#92. 'Everything, everything will be alright'

Jimmy Eat World "The Middle"

You already know how much I hate hate hate the liberal misapplication of the term emo. Well, I hate the misapplication of any genre in any context, but there's something specific about the widespread misuse of emo to describe what is in essence power pop/rock that just irks me more than usual. I will admit that a part of it is that the bands that got the emo stamp this decade cast such a pall over the name that it scared away a good deal of people from delving into a rich, varied and overall damn good subgenre of music. And really, if you think emo means Fall Out Boy (pop-punk/pop-rock with arena rock hooks) or The Used (once again, pop-punk at its base but with a harsher edge) or Dashboard fucking Confessional (earnest, melodramatic singer-songwriter) or whatever other band that depressed teenagers more concerned with a fashion statements than actual, y'know, emotion are listening to while they write their LiveJournal entries, I don't entirely blame you for running screaming from anything that carries that tag. It sucks that you'll never get to hear stuff like Maximillian Colby or Hoover, but I can't blame you for being misled by the marketing team behind FOB and their whole scene.

So why did this happen? How is it that a largely underground genre became a part of the national lexicon? I'm laying the blame squarely at Jimmy Eat World's - and specifically at "The Middle"'s - doorstep. I can't argue with calling JEW an emo band, and I'm sure that everyone who has heard either Static Prevails or Clarity can agree with that label. It gets a bit sketchier on their third album though. There's still an undercurrent of emo to about half the tracks on Bleed American, but the rest were pretty much the precursor to all the faux-emo that started to dominate the poppier rock landscape a few years later, and "The Middle" along with its follow-up "Sweetness" fall decidedly into that half of the album. Now, "The Middle" becomes a mega hit, topping out at #5 in the US and being a fixture on music video channels thanks to a video that featured a lot of attractive twenty-somethings cavorting in their underwear. Since JEW are pretty widely regarded as an emo band this leads to "The Middle" being the first hit single from an emo band, and by a bit of odd conjecture it's the first emo hit.

And that's where the general misapplication starts. Now any song that sounds remotely like "The Middle," and that's to say any rock song with a huge pop chorus and a hint of malaise, is considered to be emo. Makes sense now, doesn't it? The minute that a song associated with a subgenre becomes the first to reach the levels of popularity that "The Middle" achieved it becomes the lazy touchstone for that genre. Any new band that sounds at all like it is lumped into the same genre, and that's usually all well and good. Except for the fact that in this case what happened was that the song being used as the touchstone was not part of the genre at all. As a result emo gets applied to ll manner of artists and songs that have nothing to do with the genre in any way shape or form. "Hey There Delilah"? Not emo. Fall Out Boy? Not emo. "The Middle"? Not emo, but that doesn't matter to anyone but me.

Do I bear any ill will towards "The Middle" for this? Fuck no. The issues don't arise from the song itself, which is a prime slice of power pop in the best traditions of the genre, but from the idiots that assumed it was emo and used it as the base for their understanding of what the genre entailed. "The Middle" still stands as one of those undeniably great songs, the kind that can act as middle ground for people of differing musical tastes. I speak from experience there as Bleed American was the first album that my whole family could agree on the greatness of, and considering that family consisted of a 14 year old metalhead son, a teenybopper daughter, and parents who were typical 40-somethings with multiple copies of Fleetwood Mac and Queen albums between them that wasn't exactly an easy trick to pull off. Even expanding out beyond that it seemed that no matter what type of music the person in question was a fan of they all had a soft spot for "The Middle" at least. It's an odd song to hold such a position, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. Between the strong hooks, the driving guitar pattern, the slightly more eventful than you'd expect guitar solo and the just plain good vibes that the song gave off it does offer something for pretty much everyone.

Back to the 'not emo' thing for a second: did anyone who called this emo realize that it was probably the most unabashedly happy single of the summer in '02? It was basically athree minute pep talk about how you, the listener, are just perfect the way you are and don't need to worry about the fact that other people don't realize that. Sappy as that reads on paper, and looking at that sentence I feel a distinct pain in my back teeth from the sugary tone of it, it never comes across as being too much on that side of the equation. It could be vocalist Jim Adkins' reassuring but not unhealthily chipper tone combined with the utter sincerity that comes from the words being directed as much at himself as anyone else. The song was apparently written as a sort of pick me up for the band after their initial flirtation with a major label fell through - and I bet Capitol was kicking themselves for that move after they heard this song - and the reflexive nature of the lyrics imbues them with a lot more feeling than they ought to have. It still comes across a little sappy, but it's forgivable when it feeds into moments as joyous the chorus - and the interplay between the vocal melody and that huge guitar chord every couple of bars absolutely makes the chorus doesn't it? - or the solo which comes across as a 'throw caution to the wind' moment than a calculated bit of showing off. It's an exercise in completely enjoying the moment all through the song, and it's hard to deny that sort of thing when it works.

Coming up tomorrow: Skateboarding love stories and up-and-comers.

#92. Portishead - Third (Island, 2008)

Logic dictates that albums made after a decade or so of absence are doomed to fail. Either the style of your genre has moved forward and you haven't or you're simply making a transparent cash grab from the die-hards. It may be slightly unfair to paint all reuniting artists with that brush, but in a lot of cases reunion albums just rub me the wrong way and tend to occupy the lower end of any reuniting band's pantheon of releases. Something odd happened in the late part of the decade though: plenty of reunions actually produced albums that could stand up as their creators' best or near-best work. First it was Dinosaur Jr.'s first album with Lou Barlow since 1988, which not only didn't suck but would probably rank as a top 3 Dino Jr. release for me (apparently this year's Farm is just as good too.) That seemed to indicate a sea change as far as reunions go, as after Beyond became a success beyond (ahem) anyone's expectations all manner of other long dormant artists crawled out with albums that stand among the best stuff they've done ever. The best of this wave is coming up in a couple of weeks, but as far as unexpected successes go it's hard to think of a better one than Portishead's Third.

I was apprehensive about the release of a new Portishead album a full 10 years since their live album and 11 since their last studio release. In the intervening time it became pretty clear to me that trip-hop as a genre really doesn't age well. I tried listening to Dummy a few months before the release of Third and found that it was horribly dated by this point, and while the band moved on from that particular style quite quickly on their self-titled album it still didn't quite set the stage for the new one as well as I'd thought. If they came back like it was still the 90s and their blend of haunting, soulful vocals and claustrophobic hip hop-lite beats was still relevant the album could wind up being little more than a joke, and I didn't want to see that happen to them. On the other hand, their self titled album got better as it aged so there was the potential that they'd move even further in that direction and make an album that felt like part of a logical progression for the band. Even then it was a risky proposition; what would have sounded amazing in 2000 or 2002 (when the initial release date for the third Portishead album was listed for the longest time) might not necessarily work in the context of modern music, or at least not as well as it could have with a bit more timeliness.

Well, needless to say Third went beyond either of those scenarios and did something entirely unprecedented: it moved the band's sound forward to exactly where it needed to be to work as both a logical progression from it's predecessors and an album released in 2008. Third basically strikes the perfect balance between the band's traditional elements - Beth Gibbons' otherworldly vocals carry the whole thing with guitarist Adrian Utley and DJ Geoff Barrow creating an impressively varied field of soundscapes to work her magic over - and a great deal of unexpected infulences (Silver Apples and United States of America) to make something that borders on being timeless. It doesn't sound of any particular time despite carrying the stamp of so many of them. Utley's guitar and Barrow's production call to mind everything from 80s industrial ("We Carry On" and especially "Machine Gun") and 70s art pop ("Small" reminds me ever so slightly of Eno's vocal albums/Roxy Music's pre-Avalon releases) to odd asides like the ukulele based interlude "Deep Water." It's such a multi faceted album that trying to do it justice would take far more space than I want to fill, but suffice it to say that if I re-visit this list a few years down the line I won't be surprised if this rises up quite a bit.

And now we get to the part of the show where I go gaga over Beth Gibbons' voice. Honestly, as much as I hate the cliche, she could be singing the goddamn phone book in Chinese and I'd still be staring at the stereo like it was Christina Hendricks. Her voice is a treasure in any form, and any album that takes advantage of it is worth your time. It's a bit of a shame that she never gets to break out that rich, throaty growl that defined the best moments of the first two albums, but really there's no moments here that feel like they need that sort of a performance. The haunted croon that permeates Third is gorgeous as ever though; every single song gives her an opportunity to send chills down my spine no matter the context. The plaintive 'will I follow?' on "The Rip"? Chills. The chorus of "We Carry On"? Chills even if you don't consider Utley's scrapey guitar tone. The end of "Threads" where multi-tracksed Gibbonses get into a round and give a passable though probably unintentional Dagmar Krause impression? Huge. Fucking. Chills. I'm biased as hell since Gibbons might be my favorite vocalist of all time from a pure technical standpoint, but I don't think any other Portishead album showcases her voice quite this well.

