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#2 Elliot Smith- XO vs. #15 Beck- Mutations

Sorry to talk about something other than the albums, but for anyone reading out there it has been pointed out to me that I have not been updating as regularly as I maybe should have. This is because I started this project to pass the time while I was unemployed, and I am now un-unemployed, and feel like I have less time. I hope to continue and not give up on the project, and maybe try to write less which will save both you and me precious time (terrible sentence, that) but that's why. Also, I'd like to for the record say this is the first entry written on my brand new MacBook Pro. Take that John Hodgman. I'm a mac too. Anyway...

The Arguments: When you think about things like this as much as I do, its really easy (and fun too!) to trace the trajectory of Elliott Smith's career through his albums, and while, for my money, all points of said arc are great and he produced wonderful, beautiful music at each, falls square in the middle, a transition album of sorts. This is not to say it is a throwaway, or experiment, or anything other than a colossal musical achievement from a man who had many, but it is easy to hear the sparse arrangements and man-and-his-guitar feel of his self-titled album and Either/Or segueing into the lusher arrangements and more production heavy sound he would find on Figure 8 and From a Basement on a Hill. This was the first album that featured significant contributions from musicians other than himself (most notably Jon Brion) and it shows. The songs are still written in Smith's poetic style, with wordplay abounding ("I'm a neon sign/I stay open all the time") and it's every bit as dark and moody as his previous outputs, but it sounds more mature at times than the others, and more complete. The album has a number of standout tracks, the epic feeling sweep of "Waltz #2", the delicacy of "Pitseleh", and, last but certainly not least, the acapella track "I Didn't Understand" that might feel slight at first listen but packs quite the emotional and musical punch into two scant minutes (and, though maybe in part because Smith would later cover it, recalls nothing as much as the Beatles' acapella version of "Because" from the Anthologies.) XO shows Smith at the top of his game, is beautiful and profound start to finish, and is an album that keeps on giving...songs that were ignored years ago are now favorites, and every listen brings some new nuance or lyrical significance to the surface.

Mutations is the best novelty album I've ever heard. That isn't totally fair, I suppose, and I've talked here before about genre hopping and mastery of different sounds etc, and certainly Beck deserves the benefit of the doubt. But despite some very beautiful and moving songs, the overwhelming impression I got from listening through this album again is that it could be called Beck Sings Country or Beck Sings the Blues or Beck Hansen and His Honky-Tonk Good Time Band. It's not that he does a bad job, songs like "Bottle of Blues" or "O Maria" are great songs and credible facsimilies of the time and place and style he is aping. And while this album was definitely a departure for him (it was the first singer/songwriter album in the well documented back-and-forth with Beck's releases Odelay through Guero) but there were still moments where it was clearly a Beck album, whether because of the strangely dark nonsense imagery on "We Live Again" or, even better, the seemingly straight country of "Cancelled Check"...until towards the end what sounds like a huge man's groan or a monster's roar sample creeps in under the chorus. There are stand out tracks, and hints of the emotional highs (or, rather, lows) he would reach later on Sea Change (specifically on the hauntingly melancholy "Nobody's Fault But My Own") and the album is a pleasure to listen to, but it still feels slight.

The Score: Even a novelty album by Beck is still a Beck album, but that doesn't stand a chance against anything from the heart of Elliott Smith's catalog.

XO d. Mutations 90-68

Representative Tracks:

Every Memory of Mine's A Song

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#7 Harvey Danger- Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? vs. #10 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Again, two albums that were randomly matched have a lot in common, at least for me. These two albums, perhaps more than any others in my collection, transport me to specific times and places (both, perhaps unsurprisingly, having to do with girls). when I was in the throws of my first serious unrequited crush the summer after 8th grade, it was Harvey Danger who helped me through it. It wasn't the only album I turned to for comfort, but it was the first time I can remember feeling like a song had been written for me, for my situation (in this case, "Wooly Muffler") and listening to it in the intervening years never failed to bring me back. But i could still listen, which was not always the case with YHF. Introduced to me by my first great love (and great heartbreak) of college, the album was inextricably linked for me with that time, the good when it was good, and later, the bad when, for me, it was very bad. If we had had enough of a relationship to merit a song, it would have been "Radio Cure" (and infer from that what you will). Though I got over the heartbreak, Wilco was so a part of that time that I couldn't listen to it without being flooded with the feelings that I never wanted to have to deal with again, and it was basically removed from my rotation for the better part of the next 4 years. My loss.


