Best of 2005

I'm so far behind that I almost thought about skipping this part altogether and starting fresh with a new year. This morning, I'm motivated to do otherwise.

I wasn't as engrossed in the music scene in 2005 as I have been in the previous '00 years, but I tried to keep my ear to the ground. I usually do a "Best Albums" list, but always miss some of the best ones. Last year along I missed Joanna Newsom, Arcade Fire, and Regina Spektor. In 2006 Sufjan Steven's Illinios blew away the competition so much that I'm strained to think what would even come second: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl, perhaps, followed by Broken Social Scene. At this point I could keep going, but I feel more comfortable doing a "Top Songs" list. This are roughly ordered beginning with the greatest, but it's silly to compare such artistic pinnacles.

I apologize in advance for the whiteness of this list. "Special Awards" are noted to the right.

Antony & The Johnsons: "Fistful of Love" Best Guest-Appearance (Lou Reed)
José González: "Crosses"
Sufjan Stevens: "John Wayne Gacy"
The Raveonettes: "Twilight"
TV on the Radio: "Dry Drunk Emperor" Best Hurricane Katrina Song
Wolf Parade: "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts"
Bright Eyes: "Take it Easy (Love Nothing)"
Okkervil River: "The Latest Toughs"
Single Frame: "Exact Copy of This in the Basement"
Spoon: "I Turn My Camera On"
Bloc Party: "Banquet"
Dangerdoom: "Mincemeat"
Imogen Heap: "Hide and Seek"
Beck: "Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes)" Best Remix
Sufjan Stevens: "Decatur"
Cat Power and Entrance: "Do the Romp" Best Cover
Daft Punk: "Human After All" Most Welcome Comeback
The Kills: "No Wow"
The Decemberists: "The Sporting Life"
Stars: "The Big Fight"
Giant Drag: "This Isn't It"
Neon Blonde: "Chandeliers and Vines"
Karen O. & Squeak E. Clean: "Hello Tomorrow (adidas Version)
Soulwax: "NY Excuse"
The Bravery: "Public Service Announcement" Best Lyrics in a Dance Song
Kiss Me Deadly: "Dance 1"
M. I. A: "Amazon"
Nine Inch Nails: "The Hand that Feeds" Best Political Song
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: "Ain't No Easy Way Out"
Xiu Xiu: "Pox"
Broken Social Scene: "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)"
Kanye West: "Diamonds From Sierra Leone"
The Postal Service: "Be Still My Heart (Nobody Remix)" Best Song Featuring Ben Gibbard
Robbers on High Street: "Spanish Teeth"
Halloween, Alaska: "All the Arms Around You" Best Band Name
My Morning Jacket: "Off the Record"
Death Cab for Cutie: "Soul Meets Body"
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: "Caterwaul"
Aqueduct: "Growing Up with GNR"
Airborn Audio: "Bright Lights"
Fischerspooner: "Never Win"
The Cloud Room: "Hey Now Now"
Depeche Mode: "John the Revelator"
Louis XIV: "Ball of Twine"
Danny Elfman: "Veruca Salt" Best Vocal Song from a Film
The Go! Team: "The Power is On"
Circa Surive: "Act Appalled" Best Mars Volta Impression
The New Pornographers: "The Jessica Numbers"
M83: "Car Chase Terror"
Sleater-Kinney: "Modern Girl"
Antony & the Johnsons: "For Today I am a Boy"
Shout Out Louds: "The Comeback"
The Chemical Brothers featuring Q-Tip: "Galvanize"
Ludacris and Field Mobb: "Georgia"
Broken Social Scene: "Swimmers"
The White Stripes: "My Doorbell"
Ted Leo: "Since You've Been Gone"
Be Your Own Pet: "Spill"
Stepehen Malkmus: "Baby C-mon"
Prefuse 73 featuring Kazu (of Blonde Redhead): "We Go Our Own Way"
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: "The Lost City"
Beck: "E-Pro"
Bloc Party: "Blue Light (Engineers Anti-Gravity Mix)
The Blue Van: "Revelation of Love"
The Bravery: "An Honest Mistake" Best New Order Impression
Bright Eyes: "When the President Talks to God"
Dangerdoom featuring Ghostface: "The Mask"
Dead Meadow: "Heaven"
The Decemberists: "16 Military Wives"
Iron & Wine: "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven"
Hot Hot Heat: "Middle of Nowhere"
The Impossible Shapes: "Bombs"
The Kills: "Rodeo Town"
Ladytron: "International Dateline"
The Legendary K.O.: "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People"
Minus the Bear: "El Torrente"

And a special category for songs I like but never want to hear again:

Franz Ferdinand: "Do You Want To?"
LCD Soundsystem: "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" Most Annoying Song
Kaiser Cheifs: "Na Na Na Na Na Na"

On second thought, maybe a best album list would have been better . . .
Enjoy!