Coming up tomorrow: Two sides of the New York scene at the decade's end, and the biggest surprise of an album from 2009.

#93. 'Doesn't care, about to crash'

Vitalic "My Friend Dario"

Once again, I'm faced with a song I have no clue what to say about other than 'it's fucken awesome dudez.' I could go on about the wonders of Vitalic's production, the fact that every single element of the song is synthesized including the vocals, the wonderfully literal music video, but really all that needs to be said is that this is one of the best straight up techno singles of the decade. Vitalic hit on winner of an idea here, fusing a verse section that sounds like Ladytron circa Witching Hour to a chorus that sounds like your friend's garage band practicing without a singer, and created a monster of a dance song. It's hard to say more than that really, and I can't think of any reason to try, especially given that tomorrow's post here is gonna be huge and ranty. So just listen to the damn song, appreciate its awesomeness and come back tomorrow for something more substantial.

I may come back to this later if I get inspired though.

Coming up tomorrow: Ground zero for why everyone misapplies the term emo.

#93. Battles - Mirrored (Warp, 2007) / Don Caballero - American Don (Touch and Go, 2000)

Welcome to Ian Williams Day here at ABITF. If you don't know who that is, sit tight and you'll soon have some idea why he gets his own day here and all manner of other dudes don't. Not only was he part of the volatile dynamic behind the quintessential math rock group of the 90s, but on the whole he represents one of the most creative guitar players of the last 20 years. He never comes off as a virtuoso or anything, but even without that aspect the albums that feature him on guitar are generally incredible displays of what I call quasi-minimalist playing. What I mean is that he has his place in the overall composition, and that part is simultaneously just a part of the overall tapestry of sound and a very well thought out and stand out bit of guitar playing in its own right. He never goes out of his way to prove his mettle on the guitar, but he always manages to do it anyway with seemingly little effort.

For me, this style didn't fully come into play until Don Caballero's swan song American Don. Not only was it the only DC album where he wasn't part of a mind-bendingly awesome guitar interplay duo with Matt Banfield, it's also the album where the band got excessively pretty. Their previous three releases, all of which are good-to-great mind you, were much more in-your-face, loud, noisy and unrelentingly complex. American Don is still complex, but the other elements of the Don Cab sound have been stripped away. There's no distorted outbursts, no pounding drums, no extended codas of atonal noise while someone saws a cymbal in half - it's basically a math-rock album where the rock half of the equation is dialed down to a 2 or a 3 while the math component is left at a 10. Hell there are days that I consider it more of a jazz album than anything resembling rock; it has all the hallmarks of a classic piece of ensemble playing where every member is on top of their game and no one is extraneous. Don Cab hinted at this type of thing on the best parts of What Burns Never Returns but on American Don that's the primary style, and it results in the band's best album.

Aside from Williams' fluid playing you've got Damon Che, probably the best drummer in modern rock-adjacent music proving he's equally adept at more contemplative pieces as he is at the full-bore rock pieces he's primarily known for. He doesn't dial down the complexity of his playing at all, just applies it with less vigor than previously. He's still just as fluid as ever too, letting the songs mutate and evolve with the ease you'd expect from the guy who composed the three previous DC albums. New bassist Eric Em, a holdover from Williams even more subtle and textured Storm and Stress project fits into these surroundings quite well, and his chemistry with Williams is evident. At its heart though, American Don is Williams' album. I've heard that Che used to say that his drumming was the only necessary element of early Don Cab albums, and I can see that on some level for the first three, but Williams is easily the focus of this one. That much is made clear by the opening of "Fire Back About Your New Baby's Sex" where he lays down three concurrent guitar lines over a very understated Che beat. The song goes on to be much more of a full band piece, but Williams is still the major focal point of both the main riffs and the colour around the edges of the track. The core of the album is much more collaborative, relying less on Che's 'holy fuck' drumming than on how well it coalesces with his bandmates' equally fluid playing, but the real personality that the album exudes is more due to Williams' riffs that populate the margins of each track than Che's much less frequent outbursts. It's not surprising that just as Williams kind of asserted his presence as a worthy foil for Che that the band imploded, I gather that Che is a very strong personality andanytime that sort of person gets encroached on it never lasts too long.

After Don Cab disbanded, it took four years for Williams' next project to emerge, but given the material found on that initial trio of Battles EPs it was well worth the wait. I'm not gonna go into much talk about those, but they definitely laid the groundwork for what was to come on the band's full length debut Mirrored a full three years later. This was a different kind of ensemble for sure, heavily reliant on lock-step drum patterns and tight, tight interplay between the other members. There were more grooves, riffs that had time to stick before they changed and a heavy ration of keyboards. The funny thing was that if you look at the band members' pedigree Battles was the last thing you'd have expected them to be part of. Bassist Dave Konopka was an unknown quantity, and de facto leader Tyondai Braxton was likewise relatively new to recording but carried around the distinction of being the son of legendary free jazz saxophonist Anthony Braxton. Rounding out the quartet was former Helmet and Tomahawk drummer John Stanier, whose style as far as I knew was much more aggressive than he displayed on any Battles material. So you have a fluid guitarist best known for his work with a seminal math rock ensemble, an experimental keyboardist with ties to free jazz and a drummer responsible for stuff like "In the Meantime" joining together to make the music that robots fuck to. Unprecedented as that was the results remain unambiguously fascinating.

What unites those three personalities more than anything is their facility with complex material. The stuff on Mirrored doesn't immediately appear to have any appreciable complexity to it, but closer listens reveal a huge amount of subtle interplay between Braxton, Williams and Konopka. The key element of the interplay isn't necessarily their instruments though, but Braxton's treated within an inch of their life vocals. Take something like "Race: In" where Braxton's wordless vocalizing gets used as a counterpoint to his keyboard pattern, or "Ddiamondd"'s fascinating synthesis of vocals and guitar into one single entity. The strictly instrumental stuff is just as rich with interplay as well; I'd liken the dynamic of the band in most moments to them being encased in a cubic trampoline, bouncing around each other but never colliding. Each element is clean and sharp, fully defined enough to stand out amongst the relentless playing coming from all parties. The vocals add another layer to the party, but they aren't necessary to the album's overall aura (outside of one moment that we'll get to in the other half of this project much, much later on).

Probably the key difference between Don Cab and Battles is the idea of fluidity vs. rigidity. American Don is defined primarily by its malleability, the fact that the songs are easily shifted into all manner of different sounds by the whims of its players. Battles' material is rigid above all else, locked into a series of constant grooves over which the rest of the band engages in some of the most creative interplay of any act this decade. Don Cab were loose, cohesive to a fault but easily shifted into different realms while Battles were tight, never yielding to even the slightest pressure. They're two bands at opposite ends of the math-rock spectrum sonically as well, with Battles owing as much to classic krautrock's motorik relentlessness as Don Cab do to Sonic Youth's jammier moments fed through some sort of complexifying algorithm. I'd hesitate to say either band is better than the other since they're so far removed from each other, but the edge goes to American Don if only for the sense that you never quite now where it's gonna go next. There's exctiement to be found on Mirrored as well but nothing as rewarding as that.

Coming up tomorrow: The decade of the comeback that exceeded expectations, part 1.

#94. 'You lose'

Kanye West "Love Lockdown"

I try to separate Kanye West the public persona form Kanye West the artist as well as I can, but the influence the former has on my appreciation of the latter is undeniable. Let's just get it out of the way right now: Kanye West is basically an overgrown child prone to tantrums when he doesn't get his way and not self aware enough to really notice how lacking he is as a human being. In short, Jesus Christ is Kanye West an asshole. And I’m not talking about the ordinary gaping orifice that all of us possess. I mean, an all encompassing, all consuming, out of proportion to every facet of humanity CHASM!! Whose borne, if I may quote Shakespeare, no traveller has ever returned…you get the idea. But that's just Kanye the public persona we're talking about, and even though there was a lot of overlap with Kanye the performer I can ignore that facet of Westdom when discussing his music.

I think.

