Category: Music

The 00s: Music – 15-11

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15. Quinn Walker – Laughter’s An Asshole/Lion Land (Voodoo-Eros)

I’ve only heard 8 of the 29 tracks on Quinn Walker’s double-disc opus, but they’re so good I can’t imagine any album that features them failing to crack my top 20 for the 00s.  Walker is very much the wild card in this list, a prolific independent one-man band whose music embraces experimentation and humour, but never at the expense of depth.  The drum kit crashes, square synths wail and the guitars solos spin you right round, and above it all, Walker’s often falsetto voice weaves hilarious and unforgettable poetry.  All of these songs I know are to be savoured, but it’s ‘Save Your Love For Me’ that appears to be the quintessential Walker song – brilliantly unhinged, poetic and unforgettable.
Most representative track, and my favourite: ‘Save Your Love For Me’

14. The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Modular Recordings)

I’ll speak more about mashups later, but the great innovators in this field at the start of the 00s were Australian duo The Avalanches.  Since I Left You remains one of the most purely enjoyable records of the decade, one which just about anyone can throw on and enjoy however they wish – as a soundtrack for work, as a party or dancefloor staple, as a vehicle for reminiscing, whatever.  Chater once said the album was about “the idea of a guy following a girl around the world and always being one port behind”, and that wistfulness is tangible even amid the shining joy.
Most representative track: ‘Since I Left You’
My favourite: ‘Electricity’

13. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)

To appreciate Sufjan Stevens, you have to get over how much of a pompous ass he appears to be.  Consider the title of track 14, a 20-second ambient hum: ‘A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze’.  There are literally dozens of tracks on Illinois with titles like that (though that’s the worst); luckily, the man is an incredibly gifted musician and songwriter, and not even the most hopelessly puffed-up designation can obscure the talent evident in every one of Illinois’ 22 tracks.  I find myself wondering why he didn’t become super-mega-ultra famous, given that this album would fit pretty comfortably on commercial radio as well as in the dens of indie hipsters.  Maybe he did, but I missed it because I live in India; maybe he just burned out.  That seems more likely after such a feat as creating this record, whose scope extends well beyond the borders of the state in the title and into the hearts and stories of people all over the world.
Most representative track: ‘Chicago’
My favourite: ‘Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois’

12. Arcade Fire – Funeral (Merge/Rough Trade)

Coming on the scene in 2004/2005 with Funeral, Arcade Fire wound up defining the kind of sound that leads people to make YouTube comments like ‘If you don’t cry watching this, you are dead inside’.  I myself have made fun of their heart-on-sleeve approach, but damn it, they’re so sincere and such good performers that they stay just the right side of ridiculous, like Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting of the 00s.  I can’t fault them for seeing problems with the world and wanting to state, in no uncertain terms, how troubled they are by them; such emotional honesty should be celebrated.
Most representative track: ‘Wake Up’
My favourite: ‘Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)’

11. Four Tet – Rounds (Domino)

There are great album openers, and then there is ‘Hands’, pulsing into life with a beating heart before layering in textures that slowly reveal themselves, surrounding you, the listener, and sweeping you along in a wave that almost seems to be physically raising you up.  Most of Kieran Hebden’s output is concerned more with texture than melody, with enough rhythm to keep your feet tapping, and Rounds is the apex of his career thus far (though There Is Love In You comes close and will surely be on the 10s list).  His other albums are frustratingly inconsistent, comprised generally of stunners and fillers only, but Rounds keeps its game up after an astonishing opening.  Indeed, the opening quartet of tracks seem to me so good that they might perhaps always have existed somewhere, an undercurrent of energy that Hebden harnessed and converted into a sonic form.  As much as any musician I know, he does things that make me stop dead in my tracks and say, “I could never do that.”
Most representative track: ‘My Angel Rocks Back And Forth’
My favourite: ‘Hands’

For the next part, click here.

The 00s: Music – Intro & 20-16

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I’ll level with you.  I’m no Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes or whoever you actually read for your music tips.  I can’t compete with 200 albums of the decade, given that I have never listened to (or heard of) the vast majority of whatever is included on their lists.  I can honestly say, however, that I love music, and that there has been music during the 00s that I have particularly loved.  Some of it has been a soundtrack to certain times in my life; other albums have wormed their way into my consciousness to become an ongoing part of who I am.  This is that music.

I’ll have to limit myself to 20, but acknowledge that several of these artists would have occupied places on an expanded list if I weren’t keeping it to one album per artist.  Radiohead would have been on here at least twice (Hail to the Thief, in case you’re wondering).  I also had to omit quite a few albums that were hard to leave out, for example Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album and Battles’ Mirrored, but for whatever reason these were the 20 that made it.

