The Factual Opinion

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 1

Animal Collective
Strawberry Jam

Imagine Animal Collective as the Lost Boys from Peter Pan—orphaned by their babysitters and living as eternal kids on an island in their own imaginations.  Strawberry Jam could only have come from a set of truly youthful minds.  Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakon (all names that could exist right alongside Tootles, Nibs, Slightly Soiled and Curly) collaborate with the freedom of elementary-schoolers:  one wants to be cowboys and indians, but one wants to man a spaceship, so they end up chasing each other through the future armed with bows and arrows and Colt 45s.  In their hands, collaboration resists becoming a unified whole, and instead becomes a barrage of distinct voices—each tumbling over, bouncing off and clashing with the others.

Looking back, 2007 was a year of quiet successes.  Generally, our favorite artists refined the things that they had always done well—and frequently ended up with career albums.  Jay-Z shed his persona as a sociopathic rap juggernaut and finally dropped an album that surpassed The Blueprint.  Radiohead channeled their last ten years of experimentation into an album about love and making love.  James Murphy found room within his caustic rants for genuine sentiment, while Sam Beam found room within his pure sentiment for a little boogie-woogie.  This kind of thing happened all over the rock landscape, and 2007 rolled deep.  Even the also-ran albums—Good Bad Not Evil, The Flying Club Cup, Graduation, The Big Doe Rehab, Double Up, to name a few—all packed a mean punch.

Amongst all these quiet successes, a shitstorm of brand new ideas sticks out dramatically.  Strawberry Jam may not match the consistency of any other album in our Top 30, but it brims over with youthful exuberance and experimentation where 2007’s other offerings feel studiously conservative.  When it succeeds, it does so loudly—the album’s best moments sound unlike anything else in pop music.

Yes, *pop* music.  It may seem strange to label Animal Collective with that adjective, but Strawberry Jam—at its best—wrestles with the limits of accessibility.  “For Reverend Green” has Avey Tare frequently bursting into screams.  Each scream simultaneously interrupts and punctuates the lines.  It’s a virtuosic performance—one whose potential abrasiveness gets offset by the folksy melody and the buoyant backing “Whoo-hoo-hoo”s.  “Fireworks,” the subsequent track, begins with a propulsive march of a drumbeat and similarly precocious “Whoo”s before launching into the album’s catchiest song—it builds from a singsong melody to a series of yelps, then jumps back to melody.  Back-to-back they give the one-two punch of Sound of Silver’s “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” a run for its money.

“For Reverend Green” and “Fireworks” showcase Animal Collective at the height of their powers—raucous and loose, propulsive and dynamic, fearless.  The rest of the album aims for similar grandiosity.  While it’s hard to top the 13 minute centerpiece of those two songs, it’s constantly fun hearing them try.  The songs often use simple, catchy verses to build and sustain a rhythm before exploding into surprising fits of music.  Frequently, they manage to create stunning moments—most notably on the album closer, “Derek,” which transforms from a goofy jingle into a stadium-sized stomping chant of “When you count/ when you count/ when you count/ when you count/ count on me/ count on me/ count on me/ count on me.”

Though the members of Animal Collective tug and fight for creative space throughout Strawberry Jam, they all seem to take on the perspective of a pre-pubescent kid.  A new type of pop music could only come from that mind—uncluttered, obnoxious, sweet, optimistic, playful, abrasive, and honest; lost, maybe, but not in any hurry to be found.

-Marty Brown, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 2

The National
Boxer

Brett Favre retired and people can’t stop talking about it.  I fucking hate Brett Favre, and nobody will shut up about how much they already miss Brett Favre and how great Brett Favre is and what a battler and warrior and leader and how can we possibly carry on without Brett Favre.  Fuck Brett Favre, and fuck everyone who comes out of the woodwork to say, "you know, I don’t really like the Packers / football / my personal uselessness, and I know you hate him, but I have to say, I sure did like watching Brett Favre play."  To which I must reply, "I hope you tear your groin muscles and your internal organs protrude through the tear and it causes you lots of pain, and that you are constantly forced to explain your pain to both medical professionals and casual acquaintances at work who want to know why you’re wincing all the damn time."  If this hatred for an athlete I’ve never met is irrational, well, it’s no more irrational than the fat men crying openly across the upper Midwest about the most overrated hick in the history of Wrangler commercials.

