it had that dream effect on me that led it up the charts immediately.

'The New World' starts things off slower than slow with Masako singing "your soul can light me up any time." I have to add that these songs are indeed so delicate and sometimes innocent that if they were sung in English they may be deemed embarrassing. With titles like 'We', 'Strength of the Waves', and 'Strength of the Wind' you can rightly assume nature is the backdrop for these tales of togetherness. The chorus of 'Song about a River Crossing Song' translates like this: "Ah, we will cross the river/me and you together/ looking out for the sharp rocks below." It's just heavenly they way they join forces, and there are so many instruments played so sparsely and sometimes purposefully awry that it has made me almost despise rerecording takes, with of course that note or that timing being forever lost with a retake. For them, nothing will be infinitely swallowed up, because the waves or the wind will bring it all back. "All you rushing animals that do not know the words for green grass/Come home with us."

"Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you"

2007-01-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

#9 Nervermind, Nirvana, DGC Records, 1991

Nevermind is essential for me on so many levels, not the least of which is its visual realization of money-chasing underwater baby nudity. Like so many who were coming of age in the early '90s, this record was an icon of cultural galvanization that proclaimed that the days of Vanilla Ice and Hair Metal are over (or, if you're Sean B and we're talking about Hair Metal, temporarily suspended). I remember seeing the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in '92 and being absolutely blown away at its raw power. The song still has that effect on me - it is really, when I think back, the soundtrack to my high school experience. The song ranked #2 on my Top 200 as listed in 2004, and I wouldn't put it too much lower than that now. But Nevermind is hardly a footnote to Track 1. Butch Vig's engineering, the hallmark of that other essential high school record Siamese Dream, channels the untamed fury of Bleach into a sound that is about as antagonistic as you can be and still have "radio-friendly" music. On the subdued side, "Polly" and "Something in the Way" are sing-a-long classics, presenting themselves as easy fodder for the "I just learned how to play guitar" crew while still preserving punk integrity. Speaking of punk, the pounding energy of "Breed," "Territorial Pissings," and "Stay Away" are some of my favorite moments on the record. Though they weren't on the radio, they got the constant rewind treatment in my four-door Toyota hatchback with the Tie Fighter-patterned ceiling while I drove to and from school, work, and friends' homes. More important still, Nevermind features some of the best rock drumming of all time in the unstoppable machinations of Dave Grohl's humble role as vehicle for the great Drum God Spirit...in the sky. More than any other record, I hold this one as most influential on my own style of drumming. While I might rank 1993's In Utero critically as a better record than Nevermind, it has never struck the same chord in me as its predecessor. And the Unplugged record, which did receive a lot of attention from me in high school and early college, has not weathered well in my estimation as a whole past that point. Nevermind was, and continues to be, one of the most powerfully nostalgic records I own. Oh, and it still kicks ass like nobody's business.

"Keats and Yates are on your side"

2007-01-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

#10 The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths, Sire Records, 1986

This is the first record in my countdown that I only have in vinyl format. Purchased over a bone-chilling New Year's break in Cincinnati in 2001, The Queen Is Dead LP continues to be my favorite Smiths record, despite my found affection for Strangeways Here I Come and The Smiths. Part of this love comes from having to drop the needle every time I want to hear all the sweetness from the killer tom-tom intro of "The Queen is Dead" to the perfect '80s guitar outro of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others." The Smiths never shied away from political content and I think that's one of the reasons that I have continued to like them. Morrissey's desire to rid England of its' monarchical legacy has moved all the way from the violent denouncement of "The Queen Is Dead" to 2005's ridiculously good "Irish Heart, English Blood" off of his solo venture You Are the Quarry, a record already lovingly reviewed by Captain Ultra. Musically, this may be the apex for Marr's jagged to shimmery guitar movements and Morrissey's lyrics are at their most acerbic: "Frankly, Mr. Shankly, you are a flatulent pain in the arse." Side 1 closer "Cemetry Gates" is a high school English geek's wet dream, "Never Had No One Never" mopes with the best of them, and the outro of "I Know It's Over" stabs repeatedly at the heart of a scorned lover: "Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head." I might also have to concede that the best Side 2 ever is found here: the brilliant pop flourish and crazed background vocals of "Big Mouth Strikes Again" to the memorable cry-for-help of "The Boy With The Thorn in His Side" to the honky-tonk stomp of "Vicar In A Tutu" to the moody anthem "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" to the danceable reverse misogyny of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others." Durham's colorful Viva once wrote under the band name on The Smiths section card at Radiofree Records (R.I.P.) this query: "The Greatest Band Ever ?!?" To which, keeping The Queen Is Dead firmly in mind, I reply: "Yes ?!?"

