Thursday, January 07, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Groove Me.
Movement. For the People.
Words.
"Every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- has raised the hope that he would bring with him a new era of progressive reform. The legislative torrents of the New Deal and the Great Society -- a few brief years in the 1930s and the '60s that fundamentally reshaped the nation's economy and society -- are the templates that fire the liberal imagination.
Two great liberal historians -- the Arthur Schlesingers, senior and junior -- posited a cyclical theory of American political history, in which periods of progressive advance alternate with times of conservative reaction once every generation. And even when liberals have discounted this theory as too mechanistic, their hearts, if not their heads, have responded to the election of every Democratic president since LBJ -- each of whom entered office with a substantial Democratic majority in Congress -- with the hope that this time would be different, that a new burst of progressivism was at hand.
And each time, they have been disappointed. While Carter and Clinton could both point to progressive legislation enacted during their terms, many of their most significant achievements -- the deregulation of transportation, the consolidation and deregulation of finance, the abolition of welfare, the enactment of trade agreements with low-wage nations -- actually eroded the economic security that Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson and their congressional contemporaries had worked to hard to create.
Unlike Carter and Clinton, however, Obama took office at a moment when the intellectual force of laissez-faire economics was plainly spent. His reform agenda was nothing if not ambitious: health care for all, financial re-regulation, climate-change legislation and a Keynesian stimulus to revive a wounded economy. But as the first anniversary of his inauguration approaches, it's clear that despite the impending enactment of a genuinely epochal expansion of health care, a progressive era has not burst forth. Major legislation languishes or is watered down. Right-wing pseudo-populism stalks the land. The liberal base is demobilized. The '30s or the '60s it ain't.
...In America, major liberal reforms require not just liberal governments, but autonomous, vibrant mass movements, usually led by activists who stand at or beyond liberalism's left fringe. No such movements were around during Carter and Clinton's presidencies. For his part, Obama won election with something new under the political sun: a list of 13 million people who had supported his campaign. But he has consistently declined to activate his activists to help him win legislative battles by pressuring, for instance, those Democratic members of Congress who have weakened or blocked his major bills. To be sure, loosing the activists would have brought problems of its own: Unlike Roosevelt or Johnson, who benefited from autonomous movements, Obama would be answerable for every loopy tactic his followers employed. But in the absence of both a free-standing movement and a legion of loyalists, Congress isn't feeling much pressure from the left to move Obama's agenda.
The construction of social movements is always a bit of a mystery. The right has had great success over the past year in building a movement that isn't really for anything but that has channeled anew the fears and loathings of millions of Americans. If Glenn Beck can help do that for the right, can't, say, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann help build a movement against the banks or for jobs programs? It might well be too little too late, but without left pressure from below, the Obama presidency will end up looking more like Carter's or Clinton's than Roosevelt's or Johnson's."
Draggin' the Line.
Words. For Your Consideration...
"WHY are we reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights instead of taking him somewhere and forcibly finding out where he got the explosive underwear and whatever else he might know about Al Qaeda? Isn’t this, as well as the forthcoming federal court trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, proof that the Obama administration doesn’t really regard the war on terrorism as a war?
Even worse, isn’t President Obama, despite his statements on terrorism over the weekend, confused and amateurish on this deadly serious issue? At his direction, thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are doing their best to kill terrorists, would-be terrorists and terrorists in training with no thought whatsoever to the legal niceties. Why do these two scoundrels deserve lawyers and a trial?
Republican critics like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich have raised these questions in the past few days. There’s a gruesome anomaly here, to be sure: the United States government will blow you to smithereens and consider it a good day’s work if you’re a Qaeda member dreaming of jihadist glory while residing somewhere outside the United States, but will pay for your lawyer if you get caught in the act within our borders. But this anomaly didn’t arise with the Obama administration. It is built into our dual role as a liberal democracy and as a legitimately aggrieved superpower.
The charms of liberal democracy sometimes need to be defended by war, and Mr. Obama’s critics are right that war can’t be conducted with a high level of concern for individual justice. A liberal democracy aspires to punish only the guilty. But war is inherently unfair — it distributes suffering arbitrarily among enemy combatants, civilians and one’s own soldiers. A line has to be drawn somewhere to determine which of these utterly different standards of government behavior is applied where — and the nation’s border is as good a line as any.
