This is the Sound: 2005

Oh, lordy.  I think this was the year where we coined our odd-year theory.  So much good stuff was released in 2005 as compared to 2004 (and ’03 compared with ’02) that we decided that while you could find quality music released in even-numbered years, the overall mass of must-buys in odd-numbered years stood out in comparison.  Try it out: think of some classic records.  OK Computer? 1997.  The Joshua Tree? 1987.  Blood on the Tracks? 1975.   Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? 1967 (though Revolver was 1966 so maybe the Beatles are just a bad example).

Personally, 2005 was quite busy.  I applied and got accepted to library school, and therefore spent two lovely weeks in Champaign-Urbana (quite a statistically improbable phrase if I may say so) doing Boot Camp for LEEP and soaking up my new chosen profession.  It was an invigorating experience with many great friends made, especially my reliable Green St. buddy Anna Z.   We moved up to Rogers Park, trading space for distance to work and aside from a few challenges had a great time in that neighborhood.  I got a full time job in the library curating damaged items and wrangling bibliographers under the title Collection Development Assistant and started classes in full in the Fall.  We finished the year with a train trip to Albuquerque and then 2006 arrived, and everything changed.

Sufjan Stevens / Illinois

We all have songs that take over our lives for a few days.  Maybe you’ve heard it a few times before but were only half listening.  Then for some reason it hits you and takes over.  You listen to almost nothing else for a couple of days until the spell breaks.  But, those songs tend to always stay with you.  This record had several of those for me.  The first time through it was “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” and I can remember three very specific days in August that belonged to “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to get us!“.  Though time has dulled it slightly (and left us still waiting for its followup ‘Iowa!’), it’s hard to describe this record’s ubiquity in 2005.  I can remember hearing “Chicago” for the first time on Loyola’s  WLUW that summer and being smitten.  I’d come to his ‘Michigan’ a year late but quite enjoyed it, and now here was the heart-on-his-sleeves folk pop wizard dedicating a whole record to my home state.  His ‘The Avalanche’ released the next year was a collection of everything left off ‘Illinois’ and shows just how on top of his game Stevens was that year (and shows how some of the droney or throwaway tracks could have been left off in favor of  “No Man’s Land” or “The Mistress Witch From McClure“).  I don’t know if we’ve all just had our fill of earnestness and whimsy, but I don’t hear this record played much just five years later.   But, it certainly left its mark on 2005 for a lot of us.

The Clientele / Strange Geometry

It’s quite odd that we’re only getting to The Clientele now, but here it is.  I came to their first two records a year late, so ‘Strange Geometry’ is the first one that I adored in its first year of release.  I’ve got a lot more to say about the Clientele, but in short: Brit pop.  Reverb.  Nostalgia.  Chimey guitars.  Strings.  Ok, maybe not so much reverb as their first two records.  Alasdair MacLean would be in the running for lyricist of the decade – he doesn’t so much dazzle you with a rush of words or deal in abstractions or craft stories as much as he paints scenes.  MacLean paints self-portraits disguised as landscapes if I may mix my metaphors, although his true masterpiece may be “Losing Haringey“, a short story spoken over a Johnny Marr-esque folk pop background.  Other standouts include leadoff track “Since K Got Over Me” and “(I Can’t Seem to) Make You Mine” which actually appeared in the soundtrack to a Sandra Bullock movie.  I’ve got a lot more to say about The Clientele, so let’s move on for now.

Feist / Let it Die

First released in Canada in 2004, this wasn’t Leslie Feist’s true debut, but it was the one that mattered.  I came to it on the strength of her cover of Ron Sexmith’s “Secret Heart” but now I find that’s my least played track from this stunner.  “Gatekeeper” is a strong opener, laying out her powerful, expressive voice over a simple acoustic guitar before diving into the swirling fantasy world of “Mushaboom” and then into the slow and soulful “Let it Die” followed by the 80s groove of “One Evening” and then the R&B lite of “Leisure Suite” and …  And all of a sudden the album’s half over.  Covers dominate the back half, with the standout being a heartbroken take on the jazz standard “Now at Last“.  I spent the next two years raving about her to anyone who would listen, and look what happened.  I’m just sayin’.

Sun Kil Moon / Tiny Cities

Right off, let me just say that I can’t stand Modest Mouse.  Unimpressed by their records, they also put on one of the worst rock shows I’ve ever seen (and I saw Cat Power in 2000, I’ll have you know) at the Metro in 1998.  Loyal readers will know that I will also buy anything that Mark Kozelek releases.  Seeing that he took a raft of AC/DC songs and transformed them into acoustic ballads on a previous record meant we shouldn’t have been surprised by this one, but still, it’s quite an audacious move.  Imagine John Denver doing a Led Zeppelin covers record and you maybe get the idea.  I don’t know whether Kozelek’s versions pull out the real song that Isaac Brock left buried under noise or if he’s just able to make magic out of the ordinary, but this album really works for me (undoubtedly you’ll get a different response out of a hardcore Modest Mouse fan).  Opener “Does Not Exist” takes the surrealist imagery of the lyric and sets it against reverb-laden guitars that sound like they’re trying to recreate wind chimes to perfect effect.  “Space Travel is Boring” adds swirling strings to orchestrate a hazy, dream-like trip to the moon.  But the real standout is “Ocean Breathes Salty“.  After hearing the original, I can’t imagine how Kozelek could come up with his version, and I challenge those Modest Mouse fans out there to deny its power.  Kozelek recaptures the meaning of the lyric and sets the melody out front, resulting in one of the most moving and beautiful five minutes of 2005.