"A job that slowly kills you, bruises that won't heal"

2007-01-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

#11 OK Computer, Radiohead, Capitol Records, 1997

This is not the first time this record has made an appearance on this blog and this probably won't be the last. Five years ago this was my #1. Three years ago six songs off this record were featured in my Top 200 songs of all time. Why, then, is it no longer number one? It's not because the songs aren't amazingly well done or profound. And it's definitely not because it's too "main stream" (a notion that will continue to be proved as my countdown continues). However, a lot can change in five years. Especially when you feel that your exposure to music explodes within a given time frame (this may be analogous to saying what your favorite book is when you're a senior in high school versus your favorite book when you're a senior in college, which is only a useful analogy if you read anything in both high school and college). But certainly, despite the fact that my musical tastes have expanded one hundred fold since college, OK Computer abides. It abides so much that most of memories with the record involve forced listenings: forcing Sarah to listen to "Exit Music for a Film" on repeat while we had dinner one night in Bristol, forcing Shawna to listen to "Paranoid Android" all the way through once in her Saturn, forcing Hunter and Rob to listen to "Climbing Up the Walls" with the lights out five years ago, and, of course, being forced along with Rob to listen to Jon Kestner argue about why OK Computer is a greater concept record than Dark Side of the Moon while we played Frisbee golf in rural South Carolina. True story. Historically, my favorite song has been a toss-up between "Paranoid Android" or "Karma Police", but the sympathy vote goes to "No Surprises" which, having been forced to live and breathe a 9 to 5 desk job for many years, hits the nail right on the head for those of us who sometimes have felt like a pig. in a cage. on antibiotics.

Top Pop Songs of All Time

2007-01-23T08:03:00.000-08:00

Can I just insert a quick side-topic and get some feedback from you all?

What are your top POP (radio friendly) songs of all time?
Here are the first few I can think of:

New Radicals - You Get What You Give (oh, if only it were sans rap!)

Radiohead - No Surprises

Oasis - Champagne Supernova

CCR - basically anything they put out, but especially "Have you ever seen the rain?"

Hall & Oats - Kiss on My List*

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun

Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side

Velvet Underground - Stephanie Says (not sure this actually fits in pop songs)

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

Rolling Stones - Wild Horses

Tom Petty - Free Fallin'

(note: * denotes "siiiiike")

Something old, something new....

2007-01-22T19:10:00.000-08:00

#14 and #13 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedoes and Tom Petty Wildflowers

Tom Petty's final stop on the top 25 countdown. Damn the Torpedoes is Petty in his prime. It is full of classic tunes like Refugee, Don't Do Me Like That, and Even the Losers.... My favorite tune on the album (and second favorite Petty tune of all-time behind Kings Highway) is Here Comes My Girl...

Wildflowers, released in my prime of high school rock-and-rolling is a Petty-solo effort. His tunes address the topics of love and loneliness, among other things. My favorite tunes are Wildflowers, Don't Fade on Me, and To Find a Friend.

#10 and 24

2007-01-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

#10 - Melody A.M, Royksopp

I have a moment, but only one since Jack Bauer is about to kick some ass. Thus, I'll keep it short and sweet.

Featuring the vocals of Erlend Oye and some groovy beats, this record mixes laid back lounge with upbeat dance. My favorite tracks feature my main man, of course, (Erlend, not Jack) - "Poor Leno" and "Remind Me." "So Easy" is also a great opener.

#11 SIMON AND GARFUNKLE bridge over troubled water

2007-01-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

Finally a top #25 selection for me with some cred. Remember when Kings of Convenience were releasing albums under the name Simon and Garfunkel? Neither do I, we're just babies.

Oh, this was one of the first actual records that I owned, though. Like, actual vinyl my friends. Oh, wait...that's not true. My first doses of "wax" were (no joke):

and

I wish I had those now. No I don't.