...American justice is not a “get out of jail free” card. Obviously guilty murderers rarely escape punishment here. We have nothing to be ashamed of, little to fear and much to be proud of in choosing to err on the side of treating captured foreign terrorists as we would treat any upstanding American who tried to blow up an airplane full of people."
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
"You Rocked My World, You Know You Did!"
I’m lazy. I want to do a listing of my favorite albums of the past decade, but that takes too much time, work, and effort that a brotha is just not willing to put in right now. So instead, I’m gonna take a look back at the special albums that rocked my world each year from 2004 –2009 aka the years in which I started ranking and counting down my favorite CDs of the year. So, let’s take a look back, shall we?
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.
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.
Money for Nothing?
A Moment of Clarity.
Come see about we.
Words.
"All of you frequent fliers out there, you know the drill. Take off your shoes, because of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber." Remove your hair gel from your backpack because of the bombers who targeted Heathrow using liquid hydrogen peroxide. When you get on a plane, you must also, from now on, be prepared to remove any blankets from your lap before landing -- too bad if you're asleep! -- because of the Christmas Day underwear bomber.
When someone invents a way to hide explosive powder inside a toothbrush case, prepare to remove your toothbrush. And while you're at it, throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder as you board the plane. But never, at any moment, imagine that the rigamarole of airport security is guaranteed to make you safer -- for no one knows which of these measures, if any, is actually necessary.
Worse, no one has any financial or political incentive to find out. The fact is, since the hurried and heavily politicized creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration, neither their priorities nor their spending patterns has been subject to serious scrutiny. They have never been forced to make hard choices. On the contrary, both have been encouraged by their congressional funders to spend money in reaction to every perceived new threat, real or otherwise: Thus full-body scanners, unacceptable as recently as last summer, will now be rushed into use. In just a few years -- under a Republican administration and mostly Republican Congresses -- these institutions thus grew into vast, unruly bureaucracies, some of whose activities bear only a distant relationship to public safety.
...Having started with 13 employees in January 2002, the TSA now employs 60,000, and in the process of its expansion the organization found it had money for all kinds of extras. As I wrote in 2005, some $350,000 of its $6 billion budget once was spent on a gym; $500,000 was spent on artwork and silk plants, and untold millions are annually spent in overhiring, since determining when there will be long security lines at an airport has never been the sort of thing at which the federal government excels.
As for the DHS, its 2010 budget came in at $55 billion, some of which (according to the economist Veronique de Rugy, writing in 2006) will invariably be spent on things like the $63,000 decontamination unit in rural Washington, where no one was trained to use it, more biochemical suits for Grand Forks, Nev., than the town has police officers to wear them and $557,400 worth of rescue and communications equipment for some 1,500 residents of the town of North Pole, Alaska. Not to mention what is spent on the "needs" of the constituents of other important members of Congress.
...Imagine if the TSA's vast budget were dedicated to the creation of a cutting-edge computer network that could have made security officers in Amsterdam instantly aware of the warning from the Detroit bombing suspect's father. Imagine that, instead of relying on full-body X-ray scanners or long-haul flight-blanket deprivation, we had highly paid and trained consular officers in places such as Nigeria. Even then security would not be perfect (and I'm not sure that airborne terrorism is even the worst thing we have to worry about). But it would make sense to have a smaller, less expensive and less wasteful system. It would make sense to have a system based on real risks and priorities, instead of the stories featured on cable news. It would make sense to fight the next battle, for once, instead of the last one. "Sense," though, is not the criterion by which public money is spent in this country -- and hasn't been for a long time."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Still throwing money at doubtful tools for airport security
Come see about we.
Words.
"All of you frequent fliers out there, you know the drill. Take off your shoes, because of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber." Remove your hair gel from your backpack because of the bombers who targeted Heathrow using liquid hydrogen peroxide. When you get on a plane, you must also, from now on, be prepared to remove any blankets from your lap before landing -- too bad if you're asleep! -- because of the Christmas Day underwear bomber.
When someone invents a way to hide explosive powder inside a toothbrush case, prepare to remove your toothbrush. And while you're at it, throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder as you board the plane. But never, at any moment, imagine that the rigamarole of airport security is guaranteed to make you safer -- for no one knows which of these measures, if any, is actually necessary.
