PREVIOUSLY: #200-101 – The newbies and also-rans.
#90-81 – Jazz revisionism, shady fact-checking, Muppetized gangsta rap, and the no pussy blues.
#80-71 – A ragtag assembly of pop stars and other hate-able entities
#60-51 – Sex, suicide, misogyny, and a brief appearance by Amy Winehouse
#50-41 – 8 songs that deserve your attention, 2 songs that probably already have it
#40-31 – Dylan covers, guest spots and banging camp
The story ends with The Chemical Brothers losing. In the halcyon days of “electronica” hype, Tom Rolands and Ed Simmons garnered the musical equivalent of “breakout actress,” when all the rock magazines pegged them as the forefront of the predicted dance-music takeover—or, at least, that’s what they did when they weren’t fixating on Keith Flint’s inverted Mohawk. By the turn of the century, everyone knew that electronica as a commercial prospect was a dud. Though the Chems continued to put out staggering albums, their brand of rock-structured rave songs didn’t have much of a place in the musical climate. By the end of 2001, Daft Punk had dropped Discovery, and merged electronica with pop—of both the Van Halen and Kylie Minogue varieties—while Timbaland and UK Garage tricked out R&B with dance beats, and vice versa. In January of 2002, The Chemical Brothers released Come With Us—arguably, the apex of their discography—to mass indifference. Nestled at its heart, “Star Guitar” is a hypnotic hymn to electronica’s promise, that pays homage to that scene’s hallmarks—raves, beats, and ecstasy—while it mourns their passing. It’s no wonder that the song’s central lyric, “You should feel what I feel/ You should take what I take,” reads like an enticement, but sounds like a regret.
The decade teems with stories of dudes recording masterpieces in their bedrooms, from The Postal Service to Bon Iver, but no other window box-grown song rings with as much wordliness as Zach Condon’s “Postcards From Italy.” As most listeners’ introduction to Beirut, it’s a great trick—a strictly Balkan sound in a strictly indie rock package. Three albums in, it turns out it’s just about Condon’s only trick. And it’s still great. After tons of successful tweaks of the same formula (“Nantes,” “Elephant Gun,” “My Wife, Lost in the Wild”), “Postcards From Italy” still soars above the rest of Beirut’s catalogue. Along Condon’s with back-story—he was a student at the University of New Mexico when he recorded his debut album, Gulag Orkestrar—the title, horns, and plaintive voice actually evoke a kid imagining himself in Italy, rather than really being there. Subsequently, it’s the transporting quality of the song that resonates so deeply.
It’s tempting to think of “Maps” in broad strokes—as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ signature song; as a commercial crossover; as the last great power ballad—but “Maps” succeeds because of its component parts. Yes, Karen O rings every ounce of truth out of each time she implores you to stay—each, “I love you,” each “Wait!” But Karen’s bloodshed performance could never have flown without her bandmates. Nick Zinner’s guitar playing sounds like an icicle forming, while Brian Chase’s drums rumble louder than a mastodon, or a Mastodon. The end result has a nearly tribal impact, as if the music keeps pushing and pushing toward an enormous external revelation, but Karen O goes in the opposite direction, digging for an internal one buried deep within the confines of the word love.
“No Regrets” is literate rap the way that the work of Dr. Suess is literate literature. At no time does Aesop Rock ever give away that what he’s doing is even the least bit artful, yet the song tells an immaculate three-act story, and drives toward a truthful and compact moral. The beast gleefully snatches two samples from different songs off of the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack—some Enya-baiting vocals from Clannad’s “I Will Find You,” and the violins from Trevor Jones’ “The Kiss,” which producer Blockhead echoes with turntable scratches—and affixes them to a simple loop of guitar plunking. The real show, though, happens in Aesop Rock’s rhymes, which may eschew the rules of grammar (he begins, “Lucy was seven and wore a head of blue barrettes.”), but do it in service of concise storytelling. Lucy grows up as a reclusive weirdo, but spends day and night drawing. On her deathbed, she reveals, “I've never had a dream in my life/ Because a dream is what you wanna do but still haven't pursued/ I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done/ So I've been the dream that I wanted to be since day one!" Like the best children’s books, “No Regrets” illuminates something new about life every time you hear it.
Critics and fans fell all over themselves and each other on the release of The Strokes’ Is This It, dredging up novel ways to compare the band with Velvet Underground. Yet, the band carves “Last Nite,” their most enduring hit, out of Motown and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ “American Girl”—two of the most patently uncool influences you could cop to. Singer Julian Casablancas attempts to untangle his feelings for his girl and comes up an empty-handed 23 year old driven by leftover teenage angst. He goofily lists the people that can’t understand how he feels—girlfriends, himself, spaceships, grandsons. Kids three generations from now will still fail to understand him, that’s how bent up Casablancas is. At the end of the day, he’s still vague about whether or not he’s walking out on his girlfriend, but for all its lyrical wormholing, and bubblegum aspirations, “Last Nite” is still the kind of American tune held together by duct tape and a Huey Lewis-style guitar solo, constantly threatening to ride off the rails, but the rails have padded walls on either side. In other words, it was an instant classic.
Self-loathing is not just the best source of comedy, it’s damn near the only source of comedy. On his first post-Pharcyde single, Fatlip takes rap self-loathing to hilarious new lows. He alludes to getting kicked out of his former group for allegedly using crack. He suggests that you probably think he’s gay before calling himself a “bitch-ass nigga.” Then, he tops it all by attempting to reprise The Pharcyde’s biggest hit, “Passin’ Me By,” and sounding like a 64 year old homeless dude. On a deeper level, “What’s Up, Fatlip?” is about trying to hold yourself together while every single thing in your life is in shambles. For him, that manifests itself in the chorus, “Who am I fooling/ When they be like, ‘What’s up, Fatlip?’/ And I say, “Coolin’,” but it’s also revealed in the sound of the song itself. Allegedly produced by Fatlip using the moniker “Edy Crahp” (or Pharcyde spelled backwards), the track kicks off with a sound like a cartoon missile falling to earth, and features fragmented drums and piano that seem to deconstruct themselves as the song progresses.