The thing is that without West's own hubris I don't think "Love Lockdown"'s parent album 808s and Heartbreak would have ever been made. Think about it; insurmountable amounts of praise for each of his first three albums fed his ego to its highest level and gave him the gall to abandon everything he'd laid out on those albums and put out an autotuned, album-long meditation on his most recent breakup. The album's as much a product of West's ego as his public persona is from where I stand, and it's (undeserved) critical savaging is as much a reaction to said ego as it was to the album's nose-thumbing at West's wheelhouse. I never understood any of the critical reactions that West received to be honest; his first three albums were all just as uneven as the next mainstream rap album yet were viewed as the peak of that genre while 808s was ripped apart despite being the most easily palatable West album in my opinion. It's not a masterpiece by any means, but in its best moments its the only time either on record or in public that West has seemed remotely human.

I'm saying this about an album where West's voice is treated by the loathsome auto-tune voice box at every turn, never quite as subtly as on "Love Lockdown" either, and one that was fueled by what are mostly selfish emotions, but lyrically the Kanye depicted in the songs is an actual person, not an amalgam of cliches and mildly clever wordplay. It's his most personal album, and not in an off-putting way either. The fact that vocally he sounds like a sad robot adds a bit of cognitive dissonance to the proceedings, but on "Love Lockdown" and a few of the other songs it's used more as a subtlety to the production than being an overpowering focal point which makes it that much more easy to endure. And most importantly of all, the songs themselves are miles above West's previous material as far as quality goes.

Though I'm starting to be staunchly pro-808s my appreciation of "Love Lockdown" is a much less recent development. Pretty much from the first time I heard it something about it made me stand up and take notice, something in the combination of the sparse beat, the lightly touched up vocal and the minimal piano accoutrements made for the single most compelling single of Kanye's career. It didn't matter that it sounded nothing like a Kanye West single, hell if anything that helped it in my eyes since outside of "Flashing Lights" and "All Falls Down" none of his previous singles did anything to keep me interested. Of course the differences weren't wholly sonic either, every aspect of the track was free of the usual Kanye trademarks and in their place was something approaching genuine emotion. It was a bit of a shock at first, but soon enough I just went with it and realized that it was just a genuinely good song, regardless of who it was by.

And god what a good song it is. The unadorned production lets West's lightly - and I can't stress enough that any more auto-tune application would ruin the track for me - modulated voice fill the song's every crevasse, and it's not as annoying as that sounds on paper. If you couldn't tell, I'm not a fan of the recent auto-tune crutch/fad that's encompassed every recent R 'n' B/Rap single, but the way West uses it here is probably as good as its ever gonna get to my ears. It's not the only thing you can focus on when West's singing, and there's enough other modifications to his voice at various points that the autotune just seems like another piece of the puzzle as opposed to being every piece. Take the third verse where West buries his vocal under a layer of light distortion, but the distortion effect actually doubles the vocal as opposed to remaining static, or the additional layer of robotic effect on 'system overload' in the first verse. There's plenty more to this that just Kanye and his autotune, and the level of detail in the construction of those moments is as much of a testament to Kanye's (oft overstated) abilities as a producer.

Speaking of the production, the instrumental track here is just as devoid of common West-isms as the vocal. No pitch-shifted soul samples, no extraneous bells and whistles, no jubiliance at all - like West's bizarro world counterpart took over for a track and it worked to such great effect that he stuck around for the whole album. The instrumental is based off three relatively simple components: the near subliminal bass line that runs through the whole track, the three chord piano motif that pops up halfway through each verse and the tribal drum pattern that underpins the chorus. Sure, the glorious minute long coda section adds some ethereal whistling to the mix, but for the better part of the track you've just got those three elements coming and going at fixed intervals. That doesn't stop them from being extremely powerful when they converge though. The drums' entry in the first chorus gives the track a new sense of motion, spicing up what was a pretty melancholy overall sound while not explicitly changing the mood any more than West's vocals will allow, and the coda section is one of the most effective instances of a purely instrumental section giving the track its necessary closure as opposed to relying on the vocals. West's always been a better presence behind the mixing board than in front of it, but given that his usual bag of tricks was getting a bit tired at this point it's nice to see that he can pull out one of his better beats without going straight to his wheelhouse.

Coming up tomorrow: Kraut-techno-metal? It happened in the 00s...

#94. Acoustic Ladyland - Skinny Grin (V2, 2006)

One thing I regret about this list is that I haven't really had the time to delve into the annals of jazz, specifically free-jazz, that was released this decade. Ever since I got myself acquainted with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Alexander von Schlippenbach and later period John Coltrane - along with more modern practitioners of that style like Charles Gayle, David Ware and Tim Berne - I've developped a fascination with the genre. I'm not able to say I'm on the level of a true aficionado, can't make heads or tails of the modality changes and finer technical points, but I think of myself as more of an appreciator of what the lack of limitations can do for the style, provided the ensemble works well together. There are a few more jazz albums to come, but I wouldn't be surprised if after I do a full immersion into the music of the decade I come out with a much higher number of jazz releases among the final ranks. I'm already kicking myself for not getting around to stuff like Schlippenbach's Swinging the Bim and Bobby Previte's The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró soon enough to give them proper consideration and I'm all but certain that if I look deeper I'll find even more like them.

As it stands though there are three or four jazz records of varying stripe on the list as it stands, and of those Skinny Grin, Acoustic Ladyland's third album, is probably the most traditional. Now, if you've heard any of Acoustic Ladyland's stuff, 'traditional' is probably not the first word that would come to mind, but unlike the other few jazz records that tip both the familiarity and quality requirements I've half-assedly set out for this project it's easily the one that resides closest to 'classic' jazz. The difference between this and most straight jazz is that the quartet bring a great deal of intensity that puts a good half of this material in the realms of punk that happens to feature a saxophone. The quartet - saxophonist/vocalist Pete Wareham, pianist Tom Cawley, bassist Tom Herbert and drummer Seb Roachford - play so well in the punkier millieu that it comes as a mild shock when the slow building, vaguely sinister groove of "Red Sky" comes along with its near traditional jazz structure and it becomes the album highlight. Similarly there's the Scott Walker produced "Salt Water" which builds to a frenzy with a measure of restraint that never appeared to be in the band's musical vocabulary a mere minute and a half ago when the title track tore up the surroundings. The band plays the angles between their jazz lineage and their punk intensity with a degree of skill that few outside the Zorn posse could manage.

Take opener "Road of Bones" for instance. It starts off as a contemplative piano solo piece, Cawley developing a nice, melodic theme for about a minute before the rhythm section absolutely crashes in with an absolutely huge counterpoint riff that sounds like it was taken from a particularly bright sounding sludge metal album. There's no transition from point A to point B, the piano theme even returns after the punishing rhythm bit with an added sax theme as if nothing happened, but when the two halves converge in the last few minutes its absolutely breathtaking. There are plenty of other moments that match that as the album progresses - the almost Truman's Water sounding interludes of "Paris," the off kilter circus punk melody of the chorus of "Cuts and Lies" - but none better illustrate how well the band fuse their two seemingly disparate sides to great effect. There's plenty of music that's referred to as jazz-punk, but few of those acts show as much aptitude with the jazz side of that equation than Acoustic Ladyland do.

Coming up tomorrow: The robots win, again.

#95. 'Something's inside me, unborn and unblessed'

PJ Harvey "When Under Ether"

Sparsity in music can go one of two equally interesting ways. There's the minimalism end of the spectrum where the space between notes is more important than the notes themselves, or there's just the idea that you don't need to dress a track up all that much to make it stand out. For the latter case just think about the acoustic version of any number of your favorite songs: robbed of the bells and whistles that define the "proper" version the song takes on a whole different context and makes for a more rewarding listen in a lot of cases by getting to the song beneath the song. PJ Harvey exploited this disparity as well as anyone with the release of 4-Track Demos after Rid of Me, which took the latter's songs out of the Albini-ized context and into more intimate environs to results that many (myself not included, though I appreciate 4 Track Demos nonetheless) feel suits them better. So when it came to pass that PJ Harvey was going to release an album that was as sparse as her previous outing, 2004's middling Uh Huh Her, was loud and busy my interest was considerably more piqued than if it were just noted as a new PJ Harvey album. Given its sparse nature I don't think anyone was under the illusion that White Chalk was gonna be a commercial revival for her, but choosing "When Under Ether" as the lead single took balls.

