2004 - Modest Mouse/Good News for People Who Love Bad News
In junior or senior year of high school, my [music] partner in crime gave me Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antarctica album. For the life of me I could not get into it/feel it. The only song I had the patience for was “Life Like Weeds.” (As of late I am now a fan of Weeds and 'Tiny City Made of Ashes' shows you how big of a fan I am of their old stuff. Go ahead and say it indie snobs. I know what you are thinking.)At the time, I “knew” indie music, but I did not know it. Moon was just too pretentious and indie for me. (In other words, too anti-mainstream. Forgive me, I was in high school.) So now it’s 2004 and my roommate gives me a burned copy of Good News, an album I finally took the time to listen to completely after the spring semester ended. I was not expecting anything major from Issac and Co. because of my high school experience. Boy was I ignorant; this album kicks ass and is irrefutable proof that good things can indeed come when a band is left entirely to its own creative devices. Sure Modest is on a major label and got some extra dough for the job, but creativity and ambition trumps any amount of money Epic may throw their way. “Float On” may have ruled the airwaves, but this album—steeped heavily in the theme of death and solitude—is less commercial than “Float On” may lead you to believe. Consider the raging horns of “This Devil's Workday which, like “Dance Hall” and “Bukowski” is a fine Tom Waits impression steeped in his trademark hazy bar room soundscapes. And you can’t ignore the hushed melodies of “Blame It On the Tetons” and “The World At Large.” With these songs (and the rest on the album), Modest Mouse isn’t begging for attention; it's coming to them all on its own, and rightly so.
KEY TRACKS: Bukowski, The View, The World At Large
2005 - The Boy Least Likely To/The Best Party Ever
After listening to this album from start to finish you almost have the urge to recite the album title with hunched shoulders, palms facing upward, looking slightly confused as if a question mark sits behind the word ever. Best. Party. Ever? That’s a damn good question when the songs that encompass this disc by the english duo Joj Owen and Pete Hobbs deal with child like grown up fears of growing old, growing up,[the toe tapping country breeze of ‘Fur Soft As Fur’]towns full of monsters,[the rhythmic and vocal urgency of ‘Monsters’] and seeing spiders when one closes his eyes. [‘I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes’ a guitar strummed diddy for those with OCD] Seeking comfort from the horrors, the duo comes to us for solace, hitching their apple wagons to our stars, and asking us to be gentle with them, all while keeping an eye out for any unsuspecting terror, which may explain why they choose to sleep with guns up under their pillow. Yes it is all very child like indeed and both the lyrics and musical pallette they work with [synths, strings, harmonicas, guitars, tambourines, sweet follow the bouncing ball harmonies, and the like] give off a fluffy children’s book/cd vibe, but the duo is getting at something more. Comfort is the best medicine and with all that is bad out there lurking in the shadows, it’s nice to find that person, place, or thing that makes you feel safe. It’s a sentiment echoed by Jof near the middle of the album on the melancholy ‘Battle of the Boy Least Likely To’ when all he seeks is to get the one he loves alone and next to him. This girl quietly saves him again and again and that, for him, is truly the best thing ever.
KEY TRACKS: Be Gentle With Me, I’m Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star, Sleeping With A Gun Under My Pillow
2006 - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins/Rabbit Furcoat
Post Thanksgiving 2005 I got my hands on a little disc by a former child star and two soulful back up singing twins. I was all sorts of excited because I had just climbed aboard the Rilo Kiley train and couldn't get enough of More Adventurous. For a while I could only bring myself to play Rabbit Furcoat the track over and over again. For me it was a delicious piece of songwriting and storytelling, that placed Lewis front and center with her childhood and her music, and I couldn't get enough. But eventually I took my finger off the repeat button and once I did, within my hands I found my very own Dusty in Memphis. Many people aren't making records like this anymore, and with one listen to this you'll be wondering why. From the opening twang of the gospel like hymn, Run Devil Run, right on down to the conversation with her spirituality on the gorgeously haunting Born Secular, Lewis and the Twins produce an immaculately crafted album centered in reality with a low tolerance for bullshit. The alt country soundscapes, the arresting vocals, the weight of those lyrics; white soul rarely sounds this good. Many albums came and went in 2006, but few stuck with me like Rabbit Furcoat did.
KEY TRACKS: Big Guns/You Are What You Love/Born Secular
2007 - Of Montreal/Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destoyer?
He spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway. Stuck in this crisis, he relied heavily on the drinks and the chemicals, asking them to shift his mood back back to good again, before fatigue set in, leaving him to sleep away another day. At the moment, sleep evaded him, so he buried his head in a book, over-thinking, trying to restructure his character. And when that didn't work he lied awake at night praying to a God no one else had heard of, waiting for some high times to come again. And come they did, once he plugged in his guitar, fiddled with the knobs, dubbed some vocals, and let his words jump from the page to the stage. What came next was this, the intimate avant garde ruminations of the one they call Kevin Barnes and his traveling wilburys, known to you and me as Of Montreal. Now if you were paying attention this year, then you would have noticed that 2007 was all about the little bands that could breaking out into the spotlight, crafting music far more astonishing and fine tuned than that of their chart topping "veteran" counterparts. Of Montreal is one such act. You'll be hard pressed to find another post-modern rock album that is damn near perfect from track one onwards; An album that is tight and focused, yet ready to fall apart at the seams at any moment, sometimes within the span of one track. [Check She's A Rejector]. The emotional clarity Barnes and Co. sought leading up to and throughout the duration of this album's creation is mirrored in the words, the rise and fall of a track's backing beat [see the bridge of Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, in which the beat drops slightly evolving into the sound of grinding gears, or the musical depiction of a migraine as Barnes' inner monologue repeats aloud "I'm in a crisis. I need help. Come on mood shift, shift back to good again. Come on mood shift, shift back to good again. Come on, be a friend!"]. The vocal dubs, the layered harmonies, the tonal shifts, and radical sonic experimentations should all be oh so overwhelming, but here's the thing: they're not. These songs and compositions just emote til they're dead, keeping it physical, cerebral, and most importantly, relatable all at the same time. Hissing Fauna, you are NOT the destroyer.
KEY TRACKS: Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse/A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger/The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
2008 - Erykah Badu/New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
I speak on it cause it needs to be said.
I speak on it cause it needs to be heard.
-Cause our work is never over-
And a beautiful world is what I am trying to find.
I speak on it cause that’s just me,
trying to make it over that hump and succumb to that twinkle in my eye I overlook.
"It’s bigger than my nigga,
it’s bigger than religion."
And that is why I speak on it. That is why we speak on it;
That is why she speaks on it,
Ms. Badu,
with her
New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War.
This album is a revelation. A straight up start to finish, top notch LP drenched in reality, drenched in soul. From the opener Amerykahn Promise -a Blaxpoitation Grindhouse theater trailer without the visuals -right on down to the bonus track [that's right bonus track] and "safe" first single Honey, Badu opens her mouth, raises a fist, and tells it like it is, in whatever way she deems fit. [Stick around for the end of Me. Some might find the vocal play weird and out of control, but I think it's clever, nicely unexpected and inspired.] It’s an ambitious, soul stirring effort, music for fans of good music, soul music; you know, that real good shit. You ain't gotta be a fan of just soul, hip-hop, and/or R&B to buy what's she's selling, trust me. It’s bigger than "my nigga", this one is the healer.
KEY TRACKS: The Healer(Hip-Hop)/Soldier/That Hump
2009 - The Dream/Love vs. Money
“Call the radio RIGHT NOW!” That nigga Dream done put it down AGAIN!” Yes he “done put it DOWN AGAIN!” R&B’s smooth operator/hopeless romantic/loverboy extraordinaire Terius “The Dream” Nash has done it again, crafting yet another solid and consistently engaging set of jams that grabs a hold of your senses and never lets go. Cupid ain’t got shit on he. See a lot of these Modern R&B cats in the game, “be poppin’ that bullshit”, taking heed to trends, revelin’ in the generics, and working within the confines of what the genre has given them without looking forward or giving more. In The Dream’s hands, many of R&B’s tricks of the trade, humor, sex appeal, confidence, and the ability to connect with one’s audience on a personal/relatable level, are magnified, heightened by the creativity of the words that flow through his pen and that constant push, drive, and need to innovate the game/innovate the genre and take it to a whole other level sonically like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis before him with Janet Jack’s Control or Timbaland with Ginuwine’s The Bachelor and Aaliyah’s One in A Million. Each track, written, produced, and arranged by The Dream and C. Tricky Stewart, bleeds into each other, giving the album a steady and consistent flow, riddled in, as mentioned before, sterling production made up of dazzling rhythms, varying tempos, humor to the nines, and clever wordplay that would make R. Kelly (he whose presence is felt throughout this LP) proud. The game may be littered with cats all vying for your attention and/or goodies, but they ain’t got shit on The Dream, the “Radio Killa”, “R&B Gorilla”.
KEY TRACKS: Rockin’ that Shit/Sweat it Out/Fancy
THE END.
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