Before I get to 10-1 of my little countdown, I have some 2007 miscellanea to deal with. Stuff that didn't make the list for whatever reason, plus random crap that I wanted to talk about anyway.
Best albums from previous years that weren't released in the USA until 2007:
- Lily Allen - Alright, Still - I was at a party in the summer some time and somebody had the radio on, and "Smile" from this album came on, and I said something like "what the fuck, is that Lily Allen?" My buddy Ed said something like "Tom probably had this album a year ago," and I was put in the awkward position of trying to say that I actually did have the album a year ago without looking like some hipster shitdick. I don't think I succeeded, but Ed claimed not to be a sarcastic ass in saying that either. At any rate, Lily Allen makes some fine sweet pop confections, and she finally got her well-earned US recognition this year. So good for her.
- The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes - This one was FINALLY issued in the US with different artwork and a couple bonus tracks last fall. It's about damn time. Also, We Are the Pipettes is still an absolutely delightful pop album. It was good enough for #4 on my 2006 list, and it's good enough to mention again, now that you can actually buy it in a store.
- Cyann and Ben - Sweet Beliefs - This one came in at #7 last year on my list, and it's a fine continuation of the Cyann and Ben catalog, with the slow-burning builds, the spaced out psychedelia, and the epic explosions. It's pretty good.
- Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo - This one actually came out in Europe in 2005 or something crazy like that, and it's unbelievable that it wasn't released in the USA until 2007. It's another orgasmic celebration of happiness via pop music, and maybe the most delightful release I heard all year (except for maybe the Pipettes, I guess).
The Led Zeppelin III award(s) for irritating album packaging:
- Bjork - Volta - This one has a sticker on the front that's part of the album art (the picture of Bjork is the sticker, the red part is the cardboard), and to actually get to the CD inside you either have to rip the sticker in half (and then the cardboard sleeve will never actually close again) or carefully peel off half of the sticker. God, it's annoying. And pretty.
- Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer - It's another cardboard package with a gatefold in the front, except the gatefold is the black areas on the front, and the only way to get it to actually close, so that the liner notes (helpfully printed on a loose circular glossy piece of paper) don't fall out, is to carefully replace the whole thing back in its clear plastic sleeve, which would be fine except the thing is damn near IMPOSSIBLE to get back in there.
And the rest:
Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun - This isn't on the list because there is no recorded version of it that isn't a live bootleg (that we know of, anyway). It would be on the list if it were given a proper release because it's Brian Wilson, and it's actually pretty damned good. It's wonderful to see that revisiting Smile seems to have retriggered the part of Brian's brain (or soul) that makes amazing music, because this is the first brand new album-length work he's written that's been consistently good in 30 years (I'm counting The Beach Boys Love You as the last one, for those keeping track). And hell, even the live bootlegs sound great. Brian Wilson is a better performer at this point in his life than he's been in four and a half decades of making music. Brian's 65 years old and still following his muse, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Scott Walker - And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball? - Scott Walker, meanwhile, proved what we'd been suspecting anyway: stripped of vocals and "rock" production, his music is now simply avant-garde classical music. It's not on the list because it's a 4 song, 25 minute EP that was written as music to a ballet. The thought of anybody trying to dance to this stuff is beyond absurd. Scott went deep into the waters of atonality with 2006's The Drift, and this stuff is atonal, and also mostly arrhythmic as well. It's not as viscerally intense and downright horrifying as The Drift, but it's almost as unsettling. Scott's 65 years old and still following his muse, and I couldn't be more terrified of it.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
2007 music finally, gawrsh. 20-11
You know it's been a decent year for music when some of my favorite artists release albums that don't even crack my own top 20. Missing the cut this year, but just barely: Liars, Air, Mum, Bjork, Super Furry Animals, Paul McCartney, Suzanne Vega. Bjork! BJORK didn't make the list! I am amazed at myself. Here we go, literally counting down:
20. Six Organs of Admittance - Shelter From the Ash - I don't hear Six Organs of Admittance mentioned enough in discussions of either post rock or psych folk. They make a lovely hybrid of both. Ben Chasny is also underrated as an indie rock guitar god. Chasny's been churning out fairly good albums fairly consistently every year since 2001, and Shelter From the Ash is another fine collection of drone-based psychedelic acoustic guitar workouts. Also, check out that wild crazy psychedelic cover art!
