Best Albums of My Life #6: Separation Sunday

Anyone who has read more than one post on this blog is certain of two things. 1) I love the Clash and 2) I love the Hold Steady. So it should surprise no one at all that a Hold Steady album would make it onto my list of the 29 Best Albums Released in My Life (a list which was supposed to be completed by the time I turned 30, but better late than never, right?).

Separation Sunday was the very first Hold Steady album I heard. And for those of you who think it was love at first sound, it wasn’t. I thought this Craig Finn fellow might be shouting about something worth hearing, but I wasn’t that interested in finding out. My favorite song upon first listen was “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” (still one of my favorites) and I didn’t really think much of the other ones. I got that the album was trying to tell me a story, but it took me a few months of owning the album (I got it for free – one of the perks of working for the now-defunct Tower Records) to really sit down and try to listen to that story.

Once I did, though, I was duly impressed. Not only was the story of Hallelujah’s disappearance and “resurrection” a compelling listen, but Tad Kubler’s guitars and Franz Nicolay’s keyboards had wormed their way into my brain, creating a boiling soup of classic rock and literature, two things I would not have thought to combine on a regular basis (largely because some of the most offensive Led Zeppelin songs are the ones where you can tell Robert Plant had been getting high and reading Tolkien).

That was 2005 in Boston and now, five freaking years later, I still love this album. I listen to at least one Hold Steady album a week and lately, I’ve been coming back to Separation Sunday a lot. Not just for the mind-blowingly badass guitar work on “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and “Banging Camp” (I ask you: what kind of world are we living in where people think John Mayer is a great guitar player but only a fistful of lucky souls know and recognize Tad Kubler’s mad skills? Kubler is like  a dragon who breathes awesome riffs instead of fire) or the lyrical awesomeness of “The Cattle and the Creeping Things” (“I guess I heard about original sin/ I heard the dudes blamed the chick/ I heard the chick blamed the snake/ I heard they were naked when they got busted/ and I heard things ain’t never been the same since”), but because of the feeling that I get from Separation Sunday. Like the feelings I have toward a lot of albums, I get a very specific feeling from this album.

When I was a supervisor at Tower, I opened the store on Saturday mornings (a good shift – I was off by 6pm and able to go to shows or out drinking with my friends, most of whom worked at the same store), which meant getting to work by 9am. So I was on the train by 8:30. So every Saturday morning, I’d walk through my little Boston suburb and I loved the way the town felt that early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It was like the whole city was sleeping off a hangover and I was tiptoeing through the house, trying not to wake anyone up. I’d march from my awesome basement apartment with my headphones on, listening to Separation Sunday more often than not, and sip coffee while I waited for the train. I’d get to work to be greeted by Baby Boomers with too much disposable income waiting to purchase tickets for whatever shitty show was going on sale that day (part of the joy of being a supervisor at Tower, you see, was running the Ticketmaster – or Ticketbastard, as I called it – counter). And when I look back at my time at Tower Records in Harvard Square (best retail job I ever had – among the top five jobs of any kind that I’ve ever had), the whole thing is soundtracked by Separation Sunday.

The album itself tells the story of a girl named Hallelujah (“the kids, they call her ‘Holly’”) who gets strung out on the Twin Cities drug and party scene and disappears for a while, only to crash into an Easter mass some months later (“Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?”). She has a junkie boyfriend who cheats on her with her little hoodrat friend (Hallelujah is a hoodrat too, but you don’t find that out until the end of the album), and she finds some junkie revivalists camped on the banks of the Mississippi River who will give you a full-immersion baptism after a hit of nitrous to give you that “high as hell and born again” feeling. Along the way, she has visions of St. Theresa, sings a song to St. Barbara, and gets involved with a sweat-pants clad drug-dealer named Charlemagne (who, like Hallelujah, is a recurring character in many Hold Steady songs). The combination of the story and the hard-charging rock music that propels it serves to solidify Craig Finn’s underlying musical thesis: that you’re as good a savior as you’re likely to get and that, at the end of the day, rock ‘n’ roll is historically the least disappointing religion you can join. Though Separation Sunday depicts a druggie scene in all its puking glory, the album never becomes a morality play about the dangers of drug use. For Finn, drugs are just another self-made obstacle on Holly’s way to her self-made resurrection. Being high isn’t the problem, it’s why you get high that’s the problem (“I’m gonna tell it like a comeback story/ because when we left, we were defeated and depressed/ and when we arrived, we were rippin’ high”).

Finn’s voice is not great – most people know this. But, like Bob Dylan’s voice (yes, I did just make that comparison), Craig Finn’s voice strikes me as uniquely suited to telling the stories he has to tell. The ongoing story of people fucking themselves up and redeeming themselves is not a story to be told in the clean, polished, octave-scaling timber of a Josh Groban; it’s a story meant to be told by a guy who has lived through something. Finn sounds like he’s lived through a war – hell, like he’s sung through a war – and come out the other side. But his voice (and myriad references to early punk, early hardcore, the Bible, and John Berryman) might be a deal-breaker for a lot of people and that’s just fine by me. I can’t say for certain that I’d like the Hold Steady as much if I thought they were for everyone.

A Shallow Review of the New Spoon Record

I’m gonna be a total pig here for a minute, but I’m gonna try to be inclusive about it. Think about the type of person to which you are attracted – whether they are of the opposite or the same sex, it doesn’t matter (I guess it matters to John McCain, whose total about-face on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will, I hope, eventually put him in the position of having to publicly admit he hates gay people. Or is it, Senator McCain, that you’re afraid gay soldiers will serve more capably than you did? Really, all they’d have to do is…let’s see… not get captured). Now imagine someone, maybe a famous someone, of whichever gender gets your lust fired up – anyone whom you’ve seen in several different pictures. What we’re looking for here is someone who is really, really hot in some pictures but in other pictures they’re…well… kinda hideous. Can you think of someone like that?

Where the fuck am I going with this?

Musically, I think Spoon is like that. If you look at them in terms of some of their music, they’re beautiful (“The Ghost of You Lingers” makes art out of what is essentially the keyboard part from Bon Jovi’s “Runaway.”). Other times, they’re Velma from Scooby Doo, crashing the party with their attractive friend who, by the way, is way out of your league. Again, you can fill that analogy in with whatever reference turns you on (also, let’s not assume by this that I’m hung up on cartoon characters. I just find it fascinating that the creative minds behind Scooby Doo couldn’t have the smart girl also be attractive, as if they didn’t believe the two virtues could exist in one body).