Death Cab for Cutie / Plans

Again, some songs and records are of a very specific place.  ‘Plans’ was in solid rotation on my discman (I know it was 2005, shut up) on our trip to Albuquerque and certain songs immediately remind me of the foothills and mountains of northeastern New Mexico.  There’s nothing like staring out the window of a train at the western wilderness to help you fall in love with an album.  This album gets slagged occasionally as their clumsy grab for the big money mainstream brass ring which I suppose makes sense coming on the heels of ‘Transatlanticism’ but it’s not really lacking in tunes – it’s just got more polish.  “Soul Meets Body” was an odd choice for a single, and while I understand why “I Will Follow You into the Dark” got so popular it doesn’t do much for me.  “Summer Skin“, however, would make it to the best of the decade shortlist with its shuffling beat, fluid and melodic bass and buckets of atmosphere – I haven’t heard it described as a tribute to The Cure, but to my ears it sounds exactly like Head on the Door era Robert Smith could have written it (and he oughta cover it, really).  The subdued melancholy of “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” is another standout, but again, a lot can be said for first encountering a moody and introspective album while looking out the window of a train.

Honorable Mention

Like I said, there was so much good stuff from 2005 that I could assemble a rock solid mix CD from the stuff that didn’t make the top five.  To wit:

1. “Sing Me Spanish Techno” / The New Pornographers (Twin Cinema)
2. “This Year” / The Mountain Goats (The Sunset Tree)
3. “The Girl I Can’t Forget” / Fountains of Wayne (Out of State Plates)
4. “Unsingable Name” / Mike Doughty (Haughty Melodic)
5. “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” / Spoon (Gimme Fiction)
6. “Keep Moving” / Ivy (In the Clear)
7. “In State” / Kathleen Edwards (Back to Me)
8. “Black and White Town” / Doves (Some Cities)
9. “Like Eating Glass” / Bloc Party (Silent Alarm)
10. “Pachuca Sunrise” / Minus the Bear (Menos el Oso)
11. “Silver Rider” / Low (The Great Destroyer)
12. “Something” / Sam Prekop (Who’s Your New Professor?)
13. “Masterfade” / Andrew Bird (… & the Mysterious Production of Eggs)
14. “Sunny Road” / Emiliana Torrini (Fisherman’s Woman)
15. “My Love Has Gone” / Josh Rouse (Nashville)
16. “Amazing Glow” / Pernice Brothers (Discover A Lovelier You)
17. “Cells” / Teenage Fanclub (Man-Made)
18. “A Page From The Desert ” / Pinetop Seven (The Night’s Bloom)
19. “Knot Comes Loose” / My Morning Jacket (Z)
20. “Rock Bottom Riser” / Smog (A River Ain’t too Much to Love)
21. “Song For the Angels” / Great Lake Swimmers (Bodies and Minds)

Live shows again are a blur, but a Low /Pedro the Lion show at the Metro stands out.  This was just following their new record ‘The Great Destroyer’, which was the debut of a louder, more produced Low, and it was great to see they were as good loud as they’d always been quiet.  Pedro the Lion rocked as well, with a cover of Neil Young’s “Ambulance Blues” standing out in my memory.

This Is the Sound: 2004

This won’t go on quite as long as 2003, I promise.

2004 was comparatively uneventful as the Aughts go – most of the year was spent nose to the grindstone doing whatever DePaul said in order to finally get that paper (actually technically granted after one course Fall Quarter ’04, go me).  I can’t remember all the details, but we basically spent the year being newlyweds in a big city – my home city.  I suppose to my present self (full time job, responsibility, kids, etc.) it was the glory days – we went out a lot, had decently stress-free jobs, ate ethnic food, cooked, slept in, saw movies and shows, fought for parking spaces, talked to each other for hours uninterrupted by little people…

And, therefore, had money to spend on CDs.  2004 seems a little down in comparison to 2003 (and ’05 – we had a theory going for a while that music was really only good in odd numbered years – try it out) but there were some quality musical memories, of course:

Trashcan Sinatras / Weightlifting

I can clearly remember sitting at the computer, clicking the Amazon 30 second sample for the title track and sitting transfixed for a good five repeats.  The Glasgow natives had been on hiatus for 7 years after their last record wasn’t even released in the States, but had a solid catalog of jangly britpop. This record is a little ballad-heavy, but they’re so richly textured they don’t ever quite get old.  Frank Reader’s voice itself is enough of a treasure – and age seems to have only made it more smooth and soulful.  He conveys resignation, acceptance and grace in the melancholic “Leave Me Alone”, a sweet, buoyant joy in “It’s a Miracle” and a palpably fragile and brittle regret in “A Coda”.  I spent the next few months tracking down each of their earlier out of print releases, and was not disappointed, but this gem is the best introduction to them.

Kings of Convenience / Riot on an Empty Street

I had heard the odd K of C track in my college radio days in Portland, but Belle & Sebastian records aside, I wasn’t quite twee enough for the whispers and acoustics of their 2001 debut.  This was another record that grabbed me from the first listen.  Opening track “Homesick” begins with a simple acoustic pattern we’ve heard in countless songs but quickly adds in the sweet harmonies that are their trademark.  The lyrics speak of the need to find the unknown song hidden somewhere that will ease a friend’s homesickness – all the while sounding like the exact song in question.  Feist guests on two tracks, and the acoustic theme is further broken up by bouncing and poppy tracks like “I’d Rather Dance With You” and “Love is No Big Truth”.  But, they’re at their best with the simple two guitar, two voice songs like “Gold in the Air of Summer”.

