Index of posts 1-100

This marks the 100th post here and in order to keep it all somewhat comprehensive, below you'll find an index of the first 100 posts, which will henceforth be linked in the sidebar over there. I know this is coming straight after another "lists" post and that's a coincidence; as a bonus at the bottom of this post, there's one I neglected to tackle on the 31st, just to balance out all this dry informational stuff. Thanks for reading, everybody.

ALPHABETICAL INDEX
KEY: [A+] / [hr] = highly recommended / [r] = recommended / [c] = caution / [NO] = avoid

STUDIO ALBUMS
10,000 Maniacs: In My Tribe (1987) [c]
13th Floor Elevators: The Psychedelic Sounds Of (1966) [hr]
2 Many DJ's: As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 (2002)
3 Mustaphas 3: Soup of the Century (1990) [c]
The 6ths: Wasps' Nest (1995) [hr]
A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder (2004) [r]
Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (2010) [hr]
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today (2010) [hr]
The Beatles: Please Please Me (1963) [A+]
Belle & Sebastian: Write About Love (2010) [r]
Best Coast: Crazy for You (2010) [r]
Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot- The Son of Chico Dusty (2010) [r]
Björk: Selmasongs (2000) [hr]
Bob Dylan: Together Through Life (2009) [r]
Broken Bells (2010)
The C.A. Quintet: Trip Thru Hell (1968) [r]
ceo: White Magic (2010) [r]
Chatham County Line: Wildwood (2010) [r]
The Chemical Brothers: Further (2010)
Crystal Castles (2010) [hr]
Curren$y: Pilot Talk (2010) [hr]
Curren$y: Pilot Talk II (2010) [r]
D.L. Byron: This Day and Age (1980)
Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest (2010) [hr]
Delorean: Subiza (2010) [r]
Devo: Something for Everybody (2010) [NO]
Eels: Tomorrow Morning (2010)
Emeralds: Does It Look Like I'm Here? (2010) [c]
The Essex Green: Cannibal Sea (2006)
The Extra Lens: Undercard (2010) [r]
Fang Island (2010)
Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma (2010)
Four Tet: There Is Love in You (2010) [r]
Goldfrapp: Head First (2010)
Gonjasufi: A Sufi and a Killer (2010)
Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters (1973) [hr]
Hot Chip: One Life Stand (2010) [hr]
How to Dress Well: Love Remains (2010) [c]
Information Society (1988) [hr]
The International Submarine Band: Safe at Home (1968) [r]
Interpol (2010) [c]
Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me (2010) [A+]
Julian Lynch: Mare (2010) [r]
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) [A+]
The Kinks (1964) [r]
Leonard Cohen: Dear Heather (2004) [hr]
M. Ward: Duet for Guitars #2 (1999) [r]
The Magnetic Fields: Distortion (2008) [hr]
Male Bonding: Nothing Hurts (2010) [hr]
Matthew Dear: Black City (2010) [r]
Midnight Juggernauts: The Crystal Axis (2010) [hr]
No Age: Everything in Between (2010) [c]
OFF! First Four EPs (2011) [r]
Old 97's: The Grand Theatre, Volume One (2010)
Panda Bear: Person Pitch (2007)
Pantha du Prince: Black Noise (2010)
The Pernice Brothers: Goodbye, Killer (2010)
Pet Shop Boys: Yes (2009) [hr]
Prince: Dirty Mind (1980) [hr]
Robyn: Body Talk (2010) [r]
She & Him: Volume Two (2010) [r]
Sleigh Bells: Treats (2010) [NO]
Spoon: Transference (2010) [r]
Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (2010) [hr]
T.I.: King (2006) [r]
Tame Impala: Innerspeaker (2010) [hr]
The-Dream: Love King (2010) [r]
Titus Andronicus: The Monitor (2010) [hr]
Twin Shadow: Forget (2010) [r]
The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) [hr]
The Walkmen: Lisbon (2010) [hr]
Wavves: King of the Beach (2010) [r]
We Are Scientists: Barbara (2010) [NO]
Wild Nothing: Gemini (2010) [r]
Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs (2009) [hr]

MIXTAPES
Das Racist: Sit Down, Man (2010) [r]

EP's
Girls: Broken Dreams Club (2010) [r]
Hot Chip: We Have Remixes (2010) [r]
James Blake: CMYK (2010)
Sufjan Stevens: All Delighted People (2010) [r]
The Tallest Man on Earth: Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird (2010) [hr]

LIVE ALBUMS
10,000 Maniacs: MTV Unplugged (1993)