A couple of weeks ago, Spoon released Transference. I’ve been listening to it frequently since I got it, but it’s not because I love it. I don’t hate it either. The jury is still out, sorting the hotness from the notness among Transference’s eleven songs. The first three tracks don’t impress me much, but there are a few gems here: “Who Makes Your Money”, “Written in Reverse,” and “I Saw the Light” are nestled back to back and deliver maximum pleasure, but the rest of the album lurks around a standard of quality that falls somewhere between “Okay” and “Pretty all right”. “Trouble Comes Running,” when it dresses right, is pretty good looking.

I dove backwards into the two previous Spoon records, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Gimme Fiction for some perspective. How sexy was Spoon in these two little snapshots? Overall, they rate pretty well. I mean, “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”  would require prescription beer goggles, but “The Underdog” is quite seductive indeed. And then there’s Gimme Fiction, which, in my shallow analogy, is that photo of someone to whom you were never super-attracted but, captured in this certain light, they are nothing short of stunning. Gimme Fiction is still my favorite Spoon album because it was the first one to surprise me. I was at work at Tower Records in Harvard Square (it’s not there anymore), the album was playing and, all it once, it hit me: I like Spoon.

Given that, is Transference the ugliest stepsister of the three Spoon albums I own? No. Maybe it’s the least attractive of three moderately attractive sisters. Upon the millionth listen, there’s some real beauty to be had there. I like the rough sound (when it’s not undercut by studio masturbation, a habit for which Pitchfork heaps praise upon Spoon. I’ll not praise them for it because I know they know better. We all know better. There’s a reason “Revolution 9″ is nobody’s favorite Beatles song*), the harmonies, the lurching, jerky funk of “Written in Reverse,” and Britt Daniel’s sly falsetto on “Who Makes Your Money.” But if I gotta listen to it a million times to really suss out the good stuff, Transference is not the type of girl I’m gonna take home to meet my parents. Too high-maintenance.

Maybe I can make a slight improvement to this analogy (you’d hope so, right?). Have you ever known someone that you didn’t think was that attractive and then you see them with someone else and you suddenly get exactly what it is about them that’s so great? They become beautiful right before your eyes because you see how someone else sees them. It’s a pretty cool experience to have, if you’ve never had it. I’ve heard other people talk about Spoon in ways that make me want to run home and listen to Spoon immediately, even if I have, just that morning, resolved to get rid of my Spoon albums because I never listen to them. Maybe, once I hear some other people talking about how much they love Transference, I’ll start to love it too (I actually didn’t listen to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga much after I got it and then someone started talking about how good it was and I got all nostalgic, drunk-dialed it, and barged into its dorm room when it was making out with its new boyfriend……….. I’ve gone too far with this, haven’t I?)

So my feelings about Spoon and Transference are complicated, contradictory, both not as shallow and precisely as shallow as I’ve presented them here. Maybe Spoon’s Coachella set will be what finally wins me over. Perhaps their music and I will see each other from across the field, our eyes will meet, and…okay, I’ll stop now. In all seriousness, if you’ve liked Spoon in the past, I find it hard to believe that you won’t like Transference, but how much you like it may depend on which of their albums you want to fuck – er, listen to – the most.

*And if you say it is, you’re just being an asshole.

A Fairly Unfiltered Reaction to Beach House’s Teen Dream

First off: it’s 2010, and that means wedding planning is gonna fuck with my posting schedule a bit. So be it. For some reason, people are still dropping by, even when I haven’t posted in a while. Thanks.

Anyway, I wanna talk to you about the new Beach House record, Teen Dream. The Pitchfork review of this album uses phrases like “shadowy dream-pop”, “dark and blurry resonance,” and “Mazzy Star” in the first paragraph alone. After reading the Pitchfork (or P4K, as those pretentious twats abbreviate it. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve abused a parenthesis, so I’m just gonna vent here for a minute. I don’t know who is to blame for changing “you’re” into “Ur”, “your” into “yr” or thinking abbreviations like P4K are acceptable, but I want them found and I want them killed. Our country is already hemorrhaging intelligence at a horrifying rate [check this shit out if you don't believe me. Kirk Cameron actually talks about convincing people God exists by bypassing the intellect. This is probably the same way you convince people to eat shit.] and this needless pruning of already short words is not helping things at all. I don’t know if people who do it think it’s cute or convenient or what, but knock it the fuck off. If you’re texting a message to somebody and you can’t afford an extra three letters, just fucking call them. Whew. That’s some good parenthetical abuse right there) review, I was all set to hate Teen Dream. It’s called Teen Dream, for fuck’s sake.

I sought this album out to despise it. Not just because I’m an asshole (but I’ll cop to that), but because I learned a little lesson a year or so ago about a really shitty “band” from San Diego called Wavves. Pitchfork ejaculated a spoogey river of praise onto Wavves’ album, Wavvves (I still refuse to see what they did there), and, based on their review, I decided to check that album out. And it was dog shit. No. Dog shit still sounds better to me than Wavves. Now, to be fair, there are bands that I like that get pretty good marks from the Pitchforkers, but there are certain Pitchfork reviews, like the one for Beach House’s latest, that signal to me that this is overblown praise for a complete turd of a band. The word “droning” shows up in the Pitchfork review for Teen Dream and that’s a big red flag. The whole review conjures up analogy after analogy to light and darkness – also a huge red flag. The review also praises the use of a cheap drum machine, which is not encouraging. And the review contains this sentence: “Hearing her voice in such a spare setting reinforces just how rich, earthy, and, dare I say it, soulful it really is.” Yes, Pitchfork Managing Editor Mark Richardson, you dare say it. So just fucking say it, you giant pussy. If something is soulful, you can say it’s soulful. Saying Jeff Buckley is soulful only makes sense. Saying Wavves is soulful means you probably have a brain tumor.

But enough (at last!) about everything to do (even tangentially – it’s great to be back here, making parentheses my bitch) with Teen Dream but the music. Because this album is mostly fucking gorgeous. Victoria Legrand is a soulful (seriously, Mark Richardson, why is there a problem with saying that?) vocalist, her voice fits the instrumentation like a glove and, if that’s a cheap drum machine they’re using, good on them. Sounds great to my ears. Given how much I expected to loathe Teen Dream, I have to say it strikes me as nothing short of stunning. I’m listening to it right now on headphones and I am not infrequently getting chills.

So I think I’ve learned something here today. No, I haven’t learned to give Pitchfork the benefit of the doubt – I’m still right about them 9 times out of 10 (although, to be fair, they point me to a lot of good music. I read their site, wading through their mostly pretentious prose [cue someone saying this about me in 5, 4, and so on] to decide whether or not I will like the band they are reviewing) and they still give high praise to stuff a brain-damaged monkey could do with his ballsack, a laptop, and a MIDI-ready Stratocaster that so far from in tune that you have to measure the distance in megaparsecs. What I’ve learned is that I like to be surprised. The one time out of ten that I’m wrong about something Pitchfork likes is a moment of serenity for me. In this fucked up world, the fact that even Pitchfork and I can agree on something gives me a shred of hope (an admittedly small one) for humanity.