The Arguments: Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? was part of my first attempts to discover my own musical identity...breaking from my parents collection and from the blind buying of anything they played on MTV (sheryl crow anyone?) and trying to navigate through what i actually liked and wanted to explore. And like another band from that era that is still near and dear to me, The Smashing Pumpkins, I can trace a lot of my current likes and dislikes back to Harvey Danger...from nascent punk and emo ("Carlotta Valdez" and "Wooly Muffler") to my penchant from clever wordplay ("Old Hat"). Those songs meant a lot to me back then, and have held up remarkably well with age. Whereas with other favorites from that time (where have you gone, Eve6) the gild came off the lily fairly quickly, and those that are still around are still around only for nostalgia's sake, Harvey Danger has grown with me, and new songs have taken on the meaning that I had placed on other cuts (I've had a fantasy for about a year now that out of the blue I would call up Matt Dipane and leave "Private Helicopter" on his voicemail in its entirety. Not because of what it meant to me then, but what it means now). The strength for Sean Nelson and co. (like the band he would later join, fellow Seattlites the Long Winters) is in his lyrics, whether its painting a picture, or just turning out a couple of good one-liners..songs that reference Vertigo or Moby Dick as in-jokes are decidedly nerdy, and much of the imagery is to (only a math geek would fully appreciate the sentiment of "like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers" right?) and while the rapid-fire banter wore a little thing on the one and only single ("Flagpole Sitta", obvi), when spread out a little more evenly and with some sentinment behind it, it makes for some good listening. But listening through it again, its clear its not a masterpiece. Its a good album, but one by a young band who had a lot of room to grow and change, and one that is very much of a cookie-cutter piece with the times it was made in. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it less than unique certainly.

Most Wilco fans seem to be of the rabid variety, fans that have been with them since Uncle Tupelo or know all the drummer's side projects or have I Am Trying To Break Your Heart memorized (the film, not the song). There's nothing wrong with that, I mention it simply to say I have always been a decisively casual Wilco fan. This may be due in part to the aforementioned pain of listening to Wilco (the same girl gave me Summerteeth, and I couldn't even bring myself to rip it to my computer for a good three years later), but also that I recognize the greatest in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but it never seemed to translate to a hunger for more, and the other albums that I explored (Summerteeth, Mermaid Ave., Sky Blue Sky, and A Ghost is Born) yileded a few great tracks and a lot of skippable ones (for me. I know that for most people thats blasphemous). But slowly I've been rediscovering the genius that is YHF, what made people so enamored with that album in the first place (my cursory research on wikipedia showed it received a number of perfect reviews, including Pitchfork, who basically called it a perfect album). I'm not sure it's perfect, but it is pretty damn great. What strikes me now is how balanced an album it is, for every wandering and experiemental sounding track there's a grounded upbeat pop song and for everyone of those theres a beautiful haunting string-laden ballad. It's all over the map sound wise and subject wise, but, and I suppose this is a testament to Tweedy and cos.' "greatness" they handle all of them equally well (well, perhaps not "equally", i have quite a bias towards the beatuy and melancholy of tracks like "Radio Cure" and "Jesus, etc.") Lyrically, Wilco is another band that can turn what seems like nonsense and make it profound..."our love is all of God's money" or "It's hot in the poor places tonight/I'm not going outside" don't necessarily mean a whole lot on their own, but in context and in phrasing, they seem like beautiful gems of prose. And by the same token, they can turn around a spit out a phrase so straightforward it should be too sappy, and yet when Jeff Tweedy moans "Cheer up, honey I hope you can" on "radio cure" or whispers "How can I convince you its me I don't like" they seem like much more than the ripped-from-diary entry lyrics they could be. Its the way they are phrased, and balanced against the various strings, guitars, and, err, twinkles? (what is playing in "Ashes of American flags", and, for that matter, is it a toy piano in "radio cure"?) For all my Wilco non-fandom, I do sincerely enjoy this album, but more than that, I recognize the perfection everyone sees in it as well.


The Score: See, I told you it would happen. As much as it pains me to do this to Harvey Danger, we have our first upset, sports fans.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot d. Where Have All the Merrymaker's Gone 81-72

Representative Tracks:

I Don't Like the Drugs, But the Drugs Like Me

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#3 The Mountain Goats- We Shall All be Healed vs. #14 Sublime- Sublime

These rankings and matchups were done as "mathematically" as possible, and yet for the second posting in a row, I find myself writing about two albums that have some great similarities. In this case, the similarity is drugs. While not every song on both albums deals directly with the issue, each traffics (pun intended) heavily in discussions of the drug of choice, crystal meth and marijuana, respectively. And, ironically, while Sublime revels in the use of theirs and John Darnielle's experience seems considerably more harrowing, Darnielle's accounts of crystal meth users are at least in part fictional and he has come through that particular phase of his life seemingly none worse for the wear, whereas Bradley Nowell died of an overdose (though obvioulsy not of pot) shortly before this albums release.



