The top 5s

So, the decade draws to a close, and so must this project. Between work, social shit, a bit of laziness on my part and the fact that the reviews I started for the last 5 on each list wound up taking a lot more out of me than I'd anticipated, I couldn't get this done in my allotted time frame - note to self: more wiggle room for the next project like this I undertake. So in the spirit of at least finishing the list portion of this on time if not the reviews, here are the top 5 albums and top 5 singles of the decade, according to me, with short blurbs about them with longer, more detailed reviews to come in the new year. Thank you to everyone who followed this in some way and I hope you stick around for the next crazy thing I undertake here (I've got a few in mind, with looser time-goals of course) if not just to see me get the last 10 reviews over with. Since January is a slow month at work I anticipate having a lot more time to do this in the new decade.

So, without further ado...

THE TOP 5 ALBUMS OF THE 00'S

5. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (Jagjaguwar, 2005)

Will Sheff took his band from second tier alt country curiosities to the big time in my eyes with their third album, a song cycle based on the eponymous song written by Tim Hardin. By taking that minute and a half vignette and expanding the character's world out to a full album and equally essential follow up EP, Sheff demonstrated that he was one of the decade's foremost lyricists, storytellers and songwriters and his band showed that they could tackle all sorts of moods and tones while never getting too stagnant. It was the quintessential leap album, delivering on the promise of their under appreciated first two albums and then going beyond that with songs as gut-wrenching as "Black" (one of my picks for song of the decade) and "So Come Back I Am Waiting" and tying them all up in an uncomplicated but universal story of an outsider trying to clean up his life for a girl who loves him but seeks stability. It's an emotionally draining album in the right circumstances, and one I can't help but keep coming back to despite knowing that it will wreck me.

4. The Wrens - The Meadowlands (Absolutely Kosher, 2003)

Teenage angst lost its appeal to me for the most part once I stopped being a teenager, but mid-30s angst? Apparently that I can deal with in larger doses. It took New Jersey's favorite sons seven years to follow up their masterful 1996 album Secaucus, but the wait provided them with more than enough material to churn out the decade's defining statement about how much getting old sucks. The thing is that they did it with just as much, if not a little bit more energy than they brought to their first two albums while imbuing that energy with the sort of emotion and depth that only comes with age. They still cranked out some of the best bitter love songs of the decade - "Happy" and "Every Year You Wasted" are the kind of kiss offs that your little brother's favorite bands wish they could come up with - but but them alongside painful self examinations ("This Boy Is Exhausted") takes of perseverance ("Boys, You Won't") surreal vignettes ("Per Second Second") and "Everyone Choose Sides", which I could go on for days about the genius of but boils down to being the most driving, self-effacing bit of self-mythologizing to come out of this decade. If that's what a seven year break gives us I'm more than excited for the band's new album, tentatively scheduled for release next year.

3. The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2 (K, 2001)

Even if nothing on Phil Elvrum's main band's masterpiece matches the glorious opening troika of "I Want Wind to Blow", "The Glow Part 2" and "The Moon" that's no reason to dismiss it as a whole. Really, any album that starts off that strongly is bound to fall off no matter how good the rest of it is. And the rest of The Glow Pt. 2 is good, probably the lushest lo-fi album ever recorded and an album that was made for headphones if there ever was one. It's another album that I feel more than I listen to, letting the full 65 minute sprawl wash over and around me as opposed to focusing specifically on the material it contains, but the feel of the album is deeper with each new listen and each new environment (mild pot buzz, post-exam comedown, playing Super Mario Galaxy) that I have a hard time faulting it for the minor sin of leading off with the best 16 minutes of material the decade has to offer.

2. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye (Tzadik, 2003)

If Kayo Dot had a bit of a sense of humour I wouldn't be surprised to see someone credited with 'kitchen sink' in their ranks. There's so much going on at some points during Choirs of the Eye that the addition of a kitchen sink would seem downright logical. Basically, at their heart Kayo are a metal band, but instead of holding on to the basic metal format, the guys and gals throw in everything they can. Strings? Check, horns? Check, woodwinds? Check. The result is possibly the closest thing to an original sound that my generation has been able to hear. Sure other metal bands have gone a bit symphonic, but the fact that Kayo can throw all these auxiliary instruments in to the mix and not sound anywhere near pretentious or overblown is a testament to their skill. For instance, take 20 minute album centerpiece "The Manifold Curiosity." There's one part towards the end where every single thing that has come in to play during the song comes back, layered over top of everything else. And instead of sounding like a mess it's the best moment on an album full of exciting, original and just plain awesome moments. When a band can have close to a dozen members all playing at once and not sounding like a total mess, that takes talent. Kayo Dot have talent in spades, but more importantly they manage to be exciting. Any band can be made up of extremely talented players, but more often than not they seem to want to coast by on their talent while not doing anything really noteworthy. Kayo Dot have some X-factor that elevates them so high above their peers that it's not even funny.

1. Jackie-O Motherfucker - The Magick Fire Music (Ecstatic Peace!, 2000)

And yet the best album of the decade is the one I have the hardest time pinning down. I just know that if it were physically possible to swim in an album, this is the one I'd choose. It's not JOMF's most immediate (that would be the just-about-as-awesome Fig. 5) most expansive (Liberation) most straightforward (Flags of the Sacred Harp) or most all-encompassing (any of their live documents) but it's the one that I don't hesitate in describing as perfect. Each of the eight lengthy pieces takes the literal definiteion of post-rock (use of rock instruments for non-rock purposes) and grafts it onto the bands particularly freaky brand of folk music and Americana. Each individual piece is so endlessly fascinating, so perfectly constructed, so subtle that it's hard to listen to it and not get totally lost in its atmosphere, even when that atmosphere takes a turn for the paranoid on "2nd Avenue, 2 AM" or a turn towards an old-fashioned hoedown on closer "Black Squirrels". It's a fascinating document showcasing the most frighteningly consistent and consistently brilliant band of the decade at the very peak of their powers - not that they had far to go to get there - without necessarily drawing attention to that fact. Maybe its that subtlety that pushes it above the rest, the fact that it all seems so effortless and loose despite being so impeccably constructed. Whatever it is, it's the best thing to come out of this decade as far as I'm concerned and that's all I can say about it for now.


THE TOP 5 SINGLES OF THE 00's

5. Mirah "Cold Cold Water" (video)

I may be a bit of an Elvrum fanboy (see my #3 album and #2 single for more on that) but if any song sums up the reason he's one of my preferred producers of the deacds (non-mainstream category) it's the opener and lead off single from Mirah's Advisory Committee. Just listen to the myriad of slight changes in instrumentation that he pushes forth, never seeming content to repeat the same set of elements under any pair of lines, moving through an album's worth of arrangements in 5 minutes without having the results feel overly rushed or crowded. It's the sort of production that just works for me, intricate and varied yet not at the expense of teh song's flow. And Mirah's in fine form over top of it, laying out one of the best break up songs of the decade in her unmistakable child-like yet assured voice. Easily the highlight of her career and close to the highlight of Elvrum's if not for his main band.

4. Robyn "Be Mine" (video)

How often do songs about unrequited love come across as cheesy? Contrived? Melodramatic? Unnecessary? Often enough that every time I listen to "Be Mine!" it feels like a distinctive breath of fresh air. It's the rare 'he's just not that into me' song that doesn't come off as self-pitying or sound like an over reaction. Robyn's resigned, ultimately touching ode to losing the one she never even had hits all the right buttons, ones that get ignore so often in this type of song that it feels like the first time they were ever accessed. It's the antithesis of every single half-baked song about one-sided relationships ever written, and that's what gets the points. Not to mention that superb bridge section...

3. Radiohead "Pyramid Song" (video)

Simply the most beautiful piece of music Radiohead have ever composed. It may be the most bare bones of any of their singles, nothing but a simple yet complex sounding piano figure, Thom Yorke's most affecting vocal of their later period and in its final section Phil Selway's drumming, but it's also the most effective, doing more for me on a purely emotional level than any of the band's more involved numbers. Think of it as the 00s equivalent of "Street Spirit," but replacing its morbid, gothic tone with something that's almost exultant and angelic. Yorke describing a surreal yet beautiful dream version of heaven while the piano figure refuses to reveal its true beat even when Selway enters. It's a challenging song to figure out on a technical level but on an emotional level it couldn't be more simple: it's absolutely fucking beautiful.

2. The Microphones "The Moon" (video)

Phil Elvrum's best moment, hands down. After the opening hazy acoustic figure, when the song gets swept up in that rush of organ and more frantic than you'd expect drumming, it's one of the most unbelievably powerful moments in music, and that's before the unbelievalby sad yet strangely happy-sounding trumpets take the chorus to a new height. For 5 minutes anf 17 seconds Elvrum pretty much spells out exactly why he deserves a place on you mental list of the best producers of any kind of music, doing so much with the arrangement yet never drawing attention to just how much there is going on (as with the album it's from, headphones addso much to this one) between the panning acoustic riff, the warm yet despondant succession of organ chords and his own mumbled yet undeniably powerful vocals in the verses and the additional trumpet figure in the chorus...it's a masterpiece on a purely sonic level before you even consider looking at the lyrics. And then the song feels so much heavier, Elvrum recounting his return to the sites of some of his happiest memories and then declaring 'I went back and wished I hadn't' as if the memories of his loss are trumping the happiness he felt in those moments. It's the most powerful moment he's ever recorded in my estimation, and if not for what's next it would be a shoo in for single of the decade.

1. LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends" (video)

And yet I go with something completely predictable instead. Say anything you want, that this choice marks me for life as a hipster, a fucking dilletante, a Pitchfork-worshiping sheep, it boils down to a few simple facts. Of all the singles I heard this decade, this is the one I want played at my funeral. This is the one I want played at my wedding. This is the one I want played at last call in every bar I ever visit. This is the song I want to ring in the new decade with. This is the song I will think of first when this decade comes up in conversation years from now. This is the song that, though it may not define the decade in a strictly musical sense definitely defines it in my mind. It's the anthem for every person that just wants to find a connection in an increasingly disconnected world. It's the most concise statement of the importance of something as simple as friendship, especially as wee get older. It's such a great song that its creator was convinced he could never do it justice. It's so well arranged, produced and composed that it almost makes me sorry that I find most of what James Murphy did this decade to be somewhat lacking. It's the single of the fucking decade because I don't even need to hear more than the introductory piano figure to get a smile on my face. It's single of the decade because what the hell else could be?

#6. 'We had a promise made'

The Knife "Heartbeats"

The Knife might be the closest thing the decade had to a stealth canon band. They had no presence at all when their debut was released and even when "Heartbeats" came out it didn't capture too much attention outside certain pockets of the internet. Then everything seemed to hit at once; Jose Gonzales did a (shitty) cover of it which landed in a Sony commercial, Silent Shout became the lone surprising #1 album of the year the Pitchfork ever chose, vocalist Karen Dreijer-Andersson started lending her distinctive pipes to essential tracks by her peers (Royksopp's "What Else Is There?" and it's remix by Trentemøller specifically) before starting up a solo project, Fever Ray, that took The Knife's electronic malaise to new levels of darkness (and once again provided the lone surprising entry in this year's Pitchfork top 10). In about 3 years the band went from minor ripple to possibly being the defining electronic act of the last half of the decade, and the song that it occurred on the strength of was only ever appreciated in a delayed fashion. Sure, the quartet of singles from Silent Shout are all relatively great, particularly "We Share Our Mother's Health," but without the doors that "Heartbeats" opened for them, be it through the mild yet exultant praise it garnered initially or the commercial success of the Gonzalez version, I doubt there would be much to talk about for the Dreijer siblings at this point. Plus there's the fact that "Heartbeats" is an absolute stunner of a song on its own regardless of its importance in their ascent.

If you got into The Knife thanks to the Gonzales cover, and let me just reiterate that it's a bad cover of a great song, the tonal shift between the two versions probably shocked the hell out of you. On its surface The Knife's version sounds just like any number of other electro-pop singles of recent vintage, like Daft Punk minus the disco touchstones or going even further back the whole big beat movement without the rock touchstones, with its clusters of synths and obviously programmed drums. then Karen Dreijer-Andersson starts singing. I don't know what exactly it is about her voice that caused me to become totally entranced by it at first, maybe the duality of its icy Nordic tone with the genuine warmth of feeling she imbues each line with, but it was definitely one of the most distinctive voices I'd heard in this sort of music. Of course 'distinctive' doesn't necessarily mean 'good' - cf Shakira - but it does meant hat my attention was drawn in to something that I may have otherwise dismissed as inessential and kinda dated. The Knife hadn't quite hit upon the darker vein that made Silent Shout so mesmerizing even in the purely instrumental moments so the sound of the original version of "Heartbeats" doesn't really jibe with The Knife we now know and have our opinion of (a few recent live versions of it correct for that, and the results might be even better than the original but that's not what we're here to talk about today) but the one defining aspect of their sound that's preserved was enough to draw me in here.

And for once, it was the lyrics and their delivery that put into my own personal pantheon. Actually, looking at my top 6 singles here there's a huge swing towards songs whose lyrics were the deciding factor in their placement, although on some levels it makes sense. After all, great lyrics can elevate a mediocre song much more easily than crappy lyrics can sink a good one, and while I'd hesitate to call "Heartbeats" mediocre on a purely musical level - not transcendent, sure, but definitely not mediocre - the lyrics are damned great. Simple, unobscured by flowery prose, universal and delivered with just the right level of emotion by Dreijer. It's a straightforward tale of a one-night stand that flowers into a full blown obsession, love blooming out of lust for at least one of the involved parties despite the tacit agreement that it was only a one time thing. And Dreijer absolutely nails the emotional part of it, the confusion inherent to telling herself that just because they shared such an intimate moment it's not going to go any further. It's in the way she revisits key phrases, the contrast between 'we had a promise made/four hands and then away' and it's lyrical twin where the second line is replaced with a pregnant pause before the swooning declaration of 'we were in love', the way each time the chorus comes in she sounds more and more assured that at the last thing she needs is help from 'hands from above'. It's those thing that make the song so resonant, and those exact things that Gonzales seems ignorant of on his version.

I don't mean to shortchange the instrumental aspects here, as Olof Dreijer does lay out a great bed of synths to compliment his sister's vocals, but it's so rare that a song grabs me strictly based on the lyrics and their delivery that I feel the need to go into a bit more depth on that side of the coin for once. I will commend him on a few choice moments, the tom fill into the second chorus punctuating the 'we were in love' declaration is particularly excellent and the analog vibe to even the most obviously digital aspects of the song makes it feel much more organic than it could have and that's a good thing in my book, but really this is Karen's show. When their darker sound came into fruition it felt more like a partnership but in these early days Olof was clearly a bit of a second banana, not that that's a bad thing by any stretch. It could just be that he knew how much of the song's appeal would hinge on the vocals and took the backseat purposely, in which case: smart move.

#6. City of Caterpillar - City of Caterpillar (Level Plane, 2002)

For the longest time, the best thing I could find to describe City of Caterpillar to people unfamiliar with their music was to ask tem to imagine a hardcore band that signed to Constellation Records. We've already talked about a few bands that have applied the dynamics and structure of post rock onto screamo way back when I got around to Funeral Diner and Gospel, but as far as I'm concerned City of Caterpillar are the alpha and the omega of that type of synthesis. They weren't the first to do it of course, Envy had already been making motions in this direction back in the late 90s and Maximillian Colby were well into it before their bassist was killed (just listen to "New Jello" if you don't believe me) but City of Caterpillar were the first I heard, so they get the edge here. Is that fair? I'd say so, but only because even if they didn't necessarily do it first they certainly did it best. Better than the stunning prog-screamo of Gospel, better than the more emotional work of Funeral Diner, better than the more epic and huge sounding work Envy did starting with A Dead Sinking Story (which sits just outside the confines of this list), better than any number of their followers. In three years of activity City of Caterpillar all but perfected the grafting of second wave screamo's intensity onto post-rock's scope and dynamics, then disintegrated before they could fuck up their legacy. Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse.

The meeting point between the two genres is probably best explored on "Minute-Hour-Day-Month-Year- (The Faiths in My Chest)", a nine minute exercise in tension that gets released only t obe regained by the ending reprise of the initial crescendo. This is the crux of my hardcore-signed-to-Constellation description; take out the middle section and you've got what sounds like Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s long lost brother, keep it in, and keep in mind that the transitions to and from it feel like the most natural and logical progression the song could take, and you've got one of the most amazing compositions in either genre this decade. The quartet know exactly what they're doing here, guitarists Jeff Kane and Brandon Evans using each other as counterpoints while bassist Kevin Longendyke and drummer Ryan Parrish anchor their tapestry with some of the most solid rhythm work in any side of heavier music this decade, be it in the calmeer build up and tear down sections or the aggressive middle section. "And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven" might be even better, especially the final section where Longendyke takes the lead riff and he and Evans engage in some sublime call and response vocals, but it feels more like a few separate tracks linked together a bit clumsily, though all told each of those individual songs is class-A material. The last of the longer numbers isn't up to the level of those two, suffering from too much build up for not enough payoff until that last 25 seconds where the band almost dies off and then ROARS back with the fiecest playing on the album for that short burst. Honestly though, by the time the first three tracks of the album were done it had pretty well secured a spot in my top ten of the decade, especially thanks to "Faiths in My Chest"'s excellent sense of composition

The funny thing is that they only really do the synthesis of post-rock and screamo with any sort of scope three times, four if you count the stunning, never officially recorded but widely bootlegged "Driving Spain Up a Wall." That's not to say that the other numbers don't bear the hallmarks of both sides of the coin, but that they get their point across without needing to extend themselves beyond the five minute mark. Hell, "A Heart Filled Reaction to Disatisfaction" does enough in 2:35 to rank as one of the best songs of the whole screamo scene without taking much from post-rock at all.The tracks that expand themselves to upwards of eight minutes are more interesting to examine, of course, but the fact that the shorter numbers still manage to fit in all manner of hairpin turns and stylistic shifts, sometimes even more than their longer counterparts, and intense dynamics is stunning in and of itself. Just listen to "Wen Was the Last Time We Painted Over the Blood on the Wall?", where the band takes a damn good Pageninetynine-esque beginning section - not surprising given the overlapping memberships of the two bands - to its logical end point, but then reveals that it was just a prelude to one of the most unambiguously pretty interludes of the album, almost sounding like it would be right at home on Come on Die Young, and that that was just an excuse to build up to an absolutely mind-blowing climax where the quartet get in some of the fiercest playing of the album (at least until the sudden resurgence at the end of the very next track). Likewise, "Fucking Hero" goes from straightforward hardcore to acoustic guitar-aided (!) breakdown to intense climax without ever sounding awkward or forced. Really, it's just closer "Maybe They'll Gnaw Right Through" that doesn't have any sort of progression within it, but that one's so perfectly evocative and moody that I can't fault it for not moving beyond that one set of riffs. It's not so much the progression that got me into them as the passion, and al lthe songs, regardless of their complexity are brimming with that shit.