There’s another lesson here, one that is very important to remember, especially when Pitchfork or Bollocks! is bagging on something near and dear to your heart (although, come on, that never happens here): the music is what matters. It doesn’t matter what I think of an album if it moves you and it doesn’t matter that Pitchfork was blind to the beauty of My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges because I sure as fuck understood that album for the hulking slab of awesome that it was. I’m telling you what I think of an album in a given moment – in this moment, I really dig this Beach House album. I’m not getting paid for it (the Pitchfork guys are, but I don’t begrudge them that. They’ve achieved the American Dream: getting paid to masturbate) and I am comfortable with my complete lack of influence (which is what it is, at least until 400 motherfuckers come here to vehemently agree with me about something). There’s some reason you read music reviews and that’s for you to sort out. I write music reviews because, well, I love music and I don’t sleep much.

But seriously, Pitchfork was – dare I say it? – correct about Teen Dream. And while I am pretty happy when we agree on stuff, I’m still perplexed at how much I hate how they praise albums. They take their shit waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more seriously than I take mine. Of course, “criticism” is their job and what I do here is more Free-Floating Hostility, to borrow a phrase from George Carlin (if I’m funny, ever, it’s because of George Carlin or Kurt Vonnegut. Either by lessons learned or jokes blatantly stolen). You can decide which you prefer and adjust your reading habits accordingly. But do yourself a favor and at least listen to Teen Dream. I’ve listened to it like four times while writing this (I took a lengthy detour on the Way of the Master website, where I took their quiz to see if I’m a good person. You can guess, by their criteria anyway, how that went) and it is still fucking gorgeous.

The Pros and Cons of the New Soulsavers Record

I’m not gonna lie: I downright loved the last album by Soulsavers, It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land. I loved its unwieldy as fuck title, I loved its post-apocalyptic gospel feel, and I loved it for giving me a duet between Mark Lanegan and Will Oldham (on a cover of a Neil Young song! Grizzled dude trifecta!). So I was quite excited to discover that Soulsavers – Brits Rich Machin and Ian Glover – had teamed up with Lanegan once again for Broken, which doesn’t feature Mr. Oldham but it does have a Palace Brothers cover (Palace Brothers = Will Oldham = Bonnie “Prince” Billy. I know, it’s hard to keep track). But it has not been, for me, as immediately rewarding as its predecessor. So I decided I wanted to discuss the pros and cons of Broken with another person, mostly to try to work out my real feelings for the album. Because I’m slightly biased in favor of Soulsavers, I’ll handle the “pros”, but I wanted to find a real con with which to discuss the “cons.” So I called up my good friend Zombie Ken Lay (I know what you’re thinking: Lay’s conviction was vacated when he conveniently died, but dying don’t mean you broke the law any less, n’est pas?) and he sauntered on over to my imaginary office for a chat about Soulsavers and Broken.

Me: Well, the first thing this album has going for it is Mark Lanegan. The dude’s voice is perfectly suited to the sort of pseudo-gospel atmospherics of Soulsavers, and it especially soars on the Palace Brothers cover, “You Will Miss Me When I Burn.” By the way, I wasn’t familiar with this Will Oldham tune before I got Broken, but if I had to guess which song on here was written by the Bonnie Prince, I’d guess that one. It’s just so him.

Zombie Ken Lay: Yes, but doesn’t Broken feel a bit melodramatic at times? It’s Not How Far You Fall had dramatic tension, but Broken often sails over the top, especially on “Some Misunderstanding”, which is nearly eight minutes long. The stakes feel artificially high on this album.

Me: That’s a valid point (from a guy who knows a thing or two about making things artificially high). But they’ve also added some badass guitar work on these songs. I didn’t like “Some Misunderstanding” the first time I heard it either, but it’s really grown on me. It’s another stellar track for Lanegan, too. I kinda forgive the song its melodrama because Mark Lanegan sings it so well.

ZKL: Okay, but what about the two long instrumental tracks on the album? They’re both dirges. Completely unnecessary.

Me: Yeah, I’ve got to agree with you there. The thing with these guys is, they’re always striving to be epic, almost cinematic, really —

ZKL: I’m gonna stop you right there. You realize that the Pitchfork review said basically the same thing, right? And any time you lend credibility to a Pitchfork review, that’s a “con.”

Me: I guess you’d know something about cons, wouldn’t you, Ken? Am I right?

ZKL: Fuck you.

Me: Just saying. Anyway, getting back to the album. I know it sucks to validate a Pitchfork review, but they’re right about Soulsavers trying to make Big Music. Just like Sigur Ros (but in English!), they can stumble on the road to epic awesomeness. But when they don’t stumble, they make some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a long time. “All the Way Down” is glorious.

ZKL: Yeah, but “Can’t Catch the Train” is basically a blatant Tom Waits ripoff.

Me: True. It’s not an entirely unlistenable one, but you’re right – Soulsavers should leave broken-ass songs about trains to Tom Waits. It’s sort of his niche. On the positive side, on the enormously positive side, Broken features guest vocals from Red Ghost, a.k.a. Rosa Agostino. Her voice is perfect for this kind of music and she has more cool stuff on her MySpace page. It’s worth at least two “pros” for Broken when you consider the Red Ghost tracks. Album closer “By My Side” is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a long time. In fact, I’m going to suggest that, while taking a break from making awesome albums with Isobel Campbell, Mark Lanegan makes an awesome album with Rosa Agostino.

ZKL: The album would be better if they lost the instrumentals and put Agostino on every track. As it is, Broken is overlong – there’s not a song under four minutes on here and there are three songs that are around seven minutes long.

Me: You’re wrong, Zombie Ken Lay. There are two songs that are shorter than four minutes, but one is a gratuitous instrumental.

ZKL: Sorry. I’m not good with numbers.

Me: I know. Everyone knows. It’s okay. Any final “cons” for Broken?

ZKL: It just feels a little uneven to me, too much like the soundtrack to a movie version of Fallout or something. But other than that, I don’t have anything else negative to say about it.

Me: And that’s discounted for agreeing with the Pitchfork review, at least in spirit. To close the case for the “pros”, I will say that Soulsavers are remarkably consistent. People who dug It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Length of Your Album Title will probably enjoy Broken, though perhaps just a tiny bit less. I considered It’s Not How Far one of the best albums of 2007, and, while I doubt Broken will be one of my very favorites of 2010, I have been listening to it at least once a week since I got it with no major regrets.

