Inspired by the Stones mix review, and working from a list already assembled for the obnerds, I will post the list and then do a review for each. Expect a fair amount of meandering stories, bad description of sounds, and hyperbole in extremis.
The Strokes - Room on Fire
This band is either praised or loved. Hailed as the new saviors of New York Rock, and praised for their approved of influences of Television (whom they sound NOTHING LIKE) and The Velvet Underground (whom they sound even LESS like). Derided as nothing more than a bunch of trust fund punks who stole some Verlaine licks and the Lou Reed brand of disaffected cool.
Yet even their hardcore fans don't usually know what to make of this album. Most just overlook in favor of the amazing debut and the critically confounding third album.
Truthfully, all of their albums are almost equal. What sets this one apart is its tautness, its lack of want or need for approval, and even the fact that they seemingly didn't care about one upping the debut, or moving in different sonic directions, they just doubled down on what worked. Julian's could give a fuck less singing and lyrics, the guitar and bass work, and the 'mechanical' drums.
When this album comes on, it is always midnight at the Roadhouse after the 2003 Georgia v, Auburn game, and Yail Bloor and I are not even considering the adverse affects of another 3 day bender. "I want to be forgotten, and I don't want to be reminded. You say 'Please don't make this harder' No I won't yet." Through false memory or wrong emotion, this has become a piece of me.
Ike Reilly - Salesmen and Racists
With a title like this, how could I not love it? Equal parts John R. Cash, 90s hip hop obsessive and drunken Irish poet, this maniac from Chicago crafted a flat out masterpiece, from seemingly nowhere. Hip Hop Thighs #17 is a blast of originality, which is also greater than the sum of its influences. The opener, Last Time is, to my ears, a story about trying to screw a girl, but passing out right before she gives in. But she won't mind, cos I'm funny. Even though a psychopathic Canadian screenwriter introduced me to this record, I was aware of one of his songs from the Cracker album "Countrysides," which itself could have made this list. The versions are totally different, both great, and represent everything that is great about Ike -- joy, paranoia and the need to flee are all equally represented.
Drive-By Truckers - Decoration Day
I could write a Master's Thesis in Southern Culture on the song "Sinkhole" alone. This is the sound of a band freed from the strictures of knowing that they are great, but never QUITE managing to put that greatness on record. They managed to distill their influences, and lay it all on the line for their previous album, which somehow managed to escape this list, "Southern Rock Opera."
Sometimes realizing your potential can become a burden, but in this case it seemed to free them from the need to conceive, play and produce their masterpiece. Instead, they go back to a collection of story songs about events in the South and elsewhere, filtered through the jaundiced eyes of Patterson Hood and The Stroker Ace Mike Cooley, and the new addition of Jason Isbell. They have always had a darkness about their songs. These are people who's culture revels in being underdogs, Scots-Irish hillbillies under the foot of somebody. Be it The Yankees, The Carpetbaggers, revenuers, or even the bankers and barristers that keep the economy seperate and unequal.
On this one they hit their stride. The addition of Isbell adds an almost pop sensibility to some songs, and forced everyone to bring their A-Game. And they do. This is a Patterson heavy album, and some of his best work is at the forefront. This is also the type of album that you can listen to 1000 times and never quite GET what they mean on certain songs, and then you revisit it, and the songs reveal themselves in new and beautiful ways. "It's Decoration Day, and I got a mind to go spit on his grave. And I'll fight to the last Lawson's last living day."
Lucero -That Much Further West
Drive-By Truckers - Dirty South
Bobby Bare, Jr. -Young Criminals Starvation League
My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves
Dave Grohl's favorite band distills it's sound to Skynyrd freakout guitars and Exile on Main Street production from a Kentucky grain silo. The guitar work is what it's all about and when combined with Jim James' howl it has a beautiful effect you would not expect to find on an album definable by the six strings. Ethereal and and even winsome with a bit of menace in the background.
The Strokes - Is This It
One of the rare albums that was as good as advertised. Released the same day as Ryan Adams' Gold, the day after September 11, it was not the one with the love letter to New York, and it's highly doubtful that it's paean to the stupidity of New York's Finest will end up being Rudy Giuliani's intro music at the Republican National Convention.
So what is it? Droney, vocodery vocals, staccato guitar licks, and a new punk aesthetic that lays waste o everything in its path. The perfect soundtrack to stumbling around the Bowery, checking in to Chateau Marmont for the weekend, or in my case, 44 minutes to fill up a hole in cellphone coverage between Montgomery, AL and Atlanta, GA -- the sound of debauchery, yet also the sound of expectation of a future not yet set in stone. Sometimes you have to grab for the brass ring.
Libertines S/T
TI – King
The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
When I first heard The Hold Steady, the way the vocals and the music were mixed seemed to mesh in my head, making it feel like no matter how profound the songs about coming to grips with growing up a Jesus freak, shaking it all off in favor of a life of drunken revelry, then realizing the possibility of doing both, I'd never quite understand it.
Then one day, it was like someone pulled the cotton out of my ears, and I was able to hear everything -- the louder than bombs guitar licks, the songs about girls, and cars, and snow and poets and everything that makes youth worthwhile...and wasted on the young.
I think in the near future, we may come to view this as the final album in Craig Finn's "American Youth Trilogy," his Big Sur if you will, to borrow an analogy to the Kerouac penned title. Sure, he'll always be literary and hopeful, drunk and a nouvelle Springsteen, but I hold out hope he can build on this promise and not keep hammering the lapsed Catholic leitmotif.
But if they don't, who cares? Even if I think they can fly, if they can't they'll just die.
Young Jeezy - Thug Motivation
As anyone who knows me can attest, I like my rap GHETTO. I don't want to hear any black righteousness, backpacker bullshit, or r&b crooned choruses. I want bitches, blunts, big screen TVs, and songs about Slangin Yay. Well, jeezy brings all that, and a verbal panache and Southern Flair for all things flashy, blingy and cracky.
With horns galore and mean "Yeeeeeaaaahhh" on nearly every song, his repeat-a-line style may not make him the "Next KRS" but that's not what he wants. All Jeezy needs is some fresh shit, and a corner to ball.
Loretta Lynn -Van Lear Rose
Jay-Z The Black Album
Deadstring Brothers - Starving Winter Report
Mick Jagger fronts The Band circa Music from Big Pink, if the drug of choice were coke instead of pot and Big H. Either you forgive them their trespasses and enjoy good rock and roll, or you get caught up in them sounding too much like their influences; this country rock band from Detroit brings the goods.
Willie Nile - Streets of New York
Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Armed Love
Listening to this punk-pop melange of hammonds, handclaps, horns, and the sloughing off of the yoke of oppression by the proletariat will always bring me a perverse joy. Nothing like riding around in your truck that is more expensive than half of America's first house with the windows down, Bose stereo set to "deafen" exclaiming that "We'll all sleep tonite under a Communist Moon!"
Whether it's socialism is schtick, or a heartfelt desire for workers of the world to unite under the banner of sound from five slightly goofy Swedes with a Who hard-on, this album is one of the could have beens of this decade, lost amid the label shuffling inherent in a corrupt money driven industry that drives our capitalist economy.
Jesse Malin – Fine Art of Self Destrction
Josh Rouse – Nashville
Old 97s Satellite Rides
The Sleepy Jackson – S/T
Solomon Burke – Don’t Give up on Me
The Thrills – So Much for the City
Ryan Adams - Rock N Roll
Kathleen Edwards - Failer
The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
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