Worse, no one has any financial or political incentive to find out. The fact is, since the hurried and heavily politicized creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration, neither their priorities nor their spending patterns has been subject to serious scrutiny. They have never been forced to make hard choices. On the contrary, both have been encouraged by their congressional funders to spend money in reaction to every perceived new threat, real or otherwise: Thus full-body scanners, unacceptable as recently as last summer, will now be rushed into use. In just a few years -- under a Republican administration and mostly Republican Congresses -- these institutions thus grew into vast, unruly bureaucracies, some of whose activities bear only a distant relationship to public safety.
...Having started with 13 employees in January 2002, the TSA now employs 60,000, and in the process of its expansion the organization found it had money for all kinds of extras. As I wrote in 2005, some $350,000 of its $6 billion budget once was spent on a gym; $500,000 was spent on artwork and silk plants, and untold millions are annually spent in overhiring, since determining when there will be long security lines at an airport has never been the sort of thing at which the federal government excels.
As for the DHS, its 2010 budget came in at $55 billion, some of which (according to the economist Veronique de Rugy, writing in 2006) will invariably be spent on things like the $63,000 decontamination unit in rural Washington, where no one was trained to use it, more biochemical suits for Grand Forks, Nev., than the town has police officers to wear them and $557,400 worth of rescue and communications equipment for some 1,500 residents of the town of North Pole, Alaska. Not to mention what is spent on the "needs" of the constituents of other important members of Congress.
...Imagine if the TSA's vast budget were dedicated to the creation of a cutting-edge computer network that could have made security officers in Amsterdam instantly aware of the warning from the Detroit bombing suspect's father. Imagine that, instead of relying on full-body X-ray scanners or long-haul flight-blanket deprivation, we had highly paid and trained consular officers in places such as Nigeria. Even then security would not be perfect (and I'm not sure that airborne terrorism is even the worst thing we have to worry about). But it would make sense to have a smaller, less expensive and less wasteful system. It would make sense to have a system based on real risks and priorities, instead of the stories featured on cable news. It would make sense to fight the next battle, for once, instead of the last one. "Sense," though, is not the criterion by which public money is spent in this country -- and hasn't been for a long time."
Monday, January 04, 2010
Love & Happiness.
The Albums: 2009.
Radio Killa.
1/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
2/Dirty Projectors/Bitte Orca
3/YACHT/See Mystery Lights
4/Black Lips/200 Million Thousand
5/Bat for Lashes/Two Suns
6/Passion Pit/Manners
7/Ryan Leslie/Ryan Leslie
8/Amerie/In Love & War
9/Mos Def/The Ecstatic
10/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/It's Blitz!
11/The Flaming Lips/Embryonic
12/Phoenix/Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
13/Artic Monkeys/Humbug
14/Wale/Attention Deficit
15/Devendra Banhart/What Will Be
16/Grizzly Bear/Veckatimest
17/Chester French/Love the Future
18/Jay-Z/The Blueprint 3
19/Discovery/LP
20/Mariah Carey/Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel
21/Franz Ferdinand/Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
22/Peter Bjorn And John/Living Thing
23/Peaches/I Feel Cream
24/Karen O and The Kids/Where the Wild Things Are Motion Picture Soundtrack
25/Tegan and Sara/Sainthood
Radio Killa.
1/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
Top of the Pops.
The Singles: 2009.
1/Animal Collective/My Girls
2009, Man…Right? Trying times, man. Trying times. Economic meltdowns, unemployment, domestic warfare, international warfare, hope, change, a promise of a new day…It was enough to make a brotha, a sistah, mother/father/grandparent/four guys in a band, go crazy. What to do? What comes next? Where do I stand? I (WE!) don’t know. With My Girls, Animal Collective keep both feet firmly planted in the present, aware, afraid, and hopeful like the rest of us wading through the waters of emotional and domestic uncertainty. And like many of us “trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents”, all they ask, all they WANT, is to have those feet planted on solid ground; that theirs and them will be taken care of; that all will be alright. “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status. I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my Girls!” goes the hook. It’s a message of hope and a message of NEED sung out of love. And when coupled with the booming samples, sythns, and 808s of a beat that is present here, the track becomes damn near universal and transcendent. Shout hallelujah, clap hands, raise the roof, stomp your feet. The build of the beat calls for it. The much needed and universally sought after goal of domestic bliss and the comforting security of four walls, and adobe slabs spoken of in the lyrics calls for it. And most of all, that solid soul and blood you bleed calls for it. Hope. Believe. And you might be taken higher.
