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Best of 2009: Music
Mon, 12/28/2009 - 15:06 — Monkey Rothbard
Monkey Brad is afraid of the blog software, so I thought I'd hijack (most of) his Twitter thread and post it here, so everyone can join in:
Monkey_Brad: @ExJon @jlakely @benboychuk @robbl Hey, shouldn't we be debating the best music of the decade? (Yes, I know when it really ends, but c'mon.)
benboychuk: (adds @joeldermole) That's easy. The album of the decade is Fire by Electric Six. "Let's start a war..."
Monkey_Brad: God bless the dude who made those goofy hamster-critter videos with the Gay Bar soundtrack.
jlakely: I like The New P0rnographers ... But who listens to albums anymore?
benboychuk: Old guys like us, I assumed.
Okay, Monkeys and Monkey-watchers, lay it on us: What's the best album released between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009?
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Top albums by play count
Well, based on my iTunes Play Count, my top five albums of the last 10 years are:
I have to say: that sounds about right.
Method
I like the method, but I can't do that. One hard drive crash and one purchase of a new computer, and my iTunes rankings are all akimbo.
As with all of these lists you like to do, I have trouble out of the blocks. I need to be reminded of things before I can rank them or reject them. One candidate is more of a band than an album, and is slightly represented in your #3, and that's The White Stripes. I think they have been the most influential musical artist of the decade.
White Stripes
Brad sez:
Word. Jack White is Kurt Cobain with loads more talent and no discernible and debilitating drug problem. What he can create with sparse instrumentation is truly inspired.
Mrs. Zaius says: White Stripes, with just a guitar and drums ... it's Jack's energy and creativity that makes it not just work, but dig into you. Hard to describe. And if your fans have trouble describing your why art works, you are doing a lot of things right.
Right there with you on #5
That's an "album" that I actually listened to all the way through many, many times.
TMBG
Love the "No!" album. Great choice.
Honorable Mentions
Other discs that I really enjoyed, and in many cases listened to several times in my car CD player before I went "All iTunes" 6-7 years ago:
Not to mention pretty much everything released this decade by:
Goofy Hamster-Critters
I think this is what Brad was talking about...
It's impossible, of course, to come up with a single pick for album of the decade. I might have also picked a couple of White Stripes albums, or The Kaiser Chiefs, or "How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb," or my favorite of 2009, "Horehound" by the Dead Weather. But, maybe with the exception of the last one, those are awfully predicable, aren't they? So I think I'll stick with the Electric Six.
CLose
But I prefer the simpler viking kittens version: http://current.com/1s7eu4c
Best Album/Band
In no particular order
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious
The White Stripes - Elephant (hard to pick just one, but if I had to, it'd be the one with Hardest Button to Button on it.)
TMBG - No!
Radiohead - In Rainbows
In reviewing my iPod for this post, I've come to the conclusion that I don't listen to enough current music.
out of my league
Glad to show my age/inclinations here. Haven't heard much of the above, if any. TMBG "No!" I found fairly weak, except for "the house @ the top of a tree" which all my students invariably find goofily endearing. If I had to nominate TMBG, I would go with The Spine (feat. "Experimental Film," a video collaboration with the good brothers at Homestarrunner.com), or The Else.
So I'll nominate Michael Giacchino's scores for "The Incredibles" and "Star Trek" and leave it at that.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
The Spine vs. No!
I looked down the the TMBG discography for the decade, and I have to say, "No!" is the best. It is a throwback to the days of "Lincoln" and songs like "Cow Town." "Violin" is a surrealist classic. How do you get better than, "One quarter of George Washington's head"? Then you have songs like "Fibber Island," "Where Do they Make Balloons," and "The House at the Top of the Tree" which are ample evidence of the John's ability to construct finely crafted kid's music. "Lazyhead and Sleepybones" and "Robot Parade" take standard clichés and turn them on their head as only TMBG can. And if I could get my kids to memorize the title track, half my parenting work will be done. It would also prove a useful addition to college date-rape educational seminars.
