Seaworthy Southeast Thesaurus

2007-06-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

Notice: this site will no longer be updated. This one will.

2007-05-18T10:38:00.000-05:00

I haven't yet decided what to do with this blog (i.e., whether I should just let it slip into obsolescence instead of half-heartedly reviving it periodically), but I thought I should at least mention the first Stylus article I've written since last summer, on Bjork's "Cocoon." (I am indebted to the editors for providing with me with the opportunity to publish my thoughts there, so it seems niggling to note that, having written a paper on E.E. Cummings in 12th grade, I had capitalized his name, now lowercased in the article, with some intention).

2007-05-13T16:27:00.000-05:00

Maybe these were all rejected from the Jukebox because I couldn't muster enough excitement about any of them to give them more or less than a 7?

Devin the Dude ft. Snoop Dogg and Andre 3000, "What a Job"

None of these dudes, Devin or otherwise, are on the top of their form (Devin doesn't even sound like he's trying), and the novelty of a song about the workaday life of the rapper as recording artist eventually wears off when you realize they haven't got much to say. Still, it has such a light, summery bounce that I can't write it off entirely.
[7]

Kate Bush, "Babooshka"

The career of Tori Amos obviously owes a lot to Kate Bush, and it's particularly apparent on this daintily jaunty song, parts of which can be heard as a model for early Amos fare like "Leather," while the rest is its own wonderfully weird, witchy clatter.
[7]

Kate Bush, "Wuthering Heights"

I'm a fan of the sort of pretentious art that inevitably results from precocious 20-year-olds titling songs after Victorian novels and involving, like, harpsichords and shit, but it's also true that Bush hadn't yet learned restraint on her debut, as her high, fluttering, birdlike voice and relentlessly florid, tinkling piano almost overwhelm the song's inherent prettiness.
[7]

Also: The new Kelly Clarkson single, "Never Again," isn't as monstrously good as "Since U Been Gone" (I mean, what is?), but I swear to God when it came up randomly on my iTunes, I thought it was Sleater-Kinney.

2007-03-30T10:15:00.000-05:00

Hi. I haven't been here in a while.

Here's some singles blurbs from the last few weeks that didn't make the cut:

Lil Mama, "Lip Gloss"

For the same reason I like “Drop It Like It’s Hot” better than “Wait (The Whisper Song),” I prefer “Hollaback Girl” to this song—musically, it needs something sweet or lush to counteract that relentless drum cadence. Still, it’s cute that it’s about lip gloss, which also makes it a more plausible jump-rope song than Gwen’s.
[6]

The Stooges, "My Idea of Fun"

I've never had much use for the Stooges' crude blues-derived proto-punk, so the fact that this new single only harkens back to the glory years in its playful nihilism, but otherwise resembles Dirty-era Sonic Youth (Iggy even seems to mimic Thurston Moore's flat sing-song), is a nice surprise.
[7]

Kanye West, Nas, KRS-One, and Rakim, "Better Than I've Ever Been"

Since the all-star team assembled here had me worried at first that the track would be an overblown mess, I'm pleased that it's so lean, giving each rapper plenty of room to represent and rhyme alongside the beat's stylish glide. I just wish there was a hook, though, since that same restraint also makes it lapse into monotony.
[6]

All of these reviews, to varying degrees, reveal the extent to which I prioritize sonic elements over lyrical/thematic ones, which sometimes troubles me. I mean, it's not as if it's a conscious decision, it's just what I notice first. One of the first pop songs I ever reviewed on this blog (Lil Kim's "Magic Stick") focused almost exclusively on the melodic structure of the chorus and dropped the term "major triad." These days, I try to avoid more egregious displays of music theory, but my tendency to isolate individual instruments, in describing how they contribute to an overall mood, is what led me to wonder if this approach could be classified as formalism.

It sort of strikes me as New Criticism-influenced, not dissimilar to the way I examined contemporary poetry in Conrad Hilberry's class in 1997: picking apart how each semi-colon, each use of consonance, contributed to the whole. (I had a lot to say about the anapestic meter in Stephen Dobyns's "The Music One Looks Back On.") And all of that is fine, except in cases like that song with all the rap legends, when surely it might've done me good to force myself to pay attention to what they were actually saying. (There's a potential tangent here about why I'm able to pay attention to words when they're on paper and not when they're in my headphones, but I'll skip that for now.)

Somewhat related: I don't think Timbaland's "Give it to Me" is worth much more than the 7 that I gave it last month, but realizing that it's a Scott Storch diss track makes me appreciate it on a whole new level. The presence of Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake as guest vocalists always seemed like a show-off move ("I'm so great, I can get two of the biggest pop stars in the world to do cameos for me"), but now it just so seems so much more in-your-face, and I like that it makes Nelly and Justin complicit in the beef. Even if Storch wasn't likely to work with Timberlake again, anyway, there's a riskiness to it that's attractive.

2007-02-23T13:23:00.000-06:00

Stylus had a spotlight on "sophisti-pop" yesterday, complete with a Jukebox full of classic mid-80s singles. I had a couple of blurbs included, but a surfeit of contributors meant that another couple got cut.

Without further Adu:

Sade, "Smooth Operator
The best song on offer here, and not just because it’s the only one I’ve heard a million times (though I am irrationally affectionate toward songs I’ve heard performed by lounge bands at divey bowling alleys). It’s also a smooth jazz song—maybe even the one that codified the genre’s name—that nevertheless avoids the aimless vapidity of most of its peers. This is sometimes achieved through a climactic sax trill but mostly through Sade Adu’s marvelously creamy voice (dig the supple hiccups on the “coast to coast” part). As a character study, it lacks the emotional component of some of her later singles, but it’s an exceptionally worthy debut.
[9]

Aztec Camera, "Somewhere in My Heart"
After hearing lounge-pop also-rans The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group reference Aztec Camera as an inspiration in “Goodbye to All That,” I had high expectations, but my first encounter with Roddy Frame (via Todd Hutlock’s “The Sound of Young Scotland” mix CD) was a stripped-down disappointment. Turns out there’s more to the band than just clever jangle, though, and the insistent beat and dramatic sparkle of this later effort go a long way toward making me revise my initial opinion.
[7]

As a bonus treat, here's another unpublished blurb from a while back:

Arcade Fire, "Black Mirror"
Though the Arcade Fire's strength has always been less in their wailing melodies than in their ability to build tension and enforce a sense of dynamics, Win Butler's transformation of the song's title into a tiresome mantra means that the usual slow burn of plunking piano and ramshackle drums flickers out before a sudden burst of French can save it.
[5]

I'm still looking forward to Neon Bible, though. Sasha Frere-Jones's profile of the band in this week's New Yorker is particularly good, although using Ian McCulloch as a reference point for Win Butler's voice would've been a fresher insight if my friend Dan hadn't made the same connection (upon hearing Echo and the Bunnymen for the first time) two weeks ago.

2007-02-07T12:24:00.000-06:00

(NOTE: Revised in light of Matos's announcement that there were 503 Jackin' Pop voters, not 497.)

So Pazz and Jop is out now, and I thought it would be interesting to see if my prediction that it would reward more conservative tastes (rock dinosaurs, singer-songwriters) came true. At first glance, this does appear to be the case: while Jackin' Pop had Bob Dylan's Modern Times in the #6 slot, Pazz and Jop elevates the album to its top position.

In order to get a better look at the rest of the list, I constructed the following formula:

((((PJ*503)/494)-JP)/JP)

where PJ = Pazz and Jop points
JP = Jackin' Pop points
494 = number of Pazz and Jop voters
503 = number of Jackin' Pop voters

The voter totals are remarkably similar, but they're not equal, so the first part of that equation ((PJ*503)/494) represents a weighted Pazz and Jop vote, i.e. what we would expect if nine more people had voted. The rest of the equation calculates the percentage change in points from Jackin' Pop to Pazz and Jop.

In analyzing the 51 albums that garnered at least 200 points on either poll (this still isn't a perfect comparison, since Pazz and Jop allowed voters to give up to 30 points per album, while Jackin' Pop set a max of 15), here are the ones that did much better on Pazz and Jop:

Artist	JPpts	P&Jpts*	%change
E. Costello/A. Toussaint	78	240	213.2
Roseanne Cash	94	277	200.0
New York Dolls	106	205	96.9
Tom Waits	341	608	81.5
Raconteurs	174	281	64.4
Ornette Coleman	206	314	55.2
Bob Dylan	749	1123	52.7
Beck	157	235	52.4

Naturally, I then reversed the equation to see which albums performed better on Jackin' Pop:

Artist	P&Jpts	JPpts*	%change
Love Is All	103	226	115.5
Beirut	113	235	104.2
DJ Drama/Lil Wayne	113	226	96.4
Girl Talk	212	420	94.6
Hot Chip	307	529	69.2
Mastodon	199	342	68.8
Justin Timberlake	274	470	68.5
Destroyer	231	395	67.9
Knife	355	607	67.9
Grizzly Bear	164	274	64.1
Liars	136	226	63.2
Clipse	673	1057	54.2
J. Dilla	249	384	51.5

*this figure is unweighted

I think the results speak for themselves.

2007-02-02T10:53:00.000-06:00

Everyone's already been linking to it, so there's a good chance you've seen it already, but the Stylus Singles Jukebox has converted to a blog format. It's great news because it means I can review songs more or less as they come along, instead of having to commit for a whole batch that all too often took up my Sunday afternoon. So far, I've written blurbs for Alan Jackson, Musiq Soulchild, Linda Sundblad, Mike Jones, Akon, and the Shins. (Speaking of whom, Wincing the Night Away is, horrible title notwithstanding, much better than I'd been expecting. "Sea Legs" reminds me of Beck's "Paper Tiger" -- which itself rips off Serge Gainsbourg, as I recently noticed when listening to L'Histoire de Melody Nelson for the first time -- but I dig that taut guitar strut slathered in ascending strings.) Here's my blurb for Amerie's "Take Control," my favorite single of 2007 so far, which didn't make the cut:

Female-led R&B these days seems to rely on either a cool robotic sheen (Ciara) or a commanding belt-'em-out style (Beyonce), so it's refreshing to hear a woman who's a) got some grit in her voice but b) doesn't resort to histrionics. In fact, Amerie often reminds me of an early Michael Jackson (it's in that raw tug right after the chorus: "I said 'baby!'") and on "Take Control," the creeping spy-movie guitar and horn blasts do little to play down the resemblance to something like "Off the Wall." This is energetic, infectious stuff that proves "1 Thing" was no fluke. [9]

I almost bought Touch the other day, not least because her pose on the cover is so hot, but also because I don't really listen to many hip-hop/R&B/pop albums, which doesn't seem fair. With hip-hop, this is a pragmatic choice, since 90% of the time I listen to music, I'm also doing something else (like copyediting or reading or composing blog posts), and it's just too distracting for an hour-plus at a time (I actually like that new Clipse album, but I've barely gotten around to listening to it more than twice). With pop and R&B, I think it's partially a rockist assumption that nothing's going to be as good as the singles (even though I have heard some solid albums qua albums, like Brooke Valentine's debut), and partially the fact that I don't have as much access to it: these aren't the kind of albums that are put up on Luisterpaal or that I can gank from friends who are otherwise all too willing to burn me the new Bloc Party or Wilco discs (I had to drive all the way to Milwaukee to see a Brewers game with Matt Cibula to get my hands on Brooke Valentine!).

Of course, after Noah Berlatsky, in a recent Chicago Reader article, called LeToya's debut "one of the most accomplished and creative recordings I've ever heard, in any genre," I wanted to seek it out immediately. (Something about the article as a whole bugs me, though: even though I understand that its premise is a defense of a genre that's probably maligned by much of the paper's readership, it sometimes reads like a persuasive essay for a freshman comp class. With pat formulations like "contemporary R&B does have something to offer" and "The best thing ... isn't the lyrics, though. It's the music," I half expected the article to conclude with the old high-school paper stand-by, "Try it, who knows you just might like it." As it stands, "And it's right on the Top 40 station of your choice" isn't much better. I'm not entirely sure what would've improved the piece, but I'm sort of left wondering where all this nervous protestation sprang from.)

2007-01-22T16:36:00.000-06:00

Stylus was gonna do a year-end podcast a couple weeks ago, but apparently all the other podcasters were still hung over from New Year's or something, so the plan was scotched. But not before I already recorded myself rambling for several minutes about one of my favorite unheralded songs of 2006, Calle 13's "La Jirafa."

Get the goods here (the second half of the mp3 is the song itself).

2007-01-11T17:52:00.000-06:00

Question to self: Do I really like John Legend's "Show Me," or did I just get caught up in all the "OMG R&B DUDE LOVES JEFF BUCKLEY" buzz? I'm worried it's the latter, since I know Kaki King's "Jessica" (which succeeds "Show Me" on my 2006 mix) is the better Buckley bite, anyway: its slow, hazy chords mimic "Lover, You Should Have Come Over," but with this shy, diaphanous voice and reverbed build-up that reminds me of Slowdive, too.

2007-01-08T12:46:00.000-06:00

So the inaugural Jackin' Pop music critics' poll is out, and Michaelangelo Matos deserves high praise for organizing it and corralling nearly 500 writers to contribute. That's only 300 fewer critics than participated in the Village Voice's long-running Pazz and Jop poll last year, and because of that, I had hoped that Jackin' Pop would serve as meaningful competition, maybe even going so far as to poke a hole in the old guard and soon replace it.

(Side note: I don't like the idea of two competing music critics' polls any more than college football fans like the confusion that arises from an equally weighted sportswriters' poll and coaches' poll. For over 30 years, Pazz and Jop had ably filled the role as the yearly consensus among (mostly American) music critics: the P&J archives on Robert Christgau's site give a fascinating glimpse of what sparked the discourse in any given year. But when New Times took over the Voice in late 2005 and proceeded to fire Christgau, who started the poll, and music editor Chuck Eddy, who commandeered it in recent years under Christgau's tutelage, P&J ceased to carry the same measure of prestige and credibility for many people as it once did. When Idolator announced they'd be running a new poll, with Matos as editor, I decided to hitch my wagon to that particular train instead of voting in both.)

However, looking at the results, I share Matos's briefly stated concern that (with the exception of Bob Dylan at #6) it all seems a little too ... Pitchfork. And even though that means it probably rewards albums I voted for (half of my top 10 finished in the overall top 20), a lot of what was so great about Pazz and Jop was being able to escape momentarily from the blog/webzine circus to notice that "whoa, people actually care about Drive-By Truckers?" You had the sense of being a part of a much larger circle, one that included boring workaday graybeard critics at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and as a 20-something, it was fun to root for records you loved but knew couldn't compete, because they were too electronic/European/whatever (cf. #41 finishes for Junior Boys in 2004 and Isolee in 2005). Maybe when P&J comes out later this month, I'll have my illusions shattered—like maybe Silent Shout is a top 10 record everywhere—but given that the majority of people who boycotted the poll seem to be exactly the kind of young Internet-savvy freelancers whose tastes are most in sync with mine, I kind of doubt it.

In his essay accompanying the 2003 Pazz and Jop poll, Christgau complained that the P&J rolls were larded with "part-timers who buy many records and miss many more," as well as "newbies who learned to write from literary theorists and honed their opinionizing skills in the dog-eat-dog cenacles of college radio." It's hard not to read that second extract as a diss on the bloggers, ILMers, and Pitchfork writers that were beginning to make their mark on the poll, thus elevating the "middling indie" records Matos also finds discouraging. But I had hoped that the solution to that predicament would be to accept the great democratic movement in music criticism and maybe be a bit more judicious about which blogs make the cut (I like Ally Kearney, but I'm not sure that musings on ILM and on a sporadically updated blog are enough to earn you a ballot; hell, I don't know that I qualified the first year I voted, either)—not to have the online contingent start its own poll.

