After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade – Final

Ta-Dah – Scissor Sisters
2006
If you might want to dismiss Scissor Sisters as a novelty act, be be forewarned – this band knows what it is doing. For those who would put down the campier aspects of Scissor Sisters, I would ask exactly where would Queen be if it had not been for "Bohemian Rhapsody"?  This is a band that is not afraid to show that its roots are more in the glam 70′s of rock instead of the serious 60′s.  While Ta-Dah gives loving treatment to the late 70′s/Studio 54 set, it does not fetishize it. This is modern fun for the next generation of 24 hour party people crafted in the old tradition.  Like the lyrics to "Kiss You Off". Ms. Anna Matronic tells a soon to be ex. "Kiss you off my lips, it’s standing room only for a piece of my pigment/ so excuse me a minute while I supply demand." Consider yourself dissed and dismissed. This is not a band out to change the world.  This is a band that those changing the world can dance to.  And that is perfectly OK. 

Release – Pet Shop Boys
2002
One of the best kept secrets in music is that the Pet Shop Boys make great music that you don’t have to dance to. While Tennant and Lowe have been the top dance-pop musicians for over twenty years, it was sounding like it was time to push the envelope in another direction.  They did so and changed their game with Release. Bringing Tennant’s Electronic partner and former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr for several songs, Release is still pop, but with the club in the background.  This is the album you play when you get home from the club. It is poised, relaxed, mature and quite elegant. As the haiku from "The Samurai In Autumn" attests  – "It’s not as easy as it was / or as difficult as it could be / for the Samaurai in autumn". 

Morph The Cat – Donald Fagen
2006
back in 1982, Donald Fage put out a masterful album called "The Nightfly", an album set in the late 50s/early 60′s.  It was an album that was filled with the hope and enthusiasm of that period, viewed through the lens of the early eighties.  Fast forward to 2006.  Donald Fagen puts out and album called "Morph the Cat", an album that viewed the present time, from the view of someone who was born and raised in that earlier, more optimistic period. And the view is not pretty. This is a dark album, but it is more sardonic than mawkish. On "Mary Shut the Garden Door," he writes "Paranoia blooms when a thuggish cult gains control of the government." No missing that point. "Security Joan" is a clever love song of sorts directed to a TSA official.  The music however is light, and that makes a great counterweight to the lyrics and puts "Morph the Cat" up with "The Nightfly."       

Contraband – Velvet Revolver
2004
Sorry Axl.  Slash and Duff found another high maintenance front man and made an album that kicks Chinese Democracy’s ass to the curb and put it out five years ahead of you.  What makes me love this?  Simple.  This is straight forward take no prisoners music with Scott Weiland’s vocal that evoke Jim Morrison on a ‘roid rage. "Went too fast I’m out of luck and I don’t even give a f*ck," Weiland spits on "Do It for the Kids," and Slash’s screaming guitar backs up the line in spades.  The first twenty minutes are nothing but pure, unadulterated force that pins you back and only lets up for a beautiful four and a half minutes before throwing you back into the hurricane.  Even the power ballad "Fall to Pieces" packs more power than anything slow GnR ever did.  These guys sound like they had nothing to lose when making the album. That’s what makes it great.

Speakerboxx/The Love Below – Outkast
2003
Aquemini stole my musical heart and Stankonia made a clear intellectual statement for me.  But Speakerboxx/The Love Below really hit it out of the park.  It is hip hop, pop, jazz all rolled up.  It refuses to be pinned down. It is a drum’n'bass version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "My Favorite Things" that works exceedingly well.  It is fun, experimental, classic. In this case, the parts are as great as the sum of them.  Whatever is lost by Andre 3000 and Big Boi not performing together is more than made up by the individual effort.   But What could have turned out to be a total bust now looks in hindsight as an easy winning gamble. This is hip-hop that refuses to be dated or rated.  It has remained fresh all this time.  Someone called it hip hop’s "White Album" and I consider that an excellent analogy.  Outkast did more on this album than just mine music history – they bent, broke, trampled and rebuilt the rules of the genre. The rest of the players are still trying to catch up after all this time and they still have a long way to go. 

A Rush of Blood To The Head – Coldplay
2002
While U2 tried to save the world and Radiohead created some magnificent experiments, Coldplay stepped in and stole the spotlight. From the hammering intro of "Politik" to the stunning guitar-driven "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" the shimmering piano of "Clocks" to the bittersweet title track, A Rush of Blood to the Head is a complete tour de Force.  There is a new found maturity in Martin’s voice on this album, with considerably less yodeling, and much more power. The fact that the band had it in them to put out an album as assured, as exquisite as this one had to be one of the biggest surprises of the year. The fact that it still stands up makes it one of if not the best of the decade.

 

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade Part 3

Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes
2008
Simply put, a stunning debut album. The harmonies echo the best days of CSNY, specifically on Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.  There are liberal sprinklings of flute, banjo and accordion throughout to give a sense of a band that are at odds with the 21st Century. Nevertheless, there’s nothing here in the way of instrumental noodling, and collective egos are set aside – as they should be – in support of the song. An album you’ll play again and again.

