and though our bones, they may break, and our souls separate, why the long face?

91.





ys
joanna newsom [drag city, 2006]

beneath the dimming autumn skies, amidst the soil and the weevils, the thrushes cry and the jonquils sigh, praising the toil of the beetles. see how difficult it is to write lyrics about nature without sounding like a gargantuan tool? someway, somehow Joanna Newsom makes it work, casually tossing off wispy metaphors about dangling ghosts of spiders and fabricating vivid visual poems with delicate, rustic imagery: peonies, sea brine, and the snapping teeth of hound dogs. there's her voice, a major divisive point for many people, which has more in common with the backwoods moonshine warblers on The Anthology of American Folk Music than any recognizable mainstream pop singer. the song structures are labyrinthine, with sudden breaks and unpredictable crescendos, while the bombastic orchestral arrangements - courtesy Van Dyke Parks - add an element of urgency and majesty. Ys is a difficult record to apprehend, but leave your preconceived notions at the door, you close-minded asshole, and succumb to a world where every detail is profound and beautiful and every gesture, every sideways glance and forced half-smile, has metaphysical significance. "emily," ostensibly about her sister, is a tragicomic tribute to youth and lost innocence, while "cosmia" strives to find redemption in the death of a friend. The feminist Aesop's fable "monkey & bear" displays Joanna's storytelling abilities, but the album's beating heart lies in the middle: sex, God, nature, youth, and destiny all collide in the winding, whimsical narratives of "sawdust & diamonds" and "only skin." although Joanna Newsom receives an inordinate amount of flak for her idiosyncrasies, few musicians would have the audacity to release a record so timelessly different and unspeakably brilliant.

joan and bob moment: "only skin" features backing vocals from Bill Callahan, who[m?] Joanna was dating at the time. isn't it every dude's dream to sing back-up on a song that was probably written about him? unrelated detail: Steve Albini recorded Joanna's vocals and harp. a far cry from the Jesus Lizard, eh eh eh?

doctor comes in, pops a boner, and jacks off in her cap

92.




goat
the jesus lizard [touch & go, 1991]

Diamond Dave once said, "if you put a Van Halen album in your record collection, it will melt all the rest of your records." well, if you put a Jesus Lizard album in your collection, not only will it melt all the other sniveling, whimpering records, it will pulverize, disembowel, and castrate them, and then cackle maniacally while urinating on their grave. Goat heatbutts into the party with a Gang of Four-on-amphetamines-and-testosterone rhythm section: sky-cracking drums and deep, rumbling hellfire bass. the caterwauling, flesh-eating guitar stings and screeches like a rabid wolverine. then comes David Yow: possessed witch doctor; lobotomized lunatic; schizophrenic, drunken nihilist; leering, slobbering bum. his vocals are buried in mix, heightening his intensity and fervor; he's an alien ready to burst through a stomach, or a premature burial victim desperately clawing at his coffin. from his debauched lyrical concerns - prison rape, drowning, stupid motherfuckers who don't know how to housesit - and unmistakable yowl, he's among the most captivating frontmen EVER. it helps that the songs are just undeniably fucking good. "mouth breather" could have been a "modern rock" crossover in the paws of a less abrasive, less confrontational, less weird group. "nub" edges close to post-punk agit-funk, while "karpis" adopts a hiccupping twang. this record doesn't "rock" - people think bottom-feeding, scum-eating shills like Poison and Nickelback "rock." no, this record screams, spits, swaggers, and sprays blood, establishing a new archetype for groups who want to be simultaneously smart and brain-splattering.

bombastic intro moment: this record was produced/engineered/whatever by Steve Albini, which means each instrument is loud, crisp, and bone-rattling. though his two bands - Big Black and Shellac - didn't make the cut, through his production work, he was involved with more albums on the list than anyone: five out of the one hundred, or, 1/20th of the list.

she wants another scene, she wants to be a human being

93.




chelsea girl
nico [verve records, 1967]

o Nico! demure melancholic, wanton femme fatale! warbling siren of ennui and hopelessness! with the defeatist longing of an Old World aristocrat, the deadpan sexuality of a courtesan, and the glazed-eyed fragility of a junkie, Christa Päffgen cultivated an impressive cult of personality. she gallivanted around an abandoned castle in La Dolce Vita, fraternized with the scenesters and freaks at the Factory, and briefly fronted the Velvet Underground. she didn't conform to any presubscribed roles for female musicians; she wasn't an earth mother, a self-righteous folkie, or a wide-eyed innocent teen temptress. if anything, she was an ur-goth, an artist plagued by darkness and haunted by her insecurities. Chelsea Girl, her debut as a solo artist, is Nico at her most vulnerable and sad. with her inimitable near-baritone, baroque orchestral accompaniment, and help from talented songwriters (mainly former bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale, and also a pre-California Jackson Browne), she inhabits emotions rarely explored in pop music: heartbreaking, immobilizing indecisiveness in the soaring "the fairest of the seasons," world-weary detachment in "these days," and seasonal affective despair in "winter song." the most explicitly experimental track - "it was a pleasure thing" - is a Celtic death ritual with Nico moaning ethereal high notes over a din of feedback and lacerating guitar. Dylan's "i'll keep it with mine" - one of the few tracks with no minor chords - serves as a rousing counterpoint to the dour misery mire that surrounds it. though Nico would later delve into more abstract territory, this record captures all the tragic, twisted beauty that defined one of pop's most compelling figures.