That, friends and neighbors, is a statement that will forever capture my personal spin on the spirit of these particular times.  Particularly because it is now published.  Reaching way back through several years of hack writing, I feel much the same about the National’s Boxer.

OK, given the extreme high regard in which I hold this album, that’s a bit of structural stretch.  I absolutely defend the comparison AND the Favre statements, but for the sake of a well constructed review, I’ll start again with a conversation piece.  I’ll also vow to get this done before the Ides of March next time.

A good friend of mine finds a way to trash the rise of the Arcade Fire every time we talk music.  Why, he argues, does everyone love all that earnestness?  It’s not impressive, and it for sure doesn’t represent the secular spirituality for disaffected graduates with little-to-nothing to really be disaffected about anymore.  To exaggerate / partially refute his point of view, this vague, millenniums-old, highly under-publicized conflict between the Western Christians and Eastern Muslims isn’t any Cold War or Vietnam or anything.  And this prevailing economic fear rooted in too much TV and too many movies is some pinko blue-state bullshit that we already know all about from the Beatles.  So when you set out to bang on a xylophone in an outdoor amphitheater, you just don’t have to mean it so much, you dig?  Regardless of whether you’re with my friend or against him, it’s a dilemma.

So then we have Boxer, coming at your quasi-heavy-stress like William Blake’s Songs Of Experience.  It’s perfectly crafted pop music for the impossibly under-wizened contemporary dude (gender neutral).  This dude is disaffected by all this disaffectedness and all this love of irony and all this love of earnestness.  This dude is aware that it ALL comes and goes – and I mean ALL of it, the hair, the clothes, the trends, the issues, the relationships, the technology, the concern, the posturing, the fear, the triumph, the pain, the slipping, the bitterness, the slogans, the mantras, the sense that things done changed and fools don’t even recognize, and the feeling that it should’ve been better.  This dude has become the blogging everyman, alienated by elder Internet statesmen, SportsCenter anchors, and college kids who still get to party like it’s 1999.  This dude knows that conversations about novelty should have stayed novel longer than they have, but that everyone’s grandparents probably felt the same (like the high school umbrellas production of Our Town and shit). This dude’s time is upon us, and this album is said dude’s wheelhouse.  This album is a timeless album of resigned, patient acceptance of the full spectrum.  It’s also a brilliant and timely answer to the question, ‘meh, what can you do?’

That’s a bold effing statement.  How do you back that up?  Lyric snippets?  Comments on the vocal quality, Soul Coughing-era M. Doughty slurred ooooouuuuhs at the end of every line like the singer couldn’t be bothered to finish that one crisp?  Talk about the play between the rhythm and the melody, and it works so much better when you’re hid behind the couch together, half asleep in a fake empire, than it does when you’re trying to bob your head to Bloc Party and just can’t bring yourself to do it anymore?  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis?  Nope, actually, I don’t have to back my statements up.  I’m on internet time, baby.  I fucking finished college years ago.  Are you going to make me, dear reader?  Seriously, you?

In conclusion, if I didn’t worry about the review for the second best album of the year marring an already silly list with a little too much silliness, I’d have devoted all of the non-Brett Favre space here to the things I would fight to convince you of my love for this album.  The list would have included Russell Crowe’s gang from Romper Stomper.  Oh yeah.

-Josh Woodbeck, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 3

LCD Soundsystem
Sound Of Silver

LCD Soundsystem.  It's the one that everybody loves?  It's a critical consensus.  Let's talk about it as a mind-warping odyssey of electronic poetry, and allude to it's place in the future's canon of musical classics.  Let's examine it, aesthetically, against the great works of Cervantes, Brahms and Cezanne.  Do I know Cezanne well enough?  Diebenkorn isn't in that class, him I know well.  Monet?  I know Monet.  No connection though, Cervantes has obvious connection.  Brahms, that's a sucker way out, not Brahms.  Like the classical idea though, but there's not enough of a relationship.  Jazz connections are what everybody does.  Too many people write about jazz.  Don't join them. 

Make jokes about each individual song, which will be easy for some because the lyrics are so obvious, and they're easy to remember.  And hear, they're easily memorable lyrics.  You can sing along with this if you want to after hearing it through a few times.  Already sort of did that with Grinderman, should've saved it?  Can't do that twice in a row.  Can't do that ever again?  Wait for another music list.  Another one?  Jokes about "Sound of Silver" are easy, but that's probably the point, all that teen-ager stuff, it's so obvious.  Probably been done.  Ugh.

