Dilettarded

Twenty-five things that kept my faith in music alive in 2008

Every year I write a year-end list of my favorite music for the Mobtown Shank, a semi-regular e-zine and blog by Benn Ray, proprietor of the invaluable Atomic Books in my old hometown of Baltimore.  This is 2008’s installment.

1.  MY BLOODY VALENTINE live at Roseland Ballroom
It always killed me that I came to my appreciation for My Bloody Valentine too late to have seen their legendary performances of the early 1990s, so I comforted myself by assuming that the breathless descriptions I’d always heard of those shows had been mythologized way out of proportion.  Then I finally got to see them on their brief reunion tour this year and realized that there’s no way you could ever overmythologize an MBV performance, because humankind has not yet invented concepts grandiose enough to describe what it’s like to experience one.  It was monumental.  It was overpowering.  Its elemental fury seemed powerful enough to annihilate the universe, just as its ethereal beauty threatened to shatter the hearts of everyone in its path.  It was unquestionably the most astonishing performance I have ever seen by any band, ever.

2.  SIGUR RÓS live at the Museum of Modern Art
When we (miraculously) scored tickets for this, I assumed it would be a typical early-evening art gallery show: short set, possibly acoustic, possibly not even the full band, cool in its way but nothing compared to a real show at a real venue.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  For two and a half hours, Sigur Rós AND their sister string quartet Amiina AND the eight-piece Icelandic marching band they brought along for the ride systematically blew the doors, windows, roof, and all four walls off the Museum of Modern Art in a performance that easily would have topped this list had My Bloody Valentine not come along a few months later and destroyed the whole world.

3.  EVER LOVIN’ MAN by THE DIRTBOMBS (from WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED)
Hands down THE rock anthem of the year.  From the classic Motor City fuzzbomb guitar riff to the just-this-side-of-sloppy dual bassline and backbeat to the shout-it-out-loud backup vocals to Mick Collins’s ragged, soulful howl (and endearingly ridiculous lyrics — best deployment of the word “schlemiel” in a rock song EVER), there is literally nothing not to love about this song.  The album on which it appears doesn’t quite live up to the standard it sets, but how could it?  And who’s gonna make it past this to any of the other tracks anyway?

4.  THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMON LIFE by FUCKED UP
This one brought out the punk police in force.  The question: Is a hardcore band still hardcore if they begin their record with a flute solo, populate it with six-minute epics and instrumental experiments, overdub 70 guitar tracks on some songs, and generally show some ambition to move the genre beyond the three-chord brutality that’s been its hallmark for far too long?  The answer:  Who gives a fuck?  Records this startlingly alive and original and exciting come along once in a decade if we’re lucky.  Enjoy the shock and awe of it now before the people who claim to hate it start copping its moves to watered-down and disappointing effect.

5.  BLOOD MOON by APES & ANDROIDS
I don’t know what kind of drugs got into the water supply in Brooklyn this year (see also MGMT), but suddenly all the kids out there started freaking out and hotwiring all sorts of influences together that pre-date them by decades and don’t seem like they should work together anyway — and making some of the freshest and most addictive new music I’ve heard in quite some time.  Apes & Androids fused pitch-perfect Queen-style harmonies to the kind of computer-funk that Prince hasn’t found his way back to since “Sign O’ The Times,” then sprinkled in some Ziggy Stardust space-rock theatricality, vocal effects that haven’t been heard since Styx revealed Mr. Roboto’s true identity, and guitar solos that would make Eddie Van Halen beam with pride.  It’s the record that Axl Rose tried to make, only they did it in 1/16th of the time and on something like 1/30,000th of the budget — and it’s easily 10,000 times as much fun.

6.  ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS live at the Apollo Theatre
Backed by a string orchestra playing dazzling new arrangements by the contemporary classical It-boy Nico Muhly, and decked out in an otherworldly ball gown that must have been a gift from cosmic fellow-traveler Björk, Antony enraptured the crowd with old songs and new and a cover of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love,” and made a compelling case for considering his luminous voice among those of Bessie, Billie, Ella, and all the rest that have echoed in the hallowed halls of the Apollo through the ages.

7.  NEW AMERYKAH, PART I (4th World War) by ERYKAH BADU
In a year rich with stellar hip hop records, Erykah Badu stood head-wrap and shoulders above the rest with an encylopedic tour of the past, present, and future of the form that dissected the political and the deeply personal with equally sharp eyes and tongue, and effortlessly blended reverence for tradition with a fearless, utterly idiosyncratic, and pathbreaking vision for what comes next.  It’s a masterpiece — or at least the first half of one.

8.  THIRD by PORTISHEAD
It would have been just fine with pretty much everybody had Portishead simply given us another installment of the bone-chilling trip-hop spy music that made them beloved in the first place.  Instead, they came back with an equally bone-chilling exploration of even darker, creepier, and more alien sonic territory in an act of subtle but thorough self-reinvention whose brilliance will continue to reveal itself and reward patient listeners for years upon years to come.

