The Factual Opinion

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 9

Wu-Tang Clan
8 Diagrams

This blurb is not a critical evaluation.  This blurb is an emotional response to an album I won’t hear any argument about.  Given that I don’t care if you’re convinced, and that I therefore really don’t care about things like angle and blurb structure on this bad-boy, I’m gonna tell it like a comeback story.  The smart-ass comments will be in the text, and will not be stylized for easy consumption, because that’s just how I feel about this album.  If you’ve come this far, then come a little closer to shore and wade with me, friends and neighbors.

Wu-Tang, who did more for small-town, white-kid hip-hop fandom in the than anyone, including Dre and Snoop introducing the concept of ‘G-Thang’ to the masses, looked poised to descend into objects-of-ridicule status.  Over a decade had passed since they had blended Staten Island battle raps with awesomely bastardized Kung-Fu movie philosophy and ended up on posters coast to coast.  ODB publicly flew off the handle, and then died.  Meth played a bit-part in fucking Zach Braff’s directorial debut.  Raekwon and the GZA appeared to be one-and-done after their badass solo-albums garnered them attention amongst the Warped Tour crowd.  U-God had beef that was decidedly below everyone’s level of interest.  The RZA had produced anything quote worthy other than the ‘serious dewirium, Biww Murray,” and the dorky dicks in Handsome Boy Modeling School were taking pot shots at his empire.  Iron Flag and The W hardly made a ripple.   

Only Ghostface was making albums that you could find in a Virgin Megastore rack (and I once saw a street-time Escalade promoting Fishscale with Ghost painted on in it, so at the very least, somebody put some money into promoting his efforts).  However, even if Marty told y’all that you that he was doing for hip-hop language and structure what Dylan did for folk, your friends may have heard the Neyo track at the health club, said it was pretty cool, and moved on.  The album didn’t sell.  Pitchfork labeled him the winner of the Wu-Tang relevance battle of attrition, which is a high-faluting way of saying that Wu-Tang had jumped the shark.  And then there was the preview of the GZA-filmed documentary, which hinted that if you watched the full 90 minutes when it came out, you’d be pretty sure that the Wu were all sociopaths who just wanted attention.

So when the hype machine started up for 8 Diagrams, I was already rooting for the comeback story.  The timing seemed right, you know?   Only trouble was, these things don’t often work out like I hope.  No matter how much I try to get fired up about a former flame’s new work, a few listens and a few ‘this ain’t bad’s later and I’m done.  I’m projecting, perhaps, and also a little cynical, but the comeback album doesn’t usually add to the legacy; rather, it sells out stadiums to people who just want a little more ‘Born to Run’ before they have to go back to work.

So then, here we have 8 Diagrams, and it fucking rocks – against the odds, against the backdrop of impending permanent mediocrity, against the great expectations of Forever’s million-dollar-budget videos, against the current hipster sense of musical consumption-and-disposal-and-look-it’s-PBR-in-cans at-a-bar neat!  It’s music that makes people uncomfortable and still ensnares listeners.  The productions feels like it’s part Wu-Tang battle beats, part Wu-Tang mafia-opera strings and synth, part comfortable East-coast lyricists lounge digestive, and part bat-shit crazy tinkering.  Go and read all those parts again and see if you can reconcile them.  Then add guest spots by George Clinton riffing on Red Riding Hood and Erykah Badu compromising the Beatles with child-like empress tones with John Frusciante ‘refreshing’ Clapton’s guitar (and I’d love to talk to you at great length about why in God’s name Wu-Tang decided to rework a Beatles’ song about hurt and the artist’s helpless responsibility to address it.  The Wu got the hurt part, but their take on artistic and social responsibility is… well, a bit mixed.  Seriously, let’s you and me talk).  Oh yeah, and then add the work of a suddenly refreshed group of generation-defining MCs who were in the right place at the right time to deliver like a bad NBA nickname (like Karl Malone and shit).

But these are all features on a product – back to that listener-ensnaring.  What you need to go out RIGHT NOW and get excited about is how good it feels to process your love for this album (do it).  You want to bob your head and break your neck like Busta Rhymes couldn’t possibly compel you to do.  You said you didn’t care if the neighbors were offended – now you want to play this on your porch so you can see just how much you meant it.  Despite their elder statesmen status, Wu-Tang does not make this one free of some juvenile nastiness that the old folks and PC won’t ever embrace.  And yet, they don’t seem to bring uncomfortable just for the sake of making you wince anymore.  The kind folks at P-Spork will tell you every four reviews or so that the Beach Boys were all fun fun fun until things got complicated but couldn’t lose those fun fun fun pop sensibilities, and thus all indie-pop bands must try to comply.  Conversely, Wu-Tang used to spew outrageous battle rap claims because the people wanted it; now things aren’t as simple as trying to get rich through working a crowd.  They got rich, the public turned on them, the RZA got some peculiar ideas about religion, the ODB kicked the bucket, and they found themselves catering primarily to white kids.  They have to be aware of all of this.  And yet, you can’t take the battle verse groove out of the bizarre narratives and the outrageous binary intellectual / nuttin to fugg wit binary claims.  After all, they’re eight-plus dudes in their late thirties making up stories of pimp-dom and sexual conquest, and they make it work.  IT WORKS!  WU TANG IS BACK!  BIG WU TANG IS UNPREDICTABLE!

