Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Best Albums of 2009

Okay, first of all, I know I haven't updated this thing in a ridiculously long time. But I had a thing - you know how it is. Anyway, every December I write up a list of the top 20 albums of that year. This is this year's list. Enjoy!


20. M. Ward - Hold Time

M. Ward continues his tightrope walk between the past and the present with Hold Time, with half the album consisting of indie-folk songs ("Stars of Leo") and the other half sounding like classic folk songs that have been around forever. He's great at both, but its the latter that makes Hold Time a great album. Songs like "Jailbird" and "One Hundred Million Years" sound like a link to the past, and to a style of music that should never be allowed to die out.



19. American Steel - Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts

American Steel sound further removed from their hardcore roots than ever on Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts, but the trade from Operation Ivy-esque skacore to a catchy, poppier sound was completely worth it. At its best, ("Safe and Sound," "Bergamot") the album sounds like it's picking up where Alkaline Trio left off after their earlier, more punk infleunced albums. It's a great example of how a pissed-off punk band can mature without losing what made them awesome.



18. Bomb the Music Industry! - Scrambles

The further Jeff Rosenstock of BTMI! gets from his original goal of raging against the music industry machine, and the deeper he goes into his own neurotic psyche, the better his music gets. Scrambles is proof - thirteen great songs that seem more concerned with student loans and unemployment than copyright law. Scrambles doesn't jump from style to style in the same way that Goodbye Cool World did, but any album that can turn "Your family and friends will inherit your debt/And you're probably gonna die alone" into a sing-along deserves recognition.



17. Bowerbirds - Upper Air

Bowerbirds make music that's simple and unassuming, which makes it hard to write about. But this isn't the kind of music that makes you want to write - it makes you want to go hiking in the mountains, or swimming in a lake, or some other outdoorsy, hippie activity. Upper Air is ten great folk songs with uplifting melodies and beautiful harmonies, and saying much more would just get in the way of the album's quiet and engaging natural warmth.




16. Polar Bear Club - Chasing Hamburg

The guys in Polar Bear Club have compared themselves to a hardcore version of Third Eye Blind. If that sounds strange, you haven't heard Chasing Hamburg yet. The pop influence is bigger, but the band has a great sense for when to keep things quiet and when to let the hardcore influence explode. They're on their way up, and I think Chasing Hamburg is the point where they've perfected their sound.




15. Broadway Calls - Good Views, Bad News

2009 marks the end of a really, really shitty decade for pop-punk. The genre's figureheads in the mainstream were skinny jeaned douches who seemed more concerned with their image than the music, and the great pop-punk bands were relegated to playing in basements and garages. If any band has a shot at righting the ship in the '10s, it's Broadway Calls. Good Views, Bad News is a classic pop-punk album, with enough infectious energy and hooks to make up for the last ten years or so.



14. Thrice - Beggars

Thrice have come a long way in ten years, from their early punk-metal anthems to the folk and electronica of last year's The Alchemy Index, and with Beggars, they've taken everything they've learned and made an album that feels definitive. Beggars consists of ten solid rock songs elevated by touches of hardcore, indie and post-rock. Their next album will most likely sound completely different, but for now, Beggars feels like the album they've been building towards.



13. Banner Pilot - Collapser

How awesome is it to watch a good band become a great one? Banner Pilot pulls it off on their second album Collapser, taking their signature orgcore sound and wrapping it around great lyrics and some not-so-subtle pop hooks that set it apart from its genre. Jawbreaker has always been the obvious reference point for this band, but this is the first album where they sound truly deserving of the comparison. I have a feeling this is the first of a series of classics.



12. The Clientele - Bonfires on the Heath

I love The Clientele, but I'll admit that their albums are pretty interchangable. You know what you're getting into - pretty, dreamy pop songs filled with imagery of late summer evenings, rain and quiet neighborhoods. Bonfires doesn't add many new ideas, but it puts the focus on the sounds of fall, and the music takes on a crisp and dreamy quality, with spanish horns and guitar occasionally drifting through like falling leaves. The Clientele know how to make incredibly beautiful music, and I'm glad they haven't messed with the formula too much.



11. Propagandhi - Supporting Caste

And with this, their fifth album, Propagandhi have finally done what they've been threatening to do all along. They have made the most Canadian hardcore album of all time. Taking their focus off of the stupid shit Americans do, the band turns their attention to the stupid shit that Canadians apparently do too. Musically, the band rocks harder than ever, somehow managing to make the thrash harder and the melodies catchier at the same time. When a band can deliver a lyric like "Alberta born, prarie raised/Ain't a sheet of ice north of Fargo I ain't played" and you're rocking out too hard to think anything of it, you know that's a damn good record.



10. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come

Don't get scared off by the fact that every song title is a Bible verse. The Life of the World to Come pretty damn far away from traditional Christian music. And yet, God (or the lack of God) haunts every corner of The Mountain Goats' SEVENTEENTH ALBUM. This time around, John Darnielle's characters are in introspective moods, whether they're vandals on the run from salvation, animals facing the extinction of their species, or, in the heart-stopping finale, a murderer quietly waiting for the wrath of God. Whether you delve into the Biblical references or not, the album is a quiet and affecting work of genius.



9. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

In a lot of ways, Popular Songs sounds like Yo La Tengo's tribute to '60s pop music. Sure, it opens with squelching feedback and closes with three songs that top ten minutes, but in between the band plays around with sounds from motown, girl group and classic soul. It's all classic Yo La Tengo ("The Fireside" is one of the most beautiful songs they've written yet), and considering that this band is older than I am, it's a miracle that they're still around making music this good.




8. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion

What does it sound like when an avant garde group makes a pop album? Animal Collective have spent a long time evolving their trippy, excitable music in the direction of accessibility, and Merriweather Post Pavillion fulfills that promise without compromising the weird sense of excitement and joy that's been the group's trademark. MPP creates its own world of swirling electronics and vocals that can go from gorgeous, Beach Boys-esque harmonies to energetic shouting and back, often during the same song. If it's pointing the way to the future, as I suspect it is, 2010 should be pretty goddamned cool.



7. Dear Landlord - Dream Homes


Somehow an album full of songs about hating your job and desperately wanting out really spoke to me this year. For all of its big Dillinger 4-esque choruses and sing-alongs, Dream Homes is a bitter album for bitter people, full of lyrics about dead-end jobs, shitty beer and broken dreams. All of which would be a drag if this weren't the catchiest and most infectious punk rock album of the year.





6. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

A year ago, Phoenix was a cult favorite with a string of good albums. Now they're topping critics' lists and their music is being heard every other commercial break in Cadillac commercials. Listening to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, it was only a matter of time. The band carves out a place for themselves halfway between rock and pop, and writes ten instant classics that feel light as air and effortlessly catchy.






5. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Man, that band name doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, does it? And TPOBPAH is a killer of an acronym. But trust me, these guys are worth checking out. At first I thought they sounded like The Smiths, but the more I listen to them, the more they start to sound like Belle & Sebastian covering Husker Du songs. No matter what you call them, they've nailed their fuzzy pop sound on their first album, and I can't wait to hear where they go from here.



4. P.O.S. - Never Better

P.O.S. has been blurring the lines between hip-hop and punk for three albums now, and on Never Better, the combination of genres seems like they've been joined together forever. It helps that P.O.S. is at the top of his game lyrically, able to reference Nas and Notorious BIG in the same songs that name drop Mitch Hedberg, The Big Lebowski and Fugazi, and avoid sounding like a novelty in the process. On a personal note, this is the album that finally broke me of my "eeew, hip-hop sucks" phase, so I'll always be pretty grateful to it for that.



3. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Veckatimest isn't so much its own little world as it is a constantly shifting and changing collage of sounds and melody. Songs rise and fall, light up and die down, explode in sound, and circle back to surprise you again several songs later. The attention to detail is amazing, but the songs themselves are incredible in their own right. "Two Weeks" is the most perfect pop song of the year, stunningly catchy with beautiful harmonies and endless replay value. "Dory" starts off peaceful, sounding like light reflecting off of water and ends with a slow building, eerie energy. And when "Foreground" closes the album with its quiet, restrained beauty, all you want to do is hear it all again.



2. Brand New - Daisy

If you still think of Brand New as the emo band that sang that song about staying eighteen forever, all that will change about 1:25 into Daisy, when "Vices" explodes into an avalanche of screams, jagged guitar lines and pummelling drums. From there, the album calms down, but not by much, taking influences from Modest Mouse and the Pixies to create a monster of an album that sounds like nothing else. The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me is their masterpiece, but this is one hell of a follow up.





1. Girls - Album

Christopher Owens, singer and songwriter for Girls, grew up in the Children of God cult, and while the experience doesn't turn up in his songwriting, it helps in understanding the weird, beautiful masterpiece he's created with Album. Sounding at times like a young Elvis Costello, he and the band are at their best when channeling the warm and intricate influence of Brian Wilson on songs like "Summertime" and the gorgeous "Hellhole Ratrace." Like Brian Wilson's masterpiece Pet Sounds, Album is a collection of great pop music full of such warmth and openness that it takes time to notice the quiet sadness at the center, a lonely counterpoint to the bright California sunshine that filters through every song.