COMPILATIONS
The "5" Royales: Complete King Masters (1954-60) [A+]
? & the Mysterians: Best Of- Cameo Parkway (1966-67) [hr]
101 Strings Orchestra: 20 Years of Beautiful Music (1969) [hr]
1910 Fruitgum Co.: Best Of (1968-70) [hr]
Archie Bell & the Drells: Tightening It Up (1967-79) [hr]
The Beach Boys: Summer Love Songs (1963-71)
Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight (1955-65) [A+]
The Everly Brothers: Cadence Classics- 20 Greatest Hits (1957-60) [hr]
Gene Vincent: Best Of (1956-63) [A+]
Hall & Oates: The Essential Collection (1974-2001) [NO]
The Impressions: Definitive (1961-68) [hr]
Talking Heads: Bonus Rarities and Outtakes (1975-92)

BOXED SETS
Big Star: Keep an Eye on the Sky (1970-74) [r]

BOOTLEGS
Oasis: The Early Years (1992-95)

LISTS & COMMENTS ETC.
The List of Lists 2010
The Best Records of 2010
Welcome & Introduction

***

ALL-TIME TOP ALBUMS [through 2009]
1. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds (Capitol 1966)
2. Television: Marquee Moon (Elektra 1977)
3. The Beatles (Apple 1968)
4. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Columbia 1959)
5. John Coltrane: Giant Steps (Atlantic 1960)
6. Big Star: Third/Sister Lovers (PVC 1978)
7. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Impulse! 1964)
8. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (Sire 1991)
9. Wire: Pink Flag (Harvest 1977)
10. The Beatles: Rubber Soul (Parlophone 1965)
11. The Velvet Underground (MGM 1969)
12. The Kinks: The Village Green Preservation Society (Reprise 1968)
13. The Beatles: A Hard Day's Night (Parlophone 1964)
14. The Clash: London Calling (Epic 1979)
15. Stevie Wonder: Innervisions (Tamla 1973)
16. Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings and Food (Sire 1978)
17. Love: Forever Changes (Elektra 1967)
18. Talking Heads: Remain in Light (Sire 1980)
19. Prince: Sign o' the Times (Warner Bros. 1987)
20. The Clash (Epic 1977)
21. The Fugees: The Score (Columbia 1996)
22. Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Matador 2000)
23. Otis Redding: Otis Blue (Volt 1965)
24. De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy 1989)
25. The Velvet Underground: Loaded (Cotillon 1970)
26. Patti Smith: Horses (Arista 1975)
27. The Replacements: Let It Be (Twin/Tone 1984)
28. Big Star: Radio City (Stax 1973)
29. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (Jive 1991)
30. Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Columbia 1967)
31. Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (Tamla 1976)
32. Prince: Purple Rain (Warner Bros. 1984)
33. Sly & the Family Stone: Stand! (Epic 1969)
34. Richard & Linda Thompson: Shoot Out the Lights (Hannibal 1982)
35. Neil Young: Tonight's the Night (Reprise 1975)
36. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs (Merge 1999)
37. King Sunny Ade: Juju Music (Mango 1982)
38. Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain (Columbia 1960)
39. With the Beatles (Parlophone 1963)
40. Prince: 1999 (Warner Bros. 1982)
41. Parliament Mothership Connection (Casablanca 1975)
42. Brian Eno: Another Green World (Island 1975)
43. Miles Davis: Seven Steps to Heaven (Columbia 1963)
44. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Merge 1998)
45. Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (Epic 1979)
46. Beatles for Sale (Parlophone 1964)
47. The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Columbia 1968)
48. The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat (Verve 1968)
49. The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle (Columbia 1968)
50. The Soft Boys: Underwater Moonlight (Armageddon 1980)
51. John Coltrane: Ballads (Impulse! 1962)
52. Howlin' Wolf (Chess 1962)
53. Van Morrison: Astral Weeks (Warner Bros. 1968)
54. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Capitol 1950)
55. Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else (Blue Note 1958)
56. Ramones (Sire 1976)
57. Neil Young: Zuma (Reprise 1975)
58. David Bowie: Lodger (RCA 1979)
59. Marvin Gaye: Here, My Dear (Tamla 1978)
60. Neil Young: On the Beach (Reprise 1974)
61. Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness' First Finale (Tamla 1974)
62. Neil Young: After the Gold Rush (Reprise 1970)
63. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Apple 1970)
64. The New York Dolls (Mercury 1973)
65. The Go-Betweens: Spring Hill Fair (Sire 1984)
66. John Coltrane: Om (Impulse! 1965)
67. Funkadelic: Let's Take It to the Stage (Westbound 1975)
68. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia 1965)
69. R.E.M.: Lifes Rich Pageant (I.R.S. 1986)
70. The Clash: Sandinista! (Epic 1980)
71. XTC: Skylarking (Geffen 1986)
72. Run-DMC: Raising Hell (Arista 1986)
73. The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers (Atlantic 1971)
74. Wire: Chairs Missing (Harvest 1978)
75. Radiohead: In Rainbows (s/r 2007)
76. Leonard Cohen: The Future (Columbia 1992)
77. Pavement: Slanted and Enchanted (Matador 1992)
78. Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (Matador 1997)
79. Kanye West: The College Dropout (Def Jam 2004)
80. The Jam: All Mod Cons (Polydor 1978)
81. Marvin Gaye: Let's Get It On (Tamla 1973)
82. Blondie: Parallel Lines (Chrysalis 1978)
83. The Beach Boys: Love You (Reprise 1977)
84. Brian Eno: Before and After Science (Polydor 1977)
85. A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders (Jive 1993)
86. Blur: Parklife (EMI 1994)
87. The Notorious B.I.G.: Ready to Die (Bad Boy 1994)
88. The Beach Boys: Friends (Capitol 1968)
89. The Kinks: Arthur (Reprise 1969)
90. Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Matador 1994)
91. Yo La Tengo: Fakebook (Bar/None 1990) *
92. Pet Shop Boys: Behavior (EMI 1990)
93. Nas: Illmatic (Columbia 1994)
94. The Beatles: Abbey Road (Apple 1969)
95. David Bowie: Low (RCA 1977)
96. The Kinks: Something Else (Reprise 1967)
97. John Coltrane: Africa/Brass (Impulse! 1961)
98. The Beach Boys: Wild Honey (Capitol 1967)
99. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (Warner Bros. 1977)
100. Neil Young: Time Fades Away (Reprise 1973)
101. Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador 2006)

