| Listen for Shane (home) past editions here edition 3 January 2003 What good people oughtta hear: Year-end, best-of lists are so much fun to read: movies, baseball catches, near-celebrity overdoses, etc. provide needed escape from drunken/family sentiment in the holiday season. Time for my considerable weigh-in on the genre – $TQ TOP 7 Albums of 2002!! There were many to choose from, and because my list and collection is fed by my purchasing obsession and I buy what I think I will like, it is wholly subjective (as it should be). Record reviewers are geeks who live to receive free cds and promo fridge magnets (‘hey, they’re from Iceland …. and I put it on the FREEZER, get it!?’). You’ll notice that there are no blip-rock, pussies-with-computers-and-masks-on records here or atmospheric, droney, soundscape bullshit. I hate that boring shit. Smoke dope and be a genius while I swing my nuts and sing for life. in no particular order (its rock and roll!) - J Mascis + the Fog – Free So Free This album is all about the freedom – 3 songs with ‘free’ in the title. Apparently J skydives now and has been inspired. The songs are great and diverse, a difficult proposition considering he plays almost every sound on the album himself. The best song is saved for last ‘Outside’ is both sonic and yet somehow limping, the way of the great Dinosaur, (remember?). Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot I don’t understand how this album gets you out of a contract. I also don’t understand how critics compare it to Radiohead’s boring-assed Kid A. The songs are so catchy and the instrumentation is different but not without warmth, not arty at all. ‘War on War’ is a heartstringer and ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’ is the best Pavement song since ‘Stereo’ and who cares what the singer is really saying, Tweedy has a great voice and could sing the phone book and have me at Aaron. Bright Eyes – Lifted… Wow. 24 years-old, good-looking, best lyrics since Dylan … how could you be so fucking depressed? Conor sells it too. He means it. ‘Nothing Gets Crossed Out’ is especially beautiful. The first Bright Eyes album, Letting Off the Happiness grabbed me and reminded me how comforting it can be to be down. This album would be the perfect soundtrack to drive off that little highway en route to the cottage and avoid gray hair altogether Spoon – Kill the Moonlight These guys are snappy like no other. Smart without being heady, singer Britt Daniels tongue-lashes poor syllables like Elvis Costello when he was good and pissed off. This is clapping your hands cause you’re sexy and you know it. ‘The Way We Get By’ organs and thumps, ‘Jonathan Fisk’ bubbles over and burns. Just a great record that makes you cooler. Guided by Voices – Universal Truths and Cycles ‘Wire Greyhounds’, the 35-second opener of GBV’s 13th proper and maybe 58th album overall, is their best album opener since Bee Thousand’s ‘Hardcore UFOs’. This is the tightest, most rocking version of the band and the muscle shows through the shirt. They are the kings of indie rock and they re-assert themselves on UTOC: ‘Back to the Lake’ was a live show sing-along before it was even recorded, ‘Pretty Bombs’ blows up Brit-pop once and for all and ‘Everywhere With Helicopter’ rocks balls-out. If you don’t know who they are, you have about $1000 of shopping to do. Damien Jurado – I Break Chairs This guy is so cool. I saw him play in Toronto and he’s kinda heavy-set and wore a gray hoodie and kinda danced when he sang. His voice is familiar and yet distinctive – like a character we know in a play we haven’t seen. The songs here are the goods – after a few albums of really lonely, beautiful tunes of almosts and barelys, this guy made some friends and maybe met a girl and everyone turned up and rocked out. There is a spiritual feel to I Break Chairs (title = catharsis!). The sorrow is here: ‘Never Ending Tide’, ‘Inevitable’ are sparse and sad, but sad can be your friend and there can be triumph in your own ashes – at least they are yours. Damien seems to get this and closing with the tougher ‘Parade’ and ‘Lose My Head’ hints that he shall overcome. Arlo – Stab the Unstoppable Hero Wowee. This is such a huge record: it’s loud and proud and just keeps doubling the dose. The songs are better than solid – catchy and powerpoppy like Cheap Trick never made it to the 80’s. It’s unabashedly classic-rockish at all the right times too. Just tasty as all get out. They all write too, which suggests that this must be some sort of conspiracy….hmm. ‘Runaround’ and ‘Too Sick to Tango’ are the heaviest of this set of heavy petters. Great harmonies, stops and starts, sing along choruses, chiming guitars, in-the-red-but-clean-production…Buy it. Thank me. Honourable Mentions: The Good Life – Blackout Nice songs/neat sounds. A downer, but not in a can’t-get-laid kinda way, more in a subtler, it-can-suck-to-be-pretty kinda way. Rhett Miller – The Instigator He’s cute and the songs are cute too. Catchy and show-off record from Old 97’s lead man. Brendan Benson – Lapalco ‘Metarie’ is one of the 2 or 3 best songs I heard this year, easy. I am such a sucker for power pop. $TQ – Sex Means Something Else These songs are pretty great. More pictures of this guy please! Can’t wait for the follow-up… Happy New Year, $TQ (home) |