Of course, after the album came out, Ghostface threw the RZA under the bus, key members stopped showing up on tour, and they apparently went back to playing the same set they’ve been playing live since 1999.  So maybe not so unpredictable.  So be grateful they came together like they did, play this one loud.  If the stars align, I could be selling you another comeback story in 2013.

Thank you very much.  This concludes the address.  Punch and pie in the lobby, biotch.

-Josh Woodbeck, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 10

The Sea And Cake
Everybody

It's the album that, when it did get talked about, it was damned with nothing but faint praise, often in the form of "it's pleasant" and "it's playful."  Similar to 2002, the year where the most recommended albums were pretty much all albums that came riding in with statements like "You've gotta check this out!  It's totally relaxing and quiet!", Everybody is, under certain circumstances, one of those albums that's the antithesis of party music and a perfect example of something that can't open itself to the listener if it's treated as a soundtrack.  In a way, the closest album to Everybody on this list is going to be Burial's Untrue, another album that will always stand back and allow the listener to get on with their life--tuning this stuff out, letting it fade to a background bounce is part and parcel of what makes both Untrue and Everybody so worth returning to.  It's fragile, quiet music--and it's also one of the best things to be released this year, and one of the finest of Sea and Cake's career.  Unlike some of their almost willfully obtuse earlier works, Everybody is one of the most easily accessible albums of the year--it's a solidly pop album clothed in a vintage sweater, an album that makes good on the promise of the never realized optimism of the indie pop from the late 80's.  In other words, Everybody is the album that Beat Happening would have made if they had any music talent to back up their omnipresent joy--which isn't to say that anything Sea And Cake does here sounds like Beat Happening at all--but nor does Everybody really sound like anything else.  It's been given meat grinder terms, like everything else in music criticism these days--Pitchfork said that it was afro-pop mixed with bossa nova, whereas Wikipedia resorts to the all-encompassing "jazzy" to describe their sound.  While there's some accuracy to both (especially because just about anything except metal can probably show some "jazzy" in their DNA,) Everybody made it onto the countdown not because it was a combination of a whole bunch of stuff that's likable, it made it this high because it's one of the most direct statements of aesthetically beautiful music that came out this year.  It's never going to be one that gets a jaw-dropping response--but it's never going to fail to bring a smile to one's face.  Oh, and to give it the requisite comparison, this is what At The Drive-In would sound like if their hands were broken, their vocals were whispered, and the instruments were stolen out of Unrest's van, when they were on the way to record Imperial f.f.f.r.  If that last sentence doesn't earn some claim of assholery hipsterism, then nothing will.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: 11

Iron and Wine
The Shepherd’s Dog

Let me start with the outrageous claim that won this album the big one-one:  This album is the Graceland to Creek Drank the Cradle’s Sounds of Silence.  It could mean that Rhythm of the Saints is next for Sam Beam, and it could mean that sweaters and collars showing up all over town has wrought some unforeseen consequences amongst the ‘don’t call me hipster’ blogritatics (i.e., assuming that a comparison to 1980’s Paul Simon vs 1970’s Paul Simon is a good selling point to your presumed peers – your mother, OK?), but I’m saying this is one for the canon when we all drink a little less coffee and go to bed a little earlier.

This album is a consensus builder.  A critical enthusiast can appreciate the way this album takes the singer-songwriters’ sense of emotional intensity and makes it impersonal, and the way it makes world-music-meets-americana work in spite of the improbability of it all.  A listener who may have previously complained about the band’s slow tempo, cryptic and vaguely pastoral take on neo-romantic exaggerations, and general sameness will find variety, a bit of bounce, fun new instruments that go beyond digestible folk guitar, and songs for the citified.    A casual listener can hear it on an FM dial, and talk to his somewhat more serious friends about what a nice listen it is without fear of hearing, ‘bah, the new one’s no good.  Check out their first album that I don’t listen to anymore because Brooklyn and Canada and shit,’ because those friends like the new one, too.  Men in their fifties drop this into phone calls with the younger generation because Sonic Youth is (now famously) just noise, but this Iron & Wine biz-nass, what with the occasional calypso rhythm and the horns adding depth where you wouldn’t expect depth from horns reminds me of… well, Graceland.  The liberal arts students are going to find this one in twenty years and claim it for their newly refined palate to prove that they don’t just like it fast and loud.  They’ll also probably find sweaters and corduroy jackets around the same time, and decide that they can listen to aggressive music made by black people.  Try not to bitch when it happens.

