Decade postmortem: 2007 and 2008

Having gone through a decade of old top 10s, I’ve been thinking about the two contrary motives involved in putting these things together. On one hand, the lists express personal tastes, more emotional than analytical. And since they are usually cranked out on deadline at the end of the year, they can be inexact, first-draft statements reflecting a moment in time; it’s like a postmortem temperature taken while the body is still warm. This gut-level impulse tends to favor more unpredictable, less popular picks: fanboy plugs, showoff-y picks, oppositional stances.

On the other hand, you’re making broad statements about the state of music, and there have to be real criteria for that judgment. Less impressively, critics want to look smart to other critics, and that means balancing a certain number of obscurities with a certain number of choices in common, which function as trade credentials. This is the more calculating approach, and it’s the mindset of collective editorial lists at magazines and websites. With the imprimatur of a publication, personal feelings are minimized (as is the blame for erroneous or lame picks), and these lists end up being more official and predictable, in line with the consensus; in fact, they establish consensus.

Neither approach is right or wrong; they work together. But looking back years later it’s hard to hold on to those random, contrarian choices, since the vibe you felt making them in the first place has probably faded, and the weeding process of history has rearranged the field. For example, from our point of view 10 years later, Kid A towers over the releases of 2000, but at the time it was somewhat more controversial: Pitchfork put it at No. 1 that year, but it was only No. 5 in Rolling Stone, behind Eminem, U2, D’Angelo, even Madonna’s Music.

What this means for me is that as I’ve revised my lists they have probably become more “correct” but also less interesting: fewer surprises, fewer argument-starters, less defiant advocacy. One of my favorites for 2008, for instance, was the Jonas Brothers, which caught me some shit. (Hi, Jake.) I can’t say now whether I was right or wrong about it because I haven’t listened in a year; that fact alone, however, is reason to edit that album out, since it can’t have been so great if after 12 months I don’t care.

But it’s also one of those self-correcting, conformist moments, an opportunity to replace an honest but risky lark with something safer, more familiar, “stronger.” At the same time, you’ve got to hold on to your individuality and avoid succumbing to the groupthink that can make so many of these lists tediously identical at the time they’re drawn up but then uselessly out of fashion once X number of years pass and nobody cares anymore about Northern State or Arrested Development. That, and the fact that you need to listen to lots and lots and lots of music, is why it’s hard to do this.

❧

That’s theory. Now for practice. Here’s my original list for 2007 (and original blurbs):

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Battles, Mirrored
5. Feist, The Reminder
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. M.I.A., Kala
8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows

Scorecard: Pretty right-on, I think. Dirty Projectors blew my mind in 2007, and I still like them now. Plant/Krauss is magnificent, and Spoon added another reason for being the best band of the decade. I’m moving Feist and M.I.A. up, bumping Battles down, and replacing Avril with Deerhoof, who deserve more credit than they’ve been getting at decade’s end. Otherwise not many changes. (Nos. 11 through 20 would include Black Lips, Yeasayer, Linda Thompson, Kanye, the Frames, Miranda Lambert and Nick Lowe. And Avril.)

Kind Reader, I present my revised list for 2007:

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Feist, The Reminder
5. M.I.A., Kala
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. Battles, Mirrored
8. Radiohead, In Rainbows
9. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
10. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity

❧

2008 is a little trickier for me. My original list (and blurbs):

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
4. Metallica, Death Magnetic
5. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic
9. Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer
10. Beach House, Devotion

Looking at this, Randy Newman now feels more like an 8 or a 9 than a 6, and Black Kids and the JoBros belong in the mid-teens. But what to replace them with? The records that didn’t make my original cut were:

• Al Green, who made a gorgeous, vibrant record with ?uestlove. Cut because Newman was more topical and exploratory, and I didn’t want two fogies.
  
• Jamey Johnson. Omitted as a reaction against critical groupthink, and because I’m just not a country guy. But it’s undeniable that this is a very strong record.
• Coldplay. Good, but it’s Coldplay.
• She & Him. Nice, but at the time it didn’t seem terribly significant. Still doesn’t, although it’s just as sweet.
• Lykke Li. Sort of the year’s Bjork/Feist/Regina/Fiona/Emiliana quirky-girl entry. Which “shouldn’t matter shouldn’t matter,” as Gwen would say. But it does matter because her album is not half as clever as anything by Bjork or Feist or Regina or Fiona or Emiliana.
  
• Nick Cave. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is great, but ... I dunno.
• Joe Jackson. Rain is as good as anything he did 25 or 30 years ago, but you’ve got the fogy problem again. What’s 2008 about it? Why could it not have been made in 1983 or 1992 or 2005?
• Magnetic Fields, Distortion. Another consensus choice, and despite a couple of fantaaaastic songs (“Drive On, Driver,” “California Girls”), it felt like a trifle.

