best of pop music 2008, part one
Music: Burial: self-titled (2006)
Before the new year, I like to post my annual "best of" for pop music (I don't include jazz, blues, or other genres). My evaluation criteria are twofold: (a) what I find myself listening to the most; and (b) what I find myself listening to the most. Years ago I included the criterion of "intellectual achievement," "well done," and so forth, but then I got to thinking that was pretentious: If I'm not listening to it a lot, that means at some affective level I'm not groovin' on it. For example, I'm supposed to like Of Montreal's attention deficit disaster, but I hate this album: perhaps it will grow on me with fifteen listens, but three was enough. I no longer have the patience for intellectual processing loops for music. The new Bauhaus album was technically very good, but I got bored with it. Same with a lot of stuff: Tracy Thorn (love her, album gets old), new Legendary Pink Dots, and so on.
The downside to ditching the cerebral in evaluating tunes is that what you get is more an index of my tastes and moods---a pile of adjectives. Nevertheless, I reckon if our adjectives line-up, you'll enjoy some things you may not have heard of before. That's my goal: to turn like hearts on. I wanted to limit myself to ten, but failed. So I'll post about twenty. So, here goes the first ten:
The Cure: 4:13 Dream
Every four years Smith serves us up something, and regrettably that something is always regarded with more and more suspicion since Wild Mood Swings. 4:13 Dream improves on 2004's self-titled angerfest by ranging through a number of upbeat ballads and romantic epics. The lyrics are surprisingly sweet---at times too sweet---and the sound is much more punchy. Smith is known for giving his albums a sort of underwater feeling; this album is mixed in an unusual way, such that you can make out the recording studio room---like the drums are over there, in the corner. Smith's vocals are hammy and playful on a number of tracks. By far my favorite song is the first, "Underneath the Stars," which has a Disintegrationish feel and that "were taking our time to get to the lyrics" approach. I always love the Cure's longer songs more. This is a solid, well-done pop album.
The Watson Twins: Fire Song
As a huge fan of the album these Kentucky-born folksters did with Jenny Lewis, I confess I was somewhat disappointed it sounded nothing like it. By the second listen, however, I "got it" and fell into the understated grove. With Lewis, these sisters' harmonies were much more dramatic and gospelesque. On Fire Songs, the Watsons only employ the instrumentation and voices to do the job. The album is subdued, but not melancholy, sweet, but not sentimental. I'm particularly enamored with their cover of "Just Like Heaven," which is uniquely sedate. The song seems to demand a jump-out-of-your pants enthusiasm, but here the twins sing of a gentle, resigned love on Sunday. A brilliant album for quieter, contemplative moments.
Does It Offend You, Yeah? You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into
Now this is a dance album, the perfect fusion of electronic beats and alterna-punk guitar pop with a little funk thrown in for good measure. DIOYY are squarely within the blog/glitch rock movement (think here of Simian Mobile Disco combined with Ratatat), each song alternating from a purely electronic number and glitchy grooves to a euro-punk screamfest. Favorite tracks, "Let's Make Out," a tambourine-dripping command to tongue-kiss, and "Attack of the 50-foot Lesbian Octopus," a two-minute rock-a-billy organ mosh. But don't peg them: every now and again a sweet, bass-heavy ballad like "Dawn of the Dead" is thrown in for the slow-skate moment. FUN!
Guns and Roses: Chinese Democracy
Well, we're not supposed to like this album because Axel's ego is the Titanic, supposedly sinking under its own wealthy weight. This album is so damn weird I just had to like it. Chinese Democracy is the equivalent to a pro-tool slab-o-sound, the closest thing to a sonic palimpsest I can think of (Bon Iver's new album is the second closest; see below). What I find particularly endearing is that the sexual hang-ups and hypermasculinity so typical of G&R back then are gone, opening up a sonic archive ready to mine(field): Queen, Elton John, funk, and James Bond theme songs are all represented in strange combinations. The second track sounds like a KMFDM industrial dance number. It's a veritable aural candyland of musical playthings and dubliciousness. Here's the kicker, though: while not radio-friendly pop, these songs STICK IN YOUR HEAD, sometimes annoyingly so. This album may be too weird for folks to take now, but I do think in five years it will be held up as something important, something not-of-its-time, and something we're not ever likely to hear again. Even if you don't like the album, it will not bore you; it's interesting, trust me.
Black Kids:Partie Traumatic
The playbook for this kind of record has been out there for quite some time (Killers, Bravery, Young Ponies), but I admit I still love the bratty-80s-punk-new-wave-bandwagon gracing endcaps at Targets everywhere. I first heard about the Black Kids through kick-ass remixes that were apparently club staples this past year (e.g., remixes of "Hurricane Jane"), leaks to build up interest in their debut. This is a solid, kick-ass pop/dance album with whiney male lead vocals and bratty, bis-like scream-ish back up vocals, as with the fun track "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance with You." The genderbending/polysexual themes of the album are fun too (albeit not quite as convincing anymore). Equal parts of Pulp, the Cure, New Order, lots of bass fretting, so fun.