OFF!: First Four EPs (2011)

(Vice)

RECOMMENDED

Happy New Year! Welcome to 1981, where we have some thrash for you. It's like Pink Flag is brand new and the Replacements' graduation to swank songwriting never happened. The misleadingly named First Four EPs is the product of what amounts to a supergroup in hardcore punk parlance, so not really much of a supergroup (no Jeff Beck in sight), which is good. OFF! is the project primarily of Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, it races along at a clip, dropping its sixteen songs in barely eighteen furious minutes. Doesn't sound too appealing, and the cover is godawfully ugly, but don't underestimate the timelessness of the brash, obnoxious garage sound. Morris pushes it along perfectly, with a youthfully disaffected snarl. It's nothing original, nothing even particularly special or offbeat -- but it's a liberating noise, still as ever.

Besides Morris, the band consists of members of Red Kross, Burning Brides, and Rocket from the Crypt, none of whom have the name recognition of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, but one doesn't need to be schooled in the first wave of hardcore to enjoy the abrasive, violently brief (all run about a minute) songs here. If your taste for direct plunges into stabbing, minimal, impossibly loud punk haven't diminished with age any more than Morris', you'll fall hard for this record; ignore the stoopid cover.

The 6ths: Wasps' Nests (1995)

(London)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

"Sixths," "wasps," and "nests" are three of the most difficult words to pronounce in the English language. Did I mention this is a Stephin Merritt project? Essentially, this is a Magnetic Fields album; if you love the Fields, there is not even the slightest chance you won't dig this. Featuring the same adorable keyboard arrangements and tentative beats as the contemporaneous Get Lost, this record finds Merritt exploring the notion of an imaginary Stephin Merritt tribute album featuring many of his friends from the indie rock universe, which -- despite his reputation -- he seems to fully embrace as his own here.

The pedigree for any scholar of '90s college radio is rather astounding; that the CD was released by Polygram says a fair bit about the state of the music industry in 1994-95, the same time that Atlantic had a stake in Matador and just a few years after Geffen paid Sub Pop a pretty penny and a half for Nirvana. The uncomfortable collision of old-world mainstream media companies and scrappy independent music, a bizarre situation Merritt and Claudia Gonson could tell you a few stories about, isn't our concern here. The point is, if you've got Charm of the Highway Strip and 69 Love Songs and Get Lost and the no-synth trilogy but not this, you need it right now! Emergency situation!

And you get to hear exclusive Merritt songs, as lovely as ever, sung by the lovely Chris Knox and the immortal Mitch Easter, plus members of Unrest, Superchunk, Helium, the Clean, and Galaxie 500. There's even a song sung by Merritt himself, "Aging Spinsters," which is completely indistinguishable from the Magnetic Fields, not that the rest of this isn't, since Merritt's hardly been the exclusive vocalist on even the Fields' most popular albums.

But Nathan! you're saying. If this is just like a Magnetic Fields album, well, what the fuck's so special about it? And I say to you: do you realize what you just said!?

I can add this, though, and admit some degree of bias, that one song alone here is worth the whole album's price. One of the only acts in existence today that can stand up with the Magnetic Fields for me is Yo La Tengo, who I still contend are the greatest band in the world at the moment. The Magnetic Fields are the third or fourth best, probably. So when they, in some sense, collaborate, it'd be a big deal anyway. And all of the songs on this album are terrific, but this one really stands out: the monstrously funny and distressing "Movies in My Head," a dead ringer for Yaz-era synthpop, sung by none other than Georgia Hubley. Not only is it staggering and lovely to hear her in Stephin's context, it's a really outstanding song that's actually a cut above the rest of this already excellent material.

What are you waiting for, then? (If you already have this album, I'm sorry for the advert-like tone here, but I think it's warranted.)

