Top Ten Albums Mix Tape

Well, now that I've finished Top Ten Albums, I figured I'd give it one more spot on this blog and make a playlist for y'all. I kept it under 80 minutes so it's wired for sound and down with burning. Neeways, thar she blows:

1) "Thunder Road"- Bruce Springsteen: Best opening song ever
2) "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" - Modest Mouse: Not my favorite, but I'm in the mood for it right now.
3) "Hotwax" - Beck: Would be number two, but "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" goes into this song ridiculously well. Best, Beck, Ever...
4) "Gratitude" - The Beastie Boys: The video for this song might be the coolest "Band playing in an exotic locale without much else going on" type video ever.
5) "Idioteque" - Radiohead: So what if this list is more obvious than "According to Jim"
6) "Ashes of American Flags" - Wilco: It's hard to tell in Florida, but I think it's getting colder...this song will be in style again soon.
7) "Like A Rolling Stone" - Bob Dylan: Second best opening song ever...fortunately it works down here as well.
8) "Another Travellin' Song" - Bright Eyes: What better place for the next Bob Dylan! Har har har...
9) "Multitude of Casualties" - The Hold Steady: This is the first Hold Steady song I ever heard, and it's still my favorite.
10) "Novacane" - Beck: When I saw Beck up in the Twin Cities a couple years ago, he opened with "Novacane"...perfect concert opener.
11) "Wild Packs of Family Dogs" - Modest Mouse: This song is great in its own right, but it just has to be here for...
12) "Paper Thin Walls" - Modest Mouse: Listening to one without the other is just kinda weird.
13) "Exit Music (For a Film)" - Radiohead: I'm still waiting for the movie that has the balls to actually use this as its exit music.
14) "It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" - Bob Dylan: If you read the Bob Dylan post, you'll understand why this one was included.
15) "Something's Got to Give" - The Beastie Boys: This is the exact moment that the Beasties started turning into non-violent Tibet lovers. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing...but I present it here because it grooves and for it's historic importance.
16) "Where It's At" - Beck: First Beck song I heard (being aware it was Beck, I'm pretty sure I heard "Loser" before that). Started the whole thing...how could it not be on here?
17) "Poison Oak" - Bright Eyes: Best false ending of all time.
18) "Jungleland" - Bruce Springsteen: How could it be that the Boss has both the greatest opening and closing tracks of all time...on one album? Damn he's good.

Get it here

Top Ten Albums

Well, it's been fun. Overall, this was my favorite portion of the blog to write. It gave me an excuse to listen to my favorite albums again and think about why they mean so much to me. But it's time to get to the very last one. As promised, I'd do an extra special "Number One Album" edition. If you've been paying attention, you know that my favorite album of all time is...well why don't we just look at that list again:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

When I was making this list, there were some hard decisions involved. I mean, the line between number ten and number eleven (Paul's Boutique) was razor thin. And any one of those top three could have been number one, placing itself in this very late, but very reverent spot right now. I thought about it more than I should, and to be honest, I almost made a mistake and put Yankee Hotel Foxtrot first. But as I was about to do it, I thought..."Wait, you're not seriously going to put Odelay second are you?" And that sealed the deal. So for today we have...

Beck Odelay

I think the first time I heard anything from Odelay was on MTV once when I was in a hotel room. I'm not sure...there's all these moments from my childhood in hotel rooms that are one big blur. There's one of Jim Gatner hitting a home run, one of me playing at an indoor mini golf course, and one of me hearing "Where It's At" the first time. I think my memory is in havoc in that regard because I've always had trouble sleeping in hotel rooms.

I do remember seeing the album at my local library. The Portage County Public Library had a rather scattered assortment of CD's and cassettes available for checkout. This was my first method of getting free music. It was pretty flippin' sweet actually, because I could borrow a CD or tape for a couple weeks, and then make a cassette copy of it while I had it, and then rock it on my indestructable walkman (seriously, this thing is still operating. I got it for my birthday in sixth grade! I dropped it so many times, I even split it in half once and patched it up myself. It stilled purred like a kitten. It never ate a tape! This has to be my most successful electronic device ever). I got Odelay one day and I never turned back. Once I had it taped, I had it sitting in my walkman just about every day of the week. Also, around this time, I had a paper route, which lent itself to walkman listening rather well. It also lends itself to pondering important things, like:

"Is Beck the coolest man alive?"
"Can anyone make music better than this?"
"I think I'd like more country if it all sounded like 'Sissyneck'"
"Turntables are cool...I want to do something with turntables..."
"When will I be able to see Beck in concert?"
"I wish I had the internet so I could look up Beck on it"
"Eh...maybe rap isn't crap...is it?