Video: "Driving Spain Up a Wall" (not on the album, I know, but DAMN and I repeat DAMN is it essential)
Song: "And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven"
Song: "Fucking Hero"

#7. 'Comin' fin by fin until the whole boat sinks'

The Drones "Shark Fin Blues"

Funny story; I completely forgot this was a single when I made the initial list. I was all set to have "The Minotaur" down around the high 30s when I took a look at hte band's discography and saw that their defining moment actually got the single release it deserved and I had completely missed it. Of course this was after I spent a long time during my joint Wait Long by the River/Havilah review pointing out exactly why this was the band's defining moment. Long story short, I blew all my material on it a month ago because I'm inobservant and didn't do enough research before finalizing the list.

But just to reiterate: Mother of fuck is the guitar playing on this song impossibly amazing. Gareth Liddiard and Dan Luscombe weave precisely yet loosely in and out of each other, throwing in as many grace notes, dive bombed harmonics and moments of actual riffery as they can in the 5 minutes the song runs - the single edit cuts out the arguably essential 'na-na-na' bridge but gives the song the impression of being nothing but guitar interplay for its whole length, not a bad trade-off all told - while Liddiard tells the story of a ship's crew being systematically picked off by merciless sharks after a wreck. It's the kind of rock song there were precious few of this decade, focusing not on repeated riffing but on a much looser form of playing that only serves to illuminate just how great The Drones' guitar duo is on a technical level and how well they can play off each other. Sure there are motifs that pop up repeatedly but the real fun of the song comes from what would be considered imperfections on a more polished cut. The lack of polish is The Drones' secret weapon, and here it finds the perfect middle ground between pre-2000 Modest Mouse, proto-punk and maritime folk music. The results are at times staggeringly brilliant, the moments where Luscombe and Liddiard let loose those never quite perfectly synchronized whammyed harmonics, the opening riff where Liddiard seems to be drunkenly stumbling into each note while never sounding like he means to play it any other way, and it makes it one of the best guitar songs of the decade.

All told the lyrics are secondary to the guitars, but Liddiard does spin a good yarn here. Not as good as the best moments on Havilah by any stretch, but an intimately observed tale of survival that never seems to put survival in the cards at all. It's not that there's no hope here, the protagonist seems to keep a rather gung-ho attitude towards fighting til he can't fight anymore, but just because there's hop doesn't mean that the narrative harbors any delusions about how the story ends. We cut out before the inevitable but the song doesn't leave us with any sort of good vibes, ending with the portent of the sharks 'coming fin by fun until the whole boat sinks' before the guitars careen through a seasick frenzy to send off the track. It always comes back to the guitars and that's perfectly OK by me.

#7. The 90 Day Men - To Everybody (Southern, 2002)

This is an album about the grooves. Each song finds an absolutely un-assailable groove and rides that mother fucker 'til the wheels fall off. The grooves are tight, anchored by some surprisingly restrained yet kinetic drumming and rubbery, Contortions-on-quaaludes bass lines, but they aren't grooves in the sense that they are danceable or remotely funky. Yet they are grooves nonetheless. The key to that definition for me is how much time it takes me to focus on the complexities of the songs themselves. "I've Got Designs on You" for instance never struck me as particularly intricate or complex, but it spends a long time in 18/8 that's at once devoid of syncopations yet undeniable off. It could be the drums playing in swing-time while the rest of the instruments are playing in straight 6/4. It could be the way the tandem guitar-piano motif seems to stumble between the first two notes of the pattern on each repetition. It could be the disconnect between both of those patterns and the vocal lines, or the hairpin shift between the caterwauling of bassist Rob Lowe (no, not that Rob Lowe) and the airy slacker croon of guitarist Brian Case. Whatever it is that does it "I've Got Designs on You" just sounds fundamentally off, and that's before it goes into polyrhythms after about 4 minutes. It's a stealthily complex composition is what I'm saying, and that's mostly because the fundamental off-ness of the piece is masked by the addictive groove that it all adds into.

It has everything to do with Andy Lansangan. When Lansangan joined the trio of Case, Lowe and drummer Cayce Key for 2000's transitional (It (Is) It) Critical Band his piano playing seemed at odds with the previously set and barely evolved 90 Day Men sound. When it meshed we got something like "Sort of Is a Country in Love" but for the most part it seemed like they hadn't figured out how to really work this new element into their palette. To call To Everybody a leap forward is an understatement. In only a couple of years the band went from slightly derivative math/noise rockers to the closest thing to 10cc that the modern indie rock scene had. The intricate arrangements, the progressive nature of their new compositions, the embrace of Lansangan's keys as the focal point as opposed to Lowe's bass or Case's jagged guitar bursts. This is straight up art-pop, and no song makes that clearer than "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life." Say what you will about Case's tendency to liberally use interjections of 'yeah' to make his lyrics fit the beat...actually ignore his lyrics for now and just listen to the flow of the piece itself. Once again, the odd time signature is masked by a tight as hell groove, Lansangan's in the driver's seat and the piece briskly rolls along for a scant 3 minutes powered by Key's subtly complex beat. It's skews closer to the 'pop' side of the equation than anything in the band's discography, yet sounds nothing like any kind of pop, art- or otherwise, that the decade has pushed out.

It doesn't stop there though. "St. Theresa in Ecstacy" is eight minutes of cascading keyboards and dreamy textures all held down by Lowe's bass line, possibly the most beautiful sustained piece on the album. "we Blame Chicago" plays like the band's version of "Underture", calling back to various passages from all the other tracks on the album while carrying through it's own undeniable melody, and "Alligator" plays a bit like "I've Got Designs on You" by way of "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life", grafting the formers loping/threatening pulse onto the latter's intimate pop-craft. In the context of the album these represent the weakest section, but isolate them and compare them to every other thing I've talked about so far and they stand proudly above them. Between the band's new found synchronicity - check out those seamless transitions during "We Blame Chicago" - and producer John Congleton's lush yet natural sound you've still got an incredibly strong 20 minute stretch of slightly progressive-minded art pop. It only feels weak because the remaining 20 minutes of To Everbody is so exceptionally strong that it would lay waste to pretty much any like-minded music made in the last 20 years.

And as good as the opening duo are, particularly "I've Got Designs on You," they can't hold a candle to the album's closer, the nealy nine-minute two part suite of "A National Car Crash." Once again, it's the perfect balancing act between the progressive and the pop, the former coming through in the structure and the latter in the melody. The vocals are shared here as well, but instead of caterwauling the way he did on the opener Lowe stays much more low key for his section giving it a nice understated quality- one that was sorely lacking in his contributions to their final release - and gives more emphasis to the truly enthralling and intricate instrumental that Lansangan's leading underneath him. Then the song shifts into Case's section where there's actual catharsis for once. Think about it: "Designs" was 7 minutes of tension that was barely alleviated by its jaunty piano conclusion, the remaining tracks were moody but never to the extremes of release or tension "Car Crash"'s second section is pure release, and it's absolutely glorious to feel after 35 minutes of stasis, as beautiful and fascinating as that stasis was. Even if Case's lyrics aren't high poetry, the feeling that he puts behind his Smiths-quoting breakup allegory (I think) makes the words themselves all but inessential to the proceedings. It stands as one of the best closing sections of any album this decade, only rivaled by the ending of my #1 album here.

It's rather unfortunate that the band couldn't match this with their (so far) final album. PAnda PArk wasn't bad, hell I had it as my #1 of 2004 back in 2004 and I wouldn't hesitate to have it i nthe top 10 there still, but outside of the two numbers that Case sings solo (the already discussed "Too Late or Too Dead" and "When Your Luck Runs Out") and the instrumental closer "Night Birds" it never reaches the heights of even the relatively weak midsection here. To Everybody was a revelation, showing the band progressing into realms that few bands of their lineage had charted previously (Cheer-Accident being the only one I can think of off the top of my head) and doing it while shedding all the awkwardness of their tentative steps in this direction. Panda Park was more of the same, but it didn't push things forward as much as it could have. Either that or having Rob Lowe sing more often obscured the fact that they were pushing things forward...anyway, I don't mean to dump on the band's seeming swan song too much since it is a great album, but it seems destined to stay in the shadow of of To Everybody for the forseeable future. Given the 5 years of inactivty since then - Lowe joined up with TV on the Radio and put out a couple of interesting solo albums under the Lichens moniker, Case became the guitarist for mildly notable post-punkers The Ponys and Lansangan returned to the never-heard-by-me Sterling with a few other Chicago veterans - it's likely to remain that way for quite a while but that's OK by me. At least we have To Everybody.

