Top 10 Albums: 2004

• Adem / Homesongs: From someone called Adem (pronounced "ah-dem"), an English dude who writes beautiful modern folk songs with no amplification or electrification. His songs are like little things, intricately composed and played, drawing on the natural-is-beautiful aesthetic. He lacks the cynicism to be part of the hipster cognoscenti of the new folk of Sufjan Stevens or Iron & Wine and as a result is in a wholly different (and richer) category. This is music that is not only beauty but is also about the beauty in this world, of the broken and fixed types, i.e., for those who find it in the most unlikely places. This is his first album after a couple of four-song e.p.'s. Choice pick: "Everything You Need," in which he intones without irony or guile that "everybody needs some..."

• The Arcade Fire / Funeral: From what I can gather, there has been a lot publicity about this album, the Montreal-based band's first full length. Evidently, several relatives of the band members died before and during the making of the album. Anyway, I was skeptical, and listened to the CD and nothing clicked for a while. arcade fire Eventually, it grew on me. I haven't paid much attention to the lyrics but there are references to families, friends, parents, children, growing up, stuff you can't put your finger on. The mood is....revelatory, a striving for overcoming as opposed to surrendering. This is the musical equivalent of an evangelical rally under a broken tent in a rainstorm, not about God but about the daily grind of life. The main instrumental motif here is the organ (church, circus, swirling, you name it). The voice wobbles in that way David Byrne used to deploy so well a long long time ago. The band writes great melodies; if I heard this album out of context, I would find it next-to-impossible to locate it in 2004; it could just as well have been 1974. It is a great album though, really worth the trip and investment

• Colder / Again: This is actually one person, a French musician of Vietnamese origin (Marc Nguyen Tan, right) who sings in English. Marc Nguyen Tan The music is kind of a throwback to mid-1980s period synthetic music with a little bit of goth sprinkled in and updated in a sonic sheen perfect for 2004. Like much of the supposedly good music these days, it's derivative. Having said all that, it's much better (and catchier) than it sounds. The riffs are undeniably good, mostly songs pulsing and propulsing through on bass runs that early Cure would have killed for, and vocals imported from a generation of Projekt (the label) bands circa From Across This Grey Land, Vol. 2. Obvious picks from the album: "Crazy Love" and Confusion." Quite good. Note: The U.S. release comes with an extra DVD with six videos.

• Diplo / Florida: This is a pretty awesome album by Diplo (or Diplodocus), some DJ dude whose work reminds in some way of DJ Shadow and stuff like that. It is incredibly layered instrumental hip hop (I had no idea that such a thing existed either, DJ Shadow's kind-of-influential Entroducing being important as a starter point). There's bits of everything imaginable under the Sun in this CD, mixed seamlessly and insanely into one big groove that never lets up. The basic idea is trip hop, but the effect is often chaotic and it does take time to get used to it: think of the Beatles doing the White Album if they were into trip hop, techno, and free jazz. This is Diplo's first album. It's hard to believe that he was born in Mississipi (though apparently based in North Philly now, where he DJs at those Hollertronix parties that I read about somewhere, I can't remember). Diplo also did the recent mixtape with house chick M.I.A. which people thought was apparently pretty good but I haven't heard it. Oh, and Martina Topley Bird (of Tricky fame) sings on the CD. For interviews with Diplo at UK hiphop, go here and for a BBC interview go here

• Interpol / Antics: Yes, we all know they are basically a ripoff band, recycling Joy Division with a singer who can actually sing.....in fact, has a deeply powerful voice (Let's face it, Ian Curtis had a horrible voice). Guilty Pleasure and all, Interpol write superb songs with unforgettable hooks with sufficiently enigmatic lyrics that sound particularly good when you find yourself repeating them in the shower and they make even less sense. In plan of action, the new album is not much different from their first, but it's different in execution: the drums are brought to the forefront, the songs a little more aggressive. Like all good albums, the songs don't extend their welcomes, it's all over before you can get tired of the whole retro shtick. And despite everything, the songs are brilliant. Damn it, they wrote good songs again, especially "Evil," a fantastic track that weaves through melancholia and aggression in three minutes of brilliance and which begins with the line: "Rosemary. Heaven restores you in life," only to return midway to the question: "Hey, who's on trial?" Indeed. Interpol may be the best conventional rock band in America today.

