The Best Albums of 2010
1. Odd Blood, Yeasayer - While the album as a whole is inconsistent, the high water mark set by the best of Odd Blood is within reach of few bands making music these days. The standout songs are the most emotionally evocative and resonant songs of the year. Even when gloriously enveloped in shiny barrages of synth, danceable backbeats, and intricately layered percussion, I never felt further than arms reach from Chris Keating and Anand Wilder’s whacked out pop sensibilities as they delivered some of the most haunting and/or brilliant vocal performances of recent memory. Giving away the scorching Live at Ancienne Belgique at the exact moment I decided to finally craft this list didn’t hurt either.
2. Cracked Maps and Blue Reports, Rotary Downs - It’s hard to find a single momentary misstep - let alone a low point - on Cracked Maps and Blue Reports, an album that evokes the early work of The Band (band) in the way it seems to exist in its own awesome vacuum, an environment unfettered by the passing fads momentarily sweeping through the musical universe. Rotary Downs eschew any de rigueur smoke and mirrors in favor of immaculate instrumental performance and good old fashioned songcraft. Calling Cracked Maps and Blue Reports “perfect” would be pretentious, so I will instead call it a remarkable collection of moody power pop and dazzling, spooky indie rock; a mind-blowing tour de force that makes you continuously wonder how “Rotary Downs” is not a household name.
3. The Brutalist Bricks, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The most common criticism I hear about Ted Leo and the Pharmacists seems to have something to do with the unprecedented consistency and overall quality of their catalog, spoken like an uninterrupted procession of albums replete with golden-throat vocals and shredding guitars is some sort of black mark against an artist or band. While I would certainly argue the merits of that general position, I will concede that Ted Leo has made few major tweaks to his approach to music making. It’s a good thing, then, that his approach to music making involves a preternatural knack for creating perfectly hook-y, high-energy, new wave punk. And his output has evolved, but subtle and considerate adaptation can be lost on a general public used to jarring and/or superfluous detours (see Congratulations, MGMT or Maya, M.I.A.). Ted Leo’s genius comes with a uncanny air of dependability, and after a listen to the laser-focused, stripped down powder keg that is The Brutalist Bricks, it should be clear that is far from a bad thing.
Prince - world exclusive interview: Peter Willis goes inside the star’s secret world - mirror.co.uk
Nerds everywhere wasted no time in taking to the comment sections of every blog that covered this Daily Mirror interview to defend the honor of their precious internet. Don’t get me wrong, I found the endless variations on the “Prince is the one that is completely over” zinger both thought-provoking and amusing, but I’m left wondering why everyone was so quick to rally behind, of all things, the internet.
Prince is not attacking the series of tubes that plugs computer boxes from around the globe into each other as much as he is questioning the manner in which artists get compensated in the age of digital music downloads. Regardless of one’s personal feelings towards Prince or his music, everyone should support a guy with decades of industry experience, an enormous fan base and nearly unlimited resources as he challenges the current music publishing and distribution paradigm - a paradigm that is still nebulous and flawed to say the least.
If his plan works, we all win. Any change to the crumbling, hostile music industry has to be seen as a change for the better. And if this scheme backfires, Prince can go back to throwing vegan orgies in Chanhassen and no one will be any worse for the wear.
Furthermore, the next time you feel the urge to valiantly defend a global system of interconnected computer networks against the honest critique of one of the most prolific musicians of all time, just remember this: Without Prince, there would be no internet. Well, maybe not. But I would still suggest that everyone quick being such dorks.
One From The Vault: Someday everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody
In almost every review of The Band’s Cahoots, especially contemporary reviews that have the benefit of hindsight and historical context, there is at least one remark about the irony of the choice of Cahoots for the title. “Cahoots” implies a sort of mischievously cunning partnership, yet by the time this album was recorded, the whole outfit was practically hulking up for a full-out cage match over “Chest Fever” royalties. And as far as I can tell, this discord seems to be the only contributing factor to the round rejection of this album, which many peg as The Band’s weakest offering.
So if you feel the need to set the record up for a disappointing self-fulfilling prophecy, it will surely comply. If you want to call Cahoots 45 minutes of uninspired, formulaic, overwrought attempts at recapturing the majestic glory of Music From Big Pink and it’s eponymous follow up, you will have plenty of mainstream media confederates to back you up. Anyone with a working set of ear holes can recognize that this is no Music From Big Pink.
But I think the very fact that the performances on this record were clearly phoned in by almost everyone involved (I say “almost everyone” because, to this day, I refuse to say nary a negative word about the venerable Levon Helms) makes the finished product all the more impressive. Tales of the epic dissension among the ranks of The Band are a dime a dozen, but I am always skeptical about how much hyperbole goes into any Behind The Music-type tale about a group of talented musicians struggling with their own limitation in the harsh face of stardom.
However, the presence of “When I Paint My Masterpiece” on this album – a song penned by Bob Dylan but bequeathed to The Band for it’s first appearance on a commercially available studio recording – makes me think that, in this particular case, not only were the rumors about Robbie Robertson’s greed and megalomania true, but the situation may have been more dire than anyone thought. I can’t help but wonder if Bob Dylan’s motivation for passing along that gem was in any way similar to that of David Bowie when he offered “All The Young Dudes” to Mott The Hoople around the same time.
