Monday, December 13th, 2004
So here we are at yet another year-end list. I think the results are pretty predictable – I mean come on, what am I going to do? Surprise you? Silly rabbits, tricks are for kids. These ten albums amount to pretty much my most-listened to and most-enjoyed records of 2004. There’s no ranking this time as doing so would be almost completely arbitrary and meaningless – on any given day, depending on my mood or frame of mind, any of these could be the greatest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. So we’ll just leave them alphabetical-like and be done with it, shall we?
As always, I’ve included a sample mp3 of maybe my favourite tracks on each album, eschewing the singles or whatnot that you’ve probably already heard. If you like, go buy. None of these artists are rich, not by a long shot. Well, Wilco and Steve Earle are probably doing okay, but that’s not really the point. I’ll leave the tracks up probably till the end of the month or so. So without further ado…
 American Music Club
Love Songs For Patriots
Merge
“Another Morning”
It may have been one of the most low-profile of the indie rock reunions to take place this year, but I’ll wager almost none of the others was more focused on being artistically vital in the present rather than just cashing in on the past. Even after a decade-long break, Mark Eitzel and his compatriots managed to craft an album that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with their best work, and that’s saying something. |
 The Arcade Fire
Funeral
Merge
“Rebellion (Lies)”
In just a few short months, this Montreal collective went from well-kept local secret to kings (and queens) of the indie scene. Yes, the hype can be overwhelming but if you get past all that and just focus on the music, you’ll find that Funeral is a stunning record, bristling with energy and emotion. And it’s also true that as good as the recorded product is, the live show puts it to shame. |
 Drive By Truckers
The Dirty South
New West
“Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”
Another slice of Southern gothic mythology served up by Alabama’s finest. With three top-notch songwriters and guitarists leading the assault, the Drive By Truckers manage to turn all stereotypes about Southern rock on their heads while being just as ass-kicking as you’d expect and want Southern rock to be. |
 Steve Earle
The Revolution Starts… Now
E2/Artemis
“The Seeker”
Written largely off the cuff and in the studio to meet an election day deadline, this record could have turned out to be a half-baked rhetoric pastiche – instead, it’s as passionate and incisive a piece of social commentary as you were going to find in 2005. It also rocks, hard. The world has provided Earle with lots of reasons to be pissed and he tackles them all head-on with humour, hope and his razor-sharp pen. Defiance never sounded so good. |
 Feist
Let It Die
Arts & Crafts
“Let It Die”
Americans reeling from the ongoing invasion of excellent Canadian music be warned – the best may still be to come. Leslie Feist radiates star power and this record, with its lush, European feel and jazzy, sexy vocals only begins to scratch the surface of what this girl could do. Expect big things from this Calgarian ex-pat. Hell, even The OC has caught on. |
 Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Shake The Sheets
Lookout!
“Walking To Do”
If I had decided to rank albums this year, this one would have been damn near the top. Impassioned, literate, stripped-down, urgent, fun and balls-out rocking, Ted Leo is rock personified. |
 Luna
Rendezvous
Jetset
“Malibu Love Nest”
Bidding the indie rock merry-go-round a farewell, Luna’s swansong is their finest in years. Recorded very much live off the floor, Rendezvous is warmer, more cohesive and more intimate-sounding than their last few records, and it suits them well. Plus there’s more guitar solos! Ah, Luna. We will miss you. |
 Rilo Kiley
More Adventurous
Beaute/Brute
“Does He Love You?”
A textbook definition of a breakout record, Rilo Kiley’s third album and sorta-major label debut brims with sass and confidence while jumping from style to style, anchored by Jenny Lewis’ marvelous voice. Addictive from the first listen and it only gets better from there. |
 Saturday Looks Good To Me
Every Night
Polyvinyl
“Lift Me Up”
This probably qualifies as the dark horse of the list, but what can I say – this record just makes me happy. For whatever reason, it took seeing the live show to really make it click for me, but when it did I couldn’t get it out of my CD player. These Spector/Motown-worshipping pop tunes make me wanna dance, and that’s no mean feat. |
 Wilco
A Ghost Is Born
Nonesuch
“Muzzle Of Bees”
Possibly the very definition of “a grower”, it’s hard to separate the record from everything that made up the year in Wilco. It may be a bit of a cop-out to say that it makes more sense if you’ve read the press about Jeff Tweedy’s rehab, seen the live show or read The Wilco Book, and I’ve obviously done all of the above, but it’s true. It may take a while, but when A Ghost Is Born finally reveals itself, it’s worth the effort. |
You know, this list was a hell of a lot harder to write than I’d expected. Now I remember why I didn’t bother with writeups last year. I also forgot what a pain in the ass HTML in Nucleus is… but I’m done today’s post before 8AM, and that’s a good thing (and rare thing). Aaah.
