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.

Panda Bear: Person Pitch (2007)

(Paw Tracks)

RECOMMENDED

That Person Pitch is beautiful noise is not easy to dispute. But how is it that music as preoccupied as Panda Bear's with humbling, ornate grandiosity comes off as cerebral? It's built on feeling, but a lot of its twiddling comes off as ineffective gimmicry, at least to a skeptic. One can love the idea of Animal Collective without actually being able to let go and get down with them; their music is absurdly layered and difficult, and the same goes for Panda Bear. It doesn't even seem actually possible not to find this music impressive, or not to be moved by some of it, but seldom has a pop music enterprise existed that can generate this level of mixed feeling.

Noah Lennox gets off on towering, sample-heavy flights of fancy that at times produce sounds as gorgeous as recorded pop music is ever likely to generate. The loopy Gregorian chant spliced with synthpop on "Im Not" is flooring and immediate, and grows more spectacular as it moves. These are almost always immediately followed by insufferable side trips into seemingly deliberate annoyance (the painful repetition on "Comfy in Nautica") or a sort of electronic noodling that brings on uncomfortable thoughts of canned prog, but as college rock has embraced '70s excesses, perhaps it's the unlucky cool kid left in the dust who can't tolerate this direction. I'm a hardly a cool kid, I admit, but I also have to admit that the wonky indulgences of "Bros" make me feel seasick. Perhaps I'm just getting too old to accept another kind of traditionalism? Don't know.

I don't really know much about the modern twist on dreampop that the recent Animal Collective records have helped pioneer. I do know a fair bit about the Beach Boys, and I have to confess that as much as I enjoy seeing Smiley Smile get its critical due at last (it's better than Sgt. Pepper, you know), when I hear something like "Bros" and hear everyone telling stories about how they thought it was an obscure Beach Boys track, I die a little inside. Yeah, it sounds like the Beach Boys, as filtered through the bedroom project of a middle-aged Gentle Giant and Sigur Ros fan who reads some blogs about electronica. I know the comparison (not an insult, I implore you) is flawed because such blogs were less common in 2007 and many elements of the internet music scene as it stands today were likely founded as a result of records like Person Pitch, which is already a classic in many circles. Yet if anything, "Take Pills" betrays a longer Beach Boys shadow by attempting to evoke the sound of Western and Gold Star on tape. But "Bros" is very distinctly based on surface-level sound and feel, and has nothing to do with any element of the Beach Boys that made them interesting, by which I mean their songs. This vague teasing of fragments and otherworldly noise is, however, the direction in which Brian Wilson seemed headed with the Smile project in 1966, and I'm one of the evil bastards who thinks that was a terrible idea and that Wilson was right to shelve it. Which means we should probably move on.

Aside from the twelve-minute dud that is often cited as the centerpiece of the album (and one of the best of the decade, oh shudder) and the obtuse workout "Search for Delicious," the record is solid and artistically impressive, though it demands constant attention and fails as background entertainment. Another lengthy cut, "Good Girl/Carrots," is less irritating; it still has inexplicable moments, but Lennox's beautiful, flexible voice saves much of it automatically, and because the song is a constantly shaking and shifting foundation, it retains its cutting impact for the duration, particularly as it drifts into piano psychedelia and irresistibly rhythmic pop. It's difficult to ignore, though, that Panda Bear is loveliest at his most direct on a simple, melodic production like the closing "Ponytail." Is it terrible of me to want him to just slather it all with electric guitars and let the knobs fall off? I hate it when I feel like songs are hiding from me.

Much of this is a personal fault. Disregarding Ariel Pink, the "Chillwave Problem" is becoming an issue for me in my old age. I am all in favor of new things being done to rock & roll. I was with you on lo-fi and shoegaze and dreampop, fine. But the creaky conjurings of the pop past that have taken over indie consciousness are beginning to bug, and it's not an objection to the music so much as an annoyance with the idea that increasingly young folks with guitars isn't enough of a future, and that when we praise them we have to add a million interjections about how "oh, of course they don't do anything new." Check it: in 2007, Person Pitch wasn't anything new either, and yet somehow it's still pretty good! "Take Pills" is a fucking Motown song, guys, obsessively (and perhaps unnecessarily) slathered with effects to make it sound distant, not so much to disguise its influences as to reframe them, and yet wouldn't it be kind of awesome to hear it without the big "art" stuff on top of it? A song could just be a song and not a song used as a vehicle for a statement about sonics? I suppose I'm just blathering here about aesthetics, but I think it goes a long way to personally justify why I admire Animal Collective and Panda Bear a lot without really needing to hear them very often.

