You heard me. They are due in equal measures to the fact that I'm so excited about this item here, and that said item forecasts Hell's Ice Age.
The Beatles: RockBand. It was announced almost a year ago, but it was only on Monday at the E3 video game conference that demos, introduced by Ringo and Macca themselves, were revealed to the public. It's a gorgeous sight. The most famous and most successful band of all time has been notoriously reticent about licensing its music (or likenesses, logos, etc.) to, well, anyone. They ain't even on iTunes. Almost never do they show up in ads or soundtracks. And yet, on 9/9/09 we will see the release of the newest installment of the RockBand franchise, dovoted to the Fab Four and chock full of untouchables. It's a fully independent game, built ground-up rather than as an expansion of previous releases. Not only will it feature 45 classic Beatles tunes (only ten have so far been revealed), but renderings of the Lads themselves in highly accurate detail-- from chronological settings like The Cavern, the Ed Sullivan set, and Shey Stadium to models of instruments according to when they were actually used like Paul playing a Höfner early on and later a Rickenbacker. It's clear that the most painstaking attention has been put into this project in order to appease fans, and rock historians.
It's June, and I'm doing a best-of list for last year. The lack of motivation should indicate an underwhelming year. I don't mean to be too harsh; of course some truly great artists released some truly great music in 2008. But the overall caliber compared to 2007 is, well, disappointing. I'm almost temped to forgo grading on a curve, and just start my list at #6. That would be a jerk move, though. Shame on the audiophile who takes for granted those who make the art he consumes. Regardless of the dip in quality, the Top 10 list is an annual requisite for me. Herein you will find, in addition to the countdown, in-depth reviews, album covers, and audio samples (yes, that's new) courtesy of Lala.com. Do enjoy.
20. Ratatat - LP3 19. Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna 18. Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Color 17. John Zorn - Xaphan: Book of Angels, Vol. 9 (Secret Chiefs 3 Plays Masada Book Two) 16. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust 15. Elephant9 - Dodovoodoo 14. Dosh - Wolves and Wishes 13. NOMO - Ghost Rock 12. Department of Eagles - In Ear Park 11. TV on the Radio - Dear Science,
Get out your "Taboo" game buzzer: I'm going to attempt to review this album without using the word "haunting". Quite a challenge, as no word perfectly encapsulates the Bristol trio's tertiary LP like that gerund. Coming eleven years after their previous release, many feared if the group would remain caught in the trip-hop mold they helped create, and which has since been interred in the trend graveyard. Portishead prove they are far above the fray by presenting a record which acts as a clear answer to their past selves--heavily tied to the studio yet with a more post-rock-by-way-of-Radiohead ethic--, but also stands alone as a major creative charge. Nothing is played straight; everything is distorted like a portrait that seems to have a different expression each time you look. The keyboard riff in "We Carry On" remains unsettled, changing itself at irregular intervals, and the guitar in "Silence" plays just so much faster than the other instruments that it ends up a sixteenth note ahead with each new measure. In "Magic Doors", as the drums saunter (didn't say it!) from the left and reverb in the right, while a cowbell does the opposite, you can't figure out how to orient yourself... and it doesn't help that the two rhythms don't really match. What brings these elements home is singer Beth Gibbons' quivering, mournful voice, which you may know as the soundtrack to your neuroses. Third is a daunting (don't buzz me!) and sophisticated listen, but one which rewards immensely with attention and a strong psyche.