I must also acknowledge, again, that I’m sure a lot of incredible stuff was released that I missed for whatever reason.  I’m only just getting to listen to Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, and it is extremely good and might have been on here if I’d gotten to it a couple of months earlier…  but anyway, that’s what the comments are for – tell me how much of a philistine I am, and what I need to do to catch up.

As for trends, I think the list can speak for itself but am looking forward to things being noticed along the way as I post it.  We can address that in the comments too.  (In case you haven’t got it yet, I WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS.)

Note that thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can hear the music as you read about it by clicking the track links at the end of each album write-up – one for the track I feel is the most representative (i.e. the best introduction to the album), and one for my favourite track.  Here we go…

20. Breaks Co-Op – The Sound Inside (EMI/Astralwerks/Parlophone)

Kicking it off with some Kiwi sounds, the best ‘summer’ album of the 00s came from this skilled trio (though I’m told the live lineup of five adds plenty to the sound).  I of course bought it when it was bafflingly released in the middle of NZ’s winter and was promptly chewed out by my flatmate Nic, but it was such a great soundtrack to my student days that it stayed on high rotate through until the temperature started rising – and beyond.  Now I’m living in India where it’s always summer, and there’s a never a bad time to rediscover this record’s lazy, comfortable atmosphere lying with a beer in the hammock.
Most representative track, and my favourite, and the one everyone knows: ‘The Otherside’

19. David Bowie – Heathen (ISO/Columbia)

Don’t get Heathen mixed up with the thrash metal band from California.  It is in fact Bowie’s emphatic return to form after a decade or two patching together albums out of patchy material.  Here, reunited with producer Tony Visconti, Bowie comes to terms as best he can with his own mortality; but as always, he’s never completely at ease.  Whether it’s the afterlife or the state of the world he expects – and perhaps wants – to leave behind, Bowie prefers to remain in the grey areas rather than committing to any one philosophy.  He doubts, questions, pleads and implores and it makes for a conflicted, thought-provoking masterpiece.
Most representative track: ‘Slow Burn’
My favourite: ‘I Would Be Your Slave’

18. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)

The first three or four tracks of Merriweather Post Pavilion are un-be-lievable.  Opener ‘In the Flowers’ plants you firmly in an otherworldly trance with its slow but heady build, then explodes into life at the two-and-a-half-minute mark; ‘My Girls’ is the catchiest, prettiest bit of synth-pop in ages; ‘Also Frightened’ darkens the palette and opens up the record into more wide-reaching themes, while keeping the pace up; and ‘Summertime Clothes’ evokes a high-energy dash through the streets of your city with the one you love.  Pity the rest of the record couldn’t keep up to the same standard; though several of the subsequent tracks are very good (and one exceptional), they just feel underwhelming after the glory of those first 20 minutes.  Perhaps on another album, I’d love them all equally.  In any case, this is a heartfelt and singularly distinct work that heralds plenty more brilliance from Animal Collective to come.
Most representative track: ‘My Girls’
My favourite: ‘Lion in a Coma’

17. Daft Punk – Discovery (Virgin)

As a means of re-energizing and reclaiming the floundering dance music scene in 2001, Daft Punk, always concealed behind robot masks and suits, positioned themselves as interplanetary discoverers dredging our musical past for forgotten hooks and converting them into something they, and we, could embrace.  Even if it was a triumph of marketing and pop culture gimmicks over originality, Discovery was a sensation.  Its retro factor gives it a timelessness such that it continues, a decade later, to poke its head up on dancefloors and TV promos worldwide.
Most representative track: ‘One More Time’
My favourite: ‘Too Long’

16. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)

For the most repetitive sounds of the 00s, look no further than The Field.  Some tracks contain only three or four alterations to the same looped sample.  Thankfully, the sound happens to as purely ecstatic as it is unvarying, and after enough listens, the patterns will be so etched in your mind that you’ll know exactly when the next loop is going to start and feel a kind of exhilarating release when it does.  The Pitchfork reviewer said that if From Here We Go Sublime ‘doesn’t hit at least some of your pleasure centers, well, forget your ears– your nerve endings might actually be dead’.  I concur, and it could endure for decades to come precisely because its aim is simple:  to make you feel good.
Most representative track: ‘Everday’
My favourite: ‘The Little Heart Beats So Fast’

For the next part, click here.

Tracks I never tire of: ‘Raver’

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‘Raver’, by Burial, from the album Untrue

Nostalgia is a beautiful, brutal thing, and so it has come to hit me in the face once more with remembrance of how I discovered Burial. The reclusive UK dubstep/grime producer released his second album Untrue in late 2007, and on the tip of some good online folk, I checked it out. My subsequent (and repeated) rocking out awkwardly to his beats, seated in front of my laptop in a tatami-floored Japanese room by the sea, is not something anyone else needs to ever see or think about, but if the dearest moments in one’s life are marked by the purest self-realization yet experienced, I’d hold that as dear as just about anything.

