Remember, if you can, Dear Reader, the first time you heard that one album. That one time it took only the first few seconds for you to fall in love? A love so deep and painful that the only way you could express it would be to rip your skin off with pliers or at least bloody your hand on some rusty guitar strings.
Maybe you've never had this experience, Dear Reader. In that case, I mourn for you. You've never had your Keep On Your Mean Side.
2003: It was a late night after a few rounds at the bar. Maybe we'd stopped at a gas station for cigarettes or beer or both. Maybe we'd been playing pool or talking poetry. I don't recall. For the first and only time, I sat in the spacious, thrift-furnitured living room of the house he shared with some roommate or three. As usual, we talked music with semi-automatics, blasting names and songs and labels back and forth with sharp precision.
At some point, he changed the record and then . . .
. . . the faint, lo-fi clicks of some rescued beat box rolling around my skull. Then—
—that guitar. That. Guitar. Like a hobble-legged demon growling from down the hall. "I will rip you." Just three notes and lots of space, but that was enough. And always will be. Forever.
There was that voice, too. The demon's ghostly familiar. But it really only took that 10 seconds—not too change my life, for sure—to change everything I ever thought music and bands and rock and energy and love and lust and cool could be.
This week, Stoplight Sleep brings you my humble picks for this years best songs. First, we'll look at my top 10, followed by the 50 best list. So here we go . . .
"God" is one of the few tracks where Meric Long's machine-gun precussion and Logan Kroeber's acoustic sprints ease up on The Dodo's Visiter. The duo's music theory seem deceptively simple: a reflection of the melody (and vise-versa). The jingling in the background and the steady downbeat lull you into thinking this one will be easy to digest. Then a simple euphamism ("Oh, god.") turns into a last-ditch plee for order in the universe. "Are you there, listener? It's me, the perfect album closer."
Aside from the obvious relevance to your faithful author's current task, "My Year in Lists" is a perfect example of the energy and density packed in the best Los Campesinos! tracks. As fun as the twee-pop music is, I can't resist lyrics in which the first verse is an extended metaphor about sex and letter-writting (a la PJ Harvey) followed by a meta-poetic comment on those lines.
In the last few years, M.C.s have commanded us to do some of the most vexatious acts ever put to music. Thankfully, The Kills, who traded in the garage sound of their last two albums for splashes of raw studio flare, have way cooler intenions for their audience. "Go down to the Rio"? "Go ahead and have her. / Go ahead and leave her"? Finally, a song about something I want to do.
This list may be a bit premature, but I always find albums in the following year that would have made my year-end lists. Most recently I've found albums from 2007 (Electrelane's No Shouts, No Calls), 2005 (The Meligrove Band's Planets Conspire), and 2001 (Mirah's Advisory Committee) that probably would have made at least my top 25 list. Sometimes it takes awhile for me to give an album the chance it deserves. I've only this week listened to all of Lightspeed Champion's Falling off the Lavender Bridge, possibly because I saw it as too gimmacky following my summer 2006 affair with Test Icicles.
I've poured over this list and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. Unlike last year, there's a definite divide between the top ten and the rest of my list (which I'll post later). These ten albums really stood out in my 2008 as musical achievements.
Like 2007, you'll find a good mix of veteran acts (M83, The Kills), sophomores (Hot Chip, The Dodos), and rookies (Lost Campesinos!, MGMT). However, Ra Ra Riot are the only act completely off my radar before 2008. Crystal Castles, Adele, and the other first timers all had some kind of release (either an EP or import) that I was at least aware of before this year.
Following another interesting trend, all of these albums, with the exception of Ra Ra Riot's The Rhumb Line appeared on my mid-2008 list, although some have received a better evaluation with time.
So what do you think? Post your lists. Do you violently disagree with any of my picks?
Until a couple weeks ago, I would have said that Hot Chip had released the best album of an adolescent 2008. Made in the Dark isn’t quite on par with last year’s Sound of Silver (LCD Soundsystem), but it comes from a similar sonic playground, including songs that can knock you down with shock and awe (“Shake a Fist”) and lull you into a meditative appreciation (“Wrestlers”).
