Saturday 7 March 2009
Sunday 30 December 2007
(My) Best Albums of 2007
Disclaimer: This list only represents music I've listened to, which is naturally quite a small subset of all the music actually released.
1. The National - Boxer
2. Battles - Mirrored
3. Maxïmo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures
4. LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
5. Editors - An End Has A Start
6. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. Paramore - Riot!
8. Digitalism - Idealism
9. Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
10. Efterklang - Parades
11. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
12. Justice - †
13. The Wombats - A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation
14. (Broken Social Scene Presents:) Kevin Drew - Spirit If ...
15. Foo Fighters - Echoes Silence Patience & Grace
A few things might be higher or lower if I'd listened to them more (in particular Foo Fighters might be higher). I was going to do a little write up for each but that got too tedious, so if you have any questions about a specific one, just ask me. The Twilight Sad, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the other LCD Soundsystem album are the runners up.
Bands whose albums I wish had either been better, had lived up to the hype or were good, but not as good as their last album include !!!, Deerhoof, The White Stripes, Arcade Fire, M.I.A., Feist, Simian Mobile Disco and Patrick Wolf.
People I'd meant to listen to but either never got around to, couldn't get my hands on their album or just plain forgot about include The Eagles, Gabriel Ananda, The Pax Cecilia, Noisettes and Videohippos. Any others I should have listened to?
1. The National - Boxer
2. Battles - Mirrored
3. Maxïmo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures
4. LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
5. Editors - An End Has A Start
6. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. Paramore - Riot!
8. Digitalism - Idealism
9. Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
10. Efterklang - Parades
11. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
12. Justice - †
13. The Wombats - A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation
14. (Broken Social Scene Presents:) Kevin Drew - Spirit If ...
15. Foo Fighters - Echoes Silence Patience & Grace
A few things might be higher or lower if I'd listened to them more (in particular Foo Fighters might be higher). I was going to do a little write up for each but that got too tedious, so if you have any questions about a specific one, just ask me. The Twilight Sad, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the other LCD Soundsystem album are the runners up.
Bands whose albums I wish had either been better, had lived up to the hype or were good, but not as good as their last album include !!!, Deerhoof, The White Stripes, Arcade Fire, M.I.A., Feist, Simian Mobile Disco and Patrick Wolf.
People I'd meant to listen to but either never got around to, couldn't get my hands on their album or just plain forgot about include The Eagles, Gabriel Ananda, The Pax Cecilia, Noisettes and Videohippos. Any others I should have listened to?
My best songs list to follow later.
Tuesday 18 December 2007
M.I.A.
So, Rolling Stone has revealed their list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007, with the M.I.A.'s Kala nabbing the top spot. I agree with most things on the list, on at least the idea that they belong on the list, but the ordering, especially of the top 10 or so, I don't agree with as much. Kala is my biggest gripe. It's a very good album, definitely belongs somewhere on the top 50, but number 1? It's nowhere near that good, because it simply isn't Arular.
Everything that made Arular, M.I.A.'s debut, the amazing, avant-garde album it was has been downplayed in Kala, in many places so as to completely fade away. Arular was full of great beats and M.I.A.'s fantastic lyrical prowess, and was only as produced as required to make it work. In comparison Kala has been overproduced to the point of almost losing itself, the breakthrough minimalism of Arular replaced with more sound, for no reason other than to make the album more saleable and serving only to drown out M.I.A.'s voice and message itself. It feels to me like she was so critically successful with Arular that she ended up comprising with herself on Kala in order to meet the high crossover expectations.
The first track on the album, Bamboo Banger, would be delightful, except that it has unneeded sound effects that would be better left implied. And on every single downbeat in the song we have a male voice going "Come on." Think of Timbaland's ubiquitous vocal snippets in many Aaliyah songs. But instead of a nice break during the bridge or an intro at the beginning that those songs have, they permeate the entirety of the track. The are simply on. Every. Single. Downbeat. It's reminiscent, and to be expected, of any number of late 90s Puff Daddy "remixes" of Mariah Carey songs, but from someone who came out with such a minimal and powerfully driven debut it completely escapes me why M.I.A. thought she needed to use this device to drive a track that was already driving itself. The rest of the album is equally full of other unnecessary production artifacts that give the tracks a wider appeal, but suck the soul out of what the songs could have been - less crowd pleasing but truer to the avant-garde sound M.I.A. is more than capable of.