Nevermind that.  Let's turn it into one of those personal explanations of why the individual reviewing it really "gets" the songs, because of the reviewers proximity to New York City, and find some way to name-drop the people who the reviewer knows that were somewhat involved with James Murphy while he was recording.  Or just imply it.  Just write about New York, write about being bored, wanting to party, learning how to let go.  Sex.  Write about sex and the album.  Focus on the mundane aspects of listening to something that describes a life more interesting than one's own.  That's going to be depressing and too bloggy.  Obvious again.  Maybe just see if he'll let me post those pics of Murphy?  No, that would be gross.  Don't even know why that's coming up.  Not that interesting anyway: drunk and silly doesn't say much.

Wait.  Use Alex Ross The Rest Is Noise, and google, to make it sound like the reviewer really understands how music is made.  Make it seem like we're Sasha Frere-Jones, and can talk about music and how it's constructed, we can talk about 4/4 time, and chord progression, or the difference in key structure, all that stuff, while it's still not talking out of one's ass.  Still, who's that for?  What's the audience for this anyway?  Assumptions: on the fence readers aren't going to care about album reviews of last year unless they're disgusted with taste choice.  Tired of hearing about Person Pitch and how it should of been higher.  It should have been better, than it would be higher.  Better how?  Not as fun as this album.  Tried that with Fishscale last year, never really liked the way it worked.  Coming after likable stuff, good albums, that's impossible to write.  Shouldn't have deleted all the bad albums from hard drive, that might have helped.  No, then we'd have to listen to them again.

Just deal with the "All My Friends" video, and how perfect it is.  Talk about getting chills when the camera dollies back.  That way we can talk about imagery and personal emotions, we know that stuff.  That can work.  Don't watch the video again for a long while, try to maintain that emotional memory without the dilution of repetition.  Probably the only person with that reaction.  That trick has been done before.  Probably by Eisenstein, he did everything first.

No, make somebody else write it, do it like it's the comics interview stuff, where you just pass all responsibility onto someone else to do the thinking, take the bullet, and then you just type out what's tape-recorded, which still feels like work.  Who though?  Not going to be as easy to convince somebody to re-listen to album, it'll be disjointed, and it can't be somebody who's already writing.  Still like the pay a homeless person idea, but think that should be saved for a comic.  Listening to an album with a homeless person--that's going to take too long, waste of their time.  They have stuff they do, don't treat them like ciphers.

Oh, plagiarism.  Like the World War II guy, Stephen Hawkins.  No, that's not his name.  Ambrose?  Plagirize somebody really obvious too, that will probably avoid trouble.  Try to get caught, replace the review with a copy of a cease and desist.  Would've been better to just post cease and desist itself, but how do you get one?  Start a new blog just to plagirize, than anonymously turn myself in?  That could work.  Probably not a good idea.  Try to find a blog that's plagirized stuff, figure out what happened to them first.  Don't want to screw things up here for an album review.

Talk about the death of the album, or the rise of the mp3 blogs, or file-sharing, or mixtapes.  Something relatively contemporary, something that's always being talked about.  Post links to audio clips from Sealab and claim they are the songs.  This could work regardless of review method.  Hate file-sharing articles though, they're so MSNBC.  Find something else, but remember the Sealab idea.  What you find funny, not what anybody else will.  Not what anybody else thinks is funny, that's Good Will Hunting.  You.  Otherwise it's everything else.  Remember the reasons.

Just hyperlink other reviews.  Or do that old Amazon idea, where you just copy and paste all the terribly written Amazon reviews.  Especially the negative ones, the negative ones with lots of cursing, those always make music sound better.  Start early enough, you can probably get some kind of weird email back and forth between the really creepy ones.  Wait, this is good.  Go to wikipedia as well, delete the whole review, or really louse it up somehow, then keep checking to see who fixes it.  Contact them somehow, they all use chat, don't they?  They must.  They would.  But what are they going to say?  How much work would that take?  That's too much work.

Jesus, just write about how late this is going up.  When are these going to be finished?  At this point, is anybody still going to want to talk about LCD Soundsystem but me?  Focus on that, focus on how it's still worth repeating.  Is there anything in 08 yet with this replay value?  Besides Black Mountain and Dub Trio?  There's always something.  Nothing as big yet.  Was Silver immediately big?