9.  LOS ANGELES by FLYING LOTUS
With this endlessly absorbing pastiche of found sounds and fucked-up beats, the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane advances the theory of musical evolution that suggests that the interstellar reaches first charted by the pioneers of avant-jazz are still being explored by a new generation of avant-hip hop visionaries.

10.  THE STAND-INS by OKKERVIL RIVER
I thought maybe I’d cursed Okkervil River by describing them to others, after “Black Sheep Boy” came out, as sounding like the Old 97s had the Old 97s not started to suck — because Okkervil River then turned right around and put out a record called “The Stage Names” that opened with two stellar tracks and then promptly started to suck in its own right.  (The album-closing descent into the Beach Boys’ execrable “Sloop John B,” in particular, must never be forgiven or forgotten.)  But it turns out, happily, that “The Stage Names” was just a misstep, and its companion piece, “The Stand-Ins” is a delight from one end to the other.  Leaving behind the deadly seriousness and overweening self-indulgence of its counterpart without losing the brightly literate lyrical turns and endless melodic hooks that made the band so appealing to begin with, “The Stand-Ins” floats on a shimmering sea of twangy pop songs that bear the influence of everything from the Smiths and Muscle Shoals soul to Ted Leo and the Cars — but never end up sounding like anything other than the strong and singular voice of a great band confident enough to risk the occasional missteps without which no one ever makes their way to even greater things.  (Their performance at Webster Hall in October was also one of the best straight-up rock shows of the year.)

11.  CENTRO-MATIC/SOUTH SAN GABRIEL
As if to finally shut up all the idle speculation about what, exactly, is the difference between Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel and why in the world the same group of musicians would bother recording under two different names, the two of them finally came together for an excellent split double-album (DUAL HAWKS) and even excellenter joint tour that made the distinction as clear as could be.  Centro-Matic is the one with the super-loud guitars and louder drums and sweet vocal harmonies sung in wispy and wavering voices and abstract lyrics about god-knows-what that still strike the same kind of deep emotional chord that Bob Pollard’s lyrics do at their best.  South San Gabriel is candlelit and quiet and a little scary sometimes, with sweet vocal harmonies sung in wispy and wavering voices and abstract lyrics about god-knows-what that still strike the same kind of deep emotional chord that…  um…  Okay, anyway, South San Gabriel puts violins in the quiet spaces that Centro-Matic fills with squalling feedback, and Centro-Matic does a shockingly touching cover of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” live, and the world’s a little better place for all of this, regardless of what name they put on it.

12.  NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
At the smug and self-congratulatory Plug Awards last March, Nick Cave and his weird-ass band of well-dressed bugmen shambled through a ramshackle set of fire-and-brimstone ass-kickers that made fellow performers St. Vincent, Dizzee Rascal, José González, and even host Patton Oswalt — all of whom had turned in solid sets — look like mewling little bitches.  Later in the year, they brought the apocalypse down upon the theater adjoining Madison Square Garden with such righteous passion and fury that they made such human inventions as God and Satan seem flimsy, laughable, and irrelevant.  In between, they put out a pretty decent record called “DIG!!! LAZARUS, DIG!!!”

13.  RISING DOWN by THE ROOTS
With an extraordinary league of guests along for the hell-ride, the Roots slammed the lid shut on the last days of the Bush era with an apoplectic and hyperarticulate broadside assault on American hypocrisy that, along with 2006’s brilliant “Game Theory,” should forever stand as a reminder of how awful things got over these last eight years and why we must never let it happen again.  It’s a bleak, exhausting listen, but its rage is intoxicating.

14.  THA CARTER III by LIL WAYNE
In a really weird way, Lil Wayne reminds me of Björk.  I think it’s the sense I get when listening to both that neither ever lost their childlike fascination with the endless elasticity of the human voice and its capacity to express everything from the id to the superego and from the scatological to the sublime if you can just manage to clear out all your filters and let it rip.  The results are sometimes magnificent and sometimes just embarrassing, but I think you’ve got to admire the fearlessness with which they lay it all out there.  Anyway, I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard from a million other people this year.  This record is one of those rare few that live up to — and occasionally even surpass — the hype.

15.  AT MOUNT ZOOMER by WOLF PARADE
I’m not sure whether it’s the scant length or the fact that it falls significantly short of the glory that was “Apologies to the Queen Mary” (which, admittedly, is an unfair standard to which to hold anyone), but this record mostly left me cold.  What secured it this spot on the list, however, are a couple of tracks by mad-genius Spencer Krug (including the towering album-closer, “Kissing the Beehive”) that, in addition to being terrific songs in and of themselves, seem to suggest that “Mount Zoomer” is just a stop along the way to something truly novel and grand.

16.  SATURDAYS=YOUTH by M83
The problem with wearing your influences as prominently on your sleeve as these French lovers of ’80s synth-pop and ’90s shoegaze do is that you run the risk that your listeners won’t be able to see through their nostalgia to whatever lies beneath.  In this case, however, what lies beneath are some pretty great songs in their own right, and M83’s choice of reference points is so impeccable (My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, Simple Minds, etc.) that their occasional lapses from homage into outright plagiarism are easy enough to forgive.

