As I was writing my ‘Brain vs iPod: 2002’ piece a few weeks ago, I kind of knew in the back of my head that this would cause me to do one for every year of the decade, and sure enough, it has. Here is 2001...to be followed, I’m sure, by 2003-2006. I’m not going to go with the ‘Brain vs iPod’ thing, though, as the interesting part is simply the ranking itself. So without further adieu...
2001 was an okay year for music. Compared to 2002, it was mediocre at best, but as with even the driest of years, there’s still a lot of quality in the Top 10 or 15. Hip hop was almost nonexistent in 2001—you can see exactly why Jay-Z manufactured a feud with Nas...there was nothing else worthwhile going on—though as we saw in the 2002 piece, that was only temporary. As for music as a whole...well, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finished #8 on my 2002 Albums list. Had it been released in 2001 as originally intended, it would have been #2 in 2001. That pretty much says it all. Still, it’s not like I dislike any of the albums I’m about to discuss or anything.
Best Albums
1. Bob Dylan, Love and Theft. For a long time, I associated this album with its release date—9/11—but enough time (and listens) have passed by now that now I just associate it with being awesome. Whereas I think 2006’s Modern Times was a bit overrated, it’s really hard to overrate Love and Theft. He showed that he still had a lot of wit and talent left on 1997’s Time Out of Mind, but that album was saturated with an overall feeling of illness and mortality (“It’s not dark yet/but it’s getting there.”) With Love and Theft, Bob just reared back and decided to have a good time. It’s such a fun album, from the “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” opener to “Honest With Me” to “Summer Days.” Even some songs that feel like they should be more downbeat—“Cry a While”, “High Water (For Charley Patton)”—have a quaint looseness to them. Actually, Modern Times was probably a great album...it’s just that my standards were set so high with Love and Theft that it was going to be impossible to live up to my expectations. There really isn’t much competition here—it is far and away #1 for 2001.
2. North Mississippi Allstars, 51 Phantom. If I ever actually finish a piece I’ve been writing about R.L. Burnside and Mississippi blues-rock, you’ll see that I discovered NMAS in 2000 when I happened across their set opening for a jamband at the Blue Note in Columbia. After happily digesting their 2000 album of blues covers—Shake Hands with Shorty—I started looking forward to the fall 2001 release of their next album. Even though I expected to enjoy it, I had no idea it was going to be as good as it was. Mixing in a few originals with their variations of some more blues standards, NMAS makes the whole thing sound both laid back and energetic, original yet totally observant of history. Originality is tough in the blues genre, but NMAS continues to push the envelope.
(3. Dave Matthews Band, The Lillywhite Sessions. I’ve talked about this one before. I put this one in parentheses because, even though I want to count it in the 2001 releases, I know that I already put their 2002 album, Busted Stuff, near the top of that year’s list, and about 90% of BS’s songs are the same as on the Lillywhite Sessions. So for now we’ll just say that this is where it would have ranked if I’d ranked it.)
3. Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings. Rilo Kiley released a few different versions of their debut EP, Initial Friend, and though Initial Friend was pretty damn close a full-length album (9 songs, I believe), Take Offs and Landings was their first official LP release. Jenny Lewis hadn’t totally discovered and developed her amazing voice yet—there’s a little more quirk and a little less beauty here—and she was still splitting the lead singing load with guitarist Blake Sennett, but Take Offs is still a hellaciously good effort. It’s hard to come up with original takes in lovesong lyrics, but songs like “Plane Crash in C” (one of the best titles ever), “Science vs Romance,” and “Go Ahead” are really quirky and unique. This was a prolific time for Rilo Kiley, as they would release the even better The Execution of All Things the very next year...and More Adventurous only two years later. Granted, the Beatles put out like 19 albums a year in the mid-‘60s, but for the 2000’s three great albums—each better than its predecessors—in four years is quite a feat.
4. R.L. Burnside, Burnside on Burnside (Live). I argue with myself a lot about which live albums to include on these lists. I included 2002’s Live from the Wetlands from Robert Randolph & The Family Band, but I’m not including the outstanding Live from Mars release from Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals or Jay-Z's MTV Unplugged on this list. I guess the main criterion is this: if the album is intended to introduce an artist(s) (as Live from the Wetlands does)—and if the songs on said album aren’t really available in any other form to a music buyer—then it counts. That explains Wetlands. R.L. Burnside had been putting out minor releases (my favorite: A Ass Pocket of Whiskey) for a while, however if it weren’t for the marginal success of Burnside on Burnside, not only would I not have heard of any of his other releases, they wouldn’t have been available to me even if I had. In other words, this was, for all intents and purposes, the introduction of R.L. Burnside to the world.
All that said, this album is really, really fun. Burnside took a bunch of songs that I’d heard before in one form or another—North Mississippi Allstars hold him up as their god and perform quite a few of his songs—and crafted a great live show out of them. Plus, he was a dirty old man when this was recorded. Burnside was someone who enjoyed life—despite the obstacles thrown his way—and it just radiates from this disc. “Jumper on the Line” and “Snake Drive”, in particular, are just phenomenal.
5. Ryan Adams, Gold. This one surprised me. Every time I think of this album, I underrate it. It’s as uneven as every other Adams album—when you’re as freakishly prolific as he is, not nearly everything you come up with is going to be as good as you hope it will be at the time—but the quality extends pretty far beyond the two radio songs, “New York, New York,” and “Listening Bell,” which, as you’ll see, are two of my favorite songs of the year. I love how Adams’ sound and voice just naturally rotate between country, rock, and R&B on songs like “Firecracker” and “Gonna Make You Love Me.” He let himself have some fun on this one (that’s not always the case), and the results were strong, especially on the aforementioned “New York, New York.” I always loved Denis Leary’s 1990s comedy routines, and he talked a lot about his love for New York, both its good and its bad. Adams’ musical tribute here falls into the same “You take the good with the bad, and I love this place” category...only significantly less funny, of course.
