Navigate
Jason's Favorite
Without a rambling preamble, here are my picks for my favorite albums of 2005, in alphabetical order:
Art Brut - Bang, Bang, Rock & Roll
There was shoeless Eddie Argos, jumping into the crowd, not to fight but to RAWK OUT. Art Brut make my personal Top of the Pops because of their exuberance, their revolutionary sincerity that dared to stand chest to chest with the jaded and calculating. Art Brut dared to name names: Axl Rose, Morrissey...
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
It seems eons ago that Bloc Party released the most compelling album to come from the latest pack of nervy Brit Poppers. 2005 began with big expectations for Bloc Party. They were "the next Franz Ferdinand" after all. Now two weeks from 2006, their success can be summarized by asking, Who's the next Bloc Party?
Doveman - The Acrobat
Doveman's elegant midnight balladry compels listening in the depth of the night, preferably with a bottle of something strong. Singer Thomas Bartlett's weary voice never rises above a whisper, drums barely register and the guitars are a slow and unsteady rain on tin. The Acrobat is a work of fragile beauty.
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy makes me feel inadequate. His first concert? The Ramones. Mine? Probably some CCM act. His music knowledge? The names dropped in "Losing My Edge" likely represent a sliver of his http://www.jasminlive.mobi/ catalog. Me? I'm in 101 phase, but unawareness didn't keep me from loving the educating LCD Soundsystem.
The National - Alligator
The hubbub surrounding that infamous tour made it easy to forget The National released one of the best albums of 2005. I don't love Alligator as a rally cry against bandwagons or even that other band. I love it for Matt Berninger's deranged lyrics and the band's intriguing ability to create drama and atmosphere.
Sigur Ros - Tak
Sigur Rós know something about floating in space. On Takk, they've come down closer to earth. Takk is Sigur Rós scaled to human proportions. Remember the popular adjectives to describe them include otherworldly, spacey, and ethereal. They may not walk amongst us, but Takk is as direct and close as they've come.
Tom Vek - We Have Soun
Like LCD Soundsystem, Tom Vek's We Have Sound is defined by its low end. Vek's tunes are built around jazzy bass grooves, sludgy here, lithe there, and rollicking drums rhythms. Ostensibly it's an indie-rock record, but We Have Sound's digital touches and robotic production pushes it towards more daring territory.
The next eight: Animal Collective, The Clientele, Deaf Center, The Juan Maclean, Magnetophone, Marsen Jules, Menomena, Rogue Wave
Honorables: Amandine, Andrew Bird, Malcolm Middleton, Goldmund, Elbow, Excepter, Broadcast, Colleen, London Apartments, Brakes, John Cale, Goldspot, Sharon Jones, Avia Gardner, Jamie Lidell, Maritime, Ladytron, Common, Caribou, Condo, TK Webb, Depeche Mode, Sufjan Stevens, Steven Malkmus, Super Furry Animals, Jahcoozi, The Cars are the Stars, Low Frequency in Stereo
Disappointments (these aren't all bad albums, but ones that failed to live up to my expectations): Doves (a few good tunes, some filler too), White Stripes, Coldplay, Prefuse 73, Magic Numbers (I liked the EP much better), Broken Social Scene (half hearted effort) , 13 & God (one good song and a lot of filler)
Quick Takes: Walk the Line
I finally went to see Ray 2, err, Walk The Line this weekend. Why do these stories all seem to follow the Behind the Music Story arc? You know the one - start from nothing, find fame, fame brings problems and burn out, back to nothing, and finally the triumphant reclamation.
Like Ray, Walk the Line made the most of this predictable formula by focusing on strong acting performances and music, but I was left wanting more. I wanted to know, as best as any film can explain, what made Johnny Cash the man he was. The film provided a few points of motivation - a tragic death, an uncaring father - but neither seemed weighty enough to fully explain Cash's demons. The Chaturbaterooms.com movie was partly based Cash's autobiography; that's where I should probably start to get inside the man in black's head.
What will endure from this film for me are the musical sequences. Watching a strung-out Johnny Cash/Joaquin Phoenix, face bursting with junky sweat, careen through "I Got Stripes" or "Cocaine Blues" was riveting. Phoenix's transformation into Johnny Cash, the performer was as effective as Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles. Phoenix deserves extra praise for not just mimicking the vocals, but actually doing a commendable impression of Cash's sonorous voice. Before I saw the film, Reese Witherspoon struck me as a miscast, but she was impressive as June Carter Cash. Both actors deserve full credit for making Walk the Line a moving, enjoyable film.