And that's 2009. Thanks for reading! As usual, I made a "best of 2009" mix, so if anyone wants a copy, just let me know. And if you're a fan of me listing albums in groups of twenty and writing short paragraphs about them, you're in luck! Starting next week, I'm planning on doing a countdown of the 100 best albums from 2000 to 2009, updating once a week. Will I actually stick with it? Probably not. But you should come back anyway!
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

SOCIALISM!!!! (Perspective on the Health Care Debate)

In 1961, Ronald Reagan spoke out against socialized medicine on an LP titled "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine." On that LP, the future-president claimed that Medicare would be the first victory of a gradual takeover of the United States by socialists. Not only that, Medicare would lead the government to tyranny. Soon, he said, the government would be telling its citizens where to live, what schools to go to, and what jobs they could have.

Medicare passed, of course, in 1965, and has been functioning ever since. Somehow, perhaps through divine intervention, none of Mr. Reagan's predictions have come to pass. I have yet to receive a letter from the feds ordering me to move to Indiana and become a dentist. In fact, today the conservative movement has warmed up to Medicare. A recent poll showed that 62% of Republicans want the government to "stay out of Medicare," which is a bit like telling your engine to stay out of your car.

The "SOCIALISM!" approach to debate hasn't just been used against health care reform. It was also a frequent argument against the civil rights movement, with some opponents going so far as to claim that desegregation was a Soviet plot to weaken America. Going back further, big business interests fought against labor reform at the turn of the 20th century by claiming that extending benefits to workers would spell the death of capitalism.

Naturally, now that we have a political moderate in the White House, the conservative movement has dusted off the "SOCIALISM!" war cry, added a dash of casual xenophobia (for flavor), and sent it out to once again cheapen and insult any kind of intelligent debate. Obama's health care plans, it is said, will lead us down the road to tyranny. Doctors will be unable to properly help patients. Elderly people will be killed rather than treated. Rush Limbaugh recently made the assertion that Obama's health care plans are actual covert reparations for slavery. Somehow.

I think I've found a way to stay sane. There's a reason why we can laugh at how paranoid Reagan sounds on that old LP. There's a reason why we look at those segregationists and wonder how they could be so filled with hate. It's because they lost. Medicare was passed, segregation was abolished, and history was written by the victors. If progressives had lost, we might be sighing with relief that Medicare was never created, and being thankful to those racist protesters for speaking "truth" to power. Thank god the liberals won.

And we'll win this time too. Hell, we've already won with the American people. According to a recent poll, 62% of Americans would prefer a universal health care system to our current one. That's pretty much a mandate. But the opinions of Americans pale in comparison with the wealth of the health insurance industry, which has spent $380 MILLION dollars to influence politicians and block health care legislation.

But we progressives have been up against worse than this, and we've always come out on top. America has a long history of fighting for reform, battling against ignorance and lies, and eventually succeeding. We'll do it again this time, and someday a new generation will wonder why conservatives seemed so dead-set against helping people stay healthy. They'll wonder how a portion of the country could fight against something so obviously necessary.

Going back to that old Ronald Reagan LP, we find a quote that, if you replace "Medicare" with "Obamacare," could have dribbled out of the mouth of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck just yesterday: "If you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free." Of course, Reagan lived well into his sunset years and never had to worry about Medicare destroying America's freedom. This all poses the question - if he considered Medicare to be such a threat to the country, why didn't he move to have it dismantled once he became president? Why was Medicare, once a threat large enough to potentially destroy the nation, become so insignificant two decades later?

"Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialism" was recorded, distributed, and funded entirely by the American Medical Association, as part of its costly and sweeping campaign to defeat Medicare.
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Friday, October 9, 2009

The Top 10 Most Overlooked Beatles Songs

When I had the idea to start a blog, my first thought was that it should mostly be in list form. Lists are the easiest way to write about something, because you don't have to worry about annoying things like segues and original thoughts. You can just slap ten or so things together, put them in an order, then call it a day. But a blog with nothing but lists would be obviously lazy, instead of just partially lazy. So I've decided to update this thing twice a week - with an essay at the beginning of the week, and a list of some kind every Friday. And you'll all just have to sit there and like it.

I wanted to write about The Beatles this week because everyone who writes a music-related blog has to write about them eventually. It's a rule, like ignoring mainstream rock bands, or pretending to understand hip-hop. You have to do it, so I might as well do it now that Beatles Rock Band and the new remasters are creating a mini Beatles revival of sorts. (This has to be the second or third one by now, right?)