Joanna Newsom / The Milk-Eyed Mender

Dylan. Waits.  Lauper.  There are some performers that present a very specific challenge to some listeners: The Voice (can you get past it?).  I’m not sure what long-defunct brand of internet radio first brought me Joanna Newsom, but I”m glad I didn’t skip ahead.  There’s not much to tell – she accompanies herself with just harp on most tracks, keyboards on others, pulls out strange imagery in her lyrics, and yes, has That Voice.  Chirpy, shrill, childlike etc. – but listen to what it’s saying.  The songs and melodies are top notch and when the obscure lyrics give way to the direct ones, the result is often heartbreaking, as on “Clam, Crab, Cockle,Cowrie”.  If you can get through “The Sprout and the Bean”, by all means give the rest of the album a try.

Elliott Smith / From a Basement on the Hill

This record’s place at the top of my Best of 2004 List at Amazon owes as much to the shock over Elliott Smith’s death in late 2003 and its quick posthumous release then to its merits.  Mixed down from a few years’ work by his former producers, the record certainly hints at what must have been a new intended direction – heavier, louder and certainly (and sadly) more bleak, lyrically (if that were even possible).  The record certainly shows Smith’s skill as a musical craftsman, but some of the songs themselves don’t leave much of an impression.  Still, when the new sound works, it works well, as in “A Distorted Reality is now a Necessity to be Free”.  But, the real strength as always lies in the quieter, acoustic numbers, of which “Twilight” is the best.

David Mead / Indiana

Just another singer-songwriter record, but quite a varied one at that.  The backstory is involved with the record company mergers that left many bands without a label and completed records shelved and unreleased in the early 2000s (see “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”).  Mead had released two strong but underperforming power-pop records for RCA and apparently had a third in the can when the industry merry-go-round began.  Parts of that shelved record eventually emerged on an EP in 2005, but Mead was busy in the interim, recording and releasing the more restrained and acoustic ‘Indiana’.  There are big power-pop numbers as well, along with more quirky songs and big piano ballads as well as a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature”.  Opener “Nashville” is a stunner, with a simple guitar and voice eventually joined by cello as lyrics like “on a childhood highway through a night alone /
i was barely breathing, i was crawling home” tumble by.  For me, this song will always be crossing the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge at night, watching the lights of the city and driving with my sweetheart, just the two of us.

Honorable Mention:

Bjork’s ‘Medulla’ is an odd case – intended as an exploration of the human voice as an instrument, there are very few other instruments on the record.  When the experiment works, it works extremely well, and not just in regular a capella settings like “Sonnets/Unrealities” and “Vokuro” but also in dance-pop tunes like “Who is it?”.  Wilco’s ‘A Ghost is Born’ would doubtless be always known as the follow-up to the legendary ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ but in retrospect it represents quite well the sound of a band in transition, and makes more sense seen as the predecessor to ‘Sky Blue Sky’, especially in tracks like “Muzzle of Bees”.  I played Pedro the Lion’s ‘Achilles Heel’ quite a bit in 2004, and while its chock full of catchy tunes and great lyrics (“The Poison” is a brutally beautiful example), it doesn’t come off the shelf that much and now I’m wondering why.   I may be one of the few people that prefers Iron & Wine’s ‘Our Endless Numbered Days’ to their debut, but I feel there’s no question that it’s got the stronger set of songs; closer “Passing Afternoon” being a great example.  Lambchop returned with not one but two albums of idiosyncratic indie-country-alt-pop (hilariously titled ‘C’Mon’ and ‘No, You C’Mon’) and while the sprawl is a bit much, each is still a great listen full of Kurt Wagner’s croaky croon as well as solid instrumentals (“The Lone Official” being a great example).  2004 saw the final release from Scotland’s The Delgados, and while ‘Universal Audio’ was a little spotty, it’s got a pair of great singles – “Everybody Come Down” and “I Fought the Angels”.  Oh, and ‘Funeral’.  Something about that record signaled that I was getting old at 26.  I wasn’t down with the buzz immediately and took a while to come around to its majesty.  I’ve had trouble keeping up ever since; a problem that will obviously only be worsening but with some certain tradeoffs.

We did go to a lot of shows in 2004, and I’m mostly having a hard time remembering which were 04 and which were 05.  Seeing Low right around Christmastime in Logan Square would have been a highlight, and if it was the same Christmastime that we saw Mark Kozelek at Schuba’s then it was quite a month, not just quite a year.

This Is The Sound: 2003

OK, this might get long.  2003 was nothing short of actually pretty amazing on a lot of levels.  We got married on Christmas Eve, 2002, so 2003 was really our first year together as such.  We planned a Chicago wedding party (code named ‘The July Business’)  and a honeymoon in points further east from Portland, and also moved out of town that summer.  The actual move was a comedy of planning as well, with the departure date changing by the week and our moods.

So yes, we threw a wedding party, then departed for a two week drive in our brand new car (manual transmission, which I learned in about 2 weeks before we left, with only a handful of highway misadventures).  We went the long way to Nova Scotia (no, the U. P. is not on the way, but hey, when was I going to get up there again?) and stayed in a cottage in Cape Breton and a fancy hotel downtown Halifax, with high praise for each.  We got an apartment just off the Montrose Brown Line, mercifully within earshot of the tracks – the perfect tonic for this homesick Chicago boy.

