Certain Songs: 75-71

Continue Reading Certain Songs: 75-71…

Certain Songs: 80 – 76

Continue Reading Certain Songs: 80 – 76…

Certain Songs: 85-81

85

Nina Nastasia

On Leaving

(Fat Cat; 2006)

The most distinctive thing about Nina Nastasia is her brevity. No fan of choruses, middle eights or instrumentals, most of her songs clock in at under three minutes. In lesser songwriters, this might suggest a lack of ideas, or show that her songs are underdeveloped. On the contrary, it’s the leanness of Nastasia’s compositions which lends them their power. In On Leaving, she will reel you in; sing you into silence and then cut off your supply. And she will repeat this trick on every single track.

Whilst that’s irritating on the first listen, it’s not long before you appreciate her grace, her discipline and the beautifully sparse soundscapes she fashioned with producer Steve Albini.

The biggest compliment you could pay a musician is to say you’ve never heard enough. In that respect, Nina Nastasia is beautifully cruel.

Key track: Treehouse Song

84

Cat Power

The Greatest

(Matador; 2006)

It might be this generation’s ‘Dusty in Memphis’. Before Chan Marshall released this gloriously tender, soulful piece of music, she was merely a beguiling but erratic singer whose shows could either be transcendent in their venue-shushing beauty or an awkward, rambly, intoxicated mess. As for her recorded output, it was telling that her previous best album was a selection of cover versions.

Quite what went right in Memphis may remain a secret, but The Greatest completely shattered expectations and provided Cat Power with the finest record of her career. It was an album where she departed from the brittle indie rock arrangements that had been her stock-in-trade and embraced the rich musical history of the south, teaming up with a cast of seasoned session musicians who added trumpets, organs, pedal steel and cello to her smoky-voiced reminisces. The songs themselves sung of dating game disappointments, her battles with alcoholism and that end-of-an-evening wistfulness you get when you go home to an empty house.

On The Greatest , Cat Power finally struck the perfect sound for her voice and developed a set of songs full of pathos, longing & ache. In a decade where many artists tried to update the blues for modern times, this record showed that its roots were still firmly lodged in the heart of the American South.

Key track: Lived in Bars

83

The Hold Steady

Boys & Girls In America

(Vagrant; 2006)

“There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right”, begins Craig Finn on the opening Stuck Between Stations; “boys & girls in America have such a sad time together”. The words were borrowed from another place and another time – Kerouac’s On The Road, to be precise – but the sentiment remains an evocative description of teenage drama & farce both in the United States and beyond.

They are also the words Finn uses as the theme which unifies each narrative of midwestern misadventure: the guy whose girlfriend’s gambling addiction is paying for her drug habit; the girl who’s gotten bored of her boyfriend & just wants to get high alone; the couple who meet whilst recovering in a festival’s chill-out tent. The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but never show anything less than the empathy of someone who has probably got many more where these came from.

Meanwhile, the music shamelessly pillages American rock’s storied history: there are Replacements -style guitar jams, E street piano riffs, key changes and sing-a-long choruses. In lesser hands it either be cynical or trite, but the enthusiasm this New York band puts into each perfomance (their live shows are a sensation) makes it sound both sincere and exciting.

Written when Finn was well into his thirties, Boys & Girls in America is not a soundtrack to youth, nor even an attempt to revisit it. Rather, it’s an attempt to recollect youth; to pick over what at the time may have felt momentous & dramatic and rewrite them with the benefit of experience as funny, farcical or sweetly romantic subplots to the long slog of life.

Key track: Stuck Between Stations

82

Camera Obscura

Let’s Get Out Of This Country

(Merge; 2006)

In some ways, Camera Obscura weren’t made for these times. At the decade’s end you can look at the likes of The Strokes, The White Stripes, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse & Death Cab For Cutie and conclude that indie could be a commercial as well as a critical success. Their songs appeared on adverts & film soundtracks, were multiplied millions of times over the internet and they even had some low level contact with celeb mag culture.