The Town And The City – Los Lobos
2006
There are writers who want to write the great American novel. They need to listen to "The Town and The City" by Los Lobos. It’s an album about people — the hard life of outsiders in a new place — told without moralizing or sentimentality. The album’s standout, "The Road to Gila Bend," is a classic Lobos anthem, powered by David Hidalgo’s smoky vocals. The music is tight, the rythym section adds weight that has been missing and overall, it’s the best work they’ve done since Kiko.  And, its an album that stays around after playing – you find yourself humming songs from it and wondering why the tunes are so new, yet familiar. 

The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers
2004
I like the Drive By Truckers because I was born and raised in the South and while I am proud of my heritage, I know that where I am today  is because of the struggle with and against that same heritage. I am not afraid to look directly at the past because I know there is a wealth to be learned from it. In my mind that sums up Drive by Truckers – a group that celebrates and deconstructs what it is to be from the south. Plus they rock out like nobody’s business, especially on songs like "The Day John Henry Died," "Carl Perkins’ Cadillac," and "Never Gonna Change".  The album sums up southern rock for this decade.  It hasn’t been forgotten and it trust me, it will rise again..    

Funeral – Arcade Fire
2004
This is Rock at it’s most verbose.  It was big, ambitious, theatrical, sweeping, and unlike anything being sold at the time.  The band sounds like they’ve played for years, yet this is a debut album. It’s heart was right there on its sleeve, tackling the ‘big’ issues; Life and Death and its crushing inevitability, yet keeps a comfortable distance from the pretentious and overblown.  The underlying melancholy is never unbearable because another life-affirming moment is always around the corner. And strangely, like a funeral itself, this is a life-affirming album. A reminder that time is short and transient. That each second is precious.

Two Against Nature – Steely Dan
2000
Steely Dan reunited in 2000 as if the twenty years between "Two Against Nature" and "Gaucho" never happened. Some might call it a blessing, some a curse. After so many years between albums, doing anything out of the ordinary would have looked as ridiculous as Pat Boone in leather.  In the end, Two Against Nature is not a bold move or even a calculated move, but the correct move.  If anything, the years have not dulled their sense of macabre humor – "Gaslighting Abbie" is a song about a man and his mistress plotting to drive his wife insane.  Even darker is "Janie Runaway", about a very young runaway and the older man who "befriends" her.  “Cousin Dupree” is a sly take on incest.  All this and the signature Steely Dan sound behind them, Becker and Fagen prove that time is indeed relative.

100 Days, 100 Nights – Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
2007
Sharon Jones owned Amy Winehouse’s sound before Amy Winehouse even existed.  Remember that little nugget when you listen to 100 Days and 100 Nights.  Sharon Jones is a survivor and she has the voice to prove it; devoid of the modern diva’s histrionics, restrained when it needs to be, powerful when the music churns up; it’s truly a joy to hear, really.  While the Dap Kings may have made Winehouse a name in America, you get the feeling they saved the choice cuts for Ms. Jones herself.  Tracks like "Tell Me" and "Something’s Changed" shine with years of life lessons and when she tears sweetly into "Humble Me" it only reminds us how anyone but Sharon Jones sound more like a retread than the Real Thing.

Final Bits coming up

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade Part 2

Bachelor No. 2 (or, the last remains of the dodo) – Aimee Mann
2000
Aimee Mann has long boasted one of power pop’s most delightfully poisoned pens, fueled as much by her nuanced take on matters of the heart. Her third solo effort, finds Mann’s world as lyrically edgy as ever. While most of the relationships on the album are between people, Mann’s pen manages to draw some blood from her rocky relationship with the record companies as well. When the Burt Bachrach piano vamp leads into the line "Let’s assume you were right" to start off the song "Satellite", you know that you are in for a master’s class in picking apart a decision or two concerning the business of love or even the business of music.  The music itself is never out of bounds, and you are very capable hands all the way through.

The Grey Album – Danger Mouse
2004
It was a startlingly, shockingly wonderful piece of pop art.  It was an act of lawlessness.  It was proof that the Internet could be used to circumvent control over a product.  And for some, it was an act of pure genius.  The Grey album was all that and more.  On the most basic level, who would have thought that the Beatles and Jay-Z could work together so well?  And by working together, I mean having someone as resourceful as D.J. Danger Mouse mixing Jay-Z’s "Black Album" together with the Beatle’s "White Album" so effortlessly. Every sound here, aside from Jay-Z’s rhymes, was sampled painstakingly from the original LP. That turned out to be a problem for EMI who quickly threw around all sorts of injunctions to try to stop its release. But their efforts backfired and, god bless the Internet, inadvertently propelled The Grey Album into the international spotlight (according to download estimates), making it the most listened to album of 2004. It literally synthesized everything that the internet had been to the music industry for the previous ten years. It made several statements that had nothing to do with music per se and everything to do with artistic liscense.  And it never sold a single copy. One of the best albums you’ll never find.