2/The Presets/If I Know You
3/Bat for Lashes/Daniel
4/Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson/Paranoid
5/Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain/Blame It
6/Drake/Best I Ever Had
7/Phoenix/Lisztomania
8/Grizzly Bear/Two Weeks
9/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Zero AND Heads Will Roll
10/Lily Allen/Fuck You
11/The Knux/Fire (Put it in the Air!)
12/Chrisette Michele/Epiphany
13/Kid Cudi feat. Kanye West and Common/Make Her Say
14/Lady Gaga/Bad Romance AND Shakira/She Wolf
15/Peter Bjorn and John/It Don't Move Me AND Chromeo/Night by Night
16/Amerie/Why R U
17/Mos Def/Casa Bey
18/Teairra Mari feat. Pleasure P/Hunt For You
19/Wale feat. Lady Gaga/Chillin'
20/Peaches/Serpentine (I Don't Give A...Pt. 2)
21/The Dream feat. Kanye West/Walkin' on the Moon
22/Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys/Empire State of Mind
23/Kelly Clarkson/Already Gone AND Beyonce/Halo
24/Lady Gaga/Paparazzi
25/Taylor Swift/You Belong With Me
1/Animal Collective/My Girls
2009, Man…Right? Trying times, man. Trying times. Economic meltdowns, unemployment, domestic warfare, international warfare, hope, change, a promise of a new day…It was enough to make a brotha, a sistah, mother/father/grandparent/four guys in a band, go crazy. What to do? What comes next? Where do I stand? I (WE!) don’t know. With My Girls, Animal Collective keep both feet firmly planted in the present, aware, afraid, and hopeful like the rest of us wading through the waters of emotional and domestic uncertainty. And like many of us “trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents”, all they ask, all they WANT, is to have those feet planted on solid ground; that theirs and them will be taken care of; that all will be alright. “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status. I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my Girls!” goes the hook. It’s a message of hope and a message of NEED sung out of love. And when coupled with the booming samples, sythns, and 808s of a beat that is present here, the track becomes damn near universal and transcendent. Shout hallelujah, clap hands, raise the roof, stomp your feet. The build of the beat calls for it. The much needed and universally sought after goal of domestic bliss and the comforting security of four walls, and adobe slabs spoken of in the lyrics calls for it. And most of all, that solid soul and blood you bleed calls for it. Hope. Believe. And you might be taken higher.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Love & Happiness.
The Albums: 2009.
2/Dirty Projectors/Bitte Orca
When it comes to dancing and the crafting of music, there is a undeniable joy that exists in just getting lost in the sound; maneuvering about in the rhythms and figuring out how you want to proceed right there in the moment. Letting the juices flow and the cards fall where they may. On Bitte Orca, the ladies and gents of the Dirty Projectors come together to revel in creativity’s euphoria, applying a spontaneous free flowing aesthetic to the production of their music. Pinned down by the grooves and imagination afloat, Dave Longstreth and the gang succumb to the craft, feeding off each others’ energy and creativity to produce a jaunty batch of tunes that live, breathe, and ride upon the sheer joy and thrill that comes from just playing with the music, with just humming a melody, strumming a guitar, or crafting a lyric that works. An abundance of sounds and inventiveness weave themselves in and out of each of these nine off-kilter compositions. Vocals, hand claps, multi-layered harmonies, strings, jingled jangled guitar lines, IDEAS, floating in and out of each track, making room for themselves wherever they deem fit. It’s a mesmerizing stop and go merry go round of sound bursting at the seams with a creative free form energy that “hits the spot like Gatorade”. Pulsating R&B leanings, gentle lullaby like numbers sung from the heart, flourishes of the strings, crisply plucked guitar lines and gorgeously immaculate lead/backing vocals from the girls in the band abound. Just another fine musical output/expression from a group of like minds coming together to let the juices flow, and the cards fall where they may. Making it work and getting lost in the sound. One nation under a groove. It sounds so beautiful, don’t you agree?