17.  ORACULAR SPECTACULAR by MGMT
Another fevered concoction of incongruous influences out of Brooklyn — this one shaking up a predictable marriage of late-’60s Stones and mid-’70s Bowie with nods to the Bee Gees and I think maybe even Abba — MGMT’s debut wasn’t so much a revelation as just a damned good time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys come back around in a year or two to reveal that they’ve made the transformation into rock and roll stars.

18.  MIDNIGHT BOOM by THE KILLS
The Kills are everything that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have always wanted to be, which is to say cheap, trashy, sexy, and cool in a totally superficial but nonetheless enthralling kind of way.  They aim low, they never miss, and it makes for a pretty good (if pretty vacant) soundtrack for similarly base pursuits.

19.  HOT N COLD by KATY PERRY/NO AIR by JORDIN SPARKS and CHRIS BROWN
These two ubiquitous, inescapable megahit singles stalked me everywhere I went, from cabs to bars to bodegas to the pizza shop down the block from my work, until I finally just gave in and admitted that I didn’t mind it so much when they happened to catch up with me.  “Hot N Cold” shamelessly cops the feel of the theme from “Flashdance” in its verses, builds its chorus on the DNA of Journey’s “Any Way You Want It,” and ties it all together with a bow on the ass of one of the pinup-girl get-ups that bitchy, pitch-corrected pop-tart Perry seems perpetually in danger of spilling out of.  There is nothing about any of this that isn’t calculated, but there’s also nothing about any of it that doesn’t work flawlessly.  “No Air,” for all its layers upon layers of AutoTuned, multitracked vocals, feels a little more like something recognizably human; the ache at the core of this variation (and improvement) on the theme of Toni Braxton’s “Breathe Again” is palpable and real.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS:
AL GREEN’s “Lay It Down” is as good as anything he put out in his 1970s heyday — and that’s saying a lot.

DAVID BYRNE and BRIAN ENO came up with one of the better album titles of the year (“Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”) and a collection of seemingly simple tunes that reveal greater depth and riches with every new listen.

ROBERT POLLARD put out several recordings, as usual, and one of them, “Robert Pollard Is Off To Business,” may be the best record of 2008 that nobody noticed.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
CONOR OBERST, for finally dropping his embarrassing alias and putting out the follow-up to “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning” that “Cassadaga” should have been but wasn’t.

NINE INCH NAILS, for lightening up a little and dropping a free record (“The Slip”) that was, ironically, the first NIN record that would have been worth paying for in years.

*** Representative samples of all of the above are available here: http://blip.fm/profile/krs666/playlist

Georgia, revisited

As I was saying before, about Georgians’ reason and sound judgment and careful application of the rule of law:

A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated. A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.

Sure, we can trust them with the death penalty.

georgia on my mind

So I read this morning that Georgia wants to reduce the number of juror votes needed to impose the death penalty.

Seems they’ve had a problem with pinko liberal agitators just a-SNEAKIN’ their way onto juries and throwing all sortsa monkey wrenches into the gears of justice:

“Unfortunately, you have people who say they’re willing to consider the death penalty, but when they get on a jury, it becomes clear that they’re actually death penalty opponents,” said Representative Barry A. Fleming, a Harlem Republican who twice sponsored efforts to revoke the unanimity requirement.

And even if it ain’t those danged soft-on-crime anti-death-penalty crusaders, it seems you can’t count on anyone not to go all weak in the knees when it comes time to actually strapping culprits to the table and fillin’ ‘em fulla justice juice:

“To get 12 people to decide to kill somebody is a difficult undertaking,” Mr. Bright said. “People are overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty when the Gallup poll calls. But when you ask them in a courtroom to actually impose the death penalty, a lot of people feel very uncomfortable.”

Funny how that works.

So I’m thinking we should probably just let them go ahead and get rid of that pesky unanimity requirement. I mean, Georgians are known for their reason and sound judgment. One Georgian’s vote should be as good as a bunch of ‘em. Why set the bar so high?

And while they’re at it, they might as well go ahead and put some limits on how aggressively public defenders represent their clients, too. After all, no reason to go wild and, as State Senator Preston W. Smith puts it, give an “O.J. Simpson-style defense, all on the taxpayers’ dime,” to just anyone with the audacity not to be able to afford an attorney.

With Georgia’s sterling record on civil rights, there’s plenty of reason to believe that anyone who winds up in court will get the same fair shake as anyone else.

Mystic Fire

I find myself thinking this morning about the band Mountain for some reason. They were just on tour again, and as I think about what their show must be like these days, all I can imagine is Leslie West introducing “Mississippi Queen” ten different ways (“You may remember this next song playing in the background in ‘Vanishing Point’ while that naked chick rode around on a motorcycle—one of our proudest moments, heh heh heh…”; “The Beastie Boys sampled this next one in one of their songs. Don’t that beat all? Heh heh heh…”; etc.) and playing it ten times in a row, stopping every now and then to eat a burrito out of a pint glass.