should i stay or should i go? moment: "the fairest of the seasons" was the last song i played on my farewell show at my alma mater's radio station. the song really epitomizes the ambivalence that comes when leaving somewhere or someone.

he's acting innocent and proud still you know what he's after, like a matador with his pork sword while we all die of laughter

94.





blood & chocolate
elvis costello and the attractions [columbia, 1986]

gotz 'dem ol' mean woman blues again, brother? sometimes when the fairer sex brings you down into a pit of despair and world-is-crashing helplessness, you gotta put down that never-ending bottle of Jameson and saunter into the studio with your best dudes and pulverize that anguish into something worthwhile. this is Declan Patrick at his most vitriolic, spewing venom and catharsis, ripping apart low-down, no-good rotten women while his uncharacteristically raw sounding, yet always reliable Attractions whip up a frenzy. the record is admittedly top-heavy, but what a fucking tremendous Side A, from the vindictive, organ-fueled anthem "i hope you're happy now" to the drunken 3 a.m. sad-sack ballad "home is anywhere you hang your head." but it's all foothills to the Mt. Everest of Costello's career: the caustic, languishing, incomparable "i want you." this one track, with its slow build-up and quietly intense vocals, captures all the contradicting feelings of anger, disgust, disillusionment, and futility, and the searing, unrelenting pain that comes with that horrible, carnal knowledge: yep, it happened, and yep, it was THAT asshole. and the most horrifying part: it ends not in murder or heartbreak like other paeans to adultery, but in begrudging and hopeless acceptance. perhaps because "i want you" raises the bar so exponentially high, what follows pales in comparison and is almost entirely forgettable, though "poor napoleon" has one hell of an addictive chorus. to me, an idiosyncratic artist with a long career is always the most compelling at his or her meanest and nastiest, and this record - at least the first half, anyway - exposes all the darkness stirring underneath that bespectacled veneer.

stop attacking my viscera! moment: "i want you" is the emotional companion piece to the Velvet Underground's "heroin," but instead of narcotics, costello's focal point is the nagging suspicion and the "stupid details" of the infidelity. it makes my skin crawl and my stomach retch. it's draining, it's demanding, and it's certainly something you can't "enjoy" on a daily basis. but what a fucking perfect piece of pop catharsis.

convoluted bitching about the pitchfork list

pitchfork is culminating its decade retrospective with a "top 200 albums" list. i'm going to preface this rant by declaring that i usually like pitchfork's lists. the top 100 albums lists for the 70s, 80s, and 90s all seemed definitive: canonical, yet varied; representative of all the trends, currents, and narratives of that particular decade. i even readily agreed with their recent "top 500 tracks of 2000-09" list. but, there is something that bothers me about this albums list. and it's not just because several of my favorite albums of this decade have either been ignored or ranked already. perhaps it's an indication of the scattershot, disjointed nature of musical consumption in the aughts, or, [collar pull] perhaps it's because this decade really hasn't produced as many truly essential albums.

take, for example, vampire weekend at #51. a lot of people rag on it because it was made by a bunch of over-privileged, ivy-leagued cultural appropriators. the backlash it received after the hype cycle ran its course was unprecedented; people who championed the blue cd-r demo at the end of 2007 were dismissing and removing themselves from the band by the time pitchfork slapped a "best new music" label on the proper album in january. i actually like the album. it's innocuous, it's catchy, and it definitely was in heavy rotation in my household during the early months of 2008. but. #51 of the decade?

my point of contention may be the seemingly arbitrary, chicken with its head cut off rankings. pitchfork's other album lists are coherent and the rankings easily justifiable. this go-round contains some puzzlingly nonsensical choices. how does a tedious, retrograde, simpering wet fart of an album like bon iver's for emma, forever ago rank above, say, boredoms' vision creation newsun, which, as the blurb states, predicts the majority of the more experimental trends in 00's indie rock. yeah, i know this may be an example of "why did album x, which i think blows ass, rank above album y, which i think is awesome." but that reveals the problem with this list and maybe the decade as a whole: lack of consensus.

this strives to be a canonical list. but you can't establish a canon without consensus.

for a point of comparison, look at their '70s list. with the exception of the wall, i really can't argue against any those choices. and the rankings make sense. of course another green world is 90 ranks better than before and after science. even if it doesn't reflect my personal taste, of course the logical canonical ranking for wire albums is: 154 < chairs missing < pink flag. but, with the aughties list, there are at least five or six albums that i fucking despise, ten or so that i think are boring and inoffensive, and about thirty that i think are "good, not great or 'top 100 of the decade' worthy." and i can't say, even objectively that mclusky do dallas or change are really 90 ranks "less good" than funeral and white blood cells, or whatever is going to be in the top ten.

also, the populist pandering is really obnoxious. the original review of andrew w.k.'s i get wet - from the dude who created the site, no less - gave the album a 0.6 out of 10. but then it winds up at #144 on the list. as the review says, it's a lowest common denominator sewage treatment plant of an album. why fucking celebrate it?

maybe my griping is based on entirely on tiresome "why is x higher than y" and "where is z?" reactions but, i think some more distance is necessary before critics can contextualize the decade and form a valid consensus.

