Lost In Translation

Top Music of the 00s and 2009

Here's the AV Club's Top 50 of the decade. I have enjoyed reassessing the decades best entertainment and I will list 10 of my favorite recordings of the decade:

1) Yankee Foxtrot Hotel-Wilco (2001)

2) Cold Roses-Ryan Adams and the Cardinals (2005)

3) Feast of Wire-Calexico (2003)

4) Chutes Too Narrow-The Shins (2003)

5) Blacklisted-Neko Case (2002)

6) Back Numbers-Dean and Britta (2007)

7) Neon Bible-The Arcade Fire (2007)

8) Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots-The Flaming Lips (2002)

9) Dear Catastrophe Waitress-Belle And Sebastian (2003)

10) Transaltanticism-Death Cab For Cutie (2003)

Here's the AV Club's Top 25 of this year. I haven't been listening to that much new music this year, so here's the ones I have been listening to:

1) Middle Cyclone-Neko Case

2) Popular Songs-Yo La Tengo

3) The Hazards of Love-The Decemberists

4) Wilco (The Album)-Wilco

5) Damon & Naomi-The Sub Pop Years

6) Noble Beast-Andrew Bird

7) 3-Nouvelle Vague

8) Embryonic-The Flaming Lips

Other great music new to me this year: Prisoner of Love-Yo La Tengo, There's Nothing Wrong With Love-Built To Spill, Armchair Apocyrpha-Andrew Bird.

In The iPod: Yo La Tengo, The Flaming Lips, and Built To Spill

The new Yo La Tengo album, Popular Songs, is no departure from their typical sound. There are several lush pop songs like "When It's Dark," "If It's True," or "Avalon Or Someone Very Similar" that should be big radio hits. But that is extremely unlikely.  That being said the most uncommercial song a 15 minute instrumental, "And The Glitter is Gone" is also one of my favorites. So far it is one of my favorite new albums of 2009.

Embryonic, The Flaming Lips latest album is another sonic feast for the ears with all sorts fo interesting sounds , but necessarily one of their most commercial albums. But that being said there are several cuts that make it worthwhile like:"Convinced Of The Hex," "See The Leaves," "The Egos Understand," and "Watching The Planets." 

I reached back to an older Built To Spill album from 1994, There's Nothing Wrong With Love, after hearing the transcendent "Car" on Slate's Cultural Gabfest a few months back. It's a great guitar driven album full of melodies in songs like: "Big Dipper," "Distopian Dream Girl," and"Some" among others. It is a very strong alum overall. I really need to spend more time with it. 

Kind of Blue

Slate has an interesting feature where they show clips from TV shows and movies that use the music from Miles Davis'  classic jazz album, Kind of Blue.

Wilco, Novelle Vague, and Andrew Bird

The latest Wilco release, known as Wilco (The Album) is not a surprising album, but it is one that I felt I warmed up to more easily than their last album, Blue Sky Blue. The standout tracks are “Sunny Feeling” and “You Never Know” with infectious keyboard motif. Other standout tracks include: “You And I” and “Bull Black Nova.” This isn’t ambitious as Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, but a very solid and worthwhile effort.

Nouvell Vague’s latest effort, 3, has another stellar collection of new wave songs rearranged in bossa nova fashion. This collection has several guest vocalists like Martin Gore of Depeche Mode and Ian McCulloch. I think the tracks that work best are: “The American” (Simple Minds), “Blister In The Sun” (The Violent Femmes), “Ca Plane Pour Moi“ (Plastic Bertrand), and “Road To Nowhere” (Talking Heads).

I also recently got Andrew Bird’s 2007 release Armchair Apocrypha. It is solid but I don’t like it as much as this year’s release, Nobel Beast. Some of the better songs are: “Firery Crash”, “Dark Matter”, and “Spare-Ohs.”

Gateway To Geekery: Guided By Voices

I only have two albums, "Under The Bushes Under The Stars" and "Isolation Drills" (both of which I really like-but perplexed where to go from there, not to mention a killer compilation from my friend Michele. This should help me decide where to go next:

Why it’s daunting: Dozens of people can say they were members of indie-rock institution Guided By Voices during its 21-year run, but the Dayton, Ohio-based band was chiefly a creative outlet for a music-obsessed former schoolteacher named Robert Pollard. And Pollard was verycreative, capable of writing an album’s worth of songs in a single day, and recording andreleasing them almost as quickly. After GBV achieved a measure of fame in the late ’90s, and its record label ordered Pollard to stop putting out so many records under the GBV name, he started releasing solo records and side projects at an insanely rapid clip—albums virtually indistinguishable from those published by his regular band. In essence, he was distributing his own bootlegs, ignoring whatever inner editor he might have had and allowing fans to hear everything he was doing, regardless of quality. The result is a discography cluttered with albums, EPs, and 7-inches that are wildly uneven at best, and flat-out atrocious at worst.