6. India.Arie, Acoustic Soul. Peruse this list, and you’ll see that there’s no Alicia Keys here...other than the presence of “Fallin’” on the Top 50 list. I ended up with both Acoustic Soul and Keys’ Songs in A Minor at the same time. I was blown away by Acoustic Soul’s originality and quality, while A Minor told me that Keys was just a one-trick pony. I love “Fallin’” as much as the next person, but there just wasn’t much else on Keys’ album. So it really really pissed me off when Keys basically won all the Grammys for which India.Arie was nominated. Of course, Arie’s next album was completely and totally bland and uninteresting, while Keys took a gigantic step forward with The Diary of Alicia Keys, so for once maybe the Grammys were smarter than I was. Then again, A Minor just really cannot hold a candle to Acoustic Soul, so...yeah, screw the Grammys.
7. My Morning Jacket, At Dawn. Another one I apparently like more than I thought I did. I love every song on 2005’s Z (off the top of my head, I have to figure it will be the #1 album on my 2005 list), and I’ve always regarded 2003’s It Still Moves as a major step forward for MMJ. However, it turns out that At Dawn is pretty damn good. While Jim James’ songwriting (and singing, for that matter) has taken major steps up the pyramid since 2001, songs like “Just Because I Do” and “Phone Went West” are still top-notch.
8. John Mayer, Room for Squares. Being that I sacrificed all of my music nerd cred when I admitted that I like Mandy Moore a while back, I guess it’s safe for me to admit that I occasionally enjoy John Mayer as well. Never mind that he’s one of the funniest, wittiest musicians around...he’s a pretty damn strong singer-songwriter as well. Some of the songs on Room for Squares haven’t aged very well, but a) I sure did like them in 2001, and b) plenty of the songs—like “3x5” and “Not Myself”—are still perfect examples of early-‘00s singer-songwriter pop. And the dude has some chops on the guitar, he really does. That helps.
9. Cake, Comfort Eagle. Another surprising one. Cake are one of the rarest creations in music: a band with a sound that is 1000% their own. You hear three seconds of a Cake song, and you know it’s a Cake song. The bass sound is ska-ish, but totally original, and lead singer John McCrea is a complete and total enigma. That said, while they’ve put out some fantastic songs (“Never There,” “The Distance,” “Let Me Go,” “Sheep Go to Heaven,” their great cover of “I Will Survive”), in my opinion they’ve really only put out one truly strong-from-start-to-finish album: Comfort Eagle. Which is funny, since it didn’t sell nearly as well as 1996’s Fashion Nugget or 1998’s Prolonging the Magic. Known mostly for “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” and the really cool, creative video for that song, Comfort Eagle really does have numerous great moments, from “Meanwhile, Rick James...” to “Arco Arena” to “Long Line of Cars” and “Love You Madly.” I don’t know what makes this album better, really—the sound is still purely Cake, and the lyrics and song titles are just as strange as ever—I just know that it’s better.
An aside: I saw Cake at a free show in DC in 2002, and for the encore McCrea announced that they were taking requests. He responded to requests as they came up. “Maybe...no...probably not...yeah, we can probably do that one...NO, F*** YOU, I’M NOT TAKING YOUR REQUEST—YOU WEREN’T SINGING ALONG DURING THAT LAST SONG.” No idea if he was being serious or just messing with the guy (likely a bit of both), but it was one of the more startling and awkwardly funny things ever I’ve seen at a concert.
10. Black Crowes, Lions. I freely admit that my view of this album is probably influenced heavily by the fact that 2001 was when I saw the Black Crowes live for the first time, and they blew me away. That said, this is a good reminder of just how effortless the Crowes appear to make solid blues-rock music. They took some chances on Lions, and for the most part it paid off. Of course, then the Robinson Brothers remembered that they hate each other, and the band broke up for a bit. So maybe they didn’t like the album as much as I did. Either way, I could listen to “Soul Singing” all day long.
11. Radiohead, Amnesiac. When a group earns my respect, that tends to carry over when they do something I’m not sure I get or like. I don’t immediately proclaim their next album the greatest thing ever (unless it is), but I’ll give it more opportunities to impress me than it might seem like it deserves at first. With The Bends and OK Computer, Radiohead earned my lifelong respect; therefore, when they made an album almost entirely devoid of melody or understandable words, like Amnesiac, I gave it repeated listens until I could start to understand what they were aiming for with it. I’ve come to appreciate the melody of songs like “Morning Bell/Amnesiac,” and the guitar lick of “I Might Be Wrong” is just sickeningly good. However, just because they’re Radiohead doesn’t mean this album is anything better than #11 for the year.
And yes, I did just rank a Black Crowes album ahead of a Radiohead album.
12. Incubus, Morning View. I feel like Incubus is one of those hard rock bands I shouldn’t like. Lead singer Brandon Boyd often makes the “I think my words are deeper and more meaningful than they are” mistake, and...well, we’ll just say that his beautiful abs don’t really do anything for me. That said, Incubus actually does make some meaningful music occasionally, never moreso than on Morning View. The three singles—“Wish You Were Here,” “Nice to Know You,” and “Warning”—are the best this album has to offer, but all three are quite solid, and mixing in a few more decent songs like “Circles” and “Mexico” is enough to get them the #12 slot on the list.