Sunday, December 12th, 2004
There’s just something about puppets that’s inherently funny (and creepy). Things that you would give a second thought to if a human was doing it, like cursing a blue streak or getting cut in half by a samurai sword, are exponentially funnier when its done by puppets. It’s just true. Team America: World Police being a perfect example of this phenomenon.
Considering it’s from the creators of South Park and the amount of controversy that surrounded its release, one might have expected Team America to be far more scathing than it actually is. Right-wingers expecting to be attacked by Hollywood may have been surprised to find that it’s actually the Hollywood activist liberal types that get satirized the most here – that is of course, if they could have bothered to see it before setting up picket lines outside the theatres. No, instead of ripping social commentary, you get a pretty damned funny gross-out film. With puppets.
And the puppetry is quite remarkable, only looking clumsy when it suits the filmmaker’s purpose. The puppets themselves are pretty creepily lifelike, at least as much as a marionette can look lifelike. It’s mostly the use of soft latex of some sort for the skin that conveys this impression, making it just that much more creepy when the puppet is blown up, disemboweled or otherwise terminated. Oh, and the puppet sex. Oh the puppet sex. Certainly not deserving of the X-rating they were threatened with, but pretty damn graphic.
Another day, another year-end list. This time, the NME’s. Note that their “Acts to build up in 2004” list is interchangable with their “Acts to tear down in 2005” list.
Feist fans should check out this electronic press kit video for the European market. It’s artfully done and contains clips of live perfomances and interviews with Leslie Feist and Chili Gonzales about the making of Let It Die. Very nice.
I picked up a shiny new LCD monitor for myself yesterday. Not so much an early Christmas present to myself as a necessity – I’ve been having mild to splitting headaches on an almost daily basis for about a month or so, mostly from (or so it seemed) eye strain due to my old CRT monitor. Whether it was a glare thing or a refresh rate thing or what, I dunno, but it certainly seemed to be aggravating whatever was going on. The LCD certainly seems to help (though I had to crank the contrast and brightness way down to keep it from buring a hole through my skull – these things are bright!) though I think the root of the problems now is some sort of sinus thing. Maybe an infection, maybe a family of voles has taken up lodging in there, I don’t know.
np – Yo La Tengo / Summer Sun
Saturday, December 11th, 2004
Bob Dylan has always been an enigma to me. I only recently really got into his work, and what with his notorious reticence with the media, his work has been the only insight I’ve had into the man. In fact, last weekend’s 60 Minutes interview was the first time I’d ever heard his speaking voice. That’s why reading his Chronicles was such a revelation – it was pretty much my first look at the man behind the music, if I may use such a hackneyed phrase.
Split into five sections, the first two chapters of the memoirs start off in New York City, circa 1961. Dylan has just arrived from Minnesota and is starting to make a name for himself in the folk clubs around Greenwich Village. It then jumps ahead to the late 60s as he tries to escape his fame by moving out to Woodstock, and details his attempts to alienate his followers by making as many self-destructive career moves as possible – to almost no avail. The fourth part recounts the troubled and often frustrating first steps of his late-era creative rebirth, starting with the making of Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois. He admits he was spent as an artist and was considering hanging it up but eventually realized he still had more left in him, though the process of extracting it and rekindling his creative spark took its toll. Finally, he comes full circle in recalling his discovery of folk hero Woody Guthrie as a young man in Minnesota in the late 1950s, ultimately leading him to New York and to sign with Columbia Records.
Dylan possesses remarkable powers of recall – he paints scenes from forty years past with such detail that you feel like you’re in the room with him. His writing style is unmistakably him – this is no dry, ghost-written piece, it’s pure Dylan in tone, phrasing and style. The only thing that’s not typical is its openness – the memoirs are amazingly frank. He seems perfectly willing, maybe even eager, to de-mythologize himself and his work and he does it without being self-deprecating or diminishing the importance of his work. He claims he was always aware of his destiny, but doesn’t get caught up in hubris or false modesty. Until this point, he’d seemed almost a mythical figure to me – someone upon whose shoulder giants stood. Chronicles reveals him to be much more than just that – somehow, little details like his taste in John Wayne movies or the fact that he played ice hockey as a child do a lot to fill in my impression of the man and put me even more in awe.