It’s worth remembering, though, how different things were at the start of the noughties. When Camera Obscura dropped first single Eighties Fan in 2001, the indie scene was still a marginal & cultish genre which – when compared to the commercial behemoths of Britney, Eminem & Limp Bizkit – must’ve looked like the pasty, sick-looking kid in the corner. When they first arrived, the Glaswegians made the kind of music which was increasingly unloved; their quaint, bookish & polite songs about dilemmas & embarrassments were sung with quiet, reserve and almost apology. It was the kind of stuff which was raved about in the fanzines that nobody read and the twee pop club nights that fewer people were attending. If indie was going mainstream, Camera Obscura looked set to remain on the margins.

But rather than being a secret shared by a devoted few, the band’s career was ascendent for the rest of the decade. On Let’s Get Out Of This Country the band threw off their twee pop comfort blanket & the constant Belle & Sebastian comparisons and produced a record rich in energy & musicality. The production values were dramatically scaled up, with Spector esque arrangements, boistrous brass and glistening strings, whilst Traceyanne Campbell’s voice and songwriting had become much more confident, ranging from sparse, wilting laments to country-tinged swooners and even a few high-tempo romps.

Ever fond of self-deprecation, the band’s previous record was called Underachievers Please Try Harder . When they took their own advice they produced one of the best pop albums of the decade.

Key track: If Looks Could Kill

81

The Decemberists

Picaresque

(Kill Rock Stars; 2005)

The picaresque novel (Spanish: “picaresca”, from “pícaro”, for “rogue” or “rascal”) is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society.

There is no central character in this album. Not content to fixate on one anti-hero, Colin Meloy instead sings about a whole parade of malcontents: a ghostly barrowboy who just longs to by his love a fine robe; a writer who’s trying to rid a strayed lover from his thoughts; a sportsman who’s just been humiliated on the field and is haunted by the disappointment on his friends and family’s faces; a forbidden couple in a suicide pact.

No, instead of constructing a character for his audience to follow, Meloy invites the listener to become the picaro, venture through this richly imagined, vaudevillian world and meet all it’s varied, striking characters. Lyrically, there were few albums this decade which could match the imagination this Portland band’s third record, and it was made all the more impressive that Meloy was able to use such unique characters to speak of the more universal themes of embarrassment, sorrow, escape, revenge and love. Musically, it was all very melodic, enjoyable but unremarkable indie rock fare, but it was his skill as a storyteller which elevated his band far above the also-rans.

Key track: The Engine Driver

Certain Songs: 90 – 86

90

Drive-By Truckers

Brighter Than Creation’s Dark

(New West; 2008)

At the start of Drive-By Truckers’ 7th album, its main songwriters are in two very different predicaments. On the first track, Patterson Hood plays a man surveying the end of a life cut short, and counting his richest blessings: the domestic bliss of having “two daughters and a beautiful wife.” In contrast to this gates-of-heaven contentment is the ever ramshackle Mike Cooley, who we find wrestling with a gas station condom machine in “Three Dimes Down “. The contrasting personas of Patterson & Cooley – one reflective & wistful, the other witty but self-destructive – have long given Drive-By Truckers records an extra depth and bite that has kept them interesting long after their peers ran out of things to say.

But it’s not just the lyrical content that’s kept the Truckers interesting throughout their prolific decade; they’ve gradually stripped away their more garagey origins and have embraced the sounds of Muscle Shoals. The result is a record which might have lost some of the raucusness of the past, but makes up for it with the ability to express a broader range of moods & emotions. With tracks as delicately precious as “Purgatory Line“, as mournfully angry as anti-war lament “The Home Front” and as straight-up vituperative as “That Man I Shot “, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark may not not quite be the Truckers’ best record, but it is their most complex, dense and musical.