I went back to school that fall, fighting the advising department and the degree requirement changes implemented in my absence from DePaul as well as the distraction of the 2003 Cubs’ playoff push (full disclosure: don’t blame Bartman – I brazenly and audibly made World Series plans before Game 6, jinxing the whole enterprise).  As a 25 year old married guy feeling very much older than my classmates, I took a full load of classes and graduated the next year. The other notable event was that I got a student job on campus at my old haunt, the Johnny Rich Library.  And as I applied bar codes and labels for 15 hours a week, something magical happened…

Anyway, it was a really good year.  And so there are so many good musical memories that narrowing for publication here was quite a chore:

Sun Kil Moon / Ghosts of the Great Highway

2003 was so long ago in internet time that it’s hard to remember the days when you didn’t know about your favorite bands’ new releases weeks ahead of time.  Unless you followed fan sites religiously you still had to stumble upon new music occasionally.  I’m pretty sure I found about this one in a record store, thanks to a sticker on the cover advertising this as the newest from the Red House Painters’ Mark Kozelek.  Kozelek is nothing short of amazing in my book, an accomplished guitarist in the venues of both electric crunch and squeal as well as deft acoustic textures, who also writes exquisitely beautiful nostalgia-laden lyrics and has a rich voice that will support a variety of metaphors (velvet, snowy day, etc.)  This record was his first under the name Sun Kil Moon, and has a slew of classics.  “Glenn Tipton” is a strong opener, using a lyrical device ostensibly about people’s preferences for various Judas Priest guitarists and eventually turning it into a meditation on mortality.  “Gentle Moon” and “Carry Me Ohio” continue just as strongly in the same vein, and Kozelek turns up the amps for “Lily and Parrots” and “Salvador Sanchez” to prove he can still rock out.  Nick Drake meets Neil Young oversimplifies matters, but out of Kozelek’s many albums, this is probably the best introduction to his work.

Radiohead / Hail to the Thief

So, in the aftermath of  ‘In Rainbows’ and the frenzy celebrating ‘Kid A’/'Amnesiac’ as the top records of the decade, this little record has come off as weak in comparison.  I suppose that makes sense, but being sandwiched between two absolute classics is not ‘Hail to the Thief’s’ fault.  I was certainly not disappointed with it when we picked it up the day it was released in mid-June (pretty sure that would have been our last record purchased in Portland), and most tracks stayed in heavy rotation throughout the Fall.  Care all you want about how overtly (or not) political this record is, but one can’t deny this is the work of an angry band.  Aside from “Sail to the Moon”, there isn’t really a letup in the first few tracks, with the ‘raindrops’ section of “Sit Down. Stand Up” being particularly intense – in a good way.  “There There” was a strong single choice, and in subsequent years I’ve quite come to enjoy tracks like “A Wolf at the Door” and “Scatterbrain” that I passed over in 2003 in favor of the more direct earlier tracks.

The Shins / Chutes Too Narrow

So, here is where I admit that I came late to the Shins party.  Despite living in Portland, I did not own ‘Oh Inverted World’ in 2001.  My roommates did, and I heard it, liked it fine, got a copy online via Kazaa or something, learned to play “New Slang”, etc.  We bought ‘Chutes Too Narrow’ sometime in the summer of 2003, and while I can’t say I pull it off the shelf that often, just reading the tracklist now makes me want to – at least just to scream along to “Kissing the Lipless“.  It’s definitely the soundtrack to that summer and fall, most of my memories of it involve driving out to my parents’ house from the city, though it would usually only get us about halfway down the Ike.  Oh, and “Gone For Good“, perhaps my favorite Shins song.

Death Cab For Cutie / Transatlanticism

Again, I had heard some Death Cab For Cutie in Portland, and had downloaded copies of both “We Have the Facts and Are Voting Yes” and “The Photo Album”, but this was the first of their records I bought as soon as it came out.  I would argue it’s their strongest effort, top to bottom – “Plans” has some great tunes but falls a little flat in comparison.  Sonically complex (love that the white noise that precedes the opening to “The New Year” also closes the record after “A Lack of Color”) and emotionally rich (singling out the the title track, obviously) it’s got catchy pop songs, quiet acoustic numbers, big arena statements and moody indie rock all in 11 tracks.  Oh and there was also that Postal Service thing Ben Gibbard was involved in.  People seemed to like that, too.

Total Cop-out / Can’t Decide on Five

So our honeymoon was basically two weeks of driving from Chicago to Nova Scotia with no reservations except those in Cape Breton and Halifax. We took each day as it came, and had a pretty good time of it.  Our newly purchased car also was my first with a CD player (2003, remember), and so it was great to have both mix CDs as well as new purchases with us along the way.  Like any great road trip, there are many songs from the trip playlist that are forever attached to that time.  So, a lot of the musical memories of 2003 are so tied to those two weeks that it was hard to keep this list short.  So, great records/songs from that July were: The Jayhawks’ “Rainy Day Music”, specifically ‘Stumbling Through the Dark‘, The Pernice Brothers’ “Yours Mine and Ours”, specifically ‘One Foot in the Grave‘, Cafe Tacuba’s “Cuatro Caminos”, specifically ‘Mediodia‘,  Bettie Serveert’s “Log 22″, specifically ‘Certainlie‘ and Fountains of Wayne’s “Welcome Interstate Managers”, specifically ‘All Kinds of Time‘ (very hard to choose just one from each of these).  All these records will always remind me of this once in a lifetime trip with my sweetheart.