13. Jay-Z, The Blueprint. The first hip hop album on the list! Like most Jay-Z albums, there are moments of brilliance followed by dullness. You remember the singles, and you think the album was great...but then you realize that there really wasn’t much else to the album beyond the singles. The exception to the rule is 1998’s unbelievable Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life. That said, songs like “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and “The Takeover” are strong and memorable. Now...if I’d included Jay’s MTV Unplugged release with The Roots as backing band on this list (it didn’t meet the criteria, though it’s unique enough that I had trouble making that call), then that album would easily be in the Top 5. You can hear in his voice the energy and excitement coming from getting to play with such a great live band, and it takes songs like “Big Pimpin’” and “Give It 2 Me” to a level I didn’t think those songs could attain.
14. Ozomatli, Embrace the Chaos. Ozo’s debut album, Ozomatli, positively blew me away.
Actually, a correction: their live show blew me away the first time I saw them in 2000, and their debut album simply backed up the impression of them that I was already forming. They have an energy and depth to their sound that almost no band of the ‘00s can match. Their second album, Embrace the Chaos, is solid, but not as strong as Ozomatli (and not NEARLY as strong as their next album, Street Signs). A lot of songs need an extra ounce of energy to them, and there’s just not as much to keep your attention. However, despite the lack of great songs, there are plenty of good ones (best: “Dos Cosas Ciertas”), and Embrace the Chaos sneaks onto the list.
15. Gorillaz, Gorillaz. When I first heard “Clint Eastwood,” I thought this whole Gorillaz experiment was going to one of the greatest ideas ever. The song was great, the video was great...the whole idea of a cartoon group making interesting music was just so cool. And then I listened to the rest of the album. “Clint Eastwood” = fantastic. “19-2000” = great. The rest of the album = ...eh. It’s moody and experimental, which is fine; it’s just that...well, it’s boring. Those two songs and a couple other decent ones, though, are enough to get Gorillaz into the Top 15, though.
Honorable Mention:
Charlie Hunter Quartet, Songs from the Analog Playground. Surefire way to get me to buy your cd: put a “Featuring Mos Def and Norah Jones” sticker on the cover. I discovered this when I first started working part-time at Barnes & Noble in 2003 (after Norah had established herself), and when I stumbled across this in the jazz section, I had to give it a shot. It doesn’t disappoint. This is technically jazz, but there’s a dominant groove to most of the songs, something unseen in most of today’s “Miles and Coltrane did everything you can do in jazz—therefore our job is simply to recreate what’s already been done” jazz sound.
Dave Matthews Band, Everyday. Yes, it’s the worst album DMB has made. However, I’m a DMB fan, therefore I still find some things to like about this album. “Everyday” is fun (though 1000x better live than on the album), “So Right” is good, even “I Did It” has a fun guitar lick to it even though “Make a bomb of love and blow it up” is a lyrical lowpoint for anybody, much less a musician I significantly respect.
Nas, Stillmatic. In the likely made-up ‘feud’ between Jay-Z and himself, Nas landed the hardest single blow with “Ether,” a song so full of personal insults that it almost becomes uncomfortable at times. However, as with Jay-Z’s albums, Nas’ are mostly uneven as well. There are highlights here in “Ether” and especially “One Mic”, but for some reason I never really agree with his beat selection. Most songs here tend to blend in with one another after a while.
Train, Drops of Jupiter. In his lyrics, Train frontman Pat Monahan so closely toes the line between ‘witty’ strange and ‘stupid’ strange that he can’t help but stumble (or fall, or plunge) off the edge a few times. In that way, his songs and lyrics haven’t aged tremendously well. However, “Drops of Jupiter” is annoyingly catchy despite the “The best soy latte that you ever had/And me” line, and his unique melodies go in unexpected directions and make songs like “She’s On Fire” and “Whipping Boy” solid listens.
Aesop Rock, Labor Days. Whereas I feel I shouldn’t like Incubus but I do, I feel I should like Aesop Rock way more than I do. He’s got everything I bitch about hip hop lacking—originality in flow and subject matter, interesting beats, etc. But it just doesn’t click with me as much as you would think it does. Labor Days is an interesting album, and it scores all sorts of originality points, but...his delivery just wears me out after a couple of songs.
Now...on to...
Best Songs of 2001
1. “Honest With Me,” Bob Dylan (It just plain rocks.)
2. “51 Phantom,” North Mississippi Allstars (I’m not sure what I find so amazing about this straight-forward rock-blues song...I just know that I love it.)
3. “Clint Eastwood,” Gorillaz
4. “New York, New York,” Ryan Adams (Just about the strangest timing for a video filming ever.)
5. “Jumper On the Line,” R.L. Burnside
6. “Soul Singing,” Black Crowes
7. “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” Jay-Z
8. “3x5,” John Mayer
9. “Answering Bell,” Ryan Adams
10. “Everyday,” Dave Matthews Band (In mid-September ’01, DMB was prepared to release as a single a song called “When the World Ends,” complete with a lyric that said “I'm gonna rock you like a baby when the cities fall/We will rise as the building's crumble”. After 9/11, they decided that would be, shall we say, a bad idea. So they released “Everyday” instead, replete with the single happiest video ever.)
11. “Fallin’,” Alicia Keys
12. “Warning,” Incubus
13. “Plane Crash in C,” Rilo Kiley
14. “I Might Be Wrong,” Radiohead (To the guitar riff in this song, I say—in the words of Lloyd Dobler’s best friend Corey from Say Anything—“I love you. You invade my soul.” And yes, I just made a Say Anything reference. Bite me.)
15. “Science vs Romance,” Rilo Kiley
16. “Just Because I Do,” My Morning Jacket
17. “Not Myself,” John Mayer
18. “Dos Cosas Ciertas,” Ozomatli
19. “More Than This,” Charlie Hunter Quartet & Norah Jones
20. “Cry a While,” Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan saying “booty call” = surefire Top 20 song.)