• M83 / Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Cities: Conceptually, this is the child of My Bloody Valentine mutated through generations now, except where MBV used guitars, these guys use (for the most part) sweeping all-blanketing electric organ type synthesizers, punctuated by Casio beats. The melodies are supposed to be sad but they come off uplifting. Not quite the halcyon levels of Seefeel but M83 are another achieving (grand)child of the family that MBV begat. Vocals weave in and out like disembodied children, not unlike Slowdive and their ilk. M83 An acquired taste, but quite brilliant. Picks: "Unrecorded," something about chemicals that you run to; "America," with glitchtronic beats over an urgent melody; and "Be Wild," probably the best song on the album. I can't even describe it. Note: The U.S. release comes with a bonus CD of three extra tracks, a remix of an album track, a live recording of an album track, and two videos. Here is an interesting interview with Anthony Gonzalez, one of the two French dudes (the other being Nicolas Fromageau) who make up M83.

• Modest Mouse / Good News For People Who Like Bad News: I got hooked onto this album after only a few listens. Yer basic guitar-bass-drum thingie but quite colorful and melodic with just enough aggression in the whole thing (in attitude if not in sonority) to give you a kick in the ass. There are all sorts of weird little instruments sprinkled through. The big "hit" appropriately titled "Float On" (not the '70s soul song by the Floaters) is fantastic and funky, even if they did a totally shitty version the time they were on Saturday Night Live. "Float On" is evidence that the single form, the fantastic three minute pop song, can make you suddenly get up and air guitar and celebrate ephemera. Near the end of the song, the band sings in unision: "Already, we'll all float on alright.....already, we'll float on OK...don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy, we'll all float on alright." modest mouse The rest of the album is pretty darn good too---despite the total drunken-gargoyle voice of the singer---especially that "Black Cadillacs" song where the singer breaks up the word "fuck" into two syllables, running through lyrical overflow like a good mid-1970s Bruce Springstreen song:

It's true that we named our children after towns that we'd never been to*
It's true that clouds just hung around like black cadillacs outside a funeral
And we were done with all the fu--fu--fu--fucking around

Other great picks: "Bury Me With It,""Dance Hall," in which he intones in manic glory: "I wanna dancehall dancehall dancehall everyday!!!!!", and my personal favorite line of the album, from "Bukowski," (evidently about some dude who's done something so egregious that it's, well, worth a song):

"God, who'd wanna be such an asshole?
God, who'd wanna be such a control freak?"

*[a Pixies reference to "Dig For Fire"?]
• Pinback / Summer at Abbadon: Awesome! This is the best guitar-bass-drum-piano thing CD of the year. These guys have a factory of hooks and riffs designed to imprint them permanently in your brain. Their lyrics make no sense but that's OK because their music does. Understated pop music that is genuinely unpretentious yet clever, the stuff on this album is the best straight ahead pop/rock that doesn't fall into the white boy alterna crap out there because these guys got Da Groove. All the songs go lock stock in some crack groove that will cut your brain in half. The groove is in the mark. And the songs! Clever enough to make you think twice but not enough to distract from the song. They pile a hundred instruments (soft electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, pianos, synthesizers, percussion, programmed beats, etc.) into each song but none of it sounds burdened. If you get one pure pop album from this list, get this. Even if you don't get it, immediately download the song "Don't Sail Away," drink a beer, close your eyes, and sit back, and play it. (For an interview with Zach Smith, one of the architects behind Pinback, go here.