#12 RADIOHEAD kid a

2007-01-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

I second that emotion.

Optimistic

2007-01-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

#6 - Kid A (Radiohead) 2000

Little more needs to be said about this now "classic" album. Is there a better album opener (maybe "Enter Sandman"?) than Everything In Its Right Place?

After a long holiday hiatus.....

2007-01-20T15:32:00.000-08:00

#15 Neil Young, Harvest

There are few albums that I enjoy listening to more than this one. Spinning it every six months or so is like catching up with an old friend. I must admit that I didn't really like the sound of Neil Young when I first heard him, but I've grown to really appreciate him. His unique voice and music style is usually classified as classic rock, but when I listen to him I also here a flair of country, bluegrass, and folk. Heart of Gold is my favorite song on this album. I also enjoy the tunes Old Man and a Man Needs a Maid.

beards and fog

2007-01-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Album: master and everyone by bonnie 'prince' billy

I confess this cover did indeed inspire me to take a listen. Dreamy and distant. And, that's what this album is like. A slow fog of softness that covers me every time. [Enter picture on right. I am the forest. The fog is...well you get the picture.] This post is like some adolescent assignment to find connections and deeper meanings in art and music...and I love it. (I randomly read a review of susan sontag's book, and her writing is so beautifully crafted that i have momentarily given up all hope of ever writing anything that is remotely worth reading.) still reading? well, thank you. here are three lovely songs that i enjoy:

wolf among wolves

even if love

three questions
And, this song - hard life - i enjoy immensely. "It's a hard life for a man with no wife / babe, it's a hard life god makes you live" Will Oldham + girl with half swallowed harmony make me yearn for something. I'm not quite sure what, but the ache feels good.

'Til next time.

A Forest

2007-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

Does this video make anyone else want to watch Twin Peaks all over again?

Interlude, pt. 1: Best non-2006 albums first heard in 2006

2007-01-16T18:48:00.000-08:00

The cusp of my top 10 seems like a good place to step back and do a year-end review. But rather than talk about 2006 releases, which Mr. Cougar has quite capably done (even if there was by my account a glaring omission in his top 30). Rather, I think it is just as fun to unearth lost (to me) treasures, and ever since I became a parent (read: shut-in) I’ve had more time to devote to rock archaeology. Though I have been dabbling more and more into Papa Shoegaze territory, these picks all belong to the classic rock tradition, though classic rock broadly construed.

So, my top 8 non-2006 records of 2006 are:

8. Kate Bush Hounds of Love (EMI, 1985)

Three strikes against this one: 1) The spouse hates this – “too Celtic,” says she, which is a more than valid criticism in my book. 2) There is a near unlistenable artsy number here featuring a cd-skipping sound and evidently Satan at his most grumbly as a guest vocalist. 3) The album cover is bizarre, all weimereiners and Alberto VO5 – wait, I think I actually like it. Let me try #3 again. 3) The fact that I like this record is final verification that I am indeed over 30. Regardless, the songcraft is absolutely undeniable here, and if you can be OK with pop music made for full-blown adults, I guarantee you will like this.

7. Glenn Branca The Ascension (99, 1981)

Heavily textured instrumental electric guitar with a rhythm section. Drone that rocks and that makes a chord change sound like a revelation. Is it rock or avant-garde classical? I don’t know, but I know what I like.

6. Prince, Purple Rain (Warner Bros., 1984)

It’s not like I hadn’t heard any of this before, but it now makes sense. Remember when pop idols were geniuses? Re-check out the title track, which is an epic (8 min!) life-altering guitar slow jam easily mistaken (by me, at least) for a John Hughes prom scene cheesefest. When that falsetto drops in at around the 5:15 minute mark, get out your kleenexes.

5. Faith No More, Angel Dust (Slash, 1992)

Surprisingly awesome. No joke! We can’t blame Faith No More for the atrocious mook rock that came after it – well, yes, we can, but that only reduces this album from an A to an A-. Also, take note that “Crack Hitler” is only the second most uncomfortable-to-type song title on the record.

4. Afghan Whigs Gentlemen (Elektra, 1993)

Again, I knew some of this from back in the 120 Minutes days, but I only fully became aware of its majesty this year. Among the 90s alternarock classics, only Siamese Dream is better.