Pet Shop Boys: Yes (2009)

(astralwerks)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The inability of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe to respond to or coalesce with pop as a morphing, trending force has scarcely harmed them in the way one might expect. If anything, their career began with a remarkable coincidence: that their utterly bizarre, unapologetic disco appeared at precisely the moment it felt just right, so right it could produce #1 hits on both sides of the Atlantic... for a while. Pet Shop Boys overcame their legacy of 1980s nostalgia three ways: a consistently brilliant body of work rife with top-caliber songwriting, a conscious effort not to lose the underground reach toward club scenes the world over, and an affinity with pop critics that led them to well-deserved acclaim.

For sure, they remain one of the best things going, and like Yo La Tengo and the Flaming Lips, they are preparing to enter their fourth decade without a significant loss in output quality and adventure. There has been a problem, though, which is that that same in-touch ideal to which these two pop geniuses aspire seems to derail them now and then. You can measure it like clockwork: every PSB album feels like a direct reaction to the criticisms of the one before it. And that wouldn't be an issue -- I worship these guys -- except that the pattern has started to become a bit predictable, and it traces a logical evolution that keeps getting interrupted. One of the reasons this band (as well as YLT and the Lips) has lasted is that they don't attempt an album every year or two. The prolific burst ended along with the '80s, which is great except an off-album can lead to a full three years or so of lost faith.

To explain, I thought Fundamental, PSB's 2006 offering, was their worst album to date. I found its posturing, beats, and songwriting all tired; the sarcasm and satire felt like attention-grabbing put-ons. In perspective, though, one could have called this in advance. The first Pet Shop album, Please, drew criticism for is wry, distant, emotionless runthrough of love song clichés that filtered chilly wit through a synthy Cole Porter songbook. Stunning shocker, then, that followup Actually not only stripped away the nastiness and revealed an eloquent vulnerability (songs about AIDS, being broke, and growing up gay in a religious household) but sold millions of records in doing so. Introspective, album the third, returned to brash goofiness and took it to the far end of the dance floor; Behavior was even more wounded, naked, and cathartic than Actually. Tennant and Lowe showed up in funny outfits with computer animated videos and smashingly glitzy tunes for Very, then came down to brutally honest self-evaluation and joy on Bilingual. Here come funny haircuts on Nightlife along with over-the-top vamping in the disco that's growing sort of stale here, the jokes hammering rather than suggesting. Release had tragic breakup and despair songs that weren't even dance music. And then Fundamental... the thrust being that the stripped-down, low-key Pet Shop Boys have become ever more confident and interesting (and at times unexpectedly moving), while the disco inferno big-show architects are diminishing with age.

That doesn't mean that they're not still coming up with superb dance music on their tenth album, just that much of it is quite sad, and almost none of it seems to come from some actorly, slick perspective. Yes finds PSB in an "on" year, and it's so intoxicating you'll forget why you ever made them leave. Stylistically, there's not much new here except a more seamless integration of the guitar bits by Johnny Marr that also appeared on Release, and better-than-usual string arrangements (courtesy Owen Pallett). The exception is the first single and opening track, "Love Etc.," which bounds in like some miracle with one of the strongest keyboard hooks in the band's history, plus a hammering chorus and sideways melodic menace that bends traditional PSB in just the perfect way to make it sound freshly strange. "All Over the World" carries the momentum forward with its hip hop-like Nutcracker mingling, but quickly settles into Behavior beauty and weariness.