-Josh Woodbeck, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 12

Panda Bear
Person Pitch

...no matter what I do this review will feel incomplete.  This medium is two dimensional and Person Pitch is three...no, forty!  Much like Jeff Magnum's Neutral Milk Hotel, Panda Bear has the ability to take you to indescribable places that can only be understood whilst listening with your own ears.  All I can tell you is that this album is alive.  It is a literal "jungle of sound."  With dinosaurs roaring, giant extremities clapping to the beat, swirling Kansas City twisters and a million-plus choir chanting "time" all in the opening minute of the first song.  Panda Bear pulls it all together with ease, discovering entries and exits in his music--you would think they were brick walls a second ago. He gives a 45 minute soaring reverb drenched sermon from his pulpit of sound.  In "good girl/carrots" he take parishioners on the Best Journey of 'Dem All.  Gliding from an intense jungle of congo drums to some...fuck, a goddamn cavern, with mysterious explosions, piano notes falling from the skies and finally landing on some sundrenched shore where Panda reminds us to take a risk just for ourselves and jump into the deep end of the ocean.  You see...oh, this sounds crazy right? And there are still four more unique and exciting adventures to be had! Looks like you'll have to "take a risk--just for yourself" and give it whirl on the phonograph.

-Andre Harris, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 13

Von Sudenfeld
Tromatic Reflexxions

The Man:
Boris Karloff did a whole shit ton of movies, and on everyone of them, he outshined everyone else involved.  (Outshined: being a totally unrelenting "Step Up To THE PLATE.")  This is true.  Except--and yes, there's always exceptions, unless you're Casey Affleck, EXCEPT in Corridors of Blood.  There's this guy in Corridors of Blood named Resurrection Joe--played by a "hey i'm a dork that's" Christopher Lee, who looks like Mike Haneke, but acts like a Harry Potter character.  Boris tries his best to overpower the film with his wasted-on-drugs Boy Scout, but it's Lee's Resurrection Joe that holds up fifty years later.  Because it's subtle. He's a bastard who kills folks, he's got a nasty scar, and holy god is he one laid back scary dude--with a trenchcoat and a top hat.  Natch.  Probably went unnoticed in a Boris Karloff pic--but hey, now we all set back and watch Lee and it's a master class in creepazoid.

The Machine:
Everybody wants to use that time machine to kill Hitler, right?  Everybody but Jack Kirby, that's for sure.  Why not make another stop in Germany after that, a few years later, and beat up Kraftwerk in an alley before they make it to the studio?  Don't kill them or nothing, but just see if you can put some muscle in their back, some buzz in their voicebox, some rough and tumble in their groin.  Soundtracking a bike race?  Puh-leeze.

The Descent:
Garth Ennis wrote an angel falling the way it should be done.  Shit was blind and on fire.  That's the way an angel should hit the Earth--like a ballistic missile burning up on re-entry, but not losing it's payload until it passes some fallopian.  Nice.

Will It Blend:
He'll probably fail at something-shit, at this point, you know he has.  But what was it?  Was it something made out of stainless steel?  Was it diamonds?  Was it rhinestones?  A Stallone?

In The Ground:
You do realize that this is a music climate where a band like Low has an career spanning box set of B-sides and Rufus Wainwright designs 15 dollar t-shirts for H & M? 

Only Salvation:
Mark E Smith plus Mouse On Mars.  Better than lupus.  And it's never lupus.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: #14

Radiohead
In Rainbows

In Rainbows wants to be Radiohead’s album for the ladies, with Thom Yorke getting freaky-deaky in the club like what.  He wants to see your body go la-la.  Now back that thing up and make it go boom-ba.  He doesn’t want to be your friend.  He just wants to be your lover.  He’s an animal trapped in your hot car, and you are all he needs (and, by the way, you’re going to hell for those dirty thoughts.)  But then, Johnny Greenwood is like this major cockblocker.  I mean, first of all, you can’t even dance to “15 Step,” because it’s like in 123/7 time or some shit.  Then, every time old Tommy starts to kick game, there’s Johnny in the corner, arpeggiating.  So Tommy has to start dressing up his come-ons like they’re OK Computer’s dystopian existentialism.  “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”?  Yeah, you know what that’s about.  I’ll give you a hint:  Imagine the R. Kelly version featuring T-Pain and Busta Rhymes.  This is not seduction music for smart people, it’s straight up crunk.  You want smart?  Get this: the drum track on “Videotape” actually sounds like a videotape, when it like hits the end of the reel and turns over and over itself, which would actually technically make “Videotape” sound like a film but never mind about that.  That, and about a thousand more conversation starters.  It doesn’t have to make any sense.  How much did you pay for it?  It’s amazing.  Sensitive thugs, y’all need hugs.