3. Otis Redding Good to Me: Recorded Live at the Whisky A Go Go 1966 (Stax, 1993)
Otis Redding is who we thought he was.

2. Thin Lizzy Jailbreak (Mercury, 1976)

So I should begin by noting that before acquiring this album I had only heard “The Boys are Back in Town” (which I love – even the thought of that double guitar solo gives me that gym-class-rope feeling). The rest of the album is more than up to the standard of that song, though. The lyrics are, well, not good, but this album completely epitomizes and kills its genre, so much so that I wonder why anyone listens to any classic rock other than this. In fact, I feel cheated by the whole Classic Rock Industrial Complex; why are there at least five Bob Seger songs in the American collective consciousness, compared to only one by these guys?

1. The Exploding Hearts Guitar Romantic (Dirtnap, 2003)

KLASSIK!! The Clash + The Replacements = pop punk awesome = buy now! Raw, funny, moving, super catchy. I picked this up in late Nov. Next time around, I predict it will be in my top 25.

Could we please be objective?

2007-01-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

#11 Belle & Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister (Matador, 1996)

The scrooges among us might feel that I am supposed to be ashamed of this pick somehow. And maybe – maybe – it’s a bad thing that this is the pinnacle of millennial college boy wussrock, but let us not ignore that If You’re Feeling Sinister contains at least 9 mixtape-worthy, fanfuckingtastic songs (the remainder, “The Boy Done Wrong Again,” is merely mortal but still decent). This album is more top-to-bottom consistent than just about every other album on my top 25 (and, I would wager, than many of yours, too).

When you feel the darkness shining through, what are you gonna do?

2007-01-15T18:50:00.000-08:00

#12 Built to Spill, Perfect From Now On (Warner Bros., 1997)

As I crawl begrudgingly back into the UH T-25 sweatshop to bang out still 12 more mini-treatises (treatisettes?) I don’t feel quite as ashamed as I might be, seeing as the factory floor is still mostly empty, save for a dusty U2 classic in the corner and some unspeakable spill that must have come from D.L. Roth. Nonetheless, I still feel compelled to offer an excuse. The holidays came and went, but it’s not like I spent all that time toasting chestnuts and stringing popcorn back at Sean B HQ (though know this: we were festive, my friends). I had more than enough free time to climb into the upper reaches of my countdown, but with this next one I could think neither of some clever, yet crystallizingly insightful metaphor, nor of a poignant coming of age reminiscence to propel me to the keyboard. So that’s my excuse. That, and my in-laws live in south Louisiana and know how to keep their cabinets and fridges stocked with the good stuff, if my drift is being caught.

So I hope it’s enough to say that Perfect From Now On is a darn good record. Built to Spill is good times all around (and if I could import a tune or two from Keep It Like a Secret here, that might make for a top 3 album), but this one is the most album-y, and the one I never skip tracks on. Probably the most expansive BtS album, and of its 8 tracks, only one is less than five minutes long. I want to call it meandering, but it’s not jam band-esque noodling. The songwriter and bonafide guitar hero (the only such animal in indie rock? other suggestions solicited in the comments…) who runs this show, Doug Martsch, displays an amazing skill for creating a sound that is simultaneously improvisational and purposeful. That might sound not quite possible, so let me try a simile: the songs here are like a lazy, daydreaming afternoon walk on the beach, one with sharp and almost random turns, with highs and lows, but one where you look back at the end and realize that where there used to be two sets of footprints in the sand, there is now an awesome guitar riff.

If you can forgive the barely tolerable album cover (I almost can’t), this one is well worth devoting some of your time to. It starts off a little slow – or, rather, the first ten minutes are good but not mind blowing – but Perfect From Now On gets better with each song, culminating with the best song here, “Untrustable.” In this almost 9-min epic, Mr. Martsch packs into one track a lesser mortal’s whole album worth of ideas. Martsch, a decent lyricist who shows flashes of aphoristic brilliance, asks an important question (which I’ve quoted in the title of this post), to which he seems to answer: drop some huge guitar rock in a coda, then mellow out a little, and finally finish with another, louder coda. To which I reply: more, please.

Oh, great ocean

2007-01-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

#7 - The Joshua Tree (U2) 1987

How do you describe this album? Despite the greats like With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, and Where the Streets Have No Name, Running To Stand Still will always be one of my favorite songs of all time...