The remainder of Yes is spent displaying PSB doing what they're best at. "Beautiful People" is the archetypal Pet Shop single: the yearning musicality of an outcast, sung with brightly lit passion and tension, unmistakably shaken by its sociopolitical subtext, just far enough underneath to have massive impact. "Did You See Me Coming," acoustic guitar and all, is classic Very-era banging. "King of Rome" is the requisite British slow jam with gorgeous Tennant falsetto, as shaken and lovable as ever. To hear them being themselves again, whether there or on the wonderful '80s throwback "Pandemonium," is to revisit so much beauty that's marked and aided outsider lives for a quarter century now. And Behavior fans in particular are bound to find six-minute closer "Legacy" the most exciting downtrodden moment in recent musical history. The songs' production doesn't innovate, but the writing has the feel of refinement that has sharpened to classicism... and not one cut isn't memorable or worthy of inclusion in this splendid, hallowed canon.

I bet that even if I asked nicely, 2012 wouldn't bring a Pet Shop Boys album without a crazy new look and thinly veiled songs about world news and culture that hold feeling at arm's length or merely provide a tongue-in-cheek impression of it. That's fine. These two are a treasure, one of the longest-running top tier groups going now or ever, and it's worth waiting through a coasting session from one of the best acts in the world to get to the good stuff. Yes is the good stuff, and it was worth the gap.

1910 Fruitgum Co.: Best Of (1968-70)

(Buddah)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Outwardly, there isn't anything strange or special about 1910 Fruitgum Co. except possibly their following, which extended to the first generation of NYC punk bands. That aside, a glimpse seems to reveal the archetypal Buddah Records bubblegum raunch. It's hard to know what the hierarchy was in the '60s at a label like Buddah, so completely at odds with our modern understanding of how the business works. But much as the studio system led to the creation of many a masterwork in 1930s Hollywood, the assembly line, individuality-crushing drudgery of Buddah accidentally wrought a solid enough discography for one of its indistinct brand names to produce one of the most delightful greatest hits albums I've ever heard.

The Company were a legitimate band, guitar player and everything, at first. But as they got folded into the machine, their origin tale lost its relevance; one of the group's best singles, "Indian Giver," was recorded by a wholly different set of people. This best-of disc has an impact that will make any advocate for musicians' rights shriek in horror -- it defines anonymity as a treasure and a miracle, and it makes not giving a shit about who's really responsible for these top tunes feel really fucking euphoric and grand.

The architects whose names will be on the test are Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz. These guys used to work at Cameo-Parkway, label of such pure pop luminaries as Chubby Checker and ? & the Mysterians; at Buddah, they set themselves up as production and A&R bubblemen, shepherding bands of dubious existence such as the Ohio Express to superstardom with insipid singles. Somehow, coincidentally or not, the best songs they had lying around tended to end up with the Fruitgums. These non-people, these robots, these sub-Archie cartoons had some surprisingly innovative and smartly presented tracks in their heyday.

Another prime difference is that the vocal tracks on the Fruitgum singles are far less insufferable than those of their AM peers; Ohio Express, the Archies, and even the Monkees. All sang with a supercharged nasal whine like Mike Love on uppers; Floyd Marcus or whoever the hell sings the early cuts sounds more invested in his work, and his replacement gets the same feeling across as the "group" competes for a share beyond the disposable pop market with more overtly psychedelic and oddball material, sort of the Box Tops' marketplace. You can hear this on "Mighty Quinn," which matches that blue-eyed soul pastiche with a vague leftfieldness that's sort of a Fruitgum theme, or on the audacious "Quick Joey Small," a sort of Sam the Sham meeting Box Tops experiment (with Up with People backing) that actually connects; in this high-pressure commercial environment, the Buddah folks somehow concoct a perfect imitation of a rusty garage 45. ("Don't Have to Run and Hide" is a shameless Remains rip, in fact.)

Because the band is now next to forgotten, most new recruits will arrive courtesy of the acquisition of a Talking Heads bootleg on which David Byrne and company cover "1, 2, 3 Red Light." Without a doubt, the original version is the 1910 boys' finest moment, and it will not disappoint. It's easy to see why the Heads dug it: it's goofy, strangely convicted, awash in procedural nonsense, and gains wonder and joy from evocation of the mundane, the same way Byrne would be, a decade on, celebrating the absurd normalcy of growing up and living in a building. But better yet, the song is a damned giant musically -- that key change tugs and torments -- and, without cloying, will keep a permanent presence in the listener's skull. Almost equally hardcore is "Indian Giver," recorded by a completely different set of individuals, but managing to push onward with the minimal, pulsating chill-funk of "Red Light." "Giver" is louder and rattles the joints a bit more, but the impression is similar -- how can prefab pop be this strong, this entertaining, this convincingly felt, this artful? Maybe it's an accident and maybe it isn't, but these two songs could make any cock rocker doubt his pedigree.