From a standpoint of properly representing its parent album it couldn't be more appropriate, as outside of some added keyboards on certain sections it's just PJ and her piano, but outside of that it's probably the least single-like track on the album. It's not just the subject matter, which I'll get to in a bit, but the whole composition of the song gives it the air of an album track. There's no real chorus or even a hooky instrumental passage to draw you in, just a simple repeated piano figure and a series of verses split up by Harvey drawing out the phrase 'human kindness' in a vaguely sinister manner - and that's as close to a chorus as you'll find. Nevertheless, the atmosphere the track creates is utterly intoxicating and that makes up for any perceived shortcomings of singlehood. The lone piano figure becomes rather hypnotic quite quickly, due mostly to the resonant production adding overtones upon overtones to the palette and imbuing every repetition of the figure with a whole world of other sounds.

Now figure in the subject matter, or at least the easiest interpretation. Harvey's pulled the 'not about any one thing card' on this one, but at first it seemed pretty clear to me that the song was written from the point of view of a girl undergoing an abortion. Between the connection the ether of the title to that particular procedure and lines like the 'unborn and unblessed' section I used in the title it seems pretty simple. Of course there's plenty of other things it could refer to, if there wasn't ambiguity to be parsed through I don't think it would appeal to me quite as much as it does, but I don't think it's too unfair to say that the vast majority of listeners will make a bee-line for the most literal of interpretations. Personally, I've come to see it as being about mental illness of some stripe, the use of drugs to curb an alternate personality or just a travelogue of a non-threatening acid trip. I can't say it's not about an abortion any more than I can say it's definitively about any of those things, and allowing it that sort of ambiguity makes the track come alive even more in my estimation. There's a purposeful vagueness to the lyrics, and that allows for such wide arrays of interpretation to those that choose to look beyond the obvious.

Combine that with the dreamlike atmosphere and each individual interpretation takes on even more depth. The key element of each interpretation is that there's a degree of haziness that comes out of them, and the atmosphere of the track enhances that aspect to a perfect degree. It's a great symbiosis between lyric and arrangement that elevates it over the other singles Harvey released this decade. This is a song you get lost in, and it accomplishes that goal in less than two and a half minutes no less.

Coming up tomorrow: The robots win out.

#95. The Dead Science - Frost Giant ( Absolutely Kosher, 2005)

Between the brittle, jagged bursts of guitar, the insistent pulse of the drumming and the resonant stand up bass underpinning there's not a lot on Frost Giant that qualifies as easy listening. It's a profoundly unsettling album, brimming with paranoia and fear, never lightening the mood one iota for the full 37 minutes of its run. Not a long time to maintain that sort of atmosphere, granted, but it's more the way that the trio go about it that makes this among the most unsettling of the decade. It's the tone of the guitar, the interplay between the bass and cello that occasionally pops by, the light touch to the drumming even at its most frantic. It's an album of subtlety above all else, which makes its mood work that much better. It's insidious as opposed to overpowering, ensuring that its overall unsettlingness always kind of sneaks up on you no matter how many times you hear the album, and its never a shock when it makes that knot in the pit of your stomach form.

One major element of this atmosphere that I didn't mention up there is Sam Mickens' voice, even though that's the most make-or-break element of the whole ordeal. It's one of the most singular voices in modern alternative music, a light, keening croon with ample strength and presence that never fails to come across as anything other than the song of a man who is utterly fucking terrified at all times. It's an odd mix of weakness and strength in perfect balance, the latter giving it the necessary presence to be the focal point of most songs and the former adding greatly to the unsettling feel that permeates the entire album. Take the album midpoint "The Future, Forever (Until You Die)," where Mickens' voice seems to be at its most forceful until the coda where it devolves into a mangled shriek as he repeats 'until you die' and the band rises up behind him. Or "In the Hospital" where his voice seems more broken than at any other point yet strong enough to soldier forward through talk about amputation and so forth. It's a hard trick to pull off, but Mickens maintains the balance for all nine tracks, nevr once tipping his hand too firmly into either side of the coin.

That would be pretty much wasted if he weren't backed by such an accomplished ensemble. It's not hard to ascertain that the three members at the core of The Dead Science all come fro ma jazz background, as the sense of interplay and looseness of the instrumental sections of the album are unmistakably jazz-inflected. The pure instrumental sections of "Blood Tuning" are exceptional examples of small ensemble playing, where the trio are augmented by a cello - used as a melodic counterpoint to upright bassist Jherek Bischoff's lovely, fluid playing - and seem to play as one organism, no member ever stepping out for a traditional solo for more than a few seconds until the rest of the band follows their lead and morphs to accommodate the changes. There's plenty of examples of this across the entire album, the songs are never wholly static even if they return to similar themes and motifs. And the whole ordeal is beautifully produced, crisp and well defined individual instruments mixed for maximum effectiveness. The unsettling aura may take a bit for some listeners to overcome, but it's a uniquely rewarding listen at the end of the day.

Coming up tomorrow: Jazz goes punk at odd intervals, amplifies the powers of both.

#96. 'I'm goin' to Wichita'

The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army"

I remember the moment that I realized what a cultural force The White Syripes were circa 2003. I was sitting in my French 12 class towards the end of the school year, right around the time of "Seven Nation Army"'s release, and one of the oddest things happened. We were writing a practice provincial exam or something of the sort when someone towards the back of the class started to hum it's bassline, and within a minute at least half the class had joined in, some just humming the bass line and others stomping out a reproduction of the drum beat on the floor. Our teacher had no earthly clue what was going on, but most of us kinda hated her anyway so it didn't matter that she was looking at us like we each possessed three heads, we kept it going for a few minutes until it just stopped and we went back to silence. I was a bit surreal in hindsight, but what was kind of remarkable was the breadth of people that took part in that momentary diversion. It was a mix of pretty much every branch of high school cliquery, all united for a few minutes by the most infectious bass line of the decade. The power of The Stripes was never more evident to me than in that moment.

There may be no better argument for the power of simplicity than The White Stripes. Strip away the hype, the mythos, the commercial saturation of Jack White in the years since the band's breakout and you're left with two people, one of whom isn't even all that adept at their instrument. That's not all that uncommon anymore, but one of the things that set the Stripes apart from other two person bands was how, in the early days at least, they never made the effort to sound like anything more than two people. Beginning with 2003' Elephant they may have made a move towards more rounded out sound, but their first three albums rarely went too far beyond the rudimentary drums-n-guitar base the band had at its disposal. The expansion their sound underwent on Elephant was both good and bad; it was good in that the songs could take on a bit more structure, layering Jack White's guitar to give the songs a proper expanse or allowing for the now present guitar solos to have an underlying rhythm riff, but the bad was that it also allowed for White's reach to exceed his grasp far more often than it would have otherwise. It's a deeply, deeply flawed album, but at the very least it kicks itself off in style.

Really, if the only thing this new, studio-abetted White Stripes had done that was remotely good was "Seven Nation Army" it would be enough to forgive a few Get Behind Me Satan's. It's not just a great song, it's a total force of nature. The infectiousness of the bass line aside, it could be the definitive Meg White drum performance. OK, so that's a backhanded compliment if there ever was one, but as unremarkable as her talents may be they're used to great effect here. Her skeletal drum pattern enhances the militaristic quality of the verses and when it gets a bit more involved during the choruses it's still well within her comfort level. Meanwhile, Jack White uses his expanded capabilities of arrangement to lay down an unprecedentedly great guitar solo over the slide guitar riff used to define the chorus. The key is that other than during the solo section, it never sounds like more than two people playing.The studio environment may rob it of the caustic tone of their previous outings, but the core simplicity of their duo format remains mostly intact here, avoiding the pitfalls of ambition that Elephant suffered from.

The simple nature also underpins the defiance of the lyrics i nan interesting way. When Jack White kicks the song off by promising 'I'm gonna fight 'em all/A seven nation army couldn't hold me back,' the bare bones underpinning of the bass line and Meg's unadorned kick drum pulse underlines the sort of 'me against the world' nature of the song. With such a desolate backing he sounds even more alone as he starts his battle, and until the song builds to the chorus it never betrays that lone fighter archetype. There's not really any sort of progression either, but that accentuates the sort of determination that the lyrics speak to. It may go through more involved passages but it always comes back to the desolation. The lonely bass line and pulsing drum beat are around every corner, a constant reminder that no matter the outcome of the battles it always boils down to the individual that got it started. There may be a political allegory at work there, but the basics of the metaphor the lyrics and arrangement weave together is enough subtext to give it that additional heft that any number of their better songs lack to some degree.

I keep coming back to that moment in French class every time I hear the song, not only for the surreal nature of it but for the sense of unity it brought to the group. But even then it started with one guy, and he illustrated the point of the song long before any of us were willing to hash it out.

Coming up tomorrow: Defiance can be gone about in a quiet manner too.