The idiocy of the New Times management forced the creation of a P&J alternative, but if Jackin' Pop going to succeed in establishing the same exhaustive consensus as P&J once did, it's going to have to cast an ever wider net, pulling in the genre specialists and the folks on the daily-newspaper and mainstream-magazine beat. (I notice, with some disappointment, the absence of Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jon Pareles and Kelefa Sanneh of the New York Times, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone, and the venerable Greil Marcus.) I'm probably being too hard on an enterprise that's only in its first year, but the day P&J came out used to be known as "Christmas morning for rock critics," and I'm already missing that sense of excitement and surprise.

2007-01-04T13:42:00.000-06:00

From Carina Chocano, in Slate.com's annual Movie Club:

Also—and this is minor, but when else will I get the chance to ask?—did anyone else have a weird reaction to the kids [in Babel] being named Mike and Debbie? As far as I know, there is no such thing as a Mike or a Debbie under the age of 35 in California. It's Kai and Brianna now.

Ha. Yeah, I had that reaction. Not to Mike, since I know plenty of them, but Debbie? No way.

2007-01-04T12:14:00.000-06:00

Two years ago, buoyed by my invitation to participate for the first time in the storied Village Voice-run Pazz and Jop poll, I wrote a grand overview of the music I encountered over the past year, with a style partially jacked from copy I was editing at my day job, and submitted it as my comments. Though none of it was excerpted for publication (not enough bite-sized pull quotes or references to Iraq/George W. Bush, I reckon), it's still one of my favorite things I've written for this site. Last year, I declined to craft a 2005 version, mostly because I was burnt out by assorted year-end assignments for Stylus -- but I figured that just gave me more time to prep new posts and articles for the coming year.

At the beginning of 2006, however, my proposal for the EMP Pop Music Conference (on indie bands who cover pop songs) was rejected, and later in the year I was let go from the Stylus staff for not writing enough. I'm over the initial disappointment of both of these events (lots of critics I admire didn't get into EMP, for one) -- but they had the joint effect of making me wonder whether I was cut out for this hobby. Since it is indeed a hobby, I have to squeeze it in between my 9-to-5, my ever-more-serious band, and my new (as of spring) girlfriend, and so it's entirely possible that if I had more time to devote to writing, I'd be more successful at it. But when I asked the Stylus editor in chief, in a friendly e-mail exchange, why he hadn't warned me and allowed me to formulate a pitch or two before giving me the boot, he suggested that my failure to do so voluntarily indicated a lack of enthusiasm from the start. And there was something to that, too: I was worried about my declining output, but I often couldn't think of much I wanted to write about (especially not anything that others couldn't do better), and as my life busied, even the practice of keeping up with new music began to feel like a chore.

So why bother with a 2006 wrap-up then? Because, put simply, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be doing this, and I need some closure. After all, even though I haven't written much, I have been actively listening to music in the last twelve months (nearly 100 albums with a copyright date of 2006 somewhere in the world), and there's some things I want to say before I make the decision whether or not to give a shit about 2007. (LCD Soundsystem's new [March '07] album has been on my iPod for weeks, but I couldn't even bear to listen to it before the calendar changed, or else I'd already be giving in.)

***

That said, I don't know that I had a whole lot of epiphanies in 2006, in the sense of genres newly discovered or listening habits fundamentally changed. For the first time in four years, I heard about the same amount of music as I did the year before. (Which is possibly what contributed to the disillusionment I felt: after several years of immersing myself in music in order to better write about it, I had reached an end-point of sorts.)

On the other hand, I did give mainstream country more of an ear than usual. There are only four Nashville singles represented on my year-end mix below, compared to three from 2005, but those three were pretty much the only country songs I heard, whereas this year I paid attention to at least a dozen. And since my trips to the laundromat where the radio's set to US99 were only every couple of weeks, I picked up a lot from the Stylus Singles Jukebox, which was revamped and expanded in 2006 to include plenty of songs that didn't reach the upper echelons of the Billboard Hot 100. I've already mentioned Steve Holy's "Brand New Girlfriend" as an exemplar of infectious enthusiasm (long before my mom and I hollered along with it on our way to central Illinois for Thanksgiving), but Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" rivals Gretchen Wilson's barn-burners (or hell, most of Lily Allen's three-minute snark-fests) for piercing detail: vivid lines like "white-trash version of Shania karaoke" and "dabbing three dollars worth of that bathroom Polo" made me grin like crazy.

Of course, the other major beneficiary of the new Singles Jukebox format was international pop. After Robyn leapt into my heart in 2005, no one needed to tell me adorable Scandinavian women went hand in hand with immaculately crafted pop songs (actually, ABBA probably proved that 30 years ago, and I can't be the only one who still has a soft spot for Roxette) -- but I'm not sure I would've come across the sunny Marit Larsen ("Don't Save Me") or the coy Linda Sundblad ("Oh Father") otherwise: both made me want to don leg-warmers and lip-sync in front of the mirror with a hairbrush, and I mean that as a high compliment. I also heard, via the Jukebox as well as via Krista (who works with Spanish speakers and occasionally flips the radio to La Kalle 103.1 FM), a fair amount of pop en español, and though not much of it stuck, one act that did impress me was reggaetón duo Calle 13, who shun the taunting monotone shouts that characterize most of the reggaetón that makes it onto U.S. hip-hop radio in favor of slinky melodicism ("Atrevete-te") and lush, dreamy arrangements ("La Jirafa").

What I didn't listen to as assiduously as I did in 2005 was electronic dance music, apart from Ellen Allien and Apparat's Orchestra of Bubbles (with its mix of fierce cello and floating female vocals) and about half of Booka Shade's Movements. (I'm also not counting obvious indie crossovers like Junior Boys and the Knife.) I was actually thinking about this a couple months ago, when I happened to put on Total 7 on the way home from work and was surprised at how good it was. Surprised because I'd heard it once before, when I first acquired it, but hadn't been compelled to listen to it again until that night, when it all fell in line: supple beats, dark and shiny synths, subtle transitions, etc. But then I realized that I didn't love Superpitcher's Today immediately, either, and the primary reason it ended up on my top 10 of 2005 was because I listened to it so often while falling asleep, and its crystalline textures became familiar, a small comfort of sorts.

This year, because of aforementioned girlfriend, I rarely used music in this way (I think I put on Immer once, and she complained that it was the opposite of falling-asleep music; after that, I learned my lesson) -- which only confirms my belief that our musical diet is much more contextual than we often like to admit. I'm by no means a fanatic about post-punk, but this fall the confluence of watching Marie Antoinette (note the comment), reading Simon Reynolds's admirably comprehensive Rip it Up and Start Again, and riding the el on slate-gray mornings, as the last leaves clung to their skeletal branches, had the effect of making nothing sound as good as the anxious clang of Gang of Four and Joy Division.

***

When I filled out my Jackin' Pop ballot last month, I didn't even have to think twice about the best-artist-of-the-year category. Not only was Timbaland was responsible for the much-vaunted makeovers of Nelly Furtado (their flirtatious duet "Promiscuous" ruled the summer) and Justin Timberlake (whose FutureSex/LoveSounds lacked dazzling peaks like "Rock Your Body" but also felt more like a work of art, with every track uniformly dark and meticulously stitched together), but he also produced Omarion's "Ice Box," a late-in-the-year single that transposed the frozen echoing synths of "My Love" onto vocals that are more haunting and emotionally resonant than anything JT has done (if not quite as fun). Since I missed Timbaland's first wave of creativity, with Missy Elliott and Aaliyah, I originally considered him inferior to the Neptunes (especially since I preferred slick disco to arty minimalism), but at this point, he has the better track record.

All that notwithstanding, I found 2006 to be a disappointing year for singles -- or maybe it's just all been downhill after the amazing first three months of 2005 (seriously, two of my honorable mentions [The Game and M83] eventually ended up in my top 20 that year). Of course, the biggest sensation was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," and I even considered putting it as my number one, in part because I'm kind of in awe of weird songs like "Hey Ya!" that somehow appeal to multiple demographics and become culturally inescapable. (I sympathize with Rahawa Haile, who muses, "Perhaps I’m drawn to songs destined for numerous covers because it implies some sort of inherent excellence.") But even though I nodded along to it plenty, and frequently imitated Cee-Lo's rich tenor ("Hahaha now bless your soul"), it never adrenalized me the way "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" did, and its sui-generis status made it seem like a predictable choice. And so I listed it below Nelly Furtado, Panic! At the Disco (whose nervous syncopation was a lot more viscerally interesting than the newfound bombast of fellow emo clowns My Chemical Romance), and T.I.'s "What You Know," which combines the kind of stately, soulful orchestral swoops that I can't help but be attracted to in hip-hop (also see Lupe Fiasco's wistful "Kick, Push") with an obvious love of language, if a line like "fresh off the jet to the 'jects where the G's at" is any indication.

Perhaps my nostalgia for the promise of 2005 is what made me fall so hard for Girl Talk's Night Ripper, which weaves a handful of recent hip-hop hits into its tapestry of samples, but none more recent than "Laffy Taffy." An album that symbolized my schizophrenic listening habits seemed a fitting choice for my best of the year, to say nothing of the nifty aesthetic scenarios it made possible. The rest of my top 10, on the other hand, feels like a straight-up flashback to 2004, with Sonic Youth, Junior Boys, and Joanna Newsom once again finishing strong, and Grizzly Bear arguably filling Animal Collective's position. I guess this is what happens when your tastes ossify, huh? It's also a pretty hivemind-oriented list, which is partially why I sneaked Kaki King's ...Until We Felt Red on there at the last minute: her wounded whisper and restless fretwork reminded me of a time before ILM and probably spoke to me more than whatever I bumped down to #11, anyway (the Knife, I think). One of my resolutions for 2007: to listen to more older stuff, and not just the canon fodder when it's on sale for $7.99 at Tower (RIP), but strange and beautiful music I can obsess about and fall in love with.

2007-01-04T12:06:00.000-06:00

2006 YEAR-END MIX

Might tweak this a little before I'm done, but here's my annual year-end mix. (For reference: 2004, 2005.) As always, let me know if you want a copy: it fits on one mp3 disc.

1. Be Your Own Pet, "Adventure"
2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Gold Lion"
3. The Rogers Sisters, "Emotion Control"
4. Love Is All, "Felt Tip"
5. Tokyo Police Club, "Be Good"
6. The Fake Fictions, "Do the Dance"
7. The Futureheads, "Skip to the End"
8. Arctic Monkeys, "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"
9. The Hold Steady, "Chips Ahoy!"
10. The Strokes, "Juicebox"

11. Rhymefest, "Devil's Pie"
12. Girl Talk, "Smash Your Head"
13. J Dilla, "Workinonit"
14. Cassius, "Rock Number One"
15. Escort, "Starlight"
16. Kelis, "Bossy (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke Remix)"
17. MSTRKRFT, "Easy Love"
18. Dr. Octagon, "Trees"
19. DJ Shadow ft. Q.Tip and Lateef Truth Speeker, "Enuff"
20. The Coup, "Laugh Love Fuck"

21. Prince, "Black Sweat"
22. Beck, "Cell Phone's Dead"
23. Omarion, "Entourage"
24. Pharrell, "How Does It Feel?"
25. Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man"
26. Beyonce, "Deja Vu"
27. Jay-Z, "Show Me What You Got"
28. OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown and Scar, "Morris Brown"
29. Mark Ronson ft. Alex Greenwald, "Just"
30. John Legend, "Show Me"

31. Kaki King, "Jessica"
32. Brighton, MA, "Bet You Never Thought"
33. Midlake, "Roscoe"
34. Loose Fur, "Wanted"
35. Steve Holy, "Brand New Girlfriend"
36. Carrie Underwood, "Before He Cheats"
37. Richard Hawley, "Just Like The Rain"
38. Sara Evans, "Bible Song"
39. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, "Rise Up with Fists"
40. Taylor Swift, "Tim McGraw"

41. Cat Power, "The Greatest"
42. Joanna Newsom, "Cosmia"
43. José Gonzalez, "Heartbeats"
44. Beirut, "Postcards from Italy"
45. The Decemberists, "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)"
46. Belle and Sebastian, "We Are the Sleepyheads"
47. The Flaming Lips, "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song"
48. Yo La Tengo, "Mr. Tough"
49. Peter Bjorn & John, "Young Folks"
50. Stereolab, "'Get A Shot Of The Refrigerator'"

51. Lily Allen, "Everything's Just Wonderful"
52. Nouvelle Vague, "Ever Fallen In Love"
53. Marit Larsen, "Don't Save Me"
54. Linda Sundblad, "Oh Father"
55. CSS, "Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above"
56. Morningwood, "Nth Degree"
57. Aly & A.J., "Rush"
58. The Pipettes, "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me"
59. The Research, "Lonely Hearts Still Beat The Same"
60. Miranda, "Don"

61. Rihanna, "SOS (Rescue Me)"
62. Fergie ft. Will.i.am, "Fergalicious"
63. Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland, "Promiscuous Girl"
64. LL Cool J ft. Jennifer Lopez, "Control Myself"
65. Ciara ft. Chamillionaire, "Get Up"
66. The Clipse, "Momma I'm Sorry"
67. Calle 13, "La Jirafa"
68. Lupe Fiasco, "Kick, Push"
69. T.I., "What You Know"
70. Three 6 Mafia, "Poppin My Collar"

71. "Weird Al" Yankovic, "White And Nerdy"
72. Lady Sovereign, "Love Me or Hate Me"
73. Justin Timberlake ft. Timbaland, "SexyBack"
74. Ghostface Killah ft. Theodore Unit, "Jellyfish"
75. Field Mob Ft. Ciara, "So What"
76. Cassie, "Me & U"
77. Junior Boys, "The Equalizer"
78. Booka Shade, "Night Falls"
79. Ellen Allien and Apparat, "Way Out"
80. Coldplay, "Talk (Jacques Lu Cont Mix)"

81. Madonna, "Sorry"
82. Herbert, "Something Isn't Right"
83. Sally Shapiro, "I'll Be by Your Side"
84. Sapporo 72, "Architecture of Love"
85. Luomo, "Really Don't Mind (Radio Edit)"
86. Kleerup ft. Robyn, "With Every Heartbeat"
87. Nathan Fake, "Charlie's House"
88. Basement Jaxx, "Take Me Back To Your House"
89. Hot Chip, "Over and Over"
90. New Young Pony Club, "Ice Cream"

91. The Rapture, "The Devil"
92. Justin Timberlake, "My Love (DFA Mix)"
93. Chicken Lips, "Without Sound"
94. Gnarles Barkley, "Smiley Faces"
95. TV on the Radio, "Hours"
96. Xiu Xiu, "Boy Soprano"
97. The Knife, "We Share Our Mother's Health"
98. Barbara Morgenstern, "The Operator"
99. 120 Days, "Keep On Smiling"
100. Thom Yorke, "Black Swan"

101. Mogwai, "Travel Is Dangerous"
102. Grizzly Bear, "Colorado"
103. Final Fantasy, "This Lamb Sells Condos"
104. Joan As Policewoman, "Christobel"
105. Panic! At The Disco, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"
106. The Killers, "When You Were Young"
107. Sonic Youth, "Incinerate"
108. The Whitest Boy Alive, "Burning"
109. The Changes, "Water Of The Gods"
110. Phoenix, "Consolation Prizes"

2007-01-02T09:47:00.000-06:00

Why "Fergalicious" is superior to "London Bridge": Missy Elliott imitations that lack Missy's goofy charm and queen-bee authority absolutely miss the point, whereas JJ Fad's "Supersonic," for all its amateur exuberance, becomes even more of a treat with pristine 21st-century production. (Thanks to Morgan for pointing out the obvious similarity.)

2006-12-22T10:17:00.000-06:00

I must confess, I don't understand how Ciara's "Promise" has become the only single this year by the so-called crunk'n'b diva worthy of having praise heaped upon it: it's #47 on Stylus's year-end list, #42 on Pitchfork's, and Andy Kellman's AMG review calls it "tremendous, one of the sexiest, slow-tempo, non-breakup songs of the past ten years" and one of the only real highlights on The Evolution.