And along those sorts of lines, on and on and some other things.

So when I fianally got some green from the paper delivery gig, I soon splurged on the actual CD...of my very own!!!

And so it's been since then. There's lots of CDs I got back then that I've changed my opinion on or don't really listen to anymore. There's a lucky few that I've found new ways to appreciate, as well as ones that I learned to appreciate because I wasn't quite ready for them yet. But Odelay, I listened to so exhaustively that I think there was little new to glean over the years. I had entirely digested it...but that didn't diminish it. I never got tired of it, and I've probably listened to at least once or twice every month since I've been in eighth grade. Sometimes, I go on a kick and I'm listening to it just about every day. Ask my girlfriend, I can nearly recite every word to every song without hearing the song. This is the only album I can say that about. And I've been looking for an album like this my entire life. My entire musical listening existence has been trying to top Odelay, to find something that could become as much a part of my life as that one album.

One album on this list gave me a bit of hope in this regard, that being Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. However, it didn't quite have the wings I was hoping it would. And so Odelay remains, untouched after almost ten years.

But why? What about this album makes it so great? I said last week that this is the album where Beck put it all together. His cut and paste sample happy genre hopping mish mashing was the perfect foil for scattershot word play lyrics. It was a collage that didn't just paste a bunch of stuff together, but wove it into the fabric of the canvas, mixed it into the paint, and seeped into the glue. It sounds like the sounds are all coming out of a well worn and beloved acoustic guitar, slapped on crackly vinyl. Beck wasn't just channeling hip hop, country, lounge, folk, rock, metal or any other meaningless label, he actually was all those things simultaniously.

Which is a pretty hard thing to do, and it's not suprising that he's never been able to do it again. Beck is at his best now when he's focused on something, and when he tries to go all Odelay on us again, like he did with Guero, it sounds stale. And I have a theory as to why Odelay can't possibly be topped or even replicated to much satisfaction. I don't think Beck really had any idea what he was doing at the time. If you listen to early Beck, it's all so schizophrenic, and it seems like he's just playing what comes to him. There's a line in the song "Thunder Peel" (available on Stereopathetic Soulmanure) that goes, " "It's a cold out special/when she stole my passion/it's an everlastin'/that's a ghetto blastin". And this really sums up what was important to Beck when he made Odelay. Just blast that shit...and say things like, "Now I'm rollin' in sweat/with a loaf of cold bread/and a TACO in my JEANS!" There's nothing calculated about it, but he'd spent so much time being so many things, that for this one special moment, he was all those things at the same time. And at the end, "Ramshackle" laments the end of the day. Everything's been poured out and the whole thing is disassembled; the whole thing lies in pieces. All we're left with now are the pieces, beautiful and interesting in their own right...but we'll always be reminded of what they created.

Top Ten Albums

Ah, it’s been such a long time since a Top Ten Album has graced this space. So long since I yakked long winded about some fantastic work of musical achievement. It was wrong of me to let this space go fallow, and now here’s your amends mes amis. Yes, there were two that never got the Unencumbered treatment. I must rectify this. And I will begin today. First, since most of you lost your memory due to that horrific farming a couple months back, I’ll repost those chosen ten once again…

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Also to remind those that were in that farming accident, the two that haven’t been Unencumbered are the Beasties and Beck. Now, Beck will get his time next week, but this week it’s the Beastie’s turn. So without further ado…

Beastie Boys Check Your Head

I’ve survived multiple musical obsessions. They’ve come and gone: Huey Lewis, Beck, Bob Dylan, and even a low level Hold Steady obsession as I’m writing this. But I’m going to have to give props to the Beastie Boys as my most durable musical obsession. I believe it lasted from about tenth grade through my freshman year in college. It remained in fits and starts, but it was always there. There are a couple reasons for this. One is that the Beastie Boys were about the coolest people on that list. And they were white rappers. Let that sink in a minute. Second is that they had a remarkably consistent output from Licensed to Ill through Hello Nasty, with only minor signs of age cropping up around Ill Communication. And finally, they always brought something new to the table, not only with each release, but every time you listened to an album.