So I’ll go ahead and say the “pros” beat the “cons” by a field goal (in overtime) on Broken and hopefully that will encourage people to check the album out and decide for themselves. Soulsavers are a group whose good music is amazing enough to compel me to forgive their mediocre music (I have yet to hear anything from them that is outright bad music). I’d like to thank my guest, Zombie Ken Lay, for debating the Soulsavers album with me and for not eating my brains. He might have been a lying, stealing bastard in life, but he seems to be a pretty stand-up guy in death. Just don’t let him do your taxes.

Sainthood

Last time I heard Tegan and Sara, they were walking with the ghost. I knew a lot of people who loved that song and whatever album it was on (the internet says it was on an album called So Jealous), but I was not one of them. I found the song pretty repetitive and I didn’t like the singer’s voice. Turns out that singer was Sara Quin and it turns out that, as of last year’s Sainthood, I still don’t care much for her voice. Sainthood is not the worst thing I’ve ever heard, mind you, but at best, it makes me want to listen to Mates of State. Or the New Pornographers. Or Santogold. Or Metric. Or the last Yeah Yeah Yeahs record. I could do this all day, and that’s a problem for Sainthood.

Tegan and Sara Quin, the titular sisters in this mad pop duo, seem to have gone to a subpar school of How to Make Pop Music – one that taught them that “pop song” = “repetition of the same few phrases over and over again.” I know that, to some extent, this is the case -  that’s why a refrain is a refrain.  But Tegan and Sara have too much repetition and not enough pop song to go ’round, which is especially irritating when you realize they are attempting to practice the chorus/chorus/chorus song structure that the aforementioned New Pornographers have mastered (FYI, there’s a new New Pornos record coming out in May. I am very excited about this). Maybe if I thought about music differently, I could focus on the cutesy vocals and admittedly catchy melodies and come away enjoying Sainthood. But I don’t and I can’t.

What I can think about is how, in “On Directing,” Sara Quin sings, “I know it turns you off/ when I get talking like a teen” and how that strikes me as the truest line on the album. In my estimation, all of Sainthood is talking like a teen. I feel like, if there was a store for teen-pop kids (like a less deliberately gloomy Hot Topic), you’d walk in and hear Tegan and Sara music at top volume. Wait a second, there is a store like that. It’s called American Apparel. Someone walk in there and tell me what you hear, because I’m not fucking going.

I have hit on exactly one context in which I could really like Sainthood: if Tegan and Sara were sixth-graders, I would be pretty impressed with their music. It’s melodic enough, but lacking in complexity, the way a lot us are in our preadolescence. The repetition could be forgiven in youngsters who are making their first foray into pop music; in grown-ups, it comes off as supremely lazy. Though none of the songs on Sainthood make it past the four minute mark, all of them feel like they could be about half as long. And album closer “Someday” is a blatant ripoff of probably every song on the best Mates of State album, Bring It Back – especially “Punchlines.” And it’s telling to me that “Someday” is my favorite song on the album – and for every decent song on Sainthood, I can think of a better song by a better artist that I’d rather be listening to. In fact, I can do that for every song on Sainthood. I was going to list them in order below, but gave up on the exercise when I realized that I would just be suggesting you listen to Metric, Mates of State, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs instead of Tegan and Sara.

So there are two things that occur to me upon repeated listens to Sainthood. First off, Tegan and Sara are a poor man’s (or woman’s) version of Metric, a band that brings consistently better melodic hooks, constantly better singing, and less repetition. A friend of mine came to stay this weekend and in exchange for a few luxurious nights on my futon, he dumped a ton of Metric’s old stuff on my hard drive. I was already in love with Fantasies, but my time with Live It Out and other previous Metric albums has only increased my esteem for that band. “Monster Hospital,” for instance, is vastly superior to every single track on Tegan and Sara’s Sainthood. Second, the songs on Sainthood that don’t make me want to switch over to Metric make me want to switch over to other, better, bands with strong female voices. I’ve already listed a bunch so I won’t repeat ‘em, but it tells me that Tegan and Sara are tragically generic and I’m forced to wonder if that’s what they’re trying to be. And if it is, that makes Tegan and Sara music for people who don’t really care about music. I’m not being facetious here, either – there is a demographic out there that consists entirely of people who want to put an album on and forget about it. If you’re in this demographic, you’re going to really pay attention to the album very rarely, so it rarely has to be good – it has to please your ear, say, once every ten minutes or so.  I’m adamantly outside of that demographic, and I tend to view those within it as some weird breed of people who will swallow musical poison to avoid silence. When I listen to music, I want to be riveted. I want music that demands my attention, and Tegan and Sara have me skipping to the next track, not because I want to hear it, but because I want to play my little game of “what would I rather listen to?” And that fun lasts for about three minutes before I just listen to something else.

So that’s my not-so-ringing endorsement of Sainthood. I’m not joking when I tell you that, if you don’t give a fuck about music, the album will work just fine for you. But if you don’t give a fuck about music, you probably don’t read Bollocks! (unless you’re here to shit on me for not liking your favorite band. If your favorite band is Tegan and Sara, shit away. Your scorn will only make me stronger). I guess, to sum up, since Sainthood is for people who don’t give a fuck about music and I do give a fuck (a mighty one – feel free to name your band A Mighty Fuck) about music, I can’t honestly give a fuck about Tegan and Sara’s Sainthood.

Why I Don’t Hate Vampire Weekend

I don’t believe Americans invented the ill-informed, knee-jerk reaction, but I know we’ve perfected it. Ask yourself if people who have the time to go to D.C. for a week and wave (often misspelled) signs are actually working enough to make enough money to be “Taxed Enough Already.” Just a for-instance. Politics is an easy field to which I can point and say, “Behold, y’all: ignorance abounds.” But fans of music are not immune, as I have found out on more than one occasion. Sometimes, if you don’t like a band that other people like, they’ll hate you for it. I don’t understand this myself, but it happens. And sometimes music fans like to react to things before they’ve heard them. I didn’t want to write too much about how people hate Vampire Weekend for their Ivy-League pedigree, their elitist references to “kefir” (goes good with arugala, Tea Partiers), or their globe-trotting sound because every Vampire Weekend review discusses that shit ad nauseum. But every review discusses that shit because there are more than a few people whose knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss Vampire Weekend as privileged posers, allowing their perception of the band as people to color their perception of the band as musicians. (It should be noted that plenty of great musicians are/were horrible people. Ask John Lennon’s kids what kind of father he was. Ask Joey Ramone what kind of friend Johnny Ramone was*. And so on.)

But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to like Vampire Weekend at first either. I felt snob-guilt for liking “A-Punk,” which I heard for the first time (gasp!) on a non-NPR-affiliated radio station. And I still listen to their first album and it’s still fun and interesting. And I wanted to cut myself off there and resist the urge to purchase Contra on the day it came out (I did read an NPR review of the album before I bought it. Cred restored? I don’t care). But who was I kidding?