The Magnetic Fields: Distortion (2008)

(Nonesuch)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It stands to reason in our perverse musical universe that one of the landmark shoegaze albums of recent years was written and recorded by a man who finds guitar noise intolerable, who typically resents the din of fuzzed-out rock music. In fact, when Stephin Merritt saw Superchunk cover his early track "100,000 Fireflies" in the early '90s, he was mortified; that didn't stop him from signing the Magnetic Fields to Superchunk's label, Merge, and maybe he absorbed some of their rough edges. In the early 2000s, the Fields joined a major label and began a "no-synth" trilogy, opening it with the surprisingly conventional pop record i. The sequel, Distortion, turned out to be a major change of pace for Merritt; it could be that its inventive sound and atypically aggressive demeanor were simply the result of brainstorming for keyboard avoidance tactics, but whatever the reason, Merritt injects the harsher corners of alternative rock with some of his most classicist, audaciously pretty Irving Berlin-derived pseudo-standards to date. It hasn't been done before, and it doesn't sound like anything else, in his catalog or outside of it. The juxtaposition alone is frequently stunning, but on top of that, these are the best songs he's put down since 69.

Speaking of which, two of the sixty-nine love songs offer some degree of precedent for Distortion. The one-off joke cut "Punk Love" is the direct antecedent to the more carefully composed mission statement "Three-Way." But more importantly, Merritt's first flirtation with meaty, vaguely sinister guitar hooks on "Underwear" provides a transitional moment for the band before diving into the deep end of pedals and feedback for Distortion. What's most impressive is that the Magnetic Fields don't tentatively stab at shoegaze and fuzz, or make fun of it, they actually burst into it full-bore and craft an utterly convincing, achingly loud torrent of noise and tremor.

Some were no doubt disappointed that only a couple of times does the songwriting bend to the production style; not much here is any angrier or bawdier than the average Magnetic Fields track, nor does it attain the mystery and buried vocals traditional to its aspired genre, but the album's all the better for it. The exceptions do stand out, though. Opener "Three-Way" shouts and chirps along like space age surround-sound Replacements, "Too Drunk to Dream" features an atypically brash Merritt listing the advantages of being "shitfaced," but best of all is the magically malicious "California Girls," an instant classic sung by Shirley Simms. Flipping clichés back and forward and back again, the song is a vicious and unfair attack on the same location-fortunate young ladies unfairly propped up decades ago by the Beach Boys. Merritt filters hatred, resentment, even murder through his unflappably melodic pen; Simms gives it a loyal gung ho. It's a rock & roll masterstroke.

The innovation, however, lies elsewhere, on material like "Please Stop Dancing," "The Nun's Litany," and especially "Drive On, Driver," all stunning compositions; their marriage to aural inferno seems like an ill fit until you hear the sarcasm, immense emotion, and endless confusion of Merritt and Claudia Gonson's vocals cracking through the cacophony like a glimpse of distant warmth. It amplifies these songs not just in the gimmicky, forced sense but in the beauty and intensity of feeling that's always been buried in Merritt's work. Unlike on the still awkward and distant i, the Magnetic Fields here offer some stirring and poetic, and at times gorgeous, human moments.

Merritt always casts silly limitations and rules over his projects, perhaps some hanging left brain cell that must intrude on his work, and it often provides unlikely inspiration. Because he insisted that the thirteen songs on Distortion were to hover around three minutes, the album flies by; its only out-of-place moment is the misplaced, overly goofy "Zombie Boy." Most of the remaining songs stand proudly with the band's '90s work. And there's even a Christmas song in the My Bloody Valentine meets Frank Sinatra style, "Mr. Mistletoe."

Realism, the followup to Distortion, has equally brilliant songs but doesn't stick in the mind as long; that's because Distortion is a textbook example of how a band in its nineteenth year stays young. It is a new page turned, an experiment, a group of people having a blast despite not really knowing quite what they're doing -- again. The Magnetic Fields really need keyboards; they're a keyboard band that wrings head-spinning noise out of synths, and that element has been missing in the last ten years, but Realism could have come along at any point in the band's career because their sound is already predisposed to work in a folk music environment. (The tour behind Distortion saw them strip the songs to acoustic arrangements.) Distortion is something altogether different. Merritt's too excellent a songwriter to really need to stretch like this, but it's a thrill to hear him do it and achieve something this impressive.

The List of Lists 2010

For the last day of each year, today and thereafter, I'll be posting a set of lists dealing with past records just for fun. These are based on whim and subject to be revised in future year-end posts. We're just doing albums this year; I'm a little tipsy and I can't do much more complicated than that. Happy new year to all. I'm late on a couple of reviews (a Stephin Merritt double-header), I realize, and I'll try to get those up tomorrow.

These lists aren't thought or meant to be a definitive musical portrait of any given year or decade they document. They're a reflection of my personal tastes as of 2010. The whole point of documenting them is that they will have completely changed by the time I compile them again, because there's so much more to discover. Please do the same if you've got time, as it's great fun, and it will be fun to compare them years from now.