Find the old Wire with the Murphy cover story, it'll spark something.  Make jokes about his weight?  Hard to tell, sometimes he does look pretty heavy.  That won't go anywhere.  Just mean and weird.  Too immature.  Heh, can't believe I wrote that.

Call them the new Metallica.  No one will get that.  No, the new...who?  New Kinks.  That's even less comprehensible.  Make fun of Prodigy, that'll never get old, right.  Hordes of Jericho versus "North American Scum."  Post videos?  Hate video posts on write-ups.  Link to that scarecrow getting punched in the face.  Link to E2-E4, compare and contrast.

Get drunk?  Write while drunk?  Not worth it.  Fake it?  Fake drunk is never really funny.   Never interesting.

Translate Pitchfork's review into other languages with babelfish until it's almost completely unreadable?  What if it's already completely unreadable.  Haven't looked at Pitchfork in months.  Look at Pitchfork again.  Where'd they put this album?  Make fun of Spin for their Against Me pick?  No, Spin is done.  That's pointless.  Pointless road, don't go down it.

Talk to sister.  Bought it for her, she probably can say something funny.  Can't base a write-up on quotes.

Why is this one so difficult?  Just put something up, anything.  Doesn't matter anyway, right.  No, matters, it matters.  Talk about great albums at perfect moments--Nirvana Nevermind, Godspeed F-sharp, Helmet Betty, Radiohead The Bends, Eliott Smith Either/Or, yeah, Silver is in that class.  We can't be the only one's who feel that way.  Wait, that's not it either, it doesn't matter if anybody does.  It's music, it's going to have to have that personal kind of relationship, it's going to be there even if we try not to write about it.  Write about the way "Get Innocuous" sounds when you're walking, how you walk in time to it, and you feel ashamed because why the hell are you doing that, timing your walk?  Is that a definition of "great music?"  People aren't moonwalking to work while listening to Michael Jackson.  But that happens everytime with Innocuous, right?  That's never going to go anywhere.  You can't write a whole paragraph on beat-timed walking.  Write about how it sounds in a car, really loud?  Isn't that going to be tied up with smoking while driving fast?  Not enough smokers left for that to appeal to anyone, and everyone is having babies, nobody drives fast.  Except kids, hate kids, hate them.  Hate hate hate.  Write about things. you. hate.  Write about those trainwreck assholes on American Idol, that'll really date the piece.  Fucking trash maggots, baby eaters.  Dreadlocked serial rapist, Carly the sack of trash.  Sales, none of them sell.  Murphy beat them in sales, had to.  Don't even look it up, assume he did.  Move away from that, it's going nowhere.  Now you're thinking about Tyler Perry movies, there's no correlation there.  Maybe there is?  Putting on a dress, putting on an act?  Putting on the party when the parties over?  Keyboards and drums a cowbell, but it's just a room, just a studio?  No friends are there at "All My Friends?"  No, nothing there.  All music is somewhat a lie.  All art, somewhat a lie.  Painting?  No, painting too, maybe, a bit.  Sculpture=biggest lie.  Takes too long.  People die, you're still sculpting.

None of this is useful.  It's like a dream journal of handicapped.  Dump it.  Move on.  Just keep listening to the album, everything has to be there, something is there.  Music is the answer.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 4

Grinderman
Grinderman

It's been said, and it just might be true, that Nick Cave is somewhat of a fraud.  That his signature vocal delivery and his obsessively overwrought lyrics are symptomatic of a guy putting on an act.

It's totally true.  Just like Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, Cave's work with the Bad Seeds is full of songs that are trying just way too goddamn hard to be little one act plays--Meloy vocalizes some David Eggers, whereas Cave is all about Sam Shepherd by way of Steinbeck.  On paper, Cave's stuff is almost completely ridiculous, as anyone who struggled through The Ass Saw The Angel can tell you.  Film-wise, Cave's script for the Proposition is pretty standard noir-by-way-of-the West, but John Hillcoat is such a brilliant director that there any of Cave's failings were completely dismantled.  On the vocal tip, well, that should be pretty obvious.  Does anyone really believe that Nick Cave talks like that?  That he orders a cheeseburger and sounds like a cross between Clint Eastwood and a drunk Elvis Presley?  Of course not.  Nobody talks like that.  Hell, James Earl Jones has a terrible stutter.  (Still!) Get real.

