Best Music of 2010 - #2 and #3

2.  JONSI - GO

Former Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi's first solo record--Go--is everything great about Sigur Ros, but faster and more propulsive.  What amazes me most about this record is not just its inventiveness and its style--although those two elements are impressive--but its consistency.  Jonsi makes songs that ought to be impossible--orchestral-fused dance-mix folk pieces--and not only pulls them off but makes them beautiful.  His move to broken English, about which I was skeptical, actually clarifies the entire "Hopelandic" mess.  It's not "invented" the way a code might be, it's spontaneous and cathartic.  I know I rate this album more highly than most people, but I think the reason more people aren't blown away by what Jonsi is doing is because he makes it seem, by album's end, so commonplace.  If you've got this record, listen to it again and tell me why a song like "Tornado" is any less aurally spectacular than those first two tracks--go ahead; the comments section is open, and I'd love to hear what you think.  For me, this record never lets up.

Talking about Jonsi reminds me of a drive I took with my brother, Chris, probably in 2003.  We were on our way to play a show, and for the entire 2 hour drive, we listened only to Sigur Ros.  After an hour or so, Chris looked at me said, "It's impossible not to be happy when you're listening to this."  I think Jonsi's Go is Chris's kind of a record--a record that you can't help but be in love with and in love to.


3.  KANYE WEST - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

We'll get to it a bit later, but to me, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an (even) better version of what Sufjan Stevens is up to with The Age of Adz: it's paranoia--of self, of fame, of craft--ripped open and writ large.  Kanye isn't being "just" an egomaniac here, he is being all-out psychotic.  In tracks like "Power" and "Monster," he vacillates by the verse between being a cocksure "A"rtist and being pathetically insecure, between seeming untouchable and suicidal: it is a strange thing to behold.  Like Sufjan, Kanye's album seems to be the product of not simply a desire for reinvention, but a desire for reinvention fueled by 21st century expectations: Kanye can't get through a song (much less an album) with a singular vision of himself in mind, and his lyrics reflect this tension.  In "Power," West recognizes but then counters the industry's perceived "blackballing" of his career after his interruption of the 2009 Grammys with his own "black balls," insisting that he "know[s] damn well [we're] feeling this shit"--he's right, of course: the song is an unmistakable hit.  However, the more insightful moments come on the back half of the album, highlighted, at least thematically, by his inclusion of indie folk artist Bon Iver on two separate tracks.  It's hard to read Bon Iver's inclusion in this collection coherently: is this crossover moneygrubbing?  A critical kowtow?  Or did West just dig Iver's stuff and then bring him on board?  That last option seems most likely, but it just leads to another question: what in the hell was Kanye freaking West doing listening to Justin Vernon's "Blood Bank EP" in the first place?  Was it because he was interested, or because it made sense for him to be interested?  I think this question is answered in some ways by the retreats into the past in songs like "Monster": God only knows what Kanye means with that "sarcophagus" lyric, but its pretext--that Kanye isn't just "like" a pharaoh, he is one--feels less like a search for a power metaphor and more like an attempt to ground the instability of his own paranoia and fame in what he imagines as a more stable and survivable past.  After all, pharaohs weren't crazy, they were exploitative, greedy, prideful, warmongering assholes.  They were monsters.  For Kanye, even being a monster feels a bit too cliche...which means even that role is relegated to a (beautiful?  twisted?) fantasy.

My read is that the tension that makes this album great is the same tension that makes Kanye so simultaneously typical and enigmatic: he can't seem to go a moment without seeing his musical and personal selves through the eyes of others, and as this feedback loop closes--sample, song, praise, criticism, inspection, obsession, fear, paranoia, rebellion, exploration, sample again--Kanye seems to be increasingly driven to spell out the names others give to him.  Of course, what makes this record great is that it does all of this so well and so unabashedly: for all their postmodern musings, these tracks are almost-all killers, and the guests Kanye rings along--Kid CuDi, Niki Minaj, Jay-Z, etc.--don't just take verses and fill them, they inhabit spaces in these songs that are custom tailored to who they are as both musicians and individuals.

So sure, blame it on Twitter, blame it on UsWeekly, blame it on whatever you want, but this record gets two things right, and sets them in stone: the loudest voices in your head are almost never your own, and you can't sell out something that was never entirely yours in the first place.

Best Music of 2010

Alright folks, the first entry in the list nobody asked for: my picks for the best 25 records* released in 2010, unveiled 1 (or 2...or 5) at a time.  Tonight, I'm going to start with my #1 of 2010: Titus Andronicus's The Monitor.  But before I get started, a quick note on how this list was compiled: although I listen to as much music each year as I can, I am by no means a music expert.  When it comes to evaluating art, I'm much more comfortable talking about movies than I am records.  But, like I said, I listen to a lot of music each year--somewhere between 70 and 100 albums--and while I'm doing that, I oftentimes stumble on records that worth sharing.  This list, in part, is the end result of that effort: this is me, trying to share stuff I like with you.

I hope you find something to spin and dig it.

