The first disc represents songs from twenty of my
favorite CDs of 2005 (excluding EPs, compilations, or live albums.
Why? Because I'm the king, that's why...). Here are my comments on
those tracks:
1. Audible "Sound Makes a Circle" Sky Signal:
Coincidentally, one of two tracks here that makes use of the venerable
11-beat measure.
2. Tenement Halls "Silver from the Silt" Knitting Needles &
Bicycle Bells: I had a hard time choosing which track from this
album to use. I went with this one, which is the opening track.
Conveniently, it's in the same key as the following song.
3. The Ponys "Today" Celebration: You know how old records
used to be labeled by the type of dance step they accompanied? I think
something similar ought to go on, and particular beats should have
names that appear on the record. Actually, compared with a lot of
musics, rock'n'roll has done a lot less with naming its beats. Anyway,
I'm not sure what to call this beat, which seems pretty common and yet
I can't think offhand of another track with a similar rhythm, sort of
an agitated four-on-the-floor shuffle.
4. Maxïmo Park "Graffiti" A Certain Trigger: Rog pointed out
that it's hard to choose, in one's mental jukebox, which track off
this album is the "single." I eventually went with this because its
chorus kept popping into my head. I have no idea what the chorus means
- but who cares?
5. The Spinto Band "Brown Boxes" Nice and Nicely Done: I
almost put "Oh Mandy" on here, if only to cleanse the ears of people
who think only Barry Manilow did a song with the name "Mandy" in the
title (and who forget about 10cc). But that one was a little too
sweet, and also too long (you might notice that this disc is only a
supermodel- width short of its time allotment). I like the musical
textures (kazoo and electric piano).
6. The Go-Betweens "This Night's for You" Oceans Apart: Man
is this thing compressed! Anyway, that distorted bass (as a result?)
makes the whole track sound distorted at first...it's not. This track
chosen both because it relatively rocks, and I didn't want a slower
track yet, and because its chorus was sticky.
7. Stephen Malkmus "It Kills" Face the Truth: I suppose some
folks are still allergic to Malkmus' upper register. I've gotten used
to it, and I think he controls it a lot better than he used to. Also,
I wasn't kidding over at
the year-end wrap-up page when I alluded to the Grateful Dead:
both some of the guitar tones and something in the chordal texture
remind me strongly of that band here.
8. John Vanderslice "Trance Manual" Pixel Revolt: I think I
have a musical learning disability, which may explain why I keep
acquiring new music: it takes me forever to learn new songs. Or maybe
it takes me forever to learn new songs because I keep acquiring new
music. Anyway. Also, handbells? Yes, handbells!
9. John Cale "Perfect" Black Acetate: A simple,
straightforward, uptempo track, after the tricky (Malkmus) and subtle
(Vanderslice) two previous tracks. If we lived in a universe where
folks like John Cale released singles, this would be it.
10. Caribou "Brahminy Kite" The Milk of Human Kindness:
Drums! Despite the directness implied by loudly banging on things,
there's also a subtlety to the arrangement of this track: I'm not
exactly certain of its exact layout, but I think some of the loops in
the middle of the track were double-tracked, with one track digitally
quickened slightly (that is, without changing the pitch) so the two
tracks go gradually, slightly out of sync with one another. The track
pulls back just before the effect becomes glaring. I notice it in the
flute loop and a little later in the drums, if I recall correctly.
11. The Caribbean "Tarmac Squad" Plastic Explosives: Because
I'm a dummy who rarely looks at lyric sheets, it took me forever to
parse out the first line as "Up at Urban Chic..." Now you know (if you
didn't). Anyway, I like the unexpected major-seventh rise in the
melody, the clever, short-story -like way the lyrics tell its tale of
anti-corporate resistance, and the way the track gradually gets
hairier from its simple acoustic guitar and voice opening, ending in a
clattering of arrhythmic percussion.
12. Momus "Lute Score" Otto Spooky: Minor mistake: the link
on the year-end page doesn't go to mp3s, but to lyrics. Which is fine,
since they're difficult to understand. As it turns out, though (and as
outlined here at Momus' blog Click Opera, itself one of the
more fascinating blogs out there - and interactive, with many
commenting readers), this is a "mumble song," as Currie calls it: a
species of not-quite-nonsense. Anyway: I had a hard time choosing
which track to use from this album, since the tracks are so diverse.
This one combines a lot of features found throughout the record: the
exoticisms, the pastiche, the strange audio processing, the mix of
whimsy and an arms-length sense of menace, the joy in putting together
disparate pieces into a whole. (Incidentally, the overall title of
these CDs comes from a misheard line from another track on this album,
"Bantam Boys.")