21. “19-2000,” Gorillaz
22. “One Mic,” Nas
23. “Video,” India.Arie
24. “Sugartown,” North Mississippi Allstars
25. “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” Cake
26. “Wish You Were Here,” Incubus
27. “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” Bob Dylan
28. “Snake Drive,” R.L. Burnside (I thought one time that I had come up with a killer guitar lick for a blues song, then after getting all excited about it, I realized it was the lick from “Snake Drive.” Bitches, man. And yes, that was another Say Anything reference.)
29. “Ship,” North Mississippi Allstars
30. “Gonna Make You Love Me,” Ryan Adams
31. “So Right,” Dave Matthews Band
32. “Survivor,” Destiny’s Child (What can I say...I’m a survivor. I’m not gon’ give up. I’m not gon’ stop. I’m gon’ work harder.)
33. “Love You Madly,” Cake
34. “Bulletproof,” Rilo Kiley (Jenny Lewis’ vocals at their quirkiest and cutest. She aims a lot less for ‘cute’ and a lot more for ‘hot’ nowadays.)
35. “Shake ‘Em On Down,” R.L. Burnside
36. “High Water (For Charley Patton),” Bob Dylan
37. “Summer Days,” Bob Dylan
38. “Go Ahead,” Rilo Kiley
39. “Drops of Jupiter,” Train
40. “Firecracker,” Ryan Adams
41. “Phone Went West,” My Morning Jacket (Jim James’ voice is never whinier than right here, but there’s a lot of drama here, and I think he pulls it off.)
42. “Nice to Know You,” Incubus
43. “Shadow Stabbing,” Cake
44. “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love),” Jay-Z
45. “Goin’ Down South,” R.L. Burnside
46. “Mud,” North Mississippi Allstars
47. “Morning Bell/Amnesiac,” Radiohead
48. “Lickin’,” Black Crowes
49. “Mississippi,” Bob Dylan (How many artists have covered this song now? 139?)
50. “Ether,” Nas
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Best Songs and Albums of 2001
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Brain vs iPod: 2002 edition
With all this talk I’ve made recently about how great hip hop was in late-2002, I figured it would be interesting to go back and look at 2002’s albums. I figured I’d throw out the Top 10 albums of the year according to my memories and perceptions and compare them to what my iPod ratings of each song actually tells me.
Hip hop did indeed make four outstanding late-year contributions to 2002’s quality output, but 2002 was really a great year all around. The Flaming Lips put out Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Dave Matthews Band released their best studio album (Busted Stuff), Counting Crows (remember them?) had a decent one in Hard Candy, and of course Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally saw an official release after a long ordeal (Jim DeRogatis actually counted Yankee as a 2001 release since that’s when Wilco intended for it to come out…and since that’s when the bootlegs hit the internet). I’m sure I’ll end up doing something similar to this for 2003-2006, and I may be proven wrong, but right now I think 2002 was the deepest musical year of this decade so far. Just a ton of great stuff.
So based purely on opinion, here’s my 2002 Top 5.
1. Common, Electric Circus. I said quite a bit about this one recently, but I just can’t say enough about how interesting and weird this album was.
2. Jurassic 5, Power in Numbers. I was so excited about this one when it came out—I had religiously memorized just about every second of their 2000 release, Quality Control, and I just could not wait to see what they did next. This was a deep album, and it actually threw me off a bit. The group that made the most fun album in a long time in Quality Control actually got a bit serious on PiN, and the result was an album that got a little better to me each time I listened to it. Plus, it has the added benefit of being one of the only hip hop albums (possibly the only one) that my wife loves.
3. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Possibly not quite as great, top-to-bottom, as The Soft Bulletin, but songs like “Fight Test” and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Pt. 1)” are outstanding, and “Do You Realize???” really might be the greatest song of all-time. It doesn’t make me cry or anything, but I think it’s safe to say my eyes glisten every time I listen to it. Every single time. And I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to admit that.
4. Dave Matthews Band, Busted Stuff. The best capitulation-to-the-fanbase album of all-time. After taking a large step in a different direction with 2001’s Everyday, they went back and finalized the demo’s leaked on The Lillywhite Sessions that the DMB fanbase loved so much, and the result was a moody, bluesy, wonderful album. “You Never Know” and “Bartender” might have been my favorite two songs of the year if not for the aforementioned “Do You Realize???” and Talib Kweli’s “Get By.” Have I mentioned how great a year 2002 was?
5. The Roots, Phrenology. Like Electric Circus, we see lots of strangeness and experimentation here. “Water” and “The Seed 2.0” are also strong candidates for Song of the Year in any other year but 2002. Seriously—any of the six songs I’ve mentioned here (“Do You Realize???”, “Get By,” “Water”, “The Seed 2.0”, “Bartender”, “You Never Know”) would be the #1 song of 2007. But one of those won’t even make the Top 5.
So what does my iPod tell me about 2002 albums? Here are the Top 15 based on my star ratings...
1. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Apparently I like the Lips even more than I thought I did!
2. Common, Electric Circus. One of my thoughts when I was starting to use iPod ratings to judge albums was than an album’s overall groove would be neglected by simply looking at star-ratings. A song that furthered the overall mood of the album might by itself not merit a strong rating. In other words, I was suspicious that albums like Electric Circus would not grade out as well as they should. Apparently that’s not a problem, as when I randomly hear a given EC song, I’m reminded of the groove as a whole. If that makes any sense at all.