There's a Warren Ellis that writes comic books, usually about math.  He's not the same Warren Elllis who Cave works with on movie scores, or on the Grinderman stuff.  Totally different people.  One is a guy you wouldn't let into your house, but later you'll wish you did (the music one) and one you'd probably be excited to get coffee with, and then later you'd wish you'd brought a crowbar to jack his eyeballs out with.  (The comic one.)  You'll have made these mistakes because you judged books by their covers--the musical Ellis looks sort of like Charles Manson on acid, which is just about as unnerving as it sounds, whereas the comic one looks sort of like your next-door neighbors 40 year old son who lives in the basement and plays a lot of ping pong.  (By himself!)

There's a song on Grinderman where a guy has green flippers, he sings the blues, he's probably fucking your wife, he's got a pornographic frown, and he's going to skate out of town in the middle of the night to dodge the IRS.  Having flippers ain't enough.  He's a tax evader too, just like Wesley Snipes.  Except he's like Wesley Snipes before you found out that Wesley Snipes beat Halle Berry so bad that she can't hear out of her left ear.  You know, back when he was Nino Brown and you liked him, and thought he was cool.  And now, even though you might joke about hitting Halle Berry for being such a terrible actress, you don't think it's cool that Wesley Snipes did it for real, because when you were so irritated watching her in X-Men, you weren't serious about it, she's just a crappy actress.  Who hits women, anyway?  This ain't RUSSIA, for chrissakes.  It's America, we don't hit girls.  C'mon "WESLEY."  In other words, "Get It On" is about Wesley Snipes when he did Drop Zone with Parker Lewis from Parker Lewis Can't Lose, even more so, because the character Cave sings about in "Get It On" probably has that jacket that Parker Lewis' nerdy friend had, the one that he was always pulling surfboards out of.  God, that was a great show.  So much better than the sitcom based on Ferris Beuller.  That shit was awful.

The big single that everybody heard off Grinderman was "No Pussy Blues," a song about all the terribly demeaning shit a guy thinks he needs to put himself through to get laid, when in all truthfulness he should probably just be himself, y'know?  Nobody gets turned on by desperation.  It's just so unattractive.  You don't like my little chihuahua?  Fine, that's fine.  But I'm more likely to sleep with you if you just say hey, look, your dog.  Your dog is fucking disgusting.  Get him off my lap, or I'm going throw him into a wall, and I don't care if that pisses you off.  Maybe I should just leave.  No, I'm not going to do your dishes.  We're on a date.  Who's ever gotten turned on when a guy says, "god, you're so fucking hot, i just wanna wash your orange juice cup from this morning, oh shit, you had oatmeal, that shit, it's all stuck to the bowl, lemme get that steel wool,  that steel wool that makes blue suds, oh you're so goddamn hot."

Some people's version of Grinderman doesn't have that song "Vortex" on it, because some people actually paid for the album, which is so fucking 1995 of them.  Too bad, 'cause Vortex is one of the best songs on the album, or on the pre-release mix, or whatever it is you call it when your version of the album has the songs in a different order than the one that costs 17.99.  "Vortex" is all about how Nick is gonna "step into the vortex" with you, because that's where you and him can be together.  There's not a lot else to say about it, oh except that it's totally bonerific and that it's the perfect description of what everybody wants to do with their special someone, usually on a Sunday evening if the two individuals both have to go work on Monday morning.  Like your job all you want, but someday, you're going find somebody that makes you want to call in and say, hey boss--both my parents are dead, i'm never coming back, and oh yeah I'm the one who dropped that deuce that ranked the place last week.

"Don't Set Me Free" is one of those classic "please for the love of god don't dump me, seriously, i know everybody says they'll change, but seriously i WILL change, like Bryan McKnight style change" or it might be one of those classic "i really don't want to do this anymore, don't worry about dumping me, I'm gonna beat you to it, NATCH, don't let the door hit you on the way, on second thought, stand right there, i'm gonna slam it on your head, what, am I the T-1000?  Do I look like Robert Patrick?  Say it.  Say I'm Robert Patrick" songs.  In other words, it means whatever you want it to mean, depending on how much you and your special somebody have their shit together.  Are you sharing?  You better be sharing.  Start sharing.  Feelings, talk about them.