Maybe I'm being a bit unfair, maybe the album is simply M.I.A. trying out different styles, not to be more commercial, but to expand herself and her music. If this is the case there are a few tracks were she more than succeeds. The disco riffs and beat of Jimmy are lovely and meld well with her style. But for every Jimmy there are many more tracks like $20 which feels like it's channelling Justice or Daft Punk, but the sound feels muddy and without any of those artist's finesse, and drowns out the great lyrics . Funnily enough, while I think that Bamboo Banger's late 90s, Diddy and Timbland-esque vocal stabs ruin the song, the final track on the album, Come Around, is one of the better tracks, and is produced by and features Timbaland himself. I think the lesson is to leave someone else's style to them, unless they'll come do it for you. Don't be afraid to try out new styles, it worked with Jimmy, but don't be afraid to let stuff hit the cutting room floor either.
I still like Kala. It is very listenable, and is very fun, but it's not evocative the way Arular was. It deserves to be a top album of the year, but not the top album. My friend Clio pointed out that the top spot on these lists is always going to be a committee decision, and in that respect the choice makes sense, it's the best album this year that a diverse range of critics are all going to like. She satisfies the hip-hop community with her style, satisfies the indie rock critics because of the cred earned by Arular, and she satisfies everyone else with the crossover of styles that I find water it down - they are what make it more easy to swallow for people not willing to go in for her particular brand of offbeat delivery.
It's good. I really do like it. It's just not the evolution from Arular it could have been.
Everything that made Arular, M.I.A.'s debut, the amazing, avant-garde album it was has been downplayed in Kala, in many places so as to completely fade away. Arular was full of great beats and M.I.A.'s fantastic lyrical prowess, and was only as produced as required to make it work. In comparison Kala has been overproduced to the point of almost losing itself, the breakthrough minimalism of Arular replaced with more sound, for no reason other than to make the album more saleable and serving only to drown out M.I.A.'s voice and message itself. It feels to me like she was so critically successful with Arular that she ended up comprising with herself on Kala in order to meet the high crossover expectations.
The first track on the album, Bamboo Banger, would be delightful, except that it has unneeded sound effects that would be better left implied. And on every single downbeat in the song we have a male voice going "Come on." Think of Timbaland's ubiquitous vocal snippets in many Aaliyah songs. But instead of a nice break during the bridge or an intro at the beginning that those songs have, they permeate the entirety of the track. The are simply on. Every. Single. Downbeat. It's reminiscent, and to be expected, of any number of late 90s Puff Daddy "remixes" of Mariah Carey songs, but from someone who came out with such a minimal and powerfully driven debut it completely escapes me why M.I.A. thought she needed to use this device to drive a track that was already driving itself. The rest of the album is equally full of other unnecessary production artifacts that give the tracks a wider appeal, but suck the soul out of what the songs could have been - less crowd pleasing but truer to the avant-garde sound M.I.A. is more than capable of.
Maybe I'm being a bit unfair, maybe the album is simply M.I.A. trying out different styles, not to be more commercial, but to expand herself and her music. If this is the case there are a few tracks were she more than succeeds. The disco riffs and beat of Jimmy are lovely and meld well with her style. But for every Jimmy there are many more tracks like $20 which feels like it's channelling Justice or Daft Punk, but the sound feels muddy and without any of those artist's finesse, and drowns out the great lyrics . Funnily enough, while I think that Bamboo Banger's late 90s, Diddy and Timbland-esque vocal stabs ruin the song, the final track on the album, Come Around, is one of the better tracks, and is produced by and features Timbaland himself. I think the lesson is to leave someone else's style to them, unless they'll come do it for you. Don't be afraid to try out new styles, it worked with Jimmy, but don't be afraid to let stuff hit the cutting room floor either.