TOP 1990S ALBUMS
1. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (Sire '91)
2. The Fugees: The Score (Columbia '96)
3. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (Jive '91)
4. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs (Merge '99)
5. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Merge '98)
6. Leonard Cohen: The Future (Columbia '92)
7. Pavement: Slanted and Enchanted (Matador '92)
8. Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (Matador '97)
9. A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders (Jive '93)
10. Blur: Parklife (EMI '94)
11. The Notorious B.I.G.: Ready to Die (Bad Boy '94)
12. Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Matador '94)
13. Yo La Tengo: Fakebook (Bar/None '90)
14. Pet Shop Boys: Behavior (EMI '90)
15. Nas: Illmatic (Columbia '94)
16. Galaxie 500: This Is Our Music (Rough Trade '90)
17. R.E.M.: New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros. '96)
18. Yo La Tengo: Electr-O-Pura (Matador '95)
19. The Chemical Brothers: Exit Planet Dust (astralwerks '95)
20. Pet Shop Boys: Bilingual (Atlantic '96)
21. Ben Folds Five: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (550 Music '99)
22. Radiohead: The Bends (Capitol '95)
23. Depeche Mode: Violator (Reprise '90)
24. Naughty by Nature (Tommy Boy '91)
25. R.E.M.: Out of Time (Warner Bros. '91)
26. De La Soul Is Dead (Tommy Boy '91)
27. Belle & Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister (Jeepster '96)
28. L7: Bricks Are Heavy (Slash '92)
29. R.E.M.: Automatic for the People (Warner Bros. '92)
30. Pet Shop Boys: Very (EMI '93)
31. Radiohead: OK Computer (Capitol '97)
32. Blur: Modern Life Is Rubbish (SBK '93)
33. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros. '99)
34. Jeff Buckley: Grace (Columbia '94)
35. Oasis: Definitely Maybe (Epic '94)
36. The Notorious B.I.G.: Life After Death (Bad Boy '97)
37. XTC: Nonsuch (Virgin '92)
38. Everything But the Girl: Walking Wounded (Atlantic '96)
39. Madonna: Erotica (Maverick '92)
40. Pixies: Bossanova (4AD '90)
41. Yo La Tengo: Painful (Matador '93)
42. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Columbia '98)
43. The Cardigans: First Band on the Moon (Mercury '96)
44. Television (Capitol '92)
45. Outkast: ATLiens (Arista '96)
46. Matthew Sweet: Girlfriend (Zoo '91)
47. Outkast: Aquemini (Arista '98)
48. Elliott Smith: XO (DreamWorks '98)
49. Old 97's: Too Far to Care (Elektra '97)
50. The Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole (astralwerks '97)

***

2000 ALBUMS
1. Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Matador)
2. Outkast: Stankonia (Arista)
3. The Avalanches: Since I Left You (Sire)
4. The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic (Matador)
5. Belle & Sebastian: Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant (Matador)
6. Elliott Smith: Figure 8 (DreamWorks)
7. Radiohead: Kid A (Capitol)
8. The Weakerthans: Left and Leaving (G7 Welcoming Committee)
9. Common: Like Water for Chocolate (MCA)
10. Cat Power: The Covers Record (Matador)
+
Björk: Selmasongs (Elektra)
The Apples in Stereo: The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (SpinART)
eels: Daisies of the Galaxy (DreamWorks)
Madonna: Music (Warner Bros.)

1990 ALBUMS
1. Yo La Tengo: Fakebook (Bar/None)
2. Pet Shop Boys: Behavior (EMI)
3. Galaxie 500: This Is Our Music (Rough Trade)
4. Depeche Mode: Violator (Reprise)
5. Pixies: Bossanova (4AD)
6. Information Society: Hack (Tommy Boy)
7. Boogie Down Productions: Edutainment (Jive)
8. Suzanne Vega: Days of Open Hand (A&M)
9. Deee-Lite: World Clique (Elektra)
10. Brian Eno & John Cale: Wrong Way Up (Warner Bros.)
+
A Tribe Called Quest: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (Jive)

1980 ALBUMS
1. Talking Heads: Remain in Light (Sire)
2. The Clash: Sandinista! (Epic)
3. The English Beat: I Just Can't Stop It (I.R.S.)
4. The Jam: Sound Affects (Polydor)
5. Suicide [2] (Mute)
6. Devo: Freedom of Choice (Warner Bros.)
7. U2: Boy (Island)
8. Prince: Dirty Mind (Warner Bros.)
9. John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Double Fantasy (Geffen)
10. Joy Division: Closer (Factory)
+
The Records: Crashes (Virgin)
Stevie Wonder: Hotter Than July (Tamla)
Kurtis Blow (Mercury)
Alex Chilton: Like Flies on Sherbet (Peabody)
The Ramones: End of the Century (Sire)
Peter Gabriel (Geffen)
The B-52's: Wild Planet (Warner Bros.)
XTC: Black Sea (Virgin)
The Only Ones: Baby's Got a Gun (Epic)
Neil Young: Hawks & Doves (Reprise)
The Police: Zenyatta Mondatta (A&M)
The Cars: Panorama (Elektra)