Key track: A Ghost To Most

89

Jens Lekman

Night Falls Over Kortedala

(Secretly Canadian; 2007)

For an album about the strangeness of love, what I remember most is its showreels of odd, eccentric images: the Friday nights spent at a drive-in bingo in the Swedish countryside; taking your sister to the ocean and making a mess of giving her advice; being introduced to the parents of a lesbian friend as her ‘lover’, leaving ‘out of office’ auto replies to unwanted emails; falling in love with a girl running an underground hair salon; spending part of your adolescence refusing to speak to another soul.

With all this idiosyncracy, you’d think Jens Lekman’s second album would be too individual for the rest of us to relate to ; that his quirks, however charming, just bear no relation to the way many of us think or live. And yet at each stage in this splendid, joyous record, Lekman’s is an utterly compelling voice. Maybe it’s due to his jokes & self-deprecation. Maybe we identify with his child-like need to be loved. Maybe it’s because everything else on this record is so amplified – the orchestral arrangements, the doomed romanticism, the detours into fucking disco – that the lyrics seem tame in comparison.

Or maybe it’s because Lekman reaches for that part of his audience which is similarly eccentric. Whilst our own tales may not be quite as tragi-comic as anything crooned over these twelve tracks, we’ve all done daft things in pursuit of happiness, we’ve all overreacted to misunderstandings, we’ve all cringed in darkened pubs about the strange young men and women we are, or used to be.

By achieving all this, on Kortedala, Lekman manages to channel everyone from Bacharach & Brian Wilson to Morrissey & Stephin Merrit: forever a dreamer about the ideal of love, and forever a pessimist about the chances of achieving it.

Key track: Shirin

88

Bright Eyes

Lifted or The Story is in The Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

(Saddle Creek; 2002)

There is petulance, pomposity, purple prose, a lack of perspective, vanity, self obsession, naivety, navel-gazing, bed-wetting & self-indulgence. Conor Oberst was that person once. So was I. So were a lot of us. Thankfully, that’s not all there is. There’s also romance, wonderfully imagined writing, honesty, hope, friendship, medication, defiance, a burning conscience and an open heart.

Lifted can veer between extremes. It can alienate in one listen & invigorate in the next. It is ambitious, epic and uneven; it contains moments of brilliantly mature songwriting and tracks where you just want to to tell the singer to grow up. But grow up he did, and by doing so in the most public way possible, he found admirers who might otherwise have dismissed him as as just an attention-seeking sob-smith.

Fractious, unstable and powerfully imperfect, Lifted may well be the most fitting testament to growing up in this mad new century.

Key track: Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love & To Be Loved)

87

Bubba Sparxxx

Deliverance

(Interscope; 2003)

Towards the end of his mostly abysmal Encore, Eminem boasts that he “spoke to a generation of angry teenagers whom if it wasn’t rap to bridge the gap maybe raised to be racist”. It’s a typically grandiose statement, but not without some truth to it: Marshall Mathers’ records sold to a demographic far wider than a rap audience, and there will have been many a teenager’s record collection which never included any rap music until ‘The Slim Shady LP’ dropped. If music can help introduce people to new sounds, worlds, words, cultures & attitudes, then perhaps he really did make a small contribution to racial harmony.

But if Mathers really did “break down barriers of language & races”, he didn’t do it nearly as dramatically as was heard on Bubba Sparxxx’s second album. By the time ‘Deliverance’ was released, Bubba had already been downgraded to a one hit wonder; his tune ‘Ugly’ was just a fond memory from the time when radio would play anything with a Timbaland beat. But the collaboration between Timbaland & his southern, white protege was better – and more inventive – than anything either had done previously.

Deliverance was a fusing of hip hop & country; a brew which merged Southern accents, fiddles, banjos & Skynrd guitar hooks with rapping and hip hop beats. It was an idea so brilliant you wonder why nobody had tried it before: Jimmy Mathis was an infectious hoedown which would’ve stormed any dancefloor, the title track was stirring & reflective & Coming Round managed to ruminate on themes of poverty & rural decay. Whilst Sparxxx wasn’t a particularly great rapper, he was still an interesting & compelling voice who seemed to take it upon himself to demonstrate why the ghettoes in East & West Coast rap really weren’t that far removed from the disrepair you could find in the small town southern states.