#96. Tom Herman - Wait For It (Return to Sender, 2004)

For a band I'd easily rank among my favorites of all time it sometimes amazes me how few proper Pere Ubu albums I truly enjoy. Outside of their first pair of releases in 1978 their career has been exceptionally uneven, where every peak is nowhere near the level of the previous one and usually indicates a further dip in quality thereafter. Yet they'd still be among the first artists to come to mind when anyone asked me who my all time favorites were, because not only are those first two albums truly exceptional documents of demented post-punk attitude, but because the band's extended family tree contains far more gems than it does duds. I love Dave Thomas' solo output from the 80s more than any Pere Ubu album released in that decade, and looking into the back catalogue of any of the newest additions tends to reveal some incredibly obscure additions to my post-punk collection, plenty of which are as good or better than what Pere Ubu was doing at the time. In short, they're one of my favorite bands because the talent in their ranks runs deep enough into other projects that the band proper's lack of consistency isn't as much of a bother as it should be.

Tom Herman was Ubu's initial guitarist, playing on the first three albums and briefly returning for 1998's Pennsylvania, but outside of that he didn't have much else to his credit. He played on Red Krayola's under-rated late 70s release Soldier Talk and formed Tripod Jimmie after his separation from Ubu but in the intervening years he all but disappeared. That's part of why 2004's Wait For It is such a joy of an album, the fact that despite that seeming inactivity since the 80s Herman's still got a lot of creative, unique ideas floating around in his head even if they were fairly far removed from those of his old band in any of their incarnations. Initially released in a limited run of 2,000 albums, though it was properly reissued in 2007 by Ubu's own Hearpen label, it may be the most under the radar thing I get to wax lyrical about in this project. Hell, if it weren't for the inclusion of "Your Street" on one of the mixes I received in a swap through RYM I don't think it would have ever come to my attention at all (the guy who made that mix later hooked me up with a burned copy, for which I am truly thankful, so props to you, Lars.) When it did though, it quickly placed itself among my favorite Ubu-related releases.

That's an odd distinction for an album as far removed from the overall Pere Ubu sound as this one is. Of the twelve tracks only two have any overt ties to Herman's old band sonically, and while there are elements of the Ubu sound scattered around the whole release it's never the primary influence. Most of the album, outside the two most Ubu-like moments - "I'm Drowning" and "Veil of Separation" - and the near blaxploitation funk badassery of "Your Street," is pretty firmly rooted in folk and blues above everything else. Sure there's jazzy saxophone squalls and fiery soloing from Herman, who plays everything on the album save for the some guitar and vocals on "Veil of Separation" and drums on a pair of tracks, that point more towards first generation post punk and garage rock than old bluesmen, but there is a heavy lean towards the blues, especially on the latter half of the album. The whole stretch from "Slim" through to "It's Not the Way It Seems" uses old school blues as its jumping off point, with each track using that as a springboard into different sounds, from the paranoid, quasi-indutrial production on "Slim" to the almost straight up country rock of "I Do Now." Herman even closes things out with a pretty faithful cover of the old blues standard "Jesus," not the best cut on the album but a powerful ender nonetheless. And don't get me started on "Red Haired Girl"'s dueling guitar licks that combine to enhance the creepiness of what sounds like an old school murder song. It's not a strict blues album by any means, but it's got more of that in its DNA than it does post punk.

Of course it's the most atypical songs in the set that stand out as the particular highlights. Having "Your Street" act as my introduction to the album was a bit misleading, but that doesn't change the fact that it's as close as you'll find to a distillation of genuine badassery in song form. It's impossible to listen to the song without developing a large degree of swagger in your step, mostly doe to the huge walking bass line that anchors the majority of the track. It's also a great example of Herman's arrangement skills as he makes excellent use of multiple sax tracks to propel the track at key points alongside some rather understated guitar shards that pierce the track in its intro. "I'm Drowning" sound like it could easily be folded into any recent Pere Ubu album if Dave Thomas were singing it, and "Veil of Separation" features guest vocalist Lenny Bove doing what might well be a Dave Thomas impression over some hazy guitar squalls. Penultimate track "When I'm Gone" kicks off with a borderline metal assault of programmed(?) drums and the most distorted guitar tone Herman may have ever utilized before settling in to a heavy blues lick and more human sounding drumming. It's not a 'something for everyone' level of diversity but Herman's sonic palette here is far beyond what I'd have anticipated from any Ubu member.

Coming up tomorrow: Paranoia can be fun, at least to listen to.

#97. 'I even fell for that stupid love song'

Kelly Clarkson "Since U Been Gone"

I've tried to avoid raising the specter of Pitchfork's best songs of the decade list when I write these things. Any time I see an instance of cross over between their list and this one I get tempted to go into my rant mode, which is more fun to write in, no doubt there, but isn't exactly productive to the actual reviews. But honestly, given that most of my problems were with the reaction to the list rather than the list itself, and my problem with most of those reactions was the utter contempt they had for well crafted pop songs winding up in the upper section of the list, I figure there's no better place to get it off my chest than right here. "Since U Been Gone" placed at #21 out of 500 on that list if you weren't aware, and the minute that section was published it seemed like every second person was just waiting to throw their disgust at that particular turn of events onto whatever message board they frequented. Because how dare an 'indie' publication even consider this pop shit to be among the best songs released this decade? How dare it rank at #21, ahead of so may obviously better (read: not popular) songs? How fucking DARE they imply that it had anything to with indie in any way shape or form? HOW FUCKING DARE THEY?

If you were one of those people, fuck off. Right now, just fuck right off. It's your right to have that opinion but I'm gonna insist that you fuck off anyway. Because obviously you missed the part of the decade where every 'indie' webzine was giving the critical equivalent of fellatio to "Since U Been Gone" from the moment it was released. Stylus called it the best single of 2005 and Pitchfork themselves ranked it at #4. For a while it seemed like there was no one that didn't appreciate it on some level, if not the original then the Ted Leo cover of it. There were always people who disliked it, true, but pretending that this was some random, unprecedented occurrence and getting indignant about it just makes you an asshole. You're worse than the people who rallied to claim that the only reason "B.O.B." was #1 was so that they could claim to be home with the downies and are in fact only pretending to like hip hop. You're worse than the people who cared that what was pretty much a singles list featured no metal outside of Mastadon. You probably only read the damn thing so you could have something to bitch about and try to score some mythical cool points by loudly yelling 'I HATE POP MUSIC MOTHERFUCKERS! AM I ALONE IN THIS ASSESSMENT?!' So fuck. Off. Now.

I'm not saying you have to like the song, your taste is your taste and I'm not saying it's wrong, but the real issue that I saw behind a lot of the bashing that list underwent in some corners had nothing to do with the songs and everything to do with perception. To many, Pitchfork is an 'indie' site, whatever that means, so its readers probably look for it to give the major props to the little guy, the songs that it had a hand in making as popular as they are, the artists they launched to what amounts to fame in the 'indie' circle. The issue is that Pitchfork stopped being an indie site long, long ago. they'll still cling to the recognition they get as an 'indie' site but they haven't really embodied that ethos for a while. They've become an online version of Spin circa 1998, the same magazine they took pleasure in slamming when they published their initial best of list for the 90s, putting as much focus on the uber-underground as they do on the hugely popular. So what if they don't openly show contempt for the latter? If they did it would be pointless, and if they had any pretensions of being a legitimate music rag they couldn't just turn a blind eye to the more people-friendly side of things.

But back to "Since U Been Gone" since that's (ostensibly) what I'm here to discuss. Really, if there was any pop song this decade that would have overtaken the largely independent label worshiping scene that is online music journalism why wouldn't it be this one? Can you really say that this is a regular radio pop song in any sense other than the fact that it was popular? It may have been a calculated attempt to piggyback on the post-punk revival, what with its Interpolian guitars and dissonant, controlled bursts of guitar noise in key places and most importantly toned down vocalizing from Clarkson, but that shouldn't matter if the song is good. And is it ever fucking good. It's not the alpha and omega of pop singles this decade, but as far as an example of how the lines between the popular and the underground blurred as the decade went on it makes a good ground zero. It's not necessarily the indie-pastiche some claim it to be but it definitely takes enough cues from that side of the coin to qualify as at least being indie-inspired. It's a rarity to hear what is destined to be the music of the masses so readily and perfectly apply the sonic cues of what may as well be underground music to the pop aesthetic, but Clarkson's producers marry the two sides almost perfectly.