I just can’t quit Vampire Weekend, to borrow a phrase from a vastly overrated film. The reason I can’t is because Vampire Weekend makes very – very - compelling pop music. That is due in no small part to the arranging abilities of a multi-instrumentalist whom I affectionately nicknamed Batman when discussing their first album. Batman punctuates Vampire Weekend’s hyper pop music with flourishes of wind and string instruments, while Ezra Koenig yelps his sometimes-clever lyrics (he’s no Isaac Brock, but he scores his share of points) and strums his usually-clean guitar. Their sound is not like the sound of other popular acts and I believe they come by their world-music inclinations honestly. So I like them and I like Contra and if you write a review where you say it’s the worst piece of shit you’ve ever heard, I promise I won’t post comments on your blog telling you to shoot yourself or trying to simultaneously abuse you and the English language. The reason I won’t do that is simple: I’m a fucking adult (looking at you -but certainly not all of you – fans of Portugal. The Man).

But enough peripheral bullshit. Let’s talk about Contra, can we? The songs are not drastically different from the songs on Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut – which is to say, the songs are good. There are one or two slower, more ballady numbers, and Auto-tune rears its ugly head on “California English”, much to my dismay. While I understand the aesthetic choice and there is compelling evidence that Ezra Koenig doesn’t need Auto-tune, I cannot state clearly enough that I loathe Auto-tune at all times under all circumstances. I think it sounds like shit. If Joe Strummer came back to life and told me that Auto-tune cures cancer, AIDS, poverty, and stupidity all at the same time, I would counter that it still sounds like shit and has no fucking business in my music. Ever. Also, Kanye West used Auto-tune on his entire last album and he doesn’t seem to be less stupid from where I sit. My gripe about the Auto-tune is smaller than it sounds, though – it (just barely) doesn’t ruin “California English” and certainly doesn’t ruin the rest of the album. Contra is similar to Vampire Weekend, but Contra is musically smarter. This is analogous to how I feel being newly 30 – it’s like being 20 again, but I’m smarter. I hope.

The only real question I have for Vampire Weekend is, can they pull this music off live? I might have to see them at Coachella to find out, but it looks like I’m headed back there this year, so that won’t be a problem. It doesn’t sound to me like Koenig sings anything particularly challenging for his vocal range, so what I’ll be looking for his how they pull off all of the nifty little instrumental flourishes. I predict heavy sequencing.

The bottom line is, if you liked the first Vampire Weekend record, Contra will probably also please you. If you didn’t like their debut, you’re probably not going to find much to change your mind here. If you don’t like Vampire Weekend because of where they’re from or what college they attended, or how “privileged”** you think they are, I think you’re cheating yourself out of some great pop music, but that’s your business.

*A bit of explanation for those of you who have, for some reason, not seen The End of the Century: Johnny’s wife was, at one time Joey Ramone’s girlfriend. Johnny Ramone wooed her away from Joey who, by way of passive aggressive vengeance, wrote “The KKK Took My Baby Away”, ostensibly about his guitarist Johnny. I honestly don’t know how the Ramones stayed together as long as they did, given how little they seemed to like each other.

**Anybody who gets to make music for a living is privileged, as is anyone who can go to the occasional (or frequent) concert. If you have time to troll the internet to defend the bands you love and dis the bands you hate, you are also privileged. To my knowledge, the dudes in Vampire Weekend are not the sons of cable TV moguls or oil barons or former pop stars. Even if the guys in Vampire Weekend were born rich, it makes no sense to hate them for it. They clearly used their privilege to hone what is, all else aside, remarkable musical talent. On the other hand, it does make sense to hate Paris Hilton because she’s famous for being born rich and has used her privilege to simultaneously attract new and exotic STDs, launch an abortive acting career, and launch an even more abortive (if possible) musical “career.”

Unknown and Beautiful (The Virtues of Broken-Ass Music)

There’s a kind of music that I love, that is sometimes rock and sometimes blues and sometimes both. I call it Broken-Ass Music. Tom Waits is probably the current reigning king of Broken-Ass Music, but it has its roots in stuff like “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” by Robert Johnson. Johnny Cash was also a master of Broken-Assness, and you can hear a more rock ‘n’ roll side of Broken-Ass Music on the first Hold Steady album and tracks like “Lord, I’m Discouraged” from 2008’s best album, Stay Positive. I heard a band called the Gaslight Anthem that I think deals in diet Broken-Ass Music, for kids who want to ache a little but don’t want to get any dirt on their new H&M shirts (I just made up that stereotype, so let’s not read too much into it. Also, I have purchased at least two shirts from H&M in my life. But I got them dirty).

And then there’s Lucero.

There is no better phrase I can think of to describe Lucero’s music: if any music is Broken-Ass Music, Lucero’s music is Broken-Ass Music. Their 2005 album, Nobody’s Darlings, was a nearly perfect slice of Broken-Assitude and last year, they reached new heights with 1372 Overton Park, an album that occurs at the collision point of southern rock, Memphis soul, and incredibly Broken-Ass Music. Lucero wanted to pay tribute to the Memphis music scene (a scene which just lost Jay Reatard, whose music I didn’t really enjoy, but the dude died at 29 and, having just turned 30, that shit freaks me right out) including the titular loft where, at one time or another, all of the band lived. Singer Ben Nichols was the last band member to occupy the space, which he vacated upon finding out it was slated for the wrecking ball. Such is the life of a Broken-Ass musician – if they can’t break your heart anymore, I guess they tear down your house.

1372 Overton Park is lyrically not that different from other Lucero albums – there’s drinking, gambling, women, and all of the above in random order (“Sixes and Sevens” features the line, “Drinking women/ chasing whiskey”, showing that even Nichols can’t keep it all straight sometimes). But the album is helped – nay, it is elevated – by the sumptuous horn arrangements of Memphis legend (and saxophone ninja) Jim Spake, who has played with a wide range of awesome people, including Levon Helm, Toots Hibbert, and Buddy Guy. The horns infuse every song with a soulful warmth that perfectly contrasts Ben Nichols’s shredded vocals.