Makin' Some Noise: Foburg Fest Recap
Here is my latest Groovescapes piece, about the inaugural (and undeniably awesome) Foburg Music Festival. For 3 days in March, I buzzed around Frenchman Street drinking cheap beer, eating lukewarm pizza, violating temporary smoking ordinances, and seeing some of the most exciting alternative rock New Orleans has to offer. A preview:
Every now and again, I want to hear a dapper gentleman with a vintage guitar croon the type of emotive electric waltz that Jeff Tweedy has been trying to write since 1996. I want to hear a bunch of college kids play a whacked out version of acid jazz that sounds like they’ve got Donald Fagen on keys and Thurston Moore on lead guitar. I want to hear a gravelly voiced singer unfurl a set of raucous, boozy narratives that one might expect from Craig Finn if he grew up in Paul Thomas Anderson’s version of the Lower Garden District.
I want homemade Theremins and electric ukuleles. I want disorienting timing shifts and ear splitting reverb. I want 4am Joy Division covers and the wanton destruction of guitars and bass drums. I want rock: diverse, innovative, imaginative rock. And at the first annual Foburg Music Festival – which commandeered ten of the best stages on Frenchman Street for three days earlier this month – I got rock.
As always, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the editor of the site, Aaron, who has an amazing ability to take a pretentious yet incoherent draft and make it, at the very least, somewhat palatable. Enjoy.
Dark Star Orchestra at the House of Blues
My friend Aaron is the proprietor of the essential New Orleans music site Groovescapes.com. Last week he gave me my first real writing gig when he offered me a free ticket to the Dark Star show at the House of Blues in exchange for a review of the show. Here is said review.
You and What Army: “NPR ROCK” AND THE DEMISE OF SNARLY, ABRASIVE
I was first introduced to Michael Azerrad’s engaging brand of music journalism when I was 12 years old and read Come As You Are, his magnificent and timely biography of Nirvana. I say “timely” because it was released before Kurt Cobain’s death and therefore not only benefited from his direct input, but lacked the weird aura of fatalistic subtext present in almost everything written about the band since Cobain’s passing.
In his most recent blog post, Azerrad argues that the definition of DIY/punk rock has evolved since the days of the Sex Pistols and Velvet Underground and now should include the less-than-abrasive music being created by some not-necessarily-snarly new bands (Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, St. Vincent, etc).
Whether or not these bands sound anything like the distortion-soaked, raw-throated troubadours that created alternative rock is beside the point. “Punk” is a label that embodies not only the aural qualities of a particular piece of music, but the intent and inspiration of the musicians in question. Azerrad correctly identifies an overwhelming disdain for complacency as the real common thread by which the pioneers of punk rock were united. That fact that they operated within a similar sonic landscape has more to do with correlation than causation.
A 24-hour news cycle and ever-expanding arena for user-generated content has indeed made mainstream complacency a thing of the past. But while the endless stream of commentary from talking heads of all political persuasions has generally kept middle America more informed, it has also made it more boorish and reactionary.
When you couple that with a quick survey of the type of music that tops the charts these days - bland country-pop from Taylor Swift, derivative pseudo-rap from The Black Eyed Peas, altogether-inexplicably-well-received sorority-hop from Ke$ha - the idea that Dave Longstreth’s intricate timing shifts or Regina Spektor’s subtle wordplay may, in fact, be revolutionary does not seem nearly as far fetched.
But I’m not going to sit here and claim that The Dirty Projectors are better than, or even as good as, the Velvet Underground. Nor am I going to say that the process by which they each produce music - or the motivation behind said music - is even the least bit similar. At the end of the day, the best we can do is merely tender a guess about why the bands we listen to make the music that they do.
But if you are of the disposition that musical artifacts are bound to the sociopolitical environment in which they were created and acknowledge that complacency has given way to under-informed populist outrage, an argument can be made that “God Save The Queen” and “Temecula Sunrise” are cut from the same cloth (or, at least, similar cloths).
“Punk” isn’t about simply getting a listener’s attention as much as it is about making him or her think once you have it. And with swaths of people all over the country looking for any excuse to take to the streets with misspelled placards and a prevailing air of ignorant bigotry, it is taking an equally heavy hand with music dissension that really puts it at risk of getting lost in the cultural shuffle.
Whether or not you happen to agree with Chris and Maura’s choices for the actual songs that make up the Idolator/Village Voice F2K, there is no denying that this article - written to cap off a collection of the worst music of the decade - is brilliant. Outside of the collected works of Lester Bangs, this is easily the most entertaining piece of music journalism I have read in years.
Sometimes, epic takedown pieces such as this do little more than show off an author’s incisive wit, large vocabulary and encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture. While this article certainly does all three (and does them quite nicely), it also does a great job of exploring what has been a personal source of consternation when it comes to mainstream anything over the past 10 years: It wasn’t all bad; but the worst of it was extremely bad, and more often than not, inexplicably popular.
It also highlights the easily-overlooked truth that bad songs are more than just bad music. They represent horrible ideas - ideas that were acted upon by leaders in their field and ultimately accepted by society as a whole even though, in hindsight, it is clear they were born from the most frightening aspects of the zeitgeist.
As anyone with a working set of ear holes can attest, music from the 2000s wasn’t all terrible. Far from it, actually. But there was some seriously regrettable shit that somehow got made (and probably ended up making someone a boat load of money). This article has a lot of fun addressing that fact.