The hard part is deciding which Beastie Boys album is their finest. In the case of Beck, you can point to Odelay as the point where everything came together. For Radiohead, Kid A wins because its genius is staggering. But the Beastie Boys never made something of “genius” and they never really brought everything together because that would be a Herculean task. When I think of the Beastie Boys, I think of a room that’s so hopelessly disorganized, but with the Beasties sitting at the desk in front able to find anything your looking for inside. You can’t bring it all together, but you can pick some amazing stuff out of it, blend it together, and suddenly you’re walking home with something unbelievably awesome.

So what we have is five proper LPs from the Beastie Boys prime. One, Licensed to Ill is legendary, but shows it’s inexperience. Two more come from times when the pickins started to look a bit lean, Ill Communication and Hello Nasty. So that leaves their twin masterpieces, when the Boys were frisky enough to seem youthful, but experienced enough to know where to put all that energy. All there is left to do is ask yourself, “Do I like Paul’s Boutique or Check Your Head better.” It’s like an extremely unimportant coin flip.

As you can see, Check Your Head won out. As you can’t see, it wasn’t by a whole lot, since that list doesn’t go to eleven. And really, it’s like a coin flip to me. But here at UE I like to analyze the hell out of a coin flip. And luckily the Beasties provide us with innumerable nuances to latch onto.

Here’s the thing about Check Your Head. This is when the Beastie Boys picked up some instruments. As much as I love the sample happy cut and paste style of Paul’s Boutique firmly steeped in studio trickery, I love how Check Your Head combines that aspect with a more organic sound. It’s like having my cake and eating it too. And you don’t even have to ask if I love cake, all you got to look at is my waistline…

So is that all there is? They picked up a guitar and all of a sudden it’s better? Well, that can’t be it, because, get this, up until about two years ago, if you asked me what my favorite Beastie Boys album was, you’d hear me say Paul’s Boutique. What the real key is that Check Your Head exists entirely in that mode of a twenty one year who’s basically a dumbass, but is started to become conscious of his own dumbassitude. In other words, capable of the ridiculous braggadocio of “The Maestro”, but conscious enough to sing “Something’s Gotta Give.” Plus, there’s the positive side effect that a person of this age has impeccably good music taste, and can write something as groove-a-licious as “Gratitude”. So what it really comes down to is the attitude of the album.

Who know, maybe when I’m thirty, I’ll start digging To The Five Burroughs

Top Ten Albums

So this was supposed to appear on Wednesday...but better late than never, eh? We're getting down close to the end, only three of these classics left to cover:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

So this week came down to a coin toss between Modest Mouse and The Beastie Boys. I asked Ann to choose on or two, and she picked two. And that corresponded to:

Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica

Modest Mouse is the only band on here that was a true recommendation from a friend. Everything else I either inherited from my parents (Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen) or came to by my own devices. But in living with my now former roomate, Blake, it was inevitable that I'd here some Modest Mouse. I don't remember exactly, but I think they're something like his second or third favorite band of all time. So it's kind of cool to think, that unlike the other bands on this list, I can say that if I'd never known Blake, I'd never have learned to appreciate Modest Mouse. Of course, Blake listened to a lot of other stuff, most of which I liked, but none of it stuck like Modest Mouse. Although I do tend to get the song "Fightin' Texas Aggie" stuck in my head quite often...

Now this is a bit odd, as Modest Mouse aren't the easiest thing to get into. Modest Mouse definately needed to grow on me. It's been three years since I first heard "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" and it was only six months ago that I threw down the headphones and proclaimed The Moon & Antarctica "possibly the best album ever made." (which upon further reflection settled in at number 4). But this is probably the key to its success. Four of the top five albums were growers (Odelay being the exception). There's something rewarding about being patient with an album that finally reveals itself to you. It's even more rewarding when there is a eureka moment.

The Moon & Antarctica's eureka moment occured late at night, during a period of time when I was in the habit of staying up late listening to music on my big ol' brown headphones. I'd sit there either staring out the window or at my ceiling and just listen to an album cover to cover. This lent itself well to big, epic albums. However, they also needed to stay interesting, or I was liable to nod off and wake up at four in the morning with headphones wrapped around my head in some ungodly position. Up to this point, I liked The Moon & Antarctica the best out of Modest Mouse's catalouge, but I still really only listened to the most accessible tracks like "3rd Planet" and "Paper Thin Walls". Then, that night, staring off into the peace of the Winona night, at that same street corner I'd been staring out at for almost two and a half years, "Alone Down There" came on, and the whole thing just clicked. It clicked and clicked on into "The Stars Are Projectors" with it's spacey Sonic Youth vibe fitting perfectly.

