albums of the decade (III)

I can't stop posting! However, when you consider the stack of cds sitting in front of me right now, it soon becomes apparent that I've got my work cut out for me.


Constantines - Shine a Light (Three Gut Records, 2003)

The Constantines had a great decade. In fact, they’ve just celebrated their tenth year as a band and are still playing some of the most electrifying live shows in the country. They’ve got four solid albums of blue-collar rock n’ roll and, although they recently made a shift a new label (Arts and Crafts), the band shows no signs of slowing down. This band has staying power. Shine a Light is not only their heaviest album (this one’s debatable); it’s also their best (this one, not so much). This follow up to their self-titled debut stays true to the urgency of their punk roots, but Shine a Light has the honesty of a band well into its career, easily moving between diverse sounds and moods. There’s something unsettling about an album this angry and impassioned, yet so carefully refined and channelled into songs like the blistering title track. Then there’s that sprawling anthem, “Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Alright),” that harrowing “Insectivora,” in which Bryan Webb tells us in great detail how he’s “learning to survive.” Sure Webb can howl, but he’s really a tender soul. Take “Young Lions” or “On to You” or “Poison,” for example. Webb flips from his unrestrained social realism to romantic lines like “make your love too wild for words” ("Young Lions") or “When we dance the night belongs to us” ("Poison"). We, the adolescent hipsters of 2003, instantly melt.

I came to know this album when I was in my first year of university. A friend of mine gave me her cd; she didn’t really care for it, and I was obsessed with “Poison.” Like many, I was also intrigued by the band’s name, as my course in Christian history made a pretty big deal about Constantine. I always imagined they were sort of being ironic, but as I found out in an interview last year the band name has nothing at all to do with the historical figure who single-handedly made Christianity synonymous with the Western empire. Whether or not these guys will admit it, I still like to think the name has some theological significance.

albums of the decade (II)

The Weakerthans - Left and Leaving (G7 Welcoming Committee, 2000)

The Weakerthans don’t brag much, and maybe it’s inappropriate to throw around lofty titles like “Best Album of the Decade” in reference to one of their albums, but with all celebratory lists and tributes floating around these days, I can’t help myself so I’ll just say it: Left and Leaving, that understated collection of songs about life in Winnipeg might just be the best album that’s come out of Canada in the last decade. At the end of the year, when everyone's touting Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene as the “saviors of indie rock,” those of us who know and love the Weakerthans might also remember that, before the indie music media frenzy began, 2000 marked the release of the Weakerthans’ second album. You can’t get any better than reckless abandon of “Watermark,” the tenderness of “My Favourite Chords,” the inspiring “Pamphleteer,” and a title track so honest and reassuring it just might be reason enough to stay put. Full of well-crafted characters and all kinds of social subtleties, Left and Leaving is an album that’s both highly literate and unapologetically local. Not only do Samson, Tait, Carroll and Sutton give us a better understanding of Winnipeg (already quite a feat), their album invites each of us see one another and our city with new eyes. How’s that for zeitgeist?

The decade lists keep rolling out. Pitchfork was ahead of the game, posting theirs earlier this fall. Now Rolling Stone has unveiled its own authoritative list, complete with a snazzy cover design (in fact, this is probably the best Rolling Stone cover of the past 10 years). The magazine has gone through some fairly major changes over the decade to cut costs. They've cut back Rolling Stone's size, format, etc., while websites like Pitchfork have expanded in every way. Now we've got old print giant on the one hand (trying desperately to keep up with the culture it once spoke for) and the new cutting edge P4k website on the other (which is where the growing majority discover new music; if consensus can exist anymore, P4k has the sway to shape it). Rolling Stone has little influence among anyone under 30; it really belongs to the boomers...especially because hardly any young people actually buy magazines!

Simon Reynolds has hatched a theory about popular music tastes that he's developed by scanning the "best of the decade" lists from places like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. The lists predominantly feature albums from the first half of the decade. You're likely to see albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A, Stankonia, Is This It, Funeral, etc. dominating the list, while obviously great albums from the last couple years won't even break the top twenty. What's behind this trend? Well, Reynolds argues, it has nothing to do with the quality of music (in fact, each year brings new albums that are just as good, if not better, than the year before); it has little to do with having some distance from the album; it isn't even because lists are essentially vehicles for personal nostalgia (which I think to be the case). No, it's because we as listeners of popular music are less able to reach consensus on definitive albums (You can read his full article/theory here). Instead, because of a variety of factors, the pop music canon has become increasingly fragmented over time because there is exponentially more music being made today than yesterday; musicians now, more than ever, can pick from a growing range of genres and experiment. Add to that the decline physical media (cds, tapes, etc.), which has definitely had an effect on consumer habits and buying patterns.

This makes sense, especially when you consider how music is currently being produced and consumed, not to mention this decade's blatant shift from physical (both in print culture and music) to digital media. Reynolds also stresses that music responds to social need/convention. In other words, consensuss builds when we need it to. To use Reynolds' point against him, if you look at the beginning of the decade, there was a strong feeling of urgency about the music being made (a lot of fear, resentment, and so on). The future looked bleak and we needed albums to rally around. Looking back, it's hard to ignore the fact that 00, 01, and 02 are the most favoured years. And I don't think it's ludicrous to connect that with the 9/11 watershed (though I shudder at the thought). Like all historical measurements, commemorative lists are bound by the projections of their makers. That event was symbolic on a number of levels and we're bound to interpret the music from those years in light of what took place. Could something like this happen again in popular culture? The once powerful tastemakers like Rolling Stone and Spin aren't going to convince all of us that x or y have captured our cultural zeitgeist, but I think a lot of us will still be looking for someone to do so when catastrophe hits.

albums of the decade (I)

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be celebrating my favourite albums of the decade by writing introspectively about them. What else are blogs for?