-Marty Brown, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 15

The Arcade Fire
Neon Bible

The Arcade Fire aren't just musicians they are magicians.  They don't just write music they caste it, over and over until the spell has taken over. And while we were all fond of the nostalgic, sad, wonderfully and uniquely beautiful premiere spell that was Funeral, Neon Bible has arrived and is here to stay.  It has set its 4,000 pound stone stage on your shores...forever.  They'll croon and slam at their instruments while the fuckin' sea tumbles furiously at their feet and black clouds roar and shake above.  At least, that's the scene that album opener "Black Mirror" has set for itself--and what a scene it is.  Here comes the new Mr. Butler (same as the old Mr. Butler) who is so ready for the future that he "forgets his name after he's told it you cause he doesn't know where and he doesn't know when but its coming! (keep the car running)."  He's sick of working for the church while his family dies and he cant stand to watch his brothers and sisters in the ghettos eating off of hundred dollar plates.  But as much as Butler is tired of the fear, loneliness and doubt invading and poisoning our world he also feels the hope inside begging to take over it all.  His band seems to agree with him for while they seems to be overtly in the mood to haunt it isn't to scare YOU but the demons inside.  For behind all the reverb, goth and scary background synths....is a throbbing bleeding heart that loves.  The organs scream, violins sweep through and around and away (your breath that is), Mr. Butler swoons and wails prophecies, declarations of love and hate, the guitars swim furiously or obediently with the driving (yet wonderfully alive) rhythm section to take you to that place you need to go.  Where all the "little babies, women, children and old folks" are going.   They don't know here yet but they've gotta try.  And as old Winny sits on the steps of the church and sings into the night alone (he actually did this for the recording of "My Body is a Cage")  he tells us why.  To set our bodies and spirits free. GO FOR IT YOUR MIND HOLDS THE KEY!

-Andre Harris, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 16

Pharoahe Monch
Desire 

The spirit of the times once again seems to be critical adoration for tales of unbridled masculine ambition and force.  On the Oscars front (surely the best measure of the critical zeitgeist ever – who didn’t love Crash?), we’ve gone from tales of people getting by (Brokeback Mountain, Closer) and tales of ambition leaving the protagonist ruined and batshit crazy (The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby) in the past few years to fuckin’ badass vs. fuckin’ badass for the right to say, ‘YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME!  YOU WON’T!’ (The Departed, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men).  It should not surprise our general readership which camp gets the Factual offices here more excited.  Elsewhere, Obama is getting people good and riled up with promises of conquering Washington (vs. the 2004 campaign - I was admittedly not living in the US, but do you remember anything about the candidates trying to rise above each other?  I only recall them making vague allusions to loving America a lot), the Patriots are trying to make everyone in their path look bad for that whole catching them cheating thing, and Jack Bauer is… well, we’ve got The Wire, anyways, and that’s full of this kind of stuff.  And in the best of 2007 list, we have the Pharoahe Monch comeback album declaring that nothing will hold back his ambition.  We believe him, and we are eating this shit up.

This is how I wanted my East Coast hip-hop to grow up.  The tracks are rooted in the kind of groove that I’d be proud to have coming out of a car window – heavy on the horns punctuated with the occasional overdriven guitar, pre-Bee Gees era disco soul loving the thematic buzz words (Desire! Pushing! Freedom!).  The MC touches all of the developmental bases, giving us a bit of Chuck D’s pulpit, Nas’ flow, Ghostface’s vision for the slant rhyme, and the Clipse’s “God I wanna be you guys!” swagger.  And then there’s the struggle.  This guy’s statements of determination make me want to take on a prison riot by myself.  Oh, and then there’s a psychoanalytic theory gem or two in there just to let you know that mold isn’t broken, it’s just freshly recast: “My book is an ovary / The pages I lust to turn / My pen's the penis / When I write the ink's the sperm.”  The couplet let’s you know that Monch’s music isn’t evolution, but it is aware of its linear maturation.  Like I said, this is how I wanted my East Coast hip-hop to grow up.

-Josh Woodbeck, 2008