Unlike most of my favourite albums, Untrue did actually grab me immediately, warranting a second listen straight after the first. However, it wasn’t until after a week or so that I realized it was Raver that stuck in my head as I cycled to and from the supermarket. It is the closing track, after all, but that’s not why I couldn’t shake it.

There are several reasons for this. First, it stands out clearly as being unlike anything else on the album. The moody, echoed, organic textures of ‘Archangel’, ‘Ghost Hardware’ and ‘Untrue’ are offset by the quiet reverberating tones of ‘Endorphin’ and ‘In McDonalds’, but ‘Raver’ offers a more upbeat conclusion with its straightforwardness and clarity of tone. As such, it could be dismissed as more shallow than what’s come before, but repeated listens prove this isn’t the case.

Opening with echoed cymbal hits, it starts off much like the other tracks. Then that driving beat kicks in, followed by a pushing, wobbling bassline – can I even call it a bassline? It kicks in at about 00:18 – and I’m swept along every time. Layers are added steadily until the chorus which seems to burst, powerfully but at a respectful distance, out of the metronomic beat. Its simple up-and-down tones cut to the heart of whoever feels like listening.

One of the more beautiful things about Burial’s music is that he cuts the vocal samples so that they could be heard and interpreted in several different ways. To me, the initial plaintive cry on ‘Raver’ asks us to “choose life” and later agonizes over “the world’s fear” and how we “never grow”. A simple message that could be purely my own. Perhaps the way cuts the lyrics is an effort to include the listener in what meaning should be ascribed to his work.

It’s hopeful, it’s emotional. Everyone’s been dancing for hours and this is the last song before the club closes, or something. Burial himself once said that one way he would be inspired would be to recall the sounds of the club echoing in his head when he got home (see question 9), and that’s exactly what ‘Raver’ reminds me of. Still nodding your head as you unlock the door, then breaking out some clumsy moves with your girlfriend as you both stagger into the bedroom. Or closing your eyes and pointing to the sky with passion as you begin to comprehend what being away from home REALLY means. Your choice.

In Radiohead We Trust: ‘In Rainbows’

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You probably know the deal by now, but I’ll recount the brief history anyway: last week I got an email from the Radiohead mailing list saying that their new album In Rainbows was now available for pre-order via their website radiohead.com via two forms: 1) a download available from 10 Oct; 2) a ‘discbox’ containing the album and extra material on 2 CDs and 2 vinyl records shipped on or before 3 Dec, plus the download.

The discbox costs £40.00, the download costs £?.??. ‘It’s up to you’, comes the reply when you click the ?. Click again: ‘No really, it’s up to you’. You can download the new Radiohead album for any price you choose. Like they’re saying to the record companies, “Whatever! I do what I want!” I paid £0.00, planning to buy the CD when it’s released as I have for past Radiohead albums.

Anyway, I listened to it for the first time walking to the train station yesterday, and through the thumps, blips, cut-up guitar loops and Thom Yorke’s wailing, I couldn’t help but have the same reaction I always have when listening to new Radiohead material: have they completely betrayed me at last?

You see, I have a particularly strong love/hate relationship with them. Around the age of 15/16, Kid A took its place as the first album I ever loved. I didn’t just love it; I listened to it all the time, thought about it whenever I wasn’t listening to it, read every interview with the band I could find, and analyzed the lyrics to within an inch of their life, amazed that somehow they were all pertinent to what I was going through as teenager. I told none of my schoolmates of my obsession, instead preferring to revel in the perceived solitude of liking something so unusual so deeply. It was music that made me want to feel alone, and I gave myself over to those feelings.

Later I found out that many of my schoolmates were listening to it too, and I wasn’t all alone, and I could have been out yarning and having a laugh. I’m not going to be so melodramatic as to say that ‘those bastards and their music made my teenage years miserable’, because while there are elements of truth there – it did push me to become more introspective and seek less the company of others – those elements probably would’ve come to light whether it was their music or the Vengaboys’. For one, the act of listening to the album was an experience I always delighted in, always far more a positive, happy time than a negative, upsetting time. And it made me think about things on a deeper level, like human relationships, and death.

Yeah, it was a really big deal. It was further enhanced by the subsequent and ongoing discovery of their work (6 albums and hundreds of B-sides and unreleased tracks), to the point where I had something like an encyclopaedic knowledge of the band’s music and ideology. Because a lot of it is either upset by or pissed off with the people in the world, it kind of built in my head to a point where I just couldn’t be arsed getting behind something that seemed so demoralizing. Look at what I listen to most now: Girl Talk, The Go! Team, M.I.A… music that suits a short attention span and encourages appreciation of the moment, rather than concern for the future. (M.I.A. is stretching that a bit, but what the hell, I’ll go with it.)