3. Jurassic 5, Power in Numbers. Damn shame that this was the last fantastic album we got from them.
4. Dave Matthews Band, Busted Stuff. My brain’s mostly agreeing with my iPod here.
5. Rilo Kiley, The Execution of All Things. I actually had no idea this came out this year. I got into RK a few years later, so I wasn’t connecting it with a date. What a neat listen this is. The more I think about it, the more I think this one’s better than its follow-up, More Adventurous. Both are quite strong, but only Execution has “With My Arms Outstretched” and “A Better Son-Daughter.”
6. Talib Kweli, Quality. Going by star ratings, I guess this is the best overall Kweli album…though we’ll see what happens when Eardrum starts growing on me. A lot of really strong songs, but only one truly great one—“Get By.” Might have been the best album of 2003 if he’d just waited another two months to release it.
7. Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Live at the Wetlands. This one surprised me. I don’t usually list live albums in the “Best Albums” category because they’re usually supplemental to the studio albums. For RR&FB, this was their debut album, so I’m counting it. And oh, how fantastic it is. Six songs, 60+ minutes of pure blues, soul, and joy.
8. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. More interesting than great (the greatness would come with the next album, A Ghost is Born), this is still a lovely album all the way, from “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” to “The Late Greats.”
9. Pearl Jam, Riot Act. An highly underrated album. “Thumbing My Way” is possibly the saddest, prettiest song in the PJ catalog, while “Love Boat Captain” and “I Am Mine” are as emotional as Eddie Vedder’s vocals has ever been. Really, 2-3 weak songs were enough to knock this all the way down to #9.
10. Bruce Springsteen, The Rising. Oh yeah. Damn near forgot about this one.
11. David Gray, A New Day at Midnight. And this one. To me, David Gray’s one of the more underrated artists in a long time…underrated even by me. I listened to this album for the first time in a while last week, and I was surprised by how emotionally effective it is. Not as emotional as A Century Ends and not as catchy as White Ladder, but strong. And he’s the only person I know of who can get away with a lyric like “Jumpin’ Jesus, holy cow/What's the difference anyhow” (from “Be Mine”) and maintain respect.
12. The Roots, Phrenology. This one shocked me. I guess the high points (“Water”, “The Seed 2.0”) distracted me from the fact that there are a few low points and dull moments. And as I mentioned with Pearl Jam above, a couple weak moments are enough to knock you a long way down in this list.
13. Cody ChesnuTT, The Headphone Masterpiece. It’s a bit of an understatement to call the sound quality of this album “lo-fi”. Well, not only is it monstrously lo-fi, it’s also immature, slightly perverted…and just so much fun to listen to. I imagine this one of those “you either love this album, or you absolutely loathe it” albums, but with songs like “Up in the Treehouse” and “Serve This Royalty,” count me in the “love it” group. Plus, ChesnuTT provided “The Seed” for use (and upgrade) by The Roots.
14. Norah Jones, Come Away with Me. A perfect mood piece. My buddy Walsh (immortalized, ahem, in the Lollapalooza posts) made a copy of this album for me some time in the late-summer/early-fall of that year and said “Just listen to it. You probably don’t think you’ll like it, but you’ll love it. Her voice is unbelievable. And while she’s pretty attractive, once you hear her sing, you’ll think she’s the hottest person in the world.” He was just about right on all counts. And I could very easily write 1,000 words on just how amazingly gorgeous “Nightingale” is. Sheesh…another song that needs to be at the top of the “Best Songs of 2002” list…they’re everywhere…
15. Counting Crows, Hard Candy. Another underrated album. In the Crows’ three previous albums, the great songs were unbelievable, and the not-great songs were darn near unlistenable. In Hard Candy, a certain consistency is reached. The best songs (“Richard Manuel is Dead”, “Miami”) are strong and emotional, but they’re not classics like “Round Here” or “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby.” However, every song is solid.
Honorable Mention:
Beck, Sea Change. I was going through a pretty tough breakup when this was released, and my roommate at the time wouldn’t let me listen to this ablum more than once a week or so. Every song’s the same tempo and the same emotion, and while that wears you down, there are some unbelievably good songs here, like “Golden Age” and especially “Lost Cause.”
Atmosphere, God Loves Ugly & Lucy Ford. These two albums established MC Slug’s credentials as more than just an ‘asshole with a heart of gold’ persona. Dude’s got talent, and he’s managed to craft himself into a sympathetic, simple figure even though half the songs are about getting drunk or being pissed at a girl for dumping him. At the time of Lucy Ford’s release, Walsh—who LOVED that album—surmised that it was likely a “lightning in a bottle” type of situation, where no other album would be nearly as good as that one. Instead, every album since then has been better than its predecessor, right up to 2005’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having.
Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf. I’m the only person in the world who enjoys Lullabies to Paralyze far more than this one. It’s still good, though.
Matchbox 20, More Than You Think You Are. Not amazing, but better than you think it is. No, really.
Audioslave, Audioslave. Nothing amazing, but strong hard rock is still enjoyable from time to time.
Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow. Blackalicious is solid, never spectacular, and this is an enjoyable listen.
And just for the hell of it...