It's not that it's bland*, at least in terms of instrumentation and production: the slathered-on vocoder certainly speaks to me (even though T-Pain is making better use of it these days), and I'll even buy Alex Macpherson's argument that Ciara's vocal limitations are capable of creating a certain emotional effect (even though it's hard to hear her usual breathiness here as anything other than weak and unengaging). It's just kind of muddled, and there's little about the song that sticks with me at all.

Which would be par for the course as far as a lot of modern R&B goes, except for the fact that this is Ciara, and she's had two far superior singles in 2006 alone! I can sort of understand critics ignoring "So What," since it's not technically her song, although she dominates it so much, both in personality and sheer time behind the mic, that the mere "ft." credit she receives hardly seems fair. Not to mention how the blase, sing-song refrain is perfectly suited to her glamorous reserve: the Field Mob dudes sound scrappy, but she's too cool to even eke out the entire word "you" at the end of a line, rhyming "thug in yuh" with "here for yuh" as though swallowing a yawn.

The melancholy air of "Get Up" is reminiscent of last year's brilliantly simmering "Oh" (although not quite as much as Cherish's "Do It to It," which is a copy right down to the creeping chord changes), and it features the same midtempo dance-floor exhortations as "1, 2 Step" -- but it's also perhaps Ciara at her most joyous. For instance, note the playful way Ciara doubles that light pizzicato line that's introduced as counterpart several bars earlier: the tick-tock cadence ("the. club. is. jum-. pin'. now.") works as a neat build to the excited rush of "Get up!" And then what about the way that Chamillionaire's fluid rap transitions into him suddenly singing the third verse? It's unexpected -- since when does the cameo rapper ever step on the singer's turf? -- but it flows so naturally, it's a sweet bonus.

2006-12-19T10:44:00.000-06:00

Yay, Jody Rosen and I have the same least-favorite song of 2006. This along with other year-end revelations can be found at the Slate Music Club, where Rosen is joined by Jon Caramanica, Ann Powers, and Carl Wilson.

Of major music scribes, Wilson is probably the single biggest champion of Final Fantasy, but I'd assumed that enough bloggers and webzine critics would have been into He Poos Clouds to guarantee it a placement higher than #49 on Stylus's Top 50 or anywhere for that matter on Pitchfork's, where nearly three-quarters of my personal top 20 placed. If I'd been allowed to vote on the Stylus list, I might've been able to shake things up a bit, but probably not too much.

2006-12-18T11:19:00.000-06:00

2006: THE ALBUMS

I did a top-five list with blurbs for Scenestars.net last week (although it hasn't gone up on the site yet), and while I was at it, I figured I could fill in the rest of the ballot that I submitted to the Jackin' Pop poll. (Still torn about whether or not to contribute to Pazz and Jop this year. On one hand, there's the genuine thrill of inclusion the last couple of years: "Ma, I'm in the Village Voice!" On the other, we're talking about a paper that has fucked over Robert Christgau, Chuck Eddy, and Michaelangelo Matos, three of the best, most consistently interesting music critics in the world. I guess there's always Hinder.) And so here we are:

10. Hot Chip, The Warning

An uneven record from a gang of pasty white British dudes that still contains some of the past year's most rewarding pop pleasures, from the energized, anthemic refrain of "Over and Over, " to the alluring blue-eyed croon and insistent twitch of "Boy from School."

9. Herbert, Scale

On paper it sounds like disco: lavishly sweeping strings and anonymously fabulous singers both subservient to a dance beat -- but for Herbert, fine details matter more than grand statements, and so his Technicolor orchestra here is microscopic, wrapped in a warm blanket of mellow clicks and glitches, and no less captivating for all the tweaking that implies.

8. Kaki King, ...Until We Felt Red

It's hard for me to dislike an album whose antecedents seem to be the kind of moonlit, back-porch post-rock I loved at the turn of the century: Tara Jane O'Neil's Peregrine and Papa M's Live in a Shark Cage, most obviously -- but the young guitar whiz also demonstrates her versatility by interspersing meditative, finger-picked instrumentals with eerily poignant vocal numbers like "Jessica," which borrows some of Jeff Buckley's compelling reverie.

7. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House

They've been said to resemble the softer side of Animal Collective, and this ensemble indeed copies the celebrated noise-folk outfit's wondrous harmonies and acoustic trance, but Yellow House is redolent less of the bounties of nature and more of the shadows of the past, with the hushed, creeping "Marla" seeming not so much a cover as a palimpsest, all the dusty, wine-stained markers of the attic where it was discovered still preserved and seeping through.

6. Destroyer, Rubies

Dan Bejar is the only New Pornographer I've ever had any use for, and though I admired the bold romantic artifice of Your Blues, his previous record under the Destroyer moniker, it was the sprawling Rubies that really sold me on him: an organic tangle of ramshackle piano and bleeding guitar, overlaid with endless strings of words that Bejar clearly relishes, as they build upon his own mythology.

5. Joanna Newsom, Ys

Girl's getting a lot of guff and p-word drops for her long song-suites, but pretentious only makes sense within the insular realm of indie rock: no one would dare diss Philip Glass, say, for ten minutes of hypnotic harp figures. Plus, the expansiveness only enhances the thorny beauty of these fairy tales: amid the colorful swaths of orchestration, it lets them linger and breathe.

4. Junior Boys, So This is Goodbye

Two years ago I swooned for the tricky rhythms and gorgeously frozen sighs of the electro-pop duo's debut, Last Exit, and though this one's more streamlined, that may ultimately be to its advantage: the persistent beat and elastic laser synths on "In the Morning" prompt fantasies of dancing all night, eyes lifted to the darkened sky.

3. Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds

Owen Pallett's palette consists of the polite tools of the trained composer: contrapuntal cello and ornate piano intricately darting past each other, for instance. But he's as likely to spiral into cries of anguish as he is to dwell on his own prettiness (just as the album title conflates the heavens with literal shit), and the appearance of the Charlie Brown children's chorus on "This Lamb Sells Condos" all but encapsulates the record's consuming melancholy.

2. Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped

Twenty-five years on, and these boho rock stars not only haven't lost the plot, they're making some of the best music of their career: here they condense the bright, dreamy jams of their last couple records into crisp, shimmering pop songs, albeit with plenty of detuned arpeggios and breathy art-school poetry that'll probably always serve as a signature, since it still sounds so good.

1. Girl Talk, Night Ripper

In 2006 the gimmicky fun of the traditional mash-up gave way to a more transcendent pleasure: hearing dozens of my favorite radio hits stitched together, one snippet after another, for over 40 breathless minutes. Even when the name-that-tune factor lost its novelty, I was still left with a cavalcade of thrilling new contexts that unexpectedly stuck in my craw, and as the sort of dilettante who loves Ciara nearly as much as Sonic Youth, I couldn't help feeling like the mix was designed just for me.

Runners-up: The Knife, Silent Shout; Ellen Allien and Apparat, Orchestra of Bubbles; Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit; Phoenix, It's Never Been Like That; Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSounds; The Changes, Today is Tonight; Booka Shade, Movements; LCD Soundsystem, 45:33; The Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love; Luomo, Paper Tigers.

[cross-posted on The Funky Funky 7]

2006-12-12T10:59:00.000-06:00

So the Stylus Top 50 Singles list is up this week, and I've got two blurbs in the 31-40 range: Sonic Youth's "Incinerate" and Panic! At the Disco's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," both of which were in my personal top 10. Can't wait to see what else makes the list: as you might know, I'm a total whore for all this year-end nonsense. (Only last year did I finally throw out all my Entertainment Weekly yearly wrap-up issues that I bought at the newsstand for most of the '90s.)

2006-12-05T10:14:00.000-06:00

New single reviews.

And a query: does anyone know of any good CD compilations of what we usually call "standards"? I'm talking Tin Pan Alley, Broadway showtunes, that sort of thing. I mean, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Gershwin Songbook is probably a good start, but I'm looking for a record (or box set) that has Ella doing "Someone to Watch Over Me" and Peggy Lee doing "The Lady is a Tramp" and Sinatra doing "Fly Me to the Moon" -- because as much as I love these songs (I spent a good part of my adolescence learning to play them on the piano), I've got practically zero recordings. Could make for a good Christmas gift, hint hint.

2006-11-17T14:38:00.000-06:00

2006-11-16T17:12:00.000-06:00

2006-11-16T16:52:00.000-06:00

This blog would be better if I didn't read any other blogs at all, if I had no ASPIRATIONS. (Irony alert: the thought occurred after reading this.)

2006-11-15T18:19:00.000-06:00

2006-11-14T18:06:00.000-06:00

Me and Matthew Fluxblog stake out separate positions on melons. (I didn't even realize that was Ted Leo!)

2006-10-31T09:55:00.000-06:00

Some singles reviews this week, plus a couple that didn't make the cut:

Jay-Z, "Show Me What You Got"

The shout-out to James Brown ("Give the drummer some!") near the top is apt: as with Brown's merciless funk workouts, "Show Me What You Got" goes straight for a singular, self-aggrandizing statement, rather than muck about in story, and the dense, celebratory orchestration is meant to underscore the rapper's supposed virtuosity. However, this Vegas-style razzle-dazzle, complete with glamorous brass, show-offy piano glissandos, and snaky Wreckx-N-Effect sax, is intoxicating enough on its own to distract the listener from Jay-Z's laziness on the mic. It's an effective first single in the sense that it raises excitement for Kingdom Come, but its purpose feels limited to promotion (it's also in a new Budweiser ad, with Hova hollering from a convertible), and if its place on the album is as something other than an intro, I'll be worried.
[7]

Carrie Underwood, "Before He Cheats"

As someone who disdains the predictable trad-rock trappings that generally characterize the sound of contemporary country, I'm constantly surprised at how the genre routinely wins me over. Most of the time, it comes down to two elements that country has in abundance: strong, charismatic performers and clever, richly detailed lyrics. On "Before He Cheats," Underwood snarls about a "white-trash version of Shania karaoke" and "three-dollar bathroom Polo" in a big, pliant voice that seethes with contempt at the right moments. If the sonic palette is rather conventional, that's fine: it makes the song's real charms all the more apparent.
[8]

2006-10-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

The Funky Funky 7 originated several months ago as an excellent group blog made up mostly of Stylus writers, and so I was pleased when I was recently asked to contribute. My debut post there, which somehow ballooned into 1800 words, considers the evolution of emo, both as a genre and as a personal touchstone, and features some free tunes by American Football and The North Atlantic.

2006-10-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

Two stray thoughts about Girl Talk's Night Ripper:

1. When I'm listening to the album, the Ciara/Sonic Youth collision doesn't totally gel -- up against that ringing guitar, her voice is just a little off, pitch-wise. But when the mash-up surfaces in my mind a day later, it's perfect: "rock it, don't stop it, everybody get on the floor" syncs up with the stripped-down chords and it becomes this ideal blend for someone like me who appreciates slick new-school R&B as much as dirty art-school rock, triggering simultaneous memories of bumping Ciara in the car last spring and making out to Sonic Youth in high school -- even if the perfection doesn't quite exist outside of my head.

2. So much of the pleasure of Night Ripper has to do with anticipation, but it's a different kind of anticipation than in a song where you're like, "Oh oh, wait for this awesome drum fill" -- because what you're waiting for (whether it's the intro to "Another Day in Paradise" or the main lick from "Mundian to Bach Ke") a) doesn't seem to have anything to do with what you're currently hearing, and yet b) also feels completely inevitable. This is why I don't really buy the argument that the album doesn't have any replay value. It's only because I've heard it more than once that I can experience this discrete thrill -- and when it happens over and over, in rapid-fire succession over 42 minutes, it's a recipe for delirium.

In a weird way, it reminds me of performing Shakespeare: just as Night Ripper dazzlingly stitches together samples, A Midsummer Night's Dream assembles strings of iambs. And so after you've run through the show enough times, each absurd, archaic line no longer exists on its own: they all spill out in an oddly logical sequence, unbroken in your memory.

List of samples on Night Ripper, from Wikipedia

2006-10-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

Junior Boys at the Empty Bottle, 10/8/06:

So This Is Goodbye / The Equalizer / Teach Me How to Fight / Like a Child / First Time / In the Morning / Count Souvenirs / Birthday / FM // Under the Sun

You know that moment at a show where you close your eyes and the sound swells all around you and you get this uplifting rush in the center of your body that's, I dunno, just so blissful? I mean, it doesn't happen all that often, but part of the reason I still see live music is in the hopes of having that experience. When Sonic Youth played the Metro in 2002, and I was closer to them than I'd ever been, and they laid down one bright, gorgeous jam after another, I felt it then. I don't remember when: maybe it was in the thick of a wild, free guitar solo. Last night the moment came during the Junior Boys' encore, "Under the Sun." Its lyrical slightness and uncomplicated rhythm mean it's often overshadowed on Last Exit, but on stage the band uses this minimalism to its advantage, slowly building the beat into a trance, and when Jeremy Greenspan's dreamy, reverbed guitar suddenly bloomed into noise, I closed my eyes and smiled.

2006-10-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

This will probably be the last Stylus contribution from me for a while. (E-mail me if you want details.) It's part of the site's Non-Definitive Guide to Musicians as Actors, a feature ably commandeered by Mr. Alfred Soto, who pitches in with the Five Best Musician-Actors. I start things off with a discussion of four recent pop-star vanity projects: 8 Mile, Get Rich or Die Tryin', Crossroads, and Glitter. (With a deadline looming, Netflix would've been too slow, so I had to visit no fewer than six video stores before locating a copy of the Mariah movie.) And then Brad Shoup rounds out the article with his Top Ten Notable Bit and Supporting Roles. With all the great performances left out for space, I'm surprised we haven't attracted more comments on the piece. I was imagining something on the order of "OMG LYLE LOVETT ROOLZ IN SHORT CUTZ."

(I'm still going to be doing singles reviews, btw. Here's this week's Singles Jukebox Podcast, where I've got an audio review of Love is All's "Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up.")

2006-09-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

So I wrote some singles reviews a week ago and started contributing to the Singles Jukebox podcast as well, which means that from now on, you can listen to me ramble about at least one of the songs that Stylus reviews each week. Last week I tackled New Young Pony Club, and this week it's Japanese novelty rockers Orange Range. Stay tuned...

2006-09-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

Unless you've noticed the sidebar link to Laura Wattenberg's Baby Name Wizard blog, you may not know that one of my myriad interests is trends in baby names. Over the last week, I've been reading Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson's A Matter of Taste, an academic treatise that aims to explain changes in fashion. He uses first names as a case study because a) it's a trend that's uncontaminated by commercial influence (which is not to say that parents don't name their children after popular media figures -- witness the ascendance of "Kanye" in 2004 -- but that corporations/celebrities are not in the business of persuading them to do so), and b) there's already a rich data set available for analysis. As someone who owns books full of baseball statistics and Billboard chart data, it's this second factor that heightens the appeal for me, beyond my usual fascination with cultural trends.

After a conversation with Laura about the Lieberson book, I started thinking about the phenomenon of "mom names." Among my generation, there are certain women's names that resonate as names belonging to our mothers and our friends' mothers, names like Sharon and Diane and Kathy. And this association is helped by the fact that these names hardly ever show up among our peers. Since there is such a high turnover for girls' names in particular, all but one of the top 20 girls' names in 1950 was still in the top 20 in 1975. Indeed, many of 1950's top names for girls can be considered "mom names" today, but especially these:

Name	1950 rank	1975* rank	Drop
Shirley	19	278	259
Carol	9	149	140
Diane	16	142	126
Janet	18	140	122
Carolyn	20	119	99

*I was born in 1979, so this data is probably more true for my older friends, but I decided to use a good round number. The twenty-five years difference is also arbitrary and not based on the actual average age of U.S. mothers at childbirth, although I'd wager it's close.

Incidentally, I have never known a single woman named Shirley in my life, but the others sound about right. For the record, Sharon is close behind (11-->75 = a drop of 64), and I suspect that my image of Kathy as a mom name is not due to a drop in Katherines but to a tendency for Katherines my age to prefer Katie as a nickname.