Who could have up-ended this achievement? On March 18, The Kills released Midnight Boom, and album I had probably anticipated more than any other this year. No one could have had higher expectations for a fresh release from the cross-Atlantic duo of vocalist Alison "VV" Mosshart and guitarist Jamie "Hotel" Hince, but when I started hearing of Spank Rock’s involvement and some of the early reviews, I worried that my two-headed demon of ripping hipster blues had been defanged (a la PJ Harvey’s White Chalk).
When I finally got to pop Midnight Boom in my CD player, I felt the tingle that a friend had introduced me to with the first blips followed by the revving chainsaw of “Superstition” (track 1 of their debut, Keep on Your Mean Side). The first, confusing ten seconds of “U.R.A. Fever” follow landline sound effects into VV and Hotel’s endless supply of violently whispered haikus:
Pick you out a soda. Look at you forever. Eyes like a casino. Find a piece of silver. Go down to the Rio. Put it in a fruit machine. Everyone’s a winner. Laughing like a seagull. You are a fever . . .
With the refrain comes a subtle-but-deadly bass line and electro scratch. Like most of the album, it’s hit-and-run; two minutes later the track is over, leaving elation and bemused confusion in its wake. “Take you to a jukebox . . . / Pick you out a number, / that’s our arrangement.”
Hip-hop roots decorate the proverbial sleeves of tracks like “Getting Down” and “Sour Cherry.” The Kills has always been the other side of The Bumblebeez garage-blues-for-B-boys coin (compare “Hook and Line” to the former’s “Step Back”), but Midnight Boom finds VV, Hotel, and their studio mates further exploring their metallic possibilities (Did Albini stop by with a metal pick?). There are new sounds, like the tricks that peers The White Stripes, Forget Cassettes, and Hot Chip have used to give their sound new dimensions.
With Midnight Boom, 2008 has found the spit and booze to shape its reckless youth, albeit one with decent taste.
VV borrows a pinch of soul from (The Gossip’s) Beth Ditto on “Cheap and Cheerful.”
Circa 2001. I'm working at a regional music chain in Jackson, TN. This is both the best and worst job I've ever had. My musical vocabulary and frame of reference increases ten fold in the year or so I spend there, and I meet many people who positively influence my knowledge and taste. I also encounter countless "morons" who grate my nerves with their questionable taste and inane questions. Worst of all, I become a cultural elitist (partially due to the film education provided by a roommate and a video production course), a personality trait I have only wrestled into submission in the last couple years.
Present. Inspired by my newly acquired speakers, I've u-turned away from the internet as my primary source of new music. Over the last decade the mode of transfer from my music has shifted in much the same way as yours (you being the ubiquitous blog-reader) likely has: from exclusively CD to almost exclusively mp3 (or some other digital equivalent). Although I'm completely confident in the ability of a digital audio file to deliver an experience equal to that of CD, I'm not confident in the ability of my computer or iPod or internet storefronts to consistently deliver that experience. What follows is a list of my praise and gripes:
The iPod classic and PC, while good in storage capacity, portability (iPod), and user friendliness, require add-ons (external DAC, controler/line-in adapter) for optimum performance.
BLEEP, 7digital, Anthology Recordings, and similar sites have the quality right, but their selection is limited or caters toward a specific market.
Amazon and iTunes (the two biggest digital music retailers) are headed in the right direction, but still aren't the perfect solution.
Nine Inch Nails had a great idea with their latest release, but bandwidth was a problem early on.
The--possibly foolish--reaction has been to invest almost embarrassing amounts of cash on CDs, occasionally of tracks that I'd previously acquired (legally or otherwise). Not since my time at the CD store have I so haphazardly consumed round, silver plastic. In the last two weeks, I've popped into Barnes & Noble (of all places) to look for CDs. The first time I was hoping they might have the new Kills album, and last night I was taking advantage of their 40% coupon. Both times, I hoped--fruitlessly--to see my friend/acquaintance who works there. During his appearance on All Songs Considered, Thom Yorke stated that he missed the experience of record shopping. My time shopping the decent-but-inadequate CD section of our local B&N became about an attempt to reclaim that music shop experience, and even though there was no one around who's taste I would turn to, I picked up the Nick Cave album that sat in my friend's recommendation slot by the counter.
I realize that the try-before-you-buy nature of mp3s and music blogs are a more efficient and streamlined method of achieving the same effect. But there's a unique experience in filing through rows of CDs or vinyl while chatting and listening to someone else's selection. I don't want to give up all that technology hath wrought, but I don't want to throw out the indie shops either.
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