19. The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City - I saw the Fiery Furnaces live for the second time this past June (I wrote about the first time, if you recall, here). Even having seen them before, I was unprepared for the total mindfuck that I witnessed. They didn't so much deconstruct their own back catalog as slaughter it, rip it limb from limb, and create an ungodly Frankenstein monster out of the parts. If the songs were nearly unrecognizable before, they were completely unrecognizable now, able to be discerned only by listening carefully to the lyrics. I mention it now because it sets up how weird an experience Widow City is. On one hand, it's a fairly simplified version of the Furnaces' trademark insanity, featuring some calm, straightforward songs that actually wait for the next track to start before veering off on a hairpin turn toward something completely different. On the other hand, it's got some of the only music ever recorded that approximates the careening freight train that is their live show. It sounds like something a live band could actually play, mostly due to the fact that Matthew Friedberger's assault of multi-tracked splatty synthesizers and organs has largely been reduced down to a relatively basic lineup of guitar, bass, drums, and, um, mellotron (I said RELATIVELY basic). It makes for some surprisingly simple rock songs ("Duplexes of the Dead") and some insane prog-rock freakouts ("Clear Signal From Cairo"), and most importantly, a sign that the Fiery Furnaces are evolving, however slowly. And they can go as slow as they want as long as they keep making good music.
18. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky - I guess this is Jeff Tweedy's rehab album or something, I don't know. It took me awhile to realize that it was subtle, not simply boring. Unfortunately, a lot of people never got that far. There are plenty of keepers here, though, even if none of them provide the heart-rending devastation of, say, "Reservations." But Christ, I'm not listening to Paul McCartney's new stuff expecting to hear "Hey Jude" either, I can forgive Wilco if they never make another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as long what they do make is still good. A Ghost is Born wasn't (at least I didn't think so); Sky Blue Sky is.
17. The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army - Up until this album, pretty much every Polyphonic Spree song could have been called "Sure, Life is Bad Sometimes, BUT YOU ARE AWESOME!" And I would have been ok with that. I would probably have paid to hear that song 12 times every two or three years as long as they wanted to keep making it, because it was great, but now there's this whole "army" concept we've got to deal with, and the technicolor dream robes were ditched in favor of black fatigues. Clearly the new album would prove to be darker and more confrontational, and... oh, come on. When I saw them in June, they wore the fatigues, but by the time the encore came around (which ended up being almost as long as their set), and they wove their way through the crowd to retake the stage, they were back in their old robes. They're still the Polyphonic Spree, they're still just peachy as can be, except now there's some sort of nonsense about marching to take on the world and unite it with love, or some such thing. As with their previous two albums, you'll either love it or hate it, but they're still the same old, huge, bombastic, psychedelic, pompous, subtle-as-a-brick, anthemic, Polyphonic Spree.
16. Kanye West - Graduation - It turns out that being the world's biggest rap star isn't enough to keep Kanye West from being cripplingly insecure sometimes, which is no surprise to anybody who's heard about his various antics at awards shows and other stuff that would suggest that Kanye is a Grade A jerk. Luckily for us, he spins that insecurity into some Grade A pop music. Compelling lyrics and indelible tracks: it's another good Kanye West album.
15. Gruff Rhys - Candylion - Gruff Rhys eats sunshine for breakfast and poops out sweet li'l melodies at night. See earlier review.
14. Robert Wyatt - Comicopera - If you need a little history lesson, Robert Wyatt started his career as the drummer for 60s psych-proggers The Soft Machine. In 1973, he fell from a third story and suffered a spine injury, and was paralyzed from the waist down. This pretty effectively ended his career as a drummer, but it started him in a second career as a solo artist, making some very strange and very sad music. This one fits right in. Ol' Rob is still pissed at the world, and very insecure sometimes, it would seem, and... there are some songs in Spanish, and I don't know what those are about, but it's all still a sad, strange, but lovely affair.
13. Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust - These guys make it sound easy at this point. It's a particular brand of that peculiar genre called "post-rock" that actually exudes warmth and spontaneity, and even song structures that don't go exactly where you expect them to every single time (I'm looking at you, Explosions in the Sky). This one is so laid back that it could pass as folk music if it wasn't so deafening from time to time. Do Make Say Think: still the kings of the "post-rock" mountain.
12. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver - Now this is more like it: a cohesive and solid LCD Soundsystem album. I'm nominating these guys (or this guy, I don't know how much of this stuff is just James Murphy blah blah blah) for the most improved award. If they'd have dropped the last song on the album this could have cracked the top 10. As it is, it's still one of the few album-length achievements that make me believe that "dance music" is a concept worth exploring.
11. Caribou - Andorra - Every time Dan Snaith makes an album he drifts further away from electronica and more toward psychedelic pop, and with Andorra, the transformation would seem to be complete. This is an album of bright, lushly arranged, gorgeous pop music, as thoughtful in the winding nature of its songs as in its ornate instrumentation. Snaith's knack for great melodies shines in a way it never has before, and for a guy who made his name as an electronic producer, this sounds amazingly like it could have been released in the 60s and filed next to a Soft Machine or Tomorrow album (obscure 60s name-dropping music nerd alert! Also I just read the above writings and realized that this is two Soft Machine references in one post, a new record.).
20. Six Organs of Admittance - Shelter From the Ash - I don't hear Six Organs of Admittance mentioned enough in discussions of either post rock or psych folk. They make a lovely hybrid of both. Ben Chasny is also underrated as an indie rock guitar god. Chasny's been churning out fairly good albums fairly consistently every year since 2001, and Shelter From the Ash is another fine collection of drone-based psychedelic acoustic guitar workouts. Also, check out that wild crazy psychedelic cover art!
19. The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City - I saw the Fiery Furnaces live for the second time this past June (I wrote about the first time, if you recall, here). Even having seen them before, I was unprepared for the total mindfuck that I witnessed. They didn't so much deconstruct their own back catalog as slaughter it, rip it limb from limb, and create an ungodly Frankenstein monster out of the parts. If the songs were nearly unrecognizable before, they were completely unrecognizable now, able to be discerned only by listening carefully to the lyrics. I mention it now because it sets up how weird an experience Widow City is. On one hand, it's a fairly simplified version of the Furnaces' trademark insanity, featuring some calm, straightforward songs that actually wait for the next track to start before veering off on a hairpin turn toward something completely different. On the other hand, it's got some of the only music ever recorded that approximates the careening freight train that is their live show. It sounds like something a live band could actually play, mostly due to the fact that Matthew Friedberger's assault of multi-tracked splatty synthesizers and organs has largely been reduced down to a relatively basic lineup of guitar, bass, drums, and, um, mellotron (I said RELATIVELY basic). It makes for some surprisingly simple rock songs ("Duplexes of the Dead") and some insane prog-rock freakouts ("Clear Signal From Cairo"), and most importantly, a sign that the Fiery Furnaces are evolving, however slowly. And they can go as slow as they want as long as they keep making good music.
18. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky - I guess this is Jeff Tweedy's rehab album or something, I don't know. It took me awhile to realize that it was subtle, not simply boring. Unfortunately, a lot of people never got that far. There are plenty of keepers here, though, even if none of them provide the heart-rending devastation of, say, "Reservations." But Christ, I'm not listening to Paul McCartney's new stuff expecting to hear "Hey Jude" either, I can forgive Wilco if they never make another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as long what they do make is still good. A Ghost is Born wasn't (at least I didn't think so); Sky Blue Sky is.
17. The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army - Up until this album, pretty much every Polyphonic Spree song could have been called "Sure, Life is Bad Sometimes, BUT YOU ARE AWESOME!" And I would have been ok with that. I would probably have paid to hear that song 12 times every two or three years as long as they wanted to keep making it, because it was great, but now there's this whole "army" concept we've got to deal with, and the technicolor dream robes were ditched in favor of black fatigues. Clearly the new album would prove to be darker and more confrontational, and... oh, come on. When I saw them in June, they wore the fatigues, but by the time the encore came around (which ended up being almost as long as their set), and they wove their way through the crowd to retake the stage, they were back in their old robes. They're still the Polyphonic Spree, they're still just peachy as can be, except now there's some sort of nonsense about marching to take on the world and unite it with love, or some such thing. As with their previous two albums, you'll either love it or hate it, but they're still the same old, huge, bombastic, psychedelic, pompous, subtle-as-a-brick, anthemic, Polyphonic Spree.
16. Kanye West - Graduation - It turns out that being the world's biggest rap star isn't enough to keep Kanye West from being cripplingly insecure sometimes, which is no surprise to anybody who's heard about his various antics at awards shows and other stuff that would suggest that Kanye is a Grade A jerk. Luckily for us, he spins that insecurity into some Grade A pop music. Compelling lyrics and indelible tracks: it's another good Kanye West album.