The Spine is a good album too. I particularly like "Wearing a Raincoat" (the line "The undead are like a bunch of friends demanding constant attention" is the unofficial motto of my cleric in a D&D campaign), "Thunderbird," and "Au Contraire." And "Damn Good Times" always makes for a good piece at the live shows. "Stalk of Wheat" really belongs on one of the kid's albums though. I think I will have to make my own playlists of their kid's songs, because so much of their earlier music is really kid music.
You want "Lincoln"esque TMBG? Try this:
John Linnel's "State Songs." (c) 1999, I find it gloriously lateral.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
TMBG in The Oughts / Kid lists
When my girls were younger (they're "tweens" now) I combined "No!" with lengthy playlists of other kid-friendly TMBG songs so that we'd have something to listen to that they genuinely enjoyed but that didn't make me want to gnaw my own leg off. My oldest loved their cover of The Allman Brothers "Jessica" (and, eventually, the original) so much that she named our dog after it.
I enjoyed "The Spine" and "The Else" quite a bit, but I'm not sure anything can ever achieve the beginning-to-end perfection that "Flood" did almost 20 years ago. Apart from "No!" I think their greatest creative success in this decade has been their podcasts. The mix of new and old, popular and obscure makes each one a delight.
No Depression's Top 50
I rather thought the No Depression top 50 got it about right, but I like the alt country (cosmic country, torch and twang, whatever...) genre best.
I would make special mention for:
Son Volt
Avett Brothers
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
and finally,
Drive-by Truckers
I'll Toss Out...
...in no particular order:
M83 - "Before the Dawn Heals Us"
Super Furry Animals - "Rings Around the World"
Fiery Furnaces - "Blueberry Boat"
Mew - "Frengers"
The Polyphonic Spree - "Together We're Heavy"
My best of the decade
In no particular order…
• Gogol Bordello, Underdog World Strike. These guys put on one of the best live shows you’ll ever see…
• Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights. …unless you see Sharon Jones, a fiftysomething woman, jump and slink her way across a stage. Amy Winehouse can go to hell.
• Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I can’t remember why this record seemed so weird to the record companies. Maybe it’s not easily genre-classifiable, but it’s good music. And unintentionally resonant in the aftermath of 9/11.
• Sufjan Stevens, Illinois. Perfect. I’m not a Christian, but the song “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” comes as close as any sermon or piece of art ever has to making me reconsider.
• Deep Thinkers, Necks Move. (KC rappers, friends of friends, and a ton of fun to listen to.)
• Radiohead Kid A/Amnesiac. (I realize that this isn’t technically a double album, and that they were released some months apart. But conceptually and sonically they fit together. They even have one song – “Morning Bell” – in common.)
• White Stripes, Elephant. Much as I love Radiohead, Jack White is probably the rock n’ roll artist of the decade.
• The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The Lips toured on this album by opening for Beck on his Sea Change tour. Totally blew him off the stage, revealing him (too me, at least) as the poncey too-precious music curator/archivist he is.
• Neko Case, Blacklisted. She’s gone on to bigger venues and album sales since this disc, but the first time I saw Neko Case was in a small packed Kansas club when she had two backup musicians: An upright bass player and steel guitarist Jon Rauhouse, one of the best players ever. I’d never heard her music before that night – a friend dragged me along – but somehow we got pushed to the front where I could see the roof of her mouth as she reared back her head and belted “Deep Red Bells.” What is this album? Americana? Alt country? It sounds like something you’d find in a David Lynch film trying to convey the skewed “normalcy” of rural American life. And it’s amazing.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever To Tell. Short, punky and soulful. I can’t not listen to Karen O when she sings.
I know, I know. Embarrassingly caucasian. There ought to be some Outkast or Jay-Z or Lil Wayne on here, right? Probably. But this is the stuff I loved and returned to, again and again. It’s the stuff I like so much, in fact, that I’m almost afraid to play it too much — afraid that I’ll accidentally ruin a transcendent experience for myself if I bleed it out of the CD or iPod too quickly. Crazy, I know. But that’s what good music does to you.