I still like Kala. It is very listenable, and is very fun, but it's not evocative the way Arular was. It deserves to be a top album of the year, but not the top album. My friend Clio pointed out that the top spot on these lists is always going to be a committee decision, and in that respect the choice makes sense, it's the best album this year that a diverse range of critics are all going to like. She satisfies the hip-hop community with her style, satisfies the indie rock critics because of the cred earned by Arular, and she satisfies everyone else with the crossover of styles that I find water it down - they are what make it more easy to swallow for people not willing to go in for her particular brand of offbeat delivery.
It's good. I really do like it. It's just not the evolution from Arular it could have been.
Saturday 15 December 2007
Intro and Rant
So, I've decided to create a music blog. This is mostly because I've found myself putting musical thoughts on either my LiveJournal, where a lot of people either don't care, or even if they do just care they TL;DR it; or by talking at a few friends on IM. Not that they seem to mind, but I do feel like I'm just kinda talking to myself sometimes, through no fault of theirs, I just do tend to come out with a lot of text at once and be all, so, what do you think? I'd not really have a reaction to that if someone did it to me.
Thusly, I've created this blog to be a place for me to post reviews, rants, thoughts on music in general, my changing tastes, and mostly long boring posts that will appeal to few people other than me, if any. As it says in the info box at the top this is mostly for me to have a place to collect all my musical thoughts, but if people do end up reading it and commenting I hope I can get into good discussions about things, and get new recommendations for music to listen to.
So, I'll start out with a short rant. On the University of Sussex last.fm page someone posted a thread calling post-rock 'pretentious' because it purposefully lacks melody and meaningful lyrics. He cited Mogwai and Sigur Rós as examples of this, saying that they were pretentious by thinking they could not include melodies and still call what they do music. He attacked Sigur Rós specifically for ( )'s lack of lyrics (all the singing in it is actually gibberish) and lack of song titles. This seems to be a common criticism of post-rock.
I think it really kind of misses the point. The general stated point of post-rock (in a musical sense, not in any sort of meaning sense) is that it is music that uses rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes. Lacking a melody and meaningful lyrics are just manifestations of those non-rock purposes. It seems to me that the pretentiousness here is on the part of the critics, by demanding that post-rock have melody and lyrics they're saying it's not good unless it conforms to their narrow definition of what rock in general should be.
It looks like a larger problem of not being able to admit you simply don't like something, but having to find something objectively wrong with it, so that everyone decides it's bad. If you don't like that post-rock doesn't have obvious melodies, then simply don't listen to it. It's fine to simply not enjoy it. But don't claim that lacking melody makes it pretentious, because it only makes you the pretentious one.
For those who do like post-rock, especially post-rock with a post-popiness to it as well, check out Efterklang's newest album Parades. It is definitely one of the best albums of 2007.
Thusly, I've created this blog to be a place for me to post reviews, rants, thoughts on music in general, my changing tastes, and mostly long boring posts that will appeal to few people other than me, if any. As it says in the info box at the top this is mostly for me to have a place to collect all my musical thoughts, but if people do end up reading it and commenting I hope I can get into good discussions about things, and get new recommendations for music to listen to.
So, I'll start out with a short rant. On the University of Sussex last.fm page someone posted a thread calling post-rock 'pretentious' because it purposefully lacks melody and meaningful lyrics. He cited Mogwai and Sigur Rós as examples of this, saying that they were pretentious by thinking they could not include melodies and still call what they do music. He attacked Sigur Rós specifically for ( )'s lack of lyrics (all the singing in it is actually gibberish) and lack of song titles. This seems to be a common criticism of post-rock.
I think it really kind of misses the point. The general stated point of post-rock (in a musical sense, not in any sort of meaning sense) is that it is music that uses rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes. Lacking a melody and meaningful lyrics are just manifestations of those non-rock purposes. It seems to me that the pretentiousness here is on the part of the critics, by demanding that post-rock have melody and lyrics they're saying it's not good unless it conforms to their narrow definition of what rock in general should be.
It looks like a larger problem of not being able to admit you simply don't like something, but having to find something objectively wrong with it, so that everyone decides it's bad. If you don't like that post-rock doesn't have obvious melodies, then simply don't listen to it. It's fine to simply not enjoy it. But don't claim that lacking melody makes it pretentious, because it only makes you the pretentious one.
For those who do like post-rock, especially post-rock with a post-popiness to it as well, check out Efterklang's newest album Parades. It is definitely one of the best albums of 2007.
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