Clarkson herself does something that you wouldn't expect from an American Idol winner here too: she reins in her voice and only lets loose when it's appropriate in the context of the song. It still shows off her voice, probably better than any of her other singles do for that matter, but her voice is never the sole focus of any particular section. In that respect it has more in common with power-pop, albeit very slickly produced power pop, in that the focus isn't on either the vocal or the instrumental but on the whole package. The interaction between the two layers is not ever-present but it certainly adds to key moments of the track, and even without direct interplay the two facets work well with each other. It's not a showcase for either side, but closer to a full band environment than anything. If anything, the reason so many people were able to embrace the song might have been because unlike a lot of pop music it was easy to separate it from its maker. It's not so much a Kelly Clarkson song as a modern power-pop gem that happens to feature her on vocals, and the lack of focus on her and all the baggage her presence brings to the proceedings is as essential to it's embrace in all quarters as anything else.

Coming up tomorrow: Out of rant mode and into nostalgia mode.

#97. Sole - Bottle of Humans (Anticon, 2000) and Selling Live Water (Anticon, 2003)

No, this is gangsta rap and my shirt's unbuttoned
We're stealing moments of brilliance in the limelights
choppin' up keys to break the floodgates
Maybe this is instrumental hip-hop and I don't know when to shut up
Or maybe this is turntable music,
scratch the I's and I'll scratch yours
Or what if this is honest music, and I mean every other word I say
Don't take anything literal, out-of-context,
just take it for what it is
If you want labels, we can divide, I'll still be strong
Bottom line it's all art (This is a good and a bad song) -"Bottle of Humans"

All the talk I do about not paying too much attention to lyrics goes out the window when I'm listening to a particular brand of hip hop. I still focus on the production and overall sound of the songs first and foremost, but if it becomes obvious that there's a certain density to the lyrics that merits a closer listen I'm not gonna resist. It makes sense that this happens more often in hip hop than other genres; the lyrics of a hip hop song are much more integral to the whole process than in other genres. Not just the words themselves, but the structure of the verses, the variety of poetic techniques put to use, the way they interact with the beats. It boils down to the way that the words can create a tapestry just as well as the instrumental elements can.

Most mainstream rappers can't approach that sort of thing which probably explains why most of my preferred rappers come from the more independent scenes. These scenes may not be important in the grand scheme of things, but they represent exactly what I look for in hip hop. The lyrics are dense, uncompromising and rarely resort to the overused cliches that their mainstream counterparts are guilty of instilling in the genre. The uncompromising nature extends to the beats as well, which are much more varied and interesting to my ears on underground releases. It's not that these releases are better solely because they're underground but because it's easier to spot the passion in the art when it's in the unvarnished form that the likes of Def Jux, Lex, anticon and their ilk are more fond of embracing. They're different, sure but that's not all they have going for them 9 times out of 10.

We can be friends or arch-rivals or we can share ideas
Or sip espresso, until we both have diarrhea
A lot of people are cool, and some are less intellectual
I like having a girlfriend and like them more when they're bisexual
Battle rhymes don't hurt people, battling AIDS isn't enjoyable
There's something about goth girls in short skirts I find delectable
So come back to my shelter you horny little pale raccoon wearing three chains
And I'll give you some more stupid sayings to put in your keychains - "Sole Has Issues"

The anticon collective may not have produced my absolute favorite hip hop album of the decade, but their ranks permeate this list more than any other underground-leaning collective or label. Starting in '99 with the seminal release of the compilation Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop the label seemed to be a breeding ground for exactly the sort of hip hop I enjoy, both from a lyrical and a production standpoint. The MCs went beyond the confines that mainstream hip hop seemed to impose and gave more expansive, deep and intellectual performances that encompassed such a wide range of moods that it was hard to get bored even in the cases where an album stretched well past the hour mark. The stable of MCs and producers that moved through the label's releases wasn't 100% amazing, but they covered such a wide range of sounds, from the ultra-abstract stylings of Themselves (Dose One and Jel) to the more personal and straightforward work that Buck 65 did on the label and hitting all points in between.

Today I downed 90 miligrams
After 20 i could feel the head rush
I raced to my gallery roof
Gazing at the beauty that we always take for granted
Its my opening night
Spinning
Everyone will be there
Whos anyone to bear witness to my newest latest and greatest work
I'm a comet human cannibal swan dive never has the air been so clean
I inhale and exhale to become one my ends on the sidewalk
A vivid display of a 170 pounds of blood sweat and tears
Critique away
But my greatest work is in the pavement
I made it for you - "Suicide Song"

Tim Holland (aka Sole) may have been the founder of the label but he never stood out on the first few things I heard him do. His contributions to Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop weren't top shelf and even when they were he was upstaged by his collaborators. He may have provided the single most intense moment on Deep Puddle Dynamics' lone album with the final verse of "Where the Wild Things Are" but none of his other contributions to that album were noteworthy enough for me to consider it anything other than a fluke. Of course once I heard his first two solo albums my tune changed quite dramatically. Bottle of Humans was a bit uneven but it's highs were some of the most personal, impassioned and emotional tracks the genre had spat out. The three I've pulled verses from above are the obvious highlights, but there's moments of lyrical brilliance scattered all across its (rather unwieldy) length. It's not a consistent album like it's follow up Selling Live Water would be, but it's an album where I can forgive the inconsistency simply because when it hits it hits hard.

If I made a proper list out of the albums I'm covering in this project Bottle of Humans might rank near the bottom, but it's hard to not give it credit when it's got stuff as good as its title track and "Suicide Song" especially. The former is also one of the best production jobs on the album as Sole's former DPD co-member Alias lays out a simple, mournful cello figure with some skittering drums and a perfect soul vocal sample to use as a chorus. It's as bare bones as these things get, especially when you compare it to some of Jel's work later on the album, but it's a perfect underpinning to Sole's brutally honest lyrics. Aside from the final section quoted above you've got proclamations like 'I'm ahead of my time/I fear my time will never come' and 'I'm known by most, hated by many, endured by the rest' highlighting the high levels of self-deprecation that go into his best lyrics. "Suicide Song" is even more harrowing, a series of half-finished suicide notes each punctuated by the sound of crumpling paper and all laced with some remarkable gallows humour like 'Why do I keep dying in public places?/The medication should take two hours to take effect/But last time, I was killed eating my last meal/It's embarassing and I die inside' or an entire tangent about dying during oral sex and living in death with his female companion. Sole's a fucked up dude, but he's putting his issues to good use here, and even though it's not a great-great album it's one of the most affecting hip hop releases the decade has to offer.

Cops ain't shit to me
Jobs ain't nothing but free pens and long distance calls
Thought I had it all, then God got birth control
White man's the fucking devil
I wanted to be black at age fourteen
So when they say I don't respect the cuture
Truth is I only rap 'cuz I ain't smart enough to write a book
I've never paid parking ticket:
It's 20 dollars now or 300 then;
You want your money, come and get it
But better bring 200 guns and a 100 men - "Da Baddest Poet"

His follow up, 2003's Selling Live Water isn't hampered by the inconsistency that marks Bottle of Humans but also never reaches its heights. It's a front-to-back great album though, probably the single most consistent work to come from the anticon label, and finds Sole just as issue-laden as before but much more self assured on the mic. His style was pretty well in place on Bottle but it's at full force here. The consistency is probably helped by the fairly constant presence of Alias as a producer. Odd Nosdam, Jel and Telephone Jim Jesus each get a pair of production credits it's pretty much Alias' show the whole way through. The funny thing is that it's the other producers that get the best results for whatever reason. Alias' cuts are great, don't get me wrong, but there's a certain otherness to the three others' songs that makes them stand out amidst what is a pretty consistent album form a quality standpoint. Nosdam especially produces a real winner in "Salt on Everything" whose sparse verses give way to a crushing, guitar based chorus that foreshadows his shoegaze-indebted solo work albeit in a much more paranoid context. Jel's much more abstract style is toned down quite a bit on his two contributions but the way he gives "Respect Pt. 3" over to what I'm 90% sure is a Portishead sample at the end ensure that it will stand out quite a bit. And while he's got the album's only clunker in the closing "Ode to the War on Terrorism," TJJ's beat for "Da Baddest Poet" is the perfect start to the album, even when it modulates into a weird drum-n-bass section out of nowhere.