Honorable mention: Like I said, there was a lot of good music this year.  I knew of Wilco’s John Stirratt’s Autumn Defense side project, but their record “Circles” was the first I bought.  It’s quite a solid effort on its own, thanks also to the work of current Wilco member Pat Sansone.  Opening track ‘Silence‘ is a standout, but the whole album is a strong collection of 70s colored acoustic pop.  Another lesser-known album featuring members of Wilco is the Minus 5′s “Down With Wilco”.  Minus 5 main man Scott McCaughey recorded it in Chicago with all of Wilco as his backing band, with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, the Posies’ Ken Stringfellow and the Spinanes’ Rebecca Gates also guesting.  Jeff Tweedy even sings lead on ‘The Family Gardener‘, but a standout for me is ‘The Old Plantation.’  Belle & Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” was definitely a stylistic left turn that took a while to grow on me, but ‘I’m A Cuckoo‘ was a hit on first listen.  I picked up The Delgados’ “Hate” in Berkeley during a December vacation, and listened to it almost the whole time.  Produced by frequent Flaming Lips collaborator Dave Fridmann, it’s got the same wide-screen sound but is definitely more down to Earth than the Lips.  The Sea and Cake’s “One Bedroom” continued their string of solid releases, and I caught a great show by them in Portland that winter.  ‘Mr. F‘ has made it on many a mix CD since then.  Another band that rarely disappoints is Yo La Tengo, and while their “Summer Sun” was understandably a dropoff from the classic “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out”, it had many great songs, including the don’t-even-try-to-sit-still groove of ‘Moonrock Mambo‘.

The best show we saw all year was definitely Rachel’s, supporting their masterpiece ‘Systems/Layers‘ in Chicago that Fall.  The show was on the second floor of some kind of industrial building down in the warehouse district somewhere around Lake and Damen, and it took some convincing that we were actually in the right place.  It was quite an intimate event, with Matt Pond PA opening, and a full multimedia presentation with films alongside the main performance.  Unforgettable, like most of 2003 (the Cubs included).

This Is The Sound: 2002

OK, now things are improving.  2002 saw us fall more in love and get married, which is more than enough to make it memorable, but a lot more happened.  I moved across the river to SE, got promoted to manager at work (oh what the heck, I’ll give World Cup Coffee a shoutout), made a connection there with staff at the Crystal Ballroom, getting us into tons of shows, started doing a radio show with the fabulous DJ Mr Romo on KPSU,  did some acting and sound work for the Miracle Theatre where my wife worked, kept writing and performing music around town, and made my first two trips to California (one by train) to meet all of my wife’s family.

And of course there was the music.  I mentioned ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ in the 2001 post (due to its chronologically displaced status) so I won’t include it here – if you don’t know all about it by now there’s really no helping you.

The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

Following an undisputed masterpiece like ‘The Soft Bulletin’ is no easy task, but ‘Yoshimi’ largely pulls it off.  It’s not a total left turn, and it’s not an attempt at rehashing its predecessor, either.  Also, it’s not as if there isn’t joy and exuberance on ‘Soft Bulletin’, but “Do You Realize” takes those sentiments to another level altogether.  “Ego-Tripping At the Gates of Hell” (and its varied remixes) is just as powerful in speaking of regret, and “One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21” is without a doubt the best song ever written about a robot learning to feel emotions.  I can imagine this is a record my kids will appreciate when they’re just a little older, and I really hope Wayne and co. are still touring then.

Beth Orton / Daybreaker

I love all of Beth Orton’s records for various reasons, but ‘Daybreaker‘ is definitely my favorite.  It covers lots of emotional ground, the production is swirling and grand in the right places and simple and direct in the others, and the guest list?  “Concrete Sky” was co-written by Johnny Marr and on harmonies features Ryan Adams, who wrote “This One’s Gonna Bruise“, and also shows up on “God Song” alongside Emmylou Harris.  Oh, and Everything But the Girl’s Ben Watt co-produced.  Overall, this is a great introduction to her work, featuring acoustic ballads, a dance track, straightforward pop and more languid chill-out stuff.  And, “Mount Washington” is without question on my best of the decade mixtape.

Josh Rouse / Under Cold Blue Stars

Similar to ‘Daybreaker’, ‘Under Cold Blue Stars’ is another example of the perfect entry point to an artist’s work.  Almost all of Josh Rouse’s records have great songs and decent production, but this one stands out.  Wilco’s Pat Sansone is all over this record, which contributes to the overall sound, but here it’s the songs that really stand out.  And, perhaps most importantly, we listened to this a ton in 2002, and there’s something to be said for the record that comes at the right time when you’re slowly allowing depressing music to release its stranglehold on you.  “Feeling No Pain” was on our wedding gift CD as well, obviously.

Ron Sexsmith / Cobblestone Runway

I’ve been a Ron Sexmith fan for a long time – he’s the consummate songwriter’s songwriter (Feist covered his “Secret Heart” on ‘Let it Die’ and co-wrote “Brandy Alexander” from ‘The Reminder’ with him).  I don’t know how he does it every time, but he makes it look so effortless.  His songs are so simple yet expertly constructed, and how he keeps coming up with so many catchy melodies after all these years is something I’ll stop questioning and just appreciate.  That said, ‘Cobblestone Runway’ is not my favorite record of his, but it was my wife’s introduction to his work, and “God Loves Everyone” was a perfect choice to play at our wedding(s).  Oh, and Coldplay’s Chris Martin guests on the remix of “Gold In Them Hills“

Lambchop / Is A Woman

Possibly the other strongest musical memory of 2002 is this understated effort, quite a change of direction from the boisterous ‘Nixon’ from 2000.  ‘Is  A Woman‘ is very simply any one of a number of Sunday mornings, sitting at home after breakfast at the Cricket Cafe (mmm… bacon and blue cheese omelets…) with the newspaper and a pot of coffee.  I’ll highly recommend you add it to your Sunday morning paper and coffee playlist, should you have the occasion.