Premiere hit "Simon Says" is less ahead of its time, marked by its obvious Lovin' Spoonful '60s sound, but it does possess the joyously stupid line "I hope the winner will be you," it is top-tier Buddah shit, and the double-time trickery in the fadeout hints at the "Red Light" mastery to come. The promise of that second-biggest hit shines onward to "Goody Goody Gumdrops," frayed Beach Boys junk that displays a comprehension of not just that legendary band's sound but their weird, off-putting intensity. It doesn't quite get there, but it does try. The influence presses on to "Looky Looky," which is really more of a Jan & Dean lift, although its direct cloning is of "Wooly Bully."

The compilation is filled out with covers of other Buddah bands' chestnuts, like "Yummy Yummy Yummy" (which adds more guitar) and "Chewy Chewy" (which doesn't). And some of the songs are indefensibly half-assed ("Pop Goes the Weasel," possibly Nixon commentary, and "Happy Little Teardrops," inexcusable sap). But the overwhelming majority of it is vibrant fun; "Bubble Gum World," the immensely well-written "May I Take a Giant Step," the unheralded classic "The Year 2001," and the breaking, mounting "Candy Kisses" cry out for inclusion on your next mixtape for that Special Person. If they don't like them, they don't deserve you. If you're really brave, allow them to bask in the glow of the total Brian Wilson in sandbox eccentricity of "Sticky Sticky." Don't say I didn't warn you.

Bubblegum wasn't part of my world growing up. I was busy listening to grunge and "alternative rock" or whatever because that was real art, man. What lame causes adolescene provides. I was doing my best to enjoy Pearl Jam while brilliant singles like "I Want It That Way" swirled around me. It's the same thing here. If I were a teenager in 1966 I'd have probably been into the fucking Doors or Jefferson Airplane or something and chortled at the teenage girls grooving to the Monkees and to 1910 Fruitgum Co. Then (hopefully) in 1973 or so I'd look around and think back and suddenly realize that, as ever, the teenage girls were right all along.

Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs (2009)

(Matador)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The great lesson of Yo La Tengo's career is that a certain point, it is no longer possible to be radical. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the best band in the world, better than anyone else at everything they've attempted, at least since recruiting bassist James McNew and signing to Matador Records in the early '90s -- and probably before that. Opening their Matador career with the moody, angular shoegaze of Painful, the band quickly grew into life as a trio with one of the finest runs of albums in rock history: Electr-o-Pura (edgy, razor-sharp alternative rock), I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (sprawling folk-fuzz), And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (focused, heartfelt love songs with new concepts of pretty), Summer Sun (monstrously well-crafted ambient pop), and I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (uncompromising schizophrenia). Each album was a different game entirely, but each held a common theme: every crazy thing that Yo La Tengo went out on a limb and tried, they excelled at. In the '80s, they were already a fine feedbacky folk-rock outfit, but the limitless feeling of their Matador output has rendered the prior records next to inconsequential. But now, they have an unforseen curse: their eclecticism has become, for them, almost normal. Almost old hat. Almost.

In 2004, Yo La Tengo became the rare indie rock outfit to issue a greatest hits package while still active and successful. Curiously, the two-disc compilation Prisoners of Love has proven itself a roadmap for the improbable synthesis of styles that's marked the two albums since. Beat Your Ass opened with a ten-minute guitar slab and immediately slid into the most commercial, radio-friendly, of-its-time song the band had ever made, "Beanbag Chair," then into schlock balladry ("I Feel Like Going Home"), then wildly unexpected Stax soul ("Mr. Tough"). Three years earlier, Yo La Tengo had resisted this sort of mixtape mania by leaving the loud and fast songs off the somber, reflective Summer Sun, instead collecting them later on an EP. The result was critical derision and fan outcry, seemingly on the basis that not every Yo La Tengo track was the kind of Yo La Tengo track they were in the mood to hear. (The sole YLT album that's almost entirely an exercise in loudness, May I Sing with Me, suffered similarly poor reception back in 1992.) The very idea of cohesion, thusly, went out the window.