Nick Lowe Interview

I cam across this interview with the legendary Nick Lowe in The Believer:

I interviewed Nick in his hotel lobby after his show at Maxwell’s, a great little rock club in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the last stop on his recent U.S. solo tour. Before we met, I went online and checked out a few interviews with him. They seemed to follow a similar pattern: the interviewer would name a song and ask what it was about, or what led him to write it. That seemed like an awful thing to ask a songwriter, and personally, I almost feel it’s none of my business why someone writes a song. So I tried to ask more questions about live performance and touring, probably because it’s something we have in common. My biggest regret of the interview was not following up when he told me he spends his downtime on the road watching Judge Judy. I think we could’ve talked about that a bit longer.

The Decmeberists-Y / Animal Collective-N

I didn’t have a lot of familiarity with The Decemberists. There was a track on The Believer’s 2005 Music Issue CD-“Balloons and Bridges” that I enjoyed. I also read a memoir by lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy that was centered around The Replacement’s excellent album Let It Be on Continuum’s excellent 33 1/3 imprint. The Hazards of Love is something of a revelation for me-a solid album through and through. It is heavy on orchestration of different sounds and full of stories. Some f my favorites include: “The Hazards of Love 2,” “The Rake’s Song,” “The Hazards of Love 4,” Annan Water,” and “The Hazards of Love 1.” There are several guest appearances by other indie rock stalwarts-this is among my favorite albums of the year-I haven’t made many poor choices so far.

 

That being said The Animal Collective’s latest album, Merriweather Post Pavilion has been critically acclaimed as one of the year’s best. I find it cold and inaccessible. However, it joins a list of critically acclaimed bands that didn’t do it for me along with: Kings of Leon, TV on The Radio, and The Hold Steady.

Andrew Bird-Nobel Beast

I haven’t been listening to many new albums, but I have to say that Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast must surely be among the best new albums of 2009.  Apparently he has been around for a while churning out several different genre albums-he’s a violinist by training, but he has established an impressive singer/songwriter presence on this album. The standout tracks for me include: “Oh No,” “Fitz & Dizzy Spells,” “Nomenclature,” “Not A Robot, But A Ghost,”  “Souverian,” and “Natural Disaster.”

Graham Parsons Part II

Here's Part II of the feature on the sublime Graham Parsons from the AV Club:

By the time Parsons got around to recording his first solo album, 1973’s GP, he had evolved beyond the boyish reverence of his early work. The man-child who sounded so callow singing “Folsom Prison Blues” on International Submarine Band’s Safe At Home now sang with an assurance and authority beyond his years. After leaving The Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons lacked a band or a producer. He tried to get Merle Haggard to produce his first solo album, but after a promising initial meeting in which the two antithetical-yet-complementary iconoclasts spent hours playing with Haggard’s toy trains, the beloved ex-con opted out, reportedly too distraught over a recent divorce to throw himself into the project.

Gram Parsons Part I

Nathan Rabin is writing a two part series on the musical legacy of Graham Parsons (the godfather of alt country a revered genre of mine) here's a bit form Part I from the Onion's AV Club:

Parson’s family fortune ensured that while his contemporaries struggled commercially, he had plenty of money—to buy the heroin, cocaine, morphine, and alcohol that led to his death at 26. He joined one of the most successful groups in rock history and led them to create a masterpiece in 1968’s Sweetheart Of The Rodeo—only to leave six months later. He had a deep bond with Keith Richards that helped establish the sound, aesthetic, and philosophy of Exile On Main Street—but it never led to recording for Rolling Stones Records, or partnering on the Richards-produced solo album Parsons desperately craved. Richards did manage to get The Flying Burrito Brothers a sweet-ass gig opening for The Rolling Stones—at a racetrack called Altamont. If that isn’t the very definition of a mixed blessing, I don't know what is.

 

Today’s Nashville Or Bust subject had a special genius for snatching defeat from the claws of victory. Parsons should have been the biggest star in the world. He had the looks, songs, talent, charisma, voice, and vision. He should have been Elvis. Instead, he was one of pop’s great martyrs.