Anyway, this got Laura and I thinking about whether there were equivalent "dad names." My initial inclination was no, since boys' names turn over much more slowly than girls' names and in fact my own dad's name (Michael) was the most popular boys' name the year I was born. But there is some turnover: half of the top 20 in 1950 had been replaced by 1975. The drops aren't nearly as precipitous (not to mention the top 6 names in 1950 stayed firmly within the top 10) -- but then again, I can't think of a single Gary my age and have met only a handful of the rest on this chart:

Name	1950	1975	Drop
Larry	11	56	45
Dennis	17	59	42
Gary	10	50	40
Ronald	12	45	33
George	20	53	33

Lieberson spends a lot of time showing how turnover in both sexes' names has increased exponentially over the last several decades, however, so I was curious to see if dad names will be more recognizable among children born in this century. I ran a similar comparison for the most popular boys' names in 1975 vs. those in 2000:

Name	1975	2000	Drop
Scott	17	158	141
Jeffrey	14	104	90
Mark	19	79	60
Jason	2	39	37
Brian	8	43	35

The differences are revealing. Scott and Jeffrey exhibit the same degree of downfall as the readily identifiable mom names of a generation prior, which suggests that they'll be recognized quite strongly as dad names by today's kindergarteners. (I don't know that many Scotts, but I know quite a few Jeffs, so this is amusing to me.) And though Jason's drop is on par with the most likely dad names of the previous generation, it was the #2 boys' name of 1975, which means that while it's by no means an unpopular name today, the sheer number of new dads named Jason is significant. (Probably more so than Mark, which experienced a larger drop but only started out at #19.)

As expected, the girls' chart is more volatile than the boys'. The drops are not substantially more than the previous generation's, but it does appear that extremely popular names (#2, #3) aren't as safe as they once were.

Name	1975	2000	Drop
Lisa	8	295	287
Julie	18	190	172
Heather	3	125	122
Amy	2	106	104
Kelly	16	111	95

For me, the most notable revelation here is that for the next decade or two, at least, kids will find it weird that Heather was once a popular name for high schoolers: now it's got "mom name" written all over it.

2006-09-11T09:54:00.000-05:00

Update: I listened to Ys while driving to the airport in the rain yesterday morning, and it sounded splendid.

I do think it's a morning-with-tea record rather than a late-night-with-wine record, since the very first time I gave it a shot I was drunk at midnight and splayed out in bed, and Van Dyke Parks's strings felt intrusive, slathered in so many empty spaces that the arrangement couldn't breathe. (And maybe also because I knew they were added after the fact.) It's still maybe a valid criticism of certain tracks (like the opener "Emily"), but when you're alert and born into the world again, that thorniness suggests the hyperactive buzz of genius, and you long for old wood desks with good scratch paper.

2006-09-01T10:13:00.000-05:00

I downloaded the new Joanna Newsom the other day, like everyone else, but am finding that I don't want to listen to it on the train or at work or wherever else I usually hear albums first. (I started to listen to Beyonce's B-Day yesterday morning on the bus, while perusing the Red Eye for celeb gossip and sports scores.) I'm not usually so particular about these things, but something about this album -- probably the fact that it's a five-song suite where each song is an average of 10 minutes, maybe also a desire to recapture that initial awe-filled experience with her -- makes me want to sit down with a bottle of wine and the lights dim in my living room, alone, before giving this a chance.

2006-08-29T11:17:00.000-05:00

New singles reviews.

Only one of mine that didn't make it was my Omarion blurb, which is just as well, since in retrospect it looks like a Pandora.com evaluation (this track has similar modern R&B stylings, heavy melodic ornamentation, and a vocal-centric aesthetic...):

I've somehow never noticed Omarion before, but I'm totally in love with this single right now. Like Mario's "Here I Go Again," most of its appeal comes from its blend of silky, languid R&B vocals with an insistent uptempo beat and an unusual instrumental riff: where Mario had crashing rock guitar, Omarion has a strutting liquid synth straight out of Stevie Wonder. And when the chorus hits, everything's locked in just right.
[8]

Maybe I should've said something about how he looks like Ludacris Jr.

2006-08-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

So the annual Da Capo Best Music Writing book doesn't come out for another two months, although series editor Daphne Carr has revealed the table of contents. And since an entire two thirds of the articles chosen for publication are currently available online (many appeared there originally), I decided to reprint the TOC with the relevant links. See, now you don't even have to buy the book.

Greil Marcus, Stories of a Bad Song / Threepenny Review

Alex Ross, Doctor Atomic "Countdown" / The New Yorker

Mike McGuirk / Rhapsody
Rush, Hemispheres
Charlie Rich, Behind Closed Doors
Ted Nugent, Cat Scratch Fever
Kylie Minogue, I Believe in You
Accept, Balls to the Wall
Frosty, Liquor Drink
Iron Maiden, Number of the Beast
Boredoms, Super AE
Kraftwerk, Man Machine
Dream Theater, Octavarium

Robert Wheaton, London Calling -- For Congo, Coloumbo, Sri Lanka... / PopMatters

Jon Caramanica, Ghetto Gospel / XXL Magazine

Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Love Hurts / VIBE [PDF]

Charles Michener, Going Bonkers at the Opera: Glimmerglass Flirts with Chaos / New York Observer

Ann Powers, Crazy Is as Crazy Does / eMusic

Miss AMP, Kevin Blechdom / Plan B Magazine

Kimberly Chun, Touched by a Woman: Dolly Parton Sings about Peace, Love, and Understanding / Creative Loafing

Frank Kogan, Frank Kogan's Country Music Critics' Ballot 2005 / I Love Music [I think this is it?]

John Biguenet, The DeZurik Sisters / The Oxford American

Katy St. Clair, A Very Special Concert / San Francisco Weekly

Nick Weidenfeld, Dying in the Al Gore Suite / The Fader

Tom Ewing, The Beatles "Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine" / Popular

Geoffrey O'Brien, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" / The New York Review of Books

Geoff Boucher, Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire / Los Angeles Times

Dave Tompkins, Permission to 'Land / Scratch Magazine

Kevin Whitehead, Chops: Upstairs, Downstairs with Art Tatum (and Monk) / eMusic

Robert Christgau, The First Lady of Song / The Nation

Anne Midgette, The End of the Great Big American Voice / New York Times

Bill Friskics-Warren, Bettye Lavette / No Depression

Susan Alcorn, Texas: Three Days and Two Nights / Counterpunch

John Sullivan, Upon This Rock / GQ

Peter Relic, The Return / XXL Magazine

Dr. David Thorpe, Thorpe's Notes on R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet / Something Awful.com

Raquel Cepeda, Riddims by the Reggaeton / Village Voice

Wayne Marshall, we use so many snares / wayne&wax

Andrew Hultkrans, Sweat and Lowdown / Artforum

J. Edward Keyes, Where's the Party? 13 Hours with the Next Franz Ferdinand / DIW Magazine

David Marchese, High on Fire / PopMatters

Monica Kendrick, Bang the Head Slowly / Chicago Reader

Will Hermes (as Robert Barbara), Vegetarian militancy, sound magick, B&D, and the most astonishing live show of my life / Loose Strife

Moustafa Bayoumi, Disco Inferno / The Nation

2006-08-22T12:24:00.000-05:00

I've been talking about pop music a lot lately with a new co-worker, Laura, and thus revisiting some of the reasons why I suddenly embraced pop again after toiling in the indie wilderness for too long.

(Which reminds me, haha, so the other day, Krista was trying to remember the name of Nelly's first really huge single, like something before "Hot in Herre," and I was like, I don't know, that must have been during my dark period, and she said, "I like how your 'dark period' isn't a time when you were depressed or doing lots of drugs or whatever, but when you weren't listening to pop music.")

Anyway, so I told Laura, who's feeling skeptical about downloading "Toxic" when Wilco and Calexico seem smarter and more relevant, that one reason I took to current Top 40 so quickly was that it was the sort of music I'd always genuinely liked but had merely repressed for ten years. I mean, when I first used Limewire three summers ago, I downloaded not just "In Da Club" but also Candyman's "Knockin' Boots" and Father MC's "I'll Do 4 U." I had a fierce nostalgia for hip-hop and R&B, and what was on the charts in 2003 was just an update of a genre that had always been there for me. (The back-turning, by the way, wasn't such a bad thing: as snobbish as my impulses sometimes were, I also really needed to explore the world beyond MTV.)

So Laura said, "Yeah, well, the music I was listening to before I got into indie rock? Mainstream country. I'm not sure I want to return to that." And I smiled, because even though my tastes in pop generally run in the KISS-FM direction, I'm enough of a dilettante that there are actually a couple of nouveau-Nashville singles that I quite like. For instance, I still maintain that Gretchen Wilson's "All Jacked Up" is one of the finest songs of the last couple years in any genre.

After I mentioned this, Laura wrinkled her nose and said, "I don't know, a lot of that stuff just sounds so overproduced." Now obviously, I don't usually have much of a problem with fancy production -- after all, I like dance music -- but I guess I knew what she meant. I shrugged. "I honestly haven't heard a whole lot," I said, "but some of what I've heard has really clever and funny lyrics, and these big, warm, charismatic voices that make me want to sing along." I stopped myself. "I guess since I never really heard country music at all until recently, maybe there's a novelty factor, too. Like hey, they're telling a story!" She laughed.

My friend Jason Hughes thinks that the only reason I like any mainstream country music at all is that no one else I know is listening to it, and so it keeps me ahead of the curve. There's a weird insinuation here that I haven't really given up indie, or at least indie's contrarian impulse to reject what's popular: in these days of the Decemberists signing to Capitol, he claims, the only truly subversive move is to reclaim commercial pop. (And once that's cool again, leave the city altogether and head out to Wal-Mart.)

And while there's an embarrassing grain of truth in that, I also think that there is something intrinsic about country that appeals to me, starting with what I fumblingly tried to explain to Laura. I'm reminded of an interesting observation Jonathan Bradley made last week on the new FunkyFunky7 blog:

One of my favorite things about country music is the economy of the lyrical structure. Every single line is placed to build up to the one or two lines in the chorus that provide the thematic center of the track. It's even like they've worked backwards, which in actuality, I'm sure they do. The killer phrase in the chorus comes first, and the entire track gets built round that.

He goes on to contrast this approach with those of rock and hip-hop, where the hook is often just a re-affirmation of what's come before it. Now I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples to this theory, but I've been amazed while listening to country at how captivated I am by the lyrics, and I'm willing to surmise that it's because this style of songwriting not only demands but rewards a close listen. For instance, I love how, in Brad Paisley's "Alcohol," the first verse functions almost as a riddle to which the chorus reveals the answer.

Or take Steve Holy's "Brand New Girlfriend," which shares an infectious giddiness, not to mention an entire lyrical hook, with Art Brut's "Good Weekend." (Despite the similarities, I somehow doubt the two acts are aware of each other.) The first verse reminds me of one of those old Gershwin or Porter opening verses that nobody actually remembers and which serve only to set up the chorus. (The one that comes immediately to mind is the tense monotone -- "like the beat-beat-beat of the tom-tom..." -- that starts "Night and Day" before it turns luxuriant.) But in "Brand New Girlfriend," this quiet, conversational intro also conveys the song's backstory: nowhere else do you hear that this is a rebound relationship.

Factor in how much fun it is to sing "playin' kissy-kissy, smoochie-smoochie, talkin' mushy-mushy about nothin'," not even caring how saccharine it is, and you've got a winner, a song that reliably makes me grin. Now I've just got to borrow Laura's old Kathy Mattea tapes...

2006-08-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

I was in Michigan all weekend for a wedding, so I missed that my rumination on songs that list women's names was published on Stylus on Friday. It contains more lyrical exegesis than probably anything else I've written for the site, but I'm pretty pleased with it. Writing it reminded me of what I liked about college.

2006-08-10T11:38:00.000-05:00

After initially disliking Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" for sacrificing the brilliant songcraft that made the singles from Justified such an unexpected pleasure, the damn thing's grown on me. All last weekend, the iPod in my mind bounced between "SexyBack" and N*E*R*D's "She Wants to Move," and my constant chants of "get your sexy awwwn" and "she's sexy!" probably annoyed my girlfriend. (I haven't actually tested yet whether these two mix well for real). Still, is it just me or does Timbaland, urging JT to "Take it to the bridge!", sound a shade like Mr. Ed?

2006-08-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

A Grand In-Joke

While re-screening Brokeback Mountain last night, I was reminded of one of my favorite closing lines to a Wallace Stevens poem: "It was like a new knowledge of reality." Jack Nasty, we hardly knew ye.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan savages my beloved Pet Shop Boys. Of course they're fey and insouciant, but even on Fundamental (which sounds fresher than its critics maintain) they're also invigorating.

2006-08-05T18:19:00.000-05:00

Pitchfork Music Festival Recap:

The best performance of the weekend was Art Brut, which I probably could have suspected, despite never having seen them before. I like Bang Bang Rock & Roll, but don't love it, probably because it places more importance on shouted lines and rudimentary riffs than on ineffable textures and melodies. But unlike the Hold Steady, where the bar-band jamming seems like a mere placeholder for Craig Finn's dense narratives to be set against, there's something refreshing about Art Brut's simplicity. The eager excitement of Eddie Argos, talking about starting a band or seeing a girl naked, feels so genuine that you wouldn't want the arrangements to get any trickier. Toward the end of the afternoon on Saturday, Argos played a rare cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America," took a break in the middle of "Emily Kane" and exhorted the crowd to let go of their exes, and ad-libbed like crazy ("Silver Jews, Top of the Pops! ... hmmm, now that would be something!") -- all with enough goofy enthusiasm to keep a grin on most festivalgoers' faces.

The runner-up was probably CSS, although I have to say that, with the exception of the disco-sheened "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" (which was already seeing a lot of play on my iPod), the mostly all-girl Brazilian electro-rock band won me over on presence more than music. But man, what presence: frontwoman Lovefoxxx twirled her microphone like a lasso, engaged in bizarre broken-English banter, and dove from the stage several times, her rainbow tights kicking up from the sweaty sea of people under the Biz3 tent. I was also glad to discover that my observation, upon hearing the record, that she "sounded Japanese" wasn't ill-founded: the gal's last name is Matsushita, and when supported by that battery of spiky guitars, I couldn't help recalling Shonen Knife.

However, a note to festival organizers: while the Biz3 tent makes a lot of sense for DJs, there's not much point to putting a live band (especially such a rambunctious one) in that space when half the crowd can't even see the stage. And since the main stages this year were pretty electronic-free (in comparison to 2005's Out Hud, Go! Team, Four Tet, Prefuse 73, and Tortoise), it'd have been nice for them to take a chance with a band like CSS to rock the sunshine.

Like CSS, Man Man impressed me mostly with their antics (faces adorned with war paint, multi-colored feathers blown out into the crowd, trinkets thrown at cymbals to create some classic pots-and-pans percussion), though their frenzied Tom Waits-ish circus music can't easily be separated from the performance thereof: the whole act is pretty compelling.

Destroyer was fine, too, with some nice blazing guitar solos in the midday sun -- but Bejar was more or less blank-faced the entire time. I liked the set but mostly because I like the new album: otherwise, no real surprises, except for the band ditching the broken-down coda to "Rubies" and translating "It's Gonna Take an Airplane" away from its original MIDI glory. (I met up with Mike Powell beforehand, and halfway through I asked him, "Are you, like, a Destroyer fan?" To which he nodded vigorously, and I was like, "Oh shit, of course he is, dude loves stuff like this," recalling his many paeans to enigmatic, romantic poets like John Darnielle, David Berman, and Donald Fagen. I wish I'd gotten a chance to hang out with him more.)

Though most of the weekend was hellishly hot, and I was wearing these cheap flip-flops that made my heels ache like crazy, I couldn't say no to the acts that closed out the dance tent each night. A-Trak struck me as a quicker Diplo, effortlessly mashing up hipster favorites with such purpose that he'd sometimes tease us with snippets rather than whole hooks: all we got of "Bucky Done Gun" was the horns and one looped second of rap.