15. Gruff Rhys - Candylion - Gruff Rhys eats sunshine for breakfast and poops out sweet li'l melodies at night. See earlier review.
14. Robert Wyatt - Comicopera - If you need a little history lesson, Robert Wyatt started his career as the drummer for 60s psych-proggers The Soft Machine. In 1973, he fell from a third story and suffered a spine injury, and was paralyzed from the waist down. This pretty effectively ended his career as a drummer, but it started him in a second career as a solo artist, making some very strange and very sad music. This one fits right in. Ol' Rob is still pissed at the world, and very insecure sometimes, it would seem, and... there are some songs in Spanish, and I don't know what those are about, but it's all still a sad, strange, but lovely affair.
13. Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust - These guys make it sound easy at this point. It's a particular brand of that peculiar genre called "post-rock" that actually exudes warmth and spontaneity, and even song structures that don't go exactly where you expect them to every single time (I'm looking at you, Explosions in the Sky). This one is so laid back that it could pass as folk music if it wasn't so deafening from time to time. Do Make Say Think: still the kings of the "post-rock" mountain.
12. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver - Now this is more like it: a cohesive and solid LCD Soundsystem album. I'm nominating these guys (or this guy, I don't know how much of this stuff is just James Murphy blah blah blah) for the most improved award. If they'd have dropped the last song on the album this could have cracked the top 10. As it is, it's still one of the few album-length achievements that make me believe that "dance music" is a concept worth exploring.
11. Caribou - Andorra - Every time Dan Snaith makes an album he drifts further away from electronica and more toward psychedelic pop, and with Andorra, the transformation would seem to be complete. This is an album of bright, lushly arranged, gorgeous pop music, as thoughtful in the winding nature of its songs as in its ornate instrumentation. Snaith's knack for great melodies shines in a way it never has before, and for a guy who made his name as an electronic producer, this sounds amazingly like it could have been released in the 60s and filed next to a Soft Machine or Tomorrow album (obscure 60s name-dropping music nerd alert! Also I just read the above writings and realized that this is two Soft Machine references in one post, a new record.).
Friday, January 04, 2008
Tom's Favorite Songs of 2007
2007 officially begins ending... well, a few days ago, as it turns out, but here are my favorite songs of the year, in no order other than the order in which I thought of them. Enjoy.
Radiohead - "Bodysnatchers" - The big lyrical hook here is "I have no idea what you are talking about," which later turns into "I have no idea what I am talking about." It's kind of funny, and possibly accidental, that these two statements in conjunction form the basis of the vast majority of lyrics that Thom Yorke has written, at least from Ok Computer onward. It's paranoid and fearful, but ever acknowledging that there is perhaps nobody who's more full of shit than Yorke himself. We deify Yorke and Radiohead at our own risk, but who can blame us? This track rocks.
Brian Wilson - "Midnight's Another Day" - A good song with a New Year-appropriate title, right? I resisted the urge to try to include That Lucky Old Sun on my 2007 best of list, but I'm holding out for a studio release this year. Meanwhile, I can at least include this song, because we actually got a recorded studio version, which was uploaded to his website somewhere... I can't find it now. The important thing is that it's a gorgeous song, with a gorgeous melody, the gorgeous trademark Brian Wilson harmonies, and... God, it's just wonderful to know that the old guy still has it in him. I can't say for sure whether Van Dyke Parks was involved with this song, or if he just wrote the between song narratives for That Lucky Old Sun, but that'd be the icing on the cake.
Dr. Dog - "We All Belong" - There are worse things that could happen than for some scrappy, lo-fi Beatles enthusiasts to become ambitious, structurally complex Beatles enthusiasts. On a somewhat related note, it's amazing the difference a well-arranged string section can make.
The Apples in Stereo - "Same Old Drag" - And so Robert Schneider, blissfully unaware of how painfully unhip the Electric Light Orchestra is, soldiers on with his vocoder and big pompous layered arrangements. It's a song that sounds basically nothing like most popular music that's been recorded since the late 1970s, but it's got a bitchin' Rhodes piano part, some great melodies, and the production still sounds great, vocodered background vocals included.