SOOOO as I listened to the first robotic drumbeats of ’15 Step’, the first track on In Rainbows, I asked myself ‘can I be bothered with this’? And when Yorke’s patented wail started up with ‘How come I end up where I started?’ I asked myself ‘honestly… can I?’ Of course I stayed with it, listened to it right the way through, and inevitably put it straight back on for another run. What at first seems kind of tuneless and preachy becomes layered and thought-provoking. Shock, horror, it’s good stuff – just like everything else they’ve done – and I’ll listen to it again many more times in the coming weeks and months. Thus far, the track ‘House of Cards’ stands out as a particularly good example of Radioheady production, lyrics, guitar and structure.

I still love the band and the music, and I imagine I always will, no matter what they do, but that initial reaction to new material will likewise always be the same: ‘do I want to hear this?’ They’re always so different from whatever else I’m listening to at the time, but I guess that makes them a constant I can always rely on to provide me with something unique that’ll challenge me musically and lyrically. A comfort zone that makes me step outside my comfort zone, or something. All I can say is keep it up: you’ll never again be flavour of the month with me, but I’ll keep returning to your music as long as you keep making it, whether I like to or not.

Tracks I never tire of: ‘Boyd’s Journey’

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‘Boyd’s Journey’, by Michael Nyman & Damon Albarn, from the album Ravenous: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Film scores rarely hold much interest for me as stand-alone works of art. Generally, they’re either boring compilations designed to cash in on (or bolster) the movie’s success or the same cue repeated 20 times with little variation and a few bits of dialogue thrown in for distraction. There are exceptions, of course. Great compilation or part-compilation soundtracks include GoodFellas, Boogie Nights or Lost In Translation (among others), all of which work wonderfully as albums; of excellent original score soundtrack albums, however, I’ve only come across one – Ravenous.

Without its score, Ravenous would be a decent, enjoyable, but somewhat muddled film. With its Albarn/Nyman score, the muddlement remains, but it seems to fit perfectly alongside the schizophrenic music and the film is elevated to something I have been happy to watch about six or seven times. For me, no other film score is as important to its film than this one. Other scores may be greater – 2001, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, name something of your own – but here it’s absolutely vital to the film’s success. It is its star, its guiding force, the thing you remember about the film years later.

Though it’s full of fantastic individual tracks, it’s easy to pick one as the standout. ‘Boyd’s Journey’ is essentially the film’s main theme, appearing three times in the film and acting each time as a cue to our hero’s rebirth. As it begins it sounds like a child with ADD plucking at banjo strings, then other elements such as harmonica, squeeze-box and brass are brought in. It’s almost heroic, but the overwhelming impression one gets is of bitterness, melancholy, and tragedy. Like, it’s really beautiful, and seems to signal new beginnings, but I don’t think there’s any real joy intended – yes, things are changing, but probably not for the better.

The first time and (I think) second time through, it’s played on actual instruments, but on the third time – for the conclusion and end titles – Nyman & Albarn switch just about everything over to keyboards and synthesizers. With the strings, it adds a deeper level of sadness, its preciseness somehow cutting deeper than the roughness of the former version. Both are phenomenal pieces of music, regardless of whether they’re listened to in context (of the film or the album) or not. My vote for the Best Film-Related Music Ever, and as stated above, something I never get sick of hearing.

Tracks I never tire of: ‘Are We Here?’

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Are We Here?’ by Orbital, from the album Snivilisation (1994)

Given my deep, almost obsessive love for Orbital’s entire oeuvre, it seems unfair to pick just one track to discuss out of the many they’ve released. The Hartnoll brothers have provided more of the soundtrack to my life than any other musicians – there’s no doubt I’ve listened to some of their tracks hundreds of times – and were at the forefront of electronic music for an entire decade. Nevertheless, if there’s one single track which I come back to more than any other, it’s ‘Are We Here?’, so… here we are.

The album it comes from, Snivilisation, was their third and marked something of a change in direction: less club-friendly, more experimental, and certainly more ambitious than their previous work. For a long time it was my least favourite of theirs purely because it was so different from everything else they’ve done, but as I listened to it more, I slowly realized it was their best. This seems to have been the opinion of many Orbital fans. You have that knee-jerk “Play your old shit! Your good shit!” reaction, then you actually give it a chance and see how good it is.