9. Steinski - What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
Steve Stein, a Jewish copy supervisor for a New York advertising firm, was already in his thirties when in 1983 he decided to enter a competition that called for original remixes of the rap song "Play That Beat, Mr. D.J.". He and his then-partner Double Dee (Doug DiFranco) painstakingly assembled a five-minute track they called "Lesson 1 - The Payoff Mix", which weaved samples from The Supremes, dance instruction records, and Humphrey Boagart into the original song. It took first prize and because a major hit in the hip-hop world. This illustrates what can be off-putting about Steinski: despite his many watershed mixes, his influence on generations of DJs,
and hismastery of turntablism, he could be seen as undeserving. He didn't
really come from within the hip-hop world, nor did he work like those who did (having access to high-tech recording equipment certainly gave "The Payoff Mix" an edge). However the unbiased will immediately see how, as often happens, an outsider had the advantage to reshape and focus what was being done before. What Does It All Mean? is more than a retrospective, seeing as how many of these underground and highly litigious mixes have never before seen official release. But it also presents a mostly forgotten hero helping to define how it should all be done. A good DJ works with an astoundingly eclectic palette in the obscure records and audio sampled, but a great DJ matches that eclecticism in emotion and mood as well. The tracks here sample Marx Brothers films, the Spider-Man theme, a Mozart concerto, "Hernando's Hideaway", and George
H.W. Bush, yet through it all Steinski is satirical, playful, grave, immature, aggressive, insightful, and silly. "Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix)" celebrates the grunts and horn hits of the Godfather. "The Motorcade Sped On" reflects upon the JFK assassination. "I'm Wild About That Thing" giggles about sex. All of this alone would be solid enough for a retrospective, yet a second disc is included, devoted entirely to the hour-long "Nothing to Fear: A Rough Mix", made in 2002 for the BBC hip-hop program Solid Steel and also never before released on record. Its inclusion is a revelation; with a detailed glimpse of how Steinski constructs his art (plus some nasty beats for your right brain), it is the trees to disc one's forest. A socially-conscious party-starter, and a virtuoso of the decks, Steinski's work can now live on.
This album is available as a legal, pay-what-you-want download from the Illegal Art label website. Click here.
8. David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
NOTE: Lala.com does not have this album, so I am not able to include a playlist for it. However you can still enjoy these mp3 samples that I have personally uploaded.
I have one major complaint about Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, and it has to do with truth in advertising. See, I would love to wax on the sublimity that results when two geniuses collaborate, or how two musicians can mutually inspire and end up with something greater than the sum. But that's not what we have here. This isn't a meeting of the minds; in actuality, this is a very good David Byrne album on which he has a superb producer. Marketed as the 28-years-in-the-making follow-up to the duo's legendary new-wave-meets-musique-concreté record My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the two records actually share very little DNA (it's telling who got first billing on each album). But I said Happens is very good, and I do mean that, lest it be misunderstood that this music could have been improved upon by a different system of government. Byrne is refreshed here, penning some of the most wry, incisive and self-effacing songs of his career. The music is carried along by melody after hummable melody, held together with a unified vision but varied enough to avoid feeling heavy-handed. Eno, for his part, has scored some very nice programming ("Strange Overtones"), but should be credited primarily for successfully reigning in Byrne's usual indulgences. There are deliciously odd moments such as the atonal piano blurts in "I Feel My Stuff", but most of the time things are done in a safe zone, saving the album from the occasional strained juxtapositions that have been known to drag down Byrne's solo records. So perhaps the duo just don't like a completely even working relationship, but instead take turns driving a car powered by the others' mojo. Nothing wrong with that at all.
7. Anthony Braxton, William Parker & Milford Graves - Beyond Quantum
If the jazz world were a pro sports league, this would be my fantasy pick roster for the New York Shronkers. You've got free jazz pioneer and general reed enthusiast Anthony Braxton as pitcher and team captain; astoundingly versatile bassist William Parker as point guard; the wildly frenetic, otherwordly, and reclusive percussionist Milford Graves as full back; experimental music's go-to recording producer Bill Laswell as goalie; and the king of the avant-garde himself, executive producer John Zorn as team manager and ballboy. What sport is this, anyway? Who cares, if it's this thrilling to spectate. Over five freely improvised tracks (titled as "meetings"), the three performers force all variety of sounds and textures onto one another, with little pretense for actual, deliberate collaboration. It's a noisy, difficult and highly esoteric affair, but it's no less inspiring to hear these geniuses do what they do (I don't use the term "genius" lightly; both Braxton and Zorn have previously been awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant). You can stand by and tsk tsk and say this isn't music and what's the point?, but it's futile. You can't defeat this dream team.