Honorable Mention: Ok, there’s a lot of these.  Paul Westerberg/Grandpaboy’s ‘Stereo/Mono‘ got played a lot back then, but right now I’m thinking it was more because he’d been relatively silent for a while.  “Making Pies” from Patty Griffin’s ’1000 Kisses’ is the most touchingly beautiful song of the year.  Tom Waits’ ‘Alice’ and ‘Blood Money’ two-fer threw a lot of tracks at us, “Alice” being the most memorable.  Beck’s ‘Sea Change‘ is of course a classic, but I was a little too happy and content to really play it a lot that year.  Pedro The Lion’s ‘Control‘ is another intense little record, but it has some really strong songs.  Richard Buckner had been a favorite for a while, but ‘Impasse’ was quite a surprise – “Count Me In On This One” doesn’t really sound like alt-country, it just sounds great.  I listened to Elvis Costello’s ‘When I Was Cruel‘ quite a bit that year, but it hasn’t held up as well.

And we saw quite a few live shows that year (Low, Ron Sexsmith, Bad Religion, Gillian Welch, Elliott Smith, They Might Be Giants, etc.) but really, anytime you see the Flaming Lips it rightly should be the highlight of the year.

This Is The Sound: 2001

Obviously, a lot happened in 2001.  And I don’t just mean the Cubs pulling off the big trade for Fred McGriff.  I was still in Portland, but was meeting more people and eventually moved out of my tiny studio and into a house with some friends.  I did a professionally recorded demo and started playing around town and was still writing plenty of new songs.  I went to tons of shows, and that summer, I met my wife.  So then there was all of that.

I also apparently bought a ton of music that year.  I guess I really didn’t have much else to spend money on (and I walked past Music Millennium on NW23rd on my way home from work everyday, where, true story, I once ran into Benicio Del Toro, who really likes the Stones, btw), and while the dark times were slowly lightening on their own, fantastic music certainly helps.  So, out of the 90 hours of 2001 music I have, the best stuff of the year for me was:

Joe Henry / Scar

I first saw Joe Henry open for Wilco at the Riv in May of 1999, and his literate, moody roots rock impressed me enough that I picked up a few of his records.  But they didn’t prepare me for ‘Scar’.  This is a nighttime record, dark and spare and shadowy yet well lit in all the proper places.  The title track is masterclass on writing lyrics, but it’s the combination of mood, restraint and passion on the first track that leaves the biggest impression.  It’s titled “Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation” which is probably more apt than it has a right to be.  It rolls along at a jazzy, slow burn tempo, but catches fire once Ornette Coleman improvises a gorgeous solo in the middle that pulls together all of the song’s elements (title, lyric, key, tempo) into a raw yet beautiful summation of purpose.  I’m not doing it justice, but I’ll finish by saying it may be the most powerful musical moment of the whole decade for me (read Henry’s essay on the topic “The Ghost in The Song” for the full story on its creation and execution – you won’t be sorry you did, trust me).  Oh, yeah, and track 2 was later recorded by Henry’s sister-in-law.  Madonna.

Gillian Welch / Time (The Revelator)

My friend Alexis introduced me to Gillian Welch’s earlier albums that year, so I was caught up in time for this one.  My best memory of it is walking to work at 5:30 AM on my way to open up the coffee house.  And then finishing it on the way home, taking the long way to let “I Dream A Highway” take its course.  ‘Time’ is certainly made of the same cloth as her other records, but that cloth is made into a completely different dress here.  It’s not more personal, it’s not any less timeless, but it feels very different.  Another top contender for the best of the entire decade list.

Bjork / Vespertine

I bought ‘Vespertine’ for my wife a few weeks after we started dating.  In an incredible and justified bit of foresight, I did not buy a second copy for myself.  Everything seems to have worked out well (aside from history not being kind to the Swan Dress), and “Unison” closed out our wedding gift mix CD as well.

Low / Things We Lost In The Fire

I liked Low’s earlier records, but ‘Things We Lost in The Fire’ marked a turning point for them.  It moved them away from the strict slow, spare and quiet sound of records like ‘Long Division’ and ‘The Curtain Hits the Cast’ and toward the adventurousness and increased volume of ‘The Great Destroyer’ or ‘Drums & Guns’.  And, as so often happens with a band in transition, they made their best album as a result. “Sunflower” is one of those classic track #1′s that so grabs you from its first chord that you don’t get to track 2 or 3 for the whole first week you own the record.  Also, 2001 was the first time I saw them live, at the Aladdin in Portland, and the highlight of the show was a stripped down cover of The Smiths’ “Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me”.

Red House Painters / Old Ramon

I’d been a Red House Painters/Mark Kozelek fan for quite some time, which was pretty directly responsible for me moving in with Steve and Jamie in Portland.  I worked with Jamie, but we only became friends after I brought in a handful of RHP records to play at work.  I snapped up ‘Old Ramon’ as soon as it was rescued from its label-limbo unreleased status by Sub Pop that Spring.  2001 was also the first time I saw them live, though that show was largely a disappointment to many (especially Kozelek) thanks to a particularly disinterested Portland audience (a frequent occurrence – don’t get me started).  I played this a lot, obviously, but the one song that stands out most now is his simple guitar and voice tribute to John Denver, “Golden“.  Don’t laugh.  Give it a try.