About that voice: having a gravelly voice does not necessarily mean you are capable of performing Broken-Ass Music, but, if you do have a facility for BAM, a mangled voice doesn’t really hurt either. Ben Nichols can still carry a tune, but his voice has the sound of years on the road, drinking too much, smoking too much, and sleeping too little. But it fits Lucero’s songs like a velvet glove wrapped in barbed wire. He clearly pushes himself to the limit on album opener “Smoke”, but the rewards are well worth it. Even at it’s crooniest (“Hey Darlin, Do You Gamble?”), Nichols’s voice is still somewhere between Rolf the dog and Tom Waits. If you read that sentence and thought, “Awesome!”, you will probably love Lucero (or you probably already do). If you read that sentence and thought, “Who would want to hear that?,” you are probably someone’s girlfriend/wife/mother and possibly my fiancee, my stepmother, or pretty much every other woman I know. That’s not a sexist thing, it just happens to be true. I will bet you every dime I make from writing this blog that more women own albums by Coldplay, Norah Jones, and the Dave Matthews Band (admit it, folks – you know at least one girl who refers to Dave Matthews on a first-name basis, despite the fact that they’ve never met him). I’ll bet you the same amount that more guys own albums by the Clash, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, and Lucero (and if you know a guy who refers to Tom Waits as simply “Tom” despite having never met the man, you are legally allowed to kick him in the balls until his eyes change color).

Getting back to 1372 Overton Park, Jim Spake certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on musicianship here. Keyboardist Rick Steff (who co-arranged the horn parts with Spake and Marc Franklin, who is credited with trumpet, trombone and flugelhorn duties) contributes some badass organ work and more than his share of honky-tonk piano (see the afore-mentioned “Sixes and Sevens”) and Brian Venable supplies some literally gnarly guitar work. Overall, Lucero sounds tighter as a band than they’ve ever sounded (no mean feat, as they’ve always struck me as a somehow simultaneously shambolic and tightly wound group) and I can only hope Spake and Franklin come out on the road with them for some live hornage (also, I can hope they come to Los Angeles. Please?)

Earlier in 2009, I discussed Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight album as having the mood of a night on the town: starting with all the promise that brings and ending with drunken half-disaster. If that’s the case for Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight, Lucero’s 1372 Overton Park is the feeling of several nights on the road, in clubs with no dress code (look at the cover of the Franz Ferdinand album – those guys are going to much better clubs than you and I are), starting with waking up in a strange town sometime after noon, and ending after a raucous rock ‘n’ roll show and a night of drinking with a band that, though vastly underrated in this reporter’s opinion, is one of America’s finest.

Playing Catch-Up: Several Short Reviews

Okay, there are a lot of albums from 2009 that I haven’t reviewed yet and it’s already 2010. This doesn’t really bother me, but when I look at the stack of albums I have to review, there are some that I just don’t have that much to say about. Because I update with a frequency that can best be described as erratic, I like the posts to be of a length that might justify the time between them. And some albums, try as I might, don’t inspire much verbosity from me. This is not always because I dislike the album.

Anyway, I decided to put together a collection of shorter reviews of albums I’ve listened to, some of which I think you should listen to and some of which I think no one should listen to. In alphabetical order, even:

Alec Ounsworth, Mo Beauty. You might know Mr. Ounsworth as the uber-nasally vocalist for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and it’s a reasonable bet that, if his voice chased you away from that band, it will chase you away from his solo debut as well. You know, ’cause it’s still him singing. Anyway, Mo Beauty is actually kinda beautiful. I haven’t had as much time to listen to it as I would like, but every time I do, I enjoy it. Ounsworth is a little more folky on this album and by “folky” I mean “folk by way of David Byrne and Tom Waits”, which is hardly a bad thing. Ounsworth’s best work is still the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record, but Mo Beauty is good in its own right.

The Cribs, Ignore the Ignorant. I’ve already mentioned that “We Were Aborted” is a thunderously badass way to open an album. Ignore the Ignorant doesn’t get any better than its opener, but it drops down to a fairly consistent level of quality. Gary Jarman has a pretty pleasing voice, one minute crooning like Dave Gahan, the next yowling like Johnny Rotten. I didn’t like this album much when I first heard it (after “We Were Aborted”, which I loved instantly), but it’s actually done a lot of growing on me and I find more to like with each listen. Not a bad choice for people who miss the Libertines.

Devendra Banhart, What Will We Be. I’m probably gonna catch hell for this, but somewhere in the time between Cripple Crow and What Will We Be, I stopped being able to tell the difference between Devendra Banhart and Jack Johnson. I know Banhart looks like Charles Manson, and his music a bit more sophisticated than Johnson’s but I can’t help feeling like Banhart fills the same niche for indie kids that Johnson fills for frat kids. I’ve listened to What Will We Be about eight times now and I find myself drifting off about half way through every time. I’ve made an honest effort and, well, I just don’t give a fuck about this album. Moving on…

Franz Ferdinand, Blood. This is the “dub” version of Tonight. I don’t really care for dub music, but Blood is actually not entirely intolerable. If you think Tonight is not ravey enough, this might help you out. Incidentally, I listened to this album on headphones on a long subway ride and enjoyed the hell of it. That’s a pretty specific context in which to enjoy an album, but I stand by it.

Fruit Bats, The Ruminant Band. A dude from the Shins. I think his name is Eric Johnson. This record is like an indie version of the Supertramp songs I liked from the Magnolia soundtrack and the only Led Zeppelin album I like, Led Zeppelin III. I’m gonna pretend that tells you everything you need to know about The Ruminant Band.

Girls, Album. Pitchfork went all gooey over this album, but I don’t get it. It sounds like Wheatus. Fuck this album.

The Gossip, Music for Men. This album, on the other hand, is pretty rad. Beth Ditto is a big, fat, Katy Perry-hating dyke and I would adore her on those grounds alone, but the fact that she can straight up belt shit out is icing on a giant lesbian cake. This was my surprise pop album of 2009, like the first Santogold record (she’s Santigold now, I guess. I don’t care as long as she stays awesome) – something that sounded abhorrent to me on paper but was absolute candy for my ears. Ditto’s voice may be too strident for some, but it’s a real voice in an age of auto-tune and you gotta raise your glass to that.

Iggy Pop, Preliminaires. I just never knew what to say about an album that features Iggy Pop singin’ cabaret style, often in French. I dig this record for existing, but I hardly ever listen to it. Make of that what you will.

Karen O and the Kids, Where the Wild Things Are Soundtrack. Karen O and some kids having a lot of fun in a studio. I like the cut of this album’s jib and feel deep shame for having not seen the movie yet. The film is written by Dave Eggers, who is awesome. He co-wrote the screenplay for Away We Go and if you haven’t see that yet, stop what you’re doing and watch it right now.

Kings of Convenience, Declaration of Dependence. This is easy: the degree to which you are put off by the forced cuteness of this album title is the degree to which you’ll probably not have patience for the album itself. I’ll cop to liking the Kings of Convenience, though. They come up at the perfect times when my Songbird is on random, but listening to a whole album of theirs could induce a coma. They make Riceboy Sleeps sound like Black Fucking Flag.