1970 ALBUMS
1. The Velvet Underground: Loaded (Cotillon)
2. Neil Young: After the Gold Rush (Reprise)
3. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Apple)
4. The Meters: Look-Ka-Py-Py (Josie)
5. Nick Drake: Bryter Layter (Island)
6. The Stooges: Fun House (Elektra)
7. The Kinks: Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround (Reprise)
8. David Bowie: The Man Who Sold the World (Mercury)
9. Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (Columbia)
10. Van Morrison: Moondance (Warner Bros.)
+
Funkadelic: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow (Westbound)
The Flying Burrito Brothers: Burrito Deluxe (A&M)
Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water (Columbia)
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (Apple)
Miles Davis: Jack Johnson (Columbia)
Van Morrison: His Band and the Street Choir (Warner Bros.)
Loudon Wainwright III: Album I (Atlantic)

Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight (1956-65)

(Chess)

!!! A+ COMPILATION !!!

A heart-beatin’ rhythm and my soul keeps singin’ the blues.

I hate to start this out with a bunch of shit about ME, but recently it occurred to me that I’ve barely written about Chuck Berry anywhere. I actually know why this is; I find it intimidating to even try to address his music. But there’s no real excuse. I’ve talked plenty about R.E.M., a great group for sure, but not fit to mow Berry’s yard. The truth is that if there’s anyone whose work defines what I love in music it is Berry. His songs are short bursts of rhythm and energy, tough-minded but warm, melodic but raw, and goddamn if the motherfucker can’t play the guitar. At any rate, I’ve wanted to write a whole bunch of stuff about Berry for at least seven years, just like I’ve wanted to write about Ray Charles and Buddy Holly and etc etc etc., but in all of these cases I feel simply inadequate. I can handle the Beatles because I’ve grown up reading everything I could get my hands on about them and attaining a blob of useless knowledge about them, like did you know “I Feel Fine” is preceded by mysterious whispering on the American version of the Red Album but not the British one? Now you do.

Obviously a lot of people who didn’t hear much Berry growing up — and he is mysteriously sidelined on oldies stations — became aware of him through the Beatles and the Beach Boys and I’m no exception. I will go ahead and cop by telling you that I often prefer the Beatles' versions of Berry's songs they covered in the studio (not for the BBC) and there are days when I even prefer Eddie Cochran’s live performance of “Sweet Little Sixteen” to Berry’s original. But this has become less true as I've grown older, and anyway it would mean nothing without his barbed, brilliant songwriting. The Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun” is a masterful rock & roll record, but there is simply no way it would ever have been written if not for Chuck Berry, and I would argue, there is no way that the Beach Boys or the Beatles, or the Rolling Stones or the Who or blah blah etc., would ever have existed without him. Rock & roll might exist without him, those seeds were planted before he was born (Oct. 18 1926) but it would not matter, certainly not today.

And what is rock & roll, anyway? These sorts of questions grab you at the Ground Zero of these 28 songs. If you’re my age or a bit older, you’ve had everyone from Jack Black to Adam Curry to Fred Durst telling you that rock music is about aggression, partying, drugs, hookers, what the hell ever. Berry for sure was aggressive, he partied, he did drugs, and probably hired about a million hookers. And I’m sure he’s got an ego, and he pretty much deserves it. But what intrigues me is that none of this comes through in the music, which has something that most celebrated classic rock does not: human intelligence, minimalism, even, in a sense, privacy. Berry’s vocals and guitar work have no pretension to godlike self-aggrandizement that has been the trademark of the form from Clapton onward. They are complex ideas simply expressed; if you want to add community to the equation, that’s great, but you actually don’t have to.

Maybe lyrics matter in all this, and maybe they don’t. For sure they’re not the point and never were. When Berry’s popularity was renewed (following his prison sentence for “transferring a minor across state lines”) after the credit he received for the sound of the British Invasion, his response was an album called St. Louis to Liverpool and a single called “No Particular Place to Go” very similar to his older “School Day.” For a long time I dismissed the song as a cash-in, then the more I heard it the more remarkable I found the character, charm, humility in the words… really not even the words so much as the way Berry brought them to life, but they are worth repeating nevertheless:

Ridin’ along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity runnin’ wild
Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio
With no particular place to go.

Ridin’ along in my automobile
I’m anxious to tell her the way I feel,
So I told her softly and sincere,
And she leaned and whispered in my ear
Cuddlin’ more and drivin’ slow,
With no particular place to go.

No particular place to go,
So we parked way out on the Kokomo
The night was young and the moon was bold
So we both decided to take a stroll
Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt!