Three more you see on every other list from 2008 are Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, Fleet Foxes’ debut, and Tha Carter III. I still snooze thinking of Fleet Foxes, and don’t feel fully qualified to judge Lil Wayne. But Kanye’s Auto-Tune essay on isolation and misery was visionary; shoulda been in my list to begin with. He and Jamey Johnson make the cut.

So, 2008 revised:

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Metallica, Death Magnetic
4. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
5. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
6. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
9. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
10. Beach House, Devotion

❧

And that’s our show, folks! My 2009 list will be posted soon. Make that eventually. Well, pretty soon. Happy New Year!

Partial recovery of ‘Best of 2008’

All links, formatting and embedded clips, etc., are gone, and I really don't feel like going to all that trouble again. But here it is, at least until Google allows it to mysteriously disappear again:

ALBUMS

1. Vampire Weekend (XL). Although the role of blogs in their success might be overstated, as people who know have suggested, there’s no denying a textbook 21st-century phenomenon. Yet there’s also something comfortingly classic going on here. The album has a clear musical vision and sonic consistency — two elements endangered by “unbundling” — and, most important, tight, smart songwriting. The rampant Graceland comparisons are simplistic and inaccurate, but this does remind me of the clean minimalism of the ’80s. The Police, maybe? Anyway, fishing for antecedents is a dismal pursuit. The reason this is great is just that it is great.

2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar). The sad-sack lo-fi album is the most pathetically overdone trend since 15-year-olds discovered black lipstick. But Justin Vernon has done it about as best as can be done, with breathy, wintry harmonies and a perfectionism that still allows for something ragged and unbalanced, making this seem at times like a very low-energy tantrum. Best of all, that perfectionism puts other boo-hoo boys on notice. The age of the trembling Conor Oberst imitation is dead; you have to actually sing now.

3. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals (Illegal Art). There’s nothing new about mashups, nor about an album made entirely of samples. What Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, has done is return the art of sampling to its origins, which were all about the thrill of familiarity. DJ’s recontextualized old sounds, yes, but they chose those sounds in part to piggyback on the memories they triggered. A typical GT track is nostalgia in hyperdrive, stitched together from dozens of samples — each of which you are happy to hear again and again, and again and again.

4. Metallica, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.). Maybe it is compressed; so what. This is a return to the Metallica that I love, the Metallica I haven’t heard from in 20 years. Physicality = viscera = blood rush = the hunt = murder = pain. In many ways this is a simple horror film, with lyrics like “Crushing metal, ripping skin/Tossing body, mannequin.” There’s also new depth in there, though, thanks to age and the mirror of rehab. But you don’t really care about that, do you? They had you at “ripping skin.”

5. TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope). I’m getting tired of putting TVOTR albums on my best-of lists. But they twisted my arm. This is maybe their best, the noise-cloud gathered into cleaner, sharper lines, the falsetto still kickin’, the caustic surrealism still kickin’ too.

6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels (Nonesuch). Perhaps the best piece of political satire all year. Newman did a beautiful thing by taking a step away from partisan rancor and arrogance, and then using lighthearted entertainment to brutally lambaste them. How better to frame a theme of post-Katrina shame than with avuncular New Orleans showmanship?

7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO). Jim James may make a great album some day. This isn’t it — disqualified for sexy librarians and “the Interweb” — but it’s one of the most ambitious records by a major band in 2008. (I contend that only Coldplay and Axl Rose took bolder risks. Discuss.) It’s a tug-of-war about paranoia and alienation, and goes through a lot of itchy electronic stuff before getting anywhere close to the Southern-rock pastorals they are known for. And when they do get there (“Thank You Too!”) it’s absolutely gorgeous.

8. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic (Columbia). The Black Kids suffered a bit from the industry-not-moving-as-fast-as-the-Web thing. (Not too bad, though; I still heard them every time I walked into an Urban Outfitters.) But any backlash reflected badly on the blogosphere itself. This is smartass indie dance-pop at its best, and the lyrical wit (“Hello, this is your body/What do you want, my body?/I wanna feel somebody on me”) is the cherry on top.

9. Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer (Hollywood). Perfect rocklegum. How long do we have to wait until Nick Jonas hits his Brian Wilson period?

10. Beach House, Devotion (Car Park). Victoria Legrand has a suppler, deeper alto than Chan Marshall, although she doesn’t reach the same expressive heights. But on Devotion, she wins. Her voice is like a hormonal beacon through clouds of organ and slide guitar (by the other member of Beach House, Alex Scalley), whereas Cat Power’s aimless Jukebox just gets lost. My worry: There’s not much else but texture here. I hope Legrand (and Scalley) develop further and don’t end up simply treading pretty water.