Extraordinary Machine – Fiona Apple
2005
There are actually two versions of Extraordinary Machine-One that was produced by Jon Brion in 2003 and never released, and one produced in haste by Mike Elizondo and released by Sony after word got out on the internet that Sony had a great Fiona Apple album produced by Jon Brion in 2003 that it was refusing to release. You with me so far? The backstory should win an Oscar for Best Drama. Fortunately, due to the internet, one can find both versions and decide for themselves if they could be a Sony Executive.  I happen to like both for different reasons. Brion’s production is more raw, while Elizondo’s version is subdued.  The good thing is that Apple’s contribution shines through both versions.  The keeper that shows the difference is "Red, Red, Red".  In Brion’s version, the Perry Mason-like orchestration points up the song’s confusion and raw anger, while Elizondo’s handling takes the same song and makes it a world-weary statement.  When she closes with the line "I don’t understand/ I’ll never understand/ But I’ll try to understand/ There’s nothing else I can do”, she no longer sounds like the little girl from Tidal, rather, she’s a full grown woman who suddenly has gone through every option left to her. 

Bang Bang Rock and Roll – Art Brut
2005
There’s something about the way lead singer/speaker Eddie Argos talks about landing in Los Angeles, stripping naked to waist and riding a motorcycle up and down the Sunset Strip and drinking Hennesy with Morrisey that really hits me. It is astounding that Art Brut can reel off so many downright enjoyable songs that it almost hurts. ‘Formed A Band’ is a renewed, nearly Pixies-esque shouty vigour, no longer as much a call to arms as a celebration that they’re still together over a year later. ‘Emily Kane’ says more about unrequited teenage kicks than any textbook on the hormonal process could.  And doing this, not as some kind of joke, but completely and thoroughly sincere.  Art Brut just wants to have fun, charge head down at a stray Matisse, be bored with the Velvet Underground and play Rock n’ Roll while doing so. And they do. This is not ironic. This is straight-ahead wear it on your sleeve music that is not afraid to be fun and serious and clumsy and everything a young guy is in real life.  Hooray for honesty. 

More later…

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade

With 2010 around the corner I decided to review the albums that I consider my favorites of the decade.  This is no particular order, simply me rambling about why these are my favorites.

Sound Of Silver by LCD Soundsystem
2007
It is leaner, sleeker and more focused than the first LCD Soundsystem album and that is saying a lot.  It is also an album that uses dance music with an emotional punch.  It is the aging hipster from "I’m Losing My Edge" forced to confront his own humanity, a feeling magnified by New York  I Love You, whose deceptive title masks the lyrics "New York I love you, but you’re bringing me down". The sparse backing on the track only adds to the alienation.  But there’s also the tenderness of "Someone Great," a detailed account of grieving over a dead friend. "The worst is all the lovely weather/ I’m stunned it’s not raining/ The coffee isn’t even bitter/ Because, what’s the difference."  It may be dance music at the core of it, but it makes you think.  Damn good achievement. 

 

Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose
2004
For so many years, most of Nashville thought of Loretta Lynn as an icon – placed in a sacred part of the music church, revered by many but not to be touched. Jack White came into to town and showed the world that Loretta Lynn was far from being encased in a glass coffin yet.  It is by far and away, the best work she has done in years.  The music is vibrant, alive and crackling with emotion.  That is a testament to being a timeless and essential artist.  There are a handful of female country artists who could only wish that their music will stand up so well when they turn 70. The rest of them all ready know theirs won’t.  

 

Raising Sand by Robert Plant And Alison Krauss
2007
Who’dathunk?  Robert Plant, Allison Krause, produced by T-Bone Burnett. And it is a near perfection as one can find.  it sounds as if the three of them had been making music together for years. "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" is an amazing track-Krauss’ fiddle work is unreal and mesmerizing.  Plant’s take on the Everly Brothers’ "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)." sounds refreshingly candid and relaxed, almost as if he and the band had been playing around and didn’t realize the tape was rolling. Together though, their voices never compete, but never alone.  Each realizes the other is in the room and respects that.  Overall an amazing collaboration.

 

Dear Science, – TV On The Radio
2008
"A lot of bands have something to say," explains TV On The Radio producer/multi-instrumentalist David Sitek. "We have something to ask."  Indeed.  But I do have something to say.  TV On The Radio could be the Next Great American Band. Don’t believe me?  Get this album and listen to it.  Dear Science, starts off on a dead run – and manages to dance, swing, get serious, funk out and run some more. In a world where most pop acts are basically the same song over and over again (you hear me, Nickleback?) TV On The Radio’s versatility puts them head and shoulders above the competition. There is a swagger you rarely hear from a group that is only on it’s third album.  It shines.

 

More Later…

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of