The Arguments: I've owned Sublime since its release, and while I certainly listened to parts of it since that time, I don't think I ever really appreciated it until recently. And while I don't want to overstate its themes (not that I haven't already) I have to conclude that for 14 year old me, lyrics about 12 year old prostitutes, the LA riots, and, not least of which, the joys of pot didn't quite register with me. And while "getting" the nuance of a lyric like "finding roaches in the pot" (hes not talking about bugs, right?) doesn't make or break an album, I think I can appreciate both subject matter and the albums place in history better now. This album is so chock full of key songs that it feels like a greatest hits album (I had to wiki it to make sure it wasn't and I had just forgotten)...the songs that made Sublime famous, the "What I Got's" and "Santeria's" but also songs that I genuinely like now (those are fare too overplayed for me to have much of an opinion about, except to say that I don't think "santeria" or "wrong way" are the pinnacle of Nowell's songwriting. Songs like "Jailhouse" and "Pawnshop" and "Seed", which not only are great songs in themselves but harken back to Sublime's roots, but showcased the band's ability to genre jump from reggae to ska to hardcore and ultimately back to pop. And on a more subjective level, these songs are perfect for blasting on a warm smmer's day at the beach or in my car with the windows down, and regardless of what I thought about them back then, serve to remind me of a simpler time in my life (like the riots!) but with a better appreciation for the material now. With all that said, I don't think I'll ever love Sublime (or Sublime for that matter). Some songs are very good, but not all of them are--besides the skippable singles (While its probably a great song on some level, I think I could go the rest of my life never actually hearing "What I got" beginning to end and feel like I still got enough out of that song) songs like "Under My Voodoo" have never done it to me, and the less mature and complex songs like "Burritos" don't anymore.

I will try to delay my open love letter to the Mountain Goats for the posting that pits two of their albums against each other (though "his" is probably more accurate than "their" even at this stage in the Mountain Goats career), cause what else would I talk about? But suffice to say that if there is another band that my devotion to comes close to matching the obsequiousness I feel towards Bear vs. Shark it's this one (and, as a slight aside here, I am some what ashamed to note, after attending a Mountain Goats show on Monday, that my adoration of Darnielle's last five albums makes me a veritable dilletante compared to the rabid fandom of some of the other attendees). For the last 18 months or so, i have not listened to any band, or enjoyed any output, as much as the Mountain Goats, and We Shall All Be Healed is no exception. But, and pardon the blasphemy here (Julie), like the Beatles it is hard for me to single out one album, or one song, above any other...it just depends what I am listening to a lot at the time. We Shall All Be Healed is ranked as it is on the strength of its concept, and its housing my first favorite Mountain Goats song and one of my current favorites ("Your Belgian Things" and "Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, The Triumph of" respectively), and the fact that, like many Mountain Goats albums, it seemingly has no bad songs. That is a rarity for me, an album with no songs that are always or often skipped. There are worse songs and better songs, but none that I never want to listen to, or, more accurately, always don't want to listen to. The album tells the (semifictional) autobiographical story of bandleader and evil genius behind the entire MG operation John Darnielle and various friends in LA and PDX's struggle with meth addiction, a struggle that sees some dead, some in jail, and some just way to strung out to function ("When we go out in the sun we tell everyone we know it hurts our eyes/Even though the real reason we don't like it is that it makes it wonder if we're dying") The special thing about Darnielle for me is how his simple songwriting and phrasing can make small metaphors and simple lyrics carry so much power. The lyric "I saw the mess you left up in the east bedroom/A tiger's never gonna change it's stripes/I guess I guess but Jesus what a mess" isn't much to read on paper (at least not the way other fave lyricists like Blake Schwarzenbach or Elliott Smith's lines jump out at you) but the way Darnielle sings it, and its context both in the song and in the album as a whole, make it pack an emotional punch far beyond the meaning of the words that comprise it. Thats the thing about the Mountain Goats, I guess, the sum of the parts is surprisngly better then the parts themselves. Part of a song might not be great unless you listen to the whole song, and the whole song's meaning doesn't unfold until you've heard and digested the whole album. I don't think that's a truism that holds for as many bands as one might think. But even taken out of context, the album is full of great songs that show off both Darnielle's ability to write a beautiful, delicate song (like "Linda Blair was Born Innocent") or tell a story ("Palmcorder Yanja" and "Against Pollution" being two of many examples) while always managing to turn a phrase ("I can remember when we were in high school/Our dreams were like fugitive warlords). There might be songwriter who employs more clever metaphors in his writing, but I'm not sure who (just wait for Get Lonely's "And an astronaut could have seen the hunger in my eyes from space" Oh boy!)