24. Róisín Murphy – “Sow Into You” (2005)
23. Ghostface – “Save Me Dear” (2004)
It was a good decade for horns. Since sometime around the decline of the Minneapolis sound, horns had been scarce commodities in pop music. Everything was all classic rock guitars, frigid beats and recognizable samples. You had your “The National Anthem” and your “The Whole World,” sure, but those were the exceptions, until, sometime around “Crazy in Love,” the bubble burst and the warm humanity of a dazzling horn section became fashionable again. Though they come from two disparate sources, Róisín Murphy’s “Sow Into You” and Ghostface’s “Save Your Dear” showcase two of the best, post-Rich Harrison horn samples of the last ten years. On “Sow Into You,” producer Matthew Herbert grafts the song’s entire rhythmic backbone to his trumpet line, drawing parallels to big band music as well as house. Murphy weaves in and out of the horns, singing through them as if she were enticing a lover through the bars of a jail cell. Ghostface similarly gets out of the way of his source material, Freddie Scott’s “You Got What I Need” (famously used for Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend”), rapping inside and out of liberal samples of Scott’s vocal—and those horns. The result is one of the rare Ghostface joints where the production nearly outshines the rapping itself. Maybe that’s because Ghostface produced it.
Summer flings can often contain as much drama and excitement as a full-fledged, year-spanning romance. There’s something mystical about them. Or maybe it’s just a mild euphoria created when the sun fries your brain cells. Either way, summer fling songs can be some of the most potent pieces of music out there. Why do you think Grease’s “Summer Nights” has had such an extended shelf life? It’s not because of the songwriting, and it’s not because of John Travolta.
On “Throwaway Style,” The Exploding Hearts marry the summer fling song with one of the other most irresistible forces in rock music—the “Walking on Sunshine”/“Modern Love” rhythm (see also #26)—to create a juggernaut of giddy romantic promise. The song begins with the girl out of the picture, after singer Adam Cox has helped her pack for a move to Seattle with her boyfriend. He still sleeps at their old campsite, and the song is built around a sly, flirty plea for her to come back: “I know our love is over/ Unless you come over.” Simple stuff, but in Cox’s and The Exploding Hearts’ hands, it becomes an opera of innocent passion—at turns sad, joyous, and beguiling.
The other day, I discovered that Ridley Scott soundtracked the duration of the movie Aliens with the sound of human breathing, just below noticeable levels, in order to create an foreboding tension through the entire film. Breath is a pretty astounding thing. On “In the Morning,” Junior Boys build a three-part breath sound right into the beat, and it makes the song sound like a physical experience. A Cybotron-checking keyboard riff cascades off of a forward-marching, insistent rhythm, while Andi Toma of Mouse On Mars makes a veritable pop star of himself with his vocal performance. But it’s the insistence of breath that takes “In the Morning” to its level of greatness, as if Toma were a one-man chain gang building a road in the middle of the club toward the break of the first daylight.
-Martin Brown, 2009
I would argue that Mastodon has bigger drums than a mastodon and possibly even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but that's by virtue of them being a humongous band in general.
That brings up the fact that I've noticed a distinct lack of representation from the metals in this list. If that whole genre just isn't your thing though, I definitely understand that.
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.09.26 at 21:27
Maps seems like an odd choice for YYY's signature song, since most of their stuff seems to have lots of screaming guitars and just plain screaming. It's their most famous, but it's kind of a different than a lot of their stuff, isn't it? It's cool; I like them both ways.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.09.26 at 23:40
I love what Karen O summons up in the Maps video - it's like she's channeling some kind of emotional alienation hurricane that you could never possibly be emo enough to understand.
Funny how that's all that's gotten commented on.
These lists are great!
Posted by: Zeb L. West | 2009.09.27 at 23:53
Perhaps you didn't have time to write about Róisín Murphy? Well, without your mixes I would have never listened to her, ever, so here's a little tid bit on her video:
Róisín Murphy dances like my friend Cheriece. Kinda jazz. Kinda modern. Kinda robot. Way dorky. (I love you Cheriece.) Which is weird since this is pretty straight forward dance music. Thank goodness someone has added about ten sci-fi/mechanical/botanical/animal/spandex costumes with computer animation wings, tentacles, spider legs and Stegosaurus style back plates to distract us from the 80’s white girl moves Murphy is rocking.
I imagined her being much smoother and cooler than this and I couldn’t be happier with the awkward goober presented in the video. I heart the weird ones.
Posted by: Spitfire | 2009.09.28 at 09:55
What's Up, Fatlip? is one of the defining songs and videos of our era. I honestly believe that. Too bad his album was awful.
I liked a few other Ghost songs more, but I agree with your reasoning. For me, Ghost pretty much killed hardcore hip-hop with a song so tough, everyone else looks silly in comparison. (The Watch) I liked the use of the gimmick of rapping over an R&B song better on Heard It All Before. My pick for most inventive Ghost song goes to Chez Chez La Ghost. But really, if this were my list, and the joy is that it's not, but if it were, I'd go with The Mask on the Dangerdoom album.
I love The Chemical Brothers and I think I always will. Just great, great music there. Although, Daft Punk did ultimately do it better! ^_^
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.09.28 at 16:52