We're through the looking glass here, people. There have been several attempts in the past by jazz musicians of adopting and infusing Indian classical music into their own: Coltrane's often raga-like solos, Miles' modal landmark Kind of Blue, John McLaughlin and his fantastic work with his 70's group Shakti. Within Kinsmen, alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa shows how it looks from the other side. Mahanthappa, who was actually born in Italy and raised in Colorado (and who studied at Berklee), is technically an outsider to Indian musical traditions. It took a record by the great Indian saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, who has spent his career finding a place for his chosen instrument in his native music, to inspire Mahanthappa with similar thoughts of cross-breeding. The marriage here is seamless, cosmopolitan and accomplished, thanks as much to the expertise of Gopalnath, who co-leads this session, as to the vision of his protegé. This is thrilling, mixed-media art. Sometimes the strokes are broad, like during "Kalyani", where a lithe faux-sitar solo by guitarist Rez Abassi is later followed by a Mahanthappa solo that skirts honking, free-jazz atonality, yet the picture never loses its measured subtlety. Indian facets abound, such as employing modal structures built upon a single note (here from a double bass rather than a droning tanpura), rephrasing and re-exploring the same improvised line repeatedly, and a liberal dose of grace notes and microtones. Further, both saxes affect a pinched tone, no doubt with the shehnai in mind. Interspersed among the five main compositions are five relatively brief "Alaps" (the term for the introductory section of an Indian classical performance), which are vehicles for solo displays by various members of the band, and which not only showcase their talents well but also add a deeper context to the whole affair. "Convergence (Kinsmen)" is an ideal denouement, featuring a fierce trading of solos by Mahanthappa and Golpanath and a reserved mridangam solo by Poovalur Sriji. With the various and disparate elements carefully folded in together, Kinsmen should stand as a redefinition of fusion--and a beautiful sound to boot.
Why?, aesthetically speaking, is Animal Collective's answer to hardcore rap. It's anathema-- most hip-hop purists deny it even belongs in their camp. To someone like me, who yearns to find validity in every musical style but whose principals are let down by the unchecked pomposity and forsaken creative pulse of mainstream hip-hop, this makes an item like Yoni Wolf's Why? the revolution we crave. A founder of the thoroughly iconoclastic hip-hop label anticon. (apparently punctuation in titles is part of their culture subversion strategy), Why? indeed acts in every way like an indie rock artist. First off, yes, they're all white. Second, Wolf defies various conventions like alternately treating Why? as a solo stage persona and as a full band. And, perhaps most scandalously, he eschews vainglory: Alopecia's garish folk-art album cover lacks his countenance flanked by half-naked shortys or flaunting bullet wounds, and his lyrics, when they even are about himself, are disturbingly self-effacing confessions about vomiting in a Whole Foods parking lot or being conned by Gypsys ("The kind of sh*t I won't admit to my head-shrinker," Wolf raps in "Good Friday"). Because of this, Alopecia is new and unusual to the point of feeling unstable, like plutonium. And like plutonium, it houses great power. Wolf challenges Timbaland in his production: while he almost always prefers live instruments to beats, the use of jingling change as a backbeat, or a Reich-ian mallet ostinato as a song's foundation, results in a similarly spooky and disorienting sensation as the work of the famous beat-maker. The song structures are unsettled and nonlinear, favoring neither the traditions of rock or rap. And Wolf's flow is relaxed and apathetic, like a stoner possessed by the spirit of Kurtis Blow. The hipster kid shouldn't look at Why? as a safe way to claim he listens to rap, just as no involved party should ever call into question their refreshing vision of the popular music landscape.
Damn context. Damn the tastemaking mill. If weren't for the highly faulty system currently in use, a charming little band like Vampire Weekend wouldn't suffer the whiplash of being trumpeted in the blogs one day (in their case, that day was months before their debut was even released), then torn apart the next as over-hyped and pretentious, and of course fervently defended the day after. All the same, as much as a din was created from personal baggage, the quality and charm of Vampire Weekend's eponymous debut album was still well-heard by many. To be fair, providence was at work: this album was released at a time when nothing sounded like it. It contrasted nicely with all the records featuring heavy moods and heavier music (see: the rest of this list). Perhaps becoming so accustomed to the weightiness of that other music is what made some balk at such an effervescent record... but being used to the darkness is a terrible reason not to go outside. Vampire Weekend doesn't try to be anything more than it is. The guitars are clean and jangly, the mix has an unassuming spaciousness, and the lyrics are peppered with various references to New England life (Charles Ives would like this band). But of course what propels this album beyond mere feelgoodery is the Afropop. When the band employs such highly engaging syncopated rhythms and riffs in songs like "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" (itself named after a Congolese dance music), a tasty new cocktail is made. It was 22 years before that Paul Simon first broke through with African-infused success, and another take has long since been due. Sit back and enjoy, because you won't be getting this anywhere else.