But when Diplo took the stage the following night, the essential similarities (which Tom hints at, too) were made apparent: both DJs amped up the audience with Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous," Kanye West's "Gold Digger," and Cassie's "Me & U" (which got a surprisingly big reaction, even as I longed for the mournful synths of the original mix). Both even reached for obligatory blog faves Hot Chip: A-Trak took "Just Like We (Breakdown)," and Diplo went with "Over and Over." The most unexpected crowd-pleaser, though, was Diplo dropping "Walk Like an Egyptian" over the bare-bones beat of "Wait (The Whisper Song)." Oh-way-oh.

The rest of the fest was sorta meh. I still wish I liked the Mountain Goats more than I do, because Darnielle is such a smart, personable dude, but I've got this block when it comes to lyrics-driven singer-songwriters: they require a kind of attention that I'm just not used to giving (and which thus feels like a chore), and in the absence of this focus, it all just sounds "boring." I'm 90% confident that I'd respond better to both him and Craig Finn if they jettisoned the music altogether and published their songs as poems. They could even read them aloud: at least I'd be listening with a different ear.

I do consider myself a Yo La Tengo fan, but I've been burned both times I've seen them now. In 2001, at Nevin's Live in Evanston (during the brief three-month period when that place was committed to booking top-shelf bands), they played a set heavy on obscure cover songs, while at Pitchfork they stuck to their new, unreleased material. I know they have a reputation for being unpredictable live -- like suddenly they'll start jamming out on "Lola" just for kicks -- but I was clamoring for the hits and was sad when they never came.

Matmos was good, although I don't always know how to approach that breed of IDM, especially in a festival setting. I nodded along to some unexpectedly danceable tracks (reminiscent of the last Mouse on Mars album, actually) before cutting out to gab with Chicago Reader critic Brian Nemtusak, who was near the tent to see Matmos but was still frothing about Art Brut: "No matter what they do, it's so cheeky!"

In fact, as with last year, the opportunity to commiserate with some of my favorite music writers often outweighed the desire to see as much music as possible, especially on Saturday. I caught most of the Futureheads set behind the stage, out of the corner of my eye, as I conversed with the incredibly friendly Chris Dahlen for the first time. And since I frankly didn't care about several of the mainstage bands (including the Silver Jews, the Walkmen, and Ted Leo), I was happier hanging out in the shade with free beer and fresh fruit, chatting with folks like Nitsuh Abebe, Rob Mitchum, Matthew Perpetua, Amy Phillips, and Mark Richardson. (Former Illinois Entertainer editor Althea Legaspi and I even revisited our debate, conducted at the Q101 studios early last year, about the artistic merits of Britney Spears.)

On Sunday I arrived at the park for the tail end of Jens Lekman's set, caught a few songs from Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif (I dutifully sang along to the chorus of "Daylight," my favorite cut from either of them), and popped in the tent long enough to realize that microhouse is a poor proposition when the sun is still out, no matter how cute Ada is. But my real excuse for missing Os Mutantes and Devendra Banhart, never mind Mission of Burma and Liars (big ol' shrug), is simply that the weekend wore me out. But let's do it again next year, shall we?

2006-08-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

Half-Year Roundup: Top 20 Singles
must be released as a single between Jan. 1 and Jun. 30, 2006
[in alpha order]

Lily Allen, "LDN"
Ellen Allien & Apparat, "Way Out"
Aly and AJ, "Rush"
Booka Shade, "Night Falls"
Belle and Sebastian, "The Blues Are Still Blue"
Beyonce ft. Jay-Z, "Deja Vu"
Calle 13, "La Jirafa"
Coldplay, "Talk (Thin White Duke Mix)"
CSS, "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above"
Field Mob ft. Ciara, "So What"
Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland, "Promiscuous"
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Hot Chip, "Boy From School"
Lupe Fiasco, "Kick Push"
Panic! At the Disco, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"
The Research, "Lonely Hearts Still Beat the Same"
Rihanna, "S.O.S."
Sonic Youth, "Incinerate"
T.I., "What You Know"
The Whitest Boy Alive, "Burning"

This was in response to Matos, although the rules and regulations are all mine, just because I don't know how I'd winnow it down to 20 otherwise. Basically, I'm leaving out non-singles like Destroyer's "Painter in Your Pocket" and Final Fantasy's "This Lamb Sells Condos" and brand-new shit like The Knife's "We Share Our Mother's Health" and Midlake's "Roscoe." Tops is probably "What You Know," although I may be suggestible on that, since Mark Pytlik told me the other day it was his favorite of the year, too. Ask me later.

2006-07-31T16:31:00.001-05:00

Carl, I'm onto you:

Oh, and I'd nominate Islands' Rough Gem - I don't love the album as much as some of the principles' other work, but that song's irresistible. (The same disc's "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby" is the title of the year; the song doesn't live up to it, but how could it?)

2006-07-25T12:08:00.000-05:00

Three years ago in this space, I wrote about the joy of discovering Stereolab's Dots and Loops in college and my worry that revelatory experiences on that order were no longer possible as I aged. Recently I expanded that into a full-fledged reconsideration of the album, for Stylus's On Second Thought column, which you can read here. In retrospect, I might excise that whole John McEntire rant in the middle, to make the whole piece read better -- but dammit, the thing needed to be said. :)

2006-07-21T17:12:00.000-05:00

By the way, here's some additional singles reviews from this week that got cut:

Sean Paul ft. Keyshia Cole, "(When You Gonna) Give It Up to Me"
This came as a revelation, because I'd been hearing the original mix on Chicago radio for the last couple months and was always just like, "yeah yeah, Sean Paul, whatever" -- but the remix is fitted with an unusual lushness, and Keyshia Cole's silky vocals provide a nice foil for Sean Paul's chanting Jamaican robot act. Plus, since it's a clean edit, they've gotten rid of the word "horny," which is silly enough without said robot pronouncing it as "yarny." [7]

Plan B, "Mama (Loves a Crackhead)"
It's funny, I really liked that choppy "Like I Love You"-style guitar until I learned that dude plays it himself, which I dunno, just makes me think of M. Doughty now. And the lyrics are, let's face it, pretty insipid. But major points for managing to integrate "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" (a/k/a THE BEST SONG EVER) into the chorus in such a smooth, non-intrusive fashion. [6]

Gnarls Barkley, "Smiley Faces"
Is it just me, or does this sort of sound like TV on the Radio? Seriously: listen to those dense doo-wop harmonies constrained by the machine-like beat, rubbing up against that scuzzy guitar. At any rate, it's a good choice for a follow-up to "Crazy," since it's probably the next-best track on the record, and while I'm at it, it's better than anything on Cookie Mountain, too. [8]

2006-07-21T14:10:00.000-05:00

The most influential man in modern music

So I don't understand: Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz stars in Everything is Illuminated and within a year every other new indie band in America is doing the Eastern European gypsy cabaret-rock thing. Like, in the Stylus Singles Jukebox this week, I talk about how this Tapes 'n' Tapes track, "Insistor," has the same "crooning yelp and Old World accoutrements" as do songs by DeVotchKa, Beirut, and Man Man. (DeVotchKa in particular really plays it up, with the lead singer hoisting a dusty bottle of red wine throughout their live set and taking swigs between songs, all amidst furiously flying violin, romantic accordion, and thumping tuba. My own band is opening for them tonight, and it should be a treat.) And what the hell, you can throw Dresden Dolls in there, too, I bet.

But criminy, I certainly wasn't expecting this trend to find its way to Basement Jaxx, of all acts. And yet there it is, on the new Crazy Itch Radio. The intro track is a grim march that boasts glorious, chasing strings and a huge, foreboding choral section out of, like, Wagner, or Carmina Burana. Later, "Hey You," with its bubbling brass, fake klezmer solos, and manic shouts and claps throughout, sounds like it belongs at some Russian village festival, while gleeful peasants do that dance with the arms on the chest and the leg kicks and everything. And then "Run 4 Cover" basically mines this same territory, except maybe not to the same extent, because there's also, you know, spunky female grime MCs barking on it. Truly odd.

On a whole other stream of thought, I don't believe I ever linked to my short profile of Larry Carlton in the Stylus Non-Definitive Guide to the Session Musician, which ran a couple weeks ago. It was fun to research; dude's a class act.

2006-07-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

In Jonathan Bradley's article on Taking Back Sunday, he ruminates on the "faintly demeaning pet names for (ex-)girlfriends" that show up in emo songs, from Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down" to Panic! At the Disco's "There is a Reason Why These Tables Are Numbered, Honey..." and the opening line in Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without the E (Cut From the Team)": "Don't bother, angel, I know exactly what goes on." (I'd add the North Atlantic's "Swallows Fire," with the line, "I'll tell you one thing, sugar...")

I'm sure there's plenty to be extrapolated from that trend, especially in light of Jessica Hopper's now-canonical essay about emo and sexism, but what jumps out at me most from Bradley's digression is, "Holy shit, emo titles and lyrics are awesome!" I mean, awesome in the most ridiculously pretentious way, of course. But still: I am seriously loving that my favorite commercial rock song of the year (the dynamics are really intense) has a chorus that goes, "I chime in with a 'Haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?' / No, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality." (Even better when, until two seconds ago, I thought the line was "poisoned rationality.") And it's called "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"! Brilliant. I still have to hear Fall Out Boy's "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" -- but I have a feeling it won't live up to its title. Because really, what could?

2006-06-22T09:58:00.000-05:00

The long-awaited 1992 mixtape is now up. As I hinted, I did a lot of paring down for this one, and it does sort of hurt me that there's no room for CeCe Peniston's "Keep On Walkin'" or the Black Crowes' "Remedy" or, since I'd begun listening to WGCI that year, sensuous slow jams like R. Kelly's "Honey Love" or Jodeci's "Come and Talk to Me" (complete with lascivious moaning to rival Donna Summer). I even thought about tossing in "Achy Breaky Heart," too, just to mix it up. But I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out, and, as always, copies are available upon request.

2006-06-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

It was the agony and the ecstasy last week on the Singles Jukebox, as I gave my first 0/10 ever (Sandi Thom) and only my fourth or fifth 9/10 (Nelly Furtado). (In retrospect, I've decided that my only perfect 10/10s from last year were "Since U Been Gone" and "Be Mine!" -- but I didn't have the chance to score either of them at the time.)

And there's a new article from me today as well, as I give a chance to Booker T. and the MGs. It's summer: stay cool.

2006-05-23T12:12:00.000-05:00

Here's a Stylus article I wrote about Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me."

I've been listening to the new Sonic Youth record a lot lately, and though I'm inclined to say it's not as good as Sonic Nurse, I have such an attraction to their aesthetic that I can't imagine them ever completely letting me down. My only real beef with Rather Ripped is that the slow, hushed start of "Do You Believe in Rapture?" feels like such a momentum killer after the spirited commotion of "Incinerate," the album's best song.

2006-05-19T12:05:00.000-05:00

BLUES EXPLOSION

2006-05-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

Lots of singles reviews this week.

Also: if my immediate affection for Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds and Ellen Allien & Apparat's Orchestra of Bubbles is any indication, propulsive cellos are the way to my heart.

2006-04-25T13:41:00.000-05:00

So I did my first real DJ set last night, inasmuch as it was in an actual club -- although most of the people there were friends and acquaintances who'd come upstairs after the Canasta show. The plan was to switch off sets with Nick of The Fake Fictions (I "spun" as DJ Seaworthy, him as Nick Fiction) -- so we each ended up doing two blocks. Several songs into the second set, some folks started making requests, and while I didn't have what they wanted on the laptop I was using, I did have some dance-floor favorites on the old iPod. So I said mixing be damned and cued it up. About 30 seconds into "Bust a Move," some beer accidentally got spilled on the iPod (I don't even know whose fault it was), at which point I simultaneously performed emergency drying procedures and connected back to the laptop for a couple tunes. I wouldn't have played two Luminfire mixes in a row except I was still a bit harried. Fortunately, the iPod was resilient enough to come back for the final song of the set.

(Asterisks indicated songs chosen by request.)

1.
Go Home Productions, "Rapture Riders (Blondie vs. The Doors)"
Call and Response, "Nervous Wreck"
De La Soul, "A Rollerskating Jam Called Saturdays"
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Chicken Lips, "Without Sound"
Pebbles, "Mercedes Boy"
The Rapture, "Sister Saviour (DFA Remix)"

2.
M.I.A., "Buckey Done Gun (The Claps' NoMeansMaybe Remix)"
Salt N Pepa, "Push It"
Supersystem, "Everybody Sings"
Stacey Q, "Two of Hearts"
*Ministry, "Every Day is Halloween"
*Michael Jackson, "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough"
George Duke, "I Love You More"
*Prince, "Erotic City"
*Violent Femmes, "Blister in the Sun"
*Boyz II Men, "Motownphilly"
*Young MC, "Bust a Move"
Gwen Stefani, "Hollaback Girl (Reverso 68 Mash Edit by Luminfire)"
Snoop Dogg ft. Justin Timberlake, "Signs (Metro Area Mash Edit by Luminfire)"
*Sir Mix-A-Lot, "Baby Got Back"

2006-04-21T10:12:00.000-05:00

Stylus has devoted this entire week to a tribute to producer gurus Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (probably best known for their work with Janet Jackson), and while I've been awed by almost every piece published, I'm particularly proud of the Singles Jukebox I participated in: ten representative songs from the Jam and Lewis canon, rated by five writers. I'm pleased that "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" landed on top, although I'm still scratching my head over what makes "Fake" so wonderful. (My blurb was edited out -- which is fine, since it wasn't particularly insightful -- but I gave the song a 5/10.)

---

The other day, I listened to six new buzzed-about indie-ish albums -- Band of Horses, Dresden Dolls, Flaming Lips, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Secret Machines, and The Streets -- and was left unimpressed by almost all. Although to be fair, I would like to return to the Lips record, which is often druggily pleasant, and the Streets, whom I've never quite cottoned to but requires a little more patience, I think. There's also a decent song on the Secret Machines record -- the taut "Faded Lines" -- but Band of Horses is like a cookie-cutter SubPop band right now in its similarity to Modest Mouse/Wolf Parade/etc., Pretty Girls Make Graves have lost most of what made their debut so fierce and joyous (title of the new one, Elan Vital = serious misnomer), and Dresden Dolls (sorry, people I know who love them!) is just plain annoying. (Based on a description I'd read of them as a "goth Ben Folds Five" I was totally excited, but ugh, too much caterwauling, not enough tunes. I turned it off after the fifth track.) For most of the year I've been pretty disappointed with new releases, and I keep hoping that'll change soon. As far as I'm concerned, the new Sonic Youth -- Matthew's got a track here -- can't come quickly enough.

2006-04-15T17:21:00.000-05:00

Hey, so remember that mixtape party I went to a few months ago? One of the mixes I took at the end of the night came in a thin, blue circular case, unmarked except for a sticker made to resemble a Mexican loteria card, with the label EL ALACRAN. (Here's a similar version.) So I had no idea what the tracklist was, and I didn't even bother listening to the CD for a while, and then at some point it struck me that it might be fun to sit down and record my first reactions in real time (as I've done before). Here we go.

EL ALACRAN

1. Ha, okay, so I cheated with this one: I accidentally listened the first few seconds of the mix a few weeks ago, and I was like, oh it's "Venus in Furs", I suppose that bodes well. Last time I heard this song, probably, was in Last Days, although I don't totally remember the context. When you first read about the Velvet Underground being all avant-garde, full of cello scrapes and drones, you probably imagine it's all like this -- but truth be told, I find it to be darker and more perverse than most of their work.

2. Nice. PJ Harvey, "Down by the Water." I mean, it's a nice follow-up: stays moody and droney (both songs are pretty much just one chord), but picks up the tempo with that constant shaker. I should probably listen to To Bring You My Love more -- it seems to have become the canonical best-of-catalogue, but ever since Kelsey told me it wasn't her favorite, I listen to other albums of hers much more.