Honorable Mention: On the whole, Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Poses‘ was a slight let down from his debut masterpiece, but the title track is a moving and stunning accomplishment.  Ryan Adams was certainly ubiquitous in the Fall of 2001 because of the release of ‘Gold‘, but for as much as I listened to it then, I don’t think it’s aged as well as his other albums.  Rather, the also shelved then released belatedly in 2001 effort ‘Pneumonia’ by Adams’ old band Whiskeytown has held up very well, and “Jacksonville Skyline” might be one of my favorite songs from 2001.  Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ ‘No More Shall We Part‘ and Duncan Sheik’s ‘Phantom Moon‘ (a ridiculously underrated and completely atypical gem compared to the rest of his output) are both forever tied to a gray weekend in May, and earn their place here thanks to that memory. But, the elephant in the room is of course Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘.  By the end of 2001 we had all heard it, and they basically played all of it when I saw them at the Roseland that November (as well as at a Tweedy solo show that Spring), but it wasn’t actually released until April 2002.

The top live show memory of that year was undoubtedly Radiohead with the Beta Band at the Gorge in George, WA in June.  The Gorge is just that, an outdoor amphitheater set overlooking a huge gorge of the Columbia River in Central Washington.  So, the setting, the band, the timing (right after the release of  ‘Amnesiac‘) and the set list itself – opening with “The National Anthem” if memory serves – were all perfect.  We were on such a high that we sealed the evening by driving straight back to Portland after the show – 5 hours – talking and laughing all the way.

This Is The Sound: 2000

So, some backstory.  I graduated high school in 1996, putting me solidly on track for graduating college (DePaul University, Go Blue Demons!) in 2000.  My grades for Fall Quarter 1999 were… less than stellar.  As a result, I did not darken the doors of Schmitt Academic Center or the JTR in the year 2000.  Add to that The Ex getting engaged, and well…

I moved to Portland!  On the first of July, 2ooo, I loaded my mom’s car full of clothes, guitars and CDs and headed west with no job, no expected address, no one known to me there in town.  A lot of good things happened to me in PDX (more on that later), but honestly, this was a pretty dark year.  It was the end of some fun, yet poorly remembered years in Chicago and the uncomfortable beginnings of an attempt at a new life in a new city.

And when I scan the hard drive for the records tagged with 2000, it’s a dark list indeed.   But, here we go:

Ryan Adams / Heartbreaker

Here is an excellent example of the critical and the emotional working together to everyone’s satisfaction.  Not only is ‘Heartbreaker’ a cracking record from top to bottom, but nothing quite sums up the summer of 2000 in a studio apartment in lonely Portland OR, like “Come Pick Me Up“.  I think I bought this on my first trip to Everyday Music on Burnside, and one must wonder whether I would have come running back home without it for support.

Radiohead / Kid A

… and yet, I did go running back, stupidly, to try to reconnect with The Ex that Fall.  The best part was stopping by the Virgin Store on Michigan Ave to pick up this, The Sea and Cake’s ‘Oui’ and Richard Buckner’s ‘The Hill’.  Honestly, what hasn’t been said about what an amazing, paradigm-shifting record this is.  Personally, I can remember playing “How to Disappear Completely” (it was a dark year, I told you) over and over at quite a loud volume.  I was very lucky to live between an 80 year old man and a deaf guy.

Elliott Smith /Figure 8

In truth, without Elliott Smith I would have probably just moved somewhere stupid like Indianapolis or New York.  My sole ambition upon declaring my intentions for Portland sometime that Spring was that I would be a regularly performing singer-songwriter.  And when I walked around town for the first time that summer, it was Figure 8 in my Discman (yes, that takes us all back, eh?).  His story ends more sadly than mine (and the one time I saw him live in PDX makes me cherish my memories of the Chicago shows all the more) but this ornate yet depressing gem is both critically and emotionally central to 2000 for me.

Belle & Sebastian / Fold Your Hands, Child, You Walk Like A Peasant

This record gets slagged by B&S fans as their worst (well, aside from ‘Storytelling’, but we won’t get into that) but I rather prefer it to its more classically twee predecessors.  I find top to bottom it’s a strong listen that I can put on today with no skipping required (come on, ‘The Boy With the Arab Strap’ devotees, you never skip over “A Space Boy Dream”?).  This was the soundtrack to my last few months in Chicago as well as the drive west, and while “Women’s Realm” is attached to no specific memory, it makes me dance every time, and that’s saying something for a record first encountered in 2000.

Josh Rouse / Home

Just a tastefully produced little singer-songwriter record, but it was quite inspiring as a template for when I was trying to accomplish similar things as a writer.  I like all of his records, but this one seems to just fit better top to bottom as a collection of songs.  There’s not an off tune among the ten, and while I don’t come back to it often, that’s probably more due to its relationship to my messy 2000 than its own merits.  “Hey Porcupine” is worth a listen, but the rest of his albums are all worth a listen as well.

Honorable mention:  I also played the crap out of Yo La Tengo’s ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out‘.  Morphine’s ‘The Night‘ contains a title track that’s the best introduction to the band that I can recommend, and PJ Harvey’s ‘Stories of The City, Stories of The Sea’ certainly meets all critical benchmarks, but I really only listened to “This Mess We’re In” on repeat that year.  Jim O’Rourke’s ‘Halfway To A Threeway’ is honestly the year 2000 record that I listen to most often today, but it’s just a 4 song EP, so… you know.  Billy Bragg & Wilco’s (& Woody Guthrie’s) “Remember The Mountain Bed” might be the most beautiful song on either ‘Mermaid Avenue’, but the year 2000 second record was definitely the weaker overall.  Oh, and as huge of a Cure fan as I was in February 2000, “Bloodflowers” was largely a disappointment, aside from the first and title tracks.