When "The Stars Are Projectors" finally washed away and went into the weirdness of "Wild Pack of Family Dogs", I wanted that feeling back, but the album had changed directions on me. And I had to go with it. This used to be the most annoying thing about the album. The seemingly out of place middle of the album had seemed jarring. It seemed as if the three songs in the middle, "The Cold Part", "Alone Down There", and "The Stars Are Projectors" stood as an island that clashed with the rest of the album. But at this moment, it all made sense. This little island clashed, but in a good way. The Moon & Antarctica is an album of extremes, and it doesn't stay in one spot the whole time, but it's not afraid to linger in each place at least awhile. And it remains rewarding everytime I go there.

Top Ten Albums

So I missed a week of these Top Ten Albums, and though I had all intentions of doing it last week, I sort of stalled. So I apologize to these wonderful albums:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Last week (er, two weeks ago) we examined the fun with a gun of Separtion Sunday, and now we're left wondering, what's next? If you're a faithful reader you know there are only four more left, and that Odelay will be the last one. What fate has taken up the task of deciding the next album? Well, this time it was Ann, and given a choice, one through three, she decided that one was far enough. And that corresponded to:

Radiohead Kid A

If you look at the number in front of Kid A, you'll see the number three. That means a couple things. First is that it's my third favorite album of all time. But it also means that it very well could be number one. I'm not entirely sure what it is that separates the the top three into making one better than another. Is it a whim? Something deep inside me that just says, "this is better"? I'm not sure, but regardless, it could be number one, and in all fairness, should be though of that way. In other words, the distance between 2 and 3 is the width of a razorblade, while the distance between 3 and 4 is the Atlantic Ocean. In even simpler words, Kid A is special.

I'm going to steal this line, but it's the best phrase I've ever heard about Kid A. In his Pitchfork review of the album, Brent DiCrescenzo says,

"When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Nigel Godrich included) created this, it's clear that Radiohead must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over."

I've thought this thought many times (even before DiCrescenzo wrote it) about things besides Kid A, but Kid A is perhaps the greatest illustration of the concept. The album sounds alien and detatched from humanity. The best phrase to describe the feeling of Kid A is uneasy comfort. It's a blanket made of ice. This should create tension, but Radiohead makes it flow. Here's another image for you, Kid A is like floating on a lazy river, except replace river with glacier. But the cold feels good.

Do I sound a bit at a loss for words? Just babbling off images? Perhaps I am trying to describe a feeling that is impossible to describe. And this is why Kid A is this good and this special. There is no other way to describe the feeling than, it feels like listening to Kid A. The album is an entirely unique experience, and somehow completely alien to anything else. Radiohead is actually quite adept at accomplishing this, but it's at its best on Kid A. And the idea that human beings created it is all the more incredible.

Top Ten Albums

Well, we're over the hump, after this Top Ten Album only four remain. And the excitement builds! For your reviewing pleasure, here's those fantastic collections of musical nirvana once more:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Well, all we have left is #1, #3, #4, #6, and #10. I randomly mixed those up, and by his virtue of being the only person around, let alone awake late last night, Blake chose number 5, which corresponded to:

The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

“Pills and powders baby, powders and pills!” Craig Finn exclaims on the Hold Steady’s debut album Almost Killed Me. This statement did two things:

1) Established that the Hold Steady intended to party hard.

2) That in the middle of a loud yell of debauchery, Finn could still turn a phrase with expertise and remain a bit detached from the whole seedy world he was singing about.

This, it turns out, makes for a rollicking good time, and the promise of Almost Killed Me became full fledged excellence on Separation Sunday. The album works on so many levels you’d need an elevator to navigate all of them. First and foremost, this is an adrenaline pumping party record. I saw The Hold Steady perform in Madison last Halloween, and they just exuded so much energy. One of the best shows I’ve seen. Plus, there’s no end to the fantastic lines that get people singing along. Somehow, the album just seems better when you get a group people yelling, “Silly rabbit, tripping is for teenagers, murder is for murderers and HARD DRUGS are for BARTENDERS!” But then, as he says in “How A Resurrection Really Feels”, “The parties they start lovely/but they get druggy and they get ugly.” The hedonism has a price, and Finn’s there to chronicle it too.