Deerhoof - "The Perfect Me" - Perhaps one of the best album opening tracks ever (hyperbole alert!). "The Perfect Me" explodes out of the gate with some big fat guitar riffing, some great drumming, and the ridiculous musical schizophrenia and manic energy found in any good Deerhoof song.
The Polyphonic Spree - "Guaranteed Nightlite" - For their third album, the Spree largely abandoned the symphonic prog pop of Together We're Heavy in favor of some of the biggest, most bombastic pop anthems ever known to man. "Guaranteed Nightlite" more or less splits the difference, winding up with huge pop hooks and singalong choruses that are bounced back and forth between drastic tempo, key, and mood changes. The Fragile Army is essentially one huge chorus after another; here they're at least set in different contexts within the same song, and the approach is much more effective.
Wilco - "Walken" - When Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, I assumed that the song title "Jesus, Etc." had something to do with a weary atheist's perception of religious zealot types, or something like that. As it turned out, the song used to be called "Jesus Don't Cry," and was shortened when somebody in the band wrote "Jesus Etc" on a setlist, and it caught on. I bring this up now because "Walken" looks like a similar setlist-derived title, unless it actually has something to do with Christopher Walken, and not, you know, walkin'. Anyway, Sky Blue Sky has a lot of decent rock songs that take awhile to grow on you, but "Walken" isn't one of them, fitting more in line with the bouncy good-time pop of "Hummingbirds." It's also one of the few songs on the album that actually sells me on the whole "Nels Cline, guitar god" idea that a lot of people seem to have. Frankly, I think Jeff Tweedy may be more responsible...
Kanye West - "Champion" - Graduation featured more darkness and insecurity than Kanye's previous efforts, but "The Good Life" is a great example of the effortless pop brilliance that he can toss off when he wants to. Bonus points for the nearly unrecognizable sample of Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," which, in this context, suddenly becomes laid back funk.
Panda Bear - "Good Girl/Carrots" - When I was reading reviews of Panda Bear's Person Pitch, they all talked about "Bros" as a gorgeous sweeping 13 minute epic piece of brilliance. I would read this and nod my head in agreement. I never bother learning track names half the time, and as it turns out, I like the OTHER gorgeous sweeping 13 minute epic piece of brilliance on the album. The opening percussion loop alone, to say nothing of the beautiful backwards vocals that join it, is something I could listen to for an hour. The rest of it contains some of the most engaging hooks, loops, textures, and everything else that makes Person Pitch great on the whole album.
Bjork - "The Dull Flame of Desire" - Wow, I finally like this guy Antony. Sit him down in front of a piano and I want to punch him in the throat, but surround his voice with a typically over-the-top Bjork song and he fits right in. It's an oversimplification, but the point is, Bjork and Antony manage to squeeze an awful lot out of a couple short verses repeated over and over. "The Dull Flame of Desire" has more peaks and valleys than any other song I heard this year, and, as always, any time Bjork really cuts loose, it's a breathtakingly intense experience.
Animal Collective - "#1" - I wasn't entirely convinced when I first heard this song that it wasn't sampled from somewhere in Terry Riley's catalog. I'm still not entirely sure, but it's got enough of the trademark Animal Collective quirks that it's a moot point. Like all of Strawberry Jam, it bursts with energy even while seducing the listener into a trance. It's an improbably wonderful experience, and it's all based around a crazy arpeggiated organ part.
There you go. Sometime soon you'll get yourself a nice top 20 list from me. Yep, it's 20 this year. I heard THAT MUCH good stuff.
Radiohead - "Bodysnatchers" - The big lyrical hook here is "I have no idea what you are talking about," which later turns into "I have no idea what I am talking about." It's kind of funny, and possibly accidental, that these two statements in conjunction form the basis of the vast majority of lyrics that Thom Yorke has written, at least from Ok Computer onward. It's paranoid and fearful, but ever acknowledging that there is perhaps nobody who's more full of shit than Yorke himself. We deify Yorke and Radiohead at our own risk, but who can blame us? This track rocks.
Brian Wilson - "Midnight's Another Day" - A good song with a New Year-appropriate title, right? I resisted the urge to try to include That Lucky Old Sun on my 2007 best of list, but I'm holding out for a studio release this year. Meanwhile, I can at least include this song, because we actually got a recorded studio version, which was uploaded to his website somewhere... I can't find it now. The important thing is that it's a gorgeous song, with a gorgeous melody, the gorgeous trademark Brian Wilson harmonies, and... God, it's just wonderful to know that the old guy still has it in him. I can't say for sure whether Van Dyke Parks was involved with this song, or if he just wrote the between song narratives for That Lucky Old Sun, but that'd be the icing on the cake.