#8. 'If I wrote you a symphony'

Justin Timberlake ft. Timbaland and T.I. "My Love"

Bullet Points!

• If "Closer" was the classiest thing to hit modern R n B this decade I doubt this would be far behind. It's got more of a lushness to it but it's just as restrained and seemingly casual.
• I don't know how he did it, but the way Timbaland made those molasses-thick synth-orchestral chords sound like a revelation is fucking staggering.
• The intro is essential, if only for the transition from the last-minute-of-"Work It"-style bells and bleeps into that main synth figure.
• T.I.'s guest verse is the sort of thing every guest rapper should listen to before laying anything down. It's like Luda's verse from "Yeah!" only the song isn't completely deplorable otherwise.
• I know it's a tired point to make, but did anyone really see Timberlake's transformation from boyband refugee to actually somewhat mature pop star (and funny motherfucker to boot) coming? Dude actually made me reconsider my blanket dislike of *Nsync for a while there (it's still mostly intact though)
• 'They call me candle guy/simply 'cuz I am on fire' = win
  

#8. Clint Mansell - The Fountain (Nonesuch, 2006)

Kronos Quartet + Mogwai. One of my favorite movies of the decade (yeah, I'm one of those guys). The soundtrack stands on its own - I loved it before I even saw the movie - but now that it's inexorably tied to Aronofsky's visuals it comes off as even better. And if there's a more sweepingly epic bit of music than "Death Is the Road to Awe" that was released this decade I can't say I'v heard it.

#9. 'Though believing sees me cursed'

Johnny Boy "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve"

Phil Spector currently sits alone in a jail cell, and the only thing going through his mind is 'Why the hell didn't I record this fucking song?'

Sometimes brevity is the best way to go in these cases (translation: I couldn't decide if this was pastiche or tribute even though it works as both and sleep is sometimes more important than longwindedness)

#9. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (Constellation, 2000)

Storm

You think of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and you think about crescendos. I don't begrudge you for this, after all given what post-rock's come to signify in the years since GYBE!'s last missive it's all but necessary that you associate it with crescendos. That and the fact that there are crescendos here. Huge sweeping crescendos that lay waste to everything around them, crescendos that put most other post-rock bands to shame, crescendos that seem to have reached their peak and then go even further. But that's not all there is to GYBE!, and that's definitely not all there is to Lift yr Skinny Fists... If you came here for the crescendos you certainly won't be disappointed, but you'll find so much more as you dig through the quartet of suites that the collective put forth. You'll find potent statements about isolationism, you'll find incredibly subtle arrangements, you'll find a group of people that know how to put together compelling suites that rarely tread over the same ground twice. You may find Jesus if that's your bag. Whatever you find though, it won't stop at the crescendos, it will spiral outwards until you've found yourself completely immersed in the album.

That's how it starts though, with a pair of mighty crescendos. "Storm"'s first two movements milk their build ups for all their worth, the first time around with the addition of that drunken trumpet that sloppily yet precisely overlays the intense, military drumming and ringing guitars, the second with a piercing, "Amazing Grace" quoting guitar solo that devolves into an atonal shower of guitars. It shows you that the best moments aren't the crescendos themselves but what comes next. After that you're thrown into the meat of the album, the ominous recording of a recorded warning at a gas station advising its customers to avoid contact with anyone offering to help them and the solo piano coda with what sounds like wartime radio chatter in the background. The latter is especially chilling, the voices are barely discernable underneath the resonating piano on top of being obscured by static but they sound panicked, fearful. The words aren't important but the feeling is there. The former is just kind of depressing, but it's the album's theme delivered in a nice little package that gets lost during the comedown from the guitar frenzy of the previous section. The world has become place where people trying to make your life easier are to be feared, turned away. They are not employed by this establishment, they are only doing this for themselves, and that's frowned upon. I used to ignore the spoken bits on here but once they came into focus the album made sense.

Static

You could argue that large portions of this are closer to modern classical and experimental music than they are to post rock. There' a heavy reliance on field recordings, interpolations of recorded voice that are commented on by the music. The one at the heart of "Static" is an evangelical sermon, a heartfelt treatise on the powers of god and by extension faith that unwinds as a simple, echoing guitar figure plays in the background and the violins play out a mournful counterpoint over an ominous drone. "Storm" hinted at faith with the "Amazing Grace" crib, but "Static" puts it right out there, this disembodied voice hailing the power of the lord as the band lays the groundwork for their most devastating climax. "Storm" had alienation on its mind while "Static" edges closer to paranoia as the "World Police and Friendly Fire" section rears up, that ominous plucked upright bassline slowly giving way to an intense as hell crescendo that to this day never fails to send a sharp chill down my spine. That's before Efrim lets loose with that incredible solo that's half angular noise and half piercing emotion. To me, it's like the suite is saying 'You can put your faith in whatever you want, but there's still something out there that's gonna take you by surprise. You'll see it coming, you'll prepare for it but in the end it will still completely destroy you. Every. Single Time.' So we've got alienation and faith wrestling with each other, unease and catharsis working hand in hand to drive home a simple message: Something isn't right.

Sleep

'They don't sleep anymore on the beach' - Murray Ostril

We used to be trusting as a species. A young Murray Ostril could go to Coney Island and get lost without the fear of being taken. People could fall asleep on the beach and not worry about what happened after they closed their eyes. That doesn't happen anymore. It's heartbreaking to see how far we've fallen, this society where everything that's done is done with trepidation at best and fear at worst. Something isn't right, indeed, and it's us. We've lost faith because we're afraid of everything. They call the religious 'god-fearing' because even in their fervent worship they're afraid of what happens next. What if they aren't good enough to get in to heaven? What if there's a laundry list of minor sins they need to atone for? I hesitate to refer to this as a spiritual album, but it keeps pushing itself there with each new voice that comes into the melange. We, as a society need faith in each other. We've lost that, and we need it back.

That's what's going through my head before a couple of minutes of the second disc have gone by. I don't know who Murray Ostril is or where GYBE! found that sample of him talking about his youthful experiences, but whatever led to its inclusion here it's a fucking masterstroke. A simple story that comments so heavily on what's come before and what's to come as far as the emotions the album invokes. Before "Sleep" has even really begun it's drawn the whole thing into focus and that clarity reflects on what is possibly the finest 20 minutes that GYBE! have ever laid down. It may be the least adventurous piece on Lift Your Skinny Fists... but it's also the most concise and affecting. There are only two real movements so the slightly schizophrenic edge of the previous tracks is gone, but each of the two movements is in and of itself a perfectly constructed piece of 'normal' post-rock. "Monheim" is more affecting and emotional, but the way that "Broken Windows, Locks of Love Pt. III / 3rd Part" builds into that feverish climax makes it stand out as possibly the most hopeful moment on the disc. They're also the best examples of the group's ensemble playing, with each member being used to the best of their abilities and their interplay being amplified greatly over what was seen in the rest of the tracks.

Antennas to Heaven

I don't have much to say after that. Truth be told the final suite is a bit of a let down after the highs, both thematic and musical of its immediate predecessor, but it's still integral to the experience. It's the denouement if you will, the big come down. It serves its purpose but it doesn't have the depth of the previous three movements. It's a shame that one of the best recordings of the decade has to go out on a slightly disappointing note, but after the high that's sustained over the previous hour of material it's not like I can fault it for running out of steam.

#10. 'Clinging to his picture for dear life'

Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss "Whiskey Lullaby"

I keep returning to that rant I made against the insipid nature of modern country whenever another Nashville production rears up, but I don't think it's ever been more apt than here. It's not just that - spoiler - this is the highest ranking country single on the list but the fact that it's made by someone who rarely seems like anything more than another in the line of ever changing yet never changing pieces of the modern country machine. Brad Paisley is a frustrating artist for me; half the time I really like his work but the other half is horrible, too reliant on gimmicky songwriting and playing against what I see as Paisley's strengths. The results of that opposition within his catalog means that despite having made a few of my favorite singles of the decade he'll never come to mind as on artist I'd recommend above the others of his ilk. That's a shame really, because when he's on his game he can pull out some truly sublime work, trading in on his slightly weathered but still expressive voice, his skill as an instrumentalist and his genuine relatability to knock out a few truly stunning numbers.