But this is probably the least likely triumph on my list. If you’ll excuse a sports analogy, The Hold Steady is the 2001 New England Patriots of the music scene. On paper, it’s not terribly impressive. The Patriots had a quarterback that had been picked in the sixth round at the helm after an injury to Drew Bledsoe, and a team around him that hadn’t done much the previous year. The Hold Steady isn’t just inspired by a classic rock sound that has been done a million times, they were a classic rock sound that had been done a million times, note for note. Add to that a “singer” who ascribes to the nasal shout-rap-sing-whatever-you-call-it school of spewing out lyrics. But both triumphed despite the seeming handicaps coming in. How?

By turning seeming handicaps into strengths and the addition of a secret weapon. For the Patriots, that handicap turned into Tom Brady, and that secret weapon was Bill Belichick. For the Hold Steady, those handicaps were never really handicaps at all. While the classic rock riffs don’t seem terribly original, in the hands of guitarist Tad Kubler, they come alive, and reel the listener in. Craig Finn’s voice adds the edge to the party, sounding like an overly talkative drunk, adding a layer of mystery to his ramblings. But the secret weapon remains the lyrics. Long after the excitement of the riffs and the voice has faded, the lyrics keep an allure. Listening to Separation Sunday is like having the most interesting one sided conversation ever with a kick ass song blaring in the background.

Separation Sunday itself is like the Patriots Super Bowl victory: a well played, exciting, and memorable achievement. From the opening lines of the opener “Hornets! Hornets!”, “She said always remember/never to trust me/aw she said that the first time she met me/she said there’s gonna come a time/when I’m gonna have to go/with whoever’s gonna get me the highest”, Finn spins a tale of the junkies Hallelujah (her friends call her Holly) and Charlemagne who run around getting high, selling drugs, and trying to find God. This whole prospect would have failed in another’s hands, but Finn has a keen literary eye and has a great sense of character. It would be interesting to see what Finn would do with a fiction writing career.

But enough of this high minded jibber jabber. The Hold Steady just plain kicks ass. It’s no small feat to inject energy into straight forward guitar rock. And when that’s been accomplished, something special is sure to follow.

Top Ten Albums

Well, another Wednesday, another Top Ten Album, with no sign of letting up in sight. So let’s take a look at those gems of musical achievement yet again…

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

That list just gives me goose bumps. We’re talking real chills. Anyway, less fawning, more writing…This week I let Blake make the number choice, with a twist. Seems when you ask people for a number, for some reason they are drawn to the number four. So, really, whenever I did the picking thing, the album I assigned number four usually ended up being the one I’d do. So I told him, “Pick a number one through six which isn’t four.” Predictably, he was chagrined, his body immediately suffering from four withdrawal. But I got him thinking outside the box, and therefore, the number two was chosen, corresponding to:

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Highway 61, at least the portion between the Twin Cities and La Crescent, MN that I’ve traveled on many occasions is the most beautiful highway I’ve ever seen. It winds along the Mississippi River, clinging to steep bluffs. The train tracks right below the road somehow add to the view, a merging of industry and nature that seems natural. If there’s one song on Highway 61 Revisited that captures the experience of the Southeastern Minnesota portion of Highway 61 it’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”. The slow train beat of the song, the relaxed blues feel captures the environment perfectly. This stretch travels slow, I never feel like I’m going fast on this highway. In fact, I can’t make the car go much more than 70 mph, it just feels wrong.

To say Highway 61 Revisited is about the road is like saying the sky is blue. Few albums are so firmly planted in a feeling of movement. That’s not to say all the individual songs are about movement. There’s a dichotomy to the album, alternating between mobility and being stuck. Dylan deftly captures the feeling of both, the movement songs feeling free and relaxed, the stuck songs feeling tense and paranoid. No song typifies this tense paranoia better than “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Tombstone Blues”. However, at no point on the album does Dylan bring these elements together on the album except on the opener “Like a Rolling Stone”.

“Like a Rolling Stone”, aside from being a brilliant song, is also the best opening song of all time. Nothing sets the stage for what follows better. It incorporates both the elements of mobility and loss of mobility. Here we find Dylan in an accusatory mode, chastising someone (himself probably) for overstaying his welcome. But this is someone who has moved on many times before, and can’t quite bring himself to do it, because it always ends the same. Like it says in “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, “I’m goin’ back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough.” But New York is a poor facsimile for home, and the nomad will have to move on.