Marilyn Manson, The High End of Low. I know I’m passing up easy jokes about how Manson worships David Bowie here, but the fact is Marilyn Manson made one great album called Holy Wood that was equal parts tuneful and wrathful and he’s never had that kind of fire since. While The High End of Low isn’t as cringe-inducingly emo as 2007’s utterly ill-advised Eat Me, Drink Me, it is still pretty awful. To illustrate my point: on Holy Wood, Manson pretty blatantly jacked the riff from Blur’s “Song 2″ for “The Fight Song,” but I forgave him for it because “The Fight Song” is still one of the best things to crank up when you’re pissed off. On The High End of Low, Manson gives us “We’re From America”, which astute (by which I mean “non-comatose”) readers will recognize as a shameless and wholly inferior ripoff of LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum.” Maybe getting the swine flu will give Manson a much-needed boost of inspiration, but I’m not holding my breath.

Taken by Trees, East of Eden. So this Swedish indie singer goes to Pakistan and… well, it’s not a joke. Victoria Bergsman, once of the Concretes (an occasionally good band), took a trip to Pakistan and recorded East of Eden, her second album as Taken by Trees. How good does this album have to be to surmount the pretension of a spiritual journey to Pakistan and an Animal Collective cover? Exactly as good as it is. This album is truly lovely, and not a little surprising for that fact.

Deck = cleared. I should have some thoughts for you on some late-2009 finds (including stuff from Soulsavers, Lucero, and the late Vic Chesnutt) and the new Vampire Weekend record very soon. And by “very soon” I mean “????????”….

Can a Band with “Brothers” in the Name Be Good?

The reason I ask is because, when I think of bands with “Brothers” in their names, I can’t think of any I like. I don’t like the Blood Brothers, I hate the Jonas Brothers (because I’m a grown-up), I don’t even like the Blues Brothers. I’ve never listened to the Palace Brothers, but they’re a Will Oldham project so I’ll assume I like them. That’s three to one against. But I’m not going to judge last year’s coffeehouse kings, the Avett Brothers, on name alone. Nor will I judge them based on how ready they are for a Grey’s Anatomy montage (or worse, some shitty CW teen soap opera. Wait, is that worse than Grey’s Anatomy? How are the two things different?) – and believe me, songs like “I and Love and You,” the title track to the Avetts’ latest record, are a little too ripe for the melodramatic plucking.

But I don’t blame the Avett Brothers for that because “I and Love and You” is a simple, lovely, refreshingly earnest tune. Also, to my knowledge, the Avett Brothers haven’t taken any annoyingly public pledges of abstinence. So they’ve got that going for them. But I and Love and You, produced by Rick Rubin (who is rumored to produce albums entirely with his beard these days), never again reaches the heights it achieves with its title track, which – helpfully or not – opens the album.

Which is not to say the Avett Brothers aren’t good. I and Love and You is Actually Pretty Lovely, which I kind of didn’t expect. I expected it to be Actually Pretty Irritating. But it managed to top Paste’s (I trust Paste more than I trust most magazines) Best Albums list for Twenty-Oh-Nine and it’s been generally well received everywhere, if you can get past the the fact that almost every review I’ve read of this record drops the “Their Old Stuff was Better” bomb on the poor, unsuspecting (or are they? The Rick Rubin production, the move to NYC, they suggest to me a conscious effort to reach the much-coveted Next Level. I’ve got no beef with bands trying to do that, but I can see why it might prompt critics to say that the old stuff was better if the old stuff wasn’t being made with a bigger market-share in mind) Avetts. I’ve read that old Avett Brothers stuff is a little more shambolic, which is something I think I and Love and You could use. It’s too clean, too neat, almost too nice. And when it tries to let its hair down (“Kick Drum Heart”), it gets a little goofy.

I and Love and You’s fatal flaw – and it’s significant – is that it seems like it’s often trying way too hard to be infused with meaning. Like when this line pops up in : “I want the pride my mother has/ and not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.” If you didn’t cringe reading that, you’re a better person than I because I find that line wholly unworthy of the Avett Brothers’ considerable musical capabilities. But I can tell, every time I hear that line, that they’re aching for depth with that one. In baseball parlance, we call that a swing and a miss. One reason “I and Love and You” works so well as a song is because it doesn’t contain any attempt at a Big Meaningful Statement. It has a solid emotional core with which the listener can identify and for which the listener can provide their own meaning. The experience of moving on and not being sure what’s next, of hoping that the new city (or job or girl or guy or whatever) will embrace us is an experience that 98% of us (maybe 100% of people who will find this album on the counter at Starbucks) have had and because “I and Love and You” isn’t striving for Monumental Importance, it becomes important by connecting with its audience. Incidentally, this is a skill the Band possessed in spades – I’ve read favorable comparisons between the Avett Brothers and the Band but I submit to you, my 20-30 readers (new average!), that the Avetts won’t really earn that comparison until they master the art of real emotional substance. “Real emotional substance” should not, under any circumstances, be mistaken for being emo. When I say “real emotional substance”, I mean that feeling all reasonable people get when they hear the Band sing “The Weight”: a feeling of simultaneous joy and heartache, and/or a nostalgia for something you have never experienced and might never experience (I’m paraphrasing Edgar Watson Howe here: “When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.”). “The Weight” doesn’t lay out a keen and effective new immigration policy, but it solves our problems on – dare I say it? Fuck yes, I do – a spiritual level and therefore has value (as does 99% of the rest of the Band’s output). The Avett Brothers are palpably close to understanding this and it causes I and Love and You to vacillate between sublimely rewarding and downright consternating. I find myself rooting for this album every time I listen to it, but nearly half the album has me shaking my head like a disapproving father. This band has undeniable talent – great harmonies, a sharp ear for melody, et cetera – but I and Love and You’s blemishes squander that talent a little too frequently for my comfort.

Ultimately, whether or not I and Love and You’s beauty is worth its beastly bits is in the ear of the beholder. You might hear it and decide it really was the best album of last year. If you do, I suggest you go back to the Band’s Music from Big Pink and give it a good listen. Then, stand in front of your mirror, look yourself square in the eye, and ask yourself, “Really? Really?”

My Favorite Albums of 2009 5-1

I know we’re a few days in already, but I have a couple New Year’s resolutions I’d like to share with you, both of which pertain to language you find in abundance on the internet. The words “douche” (or “douchebag” or “douchetard” or “douchefuck” or et cetera) and “hipster” are used far too much on the internet. This year, I will not use the D-word (or any of its various permutations) on this blog. At all. Ever. It’s done. Don’t worry about me coming up with alternatives, either. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding new ways to hurl invective. As for the word “hipster,” when it comes to music, everyone thinks they know what a hipster is and everyone thinks it’s not them. It’s become a completely meaningless – and therefore useless – word. I don’t use that word a lot myself, but it is hereby banished from Bollocks! in the hopes that I can inspire other people on the internet to stop using it.