Are You A Music Snob?
Gawker's Hipster quiz and my low score got me thinking. If I'm not a hipster, what am I? The answer is clear: I'm a music snob or at least I aspire to be one. Knowing I'm not smart enough to create my own music snob test, I did some Googling and found the mother lode of music quizzes. OK Cupid has 822 music tests, ranging from What Phase of Bono Are You (I'm family man Bono, how boring!) to the Obscure CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) test. It turns out all those years of working in a Christian Bookstore back in high school paid off as I'm officially Smug, which is close to being an expert. If anyone wants to share Phil Keaggy trivia or recall the glory days of The 77s let me know.
Right. One of the quizzes is a Music Snobbery test. Here are a few of the questions:
As everyone knows, The Rapture are nothing more than cheap post-punk copyists. But who do they sound most like?
Slint, Will Oldham, Papa M, Aerial M, Tortoise. What immediately springs to mind?
Which recent movie has a title very similar to the name of one of the brains behind the rather paranoid Hip-Hop of Non-Phixion?
You like L'etranger by Tuxedomoon (and if you don't have it, I will SEND it to you) because.
I'm not going to reveal my final score on this one. Either I don't want to lord my musical superiority over everyone or I'm afraid of being exposed as a complete dilettante. The world will never know. Ha
Traveling Ants
Low Frequency In Stereo - Traveling Ants Who Got Eaten By Mosku
The off kilter, Bjork-esque vocals on "Man Don't Walk" (MP3) initially sparked my interest in Norway's Low Frequency in Stereo. The track was one of the standouts on the SXSW 2005 showcase (the Austin shows LFiS played are the band's only U.S. appearances to date). "Man Don't Walk" is one of only three vocal tracks on Traveling Ants. Otherwise LFiS are rock instrumentalists with a passion for jazzy interludes, surf jams and droney Jesus and Mary Chain fuzz. LFiS try for many styles and moods on Traveling Ants and each attempt is a success.
Traveling Ants begins with the surging intensity of "Man Don't Walk". The fear in the voice is palpable. As if chased by monsters, guest vocalist Jomi Massage intones "Man don't walk / he runs and runs / He runs for shelter, he runs for life." From this dramatic moment, the www.jasminelive.online album moves suddenly to the jazzy "Hi Ace" and "Astro Kopp", an epic space ride on distorted guitars and a cavalcade of drums.
Vocals appear again on the album's zenith, "Slow Train Coming". Jomi Massage's sumptuous sighs again build drama, but where fear possessed "Man Don't Walk", serenity pervades "Slow Train Coming". This blissful ride continues through "Stargazer", the album's most beautiful and evocative moment, to the trippy conclusion of "Hazelwood".
Side Projects Going Steady: Samamidon
But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted is the first album from Samamidon, the work of multi-talented Sam Amidon, banjo player for Doveman and Stars Like Fleas. Much like Doveman, Samamidon trade in midnight tones with arrangements sparse and intimate.
"These songs are about a lot of different things...love, adventures on the ocean, beasts with horns, prison breaks, and other things," Sam writes on his site. "they're old songs that I found in different places. I changed them around some. I recorded the songs late at night in my house...I woke up one morning and my friend Thomas had surrounded the songs with sounds from his magic wand."
The man with the magic wand would be Thomas Bartlett, Doveman's front man. Besides abracadabra, Thomas contributed drums, accordion, guitars, and organs. Vocals, guitars and of course banjo are handled by Sam.
The Edge Doesn't Care About Africa
Somehow the contents of this post approximate the way my brain is currently functioning. In other words, a bunch of disconnected synapses misfiring and producing a random mix of links and songs.
Rest of U2 Perfectly Fine With Africans Starving: Hilarious and perhaps a little true? My favorite quote: "When Bono starts telling the audience how messed up the world can be and how we should work together to make things better, I usually just zone out," [Larry] Mullen said.
I can't keep track of the many versions and stories behind "Ca Plane Pour Moi". I expressed my admiration for Plastic Bertrand and this song yesterday and have since been given a proper education by a number of more knowledgeable souls. Let's see, there are versions of this song by the following: Thee Headcoatees, Sonic Youth, Normahl, Plasticke, Elton Motello, Chron Gen, and The Damned. Why not head over to Strange Reaction and download them all?