Beck - Sea Change (DGC), 2002

I was in grade 11 when Sea Change finally arrived at our town's local record store. I had been streaming it online months before its release (I was on the website mailing list, so I stayed up to date with my Beck news). The tracks were released slowly. A new song was added every week and because you had to listen cumulatively, I quickly developed a strong attachment to this album. It wasn't just the brooding, heartbroken posture Beck was milking; it also had to do with the album's entire aesthetic: from the blurry pastels of the album art, to the subdued strings that accented Nigel Godrich's ingenious production.

I remember the day perfectly. My friend Pete and I were sitting in our lounge at school and decided to drive to the record store over our break to pick up the new Beck album. Pete was surprised. This wasn't the Beck of Odelay or Mellow Gold. This guy's clearly gone through some seriously rough times. I remember Rolling Stone or Spin (at this point I was totally immersed in bland music journalism) calling it Beck's After the Goldrush. I liked this label, and I think I still do, considering Young and Beck are two of my favourite songwriters.

The album got mixed reviews, but even those who at first dismissed it are now recognizing it as one of the decades best, and I couldn't be happier that I happened upon Sea Change when I did. The dancing strings of "Paper Tiger" are undeniablely stylish, "Lonesome Tears" is one of the most sweeping breakup anthems I've ever heard, and "Little One" ends the album with an unexpected burst of momentum. Some may complain that this "sad bastard music" is slow and depressing, but I think Beck's fourth album was a creative breakthrough and Sea Change remains one of his strongest (and easily his most cohesive) albums to date.

brooklyn follies

It's about time for a real post. Last night I finished Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, which I'll soon start recommending to everyone. It's about an orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn, who has a talent for painting and the sort of tortured soul every artist wants. All points come to a head in his masterpiece, "The Brooklyn Crucifixion," a family portrait with him mother hanging from the cross. It's a bold representation of conflicting traditions, that is based on a painting by Potok, himself an accomplished painter.

I am fascinated by Brooklyn, not simply because of the novel, but because it fosters such creative energy. Many of my favourite film directors (Noah Baumbach), authors (Paul Auster) and musicians hail from Brooklyn. In fact, a good deal of my most positive record reviews over the last year or two have been about "Brooklyn-based" bands. I mean, Brooklyn does have 2.5 million people, making New York's most populous region.

This year especially, Brooklyn can lay claim to the year's best albums. I am, of course, talking about Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, and Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca. There's also a loose connection with Animal Collective who are undoubtedly this year's most celebrated group and the most likely contenders for album of the year with Merriweather Post Pavilion. A few weeks back New York Magazine put out a list of the top 40 songs that define the "Brooklyn sound." It's a staggering list, when you consider it's all coming from the same place. I'm sure they're tied into a conspiracy with Pitchfork.

40 Light Asylum - "Angel Tongue"
39 Oakley Hall - "All the Way Down"
38 Here We Go Magic - "Fangela"
37 Apache Beat - "Tropics"
36 Bishop Allen - "Click, Click, Click, Click"
35 White Rabbits - "Percussion Gun"
34 Japanther - "Challenge"
33 Class Actress - "All The Saints"
32 Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - "The Debtor"
31 Ninjasonik - "Art School Girls"
30 Antibalas - "Beaten Metal"
29 Black Dice - "Glazin'"
28 The Antlers - "Kettering"
27 Panda Bear - "Comfy In Nautica"
26 The National - "Mistaken For Strangers"
25 Amazing Baby - "The Narwhal"
24 St. Vincent - "Actor Out Of Work"
23 Neon Indian - "Deadbeat Summer"
22 Matt & Kim - "Daylight"
21 Grizzly Bear - "Knife"
20 Suckers - "Beach Queen"
19 Sharon Jones And The Dap Kings - "100 Days, 100 Nights"
18 The Drums - "I Feel Stupid"
17 A Place To Bury Strangers - "To Fix The Gash In Your Head"
16 Chairlift - "Bruises"
15 Telepathe - "Chrome's On It"
14 Crystal Stilts - "Crippled Croon"
13 Das Racist - "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell"
12 The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - "Young Adult Friction"
11 Hercules & Love Affair - "Blind"
10 Animal Collective - "My Girls"
09 Yeasayer - "2080"
08 Vampire Weekend - "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"
07 Vivian Girls - "Where Do You Run To"
06 Gang Gang Dance - "House Jam"
05 TV On The Radio - "Golden Age"
04 LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"
03 MGMT- "Kids"
02 Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks"
01 Dirty Projectors - "Stillness Is The Move"

This is the first of what will be many lists in the days to come. It's that time of year/decade.

st. francis on the sacraments

I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel, about the Sacraments -
he got so excited

and ran into a hollow in his tree and came
back holding some acorns, an owl feather
and a ribbon he found.

And I just smiled and said, "Yes, dear,

you understand

everything imparts
His grace."

-St. Francis of Assisi

i am no man - i am dynamite

Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil:

“it is we alone who have devised cause, sequence…law, freedom, motive and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed ‘in itself,’ we act once more as we have always acted – mythologically” (219).

In his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy and History,” Michel Foucault describes the historical development of humanity as a series of interpretations. Against those who “seek the soul in the distant ideality of an origin,” he writes, effective history “unearths periods of decadence, and if it chances upon lofty epochs, it is with suspicion --not vindictive but joyous-- of finding a barbarous and shameful confusion” (89). Although historians have generally taken great pains to remove that which reveals their grounding in particular time and place, “effective history is [an] affirmation of knowledge as perspective” (90).