Now, if you listen to ‘Are We Here?’ by itself, it’s magnificent – 15 minutes plus of typically emotional and heartfelt loops cut together to almost feel like it’s telling a story. As the penultimate track of Snivilisation, listened to within that context, it becomes something like the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. If the album is, as I occasionally suspect, a concept birth-to-death thing, then ‘Are We Here?’ is its centrepiece – the last days of a being’s consciousness before slipping away into the dreamworld of ‘Attached’. That sounds awesomely pretentious, and maybe it is, but for me, it’s a religious experience when listened to in sequence.

The old criticism of ‘too repetitive’ would be an easy way to dismiss ‘Are We Here?’, and I imagine I probably did exactly that upon first listen. Now when it comes on, I can’t help but marvel at its complexity, how every element is perfectly timed to come in at just the right moment. It makes me feel very small and insignificant, but it also makes me totally okay with that.

Tracks I never tire of: ‘High Roller’

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High Roller’ by The Crystal Method, from the album Vegas (1997)

I was tempted to select ‘Vapor Trail’ from Vegas, The Crystal Method’s debut album, as the first track to write about in this continuing series. Both are excellent examples of meticulously orchestrated electronic music, but ‘High Roller’ gets the nod because it’s a little bit more innovative.

If you know the album but not the track names, this is the one which has “This transmission’s coming to you / We’ve got it” running all the way through. The track opens with straightforward pumping synth which slowly becomes more complex as the samples are laid over the top. After about a minute, the thumping bigbeat comes in, and more synth elements are gradually added.

Kirkland and Jordan understand, however, that simply adding elements can make a track work okay, but to make it really interesting, you’ve got to strip some of those elements away in turn. So, the track ends up as about four minutes of all these different keyboard, drum and other percussion elements, along with the distinctive samples, being cut in and out at various intervals in a way that flows beautifully and demands attention.

I was reading just now and this track came on, and I had to stop and listen (and write about it). I seem to read a lot of unimpressed reviews of electronic music which complain that ‘you couldn’t dance to it’. In this case, and most of the others, it isn’t supposed to be about dancing. Best appreciated through headphones, this is a challenging, professional bit of work. And the beat sure kicks arse.

2006: Music

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Similar to last year, here are 13 new albums I listened to this year, in order of most appreciated to least appreciated. I am laughably inept at this sort of writing, but I’m putting it down in the hope that someone will listen to something new because of it. If you prefer, just scan down the list.

1. Night Ripper – Girl Talk
Mashups are becoming more and more popular, and Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) might just be the man to bring them into the mainstream. I heard that he’d made an album containing samples from hundreds of different songs from the 60s to the 00s, but I got it more as a curio than anything else. The mashups I’ve heard in the past have occasionally been worth repeat listens, usually drab (though clever) after you’ve played it once. Night Ripper is a lot more than clever, though. It flows seamlessly from one sample into the next for over 40 minutes, layering them on top of each other, slowing them down, chopping them up, and sometimes using two or three conjunction to create some sort of delicious irony. In my head, all the samples contained within will forever be associated with this record, even the ones that I knew and loved before hearing it for the first time. It’s fresh, it’s now, it’s great.
Favourite track: 03 – Hold Up. It isn’t right to play favourites with an album that continuously segues (and that I can only listen to all the way through), but if there’s one track that best demonstrates Gillis’ ability to throw seemingly disparate sounds together and make them sound like they should have been heard that way before, it’s this one.

2. Return to Cookie Mountain – TV on the Radio
Into my African-American section now, and first up are the Brooklyn rockers TV on the Radio. This is somewhat less experimental than their excellent debut Desperate Youth / Bloodthirsty Babes, but it is a better record because of its more focused sound. While there’s nothing as spectacular and unusual as that earlier album’s Staring at the Sun, there’s still plenty of messing around. There’s nobody else that sounds like these guys, truly; combine that with lyrics as poetic as anything creeping its way into the mainstream, and you’ve got pretty much my favourite musical group of the moment.
Favourite track: 02 – Hours. The shortest and most straight-ahead track on the album – I love it because it provides the best vehicle for Tunde Adebimpe’s incredible voice and songwriting ability.

3. St. Elsewhere – Gnarls Barkley
DJ Danger Mouse topped my list last year by producing Gorillaz’ Demon Days, and he came very close to doing the same again in 2006 with this effort. Another I have to listen to from start to finish, DM and Cee-Lo Green’s first collaboration doesn’t really sound like rap, or rock, or pop. Yeah, I like things that are different and defy categorization (which is mostly fruitless with music anyway). Crazy was the song of the year and possibly decade, something so odd yet soothing as to captivate me whenever and wherever I hear it. If anything’s wrong, the album is very short at just over 37 minutes.
Favourite track: 02 – Crazy. Definitive.