Top 34 Songs of 2002
1. “Do You Realize???”, Flaming Lips
2. “Get By,” Talib Kweli
3. “Nightingale,” Norah Jones
4. “Water,” The Roots
5. “Thumbing My Way,” Pearl Jam
6. “You Never Know,” Dave Matthews Band
7. “The Seed 2.0,” The Roots
8. “Bartender,” Dave Matthews Band
9. “With Arms Outstretched,” Rilo Kiley
10. “Love Boat Captain,” Pearl Jam
11. “Lose Yourself,” Eminem
12. “Lost Cause,” Beck
13. “I Got a Right Ta,” Common
14. “Bright Lights,” Matchbox 20
15. “A Better Son-Daughter,” Rilo Kiley
16. “Fight Test,” Flaming Lips
17. “Freedom,” Jurassic 5
18. “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1,” Flaming Lips
19. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” Wilco
20. “Come Close,” Common
21. “My City of Ruins,” Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band
22. “If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead),” Counting Crows
23. “Up in the Treehouse,” Cody ChesnuTT
24. “Hard Candy,” Counting Crows
25. “What’s Golden,” Jurassic 5
26. “Save You,” Pearl Jam
27. “Ted’s Jam,” Robert Randdolph & the Family Band
28. “If I Was Santa Claus,” Atmosphere
29. “Be Mine,” David Gray
30. “Caroline,” David Gray
31. “Waitin’ for a Sunny Day,” Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band
32. “Miami,” Counting Crows
33. “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” Wilco
34. “Cochise,” Audioslave
35. “High Fidelity,” Jurassic 5
36. “Come Away With Me,” Norah Jones
37. “God Is In the Radio,” Queens of the Stone Age
38. “Brown Sugar,” Mos Def & Faith Evans
39. “Freedom,” David Gray
40. “Don’t Know Why,” Norah Jones
Friday, June 29, 2007
Brain vs iPod: Bob Dylan Edition
A month ago, I decided to embrace my nerddom and look into something that only I could possibly care about: how greatly do my perceptions of an album differ from the star ratings I each song of the album on my iPod? In other words, how much does the concept of an ‘album’ actually matter? A lot of albums have distinct feels and moods to them, but does that end up actually mattering when it comes to an evaluation/rating of the album itself? The album can have a really interesting feel to it, but if the songs aren’t good, what difference does that make? My guinea pig for this experiment was Wilco.
Well, now I’m moving on to the Big Dog.
I’ve always had an appreciation for Bob Dylan, but I didn’t become a full-fledged Dylan-phile until around 2001 or so. In one of my BMG “Buy 1 Get 27 Free” binges early in high school, I bought his greatest hits, but I just wasn’t ready to appreciate him yet. Well, during the height of Napster, I decided to give Blonde on Blonde a try. And that very predictably led to one of my patented ‘phases’ (like the Flaming Lips phase I went through last year...and the Funkadelic phase I seem to have entered recently).
In the summer of 2001, I discovered Half.com and purchased about 2/3 of Dylan’s albums (almost all for under $7!), bought a couple biographies, and immersed myself. So after 6+ years of Dylanology, it’s time to rank the albums...I’ll only do a Top 10 here because if I were to rank all of his albums, this would end up around 15,000 words. That, and there are still a few albums I don’t own—Empire Burlesque, Saved, and New Morning.
Anyway, here goes nothing. The following is my “Brain” ranking of the Top 10 Dylan albums.
1. Highway 61 Revisited (1965). As uncreative as this might make me sound, this is my favorite album of all-time. And I know in advance that my iPod will agree with me, as every song on here got 5 stars. Can’t beat that. Dylan was pursuing that “thin, wild mercury sound” that he had in his head, and he said he didn’t capture it until Blonde on Blonde. Well, to me he had already caught and released it. Everything about this album is perfect. Best album opener ever. Best album closer ever. A perfect combination of whimsy and apocalypse.
2. Blood on the Tracks (1975). No matter what mood I’m in, when I listen to this album, I end up sad and a little bit angry. If great art projects its mood onto you, this is as good as art gets. Songs like “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Shelter from the Storm” set the reflective mood, and then Dylan takes you through the different stages of a breakup, from Anger (“Idiot Wind”) to Gut-Wrenching Despair (“If You See Her, Say Hello”) to Acceptance (“Buckets of Rain”). This might be my second-favorite album of all-time.
3. Bringing It All Back Home (1965). I always forget about this one in the overall conversation of Dylan’s discography—Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde are always the first two ‘60s albums mentioned, Blood on the Tracks always gets mentioned as well, and his last three albums start to surface in the conversation—but that always leads to a nice “Holy crap is this a great album” moment. The album title is one of the most apt titles ever. You can see his music and all of his influences coming together to start making the ground-breaking music he had in his head. But more than that, the lyricism is at just about an all-time high. Hell, this might be third-favorite album of all-time.
4. Love and Theft (2001). When I woke up the morning of 9/11, my initial thought was, “Do I buy Dylan’s new album before class or after?” I had intentionally avoided reading any reviews or stories about Love and Theft because I wanted to be surprised by what I heard. Of course, as I was getting ready for class, I hopped on the Internet like I always do, saw what had happened, and that, shall we say, changed my day around a little bit. By mid-afternoon, though, my brain was simply fried, so I headed over to Wal Mart to pick up Love and Theft and allow it to distract me for a while. When I got back I turned off the TV and computer, sat in my room, turned out the lights, and listened. It was a nice one-hour distraction before I headed back into the living room to take in what was happening for the rest of the evening.
Normally, listening to Dylan is (for me) a pretty emotional experience; coming off of Time Out of Mind, I was expecting something similar with Love and Theft. Instead, I turned on the cd player and listened to what is probably the most fun album Dylan’s ever made. You can’t avoid smiling during “Summer Days”; “Honest With Me” is the hardest-rocking song he’s written; even songs with more downbeat subject matter, like “Cry a While” and “High Water (For Charley Patton)”, aren’t all that downbeat. I expected to enjoy Love and Theft, and I did...in a completely different way than I thought I would.
5. Desire (1976). Certain Dylan albums are mood pieces. They're not tours de force of pure songwriting agility and mastery, but the groove and production and instrumentation are perfectly distinct, and it makes for a lovely listen. Desire is my favorite of this type of Dylan album (others I’d throw into this category are albums like Oh Mercy, Planet Waves, Slow Train Coming, Nashville Skyline—my least favorite Dylan album ever—and Time Out of Mind), though let’s face it—anything with Emmylou Harris on it gives it an unfair advantage over anything without Emmylou.