I was amused watching the 60 Minutes interview, as Ed Bradley tried mostly in vain to get Dylan to open up. Mostly, he repeated portions of the book and got Dylan to reiterate what he’d said. And the editing of the segment made me believe that there were a whole lot of long pauses cut out of the original footage. His attitude seems mostly to be, “You read the damn book, you already know the answer”.
Obviously, Chronicles is recommended/required reading for Dylan fans. I’m very much looking forward to the two planned follow-up volumes. And while I’m on the topic, does anyone know if the reissue of his remastered back catalog is going to continue, or if they’re done? The sonic improvement on a lot of the albums is quite noticable, and I still need to get The Times They Are A-Changin’, which was inexplicably left out of the lineup. If I’m waiting for a reissue that’s not going to come, I may as well get the regular edition and be done with it.
See the Jonathan Demme-directed video for Steve Earle’s “Rich Man’s War” here. Sorry – RealPlayer only. It’s not a bad video, it actually fits the tone of the song quite well, but I don’t really see how/why a big-name Hollywood director was needed to make it. There should be explosions. And fast, sensationalistic cuts of war footage and mothers crying and politicians lying and — oh wait, sorry, I was thinking of Michael Moore. You can also hear some of Steve’s archived The Revolution Starts Now radio show on Air America here.
Each Note Secure points out that Glide Magazine has a complete Wilco show from DeKalb, IL in May of this year available to download. This was their first Ghost show, and it’s a good one.
Posters, shmosters. Gimme a Batman Begins trailer.
Hold My Life’s best albums of 2004. Quick, concise, to the point.
Goddamn! I’m getting comment spam. I guess I’ve arrived.
np – Neko Case / Blacklisted
Friday, December 10th, 2004
Terry Bickers-ified for the first time since their debut release in 1988, The House Of Love will release their first album since 1993’s Audience With The Mind early next year. NME reports that Days Run Away will be out on February 28 in the UK. I expect to have to play the import game for this one.
Though mostly a footnote in the history books, The House Of Love’s jangly, atmospheric rock made them UK indie darlings for a brief period in the late 80s, essentially filling in the space between the end of The Smiths and the rise of The Stone Roses. Constant lineup shuffles and the fact that Guy Chadwick didn’t exactly have a face made for the cover of the NME kept them from becoming much more than cult favourites, though. Everyone goes on about the eopnymous debut record (often referred to as Creation after their label at the time), citing Terry Bickers’ guitarwork as the cornerstone of their sound. While I love Bicker’s playing as much as anyone (check out their John Peel Sessions disc – stripped of the rather dated production, these songs and performances are glorious), I think the songwriting on their eponymous sophomore album (generally referred to as Fontana, again, after their label) is my favourite of their releases. It, plus the Peel Sessions, get the most spins.
Sadly, neither of their last two albums managed to recapture those heights. Babe Rainbow was pretty solid, if lacking that je ne sais quoi, while Audience With the Mind was as good a sign as any that it was time to disband, which they did. Chadwick put out an alright solo record, Lazy, Soft and Slow in 1998, but has been quiet since. While I don’t think House Of Love have ever quite gotten the respect they deserve, they have been getting a much-deserved critical reappraisal over the last few years. With the Peel sessions disc, a best-of, and albums compiling all their Creation-era and Fontana-era material, the vaults have been pretty much cleared. It may be more wishful thinking than anything, but I’m hoping that the new material is respectable if not a complete return to the glory days of 1988-1990. That’s probably a little much to ask for, but I’m anxious to hear the new stuff regardless.
I’m a little surprised to see The Cardigans releasing a DVD from their “Lovefool” heyday with The Cardigans: Live In London, coming out in North America on February 8 (it’s already out in Europe). Taken from two First Band On The Moon-era concerts at the Sheperd’s Bush Empire in Londontown in 1996, it sort of goes against all their efforts to distance themselves from their undeserved ‘one-hit wonder’ status. While their early stuff is far more sophisticated than first impressions might imply, I really like how much they’ve grown since those days and find their current sound just as interesting. At any rate, besides the live show, the DVD features a couple videos – including versions of “Lovefool” and “Been It” rarely ever seen in North America – and a short film about the making of First Band On The Moon.
Click here to watch the video for the Stars’ “Ageless Beauty”, the excellent first single from Set Yourself On Fire (From Pop77). Their December 18 show at the Mod Club is now pretty much sold out (though Soundscapes apparently still has some tickets), but tickets remain for the all-ages show there on the 19th.