3. Grinning here: I wonder if I'll know the entire mix. Okay, except I don't remember the exact song here, but it's Sonic Youth. Something from Dirty? Man, I can't wait until Rather Ripped comes out: I really love this band. Even in their weirdest, noisiest moments, there's this epic warmth to them. ... Sorry I had to Google this, and it's "Titanium Expose," the last track on Goo. Not unlike "The Sprawl" on Daydream Nation, it starts out with an extended instrumental intro before the vocals (in this case, Thurston) come in, and it ends with a return to that section, almost like the head on a jazz chart. It also ends with about a minute of feedback patterns, which is sort of ballsy for the third track on a mix.

4. All right, I definitely don't know this, but it keeps with the same minor-key feel that's pervaded so far. There's both male and female vocals, which are pretty quiet in the mix, an organ, and scuzzy indie-rock guitar. Not bad. Occasional screaming. Whoa: drum solo. And now bass solo, haha. "But they're here and it's now / There's a door breaking down / Your hands in the air, and you're pushed to the ground." That's the chorus, and the Internet is turning up nothing. A nice moment when the vocals are a capella (after the other solos) and then the guitar comes crashing in again.

5. Pixies, "Where is My Mind." Man, this is actually sequenced pretty well: there are definite sonic similarities between this and the last track, from the coed vox to the simple rocks-back-and-forth guitar line. I always have an argument with Matt P. about what the most popular Pixies song is, and I think he usually says this one, owing partially to its appearance in Fight Club -- but I don't even know what I usually say. "Gigantic"? Or does he say "Here Comes Your Man"?

6. Interpol, "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down." Again, well played. That fake-live intro always cracks me up: "This one's called 'Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down,'" says Paul Banks as if his mouth is full of cotton. For sure a highlight from Turn on the Bright Lights, although I can't figure out exactly why I prefer that album to their follow-up: the template hasn't changed that much, has it? So word has it that this song's about blowjobs, yeah? I don't really care, although I do think that Banks's lyrics being so terrible is what makes them awesome. I feel like Nitsuh Abebe said something about this recently, about how they're great lyrics to just sing along to, as fragments -- which is what I'd say (and have said) about the Smiths, too. (The other day, Jesse was correcting me as I sang along to, what, "Sheila Takes a Bow"? In the car. And I was like, you know, I don't really care what the actual lyrics are: you're lucky I remember as many as I do, and that's because Morrissey is just hilarious to do impressions of.) The "anatomic sex toy" coda here is really nice.

7. Don't know this one: it's electro-clash. "We never took the art test." Okay, so this is ... Mu? Adult.? Fischerspooner? I like a lot of the elements here -- squiggling synths, drum machine, treated vox -- but it all hangs together so loosely, parts clanging against each other, that I'm not entirely sure it works. Oh shit, I just looked it up: it's Tracey and the Plastics, "Art Test."

8. Not recognizing this, either: it has a folkish feel, but carousing, like Billy Bragg maybe? Guitar hit on the 2 and the 4 -- like reggae, then, too. Heh. It's The Mekons, "Work All Week": I don't even know the Mekons that well, but that totally makes sense.

9. Cat Power, "Cross-Bones Style." Fantastic. You know, I don't straight-up hate the new Cat Power record, but most of my favorite Cat Power songs have been more uptempo, and sort of rhythmically hypnotic, like, say, "Nude as the News" or "He War" or this one. I also kind of love how the almost primitively simple guitar line seems to create these eerie close harmonies, either with itself or with Chan's haunting multi-tracked voice. Could this be considered an example of hauntology? I mean, there's something ghostly about it: knowing that the doubled voice means that at least one of her isn't there. And so my point being that there's nothing on the new album that sounds anything like this.

10. Oh sweet, Dolly Parton, "Jolene." This is a good segue, too, as both Dolly and Chan have such pure, clear voices, and there's a similar dolorous yet rhythmic (picked guitar) feel. In fact, the chords here almost seem to hark back to traditional melancholy ballads like "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair."

11. Al Green, "I'm So Tired." This is a song that's so iconic -- the one that they'll play as a tribute to the good reverend when he dies -- it's hard to really listen to it anymore. I don't mean that it's grating -- more that it's difficult to appreciate on its own terms. I guess that's true of, like, the Beatles, too.

12. I'm really digging the slow echoey guitar on this one, but I can't tell who it is yet. Oh man, it sounds familiar, though. I don't even know if I want to guess ... oh wait, it's Smog, isn't it? Yeah, it's gotta be. This is really pretty, some gently brushed cymbals, a single plinking piano line -- not quite as trancelike as, like, Talk Talk's "New Grass" -- but it's a great place to dwell, a gradual build as his words extend over more of the space, a woman's voice ooohs, he sings "you are not helpless, I'll help you try." ... Oh no, foiled! It's not Smog at all. Okay, yeah, his voice isn't as low as Callahan's. You know who it is? It's Songs: Ohia, and it's called "Blue Chicago Moon."

...

So yeah, funny: I have no idea who's responsible for this mix, but I definitely approve. I mean, I knew most of the songs already, but it's well-sequenced, and of the four unfamiliar tunes, none are bad, and the Songs: Ohia one is actually pretty great. Cheers, anonymous mix-maker.

2006-03-22T17:56:00.000-06:00

As usual, I've got singles reviews in the usual spot and overflow below. Mostly pleased with these considering I wrote most of them at around two in the morning, still wired from the Moroccan tea I had earlier in the day.

Rammstein - Mann Gegen Mann
There's something inherently cartoonish about a goth-industrial band like Rammstein, and even more so with all that guttural German. Still, this is surprisingly effective, with a darting bass part serving as a menacing undercurrent and a theremin-like synth whoosh as a treat near the end.
[6]

Rihanna - S.O.S.
I wouldn't have expected the follow-up single to Rihanna's seductive bubble-dancehall hit "Pon de Replay" to be a more straight-up (read: American-sounding) R&B song based around a "Tainted Love" sample, of all things. But to the 18-year-old's credit, she's able to breathe new life into the '80s club night staple by treating it as just another mold for her proficient and unmistakably alluring voice. She navigates those darkly buoyant synth lines with style.
[8]

Rogue Traders - Watching You
For a song that brazenly swipes one of new wave's most famous stutter-stop riffs, this song feels oddly unfocused. Maybe it's because hearing "My Sharona" in the context of a nervy female lead vocal also calls to mind Elastica's "Three Girl Rhumba" rip, or maybe it's because that laser-synth break demands more of an overall presence. I can't argue that it's not fun in its own way, though.
[6]

2006-03-18T11:14:00.000-06:00

Hands up if you like indie rock.

2006-03-16T10:27:00.000-06:00

The more things change...

Ten years ago, I drove to work listening to Sound Opinions, the "rock'n'roll talk show" hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Bill Wyman, that I had taped from the radio onto a cassette and then played on a mini tape recorder that I propped up on the passenger seat.

This morning, I drove to work listening to Sound Opinions, hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, that I had automatically downloaded via podcast and then played on an iPod that I connected to my car's tape deck through an adapter.

***

Here's some new singles reviews. All my hip-hop blurbs got cut, haha -- which is fine, actually, since they weren't my best, but if you're curious:

T.I. - What You Know
One of the first truly classic rap singles of 2006. It's sort of hard to go wrong when your song is dressed up with regal orchestration pilfered from an R&B dusty (cf. last year's "Stay Fly"), but T.I. is also on the top of his game here, sounding playful and confident as he cycles though endless internal rhymes.
[9]

Juvenile - Rodeo
"Rodeo" finds Juvenile employing the same clean jazz-guitar sound he used on "Slow Motion" (his biggest chart hit), but his simple, easygoing flow inches this one even further toward watery smoothness. It has a pleasant, non-intrusive bounce, but at times I wish it called more attention to itself.
[6]

B.G. f/Mannie Fresh - Move Around
All I really have to say about the actual song is that the refrain "I was raised on bread and baloney" is pretty funny shouted like that. Otherwise, though, "Move Around" is most interesting as a post-Katrina document: through their neighborhood pride, B.G. and crew dramatize the resilience of New Orleans, even if the mentions of the city's damage are few and the song's title doesn't (as I hoped it might!) refer to the relocation effort.
[5]

2006-03-07T10:53:00.000-06:00

I have a couple things in Stylus this week: the first is just a Turntable post about the Oscars, but the second is a personal essay I've had brewing for a while about taste and listening communities. Check 'em out.

2006-02-22T10:03:00.000-06:00

This week's singles reviews. If I'd been assigned that Corinne Bailey Rae song, I'd probably have used the phrase "Norah Jones meets Natasha Bedingfield." Also, for what it's worth, my personal favorites (though I didn't write about them) were Madonna and Black Eyed Peas.

2006-02-14T22:15:00.000-06:00

The problem with Transamerica isn't Felicity Huffman's Oscar-nominated performance, which is admittedly a deft characterization of a M2F transsexual who still must consider and try on her femininity at every step. No, the problem is nearly everything else about the film, which I suspect is garnering better-than-average reviews because of its "brave" subject matter.

The film's most glaring failure is that, for all of Huffman's nuanced mannerisms, Bree remains a fundamentally one-dimensional character. There is little sense of who she is beyond what is put on the screen: all we learn about her past is that she once attempted suicide, once had sex with a woman, and that she spent ten years in college without graduating -- a detail that serves alternately as a joke and as an excuse for Bree to expound upon Native American mythology and other trivia throughout the film. I kept wondering simple things like how long she had known she was a woman, why she decided to transition at this point, what was her history of desire, and essentially how she had gotten to where she was.

Granted, these questions were perhaps at the forefront of my mind having just read Jennifer Finney Boylan's funny, sensitive memoir She's Not There, about her own life as a transsexual and all of the identity grappling that goes along with it. And there's an interesting counterargument that could be made, to the effect that dwelling on all of the psychology reifies our understanding of transsexuality as a "problem" (cf. early narratives of the tragic mulatto and the tortured homosexual). This line of thought claims that it's more progressive to present members of marginalized groups as just plain people, without all of the attendant handwringing. And yet the film is already making a big deal of Bree's gender, as indicated first by the title (an admittedly clever pun for a film about a cross-country trip) and by her superobjective (getting back to Los Angeles for her surgery), not to mention all of the predictable reactions from those around her. If we are going to make it a focus, why settle for superficiality?

Unfortunately, superficiality seems to be writer-director Duncan Tucker's modus operandi, since most of the other characters are not just flimsily written but outright caricatures. There's the jovial old Mammy, the teenage dreadlocked hippie, the wise and gentle Native American, the shrill harpy mother, the Jewish retiree. Even Toby (a/k/a Eddie Furlong Jr.) rarely moves beyond the tired markers of Troubled Youth. A few weeks ago, my friend Brian Tallerico of The Deadbolt warned me that Transamerica exemplifies "everything that's wrong with independent cinema nowadays"; at the time it sounded like an exaggeration, but I'm willing to concede an element of truth. There's a sense in this film in which diversity appears to be presented for no other reason than the fact that it's an independent picture and they can get away with it -- not only does this carry a whiff of smug self-congratulations, but the intended effect (see how tolerant and liberal we are?) falls flat when every character can be reduced to his or her identity-quirk. Ipso facto, the old stereotypes win. In the same way, the film introduces "controversial" elements -- Toby's sexual abuse at the hands of his stepdad, Bree's sister's alcoholism, the almost-incest between Bree and Toby -- more or less gratuitously, with hardly any exploration of their import, an approach that strikes me as sub-Solondzian at best.

All of this has the effect of creating a fairly uneven tone, which is disastrous for a film that I think ultimately requests sympathy for its lead character. I am reminded of About Schmidt, another film about a farcical road trip that simultaneously aims to be a serious character study. At the end of both films, the protagonist breaks down and cries, supposedly having suffered so much -- but in neither case does it feel earned, after all the cartoonishly broad strokes (cf. Dermot Mulroney's redneck role in Schmidt) that precede it. The family scenes could've been a wonderful opportunity for Bree to examine her past and what she's sacrificed to become who she is -- but Tucker apparently thought it served better as an opportunity for an old lady to make dick jokes.

2006-02-13T09:55:00.000-06:00

Me and the Stylus crew on the New Pantheon Music Awards. This piece reaffirms my belief in the value of collective criticism, or criticism as conversation -- as exemplified by things like the Slate Movie Club, the too-brief Singles Jukebox experiment, and (I guess) ILX at its finest. I like being able to react to others and reshape my positions as I go along; the apparent solid certainty of most published criticism is one of its major fallacies. And I like the voice that comes out when you're just bullshitting with fellow writers: smart and a bit show-offy, but also breezy and fun. I even got to make use of my interest in baby-name trends while talking about the Arcade Fire: all of a sudden I feel like Malcolm Gladwell.

2006-02-09T00:15:00.000-06:00

Two thoughts while listening to the ol' iPod this week:

1. I was skeptical when I first read that K-OS had a cameo on that new Broken Social Scene album: I mean, I know they like to promote the collective spirit and all, but I was imagining, I dunno, like R.E.M.'s "Radio Song" or something, and this didn't bode well. But you know, it's actually surprisingly fluid, to the point where when I hear the song now, even before he comes in, I'm thinking, "This would be a great place for a guy to just freestyle over." Which is weird, but what I'm saying is, it really works.

2. There's something about Kiki (of "& Herb" fame) -- at least just listening to Live at Carnegie Hall -- that reminds me of a Martin Short character! "To be a lesbian and a nun in SHOW BUSINESS!" This probably does Kiki a disservice, but ... that voice.

2006-02-07T17:32:00.000-06:00

From Carl Wilson:

I was being interviewed for a teevee show about music writing and blogging today, and among my staircase moments afterwards, I thought that my answer to the question, "If writing about music is such a non-lucrative career, why do it?" should have been that precisely because music is so abstract and inimical to verbal capture, it opens up an infinite field to write across, an unending series of creative near- or far-misses -- and because music is so insinuated in everyone's personal lives and consciousnesses, it burrows tunnels into every subject matter, making it a subject that potentially permits you to write about anything and everything in the world. But then again, I thought, that could be said of writing about food or clothing or a hundred other things.

He's right, though: those are exactly the reasons why I find writing and thinking about music (as opposed to other art forms, at least) so consistently rewarding.

2006-02-07T15:09:00.000-06:00

Saw Inskeep's top 10 films of 2005 today and thought I should turn mine in as well, although there's still plenty I haven't seen (I've got War of the Worlds and Murderball at home via Netflix).

It was one of those years I almost didn't make a list at all, since I barely thought about it throughout the last twelve months (unlike, say, 2001 or 2004, which were particularly fruitful movie-watching years for me) -- only last week did I realize that Werner Herzog's fascinating Grizzly Man was in fact my #1, although I'll admit it got there mostly by default.

1. Grizzly Man
2. Capote
3. A History of Violence
4. The Squid and the Whale
5. Brokeback Mountain
6. Walk the Line
7. Munich
8. Hustle & Flow
9. Broken Flowers
10. Match Point

2006-02-07T11:58:00.000-06:00

A new crop of singles reviewed. I think I'm getting the hang of the new international jukebox (although I requested to write mostly about songs that'll actually show up on these shores).

2006-02-03T14:43:00.000-06:00

Illustration by Ken Chu

There's something utterly fascinating about this ILX thread, which began with Emily posting a photo of three people sitting on a bed -- but with no information about it apart from her own caption "so not gonna happen." From then on, everyone almost instantly began dissecting it, and for hundreds of posts.

The ways in which people analyzed the photo differed, however. On one hand, you had those interested mostly in socio-psychological analysis based on the available clues in the photo: for instance, what are the motivations of the dude in the photo (quickly nicknamed "Wayne")? What does his dress and body language tell us about his goals in the scenario? Why are these girls hanging out with him? Etc. And then you had those of us who sought to expand upon that by gathering as much detailed, actual information as we could about the photo subjects and their environment. The fact that Wayne's Hooters t-shirt reads "King of Prussia, PA" at the bottom (look closely) is irrelevant to determining what sort of relationship he has with the sorority gals on the bed, but inasmuch as it broadens our knowledge base, the discovery of this detail is rather exciting.