Desire does have a few perfect songs—“Hurricane” is unbelievable even though his protest might or might not have been sincere; “Isis” is intense and enchanting, though better live (check out the unbelievable Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Rolling Thunder Revue to see how perfect this song can be); and “Oh Sister” is both haunting and Emmylou-tastic. Most of the album, though, is made up of songs like “One More Cup of Coffee” and “Romance in Durango”—great examples of Dylan songs that could have only been captured with that exact lineup at that exact moment.
I should also mention that Dylan’s voice has never sounded as good as it does on Desire, though my ears might be biased because Emmylou’s harmonizing.
Have I mentioned that Emmylou is the greatest backing vocalist of all-time?
6. Blonde on Blonde (1966). While I don’t love it as much as some (I might just be penalizing it because the harmonica on "Pledging My Time" is too shrill), this album is great for four reasons: 1) “Visions of Johanna”, 2) “I Want You”, 3) that “4th Time Around” sounds like Dylan imitating “Norwegian Wood” (John Lennon had a good reason to be paranoid), and 4) that “Absolutely Sweet Marie” sounds like Dylan imitating every Beach Boys surf song. Don’t know if he actually was or not, but I enjoy it more when I think about it.
7. John Wesley Harding (1967). I was late to the party on this one, and I’m not sure why. I just kept skipping over it on my checklist. That was a mistake. When I finally purchased John Wesley Harding last year, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. I knew I’d like “Watchtower” obviously, and I’d seen him perform “Drifter’s Escape” a couple times in concert, so I knew what to expect (more or less...his voice and the instrumentation to every ‘60s song have changed exponentially since then) from that. Otherwise I was a blank slate. But despite the famous lack of hooks or choruses on this album, there is strong emotion and melody at every turn. “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” has become one of the most played songs on my iPod.
8. Oh Mercy (1989). This one’s #2 on the “Mood Pieces” list...for today, anyway. Some other day, I might put Time Out of Mind in this slot instead. They’re both Daniel Lanois productions, and they both have the same tired (in a good way) feel to them. The difference is, while Time Out of Mind feels like a brittle, cold New York morning, Oh Mercy sounds like a stifling, hot New Orleans night. My opinion of this album might have been enhanced by his long recollection of its recording process in Chronicles, Vol. 1. Hearing him talk so fondly and vividly of it might have made me biased. It’s a damn good album either way, though.
9. The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964). Really, this album is just as unsteady as his first two (Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), but the title track is, to me, the greatest folk song ever written, so for that reason alone I think very fondly of the album as a whole. However, I have the feeling my iPod ratings won’t think quite as highly of it.
10. Modern Times (2006). Actually, no. Make that Time Out of Mind (1997). Modern Times is a lovely listen, but Time Out of Mind is more cohesive and emotional. Cohesion and emotion are usually two of the more important qualities an album can have, so I’m giving Time the nod. See #8 for further details on this one.
So that’s great. Now what does my iPod tell me I like the best?
1. Highway 61 Revisited. Five-star songs: All of them. “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Tombstone Blues”, “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, “From a Buick 6”, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, “Queen Jane Approximately”, “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, “Desolation Row”
2. Blood on the Tracks. Five-star songs: “Tangled Up in Blue”, “Simple Twist of Fate”, “Idiot Wind”, “Meet Me in the Morning”, “If You See Her, Say Hello”, “Shelter from the Storm”, “Buckets of Rain”
3. Bringing It All Back Home. Five-star songs: “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “She Belongs to Me”, “Maggie’s Farm”, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Gates of Eden”, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
4. Love and Theft. Five-star songs: “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”, “Mississippi”, “Summer Days”, “High Water (For Charley Patton)”, “Honest With Me”, “Cry a While”
5. Blonde on Blonde. Five-star songs: “Visions of Johanna”, “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”, “I Want You”, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”, “Just Like a Woman”, “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine)”, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”
6. Time Out of Mind. Five-star songs: “Love Sick”, “Standing in the Doorway”, “Not Dark Yet”, “Cold Irons Bound”
7. Slow Train Coming. Five-star songs: “Gotta Serve Somebody”, “I Believe in You”, “When He Returns”
8. Another Side of Bob Dylan. Five-star songs: “Chimes of Freedom”, “To Ramona”, “It Ain’t Me Babe”
9. Modern Times. Five-star songs: “Thunder on the Mountain”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, “Someday Baby”
10. Desire. Five-star songs: “Hurricane”, “Isis”, “Oh, Sister”
Not surprisingly, the ‘mood’ albums I mentioned don’t fare quite as well when they’re evaluated simply for their content—Desire drops from #5 in my head to #10 on my iPod, just as Oh Mercy drops from #8 to unrated.
However, I seem to have discounted Slow Train Coming, Another Side, and Modern Times. I think Slow Train has an easy explanation: it’s a bit of an uncomfortable listen. There are plenty of strong songs, and Dylan sings with conviction, but...well, it’s preachy. Everybody knows this. He suddenly went from well-known Jew to proselytizing Christian, and he seemed to be judging anybody who questioned him or his motives...and for that matter, anybody who wasn’t as faithful a Christian as he suddenly was. Knowing this in advance, I wasn’t in a hurry to buy this album or Saved, even though I’ve owned Shot of Love—the third part of the Christian-esque trilogy—for a while and enjoy it. But there’s no discounting the quality and passion of Dylan’s performance and songwriting here. If he really did ‘go Christian’ go give him something to feel strongly about, it served its purpose.