The album is obsessed with home. Each song seems to be a search for a home that cannot last. Each home found, up to the last one “Desolation Row” just leads to desperation. The only place Dylan allows the songs to feel comfortable are the road songs, especially on “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”. What that leaves for home then, is the road. Highway 61 is the only place things can’t go wrong. It’s the center of everything, and no more welcoming and comfortable highway exists in America.

Top 10 Albums

Another Wednesday, another Top Ten Album. Heck yes! Let’s take a gander at those masterpieces of popular music:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

This week’s number picking duties went to Ann, and she went with 5, which is cool, because she picked something that she really likes. I’m happy for her. Any, number five corresponded to:

Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

This thought I believe should be credited to Blake, but it’s fun to think about, so I’ll steal it. The premise - “how would it feel to have been a music reviewer and end up giving a negative review to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?” As Sgt. Pepper is the holiest of holies as far as records go, what if when it first came out, you stuck one and a half stars on it and bemoaned The Beatles direction? What was the motivation for the poor review? Would you try to forget the folly or proudly declare your unwillingness to go along with the crowd? And as history kept going against you, would you stick to your guns or just act like you love the record?

What this gets at, I think, is where exactly negative reviews come from. I can think of two places, and how our hypothetical Sgt. Pepper hater reacts to being proven wrong by history depends a lot on where the negative review came from. One possibility, of course, is that the reviewer just didn’t like the music. Perhaps he hated rock music or peppers, though that would beg the question of why he would be given the assignment of writing the review. The more likely reason is that people will exaggerate how much they dislike something, because there’s a little bit of an appeal in trashing something. All the better if something is a masterpiece like Sgt. Pepper.

How does this relate to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Well, as with happens with many successful things, it attracts contrarians looking to help their image by insisting they hate the album (or at least don’t like it as much as everyone else). I don’t know if history will make these people look foolish, but I think it should. Because Yankee Hotel Foxtrot deserves a place alongside the greats.

Oh but I suppose I should explain why? Why is this album number two (and missing number one by less than a whisker)? Well, it’s a work that brings it all together. Every one of Wilco’s strengths came together to create a cohesive, interesting album. The clanks and whistles on “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” fit into their playful tradition of songs like “Kingpin” and “Christ for President”. The contemplative nature of songs like “Radio Cure” and “Ashes of American Flags” drip with sadness. And Wilco’s ability to write breezy pop songs is spot on perfect on “Heavy Metal Drummer”, “Kamera” and “War on War”. That Wilco was able to make all these pieces fit together and maintain the overall atmosphere of the album is just icing on the cake. The album sounds like it’s being picked up by your stereo late at night from an AM signal out of Chicago (unless you live near Chicago, then pretend it was Denver), which both plugs the album into powerful rock mythology and just make it sound cool.

And it’s all the more fun since the contrarians must be hard-pressed to hate such a perfect album.

Top Ten Albums

Another week, another Top Ten Album. Let's take a look at the beast:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Well, we've knocked off Born to Run and OK Computer, and now it's time for something a little different. This time my sister did the number picking duties and she picked the number "5", which corresponded to:

Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

So much for the way back machine. This album is only a year old, and I didn't even start listening to it until about this time of year last year. In a way it seems strange that something so new could be on a list like this. The decision seems ripe for derision, I suppose. To be honest, if I were trying to be cool, I would pretend that I didn't love this album as much as I do and put Paul's Boutique on my top ten and that would be that. But no one I know personally really gives a shit about that sort of thing and neither do I. Here's the truth: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning has no weak tracks and Conor Oberst's songwriting is affecting and interesting. I have no trouble saying that this album will be a classic.

I have no idea how I stumbled accross the song "Lua", but I did and listened to it a few (er, a hundred) times. The thought came to me, "They still make songs this good?" I searched out more and fell in love with the way Emmylou Harris' voice mingled with Obersts on "We Are Nowhere, and It's Now" and "Landlocked Blues". I loved hearing his voice go raw on "Poison Oak". This album weeped, clenched its teeth, smiled and rollicked. This hadn't happened to me in a long time. This album didn't just feel alive, it was alive.