• Ulrich Schnauss / A Strangely Isolated Place: Although technically released in 2003, the CD was released in the U.S. in 2004. Ulrich Schnauss A lot of IDM verges pretty close to muzak into this weird cul de sac of yuppie "chillout" music, not to mention the whole Yanni class of narcotic appropriate for BMW rides between San Francisco and Monterrey (think: expensive colognes). Still, this music somehow resonates with me, I'm uncertain why. It's muzaky for sure, but on pretty much every track, he takes the electronic/ambient approach to different places than you might have anticipated at the beginning of the songs. All the pieces are beautiful, evocative, and understated, avoiding the easy cliches of this genre. Listening to this music, you may still think of sunrises and sunsets and beaches and parents and children and memories and lost lovers but it's not Hallmark, it's your own manufactured nostalgia. There's some semblance of a nod to post-rock, especially in the last few tunes on the album, but most of it sails by on repetitive beats and musical figures that make some rhythmic and melodic sense. No extremes, barely happy and barely sad and somewhere inbetween. One of the songs, "On My Own," which can be downloaded at Epitonic is fantastic, propulsed on a bass riff, high vocal harmonies, and unexpected melodic twists that end in a glory-for-all moment of euphoria after nearly six minutes of buildup. You can almost dance to it. Almost. One of the best muzaky tracks of the year.

 • Secret Machines / Now Here Is Nowhere: While visiting LA sometime this year, I read about them in a newspaper. They said that they were like Pink Floyd but updated for the 2000s. Secret Machines They are nothing like Pink Floyd, more like Rush if Rush had been a remotely good band with any balls and less ludicrous lyrics....and a drummer not obsessed with how many parts of his drumkit he can hit in a given song. The Secret Machines are a three piece, kind of in the format of the Doors, a guitarist, a drummer, and a keyboardist who plays bass on the keyboard. They rock pretty darn good, and the first song hits you hard. They do good prog rock without getting pretentious. And they have perfect American accents, them being American and all. They also write and play kickass songs, an example being the first song on the album, "First Wave Intact," which moves ahead on a repetitive propulsive crack drum beat that will pulverise you if you turn it up loud enough. Aside: The play on words of the title is not new. I saw that ol' Paul Westerberg on David Letterman one time a couple of years ago with a jacket, the left flap saying "now" and the right flap saying "here." Naturally he put the two flaps together.


Honorable Mentions from 2004

• Air / Talkie Walkie (more organic than one might have expected, U.S. release came with a bonus DVD of videos)
• The Album Leaf / In A Safe Place (more mellow, if that's possible, than usual, but still pretty and gossamer-ly).
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club / Take Them On, On Your Own (heavy and moody, similar to debut)
• Dungen / Ta Det Lugnt (meticulously written and orchestrated '70s-vintage classic rock)
• Friday Night Lights (ambient soundtrack album featuring [mostly] Explosions in the Sky)
• A Perfect Circle / eMOTIVE (album of weird covers, including "What's Going On" and "When the Levee Breaks")
• Elliott Smith / From A Basement On A Hill (lovely and sad, picks: "Let's Get Lost," "Fond Farewell to a Friend")xiuxiu
• TV On The Radio / Desparate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (what can I say? pretty good stuff, killer melodies, insane arrangements, from a whisper to a scream)
• Xiu Xiu / Fabulous Muscles (they still focus on fucked up family / relationship dysfunction in ways that will make you extremely uncomfortable if you're in the presence of other people; the music is more fleshed out than usual, and their typically discordant impulses blunted by melody and familar arrangements)
Reissue! Repackage! Reevaluate!

• The Clash / London Calling (2 CDs + 1 DVD, original album remastered on one CD, second CD has outtakes and demos)
• John Lennon / Acoustic (collection of post-Beatles acoustic demos, sparse and brilliant, all of it)
• Nirvana / With The Lights Out (3 CDs + 1 DVD, collection of 81 tracks, 68 previously unreleased, mostly demos or live tracks, uneven consistency but shows that even some of the throwaways had killer hooks)
• Slowdive / Catch The Breeze (2 CDs, selections from their three proper albums, various singles and e.p.s, moving from initial MBV-inspired dream pop to more post-rockish ambience)