You can pre-order the new Magnolia Electric Co. release, the live Trials and Errors, at Secretly Canadian. The formal release date isn’t until January 18 but it appears as though they’ll start shipping pre-orders today.
The Telegraph introduces the UK to Nellie McKay. From LHB.
More year-end lists: Glide Magazine, Kathryn Yu, Insound (sales rankings). Last two links from LHB.
Another Batman Begins poster.
np – The Fiery Furnaces / EP
Thursday, December 9th, 2004
Here’s one for the ‘Great injustices in music’ files – Nottingham, UK’s Six By Seven. I first came across them during one of my previous “shoegazer phases”, this one in the Fall of 1998. A Beggars/Mantra compilation of new artists featured a track from their debut album The Things We Make that was actually more Charaltans-y than anything, but a little research yielded reviews that indicated their sound was more in the droney/spacey vein. It took me some doing to find a copy of the album, which contained several extended, taut and tense pieces (“European Me”, “88-92-96”) punctuated by shorter, punchier numbers like “Candlelight” and “For You”. The acclaim in their native UK was impressive and they seemed to be well on their way to “next big thing” status. In 1999, they released the surprisingly delicate Two And A Half Days In Love With You EP, which was the result of sessions with legendary producer John Leckie. Leckie would go on to produce several tracks on their follow-up record The Closer You Get.
The sophomore record was quite a departure from the gauze of their debut – what was kept under tension on that record exploded off this one. The screaming vitriol of songs like “Eat Junk Become Junk” and “Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt” set the tone for the record, which still contained a number of more meditative, atmospheric pieces and beautifully grafter their shoegazer roots with righteous punk fury. Even their love songs seethed with gorgeous intensity. An underrated monster of an album, the promotional duties saw them travel to North America for the first time (though I missed their half-attended show at the Horseshoe in Summer 2000 on account of being out of the country, NME reviewed the gig) as well as lose co-founding guitarist Sam Hempton. Undeterred, they carried on and went back into the studio as a four-piece.
2002’s The Way I Feel Today was more stripped-down and straightforward than the previous two albums, but still ferocious. Feeling that their work had been over-produced to this point, they elected to record this album completely live off the floor and with no overdubs. With the absence of Sam Hempton, the band began utilizing more keyboards to fill in the space left behind, resulting in a more textured, haunting feel to much of the new material. Not entirely surprisingly, Mantra dropped the band after The Way I Feel Today failed to set the charts ablaze and to compound the hardship, bassist Paul Douglas quit the band in November of 2002. While the unrelenting string of bad luck would have spelled the end of lesser bands, the three-piece Six By Seven ploughed forward regardless. After releasing almost album-length EP Bochum in 2003 (the title track of which absolutely soars, by the way), the band formed their own label Saturday Night Sunday Morning to release their own music.
After a few singles, they released their fourth full-length, :04, in the Fall or 2004 (Review at Stylus). As a result of both necessity and choice, their sound has gotten less dense, recapturing some of the atmosphere of their debut effort though it makes more use of keyboards and programming to accomplish this rather than dueling guitars. One would never accuse the notoriously grumpy band of lightening up, but the record is decidedly more anthemic and postive-sounding, though that’s a very relative statement with Six By Seven. Moments sound almost Doves-ish, though a lot more abraisive. Though the album isn’t available on these shores yet (my ‘copy’ is an mp3 burn), they just announced that both :04 and it’s companion demos album Left Luggage At The Peveril Hotel will be coming out early next year in North America. Full details to come.
If you couldn’t tell, Six By Seven nearly tops the list of my “Greatly Underappreciated Bands” list. If you want to learn more about Six By Seven, visit your local library – or check out any of these links: Listen to some samples at MP3.com. Watch a live performance by the band at Mantra’s fifth birthday celebrations in 2000, courtesy of VirtueTV. PlayLouder interviews Chris Olley about losing one of their staunchest champions in John Peel. Mantra’s artist page still has loads of videos and audio tracks from the band’s releases on that label. The band’s website has a detailed discography that includes release-by-release discussions of how each record came to be.
Details for The Futureheads’ February 27th show at Lee’s Palace have been announced. Support will be Sweden’s Shout Out Louds and LA’s High Speed Scene. Tickets $15, on sale January 6.
Billboard has some details on Brendan Benson’s forthcoming album The Alternative to Love, due out in March of next year.
The Onion AV Club rounds up their best albums of the year.
np – New Order / Brotherhood
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