As a result, Popular Songs is the second Yo La Tengo record in a row that feels like a greatest hits package, appropriately enough given its title. Of course it bears their usual eccentricties, from its confounding design (that "tape" on the cover is a sculpture by Dario Robleto made of, among other things, bone fragments) to its loony sequencing, but the album nevertheless feels like any other band's best work strung together in a miracle of sonic delight. Or better yet, a whole bunch of different bands' best songs. It's like hearing a stack of incredible obscure 45's you can't believe you've never previously discovered. For rock & roll geeks, this is cotton candy: disorienting psychedelia ("Here to Fall") gives way to godlike power pop ("Avalon or Someone Very Similar") to Nico dread ("By Two's") to bouncing garage rock ("Nothing to Hide") to steaming, witty funk ("Periodically Double or Triple") to Motown balladry ("If It's True") to awesomely sad McNew moping ("I'm on My Way") to galloping cowboy scenery ("When It's Dark") to low-key girl group pop ("All Your Secrets"). That's the first half.

It's inescapable, however, that the three-year progression from Beat Your Ass to Popular Songs is less marked than previous gaps. This isn't really a reaction to the last album, nor is it consistently a step forward; actually, it occasionally feels like an extension. The songs are different, sure, and equally great (with, significantly, no duds or near-misses like the last album had in the form of "I Feel Like Going Home" and "Song for Mahlia"), but the risks seem more calculated and calmer, like our favorite band's starting to mellow a bit. Maybe, maybe not, but consider this: The primary unit of measurement is in the three lengthy songs that comprise the last half of the album in a bit of sequencing tomfoolery on the band's part that is meant either to provoke or to quell criticism of the band's more long-winded, uncommercial side by deliberately separating those songs (you can stop the thing after track nine and still get your money's worth, or if you buy the vinyl you can just concentrate on the first record). Anyway, imagine moving "More Stars Than There are in Heaven" to the beginning of the record just like "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind," "The Fireside" somewhere in the middle like the similarly ambient "Daphnia," and leave "And the Glitter Is Gone" where it is like the last album's raveup "The Story of Yo La Tango." Then, with this strange duplication, you can see the notion that Yo La Tengo are kind of operating with a "format" of sorts.

I'm not saying I fully buy it, though. As a fan of all three longer cuts from Beat Your Ass, I can tell you that I think two of the three new ones trounce them. "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven," which takes its name from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's old slogan when it was a stable of celebrity power, is one of the finest songs the band's ever written; its gritty, deeply affecting romanticism calls back to And Then Nothing or, better yet, the wrenching "My Heart's Reflection" from 1995. Building itself up slowly to an arresting emotional high, with gorgeous harmony vocals, "Heaven" makes brilliant use of its nine-minute run. On first pass, "The Fireside" seems to coast on atmosphere alone; no one minded that on "Daphnia" because it was thrown in amongst the friendlier stuff. But a more careful listen to "Fireside" reveals a lovely acoustic riff, varied cleverly, that doesn't fall too far from the Abbey Road tree and a positively stirring Ira Kaplan vocal melody that shows up unexpectedly toward the end; it's a more sustained, narrative epic notion than they've ever taken a stab at, and it is finally as bound to inspire worship as "Blue Line Swinger" all those years ago. "And the Glitter Is Gone" is easily the most dubious song on the album, fifteen minutes of swagger that can't match the emotional catharsis of "The Story of Yo La Tango"... but it seems like a correcting of the tendency back around Painful to cut these lengthy jams off just when they were starting to swing, and this one certainly does find plenty of beauty in its noise barrage.