The best-laid plans of mice and Wolf Parade

Goodness . . .
It’s been too long since my last update. Besides the regular holiday experiences, my “career” in retail revs up the holiday jumble a couple notches. I have a few things planned for the next few weeks:

Reviews of Walk the Line and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices
Comments on Fell and Long Hot Summer
A “Best of 2005” List
More music!

For now I’ll leave you with a track from Wolf Parade’s 2004 self-titled EP, “Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts.” It seems fairly appropriate for how well my best-laid plans have worked out. Enjoy and thanks for your support.

Update 11.29 Along those lines . . .

Alan Moore's The Watchmen

The Watchmen is fairly long for a mainstream comic miniseries, especially one that focuses on masked heroes that readers have nothing invested in. But Moore needed this space to craft characters and a story rich enough to reshape how we read comics. I’ll admit that I wasn’t much into The Watchmen from the beginning. It wasn’t until chapter four (“Watchmaker”) that I became immersed in the narrative structure and Moore’s poetry, which I swallowed by the handful in Saga of the Swamp Thing but found sour in V for Vendetta. It took me almost three months to get to that point (during which time I finished a novel and several other comics and tp’s).

Unlike Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which is often paired with Watchmen as the dynamic duo of modern superhero storytelling, Watchmen doesn’t instantly grab for his reader or use an immediately accessible structure; although an overall style is easily seen. Instead, Moore uses visuals to give Watchmen a cyclical narrative, often found in contemporary fiction, and alters his style to fit the theme of each individual chapter, which could easily be read individually, although it would leave the reader painfully ignorant. For example, in the above-mentioned chapter, Moore exaggerates the narrative timeline into a kind of chutes-and-ladders hopping to portray the world as Dr. Manhattan experiences it.

The next chapter adopts a punchy, sequential rhythm as the author turns his focus towards the analytical Rorschach. Named for the ink-blot tests used in dated psycho analysis, Rorschach’s obsession with logic and worldview as black-and-white as his mask doom him throughout the story. Most of Watchmen’s characters suffer from tragic flaws, but Rorschach’s inability to evolve with a culture too complex for terms like right and wrong is apparently the least forgivable. Appropriately, the chapters that focus on him are more straightforward and, therefore, least indicative of Moore’s genius.

Like DKR, Watchmen utilizes a variety of viewpoints, including television and first-person narrative. Unlike Miller, however, Moore realizes the importance of the micronarrative. By assembling the increasingly parallel storylines of a local magazine seller, a pirate comic, and other side plots, Moore succeeds in what other graphic tour-de-forces, such as Marvels, Maus, and Kingdom Come, only partially accomplished: he perfectly blends the main storyline, tales from the margins, mass media, and cultural artifacts into a cohesive work.

In addition, the prose pieces (book excerpts, essays, etc.) that accompany each chapter give the reader a more comprehensive experience. Although sometimes distracting from the reader’s immersion in Watchmen, the best appendices, namely the interview with Ozymandis, are as important as the rest of the book. This article had me completely convinced that Ozymandis was a real person, something that his surgical efficiency and cold demeanor never accomplished.

I don’t wish to detract from the greatness of any of the above mentioned graphic stories, but as far as narrative style is concerned, I have yet to meet Watchmen’s peer.

What's in a name?

I just wanted to post a link to the song that inspired the blog name. "Traffic" by Chad VanGaalen tells a story of dreaming about beautiful things at stoplights, which is sort of what this sight is designed to do. I hope visitors are exposed to something creative that breaks the mundanity of life. It also reminds me of part of a story I wrote as an undergrad. Maybe I'll dig it up and post that part of it.

Comic Geek Speaks

One of my favorite podcasts is Comic Geek Speak. I was recently a guest on the show. We discussed the various layout styles of comic stores and the various comic ages (Silver, Golden, etc.). I was on episode 75 (with variant covers and higher price point), but if you're interested in comics at all, you should check out their show.