13. Bullette "We Are Not from Sugar" The Secrets: If Monika
Bullette goes on to bigger things, she'll be one of the first
musicians to have been "discovered" by putting up an album's worth of
tunes (and more) for free on a personal website. The network of mp3
blogs (notably the late and lamented Mystical Beast, run by Dana
Paoli) jumped on this one early. This particular track is my favorite,
even though it's atypical of the album. Then again, the album is
itself atypical, running from primarily acoustic songs to rec-room
rock band tracks to (like this) almost entirely synthetic sounds.
Bullette doesn't manage the diversity as well as someone like Momus
yet (then, he's got twenty years of recording experience over her),
and the album isn't well sequenced, seeming to move in chunks from one
style to another rather than integrating them into more of a whole.
Still, an intriguing set of songs (the year-end summary page links to
her site: the app I'm typing this in forces me to manually type the
HTML for links, so I'm being minimalist about them).
14. The Sugarplastic "Autumn All the Time" Will: This is the
musical equivalent of cotton candy: very sweet going down, but a bit
painful in retrospect. He is saying goodbye, after all.
15. Spoon "The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine" Gimme Fiction: One of my favorite things about the last three Spoon albums is the
piano. They use it primarily in the lower and middle registers,
avoiding the more cutting (and typical) higher notes, and they get
this great sound from it. (What piano? What sort of recording
technique? Hey, I don't know!) And I'm a sucker for cello - and I like
the way the last notes of the phrase swoop and groan...an effect used
at the very end as well. (PS: Spoon drummer Jim Eno has a famous
relative...it's true! U2 producer Brian Eno is the Spoon drummer's
third uncle!)
16. The New Pornographers "The Jessica Numbers" Twin Cinema:
Another album from which I could have chosen nearly any track. I ended
up choosing this one almost by default: originally, I was going to
cheat slightly and put the track that's not on the physical CD but is
available only via iTunes (and not as an individual track - bastards!)
- but I'd posted it a month or so back (it may even still be up,
contrary to my usual practice...) and, unfortunately, that version was
digitized from the vinyl release...which, like way too many of the
entirely awful format of 7" singles, is pressed slightly off-center,
so the pitch wobbles queasily a bit near the end. I didn't like the
effect - especially not coming so soon after the slight pitch mismatch
in the transition from Bullette to the Sugarplastic - so I needed
another song (this one). I chose "The Jessica Numbers" because (a)
it's short enough, (b) it also has cello, tying in nicely with the
track before - in fact, the segue works really well, and (c) because
hey, another track with an 11-beat measure!
17. Damon & Naomi "Beautiful Close Double" The Earth Is
Blue: Apparently, a "close double" is an astronomical term (thank
you, Google). Just thought you might want to know. I like the way the
electric guitar and trumpet sounds interact here. Note also a
typically wandering Naomi Yang bassline - she plays bass like no one
else, almost completely disregarding the roots of chords and instead
drafting countermelodies, almost as if she's a lower-register lead
guitar.
18. Sufjan Stevens "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." Illinois: This is
the track that some people think takes Stevens' wide-eyed bit too far,
particularly the line "and in my best behavior / I am really just like
him" (like Gacy, that is) - which, of course, isn't literally true
(one hopes). But given that the song also asks its listeners whether
they're among the boys Gacy murdered, and says Gacy would kill "ten
thousand" more, literalness clearly isn't Stevens' concern. Stevens
(as every other article has to note) is a Christian, and I think this
song is a gloss on two themes: the inescapability of sin, its
pervasiveness in all people, specifically in questioning the moral
distinction between sinful actions and sinful thoughts; and mercy
through redemptive empathy. (As I understand it, that's one "reason"
it's important for Christians that Christ was fully human, not just a
god descended to and embodied on Earth.) Stevens posits that the
difference between a killer and the rest of us apparently sane, decent
folk isn't inborn, isn't necessarily environmental, and most important
isn't pre-given: it's a question of passing beyond a certain tipping
point (to use an utterly 180-degree different figure), a point to
which (he argues) we are all much closer than we'd like to admit. Who
in anger hasn't wanted to strike someone; who having struck someone in
anger might not have missed killing that person by infinitesimal
degrees (who knows?); who after such an accidental killing might not
have lost hold of the moral moorings that had held that anger in - and
who might have been John Wayne Gacy Jr., but for a few minor changes
in their life, invisible to them? Or: who might John Wayne Gacy Jr.
had been if he hadn't become a killer?
19. Hood "L. Fading Hills" Outside Closer: This is another
difficult-to-excerpt album: except for the obvious "single" "The Lost
You" (featuring its distinctive digital cutout vocal parts), the album
is pretty much of a piece and builds its effect cumulatively. This
song had several features I liked: the instrumentation, the mood, the
texture...
20. The Fall "Blindness" (alternate version): This is not the
version on the Fall Heads Roll album - it's downloaded from the
label's (Narnack Records) website. Anyway, a pummeling, distorted
bass-guitar driven rant seems an appropriate way to end the disc - a
cleansing blast.
Well, almost close the disc anyway...
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