When Emily revealed the source of the photo -- a photo gallery on the website of a young soldier deployed in Iraq -- some complained that this took the fun out of the game. But for the more investigative-minded posters, it only gave us more to work with. Full names led us to Myspace profiles, which enlarged the social circle beyond the partygoers pictured in the gallery. The comments there were revealing: a reference to "that shadeball Tommy Loftus" suggested Wayne's entire real name (we already knew the surname from the URL on some of the jpegs). And yet by the time I had worked out that Ashlee and Danielle and Jenna, who went to a different high school than most of the gang, must have met them at Delaware County Community College, I had to stop and ask myself what was really the point of all my amateur sleuthing.

Longtime readers of this blog might note shades of the Maya Keyes fiasco, at least in the initiative I took toward investigating and putting together a puzzle based on clues dropped around the Internet. (My friend Robyn joked that I should find some way to turn my obvious skill and talent in this area into a career -- like what, a private eye?) But in this case, there was no sense that I was on the front line of uncovering a political scandal; in fact, at one point, I remarked that the very banality of these kids' lives held a certain appeal to me. The pleasure, therefore, was related more to the thrill of fiction, at having a narrative unspool before you, a whole world opening up full of new people and places, all somehow connected. One of the things I like about an epic novel like DeLillo's Underworld is how you're introduced to a minor character like Eric Deming in the context of being a colleague of Nick Shay's, and then a couple hundred pages later you're treated to a prolonged account of his childhood. (You find the same thing in the improv-comedy form known as the Harold.) In this sense, the delight I took in tracing Andy's love of Pantera and friendship with a sandwich-maker named Glen (for instance) was like a great subplot spinning off from the main storyline, with boundless possibilities.

2006-02-03T10:10:00.000-06:00

So: Pazz and Jop is finally out, and not surprisingly, Kanye takes both album and single (for "Gold Digger"). (Precedents: Michael Jackson in 1983, Prince in 1987, Nirvana in 1991, Arrested Development in 1992, and Outkast in 2000 and 2003.) I'm not sure why I thought that Kelly Clarkson had a chance for "Since U Been Gone" (when Alex in NYC is on record as digging "Gold Digger," then there's your P&J winner, folks) -- but I'm pleased that Amerie and Kelly round out the top three.

Once again, glenn mcdonald has done the yeoman's work of calculating the critical alignment ratings for every voter in the poll. As you can see, I'm 209th -- up nearly 100 places from last year, which I'm guessing has something to do with the fact that I didn't have any truly idiosyncratic votes (like, say, Codename: Dustsucker or "Phone Call") this time around. (Wait, I take that back, I'm the only dude who voted for the Braxe/Falke remix of "Black History Month." But I also voted for the #2 and #3 albums and the #2 and #3 singles.)

Kisses to David Moore: the fact that we're the only two critics to list Lindsay Lohan's deliciously swaggering "First" means I'll forgive him for igniting perhaps the biggest hype machine in indie rock this decade. Fun to see, too, that Stylus writers make up the majority of votes for Snoop Dogg's "Signs" (it's me and the notoriously stylish Alfred Soto and Thomas Inskeep, and then someone named Robin Edgerton), and nearly the majority for the Kelley Polar record (me, Todd Burns, and Derek Miller make up three of the seven, and I don't think anyone's surprised to see melodic dance aficionados Juzwiak, Kellman, and Pytlik in there as well.)

Heather Phares, who are you? We have the same favorite album and favorite single from 2005. Let's date.

2006-01-23T10:40:00.000-06:00

For each of the first two years of this blog, I did a year-end roundup, where I put up my top ten lists and commentary. This past year, I have to admit, I got burned out on all that stuff fairly quickly and I just couldn't bring myself to say anything I hadn't already said elsewhere. Even the prospect of keeping up with new music made me ill at the start of 2006 -- I turned my attention to all of the films from last year I had been neglecting -- and it's only been in the last couple of days that I've felt enthusiastic again (yay new Destroyer album). But in advance of next week's Pazz and Jop reveal, I thought I'd at least print my ballot here, as a means of closure:

ALBUMS

1. Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens - Environ (18)
2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois - Asthmatic Kitty (16)
3. Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again - Kranky (13)
4. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm - Vice (13)
5. Isolee - Wearemonster - Playhouse (10)
6. Stars - Set Yourself on Fire - Arts and Crafts (10)
7. Vitalic - OK Cowboy - PIAS (5)
8. M.I.A. - Arular - XL/Beggars (5)
9. Superpitcher - Today - Kompakt (5)
10. Robyn - Robyn - Konichiwa (5)

SINGLES

1. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone - RCA
2. Robyn - Be Mine! - Konichiwa
3. Snoop Dogg ft. Justin Timberlake - Signs - Geffen
4. Lindsay Lohan - First - Universal
5. Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl - Interscope
6. Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline) - Arts and Crafts
7. Amerie - 1 Thing - Columbia
8. The Killers - Mr. Brightside - Island
9. Death From Above 1979 - Black History Month (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix) - Vice
10. The Game ft. 50 Cent - Hate It or Love It - Aftermath

Would I move things around were I to submit the ballot now? Sure I would. For one, I probably overrated Isolee and M.I.A., neither of which have had much staying power for me as the year wore on (I rewarded them mostly for their initial bursts of brilliance; at a certain point, I was as into them as anything else in my top ten). As ever, lists like these are merely snapshots.

2006-01-23T08:26:00.000-06:00

A few singles reviews as part of the new international jukebox on Stylus. I'm not entirely sure how the editing process goes (maybe I just can't compete with the delirious imagery of Powell or the amusing self-awareness of Barthel), but here are three reviews that didn't make it to print:

a-ha - "Analogue"
Wait, did everyone else know that a-ha has had a career for the last twenty years? I could've sworn they were scheduled for a future installment of VH1's Bands Reunited. Comeback or not, this song is pleasant adult pop, as the band ditches the trademark synths of "Take on Me" for fuzzy guitars and a spacious piano line that's coincidentally reminiscent of another new song by an 1980s holdover: Depeche Mode's "Precious."
[7]

Miranda! - "Don"
Awww, I'm tickled to hear a Spanish-language pop song that for once isn't peppered with gruff reggaeton shouts or familiar norteño flavors. I still have no idea what they're singing about, but this Argentinian band creates a sense of colorful fun through synth bloops and winsome coed harmonies.
[7]

Ne-Yo - "So Sick"
He's straight from the school of whining male R&B singers who miss their boo so much it hurts (class president: Mario), but I have to say, when I first heard this song in the car a few weeks ago, the details in those first few lines (illustrating how even everyday banalities take on a new significance post-breakup) really got to me.
[6]

2006-01-08T02:03:00.000-06:00

Ever since Josh called Alfred a formalist, I've wondered whether the label applies to my mode of criticism as well. I mean, I'm not sure exactly what this means, except I tend to be more interested in musical structures than in poetic evocations. If you asked me what my favorite pop-song bridges were from the past year, for instance, I'd have a good idea. (Off the top of my head: "Since U Been Gone," "First," and "Here I Go Again.") I talk about instruments a lot. (Like, what was with all of those R&B songs circa 2003-04 that used these noodly jazz-guitar sounds? I'm thinking of, like, Baby Bash's "Suga Suga." But it was everywhere for a while.) I get the sense that Alfred gets classed as a formalist because he has the capacity to judge different sorts of music (indie, mainstream, etc.) on the same general aesthetic level, not as encumbered by issues of hipness or politics as many critics are. I don't know if this is the same thing, though.

2006-01-07T17:40:00.000-06:00

There's something to be said for watching a film in the spirit of its protagonist, which is why I don't feel too bad for curling up naked under a comforter in a darkened bedroom, with a mild headache and sore joints, while Last Days played on a small television in front of me. I even came close to falling asleep a few times, especially during long uninterrupted takes like Blake playing drums behind the front window: I would just sort of drift off, and then when I came to, Kim Gordon's face would appear. Okay. After the credits rolled, I stumbled into the kitchen, washed out a saucepan and thought about making soup but didn't, then put on In Utero and crawled into the bath, where I lay for fifteen minutes in a daze, disaffected, wanting to avoid later social engagements by just not doing anything.

Of Gus Van Sant's three most recent films, I'd rank Last Days somewhere between the mostly captivating Elephant and the tedious Gerry. I found myself most engaged by the elements of banality set against the miseries of Blake's addiction and inevitable demise, most obviously the business-speak of the Yellow Pages salesman but also the Boyz II Men video that blares as Blake hides and sulks. (The video isn't banal in the sense of it being dull but rather in the way it represents the unflagging progression of media images insensitive to the individuals whose spaces they occupy.) But I also don't quite know how to judge these films, as the aesthetic experiences they offer seem to be of a different category than most films I see. All of them are, to a degree, pointless, but that's not a failure: that pointlessness is sort of the point.

2005-12-31T04:05:00.000-06:00

At the Diplo/Books show tonight:

Me: How do you feel about arm-wrestling?
M.I.A.: Eh, whatever, I'm not really ... not now, there's not a good surface ...
Me: I'm asking because I arm-wrestled Lady Sovereign a few weeks ago.*
M.I.A.: Oh, I can fucking take her.
Me: Then let's see what you got!
M.I.A.: [rolls up her sleeves, proceeds to shame me]

I related this story to Amy, and then said, okay, so who do I go for next? Her answer: Annie. Of course. It's the holy trifecta of blogger-beloved international female pop stars.

*Not entirely true!

2005-12-30T08:59:00.000-06:00

I've also got an article up on Stylus detailing my top 10 remixes of 2005.

Some otherwise fine remixes that didn't make the cut: Missy Elliott, "Lose Control (Jacques LuCont Remix)"; The Juan Maclean, "Tito's Way (Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas Remix)"; Mike Jones, "Still Tippin' (Diplo Remix)"; R. Kelly, "Sex in the Kitchen (Remix)"; and Spoon, "I Turn My Camera On (John McEntire Remix)."

2005-12-30T01:35:00.000-06:00

So I've put together a best-of-2005 mix. Last year's mix was 72 songs, but I found room for 110 tracks on this one, spanning hip-hop, R&B, Europop, dance-punk, emo, country, indie rock, house, and freak-folk, among others. Depending on when you're reading this, I might still make a substitution or two, but most of it's set. And once again, if you'd like a copy (preferably a single mp3 CD, but I can also do six audio CDs), let me know.

1. Lady Sovereign, "Random"
2. Gwen Stefani, "Hollaback Girl"
3. Rihanna, "Pon de Replay"
4. Daddy Yankee, "Gasolina"
5. M.I.A., "Bucky Done Gun (The Claps' NoMeansMaybe Remix)"
6. Trick Daddy ft. Cee-Lo and Ludacris, "Sugar (Gimme Some)"
7. Ying Yang Twins ft. Mike Jones, "Badd"
8. 50 Cent ft. Mobb Deep, "Outta Control"
9. Common ft. John Mayer, "Go"
10. Ludacris ft. Bobby Valentino, "Pimpin' All Over the World"
11. The Game ft. 50 Cent, "Hate It or Love It"
12. Kanye West, "Diamonds"
13. Three 6 Mafia ft. Young Buck, Eightball, and MJG, "Stay Fly"
14. Missy Elliott ft. Ciara and Fatman Scoop, "Lose Control"
15. Basement Jaxx, "Oh My Gosh"
16. Mariah Carey, "Shake It Off"
17. Brooke Valentine ft. ODB, "Blah Blah Blah"
18. Ciara ft. Ludacris, "Oh"
19. Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz ft. Usher and Ludacris, "Lovers and Friends"
20. Natalie, "Goin' Crazy"

21. Mary J. Blige, "MJB Da MVP"
22. Amerie, "1 Thing"
23. R. Kelly, "Sex in the Kitchen (Remix)"
24. Stevie Wonder, "What the Fuss"
25. Jamie Lidell, "When I Come Back Around"
26. Jeff Parker, "Toy Boat"
27. James Carter, Cyrus Chestnut, Ali Jackson, and Reginald Veal, "Blue Hawaiian"
28. Feathers, "My Apple Has Four Legs"
29. Stereolab, "Interlock"
30. Beck, "Earthquake Weather"
31. Nouvelle Vague, "A Forest"
32. Feist, "One Evening"
33. Sam Prekop, "Dot Eye"
34. The Books, "Smells Like Content"
35. The Futureheads, "Decent Days and Nights (Max Tundra Remix)"
36. The Russian Futurists, "Why You Gotta Do That Thang?"
37. Fiona Apple, "Extraordinary Machine"

38. Robyn, "Be Mine!"
39. Tahiti 80, "Changes"
40. Snoop Dogg ft. Justin Timberlake and Charlie Wilson, "Signs"
41. Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
42. The Knife, "Pass This On"
43. Jens Lekman, "You Are the Light"
44. Electric Six, "Future is in the Future"
45. Bumblebee Unlimited, "Lady Bug (I Just Wanna Be Your)"*
46. Madonna, "Hung Up"
47. Rachel Stevens, "Negotiate with Love"
48. Supersystem, "Born Into the World"
49. Out Hud, "How Long"
50. The Juan Maclean, "Give Me Every Little Thing"
51. Gorillaz, "DARE"
52. Architecture in Helsinki, "Do the Whirlwind"
53. Spoon, "I Turn My Camera On"
54. Of Montreal, "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games"
55. New Order, "Krafty"
56. The Killers, "Smile Like You Mean It"

57. Bloc Party, "Like Eating Glass"
58. White Rose Movement, "Love is a Number"
59. Kaiser Chiefs, "I Predict a Riot"
60. The Futureheads, "Hounds of Love"
61. Art Brut, "Emily Kane"
62. The Hold Steady, "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"
63. Kelly Clarkson, "Since U Been Gone"
64. Low, "California"
65. Chevelle, "The Clincher"
66. My Chemical Romance, "Helena"
67. Lindsay Lohan, "First"
68. Queens of the Stone Age, "Little Sister"
69. LCD Soundsystem, "Daft Punk is Playing at My House"
70. Death From Above 1979, "Black History Month (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke Remix)"
71. Nine Inch Nails, "Only"
72. Mario, "Here I Go Again"
73. Stephen Malkmus, "Pencil Rot"
74. Trace Adkins, "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk"
75. Gretchen Wilson, "All Jacked Up"
76. Brad Paisley, "Alcohol"

77. The New Pornographers, "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras"
78. Tegan and Sara, "Walking with a Ghost"
79. Death Cab for Cutie, "Soul Meets Body"
80. The Decemberists, "The Engine Driver"
81. Sufjan Stevens, "Casimir Pulaski Day"
82. Edith Frost, "Emergency"
83. Emiliana Torrini, "Next Time Around"
84. Eric Ziegenhagen, "Is That Star Wars?"
85. The Mountain Goats, "Pale Green Things"
86. Antony and the Johnsons, "Hope There's Someone"
87. Coldplay, "The Speed of Sound"
88. The Doves, "Black and White Town"
89. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, "In This Home on Ice"
90. Sleater-Kinney, "Jumpers"
91. Broken Social Scene, "7/4 (Shorelines)"
92. M83, "Don't Save Us from the Flames"
93. Stars, "Ageless Beauty"
94. Petra Haden, "I Can See for Miles"

95. Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek"
96. The MFA, "The Difference It Makes (Superpitcher Remix)"
97. Chelonis R. Jones, "I Don't Know"
98. Isolée, "Pictureloved"
99. Lindstrøm, "I Feel Space"
100. Justus Köhncke, "Timecode (Edit)"
101. Kelley Polar, "Here in the Night"
102. Rex the Dog, "I Look Into Mid-Air"
103. Vitalic, "Wooo"
104. The Killers, "Mr. Brightside (Jacques LuCont Remix)"
105. Boards of Canada, "Chromakey Dreamcoat"
106. Caribou, "Hello Hammerheads"
107. Super Eagles, "Love's a Real Thing"**
108. Devendra Banhart, "Long Haired Child"
109. Animal Collective, "Grass"
110. Dungen, "Festival"

*orig. released in 1978; appears on Annie's DJ Kicks
**orig. released in 1972; appears on Love's a Real Thing: The Fuzzy Funky Sounds of West Africa

2005-12-23T13:57:00.000-06:00

You always hear those stories about rock critics hanging out with big-time musicians -- Lester Bangs on tour with the Clash, for instance -- and wonder what it must really be like. This photo is hilarious. Next time I see Tom Breihan, I'm buying him a drink.