Compilations

• Left Of The Dial: Dispatches From the '80s Underground: Like last year's No Thanks!: The '70s Punk Rebellion this four-CD box set was put out by Rhino and is somewhat of a sequel the earlier box set. It contains 80 songs from what used to be called "alternative" music back a long time ago. The periodization is vague, but you get the general idea: it covers an astonishingly rich period in music, beginning with the genius innovations of post-punk to the late '80s pop that we called "college rock." For my mark, everything good in music that exists in popular rock'n'roll today descends from that period and all the genres that sprung up in the wake of late '70s punk. Unfortunately, this box set doesn't do justice to that explosion of music. It does a competent job, but not an exemplary one.
    The usual genre suspects are covered: Amerindie (R.E.M., the Replacements, Mission of Burma, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr., Minutemen, Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, Camper van Beethoven, Beat Happening), American noise experiments (Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers), British pop (the Jam), proto-goth (Joy Division, the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & The Banshees), hardcore (Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Minor Threat), left of the dial West Coast punk (X), English noise pop (the Jesus & Mary Chain), English synth pop (Depeche Mode, New Order), English smart pop (the Smiths, XTC, Echo & the Bunnymen, Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, The The, Kate Bush), Amerindiefunk (Red Hot Chili Peppers), English pretentious singers with labored hairstyles (Japan), power pop (the Pretenders, Concrete Blonde, the dB's), industrial (Ministry), post-punk (the Raincoats, Gang of Four, the Pop Group, Throbbing Gristle, P.I.L.), satire punk (the Dead Milkmen), psychobilly (the Cramps, parts of Wall of Voodoo), goth (Sisters of Mercy), dream pop (the Church, Love & Rockets, Cocteau Twins), Madchester (the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays), the genre of Pixies (Pixies), late '80s college rock (Jane's Addiction). You get the general idea.
    The breadth is pretty wide and the song selection is remarkably good with the odd unusual cut thrown in (e.g. Husker Du's single song is "Sorry Somehow" from Candy Apple Grey rather than anything from the more classic albums. Not an obvious choice, but what a fucking great song!). The sequencing is all over the place (Ministry's "Stigmata" follows the Smith's "This Charming Man") and after listening to the whole thing a few times, it actually seems like a good thing that the song selection is so whacked. That's how we discovered the music in the '80s--with no rhyme or reason. The soundtrack of our lives was a mixed tape made by friends with attention deficit disorder. So the complaint? The set veers too far to the palatable end of '80s outsider music, making it seem like a box set for all those folks who could still be "alternative" and/or "progressive" by simply liking R.E.M.'s Murmur instead, of say, P.I.L.'s Metal Box. So, basically, some of it comes of as a frat house alternative soundtrack.
    And whoever picked the stuff on the set made some very questionable selections: Passions? Aztec Camera? Lone Justice? The Rain Parade? Green on Red? The Lyres? The Three O'Clock? All of these bands are footnotes, especially when you consider the following astounding omissions, whose inclusion might have made this a superlative set instead of just a good one: Big Audio Dynamite, the Birthday Party, Cabaret Voltaire, Controlled Bleeding, Elvis Costello, Crowded House, the Cult, Dead Can Dance, Einsterzende Neubaten, Firehose, Flipper, Foetus, Front 242, Joe Jackson, Live Skull, Mojo Nixon, Morrissey, Peter Murphy, Sinead O'Connor, Skinny Puppy, A Split Second, Swans, Talking Heads, 10,000 Maniacs, This Mortal Coil, Throwing Muses, Tones On Tail, Trisomie 21, the Waterboys, and Wire. ESPECIALLY FLIPPER!!!! What the fuck????? No Flipper?


• Song Of The Silent Land: This is a compilation of mostly unreleased tracks from bands on the Montreal-based Constellation label which specializes in post-rockish bands into very experimental music (long pieces, orchestral flourishes, found sounds, unusual instrumentation, classical noise, etc.). Most of the bands on the label represent a spectrum of lefty progressive politics, although none in any overt way. Members circulate among the bands. They operate as a collective, sharing profits, sharing equipment, completely disconnected from the mega-corporate distribution system. Their album packaging is exquisite and hand-crafted, like the cover on this CD. Indie: they mean it. The most famous band on the label is, of course, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who, in my estimation, have produced some of the most fantastic new music in the last decade. This CD is an acquired taste but an excellent intro to the Constellation brand of post-rock. Highlights: Exhuast's "Wool Fever Dub," 1-Speed Bike's "Fair Warning," and Godspeed's "Outro," the latter, a recording of the last moments of a concert in Nantes, France in May 2003. Hard sell but worth repeated study: Do Make Say Think's truncated 5-minute version of "Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn."


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