Marconi Union: A Lost Connection
Y'all know I'm a huge fan of ambient music, especially of the sort composed by our European friends Marconi Union. Apparently they had a run-in with Eno's label, which is a shame, as A Lost Connection is an mp3 download album only (I'm a audiophile snob sometimes, especially with earphone music). Nevertheless, this is the darkest of their three albums, at times even foreboding, as with the opening track, "Interiors," which recalls some of David Lynch's own soundtrack compositions. Minor keys; pulsating bloops; a simple plucked melody from an electronic guitar; a desert in the dark. This is a beautiful, meditative album for writing, Sunday mornings, or the post two-a.m. wind-down.
Sébastien Tellier: Sexuality
Two words: elegant cheese. Like a lot of albums I fall in love with, I really didn't get all the fuss about this album when I heard the singles that circulated before its release. Tellier is part of that 80s-recovery movement that rescues the slow sounds of Ultravox, Gary Numan, and so forth and then sexes them up in whispered vocals (English, but with a played-up French accent), contemporary synth riffs and hand-clap percussion. This is not a dance album per se. While there are a number of tracks that approach a dance tempo, its clearly intended as a slow, filter-sweep, synth-dripping album of sexy-ballads. All the songs hang in the same key and thematic, for the most part, giving it an overall cheesy cohesion. If your partner has a sense of humor, this might make for a good giggle-fest make-out session. Otherwise, play it at your next dinner party: older generations will think you're a sophisticated Human League aficionado, while younger generations will smirk at your understated irony.
Midnight Juggernauts: Dystopia
The MJ produce electronic music with a real drum kit, falsetto harmonies, and are clearly riding the 80s-new-wave revivalism. Can you tell I like that stuff? Again, the bass riffs are heavy in the mix, the synth riffs are thick and meaty, and the attention to lyrical harmonies gives their music a BeeGees disco undertone that is missing from similar artists like Cut Copy. The lead vocalist sometimes delivers his words in a gothic, Andrew-Aldrich voice, then will ascend to falsetto heights (as with the song "Twenty Thousand Leagues," my favorite track). The album also has a nice cohesive feeling, which is part of a trend this year: as with Hot Chip and Cut Copy (and even The Cure), there seems to be a desire to return to album-oriented music. Perhaps this is a response to iTunes culture, which has oriented attention to singles again (as in the 50s)? I'm not sure, but I think this album nevertheless sits squarely in the middle as the representative pop album of 2008, both a summary of trends but also prophetic in the sense that the new cool, "underground" or "trendy" thing to do as an alterna-artist is to make album-oriented music, not tracks for iTunes. Coheed and Cambria have already brought back the 70s concept album; I predict even more of that next year. Dancey at times, ballady at others, just the baby bear's porridge you're looking for.
The Black Ghosts: self-titled
This is an addictive, sample-heavy, electronic pop album that features the sweet, often falsetto male voice singing lyrics of love and its loss. The opening track, "Some Way Through This" sets the tone with a break-up ("Why did you leave that message on my phone/Was it from your head? Cause I don't what I done to earn it"); it’s a slow song that builds with string-arrangement samples, but then it delivers you to a 128 bpm harmonic dance tune, "Anyway You Choose to Give It." I love the way the vocalist overdubs the harmonies, and the fuzzy-guitar that is used as a percussive element on some tracks. Again, there's that typical heavy bass 80s-sound throughout, but unlike some of my other favorites, the distinctive element with the Black Ghosts is the attention to lyrics. On this score it's a very chatty album, the focus being on its sing-along quality, less so on what it makes your feet do. And besides, its on the awesome I AM SOUND label which has been putting out some stellar stuff this year!
Gutter Twins:Saturnalia
With all the praise of dancey, upbeat pop in my list so far, we can certainly temper it with the brooding darkness of this super-group duo. One part Greg Dulli of the Twilight Singers and one part Mark Lanegan of the screaming trees, the Gutter Twins debut album is a packaged, low-key growl; the overall album has the feel of a large, angry dog just about to bite your face off. The guitar grooves howl out tones, not really melodies, or songs are carried along by a single drone (as with "God's Children"). There is a occasional melodic strum characteristic of gothic music, but I wouldn't say this album is goth. It has something of a Mogwai-ish feel in the songs that build, but with Dulli's hushed and whispery vocals. It does call to mind the Twilight Singers more than the screaming trees, which suggests Dulli's melancholy is a driving force here. The production is crystal, the orchestration epic. It's a big sound, at once intimate ("Front Street") and epic ("The Stations"), with lots of backing vocals. It's a good soundtrack for a remake of Left Behind movie from the devil's point of view.
Whew, ok. I gotta shift to work that actually pays the bills, but I'll post my final ten in the next couple of days. Oh, and if you're wondering: yes, I'm "counting-down" to my favorite album of the year. The recommendations only get better and better . . . .