Then you realize it was only a dream and you were tied to a tree the whole time
watching friends drag by 'cause they can't look at the scars under your eyes
Burned to hell covered by locusts, they're trying to quote us
now that they finally broke us into ridiculous names and meaningless titles
I won't forget, the little things escape
through the pores in my skin so I can pour it on thick
And watch them scurry to escape the glass, leave the collection
and have a life of their own, well get rich you'll hate it too..
I promise.. - "The Priziest Horse"

Of course this is Sole's show, so despite how great the production line up is the real greatness here is in his rapping. It's pretty much a full solo album, with no guest verses from his cohorts outside of some harmony vocals from Why? on the penultimate track, and there's very little fat on any of the tracks, or on the album as a whole His style here is much less transparent than on his debut, upping the density of the lyrics and impenetrability of the subject matter to the point where it's hard to know what he's talking about most places but he sounds incredible saying it. There aren't rhymes a lot of the time so much as free verse poetry spat out with remarkable amounts of fire and confidence. It's the same trick Dose One plays with on most of his releases, but Sole's not as much of an acquired taste as far as vocal style goes, still not polished thank goodness but far less outre than even Dose's more standard material. He's also a lot angrier here than on his previous outings, doing away with the bits of levity that would creep in every so often on Bottle in favor of a full bore screed against the state of everything for the whole album. And it works so well that I can't even fault it for ending on as sour a note as the underdone "Ode to the War on Terrorism" when the 14 previous tracks represent some of the best hip hop made this decade.

Coming up tomorrow: One of the key figures in American post-punk gets his americana on.

#98. 'I may appear to be free, but I'm just a prisoner'

Macy Gray "I Try"

If you were to ask me what my least favorite songwriting tropes were one of the first ones to come to mind would be what I call the major shift. You hear it in every American Idol coronation song, every Celine Dion ballad and every Dianne Warren love theme. You hear it in most ballads regardless of genre actually, and if you're anything like me you anticipate it whenever you hear a song with a slower tempo for the first time. It happens right before the final chorus; the song's been in a minor key for the first 2/3rds of its runtime but then as that last chorus hits the song modulates into the major key. It's a cheap trick, giving the song an emotional payoff that's usually unearned and doing it in a way that's unorginal to boot. It rarely strikes me as anything more than pandering, giving what is fundamentally a sad song a happy ending without bothering to do anything akin to progressing the song to that point in a logical way. The major shift is the 'It was all a dream!' of songwriting, and any time it happens it makes me die a bit inside.

Except for when it doesn't, of course.

Look, I may hate the major shift enough to base an entire intro paragraph around my distaste for it, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate when it's done well. The fact is that when it's done well it impresses me more than any other sort of good songwriting practice because it's been so horribly abused in every other case that the good ones stand out more. It's a rare phenomenon to see happen, and any time it does the credit goes to the vocalist above everyone else. When you're confronted with such a cheap gimmick the only way to make it work is to sell it like you've never sold any other part of your discography. You need to make the shift work by sheer force of will because just doing it is not enough to make it believable. It borders on cruelty to force that sort of pressure on a vocalist, but when they pull it off I tip my imaginary hat their way.

Macy Gray's "I Try" is one of the few times that this particular gambit pays off well, but it's also a bit of an atypical example of it. Unlike, say, Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart" (I think of this as ground zero for my high level of major shift hatred) the shift is actually logical in context of the lyrics and not just a vocal exercise that makes your pleading sound more desperate than anything else. Throughout the song Gray's been singing in a minor key about the depth of her love, borderline obsession you might say, for a guy who she isn't able to be with for whatever reason; the reason isn't important though, because Gray's voice is expressive enough to convey the emotions attendant to this type of yearning. As the song progresses though her tone gets less and less despondent, slowly striping back the sadness of the opening and getting brighter and brighter with each passing line.

That sort of progression is the only reason that the shift that occurs in the last chorus works. It's not the abrupt sad-HAPPY shift that marks this trope most times but a gradual build up towards the absolutely giddy final part of the song. I like to think of it as the evolution of Gray emotions as she gets closer and closer to her object of desire, beginning with resigned sadness over the fact that they'll never be together and slowly approaching the point where she just says 'fuck it, I might as well give this a shot.' The bridge itself reads like a sort of twisted yet romantic confession of love,the sort of tipping point where her emotions go from internal torment over her separation from her beloved to unbridled happiness at their eventual coming together. Gray sells this evolution of emotion in a way that few singers before or since have managed to, and it's not just the fact that it's an actual evolution that sets it apart but that Gray's vocals in the major shift section are so undeniably pure. It's not a sterile sort of vocal but one full of passion in a very real way as opposed to the more studio sterile likes of...well, every other artist that tried a major shift in the last little while.

Coming up tomorrow: Why you need to stop bitching about 'indie' publications loving pop music.

#98. The pAper chAse - Hide the Kitchen Knives (Beatville, 2002)/Racebannon - In the Grips of the Light (Secretly Canadian, 2002)

Umbrella genres are kind of useless. I hate it when I find myself referring to albums as being something as ill-defined as 'alternative' or 'indie rock' because in all honesty those labels say next to nothing about the sound of the album. Any time I see something described with only those terms it strikes me as overall critical laziness that no one can find a more useful classification. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone but it sill bothers me that what amount to empty classifications are the go-to label for not only all manner of albums but for entire subsets of culture. And it really pains me to see that post-hardcore has probably joined those ranks.

It's still a useful tag on some levels, amounting to 'hardcore-adjacent music with more ambition' or 'stuff that you'll like if you own a copy of The Shape of Punk to Come' but the breadth that the tag's come to cover since the term's inception makes it just as useless insofar as describing what an album sounds like as indie or alternative. think about it, within the confines of post-hardcore you've got everything from epic screamo (City of Caterpillar) to the heavier side of mainstreamed emo (early Thrice) to aggressive noise rock (Racebannon) to suspense-laden chamber punk (or whatever you want to call The Paper Chase.) None of those bands sound that much alike, but all of them have a firm root in the hardcore punk scene that they then branched out from to vastly different effects. It makes for one of the most interesting subgenres out there but one that is all but useless to use as a description of what the bands actually sound like.

In my eyes, Racebannon and The Paper Chase represent opposite ends of the post-hardcore spectrum. The former are more explicitly hardcore based, but owe as much of a debt to noise rockers like Big Black and Melt Banana as they do to punk while the latter are one of the most vital and expansive rock bands of the decade, with everything from piano and string quartet based numbers to full on hardcore/emo moments that all sound cohesive in the context of the band's albums. You'd never think they'd get painted with the same brush, but that's where post-hardcore's gone as a genre. It's also worth noting that these two are, for my money, among the most consistently amazing bands of the decade. Ignoring their respective debuts, which hinted at their future quality but were marred by horrible production in one case (Racebannon's First There Was the Emptiness) and a lack of cohesion in the other (Paper Chase's Young Bodies Heal Quickly, You Know) they went on to each put out a trio of absolutely amazing albums along with assorted splits and EPs. Picking out a highlight for each of them was difficult, but in the end it winds up being the first in their streaks of greatness that wound up on top.

In Racebannon's case it was pretty much predestined to be In the Grips of the Light that got the nod over the equally intense rock opera of Satan's Kickin' Yr Dick In and last year's Acid or Blood which I honestly haven't spent enough time with to put it here anyway. The reason is pretty basic too: their cover of Captain Beefheart's "Electricity" is on In the Grips and it's probably the only cover of Beefheart's material that I wouldn't hesitate to call better than the original. Now, I love Beefheart with a fervor that borders on insanity. Trout Mask Replica ranks as my absolute favorite album of all time and Lick My Decals Off, Baby and Doc at the Radar Station don't rank too far behind that one. I have a folder on my laptop that's 267 MB of Beefheart covers that I've found in the course of my travels, and of that batch Racebannon's "Electricity" is the only one that improves the original. It's played fairly straight, but Racebannon imbue it with a sense of urgency that the original can't match, as good a song as that is. It was my introduction to the band, and probably did more to make them among my favorite artists of the decade than the rest of In the Grips of the Light but that's no reason to discount the rest of the material there.

Basically, over the course of an hour the band lays down some unrelentingly harsh, noisy grooves that rarely give the listener a chance to catch their breath. Producer Mike Mogis (yes, the dude behind 90% of Saddle Creek's output) captures the band's intensity better than anyone else has since, and judging by the few live videos of these guys in action I've found on youtube it's as good an approximation of the energy they possess in a live setting as you're likely to get in a studio. The band employs all manner of odd techniques to augment their noise-laden assault, from DJ scratching that's far removed from the way you'd expect that technique to be used to theremin playing to add to the chaotic soup on a few songs. The bass playing is fantastic, the closest to a melodic element the band has in most cases (not that that's a bad thing) and the drummer isadept enough to send all eight tracks hurtling along at a manic pace without ever getting too static in his technique. The guitars wind their way between frantic, Truman's Water circa-Spasm Smash bursts of off-kilter noise with a surprising amount of blues-inspired rhythms and riffs. And on top of this there's Mike Anderson, the most singularly demented vocalist in modern music, shrieking shards of unnerving poetry as if his life depended on it. The result isn't anything other than intense, but it's also fun to listen to once you get used to its unrelenting assault.