But a "top 10 best Beatles songs" list is boring. Millions of people have already written about "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Hey Jude." So I decided to write about songs that merely thousands of people have written about. These are the songs that get overlooked when people talk about the best of the Beatles. Some of them are too weird, some were unfairly packaged as b-sides to popular singles and then forgotten when the market became more album-based. But they're all great, and they deserve some recognition. I'm a hero!

10. Sexy Sadie
The Beatles (White Album)

When the Beatles went to India to visit the Maharishi, they came back with songs about peace, tranquility and the awesome forces of love that dwell within us all (read: LSD). And then there's "Sexy Sadie," one of the most bitter and angry songs the band recorded. John spends the entire time lashing out at "sexy Sadie" with lyrics like "you've made a fool of everyone" and "you'll get yours yet, however big you think you are." Who is Sexy Sadie? No one - John changed the title to placate George. The original title was "Maharishi." Apparently John had some trouble with that whole "inner peace" thing.



9. Flying
Magical Mystery Tour

It's easy to see why this one gets overlooked, but it's still a great song. "Flying" is the only Beatles instrumental, but it makes you wish they had tried more. It conjures up a hazy, laid back psychadelic sound that builds on itself until it finally fades away into a haze just as you start hoping it would go on longer.



8. Hey Bulldog
Yellow Submarine

The "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack is probably the weakest thing the Beatles ever did. It consists of two previously released songs, four originals, and the non-Beatles related score to the movie. But one of those four originals is John's "Hey Bulldog," a great, bluesy song that sounds like "Lady Madonna"'s more aggressive, more dog-themed cousin.



7. Blue Jay Way
Magical Mystery Tour

Okay, this one is right on the line between "overlooked" and "disliked." And I can see why - it's probably the band's least melodic song that doesn't repeat "number nine" over and over. But its droning psychadelics evoke an eerie tension, sounding like the bad trip lurking on the other side of "Lucy In The Sky."



6. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
Help!

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. It's a Bob Dylan song. John could have retitled it "Bob Dylan's 115th Imitation" and it wouldn't seem too far off the mark. But it's a great Bob Dylan song, and a big step forward for a band that, at this point, was still known for screaming teenage fans and "yeah, yeah, yeah."



5. One After 909
Let It Be

There has to be some alternate universe somewhere where this song was a huge hit. I mean, listen to it! Doesn't it sound like it belongs on some greatest hits album, sandwiched between "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "All My Loving?" It was written in the band's early days, but didn't turn up on an album for almost ten years. By that time, The Beatles had moved far beyond this kind of old school rock and roll, but if this song had been released in 1964 it could have been huge. Of course, the Beatles could have released a twenty minute album of Ringo farting in 1964 and it would have sold ten million copies, but you know what I mean.



4. And Your Bird Can Sing
Revolver

I'm not sure if this song is overlooked, exactly. As far as I know, everyone likes it. But it had the bad luck to be a great, straight-forward rock song on an album full of revolutionary new sounds and ideas, so it gets pushed to the side in favor of "Eleanor Rigby" and "Tomorrow Never Knows." But it's a great song with one of John's best melodies. John claimed to hate it at least twice, but what does he know?



3. The Inner Light
"Lady Madonna" b-side

"The Inner Light" was the furthest The Beatles went into Indian music, bringing in a full band of Indian instruments instead of the usual sitar. It's also one of George's best songs, with a beautiful, timeless melody that shines through the Bollywood feel of the music, and some of the trippiest lyrics George ever wrote.



2. Rain
"Paperback Writer" b-side

Okay, forget the whole "overlooked Beatles songs" thing that this entire entry has been about so far. This song and the next one rank up with the best Beatles songs ever. "Rain" is one of those songs like "She Loves You" and "A Hard Day's Night," with a melody so simple and perfect that it seems like it's always been around. It also has one of the first backwards vocals ever on a pop record. But you should really let John Lennon, in an interview from 1980, tell you about that:

"I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana... and, as I usually do, I listened to what I'd recorded that day. Somehow it got on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, 'I know what to do with it, I know... listen to this!' So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. (sings) 'Sharethsmnowthsmeanss!' That one was the gift of God... of Ja actually-- the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one."

I'm pretty sure Jah is the Christian God, as interpreted by Rastafarians, but whatever. That's still awesome.



1. I'll Follow the Sun
Beatles for Sale

Remember that alternate universe where "One After 909" was a huge hit? In that universe, "I'll Follow The Sun" is as popular as "Yesterday," or at least "Penny Lane." It's one of those great, seemingly effortless songs that Paul was able to pull out of nowhere constantly. It got lost in the chaos of Beatlemania, but it's easily equal to anything else the band recorded around this time.