The Score: I like Sublime a lot, but don't love it. I LOVE the Mountain Goats, though maybe the band more than any individual output, including this one. Doesn't matter this round though.
We Shall All Be Healed d. Sublime 75-52

Representative Tracks:





PS I apoligze for the tracks this time, esp the Mountain Goats one. Songza seems to have been nerfed somehow to include only videos and not songs anymore, and this was the song fromt he album I could find that had the best audio quality. In any case, if you choose to watch, enjoy John Darnielle's banter and trust the song is coming, he has, hands down, the best stage banter I've ever seen live ever. Ever.

Gone but Not Forgotten

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#6 Bear vs. Shark- Terrorhawk vs. #11 Desaparecidos- Read Music/Speak Spanish

I mourn the loss of Bear vs. Shark almost every day. That obviously sounds extreme, and I don't pretend that they mean as much to me as people or pets or world leaders or anything, but they released two nearly perfect albums and called it quits just as I was truly discovering how much I loved them. Bands never ask you whether you care if they go away, selfishly, they just do. And Desaparecidos aren't much better. While bandleader Conor Oberst obviously is still making copious amounts of music, none of his output as Bright Eyes (or, I assume, his new self-named material) has the punch, politically or emotionally, as his one foray into rock with Desaparecidos. Two great bands who made three total albums and then went the way of the Dodo, or some other bird that no longer exists.

The Arguments: I think these two albums are the most similar two I've done so far, which is surprising in that one of the great things about Bear vs. Shark is that they don't sound like anyone. They are sort of hardcore, and sort of post-punk, and definitely have a political bent on Terrorhawk (I mean, what else could that title mean if not a "hawk" for terror, rather than war...and song titles like "Entrance of the Elected"...its political right?) and supposedly were strongly influenced by early emo and indie bands like Texas is the Reason and Husker Du, but really, i can't actually compare them to anyone. And I can't quite pinpoint why I love them so much. The lyrics are pretty much completely inscrutable, like and angry Pavement or something, but then you think they start to make sense, that a line like "And either side of paper is erupting a snake/You're boarding planes to Oakland in the pouring rain/Well every drop will count when they tally it up" start to make a strange sort of sense and a bizarre near-profundity, and really, the point is that they are couched in some of the most driving music I have ever heard. The power in the music plus the depths of emotion in the lead singers' wail/scream/whisper (depending on what the situation calls for, and on this album especially, they nail 2 minute punk song, piano ballad, and everything in between. And it all makes sense.) This is a band that never fails to make me feel more alive when I listen to them...I want to jump up and scream and howl and shout, but always in a good way. I know I'm writing way more about the band than the album, when but a band limits itself like they have, its hard to separate the two...I love this band, both albums, and while this one is ranked lower and has its own section (I'll get to Right Now... eventually) what they accomplish is very similar, and is sorely missed. I don't pretend everyone would like this album, but I think anyone who likes anything remotely similar owes it to themselves to at least try it out.

Read Music/Speak Spanish is, wait for it...yet another concept album! And a great one at that (are there bad ones? undoubtedly, though not on this blog). This particular song cycle (and i think those two terms aren't actually interchangeable the way I use them, though I think it is applicable here) is a look at wealth and politics in America, and how that shapes relationships and the world around us, particularly looking through the lens of Oberst's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, and the development/stripmalling/gentrification thereof. And unlike Terrorhawk, much of Read Music is quite blatant in its politics...the song "Greater Omaha", which is basically a line by line indictment of that idea, starts with a recorded argument between Oberst and a friend discussing the indignities of strip malls and, gasp, a Starbucks opening in a place they used to hang out. Another song is titled simply "$$$$", and features samples from (presumably) real infomercials. And finally, its hard to find a song that is more pure vitriol against modern America then "Happiest Place on Earth" (the song starts "I want to pledge allegiance to the country where I live/I don't want to be ashamed to be American" and goes on to posit ideas like "Our freedom comes at their expense/Make sense does it?/Dollars and cents"). And, as an avowed liberal, its pleasurable to listen to the anger, to get wrapped up in the arguments and the angst that I share over the injustices Oberst describes over distorted guitars. But the strongest parts of the album are where he tones it down and gets a little personal, on the two-track relationship story "Man and Wife, The Former (Financial Planning)" and "Man and Wife, The Latter (Damaged Goods)" which from each of the title characters perspectives tells the story of the beginning of their relationship, through the lens of their money troubles, and of the end, and how focus on money is to blame, and no longer enough. For my money, "The Latter" is the best song Oberst has ever written, and considering how much I used to love Bright Eyes, that's saying something.