The top live show would have been from Catherine Wheel’s penultimate US tour, at the Double Door that Spring.  I hadn’t bought their new record at that point, so when they closed the regular set with “Creme Caramel” it hit me like a ton of bricks, especially when Rob Dickinson sang “and your wedding night [i heard 'eyes', though the lyric sheet says 'thighs'] / kept me alive / all through the good times / when passion was ripe”.

… erm, yes, let’s all move on to 2001.

… And,We’re Back

Over a year.  Ouch.  Is this thing on…?

Nobody really thought it would last, and they were mostly right.  I suppose there’s a number of potential blame targets: mostly that having young children takes up so much of your time that it’s pretty hard to blog about them.  Or blog about them and work a regular job, which brings me to my next point.  Meredith always suggested that maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a library blogger, and 1 post out of 6 proves the numbers never lie.  In her kindness and positivity, she did say that maybe instead I was a music blogger, which brings us to our topic for today.

It has been recently announced that yes, I am now in a band again (those who were there can say whether Cousin Walter counts or not), and my bandmate had an inspired idea on her blog that I now intend to copy in order to resurrect mine.  I”ll let her explain:

Over the next few weeks I’m going to review the music of the last decade – I should say, I’m going to review MY music of MY last decade. It’s probably going to be at least a little embarrassing as I often find I come to things late, but hey.

Now, those that know me will know that I would never be able to publicly announce that I didn’t actually buy _______ record until a year after it came out.  And, when faced with defining a year musically, I’m also torn between my critical inclination and my emotional self, which manifests itself in the ambiguity of the phrase “best of”.  So, which is it?  The high-quality, artistic records that will stand the test of time or the ones that tell the story of my life in that year?  It’d be nice to try to state that I only really spun the high artistic merit records all year, and that therefore all emotional connections are tied to them, but we all know that  ain’t true (sometimes it’s just not possible – the new record by The Antlers is amazing but I don’t know if I want to subject myself to it again – maybe I can listen to it with my hands over my ears, through my fingers).

So I’ll try for a mix of critical successes and personal faves, and also include top songs on otherwise shoddy records and memorable live experiences, though that’s gonna slack off considerably once we hit Vermont in 2007.   After that, well … hey – there goes Elvis!…

Instruction, Year Two

And but so it’s my second week back at work and I’m thrown back into the realm of Freshman English 101 instruction tomorrow.  Three 75 minute sections of EN 101, no less, back to back to back.  Last year, my first here as a “Big L” Librarian here, I enjoyed my immediate exposure to EN 101s and got to really find my groove as a stand-up comic librarian.  I usually had a brief handout, a sketch of what I wanted to show them, and then I took further cues from students and their questions and their topics.  Seat of my pants instruction sometimes, but it worked pretty well for me.  Students came back later at the ref desk, they got to know me, I got good reviews (full disclosure: I threw candy at them) and best of all, faculty told their colleagues and our instruction stats went up.  Hooray.

Now, after a summer’s worth of thought and study and reassignments, we rolled out a new, more active and structured approach to the EN 101 session – while I was out on leave.  So, while I’m finding it a little difficult talking to adults instead of toddlers this past week, my forceful return to libraryland is also including a new program for me to teach within.  Immediately (this is not a bad thing).

In a change from last year’s classes, I did a bunch of prep work for those sessions today.  My colleagues are usually much more formally prepared than I am, and while this is often a strategy that works well for me (performance background, maybe?), new times call for new measures.  So, we’ll see how everything goes on November 4th.  Change is coming.

Hat in hand

I meant to.  Really I did.  It’s just … well,  you know:

• new baby sleep loss
• the desire to get out and enjoy a classic New England autumn
• another epic Cubs collapse (and really, this one hurt like nothing since ’84 – and I was an impressionable lad of 6 then.  What was most distressing was the TV cameras’ turning Wrigley reaction shots into misery porn – making this solitary VT Cubbie feel even more alone in the wilds of R. Sox Nation)
• constant political despair and unease
• being full time Papi while I still could (and the lack of computer time as a result)
• nagging guilt that I really should be keeping up with Libraryland instead
• cooking delicious soups and stews

Really, all your babies are gorgeous.  And thanks for the gifts.   We’ll send something your way soon – too bad you aren’t close enough to come over for soup.

Please stay tuned – really.  I’m gonna stick with this.

A Salute From The Great Concavity

I can only blame New Parent Syndrome for the fact that it took me this long to hear the news of the death of my favorite contemporary author, David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide last week at the age of 46 (NY Times obit here, an, um, tribute here).

As a librarian, not a lit professor, I won’t even attempt any kind of critical evaluation or celebration for you, nor will you find extensive footnotes below in an attempted tribute.  I will say that the only time I have ever underlined anything in a book (not course-related, obviously) was when I finally hit upon the passage deep in Infinite Jest that seemed to be the keystone to the entire swirling galaxy of plot DFW had constructed.

i admired the clarity of his thinking, the precision of his language, and the depths of intelligence and creativity displayed in his elaborate constructions.  It is both odd and sad to note that he will not be with us in the Year of the Depend Undergarment.