SINGLES

1. Katy Perry, “Hot N Cold”
2. Jonas Brothers, “Lovebug”
3. Coldplay, “Viva la Vida”
4. Black Kids, “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You”
5. She & Him, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”
6. Fall Out Boy, “I Don’t Care”
7. Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love”
8. Lucinda Williams, “If Wishes Were Horses”
9. Jazmine Sullivan, “Bust Your Windows”
10. Kid Rock, “All Summer Long”


30 MORE RECOMMENDED ALBUMS

Al Green, Lay It Down (Blue Note)
Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song (Mercury Nashville)
Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (Capitol)
Jay Reatard, Matador Singles 08 (Matador)
Jay Reatard, Singles 06-07 (In the Red)
She & Him, Volume One (Merge)
Nick Cave, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (Anti-)
Lykke Li, Youth Novels (LL/Atlantic)
Portishead, Third (Island)
School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms (Ghostly)
Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely (Warner Brothers)
Jazmine Sullivan, Fearless (J)
Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts I-IV (Null Corporation)
Fall Out Boy, Folie à Deux (Island)
Joe Jackson, Rain (Ryko)
Liam Finn, I’ll Be Lightning (Yep Roc)
Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
Sons & Daughters, This Gift (Domino)
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (Atlantic)
Hercules and Love Affair (DFA/EMI)
Shearwater, Rook (Matador)
Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch)
Jealous Girlfriends (Good Fences)
Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell (Saddle Creek)
Hot Chip, Made in the Dark (DFA/EMI)
MGMT, Oracular Spectacular (Columbia)
Wye Oak, If Children (Merge)
Death Vessel, Nothing Is Precious Enough for Us (Sub Pop)
Jolie Holland, The Living and the Dead (Anti-)
Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer (Sub Pop)

REISSUES

Nick Lowe, Jesus of Cool (Yep Roc)
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (Legacy)
Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia (Legacy)

MORE SINGLES I LIKED

Lykke Li, “Little Bit”
Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name”
Beach House, “Gila”
Kanye West, “Love Lockdown”
John Legend, “Green Light”
Weezer, “Pork and Beans”
Pussycat Dolls, “When I Grow Up”

BLANK STARE

Guns N’ Roses, Chinese Democracy (Geffen)

MOST INTERESTING FAILURE

Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak (Def Jam)

BEST TITLES (ALSO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

Marnie Stern, This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (Kill Rock Stars)
Kasai Allstars, In The 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy by Magic (Crammed Discs)

FAVORITE COVER

[Crystal Castles]


YES BUT 2007

Flo Rida, “Low”
M.I.A., “Paper Planes”

HONORARY MENTION

Bruce Springsteen’s powerful reading of Suicide’s life-affirming “Dream Baby Dream,” on a purposely obscure 10-inch (cover, right) that kicked off a series of singles on Blast First Petite in honor of Alan Vega’s 70th birthday (yes, 70th!). It was limited to 4,000 copies, one of which I snagged with an advance order on Amazon. Supposedly it’s sold out, although the last time I was at Kim’s on St. Marks they had three of them, and it’s on eMusic.

MOST OVERRATED INDIE BANDS

No Age
Fleet Foxes

WHITE CRITIC’S OBLIGATORY LIL WAYNE REFERENCE

Lil Wayne

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin’ (Lost Highway)
Ray Davies, Working Man’s Cafe (New West)
Cat Power, Jukebox (Matador)
Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple (Atlantic)

CAN’T BE A DISAPPOINTMENT IF YOU DON’T CARE

Beck, Modern Guilt (Interscope)

WORST ALBUM OF 2008

Scarlett Johnansson, Anywhere I Lay My Head (Atco)

Mapping Girl Talk samples

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has done an impressive number-crunching job with the 264 samples on Girl Talk’s album Feed the Animals.

Using Wikipedia data and Amazon.com’s crowdsourcing program Mechanical Turk, he charted out exactly what moment each sample appears on the songs, graphically illustrating the spacing and density of samples on the record. It’s pretty dense — out of 14 tracks, the average number of samples per track, Baio says, is 19.8. (Though I don’t totally understand that computation: 264 divided by 14 is 18.9; maybe it’s a typo.)

Other interesting visual aids show how old each of the samples are across Feed the Animals. They stretch back to the mid-’60s but most are very recent:

Very impressive work, though it’s not a big surprise given Baio’s record: on two posts in May, he did some incredible data-mining in the Billboard singles charts, looking at the track length of Top 40 songs over the last 50 years as well as the staying power of one-hit wonders. Highly recommended reading, and not just for people like me who already spend too much time reading pop charts.

In related news, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker this week about laptop music, and he talked to Gregg Gillis (a.k.a. Girl Talk) about how he does the show live. It’s very labor intensive: “To perform a live set, Gillis has to turn a new loop on and off every few seconds, or choose to let several go on longer if he feels like getting up and dancing. The software is not set up to execute a long, complicated series of decisions on his behalf. He has to re-create the mix every night.”