The Score: As good as Read Music/Speak Spanish is, and it's very good, I think I've made it clear how very, very much I love Terrorhawk, even if I can't really articulate why. It's just one of those things.

Terrorhawk d. Read Music/Speak Spanish 95-81

Representative Tracks:

God in the Machine

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#5 The Thermals- The Body, The Blood, The Machine vs #12 The Postal Service- Give Up

I've never been a person who listens to the same song over and over again in a row (Liza Shore and I were once comparing the "most played" track on our itunes...mine at the time was "New Slang" which had roughly 50 plays, her was, I believe, either "The Frug" or "Does He Love You?" and either way, it had like 200. that one song was all she listened to for weeks) , and since the advent of the ipod everything in my life is constantly on shuffle, so its hard to even play out albums. But I still manage sometimes, and once its done, once i'm over something, its hard to get under it again. But does that make it worth less? Does that mean it couldn't have been that good in the first place, or just that I misused it, Mark Prior style, and sucked out all the goodness too soon? And what is that worth in the incredibly arbitrary ranking system I've set up.

The Arguments: A couple of weeks ago I wrote about The Thermals Fuckin' A, and was disappointed to come to the conclusion that while there are a bunch of good songs on that album, a great album it is not. The Body, The Blood, The Machine is. Once again proving my love for concept alubms, TBTBTM (unnecessary acronym alert!) is a song cycle about a dystopic future where a couple or a group must escape from a pseudo-fascist Christian state. The album opens with a retelling of some of the highlights of the Bible ("God reached his hand down from the sky/He flooded the land then he set it afire", "God told his son it's time to come home/I promise you wont have to die all alone" etc) which, upon first lesson, had me (and other fans, apparently) wondering if the Thermals had grown up and found God (not all Christian music is bad, but it would have been somewhat disappointing, still), but especially when read retroactively through the rest of the albums' lens, its clear the tone is not as reverant as it appears on first listen. And while the political bent is clearly anti-organized religion (the longest song in the Thermals catalogue "Power Doesn't Run On Nothing" dispels any lingering myths about that, as the powers that be insist that we "Give us what we're asking for/Cause either way we're gonna take it" and that their power runs on, among other things, blood and the land we're standing on.) there are times when characters or narrators feel conflicted and even regret leaving the Christian enclave and hope that when they die they can return to God. So not only is this a nuanced and well thought out cinematic album crying out against something that some (read: me) consider to too often a force for evil in this world, but, as this is the Thermals, the songs still rock. The Thermals have grown up here, they have a whole album of ideas, but they don't lease their poppy punk edge, or their blistering sound, or even the fun at their shows. "Here's Your Future" is as good a punk song as any I have heard, it just happens to tell a Biblical story and be a part of something bigger at the same time. No small feat, that.

I bought Give Up at a Best Buy in Florida while staying with my grandma, and implored a friend to arrange my first favorite song from the album for his acapella group. Neither of those things illuminates anything particular about the album, except that they evoke a very specific time in my life when Give Up was in steady rotation for me. Listening to it again, its still good, and there are still good songs, but I don't hear it the same way I did then. And I loved it then. Almost every one of the ten songs was a favorite at one time or another (though now, clearly, "District Sleeps Alone Tonight" is head-and-shoulders above the rest, the one lingering love from an album I moved on from) and I loved what I perceived as the ingenuity of both form and creation (for anyone who doesn't read any popular musical publication, The Postal Service is a long-distance collaboration between lyricist and songwriter Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie fame and producer and beatmaker James Tamberello, who records under the name Dntel using, what else, the mail). I loved Gibbard's lyrics, and loved hearing them over electornic beats and drum machines instead of guitars or strings. And I still like all that, and their still good songs, and I love them for using Jenny Lewis as the main backup singer and I look forward to the collaboration that is supposed to drop this year, but its not like it was. I know better songwriters who work in the same idiom as Gibbard, and have moved up and out of that electronica-lite phase (Dntel's solo work is way better, musically, and even that isn't my favorite stuff). The album is good, its solid, the songs are highly listenable, but like so many quick flings that flame out (okay, not that many, but everyone has some, including me), sometimes its hard to see what you were so attracted to in the first place. I don't regret my days in bed with this album, and I have fond memories and one great keepsake, but its not something to write home about (so many puns there).