"Whiskey Lullaby" wasn't the most successful of these, only peaking at #3 on the country charts and must missing the top 40 on the pop side, but it's the one that I keep coming back to any time that Paisley releases a dud like "Online" or "Ticks" to remind myself that there's a genuinely great artist in there somewhere. It doesn't matter that the song wasn't his or that his duet partner kind of mops the floor with him by virtue of being Allison Kruass, this stands as Paisley's most resonant performance. You could argue that songwriters Jon Randall and Bill Anderson had handed Paisley a guaranteed winner and all that he had to do was not fuck it up too royally and it'd still be massive, but it's not like he phoned it in here even though he could have. Just listen to his performance here compared to any of his other songs; outside of maybe "Mud on the Tires" I can't think of any other time that he hasn't seemed to be consciously performing when he sings. It could just be the stripped down production bleeding into the vocals, but he sounds more genuine here than anywhere else in his discography and that certianly gives the song a bit of a boost.

However, once Allison Krauss opens her mouth the song was all but guaranteed to win me over. It's one of those disarmingly pure voices that I can't get enough of, a haunting lilt that stood out even back in the mid 90s when women on country radio were allowed to have personalities. As much as Paisley brings his A-game to the first verse, her entrance manages to raise the rack to that next level. It's not that she gets better lines - though the one alteration to her chorus, changing the rather maudlin 'with a note that said "I'll love her 'til I die"' to teh much more subtle and haunting image of her 'clinging to his picture for dear life' does give her a bit of an edge there - or that the song changes at all to give her a showcase, but her mere presence and that voice, dear God that voice, just manage to take what was already shaping up to be a great song and turn it into a phenomenal one. Any other duet partner and the song's nowhere near this good, though I've had it bad for Krauss since hearing her turn The Foundations' "Baby Now That I've Found You" into the most hauntingly spare thing I'd heard on country radio back in 1995 so that's probably more my bias than anything. Still, I try to imagine anyone else, even my favorite country ladies tackling her part here and none of them have the right quality to sell the song the way Krauss does.

Then there's the song's production. Now, this part could have been "Whiskey Lullaby"'s downfall, but instead of going big and maudlin as would befit a song this tragic the decision to strip it down to little more than guitar and dobro outside of the chorus and that great final instrumental break makes the song so much more palatable to my ears. I wiosh I could say more than that but my brain is going into shutdown right now. Might finish this in the morning but don't count on it since I've got a post-rock watershed album and some shamelessly retro Spector warship to dissect.

#10. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (Definitive Jux, 2007)

Long day, so we go to bullet points here...

• The first eight tracks make up the strongest stretch of any hip hop album this decade, which is probably 90% of the reason I'm putting this so high up here.
• As with most of the other hip hop albums on the list it truly benefits from the cohesion of having a consistent producer.
  
• Part of me sees this as a concept album about a disillusioned soldier wandering around New York just before he's to return to duty, or at least an album-long comment on the downfall of NYC in general, but it's not quite gelling yet.
• The version of "The Overly Dramatic Truth" that El-P did at the Plug awards in 2007 is fucking phenomenal in a way that the album version just can't match.
• Funny how El-P gets the best out of The Mars Volta and Cat Power but collaborating with Trent Reznor, arguably someone more on his wavelength, leads to the album's only true weak spot.
• "The League of Extraordinary Nobodies" represents the best use of a laugh-track this decade.
• "Habeas Corpses" is gallows' humour perfected.
• Bleak, bleak production all over the album. It makes Fantastic Damage seem like a Disney movie at some points - and that's saying something.
• Yet for all its bleakness it's an oddly uplifting album. It oculd just be the lovely Cat Power-ed coda of "Poisenville Kids" but the album seems to end on a hopeful note.
• Funny how both Aesop Rock and El-P arguably had the best verses on eachother's 2007 offerings.
• While there's nothing as wrenching as "Stepfather Factory" here it really is hard to begrudge it that, especially during that phenomenal octet it begins with.

Might be doing this pretty often for these last few entries...fuckin' holidays.

#11. 'Remember, no cash returns - only credit towards future purchases'

El-P "Stepfather Factory"

Some things defy categorization. "Stepfather Factory" is hip hop in the sense that there are beats and rapping, but in practice it sounds a world away from even the most abstracted edges of the genre. In content and form it feels like something completely outside of any genre of music, but in practice it's identifiably hip hop. Maybe it's just thanks to its surroundings that it falls in there, but in isolation it feels wrong to reduce to a simple classification of hip hop or even the more nebulous experimental hip hop. In actuality it's half sales pitch half instructional manual all recited over the bleakest of El-P's uber-bleak post-apocalyptic soundscapes, a message of hope doomed to failure, possibly the most gut-wrenching, twist-the-knife moment in music this decade expanded to 4 and a half minutes. It's social commentary, it's hard to do justice to in words, but above everything else it's the kind of song that makes - nay, forces - you to sit up and pay attention. It's a totally singular achievement in music, regardless of genre, and easily my favorite hip hop single of the decade. Others may be more invigorating ("B.O.B.") lyrically dense ("Daylight") or smooth ("What You Know") but none of them make me sit up straight, get me totally enraptured, make me a bit sick to my stomach and then make me hit repeat so I can go through it all again.

Is it masochism? I mean, this song hurts like no other. It's not even that I have any personal abusive stepfather experiences to relate it to, just second hand ones from acquaintances. But it's always stepfathers. Always. Part of what makes "Stepfather Factory" work as well as it does is the fact that the story of the abusive stepfather is such an ingrained one in our society. El-P just took the concept and ran with it; if all stepfathers are abusive drunks what's saying they aren't factory made robots who run on booze? It sounds cheesy on paper, I'll be the first to admit that, but in practice it's mind blowing; alternately chilling and darkly humorous, perfectly constructed on every level and unique as fuck - even if that has no bearing on is overall quality it needs to be said. Like I stated, it's not so much a rap track as an advertisement, promising the moon while the fine print points it in the opposite direction. For every empty promise of improvement ('Jobs for the community!') there's a catch around the corner ('made from the most readily available materials and, uh, loosely inspected') and the latter just keep piling up until the song crashes to its end. I will say that no matter how many times I've heard it and despite knowing it's coming from the moment the track starts up, that final robotic repetition of 'Why are you making me hurt you? I love you...' never fails to send a chill down my spine and cause a knot in my stomach. That' the sort of thing we're dealing with here.

Of course the more times I've heard it the more other lines cause that little bit of unease - 'loosely inspected', 'the cheapest way to keep his battery running is with booze', 'trouble shooting' - and contrary to what I'd expect they only cause more discomfort the more I hear them, the more I know they're coming. El-P's words are so perfectly chosen here, perfectly mimicking the cadence and content that adds up to nothing in the end of any number of product launches, always following up the devastating lines with a sunnier image, putting emphasis in just the right places, especially during the 'trouble shooting' section, to downplay the issues at hand. It's a master's class in marketing more than it is a song, working both as satire and as a perfectly written sales pitch in its own right. It always leaves me in awe that he pulls it off so naturally, adjusting his rapid-fire delivery to flow smoothly within his little satire without ever sounding strained while doing so. I'll have a lot more to say about El-P in tomorrow's album entry, but if you want a sort of bluffer's guide to why I have so much respect for him as a lyricist this is the place to look.

That's not to shortchange his production work here though, as that's as great as any of his beats from this same time period if not more so. It's dark, dense and detailed, not hing new there from El-P, but it stands out by being so stark in addition to all that. Even in the context of Fantastic Damage, probably a contender for the darkest sounding hip hop record of the decade, it stood out as being especially unforgiving in its atmosphere, and that comes down to just how little there is to the beat. Ignoring the chorus, with its rapid-fire drum intro, soaring synth stabs and multi-tracked vocals, there's nothing to the track outside of a synth pattern that sound like a car failing to turn over recorded in slow motion and replayed at 16 rpm and a very light drum beat. That's all you've got, but it's such a distinctive sound, almost industrial - and in the Neubauten sense here, not the Reznor sense - in a way but also distinctly beat driven, and such a foreboding one that it's hard to ignore. I remember hearing it for the first time and jsut being transfixed by the sounds of the backing track, wondering how that sort of sound got made and more importantly, what it was doing in a hip hop track - this being before I had a frame of reference for El-P of course. It still baffles me a bit to be truthful, but I can't argue with the results.

#11. Xiu Xiu - Fabulous Muscles (5 Rue Christine, 2004)

There's a certain fascination I had with Xiu Xiu long before I realized just what a legitimately talented group they were. I'd heard both their 2002 debut Knife Play, an album where 'harrowing' seems far too cuddly a term to describe it's tone, and 2003's slightly less unapproachable A Promise and while I couldn't say that I enjoyed either - really, is 'enjoy' ever the sort of term you'd associate with Xiu Xiu? - I definitely saw something in them. I think back then I'd have argued that they were the logical flipside of the 80s revival, the only group of any sort of profile that was taking cues from the darker side of post-punk without cleaning it up and dressing it in a suit. They were visceral, angular, prone to bursts of noise, angry and most importantly without any pretense. Even if neither of their albums would have come within sniffing distance of my nascent yearly best of lists they did leave an indelible impression on me; I probably listened to at least A Promise far more often than a lot of albums that were 'better' than it just to try to get my bearings on it, trying to determine how the album could start out so undeniably awesome and then fade into useless noise so soon thereafter.

