OK, the next five. HERE:
20) Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, Blink 182 - OK, I'll say it: I love blink 182 more than any artist that will appear on this list. So why 20 and not higher? This isn't their best. But it's still a very, very fine album, full of great songs, each one good in its own right. This is the album where blink started realizing that they wanted to be serious - they were growing up, for real this time. Their personal lives were changing, they were settling down with significant others, kids were on the way - it all finds its way into the songs. Which is fine, because they still manage to convey humor and stay young at heart. In fact, some lyrics are damned childish - "Pick you up for our very first date," "the girl at the rock show" that kind of stuff - and that's part of the charm. There are going to be hundreds of serious albums released every year by serious artists, you know, carefully orchestrated somber chamber pop music - I'm looking at you Grizzly Bear - all striving to be meaningful and to be taken seriously, but none of them will be serious as TOYPAJ WHILE ALSO BEING as happy, infectious, childlike, and, of course, as funny, as blink is on this record.
19) Weezer (Green Album), Weezer - A pop gem. Weezer's third album is so simple and straightfoward which is why it's so fucking great. The lyrics: guy loses girl, some variations on this theme. The melodies: catchy. Hummable. There's a whole lot of major chords, and, when there is a minor change, the resolution back to a major makes the whole damn thing seem even more joyous. The arrangements: nothing more than what's essential. The biggest extravegances are handclaps and the solos very rarely stray from the vocal melody line. This is my kind of album: short, simple and sweet.
I don't think people understand Rivers Cuomo. He's a pop songwriter. That's all he's ever been. He's doing the same thing now that he was doing with the Blue Album except that the times have changed. Everything needs weight nowadays to be taken seriously; some sort of indie cred that will make people feel better about listening to something silly or simple. And it can't be delivered straight. The Green Album is incredibly straight, and that's what makes it such a breath of fresh air every time I hear it. It doesn't need anything else - no story, no scene, no nothing. It's a band playing Rivers' songs, each one a gem.
18) Microcastle/Weird Era Cont., Deerhunter - This album reminds me of cold sunshine. Or maybe sunshine on a cold day. I remember I bought it from Soundgarden in Syracuse, NY, went home and pumped it in my house ASAP, where the first blast of "Cover Me (Slowly)" made me turn my head.
What an introduction, what a start! What a sound! Everything seems to be coated in that cold sunshine - most often reverb, sometimes distortion, sometimes the lack of an effect - seemingly seeping out of the disc itself. There may be unifying lyrical themes on the album (sacrifice, suicide) but I only know that cuz I read about it. Both of these albums have a feeling about them - I guess Weird Era Cont. is a, well, continuation of the weird feelings from Microcastle - that unifies all of the tracks. The sound is whole, the feeling's there, the melodies pop and the hooks hook but it's all about that sound, pumping from speakers at full blast. It's music your mind shuts off too and absorbs; you bob your head and jam and turn your head to the speakers, but it's only later, after a few listens, that you can piece it all together. But even then, it's better to lose yourself to that feeling, that weird, visceral feeling, and ignore reason. The music exits like cold sunlight streaming into your head! LET IT IN!
18) Liars, Liars - "I wanna run away, I wanna bring you, too/I wanna run away, I wanna bring you, too!" starts "Plaster Casts of Everything," the lead track on Liars' eponymous LP, the follow up to their stunning mind-fuck, Drum's Not Dead. In a sense, it feels like those opening lines are the band saying, "Hey, we spent a lot of time in crafting a sonically rich, dense, difficult record in Drums - which was awesome! - but now we just wanna get away and rock out - and you can come, too!" And we do. Weird, listenable, hard, and they're still totally true to themselves, 100 percent. It feels like all of their stylistic variations (from punk to drone) really come together here coupled with a desire to just fuck you up cuz Liars hates you.
17) Plague Park, Handsome Furs - There's been a lot of talk this decade, especially in the latter half, of folk music. Free folk, freak folk, folk folk folk. Folk's folking everywhere. Devendra Banhart, the Dodos, Akron/Family, the earlier work of Animal Collective. These are just a few of the bands that have been called, in some way, folk artists. A name that does not get mentioned? Handsome Furs.
Yeah, upon first listen Plague Park doesn't sound terribly folky, what with the electronic drum beats and ringing electric guitars, but this is folk music. All of the songs could be performed with just voice and acoustic guitar. If you listen closely, you'll hear Dan Boeckner's acoustic underneath it all, I'm assuming the track overwhich everything was built on. This is an album made up of folk tunes. Lyrically, the album works like a folk album. "We hate this city, we hate it's drone," Boekner sings. That's a tenent of folk music, hatin' something and getting out. The subject matter may have changed with the changing times, but the attitude's still the same. Maybe you'd call it this, maybe you'd call it that, I think it's folk, an album of bare, emotionally resonant tunes crafted by a husband and wife duo where, in the end, all you really need are the words, voice, and acoustic guitar to convey a feeling that is very large.
And: Dan Boeckner is a personal favorite artist of mine. I love the way he sings, plays guitar, and writes. I like the attitude and the subject matter. I think we'd get along if we met. I hope we'd get smashed.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE OF THIS SHIT.
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I'm in Grizzly Bear. We have fun and we're happy.
ReplyDelete-Ed Droste (Vox, Guitar, Keysboards)