The Score: If this was the battle of two great track ones, it might be a good fight, but as is, its no longer close.

The Body, The Blood, The Machine d. Give Up 87-50


Representative Tracks:

The Scientoligist and The Southern Baptist

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#4 Beck- Sea Change vs #13 Violent Femmes- Add It Up (1981-1983)

An ongoing theme (meme? motif? pointless ramble?) of this exploration for me is the question of what is worth more...an album that is good beginning to end with few weak points but few standouts or an album that contains amazing tracks and tracks that get skipped everytime the come up. Of course, quantifying art, even art in the sense of track 10 on a cd, iis hard and often pointless, but thats what this whole thing is about, so it matters here. If half of an album is the best half an album ever, and the second half is forgettable, where does that album stand?

The Arguments: It should be noted at the outset that I love concept albums. Maybe its due to my fascination with the beatles and dabbling in jam and prog in high school (hang out with stoners, what do you expect? im not proud of it), but theres something about an album that is more than a collection of tracks, but tells a story or has a thread the listener can follow that appeals to my narrative-driven self. And Beck's Sea Change is a concept album. Written shortly after it happened, Sea Change is a 12 track exploration (and perhaps therapy session, if scientologists didn't hate therapy) of Beck's breakup with his finace. And its having that knowledge, having that lens, that makes the album something special. Sure, "The Golden Age" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine" are great tracks, and maybe its no great mystery what they're about even if you don't have that foreknowledge, but a simple lyric like "Put your hands on the wheel/Let the golden age begin" which opens the album certainly takes on quite a bit of added significance when heard as a line about a devastating breakup, rather than anything else. There's a cinematic quality, too, to this album...not only does it tell a story, but the album sounds like it belongs put to film, like it deserves beautfiul images to go along with the melodies (I once came up with an entire idea for a screenplay while listening to "It's All in Your Mind"). The songs are simple, beautiful, and heartbreaking, with "Guess I'm Doing Fine" occupying a keystone position on ever sad mix I've ever made. The problem is that while the first half of the album is mind-blowing, the second half, for me at least, drags a bit. The songs are good, but lose that magic the first tracks have, that wide open, heart-laid-bare, quality that Beck does so well when he wants. And that begs the question, if 7 tracks are amazing and 5 are okay, where does that rank?

Having Add It Up on this list at all feels a bit like cheating. After all, by definition, a "greatest hits album" should have a leg up on any other album, and is not composed in the same way. And maybe it is. But this is an album that I've gone through many phases with...never loving, but always there. It should be noted up front that I think "Blister in the Sun" is one of the worst songs the Femmes recorded, lacking any of the edge, politics, or early new-wave/folkpunk vibes that make these songs so great. at the same time, with the exception of "American Music", none of these songs is among my faves (and one of them is a song that I hated listening to so much I excised it from my ipod). The album is full of dark and funny takes on death, of others ("Country Death Song") and self-inflicted ("Out the Window), sex, with others ("Gimme the Car", "Black Girls" etc) and self-inflicted ("Blister in the Sun", yes, that's what its about) and politics ("I Hate the TV", "America Is...") and religion ("Jesus Walking on the Water"). What the Femmes paint for me is a vivid picture of Americana, not a happy one, but perhaps an accurate one ("American Music", the most upbeat song on the record, could serve as a thesis statment for the music). Listening to it now, I hear very clearly where the Femmes fall historically, somewhere between the Velvet Underground and the Talking Heads. They are great, and important, but in spite of all of that, the songs are never more than enjoyable to listen to. They don't move me the way that album up above does.

Score: Maybe 7 great songs is enough (and maybe a greatest hits album is a little bit cheating, even if its not greatest enough to win).

Sea Change d. Add It Up (1981-1983) 68-52

Representative Tracks:

You're Not Punk, and I'm Telling Everyone

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#8 The Get Up Kids- Four Minute Mile vs. #9 The Thermals- Fuckin' A


The year is 2000, and I've just returned to my hotel room from a Berkeley Tower Records with the new Smashing Pumpkins album Machina. Proud of my new purchase, I run into my roommate at this conference (MUN, natch), Matt Kaplan, who informs me he just found the greatest album ever made on 7". He is referring to Four Minute Mile, an album I've never heard of, by the Get Up Kids, a band I've never heard of. Rather than ask him for a listen, I scoff, probably mumble something about the Beatles, and slip my new CD into my discman. Machina, it should be noted, is terrible, and Kaplan later moved on to hardcore and straight edge, and then law school. I, on the other hand, moved muscially to a place where he wasn't so far off.