3. Janelle Monáe - Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition)
An R&B concept EP loosely based on the classic sci-fi film "Metropolis" was certainly one of the most left-field debuts of the year. Unconventionality appears to be Monáe's M.O.: for starters, she's a little firecracker of a performer, a woman who sports an intimidating pompadour and who favors archaic male attire (the fact that she is a former protegé of OutKast may help to explain all this). Hand-in-hand with her personal style goes the style of Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition), where Tin Pan Alley arrangements are punctuated with a delicious balance of digital and acoustic instruments. As a singer, Monáe shows her prowess by belting cries in the dance number "Violet Stars Happy Hunting!!!", moaning melismatic runs in the soulful "Mr. President", and even crooning sweetly along to a soft, fingerpicked electric guitar in "Smile". She packs even more oomph into her voice by deftly multi-tracking it at times, overlaying lines, creating her own call-and-response, and utilizing surprisingly evocative contrapuntal harmonies. Monáe is a promising new artist, poised to bring high art back to popular music. And while the album's story may be more "Blade Runner" than "Metropolis", robots are robots and there are enough gleefully weird aspects to this album to surely tickle all walks of carbon-based lifeforms. There is no escape. You will be assimilated. 2. Philip Glass - Glass Box [box set]
A picture is worth a thousand words, but Philip Glass' music is worth a thousand pictures. Therefore I will refrain from attempting to "review" this lovingly assembled and lavishly packaged ten-disc retrospective of the most renowned and influential living modern composer. Please take the time and listen to the sample pieces provided, and allow these exponents to unfold before you. For Context: "Spaceship" is a movement from Glass' most famous work, the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, and it features the recurring techniques of repeated mathematical sequences, both in the text and in the music. "Façades" is the fifth movement of Glassworks, an album release intended as Glass' most commercial and accessible work. "Powaqqatsi" (Hopi for "life in transition") is the title track to the third installment of a film trilogy, each for which Glass composed the score. You may also recognize it from the film The Truman Show.
When Justin Vernon sequestered himself in his father's winter cabin in northern Wisconsin he was only thinking of recuperation: from a dissolved band, from a broken relationship, from mono. He wasn't thinking about recording an album, so of course that's what naturally occurred. That complete lack of pretension is the second key to this gorgeously bare and moving record. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, we must acknowledge that For Emma, Forever Ago is as much a product of, and soundtrack to, its environment as any record could be. This music is a winter cabin in the woods, a snowstorm, frosted and foggy windows, cold and sweaty toes, seclusion, melancholy introspection, and the promise of a new spring coming, all manifested in strums and hums. It's an urgent and arresting emotional result, and it can't be shaken. When you factor in Vernon's adopted stage name--which is a variation on the French bon hiver meaning "good winter"--and the moody cover photo, the "depressing wintertime" theme may begin to feel like a gimmick. However to dismiss this record on such grounds is to only cheat yourself. Vernon, while bearing almost no intentions to create a professional record, made many subtle yet astute choices in the recording of this music. The soft acoustic guitars are close-miked, contrasting disorientingly with the reverberant vocals ("Creature Fear"). The chord progressions are colored by extended, pentatonic harmonies ("Lump Sum"), like a hero made more ambiguous by a drinking problem. And Vernon's vocals are the pièce de résistance; a fragile falsetto with a bluesy inflection that can get roughed up when needed, it, like the album itself, wields the combined bare emotionality of soul and stripped down indie rock. Vernon adds further dimensions by fervently multi-tracking his voice into landscapes of harmonies and choruses, and adding dashes of auto-tune and other modern studio tricks ("Wolves [Acts I and II]"). After all this, the album concludes with "re: Stacks", which strips away even the modest accouterments of the other tracks, leaving six minutes of a strummed guitar and Vernon's lone voice. It is the best song released this year. The simplest, most basic and most common setup for a song leaves nothing between the listener and the aching, bittersweet longing. Like a seagull over the ocean, the vocals dip in a lovely interplay with the guitar, which responds with a few hammer-ons. Vernon alters the melody with each stanza, and when he does something so incredibly simple as go up to the fourth instead of down to the second, we catch our breath for the sheer beauty of it all. For Emma somehow plays both the part of the vulnerable wounded animal, and the kind hermit who takes it into his winter cabin to care for it. As Vernon whispers the final line "Your love will be safe with me", you find the hope to believe it. _____________________________________________________________________________
Honorable Mentions
Bill Frisell - History, Mystery Ben Folds - Way to Normal [fake version] DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist - The Hard Sell Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords Jamie Lidell - Jim No Age - Nouns Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual Shugo Tokumaru - Exit S.M.V. - Thunder