Then I got a copy of the stop gap Fag Patrol EP. Hearing the songs in a completely acoustic setting, devoid of the noisy destruction that the band went into on their albums, showed that A Promise at least was made up of more than its fair share of absolutely great songs that were then willfully obscured or destroyed by noise. I figured it out then and there: Xiu Xiu were a much more accessible band than anyone would ever guess because they took their work and destroyed it before it got into any listeners' hands. Fag Patrol was the key to getting on the band's wavelength I guess; I now knew that there was a solid base to the band's material that I just needed to listen closer to hear. Subsequent listens to A Promise raised it in my estimationdramatically, and while Knife Play didn't get quite that kind of boost - it's a much less mature album all told - I certainly appreciated it in a different way than I had before.

So in a way you could say that Fabulous Muscles was the first album of theirs that I heard properly right off the bat, and thus its position as my favorite Xiu Xiu album isn't surprising. What I didn't expect was just how well it would hold up next to the bulk of other music now that I knew what I was listening to. It could just be that FM was a decidedly large step up from their previous outings on every level, the noisy abstraction was pretty much gone and vocalist Jamie Stewart was clouding his vulnerability with fake bravado or obscuring it painful stabs of noise so the whole album felt that much more...intimate I guess. For once Stewart wasn't holding the listener at arms' length, and to be frank that just made the whole experience even more uncomfortable than being inundated with noise at regular intervals. Uncomfortable, but decidedly better.

Part of the trade off there is that instead of having to root through the noise to find out what Stewart was talking about it was right there in your face. And it was ugly...oh god was it ugly. I think "Nieces Pieces (Boat Knife Version)" was one of the few times that music had come close to making me physically ill at that point, not just for the lyrical content but for Stewart's vocal performance, so frank yet undeniably apologetic as he intoned 'I can't wait til you realize your mommy's heart is broken/I can't wait to watch you grow up around the people who broke it' It still causes a bit of a hard swallow on my part, and the uneasily light accompaniment of trombone, harmonium and guitar only adds to it's fundamental discomfort. It was such a devastating song, and the way it rubbed up against "Clowne Towne," the album's most upbeat moment, made it that much more of an uneasy listen. Similarly the title track could have been played for shock based on it's lyrics ('cremate me after you come on my lips') but once again the vocals made it seems almost touching in spite of that. There were still the confrontational, noisy numbers but they were spread out between these uncomfortably intimate numbers. It's not a coincidence that the most obvious of these, the Generation Kill-inspired "Support Our Troops OH! (Black Angels OH!)" is the one I'm most likely to skip as I go through the album - though Devendra Banhart's re-imagining of it as a doo wop number is strangely inspired.

Outside of the lyrics and those much rarer instances of noisy track destruction, there seems to be a decided move towards something approaching accessibility. "Clowne Towne" particularly borders on being lush, replete with strangely upbeat strings as Stewart jauntily - seriously, jauntily - croons out a litany of character-defamations related to a figure (himself?) who 'has become weak and alone and annoying/a true ridiculous dumb-ass'. It's disconcertingly upbeat, as is the previously dissected single "I Luv the Valley OH!", but even more disconcertingly there's nothing like the former's cathartic 'OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!' to remind you that this is in fact a Xiu Xiu song. Given the more overtly pop moves that Stewart has made on the band's subsequent releases it feels like "Clowne Towne" is the impetus for all the disappointing material he followed up this masterpiece with, yet the song itself is utterly captivating. Same goes for the much darker opener "Crank Heart" which does the grunge dynamics thing with a decidedly more sinister air than normal and winds up being unnervingly catchy.

Essentially, Fabulous Muscles is the summation of everything that Stewart and his cohorts could do right. It's the one album under the Xiu Xiu name that makes for a consistent back-to-front listen, the only one that doesn't seem to lose any of its magic for me despite 5 years of semi-constant listening and the one that seems to be the most personal. I'm sure all three of those qualities are interconnected somehow, but what it really boils down to is that Stewart seems to have come around with a 35 minute set of material that wouldn't have worked until he got over the need for destroying his own material. It's as if Fag Patrol's relative success showed that people were ready to handle his material in a less abstracted light and he took full advantage by letting loose some of his most horrifyingly personal material. It helped that it was also his best material, and still stands as such to this day.

Video: "Crank Heart"
Video: "I Luv the Valley OH!"
Video: "Clowne Towne"

Catching Up With...Xmas Edition

Once again, real life has encroached on reviewing time. I had a few days this week that I was gonna use to focus on writing but those got turned into days I work recently, so while I hate to do a catch-up post this close to the top of the list I do want to get back on schedule here, so placeholders it is.

Also I'll be more vigilant about at least getting an entry per day on each list put up even if a review may not appear for a bit yet...but anyway, to get us back on track"

Albums:

#14. Subtle A New White and For Hero : For Fool
#13. Explosions in the Sky Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever
#12. Jackie-O Motherfucker Fig. 5, Liberation, Change and Flags of the Sacred Harp

Singles:

#14. Mew "The Zookeeper's Boy"
#13. Mogwai "My Father, My King"
#12. OutKast "B.O.B."

#15. 'You'll never be alone again'

Justice vs. Simian "We Are Your Friends"

A good remix can take a mediocre song and make it better. A great remix can transform a horrible song into something that borders on listenable. The best remixes though, are the ones that completely alter their source song's meaning or tone through nothing more than a reshuffling of elements into a different context. The decade has had plenty of these remixes, from Alan Braxe and Fred Falke's reimagining of Kelis' "Bossy" as an upbeat club stomper to...um, Braxe and Falke's smoothed-edges revitalization of Death From Above 1979's "Black History Month" (really like those two apparently) to either Girl Talk album's recasting of every single song ever into an ADD-sufferer's wet dream of a party mix (though the latter lose their novelty after a few listens), and if you throw in mash ups there's a whole cottage industry based on taking parts of two or more songs and using them to accentuate the best parts of each constituent piece. However, I can't think of a better example of a remix completely turning its source material on its head than the work Justice did to Simian's 2001 single "Never Be Alone" in the form of "We Are Your Friends"

Before they became Simian Mobile Disco, Simian were pretty much a poor man's Phoenix to my ears, and while "Never Be Alone" wasn't a bad single per se, it was pretty faceless in the end. The verses had a decent build up and the chorus - incidentally the only part of the song that was conserved for "We Are Your Friends" - was pretty great, but the song as a while wasn't at all essential. So what do Justice, in their first high profile move on the electronic scene as far as I can tell, do? The isolate the chorus, pump up the driving rhythm, add some more danceable elements to the track and transform it into a four and a half minute ball of danceable paranoia. Seriously, the remix adds such a high degree of claustrophobia to the proceedings that what was once a chorus about the joys of community and friendship took on an undeniably menacing edge. The lyric's been reduced to a repeated assurance of 'We! Are! Your Friends!/You'll! Never Be Alone Again!' but the way the track's been rendered makes that sound like the worst possible outcome you could ask for. It's a testament to Justice's prowess here that they seemed to do so little to the source material yet made it do a complete tonal 180 into darkness.

So where does the darkness come from? As I said, Justice don't appear to do much to the source material but what they do do makes the remix work much better than it would have otherwise. The only real addition to the mix is that bass line, which is at once rubbery and yet menacing in its way (especially later in the song), otherwise Justice seem to take the elements of the "Never Be Alone" chorus and re-prioritize them. The slight keyboard chords that act as an underpinning of the original are pumped up to the front of the mix and rendered to sound much more minor and even slightly dissonant, the guitar is dropped out and the percussion is either rerecorded or overdubbed with some more club-friendly rhythms. Of course the main element is still Simon Lord's vocal, but that only appears to change thanks to the new environment its placed it. On its own there's not a single change in either its delivery or cadence, but the re-assembled bed that Justice lay it over take it from exalted communalism to unfriendly advance without so much as a hint of effort. That seems to be Justice's stock and trade: their most foreboding material sounds effortless while their happier stuff sounds strained, and in the end both are equally catchy. "We Are Your Friends" was probably the first indication that they were a group worth watching. They turned someone else's great chorus into what might as well be their first great song, and knowing where it all came from only manages to make it seem more impressive.

#15. Johnny Dowd - A Drunkard's Masterpiece (Munich, 2008)

Note: This review was originally published by MONDOmagazine last summer. I like it well enough that I can't imagine rewriting it without considerably short-selling the album so I'm just re-posting it here with a few adjustments. Anyway, you really should check out their site (even though my friend who got me published there isn't editing the music section anymore - HI AL!) and if anyone over there has a problem with me re-posting this I'll gladly just replace it with a link.

I’ve long believed that songs about love and lust — or whatever variation thereof you have in mind — are generally their best at their most direct. No matter how ugly the results when unveiled, they’re definitely more interesting to look at than when they’re disguised by flowery prose. Half of A Drunkard’s Masterpiece, Johnny Dowd’s ninth studio album, seems to condone this “rip the band-aid off” philosophy, while the other half relies on hyperbolic surrealism to get its point across. The seeming opposition of the two ideas would make the album an interesting curio even if Dowd and his band didn’t do such a fantastic job of blending the two ideas together, musically as well as lyrically. Throw that bit into the equation and you’ve got an “album of the year” contender.