Intense is a good description of Hide the Kitchen Knives as well, although where Racebannon's intensity comes through aggression The Paper Chase's is brought out much more subtly. In general, they represent one of the best produced rock band of any stripe this decade, and given that their lead singer is one of the most vital producers of rock music in the 00s, working with everyone from underground post-punkers Single Frame to the likes of Marilyn Manson and Bono (color me surprised on the last one) that's not a surprise at all. He's not as well known as someone like Steve Albini, but any time I hear an album John Congleton has a producing credit on it seems to become a favorite. His own band's only the tip of the iceberg for that, but the work he does on Hide the Kitchen Knives is among the best production work he's done so far. It's not just that a band that fuses as many diverse elements as The Paper Chase all but requires a strong production job to work well, but that the choices Congleton makes in that area are a) not the ones you'd expect and b) wind up sounding better than any other way of arranging the elements. For instance, using the tandem bass and piano root as the focal point of "Don't You Wish You Had Some More?" instead of the relentless guitar line that runs underneath gives the track a unique sense of menace that it wouldn't have had otherwise, almost like a Hitchcock soundtrack in its suspense building capabilities.

There's also a level of cohesion to the album that makes it much more of pleasure to sit through. Well, pleasure's not the right word really, because I have yet to hear an album that's this unsettling, ugly and creepy for its entire runtime. The whole album is steeped in dread. It's got the same aura that the best psychological thrillers maintain, the feeling that something incredibly twisted is right around the corner at every moment and making the times that that's the case make just as much of an impact as the times where it's not. There's really only a couple of truly aggressive tracks here, but the other moments are no less intense. That intensity is as much a product of the overall production as the way the different instruments sound. It's odd, the individual instruments never seem to change their tone, but the way they're used on each specific track gives makes the album sound just as varied as it can. Compare "Where Have Those Hands Been?" to "A Little Place Called Trust" and you'll see what I'm talking about. The guitar is always set to that sick, trebly, distorted to the point of dissonance tone, the piano is always that little bit out of tune, the background is always that unforgiving, oppressive sterility but the former is the album's most frenetic moment and the latter is a relatively calm moment in the middle of the album. It goes back to Congleton's production as much as anything, but the fact that as a band The Paper Chase are able to evoke such a wide array of moods with such a static palette is worth praising.

Coming up tomorrow: A man who raps like a mildly coherent homeless prophet's first two salvos in the world of underground hip hop.

#99. 'Stabbing yourself in the neck'

Interpol "Obstacle 1"

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a relatively young band is hype. Hype builds up expectations, and god forbid you fall short of those no matter how inflated they get or else the vengeance of the public will fall swiftly upon you. Even if you live up to the hype, all the goodwill you muster out of that will come back to bite you whenever you release a new album. The minute you become the next big thing you're all but doomed for failure basically, because even if you make the grade initially you've got nowhere to go but down after that. Just look at the reactions to the three Interpol albums if you want a good example: every one of them has their fans and their detractors, but the scale slides more and more towards the latter with each new album. The reasons for this aren't hard to figure out if you've heard all three of them: it's the case where the debut is lightning captured in a bottle and everything that follows it is just straining to recapture that singular energy for even one song let alone the whole album.

The weird thing is that in hindsight Turn On the Bright Lights isn't the classic it gets made out to be. It's poorly sequenced, has no sense of flow despite its fairly uniform sound and is riddled with some of the worst lyrics of any 'instant classic' album that got released this decade. The last point is the only one worth going any further into here since "Obstacle 1" features one of the album's real lyrical clunkers (though it's excised from the video edit for some reason), but other than that it's probably the best example of everything the band did right on their debut. It just comes across as completely effortless, never trying too hard to hit the heights of the band's obvious influences (here it's Echo and the Bunnymen above the others) but coming close to achieving them nonetheless. If it weren't for Paul Banks' lyrics they probably would. If I'd come across this album a few years later I mght have been able to ignore the really strained lyrics, but it got into my hands during the time I was still a bit too lyric focused for my own good. As such, even now as I get a larger appreciation for its instrumental ideas I still do a little cringe at the lyrics because I'm used to focusing there.It's not exactly fair to the song that I have such a hard time getting past that, and without that quibble I wouldn't hesitate to place this higher up here.

Ignoring the lyrics though, it's quite easy to see why Interpol stood out among the first wave of post-punk revivalists. The quartet work like a well oiled machine, the guitars playing off each other in non-complex but still interesting way while the rhythm section does just as much to give the tracks a sense of motion as it does to add more melodic texture to the track and Banks' vocals are stronger than the lyrics would merit. It all works together wonderfully, from the panned guitar interplay in the chorus interludes to the second verse's slightly more involved drum pattern. It's a great example of just how much a song's quality can stem from how well the band behind works together. It's the sort of thing that's hard to describe on paper but easy to hear when it gets done well, and "Obstacle 1" is one of those instances where it gets done incredibly well.

Coming up tomorrow: Can quirk co-exist with standard R 'n' B? The answer is yes, but if you want a hit you need to tone the former down.

#99. Lift to Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (Bella Union, 2001)

The concept album, or at least the conscious concept album, is a tricky thing to pull off well. That mixture of ambition, storytelling and music is easy to fuck up completely if you don't get the balance just right, or if one element is that little bit below the others in terms of execution. A weak story can sink a concept album as easily as weak music or lack of ambition to just fully go for it, but more importantly, the story you're telling needs to actual merit a full length musical epic to accompany it. Just because it's good from a pure story point of view doesn't mean it's got enough to it to make a good concept album/rock opera, it needs to have certain something more to it. Of course my qualifications for what makes a good concept album aren't universal, mostly because I have a tendency to read concepts into the most benign of albums - a few of which we'll be talking about here later - and refuse to accept things like OK Computer as part of that family. Even with that caveat, there are some albums that are unambiguously conceptual in nature, and those are the ones that generally catch my ear regardless of the specifics.

The concept at the heart of The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads is the sort of thing that I could only see myself enjoying in this context. A movie or novel that centered around a trio of Texas boys who get word from the Lord that Texas is the true promised land where people can escape the oncoming Armageddon would just not work for me, but set it against vintage 80s dream/noise-pop and I'm halfway towards believing the central conceit of the concept. I don't know why I find it easier to stomach this heavy a dose of pure, uncut religion in this context, especially since the noise-pop end of Lift to Experience's sound isn't to the point where it obscures the vocals a la Jesus and Mary Chain/MBV. And the vocals are heavy on the biblical stuff, let me tell you. Its never crosses that narrow line into proselytizing though, instead vocalist Josh Pearson sounds like he's telling a very involved story. He's not concerned with convincing the listener that this whole 'Texas is the center of Jerusalem' thing is the way it is, but at the same time he sounds like he truly believes the ideals at the heart of it, even if their placed in a context that's utterly ridiculous to the outsider.

The real key though, is that Pearson and his band mates place their story in the midst of some exceptionally crafted songs. It goes without saying that despite my fascination with concept albums I don't go gaga over them unless there's a good portion of excellent songs hidden in their midst, and that's definitely the case here. The songs here are pretty uniform sonically, a haze of tremolo-picked guitar with a driving rhythm section produced by someone who clearly spent a lot of time with Loveless and Psychocandy on his turntable in his younger days all topped off with some excellent harmony vocals from the core trio. The songs may work together to build up the concept, but they still stand individually as great examples of modern dream pop, especially the glorious "Falling From Cloud 9" and the penultimate, mantraic "To Guard and to Guide You," and none of the 11 tracks stand out as being particularly weak. The only quibble would be that "Into the Storm" does that kind of annoying thing where the song ends halfway through its allotted time, there's a fairly large period of silence and then a 'bonus track' rises out of it. It's not something I think is necessary in the best of circumstances, and the fragment of a song that gets thrown in at the end of the track isn't exactly necessary or noteworthy so the whole exercise feels a bit unnecessary. Even with that minor fault though, the album stands out as one of those truly singular works that I don't think could ever be replicated. It's a special album,and one that deserves a lot more praise than it gets.

Coming up tomorrow: One of the most sonically interesting emo-adjacent bands of the decade.