Dr. Dog - "We All Belong" - There are worse things that could happen than for some scrappy, lo-fi Beatles enthusiasts to become ambitious, structurally complex Beatles enthusiasts. On a somewhat related note, it's amazing the difference a well-arranged string section can make.
The Apples in Stereo - "Same Old Drag" - And so Robert Schneider, blissfully unaware of how painfully unhip the Electric Light Orchestra is, soldiers on with his vocoder and big pompous layered arrangements. It's a song that sounds basically nothing like most popular music that's been recorded since the late 1970s, but it's got a bitchin' Rhodes piano part, some great melodies, and the production still sounds great, vocodered background vocals included.
Deerhoof - "The Perfect Me" - Perhaps one of the best album opening tracks ever (hyperbole alert!). "The Perfect Me" explodes out of the gate with some big fat guitar riffing, some great drumming, and the ridiculous musical schizophrenia and manic energy found in any good Deerhoof song.
The Polyphonic Spree - "Guaranteed Nightlite" - For their third album, the Spree largely abandoned the symphonic prog pop of Together We're Heavy in favor of some of the biggest, most bombastic pop anthems ever known to man. "Guaranteed Nightlite" more or less splits the difference, winding up with huge pop hooks and singalong choruses that are bounced back and forth between drastic tempo, key, and mood changes. The Fragile Army is essentially one huge chorus after another; here they're at least set in different contexts within the same song, and the approach is much more effective.
Wilco - "Walken" - When Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, I assumed that the song title "Jesus, Etc." had something to do with a weary atheist's perception of religious zealot types, or something like that. As it turned out, the song used to be called "Jesus Don't Cry," and was shortened when somebody in the band wrote "Jesus Etc" on a setlist, and it caught on. I bring this up now because "Walken" looks like a similar setlist-derived title, unless it actually has something to do with Christopher Walken, and not, you know, walkin'. Anyway, Sky Blue Sky has a lot of decent rock songs that take awhile to grow on you, but "Walken" isn't one of them, fitting more in line with the bouncy good-time pop of "Hummingbirds." It's also one of the few songs on the album that actually sells me on the whole "Nels Cline, guitar god" idea that a lot of people seem to have. Frankly, I think Jeff Tweedy may be more responsible...
Kanye West - "Champion" - Graduation featured more darkness and insecurity than Kanye's previous efforts, but "The Good Life" is a great example of the effortless pop brilliance that he can toss off when he wants to. Bonus points for the nearly unrecognizable sample of Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," which, in this context, suddenly becomes laid back funk.
Panda Bear - "Good Girl/Carrots" - When I was reading reviews of Panda Bear's Person Pitch, they all talked about "Bros" as a gorgeous sweeping 13 minute epic piece of brilliance. I would read this and nod my head in agreement. I never bother learning track names half the time, and as it turns out, I like the OTHER gorgeous sweeping 13 minute epic piece of brilliance on the album. The opening percussion loop alone, to say nothing of the beautiful backwards vocals that join it, is something I could listen to for an hour. The rest of it contains some of the most engaging hooks, loops, textures, and everything else that makes Person Pitch great on the whole album.
Bjork - "The Dull Flame of Desire" - Wow, I finally like this guy Antony. Sit him down in front of a piano and I want to punch him in the throat, but surround his voice with a typically over-the-top Bjork song and he fits right in. It's an oversimplification, but the point is, Bjork and Antony manage to squeeze an awful lot out of a couple short verses repeated over and over. "The Dull Flame of Desire" has more peaks and valleys than any other song I heard this year, and, as always, any time Bjork really cuts loose, it's a breathtakingly intense experience.
Animal Collective - "#1" - I wasn't entirely convinced when I first heard this song that it wasn't sampled from somewhere in Terry Riley's catalog. I'm still not entirely sure, but it's got enough of the trademark Animal Collective quirks that it's a moot point. Like all of Strawberry Jam, it bursts with energy even while seducing the listener into a trance. It's an improbably wonderful experience, and it's all based around a crazy arpeggiated organ part.
There you go. Sometime soon you'll get yourself a nice top 20 list from me. Yep, it's 20 this year. I heard THAT MUCH good stuff.
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