Thanks a million...

2007-01-13T19:57:00.000-08:00

#8 - The Boat Ashore (Michael Roe) 1997

Inspired by Urbane Master's flying crotch attack, enter Michael Roe and his epic pun, The Boat Ashore, once considered my all-time favorite disc. Few of you will be familiar with the Seventy Seven's front man's solo works, but that shouldn't stop you from checking him out. There's so much to like about this album that it's actually hard for me to describe it. Roe swallows his sadness just long enough to sing it to the world, mixing bittersweet sorrow and depravity in a way that makes you feel sorry for your soul with a tearful smile. I love the jazzy guitar work as much as the lyrics and the sound of Roe's somber voice. This album is about not being good enough to save yourself from yourself, and Roe does a better job of making you feel that way than anyone else. Roe and Kozelek would be best friends...
Top Tracks: Love Like Gold, Tum Tum Tum, I Buried My Heart At Bended Knee

Two Articles, A Promise, and DLR's Craw

2007-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since most of us have posted to Urbane. In an attmept to appease the Urbane Master, who's been getting grumpy over non-posting as well as over attempt's to mimic DLR's sweet stage acrobatics, here is a quick post with links to two articles I did for Thirsty magazine's January issue that you may or may not care a whit for. The first focuses on eight bands I felt were under-represented in year-end "best of" posts but that put out quality records last year (Papa Shoegaze, you'll be interested in the very last one in the list). Also, you might recognize a few in the list from a certain Cougar's Tale Top 30 that graced this publication last year. I also did a brief review of Joanna Newsom's supurbly magical Ys which is worth checking out if only for the 2-part video of a live performance of "Emily" that I found to attach to the review.

And now the promise: I will begin my own countdown to #1 again next week, starting at #11. And I encourage all who have, like myself, taken an Urbane breather to now once again gird your loins, take up your keyboard, and follow me.

2006 listens

2007-01-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

some favs that I heard for the first time this year (not all 2006 releases)

#11 Trois Gymnopedies 7"- ISAN

Erik Satie's finest piano works done with ambience and beats

#10 Gulag Orkestar- Beirut

thanks master. eastern europe visited youthfully

#9 s/t- Vetiver

gentle rustic accoustic numbers w/a little help from joanna, devandra, and colm...

#8 Gamelan into the Mink Supernatural- The Psychic Paramount

mixed and played in the red, this 3 piece destroys! clashing, wailing, and ruining speakers.

#7 The Cavalry of Light- Lavender Diamond

earnestness for life and love. this 4 song can repeat all day with Becky Stark shouting 'dream the kind of a life that you will find/the kind of love that lasts forever'

#6 Ys- Joanna Newsom

even if you dont dig it, read an interview with her and you will respect it. this is a life lived and a dream unfolded. with van dyke, o'rourke, albini, analog, and artwork like this...she knows not everybody has this chance and she went for it.

#5.5 I'm Not b/w Comfy in Nautica 7"- Panda Bear

my dreamweaver

#5 Minima Moralia- Chihei Hatakeyama

thanks master. slowly unfolding ambiance, organ, and beautiful drone. this changes my mood as soon as i put it on.

#4 Plans Drawn in Pencil- ISAN

i have a soft spot for slightly melodic ambient electronica. these 2 guys shifted gears w/less beats and still crafted a gorgeous record.

#3 To Find Me Gone- Vetiver

again. his newest feels old. great songwriting and more fleshed out than his previous.

#2 Just Another Diamond Day- Vashti Bunyan

first released in '69, this old gypsy wrote and recorded a masterpiece that can change part of your life. if you love the earth, animals, and traveling, go with her...

#1 s/t- Beach House

victoria took me away with her voice and organ, and alex's slide kept shoegaze alive this year. cant get enough.

#13 THE CONCRETES, self titled

2007-01-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

Simple but beautiful pop music. I think I first really got into Scandi-pop with Sondre Lerche after I saw his Two Way Monologue video on MTVeurope when Rachel and I were in Stockholm. After some internet digging (swedesplease.blogspot.com), I was hooked.

I wish I could leave this much "space" in music. These songs can be so sparse, and yet so rocking. I was surprised when I found out there were like 18 people in this band. Also check out New Buffalo.

