2004 Top 10:
1. Kanye West,
"The College Dropout" I wish more artists would sing about spiritual
matters this way -- from the perspective of someone who don't have it
all figured out, like most of us. Evidently that was too much for the
gospel-music folks, who couldn't stand the idea of a sinner threatening
their monopoly on God and booted West and his hellhound-on-my-trail "Jesus
Walks" from their Spirit Awards. (Jesus never had anything to do
with sinners, did he?) That's just one of many songs on this amazing record
that gets its power from upending cliches and orthodoxies: "Slow
Jamz" takes an eye-rolling, what-do-you-want-me-to-do-now approach
to the booty jam, "Breathe in, Breathe Out" eviscerates gangsta
thuggery while laying down a truly evil beat, "We Don't Care"
features a chorus of schoolkids singing "Never supposed to make it
past 25, joke's on you, we're still alive." A real kaleidoscope of
a record, funny and angry and bitter and triumphant. We need more music
like this.
2. Modest Mouse, "Good
News for People Who Love Bad News" An apt title for this package
of glorious, triumphant anthems wrapped in a cranky indie-rock veneer.
3. The Hold Steady, "The
Hold Steady Almost Killed Me" See the full review below.
4. T. Griffin Coraline,
"The Sea Won't Take Long" Over the course of three albums, Todd
has run Tom Waits' junkyard bandthrough a phalanx of low-fi samplers and
electronic gadgets. He's pickedup a fiddle player for this record and
written his finest batch of songs yet. The title track, in particular,
is as chilly and grand as the carcass of the Titanic.
5. Camper van Beethoven,
"New Roman Times" The concept in this rock opera is a bit fuzzy:
poor boy joins the Army, ships off to Iraq, loses a leg, then there's
a bunch of stuff about drug smugglers, suicide bombers and the Unabomber.
Maybe they came up with the story after they wrote all the songs, I'm
not sure. In any event, it provides a dramatic backdrop to the Balkan
fiddle stomps, country weepers, shreddin' fist-pumpers, and Steve Reich
covers that make up this suprisingly strong return to form. More bands
should consider a 12-year hiatus if that's what it takes to come up with
a record this good.
6. !!!,
"Louden Up Now" So funky, I just can't stand it. They can't
write their way out of a paper bag, but who needs hooks when you've got
a rhythm section this slinky?
7. Air, "Talkie Walkie"
Speaking of slinky, this sounds pretty much like their debut, "Moon
Safari." This is a very good thing.
8. Trans Am, "Liberation"
The offical soundtrack to Abu Ghraib, or maybe Swift Boat Veternas for
Truth. These guys need to do a cover of Ashcroft's "Let the Eagle
Soar." See a full review below.
9. Elliot Smith, "From
a Basement on a Hill" Not his best, unfortunately his last. From
the muddy arrangements and almost comically depressing lyrics, it's clear
that much work remained to be done on this record when he died. But there's
still plenty of those elegant, twisting melodies that would make Paul
McCartney proud.
10. Usher, "Yeah!"
The album as a whole ("Confessions") has a few too many slow
jamz that don't go anywhere, but that single is more catchy than a computer
virus.
Other thoughts on music in 2004:
Baby Teeth,
self-released 3 song single
Pearly Sweets is 6'3", sports a big blond afro and
wears tennis shoes with all-white thrift-store suits. He likes to jump
off the stage and show off his aerobics moves when he's not pounding on
his keyboard. Think James Brown's albino nephew playing at the wedding
reception in "The Royal Tennenbaums." Be afraid, be very very
afraid. Pearly first made his mark in the Platonics with a bunch of fellow
Yale grads, but they've all grown up and gone off to law school so now
he's found some Chicago boys who can serve as the appropriate canvas for
the Pearly vision: blue-eyed soul, horny and desparate, banging on your
door at 2 a.m. even though you told his sorry ass to leave you alone a
week ago. He just doesn't get it, he just can't stand it, and he's sorry
baby, oh is he ever sorry. Now won't you please take him back? Please?
The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me (French Kiss)
buy
it
"I got bored when I wasn't in a band, so I started
a band, man," sings Craig Finn on the
Hold Steady's debut. Thank God he didn't take up fly fishing. The
Hold Steady takes everything you love about classic rock -- between-the-knees
guitar solos, AC/DC riffage, party-hearty lyrics delivered like Lincoln's
Second Inaugural Address -- and runs them through a post-millenial cuisinart.
It's the soundtrack you listened to as you de-stemmed your stash on the
gatefold, only cut up into bits and reassembled in a way that makes you
suspicious: Is that Clarence Clemons sax solo in "Hostile, Mass."
supposed to sound as out of place as it does? Can I really pump my fist
during the big chord crashes in "The
Swish," or is it a piss-take on fist-pumping chord crashes? (I
always end up pumping my fist, alone in the living room.)
Finn's got one story to tell, the same one you've been hearing from weekend
warriors since junior high about the killer party he was at and you weren't.
But he can tell that story with panache. It's hard not to just quote the
entire album from start to finish to illustrate my point (here's a link
to the lyric sheet
if you're really curious). Let's just say he gets bruised in Newport News,
shakes it up in Shaker Heights, and can guarantee that East St. Paul's
Payne Avenue lives up to its name. There's even a shout out to the Yukon
Club, a dive on Minneapolis' Lake Street that scares off all but the most
ambitious career alcoholics.
By the end, all this mindless partying leads to a sort of transcendence:
"If she says we partied, then I guess we partied, I remember we departed
from our bodies." That beats a hangover in my book.
Trans Am, Liberation (Thrill Jockey) buy
it
From the get-go, what made this D.C. instrumental trio
stand out was its taut sense of economy: Whether channeling Deep Purple
or Kraftwerk, they didn't let their monster grooves get weighed down by
a bunch of extraneous notes. Silly song titles like "Shadow Boogie"
and "Runners Standing Still" added to the Knight Rider/Miami
Vice vibe, but the sheer physicality of their music, especially live,
pushed the music beyond camp towards Steve Reich-style minimalism.
"Liberation" finds Trans
Am getting topical for the first time, wallowing in the fear and paranoia
at the heart of the Bush administration's war on terror. Like any Trans
Am record, it's a mixed bag, with plenty of half-baked musical ideas that
don't stand up to repeated listening. But just listen to the bad-ass sounds
of a helicoper taking off fade into the bad-ass sounds of Sebastian Thompson's
drumming in "Outmoder" and you're sold. You'd think John Poindexter
had Trans Am in mind when he named his creepy computer-spying program
"Total Information Awareness," and their song of the same name
delivers the goods with Orwellian computer voices and super-fat synth
bass. The War on Terror may be all evil and stuff, but evil never sounded
so good.
Dave Holland Quintet, live at the Libary of Congress
Writing about jazz can quickly descend into wine-tasting
notes: hints of oak and cherry in the bass player's supple timbre, while
the sparkling interplay between the saxophone and the piano is redolent
of vanilla with a lingering mineral finish reminiscent of a well-chiled
Muscadet.
That said, this was one incredible show. Dave Holland is a British bass
player who has been kicking around since the mid-1960s when he played
with Miles Davis, and he does a great job of walking the line between
far-out and right on. His five piece band (trombone, sax, vibes drums)
played crystalline, intricate pieces, mostly originals, that never fell
back into the tired head-solo-solo-head form that takes the air out of
so much post-bebop jazz. His lineup's been fairly steady since 1998, so
any one of his ECM records since then is probably a good bet. I've been
enjoying "Points of View," but that's just because I haven't
yet gotten my hands on "Extended Play: Live at Birdland," a
live set released last year.