Before Deliverance , you could not find genres more different – and dismissive of each other – than hip hop and country. After Deliverance, you were left thinking they were symbiotic. Whilst Radiohead & Animal Collective may win the plaudits as this decade’s most inventive acts, nothing they have done could match the audacity of Deliverance .

Key track : Comin’ Round

86

Badly Drawn Boy

The Hour of the Bewilderbeast

(Twisted Nerve; 2000)

Whatever happened to Damon Gough? However did a man who won a Mercury Music Prize & produced one of the most inventive debuts of the noughties end the decade so creatively diminished that he’d been reduced to babbling drab Springsteen truisms and copying his old songs ?

For a brief moment, Gough’s versatility, subtle songwriting & rich arrangements had some of us excited that he might be Britain’s answer to Beck or Elliott Smith. His mastery of wistful folk & effervescent guitar pop, his DIY ethic and the glistening beauty of tracks like ‘The Shining’ and ‘Magic in the Air’ had us convinced that there were even better things to come.

Of course, that never came to pass, and each subsequent record has produced ever decreasing levels of joy. But however much of a creative ditch Damon Gough seems to have driven himself into, it shouldn’t detract from our enjoyment of Bewilderbeast as one of the best debut albums Britain produced this decade.

Key track: The Shining

Certain Songs: 95-91

95

Brother Ali

The Undisputed Truth

(Rhymesayers; 2007)

Though he doubtless hates when writers bring it up, you can’t really talk about Brother Ali’s music without first mentioning the ways he’s unique. A blind, albino Muslim from Minnesota, Ali’s entire output has been shaped by the fact that he won’t fit in any of the little pigeonholes music journalists like to stuff artists into. Stridently anti-bling and about as far away from a gangsta as the rappers who like to play the part, Undisputed Truth finds Ali taking in everything from the mundane to the profound. Just his sheer enthusiasm inflates a rap about domestic bliss & assembling Ikea furniture (Ear to Ear) with almost as much joy as a gushing ode to his son (Faheem); his political tracks (Letter from the Government, Uncle Song Goddam) are fused with the fury of a street humanitarian and his description of the collapse of his first marriage (Walking Away) manages to be hurt, hopeful and honest, but never nasty. Of course, Ali’s identity and lyrical content would all be irrelevant if his rapping was poor or if he rode weak beats, but the combination of a disciplined delivery, multi-layered rhyme schemes and classy 70’s soul & funk samples mean that it’s never a toil to wade through. Never mind debating whether the best rapper alive is white or black; Undisputed Truth makes a strong case that the accolade belongs to someone who’s albino.

Key track: Take Me Home

94

The Dirty Three

She Has No Strings, Apollo

(Touch & Go; 2003)

One of the best gigs I’ve ever seen happened in a venue not fit for livestock, never mind humans. In 2003, the dank, humid squalour of the Camden Barfly was the setting for a sold-out secret gig by cherished Melbourne trio The Dirty Three. They’d been together for 10 years at that point, graduating from playing local pubs to being one of the premier artists in a genre which became known as ‘post-rock’. They were an absolute sensation live: Warren Ellis treated the violin as if it was sexier, more thrilling and glamourous than any guitar, and would flail and sway and thrash through each song with the zeal of a zealot. Or a madman. His between-song banter was legendary; full of mostly improvised stories about ‘real’-life events which related to the titles of their songs. If they were playing in your town, that really was the only gig in town. On She Has No Strings, Apollo, The Dirty Three were more restrained & polite, but the mix of violin, guitar and free jazz drumming still made for some achingly beautiful music. Ellis had a fondness for saying “you are never alone with The Dirty Three”, as though their music wasn’t an act of commerce – or even art – but of friendship. They were good friends to have.