2005-12-23T02:18:00.000-06:00

I just returned from an awesome mixtape-swap party, where everyone brings two copies of a mixtape (or CD) they've made, and then leaves with two other mixes. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my newly acquired mixes at the party (it was hosted by Eric, AbbyG, Shelley, et al.), so I can't tell you about what I picked up. But I can tell you what I left:

1. Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek"*
2. Phoenix, "Too Young"
3. Chelonis R. Jones, "I Don't Know"
4. Kelley Polar**, "Here in the Night"
5. Out Hud, "How Long"
6. Saint Etienne, "Nothing Can Stop Us"
7. Belle & Sebastian, "We Are the Sleepyheads"
8. Bumblebee Unlimited, "Lady Bug (I Just Wanna Be Your)"
9. Althea and Donna, "Uptown Top Ranking"
10. Isolee, "Schrapnell"
11. Robyn, "Be Mine!"
12. Joni Mitchell, "Help Me"
13. Beach Boys, "Busy Doin' Nothin'"
14. Shuggie Otis, "Aht Uh Mi Hed"
15. Young Marble Giants, "Final Day"
16. Life Without Buildings, "PS Exclusive"
17. Sonic Youth, "Sunday"***

* For whatever reason, I really wanted to start with this track, which I discovered via the Stylus singles list and keep going back to. I mean, c'mon: it's a great lead-off track, right? I didn't follow up with anything from here, though.

** Yeah, so Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens was the album on the Stylus list I blurbed for. I'm actually surprised it didn't finish higher than #21, since I figured anyone who voted for Junior Boys last year (a top-ten finisher) would also be voting for Kelley Polar. (And actually, for as much as I love the album -- it's my number one of 2005 -- I'm a bit embarrassed about voting for what's basically this year's equivalent of Last Exit, my number one of 2004. Especially since when I first read the descriptions of the record -- on ILM, probably -- I kind of knew already how much I'd fall for it.)

*** For all the criticism that A Thousand Leaves gets -- some of it deserved -- there's also part of me that feels like "Sunday" is, like, the quintessential Sonic Youth single. Doesn't hurt that, amidst its noise derailment, it's also so compact.

2005-12-19T14:41:00.000-06:00

The Stylus Top 50 Albums list begins today, although the blurb I've written won't show up until later in the week (not sure when).

For their part, Pitchfork just crowned Antony and the Johnsons' "Hope There's Someone" as their top single of the year, which I never would've guessed ("1 Thing" is #2). It's a song I've liked since I first heard it, but I've been paying more attention to it lately, and that swirling coda, with those pounding piano chords ringing past each other, sounded so beautiful as I drove down the sunny hills of eastern Pennsylvania into the New Jersey sprawl a few days ago.

2005-12-15T11:53:00.000-06:00

Is "Hollaback Girl" the only pop song this year that uses the future perfect tense ("not just gonna have been like that") in its refrain?

EDIT: Scratch that.

2005-12-12T23:40:00.000-06:00

Maybe it's the novelty factor, since I certainly don't listen to much of the genre, but a country song is once again the best single of the week. Of course, it's no "All Jacked Up," but it's pretty fun regardless.

Meanwhile, I'm the only critic that admitted to liking "Seasons of Love." Is the song really that bad, or does the fact that it comes from a dopey, played-out Broadway musical work against it here? I mean, when I saw the Rent trailer -- the one where "Seasons" just plays out in its entirety -- I kind of got the chills, you know?

2005-12-08T11:01:00.000-06:00

Right, so:

You all know I love Gwen, but I'm so over her now that I almost arm-wrestled Lady Sovereign on an icy sidewalk the other night. I say "almost" because she is apparently too cool for that. But we did playfully jab at each other before she scampered away.

At any rate, the confrontation was probably instrumental in her later helping me and Evan get into the VIP section at her afterparty -- although in the end, all that really had on offer was Pitchfork gossip and free pizza.

2005-12-07T12:59:00.000-06:00

If you haven't been following the Stylus Top 50 Singles countdown, you should. I wouldn't dream of spoiling anything, but just so you know, the song that I was assigned to blurb (my #5 overall) appears tomorrow.

2005-12-02T10:53:00.000-06:00

Here's a Stylus article I wrote about Vincent Gallo and the music of Buffalo '66. I sort of wished I'd been able to talk more about Gallo's solo album When, which I discovered while researching the article: it has this creepy, dreamy 1950s feel that reminds me of David Lynch a bit, like it's so banal it seems unhinged.

2005-11-26T11:22:00.000-06:00

Another stray thought: "My Friend Dario" sort of plays the same role on OK Cowboy as "Frontier Psychiatrist" does on Since I Left You: it's the single, and initially the standout track, but it's such a departure from the rest of the Vitalic album, which has such a unified sound (all those drunken carnival organs) that it begins to grate when listened to in context.

2005-11-23T11:32:00.000-06:00

I don't really like "Fix You" that much, but it was probably smart of Coldplay to release a "Yellow" in between two "Clocks."

2005-11-22T10:57:00.000-06:00

I set a goal earlier this year to listen to 100 albums from 2005, partially so I could make a top 40 or 50 list at the end of the year without feeling like I was scraping the barrel. I didn't think it would be all that difficult, either: I'd do my usual amount of buying, downloading, and acquiring from friends, and then be more assiduous about monitoring sites like Luisterpaal, where I can stream full albums that I probably wouldn't have otherwise sought out.

Anyway, there are 39 days left until the New Year, my Stylus ballot is probably due much earlier than that, and I've heard a grand total of 86 records.

So here is where I beseech you, readers, to recommend me ONE album from this year that I absolutely need to hear. Ideally, it'd be something you think I'd like: I mean, I'd post this on ILM, but I don't just want a predictable list of the year's most-raved about records. I want a personal recommendation, so I can convince myself that listening to it is crucial.

Here's the list of what I've already heard. Now go forth!

2005-11-22T01:09:00.000-06:00

I can't hear Boards of Canada's "Chromakey Dreamcoat" (probably the highlight from The Campfire Headphase) these days without also hearing Kanye West's unctuous "Addiction" over it. Both tracks feature a cleanly picked electric-guitar figure in a dreamy minor key (on "Addiction," it's a sample of a recording of "My Funny Valentine"), and the sound is similar enough that a mash-up would wind up being redundant instead of revelatory. I'm reminded of how much BoC's beats are hip-hop-derived, which is surprisingly uncommented upon; I do think those simple, heavy drum loops are a key to their popularity among people who otherwise don't have much grounding or interest in electronic music.

2005-11-18T11:35:00.000-06:00

NEW COVER CONNECTIONS (OLD)

2005-11-18T11:15:00.002-06:00

You know, I don't usually like to talk about my band on this blog -- in general, I prefer to keep my writer side separate from my musician side -- but I'll just say this: The new Canasta album is out this week, and I think it turned out pretty good.

2005-11-09T11:11:00.000-06:00

Early-in-the-week singles now.

2005-10-31T10:08:00.000-06:00

I wrote about Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" for the Stylus Halloween special this week.

Where the Truth Lies, the new Atom Egoyan film, is an effective pulpy thriller that kept reminding me of the Luisa Rey sections in David Mitchell's postmodern novel Cloud Atlas: both Rey and Karen O'Connor are plucky young reporters in 1970s California who are carrying on their father's journalistic legacies and who find themselves caught up in the cover-up of a murder.

After reading reviews of Cloud Atlas, I was surprised to find the Rey story described by more than one critic as deliberately generic. To me it was the most captivating narrative in the whole novel -- although perhaps my surprise owes to the fact that I don't often read airplane paperbacks. (Maybe I should.) Where the Truth Lies has its hackneyed moments (cf. Alison Lohman's breathless voiceover about the murdered O'Flaherty girl living on as the tree in her mother's backyard), and Lohman isn't quite convincing as a hard-nosed go-getter (though she is appropriately vulnerable when the scene calls for it, and I maintain her essential prettiness) -- but it's creepily entertaining nonetheless.

2005-10-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on the trailer for Shopgirl:

1. Laundromat scene reminiscent of similar in Secretary, with Jason Schwartzman playing the Jeremy Davies role to Claire Danes's Maggie Gyllenhaal (and by extension, then, Steve Martin = James Spader: the older, more elusive man who's ultimately more attractive than the scruffy puppydog).

2. Schwartzman's line "Yes I am ... wait, what?" -- confidently bullshitting and then dropping the pretense for a laugh -- is a near replica of a scene of his in the trailer for I Heart Huckabees. (Tomlin: "Have you ever transcended time and space?" Schwartzman: "Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about.")

3. Overall Lost in Translation mood, which is okay with me, though a friend recently expressed skepticism toward what she called "man-rescues-wounded-sparrow" films as embodying some sort of male fantasy, and if I reacted defensively, it's probably because it hit too close to home.

2005-10-24T15:40:00.000-05:00

Because nobody's in the habit of checking it anymore, I should announce here that I'm reviving Shouting the Poetic Truths of High-School Journal Keepers with an doozy of an entry this week. EMO YEAH.

2005-10-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

Scott Woods has an interesting post (and follow-up) about recent trends he's discovered as a wedding DJ. I think part of the reason this kind of examination is interesting to me is that it's essentially about canonicity, with the wedding reception a microcosm for the broader popular-music environment.

2005-10-14T11:30:00.000-05:00

It's always satisfying when I'm in sync with the other Jukebox critics, as has happened this week, for the most part: we agree that Common, Ashlee, and Teairra are all middling, and Dem Franchize Boyz and Goo Goo Dolls are dreadful. Of course, I'm the outlier on the Death Cab song, but I knew that'd be the case.

I was once going to write a little thing about how Death Cab for Cutie and Coldplay (whom I also like) are actually fairly similar, despite their contrasting pedigrees (although who knows anymore: British people call Coldplay "indie," as is their custom, and the fact that we're reviewing Death Cab in the pop-singles roundup is a sure sign they've escaped the studded-belt subculture -- a friend who went to the Death Cab show the other night said that she was okay when the teenyboppers started showing up to shows a year ago, but that the growing frat-boy contingent is starting to become intolerable).

Anyway, the term I'd use to describe both bands is "cozy blandness," which sounds like an insult but isn't in my mind: the affectlessness of Ben Gibbard's voice, for instance, has the effect of becoming a warm, familiar blanket, his words a string of sweet nothings. And both bands' reliance on tried-and-true minor-key signifiers means that, while you might not be challenged, you can at least wallow pleasantly in a mood. This counts for something, I think.

2005-10-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

The best single this week is a country song.

It occurs to me that I never finished my 2005Q2 Singles Report. At this point, I'd rather write about new stuff than feel obligated to finish that up, so here's the complete top ten (unranked, as always) from April-June:

Architecture in Helsinki, "Do the Whirlwind"
Bloc Party, "Banquet"
Coldplay, "The Speed of Sound"
Common ft. John Mayer, "Go"
Killers, "Smile Like You Mean It"
Missy Elliott ft. Ciara, "Lose Control"
Spoon, "I Turn My Camera On"
Gwen Stefani, "Hollaback Girl"
Rachel Stevens, "Negotiate with Love"
Supersystem, "Born Into the World"
Kanye West, "Diamonds"

Actually, that's a top eleven, but I was going to combine AiH and Spoon into one entry because they have the same riff. Ha.

2005-10-06T10:17:00.000-05:00

Here's my long-awaited takedown of Public Image, Ltd.

2005-09-30T17:28:00.000-05:00

And now more singles. It appears I'm outside the consensus this week, as Alfred Soto and I are the only ones who like the Alicia Keys song (although, amusingly, Ian Mathers also makes a Cosby Show ref in his blurb) (and don't worry, I still stand by my claim that "My Boo" was one of the worst songs of 2004) and Matt Chesnut is the only one who shares my affection for the Pharrell track (call me crazy, but I have a feeling people would've dug it more had it not been sent as a muddled-sounding 128kbps mp3 -- the version I swiped from J.M. sounded more slick and lucid. Or maybe people just hate Pharrell. That's cool, whatevs.)

I liked "Stay Fly," too, but didn't go gaga over it. We had a surfeit of writers this week, so my blurb got cut, but here's what I said: "Between the distressed strings hovering in the background, the infectious stuttering sample that pops up throughout, and the Memphis crew's uniformly energetic flow, 'Stay Fly' stands as one of the most breezily confident rap singles of recent vintage." If we did half-points, it probably would've been a 7.5 for me.

I'm still waiting for something to come out in Q4 that'll really knock me out.

2005-09-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like my blurbs for last week's singles roundup somehow didn't make it to the editor, so here you go. Enjoy.

Chris Brown ft. Juelz Santana, "Run It"

Two reasons why "Run It" stands out from most minimal rap tracks: 1) the subtle fluidity with which it moves in and out of the unexpectedly swooning bridge, and 2) the lyrical shout-outs to both the Ying-Yang Twins and, erm, the Waitresses. Yup. [6]

Pretty Ricky - "Your Body"

So I'm thinking that the chord structure of this song is to current hip-hop-inflected R&B what "I've Got Rhythm" was to bebop: a useful template. That is, the fact that it sounds like several other hits isn't a shortcoming; rather, it creates the opportunity for participatory intertextuality, as the listener can sneak in a breathy
"we belong together" or swap all the "yes-suh!"s with "shorr-day!"s. Also, the group's vocal harmonies, while vaguely irritating on "Grind with Me," actually serve them well here. [6]

My Chemical Romance - "The Ghost of You"

I'm not sure this song actually works, exactly, but I find it sort of fascinating nonetheless, from the creeping, smoky-nightclub feel of the verses (which totally fits with the eyeliner) to the way dude's cracked voice swoops into oblivion on "could I? should I?" There's a smart sense of dynamics here, too. [6]

Foo Fighters - "D.O.A."

I've been listening to Lindsay Lohan's "First" a lot lately and still marveling at its delicious swaggering riffs -- which makes me sad that an actual veteran rock band can't manage anything nearly as punchy and memorable. Maybe that's an unfair comparison, since Grohl and friends certainly aren't aiming for bubblegum, but too much of "D.O.A." just sounds half-assed. [4]

Nickelback - "Photograph"

I haven't seen the video, but let me imagine: Chad Kroeger is thumbing through a dusty old box of snapshots in the attic, and when the camera zooms in on the frame, the figures previously lost to the cobwebs of memory suddenly come to life! Later, the band stands on a cliff somewhere and emotes. As for the song itself, I don't expect a Sontag treatise, but this is full of unusually dumb couplets delivered in
Kroeger's resolute clenched-throat growl. Competent but ultimately foolish. [4]

Young Jeezy ft. Akon, "Soul Survivor"

There's a nice counterpoint here between Akon's dippy, Muppet-ish croon and Jeezy's gruff delivery, but I'm not sure there's much else to recommend it. [4]

2005-09-25T02:37:00.000-05:00

Is the name My Chemical Romance meant to echo My Bloody Valentine? Why did I just notice this? Also, is it fair that their eyeliner-wearing makes me unusually sympathetic toward them? The late 90s emo touches on "The Ghost of You" don't hurt, either: that moment where everything drops out except Gerard Way's suddenly fragile voice and a single-note guitar line and you hear a blanket of space and static in the background? Yes.

2005-09-25T02:05:00.000-05:00

Cut Copy at Subterranean 9/24: Time Stands Still / Going Nowhere / That Was Just a Dream / Uu / Autobahn Music / Saturdays / Rendezvous / Future / Bright Neon Payphone