I wrote a short story under its influence, which I like quite a bit. It's one of the first entries on this blog, titled "Doubt". Normally, I can't finish any attempt at fiction I make, this is the only finished piece of fiction I have ever written. There's a mood that Oberst evokes, that's conducive to a creative feeling. I've never been able to put my finger on it, but he makes it all seem so easy. The way things rough and tumble flow out, like a spirited conversation seems to tumble and entertain.

It's hard to have much perspective on an album like this in such a short amount of time. My closest approximation on an album that hit me in a similar way is Beck's Odelay, the only difference being I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning peaked much sooner than that disc. I think I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning lost something in that, unfortunately. It might have been my number one, but I came back down to earth with it. It didn't endure quite as well as Odelay, didn't slowly enter my life like Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it still is one of my greatest musical experiences. Very few albums can say this. To Oberst's credit, he made it seem easy.

Top Ten Albums

Last week in Top Ten Albums I took a look at Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, and now it's another week and that means another album. So hooray for Wednesdays!

For a quick reminder, here are my top 10 albums of all time:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Well, I asked Jeff for a number (I've decided to spread around the number picking duties), and he said "3", and that corresponds to:

Radiohead OK Computer

Well, it seems that Top Ten Albums is fated to stay in the way back machine for yet another week. Okay, it's not that far back, but this album comes from a very different time in my life. One when my primary concern was paying for a new bike. These albums are fun, because I can remember exactly how much work I did in order to pay for said album. In those days, money was scarce, but I didn't really need it that much, except to pay for the aforementioned bicycle (a beautiful yellow Trek). One day I was offered a lawn cutting job with a wage of $20 by a friendly neighbor. Now, in these days, I was doing a paper route for a respectable $15 a week, though all of the money was going towards that yellow Trek, and money to buy the much coveted OK Computer was hard to come by. But with a freshly earned $20, the disc was in sight and only a short trip to Radio Kaos Records away.

Now, I had stumbled accross Radiohead by accident, while watching the local University TV station and the music videos they occasionally play. One of the videos was Radiohead's "High and Dry" off the much vaunted by woefully overrated album The Bends. But I loved that song. I luckily had taped the video onto VHS as I did in those days, and then transferred it to cassette to listen to during paper routes. Strangely, I was content with this one song as my only exposure to Radiohead. In fact, Radiohead drifted from my memory for awhile, until I saw a video for "Paranoid Android". It was a bizzare video to say the least, but the song stuck with me, and I often made requests for it at the local college radio station, savoring the rare times I got to hear it.

This period coincided with an increased awareness of music journalism, and Radiohead's OK Computer album was quite a story to say the least. So my curiousity was more than piqued, it downright demanded that I aquire the album to hear what everyone was gassing on about. And when I finally held it in my hands and put it in the player, it was everything I wanted and more.

OK Computer transports you somewhere, a dystopian place where anxiety rules. The imagery it rife with technology and humanity living uneasily in it. The opening track, "Airbag" is a summation of the anxiety towards technology. A speeding car could kill you at anytime, but in the song our car crash victim is saved by another bit of technology, an airbag. This gets at the natural contradiction technology entails, the more we have, the more complicated things become; but in the end, we've become so dependent on it and need it to live. The album is filled with a yearning to escape this trap, as on "Subterranean Homesick Alien".

It is a credit to Radiohead that an album so filled with anxiety can also be so beautiful. When Thom Yorke sings on "Paranoid Android", "That's it sir/you're leaving/the crackle/of pigskin/the yuppies networking/the panic/the vomit/God loves his children, yeah," it is a swelling highlight and a fitting end to a fantastic song. On "Exit Music (For a Film)", ultimately the most beautiful moment on the album, Yorke's distorted voice threatens, "We hope that you choke." There is a lot of malice in Yorke's voice, in this he is like the cornered animal who will do anything to get away.

If I were to describe OK Computer in one phrase, it would be "Beauty with a sharp, angry, edge." My young ears had never heard anything like it before. It takes you on a trip, resonates long after you've played all the songs to death. One person I know said this was "The ultimate chill album." Which is only partially true. Yes, it's great to just lie down and close your eyes and let this album wash over you, but there is always a bit of tension and unease while listening to OK Computer that makes total relaxation impossible. However, this is what keeps the album interesting and special.