Ridin’ along in my calaboose [he lets some anger slip here at the perfect moment]
Still tryin’ to get her belt unloose
All the way home I held a grudge,
But the safety belt, it wouldn’t budge

Arguably, well before Bob Dylan was even heard of, certainly well before he “went electric,” Berry cared more about lyrics than anyone else. Actually I don’t even know if he cared. It just sounds like he did. The stunning storytelling in “Memphis” has never been improved upon by anybody; Berry sings of the estranged father attempting contact with his faraway daughter in an unsentimental, moving manner that makes the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” sound even more melodramatic, forced, and maudlin than it actually is:

Help me, information, get in touch with my Marie
She’s the only one who’d phone me here from Memphis Tennessee
Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge
Just a half a mile from the Mississippi Bridge

Help me, information, more than that I cannot add
Only that I miss her and all the fun we had
But we were pulled apart because her mom did not agree
And tore apart our happy home in Memphis Tennessee

Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me good-bye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye
Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee

I hate to distill Berry’s career down to a single compilation at the moment, I know he has far more music than I’ve even touched yet, but there is a certain ingenious simplicity to the way this one is put together that is quite apt. Unadorned, simple, flat even, its artwork and tracklist are almost obvious in a sense, almost suggesting you don’t need anything except this music, these recordings, this is all the historical context you really require: a photo of Berry duckwalking and the song titles.

Everyone you hear talking about the matter has a different version of who actually spearheaded rock & roll. Some cynical people will tell you it was Alan Freed. Some sentimental ones say Fats Domino. Some naive ones stand by Elvis Presley. Some geeky ones insist on Robert Johnson. George Harrison I think argued in favor of Carl Perkins. I can’t offer anything like authority on the issue, nor can anyone (Robert Palmer, in his 1976 essay “Rock Begins,” came probably closest), but we all know pop and rock music are mutating forms, and we are at the advantage of knowing everything it has come to entail since the whole game started in 1956 or so.

1956 was the year that “Maybellene,” Berry’s first single and first massive success and the first track on this record, was released. One thing for certain, and I can’t see much of a debate on this. You can listen to Explosion The First, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Halley and His Comets, or to “Heartbreak Hotel,” which everyone alleges as an earth-shattering revelation. But “Maybellene” alone among competiting titles for The First Actual Rock & Roll Song sounds as if it could have been recorded yesterday, sounds as youthful and vibrant and "now" as it ever did. Not that the production isn’t primitive — it’s all the better for it, actually — but the self-contained energy, pointed intensity, raw emotion countered by wit, and streetwise self-deprecation are all modern and universal. There is no Lou Reed and no Kanye West without “Maybellene” and “Thirty Days” and on and on. Which I will concur would mean nothing if Berry didn’t still connect on an impossibly visceral level, but he does. Play “Maybellene” anywhere today and I dare you not to get a reaction as strong as ever, as much insatiable movement as the world has to boot upwards.

It would still matter without the lyrics. But the lyrics are still wonderful, and yet again, you can hear the future in them:

Maybellene, why can’t you be true
Oh Maybellene , why can’t you be true
You’ve started back doin’ the things you used to do

As I was motivatin’ over the hill
I saw Mabellene in a Coup de Ville
A Cadillac arollin’ on the open road
Nothin’ will outrun my V8 Ford
The Cadillac doin’ about ninety-five
She’s bumper to bumper, rollin’ side by side
Maybellene

The Cadillac pulled up ahead of the Ford
The Ford got hot and wouldn’t do no more
It then got cloudy and started to rain
I tooted my horn for a passin’ lane
The rainwater blowin’ all under my hood
I know that I was doin’ my motor good
Maybellene

The motor cooled down the heat went down
And that’s when I heard that highway sound
The Cadillac asittin’ like a ton of lead
A hundred and ten half a mile ahead
The Cadillac lookin’ like it’s sittin’ still
And I caught Maybellene at the top of the hill
Maybellene

It is sometimes common to bemoan the temptation today to make one’s music as accessible as possible to the broadest audience that can be imagined, but there is certainly something to be said for the technique. Nearly all of the great rock & roll records of the ’50s careened across pop, R&B, and country charts, regardless of racial division. Whether the Everly Brothers, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash envisioned this kind of explosion long before “rock radio” could distill them is hard to figure (at the very least, one assumes Charles had such amibitions). But it is known for a fact that Chuck Berry wrote and perhaps initially recorded “Maybellene” as a country & western number. Even in its present form, it carries no typical genre tag. In fact, a freedom of those early rock & roll records — from pure country to doo wop to rockabilly — is that genre is acknowleded practically in the text as irrelevant. Each chart today is a separate industry. Ask yourself which arrangement fosters more creativity, but also keep in mind a lingering question: could Chuck Berry at his peak today inspire and accomplish everything he did then, dying music industry or not? I would say, unquestionably, yes.