Droned

2007-01-05T16:49:00.000-08:00

#9 - Silver (Starflyer 59) 1993

I have so much love for this album. It was the catalyst for my musical experimentation (post-Michael W. Smith, etc.) in the early 1990's. Echo what Papa has said about the illumination that occured when Sin For A Season hit the Night Light airwaves. Every song is incredible, but none carry more weight or memory than Droned, which comforted and counselled me during a few dark, anti-"Ghetto"-fraternity antics at Covenant College. The song still mezmerizes me to this day. Of all the great Starflyer albums, this one still shines brightest.

Top Tracks: Zenith, 2nd Space Song, She Only Knows, Droned

#15 and #14

2007-01-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

#15 MUM, Yesterday was Dramatic. Today is okay.

I often stop to think about the millions of tiny steps that I've taken to be able to listen to the arty music that I like now. I liked the oldies radio station, which made me buy the beatles cds, which is where I fell in love with sad songs like "she's leaving home" and "she said she said", which made me love the radio hits by third eye blind or counting crows, which made me love the simple rock stylings of bands like Pedro the Lion or Damien Jurado, etc etc etc.

I think about how it is possible that I could be so anti-effects in my college days (often getting in arguments with my band members about the sound of distortion), and now I'm very computer-dance-rock attentive. I noticed some appreciation growing for electronically produced music first with novelty acts like Wendy Carlos, but then with indie groups like Her Space Holiday. Anyway. Just think about it.

Anyway, all that to say I really love this record.

#14 MUM, Summer Make Good

The first time I had a chance to see Mum live was in support of this album. I'd been following their music for a few albums, but it was the first time they'd come through the DC area (that I knew of, at least). I have to admit I was a bit disapointed with their live set. It was mostly them tinkering around with bits of instruments and some electronic-y stuff from a mac laptop. It just seemed like they were dabbling all night, rarely playing more than seconds of songs we recognized. Oh, and the violin was a) out of tune and b) not being played well. The quote from the night was "I hope they're having a good time, because I'm not."

At first I felt like Summer Make Good was the same. I first saw it as electronic-meets-organic experimentation with little regard for the listener. I was way off. The more I listened to this album, the more I feel in love with what Mum were doing. Yesterday was Dramatic was a poppier, more electronic-based album but Summer Make Good has its pop moments and some genius sound scapes.

I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah

2006-12-30T18:54:00.000-08:00

#10 - Live On Two Legs (Pearl Jam) 1998

I wrestled with this one for a long time...Admittedly not an "original" Pearl Jam fan, my first encounter with Mookie Blalock was a "Ten" t-shirt worn frequently by a girl in high school that I wanted to date (but never did). Fast forward to the spring semester of my sophmore year in college where a new roommate carried a dusty collection of "old" Pearl Jam albums, including this gem. Always a fan of the grunge, Ten hit me like news of a long-lost brother: How could I have missed this in my high school years? How sheltered was I? Spending weeks listening and sifting through his collection, I was mezmerized by Vedder's "highly distinctive timbre" and the raw, live energy that was captured on this album. How I wish I could have seen Pearl Jam live during their heyday! Several of the songs on "Two Legs" sound best captured here live, but none more than Do The Evolution, which loses it's true angst when it is distorted and disfigured on Yield. It's as brilliant a song (and as scary) as Off He Goes is beautiful, and ironically I put Vedder up there with Sting as some of the most vivid story tellers in music. Pearl Jam was (is?) a true existential band, always emotional, in the moment, never leaving anything on the table. That's exactly how I enjoy this album...
Top Tracks: Hail Hail, Red Mosquito, Off He Goes, Betterman

Many years have passed since those summer days...

2006-12-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

#11 - Ten Summoner's Tales (Sting) 1993

Of all my top 25 albums, this one has been in my possession for the longest amount of time. I owe my affection for his work to my stepmother, who has been a long-time fan. I remember hearing Fields of Gold for the first time during a mid-inning break at a Braves game in 1993. It instantly (and secretly) became my swoon song for all of my 15 minute infatuations during middle school. It still is, and like so much of Sting's work, this album exemplifies his unmatched ability to craft song around story.
Top Tracks: Fields of Gold, It's Probably Me