So let’s get on with the continuation of my meaningless – and therefore useless (but entertaining, one hopes) – list of my 13 favorite albums of 2009. Here’s the score so far:

13. Lord Cut-Glass, Lord Cut-Glass

12. Mike Doughty, Sad Man, Happy Man.

11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz!

10. Brother Ali, Us

9. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career

8. The Minus 5, Killingsworth

7. The Future of the Left, Travels with Myself and Another

6. Andrew Bird, Noble Beast

And now here’s the top 5:

5. Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul. I know, this album wasn’t technically released this year, but it damn well should have been. It’s still streaming on NPR’s website and the Wikipedia suggests that you can fire up your favorite torrent software and obtain a copy of the album for yourself at an exceedingly reasonable price. Sad thing is, Dark Night of the Soul is well worth the price of admission that EMI is so unwilling to charge. Featuring guest appearances by the likes of Wayne Coyne, Frank Black, and Iggy Pop (to name but a few), the album is pure beauty from start to finish. Danger Mouse has asserted himself as the preeminent collaborator of the last few years (perhaps of the decade, if you’re into that sort of declaration) and he and Mark Linkous (who collaborated on some of Sparklehorse’s underrated Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain) create gorgeous sonic landscapes upon which their friends (including David Lynch!) freely frolic. The highlights are numerous, but “The Man Who Played God” (featuring Suzanne Vega), “Insane Lullaby” (featuring the Shins’ James Mercer, who is partnering with Danger Mouse to release an album as Broken Bells later this year – I’m sure EMI will find some way to fuck it up, if at all possible), and “Star Eyes (I Can Catch It)” are my top 3. If you like music at all, find a way to hear this album, legality be damned!

4. Metric, Fantasies. I think 2009 was a pretty good year for the kind of pop music that I like to listen to. My favorite pop record of the year – no contest – is Fantasies by Metric. Emily Haines has an amazing, versatile voice and Fantasies is infused with loud guitars and pounding drums. This is the album you put on at top volume while flying down a freeway in the summer. And this is one band that understands brevity – the album is but ten tracks, but every single one is a killer. A different one gets stuck in my head on just about a daily basis, although “Sick Muse” and “Front Row” are the most frequent visitors. “Sick Muse” deserves special credit because, as the song builds to the chorus (where Haines sings “I’ll write you/ harmony in C”), it gives  me the feeling of going down a particularly awesome water slide or cannonballing into cool water from some dizzying height. That feeling is exactly the feeling you should get from pop music and it’s why Metric currently tops the list of bands I really need to see live.

3. TIE: Modest Mouse, No One’s First and You’re Next and Lucero, 1372 Overton Park. I know this is supposed to be some sort of exercise in perfectly ranking the albums I loved from last year, but there’s no escaping the fact that Modest Mouse and Lucero both made albums that I think are precisely the third best things I heard all year. No One’s First and You’re Next is technically an EP of songs recorded during sessions for Good News for People Who Like Bad News and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, and the songs make it clear that they weren’t omitted for a lack of quality. “Satellite Skin” and “History Sticks to Your Feet” are instant classic Modest Mouse tunes, to say nothing of “Autumn Beds” and “King Rat.” Rather than being a miniature pile of odds ‘n’ sods, No One’s First is a potent reminder of the fact (indisputable!) that Isaac Brock is a brilliant lyricist and that Modest Mouse has become a formidable musical force for awesome.

I know I haven’t reviewed Lucero’s 1372 Overton Park, but that’s because I just got it in the last month and haven’t stopped listening to it long enough to write about it. Yeah, Ben Nichols’s voice is shredded (it has been said of Tom Waits that he sounds like he gargled whiskey and broken glass. In that spirit, you could say Ben Nichols was gargling whiskey and broken glass when he accidentally swallowed), but he still tells a great story, (mostly) carries a tune, and manages to wax anthemic as fuck on album opener “Smoke.” There’s a badass horn section on nearly every song, but rather than coming off as gimmicky, the horns perfectly augment Lucero’s busted-ass country rock and aid the band in making their best album since 2005’s Nobody’s Darlings, if it’s not their best album ever. You can have your Airborne Toxic Events and your Gaslight Anthems, but neither of those bands are fit to clear the (numerous) empty bottles from Ben Nichols’s table.

2. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic. If you watch the Grammys, it might be easy to forget that the word “artist” used to apply to a select group of people. On the Grammys, everyone’s an artist (for instance, Maroon 5 were named the best new artists of 2005. I’ll give you a minute if you need to go throw up), but in the really real world, the true musical artist is a dying breed. Or maybe not. Wayne Coyne, the Flamingest Lip, is a true musical artist, a guy who lives his art because it’s who he is. And in 2009, the Flaming Lips returned triumphantly with Embryonic, a spaced-out, bass-heavy, fuzzy hippie nightmare. Not nearly as experimental as Pitchfork would have you believe, Embryonic is nonetheless a powerful rock record featuring the Lips’ usual meditations on life, love, good, evil, ego, and death. And it all ends with the cosmic dance party “Watching the Planets,” the video for which features naked adults being born out of a giant vagina ball. No, really.

MY FAVORITE ALBUM OF THE YEAR:

1. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone. If we learned anything last year, I think we learned that Neko Case is a goddess. Three years after releasing the excellent Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Ms. Case topped herself with Middle Cyclone. Such beauty! Such violence: “Their broken necks will line the ditch until you stop it/ stop this madness” (from “This Tornado Loves You”); “The next time you say ‘forever’/ I will punch you in your face” (“The Next Time You Say Forever”); people are “filleted” on the stairs (“Polar Nettles”), and, of course, surprised when they’re eaten by man-eaters (“People Got A Lotta Nerve”). I could discuss at length, as other have, the obvious metaphors for romance as a force of nature (sometimes beautiful, sometimes deadly), but beyond all that academic shit, what the music of Middle Cyclone is – above all else – is almost profoundly gorgeous. Of the fourteen songs here, there are probably eight that give me chills every time I hear them. Listening to the album again (for the billionth time – if I ever get sick of this record, you can stick bamboo splinters soaked in lemon juice under my fingernails), the dreamlike “Prison Girls” is the one that really has a hold on me. For a while it was “Magpie to the Morning.” And so on. Neko Case is among the best singers in music right now, bar none, and Middle Cyclone is a stunning achievement. If you haven’t heard this album, there is a hole in your life that can, I suspect, be easily filled. Also, it bears repeating that Middle Cyclone’s cover is among the most badass things I’ve ever seen.