Berry was always primed to explode but only allowed himself the luxury very occasionally, and that is one reason why he is so important to the genre and the culture. He exemplified every strange tendency and subgenre clutter we’ve seen since the beginning, sometimes all at once. He’s as much Tom Verlaine’s spiritual precedent as he is Stevie Wonder’s or John Lennon’s or, why the hell not, Joe Strummer’s. He is a model of precision but also of the kind of fire and passion, tempered by his own articulate perception, that is difficult to record without passing over into something overbearing. He is funny but not a comedian, he’s angry but not hateful, he’s the greatest guitar hero in the world but he’s not a Guitar Hero. Basically every great balancing act you can teeter on, he did it. When he is ninety-nine years old, and I hope he gets to be there, he’ll still be the fucking man.

I can see I don’t have time or space right now to say everything I’d like to. We only made it through one song really (not mentioned: the quotable flair for drama amid all the barbs in “School Day” and “Johnny B. Goode,” the erotic charge in “I Wanna Be Your Driver,” the rhyming perfection of “Rock & Roll Music,” the ability in “Carol” to make a propulsive rhythm downright mournful, and on from there). Maybe someday. Bear with me. But Chuck Berry is really, really, really awesome and I should talk about him more and if anything my obsession is pretty mild, but I probably could go on until you’re bored out of your mind. He’s just the greatest. That’s all I’m saying.

[Editorial Note: This is a slight reconfiguration of an essay I posted at my old weblog in 2008. I planned to rewrite it but I dunno, it seems OK to me, so I'm adding it to the blogspot canon.]

Bob Dylan: Together Through Life (2009)

(Columbia)

RECOMMENDED

Seems like there've been a lot of first-person reviews here lately, but I have a Serious Assignment that requires strict avoidance of such things and this is my coffee break, so here we go. I didn't really comprehend Dylan until I had been dumped a couple of times; something about that voice suddenly grows a weary familiarity with the advent of actual adult heartbreak. Like so many others who've become followers in recent years, I found myself quite unexpectedly seduced by his trilogy of "comeback" albums starting with Time Out of Mind; not only were they discography highlights, they felt like the beginning of an entirely new career. Seemingly out of nowhere, Dylan rode into town and slapped off that record, Love and Theft, and Modern Times with arresting ease over an impressive eight-year span.

This unexpected followup, announced quite suddenly just before its entrance into the shops, coincided neatly with my discovery. Going back through internet archives, I'm wagering you won't read a lot of reviews of Together Through Life by folks for whom it was the first new Bob album since they became fans. (That sentence is a grammatical horror, I'm sorry. See, I'm getting all the shitty non-editing out of my system here.) But I'm such a guy -- after trying for years, I fell hard for Blood on the Tracks, Nashville Skyline, and Freewheelin' in the late weeks of 2008. Life showed up mere months later, after I'd absorbed plenty more. Rather distracted at the time, I gave it a tiny bit of attention, maybe a listen or two, and sort of filed it away. Didn't really think about it again until today, when some light bulb went off and I said "Hey, Bob Dylan had that new album last year and I never really gave it much of a chance. What was the deal with that?" All I could recall was that it was hardly as sensuous as its cover suggested -- if anything, less risky and brash than anything he'd done in a while.

The deal is this: Upon entering the haphazard and muddy netherworld of Life, for almost all of the first half I end up wondering how I overlooked the managed intensity and grumbling atmosphere that now seems like perverse perfection. It's environment, partially: there's the stark Boxing Day mood, there's the million things I really need to be doing rather than listening to this, and there's (for future context) a winter storm raging across much of the U.S. (and Europe) tonight. The dimly lit, caustic mumbling courtesy Dylan and deceptively settled blues-rock noise courtesy his road company backing band falls over like dirty snow, lazy but oddly exhilarating. "Life Is Hard" and "If You Ever Go to Houston" brilliantly reconfigure ancient rock & roll as a graying grunt that both admonishes and comforts. As on much of his recent work, Dylan embraces his age, and it strengthens his work.

Around track five, though, I start to remember why I forgot the whole thing. Apprehension about the bluesy noodlings from there to the end is acceptable but perhaps a bit misplaced; they don't hit hard like the first few but they certainly expand and focus the atmosphere a bit, especially the frisky "Shake Shake Mama." The schmaltz moves, on the other hand, are intolerable. "Jolene" is rough going, "It's All Good" is tired and smug in the worst way, but the crime is "This Dream of You," a deadweight ballad that cries out for the Billy Joel cover version. It's just as murky and distant as everything else, but that somehow underscores its weird dishonesty.

The second half's strongest number is "I Feel a Change Comin' On," on which Dylan addresses what once felt like a universal mood, while building in (if only subtly) a healthy cynicism that lets him have it both ways. And he can do that because he's Bob Dylan. He can also release half-assed records if he wants, because he's Bob Dylan. But if you disregarded Together Through Life the first time, it does warrant a second look; at least six of the ten songs deserve some attention. And if you're in the mood for some accordion-overloaded mood music, by golly, is this your lucky day.