Everything on Grinderman works out pretty much as fantastically as music can pretty much work out.  In a year where everybody, except 50 Cent, worked with a great production staff, Grinderman figured out a way to make an album consisting mostly of songs that sound like they were recorded in a treehouse through a Campbell's soup can connected to a Commodore 64 in a garage somewhere while all the participants were drunk and watching old Depeche Mode videos.  It's got the balls of a case of Coors mixed with the fey sensibility of way too much Morrissey, meaning you can believe that the Grinder's would be able to throw down a herculean amount of brewskis while at the same time get their asses totally kicked if there was an actual brawl breaking out.  It's one of the most fun albums on this list, yet it's also one of those albums that it's sort of embarrassing to admit how much you're totally in love with--because, really, it's just a big lie.  It's blues garage rock in a leisure suit, it's a really exciting bar band, it's a bunch of guys taking the piss.  It's, as one of our reviewers put it, flabbergasted we liked it so much, "just like Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion!" 

Well, maybe.  Maybe it is.  But it's the best version of all that bullshit, and it came out this year, and it's in the top five.  Go fuck your mother, or something.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 5

Jay-Z
American Gangster

It says something that our favorite rap albums this year came from veterans. Dälek are the new jacks here, showing up in 1998. Wu-Tang Clan, Devin the Dude and Pharoahe Monch have been representing since the early nineties, and Sean Price made a run of it with Heltah Skeltah in the middle of that decade (which he talks about brilliantly on Jesus Price Supastar’s “Mess You Made.”) So why, among all these hip-hop lifers, does Jay-Z still feel like an elder statesman? 

Jay-Z’s retirement from rap, after The Black Album, may be easy to mock, and his subsequent comeback may have been totally predictable, but something incredibly important happened in his absence: He got comfortable. When he resurfaced in 2006 with Kingdom Come, he displayed an emotional maturity missing from his earlier work.  The Blueprint, for example, while airtight in its production, lyrically screams insecurity—from Jay’s beef with Nas and Mobb Deep, to his assertion that he’ll “Never Change.” Kingdom Come was both underrated and exactly the failure it was said to be, but it was also the first time Jay-Z’s whole self showed up on record; the first time his rap persona became a three-dimensional character; the first time he asked questions rather than making assertions. As Rob Harvilla said in the Village Voice, Jay-Z made good on The Black Album’s threat to rhyme like Common Sense. One of the few times he acknowledges Kingdom Come on American Gangster, he antagonizes us. On “Ignorant Shit,” he says, “I make some thought-provoking shit, y’all question whether he fallen off,” and it’s the perfect description of that misstep. That album provoked thought by honestly depicting the emotional life of the rapper/CEO. But it was still shit.

 “To be a gangster, swagger is not a must,” the intro to American Gangster says, “It’s a liability.” Pre-retirement Jay-Z had swagger for days, but it spoke to his constantly having something to prove. That was the most compelling part of his personality, largely because there wasn’t anything else. American Gangster takes the multi-dimensional Jay-Z that emerged on Kingdom Come, eschews the introspection that marred that album, re-energizes him, and finally lays down the type of surgically precise lyrics he’s been telling us he’s had this whole time. American Gangster is, yes, a reinterpretation and reinvention of the Ridley Scott movie of the same name—but, largely, it’s about success. For the first time, Jay-Z actually seems to feel his own success. Not having to worry about who he’s better than or what you think of him, he actually has more fun than he’s had at least since Reasonable Doubt; maybe ever. Instead of Kingdom Come’s “thought-provoking shit” (that, at the end of the day, came off more as navel-gazing shit), we get actual thought-provoking shit in the form of “Ignorant Shit,” which claims to give his audience exactly what it wants with the chorus, “Nigga fuck shit ass bitch trick plus ice.” Instead of looking inward, he sees his own complexities in the context of the world. “I wish you well,” he confesses on “American Dreamin’,” “How sick am I?/ I wish you health.” 

In contrast to his peers, Jay-Z sounds like a rap dignitary because he sounds fed when other rappers still sound hungry. It’s a complete reversal of what’s usually great about hip-hop, and Jay-Z may be the only rapper in existence that could pull it off. For once, his braggadocio is completely on point—he may be the first rapper to ever sound completely at ease with his life while at the same time, sound compelling as well.

-Martin Brown, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 6

Deerhunter
Cryptograms
Fluorescent Grey

When the lead singer of Deerhunter, Bradford Cox, was in his early 20's and the initial stages of this band, his best friend died in a freak skate boarding accident.  This, along with a past of sickness due to Marfans Syndrome and a history with child prostitution, sent him into a deep spiraling depression.  It is a curse/blessing that has made Bradford very fragile emotionally, yet has taught him to look at the world with a brevity and depth so unusual, fascinating and raw.  Each haunting lyric or part or note in his songs is followed by an insane faith in their ability to turn to beauty. 