Key track: No Stranger Than That

93

Spoon

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

(Merge; 2007)

It bulges with riffs and melodies, mistakes and regrets. It insists on belligerence through the bad times and arm-flailing abandon through the good. It acknowledges character flaws, awkward moments and ill-fated embraces. It understands the routine defeats that make up life in the noughties, but encourages its listeners to make every day an act of defiance. Above all, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the sound of a band empathising with its fan base, demanding they dance through the bad times and make the best of what they’ve got. That all makes for some awfully good rock & roll.

Key track: The Underdog

92

Okkervil River

The Stage Names

(Jagjaguwar; 2007)

“What gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man? Unless it’s fiction? Unless it’s sweat or it’s songs?

That rhetorical question, shouted over driving guitar chords at the start of “Unless It’s Kicks”, actually epitomises this thrilling record better than any review ever could. On The Stage Names, Okkervil River manage to produce a dynamic rock & roll record which is also deeply literate; stitching together narratives about the treasures and tolls of toiling in a “mid-level band”. The hunger for attention, for love, for food and money and, yes, kicks is all narrated brilliantly, but propelled by a band which joyfully pilfers the best tricks of the American rock canon.

For all the allusions to theatre in the title, it’s a record which is far more influenced by movies than the more mannered, pondrous stage show; the words to A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene or the incredibly clever Our Life Is Not A Movie (Or Maybe) could almost have been written by a cinematographer or screenwriter, so aware are they of the conventions, manipulations and roundabout truths of cinema. Narrating all these tales is Will Sheff, a man for whom singing doesn’t come easily: his voice is either a perpetually unsteady, off-key croon or a exorcising howl. But great rock music has never required great singers, and the fact that he has a fan in gravelly mumbler Lou Reed says a lot. In a decade where the worlds of literature & indie rock started to overlap, The Stage Names proved that you could make music which could be primal, urgent and thoughtful all at once. That’s a lot harder than it looks.

Key track: Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe

91

Eilen Jewell

Letters From Sinners and Strangers

(Signature Sounds; 2007)

It’s a record which reaks of the past. From the antiquated song titles (Heartache Boulevard; High Shelf Booze) to the old time country arrangements, Eilen Jewell’s second album wouldn’t have sounded out of place purring out of a tinny AM radio in the early ’60s, just before America discovered The Beatles, Stones & Beach Boys, and pop was changed forever. But whilst styles can flit in & out of fashion, the themes which are mainstays of country music (despair, self-doubt, heartache) have permanent resonance, and Jewell’s respectful appropriation of sounds gone by means she broaches them with understatement rather than melodrama. Much of this is down to Jewell’s voice; her retrained, matter-of-fact delivery makes the heartbreak she sings of seem mundane, even routine. And therin lies its power.

Key Track: High Shelf Booze

Certain Songs: 100-96

100

Stars of the Lid

And Their Refinement of the Decline

(Kranky; 2007)

Ambience is an acquired taste; there aren’t many of us who would buy an album full of synthetic drones and not feel ripped-off. Even for those who enjoy the mind-altering, mood-changing peace and delicacy of the genre, we couldn’t listen to it all the time. Everyone needs a varied diet, and sometimes you’d rather have a good singer, a funky beat or some crashing drums & violent guitars than sit through an hour of intense laptop twiddling.

But this is a record everyone should make time for. Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride have been sculpting beautiful sounds for some 15 years now, and this is probably their most gorgeous peace of work to date. Across its two CDs, fragments of sound drift in and out of view like a trail of slow-moving transit. The textures created are warm & serene, and the modified cellos, horns & violins all merge together to create a soothing blanket of sound. If this all sounds a bit like Music For Art Installations, you’re not wrong, but when played in the confines of a bedroom, it can be a glorious and strangely moving listen.