[re-loops pony tail; slips bare feet out of home-made sandals]


1. (BEST RECORD OF THE  YEAR)

TITUS ANDRONICUS -- THE MONITOR
Okay, I'm not going to write-up every one of these entries, but this record deserves the extra praise: The Monitor is a brilliant piece of music.  The album's conceit embodies most everything I like about it: it purports to be a "punk record about the American Civil War," and in order to do this, Titus Andronicus thematically arrange songs to mirror the progression of the conflict, use multiple re-recordings of period speeches by Lincoln and others to ground lyrical abstractions in specific historical moments, and, of course, cribbing that sweet cover photo of the deck gun of the U.S.S. Monitor, one of the first American ironclads (suck it, Merrimack!).  But a close listen to The Monitor reveals its not, exactly, historical audio-fiction: it's a punk record, with all the requisite hook-ups, break-ups, and angsty teenage ravings you might expect to go along with such a record.  Which, of course, is what makes this thing so downright awesome: Titus Andronicus set you up for the concept record with such gusto that its function as a metaphor seems so hyperbolic that it never can quite settle into cliche--obviously, a break-up isn't as dramatic as the single most devastating conflict in American history...but to a 16-year old boy, it is.  It's obviously worth noting that the music itself is spectacular--vocals are just the right kind of punk-raw; guitars are overdriven and sloppy-great; songs are propulsive, but organized in movements rather than in chopped-up 2:00 minute screams; and even the lyrics are wonderful (see above)--it's a fantastic listen, and standout tracks like "Richard II," "A More Perfect Union," and "Titus Andronicus Forever" get the energy and the sound of 2010 alt/folk/bar/punk as right as...well, I guess as right as that kind of mix-up can get.

So, why The Monitor?  I'm not sure...but I like that the historical Monitor is best known for two pretty darn punky things: first, it was armored to the teeth.  Second?  It sank.

Movie Night: Best In Show

BEST IN SHOW (2000)
D: Christopher Guest

First of all, I've seen Christopher Guest's Best In Show at least a dozen times: I've shown it to friends (new and old), I've watched it with my wife, I've watched it with my parents, I've caught half of it on TNT at 2 in the morning, I've put it on while grading papers or making lesson plans or listening to Braves games or...well, almost anything; I know the jokes, I know the characters, and I know the scenes like the back of my left hand (or, maybe, my left foot).  But there's a funny thing about Best In Show, and it has little-to-nothing to do with Fred Willard: despite all the times I've seen it, I'm still not sure what, exactly, I think it's up to.

Now, that needs a little explaining.  After all, what are any movies "up to"?  I suppose what I mean when I say that is that I believe most movies are made with an argument in mind.  Sometimes, that argument is simple: The Back-Up Plan wants to convince thirty-somethings love is still out there for them (or, at least, it wants to convince them to spend $12 to be told love is still out there for them); Saw VI wants to get you off on grossing you out.  Heck, even Yogi Bear wants to convince you of something (Bears are poor aeronauts?  Points to the best answer to this question in the comments section).  But some other movies--movies I, subjectively, think of as "better" movies--try to do a bit more: Inception wants us to question what exactly happens when we sit down to "share a dream" in a movie theater; Inglourious Basterds wants to convince us that art makes its own history (and that history leaves a mark); Toy Story 3, of all things, wants desperately to convince us that its the fragility of our lives that makes our relationships meaningful.  In short, movies like these challenge us to think about things earnestly and carefully, and--these movies hope--that will help them move beyond the spectacle (where we are passive) and to a point of true communication (where we are active participants in the exchange of ideas).

But that's where I don't quite get Best In Show.  Best In Show has all the earmarks of a movie with an agenda: it's sharp, it's certainly targeted at a particular group of oddball people, and it's edited with an edge to it--a willingness to let discomfort sit on the faces of its characters (and, at least in Beatrice's case, its dogs) in a way that "begs" us to question what, exactly, we're really laughing at.  And that's what bugs me.  For all the laughs I get at the expense of these yuppies, hicks, schlubs, and golddiggers, I'm not really sure what's being taken apart.  Is the point just that dog show people are freaks?  Who didn't know that already?  Did someone think the dog show world had a quiet dignity we were all simply missing?  Or is the target the broad gathering of regional and cultural stereotypes who bring their dogs to this zoo?  Are we supposed to be laughing at the mumbly North Carolina ventriloquist because all North Carolinians are equally driven towards a kind of lackadaisical curiosity?  Is the short-fused anger and aggression underneath the surface of that yuppie couple--and maybe their desire to perpetually deflect blame or responsibility--an indictment of Starbucks (and L.L. Bean) elitists?  If this is true, what does that make the gay couple here?  Or Cookie Googleman?  I don't know the answer, but the line of logic is strange to me: are these characters just grotesques?

Alright, I know I ran off on a tangent there, but let me bring it back to something simple: it seems to me Best In Show never cares much for these people.  That doesn't mean it isn't funny--I laugh at that damn Busy Bee every single time--but it does give me an answer to why I prefer This Is Spinal Tap and even Guest's follow-up, A Mighty Wind: their characters aren't just losers, they're lovable, too.

One last thought to close out this stream-of-conscious return to the blogosphere:

Last night, while watching Best In Show I noticed something I hadn't noticed before: it is an exclusively white movie.  The closest the movie comes to a non-Anglo character--Ed Begley Jr's hotel manager, who literally looks like a Scandinavian ghost--has his ethnicity reassigned by the script as "Irish-German" ("like Robert Duvall in The Godfather!" notes John Michael Higgins' loud and gay Scott Donlan).  This makes me wonder if one of the questions this movie is asking (or, I suppose, one of the arguments is making) is whether or not these kinds of freak shows--the dog shows, the beauty pageants, the sci-fi conventions, the PBA--are endemic, somehow, to whiteness; that they are a truly peculiar development, stemming less from a real passion for dogs (for a movie about doglovers, it's amazing how little it seems these people love their dogs!) and more from a peculiar cultural licensing of oddity and fancy.  That's an incredibly obnoxious sentence, so let's try again:  Maybe what Best In Show wants us to think about is not only why people are interested in this kind of goofiness, but also why our culture permits and encourages these kinds of curiosities over other kinds.

Hmm.  I'm not sure what I think about that.  But I do know this: that is the only time I've ever done it on a rollercoaster.