In a way, with Cryptograms, he makes that clear through the case of a whole album.  It starts as a coarsely beautiful opus to ambient sound.  Screeching, throbbing, soaring and flowing as one tangled mess into its final stage as an inspired pop music landmark.  In "spring hall convert", Bradford truly makes his presence known for the first time dreaming softly and effortlessly about how he woke up with two girls on the beach from way back when, where he saw the sun rays and ocean consume him with radiation (or something like that).  All this while a simple four note progression rises into a four chord progression before soaring into lead guitarist Lockett Pundt's shoegaze reverb drenched stratosphere; while drummer Moses Archuleta's creates his unforgettable beat and Bradford chants, wails, coos and hums "over over over overhead!" in the echo filled background.  This song is made even more soul crushingly awesome by its follow ups: Deerhunter's ode to the sun and its lead singer's wacky dream of us all walking into it: "strange lights", and the fiercely nostalgic and beautiful "hazel st.”; basking in the beauty and joy of its own loneliness.

Next is this albums four track companion piece, the Fluorescent Grey EP, released a mere three months after Cryptograms.  Fluorescent Grey can be summed up nicely by a description of its title track.  The song begins with the guitars gently rocking back and forth between chords and the drums keeping simple snare drum time as Bradford sings, as if trying to lull himself back to sleep: "I woke up in the middle of the night, I called out, I called your name patiently, patiently.  Why do I dream so often of his body when his body will decay? His flesh will be fluorescent grey, his flesh will be fluorescent grey."  The song then explodes in a fury of squalling guitars and wailing robotic voice effects haunting the song with its constant echoes of the phrase "people never really know", only to slowly lower itself to its initial calm with Bradford whispering frantically, "patiently patiently..."  It's by the most exhilarating song of the year, and by far, its best. 

I know this may all sound very depressing and dense but I will assure you to the contrary.  Deerhunter's density is only there for the purpose of your eternal enjoyment.  Every element of their best songs is presented like a gift with each listen, slowly haunting you like some friendly ghost.  And it's pure, ghost-like spirit is eternally reinforced by the bands wonderful sense of adventure.  Constantly pushing themselves to reinvent their definition of music.  Bradford Cox remains at the forefront of this "journey" posting over a hundred new tracks, demos, and mixtapes on the bands blog.  Not only is it an amazing gift but a fascinating history of Bradford's constant evolution musically.  But as a person he’s still just a nerdy kid from Atlanta who used songwriting to help deal with his pain.  And has in turn showed us, or at least me, that hope isn't something that comes and goes but that is eternally under our feet. Thanks Bradford!

Absolutely my favorite album of the year! WHOOOOOOO!

P.S.: The work of bassist Josh Fauver has been neglected in this article for too long.  He is the throbbing and necessary core of every song.  His shit is smooth as glass.

-Andre Harris, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 7

Kathy Diamond
Miss Diamond To You

I'm just about one of the last people who should be writing about this album.  I don't care much for disco.  I don't carve out much of my life for funk.  In all likelihood, that probably isn't going to change anytime soon.  If things progress the way they're going, eventually my music listening will be just about completely limited to whatever impenetrable drone I can rip torrents of. 

Well, that and Miss Diamond To You.

Most of the reviews I've read of this sort of music (and that's a phrase that no album can go unlabeled by, "this sort of music") are reviews that take it for granted that just about everybody listens to pop/dance/nu-disco unapologetically, with no sense of shame for the time spent with just straight up "fun" music.  Hey, they probably do.  There's a good swath of the population of the world who listen to music for straight up pleasure, that go to movies to escape, prefer their paintings to look as closely as possible to dead royalty, and like their books to end with hard core make-out sessions between a couple of beautiful protagonists.  There's a reason that Friends ran for 700 seasons and The Wire ekes out some pretty tragic Nielsens.  Most of the time, snarky bullshit comes about for the sole reason that critics don't follow the same path--we're so in love with everything that no one's heard of that when we hit up on that which everyone's heard of, recoiling from it becomes the natural response.  Critics run up against somebody talking for hours about how great Little Miss Sunshine is and how dull Zodiac was, and it turns into a "Well, you're a stupid motherfucker, here's why--" and that's just bullshit, most of the time.  Somebody likes to feel good, and Zodiac didn't do that for them.  That doesn't mean they're stupid.  There's nothing inherently wrong with craving good times.  (Not to say that the opposite is true either--if getting creeped and grossed out by Ichi The Killer is your bag, that doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with that either.)  There's a middle ground, here, is what we're saying.  But if you haven't figured out that the middle ground isn't the most stimulating thing to talk about, then you're clearly dodging most of the news, all of the critics and every televised sporting event ever.  Nasty gets eyeballs, tyrants get airtime, and sound bites are constructed out of rantings.  So here's me, trying not to apologize for liking something that's incredibly easy to enjoy--a straight up 2007 disco album from a British singer named Kathy Diamond.  While she's not exactly selling Britney or J.Lo levels, she's probably going to eventually.  And that's great.

