Short of a Fat Boys comeback, the announced Spice Girls reunion is the best thing that could happen to this planet. Life will be so much better with the musical stylings of Baby, Scary, that one who looked like she was a big fan of Melissa Etheridge, the one who is like 47 years old and of course, that one who really looks like she needs a sandwich. Talk about a tonic for our troubled times. (I would really like to think that I’m kidding here but I’m about five seconds away from going to YouTube and watching the video for Wannabe again.)
Anyway, so here we are in June 2007, just a short two and a half years away from the end of the Oughts and the start of the Roaring…Tens?...Teens? We really need a linguist to figure this out. No matter, the real point is that we are far enough into this decade to start discussing what are the best CDs of the decade. Here is my attempt, I’ll do the first five tonight and then the second five on Sunday, barring any major event in my life like, I don’t know, meeting the girl of my dreams over the weekend. Though if I met the girl of my dreams and then she discovered that I called her that in my blog twenty-four hours after meeting her she probably wouldn’t remain the girl of my dreams. That’s one of the occupational hazards of cataloguing your life. Here’s the list.
The Reinvention of Power Pop: This has been a tough decade for being a fan of pop rock. Not the hard edged stuff over the bubblegum songs, both of which have still been well represented though not in a way I would ever want to embrace. What I’m talking about is the music that has you bouncing around, dancing and singing along with songs with meanings that are pretty much impenetrable. And this was done no better than in The New Pornographer’s “Twin Cinema”. The Canadian supergroup, made up of people from bands you have never heard of, play tuneful songs filled with harmony and dark humor. Whether it is the pop sensibilities of Carl Newman or the drunken ramblings of Dan Bejar or the pure beauty that is Neko Case, they all combine into music that can either make you run for miles on a treadmill or jump around all night. Pure energy in a time of darkness and repetitiveness in the music industry.
Going Where No Sensible Man Would Dare: Concept albums are a dangerous thing. First of all, they conjure up thoughts of the late 70’s when enjoying music while high was slightly more acceptable than it is today. Plus, when you enter a genre that includes Styx’s “Kilroy Was Here” you have to wonder if you are making the right career choice. That’s what makes Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois” such a masterpiece. The album is composed entirely of songs about the people, places and history of the state of Illinois. There is a song about the city of Metropolis, a reflection on the World’s Fair and a rather chilling song about John Wayne Gacy. The songs vary from minimal arrangements (just guitar and piano) to full orchestral numbers featuring string and horn sections. It is truly unlike anything that I have ever heard before. It’s ambitious, daring and probably twenty minutes too long. However, you’ll never find two better songs back to back than “Chicago” and “Casmir Pulaski Day”, which is so beautiful and touching that it will leave you speechless. This album is what it means to be unique.
Simple Pleasures: When you start talking about the top ten discs of the decade the temptation of just focusing on those ambitious, artistic discs that sold less than nothing. It shows off your musical snobbery to be discussing the mastery of obscure Slovakian techno artists. Those albums that you listen to once, go “wow that was great”, and slide the disc back into your collection. I call them Schindler’s List discs, it might be a wonderful movie but you’re not going to watch it on a Friday night.
That’s why one spot has to go to the album that I have listened to for two years running just because it always makes me feel refreshed: Josh Rouse’s “Nashville”. There’s nothing complicated about the music, just some acoustic guitar with a little piano and pedal steel put in for good measure. Lyrically it focuses on relationships and failures but it always ends on the positive. It isn’t a “life sucks” album, it’s a “the past is only prologue” album. And there might not be a song around that I love more than “Carolina”.
The Defining Moment: When people look back at this decade, all attention will be focused on that Tuesday in September when under a perfectly clear sky the world changed. Everything that has happened since then has been colored by that moment. I still don’t feel that we have recovered or moved on from that moment. While people said that we were a cynical nation before then at least we were one that laughed about it. Now, we are more of a nation of grim determination on a glum reality. There isn’t much joy to be found.
Surprisingly, there really hasn’t been an album made since that has captured this. Sure, there were attempts (most notably Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” and Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now”) but they have all been heavy handed at best. In reality the two albums that captured what the country went through in those months were recorded months before anything happened. And they are easily two of the best discs of the decade: Gillian Welch’s “Time (The Revelator)” and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.
There is Jeff Tweedy singing “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs” and “I’d like to salute the ashes of American flags and all the falling leaves filling up shopping bags.” There is Gillian Welch, singing as if she was teleported from the Appalachian hills in the last century. Songs of loss and rebirth, about how time tells all and at times how all you want to do is sing rock and roll. If you want to pick the album of the decade it is one of these two. I just can’t figure out which one.
(Have a great weekend everybody.)
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