Now, if you just scrolled to the bottom first to see what number one was, go back up and listen to the songs quickly, before YouTube takes them all down!
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Dead, All Messed Up: The Evolution of Zombies

Hi. This is my first blog post, and I'm pretty awful at introductions so I'll keep it short. I'm Mike, and in this blog I'll be sporadically enlightening you with my opinions on music, movies, politics, and anything else I feel like writing about while bored at work. My posts should range from "boring and pointless" to "unbearably pretentious," depending on how much effort I feel like putting into them. I was going to make a graph to illustrate this, but I don't feel like it.

For my first entry, I thought I'd write about something near and dear to my heart - zombie movies. This post contains spoilers for Zombieland, so if you haven't seen it yet, proceed with caution. I say "yet," because it's a great movie and you really should go see it. Right now. I'll wait here.

My first real exposure to zombie movies was in a film class in high school. My teacher, who I'm fairly sure was only teaching the film class so that he could sit quietly at his desk for a while, threw on an old copy of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and told us all that it was "cheesy" and "dumb," but that it had probably been scary to someone at some point.

So I was pretty surprised when the movie scared the shit out of me. Well, not really. It's hard to be scared when you're surrounded by bored high school students who are only taking a film class so they can sleep. But I was caught off guard by how claustrophobic and bleak the movie was - Night was a revolutionary film for its time because of how little hope it offered audiences. Somewhere between the scene where dozens of zombies pull people from a car accident and start eating liberal handfuls of organ meat and the scene where a young girl murders her mother with a gardening trowel, I realized that this was a pretty ballsy movie for 1968.

Afterwards, I sought out as many zombie movies as I could, which was pretty easy since a full-blown zombie revival started happening right on cue with the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. The remake kept the mall setting of the original, but removed most of its consumerist satire, amping up the blood and guts in its place. From there, a ravenous horde of zombie movies descended on theaters, ripping the box office to shreds and eating the brains of... okay, I'll be honest. This metaphor has gotten away from me. Suffice it to say that a lot of zombie movies got made. Some of them were great (28 Days Later...), some of them were... not quite as great. (House of the Dead) The resurgence even brought Romero out of retirement for the flawed Land of the Dead and the even-more-flawed Diary of the Dead.

But by far the best of the bunch was the least traditional. Shaun of the Dead managed to subvert nearly every rule of the genre, while honoring its influences at the same time. Shaun is brilliant in the way that it brings a typical zombie movie into a world recognizable as our own. It succeeds because it replaces the action-movie cliches of other zombie movies with real life situations. The characters in other zombie movies react to the crisis by stockpiling guns, or building gigantic tank-buses. The characters in Shaun spend most of the movie just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Shaun also takes the long-running tradition of "zombies as societal warning" and neatly turns it on its head. Zombies have stood as metaphors for conformity, consumerism, militarism, capitalism, racism and plenty of other -isms. The zombies in Shaun stand for the threat of arrested development. Shaun's struggle against them is really his struggle to mature, and face the challenges of growing up. For his troubles, he's rewarded with a stable relationship and a happy life. Those who aren't so lucky are resigned to playing video games in sheds. It's a brilliant move, and it recasts the zombie genre in a more personal and relatable light.

Which all brings me to the inspiration for all of this, Shaun's new American cousin, Zombieland. Zombieland hones in on a crucial, sometimes subtle, part of all zombie movies: wish fulfillment. Sure, a zombie apocalypse would suck when you're being ripped to shreds by living corpses, or shooting your loved ones to keep them from turning into crazed cannibals. But if you manage to survive, the world becomes your playground - full of empty amusement parks and deserted mansions where everything can be yours for the taking. Even the zombies become wish fulfillment in Zombieland, with zombie killing turned into the competition that more serious movies have always denied it is. The zombies aren't a metaphor for anything in Zombieland. They exist only to be killed, usually in the most creative and funny ways possible.

In the end, the zombies aren't even the point of Zombieland. You could replace them with monsters, mummies, or giant lizards, and the point would stay the same. Zombieland is a comedy about finding your place in the world. It just happens to be a world overrun by the living dead. And, unlike nearly every zombie movie that's come before it, all the characters survive in the end, and find something resembling happiness. Together with Shaun of the Dead, it's the zombie movie coming full circle, finding hope in a genre that has long been defined by unrelenting bleakness. And it's my first blog entry, being pretentious as all hell. See you next time!
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