KEY TRACKS: Stillness is the Move/Two Doves/Useful Chamber
3/YACHT/See Mystery Lights
4/Black Lips/200 Million Thousand
5/Bat for Lashes/Two Suns
6/Passion Pit/Manners
7/Ryan Leslie/Ryan Leslie
8/Amerie/In Love & War
9/Mos Def/The Ecstatic
10/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/It's Blitz!
11/The Flaming Lips/Embryonic
12/Phoenix/Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
13/Artic Monkeys/Humbug
14/Wale/Attention Deficit
15/Devendra Banhart/What Will Be
16/Grizzly Bear/Veckatimest
17/Chester French/Love the Future
18/Jay-Z/The Blueprint 3
19/Discovery/LP
20/Mariah Carey/Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel
21/Franz Ferdinand/Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
22/Peter Bjorn And John/Living Thing
23/Peaches/I Feel Cream
24/Karen O and The Kids/Where the Wild Things Are Motion Picture Soundtrack
25/Tegan and Sara/Sainthood
2/Dirty Projectors/Bitte Orca
When it comes to dancing and the crafting of music, there is a undeniable joy that exists in just getting lost in the sound; maneuvering about in the rhythms and figuring out how you want to proceed right there in the moment. Letting the juices flow and the cards fall where they may. On Bitte Orca, the ladies and gents of the Dirty Projectors come together to revel in creativity’s euphoria, applying a spontaneous free flowing aesthetic to the production of their music. Pinned down by the grooves and imagination afloat, Dave Longstreth and the gang succumb to the craft, feeding off each others’ energy and creativity to produce a jaunty batch of tunes that live, breathe, and ride upon the sheer joy and thrill that comes from just playing with the music, with just humming a melody, strumming a guitar, or crafting a lyric that works. An abundance of sounds and inventiveness weave themselves in and out of each of these nine off-kilter compositions. Vocals, hand claps, multi-layered harmonies, strings, jingled jangled guitar lines, IDEAS, floating in and out of each track, making room for themselves wherever they deem fit. It’s a mesmerizing stop and go merry go round of sound bursting at the seams with a creative free form energy that “hits the spot like Gatorade”. Pulsating R&B leanings, gentle lullaby like numbers sung from the heart, flourishes of the strings, crisply plucked guitar lines and gorgeously immaculate lead/backing vocals from the girls in the band abound. Just another fine musical output/expression from a group of like minds coming together to let the juices flow, and the cards fall where they may. Making it work and getting lost in the sound. One nation under a groove. It sounds so beautiful, don’t you agree?
KEY TRACKS: Stillness is the Move/Two Doves/Useful Chamber
Top of the Pops.
The Singles: 2009.
2/The Presets/If I Know You
The protagonist in this song right here is done, finished, finito (!); Over you, over this situation, and on to the next one. But not before she gets this outta her system, looks back, keeps it real, and tells it like it is. An evocative moment of clarity written from a girl’s perspective, If I Know You marches along to the beat of this girl’s heart, as if it’s being spun from the chamber of her heart; that steady groove of a beat, clear and never ending, providing a rhythmically menacing backdrop for the venom being spewed from her mouth, unabashed, honest, off the top of her head. And lead singer Julian Hamilton does the girl’s words justice, singing in a clear and knowingly self-aware tone that aims to place him alongside the Ian Curtises, Dave Gahans and Morrisseys that came before him. And by handling the vocal duties himself, instead of offering it up to a female vocalist, the song becomes bigger/so much more, widening the story and situations at hand. Cutting deep by keeping it real, this breakup song sticks with you long after the words end and the beat fades to black.
And don’t even get me started on the video. Man…
3/Bat for Lashes/Daniel
4/Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson/Paranoid
5/Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain/Blame It
6/Drake/Best I Ever Had
7/Phoenix/Lisztomania
8/Grizzly Bear/Two Weeks
9/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Zero AND Heads Will Roll
10/Lily Allen/Fuck You
11/The Knux/Fire (Put it in the Air!)