Sexy pop, computerized handclaps, an electric bass and a synthesized smoky vocal don't usually translate into the sort of music that I want to listen to--after all, that's pretty much a description that's going to fit about fifty percent of the albums that those intensely obnoxious publicity-hungry prostitutes who make the top 12 of American Idol.  For some reason though--maybe it's because she's British, possibly because she's not all over the celebrity circuit, and mostly because it's out-and-out gorgeous, Kathy Diamond just fucking works.  It's an addictive album, one that starts from the point of "well, that's well produced" and ends up being "god, that's a really great sound" and ends where it's been for the last six months:  A classic pop tour-de-nice.  Never overpowered by the somewhat trendy beats that wouldn't be out of place on an early Massive Attack album, never over-sentimentalized by lyrics that wouldn't be out of place on an Aretha Franklin b-side, and never as ulterior-motivated as any of Madonna's last few "fuck you, i'm as relevant as Like A Prayer" mis-fires,  Miss Diamond To You is one of those albums that, against all odds, convinced a guy who spent most of the year listening to Grinderman and William Basinski that there was still something to be said for music that's just inherently happy, joyful and, ugh to the ugh, danceable.  While it's always going to take an unasked for shot of crystal meth to get this reviewer to shake his uncoordinated, yet delightfully attractive ass, Miss Diamond could make for the perfect soundtrack to that intensely tragic moment. 

Nevermind.  Let's put it in the now-defunct terminology of the hopeful winner of Project Runway. 

Miss Diamond To You?

Shit is fierce.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 8

Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

I do not want to write about this.  It's so fucking stupid.  Everyone on the planet knows that Spoon doesn't need me.  Spoon is more than capable of unleashing their diabolical (?) plan for world domination without me typing a single, here it comes, FUCKING word. 

Let me ask you some questions. 

Do you like music...specifically (but not limited to) the genre of rock music?   

Then you would like Spoon. 

If anyone likes pop music and then listens to Spoon they would like it.  But here is where the "kicker" comes in.  Spoon doesn't even care.  They're not trying to get you to like them!  All they wanna do is make music THEY like.  Isn't that the same crazy equation that rose Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and THE BEATLES to fame? 

Please God, let enough people who like music listen to Spoons' music so they can like Spoon and make them world famous.

Please let enough people hear Britt Daniels and his band tear through ten (or at least eight) of his best songs ever.

I don't know why that person is holding a cherry bomb or why Britt Daniels cares I'm too busy dancing.  The way those jingle bells jingle so brightly, the horn section evades its loser status and Britt telling us to "come on!" randomly from the stratosphere.  I'll tell you something, it's a wonderfully simplistic and freeing experience.  Rather than trying to escape their own musical restraints like this other brilliant band (Deerhunter), Spoon does it by embracing their own simple musicality.  To them it's just a bunch of beats and strings and chords--but that's a beautiful thing too!  No effects pedal required.  "The Ghost of you Lingers"  is instant proof, using a simple four chord piano progression, mike echoes, and simple tape delays to produce one of the most oddly original songs in years.  And of course nothing beats the incomparable "Finer Feelings".  From the first seconds it grandly sweeps you to some holy and wonderful summer in the back of Britts mind in which he fiercely pursues love.  Almost all of the details are missing but that's what perfectly balanced hand claps, rain makers, and percussion are for: helping you create the details yourself.  So make fuckin' way people, the band is coming through.  They're making quick ground to the top of Mt. Domination so put your headphones on. 

It's time for you to fall in love.

-Andre Harris, 2008