ANYWAY, predictions for top twenty:

20. kill the moonlight - spoon
19. sound of silver - lcd soundsystem
18. late registration - kanye west
17. the moon & antarctica - modest mouse
16. supreme clientele - ghostface killah
15. turn on the bright lights - interpol
14. silent shout - the knife
13. agaetis byrjun - sigur ros
12. yankee hotel foxtrot - wilco
11. is this it? - the strokes
10. merriweather post pavillion - animal collective
9. illinoise - sufjan stevens
8. since i left you - the avalanches
7. funeral - arcade fire
6. white blood cells - the white stripes
5. stankonia - outkast
4. discovery - daft punk
3. the blueprint - jay-z
2. person pitch - panda bear [should be #1!!!]
1. kid a - radiohead

monkey men all in business suit, teachers and critics all dance the poot

95.





q: are we not men? a: we are devo!
devo [warner brothers, 1978]

forget "progress." forget slogging forward in perpetual motion through the sands and shards of time towards enlightenment and utopia. humanity as a whole is regressing, "devolving" into brain-dead troglodyte automatons, hepped up on hyper-consumer culture: bad TV, fast food, and a glut of unnecessary material possessions. Devo were harbingers of this harsh dysgenic reality. popular consciousness remembers them as the quirky flowerpotted "whip it" band, but, they were, in actuality, an aesthetically coherent collective of smart-ass rock deconstructionists from Akron, Ohio, a shithole hotbed of post-industrial despondency. this, their debut album, is an assemblage of herky-jerky rhythms, jagged guitar sounds, electronic blips and bleeps, and condescending, often hilarious, lyrical potshots at lazy, sex and self-obsessed American society. though this album is often labeled "new wave," is shares more musical similarities and artistic concerns with post-punk acts like Wire and PiL. the shrewd piss-take on "satisfaction" reduces the original's threatening, sexualized masculinity to robotic, sterile monotony while "come back jonee" twists the ultimate rock n' roll myth of "johnny b. goode" into a death ballad. Rolling Stone may have called them "fascists" - probably due to the unashamed insensitivity of "mongoloid" and the frenetic military call-and-resonse of "jocko homo" - but there is a sense of desperation, dread, and, dare i say it, moral concern buried underneath the irreverence. with all the bullshit that has contributed to the demise of American culture since 1978 - Reagan, the resurgence of fundamentalism, unchecked corporatism, reality television and the summer blockbuster, THE INTERNET - this album seems eerily prescient.

but have you seen my [parents'] records? moment: this album is definitely among the most surprising records in my parents' [i think my mom has assumed ownership] record collection, amidst all the Linda Ronstadt and Bachman-Turner-Overdrive. my mom actually put "satisfaction" and "jocko homo" on a roadtrip mixtape for my walkman cassette player when i was six or seven. no wonder i'm such a weird kid.

so it's more a question of will power and self-discipline, and circumstances

96.





untrue
burial [hyperdub, 2007]

robots are comforting because they aren't human. electronic vocal manipulation by use of the vocoder can be warm (Daft Punk), detached and distant (Kraftwerk), or hilarious (Frampton), but, ultimately, it's easy to accept because it bears little resemblance to the timbre of the actual human voice. Auto-Tune may straddle the uncanny, but the vocals on Untrue wander aimlessly through the Valley. these are unmistakably human voices [that's apparently Christina Aguilera providing the album's best vocal hook on "ghost hardware"], but they are tweaked, transformed and transgressed beyond recognition. planned obsolescence has finally caught up to the first few generations of the Music Bot and the models have devolved into sputtering, malfunctioning, distorting machines looping the same few lines of trite mamby-pamby love songs ad infinitum. the effect is disorienting and unsettling, yet entirely evocative. i don't know shit about dubstep, the scene from which this record came, so, to me, Untrue is defiantly singular and insular; nothing else sounds quite like it. the DNA of each track - preternatural vocals, sighing keyboards, steam-punk hiss and ambiance, the insomniac industrial clankity-clank of the beat - provides the solid foundation while the mutations - the rubbery, zigzag bass on "etched headphones," the panning, percolating keyboard on "shell of light," and the straight-up decadent electro of "raver" - add variety. this is a dark, eerie record, but it isn't all hopeless; Burial finds some redemption and beauty in the desolate, technologically-haywire embers of late capitalism.

what's in a name? moment: damn. talk about perfect track titles. they either evoke technological disillusionment and decay ("ghost hardware," "etched headphones"), post-industrial malaise ("in mcdonalds," "homeless"), or the ethereal, transcendent quality of the music itself ("archangel," "shell of light").