What about Another Side? Well, quite simply I think it gets lost in the shuffle between his hardcore folk albums—Freewheelin’ and Times They Are A-Changin’—and his electric conversion. How an album with “It Ain’t Me Babe”, “Chimes of Freedom”, “To Ramona” (his most underrated song), and others gets forgotten says something about either my memory or the unbelievable quality of Dylan’s discography. As for Modern Times, I get annoyed with magazines and TV shows when they rank new stuff too high on “Top __” lists, and I think I tend to overcompensate. It’s a damn good album, though it wasn’t the best album of 2006 as everybody tried to immediately anoint it.
So we’re through with two of these experiments now, and I seem to have pretty much learned what I could have guessed I would learn. Just as statistics don’t tell the whole story in sports—one’s impact on team chemistry and his ability to make teammates better doesn’t show up in the box score, just as an album with an interesting mood and groove might not rank high if the individual songs aren’t amazing—they tell a good percentage of it.
Not that this predictable conclusion won’t prevent me from writing a bunch more “Brain vs iPod”’s...
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Brain vs iPod: Wilco Edition
In addition to my ongoing Primer Series, I thought I’d look a bit into how the iPod has made its way into my life and how it has affected my tastes and habits. Being that Wilco just released a pretty strong album, I’ll use them as the guinea pig for this experiment.
Wilco has released six albums (not including the lovely Kicking Television live album or their Mermaid Avenue releases with Billy Bragg). Below are how I would rank them completely off the top of my head, with no regard to anything but the regard in which I hold each release:
1. A Ghost Is Born (2004). For reasons unbeknownst to me, this album brings out a lot of emotion in me. As I’ve said about other things before (“Desolation Row”, Huff), this is like listening to an anxiety attack. It’s tense, it’s technically proficient, it’s emotional, and “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” is my favorite Wilco song.
2. Summerteeth (1999). The fun songs are as fun as Wilco has gotten, and the dark songs are as dark as Wilco has gotten. Quite the roller coaster, but it works...and it was a giant leap up from Being There.
3. Sky Blue Sky (2007). Every album is more mature and technically sound than the last, and that trend has continued with the latest. I’ll have to expand on it later, but it’s good.
4. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002). This was a sonic leap for the band, and they justifiably got a lot of attention for it (go pick up Greg Kot’s Learning How to Die for detailed information about the drama that was this album...seriously, do it now...great read...) there are plenty of fantastic songs (“I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “I’m the Man Who Loves You”), but it’s just not as enjoyable a listen.
5. Being There (1996). I love that this album has a Pekin, IL, reference (“I wanna be your kingpin, living in Pekin” from “Kingpin”)—it is my father-in-law’s hometown, and until a couple of decades ago, their school nickname was amazingly the Chinks, and writing about this song finally gives me the opportunity to mention that—plus, songs like “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” are fantastic live; however, it’s just not quite as enjoyable as any of the four albums above.
6. A.M. (1995). It's good--and extremely Uncle Tupelo-esque--but it has been surpassed (in my ears) five times in the twelve years since its release. Wilco has matured deeply with each album, but they had to start somewhere.
For the most part, I’m ranking these albums based on the fondness and feeling I have for them. In all, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was far more of an achievement than Summerteeth, but I enjoy listening to Summerteeth more (same with a band like Pearl Jam—Ten and Vs were bigger achievements at the time, but gimme Yield any day of the week). I’m pretty sure everybody does basically the same thing.
But what does my iPod tell me about how I think?
A while back, I wrote about how the iPod has changed my tastes and listening habits, and I thought I’d revisit the issue by looking at how I rated the songs on each album. If you remember (and I’m sure you do), I give a song a star rating while listening to the iPod in the car or at work—I can pretty much do this without taking my eyes off the road at this point, so fear not, mid-Missouri drivers. Here are the Wilco albums ranked in order of the average rating I’ve given to each songs.
1. Summerteeth: 4.14. Five-star songs: “Can’t Stand It”, “A Shot in the Arm”, “I’m Always in Love”, “Nothing’severgonnastandinmywayagain”, “Via Chicago”
2. A Ghost Is Born: 4.09. Five-star songs: “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, “The Late Greats”, “Hell Is Chrome”, “Company in My Back”
3. Sky Blue Sky: 4.00. Five-star songs: “Walken”, “What Light”, “On and On and On”
4. Being There: 3.95. Five-star songs: “Misunderstood”, “Monday”, “I Got You (At the End of the Century)”
5. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: 3.91. Five-star songs: “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “Heavy Metal Drummer”, “I’m the Man Who Loves You”
6. A.M.: 3.62. Five-star songs: none
Okay, it’s roughly the same. What does this mean exactly? Well, if you know Wilco, you realize that a majority of the 5-star songs are the rockin’ kind...Jeff Tweedy does navel-gazing and introspective as well as anybody, but when he and the band let their hair down, they rock as well as any band I know.
This probably also explains why I enjoy Summerteeth so much...while it has plenty of downbeat songs like “She’s a Jar” and “We’re Just Friends” and “Via Chicago”, it also has lots of good hard rock songs.
Unlike my last iPod post, when I realized that an album like Counting Crows’ Hard Candy had ‘ratings’ as good as Exile on Main Street*, my song ratings seem to be a pretty accurate and telling representation of the album as a whole, which is good, because I was wanting to use my song ratings in part to create a Best Albums of 2007 list soon. I also figure this is a fun way to discuss bands that people are more familiar with (and therefore really don’t need a ‘Primer’ type of write-up), so stay tuned. I’m sure you will.
* I should note that, after a little friendly mocking from Michael Atchison, I revisited Exile on Main Street, and it turned out that I must have been in a really pissy mood when I rated Exile songs...upon further review, I upgraded the ratings for about half the damn songs on the album, and it now rates higher than Hard Candy. Justice has prevailed.