The Arguments: Four Minute Mile is not the greatest album ever made, but its is pretty excellent, and better than I remember. In the interest of full disclosure, (theres a pun in there somewhere) when my computer crashed last winter I had to re-rip all of my cds, and for some reason only half of 4MM made it back. So I hadn't heard it in a while. And it is great. While the Get Up Kids went on to make albums that meant more to me, were more "emo", and sucked more, this album is actually close to perfect. Perfect for shouting along to in the car, at shows, or moping along to on a bleak winter day. It reached its peak for me when I left for school, as it is (as much of GUPK early output is) lyrically often concerend with leaving home, leaving people, and relationships across a distance, but there haven't been many times in my life when something on this album wasn't resonant ("Shorty", maybe my least favorite song, was the anthem of a prolonged argument/falling out between my sometime-friend-sometime-arch-nemesis in high school, Sebastian Clark). While Matt Pryor certainly doesn't have the best voice around, and the recording isn't amazing, the sound is urgent and driving, the lyrics heartfelt and pithy at the same time ("I don't want you to love me anymore...than enough" was the first one that got me) and the album's overall arc is impressive, from the drive and angsty outpouring of the first couple of tracks through the slow burn of album closer "Michelle with one 'L'".

Fuckin' A opens with a track that my brother has called "the most punk song of all time" (and he should know). Of their three albums to date, Fuckin' A is the best example of The Thermals throw back punk/pop-punk...a scant 12 songs on an album totalling 27 minutes, but each packing quite the wallop...like a shot of concentrated rock (thats a terrible sentence). While there is nary a bad song on the album, and there are certainly standouts ("A Stare Like Yours") and I love their politics ("God and Country" is a great precursor to the anthemic message of The Body the Blood the Machine; the band refused to let Hummer use "It's Trivia" from their debut for a commercial), strangely, even 27 minutes is almost too much. It's not that the songs are bad or boring, its just that this album (and the one before it) stick pretty closely to a formula, driving guitar, swing drums, verse-chorus-verse and out, and it becomes repetitive and harder to hear the standouts as standouts. This is, unfortunately, mirrored in their live shows, which while fun and powerful (like the music) feature the band doing almost the exact same movements and patterns on every song. This album is perfect for my shuffle tendancies...any two or three songs at any given time are great, but as a coherent album leaves a little variety to be desired.

Score: A classic early emo (said completely unprejoratively) album takes down a great collection of songs by up and coming punks

Four Minute Mile d. Fuckin' A 86-53

Representative Tracks:

Old Guard vs New Guard

VS

#1 Revolver (The Beatles) vs #16 Palo Santo (Shearwater)

In what will undoubtedly be a recurring theme of this blog, this is a match up of the old vanguards of my music taste and the torchbearers of the new. The Beatles obviously need no introduction, other than to say they were my first favorite band and introduced me to rock music (no small task). Shearwater, which I discovered as a side project for current fave Okkervil River (whom they have since completely separated from), is a new love of mine, and it started with this album.

The Arugments: Palo Santo (which apparently is actually a concept album loosely based on the life of Nico (0f Velvet Underground and Nico fame) is the perfect album for being stuck in a cabin (or apartment) on a brutal winter day, and makes a surprisingly good companion to certain winter oriented fantasy novels I may or may not have been reading when I discovered it. With its string arrangments, imagery of wolves and unicorns, winter and storms, the band, led by multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg and his soaring voice, can sound positively medieval at times. The lyrics are erudite and dense, and while not always accessible always conjure haunting and evocative images to go along with the often strange melodies that can be expected from a band that features instruments from cellos to banjos to pipes, and who is anchored not by a drummer but a "percussionist". Its a great album with a number of great songs, and five years from now will undoubtedly mean even more to me.

Unfortunately, it draws a matchup against a band that probably means more to me than any other (with the possible exceptions of weezer and smashing pumpkins, but we'll get there). The problem I've always had with the Beatles is that while I have the utmost respect for their entire catalog (at least post Please Please Me) its always been a challenge picking out a favorite anything...no one song is so above the rest that it can be singled out, and while each album has a ton of classic tracks and wonderful experimentation and the fact that it is by the Beatles going for it, listening to Revolver again I was reminde how much of it I actually don't like. While the last half of Revolver (with the possible exception of Dr. Robert) is unimpeachable, the first half is hit or miss, with absolute classics (Eleanor Rigby) sharing space with what, by the Beatles standards, can only be considered duds (Taxman? please). Taken in context, Revolver deserves its ranking...both on my list, and on most professional "Best of All Time lists" where it consistently is in the top three, and often number 1. It was revelatory for me, as a pre-teen, and trying to imagine how it sounded in 1967, with songs that featured only strings (on a rock album!) a sitar, and closed with a track that I think is at least partly if not awfully responsible for much of psychadelia and (and perhaps even some techno) ("Tomorrow Never Knows") is nearly impossible...as even a dabbler in rock history, the one-two combination of this and Sgt Peppers later that year must have been like the advent of technicolor...it was like a whole different medium. There are also songs that I still love as songs..."For No One" is certainly one of my favorite tracks of all time, and again, the last handful of tracks featuring "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "I Want to Tell You" are just great.