So make no mistake, Popular Songs doesn't feel old or worn out. It just makes you wonder how a band this gifted can really find a way to expand much more than it already has. One possible answer lies in the most direct pioneering offered in the album's grooves: the claiming of a blissful AM radio pop penchant never before really grasped for, albeit one hinted at on the last two albums. It would be fascinating to hear Yo La Tengo make a pure pop album, and the potential is suggested on "If It's True," the stunning evocation of Gaye/Terrell duets like "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" which finds Ira and Georgia ably filling the duet shoes while an incredibly convincing vintage string arrangement by Richard Evans springs about lovably behind it. You can't hear the song without wanting to hug it. Meanwhile, I seriously doubt that the band would deny the other song to which Evans contributed, "Here to Fall," sounds completely different as of 2009 than it would as tackled ten or even five years ago. The sheen it offers is tantalizing in the same way that the unabashed free jazz textures of "Let's Be Still" were when backed by a newly pretty precision. "All Your Secrets" is inches away from being bubblegum, "When It's Dark" comes on like Gene Autry where the band would once have favored Gram Parsons... and they're right to embrace all of this. They're brilliant at it, and the songs are irresistible.

My other hope would be that the band starts to get past their struggle with the quiet vs. loud whiners who marred the release of Summer Sun, a magnificent record that deserved better. The chiefly irritating dichotomy has always been the folks who claim to love Yo La Tengo but want them to always do one thing. Some simply aren't aware of the group's range. You can find commenters on last.fm and YouTube who classify YLT as a "mellow" group, oblivious to the guitar-hero worship that Ira's crazed hammering inspires elsewhere on the same websites, as well as to the well-contained holocaust that unfolds in something like "Orange Song." I've always felt that if you really love Yo La Tengo you'd want the whole package, "Alyda" and "Sugarcube" all the way to The Sounds of the Sounds of Science. At the same time, however, I think an untapped opportunity gets skirted over by the "mixtape" approach to these albums. I can't imagine I'm alone in thinking that the band's masterpiece is And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, which grabs a lovelorn, nostalgic, sad, grateful mood and frames and explores it perfectly, sustaining it for nearly eighty minutes. Summer Sun nears that achievement. At what point does the uncompromising, wildly eclectic method that the two subsequent albums have shared become, well, a compromise?

I don't mean to carp at all. The songwriting on Popular Songs is better, more focused, more refined than ever. Ira's never written more clever or persuasive lyrics than those of "Periodically Double or Triple," the band's never delivered a trip to the jugular like "Here to Fall," almost no one else in the world could present a song as beautiful as "I'm On My Way" with such restraint and vulnerability, the astonishing and intimidating sheer craft of "Avalon" is a thing to behold, "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven" is the masterful peak that And Then Nothing deliberately sidestepped, and "If It's True" not only recalls various Ashford & Simpson-penned classics but reconfigures them into a twisting, vibrant self-portrait of which everybody else in the universe should be envious. As composers, Yo La Tengo are hitting the pleasure centers -- and impressing relentlessly -- like never before.

If Popular Songs falls short of its five untouchable predessors, that's only because they set the bar so high, and this could be a transitional record. It's still one of the best albums of the last several years. And what's actually new on it is remarkable: "Here to Fall" and "The Fireside" are virtually without precedent in the band's catalog, which is saying a hell of a lot, and time seems to stop when you hear them. Hell, what isn't new on this LP is remarkable. But after seventeen years, maybe some changes are in order. I wouldn't wish Roger Moutenot away when he's done so well by the band, but a certain calm and sameness does take a bit of time to work through on this album, something that's not been there before and doesn't come back to the performances or songs; it's very definitely the sound, which oversells its casual atmosphere at times. I keep coming back to a show I heard bootlegged in which Yo La Tengo plays "Periodically Double or Triple" backed by members of Sun Ra's Arkestra. It's unbelievable, godlike, transcendent, and after you hear it the studio version is never the same. In addition, a few months before Popular Songs, YLT knocked out a covers album under the psuedonyn Condo Fucks that shows them more abrasive and raw than they've dared to be in years, and that energy is missed here. When I say I wouldn't mind more chaos and excitement in the band's music, I don't mean more guitar insanity saved for side four. I mean it's OK to go a little crazy, a little silly. But if all we get is another sly, unpredictable album like this every few years from now on, I'll still be happy as a clam. This is still rock & roll as I see it, unashamed and electric. Pile more of it on, forever.