12/Chrisette Michele/Epiphany
13/Kid Cudi feat. Kanye West and Common/Make Her Say
14/Lady Gaga/Bad Romance AND Shakira/She Wolf
15/Peter Bjorn and John/It Don't Move Me AND Chromeo/Night by Night
16/Amerie/Why R U
17/Mos Def/Casa Bey
18/Teairra Mari feat. Pleasure P/Hunt For You
19/Wale feat. Lady Gaga/Chillin'
20/Peaches/Serpentine (I Don't Give A...Pt. 2)
21/The Dream feat. Kanye West/Walkin' on the Moon
22/Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys/Empire State of Mind
23/Kelly Clarkson/Already Gone AND Beyonce/Halo
24/Lady Gaga/Paparazzi
25/Taylor Swift/You Belong With Me
2/The Presets/If I Know You
The protagonist in this song right here is done, finished, finito (!); Over you, over this situation, and on to the next one. But not before she gets this outta her system, looks back, keeps it real, and tells it like it is. An evocative moment of clarity written from a girl’s perspective, If I Know You marches along to the beat of this girl’s heart, as if it’s being spun from the chamber of her heart; that steady groove of a beat, clear and never ending, providing a rhythmically menacing backdrop for the venom being spewed from her mouth, unabashed, honest, off the top of her head. And lead singer Julian Hamilton does the girl’s words justice, singing in a clear and knowingly self-aware tone that aims to place him alongside the Ian Curtises, Dave Gahans and Morrisseys that came before him. And by handling the vocal duties himself, instead of offering it up to a female vocalist, the song becomes bigger/so much more, widening the story and situations at hand. Cutting deep by keeping it real, this breakup song sticks with you long after the words end and the beat fades to black.
And don’t even get me started on the video. Man…
Friday, January 01, 2010
Love & Happiness.
The Albums: 2009.
"GIMME A BEAT!"
3/YACHT/See Mystery Lights
Come Away With Me…
Jona Bechtolt and his homie Claire Evans are on a mission, and as soon as you press play on this album right here, that mission becomes clear: To get you to escape. Get lost in the sound, and succumb to its every whim. Beats. On. Re. Peat, as songs build, move, unlock, and explode. Wordless intros take their time, asking words and verses to wait. Singing stops and beats rise, as the urge to dance and simply let go, reigns supreme, as is intended. No time for talking, keep it movin’. “Death. Is. Not. The. End. Of. This. Song!”, proclaims Claire in The Afterlife. No, of course not, freedom is, liberation is, and it comes with a clap of the hands, a snap of the fingers, or a move of the hips and a 1,2 step. This feeling of escape, of primal, physical uplift via song is scattered throughout the album’s lyrics as well. “You can live, anywhere you want!”; I told you your dreams would come true!”…”We’re a fucking earthquake. In our worlds’, we’re millionaires”, movin’ our feet to the Summer Song, full of all we ever wanted! “Don’t fight the darkness (of this dancefloor), bring the light and the darkness, and we’ll disappear”, into the beat, into the sound, into these grooves that wink, nod, and show some love to the R&B and disco movements that came before them. “Will we go to heaven, or will we go to hell”, they ask. “It’s my understanding that neither are real!” But this? This feeling? These grooves? That uplift via movement and the sound? As real as real can be. Dance. Shout. Shake ya body down to the ground.
KEY TRACKS: It's Boring (You Can Live Anywhere You Want)/Psychic City (Voodoo City)/Summer Song
4/Black Lips/200 Million Thousand
5/Bat for Lashes/Two Suns
6/Passion Pit/Manners
7/Ryan Leslie/Ryan Leslie
8/Amerie/In Love & War
9/Mos Def/The Ecstatic
10/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/It's Blitz!
11/The Flaming Lips/Embryonic
12/Phoenix/Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
13/Artic Monkeys/Humbug
14/Wale/Attention Deficit
15/Devendra Banhart/What Will Be
16/Grizzly Bear/Veckatimest
17/Chester French/Love the Future
18/Jay-Z/The Blueprint 3
19/Discovery/LP
20/Mariah Carey/Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel
21/Franz Ferdinand/Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
22/Peter Bjorn And John/Living Thing
23/Peaches/I Feel Cream
24/Karen O and The Kids/Where the Wild Things Are Motion Picture Soundtrack
25/Tegan and Sara/Sainthood
"GIMME A BEAT!"