Score: Revolver is good enough, and historical enough, to beat an upstart like Palo Santo, but not by as much as it should, and my overall level of enjoyment while listening through it again does not bode well for this number 1 seed to make it as far as it seems like it should.

Revolver d. Palo Santo 74-63

Representative Tracks:

The Real Deal

Now it begins.

Incidentally, I am not the only person who made a bracket on that website pitting albums against each other. Apparently its a popular thing to do. Who knew?

Anyway, we being our tournament, officially, in the New York Bracket (bottom left). The brackets, in clockwise order from New York, go New York, UK, Pacific Northwest, LA. The match-ups in the NY bracket are as follows:

The Beatles- Revolver (1)
vs
Shearwater- Palo Santo (16)

The Get Up Kids-Four Minute Mile (8)
vs
The Thermals- Fuckin' A (9)

Beck- Sea Change (4)
vs
The Violent Femmes- Add it Up (13)

Bear vs. Shark- Terrorhawk (6)
vs
Desaparecidos- Read Music/Speak Spanish (11)

The Mountain Goats- We Shall All Be Healed (3)
vs.
Sublime-Sublime (14)

Harvey Danger- Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? (7)
vs
Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (10)

Elliott Smith-XO (2)
vs
Beck- Mutations (15)

First up: Revolver vs Palo Santo!

Preliminary Match: Who's Number 64?

Just like the NCAA, a little pre-tourney face-off for the right to face the overall number 1 seed in the first round. Today's matchup:

Badly Drawn Boy's Hour of the Bewilderbeast vs. Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights

The case: These albums are about as different as any two on the list...the former being a finely crafted pop record, the latter a dark homage to Joy Division and 80's new wave, and the torch bearer of, if not a genre in an of itself, then a new chapter in a genre's life. And while Turn on the Bright Lights has great atmosphere, innovation, and some truly brilliant songs (especially the final track "Leif Erikson" which, for my taste, showcases the bands strengths...brooding tone, haunting vocals, and lyrics that border between nonsense and genius) the edge in this match goes to Badly Drawn Boy (nee Damon Gough). The album's greatest strength is also one of its biggest weaknesses: Gough shows a knack for genre bouncing and manipulation, from the straight piano-and-a-guitar singer songwriter style (that one assumes is his baseline) of songs like "Pissing in the Wind" and "Epitaph" to funk on "Disillusion" to, well, hip-hopish beats on "Body Rap". But some forest is lost for all those trees...a brilliant, tightly crafted pop record is hidden amongst the overlong album's 18 tracks, and were it cut down to 12 it might lose some experimentation and ability to call back and cycle through themes, but it would gain a coherence and lack of filler that would make it truly great. Gough writes songs that can be sweet and funny at the same time, and the album is littered with little jokes (the splash at the end of "Fall in a River") and melodies that stick with you long after listening.

Score: In the Hour of the Bewilderbeast defeats Turn on the Brightlights 63-48

Representative Tracks:
Badly Drawn Boy- The Shining

Highlander

The question is simple: what is my favorite album of all time? like so many lists, not the best, not the most listened to, but favorite. Using unscientific criteria, I made a list 0f 65 albums, then ranked them, then seeded them a la March Madness. Each album will receive a full listen, be compared to whatever album its up against for the week, a score will be given (just like a basketball game!) and the winner will move on to the next round. Til the end. There can only be one.

Here's the bracket:

64 Album Showdown

Killer of Time

This blog exists because I am unemployed. If you have ever been unemployed, you know it leaves you with a lot of time on your hands.

This blog exists because I like music. And lists. And making lists about music. I thought of a project that is music and list related, and would kill time, and needed a place to put it. If you're reading this, welcome, please participate. If not, hopefully I'll get a job soon.


The premise: An NCAA style showdown of my favorite albums of all time. Why not just make a list? This takes longer (see above). Enjoy.