4. Food & Liquor – Lupe Fiasco
Setting aside the absurdly self-indulgent namedrop-fests that are Intro and Outro (‘outroduction’ isn’t in the dictionary anyway, rappers take note), Lupe Fiasco’s debut was what Kanye West fans such as myself turned to this year to provide them with their hip-hop brilliance. Every track is catchy and innovative from the first listen, and lyrically he’s almost as smart as West, rapping about subjects more of us can relate to – particularly on the Kick, Push tracks. There’s no clear theme that runs through it all, but pretty much every track from 02 to 15 has wizardry of some kind.
Favourite track: 15 – Kick, Push II. Came a long way from dirty ghetto kids, yeah.

5. The Warning – Hot Chip
NME named Over and Over as the track of the year, and I’ve to agree it’s not far off. I was enamoured with it immediately, being as it was the most catchy song I heard all year, but it took me a while to warm up to the rest of it; once I did, I discovered something I liked very much. They’re a pop/electro mixture that is unusual yet strangely relaxing to the ear – often seemingly unstructured, but always knowing where they’re going. I have since obtained their first album, 2005’s Coming On Strong, which is of similar (though less daring) quality.
Favourite track: 11 – No Fit State. The darkest and most introspective on the album, with a driving beat/synth mix that you can’t shake from your head, and lyrics that will either delight or frustrate (in my case, the former).

6. Peeping Tom – Peeping Tom
Whether or not you’re a fan of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, numerous other projects) shouldn’t matter in this case. It’s pop music as he’d like it to be, and it has a dirty, grimy feel that appeals to me very much. Each track is a collaboration between Patton, with his unmistakeable glam metal voice and unique musical innovations, and a different well-known musician or group, ranging from Amon Tobin to Massive Attack to Norah Jones. Despite that, it’s consistent all the way through, and there’s no real dead weight.
Favourite track: 11 – We’re Not Alone (Remix) feat. Dub Trio). I love a good closer, and this is a very good one – it stands alone just fine, but gives extra coming at the end of all the other tracks.

7. Taiga – OOIOO
Definitely the oddest thing I branched out to this year, this is the fifth album from Yoshimi P-We (subject of The Flaming Lips’ most well-known album) and her fellow female experimental punk rockers. I gave it repeat listens solely on the strength of the opening track, UMA, which had the most kick-arse drumming of any song I heard this year; as I got to know the rest of it better, it began to resemble something more interesting than a rack of confused sound. I wouldn’t say I love it, but I certainly enjoy and admire it a lot more than I expected to.
Favourite track: 01 – UMA. More than anything else this year, I’d love to see this performed live.

8. Confessions on a Dance Floor – Madonna
Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Lyrically she’s worse than ever (“I don’t like cities, but I like New York / Other places make me feel like a dork”), but das Queen of Pop reinvents herself better than anyone else. I never thought she’d do anything better than 1998’s Ray of Light, but she topped it pretty comfortably with this no-mucking-about dancehall extravaganza. It flows better than anything else this year except Night Ripper, and whoever she’s got producing now really knows how to churn out a good synth hook.
Favourite track: 02 – Get Together. Chosen as the third single; I particularly love the way it segues out from Hung Up, into this, then into Sorry.

9. Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound
This was my introduction to Brazilian music, and it’s great. Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil and Caetono Veloso are now names that will always prick up my ears when heard. I don’t think it’s cheating to put a compilation on here, especially when everything on it is good and quite alike-sounding.
Favourite track: 05 – Alfomega – Caetano Veloso. Supposedly the man is reviled by some in Brazil for his general pretentiousness, but he makes interesting music, so he gets a pass from me.

10. Scale – Herbert
Politically charged electronic music from the man who, from his lofty perch, looks down on anyone who uses non-original samples. He doesn’t fit well on a list that has Girl Talk sat at the top, but he’s always done pretty good stuff, and there are some very interesting tracks here. Unfortunately, there’s an equal amount of filler; he doesn’t seem imaginative enough to produce consistently intriguing music. Definitely worth a look for the standouts, though.
Favourite track: 01 – Something Isn’t Right. Extremely catchy, and vocally superior, anti-war / anti-Bush / anti-Blair / anti-establishment track – one of the best on any album on this list.

11. Black Holes & Revelations – Muse
Everybody’s favourite hilariously overblown rockers (or, as Ed would say, metallers in popular disguise) returned with another ‘more-is-more’ effort this year. I like Muse a lot, but I’m not getting behind any of the critical acclaim for this album, and certainly not for the much-vaunted second single Supermassive Black Hole. There are some very good tracks, as always, but as a whole it’s a pale imitation of Absolution or Origin of Symmetry, and a little way off the quality of their debut Showbiz. Matthew Bellamy remains, however, one of the most talented musicians working today – he is Muse.
Favourite track: 02 – Starlight. For a change, they toned their WORLD IS ENDING shtick down a bit here, and it worked wonderfully.

