This is the final installment of the 2006 Shmoo Poll Results. Revel in its glory. Thanks to all of the blurb writers who helped make this happen and to a certain someone for stepping in at the last minute.
3. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
F**k You Dave:
Let's get it out of the way...yes, I'd do 'er
These days, a lot of artists in the "indie" canon use the "vocals as an instrument" excuse to get around the fact that either their singer can't really sing, or the lyrics just aren't that good when removed from the music. Instead, Neko releases an album where all the lyrics and vocal arrangements are the absolute anchor of the songs, and they would not work without Neko singing them.
That being said, where is the shot of her with the pool table?
contradiction:
So let's talk about Neko Case. Here's what I know about her: She's a woman. She's got reddish hair. She has posed for provocative pictures. She's a member of one of the best pop bands in the world, The New Pornographers. She writes great songs. She is probably in the top 3% of most beautiful voices in the world. Everything about her solo records equals just about everything that I love. And yet, I never really care about Neko Case. I can't tell you why, it's just been this way for years now. Listen, I have all of her albums, and I realize they sound good when I listen to them, I am just never moved to listen to them. It's country music for the most part. I love country music for the most part. I should swoon over this woman and her music. Instead I am too wrapped up in the next big songwriter. I know Neko's good, so who cares? She gets the back burner, because hey, indie darling Amy Milan put out the same style record that was half as good, yet got four times the amount of listens, because it's new? I don't know. Maybe I've just filing Neko in with all these other females making excellent country-ish music. I mean 2006 had Roseanne Cash, Allison Moorer, Mindy Smith, Dixie Chicks, Wailin' Jennys, blah blah blah. Neko is almost heads and toes about all of these women in terms of actual ability, and yet I listen to the others infinitely more. One day I may appreciate her. As of now? Hey, it's good. Cool. I just don't connect, I don't care. I'll keep paying attention and everything, but all 2006 was to me was another year that Neko didn't crack my list. I'd diagram the album, but I'm indifferent as this point. Don't try to sell this record to me, I don't need it. Time will come, and I will love her. Just not right now.
2. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Ish:
"Return to Cookie Mountain" was my unfortunately titled introduction to TV on the Radio, so I can offer to you this naïve reaction to it: To date, their debut and early singles/EPs still seem to me disjunct and immature, where "Cookie Mountain" - for my money, the best record Obner heard this year (while I placed it 7th) - is a focused and complete, nearly homogenous album. We recognize TV on the Radio for a sound that is barely their own, by their distinctive vocal delivery, production, melody, and harmonization, which is tied really well into the whole by fuzzy pink production. Occasionally memorable lyrics follow impeccable tunes threaded throughout well-spaced instrumentation, and a wisp of unifying noise. My least favourite songs are the ones that seem to be residual elision from "Desperate Youth ... ": "Playhouses" and "Wolf Like Me"; and even then, I can't fault these two songs for being so well placed. And many other songs throughout can easily be called the most striking I've heard this year. This is a great pop album that balances the carefree with the careful, that soars grounded, and casts away sophomoric doubts without a second thought.
Sleepytime Tea:
Despite the massive leak and the horrendous name,
Return to Cookie Mountain remains one of the top albums of 2007, and for good reason. This was an important crossroads for the band, having grown in leaps and bounds with each release, signing to a major label, and introducing a couple new members. This album could just have easily been a flying sack of dog shit instead of the stellar assemblage of songs that make up this album. There was any number of ways that this album could have gone wrong; overproduction, failure to grow from the last album, too many cooks, label interference...killer bees.
But no. The new members don’t crowd the already existing sound of the band. David Sitek’s production has grown more complex without sacrificing the accessibility that made them so interesting to begin with. Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone’s vocals still play like a harmony group that’s accompanying a sheet metal quartet. What’s even more amazing is that they make the guest appearances from people like Katrina Ford, Kazu Makino, and David freakin Bowie seem noticeable, but not outside of the framework laid down by the band. The songs go all over the place and yet not once do they skirt mediocrity. In fact thinking about it, I think the biggest flaw I find in the album is the retarded tracklisting on the American release (blank tracks, the remix), but that’s more a result of the leak than anything else.
In the end, the album presented is cohesive and intriguing. It takes several turns and folds over on itself in places, making perhaps the first rock album with potential wormholes. It might as well undergo study from physics, since it’s seems to have drawn everyone else’s attention.