Johnny Dowd’s been kicking around in various small-time bands since the late ’70s, but since his first solo outing (1998’s The Wrong Side of Memphis), he’s carved a rather unique sound. His band has been slowly working towards an odd variation of Captain Beefheart’s fucked-up blues-rock, using old-style organ tones to anchor the rhythm section. Dowd often goes for broke with fierce shredding that’s never too over-the-top, with a voice made of equal parts Tom Waits and Mark E. Smith. On recent albums he’s added Kim Sheerwood-Caso, who does the lion’s share of the vocal work. She’s a much more limited vocalist than Dowd, but her lack of affect manages to work well with the material she’s given.

A Drunkard’s Masterpiece, structured like a long story rather than multiple short vignettes, features Dowd and Sheerwood-Caso as opposing parties in a dysfunctional set of adulterous relations, slowly realizing that there’s no going back to whatever stability existed before. It’s a well-worn story - at various times I considered it to be the ideal starting material for a sequel to Francis Ford Copolla's One From the Heart - and the theme isn’t twisted in any innovative way here. There’s something, however, about how Dowd and his cohorts present it, shifting seamlessly between gothic moodiness to rollicking blues-rock, between the serious and the ridiculous, between all the perspectives a tale like this needs, without hitting you over the head with what exactly they’re doing.

It may look pretty nondescript on paper, but in practice the way the elements converge is remarkable. Take album highlight “Infidelity / Gargon vs. The Unicorn.” Dowd and Sheerwood-Caso trade increasingly implausible scenarios in which they’d forgive each other’s infidelity; the strong organ-based motif slowly cedes to Dowd’s increasingly erratic soloing as the scenarios get more demented and absurd. The way the music mirrors the intensity of the lyrics throughout the album is one of the nicer touches, especially here, where you’ve basically got both a thematic and sonic summation of the album in about seven minutes.

There’s the occasional tangent (like the cautionary tale “Easy Money”), but the whole thing manages to be relatively streamlined, despite its nearly 70-minute running time. It’s the big moments — the epic surreal argument of “Infidelity / Gargon vs. The Unicorn,” the lonely lament of “Adulteress,” and the moody place-setting of “Danger / The Blind Painter Paints Black” — that are perfectly executed, bringing the whole album up to a level of greatness. There are no wasted moments, either: even the five-minute exercise in booty worshipping “Caboose” is a lot of fun, out of left field as it is. To top it all off, Dowd’s lyrics are as good as they’ve ever been, leavening the bleak moments with a healthy dose of surreal comedy.

It’s an acquired taste, to be sure: if you’re averse to Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart, this probably isn’t gonna be your cup of tea. But, if you like your blues twisted and bitter, this could work its charms on you pretty easily.

#16. 'You just saw a feathery woman carry a blindfolded man through the trees'

The National "Mistaken for Strangers"

I associate the term 'grower' more with albums than with single tracks therein. It's not that individual songs can't make the same sort of journey that their parent albums do, just that songs, singles especially, are entities I associate more with immediateness than a slow burn. You could argue taht any sort of 'grower' album would have to be made up of songs that are just as easily described by that term, and you'd probably be right to some extent, but I see it as moreof a whole package deal than each individual piece growing on its own. There may be songs that are slow to reveal themselves, but it usually comes in the context of the album as opposed to in isolation. That said, if there was one single that pretty much puts lie to all that bullshit I was just spouting it's gotta be "Mistaken for Strangers."

I can't quite figure out how it snuck up on me, or even why tit would have had to, but I know during my initial passes through Boxer it definitely didn't strike me as a stand out the way that he likes of "Fake Empire" and "Racing Like a Pro" did. It was a good song for sure, but it wasn't something I'd have considered as one of the best on the album by any stretch. Yet with each subsequent listen it got closer to the top of the heap and eventually started to become sort of the watershed National song. It's such a perfect encapsulation of the band, both sonically and lyrically that I find it hard to believe that I took so long to fully warm up to it. I think it might have to so with my general dismissal of lyrics upon the first few listens, because as great as the song sounds most of its strength comes from Berringer's lyrics.

It also could have something to do with it mirroring certain fears that were becoming more and more prominent as I got closer to graduating. The whole song is about the uncertainty of adulthood, the way that young adults try on so many different identities that they end up unrecognizable to people who once cared for them ('mistaken for strangers by your own friends'), how idealists will eventually sell out their beliefs for security ('showered and blue-blazered/fill yourself with quarters,' 'make up something to believe in your heart of hearts so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves'), how as the exciting life you could lead before is obviated by responsibility ('you wouldn't want an angel watching over you/surprise, surprise they wouldn't want to watch') and most importantly how inevitable it all is. That sort of thing doesn't so much frighten me as it does just make me uneasy. The fact is that on some level that's already happened to me, I've already done my uninnocent, elegant fall into complacency before I've even had a chance to sell out my core beliefs. The lyrics started to speak to me more and more as I got closer to that point in my life where I knew I'd have to start making decisions that could lead me to a point where not even my friends would recognize me. It's prescient, and unsettling, but the way Berringer renders it in its lyrics is so perfectly evocative and beautiful in its way that it probably would have stuck with me even if it didn't strike that chord of truth.

But there's one image that stands out amidst the rest, and that's Berringer's assertion of 'You swear you just saw a feathery woman carry a blindfolded man through the trees.' On its own its a fascinating image, the sort of surrealist tableau that would be more at home in a less reality-focused song, but in context it takes on a much more unsettling meaning, to me at least. Here we have a song about the transition between boy and man, between college kid with no firm life goals and adult with nothing but responsibility, with that transition painted as the most boring and inevitable change you could imaging; the sort of thing that the angels who supposedly watch over you at all times can't be bothered to tune in for. Then this image comes along of a helpless person being carted into the unknown by a supernatural force. In other words, you've just witnessed this transition being made, and not in a peaceful way. and the reason that the angels don't want to watch isn't because it's boring necessarily, but because dragging people who aren't ready into the unknown is a necessary act of cruelty that they have to carry out. It's the most frightening lyric of the decade as far as I'm concerned (OK, maybe second to one I have yet to write up) mostly because it always seems so innocent and inconsequential until I thought about it too much and it kinda hit me just how beautiful yet haunting that simple image could be. Berringer gets a lot of acclaim for his lyrics, and it's all well deserved, but a lot of people don't get to the heart of why his lyrics work so well; it's that instead of the visceral he hedges towards the evocative, and the meanings you project onto them are always more vivid than whatever he could describe.

#16. Electric Masada - 50th Birthday Celebration Vol. 4 (Tzadik, 2004)

I'll give John Zorn credit: the man knows how to celebrate a birthday. Oh sure, you might think it can't get better than hanging out with friends and getting shitfaced, but compared to the manner in which Zorn chose to celebrate his 50th birthday that shit is tame. Instead of the usual festivities he book a month-long residence at New York's seminal Knitting Factory club and got together with a wide variety of ensembles to spend the month of his birthday reinventing his catalog in the best possible ways. Now, I haven't heard the rest of the releases that were spawned from this series, probably because the Electric Masada set was so overpoweringly great that i feared the rest of them would only suffer by comparison, but you can't deny that as far as concepts go that's one of the best kinds of celebration you could think up. Self-congratulatory? Sure, but when you're John Zorn you're allowed to be self-congratulatory.

Anyway, I think that outside of a cursory listen to Naked City and The Circle Maker, the Electric Masada set from that series was my first exposure to Zorn's catalogue, and as far as entry points for someone coming into this world from a very rock-centric world I couldn't have asked for a better one. Sure, Naked City was more "rock" in the proper sense, but a good half of the album was made up fo those trademark fragmented bursts of aggression that came from and went nowhere. I've come to appreciate tehm more with time, but when I first listened to 50th Birthday Celebration Vol. 4 it still only struck me as half a good album. This, on the other hand is 70 minutes of absolutely killer jazz-rock hybrids, complete with a 3-man percussion section, Marc Ribot on guitar (sounding nothing like he does on Tom Waits' albums) Trevor Dunn from Mr. Bungle on bass and Zorn letting loose as I'd never heard him do before and well integrated electronics and keyboards from Ikue Morie and Jamie Saft respectively. The performances are fierce, fiery and energetic, the interplay is without comparison, the songs are culled from Zorn's extensive Masada songbook so it's material all the players know well (half of the ensemble is part of the Bar Kokhba Sextet and drummer Joey Baron is part of the original Masada Quartet). The result is the most essential Zorn document I've heard even after a minor immersion in his other work (full immersion would require a lot more time since the dude's prolific enough for three of him).