12. Half These Songs Are About You – Nizlopi
I listened to this on the back of the delightful JCB Song and its great video; the rest of the album is mostly not up to much, except for a couple of very good tracks. This is the sort of music I thought could be very, very successful, that inspired-by-Coldplay brand of wailing and gentle orchestration that everybody seems to love. Nizlopi haven’t hit it big yet, but they may yet do so; if they do, I will applaud respectfully, but with reservations. One thing the singer does extremely well is use swear words: sparingly, startlingly, in a way that makes you sit up and pay attention.
Favourite track: 08 – Freedom. A good song for feeling unhappy to; actually, just a good song.

13. The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living – The Streets
After two masterpiece albums about generally being an average yob, Mike Skinner turned to his now massive fame and fortune and tried to make it funny and interesting to us, his adoring listeners. Bzzt! No good, mate. It isn’t that his rhymes and flow have dried up; the stuff just isn’t nearly as inherently interesting, and it’s barely half as clever as what he’s put out before. On top of that, the hooks and beats are much more dull. File under ‘disappointment of the year’, apart from a couple of lights in the gloom. Hopefully he makes amends next time by returning to what he knows best.
Favourite track: 01 – Pranging Out. Falsely heralds the album as being as excellent as its predecessors, but the poorness of what follows shouldn’t distract from the fact that this is one fine track.

That’s it. Artists/groups that I discovered for the first time this year, but who did not release albums in the same year, included NoMeansNo, Modest Mouse, The Bravery, The Wrens, Benjamin Diamond, Masters of Reality, Hüsker Dü… and モーニング娘。Don’t laugh at me; I was once like you.

2005: Music

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My review of the year 2005 will begin with Music. Here I will list the new albums that I listened to this year more than a couple of times, in descending order of admiration. Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to talk about music, as you’ll see.

1. Demon Days – Gorillaz
It’s close, but I’m going with Demon Days for my favourite album of the year. I probably listened to it more times than anything else, and I’m listening to it right now, so I suppose it’s appropriate. I wasn’t excited when it came out; the self-titled first one had a few good tracks, but the four-year interval killed off any remaining hope for a better follow-up. Eventually, I got around to listening to it, and on about the fourth time I suddenly loved it. It’s like nothing else released this year. I can only listen to the whole thing right the way through, because it is a genuinely great album, not just a collection of work compiled together; every track works on its own but works better in the context of the others around it. Give it a go, even if you’re sceptical.
Favourite track: 15 – Demon Days

2. ’64 – ’95 – Lemon Jelly
Paul Deakin and Nick Franglen’s third album is their best yet, after the considerable quality of lemonjelly.ky and Lost Horizons. “This is our new album. It’s not like our old album” proclaimed the cover, which proved to be very accurate: ’64 – ’95 adds a bit of darkness to their patented pleasantry, signalling that they’re not just a chillout duo any more. Another album that I have to listen to all at once, as each track segues wonderfully into the next and worms its way into your head for days. They are sampling wizards, even using a bit of John Rowles; it’s good music for any situation, with several excellent tracks.
Favourite track: 02 – Come Down On Me

3. Late Registration – Kanye West
I don’t care if you don’t like hip hop; this is a great album. Thanks to Richie for alerting me to its brilliance. I call it hip hop, but it’s hard to label (categorising music is difficult and pointless, anyway). It frequently reminds me of Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below, which is to say it’s in the same class: it’s catchy, profound but not preachy, musically intriguing. Several tracks stand out, and the interludes – especially Bernie Mac’s introduction – are amusing. Next, I shall get a hold of his debut College Dropout, which many say is even better. Hard to believe, I tell ya.
Favourite track: 19 – Gone

4. Come On! Feel the Illinoise! – Sufjan Stevens
A five-star review in the Herald put me onto this, and after two listens, I was hooked. He’s incredibly audacious and pretentious, this young man, seeing fit to give tracks ridiculous names like ‘A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in which Sufjan Stevens has an Existential Crisis in the Godfrey Maze’ and singing in a typically anguished ‘indie-wail’. But, it’s actually pretty good – very good, even. He’s on a mission to educate all of us about each of the 50 United States, and does a pretty good job on Illinois here – reaching for a deeper truth while contemplating such things as John Wayne Gacy’s killings and the Sears Tower. The whole album is wonderfully arranged and flows nicely, with Stevens himself playing almost all the instruments, and includes a nod to The Cure (naturally). Do try it.
Favourite track: 12 – The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

5. Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll – Art Brut
“Formed a band, we’ve formed a band. Look at us! We’ve formed a band!” So opens the most enjoyable album of the year. If The Streets were a punk rock band, this is what they’d sound like. It’s proper British punk rock too, irreverent but not inane, tapping into the everyday lives of young people everywhere. Rua told me about these guys, appropriately through the song My Little Brother, so cheers Rua. Just listen to it, and songwriters take note: you can reach a great many deeper truths by keeping it simple. Metaphors need not be complex – just write and sing sincerely.
Favourite track: 04 – Rusted Guns of Milan

6. The Fanatics – The Fanatics
Not actually an album, but a 7-track EP – still, this was the best NZ offering this year. The hype is not enough for this duo from Auckland: they have a unique sound, what they call ‘electro-rock’, which harks back to the 80s but also contains elements of the Future… sounds a bit like Fischerspooner, but with no pretence. They’re currently working on an album, which I am as excited about as I have ever been about a forthcoming music release.
Favourite track: 02 – Dead

7. Odyssey – Fischerspooner
Gay couple Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner were performance artists (gag, spit) who decided that the music they wrote for shows was far more interesting than the performances, so they turned their attention full-time to making music. Their first album, #1, was inconsistent with a few outstanding tracks (Sweetness, Emerge to name two); thankfully, Odyssey is an improvement, feeling more like a real album rather than a collection of tracks just thrown together onto a CD. Their sound is pretty much unique and at the forefront of what we call synthtron, or electroclash (man, music genres are ridiculous). Spooner’s lyrics are a bit dodgy, but Fischer’s sound carries it through; plenty of good tracks on here, so if you heard Emerge in a club and liked it, you’ll probably like Odyssey.
Favourite track: 08 – Happy

8. Funeral – Arcade Fire
I like singers who wail in falsetto, so I was always going to like Arcade Fire. Win Butler wails with the best of them, and sings about reasonably interesting things; as always with me, though, it’s the instruments that draw me in. Alternating between strong & driving and a sort of dreamy low-keyness, this album is great right up until the last track, which is a terrific anti-climax. Pity. Still, I enjoy it very much, and it contains maybe my favourite rock song of the year.
Favourite track: 09 – Rebellion (Lies)

9. The Sound Inside – Breaks Co-op
The other NZ album I bought this year, and it’s really bloody good. I was in Real Groovy browsing for about an hour, and found myself listening to and very much enjoying what they were playing over the PA. Turns out it was these guys, so I came back the next day and bought it. I bought it in July, and it’s a perfect summer album, so of course I haven’t come to appreciate it so much until now. It is a departure from their earlier stuff, largely because of the addition of a new band member, but it is (in my opinion) an improvement. Very much easy-listening chillout music, but… you know… good.
Favourite track: 05 – Last Night

10. Human After All – Daft Punk
Homework was essential, Discovery was a delightful reinvention, and after four years of waiting for another one we get… this? That was my initial response to Human After All – they produced this in a couple of weeks, surely? It felt like complete rubbish, derivative of everything else they and several other French house groups have done. A couple of tracks stood out, but overall it was just a big mess. But then I looked again at the title, and at all the track names, and I realised that they were in fact taking the piss. Out of us, out of what we’ve become. In the end, it’s clever, but a fascinating waste of time is still a waste of time. I don’t dislike the album, but I feel they would’ve been better off taking another six months to create something with the innovation of either of their first two. At any rate, the final track is one of my favourites of the year – it’s a blindingly obvious six and a half minutes, but as I said earlier, simplicity can often bring about a stronger and deeper reaction in the listener.
Favourite track: 10 – Emotion

11. Get Behind Me Satan – The White Stripes
More of the same from Jack and Meg, but if it’s a same you like, then great – fortunately, I do like it. Nowhere near the greatness of Elephant or the near-perfection of White Blood Cells, this is still a good offering; there are a few experiments here and there, but mostly they’re just doing what they’ve always done. Kind of feels like they phoned it in a bit. As I say, good regardless.
Favourite track: 02 – The Nurse

12. Nympho – Armand Van Helden
Easily the biggest disappointment of the year. 2 Future 4 U and Killing Puritans are two albums I own and very much enjoy, but what the hell happened here? This is lazy, sloppy work from a guy I thought was at the forefront of the DJ scene. There are some very good club tracks – Into Your Eyes, My My My – but where are the nine-minute epics of previous outings? Perhaps I didn’t give this one a fair go, but it seemed to me that his trademark repetitiveness was different this time: he was repeating boring beats and hooks, not interesting ones. Shame.
Favourite track: 03 – Into Your Eyes

So, only one new album a month on average. It goes to show that most of the music I listen to is from previous years. For the record, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips and Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes by TV on the Radio were my most-listened-to non-2005 albums this year. Both are phenomenally great, totally unique albums that you should track down and listen to as soon as you can.