99

Clipse

We Got It 4 Cheap (Vol 2)

(2005; Re-Up)

At the start of the decade, Clipse were the darlings of rap. Their collaborations with The Neptunes had managed to merge high experimentalism with commercial appeal, and they’d even bagged a spot on Justin Timberlake’s first single. But then, as often happens, conflict arose with the record label, release dates kept getting knocked back and the group were consigned to semi-obscurity.

So Pusha-T and Malice went back to the mixtape circuit, enlisted Philadelphia rappers Ab-Liva and Sandman and produced a series of mixtapes as the ‘Re-Up Gang’. Like the other two volumes, We Got It 4 Cheap rode a bunch of well-known beats and featured Clipse’s tales about their former lives as drug dealers. It’s a lesson in how to produce a perfect mix-tape: the beat choices are excellent, the MCs are hungry to outdo each other on every verse and they often to a better job of the track they cover than the rapper who first had it. It’s a record by men whose time in major label wilderness had left them craving for respect, and by the time listeners had discovered this fierce, pulsating & unrelenting piece of work, their time in obscurity was well & truly over.

Key track: Hate it or Love it

98

Arctic Monkeys

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

(Domino; 2006)

It’s a shame the term ‘overrated’ is used more as a criticism of a band or artist than of the ridiculous, overwhelming hype they attracted in the first place. The Monkeys’ debut was hardly a perfect record, and there were at least a dozen albums released that year which were superior. In that context, the fawning & sycophancy from the music press & broadsheet culture supplements was embarrassing.

But when you judge the album on its own merits and ignore the hyperbole it was lumbered with, Whatever People Say I Am remains an impressive achievement. Alex Turner’s tales of scumbags, riot vans, wannabe rockstars and dodgy bouncers are brilliantly told and his lyricism could shame songwriters twice his age. But although Turner’s sharp eye and keen ear are mentioned most often, one shouldn’t forget what made the Arctic Monkeys such an exciting, attention-grabbing listen in the first place: the presence of probably the best rhythm section a British band’s had since the Stone Roses. It’s not just the fidgeting guitar lines which make tracks like I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor or A Certain Romance, but the ferocious drumming and hyperactive bass lines. Distinctive, dynamic and determined to subvert all the media’s expectations, the Arctic Monkeys were one of the better things to happen to British music this decade.

Key track: When the Sun Goes Down

97

Neko Case

Middle Cyclone

(ANTI-; 2009)

For a record preoccupied by thoughts of love & wilderness, it’s fitting that Neko Case’s voice is like a force of nature. A gloriously versatile instrument, she can shift from a gale-force holler to a seductive, sweetheart whisper – sometimes in the space of the same song.

Backed by some of the best musicians in alternative country/rock, Middle Cyclone is both Case’s strongest collection of songs and her best produced. There’s romance and heartbreak, longing and loss, and it’s all delivered by a singer who could blow the doors from their hinges. “This tornado loves you”, she teases at the start of the record. I’ve still not figured out whether it’s a chat-up line or a warning.

Key track: Don’t Forget Me

96

M83

Saturdays=Youth

(Mute; 2008)

It’s the film soundtrack John Hughes never had. Although they vary in quality and style, each of the five records produced by this French dreampop duo have been heavy with romance, melodrama and zest for life. But never before had they so studiously emulated the giddy hormonal highs you’d find in the teen movies of the 1980’s.

Apparently in thrall to the aesthetic which Richard Kelly borrowed for Donnie Darko, Saturdays=Youth is a record which evokes all the right cliches of the American Youth Movie: the graduation ceremonies, forbidden parties, cheerleaders, quiet crushes, stolen kisses & long walks home through picket fence suburbia.

Whether or not those images were ever representative of American youth – either then or now – doesn’t really seem to matter. We have the music for their imagined lives, and if that spills into our own, less perfect, less glamorous existences, then so much the better.

Key track: Kim & Jessie