3/YACHT/See Mystery Lights
Come Away With Me…
Jona Bechtolt and his homie Claire Evans are on a mission, and as soon as you press play on this album right here, that mission becomes clear: To get you to escape. Get lost in the sound, and succumb to its every whim. Beats. On. Re. Peat, as songs build, move, unlock, and explode. Wordless intros take their time, asking words and verses to wait. Singing stops and beats rise, as the urge to dance and simply let go, reigns supreme, as is intended. No time for talking, keep it movin’. “Death. Is. Not. The. End. Of. This. Song!”, proclaims Claire in The Afterlife. No, of course not, freedom is, liberation is, and it comes with a clap of the hands, a snap of the fingers, or a move of the hips and a 1,2 step. This feeling of escape, of primal, physical uplift via song is scattered throughout the album’s lyrics as well. “You can live, anywhere you want!”; I told you your dreams would come true!”…”We’re a fucking earthquake. In our worlds’, we’re millionaires”, movin’ our feet to the Summer Song, full of all we ever wanted! “Don’t fight the darkness (of this dancefloor), bring the light and the darkness, and we’ll disappear”, into the beat, into the sound, into these grooves that wink, nod, and show some love to the R&B and disco movements that came before them. “Will we go to heaven, or will we go to hell”, they ask. “It’s my understanding that neither are real!” But this? This feeling? These grooves? That uplift via movement and the sound? As real as real can be. Dance. Shout. Shake ya body down to the ground.
KEY TRACKS: It's Boring (You Can Live Anywhere You Want)/Psychic City (Voodoo City)/Summer Song
Top of the Pops.
The Singles: 2009.
3/Bat for Lashes/Daniel
Here’s a little story that must be told, and it goes a little something like this…
A girl, alone, in love, in lust, in HEAT, on the run, in search of that boy, her Daniel; He who, when she first saw him, had a flame in his heart. “And under our blue skies”, she sings, as the synths, bass, and swelling instrumentation simmers beneath her. “Marble movie skies, I found a home in your eyes. We’ll never be apart.” Again, this girl’s in love. This heart’s on fire. And it’s quite sad that she can’t have what she wants. But then that beat kicks in, that slick repetitive percussion holding hands with those menacing strings, and things feel triumphant, joyful even, as if a turn for the better is right around the corner, as Natasha Khan runs in the dark, to a place that’s vast, where she can dream of that home that resides in sharing (and having) his heart. This heart’s on fire. This love once found and now lost shall, and must, return. This gorgeously immaculate lamentation wouldn’t have it any other way.
4/Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson/Paranoid
5/Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain/Blame It
6/Drake/Best I Ever Had
7/Phoenix/Lisztomania
8/Grizzly Bear/Two Weeks
9/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Zero AND Heads Will Roll
10/Lily Allen/Fuck You
11/The Knux/Fire (Put it in the Air!)
12/Chrisette Michele/Epiphany
13/Kid Cudi feat. Kanye West and Common/Make Her Say
14/Lady Gaga/Bad Romance AND Shakira/She Wolf
15/Peter Bjorn and John/It Don't Move Me AND Chromeo/Night by Night
16/Amerie/Why R U
17/Mos Def/Casa Bey
18/Teairra Mari feat. Pleasure P/Hunt For You
19/Wale feat. Lady Gaga/Chillin'
20/Peaches/Serpentine (I Don't Give A...Pt. 2)
21/The Dream feat. Kanye West/Walkin' on the Moon
22/Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys/Empire State of Mind
23/Kelly Clarkson/Already Gone AND Beyonce/Halo
24/Lady Gaga/Paparazzi
25/Taylor Swift/You Belong With Me
3/Bat for Lashes/Daniel
Here’s a little story that must be told, and it goes a little something like this…
A girl, alone, in love, in lust, in HEAT, on the run, in search of that boy, her Daniel; He who, when she first saw him, had a flame in his heart. “And under our blue skies”, she sings, as the synths, bass, and swelling instrumentation simmers beneath her. “Marble movie skies, I found a home in your eyes. We’ll never be apart.” Again, this girl’s in love. This heart’s on fire. And it’s quite sad that she can’t have what she wants. But then that beat kicks in, that slick repetitive percussion holding hands with those menacing strings, and things feel triumphant, joyful even, as if a turn for the better is right around the corner, as Natasha Khan runs in the dark, to a place that’s vast, where she can dream of that home that resides in sharing (and having) his heart. This heart’s on fire. This love once found and now lost shall, and must, return. This gorgeously immaculate lamentation wouldn’t have it any other way.
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