Top Ten Albums

I'm going to start a new feature on this blog in which I'll talk about my top 10 albums of all time. Each of them has a special place in my heart and a little story behind them. So I figured why not share that with everybody. In case you missed my top 50 albums of all time (which you can find in the archives) here are my top 10 albums of all time:

1) Beck Odelay
2) Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3) Radiohead Kid A
4) Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
5) Radiohead OK Computer
6) Beastie Boys Check Your Head
7) Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
8) Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
9) Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
10) The Hold Steady Separation Sunday

Now, I'm in a bit of a quandry, because I had planned to go in reverse order starting with number ten all the way up to one, however, as is quite evident, number ten is The Hold Steady. Now, if your one of the loyal readers of this site, you're probably saying, "Oh geez, he's always talks about the damn Hold freakin' Steady, enough already." This in addition to solemn promise I made a little while ago to try and talk a bit less about The Hold Steady. So I don't really think that would be the best way to kick off this feature. Therefore, instead I will do this randomly by assigning each album a number and having my roomate Blake pick a random number and then doing the corresponding album. So you're never really going to know what's coming. How exciting! However, the last one I'll do will be a very special Beck Odelay edition. This will be a weekly feature, with one album per week. So this weeks album will be...

Bruce Springsteen Born to Run

Ah, the Boss, this album has been with me my entire life. My parents often listened to this album when I was a young lad, and I always remember liking it. I used to wrongly sing the chorus of "Tenth Avenue Freezout" as "tap dab-a-loo freakout". However, I didn't listen to the album much throughout my teenage years, but about four years ago there occured a Bruce Springsteen renaissance, in which Born to Run featured prominently. This album is truly timeless, it's now thirty years old (I just got my dad the excellent 30th Anniversary Edition for Christmas), but it remains fresh and vital. What first hooks people about it, I suppose, is different. For my young ears it was the fun of "Tenth Avenue Freezout" and later the wall of sound chaos of the title track. For my girlfriend, it was the delightfully assholish (but sincere) line from "Thunder Road", "you ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright." But what I love about Born to Run and what accounts for it's continued popularity is the power of the passion emoted on the entire record. The music is loud, chaotic, washing over the listener in an almost confusing fashion. Over that chaos comes Springsteen's gravelly voice, just trying to be heard over the music. What emerges from this is a sense of hopeful desperation.

But why is it so special? In his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman wonders the same thing, pointing to what he calls idiotic lyrics. What makes Springsteen so much more special than similarly emotive "blue-collar rock" from the late 70s? Why does Springsteen have more lasting appeal than Meat Loaf or Van Halen. He guesses:

"I guess Springsteen is 'more real' (or whatever) and took a legitimately emotive risk with his earnest eight-grade poetry; referring to your guts as 'my engines' may be idiotic, but I have little doubt that Bruce really thinks of his rib cage in those terms. However, Springsteen's sincerity only matter if you had a predetermined opinion about what he was trying to accomplish. David Lee Roth might have been sincere, but he was just a cool kid trying to get laid; Meat Loaf might have been sincere, but he was just a fat goofball who was cool in spite of himself. But Bruce was trying to save you. He appealed to the kind of desperate intellectual who halway believed that - when not recording or touring - Springsteen actually went back to New Jersey to wok at a car wash. Before he even utters his lyrics, people accept his words as insights into their version of existence. Had Bruce written 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light,' people would play it at weddings." (pg. 47)

While Klosterman is right about how each artist's image affected their lasting legacy, he is wrong about where it comes from. This image came from somewhere, and while he may be right that it is predermined for my generation, this is not the case for my parents. This sincere image comes from the effectiveness of the music of portraying that hopeful desperation of a romantic in love but trapped by social conditions. He seems to imply rather that Springsteen just had a better publicist than Meat Loaf. But Springsteen's music on Born to Run is just flat out more effective than much of the "blue-collar rock" of his contemporaries. Springsteen would never have written "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" because he is much better songwriter than Meat Loaf. Klosterman is also wrong about the idiocy of the lyrics. He is confusing lack of cleverness in the lyrics with idiocy. Rather than beat around the bush, Springsteen's are direct, but still remain lush and full of wonderful images. One of my favorites, in the song "Thunder Road", Springsteen says, "Hey what else can we do now/ 'cept roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair." Clever, no, but a rich image nonetheless. Whenever I hear that line I can feel the cold night wind blowing onto my face and see the hair whipping around.

Born to Run has been with me for much of my life, from my five year old legs making the record skip to now when it's a great companion for a long drive or to get me going in the morning. This, more than any other album on the list, is one that is meant to be loved deeply.