In fact, I don't think I fully appreciated the quality of this until I familiarized myself with the other versions of these seven numbers. Now that I've listened through the original 10 Masada albums, plus Bar Kokhba, The Circle Maker and a few other Masada-based releases in Zorn's discography, and I can say without much hesitation that the performances of the song on here (and on the unit's subsequent outing At the Mountains of Madness) are my favorites. I can hear the originals shining through, but the intensity of these performances really puts them at the front of the line. "Idalah-Abal" never sounded this dark and menacing, "Tekufeh" never sounded as vital and energized, the closing trio of tracks here never sounded so earth-shatteringly monumental. You could argue that the performance of "Hadasha" is a bit meandering, and it is to some extent, but other than that the whole set is absolutely blistering, without much of a wasted moment in the whole works. And listening to the ridiculously talented percussion trio of Baron, Cyro Baptista and Kenny Wollensen at any point in the ordeal is worth the price of admission on its own.

#17. 'There's nothing quite like the blinding light'

Okkervil River "For Real"

This is a cop out, but discussing this out of context with its parent album is next to impossible. That combined with the fact that I'm falling behind again and really so want to get this out of the way before the new year means I'm just gonna say 'fuck it' and do a larger than normal review of Black Sheep Boy when it comes up for the albums list with an extended look at the greatness of "For Real".

#17. James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes (Tompkins Square, 2008)

Jack Rose died earlier this month. I hadn't thought much about him or his work since 2005's marvelous Kensington Blues came across my radar, but the news still hit me hard. I loved what I'd heard of him, be it from his time in seminal drone-folk collective Pelt or his first few solo outings, and his sudden death felt like a huge blow to the insurgent American Primitivism revival that was building up over the decade. The worst of it was that when I heard the news I realized that both Opium Music and Kensington Blues were albums that had slipped my mind completely when I was making this list, and the latter of which at least would have been a shoo-in for the top 50 if not higher. So even though I'll spend more time talking about one of the newer leading lights f the American Primitivism scene today, consider this post as much for Jack Rose as it is for James Blackshaw. It may not be the epitaph that Rose deserves, but it makes me feel a bit less shitty for having him slip my mind in the list-making process.

Blackshaw isn't as similar to Rose as I'd initially thought. Based on his marvelous 2007 breakthrough The Cloud of Unknowing I'd assumed he was another in the line of Fahey-worshippers that seemed to wait until this decade to really make their presence felt - Ben Chasny, Rose, Steffan Basho-Junghans, that Locust Records Wooden Guitar compilation from the early decade - albeit one that was played with more conviction and skill than I'd anticipated. If its follow up, 2008's Litany of Echoesmade anything clear it was that we weren't just talking about an exceptionally talented Fahey acolyte but an exceptionally talented composer and performer period. This is still American Primitive Guitar at its core, but there are elements of classical music, chamber music and in collaborator Fran Bury's violin and viola contributions a keen sense of interplay and harmonics. All that is taken to the next level by Blackshaw's guitar playing, using his 12-string acoustic guitar to its full potential and deriving a sort of harmonic richness that just wouldn't be possible on any othe instrument. It never ceases to amaze me that something like "Shroud" is the product of one man and one guitar; the way it's recorded and the way Blackshaw plays, making excellent use of the overtones and reverberations generated by the room to give the song a richness and depth that few others in his immediate group of peers can manage.

As great as "Shroud" and the other purely solo piece "Echo and Abyss" are, the real stunner here is the 12 and a half minute "Past Has Not Passed" which not only takes full advantage of Blackshaw's guitar but adds in Bury's violin as a counterpoint. The melding of the two instruments, Blackshaw letting out a flurry of absolutely beautiful, fluid arpeggios while Bury adds in both a melodic through line and some low viola drones to add to the harmonic texture of the piece. It's some of the most expressive playing the decade has to offer, and from such a bare-bones ensemble it sounds massive, with Bury's multi-tracked string drones reverberating endlessly through the room, Blackshaw's guitar doing likewise and Bury's overdubbed violin sounding out a sharp contrast to the lushness of the rest of the piece. Her other contributions are just as essential, but the confluence of everything on "Past Has Not Passed" gives her her best showcase.

As for the other pieces, the brief "Infinite Circle" is the most droney piece the album offers up, with Bury's viola once again providing the grounding while Blackshaw does a less intricate version of his usual thing, and he album's bookends are foreboding piano pieces reminiscent of Steve Reich at times. They may not be as rich and pretty as the guitar based pieces but they're a key part of what set Blackshaw apart from his peers. He's not just indulging in the American Primitive guitar but taking detours into the realms of classical composition and chamber music sonics to give the album a distinct feel. It would work fine as a straight guitar album with an hour of pieces like "Shroud" but the variety, however slight, it offers pushes it ahead of its obvious peers. That and the fact that it sounds so fucking immaculate, so dense with reverberating guitar notes that seem to hang in the air forever with their overtones mingling to create a rich harmonic bed. It kind of comes with the territory I suppose, but it's stunning nonetheless.

Video: "Past Has Not Passed (Live)"

#18. 'This origami dream is beautiful, but man those wings will never leave the ground'

Aesop Rock "Daylight"

I remember that around the time that The Marshall Mathers LP was released there was a widely circulated quote - I want to credit it to Charles Barkley but I can't confirm that right now - along the lines of 'you know the world's changed when the best golfer is black and the best rapper is white.' I know he was talking about it in terms of popularity above all else, but even back then when I was a huge fan of Eminem's the phrasing of the quote struck me as shortsighted. Eminem was doubtlessly talented, and if he stays away from cheesy crap like "We Made You" he still is to some extent, but I never thought of him as being the alpha dog as far as my 15 year old view of 'skills' went. Certainly Busta Rhymes was faster (though he was arguably past his prime by then), Ludacris was just as distinct and nimble (though arguably he hadn't fully arrived yet) and countless others were more passionate in their delivery. Eminem had them all beat in terms of visibility, as anyone who courts controversy as relentlessly as he did would be, but he always seemed like a B-student acting out to get people on his side.

Of course the irony of it is that the quote proved pretty much correct, except it was the wrong white rapper that Barkley(?) was referring to. I wasn't aware of Aesop Rock's existence at that point, my knowledge of non-mainstrem hip hop went no further than MC Paul Barman (of all people) and a single Dose One track from a CMJ New Music Monthly compilation, but had I heard "Daylight" when it was released I can't help but think that my little 15 year old brain would have gone into overload by the time 'merit crutch stolen wretched refuse of my teeming resonance/I promise temperance towards breed with a leaning conscience/Here the creed acts since responsive but my sports supports the wattage' came around. Even now I do mental 'whoa' every few lines, something I rarely do for any other hip hop tracks. Put simply, Aesop Rock might be the best rapper out there, at least in my mind he is. He's nimble, intelligent and dense without sacrificing flow, a rare combination that few pwople can match. Even if his voice is a bit of an acquired taste - OK, a lot of one - there's no denying the sheer level of skill behind his work.

And then there's his lyrics. I don't get into the whole lyrical analysis thing all that often, but sometimes a song just begs to be understood beyond being a series of words and images that sound good when put into place. If "Daylight" isn't one of those songs then I don't know what is, honestly. Throughout the verses Aesop throws out a lot of potent images detailing all manner of modern evils that keep the good at bay, how the American dream has been corrupted into a twisted facsimile of what it started out as and the various ways that modern life keeps pushing it further away, then in the chorus he expresses his regret at how little he can do to change things. I won't try to claim that that interpretation is gospel, but that's the gist I get from what could well be a stream of consciousness assemblage of words that sound particularly great together. And boy do they sound great. Even without a larger meaning behind them there are so many particularly noteworthy lines scattered throughout the song that don't need to fit into a larger framework to hit hard. To name a few...

• 'And I'm sleeping now/wow/yeah the settlers laugh/you wont be laughing when your covered wagons crash/you wont be laughing when the buzzards drag your brother's flags to rags/you wont be laughing with the front lawn's spangled with epitaphs (wont be laughing)'
• 'Shimmy across the centerfold enter dead time engulfed/divvy crumbs for the better souls/with seven deadly stains adhere the blame to crystal conscience/the results a low life counting on one had what he's accomplished'
• 'Life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman/you only call her a bitch 'cause she wouldn't let you get that pussy/maybe she didn't feel ya'll shared any similar interests/or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess'
• 'Metal captain, this cat is askin if I seen his little lost passion/told him, "yeah" but only as I pedaled past him'

Then there's the chorus itself, probably the simplest part of the song yet the most indicative of its true nature. Two lines punctuating each verse of dystopian imagery that get to the heart of the complaints he's raising. 'All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day/put the pieces back together my way' Everything that's wrong could be fixed if the constituent parts were put into different contexts, and if he could find the best way to place these things it would work out better. It's idealism personified, there's good in the worst aspects of society if you put the pieces that led to it into a different light. Such a powerful idea, but as the sample afterward reminds us, you can't stop for too long to analyze that type of thing, you just have to keep going.

For once I don't have much to say about the production, Blockhead's reliably great but he wisely takes a backseat to Aesop here. I do love the bass line that it's all based on, and the horns that pop up halfway through each verse wind up providing emphasis on some of the best lyrics, but otherwise it's just a good beat over which Aesop can completely tear it up without much distraction. And I'm fine with that for once. If the production had been phoned in Imight have to take issue but it seems more purposefully understated than lazy. Hell, even if it were phoned in and the lyrics stayed the same I doubt I could rank it much lower.