Radcliffe:
So this is what it's come to? We've now reached the point where something is regarded as brilliant simply for not being stupid? Well, congrats to us all. We get what we deserve, which in this case is an allegedly avant garde work that takes absolutely no chances. And for the record, the appearance of David Bowie is neither a signifier of quality nor cool - the dude is what, 90 years old, and married to the world's first tranny supermodel? Shit, even when Bowie was young he was clueless, only tapping into anything cutting edge when he made those expensive transatlantic telephone calls to Lou and Iggy that his schoolmate Peter Frampton couldn't afford. These days, Bowie gets his cool cues from some oily 26 year old publicist with screenplay ambitions, and I can just imagine the slickhaired dick pitching his case: "honest, Dave, this shit is what all the kids will be playing." And Bowie swallows it. And why not? The baby exec speaks the truth. Sort of. Because even though the kids play
Return To Cookie Mountain, I highly doubt they spend much time actually listening to it. This is music to throw on the iPod when you want to impress yourself with your own cleverness. "Oh, listen to that, "A Method" is fake doo wop, which proves I know doo wop... and "I Was A Lover" cribs some shitty Nawlins funeral march, which proves I'm well-versed in funeral marches, beeyotch... and, damn, "Let The Devil In" feigns the sound of plate-lipped Bantu tribesmen annoying the womenfolk, which really harkens back to my heritage as part of society's downtrodden minorities." And on and on it goes. The most amazing facet of this album is not the thick soundscapes, the layers of noise, or the monotonous chain gang sense of rhythm, it's how unrelentingly mediocre it is, without a single melody managing to distinguish itself from any other and instead blending into an undifferentiated sonic soup. Which is good, I guess, because otherwise there might be something to dislike, if you were so inclined. So instead of a challenging work, we're just left with a static, coldly academic exercise in whitewashing what might have been an interesting venture. Kinda ironic TV On The Radio would end up releasing the whitest album of the year, isn't it?
1. Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
El Guapo:
When I listen to Belle and Sebastian I want to fondly remember having a dead crayfish shoved in my locker in junior high. I want to recall what it was like to pine away for some girl who just wanted to be my friend. I want visions of rainy November days. I want heartwrenching piano and acoustic guitar intros and tasteful horn interludes. I don't want guitar cliches, especially in the form of an anemic recylced Strokes hook('For The Price of a Cup Of Tea") I definitely do not want anything resembling a bad Stevie Wonder song or blues or funk, please, nothing even remotely funky in a bad way. I don't want sunshine, I don't want to be happy. I want to have to pay attention. I don't want listenable, pleasurable well produced pop songs in the background, If I did I'd like the "Life Pusuit" alot more than I do.
This guy has crack:
So I was driving home from picking up my frozen yogurt, feeling a tad fey and vaguely disappointed that my caramel macchiato flavoured frogurt tastes more like a sugar coated homeless man's butt, and one of the new Belle and Sebastian songs came on the radio (WRIR 97.3). As the wah-wah guitar ripped into what seemed like an unlikely Isley brothers riff for some Scot ponces to indulge in, I started to notice nuances in their songs-layers of organ, subtle country phrasings, obvious nods to 60s soul- that I'd never picked up upon, having been too blinded by their collective RAPIER wit and pop ditties on previous albums. I had to roll down the driver side window (by hand) of my '92 Volvo enough that I could pump my fist along to the beat. With my right hand I blasted out a furious air-drum solo riding mostly on the high-hat. As the chorus trivialized its way through the middle of the track, something about "badabadabadabadadoobiedoobiedoofuck them too ", I'm driving with my knees at 4 and 7 o'clock and really getting into a guitar solo. It wasn't until the frogurt started dribbling down my fist did I realize that I'd been using the cone as a paintbrush to make my wife's face, still sitting in the passenger seat, look like Pigpen from a live-action remake of "Peanuts". As we pulled to the stoplight I was still laughing and threw the remains at the homeless man at the corner whose sign encouraged me to "God Bless" something (it was raining and I couldn't quite make it out).
sensei:
I figure 75% of the music I listen to would be labelled "indie rock" (per Pitchfork's guidelines and definitions). However some of its artsy-fartsy pretentiousness can be such a turn off (re: Belle & Sebastian). I used to enjoy Belle & Sebastian not for the sake of being part of the "indie rock" elite, but for left-of-center, original, non-conforming music. However, I never thought I'd see the day where I'd grow tired of Belle & Sebastian as a whole. Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older, but far too much of
The Life Pursuit is too annoying and obnoxious for my, um, 'liberal' tastes in music. Belle & Sebastian are stereotypical liberals. Profane and inflammatory, yet unable to engage me in the arena of ideas. But my observation about political correctness in Belle & Sebastian hit a little close to the mark, wouldn't you say? Of course, Belle & Sebastian aren't from the racist/sexist/homophobic South? Right? Do your research on HISTORY, please.
There is much more to life than Belle & Sebastian. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble. I know I'll get vitriolic responses considering you all are still bitter over my humble viewpoints. But, the new Belle & Sebastian album is a letdown. The "hooks" are forced. There is too much filler. I wouldn't know a damn thing about Bruce Springsteen's music, but I'm sure it is an exception. There isn't the 'hip factor' in classical music the way it is in Belle & Sebastian. That's like comparing apples to Belle & Sebastian. Nice try, though. The best way to describe the 00's is the sound of whining by a group of under-achieving, self-loathing, paranoid, elitist, smug, lazy, malcontents under the guise of "intellectual" and pompous art rock (re: Belle & Sebastian).
